30 March 2009

U.S.A Propaganda?

Mystery Flash and Big Boom Rattles Virginia
Buzz Up Send
They don't know what did it, but they're pretty sure it is from Russia?




Play Video 13 News, WVEC Hampton Roads – Unknown light and loud boom over Hampton Roads SPACE.com staff

SPACE.com Space.com Staff

space.com – 1 hr 23 mins ago
Editor's Note: This article has been updated. The flash and boom was likely a Russian space rocket. Click here for the update.


A mysterious flash of light and loud boom occurred over the skies of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Va., on Sunday night, but just what caused the phenomenon is still unknown.




Calls from local residents to 911 began coming in at around 9:45 p.m. EDT, with some people reporting their doors and windows rattled when the boom went off, according to reports from WVEC-TV.




Similar reports in the past often have turned out to involve meteors, which can explode in the atmosphere to create a loud noise and bright flash of light that streaks across the sky. However, often times the source of events like this are not determined.




In a recent scientific first, meteorite fragments of an asteroid that was spotted in space before it exploded over the African desert in October were recently recovered and examined by scientists.




The jury is still out as to what caused Sunday's event.




Local National Weather Service meteorologists have been in touch with the U.S. Navy, Air Force and NASA, but have not heard back these sources and don't know whether they are actively investigating the cause of the boom, said Wakefield NWS forecaster Jeff Lewitsky.




"The only thing we know for sure at this point is that it wasn't meteorologically related," Lewitsky told SPACE.com.




Lewitsky said meteorologists have looked back at their radar and lightning strike data during the time period and didn't find anything that could explain the event. He also said they had received no more reports on the incident and no photos of the light streak have come in.




Officials at Norfolk International Airport had received reports of the light and explosion, but hadn't observed anything out of the ordinary at the airport, according to WVEC-TV.


The National Weather Service told WVEC-TV that the reports of the light and the bang were coming in from Maryland to North Carolina.


The National Weather Service released a statement at 11:17 p.m. Sunday:


"Numerous reports have been called in to this office and into local law enforcement concerning what appeared to be flashes of light in the sky over the Suffolk/Virginia Beach area. We are confident in saying that this was not lightning ... and have been in contact with military and other government agencies to determine the cause. So far ... we have not seen or heard of any damage from this and will continue to inquire as to the cause."


Video: A Meteoric Tale
Meteors and Meteor Showers: The Science
Images: Perseid Meteor Shower
Original Story: Mystery Flash and Big Boom Rattles Virginia

Explosion blows up Kosovo Serb house
Mar 27, 2009
An explosion went off in the house owned by an ethnic Kosovo Serb woman in which she was not killed but her home suffered substantial damage.

House of Dobrila Aksic was blown up early in the morning in the village of Donja Budriga near city of Gnjilane.

Municipality president Predrag Stojkovic confirmed that her house was bombed in early morning hours and that the ethnic Albanian dominated Kosovo Police Service is investigating.

“Dobrila Aksic lives alone in the house that isolated at the entrance of the village in the direction of the Albanian village called Zegra. Fortunately, no one was injured during the explosion, but the old woman is traumatized and damage to her house was made,” said Stojkovic.

Spokesman for the ethnic Albanian separatist police, Arber Beka, said that the explosion occurred around 3 a.m. on Friday morning.

Dobrila Aksic was likely asleep.

Beka said that criminal unit is investigating.

Police has no evidence of the type of explosive used nor does it have any suspects or a motive.

March 27, 2009
SERBIANNA

Tags: Kosovo

27 March 2009

Western Paternalism in Kosovo

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This article does not take into accounts Holy Russia's acts of humanitarian and spiritual aide to countries in the Balkans, including Greece since before 1389. Please read with care, as it continues to try and bias people against the current goverment leaders of Holy Russia.


Tuesday 24 March 2009
The legacy of Kosovo? International paternalism
The transformation of Kosovo into a colonial-style protectorate exposes the authoritarianism behind Western governments’ ‘ethical’ foreign policies.
Philip Cunliffe



Ten years ago today, the powers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) launched an 11-week bombing campaign against the then-Yugoslavia, made up of today’s republics of Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro.

‘Operation Allied Force’ was waged to eject Yugoslav security forces from the breakaway province of Kosovo and thereby protect Kosovo’s Albanian population from a military crackdown. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia just over 13 months ago (17 February 2008), after being administered as a United Nations (UN) protectorate for nearly a decade. What is it that still makes this tiny, impoverished and isolated statelet of two million people important for international affairs today?

If Kosovo is talked about today, it is usually in terms of the problems posed by drug- and people-trafficking in the region, ethnic unrest and the international precedent that Kosovo’s secession may set for other volatile regions. But more important and more insidious than any of these problems is the political legacy of NATO’s 1999 crusade.

