Rumours of War

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Matthew 24:6 

Diana Johnstone, European based US left-wing journalist, discusses the terrible war in Libya

The news about Libya you rarely see.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 is meant to protect innocent people in a time of war, which includes prisoners, civilians, wounded soldiers and medical staff.  It recent times it has been highly violated

The bust of Alfred Noble (1833-1969), the Swedish chemist, engineer, explosives expert who invented the dynamite is on this medal (prize), that is awarded to individuals who are meant to help create peace in the world. The irony of this gift that was a part of his will is that he probably did more than any individual in pre-nuclear times to make possible the horrors of warfare.  Sadly, it hasn't stopped to prevent the continuous wars 

The US spends $600bn on its military, more than all the countries of the world combined 

Jesus gave a detailed account of the planet just prior to His glorious Second Coming. The hunger for arms companies to gain more profit and multinational and transnational corporations hunger for oil, gas and minerals, will only lead to more intense bloody wars.  Peace talks won’t last (I Thess. 5:3) and ethnic strife’s, religious and political differences will only intensify and nation states that have been at peace for years will rise up against each other (Luke 21:10).  In the 19^th century two spiritual observers were deeply analysing the rapid buying up of arms by nation states and the swelling up of their armies and were observing that from the Napoleonic wars warfare was beginning to intensify.  Prolific Scottish Protestant historian/scholar James Aitken Wylie and Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy knew that a worldwide war was going to erupt and that the death toll would be catastrophic if nation states did not sit down and sort out their petty differences. 

• Napoleonic War (1793-1815)
• Turkish War (1827-1829)
• Crimean War (1853-1856)
• American Civil War (1861-1856)
• Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)
• Russian-Turkish War (1877-1878)
• Egyptian War (1882-1885)
• Spanish-American War (1898-1899)
• Sudan War (1898-1899)
• Boer War (1899-1902)
• Russian-Japanese War (1904-1905)
• Morrocco Conflict (1904-1906)
• Persian Conflict (1907-1912)
• Morrocco "Affair" (1911)
• Tripoli War (1911-1912)
• 1st Balkan War (1912-1913)
• 2nd Balkan War (1913) 

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian writer

'We are all brothers, yet I take a salary for being ready to commit  a murder, for teaching men to murder, or making firearms, gunpowder, or fortifications. "There are in Europe twenty-eight millions of men under arms," says Wilson, "to decide disputes not by discussion, but by murdering each other."' (1)

James Aitken Wylie (1808-1880), Scottish historian

"Europe at this hour ... nations are continually on the brink of war, their armies have grown to be enormous, and should conflict arise, the destruction of human life would be prodigious, and beyond all former precedent." (2)

Unfortunately it would only take a short fuse to start the ‘Great War’ and since World War I the blood has never been able to dry on this daily decaying planet.  Many observers have carefully analysed the great cost of life war brings to nation states.

"During the First World War, 10,000,000 people were killed outright, a further 10,000,000 died of epidemics, and 20,000,000 were wounded.  World War I was more destructive than the 901 major wars of the past 2,400 years; seven times more destructive than all of them combined.  World War II was four times worse than World War I." (3)

"The 20th century was the most violent one in human history.  Not only did it witness two world wars, and 30 years of major arms-fuelled tension between the world's superpowers, it also featured hundreds of localized conflicts, armed border disputes, civil wars, military coups and counter coups, revolutionary struggles and atmed invasions.  According to the Armed Conflicts Report 2000 and the State of the World Report 1999, there were 40 armed conflicts underway in 36 different countries as the 21st century was born.  Earth is planet at war." (4)

Q. Why will there always be wars leading up to the Second Coming of Christ?

A. Jesus prophesied the moral decline and the stonehearted coldness of mankind just prior to His Second Coming. The more selfish man becomes and the more he feels he doesn’t have to give an account to God for his evil deeds, he will get worse and constantly suppress his neighbour, as was the case before the fall of ancient Babylon and Sodom and Gomorrah (Ezek. 16:49, 50; Dan. 4:27).

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

Matthew 24:12

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

II Timothy 3:13

Wars will never be able to function properly without the selling of arms.  It doesn’t matter how deep the political or religious conflict is between two countries or ethnic tribes, wars can only prosper and progress with the huge supply of arms. Whether they are Kalashnikovs supplied to rebel groups in Afghanistan or in the hands of child soldiers in Sierra Leone or Uganda, or if it is Britain supplying £110,000 worth of arms to Nepal, or Russia selling arms and missile systems to Venezuela, Syria, Iran or Burma, or machetes supplied by France to the Hutus in the Rwanda war in 1994, the arms trade is the number one cause of deaths in warfare, where sadly the victims are always the innocent civilians, who usually have nothing whatsoever to do with the conflicts.  In the year 2005/6, startling but sad figures were released on the huge economic revenue arms companies were making on war.  They are all aware that the states they are supplying arms to violate human rights laws, but they don’t care.

