3234-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

by Preston James

Have you have “woken up” and learned about Gladio-style False-flag, inside-jobs, the engineered and staged terror attacks, real and virtual, which include mass-shootings in gun-free zones?

Have you learned that this staged terror, some fake and some real, is all part of a secret Establishment strategy to produce massive societal fear in order to motivate Americans to give up their basic Constitutional rights which they would never otherwise give up?

Have you learned that the attack on America on 9-11-01 was a monstrous Gladio-style, inside-job False-flag attack done by the Mossad and the Israeli-American “Israeli-first” Dual Citizen traitors in PNAC and AIPAC along with help by Top NeoCon Traitors in the US Administration, Congress, the JCS, the USAF, NORAD and the FAA?

Have you learned that the FBI is a criminal organization set up inside the US Department of Just-us to service the cover-up needs of the Establishment and that it selects dumbed-down, retarded and mentally ill Islamic immigrants like Somali young men to mind-kontrol, arm and entrap as patsies into their staged terror dramas?

Have you learned that the CIA, the FBI and foreign Intel Agencies like the Mossad that serve the Establishment have a long history of using drugs, implanted chips and hypnosis to mind-kontrol victims and to activate and deploy them as stone-killers to do mass-shootings in gun-free zones.

Have you learned that these criminal Intel agencies do this as sophisticated psyops in order to generate massive fear in the American group mind in order to manipulate them to give up their Second Amendment rights and other rights which are supposed to be guaranteed in the US Constitution and which they would never otherwise even consider giving up.

Have you learned that nobody died at Sandy Hook School which was shut down in 2008, it was a two-day DHS/FEMA Capstone drill using professional crisis actors, many who have been identified as such?

Have you learned that nobody died at the Boston Marathon Bombing which was only a drill using previous amputee professional crisis actors and a harmless black-powder puffer bomb?

Have you “woken up” and learned that our Congress and President were bribed in 1913 to pass an unConstitutional Federal Reserve Act which illegally gave the right to a private foreign owned bank to create and distribute our money in counterfeit form?

Have you learned that this illegal, unConstitutional Federal Reserve Bank charges pernicious usury to use what should be our own money in the first place and mandates inflation to continually debases its value so that it is now only worth 2% of its original symbolic value?

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Have you learned that this progressive debasement of our money places most of us, (Excluding the Establishment Oligarchy and Plutocracy) in debt-slavery?

Have you learned that the illegal, unConstitutional private Federal Reserve Bank which issues interest-bearing fake money as debt-notes is just part of a worldwide, World’s largest Organized crime Syndicate (aka the KM or the “Establishment Empire”).

And have you learned that that this Establishment Empire has an incredibly evil Globalist NWO Agenda to destroy America in order to eradicate any vestige of what our Founding fathers produced, and prevent it from ever occurring again anywhere.

Have you “woken up” and learned that the Establishment has illegally and unConstitutionally passed various Free Trade Agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO and GATT in order to fulfill their Evil Agenda to export American heavy industry and manufacturing along with most of our good jobs?

Have you learned that these Free Trade Agreements have forfeited American Sovereignty illegally and unConstitutionally and are designed to allow large international corporations to move their production facilities, hire cheap labor, while parasitizing lucrative American markets.

Have you learned that these large international corporations are doing this to maximize profits while the American economy is slowly and systematically sacked and decimated, producing the largest transfer of wealth ever conceived from the American people to the shareholders of these large international corporations who soon will no longer need American markets but will service the whole world?

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Have you “woken up” and learned that the Establishment has set up a dualism in every one of their USG institutions and agencies, the socially desirable side for for public awareness and the secret dark side to serve their sinister, evil purposes?

Have you learned that there is a visible ceremonial USG that has little real power except what they are ordered to do by the real secret USG which is called theSecret Shadow Government (SSG) and is invisible to most Americans?

Have you learned that this SSG engineers and stages false-flag terror and projects public blame for these acts on foreign nations who had nothing to do with such, all done in order to feed the Establishment war machine and generate extreme profits while providing access to others natural resources for their associated corporations?

Have you learned that the SSG creates CIA-backed dictators if they agree to buy weapons from Establishment-associated defense manufacturers.

Have you learned that the SSG then uses these dictators and Establishment false-flag terror to start wars, all the while secretly funding both sides of the conflict in order to fulfill their Globalist NWO Agenda of “Divide and Conquer” while stealing them and the American taxpayers blind?

Have you learned that the SSG has built 140 Deep Underground Military Bases that are connected by high speed maglev trains?

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Have you learned that the SSG has deployed aerial spraying of toxic chemicals such as nano-aluminum, barium and strontium in massive quantities in order to deforest, kill plant life and cause famines, as well as to mind-kontrol the masses?

Have you become aware that the SSG has deployed ultra-high tech eugenics against the American masses to make them sick so they will boost the establishment owned Big Medicine and Big Pharma?

Have you learned that the SSG is secretly venting radiation from many nuclear power plants. Some insiders believe that this is being done in order to increase the rates of cancer in Americans and to alter their minds to make them more amenable to Psychotronic mind-kontrol?

Have you learned that the Secret Shadow Government is now setting up a 24/7 Total Surveillance System involving satellites, aircraft, drones, special trucks, vans, autos, cell phone Systems, Wi-Fi advanced technologies, in order to preemptively intercept any emerging spontaneous mass populism as effectively as possible?

Have you learned that the SSG has built numerouspsychotronic firewalls against public truth which help keep the American Public mind-kontrolled and unable to know the truth even when told by others and shown the evidence?

Have you learned that the Establishment and the SSG have mind-kontrolled the American Public over the last 50 years to view the USG and their Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM) Talking Heads as benevolent parent figures that would never lie to them or deceive them which is actually their mandate and daily practice?

Have you learned that the SSG has back-engineered recovered Alien ET anti-gravity craft and even negotiated beyond-black secret treaties with some Alien ET groups to obtain advanced technologies in exchange for allowing access to human and animal subjects for abductions and mind-kontrol and alien/hum hybridization experiments.

Have you learned that ever since Nikolai Tesla, secret zero point and ether-based free energy technology has been suppressed by the Establishment to keep the Establishment owned Oil Cartel fat with profits off the backs of Americans and the World?

Have you “woken up” and become aware that the USA has been completed infiltrated and hijacked by a secret sect of Babylonian Talmudic Zionist Occultists known as the Khazarian Mafia, the World’s largest organized crime syndicate run out of the City of London?

Have you become aware that the USA has essentially become a province of Israel and that Homeland Security (DHS) was set up by this occult group as their own private police state force inside America.

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Have you become aware that DHS was set up and has been run by KM mass-murderers who set up and deployed the attack on America of 9-11-01 and many other false-flag terror events in America; and this top DHS leadership is a strange collection of perverts, genetic weirdos and freaks?

Have you become aware that the same group who did 9-11-01 and set up DHS have been working hard to militarize the American Police and bring them under the control of Israeli anti-terror maniacs in order to quash any real American dissent and any serious attempts by We The People to take back America?

Have you become aware that this same group the KM has completely penetrated all American Intel and has been able to co-opt it, arranging for all NSA raw files to be downloaded by satellite to Tel Aviv where many defense, industrial and intellectual property secrets are sold around the world to the highest bidders, especially from China.

Have you “woken up” and learned that the establishment has allowed and even mandated excessive immigration legal and illegal including refugee status to millions of foreigners in order to destroy our language, culture and borders with the intent to Globalize America and reduce it to third world status?

Have you learned that H1 status professional foreigners are being brought in by the thousands to fill the reduced number of professional jobs that Americans have obtained college educations to get, all with the goal in mind to lower wages and increase profits for large international corporations?

Have you learned this is all part of secret evil Establishment Agenda to Globalize America by destroying its language, culture and borders along with their imposed diversity and false-equality.

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Have you “woken up” and learned that the large Wall Street Banks launder illegal drug money for the CIA and its partner Cartels as well as profits from large illegal arms sales, and that this constitutes their greatest source of profits?

Have you learned that the Wall Street Banks have been bailed out twice by the taxpayers through illegal, unConstitutional Congressional and Presidential actions and these Banksters who have done these crimes have bribed their way out from being prosecuted with small “normal cost of doing business, hand-slap” fines being paid?

Have you “woken up” and learned that the US Congress and the Presidents are essentially bought and owned by special interest groups that feed them millions of dollars in large campaign contributions, revolving door jobs and board positions, and foreign numbered bank deposits called “set-aside allocations”?

Have you learned that the USG is essentially for sale anytime to the highest special interest bidders?

Have you learned that in 1867, the USA was illegally, unConstitutionally and secretly incorporated under the British system, was declared bankrupt in 1933, repossessed by the private Occult Zionist British Banksters.

Have you learned that at the same time a State of National Emergency was illegally and unConstitutionally declared by FDR which has been re-declared by every single later President, thus placing America in a secret state of martial law and falsely claiming to insiders that the US Constitution is suspended?

Are you aware that the American legal system is a secret franchise of the British BAR system and operates under their rules and this completely illegal and unConstitutional?

Have you learned that in return for these vast perks and payments, bought and owned Members of Congress provide massive “sweetheart” corporate welfare (pork) to these large corporate special interest benefactors, always at taxpayer expense one way or another?

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Have you learned that according to two separate investigations, (one by the FBI itself, now buried) about 40% our top DC elected politicians and officials are members of occult linked mystery religion groups and practice perversions from the dark-side such as pedophilia, child sacrifice, and S&M?

Have you learned that these acts of perversion, torture and murder are typically videoed and are occasionally used to blackmail them and keep them within parameters prescribed by the Establishment Hierarchy top Policy-Makers?

Have you learned how the Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM) Network News Cartel “Talking Heads” lie and distort everything according to an Evil Establishment Globalist NWO Agenda, continually feeding most Americans mandated big Establishment lies, Establishment mandated false-narratives and Establishment mandated propaganda?

Have you become aware that this results in the imposition and acceptance by most Americans of a completely false reality? And have you become aware that if you try and convince most of the real truth about all these serious matters you find yourself in most cases being labeled a conspiracy theorist or even a crackpot and will be socially rejected?

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Conclusion

Once a person has woken up, it becomes increasingly clear that the USG which was supposed to be “Of the People, By the People”, is no longer such and has been infiltrated and completely hijacked by a foreign based group of private Counterfeit Banksters.

This Occult linked group from the City of London private KM Banking System we now know as the “Establishment” has used its limitless and ever expanding money supply to buy and bribe every institution of the USG and almost every single elected and appointed official and has folded them into a unitary Hierarchy.

This Hierarchy is an unimaginably evil pyramid of power with only a few select incredibly evil secret Rulers or Kings at the top who set the policies and make all the important decisions. If they are told by their “higher power” that Americans must be disarmed using any means necessary, well then, you have new policies mandated for staged and engineered mass-shootings in gun free zones, some real and some virtual only. And these policies are imposed on the whole political system and attempts are made to institute them in every sate of the union using extensive bribes, blackmail and other coercive, illegal and unConstitutional means.

The bottom line is that this is no longer yours or my America, it is now an occupied nation that was covertly infiltrated and hijacked beginning at the end of the Civil War and culminating in 1913 with the passage of the illegal, unConstitutional Federal Reserve Act. It’s up to all Americans to wake up and slowly but surely take back our nation, step by step starting in each state using Tenth Amendment States Rights.

George Orwell once stated that in a time of universal deceit the truth is revolutionary. Sadly in America today, if you have woken up and speak the truth to your family and friends, you are too often viewed as trying to start a revolution.

Most of the time when you tell others any of these dark side truths you have learned from picking and choosing truth nuggets from the Alternative Media provided on the Worldwide Internet (as you do your part to awaken others) you will be disbelieved, tuned out and socially rejected.

Such rejection of truth and even yourself as a person is always somewhat painful. But the more you learn about what is really going on in the Establishment backrooms of America and their institutionally rampant organized crime with corruption now at every level of our government, the more isolated you will probably feel.

If you talk too much or argue about these things at work or at church, DHS may be alerted through InfraGard, the FEMA Clergy program, or a controlling nosy neighbor or misguided fear-filled informant and you are likely to be investigated as a “suspected domestic terrorist”, stalked, surveilled and even harassed in many diverse ways.

Do not be surprised if you lose your job or maybe never get another promotion despite being well deserved, if you talk about “truth” too much at work or to the wrong people. Today, if you want to be a success in a large Establishment related corporate business for the most part you must be intellectually neutered of the truth, thus willing to be quite bridled in your honest talk and willing to become a truth-gelding.

Even members of your own family members might think you have cracked and become a conspiracy nutcase or are in some kind of midlife crises, maybe even an early or delayed one.

Yes, it now seems quite certain that if you are truly “woken up” and have learned too much, it is quite easy to find yourself increasingly becoming a stranger in your own land, and part of an ever shrinking circle of real friends and family that you can communicate with about matters of real truth about what is going on.

You may now have a your growing obsession to share the truth with your family and friends and your legislators and Congress-persons about all the Establishment corruption and how there is rampant corruption at every level.

But you also have a growing realization that most do not want to know the truth and just cannot handle it because it won’t fit into their false sense of reality which has been effectively conditioned by Establishment mandated mind-kontrol.

And you also have a growing realization that Establishment oligarchs and plutocrats gain special privileges and have immunity from any correction for their obscene crimes, except in the rare occasion some go outside their allowed parameters and are made an example out of by the Top policy-Makers of the Establishment.

But despite how grim this almost total rejection of truth can seem and feel, it isn’t completely hopeless because slowly and surely the truth as dispensed all across the Internet on the Alternative News sites is diffusing to the masses.

And there appears to be a growing unrest and distrust toward both the Republican and Democratic political parties which are now becoming viewed by many Americans as two divisions of the same corrupt establishment.

As the good jobs continue to leave America and our debt-slavery increases with a continually worsening economy, economic pressures are building, and these help in waking the masses up from their CMMM mind-kontrolled stupor.

The real question is can the American masses wake up fast enough to organize and force the changes we need to survive as a sovereign nation and not become broken up into territories annexed by China (the South), Europe (the East) and Japan (the West)?

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The following Steve Miller music video “Fly Like An Eagle” from a recent Chicago performance can be played in super-ultra HD (1440). Headphones are recommended for maximum audio effects. Over the last 40 years this band has continually improved under Steve Miller’s leadership and is at the top of their game right now. In December 2015, it was announced that he will be inducted into into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in 2016.

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Opinion: Is Turkey coming in from the cold in Europe?

Soner Cagaptay, Special to CNN
Updated 0828 GMT (1528 HKT) March 28, 2016

Is the EU is ready to hold its nose in dealing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian administration?