Liberals nostalgically hark back to NATO’s 1999 campaign as exemplifying a more innocent era of human rights, before the dastardly American neocons subverted cosmopolitan human rights with their schemes to dominate the Middle East. At the time, NATO’s violation of Yugoslav sovereignty was defended as a just war that transcended national defence and strategic necessity in favour of the moral goal of halting genocide against the Kosovo Albanians. Those who opposed the NATO campaign were tarred as apologists for Serbian nationalism more concerned with the legal niceties of states’ rights rather than the needs of suffering humanity.

As things turned out, the ‘genocide’ proved to be as bogus as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, a fabrication of NATO propaganda (see The rise of the laptop bombardier, by Philip Hammond). While Serbia was subjected to a devastating bombing campaign, and eventually dismembered as a country, the post-1999 history of Kosovo makes it apparent that the Western alliance is no ally of the Kosovo Albanians either. The Western alliance placed Kosovo under a UN protectorate, which has since metamorphosed into a European Union (EU) protectorate to ‘supervise’ Kosovo’s independence since last year. The conclusion of these developments can only be that dictatorship did not disappear from Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall: NATO, the UN and the EU have re-established autocracy as a legitimate form of government in Europe by imposing internationally appointed governor-generals to rule over protectorates in the Balkans.

As I have discussed previously on spiked, the EU-managed system of ‘supervised independence’ undermines the idea of self-determination more thoroughly than outright national oppression. The very premise of ‘supervised independence’ is to concede that true national independence is an unworkable and undesirable goal that must be renounced in favour of petty freedoms to be enjoyed under EU oversight. What is more, ‘supervised independence’ establishes Kosovo’s dependence on the international community in perpetuity.

Under the system of old-style colonialism and trusteeship, imperialist powers staved off criticism by holding independence aloft as a distant but desirable goal for the colonised peoples. The new type of trusteeship on display in Kosovo is more insidious: Kosovo’s declaration of independence and its simultaneous embrace of EU oversight effectively denies that trusteeship and independence are mutually exclusive conditions. The consignment of Kosovo to the political limbo of trusteeship is consistent with the NATO campaign 10 years ago. For it was ultimately not a campaign waged for freedom and justice, but to defend the most minimal and basic rights of Kosovo’s Albanian population as victims of oppression. Victims by their nature lack the capacity to control their fate; denying self-determination to them is entirely consistent with rescuing them from their victimisers.

This new strain of international paternalism has been consolidated since the Kosovo War. Two examples serve to illustrate some of the most worrying trends to emerge from the conflict. The first is the international redefinition of the legitimacy and authority of state power. It was in response to the Kosovo conflict that the Canadian government sponsored the acclaimed International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which promoted the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (often known as ‘R2P’). This doctrine was offered as a way of reconciling the function of states with the human rights of individuals. The doctrine maintains that if a state is unable or unwilling to uphold its duty of protection to its people, then this duty falls upon the international community.

Having been unanimously endorsed by the UN World Summit of 2005, the embrace of this doctrine by states the world over shows that states are happy to put themselves forward as protectors of their peoples. By elevating the provision of security as the ultimate end of politics, the R2P doctrine provides states with a convenient means of diluting the idea that the will of the people is the supreme justification for state power. While claiming to scale back the excesses of humanitarian intervention, the R2P doctrine solidifies its basic premise: people are redefined as the passive recipients of security provided by external agencies over which they have little control. The people’s sovereignty is sacrificed in favour of boosting state power.

The legacy of Kosovo was also in display in the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. The Russian invasion of Georgia and its subsequent recognition of the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was met with outrage in the West. But Russia only defended its war effort along the lines adopted by the Western alliance back in 1999. Russian protection of the two enclaves was justified as a humanitarian intervention against a Georgian campaign of ethnic cleansing. Russia’s subsequent recognition of the two breakaway enclaves has made them much like Kosovo – diplomatically isolated statelets dependent on foreign largesse for their political survival.

Given Russia’s opposition to the NATO campaign in 1999, its belated and opportunistic embrace of humanitarian intervention illustrates just how widespread the legacy of Kosovo is – in particular, the idea that great powers can legitimately pose as the protectors of small and weak nations. Russia’s claim to have a greater moral authority in these matters than the Western alliance has been exposed: it is not the principled defence of sovereignty that interests the Russian government, but only Russian sovereignty.

These two examples show that, through humanitarian intervention, the promotion of cosmopolitan human rights has come full circle. From a credo for the protection of oppressed minorities and suffering humanity against the depredations of states, human rights have become a justification for imperialism and the paternalistic exercise of states’ power over their own populations. The cynical response to this – that all idealism inevitably becomes a cover for the extension of state power – would miss the mark here. Such a cynical response would only let the liberal interventionists off the hook, allowing them to fall back on the position of being starry-eyed but impractical cosmopolitans. But to grant the liberal cosmopolitans even this is to grant them too much: the legacy of Kosovo shows us not that cosmopolitan human rights are unfeasible, but rather that they are undesirable.

