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One of the biggest and most outlandish US infowar and propaganda whoppers of the 1999 Kosovo conflict was the infamous NPR story of the ethnic Albanian Anne Frank. This seems like a mindless, unethical, immoral, and vicious, racist propaganda hoax today, using propaganda to destroy an entire people, Serbian Orthodox Christians. The Anne Frank infowar campaign was manufactured to support an illegal land grab in Kosovo, in support of a Muslim Albanian separatist and secessionist terrorist war against Serbian Christians. But at the time it was very popular and helped sell the US bombing of Yugoslavia in support of Albanian Muslim separatists who wanted to create an ethnic Albanian statelet, “Kosova”. The Anne Frank of Kosovo whopper was a classic of propaganda and brainwashing, how people screw other people’s minds. But unfortunately this propaganda hoax is forgotten today and is deleted from any accounts of Kosovo.
How did the US government and media concoct the outrageous and laughable Anne Frank of Kosovo hoax? Who was behind it? Where are the people who pulled it off now?
The two key players in the Anne Frank propaganda hoax were Finnegan Hamill, “Finney”, and the mysterious Albanian Muslim (i.e., the oxymoronic “Kosovar”, a Serbian term, “field of blackbirds”, to describe Albanians, or Shqiptars) “Adona”, Kujtesa Bejtullahu. Hamill was a junior at Berkeley High School in California while Kujtesa was the Albanian Muslim Anne Frank in Pristina who “miraculously” had a personal computer with a scanner. The real Anne Frank would have envied the Albanian one. Was this just all by accident and chance, a case where an American do-gooder was able to bring “democracy” and “freedom” to a helpless Albanian Muslim “victim” facing “genocide”? Hardly. Cui bono? Who benefits? What is propaganda? What is brainwashing? Who is behind propaganda? Ultimately, the US government benefits along with the corporate and media and industrial and military interests which it sponsors. US President Bill Clinton even cited the Adona-Hamill e mails as proof that the US was preventing a Holocaust in Kosovo.
The Anne Frank of Kosovo case is an important example of how in the US, a capitalist democracy, propaganda and brainwashing can be more efficient and more effective than in a totalitarian state. Nobody sees the strings in a capitalist democracy. Almost everyone is fooled or brainwashed. But we never know who the puppet master is. We never know who is pulling the strings or even that there are strings. We do not know how to distinguish between the “medium” and the “message”. In a democracy, the propaganda works like gang busters because everyone assumes the myth of a “free press”, no one questions or analyzes the medium. In short, in a capitalist democracy, the propaganda is effective. Everyone buys it.
In the Muslim “Anne Frank of Kosova” hoax we know who was pulling the strings. NPR and CNN were the media conglomerates that were sponsoring and orchestrating this hoax. Hamill worked for Youth Radio which was affiliated with NPR. NPR is a government-funded, i.e., government-run or state-run radio. CNN had Pentagon infowar psyops personnel orchestrating and organizing the media coverage of the Kosovo conflict. US Army psyops specialists using infowar techniques were running the media operations at CNN, the largest US media outlet. Is this state-run media? Is it a military-run media? CNN’s Pentagon “commentators”, “analysts”, and “advisers”, even concocted an outrageous hoax about Serbian “human blood banks”. Hamill himself admitted that a US “peace worker” from Kosovo had suggested that he do an Anne Frank propaganda story. Hamill also admitted that many had accused him of working for the CIA. It is just semantics.
What is a “peace worker”? The “peace worker” who suggested that Hamill engage in e mail correspondence with Adona was Marek Zelazkiewicz, a “social scientist” from Poland who had earlier been involved with Solidarnosc and was then a researcher at UC Berkeley. He had managed to travel to Kosovo as part of the San Francisco-based Peaceworkers group.
Peaceworkers (USA) is a non-profit organisation created in 1958 “to promote international peace and conflict resolution work.” It seeks to create “a Global Nonviolent Peace Force”. The Peaceworkers is an NGO, like ICG and the Soros Foundation, which acts as a front for the US government, military, and corporate interests and advances the globalist agenda. It was from this NGO where the idea for the Anne Frank of Kosovo propaganda campaign originated. They claimed that they are “peace workers” and engage in “conflict resolution”. The only thing they engineered with the Adona hoax was an illegal bombing and occupation of Serbian territory. The hoax resulted in an illegal war to support an illegal terrorist separatist movement. The Peaceworkers achieved the opposite of what they claimed.
The Anne Frank of Kosovo infowar blitz was modeled on an earlier Anne Frank hoax, Zlata’s Diary, by Zlata Filipovic, a Bosnian Muslim from Sarajevo who was the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank. Unlike the real Anne Frank, who died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from typhus, Adona and Zlata lived the good life and in relative luxury. Adona had a personal computer with a scanner. Zlata went to live in a luxurious villa in Paris during the “siege” of Sarajevo. Obviously the US propaganda technique or infowar strategy here was pretty inane and mindless and simplistic to the point of absurdity and stupidity. Propaganda never has to make sense. Just go with the flow. Turn off your brain. Let yourself be brainwashed or “sold”. It feels good. The US Holocaust and genocide propaganda strategy worked in Bosnia. Why not replicate it in Kosovo? You go with what works. If it worked with the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank, why couldn’t it work for an Albanian Muslim Anne Frank? Who said propaganda had to be original? Indeed, propaganda is based on unchanging Jungian universal archetypes.
