In January, 1999, as the US and NATO were preparing to launch a pre-planned massive bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, National Public Radio (NPR)and the Cable News Network (CNN) began featuring news stories— meant to buttress and to support the US government propaganda war effort —about an Albanian girl in Kosovo, using the pseudonym of Adona, who began sending e mail messages to a radio station in California, Youth Radio. Using her NPR/CNN pseudonym of Adona, she started sending e mail messages to a high school student in California, Finnegan Hamill. NPR and CNN ran a series of reports on the ”Anne Frank of Kosovo”, the CNN/NPR Albanian Anne Frank, known also as the Anne Frank with a Laptop as she became known because she used a computer. The unstated assumption was that a Holocaust or genocide was occurring in Kosovo (and not what it actually was, a racist Albanian separatist movement to create an ethnically pure Kosova). Adona was the Albanian Kosovo Anne Frank, the 1990s version of Anne Frank, the Shqiptar Anne Frank, but with a difference. The real Anne Frank used the old-fashioned and passé diary, which was antiquated and obsolete in the cyberspace era, the Information Age. Instead of the old-fashioned diary format, this Albanian Anne Frank had gone high-tech, replacing the outdated diary was a state of the art computer with a photo scanner and an Internet link. The Anne Frank with a Laptop, Adona, was writing her messages in cyberspace. Unlike the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic, who used the obsolete diary format, the Albanian Anne Frank was using state of the art communications technology and infowar techniques. Propaganda had reached a new threshold, cyberspace.
CNN and NPR were at the forefront of information technology coordinated with the Pentagon and US government, they were pioneering new propaganda and infowar techniques and methods. US propaganda had come a long way since the Committee on Public Information established by US propagandist George Creel under the Woodrow Wilson Administration, who understood the value of propaganda or information (the American euphemism for propaganda, same thing, different name). Propaganda had gone high-tech, propaganda was now using the new cyberspace technology. Moreover, the Adona/Anne Frank propaganda was significant in that a Christian Church, the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, California, was the main sponsor of racist propaganda on behalf of Muslim separatists/terrorists organized against Orthodox Christians. The US Christian Church was integrated in the US government infowar. Propaganda had reached new thresholds. But who was behind the propaganda planning and strategy behind the Laptop Anne Frank propaganda? How did the Albanian Anne Frank infowar strategy originate?
Political propaganda is invariably at the behest of and in the service of government, in this case, the US government. According to Finnegan Hamill, this infowar strategy began when he had the week off from hockey practice. The e mail address of an Albanian girl was given to him gratuitously by a peace worker who had just recently returned from Kosovo. Hamill is vague purposely about the US peace worker from Kosovo. But was it accidental that this information was given to Hamill? What were the peace workers ties to the US government, State Department, CIA, Pentagon, MPRI? The names, affiliations, and reasons for giving him the e mail address were left blank. Hamill met the peace worker at a meeting of his church, the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, which was intricately involved in the propaganda strategy. Adona, whose real name is Kujtesa Bejtullahu, an Albanian Muslim, was 16 years old, the same age as Hamill. Was this accidental? According to a CNN report, Adona had access to a computer and wanted to correspond with youth in the United States. Hamill sent Adona an e mail message. The next day he received an email message in response that was to change the way he saw the world. Below is her first e mail message:
Hello, Finnegan. I am glad you wrote to me so soon. About my English, I have learned it through the movies, school, special classes, etcetera, but mostly from TV. I can speak Serbian as well, Spanish and understand a bit of Turkish. You never know what will happen to you.
In a second e mail, Adona wrote:
Hello Finney, I guess you’re OK. Well Finney (I like calling you that) did I tell you that I am not a practicing Muslim and do you know why! Ö because, if the Turks didn’t force my grand grandparents to change their religion, I might now have been a catholic or an orthodox. Personally, I agree with Decartes (sic) when he says that god is imagined by the human mind. Bye, Adona.
In a third e mail, Adona wrote:
About the NATO thing, you know I feel they should come here and protect us. I wish somebody could. I don’t even know how many people get killed anymore. I really don’t want to end up raped, with no parts of body like the massacred ones. You don’t know how lucky you are to have a normal life. We all want to be free and living like you do, having our rights and not be pushed and pushed. P.S. Send me photos of you, I will be sending some of mine as soon as the scanner gets fixed.
