Category Archives: Balkans

Immigration X-Box in the Balkans

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The Balkan Route for refugees has reopened.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who recommended the following article for translation, sends this prefatory note:

Thanks to Saint Greta and her apostles — the resurgent Greens party — this is a non-story in the Austrian media. Everyone is focused on climate change and its associated disasters, or lack thereof.

Does the youngest ex-chancellor care? Not much. He just wants to be re-elected in September, whether on a climate platform or anything else.

Many thanks to JLH for translating this piece from the Austrian media project Addendum.org:

The Balkans Are Becoming Porous Again

by Georg Gassauer and Benedikt Morak

New figures show that there was a 76% increase in new arrivals in the pivotal land of Bosnia in 2019. More and more people are beginning what is known to immigrants, politicians and authorities as the “game” — the gamble of (illegal) travel along this passage to the EU. We investigated on the spot.

Something is happening again in the Balkans. That is shown by the numbers from inside the Immigration Taskforce of the Austrian Interior Ministry.

By the end of May/beginning of June of 2019, there were an estimated 80,000 persons somewhere along the chaotic Balkan route, between the Bosporus and Spielfeld. At several stations along the way, authorities register clear increases in comparison to the previous year at the same time: up 155% between Greece and North Macedonia; up 76% in the pivotal country of Bosnia; up 31% in Croatia.

More Attacks on the Balkan Route

After Italy was able to reduce passage over the Mediterranean to zero, the passage through the Balkans, called by immigrants, politicians, authorities and the residents of the region the Game, became attractive again. The route ex-chancellor Kurz had once declared closed became porous again. Needed for the game — the word is a play on computer games where it is necessary to pass different levels in order to reach a goal or break a record — are time, luck and a smartphone. Between the Aegean and the Alps, participating immigrants pass through level after level. The goal is Austria, Germany or Sweden. Many make it through; some are stranded along the way; several are killed. Our reporters Georg Gassauer and Benedikt Morak investigated at the most important stations. Encountering participants, major players and minor players, they traveled especially in Bosnia, the pivotal point on the route.

Level 1: Greece

Among those who play the game is Amir (name changed) from Afghanistan. He traveled on a forged Austrian pass from Turkey to Greece, intended to fly from there to Germany, but at the airport had to return to Start. German customs, which checked air passengers from Greece, were alerted. So Amir stayed there: the alternative was the land route.

Why the strictness? March 20, 2016 marked a kind of new beginning of European immigration policy. Because of the pressure from the Austrian government at the time, the borders of four countries on the western Balkan route (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia) were closed simultaneously. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s diplomacy was being implemented, and the era of close cooperation between EU countries and Turkey began. The official position was that a refugee and immigration crisis like 2015 shouldn’t happen again. And in fact, the number of arrivals from that time was not equaled.

Nevertheless, despite all measures taken, 116,537 arrivals from Turkey to Greece were counted between April 1, 2016 and May 31, 2019. Amir from Afghanistan was one of them. And now, in the summer of 2019, the pressure on the border “is getting stronger and stronger.” So says Gerald Tatzgern, of the section for organized immigration crime in the federal police. He warns that migrants stopped for now on the Balkan route “are slowly losing their patience and want to continue.”

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Péter Szijjártó: ISIS Terrorists Have Infiltrated the Flow of Migrants Into Southeastern Europe

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The “Budapest Process” was inaugurated more than a quarter-century ago to manage, promote, and facilitate migration from Third World countries — most of them Muslim — into the European Union. The choice of name for the project is unfortunate from the standpoint of the current government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which is adamantly opposed to the very migration that the Budapest Process is attempting to push on Hungary and Europe.

In the following interview, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó outlines the most recent session of the Budapest Process in Istanbul, and describes the resistance of the Visegrad Four + 2 (Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, and Italy) to any further mass immigration into Europe.

Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

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Stop the Migrant Train!

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For months there has been a concerted attempt to revive the Balkan Route for migration into Europe. The efforts of the people-smugglers and the migrants themselves have concentrated on crashing the border between Bosnia and Croatia.