The revival of protectorates can be logically deduced from the structure of cosmopolitan human rights themselves. Severed from a collective vision of politics and national rights, military humanitarianism inevitably reduces people to the status of victims: victims of both their oppressors and their benefactors.

Philip Cunliffe is co-editor of Politics without Sovereignty: A Critique of Contemporary International Relations. (UCL Press, 2007). Read more about it here, and buy the book here.




The rise of the laptop bombardier, by Philip Hammond

When is a war crime not a war crime?, by Tim Black

Read more at spiked issue: Former Yugoslavia.




reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6388/

16 March 2009

Joint Statement From Synod

Participants in meeting of Orthodox churches in Sofia release joint statement
Posted on Fri Mar 13 2009

Focus News
Sofia. The participants in the working meeting between the representatives of the Orthodox Churches have united around a joint statement concerning the issues raised in the European Court of Human Rights decision of January 22nd 2009 in relation to complaints № 412/03 and № 35677/04 about the people who separated from the unity of Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church told Focus News Agency.

In the statement the participants say that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is one and the disunity issue, which existed in it between 1992 and 1998, was resolved at a convocation on September 30th and October 1st 1998. The convocation decisions were made in compliance with the Orthodox Church cannons.

The participants in the meeting ask why European Court of Human Rights did not discuss and take into account these decisions. They say that according to the Court’s principles and practice religious freedom includes respect to autonomous right of every religion. In the case of the Orthodox Church it is about a cannon right.

The Court’s conclusion that the state has to be neutral about its traditional religion, Eastern Orthodox, is not an obligation included in the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Religion Act adopted in 2002 by Bulgaria’s National Assembly expresses Bulgarian national self-awareness and does not contradict European practice. The participants call on the Bulgarian government to protect the legal interest of Bulgarian Orthodox Church, taking the necessary measures to appeal against the Court’s decision.

15 March 2009

Patriarch Aleksy, R.I.P.

Patriarch Aleksy, R.I.P.
Posted in: 2009, February 2009, In Print, News & Views

Aleksy II, Patriarch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church, died of heart failure on December 5, 2008, at the age of 79.

Born in Estonia in 1929 into a pious family of Russian émigrés of German extraction, Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger was ordained a priest in 1950, completed his theological studies in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) three years later, and was tonsured in 1961. His subsequent rise through the ranks of the Russian Orthodox Church—allegedly facilitated by a KGB connection, which he always denied—culminated in his election as Patriarch in 1990.

Aleksy II came to the throne just as the Soviet state was beginning to disintegrate. The early years of his tenure were dominated by the tremendous task of restoring the moral authority of the Church in a nation devastated by seven decades of lethal anti-Christian rule.

The scale of that devastation defies imagination. Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and other denominations under the communists is one of the greatest crimes in history. Its death toll was several times greater than that of the holocaust. It had killed more Christians than all other persecutions in all ages put together, with Islam a distant second. In 20 interwar years (1918-38), the number of churches that remained open in Russia was reduced from 54,000 to under 500—less than one percent of the pre-Bolshevik total. Some 600 Orthodox bishops, 40,000 priests, 120,000 monks and nuns, and millions of laymen were murdered.

Even in the late Soviet period the Orthodox Church was at best grudgingly tolerated, hindered from playing any role in a society that was drowning in despair, vodka, and cynicism. Yet Aleksy II’s considerable diplomatic tact and organizational ability were already evident during the 1980’s, when he secured the Soviet authorities’ acquiescence in the return of Holy Danilov Monastery, which has been restored to its old status as the official headquarters of the patriarchate. In 1988 he used the celebration of the “Millennium of Faith” in Russia to raise the profile of his Church in a manner unimaginable under Mikhail Gorbachev’s predecessors.

The end of communism enabled the Russian Orthodox Church to assume her old role of moral leader amid the collapse of all secular institutions. A major test of Aleksy’s political savvy came in the summer of 1991, when old Soviet loyalists tried to stage a coup. The Patriarch contributed to its failure by sternly condemning the shedding of civil blood: “May God protect you from the terrible sin of fratricide . . . Cease at once!” The army obeyed. This remarkable fact was a testimony to Aleksy’s steady cultivation of the military and security apparat well before his rise to the patriarchate.

