Byzantine Blog

European Union's Foreign Policy Made in Bonn

Drawing the parallels between the orchestrated vilification of the Serbian people in the 1990's and the 1930's, “when most of the British press demonised the Czechs at Downing Streets behest, denouncing them as a threat to European peace and for ill-treating their peaceful German Sudetenland minority,” while “‘Herr’ Hitler, by contrast was held up as a reasonable man,” Sir Alfred Sherman pointed to the legitimate claim of the Serbs to self-rule with religious and cultural freedoms and concluded:

This will not be achieved so long as European Community foreign policy is made in Bonn, whose agenda entails the reversal not only of Versailles, but also of the post-1945 settlement.

Germany's Latest War: War Against Yugoslavia

In a letter to The Washington Times editor published today, Dr. Vojin Joksimovich responds to a Muslim propagandist claiming that secession of Slovenia and Croatia had little to do with religion. He explains how, after Tito's death, Vatican “revived the ancient policy of European division between the Roman and Byzantine parts” by which Roman Catholic Slovenia and Croatia “belonged to the Roman Europe together with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia,” while “the other Yugoslav republics [which] had predominant Serbian Orthodox and Muslim populations ... thus belonged to the Byzantine Europe together with Russia.”

Professor Joksimovich further explains:

Vicious secession campaigns were initiated in Germany and Austria. Germany, as the leading member of the European Community (now European Union), took the lead and coerced most other EC partners in dismembering Yugoslavia.

Germany recognized the secessionist republics of Slovenia and Croatia on Dec. 23, 1991, the Vatican on Jan. 12, 1992, and the EC on Jan. 15. The United States' recognition did not come until April 6.

(...)

Four days after Mr. Baker's departure, Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally declared their independence, casting Yugoslavia into a political and constitutional limbo. The ensuing series of events culminated in the Serbo-Croat civil war. Former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance characterized it as the Genscher's war (Hans Dietrich-Genscher was Germany's foreign minister) (...)

Renewed Drive for Dominance

With recently elected German Pope, Joseph Ratzinger who, before stepping on Vatican Ladder, was a member of the Hitler's army (no big deal, though, boys will be boys), on the eve of German takeover of the European Union leadership in 2007, and at the time the status of southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija is to be decided upon, it comes as no surprise that the person assigned to head the UN Mission in Kosovo is no other then a German national Joachim Rücker who is openly rooting for Albanian secessionists.

Build That Wall Again!

In a climate where the aggressively renewed German drive for dominance is more then obvious, news such as the recent one appearing on the German Foreign Policy site are eerily familiar:

The medieval, Europe-wide German Reich is a valid model for the union of European countries today. So says the Berlin State Minister for Culture, Bernd Neumann. According to him, the memory of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation reveals “an inner historical consistency” with the founding and steady expansion of the European Union. These remarks are a preparation for the festivities in Berlin for the fiftieth anniversary of the European Economic Community (EEC), to which the Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has invited the German Pope, Joseph Ratzinger. Ratzinger is a committed supporter of the “Imperial Ideal” (Reichsidee) and is to speak on the “spiritual foundations” of Europe in the German capital. This government offensive to revitalise the Imperial Ideal will underline the German leadership of the EU and confirm fears in France, Great Britain and almost all the states of eastern Europe. Sections of the German elites are warning against an all-too-public assertion of German hegemony.

It is becoming exceedingly obvious that the world now needs another Reagan to say: “Mr. President, bring that wall up again!” Otherwise, we're all screwed.

Speaking of Evil: Playing Kosovo in Switzerland

Switzerland has been shaken by the news of a violent crime committed by two Kosovo Albanian boys age 11 and 13 who have raped a 5 year old girl. According to the Swiss newspapers Blick and Sudostschweiz, which made the affair public, the 5 year old girl was taken to a neighbourhood park where she was sexually abused by the two schoolboys. The victim was held down by the younger boy while the 13 year old teenager raped her. Then the younger boy took his turn. All three lived in Rhazuns, Switzerland, and knew each other.

Poor “Albanian Kosovars,” after suffering at the hands of those nasty Serbs, the Swiss are now continuing to abuse world's favorite victims in their new home, prohibiting their children to play Kosovo with Western children and banning them from a public school.

To paraphrase late President Milosevic: “When they start raping your children, ambushing and killing your policemen and beheading your own people, then you will know what this is all about.”

Artwork by Zoran Spasojevic

Posted by Svetlana at 02:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Clinton Administration Allied With Radical Islam

Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, reveals The Real 9/11 Conspiracy, the one that is still among the best guarded Washington secrets, which none of the greatest timely-accurate-around-the-world-news-at-your-doorstep media outlets would touch with a 10 foot pole:

“First, the Clinton Administration was allied with radical Islam when it waged a war on Serbia and the CIA was ordered to assist the Kosovo Liberation Army, some of whose members were trained by bin Laden. That was 1999-two years before 9/11.

One of many stories about such connections appeared in the Washington Times on May 4, 1999, and was written by Jerry Seper. It said, ‘Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden...the KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO's...bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports...The reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA. Many border crossings into Kosovo by ‘foreign fighters’ also have been documented and include veterans of the militant group Islamic Jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.’

CIA Was Actively Assisting Bin Laden Network

After 9/11, Dollars for Terror, an important book by Swiss television journalist Richard Labeviere, explained in detail what was happening and how it had backfired on the U.S. He presented the thesis that the international Islamic networks linked to bin Laden were nurtured by elements of the U.S. intelligence community, especially during the Clinton years.

This is a shocking view, but it puts other developments in perspective, such as Clinton support for radical Muslims in such places as Kosovo and Bosnia before that. The book also suggests that Islamic radicals, who were present in the U.S. in the 1990s and training to fly aircraft, were tolerated because it was believed that they were going to hit targets in other countries, not the United States.

In other words, the CIA was actively assisting the bin Laden network, thinking it would serve U.S. interests.

(...)

Tragically, some of the misguided Clinton policies have been continued, such as the plan to create a Muslim state in Kosovo, to go along with the Muslim state already established with Iranian help in Bosnia. Bush should reverse course on that one-and fast.”

Entire article by Cliff Kincaid, The Real 9/11 Conspiracy

Stupid and Malevolent Policy in the Balkans

Srdja Trifkovic of The Chronicles Magazine, takes time to honor the brilliant man and one of the greatest thinkers of our time, Sir Alfred Sherman, who passed away on the 26th of August. Going over Sir Sherman's incredibly accurate and timely warnings about the gross Western miscalculations that led to a series of vicious wars in the Balkans, one can only be shocked to realize NOBODY LISTENED:

“In the last decade and a half of his life, Sherman was tireless in exposing the stupidity and malevolence of the Western policy in the Balkans. In 1994 we joined forces to establish The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, with the help of Michael Stenton and Ronald Hatchett, as a non-partisan research institute. In Sherman’s words, it was “designed to correct the current trend of public commentary, which tends, systematically, not to understand events but to construct a propagandistic version of Balkan rivalries, designed to facilitate the involvement of outside powers.” He chose the name of a great Western poet who gave his life in the fight to free Balkan peoples from Mohammedan rule, which reflected his belief in “the essential unity of our civilization, of which the Orthodox nations are an inseparable and essential ingredient.” As Michael Stenton wrote when Sherman retired as LBF Chairman in 2001:

Pick Your Blue-Eyed Boys

Alfred has known Yugoslavia since the days the Muslim ladies were still wearing veils. Long decades before the talk of a ‘clash of civilizations’ he understood the Balkans in this sense. Where the average journalist sees the wars in Yugoslavia through some ‘worst since World War Two’ lens, Alfred sees precise parallels: between the Anglo-French reluctance to recognize Nazi malice and ‘Western’ courtesies and concessions to Islam today; between the fashionable denunciation of the Czechs for their treatment of the Sudeten Germans in 1938 and the recent excoriation of the Serbs in Kosovo and elsewhere. First select your blue-eyed boys, then wait for the atrocities, then believe what your favorites say. He has seen it all before—whether on the winning or the losing side. It inspires him not with cynicism but with stoicism. He is filled with regret but not with bitterness.

Muslims Are Not Jews

As early as 1992, writing in London’s Jewish Chronicle, Sherman warned against the lapse of logic in confusing the present plight of Bosnian Muslims with that of European Jewry under Hitler. “It does us no good to claim a locus standi in every conflict be equating it with the Holocaust,” he wrote, “or when third parties in their own interests take the name of our martyrs in vain; Bosnia is not occupied Europe; the Muslims are not the Jews; the Serbs did not begin the civil war, but are predictably responding to a real threat”:

Some years ago, I, among others, warned that, whatever the logic of establishing Yugoslavia in the first place, any attempt at hurried dismemberment, particularly along Tito’s internal demarcation lines, would lead to armed conflict, self-intensifying bloodshed and floods of refugees . . . Since 1990, the independent Croatian leadership—with its extreme chauvinist and clericalist colouring—and the Bosnian Muslim leadership—seeking, in its Islamic fundamentalist programme, to put the clock back to Ottoman days—have threatened to turn the Serbs back into persecuted minorities… The Serbs cannot forget that, in living memory, the ‘Independent Croatian State,’ set up by Hitler in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, massacred close on half of the Serbian population—which was then the largest of the three communities in Bosnia—and as many Jews as it could  lay hands on . . . If there is any parallel with the Holocaust, it is the martyrdom of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, who account for a third of the Serbian nation.

