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December 10, 2015
Combatting ISIS
December 05, 2015
End the Gun Epidemic in America
End the Gun Epidemic in America
The Editorial Board
Doug Mills/The New York Times
All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.
But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.
It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America's elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let's be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.
Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.
But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.
It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.
Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.
What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?
A Selection of Related Editorials
October 19, 2015
Europe is becoming an undemocratic continent where force matters more than law
Europe is becoming an undemocratic continent where force matters more than law
Paul Mason
We've had the rival launches, in which cheesy celebs and tawdry men in suits swapped platitudes about Europe. Now we're going to get the letter: David Cameron is being forced to write down his demands before the other EU governments will begin negotiations. All this in preparation for a referendum whose date has not yet been set.
Writing stuff down is good – and too rarely done in international diplomacy. What you think is wrong with the EU, and what you want done about it, will vary widely depending where in Britain you live, your class, age and ideals. My hunch is that, if we all did this, and loaded the results into some vast database, the real problem with Europe would emerge. It is power – and the lack of democratic control over it.
I have no prior hostility to the EU. But the first time you have to lug TV production kit around the stairs and tunnels at Rond-Point Schuman in Brussels, beneath the unfriendly gaze of armed Belgian cops, you begin to realise how unequal power is in this semi-superstate. The architecture of power in Brussels is faceless: it seems to embody the determination to dissolve political traditions into a monolith.
The sheer size of the EU directorates makes them susceptible only to two kinds of influence: global corporations and pan-national industry lobby groups. That means, for businesses, it is almost impossible to deal with Europe unless you have mega size, or are prepared to dissolve your specific interest into a sector agenda, which will itself be mediated through layer upon layer of protocol. For individual citizens, it's worse. The only real power to influence Europe's vast bureaucratic structures has to be expressed through one of two channels: the British government and the European Court. The commission is not accountable to the parliament, and the central bank seems accountable only to Angela Merkel.
In the past year, on two occasions when tested, European solidarity fell apart. Critics say Greece was smashed by the European central bank that was supposed to keep it solvent. There was no democratic redress. The many millions of people who saw the protest hashtag #ThisIsACoup had no way – even indirect – to influence the actions of the commission and the European Central Bank. Then, as refugees from Syria and beyond flowed through the Balkans, two key parts of the legal architecture fell apart: the Schengen agreement, which assures free movement between some central states, was suspended. And the Dublin III treaty, which forces the deportation of migrants to their first country of entry, likewise ignored.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion: Europe is becoming a continent where force matters more than law. Germany forced Greece to accept a programme that will destroy its economy and strip its state of assets for the next 50 years. Half a million people forced their way across borders in a way that all forms of rhetoric against migration could not stop.That's great for them: but not for the thousands of sub-Saharan migrants trapped in violent slums across north Africa. They must rot there, simply because they do not have the power to do what the Syrians did. Businesses and politicians have also begun to understand that, in Europe, might is right. Uber, which has faced bans in Spain and had its offices raided three times in the Netherlands, has just been declared legal in the UK.
Staking a claim to a new business model then seeing if it's actually legal seems to be the new normal. In Europe, the outcome seems hit and miss. Both the action and reactions demonstated something that all Chinese city governments know: when the executive power is far away and the law lethargic, arbitrary pursuit of self-interest is the most effective course of action.
For the "stay" lobby, in the run-up to the referendum, the strongest argument will be the lack of real alternatives to EU membership. Sure, let's do 50 bilateral trade deals and sell our infrastructure to China – but don't think this comes with a return to Great Power status for the UK. It will mean the opposite – as we bargain away our diplomatic positions and our human rights agenda for the sake of investment deals and energy security.But the "everything's fine and the critics are just nationalists" argument does not wash either. Just as the euro is destroying the economies of southern Europe, the EU's institutions might destroy European solidarity.
My own written demands would focus on the imbalance of power and the tendency to use it arbitrarily. For the EU to be a legitimate state, even a weak one, its legislature must control its executive. The rule of law means swift redress and advance compliance: but European law is neither swift nor enforcable without expensive retrospective justice.The ECB's tendency to take politicised and arbitrary action is not just a problem for euro countries, but the whole project. Finally, the power to admit new states has to lie with existing populations. The EU's logo is on my passport: before the borders of that institution are extended to Iraq (via Turkey) or the Donetsk warzone (via Ukraine), I would like not just a vote but a veto.
This problem of power is so big that both sides in the referendum have a vested interest in ignoring it. Even if we leave, it will still be a problem for Britain if there's a power imbalance between people and institutions inside the EU. The pro-EU faction seem happy to tolerate glacial change, leaving generations of Europeans to live under a semi-democracy. The real power, meanwhile, sits with large corporations, banks and elites.
And here's the strangest thing: for all the power concentrated at the top, the EU lacks the will to operate purposefully in the multipolar global power system. We know, roughly, what the US wants. Ditto for China and Russia. Ask what Europe wants – in Ukraine, Syria or the Arctic circle – and you'll draw a blank. In a multipolar world, whose chaos zones are expanding, effective states with clear diplomatic aims and red lines matter.
Paul Mason is economics editor of Channel 4 News. @paulmasonnews
October 04, 2015
Brilliant Explanation of US Foreign Policy and What Went Down at the UN
Brilliant Explanation of US Foreign Policy and What Went Down at the UN
Rob Slane (Blogmire)
This article originally appeared at the author's excellent blog
Imagine a kid at school. An intimidating kid he is, packing a lot of muscle, used to getting his own way, and with no scruples about bullying other kids that stand in his way.