In a studio of Youth Radio, Hamill reported the radio segment while Belia Mayeno-Choy narrated the e mails. Revealing in the above e mail is the fact that Adona has a photo scanner. Youth Radio is stated to be a non-profit organization based in Berkeley that produced segments that appeared on KQED and KCBS in San Francisco on NPR and Pacifica National Network. All these organizations had one thing in common, they are dependent on US Government funding and support and can be seen as government front groups.
Why was there a need for using the Transfer Technique in this propaganda campaign? The CNN/NPR Adona/Anne Frank propaganda/infowar relied on misinformation, disinformation, and falsification. CNN/NPR erroneously claimed that ”ethnic Albanians were barred from attending schools and universities” in Kosovo. This is a falsehood. In fact, Albanian separatists were boycotting Yugoslav schools and universities. Albanians chose not to attend schools and universities that were not Albanian-run and in the Albanian-language and based on an Albanian curriculum introduced from Tirana, Albania. In short, Albanians refused to attend non-Albanian schools. This was a form of apartheid, like the South African model. The Albanians instead set up ”parallel” schools and universities, a ”parallel” educational system that maintained this racist apartheid and promoted a Greater Albania, an ethnically homogenous and pure Albanian statelet. This is what the propaganda sought to conceal. Moreover, the separatist/secessionist nature of the conflict was similarly camouflaged by the US propaganda. The Albanian population ”demanded” their own state, Kosova, ”demanded” incorporation into a Greater Albania, ”demanded” their own language. The Kosovo conflict was a secessionist/terrorist conflict dedicated to the goal of establishing Greater Albania. Human and minority rights had nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict. The 1974 Yugoslav Constitution had given the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia greater political rights and freedoms than any other Constitution in Europe of in any other nation.
Even before the conflict in Kosovo-Metohija had begun, the US Government, the US media, and special interest groups began covertly laying the propaganda groundwork for US military intervention. First, apropos of nothing, books began to appear on the Kosovo conflict, books written specifically and especially to persuade the American public for war against Yugoslavia on behalf of the Albanian Muslim minority.. These books were classic propaganda tracts, essential specimens of effective government propaganda meant to create a framework for military operations.
A conspicuous book was Adem’s Cross (published in October,1996, hardcover; 1998, paperback edition, by Farrar Straus and Giroux)by Alice Mead, written for a youthful audience, highlighting the alleged human rights abuses against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and the alleged repression/oppression, but conveniently omitting the violent and racist separatist nature of the conflict, racially motivated and virulently anti-Serbian and anti-Orthodox. Mead, a writer of children’s books such as Junebug, was an advocate for the Kosovo Albanian separatists, having written letters, articles, and having produced a video, ”Kosovo and the Death of Yugoslavi’ on behalf of Albanian Muslim separatism/terrorism. Mead was at the forefront of the advocacy/propaganda for Albanian separatism. Adem was a 14 year-old Albanian who lived in a Kosovo village where they drank Coke and watched MTV. This is an example of the Plain Folks Technique in propaganda analysis. Susan Sontag used this technique in the Bosnian civil war. Sontag argued that the Bosnian Muslims were ”after all, just like us.” The propaganda is intended to induce sympathy for the Albanians by suggesting that after all, they are just like us, just like us Americans, just like the nation induced to militarily intervene on their behalf, the Coca Cola generation and the MTV generation. Adem and his family, the ”victims”, ”innocent people”, suffer from ”repression” in ”Serb-occupied” Kosovo. Adem’s sister Fatmira is machine-gunned at a peace rally in Kosovo by the ”cruel and capricious Serbian military”. Adem has the bones in his hand broken by three Serbian soldiers who carve a large ”Cyrillic cross, symbol of Serbia”, on his chest with a pocket knife. This racist and religious bigotry is where the title is derived from. This is fictionalized racism and bigotry, but factual instances of such crimes have occurred. Patriarch Pavle had his hands broken by Albanian separatists/terrorists and the UCK/NLA/KLA in Macedonia did carve the initials on the backs and hands on Macedonian Orthodox Christians who were kidnapped by Albanian separatists/terrorists. The Orthodox Macedonian Christians were tortured, their bodies mutilated, and they were also forced to perform fellatio on each other and other sex acts. In Kosovo-Metohija, the Albanian separatists sodomized Serbian Orthodox victims with beer bottles. Serbian women and girls were repeatedly raped in Kosovo in a systematic policy to drive out all non-Albanian Muslims. In propaganda, this is known as projection or transference. Mead projects the crimes of the Albanian separatists/terrorists onto the Serbian victims, known as propaganda projection. In the novel, Adem relates that the Yugoslav police ”sang songs about killing usÖ We were like mirrors the reverse of each other.” Three years after the novel was published, the Racak Massacre, a staged US propaganda event, known as propaganda of the deed, the same allegations emerged, that Serbian police sang while executing Albanian civilians. Here life imitates art? The plot revolves around Adem and his family who are ”tortured and imprisoned” by the ”totalitarian regime” by ”Serbian soldiers wanting to reclaim the land they owned prior to the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.”
