Da: Predrag Tosic
Data: Lun 8 Mar 2004 22:47:07 Europe/Rome
A: yugoslaviainfo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
[ Eve-Ann Prentice outlines a truthful, and therefore unpopular, picture
of the post-war, NATO-occupied Kosovo, and makes it a part of a larger
mosaic, together with Bosnia, Afghanistan, etc. of how 'the West'
(meaning:
a few thugs who ruled the US and controlled its foreign policy during
most
of the 1990s, and successfully convinced, coerced and/or brainwashed the
rest of 'international community' to go along with their crafty plans
for
the Balkans and beyond, de facto actively assisted and kept feeding the
very monster that is, after 09/11/2001, the declared greatest nemesis
and
the real target of the 'war on terrorism'. In addition to reflecting on
head-cutting and throat-slitting Islamic terrorists in Kosovo and Bosnia
and beyond, Prentice also reflects on the Kangaroo Court in The Hague,
and
its blatant biases, political rather than legal agenda, and myopic
treatment
of the accused / arested Serbs.
A pair of telling quotes from the article below:
"Meanwhile, atrocities by the KLA against the few Serbs who have stayed
behind in Kosovo since NATO's entrance in June 1999 continue under the
noses of the international community, while London and Washington
proclaim
the Kosovo mission a 'success'."
"Mention the Balkans to most people in the West (including senior
journalists
who should know better) and their eyes glaze over with boredom or
confusion.
Yet the wars there in the past 10 years are inextricably interwoven
with
what is happening today in America, Afghanistan, Iraq and across the
world.
Washington's determination to portray the civil wars in Bosnia and
later in
Kosovo as straightforward battles of good vs evil was based on deceit.
Indeed, the lies masquerading as propaganda helped feed the school of
terrorism which struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Political
and military leaders in Washington should not have been surprised when
the
monster they helped to create turned against them."
It is a pity many of Prentice's discoveries, while well-known to us
who are still trying to maintain this info list, are widely unknown to a
vast majority of well-intentional, decent people here (the US) and
elsewhere. It is equally pity that the truth that some Western media are
finally bothering uncover seems way too little, and way too late for the
gloomy realities in Kosovo to start changing - two Serb civilians, a
young
woman and a middle-aged professor, were brutally murdered near Lipljan
in
Kosovo some two weeks ago, and this latest crime is likely going to
remain
unsolved, with the perpetrators having very little to fear, as so many
similar such crimes before.
Predrag Tosic ]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1086509/posts?page=1
for comments to this article.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA412.htm
Another side to the Balkans
by Eve-Ann Prentice
The marathon trial of former president of Yugoslavia Slobodan
Milosevic has
reached its second anniversary in February 2004, with Serbs continuing
to
take the brunt of the sentences meted out by the International War
Crimes
Tribunal in The Hague.
It is ironic then that ethnic Albanian members of the Kosovo
Liberation Army
(KLA) - trained and encouraged in the past by the West - have been
free to
sell Semtex explosives to undercover journalists from Britain. In late
2003,
the journalists posed as Irish terrorists determined to blow up British
targets with their booty.
Furthermore, one of the KLA men - offloading enough Semtex to down 40
jumbo
jets - also stands accused of torturing and killing Serbs in Kosovo
during
the war there, which led to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
This was
a war where the Serbs were seen as the guilty party and the Albanians
as
victims.
It is significant that the KLA man felt cocky enough to show off a
photo of
what he boasted was the disjoined head of one of his victims, a Serb,
according to the undercover journalist, Graham Johnson, investigations
editor of the Sunday Mirror newspaper, and a British Channel Five TV
documentary crew.
Where is The Hague when it comes to charging Albanians with war crimes
in
the conflict that brought down the wrath of NATO on Yugoslavia in the
spring
and summer of 1999?