His goal is to get everyone to acknowledge his authority and leadership over them, and he's not afraid to use any number of tactics to make this happen.
Sometimes he humiliates them. Sometimes he arm-twists them. Sometimes he threatens to take their money. Sometimes he gets other kids to fight his battles for him, promising them all sorts of perks. Sometimes he even tortures some folks, if need be. And if he sees anyone standing in his way, he has no hesitation in demonising them, making up all sorts of stories up about them, turning some of the other kids against them, before going in with his gang to sort them out.
Cut to another scene and the same kid is standing up in front of the whole school giving a speech. He starts by talking of the need to solve disputes using diplomacy. He speaks about the need to stand up to what he calls "strongmen" in the school. He berates some of the bigger boys for asserting themselves in ways that contravene the rules of the school. He speaks about spreading peace and moving away from what he calls the "old ways of conflict and coercion".
Warming to his theme he says that force alone cannot impose order, but he also mentions that of course he possesses massive force and will use it if necessary. He talks about the history of the school over the past few years, telling his audience about all the bad guys out there and what they've been up to. He's careful not to mention his own part in it though, but he does manage to praise himself for the great job he's been doing of keeping order.
He moves on to talk about the importance of respecting the rules and then singles out one of the other boys in particular for breaking them, and for being a big bad bully. He acknowledges his own part in the case of Libby, who he put on a life support machine, but only to say that it was necessary for something to be done about her. He then admits that we (notice the "we") perhaps could have done more to help her rehabilitation, and that "we" will have to do more to help in the rehabilitation of those who get hospitalized in the future.
He finishes by lamenting the plight of all the poor and weak kids in the class, including some that he has hospitalized in the past, speaking about their dignity and how "we" should all work together for a brighter future. For those who swear unswerving loyalty, his speech is welcomed as putting all the trouble makers in the school in their place. Others sit there scratching their heads, wondering whether they are going mad or did they just hear the school bully paint himself as an angel of light bringing freedom and peace to the school?
A few minutes later, along comes another boy with a speech – the boy he accused of being a big bad bully – and in one sentence – "Do you realise what you have done?" – sticks a pin in the big fat hubris-filled balloon of the school's chief bully and exporter of chaos.
Listening to Barack Hussein Obama's speech at the United Nations was one of the most nauseating experiences I have ever had, and it ought to have been accompanied by a health warning. Rarely have I ever witnessed a more deluded individual manage to turn the world on its head, painting a picture of US foreign policy that is utterly divorced from the tragic reality.
Yet, sad as that may have been, even more astonishing is the fact that events since then – which have moved at breakneck speed – have shown that the man has learnt not even an ounce of humility from the Emperor's New Clothes treatment he got from Vladimir Putin. On the contrary he seems set on continuing in his ways.
With the agenda exposed like never before, and with their Middle East policy lying in ruins, you might have thought there'd be some sort of contrition and even radio silence from Washington and its global media outlets. Not a bit of it. No sooner had Russian planes got off the ground (perhaps even sooner), at the request of the Government of Syria, we were told that 33 civilians had been killed, including children, and that Russia was not targeting ISIS but the US-trained rebels.
I reserved judgement for a while. In these days of reckless propaganda, unverified claims and trial by social media, it is right to be cautious, especially when the alleged incident is so horrible. Nevertheless, my first thought was that it was mighty quick of the western media to tell us how many civilians and children died literally minutes after an airstrike in a warzone. All the more remarkable since they seem to have been unable to tell us this sort of thing when it has happened because of Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign against Yemen.
But it didn't take long for the claim to be shown to be false. A Tweet put out by the White Helmets organization, apparently showing a picture of a man carrying a dead child out of rubble after Russian airstrikes, turned out to be a fake, the picture having been taken several days prior to the Russian action.
What about the claim of Russia targeting US-backed "rebels" rather than ISIS targets? The first question that springs to mind is this: Since the US and its allies seem to be so clear about which targets the Russian planes have been hitting, and since they are so clear that they are not hitting the right targets, presumably they must have the military intelligence to know where the "right" targets actually are. In which case, what exactly have they been doing out there for the last year?
A couple of answers to that question spring to mind. Firstly, they've been violating the sovereignty of a nation that never gave them permission to be there. And I must say that the nausea generated by Barack Obama's UN address is matched only by the nausea generated in the last year upon hearing these globalists, these neo-Trotskyite world revolutionaries, who despise the idea of national sovereignty, berating Russia over its alleged violations of sovereignty.
The other answer to the question of what they have been doing for the last year is not very much at all. Target practice in the desert maybe, but that's about all. They certainly haven't been tackling ISIS, for the simple reason that they need ISIS to serve their real purpose, which is the removal of the Syrian Government.
Their claim that Russia has been targeting "moderate" Syrian rebels is especially absurd. Less than a month ago, General Lloyd Austin, Commander of US Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that so far, the US had trained four or five "moderate" Syrian rebels to take on ISIS. You heard that right. Not four or five thousand. Not even four or five hundred. No, just four or five. Less than ten in other words. But apparently the Russians have now been targeting them. All four or five of them!
Or could it be that the "moderate" Syrian rebels that that the Russians have been targeting are the ones that were trained via a covert CIA programme since at least 2012? Very probably, but if so Russia's actions have further exposed the diabolical US policy for what it really is, since most of these "moderates" are known to have ended up either in ISIS, or in groups like the al-Nusra Front (or al-Qaeda in Syria as they are also known).
