EuropeNews has been under attack, causing the pages to load slowly or not at all. This is verified to be a botnet attack, coming from Russia. After the relevant IP addresses have been blocked, EuropeNews is now running again.
A Turkish hacker team by name of AyYildiz Team (Crescent and Star Team) has attacked various German sites. More information on Earth Times.
We have found that AyYildiz have paid attention to EuropeNews before and may have directed the attack against EuropeNews. What is known for sure is that the attack was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack coming from obscure addresses in Russia, probably a botnet. Blocking those addresses gave our server breathing room again, and all is normal.
Also, our log indicates a (failed) hacking attempt against us.
The attackers would need a fresh botnet to resume the attack. That is not completely impossible, but we have more experience now and expect any future attacks to be fended off quickly.
The attack seems to be part of a hacker attack wave related to a fire in Ludwigshafen, Germany, in an apartment inhabited by a Turkish family. Claims of arson have been thrown around, nothing proven.
Unsurprisingly, the Turkish government is exploiting the event to the max. Zaman report.
The implications are explored in this Spiegel report.
The latest assumption about the cause of the fire is that it may have been caused by tinkering with the electrical installations. From Fact - Fiction blog (German). Thus, possibly the fault of the inhabitants, not an attack.
False accusations of racist hate attacks constitute blood libel.
Revenge through Internet attacks will be published as widely as possible. We will not give in to assorted Turkish bullying.
The Ludwigshafen fire and Turkish reactions
However, the DDoS is the least interesting bit. What is more sinister is the background and the behaviour of the Turkish politicians, who immediately reacted by trying to smear the Germans as a bunch of killer racists and, by implication, the *Turkish* politicians as the true protectors of Turks in Germany.
That included a Turkish minister visiting the place of the fire and lots of official statements recalling the racist arson attack in 1993, implying that now a new wave of racist attacks against Turks is looming. To show their distrust, a Turkish investigation team was sent to control the work of the Germans - very unusual behavior.
All this is based on a tiny grafitti on the entrance door “HASS”, which they take to mean it’s a hate attack. Given the rampant grafitti situation in Germany, and not least in run-down city part like this, there’s absolutely no firm reason to interpret a simple bit of evidence as conclusive proof about racism. This is far-fetched, and it is a severe case of libel, too.
This play by the Turkish politicians also ignores the fact that the firefighters were doing a marvelous job, that the cause of the fire is still unknown after four days of investigation - including Turks specifically looking for arson - and it skips the little detail that the 1993 attack was extensively exploited by Turkish investment groups to discourage Turks in Germany from investing their hard-earned money in Germany. Later these Turkish investement groups went into suspicious bankruptcies, netting AKP-connected businessmen (and probably AKP itself) a whopping 25 billion euro.
Further, the performance of the Turkish politicians posing as the protectors of Turks in Germany is a divisive move eerily similar to the events in the 60’s that eventually led to the division of Cyprus. This is counterproductive to integration but fits well with the “special role” Erdogan assigns the Turkish diaspora in Europe. We are on the edge of insurgencies in many places, latest in Cologne.
Connecting the dots is an interesting art. But one easily ends up with rather unpleasent results, and I’m scratching my head over this: Is it really this dangerous?
In any case, it would be wise for the German politicians to simply reject the Turkish demands. By any measure, the German justice system is much better than the Turkish one, Turkish anti-minority crimes are rampant anyway, and German fire technicians are perfectly capable of determining the cause of fires, and the undue interference of Turkey into German matters are a severe breach of diplomatic etiquette that deserves no reward, only rejection.
Erdogan deserves the humiliation of being rejected by the German politicians. Will they show enough spine to do so?
Europe News, a joint Danish-German news and opinion aggregating service, suffered a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack yesterday initiated by Turkish hackers, temporarily incapacitating their site.
It may be that the above link is not working. That’s because the Europe News site was brought down entirely during the night. Since then service to it has been restored intermittently, but it’s not back to full operations yet.
Henrik, who runs the English-language half of Europe news, sent me this account of recent events:
The leading Islam-critical news aggregator EuropeNews has been attacked and knocked off the Internet, along with Politically Incorrect and several other blogs. Yesterday, February 7th, we faced a botnet attack out of Russia, which overloaded and crippled our servers. We weathered that by blocking the IP addresses involved. Today, February 8th at 13:50 CET, our server was knocked out entirely. Right now, 15:45, we are online again.
We do not know yet what exactly has happened. A Turkish hacker team by name of AyYildiz Team (Crescent and Star Team) has attacked and defaced roughly a hundred German sites. More information on Earth Times. The group, according to Netcraft, moves to a fresh server every few months. Part of their ethos is to never attack any Turkish web sites.
The attack seems to be motivated by a fire in Ludwigshafen, Germany, in a house inhabited by Turkish families. The fire had wide publicity, not least by a sensational rescue of a baby falling down four stories. The fire brigade is reported to have done a great job at the scene, but nonetheless nine persons succumbed to the rapid fire in the century-old building.
The fire, however, has escalated to a diplomatic crisis between Germany and Turkey, as claims of arson have been thrown around, nothing proven. (ABC News report; Guardian report. More details in this Spiegel report.) Unsurprisingly, the Turkish government is exploiting the event to the max. Zaman reports, like every other Turkish media.
The latest assumption about the cause of the fire is that it may be due to tinkering with the electrical installations. From Fact — Fiction blog (German).
False accusations of racist hate attacks constitute blood libel.
Revenge through Internet attacks will be publicized as widely as possible, and dealt with to the full extent of the law. We will not give in to assorted Turkish bullying.
EuropeNews is back online after 7 hours of downtime. The DDoS attack of yesterday was averted, but today the server was knocked out solid. We are still analyzing the exact cause of the event.
We’re alive and kicking, so please enjoy the articles.
Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of Turkey, the man who said that Turkey was using democracy like people use a bus to reach their destination, the man who maintains that there is no difference between islam and islamism, that there is only one islam, will visit Germany on February 10th. Huge billboards are all over the place. Most of them are entirely in turkish language and desecrate the official German flag.
Why?
In the German city of Ludwigshafen, an apartment fire in a building inhabited by turks and kurds only, has cost the lives of several inhabitants. Without even a shred of evidence or the beginning of a reasonable suspicion, the Turkish press and Turks in Germany in unison with the usual leftist do-gooders have concluded, a day after the fire, that this was a politically motivated arson by German right wing extremists. A Turkish delegation will come to Germany to investigate.
Official numbers of muslims (mainly Turks) in Germany are pegged at 3.5 million. Unofficial numbers are between 5 and 6 million. Emotions about the fire are rising right now. German natives do not seem to be upset about the desecration of their flag and the inspection visit of the Turkish leader yet. Via internet, young turks and Germans are trading barbs, accusations and racial insults.
(hat tip and pic: PI)
UPDATE: ARD state TV reports that the fire in Ludwigshafen seems to be due to the theft of electrical power from in house power lines, circumventing the power company counter!
Let me start by saying that I don’t care one whit who wins Serbia’s election for president. I am an American and the US is my country, not Serbia. As far as I am concerned, Serbian citizens have as much right to elect “a savior” or “an idiot” as we Americans do (and will do in the near future), and no other country (or countries) calling themselves “progressive democracies” have any right whatever to interfere in their election process.
However, this is NOT what is happening with Serbia. Western leaders, impatient with the Serbian election process, are acting like a bunch of bullies by trying to force Serbia’s citizens into electing the West’s “chosen one” candidate, Boris Tadic, and unfortunately, the Western media (both print and internet) are cooperating in this extortion.