The trade in small arms has grown into a $4 billion-a-year industry, fuelling insurgents and gorilla wars from Iraq to Congo.  From 1992 to 2002 the total size of the global drug trade more than doubled to $900 billion annually.  Ukrainian criminals trade their guns to their counterparts in Colombia in exchange for cocaine. (5)

Global spending on arms has hit a record high, swelling to 17 times the amount earmarked for alleviating world hunger.  This year, £561 billion will be used to buy weapons – more than £547 billion spent at the peak of the Cold War.  The figure dwarfs the £32 billion set aside for international aide and is more than double the debt of developing countries.  The leading 100 arms companies have seen sales increase by almost 60 per cent from £83 billion in 2000 to £142 billion in 2004.’ (6) 
             

Although a number of NGOs (Non Government Organisations) like Amnesty International do a good job in lobbying for the reducing and selling of arms, there is big profit to be made in these deadly weapons and because it is interlocked with theses countries self interests, arms will always be manufactured and distributed.

‘The US, UK, France, Russia, and China are responsible for 88 per cent of reported conventional arms exports – particularly shocking to realize that these same five countries make up the UN Security Council.  Since the US-led ‘war on terror’ ostensibly aims to rid the world of religious extremists…it is a terrible irony that the opposite seems to be happening.  The ‘war on terror’ has only intensified the trade and spread of small arms, increasing the violence.’ (7)  

President Obama is continuing the same geopolitical agenda as his predecessors, by waging relentless war on innocent civilians for self-interests.  He received the Nobel Peace Prize in the first year of his presidency and when he went to Oslo, Norway, he made a speech on Thursday, 10th December 2009 and this is a portion of what he said:

‘There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” (8)

This was spoken just over a week he announced that he would deploy 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.  Research has shown that he is no different than his predecessor.  Amnesty International has confirmed that President Obama is continuing the same policies as the globally loathed Bush administration.  

The president issued an executive order banning the use of torture and other ill-treatment, but endorsed the US Army Field Manuel, which permits prolonged sleep deprivation, isolation and manipulation of a detainees fears, contrary to the international ban on torture.  The administration has ordered the CIA to close its secret detention facilities, but leaving open the possibility, of the CIA detaining people in short-term facilities.  The new administration has also opposed any right of judicial review in US courts for foreign nationals held in the US air base in Bagram, Afghanistan, and continues to withhold information about those detained there. (9)

When wars are over, many are unaware of the effects it leaves behind.  May people suffer for years because of an invasion by a greedy nation state.  In Indo-China during the Cold War, a majority Buddhist peasant nation defeated the military might of the U.S., which was a major blow to U.S. military morale in Vietnam.  The U.S. still had the upper hand.  Between 1965 and 1975 the U.S. military sprayed millions of tons of a chemical, called Agent Orange on the jungles of Vietnam in what is described as “ADMs” – airborne “area denial missions”, leaving a nasty effect on the nation. Ecocide is the term used to describe the destruction of vegetation and landscape and when Agent Orange was sprayed on the jungles of Vietnam, ‘…in places, it still lingers in soil and water and reports started to come out linking it to high rates of cancers and premature deaths.  Since the war, first children and then grandchildren of those exposed to Agent Orange have been born with terrible deformities and mental retardation, in America and Vietnam.  Compensation is being sought against 37 US chemical companies, including Monsato and Dow, which produced the chemical which was named after an orange stripe on the barrel it came in.’ (10) This isn’t the only tragedy the Vietnamese have to deal with.  ‘Cluster bombs have killed 12,000 people in the 37 years since they were dripped on Laos.  Laos is more contaminated by cluster bombs than any other country on earth.  Roughly 90 million of them dropped there between 1964 and 1973, as part of bombardment heavier than that suffered by Germany and Germany combined in the Second World War.’ (11)

The wars between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government ended in 2009

A child soldier in the Sierra Leone war (1991-2002), where the British intervened there, not because of the atrocities taking place, but for its valuable diamonds  

A child by a land-mine in Cambodia

Chechen guerillas in southern Europe consistent fight for their independence from Russia.  It is lying on a gas pipeline

The Palestinians continue to fight against the Israelis

The Libya War is a result of the Arab uprisings that started in late 2010

The Mexico War between the drug traffickers and the government has cost thousands of lives

The war in Somalia is an ongoing endless war 

The people who experience the real brunt of war are the civilians, especially children.  Children make up some of the highest casualties in warfare.  They become the victims of landmines and smart bombs and cluster bombs and make up a large number of amputees, especially in Cambodia, Yugoslavia and Lebanon.  They also are used as child soldiers because they are easier to control and manipulate.

