Thats a great photo! Its defenatly retired aircraft…and it is certainly at Kucova. However…they could also be aircraft just parked there becasue the base at Kucova is being rebuild…so maybe they are have just been moved out of the way. Most of them seem to be trainers…which is unusual for Kucova since most of the trainers were moved to Vlora and Kucova mostly had MiG-19s. But its Kucova becsue I recognize the nature. What is the soure fot this?? (what is CDF?)

You know…for a man who tells others to read their history…you really do make up a lot of your own.

Reading to what you wrote and the expressions you use is like reading text from a communist instructionist. You conveniently forget to mention that Albania was “declared” a “People’s Repubic” where “popular tribunals” were set up and conveniently condemned to death thousands of people that were considered a “danger” to Hoxha’s communist regime, Albanians and Greeks alike.

And this has exactly what to do with anything???

Inventing “ethnic cleansing” when Greece was under Nazi occupation and the Germans along with their Bulgarian and Camerian collaborators were burning villages and killing civilians, and turning this around and accuse Greeks for this, is not going to cut it.

The more you repeat a lie…doesn’t mean it will eventually become true. What proof is there that these Albanians in Cameria were collaborating with the Germans or that they were “burning down villages”?? (maybe you can name some of those villages they supposedly bruned down 😉 ) The funny thing is…Cameria was a haven for Greek communist Partisans. Maybe thats another clue why they were ethnically cleansed.

And I’m not inventing anything…9,000 civilians were killed by Zerva in Cameria…68 villages destroyed…and tens of thousands people expelled. Thats fact…Its fact even accepted by Greek soucres. What is also fact…is that Zerva did the same thing to EVERY other minority in Greece, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Turks…whoever was non-Greek was ethincally cleansed by force. You need an excuse to justify these actions…so you invent one…they collaborated with the Germans! Whether its true or not doesn’t matter…and it wasn’t true…because there is no evidence to suggest anything of the sort. Albanians were 95% of the population in Cameria…where did they find Greek villages to destroy and pillage??

Greek justifications go so far…only as long as one doesn’t know the history of the region and the repeated ethnic cleansings of all sorts of groups of people from Greece. Its not as if it started in June 1944 out of the clear blue sky. Greece invaded in 1912…and since then has carried out ethnic cleansings of Albanians, macedonians, Bulgarians and Turks on regular intervals between 1912-1945. Of course then they couldn’t use the excuse of “collaborating with the Germans”….but the excuse was simple…they are Muslims or non-Greeks. Lets be honest ok…they were expelled becasue they were non-Greeks…and that was the best time to do it out of the view of the rest of the world. Thats it.

In 1913 the Greeks killed 72 Albanian leaders from Cameria who had come to discuss with the Greek side after they occupied the territory. Between 1923-24 the Greeks included even the Muslim Albanian Cams as “Turkish Muslims” and deported thousands of them to Turkey under an agreement they had for population exchange…except that Albanians were not part of this agreement (since we’r not Turks). When the Italians started their war against Greece…the Albanian Cams asked the Greek government to mobilize them to fight the Italians. Instead, the Greek government only took them for labor, refusing to arm them. The men were taken for labor to far off places…and later during the war were interned in concentration camps in Medilin, Hio and Corinthus. During the war with the Nazis, the Cams formed the Cameria Anti-Fascist Committee which sided with the Communist Greek Partisans. And in that…was their doom…and they were named “collaborators”…except they didn’t collaborate with the Nazis but with the Greek Communist Partisans. When Zerva came around…on June 27 1944, he started his brutal campaign of massacres in Paramathia…killing 600 people in a single day. This was followed by the town of Filat, with 1286 persons killed, Parga with 626 persons killed and Gumenica with 192 persons killed. The final count by 1945 was 2900 men killed, 214 women, 96 children (32 younger than 3), 5800 houses destroyed and 68 villaged destroyed. Thousands more died in their journey to Albania. In Paramathia and surrounding vilages, 61 mosques were destroyed. In Gumenica and villages, 25 mosques destroyed. In Filat and villages 24 mosques destroyed.

