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    17-04-2002
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    Albania - Andrew Mueller

    nje artikull interesant mbi Shqiperine ose me mire mbi Tiranen. t'me falni po eshte shume i gjat per tu perkthyer po me interes per tu lexuar.



    ALBANIA

    by Andrew Mueller



    WHEN we take our seats in the revolving cocktail lounge on top of the
    city’s highest building, we’re overlooking a magnificent square, into
    which
    pour several lanes of expensive cars, mostly Mercedes-Benzes and Audis.
    In the middle of this superb public space, there’s a ferris wheel and
    other rides for children, whose parents are catered for by the cafe
    tables on the balcony of the opera house to the right. As the bar
    rotates, we
    get a view over a tree-lined district of bars, filled by
    snappily-dressed young people. Further around, we look across a park to
    gleaming hotels
    along the main boulevard. As we complete our circuit, there’s a vista of
    semi-completed luxury apartment blocks, painted a beguiling tropical
    mix of reds, greens, blues and yellows.

    We could be in Miami, or Barcelona. But we’re not – and, more to the
    point, I’m not sure we’d swap if offere d the choice. We’re in Tirana,
    Albania, and it’s not what you might expect.



    “ALBANIAN organised crime has become a point of reference for all
    criminal activity today. Everything passes via the Albanians. The road
    for
    drugs, and arms and people, meaning illegal immigrants destined for
    Europe, is in Albanian hands.”


    – Cattaldo Motta, Italian public prosecutor, August 2000



    AND that, as long as we’re painting entire nationalities with broad
    strokes, was an Italian talking. But Mr Motta is hardly alone. Let’s do
    some
    word association. I say “Albanian,” you say. . . what? Gangster?
    Asylum-seeker? Prostitute? There are viruses breeding in African rivers
    which
    have better public images than Albania. Indeed, in London schoolyards,
    the adjective “Albanian” has passed into vernacular, descriptive of
    anything shoddy, unfashionable or criminal.

    You’d no sooner go to Albania than you would jump on the tail of a
    sleeping leopard, and nor would anybody else. The current “Rough Guide
    to Eastern Europe” doesn’t mention Albania. Fodor’s “Central & Eastern
    Europe” also gives it a swerve. Ditto the Eastern Europe edition of
    “Let’s Go” – which does cover Bosnia and Belarus. Lonely Planet goes
    there, but their Albania chapter kicks off with the reminder that “This
    pint-sized, sunny slice of Adriatic coast has been ground down for years
    by poverty, blood vendettas, and too many five-year plans,” and also
    remarks that “Armed robberies, assaults, mobster assassinations,
    bombings and carjackings have been reported, and street crime
    (particularly
    at night) is a problem across the country.” When I told my friends –
    educated, enlightened, citizens of the world – that I was going to
    Albania,
    their responses were instructive: “Was Baghdad not chaotic and dangerous
    enough?; “Can I have your flat?”; “Bring me back a, erm. . .
    cabbage?”

    I wish I could say I knew better. I’ve been lots of places, some of
    them pretty awful. I know some of Albania’s neighbours well enough to
    know
    the Serbo-Croat for “Don’t shoot!”. And I thought Tirana was going to
    resemble the less fashionable districts of Kabul. I packed water
    purification tablets, insect repellent and medicines for stomach
    ailments. I bought hefty books, which I imagined reading by torchlight
    to the
    crackle of gunfire. I took my laptop, reasoning that if it wasn’t stolen
    by bandits on the road from the airport, and I was able to find an
    operable
    power socket, I could get some work done in the evenings, which would
    surely otherwise be spent brooding in my room with a chair wedged
    under the door handle.

    I even wondered, as photographer David Sandison and I waited to
    change planes in Budapest, if it mightn’t be an idea to pick up some of
    the
    Hunga rian salami in duty free, so we could be sure of something to eat.
    Sandison, for his part, was gloomily concerned about his equipment –
    every photographer he’d asked had assured him that if his cameras
    weren’t lifted by Kalashnikov-wielding brigands, they’d be impounded by
    hatchet-faced security guards the second he tried to photograph
    anything.

    Albania’s fearsome reputation is the product of a modern history best
    described as tragi-comic – tragic if you had to live there, comic if you

    didn’t. Under the fabulously insane dictator Enver Hoxha, who ruled from
    1944 until his death in 1985, Albania was so insular and paranoid that
    it
    fell out with every other batty communist state – Hoxha left the Warsaw
    Pact when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia, and stopped talking to
    China when they started speaking to the USA (“Revisionists!” snorted
    Hoxha). Convinced that the whole world coveted his loopy Ruritanian
    fiefdom, Hoxha gaoled or killed thousands of opponents, banned religion
    and foreign travel, and built hundreds of thousands of semi-circular
    concrete bunkers all over Albania, facing in every direction. The whole
    world, whose true feelings towards Albania were bemusement and
    indifference, let him get on with it.

    Hoxha’s death in 1985 came at the right time for his country to
    catch the wave of freedom that began sweeping across Eastern Europe in
    1989. Instead, Albania spent the next decade turning from a Balkan North
    Korea into a Balkan Somalia. During the 1990s, a substantial
    proportion of Albania’s population put their savings into pyramid
    schemes. When the schemes reached critical mass and collapsed, in
    February
    1997, the country went berserk. Military installations were looted –
    more than 500,000 guns were suddenly distributed among Albania’s 3.5
    million people, minus the estimated 20,000 who seized boats and tried to
    sail the m to Italy. Hardly had that fracas subsided when the 1999 war
    between Slobodan Milosevic’s goon squads and Albania’s ethnic kin in
    Kosova dumped half a million refugees on Albania’s northern doorstep.

