Tony Blair Signed Up to Help Albania to Join EU

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Albania has signed up Tony Blair as an adviser and lobbyist in its uphill struggle to join the 28-nation European Union.

Edi Rama, the Prime Minister of the formerly Communist country, said Mr Blair would be “personally, totally and voluntarily” helping his government.

Mr Blair, who was Labour Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007, is considered to be a hero in Albania, a formerly Communist state of just three million people.

He was involved in Nato intervention in Kosovo in 1999, where ethnic Albanians were being attacked by Serb forces.

At the time, many children in the country were named “Tonibler” in his honour.

At a joint briefing in Tirana, Mr Blair – who is not being paid in his new role - said joining the EU is the “right and proper” prospect for the former Communist country.

He said: “The orientation toward Europe is immensely important, and personally I'd love to see this country join the family of European nations.”

Albania first applied for EU candidate status in 2009, when it joined NATO. Read on and comment » | Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent | Thursday, October 03, 2013

My comment:

Tony Blair is committed to the Islamisation of Europe, obviously. Albania is a Muslim majority nation.

Is this a suitable nation to bring into the EU? If I remember correctly, Tone also wants Turkey in the Union. What is this meddlesome man trying to do to us?

The sooner this man retires from politics, the better it will be for all of us. – © Mark

This comment also appears here

Hero’s Welcome for Bush in Albania
BBC: President George W Bush has become the first US leader to visit Albania, where he enjoyed a hero's welcome. Bush greeted as hero in Albania (more)

WATCH BBC VIDEO:
Bush met as a hero in Albania

Mark Alexander

Albanians Could Be On Their Way to Britain as David Cameron to Agree EU Move

Government would back Albania's plans to enter EU

SUNDAY EXPRESS: MORE than three million Albanians could be free to move over to Britain after David Cameron backed plans for the country to join the European Union.

Despite Cameron previously saying he didn't want poorer nations to join the EU, Government sources have confirmed Britain would back Albania's campaign to gain "candidate" status in a vote next week.

It comes after fresh unrest over Mr Cameron's pledge to get a grip on Europe.

Mr Cameron has previously said he wants EU rules in place to block movement from new EU countries until their average income is in line with western European nations.

During the last census, Albania had a population of 2,931,977, currently 17 per cent of whom are unemployed. The average monthly wage is £305. » | Helen Barratt | Sunday, June 15, 2014

Albania's Last Communist Leader Ramiz Alia Dies
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: TIRANA, Albania — Albania's last communist president Ramiz Alia — credited with opening one of the world's most isolationist political systems to democracy — has died. He was 85.

Mimoza Kociu, a spokeswoman for president Bamir Topi, said Alia died at about 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) of lung complications.

Alia assumed leadership of the communist party in 1985 following the death of his longtime friend, dictator Enver Hoxha. Following a series of massive student protests, he introduced political and economic reforms that paved the way for the country's first free elections in 1991. » | AP | Friday, October 07, 2011

NZZ ONLINE: Früherer albanischer Präsident Alia gestorben: Erster frei gewählter Präsident des Landes » | ddp | Freitag 07. Oktober 2011

WIKI: Ramiz Tafë Alia »

Albania Hit by Most Severe Earthquake in Decades | DW News

At least 13 people have been killed in Albania and hundreds more injured in the most powerful earthquake to hit the country in decades. The 6.4 magnitude quake struck 30 kilometers northwest of the capital Tirana, causing buildings to collapse and sending panicked residents out into the streets. It's the second earthquaketo have hit the country in the past two months.

An Australian’s Path to Jihad
CBS NEWS - Adelaide: (AP) When young Australian David Hicks got an offer from a Saudi friend to go to Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan in December 2000, he did not think twice.

"So many of today's Muslims want to meet bin Laden but cannot, and after only being Muslim for 16 months Allah has given me the chance to," he gushed in a letter to his mother. "Please don't worry."

Within six months, Hicks - who took the name Mohammad Dawood - had met bin Laden at least 20 times and was full of praise for the al Qaeda leader.

"Lovely brother, everything only for the sake of Islam," Hicks wrote to his mother in May 2001. "Only reason non-Muslims call him the most wanted terrorist is because he has the money to take action, which was given to him by Allah."

The meetings with bin Laden are mentioned in Hicks' account of his journey from a working-class background in the central Australian city of Adelaide to Islamic jihad, made public for the first time last week.

Hicks was the first person convicted before a U.S. military tribunal at Guantanamo, and is now free in Australia after serving a seven-year sentence for supporting terrorism.