Herr Hitler, a Reasonable Man

Both the Croatian and Muslim leaderships enjoy support and encouragement from Germany, Sherman noted, and from militantly Islamic governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, though Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia outnumbered Croatian and Muslim refugees combined, the media virtually ignore them:

It reminds one of the late 1930’s, when most of the British press demonised the Czechs at Downing Streets behest, denouncing them as a threat to European peace and for ill-treating their peaceful German Sudetenland minority; ‘Herr’ Hitler, by contrast was held up as a reasonable man . . . It is almost invariably the innocent who suffer in war. But that does not equate them with  victims of the Holocaust, any more than being a Jew automatically qualifies one to pronounce on Yugoslavia. This needs to meet the Serbs’ legitimate claim to self-rule with religious and cultural freedoms, otherwise they will go on fighting even if the whole world is mobilised against them . . . This will not be achieved so long as European Community foreign policy is made in Bonn, whose agenda entails the reversal not only of Versailles, but also of the post-1945 settlement.

By the end of the decade Sherman saw the U.S. policy in the Balkans as inseparable from the drive for global hegemony. At a conference jointly organized by The Lord Byron Foundation and The Rockford Institute in 1997, he noted that the American century began with the Spanish-American War, and that it was ending with American penetration of the Balkans. But in contrast to the Spanish-American war, he argued, U.S. intervention in the Balkans has no clear strategic aim, but is allegedly a moral crusade on behalf of the “international community”:

Can't Sit on Bayonets

This begs many questions. First, is there such a thing as “the international community”? Do people in China, which accounts for a fifth of the world’s population, and the Buddhists, who account for another fifth—among others—really want the US and its client states to bomb the Serbs or Iraqis? And who exactly, and when, deputed the US to act on behalf of this “world community”? . . . Secondly, can the blunt weapon of force, of whose use US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright boasted, balance conflicting and competing ethnic, religious, economic and political interactions over this wide and conflictive region? Can the US raise the expectations of the Albanians and Slav Moslems without affronting Macedonians, Greeks, Italians, Bulgars and Croats, as well as Serbs? . . . Thirdly, can force be a substitute for policy? It was a wise German who said that you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. The same goes for gunships, the modern equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. Bomb and rocket once, and it has an effect. But if the victim survives, the second bout is less effective, because the victim is learning to cope.

Almost a decade ago, well before Iraq and 9-11, Sherman saw that Washington had “set up the cornerstone of a European Islamistan in Bosnia and a Greater Albania, thus paving the way for further three-sided conflict between Moslems, Serbs and Croats in a bellum omnium contra omnes . . . Far from creating a new status quo it has simply intensified instability.” The U.S. may succeed in establishing its hegemony, in the Balkans-Danubia-Carpathia and elsewhere, “but it will also inherit long-standing ethno-religious conflicts and border disputes without the means for settling them.” His 1997 warning could have come from the pages of Chronicles:

Megalomania, a Form of Madness

At the time of writing, the USA is uniquely powerful. It will not always be so. In the course of time, Russia may gain its potential strength, and there is very little the USA can do about Chinese developments one way or the other . . . A law of history is that power tends to generate countervailing power. It is not for me to trace how this will come about. We can do little more than guard against arrogance and over-extension and minimize the pointless sacrifices they usually entail. I am proud to have taken part in this struggle, the struggle to bring the powerful to their senses before they plunge into reckless, ruthless folly. This struggle carries no guarantee of success, for it is the quest for sanity that epitomizes the struggle of suffering humanity throughout the ages.

His realization that Western intervention in Yugoslavia has come as a result of Western crisis and not of Balkan tragedies, stemmed directly from his key insight that Washington’s “Benevolent Global Hegemony” is based on a new cultural paradigm, materialistic and anti-traditional. This megalomania is a form of madness, he would add, and nothing new in world history (...)

Entire article by Srdja Trifkovic, Sir Alfred Sherman: Witness to a Century

Cartoons, in the order they are shown, by Serbian cartoonists: N.V., Predrag Koraksic - Corax and Nikola Otas

Posted by Svetlana at 05:01 PM | Permalink

The Only Just and Righteous Judge

Holy Gospel teaches us the sacred and salvific truth that, at the only just and righteous Judgement, that of the Lord, every man will give account for all of his deeds and transgressions.

Therefore, there is no such thing as a collective responsibility and especially no collective guilt exists in any sense.

The one who charges the entire Serbian nation as guilty of being evil is rejecting both the Christian understanding of a man, and the main premise of the human society's democratic structure.

After all, it is well known how the Jewish people in recent history paid for the notion of its alleged collective guilt: with over six million innocent lives. If victims from Russian and Polish nation and other Slavic nations -- among them, us, Serbs -- as well as victims from many other peoples in Europe and the world at the time were added to this terrifying number, that is when one truly feels the mystic horror of ideological misconceptions and political madness.

Forgetful Mr. Ahtisaari

Serbian Orthodox Church would have been deeply saddened and concerned if any nation were to be charged with the collective guilt, but especially when we learned this has been said for Serbian people which constitutes the greatest majority of our Church's faithful.

Even greater alarm and bitterness was brought upon Serbian Church by the fact that such qualification of the Serbian people came from no other then Mr. Martti Ahtisaari, the high representative of the international community. This is the person that is supposed to, impartially and constructively, facilitate the Serbian-Albanian negotiations in the name of United Nations, with a goal of reaching a reasonable compromise about the future status of Kosovo and Metohija - the arrangement that should morally, legally and in terms of sustainable life be acceptable to both sides.

Obviously discarding the neutrality and objectivity, seemingly forgetting there are no colonies and colonial governors in the modern-day Europe, Mr. Ahtisaari offered such statement as a justification for his position that Serbia's spiritual and historical heart, Kosovo and Metohija, should simply be confiscated. Indeed, he is not the first to nurture such presumption about Serbian nation -- he only joined the lengthy list of its advocates. Is it necessary to recall the numbers of all the innocent victims with which the Serbian people has paid for such notion through countless death-fields, during its recent and more distant history?

Never Again

We believed such words will never again be heard in Europe -- not even during the war, let alone in peace -- and especially not from a United Nations representative sent to the mission of peace and reconciliation. Those who reach for these kinds of presumptions in 21st century are confirming once again that might and right are irreconcilable opposites. This is where the verses of the greatest Serbian poet, Bishop and Cetinje Hermit are eternally relevant:

A wolf claims his right to a sheep -
as the tyrant to the weak;
But to step down on tyranny's neck -
that is the holiest duty of the Man.

In the same way, the Russian proverb teaches us that God is not in might, but in truth and right.

Let us never forget: Christ defeated lies and death by the Holy Cross. The triumph of the Good, of the Light and Love He has sealed with Resurrection -- His Own and ours.

The Archbishop of Pec, the Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch, Pavle

Posted by Svetlana at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Public Shock and Outrage

Chief United Nations negotiator for Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari drew unprecedented criticism over the weekend from Serbian politicians for allegedly saying that “Serbs are guilty as people” and implying that they would have to pay for it, possibly by losing Kosovo which is seeking independence. The statement, allegedly made by Ahtisaari during Kosovo talks in Vienna on 8 August, was made public Friday by members of Belgrade's negotiating team and immediately provoked a public shock. A weekend [terrorist attack] on a cafe in the northern Serb area of the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica where ethnic Albanians live to the south of a UN-guarded bridge [followed Ahtisaari's statement].

Ahtisaari, winding up his four-day visit to Kosovo on Friday indirectly confirmed his earlier stance. Asked by journalists for comment he said that “every nation carries a burden for which it has to pay.” He said that the new democratic leadership in Belgrade can’t be blamed for the wrong policies of former president Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo, but “leaders in Belgrade must face a historic inheritance and accept responsibility for the past years.”

(...)

The statement further enraged Belgrade, which opposes Kosovo's independence, and some politicians even called for Ahtisaari’s resignation.

Ahtisaari and, Before Him, Hitler

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said in a statement that while the UN was seeking “a just and tenable solution for the status of Kosovo” Ahtisaari seemed “determined to do just the opposite.” Ahtisaari has been creating the impression that the negotiations were unnecessary, he said, “because the solution already exists and has only to be implemented - and that is Kosovo independence.”

Spokesman for Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia, Andreja Mladenovic, said that “before Ahtisaari only Hitler had dared to say that an entire people was guilty,” slamming Ahtisaari’s statement as “scandalous, shameful and racist.”

Triggering Terrorist Attacks

Tension was heightened after an attack late Saturday on a Serbian cafe in the city of Kosovska Mitrovica, in which nine people, including a UN policemen and a pregnant Dutch woman, were injured. The Serbian government said in a statement the terrorist act was encouraged by Ahtisaari’s statement that “Serbs were guilty as a people.”

“If something like that is said by a special envoy of the UN Secretary-general in the talks on the Kosovo status, then any violence against Serbs is justified and awarded,” the government statement said.

The cafe [terrorist attack] in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica on Saturday, which injured nine people, has fuelled fears of a fresh wave of violence in the UN-run province, where nearly two million ethnic Albanians are pushing for independence from Serbia.

