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Acorn Squash
August 26, 2006
By Steven Malanga
When Chicago's city council this summer required big-box stores to pay new employees at least $10 an hour, supporters of the legislation held an impromptu celebration in the council galleries. The hoopla was reminiscent of another scene five years earlier in New York, when opponents of Rudy Giuliani's effort to privatize failing public schools embraced in the streets after parents rejected the idea.
What linked these celebrations was the left-wing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), which led the campaign for the legislation and against privatization. And in each case its efforts represented Pyrrhic victories for the poor. Anti-big-box legislation does little more than limit shopping choices and raise prices for inner-city residents, while parents who celebrated Acorn's defeat of Mr. Giuliani were left with their same old failing public schools.
No one should be surprised, for this organization grew out of some of the most counterproductive ideas of 1960s radicalism. Acorn's roots are in the National Welfare Rights Organization, whose leader, George Wiley, believed he could use poor, unwed mothers to foment a revolution. The NWRO agitated for unlimited welfare benefits for those mothers and persuaded many urban politicians to loosen welfare eligibility requirements. This led to a more-than doubling of the welfare roles and strained local budgets. Wiley hoped to persuade the federal government to come to the rescue with massive aid. Instead NWRO's strategy prompted a backlash against "welfare mothers" and politicians in free-spending cities like New York.
When Wiley's welfare strategy reached a dead end he moved on to other ventures, including sending some of his troops to form a new community organization in Arkansas, infused with the same radicalism. It was a brilliant stroke: By the early '70s billions of dollars in federal and state aid was streaming to these local groups, spurred by Republicans in Washington who reasoned that it was better to fund nonprofits than create giant federal bureaucracies to run burgeoning antipoverty programs. Little did the GOP understand that the money would finance a nationwide network of organizations that for decades have mobilized urban residents against the party's candidates and agenda.
Then came the Community Reinvestment Act. Passed in 1977 to prompt banks to lend money in underserved communities, the CRA allowed community groups to file complaints that could hold up or even scuttle bank mergers. As one nonprofit umbrella group observed: "To avoid the possibility of a denied or delayed application, lending institutions have an incentive to make formal agreements with community organizations."
Acorn became among the most successful at exploiting the law, especially after the Clinton administration set up tough new CRA standards. In 1993 Acorn crafted a $55 million, 11-city lending program administered by it and financed by 14 major banks eager to avoid CRA woes. In 1998 Acorn activists disrupted Federal Reserve hearings on the proposed Citicorp merger with Travelers, waving red umbrellas, a corporate symbol of Travelers, and then later protested Citigroup's acquisition of Associates First Capital Corp. Eventually Citigroup signed an agreement to provide mortgages through Acorn counseling centers, including home loans to undocumented aliens in California. In 2000 a U.S. Senate subcommittee estimated that such CRA deals had directed at least $9.5 billion through nonprofits, making the CRA the second-most important funder of social advocacy groups next to the government itself.
While Acorn now operates in more than 100 cities with a national budget of $37 million, it never truly left behind the welfare-rights mentality. One is hard-pressed to find in the organization's many antipoverty initiatives any programs that address social dysfunctions like illegitimacy and single parenthood. Instead, as Acorn's executive director, Steven Kest, said several years ago, "We are more focused on irresponsible behavior in the corporate sector. I don't think [illegitimacy] comes anywhere close to the irresponsible behavior of people running the largest businesses in this country."
While CRA spurred Acorn's growth, the "living wage" is the group's most successful local issue. In the early '90s, advocates persuaded Baltimore to require city government contractors to pay salaries substantially above the federal minimum wage; the campaign caught the attention of Acorn just when the Gingrich Congress was coming into power with a conservative agenda. Stymied in Washington, Acorn decided instead it would work city by city, starting in the most liberal places, to enact local wage legislation. Partnering with Wayne State University's publicly funded labor studies program, Acorn set up a national living-wage center to help coordinate campaigns. Some 125 municipalities have since passed living-wage legislation.
The movement is not always what it appears to be. Though Acorn touts living-wage laws as a way to lift the working poor into the middle class, the vast body of academic work on wage laws shows that they end up hurting the poor by forcing businesses to eliminate some low-wage jobs. Acorn's own leadership understands this principle perfectly. When California regulators sued Acorn for not paying its own workers the minimum wage, Acorn argued that this would endanger its mission—because it would have to hire fewer workers.
One of Acorn's real intentions with this legislation is to help its public-sector union allies. By artificially raising the cost of outsourcing until it is just as costly as work done by government employees, "the Living Wage undercuts the incentive to privatize," Acorn proclaims in its manual on how to run a living-wage campaign. Some living-wage efforts have gone one cynical step further—with laws that specifically exempt unionized companies from adhering to the new wage standards.
The Chicago legislation is the latest iteration of Acorn's living-wage campaign and is more likely to benefit unions than the poor. Wal-Mart and its competitors have lately been eying low-income urban neighborhoods because they are underserved by retailers. A recent study by the Brookings Institution estimated that millions of low-income residents of cities pay excessively high prices for consumer goods in part because of a lack of competition. The report noted that in Chicago "higher priced, small grocery stores" are concentrated in the city's poorer neighborhoods—exactly the kind of place where big-box stores now want to open.
Far from rejecting these stores, inner-city residents have embraced them. Thousands of local residents showed up to apply for jobs when Wal-Mart announced it was opening a new store in an abandoned former Macy's outlet in the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles. After the store opened in 2003, sales soared at the mall were the Wal-Mart was located and other national retailers moved into the predominantly black neighborhood, vastly improving the range of products offered to residents.
But if poor Chicagoans miss out on such a boom, so what? Groups like Acorn thrive off a 1960s philosophy which holds that the worse things are, the better. The more Acorn's policies thwart the free market, stymie efforts to make government more efficient and saddle the poor with bad stores and lousy services, the more Acorn can lobby for government aid to cure the ills of our society—all funneled through Acorn-run programs, of course.
Steven Malanga, a contributing editor at City Journal, is the author of "The New New Left" (Ivan R. Dee, 2005).
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-acorn_squash.htm
Wasn't that guy Hitler a friend of Islam?
Bissama Allah, oria alard Hitler
Not many realize that.
"Let me state upfront I have no use for farm bills for rich farmers."