    That was the last time the world’s media paid attention to Albania,
    so those are the images that stick – the anarchy, the rioting, the
    soggy-socked desperadoes tramping through mountains in search of safety.
    This is what you prepare for as you pack – the idea that it might be
    quite nice doesn’t come into it. But my first visit to Albania has
    changed my view of the swarthy, tracksuited men selling bootleg
    cigarettes to
    hostile locals on Holloway Road. I never really thought they were
    hardened criminals. But now I don’t think they’re ambitious immigrants
    pulling
    themselves up by their bootstaps, either. I don’t even think they’re
    pitiable economic flotsam with nowhere else to drift. What I now think
    they are
    is abs olutely barking mad.



    “LAVAZH,” says a sign painted in white. “Lavazh,” says another, daubed
    in black. “Lavazh,” say a dozen or so more, in rapid succession. We’re
    in a taxi heading to downtown Tirana from the airport, and we’re reading
    one word, written on just about every surface.

    “Restaurant?” I wonder. “Albanian for restaurant?”

    “Coffee,” decides Sandison. “There’s that coffee machine, Lavazzo.”

    A good guess, but how much coffee can one nation drink? We pass 80
    or 90 “Lavazh” signs. Eventually, I realise that most of them are
    situated close to a shirtless youth with a hose. “Lavazh” is Albanian
    for car wash – and while, judging by the cars on the roads, supply
    rather
    exceeds demand, this is an encouraging indicator of an entrepreneurial
    spirit; chalk up an early score against the popular image of Albanians
    as shiftless scroungers. The hotel is another surpris e. It’s as quiet
    and comfortable as it looked on its website, with friendly staff. The
    lampshades contain no microphones.

    Measured against received wisdom, Tirana as a whole is similarly
    disorienting. Some footpaths need maintenance, but I live in the London
    Borough of Hackney – I’ve tripped over worse. We do pass a couple of
    beggars as we walk to Skanderberg Square, the vast central plaza
    named for Albania’s 15th century nationalist hero, but you’d find more
    on the Strand. The streets are clean, and the traffic, by Balkan
    standards,
    only mildly chaotic. Nobody seems interested in robbing or arresting us
    – the only way we can get the vaguest thrill of Stalinist oppression is
    to
    stand outside Hoxha’s old villa and wave cameras around ostentatiously
    for about five minutes, after which a guard politely asks us to stop. We

    are instantly embarassed by our ignorance (it will take us a few days to
    become actually as hamed: this will happen when, after a long night in
    Tirana’s convivial bars, I get my 1000 lek notes mixed up with my 100
    lek notes, and try to pay a taxi driver ten times what I owe him, only
    to have
    him return my money and carefully pluck the correct fare from my
    wallet).

    What startles us most, though, are the colours. When the world’s
    media shipped out in 1999, Tirana looked like a huge London sink estate
    with some self-important government buildings in it. Tirana still has
    the self-important government buildings: the almost impressively ugly
    mausoleum built to house Hoxha’s remains, which is now an arts centre;
    the dreary National History Museum and Palace of Culture on
    Skenderberg Square, though the former is redeemed by the splendid
    socialist mosaic along its front. But every other building that faces a
    main
    street has been painted in lurid pastel hues, and highlighted with
    exuberant checks, zig-zags and s tripes. Tirana now looks like it has
    been
    assembled from giant liquorice allsorts. This fresh coat is the work of
    Tirana’s mayor, and Tirana’s principal topic of conversation, a
    39-year-old
    conceptual artist called Edi Rama.

    “Edi’s a character,” says Edi Muka. Muka, 34, is the director of the
    2003 Tirana Bienalle, scheduled for September. He buys us coffee at the
    cafe outside his gallery, across the road from Rinia Park, a shady green
    haven from the sunshine. “You never know what he’s going to say, or
    do, or wear next. That park over there was a shanty town two years ago –
    full of illegal kiosks and bars. Edi had them bulldozed, and now it’s
    beautiful.”

    “Edi’s a strange guy,” says Nora Kushti, of the UN’s Development
    Program for Albania, “but you have to be, I think.”

    “I like Edi,” says Eni, 23, a language student visiting home in a
    break from her studies in Paris. We meet her in Quo Vadis, a bar across
    the
    street from Hoxha’s unprepossessing villa, in the area of Tirana known
    as Block. Once off-limits to all but Albania’s communist elite, Block is

    now as pleasant a cafe district as might be found anywhere in Europe.
    “All our politicians are shits, but Edi smells less than the others.”

    “He has made things better,” says Dorian, a friend of Eni’s at the
    same table in Quo Vadis. “But the contracts seem to go to the same
    people.”

    “Edi needs medical help,” says Artur, a part-time lecturer, also in
    Quo Vadis. “He’s got a touch of the dictator about him.”

    When we do secure an appointment with the mayor, a couple of the
    legends that surround him are immediately confirmed as truth: the
    surreal
    redecoration of the municipal offices (the walls are painted as brightly
    as downtown Tirana, a chandelier in one stairwell has been replaced by a

    string of garlic cloves), and the no less giddying pulchritude of Edi’s
    female staff, who are breathtaking even by Tirana’s standards (at the
    risk of
    outraged letters and/or a stretch in the doghouse, Tirana’s women are
    stunning, and know it, dressing with a blithe lack of modesty and
    walking
    with a knowing catwalk strut; Edi’s campaign against Tirana’s infamous
    potholes must have saved thousands of distracted male pedestrians
    from undignified plunges into sewers).