Whenever Albanians are arrested by international forces in Kosovo, KLA
hardliners frogmarch ordinary moderate Albanians on to the streets to
protest the innocence of the accused - and the charges are usually
dropped
at source. Some Albanians have been handed to The Hague but the number
is
believed to be tiny; the tribunal says it cannot say how many as it
refuses
to break down the accused into ethnic groups. A spokesperson admits,
though,
that the vast majority of those so far charged have been Serbs.
Meanwhile, atrocities by the KLA against the few Serbs who have stayed
behind in Kosovo since NATO's entrance in June 1999 continue under the
noses
of the international community, while London and Washington proclaim
the
Kosovo mission a success.
In June 2003, for instance, an elderly couple, Slobodan (80) and
Radmila
Stolic (76) along with their middle-aged son, 52-year-old Ljubinko,
were
tortured and killed at their home in Obilic, Kosovo. In the week
leading up
to their deaths, they were threatened and bullied when they refused to
sell
their home to a group of Albanians. The killing of the family came just
after agreement had been reached for 20 Serb families to return to
their
homes in that area; the Stolics' murder was seen by many Serbs as a
clear
warning not to return.
Although Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator for Kosovo,
condemned the killings as a 'heinous and perfidious crime directed
against
multi-ethnicity in Kosovo', the UK Parliament took a different view.
In a
debate on Kosovo on 17 June 2003, Minister for Europe Denis MacShane
said he
believed the Stolics perished in a 'family feud' - a theory he
reportedly
had taken from an Albanian newspaper in Kosovo.
Most of the Western public is under the impression that all is now
sweetness
and light in the Balkans after the Western interventions in Bosnia and
Kosovo. How many are aware, though, that Bosnia is now a base for some
hardline Muslim militants? Bosnian Muslims have historically been a
very
secular, gentle people; the extremist Muslims who have taken up bases
in
their country are from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Saudi
Arabia and they have found a foothold in Europe largely thanks to the
chaos
of the Bosnian war.
The KLA was trained and equipped in part by Islamic Mujahedeen fighters
Many believe that one of NATO's finest hours was in June 1999, when
bombing
forced Milosevic to pull his forces out of Kosovo. Is it such a success
story when you realise that hundreds of thousands of Serb civilians,
ordinary families, including young children, have been forced to flee
Kosovo
in fear of their lives? They have been hounded out by extremists from
the
very community the West said it was protecting - the ethnic Albanians.
The big powers do not want people to ask too many questions about any
links
between the Balkans and the so-called 'war on terror' following 9/11.
But
the links are there.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is Public Enemy Number One in the
West. Yet
only a few years ago, he was actively encouraged to take up arms by
the very
people who now want him dead. The Saudi dissident-turned-Afghan
warlord and
global terrorist played a key role in training and organising Muslim
forces
in the former Yugoslavia during the wars in Bosnia and later in
Kosovo. Why?
Because the West was so determined to crush 'communistic' Serbs
following
the fall of the Berlin Wall that it was not as fussy as it might have
been
in choosing its friends.
Mention the Balkans to most people in the West (including senior
journalists
who should know better) and their eyes glaze over with boredom or
confusion.
Yet the wars there in the past 10 years are inextricably interwoven
with
what is happening today in America, Afghanistan, Iraq and across the
world.
Washington's determination to portray the civil wars in Bosnia and
later in
Kosovo as straightforward battles of good vs evil was based on deceit.
Indeed, the lies masquerading as propaganda helped feed the school of
terrorism which struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Political
and military leaders in Washington should not have been surprised when
the
monster they helped to create turned against them.
When the World Trade Center was bombed, it was lunchtime in Britain.
On the
far side of Europe, it was mid-afternoon. Millions of people in
Yugoslavia
also looked aghast at the horror-film scenes unfolding on their TV
screens.
But in Belgrade, shock and revulsion was tinged with a sense of
realism.