The Democratic Republic of Congo:

The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country situated in Central Africa, is usually by-passed by most mainstream news channels, reporters or journalists, but its devastation is absolutely horrific.  Since its colonization by Belgium’ King Leopold II, for its vast supply of rubber and the cruel methods he imposed upon the natives, by cutting off the hands of men, women and children who came out of line of his draconian methods, this francophone speaking state has never had time to heal and recover since European culture imposed itself on the third largest country in Africa.  It is still one of the most unexplored regions on earth, but what has been discovered is being heavily exploited, not just from neighboring African countries such as Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Uganda, but also by the USA, Europe and even Asia (e.g. China, North Korea).  This war has produced many orphans as well as many civilians being left motherless, fatherless, sister less, brother less, etc.  There are constant violent rapes and young girls being used as sex slaves, and an increase in disease, famine and genocide.  Why is there not a loud cry from our so-called worldwide community we live in and what is this horrific war all about, where peace talks seem almost pointless?  Who is profiting and how does the war affect our everyday lives?  One of the main reasons that fuels the wars in the Congo, unconscious to the average consumer in Europe, Asia and the United States, is our constant desires for more electronic products.  The Congo has diamonds, copper, gold, casserite and coltan.

By the IRC’s methodical calculations, Congo’s convulted war – are barely mentioned in the western media – has claimed far more lives than any other conflict since the Second World War. (14)

                                                                                            

…in eastern Congo, the last battlefield of the world’s biggest war…Shabanda, a remote gold-mining town surrounded by jungle…has been held by Rwandans and rebels for most part of the war, despite being heavily besieged by the Mayi-Mayi militia, a patriotic movement gone bad.  In Shabunda from the outlying village of Matili, Mayi-Mayi and rebels are fighting over a gold mine. (15) … Mr Kagambe finds himself cast more as a perpetrator than victim, with the unveiling of Rwanda’s role in the plunder and killing in eastern Congo, a war that has claimed the lives of five times as many people as the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur combined. (16)

More evidence of what a dirty war it is, fuelled by greed for Congo’s immense wealth of gold, diamonds and timber, and by the lust for power of regional leaders.  While the Zimbabean army profits handsomely from its links with Kabila, Rwanda and the Ugandan army regard Congo’s mining riches on there’s for the taking.  Gold and diamond dealers rub shoulders at the bars of the big hotels in Kigali, Rwanda, and Kumpala, Uganda, and businessmen have been flying in on private jets to negotiate lucrative deals.  The tragedy of Congo, is that virtually all the parties involved lack any incentive to end the war because they are growing rich from it.  The international parade of companies and nations exploiting the Congo’s wealth is endless.  Even the North Koreans are in there now: 350 of them are training Kabila’s forces in return for Uranium rights from the mine that supplied material for the atomic bomb that America dropped on Japan in 1945. (17)                                                                                                                      

In December of 2000 the shortage of coltan was the main reason that the popular sale of the Sony Play Station 2 video game came to an abrupt halt.  The DRC holds 80% of the world’s coltan reserves, more than 60% of the world’s cobalt and is the world’s largest supplier of high-grade copper. With these minerals playing a major part in maintaining US military dominance and economic growth, minerals in the Congo are deemed vital US interests. (18)

According to the United Nations, more than 20 international mineral trading companies import minerals from the Congo via Rwanda alone.  These imports, as well as others from Uganda and Burundi, end up in Asia, Europe and the United States. Sabena Airlines, Belgium's national carrier, regularly flies minerals out of the Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. American Airlines, in partnership with Sabena, also transports goods originating in the region throughout the United States. (Sabena says it transports coltan only from legitimate traders.) Tantalum is extracted from the ore by processing companies such as H.C. Starck, which produces 50 percent of the world's tantalum powder, and Cabot (CBT), the second-largest mineral processing company. These firms - which buy from international trading companies and also directly from large mines and local trading concerns - in turn sell refined tantalum powder to capacitor manufacturers - the largest of which are AVX (AVX), Epcos, Hitachi (HIT), Kemet, NEC (NIPNY) and Vishay. Their products go to the cream of the high-tech industry. Alcatel (ALA), Compaq, Dell, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard (HWP), IBM, Lucent, Motorola (MOT), Nokia and Solectron (SLR) are all major buyers of tantalum capacitors. Chip firms such as AMD and Intel are also increasingly buying tantalum powder in its raw form to use in manufacturing semiconductors. (19) An investigation by the Financial Times has found that tin ore from the mine is reaching smelters and solder manufacturers in Asia via a network of local middlemen and international traders. Household brands such as Hitachi (NYSE: HIT - News), Microsoft, Pioneer (NYSE: PIO - News) and Samsung are investigating whether they could be sourcing tin solder from these companies. (20)

The minerals that the bloody war in the conflict is in the Congo is over are:

• Tin (produced from cassiterite)—used inside your cell/mobile phone and all electronic products as a solder on circuit boards. The biggest use of tin worldwide is in electronic products. Congolese armed groups earn approximately $85 million per year from trade in tin.

