Kosovska Mitrovica

 Streets of Northern Mitrovica

I really like Kosovska Mitrovica, but it's rather difficult to write about it. I spent a very nice time in the northern part of the city, and I knew it would not be enough just to show you some pictures and to write how sad that the city is one of the last devided cities in Europe and that crazy thing happened and happens there. So I tried to put some hisotrical facts together to help the understanding of the odd situation now and to put my pictures in a different angle.


The city, that is one of the oldest settlements of Kosovo and Metohija (in those times the region belonged to Raska) was named after Saint Demetrius (Dimitrie Solunski with patron day on November 8th called Mitrovdan) in the 14th century and a church dedicated to him was built.

Old postcard showing a street in Kosovska Mitrovica

Under Ottoman rule (that lasted from 1455 – 1912) the city became a lively industrial city (lead was discovered and mines were opened).

The Serb population never accepted Ottoman rule and often rose against the foreign regimen. The Albanian population didn’t resist against Ottoman rule and accepted easily the muslim religion. Kosovo was temporarily occupied by Austrian forces during the Great War of 1683–1699, but the Ottomans re-established their rule of the region. In 1766 the Ottomans abolished the Patriarchate of Pec and weakened the position of Christians by inducing a taxation of non-Muslims.

View of Mitrovica from the hill arriving from Zvecan

Changment arrived after the Congress of Berlin (1878) when Serbia and Montenegro got ist independence, Mitrovica stayed under Ottoman rule (as a region of Sandzak) but was occupied by Austrian forces. After the first Balkan War in 1913, Mitrovica was put under the Kingdom of Serbia  and after 1918 under the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs later (1929) Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

The main street in Mitrovica

Even during communist Yugoslavia there were constant ethnic tensions between Albanian and Serbs and another problem was an unclear strategy how to handle the problem. So from trying to get rid of Albanians (after 1953 Josip Broz Tito reached an agreement with Turkey to push Yugoslavian Albanians to declare themself Turks and to leave for Turkey) to giving Albanians more rights and freedom (University in Pristina was founded to assure Albanians higher education and after 1974 the Socialist Autonomes province of Kosovo received more power) everything was tried to solve the constant ethnic problems.

Inter-ethnic tensions continued to worsen in Kosovo throughout the 1980's. A high birth-rate in Albanian community and departing and diminuishing Serbian population changed the demography of the province and lead so to Milosevic’s 1989 reaction to reduce Kosovo’s special autonomy status in Serbia. Kosovo Albanians reacted with parallel structure (e.g. n medicine, education, taxations).

Of course such eternally not solved tensions could not lead to anything good. Violent Guerilla groups (KLA), armed Serbian and Yugolsavian security forces and desinteresse by the international community resulted in a ugly War with its peak in NATO bombing of 1999, leaving the province in a complete chaos and a fertile place for lies, crimes and  more tensions.

View to the Southern part of the city

An old building from communist time

Kosovska Mitrovica was so divided in a Southern half (populated completely by ethnic Alanians, ca. 60'000 inhabitants) and a Northern part (populated by  mostly Serbs, 13'000,  plus other ethnic minorities like Muslims by Nationality, Turks and Roma.

The bridge that instead of connecting is dividing the city

 

The City is since then divided by 2 bridges (and a little footbridge)  and the border is made by the river Ibar. The city and the borders are supervised by KFOR-troups.

However all that supervising was not really able to prevent clashes or attackes, and from all sides the KFOR is more seen as an intruder or occupator.

The new church for Sveti Dimitrije

The old church devoted to Saint Demetrius (from 14th century) that gave the city its name, came to lay in the Albanian part of the city.  Due to riots (the major ones in 2004) it became impossible to reach the church for orthodox believers.  As a surrogate a new church was built in 2005 on the hill over the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica and was dedicated to Saint Demetrius.

Shrine dedicated to the Serb and Albanian partisans 

in the 1941–1945 war from 1973 by Bogdan Bogdanovic

All the idustry that made Mitrovica a good funtioning city in the past was shut down because of the war and the tensions in the area. Today there is hardly a branch of industry working. Even electricity and water is not always available, not because it would be impossible to supply, but because the political wish is not present. 
The region is in a rather dead end situation that must be curbed by investments. But I would also say for that: even if there are attempts and studies made to solve the difficult ecconomic situation, it will not work, until the political wish on all sides is ripe.