From Aki, the Global Information Gateway

UN Representatives' Irresponsible Behavior

Representatives of the Serb National Council of Northern Kosovo have demanded that international authorities in the province close the bridge over the Ibar River, which separates the town into Serb and Albanian parts, until negotiations on the status are concluded, and called on citizens to remain calm and not to panic “which is obviously what some want.”

Speaking at a SNC press conference, Belgrade negotiating team member Marko Jaksic stated that the most recent tossing of a grenade at a cafe in the northern part of Mitrovica and the wounding of nine people is the consequence of statements by Kosovo status envoy Martti Ahtisaari and newly appointed UNMIK chief Joachim Ruecker that the Serbs as a people are guilty and that Kosovo independence is on the horizon.

“By their irresponsible behavior and cover-up of crimes UNMIK and KFOR are encouraging Albanians to commit them. In just six months over 70 attacks on Serbs have been recorded which are, for the most part, classified as public disturbances and criminal acts,” said Jaksic.

Encouraging Terrorism

Nebojsa Jovic, the president of the SNC of North Kosovo, has demanded that UNMIK, KFOR and the Kosovo police explain “why the name of last night's attacker was not publicized when it is general knowledge that he is an ethnic Albanian Adem Dibrani,” claiming that all the members of his family are known terrorists.

Jovic explained that the closing of the bridge on the Ibar River has been requested in order to ensure the safety of Serbs in the northern part of Mitrovica.

The Serbian Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija sharply condemned the bomb attack in Kosovska Mitrovica and accused the international community of being responsible “at least as much as the Albanian terrorists” for Albanian crimes against Serbs.

“In the last few days Albanian terrorists in Kosovo and Metohija have been encouraged by statements by senior representatives of the United Nations and they have intensified their murderous actions directed against Serbs,” said the Coordinating Center in a written statement.

International Community Shares Guilt

The Coordinating Center points out that only circumstance prevented great casualties “from a bomb calmly carried across the Ibar River bridge by a terrorist and, despite the Kosovo Police Service, UNMIK and KFOR, tossed at a nearby cafe.”

The Coordinating Center's communique notes that the grenade was tossed “immediately following Ahtisaari's statement regarding Serb guilt.” “The international community is at least as responsible for Albanian crimes against Serbs, which are assuming an ever greater and worrisome scale, as the Albanian terrorists,” said the Coordinating Center.

“It has not stopped, arrested or sentenced them in the past, and now Ahtisaari is further encouraging them,” concluded the communique.

Serbs demand bridge closing during Kosovo status negotiations

Posted by Svetlana at 03:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

Old Nobodaddy

Among other things, Serbs are these days a perfect example for the wise old warning: Never lose a war. Because if you do, not only will you be hanged and quartered and forced to eat mud for the rest of your days, you'll also get innumerable Nobodaddy's pissing on your leg and telling you it's raining.

Today, a Nobodaddy named Martin Sletzinger suggested a compromise solution for Kosovo could be based on “a revision of existing borders.” Not surprisingly, what this troll considers Serbia's “existing borders” are the non-existent borders of Serbia-proper: instead of Serbia's southern border with Albania, Sletzinger is talking about the “border” with Kosovo. So, in short, Sletzinger decided to give Serbian southern province of Kosovo away to Albanians, and now he is generously offering one half of one city in the same Serbian province to Serbs.

Very nice, I love it when the trolls fall back to their original Serbs-are-morons strategy.

Another Nobodaddy, a German pen-pusher Joachim Ruecker recently assigned to head the administrative leg of the UN Mission in Kosovo, rushed to announce Serbian province will be taken away from Serbs who, being bad and unworthy, deserve to lose 15 percent of their territory.

Director of the Serbian government's Office of Media Relations Srdjan Djuric felt the German troll (already!) needs to be reminded of his duties which, incidentally, exclude free-hand map redrawing and include bringing to justice Albanian Muslims who have committed hundreds of unpunished crimes against Serbs in the province.

Ahtisaari, the Troll King

But none of it quite matches the audacity of Martti Ahtisaari who, from his position of the UN special envoy for Kosovo status negotiations, decided it is time to issue a final verdict, that “Serbs as a people are responsible” for the war against Albanian al-Qaeda, the terrorist KLA, suggesting loss of Kosovo and Metohija will be another installment of the price Serbs are expected to pay without batting an eyelash.

The accusation was hurled on August 8 this year, in Vienna, and thrown into Serbian delegation's face while they were taking part in the negotiations over the future status of southern Serbian province. Coordinators of the Serbian government's negotiating team Leon Kojen and Slobodan Samardzic had sent a letter to Ahtisaari on August 10 demanding that he explains his statement. Since they received no response until yesterday, Kojen and Samardzic went public with the biased envoy's deplorable statement, repeating their demand for explanation.

Pressed to respond, the decrepit troll simply said that “every nation has a burden to pay for” and used the opportunity to push the blade an inch deeper:

The democratic leadership in Serbia today cannot be held accountable for the actions of Slobodan Milošević, but the leaders in Belgrade have to face the heritage and responsibility, because this historical heritage cannot be ignored, but rather must be taken into account in the process of finding a solution for the future status of Kosovo.

Notwithstanding the fact Slobodan Milošević did much less and much later than any president of any state in the world would have in the face of the organized armed insurgence aided by Bin Laden and foreign intelligence services, and dedicated to starting a war in order to carve up part of the state Milošević swore to protect, Ahtisaari is saying that the Serbian democratic leadership cannot be responsible for Milošević's terribleness, but it is responsible. The “historical heritage” of a 1,500 years old state with Kosovo and Metohija as its Jerusalem, according to Nobodaddy Ahtisaari, is limited to the “heritage” of 1998-1999 war with terrorist KLA. And Serbian democratic leadership “has to face responsibility” for this war because they must and have to. Did I miss something? Is this man a complete idiot, or does he just think Serbs are?

Cause and Effect

The very same evening after the KLA-fan supposedly representing United Nations has finished publicly repeating the insult and issuing the verdict to Serbian people, a sixteen year old Albanian Muslim Adem Dibrani walked across the bridge to predominantly Serbian part of town of Kosovska Mitrovica and threw a bomb into a coffee-shop. Among the injured was also a member of NATO troops stationed in Kosovo.

Following Ahtisaari's accusation that triggered the attack, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica issued a public statement:

Ahtisaari's declaration of Serbian national guilt has produced the prompt reaction from Albanian separatists - throwing a grenade at innocent Kosovo Mitrovica citizens.

Both the Albanian terrorists and the representatives of the international community who, through their actions or inaction are continuously encouraging the terrorists, bear equal responsibility for this crime.

At the moment when the negotiations over the just and sustainable solution for the future status of Kosovo and Metohija are in full swing, the gestures and statements of Martti Ahtisaari, the UN Secretary General's special envoy, are causing all the greater bewilderment and raising serious concerns. Although Ahtisaari was given a mandate to enable the negotiations that would lead to a historically just compromise and a solution based on the rules of the international law, Ahtisaari seems to be bent on doing everything contrary to his task.

On many occasions, in a more or less veiled way, he has pointed out that compromise and negotiations are pointless, since the solution that only remains to be implemented already exists: independent Kosovo. For this solution which is directly opposed to the basic principles of the international law Ahtisaari has now offered his explanation: ‘Serbs as a people are guilty.’ This way, Ahtisaari has joined the proponents of the most sinister notion in the history of humanity, that of the collective responsibility of entire nations.

For this reason, Ahtisaari has not just trampled over the mandate he was entrusted with, but has also engaged in a war with the international law, democratic values and historical facts. As the history has already recorded, one dangerous precedent Ahtisaari is sponsoring cannot remain unique and singled out. The issue that is jeopardizing the integrity of the Serbian state today could soon plague other countries and the entire world.

This is precisely why the world's democratic community has to respond appropriately to this type of lethal ideas and propositions.

Price of Peace

Not so long ago, Henrik Ibsen concluded that “to live is to war with trolls.” As a Serbian, until fifteen years ago, I didn't even know so many trolls crawl around, let alone that so many of them occupy the highest positions on the world scene. But, as a Serbian, I'm afraid there is another quote that is much closer to the people I belong to: We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive to his body. Chains are worse than bayonets (Douglas Jerrold).

Perhaps it is time for the international trolls to take a cue from Serbian history (which happens to be a bit longer then the past 15 years) and start treading lightly over the certain ground, lest they wish to get the Serbs thinking they are being chained all over again. The unlimited patience, alas, is far from being Serbian strongest trait.

Cartoon by Zoran Matic - Mazos

Posted by Svetlana at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (5)

Article by Julia Gorin, originally published by the FrontPageMagazine.com

Kosovo, a Terrifying Precedent

Although Kosovo set a terrifying precedent for Israel, at least two Jews are happy about it. In a recent Wall St. Journal-Europe piece titled “Balkan Choice,” Morton Abramowitz and Mark Schneider write that Serbian President Vojislav Kostunica’s opposition to Kosovo independence risks making his country an “international pariah.”

Have these two been asleep for 15 years? Serbia has been a pariah since it began fighting Islamo-nationalist terror without the West’s permission. Serbs were the first ones fingered in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the ones bombed by Bill Clinton in 1995 for a Sarajevo marketplace massacre — despite British intelligence warnings that a Bosnian-Muslim mortar was responsible. That other pariah state, Israel, is familiar with such frame-ups, and it’s no coincidence that Israel quietly aided Serbs militarily, aware of Islamic terrorist ties to the Bosnian army, including Palestinians operating in Bosnia.