Editors note: Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, and author of 'The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty-First Century's First Muslim Power.' The views expressed are solely those of the author. Follow him@SonerCagaptay

(CNN) Turkey is facing the largest wave of terror attacks in its history -- in the past six months alone, the country has been hit by five deadly attacks.

Islamic State (IS) has targeted Istanbul twice and Ankara once since October 2015, killing at least 120 people, and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has hit the Turkish capital Ankara twice, killing at least 65 people.

How Europe responds to the crisis facing Turkey could be crucial to the country's future -- as well as Europe's.

The only silver lining for Turkey at the moment is the reopening of the country's European Union (EU) accession talks.

Although Turkey and the EU entered into membership negotiations in 2005, the country's membership process came to a halt soon after.

Recently, though, Turkish-EU ties have taken on new life. In December 2015, Ankara and Brussels opened a new chapter in accession talks covering monetary policy, and earlier this month the two reached a dealon a plan for handling refugees.

This is because Brussels realizes that it needs Turkey's help with the refugee crisis threatening to break the EU at its seams. Turkey is a frontline state in the refugee crisis, and the EU needs Turkish cooperation.

Accordingly, talks have restarted and the EU is ready to hold its nose in dealing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian administration.

Why Europe has a bigger terror problem than the U.S.

Benefits to both

Turkey has its own reasons to get back on track with the EU.

In 2005, soon after membership talks commenced, Erdogan's government put EU accession on the backburner, declaring 2005 the "Year of Africa" in foreign policy in a clear snub to Brussels, and then pivoting Turkish foreign policy to the Middle East.

As Turkey turned away from Europe and towards Erdogan's foreign policy dream of marching into the Middle East to become a regional star in the last decade, the public pivoted away from Europe with him.

Opinion polls conducted by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) show that whereas 73% of Turks were in favor of joining the EU in 2004, in 2010, this number had dropped to 38.

And then the Arab Spring took root at Turkey's doorstep and emboldened Ankara to throw its support behind anti-Assad rebels in Syria to oust the Assad regime on its own.

Suicide bomber had ISIS links, says Turkey's interior minister

Late to the Middle East table

Sadly for Erdogan, in the Middle East mere soft power does not make a country a regional power. Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war has been challenged by Iran and Russia, two countries with significant hard power, assets including proxies and weapons, which Turkey sorely lacks.

Unfortunately for Turkey, the Erdogan administration has not recalibrated their view of Middle East involvement.

But the Turkish public has certainly done so: in 2011 GMF polls showed that support for EU accession increased to 48%, reaching 53% in 2014. The Turks are telling their government to pivot to Europe.

Erdogan is taking more positive view of the EU as well, contractual as it might be. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won successive elections since 2002 on a platform of economic growth.

Faced with multiple crises, the EU is not ready to fully embrace Turkey.

Female suicide bomber spent time in Syria

Fresh hope

Nevertheless, a recently signed deal will breathe more life into Turkey's EU accession process -- new accession talk chapters will be opened up during the Dutch presidency of the EU in 2016.

Subsequent to Erdogan's relentless crackdown on democratic checks and balances in Turkey, targeting everything from the media to the courts, EU membership is the last anchor of liberal democracy in the country.

The good news is that the EU, once again, has soft power in Turkey.

The EU should reach out to Turkey's civil society, building bridges while them, working with Erdogan to maintain a recently agreed deal to prevent further refugee flows from Syria via Turkey.

Abandoning Turkey now would be a historic mistake for the EU as this would pave the way for the death of Turkish democracy. An undemocratic Turkey will export instability and more Syrian refugees to Europe.

ISIS goes global: 75 attacks in 20 countries have killed 1,280 people

9 photos: Blast in Turkish capital of Ankara

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The History of “Humanitarian Warfare”: NATO’s Reign of Terror in Kosovo, The Destruction of Yugoslavia

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, March 27, 2016

Global Research 11 August 1999

March 24th 2016 marks the 17th anniversary of NATO’s war against Yugoslavia. The following text was written in August 11, 1999 in the immediate wake of the 1999 NATO bombings of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Kosovo by NATO troops.

It is now well established that the war on Yugoslavia was waged on a fabricated humanitarian pretext and that extensive war crimes were committed by NATO and the US.

In retrospect, the war on Yugoslavia was a “dress rehearsal” for subsequent US-NATO sponsored humanitarian wars including Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (2011), Ukraine (2014).

Who are the war criminals? In a bitter irony, the so-called International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague is controlled by those who have committed extensive war crimes.

US-NATO started the war on Yugoslavia. President Milosevic was indicted on charges of war crimes. He was poisoned in his prison cell under the auspices of the ICTY.

According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, the ultimate war crime consists in starting a war. According to William Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal:

“The [1999] bombing war violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities” against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.”

According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, NATO heads of State and heads of government are responsible for the supreme crime: “the crime against peace.”

Reagan’s NSDD 133 (1984) “Secret and Sensitive”

There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia.

The decision to destroy Yugoslavia as a country and carve it up into a number of small proxy states was taken by the Reagan adminstration in the early 1980s.

A “Secret Sensitive” National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) entitled “US Policy towards Yugoslavia.” (Declassified) set the foreign policy framework for the destabilization of Yugoslavia’s model of market socialism and the establishment of a US sphere of influence in Southeastern Europe.

Yugoslavia was in many regards “an economic success story”. In the two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the rate of literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years.

While NSDD 133 was in itself a somewhat innocous document, it provided legitimacy to the free market reforms. A series of covert intelligence operations were implemented, which consisted in creating and supporting secessionist paramilitary armies, first in Bosnia then in Kosovo.

These covert operations were combined with the destabilization of the Yugoslav economy. The application of strong economic medicine under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank ultimately led to the destruction of Yugoslavia’s industrial base, the demise of the workers’ cooperative and the dramatic impoverishment of its population.

Kosovo “Independence”

The record of US-NATO war crimes is important in assessing recent developments in Kosovo.

From the outset of their respective mandates in June 1999, both NATO and the UN Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK) have actively supported the KLA, which has committed numerous atrocities.

It is important to understand that these atrocities were ordered by the current and former prime ministers of the Kosovo “government”.

Since 1999, State terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO’s design.

The present government of President Hashim Thaci (a former KLA Commander), is an outgrowth of this reign of terror. It is not a government in the common sense of the word. It remains a terrorist organization linked to organised crime. It is an instrument of foreign occupation.

Michel Chossudovsky, March 27, 2016, August 5, 2015

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NATO HAS INSTALLED A REIGN OF TERROR IN KOSOVO

by Michel Chossudovsky

10 August 1999

This text was presented to the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against The People of Yugoslavia, International Action Center, New York, July 31, 1999.

PART I: MASSACRES OF CIVILIANS IN KOSOVO

While the World focusses on troop movements and war crimes, the massacres of civilians in the wake of the bombings have been casually dismissed as “justifiable acts of revenge”. In occupied Kosovo, “double standards” prevail in assessing alleged war crimes. The massacres directed against Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Roma and other ethnic groups have been conducted on the instructions of the military command of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

NATO ostensibly denies KLA involvement. These so-called “unmotivated acts of violence and retaliation” are not categorised as “war crimes” and are therefore not included in the mandate of the numerous FBI and Interpol police investigators dispatched to Kosovo under the auspices of the Hague War Crime’s Tribunal (ICTY). Moreover, whereas NATO has tacitly endorsed the self-proclaimed KLA provisional government, KFOR the international security force in Kosovo has provided protection to the KLA military commanders responsible for the atrocities. In so doing both NATO and the UN Mission have acquiesced to the massacres of civilians. In turn, public opinion has been blatantly misled. In portraying the massacres, the Western media has casually overlooked the role of the KLA, not to mention its pervasive links to organised crime. In the words of National Security Advisor Samuel Berger,

“these people [ethnic Albanians] come back … with broken hearts and with some of those hearts filled with anger.”1

While the massacres are seldom presented as the result of “deliberate decisions” by the KLA military command, the evidence (and history of the KLA) amply confirm that these atrocities are part of a policy of “ethnic cleansing” directed mainly against the Serb population but also against the Roma, Montenegrins, Goranis and Turks.

Serbian houses and business have been confiscated, looted, or burned, and Serbs have been beaten, raped, and killed. In one of the more dramatic of incidents, KLA troops ransacked a monastery, terrorized the priest and a group of nuns with gunfire, and raped at least one of the nuns. NATO’s inability to control the situation and provide equal protection for all ethnic groups, and its apparent inability or unwillingness to fully disarm the KLA, has created a serious situation for NATO troops…2

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), confirms in this regard that:

“more than 164,000 Serbs have left Kosovo during the seven weeks since… the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered the province… A wave of arson and looting of Serb and Roma homes throughout Kosovo has ensued. Serbs and Roma remaining in Kosovo have been subject to repeated incidents of harassment and intimidation, including severe beatings. Most seriously, there has been a spate of murders and abductions of Serbs since mid-June, including the late July massacre of Serb farmers.”3

POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS

The self-proclaimed Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK) has also ordered assassinations directed against political opponents including “loyalist” ethnic Albanians and supporters of the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL). These acts are being carried out in a totally permissive environment. The leaders of the KLA rather than being arrested for war crimes, have been granted KFOR protection.

Madeleine Albright and Hashim Thaci

According to a report of the Foreign Policy Institute (published during the bombings):

“…the KLA have [no] qualms about murdering Rugova’s collaborators, whom it accused of the `crime’ of moderation… [T]he KLA declared Rugova a `traitor’ yet another step toward eliminating any competitors for political power within Kosovo.”4

Already in May [1999], Fehmi Agani, one of Rugova’s closest collaborators in the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL) was killed. The Serbs were blamed by NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea for having assassinated Agani. According to Skopje’s paper Makedonija Danas, Agani had been executed on the orders of the KLA’s self-appointed Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.5 “If Thaci actually considered Rugova a threat, he would not hesitate to have Rugova removed from the Kosovo political landscape.”6

In turn, the KLA has abducted and killed numerous professionals and intellectuals:

“Private and State properties are threatened, home and apartment owners are evicted en masse by force and threats, houses and entire villages are burned, cultural and religious monuments are destroyed… A particularly heavy blow… has been the violence against the hospital centre in Pristina, the maltreatment and expulsion of its professional management, doctors and medical staff.”7

Both NATO and the UN prefer to turn a blind eye. UN Interim Administrator Bernard Kouchner (a former French Minister of Health) and KFOR Commander Sir Mike Jackson have established a routine working relationship with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and KLA Chief of Staff Brigadier General Agim Ceku.

ATROCITIES COMMITTED AGAINST THE ROMA

Ethnic cleansing has also been directed against the Roma (which represented prior to the conflict a population group of 150,000 people). (According to figures provided by the Roma Community in New York). A large part of the Roma population has already escaped to Montenegro and Serbia. In turn, there are reports that Roma refugees who had fled by boat to Southern Italy have been expelled by the Italian authorities.8 The KLA has also ordered the systematic looting and torching of Romani homes and settlements:

“All houses and settlements of Romani, like 2,500 homes in the residential area called `Mahala’ in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, have been looted and burnt down”.9

With regard to KLA atrocities committed against the Roma, the same media distortions prevail. According to the BBC: “Gypsies are accused by [Kosovar] Albanians of collaborating in Serb brutalities, which is why they’ve also become victims of revenge attacks. And the truth is, some probably did.”10

INSTALLING A PARAMILITARY GOVERNMENT

As Western leaders trumpet their support for democracy, State terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO’s postwar design. The KLA’s political role for the post-conflict period had been mapped out well in advance. Prior to Rambouillet Conference, the KLA had been promised a central role in the formation of a post-conflict government. The “hidden agenda” consisted in converting the KLA paramilitary into a legitimate and accomplished civilian administration. According to US State Department spokesman James Foley (February 1999):

“We want to develop a good relationship with them [the KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization, …[W]e believe that we have a lot of advice and a lot of help that we can provide to them if they become precisely the kind of political actor we would like to see them become.’”11

In other words, the US State Department had already slated the KLA “provisional government” (PGK) to run civilian State institutions. Under NATO’s “Indirect Rule”, the KLA has taken over municipal governments and public services including schools and hospitals. Rame Buja, the KLA “Minister for Local Administration” has appointed local prefects in 23 out of 25 municipalities.12

Under NATO’s regency, the KLA has replaced the duly elected (by ethnic Albanians) provisional Kosovar government of President Ibrahim Rugova. The self-proclaimed KLA administration has branded Rugova as a traitor declaring the (parallel) Kosovar parliamentary elections held in March 1998 to be invalid. This position has largely been upheld by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) entrusted by UNMIK with the postwar task of “democracy building” and “good governance”. In turn, OSCE officials have already established a working rapport with KLA appointees.13

The KLA provisional government (PGK) is made up of the KLA’s political wing together with the Democratic Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to Rugova’s Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime minister, the KLA controls the ministries of finance, public order and defence. The KLA also has a controlling voice on the UN sponsored Kosovo Transitional Council set up by Mr. Bernard Kouchner. The PGK has also established links with a number of Western governments.

Whereas the KLA has been spearheaded into running civilian institutions (under the guidance of the OSCE), members of the duly elected Kosovar (provisional) government of the Democratic League (DKL) have been blatantly excluded from acquiring a meaningful political voice.

ESTABLISHING A KLA POLICE FORCE TO `PROTECT CIVILIANS’

Under NATO occupation, the rule of law has visibly been turned up side down. Criminals and terrorists are to become law enforcement officers. KLA troops which have already taken over police stations will eventually form a 4,000 strong “civilian” police force (to be trained by foreign police officers under the authority of the United Nations) with a mandate to “protect civilians”. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has already pledged Canadian support to the formation of a civilian police force.14 The latter which has been entrusted to the OSCE will eventually operate under the jurisdiction of the KLA controlled “Ministry of Public Order”.

US MILITARY AID

Despite NATO’s commitment to disarming the KLA, the Kosovar paramilitary organisation is slated to be transformed into a modern military force. So-called “security assistance” has already been granted to the KLA by the US Congress under the “Kosovar Independence and Justice Act of 1999″. Start-up funds of 20 million dollars will largely be “used for training and support for their [KLA] established self-defence forces.”15 In the words of KLA Chief of Staff Agrim Ceku:

“The KLA wants to be transformed into something like the US National Guard, … we accept the assistance of KFOR and the international community to rebuild an army according to NATO standards. … These professionally trained soldiers of the next generation of the KLA would seek only to defend Kosova. At this decisive moment, we [the KLA] do not hide our ambitions; we want the participation of international military structures to assist in the pacific and humanitarian efforts we are attempting here.” 16

While the KLA maintains its links to the Balkans narcotics trade which served to finance many of its terrorist activities, the paramilitary organisation has now been granted an official seal of approval as well as “legitimate” sources of funding. The pattern is similar to that followed in Croatia and in the Bosnian Muslim-Croatian Federation where so-called “equip and train” programmes were put together by the Pentagon. In turn, Washington’s military aid package to the KLA has been entrusted to Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) of Alexandria, Virginia, a private mercenary outfit run by high ranking former US military officers.

