Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins

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TiM GW Bulletin 98/7-3

July 8, 1998

Myth of Albanian Unity (by Ben Works)

Serb Bishop: A Naive Lamb or a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Holbrooke's Bag of Tricks (by Mikhova) 

PHOENIX, ARIZONA   Topic: BALKAN AFFAIRS

 

HEADLINES

       U.S.:                   n Myth of Albanian Unity; Secret U.S. Supply Flights (Works)

Bulgaria:            n Holbrooke's Bag of Tricks (Mikhova)

Germany:           n Serbian Bishop from Kosovo Mingles with EU Globalists 

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A Vietnam Veteran, Now a U.S. Political/Military Analyst, Comments About Kosovo

 MYTH OF ALBANIAN UNITY; SECRET U.S. SUPPLY FLIGHTS

By Benjamin Works

 LONG ISLAND CITY, NY - On July 6th, international diplomats from nine countries began patrolling Kosovo in Chevrolet SUVs (armored vehicles) in order to better observe actual goings-on in Kosovo.  From Thursday (July 9), international monitors from human rights NGOs (non-governmental organization) and other international organizations will join these patrols which will document the fact that the Yugoslav police and military authorities are not committing widespread atrocities and acts of oppression. 

 But a solution to cutting off the flow of supplies to the outlaw KLA has not been decided upon and their political spokesman in Germany asserted to Der Spiegel that the guerilla group has now established itself in Macedonia as well.  The KLA, he asserts will not stop until it has established a Greater Albania from Kosovo, part of Macedonia and parts of Montenegro.  Flat out, the KLA is willing to trigger a general Balkan war no matter how many get killed.  Fortunately, Europe is not interested in that prospect and further, the KLA has neither the manpower nor heavy weaponry to put up that kind of fight.  Still, their ability to generate headlines is scary.  They have money, fools and Kalashnikovs aplenty; the requisites for disaster.  Further, they are ruthless.

 How many diplomatic observer SUVs will be hijacked by gunmen, we wonder facetiously as news editors contemplate a dwindling supply of prefabricated Serb-atrocity headlines.  Such car-jackings occurred routinely in Bosnia during the UN mission there and are frequent events in northern Albania.  Will environmentalist NGOs complain at the UN that these SUVs are wrecking the ecology and polluting the environment?  Will the environmentalist NGOs fall out with the Human Rights NGOs over SUVs?  That's too much to hope for at this early stage.

 Despite a lack of budget and other resources, it is intriguing to find out just how easy it is to find accurate information that the major newspapers and networks miss and therefore misreport through partisanry, ignorance or sheer amateurishness.  Herewith, Kosovo's secret minority groups, followed by a report of secret US cargo flights into North Albania.

 Kosovo and Myth of Albanian Unity

 Going into the Fourth of July weekend I got a line on a substantial Gypsy ("Roma" is the politically correct term nowadays) minority in Kosovo, which has apparently been redefined as "Albanian" for the purpose of inflating Mr. Rugova's claims for Albanian independence.  The lead on the Gypsy population caused me to discuss the matter with a couple of Yugoslav neighbors --one of whom grew up in southeast Kosovo in the 1960s.  They estimate a population of between 60-100,000 gypsies in Kosovo & Metohija. 

 In Kosovo, evidently, a good number of gypsies are Orthodox Christians and identify with the Serbs, while in Metohija they tend to identify with the Albanians.  In Belgrade, Gypsies from Kosovo tended to identify themselves as "Albanian" in order to benefit from the Tito-era "affirmative action" benefits for Kosovo. But it also appears that the Gypsies are not really favored by the Albanians, but would be discriminated against under Rugova's autonomous political regime --though that may be regarded for now as a bit of speculation.  Yugoslavia is distinguished in that it is one country where gypsies are notably less discriminated against in the region than in the more democratic Czech Republic, Romania and other post-Communist states.