So when Barack Obama said in his address that "we have demonstrated over more than a decade of relentless pursuit of al-Qaeda, we will not be outlasted by extremists", would he care to explain how it is that days after he said this, we are now meant to be lamenting the fact that the Russians have apparently been targeting not just ISIS, but also groups like the al-Nusra Front, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria? Our allies, huh?
Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the most potent weapon the West had against the tyranny of communism was simply to tell the truth about it. No need to lie, though of course there was a lot of that going on too. The Soviet Union, by contrast, needed its Pravda to feed people with lies and distortions.
Today the boot is firmly on the other foot. The western complaint about Russian lies and propaganda utterly misses this simple point: the most potent weapon Russia has against the tyranny of US neo-Trotskyist globalism is not to lie about it, but to simply tell the truth about it.
This is why at the UN, Putin's Pin was so successful in bursting Barack's Balloon. He didn't need to lie to make the point. Rather he simply told the truth about what they had done, and the effect was powerful.
Yet far from backing down, the West is now cranking up the lie machine to maximum volume. It won't end well. Their lies are now finding them out, and there is only so much lying to cover up lying to cover up lying you can get away with before your whole narrative collapses in upon itself.
As for the foreign policy pursued by the United States and its allies for the past couple of decades, it has been weighed in the balances, and has been found wanting.
October 03, 2015
Sott Exclusive: Full unedited text of Vladimir Putin's interview with Charlie Rose: What CBS left out
Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Tue, 29 Sep 2015 09:14 UTC
© Presidential Press and Information Office
The day before his much-anticipated address to the UN General Assembly on Monday, CBS broadcast Charlie Rose's interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin for its season premiere of 60 Minutes. Understandably, the interview was cut and edited to fit in the 20-minute slot available in the program. But now that the full transcript has been made available on the Kremlin website, it's fascinating to see just what was cut. We're including the full transcript below, with comments identifying which parts were not included in the final broadcast, or as special online clips.
From single sentences to entire exchanges, some of the exclusions are noteworthy. For example, practically the whole of Putin's commentary on the Minsk agreements was not aired. Nor were Putin's pointed comments on Libya and Syria, his observation that the U.S.'s actions in those countries was a blatant violation of international law, and his suggestion that "somebody wants to use either certain units of ISIS or ISIS in general in order to overthrow al-Assad and only then think about how to get rid of ISIS." Other exchanges, such as Putin's views on sanctions and gay rights, were broadcast online, but not in the final program.
You can view what CBS chose to broadcast on their website, and read the relevant transcript of their translation, here.
CONTINUED….http://www.sott.net/article/302911-Sott-Exclusive-Full-unedited-text-of-Vladimir-Putins-interview-with-Charlie-Rose-What-CBS-left-out
August 26, 2015
Mass Migration: What Is Driving the Balkan Exodus?
Mass Migration: What Is Driving the Balkan Exodus?
Armend Nimani/ DER SPIEGEL
More than a third of all asylum-seekers arriving in Germany come from Albania, Kosovo and Serbia. Young, poor and disillusioned with their home countries, they are searching for a better future. But almost none of them will be allowed to stay.
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When Visar Krasniqi reached Berlin and saw the famous image on Bernauer Strasse -- the one of the soldier jumping over barbed wire into the West -- he knew he had arrived. He had entered a different world, one that he wanted to become a part of. What he didn't yet know was that his dream would come to an end 11 months later, on Oct. 5, 2015. By then, he has to leave, as stipulated in the temporary residence permit he received.
Krasniqi is not a war refugee, nor was he persecuted back home. In fact, he has nothing to fear in his native Kosovo. He says that he ran away from something he considers to be even worse than rockets and Kalashnikovs: hopelessness. Before he left, he promised his sick mother in Pristina that he would become an architect, and he promised his fiancée that they would have a good life together. "I'm a nobody where I come from, but I want to be somebody."
But it is difficult to be somebody in Kosovo, unless you have influence or are part of the mafia, which is often the same thing. Taken together, the wealth of all parliamentarians in Kosovo is such that each of them could be a millionaire. But Krasniqi works seven days a week as a bartender, and earns just €200 ($220) a month.
But a lack of prospects is not a recognized reason for asylum, which is why Krasniqi's application was initially denied. The 30,000 Kosovars who have applied for asylum in Germany since the beginning of the year are in similar positions. And the Kosovars are not the only ones. This year, the country has seen the arrival of 5,514 Macedonians, 11,642 Serbians, 29,353 Albanians and 2,425 Montenegrins. Of the 196,000 people who had filed an initial application for asylum in Germany by the end of July, 42 percent are from the former Yugoslavia, a region now known as the Western Balkans.
The exodus shows the wounds of the Balkan wars have not yet healed. Slovenia and Croatia are now members of the European Union, but Kosovo, which split from Serbia and became prematurely independent in 2008, carves out a pariah existence. Serbia is heavily burdened with the unresolved Kosovo question. The political system in Bosnia-Hercegovina is on the brink of collapse, 20 years after the end of the war there. And Macedonia, long the post-Yugoslavia model nation, has spent two decades in the waiting rooms of the EU and NATO, thanks to Greek pressure in response to a dispute over the country's name. The consequences are many: a lack of investment, failing social welfare systems, corruption, organized crime, high unemployment, poverty, frustration and rage.
Losing Confidence
A survey by Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation found that close to two-thirds of 14-to-29-year-olds want to leave Albania, as do more than half of those in the same age group from Kosovo and Macedonia. They have lost all confidence in their young democracies, and they dream of a better life.
