07/18/16

CNN Headline: Albanian Couple Arrested in France Attack

By: Julia Gorin | Republican Riot

Pamela Geller already has it. There are no details other than six are in custody for the crowd-mowing jihadi attack in Nice last week. The estranged wife of the Albanian man involved has been released and is not a suspect.

Pamela correctly interprets the media’s use of the word “Albanian” as planting doubt about the Muslimness of everyone involved. It was something that Jim Jatras and I mentioned on her radio show in 2007 — namely that the term “ethnic Albanian” became useful during the 1999 conflict, to not turn Westerners off from helping the Muslim side in the conflict against the Christian-Serbs we were setting up as the villain.

But recall that we witnessed the disappearance of the word “Albanian” from articles in the early 2000s, when the news coming out about them was less flattering than their plight as innocent victims of bloodthirsty Christians (e.g., drugs, prostitution, jihad, gangs). Instead, terms like “Yugoslavs” were used, and sometimes “Kosovars,” since no one would know what that was despite our having waged our last pre-9/11 war there, the war that closed the 20th century. The foreshadowing war (of what was to become commonplace in this century: pro-jihad NATO war).

In other words, after working so hard to prop up ethnic identity in multi-national Yugoslavia and dismantle that country into ethnically pure, Western-dependent statelets, our officials and media found themselves embarrassed by their clients, and started shrouding their ethnicity.

But now, with Muslims being undeniably out-of-control enough for even the world-in-denial to notice, the media and government goal is to shield the Islamic background of as many suspects as possible. And so “Albanian” has again become preferable, and media have gotten over their shyness in using it.

I’ll close with a sophomoric tangent, something that took me 17 years since the Kosovo war to notice. We all remember whose war it was. Hillary, Bill and Wesley aside, it was “Maddie’s War.” Namely, Madeleine Albright’s. It’s silly to even notice this, but look at the first three letters of her last name: Alb.

Then again, if Shakespeare had written the story, this might have been considered a telltale clue, a foreshadowing. It’s as if she were predestined to FTW ( “F–k The World”).

Ah, “if women ran the world…” indeed.

Get ready for the last female president.

03/24/16

March of Crimes

By: Julia Gorin | Republican Riot

“Presumed innocent until proven Serb”
–Balkans forum commenter

“The falseness of the entire situation here defies description.”
– Radovan Karadzic, Opening Defense Statement

Well, at least this Hague-held Serb didn’t turn up dead like six or so others.

Very little in or about the Balkans happens by accident. In 2008 Radovan Karadzic was arrested at a time that the U.S. and EU were desperately ramming through statehood for a criminal enclave named Kosovo. Conveniently, the arrest of Karadzic reinforced the image of Serb as war criminal just as they were looking to have fewer questions about officialdom’s obsession with this tiny place.

And it is again no accident that the date of the Karadzic verdict eight years later was “set for March 24th,” the infamous date in 1999 of America’s greatest international crime and shame, when a purportedly anti-war president took us to war against a Christian, European population that had been America’s historical ally. All for doing battle against domestic terror and the ambitions of Greater Islam which, having little experience with it at the time, Washington dubbed “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” As did Berlin, Paris and Brussels.

Payback is a bitch. Particularly when it’s self-orchestrated, as Europe and America are today reaping the karma and consequence of what they’ve sown, making Serbs of us all. As publisher Milo Yelesiyevich, who has translated Karadzic’s Opening Defense Statement, put it in a letter to me:

I hope the Europeans give Dr. K a second look, because they’re in for it now. In a few short decades, they’ve been cast in the role of “Serbs” in their own countries, yet they still refuse to acknowledge their complicity in their own downfall, which stems from having attacked Serbs and Serbia throughout the 1990s [on behalf of what would become the next nexus of jihad — Bosnia and Kosovo].

Continue reading

09/24/15

Bosnisis? Kosovosis? What a Shocker. Thank US-IS. A Summer-to-Summer Roundup Shows it ISUS

By: Julia Gorin
Republican Riot

How many times has it been said or written sarcastically of us Balkans heretics that “The place she wants you to worry about for terrorism is not in the Middle East or Pakistan, but in the Balkans. She wants you to think that Bosnia/Kosovo is the next Afghanistan.”

Well, over the past three years more and more people have gotten the memo that ISIS is setting up its Great White Hope in Bosnia and Kosovo, while recruits from both continue topping the numbers, proportionally speaking.

It has something to do with the fact that the West created Afghanistan-like potential “in the heart of Europe,” as the Balkans are again emphatically being called, this time not to dramatize some desperately concocted genocide “in the heart of Europe,” but to underscore the juxtaposition of the Middle East making its way into Europe, which is happening thanks in large part to that early help from media and governments in concocting that genocide and the wars they justified with it.

This European Middle East we facilitated is precisely what the Caliphate had pinned its hopes on for infiltrating Europe more expeditiously. How many times have we few tried to explain this, and in how many different ways, in response to criticisms that we were mischaracterizing the vast majority of secular, European, moderate, pro-American “Kosovars” and “Bosniaks,” as if that were the point.

As we peruse the following year-in-review about Bosnian and Albanian jihadis (and these are just the ones I haven’t had a chance to chronicle yet on this blog), let’s keep in mind that old pals U.S., UK and Germany brought us all of this. That’s who’s made this world for us, and so more of our children have to die, starting with the soldiers who are sent by the same devils to face the enemy proliferated by us (UsIS?). And still they want us to believe that it was a bigger deal that some Serb paramilitaries in the 90s executed up to a thousand Muslim soldiers (”8000,” as they call the same figure), and so everything we’re dealing with now is justified by it.

Inside Kacanik, Kosovo’s jihadist capital (UK Telegraph, Aug. 23, 2015, by Colin Freeman)

Tiny town boasts only 30,000 people, yet two dozen local men have gone to fight jihad in Iraq and Syria

Nestling in a wooded valley that its citizens laid their lives down to defend [sic: seize], the town of Kacanik in southern Kosovo is fiercely proud of its war dead.

Well-kept cemeteries include nearly 100 victims of Serb-led ethnic cleansing [sic] in 1999, while in the town centre, a statue clutching an RPG honours fallen members of Brigade 162 of the Kosovan Liberation Army [what?].

