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• Dall'articolo "Victory at University of Delaware" (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 2 novembre 2007):

After an intense campaign led by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the University of Delaware has dropped an ideological reeducation program that was referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The program’s stated goal was for the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. Following FIRE’s campaign, which called the attention of the national media and the blogosphere to the Orwellian program, university President Patrick Harker terminated the program, effective immediately.

• Dall'articolo "University of Delaware Requires Students to Undergo Ideological Reeducation" (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 30 ottobre 2007):

• Dall'articolo "University to students: 'All whites are racist'" (Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily, 30 ottobre 2007):

A mandatory University of Delaware program requires residence hall
      students to acknowledge that "all whites are racist" and offers them
      "treatment" for any incorrect attitudes regarding class, gender, religion,
      culture or sexuality they might hold upon entering the school, according
      to a civil rights group.
      "Somehow, the University of Delaware seems terrifyingly unaware that a
      state-sponsored institution of higher education in the United States does
      not have the legal right to engage in a program of systematic thought
      reform. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of conscience –
      the right to keep our innermost thoughts free from governmental intrusion.
      It also protects the right to be free from compelled speech," said a
      letter from Samantha Harris, director of legal and public advocacy for The
      Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to university President
      Patrick Harker.
      The organization cited excerpts from the university's Office of Residence
      Life Diversity Education Training documents, including the statement:
      "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the
      basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to
      all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United
      States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By
      this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples
      within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their
      prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination….'"
      The education program also notes that "reverse racism" is "a term created
      and used by white people to deny their white privilege." And "a
      non-racist" is called "a non-term," because, the program explains, "The
      term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to
      maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to
      shift the responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of
      color (called 'blaming the victim')."

The "education" regarding racism is just one of the subjects that students
      are required to adopt as part of their University of Delaware experience,
      too, FIRE noted.
      The "shocking program of ideological reeducation," which the school itself
      defines as a "treatment" for students' incorrect attitudes and beliefs, is
      nothing less than "Orwellian," FIRE said.
      The school requires its approximately 7,000 residence hall students "to
      adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from
      politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy and
      environmentalism."
      "FIRE is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a
      flagrant violation of students' rights to freedom of conscience and
      freedom from compelled speech," the organization said.
      On a foundation blog, a student noted that one residence assistant told
      students, "Not to scare anyone or anything, but these are MANDATORY!!" And
      the training program for those who indoctrinate students includes the
      order: "A researcher must document that the treatment/intervention was
      faithfully applied (ex: specific lesson plans were delivered to every
      student, etc.)."
      Further, the school requires "a systemic change" as a result of the
      program, FIRE noted. As one RA told students: "Like it or not, you all are
      the future Leaders, and the world is Diverse, so learning to Embrace and
      Appreciate that diversity is ESSENTIAL."
      "The University of Delaware's residence life education program is a grave
      intrusion into students' private beliefs," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff
      said. "The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its
      students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its
      students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university
      like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional."
      According to university materials, RAs are instructed to ask students
      during one-on-one sessions questions such as: "When did you discover your
      sexual identity?" "When were you first made aware of your race?" and "Who
      taught you a lesson in regard to some sort of diversity awarness? What was
      the lesson?"
      "Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet
      with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one
      sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student
      identified in a write-up as an RA's 'worst' one-on-one session was a young
      woman who stated that she was tired of having 'diversity shoved down her
      throat,'" FIRE said.
      This particular student responded to the question, "When did you discover
      your sexual identity?" with the terse: "That is none of your damn
      business," FIRE said.
      Requirements for students include: "Students will recognize that systemic
      oppression exists in our society," "Students will recognize the benefits
      of dismantling systems of oppression," and "Students will be able to
      utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and
      consumer mentality," FIRE said.
      The foundation said students even are "pressured or even required" to make
      social statements that meet with the school's approval.
      "The fact that the university views its students as patients in need of
      treatment for some sort of moral sickness betrays a total lack of respect
      not only for students' basic rights, but for students themselves,"
      Lukianoff said. "The University of Delaware has both a legal and a moral
      obligation to immediately dismantle this program, and FIRE will not rest
      until it has."
      A spokesman for the school, contacted by WND, said he was not ready to
      make a statement about the situation right away.
      But the foundation's letter to Harker noted, "we have never encountered a
      more systematic assault upon the individual liberty, dignity, privacy, and
      autonomy of university students than this program," which "requires
      students to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues."
      "Such utter contempt for the autonomy and free agency of others is the
      hallmark of totalitarianism and has no place in any free society, let
      alone at a public university in the state of Delaware," the letter said.
      Especially alarming, Harris told WND, is that the school defines learning
      specifically as "attitudinal or behavioral changes," not acquiring any
      sort of knowledge and ability.
      Such thinking "represents a distorted idea of 'education' that one would
      more easily associate with a Soviet prison camp than with an American
      institution of higher education," FIRE said. "As another example, after an
      investigation showed that males demonstrated 'a higher degree of
      resistance to educational efforts,' the Rodney complex chose to hire
      'strong male RAs.' Each such RA 'combats male residents' concepts of
      traditional male identity,' in order to 'ensure the delivery of the
      curriculum at the same level as in the female floors.' This language is
      disturbingly reminiscent of a pivotal scene from George Orwell's '1984,'
      in which the protagonist's captors tell him that 'The Party is not
      interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not
      merely destroy our enemies, we change them.'"
      No small danger, FIRE noted, is being presented to the university through
      such apparent constitutional violations. "Simply put, the residence life
      education program is a legal minefield," the group said.
      One student reacted to the indoctrination with rebellion. On the FIRE
      blog, he wrote:
      "Take the issue of homosexuality, and the rights that should or should not
      be associated with it. As a Christian, I believe that the Bible says
      homosexuality is wrong, and is a sin against God. As such, I cannot accept
      it as a legitimate lifestyle. While I accept homosexuals as people, I do
      not accept their choice as right, and subsequently I do not think that
      homosexual couples should be given marital rights. I accept that others do
      not hold the same views as me. But it is wrong that under the Residence
      Life curriculum and school mandated curriculum that I should made to feel
      guilty for my views. … It is not the school's right to try to convince me
      to embrace the values that Residence Life has chosen. Essentially, if I do
      not change my views, I will be labeled by my RA as not embracing
      diversity, and not accepting of certain groups, and thus my RA will try
      all the harder to change me. This is not the school's job, or right."

• Dall'articolo "Wanted: White criminals only" (Douglas MacKinnon, Townhall, 13 settembre 2006):

Recently, my wife and I started to watch a DVD we
                              had rented, when, before the film even played, I
                              learned something of great interest.
                              Apparently, in the world of creative
                              entertainment, not only can white men not jump,
                              but we represent most, if not all, of the criminal
                              element.

                              Amy Trask, Chief Executive of the Oakland Raiders,
                              is shown at their summer training camp in Napa,
                              Calif., in this July 31, 2003 photo. The NFL's
                              rule that at least one minority candidate be
                              interviewed for each head coaching vacancy is the
                              reason there are now a record seven black head
                              coaches, six more than 16 years ago. The
                              University of Central Florida's Institute for
                              Diversity and Ethics in Sport credited the
                              league's "Rooney Rule," adopted in late 2002, for
                              the improvement. However, the report noted that
                              the NFL _ and other pro men's sports, with the
                              exception of basketball _ continued to lag in
                              hiring women. The NFL does have a female
                              president/CEO , Amy Trask of the Oakland Raiders .
                              (AP Photo/Dino Vournas) Before the movie spun, the
                              motion picture industry had inserted a one minute
                              infomercial on the evils of movie piracy and
                              intellectual theft. To make their melodramatic
                              point, they showed a criminal stealing a cell
                              phone. Some thug breaking into a car. And just a
                              total reprobate, stealing a purse. Truly awful
                              people.
                              The point of course being, just like no decent,
                              law abiding citizen would ever contemplate
                              committing such vile crimes, no upright individual
                              would ever consider downloading a movie off the
                              internet, or buying a cheap, burned copy, with
                              someone’s popcorn in the bottom of the frame, from
                              off the street.
                              Of course, in the pre-movie infomercial, all three
                              criminals were white men. Which got me to
                              thinking. In the make believe land of movies,
                              television, and commercials, if there is a heinous
                              crime to be committed, 99.9% of the time, it’s now
                              going to be done by a white guy. In fact, it has
                              to be done by a white guy.
                              Political correctness and the fear of offending,
                              or worse yet, getting sued or picketed, is such,
                              that you will no longer see blacks, Hispanics,
                              most minorities, or even women for that matter,
                              commit a fictional crime. No. Hollywood and the ad
                              agencies have decided that criminal activity on
                              film is now the sole domain of the “too successful
                              for his own good” white male.
                              Think I’m exaggerating? Watch any commercial on
                              television for any one of the home alarm
                              companies. One hundred percent of the time, it’s
                              always a white guy breaking into the home. In
                              fact, there is one spot now running, where we see
                              an upper-middle class African-American family in a
                              panic as a burglar is trying to break into their
                              home. And just who is this burglar? Why none other
                              than that well known and ubiquitous, evil white
                              male.
                              Don’t like that example. Okay. Instead, watch any
                              of the commercials for any of the credit card
                              companies that try to sell you a card to replace
                              traveler checks. As the commercial plays out, you
                              see that some low-life, former Enron-like
                              executive white male, has, once again, ruined the
                              vacation of mom, dad, muffy and skip as they tried
                              desperately to enjoy Paris before it too, was
                              torched by insurgents in training.
                              Still not convinced. Fine. Watch any sitcom or one
                              hour drama on television. Almost without
                              exception, every fictional crime being committed
                              in all of these shows is being done by a white
                              male. “Case closed, Monk. Sanitize your hands and
                              let’s lock up the Caucasian.”
                              Think the big screen is different. Wrong. Most
                              crimes that take place on the silver screen are
                              committed by white men. Of course, just for a
                              laugh, Hollywood will, on occasion, out due itself
                              as it stretches the bounds of political
                              correctness, by throwing a completely impossible
                              scene of reverse stereotyping at the film fan.
                              Case in point, the movie “Falling Down” where the
                              defense contractor, played by famous white guy
                              Michael Douglas, completely snaps and starts
                              shooting minorities. My favorite part of the movie
                              is where he goes into a burger joint that is
                              supposed to be in South Central L.A. and is served
                              by none other than Dee Dee Pfeiffer. A whiter than
                              white Valley girl working in a burger joint in
                              South Central.
                              My wife, who is from South America, once asked,
                              “Don’t Hispanics ever commit any crimes in your TV
                              shows?” My answer was, “Rarely. They will commit
                              marginally more crimes on TV than blacks, but only
                              because Hollywood is more worried about Jesse
                              Jackson coming after them than Edward James
                              Olmos.”
                              Obviously, for far too many years, minority and
                              African-American actors were marginalized,
                              stereotyped, and blatantly insulted in film, on
                              television, and even in commercials. I would
                              submit that you still have some of that behavior
                              happening today. Both by elements of mainstream
                              entertainment, and ironically, and quite
                              tragically, in a number of Hip Hop and Gangsta rap
                              videos which purposely denigrate and disrespect
                              black women, while fostering the worst possible
                              stereotypes of black men.
                              But is the solution to those past and current
                              sins, to create a fairytale entertainment world in
                              which only white men can be portrayed as
                              criminals. While amusing in its absurdity, it also
                              draws attention the fact that as a nation, we are
                              still not as comfortable or accepting of diversity
                              as some would pretend.