Just over two years before, many had watched first-hand as high-rise
buildings were turned into balls of fire and reduced to rubble, also by
airborne instruments of death. Serbian civilians had felt the violence
of
Cruise missiles and conventional bombs hitting home in towns and cities
across the country as NATO pursued its campaign against the Milosevic
regime.
Many Serbs know that the hardline KLA was trained and equipped in part
by
Islamic Mujahedeen fighters who saw action in Afghanistan against the
Russians, from the same stable of Muslim extremism which attacked New
York
and Washington on 9/11.
When the Bosnian war looked imminent, Britain's ambassador to Belgrade,
Peter Hall, advised a hands-off approach by the West. The Muslim
leader of
the would-be breakaway state of Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic, who died in
2003,
initially wanted to avoid putting up barricades which he knew would
provoke
the first shots, but he was persuaded by US diplomats that the West
would be
right behind him in the coming conflict. Western leaders knew, but
chose to
ignore, that Izetbegovic had friends in Arab countries and had made
several
visits to Tehran to see Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1970s. In the 1980s,
he
was imprisoned by the Yugoslav authorities for writing an Islamic
treatise
which was seen as treason.
By 1994 there were large numbers of Mujahideen in Bosnia, including
fighters
from Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
'Muderis'
was the nom de guerre of one Mujahedeen in charge of a 100-strong unit
which
wore black scarves wound round their heads. Militant Muslims did not
stop
with Bosnia - some made alliances with extremist Albanians and ethnic
Albanians from Kosovo. These ethnic Albanians embarked on a campaign to
dominate first Kosovo, then surrounding areas, including Macedonia.
Where it will all end now is anybody's guess - but it is unlikely to
end
happily.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA412.htm
http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/Support/Index.stm
Eve-Ann Prentice is a freelance journalist who has covered events in the
Balkans for the Guardian, Sunday Correspondent and The Times (London)
for
25 years. She is also the author of
One Woman's War, Duckworth Publishing, 2002
(buy this book from Amazon (UK)
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631047/spiked>
or Amazon (USA)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631047/spiked-20> ),
which explores in depth issues raised in this article.
Data: Lun 8 Mar 2004 22:47:07 Europe/Rome
A: yugoslaviainfo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
[ Eve-Ann Prentice outlines a truthful, and therefore unpopular, picture
of the post-war, NATO-occupied Kosovo, and makes it a part of a larger
mosaic, together with Bosnia, Afghanistan, etc. of how 'the West'
(meaning:
a few thugs who ruled the US and controlled its foreign policy during
most
of the 1990s, and successfully convinced, coerced and/or brainwashed the
rest of 'international community' to go along with their crafty plans
for
the Balkans and beyond, de facto actively assisted and kept feeding the
very monster that is, after 09/11/2001, the declared greatest nemesis
and
the real target of the 'war on terrorism'. In addition to reflecting on
head-cutting and throat-slitting Islamic terrorists in Kosovo and Bosnia
and beyond, Prentice also reflects on the Kangaroo Court in The Hague,
and
its blatant biases, political rather than legal agenda, and myopic
treatment
of the accused / arested Serbs.
A pair of telling quotes from the article below:
"Meanwhile, atrocities by the KLA against the few Serbs who have stayed
behind in Kosovo since NATO's entrance in June 1999 continue under the
noses of the international community, while London and Washington
proclaim
the Kosovo mission a 'success'."
"Mention the Balkans to most people in the West (including senior
journalists
who should know better) and their eyes glaze over with boredom or
confusion.
Yet the wars there in the past 10 years are inextricably interwoven
with
what is happening today in America, Afghanistan, Iraq and across the
world.
Washington's determination to portray the civil wars in Bosnia and
later in
Kosovo as straightforward battles of good vs evil was based on deceit.
Indeed, the lies masquerading as propaganda helped feed the school of
terrorism which struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Political
and military leaders in Washington should not have been surprised when
the
monster they helped to create turned against them."