What the f**k is a rich farmer?
"Are you really outraged over it?"
Yep.
Bond...
voted aye as well...according to:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2007-434
where do you get your misinformation from tinman...
SL
"you made my point for me"
I fail to see how...
your statement was as follows:
"i guess now you know why the farmers, concentrated in the red states, are totally republican as they have their hand in the till."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=29491707
there is a north/south/east/west arrow/arrows on the following map...pass over NYC...pass over a blue state/states
http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/mappage.php?&lat=38.959408792454&lng=-97.3828125&z=5&type=Road%20Map
you may wish to find one of those red state blue state maps to which show how a certain county voted...
At any rate, your statement was incorrect/flawed...
SL
"Do you have a link that shows otherwise?"
Yep...(give it time to load)
http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/mappage.php?&lat=38.959408792454&lng=-97.3828125&z=5&type=Road%20Map
"The liberal guys farming a few acres with an old tractor..."
Now you are trying to blow smoke up my ass.
SL
"Here in Missouri my woman voted NO and Bond"
I take it that you are referring to McCaskill (correct me if my assumption is incorrect) as "my woman"...
Appears to me she voted yes (aye).
http://www.govtrack.us/users/events.xpd?monitors=pv:412243
She did object (to which she deserves praise)
to a "air dropped earmark" via Pelosi who, by the way, is a f**king democrat:
But the money was part of what’s known on Capitol Hill as an "air-dropped earmark." It was added without any hearings or debate after the House and Senate versions of the farm bill went to conference for lawmakers to settle on a final bill.
McCaskill objected because, besides being air-dropped, the money had nothing to do with farming and violated ethics reform rules adopted in January 2007.
The ethics bill was the first bill the new Democratic-led Senate – and McCaskill as a freshman lawmaker – had voted on.
"The practice of putting projects in bills during conference without input from either the House or the Senate must stop," McCaskill said later. "It shouldn’t matter whose projects they are."
Did we mention that the author of the salmon earmark was Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House and the most powerful woman in the galaxy?
http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/11782
"BORROW AND SPEND REPUBLICANS both voted to BORROW AND SPEND"
And the 170 million salmon earmark was brought forth by whom?
"Their REPUBLICANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
They are Republicans
SL
"i guess now you know why the farmers, concentrated in the red states, are totally republican as they have their hand in the till."
Care to share the data/link to which allowed you to draw such a conclusion?
SL
"And this is how our government will work in the future as long as we elect candidates whose campaigns are run by the likes of Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson -- and advised by the likes of Bill Clinton. And that holds for the likes of Charlie Black, Rick Davis, and the bevy of other lobbyists guiding John McCain's campaign as well."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-clinton-colombia-conn_b_95929.html
"the old shuck and jive instead of backing up what you post."
I recall asking you to "back up what you post" for a long period of time tinman...
I also recall that you "shuck and jived" each and every time...
SL
By the way...I can "back up this post"
Hillary, the war chick
By Pepe Escobar
"I've stumbled on Clinton supporters and asked them why she has lied about so many important issues. They told me everybody lies. I am a teacher. I told them 'look me in the eye. Would you say to your children that it is OK to lie'?"
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD26Ak02.html
"Liberals are always so quick to talk about "freedom of speech" but are always the first to censor views opposed to their own."
And examples lie within:
http://www.thefire.org/
SL
Why women shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton
By Camille Paglia
Is Hillary Clinton the saviour of feminism? Or its albatross, dragging feminism backwards under a weary weight of old-guard victimology and male-bashing?
The scrum is on! Feminist grand panjandrums like Gloria Steinem have leapt back into the arena, while younger women have seized the feminist banner to proclaim Hillary the messianic Wonder Woman, destined to smash the glass ceiling of the presidency.
All women, on pain of excommunication from the feminist claque, must now support Hillary. Never mind her spotty record or her naked political expediency. Any woman with the temerity to endorse Barack Obama (as I do) is condemned as a "traitor" to her sex. "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life," trumpeted Steinem earlier this year in an article promoting Hillary in the New York Times. Barriers of race, class or economics are waved away as mere frippery.
Hillary Clinton among the women of Scranton: Why women shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton
Back to her roots: Hillary Clinton among the women of Scranton
As a resident of Philadelphia, I am currently under siege by the firestorm of political adverts heading toward Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, which Hillary has long been expected to win. She has roots in this state: her grandfather was a Welshman who settled in the coal-mining city of Scranton, which remains conservative and working-class. Women there are tough and blunt, with few illusions about life.
Hillary's voter base consists of middle-aged to elderly white women who identify with her caustic, stubborn, bulldog resilience. Humiliated and upstaged by her philandering husband, Hillary is the champion of an army of women who were stymied, betrayed or outmanoeuvred by men. Over the past year, whenever her cowed male opponents mildly rebutted Hillary in debate, her campaign jumped into über-feminist mode: male bullies, they screeched, "ganging up" on a helpless damsel.
Losing ground with other core groups - notably her own cohort of upper-middle-class, baby-boom career woman - Hillary played the gender card to the max. When polling showed she had seemed too harsh to the caucus-goers of Iowa, she rolled out teary eyes for New Hampshire, which handed her a primary victory. Hillary will scratch, claw, and morph through every gender trick if it rakes in votes.
This symbol of raw female ambition has never comfortably fitted into a conventional sex role. As the first child of a hard-working and authoritarian father, Hillary absorbed his willfulness, competitive drive and suspicion. Excelling academically, Hillary felt ill at ease with the feminine persona so deftly deployed by pretty, popular girls in that era. Frumpy, stumpy and myopic, she identified with the new idolatry of shiny careerism promulgated by the second-wave feminism of the late 1960s, when she emerged from posh Wellesley College.
US presidential election 2008
Though she would specialise in women's and children's issues, Hillary's public statements have often betrayed an ambivalence about women who chose a non-feminist path. "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies," she sneered during Bill's 1992 presidential campaign. Then, defending her husband against the claims of a 12-year affair by Gennifer Flowers, Hillary snapped: "I'm not sittin' here like some little woman, standing by my man like Tammy Wynette" - a sally that boomeranged when Hillary had to make an abject apology. The irony is that Hillary had offended the very group of stoical, put-upon, working-class women who are now proving to be her staunchest supporters.
advertisement
Whatever her official feminist credo, Hillary's public career has glaringly been a subset to her husband's success. Despite her reputation for brilliance, she failed the Washington, DC bar exam. Thus her migration to Little Rock was not simply a selfless drama for love; she was fleeing the capital where she had hoped to make her mark.