“the singer now appears to support Tomislav Nikolic, the eurosceptic nationalist candidate of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), who won the first round of the Serbian presidential elections last Sunday (20 January). Ms Serifovic participated in rallies organised by Mr Nikolic, including one in December in the Serbian town of Kragujevac and one on 15 January in Belgrade, singing her winning song, “Molitva” (Prayer).”[SerbBlog note: Marija Serifovic is also an ethnic Roma, AKA “Gypsy”, so the title “nationalist” gets put in the proper context here. The EU wants to punish Serifovic for simply supporting a candidate who is not “pro-EU”.]
Then consider the following statements & news stories in recent days on Serbia’s hot-button issue “Kosovo”:
“Senior western diplomats say the precise timing now (on Kosovo’s independence declaration) depends on whether the next Serbian president is Boris Tadic, the pro-western liberal incumbent, or Tomislav Nikolic, a pro-Russian nationalist…..If Nikolic, the conservative, gets elected, then no one in Europe will see any benefit in waiting any longer with the independence declaration….If Mr Tadic returns to power, however, diplomats say EU states would see merit in delaying Kosovo’s independence by a few weeks, seeking to flesh out an agreement on closer EU-Serbian relations”
“Kosovo will declare independence from Serbia with Western backing the weekend after the February 3 Serbian presidential election if the nationalist candidate (Nikolic) wins, political sources said on Wednesday. “If (Tomislav) Nikolic wins, it’s the 9th or 10th,” one of the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity….If pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic wins the closely-fought race, Kosovo Albanians would be expected to wait until the following weekend, and possibly until after a meeting of European Union foreign ministers on February 18, the source said. The West is “pushing for February,” the source added. The United States and major EU powers are trying to “coordinate” a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority province after almost two years of negotiations with Serbia ended in failure in December.”
I like that last line in the Reuters story — “after almost two years of negotiations with Serbia failed”. To anyone who has been following this story for the last “two years”, there were absolutely NO “negotiations” between Serbia and the Albanians on Kosovo. Both Condoleeza Rice and President Bush had already released statements months before these “negotiations” began, saying “Kosovo will become independent”, and they simply continued that same drumbeat through out the sham meetings between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians . What that created was a sad display with Serbia on one side of the table, turning itself inside out to give the Albanians anything they wanted short of handing over their sovereign Serbian territory, and the Kosovo Albanians on the other side of the table, (with their US and EU backing) basically “buffing their nails” until the so-called “negotiations” were over, because the Albanians knew that the West had already committed to legitimize the theft of Kosovo. So why bother to even call it negotiations when the US & EU had already decided the outcome, beforehand? So that the uninformed, stupid or the corrupt, could believe and promote our US & EU governments’ lies when they say , “We tried, it failed, and then we had to do something”.
Now if the sham negotiations weren’t bad enough, the West isn’t even bothering to hide their extortion tactics anymore in the Serbian presidential elections. The message to Serbia’s citizens is clear, “Elect Nikolic and we will amputate Kosovo with a meat-ax soon, you will get no anesthetic and we will let the Albanians kill as many Kosovo Serbs as they want (and then blame it on you). Or elect “our man” Tadic and we might (if we feel like it) give you a couple of aspirin for the pain of amputating Kosovo from you and let a few more Serbs live.” It’s a “lose-lose” proposition for Serbia, as anyone can see — just as it is designed to be.
However, since the demise of Milosevic, all that Western intimidation of Serbia seems to have ever done is to drive Serbia closer to Russia. Russia’s support of Serbia in the UN Security Council on the Kosovo issue, and the Russian Gasprom deal signed with Serbia last week (which sunk the EU/US Nabucco plan and likely cost US State Department #3 man, Nicholas Burns, his job) has done more for Serbia than Western promises (and bombing) have done in the last 17 years. Combine this with the Serbian concept of “inat” (stubborn defiance in the face of bullies) and this all works in Nikolic’s favor, regardless of whether Nikolic is worth a damn or not.
But on the other hand, hope springs eternal in the human breast. For the life of them, Serbs still cannot understand why the US & EU would wish to continue punishing them and stealing their land. Serbs are Christians who speak multiple European languages and their kids want the same security & toys that other normal European kids have — and so do their parents. Based on this commonality, some Serbs believe that this torture has to stop soon — perhaps if they jump through just one more humiliating hoop then the West will see them for who they really are, perhaps if they elect just one more “pro-Western leader” then the West will recognize that Serbs ARE Europeans. This slim hope (or “wishful thinking”, depending on who you talk to) of one day maybe joining that EU “fun & goodies fraternity”, is all that Boris Tadic has to offer them. And the West knows this — which is why they had to throw in the ham-handed “club them if they don’t vote for Tadic” pressure to make the alternative even less attractive.
The big question that remains to be answered about this Western intimidation of Serbian voters to vote for Tadic in the upcoming run-off, is: “Will it work? Or will it backfire?”
Ultimately, Serbian citizens can (and should) be the ONLY ones to answer that, when they vote in the run-off election on February 3rd. It’s their fate to decide, not ours.
Program Director of the election monitoring agency Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) Marko Blagojevic stated tonight that, based on 100 percent of the processed sample, it can be assessed that voters in Serbia entrusted Boris Tadic with another term in the office. Blagojevic stated that Tadic won some 2.6 % votes more than his rival Tomislav Nikolic and that difference is between 120.000 and 130.000 votes. Blagojevic announced that the turn-out was about 67% in the second round of presidential elections, which means some 4.5 million voters. Earlier, Executive Director of the CESID Zoran Lucic told the press conference that it can be stated that Tadic is the President of Serbia considering the big difference in the number of votes.
How can we possibly trust the outcome of a manipulated election?
The problem is that this election is already tainted. Once it has become so obvious that the US and the EU have an intense, vested interest in subverting an election in Serbia, how are we supposed to believe these US and EU politicians and “international observers” when they proclaim that this election is legitimate and clean?
From what was indicated by various interviews, polls, and so forth, before the runoff election, it was not at all clear that a majority of Serbs would have been willing to follow Tadic in taking the EU route.
EU membership is not worth the price
Take a good look at what’s happened in the EU lately. What with the Lisbon treaty chicanery, the bureaucratic strangulation, and the persistent sellout to jihadism, the EU is clearly turning into an ugly dictatorship itself. Maybe all of the noise that Western politicians and journalists make about Vladimir Putin supposedly being a “dictator” is only a distraction from the very real dictatorship that is taking shape in the EU.
I should be accustomed to this by now…
Like M.V. Pejakovich, I, 1389, am a US citizen, and I find it disgraceful that my own country’s government is manipulating an election somewhere else. It would be wrong no matter what the motives, but in this case, our own politicians are corrupt and they want to sell out the Balkans to petrodollar interests. It’s disgusting. But I suppose I ought to be used to it by now, considering how much vote fraud goes on in the US.
Yes, it’s very sad indeed. And although the decision is not mine to make, I would be sorry to see any more countries fall under the sway of the EU or of any organization like it.
Severing of Kosovo Province Enters the Final Stage with Boris Gump Reelected
Together with ecstatic long-winded congratulatory messages from the U.S. State Department, Javier Solana and the EU-presiding Slovenia to Boris Tadic and the “Serbian people”, after the Yellow leader barely squeezed through to get reelected as Serbian president, Serbia has received another, much more sincere, sobering message the very next day: that the illegal and unlawful EU mission to southern Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija has been approved by the EU.
One doesn’t really need to read between the lines to realize Western leaders have breathed a huge sigh of relief certainly not because they were concerned for Serbia’s wellbeing, but simply because they understand Tadic’s razor-edge victory as a green light to proceed with the final stage of their plan of amputating Kosovo province from the rest of Serbia.
According to Tanjug, which cites its sources within the EU in Brussels, the European Union adopted on Monday, in an “urgent procedure”, a document dubbed “Joint Action” on the “legal and financial bases for sending a EU mission” to Kosovo and Metohija. Since the procedure was so urgent, one has to wonder if the EU heads were only waiting for their own candidate for Serbian presidency to declare victory, eager to push the approval of the Ahtisaari-planned EU mission through on the very same day.