It is a pity many of Prentice's discoveries, while well-known to us
who are still trying to maintain this info list, are widely unknown to a
vast majority of well-intentional, decent people here (the US) and
elsewhere. It is equally pity that the truth that some Western media are
finally bothering uncover seems way too little, and way too late for the
gloomy realities in Kosovo to start changing - two Serb civilians, a
young
woman and a middle-aged professor, were brutally murdered near Lipljan
in
Kosovo some two weeks ago, and this latest crime is likely going to
remain
unsolved, with the perpetrators having very little to fear, as so many
similar such crimes before.
Predrag Tosic ]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1086509/posts?page=1
for comments to this article.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA412.htm
Another side to the Balkans
by Eve-Ann Prentice
The marathon trial of former president of Yugoslavia Slobodan
Milosevic has
reached its second anniversary in February 2004, with Serbs continuing
to
take the brunt of the sentences meted out by the International War
Crimes
Tribunal in The Hague.
It is ironic then that ethnic Albanian members of the Kosovo
Liberation Army
(KLA) - trained and encouraged in the past by the West - have been
free to
sell Semtex explosives to undercover journalists from Britain. In late
2003,
the journalists posed as Irish terrorists determined to blow up British
targets with their booty.
Furthermore, one of the KLA men - offloading enough Semtex to down 40
jumbo
jets - also stands accused of torturing and killing Serbs in Kosovo
during
the war there, which led to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
This was
a war where the Serbs were seen as the guilty party and the Albanians
as
victims.
It is significant that the KLA man felt cocky enough to show off a
photo of
what he boasted was the disjoined head of one of his victims, a Serb,
according to the undercover journalist, Graham Johnson, investigations
editor of the Sunday Mirror newspaper, and a British Channel Five TV
documentary crew.
Where is The Hague when it comes to charging Albanians with war crimes
in
the conflict that brought down the wrath of NATO on Yugoslavia in the
spring
and summer of 1999?
Whenever Albanians are arrested by international forces in Kosovo, KLA
hardliners frogmarch ordinary moderate Albanians on to the streets to
protest the innocence of the accused - and the charges are usually
dropped
at source. Some Albanians have been handed to The Hague but the number
is
believed to be tiny; the tribunal says it cannot say how many as it
refuses
to break down the accused into ethnic groups. A spokesperson admits,
though,
that the vast majority of those so far charged have been Serbs.
Meanwhile, atrocities by the KLA against the few Serbs who have stayed
behind in Kosovo since NATO's entrance in June 1999 continue under the
noses
of the international community, while London and Washington proclaim
the
Kosovo mission a success.
In June 2003, for instance, an elderly couple, Slobodan (80) and
Radmila
Stolic (76) along with their middle-aged son, 52-year-old Ljubinko,
were
tortured and killed at their home in Obilic, Kosovo. In the week
leading up
to their deaths, they were threatened and bullied when they refused to
sell
their home to a group of Albanians. The killing of the family came just
after agreement had been reached for 20 Serb families to return to
their
homes in that area; the Stolics' murder was seen by many Serbs as a
clear
warning not to return.
Although Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator for Kosovo,
condemned the killings as a 'heinous and perfidious crime directed
against
multi-ethnicity in Kosovo', the UK Parliament took a different view.
In a
debate on Kosovo on 17 June 2003, Minister for Europe Denis MacShane
said he
believed the Stolics perished in a 'family feud' - a theory he
reportedly
had taken from an Albanian newspaper in Kosovo.
Most of the Western public is under the impression that all is now
sweetness
and light in the Balkans after the Western interventions in Bosnia and
Kosovo. How many are aware, though, that Bosnia is now a base for some
hardline Muslim militants? Bosnian Muslims have historically been a
very
secular, gentle people; the extremist Muslims who have taken up bases
in
their country are from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Saudi
Arabia and they have found a foothold in Europe largely thanks to the
chaos
of the Bosnian war.
