The United States of America was the first country in the world to be built by sects. Representatives of the European persecution of Protestants settled in the New World to build their “city upon a hill”, a millenary Protestant utopia. It was a claim to build a new society, whose principles would extend to other nations in the future.
As time passed, American Protestantism, from Pentecostals to Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, became important tools of American soft power.
Many remember the
In Albania, the growth of the democratic state proceeds slowly, hampered by an economic crisis that is difficult to overcome and the security and legal problems that afflict the country. We address them in this report by Polo de donno.
SPREAD OF RADICAL ISLAMIST TERRORISM: The spread of Jihadism in the Balkans, and more particularly in Albania, cannot be framed within a generalized scheme of action but is based on specific dynamics that relate to the weakness of the state control structures
“I love my country and I consider the MEK a security threat to my country,” investigative journalist Gjergji Thanasi tells the Balkans Post in an exclusive interview.
The following is the transcript of the interview:
Balkans Post: What is going on with the MEK since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus?
Gjergji Thanasi: Well, it is difficult to offer a precise answer. The cult is very opaque. It is not that easy to get information (from the point of view of journalism, not espionage) of what is
by Anne Khodabandeh
A petition addressed to Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama has reached over ten thousand signatures. The petition was created by estranged families who need help to contact their loved ones trapped in the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) cult’s closed camp ‘Ashraf 3’ in Albania. The families are demanding that PM Rama ensures they get this contact. Now with the global coronavirus pandemic affecting Albania as elsewhere, they are even more urgently concerned to have news about the fate
Chief Iranian diplomat denounced Trump for retweeting MEK-linked account
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday accused US President Donald Trump of making threats that were cheered on by "Saddam's terrorists".
The chief Iranian diplomat was referring to the formerly US-designated terrorist group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that was allied with the late Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein.
It all started on Wednesday, when Trump said in a tweet that he
By Massoud Khodabandeh
With its small population of 2.8 million people, the Republic of Albania may appear to have a more manageable task (depending, of course, on the availability of health care resources) of testing and tracking contacts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, than countries with multiple millions of citizens living in large, sprawling cities and conurbations. But as Albania extends its lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the country faces a specific problem that
In an interview with the Balkans Post, Dr. Olsi Jazexhi, a Canadian-Albanian historian, argued that the possibility that coronavirus has infected the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK)’s camp in Albania is highly likely.
The transcript of the interview is presented below:
Balkans Post: The Intercept has published a piece, according to which the MEK has isolated, disappeared, and tortured many of its cadres into submission, including forcing dozens of female members to have sex with Massoud Rajavi and
Intercept Murtaza Hussain said members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, an Iranian militant group in exile better known as MEK, are responsible for leading the sectarian group’s online propaganda campaign against the Islamic Republic from MEK bases in France and Albania.
“The PMOI is a very secret organization, but the defectors told us that on their bases in Albania and in France, the members are charged all day long to publish articles on line and to manage the operations of information of the WIPO
Following the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy, more than 120,000 Albanians residing in Italy returned to their country. Albania, with a population under 3,000,000, has, as of this writing, 243 cases of coronavirus. That is 84 cases per 1,000,000 people. The death toll thus far of 13 represents a rate of 5 per, 1,000,000 people. These numbers are expected to skyrocket due to the lack of basic health services and service infrastructure to manage the crisis. Additionally, with so many Albanians
As Mike Pompeo – now dubbed ‘Secretary of Hate’ by Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif – ramps up his daily rants against Iran in spite of universal pleas for the U.S. to lift sanctions in order to help Iran fight the spread of COVID-19, attention has again focused on the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the so-called Iranian opposition group based in Albania. The MEK has, of course, become a favourite of anti-Iran hawks in the U.S. and Europe who see it as a weapon against the government
By Anne Khodabandeh
Since well before President Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, the U.S. and Iran have been in a de facto state of non-military warfare with sanctions, economic sabotage, cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns and social media attacks the weapons of choice. Both countries have exploited conflict in the region, especially after the rise of ISIS, to extend their military presence and reach.