But a decade and a half on from the war that brought about Kosovo’s independence, there is rather less pride in Kacanik’s new crop of warriors.

In the last three years, some 24 local menfolk have gone to fight for jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, giving the town of just 30,000 people an unwanted reputation as the jihadist capital of the Balkans.

Not in any way predicated on the first crop of violent, Christian-host-society-delegitimizing-and-slaughtering domestic terrorists, of course, those “Kosovan” Liberation Armyfolk.

…”[Lavdrim] Muhaxheri [the jihadi who last year beheaded a Syrian teen] has given Kacanic a name as the most radical city in Kosovo, if not the whole Balkans,” said Musli Verbani, a local imam, who claims that hardliners forced him from Kacanik’s Islamic Association four years ago. [More than a “claim,” as reporter Freeman could havechecked.] “I warned that this kind of thing was coming, but no-one listened.”

…For a nation [sic] of just 1.8 million people, [Kosovo] now punches well above its weight in terms of the number of citizens joining Isil. The interior ministry estimates that some 300 Kosovans have followed in Muhaxheri’s’ footsteps, making Kosovo Europe’s biggest contributor per capita. [Syria alone has 300 from Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia.] Along with neighbouring Albania, which has fielded around 200, and nearby Bosnia, which around 160, it is now seen as a potential launch pad for Isil in its bid to establish a new front against Europe in the Balkans.

What’s this? Albania-Kosovo-Bosnia as some sort of jihadi hideout/transit point and launching pad for the Caliphate into Europe? Not like we were warned a million times over or anything. Wow, so the enemy found some utility in our pro-American Muslim projects? Who would have thunk?! But wait — before you go second-guessing those projects — The Telegraph wants to keep you on-program via the following image:


Captain Andy Phipps from the British Army holds his head in hands as he looks over the site of a possible mass grave of nearly 100 ethnic Albanians in southern Kosovo Photo: Reuters

What also alarms Western security officials, though, is why any Kosovans would join Isil’s fanatics at all.

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06/22/15

“Deranged Lone Assassin” Mows Down, Stabs 37 Austrians, Answering ‘IS’ Call to Balkan Muslims: “Either Join, or Kill Over There”

By: Julia Gorin
Republican Riot

Is it a coincidence that earlier this month, the following call to Jihad by IS was issued specifically to Balkan Muslims: IS to Balkan Muslims: “Either join, or kill over there”

Well, Alen Rizvanovic killed over there. Not exactly “lone” or “deranged” (beyond the mental disorder otherwise known as Islam which, yes, is lame. And now so are 34 Austrians, plus three dead).

Austria is of course very vulnerable to feeling the effects of the call of the wild, thanks to the Bosnian Muslims it welcomed back when it served as the financing center of the Bosnian Jihad, known to Westerners as the Bosnian war, or “Serbian genocide against Bosniaks.” Official Austria was front and center in helping make the war go in favor of the Muslims who demanded to carve their own Islamic state in Europe out of Yugoslavia.

But getting to the main question at hand: Gee, why would IS think it can recruit Balkan Muslims? Of all people. Didn’t we make it clear that those Muslims aren’t like those Muslims? IS and its forebears must not have gotten the memo that the West proclaimed the Muslims of the Balkans to be modern, secular, European, Western-facing, moderate, and so on — and gave them the upper hand in the war, and then in the peace. Because that way there would be no risk that these Muslims would turn into those Muslims, right? I mean, if they drink alcohol and eat pork — as their advocates constantly point out — then there’s no way they’ll choose Islamic solidarity over the West. Right?

Here was that IS call:

IS to Balkan Muslims: “Either join, or kill over there” (B92, RTS, vocativ.com, June 5, 2015)

The Islamic State has published a propaganda video that threatens Balkan countries and calls on Muslims to either join it, or launch attacks in the Balkans.

The video, titled “Honor is in jihad, a message to the Balkans”, has been published by the Alhayat Media Center – a propaganda center established to reach audiences in the West with Islamic messages.

The video, that lasts a little over 22 minutes, has an English language narrator talking about the history of the Balkans, while showing historical footage, and about the Muslim communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania “and other countries in the region.”

Members of the Islamic State who came from the Balkans are shown, with several of them calling on other Muslims to go to Iraq and Syria, “where they can safely and with dignity live with their families.”

Among the identified Islamists are Abu Bilkis, aka Al Albani and Abu Mukatil, aka Al Kosovo, as well as Abu Muhammad al Bosni.

[What names these are! “Al-Bosni, Al-Albani, Al-Kosovi.”? Who could have foreseen it? Those very same “moderate” and “pro-American” Muslims.]

“Many of you complain that they cannot grow a beard or wear a niqab. Now is your chance, make Hijra,” said one of those featured, Salahudding Al Bosni.

He also told the audience that “to think back to the last war in Bosnia-Herzegovina”.

As in other propaganda videos, the jihadists are telling those who are “unable to emigrate to the land of Islam” to attack “dictators in Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania”, as well as their armies.

“Fight them over there. If you can, put explosives under their cars, in their houses, all of them. If you can, take some poison, put in it their drink, in their food, let them die. Kill them in every place and wherever you can. In Bosnia, in Serbia, in Sandzak. You can do it, Allah will help you,” Salahudding Al Bosni is heard saying.

This clip has been “much better produced than the dozens of previous propaganda materials made for the Balkan Islamists in the past 20 years,” said the reports.

Well that must have done the trick. This guy was motivated enough to extrapolate “over there” to his own adopted home of Austria, not far from the Balkans. It’s a call-up that has Deutsche Welle asking, “Are the Balkans a gateway for ‘IS’?”

Now, why would the Balkans per se — more than some other part of Europe — be IS’s gateway? I mean, what is different about the populations of the Balkans from those of the rest of Europe? Surely it couldn’t be the countless Westward-facing Muslims that populate that region. In any case, when has the word “extremism” ever been associated with Balkan Muslims? Yet that is the category Deutsche Welle placed the story under:

EXTREMISM
Are the Balkans a gateway for ‘IS’?
Millions of Muslims live in the Balkans. According to media reports, Islamist terrorists are increasingly trying to influence them. But opinions are split on how dangerous the situation really is.