 Further, I found that there is a significant "Turkish" minority in Pristina and Prizren, and that this minority maintains its own schools and university without any oppression or harassment from the Serbs.  Relations between Turks and Serbs are reported to be generally very good to excellent.

 It is also gnawing that the Western Press now confirms that there are actually 16 different Albanian political parties in Kosovo --obviously Mr. Rugova's group has plenty of rivals across the spectrum of ideology and religious belief.  The reader, too, should take that number of 16 political parties for one ethnic group and consider what that means with regard to both Rugova's assertions of Albanian support for independence and for Holbrooke's assertions that there is broad agreement.

 This also causes us to wonder how the Kosovo Albanians have been able to enforce a boycott against elections within Kosovo since 1989 --there are parliamentary elections and one suspects some Albanians and non-Albanian Turks and gypsies vote in these elections.  But ask an American reporter to catalog the parties and their positions --that is altogether too much work and a generalization serves our predisposition to support Rugova, just as generalizations were used to support Father Aristide and other politically- correct leaders.  Perhaps a SIRIUS reader in Europe or America can oblige us with some data.

 This all led me to try to find some formal population data and I found that in 1981 Albanians (legal residents and illegal immigrants) represent 77.5% of the population, not 90% as universally asserted by Albanian propagandists and reported without critical verification by the Western Media. That error of 12.5% of the population, represents a material misstatement that still obtains within a couple of percentage points in 1998, and is not a mere rounding error, given the political diversity already indicated by the number of political parties. In college you might get F's for such mistakes, in journalism you might get a Pulitzer.  Gypsies represent some 3% of the population, but non-Albanian Turks and Slavic Muslims represent about 5% of the Kosovo populace:

 The following data were provided in March by a Professor Dusan Batakovic to Bob Djurdjevic, a computer industry consultant and independent journalist from Phoenix, AZ.  Mr. Djurdjevic forwarded the following note, which I have edited and added percentage breakdowns for Prof. Batakovic's census figures:

 "According to Prof. D. Batakovic, member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU), who has done extensive demographic studies of Kosovo, the following are the Kosovo population stats in 1981, when the manipulation of the numbers was not as blatant as it is now:"

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Kosovo Population (per Prof. Dusan Batakovic, SANU, 11-Mar-98):

 POPULATION               1981    Percent 

 Albanians                     1,226,736        77.4%

Other Muslims                 71,075            4.5%             (Turkish and Slavic Muslims)

Serbs                              209,497          13.2%

Montenegrin Serbs          27,028              1.7%

Others (Gypsies, etc.)      50,104              3.2%

Total                           1,584,440           100.0%

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 Now the population has grown over the last 17 years and some non-Albanians have moved out, being tired of this political nonsense, but the Muslim and Christian communities of non-Albanians remain strongly entrenched in Kosovo. So what we have is Albanian Geg (a northern tribe) neo-fascists and drug lords against virtually everybody and anybody else.

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TiM Ed. For more details on the Prof. Batakovic's research on Kosovo demographics, you can visit http://www.bglink.com/personal/batakovic/kosovo.html.

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 Secret Supply Flights to Northern Albania?

 The following BBC article was forwarded to me by a reader.  Apparently two C-130 flights are landing daily --in broad daylight-- bringing supplies of some sort into Gjadar airfield.  But there are no Pentagon confirmations of these flights.  Clearly Yugoslav Air Traffic Control (ATC) authorities --and therefore Yugoslav intelligence agencies-- have a very good idea what is going on, but Albania appears to have been clueless.  This is curious, so SIRIUS decided to check these flights out through its eccentric aggregation of intelligence channels. This airfield and town do not even appear on my maps, so it must be fairly obscure and remote.  SIRIUS got an answer quickly and it looks like simple bureaucratic blundering, not dark skullduggery.

 A UN source confirmed this afternoon that NATO is providing C-130 planes from Brindisi that pick up surplus supplies at Sarajevo and then deliver it into northern Albania for distribution by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the 12,000 Kosovo refugees.  Indirectly the source admitted the office of the UNHCR has fallen behind in its press release politesse.  We will report any further findings in due course, but for now, this explanation makes sense.