    It says much for Edi, and Edi’s private office, that neither are a
    disappointment. Edi, a six-and-a-half-foot Balkan bear in an irridescent
    blue
    shirt and tartan trews, greets us from behind a polished wooden desk in
    the middle of a marble floor, inlaid with the mayoral seal. Behind him
    fly
    Albania’s national flag – the splayed, double-headed eagle on a
    blood-red background, which looks unfortunately like roadkill – and the
    flag of
    the European Union, a universal Albanian aspiration. The walls are
    covered in a sepia panorama of 1930s Tirana, and the green and gold
    ceiling looks like it was looted from Uday Hussein’s bathroom.

    “I decorated this myself,” he says, unnecessarily.

    Edi seems tired. He has just returned from some sort of festival in
    the Kosovan capital Pristina, where, to the delight of Albania’s
    television
    news programmes, he made a guest appearance with an Albanian hip-hop
    group, The Westside Family. He speaks slowly, in a guttural drawl
    that sounds like an idling tank.

    “The painting,” he begins, “ was because Tirana was in need of
    signals of change and hope. After three years of chaos, people had lost
    hope.
    Also, it’s something that is not too much of a strain on our finances.
    My budget is nothing point something.”

    Almost as if he’s worried that this sounds t oo prosaic, Edi
    assembles the first of many ambitious metaphors.

    “It’s like you’re on a boat cruising past a desert island, and you
    see a fire – someone’s making a signal. This is not exactly like
    ‘Robinson
    Crusoe’, though. . . ”

    Edi pauses, sensing that the allegory is getting away from him. His
    head disappears into his hands until he hits upon a way of bringing it
    round
    to an apposite conclusion.

    “Those fires,” he decides, “said ‘Don’t leave without me’. Ours are
    telling people not to get on the boat.”

    The smile at the conclusion of this Cantona-esque flourish is one of
    triumph mixed with relief.

    “Anyway,” he continues, invigorated, “the colours are all my personal
    choice. I didn’t want different neighbourhoods lighting different fires.
    The
    colours were intended as a shock. People were used to sleeping after
    they wo ke up – their surroundings were grey, and unchanging. There was
    resistance, but people got used to it, and the poorest country in Europe
    became like a Montmartre cafe, with everyone discussing colours. It was
    very strange.”

    Not everyone in Tirana is a fan of Edi. He has recently been the
    subject of a government investigation into allegations of corruption.

    “That’s not all,” he says, grinning mirthlessly. “My opponents also
    say I’m the contact of al-Qaida in Albania, I’m chief of a
    money-laundering
    racket, I used to sleep with my mother, I’m homosexual, which is a big
    offence here, I’m on drugs. . . The point is that I am independent from
    the
    past. The crises here depend on the past – all our parties have
    historical and psychological links with communism or Balkan
    totalitarianism.”

    I tell Edi we’ve met people who think he’s not far from the lineage
    of Balkan despots hi mself, and who believe he has an eye on loftier, if
    more
    modestly decorated, offices.

    “No,” says Edi. “It’s not an honour to be a national politician. I
    like being mayor. And I’d never be mayor in a normal country. It would
    be boring
    and depressing. In a normal city, what difference can you make? Here,
    small projects can have an enormous effect, like launching a computer
    virus. This job is like adventure, like madness, like art.”

    With Tirana as a blank canvas, I suggest.

    “That,” he corrects, “would be a pretentious thing to say. It’s more
    like conceptual art. This is not Albanian politics. Albanian politics is
    about
    escaping the truth through a mixed salad of words. I don’t have the
    chances to prepare any mixed salads. But I am tragically optimistic
    about this
    city.”

    As we’re leaving, I tell him that, for what it’s worth, I’ve been
    pleasantly surpris ed by Tirana.

    “You know,” he says, as my hand disappears into his immense, hairy
    fist, “journalists come here all the time and tell me that. And then
    they
    write shit. I am terrified of you people. Terrified.”



    THE awnings of the restaurants and shops of the Block district are, so
    far, free of the logos of the western corporate monoliths, but
    aspirational
    names lessen the shock of their absence – there’s a wood-panelled Grand
    Cafe de Paris next to a clothes store called Rodeo Drive, and a bar
    called McMarriott, whose staff wear shirts embroidered with a golden M.
    McMarriott’s owners, you have to reckon, are going to be forced to
    rethink their image one day soon.

    The one Albanian word we see everywhere, on posters and stickers next
    to a print of a red hand, is “Mjaft!”. “Mjaft!”is an emphatic Albanian
    variant of “Enough!”. Mjaft! is also a consciousness-raising movement
    which is acquir ing significant momentum. Since its launch earlier this
    year, the young activists of Mjaft! have campaigned against all
    Albania’s chronic ills – corruption, organised crime, the traditional
    blood feuds
    which still condemn rural families to avenge slights against their
    ancestors with murderous violence, lack of infrastructure (for most
    Albanians,
    water and electricity are erratic). Mjaft’s tactics are borrowed from
    the situationists of Paris 1968 via the Serbian student movement Otpor!,

    which played a significant role in bringing Milosevic down. In May,
    Mjaft! staged a bogus criminal street fair in Tirana, pretending to
    offer
    weapons, drugs and forged visas. They received several genuine
    enquiries.

    “Albania’s real problem is apathy,” says Erion Veliaj, Mjaft’s
    Campaign Director. Veliaj, 23, was raised in Tirana, educated in
    America, and
    worked in more than 60 countries for various NGOs befor coming home . We
    meet Erion and Mjaft’s Arbjan Mazniku, 24, in the excellent French
    cafe downstairs from their office. Like all Albanians we meet, Erion is
    acutely aware of, and depressed by, his country’s reputation.

    “The worst thing is that people here have started to believe it,” he
    says. “They read foreign newspapers, they see reports on Italian TV, and

    they start to believe that we are all gangsters, and that we’re all
    doomed.”

    Mjaft! are funded by various western governments – the British
    embassy in Tirana has kicked in an unspecified amount – and by local
    businesses. Edi Rama, campaigning for re-election in October, has been
    spotted wearing a Mjaft! badge.