• Tantalum (produced from “coltan”)—used to store electricity in capacitors in iPods, digital cameras and cell/mobile phones. Sixty-five to 80 percent of the world’s tantalum is used in electronic products.  Congolese armed groups earn an estimated $8 million per year from trading in tantalum.

• Tungsten (produced from wolframite)—used to make your cell/mobile phone or Blackberry vibrate.  Tungsten is a growing source of income for armed groups in Congo, with armed groups currently earning approximately $2 million annually.

• Gold—used in jewelry and as a component in electronics. Extremely valuable and easy to smuggle, Congolese armed groups are earning between $44 million to $88 million per year from gold.

• Uranium—is a silvery-white metallic chemical element primarily used in atomic weaponry.  The Unite States first utilised this mineral when they made the atomic bombs called fat man and little boy under the Manhattan Project and dropped these bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan at the close of the Second World War.

• Copper—Copper has the best electrical conductivity of all the non-precious metals and is therefore the material of choice for power generation, transfer and use. In electric motors and other components, optimising copper improves efficiency by reducing wasteful heat loss. Copper forms a very small percentage of the materials found dumped on landfill sites; it is too valuable to throw away.



Iraq:

Since the illegal invasion by the United States on Iraq in 2003, the evidence that has come to light is that there are no WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and that the late Sunni Muslim Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) had absolutely no political ties to the CIA/SAS trained Islamic Sunni guerilla Osama bin Laden.  It has been clearly confirmed that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, but greedy geo-politicians in the U.S. were already planning to colonise Iraq for its huge amounts of oil way before the planes had landed into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in the U.S.  A whole infrastructure of a country has been ruined, which has led to a civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, an ethnic cleansing programme of Chaldean and Armenian Christians, an increase in insurgents and terrorist groups recruiting more vulnerable minds on the Internet and a more unstable world. It has been the greed of western colonists that has fuelled Islamism around the world, from the Papal led armies in the Crusades in the Dark Ages, to the early 20th century British colonies of Iraq, Palestine, and oil-rich Iran (B.P. was founded on Iranian oil), to the U.S. using Muslim guerillas as allies during the Cold War against Communist Russia.  The following are news reports of the devastation that has hit Iraq since 2003.

·      The September 11 attacks shifted and accelerated but did not fundamentally alter a course the United States was already on.  During the Clinton years, Congress had passed by a nearly unanimous vote a bill authorizing military and financial support for Iraqi opposition forces, and the second Bush administration was considering plans to destabilize Iraq before the terrorist struck on September 11.  The Clinton administration also laid the foundations for a new ballistic missile defense system to defend against rogue states such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.  Had Al Gore been elected, and had there been no terrorist attacks on September 11, these programs – aimed squarely at Bush’s “axis of evil” – would still be under way. (21)

·      2003/04: An Army investigation of conditions at Abu Ghraib concluded that prison guards had carried out “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton abuse” for months.  The Army is investigating reports of crimes committed at other detention facilities in Iraq. Oct-Dec. 2003 Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad are abused and photographed by members of the U.S. military police force assigned to the site. (22)

·      2005: The country has been facing its most deadly spasm of violence in a year: last month alone, attacks killed more than 600 Iraqis, many of them Shi’ites targeted by Sunni jihadis bent on sowing civil war.  The countries universities have long served as the bulwark of Iraq’s secular society, refuges from the sectarian strife that threatens to rip the country apart.  But now violence has now come to the campuses.  Some prominent Iraqis say the surge in extremism on campus holds grave portents for Iraq.  “Once this poison enters the minds of our young people,” says Mohammed Jaffer al-Samarrai, a geography professor in Baghdad, “then all hope is lost for society.” (23)

·      2006: The White House has acknowledged for the first time that a key moment in post-war Iraq, the declaration by George Bush that “we have found the weapons of mass destruction”, was based on intelligence known in Washington to be false. (24)