In April, 2001, Mead released a follow-up novel, Girl of Kosovo, a quasi-Anne Frank novella for children. The plot centers around a pseudo-Anne Frank figure named Zana Dugolli, an Albanian girl who witnesses the UCK separatist/terrorist war in Kosovo. Her family is just like us we are told. The Dugolli family watches sports on ESPN and Zana’s brother plays Nintendo. Like Adona and Adem, Zana is oppressed/repressed by the totalitarian state but yet absurdly has access to computers with an internet linkup and photo scanners, MTV cable channels, and cable sports channels. Is this repression/oppression in the New World Order? Is this genocide? The Girl of Kosovo is meant in propaganda or infowar terms to rely on the Anne Frank/Holocaust propaganda analogy or paradigm. Indeed, Hazel Rochman, in an American Library Association review, concluded: Add this to the Holocaust curriculum.î Girl of Kosovo is an example of the Transfer Technique in propaganda, transferring the Holocaust to the Kosovo separatist/terrorist war.
British historian Miranda Vickers, an Albania scholar and a historian of Albanian history, wrote Between Serb and Albanian: The History of Kosovo, published in 1998, giving propaganda support to the Albanian separatist position. Noel Malcolm, a historian with dubious credentials in ethnic conflict and no background in Balkan history, attempted a comprehensive history of the Balkan region, who had earlier published the pro-Muslim and anti-Serbian racist diatribe Bosnia: a Short History in 1992, now published Kosovo: A Short History, another racist, bigoted, anti-Orthodox, anti-Serbian propaganda tract and virulent polemic in support of Albanian separatism and independence. Malcolm, at best an inflammatory propagandistic hack and pompous intellectual elitist, inconsistently opposed Bosnian Serb separatism but vehemently supported Albanian separatism. So much for consistency.
The CIA published maps of Kosovo-Metohija in 1992 which was a tip-off that military intervention was contemplated. Kosovo: In the Heart of the Balkan Powder Keg, edited by Robert Elsie, was published in 1997 presenting a collection of Albanian propaganda tracts gathered from throughout the twentieth century in support of a Greater Albania, which would consist of Kosovo-Metohija, Southern Serbia, territory from Montenegro, and the Western area of Macedonia, Illirida in the Greater Albania lexicon. Albanians had claims on Greece as well, Chameria, the northern part of Greece. In 1998, CNN staff and personnel sought to gain entry into Kosovo. Ted Turner himself sought to establish a media center in Pristina to cover the ensuing conflict, modeled on the CNN coverage in Sarajevo. Christianne Amanpour was selected to cover the Kosovo conflict. Kosovo was modeled on the Bosnia conflict, Kosovo was going to be Bosnia II, a repeat performance of the Bosnian civil war.
In propaganda analysis, the Anne Frank of Kosovo propaganda is an example of a routine propaganda technique known as the Transfer Technique. The US Army Psychological Operations Field Manual No. 33-1, under Appendix 1: PSYOP Techniques, defined the Transfer Technique as follows:
Transfer: This is a technique of projecting positive or negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or value (an individual, group, organization, nation, patriotism, etc.) to another in order to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. This technique is generally used to transfer blame from one member of a conflict to another. It evokes an emotional response, which stimulates the target to identify with recognized authorities.