• Dall'articolo "Blond bad guys - Hollywood's other obsession" (Steve Sailer, VDare, 19 giugno 2005):

After finishing last week's column about Hollywood's obsession with fair-skinned actresses, I went to see Batman Begins, which has been positioned as a "more realistic comic book movie."

Obviously, there's something oxymoronic about that phrase, but Batman Begins is reasonably refreshing for a summer blockbuster. It puts a lot of effort into explaining where Bruce Wayne gets all his Bat Gear (the Batmobile and the rest are high tech military prototypes invented by Wayne Enterprises' top scientist, played by Morgan Freeman), and into detailing why he becomes an avenging angel of the night: when he was a lad, his saintly parents were gunned down in front of him by a mugger.

Gotham City looks evocatively like Chicago, where some of the movie was filmed.

But, as an old Chicagoan, I can assure you that one aspect of Batman Begins is standard-issue Hollywood hokum: the murderous mugger is blond.

Blond bad guys are a lot more common in movies and television than in real life.

For example, in Batman Begins, you can tell that Mr. Earle, the executive in charge of Wayne Enterprises, is up to no good because he is played by Rutger Hauer—the blond Dutchman who made his American debut in 1981's Nighthawks as a terrorist chased by heroic NYPD cops Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams. Hauer was subsequently cast as Albert Speer in the TV movie Inside the Third Reich, and eventually received his best-known role as a homicidal android in Blade Runner.

No typecasting there!

And speaking of blond terrorists being chased by NYPD cops, who can forget Alan Rickman in Bruce Willis's Die Hard? No wonder President Bush cracked down on ethnic profiling of Arabs by airport security in the months before 9/11: all the terrorists in movies are either Germans or English aristocrats!

Exactly why Hollywood hates blond men almost as much as it loves blond women is not clear. Some have suggested complicated combinations of resentment and longing in regard to WASPs and/or Nordics.

This prejudice against blond men would seem to be on a collision course with the tendency of movie moguls, such as Steven Spielberg, to marry blonde women, such as Kate Capshaw. This means the industry's hereditary elite will tend to become blonder over the generations. No doubt it will cause no end of father-son conflicts, keeping Beverly Hills psychiatrists prosperous for the rest of the century.

A more general question is why in movies and television, murderers are far more likely to be white (whether blond or brunette) than African-American—even though, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics: "Blacks were 7 times more likely than whites to commit homicide in 2002."

One of my readers recently pointed out that with non-Hispanic whites accounting for only about ten percent of the violent crime in New York City, the three Law & Order television shows were likely to feature more fictional white New York murderers in 2005 than there will be actual white murderers in real life!

Another reader pointed out:

"In the first 24 episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent there's only one black murderer, and she is a corrupt police officer.  Make of that what you will…"

Racial activist organizations like the NAACP constantly complain that minority actors have a hard time getting roles. For some reason, though, the NAACP never brings up the most obvious ways to increase the casting of blacks and Hispanics—by making the ethnic make-up of screen criminals more realistic.

There are unintended consequences to all these good intentions. Villains provide excellent roles that actors can sink their teeth into. But minorities seldom get those great Hannibal the Cannibal-type parts.

Unfortunately, African-American actors have long been held back by what's known as Ben Stein's Law. The mordant law professor, economist, screenwriter and game show host made an in-depth study in 1979 that revealed that in any Hollywood whodunit, the whitest, richest and most respectable character usually turns out to be the bad guy.

In Rush Hour 2, Chris Tucker updated Ben Stein's Law with his "Law of Criminal Investigation: Always follow the rich white man."

It appeared that the ice was breaking when Denzel Washington won the Oscar for playing the heavy in 2001's Training Day, a role based on Rafael Perez, the affirmative action-hire rogue cop whose criminality set off the LAPD's Rampart Scandal.

But little progress has been made since. Morgan Freeman, for example, first broke through to public notice playing a vicious pimp in 1987's Street Smart. However, he continues to get cast as the embodiment of saintliness, what Richard Brookhiser calls the "Numinous Negro"—as in Freeman's Oscar-winning but embarrassing role as the holy janitor in Million Dollar Baby.

In Batman Begins, Freeman portrays an inventor—another weird Hollywood racial cliché. Just as judges are so often played by black women, Hollywood has decided that technogeeks must be portrayed by black men, the more improbable the better, as in burly Ving Rhames being the computer nerd in the "Mission Impossible" movies.

Clearly, political correctness damages black actors' careers. Because it would be “racist" for movies to show blacks as killers, since that would support the "stereotype" that blacks commit more homicides than whites, they are denied the good roles as bad guys.

And to counter the "stereotype" that black men aren't as interested as other races in computers, they get force-fed into playing nerds.

From a career standpoint, that's a disastrous trade-off for any actor.

And from a political and cultural standpoint, Hollywood’s blond-bashing isn’t that great either.

• Dall'articolo "Kosovo in the 1980s: Murders, Rapes, and Expulsions" (Carl Savich, Serbianna, 27 luglio 2007):

  I. Introduction: Ethnically Pure “Kosova”
                  To understand the Kosovo separatist conflict of 1998-1999, the
                  background must be analyzed and examined. Did the Kosovo
                  conflict emerge sui generis? What was the context and
                  background of the conflict? To understand that, the decade
                  before must be analyzed, the 1980s. Kosovo in the 1980s is
                  where the conflict arose.
                  From 1981 to 1989, 20,000 Kosovo Serbs are estimated to have
                  fled from Kosovo. There was a massive campaign to drive out
                  the Kosovo Serb population through ethnic murders, rapes,
                  attacks, beatings, desecrations of churches, cemeteries. From
                  1982 to 1984, 10 rapes were committed, while 11 attempted
                  rapes were committed against Serbian women by Albanian men. In
                  this period, 286 crimes were committed against Kosovo Serbs,
                  while 1,249 misdemeanors were committed against Kosovo Serbs.
                  A Kosovo Albanian Muslim leader, Fadil Hoxha, incited Kosovo
                  Albanians to rape Kosovo Serb women. Kosovo Albanian Muslims
                  engaged in a systematic and planned policy or campaign to
                  expel Kosovo Serb Christians from Kosovo.  This ethnically and
                  religious motivated campaign of genocide against Kosovo Serbs
                  has been largely suppressed and censored in the US and the
                  West. Through the infowar technique of “emphasis”, these human
                  rights abuses have been de-emphasized and buried and spin
                  doctored away.
                  A systematic and planned campaign of ethnic and religious
                  terror whose goal was genocide has been erased and deleted
                  from the historical record. How was this done? What really
                  happened in Kosovo during the 1980s that set the stage for the
                  Kosovo conflict of 1998-1999? Do we know? Can we know?

II. Arson or Accident?: Pec Patriarchate Burned
                  On March 16, 1981, the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate was
                  burned in Pec in Kosovo-Metohija. The fire had started on
                  Sunday. Was it arson or an accident? Could a candle have
                  started the blaze? Was the attack ethnically and religiously
                  motivated, a hate crime meant to terrorize the Serbian
                  Orthodox population and to drive them out of Kosovo?
                  Why is it important? The Pec Patriarchate had been the seat of
                  the Serbian Orthodox Church from the 13th century to the
                  abolition of the Pec Patriarchate in 1766. The Pec
                  Patriarchate was regarded as the spiritual center of the
                  Serbian Orthodox and had been the seat of the Serbian
                  Patriarchs since 1346.
                  The fire burned large areas of the monastery complex, a series
                  of structures. It was started simultaneously in two separate
                  locations. The konak, or residential living quarters, and
                  religious artifacts were destroyed. The fire destroyed the
                  winter church of the monastery complex.
                  In the period between 1960 and 1981, the Albanian separatists
                  plundered and destroyed the Serbian monasteries of Devic and
                  at Decani. Christian churches were targeted by Albanian Muslim
                  separatists to destroy evidence of the Serbian cultural and
                  religious presence in Kosovo.
                  Andras J. Riedlmayer, the director of the Documentation Center
                  of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard's
                  Fine Arts Library, stated in his 2002 testimony at the Hague
                  that he had heard of the 1981attack on the Pec Patriarchate
                  but dismissed it as an accident: “That period was not part of
                  our study, but yes, I've heard reports of that. I've also read
                  that police at the time claimed that it---the fire at the
                  konak---was accidental.”
                  The New York Times reported on the burning of the Pec
                  Patriarchate in the story “Sacred Serbian Site Damaged by
                  Blaze” by Marvine Howe: “Before daybreak on March 16, the Patriarchate of Pec, which
                  had survived invasion and occupation by the Ottoman Turks, was
                  heavily damaged by fire. A whole wing of the complex was
                  demolished, including the living quarters of the Patriarch,
                  the nun's refectory, a sick ward, a workshop …”
                  No one has ever been arrested or charged for the attack. No
                  independent investigation has ever been conducted. The konak
                  was rebuilt on October 16, 1983. The causes for the fire
                  remain unknown. It becomes an epistemological game. Some
                  “claim” or “allege” arson while Albanians “claim” an accident.
                  What is the real story? It all depends on whom you ask. The
                  answer is a function of self-interested motivations and
                  concerns. Was it “arson” or was it an “accident”? Serbian
                  sources “claim” it was purposely set on fire by Albanian
                  Muslims in a terrorist attack to drive out the Kosovo Serb
                  population. Albanian sources and their supporters in the US
                  “claim” that it was an “accident”.