The history of the Balkans over the past 100 years is nothing but a chronology of Muslim oppression, at least according to the “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist group, whose propaganda targets the region. [Funny, that’s also according to the Bosnian and Albanian ‘not-like-those’ Muslims.] The only solution in the fight against the communists, so-called “crusaders” and Jews is jihad, they say. In an elaborately produced video, “IS” urges Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegowina, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia to kill their “infidel” neighbors.

“Put explosives under their cars and houses, pour poison into their food, let them croak,” a young bearded man shouts in Bosnian. The terrorists in the video even have nicknames, depending on where they come from: Al-Bosni, Al-Albani, Al-Kosovi.

The propaganda has already served one purpose: for days, all of the regional media reported that “IS” has its sights on the Balkans. Such reports are extremely useful to the Islamists, warns Vlado Azinovic, a political scientist and journalist from Bosnia.

“Via Twitter alone, the IS publishes more than 200,000 short messages per week,” the terrorism expert says. “They all contain such threats in several languages, so it’s wrong to believe that IS is targeting the Balkans in any way,” Azinovic told DW.

But, notions that the Balkans represent a gateway for jihadists are nothing but media hype and an expression of “hysteria”, he added.

[That’s right, Folks. Stay on-program. There’s no difference between short twitter messages and an elaborately, professionally produced video specifically in the Balkanites’ own language.]

Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper also reported that radical Islamists are increasingly networking in the western Balkans, offering “a kind of initial training for would-be jihadists.” The paper quoted German security officials as saying the situation is so alarming that it was discussed at the most recent G7 summit.

“The threat posed by IS should be taken seriously,” says Filip Ejdus, a Belgrade political scientist. While the expert doesn’t believe “IS” can create branches in the Balkans at this point, he fears the terrorists will soon carry out more attacks in Europe…

Experts may disagree about the extent of the threat posed by “IS” in the Balkans, but there is no doubt that the “Islamic State” has been recruiting many new backers in the region.

A record 250 men from Kosovo have gone to war for “IS”, media reports say. Bosnia-Herzegowina is also said to be at the top of the jihadist recruitment list…

…Ejdus says… “Although a majority of Muslims in the Balkans rejects these anti-civilizing ideas, they still unfortunately find their way to some people.”

The same is true for Kosovo, says Ismail Hasani, an expert on the sociology of religion from Pristina. Some Imams, who were trained in the Middle East, propagate a non-traditional interpretation of Islam, he told DW. “But in the Balkans, these radical versions don’t fall on fertile soil.” Hasani is convinced these interpretations will soon be a thing of the past…

But back to the present. Here is the UK Daily Mail report:

‘Deranged lone assassin’ drives at 90mph into crowds of shoppers in Austria before stabbing bystanders, killing four-year-old boy and two adults, and leaving 34 injured (June 20, 2015)

A four-year-old boy is reported to be one of three people killed after an SUV ploughed into a crowd of people in Graz, Austria.

Another 34 people were injured in the attack, with six – including two children – said to be in a serious condition.

Eyewitnesses say the driver rammed into crowds at up to 90mph before he got out and began randomly stabbing bystanders, which included the elderly and policemen.

The three victims killed in the attack have been described as a 28-year-old Austrian man, a 25-year-old woman and a four-year-old boy.

The woman and boy were both killed as the driver ploughed through crowds on the main Herrengasse shopping street before reaching the city’s main square.

The governor of the state has described the driver as a ‘deranged lone assassin’.

The National Police Director, Josef Klamminger, said the man, who is believed to be a 26-year-old Austrian truck driver, was suffering from ‘psychosis’ related to ‘family problems’.

The attacker is believed to be married with two children.

Police director Klamminger added that the man was under a restraining order keeping him away from the home of his wife and two children, after a domestic violence report was filed against him last month. [So far, we’re hitting on all the tropes of being a pious Muslim male.]

The driver did not resist when he was arrested by the police – who say he acted alone – and they have no reason to believe it was an act of terrorism.

The mayor was reported to be riding his Vespa in the street when the SUV sped past him, just feet away.

He only avoided being hit by driving onto the pavement, according to local media.

Always doing his homework, writer Daniel Greenfield found an Alen Rizvanovic on facebook, who has twice “liked” jihadist Bosnian war criminal Naser Oric, commander of Muslim soldiers at Srebrenica whom we are to again memorialize this July 11th. (And with extra gusto, please, as it’s the 20th anniversary of “the worst atrocity in Europe since WWII.”)

By the way, isn’t Graz where the Bosnian Muslims and Croats stole off to in the first place, to have their secret referendum on secession? Graz even sounds like a shortened Grazie — as in ‘Thanks, Austria, for not extraditing that Bosniak war criminal on the Serbs’ warrant, and thanks for trying to block Serbia’s EU accession start. Doing everything “right” for the Bosnian Muslims sure goes a long way.

06/18/15

This Week’s Globe Magazine Cover

By: Julia Gorin
Republican Riot

“Ex-White House aide reveals — Clinton Fighting Dementia!”

Well that’s good. Because he sure as hell didn’t fight al-Qaeda.

(Or is Dementia the name of a mistress?)

Meanwhile, the subhead reads: “Can’t Remember Being President.”

That’s funny, I can’t remember him being a president either.

Anyway, no biggie. Some would argue Bill Clinton has had dementia for the last 30 years.

06/5/15

For Cinco de Mayo, American Thinker Took the Carefree, Well-beaten Route to the Balkans

By: Julia Gorin
Republican Riot

This past Cinco de Mayo, the eagle-eyed Ruth S. King, board member of Family Security Foundation and columnist for Americans for a Safe Israel’s Outpost, alerted me to what she called an “appalling whitewash of Albania in American Thinker.”

Of course, it’s less appalling if one recalls my own bumpy Balkans history with American Thinker, as I’ve had with almost every other publication that had the momentary courage (or blissful naivete) to publish my minority view (a.k.a. the truth) about Kosovo and who the real aggressor was. Publisher Thomas Lifson had followed the familiar pattern wherein an editor is at first thankful that I put the subject on his radar and did the hard research — then feels immediately overburdened by the subject as soon as it causes real controversy and shows how unpopular the actual history is. Often, they turn on a dime when the hyenas of the majority view start screeching about the rare appearance of something other than the monopoly perspective — that only allowable, only existing (as far as you’re supposed to know), recent recorded history of the region.