Serbian news agency reports that only “a single formal step remains” until the EU mission is sent to Kosovo — a decision by the Council of Ministers on the adoption of the “Operative Plan” which gives the go-ahead for sending the mission. The mission would be dispatched only a day after the “Operative Plan” is adopted.
All this despite Serbian government’s firm opposition to sending the EU mission without an adequate UN Security Council decision, since on its own, the mission has no legal basis and it directly represents the first step of the implementation of rejected Ahtisaari plan on “supervised independence” of southern Serbian province.
But the EU now believes it doesn’t need a UN SC approval, or the approval of the Serbian government, since the man who refused to put his signature on a document that articulated unambiguous opposition to the EU mission being sent to Kosovo, offered to him by Prime Minister Kostunica in return for endorsement for the second round of elections, has been reelected anyway. And if Serbian president has no objections to the EU mission being sent to the territory of the country he’s sworn to protect, they figure that there are no obstacles to sending the mission.
“Serbian People” or Hungarian, Croat, Albanian and Muslim Citizens of Serbia?
The showering praises and gushing congratulatory messages that have poured from Washington, Brussels and Ljubljana when it was announced Tadic has managed to scrape a victory in Serbian presidential elections inevitably speak of “Serbian people” who have “chosen the European integrations” by giving their votes to Tadic.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters he had congratulated Boris Tadic and “Serbian people” on Tadic’s reelection, while Slovenians eulogized to the “Serbian people who have confirmed their support for democratic and European path of their homeland.” Although West’s collective desire to sell the whole deal as a Serbian choice is understandable, being that they desperately need to portray Tadic’s reelection as Serbian consent to the loss of Kosovo-Metohija province, the fact remains that Tadic’s narrow victory was neither a referendum on letting go of 15% of Serbia’s historic territory, nor the expression of the wish of predominantly Serbian nationals.
Understandably, all the praises ignore the fact that Tadic has barely managed to win by less than half percent above the necessary 50%, or 2.6 percentage points more than Tomislav Nikolic, which translates to a difference of around 100,000 votes between the two candidates. More importantly, they willfully ignore Serbia’s widely diverse, multi-ethnic society in which the sizable national minorities, such as Vojvodina Hungarians and Croats, as well as Presevo Valley Albanians and Raska (Sandzak) region Muslims (who call themselves “Bosniaks”) have voted in droves during the election runoffs, with the single goal: to prevent Tomislav Nikolic from winning.
One only needs to take a look at votes cast during the first round of elections, held on January 20, to find that the Hungarian representative, Ishtvan Pastor of Hungarian Coalition party in Vojvodina, was given almost all the votes that represent a difference between Tadic and Nikolic: 93,039 votes from Serbia’s ethnic Hungarians. At the same time, an equally marginal figure, Cedomir Jovanovic, backed by the Serbia’s Albanians and other Muslims as the only Serbian politician who supports severing of Kosovo-Metohija province, gained 219,689 votes two weeks prior to Tadic’s miserable victory. Everyone who knows the first thing about Cheda the Junkie and LSD LDP fanaticism knows fully well that they would rather pour gasoline over their heads and get collectively incinerated than see Tomislav Nikolic anywhere near a presidential office.
According to the local news sources, large communities of Hungarians and Croats populating mainly north of Serbia, have been pouring into the polling stations on Sunday, February 3, with military discipline, not so much to show support for Tadic, as to make sure Nikolic gets defeated. Some local TV stations have reported that “every single Hungarian in Vojvodina” voted against Tomislav Nikolic on February 3.
Meanwhile, according to Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti, British ambassador to Serbia Stephen Wordsworth allowed himself a luxury to publicly call the Albanians and other Muslims from Presevo Valley and Raska region to step up to the plate and cast their votes in order to ensure Nikolic loses the presidential bid. Readily responding, two Muslim parties from the Raska region have bragged about their help in defeating Nikolic on the very same day, announcing in the Serbian media that all the Raska Muslims “showed unity” by unanimously voting for Tadic.
British government has also financed CESID, a parallel structure to Serbia’s RIK (Republic’s Electoral Commission) to “count” the votes in the election runoff, and Stephen Wordsworth, the uncrowned king of cynicism, was among the first to congratulate “Serbian people” on the election results.
No Confusion in Kosovo-Metohija: Nikolic Wins Resounding 73.66% of Votes
How the actual Serbs voted is most obvious in the province of Kosovo-Metohija, where Albanians pretended no election whatsoever is taking place, so none of them took part, and where Tomislav Nikolic defeated Tadic with resounding 73.66% of votes won. Therefore, if the presidential elections in Serbia were a kind of “referendum” on the fate of Kosovo-Metohija province, Kosovo residents, whose opinion should matter far more than that of Novi Sad Hungarians, have stated their view in crystal-clear terms.
Crude EU Meddling in Serbia Elections
Right after the first round of elections, when Tomislav Nikolic surged to the top with 40% of votes won among 9 candidates, it became clear that “Serbian people” are determined to vote Boris Gump out of the office and replace him with the seasoned politician who places national interests above his personal or party-interests, and who has no intention to follow the foreign diktat, or tolerate West’s extortions, blackmails and rotten carrots.
Three days later, Reuters reporter Ellie Tzortzi noted the patently obvious EU interference in Serbian presidential elections, warning that “the EU must be wary of charges it is meddling to help pro-Western President Boris Tadic defeat nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, just as Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province prepares to declare independence with the EU’s blessing.”
In order to boost Tadic’s prospects of defeating the challenger, the EU was prepared to offer Serbia the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA)—considered the very doorstep to the full EU membership—on January 28, only few days before the scheduled runoff. Tzortzi quoted Danish Prime Minister as saying “it would be a good idea” to sign a formal agreement “before the second round of the Serbian presidential election to demonstrate the positive EU attitude,” and briefly mentions that such opinion was shared by all representatives of the EU-member states, including the EU leadership, except for Netherlands and Belgium.
When that failed, the EU heads devised a non-SAA “political agreement”, which is quite unique in the sense that no other country wishing to join the union was ever proposed anything similar and, more importantly, which offers no territorial guarantees to Serbia but, through some cosmetic, superficial benefits, such as relaxed visa regimes and trade conditions, intends to anesthetize the Serbs in order to sever their Kosovo province with less noise, mess and fuss. They announced this “offer” few days before the February 3 election runoffs, as something that will be available to Serbia for signing on February 7.
But the rotten carrot and British ambassador’s crude interventions in the midst of Serbian election were far from being the only ways the Western officials have been influencing the outcome of the presidential elections in Serbia. As Neil Clark aptly noted, “the US and the EU have made […] quite clear […] the consequences which would follow if the Serbs decided to elect the Radical Party’s Tomislav Nikolic […], a man they describe as “ultra nationalist”, as their country’s new President this weekend. If Serbia does not vote the ‘right way’, the country faces ‘isolation’ and will be treated as ‘the Belarus of Europe’, western officials have warned”.
Foreign-Owned Media in Serbia Unleash Ferocious Pro-Tadic, Anti-Nikolic Campaign
Serbian media, almost entirely owned by the German, British and American corporations, has been running a similar pro-Tadic, anti-Nikolic campaign throughout, reaching the fever-pitch after the first round of elections. Serbian citizens were exposed to toxic daily fumes generated by the numerous op-eds, articles and “analysis” extolling the virtues of joining the EU, while at the same time exploiting the fears of “going back into the 1990s” — the poverty, isolation and wars, even suggesting the possibility of economic sanctions and another round of NATO bombardment (?!). The choice, as presented by the Yellow party politicians and Soros-owned media in Serbia was clear: either the bright and sunny future in the European Utopia (Boris Tadic), or return to the dark and gloomy hellhole from the time of bruising sanctions, Western aggression and merciless punishment (Tomislav Nikolic).
