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The great 2012 doomsday scare, frightful rumors and gossip are spreading. Already more than a half dozen books are marketing, to eager fans, astronomical fears about 2012 End Times. Opening in theaters on Friday, Nov. 13, will be 2012, a $200-million disaster movie that seems designed to break all records for disaster spectacles. Two other major movies about the 2012 doomsday are also reported to be in the works. Incorrect doomsday predictions have taken place several times in each of the past several centuries. Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 21st 2012. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed, but none have been accepted by mainstream scholarship.

Scientific facts according to NASA:

The Mayan calendar does not end in December 2012. Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period, but then – just as your calendar begins again on January 1 - another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar. It's the end of Baktun 13. The Maya calendar was based on multiple cycles of time, and the baktun was one of them. A baktun is 144,000 days: a little more than 394 years. Although some ancient inscriptions turn 13 baktuns into an important reset milestone, others imply that the calendar simply keeps running. For instance, it takes 20 baktuns to make a pictun. There is no evidence that they saw the calendar and a world age ending in either transcendence or catastrophe on December 21, 2012.

There is no Galactic alignment with the center of the Milky Way in 2012.
In fact, astronomy cannot pinpoint such a "galactic alignment" to within a year, much less a day. The alignment depends on the rather arbitrary modern definition of the galactic equator, and/or the visual appearance of the Milky Way. There is no precise definition of the Milky Way's edges. It's almost a sidelight that the winter-solstice sun will never actually "eclipse" the galaxy's true center, the pointlike radio source marking the Milky Way's central black hole. Moreover, the winter-solstice sun won’t even pass closest to it on the sky for another 200 years. There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

Nibiru, a purported large object headed toward Earth, simply put - does not exist. There is no credible evidence - telescopic or otherwise - for this object's existence. There is also no evidence of any kind for its gravitational affects upon bodies in our solar system. The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012? The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. Nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

The polar shift theory. There are claims of relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway. A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles.

Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012? Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

We will not be entering the galactic plane, we will not align with the central black hole, we will not enter an alignment of all the planets of our solar system, and we will not be in any obvious way positioned so that we are exposed to a logical threat. Claims of a planet X passing near by in that year are also extremely unbelievable unless it is made of dark matter or some other exotic composition which prevents us already seeing its approach. There is nothing to suggest that we are about to see physical pole shifts even assuming such events are just possible, or that we can expect a super volcano eruption, incoming comets, deadly plagues, alien attacks or other massive physical upheaval. Such things do and will occur again on Earth, but stating they will manifest on 21-12-2012 is a reach backed by precious little hard evidence. ... So, the only doomsday scenario left is the one where we, the mankind, destroy each other and our planet. But the question remains: Who is spreading the panic and why? TO BE CONTINUED...

List of Links to Articles About 2012
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The United Nations Security Council said early Tuesday that it deeply regretted the loss of lives on the humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza and condemned the actions that led to the deaths.

"The Security Council deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force during the Israeli military operation in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza," the council said in a statement. "The council in this context condemns those acts which resulted in the loss of at least 10 civilians and expresses condolences to the families."

Israel instituted a blockade on Gaza in January 2006, when Hamas won democratic elections in the Palestinian territories. The U.N. has described the blockade of Gaza by Israel as the "collective punishment" of the Palestinian people living there. The statement also said the "only viable solution to the conflict is a two-state solution with an independent and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its neighbors. The statements reflected the international community's strong disapproval of Monday's events in the high seas, when Israeli soldiers stormed the six ships in international waters about 65km off the Gaza coast. The ships with about 700 pro-Palestinian activists were carrying 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Gaza, the coastal territory under a crippling Israeli siege. Israeli commandos rappelled down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade on Monday, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a bloody raid that left at least 10 people dead and sparking protests in Arab capitals across the world. Bloodied passengers sprawled on the deck and troops dived into the sea to save themselves amid hand-to-hand fighting that injured dozens of activists and six soldiers. Hundreds of activists were towed from the international waters to Israeli detention centers and hospitals. Israeli spin masters have been going into overdrive, doing their best possible to spin this event as though the Israeli commandos were not the ones attacking but rather the attack was perpetrated by people on board. In this case, we're looking at a humanitarian aid convoy, with prominent people and activists, clearly not a military target in any way whatsoever. Hamas, the Palestinian group which governs the Gaza Strip, said the assault was a "massacre" and called on the international community to intervene. The attack earned Israel widespread international condemnation, with many countries canceling planned military exercises with Israel and visits from Israeli officials. The incident could have especially dire consequences for Israel’s relationship with Turkey, a major power in the region and historically one of the few Muslim countries that have maintained strong ties with Israel. Relations between the two countries had already hit a low point in recent months. Turkey has attempted to reassert its dominance in the Middle East after largely giving up on its attempts to fully integrate into the Euro zone, which have been met with resistance. The Turkish foreign ministry posted a statement on its website Monday condemning the raid in the strongest language yet:

Israel has once again clearly demonstrated that it does not value human lives and peaceful initiatives through targeting innocent civilians. We strongly condemn these inhuman acts of Israel. This grave incident which took place in high seas in gross violation of international law might cause irreversible consequences in our relations...