Simply put, the Holocaust and Anne Frank propaganda campaigns were used as part of the Transfer Technique in US propaganda, to transfer or project a positive value on the Albanian separatist conflict which normally would be perceived as negative, that is, murderous, racist, Albanian cutthroats and thugs are through propaganda projection transformed into victims of genocide. The US propaganda machine relies on what works, so the MO or pattern is easy to discern. The Anne Frank propaganda began with the Bosnian civil war, with the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic, who later went to live in a Paris villa to prepare her diary for publication.
Why is the Anne frank propaganda so prevalent and when did it originate? In 1947 in the Netherlands, Anne Frank’s diary was first published in Dutch as Het Achterhuis (The House Behind). In 1952, a major translation in English appeared as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. In 1955, a play of the book appeared by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich. In 1959, a Hollywood movie, The Diary of Anne Frank, was released. In 1993, the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Washington, DC, was opened as were many Holocaust museums in US cities. The Diary was not only a central fixture of the Holocaust museum and literature, but also was a part of US classroom curricula, and was the subject of endless documentaries.
Norman G. Finkelstein, who teaches political theory at Hunter College, of the City University of New York, examined and analyzed the exploitation and manipulation of the Holocaust in The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Verso Press (hardcover,2000; paperback edition, 2001). The Holocaust Industry is a critical expose about how the Holocaust is used to advance countless agendas, from Zionism, to the construction of Holocaust Museums, to advancing Jewish causes in the US and around the world, the remembrance of the Holocaust became an ìindustry, and a crucial component of US foreign policy propaganda, creating the propaganda basis for humanitarian intervention and the prevention of alleged genocide globally and generally to support US military action and intervention around the world. Finkelstein’s mother was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Maidanek concentration camp while his father survived the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. Finkelstein criticized the World Jewish Congress (WJC), the World Jewish Restitution Organization, Edgar Bronfman, leader of the World Jewish Congress and Seagram’s, of using ”ruthless extortion tactics” and that the ”Holocaust industry” was one of the main ”fomenters of anti-Semitism today”. The anti-Serbian, anti-Orthodox, anti-Macedonian New York Times is regarded as the ”main promotional vehicle” of the Holocaust Industry. According to Finkelstein, who did a content analysis, ”for frequency of coverage, the Holocaust places a close second to the daily weather report.” The US is the center of the agitation: ”The U.S. is the corporate headquarters of the Holocaust industry.” The Holocaust Industry emerged following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War when Israel became a prime vehicle for advancing US geopolitical interests in the Middle East against the Soviet-backed Arab states. American Jews made the Holocaust and Israel the primary focus of their concern and intertwined the two disparate concerns. American Jews thus focused on the Holocaust to buttress their support and sponsorship of Israel. Finkelstein noted: ”I sometimes think the worst thing that ever happened to the Nazi Holocaust was that American Jews discovered it.” The Holocaust was used to manipulate reparations as an ”extortion racket” and to the falsification of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and illegal settlements and the assassinations policy and US financial and military support to the Israeli government and military. The case against Swiss banks was orchestrated by Bronfman, who has close ties to the US government, to pressure the Swiss government by threatening US sanctions if the Swiss did not meet the World Jewish Congress ultimatum. Finkelstein attacked the creation of Holocaust Museums as ”a kind of circus”. There were no Holocaust Museums for the millions of Native American Indians who were ethnically cleansed from their indigenous lands and murdered and exterminated in a massive and systematic genocide, no museum for the Armenian Genocide, no museum for the Gypsies (Roma) murdered during the Holocaust, no museum for the Serbian Orthodox victims of the Croatian/Vatican NDH regime. Moreover, a higher proportion of Gypsy or Roma of Europe died than of the Jewish population according to Finkelstein. He criticized the self-aggrandizement of the American-Jewish community which pictures itself as a victim while, in fact, the American-Jewish community is affluent. Jews have double the income of non-Jews. Jews make up 16 of the 40 wealthiest Americans. Finally, the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust is criticized. The Holocaust Industry portrays the Holocaust as unique in history and thus above critical analysis and debate. The result is that no learning or understanding can occur. There is no factual basis to allege that the Jewish Holocaust is special or unique in history. Needless to say, Finkelsteinís book was dismissed and ignored in the US.
