From Ken Freeland, Texas ,

Kouchner is not mentioned in the article. Can you explain his connection with these events?

(He was the gauleiter of NATO-occupied Kosovo. Shamir) 

Thanks VERY MUCH for publishing this! I visited Yugoslavia with a delegation immediately after the war, and I vouch for everything the archbishop writes.

Peace,
ken

From Olsi, Tirana , Albania

Dear Israel Shamir,
Your latest posting in your shamireaders forum of the letter of Bishop Artemija, has shaked the image of freedom fighter that I have for you in my mind. Even that I do not share positive thoughts on NATO and the new Sarkozy regime, I cannot accept that for the sake of attacking the bad guys we ally ourselves with each and every propagandist and liar that comes up in the street and starts spitting around. This is true about the propagandistic article of Bishop Artemije, who according to many Albanians is a war criminal, equal with Slobodan Milosevic and your Ariel Sharon.

His article that you have forwarded below, goes contrary to your ideas on the Ottoman Empire that you presented in your article “Ottoman Empire, please come back”. The Serbs who complain today for the recent NATO bombing were themselves part of the dirty western tricks of colonization and invasion in early 20th century, when they, like the Zionists, invaded Kosova, exterminated its local Muslim population and colonized it with Serbian settlers. [So, Olsi, how come Kosovo is 90% Albanian?- ISH] Serbian Zionism that Artemije speaks in his article for – by claiming like the Zionist do – that Kosova is their holy place, is a fundamentalist and dangerous ideology equal with Zionism. This ideology of Holiness is what is making Palestine suffer today and has made Kosova suffer for the last 100 years.

Serbian politicians, from Vuk Drashkovic up to Slobodan Milosevic continuously compare themselves with the Zionists and have asked for the help of Israel on suppressing the Albanians of Kosova. [So did Kosovars, too – they used the Holocaust imagery as much as anybody – ISH] But, as Allah says in Quran that: ‘They prepare intrigues, but Allah destroys their intrigues.’ The NATO and American intervention in Kosova made the Serbian Zionists to come into conflict with the big Israeli and US Zionists. But the confrontation of NATO with the Serbs has nothing to do with the Ottomans, Albanian KLA or any other Muslim conspiracy against the brave Christians Serbs as Bishop Artemije claims.

It was the plight of Albanian Kosovars who suffered worst than the Palestinians for the last 100 years that made the West move for appeasing them. And this did not come because the Americans and Europeans felt any sorry for the Albanians of Kosova. The problem was that the Palestinization of Kosova was so desperate, as the conflict threatened to engulf the whole Balkans and Europe . But we should bear something in mind: the Palestinian case as the Kosovar case have one genesis. That is the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern Question that awarded Serbs and Zionists alike with the pieces of the Ottoman Muslim prey.

Serbian rape of Kosovar women, their killings of Albanians from 1912 to 1999 were in such an industrial scale, that since 1912 from the Balkans some 3 million Muslims have either been killed or expelled. But as Allah made miracles with the suppressed blacks of South Africa , (and he will certainly help one day the Palestinians free themselves from the Zionist yoke), the same happened in Kosova. God invented the Americans, who, apart from their criminal record in the recent history, either by accident or through their imperial calculations pushed the Serbian yoke away from Kosova. But this does not mean that they are the allies of Albanians. Far from it. If you go in Kosova today you shall see the massive poverty, corruption and fear that they have installed in the country.

The Kosovars freed themselves from the Serbian yoke to be place under the American yoke. The Kosovars Muslims are not being treated better by the Americans today. Many are thinking with nostalgia the good old days of Tito when they were richer, treated as humans and were not in such an inferior status that the Serbs but even Americans put them at present. The Kosovars are suffering from the Americans even religiously. Thousands of missionaries have invaded Kosova and are exploiting the poverty of the locals to convert them into Christians. What the Serbs failed to do by tanks and guns, the Americans are making by bread and brainwashing.

Nevertheless, we should not regret the American intervention in Kosova. Thanks to the American leviathan, the Albanians today are freer than during Bishop Artemije and Slobodan’s days. They can at list speak and write their language in public. They can go out in streets without the fear that the Serbian military will kill them only because they are not Serbs,… as Ehud Olmert is making targeted killings in Gaza and West Bank . And today, after 90 years of Serbian yoke, they can dream that one day the Christian West will be merciful enough and allow the Ottoman Muslims of Kosova to have their own state or freedom, or whatever you might call it. Even though I doubt a lot.

Thank you
Olsi J.

From Dr Sugar Andras, Budapest, Hungary

It is an eloquent text by this bishop but I cannot forget all those acts of murder and genocide committed by the Titoist gangs of Serbs in 1944 against innocent Hungarians in Vojvodina killing at least 40.000 men, women and children, as well as the barbarian slaughter of innumerable innocent civilians in Croatia by the Milosevic gang, not mentioning the current "smooth" ethnic cleansing by changing the population rates in Vojvodina in favor of the Serbian refugees from Kosovo, let alone the Karadzic and Mladic massacres in Bosnia. The bishop seems to forget that Albanians account for 90% of the population of Kosovo, which alone justifies the wish of the people for full independence.

Yours ever András Sugár,

Budapest

From Yousef Salem, Palestine - US

From Tom Mysiewicz, the US

The policy regarding Kosovo reflects almost true schizophrenia.  Moslems are evil and to be detested and attacked everywhere in the world except in the former Soviet (now CIS) sphere of influence, where they are to be considered freedom fighters.  We see a similar treatment of the regime in Burma , where Buddhists (who would normally be considered pagan idolaters in the Neocon-Christian Zionist playbook) are seen as patriots and defenders of freedom. 