“Albanian Kosovar” or Muslim?

When Israel confronts terrorism, it’s called self-defense. When Serbia does, it’s “poisonous nationalism” — as a Washington Post editorial called it the same week (“Serbia’s Intransigence”). Quite strategically, the word “Muslim” appears nowhere in either article, lest the world finally catch on to what we “achieved” in the Balkans. Instead, the authors promote the term “Albanian Kosovar,” a flashback to the journalistic ploy that ensured a multi-national war against European Christians on behalf of Muslims.

Abramowitz and Schneider write that Milosevic’s “attempted ethnic cleansing [has] made anything less than independence totally unacceptable to the people of Kosovo.” The “people of Kosovo” to whom the authors so reverently refer use Serbian children for target practice. Kosovo is dominated by thugs who have attacked Serbs 186 times just since getting the green light for final-status talks last October. The bruises, broken bones and graves of their victims — infant to octogenarian, male or female — are on display in the DVD documentary “Days Made of Fear.” As for Milosevic’s “attempted ethnic cleansing,” all that can be said is that people who haven’t followed even a day of a four-year trial shouldn’t write op-eds relying on popular mythology.

West Buckling Under

Abramowitz and Schneider even have the poor taste to repeat the disingenuous assurances of a NATO presence enforcing international guarantees to protect the Serb minority — as if oblivious that NATO hasn’t been able to prevent the almost daily kidnappings and attacks on the remaining Serbs, and was helpless even to stop the 2004 pogrom in which NATO troops themselves were attacked by Albanians. Incredibly, the authors write that the Kosovars have “met enough of the standards to get U.N. Security Council endorsement of final status negotiations” — as if one monitoring group after another hasn’t exposed the fact that the internationals have simply given up on any standards being met. (The UN is planning to evacuate tens of thousands of Serbs the moment we hand Kosovo to the terrorists this year.)

“Serbia is going to have to accept Kosovo independence” is code-speak for the West buckling under to terrorism in the Balkans as usual. It’s all the more unconscionable, given that today we know the London and Madrid explosives came from Kosovo.

The authors conclude by saying that Serbia will be better off “living in peace with a new Kosovo.” Just like Israel will be better off living “in peace” with a Hamas-led Palestine.

Fighting Terrorism With One Hand

For its part, The Washington Post criticizes Serbia for “repeatedly [failing] to meet a critical condition for moving forward [toward EU and NATO membership], which is the arrest of indicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic.” While fugitive Serbian war criminals are fixated on, Albanian war criminals are allowed to enjoy political careers. Notice that no such criticism is raised about Kosovo’s prime minister Agim Ceku — a former KLA commander who is indicted in Serbia for command responsibility in terrorist killings of over 600 Serbs, Roma, Albanians and others, including beheading, torture, mutilation, and abducting more than 500 people, most presumed dead. The KLA, meanwhile, trained in al-Qaeda camps prior to our 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia.

When America is leading a global war on jihad terror, it’s difficult to understand how Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly greeted this wanted terrorist in Washington this summer.

We cannot fight terrorism with one hand while abetting it with the other. As UN human rights observer Jiri Dienstbier has noted, “If NATO and the UN can’t defeat terrorism in an area the size of one-eighth of the Czech Republic, how do they expect to confront global terrorism?”

Appeasing the Albanian Violence

Although the intelligence community is fully aware of the Kosovo threat, our political leaders and media are denying it. The Post editors refer to “a firm Western consensus” that the province “should be granted independence before the end of this year.” Translation: America and Europe are taking the Wesley Clark approach and appeasing the Albanian violence meant to persuade us that there can be only one outcome — theirs. Recall that the “firm Western consensus” in 1999 was that Kosovo would have autonomy precisely without becoming independent.

To get back into the West’s good graces, the beaten-down Serbs have lain prostrate for the past seven years throughout the continuing dismemberment of their country and security. And yet, any leader — no matter how democratic and pro-Western (Kostunica is a Constitutional scholar) — who tries to draw the line with the number of concessions Serbs will make to their tormentors sounds “disturbingly like Slobodan Milosevic,” according to The Post.

Writing in a Vacuum

Terror aside, the criminal rackets (sex slavery, the heroin trade) in Kosovo are closely linked to the KLA leadership that dominates the local Albanian administration operating under UN auspices, and are already a menace to Europe. If organized crime is uncontrolled under UN and NATO supervision, how will Kosovo’s independence improve things when the racketeers become the sovereign government?

It’s time to stop writing in a vacuum about the Balkan region and our handiwork there. It happens to be the MOST key region nearest us in the War on Terror. As the 9/11 Commission found, it was in 1990s Bosnia that the “groundwork for a true terrorist network was being laid.” That network is today known as al Qaeda.

Then You Will Know

This year, we continue the march toward a Greater (and eventually Muslim-only) Albania that will attach Kosovo (and soon Macedonia and parts of Greece). By signing the Christian Serbs’ Jerusalem over to the terrorists, we will give terrorism the boost it struggled for throughout the 90s. Instead of influencing their government away from such treachery, Americans shrug.

When the Milosevic trial opened in February 2002, the former Serbian “disproportionate force” president showed photos of disembodied Serbian heads. The late Judge Richard May had little patience for this display, calling it irrelevant. To which Milosevic replied:

“It’s not on the screens that the public sees. Right. I see it on this screen now. But this internal screen only. So he is holding a head, the head of a Serb that he cut off. So those are the 20,000 Mujahedin that were brought to the European theatre of war through Clinton’s policy, and most of them remained there and some went to America and to other countries, and they went all around Europe. And then when they start beheading your own people in wars to come, then you will know what this is all about.”

I thought we’d gotten the memo by now.

Julia Gorin is a member of the Advisory Board of American Council for Kosovo, and a contributing editor to Jewish World Review. For a daily dose of Julia's intelligent, timely and straightforward comments, visit her Glob.

Cartoon by Nikola Otas

Posted by Svetlana at 04:01 PM | Permalink

“Natural Albania” or Cavemen United

“(...) Epoka e Re, an Albanian paper published in Kosovo, printed an interview on Aug. 22 with Koco Danaj, political adviser to Albania's Prime Minister Sali Berisha, in which Danaj called for the creation of a “natural Albania” by 2013.

Already assuming the independence of Kosovo, Danaj invoked Montenegro's separation from Serbia as an argument that Albanians in Montenegro and Macedonia should have the right to secede as well. “Instead of having Albanians participate in those countries' governments, it would be more natural that they had one government in the Albanian capital, Tirana, Danaj said.” (AKI)

The Italian news service that reported Danaj's comments didn't note the significance of the date, but 2013 would be the 100th anniversary of the creation of Albania. It was in 1913 that the European “Great Powers” created the first Albanian state by the Treaty of London, which officially ended the Balkan Wars. For the rest of the 20th century, Albanian nationalists have attempted to adjust the borders laid out by that treaty to ones more closely approximating those claimed by the 1878 League of Prizren as "ethnic Albania." This is the “natural Albania” Danaj was referring to, no mistake.

Danaj's comments drew a sharp reaction from Serbia's de facto Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic, who condemned them as expansionist and sent a message to the Contact Group that amounted to “Did we not tell you so?”

Belgrade's warnings that the campaign for Kosovo's independence, the Macedonian rebellion, and the Albanian participation in Montenegrin secession were all parts of a wider strategy for the creation of a Greater Albania have been played down by Imperial officials and mocked by Albanian partisans such as the ICG. But as days go by, it's become obvious that such a pattern does indeed exist (...)”

Entire article by Nebojsa Malic, Wishful Thinking

Viral Meningitis Outbreak

In his excellent analysis, Malic also mentions the outbreak of viral meningitis in southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, where contaminated tap water and public pools have helped infect over 400 people so far.

Sanitation in Kosovo is not UNMIK's responsibility, but squarely that of the authorities led by the “former” KLA thugs. Over the past eight years, they have demonstrated an unquestionable talent for atrocities, terrorism, propaganda, and lobbying, but a complete lack of ability to protect the lives or property of their fellow Albanians, let alone the Turks, Roma, Ashkali, or Serbs who lived in Kosovo.

Mind you, the competence – or lack thereof – of the Albanian authorities should not be a factor in deciding whether their separatist cause should be allowed to violate international law, precedent, and principle. But it would at least help the Albanian claims some if they actually appeared even marginally capable of running their own affairs.

UNMIK: We Call the Albanians Rats and Cockroaches

The spread of infections in Kosovo due to the appallingly unsanitary conditions brings to mind a testimony of Mark Ames, an American visiting Kosovo a year after it was handed over to UNMIK, NATO and KLA terrorists, aptly titled GET ME OUTTA HERE!

Yeah, this is a lovely fucking place. Trash everywhere. Trash literally everywhere, in every ravine, gully, roadside, in rivers, streams, besides schoolyards…. Albanian leaders are trying to educate their people about the evils of trash, but they’ve got a long way to go. The entire south side is dusty, filthy, polluted. Power cuts and water cuts are frequent.

(...) The province is filthy, ugly, completely polluted by NATO ordinance, run by half-wits and thugs, soaked in blood and doomed to be the permanent asshole of Europe, a stain on the Balkans.