The Holocaust was used as the propaganda rationale for the NATO/US ”humanitarian intervention” and occupation of Yugoslavia. The Kosovo Conflict was replete with Holocaust images, terminology, and analogies: Genocide, war crimes, massacres, ethnic cleansing, refugees, assassinations of Albanian political leaders, a dictator in the form of Slobodan Milosevic, the ”Butcher of the Balkans”, who was analogized to Adolf Hitler. To be sure, the propaganda model was the Bosnia civil war where the same propaganda/infowar paradigm was employed by the US government/media. Wars come and wars go but the propaganda techniques always remain the same. Invariably, once wars end the government/media quickly cover-up and discard the propaganda they used in that war. Does anyone even remember the CNN/NPR Adona or Anne Frank of Kosovo US propaganda campaign today? But a more important question is this: Was this a moral and ethical use of the Holocaust, to foment racism and ethnic hatred against Orthodox Christians to advance the US government/media war propaganda? Is this the exploitation of Jewish suffering to advance the interests of the Pentagon, the Israel lobby, and American-Jewish groups and organizations who will prosper economically/politically/militarily if the Serbian population is killed and displaced from their lands? The real Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. By contrast, Adona came on an all-paid trip with three Albanian companions to California to party, gloat, and enjoy herself after her brilliant church-funded and church-sponsored propaganda war which resulted in a brilliant CNN/NPR propaganda success. The Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank left Sarajevo to live in a comfortable Paris villa where she celebrated her propaganda/infowar success.
Why was the US Government/media supporting the UCK/KLA/NLA, Albanian separatists/terrorists conducting a racist secessionist war against the population of Yugoslavia? In 1998, the US government condemned the KLA/UCK as a ”terrorist” group and organization that targeted Serbian civilians and police. Under the US Code, terrorism is defined, under which definition the KLA applies. Moreover, arming, training, funding, and supplying known terrorist groups is illegal under the Code. The KLA falls clearly within the US Code definition of terrorist organization/group. Why did the US government/media invoke the Holocaust analogy in arming, training, funding, and supplying a known terrorist organization, the KLA/UCK separatists/secessionists/terrorists? The British news agency Reuters explained that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. During World War II, Heinrich Himmlerís Waffen SS troops were regarded as ”freedom fighters” and ”liberators”, freeing nationalities and ethnic groups, such as the Baltic states, Croatia, Kosovo Albanians, Slovakia, and Transylvania Hungarians. Adolf Hitler explained the 1938 Munich Agreement as advancing the minority/national/ethnic rights of the Sudetenland German population. The 1939 invasion of Poland was predicated on the assumption that Germany sought to protect the German minority from oppression/repression in Poland, Danzig, and the Corridor. In the New World Order lexicon, similar to George Orwell’s ”Newspeak” in 1984’s Oceania, mujahedin, ”rebels”, the resistance, insurgents, guerrillas are used to describe terrorists that are supported and sponsored by the US. The New World Order propaganda lexicon is actually very simplistic and easy to understand by the cattle/herd. If the armed groups advance US military/political/economic interests, if they are clients or client states of the US, if the US funds, supplies, arms, and trains the armed groups, then they are dutifully termed ”rebels”, ”freedom fighters”, mujahedin, and ”resistance groups”. If the US government does not sponsor or support the armed groups, if they are not clients and client states, then the groups are ”terrorists”, ”separatists”. Propaganda techniques never change regardless of which government uses them. All governments are a necessary evil. This is the reason why the Founding Fathers of the US created checks and balances and enumerated a Bill of Rights to safeguard and protect democratic principles. The Founding Fathers tended to agree with Samuel Johnson: ”Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” But in the New World Order dictionary, one man’s patriotism is another man’s nationalism and ultra-nationalism. The analysis is the same. If US military/political/economic interests are advanced, we term it patriotism; if the opposite is the case, we term it ”nationalism” and ”ultra-nationalism”.
This type of governmental/military misuse, hijacking, manipulation, and exploitation of the Holocaust degrades the Holocaust and trivializes it and creates an anti-Jewish backlash. Why don’t more people protest and dissent against this blatant misuse and unethical manipulation of the Holocaust? When I queried him about the US exploitation of the Holocaust to advance US military/economic interests in the Balkans, Finkelstein agreed that the US government manipulated the Holocaust on behalf of the Holocaust Industry:
It is quite clear that the US invoked the Holocaust/Hitler images for purely opportunist reasons.