Apart from the natural division created by the Ibar, North Mitrovica itself is being further divided between a Serbian section of the city (where also other minorities live like: Roma, Ashkali, Turks) and three neighborhoods - Bosnjacka Mahala, Tri Solitera, and Suvi Do - that are largely Albanian.

I would have like to post some pictures about Bosnjacka mahala, but just by aproaching the district (a cluster of old houses with a huge Albanian flag on the roof) just because we were sitting in a Serbian car some people started shouting at us, so it was not possible to take pictures. I can just tell: a scary situation!

Contact with the city's southern half (populated by Albanians) is also rare and hostile. Before crossing the bridge into that part we had to customize the car, to hide every possible sign of serbness or orthodoxy or we would have needed escort from KFOR.

Here is one building of Naselja "Tri Solitera" (the 3 skyscraper district)  populated by Albanians and where earlier this year exploded some bombs. That's the only picture I could take from the albanian populated places.

N.B. This post is not an intention to implement that there are good ones and bad ones. I wish to show that you can not force people to get along if their basic believes are so different and if the roots of their disagreements are so settled. The situation is not created by the people itself (it's neither the Albanian population nor the Serbian). It's been heavily manipulated by imperialistic wishes of third parties, the ones that now make presure to these people to make peace, to get along nicely. The ones that dare to speak about multiethnicity in the KOSMET region. The ones that dare to say: we helped those people with the "humanitarian" mission: the NATO agression!

I would also like to mention two of very good impressions that have been recently writed about Kosovska Mitrovica:

Alessandro di Meo wrote this posts SOS Kosovo and  KOSMET-è scattato l'allarme about his recent stay in KOSMET (in italian)

Gian Matteo Apuzzo worte a lot about divided cities, and here his post about Kosovska Mitrovica. Divisi dal ponte: Mitrovica,una città die mondi (in italian)

Does Luc Montagnier Make the Case for AIDS Denialism?

If you have wondered just how manipulative and destructive AIDS Denialism can be, look no further than the ‘documentary’ House of Numbers. As I have posted before, House of Numbers uses the classic tactics of AIDS Denialism to create the illusion of a debate among scientists as to whether HIV causes AIDS.

Images can be powerful and persuasive. In the age of digital editing, anyone can snip away in their own home to create what could appear to be a credible film. Such is the case with House of Numbers.

The latest mischief focuses on four minutes of snips from an interview in House of Numbers with Nobel Prize winning discoverer of HIV, Dr. Luc Montagnier. AIDS Denialists around the world have rejoiced at those four minutes of footage. Aside from the Rethinking AIDS Society etc… the video of Dr. Montagnier has quickly taking on a life of its own with…


Libertarian bloggers…“Particularly problematical for the orthodoxy is the interview with Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who discovered HIV (if you accept that he discovered something).”

Comments on media threads…. “When Luc Montagnier states on released video on World AIDS Day, that vaccines and drugs are not necessary to get rid of HIV, this is earth-shattering news. The Rethinkers have been saying this for a very long time. How can the mainstream keep pushing their toxic drugs to society? The truth always prevails!”

Pseudoscientists.... "Luc Montagnier’s remarks were, it was alleged, (1) taken out of context; (2) suffered from Montagnier’s lack of command of English; (3) reflected trapping through leading questions from the interviewer (though Montagnier himself did not sign the letter)."

Anti-government bent groups…. “In essence, Montagnier has sided with Peter Duesberg in his hypothesis that HIV is harmless. Duesberg believes that several factors, such as the use of pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, are the true causes of AIDS and not HIV.”

AIDS Myth Exposed… “I think he double speaks ie leaves wriggle room because he knows the French will kill him (French Citizen- French law, french court) when the proverbial brown stuff goes flying vs this totally 'all in' buddy Gallo knows corporate and commercial interest will justify the means some how- jobs and billions in revenue will be his get out of jail free card.”

