Healthy skepticism

The first piece of news is about … the Olympics. What else?

I am not going to talk about the lavish opening ceremony, other than to mention that it took seven years to master the choreography and it cost about $40 billion.

Interesting are the other aspects surrounding this year Summer Olympic Games. After the terrorist attack happened last week, an extra 100,000 security and police troops have been deployed to Beijing and Tiananmen Square was closed off.
An Air China flight bound for Beijing from Tokyo was forced to turn back after an Olympic-related bomb threat was received.
Buddhist monks continue to protest wherever they can along with exiled Tibetans. It’s an understatement to say that they are unhappy with the Chinese ruling.
Pollution remains a key concern for the Games and on the morning of the opening ceremony, fog obscured the Beijing skyline. Naturally, the official point of view is that people confuse ‘haze’ with ‘pollution’ Yeah, right.
I wonder if the food prepared for athletes is coming from irradiated seeds or not.
Some time ago, Chinese scientists boasted about the huge size of the crops made with seeds irradiated in space, assuring at the same time that they are not going to be used to feed the Olympians. But what about the rest of the people?

In any way, the Olympic Games are very important to the Chinese officials. They are to show that China emerged from being a poor country, occupied in the past by Western power players and Japan and morphed into a power to be taken into account.
The idealistic image has been unfortunately tarnished by some events, like the resignation of Steven Spielberg as artistic director of the Olympic Games in February, over Chinese relation with Sudan.
Following month, March, has been plagued by riots and demonstrations in Tibetan areas culminating with angry reception of the Olympic torch in many international capitals.

The oil control proxy war
While China is busy hosting the Olympic Games, Russia is busy staging a war with Georgia.

What if the problem actually is related to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline? The pipeline feeds Caspian oil to the West, without passing into Russian territory (hence no Russian control… at least not directly; some terrorist acts only)

It looks like there are some forces trying to control the oil reserve in Central Asia. Russia wants the pipeline to go through Russia (duh!), the USA wants to go through Georgia and Turkey and Iran wants to see it go through … Iran (where else??)
Coincidentally or not, the Americans have sent a huge naval task-force to the Persian Gulf to blockade Iran. Throw into the equation another player: Israel, and remember the recent reports of a massive IAF exercise over the Mediterranean.

For some time now, Georgia has been fighting separatists with ties to Russia in order to regain control of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which voted for independence in 2006, in unofficial referendum. The separatist administration in South Ossetia has been trying to gain formal independence since breaking away in a civil war in the 1990s.
The majority of its 70,000 population are ethnically distinct from Georgians, speaking a dialect related to Farsi. The Ossetians claim that they have been forcibly absorbed into Georgia under Soviet Rule.
Now, South Ossetians want to join up with their ethnic cousins in North Ossetia, which is an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.

In April 2008, Russia steps up ties with the other Georgian’s breakaway republic, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in retaliation to NATO’s position of allowing Georgia to join the alliance at some point.

In July Russia admitted flying jets over South Ossetia to ‘cool hot heads in Tbilisi’ and at the same time Georgia and Russia accused each other of military build-up.

August 8, 2008 marks the start of heavy fighting between Georgia and Russia.
Photo of Georgian shells fired at separatist rebels in South Ossetia, August 8, 2008

Hundreds of fighters from Russia and Abkhazia were reportedly heading to aid the separatist troops.
Some people believe that Georgia’s president tries to draw NATO into the conflict, but chances are that it’s not going to happen. After trying to avoid a military conflict with Russia for so many years, would NATO be foolish to get into one at this point?

Let’s move on to a more serious and much anticipated issue: Angelina Jolie’s newborns
Here are some pictures of the happy family. Shiloh is a sweetheart and I must admit that the twins are beautiful. Considering that Hello! Magazine paid $11 million for the first pictures, they should have better been gorgeous.
Jolie Pitt Twins

Shiloh and one baby

Jolie Pitt family

Angelina, Shiloh and the newborns

What a slap on Jennifer Lopez’s face! Her twins were worth only half the money.

Now if you want to see a picture of Nicole Kidman’s baby… there is only a very fuzzy one not worth uploading. I guess it’s just a typical baby, looking like her father (as per Nicole’s statements) with a reddish blond hair.