This is not surprising, since the US State Department was instrumental in creating the US Holocaust Museum. The US government wanted to use the Museum to advance its agenda. Why waste the money on a museum when you can use the propaganda value for military operations abroad? Elie Wiesel, Abe Waxman of the Anti-Defamation League, the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum, all contributed to making the Holocaust central in US propaganda. Holocaust Museums and Holocaust projects, studies, and research, gave the issue high PR visibility. Israel and the Holocaust became inseparable and any advance of Israel was supported. Waxman, for instance, supported Marc Richís pardon because Rich had been an agent of the Israeli government. David Finn, the head of the Ruder-Finn PR firm, based his propaganda efforts on Holocaust themes. This explains why Zlata’s Diary, the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank, and Adona, the Albanian Laptop Anne Frank of Kosovo, became key components of the NPR/CNN Holocaust propaganda. But who was the real Anne Frank?
The real Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929, in Franfort-on-Main, Germany. She had an older sister, Margot. The family moved to Holland in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power. She began writing her diary after Holland was occupied by Germany and the Franks hid in a Secret Annex. She addressed her Diary, Dear Kitty, and recounted her experiences hiding in the Annexe during the German New Order in Europe. She listened to BBC broadcasts and managed to hide there until an informant gave away their location. The Grune Polizei seized the Secret Annexe on August 4,1944 and the Franks were sent to concentration camps. By contrast, the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic, moved to a comfortable and posh villa in Paris after the first year of the Bosnian civil war, while the Albanian Anne Frank of Kosovo, Adona, accompanied by three Albanian Kosovar friends, came to Berkeley, California to finish high school in San Francisco. The educational tour was paid for and sponsored by the First Congregational Church of Berkeley as the Church was instrumental in the propaganda campaign. Here is an example of a Christian denomination, a Christian church, fomenting and sponsoring anti-Christian propaganda on behalf of Muslim separatists who would kill and displace Christians from their land and destroy and demolish Christian Orthodox Churches. After the NATO occupation of Kosovo, over 250,000 Kosovo Serbs, Kosovo Jews, Roma, Slavic Muslims, and Turks were driven out, creating an ethnically pure Albanian Kosova. The UCK separatists demolished up to a hundred Serbian Orthodox Churches and murdered Serbian and Roma civilians, hunting them down like animals, and kidnapping others. The role of the First Congregational Church is also a remarkable example of a Christian Church working with the government propaganda machine, aiding and abetting the war effort, complicit in and colluding with the government war propaganda. This church and government collusion in producing racist and bigoted propaganda and infowar against the Serbian population raises troubling questions about the separation of church and state in the US. Under the US Constitution, in the First Amendment, there must be a fundamental separation of church and state, of religion and the political government. But here we have a violation of the primary principles of the US Constitutional framework. To kill and displace Serbian Christians from their land in Kosovo, the US propaganda war violated many of the tenets of its own principles. The victims in this racist war propaganda were ultimately American citizens. In dehumanizing the Serbian population, the propaganda machine of the US government dehumanized US citizens. The First Congregational Church of Berkeley violated the principle of the separation of church and state by mindlessly supporting the US government propaganda war that was morally selective and chosen to advance US economic/military/and political interests in the Balkan region. In the 1960s Berkeley had a reputation as an anti-war community that was at the forefront of opposition to the Vietnam War. In the 1990s, Berkeley had become the key sponsor and fomenter of the Kosovo War. This was a remarkable transformation and demonstrated just how successful the US government, Pentagon, and media were in counteracting the Vietnam Syndrome. Berkeley now was famous as the place where the NPR/CNN Anne Frank of Kosovo propaganda was hatched and concocted.
The real Anne Frank died at the real German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in March, 1945. Her father, Otto Frank, was the sole survivor of the family. He prepared the diary for publication. What is the content of the Diary? Does it offer a humanistic outlook or humanitarian vision absent of nationalism and racial/ethnic polarization?
Structurally, the Diary is poignant and tragic, but offers no new viewpoint or insight on ethnic tolerance and nationalism. Anne Frank perceived ethnic identity in the same way Adolf Hitler did, as a bipolar dichotomy of us versus them. In her entry for October 12, 1942, the following entry appears:
Nice people, the Germans! To think that I was once one of them too. No, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. In fact, Germans and Jews are the greatest enemies in the world today.