I can’t wait to get the fuck out.

But before commenting on the filth and trash Albanians pile up literally everywhere, including the schoolyards, Ames goes into more detail about the feelings The Cavemen, up-close and personal, awake in their rescuers and allies:

(...) You may have read about how members of the United States’ 82nd Airborne have been running amok in their sector, brutalizing the local Albanian population. What you probably haven’t read is the reason why: the soldiers couldn’t take the lawlessness, and the attacks on the totally defenseless local Serbs, and it drove them mad. Literally.

The internationals working here for the UN administration, for the OSCE, for NGOs and news organizations, are the most demoralized, cynical group of people this side of the Moscow Times headquarters. Most came in hating the Serbs, and found themselves soon hating the Albanians at least as much, and now are just trying to save their sanity and get out of this hellhole before they’re dragged down with it.

“We call the Albanians ‘rats’ and ‘cockroaches,'” one top UNMIK official told me. “If they gave guns to the internationals here, there’d be another genocide. Much bigger than what the Serbs did. Much worse.”

His girlfriend, who works for the OSCE here, nodded her head and rolled her eyes, eagerly agreeing. “All the Albanians do is complain. They have no culture, they hate us, they have no respect for us at all. They leave garbage everywhere, they treat women like shit.”

Only a Mother...

Meanwhile, Spanish police has arrested a gang of thieves in connection with 150 robberies from homes on the Costa del Sol. All those arrested are linked to an international network of Kosovo Albanian thieves. Which gives us an insight into what Albanians do when they are not trafficking drugs, slaves and arms, or when they're not starting another war. Robbing other people's homes is what Albanians do when they go to summer vacation.

So if, when you look at it in all honesty, only a mother can love this, why is West so keen on giving them all they want and more? As we could plainly see in Mark Ames' article, it's certainly not love and tenderness Albanian thugs evoke in an average Westerner, so what is the connection?

In the above quoted article Nebojsa Malic offers the answer:

The only clear winner emerging here is the Empire: it gets to keep the bases Halliburton built in the occupied province, and boast of its “intervention done right.”

In other words, Serbs are expected to continue paying for the entire mountain of Western miscalculations, mistakes and purposeful wrongs piled up during the last 15 years, while The Cavemen will continue to reap benefits from the same? Not bloody likely.

Posted by Svetlana at 01:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Feigning Shock

The recent revelation that “Germany's Conscience” and a beloved public figure Günter Grass was a proud member of the elite Waffen SS unit of the fascist army, which was entrusted by Adolf Hitler with the mission of running the Nazi concentration camps during the WWII has shocked and disappointed Germans and Austrians.

Among those who were neither surprised, nor disappointed are Serbs who have already had their rude awakening regarding Grass' true colors seven years ago, at the very start of NATO aggression on Serbia. The same year celebrated German “humanitarian” and supposed leftist has received the Nobel Prize, two days into the ferocious bombardment of Serbia, Grass used his overwhelming influence in the German-speaking world and his stature of a literary giant to give his blessing to the carnage:

Finally! this attack on Serbia is long overdue! It is already late, I just hope not too late. Obviously, we on this continent are not capable of doing anything regarding democracy, humanity and human rights without the Americans.

Beating the Fascist Tin Drum

The revolt Grass' words have caused among the Serbs has moved many of his Serbian readers to return his books. Flooded with messages and calls, Serbian daily Novosti has initiated the action “We are Returning Your Books, Herr Grass.” This is how “The Tin Drum” writer was exposed to the same experience Norwegian Hitler-supporter Knut Hamsun (another Nobel Prize winner) had to go through, few decades earlier.

Unlike Germans and Austrians (or the rest of the world, for that matter), Serbs didn't have to wait for Grass' public confession -- Serbian Minister of Culture Dr. Zeljko Simic saw through the thin layer of varnish of German writer's “humanity” back in 1999:

Resentfully, I can conclude Günter Grass' statement is in full accordance with the nurturing of the fascist tradition of thought. It represents the culmination of the Nazi outlook on the present day civilization. Beating on his fascist tin drum, Grass is inviting Europe to resort to even more brutality in the aggression against Serbia and Yugoslavia.

German Hypocrisy

The only thing that is bewildering and quite repugnant in the whole story is the hypocrisy of the German and Austrian public that is, suddenly, so deeply shocked and needs to “come to terms” with the fact Günter Grass The Nazi was also an active fascist sixty years ago. Why would they be shocked?!

Wasn't another famous German, the current Pope Joseph Ratzinger, also a member of the Hitler's army? The fact obviously didn't hurt his prospects of climbing up the clerical ladder in Vatican, right to the point of “infallibility” although the uniform he wore was never a secret.

Didn't the previous Pope, Karol Józef Wojtyła, beatify a convicted war criminal and a fascist, Croat cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, whose clero-fascists took part in the slaughter of 750,000 Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia during the WWII? And didn't that Pope went to beatify this verified monster right after Croatian Ustashe successfully cleansed another 350,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995? So, where was the outrage, what happened with the shock-mechanisms of the German, Austrian and other moralists then?!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...

Germans and Austrians who are these days “struggling to come to terms” with the fact their “Conscience” in the shape of Günter Grass is rather dirty, should reach for a mirror and have a better look at themselves, instead of continuing to externalize their own fascist attitudes.

After all, it wasn't so long ago that their government of “Green Slaughterers” (Peter Handke) rushed in to be the first in the world to grant independence to Neo-Nazi Croatia in its unhistorical, Tito/Hitler borders and without negotiations. It wasn't so long ago that the notorious holocaust denier and the war criminal Franjo Tudjman and his Croatian Ustashi were supplied with the brand new Made-in-Germany guns and tanks in the midst of arms embargo, which they used to ethnically cleanse Croatia and to aggress and occupy 30% of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It wasn't so long ago that the new incarnation of the Fascist Croatia went into a collective trance singing “Danke Deutschland” and it wasn't for nothing when it did.

It also seems rather recent that German mass-media outlets and the most prominent German newspapers were so shamelessly pitching Croat anti-Serbian propaganda that some of them, like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were ridiculed for the lack of any semblance of journalistic ethics and called, appropriately, Zagreb Allgemeine Zeitung. Even more recent is the firing-up of the German Luftwaffe fighter jets for the first time after the WWII, when these same Germans and Austrians that are now barely able to recover from the shock regarding their favorite Fascist Drummer, happily jumped at the opportunity to bomb Serbs once again and finish what their fathers and grandfathers were busy with throughout the large part of the last century.

The True Conscience

The visible German tremor over the calls to the Nobel Foundation to revoke Günter Grass' Nobel Prize and the entire we-read-the-books-not-the-writer refrain plays like a vulgar travesty on the scene of the “world of culture” when viewed from the perspective of another contemporary author who writes in German, Peter Handke.

It was really just yesterday that the pure genius of the written word, Peter Handke, who won the Heinrich Heine Prize fair and square was denied the award by the German officials and the entire German/Austrian public which went into a foaming fury over the very thought Handke should be the recipient of the Prize he fully earned. And this time around, the appallingly duplicitous German/Austrian mob of “Intellingentzia” (the ruling Wall*Mart Intelligence, as Gilles d'Aymery puts it) chose to punish the ingenious writer simply for refusing to shut up and go along with their favorite pastime: Serb-bashing.

For, unlike the SS Waffen Günter Grass, Handke is far from being Hitler's elite soldier and has no connection to the Nazi concentration camps -- quite opposite Günter the Fascist and the Fake Humanist, Handke happens to be the TRUE conscience of Germany and Austria. That is precisely why he is being so ferociously ostracised and most passionately hated exactly in Germany and his native Austria.

Unlike Günter the Nazi Liar, Handke's only sin is his humanity and integrity, the fact that he refused to join the chorus led by The Opportunistic Fascist Drummer in vilifying the Serbs beyond recognition, the fact that he condemned the inhumanity and bestiality with which Serbs were demonized, destroyed and systematically ruined. Handke kept telling the truth, in spite and in the midst of the mass-hysteria and anti-Serbian bias that is still dominating German/Austrian mass media.

Nevertheless, in the case of Peter Handke there were no outcries from the same corner we are hearing loud and clear today, and not one from the Fascist Grass' we-read-the-books-not-the-writer fans remembered to apply the same measuring stick to Handke's work. If Günter Grass was half the man Peter Handke is, he would return his Nobel Prize, just like Handke did, down to every penny. But the Old Fat Nazi has demonstrated he cannot even think of any gesture that would spring from personal integrity and sense of honor -- except for lip-service and cheap words, he has nothing else to give.

Swastika Forever

So, while Germans and Austrians are choking up on the “news,” it might be a good time for them to face some seriously unpleasant truths: Günter Grass wasn't a fascist 60 years ago, rather he never ceased to be one, and that very mindset and his Nazi-bent is the main reason he was so adored in Germany and Austria. There is no need to feign disgust, or to feel cheated by Grass' lies and pretence, since the majority of contemporary German/Austrian intellectuals, writers and public figures are in no way better -- while they might have not worn Hitler's uniforms, the swastika from Grass' lapel seems to be eternally imprinted on their foreheads, and mystically materializing in their words and actions.