MPRI’s training concepts which had already been tested in Croatia and Bosnia are based on imparting “offensive tactics… as the best form of defence”.17 In the Kosovar context, this so- called “defensive doctrine” transforms the KLA paramilitary into a modern army without however eliminating its terrorist makeup.18 The objective is to ultimately transform an insurgent army into a modern military and police force which serves the Alliance’s future strategic objectives in the Balkans. MPRI has currently “ninety-one highly experienced, former military professionals working in Bosnia & Herzegovina”.19 The number of military officers working on contract with the KLA has not been disclosed.

PART II. FROM KRAJINA TO KOSOVO. A FORMER CROATIAN GENERAL APPOINTED KLA CHIEF OF STAFF

The massacres of civilians in Kosovo are not disconnected acts of revenge by civilians or by so-called “rogue elements” within the KLA as claimed by NATO and the United Nations. They are part of a consistent and coherent pattern. The intent (and result) of the KLA sponsored atrocities have been to trigger the “ethnic cleansing” of Serbs, Roma and other minorities in Kosovo.

KLA Commander Agim Ceku referring to the killings of 14 villagers at Gracko on July 24, claimed that: “We [the KLA] do not know who did it, but I sincerely believe these people have nothing to do with the KLA.”20 In turn, KFOR Lieutenant General Sir Mike Jackson has commended his KLA counterpart, Commander Agim Ceku for “efforts undertaken” to disarm the KLA. In fact, very few KLA weapons have been handed in. Moreover, the deadline for turning in KLA weaponry has been extended. “I do not regard this as noncompliance” said Commander Jackson in a press conference, “but rather as an indication of the seriousness with which General Ceku is taking this important issue.”21

Yet what Sir Mike Jackson failed to mention is that KLA Chief of Staff Commander Agim Ceku (although never indicted as a war criminal) was (according to Jane Defence Weekly June 10, 1999) “one of the key planners of the successful `Operation Storm’” led by the Croatian Armed Forces against Krajina Serbs in 1995.

General Jackson who had served in former Yugoslavia under the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was fully cognizant of the activities of the Croatian High Command during that period including the responsibilities imparted to Brigadier General Agim Ceku. In February 1999, barely a month prior to the NATO bombings, Ceku left his position as Brigadier General with the Croatian Armed Forces to join the KLA as Commander in Chief.

FROM KRAJINA TO KOSOVO: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

According to the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Operation Storm resulted in the massacre of at least 410 civilians in the course of a three day operation (4 to 7 August 1995).22 An internal report of The Hague War Crimes Tribunal (leaked to the New York Times), confirmed that the Croatian Army had been responsible for carrying out:

“summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and “ethnic cleansing” in the Krajina region of Croatia….”23

In a section of the report entitled “The Indictment. Operation Storm, A Prima Facie Case.”, the ICTY report confirms that:

“During the course of the military offensive, the Croatian armed forces and special police committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law, including but not limited to, shelling of Knin and other cities… During, and in the 100 days following the military offensive, at least 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed, and many hundreds disappeared. …In a widespread and systematic manner, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts upon and against Croatian Serbs.” 24

US `GENERALS FOR HIRE’

The internal 150 page report concluded that it has “sufficient material to establish that the three [Croatian] generals who commanded the military operation” could be held accountable under international law.25 The individuals named had been directly involved in the military operation “in theatre”. Those involved in “the planning of Operation Storm” were not mentioned:

“The identity of the “American general” referred to by Fenrick [a Tribunal staff member] is not known. The tribunal would not allow Williamson or Fenrick to be interviewed. But Ms. Arbour, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, suggested in a telephone interview last week that Fenrick’s comment had been `a joking observation’. Ms. Arbour had not been present during the meeting, and that is not how it was viewed by some who were there. Several people who were at the meeting assumed that Fenrick was referring to one of the retired U.S. generals who worked for Military Professional Resources Inc. … Questions remain about the full extent of U.S. involvement. In the course of the three yearinvestigation into the assault, the United States has failed to provide critical evidence requested by the tribunal, according to tribunal documents and officials, adding to suspicion among some there that Washington is uneasy about the investigation… The Pentagon, however, has argued through U.S. lawyers at the tribunal that the shelling was a legitimate military activity, according to tribunal documents and officials”.26

The Tribunal was attempting to hide what had already been revealed in several press reports published in the wake of Operation Storm. According to a US State Department spokesman, MPRI had been helping the Croatians “avoid excesses or atrocities in military operations.”27 Fifteen senior US military advisers headed by retired two star General Richard Griffitts had been dispatched to Croatia barely seven months before Operation Storm. 28 According to one report, MPRI executive director General Carl E. Vuono: “held a secret top-level meeting at Brioni Island, off the coast of Croatia, with Gen. Varimar Cervenko, the architect of the Krajina campaign. In the five days preceding the attack, at least ten meetings were held between General Vuono and officers involved in the campaign…”29

According to Ed Soyster, a senior MPRI executive and former head of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA):

“MPRI’s role in Croatia is limited to classroom instruction on military-civil relations and doesn’t involve training in tactics or weapons. Other U.S. military men say whatever MPRI did for the Croats and many suspect more than classroom instruction was involved it was worth every penny.” Carl Vuono and Butch [Crosbie] Saint are hired guns and in it for the money,” says Charles Boyd, a recently retired four star Air Force general who was the Pentagon’s No. 2 man in Europe until July [1995]. “They did a very good job for the Croats, and I have no doubt they’ll do a good job in Bosnia.”30

THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL’S COVER UP

The untimely leaking of the ICTY’s internal report on the Krajina massacres barely a few days before the onslaught of NATO’s air raids on Yugoslavia was the source of some embarrassment to the Tribunal’s Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour. The Tribunal (ICTY) attempted to cover up the matter and trivialise the report’s findings (including the alleged role of the US military officers on contract with the Croatian Armed Forces). Several Tribunal officials including American Lawyer Clint Williamson sought to discredit the Canadian Peacekeeping officers’ testimony who witnessed the Krajina massacres in 1995.31

Williamson, who described the shelling of Knin as a “minor incident,” said that the Pentagon had told him that Knin was a legitimate military target… The [Tribunal's] review concluded by voting not to include the shelling of Knin in any indictment, a conclusion that stunned and angered many at the tribunal”…32

The findings of the Tribunal contained in the leaked ICTY documents were downplayed, their relevance was casually dismissed as “expressions of opinion, arguments and hypotheses from various staff members of the OTP during the investigative process”.33 According to the Tribunal’s spokesperson “the documents do not represent in any way the concluded decisions of the Prosecutor.” 34

The internal 150 page report has not been released. The staff member who had leaked the documents is (according to a Croatian TV report) no longer working for the Tribunal. During the press Conference, the Tribunal’s spokesman was asked: “about the consequences for the person who leaked the information”, Blewitt [the ICTY spokesman] replied that he did not want to go into that. He said that the OTP would strengthen the existing procedures to prevent this from happening again, however he added that you could not stop people from talking”.35

THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN CROATIA

The massacres conducted under Operation Storm “set the stage” for the “ethnic cleansing” of at least 180,000 Krajina Serbs (according to estimates of the Croatian Helsinki Committee and Amnesty International). According to other sources, the number of victims of ethnic cleansing in Krajina was much larger.

Moreover, there is evidence that chemical weapons had been used in the Yugoslav civil war (1991-95).36 Although there is no firm evidence of the use of chemical weapons against Croatian Serbs, an ongoing enquiry by the Canadian Minister of Defence (launched in July 1999) points to the possibility of toxic poisoning of Canadian Peacekeepers while on service in Croatia between 1993 and 1995:

“There was a smell of blood in the air during the past week as the media sensed they had a major scandal unfolding within the Department of National Defense over the medical files of those Canadians who served in Croatia in 1993. Allegations of destroyed documents, a coverup, and a defensive minister and senior officers…”37

The official release of the Department of National Defence (DND) refers to possibility of toxic “soil contamination” in Medak Pocket in 1993 (see below). Was it “soil contamination” or something far more serious? The criminal investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) refers to the shredding of medical files of former Canadian peacekeepers by the DND. In other words did the DND have something to hide? The issue remains as to what types of shells and ammunitions were used by the Croatian Armed Forces ie. were chemical weapons used against Serb civilians?

OPERATION STORM: THE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN REGIMENT

Prior to the onslaught, Croatian radio had previously broadcasted a message by president Franjo Tudjman, calling upon “Croatian citizens of Serbian ethnicity… to remain in their homes and not to fear the Croatian authorities, which will respect their minority rights.”38 Canadian peacekeepers of the Second Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment witnessed the atrocities committed by Croatian troops in the Krajina offensive in September 1995:

“Any Serb who had failed to evacuate their property were systematically “cleansed” by roving death squads. Every abandoned animal was slaughtered and any Serb household was ransacked and torched”.39

Also confirmed by Canadian peacekeepers was the participation of German mercenaries in Operation Storm:

“Immediately behind the frontline Croatian combat troops and German mercenaries, a large number of hardline extremists had pushed into the Krajina. …Many of these atrocities were carried out within the Canadian Sector, but as the peacekeepers were soon informed by the Croat authorities, the UN no longer had any formal authority in the region.”40

How the Germans mercenaries were recruited was never officially revealed. An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) confirmed the that foreign mercenaries in Croatia had in some cases “been paid [and presumably recruited] outside Croatia and by third parties.”41

THE 1993 MEDAK POCKET MASSACRE

According to Jane Defence Weekly (10 June 1999), Brigadier General Agim Ceku (now in charge of the KLA) also “masterminded the successful HV [Croatian Army] offensive at Medak” in September 1993. In Medak, the combat operation was entitled “Scorched Earth” resulting in the total destruction of the Serbian villages of Divoselo, Pocitelj and Citluk, and the massacre of over 100 civilians.42

These massacres were also witnessed by Canadian peacekeepers under UN mandate:

“As the sun rose over the horizon, it revealed a Medak Valley engulfed in smoke and flames. As the frustrated soldiers of 2PPCLI waited for the order to move forward into the pocket, shots and screams still rang out as the ethnic cleansing continued. …About 20 members of the international press had tagged along, anxious to see the Medak battleground. Calvin [a Canadian officer] called an informal press conference at the head of the column and loudly accused the Croats of trying to hide war crimes against the Serb inhabitants. The Croats started withdrawing back to their old lines, taking with them whatever loot they hadn’t destroyed. All livestock had been killed and houses torched. French reconnaissance troops and the Canadian command element pushed up the valley and soon began to find bodies of Serb civilians, some already decomposing, others freshly slaughtered. …Finally, on the drizzly morning of Sept. 17, teams of UN civilian police arrived to probe the smouldering ruins for murder victims. Rotting corpses lying out in the open were catalogued, then turned over to the peacekeepers for burial.”43

The massacres were reported to the Canadian Minister of Defence and to the United Nations:

“Senior defence bureaucrats back in Ottawa had no way of predicting the outcome of the engagement in terms of political fallout. To them, there was no point in calling media attention to a situation that might easily backfire. …So Medak was relegated to the memory hole no publicity, no recriminations, no official record. Except for those soldiers involved, Canada’s most lively military action since the Korean War simply never happened.”44

PART III. NATO’S `POST CONFLICT’ AGENDA IN KOSOVO.

Both the Medak Pocket massacre and Operation Storm bear a direct relationship to the ongoing security situation in Kosovo and the massacres and ethnic cleansing committed by KLA troops. While the circumstances are markedly different, several of today’s actors in Kosovo were involved (under the auspices of the Croatian Armed Forces) in the planning of both these operations. Moreover, the US mercenary outfit MPRI which collaborated with the Croatian Armed Forces in 1995 is currently on contract with the KLA. NATO’s casual response to the appointment of Brigadier General Agim Ceku as KLA Chief of Staff was communicated by Mr. Jamie Shea in a Press Briefing in May:

“I have always made it clear, and you have heard me say this, that NATO has no direct contacts with the KLA. Who they appoint as their leaders, that is entirely their own affair. I don’t have any comment on that whatever.”45

While NATO says it “has no direct contacts with the KLA”, the evidence confirms the opposite. Amply documented, KLA terrorism has been installed with NATO’s tacit approval. The KLA had (according to several reports) been receiving “covert support” and training from the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) since the mid-nineties. Moreover, MPRI collaboration with the KLA predates the onslaught of the bombing campaign.46 Moreover, the building up of KLA forces was part of NATO planning. Already by mid-1998, “covert support” had been replaced by official (“overt”) support by the military Alliance in violation of UN Security Council Resolution UNSCR 1160 of 31 March 1998 which condemned: “…all acts of terrorism by the Kosovo Liberation Army or any other group or individual and all external support for terrorist activity in Kosovo, including finance, arms and training.”

NATO officials, Western heads of State and heads of government, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan not to mention ICTY chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour, were fully cognizant of General Brigadier Agim Ceku’s involvement in the planning of Operation Storm and Operation Scorched Earth. Surely, some questions should have been asked…

Yet visibly what is shaping up in the wake of the bombings in Kosovo is the continuity of NATO’s operation in the Balkans. Military personnel and UN bureaucrats previously stationed in Croatia and Bosnia have been routinely reassigned to Kosovo. KFOR Commander Mike Jackson had previously been responsible as IFOR Commander for organising the return of Serbs “to lands taken by Croatian HVO forces in the Krajina offensive”.47 And in this capacity General Mike Jackson had “urged that the resettlement [of Krajina Serbs] not [be] rushed to avoid tension [with the Croatians]… while also warning returning Serbs “of the extent of the [land] mine threat.”48 In retrospect, recalling the events of early 1996, very few Krajina Serbs were allowed to return to their homes under the protection of the United Nations.

And a similar process is unfolding in Kosovo, ie. the conduct of senior military officers conforms to a consistent pattern, the same key individuals are now involved in Kosovo. While token efforts are displayed to protect Serb and Roma civilians, those who have fled Kosovo are not encouraged to return under UN protection… In postwar Kosovo, “ethnic cleansing” implemented by the KLA has been accepted by the “international community” as a “fait accompli”…

While calling for democracy and “good governance” in the Balkans, the US and its allies have installed in Kosovo a paramilitary government with links to organised crime.