She perceived an artificial division between us, Jews, and them, the Germans. She stated that she was once one of them. She stereotyped all Germans as ”them”. She also created a dichotomy between friends, the British, and ”enemies”, Germans, seeing the German people in a racist stereotype as the ”enemy” and as ”enemies”. She also saw the inherent conflict as one of ”nationality” or nationalism, the identification with a particular nation or nation-state. She exhibits a racism and ethnic bigotry. She has a pet cat which she named ”Boche”, or German, a derogatory and racist ethnic slur for ethnic Germans of French origin, particularly popular in France during World War II during the racist anti-German hysteria, meaning idiot or blockhead, from alboche, French for cabbage. It would be like Germans naming their cat ”Yid” or ”Kike” or ”Nigger” or ”Spick”. Similarly, the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic, terms all Serbs Chetniks, in her diary, a term to describe Serbian guerrillas during World War II who engaged in a guerrilla war against the German occupation. The three ethnic warring groups in Bosnia, the Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, referred to each other in derogatory stereotypes created after WWII to refer to each other: All Muslims were ”Turks”, all Croats were ”Ustasha”, all Serbs were ”Chetniks”. These were the racist stereotypes the groups had of each other brainwashed during the Communist era. These Diaries offer no new vision of ethnic tolerance or humanity or human compassion. They, in fact, engage in racist polarization and enmity exactly like the forces they are fighting against; they mirror the language and structures used by their ìenemiesî.
What solution or political vision for tolerance and ethnic multi-culturalism does Anne Frank offer? She wrote as follows:
I go to a meeting of the Zionist movement. Iím by no means a fanatic, but I have a leaning that way.
Her answer is Zionism, which can be seen as a racist, ultra-nationalist movement, the mirror reflection or image of Nazism. In the Zionist ideology, Jews are the ìchosen peopleî or the chosen race; in Nazi ideology, the Germans are the master race. A UN Resolution 3379, passed the UN General Assembly equating Zionism with racism, passed by the international community, has in fact equated Zionism with racism. So under the international community and under the UN, Anne Frank would be deemed a racist. Anne Frank offers nothing other than the mirror image of Adolf Hitler. One racism is pitted against another racism, one ultra-nationalism is juxtaposed to another ultra-nationalism, Zionism and Nazism. But why is the diary of Anne Frank held up to be a panacea for ethnic conflict. Why isnít it exposed as a sham? The book has tremendous propaganda value, as NPR, CNN, the Pentagon, the US State department, and the US Government have discovered. It is all about propaganda or information warfare.
But why is a book with no real value in understanding ethnic conflicts and competing nationalisms still used in propaganda. Propaganda appeals on the emotional level and the subconscious level. Propaganda works not only on the conscious level, but on the subconscious level. We think we are in control, but this is a delusion. The propagandist or information technologist, the Pentagon psyop specialist and PR spin doctor and media analyst, hold all the strings. Unconscious or subliminal perception is not new. In 400 B.C., the Greek philosopher Democritus wrote that ìmuch is perceptible which is not perceived by us. Aristotle discussed subliminal perception in Parva Naturalia: Impulses occurring in the daytime, if they are not very great or powerful, passed unnoticed because of greater waking impulses. But in the time of sleep, the opposite takes place, for then small impulses seem to be great.
The Austrian psychologist Otto Poetzle developed the Law of Exclusion, arguing that people exclude conscious perceptions from their dreams. Instead, subliminal perception is the basis of dream content. In other words, we disregard subliminal or subconscious impressions, but they emerge in dreams where they are shown to have an impact on our minds. Subliminal or unconscious perception is fundamental in understanding propaganda and information technology.
The US information technologist/propagandist/infowar/ psyop specialist uses the Holocaust propaganda paradigm or analogy to subliminally influence the mind of the recipient of the propaganda/brainwashing embeds/images. Western/American democratic and republican political principles are founded upon free will or free/independent choice which distinguishes the US from totalitarian states/systems. But subliminal stimuli operate on the subconscious, which cannot be controlled. All effective spin or public relations or psyop techniques or propaganda operate at the subliminal, subconscious level. In other words, we have no free/independent will or choice. The government dictates how we will feel, how we will react, how we will think, how we will choose. This is why the Founding Fathers regarded all governments as a necessary evil which needed to be limited, restricted, and controlled. When we see images that are constantly repeated of Albanian refugees, of massacred Albanian civilians, we are being forced to think a certain way, we have no free choice in how we think about the Kosovo crisis.