The following video concerns an ad-hoc attempt by two Germans to stop the migrant train traffic for a single day. The translator includes these notes about the video:

In Bosnia, migrants are driven every day by a special train to the Croatian border, which is also the EU border. Matthias Helferich and Roger Beckamp don’t hesitate when they hear of a possibility to stop this train.

Roger Beckamp is an AfD State Parliament Member in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

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Don’t Leave Home Without It!

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During the height of the Great Migration Crisis in 2015, “refugees” in the Austrian town of Nickelsdorf, which lies just over the border from Hungary, paid for food, clothes, and cell phones with €500 notes that they just happened to be carrying with them.

Later it was reported that these itinerant culture-enrichers had been handed bundles of such notes by agents for shadowy NGOs, as part of their welcome baskets when they first arrived on the European mainland. I always assumed that the NGOs involved answered ultimately to George Soros. Who else could it be?

And now it’s official, but the current method is far more sophisticated: a partnership involving George Soros and Mastercard is handing out prepaid credit cards to migrants, which allow them to live in the style to which they hope to become accustomed as newly-minted citizens of Modern Multicultural Europe.

Many thanks to FouseSquawk for translating this article from Occhi Della Guerra:

Soros Pays: UN and EU give blessing

Prepaid cards for migrants: Soros and European Union pay
November 5, 2018

It’s called Humanity Ventures , and it is the partnership signed in January 2017 in Davos between the financier George Soros and Mastercard, based on the mogul’s promise to allocate $500 million to migrants in Europe. As stated on the Mastercard website, the project aims to “catalyze and accelerate the economic and social development of vulnerable communities around the world, in particular refugees and migrants.”

From words to facts, because Humanity Ventures is now a reality. According to the Slovenian website Nova24 , which cites internal sources in the Croatian police, the migrants crossing the Balkans would be issued with prepaid cards: “The illegal migrants that we send home, in a few days, reappear to try and return to Croatia. Some are very poor, but most of them are well-equipped, with new shoes and clothes, the most sophisticated and latest-generation smartphones, even weapons. And they all come with a Mastercard without a name but with the word UNHCR and a number stamped. What we do not (know) is from which account is withdrawn money from ATMs.”

Soros and Mastercard

If at the moment the role of the European Union and especially of the United Nations is not clear at all, there is less doubt about the involvement of Mastercard which announced on its official website the launch of the project in collaboration with the founder of the Open Society Foundations: “billions of dollars in humanitarian and development assistance every year,” says the official note. “Millions of people remain marginalized.” Mastercard and George Soros believe that the capabilities of the private sector, together with long-term strategic investments, can stimulate development and transform life for the less well-off. “Humanity Ventures is destined to be profitable so as to stimulate the involvement of other entrepreneurs,” said Soros.

In another official note dated June 2016, the colossus confirms its commitment on this front: “By exploiting our technologies and products such as MasterCard Aid Network and Prepaid, Mastercard collaborates with partners to provide essential services in the most critical moments in the life of the refugees. To date, Mastercard Aid and Prepaid cards have been used in humanitarian missions in Africa, Asia and Europe — in countries such as Turkey, Kenya, Yemen, Nepal, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Niger, the Philippines and Greece — and are available to support thousands of beneficiaries.”

Prepaid cards given to migrants

In an interview with Forbes last year, Tara Nathan, executive vice president of Mastercard, explained how the company has collaborated with organizations around the world in supporting migrants: “By creating an offline payment platform and offering prepaid cards, digital financial identification and point-of-sale systems for local merchants, we essentially created a digital version of the paper voucher,’” commented Nathan.

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Decapitating Granny

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A “Swiss” youngster in Frauenfeld became so peeved with his grandmother that he removed her head and carried it away with him.

I couldn’t find any news articles in English about the crime. There’s one story in German, from Blick. But there seem to be hundreds of news reports on it in Albanian. The first name of the alleged perp is Fatmir, which appears to be a fairly common name in Albania.

The following video, also from Blick, contains all the information we have on the incident. Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

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Another Stampede Through the Balkans

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The following article about the new migration wave passing through the Balkans did not appear online, but only in the print edition of Kronen Zeitung (Krone Bunt supplement) on September 30, 2018.

Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation:

Refugee Wave

The recent arrivals have in part increased more than a tenfold. This time the largest group of migrants comes from Pakistan. ORF Balkans expert Christian Wehrschütz was on site for a local investigation.

Another Stampede Through the Balkans

Both the small town of Velika Kladuša and the town of Bihać [both in Bosnia-Herzegovina] are still hot spots on the Balkan route, as these municipalities lie near the border with Croatia, and about 100 km [63 miles] from Slovenia. On the outskirts of Velika Kladuša there are emergency tents set up on bare earth, and “inhabited” by about 250 people. Meals are provided by the Red Cross, which is funded by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM has sufficient means to set up a winterproof reception center, but lacks a location and governmental authorisation. However, the IOM has rented a hotel to better accommodate families arriving there. The journey continues with the help of smugglers and mobile phone navigation systems, moving on towards Italy and other EU countries.

In general, the burden placed on the states of former Yugoslavia by the new Balkan route from Greece via Albania and Montenegro to Bosnia and Herzegovina remains considerable. For example, Bosnia alone registered around 12,000 migrants in the first seven months of this year, ten times more than the year before.

Visa liberalisation acts as a magnet for illegal migration

The largest group by far comes from Pakistan. According to the border police in Ljubljana, 6,000 illegal border crossing were thwarted by mid-September. This is a significant increase over the same period from the previous year, of only 1,200 illegal border crossings. Slovenia has documented around 1,000 illegal border crossings per month since May of migrants coming from Croatia. All this despite 6,000 border control officers’ being deployed to protect the 1,200 kilometres of external borders of the European Union. One third of the illegal border-crossing migrants in Slovenia are Pakistani. The 400 Iranians who were also caught crossing the border illegally are most likely a consequence of the visa liberalisation agreement that Serbia made with Iran last year.

In general, visa liberalisation is a magnet for illegal migration — not only in Serbia, but also in Bosnia and Herzegovina (via Turkey) and in other countries. The border control officers of the EU border protection agency Frontex are already present at the airport in Belgrade. Frontex is also stationed at the airport in Tirana, in order to make illegal migration from Albania into the EU more difficult. Frontex and Albania will sign a status agreement in early October. As a result, Frontex will be given executive powers in this Balkan state and will no longer be merely observing and advising. Such agreements were also signed with Macedonia and Serbia. Currently Frontex has 124 officers in the Western Balkans deployed at so-called coordination points.

The Balkans is also a focal point of Austrian police cooperation with sixty officials who are working with thermal imaging cameras at various borders. A support team was also present at the Albanian-Greek border during the summer. There, a special vehicle was used that can read mobile phone data to determine the nationality of migrants, routes, and as cash flows to human traffickers. To receive payment for their services, human trafficking organisations use virtual currencies as well as the so-called hawala system. Money is deposited by someone and a code agreed upon. If a trafficked person reaches a certain part of the route, or if a trafficker fulfils part of his task (forging documents, providing transport), the code is transmitted and the money is transferred. Such codes are also sent via mobile phones, which can be detected. Human traffickers also use apps that indicate shipping traffic on the North African coast. The rescue ships of aid organisations have become “part of the business model of smugglers” in a sense, because the “dilapidated dinghies” are deployed when such a ship is nearby.

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Is Partition a Viable Option?

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UPDATE: I thank you all for an interesting range of comments; there’s plenty of good discussion to read. However, I think most of you may have missed my primary question, which is NOT about what is likely to happen, but whether partition is a viable option in Western Europe.

I don’t have any idea what is likely to happen. I just don’t think partition à la India or Gaza is a viable option. It’s not just that I don’t think it will happen, but that it can’t possibly work in the event that some misguided government (or supra-national power) attempts to implement it.

On last night’s post about the BBC, RonaldB left a comment concerning the possible eventual partition of Britain into separate Muslim and non-Muslim states. That got me thinking about the issue of partition, which has been discussed here in the past from time to time.

The most Islamized country in Western Europe is France, so the first of any partitions is likely to occur there. Marseille in particular comes to mind. But Britain, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany are close behind.