III. “We Want a Unified Albania”: The 1981 Riots
                  On April 3-4, 1981, ethnic Albanian demonstrations in Kosovo
                  turned into an armed rebellion to create a Greater Albania.
                  The demonstrations were motivated by separatism and secession.
                  The rioters wanted union with Albania and expressed support
                  for Albanian Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. The slogans the
                  Albanians displayed during the riots were: “We are Albanians
                  and not Yugoslavs”, “We are the children of Skanderbeg and the
                  army of Enver Hoxha”, “We Want a Unified Albania”, and
                  “Kosovo-Republic”. This is what the Yugoslav media reported.
                  In the US and Western media accounts, the Albanian majority
                  was supposedly seeking greater rights and freedoms. The
                  ultra-nationalist placards were dismissed and spin-doctored or
                  “air brushed” out of the picture.
                  There was never any secret what the objective was. Beginning
                  with the demonstrations in 1968, Kosovo Albanians wanted the
                  right to secede from Yugoslavia. They wanted to create an
                  ethnically pure “Kosovo”, an ethnic Albanian statelet. In a
                  Radio Free Europe report from December 3, 1969, this creeping
                  secessionism was noted in the article “Cooperation between
                  Tirana University and the new University of Prishtina”: “With the establishment of the new University of Prishtina, the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo has chalked up
                  another success in its quest for complete national equality.
                  The founding of the university has been hailed in the province
                  as a very important step for the future development of Kosovo.
                  At the same time, Prishtina has announced that a substantial
                  quantity of educational materials needed by the new university
                  will be imported from Albania. Rilindja reports the signing of
                  a 200 million dinar contract in Tirana for the supply of
                  Albanian textbooks and other educational aids to Kosovo during
                  1970. This cooperation between Prishtina and Tirana could have
                  a favorable effect on the development of relations between the
                  two neighboring countries. In its quest for equality within
                  the Yugoslav Federation, the predominantly-Albanian Autonomous
                  Province of Kosovo has taken a new and important step with the
                  founding of the University of Prishtina. This momentous event
                  in the history of the province, an event which will have
                  significant consequences for the future of the nationalities
                  of Kosovo, took place on 19 November and was timed to coincide
                  with the 25th Anniversary of ‘liberation’ of the provincial
                  capital.”
                  The greater autonomy that was granted to Kosovo only resulted
                  in greater aspirations for full independence from Serbia and
                  Yugoslavia. The Communist Yugoslav regime created an
                  atmosphere of rising expectations in Kosovo. The more the
                  Serbs gave, the more the Albanians wanted, the more the
                  Albanians took. It was an absurd and paradoxical cycle that
                  was predictably going to lead to disaster.
                  The “Albanianization” of Kosovo continued during the 1970s and
                  1980s as ethnic Albanians took control over the political,
                  economic, educational, and cultural aspects of Kosovo. From
                  1971 to 1981, Albania sent to Kosovo 240 university teachers,
                  together with textbooks written in the Albanian or Shqip
                  language. Albanians had the right to their own Assembly, to
                  their own Executive Council, to their Presidency, to their own
                  Supreme Court, to their own Constitutional Court, to their
                  Ministry of the Interior, and their own University in
                  Pristina. The “Albanianization” of the Kosovo police began
                  after 1966.
                  Granting Kosovo greater autonomy only whetted the Albanian
                  appetite to go for it all and create a Greater Albania, a
                  “Kosova” statelet or “Republic”. The 1981 riots proved this
                  and made it abundantly clear to all. As a result, Albanian
                  Communist Party leader in Kosovo Mahmut Bakali resigned.
                  How were these Albanian ultra-nationalist disturbances and
                  separatist riots explained in the US and the West? Eric Bourne
                  dismissed the crisis in a Christian Science Monitor article of
                  May 7, 1981. He described Kosovo-Metohija as a “onetime Serb
                  colony” and “the problem child” of Communist Yugoslavia but
                  conceded that it was Albanian “extremist nationalist riots”
                  that had sparked the violence and that the “latest unrest
                  repeated the demand that Kosovo be made a republic and
                  incorporate Albanian populations in the neighboring republics
                  of Macedonia and Montenegro.” The objective was a Greater
                  Albania although Bourne was careful not to admit that. Bourne
                  asked: “Since 1974, Kosovo has had autonomy in all domestic
                  affairs. Why not then republican status? It seems a simple
                  enough solution.” The only problem with it is that the next
                  step is secession and an independent Albanian state of
                  “Kosova”. How do you solve the illegal immigration problem in
                  California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas? It is “simple
                  enough.” Give those states back to Mexico. Bourne’s solution
                  is no solution at all, just mindless drivel. Bourne gives us a
                  clear picture of what the US stance on this issue was in 1981.
                  Bourne reports what the US government wants him to report.
                  Bourne and other US and Western journalists were not
                  interested in the plight of the Serbian Orthodox “minority” in
                  Kosovo. Not one whit. The US media did not get to experience
                  the systematic terror campaign organized by Albanian
                  separatists. The Serbian Orthodox Abbes Hilaria in the
                  Monastery of the Holy Trinity near Musutiste had to keep a
                  rifle to protect herself from separatist Albanian attacks to
                  drive her out of Kosovo. The Albanian dominated police refused
                  to provide protection from criminal attacks and looting
                  directed at the monastery. She had to use a hunting rifle and
                  to fire warning shots in the air to deter the attacks on the
                  convent, Albanians blinded her cattle. She was photographed
                  showing reporters her blinded cattle. The objective was to
                  terrorize Kosovo Serb Christians to drive them out of Kosovo,
                  The series of ethnically motivated murders began with the
                  murder of Danilo Milincic from the Kosovo village of
                  Samodreza, near Vucitrn, on June 2, 1981. In 1941, when Adolf
                  Hitler annexed Kosovo to Albania and created a Greater
                  Albania, illegal settlers or “immigrants” came from Albania
                  and forced the Milincic family out of Samodreza. In 1960, the
                  father of Danilo, Slavoljub Milincic, was killed on his own
                  property in Samodreza. He was killed by a gun shot. The
                  murderer has never been apprehended. In 1982, his son, Danilo
                  Milincic, was violently killed by an “immigrant” or settler
                  from Albania, Ferat Mujo. Mujo killed Milincic in front of his
                  own house. This was an ethnically motivated murder to drive
                  out Christian Kosovo Serbs. The second ethnically motivated murder was of Kosovo Serb
                  Miodrag Saric on July 3, 1982 in the village of Mece near
                  Djakovica, 40 miles southwest of Pristina. Saric was a
                  43-year-old Kosovo Serb, who was shot and killed by an
                  Albanian neighbor, Ded Krasnici. The official Yugoslav press
                  agency Tanjug reported on the murder. It was the second
                  ethnically motivated murder of a Serb by an Albanian in Kosovo
                  in 1982. The dispute reportedly began with a dispute over
                  damage done to a field belonging to the Saric family. The
                  Saric family had been threatened and coerced to leave Kosovo
                  by Albanians. Saric was murdered because he would not leave
                  his home in Kosovo. This was an ethnically motivated crime to
                  drive out Kosovo Serbs and to create an ethnically pure
                  “Kosova”.
                  On April 16, 1982, 21 Serbian priests and monks addressed an
                  appeal to the Yugoslav government that focused on the human
                  rights violations against Kosovo Serbs in Kosovo:
                  “It may be said without exaggeration that systematic genocide
                  is gradually being perpetrated against the Serbian people in
                  Kosovo! Because, if this were not the case, what do the theses
                  about an 'ethnically clean Kosovo' mean which, regardless of
                  everything, is being implemented without interruption? Or what
                  do the words, often repeated in villages and hamlets,
                  monasteries and churches and even in towns mean: 'What are you
                  waiting for? Move away, this is ours!'"
                  Albanian separatists had targeted Serbian Orthodox Churches
                  even after the end of World War II. In March, 1952, the
                  Serbian Orthodox Church in the village of Duganjevo near
                  Urosevac was destroyed. In 1949, the Serbian Orthodox Memorial
                  Church in Djakovica was dynamited and blown up on a major
                  Serbian Orthodox Christian holiday, St. Sava's Day. According
                  to the report by the delegation of priests: “Various Albanian
                  facilities were erected on the foundations of Serbian churches
                  and cultural monuments if they were not completely destroyed."

IV. “[F]ound …with a broken bottle up his anus”: Sodomy or
                  Homosexual Accident?
                  One of the most inflammatory and disgusting incidents against
                  Kosovo Serbs occurred in 1985. Djorde Martinovic became a
                  symbol of the human rights abuses committed against Kosovo
                  Serbs. He became a “martyr” for Kosovo Serb Christians. In a
                  painting by Miodrag Popovic, 1 Maj. 1985, Martinovic was shown
                  being crucified like Jesus Christ by Albanian Muslim
                  separatists. His case became symbolic of a perceived sense of
                  Serbian Christian “martyrdom” in Kosovo. Wouldn’t you be
                  outraged and angry if someone shoved a bottle up the ass of an
                  American? In other words, this horrific attack came to
                  symbolize Serbian grievances and a sense of victimization in
                  Kosovo. For this reason, the story needed to be quashed. It
                  had to be made to appear like it was all made up. Fearing a
                  backlash, the Yugoslav government and the US and the Western
                  media colluded in manipulating and censoring and falsifying
                  the incident. What followed was a massive cover-up by the
                  Communist Yugoslav government. On May 4, 1985, the Martinovic case appeared in the Yugoslav Communist political publication "Politika". The headline read:
                  "A civilian employee of the JNA in Gnjilane, Djordje
                  Martinovic, attacked and injured on a stake on May 1 on his
                  own land Jaruga, two kilometers from Gnjilane. This crime was
                  committed by Albanian terrorists".
                  What happened in the Martinovic case?  It all depends on who
                  tells it. This is one version or “narrative” of the
                  “storytelling”. Djordje Martinovic was ambushed by several
                  Albanians who attacked him while he was working in the field
                  on his own private property. He was placed on a stake or
                  spike. He was then sodomized with a bottle, impaled with a
                  bottle. The Albanian attackers forced the bottle in his anus.
                  Martinovic managed to run to a nearby road where he was able
                  to flag someone down. He was taken to the hospital in Pristina
                  where he received emergency surgery. His injuries were
                  serious.
                  This is where the plot thickens. He was then visited by Novak
                  Ivanovic, an official from the civil branch of the Yugoslav
                  Army, the JNA. Ivanovic then told him that he had not been
                  sodomized by ethnic Albanian Muslims in an ethnically and
                  religiously motivated hate crime. This is only what appeared
                  to be the case on the surface. He told Martinovic that he was
                  a homosexual and that he had inflicted the injury on himself.
                  It was a self-inflicted injury. The bottle was a dildo
                  Martinovic used in homo-erotic self-gratification. Once the
                  exercise in homosexual auto-eroticism went awry, Martinovic
                  decided to blame the Albanian separatists. That was quite a
                  story.
                  After a year passed, Novak Ivanovic gave an interview in the
                  publication "Intervju" admitting that the whole homosexual
                  “explanation” was concocted and fabricated on the orders of a
                  General of the Yugoslav Army or JNA. The homosexual angle was
                  a hoax. This is the part of the story that never seemed to
                  reach the US and Western media. The US media stuck with the
                  discredited homosexual angle because it could be true even
                  though shown to be false.
                  Martinovic obtained the signatures of five doctors in Pristina
                  that attested to the fact that such an injury could not be
                  self-inflicted. He was operated on by British surgeon Peter
                  Holly twice in London who also confirmed that a self-inflicted
                  injury was not possible. A Slovenian doctor in Yugoslavia, in
                  an effort to buttress the Communist regime, however, had
                  argued that a self-inflicted injury was possible. This injury
                  became politically charged. The Communist regime did not want
                  to acknowledge that a Kosovo Serb, a Serbian Christian, was
                  sodomized in an ethnically and religiously motivated hate
                  crime. To do so would only strengthen Serbian “nationalists”
                  within Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Communist regime then
                  falsified the evidence and the facts, indeed, made up its own
                  “reality”. This was all done in the name of preserving
                  Yugoslavia and in covering up any Serbian grievances.
                  We would call this “reality control” today, PR and spin. We
                  are no strangers to “reality control” in the US and the West.
                  This perhaps best explains why these outlandish and outrageous
                  lies and fabrications were accepted in the US and the in the
                  West as etched-in-stone facts and as truths. Who would believe
                  Djordje Martinovic anyway? He is a Serb. He is a Christian.
                  And he is a homosexual too. Or is he?
                  Yugoslav interior minister Stane Dolanc, who was from
                  Slovenia, made the “official” conclusions on Television
                  Ljubljana in 1987: “The Djordje Martinovic case is over. My
                  police have shown that the injury was self-inflicted and there
                  is no legal recourse. Djordje is the first Serbian Samurai who
                  has committed on himself hara-kiri." Preposterous? Outrageous
                  nonsense? Not so to the US and Western media. It could happen? In the May 22, 2004 article “Chronicle of an enduring enmity” in the Guardian Unlimited, Nicholas Lezard recalled the
                  Djordje Martinovic tragedy in the context of the broader
                  conflict between Christianity and Islam. Lezard reviewed the
                  book Infidels by Andrew Wheatcroft, which analyzed centuries
                  of confrontation and conflict between Christendom and Islam.
                  Lezard queried: “How could we have imagined this conflict
                  could ever have gone away?” Lezard then wrote about the
                  Martinovic sodomy in the context of Christian-Muslim
                  relations:
                  “When the Serb Djordje Martinovic claimed in 1985 that two
                  Albanians had shoved a bottle up his bum, some newspapers
                  pointedly referred to the old Ottoman punishment of
                  impalement, even though it was possible Martinovic had
                  performed the deed himself for private reasons.”
                  He could also have been the victim of an alien abduction.
                  Lezard played the spin game too. Anything is possible,
                  especially when you want to engage in a bit of “reality
                  control” and spin. The key to the game is to create ambiguity
                  and uncertainty. Then the game is won. It becomes a farce of
                  he said/she said. Facts are suspended and meaning is deferred.
                  Ultimately, we get to decide the facts for ourselves. We
                  create our own “reality”. That is where all the fun is.
                  Ignorance is, indeed, bliss. Who needs reality when we can
                  manufacture and create our own reality? This is the key in
                  understanding the Kosovo conflict.
                  In 1990, a court in Belgrade found the Yugoslav government
                  liable and that Martinovic be awarded 100,000 Marks in
                  damages. He never received that award. The court did, however,
                  exonerate Martinovic. But no one noticed. Or cared.
                  Djordje Martinovic died on September 6, 2000 in Citluk near
                  Krusevac. His wife was Jagodinka. He had three sons, Srecko,
                  Dragan and Gradimir, and one daughter, Olga.