·      2007: Even under Saddam, women in Iraq – including in semi-automous Kurdistan – were widely recognized as among the most liberal in the Middle East.  They held important positions in business, education and the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory family law that was the envy of women’s activists in neighbouring countries.  But sine the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to establish are crumbling away.  In much of the country, women can only now move around with a male escort.  Rape is committed habitually by all the main groups, including those linked to the government.  Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers. (25)

·      2008/09: Nearly four decades after the four biggest Western oil companies were expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, they are negotiating their return.  Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq’s first with big Western oil firms since the US-led invasion in 2003. (26) Iraq’s untapped oil reserves total at least 115 billion barrels – the third largest in the world. After months of sticking to their demands, oil companies now are agreeing to Iraq’s $2-a-barrel offer.  A partnership between Britain’s BP and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) for production rights to southern Iraq’s giant Rumalia field. The British and Chinese companies won the right to drill for 20 years in what is believed to be one of the world’s four largest fields with potential reserves of about 65 billion barrels. Italian oil executives from ENI flew to Baghdad to sign a deal on Zubair, a southern Iraq field with about 4.1 billion barrels of reserves.  ENI plans to pump about 1.1 billion barrels a day from Zubair in partnership with California-based Occidental Petroleum and South Korea’s Kogas.  ENI was quickly followed by ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, which agreed to produce about 2.3 million barrels a day in another giant field called West Qurna.  Unlike huge new finds off Mexico, Brazil and West Africa, many Iraqi fields were mapped years ago – some by the same companies now negotiating new contracts – and so will not require lengthy exploration before pumping began.  Iraqi oil officials say they expect about 45 companies to compete for 15 fields. (27)

Afghanistan:

Afghanistan is a predominantly Islamic country that is geographically situated in South-Central Asia that connects east and west Asia in the Middle East in a mountainous region termed the ‘Golden Crescent’.  It is predominantly populated with an ethnic tribe called the Pashtuns and it was once a part of Iran before the divide and rule methods of the colonialist powers interfered. Despite the collateral damage of bombings and the thousands of deaths of innocent civilians which goes unreported by the mainstream Western press in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a war which has cost billions of dollars and planned way before the twin towers and the Pentagon were even attacked on 9/11, with the huge body count of British and American soldiers still constantly returning home in body bags, it looks like there is no end to this senseless war in Afghanistan which has disastrously expanded the global narcotics trade in heroin.  The following news reports in recent years has proved and showed us that the war in Afghanistan has only benefited politicians, corporate elites, arms companies and has pocketed well the drug barons which has sadly led to a massive increase in heroin addicts across Asia and Europe.

·      2005: The International Narcotics Control Board reports that the opium crop in Afghanistan – which is the source of more than 90% of the heroin sold on Britain’s streets – says that Britain has the highest number of seizure rate in Europe and the third highest number of heroin addicts. (28) A UN report shows that drug abuse has also risen among the Afghan population, with increasing numbers injecting themselves with heroin, the report says.  Large quantities of drugs are being smuggled into Western Europe via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.  The UN report warns that expansion of the European Union last year from 15 to 25 states may make life easier for drug traffickers. (29)

·      2006: In Afghanistan, criminal syndicates based on a network of tribal leaders are making huge profits by trafficking narcotics.  They are now also working hand-in-glove with the Taliban.  The Taliban are making money hand over fist from drugs, ensuring that their forces remain well stocked with weapons. On 18 September, the head of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Antoni Maria Costa, one of the most resolute supporters of the war on drugs…observed, “As a result, Afghan opium is fuelling insurgency in Western Asia, feeding international mafias and causing a hundred thousand deaths from drug overdoses every year.” (30)

·      2007: Opium production in Afghanistan has reached record levels, with the country pumping out more illegal drugs than Colombia, Bolivia and Peru combined, a new report showed.  No other country has produced narcotics on such a deadly scale since China in the 19th century’, revealed the UN Office of Drugs and Crime Report. (31)                                                                    

·      2009: “At the end of the day, in the army, you’re just a pawn to the politicians.  We’re being terrorists, really.  We’re going over [to] their countries, blowing them up…We only do things that are going to benefit our own economy and that’s the only reason we’re over there, I believe.”                                    (Interview with a British veteran corporal back from a tour of Afghanistan) (32)

• ·      Afghans currently constitute the largest single refugee population, at around 3.6 million people. (33) 

Kosovo:

Republic of Kosvo President Fatmir Sejdui (left) and Pope Benedict XVI (right) in the Vatican on 2nd February 2008, a week before the Vatican seceded from Serbia. 

