'Kosovo' at 10: Still wards of Washington

When they declared "independence" ten years ago, the KLA terrorists no doubt it was a transit stop on their 130-journey towards "Natural Albania." They had forgotten the crucial characteristic of the Atlantic Empire: any deals with it are Faustian in nature.

Ten years later, "Kosovian" independence is stalled, the promised prosperity is nowhere to be found, and instead of supporting Albanian expansionism the Empire is setting up special courts to keep KLA chiefs under control. Nor are "Kosovians" the first or only ones to have their hopes so dashed - but that's another topic, for another time.

Read more in my latest at RT.com:

#Kosovo: A decade of dependence (Op-Ed by @NebojsaMalic) https://t.co/ae25oTB3DR pic.twitter.com/sEJzwkrS6s

— RT (@RT_com) February 17, 2018

Vucic might be setting up Putin to take the fall on Kosovo

"Once bitten, twice shy" goes the old saying, and Serbs have been bitten a few more times besides. While the Empire is renewing interest in "finishing the job" in the Balkans, Russia is relying on Empire-made Aleksandar Vucic to be the patriot. What could go wrong?

While Moscow treats President Vucic as a credible partner, he reportedly said he was “satisfied” with the Atlantic Council’s proposals and wished they would become official US policy. Having previously conducted an “internal dialogue” with himself on the topic of surrendering the Serbian claim to Kosovo ‒ in the pages of Western-owned newspapers, no less ‒ he now says he’d be happy to hand the issue over to Russia for mediation.

Read the rest in my latest piece on RT. God help us all.

Kosovo: An Evil Little War Turns 18

March 24, 1999 ought to be a date that will live in infamy. On that day, NATO launched an unprovoked war of naked aggression, violating its own charter and international law, while claiming to be on a "humanitarian" mission.

For 78 days, the outnumbered and outgunned Yugoslavia (which would later be split into Serbia and Montenegro) resisted, turning back ground attacks from Albania, capturing a trio of US soldiers, and even shooting down a F-117 "stealth" bomber. In the end, abandoned by all and threatened with carpet bombing, the government in Belgrade accepted a compromise armistice - which NATO immediately tore up, letting the Albanian separatists terrorize the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo.

Thousands died in the war, and tens of thousands have died since from cancers caused by depleted uranium dust. Most non-Albanians were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo, and the province turned over to warlords and organized crime. In 2008, the province illegally declared independence, which is not yet recognized by the UN.

Thanks to the shameless propaganda and spin, the Kosovo War is considered by most American politicians to be a great success and even a shining example of virtue in the "liberal world order" the US is upholding through its military might. Only one candidate in the 2016 election dared disagree with that conventional wisdom even a little - and though he ended up getting elected, hasn't signaled any willingness to break with the inertia of US policy, either.

Serbia has since served as the test bed for the first "color revolution," and turned into a failed state ruled by a succession of servile slugs, each worse than the one before. The Atlantic Empire continued to enable Albanian aggression, in hopes of rekindling its romance with dar-al-Islam even as it bombed and invaded Iraq, Libya and Syria and fomented revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere that claimed even more Muslim lives.

That war, however, served as a wake-up call for Russia, which had until then lionized the West even as it was being robbed blind and buried alive. Within six months of NATO's land grab, Vladimir Putin was at the helm in the Kremlin. The rest, as they say, is history.

It is tempting to declare the saga of Kosovo over, 18 years after the war and as the quisling regime in Belgrade is busily recognizing the Albanian land grab. But the Atlantic Empire wouldn't be the first to write the Serbs off and declare them conquered and beaten, only to see them rise again... NATO1999

Five facts about Kosovo the #fakenews media is lying to you about

1. Kosovo is not ancient Albanian land. 

Its very name comes from the Serbian word "kos," meaning blackbird. Its Albanian name, "Kosova," means nothing whatsoever.

Kosovo was the heartland of medieval Serbian state and the site of the 1389 battle in which both the Serbian prince and the Ottoman sultan died, checking the Turkish expansion into the Balkans for almost 70 years. Ethnic Albanians were settled there by the Ottomans over the intervening centuries, and became a majority due to pogroms and persecution of Serbs - which began under Ottoman rule but continued under Austro-Hungarian occupation in WWI and German/Italian occupation in WWII.

Kosovo was never a political entity of any kind until 1945, when the Communist regime that reconstructed Yugoslavia after Axis occupation (with which Albanians overwhelmingly collaborated) created the "Autonomous Region of Kosovo & Metohija" - the latter being a Greek word describing church lands.

The Communists also forbid any Serbs expelled in WW2 to return to Kosovo, cementing its ethnic Albanian majority, which further grew through an influx of illegal immigrants from Enver Hoxha's Albania and the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians since the NATO occupation began in 1999.

Aftermath of the March 2004 pogrom: burned-out Serbian church with "UCK" (KLA) graffitti

2. Operation Allied Force, the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, was not a legitimate humanitarian intervention approved by the UN.

It was a war of aggression, in violation of both the NATO and the UN charter. Contrary to what the mainstream Narrative says today, NATO's justification for the war was not Serbian "human rights violations" against the Albanians. No, the bombing began as a way to force Serbia to accept the ultimatum issued at the French chateau of Rambouillet, in which NATO demanded a 3-year occupation of the province and a NATO-organized referendum that would give the ethnic Albanians independence.