    “We don’t comment about that,” says Arion. “We can’t deny what he’s
    done. But Edi gets praised for fixing roads and painting buildings –
    that’s what mayors are supposed to do. Expectations here are very low,
    and t hat’s why he gets applause.”

    Erion and Arbjan are terrifyingly bright, and I suspect that if I
    visit Albania 20 years hence, I might find myself addressing one of them
    as Mr
    President. Both could have walked into any NGO and been hired on the
    spot. They must have grounds for optimism.

    “Albania’s problem,” says Arbjan, “is that too many smart people are
    leaving. All my friends left after school, and I’m the only one who came

    back. To me, it was a choice between leading a comfortable, mediocre
    life in Canada or somewhere, and staying here and struggling for a
    future.”

    “Besides which,” adds Erion, “this is really good fun.”



    SO, what of the Albania of received opinion? What of this mythical nest
    of gangsters and scroungers, plotting to steal our jobs, ravish our
    women, drink our beer? If it’s any help, we are accosted one afternoon
    in Rinia Park by Sokul, 3 1, recently back from America.

    “I was there for 10 years,” he says. “I worked in building.”

    Why are you back?

    “I had a bit of trouble. Drugs, man. Cocaine supply. I did five
    years in Florida State Pen, then they deported me. You know, when I left
    10 years
    ago, this was total hell, dude. Now look at it. Wow.”

    So all’s well that ends well?

    “No way, dude. I’m going to get in the back of a truck and go to
    London. I got to Brussels last year, but they caught me.”

    Why, for heaven’s sake? There are people who’d row a milk crate
    across shark-invested oceans to live in cities a hundred times worse
    than
    this.

    “There’s no work here, man.”

    You’re kidding. There are construction projects everywhere, hotels
    opening all the time. You’re young, you’re experienced, y ou speak
    perfect
    english. Get a job.

    “You gotta understand, dude. Minimum wage in the UK is four pounds
    an hour. I get four dollars a day here. I go to London, I’ll share a
    room
    with 10 other people, I can save some money, then I can come back, or
    maybe find an English girl and stay. There’s some pretty girls here,
    though. Wow.”

    I wish Sokul well, but I can see why he feels that Tirana holds
    nothing for him. There’s a palpable sense of the rise of a generation
    who see
    what needs to be done as a challenge, rather than reason to swim to
    Italy. In the bar of the Rognor Hotel, we meet Gazmend Haxhia, 35. He
    manages the Tirana edition of the irreverent In Your Pocket travel
    guide, and also runs Tirana’s Avis franchise. Gazmend left Albania when
    the
    ban on foreign travel was lifted in 1990, and was the first Albanian to
    graduate from New York’s Columbia university. A ball of gregarious
    energy, Gazmend would have done well anywhere. But he’s chosen here.

    “Albania is still white sand. There’s such possibility.”

    Gazmend has been a tour guide, a translator, an aide to former prime
    minister Pandeli Majko, and an entrepreneur.

    “Sure, there are problems,” he says. “Take the cars – all those
    Mercs in Europe’s poorest city? Okay, the older ones were stolen in
    Germany,
    or driven here by Italians who’d claim the insurance, but police are
    cracking down – drive a nice car in Tirana, you’d better have the
    papers. The
    institutions are becoming less corrupt. When you consider what this
    country has gone through, what’s happening is amazing.”

    Albania didn’t join the 20th century until 1990. By 1997, it had
    collapsed into anarchy. Six years later, it’s the kind of place where
    people like
    Gazmend want to raise their children.

    “In 1990,” he says, “people were amazed to learn that Hoxha’s wife
    had 20 pairs of shoes. We couldn’t imagine such wealth. That’s where
    we’ve started from. Things really are happening here.”

    That said, even the most ebullient Tiranese remind us that the
    capital is an island of relative prosperity in a country which still
    rivals Moldova
    for bottom of most European statistical analyses, other than those
    pertaining to unlicensed gun ownership. Doubtless there are dodgy parts
    of
    Albania, but there are dodgy parts of everywhere – nobody judges Britain
    by Middlesbrough at closing time. We don’t have time to visit the
    bandit country of the north or, more annoyingly, the reputedly gorgeous
    beaches of the south, but in our ventures beyond Tirana we again fail to

    find the Albania we imagined. The mountainside fortress town of Kruja
    could have been transplanted from the Amalfi coast . The seaside resort
    of Durres, where ships loaded with refugees left for Italy during the
    bad times, has golden beaches crowded with day-trippers from Tirana. As
    far
    as we can tell, all the people who hire pedal boats are bringing them
    back.



    “OUR people have become the masters of their fate, and now are building
    and protecting a new life without oppressors and oppressed, without
    enslaving treaties imposed by foreigners, without misery. They rise a
    step higher with each passing year. All this has been achieved through a

    fierce class struggle, overcoming the backwardness inherited from the
    past with an iron will, foiling the plots of internal and external
    enemies and
    coping with the difficulties of growth.”


    - From “40 Years Of Socialist Albania”



    THE above words appear in a glossy book published by Hoxha’s Communist
    Party of Albania in 1984, appropriately enough. I bought it in a
    shop in Tirana, a dding it to the souvenirs I’d already acquired – a
    t-shirt from Mjaft!, some old communist medals from Kruja, an ashtray in
    the
    shape of an Albanian bunker from the Hotel Tirana on Skanderberg Square.
    The party hack who penned this paragraph must have known he
    was writing the most fearful nonsense, but the irony that he may yet be
    proved right, if in circumstances he’d have found incredible, is a
    richly
    appealing one.