In Little Rock, every role that Hillary played was obtained via her husband's influence - from her position at the Rose Law Firm to her seat on the board of Wal-Mart to her advocacy for public education reform. In a pattern that would continue after Bill became president, Hillary would draw attention by expressing public "concern" for a problem, without ever being able to organise a programme for reform.
Hillary has always been a policy wonk, a functionary attuned to bureaucratic process, but she has never shown executive ability, which makes her quest for the presidency problematic. Hillary's disastrous botching of national healthcare reform in 1993 (a project to which her husband rashly appointed her) will live in infamy. Obama may also have limited executive experience, but he has no comparable stain on his record.
The argument, therefore, that Hillary's candidacy marks the zenith of modern feminism is specious. Feminism is not well served by her surrogates' constant tactic of attributing all opposition to her as a function of entrenched sexism. Well into her second term as a US Senator, Hillary lacks a single example of major legislative achievement. Her career has consisted of fundraising, meet-and-greets and speeches around the world expressing support for women's rights.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is aiming to become the first female president of the United States
What feminist supporters have recently denounced as troglodytic misogyny in media portrayals of Hillary has in fact been a function of her own strange sexual accommodations and ambiguities. Yes, she may surround herself with luscious, multicultural babes (such as her minder, Huma Abedin, or her now sacked aide, Patty Solis Doyle), but Hillary, despite the rumours, is no lesbian. She's a crucifix-wearing, Methodist do-gooder who confidently thinks she's God's agent. There's no room for random eroticism in her calendar.
Genuinely disturbing are the caricatures of Hillary (called "Hitlery" or "the Hildebeast" on the web) that rarely accrue to male candidates: she's portrayed as a hectoring nag, a witch on a broomstick, or a castrating bitch. But if such images were truly generated by simple fear of female power, we would expect to find them around other women politicians too, such as the current female Speaker of the House.
No, Hillary was demonised by the American electorate long before she sought elective office. It is Bill Clinton who is responsible for the tainted sexual aura around his wife.
Furthermore, Hillary's mythomania and her chameleon-like daily alterations of persona and voice are unsettling. (Even Hillary's eye colour is fake: she wears blue contact lenses.) No male candidate enjoys Hillary's options as a woman to tailor her costume to the audience.
Hillary's recent remarks about politics as a "boys' club" resistant to uppity women was sheer demagoguery. By progressing farther than any woman presidential candidate, she has become a role model for future aspirants. But by attaching herself so blatantly to anti-male rhetoric - particularly in view of her debt to her husband - she is espousing a retrograde brand of feminism no longer applicable to the US.
If Hillary loses, batten the hatches against a mass resurrection of paranoid, paleo-feminist martyrs, counting their wounds and wailing at the blood-red moon.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/19/wuspols219.xml
"Guerilla movements, however, require arms, money and intelligence from sympathetic states. Hamas and Hezbollah would represent no threat to Israel without the backing of Syria and Iran. Military and political logic requires Israel to attack their sponsors, rather than their militants embedded among civilians. Iran is hard to reach, but Syria is a sitting duck."
Spengler
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD15Ak02.html
"keep em ignorant, discourage independent thought, debate and dissent"
you speak of the liberal institutions of higher learning...
http://www.thefire.org/
Clinton laughs off Colombia questions
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/11/clinton-laughs-off-colombia-questions/
Congressman Murtha's Earmarks - Paid for by You
"we need the fairness doctrine returned"
BS
SL
your energy/concerns...
should be upon your party....
it could have been a sure win...however, your parties nominee's appear to be f**king things up.
Later u SOS
SL
tinman....
I did not bring this to the table...YOU did.
Shall we rewind:
"And we will all miss your wonderful posts about your hero Yogi. Dream on if you can get your head out."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22378813
I have simply requested (at numerous times) for you to provide such a post...it is not an unreasonable request...but it is my last one.
Ted Sampley...
You posted the author/article...too bad you could not/would not do some research prior to posting it...but hey, your that kinda guy!
"What a sweetheart you have picked once again."
lol...DO YOU REALLY wish to compare clitnon/McCain scandals!
Later dumb@ss
SL
"By Ted Sampley"
LOL...you continue to surprise me tinman...
http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:zY4a2INXz84J:bluenc.com/tags/ted-sampley+Ted+Sampley&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us&client=firefox-a
By the way....
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22624402
Tell me "bob"...
why is it you think I am a supporter of obama...
Simply put...
and simply true...
ROFL "bob"
Is hillary going to usher in another internet bubble...
Go play in the bitches sandbox...
To save some time...
http://prorev.com/hillary.htm
Enjoy...
And tell your hopeful to release her/bills tax records...
"not be bought out."
In just one major transaction, Trie donated more than $600,000 to the Clinton Legal Defense Fund. Much of the money was contributed...get this...via consecutively-numbered money orders, mailed from cities across the country, with different contributor names affixed...but all signed by the same person and each containing the same misspelled word. (Don’t you just hate it when that happens?)
http://www.therant.us/staff/p_hollrah/10242007.htm
Yep...I can't imagine no favors are in order.
Meant to...
send this link:
http://mnweekly.ru/world/20080221/55311496.html
Though I must admit...the other one has better pictures.
SL
600 mil a month...
pipeline revenue (if I remember correctly).
By the way...
http://mnweekly.ru/culture/20071220/55298237.html
Take care,
SL
I shall respond...
during the morrow.
SL
"Where in the Bible does it say you should apply "common sense"."
Tis the reason we have all these f**king warning labels...
apparently, commonsense eludes some.
SL
What f**king...
website did you retrieve that from?
D@mn man...read the complete verses yourself and apply some commonsense.
SL
no prob...
we have the organized crime element there...
heroin, sex trade/forced prostitution (reports state as young as 11)...
PLUS!!! we got rid of some depleted uranium, was able to test our military might from 30,000 f**king feet up!
D@mnnnn shame...
What was your last move again?
SL
Russia and Serbia...
have a pipeline deal in the works.