Whatsoever the motives might be, such actions against civilians who are involved only in peaceful activities cannot be accepted. Israel will have to bear the consequences of these actions which constitute a violation of international law.

Turkey had been the unofficial sponsor of the aid flotilla, giving its implicit support to the Turkish humanitarian organization Insani Yardim Vakfi, which sent a large passenger ship and another cargo ship. The Free Gaza organization said Monday that at least six of the dead were Turkish citizens, and thousands of people gathered in Istanbul to protest the Israeli raid, chanting “murderous Israel, you will drown in the blood you shed.”Subscribe in a reader

An explosion and fire on a British Petroleum drilling rig on April 20, on the eve of Earth Day, left 11 workers missing and presumed dead. The rig sank two days later about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. After the blast, the flow of oil should have been stopped by a blowout preventer, but the mechanism failed. The oil slick, which already stretches over an area the size of West Virginia, is growing rapidly as more than 200,000 gallons of oil per day gush from the ruptured well on the ocean floor. At that rate, the spill could pass the Exxon Valdez 1989 disaster in Alaska as the worst oil spill in the nation's history. The oil threatens oyster beds, shrimp, bluefin tuna, and many other kinds of seafood. A pod of sperm whales and sea turtles in the northern Gulf are also in great danger. Oil is especially harmful to sea birds. The sticky oil robs feathers of their ability to insulate from the cold. Birds can get sick from licking the toxic goo off their feathers.
BP was the exploratory well's owner and overall operator, Transocean the rig's owner and Halliburton a subcontractor that was encasing the well pipe in cement before plugging it in anticipation of future production. Hearings were held in Washington DC on Tuesday in which senior executives from BP, Transocean and Halliburton were asked to account for the "cascade of failures" at the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform prior to the catastrophic rupture in the wellhead. Each company defended its own operations and raised questions about its partners in the project. Tuesday's back-to-back hearings were the first congressional inquiry into the April 20 incident, which has since grown a massive environmental and economic disaster. Journalist Greg Palast, who took part in the investigation into the BP Exxon Valdez oil disaster of 1989, blames British Petroleum for cutting its safety budget, which led to the accident.
“I’ve been following British Petroleum for two decades. Last year they cut production costs by $1 billion while production increased in the most dangerous areas, like offshore,” he said. Moreover, he believes the spill is even beneficial for the company:
“Because of the spill the price of oil went up about $2.5 per barrel. That means that they are making $10 million a day while the spill is happening,” he added. Halliburton did admit to failure.
“Prior to the point in the well construction plan that the Halliburton personnel would have set the final cement plug, the catastrophic incident occurred. As a result, the final cement plug was never set,” Tim Probet from Halliburton said. The glaring spotlight turned from the corporate oil industry to the MineralsMmanagement Services (MMS).The MMS – the agency that is suppose to regulate the oil industry and impose safety guidelines and regulations – is being charged with allowing the industry to run wild with very limited oversight and regulation. The communities, the oil companies, the coast guard, all knew this could happen sooner or later. From the coast you can see an almost unbroken line of oil rigs along the horizon. In the fading light, their burning flares almost like a chain of foreboding. Under the surface, a spidery network of pipes reach up from the seabed, through which endless barrels of oil constantly glug. It’s a vast enterprise - the Gulf supplies up to 30 per cent of the USA’s energy needs. Within a 60km radius of Port Fourchon, there are 600 platforms.
The Coast Guard abandoned its plan to burn off some of the oil after sea conditions worsened. Efforts to plug the gushing well 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface with submersible robots have so far failed. The next solution is to drill relief wells to plug the leak, but that could take three months. Other tactics include: using remote-controlled vehicles to shut off the well at its source on the sea floor, an operation that has so far been unsuccessful; dropping domes over the leaks at the sea floor and routing the oil to the surface to be collected, an operation untested at such depths that would take at least two to four more weeks; and drilling relief wells to stop up the gushing cavity with concrete, mud or other heavy liquid, a solution that is months away. The array of strategies underscores the unusual nature of the leak. Pipelines have ruptured and tankers have leaked, but a well 5,000 feet below the water’s surface poses new challenges, officials said. In the meantime, more than 200,000 feet of protective booms were put in place along the coast to contain oil reaching the shore. Aircraft have dropped 100,000 gallons of chemical dispersants on the water's surface to break down the oil. The Gulf of Mexico is one of the world's richest sources of seafood. A BP spokesman said an oil containment box known as a "top hat" was being taken to the leaking oil well and undersea robots would position it over the gusher by Thursday. The new device is much smaller than one that failed during the weekend and engineers hope it will cap the leak and allow the oil to be brought up to waiting tankers on the surface. Oil giant BP has said that it will pay for all the cleanup costs from a ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. "BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill," Obama said.
The oil could keep gushing for months until a second well can be dug to relieve pressure from the first...
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naftni černobilj(srb)Subscribe in a reader

