Krugman: disturb your orthodoxy!

thought of the day, that may last for a while:

"...if you’ve reached the point where you don’t pay attention to anything that might disturb your orthodoxy, you’re not doing science, you’re not even pursuing a discipline. All you’re doing is perpetuating a smug, closed-minded sect."

Paul Krugman on the NYT

Evidence that Kosovo's leadership was complicit in grisly crimes

from the Econonist:

KOSOVO marked the third anniversary of its independence on February 17th in sombre mood. Only last July the country's leaders were riding high last year in the wake of anadvisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that its declaration of independence had not been illegal. Now their reputations are in tatters.

First came allegations of fraud in last December’s elections, which angered its strongest supporter, the United States. Soon afterwards, a report produced by Dick Marty, a Swiss politician and former prosecutor, made lurid claims about the involvement of Kosovo's leadership in organised crime. In the last few days two new documentss have come to light that appear to bolster the most nightmarish of those allegations. 

First, a disclaimer. In Balkan politics, the dictum, “if you are not with us, you are against us” usually applies. Some readers have attacked this blog simply for reporting on the Marty affair. As a fog of confusion, claims and counter-claims swirls over the allegations laid against Kosovo's leaders, we lay out here what is already known about the issue, and what is new.

more from the Econonist

British PM on Muslims in the UK: State multiculturalism has failed!

Echoing the declarations of of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (October 2010), the British PM admits that Muslim integration in Europe has failed:

" Do they believe in universal human rights - including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism? "

The question is now: will the Brits be coherent and stop pushing for Turkey's integration into the European fatherland?

What are you waiting for Mr Cameron?

PS: Sarkozy on the same note! Sarkozy estime à son tour que le multiculturalisme est un "échec"

God in America

Ricky Gervais writes:
"75 percent of Americans are God-­fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God-­fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists."


American atheists have higher morals than non-atheists?

Kosovo & Metohija province under the Albanian criminals

As the dust of war settles what was obvious to many, is now official. The US administration in a barbarian war against Serbia, Delivered the province to a gang of organ-snatching mafia ogres, in short the klepto-terrorist band known as the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Compared to these US allies, group like Hezbollah are a gentleman's club. Kosovo is lost for Western civilization for the foreseeable future, that was America's achievement by interfering in European affairs.

The Council of Europe is finally publishing a report naming Hashim Thaci, the KLA's prime minister and former war lord 27 times! Allegations of organ-trafficking against the KLA were first published by the former prosecutor of the Hague International War Crimes Tribunal, Carla del Ponte, in 2008, but conveniently forgotten.

Of course in Washington D.C., president Hussein Obama II will pretend nothing happened.

The BBC reports:

"The Drenica group within the KLA, which was led by Mr Thaci, is accused of involvement in organised crime, including drug-trafficking and the trafficking of human organs.

Leaders of the group are also said to bear "the greatest responsibility" for running the "KLA's ad hoc network of detention facilities" inside Albania as well as determining the fate of prisoners.

Evidence is also presented of organised crime activities continuing up to the present day.

Mr Marty's report argues that the abuses were sufficiently widespread to constitute a pattern in neighbouring Albania as well as in Kosovo.

It suggests that at least six detention centres operated in Albania and it adds that prisoners continued to be detained after the end of the 1999 Kosovo conflict.

In addition, it says, a "state-of-the-art" reception centre was used for the removal of captives' kidneys as part of the organised crime of organ-trafficking. Mr Marty's sources allege the organs were shipped out to private overseas clinics.

The report also appears to corroborate allegations of crimes, mainly against ethnic Serbs, at a farmhouse in the Albanian village of Rripe known as the "Yellow House".

The Yellow House allegations were contained in a joint investigation by the BBC and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The draft Council of Europe report says a small number of deaths occurred there and goes on to claim that the house was used as a transit point where victims were processed according to their physical condition.