Apart from the unrelenting media campaign almost without exception drumming up Tadic as the only acceptable candidate, the Yellow camp showed they are not above the basest, sleaziest tricks to help them stay in power.
Yellow Camp’s Sleaze
One of the slimiest moves of Tadic’s supporters was to invent the alleged “endorsement” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as if he personally favors Tadic over Nikolic. Even though Russian leadership, in stark contrast to the Western officials, has demonstrated an admirable level of chivalry and non-interference in staying neutral all the way and allowing citizens of Serbia to vote according to their conscious, Tadic’s team understood fully well they urgently need every inch of support they can pry, so they brazenly manufactured Putin’s support.
Being that Kremlin office takes care of even the small details and niceties such as expressions of condolences, presidential birthdays, congratulatory messages and similar, and that Tadic’s birthday happens to fall on January 15, Tadic has once again received a birthday card from President Putin’s office, just like the year before and the one before that and every year since he became Serbian president in 2004. But, unlike ever before, this time around the entirely innocent, non-committal wish for a happy birthday that coincided with the election in Serbia, was fervently publicized and advertised throughout Serbia, as Putin’s personal endorsement of Boris Tadic in the presidential elections.
According to some reports, Tadic has fought tooth-and-nail to squeeze into the Serbian government delegation on the occasion of signing the agreement with Russian energy giant, Gazprom. Such an occasion, although immensely important for Serbian state, has in no way necessitated the presence of Boris Tadic, being that it was the deal worked out by the Serbian government and Prime Minister Kostunica and that members of Tadic’s party within the government were expressly against the agreement, almost ruining the whole deal if it wasn’t for direct intervention of the Serbian Premier. But, nevertheless, using and abusing every opportunity for catching some limelight and hijacking some of the credit for any positive development was a primal urge, capable of overriding any sense of common decency.
A Wretched Victory No One Would Wish
Add to all that a relentless smear campaign against Tomislav Nikolic (charged of using services of an American PR agency to “brush-up” his public appearances, a malicious lie that was quickly denied by the agency cited; accused of planning to assign a prime ministerial post to Vojislav Seselj, rotting in the Hague prison for five years while awaiting his “trial” for politically incorrect opinions and verbal offenses to start, etc.), the reports of Tadic’s supporters visiting Serbian voters in person, door-to-door, and offering paychecks in return for votes given to Tadic and payment of utility bills, or the delivery of insulting hand-out packages of flower, sugar and cooking oil given by the Yellows to the poor and disillusioned voters on the eve of the runoffs, and still, despite everything, Boris Gump has barely managed to scrape measly half percent above the margin to get reelected.
Apart from being overwhelmingly suspicious and quite questionable, Boris Tadic’s “victory” is probably the saddest, most pathetic and morally wretched feat no decent man would ever wish for himself. For who could possibly rejoice and celebrate the victory of a man widely expected to assist in cheerful dismemberment of a state he is supposed to serve and protect?
A lot of people think that Albanian Muslims have a less religious character than the rest of the Islamic world. Which is, of course, not true. The real question is why the Islamic character of Albanian terrorism is concealed. (And I will call it terrorism, because actions where one group of people are trying to seclude a part of tne country in a illegal way is terrorism.) Maybe the answer is that there is a fear that the public will recognize that, in the heart of Europe, a new Islamic state has been formed by taxpaying citizens of the “West”.
Nothing new about the push to Islamize the Balkans
However, the Islamization of the territory around Albania - especially the effort to force Islamization upon Kosovo and Metohia - isn’t a recent process. It has been active for centuries and has gone through a number of phases. In certain phases, Islamization was interlaced with solving a national territorial question; that is, joining all territories with Islamic populations in one state.
At this point, I would like to point out that Kosovo and Metohia (the full name of the region) was Serbian before the first Albanian tribe came down from the mountains and set up there. In 1389 there was a famous Battle of Kosovo, of Serbs and their allies against the Ottoman Turkish empire. The Turks conquered Serbia and stayed there for 500 years before they were forced out, and Serbia was declared an independent state once more. When Turks came and brought Islam on Balkan soil, the Serbs and other people had a choice to join Islam or to become a form of slave to the newly-established and mighty Ottoman Empire.
Icon of Nemanjic Dynasty, medieval rulers of Serbia
An unthinkable surrender for the Serbs
Now we are talking about proud people who had a holy lineage of rulers during the previous couple of centuries, and such thing was unthinkable. When I say holy, I mean holy like saints - they were acknowledged to be saints and they are celebrated even today. It is even said that one of the descendants could perform miracles… so I hope this will shed a little light on what was going through people’s minds.
Oh, and I said a form of slaves - well, the main difference is that Ottomans took the Serbs’ firstborn male children 7-14 years old, and trained them to be an elite army for the empire, never to return home.
Well, unlike Serbs, Albanians were a group of mountain tribes without a significant heritage, so they didn’t have any problem with accepting Islam. Under the Ottoman Empire, this gave them an advantage over other people in this region. They also participated in violence against the Christian people. In spite of this, a great number of Serbs survived to see the fall of Ottoman Empire in this region, and, after the Balkan Wars, the rejoining of Kosovo and Metohia to Serbia. Albanians, of course, were not satisfied with such a solution. They also participated in the liberation from the Turks, but with different ambitions. They wanted to create a “Greater Albania” that would include all territories where Albanians lived, either as a majority or a minority, it didn’t matter.
WWI poster - “Kossovo Day” June 28, 1916 Solidarity with our Serb allies
That was a great source of frustration for a great number of Albanians and their ideology. In the newly created state of Serbia, they were a considerable minority, even in Kosovo (according to the records, in the late 19th century, there were 415.000 residents of Serbia who were Christians, 236.420 who were Muslim, and only 106.270 Albanians). By the end of WWI they became an even smaller minority, but that didn’t stop them from harassing the Serbs of Kosovo, who were beaten up, humiliated and forced out from their homes. Many foreign authorities wrote about it, so that you can be pretty sure that Serbs didn’t imagine it.
Nazi Albania
The most important phase in Islamization of Kosovo and Metohia occurred during WWII. Because of specific relations between Albania and their own interests, Italian occupiers allowed mass persecution of Serbs from these parts, and at the same time allowed a large number of Albanians from Albania to move there. In this way, a significant artificial demographic upheaval was made, which went unpunished and uncorrected. This also was to have a deciding role in the growth of terrorism and separatist ambitions in the region.
In this period around 10.000 Serbs were killed, 70.000 were banished, and 30.000 houses and other structures were demolished and destroyed. At the same time, 300.000 Albanians came from Albania to the territories of Kosovo and western Macedonia.
In battle against Christian Serbs (and later I will return to this, because there are other Christians in these parts beside Serbs), the Albanian leaders mobilized all Albanians - Muslim and Christian. To Christian Albanians, the struggle against Serbs was portrayed as a fight against Serbian oppression, and for the creation of “Great Albania.” But within the inner circles, among the Muslims themselves, they spoke freely of their real goal of creating an Islamic country - a goal that is entirely consistent with Islam as a religion. As an expression of their ambition for creating such a country, along with other things, a Skenderbeg Division was created.
Skenderbeg Albanian Muslim Waffen SS Division
The Skenderbeg Division had in its assembly military imams who worked to promote ideology among the fighters. Of course, the pan-Islamic and jihadist basis for doing battle against unbelievers was constantly highlighted. Among the unbelievers were Partizans, a Slavic (Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bosnian and Slovenian) guerrilla anti-German military in Balkan parts. [In other articleson this blog, we have discussed the Chetniks, led by Draza Mihailovic, a Serbian Orthodox anti-German force loyal to the Kingdom. - 1389] The first action of the Skenderbeg Division, which confirmed their Nazi orientation, was the arrest and execution of 281 of Pristina’s Jews in May of 1944. Pristina is a city in Kosovo.
