POST-TRUTH And Other Lies

The main assumption of the prophets of the horrors of the Post Truth (sometimes called simply fake news) is that there is an official truth (brought to you by the corporate media), and that whatever contradicts that "truth" are the lies that the media is now snobbishly calling Post-Truth (*).

But the fact is corporate media lie, hide the truth and manipulate on a daily basis.

They have been telling each other lier since printed press exists, but they don't like someone else telling them. And they hate not being the only ones to be able to reach the masses.

But you may be one of those who believe that corporate media don't lie, at least not on purpose, maybe sometimes just by accident.


1st Case Study: Panama Papers


Remember the Panama Papers? Well, there were several interesting facts about them, or more precissely, about how the media treated them.

- First, I think it is quite surprising that the BBC made 4 tweets about Putin's friend before making any tweet about David Cameron's father (who was also in the papers), burying it in a secondary account with only around 300K followers (while Putin's friend deserved the most popular account, with several milions of followers.

But the most interesting aspect were the questions about the source of the papers. While we have seen how all western media assume russian hackers (under Putin's orders) are behind any leak in the USA or the EU even without any proof (or just the word of the CIA or the NSA, which means the same), asking who was behind the Panama Papers was like defending Putin himself. And the most funny thing, saying that Soros and the US government were behind the Papers was spreading fake news, although anyone could check it with just a few clicks in the website of one of the organizations (https://www.occrp.org/en - go to the bottom of the website).

2nd Case Study: Chemical attack in Syria of the April 4th, attributed to Assad.

It was fascinating to see how all western media accused Assad of the chemical attack in Syria, without any evidence and without even wondering why the hell would he do that.

The New York Times tried to answer this question, arguing that "rather than an inexplicable act, analysts say, it is part of a carefully calculated strategy of escalating attacks against civilians."

First, this "analysts say" sounds too much to the "some people say" of the Fox News.

Second, and most important, it just doesn't answer the question seriously. Even if this alleged "calculated strategy of escalating attacks against civilians" was real, it doesn't answer the question "WHY NOW?". Let's be serious here, if Assad wanted to do this, he could just perfectly wait until his position was safe.

Why did the western media believe the US army so blindly? How many times have we heard that the US government or army had indisputable evidence about some crime but we never got to see that evidence?

And why should we believe the word of the US government or army? It is not like they haven't lied before about chemical weapons in order to bomb one country (just think of Iraq).

So why didn't the western media consider that it could have been the rebels?

First, we know that the rebels have used chemical weapons several times already:

"Khan al Asal, 19 March 2013:  111.  The United Nations Mission collected credible information that corroborates the allegations that chemical weapons were used in Khan al Asal on 19 March 2013 against soldiers and civilians."

"Jobar, 24 August 2013:  113.  The United Nations Mission collected evidence consistent with the probable use of chemical weapons in Jobar on 24 August on a relatively small scale against soldiers…"

"Ashrafiah Sahnaya, 25 August 2013 117.  The United Nations Mission collected evidence that suggests that chemical weapons were used in Ashrafiah Sahnaya on 25 August 2013 on a small scale against soldiers." [United Nations website]

Second, there are serious reasons to believe that the rebels (aided by foreign governments) have been planning and probably had already executed false flag attacks:

"Accumulating evidence offers persuasive proof that Syrian rebels supported by Turkish intelligence – not Syrian Army troops – bear responsibility for the infamous sarin nerve-gas attack killing hundreds of people on Aug. 21, 2013 in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. The incident bears all the earmarks of a false-flag attack." [Mintpress News]

zerohedge explains why the April attack could be in fact another false flag action, including a removed article from The Daily Mail from 2013!

"Leaked emails have allegedly proved that the White House gave the green light to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that could be blamed on Assad's regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country.

A report released on Monday contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence where a scheme 'approved by Washington' is outlined explaining that Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons. "

And like this we could continue, with endless examples of how corporate media lie, hide and manipulate. We could remember the Noam Chomsky case against The New York Times regarding Cambodja and East Timor (nowadays could be Syria and Yemen), we could remember how they convinced the American people to "free" Kuwait on fabricated stories, how the Kosovo war was promoted by Madeleine Albright with the collaboration of the media, we could go on and on (and maybe we will add some more examples in the future).



Other study cases:


The death of Aylan Kurdi

When the horrible photo of Aylan Kurdi's small body appeared in the newspapers, to say that the main reason of his family's trip was that his father wanted new teeth was a lie, fake news, although the aunt of the child herself, who paid for the trip, explained it in tv.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22FenqnfWQk]

But the "truth" was that the Kurdi family were escaping war the war in Syria, although they came from Turkey were Aylan's father, although with small salary, had a job. 
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3232251/Aylan-father-s-REAL-story-Abdullah-Kurdi-forced-deny-smuggler-new-questions-emerge-picture-shook-world.html].


