From Steve Clemons’ blog in the USA:
NeoCons Trash George Soros in Attempt to Distract from Their Complicity in Iraq “War of Choice” Disaster
George Soros‘s words often kick up storms. And another storm has hit.
This time it’s about comparing America today and Nazi Germany — and how states deal with their not-so-pleasant pasts.
Just for the record, Soros also included Turkey and Japan in his mix of history-denying countries that faced obstacles in approaching their futures in a healthy way. …
Soros is worth something around a couple or few tens of billions of dollars and donates through his charities half a billion dollars a year, most of this to help cultivate civil society development in former Soviet bloc countries. …
But the right wing hates George Soros. And the NeoCons (on the right or the left) hate him more.
I just don’t get it though because he has actually helped change societies successfully and is a hero in much of the world.
The neocons too have wanted to change the world — albeit with guns, while Soros did it through education and political and civil institution buildng [sic].
One must surmise then that they are both jealous of his success and have a counterproductive obsession with military-driven social change, something that rarely if ever works. …
Here, I have to disagree with Steve Clemons.
Not on the futility, I might add: hypocrisy, of supposedly bringing democracy with bombs; but on Soros.
Soros supported the NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999.
Which did not make life better for Serbs, Kosovo Albanians now facing 80% unemployment, or anyone else.
In this way Soros himself helped to build up the militarist madness we see today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.
Soros may be a favourite scapegoat of the loony Bushist far Right. Which does not give him automatically any saint or sage or hero status though.
However, George Soros, like anyone else, has the right to make historical comparisons (which as a rule establish relative, not absolute, similarity) without intimidation by hysterical Bush supporters.
Clemons continues:
So, what exactly did George Soros say.
Here, is is [sic] a recap from the New York Post that adds to an original item written by Floyd Norris’s “Davos Diary” for the New York Times:
After asserting that the United States is recognizing the error it made in Iraq, Soros said, “To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future.”
He went on to say that Turkey and Japan are still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany’s rejection of its Nazi-era past.
“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” Soros said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”
Soros spokesman Michael Vachon told Page Six: “There is nothing unpatriotic about demanding accountability from the president.
Those responsible for taking America into this needless war should do us all a favor and retire from public office.”
The International Crisis Group: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
so is it benevolent? fascisme
“Say “fascism” to anyone you meet, and you will conjure images of coal-scuttle helmets, of Nazi boot-heels clicking in terrible unison down Berlin streets during dark days that only a few remaining among the living remember. Each day, members of the generation that heard those heels for themselves go into the ground, taking with them whispered words of warning. I saw it for myself, they whisper before they pass. See this tattooed number? See this scar? It happened. It was real.
Say “fascism” to anyone you meet, and you will be greeted with the boilerplate response of the blithely overconfident: such a thing cannot happen here. This is the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. Ours is a nation of laws, of checks and balances, of righteousness and decency. Our laws and traditions stand as a bulwark against the rise of totalitarian madness. It cannot happen here. Thus we are indoctrinated into the school of our own assumed greatness.
“We must disenthrall ourselves,” said Abraham Lincoln, and so we must, because it can happen here. It is already happening. All the parroted recitations of grade school civics cannot erase the fact that a new order is rising. Call it “secret fascism” or “smiley-faced fascism.” Call it a quiet dictatorship. Call it what you like, but it is here with us in America today, and it is growing.
To be sure, there are no coal-scuttle helmets lined in ranks down our broad avenues, no Tonton Macoute savaging dissidents, no Khmer Rouge slaughtering intellectuals and herding citizens from cities to die by the millions on roads littered with skulls. The core strength of our new fascism is that it speaks softly. It does not present itself in such an obvious way that those who subsist on the dogmas of our greatness can point and say there, there it is, I see it.
This new fascism is not fed only by lies, though to be sure the lies are there in preposterous abundance. This new fascism is fed by myths, our myths, the myths by which we rock ourselves to sleep. This new fascism is in truth an elemental fascism, reborn today by a confluence of events; the diligent work of the few, in combination with the passivity of the many, have brought forth this new order.