While some in the U.S. have pressed for war with Iran at all costs, the
By Robert Fantina
The United States continues to support the Mujahedeen-e Khalk (MEK), despite the fact that that terrorist organization is losing popularity, not that it ever had very much anyway, around the world. The group remains basically based in Albania, a nation that allowed about 4,000 of its members into the country at the insistence of the U.S. government. As Dr. Olsi Jazexhi has stated, “The Americans imposed them (MEK) on Albania and since Albania is a very fragile state, they had
By Catherine Shakdam
“Both the far right and Islamist extremists benefit when their professed enemies engage in a terror attack or do anything that confirms their narratives. They want to see more rifts and more chaos in society. When communities are scared, when they’re driven apart, they’re vulnerable to the extremist narratives.”
News resurfaced this February of political collusion between the infamous Iranian MEK group (Mojahedin-e-Khalq), also known as the MKO, a cult-type organisation
By Kurt Nimmo
Trump murdered Qassem Soleimani for “saying bad things” about the USG, according to The Hill. The president, gathered Friday at Mar-a-Lago with donors and supporters, also threatened Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
The so-called “Supreme Leader” of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some nasty things to say about the United States and Europe. Their economy is crashing, and their people are suffering. He should be very careful with his words!
— Donald J
Israel’s secret service is the world’s leader in assassinations having killed more people than the agents of any other country since World War II, and conducted more than 800 operations in the last decade, a book released earlier this year has revealed.
Author Ronen Bergman held 1,000 interviews and studied a number of leaked documents to shed light on the human cost of Israel’s assassinations.
According to Bergman, until 2000, Israel conducted more than 500 assassination operations which
Trump’s ordered assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force, not only means a dangerous escalation of tensions with Iran, but also ends fiction that Russia was controlling him.
Just imagine….. If Iran’s President Rouhani had authorised a New Year drone strike on General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, as he was being driven to the airport in Canada.
Would anyone even be suggesting that the attack was
On October 30, a volley of tweets attributed to Alexis Kohler, chief of staff of the French President Emmanuel Macron, announced that France, taking into account the “negative consequences” of the presence of the National Council of Resistance (NCRI) on the French soil, will restrict its activities in the country. On November 5, however, the Élysée Palace disowned the tweets as fake, and the Twitter handle supposedly belonging to Kohler was suspended.
The incident raises a number of
In a statement today, the Albanian State Police and the Anti-Terrorism Directorate claim to have uncovered a “terrorist network directed by the Iranian regime” in Albania. The network allegedly consists of 4 Iranian citizens forming an “active terrorist cell of an external operations unit of the Iranian Quds Forces, which are part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.” No arrests have been made, and it is unclear whether international arrest warrants have been issued.
In a response, former
Albanian Police announced in a press briefing on Wednesday they have dismantled an ‘Iranian terrorist cell’ that allegedly planned an attack against the Mujahedin-e Khalq organization (MEK, a.k.a MKO, NCRI), a controversial Iranian group with a history of conducting terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians in the 80s.
The country’s police chief, Ardi Veliu, said the ‘terrorist cell’ plotted to target MEK members in Albania. He further claimed another ‘Iranian terrorist plot’ was foiled
President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, now at the center of a congressional impeachment inquiry targeting the president, once dreamed of securing the top spot at the State Department, only to voluntarily remove himself from the shortlist just after his name started started coming up.
But the former New York City mayor’s decision to bow out from consideration for the secretary of state gig wasn't necessarily a missed opportunity.
Since Trump took office, the president's
The United States of America was the first country in the world to be built by sects. Representatives of the European persecution of Protestants settled in the New World to build their “city upon a hill”, a millenary Protestant utopia. It was a claim to build a new society, whose principles would extend to other nations in the future.
As time passed, American Protestantism, from Pentecostals to Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, became important tools of American soft power.
Many remember the