V. Rape as an Instrument of Terror
                  Albanian separatists in Kosovo used rape, sexual assault,
                  against men and women in Kosovo. From 1982 to 1984 alone, 10
                  rapes against Kosovo Serb women committed by Albanian Muslim
                  men were reported by the police in Kosovo. There were 11
                  attempted rapes against Kosovo Serb women by Albanian Muslims. In 1983, Kosovo Serb farmer Stojan Peric was photographed carrying his 9 year-old daughter in his arms from a cornfield
                  in Zitinje near Vitina, Kosovo where she was reportedly raped
                  and sexually assaulted by Kosovo Muslim separatists. Do
                  pictures speak a thousand words? Is seeing believing? The
                  camera does not lie? Or does it? An image can mean many
                  different things to different people. It is the viewer that
                  imparts meaning to a photograph or an image. In other words,
                  meaning can be suspended and deferred. I see what I want to
                  see, or what the media or “experts” or US State Department
                  hack tell me to see.
                  Was there a planned, systematic, and organized policy of rape
                  as an instrument of terror in Kosovo? David Binder reported in
                  The New York Times on November 1, 1987 that Fadil Hoxha, the
                  political leader of Kosovo Albanians, had advocated that
                  Kosovo Serb women be raped by Albanian Muslims. He was
                  inciting rape against Christian women by Albanian Muslim men
                  to create an ethnically pure Muslim “Kosova”. Can it get any
                  more outrageous than that? How was this incitement of rape and
                  genocide spun in the West? The spin doctors in the West
                  concluded that Hoxha had “joked” at an official dinner in
                  Prizren that Kosovo Serb women should be systematically raped.
                  Can you “joke” about rape and genocide?
                  Who was Fadil Hoxha? He was one of the most prominent
                  “Kosovar” Muslim political leaders in Kosovo during the
                  Communist period. He had served as the president of the
                  Assembly of the Kosovo Autonomous Province for two terms,
                  first from July 11, 1945 to February 29, 1953, then a second
                  term from June 24, 1967 to May 7, 1969.  In 1967 he was
                  appointed to the Yugoslav Communist Party Presidium. In 1974
                  he became a member of the Federal Presidency of Yugoslavia.
                  During 1978-79 he held the rotating position of president of
                  the Federal Presidency. He was regarded as a “father-figure”
                  for the Albanian Muslim separatists and secessionists.
                  How do you explain the incitement to rape and genocide by a
                  top Albanian Muslim leader in Kosovo?

VI. Desecration of Christian Graves and Cemeteries
                  One of the most horrific human rights abuses against Kosovo
                  Serb Christians was never even covered by the US or Western
                  media. This was a crime committed by Albanian Muslim
                  separatists against Kosovo Serbs.
                  On September 27, 1988, five Albanian Muslim “Kosovars” dug up
                  the bodies of two Kosovo Serb infants, Radojko and Dragica
                  Petrovic. They were twins who had died at birth. The Albanian
                  Muslims then scattered the remains of the bodies all over the
                  grave in the Orthodox Christian cemetery in Grace near
                  Vucitrn. This attack occurred on an Orthodox Christian holy
                  day, the Day of the Glorification of the Holy Cross. This was
                  a horrific ethnically and religiously motivated hate crime
                  committed by Albanian Muslims against Serbian Christians. This
                  crime was well-documented and substantiated by the police.
                  Needless to say, it was virtually censored in the US and
                  Western media. How do you spin or manipulate such horrendous
                  human rights abuses? When you cannot manipulate or spin the
                  facts, you ignore or dismiss the incident entirely, in toto.
                  That was what the US and Western media did in this instance. Albanians systematically destroyed and desecrated Orthodox Christian cemeteries from 1981 to 1989. Gravestones and
                  monuments of Orthodox Serbs in the Srbica cemetery were
                  attacked in the summer of 1985. On July 18, 1984, Serbian
                  gravestones in Slakovce, near Samodreza, were destroyed,
                  desecrated, and vandalized. On October 8, 1985, in Begov
                  Lukavac, the Serbian Orthodox cemetery was burned. There was
                  photographic evidence of these ethnically and religiously
                  motivated human rights violations and hate crimes.
                  Nevertheless, in the US and the West, these human rights
                  violations were censored, dismissed, and spun away as “claims”
                  and “assertions”. None of the human rights groups in the US or
                  the West paid any attention. The “international community”
                  turned a blind eye.
                  Kosovo Serb Dmitrije Petkovic, who lived in a village near
                  Pristina, was a target of these attacks. He explained in a
                  December 4, 1984 Ilustrovana Politika interview: "It is clear
                  that this is the work of Albanian irredentist to force us to
                  leave Kosovo, but I, my wife Krstana, my four sons and two
                  daughters are determined to stay on our land. No one will
                  chase us away..."
                  The attacks against Serbian churches, cemeteries, gravestones,
                  and monuments were not random and arbitrary and accidental. It
                  was all part of a systematic, planned, and organized campaign
                  to drive Kosovo Serbian Christians out of Kosovo. The
                  implications were obvious. And yet the US and Western media
                  and pundits, the “international community”, missed it even
                  though it was right under their very noses. How do you miss
                  such egregious human rights violations that amount to
                  genocide? Is it possible? We have to ask: Who controls what we think and what we know
                  about Kosovo? When do “claims” and “assertions” become “facts”
                  and “true”. How does this process or procedure work? The
                  answer is the US State Department, that is, the US Government.
                  The media just parrots and mimics what they are told by their
                  betters and experts at the US State Department. The media
                  reports what the government tells them to report. To fully
                  grasp the Kosovo conflict, however, an epistemological
                  analysis is needed.