Here are the TRUE facts of the Albanians in Cameria…and exactly who they collaborated with. There was no collaboration with the Nazis…that is fantasy which has never been proven at all. The Albanians in Cameria under the leadership of the Cameria Anti-Fascist Committee joined the ELAN forces (the Greek communist partisans) and were organized under the ELAN Regiment XV. According to an agreement between ELAN and the Zervist forces…the Sarafis-Zervas Caserta agreementin August 1944…the two would fight togather…and as a result the Zervist forces were allowed to come into Cameria. However, this is where the Zervist forces broke their agreement with the ELAN, and attacked the Albanian regiments of the ELAN in Cameria and attacked the civilian population and massacred thousands. The Albanian ELAn units in the are were attacked…and this broke the “agreement” with the Zervists. In October the Cameria Anti-Fascist Committee made a protest to Athens that Zervas was breaking the agreement by attacking the Albanians in Cameria…but the Papanderus government did not rely. In December 1944 the ELAN forces kicked Zerva out of Cameria and liberated the area once more. The Albanians still held in jails there were released…and the Albanian units of ELAn were reformed once more and some Albanians started returning to Cameria once more. However, in March 1945 the Zervist forces invaded once more…carrying out the same acts of violence.

As a result of the terrible human tragedy inflicted on the Albanians in Cameria…the UNRRA recieved just from Washington 1.45 million dollars of aid for the refugees from Cameria…this was in 1946.

Now…are you going to keep saying once more that Albanians in Cameria collaborated with the Germans and “burned down villages”…or are you going to accept the fact that the only reason they were attacked and ethnically cleansed by Zerva is becasue they actually were allies of the Greek Communist Partisans and were an easy target at a time when no one was looking???

Those who collaborated with the Nazis were killed by the Greek partisans of Zervas who I repeat, was taking orders from Cairo. Zervas partisans were mainly Greek Army officers and soldiers that either took to the mountains or came from Cairo in Greece and were under the orders of the Allied Supreme Headquarters, Middle East and were fighting the Nazis and their collaborators.

Zerva was more busy killing other Greeks and non-Greeks than anyone else. He was a Gestapo agent…as is confirmed by Gestapo documents…and his main role in Greece was to hunt down communists and kill as many of them as he could.

BTW regarding your “invasion” claims in previous pages the UN in May 1947 concluded -after investigation- that Albania along with Yugoslavia and Bulgaria supports the communist guerillas in the Greek civil war, while at that time Albania had no diplomatic relations with the US or Greece.

Well…you can listen to “UN resolutions” from 1947…or you can listen to real historical facts. Let me teach you some historical facts. Hoxha and the Greek communists never got along…it got to the point that even at the request of Stalin Hoxha refused to aid the Greek communists and had a fight with them in Moscow. There were no greek communists operating from Albania…period…all those who crossed the border were promptly taken into custedy…and send to the USSR.

Your ignorance rivals your arrogance. The (then Royal) HAF flew missions over Albania and Yugoslavia as the Axis forces were withdrawing, along with RAF and USAAC Squadrons. Posting in a military aviation forum and not knowing the history of air operations over your own country, speaks for itself… Partisans were one thing, organised miltary forces were another, do not confuse their role and importance. Of course this is not good for the “profile” you are trying to build regarding Albania in WW2 but that’s not your fault. Try to be less ironic and better informed next time…

Thats wonderful to hear that once a year an RAF plane flew over Albania. Do tell…what exactly did these RAF or Greek planes do over Albania?? What missions were they performing?? What exactly did they target over Albania?? Now again…I will have to teach some historical facts once more. The RAF or any other allied involvment in Albania was absolutely minimal…certainly these “flights” over Albania are far less than even a footnote in the history of the outcome of the war in Albania. The RAF nor anyone else carryed out no military operations over Albania. At most…the operations were to drop agents or to drop the small ammount of military aid Albanian Partisans got during the war. It was limited to that. But maybe…in Greek history books…the RAF won the war in Albania too.

Your war”??? Are you saying that Albania was fighting another war? “Our war” was the Allied Forces War against the Fascists and the Nazis, In Albania, in El Alamein, in Tunisia, in Habbaniyah, In Normandy, in the North Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean, all over the Med, everywhere that duty called we were present,what was yours?

Thats wonderful to hear that Greeks liberated Egypt, the Indian Ocean, and Greenalnd…but it has NOTHING to do with the war effort of Albania at all…so why do I need to address these pointless and ridiculus comments???

BTW Albania was an Italian protectorate from 1939 and the Fascist Italian Armed Forces invaded Greece from Albania on 28th October 1940 when Albania also declared war on Greece and the rest of the Allies.

And Greece was a Nazi protectorate with a puppet Nazi regime under the leadership of Prime Minister Ralisi…and a pro-Nazi puppet army of 30,000. What exactly is your point?? That ONLY Albania was imposed under a puppet regime? If that is your point…than of course you are wrong…becasue the Greeks were in the same situation. Becasue there was a puppet regime imposed, does that then mean that Greece too was an Axis state and therefore not an Ally??? Please do THINK before you write such things…

Now…just as there was a puppet army in greece…there was also one set up in Albania…which however deserted before the war with Greece even started and not a single Albanian soldier was involved. Or are you not aware of these events?? Moisiu was the commander of the Albanian troops under Italian control. I wonder WHY Greece gave him a medal though…something for you to think about 😉

so yes there were many “feet” stepping in Albania my friend. Why are you so anxious to distort reality is beyond me… Does it bother you so much? Probably we the Allies did not fight “your war” eh?