The writer Umberto Eco, in a 1995 essay titled “Ur-Fascism,” delineated several core elements that have existed in one form or another in every fascist state in history: “Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader. Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect. The national identity is provided by the nation’s enemies. Argument is tantamount to treason. Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of ‘the people’ in the grand opera that is the state.”
Take these one at a time.
“Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.”
George W. Bush has all but gelded Congress in recent months, attaching so-called “signing statements” to a variety of laws, which state that the president may act beyond the laws whenever he so chooses. The United States, fashioned as a republic, has as its voice the congressional body. This is all but finished. To cement his victory over the parliamentary system, Bush has put forth one Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, a man who believes in the ultimate power of the one leader over the many. The gelded congress does not appear able to keep this man from the high court, thus rendering the balancing branches of government into a satellite system of the Executive.
“Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect.”
The supremacy of religious fundamentalism within and without government carries this banner before all others. What is reason in the face of the zealot’s faith? Science has become a watered-down vessel for Intelligent Design, and the incontrovertible truths of empirical data are slapped aside. Spencer Tracy, in the film “Inherit the Wind,” bellows the warning here: “Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, backward, through the glorious ages of that sixteenth century, when bigots burned the man who dared to bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.”
“The national identity is provided by the nation’s enemies.”
This has been with us for generations now. Our nation defined ourselves through a comparison to the Nazis, to the Imperial Japanese, and then through decades of comparison to Communism. Terrorism has supplanted all of these, hammered into place on a Tuesday in September by the actions of madmen. We are not them, all is justified in the struggle against them, and so we are defined.
“Argument is tantamount to treason.”
All one need do to see this in action is spend some hours with the Fox News channel. Freedom fries. Why do you hate America? You are with us or you are with the terrorists. Watch what you say.
“Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear.”
The manipulation of this population by fear has been ham-fisted, to be sure, but has also been cruelly effective. We do not want the evidence to be a mushroom cloud. Weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda in Iraq. Nuclear designs in Iran. Plastic sheeting and duct tape. Orange alert. Argument becomes tantamount to treason simply because everyone has been made to feel fear at all times. A frightened populace is easily governed, and governs itself; this lesson was well-learned in the duck-and-cover days of the Cold War. Those lessons have been masterfully applied once again. Today, the citizenry polices itself, and the herd moves as one body. Even the surveillance of innocent citizens by the state is brushed off as a necessary evil. Remember: you are being watched.
“Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of ‘the people’ in the grand opera that is the state.”
Once, we lived by the glorious simplicity of the vote. Casting a ballot was the single most patriotic duty a citizen could perform, an affirmation of all we held dear and true. Today, we live in the nation of the vanishing voter. Power has been so far removed from the people by those with money and influence that most see voting as a waste of time. Add to this the growing control of the implements of voting and vote-counting by partisan corporations, and the rule of We the People is left in ashes.
We must disenthrall ourselves from the idea that our institutions, our traditions, the barriers that protect us from absolute and authoritarian powers, cannot be broken down. They are being dismantled a brick at a time. The separation of powers has already been annihilated. It is a whispered fascism, not yet marching down your street or pounding upon your door in the dead of night. But it is here, and it is laying deep roots. We must listen beyond the whispered fascism of today to the shouted fascism of tomorrow. We must look beyond the lies and the myths, beyond the dogmas by which we sleep.”
They are afraid of the old for their memory,
Sorry more a rant about sugestive illusion.lol.
They are afraid of the young for their innocence
They afraid of the graves of their victims in faraway places
They are afraid of history. They are afraid of freedom.
They are afraid of truth. They are afraid of democracy.