VII. Epistemological Analysis: Who do you believe?
                  Who is telling the truth? Who do you believe? What is the
                  “truth” here? What are the “facts”? The Kosovo conflict is a
                  classic case where epistemology is part of the issue. In other
                  words, we never know what the facts are. We never know what
                  the “reality” is. He said this and that. He claimed and
                  alleged this and that. Some assert and maintain the following
                  “facts”. According to this or that source, these are the
                  contradictory “facts”. It is like an insane asylum. We are in
                  a madhouse with a series of unending mirrors like in Orson
                  Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai (1947). Which mirror reflects
                  “reality”, “facts”, and the “truth”. We do not know. We cannot
                  know. Images are reflected endlessly and infinitely. Are we
                  losing our minds? Are we going mad? Someone must be playing
                  with our minds. Croat journalist Krsto or Christopher Cviic wrote about the
                  Martinovic sodomy in “A Culture of Humiliation” on June 22,
                  1993 in The National Interest:
                  “I keep returning to an incident from my personal experience
                  that, to me at any rate, symbolizes and encapsulates the
                  attitudes that have led to the present disaster. On May 1,
                  1985, a 59-year-old Serbian farmer by the name of Djordje
                  Martinovic was found in a distressed condition with a broken
                  bottle up his anus in his own province of Serbia, one with a
                  large ethnic Albanian majority. Almost overnight, this elderly
                  man, who supplemented his farm income by working as a
                  storekeeper for the Yugoslav Army in Gnjilane, became the
                  center of a fierce controversy that quickly grew into a cause
                  celebre.
                  According to reports claiming to be based on Mr. Martinovic's
                  own evidence and published in Belgrade, Serbia's capital, Mr.
                  Martinovic had been attacked from behind by a group of masked
                  men speaking Albanian, who then allegedly tied him up and
                  brutalized him. The other version, in Kosovo's
                  Albanian-language press and in the media in some non-Serbian
                  parts of Yugoslavia, was very different. According to that
                  account, Mr. Martinovic was a homosexual who had suffered an
                  accident while in the act of self-gratification and, in order
                  to avoid bringing dishonor on himself and his family in a very
                  old-fashioned society, decided to invent the alleged attack.”
                  Cviic suspends his judgment and reports the attack as if no
                  explanation can be found for it. It remains a mystery of
                  mysteries? An enigma inside a conundrum? Cviic engages in all
                  the journalistic tricks of manipulation and “reality control”
                  and spin. For instance, he uses the passive tense in
                  describing the attack against Martinovic, who is “found with a
                  broken bottle up his anus”. This is a passive construction
                  implying no active agency. He just woke up one day and found a
                  bottle up his ass. A body was found not breathing. A corpse
                  was found dead. Cviic is playing the journalist game. He knows
                  consciously that it is a cynical game because he discusses it
                  himself:
                  “I arrived in Kosovo shortly thereafter while researching a
                  story on the national question in Yugoslavia for The Economist
                  and was one of the first Western correspondents to write about
                  ‘the Martinovic affair.’ The atmosphere I found there reminded
                  me of Kurosawa's famous film "Rashomon" I had seen while still
                  living in Yugoslavia in the early 1950s, in which a single
                  violent incident is told in several completely different
                  versions. I wanted to talk to Mr. Martinovic but could not: he
                  had been taken out of the hands of the Kosovo authorities,
                  whisked off to the Yugoslav Army's Medical Academy in Belgrade
                  and kept incommunicado there pending further clinical and
                  psychiatric investigations. Meanwhile ethnic Albanian officials in Pristina, Kosovo's
                  capital, kept assuring me that the story of the attack was a
                  complete fabrication and even provided me with graphic
                  clinical details of the incident as recorded by the local
                  Albanian doctors (including the exact size of the bottle).
                  They argued that the Martinovic case was being exploited
                  politically by the Serbian leaders in Belgrade as another
                  argument in their campaign for the abolition of Kosovo's
                  autonomy and its re-annexation by Serbia, on the grounds that
                  this was the only way of protecting the local Serbs (by then
                  10 percent of the total population) from Albanian ‘terror.’ On
                  the other hand, local Kosovo Serbs I talked to claimed to
                  believe the attack version implicitly and interpreted the
                  incident as another instance of the systematic Albanian
                  campaign aimed at forcing the Kosovo Serbs to emigrate,
                  leaving it to the Albanians. In Belgrade, meanwhile, the
                  Kosovo farmer had become a hero to Serbian opinion as a martyr
                  in the national cause. A famous Serbian painter not long
                  afterwards made Mr. Martinovic the central figure of a
                  crucifixion scene in a painting which, I was told, now adorns
                  one of the rooms in the building of the Serbian Academy of
                  Sciences in Belgrade.
                  Four years after this bizarre and gruesome incident, in June
                  1989, Serbia re-annexed Kosovo, thus regaining full control
                  over its police and judiciary. Intriguingly, the Martinovic
                  file remained closed. The new Serbian authorities have so far
                  failed--to my knowledge anyway--to do what they might have
                  been expected to do in such a highly publicized case. They
                  have not reopened the investigation with a view to catching
                  the alleged perpetrators, bringing them to justice and
                  vindicating the old man's honor. This suggests that the attack
                  theory might after all have been an anti-Albanian fabrication,
                  as the local Albanians had claimed from the start. But,
                  whatever the true facts of the case, they do not seem to
                  matter any more--at least not to the present generation of
                  Serbs. The martyrdom of Djordje Martinovic, in the highly
                  stylized form of the crucifixion in the Academy of Sciences
                  picture, has become part of the Serbs' vision of themselves as
                  perpetual victims of cruel historical circumstances--an idea
                  born in Kosovo more than 600 years ago.
                  It was in Kosovo Polje (the Field of Blackbirds), not far from
                  where Djordje Martinovic suffered his mysterious
                  humiliation….”
                  Cviic uses ironic quotes or quotation marks when he uses the
                  term Albanian “terror”. This is an obvious ploy that
                  de-legitimizes the Serbian “claims”. Having a bottle shoved up
                  your anus is not “terror” when you cannot prove it. The game
                  here is pretty clever. We are in awe. It does get rather silly
                  after a while once you figure out what is going on. Is there
                  any reason we should suspect bias and self-interest here? Who
                  is Cviic? He is a Croatian Roman Catholic. During World War II
                  Croatian ultra-nationalists have been “accused” or alleged” to
                  have murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbian Orthodox
                  Christians. Cviic may be biased?
                  The absurdity of the Cviic “narrative” is that he tells you
                  that you cannot believe anyone but then expects you to believe
                  him. I would never lie to you. But those other people may.
                  This begs the obvious question: Why should I believe you? The
                  approach is paradoxical and contradictory. We don’t know who
                  to believe. And, of course, that is all part of the game.
                  Julie Mertus takes this outlandish approach in Kosovo: How
                  Myths and Truths Started a War. Her “analysis” is so laughable
                  and biased that one does not even need to read the book. Here
                  is how the story ends: Everything the Serbs “claim” is merely
                  “myth”; conversely, everything Albanians claim are “truths”.
                  This is simplicity itself. Why didn’t I think of that? No,
                  this is not a joke. This is supposed to be highfalutin
                  historical scholarship and research. This is the best and the
                  brightest at work. This is what they teach you in American
                  universities and colleges.
                  Mertus would interview Albanian sources and their statements
                  would be used as “truths” and as “facts” while Serbian
                  statements would be dismissed as “claims”, “allegations”, and
                  “assertions”. How are we supposed to believe what Albanian
                  Muslims say? Don’t they have a stake in a Greater Albania or
                  independent “Kosova”? Don’t they get all the Serbian property
                  for free? Don’t the Albanian Muslims get to create a second
                  Muslim Albania statelet? Why are they not biased and
                  self-interested? Julie Mertus assumes her readers are too
                  stupid to figure it out. It ain’t rocket science.
                  The “analyses” by Mertus, however, are what we have for the
                  history of Kosovo in the 1980s. This is what the “history”
                  will be for Kosovo. This mindless drivel is what will be
                  accepted as the true and accurate account of Kosovo. This is
                  more than a question of spin or bias. This is an issue of
                  humanism. Are we that brain dead that we cannot tell when our
                  minds are manipulated and screwed with?
                  In the preface to her book, Mertus admits that she is
                  advocating the Albanian Muslim side in the conflict, but
                  without actually saying it. What a big surprise. But is this
                  what a “scholar” and an “expert” should be doing? In the guise
                  of objectivity and analysis, she is totally biased and offers
                  propaganda instead of analysis. The book is totally
                  nonsensical and one-sided and prevents any understanding of
                  what occurred in Kosovo during the 1980s.
                  Kosovo in the 1980s is essentially an epistemological issue.
                  We never know what really happened. We suspend judgment and
                  defer meaning. The approach that the US media used can be
                  compared to the multiple viewpoints or perspectives approach
                  of narration or “narrative” in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane
                  (1941), a technique later “borrowed” by Akira Kurosawa in
                  Rashomon (1950).
                  We never know who Charles Foster Kane was. We get
                  contradictory appraisals of the man and his career. Who was
                  Citizen Kane? After his death, there were conflicting and
                  contradictory accounts.
                  Some “claimed” Kane was a fascist: The Chicago Globe called
                  Kane “U.S. Fascist No. 1”:
                  “DEATH CALLS PUBLISHER CHARLES KANE
                  Policies Swayed World
                  Stormy Career Ends for "U.S. Fascist No. 1"
                  The Minneapolis Record Herald claimed he sponsored democracy:
                  “KANE, SPONSOR OF DEMOCRACY, DIES
                  Publisher Gave Life to Nation's Service during Long Career “
                  In front of a Congressional investigating committee, Walter
                  Parks Thatcher recalled:
                  “Mr. Charles Foster Kane, in every essence of his social
                  beliefs, and by the dangerous manner in which he has
                  persistently attacked the American traditions of private
                  property, initiative, and opportunity for advancement, is in
                  fact, nothing more or less than a Communist!”
                  In New York's Union Square, where a boycott of Kane newspapers
                  is advocated, a speaker declares:
                  “The words of Charles Foster Kane are a menace to every
                  working man in this land. He is today what he has always
                  been---and always will be---a Fascist!”
                  Kane described himself as follows: “I am, have been, and will
                  be only one thing--an American.”
                  Who was Kane? We never find out. The problem is that we do not
                  know which “narrative” to accept as factual or truthful or
                  even accurate. In a multiplicity of viewpoints, who can you
                  believe? Who is telling the truth? Who is pulling your leg? We
                  never find out in Citizen Kane.
                  But do we know what the facts and the truth are in the Kosovo
                  conflict? How do you connect the dots? Who can you believe?

VIII. In the eye of the beholder?
                  We never find out who Charles Foster Kane is or was. Does a
                  sled with the word “Rosebud” explain who or what Kane was? We
                  have multiple viewpoints and perspectives but we don’t know
                  which one to give credence and priority to. There are also
                  differing layers and depths to what we see or perceive. In
                  Edgar Allan Poe’s detective story The Purloined Letter, the
                  purloined letter is in plain sight, right in front of the
                  Parisian police. The police see the letter in plain view. But
                  they also do not see the letter. They see the letter but they
                  ignore it or dismiss it. Their senses tell them that the
                  letter is not what it seems or appears to be. How do we give
                  meaning to our perceptions? Can our perceptions be tricked or
                  deceived? Are we guided by pre-determined assumptions and
                  impulses?
                  Who do we believe? What do you believe? How near or far should
                  we be? How do we figure out who he is, who he really is?
                  Similarly, we never find out what the actual situation in
                  Kosovo is or was. Everyone has their own opinion or
                  assessment. If Serbian sources are cited, they are prefaced
                  with the terms “according to”, “claims”, “alleges”, “asserts”,
                  “reports”. They are usually self-motivated or self-interested
                  allegations which are little more than “myths” and
                  “propaganda” and spurious “claims”. Information from Albanian
                  sources, on the other hand, are facts, etched is stone facts,
                  chiseled in marble and granite “truths”, to be taken at face
                  value truisms and self-evident. Serbian “claims” or “myths”
                  are juxtaposed to Albanian “facts” and “truths”. Serbian myths
                  were juxtaposed against Albanian truths. Whatever the Serbs
                  “claimed” or “reported” or “alleged” or “said” was deemed a
                  myth. Conversely, anything and everything an Albanian Muslim
                  said or wrote was etched-in-stone, chiseled-in-granite, gospel
                  “truth”, a priori true and factual because an Albanian or
                  Shqiptar had uttered them. Laughable? Psychotic and
                  delusional? If it is psychotic and delusional, then this
                  applies to the foremost US “experts” and “scholars” and think
                  tank pundits and “analysts". The key here is to foster ambiguity and uncertainty. The
                  objective is to create a smokescreen or a diversion. Like in
                  Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter, C. Auguste Dupin has
                  someone fire a pistol as a diversionary tactic in the street
                  so that he can switch “the purloined letter” unobserved. The
                  diversion in this case is to conceal the policy of ethnic
                  cleansing and genocide being conducted by the ethnic Albanian
                  population and leaders in Kosovo. Without the diversion, the
                  evidence becomes overwhelming that human rights abuses against
                  the Serbia population are cumulative and egregious.
                  There is a suspension of disbelief in the Kosovo crisis. We
                  delude ourselves into believing that we do not understand what
                  is going on. We know perfectly well what is going on. In 1941,
                  after Adolf Hitler created a Greater Albania, Kosovar Albanian
                  Muslim political leader Dzafer Deva from Kosovska Mitrovica
                  declared: "The freedom has come. Yugoslavia is no more. The
                  Greater Albania has been created. Serbs ought to be expelled
                  from the Balkans or killed." The Kosovo crisis was always
                  about separatism and secession.
                  From 1981 to 1989, an estimated 20,000 Kosovo Serbs were
                  driven out from Kosovo. Many were settled in refugee camps in
                  Belgrade. Kaludjerica, near Belgrade, was a town settled by
                  Serbian refugees from Kosovo in the 1980s. Kosovo Serbs were
                  murdered, raped, beaten, attacked, and terrorized to leave
                  their homes and property in Kosovo. Serbian churches,
                  gravestones, cemeteries, and religious and cultural and
                  historical monuments were vandalized, desecrated, and
                  destroyed. Serbian priests and nuns were attacked, beaten, and
                  abused. Why was this systematic, planned, and organized
                  campaign of genocide against the Serbian Orthodox Christian
                  population of Kosovo suppressed and censored in the US and the
                  West?