Yes I know…Greece invaded part of Albania. Great thing to do too…as your stated intentions were also to annex the parts you invaded 🙂 I wonder why this doesn’t sit well with anyone.

Albania as an Italian protectorate had declared war against the Allies. That is History. Partisans and Resistance groups were organised in all countries occupied by the Axis, its nothing new and it does not mean that Albania was not in the Axis side in WW2. Its obvious you don’t like it but its true…

:rolleyes: …ok lets try this one more time. Greece is invaded by the Germans. The Greek government goes into exile…operates from exile. Meanwhile, a puppet pro-Nazi regime is set up in Athens…and serves the Axis. The story of Greece.
Albania is invaded by the Italians. The Albanian government goes into exile…operates from exile. Meanwhile, a puppet pro-Italian regime is set up in Tirana…and serves the Italians. The story of Albania.

How are these two different?? How does it make Albania an Axis country while Greece the glorious liberator of all of Egypt, the Indian Ocean, Antarctida and Greenalnd??

You make no sense…but of course Greece is the ONLY country in the world that still denis this history.

The “photo shoot” in Moscow isn’t becasue Putin decide to feel sorry for the evil ex-Axis country of Albania and invite its President over to Moscow. Moisiu is there becasue Putin wanted to personally decorate him for his fight against the Nazis during WW2. A week prior to the celebrations in Moscow, Putin had send 60 decorations to be awarded to various Albanian WW2 leaders…but he requested that Moisiu come personally to recieve his medal. Now in Moscow’s and Washington’s and London’s account (and even Belgrade’s)…Albania was an Ally country. In Athen’s account…we are Axis. Well… :p

Taking a Communist era census as gospel is neither wise nor credible. Again the number of Greeks in Albania is downplayed by Albania since decades but now that the European Parliament is involved things are getting iffy…

Well…I can give you data from the 2004 census too if you want…but you’ll be dissapointed since they are about half as much as they were in 1989 😉 Now you can dismiss things in any way you want…these are the facts as they are…Greek minority today doesn’t even make 0.5% of the population…and these are from recent census…which…international monitoring organizations had no objections to at all. But I’m sure…Greece has objections. Either way…I state facts…you state whatever you want.

When you come to Athens don’t forget to remind me to introduce you to Greeks from Albania who not were imprisoned as political prisoners in Albania. And to Albanians who will tell you about “tortures”…

Well certainly I will remind you…and I’ll remind them too of my Greek minoritar neighbours in Tirana who lived a floor below me…or of the several Greek minoritar villages I have visited in Albania. I am sure…they’d like to know too.

Remember the elections a few months back when Greeks were beaten up outside polling stations and ballot boxes stolen? Very “democratic” indeed, in the best tradition of Hoxha…

Yes…especially considering that a mob of Greeks had come to the ballot station and was trying to stuff the ballots and tore down the Albanian flag…and the police had to intervene by breaking up the violent mob and removing the ballot box which was compromised. Indeed…democracy in action. But then again…Himara is that kind of a village.

LOL that was funny, thank you!!! If Albanians are so mistreated in Greece then why are they living and working here constantly? Why don’t they go to Germany or the US where they are going to be treated better??? Accusing Greece for torture is not only laughable, its clueless…

Actually…it may be good news to you…but today there are very few Albanians immigrating to Greece. No one wants to go there anymore. Good news…or maybe not…since we do make up 30% of your workforce. Torture…that I don’t need to claim at all…the EU has already criticized Greece for its practices…and the murders of Albanian soccer fans in Greece after the game speak volumes on their own. Trust me…I’v been to Greece.

Apollonia? Dyrrachion? Girokaster? Are these Greek names? Hmm…. Where did Achilles come from? Or Kastriotis? And ignoring 3000+ years of History is also not wise or credible either…

LOL. Apollonia hasn’t existed as anything more than an archeological site since 2500 years ago when the Illyrains drove the Greek colonists out…and Durrachium is a ROMAN name. Achilles??? Sprang out of Zeus’s shoulder or something…he didn’t even exist…lol. Kastrioti?? Are you one of those who claims that the Kastrioti clan are Greeks?? Its so funny…Serbs claim the Kastrioti are Serbs…greeks claim they are Greeks…yet Gjergj Kastrioti himself said he was Albanian and fought for Albania (not to mention they were a Catholic clan). Who to believe??? :rolleyes:

3000 years of history?? Go back 4000 years actually…when the first Illyrians came into the region…and where Illyricum stretched from the Veneti to the Chaons (which means round about Actia BTW). Greeks had a couple of colonies in these lands…and only survived there a couple of centuries. But lets not go back that far ehh…lets focus on more “recent” events.