Kosovo train-wreck warnings
It is expected that early on in 2008, probably February, the United Nations-supervised Albanian Muslim Administration of the Serbian province of Kosovo will make a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI).
(James Lyons, Washington Times) Thursday, January 03, 2008
It is expected that early on in 2008, probably February, the United Nations-supervised Albanian Muslim Administration of the Serbian province of Kosovo will make a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI).
The United States has said it is prepared to recognize Kosovo, despite the objections of the Serbian government and more importantly, despite the fact that Russia, a key ally of Serbia, does not want Kosovo independence.
While unclear, it is likely a number of European countries starting with the United Kingdom, France and Germany will follow Washington's lead. Several other countries, notably Spain, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia and Greece say they will not recognize Kosovo's UDI. The UDI would be undertaken without approval from the U.N. Security Council because of the vigorous objection of Russia and China, who claim no sovereign state's territory can be detached without its consent. Further, as pointed out by George Friedman in his Stratfor article, there was an absolute consensus that post-World War II borders of Europe were sacrosanct. Therefore, no borders would shift.
Most ominously, Russia with its newfound resurgence under Vladimir Putin's guidance has stated its willingness to support Serbia against what they would consider an illegal occupation of Serbian territory. The current Serbian government is divided on whether it would be prepared to use force to protect its citizens in a breakaway Kosovo, but there have been clear indications that Moscow is prepared to provide military assistance if Serbia requests it.
A government crisis in Belgrade would certainly unfold in the wake of a Kosovo UDI and U.S. recognition. This certainly would solve Serbia's dilemma about requesting Russia's offer of aid.
As described in a recent article in Stratfor, Washington and Moscow seem to blunder into what is described as an "asymmetrical" crisis. The U.S. seems intent on letting the Serbian province of Kosovo break away and apparently sees the issue of no great importance.
Russia on the other hand, sees the situation very differently. Moscow has warned it will not accept independence for Kosovo. Mr. Putin has put his prestige on the line. He cannot afford to back down as Boris Yeltsin did. And therein lies the crisis.
This is an "optional" crisis. We cannot overlook the fact that the dominant element in the local Albanian administration are commanders from the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army that have known ties to the global jihad movement and organized crime. Further, more than 300 mosques have been built in Kosovo, funded mainly by Saudi Arabia where the radical teachings of the Wahhabi sect are promoted.
From a strategic viewpoint, we are endorsing formation of a "Taliban-like" state in the very heart of Europe. It is difficult to see what advantages exist for the U.S. to force a resolution for Kosovo, especially one that threatens to unleash instability in the troubled region, as well as a broader political showdown with Russia, and China too. Not only do we have enough serious issues with those countries, over Iran, Taiwan and North Korea, the U.S. can ill afford with our ongoing efforts in the Middle East to commit additional military forces to a new confrontation in the Balkans.
With an unemployment rate of up to 70 percent, no one who has been to Kosovo, as I have, can doubt we are looking at the creation of a failed, nonviable rogue state. This, notwithstanding claims by the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman that somehow Muslim-led governments will embrace the United States for supporting creation of a Muslim state in the very heart of Europe. They will embrace us the same as Iran did after our elimination of their archenemy Saddam Hussein.
There is no reason for the secretary of state to be beholden to the Holbrooke Cabal in the State Department. A recent op-ed by Richard Holbrooke, President Clinton's former ambassador to the U.N., urged the U.S. to move forward with Kosovo's UDI - a position also embraced by Hillary Clinton's campaign. Oddly, even Mr. Holbrook concedes that supporting Kosovo's UDI would set the U.S. toward a "train wreck" with Russia.
Before the Kosovo UDI turns into what the Russian Foreign Ministry has called "crossing the Rubicon" and a possible "uncontrolled crisis," someone in the Bush administration needs to call for a long overdue reassessment of our Kosovo policy. America has much more important business to take care of that we cannot afford to jeopardize over a seemingly minor dispute to vindicate a Clinton agenda item.
James Lyons, U.S. Navy retired admiral, was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations, and deputy chief of naval operations, where he was principal adviser on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.
http://www.kosovocompromise.com/cms/item/topic/en.html?view=story&id=421§ionId=2
"Got anything new?"
Nothing that you could/would understand/comprehend tinman...
Have you had any luck finding that/those post???
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22624402
SL
Once Again...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22624402
I know your slow tinman...but this is f**king ridiculous.
SL
Clinton, Cheney and Haliburton...
The Criminalization of the State: "Independent Kosovo", a Territory under US-NATO Military Rule
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, February 4, 2008
While the European Union and the US, have acknowledged that they would be "opposed" to a " unilateral" declaration of independence of Kosovo, the secession of Kosovo from Serbia is already de facto. It is part of a US-NATO military agenda. It is the culmination of the 1999 NATO led invasion. It responds to US-NATO strategic objectives.
Moreover, the "compromise" Ahtisaari Proposal under the helm of the former Finnish Prime Minister to establish a "multi-ethnic" Kosovar State has little to do with "national sovereignty" or "independence". It is a copy and paste replicate of the structures imposed on Bosnia-Herzegovina under the 1995 Dayton agreements. It essentially sustains the authority of the military occupation. Under proposed blueprint, all the major decisions pertaining to public spending, social programs, monetary and trading arrangements would remain in the hands of the NATO-UN occupation administration.
The re-election of a "pro-Western" president Boris Tadic in the Serbian elections is likely to "legitimize" Kosovo's de facto secession. Boris Tadic's Democratic Party takes its orders from Washington. In 2000, it actively participated in the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic from the Serbian presidency. Moreover, Boris Tadic as Serbian president, is also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. He is unlikely to act without consulting Washington and Brussels in the event of a unilateral declaration of independence.
Since the 1999 NATO invasion, Kosovo has become a territory under foreign military rule. Kosovo remains under UN administration, In practice, however, it is under NATO military jurisdiction. Secession from Serbia would reinforce the control of the NATO-UN occupation authority.
The civilian government of the province is headed by Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës or UÇK in Albanian). Known for its extensive links to Albanian and European crime syndicates, the KLA was supported from the outset in the mid-1990s by the CIA and Germany's intelligence agency, the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND). In the course of the 1999 war, the KLA was supported directly by NATO.
Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaci, who now heads the Democratic Party of Kosovo was known in the 1990s to be part of a crime syndicate, involved in drug trafficking and prostitution. During the Clinton administration, he was a protégé of Madeleine Albright. In the 1990s, Thaci founded the so-called "Drenica-Group", a criminal syndicate based in Kosovo, with links to the Albanian, Macedonian and Italian mafias. These links to criminal syndicates have been acknowledged both by Interpol and the US Congress.
In 1997, the KLA was recognized by the U.S. as a terrorist organization linked to the drug trade. President Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, described the KLA as, "without any questions, a terrorist group".
The Democratic Party of Kosovo is integrated by former members of a terrorist organization. It has maintained its links to organized crime. In fact, a large part of the political spectrum in Kosovo is dominated by former KLA members. Kosovo's previous prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and head of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, elected in 2004, is also a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army. In addition to his links to organized crime, Hadadinaj was also indicted in 2005 for war crimes by the The Hague ICTY Tribunal.
The NATO occupation of Kosovo responds to US foreign policy objectives. It secures a heavily militarized US zone of influence in Southern Europe. It ensures the militarization of strategic pipeline routes and transport corridors which link Western Europe to the Black Sea. It also protects the multibillion dollar heroin trade, which uses Kosovo and Albania as transit locations for the transshipment of Afghan produced heroin into Western Europe.
Camp Bondsteel
Kosovo is home to one of America's largest military bases, Camp Bondsteel.
Bondsteel was built on contract to the Pentagon by Halliburton, through its engineering subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR). Camp Bondsteel is considered to be "the largest and most expensive army base since Vietnam." with more than 6000 US troops.
"Camp Bondsteel, the biggest “from scratch” foreign US military base since the Vietnam War (...) It is located close to vital oil pipelines and energy corridors presently under construction, such as the US sponsored Trans-Balkan oil pipeline. As a result defence contractors—in particular Halliburton Oil subsidiary Brown & Root Services—are making a fortune.
In June 1999, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Yugoslavia, US forces seized 1,000 acres of farmland in southeast Kosovo at Uresevic, near the Macedonian border, and began the construction of a camp.
Camp Bondsteel is known as the “grand dame” in a network of US bases running both sides of the border between Kosovo and Macedonia. In less than three years it has been transformed from an encampment of tents to a self sufficient, high tech base-camp housing nearly 7,000 troops—three quarters of all the US troops stationed in Kosovo.
There are 25 kilometres of roads and over 300 buildings at Camp Bondsteel, surrounded by 14 kilometres of earth and concrete barriers, 84 kilometres of concertina wire and 11 watch towers. It is so big that it has downtown, midtown and uptown districts, retail outlets, 24-hour sports halls, a chapel, library and the best-equipped hospital anywhere in Europe. At present there are 55 Black Hawk and Apache helicopters based at Bondsteel and although it has no aircraft landing strip the location was chosen for its capacity to expand. There are suggestions that it could replace the US airforce base at Aviano in Italy.
(See Paul Stuart, Camp Bondsteel and America’s plans to control Caspian oil, WSWS.org, April 2002, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/oil-a29.shtml)
Camp Bondsteel was not the outgrowth of a humanitarian or "Just War" on behalf of Kosovar Albanians. The construction of Camp Bondsteel had been envisaged well in advance of the bombings and invasion of Kosovo in 1999.
The plans to build Camp Bondsteel under a lucrative multibillion dollar DoD contract with Halliburton's Texas based subsidiary KBR were formulated while Dick Cheney was Halliburton's CEO.
Construction of Camp Bondsteel was initiated shortly after the 1999 invasion under the Clinton administration. Construction was completed during the Bush administration, after Dick Cheney had resigned his position as Halliburton's CEO:
The US and NATO had advanced plans to bomb Yugoslavia before 1999, and many European political leaders now believe that the US deliberately used the bombing of Yugoslavia to establish camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.. According to Colonel Robert L. McCure, “Engineering planning for operations in Kosovo began months before the first bomb was dropped.” (See Lenora Foerstel, Global Research, January 2008)
One of the objectives underlying Camp Bondsteel was to protect the Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil pipeline project (AMBO), which was to channel Caspian sea oil from the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Burgas to the Adriatic.
Coincidentally, two years prior to the invasion, in 1997, a senior executive of `Brown & Root Energy, a subsidiary of Halliburton, Edward L. (Ted) Ferguson had been appointed to head AMBO. The feasibility plans for the AMBO pipeline were also undertaken by Halliburton's engineering company, Kellog, Brown & Root Ltd.
The AMBO agreement for the 917-km long oil pipeline from Burgas to Valona, Albania, was signed in 2004.
Criminalization of the State
The KLA was set up as a paramilitary group in the mid 1990s. It was a US-NATO sponsored insurgency. The objective was to destabilize and ultimately break up Yugoslavia. The KLA had extensive links to Al Qaeda, which was also involved in military training. Mujahideen mercenaries from a number of countries integrated the ranks of the KLA, which was involved in terrorist activities as well as political assassinations.
In this context, what are the implications of the "Ahtisaari Plan." which envisages the formation of a separate multi-ethnic Kosovar State?
The proposed Kosovar political setup is integrated by criminal elements. Western politicians are fully aware of the nature of the Kosovar political project, of which they are the architects. .
We are not, however, dealing with the usual links of individual Western politicians to criminal syndicates. The relationship is far more sophisticated. Both the EU and the US are using criminal organizations and criminalized political parties in Kosovo to reach their military and foreign policy goals. The latter in turn support the interests of the oil companies and defense contractors, not to mention the multibillion dollar heroin trade out of Afghanistan.
At the institutional level, the US administration, the EU, NATO and the UN are actually promoting the criminalization of the Kosovar State, which they control. In broad terms we are also dealing with the criminalization of US foreign policy. These criminal organizations and parties are created to ultimately serve US interests in Southern Europe.
Kosovo independence would formally transform Kosovo into an independent mafia state, controlled by the Western military alliance. The territory of Kosovo would remain under US-NATO military jurisdiction.
The 1999 NATO led Invasion of Kosovo
In 1999, many sectors of the Left both in North America and Western Europe were tacitly supportive of the NATO led invasion. Many progressive organizations upheld what they perceived as "a humanitarian war" on behalf Kosovar Albanians.