Gazimestan - place of a monument to the battle, in the shape of medieval tower designed by Aleksandar Deroko. The monument was guarded by international forces on a full-time basis as there have been numerous attempts by Albanians to destroy it and to destroy all traces of the Serb presence in Kosovo....
Nato's choice of Gazimestan as the first monument to be handed over to the Kosovan police service (KPS) , dominated by ethnic Albanians, is highly unusual and provocative. Gazimestan marks the site of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans. It is where Slobodan Milosevic rallied Serb activists 600 years later, with a nationalist speech that propelled him to power. Taking over the authority for security of Gazimestan monument will be the first case where KPS will assume responsibility for security of Serb cultural monuments in Kosovo. The move is seen as an important step in the transfer of powers to local rebel authorities. It has angered Serbia. Rightly so...
Tzar Lazarus Kosovo Curse

"Whoever is a Serb and of Serb birth,And of Serb blood and heritage,And comes not to the Battle of Kosovo,May he never have the progeny his heart desires,Neither son nor daughter!May nothing grow that his hand sows,Neither dark wine nor white wheat!And let him be cursed from all ages to all ages!"

2004 Kosovo genocide
March 17 pogrom in photosSubscribe in a reader

At precisely 7.02pm on 22nd October 2006 in Sao Paulo, Michael Schumacher walks out of the box, his second home for the last 16 years. From this moment on, he is not only the former champion but also an ex-racing driver...
Racing legend Michael Schumacher makes his F1 2010 comeback! People's champion Schumi ,the seven-time world champion, is laid back about his FORMULA 1 return. This weekend will be his first race after three years retirement. Here is a list of teams for 2010 season. His new home is Mercedes GP .
Everybody seems to expect nothing but the title from you. Aren't those expectations too high maybe?"No. I said it quite clear from the beginning: we do not have to - and probably will not - be in the position to win right from the start. It is important to be close and then use the long season to be at the top at the end. It is not the start which is important; it is the finish." /M.S. 08.03.2010
Michael Schumacher stands out in Formula One because he is a driver who makes a difference. He has got so much talent that he disproves the idea it’s the man with the best car who wins. Schumacher has been making a difference ever since his stunning debut in qualifying for Jordan at Spa in 1991. His victory in the rain at the Spanish Grand Prix in 1996 in a malfunctioning Ferrari is listed by many as the finest drive they have ever seen. He has too many dark episodes to be a great By BYRON YOUNG, Formula 1 Correspondent. Many have criticised his Adelaide clash with Damon Hill in 1994, yet he had been ruthless but fair that day when he won his first championship. Three years later it was a different story when he simply tried to barge Jacques Villeneuve off to win the title and was stripped of all the points he scored that year. Worse was to follow when his Ferrari team-mate Rubens Barrichello was ordered to cede a certain victory at Austria in 2002 and Schumacher even faked a crash at Monaco in 2006 to stop Fernando Alonso grabbing a pole... He is a workaholic, a man who inspires loyalty in those around him and has the happy knack of being able to bend a team to his will. The seven world titles Schumacher has won do not lie.
He is, quite simply, the best there has ever been.
Mercedes_GP /wikipediahttp://www.mercedes-gp.com/ official team pageSubscribe in a reader

