The Guardian 17 May, 2006
Culture and Life
by Rob Gowland
Kosovar gangsters,
playboys and posh sandwiches
It’s time to check a few items on which we did not have room to comment in the last few weeks.
The first was the discovery by the international media — and the UN — in April that the Serbian province of Kosovo was under the control of Albanian organised crime gangs. This would hardly have come as a surprise to readers of this paper.
You will remember that in the late 1990s, US and NATO forces bombed, blockaded and generally shot up Serbia (part of Yugoslavia) supposedly to free the "oppressed" Albanian minority in the province of Kosovo.
There were plenty of international voices (everyone from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the international police agency Interpol) that pointed out that this "oppressed minority" was actually under the thumb of the local Albanian mafia. But these voices were brushed aside.
The Guardian frequently published material at that time that exposed for Australian readers the involvement of the supposed Albanian "freedom fighters" in the drug trade, slavery, extortion, money laundering and vice generally.
Now, UN-sponsored talks in Vienna on the "final status" of Kosovo (since it was invaded and occupied by US/NATO troops) have openly acknowledged that the US and German weapons that were sent into the province to foment a terrorist war there against Serbs were smuggled in via "mafia networks".
Not so readily acknowledged is the fact that, to get the Kosovo Albanian clans’ support for their US-inspired "struggle" for independence, the US agencies had to give the Kosovo Mafia clans access to the profitable Middle East — Europe drug route.
The links between US intelligence outfits (especially the CIA) and the Mafia — both at home and abroad — are well documented. The Vienna talks are not concerned about that, however: after all, that served US purposes.
What they are concerned about now is that the same Albanian Mafia forces, using the same routes and contacts, are still accumulating substantial profits from what the capitalist media refers to as "a burgeoning trade in illicit petrol, cigarettes and cement [as well as] prostitution and drugs".
These profits (along with smuggled oil from Montenegro) are laundered through more than 2000 petrol stations — in a province of only two million people! Other profits are being ploughed into Mafia-owned shopping centres and hotels, creating a building boom (using the Mafia cement mentioned above).
The UN’s International Ombudsman for Kosovo (until he lost the position last year) was Polish, Marek Nowicki. He says that the Albanian gangsters in Kosovo operate at the highest level.
"You have a criminal state in real power." But gangsterism is no basis on which to try to run an economy: such a state "needs underground illegal structures to supply it with everything to survive".
Even the UN, with its multiplicity of agencies and services going in and out of Kosovo, has apparently become peeved at the amount of graft it gets stiffed for at Pristina airport.
Last month its internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight, accused Soren Jessen-Petersen, the head of the UN mission in Kosovo, of turning a blind eye to the instances of fraud and corruption at the airport. Predictably, Jessen-Petersen said the report was "entirely unwarranted".
You don’t have to be a reader of our Guardian to know that wherever the US armed forces go in the world, crime, destruction and chaos follows.
Hugh Hefner, the filthy-rich magazine publisher who originated Playboy, turned 80 recently. He celebrated — oh, so predictably — with a pyjama party (will this man never grow up?) at the large and lavish house he ostentatiously calls the "Playboy Mansion".
Heffner, by any rational standard a sex-obsessed old codger with a fondness for women young enough to be his granddaughter, still trades on his self-created image as a "swinger" with a boob fixation.
His wealth always put him in a position to offer his "Bunnies" and other playmates the chance to meet well-paid young men who could improve their social standing one way or another.
But his obstinate refusal to see that he was in fact exploiting his young female employees — even though his victims usually did not see it either — does not make his behaviour any the less decadent.
His hedonistic and very public pursuit of his own pleasures, he pretentiously hailed as "the Playboy philosophy". In fact, of course, it is no-more than the self-indulgent credo of every rich person: "it’s mine and I’m going to enjoy it, and to hell with the rest of you".
Indulging the rich in a different way was also in the news recently: the London store Selfridges launched a gourmet line of sandwiches, created by its executive chef, Scott McDonald.
There are plenty of people in London who would appreciate a decent sandwich: shop assistants, office clerks, old age pensioners, those who can only get part-time work and those who cannot get any.
But Selfridges’ sandwich is not for the likes of them. Goodness me no. Uh uh!
Selfridges is what is called an "up-market" store. It caters to the well off.
Its "McDonald sandwich" was priced at spiffing 85 ($204), a price tag presumably intended to keep it out of the hands of the hoi polloi (the mass of common people like you and I). Mr McDonald’s sanger weighs in at well over half a kilo, and comprises Wagyu beef, foie gras flavoured mayonnaise, Brie de Meaux (one of Europe’s finer cheeses), English cherry tomatoes and roasted capsicum, all on 24-hour fermented sour dough bread.
But no tomato sauce, apparently. Personally, I think the ruling class should be encouraged to go on flaunting their wealth in people’s faces like this. It can only help rouse people’s anger and disgust.