Gulf War

"Although there were human rights abuses committed in Kuwait by the invading Iraqi military, the alleged incidents which received most publicity in the US were inventions of the public relations firm hired by the government of Kuwait to influence US opinion in favor of military intervention." "Among many other means of influencing US opinion, (...) the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of members of the US Congress in which a woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor.[98]

The story was an influence in tipping both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military actions in a 52–47 vote. However, a year after the war, this allegation was revealed to be a fabrication. The woman who had testified was found to be a member of Kuwait's Royal Family, in fact the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the US.[98] She hadn't lived in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion.

The details of the Hill & Knowlton public relations campaign, including the incubator testimony, were published in John R. MacArthur's Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), and came to wide public attention when an Op-ed by MacArthur was published in The New York Times. This prompted a reexamination by Amnesty International, which had originally promoted an account alleging even greater numbers of babies torn from incubators than the original fake testimony. After finding no evidence to support it, the organization issued a retraction. President Bush then repeated the incubator allegations on television." [Wikipedia]


Obama's great uncle and Auschwitz

Remember when Obama lied about his uncle liberating Auschwitz?
Never heard of that? Not a surprise, because the same mainstream media that are so eager to audit Trump's lies, do't seem to care much about Obama's lies. But he did say that his uncle (in fact it was his great uncle, but ho cares about such "small" details...) liberated Auschwitz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVRaA_Z7430), despite the fact that it was the Soviet Army that liberated it 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp#Evacuation.2C_death_marches.2C_and_Soviet_liberation).

For instance, if you search "obama+auschwitz" from site nytimes.com, the only results you get back is from a blog entry (https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/obamas-staff-corrects-wwii-story/). The official excuse given was the Obama's uncle helped liberated another, less known camp, Buchenwald, and he had "simply" confused the names.

Can you imagine what the press would have said if Trump had made such "mistake"? If you think it is not so important that the President of the USA doesn't know who liberated the most infamous concentration camp in WW2 history, maybe you think this is more important (despite not being either in any NYT fact-check:

"He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside." [https://www.commondreams.org/news/2009/12/13/obamas-big-sellout-president-has-packed-his-economic-team-wall-street-insiders]


War in Bosnia

Western media explained us for years (and still do) how Milosevic planned and guided the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

Well, one thing is sure: they didn't have any evidence of that, as the International Court for the Former Yugoslavia has made clear:
"...there was no sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed [with Radovan Karadžić] with the common plan [of ethnic cleansing]"
[http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf]

So, if after more than 20 years the tribunal created to investigate the war crimes was not able to find any evidence linkin Milosevic with the ethnic cleansing, what was the news accusing him based on? It means they were lacking any fact.


War in Kosovo

They also told us how NATO was bombing Serbia to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, although this was a lie, becasue the so called ethinc cleansing, started after the bombing, as proven in this documentary from the BBC
[http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/bf9e62b3abd846d398e2629c4fbf10d5]


Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

One example that I have already covered in previous posts is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. As Wikipedia says, it "is frequently quoted by major Western news media, such as Voice of America, Reuters, BBC, CNN and National Public Radio."

But if you continue until the description of this organization you will have a surprise: "The organisation is run by one man, Rami Abdulrahman (sometimes referred to as Rami Abdul Rahman), from his home in Coventry. He is a Syrian Sunni Muslim who owns a clothes shop." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Observatory_for_Human_Rights)


Cologne New Years Eve

"Several media outlets at first did not cover the story and, according to Jörg Luyken, only started reporting on the incidents on 5 January, after a wave of anger on social media made covering them unavoidable.[49] This delay was criticised by several politicians, including Hans-Peter Friedrich.[192] The public television channel ZDF later acknowledged that they had failed to report on the incidents despite having sufficient knowledge to do so.[193][194]

ZDF later called the delay in reporting a "clear misjudgment", and said since then, it has been "over-whelmed with hate and anger".[176] This has reinforced discontent previously held by parts of the German public with news coverage relating to the European migrant crisis, as well as a readiness to support the idea of the "Lügenpresse" (literally lying press).[176][195]

The delay in reporting on the assaults in the media lead to accusations that the authorities and the media attempted to ignore or cover up the attacks to avoid criticism against the current asylum and migration policy of the government.[1][196][197] The BBC's Gavin Hewitt wrote, "What has fuelled the sense of crisis is the suspicion - now widely held - that the German establishment is not telling the truth."[176] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Eve_sexual_assaults_in_Germany#Criticism_of_late_media_reporting]


(*) About the origins of the post-truth concept:

It is funny that the concept post-truth is now used by the media to talk about Russia and other non-aligned countries, because in their origin it was almost dedicated to american politcs:

"According to Oxford Dictionaries, the term post-truth was first used in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation. Tesich writes that following the shameful truth of Watergate, more assuaging coverage of the Iran–Contra scandal and Persian Gulf War demonstrate that "we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world."[10][11] In 2004, Ralph Keyes used the term "post-truth era" in his book by that title.[12] The same year American journalist Eric Alterman spoke of a "post-truth political environment" and coined the term "the post-truth presidency" in his analysis of the misleading statements made by the Bush administration after 9/11.[13] In his 2004 book Post-democracy, Colin Crouch used the phrase "post-democracy" to mean a model of politics where "elections certainly exist and can change governments," but "public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle, managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the techniques of persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those teams." Crouch directly attributes the "advertising industry model" of political communication to the crisis of trust and accusations of dishonesty that a few years later others have associated with post-truth politics.[14]

The term "post-truth politics" was coined by the blogger David Roberts in a blog post for Grist on 1 April 2010, where it was defined as "a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation)".[15][16]" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics]

Milosevic's Exoneration

"The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually "condemned ethnic cleansing", opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590 page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato's illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented "international tribunal". Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by US officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.

Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the western media as the "butcher of the Balkans" who was responsible for "genocide", especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against "this new Hitler". David Scheffer, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], declared that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been murdered by Milosevic's forces.

This was the justification for Nato's bombing, led by Bill Clinton and Blair, that killed hundreds of civilians in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios and destroyed Serbia's economic infrastructure. It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious "peace conference" in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were "worth it".

Albright delivered an "offer" to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces "outside the legal process", and to the imposition of a neo-liberal "free market", Serbia would be bombed. This was contained in an "Appendix B", which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe's last independent "socialist" state.

Once Nato began bombing, there was a stampede of Kosovar refugees "fleeing a holocaust". When it was over, international police teams descended on Kosovo to exhume the victims of the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". The final count of the dead in Kosovo was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the pro-Nato Kosovo Liberation Front. There was no genocide. The Nato attack was both a fraud and a war crime." [John Pilger]

"Kosovo and the myth of liberal intervention"

"The Council [of Europe] claims that civilians – Serbian and non-KLA-supporting Kosovan Albanians detained by the KLA in the 1999 hostilities – were shot in northern Albania and their kidneys extracted and sold on the black market. It names Hashim Thaçi, the former leader of the KLA and Kosovo's prime minister, as the boss of a "mafia-like" group engaged in criminal activity – including heroin trading – since before the 1999 war. The report is a damning indictment not only of the KLA but also of western policy. And it also gives lie to the fiction that Nato's war with Yugoslavia was, in Tony Blair's words, "a battle between good and evil; between civilisation and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship".

It was a fiction many on the liberal left bought into. In 1999 Blair was seen not as a duplicitous warmonger in hock to the US but as an ethical leader taking a stand against ethnic cleansing. But if the west had wanted to act morally in the Balkans and to protect the people in Kosovo there were solutions other than war with the Serbs, and options other than backing the KLA – the most violent group in Kosovan politics. They could have backed genuine multi-party negotiations, or offered to lift sanctions on Belgrade if a peaceful solution to the problem of Kosovo could be found.

Instead, a virulently anti-Serb stance led the west into taking ever more extreme positions, and siding with an organisation which even Robert Gelbard, President Clinton's special envoy to Kosovo, described as "without any question, a terrorist group". In 2000 the Sunday Times revealed that, prior to the Nato bombing, US agents had been training the KLA. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander, claimed he had met British and US agents in north Albania in 1996.

It was the KLA's campaign of violence against Yugoslav state officials, Serbian and Kosovan civilians in 1998, which led to an escalation of the conflict with the government in Belgrade, with atrocities committed on both sides. We were told the outbreak of war in March 1999 with Nato was the Serbian government's fault, yet Lord Gilbert, the UK defence minister, admitted "the terms put to Miloševic at Rambouillet [the international conference preceding the war] were absolutely intolerable … it was quite deliberate".

The subsequent 78-day "humanitarian" bombardment of federal Yugoslavia massively intensified the ethnic cleansing of Kosovan Albanians by Yugoslav forces. Between 2,000 and 10,000 Kosovan Albanians were killed by these forces, with between 500 and 1,500 people killed by the Nato bombing.

But even after Russian pressure forced a Yugoslav withdrawal from Kosovo, ethnic cleansing and rights abuses in the region continued. Under the Nato occupation an estimated 200,000 ethnic Serbs, Roma and other minorities from south Kosovo, and almost the whole Serb population of Pristina, have been forced from their homes.

A report on Kosovo by Minority Rights Group International claimed: "Nowhere [in Europe] is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed or attacked, simply for who they are." And in October 2010, a report by Human Rights Watch stated that "Roma and related minority groups deported from western Europe to Kosovo face discrimination and severe deprivation amounting to human rights abuse". As for democratic advances, Sunday's elections in Kosovo, boycotted by the Serbian minority, have seen widespread allegations of fraud, with a turnout of 149% reported in one area.