Pride parades for the LGBT community (also known as gay pride parades, pride events and pride festivals) are events celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture. The events also at times serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same sex marriage. Most pride events occur annually and many take place around June to commemorate the Stonewall riots, a pivotal moment in the modern LGBT rights movement.. The Stonewall Inn, often shortened to Stonewall is an American bar in New York and the site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which are widely considered the start of the modern gay liberation movement. Originally constructed between 1843 and 1846 as stables, the property was turned into a restaurant in 1930. It remained a restaurant until it was gutted by fire in the mid 1960s. The Stonewall Inn, at the time, was owned by the Mafia. On March 18, 1967, the Stonewall opened in the space. It was, during its time, the largest gay establishment in the U.S. and did a very good business, although, as with most gay clubs at the time, police raids were common. The raid did not go as planned. Standard procedure was to line up the patrons, check their identification, and have female police officers take customers dressed as women to the bathroom to verify their sex, upon which any men dressed as women would be arrested. The police tried to restrain some of the crowd, and knocked a few people down. Someone in the crowd declared that the bar had been raided because "they didn't pay off the cops", to which someone else yelled "Let's pay them off!"Coins sailed through the air towards the police as the crowd shouted "Pigs!" and "Faggot cops!" Beer cans were thrown and the police lashed out, dispersing some of the crowd, who found a construction site nearby with stacks of bricks...The police, was outnumbered by between 500 and 600 people. The Tactical Police of the New York City Police Department arrived to free the police trapped inside the Stonewall. One officer's eye was cut, and a few others were bruised from being struck by flying debris. A witness across the street said, "All I could see about who was fighting was that it was transvestites and they were fighting furiously". Thirteen people had been arrested. Some in the crowd were hospitalized, and four police officers were injured. Almost everything in the Stonewall Inn was broken... A few months after the riots that started 28 June 1969, The Stonewall Inn closed in late 1969. Each year during the Pride March crowds gather outside the Stonewall Inn to enjoy its rich history. Some particularly important pride parades are funded by governments and corporate sponsors, and promoted as major tourist attractions for the cities that host them. On November 2, 1969, the first gay pride parade was held in New York City. In the 1980s there was a cultural shift in the gay movement. Activists of a less radical nature began taking over the march committees in different cities, and they dropped "Gay Liberation" and "Gay Freedom" from the names, replacing them with "Gay Pride". The very first Eastern European Pride, was assumed to be a promotion of the human right to freedom of assembly in Croatia and other Eastern European states, where such rights of the LGBT population are not respected, and a support for organizing the very first Prides in that communities. Out of all ex-Yugoslav states, only Slovenia and Croatia have a tradition of organizing Pride events, whereas the attempt to organize such an event in Belgrade, Serbia in 2001, ended in a bloody showdown between the police and the counter-protesters, with the participants heavily beaten up. South Africa is home to the only gay pride march on the African continent, the Joburg Pride held in Johannesburg. On June 29, 2008, four Indian cities (Delhi, Bangalore, Pondicherry, and Kolkata) saw coordinated pride events. On 30 June 2005, the fourth annual Pride march of Jerusalem took place. It had originally been prohibited by a municipal ban which was cancelled by the court. On 26 June 1994, on the 25th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines (ProGay Philippines) and Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) Manila organized the First LGBT Pride March in Asia. On 22 July 2005, the first Latvian gay pride march took place in Riga, surrounded by protesters... There is opposition to pride events both within LGBT and mainstream populations. Critics charge the parades with an undue emphasis on sex and fetish-related interests which they see as counter-productive to LGBT interests. The argument is sometimes taken further, arguing that they expose the "gay community" to ridicule. LGBT activists counter that traditional media have played a role in emphasizing the most outlandish and therefore non-representative aspects of the community. So, it is all about human rights, right? If they want to dance with bare butts in the streets or have sex in public with the same gender, so what, it's their God given right, ok? There is a group of individuals who are victims of persecution by our society. They are kleptomaniacs. A kleptomaniac is a person who has an irresistible desire to steal. Sociological studies have proven that 1 of every 10 people is a kleptomaniac. But because they are a small minority, they continue to suffer from the misguided efforts of society to punish them.Despite the fact that they are born with this desire, society punishes them for practicing their desire. Laws are stacked against them, “Christian” leaders constantly condemn kleptomaniacs by twisting the Bible to say what they want it to say. Thus, this innocent minority is made to suffer simply because society sees them as a threat to established morals. Indeed, they are one of the most persecuted groups in our society, persecuted simply because they are different. Instead of acceptance and tolerance, they suffer discrimination and condemnation. God has made kleptomaniacs the way they are. It is behavior they cannot, and should not, deny. It is time for kleptomaniacs to come out of the closet and demand their special rights !Subscribe in a reader