The foreseeable outcome is the outright “criminalisation” of civilian State institutions and the establishment of what is best described as a “Mafia State”. The complicity of NATO and the Alliance governments (namely their relentless support to the KLA) points to the de facto “criminalisation” of KFOR and of the UN peacekeeping apparatus in Kosovo. The donor agencies and governments (eg. the funds approved by the US Congress in violation of several UN Security Council resolutions) providing financial support to the KLA are, in this regard, also “accessories” to the de facto criminalisation of State institutions. Through the intermediation of a paramilitary group (created and financed by Washington and Bonn), NATO ultimately bears the burden of responsibility for the massacres and ethnic cleansing of civilians in Kosovo.

STATE TERROR AND THE `FREE MARKET’

State terror and the “free market” seem to go hand in hand. The concurrent “criminalisation” of State institutions in Kosovo is not incompatible with the West’s economic and strategic objectives in the Balkans. Notwithstanding the massacres of civilians, the self-proclaimed KLA administration has committed itself to establishing a “secure and stable environment” for foreign investors and international financial institutions. The Minister of Finance Adem Grobozci and other representatives of the provisional government invited to the various donor conferences are all KLA appointees. In contrast, members of the KDL of Ibrahim Rugova (duly elected in parliamentary elections) were not even invited to attend the Stabilisation Summit in Sarajevo in late July.

“Free market reforms” are envisaged for Kosovo under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions largely replicating the structures of the Rambouillet agreement. Article I (Chapter 4a) of the Rambouillet Agreement stipulated that: “The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles”. The KLA government will largely be responsible for implementing these reforms and ensuring that loan conditionalities are met.

In close liaison with NATO, the Bretton Woods institutions had already analysed the consequences of an eventual military intervention leading to the military occupation of Kosovo: almost a year prior to the beginning of the War, the World Bank conducted “simulations” which “anticipated the possibility of an emergency scenario arising out of the tensions in Kosovo.”49

The eventual “reconstruction” of Kosovo financed by international debt largely purports to transfer Kosovo’s extensive wealth in mineral resources and coal to multinational capital. In this regard, the KLA has already occupied (pending their privatisation) the largest coal mine at Belacevac in Dobro Selo northwest of Pristina. In turn, foreign capital has its eyes rivetted on the massive Trepca mining complex which constitutes “the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, worth at least $5 billion.”50 The Trebca complex not only includes copper and large reserves of zinc but also cadmium, gold, and silver. It has several smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, a power plant and Yugoslavia’s largest battery plant. Northern Kosovo also has estimated reserves of 17 billion tons of coal and lignite.

In the wake of the bombings, the management of many of the State owned enterprises and public utilities were taken over by KLA appointees. In turn, the leaders of the Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK) have become “the brokers” of multinational capital committed to handing over the Kosovar economy at bargain prices to foreign investors. The IMF’s lethal “economic therapy” will be imposed, the provincial economy will be dismantled, agriculture will be deregulated, local industrial enterprises which have not been totally destroyed will be driven into bankruptcy. The most profitable State assets will eventually be transferred into the hands of foreign capital under the World Bank sponsored privatisation programme. “Strong economic medicine” imposed by external creditors will contribute to further boosting a criminal economy (already firmly implanted in Albania) which feeds on poverty and economic dislocation.

“The Allies will work with the rest of the international community to help rebuild Kosovo once the crisis is over: The International Monetary Fund and Group of Seven industrialized countries are among those who stand ready to offer financial help to the countries of the region. We want to ensure proper coordination of aid and help countries to respond to the effects of the crisis. This should go hand in hand with the necessary structural reforms in the countries affected helped by budget support from the international community.”51

Morever, the so-called “reconstruction” of the Balkans by foreign capital will signify multibillion contracts to foreign firms to rebuild Kosovo’s infrastructure. More generally, the proposed “Marshall Plan” for the Balkans financed by the World Bank and the European Development Bank (EBRD) as well as private creditors will largely benefit Western mining, petroleum and construction companies while fuelling the region’s external debt well into the third millennium.

And Kosovo is slated to reimburse this debt through the laundering of dirty money. Yugoslav banks in Kosovo will be closed down, the banking system will be deregulated under the supervision of Western financial institutions. Narcodollars from the multibillion dollar Balkans drug trade will be recycled towards servicing the external debt as well as “financing” the costs of “reconstruction.” The lucrative flow of narcodollars thus ensures that foreign investors involved in the “reconstruction” programme will be able reap substantial returns. In turn, the existence of a Kosovar “narco State” ensures the orderly reimbursement of international donors and creditors. The latter are prepared to turn blind eye. They have a tacit vested interest in installing a government which facilitates the laundering of drug money.

The pattern in Kosovo is, in this regard, similar to that observed in neighbouring Albania. Since the early 1990s (culminating with the collapse of the financial pyramids in 1996-97), the IMF’s reforms have impoverished the Albanian population while spearheading the national economy into bankruptcy. The IMF’s deadly economic therapy transforms countries into open territories. In Albania and to a lesser extent Macedonia, it has also contributed to fostering the growth of illicit trade and the criminalisation of State institutions.

NOTES

1. Jim Lehrer News Maker Interview, PBS, 26 July 1999.
2. Stratfor Commentary, “Growing Threat of Serbian Paramilitary Action in Kosovo”, 29 July 1999.
3. Human Rights Watch, 3 August 1999.
4. See Michael Radu, “Don’t Arm the KLA”, CNS Commentary from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, 7 April, 1999).
5. Tanjug Press Dispatch, 14 May 1999.
6. Stratfor Comment, “Rugova Faced with a Choice of Two Losses”, Stratfor, 29 July 1999.
7. Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Yugoslav Daily Survey, Belgrade, 29 June 1999.
8. Hina Press Dispatch, Zagreb, 26 July 1999.
9. Ibid.
10. BBC Report, London, 5 July 1999.
11. New York Times, 2 February 1999.
12. Financial Times, London, 4 August 1999.
13. See Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Mission in Kosovo, Decision 305, Permanent Council, 237th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal No. 237, Agenda item 2, Vienna, 1 July 1999.
14. Statement at the Sarajevo Summit, 31 July 1999.
15. 106th Congress, April 15, HR 1425.
16. Interview with KLA Chief of Staff Commander Agim Ceku, Kosovapress, 31 July 1999.
17. See Tammy Arbucki, “Building a Bosnian Army”, Jane International Defence Review, August 1997.
18. Ibid.
19. Military Professional Resources, Inc, “Personnel Needs”, http://www.mpri.com/current/personnel.htm
20. Associated Press Report.
21. Ibid.
22. The actual number of civilians killed or missing was much larger.
23. Quoted in Raymond Bonner, War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops Cleansed the Serbs, New York Times, 21 March 1999).
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Raymond Bonner, op cit.
27. Ken Silverstein, “Privatizing War”, The Nation, New York, 27 July 1997.
28. See Mark Thompson et al, “Generals for Hire”, Time Magazine, 15 January 1996, p. 34.
29. Quoted in Silverstein, op cit.
30. Mark Thompson et al, op cit.
31. Raymond Bonner, op cit.
32. Ibid.
33. ICTY Weekly Press Briefing, 24 March 1999).
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. See inter alia Reuters dispatch, 21 October 1993 on the use of chemical grenades, a New York Times report on 31 October 1992 on the use of poisoned gas).
37. Lewis MacKenzie, “Giving our soldiers the benefit of the doubt”, National Post, 2 August 1999.
38. Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia, August 5 1996.
39. Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan, The Sunday Sun, Toronto, 2 November 1998.
40. Ibid.
41. United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-first session, Item 9 of the provisional agenda, Geneva, 21 December 1994).
42. (See Memorandum on the Violation of the Human and Civil Rights of the Serbian People in the Republic of Croatia,
http://serbianlinks.freehosting.net/memorandum.htm
43. Excerpts from the book of Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan published in the Toronto Sun, 1 November 1998.
44. Ibid.
45. NATO Press Briefing, 14 May 1999.
46. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo `Freedom Fighters’ Financed by Organized Crime, CAQ, Spring-Summer 1999.
47. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Vol 25, No. 7, 14 February 1996.
48. Ibid.
49. World Bank Development News, Washington, 27 April 1999.
50. New York Times, July 8, 1998, report by Chris Hedges.
51. Statement by Javier Solano, Secretary General of NATO, published in The National Post, Toronto May 1999.

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best America’s “War on Terrorism” Second Edition, Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.

To order Chossudovsky’s book America’s “War on Terrorism”, click here

The original source of this article is Global Research

The Armenian Genocide: An Open Wound

Global Research, January 28, 2016

Armenia: Georgia's Defeat Prevented Wider Caucasus War

(Originally published in April 2015)

To the memory of Stepan Shaumyan, Armenian Bolshevik leader of the Baku Commune in 1918, and of Hrant Dink, Armenian socialist intellectual from Istanbul who, until his assassination in 2007, exerted a Herculean effort to bring the genocide into the centre of attention in Turkey.

April 24, 1915, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, politicians and community leaders were rounded in Istanbul (or Constantinople as it was then called in the West) by the Ottoman state, to be subsequently sent to exile from which most never returned. This was the signal that set off a chain of events that ended in a tragedy the like of which has rarely been witnessed in the annals of modern history. The Armenians, who had been living in the eastern part of the Anatolian plateau from time immemorial, were forcibly deported from their homes in almost every city in what is now Turkey, ostensibly to their destination Dar ez Zor in the Syrian desert. Up to a million and a half died in the process. Women were abducted, raped and killed. Young children were sent to orphanages and forcibly Islamized. All the property belonging to Armenians, houses and gardens, farms and orchards, cattle and sheep, workshops and tools, trade houses and factories were seized by the state or simply grasped by the Turkish ruling strata. Churches were made into warehouses or left to rust and community hospitals and schools were taken away.

On the eve of World War I, different estimates and censuses put the Armenian population of Anatolia between 1.2 million and close to 2 million. At the end of the war, the only sizeable Armenian population was left in Istanbul and the overall figure had fallen below a mere 100 thousand. What was to become present-day Turkey was thus “cleansed” of its Armenian population. The Turks had entered Anatolia as a result of the victory obtained by the Seldjukides over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. They cohabited with the autochthonous Armenians for close to a millennium. The Ottoman Empire regarded the Armenians as the “loyal nation,” and yet it was this very same state that betrayed them, massacred them and extirpated them from their homes and their motherland.

Implications for the Future of the Middle East

There is not a shred of doubt that this was genocide of the worst kind. Of course, the concept may sound like an anachronism in this context since it was first coined as a legal concept in the aftermath of World War II. However, we do not approach the question of the Armenian genocide from a legalistic viewpoint. Our concern is to re-establish friendship and trust between the workers and labourers of Turkey and Armenia. For us this is first and foremost a political question that has to do with the prospect of revolution in the region. All social upheavals in the Eurasian land mass from 1905 and 1917 to the period 1989-1991 passing through World War I witnessed massacres involving the Armenians, the Turks and the Azeris, the latter being the ethnic brethren of Anatolian Turks inhabiting the Caucasus. On the other hand, the Armenians and the Kurds each claim roughly the same geographic territory as their historic motherland. So the fate of the revolution in the Caucasus, Anatolia and Mesopotamia hinges upon the relationships established between these four peoples. Proletarian revolution cannot succeed here unless it sets in motion a process that culminates in the Socialist Federation of the Caucasus and in parallel the Socialist Federation of the Middle East, where Turk and Armenian and Kurd will have to cohabit. Hence the debate on the Armenian genocide is by no means a futile exercise on a long bygone historic event, but really concerns the future of the revolution in this whole region.

The Turkish state and those historians and intellectuals who act as its mouthpiece have consistently denied the genocide. Their arguments range from the minimization of casualties (the lowest figure cited being 320 thousand as against the 1.5 million put forward by many Armenian and other historians) to the claim that the massacres were reciprocal. They forget two simple facts. First, the Armenian population of eastern Anatolia was almost totally eradicated from the face of Anatolia. So to count the numbers of the dead is only a part of the genocide debate. Secondly, state power was in the hands of the Turkish dominant nation, which renders all talk about mutual carnage empty chatter.

Genocide as Class Struggle

The classical explanation offered for this barbaric cruelty by liberal historiography in Turkey and nationalist historiography of the Armenians both in contemporary Armenia and the Diaspora has been that it was the outcome of the “construction of Turkish identity” or of “Unionist mentality,” the latter implying the world outlook of the Committee of Union and Progress, the party then in power. These are, of course, philosophically idealistic approaches that beg the question of why the identity or the mentality in question became dominant specifically at that historical juncture. But there is worse. It is a very widespread view among Westerners, Armenians and Westernized Turks that somehow the Muslim or the Turk or both partake of some kind of evil, that it is from the nature of the religion or the ethnicity in question that this barbarism proceeds. This kind of racist characterization is hardly ever pronounced in writing or in public nowadays, but it is still voiced in private conversation.

Our view on the determinants of the Armenian genocide is fundamentally different from almost all commentators. We assert that what lay behind the Armenian genocide was class struggle of several orders. The vicious attacks against the Armenians had its earliest roots in the looting of the surplus product of the Armenian peasantry by the ruling stratum of Kurdish tribes, which shared the same geographical territory with the Armenians. The later but stronger and more radical drive came from the urge for primitive accumulation on the part of the nascent Turkish bourgeoisie at the turn of the century fighting against the economic dominance of the non-Muslim moneyed classes in Ottoman society. It was this class fraction that was represented by the Unionists in power and dispossessed the Armenian and, in a different manner, Greek population of Anatolia to amass capital in its own hands. Marx’s remarks on primitive accumulation in Capital sound prophetic in regard to the Armenian genocide: “If money, according to Augier, ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,’ capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” In Turkey the blood and dirt of primitive accumulation took the form of genocide.

These domestic factors were reinforced by the support extended to the Turkish bourgeoisie by the German imperialist bourgeoisie, instrumentalizing the power of the Ottoman state in its intra-class struggle against the other imperialist bourgeoisies of Europe, that is, British, French and Russian.