So why the hell are we afraid of them? … For they are afraid of us
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German parody of the nazi Horst Wessel Song:
1.Die Preise hoch,
Die Schnauze fest geschlossen
Hunger marschiert
In ruhig festem Schritt
Hitler und Goebbels
Unsre beiden Volksgenossen,
Hungern im Geist
Mit uns Proleten mit.
2. Im Arbeitsamt
Wird SOS geblasen,
Zum Stempeln stehn
Wir alle Mann bereit.
Statt Brot und Arbeit
Gibt der Führer uns nur Phrasen
Und wer was sagt,
Lebt nur noch kurze Zeit.
3. Die Straße stinkt
Nach braunen Batallionen,
Ein Pöstchen winkt
Dem Sturmabteilungsmann.
Vielleicht verdient als Bonze
Morgen er Millionen,
Doch das geht uns
‘nen braunen Scheißdreck an!
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,464291,00.html
Der Spiegel
February 5, 2007
THE FUTURE OF KOSOVO
How High Is the Price for Peace?
By Renate Flottau and Walter Mayr
-Haradinaj’s quiet life on the farm ended when his
son, Ramush, a former bouncer in a Swiss nightclub,
rose to prominence as the commander of the KLA and
then became Kosovo’s prime minister in 2004. In the
process the Haradinaj farm developed into a stage of
sorts for secret diplomacy in Kosovo.
-[I]n March 2005, when high-ranking United Nations and
NATO representatives met in Kosovo, the farmhouse was
turned into a banquet hall where the officials could
meet with Haradinaj….
-Ramush Haradinaj, a.k.a. “Smajl”, was accused of 37
counts of crimes against humanity, including murder,
kidnapping and torture, during the Kosovo war in 1998.
The indictment also stated that his brothers, Daut,
Frasher and Shkelzen, were among the members of the
“criminal organization” headed by Haradinaj, and that
the family home in Glodjane was periodically used as a
command center to plan and commit the crimes.
Thirty-two corpses of Serbs, gypsies and Albanians,
some severely mutilated, were found near the farm.
-When he returned from The Hague in June 2005, where
the case against him was temporarily suspended,
Haradinaj – with the blessing of the UN Mission in
Kosovo (UNMIK) – simply picked up where he left off.
-Three former rebel leaders from the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), party bosses Haradinaj and Hashim Thaçi,
as well as Prime Minister Agim Çeku, are the key
players on the province’s political stage.
-When the event ends Haradinaj jumps into a waiting
car in front of the center and is taken to a secret
restaurant. At the restaurant, Besiana-F, he meets Ali
Ahmeti, the leader of the 2001 Albanian uprising in
Macedonia. Ahmeti and his equally famous uncle, Fazli
Veliu – both of whom are on a US terrorism watch list
and have been banned from entering the United States
since May 2003 – have crossed the border into Kosovo
to join in the day’s celebration.
As the decision over the future of Kosovo approaches,
tensions are growing in the western portion of the
province. A return to violence is a distinct
possibility. Meanwhile, a presumed war criminal
remains in power with the blessing of the
international community.
No decision has been reached yet, and Kosovo is still
part of Serbia. But history is already being rewritten
in the villages of Kosovo Polje and Metohija, where
ethnic Albanians are building heroes’ memorials to
fallen brothers – pilgrimage sites for
post-independence Kosovo.
Glodjane, a tiny village at the base of the Prokletije
or Cursed Mountains, is that kind of a place. More and
more dead Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters are
being reburied in the heroes’ cemetery there. A museum
designed to resemble a Kulla – a traditional Albanian
stone house with deep-set windows – towers over graves
adorned with plastic flowers. Behind the museum, two
additional stone towers are being constructed to honor
the Haradinaj clan.
Three of the family’s sons are already buried in the
hallowed ground. A fourth son was recently released
after serving a prison sentence for manslaughter. A
fifth son, former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush
Haradinaj, has been summoned to appear before the
International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
In and around Glodjane, where Kosovo borders Albania
and Montenegro to the west and where Albanian freedom
fighters are based, conflicts with the authorities –
and the kind of deadly toll the Haradinajs have
suffered – are considered badges of honor. This is
especially true of those who died fighting the Serbs,
long the heavy-handed rulers of Kosovo’s majority
ethnic Albanian population.