What is this obssesion you have with Ali Pasha? Is he some kind of icon in Albanian History? A role model for you? Get over it…

No its just that without Ali Pasha there wouldn’t have been a Greece.

We are in NATO and the EU. Get real

Thats wonderful!!…you should try to remember that next time you beat up another Albanian at the border, threaten another country with invasion becasue you don’t like their falg/name, or pull down another country’s flag from the poles at stadiums during soccer games or kill another soccer fan because his country won over yours. And while you’r at it…don’t forge your economic data for the EU either…they found out 😉 And while you’r at that…try not to invite war criminals like Karadzic and celebrate them like heros in the middle of Athens.

Tell that to the Serbs.

Why?? Did we hurt them too much?? Sorry guys…

The Germans were there also. So what? Were the Germans part of the Allied Powers as well? Does that change History? No it does not, its just politics and goodwill after decades of war. As a matter of fact I was with my Grandfarther ( an Albanian front veteran, a Partisan and a member of the Greek Sacred Regiment under SOE’s Brigadier Turnbull) in the Allied Cemetary in Faliron on Saturday for the Memorial Service of all the Allies that died in Greece during WW2, and no there were no Albanians… Who Putin invites is his choice. Politics and good manners say that everyone is invited, even the Germans. This does not mean there were not part of the Axis then like the Italian protectorate Albania, nor that now we are not allies and partners. Things have changed while Albania was isolated form the rest of the world you know…

I’v already addressed this riduclous point. When I said do you know who Alfred Moisiu is…and you said yes…I actually thought you meant yes. but apparently you must have meant no…becasue you obviously don’t know what he is doing in Moscow or why the Albanians were invited there.

Albania was never part of the “Allied and Associated Powers”, it was an Italian Protectorate that declared war against the Allied and Associated Powers! Learn to live with it and stop distoring History…

LOL…Listen I am really tired of trying to expalin this to you over and over. Obviously you don’t understand…even if all the world recognizes Albania for what it did…it won’t change your mind. Point is…what exactly is different between the situation in Albania and that in Greece or Yugoslavia?? All were invaded by the Nazis…all had puppet governments set up…all had governments in exile in London…all had large Partisan movements which eventually liberated those lands. Albania ahd no delegates to most of the Allied conferences….and as such wasn’t “recognized” as an Allied state until after the war. Does that belittle our efforts??? Only in your eyes…but I could care less…apparently even Putin doesn’t think so. So go an keep saying…Albania is an Axis nation…if it makes you feel any better. Mosisu is in Moscow recieving his medal for his role in WW2…and you keep saying it never happened. Guess who is looking like a fool???

No it wasn’t… Albanians weren’t even a majority in Albania itself (Aromanian vlachs were) until 1769 when you destroyed their capital Moscopolis and killed, drove out, or assimilated all the Aromanians.

You mean Vlachs right?? Vlachs were a large minority in Greece…not in Albania…Vlachs even today number probably around 1% of the Albanian population in Albania. Moscopolis…or what it is called today Voskopoj…was raided by Ali Pasha in 1769 and then once more by the Greeks in 1770…becasue the Vlachs were very much pro-Ottoman. This was pretty much their only center in Albania…and today it is a tiny village. Vlachs made nowhere near a “majority” in Albania at any point in time…they were nomads who came to settle all over the Balkans…and made a tiny percentage of the population. Vlachs today in Albania and anywhere they are are thoroughly assimilated into the local culture…not by force…but by choice (they are nomads). Some of the most famous Albanian nationalists have been Vlach in origin.

But your claims that Vlachs were a majority in Albania are utter nonsense…if by majority you mean majority in one small city.

This is complete nonsense. Is this what they teach you in Albanian schools? Why don’t they teach you about how Serbs sacrificed their lives to drive out the Turks from Albania, or how Serbs built schools for Albanians in northern Albania?