This was my comment in response:

One thing to bear in mind about partition: the new “stans” will consist primarily of urban residential areas, with no significant manufacturing plant or other productive assets. There will be no agricultural land, and the commercial base will be negligible. Unless the other side of the partition agrees to continue the delivery of jizya, the new emirates will be unable to support themselves. The kuffar would basically have to do what Israel does with Gaza: supply electricity and other necessities for free, or for a nominal charge.

I suppose a partition agreement could include the mandatory eviction of landowners from portions of prime arable land, which would then belong to the new entity. But even then, the new owners would hardly be likely to use it effectively — Muslims have a history of destroying agricultural land through bad husbandry; it seems to flow naturally from Islamic practices.

I don’t see any way in which partition could work for them. I think they will require full submission, with dhimmitude and/or enslavement for the former owners in perpetuity.

I can’t think of an outcome for all this that isn’t very, very ugly.

In recent times, we really only have three models for partition to draw on:

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From Szczecin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a Razor-Wire Curtain Has Descended…

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Immigration-related events are moving rapidly this in Europe summer. The situation is in such flux that now would be a good time to step back and try to get an overview of the process.

Three years ago the dead baby hysteria, followed by Chancellor Merkel’s invitation to the world (“Y’all come in and set a spell, bitte!”), launched the Great European Migration Crisis. Since then I’ve read hundreds of news articles and analyses about the flow of “refugees” and the reactions to their violent and fragrant arrival in Western Europe.

After digesting all that information I created the following map, which presents my subjective evaluation of the different approaches to migration by various European countries. I’ve rated the policies of 28 different countries (the EU 27 minus Croatia, plus Switzerland) on a scale from 0 to 100, from zero (red) for the open-borders attitude of the “Welcoming Culture” to 100 (blue) for the absolute refusal of mass migration by the Visegrád Four (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic). Data from the last six months weighs more heavily in the score assigned to each country — for example, Spain and Italy recently changed governments, which has strongly affected each country’s migration policy.


Immigration policies in Europe, Summer 2018 (Click to enlarge)

The grouping of countries based on their stance on migration bears a striking resemblance to the division of Europe into East and West by the Iron Curtain. This is especially true if we roll the clock back three months — back then Italy and Bavaria would have been quite red. And the analogy becomes even more apt if we remember that Austria was occupied by Soviet troops until 1955, which gives it one foot in the Eastern camp.

The biggest change in the past three months has been the formation of a new anti-immigration government in Italy. The “xenophobia” of the East Bloc has now broken through the razor-wire curtain and gained a foothold in Western Europe. No wonder EU politics is in such turmoil! After failing to contain the “anti-European” attitudes of Poland and Hungary, Brussels now has to contend with Matteo Salvini. Italy is one of the “big four” pillars of the European Union, so its defection to the anti-migration side carries enormous significance for continental politics.

The situation is metamorphosing rapidly, but before we analyze the process of change — the “delta”, as they say in the military-industrial complex — let’s go over the snapshot of current European migration policies.

The Visegrád Four

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the first major European political leader to (1) understand the larger significance of the refugee crisis of 2015, and (2) act rapidly to counteract the nexus of globalist actions that threatened the stability of the Hungarian state. In doing so he made himself an obstacle to the no-borders coalition, especially the “American philanthropist” George Soros. The reaction to Mr. Orbán’s building of the fence helped clarify the East-West divide, and strengthened the solidarity of the Visegrád Four. Each country now supports the others’ positions, and each vows to veto any action by the EU (the European Commission requires consensus to implement a sanctions regime) that would harm the other members. Taken individually, each V4 country is no match for Germany or France, but when they act in concert the four countries become a formidable thorn in the flesh of the Brussels oligarchy.

The movement of Italy and Austria (and even Bavaria) towards the Visegrád Four position allows Hungary to — as Barack Obama has so frequently said — punch above its weight.