Posted by Svetlana at 07:23 AM | Permalink

Nowhere in Europe

Nowhere in Europe is there such segregation as Kosovo. Thousands of people are still displaced and in camps.

Nowhere else are there so many ‘ethnically pure’ towns and villages scattered across such a small province.

Nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are. And perhaps nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future – or even a risk of genocide.

Kosovo Today

This is not a description of Kosovo in 1998 or in 2003. It is a description of Kosovo today. For the Serbs and ‘other minorities’ – the Roma, Bosniaks (Slavic Muslims), Croats, Turks and Albanians of Kosovo – who suffer from expulsion from their homes, discrimination and restrictions on speaking their own language, the pattern of violence they have endured for so long may be about to be entrenched as law in the new Kosovo, as the future status talks continue behind closed doors in Vienna.

How, after one of the longest and most expensive international administrations since the creation of the United Nations (UN), whose mandate was explicitly to secure an environment for refugees to return home and ensure public safety (Resolution 1244, Article 10), has this been allowed to occur?

Clear Failure

This report tracks a clear failure on the part of the international protectorate to learn lessons from the past and draw on the minority rights expertise available to it in the UN and other bodies. This failure has allowed decision-makers to remain unaccountable, and produced a Constitutional Framework that refers to minority rights so broadly that they are too wide to be effective. Instead of integration, the current situation encourages the opposite: segregation. The report shows how the initial international governance structure – five different armed brigades in Kosovo, each running a different region and led by a different country (France, Germany, Italy the UK and the USA), each with very different policies towards security and minorities – has kept fresh the wounds inflicted before the security forces first arrived and allowed patterns of violence to be repeated.

The problem is not lack of financing. Conversely, the fact that so much money has been spent on the region has allowed segregation in public services to become an easy solution to conflict between groups. A short-term mentality, the use of quota systems in public services and an electoral system based on rigid ethnic representation show a lack of commitment to implementing minority rights in any meaningful way.

Radical Need for Change

This report shows how the future status negotiations currently under way in Vienna represent both the best hope and the greatest danger for peace.

For hope to be justified, the report emphasizes, there is a radical need for change in mindset and in practice:

• Minority rights should be guaranteed by a rule of law that is actually taken seriously and applied.

NATO and UN in Kosovo Above Regulation

Till today, the governing administration, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) have declared themselves above regulation, overturning even the most basic of human rights laws, that of requiring all detention to be by order of a judge. Rights that exist on paper are made meaningless, and any fragile sense of security minorities have is consistently undermined. Therefore:

• The criminal justice system must hold those responsible for past crimes to account and see them arrested whatever their political power. Out of hundreds of investigations into the 2004 atrocities, few have been prosecuted, and those few convicted have received lenient sentences.
• All minorities should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country, instead of talks taking place among a select group of people, in secret and behind closed doors.
• Specific efforts must be made to include women’s views and international negotiations should include minority rights and gender experts. When the Constitutional Framework was drawn up in 2001 it was not put up for general consultation. The same mistake is being made today, with talks taking place in Vienna, far from where the most disadvantaged can take part. Understanding the devastating realities facing returning refugees and communities wanting to keep their language alive, to travel in safety and to seek work at all levels of society – all of which have become next to impossible for Kosovo’s minorities despite seven years of international intervention – is vital for anyone involved in peacekeeping missions, in reportage or in international governance.

Present Danger

The report shows that measures that separate communities through religion or ethnicity should be transitional, if they have to be used at all. The future status talks offer a chance for change. Otherwise, the danger is that the patterns of segregation that are accepted in Kosovo, and that lead to the terror of ethnic cleansing, will be enshrined in the Constitution, and will be played out again over the next decade.

Summary of the damning report titled Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule, by Clive Baldwin, Head of Advocacy at Minority Rights Group International. From 2000 to 2002 the author was a member of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. Previously, he was a practising human rights lawyer.

Clive Baldwin's Kosovo Report in PDF format.

Posted by Svetlana at 04:26 PM | Permalink

For those who prefer not to be bothered with learning to work with complex and expensive graphic programs, but would still like to occasionally display an original piece of digital artwork on their sites, TypoPoster Generator is the ideal answer.

TypoPosters are a creative combination of letters (words) and images and the nicest thing about them is that they can be used to visually illustrate the content of the page, instead of meaningless pretty pictures with no connection to the content.

~ Rose ~

Any term or word (even your name or the title of your web site) can be typed in the form provided as the subject of your piece of art, or you can type in a random string of letters and punctuation marks and see what happens.

Remember you can choose the portrait or landscape orientation and that you can “keep” the colors, background or the font you like on a certain image, while changing the other elements until you get the perfect poster for your site.

With a little bit of css styling, like in my Rose example, your TypoPoster can be adjusted to any look and feel you are after, and the best thing of all is that it's absolutely free!

Posted by Svetlana at 06:17 PM | Permalink

Foretelling a Failure

Addressing a joint session of Congress on Sept. 1, 1990, President George H.W. Bush proclaimed the advent of the New World Order. A new era of peace, prosperity, transnationalism and integration was ahead for long-suffering humankind.

The new system was based on the notion that nation-states are destructive to the progress of humankind because nationalism, like cancer, spreads and causes conflicts. Therefore, dominant and enduring international institutions should be empowered to coordinate worldwide efforts in the political, social and economic realms.

The collapse of communism presented the world with unforeseen problems. As the Cold War ended, many countries and people began to reclaim their individual national identity, traditions and self-interest. Future historians may well conclude that the Yugoslav civil-religious war (1991-1998) tested the viability of this new order. “Yugoslav carnage poses painful questions for the Western Alliance and the United Nations,” possibly “foretelling a failure of the New World Order,” said the May 15, 1992, New York Times.

Overwhelmed with realities of history and tradition, of nationalism and religion, of their own convictions and biases, the architects of the new order failed to implement their vision and successfully deal with its very first challenge. Simply, America was not ready for the New World (dis)Order.

Yugoslavia as a Laboratory

The proponents of the new order saw the Yugoslav tragedy as a laboratory and a test for the New World Order concepts and collective actions by such supranational bodies as the United Nations, the European Union and NATO. Conceivably, they believed that by interfering in Yugoslav internal affairs and against Serbian nationalism they could set up an early example of how to stamp out national aspirations and interests, establish democracy and multiethnic-multireligious societies and states by collective mechanism of the New World Order. But it did not work out that way. Neither is it working now in Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, nor will it work in the Israeli-Palestinian clash.

In the ebb-and-flood tides of the struggle between Christianity and Islam beginning in the 8th century and continuing to the 20th century, each side had two major advances and two major reverses, approximately four centuries apart. We are now witnessing the fifth cycle, which is for the first time simultaneous. The West has been moving into the East economically and militarily. The Islamic tide almost invisibly is seeping into the West not by arms or economic power, but via steady immigration, settlement, threat of or actual violence and ongoing demographic expansion.

Serbs and Jews Fighting to Preserve Ancestral Land

The struggle for the New World Order is unfolding in the Middle East with conventional warfare and suicide bombers, and within the ramparts of Western civilization as a new guerrilla type of combat threatening the foundations of democracy, free-market economies and pluralistic open society. This cunning and cancerous model was successfully used in Kosovo over the past 90 years.

There are currently two specific historical and geopolitical cases whose resolution will have an important long-term impact on this ongoing clash of civilizations — Kosovo and Israel. Although the dynamics and characteristics of the two conundrums are varied, they have basic common implications for the West. Serbs and Jews are fighting to preserve their ancestral land and the spring of their metaphysics. The Serbs have historically been the “Guardians of the Gate” of Europe against Islam, while the Jews are the only outpost of the Judeo-Christian civilization and its core values in the Islamic Middle East. Both are struggling for survival, their common and historical enemy being Islam.

No other issue dominates so pervasively and antagonistically the U.S.-Islam relationship as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its fair resolution is the prerequisite for peace between the West and Islam. As amply manifested in Kosovo and in the Middle East, ever-increasing concessions to radical Islamist alone will not end the clash. In addition to complex and difficult geostrategic decisions, the West must also candidly face the legacy of past flawed policies.

Deadly Contest of Ideas

The West should stop blaming the Serbs for something they have not done — attempting to establish “Greater Serbia,” and the Israelis for something they cannot do — give up Jerusalem along with their future security and survival. Solutions to grave world problems cannot be achieved by willfully disregarding the historical and legitimate aspirations of nations and people. Moreover, democracy, tolerance, the rule of law and respect for human rights and for religious and cultural diversity cannot be secured and sustained by double standards.

The survival of the West is doubtful, if dependent upon global institutions and pursued only by economic and military power. As in the past, the current fight is not just about oil or other material riches. It is essentially and foremost a deadly contest of ideas and metaphysical beliefs.

Last in the three-part series, Washington Times Editorials/Op-Ed, by Michael Djordjevic.
Cartoon by Ranko Guzina

Part One of the Series, Balkan Mirror
Part Two of the Series, Toward a Greater Albania

Posted by Svetlana at 02:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Jihadists: Puppets in the Western Hands

In his latest book, How the Jihad Came to Europe, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing his research on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia and in Kosovo and Metohija.

Silvia Cattori: Your investigation into the actions of the secret services makes a frightening report. We discover that since the 80's the United States has invested billions of dollars to finance criminal activities and that by means of the CIA they are directly implicated in the attacks attributed to the Moslems. What is the contribution of your book?