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci (left), Kosovo President Fatmir Sedjui (centre) and President George W. Bush (left) in the White House on July 21, 2008

Kosovo Prime Minster Hashim Thaci (left), Kosovo President Fatmir Sedjui (second from left), British Prime Minster Gordon Brown (centre) and British Secretary of State David Miliband (right) in 10 Downing Street, London England 

From the illegal bombings in Yugoslavia in 1999, covertly inspired by the Vatican and led out by anti-Serbian Senators, politicians and war commanders in the U.S. - Bob Dole, Joseph Biden (now Vice President of the United States), John McCain, Zbigniew Brzezinski, General Wesley Clark, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke and former President Bill Clinton, the Serbs in the partially-recognized Republic of Kosovo have been met with a daily onslaught of beatings, bombings and murder.  The U.S. led NATO bombings were strategically designed to weaken former Serbian and Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, so Kosovo would secede from Serbia and the United States could have easier access to the oil and gas in that region.  Polish-American politician Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has had one of the greatest influences on American Foreign Policy, clearly outlined the importance of the U.S. having access to that region.

‘The Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.’ (34)

In Britain, the public was fed with false news reports that the war was to protect the Kosovo Albanians from ethnic cleansing, a lie perpetuated by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’ spin-doctor, Alistair Campbell.  The main conflict, which is developing on Kosovo’s territory, involves rival oil and gas pipelines.  Russia has already started building one pipeline and the United States has started building another.  The two gas pipelines are adding to the situation.  The United States built a 955-acre air base in Kosovo called Camp Bondsteel in June 1999, the same month U.S. NATO bombings ceased in Yugoslavia.  It is one of its biggest overseas airbases. It was strategically placed there so that the United States can have easier access to the resources for their national interests.

The United States financially supports these Muslim leaders of Kosovo who are well known on Interpol’ database as war Criminals (Hashim Thaci, Prime Minister of Kosovo; Agim Ceku, former Prime Minister of Kosovo and chief of the Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.) and Ramush Haradinaj, former Prime Minister of Kosovo and guerilla for the K.L.A.) and have given them the red light to ethnically cleanse the land of Orthodox Christian Serbs while they are fully aware and close a blind eye to the Kosovo governments’ close ties to the Albanian Mafia, who in Europe have ‘been the chief perpetrator of drug and people smuggling, passport theft and forgery, human body parts sales, sex-slavery, abductions and murders.’ (35) The NATO bombings and the opening up of the EU borders have allowed the Albanian Mafia to flourish from a once small European based cartel, into a powerful transnational cartel.

The leading authority on the Kosovo War and the brutal ethnic cleansing of the Orthodox Christian Serbs in Kosovo is Dr. Vojin Joksimovich, a Serbian-American and an expert on the Balkans region, whose brilliant, solid documentation and the historical accuracy of his works, no journalist would dare to challenge.  He pulls the rug under the one-sided anti-Serbian Western press, who always paints the Serbs as criminals and thugs and gives us a distorted view of the conflict and he exposes the lies, propaganda and disinformation we are usually fed with by Western governments and their corporate controlled journalists concerning this region that is being exploited by Western conglomerates.

‘The nature of the conflict between the Serbs and Albanians is as complex as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East.  Serb-Albanian conflicts have been ongoing for at least 120 years-since the 1878 Congress of Berlin, when Serbia was formally internationally recognized. 

                                                                               

The Vatican sees Kosovo as an area of expansion for Roman Catholicism (spinta verso l’oriente) into “terra missions,” as well as the spreading of influence into the Balkan part of the Adriatic (mare nostro).  

                                                                                In the forefront of the Kosovo conflict have been the United States (U.S.) NATO, the European Union (EU), Group of Eight countries, (G8), Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Contact Group.  NATO bombs and cruise missiles started raining over Serbian targets on March 24, 1999, marking the first time in NATO’s 50-year history that the alliance directed its military might-second to none in the world-at a sovereign nation.  About 150 aircraft, participated from the United States, Britain, Italy, Canada, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany.  The NATO governments care about helpless civilians if, and only if, the people killed are white Europeans and the country doing the killing is not a US ally. 

                                                                 Mideast Christians condemned the “Islamist-inspired attack on Christian Serbia.”  The Coptic Armenian Union (CAU) blasted the official U.S. position, which “seems to favor Muslim against Christian Orthodox and Christians in general.” According to Bishop Artemije, as of November 30, 1999, over 80 Serbian churches and monasteries have been burned and destroyed since the KFOR was deployed.  Three fourths of the diocese has been destroyed. (36) In his November 7, 2001, speech at Georgetown University, Clinton implied that Muslims in the Middle East might hate America less if only they understood how much the Clinton administration had done for Islam. “We need to do a better job of getting the facts out.  Most Muslims in the Middle East, I’ll guarantee you, don’t know the last time we used our military power was to protect poor Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.”  From this one can conclude that Clinton decided to bomb a small Orthodox Christian nation in order to appease the Islamic world.  In addition, by doing so, he was aiding and abetting terrorism since Bin Laden was his key ally of convenience in the Balkans.’ (37)