The problem is, unlike Kari Mullis also a Nobel Laureate, Dr. Montagnier is credible. Also unlike Mullis, Dr. Montagnier is not known to use LSD and as far I know he has never claimed to have been abducted by Alien Glowing Raccoons.

Remember, credibility counts and Dr. Montagnier is highly credible.

That is why if he came out in support of AIDS Denialist claims no one, including me, would take it lightly. If Dr. Montagnier raised doubts that HIV is a lethal sexually transmitted virus I would be the first to publically apologize for dismissing Peter Duesberg as a flake. If Dr. Montagnier stated that people in Africa who are dying of AIDS were afflicted by stress and not HIV infection, I would call for an immediate return of all copies of Denying AIDS and burn them in a public ceremony on the University of California Berkeley campus. I would also donate all of the Royalties from Denying AIDS to Henry Bauer’s expeditions in search of Nessies.

Now just hold on. It isn’t about to happen.

Here is what Dr. Montagnier says, taken from the transcript from House of Numbers where he is interviewed by Brent Leung, the guy who made the film:

Leung: You talked about oxidative stress earlier. Is treating oxidative stress one of the best ways to deal with the African AIDS epidemic?

Montagnier: I think this is one way to approach, to decrease the rate of transmission, because I believe HIV we can be exposed to HIV many times without bring chronically infected, our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system; and this is the problem also of the African people. Their nutrition is not very equilibrated, they are in oxidative stress, even if they are not infected with HIV; so their immune system doesn't work well already. So it's prone, it can, you know, allow HIV to get in and persist. So there are many ways which are not the vaccine, the magic name, the vaccine, many ways to decrease the transmission just by simple measures of nutrition, giving antioxidants -- proper antioxidants -- hygiene measures, fighting the other infections. So they are not spectacular, but they could, you know, decrease very well the epidemic, to the level they are in occidental countries, western countries.

Leung: So if you have a good immune system, then your body can naturally get rid of HIV?

Montagnier: Yes.

Leung: Oh, interesting. Do you think we should have more of a push for antioxidants, and things of that nature, in Africa than antiretrovirals (AIDS drugs)?

Montagnier: We should push for more, you know, a combination of measures; antioxidants, nutrition advice, nutritions, fighting other infections -- malaria, tuberculosis, parasitosis, worms -- education of course, genital hygiene for women and men also, very simple measures which [are] not very expensive, but which could do a lot. And this is my, actually my worry about the many spectacular action for the global funds to buy drugs and so on, and Bill Gates and so on, for the vaccine. But you know those kind of measures are not very well funded, they're not funded at all, or they are, you know, it really depends on the local government to take choice of this, but local governments they take advice of the scientific advisors from the intelligent institutions, and they don't get this kind of advice very often.

Leung: Well there's no money in nutrition, right? There's no profit.

Montagnier: There's no profit, yes. Water is important. Water is key.

Leung: Now one thing you said, you were talking about the fact that if you have a built immune system, it is possible to get rid of HIV naturally. If you take a poor African who's been infected and you build up their immune system, is it possible for them to also naturally get rid of it?

Montagnier: [Nodding yes] I would think so.

Leung: That's an important point.

Montagnier: It's important knowledge which is completely neglected. People always think of drugs and vaccine. So this is a message which may be different from what you heard before, no?

Leung: The closing?

Montagnier: No, no, yes, my message, it's different from what you heard from (Anthony) Fauci or...

Leung: Yes, it's a little different.

Montagnier: Little different.

The points excerpted in Leung’s interview are used by AIDS Denialists to suggest that Dr. Montagnier is in line with Peter Duesberg and other AIDS Deniers.

But is he?

For the record, Dr. Montagnier has stated that Duesberg is hopelessly wrong on AIDS, including in Dr. Montagnier's 2008 Nobel Lecture. Now read this section of his lecture carefully because not only does Dr. Montagnier refute the central ideas of AIDS Denialism speaking directly about Peter Duesberg himself, he discusses the complexity of AIDS and the failings of AZT mono-therapy, statements that AIDS Denialists will easily exploit. I have put key phrases in bold to help the Cherry Pickers.