The Haradinaj house has had the air of a rebel fort
from the beginnings of the guerilla war against
Belgrade’s forces in 1997. The family’s farmhouse
stands on the outskirts of Glodjane, where its four
whitewashed walls present a defiant front against the
outside world. The coat of arms of the KLA,
established in the mid-1990s, is emblazoned over the
front door.
After calling out several times, we are greeted by an
adolescent boy standing in the hallway. He leads us
through the inner courtyard to the living room, to a
roaring fire under the Albanian flag, adorned with its
twin black eagles. Plum brandy and cigarettes are
served, and then the master of the house appears.
Hilmi Haradinaj is a white-haired patriarch in his
early seventies. He asks us to excuse the “poor
circumstances” in which he lives. The war against the
Serbs, he says, has destroyed much of his estate,
leaving him with only five cows, a handful of sheep
and this house. Then he discusses Kosovo’s imminent
independence and the hope that the years of violence
will soon come to an end. He nods quietly and his son
refills our glasses.
Nowadays Hilmi Haradinaj performs his host duties with
a mixture of traditional politeness and professional
coolness. Haradinaj’s quiet life on the farm ended
when his son, Ramush, a former bouncer in a Swiss
nightclub, rose to prominence as the commander of the
KLA and then became Kosovo’s prime minister in 2004.
In the process the Haradinaj farm developed into a
stage of sorts for secret diplomacy in Kosovo.
In the early days, when the war was still raging, it
could easily happen that a retired German military
officer turned Kosovo war observer would be greeted
with a Kalashnikov jammed into his belly during a
surprise visit to the Haradinaj homestead. But in
March 2005, when high-ranking United Nations and NATO
representatives met in Kosovo, the farmhouse was
turned into a banquet hall where the officials could
meet with Haradinaj to discuss bringing peace to the
region.
On that evening, the Western representatives were
already aware of the charges brought against Haradinaj
by Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte at the
International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
According to the indictment, Ramush Haradinaj, a.k.a.
“Smajl”, was accused of 37 counts of crimes against
humanity, including murder, kidnapping and torture,
during the Kosovo war in 1998.
The indictment also stated that his brothers, Daut,
Frasher and Shkelzen, were among the members of the
“criminal organization” headed by Haradinaj, and that
the family home in Glodjane was periodically used as a
command center to plan and commit the crimes.
Thirty-two corpses of Serbs, gypsies and Albanians,
some severely mutilated, were found near the farm. So
far Haradinaj has denied all accusations.
Sören Jessen-Petersen, the former UN administrator,
long viewed the presumed war criminal as a “close
partner and friend” who “sacrificed and contributed so
much to a better future for Kosovo.”
He was eventually replaced, but there has been no
fundamental change in course. When he returned from
The Hague in June 2005, where the case against him was
temporarily suspended, Haradinaj – with the blessing
of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) – simply picked up
where he left off.
Today he obtains UNMIK’s approval for his public
appearances, is chairman of the small governing party,
the AAK, and sips whisky and smokes Cohiba cigars with
hand-picked guests at his ostentatious mansion in the
diplomatic district on Dragodan Hill in the Kosovo
capital of Pristina. At a ceremony to honor the Kosovo
Protection Corps (TMK), the most prominent seat,
between representatives from Washington and London,
was reserved for Haradinaj.
Despite the indictment, it is entirely possible that
Haradinaj’s level-headedness in the past two years
helped keep the situation under control in the
province. The price, though, has been high. The
international community, with UN Resolution 1244,
obligated itself to protect human rights and respect
for the law in Kosovo. It is hard to see how continued
cooperation with Haradinaj is consistent with that
obligation.