Media propaganda and disinformation contributed to distorting the real causes and consequences of the wars directed against the Yugoslav federation.
The anti-war movement was in disarray. At the height of the NATO bombings, several "progressive" writers described the KLA as a bona fide nationalist liberation army, committed to supporting the civil rights of Kosovar Albanians.
The KLA, as confirmed by the OSCE observer mission to Kosovo in late 1998, had been involved in countless terrorist acts and atrocities directed against Serbian and Albanian civilians as well as minority groups in Kosovo.
Without evidence, the Yugoslav government headed by president Slobodan Milosevic was presented as being responsible for triggering a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. The alleged violation of human rights of ethnic Albanians was used as a pretext for the extensive bombing of Yugoslavia. In a cruel irony, the most intense bombing raids were carried out in Kosovo. A majority of the victims of these raids were Kosovar Albanians.
The invasion and subsequent military occupation was upheld as a humanitarian endeavor, geared towards preventing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo directed against the Kosovar Albanians. The war on Yugoslavia was presented as a "Just War". by Professor Falk, a leading "progressive" intellectual endorsed the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on moral and ethical grounds:
The Kosovo War was a just war because it was undertaken to avoid a likely instance of "ethnic cleansing" undertaken by the Serb leadership of former Yugoslavia, and it succeeded in giving the people of Kosovo an opportunity for a peaceful and democratic future. It was a just war despite being illegally undertaken without authorization by the United Nations, and despite being waged in a manner that unduly caused Kosovar and Serbian civilian casualties, while minimizing the risk of death or injury on the NATO side."
( http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2003/08/01_falk_interview.htm )
Several progressive media condemned the "Milosevic regime", while expressing mitigated support for the KLA:
At present, the only armed force capable of defending the Kosovar Albanian villages that remain is the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA). Despite political shortcomings born of the state of lawlessness into which the 90% Albanian majority has been thrown over the last 10 years, since Milosevic abolished Kosova's autonomy, the KLA last year managed to organise an army of up to 40,000 fighters.
Much left debate centres on its potential and political program and on the desirability of armed struggle in general. For example, Stephen Shalom, in an article on ZNet (its contributing editors include Noam Chomsky and Edward Said) that incisively sums up the case against both NATO and Milosevic, states: “I am sympathetic to the argument that says that if people want to fight for their rights, if they are not asking others to do it for them, then they ought to be provided with the weapons to help them succeed. Such an argument seemed to me persuasive with respect to Bosnia.”
....
Michel Chossudovsky, a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, has set out the most meticulous frame-up in a piece entitled “Freedom Fighters Financed by Organised Crime”, which has been doing the internet circuit. Full of half-truths, assumptions and innuendoes about the KLA's alleged use of drug money, Chossudovsky's article seeks to discredit the KLA as a genuine liberation movement representing the aspirations of the oppressed Albanian majority.
(Michael Karadjis, Chossudovskys frame-up of the KLA, Green Left Review, http://mihalisk.blogspot.com/2005/08/chossudovskys-frame-up-of-kla-1999.html
Nine years and two wars later, the Kosovo issue has re-emerged. It is an integral part of the broader military roadmap. It is intimately related to the post 9/11 US led wars in Central Asia and the Middle East.
The Balkans constitute the gateway to Eurasia. The 1999 invasion establishes a permanent US military presence in Southern Europe, which serves the broader US led war. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq: these three theater wars were waged on humanitarian grounds. Without exception, in all three countries, US military bases were established.
Below is my original April 1999 article on the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), published barely three weeks after the onslaught of the NATO bombings, almost nine years ago.
Kosovo "Freedom Fighters" Financed by Organised Crime
By Michel Chossudovsky
10 April 1999
Heralded by the global media as a humanitarian peace-keeping mission, NATO's ruthless bombing of Belgrade and Pristina goes far beyond the breach of international law. While Slobodan Milosevic is demonised, portrayed as a remorseless dictator, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is upheld as a self-respecting nationalist movement struggling for the rights of ethnic Albanians. The truth of the matter is that the KLA is sustained by organised crime with the tacit approval of the United States and its allies.
Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multibillion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in "financing the conflict" in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged by numerous studies, the links of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the mid-1990s.
" ... The financing of the Kosovo guerrilla war poses critical questions and it sorely tests claims of an "ethical" foreign policy. Should the West back a guerrilla army that appears to partly financed by organised crime."[1]
While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was "preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs."[2] In the meantime, the rebel army has been skillfully heralded by the global media (in the months preceding the NATO bombings) as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
With KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year "freedom fighter") appointed as chief negotiator at Rambouillet, the KLA has become the de facto helmsman of the peace process on behalf of the ethnic Albanian majority and this despite its links to the drug trade. The West was relying on its KLA puppets to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under Western Administration.
Ironically Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, had described the KLA last year [1998] as "terrorists". Christopher Hill, America's chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement, "has also been a strong critic of the KLA for its alleged dealings in drugs."[3] Moreover, barely a few two months before Rambouillet, the US State Department had acknowledged (based on reports from the US Observer Mission) the role of the KLA in terrorising and uprooting ethnic Albanians:
" ... the KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police, ... KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA [a process which has continued since the NATO bombings]... [T]he KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in the Stimlje region are "ready to flee."[4]
While backing a "freedom movement" with links to the drug trade, the West seems also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who has called for an end to the bombings and expressed his desire to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Yugoslav authorities.[5] It is worth recalling that a few days before his March 31 Press Conference, Rugova had been reported by the KLA (alongside three other leaders including Fehmi Agani) to have been killed by the Serbs.
Covert financing of "freedom fighters"
Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where "freedom fighters" were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.