They apply for asylum in Europe because that is the only way to obtain a residence permit. But almost all applications are ultimately denied. In 2014, 0.2 percent of Serbians were recognized, 1.1 percent of Kosovars and 2.2 percent of Albanians. One of the topics of discussion at the next asylum summit in Berlin on Sept. 9 will be whether Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo should be added to the list of "safe countries of origin" along with Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The hope is that changing the rules will encourage fewer people to migrate to Germany from the Balkans.
DER SPIEGEL
Map: Where the asylum seekers come from.
And there are, indeed, hardly any reasons to grant asylum to migrants from the Balkans. Even human rights organizations have few objections ton classifying these countries as "safe," with the exceptions that apply to minorities like the Sinti and Roma, as well as homosexuals. But is this a way to stop the hopeless from coming? What are people like Visar Krasniqi running away from? And what is political security worth to someone who is poor?
The search for answers takes us to Albania and Kosovo, the two poorest Balkan countries and the sources of the largest number of asylum seekers in recent months. And to Serbia, which has been classified as a "safe country of origin" for the last year.
Kosovo: A Country Like a Cage
Vučitrn is a small city north of Pristina that holds a sad record: Almost a tenth of its of 70,000 people have left for -- or have already returned from -- Germany. The city's largest employer, a galvanization plant, shut down last year and the exodus began soon thereafter. Some residents sold their houses or jewelry to pay for the trip; all went into debt. Suddenly no one wanted to stay in Vučitrn anymore.
The migrants took buses to Subotica on the Serbian-Hungarian border. Then a trafficker took groups of 60 to 70 people at a time on an eight-hour trek through the forest into Hungary, circumventing the border post. "It felt like all of Kosovo was there," says Teuta Kelmende, 30, an attractive woman with high cheekbones and blue eyes. Wiping away a tear, she describes how she pulled her daughter along with her in the coldness of February. She scrolls through photos on her smartphone: of the hotel in Serbia, the train ride to Austria, the family sitting on a bus in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, bound for a migrant reception camp.
Kelmende and her husband live in the house of her husband's parents in a village near Vučitrn. They own one cow. She dreams of learning to become a hairdresser and he dreams of making more than the €15 a day he takes in driving an illegal taxi. In January, they heard the news on television that Germany was seeking foreign workers and accepting refugees. They borrowed €3,000 from relatives and left.
Their dream ended a few weeks ago, and Kelmende and her husband, like so many others, are back in Vučitrn. On this day, she is sitting in the social welfare office. An international aid organization is looking for an assistant, and Kelmende is hoping to get the job. She is wearing lipstick and a chiffon blouse for the interview.
"We deceived ourselves," says Kelmende, referring to their trip to Germany.
But perhaps that is unsurprising in this small country with a population of only 1.8 million, where one in four people lives on less than €1.20 a day. Two-thirds of Kosovars are less than 30 years old, and 70 percent of them are unemployed. Many families could hardly survive without the €600 million that is annually sent back to family members by the Kosovar diaspora. The payments represent half of the country's gross domestic product.
Bloated Administration
Those who are not part of the system in Kosovo hardly stand a chance to rise out of poverty, despite the fact that Kosovo receives more foreign aid per capita than any other country. The EU pays €250 million alone for the EULEX police and justice mission, which has failed to develop constitutional institutions and in fighting corruption.
The same group of corrupt politicians occupies all top government positions. This has led to the development of a bloated administrative apparatus of about 100,000 employees. The jobs typically go to relatives and supporters of those holding political positions. Public property is treated like private property: Recently, for example, the country's electricity plant was sold at a deep discount to a relative of the Turkish president. Profits are funneled into dark channels and court proceedings drag on forever, with 500,000 cases still awaiting processing.
The country has never investigated what happened to 13,000 people who died in the war, and former officers of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are now in positions of power. It was only at the beginning of August that parliament approved the establishment of a special tribunal to investigate war crimes.
Kosovars have been liberated from their Serbian oppression since the war ended 16 years ago, and yet they still live in a cage. Kosovo is the only country in the Balkans whose citizens are denied access to Europe and require a visa for the EU. Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations nor is it recognized by all EU countries. It is not even permitted to compete in the football World Cup.
Such was the situation in Vučitrn, and no one was particularly interested whether the news about Germany seeking foreign workers was actually true. No one investigated rumors that traffickers might have put out the information to create false hopes.
This, at any rate, is what the mayor of Vučitrn claims. Bajram Mulaku, 66, a former mathematics professor, is a white-haired giant of a man with a piercing gaze. Sitting at a large conference table in the town hall, he says that drivers, traffickers and hotel owners must have earned more than €10 million from the exodus out of Kosovo. The government in Pristina likewise blames an international trafficking network for the wave of refugees, and police have already arrested 54 suspects.
'We Have a Life'
In spring, Mulaku called upon his citizens to stay home. He spoke of opportunities, of subsidies for potato farmers and of beekeeping. People merely had to be willing to work hard, he said. But no one wanted to hear that. The number of people leaving the city and the number of traffickers kept increasing, and prices declined by the day. In the end, traffickers were charging only €200 to take people to Hungary. Now everyone wanted to try his luck, if only to see Europe once. More than 100,000 Kosovars have left the country in the last 12 months, including 48,000 in the first three months of this year alone. Most went to Germany and France. Only 13,000 have thus far returned.