The war in Afghanistan makes no sense at all. Why would anybody want to invade and take over this remote and hard land of poor and ferocious men? There are no spoils to be taken, no oil, no important routes. But what is the possible benefit?
The only semi-rational argument is that of Drugs. Afghanistan produces a lot of the stuff (90 percent of the world's supply) ; in the days of Taliban rule, opium was practically eliminated, but since the US intervention, the production shot up many times. Afghani opium is flown from Bagram Air Base to Kosovo, the biggest US base in Europe and then smuggled to Europe . Thus creation of independent Kosovo with its criminal Albanian gangs begins to make sense – as a part of America’s war against Europe . Alternative route is allegedly carried by Chechens via Grozny where an almost independent warlord Kadyrov has his own customs clearance for entry into the Russian market. President Obama is just a supreme heroin pusher, but the same can be said about Queen Victoria , for in 19th century plucky Brits twice fought wars for harvest, production and delivery of opium. Perhaps this war is the latest in the series of the Opium Wars? It should come as no surprise that the biggest opium-growing regions are Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the Taliban strongholds where so much of the war is being fought. The opium crop employs from 1.6 million to 2.4 million Afghan citizens - as much as 8 percent of the country's 28.4 million people. After President George W. Bush spent 3 years trying to "eradicate" the crop, the opium acreage increased by 61 percent and the value of the crop increased by about one-third, the Washington Post reported in 2006. Opium pays Afghan farmers 12 times as much as food crops. They can't grow food in opium country as easily as they can grow opium. Growing opium may be the best thing that land can be used for. History seems to indicate that. Those two poor, devastated provinces could supply the entire world with nearly all of a drug that the world needs - legally. The entire world needs about 5,000 tons of opium a year for painkillers, according to those semi-reliable sources. Afghanistan is expected to produce 6,900 tons this year, and the wholesale price for opium today, according to Reuters, is $64 a kilo, or $64,000 a metric ton. At that price, United States could buy Afghanistan 's entire opium harvest this year for $442 million. It costs US $1 million to keep a single U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for a year. With 53,000 U.S. troops in country now, that's $53 billion a year. That's why they need to close the deal fast, that's why they're negotiaing with the enemy.
Ethnic Albanian criminal gangs continue to pose a serious security threat, dominating the transit and supply of heroin to Switzerland, warns a federal police expert. (source: ISN Security Watch)
According to the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Switzerland has historically been singled out as one of the countries most affected by ethnic Albanian heroin trafficking, due to the large expatriate population. There were an estimated 94,000 Albanian-speakers in Switzerland in 2000. In the late 1990s, Albanians were blamed for trafficking some 70 to 90 percent of Switzerland's heroin supply into the country. Ethnic Albanian criminal gangs built up a reputation as effective traffickers as they were violent and clannish with a language nobody else could understand and had an honor code similar to the Sicilian mafia. Southeastern Europe lies along the most conventional route - the so-called Balkan route - between the supplier of some 90 percent of the world's heroin, Afghanistan, and its most lucrative consumer market, western Europe. Kosovo's independence proclamation by the Albanian secessionist administration in Pristina in February 2008, follows a course that was drafted back in March 1999 when NATO started a war against Serbia. Kosovo is viewed as a region that is under the tight grip of organized crime and corruption which spans through he entire social and political sphere. The current leadership under Hashim Thaci is to emerge from the unholy alliance of traffickers in the region and the UCK. Pristina government has always been subject to the power of the Mafiosi who were the largest donors of the KLA rebels and want to keep the region in their own sphere of influence. German intelligence service in 2005, described the former Prime Minister of Kosovo Ramous Haradinaj as related «in drug trafficking, extortion and protection business». Reliable and highly informed sources at the Institute for European Policy, based in Germany, in a 2007 last report, commissioned for the German Armed Forces, indicated that the three leading Kosovo politicians, Ramush Haradinaj, Hashim Thaci and Xhavit Haliti are «Persons protected by the international community although they are deeply involved in all of these affairs». In a Pan-European level perhaps two-thirds of the heroin sold in the streets it is being distributed by Albanian criminal syndicates which are mostly established in Kosovo. Further another crucial element is the existence of a strong Albanian-American lobby in the U.S. East Coast which is interlinked with the still powerful American-Italian Mafia and quite a few mainstream politicians and bureaucrats. This lobby is also a small part of the wider nexus between Pakistan-Saudi Arabia-Turkey business lobbies n Washington that have managed to pursue high politics mainly in the Pentagon and the State Department through the use of retired American Generals and diplomats, attaining great influence even at the expense of the national interests of the USA. According to the U.S. law, "US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961", aid is prohibited to any country or organization that it is involved in drug trafficking. It is noteworthy to emphasize the involvement of the DEA at this point. Until March 1999 it followed a clear-cut policy of repression against the Kosovo related drug crime, but a month before the NATO bombing it pulled down from its own website references connected to Kosovo...
NATO bombing of Serbia, "the Kosovan War" allowed the place (rebel Serbian province) to become a centre of drug activity for the European market. So called "Kosovans" (muslim albanian population of Kosovo and Metohija) had a reputation for smuggling, but mafias there were eager to be involved in supplying the European market and could offer safe storage and a network of smugglers and wholesale dealers in the UK. They also used the refugee crisis to take advantage of this. If Afghanistan was a War to fight Terrorism - it begs the question - who is benefiting from the billions in drug revenues? In one War (Kosovo) a massive European safe haven for traffickers is created as the CIA court drug mafias linked with 'freedom fighters'. In Columbia - Right wing paramilitaries work hand in hand with drug cartels. In Afghanistan, the CIA again courted people involved in the drug trade masquerading as freedom fighters - the 'Northern Alliance' rise to power has seen the old poppy farming come back with a vengeance. It's almost as if the USA is creating the very conditions the drug trade needs to prosper. Some would point to the ease in which drug ravaged communities can be controlled by the state. The consequence of the USA involvement in its wars has been to create a free market for drugs. Was that the intent or just an accident?