Well maybe becasue they didn’t…

Dude…I gave you a quote from Kosovo.com…a ultra-nationalist Serb site. There were 2 Albanian divizions in Kosova and a large number of Albanian partisans that liberated Kosova and much more…And yet you dismiss it as “nonsense”. Well…ok…find proof that they weren’t there then 😉

And who was it that liberated Kosovo from the Turks? The Albanians, right? Not! It was the Serbs. Albanians on the other hand fought WITH the Turks, against Serbs

Hmm…Albanians in Kosova had been in rebellion against the Turks from 1909 to 1912…and by 1912 most of Kosova was liberated and declared its independence along with Albania. Albanian fighters under Bajram Curri liberated all of Kosova and even drove into Macedonia and liberated Skopje (Shkup), which also, along with Monastir and other Albanian cities in Macedonia…delcared their independence along with Albania in 1912. Here is a picture of a train full of Albanian fighters of Bajram Curri entering Shkup in 1912:

The Serbs came only after the Albanians had already defeated the Turks…and most of the fighting happened between Albanians and Serbs. The nearest Turkish garrison remaining was in Shkodra.

We fought against the Serbs…not with the Turks…there is a difference there. There was only ONE instance of Albanians siding with the Turks in the Balkan War…but that was at Janina against the Greeks. Nothing to do with Serbs.

Albanians didn’t even exist in prehistoric times. There is no evidence that Albanians were in Kosovo long ago. There is lots of evidence Serbs were there tho. Like our 1000 year old monasteries and castles.

Quite on the contrary. Ottoman census data dates back to 1455 if I may remind you…and it shows without a doubt that Albanians were the vast majority in the region even at that time. Serbs yes…RULED Kosova at that time. There is a difference between RULING and colonizing…and actually being indigenous to a place or even being a majority in it. Russians RULED Poland for centuries…and tried to colonize it…but that doesn’t change the fact that Poles are and have always been a majority..despite being ruled and colonized by others.

And another thing… I recently read an article which says Kosovo ALbos are making a memorial statue to the SS Skanderbeg Nazi division. It will be built on 1.5 hectares in Pristina, and a second monument will be built in Prizren to commemorate Albanian Nazi collaborators that were killed by Tito who belong to the Second League of Prizren. The Second League of Prizren killed more than 200 Jews in the Belsen Nazi death camp, so why are you building them a monument if you are such big anti-fascists? In Kosovo there is the “association of war veterans” which includes members who fought in the SS Skanderbeg, and they are honored by the population instead of being reviled like Nazis are in every other country. Also in Blace (town near Skopje) you guys are building a monument to honor some dead Albanians who fought with the Nazis and were killed by the communists

There are no and will not be any monuments to Balli Kombetar…Balli was our equivalent of the Chetniks. The monuments are to the Second League of Prizren and other honest nationalists who fought against Serbian occupation but weren’t communists. The Second League of Prizren killed no one…least of all Jews…not a SINGLE Jew from Albania was killed by the Nazis becasue we protected them all…Albania was the only country in Europe which ended up with more Jews after the war than before the war. The puppet authorities in Kosova were forced to handle a number of Jews which the Germans had shipped there from Serbia in preparation for sending them elsewhere…but even the puppet authorities in Kosova aided in saving many of them. They killed no one…the Germans came and took them elsewhere…Albanians had no part in it whatsoever. Maybe you should read some accounts from Jews themselves who were in Albania…

No they were not “ethnically cleansed” and its really sad to see that you try to turn the fleeing of war criminals and Nazi collaborators into something that never happened. Those who fought the Nazis stayed, those who did their dirty work left in order not to be captured by the Allies and tried for war crimes, so yes it was “their own accord”… You sound like a communist instructionist from Hoxha’s time. It’s 2005 now, time to join the rest of the world…

In 2005…Greece is still the only nation that denies the massacres and ethnic cleansing it carried out. You know…even the USSR appolagized to the Chechens and all the others they did the same thing to…and that was way before 2005. Maybe in Greece where they still pull down the flag of another nation in the middle of a stadium and tear it appart…or kill people in the middle of the street for celebrating the victory of their soccer team against Greece…things are done that way…but in 2005 in Europe people acknoledge their mistakes and pay compensation for them. Considering that 9,000 men, women and children were killed by Zerva’s forces in 1944…I don’t think this was a “voluntary” movement of anyone…nor is it considering the fact that of those few Albanians that were allowed to remain…all of them were of the Orthodox religion while all those expelled were of the Muslim religion. I don’t think this was coincidental or that 9,000 civilains died of a heat stroke.

No we did’nt, but then again that did not prevent us from beating the Italians in the Albanian front, fighting in the Middle East, all over the seas of the world with our Navy (War and Merchant as well),in the air all over the eastern Med, even in Iraq and Normandy, until the final VICTORY! Maybe your criteria for size are different, who knows…? You are the first to say we had a big army “prior to WW2”, Mussolini thought otherwise…

You’r right…Greece won WW2 as well for everyone else…yes your Spitfires flew over Albania and Yugoslavia…and I suppose all 5 of those you had is what liberated Albania and Yugoslavia. Thank you very much…our hundreds of thousands of Partisans had nothing to do with it…nor did Yugoslav Partisans have anything to do with liberating their own country. It was all of course…becasue of Greece.