Far from being Tony Blair's "good war", Nato's assault on Yugoslavia was in its own way as immoral as the assault on Iraq. But as the Iraq war has become discredited, so it is even more important for the supporters of "liberal interventionism" to promote the line that Kosovo was in some way a success. The Council of Europe's report on the KLA's crimes makes that position much harder to maintain. And if it plays its part in making people more sceptical about any future western "liberal interventions", it is to be warmly welcomed."

"Kosovo and the myth of liberal intervention". Neil Clark. The Guardian. December 15, 2010.

William Walker and the Kosovo Verification Mission

"European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission.

"The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE," said a European envoy.

(...)

Initially some "diplomatic observers" arrived, followed in October by a much larger group that was eventually swallowed up into the OSCE's "Kosovo Verification Mission".

Walker said: "Overnight we went from having a handful of people to 130 or more. Could the agency have put them in at that point? Sure they could. It's their job. But nobody told me."

Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade . He had worked briefly for the United Nations in Croatia . Ten years earlier he was the American ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there to suppress leftist rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua .

Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, concluded from Walker 's background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American "diplomatic observers" from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.

"It was a CIA front, gathering intelligence on the KLA's arms and leadership," said one."

"CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army", by Tom Walker and Aidan Laverty. The Sunday Times. March 12, 2000.

USA and the KLA

Senator Joseph Lieberman

Now that nobody can deny the links between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and drug dealing and organ trafficking it is good to remember some things:

"[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values."

Senator Jo. Lieberman, quoted in the 'Washington Post', 28 April 1999

"American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia (...) Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police."

Tom Walker and Aiden Laverty, ‘CIA Aided Kosovo Guerrilla Army’, Sunday Times, 12 March 2000.

Searching for Kosovo's Missing

Searching for Kosovo's Missing. Center for Investigative Reporting.

HRW on Kosovo

"The international community can no longer ignore credible allegations of serious crimes in Kosovo and Albania. The US and European governments must demand prompt, thorough, and impartial investigations, with prosecutions of those responsible." Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

"According to the draft report, a group of former KLA members called the "Drenica group" are responsible for abductions, beatings, summary executions and, in some cases, the forced removal of human organs on the territory of Albania after the war ended on June 12, 1999. The victims were mostly Serbs and Roma from Kosovo but also ethnic Albanians suspected of having collaborated with the Serbian government before or during the 1998-1999 war, or members of rival armed groups." [Human Rights Watch]

Consejo de Europa: La oscura verdad sobre Kosovo

"Los actores internacionales decidieron hacer la vista gorda
ante los crímenes de guerra del UCK"
Consejo de Europa

En este blog siempre hemos defendido que la guerra de Kosovo no fue tan simple como nos quisieron hacer creer; que no se trataba de una guerra entre buenos y malos; que, en contra de lo que no paraban de repetirnos, no habíamos detenido el "mayor genocidio sucedido en Europa desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial"; que el UCK (KLA) no eran unos defensores de la libertad, sinó más bien todo lo contrario.

Hoy se ha hecho publico el informe del Consejo de Europa acerca del tráfico de organos en Kosovo tras la guerra. La noticia ha saltado a la primera página de muchos periódicos europeos al mencionarse repetidamente la implicación del actual primer ministro de Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, en la red mafiosa que asesinaba a serbios para vender sus organos en el mercado negro. Titulares como "El primer ministro de Kosovo, acusado de tráfico de órganos" o "El primer ministro de Kosovo, acusado de tráfico de órganos humanos" son bastante ilustrativos.

La noticia puede parecer sorprendente pero ya hace más de un año la BBC trataba este tema, y nos hacíamos eco en este blog. Lo más interesante de este informe es que, por primera vez, una organización internacional oficial, el Consejo de Europa, se hace eco de las escandalosas irregularidades que han tenido lugar en Kosovo tras la finalización de la guerra (lástima que no hayan estudiado el periodo anterior a la guerra); y de los crímenes contra la humanidad cometidos contra la población serbia; y de la colaboración innegable entre la OTAN y una organización mafiosa.

Los medios de comunicación occidentales se han hecho eco de la implicacion del Primer Ministro de Kosovo pero no de algunas revelacions realizadas en el informe del Consejo de Europa de igual o mayor gravedad. Algunos pasajes producen escalofríos, por sus implicaciones. Estos pasajes, curiosamente, han sido ignorados por los medios oficiales, pasajes que hasta hoy parecían reservador a "simpatizantes de los serbios", anti-americanos, etc.; en general, radicales. Ahora una organización tan poco radical como el Consejo de Europa nos da la razón.

