One must hope that the US will also be prepared to investigate claims of organ harvesting by, well, certain US elements during, or after, the war to break up Yugoslavia. They may also like to investigate the drug involvement some of their allies in that same conflict.
Asking never hurts, eh.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Paul Rigby Wrote:A Viscious Experiment in Wheenland
By Paul Rigby
April 1999
As prelude to conscripting Orwell (1) for Washington's war of petro-strategic position in the Balkans, Guardian columnist Francis Wheen bravely invited readers to mock an unnamed correspondent. The holder of conveniently pat Old Labour views, the angry straw man of Glasgow had written to object both to the war, and Wheen's support of it (2). Like LBJ contemplating Vietnam in the autumn of '64 (3), the certain cost - both domestic and to the inevitable victims - held no terrors for Farringdon Road's unfailingly "progressive" voice of conscience.
He was even less troubled by his correspondent's opening salvo, "Have you been got at by MI6?" The very suggestion that a Guardian journo might act as a spook mouthpiece was so self-evidently absurd that Wheen generously proceeded as if the question had never really been posed. Quite why was, if not immediately obvious, ultimately ascertainable: History - evidence - was on the side of his interlocutor. The source of this less than shocking revelation? Wheen's own paper, the daily house organ of what passes for the British liberal-left.
In Feb 1986, Hutchinson published the first book to probe seriously the true inter-war career of John Logie Baird, the radar-TV genius. In this and subsequent books and essays, Peter Waddell, together with successive collaborators, peeled back decades of official deceit to reveal a startling tale of covert innovation in the service of Britain's imperial war machine. In particular, this work exposed the role of SIS in recognizing, nurturing and exploiting Baird's pioneering work.
In December 1985, it would appear that SIS launched a pre-emptive strike on the forthcoming Secret Life of John Logie Baird. Guess who fronted it:
Quote:JOHN LOGIE BAIRD: THE INVENTOR OF TELEVISION
In 1957 an attempt to convert the Baird family home in Scotland to a public museum of television was thwarted by some powerful figures in the British government who said bluntly, "Baird did not invent television." In a book on television by Francis Wheen, the author seemingly went out of his way to discredit the pioneering work of Baird by quoting negative remarks and dismissing most of his groundbreaking work as feats of "one-upmanship", whilst disregarding any of Baird's recognised achievements.
Francis Wheen. Television: A History (London: Century, Dec 1985)
Why would SIS bother? Because what Waddell & co uncovered went far beyond the narrow issues of establishment ingratitude, and genius denied. They were taking us, instead, into the dark heart of British foreign policy between the wars - how this establishment conjured Hitler to destroy both Germany and the Bolshevik beast.
Oddly enough I was once approached to write an article about Baird, but declined the commission because the subject didn't really appeal to me. Missed that one eh.
I seem to recall that British Imperial policy had, for a very long time indeed, been directed at keeping France and Germany at each others throats to ever stop them from uniting - and therefore controlling Europe. That strategy pre-dated WWI, as I recall, and I believe the Rhodes-Milner gang who ran things here in Blighty, up until the post WWII period.
And I absolutely recall a conversation I had with an elderly Restauranteur and gangster (now deceased) who was sitting with Anthony Eden when news came that Herr Hitler had unleashed Barbarossa, whereupon Eden slapped his thighs in joy exclaiming "we've won the war!"
I suppose the question to be asked was why a Brazilian born Italian with close links to pre WWII New York mafia ended up in London in the company of a former (and yet to be again) Foreign Secretary during WWII?
Eden was a blood relative of the Earl Grey, a senior inner member of the Rhodes-Milner kindergarden.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Paul Rigby Wrote:A Viscious Experiment in Wheenland
By Paul Rigby
April 1999
33 JOAN PHILLIPS, "America's Baltic Intrigue," Living Marxism, (60), October 1993. For a sustained pretence that the CIA was not the creator of the KLA, see ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, "Arm the KLA. And if that doesn't work, send in the ground troops," The Guardian, 31 March 1999, p.15. The CIA armed the KLA to provoke, not to conquer. There is every likelihood that the KLA will be transformed in due course into the core force of an Islamic "rogue state," against which the European and American tax-payer must be protected at extravagant cost.
Quote:Imported Islamists? Wahhabi Group Launches Conversion Campaign In Bosnia
by Dzenana Karabegovic
SARAJEVO -- During the past week, an international Wahhabi organization has launched a campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina calling on non-Muslims to convert to Islam.