Summary of World Broadcasts, July 4, 1998, Saturday

Unreported US military flights to Kosovo could pose threat to civil aviation

SOURCE: Source: 'Gazeta Shqiptare', Tirana, in Albanian 2 Jul 98

Excerpt from report by Albanian newspaper 'Gazeta Shqiptare' on 2nd July

Tirana: US military aircraft enter Albanian airspace without reporting their flights. Albanian civil aviation employees sounded the alarm after discovering quite by accident flights made last week and early this week. This "accidentalism" is due to the lack of radar in the control room, which makes it impossible to keep track of all aircraft that fly over Albanian territory. An average of two US C-130 military aircraft have landed daily at Gjader airport [in northern Albania] at 1000 and 1200 hours [0800 and 1000 GMT]. It was only possible to find out what has been happening with air traffic in the northern part of the country on Monday afternoon [29th June]. Belgrade reported dense air traffic in the northern part of Albania.

"We want to know whether we may give the OK for the Austrian Airlines' flight from Belgrade to Tirana," Belgrade airport authorities asked Rinas airport [outside Tirana], "because we notice heavy air traffic in the north of Albania."

This news put the whole Rinas control room in a state of alarm. In the meantime, another US C-130 military aircraft flew over Albanian airspace without sending out any signal and landed at Gjader airport. This is the first time such flights have been picked up in our airspace. It is the first time the Rinas airport ACC room was able to detect such uncontrolled flights, irrespective of their mission. "

While Rinas airport is not yet furnished with the necessary technical equipment to detect all aircraft, any flight that is not reported could cause an extraordinary disaster," one of the aviation experts says. He sees a major potential danger in the lack of information. "It is possible that there could be accidents involving foreign airliners and the military aircraft that are ever present in our air space while the war in Kosovo is going on..."

 Note:  Several SIRIUS readers contributed to this report and I would like to express my gratitude to them.  Thank you all.

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Benjamin C. Works is the Executive Director of The Strategic Issues Research Institute (of the United States) - SIRIUS, Long Island City, NY

www.wbworks.com/sirius.htm

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 From DUMA (Bulgaria) July 1, 1998

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Translated from Bulgarian

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 A Bulgarian Columnist Comments About the U.S. Meddling in the Balkans

 HOLBROOKE'S BAG OF TRICKS

By Svetlana Mikhova

 SOFIA, Bulgaria - From the time of the disintegration of the SFRY (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) until the present, the great US experiment has been under way in the Balkans.  The peninsula is being turned into a seething cauldron of hatred and conflicts in which the passions of nations, ethnic groups, and religious communities are being inflamed. This is true even of those whom the sands of time have succeeded in lulling into an anesthetized slumber.  When US interests require it, the heat is turned up and the pot begins to boil, so that the latest surrogate diplomatic initiative settles on the bottom and is forgotten.

This was the case in Bosnia.  The Dayton peace accords created the first state in the Balkans formed on the basis of RELIGION! The quasi-papal indulgence lay in the maxim that even the worst peace is better than any war.  However, the modern history of the Balkans is filled to overflowing with wars that were caused by a bad peace.  Our own Bulgarian history contains plenty of examples of this.  The entire postwar period has proved that Dayton has produced a stillborn child.  The invalidity of the newly formed state is obvious.  It cannot stay on its feet without the crutches provided by the PERMANENT presence SFOR (Stabilization Force). In fact, this was the very purpose of the West's diplomacy. Europe's bashfulness prevented it from rejecting the marital bed of US hegemonism, and no one wanted Uncle Sam's donkey to start braying.