Perhaps the government is not entirely opposed to the mass exodus, because the typical migrant is 20 to 34, has no training, is unemployed and earns no more than €450 a month. Kosovo also has the highest birth rate in Europe, and 40,000 people come of age every year, creating even more pressure on the labor market.
Visar Krasniqi doesn't want to go back. He is sitting in Café Oase on Alexanderplatz in Berlin, exhaling smoke from a hookah. He shows us his mobile phone, with an endless list of numbers of Kosovars in Berlin, Germany and all of Europe. They talk on the phone and play soccer, but most of all they compete with one another over which of them will stay in Germany the longest. And when they are short of funds, they cheer each other up by saying: "We are poor, but we have a life."
In Sweden migrants are deported after only four days, says Krasniqi, but the Finns are more liberal. In fact, he wants to go to Finland after Oct. 5, the date when his stay in Germany will come to an end.
Albania: Caught Up in the Maelstrom of Emigration
Mali Tafaj is standing in a field, threshing rye, five kilometers from the border with Kosovo. He gathers the dried sheaves, jerks the ears up to the cloudless sky and then slams them against a wooden block to detach the grains. Gathering, jerking and slamming the grain onto the wooden block -- this is the rhythm of Tafaj's days. He has been working in the field since 8 a.m., alongside his sister Baid, his father Bayran and his mother Nadira. They are producing feed for their three cows. The threshing will take eight hours. But there isn't much else to do in Novosej, anyway.
Novosej is a small hamlet in northeastern Albania, with huts made of fieldstone and unpaved streets. Chickens scratch around in the dirt, old men ride by on their donkeys and children tend the sheep. Many years ago, the village had a population of more than 2,000, but now there are only 300 people left. "They are all in Germany," says Tafaj.
A slender 23-year-old man and a fan of AC Milan, he wipes the sweat from his brow. When he enrolled at the university, he listed his top choices of the subjects he wanted to study: 1. Finance, 2. Journalism, 3. Forestry. The government chose forestry for him. Now Tafaj knows the Latin names of all types of local trees, but he doesn't have a job. Albania has a 30 percent unemployment rate.
There are about three million Albanians still living in the country, and about the same number as have already left the country. Albania is ninth in the World Bank's ranking of the ratio of a country's emigrants to its population. In first seven months of this year, 29,353 Albanians applied for asylum in Germany, including 7,500 in July alone. Only about 8,000 applications were filed during all of last year. After Syrians and Kosovars, Albanians have become the third-largest group of asylum seekers in Germany.
The most recent wave of emigration began with a rumor, say the villagers. The rumor, which came from Kosovo, just over a nearby hill, at the beginning of the year, was that the border to Serbia was open and that Germany was looking for workers.
Waiting for a Miracle
Dozens of Tafaj's friends and relatives left the village and drove across the border to Prizren, where they paid €200 to board a bus to Germany. Since the visa requirement was lifted in 2010, Albanians are now permitted to spend three months a year as tourists in the Schengen area. Upon arrival in Germany, they applied for asylum, and now they receive €143 a month in support and are waiting for work. Or a miracle.
Albania is a country of constant transformation: from a communist regime to unrest bordering on civil war to a parliamentary democracy. Albania became a candidate for EU accession a year ago, but it is also a country where human trafficking and organized crime are rampant.
Some 72 bombs tied to criminal, private or political feuds have exploded there since 2014. Entire families are trapped in their homes because of threats of blood revenge. Albania is in 110th place in the Transparency International corruption ranking.
Albania is also the poorest of the 37 European countries for which Eurostat collects statistics. After 1990, agricultural cooperatives were closed and the country's industry was in shambles. About half of all scientists and academics left the country and roughly one in two Albanians still work in agriculture today. Annual per capita GDP is €3,486, one-eighth of the EU average. The average hourly wage is a little over €2.
But no one is persecuted for criticizing the government. There is no war, the Sinti and the Roma are not hunted down, and even gays and lesbians are tolerated. If Albania is soon classified as a "safe country of origin," it will become easier to deport its citizens. But would that solve the problem?
In the afternoon, we are invited into the home of Mali Tafaj and his family. They live in a simple stone hut, with the parents sharing a room with the little brother, and Tafaj sleeping next to his sister. At night, they talk a lot about emigrating. His sister Badi says: "As a woman, I have to stay. But I want my brother to leave soon."
'For My Parents' Sake'
The Tafajs have an annual income of €3,500. They earn 20 cents from a kilogram of potatoes and €2.50 from a kilogram of veal. "It troubles us that we cannot offer the children a future," says the mother. On the day before, Tafaj spoke with a few emigrants who live in London and are home on vacation. They are well dressed and have brought money from England. Transfers from abroad make up one-tenth of the country's GDP. "I will have to support my parents when they get old," says Tafaj. "But how?"
In a video posted by the German police that he saw on Facebook, a voice says that there are no prospects for asylum in Germany. Tafaj would actually like to stay in Albania. "But I will probably go," he says. "For my parents' sake."
What would Edi Rama say to a young man like Tafaj?
"I know that Germany is tempting," says Rama. "The €11 a day. The temporary work permit. The ability to save a little money in those three months. All of that is worthwhile for many people." Rama is a tall, jovial man who was once an art professor and used to be the mayor of the Albanian capital city of Tirana. He is now the country's prime minister. His office in Tirana, which doubles as his studio, is a three-hour drive from Tafaj's village. There are wax crayons on the tables. Rama wants to be the one to bring Albania into the EU.