• Dall'articolo "Pacchetto sicurezza: la criminalizzazione del malessere sociale" (Etleboro, 1 novembre 2007):

Il Consiglio dei Ministri ha approvato un pacchetto di cinque disegni di legge destinati a garantire la sicurezza dei cittadini e a porre in essere i dovuti provvedimenti di contrasto all’illegalità diffusa. Un corpo di norme che risponde all'esigenza di recepire il progetto di e-justice, volto alla creazione di una banca dati biometrica a livello europeo, nonché di rimodellare il sistema giuridico in funzione della nuova percezione della criminalità dettata dalla strategia del terrore.

Giunge finalmente in Parlamento il pacchetto sicurezza, composto essenzialmente da 5 disegni di legge destinati a cambiare profondamente il volto del nostro sistema giudiziario che si prepara a divenire uno "stato di giustizia" e non più "uno stato di diritto". I decreti legge riportano disposizioni in materia di sicurezza urbana; ratifica di adesione al trattato di Prüm e istituzione della Banca dati nazionale del Dna e del Laboratorio centrale, misure di contrasto alla criminalità organizzata; disposizioni in tema di reati di grave allarme sociale e di certezza della pena , mentre non è stato ancora approvato il decreto legge che reintroduce il reato di falso in bilancio. L’Italia dunque conferma la creazione di una Banca dati del DNA, come stabilito nell'ambito del Trattato di Prum, già sottoscritto da Belgio, Germania, Spagna, Francia, Lussemburgo, Paesi Bassi ed Austria, che sancisce il potenziamento della cooperazione transfrontaliera per contrastare terrorismo e migrazione illegale, accelerando lo scambio di informazioni tra le autorità preposte all'applicazione della legge. Un obiettivo che passa necessariamente attraverso il confronto del profilo del DNA di un individuo con i profili presenti nei database automatizzati degli Stati membri, nonché di dati relativi alle impronte digitali e all'immatricolazione dei veicoli.
Il Trattato di Prüm, definito anche Schengen III, è un ulteriore passo verso la completa integrazione degli ordinamenti giuridici degli Stati, come previsto dai progetti di e-justice ed Eurojust, che arriveranno a creare un unico organismo di giustizia senza tuttavia avere una base costituzionale. Rappresenta questa l'ennesima regressione istituzionale perché va ad incidere sui diritti fondamentali dell'individuo di libertà e di riservatezza senza essere sottomesso a delle procedure di ratifica che chiedono l'intervento dei cittadini europei, e senza rispettare i normali meccanismi di legislazione comunitaria che prevede l'intervento del Parlamento europeo. La regressione è ancora più evidente se si pensa ai meccanismi per la sua applicazione, con la creazione di un Comitato dei Ministri dell'interno degli Stati Europei, e un gruppo di lavoro comunitario, che avranno la struttura di una commissione di esperti ma non di un organo istituzionale. Ci si aspettava, dunque, che con la decadenza della Costituzione Europea si sarebbero arrestati anche tutti quei progetti che avevano una carta costituzionale come punto di riferimento. Invece il cammino dell'integrazione è continuato senza sosta, e in maniera molto silenziosa sta arrivando nelle sue fasi finali senza che le persone sappiano cosa sta accadendo in realtà.Le carte costituzionali vengono inesorabilmente sostituite, a tutti gli effetti, da trattati scritti dai comitati di esperti, sancendo la deliberata violazione dei diritti fondamentali del cittadino senza che vi siano poi degli strumenti di deterrenza per fermare gli abusi. I nostri Parlamenti approvano dei Trattati "a scatola chiusa" che contengono clausole molto pericolose e definizioni controverse e vaghe - si pensi alle forme di restrizione della libertà e di arresto - che necessitano di un'interpretazione nel rispetto dei singoli ordinamenti.Tuttavia il Trattato di Prüm confida la soluzione di questo genere di problemi sempre al Comitato dei Ministri e al gruppo di lavoro, senza prevedere nessun meccanismo di coordinamento per autorità di protezione della privacy o dei diritti dell'uomo. Si credeva che la Costituzione Europea avrebbe colmato queste lacune, e ora che è stata congelata - proprio perché i cittadini non volevano una tale invasione dei propri diritti - tutto resta ma viene messo nelle mani dei comitati di esperti.
Vi è in ogni caso un'evidente sproporzione tra i vantaggi che si avrebbero nella "lotta al terrorismo e alla criminalità transfrontaliera" e la violazione dei diritti dei cittadini: si cerca di combattere con le armi nucleari una guerriglia di bande. Il contrasto all'immigrazione clandestina - si veda la legge Bossi-Fini - è stato il trampolino di lancio del sistema di tracciamento degli individui, nel quadro del programma Schengen Information System, e non a caso la predisposizione di sistemi informatici per la raccolta delle informazioni sui movimenti delle popolazioni e degli emigranti rappresenta una clausola fondamentale per avere accesso alle trattative di ingresso all'Unione Europea.
Il pericolo da cui in realtà sentiamo il desiderio di proteggerci è quello creato dalla disinformazione, ma nei fatti la sicurezza nazionale è compromessa dall'instabilità sociale, dovuta al malessere economico. Mentre da una parte si va a criminalizzare "l'emigrato clandestino", le banche e le multinazionali commettono i veri crimini transfrontalieri per i quali non sono previsti confronti o prelievi del DNA.
Per cui, ci stanno nascondendo qualcosa di terribile, che va al di là del problema dell'invasione della privacy, e sfocia nel pericolo dell'internamento e della persecuzione dei cittadini comuni.
Infatti, il corpo di norme del pacchetto sicurezza, presenta come fattore comune quello di criminalizzare il cittadino per gli atti commessi durante la sua vita quotidiana, nonché di trasformare in reato un problema di malessere sociale. Dunque viene scritto un decreto per sicurezza urbana, per "contrastare alcuni comportamenti diffusi e particolarmente odiosi della cosiddetta criminalità di strada" , come "pratiche di accattonaggio, il danneggiamento, deturpamento o imbrattamento di immobili non solo di pregio, l’occupazione abusiva di suolo pubblico anche a fini di commercio, la detenzione di razzi, bengala od altro materiale con potenzialità offensiva in prossimità di manifestazioni sportive." Sottolineiamo che questi non sono reati penali veri e propri, ma "atteggiamenti odiosi", come li definisce il governo che sono stati trasformati in crimini con conseguenze penali.
Il pacchetto sicurezza va inoltre a contrastare quegli eventi che creano un forte allarme sociale con misure di inasprimento delle pene per omicidio colposo e lesioni personali colpose se aggravati dallo stato di ebbrezza da alcool o da stupefacenti.
Il malessere sociale, derivante dal degrado della società e dall'insostenibilità economica, sono diventati invece sintomi di intolleranza all'interno delle città e così nuovi reati per criminalizzare "l'altro" e creare un clima di paura e di smarrimento. In un certo senso si cerca di eliminare il rischio di morte, di pericolo o di perturbazione della quiete pubblica, tuttavia, questi tentativi andranno ad esasperare la vivibilità stessa, perché pian piano agirà sulla psicologia delle persone che si sentiranno costantemente controllate e sottoaccusa. Lo "stato di polizia", il tracciamento dei criminali, la vigilanza elettronica sino ad arrivare alla costruzione di un database del DNA e di dati biometrici crea un danno al tessuto sociale che va al di là della violazione della privacy del cittadino.
La diffidenza e la paura renderà la società sempre più pericolosa, il terrore porta al panico, e il panico porta con sé crimini. La componente economica non è da sottovalutare, perché ghettizza la società, crea dei gruppi discriminati, che cercano di emergere ma non riescono essendovi un muro di intolleranza impenetrabile. I media poi sono riusciti ad esasperare tali sensazioni di insicurezza, trasmettendo a ripetizione gli episodi di cronaca e violenza, che riescono a contaminare la vita normale, e a inviare il messaggio subliminale che "ognuno di noi può essere il prossimo ad essere colpito da dei crimini violenti e inaspettati". È stata così progressivamente introdotto il concetto di "pericolosità", che sostituisce quello di criminalità, senza considerare che la percezione del pericolo potenziale è una cosa soggettiva, e ogni innocente diventa potenzialmente colpevole. Il diritto così degenera e va a condannare gli atti di inciviltà o di "allarme sociale" per poi sfociare nella penalizzazione delle intenzioni e non degli atti. Un principio questo che è assolutamente contrario allo stato di diritto, alla democrazia, e porta ad una dittatura invisibile che potrebbe incarcerare delle persone per le loro opinioni. Tale scenario non è così lontano dalla realtà che cerca di creare un sistema giudiziario basato sulla prevenzione istituendo così il "reato preventivo" che non è altro che un reato psicologico. Ed ecco che la "sicurezza" diventa un pretesto per aumentare la repressione nei confronti di quelle persone che maggiormente subiscono la crisi economica, che vedono compromessa la propria sopravvivenza dal peggioramento dell'economia nazionale. Il rafforzamento della repressione, e l'instaurazione di uno stato poliziesco sono ormai elementi indispensabili del liberismo economico, al fine di reprimere le reazioni violente e illegali della massa crescente dei poveri e degli esclusi, e così di rafforzare la sottomissione e la rassegnazione della popolazione, ed evitare una rivolta contro l'opera di sabotaggio e di "demolizione sociale" condotto dai governi e dalle multinazionali. Il cambiamento della nostra economia, che porta con sé inflazione e disoccupazione, viene così facilitato dalla restrizione delle libertà e della criminalizzazione dei poveri e delle entità più fragili che non hanno né rappresentanza politica né potere contrattuale.