Jurgen Elsässer: It is the only work that establishes the tie between wars in the Balkan of the 90's and the attack of September 11, 2001. All the large attacks, in New York, in London, in Madrid, would never have taken place without the recruitment by the American and British secret services of these jihadists who have been blamed for the attacks. I bring a new light on the manipulations of the intelligence agencies. Other books than mine have noted the presence of Osama Bin Laden in the Balkans. But their authors presented the Moslem fighters in the Balkan as enemies of the West. The information that I collected from multiple sources, demonstrate that these jihadists are puppets in the hands of the West and are not, as one pretends, enemies.

Bin Laden Allied with West

Silvia Cattori: In the case of the war in the Balkan, the manipulations of various states are clearly designated in your book. The United States supported Bin Laden whose work was to form the Mujahedeens. How can anyone continue to ignore that these attempts that horrify public opinion would never have existed if these terrorists had not been driven and financed by the western intelligence services?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, indeed, it is the result of facts that one can observe. But one cannot say that the western intervention in ex-Yugoslavia had for objective to prepare attack of September 11. To be precise: these attacks are a consequence of western politics of the 90's because NATO put these jihadists in place in the Balkans and collaborated with them. The Moslem militants who have been designated the persons responsible for the attacks of September 11 were part of this network.

Destroying Yugoslavia a Common Western Interest

Silvia Cattori: According to you, what was the interest of the United States and Germany to set the people of the Balkans one against the other?

Jürgen Elsässer: The West had a common interest to destroy Yugoslavia, to dismember it, because, after the end of the Soviet bloc, it would have been a model of the intelligent combination of capitalist and socialist elements. But the West wanted to impose the neoliberal model on all countries.

Silvia Cattori: Is not Europe itself imprudently committed to a war manipulated by the neoconservatives?

Jürgen Elsässer: It is difficult to say. I believe that in the 90's, the politics of the United States was inspired by their victory against Soviets in Afghanistan. It was the model that they wanted to apply in Balkans. If, during those years, the economy of the United States had not fallen into depression, maybe the more realistic politicians, such as Kissinger, could have kept control of American politics. I think that the coincidence between the economic depression and the aggressiveness of the neoconservative school determined what happened.

(...)

Hitler's Old Ruse

Silvia Cattori: What was the objective pursued by the United States in attacking Serbia? Was it merely about, as is indicated in your book, the US getting itself installed in a strategic region situated on a transit line for the oil and the gas of central Asia? Or did the alliance of the United States with the Moslem fighters directed by Izetbegovic have a second objective: to create a Moslem extremism at the doors of Europe in order to make use of it in the setting of terrorist manipulations? And, if yes, towards what goal?

Jürgen Elsässer: The United States wanted, as did Austria at the end of the 19th century in Bosnia, to create a "European" Islam to weaken the Islamic states in the Middle East, meaning, at that time, the Ottoman empire, and today, Iran and the Arab states. The neoconservatives had other plans again: to construct a clandestine network of "fundamentalist" puppets to do the dirty work against "old" Europe.

Silvia Cattori: The result, a terrifying civil war. How could Europe have participated in the destruction of Yugoslavia, which appeared as an example of the perfectly successful cohabitation between ethnic groups? By making the Serbians the guilty party, didn't Europe destroy a country that was one of the major constructions of the postwar era? On what legitimacy did Europe base its intervention?

Jürgen Elsässer: First, in the beginning of the 90's, Germany led the attack based upon the principles of the self-determination of ethnic groups: in other words, Hitler's old ruse against Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938/39. Then, the United States took the relay and praised "human rights", an obvious swindle.

(...)

Al Zawahiri Asigned Chief of Balkan Operations

Silvia Cattori: These Moslems who, like Mohammed Atta, were just ordinary citizens before being enlisted by the CIA, how could they be driven to such terrifying actions, without knowing that they were being manipulated by intelligence agents of the opposite camp?

Jürgen Elsässer: There are some youth that can be turned into fanatics and manipulated very easily by intelligence services. High-placed characters are not unaware of what happens and know by who they are hired.

Silvia Cattori: Bin Laden, for example, did he know that he served the interests of the United States?

Jürgen Elsässer: I didn't study his case. I studied the case of Al Zawahiri, Bin Laden's right arm, who was the chief of operations in the Balkans. In the beginning of the 90's, he traveled all through the United States with an agent of the US Special Command to collect money for the Jihad; this man knew that he participated in this collection of money as an activity that was supported by the United States.

Best Jihadists Recruited to Fight in Bosnia

Silvia Cattori: All of this is very troubling. You bring the proof that that attacks that have occurred since 1996 (attacks in the subway of Paris), would never have been possible if the war in the Balkan had not taken place. And you impute these attacks, that left thousands of victims, to western intelligence services. Has opinion in West therefore been deceived by governments that have embarked on terrorist actions?

Jürgen Elsässer: The terrorist network that the American and British secret services formed during the civil war in Bosnia and later in Kosovo provided a reservoir of militants that we find implicated later in the attacks in New York, Madrid, London.

Silvia Cattori: How did this happen concretely?

Jürgen Elsässer: Once the war was finished in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden recruited these jihadist militants. It was his work. It was he that trained them, partially with the support of the CIA, and put them in place in Bosnia. The Americans tolerated the connection between the President Izetbegovic and Bin Laden. Two years later, in 1994, the Americans began to send weapons, in a common clandestine operation with Iran. After the treaty of Dayton, in November 1995, the CIA and the Pentagon recruited best of the jihadists that had fought in Bosnia.

Silvia Cattori: How does it happen that these Moslems got into the hands of services that served ideological interests opposed to theirs?

Jürgen Elsässer: I analyzed testimonies given by some jihadists interrogated by the German judges. They said that after the treaty of Dayton, which stipulated that all foreign ex-fighters had to leave the country, they didn't have any more money and had nowhere to go. As for those that could remain in Bosnia, because they had been provided with Bosnian passports, they were without work and without money. The day when the recruiters came and rang at their doors and proposed to pay them 3,000 dollars a month to serve in the Bosnian army, they didn't know that they were recruited and paid by emissaries of the CIA to serve the United States.

(...)

Israel Supported Serbia

Silvia Cattori: You rightly underline the extremist religious character of Bosnia-Herzegovina under Izetbegovic, but, whereas you doubt the support of Israel to this sort of draft of the emirate of the Talibans, don't you overvalue the role of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Richard Perle was the principal political advisor to Izetbegovic. Didn't the Iranians and the Saudis raise the ante on the question of Islam hoping to take the control of a Moslem regime that only took its orders from Tel Aviv and Washington? In fact, was Izetbegovic not an agent of Israel?

Jürgen Elsässer: The Mossad helped the Bosnian Serbians, they even provided them weapons. There is nothing that indicates that the Israeli government helped Izetbegovic. It was supported by Americans, and Clinton depended upon the Zionist lobby in the United States, but this lobby didn't have the support of the Israeli government during the war of Bosnia.

Silvia Cattori: With regard to some of your sources, can one grant credit to the assertions of Yossef Bodanski, director of the Working Group on Terrorism and Non-Conventional war close to the American Senate?

Jürgen Elsässer: I don't trust anybody. They claim that Bodansky has ties with sources in Mossad and it renders a number of his findings suspect. On the other hand, he brings to our knowledge a lot of interesting facts that contradict the official propaganda. In my book I show the contradictions within the dominant elites of the United States, and, in this respect, Bodansky, is very interesting.

Yugoslavia a Jihad Laboratory

Silvia Cattori: It says in your book: “Terrorism exists in Kosovo and Macedonia, but in its majority it is not controled by Ben Laden but by US intelligence.” Do you doubt the existence of Al Qaeda?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, as I wrote it in my book, it is propaganda manufactured by the West.

Silvia Cattori: One has a bit the impression that, to go to the end of its logic, your investigation is not finished. Certainly, Yugoslavia was a laboratory for the manufacture of the Islamic networks, and your book shows well that these networks serve the interests of the United States. However, you seem to believe in the existence of international Islamic networks who would have a popular base in the Moslem world, whereas at the same time your research demonstrates that these networks are only mercenaries of the United States and that they have never done anything for the Moslems?

Jürgen Elsässer: Look at the example of Hamas: in the beginning of the 80's, it was fomented by Mossad to counter the influence of the PLO. But thereafter, Hamas developed its own popular base and, now, it is part of the resistance. But I bet that there are still foreign agents inside Hamas.

Ordinary People All Lost

Silvia Cattori: You mentioned that the inspectors of the United Nations are infiltrated by spies from the United States. Could we have some precisions?

Jürgen Elsässer: Some blue helmets of the UNPROFOR in Bosnia transported weapons to destinations of the Mujahidines.

Silvia Cattori: When Peter Handke affirms that Serbs are not the only guilty party, that they are victims of the war of the Balkans, one banish it. Who is right in this business?

Jürgen Elsässer: On all sides - Serbs, Croatians, Moslems - the ordinary people have all lost. Moslems won the war in Bosnia with the help of Bin Laden and Clinton but, now, their country is occupied by NATO. They have less independence today than at the time of Yugoslavia.

(...)