    If he or she is still alive, I can empathise with the bewilderment
    they must feel. I fly home contemplating something which, five days
    previously,
    would have struck me as utterly risible. One day, I’m going back to
    Albania. Of my own accord. On holiday.
    Memory is a kind
    of accomplishment
    a sort of renewal
    even
    an initiation

  2. #2
    Shpirt Shqiptari Maska e Albo
    Anėtarėsuar
    16-04-2002
    Vendndodhja
    Philadelphia
    Postime
    30,122
    Postimet nė Bllog
    17
    Nje nga raportet me realiste te jetes shqiptare edhe pse nuk mund te konsiderohet i plote. Kjo eshte pershtypja e nje te huaji per Tiranen.

    Si gjithmone Edvin Rama nuk e humbi edhe kete mundesi per te shpalosur kulturen e tij te gjere.

    As we’re leaving, I tell him that, for what it’s worth, I’ve been
    pleasantly surpris ed by Tirana.

    “You know,” he says, as my hand disappears into his immense, hairy
    fist, “journalists come here all the time and tell me that. And then
    they
    write shit. I am terrified of you people. Terrified.”
    "Babai i shtetit ėshtė Ismail "Qemali", e zbuloi Edvin shkencėtari!"

  3. #3
    i/e regjistruar Maska e krokodili_73
    Anėtarėsuar
    14-06-2003
    Postime
    382
    Ky komenti jot albo le shume per te deshiruar, a thu se kjo ishte arsyeja pse u shkrujt ky artikulli. Mendimi im eshte se ky artikull eshte nje shenje shume e mire persa i perket thyerjes se mendimit se shqiptaret jane nje popull i deshtuar duke i steritipizuar te gjithe me tipin e mirit te xhikes qe kane qelbur evropen. Pavaresisht, kjo eshte nje gje per tu pershendetur dhe ktu tregohet edhe puna e madhe, revolucionizuese qe ka bere edi. Nje gje albo, eshte perverse menyra se si i kritikona ju gjerat qe kane lidhje me edi ramen. Ne mungese te argumentave serioze, plus dhe perballe fakteve qe ju vine si nga brenda, ashtu dhe nga jashte ne lidhje me punen e rames, ju zgjidhni te kapeni me gjera te tilla sic eshte homosexual, imoral, i cmendur, i droguar e ku ta di une, duke treguar se sa te rrezikshem jeni persa i perket propagandes suaj dhe qe metodat tuaja ngjajne me metodat e perdorura nga gebelsi. Shume keq dhe me keto menyra e keni te siguruar opoziten.
    Kroksi

  4. #4
    Shpirt Shqiptari Maska e Albo
    Anėtarėsuar
    16-04-2002
    Vendndodhja
    Philadelphia
    Postime
    30,122
    Postimet nė Bllog
    17
    Krokodil, po ta merrje mendimin ta lexoje artikullin do te kuptoje qe ai qe e ka shkruajtur nuk ka bere asnje koment, vetem ka pershkruar ate qe i kane pare syte dhe ka rrefyer ate qe i ka zene veshi nga njerezit qe ka intervistuar. Pra eshte nje pershkrim e llojit "No Comment!" dhe autori vetem ne fund shpreh deshiren e tij per tu rikthyer ne Shqiperi jo me si gazetar, por me pushime.

    Sa per Edvin Ramen, une nuk e "sulmova" dhe as e "shava", vetem citova fjalet e tij per gazetarin me lart.

    Albo
    "Babai i shtetit ėshtė Ismail "Qemali", e zbuloi Edvin shkencėtari!"

  5. #5
    Perjashtuar Maska e Ihti
    Anėtarėsuar
    26-04-2002
    Vendndodhja
    NY
    Postime
    966
    Artikuj te ketij tipi te bejne te ndihesh mire. Megjithate duhet marre gjithashtu parasysh qe ky gazetar ishte nisur me nje imazh per Shqiperine qe eshte shume poshterues, edhe kjo eshte gjeja me shqetesuese.
    Kuptohet qe edhe ai i ka zmadhuar disa gjera me stilin e gazetarit, qofte mbi imazhin e krijuar ne Angli per Shqiperine, si dhe mbi realitetin shqiptar qe ai njohu.

    Po ne fund te fundit, te ben optimist ideja qe ndryshimet per mire po dalin ne pah.
    Summertime baby!

  6. #6
    Shpirt Shqiptari Maska e Albo
    Anėtarėsuar
    16-04-2002
    Vendndodhja
    Philadelphia
    Postime
    30,122
    Postimet nė Bllog
    17
    "Indipedent" zbulon tė vėrtetat mbi Edi Ramėn

    Kryebashkiaku despot, shtypi, veset dhe ngjyrat e Tiranės

    Nga Andrew Mueller, The Indepedent

    "...Kur siguruam takim me bashkiakun i konfirmuam menjėherė duzinėn e legjendave qė qarkullonin rreth tij: dekorimi sureal i zyrave tė Bashkisė (muret ishin lyer me po ato ngjyra si pallatet e Tiranės, njė varg hudhrash tė thara kishin zėvendėsuar njė abazhur tek tavani i shkallėve), por jo mė pak eksituese ishte larmia e stafit femėror tė Edit, femra qė tė linin gojėhapur edhe krahasuar me femrat e Tiranės (zot na ruaj, por femrat e Tiranės janė tė hatashme, tė veshura me njė mungesė tė shkujdesur modestie dhe me njė ecje krenare prej koteleje; fushata e Edit kundėr gropave duhet tė ketė shpėtuar me mijėra kėmbėsorė tė shkujdesur meshkuj nga rėnia e turpshme nė gropa, teksa shihnin kėto femra).