Austria

The most recent Austrian election resulted in a coalition government headed by Sebastian “Boy” Kurz (ÖVP) as chancellor and Heinz-Christian Strache (FPÖ) as vice chancellor. Mr. Kurz may well be a cynical opportunist who has simply trimmed his sails to the wind, all the while remaining loyal to his mentors in the Davos crowd. However, to maintain his position he has to give at least the appearance of acting decisively to deal with the migration issue — hence the recent law targeting “radicalization” in Austrian mosques (see Christian Zeitz’ analysis). Part of that appearance will of necessity include the reduction of violence and disorder brought to Austria by Muslim immigrants. Any failure to achieve discernible results will endanger his chancellorship. For that reason one may expect him to stay the course, at least for the time being.

Mr. Kurz’ alignment with Italy, Hungary, and Bavaria bodes ill for Chancellor Angela Merkel and the mandarins in Brussels. A counterweight to their power is forming on their southeastern flank, and the resulting political crisis looks to be the most turbulent since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of Germany.

Italy

The new coalition government in Italy is shaking the very foundations of Barad-dûr in Brussels. The Five-Star Movement is more or less a traditional populist party, but the Lega Nord is full-on anti-immigration. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has hit his stride early, turning back the refugee ferries and threatening to impound any NGO “rescue” vessels that make port in Italy. Unlike Chancellor Kurz, Mr. Salvini has never changed his tune — almost ten years ago, when I first started paying attention to him, he was the same anti-migrant firebrand that he is today. He shows no sign of being cowed by threats from Brussels; it’s no wonder that emergency summits are being hastily convened in reaction to him.

Since the new government was formed, the Lega has shot ahead of the Five-Star Movement to become the most popular party in Italy. If another election were to be held, Matteo Salvini would most likely end up as prime minister.

Eastern Europe

When I use the term “Eastern Europe”, I refer to the Baltic republics, Romania, and Bulgaria. (The Visegrád Four plus Austria comprise Central Europe. Strictly speaking, Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus could also be considered Eastern Europe, but their political affairs are more closely associated with Russia, whether for or against, so I’m leaving them out of this analysis.)

Eastern Europe has the good fortune not to be attractive as a final destination for migrants — their welfare benefits are much less generous than those further west, and they are less reticent about dealing harshly with the criminal proclivities of foreigners. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have the added advantage of being largely off the route for most of the migration flowing into Western Europe.

Bulgaria and Romania have their share of migrant camps, full of angry, resentful Third-World “refugees” who are impatient to get out of those Black Sea backwaters and into the promised land of Germany or Sweden. The crime and disease the migrants bring with them spills out of the camps and into the adjacent towns. News outlets in those countries are blessedly un-PC, so the word gets out, and members of the general public who may once have been indifferent are now becoming anti-immigrant.

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A New Wave of “Refugees” is Heading for Austria

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The Austrian government is worried.

The following map and article were published yesterday in Österreich:

Many thanks to Egri Nök for helping me translate the captions on the map:

This is the new route

Old path through Serbia

18,222 border-crossers into Greece — 145% increase compared with the same period in 2017

New trek through Albania — New path for traffickers: From Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia all the way to Austria

Egri also translated the accompanying article:

This is the New Refugee Route

Traffickers found a new route, after the closing of the Balkan Route

Government raises the alarm: Refugee numbers are on the rise, the refugees found a new route to Austria

Stream of refugees

Through May 20 a total of 18,222 people made it across the Aegean to Greece — those are, according to the government, which published new figures on the refugee streams yesterday, 144.8 percent more than in the previous year. Many of them risk their lives by trying to get across the “river of death” Evros between Turkey and Greece. 3,986 people were apprehended there in April — in the month before there were 1,658.

New Route

It is obvious to the experts: The traffickers, after the closing of the Western Balkan route, moved from Macedonia to Albania. This new “Albanian Route” leads from Greece across Albania and either Montenegro or Serbia to Bosnia-Herzegovina. These two countries, however, are just classical “transit countries” — afterwards, the route continues across Croatia and Slovenia to Austria.

Concern

Last year the strongest stream of was refugees unleashed — still via the old route — only in the second half of the year. The government is accordingly worried about the dramatic increase: in Bosnia-Herzegovina, since the beginning of the year, approximately 4,000 illegals have arrived. In the past three weeks alone, there were roughly 1,200 refugees. In comparison: during the entire year of 2017 there were only 755 refugees who were registered in asylum centers in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Slovenia, the final way station before Austria, has recorded an increase in refugees of 380 percent, to 1,500.