From: Charles F. Moreira, Malaysia

Soros paid for anti-Milosevic gangs

Hmmm! Maybe I should join a Soros backed NGO and I'll probably be driving a BMW -- but then again, I might as well sell my soul to devil. Basically all this "democracy," "human rights," "independent media," etc business is all about enabling the western imperialists to get a political and economic foothold in various countries, much like the British colonialists backed one sultan in a war against another in return to the sultan accepting a British "advisor" to tell him what to do thereafter.
While Tun Mahathir was no angel, not all of his opponents are friends either and could be worse, depending on their agendas, overt or hidden. If Mahathir had not taken some of the unpopular currency control measures which he did nearly 10 years ago, we'd all quite probably be a lot poorer today.
"Of course, in the case of Yugoslavia, ultimately the Soros approach was not enough so the overwhelming might of the U.S. military was brought into play.* So when the softly, softly approach fails, bring on the mailed fist of military might to achieve the same geostrategic objective. You'll find lots more of these articles on Soros at http://users. cyberone. com.au/myers/ soros.html
Charles F. Moreira

Soros gave $ to Solidarity, Charter 77, Sakharov, & the anti-Milosevic opposition

by Neil Clark, New Statesman, June 2, 2003
A review by Karen Talbot
http://www.globalre search.ca/ articles/ TAL307A.html 3jul03
George Soros, is known as a Hungarian philanthropist, a proponent of human rights and the "open society," and, just incidentally, a financier - one of the richest men in the world. What of the NGOs Soros established and finances? Who are the other leaders of these groups? Clark informs us that at Human Rights Watch, for example, there is Morton Abramowitz, U.S. assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research from 1985-1989` and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Warren Zimmerman former ambassador "whose spell in Yugoslavia coincided with the break up of that country"; and Paul Goble, director of communications "at the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (which Soros also funds)."

According to Clark, Soros' International Crisis Group "boasts such 'independent' luminaries as the former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinki and Richard Allen, as well as General Wesley Clark, once NATO supreme allied commander for Europe . The group's vice-chairman is the former congressman Stephen Solarz, once described as 'the Israel lobby's chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill' and a signatory, along with the likes of Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, to a notorious letter to President Clinton in 1998 calling for a 'comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime'."

 Take the collapse of the Soviet Union , for example. Clark points out that "Soros' role was crucial: "From 1979, he distributed $3 million a year to dissidents including Poland's solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media. Ostensibly aimed at building up a 'civil society", these initiatives were designed to weaken the existing political structures and pave the way for eastern Europe's eventual exploitation by global capital. Soros now claims with characteristic immodesty, that he was responsible for the "Americanization" of eastern Europe."

More recently, there is the case of Yugoslavia . As Clark puts it: "The Yugoslavs remained stubbornly resistant and repeatedly returned Slobodan Milosevic's reformed Socialist Party to government. Soros was equal to the challenge. From 1991, his Open Society Institute channeled more than $100 million to the coffers of the anti-Milosevic opposition, funding political parties, publishing houses and" "independent" media such as Radio B92, the plucky little student radio station of western mythology, which was in reality bankrolled b one of the world's richest men on behalf of the world's most powerful nation. With Slobo finally toppled in 2000 in a coup d'etat financed, planned and executed in Washington all that was left was to cart the ex Yugoslav leader to the Hague tribunal, co-financed by Soros along with other custodians of human rights, Time Warner Corporation and Disney. He faced charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, based in the main on the largely anecdotal evidence of (you guessed it) Human Rights Watch."

Clark points out that "since the fall of Milosevic , Serbia , under the auspices of Soros- backed "reformers", has become less, not more, free. The recently lifted state of emergency saw more than 4,000 people arrested, many of them without charge, political parties threatened with bans, and critical newspapers closed down" This has been so blatant that it was condemned by the UN Commission on Human Rights and the British Helsinki Group

"Soros has made money in every country he has helped to prise 'open'. In Kosovo, for example, he has invested $50 million in an attempt to gain control of the Trepca mine complex, where there are vast reserves of gold, silver, lead and other minerals estimated to be worth in the region of $5 billion. He thus copied a pattern he has deployed to great effect over the whole of eastern Europe of advocating 'shocking therapy' and 'economic reform', then swooping in with his associate to buy valuable state assets at knock-down prices," according to Clark.*

In Hungary , Soros is the benefactor of the Free Democrats party "which has pursued the classic Soros agenda of privatization and economic liberalization- --leading to a widening gap between rich and poor," says Clark .

Of course, in the case of Yugoslavia, ultimately the Soros approach was not enough so the overwhelming might of the U.S. military was brought into play.*

From Israel Shamir

In my view,

(1) Nothing good came out of destruction of Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.

(2) Yugoslavia was a very problematic construct, to start with.

(3) Dissolution of Yugoslavia was, anyway, a painful and traumatic imperialism- inspired event. (4) Nato bombing of Serbia was certainly a crime and an aggression; wars of Yugoslavian successor states were wars of secession, a sort of civil wars.

(5) As a rule, secession is bad (for people), while struggle for equality is good.

(6) Everybody suffered a lot in Yugoslavian wars, and it is a lesson against secession attempts. (7) The Kosovo Albanians have their counterparts in Albanians of FYRM, Germans of Tyrol, Swedes of Finland, Russians of Estonia and many other similar communities. The exemplary attitude was that of Finland to Aland Islands , and that is the attitude we may promote and wish to implement.

(8) NATO occupation of Kosovo is still illegal and should be terminated.

(9) Kosovo under Tito fared better than Albania ; if Kosovars were able to see Albania before beginning the secession war, probably they would desist.

(10) The solution lays on the way of integration of the East, not in the way of further fragmentation.