The Holocaust analogy propaganda of the US infowar is an example of subliminal stimuli, using the Transfer Technique in propaganda to control thought and emotion, to influence and to persuade. The Adona/Anne Frank of Kosovo propaganda paradigm of the US psyop specialists was not meant to appeal on the conscious but rather on the subconscious level. Consciously, we can deduce that the Anne Frank analogy is absurd and ludicrous and morally unethical. But in the anti-Serbian racist frenzy and bigoted anti-Orthodox zealotry, an appeal to the emotion and subconscious is highly effective. Under the Poetzle Effect or Alarm Clock Effect, the subliminal embed of the Holocaust analogy is subconsciously embedded or established and evokes a behavioral response many hours, months, or years after the initial perception of the subembedded stimuli. Subconsciously we associate the separatist/secessionist/terrorist nature of the conflict in Kosovo with the Holocaust and the Albanian minority is associated with European Jews during the Holocaust. Consciously we understand that Kosovo conflict as a secessionist/terrorist racist war against Orthodox Serbians Christians, but subconsciously we make an emotional association with the Holocaust and the Jews. This is what the US propagandist/psyop specialist intends all along. We have little or no control over this process. The US infowar technologist or propagandist knows this. The US propagandist/infowar technologist has won.
Subliminal persuasion techniques are not new. US commercial advertising is dependent upon subliminal persuasion. Advertisers do not explain why drinking Coca-Cola is good for you. US advertisers do not explain why smoking cigarette products is good for your health. Instead, the sales pitch is made at the subliminal, subconscious level, the effective/emotional level, not the cognitive/reasoning level. In a Coca-Cola commercial, Cal Ripkin of the Baltimore Orioles is shown drinking a Coke in an empty stadium. At the conscious level, the ad imparts nothing. But subconsciously, the ad says everything. One of the greatest athletes in baseball drinks Coke, by implication, Coke is healthy, Coke is a soft-drink of great athletes. By implication, Coke is an All-American drink, right up there with the American flag as a symbol of America. Coke is the soft-drink of freedom. Can an ad be any more effective than this one? The impact is all essentially at the subliminal level. Likewise, cigarette ads show a cattle rancher usually on a horse in a mountainous ranch locale. The stimulus is directed at the subconscious. Cigarette smoking is conducive to rugged individualism and hard physical activity. The ad does not have to say anything. The impact is all at the subconscious level.
The subconscious nature of propaganda is well known. In Mein Kampf (1924), Adolf Hitler explained the mechanisms of subliminal persuasion. In 1957, James Vicary, a US market researcher caused a nationwide frenzy when he introduced the tachistoscope, a film projector that could flash messages on a movie screen at the rate of 1/3000th of a second. Vicary flashed the messages Drink Coca-Cola and Hungary? Eat Popcorn in movie theaters. The messages were subconsciously perceived by viewers although not detected consciously. While discredited, nevertheless, these subliminal techniques highlight how the game works, how to sell everything from detergent, soap, soft-drinks, to war and military intervention. Vicary took the technique to the level of absurdity, a reductio ad absurdum.
A conscious association can trigger a subliminal precept buried in the unconscious that is dormant and latent. This was why the Holocaust and Anne Frank of Kosovo/Adona propaganda was used. The US propagandist sought to camouflage and falsify the fact that the Albanian conflict was an violently and virulently anti-Serbian, anti-Orthodox, racist separatist/secessionist/terrorist conflict by establishing a misleading and spurious association with the Holocaust/Anne Frank. The US infowar technologist and propagandist made use of the Transfer Technique in propaganda analysis, a routine and well-established infowar technique. Wars come and go, but propaganda techniques remain constant.
Anne Frank of Kosovo Propaganda Hoax: Where are they Now?
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 puppetmaster 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 puppetmasters. 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 puppetmaster, 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 Master’s 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.
Source: Carl Savich blog