The United States is well aware of what the Kosovo Albanians are doing, but they need them for their energy interests, for the U.S. is governed by the double standard policy.  While they have colonised one Islamic country (Iraq) and is exploiting its oil, it is aiding another and abetting another one, also for its oil.  But this is causing growing problems in Europe, for many politicians are well aware that all Kosovans have dreamed of a Greater Albania since the 19th century, which was also encouraged by Benito Mussolini during WWII, a plan that incorporates Kosovo, parts of Montenegro, Greece, and the Republic of Macedonia into Albania and the EU can’t afford to have a Muslim state in the heart of Europe, so many see the Balkans as having the deciding role of the stability or instability of Europe.

The following news reports since the illegal 70-day US-led NATO bombings in 1999, shows the reign of terror Serbs in Kosovo have experienced even up to this very day and the effects it has had on criminality throughout Europe.

An article in a Balkan newspaper with a picture of Kosovans with severed Serbian heads as trophies

The Albanian population attacking the Serbs 

The 'Nis Express Massacre' where 12 Serbs and 40 were injured on a traveling bus by a bomb planted on a bridge by Kosovo Albanians in post-War Kosovo on February 16, 2001 

Serbian Orthodox priests being exported to church by UN military

·      1999: Too many laser-guided bombs are going astray and killing innocent civilians.  Apart from the costly human toll, NATO airstrikes are knocking out bridges, roads and factories, destroying jobs and livelihoods not only in Yugoslavia, but throughout the region. (38)
                                                       
·      2001: ‘The Government has confirmed that a unit from Britain’s SAS successfully seized a group of Ethnic Albanian warriors suspected of killing dozens of innocent Serbs.  Interestingly, four of those detained were actually identified as belonging to the Kosovo Protection Force, which developed out of the Kosovo Liberation Army.  Headed by the KLA’s commander, Agim Ceku, the KLA was trained by the SAS before it was disbanded after the war. (39)
                 
·      2004: In March there were ethnic riots which left 19 dead, hundreds of homes burned and ransacked, and more than 4,000 Serbs displaced, when the majority Albanian population turned on the Serbian minority.  It was the worst violence in Kosovo since Nato expelled the Serbian military in an air raid in the summer of 1999. 30 Serbian Orthodox churches and other properties were attacked by rioting Albanians and hundreds of Serbian homes in the provinces were destroyed. (40)

·      2004: Slobadan Milosevic…the former Yugoslavian president spoke for nearly four hours in the United Nations court in The Hague…he used his command of the floor to blame an unholy alliance of the Vatican, Germany and the United States for the destruction of Yugoslavia. (41) The Milosevic trial has shown that genocide never occurred in Kosovo. (42)

·      2007: The head of the Catholic Church in Kosovo has denied backing demands for the war-torn province’s secession from Serbia and pledged to respect any outcome which reflects the will of the inhabitants.  The Pope received Kosovo’s president, Fatmir Sejdiu, in a private audience… (43)

·      1999-2008: The Kosovo Liberation Army, which has won support of the West for its guerilla struggle against the heavy armour of the Serbs, is a Marxist-led force funded by dubious sources, including drug money.  An investigation by The Times has established that police forces in three Western European countries, together with Europol, the European police authority, are separately investigating growing evidence that drug money is funding the KLA’s leap from obscurity to power.  Could the KLA’s need for funds be fuelling the heroin trade across Europe? (44) According to Interpol data, the Albanian Mafia earned $38 billion in 1999 on drug smuggling alone.  In 2001 the profit was $50 billion, and in 2002 the profit reached $70 billion.  The Albanian gangsters, with use of violence, have established a grip on the drug and sex trade in several EU countries.  Britain is an example.  Vice squad officers estimate that Albanians control more than 75% of the country’s brothels, and their operations in London’s Soho alone are worth more than 15 million pounds per year. (45) Most of those forced into the sex trade are from Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and southeast Europe. (46) From June 1999 to March 2004, some 200,000-250,000 Serbs and up to 100,000 other Serbian speaking minorities (Roma, Gorani, Slavic Muslims, Turks, Egyptians, Ashkali, Croats, and Jews) were ethnically cleansed and more than 2,000 murdered. (47) Between 2004 and 2007 the European Commission and the Council of Europe produced a series of situation reports on organized crime in Albania and the former Yugoslavia.  These reports were based on a survey of member states and were able to make some important quantitive observations about crime and the region.  According to the final report, issued in June 2007:  The traditional Balkan drug trafficking route has become a two-way route with an increasing volume of trafficking.  South East Europe lies along the most convenient route (the so-called ‘Balkan route’) between the supplier of some 90% of the world’s heroin (Afghanistan) and its most lucrative consumer market (Western Europe).  It is estimated that about 100 tons of heroin crosses South East Europe on its way to Western Europe, of which 85 tons eventually makes it to the consumer, a flow valued at US $25-30 billion.  This is more than the GDPs of most of the countries of the region, and consequently this flow has great corrupting power. (48)