The Importance of German Complicity

This last fact is of utmost importance. Germany was the ally and protector of the Ottoman state during World War I. The commanders of the Ottoman-Turkish army were German field marshals, generals and admirals. It is absolutely impossible for the genocide to have taken place without German consent, even positive encouragement. The German Kaiser and the Reich were already responsible for the genocide of the Herrero people in what was then called German Southwest Africa, what is present-day Namibia. Hence, there is no reason to rule out even a scenario in which Germany may have instigated the ruling Union and Progress Committee and its strong man Enver Pasha to implement this “final solution” to the Armenian question. Enver Pasha was a personal protégé of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The latter is notorious for his secretive and personalized management of foreign and military affairs. The Kaiser’s government expected the Ottomans to threaten both Russia and Britain in their Asian backyards by propagating a simultaneously pan-Turkist and pan-Islamist political onslaught. The Armenians stood in between the Ottomans and the Muslim and Turkic peoples of Asia. Hence, in an objective sense, the Armenian genocide served the wartime aims of German imperialism.

Of course, all this does not necessarily mean the German government was involved as an accomplice in the genocide. However, it is only through a study of the archives, including top secret documents, that the truth of this matter can be discovered.

Where does the significance of all this lie? Let us start with a general proposition. Recognition of the genocide is the primary act in the direction of redressing the suffering of the Armenian people and of rekindling a modicum of fraternity and trust between the peoples of the region. The problem is that, left on their own, Turkey and the Armenians, both Armenia proper and the Diaspora, have locked horns for a very long time. The Turkish state and those historians and intellectuals who act as its mouthpiece have consistently denied the genocide. The absurd concept of the “Turkish thesis,” denoting full denial of the genocide, is testimony to the stubborn position of the Turkish state. The titanic effort of Hrant Dink, an Istanbul Armenian formerly a revolutionary socialist, to create an awareness of the question throughout Turkish society in the 1990s and early 2000s created an immense breach in the wall of silence that had earlier been imposed. Hrant Dink was assassinated in 2007 through a conspiracy prepared by the so-called “deep state” of Turkey, but his legacy lives on. If we are today able in Turkey to discuss this question openly, most of the credit goes to the Herculean work carried out by Hrant Dink and his still extant bilingual weekly Agos. However, the overall situation cannot be said to have changed irreversibly. The genocide is still mentioned in the media perforce as “the so-called genocide.”

The question of the recognition of the genocide cannot be resolved by the ill-conceived pressures of the state organs of some imperialist countries and is positively harmed by such irresponsible theatrics such as that of the Pope in early April, conspicuous for its lack of modesty coming from the head of an institution wholly immersed in the Holocaust. However, for the reasons explained above Germany is the exception.

It is a noteworthy fact that although many European governments and parliaments (including France, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden etc. and the European Parliament recently for a second time) have recognized the 1915 events as genocide and called on Turkey to do likewise, Germany has remained very much in the shadows on this question. This fact glares with significance.

We believe that it is the duty of the German socialist and working-class movements and German democrats to press for the complete opening of German archives relevant to that historical period. We summon them to press the German government to recognize and condemn the Armenian genocide.

If Germany does recognize the Armenian genocide, with documents in hand, the Turkey-Armenia polarization will be cast in a new light and the obscurantism of the “Turkish thesis” will receive a fatal blow. This is the only way to fraternity and trust between the peoples of the region.

Needless to say, the real effort to make the Turkish government recognize the genocide falls on the shoulders of the Turkish and Kurdish left.

Sungur Savran is based in Istanbul and is one of the editors of the newspaper Gercek (Truth) and the theoretical journal Devrimci Marksizm (Revolutionary Marxism), both published in Turkish, and of the web site RedMed.