What was the Anne Frank of Kosovo hoax all about? The case was very simple. Like in Bosnia, the US was searching for an Albanian Muslim Anne Frank to peddle the Holocaust propaganda strategy. Subliminal message: “Kosova” is like the Holocaust. “Kosova” is Poland in 1939 and Adona is a Jewish girl facing genocide from the Serb Nazis (even though, in fact, they were more accurately “socialist” or “Communist”). “Adona” is the “Anne Frank of Kosova”, the Albanian Muslim Anne Frank. Got that? Of course today it sounds preposterous and outrageous and utterly stupid and displays just how ignorant and arrogant the American public is. It displays the dehumanization and racism that is endemic in American society and how dehumanized and degraded American society has become.
Adona was an Albanian Muslim girl who was to play a role in a propaganda stage play choreographed by the US puppet masters. Adona was going to play the role of Anne Frank, but she was to be the Albanian Muslim version. She sent e mails from Pristina in Kosovo to Hamill who read them on his NPR radio program, i.e., US government-run radio show. CNN then used the NPR broadcasts to hype up the Holocaust propaganda angle. Then the real puppet master, the US government, used the CNN accounts to bolster the bombing of Yugoslavia. It was as simple, or simplistic, as pie.
The Adona case shows us the dangers we face in a so-called capitalist democracy. It shows the symbiotic relationship between the media, corporate interests, and the government. Brainwashing and manipulation in a capitalist democracy are much more sophisticated and complex than in totalitarian societies. The end result, however, is the same. The government controls what you think and how you think.
Where are they now? What happened to Finney, “Kosovo Boy”, Finnegan Hamill? He teaches women’s self-defense classes in Portland, Oregon today. Earlier he worked in a pizzeria and a pet food store. He claimed the Anne Frank propaganda hoax got him into Harvard, where he majored in Government. He never got to be a journalist like he planned.
What happened to Adona, the Albanian Muslim Anne Frank of Kosovo? Did she die in a “Serb concentration camp”? Was she raped by Serbian soldiers? Kujtesa Bejtullahu, the Albanian Muslim Anne Frank, a Muslim, was sponsored by a Christian Church, First Congregational Church of Berkeley, California and brought to the US to study at a Roman Catholic high school.
Absurdly, we had an American Christian Church helping an illegal Muslim separatist and terrorist campaign, an illegal land grab, to create a Muslim statelet in Europe, “Kosova”. A US Christian Church was helping, supporting, funding, and sponsoring Muslim terrorists and Islamic terrorism. This is shocking but true. It should shock everyone. Invariably, Serbian Christians would be exterminated and their Christian Churches would be destroyed, as in fact happened. Over 150 Christian Churches were destroyed by ethnic Albanian Muslims. The UN reported that 230,000 Kosovo Serbs, Roma, Ashkali, Jews, Turks, and Gorani were forcefully driven out of Kosovo after NATO occupied the Serbian province. Kosovo Jews fled to Belgrade. There are no more Jews in Kosovo. Where is the morality and justice in that?
How can an American Christian Church support the genocide of Christians and Jews? It makes no sense at all. This was a perverse case showing the absurd and immoral policy of the American Christian community. Is this what Christianity is about, being shills for the Pentagon and US Army and corporate interests? Moreover, it violated the constitutional separation of church and state. The US government and US war machine were in collusion and in a symbiotic relationship with a Christian Church.
Zelazkiewicz created the Kosovar Refugee Student Support Project (KRSSP) to bring ethnic Albanian Muslims from Kosovo to study in the US at a Roman Catholic high school. Cui bono? His motivation was to expand Roman Catholic influence in the Balkans, which he saw as controlled by Communist regimes that had to be destroyed and replaced by Roman Catholicism. There is an ulterior motive to his “humanitarianism” and unabashed goodness. There always is. That he was engineering the extermination of Orthodox Christians was not of much concern. And while Adona was from a Muslim cultural heritage, he argued that she was not a “practicing Muslim”. So bringing her to Berkeley to study at a Roman Catholic high school would revive her dedication and commitment to Islam and make her a practicing Muslim?
The Anne Frank hoax raises moral and ethical issues. Why is the suffering and the memory of Anne Frank being cynically exploited and manipulated by corporate interests and the military? Cui bono? Who benefited? The US Camp Bondsteel military base in occupied Kosovo is one of the largest and most expensive US military bases ever constructed.
There is irony in the Adona hoax in that during World War II, Albanian Muslims formed a Nazi SS Division and rounded up the Jews of Kosovo who were killed at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Ironically, Bergen-Belsen was the same concentration camp where the real Anne Frank died.
What was also missed by the Western propaganda juggernaut was the fact that Adolf Hitler was the sponsor of a Greater Albania during World War II and actually created a Greater Albanian state which included Kosovo. The irony was missed by the US propaganda machine. The Anne Frank hoax showed the dehumanized and morally debased and degraded nature of American society.
The First Congregational Church of Berkeley, a Protestant Church, eventually brought the Albanian “Anne Frank with a Laptop” to the US where she finished high school at St. Mary’s, a Roman Catholic school, and attended Stanford University. She received her BA in 2004 in International Relations. She helped organize the 2001 Kosovo Youth Congress. In June, 2006, she graduated with a Masters Degree in Public Administration and International Development.
Currently, the Albanian Muslim Anne Frank of Kosovo is based in London with Deutsche Bank’s leveraged finance team. No, Anne Frank of Kosovo did not die in a “Serb concentration camp”. She ended up working for Deutsche Bank.
What are the lessons from the Adona propaganda hoax? This racist infowar hoax shows us the dangers in a capitalist democracy where we are constantly brainwashed and manipulated and dehumanized. Yes, Virginia, even in a so-called democracy the government manipulates and controls what you think and how you think. The government likes to screw with your mind.
Originally published on 2007-06-27
Author: Carl Cavich
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Source: Serbianna
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