The facts above show the state of the earth as we speak, it is terrible.  Many reading this for the first time may be shocked at what takes place each and every day under our noses.  Mankind is too greedy and selfish to make the earth more peaceful.  He allows racial, cultural and religious differences to turn him into an animal and this leads to more and more intense pandemonium.  It is quite clear that wars will never cease.  Geopoliticians and greedy Corporations make too much of a profit out of them, so they will just go on and on and on.  What is the most powerful thing about this information, is that this is how Jesus Christ pin point accurately described the planet just prior to His Second Coming, but what is really sad is that despite the warnings and the gospel going to every inhabitant on the globe (Matt. 24:14; Rev. 14:6), the majority of the world will reject Christ and decline their ticket to eternity (Matt. 7:14; II Peter 3:3, 4; Rev. 13:8).  Let us pray that all who are waiting for Jesus’ Second Coming will keep holding on.

Source: (1) The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy pp.119, 127;  (2) Which Sovereign Queen Victoria or the Pope by Rev. J. A. Wylie  p. 306; (3) Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom by Avro Manhattan p.394; (4) The No-Nonsense Guide to the Arms Trade by Gideon Burrows p.28; (5) NEWSWEEK, November 24, 2005 pp. 57, 62; (6)  METRO, Friday, September 22, 2006; (7) KALASHNIKOV AK47 by Gideon Burrows pp. 59, 63; (8) The Independent, Friday 11th December 2009 p.28; (9) AMNESTY MAGAZINE, May/June 2009 p.8 (10) The Times, Monday, June 18, 2007, p.34; (11) The Times, Tuesday, February 23, 2000; (12) The No-Nonsense Guide to the Arms Trade by Gideon Burrows pp. 99, 100; (13) The Impact of War on Children by Graca Machel p.7; (14) The Guardian, Tuesday, April 8, 2003, p.15; (15) The Guardian, Wednesday, July 2004, p.15; (16) The Times, Tuesday, April 7, 2009, p.32; (17) The Sunday Times, December 3, 2000, p. 2, 3; (18) http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/19-american-companies-exploit-the-congo/;                                                                                                        (19) http://www.globalissues.org/article/442/guns-money-and-cell-phones; (20) The Financial Times, 5th March 2008; (21) Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan pp. 91, 92; (22) TIME, May 17, 2004 pp. 30, 31; (23) TIME, June 6, 2005 pp. 44, 45; (24) The Guardian, Thursday, April 13, 2006 p.19; (25) G2 - The Guardian, Thursday 13th December 2007 p.8; (26) The Independent, Friday 20 June 2008; (27) TIME, December 7, 2009 pp. 50, 51; (28) The Guardian, Wednesday, 2 March 2005, p.10; (29) The Independent, Wednesday, March 2, 2005 p.14; (30) NEW STATESMAN, 9 October 2006 pp. 18, 19, 20; (31) METRO, Tuesday, August 28, 2007, p. 11; (32) NEW STATESMAN, 17 August 2009 p. 18; (33) The No-Nonsense Guide to the Arms Trade by Gideon Burrows p.54; (34) The Grand Chessboard by Zigniew Brzezinski p.124; (35) The Revenge of the Prophet by Vojin Joksimovich p. 196; (36) Kosovo Crisis by Vojin Joksimovitch pp. xiii, 6, xiv, 275, 277, 322, 278, 394; (37) The Revenge of the Prophet by Vojin Joksimovitch p.267; (38) TIME, MAY 31, 1999 pp. 28, 32; (39) EYE SPY! ISSUE 2, 2001 p.24; (40) The Guardian, Wednesday, May 26, 2004 p.15; (41) THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, Wednesday, September 1, 2004, p.15; (42) The Guardian, Monday, August 2, 2004 p. 16; (43) The Universe, Sunday, February 10, 2008 p.8;  (44) The Times, March 24, 1999, p.4;            (45) The Revenge of the Prophet by Vojin Joksimovich pp. 196, 197, 212;  (46) The Times, Thursday, March 8, 2007 p. 27; (47) The Revenge of the Prophet by Vojin Joksimovitch p.218; (48) CRIME AND ITS IMPACT ON THE BALKANS and affected countries, MARCH 2008