Posted on 03/27/2005 4:57:25 AM PST by Engraved-on-His-hands
The announcement several days ago Albania -- a small country with limited resources -- was sending an additional 50 well-trained troops to Iraq came as a surprise to some observers. But it really should not have surprised anyone. Albania was one of only four countries to send combat troops during the operation "Iraqi Freedom." Albania is probably the most pro-American country on Earth. It showed its support of the United States early, when it initially sent 70 commandos to join the Coalition of the Willing's effort to bring peace, stability and free elections to Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Bill
Wrong! The genocide continues; clinton fed the monster!
Those numbers are incorrect. Updated numbers have Orthodox christians at 30%, Catholics 30% Muslims and athesit at around 20% now in Albania.
Of course not. ALbania is very very pro american. Being albanian myself i was against the war in Kosovo but very pro Iraq war. Although i am biased because i am American first and that is where my priorties stand.
When Albania was ruled by the commmunists the whole country was surrounded by an electric fence. Reinforced along various stretches, but nothing less than that fence.
I don't know. Lukasz has an Eastern European ping list. I don't know of an Albanian ping list.
No religion was allowed to exist in Communist Albania. The ban was lifted in 1990, but no legal provision for religious freedom was made until 1998. The very existence of Evangelicals and other faiths is often portrayed by Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics as a disturbance to social custom.
| Religions | Population % | Adherents | Ann.Gr. |
| Christian | 41.48 | 1,291,452 | +2.7% |
| Muslim | 38.79 | 1,207,701 | +0.5% |
| non-Religious/other | 19.54 | 608,365 | -6.9% |
| Baha'i | 0.18 | 5,604 | +12.0% |
| Jewish | 0.01 | 311 | n.a. |
Over 50% of the population is culturally Muslim, but superstition and folk Islam are strong. Many Muslims belong to the syncretistic Sufi Bektash movement.
| Christians | Denom. | Affil.% | ,000 | Ann.Gr. |
| Protestant | 9 | 0.15 | 5 | +15.6% |
| Independent | 14 | 0.25 | 8 | +13.4% |
| Catholic | 1 | 16.75 | 521 | +1.5% |
| Orthodox | 2 | 24.09 | 750 | +3.5% |
| Marginal | 2 | 0.24 | 7 | +20.1% |
Interesting. Albania has been part of this and part of that for so long that it is not often recognized that the Albanian language itself, underneath all the layers of conquering language structures, is one of the few modern languages that has descended directly from the ursprache--Indo European.
... and according to http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/oldest.html the Albanian language was not written down until about the 15th century AD...
... an http://www.krysstal.com/langfams_indoeuro.html says that Albanian has been written in the Latin script since 1909; this replaced the Arabic script.
Perhaps,
Albanian has been written with various alphabet since the 15th century. Originally the southern Tosk dialect was written with the Greek alphabet, while the northern Gheg dialect was written with the Latin alphabet. They have both also been written with the Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet. In 1916 an official standard based on Gheg came into being, but in 1945 the standard was reformed and based on Tosk.
Albanian has also been written with two other scripts: Elbasan and Beitha Kukju, local inventions which appeared during the 18th and 19th centuries but were not widely used.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/albanian.htm
check out the scripts at the ref.
On another note, Mother Teresa's entry with photo in my Webster's mentions that she was Albanian from a part of Albania now known as Macedonia. Politics runs deep in the language.
There was no genocide. The "mass graves" in Kosovo all turned out to be fakes. The bloodshed during the original breakup of Yugoslavia was on all sides. Milosevic was bad, but he was no worse than Clinton. Clinton was just better at manipulating fools into thinking that he had noble goals.
True, but they also stand behind the heroin trade in Italy and New York.
Well, if it is not intruding on the territory of the most-excellent Eastern European ping list, I think that after the income-tax season is over (April 15), I will start an "Albania ping list," so as to illuminate others about this remarkable little country.
The late journalist from the New York Times, Cyrus Sulzberger, in his very long book "A Long Row of Candles" (published 1969), wrote a great deal about Albania as it was in 1930-1940; utterly fascinating.
The Tosks, the Ghegs, King Zog, the Italians, all that.
What was amusing was the story of the assassin's assassin's assassin's assassin's prospective assassianee; a true-life drama with all its characters from Albania, but the events taking place in.....Czechoslovakia.
Albania, a remarkable country and people.
Excellent. Please include me on the list. I'm sometimes sporadic here, but would love to be included anyway.
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