Pero permítanme que les transcriba algunas de estas frases que me han resultado especialmente significativas (disculpen la traducción de Google Translate):

"Durante la fase decisiva del conflicto armado, la OTAN intervino en forma de ataques aéreos, mientras que las operaciones terrestres fueron realizadas por el UCK, aliados de hecho de las fuerzas internacionales. Tras la marcha de las autoridades serbias, los organismos internacionales responsables en Kosovo confiaron la seguridad en las fuerzas políticas en el poder en Kosovo, la mayoría de ellos ex dirigentes del UCK. "

"Los crímenes atroces cometidos por las fuerzas serbias, que remuevieron sentimientos muy fuertes en todo el mundo, dio lugar a un estado de ánimo se refleja también en la actitud de algunos organismos internacionales, según la cual era siempre un lado que eran considerados como los autores de los delitos y el otro lado de las víctimas, necesariamente inocentes. La realidad es más matizada y más compleja. "

"Considerando que en última instancia, Serbia ha cooperado, ha demostrado ser mucho más complicado para llevar a cabo excavaciones en el territorio de Kosovo, y ha sido imposible, al menos hasta ahora, en el territorio de Albania. La cooperación de las autoridades de Kosovo es especialmente necesaria en el respeto de la búsqueda de las casi 500 personas que oficialmente desapareció después del final del conflicto. "

"La intervención de la OTAN tomó esencialmente la forma de una campaña aérea, con los bombardeos en Kosovo y en Serbia - Las operaciones, según algunos, han infringido el derecho internacional, ya que no fueron autorizados por el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU -, mientras que en el terreno la OTAN era de facto aliada del UCK. Así, durante el período crítico que es el foco de nuestra investigación, el UCK tenía un control efectivo sobre un ámbito territorial amplio, que abarca Kosovo, así como algunas de las regiones fronterizas en el norte de Albania de control. UCK no debe debe entenderse como un ejercicio estructurado de poder, y fue sin duda lejos de asumir los contornos de un Estado. Fue en el transcurso de este período crítico que numerosos crímenes fueron cometidos tanto contra los serbios que se habían quedado en la región y contra los albaneses kosovares sospechosos de haber sido "traidores" o "colaboradores", o que fue víctima de las rivalidades internas dentro del UCK. Estos crímenes han quedado impunes en gran medida y sólo años después de que un comienzo más bien tímido se ha hecho en el trato con ellos. "

"Fue como resultado de esta situación que ciertos delitos cometidos por miembros de la UCK, entre ellos algunos altos dirigentes del UCK, se oculta con eficacia y han quedado impunes."

"Los crímenes cometidos por las fuerzas serbias se han documentado, denunciado y, en la medida de lo posible, juzgado en los tribunales de justicia. La naturaleza de estos terribles crímenes apenas necesita ser ilustrado. (...) Sin embargo, lo que surgió en paralelo Fue un clima y una tendencia según la cual llevó a todos estos eventos y actos se han visitado a través de una lente que se muestra todo como algo demasiado claras: por un lado, los serbios, que eran vistos como los opresores del mal, y en el otro lado los albaneses de Kosovo, que fueron vistos como las víctimas inocentes. En el horror y la comisión de delitos no puede haber un principio de compensación. La esencia básica de la justicia exige que todos sean tratados de la misma manera. Por otra parte, el deber de encontrar la verdad y administrar la justicia debe ser dado de alta para que la paz verdadera para ser restaurada, y para las diferentes comunidades a reconciliarse y comenzar a vivir y trabajar juntos. "

"El resultado ha sido una forma de justicia que sólo se puede definir como selectiva, con la impunidad que rodea a muchos de los crímenes que aparecen, sobre la base de indicios creíbles, que han sido directa o indirectamente, el trabajo de los líderes del UCK. Los países occidentales que se comprometieron en Kosovo se había abstenido de una intervención directa sobre el terreno, prefiriendo recurrir a ataques aéreos, y ha adoptado por tanto, en el UCK como su aliado indispensable para las operaciones en tierra. Los actores internacionales decidieron hacer la vista gorda ante los crímenes de guerra de la UCK, colocando en primer lugar de lograr un cierto grado de estabilidad a corto plazo. En efecto, el nuevo Kosovo se ha basado en las estructuras existentes del movimiento patria albanesa de Kosovo. De ello se deduce que las sucesivas administraciones internacionales establecidos, así como la Gobierno de EE.UU., que es generalmente considerado como jugando un papel importante en los asuntos del nuevo Kosovo, han tenido que mantener buenas relaciones con sus aliados de facto sobre el terreno, ya que éste se han convertido en los nuevos amos de la política local escena."