Organized Crime in KosovoSubscribe in a reader

by Amy Goodman
The tragedy of the Haitian earthquake continues to unfold, with slow delivery of aid, the horrific number of amputations performed out of desperate medical necessity, more than a million homeless, perhaps 240,000 dead, hunger, dehydration, the emergence of infections and waterborne diseases, and the approach of the rainy season, which will be followed by the hurricane season. Haiti has suffered a massive blow, an earthquake for which its infrastructure was not prepared, after decades—no, centuries—of military and economic manipulation by foreign governments, most notably the United States and France.
Haiti was a slave plantation controlled by France. In 1804, inspired by Toussaint L’Ouverture (after whom the now barely functioning airport in Port-au-Prince is named), the slaves rebelled, founding the world’s first black republic. Under military threat from France in 1825, Haiti agreed to pay reparations to France for lost “property,” including slaves that French owners lost in the rebellion. It was either agree to pay the reparations or have France invade Haiti and reimpose slavery. Many Haitians believe that original debt, which Haiti dutifully paid through World War II, committed Haiti to a future of poverty that it has never been able to escape. (While France, as part of the deal, recognized Haiti’s sovereignty, slave-owning politicians in the United States, like Thomas Jefferson, refused to recognize the black republic, afraid it would inspire a slave revolt here. The U.S. withheld formal recognition until 1862.)
The U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 until 1934. In 1956, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier took control in a military coup and declared himself president for life, initiating a period of brutal, bloody dictatorship, with U.S. support. Papa Doc died in 1971, at which point his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, took over, maintaining the same violent dictatorial control until he was driven into exile by popular revolt in 1986. Jubilee USA, a network calling for elimination of debt owed by poor countries, estimates that Baby Doc alone diverted at least $500 million in public funds to his private accounts, and that 45 percent of Haiti’s debt in recent decades was accumulated during the corrupt reign of the Duvaliers.
Loans from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) imposed “structural adjustment” conditions on Haiti, opening its economy to cheap U.S. agricultural products. Farmers, unable to compete, stopped growing rice and moved to the cities to earn low wages, if they were lucky enough to get one of the scarce sweatshop jobs. People in the highlands were driven to deforest the hills, converting wood into salable charcoal, which created an ecological crisis—destabilizing hillsides, increasing the destructiveness of earthquakes and causing landslides during the rainy season.
Haiti’s first democratically elected president was Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest committed to the poor. He was elected in 1990, then ousted in a military coup in 1991. In 1994, with Haitian refugees flooding into Florida, the Clinton administration was forced to restore Aristide to power, but only with additional structural-adjustment demands. Aristide was re-elected in 2000, only to be deposed again in a U.S.-backed coup in 2004, Haiti’s bicentennial.
The destruction of Haiti’s rice industry, which was replaced with U.S. government-subsidized rice that Haitians refer to as “Miami rice,” as well as the sale of critical state-owned enterprises, like Haiti’s sole flour mill and cement factory, have left the country dependent on foreign trade and aid, keeping Haiti at a permanent disadvantage.
It is critical now to cancel Haiti’s ongoing foreign debt, so that the country can devote its scant resources to rebuilding and not to repaying debt. The G-7 finance ministers met in Canada this week and announced the forgiveness of the bilateral debt between member states and Haiti. But the World Bank, IMF and IDB debts remain (the IMF controversially promised a $100 million loan after the earthquake, eliciting condemnation, and has since pledged to convert it to a grant).
Earthquakes alone do not create disasters of the scale now experienced in Haiti. The wealthy nations have for too long exploited Haiti, denying it the right to develop in a secure, sovereign, sustainable way. The global outpouring of support for Haitians must be matched by long-term, unrestricted grants of aid, and immediate forgiveness of all that country’s debt. Given their role in Haiti’s plight, the United States, France and other industrialized nations should be the ones seeking forgiveness.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.Subscribe in a reader