    Kjo fliste shumė pėr Edin dhe zyrėn e tij personale, qė as mund tė themi se ėshtė zhgėnjyese. Edi, njė ari gjashtė kėmbė e gjysėm i veshur me njė T-shirt blu dhe qillota na pėrshėndeti pėrtej njė tryeze druri tė lėmuar tė vendosur nė mes tė njė dyshemeje prej mermeri, nė tė cilėn ėshtė stema e bashkisė. Prapa tij valėvitet flamuri kombėtar shqiptar me shqiponjėn dykrenare nė fushė tė kuqe qė fatkeqėsisht duket si njė kafshė e vrarė nė rrugė, si dhe flamuri i Bashkimit Evropian, njė aspiratė mbarėshqiptare. Muret janė mbuluar me njė panoramė kuqėrreme tė Tiranės sė 1930-ės kurse tavani i gjelbėr dhe i praruar duket sikur tė jetė grabitur nga ndonjė prej banjove tė pallatit tė Uday Huseinit.

    E kam dekoruar vetė, na thotė ai, pa qenė nevoja.

    Edi duket i lodhur. Sapo ėshtė kthyer nga njė biēim festivali i organizuar nė kryeqytetin e Kosovės, Prishtinė, ku, pėr kėnaqėsi tė programeve tė reja televizive shqiptare, ai u shfaq si mik nderi me njė grup 'hip-hop'-i, Familja e Bregut Perėndimor (ėest Side Family). Ai flet ngadalė, me njė tė folur grykore qė tingėllon si njė kamion nė afolio.

    Ngjyrat, fillon e thotė ai, i bėra sepse Tirana kishte nevojė pėr sinjale ndryshimi dhe shprese. Pas tre vjetėsh kaos, populli i kishte humbur shpresat. Gjithashtu ishte diēka qė nuk i rėndonte shumė financat tona. Buxheti im ėshtė zero presje diēka.

    Pastaj, i shqetėsuar se mos kjo tingėllon shumė prozaike, Edi fillon e na thotė tė parėn ndėr shumė metaforat e tij:

    Ėshtė sikur tė jesh nė njė anije qė kalon afėr njė ishulli tė shkretė dhe ju shihni dikė tė bėjė njė sinjal zjarri. Nuk ėshtė tamam si puna e Robinson Kruzoit, megjithatė...

    Edi bėn njė heshtje, duke e kuptuar se alegoria po i del duarsh. Koka e tij zhduket pas duarve derisa na del nė njė konkluzion tė kundėrt me tė parin:

    Ato zjarret, i thonė anijes: mos ikni pa mua. Kurse kėta tonėt i thonė njerėzve qė tė mos shkojnė tek anija.

    Buzėqeshja e tij, pasi kryen kėtė dribling alla Kantona, tregon triumf tė pėrzier me lehtėsim.

    Megjithatė, vazhdon ai, pasi e ka marrė ca veten, ngjyrat janė zgjedhja ime personale. Unė nuk desha qė fqinjė tė ndryshėm tė ndiznin zjarre tė ndryshme. Ngjyrat kishin qėllim tė krijonin shock. Njerėzit ishin mėsuar tė flinin pasi ecnin nė rrethina qė ishin gri dhe tė pandryshueshme. Pati rezistencė nė fillim, por njerėzit u mėsuan me to dhe kėshtu vendi mė i varfėr i Evropės u bė si njė kafe e Montmartrit, ku s'bėhej punė tjetėr veēse diskutohej pėr ngjyrat e mia. Ishte shumė e ēuditshme.

    Jo tė gjithė nė Tiranė janė fansa tė Edit. Kohėt e fundit ai ėshtė bėrė subjekt hetimesh me akuzėn pėr korrupsion.

    Kjo nuk ėshtė e gjitha, thotė ai duke qeshur me sforcim. Kundėrshtarėt e mi thonė gjithashtu se unė jam nė kontakt me 'Al Qaida'-n nė Shqipėri, se jam shefi i pastrimit tė parave, se kam fjetur me nėnėn time, se jam homoseksual, ēka ėshtė njė ofezė e madhe kėtu, se jam i droguar... Puna ėshtė se unė jam njė njeri i pavarur nga e kaluara. Kriza e kėtushmne lidhet me tė shkuarėn, tė gjitha partitė tona kanė lidhje historike dhe psikologjike me komunizmin apo me totalitarizmin ballkanas.

    Unė i thashė se kisha takuar njerėz qė mendonin se dhe ai nuk ishte larg despotėve ballkanikė dhe qė besonin se ai e ka syrin pėr mė lart, edhe pse nė njė zyrė qė mund tė jetė dekoruar nė mėnyrė mė modeste.

    Jo, thotė Edi. Nuk ėshtė nder tė jesh politikan nė nivel kombėtar. Mua mė pėlqen tė jem bashkiak. Madje unė nuk do tė isha bėrė kurrė bashkiak nė njė vend normal. Do tė kishte qenė njė punė e mėrzitshme dhe deprimuese. Ēfarė ndryshimesh mund tė bėsh nė njė qytet normal? Kurse kėtu me projekte tė vogla mund tė kesh efekte tė mėdha, njėsoj sikur tė lėshosh njė virus nė kompjuter. Kjo punė ėshtė si njė lloj aventure, si njė ēmenduri, si arti.

    Dmth., Tirana pėr ju ėshtė si njė kanavacė e bardhė, i them unė.

    Do tė ishte pretencioze ta thuash kėtė. Ėshtė mė shumė si art konceptual. Kjo nuk ėshtė politikė shqiptare. Politika shqiptare do tė thotė t'i ikėsh sė vėrtetės nėpėrmjet njė sallate fjalėsh. Unė nuk i kam shanset tė pėrgatit ndonjė sallatė fjalėsh. Por unė jam tragjikisht optimist mbi kėtė qytet.

    Kur ikim i them se Tirana mė ka pėlqyer dhe befasuar mjaft.