It gets worse. A report by the UN police force in
Kosovo has linked Haradinaj to the cocaine trade. And
according to a 2005 analysis by Germany’s foreign
intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(BND), Haradinaj and his associates play a key role in
“a broad spectrum of criminal, political and military
activities that significantly affect the security
situation throughout Kosovo. The group, which counts
about 100 members, is involved in drug and weapons
smuggling, as well as illegal trading in dutiable
items.”
If the BND analysis is correct, Haradinaj has
apparently made himself a major player in one of
Kosovo’s key industries. According to experts, the
€700 million budget of this province, 90 percent of
which is populated by ethnic Albanians, pales in
comparison to the revenues earned in the drug trade in
Kosovo.
Indeed, aside from the drug trade, there isn’t much
else to do in Kosovo. It has minimal economic growth,
over 40 percent unemployment, and a growing number of
young people in a region with little manufacturing.
And Kosovo’s population has almost tripled within the
last century. The result is that exports make up
barely 6 percent of the volume of foreign trade; aside
from a bit of scrap metal, little of value leaves the
province.
For many young people, the proposal for a Kosovo with
limited independence – presented by UN Special Envoy
Martti Ahtisaari in Belgrade and Pristina on Friday –
doesn’t go far enough. The dissatisfaction with the
region’s de-facto rulers from the West, represented
since 1999 by a string of envoys from the UN, NATO,
the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), and the European Union, is deep seated.
“Wish you were not here,” reads a sticker Albin Kurti,
a self-proclaimed popular leader and head of the
“Self-Determination” movement, has been handing out
for some time.
The message Kurti and his group seek to convey is that
they want Kosovo’s secret masters – the Land
Rover-driving international contingent of
administrative officials with padded expense accounts,
the academics who come here to satisfy their curiosity
about Kosovo’s ethnic groups and the veteran
technocrats with lengthy international resumes who
come to foist their solutions on the province – to
disappear as quickly as possible.
People like the seven Irish businessmen who came to
Kosovo on a €10 million contract to clean up the books
of a local power plant are simply no longer as
welcome. It has become too obvious that the
protectorate in Kosovo primarily serves those in the
seats of power.
“The UNMIK people openly admit that they use the
double salaries they earn here to buy apartments in
London,” says opposition leader Kurti. “And people
like Haradinaj are also making money on the status
quo. UNMIK protects them so that they keep the people
under control, meanwhile allowing them to continue
making their fortunes.”
Kosovo has yet to develop a civilian elite, says
former Prime Minister Bujar Bukoshi, now in exile.
Three former rebel leaders from the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), party bosses Haradinaj and Hashim Thaçi,
as well as Prime Minister Agim Çeku, are the key
players on the province’s political stage.
The Democratic League of Kosovo, formerly the
strongest party, has broken apart into two camps. The
party’s internal differences have become so
contentious that finger pointing among its members
recently escalated into an all-out brawl in
parliament. Bukoshi derisively referred to the
incident as “a painstaking process of democratization
with fists and chair legs.”
He too favors immediate independence for Kosovo, at
least in principle, says the former prime minister,
but adds that no one will be served by a new republic
headed by thugs and drug dealers. “I don’t want an
independent Kosovo ruled by scoundrels like
Haradinaj,” says Bukoshi. “One needs European people
for a European country.”
The UN’s final decision over Kosovo’s future will
ultimately depend on what happens in Haradinaj’s
native region in the western portion of the province.
The Serbs reverently refer to the area as Metohija, or
the Land of Monasteries, while the Albanians call it
Dukagjini, after a freedom fighter from the Middle
Ages.
But whatever name one attaches to the region, it
represents the nucleus of the Kosovo conflict, a place
where the pride and wild customs of Albanian mountain
tribes collide with the cultural traditions and sense
of mission felt by the area’s Serb population. “Your
soul is in our body,” the Albanians say to the Serbs,
meaning that while the Serbs may have their
monasteries, the Albanians have their young people.