Democracy in America is a Useful Fiction
Corporate forces carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place. Democracy in America is a useful fiction. There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on “American Idol.” Barack Obama is a brand, he has no power. Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures. Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as “soft” or “unpatriotic.” The “patriotic” citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression...
Wall Street Will Be Back for More
Corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation—personal power and wealth—as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us. The corporation decides who has value and who does not, who advances and who is left behind. It rewards the most compliant, craven and manipulative, and discards the losers who can’t play the game, those who do not accumulate wealth or status fast enough, or who fail to fully subsume their individuality into the corporate collective. It dominates the internal and external lives of its employees, leaving them without time for family or solitude—without time for self-reflection—and drives them into a state of perpetual nervous exhaustion. This hazing process eliminates from the system most of those with backbone, fortitude and dignity. The employees who advance are skilled drones, often possessed of a peculiar kind of analytical intelligence and drive, but morally, emotionally and creatively crippled. Their intellect is narrow and inhibited. They rely on the corporation, as they once relied on their high-priced elite universities and their SAT scores, for validation. They demand that they not be treated as individuals but as members of the great collective of Goldman Sachs or AIG or Citibank. They talk together. They exchange information. They make deals. They compromise. They debate. But they do not think. They are deaf, dumb and blind to the common good. How you make money and how you climb the ladder of the corporate structure are irrelevant. Success becomes its own morality. Those who do well in this environment possess the traits often exhibited by psychopaths—superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. They, like competitors on a reality television program, lie, cheat and betray to climb over those around them and advance. These deeply stunted and maladjusted individuals, from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Robert Rubin to Lawrence Summers to the heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, hold the fate of the nation in their hands. They have access to trillions of taxpayer dollars and are looting the U.S. Treasury to sustain reckless speculation. The financial and corporate system alone validates them. It defines them. It must be served. This is why we will endure another catastrophic financial collapse. This is why firms like Goldman Sachs are more dangerous to the nation than al-Qaida.
These corporations don’t make anything. They don’t produce anything. They gamble and bet and speculate. And when they lose vast sums they raid the U.S. Treasury so they can go back and do it again.
Globalization Goes Bankrupt
The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong. This is what those meetings are about. The draconian security measures put in place are disproportionate to any actual security concern. They are a response not to a real threat, but to the fear gripping the established centers of power. The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save a criminal class on Wall Street. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept. Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations. They have pledged or raised a staggering $18 trillion, looted largely from state treasuries, to prop up banks and other financial institutions that engaged in suicidal acts of speculation and ruined the world economy. They have formulated trade deals so corporations can speculate across borders with currency, food and natural resources. The wealthiest governments use institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization like pit bulls to establish economic supremacy. There is little that most governments seem able to do to fight back. But the game is up. The utopian dreams of globalization have been exposed as a sham. Force is all the elite have left. We are living through one of civilization’s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all utopias that are sold as inevitable and irreversible, has become a farce. The power elite, perplexed and confused, cling to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the political and economic vacuum before us. We have reached the terminal stage. No one will save us now but ourselves. The best thing that happened to the Establishment is the election of a black president. It will contain people for a given period of time, but time is running out. The recovery is only a recovery for Wall Street. It can’t be sustained, and Obama will be blamed for it. He is doing everything Wall Street demands. But this will be a dead end. It is a prescription for disaster, not only for Obama but the Democratic Party.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”Subscribe in a reader

Al-Qaeda is training new fighters that "look western" and could easily cross U.S. borders. Islamic terrorist with European features are based in Bosnia and Kosovo. "In Bosnia and Herzegovina today al-Qaeda is in a strategic planning phase. This means that, among such potentials - and it is likely that there are 100,000 such believers - you can find five people... to hang bombs on their belts and bring in explosives," says Dzevad Galijasevic, chairman of the New Democratic Party in Bosnia and an author of the recently published book The Era of Terrorism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The international community does not attach a high level of importance to the presence of 'White al-Qaeda' because Bosnia is not the target of terrorist activities. It is clear that the al-Qaeda cells in Bosnia are waiting for EU accession; thus, this white, European physiognomy and anthropology - the so-called 'white al-Qaeda' - can in fact be the most fatal for Europe, while Bosnia-Herzegovina is an insignificant target for al-Qaeda. In August of 2007, US diplomat Raffi Gregorian said in an interview for a Sarajevo daily that al-Qaeda uses Bosnia as a transit point but labeled the local Bosnian Muslims not as "sleeper" cells but as "helper" cells. "There are sympathizers in the country who are ready to help al-Qaeda with hiding agents, providing financial support or providing false documents," said Gregorian, the principal deputy to Miroslav Lajcak who was the top international administrator of Bosnia. The al-Qaeda has enjoyed protection and support from the highest ranks of the Bosniak political and intelligence establishment but blames the existence of the Serb Republic as the real threat to Europe. 1,250 of al-Qaeda members have domiciled in Bosnia, got married with locals and enjoy political protection. In 2004, Abdurahman Khadr, the son of the killed Pakistani al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Said Khadr, says that the CIA helped him settle in Bosnia and asked him to spy on the the largest Mosques in Sarajevo, the King Fahd mosque, ran by a local Bosnian Muslim Imam Nezim Halilovic Muderis known for extremist preaching. At the Sarajevo Mosque, Abdurahman became friendly with a Bosnian Muslim recruiter for al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. Islamist activities such as these are pushing the Bosnian Muslims into a whirlpool of problems of other Islamic countries and are moving Bosnia closer to Palestine rather then their Christian neighbors, Serbs and Croats. It is turning Muslims' true historical brothers, Serbs and Croats, into eternal and irreconcilable enemies...