    E di si ėshtė puna, mė thotė, ndėrkohė qė dora ime zhduket nė pėllėmbėn e tij leshtore, gazetarėt vijnė kėtu dhe gjithnjė ma thonė kėtė. Dhe pastaj shkruajnė ***. Jam i terrorizuar me ju djema. I terrorizuar..."


    Kur Edi Rama censuron "The Indepedent"

    Ky ėshtė njė shkrim i rrallė, ose ndėr tė pakta shkrime realiste nė shtypin perėndimor, qė zbėrthejnė me realizėm portertin e Edi Ramės . Pjesa qė po botojmė ėshtė njė fragment nga shkrimi i Andreė Mueller botuar nė The Independent. Mes tė tjerash gazetari tregon edhe pėr takimin e tij me kryebashkiakun Edi Rama.

    Aty do tė gjeni ca tė vėrteta tė Edi Ramės, pėr ėndrrat e tij artistike, pėr stafin e tij erotik si dhe pėr dekorimin e zyrės sė Edit ku tavani i gjelbėr dhe i praruar duket sikur tė jetė grabitur nga ndonjė prej banjove tė pallatit tė Uday Huseinit

    Kryebashkiaku tregon se ngjyrat e pallateve tė Tiranės i ka bėrė ashtu pėr t'i shokuar shqiptarėt, qė tė zgjohen e tė mos bėjnė punė tjetėr, veēse tė merren me ngjyrat siē bėjnė piktorėt francezė nė kafenetė e Montmartrit.

    "Nuk ėshtė nder tė jesh politikan nė nivelin kėmbėtar" thotė Rama. Politikanėt nė nivelin kombėtar (kuptohet, e ka fjalėn pėr Nanon) nuk bėjnė gjė tjetėr veēse njė sallatė fjalėsh pėr tė gėnjyer miletin". Kurse nė krye tė bashkisė sė Tiranės ai mund tė bėjė aventurė, ēmenduri, art konceptual. Merreni me mend se ē'mund tė bėnte Edi nė krye tė Shqipėrisė, paēka se e fsheh hė pėr hė kėtė ambicje.

    Teksa ndahet me gazetarin, Edi, i mėsuar me Arjan Ēanėt, tenton tė lėrė porosi pėr shkrimin duke i thėnė se ėshtė i terrorizuar me gazetarėt e huaj qė bėjnė shkrime "muti" pėr sukseset e tij. Por kryearsyeja pėrse po e btojmė kėtė pjesė pėr Edi Ramėn, ėshtė se ajo ėshtė botuar e servirur prej tij nė shtypin shqiptar duke censuruar gazetėn mė prestigjoze britanike, e cila nė tė vėrtet shkrimin nuk e ka shkruar "***" sic shprehet Edi Rama, por thjeshtė ka pėrshkruar kush ėshtė Edi Rama .
    "Babai i shtetit ėshtė Ismail "Qemali", e zbuloi Edvin shkencėtari!"

  7. #7
    i/e regjistruar Maska e krokodili_73
    Anėtarėsuar
    14-06-2003
    Postime
    382
    ka dhe kshu, ket e shkrun gazeta sun, qe te mso na rriten veshet


    Albanian Mafia man's
    shock offer to The Sun

    From OLIVER HARVEY
    in Vlora, Albania

    THE Sun today exposes a sex slave scandal in which 1,400 innocent young girls a year are smuggled to Britain to work as prostitutes.

    The racket is run by the Albanian Mafia and I tracked down one of its key figures in an undercover operation.

    I posed as a pimp from London and within minutes of us meeting he offered to ship children to the UK for me — for only £527 each.

    And — with sickening callousness — he boasted he would transport ten for the price of nine.

    We reveal the sordid trade only 48 hours after police smashed an African child-slavery gang importing kids to London.

    I travelled to Albania to infiltrate the sex-slave trafficking mobs.

    The investigation led me to hear accounts from a string of girls who had been raped, beaten and forced to work in brothels abroad.

    Some were sold like animals by their families for £1,000.

    The underworld — in Albania and Britain — is reaping huge profits from the booming business.

    Our rendezvous with the Albanian mobster was at the isolated Kalaja restaurant on cliffs towering above the Ionian Sea.

    A contact in the Albanian criminal fraternity in London had put us in touch with a middleman in the smuggler’s paradise of Vlora, southern Albania. After a flurry of mobile phone calls we were told to meet the hoodlum at 3pm.

    I arrived ten minutes early with a bodyguard and an interpreter.

    Meanwhile, Sun photographer Dan Charity hid in a room 100 metres from our table.



    Call ... Gyjmi and minder
    A beige saloon car pulled up at the restaurant soon after and two thick-set men in their 40s got out.

    One, wearing slacks, Italian loafers and sporting a chunky signet ring, was introduced to us as Nasi Gyjmi. The other, clad more casually, was his henchman.

    I told cigar-puffing Gyjmi through the interpreter I needed girls smuggled to the UK. He replied: “No problem. We can take them by boat to Italy.”

    Then he added: “If you pay for nine you get number ten free.”

    I asked how much it would cost and he replied: “One thousand euros (£700) for an adult.”

    “I can take children across but they must be with an adult.

    “They’re cheaper. I’ll do it for 750 euros (£527).”

    He explained: “We have to wait for good weather and dodge the patrols.”

    I tried to haggle but he said through gritted teeth: “This is my last price.”

    I said I would would have to check with my boss in London then we shook hands and parted. The ease with which I could have struck a deal then and there shocked me.

    It proved the people smugglers were undeterred by an Albanian government clampdown ordered in the wake of international pressure.

    There was evidence of that blitz by the authorities on the outskirts of Vlora where several rubber speedboats had been confiscated.