The original source of this article is The Socialist Project

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/27/2016 8:20:38 PM
	The 'Islamophobia' industry grows police state at home, feeds war abroad Tony Cartalucci Land Destroyer Report Sat, 26 Mar 2016 17:53 UTC Groups like the UK EDL, PEGIDA, and others are created and run directly by special interests - ironically the same special interests organizing, funding, and directing the very extremists Islamophobes are scapegoating all of Islam for. Many EDL/PEGIDA members are concurrently violent football hooligans and/or Neo-Nazis, thus, a lack of informed discernment should be no surprise. It's real simple. Create a threat, predicate expanding autocracy at home and endless wars of hegemony abroad upon confronting that threat, and all the while intentionally perpetuate fear, hysteria, hatred, and division to keep that threat relevant in the hearts and minds of as many people as possible. Described above is an elementary tactic used by special interests throughout human history, and today's special interests being no exception. Today, the contrived threat of choice is "terrorism." It is a well-documented fact that organizations like Al Qaeda and the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS), are creations and geopolitical tools of the United States, its European allies, and its Middle Eastern subordinates, including Turkey and the Persian Gulf states. The means of keeping this contrived threat fresh in the minds of the public is Islamophobia - the scapegoating of some 1.6 billion Muslims around the world for the deeds of US-Saudi indoctrinated, armed, funded, and backed extremists. The role the United States and Saudi Arabia played in the inception of Al Qaeda during the 1980's to wage proxy war on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan is documented history. What is less widely known, is the role these same two nations played in the creation of ISIS -which admittedly branched off from Al Qaeda. However, America's own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) admitted in a leaked 2012 memo that indeed, just as Al Qaeda was created to wage proxy war in Afghanistan, a "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State) was intentionally created in eastern Syria to wage proxy war against Damascus. The leaked 2012 report (.pdf) stated explicitly that: If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran). To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were that sought the creation of a "Salafist" (Islamic) principality" (State), the DIA report explains: The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime. It is clear then, that if the US and its allies are behind ISIS, than attacks attributed to ISIS are either directly or indirectly related to US foreign policy. It is very clear that ISIS serves Western objectives in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) by waging war against precisely those governments the US itself has slated for "regime change." ISIS also serves as a convenient pretext for direct military intervention abroad when possible. What may be less clear to some, is what the US and its allies have to gain when ISIS launches attacks in France, Belgium, and other targets across both East and West. However, it is indeed clear - clear that they serve to bolster the contrived threat of "global terrorism" and both the growing autocracy at home and expanding wars abroad, Islamophobia Industry Run by Familiar Faces Wouldn't it be curious if those most vocal in promoting fear, hysteria, hatred, and division against Muslims to perpetuate the contrived threat of "global terrorism" represented the same special interests both involved directly in arming, funding, training, and exploiting the violence of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, as well as the same special interests profiting the most from the perpetual "War on Terror?" It would be curious - and it also happens to be the verified truth. A growing ecosystem of Islamophobia networks is centered around a cadre of Neo-Conservatives who led the United States into the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as advocated for wars against Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and many more in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in Washington, New York, and Pennsylvania. One of the highest level former US government representatives publicly involved, John Bolton, was a vocal advocate for global war including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Iran, and has for years served as the gravitational center of at least America's Islamophobia subsidiary. Around him orbits media personality, racist, bigot Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, and Project for a New American Century (PNAC) signatory, Daniel Pipes. Not only is America's Islamophobia subsidiary linked directly to US government representatives directly involved in both the arming, funding, and exploitation of terrorist groups and the various wars fought upon the pretext of "fighting terrorism," but this subsidiary interlocks with those across Europe including the UK's "English Defense League" and PEGIDA. The special interests characters like Bolton, pictured posing with Geller top, right, represent, have made literally trillions off of the wars predicated on the fear, hatred, and hysteria perpetuated by Islamophobia. Further in the peripheries, are faux-alternative media cognitive infiltrators like WorldNetDaily run by Joseph Farah, a card-carrying member of the Neo-Conservative war lobby and an associate with many advocates who have played a direct role in the subversion and destruction of Syria. Farah himself is Syrian-Lebanese, and involved heavily in organizations created by the US aimed at the overthrow and reordering of the Levant. WND, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, and many others who lead the American Islamophobia subsidiary, in tandem with their European counterparts, have invested years in fanning the flames of misunderstanding, hatred, fear, and hysteria among Western populations. They do this to both divert from the fact that the very interests they represent are the source of global terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda and ISIS - creations not of Islam, but of US foreign policy, and to create sufficient rhetorical justification for continued American intervention overseas across MENA and beyond. The West has scarcely managed to justify its many and still multiplying wars abroad, and global consensus regarding America's role in the creation and perpetuation of Al Qaeda and ISIS is reaching critical mass. It is not difficult to see that without the significant Islamophobia being spread through at least segments of the world's population, just how much more tenuous US foreign policy would be. Those in the Alternative Media Selling Out It has been a stated matter of US policy, best articulated in former-US Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein's "Conspiracy Theories" paper, to infiltrate and redirect the alternative media, who even years ago, had already begun to significantly undermine US spheres of influence within global information space. Called "cognitive infiltration," the idea was to infiltrate the alternative media with messages not directly contradicting the truth, but contradicting it enough to slowly bring readers, viewers, and listeners back into government controlled narratives. That is precisely what WND and those that have since found themselves in close cooperation with them and paid lobbyists like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer have done. Co-opted alternative media organizations that had for years warned the public of the dangers of false flag terrorism, US government involvement behind both Al Qaeda and more recently ISIS, and who had warned of Western attempts to scapegoat religions, races, and political systems to divide and control people, are now directly complicit in doing all of the above. Now, throngs of weaker-minded readers who had drifted toward alternative media, have been successfully brought back through the vector of Islamophobia - employing many of the most elementary ploys used throughout the history of propaganda to manipulate and control public perception. With establishment media platforms and alleged alternative media personalities peddling precisely the same narrative so closely, these supposed alternative media platforms no longer are "alternative." What is left is for genuine alternative media to recognize this split and continue focusing on telling the truth overall - and in particular - the interests and agendas being served by the Islamophobia industry. Co-opted alternative media organizations that had for years warned the public of the dangers of false flag terrorism, US government involvement behind both Al Qaeda and more recently ISIS, and who had warned of Western attempts to scapegoat religions, races, and political systems to divide and control people, are now directly complicit in doing all of the above. The goal should not be to fall into perpetual infighting with these co-opted individuals and organizations. The goal should be to treat these sell-outs precisely as the rest of the corporate-controlled media is treated - a voice to be exposed by simply documenting and reporting the truth. It is a hard sell for US policymakers to justify the price in public treasure and blood paid to maintain global hegemony like that depicted on the map above. It would be infinitely harder without the contrived threat of "terrorism," and to ensure the longevity of the "terror" narrative, much has been invested in the Islamophobia industry. Lying about Groups of People to Start Wars = Oldest Trick in the Book: Why are Some Still Falling for It? While in hindsight, considering the lies that have been told to sell wars to the Western people, and the documented wealth, power, and influence these wars have brought special interests at the cost of the rest of humanity, it should seem obvious to people that those peddling Islamophobia have vested monetary and political interests in doing so, and that the truth certainly lies well beyond their simplistic generalizations, slurs, and vitriol. But because indulging in racism and bigotry is a path of lesser resistance than informed inquiry, research, and self-guided learning, the establishment has found a means of diminishing the impact of alternative media. It will be up to genuine alternative media to find a way of restoring and even expanding upon its previous impact. Lying about groups of people to justify perpetual war profiteering is one of the oldest tricks in the book. If the alternative media is unable to confront and confound such elementary tricks, something is systemically weak within the alternative media itself. If the alternative media is content with reporting whatever will bring in readers and revenue, they are no longer the alternative media - they are bad copies of establishment propagandists. If the alternative media is serious about the truth and a future for themselves, their friends, family, and communities, this Islamophobia - and all ploys like it - must be confronted and crushed alongside all the other lies told by special interests. Comment: See also: Attacks on the Muslim population, exploiting fear and paranoia As Islamophobia Rises, Moral Values Decrease (sott.net)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/28/2016 10:22:22 AM
	Opinion: Is Turkey coming in from the cold in Europe? Soner Cagaptay, Special to CNN Updated 0828 GMT (1528 HKT) March 28, 2016 Is the EU is ready to hold its nose in dealing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian administration? Editors note: Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, and author of 'The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty-First Century's First Muslim Power.' The views expressed are solely those of the author. Follow him@SonerCagaptay (CNN) Turkey is facing the largest wave of terror attacks in its history -- in the past six months alone, the country has been hit by five deadly attacks. Islamic State (IS) has targeted Istanbul twice and Ankara once since October 2015, killing at least 120 people, and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has hit the Turkish capital Ankara twice, killing at least 65 people. How Europe responds to the crisis facing Turkey could be crucial to the country's future -- as well as Europe's. The only silver lining for Turkey at the moment is the reopening of the country's European Union (EU) accession talks. Although Turkey and the EU entered into membership negotiations in 2005, the country's membership process came to a halt soon after. Recently, though, Turkish-EU ties have taken on new life. In December 2015, Ankara and Brussels opened a new chapter in accession talks covering monetary policy, and earlier this month the two reached a dealon a plan for handling refugees. This is because Brussels realizes that it needs Turkey's help with the refugee crisis threatening to break the EU at its seams. Turkey is a frontline state in the refugee crisis, and the EU needs Turkish cooperation. Accordingly, talks have restarted and the EU is ready to hold its nose in dealing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian administration. Why Europe has a bigger terror problem than the U.S. Benefits to both Turkey has its own reasons to get back on track with the EU. In 2005, soon after membership talks commenced, Erdogan's government put EU accession on the backburner, declaring 2005 the "Year of Africa" in foreign policy in a clear snub to Brussels, and then pivoting Turkish foreign policy to the Middle East. As Turkey turned away from Europe and towards Erdogan's foreign policy dream of marching into the Middle East to become a regional star in the last decade, the public pivoted away from Europe with him. Opinion polls conducted by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) show that whereas 73% of Turks were in favor of joining the EU in 2004, in 2010, this number had dropped to 38. And then the Arab Spring took root at Turkey's doorstep and emboldened Ankara to throw its support behind anti-Assad rebels in Syria to oust the Assad regime on its own. Suicide bomber had ISIS links, says Turkey's interior minister Late to the Middle East table Sadly for Erdogan, in the Middle East mere soft power does not make a country a regional power. Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war has been challenged by Iran and Russia, two countries with significant hard power, assets including proxies and weapons, which Turkey sorely lacks. Unfortunately for Turkey, the Erdogan administration has not recalibrated their view of Middle East involvement. But the Turkish public has certainly done so: in 2011 GMF polls showed that support for EU accession increased to 48%, reaching 53% in 2014. The Turks are telling their government to pivot to Europe. Erdogan is taking more positive view of the EU as well, contractual as it might be. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won successive elections since 2002 on a platform of economic growth. Faced with multiple crises, the EU is not ready to fully embrace Turkey. Female suicide bomber spent time in Syria Fresh hope Nevertheless, a recently signed deal will breathe more life into Turkey's EU accession process -- new accession talk chapters will be opened up during the Dutch presidency of the EU in 2016. Subsequent to Erdogan's relentless crackdown on democratic checks and balances in Turkey, targeting everything from the media to the courts, EU membership is the last anchor of liberal democracy in the country. The good news is that the EU, once again, has soft power in Turkey. The EU should reach out to Turkey's civil society, building bridges while them, working with Erdogan to maintain a recently agreed deal to prevent further refugee flows from Syria via Turkey. Abandoning Turkey now would be a historic mistake for the EU as this would pave the way for the death of Turkish democracy. An undemocratic Turkey will export instability and more Syrian refugees to Europe. ISIS goes global: 75 attacks in 20 countries have killed 1,280 people 9 photos: Blast in Turkish capital of Ankara Watch videos
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/28/2016 10:44:31 AM
	The History of “Humanitarian Warfare”: NATO’s Reign of Terror in Kosovo, The Destruction of Yugoslavia By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, March 27, 2016 Global Research 11 August 1999 March 24th 2016 marks the 17th anniversary of NATO’s war against Yugoslavia. The following text was written in August 11, 1999 in the immediate wake of the 1999 NATO bombings of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Kosovo by NATO troops. It is now well established that the war on Yugoslavia was waged on a fabricated humanitarian pretext and that extensive war crimes were committed by NATO and the US. In retrospect, the war on Yugoslavia was a “dress rehearsal” for subsequent US-NATO sponsored humanitarian wars including Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (2011), Ukraine (2014). Who are the war criminals? In a bitter irony, the so-called International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague is controlled by those who have committed extensive war crimes. US-NATO started the war on Yugoslavia. President Milosevic was indicted on charges of war crimes. He was poisoned in his prison cell under the auspices of the ICTY. According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, the ultimate war crime consists in starting a war. According to William Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal: “The [1999] bombing war violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities” against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.” According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, NATO heads of State and heads of government are responsible for the supreme crime: “the crime against peace.” Reagan’s NSDD 133 (1984) “Secret and Sensitive” There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia. The decision to destroy Yugoslavia as a country and carve it up into a number of small proxy states was taken by the Reagan adminstration in the early 1980s. A “Secret Sensitive” National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) entitled “US Policy towards Yugoslavia.” (Declassified) set the foreign policy framework for the destabilization of Yugoslavia’s model of market socialism and the establishment of a US sphere of influence in Southeastern Europe. Yugoslavia was in many regards “an economic success story”. In the two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the rate of literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years. While NSDD 133 was in itself a somewhat innocous document, it provided legitimacy to the free market reforms. A series of covert intelligence operations were implemented, which consisted in creating and supporting secessionist paramilitary armies, first in Bosnia then in Kosovo. These covert operations were combined with the destabilization of the Yugoslav economy. The application of strong economic medicine under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank ultimately led to the destruction of Yugoslavia’s industrial base, the demise of the workers’ cooperative and the dramatic impoverishment of its population. Kosovo “Independence” The record of US-NATO war crimes is important in assessing recent developments in Kosovo. From the outset of their respective mandates in June 1999, both NATO and the UN Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK) have actively supported the KLA, which has committed numerous atrocities. It is important to understand that these atrocities were ordered by the current and former prime ministers of the Kosovo “government”. Since 1999, State terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO’s design. The present government of President Hashim Thaci (a former KLA Commander), is an outgrowth of this reign of terror. It is not a government in the common sense of the word. It remains a terrorist organization linked to organised crime. It is an instrument of foreign occupation. Michel Chossudovsky, March 27, 2016, August 5, 2015 * * * NATO HAS INSTALLED A REIGN OF TERROR IN KOSOVO by Michel Chossudovsky 10 August 1999 This text was presented to the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against The People of Yugoslavia, International Action Center, New York, July 31, 1999. PART I: MASSACRES OF CIVILIANS IN KOSOVO While the World focusses on troop movements and war crimes, the massacres of civilians in the wake of the bombings have been casually dismissed as “justifiable acts of revenge”. In occupied Kosovo, “double standards” prevail in assessing alleged war crimes. The massacres directed against Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Roma and other ethnic groups have been conducted on the instructions of the military command of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). NATO ostensibly denies KLA involvement. These so-called “unmotivated acts of violence and retaliation” are not categorised as “war crimes” and are therefore not included in the mandate of the numerous FBI and Interpol police investigators dispatched to Kosovo under the auspices of the Hague War Crime’s Tribunal (ICTY). Moreover, whereas NATO has tacitly endorsed the self-proclaimed KLA provisional government, KFOR the international security force in Kosovo has provided protection to the KLA military commanders responsible for the atrocities. In so doing both NATO and the UN Mission have acquiesced to the massacres of civilians. In turn, public opinion has been blatantly misled. In portraying the massacres, the Western media has casually overlooked the role of the KLA, not to mention its pervasive links to organised crime. In the words of National Security Advisor Samuel Berger, “these people [ethnic Albanians] come back … with broken hearts and with some of those hearts filled with anger.”1 While the massacres are seldom presented as the result of “deliberate decisions” by the KLA military command, the evidence (and history of the KLA) amply confirm that these atrocities are part of a policy of “ethnic cleansing” directed mainly against the Serb population but also against the Roma, Montenegrins, Goranis and Turks. Serbian houses and business have been confiscated, looted, or burned, and Serbs have been beaten, raped, and killed. In one of the more dramatic of incidents, KLA troops ransacked a monastery, terrorized the priest and a group of nuns with gunfire, and raped at least one of the nuns. NATO’s inability to control the situation and provide equal protection for all ethnic groups, and its apparent inability or unwillingness to fully disarm the KLA, has created a serious situation for NATO troops…2 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), confirms in this regard that: “more than 164,000 Serbs have left Kosovo during the seven weeks since… the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered the province… A wave of arson and looting of Serb and Roma homes throughout Kosovo has ensued. Serbs and Roma remaining in Kosovo have been subject to repeated incidents of harassment and intimidation, including severe beatings. Most seriously, there has been a spate of murders and abductions of Serbs since mid-June, including the late July massacre of Serb farmers.”3 POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS The self-proclaimed Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK) has also ordered assassinations directed against political opponents including “loyalist” ethnic Albanians and supporters of the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL). These acts