For decades, the country's economy was based on a construction boom and transfers from emigrants. Now it has been diversified to include a textile industry, mining, telecommunications, energy and tourism. "But palpable results take a long time," says Rama. The reform process has come to a standstill. Tens of thousands protested when the government raised taxes on cigarettes and gasoline, and announced plans to introduce a higher income tax. People are leaving Albania because change is taking too long for their taste. To prevent more and more people from emigrating, the prime minister is urging the EU to classify his country as "safe" as quickly as possible. He knows that EU accession negotiations will not begin as long as large numbers of Albanians continue to seek asylum in countries to the north.
Rama also has a dream, one that he discussed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she visited Tirana in July. He wants Germany to enter into cooperative programs with Albanian trade schools. The schools would deliberately prepare Albanians for the kind of work that no one in Germany wants to do. He calls the idea "a game changer," and adds: "Fifty trade schools, and in three years everything here would be different."
Serbia: Escaping the Winter
Most Balkans immigrants originate from Albania and Kosovo, but one in five is from Serbia or Macedonia, two countries that have been considered "safe countries of origin" since 2014. Despite this, the number of asylum applications for Serbian citizens has increased by 45 percent compared to the first seven months of 2014. Only 0.1 percent of Serbians have so far been permitted to stay in 2015. So why do they keep coming?
During the first three months of this year, 91 percent of the Serbian asylum-seekers in Germany were Roma, despite the fact that there is less discrimination against Roma in Serbia than in Hungary, the Czech Republic or Slovakia. What drives them is need. "We also want to get a piece of German prosperity -- that's why many are going," says Vitomir Mihajlovic, who is sitting in his office with a view of Belgrade's St. Mark's Church. He's president of the Roma National Council, which, he says represents 600,000 Roma.
He says all the talk in Europe of "asylum cheats" is misleading and what his people are actually looking for is "economic asylum. That means that we aren't fleeing for political reasons, but that we are nonetheless threatened." Mihajlovic says that 80 percent of Serbian Roma haven't even completed primary school and that discrimination creates a vicious cycle of suffering. The marginalization of the people who live in Mahala, a Roma settlement, starts as soon as school for most, and it doesn't take long for a sense of resignation to set in.
Conditions are at their worst during the cold winter months. To prevent people here from heading for Western Europe, Mihajlovic suggests that Germans send wood for heating, food and toiletries and undertake other short-term measures. The clock is already ticking, he warns. "Things will pick up again in September. Then the next wave will begin making its way north."
Eight People in 12 Square Meters
Halkilk Hasani is among those planning to make that journey soon. The 42-year-old spent nine years working for the garbage collection company, but he's been out of work for a long time now. He lives together with his wife and six children in a 12 square meter (130 square foot) space in Makis 1, an impoverished container settlement at the edge of Belgrade that is surrounded by trash, stray dogs and children who play on the bare earth. At least he lives here for the time being. The city wants to evict the family because they left for Germany in 2011 and, by doing so, forfeited their right to live here.
Their 2011 trip took them by bus from Belgrade to Essen, where they applied for asylum. Around a year later, officials rejected their applications, but they stayed anyway, for another 15 months. "It was like living in America," says Hasani. "We got an allowance of €900 a month as well as food and toiletries." But then, they were cut off. The police showed up one morning at 3 a.m. and drove them to the airport. They were flown back home on an Adria Airways flight from Frankfurt on Feb. 25, 2014. Hasani dug out his ID, which the German federal police stamped with the word "deported". It didn't scare him. "I was told that it is only valid for two years," he explains. He will be permitted to enter Germany again in February and he says his family plans to go again.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has some advice for the Germans. "Send our people home again and, more importantly, don't give them any money." There's nothing Vucic could use less right now than trouble with the Germans. The EU lifted the visa requirement for Serbians traveling into the Schengen area in 2009 and it would be a major setback for the prime minister and his policies of opening Serbia, which include cautious overtures to Kosovo and painful economic reforms.
But it's not just Serbian Roma who are heading to Germany. Belgrade has become a transit hub for tens of thousands of Syrians, Afghans and Iranians who are flowing into northern Europe via Turkey and Greece. The EU, their dream destination, is located just 200 kilometers from the Serbian capital and around 2,500 refugees arrive in Serbia every day. Andso many refugees are arriving in neighboring Macedonia that the government declared a state of emergency last Friday.
To send a message, Serbia's prime minister appeared on Aug. 19 in the park behind Belgrade's central station, where thousands of refugees gather prior to the last stage in the trip to Hungary. Just one day earlier, the refugees had been camped out here between mountains of trash, shreds of clothing and excrement. On the morning of the 19th, though, in expectation of the visit, the city's sanitation department cleaned up the park up so that Vucic, surrounded by cameras, could extend his "hospitality and cordiality" to the refugees. Most of those present, though, didn't even know who was speaking, so the prime minister patted a boy on the head and disappeared again.
On Thursday, the Western Balkan Conference is set to begin. Ironically, the meeting will be held inside Vienna's Hofburg Palace, the heart of the former Habsburg Empire. The countries touching the empire's former external borders still haven't found lasting peace even 100 years after it unraveled. For this year's conference, organizers have come up with something special. In the stadium where the football team Wiener Austria usually plays, heads of current EU member states are to match up against the team "FC Future EU."
That team includes Serbian Prime Minister Vucic, Kosovo Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci and Prime Minister Rama of Albania, men who wouldn't even have shaken hands not too long ago. It would be a good opportunity for these men to bury old hostilities. And to try to find a way to stop the exodus.