• Leave a comment... (0)

I know, I break my own record and post twice on the same day, but I can’t help it.
From the cycle ” Idiots among us” I am bringing you two examples:

First example : From the projects in Brooklyn to a mansion in Atlanta, introducing the Harper family

By the Associated Press LAKE CITY, Ga. - More than 1,800 people showed up to help ABC’s “Extreme Makeover” team demolish a family’s decrepit home and replace it with a sparkling, four-bedroom mini-mansion in 2005.
After the Harper family used the two-storey home as collateral for a $450,000 loan, it’s set to go to auction on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse Aug. 5. The couple did not return phone calls Monday, but told WSB-TV they received the loan for a construction business that failed.
The house was built in January 2005, after Atlanta-based Beazer Homes USA and ABC’s “Extreme Makeover” demolished their old home and its faulty septic system. Within six days, construction crews and hoards of volunteers had completed work on the largest home that the television program had yet built.
The finished product was a four-bedroom house with decorative rock walls and a three-car garage that towered over ranch and split-level homes in their Clayton County neighbourhood. The home’s door opened into a lobby that featured four fireplaces, a solarium, a music room and a plush new office.

Materials and labour were donated for the home, which would have cost about $450,000 to build. Beazer Homes’ employees and company partners also raised $250,000 in contributions for the family, including scholarships for the couple’s three children and a home maintenance fund.

Now the house is in foreclosure and the idiots should go and work as volunteers on other Extreme Makeover projects. To gain experience construction related if nothing else.

Second example: Winner of $3.6 million jackpot kept the secret for almost a year
We have to be proud with our local celebrities, so, drum roll please: introducing the young realtor who won $3.6 million on 6/49 and kept it secret for 49 weeks…. Ladies and gentlemen… here is Peter Dushop.

Seriously, what was in his freaking mind? He signed the winning ticket and left it in safe deposit box at the bank because he could not make up his mind about what to do with the money. Duh!!!!! This guy does not seem to be very bright if it took him almost a year to figure out something. And the supreme ‘duh moment’: he decided to leave the money in the bank!!!

That mucho intelligent idea needed almost a year to navigate through the emptiness of his skull. In the mean time he lost about $100,000 in interest.

I found as well some pretty disturbing comments congratulating the guys for not making his mind for almost a year.
Seriously? Congratulating him for being an idiot? Definitely the idiots outnumber us.

I am getting dizzy already rolling my eyes and shaking my head.

• Leave a comment... (0)

Viacom backs off YouTube demand

The bad news:
On July 3rd, Google had been ordered to provide personal details of millions of YouTube users to help Viacom (which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures) prepare its case on alleged copyright infringement ($1 bn). Viacom stated that it had identified about 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programs on the website, which had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
Steps in digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which called the US court ruling a “set-back to privacy rights”. The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.
How wonderful is that… NOT!! Effing you Viacom along with your MTV and Paramount Pictures… is it not you guys rejecting the artists’ request to be paid royalties from web-content? Talking about double standards.
The good news:
Viacom has backed off and now Google (owners of YouTube) will hand over the database but without data that could identify users.
Still…. Effing you Viacom!

Andrey Melnickenko’s super-yacht

While most of the people are worried about fuel and food cost increase and see their cost of living skyrocketing, Roman Abramovich’s yacht has been overshadowed by his rival’s super-yacht.

Andrey Melnichenko’s futuristic yacht dubbed ‘A’ and evaluated at over $400 million, took its maiden voyage to Norway to pick up three Monet paintings.

Two best friends: China and Sudan

While some people are in a pissing contest over the size of their yachts or the number of paintings or modern art purchased from Christi’s auctions, other are worried over the crushing stock market and others decided to attacked the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s decision to seek an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president on charges of genocide in the Darfur region. According to the United Nations, more than 300,000 people have died and over 2. 5 million have been driven from their homes.
The BBC has found the first evidence that China is currently helping Sudan’s government militarily in Darfur. The BBC has found the first evidence that China is currently helping Sudan’s government militarily in Darfur because it believes that what Sudan needs is good business partners, help with development and a solid peace process in Darfur, instead of confrontation and sanctions from the West.
How do they achieve all of that (especially the solid peace process)?
First of all by buying two-thirds of Sudan’s petroleum exports, then by providing Fantan jets and training pilots to help the military interventions of the government , writing off million of dollars worth of debt and giving interest free loans.
How nice it is to see such good friends loving and respecting each other. Mostly… deserving each other.