The KLA was trained and equipped in part by Islamic Mujahedeen fighters
Many believe that one of NATO's finest hours was in June 1999, when
bombing
forced Milosevic to pull his forces out of Kosovo. Is it such a success
story when you realise that hundreds of thousands of Serb civilians,
ordinary families, including young children, have been forced to flee
Kosovo
in fear of their lives? They have been hounded out by extremists from
the
very community the West said it was protecting - the ethnic Albanians.
The big powers do not want people to ask too many questions about any
links
between the Balkans and the so-called 'war on terror' following 9/11.
But
the links are there.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is Public Enemy Number One in the
West. Yet
only a few years ago, he was actively encouraged to take up arms by
the very
people who now want him dead. The Saudi dissident-turned-Afghan
warlord and
global terrorist played a key role in training and organising Muslim
forces
in the former Yugoslavia during the wars in Bosnia and later in
Kosovo. Why?
Because the West was so determined to crush 'communistic' Serbs
following
the fall of the Berlin Wall that it was not as fussy as it might have
been
in choosing its friends.
Mention the Balkans to most people in the West (including senior
journalists
who should know better) and their eyes glaze over with boredom or
confusion.
Yet the wars there in the past 10 years are inextricably interwoven
with
what is happening today in America, Afghanistan, Iraq and across the
world.
Washington's determination to portray the civil wars in Bosnia and
later in
Kosovo as straightforward battles of good vs evil was based on deceit.
Indeed, the lies masquerading as propaganda helped feed the school of
terrorism which struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Political
and military leaders in Washington should not have been surprised when
the
monster they helped to create turned against them.
When the World Trade Center was bombed, it was lunchtime in Britain.
On the
far side of Europe, it was mid-afternoon. Millions of people in
Yugoslavia
also looked aghast at the horror-film scenes unfolding on their TV
screens.
But in Belgrade, shock and revulsion was tinged with a sense of
realism.
Just over two years before, many had watched first-hand as high-rise
buildings were turned into balls of fire and reduced to rubble, also by
airborne instruments of death. Serbian civilians had felt the violence
of
Cruise missiles and conventional bombs hitting home in towns and cities
across the country as NATO pursued its campaign against the Milosevic
regime.
Many Serbs know that the hardline KLA was trained and equipped in part
by
Islamic Mujahedeen fighters who saw action in Afghanistan against the
Russians, from the same stable of Muslim extremism which attacked New
York
and Washington on 9/11.
When the Bosnian war looked imminent, Britain's ambassador to Belgrade,
Peter Hall, advised a hands-off approach by the West. The Muslim
leader of
the would-be breakaway state of Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic, who died in
2003,
initially wanted to avoid putting up barricades which he knew would
provoke
the first shots, but he was persuaded by US diplomats that the West
would be
right behind him in the coming conflict. Western leaders knew, but
chose to
ignore, that Izetbegovic had friends in Arab countries and had made
several
visits to Tehran to see Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1970s. In the 1980s,
he
was imprisoned by the Yugoslav authorities for writing an Islamic
treatise
which was seen as treason.
By 1994 there were large numbers of Mujahideen in Bosnia, including
fighters
from Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
'Muderis'
was the nom de guerre of one Mujahedeen in charge of a 100-strong unit
which
wore black scarves wound round their heads. Militant Muslims did not
stop
with Bosnia - some made alliances with extremist Albanians and ethnic
Albanians from Kosovo. These ethnic Albanians embarked on a campaign to
dominate first Kosovo, then surrounding areas, including Macedonia.
Where it will all end now is anybody's guess - but it is unlikely to
end
happily.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA412.htm
http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/Support/Index.stm
Eve-Ann Prentice is a freelance journalist who has covered events in the
Balkans for the Guardian, Sunday Correspondent and The Times (London)
for
25 years. She is also the author of
One Woman's War, Duckworth Publishing, 2002
(buy this book from Amazon (UK)
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631047/spiked>
or Amazon (USA)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631047/spiked-20> ),
which explores in depth issues raised in this article.