Apprehensions

In Austria, the apprehensions of illegal migrants were on the rise: In the week before May 17 there were 352 people, 75 more than the week before.

Kurz and Kickl want to close “Albania Route”

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz gathered his cabinet together on Sunday in summer temperatures in the idyllic Mauerbach (Lower Austria) — but the topic aren’t as idyllic: today, the new welfare measures are introduced [to the press]. But mainly the government is warning of a second wave of refugees, which Kurz, Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, and Interior Minister Herbert Kickl think they are seeing in the Balkans: According to Kneissl, currently, there are about 30,000 to 40,000 refugees waiting in the Balkans. This new route should be closed preventively:

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Bosnian Croat General Commits Suicide After Final ICTY Verdict

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A Bosnian Croat named Slobodan Praljak, a general during the Balkan civil wars of the 1990s, committed suicide today in The Hague. Gen. Praljak’s suicide was very public: he drank poison during a hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, just after a judge rejected his final appeal.

Gen. Praljak was 72 years old and was facing twenty years in prison. Many convicted defendants do all they can to save themselves so they can live out the rest of their lives in prison, but the general was evidently not cut from that sort of cloth. After drinking the poison, before he was carried out of the courtroom by EMTs, he said, “I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction.”

A note to readers, before you jump all over me about this: I’m not saying that Gen. Praljak was an innocent lamb who did not deserve the sentence handed down. Nor am I saying he was a depraved psychopath who deserved what he got, and more. I’m not qualified to evaluate such matters, so that’s not what I’m doing.

My interest is in the political nature of the ICTY, which I consider a kangaroo court. But before we get into that, here’s the report from Australian ABC:

Bosnian Croat War General Dies After Drinking Poison During Trial in the Hague

The wartime commander of Bosnian Croat forces, Slobodan Praljak, has died after he drank poison seconds after UN judges turned down his appeal against a 20-year sentence for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, Croatian state television reports.

Sources close to Mr Praljak told Croatia’s state TV he died in a hospital in The Hague.

Dutch police will not comment on the TV report based on “sources close to General Praljak”.

Spokesman for the tribunal Nenad Golcevski, when asked if he could confirm the death, said: “I have no information to share at this point”.

Mr Praljak, 72, tilted back his head and took a swing from a bottle shortly after appeals judges confirmed his sentence for involvement in a campaign to drive Muslims out of a would-be Bosnian Croat ministate in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

“I just drank poison,” he said.

“I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction.”

Presiding Judge Carmel Agius had overturned some of Mr Praljak’s convictions but left his sentence unchanged.

Judge Agius quickly halted the hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Dutch police, an ambulance and a fire truck quickly arrived outside the court’s headquarters and emergency service workers, some of them wearing helmets and with oxygen tanks on their backs, went into the court.

The ICTY is about to close its doors after 24 years of dispensing international “justice” at The Hague. During that time it has handed down 161 indictments. Gen. Praljak provided a fitting finale for the court that will most likely color future historical accounts of its proceedings.

Based on the Wikipedia entry for the ICTY (see the bottom of this post for the full table), 17 of the 161 defendants indicted were Muslims, and six of those were convicted. That means that 10.6% of those indicted were Muslims, and of those convicted, 6.7% were Muslims.

The civil wars in the former Yugoslavia were by and large a three-way affair: Serbs vs. Croats vs. Muslims (Bosniaks and Kosovars). Therefore one might expect the indictments to break down into roughly a third for each group.

But they don’t. So what’s the reason for that? Why are Muslims under-represented in the court’s cases? Are Serbs and Croats simply that much more bestial and depraved than the Bosniaks and the Kosovars?

Or was the ICTY simply carrying out a political agenda?

My money’s on the latter. Saudi money was (and is) very prominent in the Balkans on behalf of Bosnians and ethnic Albanians. That money has a long reach in other places, too. Carefully targeted amounts earmarked for various groups and individuals working the international “justice” scam could do wonders to direct the indictments.