Again…what does YOUR war in Iraq and Zimbabuwe or wherever have anything to do with your arguments to belittle what we did to liberate our own country?? Albania was the ONLY country in Europe in which no Allied soldiers set foot on…and in which we liberated it all on our own. Somehow…that happened miraculously since according to you…we didn’t fight. Well…I’m sure my grandfather would like to hear of that.

Not only Greece: All the Allied Powers fought together and Albania was not among them. Sad but true…

No…certainly we were not among them :rolleyes: Somehow the Italians and Germans decided to leave Albania one sunny day becasue they had enough of our grapes.

There were 60,000 Albanian partisans who went into Kosova and Bosnia after 1944 to liberate those areas too…on an agreement with Tito. But I guess…that too never happened.

Nor the fact that 60,000 Italian soldiers surrendered to our Partisans in 1943…or that the Axis suffered tens of thousands of casualties.

In Greece maybe you don’t know of any of these things…since you don’t study under the “Stalinist propaganda”…but I know in Moscow and in Washington they know very well who we were, what we did and how much we fought. So maybe when Greece is ready to join the rest of the world and realize that they weren’t the only ones who fought for the freedom of the Balkans…in Iraq…then maybe you will be ready to face these facts too.

Be ware…these people…don’t exist!

You mean the falsified by the communists censuses that make up the results exactly as the regime wants them? By manipulating numbers you won’t fool anyone but yourself:

LOL…if you could bother yourself to find an official census from Albania…you might be able to see what those exact figures of this Greek minority are…and you wouldn’t need to rely on any other sources. The census is correct…and everyone says the census is correct…except the Greeks. Oh well…

According to the Albanian census of 1989, out of a total population of Albania of 3,182,417 there were 58,785 Greeks.

Albania has to comply with democratic standards and forget about the practices of the communist era, the EP and OSCE are involved in order to improve the conditions for political rights and democratic reforms, and there is no turning back now…

Thank you for your concern once more. Don’t worry…Albania is a democratic nation and the Greek minority has all the rights it deserves and much more…including the right to practice their own lanaguage wheverer they want, schools in their language, even the use of Greek and Albanian in official signs in areas where the Greek minority lives…as well as representation in local and national government. However…you have to deal with the fact…you are now less than 1% of the total population…and as such you get as much representation.

Now…maybe when Greece gets serious about democracy and stops beating and torturing Albanian immigrants and stops forging its EU documents…than maybe you can criticize us on something.

Now my friend there are some things called History and Archaeology and unfortunately for you the Greek cities speak for themselves, as well as 3000 years of literature, history, art, theater, sculpture etc etc… Your attempt to twist reality should be restricted to jet engine manufacturing…

Yes history does speak for itself…Greeks established two…or rather took over from the Illyrians two city states…Durrachium and Apollonia…and held them for a couple of centuries until they were expelled by the Illyrians. Thats as much as histroy speaks of the Greek presence in the area. History also speaks of the fact that Greeks in Himara came from Corfu…and speak the Corfu dialect of Greek…and are recent immigrants of no more than a couple of centuries…and that the Greeks near Gjirokastra were invited there by Ali Pasha in the 1800s to settle the land. History speaks of all these things too…you don’t need to go back 3000 years to look for them…just a couple of centuries.

Ali Pasha is your typical butcher type ruler found in the hundreds over the ages. Ruthless? Yes. Interesting? Not more than a dozen others like him, more like indifferent…

As opposed to the previous Greek ruler of Janina in the 14th century… :rolleyes: …who as his passtime had the mutilating of Albanians in the city while still alive. Well…past history is past history…but Ali Pasha is the man who made the Greek revolution possible…so maybe you should be a bit more grateful to this man.

It has to do exactly with that: 50 years of brainwashing by a regime that made Stalinism look like kindergarden… Albanians go through what the rest of Europe went through after WW2: renewed nationalism. You missed out on it because you were isolated from the rest of the world and now you think you can realise your dreams with 50 years delay. Not so, at least not the ones that are not peaceful…

Well if you say so…

So the whole “Cameria” thing is imaginary? Or you just don’t admit it in public?