Russia is sending warships to patrol Arctic waters

For the first time since the break-up of the Soviet Unions, Russia is sending warships- A submarine destroyer and a missile cruiser- to patrol Arctic waters. This is the latest move to increase Russia’s global military presence.
According to Navy spokesman, Igor Dygalo, one aim of the patrols is to protect the Russian fishermen which are blocked from seas around the island of Spitsbergen because of the Norway’s claims of exclusive fishing rights.

• Leave a comment... (0)

I could not stop laughing while reading this piece of news .
It’s utterly hilarious.
Why? Because so many people aka ‘the righteous ones’ considered the ‘poor gypsies’ not being treated fairly. Actually, to be politically correct we should call them ‘travelers’ not use a derogatory name like ‘gypsies’.
Now you can have them in your backyard and by all means, please treat them fairly.

I took the liberty to extract some lines from the article and just comment them.

“Sandbanks is said to be the fourth most expensive place to live in the world. Seafront mansions sell for up to £10million and homeowners often fly in and out in helicopters”

I guess they may have to reevaluate the value of the proprieties.

Sandbanks

The new additions brought up some ethnic touch:
“Cavalcade of lorries towed the caravans into place in the genteel village of Canford Cliffs on the outskirts of Poole, Dorset.
And within hours the new arrivals had tethered a pony to the main road and strung up several lines of washing. Residents living near the car park say dogs are running freely around the caravans and motor homes which have been parked near to the mansions of the super rich”

A pic for all animal lovers:

Ignorance is bliss … but only sometimes. In this case it’s plain idiotic. How dilusional these Brits can be?

“’Our officers have visited the site and will continue checks to ensure the area is kept clean and tidy. It is our policy that unauthorised encampments will be tolerated as long as there is no significant impact on the local community”

Other residents are a little bit less politically correct:

“’It is utterly outrageous. These people are allowed to just show up, set up home and make a mess with the taxpayers picking up the bill when they move on.”

The lady still believes that they are going to move on… told you the Brits were dilusional.

Hey, maybe the gipsies are just sport lovers and want to be part of the sand polo championship about to begin.

• Leave a comment... (0)

Police chopper encounters a UFO
A police chopper model Eurocopter, EC135T21 had a near collision encounter with a UFO near a RAF base outside Cardiff, South Wales.
Apparently the UFO aimed straight at the chopper, which had to swerve sharply to avoid being hit.
After the collision, the police air unit decided to follow the aircraft to find out what it was.
The pursuit had to be abandoned because the police helicopter was running low on fuel.

The skeptics would say ‘yeah, yeah, … another guys looking for 15 minutes of fame’ while the guys from the other team, the one believing that there is somebody out there keeping an eye on us, would say ‘told you so’.
It’s hard to believe that some police officers would risk being ridiculed and put their careers on risk, to report a hoax.

Pregnancy pact to have babies
If I needed another reason for being happy and grateful that I have a boy, here it is: 17 schoolgirls pregnant as a result of a pact made to have babies.
The ones who succeeded celebrated with high-fives and the ‘unlucky’ ones were in distress.
How idiotic is this pact? As soon as ‘Juno’ hit the theaters I knew it will generate troubles and it will send the wrong message about pregnancy and having babies.
The religion card is going to be played, no doubt about it. Parents, teachers will be blamed for not handing out contraceptives and not having a non-glamorous approach to the unwed teenager mothers. But I believe that a 16 year old will be strong minded enough and not take into consideration anything told, especially by the parents.
Let’s face it: babies are cute, but demanding. And you can’t throw them away if next year they are running out of fashion. Jeez!!

Bill Gates pledges his $58 billion fortune to charity… great, I guess his kids are so thrilled… NOT. It’s about the charity he and his wife set up ‘The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ which funds health and education projects around the world.