are being carried out in a totally permissive environment. The leaders of the KLA rather than being arrested for war crimes, have been granted KFOR protection. Madeleine Albright and Hashim Thaci According to a report of the Foreign Policy Institute (published during the bombings): “…the KLA have [no] qualms about murdering Rugova’s collaborators, whom it accused of the `crime’ of moderation… [T]he KLA declared Rugova a `traitor’ yet another step toward eliminating any competitors for political power within Kosovo.”4 Already in May [1999], Fehmi Agani, one of Rugova’s closest collaborators in the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL) was killed. The Serbs were blamed by NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea for having assassinated Agani. According to Skopje’s paper Makedonija Danas, Agani had been executed on the orders of the KLA’s self-appointed Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.5 “If Thaci actually considered Rugova a threat, he would not hesitate to have Rugova removed from the Kosovo political landscape.”6 In turn, the KLA has abducted and killed numerous professionals and intellectuals: “Private and State properties are threatened, home and apartment owners are evicted en masse by force and threats, houses and entire villages are burned, cultural and religious monuments are destroyed… A particularly heavy blow… has been the violence against the hospital centre in Pristina, the maltreatment and expulsion of its professional management, doctors and medical staff.”7 Both NATO and the UN prefer to turn a blind eye. UN Interim Administrator Bernard Kouchner (a former French Minister of Health) and KFOR Commander Sir Mike Jackson have established a routine working relationship with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and KLA Chief of Staff Brigadier General Agim Ceku. ATROCITIES COMMITTED AGAINST THE ROMA Ethnic cleansing has also been directed against the Roma (which represented prior to the conflict a population group of 150,000 people). (According to figures provided by the Roma Community in New York). A large part of the Roma population has already escaped to Montenegro and Serbia. In turn, there are reports that Roma refugees who had fled by boat to Southern Italy have been expelled by the Italian authorities.8 The KLA has also ordered the systematic looting and torching of Romani homes and settlements: “All houses and settlements of Romani, like 2,500 homes in the residential area called `Mahala’ in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, have been looted and burnt down”.9 With regard to KLA atrocities committed against the Roma, the same media distortions prevail. According to the BBC: “Gypsies are accused by [Kosovar] Albanians of collaborating in Serb brutalities, which is why they’ve also become victims of revenge attacks. And the truth is, some probably did.”10 INSTALLING A PARAMILITARY GOVERNMENT As Western leaders trumpet their support for democracy, State terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO’s postwar design. The KLA’s political role for the post-conflict period had been mapped out well in advance. Prior to Rambouillet Conference, the KLA had been promised a central role in the formation of a post-conflict government. The “hidden agenda” consisted in converting the KLA paramilitary into a legitimate and accomplished civilian administration. According to US State Department spokesman James Foley (February 1999): “We want to develop a good relationship with them [the KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization, …[W]e believe that we have a lot of advice and a lot of help that we can provide to them if they become precisely the kind of political actor we would like to see them become.’”11 In other words, the US State Department had already slated the KLA “provisional government” (PGK) to run civilian State institutions. Under NATO’s “Indirect Rule”, the KLA has taken over municipal governments and public services including schools and hospitals. Rame Buja, the KLA “Minister for Local Administration” has appointed local prefects in 23 out of 25 municipalities.12 Under NATO’s regency, the KLA has replaced the duly elected (by ethnic Albanians) provisional Kosovar government of President Ibrahim Rugova. The self-proclaimed KLA administration has branded Rugova as a traitor declaring the (parallel) Kosovar parliamentary elections held in March 1998 to be invalid. This position has largely been upheld by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) entrusted by UNMIK with the postwar task of “democracy building” and “good governance”. In turn, OSCE officials have already established a working rapport with KLA appointees.13 The KLA provisional government (PGK) is made up of the KLA’s political wing together with the Democratic Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to Rugova’s Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime minister, the KLA controls the ministries of finance, public order and defence. The KLA also has a controlling voice on the UN sponsored Kosovo Transitional Council set up by Mr. Bernard Kouchner. The PGK has also established links with a number of Western governments. Whereas the KLA has been spearheaded into running civilian institutions (under the guidance of the OSCE), members of the duly elected Kosovar (provisional) government of the Democratic League (DKL) have been blatantly excluded from acquiring a meaningful political voice. ESTABLISHING A KLA POLICE FORCE TO `PROTECT CIVILIANS’ Under NATO occupation, the rule of law has visibly been turned up side down. Criminals and terrorists are to become law enforcement officers. KLA troops which have already taken over police stations will eventually form a 4,000 strong “civilian” police force (to be trained by foreign police officers under the authority of the United Nations) with a mandate to “protect civilians”. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has already pledged Canadian support to the formation of a civilian police force.14 The latter which has been entrusted to the OSCE will eventually operate under the jurisdiction of the KLA controlled “Ministry of Public Order”. US MILITARY AID Despite NATO’s commitment to disarming the KLA, the Kosovar paramilitary organisation is slated to be transformed into a modern military force. So-called “security assistance” has already been granted to the KLA by the US Congress under the “Kosovar Independence and Justice Act of 1999″. Start-up funds of 20 million dollars will largely be “used for training and support for their [KLA] established self-defence forces.”15 In the words of KLA Chief of Staff Agrim Ceku: “The KLA wants to be transformed into something like the US National Guard, … we accept the assistance of KFOR and the international community to rebuild an army according to NATO standards. … These professionally trained soldiers of the next generation of the KLA would seek only to defend Kosova. At this decisive moment, we [the KLA] do not hide our ambitions; we want the participation of international military structures to assist in the pacific and humanitarian efforts we are attempting here.” 16 While the KLA maintains its links to the Balkans narcotics trade which served to finance many of its terrorist activities, the paramilitary organisation has now been granted an official seal of approval as well as “legitimate” sources of funding. The pattern is similar to that followed in Croatia and in the Bosnian Muslim-Croatian Federation where so-called “equip and train” programmes were put together by the Pentagon. In turn, Washington’s military aid package to the KLA has been entrusted to Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) of Alexandria, Virginia, a private mercenary outfit run by high ranking former US military officers. MPRI’s training concepts which had already been tested in Croatia and Bosnia are based on imparting “offensive tactics… as the best form of defence”.17 In the Kosovar context, this so- called “defensive doctrine” transforms the KLA paramilitary into a modern army without however eliminating its terrorist makeup.18 The objective is to ultimately transform an insurgent army into a modern military and police force which serves the Alliance’s future strategic objectives in the Balkans. MPRI has currently “ninety-one highly experienced, former military professionals working in Bosnia & Herzegovina”.19 The number of military officers working on contract with the KLA has not been disclosed. PART II. FROM KRAJINA TO KOSOVO. A FORMER CROATIAN GENERAL APPOINTED KLA CHIEF OF STAFF The massacres of civilians in Kosovo are not disconnected acts of revenge by civilians or by so-called “rogue elements” within the KLA as claimed by NATO and the United Nations. They are part of a consistent and coherent pattern. The intent (and result) of the KLA sponsored atrocities have been to trigger the “ethnic cleansing” of Serbs, Roma and other minorities in Kosovo. KLA Commander Agim Ceku referring to the killings of 14 villagers at Gracko on July 24, claimed that: “We [the KLA] do not know who did it, but I sincerely believe these people have nothing to do with the KLA.”20 In turn, KFOR Lieutenant General Sir Mike Jackson has commended his KLA counterpart, Commander Agim Ceku for “efforts undertaken” to disarm the KLA. In fact, very few KLA weapons have been handed in. Moreover, the deadline for turning in KLA weaponry has been extended. “I do not regard this as noncompliance” said Commander Jackson in a press conference, “but rather as an indication of the seriousness with which General Ceku is taking this important issue.”21 Yet what Sir Mike Jackson failed to mention is that KLA Chief of Staff Commander Agim Ceku (although never indicted as a war criminal) was (according to Jane Defence Weekly June 10, 1999) “one of the key planners of the successful `Operation Storm’” led by the Croatian Armed Forces against Krajina Serbs in 1995. General Jackson who had served in former Yugoslavia under the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was fully cognizant of the activities of the Croatian High Command during that period including the responsibilities imparted to Brigadier General Agim Ceku. In February 1999, barely a month prior to the NATO bombings, Ceku left his position as Brigadier General with the Croatian Armed Forces to join the KLA as Commander in Chief. FROM KRAJINA TO KOSOVO: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME According to the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Operation Storm resulted in the massacre of at least 410 civilians in the course of a three day operation (4 to 7 August 1995).22 An internal report of The Hague War Crimes Tribunal (leaked to the New York Times), confirmed that the Croatian Army had been responsible for carrying out: “summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and “ethnic cleansing” in the Krajina region of Croatia….”23 In a section of the report entitled “The Indictment. Operation Storm, A Prima Facie Case.”, the ICTY report confirms that: “During the course of the military offensive, the Croatian armed forces and special police committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law, including but not limited to, shelling of Knin and other cities… During, and in the 100 days following the military offensive, at least 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed, and many hundreds disappeared. …In a widespread and systematic manner, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts upon and against Croatian Serbs.” 24 US `GENERALS FOR HIRE’ The internal 150 page report concluded that it has “sufficient material to establish that the three [Croatian] generals who commanded the military operation” could be held accountable under international law.25 The individuals named had been directly involved in the military operation “in theatre”. Those involved in “the planning of Operation Storm” were not mentioned: “The identity of the “American general” referred to by Fenrick [a Tribunal staff member] is not known. The tribunal would not allow Williamson or Fenrick to be interviewed. But Ms. Arbour, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, suggested in a telephone interview last week that Fenrick’s comment had been `a joking observation’. Ms. Arbour had not been present during the meeting, and that is not how it was viewed by some who were there. Several people who were at the meeting assumed that Fenrick was referring to one of the retired U.S. generals who worked for Military Professional Resources Inc. … Questions remain about the full extent of U.S. involvement. In the course of the three yearinvestigation into the assault, the United States has failed to provide critical evidence requested by the tribunal, according to tribunal documents and officials, adding to suspicion among some there that Washington is uneasy about the investigation… The Pentagon, however, has argued through U.S. lawyers at the tribunal that the shelling was a legitimate military activity, according to tribunal documents and officials”.26 The Tribunal was attempting to hide what had already been revealed in several press reports published in the wake of Operation Storm. According to a US State Department spokesman, MPRI had been helping the Croatians “avoid excesses or atrocities in military operations.”27 Fifteen senior US military advisers headed by retired two star General Richard Griffitts had been dispatched to Croatia barely seven months before Operation Storm. 28 According to one report, MPRI executive director General Carl E. Vuono: “held a secret top-level meeting at Brioni Island, off the coast of Croatia, with Gen. Varimar Cervenko, the architect of the Krajina campaign. In the five days preceding the attack, at least ten meetings were held between General Vuono and officers involved in the campaign…”29 According to Ed Soyster, a senior MPRI executive and former head of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA): “MPRI’s role in Croatia is limited to classroom instruction on military-civil relations and doesn’t involve training in tactics or weapons. Other U.S. military men say whatever MPRI did for the Croats and many suspect more than classroom instruction was involved it was worth every penny.” Carl Vuono and Butch [Crosbie] Saint are hired guns and in it for the money,” says Charles Boyd, a recently retired four star Air Force general who was the Pentagon’s No. 2 man in Europe until July [1995]. “They did a very good job for the Croats, and I have no doubt they’ll do a good job in Bosnia.”30 THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL’S COVER UP The untimely leaking of the ICTY’s internal report on the Krajina massacres barely a few days before the onslaught of NATO’s air raids on Yugoslavia was the source of some embarrassment to the Tribunal’s Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour. The Tribunal (ICTY) attempted to cover up the matter and trivialise the report’s findings (including the alleged role of the US military officers on contract with the Croatian Armed Forces). Several Tribunal officials including American Lawyer Clint Williamson sought to discredit the Canadian Peacekeeping officers’ testimony who witnessed the Krajina massacres in 1995.31 Williamson, who described the shelling of Knin as a “minor incident,” said that the Pentagon had told him that Knin was a legitimate military target… The [Tribunal's] review concluded by voting not to include the shelling of Knin in any indictment, a conclusion that stunned and angered many at the tribunal”…32 The findings of the Tribunal contained in the leaked ICTY documents were downplayed, their relevance was casually dismissed as “expressions of opinion, arguments and hypotheses from various staff members of the OTP during the investigative process”.33 According to the Tribunal’s spokesperson “the documents do not represent in any way the concluded decisions of the Prosecutor.” 34 The internal 150 page report has not been released. The staff member who had leaked the documents is (according to a Croatian TV report) no longer working for the Tribunal. During the press Conference, the Tribunal’s spokesman was asked: “about the consequences for the person who leaked the information”, Blewitt [the ICTY spokesman] replied that he did not want to go into that. He said that the OTP would strengthen the existing procedures to prevent this from happening again, however he added that you could not stop people from talking”.35 THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN CROATIA The massacres conducted under Operation Storm “set the stage” for the “ethnic cleansing” of at least 180,000 Krajina Serbs (according to estimates of the Croatian Helsinki Committee and Amnesty International). According to other sources, the number of victims of ethnic cleansing in Krajina was much larger. Moreover, there is evidence that chemical weapons had been used in the Yugoslav civil war (1991-95).36 Although there is no firm evidence of the use of chemical weapons against Croatian Serbs, an ongoing enquiry by the Canadian Minister of Defence (launched in July 1999) points to the possibility of toxic poisoning of Canadian Peacekeepers while on service in Croatia between 1993 and 1995: “There was a smell of blood in the air during the past week as the media sensed they had a major scandal unfolding within the Department of National Defense over the medical files of those Canadians who served in Croatia in 1993. Allegations of destroyed documents, a coverup, and a defensive minister and senior officers…”37 The official release of the Department of National Defence (DND) refers to possibility of toxic “soil contamination” in Medak Pocket in 1993 (see below). Was it “soil contamination” or something far more serious? The criminal investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) refers to the shredding of medical files of former Canadian peacekeepers by the DND. In other words did the DND have something to hide? The issue remains as to what types of shells and ammunitions were used by the Croatian Armed Forces ie. were chemical weapons used against Serb civilians? OPERATION STORM: THE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN REGIMENT Prior to the onslaught, Croatian radio had previously broadcasted a message by president Franjo Tudjman, calling upon “Croatian citizens of Serbian ethnicity… to remain in their homes and not to fear the Croatian authorities, which will respect their minority rights.”38 Canadian peacekeepers of the Second Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment witnessed the atrocities committed by Croatian troops in the Krajina offensive in September 1995: “Any Serb who had failed to evacuate their property were systematically “cleansed” by roving death squads. Every abandoned animal was slaughtered and any Serb household was ransacked and torched”.39 Also confirmed by Canadian peacekeepers was the participation of German mercenaries in Operation Storm: “Immediately behind the frontline Croatian combat troops and German mercenaries, a large number of hardline extremists had pushed into the Krajina. …Many of these atrocities were carried out within the Canadian Sector, but as the peacekeepers were soon informed by the Croat authorities, the UN no longer had any formal authority in the region.”40 How the Germans mercenaries were recruited was never officially revealed. An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) confirmed the that foreign mercenaries in Croatia had in some cases “been paid [and presumably recruited] outside Croatia and by third parties.”41 THE 1993 MEDAK POCKET MASSACRE According to Jane Defence Weekly (10 June 1999), Brigadier General Agim Ceku (now in charge of the KLA) also “masterminded the successful HV [Croatian Army] offensive at Medak” in September 1993. In Medak, the combat operation was entitled “Scorched Earth” resulting in the total destruction of the Serbian villages of Divoselo, Pocitelj and Citluk, and the massacre of over 100 civilians.42 These massacres were also witnessed by Canadian peacekeepers under UN mandate: “As the sun rose over the horizon, it revealed a Medak Valley engulfed in smoke and flames. As the frustrated soldiers of 2PPCLI waited for the order to move forward into the pocket, shots and screams still rang out as the ethnic cleansing continued. …About 20 members of the international press had tagged along, anxious to see the Medak battleground. Calvin [a Canadian officer] called an informal press conference at the head of the column and loudly accused the Croats of trying to hide war crimes against the Serb inhabitants. The Croats started withdrawing back to their old lines, taking with them whatever loot they hadn’t destroyed. All livestock had been killed and houses torched. French reconnaissance troops and the Canadian command element pushed up the valley and soon began to find bodies of Serb civilians, some already decomposing, others freshly slaughtered. …Finally, on the drizzly morning of Sept. 17, teams of UN civilian police arrived to probe the smouldering ruins for murder victims. Rotting corpses lying out in the open were catalogued, then turned over to the peacekeepers for burial.”43 The massacres were reported to the Canadian Minister of Defence and to the United Nations: “Senior defence bureaucrats back in Ottawa had no way of predicting the outcome of the engagement in terms of political fallout. To them, there was no point in calling media attention to a situation that might easily backfire. …So Medak was relegated to the memory hole no publicity, no recriminations, no official record. Except for those soldiers involved, Canada’s most lively military action since the Korean War simply never happened.”44 PART III. NATO’S `POST CONFLICT’ AGENDA IN KOSOVO. Both the Medak Pocket massacre and Operation Storm bear a direct relationship to the ongoing security situation in Kosovo and the massacres and ethnic cleansing committed by KLA troops. While the circumstances are markedly different, several of today’s actors in Kosovo were involved (under the auspices of the Croatian Armed Forces) in the planning of both these operations. Moreover, the US mercenary outfit MPRI which collaborated with the Croatian Armed Forces in 1995 is currently on contract with the KLA. NATO’s casual response to the appointment of Brigadier General Agim Ceku as KLA Chief of Staff was communicated by Mr. Jamie Shea in a Press Briefing in May: “I have always made it clear, and you have heard me say this, that NATO has no direct contacts with the KLA. Who they appoint as their leaders, that is entirely their own affair. I don’t have any comment on that whatever.”45 While NATO says it “has no direct contacts with the KLA”, the evidence confirms the opposite. Amply documented, KLA terrorism has been installed with NATO’s tacit approval. The KLA had (according to several reports) been receiving “covert support” and training from the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) since the mid-nineties. Moreover, MPRI collaboration with the KLA predates the onslaught of the bombing campaign.46 Moreover, the building up of KLA forces was part of NATO planning. Already by mid-1998, “covert support” had been replaced by official (“overt”) support by the military Alliance in violation of UN Security Council Resolution UNSCR 1160 of 31 March 1998 which condemned: “…all acts of terrorism by the Kosovo Liberation Army or any other group or individual and all external support for terrorist activity in Kosovo, including finance, arms and training.” NATO officials, Western heads of State and heads of government, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan not to mention ICTY chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour, were fully cognizant of General Brigadier Agim Ceku’s