“Our data, which I presented in September 1983 at a meeting on HTLV in Cold Spring Harbor,were met with scepticism, and only in the Spring of 1984 did the description of a quasi identical virus under the name of HTLV III by the group of R. C. Gallo convince the scientific community that this new retrolentivirus was the cause of AIDS. The group of Jay Levy in San Francisco also isolated the same kind of virus, followed by many other laboratories.

However, a few opponents led by P. Duesberg argued, and are still arguing, that there is no real demonstration that the virus does exist and is the cause of AIDS according to Koch_s postulates.

In fact, the proviral DNA of the virus, renamed HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) by an international nomenclature committee, was cloned and sequenced,[9–11] showing the classical gene structure of animal retroviruses which Dr. Duesberg himself helped to uncover earlier. But in addition, new genes (tat, nef), important in the regulation of the expression of the viral genetic information, were recognized from the DNA sequencing, making the viral genome probably the most complex known in the retrovirus family. HIV and its primate cousins are therefore well characterized entities only composed of DNA sequences, none existing in the human genome.

A posteriori, two facts should have provided to the few remaining sceptics final conviction that HIV is the culprit in AIDS:

1) Transmission of AIDS by blood transfusion has practically disappeared in countries where the detection of HIV antibodies in blood donors has been implemented.

2) The inhibition of virus multiplication by a combination of specific inhibitors of the viral enzymes (reverse transcriptase, protease) has greatly improved the clinical conditions of the patients. Mutations in the genome of HIV-inducing resistance to these inhibitors has led to relapses and aggravation of the patients_ condition. In 1986, thanks to a collaboration with Portuguese colleagues, we isolated a second virus (which I named HIV2) from West African patients hospitalized in a Lisbon hospital. They all had the signs of AIDS but had no
antibodies against our first virus. In fact, they had only antibodies to the most variable protein of HIV, the surface glycoprotein. The patients had lost antibodies against the well-conserved internal proteins of HIV2 which show common epitopes with their counterparts of HIV1, unlike the glycoprotein .

The isolation of HIV1 and HIV2 viruses from AIDS patients in Africa made us realize that we were dealing with a large epidemic of heterosexually transmitted viruses.

Evidence that HIV was not transmitted by casual contacts came from our study in a French boarding school, where HIV infected haemophilic children were in close contact, day and night, with HIV negative nonhaemophilic children: none of the latter were found to be HIV positive.

The isolation of the virus causing AIDS allowed to implement rational prevention measures and also to start a search for efficient viral inhibitors. The first candidate, azidothymidine (AZT), was an efficient inhibitor of HIV reverse transcriptase in in vitro experiments (Mitsuya and Broder). However, its use in AIDS patients was soon recognized as disappointing. In fact, the treatment readily induced mutants of the virus resistant to AZT and did not extend the life span of the patients. The main obstacle of treatment with a single or two inhibitors was the capacity of the virus to mutate, which also impedes the design of an efficient vaccine and also explains the complexity of the pathophysiology of AIDS.” (page 5822)

To the sane and rational thinking person, there can be no question that Dr. Montagnier does not deny that HIV causes AIDS. He does not dispute the pathology that HIV causes the immune system. He does not question HIV testing or the effectiveness of combination antiretroviral medications. Amazingly, in his Nobel lecture Dr. Montagnier directly dismisses Duesberg and AIDS Denialism.

There is also no basis to believe that Dr. Montagnier agrees with Duesberg that there is no genetic link to ANY cancer and that ALL cancers are caused by toxins, or with Mullis that aliens abduct scientists, or Bauer that Loch Ness Monsters exist, or Rasnick that the CIA is working with Big Pharama to sell AZT, or Matthias Rath that Bill Gates is monitoring our conversations, or Andrew Maniotis that AIDS is caused by Syphilis, or the Perth Group that excessive exposure semen causes AIDS, or Celia Farber with whatever the hell it is that she is saying.

There is no basis for saying that Dr. Montagnier agrees with any of these things.

But that wont stop some from saying that he does.