The pan-Islamic character of the Skenderbeg division was revealed in the fact that it consisted of, among others, almost 150 Tajiks and Turkmen. Probably under their influence, the division was remembered for countless crimes against the Serbian population, even against women and children.
Communist Yugoslavia ratifies Nazi-era theft of Serbs’ property
After WWII, in spite of expectations, life for Serbs of Kosovo and Metohia in the newly-formed, atheist country of Yugoslavia for began as hard and difficult a period as before. After the war came a law that prohibited Serbs who had been exiled from Kosovo and Metohia from returning there. The direct consequence of this law was that a large number of Albanians who had entered Kosovo and Metohia during the war were given legal status. This made it possible for them to stay on property that they had taken from the Serbs. Albanian terrorists got a clear hint that they could run amok. Instead of being punished for their actions and receiving the same status as all other defeated nations, the Albanians got a total legalization of the demographic imbalance that they had created, and the Serbs got the short end of the stick.
“Godless Communists” favored Muslims over Christians
Confirming that Albanians as Muslims were privileged, unlike the Christians, is the fact that polygamy was tolerated because it was in the Islamic tradition. While in other parts of the country, marriages between nationalities were promoted, in Kosovo and Metohia it was possible only in one direction - an Albanian male could take a Serbian female, but not the other way around, because of reasons given in the Kuran.
There are other examples of Islamization of Albanians and Kosovo and Metohia, and of their preparations for the terrorism that never completely stopped, but more or less escalated over the years. From Enver Hodza’s Albania (that also declared itself as atheist) came a number of sheik dervish privates, that were convicted in Prizren in 1956 for aiding a terrorist gang. President of Central Comity of Communist Alliance Muhmut Bakali, as a communist (and communists were officially declared to be atheists) had a mosque built in Pec and further led to breaking Serbs in those parts. Several of his anti-Serb slip-ups were recorded, where he showed his sympathy for Muslims and Albanians, as a supposed communist and atheist.
The West works hand in glove with al Qaeda
Now we come to the year 1999, a year that NATO dumped its surplus of bombs on Serbia, even cluster or “cassette” bombs that are outlawed by international war rules. At various round tables that were organized to resolve the Kosovo and Metohia problem, various pronouncements often denied or negated the Islamization of this region. Those conclusions often came from abroad, from circles that stood to gain political benefit from denying these facts. Only one counter-argument is needed to prove that this Islamization is real: What about the Catholic Albanians, the famous jewelers from Janjevo? Although they were Albanians, they would have had to be Muslims to live a safe and carefree life in Kosovo. As Catholics, they had to seek refuge in Croatia.
At various times, Al Qaeda has announced terrorist acts and declared fatwas against “infidels”: USA, UK, France, Israel, India, Russia and Serbia. Osama bin Laden himself, during 1995, spent some time in Albania where he met with Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj.
Osama bin Laden with Ayman al-Zawahiri
The unconcealed connection between Kosovo Albanian separatists and the Islamist factor was confirmed in 1996 in Skopje (capital of Macedonia), at the 118th annual celebration of the Prizren League. It was attended by representatives of Albanians from Kosovo and Metohia, where they again sworn to fight for the league’s expansionist ideals. This is significant, because in the documents of the league, they appear as Muslims and not as Albanians, clearly showing the desire to create an Islamic country.
In 1998, the American administration even found it necessary to put its ally, the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army, consisted of Muslim Albanians who fought against Serbs for, well you guessed, liberation of Kosovo) on a list of terrorist organizations, for the stated reason that they had found records of funds from Islamic countries that were involved in drug trafficking. At that time, they said that one of the financiers was Osama bin Laden. According to Interpol data, one of the elite KLA units was led by Muhammad al Zawahiri, the brother of al Qaeda ideologist Ayman al Zawahiri, who is considered second in command after Osama bin Laden.
Islamic organizations fund Kosovo terrorism
During 1998. the existence of the “Abu Bekir Sidik” unit was confirmed. This unit operated in the Drenica area, and was financed with funds from the “Balkan Islamic Center” and “Active Islamic Youth”. The unit consisted of around 40 foreign citizens, and its commander was Ekrem Avdia. When the unit was disbanded, almost all of its members were arrested, along with its leader Ekrem. But they all were released because of pressure from the “international community” during 2001. Soon after he was released, Ekrem was put in charge of the organization “Kosovo’s Islamic Biro,” which had a great number of outposts across Kosovo and Metohia. After that, Ekrem reactivated his old unit. They operate and contribute to the instability of this region to this day.
A great number of Islamic organizations even now operate on the territory of Kosovo and Metohia. Believe it or not, even under the cover of humanitarian organizations they smuggle weapons, they do other illegal trading, and they finance extremist and terrorist activities.
The bottom line is that there is nothing more frustrating when a small child is beating you up, and when you try to defend yourself, a bigger child slaps you down. Meanwhile, the other children just silently watch the whole thing and shout but won’t help you. It’s a messed-up world we live in.
Balkans For Dummies— Or for Those of Us Deceived by the US Media
Part I – Divorce, Yugoslavian Style
By CzechRebel
It is about religion, stupid!
During the 1999 Kosovo War the media—inspired by the Clinton Administration was trying to convince the public that an ethnic struggle in Kosovo was pitting Serbs against Albanians. For reasons that no sane man can imagine Clinton and company had picked the Albanians over the Serbs and called in the Luftwaffe and other NATO air forces to bomb the Serbs.
But the news that actually came out of Kosovo made little, if any, sense. Newspaper would always feature a town where the Serbs and Albanians got along very well. Sometimes the Serbs would be offering their Albanian neighbors weapons to defend against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a bin-Laden-sponsored terrorist organization allied with the Clinton Administration. (In those, days most people had not heard of bin Laden and almost no one had ever heard of al Qaeda, so the media cheerfully endorsed American efforts to aid and abet them in their jihad against the Serbs.)
So, why would some Serbs and Albanians get along as great neighbors while other Albanians would join the KLA and fight against the same Serbs? It defied all ethnic analysis. So who are these people in the Balkans anyhow?
Let not pretend the author is familiar with every different subgroup in the Balkans, or even in Kosovo. However, it would be a good start to examine the major religions or the area.
The Jews
According to the Bible, God started his revelation to mankind through the Jews and so we shall start with them too. World War II was pretty rough on the Jews, but Hitler did miss a few. Not all of the Balkans Jews made it to Israel either, so we have a few over there. To our knowledge they are not much different than Jews the world over. Just remember that they are there for later reference.
The Early Church
If you read Romans 1:16, you will see that Paul admonished Christians to take the Gospel message to the Jew first, but also to the Greek. Some Bibles don’t translate it literally and use the word “Gentile” instead of “Greek.” However, one of the first major conversion stories taking place outside of the Greek-speaking world or Roman Empire was the mission to the Slavic people of Saints Cyril and Methodius. To this day, the alphabets used in Russian, Serbian and several other Slavic languages is known as the “Cyrillic” alphabet in honor of St. Cyril.
Today, the Early Church is commonly known as “Eastern Orthodoxy” or “Orthodox Christianity,” but if you think of it as anything other than the Early Church, you will have a lot of trouble understanding the Balkans. (We can understand if you would rather stay confused, you will be in good company.)
The Orthodox Church was the only major religion in the Balkans for many years. 98 percent of Greeks are Orthodox. Since the New Testament was written in Greek, it is pretty hard to argue that anyone else has a better “interpretation” Scripture than the Greeks. Nearly all Serbs who have any religion are Orthodox as well. It is also popular in Romania, Bulgaria and Macedonia and other nations and provinces in the Balkans, including—believe it or not—Albania.