During the ensuing decade the number of self-identified believers in Russia was to grow threefold, and the number of parishes fiftyfold, to 30,000. But Aleksy’s greatest accomplishment was his role in the 2007 reunion of the branches of the Russian Church abroad and at home. The reunification, together with the glorification of the Royal Martyrs Nicholas II and his family, the return to Sarov of the relics of Saint Seraphim, and the veneration of warrior saints such as Aleksandr Nevsky and Prince Dmitry Donsky, “signaled the reconsolidation of what had been ripped apart in 1917,” says foreign-affairs analyst James Jatras. Jatras notes that its counterpart in the civil sphere is “Putin’s careful and deliberate amalgamation of White and Red symbolism.” This synthesis lends itself to the vision articulated by the late Gen. Aleksandr Lebed: “The Church strengthens the army; the army defends the Church. And on this restored spiritual axis—the two pillars of our power—we can begin to feel like Russians again.”

While routinely accused in the West of excessively close links to the secular authorities, Patriarch Aleksy took pains to define what is permissible and what is not in the relationship between Church and state. He rejected any absolutization of governmental authority and insisted that the temporal powers of the state should be recognized as imperative only to the degree that they are used to support good and limit evil. Aleksy’s position was codified in 2000 by the Jubilee Council of Bishops. Its “Basic Social Concept”—drafted with his blessing—stated that, “in everything that concerns the exclusively earthly order of things, the Orthodox Christian is obliged to obey the law.” However, when compliance “threatens his eternal salvation and involves an apostasy or commitment of another doubtless sin before God and his neighbor, the Christian is called to perform the feat of confession. . . . If this lawful action is impossible or ineffective, he must take up the position of civil disobedience. The Church is loyal to the state, but God’s commandment to fulfill the task of salvation in any situation and under any circumstances is above this loyalty. . . . If the authority forces Orthodox believers to apostatise from Christ and His Church and to commit sinful and spiritually harmful actions, the Church should refuse to obey the state . . . [it] must resist evil, immorality and harmful social phenomena and always firmly confess the Truth, and when persecutions commence, to continue to openly witness the faith and be prepared to follow the path of confessors and martyrs for Christ.”

Christians everywhere would be well advised to reflect on the meaning and implications of those words.

This article first appeared in the February 2009 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Return to: Patriarch Aleksy, R.I.P.

12 March 2009

UNESCO in Kosovo-Metohija

March 11, 2009.

Source: Diocese of Ras-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija




UNESCO in Kosovo-Metohija



Meeting between Bishop Artemije and the representative of UNESCO

Bishop Artemije urges UNESCO to begin reconstruction works

as soon as possible



In Graèanica, His Grace Bishop Artemije received Ms. M-P. Roudil, Head, Section for Culture, UNESCO, Venice Office, and talked with her about the beginning of works on the reconstruction of Serbian holy places in Kosovo-Metohija.

The Bishop was informed of the activities of the UNESCO Mission of Experts which took place in January 2009.

Special attention was paid to the participation of the Russian Federation in the reconstruction of Serbian holy places and to the preliminary list of priorities which will be finalized in agreement with the Diocese of Ras-Prizren.

Bishop Artemije urged UNESCO to begin reconstruction works as soon as possible and expressed his concern regarding the extension of agreed deadlines for said reconstruction.

The Bishop pointed out that reconstruction in cooperation with UNESCO would be a contribution towards the preservation of the Serbian cultural heritage in Kosovo-Metohija and would give comfort to the Serbian people in the region.

Agreement was reached also on the attitude to the reconstruction of Serbian holy places envisaged by the Memorandum on Understanding. That is to say, according to Ms. Roudil, the representatives of UNESCO expressed their reservations about the reconstruction conducted by the Commission for the implementation of reconstruction.





Press department

Diocese of Ras-Prizren



March 11, 2009 – 9:27 am
Serbia’s police patrol at the administrative line with the Kosovo province was engaged in a shooting incident with two armed Albanians that were attempting to infiltrate illegally through the border.

The shooting occurred on Monday around 5 pm when an armed ethnic Albanian opened fire from an automatic weapon.

The incident occurred in Kursumlija municipality.

The two entered inside the property line of the Tacevac village.

After the shooting, both ran away towards Podujevo.

KFOR troops inside Kosovo were informed about the incident.

Meanwhile, a hospital in the Kosovska Kamenica municipality was set on fire.

The hospital is the only health facility that services 5,000 ethnic Serbs in that region.

Doctor Jelica Krcmarevic confirmed that he hospital burned down and said that efforts are on the way to “secure space in which Serbs from this municipality could obtain health services”.

The hospital was burglarized few days ago.

The hospital served the nearby village of Silovo that was cut off from electrical supplies by the ethnic Albanian separatist government for 9 days.

Over the weekend, Serbs from Silovo were beaten by the separatist police because they were protesting the denial of electricity.

Ministry representative for Kosovo Pomoravlje Predrag Stojkovic said yesterday that the separatist government has reinstated the electricity to the villagers.