"La misión EULEX, en funcionamiento desde finales de 2008, con lo que heredó una situación extremadamente difícil. Numerosos archivos sobre crímenes de guerra, en particular aquellos en los que los combatientes del UCK fueron catalogados como sospechosos, fueron entregados por la UNMIK en un estado deplorable (ocasionar la pérdida de pruebas y testigos declaraciones, lapsos de tiempo largo en el seguimiento de medidas de investigación incompleta), en la medida en que los funcionarios de la misión EULEX manifestaron su temor de forma muy explícita en nuestras visitas de investigación que muchos archivos, simplemente tendría que ser abandonado."

DOCUMENTO ORIGINAL.

Documento completo traducido con Google Translate.

Council of Europe: The "Secret" Truth About Kosovo

"During the decisive phase of the armed conflict, NATO took action in the form of air strikes, while land operations were conducted by the KLA, de facto allies of the international forces. Following the departure of the Serbian authorities, the international bodies responsible for security in Kosovo very much relied on the political forces in power in Kosovo, most of them former KLA leaders."

"The appalling crimes committed by Serbian forces, which stirred up very strong feelings worldwide, gave rise to a mood reflected as well in the attitude of certain international agencies, according to which it was invariably one side that were regarded as the perpetrators of crimes and the other side as the victims, thus necessarily innocent. The reality is less clear-cut and more complex."

"Whereas Serbia ultimately co-operated, it has proved far more complicated to carry out excavations on the territory of Kosovo, and has been impossible, at least so far, on Albanian territory. Co-operation by the Kosovar authorities is particularly lacking in respect of the search for the almost 500 persons who officially disappeared after the end of the conflict."

"The NATO intervention had essentially taken the form of an aerial campaign, with bombing in Kosovo and in Serbia – operations thought by some to have infringed international law, as they were not authorised by the UN Security Council – while on the ground NATO’s de facto ally was the KLA. Thus, during the critical period that is the focus of our inquiry, the KLA had effective control over an expansive territorial area, encompassing Kosovo as well as some of the border regions in the north of Albania. KLA control should not be understood as a structured exercise of power, and it was certainly far from assuming the contours of a state. It was in the course of this critical period that numerous crimes were committed both against Serbs who had stayed in the region and against Kosovar Albanians suspected of having been “traitors” or “collaborators”, or who fell victim to internal rivalries within the KLA. These crimes have largely gone unpunished and it is only years later that a rather diffident start has been made in dealing with them."

"It was as a result of this situation that certain crimes committed by members of the KLA, including some top KLA leaders, were effectively concealed and have remained unpunished."

"The crimes committed by the Serb forces have been documented, denounced and, to the extent possible, tried in courts of law. The frightful nature of these crimes hardly needs to be further illustrated. (...) However, what emerged in parallel was a climate and a tendency according to which led to all these events and acts were viewed through a lens that depicted everything as rather too clear-cut: on one side the Serbs, who were seen as the evil oppressors, and on the other side the Kosovar Albanians, who were seen as the innocent victims. In the horror and perpetration of crimes there can be no principle of compensation. The basic essence of justice demands that everyone be treated in the same way. Moreover, the duty to find the truth and administer justice must be discharged in order for genuine peace to be restored, and for the different communities to be reconciled and begin living and working together."

"The result has been a form of justice that can only be defined as selective, with impunity attaching to many of the crimes that appear, based on credible indications, to have been directly or indirectly the work of top KLA leaders. The Western countries that engaged themselves in Kosovo had refrained from a direct intervention on the ground, preferring recourse to air strikes, and had thus taken on the KLA as their indispensable ally for ground operations. The international actors chose to turn a blind eye to the war crimes of the KLA, placing a premium instead on achieving some degree of short-term stability. In effect the new Kosovo has been built on the existing structures of the Kosovar Albanian homeland movement. It follows that the successive international administrations put in place, as well as the US Government, which is generally regarded as playing an important role in the affairs of the new Kosovo[1], have had to maintain good relations with their de facto allies on the ground, as the latter have become the new masters of the local political scene."

"The EULEX mission, operational since the end of 2008, thus inherited an extremely difficult situation. Numerous files on war crimes, notably those in which KLA combatants were listed as suspects, were turned over by UNMIK in a deplorable condition (mislaid evidence and witness statements, long time lapses in following up on incomplete investigative steps), to the extent that EULEX officials stated their fears in quite explicit terms during our fact-finding visits that many files would simply have to be abandoned."

COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Hashim Thaçi, Kosovo PM, linked to organ trafficking

There has been a deep silence about what happened in Kosovo after the war. We were told that "we" have helped to defend human rights in Kosovo, that we have been in the "right side" against evil.

But little news, that arise, time to time, show us that the truth has a total different color. We have already spoken about the Organ trafficking that took place after the war. Some albanian kosovar leaders thought something like "why kill serbs and bury them, when we can sell their kidneys?".