Now, nothing much has changed in Orthodox Church since the First Century. Yes, as of the Fourth Century they have a Bible in written form, and have been promoting lay reading of it every since. Yes, they have had several Church Counsels to clarify things, however, the core beliefs of the Orthodox Church are more or less the same as Roman Catholics and most Protestants. (It’s those details that split up Christianity much more so than core beliefs.)
The Roman Catholic Church
Until 1054, the Eastern Orthodox Church considered the Roman Church to be just another Orthodox Church. True there were a number of disagreements on minor issues, but nothing major. If fact, the only issue that made the Great Schism a necessity is an issue of Church leadership. Our Roman Catholic brothers in Christ recognize the Bishop of Rome, as Pope and the earthly head of the Church. Our Eastern Orthodox brothers in Christ recognize Jesus Christ alone as only head of the Church, earthly or otherwise.
If you draw a line where the Roman Empire was divided at the time of Constantine, you will divide the Balkans between an area that is mostly Roman Catholic and one that is mostly Eastern Orthodox. (It is not an exact border, but it is pretty close.)
The Habsburg Empire, or Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was a dominant force in the Balkans until World War I, was heavily Roman Catholic. Italy, which has a history with Albania also has brought Roman Catholic influence to the Balkans.
Islam
During the time when the Eastern Roman Empire (a/k/a Byzantine Empire) was still a strong force in the Balkans, Christianity was the major religion. However, as the Turks invaded, they brought Islam into the area.
Until the 1990s, when Yugoslavia began to break up, few of us in the West realized how many Muslims lived in Europe. Most of these Muslims are ethnically European and speak the same languages as others in their locale, so it is hard to tell them from their Christian neighbors.
Others
While you can find outpost of Protestants, Buddhists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and the like most everywhere, we are not going to try to go into all the tiny minority faiths that exist in the Balkans.
Suffice it to say that there will not be many Protestants where there are few Roman Catholics. What so many people tend to forget—even those with fairly extensive religious training—is that there never was a Reformation in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The decentralized overall structure and organization of the Orthodox Church does not lend itself to the corruption that existed in the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation. Besides, it is a little hard to tell someone that he should read the Bible and try to find something wrong with a Church that has always encouraged Bible reading and repentance.
We are not saying that no one in the Balkans ever leaves the Orthodox Church and becomes a Protestant, but is rare. Likewise, it is a rare event when someone leaves Islam for a Protestant faith, but that decision can be deadly as Islam endorses the death penalty for anyone who leaves Islam for another faith.
Ethic Stripes Merge with Divisions of Faith
Who Are the Albanians?
No one is really sure. Some Albanians like to consider themselves descendants of an ancient people that were scorned in the ancient world. A group of illiterate, unruly and unkempt people known as the Illyrians lived in the Balkans during Greco-Roman times. We have no idea what happened to these people nor do we know much about them, as they left no written records. They could not; they had no written language.
We harbor no ill will for the Albanian people. We doubt that the Illyrians actually have any relationship to modern Albanians, and we believe that Albanians are insulting themselves when they look to the Illyrians as a source of heritage. (To any and all Albanian readers, no offense is intended!)
What we do know is that the Albanian language is unique. There is no similar language, which leaves scholars puzzled as to their origin.
The Communist regime in Albania was harsher than that of neighboring Communist Yugoslavia, and religion was ruthlessly suppressed. After so many years of Communist rule, it is difficult to say what percentage of Albanians have any religious faith. However, the majority of Albanians who are religious are Muslim. The next most common religion amongst the Albanians is Eastern Orthodoxy. The Albanian Orthodox Church is a fully autocephalous organization, which means that it is completely independent of (though in communion with) the other Orthodox Churches. The third most common is Roman Catholic. Before Communist domination, it was estimated that as many as 65 to 70 percent of Albanians many have been Muslim, as many as 20 to 25 percent Orthodox, and the remainder nearly all Roman Catholic.
Who are the Croats?
The Croats are Slavic people. Many of them sided with the Axis Powers during World War II, and Hitler helped establish the short-lived nation of Nazi Croatia. While it is a little-known fact that such a nation ever existed, we have met people who were born in Nazi Croatia. However, many Croatians bravely resisted Nazi occupation and who were some of the brave unsung heroes of World War II.
The Croats speak a Slavic language almost identical to Serbian. In fact, before the breakup of Yugoslavia, the two languages were considered one and called “Serbo-Croatian.” Religious Croats are almost all Roman Catholic.
Who are the Serbs?
The Serbs are also Slavic people with a long history of being different from the Croats. One theorist has even speculated that the Serbs and the Croats were two peoples from a different part the world who migrated to the Balkans in tandem, yet as distinct people. While the theory may be interesting, we have seen no evidence to show that they are any different than any other Slavic people who have descended from a common clan that once spoke a common language known as Slavonic.
The Serbs may speak almost exactly the same language as the Croats, but the Serbs use a Cyrillic alphabet much like that of the Russians, while the Croats use the same Latin alphabet as we do in English, with the addition of accent marks. (The Cyrillic alphabet may look a little cumbersome or intimidating at first glance, but if you ever study Slavic languages, you will quickly see that the Cyrillic alphabet works better for representing the sounds of Slavic languages.)
Notice a pattern here? Some Serbs and Albanians get along very well and all Serbs are—as some Albanians are—Eastern Orthodox. Gee, the Western media never connected the dots, but could it be that the Orthodox Christians in the Balkans get along with one another while the Muslims and Orthodox Christians do not?
Who are the Slovenians?
The Slovenians were the first who sought to break off ties with Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They are also a Slavic people and have traditionally been Roman Catholic.
Who are the Bosnians?
Trick question! Anyone who lives in Bosnia can call himself a Bosnian. It does not matter whether he is a Serb, a Croat of a Muslim. However, the Western media has led us to believe that only the Muslims of the Balkans are “Bosnians.” That is very misleading, because it gives the false impression that no one else belongs there! Bosnia is a place that is not named for any specific people.
OK, So Who Are These Bosnian Muslims?
For the most part, Bosnian Muslims are descended from Serbs who converted to Islam when the Turks ruled most of the Balkans. They tend to have very Serbian surnames and many of their customs are close to those of the Serbs. Bosnian Muslims speak the same language as do the Serbs and the Croats in Bosnia. One woman from Belgrade told us that, from their point of view, Bosnians all have the same accent. She likened it to the “Hillbilly accent” of Appalachia.
Another important ethnic group in the Balkans are the Roma people. We have called them “Gypsies” for centuries, but the conventional wisdom considers that word a pejorative. So, the common trend is to call them “Roma.” But that term is confusing for some; the natural reaction is to think or Rome and Italian people, or perhaps Romania, when we hear that word. (More on the origins of the Roma here.)
The Roma people are scattered throughout the Balkans and other parts of Europe. They blend in particularly well in Serbia and seem to be part of the Serbian landscape. (For instance, Marija Serifovic, the winner of the Eurovision 2007 song contest, is Roma.) But this is not the case where radical KLA Albanian Muslims have taken control. To them, the Roma, the Serbs and the Jews, or for that matter, anyone other than Albanian Muslims, might as well be one people.
Yes, there is a whole litany of other ethnic groups in the Balkans. In Yugoslavia alone there are a number of different remnants of earlier populations. For example, there are still Turks and Germans living there, as well as small distinct tribes, especially in the hill country, We cannot list them all, much less discuss them.
Why Did Yugoslavia Break Up?
The real question should be: why was Yugoslavia put together in the first place? Yugoslavia was an artificial country put together after World War I. It was much like Czechoslovakia. Neither country existed before the 20th century began, and neither was to survive the 20th century intact.