President of the reagon’s municipality in Priluzje, Sasa Andric, warned that some Serb families are fleeing the region and added that the denial of electricity by the Albanian separatists is achieving their desired end which is ethnic cleansing of Serbs.

“Yesterday and today two Serb families left for Nis and three moved to Kosovska Mitrovica,” Andric said.

March 11, 2009
SERBIANNA

Foreign Minister of Serbia Vuk Jeremic To Represent Serbian Church

Jeremic meets Serbian Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod
11. March 2009. | 10:26

Source: EMportal


Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic today talked with members of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church about next week’s meeting at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.


Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic today talked with members of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church about next week’s meeting at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

According to a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry, Jeremic will also participate in the 2nd international forum on the 5th anniversary of the demolishing of Serbian Orthodox Churches in Kosovo-Metohija, where 35 sacred Orthodox sites were burned down and destroyed.

The government and the Serbian Orthodox Church expressed their strong will to continue repairing Serbian churches and monasteries in Kosovo-Metohija, according to the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1244, concludes the statement.

11 March 2009

Top Official Admits to Intended Ethnic Cleansing of Serbs

Republican Riot

Saying it, so you don’t have to.March 09th 2009 03:22:43 AM
Even Croatia Admits it Now: The Serbs Didn’t Start the War
Posted by Julia Gorin

Well not exactly Croatia, which isn’t capable of admitting anything, but a single Croatian voice — as usual. From De-Construct.net:

Tudjman’s Police Minister Admits Croatia Started the War by Attacking Serbs
Feb 13th, 2009 | By De-Construct.net | In Croatia, Former Yugoslavia, Interview

“According to Tudjman’s concept, Serbs had to disappear from Croatia”, Josip Boljkovac, Franjo Tudjman’s minister of police

Serbs and Yugoslavia were Under Attack, Not Croatia

In the exclusive interview, Franjo Tudjman’s Internal Affairs Minister Josip Boljkovac admitted Croat leadership carried out planned attacks on Croatia Serbs in 1991, in order to start a war. “Tudjman wanted the war at any cost, following the concept according to which Serbs must disappear from Croatia,” Boljkovac said.

Croat media censored reports from Boljkovac’s testimony at the trial against former Osijek mayor Branimir Glavaš, war criminal responsible for horrific crimes against the local Serbs, concealing parts of his testimony which charge Croatia with instigating the war.

“During the testimony, Glavaš accused me of persecuting him because he destroyed the bridge on river Drava in Osijek [Croatia]. He claimed he had destroyed the bridge to protect the town from JNA [Yugoslav National Army] tanks, and I responded that, at the time, JNA was a regular army of an internationally recognized state, while Croatia, which was not recognized, was part of Yugoslavia. Then I explained who started armed conflicts in that part of Slavonija,” Boljkovac told Frankfurt-based daily Vesti.

In a sensational interview published on February 12 and carried by the several media outlets in Serbia, Croatia’s war-time minister of police said it was the Serbs and Yugoslavia who were being attacked in 1991, and not Croatia.

“Back then, in 1991, Serbs and Yugoslavia were under attack, not Croatia. Gojko Šušak, Branimir Glavaš and Vice Vukojević launched antitank rockets on Borovo Selo in order to provoke a war. The bridge in Osijek was destroyed for the same reason,” Boljkovac said.

He explained Croat war-time leader Franjo Tudjman “wanted the war at any cost”:

“The war was not a necessity — it was an intention. According to Tudjman’s concept, Serbs had to disappear from Croatia,” Boljkovac stressed, adding he was against the war and didn’t allow Serbs who were serving in the police in Croatia to be fired which, in turn, made him a target for assassination by Croat [diaspora].

Boljkovac Confirmed What Serbia has been Saying for the Past Two Decades

No one was particularly surprised in Serbia by Boljkovac’s admission that Croat leadership instigated a civil war by launching planned attacks against Serbs in Croatia and Yugoslav Army.

Vladislav Jovanović, Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1991-1995, told Glas Javnosti Boljkovac’s statement about Croatia bearing the exclusive responsibility for the war is absolutely correct.

“[Boljkovac’s] testimony only further confirms what was known from day one and what Serbia has been pointing out for nearly two decades — that there was no ‘Serbian aggression’ against Croatia; instead, Croatia Serbs were forced to defend themselves. That is Boljkovac’s hindsight for the factual state of affairs. After the ‘Storm’ and ‘Lightning’ [ethnic cleansing operations], even Tudjman admitted the war was imperative for Croatia to secede, Jovanović reminded.

Asked why Serbia stood by during the Krajina pogrom (Operation Storm, August 4-7, 1995), the single biggest act of ethnic cleansing during the civil wars in 1990s, when over 250,000 Serbs were expelled from Croatia, Jovanović said he believes late President Milošević was issued an ultimatum by [the] United States.

