Showing posts with label 2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008. Show all posts

Saturday, February 17, 2018

'Kosovo' at 10: Still wards of Washington

When they declared "independence" ten years ago, the KLA terrorists no doubt it was a transit stop on their 130-journey towards "Natural Albania." They had forgotten the crucial characteristic of the Atlantic Empire: any deals with it are Faustian in nature.

Ten years later, "Kosovian" independence is stalled, the promised prosperity is nowhere to be found, and instead of supporting Albanian expansionism the Empire is setting up special courts to keep KLA chiefs under control. Nor are "Kosovians" the first or only ones to have their hopes so dashed - but that's another topic, for another time.

Read more in my latest at RT.com:

Monday, January 30, 2017

Five facts about Kosovo the #fakenews media is lying to you about

1. Kosovo is not ancient Albanian land. 

Its very name comes from the Serbian word "kos," meaning blackbird. Its Albanian name, "Kosova," means nothing whatsoever.

Kosovo was the heartland of medieval Serbian state and the site of the 1389 battle in which both the Serbian prince and the Ottoman sultan died, checking the Turkish expansion into the Balkans for almost 70 years. Ethnic Albanians were settled there by the Ottomans over the intervening centuries, and became a majority due to pogroms and persecution of Serbs - which began under Ottoman rule but continued under Austro-Hungarian occupation in WWI and German/Italian occupation in WWII.

Kosovo was never a political entity of any kind until 1945, when the Communist regime that reconstructed Yugoslavia after Axis occupation (with which Albanians overwhelmingly collaborated) created the "Autonomous Region of Kosovo & Metohija" - the latter being a Greek word describing church lands.

The Communists also forbid any Serbs expelled in WW2 to return to Kosovo, cementing its ethnic Albanian majority, which further grew through an influx of illegal immigrants from Enver Hoxha's Albania and the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians since the NATO occupation began in 1999.

Aftermath of the March 2004 pogrom: burned-out Serbian church with "UCK" (KLA) graffitti
2. Operation Allied Force, the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, was not a legitimate humanitarian intervention approved by the UN.

It was a war of aggression, in violation of both the NATO and the UN charter. Contrary to what the mainstream Narrative says today, NATO's justification for the war was not Serbian "human rights violations" against the Albanians. No, the bombing began as a way to force Serbia to accept the ultimatum issued at the French chateau of Rambouillet, in which NATO demanded a 3-year occupation of the province and a NATO-organized referendum that would give the ethnic Albanians independence.

It was at Rambouillet that the US negotiated on behalf of the "Kosovo Liberation Army," a separatist group it had previously acknowledged as terrorists. As part of its terrorist campaign to separate Kosovo from Serbia, the KLA has engaged in murder, assassination, extortion, torture, and trafficking in drugs, guns, sex slaves and even human organs.

KLA commander Ramush Haradinaj was greeted as a hero after a NATO-backed war crimes court acquitted him of torturing Serb captives. Haradinaj was provisionally released, and witnesses against him were intimidated and killed.
3. Serbia did not kill 10,000 ethnic Albanian civilians during the 1999 war.

That figure is an estimate based on assertions by NATO, entirely unsupported by any facts whatsoever - same as the "up to 100,000 men" speculated by NATO propagandists during the war itself. Western media continue to repeat it the same way they repeated the claim of 300,000 dead in Bosnia, which was later revised down to under 100,000.

4. There was no Serbian plan to deport a million ethnic Albanians.

The so-called "Operation Horseshoe" was concocted by German and Bulgarian intelligence to provide justification for the illegal and illegitimate NATO war (see #2 above), to the point where they used the Croatian word for horseshoe. While there was a mass exodus of Albanians towards Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro (odd, since it was part of Yugoslavia same as Serbia), some evidence suggests that may have been orchestrated by NATO and the KLA.



5. Kosovo's "independence" is neither legal nor legitimate. 

UN Resolution 1244, which authorized a NATO-led peacekeeping mission after the June 1999 armistice, reaffirmed Kosovo's status as a part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Legally, it remained a province of Serbia, whose integrity was sacrosanct on the same grounds as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia (and later Montenegro) were recognized in their Communist-drawn borders when the proto-European Union and the US decided to declare Yugoslavia nonexistent in 1992.

In February 2008, the provisional administration of Kosovo set up under the UN viceroy and NATO occupation, declared independence - based on a plan rejected by the UN Security Council, the final arbiter of Resolution 1244.

The International Court of Justice later tortured logic and language to rule that international law didn't say anything about random people making such declarations - but these were not random people. Their very legitimacy rested on the UN mandate, which their declaration violated.

President Barack Obama lied in March 2014 that there was internationally recognized and supervised referendum on the issue; there wasn't. No mainstream media outlet ever called him on it, though.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Sic Transit 2008

As I wrote last week on Antiwar.com, this was a year in which the Empire won a victory in the Balkans, but lost just about everywhere else. And though I understand the argument for "the worse, the better" in theory, I certainly took no joy in watching everything that's good and decent, both in the Balkans and here in America, sink ever lower into the cesspit of politics and violence.

The economic meltdown isn't over. The Empire wants to escalate the Afghan war, and is preparing to go back to the Balkans, probably figuring it the most likely venue for a short, victorious butt-kicking that would improve morale at home and divert attention from widespread system failure. Provided it's a victory - which is by no means guaranteed.

I have no doubt that things will continue to get worse in 2009. Perhaps at some point it will get so bad that things will turn around and both the Imperialists and their local quislings will get their comeuppance. I have no illusions that this will be without painful consequences for everyone else trapped in this malignant matrix. Whether we want to snap out of it or not, however, entropy will have its own. There is only so much denial and wishful thinking can do, and we're long past the point of diminishing returns on both.

I won't wish you a happy 2009, as that would be a lie. The best I can do is wish we all live through it. And God help us.