And so American Thinker, like American Legion, Baltimore Sun and others before it, went from respect and gratitude to resentment, avoidance and annoyance at the name Julia Gorin. After kindly allowing one or two more Gorin pieces on the subject in 2007, Mr. Lifson declared that A.T. would stay away from the Balkans all together. The way the rest already do (except when it’s a rehash or tangent of the permitted narrative).

But then on Christmas 2010 he reprinted a majority-view article titled”A Srebrenica Christmas,” and when he again broached the Balkans in March 2011 with a good piece by Victor Sharpe titled “Hillary’s War” and I thanked him, he said he almost didn’t run it, since “Nobody is ever convinced to change his/her mind on the Balkans, and it is not worth the trouble focusing on it.” To which I replied, “Publishing the occasional piece on the Balkans amid the avalanche of standard-issue stuff isn’t exactly ‘focusing.’ Interesting that it feels that way to you. Sort of underscores my point about the lack of American palate, fortitude and stamina vis-à-vis the Balkans, where world wars and Orwellian societal experimentation by our elites begin. (Coming soon to Americans.)”

And so now comes the A.T. article forwarded by Ms. King. In the midst of ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the Allied Victory in Europe, it must have seemed harmless and appropriate enough to promote Albanians who saved Jews. Who could object to that, after all? Indeed, the piece is the least objectionable of this variety. Still, it must be said that it’s in line with who our clients in the Balkans are. Not only is Yad Vashem toeing that line by emphasizing the Albanian Righteous over the more numerous and more risk-taking Serbian Righteous, but so is the so-called conservative press, as evidenced by what it consciously or subconsciously chooses to highlight in the region. Which differs not at all from mainstream news sources. Which differ not at all from U.S. policy.

So it seems that on Cinco de Mayo, American Thinker went the carefree route that everyone else goes, instead of the hard way on the Balkans. They whooped it up and joined the party — ala Bush going all Clinton in Albania in 2008 — by printing an article on the hyped-up Albanian Righteous and the righteousness of Albanians — eight years after that PR started making the rounds and suckering in all the other conservative and Jewish outfits. Which makes American Thinker a latecomer to suckerhood. (And I thought Simon Wiesenthal Center was slow.) It’s like going back to school to get a degree in Flat Earth Sciences. As always, I’ll stress that it’s not wrong to let people know about the Albanian Righteous, but by this point the A.T. editor knows there’s probably more to the story, on a subject he was ostensibly steering clear of in the first place.

An excerpt:

Albania’s History of Saving Jews By C. Hart

…In a recent ceremony at Yad Vashem, Albanian government minister Edmond Panariti and his cousin Agron were acknowledged because the Panaritis saved a Greek family from Thessaloniki, hiding them in their home in Albania.

Edmond Panariti serves in the Albania government today as Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development, and Water Administration, and previously served for a short time as Foreign Minister. He shared why the Albanians are a people who have a custom of providing refuge to others.

“This is a part of our tradition. Albanians are a very friendly people and hospitable people…They think that a guest enriches them.”

[Just let’s not mention what happens when you’re the host and they’re the guest, which the welcoming Yugoslavia found out all too painfully.]

Meanwhile, very few Jews survived in Thessaloniki, while Albania did not lose one. In fact, there were 202 Jews living in Albania before the war, and 1,800-2,000 after the war. At least 600 of them came from Greece. Not a single Jew living in Albania died at the hands of the Nazis. Albania is the only country in Europe with this record of success.

Albania’s Foreign Minister told this writer in an interview last year that his country could assist the EU in understanding the plight of the Jews in Europe today, who are experiencing a sharp increase in violent anti-Semitism. [By whom, did this foreign minister of a Muslim country mention?] Because of the experience that Albanians had in hiding the Jews during the reign of Hitler, there is an unusual sensitivity to this particular people group that is unique to the Albanians.

Edmond said it not only has to do with Albania’s tradition and culture. “We are the only country in the region that has a religious tolerance. This is not the case with our neighbors. The most amazing thing, and we are taking pride in it, is that we have coexistence between religions.”

Which neighbors? Greece? Macedonia? (Which is 25-33% Albanian and where the Albanian party is a permanent member of the ruling coalition and which has the “fifth-highest proportion of Muslims in Europe” after Turkey, Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia.) Or did he mean Montenegro? Which is 17% Muslim. Or perhaps he means, more accurately, Kosovo? Surely he doesn’t mean the Christian but rapidly Islamicizing Bulgaria? Or Serbia, which is back to kneeling before its Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, and houses the world’s oldest Jewish choir.

But don’t expect to hear any such begged-for questions from the writer, Mr. or Ms. Hart, since even so-called ‘alternative’ U.S. media take down what Albanians say uncritically — still. Just as the journalistic establishment did with the Kosovo war. There simply is no American Thinking going on when it comes to the Balkans.

Notice that, like everyone else, A.T. had nothing about the April attack by the Albanians’ beloved KLA (”dismantled” by NATO in 2000), on a Macedonian police tower, demanding the creation of an Albanian state. Just as they’d done shortly after the Kosovo war, by starting another war, which I’ll guess you didn’t hear about. A war with Macedonia, which had harbored 400,000 Kosovo refugees. There were only short news items about the recent attack, such as this, but no commentary, no dissection, none of the usual analyses to tell us what it means. Because it’s the Balkans, and Americans simply don’t know what to think until an Albanian, Bosniak, or Croat tells us. Macedonia’s “ethnic tension,” as we in the West like to call it to keep the public from figuring out there’s an aggressor, renewed two weeks later, with a 36-hour-seige starting May 10th in Macedonia’s largest municipality, Kumanovo, on the border with Kosovo. Eight Macedonian police officers and 14 of 44 Albanian terrorists were killed, and another 37 officers wounded.

Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski referred to the attackers as “one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the Balkans.” This would be the selfsame American BFFs: the KLA and affiliates. In fact, almost all the attackers were from Kosovo. UK Guardian reported further, “[Kotevski] said the group entered Macedonia at the start of May with an aim to launch attacks on state institutions. It was sheltered in Kumanovo’s western neighbourhood of Diva Naselba and police found a huge arsenal of weapons at the location….” Bulgaria had to send its army to the border with Macedonia, to stem any possible terror on its borders as well as a potential refugee crisis. These are all still reverberations, outgrowths, and results of the war that Bill Clinton got us into “to keep the conflict from spreading.” And “to stabilize the region.”

But hey, as long as we’ve found a set of Muslims who don’t mind Jews, who cares what they do to Slavs or what havoc they wreak in the region? Just let’s not think how they might feel about Jews if the host society they settled in was Jewish rather than Slavic, and it was Jewish land they coveted instead. Or how well Albanian hospitality could take a Jewish guest in WWII or the 90s telling his host that his people really shouldn’t be wantonly slaughtering Serbs. No, let’s not get into higher thinking. Besides, the “Kosovars” have a statue of Bill Clinton in the center of town, haven’t you heard.

Of course they do. As Professor Ilia Toli, who has experienced Albanianism from the inside — as an Albanian — put it: “Bill Clinton risked WW3 attacking Serbia in order to draw attention away from his Lewinsky [and Broaddrick] affair…I don’t know whether this is a compliment to be worshiped in the stronghold of the scum of the mankind.”

But it’s certainly fitting. Bill Clinton is a caveman’s caveman.

While I’ve responded extensively to the Albanian Jew-saving PR (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), I’ve only peripherally made the point that, in the end, all the Jews left Albania. Because while it may be “the most pro-Israel” Muslim country, or at least the least anti-Israel Muslim country, that doesn’t necessarily translate into a sense of security and comfort for a Jew living in its borders. That is, a tolerant national policy or orientation may not come across in close proximity, as some anecdotal (in addition to numeric) evidence suggests. Here is just one vignette, offered by Professor Toli in a 2013 email exchange that was mostly about Albanian Righteous:

I had a friend one year older in university…He returned from Canada and we were traveling together in the bus home, towards south [U.S.]…He greatly annoyed me with his ardent Albanian patriotism all the way home. At some point to silence him I asked, “Are you Christian or Muslim?” “Muslim,” answered he, completely proud. “Well, I am Christian,” I answered back. That silenced him, but I did notice that he was very much uncomfortably quiet, agitated, and had a fight inside him. A few years later I came to know that this friend was Jewish pretending to be Muslim. He lives in Canada now, Jewish in the open. He didn’t dare to come out as a Jew in tolerant Albania.

I remember in his memoirs [Albania’s Soviet-era ruler] Enver Hoxha wrote about a very educated friend of his in childhood… “Samuel was the son of Haham Kofina, the poorest Jew in Gjirokastra…Haham occupied a small shop, there grew up Samuel, our friend. We loved him, because he was a very good person, honest, and not a ‘Jew’ in the bad meaning of the word.” [Note: “Jew” being implicitly bad was rampant in Communist Eastern Europe all around.]

Certainly there were many instances of righteous Albanian Muslims and Christians. That’s a very long shot from claiming that zero Jews were killed…And judge the following factors: Germans came to Albania only in September 1943 and left in November 1944. (In some parts of the country they never entered at all.) …Also, the pants-down test didn’t work in Albania because the Muslim population was also circumcised…In school in Albania at some point Comrade Hoxha told us that only 10 Jews perished in Albania, 2 of them partizans. At a later point the number became 2, then later on 0. He too was fond of the 0 Jews killed tale.

Indeed, “zero killed” was more like 10 to 12, according to the project The Holocaust Chronicle, while the rest of Albania’s 200 Jews were able to successfully disperse and blend in with the population, which provided them with cover and Muslim names. In Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War, author Christopher Simpson noted that relatively few Jews were captured and killed in Albania, but “not for lack of trying by the Balli Kombetar organization and the Albanian SS,” historian Carl Savich quoted him in 2007, adding:

In a July, 1944 [OSS] report on Albania entitled “Political and Internal Conditions”, it was reported that “[Albania’s Interior Minister, Kosovo Albanian] Xhafer Deva, [and Albanian prime minister] Rexhep Mitrovic[a] and Midhat Frasheri [president of the fascist Balli Kombetar, later imported by the U.S.] are with the Germans… Anti-semitic measures are being adopted now.” A captured SS document “revealed that Deva had been responsible for the deportation of ‘Jews, Communists and partisans’ to extermination camps as well as for punitive raids by the SS Skanderbeg Division. The small mountain territory had few Jews, so relatively few were captured and killed.”

(It also helped that Serbs and Roma were hiding Jews from Deva.)

The “Ballistas,” as America’s soon-to-be BFFFs (Best Fascist Friends Forever) were sometimes called for short, “carried out a campaign of deportation and murder of Serbs in 1943 and 1944,” Vojislav Milosevic wrote in 2012. “…Many of these Kosovo Albanians had seen prior service in the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian SS divisions which were notorious for slaughtering civilians…[In 1945,] remnants of the Kosovo Albanian fascist groups continued fighting the Yugoslav government for six years, with a major rebellion from 1945 to 1948 in the Drenica region…Sporadic violence continued until 1951. It is literally true to say that the last shots of World War II were fired in Kosovo.”

Kosovo certainly has a less pretty WWII record than Albania (see block quote under the Yeshiva World News item here), but if one considers that Albania’s borders at the time included Kosovo, the numbers of Jews killed or handed over to the camps change dramatically.

On the subject of Drenica, meanwhile, this last holdout of WWII fascist Kosovo would later become a KLA stronghold as well as the birthplace of Mr. KLA himself, “prime minister” Hashim Thaci. It was a bastion of violent Albanian nationalism, a phenomenon that spurred the following question in writer Milosevic above: “Why such passionate hatred for non-Albanians? A big factor was militant Islam. The Fundamentalist ‘Second League of Prizren’ was created in September 1943 by Xhafer Deva…to work with the German authorities…. Albanian religious intolerance was shown by their targeting Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries for destruction.”