“The day before the attack on Krajina, Milošević was visited by an American ambassador in Zagreb [Croatian capital], Peter Galbraith. I did not attend the meeting, but I believe Galbraith had put a knife under Milošević’s throat, warning him against Serbia’s involvement. I’m sure a direct threat of bombardment of Serbia was also issued, in order to prevent any Serbian military reaction,” Jovanović said.

Mixture of Facts and Fiction

Former head of Counter-Intelligence Service [Kontra-obavestajna sluzba, KOS], general Aca Vasiljević [said]…”When he was in power, Boljkovac was a loyal and obedient servant, he was always eager to please….Tudjman had stated long time ago: ‘If we didn’t want the war, there wouldn’t have been any,’ while Boljkovac was a proponent of the idea of an independent Croatia at any cost already back in the 1970s…. In the 1990s, he participated in the war, surrounded by the extremists, people who came from the terrorist wing of Ustasha organization, like Gojko Šušak,” Vasiljević said.

Živadin Jovanović, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s last foreign affairs minister, said it was good there is at least someone in Croatia who speaks “partial truth.”

“It is absolutely correct that was a civil war and there is no basis for charges of ‘aggression on Croatia’. I don’t know Boljkovac personally, but this wouldn’t be the first time former government members become wise after the fact. Hindsight wisdom is a trait of impaired politicians, even though it can be useful to historians….[T]he essential fact [is] that Croatia’s strategy was secession, separatism and, as such, it enjoyed support of Germany, Austria, Hungary and Vatican,” Živadin Jovanović said.

10 March 2009

Albanians Identified

Feb 25th, 2009 | By De-Construct.net | In Current, Kosovo-Metohija Crisis

One of the photos Kosovo Albanian terrorists took in Albania, after NATO aggression against Serbia, posing with the Serb who had just been shot in the head from the close range.
Kosovo Albanian Butchers Posed with Their Mutilated Victims
On Monday, Serbia’s War Crimes Prosecution positively identified eight members of Kosovo Albanian terrorist organization KLA (UCK), who were photographed with their victims, Kosovo and Metohija Serbs, kidnapped during and after NATO aggression against Serbia who, prior to being killed or left to die in agony, had their vital organs extracted for sale.

Serbian media reported that Prosecution on Monday identified eight KLA terrorists who committed war crimes against the Kosovo Serbs kidnapped and transported to northern Albania, near the border with Serbian Kosovo and Metohija province, during and after NATO aggression against Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. According to the War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukčević, KLA war criminals were identified from the photos prosecution recently came in possession.

- Eight KLA terrorists were identified on Monday, and we expect this number to grow in the following days. As soon as we published the photos which, beside the KLA members, also show the killed and mutilated Serbs, a number of Serbia and Montenegro citizens contacted us. Members of the families of Kosovo Serbs kidnapped since the summer of 1999 believe among the photographed Serbian victims are individuals still listed as missing, - Vukčević told Belgrade media.

In the interest of investigation, Vukčević refused to give the names of the freshly identified criminals, pointing out “some of the identified have been known by their crimes for quite a while”. He added the Prosecution is working on the case classified as “Human Organ Trafficking”, which involves identification of the criminal chain of Albanian terrorists who have been kidnapping Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians in southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, and transporting them to private prisons and death camps on the territory of state of Albania during and after 1999, for the purpose of extracting their vital organs for sale.


Kosovo Albanian terrorists posing with the kidnapped Serb, holding the knife above the victim’s throat. Summer of 1999, Albania.
- New evidence and testimonies shedding light on these gruesome crimes will help us complete the report which will be submitted to the Council of Europe’s special rapporteur on the KLA organ trafficking, Dick Marty, expected to visit Belgrade, Priština and Tirana [Albanian capital] by the end of April this year, - Vukčević said.

Serbian War Crimes Prosecution believes the set of photos which shows KLA war criminals and some of their victims was taken in the place called Padese, in May 1999, by the terrorists themselves. Caption on the back of one photo, written with the blue marker, reads “Košare, N. Albania, 22. 5. 99″ [Košare is an outpost on the border between Serbia and Albania]. Kosovo Albanian terrorists have also taken two of the photos where some of their victims can be seen: on one, Albanian wearing paramilitary uniform is holding a knife over the victim’s throat, and on the other, KLA terrorists are standing above the victim which was just shot in the head from close range.

Indisputable Evidence About the KLA-Run Death Camps in Albania, where Vital Organs were Harvested from Kidnapped Serbs
- These, as well as other photographs we have in our possession — one of which shows the destroyed Yugoslav Army barracks Košare, taken from the Albanian side of the border, confirm KLA terrorists were stationed in this region, near the border with Serbia. For the first time, the Prosecution has testimonies of Albanians who were imprisoned in the death camps in northern Albania, where the kidnapped Kosovo Serbs were tortured, butchered and killed. According to their testimonies, one of these camps was situated in the house near Durres [seaport in western Albania], and the other in the village Kukes [northern Albania], - Prosecutor said.