August 13, 2015
UNSC Genocide Vote Designed to Justify NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia
UNSC Genocide Vote Designed to Justify NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia
© AFP 2015/ STRINGER
16:11 12.07.2015(updated 16:34 12.07.2015) Get short URL
This week saw the failure of the UK-backed UNSC draft resolution calling to declare the 20-year-old mass murder of thousands of Muslims near the town of Srebrenica as genocide committed by the Serbian army; and while some Western countries strongly criticize the failure, a Russian expert explains what actually might be behind the proposed document.
Saturday, July 11, marked the 20th anniversary of the tragic events in the Muslim-majority town of the mainly Serb eastern part of Bosnia.
Back in 1995 thousands of Muslims, mainly men and boys, were murdered in and around the town of Srebrenica after it was occupied by the Bosnian Serb militia under the command of Gen. Ratko Mladic. The former general is now on trial for genocide in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, along with the former President of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina Radovan Karadžić.
© AP Photo/ Amel Emric
A Bosnian girl prays next to a coffin containing the remains of her relative perished in the Srebrenica massacre, during a funeral ceremony for the 136 victims at the Potocari memorial complex near Srebrenica, 150 kilometers (94 miles) northeast of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saturday, July 11, 2015
The massacre in Srebrenica has previously been classified as an act of genocide by the UN International Court of Justice and ICTY, now the draft resolution pushed for the same classification, claiming that a failure to adopt it will hinder reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
However, one of Russia's most well-known scholars and an expert in the Balkans, Elena Guskova, who was there on the ground during the years of the Bosnian war, believes that despite the enormity of the crime, there are insufficient grounds to consider the killings an act of genocide.
"We can't talk about genocide here," she told Rossiya 1 TV show "Vesti on Saturday". "What is genocide by definition? It is the elimination of a particular nation on the territory of another country. It is a systematic, deliberate killing. There was nothing of the kind on the territory of Srebrenica. Those were military actions."
One of Russia's most well-known scholars and an expert in the Balkans, Elena Guskova
She also debated the actual number of those killed, saying that now it stands at 8,000, but it is absolutely unclear where this figure comes from and it has fluctuated all the time, dropping down to 5,000 and then rising up to 25,000.
"This does not reflect the truth in any way," she said. "This massacre has already become a myth, which can't be either reviewed or otherwise disputed."
On Wednesday, when Russia vetoed the draft resolution, Russian envoy to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin was very clear in Moscow's position on the document.
Russian envoy to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin
"The project submitted by the delegation of the United Kingdom has turned nonconstructive, confrontational and politically motivated. It contained considerable imbalances which puts the blame for what happened entirely on one nation. An approach, which singles out just one war crime, out of all the military offences committed, is absolutely lawless and illegal and can lead to the deepening of already painful breakup within Bosnian society," he said.
Elena Guskova provided her explanation of what might actually lie behind such an insistence to lay the blame on one nation.
© AFP 2015/ ODD ANDERSEN
Forensic experts from the International war crimes tribunal in the Hague works on a pile of partly decomposed bodies, 24 July 1996 found in a mass grave in the village of Pilica some 300 km northeast of Sarajevo. The victims in the human sculpture is said to be some of the 7000 men missing after Serbs overran the Moslem enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995
"If the UK's resolution was voted for in the UN Security Council, the consequences would have been rather catastrophic for the Serbians and all the Orthodox Slavs in the Balkans. Having blamed only one nation for the genocide during the clashes between several nations back in 1990's, one could further raise a question of blaming the Serbs for everything that was going in the Balkans back then, for all the wars and all the victims."
"And, as a result, NATO actions in the Balkans back in 1999 could have been justified. NATO launched its 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia without the resolution of the UN Security Council, and with the resolution on Srebrenica they would have had an excuse: if they are guilty we could have bombed them."
Vitaly Churkin wants to leave it to historians to analyze the turn of events that led to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
© AP Photo/ Amel Emric
Gravestones are seen at sunrise at a memorial complex near Srebrenica, 150 kilometers (94 miles) northeast of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saturday, July 11, 2015
"Let the historians analyze the peripetia and the genesis of the conflict, including the role of different countries and unions, who made the hasty decisions, in the emergence of the mere conflict in Yugoslavia. Let the scholars help the secretariat of the UN and the international community to understand where our organization was too weak to act."
Guskova however gave her vision of the conflict.
"The Serbian army decided to enter Srebrenica to stop the forays of the Muslim army, which concentrated in the UN zone, in the security zone," she said.
On May 6, 1993 a UN Security Council resolution declared the town a demilitarized zone and several hundred Dutch peacekeeping forces were stationed near it to allegedly protect the enclave.
© AFP 2015/ Martijn Beekman
People wait under a banner showing portraits of victims during the Srebrenica Peace March (Mars Mira), in The Hague on July 11, 2015, in remembrance of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre
"There should have been no army at all," she added. "And when this zone was declared, then the Muslim army under the factual protection of UN and its Blue Helmets, regularly undertook forays killing, destroying and torturing the Serbian population. Before 1995, up to 4,500 Serbs were killed. And to prevent the murdering of the Serbian population, the Serbian army decided to enter Srebrenica. And it did it very quietly."
"The Serbian army marched through 43 Muslim settlements without destroying a single house and without killing a single person. And when they entered Srebrenica, they formed a column out of the Muslim officers and allowed them to leave Srebrenica for the town of Tuzla. And then there was shooting on the way and there were victims. But how it all happened remains unclear to this very day."