• Dall'articolo "La Casta ci fa ammazzare" (Maurizio Blondet, Effedieffe, 1 novembre 2007):

In tutto il resto d'Europa, i ministeri competenti sapevano che in Romania esistono due società: i veri rumeni e gli zingari.
Sanno che questa seconda società è criminale, ferocissima, di accattoni minacciosi, inaspriti dalla sopravvivenza sotto un regime demente-comunista di cui, all'occasione, si facevano spie e delatori e peggio.
Tutti i governi europei erano informati, ed hanno preso le misure necessarie in anticipo, sospendendo per questa torma di accattoni delinquenti, neo-cittadini «europei» la libera circolazione secondo Schengen.
Tutti, tranne il governo di Roma.
Tutti tranne Giuliano Amato, l'intelligentissimo ministro dell'Interno.
Tutti sapevano questo dato antropologico, tranne la TV di «sinistra»: pochi giorni fà, a Ballarò, un comico tesserato PCI derideva gli italiani per il loro senso di insicurezza, perché - ha detto - in realtà omicidi e furti sono diminuiti.
Ora che una donna di 47 anni è in agonia per il trattamento subito dal «rom», il governo Prodi emana un decreto d'urgenza: espulsioni più rapide.
Il rom stupratore assassino sarà dunque espulso, anzichè sorbirsi i regolari due-tre mesi di galera con TV a colori in Italia?
Il rom ubriacone che ha fatto strage di quattro giovani dovrà lasciare i caldi arresti domiciliari per tornare ad ammazzare i rumeni normali?
Saranno espulsi tutti, rumeni lavoratori e gli zingari, innocenti e farabutti insieme?
Splendido diritto italiota.
E' un'emergenza, ci dicono.

Le «emergenze» sono il pane quotidiano di governi insieme incompetenti, ignoranti e arroganti, che non sanno ma credono di sapere tutto.
Le emergenze sono inevitabili, quando chi ne ha il dovere non sa prevedere.
E per giunta deride i suoi cittadini, per la loro insicurezza.
Giuliano Amato, l'intelligentissimo, ha detto di temere soprattutto una cosa: che le tifoserie di Roma facciano spedizioni punitive contro i rom.
Dunque teme gli italiani, non i rom.
E' verso noi cittadini che esercita il sospetto e la prevenzione, non verso i delinquenti.
Siamo noi cittadini i sospetti razzisti, sospettabili per principio, non quei pidocchi umani che, abituati a succhiare il sangue del popolo rumeno, sono venuti a succhiare il nostro.
Non è un caso, è il risultato di una ideologia precisa.
Anche nell'immenso gulag staliniano i delinquenti comuni, definiti «socialmente vicini al proletariato», godevano di trattamento di favore dagli aguzzini, ed erano messi a fare i kapò degli onesti incarcerati, religiosi, intellettuali, dissidenti innocui, onde potessero tormentarli meglio, derubarli, rapinarli e violentarli a piacere: un aumento di pena per i buoni, approvato dal regime.
E' da questo mondo che vengono i «rom».
Sono furbissimi, e molto ben informati.
Hanno capito subito che l'Italia è il loro paradiso.
Vedono bene che la nostra polizia non è attrezzata nemmeno psicologicamente ad un tipo di delinquenza così dura e spietata.
Tanto più che i nostri agenti sono sotto l'occhio sospettoso di magistrati sub-leninisti, pronti a sbattere in galera i poliziotti se «eccedono», e a coprire i delinquenti degli immensi benefici della «legislazione premiale», invenzione sub-italiota della Casta che non ha uguali in nessun altro sistema giuridico, dei larghissimi «benefici di legge» per i recidivi più impuniti, dei «domiciliari» per pluriassassini.
Carcerazione preventiva?
Sì, ma solo per i manager, i colletti bianchi, i colpevoli di falso in bilancio o di evasione fiscale vera o presunta.
Per gli omicidi invece libertà provvisorie a man bassa, sospensioni delle pene, simpatia sociale, impunità e condoni.

La Forleo, oggi eroina delle «sinistre» miliardarie di Stato e di Santoro, nel 2005 minacciò di arresto a Milano due poliziotti che avevano beccato un egiziano che viaggiava in autobus senza il biglietto, e pretendevano di fargli la multa (che viene comminata a tutti i cittadini nelle stesse condizioni).
Evidentemente, per la Forleo quelli sono «vicini al proletariato», non gli agenti che fanno il loro dovere.
Ecco perché non sto dalla sua parte nemmeno quando accusa Mastella.
Siamo avvertiti: in Italia, è meglio essere un pregiudicato.
E' una posizione favorevole per principio.
La Caritas, tanto per cominciare, ti trova un lavoro protetto (a noi onesti, no), il comune ti dà la casa (niente ai pensionati).
Tra un pregiudicato e un cittadino incensurato sua vittima, è normale che sia il primo a prevalere nel cosiddetto «processo» italico.
Lui conosce meglio i nostri codici e le loro scappatoie, ha già un avvocato di fiducia, ed ha la simpatia ideologica della magistratura, o almeno la sua neutralità: onesto e disonesto recidivo sono la stessa cosa, per la Giustizia.
Anzi, chi accusa («Mi ha derubato! Lo riconosco!») è già visto male: e il pregiudicato, esperto di queste cose, spara di rimando una querela per calunnia.
E allora sono guai tuoi, onesto cittadino: tu senza pendenze, per il giudice, equivali al delinquente con la fedina lunga un chilometro.
Neutralità!
Nessun pregiudizio!
Ancora una volta, non è un caso.
Tra la Casta del potere e il delinquente organizzato c'è contiguità, e dunque simpatia professionale.
In certi comuni di Calabria e Sicilia, c'è addirittura identità: i sindaci sono i camorristi, i rappresentanti della 'ndrangheta e della mafia.
Ma la contiguità è più vasta.

Pensiamoci un attimo: il rom ci sottrae il portafoglio per la strada.
Visco ci toglie i soldi dal conto corrente, ci spia, ci intercetta, ci manda «cartelle pazze» per derubarci e terrorizzarci.
L'albanese rapinatore svaligia a mano armata l'aziendina artigiana, la tabaccheria, il gioielliere.
Visco e il suo fisco non riconoscono la perdita di reddito da rapina: paga le tasse, suddito, evasore! Tutti i mestieri onesti sono soggetti a super-tassazione e sospetti di evasione.
Tutti i «mestieri» delinquenziali, a cominciare dalla prostituzione, sono esenti da tasse.
Insomma ci derubano dall'alto e dal basso.
Insieme, in perfetto tacito accordo.
Ma non gli bastava.
Adesso mandano i rom ad ammazzare signore che tornano a casa.
Sono mandanti, d'accordo, preter-intenzionali: ma la legislazione che consente questo genere di delitti è tutta stata instaurata, preparata, voluta da loro.
Perciò attenti al «decreto d'emergenza» con cui contano di calmare la nostra rabbia: vedrete che non servirà ad espellere nessun delinquente straniero.
Servirà ad espellere, magari, qualche panettiere egiziano che David Amato bolla come «islamista».
Servirà, in qualche modo, contro di noi.
Il decreto dà ai prefetti il diritto di espulsione di sospetti, al di fuori di un giudizio che sarebbe troppo lungo (così l'hanno voluto loro).
Io mi fido dei prefetti, ma non mi fido della casta.
Attenti ai «provvedimenti amministrativi» per via breve: nei regimi comunisti sovietici, servivano a decretare la morte o le «cinquine» (cinque anni di Siberia) «per via amministrativa», ossia senza gli inopportuni ostacoli della forma giudiziaria: niente avvocati, nessun capo d'accusa preciso, bastava essere «socialmente borghese» (laureato, magari, e con la cravatta).
La «cinquina» veniva poi prolungata anche di cinque volte non per via giudiziaria, ma dagli aguzzini stessi, ancora una volta per via amministrativa: era il «condono» emesso dai nostri magistrati di sorveglianza, solo al rovescio.
Il nostro giudice carcerario «condona» ai delinquenti e riduce la pena.
I «giudici» del gulag aggravavano la pena agli onesti e agli innocenti.
In entrambi i casi, senza pubblicità e senza formalità.

Pensateci: non c'è una grande differenza.
E la «legislazione premiale» per i delatori si applica solo a comprovati assassini e pregiudicati.
Non al cittadino comune che, essendo estraneo alla malavita, non ha informazioni da dare utili alla magistratura, per facilitarle il lavoro d'indagine (troppa fatica).
Per principio, chi è onesto non può essere un «collaboratore di giustizia».
E' solo un «oggetto di giustizia».
Il gruppo di tre funzionari comunisti che ti condannava in URSS mica pretendeva di essere una magistratura, e di sviscerare colpe e innocenze: si definiva «troika amministrativa», e ti spacciava secondo decreti d'emergenza: «difesa della rivoluzione», «morte ai sabotatori», tali erano le motivazione dell'emergenza.
I contadini ucraini che conservavano le sementi nascondendole ai rossi e alle loro requisizioni, erano liquidati sul posto da «agenti» spesso delinquenti comuni in divisa, come «incettatori di grano», insomma come evasori fiscali.
In altro clima, oggi è la stessa cosa.
Formalmente, la casta non ha istituto il Gulag.
Non ne ha bisogno: le loro torrette di sorveglianza sono le intercettazioni e il loro frugare nei conti correnti, e l'obbligo di comunicare a chi e perché hai pagato 150 euro in contanti.
I loro reticolati sono le loro «leggi» che imprigionano noi cittadini, soffocano le nostre libertà lecite, mentre lasciano liberi i rom di malfare di nuovo.
Il nostro lager è l'esazione fiscale al 60% che non ci lascia i soldi per pagare il mutuo, è la continua esazione che colpisce i lavoratori dipendenti derubati già direttamente in busta paga.
Il concetto di lavoro forzato è già nei mille, nei 700 euro mensili a cui sono condannati decine di milioni di cittadini per il loro lavoro: dove fuggi, come ti salvi, che autonomia e libertà hai, con 700 euro mensili?