Hicks, who is said to no longer be a practicing Muslim, is barred under a plea deal from speaking publicly. But Federal Magistrate Warren Donald released his letters and a diary in court to back his ruling that Hicks is still a terror threat.

The ruling puts Hicks under restrictions until the end of the year, requiring him to report to police twice a week and live at an approved address.

While the documents are at least seven years old, they offer firsthand, detailed descriptions of the intensive training undergone by would-be terrorists, as well as insight into the mind of a convert to extremist Islam.

In the papers, the Australian comes across as both an eager foot soldier and a wide-eyed, naive adventurer, whose notes on his military training are as detailed and casual as if he were studying high school physics.

Hicks, now 32, converted to Islam in 1999 after watching television reports of the conflict in Albania. He went to Albania to join the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Muslim group fighting against Serbian forces, but when he got there the conflict was over.

He then trained in Pakistan with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, an al Qaeda-affiliated group that is fighting for the independence of Muslim-dominated Kashmir from India.

He sent home a notebook filled with details and diagrams on how to use numerous weapons, including mortars, ballistic missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. He also learned how to carry out attacks against heavily guarded targets and blow up a tank.

"The training was very intense," he wrote to his family in August 2000. "Extreme fitness, which I gave up smoking, military tactics and technics (sic), religious knowledge and weapons training."

But as time went on, Hicks became disillusioned with Pakistan as not Islamic enough, and impatient that he was not being included in big military operations. Letters Detail Australian's Path To Jihad: Young David Hicks Felt Honored To Meet Bin Laden After Just 16 Months As A Muslim >>> | Australia, Feb. 28, 2008

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Welcome 2 Albania

WIKI: Albania >>>

WIKI: Tirana >>>

Isis: Threat on Balkans to 'Avenge Muslims'

ANSAMED: 'In Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania we will arrive with explosives'

TIRANA - The Balkans are being threatened by Isis, which has announced it wants ''revenge for the humiliation suffered by Muslims in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia''. ''We will arrive with explosives'', said the Albanian national Abu Muqatil (Al Kosovi), a Kosovan Islamic militant[s] who claims to represent the jihadist group in the region.

In a long video released by Al Hayat media center, the main 'production house' of the terror organization born in Syria and Iraq, the announcement of future attacks in the Balkan region is entrusted to Albanian-language militants. » | Friday, June 05, 2015

The Struggle of Being Gay in Albania | 2015

Dec 8, 2015 | Up until the mid-90s if you were openly gay in Albania, you would be sent to prison. Many homosexuals stil face bigotry and violence, even in their own homes. …

There is so much anger in this world. It is so sad. Tragic, in fact. The world is full of people who think, believe – nay! are convinced – that they know exactly how people should be and live. In fact, so arrogant are they that they behave as though they had a hotline to the ‘Papa in the Sky’, the Creator, the Power behind all things. The Power that is said to be omnipotent yet appears more and more impotent with each passing day, as so many natural catastrophes this year attest to.

Naturally, the answer to this is clear and simple: Live and let live! As long as people don’t trouble you, refrain from troubling them! Let them seek their pleasures in a way that suits them. Therefore, let them live in a way that suits them. Let them seek their own happiness; and then you seek yours. Life is far, far too short for all this hatred and strife.

Death comes to us all. Often far more quickly than one could ever imagine. One minute you are here; the next, you are not. I have personally witnessed someone dying right in front of me. Believe you me, a person’s last breath is drawn in the twinkling of an eye. That could be yours or mine. Then, to state the obvious, it's over.

It therefore behoves us all to be as tolerant as we can be. And if someone behaves in a way that displeases you, look the other way! If you happen to be a religious person and believe that the person in question is behaving in a way that is displeasing to your God, then God will have a way of dealing with that person in the next life. That is what the Day of Judgement is all about.

So, cultivate tolerance for the sake of social harmony. For as Jesus told us: He who is without sin, cast the first stone!

Homophobia is a sickness. – © Mark Alexander

How a Peaceful Country Became a Gold Rush State for Drug Cartels

Men detained during a police raid in suburb of Guayaquil.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: In Ecuador, an intelligence official said: “People consume abroad, but they don’t understand the consequences that take place here.”

A total of 210 tons of drugs seized in a single year, a record. At least 4,500 killings last year, also a record. Children recruited by gangs. Prisons as hubs for crime. Neighborhoods consumed by criminal feuds. And all this chaos financed by powerful outsiders with deep pockets and lots of experience in the global drug business.

Ecuador, on South America’s western edge, has in just a few years become the drug trade’s gold rush state, with major cartels from as far as Mexico and Albania joining forces with prison and street gangs, unleashing a wave of violence unlike anything in the country’s recent history.