EU Treaty mess: Sarkozy blames Peter Mandelson for Ireland’s NO vote and called the Irish ‘bloody fools’, even indicating that Ireland will be forced to hold a second referendum. Issues that contributed to the Irish No vote included their concerns over euthanasia, abortion, world trade talks and future country representation in EU Commission.
France takes over EU presidency next month and it’s not going to be an easy ride, considering that the Czech Republic may not be able to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, following on the Ireland’s steps. The treaty must be ratified by all 27 members states to take effect and it’s been approved by 19 so far.
This is the status of the Lisbon treaty:

Approved by parliament: Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, UK
Defeated by referendum: Irish Republic
Challenges: Legal objections in Czech Republic
No firm date: Belgium, Cyprus, Netherlands (held up by referendum proposal), Italy (new government), Spain (new government), Sweden
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7464879.stm

Israel and ‘Iran nuclear attack drill’- U.S officials told the New York Times that more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 warplanes staged a ‘Iran nuclear attack drill’ over Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, the first week of June. So far the drill has not been either acknowledged or debunked.

EU is to lift sanctions, including a freeze on high level diplomatic visits, against Cuba.
Last night, the EU’s 27 foreign ministers agreed to permanently remove them in a bid to encourage reforms.

Google and Yahoo’s senior managers and other executives, jumping ship to other companies.
It looks like both companies are suffering from unadmitted ‘brain drain’.
But where is everybody going? To Facebook, or to other new venues like Zillow, FriendFeed, Twitter and Xobni.
Why do they leave? Well, that is something I would like to know. I guess it’s not the money, unless all these guys are ridiculously greedy. I would rather say it’s the job itself or the working environment. Maybe some of them got bored doing the same old things and wanted new challenges to keep them young at heart and brain.

• Leave a comment... (0)

“My work is purely autobiographical,…It is about myself and my surroundings. I work from people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I know… When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won’t. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.”

- Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

Intrigued by the huge selling price of Freud’s painting I wanted to find out a little bit more about this artist and mostly, I wanted to see if all his work is as dysfunctional as the ‘Benefits Supervisor Sleeping’

Painting: IB and her husband

Painted in 1992 and sold for $11.4 million by Christie’s New York in November 2007, presents Freud’s daughter Isobel Boyt in her husband’s arms, sprawled on a grim bed, appearing to be asleep.
This is an interesting painting with a sense of emotional presence and intimacy.

‘Bruce Bernard’ is another painting sold by the Christie’s London in June 2007 for $15.5 million.

Bernard was the picture editor of the Sunday Times magazine from 1972 to 1980 and later became the visual arts editor of the Saturday Independent Magazine.
Friends with Freud since 1942 he declined to sit for his portrait for many years and only changed his mind upon hearing that Freud’s “working speed had appreciably increased.”

After Cézanne- Painted between 1999 and 2000 was sold for $7.4 million to the National Gallery of Australia.

After Cézanne is a variation on the theme of Paul Cézanne’s Afternoon in Naples.
Freud worked the painting on canvas first in charcoal, then in paint.

It looks like contemporary art may be pretty lucrative market after all.

• Leave a comment... (0)

A painting by Lucian Freud sold by a private European collector for $33.6 million became the world’s most expensive workart by a living artist.
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping beat the world auction record for a work by a living artist, held by the American artist Jeff Koons’s Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold), which fetched $23.5 million when it was sold by Sotheby’s last year.
Although it’s hard to compare the two of them, considering that Supervisor Sleeping is a painting and Hanging Heart it’s a sculpture of stainless steel, le’s take a look and compare them from an aesthetic point of view.

Lucian Freud: Benefits Supervisor Sleeping

Jeff Koons: Hanging Heart

Lucian Freud is the grandson of Sigmund Freud and it is being considered in the same league with Titian, Rubens and Velázquez (not by me!!)
Take a look and compare for yourself.

Rubens:Venus at the mirror

I tried to be objective while watching Freud’s painting, but the only thought in my mind was regarding the sanity of the painter and of the people paying $33.6 million for it.
Do you feel any pleasure looking at the picture? For me it’s just a boost to go to the gym.
Would I hang it on the living room wall?
Definitely not.

Art critics would say that we, the common mortals, don’t now anything about art. That may be true, but if art means something that turns my stomach, then I prefer to remain ignorant.

