Or: are there people against democracy?! Ramiz Alia walked authoritatively between the rows of the courtroom with his hands in his pockets. But this was certainly no sign of his composure. On the contrary. Hands in pockets were a sign of his insecurity. A confused person does not know where to put his hands. Even when they no longer bear the marks of blood (Hekuran Isai would later testify and mention the order to give the command “fire” from the former head of state). Ramiz Alia recalled several times that in this trial he was not the accused but a witness. In another trial, the roles could be reversed: He, Ramiz Alia, could be the accused, and She, Nexhmija, the witness! The work of COMRADES: because the communists shared things equally! Precisely for this reason, Ramiz Alia and company are not calm. They are not calm, then, because they are opposing democracy. But can there be anyone who does not want democracy? Democracy respects everyone, creates conditions for everyone to have initiative and freedom of their own. Freedom, but also their own bondage...! I say “their own bondage” because not everyone accepts respecting the other and their past and present—and undoubtedly their future as well. Democracy was born as a promise to everyone, as a possibility for everyone to become a winner and no one to be a loser. But this does not mean that the architects of dictatorship and physical and spiritual genocide should feel equally complicit in the Albanian testimony; nor does it mean that Democracy will have no occasional opponents. Indeed, that would be illusory, idealistic. Those who have lost, those who are responsible, the conscious instruments of violence and crime, those compromised by evidence both past and present, lawbreakers, will certainly not accept democracy easily. Indeed, they will oppose it even violently. First of all, they speak and express themselves about democratic intolerance and violations of human rights and individual rights, when they themselves trampled on the interests and rights of an entire people. Although they cannot continue any further, this is precisely why they are against democracy. This is why Ramiz Alia came to the courtroom with his hands in his pockets. To encourage resistance to democracy. What more could he have done than set conditions for it? And was it true? Why? What should democracy do? Very little: First, it ordered him to take his hands out of his pockets! Later, it will be the court’s turn. The democratic court. That judicial system which confronts you with evidence, not opinions. No investigator now enters without the enforcer. No one has the right to go to an isolated person without the defendant’s lawyer accompanying them. Look, even if democracy does only this much, it is not little. Nevertheless, there are still people who oppose it. And it is astonishing that they are precisely those who yesterday applauded trials and interrogations behind closed doors, arrests and backroom dealings without trial, without a grave, without... They should go as if they were “property.” The worst thing! RRAPO OPLIKA

A CONVERSATION WITH DEMOCRATIC PARTY MP, DR. MEHMET ÇELIKU The Republican Party’s position, “Property—to its rightful owner,” is now well known. This position is based, among other things, on a natural and historical conception of ownership. The position of the Republican Party, “Property—to its rightful owner,” is now well known. This position is based, among other things, on a natural and historical conception of ownership. Do you think so too? “It is true that Albanians have considered property sacred. Ownership has always been respected on the basis of two principles: 1) property boundaries are inviolable; 2) property belongs to its owner and does not change, however much the rightful heir may change.” “Could you offer our newspaper’s readers some thoughts on privatization, a land law, its place, and prospects for development?” “The Republican Party believes that the distribution of land should be an important element for the present and the future. The land law has more than a thousand responsibilities in many countries. For example, in Western democracies, the gymnasium cannot be understood without a fair land law. The land law, as a very important law, has its own history in parallel: there is a land law returned by parliament because of its shortcomings. A land bill must be sought so that it can become a properly implemented law; it does not need an appeal, but a sound foundation in the principle ‘Property—to its rightful and original owner.’ I think the law can be based on two basic concepts: land should be available for use, and land should be owned by those who live on it; land should be in use and land should be owned, and it should not be property if this element ensures a certain easing of the vital conflict that may arise between social groups and the owner. Implementing privatization according to the principle ‘Property—to its rightful and original owner’ will bring the following results: 1. It encourages production (use of the land—one works more in order to earn more), and helps more people become prosperous. 2. The state is not without reason a void with respect to the owner, and it has nothing else to do (by providing compensation, or giving the land to be used). 3. It supports an equal relationship toward (Continued on page 2)