Slavs and Slaves
Both Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia had another thing in common; the majority in both countries were Slavic people. Prior to World War I, the only two places in Europe where Slavic people had the opportunity to live without being under the rule of someone else’s major empire were Russia and Serbia. The rest were under foreign domination.
Slavic people did not enjoy a very good image in Western Europe and North America. To this day, we have Polish jokes as a remnant of days when all Slavic people where considered inferior.
How inferior where they? So inferior that the English word “slave” is based on the Slavic word “Slav.” It means glorious in most Slavic languages; however, in English and other western languages, it meant, “these people may have white skin, but they are only fit for use as human chattel.” (Very loose translation, but you get the drift.) The Serbs, for example where slaves to the Turks before Columbus sailed to America. Many remained in bondage to the Turks until the end of World War I. That is twice as long as any African people were enslaved in North America!
Serbia, being free for a number of years prior to World War I, was ready to have other Serbs who had been part of the Hapsburg and Ottoman Turkish empires to join them in their independent and self-governing nation. However, the victorious World War I Allies had considerable clout in the destiny of 20th Century European people. The Czechs, who longed for independence from the Hapsburg crown for centuries “decided” that they just love to share their newfound independence with their Slovak neighbors who had been in a similar situation. It made a lot of sense to their cultures and heritages were similar.
Serbs, Croats, Slavic peoples of Muslim faith, Slovenians and other Slavs living south of Hungary had less in common. However, they “decided” that a nice big Yugoslavia, a land of the southern Slavs, might be nicer than smaller independent Slavic nations, especially from the viewpoint of fending off foreign incursions. While past migrations and geography might have made it more difficult for those smaller nations to agree on their actual borders, the seeds of much future destruction were sown at that time.
Breaking Up Yugoslavia and Forming a New One
As soon as the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia during the Second World War, the glue that held the first Yugoslavia disappeared. Many Croats and nearly all of the Islamic people in Southern Europe sided with the Axis powers. Pro-Communist Partisans lead by Josip Broz Tito and anti-Communist Chetniks lead by Draza Mihailovich (please don’t confuse that name with the name Milosevic) made war against the Nazis, and sometimes each other, throughout the Balkans. In addition to their battlefield heroics, the Chetniks saved hundreds of downed Allied flyers including over 500 American airmen.
While the Partisans were Communists of every ethnic stripe, including many Serbs, the Chetniks were nearly 100% Serbian. To this day, Mihailovich’s status amongst Serbian Orthodox Christians, especially those living outside of Serbia, is nearly that of sainthood. Winston Churchill considers his worst mistake of the war was withdrawing his support from Mihailovich and giving it to Tito. After the war, Tito came to power, captured Mihailovic, tried him on some trumped-up charges, and had him executed. The West did nothing to support this hero who had saved so many American lives and who had also played a vital part in tying up the Nazi war machine.
But, after the war, Tito and company put together a new Yugoslavia. Tito felt that a strong Yugoslavia meant a weak Serbia and vice versa. So, Serbs were forced to hide their identity and call themselves “Yugoslavian.” Of course, under Communist rule, church involvement of any kind was discouraged. So, the Serbs were hit with a triple whammy. First, their beloved war hero was executed. Second, they were told not to call themselves “Serbs.” Finally, they were discouraged from participating in their Orthodox faith, which was part and parcel of their ethnic identity.
Many Croats needed to hide their former Nazi ties from the Tito government, but the U.S. spared any Nazi Croats in their custody, as they were consider necessary to help combat Communism. The other minorities were not as greatly affected after the war. So, the world got used to a mosaic Yugoslavia that made studying World War I history difficult, as hardly anyone knew where Serbia actually was.
The Tito Regime
While the hardcore Western position was “the only good Commie is a dead Commie,” there always seemed to be an exception for Yugoslavia. Maps of Europe divided nations into those aligned with the West and those aligned with the Communist bloc. There were two exceptions; Albania, considered to be aligned for a time with Communist China, and Yugoslavia, which was purported to be Communist but somehow neutral in the struggle between Washington and Moscow.
For decades, American folk propagandist Paul Harvey would sing the praises of Tito on a regular basis. Mr. Harvey claimed that Tito, and only Tito, had the wisdom to keep the ethnic peoples of living together in harmony. It is funny that Mr. Harvey did not have the same praises for Fidel Castro, who used some of the same brutal tactics that Tito employed. Perhaps Castro just wasn’t brutal enough of a dictator to make Mr. Harvey’s list of great leaders. Having interviewed a number of both Cuban expatriates (including former political prisoners of Castro) and immigrants from the Balkans who lived through the Tito era, Tito was far worse than Castro. Ever hear of Castro imprisoning someone for calling himself a “Cuban”? Well, if one of Tito’s people would have caught you describing yourself as “Serb,” a cell could very well have been waiting for you.
Death of Tito, Birth of Violence
It did not have to be that way, but too many outside forces wanted to take advantage of a post-Tito Yugoslavia. Seeds of discontent were sown everywhere in Yugoslavia. The Slovenians were the first to opt out of Yugoslavia. Located on extreme northeastern part of Yugoslavia, its geographic importance was minimal. However, it opened the door for a complete breakup of the entire Yugoslavian state.
In 1992, Bosnia became a hot spot. Unlike Slovenia, Bosnia was in the heart of Yugoslavia. While there was no clear majority, the Bosnian Muslims were a significant portion of the population. (Remember, these are descendants of members of other ethnic groups, primarily Serbs, who had long ago converted to Islam. So they look much like other European people.) The Serbs represented a significant portion of the population, as well. While the Croats were a smaller portion of the population, the were, however, much closer to the part of Yugoslavia that is now called “Croatia.” While their percentage of the population may have been the smallest, they lived closer to the “center of gravity” of their own ethnic group than did the Serbs. Unfortunately, too many Serbs living in Serbia tended to look down on all residents of Bosnia, including their Serbian cousins, in much the same was as too many Americans belittle Appalachian-Americans - as merely a bunch of “Hillbillies.”
Well-organized Muslim propaganda bombarded the West while Roman Catholics Croats, Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Muslims fought a three-way religious war against each other. American, being a land that has grown weak in faith, was quick to see it as an ethnic struggle. Since the Croats had some Roman Catholic support—including a fake appearance of the Virgin Mary—they were able to create some positive propaganda of their own. The Serbs, having few fellow Orthodox Christians in the West, very little money to invest in promoting their own image, and only moderate support from Serbia proper, got almost no sympathy in the West.
That Cyrillic alphabet did not help either. Too many of us remember seeing Cyrillic letters on Russian signs during the Cold War, and we still don’t get warm fuzzy feelings when we see any people using a similar alphabet now.
Ending the War in Bosnia
In 1995, the Dayton Accords were signed creating two new entities, a Republic for Bosnian Serbs and a new country for both Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats - not as independent states, but as parts of yet another artificial, foreign-imposed federation. Neither the Muslims, nor the Roman Catholic Croats were too happy about having the same country, but after three years of a three-way war, it was about the best they could hope for. Not everyone is too happy with the Bosnian Serbian Republic either, as it has been forbidden to join the rest of Serbia.
The man the West considered instrumental in shaping the Dayton Accords was Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic. Funny, how quickly the US turns on its friends. Not that we are equating the two, but remember what happened to Draza Mihailovich?
Wrapping Things Up
Hopefully, this will clear up some of the confusion about the Balkans. This is only Part I. We will continue. In future articles, we plan to address the Kosovo War, early Balkans History and other issues. We will read all feedback and may tailor future articles to what we read in that feedback.
That said, be advised that we do moderate comments and we do enforce our comment policy. So if your purpose in commenting is to hate on the Serbs, the Jews, the 1389 Blog team, or anybody else, your comments will not be put on public display - and don’t expect us to waste our time explaining why!