Fueling this turmoil is the world’s growing demand for cocaine. While many policymakers have been focused on an epidemic of opioids, like fentanyl, that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, cocaine production has soared to record levels, a phenomenon that is now ravaging Ecuador society, turning a once peaceful nation into a battleground.

“People consume abroad,” said Maj. Edison Núñez, an intelligence official with the Ecuadorean national police, “but they don’t understand the consequences that take place here.”

It’s not that Ecuador is new to the drug business. Squeezed between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, it has long served as an exit point for illicit products bound for North America and Europe. » | Julie Turkewitz | Photographs by Victor Moriyama | Reporting from Guayaquil, Ecuador | Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Germany: Dozens of Refugees Seek Sanctuary from Deportation in Regensburg Cathedral

Around 40 Roma refugees have sort sanctuary in Regensburg Cathedral, in protest at the German state’s decision to reclassify the Balkan countries, namely Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, as ‘safe’ countries of origin.

Brexit Is One of Most Spectacular Mistakes in EU History, Says Tusk

THE GUARDIAN: Exclusive: Donald Tusk says it would still be better for both sides if UK stayed in EU

Brexit has been “one of the most spectacular mistakes” in the history of the EU and followed a campaign marked by “an unprecedented readiness to lie”, Donald Tusk has said.

In his first interview since standing down as European council president last week, Tusk said Brexit was “the most painful and saddest experience” of his five years in office, a tumultuous period marked by the Greek eurozone crisis, bitter rows over migration and the election of Donald Trump.

He also criticised the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for branding Nato “brain-dead” and refusing to open EU membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania. » | Jennifer Rankin in Brussels | Thursday, December 5, 2019

Bush Returns to US ‘Lame’
TIMESONLINE: After a hero’s welcome in Albania, President Bush returned to Washington last night faced with a slew of domestic problems and the sober reality that his influence is fading rapidly at home.

His embattled Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, was facing a Democrat-led vote of no confidence; his plans for immigration reform are on the verge of collapse and there is growing conservative anger over his failure to pardon Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff. Libby was sentenced to 30 months last week in connection with the CIA leak scandal.

The no-confidence motion in Mr Gonzales was expected to fail in the Senate last night, and was little more than a political stunt by Democrats. But the vote revealed how the issues of Mr Gonzales, immigration and Libby are all linked in one crucial respect: growing conservative disgust with Mr Bush who, on the domestic front at least, appears to have truly entered lame-duck status. From hero to zero, Bush comes back to earth (more)

Mark Alexander

The Islamic Future of Britain

THE COMMENTATOR: Britain is in denial. If population trends continue, by the year 2050, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation

Britain is in denial. There is no real public debate on a historic event that is transforming the country. Mention of it occasionally surfaces in the media, but the mainstream political class never openly discuss it.

What is that historic event? By the year 2050, in a mere 37 years, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation.

This projection is based on reasonably good data. Between 2004 and 2008, the Muslim population of the UK grew at an annual rate of 6.7 percent, making Muslims 4 percent of the population in 2008. Extrapolating from those figures would mean that the Muslim population in 2020 would be 8 percent, 15 percent in 2030, 28 percent in 2040 and finally, in 2050, the Muslim population of the UK would exceed 50 percent of the total population.

Contrast those Muslim birth rates with the non-replacement birth rates of native Europeans, the so[-]called deathbed demography of Europe. For a society to remain the same size, the average female has to have 2.1 children (total fertility rate). For some time now, all European countries, including Britain, have been well below that rate. The exception is Muslim Albania. For native Europeans, it seems, the consumer culture has replaced having children as life’s main goal.

These startling demographic facts have been available for some time (see ‘Muslim Population “Rising 10 Times Faster than Rest of Society”’, The Times, 30 January 2009. Also the work of the Oxford demographer David Coleman). But on this historic transformation of the country there is silence from the political establishment.

Not everyone agrees with these demographic figures. Population projection, some say, is not an exact science. Perhaps the Muslim birth rate will drop to European levels.

But this seems to be wishful thinking. For years it was believed that Muslims would enter what is known as “demographic transition”, with European Muslim birth rates falling to native European levels. But that demographic transition has not happened. In Britain, for example, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities continue to have significantly higher birth rates than the national average, even after more than 50 years in the country. » | Vincent Cooper | Thursday, June 13, 2013

Volodymyr Zelensky and the Spirit of Ukraine: TIME Person of the Year 2022

Dec 7, 2022 | Zelensky’s success as a wartime leader has relied on the fact that courage is contagious. It spread through Ukraine’s political leadership in the first days of the invasion, as everyone realized the President had stuck around. If that seems like a natural thing for a leader to do in a crisis, consider historical precedent. Only six months earlier, the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani—a far more experienced leader than Zelensky—fled his capital as Taliban forces approached. In 2014, one of Zelensky’s predecessors, Viktor Yanukovych, ran away from Kyiv as protesters closed in on his residence; he still lives in Russia today. Early in the Second World War, the leaders of Albania, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Yugoslavia, among others, fled the advance of the German Wehrmacht and lived out the war in exile.