In december of the last year we spoke about the BBC's documentary "Did the atrocities continue?". Now the Council of Europe report about organ traffic has directly accused the KLA and even names Hashim Thaci -prime minister and wartime political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)- a total of 27 times. [BBC]

This news force me to put again this photo:

From left to right: Hasim Thaçi, financed the KLA by trafficking with heroine and cocaine, present Prime Minister of Kosovo; Bernard Kouchner, former French Foreign Affairs Minister, was the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head, United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), between 1999 and 2001; General Mike Jackson, who took part in the in the repression against the catholic community in the Bloody Sunday; Agim Çeku, responsible for war crimes against the serbs of Krajina, including the massacre of Medak; and Wesley Clark. [The Truth about Kosovo]

"Thaçi has extensive criminal links. During the period of time when Thaçi was head of the Kosovo Liberation Army, it was reported by the Washington Times to be financing its activities by trafficking heroin and cocaine into western Europe. KLA supporters, however, insist that in reality KLA received its financing from the Albanian diaspora in USA, Albanian, UK and USA governments.

Thaçi in particular is seen as being central to the criminal activities of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), who reportedly extorted money from businessmen under the guise of "taxes" for Thaçi's self appointed government. While the KLA was officially disbanded at the end of armed conflict in Kosovo in 1999, the new Kosovo Protection Corps was composed primarily of former KLA fighters and the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) was formed largely from the political leadership of the KLA. A near monopoly on the means of force, based on the absorption of the KLA into the KPC allowed the Democratic Party of Kosovo to seize control of the machinery of government at the municipal level. The Democratic Party of Kosovo has regularly employed violence and intimidation of political rivals to maintain local political control and protect criminal enterprises which depend upon cooperation from friendly local authorities.

A recent analysis of organized crime in Kosovo prepared by German intelligence service BND and a confidential report contracted by the German military, the Bundeswehr accuse Thaçi, as well as Ramush Haradinaj and the majority Kosovo parliament faction Xhavit Haliti of far-reaching involvement in organized crime. The BND writes: “The key players (including Haliti, Haradinaj, and Thaçi) are intimately involved in inter-linkages between politics, business, and organized crime structures in Kosovo.” The report accuses Thaçi of leading a “criminal network operating throughout Kosovo.” in the end of the 1990s. The BND report also accuses Thaçi of contacts with the Czech and Albanian mafias. In addition, it accuses him, together with Haliti, of ordering killings by an professional hit man ‘Afrimi’, who is allegedly responsible for at least 11 contract murders." [Wikipedia]

Criminales albano-kosovares

Muchos de ustedes se habrán preguntado porqué hay un porcentaje tan alto de criminales (especialmente entre las bandas más violentas) de origen albano-kosovoar. Las razones son obvias: Kosovo fue entregado por la OTAN a una banda mafiosa llamada UCK, de la cual surgieron la mayoría de estos criminales.

Lo sorprendente es que, en un Kosovo independiente, y a pesar de que la mayoría de criminales kosovares en Europa son albano-kosovares y no serbo-kosovares, la diplomacia norteamericana, siga culpando a Serbia:

"Pristina peut offrir de l'espoir, mais elle ne peut réussir toute seule. Les Européens doivent participer. Eulex doit réprimer le crime organisé et Bruxelles doit utiliser la perspective de l'intégration dans l'UE pour obliger Belgrade à jouer un rôle utile pour ramener la loi et l'ordre dans le nord du Kosovo", souligne le poste de Pristina dans son bilan de l'indépendance. [Le Monde]

El Kosovo real

"En julio el Tribunal de La Haya consagró de facto la autoproclamada soberanía en una resolución que sentenciaba que no violó la ley internacional. Kosovo ha sido reconocido, además, por buena parte de las potencias que cuentan en Occidente. Y que han regado el territorio de una ayuda internacional, entre 4.600 y 5.400 millones de euros en 10 años, que no da frutos para unos ciudadanos que votan hartos del paro y la corrupción.

Los kosovares que acuden a las urnas en las primeras legislativas desde la independencia son más pesimistas que en 2008, según el mayor estudio sociológico conducido hasta ahora en los Balcanes por Gallup Balkan Monitor. La mitad de la población está desempleada y ha perdido la esperanza de hallar trabajo en el próximo año (69%).

La tercera parte cree que la economía ha empeorado. Y la abrumadora mayoría (91%) tacha al Gobierno de corrupto. Transparencia Internacional lo ratifica colocando la antigua provincia serbia como el lugar más corrupto de los Balcanes." [El Mundo]

Hipocresía Internacional

La explosión del conflicto saharaui en el territorio ocupado por la dictadura marroquí ha puesto de manifiesto la doble moral de la mayoría de instituciones internacionales, así como de muchos de nuestros "intelectuales".