Because of its proximity to Albania and the large sums
of money family members who have emigrated send home
to their families, money and weapons abound in the
area surrounding the small city of Deèani. To this day
an impressive contingent of KLA veterans in the region
stands ready for its next mission.
According to a report by the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group, “the groups in Deèani
could easily muster a substantial force to either
attack UNMIK or respond to Serbian intervention in
northern Kosovo.”
“Making predictions is difficult,” says Nazmi
Selmanaj, the mayor of Deèani, “but if the UN fails to
meet our expectations I cannot rule out anything.”
He is one of the power players who will play an
important role in the region if Ramush Haradinaj is
forced to pack his bags and head for The Hague in
February, as has been announced.
Like the Haradinajs, Selmanaj comes from Glodjane and
has the necessary connections to those in power. His
brother, a cabinet minister in Pristina, made
headlines shortly before Christmas when he dismissed
an advisor who had been arrested in connection with
the seizure of antitank weapons, machine guns and
ammunition.
Although everyone is conjuring up peace these days,
the real tone is being set behind the scenes.
That was the case at a ceremony to commemorate the
death of Yusuf Gervalla, the poet and champion of the
Albanian cause who was murdered in 1982 and whose
legacy the KLA veterans invoke. The cultural center in
Deèani is packed when a thin young man in a dark suit
walks up to the microphone.
The announcer barely has a chance to introduce the
evening’s featured speaker as “the former commander of
the heroic Jusuf Gervalla Brigade, General Daut
Haradinaj,” before Ramush Haradinaj’s younger brother
begins his speech. He mentions milestones on the road
to independence for Kosovo and says: “We are closer to
this goal today than ever before.”
The audience applauds. The fact that Daut Haradinaj,
released in March 2006 after serving a prison sentence
for manslaughter but now in mortal danger because of
an ongoing feud with a rival clan, is appearing
publicly once again is seen as a sign of
self-confidence. Many also see his appearance as a
sign of his willingness to fill the breach if his
brother Ramush is sentenced at his upcoming trial in
The Hague.
When the event ends Haradinaj jumps into a waiting car
in front of the center and is taken to a secret
restaurant. At the restaurant, Besiana-F, he meets Ali
Ahmeti, the leader of the 2001 Albanian uprising in
Macedonia. Ahmeti and his equally famous uncle, Fazli
Veliu – both of whom are on a US terrorism watch list
and have been banned from entering the United States
since May 2003 – have crossed the border into Kosovo
to join in the day’s celebration.
Upon leaving the restaurant Ahmeti and Haradinaj
embrace briefly. Then they climb into SUVs with
darkened windows. As a decoy, their bodyguards drive a
black Mercedes S-600, followed by a truck with two gun
barrels protruding from a load of cabbages on its bed.
While the UN continues to wrestle over Kosovan
independence, radical forces in and around Deèani are
already a few steps ahead. “We are all Albanians.
Enver Hoxha was our president,” protestors chanted
last year at a demonstration in front of the city hall
to commemorate the former Stalinist Albanian
dictator’s 98th birthday. Then they dispatched a
congratulatory telegram to Hoxha’s widow in Tirana.
Do such events reflect confused dreams of a Greater
Albania or are they a coolly calculated provocation?
Everyone in Deèani – including the international
administrators – knows that the Hoxha commemorative
ceremony was organized by the same KLA veteran leaders
who routinely stage protest marches whenever one of
the Haradinajs is in trouble or someone wants to
intimidate the orthodox monks in the monastery on the
outskirts of Deèani.
But for the international administrators this is no
reason to take the agitator himself to task.
After all, they still have Ramush. The commanding NATO
general simply reaches for the phone and calls Ramush
personally whenever there is an incident – as when
seven rocket-propelled grenades landed on the
monastery grounds in 2004.
Ramush also knows how best to deal with protestors,
such as those who blocked the access road to the
monastery in April 2006. He simply reaches for the
phone, chastises the agitators – his former
compatriots from their days on the front – and the
case is resolved.