involvement in the planning of Operation Storm and Operation Scorched Earth. Surely, some questions should have been asked… Yet visibly what is shaping up in the wake of the bombings in Kosovo is the continuity of NATO’s operation in the Balkans. Military personnel and UN bureaucrats previously stationed in Croatia and Bosnia have been routinely reassigned to Kosovo. KFOR Commander Mike Jackson had previously been responsible as IFOR Commander for organising the return of Serbs “to lands taken by Croatian HVO forces in the Krajina offensive”.47 And in this capacity General Mike Jackson had “urged that the resettlement [of Krajina Serbs] not [be] rushed to avoid tension [with the Croatians]… while also warning returning Serbs “of the extent of the [land] mine threat.”48 In retrospect, recalling the events of early 1996, very few Krajina Serbs were allowed to return to their homes under the protection of the United Nations. And a similar process is unfolding in Kosovo, ie. the conduct of senior military officers conforms to a consistent pattern, the same key individuals are now involved in Kosovo. While token efforts are displayed to protect Serb and Roma civilians, those who have fled Kosovo are not encouraged to return under UN protection… In postwar Kosovo, “ethnic cleansing” implemented by the KLA has been accepted by the “international community” as a “fait accompli”… While calling for democracy and “good governance” in the Balkans, the US and its allies have installed in Kosovo a paramilitary government with links to organised crime. The foreseeable outcome is the outright “criminalisation” of civilian State institutions and the establishment of what is best described as a “Mafia State”. The complicity of NATO and the Alliance governments (namely their relentless support to the KLA) points to the de facto “criminalisation” of KFOR and of the UN peacekeeping apparatus in Kosovo. The donor agencies and governments (eg. the funds approved by the US Congress in violation of several UN Security Council resolutions) providing financial support to the KLA are, in this regard, also “accessories” to the de facto criminalisation of State institutions. Through the intermediation of a paramilitary group (created and financed by Washington and Bonn), NATO ultimately bears the burden of responsibility for the massacres and ethnic cleansing of civilians in Kosovo. STATE TERROR AND THE `FREE MARKET’ State terror and the “free market” seem to go hand in hand. The concurrent “criminalisation” of State institutions in Kosovo is not incompatible with the West’s economic and strategic objectives in the Balkans. Notwithstanding the massacres of civilians, the self-proclaimed KLA administration has committed itself to establishing a “secure and stable environment” for foreign investors and international financial institutions. The Minister of Finance Adem Grobozci and other representatives of the provisional government invited to the various donor conferences are all KLA appointees. In contrast, members of the KDL of Ibrahim Rugova (duly elected in parliamentary elections) were not even invited to attend the Stabilisation Summit in Sarajevo in late July. “Free market reforms” are envisaged for Kosovo under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions largely replicating the structures of the Rambouillet agreement. Article I (Chapter 4a) of the Rambouillet Agreement stipulated that: “The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles”. The KLA government will largely be responsible for implementing these reforms and ensuring that loan conditionalities are met. In close liaison with NATO, the Bretton Woods institutions had already analysed the consequences of an eventual military intervention leading to the military occupation of Kosovo: almost a year prior to the beginning of the War, the World Bank conducted “simulations” which “anticipated the possibility of an emergency scenario arising out of the tensions in Kosovo.”49 The eventual “reconstruction” of Kosovo financed by international debt largely purports to transfer Kosovo’s extensive wealth in mineral resources and coal to multinational capital. In this regard, the KLA has already occupied (pending their privatisation) the largest coal mine at Belacevac in Dobro Selo northwest of Pristina. In turn, foreign capital has its eyes rivetted on the massive Trepca mining complex which constitutes “the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, worth at least $5 billion.”50 The Trebca complex not only includes copper and large reserves of zinc but also cadmium, gold, and silver. It has several smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, a power plant and Yugoslavia’s largest battery plant. Northern Kosovo also has estimated reserves of 17 billion tons of coal and lignite. In the wake of the bombings, the management of many of the State owned enterprises and public utilities were taken over by KLA appointees. In turn, the leaders of the Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK) have become “the brokers” of multinational capital committed to handing over the Kosovar economy at bargain prices to foreign investors. The IMF’s lethal “economic therapy” will be imposed, the provincial economy will be dismantled, agriculture will be deregulated, local industrial enterprises which have not been totally destroyed will be driven into bankruptcy. The most profitable State assets will eventually be transferred into the hands of foreign capital under the World Bank sponsored privatisation programme. “Strong economic medicine” imposed by external creditors will contribute to further boosting a criminal economy (already firmly implanted in Albania) which feeds on poverty and economic dislocation. “The Allies will work with the rest of the international community to help rebuild Kosovo once the crisis is over: The International Monetary Fund and Group of Seven industrialized countries are among those who stand ready to offer financial help to the countries of the region. We want to ensure proper coordination of aid and help countries to respond to the effects of the crisis. This should go hand in hand with the necessary structural reforms in the countries affected helped by budget support from the international community.”51 Morever, the so-called “reconstruction” of the Balkans by foreign capital will signify multibillion contracts to foreign firms to rebuild Kosovo’s infrastructure. More generally, the proposed “Marshall Plan” for the Balkans financed by the World Bank and the European Development Bank (EBRD) as well as private creditors will largely benefit Western mining, petroleum and construction companies while fuelling the region’s external debt well into the third millennium. And Kosovo is slated to reimburse this debt through the laundering of dirty money. Yugoslav banks in Kosovo will be closed down, the banking system will be deregulated under the supervision of Western financial institutions. Narcodollars from the multibillion dollar Balkans drug trade will be recycled towards servicing the external debt as well as “financing” the costs of “reconstruction.” The lucrative flow of narcodollars thus ensures that foreign investors involved in the “reconstruction” programme will be able reap substantial returns. In turn, the existence of a Kosovar “narco State” ensures the orderly reimbursement of international donors and creditors. The latter are prepared to turn blind eye. They have a tacit vested interest in installing a government which facilitates the laundering of drug money. The pattern in Kosovo is, in this regard, similar to that observed in neighbouring Albania. Since the early 1990s (culminating with the collapse of the financial pyramids in 1996-97), the IMF’s reforms have impoverished the Albanian population while spearheading the national economy into bankruptcy. The IMF’s deadly economic therapy transforms countries into open territories. In Albania and to a lesser extent Macedonia, it has also contributed to fostering the growth of illicit trade and the criminalisation of State institutions. NOTES 1. Jim Lehrer News Maker Interview, PBS, 26 July 1999. 2. Stratfor Commentary, “Growing Threat of Serbian Paramilitary Action in Kosovo”, 29 July 1999. 3. Human Rights Watch, 3 August 1999. 4. See Michael Radu, “Don’t Arm the KLA”, CNS Commentary from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, 7 April, 1999). 5. Tanjug Press Dispatch, 14 May 1999. 6. Stratfor Comment, “Rugova Faced with a Choice of Two Losses”, Stratfor, 29 July 1999. 7. Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Yugoslav Daily Survey, Belgrade, 29 June 1999. 8. Hina Press Dispatch, Zagreb, 26 July 1999. 9. Ibid. 10. BBC Report, London, 5 July 1999. 11. New York Times, 2 February 1999. 12. Financial Times, London, 4 August 1999. 13. See Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Mission in Kosovo, Decision 305, Permanent Council, 237th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal No. 237, Agenda item 2, Vienna, 1 July 1999. 14. Statement at the Sarajevo Summit, 31 July 1999. 15. 106th Congress, April 15, HR 1425. 16. Interview with KLA Chief of Staff Commander Agim Ceku, Kosovapress, 31 July 1999. 17. See Tammy Arbucki, “Building a Bosnian Army”, Jane International Defence Review, August 1997. 18. Ibid. 19. Military Professional Resources, Inc, “Personnel Needs”, http://www.mpri.com/current/personnel.htm 20. Associated Press Report. 21. Ibid. 22. The actual number of civilians killed or missing was much larger. 23. Quoted in Raymond Bonner, War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops Cleansed the Serbs, New York Times, 21 March 1999). 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Raymond Bonner, op cit. 27. Ken Silverstein, “Privatizing War”, The Nation, New York, 27 July 1997. 28. See Mark Thompson et al, “Generals for Hire”, Time Magazine, 15 January 1996, p. 34. 29. Quoted in Silverstein, op cit. 30. Mark Thompson et al, op cit. 31. Raymond Bonner, op cit. 32. Ibid. 33. ICTY Weekly Press Briefing, 24 March 1999). 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. See inter alia Reuters dispatch, 21 October 1993 on the use of chemical grenades, a New York Times report on 31 October 1992 on the use of poisoned gas). 37. Lewis MacKenzie, “Giving our soldiers the benefit of the doubt”, National Post, 2 August 1999. 38. Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia, August 5 1996. 39. Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan, The Sunday Sun, Toronto, 2 November 1998. 40. Ibid. 41. United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-first session, Item 9 of the provisional agenda, Geneva, 21 December 1994). 42. (See Memorandum on the Violation of the Human and Civil Rights of the Serbian People in the Republic of Croatia, http://serbianlinks.freehosting.net/memorandum.htm 43. Excerpts from the book of Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan published in the Toronto Sun, 1 November 1998. 44. Ibid. 45. NATO Press Briefing, 14 May 1999. 46. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo `Freedom Fighters’ Financed by Organized Crime, CAQ, Spring-Summer 1999. 47. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Vol 25, No. 7, 14 February 1996. 48. Ibid. 49. World Bank Development News, Washington, 27 April 1999. 50. New York Times, July 8, 1998, report by Chris Hedges. 51. Statement by Javier Solano, Secretary General of NATO, published in The National Post, Toronto May 1999. Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best America’s “War on Terrorism” Second Edition, Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization. To order Chossudovsky’s book America’s “War on Terrorism”, click here The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2016
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/28/2016 10:57:45 AM
	The Armenian Genocide: An Open Wound By Sungur Savran Global Research, January 28, 2016 The Socialist Project 25 April 2015 (Originally published in April 2015) To the memory of Stepan Shaumyan, Armenian Bolshevik leader of the Baku Commune in 1918, and of Hrant Dink, Armenian socialist intellectual from Istanbul who, until his assassination in 2007, exerted a Herculean effort to bring the genocide into the centre of attention in Turkey. April 24, 1915, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, politicians and community leaders were rounded in Istanbul (or Constantinople as it was then called in the West) by the Ottoman state, to be subsequently sent to exile from which most never returned. This was the signal that set off a chain of events that ended in a tragedy the like of which has rarely been witnessed in the annals of modern history. The Armenians, who had been living in the eastern part of the Anatolian plateau from time immemorial, were forcibly deported from their homes in almost every city in what is now Turkey, ostensibly to their destination Dar ez Zor in the Syrian desert. Up to a million and a half died in the process. Women were abducted, raped and killed. Young children were sent to orphanages and forcibly Islamized. All the property belonging to Armenians, houses and gardens, farms and orchards, cattle and sheep, workshops and tools, trade houses and factories were seized by the state or simply grasped by the Turkish ruling strata. Churches were made into warehouses or left to rust and community hospitals and schools were taken away. On the eve of World War I, different estimates and censuses put the Armenian population of Anatolia between 1.2 million and close to 2 million. At the end of the war, the only sizeable Armenian population was left in Istanbul and the overall figure had fallen below a mere 100 thousand. What was to become present-day Turkey was thus “cleansed” of its Armenian population. The Turks had entered Anatolia as a result of the victory obtained by the Seldjukides over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. They cohabited with the autochthonous Armenians for close to a millennium. The Ottoman Empire regarded the Armenians as the “loyal nation,” and yet it was this very same state that betrayed them, massacred them and extirpated them from their homes and their motherland. Implications for the Future of the Middle East There is not a shred of doubt that this was genocide of the worst kind. Of course, the concept may sound like an anachronism in this context since it was first coined as a legal concept in the aftermath of World War II. However, we do not approach the question of the Armenian genocide from a legalistic viewpoint. Our concern is to re-establish friendship and trust between the workers and labourers of Turkey and Armenia. For us this is first and foremost a political question that has to do with the prospect of revolution in the region. All social upheavals in the Eurasian land mass from 1905 and 1917 to the period 1989-1991 passing through World War I witnessed massacres involving the Armenians, the Turks and the Azeris, the latter being the ethnic brethren of Anatolian Turks inhabiting the Caucasus. On the other hand, the Armenians and the Kurds each claim roughly the same geographic territory as their historic motherland. So the fate of the revolution in the Caucasus, Anatolia and Mesopotamia hinges upon the relationships established between these four peoples. Proletarian revolution cannot succeed here unless it sets in motion a process that culminates in the Socialist Federation of the Caucasus and in parallel the Socialist Federation of the Middle East, where Turk and Armenian and Kurd will have to cohabit. Hence the debate on the Armenian genocide is by no means a futile exercise on a long bygone historic event, but really concerns the future of the revolution in this whole region. The Turkish state and those historians and intellectuals who act as its mouthpiece have consistently denied the genocide. Their arguments range from the minimization of casualties (the lowest figure cited being 320 thousand as against the 1.5 million put forward by many Armenian and other historians) to the claim that the massacres were reciprocal. They forget two simple facts. First, the Armenian population of eastern Anatolia was almost totally eradicated from the face of Anatolia. So to count the numbers of the dead is only a part of the genocide debate. Secondly, state power was in the hands of the Turkish dominant nation, which renders all talk about mutual carnage empty chatter. Genocide as Class Struggle The classical explanation offered for this barbaric cruelty by liberal historiography in Turkey and nationalist historiography of the Armenians both in contemporary Armenia and the Diaspora has been that it was the outcome of the “construction of Turkish identity” or of “Unionist mentality,” the latter implying the world outlook of the Committee of Union and Progress, the party then in power. These are, of course, philosophically idealistic approaches that beg the question of why the identity or the mentality in question became dominant specifically at that historical juncture. But there is worse. It is a very widespread view among Westerners, Armenians and Westernized Turks that somehow the Muslim or the Turk or both partake of some kind of evil, that it is from the nature of the religion or the ethnicity in question that this barbarism proceeds. This kind of racist characterization is hardly ever pronounced in writing or in public nowadays, but it is still voiced in private conversation. Our view on the determinants of the Armenian genocide is fundamentally different from almost all commentators. We assert that what lay behind the Armenian genocide was class struggle of several orders. The vicious attacks against the Armenians had its earliest roots in the looting of the surplus product of the Armenian peasantry by the ruling stratum of Kurdish tribes, which shared the same geographical territory with the Armenians. The later but stronger and more radical drive came from the urge for primitive accumulation on the part of the nascent Turkish bourgeoisie at the turn of the century fighting against the economic dominance of the non-Muslim moneyed classes in Ottoman society. It was this class fraction that was represented by the Unionists in power and dispossessed the Armenian and, in a different manner, Greek population of Anatolia to amass capital in its own hands. Marx’s remarks on primitive accumulation in Capital sound prophetic in regard to the Armenian genocide: “If money, according to Augier, ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,’ capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” In Turkey the blood and dirt of primitive accumulation took the form of genocide. These domestic factors were reinforced by the support extended to the Turkish bourgeoisie by the German imperialist bourgeoisie, instrumentalizing the power of the Ottoman state in its intra-class struggle against the other imperialist bourgeoisies of Europe, that is, British, French and Russian. The Importance of German Complicity This last fact is of utmost importance. Germany was the ally and protector of the Ottoman state during World War I. The commanders of the Ottoman-Turkish army were German field marshals, generals and admirals. It is absolutely impossible for the genocide to have taken place without German consent, even positive encouragement. The German Kaiser and the Reich were already responsible for the genocide of the Herrero people in what was then called German Southwest Africa, what is present-day Namibia. Hence, there is no reason to rule out even a scenario in which Germany may have instigated the ruling Union and Progress Committee and its strong man Enver Pasha to implement this “final solution” to the Armenian question. Enver Pasha was a personal protégé of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The latter is notorious for his secretive and personalized management of foreign and military affairs. The Kaiser’s government expected the Ottomans to threaten both Russia and Britain in their Asian backyards by propagating a simultaneously pan-Turkist and pan-Islamist political onslaught. The Armenians stood in between the Ottomans and the Muslim and Turkic peoples of Asia. Hence, in an objective sense, the Armenian genocide served the wartime aims of German imperialism. Of course, all this does not necessarily mean the German government was involved as an accomplice in the genocide. However, it is only through a study of the archives, including top secret documents, that the truth of this matter can be discovered. Where does the significance of all this lie? Let us start with a general proposition. Recognition of the genocide is the primary act in the direction of redressing the suffering of the Armenian people and of rekindling a modicum of fraternity and trust between the peoples of the region. The problem is that, left on their own, Turkey and the Armenians, both Armenia proper and the Diaspora, have locked horns for a very long time. The Turkish state and those historians and intellectuals who act as its mouthpiece have consistently denied the genocide. The absurd concept of the “Turkish thesis,” denoting full denial of the genocide, is testimony to the stubborn position of the Turkish state. The titanic effort of Hrant Dink, an Istanbul Armenian formerly a revolutionary socialist, to create an awareness of the question throughout Turkish society in the 1990s and early 2000s created an immense breach in the wall of silence that had earlier been imposed. Hrant Dink was assassinated in 2007 through a conspiracy prepared by the so-called “deep state” of Turkey, but his legacy lives on. If we are today able in Turkey to discuss this question openly, most of the credit goes to the Herculean work carried out by Hrant Dink and his still extant bilingual weekly Agos. However, the overall situation cannot be said to have changed irreversibly. The genocide is still mentioned in the media perforce as “the so-called genocide.” The question of the recognition of the genocide cannot be resolved by the ill-conceived pressures of the state organs of some imperialist countries and is positively harmed by such irresponsible theatrics such as that of the Pope in early April, conspicuous for its lack of modesty coming from the head of an institution wholly immersed in the Holocaust. However, for the reasons explained above Germany is the exception. It is a noteworthy fact that although many European governments and parliaments (including France, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden etc. and the European Parliament recently for a second time) have recognized the 1915 events as genocide and called on Turkey to do likewise, Germany has remained very much in the shadows on this question. This fact glares with significance. We believe that it is the duty of the German socialist and working-class movements and German democrats to press for the complete opening of German archives relevant to that historical period. We summon them to press the German government to recognize and condemn the Armenian genocide. If Germany does recognize the Armenian genocide, with documents in hand, the Turkey-Armenia polarization will be cast in a new light and the obscurantism of the “Turkish thesis” will receive a fatal blow. This is the only way to fraternity and trust between the peoples of the region. Needless to say, the real effort to make the Turkish government recognize the genocide falls on the shoulders of the Turkish and Kurdish left. Sungur Savran is based in Istanbul and is one of the editors of the newspaper Gercek (Truth) and the theoretical journal Devrimci Marksizm (Revolutionary Marxism), both published in Turkish, and of the web site RedMed. The original source of this article is The Socialist Project Copyright © Sungur Savran, The Socialist Project, 2016
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