    Such craft are used to carry men, women and children the 100 miles to Italy.

    The treacherous night crossings last around three hours.

    Sometimes they end in tragedy, with the human cargo hurled overboard to their deaths to make it easier to evade intercepting Italian vessels.



    Clifftop ... restaurant where meeting was held
    But, for the smugglers, the risks are worth it. Some of the speedboats can carry 40 people — raking in up to £28,000 a trip.

    Albania’s poverty and ancient clan system have allowed organised crime to flourish since its Communist regime fell in 1991.

    Even the manhole covers on the streets of capital Tirana have been stolen and sold for scrap.

    Gang bosses can be seen in top- of-the-range Mercedes — stolen to order in Germany — weaving past horse-drawn carts. Corruption is widespread and unemployment rampant.

    The average monthly wage was £44 in 2002.

    Some mobsters have made fortunes from drug empires stretching to New York.

    But, increasingly, they are turning to the lucrative sex industry.

    In Rome and Milan they have eased out the Italian Mafia to take over prostitution and vice rackets.

    And in Britain they are operating in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Hull. They are also believed to have made inroads in Telford, Shropshire.

    As many as 33,000 Albanian women are believed to be working as call girls in the West.

    Many girls are snared by pimps who pose as caring lovers. A third of those trafficked are simply abducted.



    Seized ... cops on a confiscated smugglers’ boat
    One aid worker told The Sun how a 14-year-old was snatched from the streets of Tirana recently as she went to school.

    She was beaten and forced to work as a prostitute in the city’s top hotels before fleeing to a safe house.

    She is now too terrified to return to her classes.

    Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service has said: “The use of kidnap by traffickers appears to be on the increase in the ex-Soviet and Balkan region, in particular with organised criminals in Kosovo and Albania.”

    Albania, with a population of 3,544,841, has also become the clearing house for the illegal movement of people from eastern Europe, thanks to its location.

    Thousands of girls from countries including Moldova, Russia, Romania and the Ukraine are wooed by promises of a new life in the West.

    They arrive via Albania’s neighbours Montenegro and Macedonia.

    Pimps take them either by boat to Italy or walk them over the mountains into Greece, to the south.

    They are then given false documents and travel on to work in brothels and saunas in Britain.

    The United Nations Children’s’ Fund — UNICEF — confirmed yesterday that child trafficking to Britain was soaring.

    Spokeswoman Soraya Bermejo said: “We welcome efforts by The Sun to highlight this awful practice. The life of a child has become cheap.”

  8. #8
    i/e regjistruar Maska e krokodili_73
    Anėtarėsuar
    14-06-2003
    Postime
    382
    Edhe nje histori per tu ngjethur mishte, se ca tbojm, e paskemi pas bishtin me tegjate se te majmunit.


    Forced to work as a £20 hooker


    Seedy ... victim
    in London's Soho
    AN Albanian prostitute parades her wares in London’s Soho — another victim of the trafficking racket in her homeland.

    In a dingy first-floor room off Wardour Street, an undercover Sun reporter was offered full sex with a leggy beauty for just £20.

    The pitiful sum would barely buy a round in trendy local bars.

    Albanians have taken over many Soho brothels — undercutting locals using trafficked girls.

    The beauty said her name was Anna and that she was 21. But, looking terrified, she refused to reveal how she got to Britain.

    Our man declined her offer of sex and left. We are not showing the girl’s face to protect her.


    Girl of 14 sold
    as sex slave


    Nightmare ... girl
    hides from pimps
    By OLIVER HARVEY

    TERRIFIED brunette Anduena was just 14 when she fell victim to Albania’s vile people-trafficking industry.

    The pretty youngster was sold to a pimp by her own father for just £1,000 and forced to work as a sex slave in London’s King’s Cross.

    The brutal pimp, introduced to Anduena as a potential husband, beat her and made her satisfy 25 men a night.

    Meanwhile her dad took a share of her profits to feed the rest of his family at home before she finally escaped.

    Anduena — now 17 and living under armed guard in a Vlora safe house — had been told she was leaving home to work as a babysitter in Europe.

    She agreed to be smuggled to Italy by speedboat.

    But the sea was too rough, so traffickers walked her seven hours across the mountains to Greece.

    The teenager was given false papers and travelled through Italy and France to London, where the beatings began.

    Anduena said: “I cried every night. I felt dirty and ashamed. I made £600 some nights, but never saw a penny.”

    One day the scared schoolgirl managed to phone her family in Albania.

    She explained: “I was ashamed of what I was being made to do and told my father I had a job as a babysitter.

    “But he said, ‘Don’t be stupid, I negotiated with these men — they paid me.’ I just cried. My sister later told me he’d sold me like an animal.”

    Anduena, whose life is in danger from the Albanian mafia, is now preparing to start a new life abroad.

    Save The Children funds a Vlora refuge for trafficked girls, which last year took in 340 women — 14 from Britain.

    The centre is tightly guarded as pimps try to snatch or kill the girls before they can testify against them.

    Residents include Vera, 19 — sold by her family and trafficked to Greece.

    There, a pimp beat her with a belt and burned her with cigarettes to make her work the streets.

    She was then sold to a pimp in Rome.

    Raven-haired Vera admitted: “I slept with up to 40 men a night. I felt ashamed, but I was trapped.”

    Vera was then sold for £5,000 to another pimp in Germany before being arrested and deported to Albania.

    She went on: “I was called a whore and a slut by men in the street when all I wanted to do was go home.”

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Regullat e Postimit

  • Ju nuk mund tė hapni tema tė reja.
  • Ju nuk mund tė postoni nė tema.
  • Ju nuk mund tė bashkėngjitni skedarė.
  • Ju nuk mund tė ndryshoni postimet tuaja.
  •