The organization, which calls itself "Poziv u Raj" (Invitation To Heaven), has been putting up slick billboards and posters and distributing leaflets in Sarajevo, Bihac, Sanski Most, Maglaj, Zenica, Travnik, Tuzla, and Tesanj.
The group also has been organizing public lectures in Bosnian cities and towns by a Greek man and a German man who recently converted to Islam.
Those recent converts have repeated the group's call for non-Muslims to convert to Islam. They have also been criticizing traditionally liberal Bosnian Muslims, claiming that many Bosniaks are not practicing true Islam.
At one recent lecture, Greek convert Efstatioss Tsionis, claimed that 60 percent of Bosniaks do not pray, 70 percent of the women do not "cover themselves," and 90 percent of Bosniaks drink alcohol.
The campaign raised concerns among non-Muslims in the overwhelmingly Muslim town of Maglaj when leaflets urging conversion to Islam were placed at the Roman Catholic church.
Local Catholics in Maglaj have complained about the leaflets to Mayor Mehmed, scheduling a meeting with Mustabasic and with representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church to discuss the issue.
Members of the Wahhabi group have also personally handed leaflets to three Roman Catholic nuns in Maglaj. Such incidents have caused widespread indignation among ethnic Croats in the town -- some of whom say they feel intimidated by the group's strict Islamic rhetoric.
Imported Islamists?
A parish priest, Jakov Filipovic, tells RFE/RL's Balkan Service that the incidents have raised the awareness of Bosnian officials about the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in parts of the country.
"Maybe it is good that the media have spoken out in the sense that we are not fooling ourselves," Filipovic says. "Some people say such things are not happening here. But this will draw attention to what is really going on here. This should be resolved by [public officials] who are responsible so that such things do not happen again."
A local Serbian Orthodox priest, Dalibor Djekic, says that he found one of the Wahhabi leaflets posted on the door of his church. "This is an ugly message to me as a representative of my people and to my people," he says. "I am aware that ordinary [Bosniaks], who have lived together for centuries with Serbs and Orthodox believers in these parts of the country, are not behind this. Even they -- my acquaintances and neighbors who heard about this -- are appalled."
Mustabasic, the town's mayor, says that he knew nothing about the leaflets or the rallies.
RFE/RL has confirmed that one Islamic Community imam, Mustafa Efendi Spahic, hosted a lecture in Sanski Most during the past week by the Wahhabi group.
But Ekrem Tucakovic, a spokesman for the Islamic Community of Bosnia, denied there is any link between his organization and the Wahhabi campaign -- saying the Islamic Community learned of the lecture from local newspaper reports.
"We don't know what kind of lecture it was, who participated, or whether that imam took part in any capacity," Tucakovic says.
'Marginal Threat'
It remains unclear who is funding the organization's campaign in Bosnia or paying for the expensively printed leaflets and posters. Staff at the Wahhabi group's offices in Tuzla have refused to comment to RFE/RL about the campaign.
A professor at the Faculty of Islamic Sciences in Sarajevo, Enes Ljevakovic, considers the group to be amateurish and marginal. "I don't think this is a serious threat," Ljevakovic says. "We are talking about marginal groups. Can it eventually be something more? Nothing can be ruled out. Anything can happen."
The Wahhabi movement, a conservative school of Islam that originated in Saudi Arabia some 200 years ago, has been growing in strength in Bosnia since the end of the 1992-95 war.
Hundreds of Islamic fighters who are adherents to the Wahhabi tradition, and who fought alongside Bosnian Muslim forces during the war, remained in the country -- with many marrying local women and establishing Islamic organizations.
In February, Bosnian police raided a Wahhabi community at the village of Gornja Maoca in northern Bosnia -- arresting several leaders there amid concerns that militant members of community were becoming a security threat.
Delightful. And with links to US ally, the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Some may consider it really curious that the US almost always chooses allies and/or places in positions of power willing pawns, who turn out to be completely foul humans.
Quote:Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports
Two-year inquiry accuses Albanian 'mafia-like' crime network of killing Serb prisoners for their kidneys
Paul Lewis in Pristina
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 December 2010 15.17 GMT
Hashim Thaci, prime minister of Kosovo.
Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.
Hashim Thaçi is identified as "the boss" of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the run-up to the 1999 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since.
The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade.
Figures from Thaçi's inner circle are accused of secretly taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a few Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.
Legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court today into a case of alleged organ trafficking discovered by police in 2008. That case – in which organs are said to have been taken from impoverished victims at a clinic known as Medicus – is said by the report to be linked to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) organ harvesting in 2000.