If this article seems a little one-sided and simplistic, GOOD! What you have heard about the Balkans in the American media has been extremely pro-Muslim and made to seem overly complicated. Had the truth been known, American foreign policy relating to the Balkans would have been considerably different for the past 60 or even 70 years. Learn the truth and spread it. It is never too late to change course.
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Category Link: Articles by CzechRebel on 1389 Blog (Note: To page back through the archive of older articles in a category link, please scroll down and click the ← Previous Entries link at the bottom of the page.)
Remember all of the discussion in the summer of 2007 about wildfires in California and in Greece? Many people raised questions about whether some of those fires were, in fact, ecoterrorism. There was also some evidence that devices made from cellular phones may have been used to ignite wildland fires. This is plausible enough, considering that remote bombs triggered by cellular phones have been used in other terrorist attacks. But after the fires were extinguished, the story disappeared from the news.
These mysterious remote cell phone bombs have now surfaced - in California.
San Jose and Santa Clara police chiefs announced Wednesday the results of a massive sting operation in their cities. Operation Meltdown, as the joint effort was called, netted investigators hundreds of criminals, tons of stolen copper, dozens of stolen cars and weapons, and in one case, homemade bombs.
A Fremont man was arrested in October as part of Operation Meltdown. He is accused of trying to sell the officers improvised explosive devices capable of being denoted remotely by a cell phone. During a news conference at San Jose Police headquarters Wednesday morning, police showed a video, recorded by hidden camera, of the suspect demonstrating the technology to officers by detonating a bomb for them.
Operation Meltdown was begun in March 2007. Undercover officers from both departments opened a fake metal-recycling business in the city of Santa Clara called Jose Clara Co-Op.
Within days, San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis said, customers started showing up offering to sell what appeared to be stolen copper. Over the course of the next year, the undercover officers purchased 14 tons of copper with a street vale of almost $100,000. Soon after the officers began buying the copper, though, Davis said visitors to the recycling shop started offering to sell other stolen goods. The officers eventually purchased 40 stolen vehicles and 74 firearms, including 21 assault weapons.
Over the life of the operation, Davis said, 273 suspects were investigated, 63 of whom were arrested over the course of the investigation. Another 73 suspects were picked up during a sweep Tuesday. There are still another 70 suspects with outstanding warrants yet to be arrested…
Vehicle theft was also part of the picture, including some mighty fancy rides:
40 stolen vehicles were purchased. The vehicles include a BMW, Porsche Carrera, Nissan 350Z, Audi, Toyota MR2, SUV’s, sedans, motorcycles and a new Ford Edge SUV.
Who is involved?
The article mentioned that “many of the suspects were identified as gang members,” but no suspects were named, nor were the gangs identified.
U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against “crusader” nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like southern California and Greece.
A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for “Forest Jihad.” The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week.
The statement, in Arabic, said that “summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.”
The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to “start forest fires.”
The posting quoted imprisoned Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Al-Suri, as saying “Jihad is an art just like poetry, music, and the fine arts. There are people that draw and there are others that are jihadists. They both act upon inspiration.”
Bush Administration defies Russia over Kosovo independence
…in order to help America’s jihadist ENEMIES, no less!
As we have discussed many times previously, this would mean violating international law to hand over part of Serbia to a jihadist/narcoterrorist drug gang that also happens to be the local branch of al Qaeda. Aid and comfort to the enemy, anyone?
“In order to protect its own and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its allies, if the need arises, Russia will use its armed forces, along with the nuclear weapons,” said Chief of the General Staff or Russian Federation Armed Forces Yuri Baluyevsky on Saturday, according to RIA Novosti.
“We do not intend to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons,” Baluyevsky said at a military conference in a remark broadcast on state-run cable channel Vesti-24, according to the report also carried by the Associated Press.
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” - Euripides
What does the GWB administration not understand about, “If we have to nuke you to keep you away from our allies, we will!”
The US military and the usual experts and pundits fail to realize just how much the Russian military has modernized in the past few years. They also forget that, unlike the US military, the Russian military has not overextended itself into commitments all over the world.
The upshot? GWB is bungling toward another Cuban Missile Crisis, but he would be foolish indeed to expect the same outcome this time around.
Nasser Rabbat, a Syrian professor of Islamic architecture at MIT, told the Park Service not to worry about the giant Mecca oriented crescent at the center of the Flight 93 Memorial. He said that since it does not point quite exactly to Mecca (it is off by 1.8°) it can’t be considered a proper mihrab (the central feature around which every mosque is built).
Liar. Many of the most famous mihrabs face as much as 20 or 30 degrees off of Mecca.
Here is another Rabbat deception:
Mosques are never in the shape of a crescent or a circle. This defeats the purpose of lining up the worshipers parallel to the Qibla wall (Mecca orientation), which usually translates into a rectangular shape, or sometimes a square. [From the White Paper released by the Memorial Project in August 2007.]
It is true that most mosques are rectangular, the more clearly to mark the direction to Mecca, but this is certainly not a requirement, given that the two most religiously significant sites in Islam are round mosques. Significant site #1 is the Sacred Mosque in Mecca:
Second most significant is the Mosque of Omar, also called the Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, from which point Muhammad supposedly ascended into heaven:
Perhaps because of the prominence of these precedents, a small but significant number of mosques around the world follow the round model.
There is the Tun Abdul Aziz mosque built in Malaysia in 1975, referred to colloquially as the “Masjid Bulat,” or “round mosque.”
There is the new 5,000 person Arafat Mosque in Nigeria, which the architect claims is “the only round mosque in Africa,” but he is wrong. Another round mosque, Al Nileen, sits at the confluence of Blue and White Nile rivers in Khartoum:
[From Google Earth. Look up “alnileen mosque”.]
Africa is also home to some older round mosques. Here is a round mosque from the Ivory coast. Similar mosques have also been found in Sierra Leone.
Here is a modern Russian mosque, laid out in shape of an eight point star.
There is even a famous round mosque right in the heart of the EU, at the northwest corner of the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels.
There is a round mosque in Kuwait, a round mosque in Kadavu India, and probably many more.
At the Islamic architecture website Archnet, a Muslim architect (not a native English writer) explains the problem with round mosques:
… a circular mosque can not function well because a mousqe should have an oriantation to kibla and as we all know that a circle does not have an orientation, How can we know the kibla wall if it is a circle ?
This problem does not afflict Paul Murdoch’s mosque design for the Flight 93 memorial because Murdoch’s giant crescent does create an orientation. Face into the crescent to face Mecca, just as with a smaller size mihrab.
Geometrically, Murdoch’s Crescent of Embrace is just a gigantic Islamic prayer rug:
A Muslim prayer rug is a two dimensional mihrab, laid out to face Mecca, just as the Crescent of Embrace is.
Notice that to a person looking into the Flight 93 crescent, the irregularity of the outer arc of the crescent is not visible. The radial arbors are all behind the double row of red maples that line the walkway. The ends of the crescent are also well defined by the end of the walkway of red maples at the bottom and the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall Entry Portal Wall on top. This is a perfectly comprehensible and recognizable Mecca direction indicator.
Rabbat’s comments to the Park Service do not even pretend to be objective. He lists “talking points” in defense of the crescent design without ever even pretending to weigh the merits of the case against the design.
Most obviously, Rabbat never considers the almost exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent as a grounds for concern, but limits his remarks to possible excuses for not worrying about this obviously worrisome fact. The same for all of his other talking points. He only even considers ways to absolve the crescent design.
In short, Rabbat is as overtly biased as he could possibly be, yet the Park Service has no qualms about this overt bias. Rabbat gives them the excuses for unconcern that they want and they eagerly embrace him. The Park Service investigation into warnings of an enemy plot was a total fraud.