Entire interview by the Swiss journalist Silvia Cattori, The Yugoslav Caldron, Jürgen Elsässer: “The CIA recruited and trained the jihadists”

Cartoons by Zoran Matic - Mazos and Nikola Otas

Posted by Svetlana at 07:15 PM | Permalink

The face of Christ is the human face of God.

The Holy Spirit rests on Him and reveals to us absolute Beauty, a divine-human Beauty, that no art can ever properly and fully make visible. Only the icon can suggest such Beauty by means of the Taboric light.

(...)

“I will sing to my God as long as I live” (Sept Ps 104:33). It is for this kind of “action” that man has been set apart and made holy. To sing to God, to sing His perfections, in a word to sing His Beauty, this is man's unique preoccupation, his unique and totally free “work.”

The figure in the praying position, the Orant, found in the catacombs, represents the proper attitude of the human soul, its inner structure in the form of prayer. The command “to fill the earth and conquer it...” (Gn 1:28) is a command to transform the earth into a cosmic temple in which to worship God and then to offer that earth to the Creator. We have here a much loved iconographic subject. It sums up the gospel message in a single word XAIRE: “rejoice and worship... let every creature that breathes give thanks to God.”

In a masterly fashion, St. Paul sets out the ultimate goal of God's charisms: “You have been sealed in the Holy Spirit... and God has obtained [these sealed persons] for the praise of His glory” (Ep 1:14). There is no better way to express the transcendent vocation of man and his doxological and iconographic ministry. The Church expresses this same notion when she sings: “Gathered together in Your temple, we see ourselves in the light of Your heavenly beauty.”

Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty

Posted by Svetlana at 12:05 AM | Permalink

Global Danger: Fundamentalist Islam

With the fall of communism and emergence of America as the only world superpower, the hope for peace, freedom and progress was high. Nonetheless, in the twilight of the old order lurked a new global danger: fundamentalist Islam. This new challenge to world peace and stability is rooted in a cosmology older and stronger than ideologies of fascism or communism or ideas of the New World Order.

The Balkans have historically been the key battlefield between Islam and European civilization since the battle at Kosovo, where the Ottoman Turks clashed with the Serbs in 1389, to the present. At its apex, the Islamic tide reached and was stopped at the gates of Vienna (1683). It was finally pushed out in the Balkan War of 1912, when the combined armies of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria were stopped at the Gates of Istanbul (Constantinople) by the intervention of the great European powers of that period.

Although not admitted in the capitals of the West, the real and the first clash with this revived expansionist force took place in the Balkans in the 1990s. In reality we have fought on the side of our enemies.

Serbian Question

As in Bosnia before, now in Kosovo, the West has again failed to deal with the basic and overarching Balkan problem — the Serbian Question. Simply, this issue originated from the fact that with the fall of Yugoslavia, nearly overnight one-third of the Serbs found themselves in a new sovereign state hastily recognized by the EU and then the United States. Due to years of experience of genocide and ethnic cleansing during WW II by the Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, the large Serbian minorities in these two countries demanded self-determination. This was denied as the West took the stand that “borders are inviolable.” Yet now the Albanians in Kosovo are encouraged to violate the Serbian borders via self-determination, while the Bosnian Serbs in the entity of Republika Srpska are still denied the same right.

Kosovo, a province in Serbia, is about 15 percent of her territory. Within only two generations (1929-1980) from 15 percent of Kosovo population, Albanians reached 80 percent; the Serbs declined from 60 percent to 18 percent in the same period. This is a clear-cut example of what open borders, a high birthrate and wrong politics can produce.

After Serbia was bombed to submission in a “humanitarian” war in 1999, Kosovo was given to the United Nations for administration — with catastrophic results. Quickly, the province was methodically and ethically cleansed. It is now monoethnic. More than 150 Christian churches and old monasteries have been destroyed, while some 200 new mosques and a number of schools for the young were feverishly built by Wahhabi funds. Violent and corrupt, Kosovo has become a den of thieves, arm smugglers and white slavers and the key narcotics transfer point to Europe.

Creating Europe's Taliban

Threatening violence, the Islamists demand independence from Serbia. America and Europe are seriously considering forcing Serbia to cede her land in contravention to all international norms and laws and U.N. Resolution 1244. This would be the second Moslem sovereign state created in the Balkans in one decade by the international community. As correctly asserted, “even as Western societies worry about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the international community's ill-conceived policies for Kosovo...may prove to be directly responsible for production of Europe's own Taliban.”

Independence for Kosovo will likely pave the tormenting road to “Greater Albania,” thus assuring a permanent instability and turmoil in the Balkans.

The idea of a “Greater Albania” is essentially a mono-ethnic nationalistic construct originated in 1878 by the Albanian League. To many Albanians, an independent and monoethnic Kosovo is nothing but a phase of the process leading to fulfillment of these nationalistic aspirations. Of course, changing the now existing borders of four sovereign states in the volatile Balkans is nothing short of creating conditions for permanent instability and new cycles of wars. These conflicts would readily and easily be exploited by outside parties, particularly terrorists and international criminal networks.

Neither Partition Nor Independence

So long as we fail to recognize Serbia's legitimate interests and continue to violate the moral norms and international legal system, the Kosovo problem cannot be solved. As Ambassador Jack Matlock correctly concluded in the New York Times in 1999: “Neither partition nor independence nor indefinite foreign occupation will win in the long run without the acquiescence of the Serbian people.” As the Serbs have already waited five centuries to regain the cradle of their civilization and identity, they will certainly try to do so again, and in much shorter time.

Part two in the three-part series, Washington Times Editorials/Op-Ed, by Michael Djordjevic.

Part One of the Series, Balkan Mirror
Part Three of the Series, New World Disorder

Posted by Svetlana at 12:05 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Clash of Civilizations

Together with the Middle East, the border lands of southeast Europe known as the Balkans have been a region of the world where seminal events and trends in human history have taken place. It has been called many names, including “the powder keg of Europe” or “the graveyard of empires.” The conflicts in the region have also been a mirror of history.

Long before Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations,” in the period between the 14th and 19th centuries, the incessant ebb and flow in the conflict between Islam and the West took place in the Balkans. Early in the 20th century, Serbian gun shots in Sarajevo ushered in World War I, Communism and Nazism. At the end of the century, Bosnian Muslim fundamentalists fired gun shots in Sarajevo, killing several Christian Serbs at a wedding party and began a bloody war in Bosnia among Christian Serbs and Croats and Muslims. This war may have well reflected in earnest the renewed clash of civilizations.

Top Dog

The Berlin Wall fell at the end of 1989. The Soviet Union imploded and the end of Communism as a global force followed. Balkan countries joined the trend. However, the pivotal and largest state, Yugoslavia, rapidly descended into a bloody civil-religious war and dissolution. This decade-long war at the end of 20th century mirrored a number of important political, legal, religious and geopolitical precedents for the post-Communist world. Of particular significance are those involving America, the European Union and the United Nations.

At first, the United States favored the preservation of Yugoslavia, or at least its peaceful and orderly dissolution. Changing this position abruptly, America did not oppose Germany's drive for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and then sided with Islamists in Bosnia. Secretary of State James Baker said “we have no dog in this fight” -- but in the end America was the top dog in the fight.

The international community's engagement in the Balkans have so far been a textbook illustration of the dangers of contradictory policies, chronic indecisions, confusion and ignorance about historical forces in play, double standards and flawed precedents. America was not prepared for the peace and the role of the only superpower in the world. Our leadership has failed in this task so far.

Apparently, not much has been learned from this experience. We could replace the location, inserting Iraq instead of the Balkans, and the aforementioned assessment would be similar today.

The Balkan mirror also shows the impotence and irrelevance of the United Nations. Any country and any people would be foolhardy to place their destiny in the hands of this inept institution. With America's complicity, the United Nations did nothing when its embargo on arms shipments was violated by Iran sending planeloads of arms to Bosnian Muslims. Subsequently, when veteran jihadists came to the country to fight Serbs, the West was also supportive.

Advocating the Islamic Agenda in the Balkans

The Serbian province of Kosovo has been ethnically cleansed from Serbs, Roma and other non-Albanians while 150 churches and many medieval monasteries have been destroyed during 10 years of U.N. governance.

The mirror showed the duplicitous methods by which world media influenced world opinion. With few exceptions, it has abused its power and professional responsibility, failing to heed Ed Murrow's admonition to examine all sides of a story and aim to elucidate, not advocate. It did the latter and in general continues to advocate an Islamic agenda in Bosnia and Kosovo.

The Balkan realities also show a great adaptability of Islamists to present a worldly, democratic face. Readily accepted by the West, Bosnian leader and fundamentalist Islamist Alija Izetbegovic was tolerated and praised as a democrat. Nevertheless, in his book “The Islamic Declaration” Izetbegovic asserted absolute validity of dominance of Islam: “There can be neither peace nor coexistence between Islamic religion and non-Islamic social and political institutions,” he wrote. Later in the war, Mr. Izetbegovic was influenced and financially and militarily supported by fundamentalist Islamists (including Osama bin Laden). Similarly, some Kosovo leaders, previously called terrorists and thugs by U.S. special envoy Robert Gelbard, are now afforded respect in the United Nations and elsewhere.

Part one in the three-part series, Washington Times Editorials/Op-Ed, by Michael Djordjevic.
Cartoon by Nikola Otas

Part Two of the Series, Toward a Greater Albania
Part Three of the Series, New World Disorder