The polemic against the Middle Ages, begun by humanists and reformers in earlier centuries for various reasons, began in the 1700s with the Enlightenment thinkers. In the name of Reason and new ideals of life, they condemned the age of “barbarism” and superstition, in which obscurantism and harsh customs supposedly ruined evangelical ideals and the purity of apostolic times, because of the papacy’s and the Church of Rome’s greed for temporal wealth. The polemic against the Middle Ages, begun by humanists and reformers in earlier centuries for various reasons, began in the 1700s with the Enlightenment thinkers. In the name of Reason and new ideals of life, they condemned the Middle Ages as an age of “barbarism” and superstition, an age in which obscurantism and harsh customs supposedly ruined evangelical ideals and the purity of apostolic times, because of the papacy’s and the Church of Rome’s greed for temporal wealth. But despite this condemnation of medieval civilization, the historiography of that period, in order to give meaning to human, “humane” facts—which is the historian’s principal aim—could not help but regard and value it as a distinct era, with its own internal unity and particular characteristics. This is also true of the German historians Gatterer, Spittler and Schmit. The Dutchman Hizinga, with his work “The Waning of the Middle Ages,” entered the historiography of the civilized world. The works of Marron and Bloxh, SOCIETE FEODALE, became classic works on medieval culture and philosophy; they contributed to the discovery of new paths in historiography. The portrayal of the Middle Ages as an age of obscurantism and barbarism overshadowed its historical achievements. The Middle Ages was defined as an era that lies at the foundation of European civilization, a civilization whose roots present-day EUROPE deepens. Through a new and deeper historical understanding, the idea of the Middle Ages, with its coherence and meaning, became one of the most certain and fruitful gains of nineteenth-century historiography, strengthening the impulse to reflect on and analyze this root problem; thus it can become a fruitful path that inspires a desire for better and higher action. In fact, during periods of prosperity and success in a movement, people have no reason to question the structures and function of a particular civilization. This happened in Italy between the end of the 1400s and the 1500s, when the barbarians descended into Italy and annihilated Mbiçinit. Only then did people ask themselves about its shortcomings.

To dominate without opposition. Within such a conception of HISTORY, the examination of the medieval era could only be negative. Voltaire, the leading figure of the Enlightenment, in his work ESSAI SUR LES MOEURS (Notes on Customs), set out the terms of the Enlightenment polemic against the Middle Ages, which have now reached modern consciousness, right up to our own day, and are deeply entrenched. The condemnation of the Middle Ages was reached by the reformist writers who, at that time, saw the historian’s main task as something that could not help but consider and value it as a distinct era, with its own internal unity and particular characteristics; this was also the case for the German historians Gatterer, Spittler and Schmit. The Dutchman Hizinga, with his work “The Waning of the Middle Ages,” entered the historiography of the civilized world. The works of Marron and Bloxh, SOCIETE FEODALE, became classic works on medieval culture and philosophy; they contributed to finding new paths in historiography. The portrayal of the Middle Ages as an age of obscurantism and barbarism overshadowed its historical achievements, defining it as a transitional period, perhaps caught between the increasingly fruitful accountability for its decline and an anxious search for a still undefined, fruitful moral and intellectual path. Knowing, he says, that often the decline of a civilization, a BREAKDOWN, acts as a stimulus for people, separates the two civilizations: the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, just as the works of Burchardt leave the divide open between ancient and modern civilization. The end of the Middle Ages, in new observations, exalts the spiritual uncertainty of a transitional period, felt between an increasingly mature awareness of its decline and an anxious, yet still undefined, search for a fruitful moral and intellectual path. Toynhee says that often the decline of a civilization, a BREAKDOWN, acts as a stimulus for people, separating the two civilizations: the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, just as the works of Burchardt leave the divide open between ancient and modern civilization. The end of the Middle Ages, in literary observation, exalts the spiritual uncertainty of a transitional period, felt between an increasingly mature awareness of its decline and an anxious search for a still undefined, fruitful moral and intellectual path. Toynhee says that often the decline of a civilization, a BREAKDOWN, acts as a stimulus for people, separating the two civilizations: the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, just as the works of Burchardt leave the divide open between ancient and modern civilization. The end of the Middle Ages, in literary observation, exalts the spiritual uncertainty of a transitional period, felt between an increasingly mature awareness of its decline and an anxious search for a still undefined, fruitful moral and intellectual path. The idea of a new society clashed with the corruption and abuses widespread in the structure of the CHURCH at the end of the Middle Ages, which truly constituted a scandal for the Christianity of the time, but it was also true—(Continued on page 3)