It comes at a crucial period for Kosovo, which on Sunday held its first elections since declaring independence from Serbia in 2008. Thaçi claimed victory in the election and has been seeking to form a coalition with opposition parties.
Dick Marty, the human rights investigator behind the inquiry, will present his report to European diplomats from all 47 member states at a meeting in Paris on Thursday.
His report suggests Thaçi's links with organised crime date back more than a decade, when those loyal to his Drenica Group became the dominant faction within the KLA.
It says the group's supremacy over splinter groups in the guerrilla movement enabled them, from 1998, to seize control of "most of the illicit criminal enterprises" in which Kosovans were involved south of the border, in Albania.
During the Kosovo conflict, Slobodan Milošević's troops responded to attacks by the KLA by orchestrating a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Albanians in the territory. As many as 10,000 are estimated to have died at the hands of Serbian troops.
While deploring Serb atrocities, Marty said the international community chose to ignore suspected war crimes by the KLA, "placing a premium instead on achieving some degree of short-term stability".
He concludes that during the Kosovo war and for almost a year after, Thaçi's forces meted out revenge against Serbs, Roma and ethnic-Albanians accused of "collaborating" with the enemy.
Thaçi and four other members of the Drenica Group are named in the report as having carried out "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations". This same hardline KLA faction has held considerable power in Kosovo's government over the last decade, with the support of western powers keen to ensure stability in the fledgling state.
The report paints a picture in which ex-KLA commanders have played a crucial role in the region's criminal activity over the last decade.
It says: "In confidential reports spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaçi and other members of his Drenica Group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics."
Marty adds: "Thaçi and these other Drenica Group members are consistently named as "key players" in intelligence reports on Kosovo's mafia-like structures of organised crime. I have examined these diverse, voluminous reports with consternation and a sense of moral outrage."
His inquiry was commissioned after the former chief prosecutor for war crimes at The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, said she had been prevented from investigating senior KLA officials.
Her most shocking claim, which she said required further investigation, was that the KLA smuggled captive Serbs across the border into Albania, where their organs were harvested.
The report, which states that it is not a criminal investigation and unable to pronounce judgments of guilt or innocence, gives some credence to Del Ponte's claims. It finds the KLA did hold mostly Serb captives in a secret network of six detention facilities in northern Albania.
Thaçi's Drenica Group "bear the greatest responsibility" for the ad-hoc prisons and the fate of those held in them.
They include a "handful" of prisoners said to have been transferred to a makeshift prison just north of Tirana, where they were killed for their kidneys.
The report states: "As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the 'safe house' individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.''
The same Kosovan and foreign individuals involved in the macabre killings are linked to the Medicus case, the report finds.
Marty is critical of the western powers which have provided a supervisory role in Kosovo's emergence as a state for failing to hold senior figures, including Thaçi, to account. It criticises "faltering political will on the part of the international community to effectively prosecute the former leaders of the KLA."
It concludes: "The signs of collusion between the criminal class and the highest political and institutional office holders are too numerous and too serious to be ignored.
"It is a fundamental right of Kosovo's citizens to know the truth, the whole truth, and also an indispensable condition for reconciliation between the communities and the country's prosperous future."
"If as expected the report is formally adopted by the committee this week, the findings will go before the parliamentary assembly next year.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
David Guyatt Wrote:Delightful. And with links to US ally, the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Some may consider it really curious that the US almost always chooses allies and/or places in positions of power willing pawns, who turn out to be completely foul humans.
I wonder why that is?
As you well know, Monsieur Guyatt:
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Holbrooke just died 2 days ago,so I guess he is in negotiations with GOD about the long journey to Hades.....
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
David Guyatt Wrote:Delightful. And with links to US ally, the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Some may consider it really curious that the US almost always chooses allies and/or places in positions of power willing pawns, who turn out to be completely foul humans.
I wonder why that is?
As you well know, Monsieur Guyatt:
Mea culpa!
Naughty ain't I...
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Keith Millea Wrote:Holbrooke just died 2 days ago,so I guess he is in negotiations with GOD about the long journey to Hades.....
I will restrain myself for a day or two about Holbrooke.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Keith Millea Wrote:Holbrooke just died 2 days ago,so I guess he is in negotiations with GOD about the long journey to Hades.....
I will restrain myself for a day or two about Holbrooke.
Naughty ain't I...
:hobbyhorse:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
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