While the United States is relentlessly bombing Afghanistan with the official aim of getting Osama bin Laden, one of bin Laden's top collaborators is running a terrorist training camp in an area of Kosovo that is under U.S. control. The shocking revelation has been confirmed by multiple sources: Macedonian intelligence agencies, as reported by several Macedonian media, including the leading daily Dnevnik; Russian press agencies, including Novosti and ItarTass; and the London Independent. If the Anglo-Americans are at "war" with bin Laden's terrorism, why are bin Laden operatives active in Kosovo in an area totally controlled by NATO? Furthermore, in the U.S. zone in Kosovo? Investigations on the bin Laden connection into the Balkans and Kosovo could, according to experts, lead to even more explosive truths. The Independent reported on Oct. 21. 2001 that Interpol has linked bin Laden to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) crime gangs, and that he "supplied one of his top military commanders for an elite KLA unit" in Kosovo. Beyond that, these extremists are out to re-ignite the ethnic "Clash of Civilizations" in the Balkans, to crush the escalating resistance of Macedonia and to continue the march of destruction, possibly triggering in the near future, an ethnic upheaval in Greece or Bulgaria. This opens up a dramatic contradiction. That contradiction throws light on the virtual reality the world has been propelled into after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are present in the Balkans and planning to increase their activity there. Al Qaeda has strongholds in Kosovo, northern Albania... and they are active in western Macedonia. All areas are heavily populated by ethnic Albanians, who are predominantly Muslim. The strategic aim of the Muslim extremists in the area is to create an Islamic state in the Balkans. The radical Muslim game plan in the former Yugoslavia, which was evident from the mid 1990s has now been realized by what is perhaps George Bush's most serious foreign policy error, the recognition of an illegal and radical Muslim state in East Central Europe - Kosovo. As has been the case in most of America's blunders regarding radical Islam, the United States embarked upon this disastrous path under the Clinton administration. The Islamist penetration into the Balkans especially Kosovo should be alarming to anyone concerned over the growing threat of Islamic jihad. Throughout the region radical Muslims, originally led by Alija Izetbegovic (bosnian muslim leader) began consolidating their power in the 1990s. During this period and leading into the Balkan civil wars tens of thousands of foreign mujahideen fighters entered coming from places as disparate as Northern Africa, Iran and Saudi Arabia. So out in the open was this operation that in the mid 1990s bin-Laden had an office in Sarajevo. The network included a major business enterprise in Cyprus; a "services" branch in Zagreb; an office of the Benevolencen International Foundation in Sarajevo, which supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with Serbia and Croatia." A study by the London Institute for International Strategic Studies revealed that, "the total number of Islamic terrorists who served in the "Bosnian Army" since the beginning of the civil war is about 40000. A number of the 911 hijackers had cycled through Bosnia including 911 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed along with Nawaw al Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. The latter two being among the first selected by bin-Laden to execute the plot.



As Dr. Shaul Shay, a colonel in the Israeli Army and a recognized expert on Islamic radicalism, states, "In the beginning the main purpose was to help the local Muslims in the war against the Serbians. When the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended, terrorist infrastructures remained there and served as a basis for the Islamic terror activities in Kosovo. Today, the Balkans serve as a forefront on European soil for Islamic terror organizations, which exploit this area to promote their activities in Western Europe, and other focal points worldwide."



Now, why has the West recognized Kosovo (a renegade province of Serbia) diplomatically, when by all accounts it will serve as a launching pad for terrorist operations against Western Europe?



militant islam monitor

al qaeda helped kosovo rebels

KLA rebels trained in terrorist campsSubscribe in a reader