Based on the historical evidence from the Balkans, there is no reason to suspect that Bosniaks and Kosovars are any less bestial than their Serb and Croat neighbors. If reports are to be believed, the Kosovars are the most bestial of all. So the light presence of Muslims in the dock and in the prisons is significant.

Also: You’ll notice that some of those convicted Muslims got out early, after three years or so, for the same types of crimes that sent Serbs and Croats to prison for twenty years. I don’t have time to evaluate the early-release patterns for the non-Muslims, but the complete data are available below for those who wish to crunch the numbers.

Here’s the full table of indictments and convictions. See the wiki page for footnotes and links to more information. Muslim defendants and the disposition of their cases are bolded in red:

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What Makes Central Europe Different?

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Eric Zemmour is a popular French commentator who appears often on radio and television. In the following clip Mr. Zemmour discusses the recent “turn to the right” in Central Europe, which has seen electoral success for EU-skeptic anti-immigration parties in Hungary, Poland, Austria, and now Czechia.

His analysis of the reasons for the rightward swing are spot on, although he elides some of the historical complexities of the region. Not all the states he mentions were part of the Habsburg Empire — from the early 18th century until the early 20th, Poland was divided among the Great Powers, mostly between Prussia and Russia.

The separate provinces or vassal states that eventually became Romania were at different times ruled by the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Hungarians, and the Russians, but mostly by the Ottomans, with varying degrees of autonomy.

Parts of Hungary were occupied for centuries by the Ottomans, while the rest recognized a Habsburg king. When Hungarian territory was wrested from the Ottomans after the Siege of Vienna in the late 17th century, Hungary became part of the Austrian Empire. After the Revolutions of 1848, it became (at least theoretically) an equal partner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the Great War it became an independent state whose borders were greatly reduced.

Czechia (Bohemia and Moravia) and Slovakia were historically kingdoms or principalities that were more often vassal states than sovereign ones. They formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its dissolution in 1918.

Complicated, isn’t it? And this is the simplified version.

By and large, however, Eric Zemmour is exactly right about what is happening in Central Europe. Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

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Towards a Greater Albania

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The following article from Les Observateurs focuses on a potentially dangerous movement in the Balkans that has as its principal aim the creation of a Greater Albania. Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation:

The Greater Albania project: a danger of an Islamic hotbed in the heart of Europe?

September 2, 2017

I am a blogger of Greek descent and I would like to submit my article on the Albanian question. Thank you for your attention.

Balkans: the “Albanian question”, the puzzle for Washington

The NATO intervention led by Washington in Yugoslavia in the 1990s plunged the region into chaos. Their bombing campaign killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed apartment buildings, farms, schools, hospitals, churches and bridges. The Kosovo war opened a Pandora’s box and created the threat of a Greater Albania.

The idea of a Greater Albania developed in the nineteenth century, while the Ottoman Empire was still present in the Balkans. Greater Albania is a nationalist project aiming at bringing together within Albania all Albanians living in neighboring states of Albania. These include Kosovo and Metohija [Serbian designation for Kosovo], the Preševo region [Serbia], territories in Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece.

The most dangerous thing is that this virus of ethnic nationalism is difficult to control. Indeed, since the proclamation of the independence of Kosovo, the Albanian nationalists have a free hand. And they feel at ease to use the issue of a great Albania as a political tool.

Thus, in his interview with the Politico portal, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama did not exclude the possibility of unification of Albania and Kosovo “if the prospect of the accession of the Balkan countries to the EU continues to recede.” Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi also said that national unity remains an alternative if the EU does not want Albanians. The remarks that the European Commissioner Johannes Hahn has deemed unacceptable and even counterproductive are not new. But they are gaining ground.

The Kosovo syndrome has spread in the region among populations of Albanian descent. It is enough to mention the very violent inter-ethnic crisis that killed 100 to 200 people in Macedonia in 2001. That year the country experienced several clashes. There were parades almost daily in Skopje, the capital, and in the main cities of the country. The protesters accused the Albanians of wanting to federate Macedonia, to divide it. There may also be riots in Greece or Montenegro. Indeed, many similar incidents have already occurred in these territories. As a result, Montenegrin deputy Predrag Bulatović stressed that “we are witnessing the organized and coordinated regional actions of Greater Albanian nationalism in order to promote the idea of Greater Albania”.