Vitaly Churkin also stressed that UN Security Council very conveniently chooses an occasion when to convene and when to submit a resolution, leaving out some extremely major events.
"Recently there was the 40th anniversary of the end of Vietnam War. Why haven't you convened the meeting of the UNSC then [on April 30]? Why haven't you prepared the draft resolution where you could condemn the carpet bombings of Hanoi or the use of napalm or the mass killing of 500 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai by Lieutenant William Calley, among others, who was generously paroled by the US president?" he questioned.
"Recently there was the 10th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq by the US and the UK [March 19,], which resulted in the death of millions of civilians and the cruelest ongoing crisis in the country. Why haven't either the US or the UK suggested adopting the UNSC resolution which would have called things by their proper names?"
These questions just hang in the air.
Meanwhile, Churkin was the only delegate to call for a minute of silence to be observed in mourning for those who died in Srebrenica 20 years ago.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/world/20150712/1024525133.html#ixzz3iibShbaD
July 08, 2015
"The real story behind Srebrenica" - General MacKenzie
The real story behind Srebrenica
LEWIS MacKENZIE
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jul. 14, 2005 12:00AM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Mar. 17, 2009 4:04PM EDT
This week marked the 10th anniversary of the United Nations' second greatest failure since its creation in 1945 -- the genocide in Rwanda being the undisputed No. 1. With much fanfare, the ceremonies focused on the massacre of "up to" 8,000 Bosnian men and boys by General Ratko Mladic's Bosnian Serb army in Srebrenica in July of 1995.
In the vast majority of recent media reports, the background and responsibilities for the disaster in Srebrenica were absent. Preferred was the simple explanation: a black and white event in which the Serbs were solely to blame.
As someone who played a modest role in some of the events preceding the massacre, perhaps a little background will provide some context. In early 1993, after my release from the Canadian Forces, I was asked to appear before a number of U.S. congressional committees dealing with Bosnia. A few months earlier, my successor in the UN Protection Force, General Philippe Morillon, had --against the advice of his UN masters -- bullied his way into Srebrenica accompanied by a tiny contingent of Canadian soldiers and told its citizens they were now under the protection of the UN. The folks at the UN in New York were furious with Gen. Morillon but, with the media on his side, they were forced to introduce the "safe haven" concept for six areas of Bosnia, including Srebrenica.
Wondering what this concept would mean, one U.S. senator asked me how many troops it would take to defend the safe havens. "Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 135,000 troops," I replied. It had to be that large because of the Serb artillery's range. The new UN commander on the ground in Bosnia, Belgian General Francis Briquemont, said he agreed with my assessment but was prepared to try to defend the areas with 65,000 additional troops. The secretary-general of the day, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, went to the Security Council and recommended 27,500 additional troops. The Security Council approved a force of 12,000 and, six months later, fewer than 2,000 additional soldiers had been added to UNPROFOR for the safe-haven tasks.
Then the Security Council changed the wording of the safe-haven resolution from "the UN will defend the safe havens" to "by their presence will the UN deter attacks on the safe havens." In other words, a tiny, token, lightly armed UN contingent would be placed as sacrificial lambs in Srebrenica to "deter" the Bosnian Serb army.
It didn't take long for the Bosnian Muslims to realize that the UN was in no position to live up to its promise to "protect" Srebrenica. With some help from outsiders, they began to infiltrate thousands of fighters and weapons into the safe haven. As the Bosnian Muslim fighters became better equipped and trained, they started to venture outside Srebrenica, burning Serb villages and killing their occupants before quickly withdrawing to the security provided by the UN's safe haven. These attacks reached a crescendo in 1994 and carried on into early 1995 after the Canadian infantry company that had been there for a year was replaced by a larger Dutch contingent.
The Bosnian Serbs might have had the heaviest weapons, but the Bosnian Muslims matched them in infantry skills that were much in demand in the rugged terrain around Srebrenica. As the snow cleared in the spring of 1995, it became obvious to Nasar Oric, the man who led the Bosnian Muslim fighters, that the Bosnian Serb army was going to attack Srebrenica to stop him from attacking Serb villages. So he and a large number of his fighters slipped out of town. Srebrenica was left undefended with the strategic thought that, if the Serbs attacked an undefended town, surely that would cause NATO and the UN to agree that NATO air strikes against the Serbs were justified. And so the Bosnian Serb army strolled into Srebrenica without opposition.
What happened next is only debatable in scale. The Bosnian Muslim men and older boys were singled out and the elderly, women and children were moved out or pushed in the direction of Tuzla and safety. It's a distasteful point, but it has to be said that, if you're committing genocide, you don't let the women go since they are key to perpetuating the very group you are trying to eliminate. Many of the men and boys were executed and buried in mass graves.
Evidence given at The Hague war crimes tribunal casts serious doubt on the figure of "up to" 8,000 Bosnian Muslims massacred. That figure includes "up to" 5,000 who have been classified as missing. More than 2,000 bodies have been recovered in and around Srebrenica, and they include victims of the three years of intense fighting in the area. The math just doesn't support the scale of 8,000 killed.
Nasar Oric, the Bosnian Muslim military leader in Srebrenica, is currently on trial in The Hague for war crimes committed during his "defence" of the town. Evidence to date suggests that he was responsible for killing as many Serb civilians outside Srebrenica as the Bosnian Serb army was for massacring Bosnian Muslims inside the town.
Two wrongs never made a right, but those moments in history that shame us all because of our indifference should not be viewed in isolation without the context that created them.
Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie was the first commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.
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