Now it is Kosovo's turn.  The fuses were laid long ago, when Croatia and Bosnia were burning, and the time has now come to find the spark to ignite them.  This was provided by the catch phrase of protecting the rights of national minorities.  These have NEVER existed in the United States, which, as it is written in its brief history, is "a melting pot of nations."  There are no ethnic groups, no minorities, no problems. In Europe the situation is different, while the Balkans are another world altogether. There, history goes back a long way, the ethnic groups are numerous, and the subject (of minority rights) is a dangerous one... Accordingly, the Balkans should welcome the new American experiment. The United States has no scruples about interfering in the internal affairs of another sovereign state, and does not bother about the need to observe that state's constitutional standards.

As a result, Ibrahim Rugova, who was elected as the so-called "president" of Kosovo in an illegal election, obtained tacit recognition. Although observers in the West bashfully pointed out that the election was not democratic, at the very least because there was no other candidate for "his high post," Rugova has gradually become a person fit for international contacts.  What is more, the US Balkan experiment does not reject terrorism as a means for achieving political goals.  Quite the reverse is true.

Until recently, it was claimed that there was no such thing as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), that it was "a Serbian fabrication" invented to enable Belgrade to justify its actions in the province.  Now, however, the magician of US diplomacy Richard Holbrooke feels no qualms when he grabs it by the ears, and pulls it out of his magician's top hat as part of his Balkan bag of tricks. In the dark behind the scenes, at secret diplomatic meetings in Geneva and the backwoods of Kosovo, Holbrooke and Gelbard are meeting the anonymous leaders of the KLA.  For the time being, they are keeping them under wraps, waiting until the KLA gathers strength, with the help of weapons supplied from abroad without control, and until the ethnic cleansing of the province to remove the Serb population is completed. Then the moment will come for the terrorists to be "legally" invited to take their places at the negotiating table.

For his conjuring tricks to succeed, Holbrooke needs to have a compliant audience.  As in any circus, the audience has to be ready to volunteer to take part.  The countries that adjoin the area of conflict must not hold common positions.  They have to confront one another until they come to blows.  The United States will be glad to assist them in this. "Those people in the comfortable capitals who like war games should be more reticent, because quite enough blood has been shed because of their amateurism," Greek Foreign Minister Pangalos declared.  New conflicts and new states mean new instability.  The cauldron boils, and the Balkan experiment continues.

We had Bosnia, now we have Kosovo.  The soothsayers tell us that Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Bulgaria, and the Aegean will be next...  Meanwhile, somewhere, far away, stands a shiny tin-plated "melting pot" filled with dissolved nationalities.  Would it also want us to melt and dissolve ourselves in our own Balkan pot?  Or that we only calm down?  The bag of tricks will soon be exhausted.

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An Innocent (Naive) Lamb Among the Wolves?  Or a (Wily) Wolf in a Sheep's Clothing ?

SERBIAN BISHOP FROM KOSOVO MINGLES WITH EU GLOBALISTS

DECANI, (Kosovo) Serbia - Just as we were about to close out this TiM GW Bulletin, we received a press release from Fr. Sava of the Decani Monastery in Kosovo, Serbia.  It was about the Serbian Bishop Artemije, whose diocese includes the Serbian province Kosovo, attending a European Union globalists' conference held in Berlin this past weekend (July 3-4).  The session was organized by the International Bertelsmann Forum of the Center for Applied Policy Research of the University of Munich.

 You may recall that His Grace, Artemije, was also recently snubbed by the U.S. Balkan diplomatic gunslinger, Richard Holbrooke, who preferred to pose with Albanian KLA terrorists fighters to meeting a Serbian bishop (see "Thugs of the World Unite!" - a New NWO Slogan? - TiM GW Bulletin 98/6-7, 6/26/98).  Nonetheless, the Serb bishop went to Berlin this weekend, where he reportedly also held private meetings with Klaus Kinkel, the German Foreign Minister, Henry Kissinger and Xavier Solana, the Secretary General of the NATO, among others. 