Albania has claims on Cameria?? 😮 Not even the Cam organizations in Albania have any sort of territorial claim in Cameria. What they demand…the people who were forcibly expelled from their homes 60 years ago…is the return of their rightful property or paying of compensation for the property they lost. No one wants the land back…no matter how much it is ours or not…becasue if we wanted to claim land back we would be claiming 1/3 of Greece which was inhabited exclusivly by Albanians prior to 1912. But no one is!! Albania has no territorial claims in Greece whatsoever…Can the same be said of Greece?? So you are preaching peace and tolerance to us who have no claism on you whatsoever…while at the same time Greece has territorial claims and disputes on Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and…well thats pretty much all your neighbours. I don’t think you are in such a position to judge us at all…

And the thugs of UCK (KLA) are aiming where exactly? Peace and quiet? There are just misunderstood by a suspicious world, are they not? Poor souls…

No…maybe they wanted (UCK doesn’t exist anymore…if no one told you) to liberate Albanian land invaded in 1912 and inhabited by Albanians from a force that was trying to exterminate and ethnically cleanse them all. Such thugs they are…

I know very well who he is and I also know that the fact of the decoration speeks for itself about the knowledge of Greeks about History and the fairness of the judgement when it comes to issues like that

I don’t think that 50 years of declaration of war over something we never did…qualifies as “fair”.

Can you claim the opposite is true and that Albanian officials have acted in a similar manner?

Acted in a similar manner regarding what in particular? A war we never participated in?

Here the terms “soldier” “militia” “irregular” “paramilitary” etc, are very well connected to each other and what the Italian controlled Albania did, is very well known also…

What exactly did Albanian soldiers under Italian controll do? I know nothing of this…but since you say it is “well known”, you might tell me what we did.

You make it sound as if Greece was the aggressor and “invaded” Albania!!! Please try to be serious when discussing History, especially WW2…

What particular reason did Greece have to enter Albanian territory and drive all the way to Vlora and try to keep the area occupied??

Greece was the only country in the region to enter in a war against the Axis, and the only one fighting on the side of Britain when everybody else had been conquerred… We also fought a civil war right after WW2 with Stalin, Tito, Hoxha, the UK and the US being strongly involved…

Greece was the only country? How do you mean? Albania and Yugoslavia collapsed quickly…but that doesn’t mean they didn’t fight…nor does it mean that there weren’t massive Partizan movements in both countries which fought.

The official Greek goverment had escaped in Cairo and thousands of Greek armed forces personel followed it as well to exile at the side of the allies. Expatriates enlisted after the declaration of war and continued to fight along with the veterans of the Albanian and Macedonian theaters, in North Africa, Italy Yugoslavia and Greece, up to 1945.

That means very little as the Albanian government of Ahmed Zogu did the same…went to Egypt and then England and led the “official” Albanian government with an “official” Albanian military in exile. It means nothing regarding the occupied territory…both in Albania and in Greece puppet governments were set up, as were puppet militias and police forces in both countries which were loyal to the Nazis. How was Greece different? Or are you denying that there was also massive cooperation with the Nazis by the Greeks too? The way you are saying it…is as if none of that happened in Greece but only in Albania or Yugoslavia. It happened in all German occupied territories.

Zervas was not a collaborator but a partisan, most of his partisans were Greek army personel and he took his orders from the Allied HQ in Cairo, being part of the armed resistance against the Nazis and their henchmen…

Gestapo documents show that Zerva was a collaborator for them…as were many of the Greeks who later would come into power in the new Greek state.

Wrong again. Those Albanians that decided to collaborate with the Nazis by burning villages killing civilians etc, decided to return to Albania when the war was coming to an end. Not surprising at all given their barbaric behaviour…

They DECIDED to return to Albania? 150-200 thousand civilians suddenly decided one day to get up and leave the lands they had been living in for millenia and move to Albania? “Return”? They didn’t have anywhere to return…they lived in Cameria…they weren’t immigrants who came to greece and then decided to move back. The fact is in 1944 Zerva’s army went in and massacred thousands, destroyed hundreds of villages and drove out almost the entire Albanian population.

All this talk of them “burning down villages” and killing civilians…none of it has been proven as of yet to be true at all. The areas in which they lived in were almost exclusivly Albanian to begin with…British reports from WW2 described Cameria as being 95% Albanian. But even IF…there were a number of collaborators with the Nazis…something which again I need to remind you happened on a wide scale throughout Greek society…that still doesn’t justify punishing an entire civilian population for the actions of a few…which is what you did. This is comparable to the actions of Stalin when he deported entire populations for the actions of a few.

Here we go again with your imaginary invasion. Stop confusing the Greek civil war with “invasion” of Albania. The state of war that existed until the 80’s was in paper only. By inventing victories and dreaming of possible F-16 purchases you just show immaturity… As for 1912, the Greeks treated the Albanians that then collaborated with the Turks, without prejudice and the payback came with the Fascist-Nazi siding of the Albanians in 1940…

Ok first of all, “inventing victories”? 1949 was a victory for us, and it cost the Greeks dearly. How many prisoners alone did we capture which were returned to Greece only in 1958? How many soldiers did the Greeks lose?