There’s no way around it. Fascism, Islam and extreme nationalism all inform the Albanian identity. The Wikipedia entry on the SS Skanderbeg division reads:

Members took a religious oath using the Quran, pledging “jihad against unbelievers.” …Its garrison was located in the town of Prizren…Early on, it became clear that most of the division’s Muslim Albanian members seemed to be interested only in settling scores with their Christian Serb adversaries, who became the target of numerous atrocities. In order to put a stop to the crimes, the Germans had to disarm battalions of the division in the towns of Peć and Prizren and arrest the Albanian officers…It was generally better known for murdering, raping, and looting, mainly in ethnic Serb areas, and for arresting Jews, than for participating in combat operations on behalf of the German war effort. In addition to indiscriminately killing Serbs and Montenegrins, the division was responsible for the expulsion of up to 10,000 Slavic families from Kosovo as new Albanian settlers arrived from the poor areas of northern Albania.

One is never sure whether it was originally Islam that informed the Albanianism that so hates Serb Christians and destroys their churches, or whether the hyper-nationalism against the Serbian identity resulted in targeting their churches as Serbian symbols, which is what Albanians and their defenders still claim today, what with Albanianism long overshadowing Albanian Islam. It’s a means of justifying their continuing supremacist “but not anti-Christian” violence, perhaps themselves forgetting that’s what it was when it started.

The Albanian public’s record on Jews during the world war remains impressive and touching, so certainly one can understand the temptation for Jewish people to be suckers for anything that Albanians seek henceforth. But why is it human nature to be won over by the tender mercies of those who accept whatever alliance or identity — and its attendant privileges — that an era’s bully is extending (e.g., Fascism, Islam), as opposed to being won over by fellow sufferers and untermenschen under those systems, whom Jews owe something to as well? That would be the Serbian side, the implicit loser of Jewish (though so far not Israeli) support in the Kosovo tug-of-war that underlies this whole WWII Righteous promotion.

Serbs likewise managed to save Jews, and in greater numbers, despite being in a much more difficult position than Albanians. The Serbs were targets and victims of the Nazis too (100 killed — sometimes hung from trees — for every German soldier killed in Serbia), while simultaneously under assault from Albanians and Croats. It’s only touched on in this late 2010 email by late Jewish-Serbian scholar Jasa Almuli (who interviewed several Jews rescued by Serbs, who never contacted Yad Vashem for Righteous status on their behalf):

In Serbia there was not much time to save the Jews as all males were shot by the Wehrmacht during three months at the end of the first year of occupation and about 7000 women and children gassed during three months next spring…All anti-Jewish measures during the German occupation of Serbia were enacted by the Germans. [But there were] two decrees enacted six months before the war by the Yugoslav coalition government in October of 1940, passed under German pressure. One introduced Numerus Clausus for Jewish pupils and students and the other forbade the Jews to trade with foodstuff…The government which introduced these measures was composed of Serbian, Croat and Slovene politicians who acted in this way when the country was surrounded by allies of Germany.

But this is all still tug-of-war, and it’s probably not in good taste to compare one ethnicity’s Righteous to another’s. There’s a reason that it’s important to simply do the right thing in any given conflict, and not go by whether this one or that one was good to Jews, exceptional as it may be. For example, the icing for Dr. Toli on the Albanian Righteous cake: “What absolutely got to my nerves was reading an article about Jew-saving Muslim Albanians on the homepage of Hamas-CAIR.”

And therein lies the rub. Taken to the next level, while most Albanians are not jihadists, as Muslims they are vulnerable to recruitment (”Kosovo ranks eighth overall and first per capita among 22 Western states“). As opposed to Christian Serbs. So why buttress the more enemy-prone side against a comparatively problem-less ally of two world wars? Indeed, one development in the increasing number of Albanians joining Islamic State (as well as in Albanian would-be terrorists before them) is the tendency now to rail against Jews and Israel.

We supported the Albanian-Muslim side against the Serb-Christian side, as we had supported the Bosnian-Muslim side against the Serbs. Even in the Croatian war, we opted for the fascist Jew-killers of WWII. Meaning that in all three cases the West chose the Axis. In all three cases, the Jewish (albeit not Israeli) position was consistent with the prevailing, pro-Axis policy. And so we find ourselves today hearing Bosnian Muslims in Vienna shouting “Kill Kill the Jew!“; counting Albanians in ISIS; and witnessing the Simon Wiesenthal Center beseech Croatia to stop paying Nazis pensions as their clergy continue delivering masses for the Croatian fuehrer. (”It is hard to believe that in the center of the capital of a member of the European Union…hundreds of people gathered yesterday to commemorate the memory of one of Europe’s biggest mass murderers…It is also a badge of shame for the Catholic Church, which allowed such a ceremony to take place in the Basilica of the Heart of Christ….” — Efraim Zuroff. Indeed, there were just two recent years that Croatians skipped the Fuehrer Mass, or at least that we didn’t hear about it: January 2013, the eve of their EU entry that July, and the bookend year of entry, January 2014. And yet the EU has deemed Croatia more suitable for membership than Serbia. In a way, one supposes it is.)

With such contemporary realities, one can certainly understand nostalgically turning to the past for its irrelevant comforts. But we must live in our time. And it was in our time that Albanians — including those from Albania this time — drove out the remaining Jews of Kosovo. Why did the Jews have to go? No one interrupts the Albanian self-back-patting to ask that uncomfortable question. Maybe it’s just impersonal ethnic supremacy — not aimed at Jews, who were merely collateral damage in 1990s Kosovo. Besides, it seemed to be mostly Serbian-speaking Jews who had to go, while 50-some Albanized Jews remain.

Maybe it’s just like Croatian soccer star Mario Mandzukic, who sometime after his fascist salute to Croatian fans seven months before EU entry (flanked by Albanian teammate Xherdan Shaqiri) got a Hebrew tattoo, as if saying that the seig heil is just part of the Croatian identity and need not be about Jew-killing, so don’t take it personally — and when Serbs do, it’s just Serbs not letting Croatians be Croatians. A message that’s as backwards as the Hebrew letters written from left to right. Naturally, not one among the Jewish media reporting on the internet stir this caused caught that this was the same player who last made international headlines when he did the Nazi salute.