Here are expert opinions regarding Hanging Heart:
“Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art, said: “Hanging Heart is a stainless steel monument from a body of work so rare, so surreal and so beautiful that one almost ceases to believe it exists. Executing this work required extraordinary precision, finesse and lavish attention to achieve such perfection of the highest order. Koons is an artist who doesn’t allow compromise, and Hanging Heart is all about making an impossibility possible.”
Alex Rotter, Senior Vice President and Senior Specialist of Contemporary Art, continued: “This is a simply unforgettable work. Hanging Heart is both powerful and romantic – the quintessential reflection of sexuality. It is highly desirable and the perfect match for this icon-driven market.”

In our modern times we have art galleries targeting the shock effect, because that eventually will translate into headlines and money.
Charles Saatchi – owner or Saatchi Gallery- regularly stages exhibitions with artworks that include pedophilic images. I wonder how much Saatchi would enjoy artworks depicting his own kids?
But Saatchi knows very well the tricks of the trade, he knows that the contemporary art collecting scene is not dominated by students of the beautiful (read: ignorant mortals), but by investment bankers and Japanese businessmen who want to buy into a lucrative market.
And so, artists like Freud became the reflection of our times when money has taken over as the sole criterion of whether or not we value a work of art.
Some critics consider Lucian Freud as a genius, other are more lukewarm toward him.

This is another Freud’s painting with the same ‘muse’ as the previous one.

Lucian Freud: Evening in the Studio

Nope, I don’t like this one either. It’s grotesque.
I would not even dare to compare Freud with Rubens. Rubens fat women don’t turn my stomach because somehow, Rubens celebrates life.
What I understand from Freud’s paintings is his bitterness against women combined with his mocking of all the suckers paying million of dollars to buy the expression of his hate.

And now go back and take a look again at Hanging Heart, because it will make you happy, not feeling slimy.

• Leave a comment... (0)

We know that entertainment industry is fuming over illegal downloading and it has long expressed frustration for Canadian unwillingness to modernize copyright laws.

Here comes Neil MacBride, a vice-president with the Business Software Alliance, a Washington D.C.-based company (dubbed industry association) that fights software piracy. The company he represents, sent out about 60,000 ‘notice and notice’ e-mails to Canadian users in 2006.
The notices contain language intended to scare the illegal downloaders.

Following is an example of the verbiage used by NBC Universal:
“This unauthorized copying and distribution constitutes copyright infringement under applicable national laws and international treaties. We urge you to take immediate action to stop this infringing activity and inform us of the results of your actions”

Canadian users are tracked by IP address when content is downloaded from the internet.The ISPs are the only ones who know what individuals are doing what and the three major Canadian internet service providers including Rogers, Bell and Telus have voluntarily agreed to distribute the notices to their customers on behalf of the industry associations. Telus forwards an average of 4,000 notices every month ( I have recently heard about a friend of a friend who got one). But allegedly they do not pass any personal information about the users to any of the groups initiating the notice e-mails.

Although tens of thousands of e-mails have been distributed over the last few years, no one has been prosecuted for copyright violation as a result of the notices.

“Notice and notice” differs from the “notice and take-down” program that’s in place in the United States. There, when an industry group notices an alleged copyright violation, an e-mail similar to the ones being sent to Canadian users is forwarded to the American ISP. In most cases, the ISPs are forced to immediately take down the content or face penalties.

In the UK there is a draft proposal to deal with the same issue; according to the draft, ISPs, including BT and Virgin Media will be required to take action against users who access illegal material. It’s called the “three-strikes” regime and the broadband companies who fail to enforce it would be prosecuted and the customer’s details could be made available to the courts.

Isn’t it funny how the big fat cats of the entertainment industry are complaining how they’re losing billions due to illegal downloading, yet at the same time report that they are making record profits?

And isn’t it strange how they can find ways to police the internet when big companies whine that their profits are being affected, but claim they are unable to do anything about the kids pornography?
Oh, yeah right! I forgot a small detail: it’s not copyright infringement, it’s just a kid’s life and who cares about all the freaking pedophiles, when the poor big studios can’t charge us $20 for a miserable recorded album or $30 for a movie that in four months from now would be sold for $9 or less?