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The Islamic Trade in European Slaves

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The following essay by Emmet Scott was published previously at The New English Review in a slightly different form. It provides apposite material to accompany Matt Bracken’s new novel, The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun.

The Islamic Trade in European Slaves

by Emmet Scott

It is common knowledge that for over a thousand years, Arab and Muslim slavers took enormous numbers of men, women and children from sub-Saharan Africa. What is not so well known is that they took equally large numbers of people from Europe. As with Africa, Arab slave-taking in Europe began in the seventh century — shortly after the rise of Islam — and continued virtually without interruption into the modern epoch.

Modern Western culture, with its Anglo-centric worldview, has an almost obsessive preoccupation with the European trade in African slaves, a trade that commenced in the late fifteenth century and ended in the mid-nineteenth, but seems to have little knowledge of or interest in the equally intense Muslim trade in European slaves during the same epoch. This is a strange state of affairs, given the fact that, in general, the Europeans enslaved by the Muslims between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries were treated appallingly, and the trade had a long-term and devastating impact upon large areas of the continent.

As noted, Muslim slave-taking from Europe commenced almost immediately after the arrival of Islam on the world stage. These early slave raids had an immense impact upon European civilization and, as I have argued in some detail in Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited, turned the entire Mediterranean into a war zone, broke the unity of the eastern and western branches of Roman civilization and Christendom in general, and essentially gave birth to the medieval world. With the Christian counter-attack, which commenced in the eleventh century with the Reconquista in Spain and the Crusades, Muslim slave-raiding abated somewhat, though it never actually ended. But following the emergence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, Islam was once again on the offensive; and with this renewed aggression came a vast expansion of the slave trade.

It is impossible to be precise or anything approaching it when talking about the number of slaves taken from Europe in the five centuries following the rise of Ottoman power. However, what is clear is that three main theatres of slave-raiding emerged. The first and by far the most important of these was in south-east and central Europe, where Ottoman armies engaged in annual assaults upon Christian territories. As the Turkish armies moved ever northwards and westwards they captured and enslaved great numbers of Europeans, the vast majority of whom were sold in Constantinople and Anatolia. Raiding Christian territories was incessant and we hear that, “The primary aim of the [Ottoman] raiders was the acquisition of booty. The most important booty was humans who could be sold at the slave markets for a high price. After a successful attack thousands of prisoners of war were driven to the Ottoman markets. … No one was safe in the endangered areas — nobles and serfs could equally become slaves.” (Eniko Csukovits, “Miraculous escapes from Ottoman captivity” in Geza David and Pal Foder (eds.) Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth-Early Eighteenth Centuries) (Leiden etc. Brill Academic, 2007) p. 5) As in other parts of the world, the Muslim slavers preferred young women and boys and these offered the highest price in the Turkish heartlands. Most of the boys were castrated and served as eunuchs, whilst the girls and women were destined for the harems of the Ottoman nobility.

It must not be imagined, as some might, that once a Christian territory was conquered and under tribute to the Ottomans that it was then immune from the attentions of the slavers. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Under sharia law the position of Christians was never secure, and Christian girls were regularly kidnapped by Muslim raiders and sold into the harems of Constantinople and Anatolia. In addition to this, Ottoman policy was to recruit Christian boys into the army, and these youths formed the elite core of Janissaries. But they were “recruited” by force, essentially kidnapped from their families and never again seen by them. So, although the Janissaries cannot, strictly speaking, be described as slaves, they were the victims of kidnap and forcible conversion to an alien faith. We should note, too, that rebellion against Ottoman rule, a common enough occurrence in Europe, was invariably met with savage reprisal, involving massacre, torture and enslavement; so that the total number of Europeans enslaved by the Ottomans grew, over the centuries, to enormous proportions. How many, it is impossible to say, mainly because no reliable records are available. However, it is beyond question that the number ran into many millions, with estimates ranging anywhere from ten to forty million.

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