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 --------------- 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:" ------------------------------------------------------------------ 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% ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ---------- 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. ---------- 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. ------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------- From
DUMA (Bulgaria) July 1, 1998 -------------------------------- Translated
from Bulgarian -------------------------------- 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. ----------- 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: ----------------------------- 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. ----------------------------- 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 ? 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..." |