According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington's military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.[6]
The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. "The rising curve of cocaine imports to the US", wrote journalist John Dinges "followed almost exactly the flow of US arms and military advisers to Central America".[7]
The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. "Dirty money" recycled through the banking system--often through an anonymous shell company-- became "covert money," used to finance various rebel groups and guerrilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991 Time magazine report:
"Because the US wanted to supply the mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. 'If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan', said a US intelligence officer."[8]
America and Germany join hands
Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established as a joint endeavour between the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) (which previously played a key role in installing a right-wing nationalist government under Franjo Tudjman in Croatia).[9] The task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: "They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money".[10] According to Whitley, the CIA was subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania.[11]
The covert activities of Germany's BND were consistent with Bonn's intent to expand its "Lebensraum" into the Balkans. Prior to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it had "forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the US favoured (although not officially) the formation of a "Greater Albania" encompassing Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.[12] According to Sean Gervasi, Germany was seeking a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa."[13]
Islamic fundamentalism in support of the KLA
Bonn and Washington's "hidden agenda" consisted in triggering nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the ultimate purpose of destabilising Yugoslavia. The latter objective was also carried out "by turning a blind eye" to the influx of mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist organisations.[14]
Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia.[15] And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerrilla and diversion tactics.[16]
According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede.[17] "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations."[18]
The supply route for arming KLA "freedom fighters" are the rugged mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies Western Europe with grade four heroin. Seventy-five percent of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe."[19] A recent intelligence report by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: "Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries."[20]
The laundering of dirty money
In order to thrive, the criminal syndicates involved in the Balkans narcotics trade need friends in high places. Smuggling rings with alleged links to the Turkish State are said to control the trafficking of heroin through the Balkans "cooperating closely with other groups with which they have political or religious ties" including criminal groups in Albanian and Kosovo.[21] In this new global financial environment, powerful undercover political lobbies connected to organized crime cultivate links to prominent political figures and officials of the military and intelligence establishment.
The narcotics trade nonetheless uses respectable banks to launder large amounts of dirty money. While comfortably removed from the smuggling operations per se, powerful banking interests in Turkey but mainly those in financial centres in Western Europe discretely collect fat commissions in a multibillion dollar money laundering operation. These interests have high stakes in ensuring a safe passage of drug shipments into Western European markets.
The Albanian connection
Arms smuggling from Albania into Kosovo and Macedonia started at the beginning of 1992, when the Democratic Party came to power, headed by President Sali Berisha. An expansive underground economy and cross border trade had unfolded. A triangular trade in oil, arms and narcotics had developed largely as a result of the embargo imposed by the international community on Serbia and Montenegro and the blockade enforced by Greece against Macedonia.
Industry and agriculture in Kosovo were spearheaded into bankruptcy following the IMF's lethal "economic medicine" imposed on Belgrade in 1990. The embargo was imposed on Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs were driven into abysmal poverty. Economic collapse created an environment which fostered the progress of illicit trade. In Kosovo, the rate of unemployment increased to a staggering 70 percent (according to Western sources).
Poverty and economic collapse served to exacerbate simmering ethnic tensions. Thousands of unemployed youths "barely out of their teens" from an impoverished population, were drafted into the ranks of the KLA ...[22]
In neighbouring Albania, the free market reforms adopted since 1992 had created conditions which favoured the criminalisation of state institutions. Drug money was also laundered in the Albanian pyramids (ponzi schemes) which mushroomed during the government of former President Sali Berisha (1992-1997).[23] These shady investment funds were an integral part of the economic reforms inflicted by Western creditors on Albania.
Drug barons in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia (with links to the Italian Mafia) had become the new economic elites, often associated with Western business interests. In turn the financial proceeds of the trade in drugs and arms were recycled towards other illicit activities (and vice versa) including a vast prostitution racket between Albania and Italy. Albanian criminal groups operating in Milan, "have become so powerful running prostitution rackets that they have even taken over the Calabrians in strength and influence."[24]
The application of "strong economic medicine" under the guidance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions had contributed to wrecking Albania's banking system and precipitating the collapse of the Albanian economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several Western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes riveted on Albania's abundant and unexplored oil-deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum.... The Adenauer Foundation had been lobbying in the background on behalf of German mining interests.[25]
Berisha's Minister of Defence Safet Zoulali (alleged to have been involved in the illegal oil and narcotics trade) was the architect of the agreement with Germany's Preussag (handing over control over Albania's chrome mines) against the competing bid of the US led consortium of Macalloy Inc. in association with Rio Tinto Zimbabwe (RTZ).[26]
Large amounts of narco-dollars had also been recycled into the privatisation programmes leading to the acquisition of state assets by the mafias. In Albania, the privatisation programme had led virtually overnight to the development of a property owning class firmly committed to the "free market". In Northern Albania, this class was associated with the Guegue "families" linked to the Democratic Party.
Controlled by the Democratic Party under the presidency of Sali Berisha (1992-97), Albania's largest financial "pyramid" VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue "families" of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests. VEFA was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money.[27]
According to one press report (based on intelligence sources), senior members of the Albanian government during the presidency of Sali Berisha including cabinet members and members of the secret police SHIK were alleged to be involved in drugs trafficking and illegal arms trading into Kosovo:
"(...) The allegations are very serious. Drugs, arms, contraband cigarettes all are believed to have been handled by a company run openly by Albania's ruling Democratic Party, Shqiponja (...). In the course of 1996 Defence Minister, Safet Zhulali [was alleged] to had used his office to facilitate the transport of arms, oil and contraband cigarettes. (...) Drugs barons from Kosovo (...) operate in Albania with impunity, and much of the transportation of heroin and other drugs across Albania, from Macedonia and Greece en route to Italy, is believed to be organised by Shik, the state security police (...). Intelligence agents are convinced the chain of command in the rackets goes all the way to the top and have had no hesitation in naming ministers in their reports."[28]
The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter): "Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek embargo [in 1993-4] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of kalachnikov rifles to Albanian 'brothers' in Kosovo".[29]
The Northern tribal clans or "fares" had also developed links with Italy's crime syndicates.[30] In turn, the latter played a key role in smuggling arms across the Adriatic into the Albanian ports of Dures and Valona. At the outset in 1992, the weapons channelled into Kosovo were largely small arms including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPK and PPK machine-guns, 12.7 calibre heavy machine-guns, etc.