 Was His Grace's attendance at such an anti-Christian gathering a sign of an innocent (naive) lamb mingling with the (pagan) wolves?  Or that of a (wily) wolf in a sheep's clothing?  We prefer to think it was the former, but will keep our minds open as events unfold from now on. 

 Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from the Fr. Sava July 8-press release:

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July 8, 1998

[...] The dominant tone of the "Bertelsmann Conference" could be observed in the presentation by Mr. Klaus Kinkel. The German Minister of Foreign Affairs decidedly stated that EU was not a Christian organization and that Serbs were (and would be) losers in the forthcoming events. He also stressed that in case of Russian veto in the Security Council there existed an instrument of the Genocide Convention which clearly gave right to the NATO to decide independently even in case such as the military intervention in Kosovo and Metohija.

The speech by Mr. Slomo Avineri, the director of the Jerusalem based Jewish University for the European Studies was very similar in character to the speech of his predecessor.  He stated that it was late now for the autonomy of Kosovo and that autonomy had no political meaning in an undemocratic country. Mr. Avineri concluded that in the case of the Balkan crisis Russia should be pushed in the background because it depended on the West and because that was the only way to put everything in its proper place.

 The presentation by Bishop Artemije, the only one representative of the European Christian confessions, aroused special attention by the auditorium. Unfortunately, the questions and follow up discussions were prevented by the pause which was hurriedly proposed by the chairman.

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 Now, here are some TiM editor's comments and questions which come to mind:

 1.     The foreign minister of an ostensibly Christian country (Germany) makes it quite clear that the direction in which Germany is leading Europe is NON-CHRISTIAN! [the "EU was not a Christian organization and that Serbs were (and would be) losers in the forthcoming events," Kinkel promised the Christian Serbs].  And a Christian Bishop takes this humiliation in stride, and even grants such an anti-Christian globalist a private audience afterward?

2.     How many snubs by the materialistic, Godless elitists, such as Kinkel or Holbrooke, does it take for a Serbian Orthodox Bishop to get the message that he is not wanted at their table?  Unless, of course, he knows that he is a member of the NWO Club?

3.     What sort of an authority on Kosovo or Russia, for that matter, is a Jerusalem-based "Jewish University for the European Studies," to pass a judgment on Kosovo's autonomy?  Might it not seem more appropriate for people who live in a glass house not to cast any stones?  Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is hardly a shining example of tolerance and compassion, is it?

Anyway, one thing seems certain: This Serbian Bishop does suffer from a dangerous affliction for "men of God" - getting involved in politics.  Especially foreign policy, something which "men of God" are neither expected nor supposed to get involved in.  Nor are usually qualified for.

Years ago (it seems like decades ago), this writer used to ask his (computer company) salesmen the following question during a "boot camp"-style training course devised for them: "Does it make a difference to the victim whether he was stabbed in the back by a vicious murderer, or by a well-meaning klutz who tripped and fell while 'protecting' the victim's back?"

The message, of course, being: You have to be even more on guard vis-a-vis the well-wishers and so-called "friends," than with regard to the obvious enemies.

Yet, in his speech at this EU globalist-sponsored session, Bishop Artemije called for an "international conference" to deal with the problems of Kosovo.  That's just like the treasonous blunder which Milosevic committed in 1991-1992 when he agreed to the Vance Plan ( see this writer's latest WT column - "Kosovo: Why are we involved?", 7/05/98).

So, one has to wonder if this Serbian Bishop is an innocent (naive) lamb among the NWO wolves?  Or a (wily) NWO wolf in a sheep's clothing ?

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Also, check out... "The Coming EU-US Clash?", "Northern Ireland: A War of the Hooligans", "U.S. European Policy Destroying Own Creations", "Austrian Men Do Dishes; Shakespeare Condemned in Arizona", "US Senate Picks Up the NATO Hot Potato", "Russia Is Still the Bogey No. 1"

Or Djurdjevic's CHRONICLES and WASHINGTON TIMES columns: "A Bear in Sheep's Clothing", and "Rekindling NATO to Fuel Cold War..."