There wasn’t much in Zelensky’s biography to predict his willingness to stand and fight. He had never served in the military or shown much interest in its affairs. He had only been President since April 2019. His professional instincts derived from a lifetime as an actor on the stage, a specialist in improv comedy, and a producer in the movie business.

That experience turned out to have its advantages. Zelensky was adaptable, trained not to lose his nerve under pressure. He knew how to read a crowd and react to its moods and expectations. Now his audience was the world. He was determined not to let them down.


Guerre en Ukraine : Volodymyr Zelensky désigné personnalité de l'année 2022 par le Time Magazine : Le magazine américain a également rendu hommage à l'«esprit de l'Ukraine». »

Islam in Albania

Albania Braces for Fresh Protests
THE AUSTRALIAN: THE mood of revolt has spread beyond the Arab world to the Balkans.

The Albanian opposition gearing up for another anti-government protest today and the police warning of a high risk of violence.

The opposition Socialist Party said the rally was aimed at honouring the three victims of violent clashes in last week's anti-government demonstration. Protesters have been calling on the government to resign, claiming corruption and electoral fraud.

"I want to assure you it will be peaceful and quiet, there will be flowers and candles," Socialist leader Edi Rama said yesterday.
"Everything will be normal, not provoking anyone and not being provoked by anyone."

Police said the demonstration was a danger to national security, and warned that they could not guarantee the rally's safety. >>> AFP | Saturday, January 29, 2011

Related in English, auf deutsch

Francis: The Modest But Radical Pope Who Is Conscience Of His Era

Pope Francis kisses a baby as he arrives to lead a special
audience at the Vatican

THE TELEGRAPH: Ageing Ponitiff overcomes physical challenges to transform the church and focus minds on the essence of Christianity

Pope Francis has an extraordinary week ahead of him. Today, a summit opens in the Vatican to debate the future of the family – and it could be tumultuous. On Friday, the pontiff might win the Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to non-violence and combating poverty.

He is a radical figure, obsessed with getting things done, transforming his church and focusing minds on the essence of Christianity. In two short years, he been transformed into the conscience of his era.

The physical challenge is mighty. The Pope is 78 and surgery conducted when he was young left him with one functioning lung. He has spoken honestly about expecting his tenure to be short. “Four or five years,” he told the press, “even two or three.”

Despite the challenges of age, he has thrown himself into international diplomacy, visiting Albania, Bosnia, Ecuador, the Philippines and Bolivia. Next month, he flies to Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic. These countries are what he likes to call “the peripheries” – nations that get overlooked by rich foreign leaders.

In September, he spent eight days touring Cuba and the United States. The pairing of these old enemies is significant. As a child of Argentina, birthplace of Che Guevara, he understands the impact on Latin America of US capitalism, Cuban socialism and the violent competition between the two. The recent détente has been credited to Pope Francis – US president Barack Obama thanked him for using his personal influence to bring them together.

When the Pope arrived in Havana, the scenes of joy were astonishing. No one should underestimate the subversive power of popular piety in communist regimes. The cries of “Christ lives!” underscored the sense of change sweeping the island, of the giddy promise of freedom. » | Tim Stanley | Saturday, October 3, 2015

Islam starts to make an impact on Alaska
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS: ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A 1998 newspaper story about two Muslim children mistakenly buried on top of each other in Palmer left Ake Dobrova weak with outrage.

One of the children had to be exhumed and reburied, a violation of Muslim beliefs. The cemetery mix-up caused anguish all around.
"I was feeling so bad about it," said Dobrova, a small-business owner from Albania. "What kind of people are we (that) we don't have no cemetery?"

That year, he decided to make a cemetery himself. This year, what he started has become the first official Muslim resting place in Alaska.

Islamic teaching, or "sunnah," is strict and specific about the treatment of the dead. A body must be washed by the family, prayed over by the men, wrapped in a shroud and laid in the ground facing Mecca. Burial must occur quickly after death, and the grave must be located near those of other Muslims. . First Muslim Cemetery Opens in Alaska

Mark Alexander

Albania's Islamic Rebirth