Spokesman of the Serbian Prosecution Bruno Vekarić said Serbia will request additional information from the officials in Tirana, about the trafficking of organs extracted from the kidnapped Kosovo Serbs on the territory of Albania during and after the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.

- New evidence confirms these crimes took place in northern Albania and we shall send an official request to the Tirana prosecution, seeking additional information about the facts we uncovered thus far, - Vekarić said, stressing the latest evidence is only additional confirmation of the previously established data.

- This is only in addition to what we already knew, that the KLA had training camps, logistic basis, prisons and death camps, as well as temporary medical facilities where they were harvesting the vital organs for sale, on the territory of Albania, - said Vekarić.


KLA terrorists who were running a death camp for kidnapped Kosovo province Serbs in Albania, near the border with Serbia. Summer 1999
Based on the new evidence, the Prosecution now has a much clearer picture of the tragic events and macabre war crimes that took place in Albania. Among else, three indisputable facts were thus confirmed: that the KLA-run death camps in northern Albania existed, that kidnapped Kosovo Serbs were being transported over the border, to Albania, and that the provisional medical facilities where the kidnapped had their organs extracted for sale were also situated in Albania.

UN-Established Locations of the Mass Graves with Remains of Mutilated Serbs in Albania
Earlier, Serbian War Crimes Prosecution established the location of three mass graves, all in northern Albania, which contain remains of Serbs, victims of the organ harvesting and trafficking — two in the swamps in the vicinity of the village Burrel and third, 1.6 kilometers from the infamous yellow house, where the kidnapped Serbs had their organs extracted.

According to the report by the UN investigators, these mass graves contain mainly the remains of kidnapped Serbs, but there are also the bodies of Roma and “disloyal” Albanians, whom KLA, in cooperation with Albanian state officials, was transporting to the psychiatric hospital in Burrel, where their organs were extracted and sold to rich patients in the West and Middle East.

The location of the mass graves was marked in the March 2004 UN report, and Serbian Prosecution came in possession of the copies of these documents and maps, along with the photos taken by the UNMIK forensic experts back in 4 February 2004, which someone kept hidden from the public for almost five years.

Those photos show incriminating evidence found in the yellow house and around it, including muscle relaxants used for surgical interventions, surgical instruments, syringes, containers for medical refuse, gauze leftovers, surgical scissors and blades, scalpels…


Caption on the back of one of the photos in possession of Serbian Prosecution, establishing the place and time of Kosovo Albanian atrocity. The caption reads “Kosare, N. Albania, 22. 5. 99″
Representatives of Belgrade War Crimes Prosecution forwarded to the Association of the Families of Killed, Kidnapped and Missing Kosovo Serbs a list containing the names of 11 individuals cited by Albanian witnesses as the known victims of KLA organ trafficking chain in northern Albania. Bruno Vekarić said that families of the kidnapped Serbs are helping the Prosecution in the process of identification of the victims and their kidnappers and executors.

Gordana Tomanović, one of the representatives of the Association of the Families of Killed, Kidnapped and Missing Kosovo Serbs, said the families are eager to find out what happened to their loved ones.

- The families are constantly calling us, hoping this breakthrough in the investigation will help them find out what happened to their loved ones. We are in contact with the War Crimes Prosecution and we shall soon receive the latest evidence they uncovered, - Tomanović said.

This Association has its own documentation and material gathered during the past decade, including video footage which shows that among the columns of Kosovo Albanians who, during NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, at the request of KLA leaders, were leaving Serbia and crossing over the border into Albania and FYR of Macedonia, were also the kidnapped Kosovo and Metohija Serbs.

Guilty: KLA Leaders, in Cooperation with Albanian State Officials
After the latest wave of testimonies, documentation and material evidence recovered, the Prosecution contends that the key organizers of this chain of most horrific crimes since Josef Mengele’s experiments on live death camp inmates, are former leaders of Kosovo Albanian paramilitaries, headed by the former “commander of the KLA Western front”, Ramush Haradinaj, who controlled the KLA units on the border with Albania.

In addition to Haradinaj, witnesses have also named former KLA spokesman, currently head of Kosovo Albanian provisional “parliament”, Jakup Krasniqi, former chief of KLA paramilitary police Sabit Geci and Jevdet (Gjevdet) Krasniqi.

In the past month, testimonies by the former KLA members revealed KLA transported two waste disposal trucks from Kosovo province through Paštrik, one with corpses of killed Serbs, and the other carrying the kidnapped Kosovo Serbs, who were subsequently tortured and killed in Kosovo Albanian-run death camps in Tropoje and Peshkopi, in Albania.