It’s just soccer, after all, where Croatian fans can shout “Kill, kill the Serb!” to little notice, as well as “For the homeland, ready!”; and where Albanians can “harmlessly” fly a drone over a Belgrade stadium, toting a banner depicting a Greater Albania and two infamous Serb-haters, while the media go on to blame Serbs for the ensuing melee, even as Albanian politicians laud the “splendid little provocation” and the Albanian team return to a hero’s welcome.

05/5/15

One Killed, Two Wounded in Jihad Attack on Bosnian-Serb Police Station. Read AP’s Bosnia-War Motives for Gunman with a Grain of Salt Lake City

By: Julia Gorin
Republican Riot

This incident happened less than a week after a Bosnian-involved Aussie terror plot was foiled, and at the very police station where former NY cop Bob Leifels did a 1997-98 stint as international police.

Gunman Shouting Allahu Akbar in Bosnia Storms Police Station (AP; ABCNews.com, Apr. 27)

A gunman stormed into a police station in a northeastern Bosnian town shouting “Allahu akbar” on Monday, killing a policeman and wounding two others, authorities said.

The gunman was also killed during the attack in the town of Zvornik….The Bosnian Serb police chief, Dragan Lukac, identified the man as Nerdin Ibric.

Here comes the requisite retro-justification part of any MSM report when Serbs are targeted:

Zvornik is a town in the Bosnian Serb part of the country and it is located on the border with Serbia. Before the 1992-95 war, about 60 percent of the town’s population was Muslim Bosnians. Almost all were expelled and many were killed during the war as part of a Serb campaign to create a purely Serb area.

(Notice also the requisite omission of the population-trades that all three sides engaged in, called “ethnic cleansing” only when the Serb side did it. Nor is the reader given to understand that “many were killed” as fighters, not in civilian-massacres, as it’s made to sound, or that the Serb ambition wasn’t to create pure areas but to prevent war. Ethnic purity was a result of the war that the Serbs’ enemies and Washington, Bonn, and Vatican so wanted.)

Serbs managed to control half of Bosnia by the time the U.S. brokered a peace agreement in 1995 under which each warring party could keep their conquered territory. This is how the country ended up divided into two fairly autonomous regions — one for the Serbs, the other shared by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats. The two have their own governments, but are linked by a central government based in Sarajevo.

After the war, only a few thousand Muslims returned to the Serb area of Zvornik.

How many Serbs returned to this or that area of Muslim-won ground, we’re not told. But here’s just one random, May 2010 example of what happens when they do:

Bosnian Muslim high school students in the city of Maglaj went out on the streets to intimidate ethnic Serb returnees….parad[ing] with traditionally green Islamic flags and shouting anti-Serbian slogans….Bosnian Muslim police did nothing to enhance security. One of the Serb returnees, Vjekoslav Lazic, said that…life of ethnic Serbs is under threat. “We asked the authorities in the Serb Republic to help us so that we can collectively leave”….During Easter, Muslims in Maglaj invited local Serbian Orthodox priests to convert to Islam…Additional “invitations” were nailed to the doors of houses owned….Christian clergy approached the chief Maglaj imam to intervene but Imam Izudin Kruska told them that the problems…have not been organized by the Islamic Community of Maglaj. Dzevad Galijasevic, himself a former Mayor of Maglaj, says that Islamic extremism is on the rise in the city. Galijasevic, who is a member of anti-terrorism task force for the Balkans, warned that Maglaj Muslims are being systematically radicalized.

And a 2007 item:

70 villages in Bosnia, home to 15,000 Serb returnees, have reportedly been without electricity for several years. Media in the Republic of Srpska reported that…local Bosnian Muslim and Croat municipal authorities “deliberately bypassed Serb villages when it came to restoration of infrastructure destroyed during the 1990s war.” The period between 1992 and 1995 saw the expulsion of the Serb population from more than three hundred major settlements that now belong to the Muslim-Croat federation.

And have you seen Sarajevo lately? (Bosnia: Muslims dominate capital, claims Croatian MP — The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, once a symbol of ethnic diversity, has become an entirely Muslim city, a Croat deputy in the Bosnian Parliament, Branko Zrno, said…Serbs and Croats in Sarajevo have no institutional protection, and continue to leave the capital…Serbs claim that in the city of 400,000 only 7,000 Serbs have remained, compared to 160,000 before the 1992-1995 civil war…Muslim President of the Bosnian Helsinki committee for human rights, Srdjan Dizdarevic, said in a recent interview that Sarajevo had become a “monoethnic” city… “Ethnic cleansing in this city has, unfortunately, been successfully completed. If the will exists to reconstruct Bosnia on multiethnic principles, one should start with Sarajevo,” he concluded. But as ethnic tensions deepened, the Muslim chairman of a three-man rotating state presidency, Haris Silajdzic, on Wednesday launched a fresh attack on the Serb entity. Silajdzic repeated earlier claims that the Serb entity is a “symbol of genocide” allegedly perpetrated by its first president, Radovan Karadzic… “The international community is obliged to remove consequences of the genocide,” Silajdzic added, referring to the Serb entity. […])

Back to the AP article about the shooting:

…The Bosnian Serb government will hold an overnight emergency session and the regional president, Milorad Dodik, told Bosnian Serb TV he believes the attacker was instructed by someone else even though he acted alone.

Lukac, the police chief, called on citizens to help police.

“We will fight against them and we will never forgive them, but police can’t do it alone. We need the citizens to help,” Lukac said, without specifying who he meant by “them.”

[Whom do you want him to mean?]

The imam of the Zvornik mosque, Mustafa Muharemovic, condemned the attack.

Of course he did. It also doesn’t hurt that minorities such as he have it good in the Serb part of Bosnia.

A weekend report from the Serb Republic News Agency:

FACT THAT AMBASSADORS ARE TURNING A BLIND EYE CANNOT DISPUTE THE ATTACK

GRADISKA, May 1 /SRNA/ – Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik said today in Gradiska that even though the ambassadors in BiH are turning a “blind eye” this cannot change and dispute the fact that Republika Srpska institutions were attacked in a terrorist attack in Zvornk.

“The police officer was wearing a uniform [with] insignia of Republika Srpska. There was not a single insignia of BiH [Bosnia-Herzegovina] there. When you [certain ambassadors] try to express your condolence to Bakir Izetbegovic [BiH president and son of the late fundamentalist wartime president Alija Izetbegovic] who is hesitating to take a political action to fight politically-motivated Islam and radical Islam, this speaks how much you want to distort facts in BiH,” Dodik told reporters in Gradiska.