The end point, the report alleges, was at Fushe-Kruje where victims were killed and their organs removed. The report notes its proximity to Albania's main airport near Tirana

Yet another source spoke of driving trucks packed with shackled prisoners - mainly Serbian civilians from Kosovo - to secret locations in Albania where they were eventually killed.

He recalled hearing two of the captives begging to be shot rather than tortured and "cut into pieces".

"I was sick. I was just waiting for it to end," the source told me. "It was hard. I thought we were fighting a war [of liberation] but this was something completely different.

Very few Kosovo Albanians have publicly revealed crimes committed by their own side. And for good reason. Witnesses who have agreed to provide testimony for prosecutions of KLA commanders have faced intimidation and death threats.It has taken these men 10 years to speak to an outsider about the dark side of the war. They were breaking a code of silence that has held strong in Kosovo.

Some have been killed, according to United Nations officials in Kosovo."

map of Serbia with its rebel province of Kosovo

Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel.
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

'Pear's Soap' advertisement - the White Man's Burden

Rudyard Kipling - the poet's portrait for the cover of Time

Plane in emergency landing after dog attack

Last August in Congo a plane crashed because of a crocodile in the cabin, some laughed but not those among us that flew in the area (see details below).

Now the same almost happens in the US because of a 12-pound Manchester terrier named Mandy.

Or shall we say because of a dog owner?

A US Airways flight headed to Phoenix made an emergency landing in Pittsburgh after a dog on board bit a passenger and a flight attendant.

US Airways spokesman Todd Lehmacher says the flight left Newark, N.J., on Monday morning. Lehmacher says an elderly passenger carrying a dog let the animal out of its carrier and it bit the two.

Lehmacher said the company's policy is to allow pets in the plane's cabin if the pet and its cage can fit under a seat. The policy also states that the pet may not be let out of the cage.

Mandy became agitated after her sedatives wore off, Allegheny County Police Inspector David Walsh told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The flight, carrying 122 passengers and five crew, resumed without the woman and her dog.

The 89 year old woman boarded a different flight.

Maybe the TSA could charge the old lady of being a "terrierist"?

______________________________________________

in case you had not seen this:

The Congo "Crocodile" air crash

(wikipedia: Bandundu Filair Let L-410 crash)

The 2010 Bandundu Filair Let L-410 crash occurred on August 25, 2010, after a Filair aircraft crashed on approach to Bandundu Airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing 20 people.

The aircraft was operating a passenger flight from N'Dolo Airport, Kinshasa to Bandundu Airport, Bandundu, Mai-Ndombe Province. At 13:00 local time (12:00 UTC), the aircraft crashed into a house approximately 1 kilometre short of the runway at Bandundu.

According to most sources, no one was injured on the ground. Of twenty-one people aboard the plane, one survived the crash. Local Radio Okapi reported that the aircraft ran out of fuel after being unable to land at Bandundu, but Filair later declared that 150 litres of kerosene were still on board, affirming that a technical problem had caused the crash.

Daniel Philemotte, the Belgian airline owner, was at the controls of the aircraft himself. Most of the dead were Congolese. Soldiers of MONUC were the first to reach the crash site and reported that no explosion appeared to have occurred, supporting the original hypothesis of fuel scarcity.

The lone survivor of the crash claimed that a crocodile hidden in a duffel bag had escaped. The frightened passengers then moved towards the front of the aircraft away from the crocodile. This affected the aircrafts weight and balance leading to a loss of control. The crocodile escaped as the plane approached its destination. The crocodile reportedly survived the crash but was killed by a blow from a machete.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a Let L-410 Turbolet, registered 9Q-CCN, with construction number 912608. It normally carries up to 19 passengers. The aircraft involved was previously registered ES-LLB, and was operated by Airest, an Estonian airline, until 2007, and was stored until Filair bought it in 2009.

Filair Let L-410 Turbolet 9Q-CDN, identical to the crashed aircraft