For some time now, the monks at Deèani’s almost
700-year-old Orthodox monastery haven’t dared set foot
in the city without an escort. “I am very concerned,
almost more so than during the war,” says Father Sava,
the deputy abbot. “We would like to be part of the new
society, but we don’t know what it will look like.
Everything here is resolved through family channels.
The law means nothing.”
An eerie silence hangs over the monastery grounds on
this evening. As always, Italian armed personnel
carriers are in position in front of the monastery,
which has been declared a UNESCO World Cultural
Heritage site. While Father Sava sits in the monastery
library and talks about the future, church bells ring
to announce Thursday prayers.
At precisely seven o’clock, the abbot, standing in the
flickering candlelight in the church’s central space
beneath 14th-century icons, opens the coffin of King
Stefan, the founder of the monastery, who died in
1331.
The smell of incense fills the air, and the hand of
the dead king protrudes visibly from beneath a thick
layer of gold brocade in the coffin.
The hand is long and delicate, and a gold ring on one
of the fingers contrasts sharply with the brown,
almost leathery skin. Before the war even Albanians
came to the church at the Deèani Monastery to see the
Medieval king’s miraculously preserved hand.
Nowadays the Serbs are the only ones who come to visit
their reliquary – 28 monks, four old refugee women and
a few laborers wait in the shadows between the
church’s stone walls.
According to the monastery’s abbot, one Albanian has
inquired several times recently about visiting the
monastery – Ramush Haradinaj. But, the abbot adds, he
felt compelled to deny Haradinaj’s request. “That step
would be too early,” he says. “Haradinaj still has The
Hague ahead of him.”
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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Bush wants independence for Kosovo
Kazakhstan News.Net
Saturday 9th June, 2007
U.S. President George Bush wants a plan for Kosovo’s UN backed independence to take immediate effect.
UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari has put forward a blueprint for Kosovan independence in April, which Mr Bush wants implemented.
The U.S. president was speaking after holding talks with the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, during a visit to Rome.
Mr Bush expressed frustration about the lack of international consensus on the question of Kosovo independence from Serbia and wants Russian and Serbian opposition to be ignored.
The province is still part of Serbia.
After the talks, riot police used tear gas against anti-Bush demonstrators.
The U.S. president is now going to Albania on the next leg of his European tour, which has already taken him to the G8 summit in Germany and Poland.
http://www.kazakhstannews.net/story/255580
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Oregon judge knocks down part of Patriot Act
Posted by: “Jack” miscStonecutter@earthlink.net bongo_fury2004
Thu Sep 27, 2007 1:46 am (PST)
Oregon judge knocks down part of Patriot Act
Wed Sep 26, 9:26 PM ET
SEATTLE (Reuters) – An Oregon judge on Wednesday ruled that two
provisions of the Patriot Act violated the U.S. Constitution’s
protection against unlawful searches and seizures.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled in favor of Brandon Mayfield, a
lawyer wrongly arrested by the FBI in 2004 for possible ties to the
Madrid train bombings, who challenged the secret searches of his home
and office.
The judge said the amendments made by the Patriot Act to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the government to conduct searches
and monitor American citizens without probable cause, which is typically
required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“The defendant here is asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill
of Rights by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any
real meaning. This court declines to do so,” Aiken wrote in her ruling.
In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said, “We are
reviewing the decision, and while we have no further comment, we are
reviewing all our options.”
Aiken’s ruling is the second legal blow delivered to the Patriot Act in
less than a month. A district judge in New York said a provision in the
Patriot Act that requires people who are formally contacted by the FBI
for information to keep it a secret is unconstitutional.
The anti-terror Patriot Act, enacted by Congress after the September 11,
2001, attacks on the United States, expanded the rights of law
enforcement agencies and eased restrictions on foreign intelligence
gathering.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070927/pl_nm/security_oregon_ruling_dc_2
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