[Politically-motivated and radical Islam. Perhaps that answers the AP reporter’s question above, as to whom police chief Lukac might have been referring to?]

Dodik said that the facts are that Republika Srpska was attacked, that a Republika Srpska police station was attacked and that a police officer, a Serb from Republika Srpska, was killed.

“I still very clearly say that a huge majority of Bosniaks are peaceful people, that we want peace and coexistence with them, but we also want an energetic fight against all those who bring violence, regardless of their motives,” Dodik said… “Everything is politics for them [foreign ambassadors distorting the target]. Of course, they have never dropped [the idea] to degrade and abolish Republika Srpska in a peaceful way, but also to strengthen BiH…” He said that this is a twisted approach by a segment of the IC [international community]….

“Republika Srpska police force does not exist in the FBiH [the Muslim-Croat Federation], in Brcko District, or in joint BiH institutions; it is a body of Republika Srpska, a body that was established by Republika Srpska laws and constitution which also represents a right that was given us by the Dayton Peace Agreement,” Dodik has concluded.

Two more AP reports follow. Watch how the whole thing morphs into a contemplation on supposed Serb bellicosity:

Police station attack in Bosnia reignites ethnic tensions

The killing of a policeman by a Muslim gunman prompted Bosnian Serb leaders on Tuesday to renew calls for independence from the federation forged in a U.S.-brokered peace deal in 1995. That’s dangerous talk in the Balkans, whose economically depressed states are rife with ethnic rivalries and border disputes that could explode at any moment.

The attack came only a week after a group of 40 masked gunmen forcibly took over a police station in a Macedonian border village, calling themselves members of the Kosovo Liberation Army that fought for independence from Serbia in the late 1990s. The attackers declare they were forming an independent state in Macedonia, another former member of Yugoslavia. [More on that to come.]

In the wake of Monday’s attack, the Bosnian Serb leader, who has been pushing for independence for the Serb region of Bosnia, said the country’s central institutions are “useless” and Bosnian Serbs should form their own intelligence service.

“This was a shot against Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb mini-state) and we have the right to defend ourselves and we will,” Milorad Dodik said.

A similar call was made by the Bosnian Serbs in 1992, which triggered their armed rebellion against Bosnia’s referendum for independence and in favor of forming a pan-Serbian state in the Balkans. [Whereas the rest of us would have no problem living under an Islamic regime.]

Bosnia has a national army, consisting of all three ethnic groups under a single command. But it has two separate police forces, one for the Bosniaks and Croats, and the other for Bosnian Serbs. Both forces are coordinated by the Ministry of Security.

In theory, Dodik could mobilize his own force, drawing from his region’s police officers and other fighters who might support the idea of secession from Bosnia. But that would be a serious violation of the Dayton agreement.

Emir Suljagic, from the Bosnian Democratic Front Party, said, “those who are trying to cynically use this event for gaining political points should be cautious and learn from the lessons of the past when major violence started with big words.”

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic struck a more conciliatory stand on Tuesday, saying Bosnia’s stability has to be preserved and that Serbian and Bosnian security services must cooperate “in order to prevent provocations like this in the future.”

“Risks of similar attacks are high in our region, most of all from the radical Islamist movement,” he said.

On Tuesday, Bosnian police arrested two men with suspected links to the gunman in Zvornik.

New details begun [sic] to emerge about the gunman, identified as 24-year-old Nerdin Ibric, with residents from his village saying his father was taken away by Serbs in 1992 at the start of Bosnia’s brutal multi-ethnic war and never seen again. Local media reported that Serb police rounded up the father along with 750 Muslims from the town and killed them all.

Considering that killings on such a mass scale have yet to be demonstrated as real even for Srebrenica, this is to be taken with a grain of salt. But what one can take away from the detail of the father being led away, if that’s true, is the same lesson as that of the 2007 Trolley Square massacre in Salt Lake City: Like father, like son. A Bosnian “defender” breeds a jihadi offspring. And yet we’re supposed to believe that the Serbs weren’t dealing with anything related to jihad.

One of the suspects taken into custody on Tuesday is known to police and has been questioned in the past for possible Syria ties and recruitment efforts for the Islamic State group, Bosnian Serb police chief Dragan Lukac said.

Bosnian security analyst Goran Kovacevic said, “This country is living in an atmosphere of war. All the people now in power emerged during the war,” he said. “Even 20 years later, they base their politics on war rhetoric and spread fear.”

The final AP article, from Thursday:

Bosnian Authorities Identify Police Station Attack Suspects (Apr. 30)

Bosnian authorities on Thursday identified two suspects arrested in connection with a fatal attack on a police station, including one already under investigation for allegedly helping to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group.

Prosecutors identified the two suspects as 24-year-old Avdulah Hasanovic, and 40-year-old Kasim Mehidic. The men were arrested on Tuesday.

Hasanovic was detained last year in a sweep against Islamic extremists who allegedly recruited people to fight for IS in Syria. He was later released, but his passport has been confiscated and he has had to regularly report to authorities. The group’s leader is on trial.

Radical Muslims were non-existent before the 1992-95 war in the Balkans when foreign mujahedeen arrived in Bosnia to help the Muslim Bosniaks fight against Serbs and Croats. Most of them left after the war but had managed to spread their ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam among a few thousand locals, who stand out amid the majority moderate and secular Bosnian Muslims. [Ah, I almost thought they’d forgotten to include that mantra.]

Bosnian Serb police chief Dragan Lukac said the investigation so far shows the gunman Nerdin Ibric was connected to such extremists.

Experts say some 200 Bosnians are fighting in Syria. IS recruiters mostly target young, jobless men with no hope for a better future in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 40 percent. The 24-year-old gunman fit this profile and was the son of a man who was killed during the war when Serb police from Zvornik rounded up over 700 Muslim men from the once predominantly Muslim town and executed them as part of a campaign to create a pure Serbian area.

Bosnia’s Islamic Community condemned the attack and said the perpetrator’s background is no excuse for committing such a crime.

That’s refreshing. Now if only the MSM could figure it out.