The main individuals responsible for transfer of victims from southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, according to the witnesses, are Daut Haradinaj (Ramush Haradinaj’s brother), Sami Lushtaku and Jakup Krasniqi.

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Mass Graves Found Links to PM Berisha of Albania and PM Haradinaj of Kosovo

Mass grave of Serbs found in Albania
December 24, 2008 – 7:25 am
A mass grave with bodies of Serbs has been found in a village of Burelj in Albania says the sources close to the war crimes prosecution office in Belgrade.

“The location of the mass grave has been marked in a part of the UN report from March 2004 that still has not been officially forwarded to Serbia prosecution for war crimes,” says a source from the prosecution office.

Serbian war crimes prosecution office requested the UN report several times but the requests were ignored.

The prosecution has found that the top Kosovo Albanian separatist leadership ran a kidnapping network via tunnels and border crossings at Cafa, Prshit and Vrbnica to the psychiatric hospital in Burelj that was registered as Prison 320.

Kosovo Serbs were brought to this facility from several other concentration camps in Albania such as Tropoja, Kuks, Bajram Curi and Koljsh.

The body parts and organs were then extracted in the psychiatric hospital.

When the person whose organs were taken out died, the body was then buried in the grave that was just found.

Serbian war crimes prosecution says that it has evidence that the organ extraction network was ran by a former Kosovo Albanian so-called prime minister Ramush Haradinaj who was pronounced innocent at the war crimes trial in the Hague.

Additional documents exist linking Haradinaj with the current Prime Minister of Albania Sali Berisha but no specific description of the link has been provided to the media.

Albanian authorities rejected cooperation requests made by Serbia.

The Council of Europe envoy Dick Marty is set to go Albanian capital Tirana in January to investigate the organ trade.

December 24, 2008
SERBIANNA

09 March 2009

The Church of Serbia Threatened By Supporter of Controversial Law

Serbian Church attacked over controversial law
March 6, 2009 – 11:52 am
Officials in the Serbian government and the Western press have singled out the Serbian Orthodox Church, the largest denomination in Serbia, for an attack because of its opposition to a controversial law that is, critics say, misnamed as a “law against discrimination” but whose ambiguity on the issue of homosexuality and religious sects would expose all religious faiths in Serbia to legal badgering and government sponsored mandate to ban religion.

“A Serbian official says that opposition from Serbia’s Orthodox Church is stalling the approval of a key law against discrimination… The law is part of pro-EU reform,” reported Associated Press and thus, critics say, passed to the world an erroneous cliché that the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) is a backward, anti-European discriminatory institution.

A pro European leader in the Serbian Parliament, Dragan Markovic Palma, said that he will vote against the bill.

“If homosexuals have to lead Serbia into Europe, then we’ll stay in Serbia,” Palma said.

In Serbia, the opposition to the law has fostered a remarkable and cohesive inter-denominational and interfaith solidarity.

Catholic Church, Evangelicals and other Christian groups have banded together with the Serbian Orthodox Church to oppose the law because of the ambiguities.

Serbia’s Islamic Community has also joined the coalition, as did Serbia’s chief Rabbi.

The secretary of the Islamic Community of Serbia, Eldin Asceric, confirmed that the Islamic Community has been in consultations with the Serbian Orthodox Church.

“From SPC we got some complaints and, as they explained it, it is a question of some double meanings from two amendments, that can affect the SPC, but also all other religious organizations, and that we seek extra time so that those issues could be precisely defined,” said Asceric.

Asceric said that, along with Serbia’s Rabbi Isaac Isiel, they will respond verbally.

Catholic Church in Belgrade, report the media, has confirmed that they agree with the complaints of other churches and religious communities on the issue.

“Catholic Church is not against the law against discrimination but only that it needs to be refined because it has many unclearities that would bring this Church in a situation to be discriminated against because of its position,” said Milutin Novakovic, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Belgrade.

Leader of Serbia’s homosexual Queer Movement, Predrag Azdejkovic attacked the Church as being discriminatory.

“The SPC rests on that discrimination and it wants to keep its privileges,” said Azdejkovic.

Azdejkovic accuses Serbia of being an “instrument of the church”.

“If we look at Serbia, where on every corner pops out some church, where almost every hospital has a name of some saint, religious studies in schools, icons in government institutions, rosaries are the greatest modern hit, where there are massive fasts and atheists are viewed from aside, we realize that we live in an Orthodox Serbia,” said Azdejkovic.

Azdejkovic then issued the warning to the church that they are in line to be dealt with.

“But don’t worry, soon you will come up in the line,” warned Azdejkovic.

March 6, 2009
SERBIANNA