Esa doble moral se manifiesta en muchas ocasiones en sentido contrario. Nuestros intelectuales, a pesar de que desde los tiempos de la marcha verde Marruecos mantiene su ocupación del Sahara antes-español, pocas veces han denunciado, salvo el ridículo episodio de Aminetou Haidar, que convirtió el problema del Sahara en un reality show. Ciertamente es mucho más "divertido" criticar a Israel que a Marruecos.

Pero aun más, a nivel de instituciones, el caso es aun más sangrante; por mucho menos de los crímenes cometidos por Israel en los territorios ocupados o por Marruecos en el Sahara, Serbia fue bombardeada y los serbios expulsados de Kosovo. Porque como ya hemos comentado (y demostrado) en varias ocasiones, en contra de lo que nos han ido repitiendo a posteriori, los bombardeos sobre Serbia se iniciaron antes de la (innegable) limpieza étnica promovida por Milosevic.

Amnistía Internacional exige poner fin a las repatriaciones de minorías a Kosovo

"Amnistía Internacional (AI) ha exigido a los países de la Unión Europea (EU) que pongan poner fin a la devolución forzada de gitanos y miembros de otras minorías a Kosovo, donde "corren el riego de sufrir persecución y otros daños graves".
(...)
Lo que tiene que hacer la UE es continuar prestando protección internacional a los romaníes y los miembros de otras minorías de Kosovo hasta que pueden regresar allí en condiciones de seguridad", agregó. "Por otro lado, las autoridades de Kosovo deben garantizar que los romaníes y los miembros de otras minorías pueden regresar voluntariamente y reintegrarse plenamente en la sociedad", advirtió." [La Vanguardia]

[Documentary] Kosovo: Can you imagine?

These are the rulers of Kosovo now

This is maybe the worst image that I have ever published in this blog. In these photos, several proud albanian kosovars KLA members hold the heads of two dead serbian soldiers. We saw photos os serbs paramilitars standing in front of burning houses, but we never saw these far more horryfing images.

After the war the KLA was given law enforcement in Kosovo. Now they are the leaders of the independent Kosovo. Thanks to NATO and UN.

[Documentary] Newsnight. Kosovo: Did atrocities continue? [BBC]

"The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found.

The BBC News investigation also studies claims that some of those held in Albania were killed for their organs, and that physical evidence gathered by UN investigators in Albania was destroyed by the International War Crimes Tribunal." [BBC]

There is around 2000 missing people in Kosovo, after the war. Investigations suggest that they were taken to detention camps, ruled by the KLA, in Albania, in front of the eyes of the United Nations throught the border. In Albania, the abducted serbs, gypsies and others, were kept at Kükes or to Burrel, were they would be killed to take some of their organs.

Carla Del Ponte, war crimes ex-chief prosecutor, claims, based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses, that Kosovan Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into northern Albania where they were killed, and their organs "harvested" and trafficked out of Tirana airport. [The Guardian]

Crossing Continents: Kosovo [BBC Radio]

[Documentary] Moral Combat: NATO at War [BBC]

“In the months that followed the KLA played a subtle but deadly game in which the willingness of the Serb police and Yugoslav army to commit atrocities against civilians was skillfully manipulated to coax the international community into action.”

“The Americans knew that because it had to be Nato, the chances of the Serbs accepting the deal were very small. They had a second acceptable outcome in mind.

"That meant the Serbs rejecting the plan and the Albanians accepting it," Assistant Secretary of State Jamie Rubin told me. Then, he added, there would be clarity where previously there had been confusion, clarity as to who was to blame, as to who Nato should oppose and who Nato should support.”

"Washington was shocked. A war that had been entered into with such confidence, and which those who had advocated it believed would be over very quickly, was now spiralling out of control." [BBC]

Click on image to watch the video

[Documentary] Kosovo: Nove anni dopo [Rai3]

Not all battles lost...

It is frequently said that Catalans and Serbs are the only nations who celebrate a defeat. Maybe the word celebrate is not the most acurate, but it has something of truth.

Catalonia's National Day is September 11th, remembering the same day of 1714 when the troops of Phillip V broke the defense of the city of Barcelona. After that began a repression that in many ways it took almost 300 years to come over; that would be the case of the town of Lleida, that lost, after that war, its Cathedral (one of the most important of all Europe in that time) that was converted into a military settlement; its City hall and its University; along with a great part of houses, destroyed to build a new fortress to control de city.

Serbia remembers the defeat against the ottoman empire, in 1389, the famous "Battle of Kosovo". But some historian arguee that these defeat was not so. It is undeniable that Ottomans won the battle but it is true too that the number of casualties suffered by the Ottomans (including Sultan Murad I) stopped the advance of the Ottomans into Europe.

This is the reason why the serbian defeat would not be so, as they achieved their major goal; stop islam from advancing into Europe. And on behalf the freedom that we enjoy now, all europeans should thank the serbian nation for their sacrifice.