If the cable and satellite providers won’t charge a leg and an arm for what they broadcast, people won’t steal the signal.
If a CD or DVD would cost a reasonable amount of money (see the movies sold for $4 at WalMart) people will buy, not download from the net.
That is the reality.

• Leave a comment... (0)

On Sunday February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence and only God and maybe the master puppeteers know what’s going to happen next.
One thing seems to be clear: a dangerous precedent has been established.
And where? In the Balkans, known for being ‘an accident waiting to happen’. The First War started because one guy, Gavrilo Princip shot the archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to Austrian throne

Maybe my opinions would not be considered strong enough to matter, therefore I will add to this post the article written by Patrick Buchanan with regards to the above subject.

February 19, 2008

Does Balkanization Beckon Anew?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
When the Great War comes, said old Bismarck, it will come out of “some damn fool thing in the Balkans.”

On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip shot the archduke and heir to the Austrian throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, setting in motion the train of events that led to the First World War.

In the spring of 1999, the United States bombed Serbia for 78 days to force its army out of that nation’s cradle province of Kosovo. The Serbs were fighting Albanian separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). And we had no more right to bomb Belgrade than the Royal Navy would have had to bombard New York in our Civil War.

We bombed Serbia, we were told, to stop the genocide in Kosovo. But there was no genocide. This was propaganda. The United Nations’ final casualty count of Serbs and Albanians in Slobodan Milosevic’s war did not add up to 1 percent of the dead in Mr. Lincoln’s war.

Albanians did flee in the tens of thousands during the war. But since that war’s end, the Serbs of Kosovo have seen their churches and monasteries smashed and vandalized and have been ethnically cleansed in the scores of thousands from their ancestral province. In the exodus they have lost everything. The remaining Serb population of 120,000 is largely confined to enclaves guarded by NATO troops.

“At a Serb monastery in Pec,” writes the Washington Post, “Italian troops protect the holy site, which is surrounded by a massive new wall to shield elderly nuns from stone-throwing and other abuse by passing ethnic Albanians.”

On Sunday, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized by the European Union and President Bush. But this is not the end of the story. It is only the preface to a new history of the Balkans, a region that has known too much history.

By intervening in a civil war to aid the secession of an ancient province, to create a new nation that has never before existed and to erect it along ethnic, religious, and tribal lines, we have established a dangerous precedent. Muslim and Albanian extremists are already talking of a Greater Albania, consisting of Albania, Kosovo, and the Albanian-Muslim sectors of Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia.

If these Albanian minorities should demand the right to secede and join their kinsmen in Kosovo, on what grounds would we oppose them? The inviolability of borders? What if the Serb majority in the Mitrovica region of northern Kosovo, who reject Albanian rule, secede and call on their kinsmen in Serbia to protect them?
Would we go to war against Serbia, once again, to maintain the territorial integrity of Kosovo, after we played the lead role in destroying the territorial integrity of Serbia?

Inside the U.S.-sponsored Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the autonomous Serb Republic of Srpska is already talking secession and unification with Serbia. On what grounds would we deny them?

The U.S. war on Serbia was unconstitutional, unjust, and unwise. Congress never authorized it. Serbia, an ally in two world wars, had never attacked us. We made an enemy of the Serbs, and alienated Russia, to create a second Muslim state in the Balkans.

By intervening in a civil war where no vital interest was at risk, the United States, which is being denounced as loudly in Belgrade today as we are being cheered in Pristina, has acquired another dependency. And our new allies, the KLA, have been credibly charged with human trafficking, drug dealing, atrocities, and terrorism.

And the clamor for ethnic self-rule has only begun to be heard.

Romania has refused to recognize the new Republic of Kosovo, for the best of reasons. Bucharest rules a large Hungarian minority in Transylvania, acquired at the same Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina were detached from Vienna and united with Serbia.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two provinces that have broken away from Georgia, are invoking the Kosovo precedent to demand recognition as independent nations. As our NATO expansionists are anxious to bring Georgia into NATO, here is yet another occasion for a potential Washington-Moscow clash.

Spain, too, opposed the severing of Kosovo from Serbia, as Madrid faces similar demands from Basque and Catalan separatists.