As for 1912, Greece treated the Albanians without prejudice? Greece invaded most of Southern Albania in 1912 and didn’t leave until 1922. During this interval there were at least 300,000 displaced persons which were deported out of the area, and massacres of entire villages were something pretty common and reported even in the western press. We sided with the Turks? We did no such thing…Albanians had been in revolt against the Turks since 1908 and by 1912 we had liberated most of the major Albanian-inhabited cities. What we did is refuse to side with you…becasue I don’t see why we should side with a “friend” whose stated intentions are to remove you off the map :rolleyes: The Ottomans still left in Albania were fighting the Greeks…on what was then Albanian land…so it would be only natural that we would then side with them since they were already going to leave Albania anyway…but Greece wasn’t. So yes Albanians sided with the Turks at Janina (which was the only instance of us cooperating with them)…but thats becasue the Greeks had already declared their intentions of annexing this land. I don’t see how we become your enemies if you try to invade our lands to chase an enemy of yours in our lands. Then…you become our enemies…and an enemy of my enemy is my friend. Greece acted as any Balkan nation acted…brutally and mercelessly against a civilian population with the intentions of territorial expansion.

That’s what you have been doing: throwing accusations. Please stop telling us that those who fought against the Fascists and the Nazis of the Axis were “wrong”!!! Its not only stupid, its laughable…!!!

Hmm…when did I say that those who fought against the Nazis were wrong? Please point that out to me! What I said is…we ALSO foght against the Nazis…as much as you did…so you have no right to throw accusations at us about ANYTHING. If your whole basis of argument is that Albania had a pro-Nazi puppet government…that is not an argument at all becasue EVERY single country invaded by the Nazis had such a government. On the other hand, Albania was also the only country in Europe to liberate itself entirely without the help of any other source…but I suppose this happened magically since we “collaborated” with the Nazis instead of fighting them. 27,000 Axis soldiers died of what?? Disease?

Trying to save face 50 years later by posting nonsense, is not going to help Albania at all I’m afraid… Getting serious about peace will…

Albania doesn’t need to save face to anyone…the whole world except Greece knows what our contributions were and what we fought. Maybe you should also ask your Serbian brothers to the North…and they’ll tell you that Albanian Partizans not only liberated Albania, but also Kosova and parts of Bosnia. The only country which still denied this reality was Greece…but fortunately this has changed recently. It is you…apparently…that decided to get serious about peace. We never had it any other way.

That’s all I had to say, I agree with you Kapedani about the tangent comment…

Maybe we should start another thread where it is more appropriate to discuss such things…what do you say? I really don’t want to keep poluting this thread with political and historical discussions.

It was hardly becasue Tito told them no…Albania was still in the Warsaw Pact even after it broke relations with the USSR…but simply put the USSR wasn’t in a position to attack Albania without risking a conflict with China at the same time…and also becasue doing so would require much more preparation since invading Albania wasn’t the same thing as invading Hungary…totally different situations. Also yes…Tito denied the Soviets access to Yugoslavia from which to lauch an attack…but Tito offered no help himself. After thinking about it…eventually the Soviets decided it wasn’t worth attacking Albania at all…they had no good reason (there was no danger of Albania becoming pro-west) and there was nothing really to be gained (the Adriatic ports could now be replaced with Yugoslav ports or Middle Eastern ports). Attacking Albania wasn’t a real possibility at all.

And no its not my opinions that Yugoslavia was our number one enemy…it was the opinions of the Hoxha government. Greece may have ethnically cleansed half a million Albanians, but then again so did Yugoslavia at various times prior to WW2. Greece wasn’t that much of a danger to us…as it was part of NATO, it had a much weaker military at the time and it couldn’t attack Albania without risking an all out NATO-Warsaw Pact war…we were still in the Warsaw Pact until 1968. Also we had a war with them in 1949…which ended badly for the Greeks so it would be unlikely they would want to repeat that. Yugoslavia on the other hand was the only real danger…it had expressed its territorial intentions on Albania previously, it had tried to infiltrate Albania politically after WW2 and continued to hold in its territory millions of Albanians. Economically we started trading in the 70s and 80s because there was no other alternative…but that doesn’t mean we were friends in any sense of the word. The economic war between our two nations was very intense…culminating at points in various illegal activites such as for example the Yugoslav mining under the Albanian border and tapping into resources on our side…something was was discovered and caused a great deal of alarm.

As far as I know the deals were implemented in 83-84…so it may have been afterward. And it must have been with the aproval of the Swedesh government as the deals didn’t just include Saab…but also other companies like Bofors.

They were rebuild…