Frank Sellers
The Duran
Thousands of protesters marched in the streets earlier to day demanding the resignation of Albania's Prime Minister, Edi Rama, over alleged links to organized crime.
Albania is a NATO member and is presently looking forward to upcoming talks on its next phase of European integration. The protests come about a month before talks are set to resume on that topic.
This isn't the first time Rama has fielded mass protests which seek his removal, last year saw multiple such events take place.
Additionally, Albania isn't alone in facing public wrath and demands for a new government, as some of its neighbors have also experienced the same, also on corruption and links to crime organizations.
Such allegations are feared as a possible roadblock in negotiations with the EU as Albania seeks membership.
Deutsche Welle reports:
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Tirana, demanding Prime Minister Edi Rama step down from his post. Protesters accuse the government of having ties to organized crime and trafficking groups.
Angry protesters in the Albanian capital Tirana marched along the city's Martyrs of the Nation Boulevard on Saturday chanting "Rama go." Some hurled stones at the premier's office building and the interior ministry.
"Albanians are protesting against the government's ties to organized crime and trafficking, which is undermining the future of Albania and now European integration efforts," Democratic Party leader Lulzim Basha told The Associated Press.
Basha said that "hundreds of thousands" of people participated in the anti-government march, which lasted for two hours.
There were reports of clashes between police and protesters. Ardi Veliu, the national police chief, said 11 officers were wounded while trying to keep protesters away from government offices.
The opposition also accuses Interior Minister Fatmir Xhafaj of supporting his brother who turned himself in to Italian authorities to serve a 2002 drug trafficking sentence. Xhafaj denies these allegations.
"No politicians should be guaranteed impunity," Basha told the rally participants on Saturday.
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WayneMadsenReport.com
In the 1999 flick “Wag the Dog,” White House aides try to build up anger against Albania by showing a phony Albanian young woman, played by Kirsten Dunst, trying to escaping rape at the hands of Albanian troops. The “rape” was faked and filmed in a studio, complete with a blue screen. The intent of the phony rape was to divert the public’s attention away from a presidential sex scandal and build up support for military action against Albania.
Fast forward to today and we see such “made in Hollywood” tactics being played out in Libya. On March 26, Eman al-Obeidy, said to be a Libyan law student and an aspirant journalist originally from Tobruk in rebel-held eastern Libya, entered the Rixos Hotel, the headquarters for the international media and claimed she was gang raped and kidnapped by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s military forces at a security checkpoint in Tripoli.
Al-Obeidy was bruised and scratched and said she entered the hotel by passing herself off as a member of the hotel staff. She claimed that the Libyan security forces recognized her accent from eastern Libya and then proceeded to rape her. Al-Obeidy, like the Kirsten Dunst character in “Wag the Dog,” became an instant media celebrity. For the anti-Qaddafi journalists nested at the Rixos, including those from The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press, Al-Obeidy immediately became a cause celebre with her tale of rape and being held in sub0human conditions by her assailants, who had the help of black African “mercenaries.” The black “mercenary tale would soon be debunked and Al-Obeidy’s rape story also began to lose credibility.
Libyan government officials opened a criminal case against Al-Obeidy’s accused attackers and Saadi Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, met with her after she was released from detention in Tripoli. Al-Obeidy was permitted to conduct interviews with the CNN’s celebrity in-breed Anderson Cooper and National Public Radio, among others. Al-Obeidy was permitted to air her grievances against the Libyan government and parrot Libyan rebel propaganda talking points from Tripoli. Eventually, Al-Obeidy ended up in Tunisia, after she said she was spirited out of Tripoli disguised as a Berber with the help of a defecting Libyan army officer. Somehow, Al-Obeidy managed to evade detection by over 50 security checkpoints on the coastal highway from Tripoli to the Tunisian border and enter Tunisia without any difficulties. This reporter, even with a Libyan visa and a Libyan diplomatic escort, was held up for at least one hour while crossing back into Tunisia from Libya. The delays were prompted by the border bureaucracies of both Libyan and Tunisian immigration and customs officials.
On May 5. Al-Obeidy was whisked into Tunis, courtesy of French diplomats who met her at the border, and by May 11, she was in Doha, Qatar, courtesy of the Libyan rebel Transitional National Council. It was apparent that Al-Obeidy’s propaganda value for the rebels and the West still had some currency because she was in the same city where Al-Jazeera has its broadcast headquarters. However, something went wrong in Qatar, an ally of the Libyan rebel movement and the NATO military offensive against Libya. Al-Obeidy was suddenly deported by Qatar. Al-Obeidy resorted to the same histrionics she employed against Qaddafi’s government: she claimed she was beaten by Qatari authorities, although she withheld rape charges in Qatar’s case. The Qatar press denied Al-Obeidy’s charges that she was beaten in Doha. The Libyan authorities claimed that Al-Obeidy had a history of mental illness and the events in Qatar lend credence to Tripoli’s contention about Al-Obeidy’s truthfulness.
WMR learned in Tripoli that Qatari officials were not satisfied with Al-Obeidy’s story or that proffered by her rebel movement handlers. The Qataris deported Al-Obeidy back to Benghazi, however, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened and sent a U.S. government aircraft to Europe to fly her to political asylum in the United States. The United States arranged for Al-Obeidy to travel to Malta and on to Vienna where she was picked up by State Department officials. CNN, which through its MI-6 intelligence-linked reporter Nic Robertson, followed Al-Obeidy’s case with a priority zeal, reporting that after being deported from Qatar she ended up, via Italy, in a refugee camp in Timisoara, Romania, which, of course, is getting the scene for the drama closer to Albania, the manufactured antagonist in “Wag the Dog.”
Just a few weeks after the Al-Obeidy debacle, the puff piece-entranced Western media found a new heroine in the Middle East. Amina Abdullah Araf al-Omari said she was a Syrian-American lesbian woman blogging from Syria. It was later reported that Amina had been kidnapped by Syrian security forces and was being held incommunicado. It was later revealed that “Amina” was, in reality, Tom MacMaster, a 40-year old PhD student at Edinburgh University in Scotland. “Amina” had posted “her” anti-Syrian government diatribes on the lesbian website LezGetReal run by executive Paula Brooks. “Amina’s” photograph was lifted from the Facebook page of a young Croatian woman living in London. Less than 24-hours after “Amina” was exposed as MacMaster, Brooks, who billed herself as a lesbian woman with three children living in the Washington DC area, was, in fact, Bill Graber, a 58-year old man from Ohio.
Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s “information czar,” is on the record favoring the use of Wikileaks and websites to spread disinformation and propaganda. In the case of Libya and Syria, Sunstein’s policies appear to be fully underway. It is also noteworthy to point out that General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, who is also the commander of the U.S. Cyber-Command, which is tasked with carrying out offensive information warfare operations on the Internet, was an attendee at the recent Bilderberg meeting in St. Moritz, Switzerland. High on the agenda of the secretive and elite group was how to salvage what is becoming a quagmire in Libya. It is certain that Alexander offered up some enticing high-tech tricks to the gathering of the cabal that actually runs the world.