Of the 30 successful candidates, 90 percent are dyed-in-the-wool communists. The doctor and atheist Hushi Hasiko, sentenced to death by the Greek patriarchate, wins the competition for a place in Greece, now as a devout Orthodox believer. Nexhmije’s aide, a member of the PP (S) Governing Council, Vasillaqi Kureta, is going to Greece together with his wife. At last the Greek embassy announced on TV the list of 30 scholarship recipients who will study philosophy and Greek culture in Athens. The selection process was a real battle for Albanians, and once again the communists triumphed in this contest. If this had been an activity of the Greek community in the minority, then everything would have been more natural: militants at every level and throughout the state coordinate and communicate freely with one another. But when the study grants are said to have been awarded by the democratic Greek government in this case, we are dealing with a clandestine act by communist mafiosi and some embassy employee. To avoid going on any longer (Continued on page 3)

Mad N., during the days of the trial of Enver Hoxha’s widow, repeatedly used the words MEN and WOMEN OF STATE in her programmatic speeches. Some interpreters of her Albanian discourse claimed that the matter concerned facts she was bringing up about that man, through the use of condoms and other stimulants from combustible blocks. The accusation against Comrade Enver for these things was her subtext: Comrade Enver knew what he was doing. A State is kept standing only by ITS MEN. And how can one imagine a MAN without HIS MEN among the Turks? Those weighed down by the people’s troubles, the bureaucrats and their families, would not even have had the opportunity to appear as MEN if they had not used such masculine medicines! Then, within the framework of keeping Albanians pure from a world drowned in vice, the Hoxha family was not condemned for trying to produce many children; other things come to mind: as it was said, money and, in general, the imagination of Comrade Enver. In His family, Comrade Enver went through life, and life ... for an illusion and accompanied by peasants. But what if, with some finding or another, they could have moved into the ranks of the comrades of the Politburo at that time? Can you imagine what would have happened? Comrade Enver took special care of the lives and health of the PARTY’S COMRADES and COMRADE WOMEN! And what about the others among these? Well, isn’t the Albanian’s prison supposedly... ? For example, MAN, look carefully at what happens to the one who owns a farm? Well, listen..., could Nexhmije have used one of those medicines? Personally, I don’t believe it. TWO CHRONICLERS INTERPRETERS

The Agricultural University of Kamza has been one of the student centers that supported the democratic movement. Today these students, who are supporters of democracy, find themselves in truly miserable conditions. Starting with the dormitories and ending with the auditoriums, all of them lack electricity, telephone service, drinking water and heating. From the outside it looks like an internment camp. The students responsible for them have taken action several times with demands, but those demands have fallen on deaf ears. Today they are quite rightly demanding their legitimate rights. For this reason they sent a petition to Prime Minister Meski with a five-day deadline, and if this deadline is not respected, they will go on strike. We thought we should go there to see their situation firsthand. After reviewing the petition and speaking with the students, we concluded that their demands are entirely minimal and achievable. More specifically, what are they asking for? 1. Scholarships for all students who meet the criteria. 2. Payment of compensation to households. 3. Waiver of last year’s obligations. 4. Establishment of order and calm. 5. Travel expenses for students at public and private institutions to be covered through compensation. 6. The water and electricity networks and telephone service should function, and food conditions should be improved, etc. If the Government does not take these demands into consideration within five days, the UB students will begin a strike using democratic means. In the next issue we will acquaint you more fully with the students’ problems there and with what the students achieved. The petition submitted now bears the signatures of “many students” and the like. ENKEL DEMI

N o t i c e