La Casta ha introdotto da ultimo una novità giuridica straordinaria: chi denuncia il furto dell'auto o del portafoglio, deve pagare bolli e «diritti» più costosi di quelli richiesti per rinnovare il passaporto.
La vittima già derubata dal «socialmente vicino» deve insomma pagare anche un pedaggio allo Stato che non l'ha difesa.
La denuncia non è gratuita come in ogni altro Paese: hai osato denunciare il nostro protetto delinquente?
Sii punito!
Sarà anche per questo che «i reati diminuiscono»: a diminuire, magari, sono le denunce.
Perché ora bisogna pagarle.
E a che servono, se il carabiniere è il primo a dirti, sospirando, che i furti restano non perseguiti nel 98% dei casi?
Meglio risparmiare.
Ci sono le tasse da pagare.
O la multa da 70 euro se un tuo albero ha fatto cadere un caki sul marciapiede (hai sporcato, cittadino, prendi esempio dagli zingari).
O la multa da 3 mila euro se hai fatto il trasloco senza aver chiesto - non lo sapevi - la «autorizzazione amministrativa»: succede a Milano, non m'invento niente.
E allora lasciatevi ammazzare la moglie.
E siate pronti a rispondere al giornalista del TG3 o al vescovo che vi chiede, davanti al sangue ancora caldo: «Ha perdonato l'assassino?».
Se non date la risposta giusta, Amato vi sospetta di volervi far giustizia di solo, di essere un adepto di un Ku Klux Klan romanesco che esiste nelle sue fantasie.
Vi farà mettere sotto sorveglianza, intercetterà il vostro cellulare, violerà il segreto bancario per frugare nei conti e vedere se i vostri redditi sono regolari: voi, non l'assassino con carta d'identità europea.

Quello è regolare.
E' socialmente vicino.
E' collaboratore di giustizia: la giustizia loro.

• Dall'articolo "Un clima pericoloso" (Stefano Rodotà, La Repubblica, 3 novembre 2007):

L'aggressione di ieri sera contro un gruppo di romeni dimostra che è avvenuto
qualcosa che i pessimisti sentivano nell'aria. Quando sono tanto forti le
emozioni, e nessuno le raffredda e troppi le sfruttano, non soltanto diventa
difficile trovare le risposte giuste, ma si esasperano i conflitti.

Da un caso gravissimo, l'uccisione di Giovanna Reggiani, si è passati con troppa
rapidità all'indicazione di responsabilità collettive. L'assassinio è quasi
finito in secondo piano, e l'attenzione è stata tutta rivolta a documentare una
sorta di incompatibilità tra la nostra società e la presenza romena, insistendo
sulla percentuale di reati commessi da persone provenienti da quel paese. In un
clima sociale che si sta facendo sempre più violento, le premesse per l'apertura
della caccia al romeno, purtroppo, ci sono tutte.

Così non basterà condannare l'accaduto. Le risposte istituzionali sono già
venute, e sarebbe sbagliato chiederne ulteriori inasprimenti, che darebbero la
sensazione che alla violenza si debba reagire solo con la violenza sì che, se lo
Stato arriva tardi o in maniera ritenuta inadeguata, tutti sarebbero legittimati
a farsi giustizia da sé. Alla politica si devono chiedere non deplorazioni, ma
misura; non ricerca di consenso, ma di soluzioni ragionate.

Da anni, da troppi anni, siamo prigionieri di un uso congiunturale delle
istituzioni, che porta a misure che rispondono ad emozioni o a interessi di
breve periodo più che alla realtà dei problemi da affrontare. E' un rischio che
stiamo correndo anche in questi giorni, mentre avremmo bisogno di analisi non
approssimative e testa fredda nell'indicare le via d'uscita. Di fronte alle
tragedie nessuno dovrebbe fare calcoli meschini.

Il presidente della Repubblica ha sottolineato che le questioni
dell'immigrazione esigono responsabilità comuni dell'Unione europea. Il
presidente del Consiglio si è messo in contatto con il primo ministro romeno.
Dalle parti più diverse si è sottolineata la necessità di un controllo del
territorio e di una attenzione per le condizioni in cui vivono gli immigrati. E'
stata proprio una donna romena che ha consentito l'immediato arresto
dell'assassino.

Perché allineo questi fatti? Perché, messi insieme, dimostrano la parzialità
della tesi di chi pensa che sia sufficiente inasprire le pene, cancellare le
garanzie, far di tutt'erbe un fascio, sparare nel mucchio. "Facimmo 'a faccia
feroce" è una vecchia tecnica di governo, ma è esattamente il contrario di quel
che serve in situazioni come questa. E' indispensabile, invece, una strategia
integrata, fatta di cooperazione internazionale, di legalità a tutto campo, di
efficienza degli apparati di sicurezza, di misure per l'integrazione, di
politica delle città. Ed è indispensabile una politica volta a promuovere la
fiducia degli immigrati: senza la collaborazione di quella donna, senza la
rottura dello schema dell'omertà (purtroppo così forte anche nella nostra
cultura), l'assassino non sarebbe stato individuato così rapidamente. In ogni
società la fiducia è una risorsa essenziale. Da soli, i provvedimenti di ordine
pubblico non ce la fanno, non ce l'hanno mai fatta.

Essere consapevoli di tutto questo non è cattiva sociologia, ma buona politica,
anzi l'unica politica possibile. Proprio quanti si preoccupano dell'efficienza
dovrebbero esigere che si facciano passi concreti in quelle direzioni. Proprio
chi invoca la legalità deve sapere che questa non è divisibile, ed è stato
giustamente notato che uno dei meriti del "pacchetto sicurezza" è nell'aver
previsto anche una nuova disciplina del falso in bilancio. Proprio chi fa
professione di garantismo deve mostrare coerenza, soprattutto nei momenti
difficili: non si può essere garantisti a corrente alternata.

Non sto sostenendo che il problema è "ben altro". Cerco di dire che non ci si
può mettere la coscienza in pace con un decreto e una raffica di espulsioni,
dando così all'opinione pubblica la pericolosa illusione che il problema sia
risolto. Qualche sera fa, intervenendo in una trasmissione televisiva, Pier
Luigi Vigna, certo non imputabile di atteggiamenti compiacenti verso chi viola
la legalità, ha riferito la risposta di un responsabile dell'ordine pubblico ad
una sua domanda su dove fossero finiti i lavavetri scomparsi dalle vie di
Firenze: "Stanno a rubare". E' l'effetto ben noto a chi ha indagato sulla
scomparsa o la diminuzione dei reati nelle aree videosorvegliate: semplicemente
i comportamenti criminali si erano spostati nelle zone vicine. Ecco perché, se
davvero si vuole uscire dalla violenza e vincere la paura, nuove norme contenute
in un decreto possono essere un punto di partenza, vedremo fino a che punto
accettabile.

Guardando solo agli inasprimenti della legislazione, anzi, si finisce col
distogliere lo sguardo dalla realtà. Più di una inchiesta di questo giornale,
ultima quella di Giuseppe D'Avanzo, ha documentato il degrado urbano, le
terribili condizioni di vita degli immigrati. Si può davvero pensare che il
problema si risolva con una politica delle ruspe e degli "allontanamenti"? Con
una tolleranza zero che poi non riesce neppure ad essere tale se le forze di
polizia non sono messe in grado di un controllo intelligente e mirato del
territorio, se i nuovi poteri dei sindaci finiscono con l'indirizzare la loro
attenzione verso una esasperazione del momento dell'ordine pubblico invece di
mettere al centro gli interventi strutturali, complici le difficoltà economiche
dei comuni? Si può certo contare sull'effetto dissuasivo di una massiccia ondata
di espulsioni. Ma quanto potrà durare? E quali saranno gli effetti reali e i
prezzi della nuova disciplina?

Il decreto riprende lo schema delle norme di attuazione della direttiva
comunitaria del 2004 sul diritto di circolazione e di soggiorno dei cittadini
comunitari (romeni compresi), in vigore dal marzo di quest'anno, con due
significative integrazioni. La prima riguarda l'attribuzione del "potere di
allontanamento" non più al solo ministro dell'Interno, ma pure al prefetto (una
figura di cui si continua chiedere la scomparsa e che, invece, ottiene così una
nuova e forte legittimazione). La seconda, ben più incisiva, consiste
nell'ampliamento delle cause che permettono l'allontanamento del cittadino
comunitario, riassunte nella formula dei "motivi imperativi di pubblica
sicurezza" che derivano dall'aver "tenuto comportamenti che compromettono la
tutela della dignità umana o dei diritti fondamentali della persona umana ovvero
l'incolumità pubblica, rendendo la sua permanenza sul territorio nazionale
incompatibile con l'ordinaria convivenza". Malgrado riferimenti altisonanti come
dignità o diritti fondamentali, siamo di fronte ad una formula larghissima,
nella quale possono rientrare le situazioni e i comportamenti più diversi. Come
sarà interpretata?

Qui gioca il clima in cui il decreto è stato approvato. Non "necessario e
urgente" fino alla sera prima (sono questi i requisiti di un decreto), il
provvedimento lo diventa dopo il brutale assassinio di Roma. Poiché si deve
supporre che il governo conoscesse già i dati riguardanti i reati commessi dai
romeni, sui quali si è tanto insistito in questi giorni, la conclusione
obbligata è che si è utilizzato lo strumento del decreto unicamente per
rispondere all'emozione dell'opinione pubblica. E la sua applicazione rischia di
essere guidata dalla stessa ispirazione, rendendo inoperanti le garanzie
necessarie per evitare che venga travolta una libertà essenziale del cittadino
europeo.

La pressione dell'opinione pubblica non è stata alleggerita dal decreto. Al
contrario, è stata ulteriormente legittimata, sì che bisogna attendersi che
continuerà nei confronti dei prefetti. Già si annunciano liste di migliaia di
persone da allontanare: questo renderà difficilissimo motivare in modo adeguato
ciascun singolo provvedimento. E i debolissimi giudici di pace, che dovrebbero
controllare questi provvedimenti, non hanno i mezzi per farlo in modo adeguato,
sì che non se la sentiranno di pronunciare un no. Per non parlare di un
successivo ricorso al tribunale amministrativo contro l'allontanamento, che
quasi nessuno potrà concretamente proporre. La garanzia giurisdizionale,
essenziale in uno Stato di diritto, rischia così d'essere concretamente
cancellata.

Alle norme del decreto bisogna guardare con distacco e preoccupazione. Con
distacco, perché non verrà solo da esse la soluzione di problemi che, com'è
divenuto evidentissimo proprio in questi giorni, esigono interventi di altra
qualità per rispondere alle legittime richieste dei cittadini in materia di
sicurezza. L'ordinaria convivenza, alla quale il decreto si riferisce, non è un
qualcosa da salvaguardare, ma da ricostruire con responsabilità e azioni comuni,
di cui gli italiani devono essere i primi protagonisti. Con preoccupazione,
perché le norme del decreto e il clima in cui nasce ci spingono in una direzione
che aumenta la distanza dall'"altro", che favorisce la creazione di "gruppi
sospetti", abbandonando la logica della responsabilità individuale.

Serve, davvero con "necessità e urgenza", un'altra forma di tolleranza zero.
Quella contro chi parla di "bestie", o invoca i metodi nazisti. Non è questione
di norme. Bisogna chiudere "la fabbrica della paura". E' il compito di una
politica degna di questo nome, di una cultura civile di cui è sempre più arduo
ritrovare le tracce. Un'agenda politica ossessivamente dominata dal tema della
sicurezza porta inevitabilmente con sé pulsioni autoritarie. Ricordiamo una
volta di più che la democrazia è faticosa, ma è la strada che siamo obbligati a
percorrere.