The Muslim world will enthusiastically endorse the creation of a new Muslim state in Europe at the expense of Orthodox Christian Serbs. But Turkey is also likely to re-raise the issue as to why the EU and United States do not formally recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Like Kosovo, it, too, is an ethnically homogeneous community that declared independence 25 years ago.

Breakaway Transnistria is seeking independence from Moldova, the nation wedged between Romania and Ukraine, and President Putin of Russia has threatened to recognize it, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia in retaliation for the West’s recognition of Kosovo.

If Putin pauses, it will be because he recognizes that of all the nations of Europe, Russia is high among those most threatened by the serial Balkanization we may have just reignited in the Balkans.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=12386

Thank you Pat Buchanan! And shame on the rest of the world for doing what they have just did.

• Leave a comment... (1)

It’s been ten years since the accident that killed Princess Diana in Paris.
And ever since then, Mohamed Al-Fayed, The Harrods tycoon and the father of Dodi Al-Fayed, has been trying to prove somehow that the death was not an accident but a murder, the result of a vast conspiracy involving lots of personalities, among them the ex-Prime Minister of U.K, Tony Blair, the secret services of Britain and France, the CIA, Prince Charles and Prince Philip and even Diana’s sister.

He is due to spend at least two days giving evidence to the inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi.
He listed as involved in the cover-up: butler Paul Burrell, every member of the Royal Family (although he recanted eventually the participation of the Queen), two Scotland Yard Commissioners, leading medical experts in London and Paris including two eminent professors Dominique Lecomte and Gilbert Pepin, newspaper editors, judges and the list goes on.

The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, said: “There seems to be an awful lot of people involved in this conspiracy.”
Mr. Fayed said the leader of the death plot was Prince Philip, who he called a “racist, Nazi, and Frankenstein” who should be sent back to Germany where he came from.
Mr. Fayed repeated his claims that Diana was pregnant and was about to tell her two sons and announce her engagement to Dodi.

According to Mr. Fayed, Diana was scared for her life, claiming that she knew that Prince Philip and Prince Charles were trying to get rid of her.
Also, she allegedly mentioned a mystery box, said to contain important information and left in butler’s hands in case something would happen to the Princess.

Reading from a statement, Mr. Fayed said: “My belief that my son and Princess Diana were murdered was confirmed when I learned that the two leading Commissioners, Lord Condon and Lord Stevens, did not show the coroner the note made by a leading lawyer, Lord Mishcon, detailing the Princess’s fears for her life.” He added: “I cannot believe that they sat upon such an important note and did not pass it on to the (examining French magistrate) Judge Stephan in Paris and (the then coroner) Michael Burgess.

His allegations have been rebutted by hard evidence already heard by the inquest jury.

On the claim that Diana and Dodi were murdered because she wanted to marry him, a Muslim, the evidence showed that Diana had already had a serious two-year relationship with Muslim surgeon Hasnat Khanwith and that did not kill her or him.

On the claim that she was pregnant, just days after the crash even Fayed’s loyal PR Michael Cole officially dismissed pregnancy claims as untrue and the chambermaid on the Fayed yacht Jonikal bore witness to Diana’s contraceptive pills.

On the claim that bodyguard Trevor Rees Jones worked for MI6, even Fayed’s lawyer Michael Mansfield QC admits there is no evidence that Mr. Rees, who was injured in the crash, has ever been connected to the intelligence services.

Now, the ex-butler Paul Burrell is in hiding, following allegations that he had lied in court.
Apparently there is a tape with the former royal butler allegedly confessing that he lied under oath.
Burrell is recording saying that he held back the facts and threw in “a couple of red herrings” as he did not want to “give away secrets”.

Mr. Fayed now has to fight all the people saying that: the Princess was not pregnant, that she was not engaged to Dodi, that she was not in love with Dodi, that she still loved surgeon Hasnat Khan.
He is desperate to prove that there was a motive to murder Princess Diana. Because without a motive, there is no murder.

Mr. Fayed will spend another few days in the witness stand trying to bring proof to his allegations. After that the jury will be send out for deliberations, which may take another five weeks.

• Leave a comment... (0)