The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti-aircraft and anti-armor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA "funnelled through a so-called 'Government of Kosovo' based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn--notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government".[31]
The KLA has also acquired electronic surveillance equipment which enables it to receive NATO satellite information concerning the movement of the Yugoslav Army. The KLA training camp in Albania is said to "concentrate on heavy weapons training--rocket propelled grenades, medium caliber cannons, tanks and transporter use, as well as on communications, and command and control". (According to Yugoslav government sources).[32]
These extensive deliveries of weapons to the Kosovo rebel army were consistent with Western geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, there has been a "deafening silence" of the international media regarding the Kosovo arms-drugs trade. In the words of a 1994 Report of the Geopolitical Drug Watch: "the trafficking [of drugs and arms] is basically being judged on its geostrategic implications (...) In Kosovo, drugs and weapons trafficking is fuelling geopolitical hopes and fears"...[33]
The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome "marriage of convenience" with the mafia. "Freedom fighters" were put in place, the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to "finance the Kosovo conflict" with the ultimate objective of destabilising the Belgrade government and fully recolonising the Balkans. The destruction of an entire country is the outcome. Western governments which participated in the NATO operation bear a heavy burden of responsibility in the deaths of civilians, the impoverishment of both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and the plight of those who were brutally uprooted from towns and villages in Kosovo as a result of the bombings.
Notes:
1. Roger Boyes and Eske Wright, Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels, The Times, London, Monday, March 24, 1999.
2. Ibid.
3. Philip Smucker and Tim Butcher, "Shifting stance over KLA has betrayed' Albanians", Daily Telegraph, London, 6 April 1999
4. KDOM Daily Report, released by the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, Office of South Central European Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, December 21, 1998; Compiled by EUR/SCE (202-647-4850) from daily reports of the US element of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, December 21, 1998.
5. "Rugova, sous protection serbe appelle a l'arret des raides", Le Devoir, Montreal, 1 April 1999.
6. See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Harper and Row, New York, 1972.
7. See John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega, Times Books, New York, 1991.
8. "The Dirtiest Bank of All," Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22.
9. Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999; see also Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997.
10. Quoted in Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999).
11. Ibid.
12. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4
13. Sean Gervasi, "Germany, US and the Yugoslav Crisis", Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93).
14. See Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1993.
15. For further details see Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997, p. 288.
16. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, 2 April 1999.
17. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 13, 1998.
18. Ibid.
19. Daily News, Ankara, 5 March 1997.
20. Quoted in Boyes and Wright, op cit.
21. ANA, Athens, 28 January 1997, see also Turkish Daily News, 29 January 1997.
22. Brian Murphy, KLA Volunteers Lack Experience, The Associated Press, 5 April 1999.
23. See Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3, see also Barry James, in Balkans, Arms for Drugs, The International Herald Tribune, Paris, June 6, 1994.
24. The Guardian, 25 March 1997.
25. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, La crisi albanese, Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Torino, 1998.
26. Ibid.
27. Andrew Gumbel, The Gangster Regime We Fund, The Independent, February 14, 1997, p. 15.
28. Ibid.
29. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3.
30. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 66, p. 4.
31. Quoted in Workers' World, May 7, 1998.
32. See Government of Yugoslavia at http://www.gov.yu/terrorism/terroristcamps.html.
33. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4.
Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s "War on Terrorism" Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7996
The Clintons pass in the night (an old/but good)
By Dick Morris
Posted: 03/08/06 12:00 AM [ET]
Written in conjunction with Eileen McGann
Bill and Hillary Clinton are the first couple to appear simultaneously and independently on the national political stage. They are using their special circumstances as a convenient shield for one another, fulfilling, at once, Hillary’s dream of no accountability and Bill’s of being able to take both sides of an issue.
Did Hillary know that Bill was pardoning the FALN terrorists to help her win Puerto Rican votes in New York? Oh, she was opposed to the pardon.
Did Hillary find out that Bill was granting pardons to felons and drug dealers who had hired her brothers for six-figure fees to lobby her husband for pardons right under her nose? No way. In fact she was “saddened” at her brothers’ involvement.
And we all know that Hillary was “gasping for breath” when she first learned the truth about Monica Lewinsky.
And the former first lady was “bewildered” that members of the White House staff would treat her demands that they fire the travel-office staff as an order.
Bill has been out there criticizing the war while Hillary plays to the center by voting for it.
And now, this heavy-footed pas de deux straddles the issue of whether a Dubai company should run six American ports.
Are we truly to believe Hillary’s insistence last week that she knew nothing about Bill’s counseling of his friend and benefactor the crown prince of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, on the ports deal? Do Bill and Hillary Clinton ever speak to each other, or do they just attend funerals, fundraisers and Billy Graham crusades together for photo-ops?
Bill is, after all, a regular in Dubai. The crown prince — that is, the government — contributed to his presidential library and pays him $300,000 per speech. Recently, Yucaipa, an American company that has Bill Clinton as a “senior adviser” and pays him a percentage of its profits, formed a partnership with the Dubai Investment Group to form DIGL Inc., a company dedicated to managing the sheik’s personal investments.
No doubt Bill Clinton was brought in to cement this lucrative deal from which he — and therefore Hillary — will likely make millions. Neither Bill nor Hillary will disclose how much he is paid, but her Senate financial disclosure says that he will make “more than” $1,000. They also won’t say how much Dubai royalty gave to the Clinton library.
So when Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) broke the story that the administration had approved the Dubai ports deal and Bill Clinton started to defend it in public, are we to believe that Hillary did not know that the sheik had called him to ask his advice, and are we to believe that Bill’s defense of the deal was unrelated to his myriad financial ties to Dubai?
Hillary stands to gain millions in income from her husband’s Dubai connection. She knows he flies there very, very frequently. And she must realize that Bill is close to the Dubai royal family.
So why did she dump on the port deal? Likely to cover herself. If she were anything less than front and center against the Dubai port deal, she would vulnerable to criticism over Bill’s involvement with the Dubai royal family. So she held marathon press conferences denouncing the deal and professed not to realize her husband was defending the deal at the sheik’s request.
What’s really going on here is that Bill Clinton is trying to please his Arab patrons and business partners at the same time that Hillary Clinton is trying to capitalize on American stereotypes about Arab terrorists.
More important, she’s desperately trying to distract attention from the Dubai dollars that flow into her family checking account from Bill’s political and business dealings with the Dubai crown prince. What better way than to attack them?
We should insist that:
• Bill Clinton register as an agent of a foreign principal.
• The Clintons say how much he makes from Dubai.
• The Clinton library tell us how much Dubai royalty gave to the library.
• And Bill disclose, in the future, whenever he is speaking as an ex-president or as a paid public-relations flack.
http://hill6.thehill.com/dick-morris/the-clintons-pass-in-the-night-2006-03-08.html
Obama bin lottery
By Spengler
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA29Dj06.html