It was at Rambouillet that the US negotiated on behalf of the "Kosovo Liberation Army," a separatist group it had previously acknowledged as terrorists. As part of its terrorist campaign to separate Kosovo from Serbia, the KLA has engaged in murder, assassination, extortion, torture, and trafficking in drugs, guns, sex slaves and even human organs.

KLA commander Ramush Haradinaj was greeted as a hero after a NATO-backed war crimes court acquitted him of torturing Serb captives. Haradinaj was provisionally released, and witnesses against him were intimidated and killed.

3. Serbia did not kill 10,000 ethnic Albanian civilians during the 1999 war.

That figure is an estimate based on assertions by NATO, entirely unsupported by any facts whatsoever - same as the "up to 100,000 men" speculated by NATO propagandists during the war itself. Western media continue to repeat it the same way they repeated the claim of 300,000 dead in Bosnia, which was later revised down to under 100,000.

4. There was no Serbian plan to deport a million ethnic Albanians.

The so-called "Operation Horseshoe" was concocted by German and Bulgarian intelligence to provide justification for the illegal and illegitimate NATO war (see #2 above), to the point where they used the Croatian word for horseshoe. While there was a mass exodus of Albanians towards Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro (odd, since it was part of Yugoslavia same as Serbia), some evidence suggests that may have been orchestrated by NATO and the KLA.

5. Kosovo's "independence" is neither legal nor legitimate. 

UN Resolution 1244, which authorized a NATO-led peacekeeping mission after the June 1999 armistice, reaffirmed Kosovo's status as a part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Legally, it remained a province of Serbia, whose integrity was sacrosanct on the same grounds as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia (and later Montenegro) were recognized in their Communist-drawn borders when the proto-European Union and the US decided to declare Yugoslavia nonexistent in 1992.

In February 2008, the provisional administration of Kosovo set up under the UN viceroy and NATO occupation, declared independence - based on a plan rejected by the UN Security Council, the final arbiter of Resolution 1244.

The International Court of Justice later tortured logic and language to rule that international law didn't say anything about random people making such declarations - but these were not random people. Their very legitimacy rested on the UN mandate, which their declaration violated.

President Barack Obama lied in March 2014 that there was internationally recognized and supervised referendum on the issue; there wasn't. No mainstream media outlet ever called him on it, though.

But they put up a monument to Hillary, so it's OK

Remember the Islamic State "kill list" of some 1,300 US government employees - with their credit card records and Social Security numbers obtained by hackers some months ago? No?

While the DNC and its satellite press were in throes of hysteria about "Russian" hackers (based on the completely unproven assertion of a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, naturally), it emerged that the hacker who obtained the list was one "Ardit Ferizi, an ethnic Albanian who was raised in Kosovo."

Now, forgive me for bringing this up nine days after McClatchy named Ferizi, but I was in Cleveland and then in Philadelphia, reporting from the coronations - erm, conventions - of both major parties. While in Philly, I heard no mention of this hack, or who was behind it - or "Kosovia" for that matter - from Hillary Clinton's camp.

I mean, why would I? Albanians are a great shining example that "America is great because America is good," according to the Clintonites, who persevere in the lie that Hillary inspired Bill to intervene against the (nonexistent) Serbian "aggression and genocide" in 1999. And look, the grateful Albanians have erected a gilded statue of Bill in the "Kosovian" capital, and just recently a bust of Hillary in an Albanian seaside resort. Completely unrelated to the prospect of her becoming the Empress, of course.

Even the New York Times (perpetually shilling for Empire) can no longer pretend that "Kosovia" is not an ISIS hotbed - though they throw Saudi Arabia under the proverbial bus for that, because Social Justice forbid they blame the Clintons. But the mainstream media that either made up or justified ever single vicious lie about the Kosovo War will never allow you to add the two and two. You hear hacking, you're not supposed to think "Kosovians" and ISIS and gross carelessness or criminal negligence - no, you're supposed to scream "RUSSIANS," just like the DNC-coached media operatives.

I mean, who are you going to believe, your own lying eyes or CNN?

Kosovo: An Evil Little War

Still wrong, 17 years later

(This article originally appeared March 25, 2005 on Antiwar.com)

Belgrade, 1999

In the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For some reason, many in the targeted nation thought the name of the operation was "Merciful Angel." In fact, the attack was code-named "Allied Force" – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker. For, however much NATO spokesmen and the cheerleading press spun, lied, and fabricated to show otherwise (unfortunately, with altogether too much success), there was nothing noble in NATO’s aims. It attacked Yugoslavia for the same reason then-Emperor Bill Clinton enjoyed a quickie in the Oval Office: because it could.

Most of the criticism of the 1999 war has focused on its conduct (targeting practices, effects, "collateral damage") and consequences. But though the conduct of the war by NATO was atrocious and the consequences have been dire and criminal, none of that changes the fact that by its very nature and from the very beginning, NATO’s attack was a war of aggression: illegal, immoral, and unjust; not "unsuccessful" or "mishandled," but just plain wrong.

Donald Trump on Kosovo in 1999

When I saw the media in Serbia reporting about Donald Trump's alleged condemnation of the 1999 NATO attack on then-Yugoslavia, also known as the Kosovo War, I shrugged it off as disinformation. Most of them, I'm sad to say, are almost entirely dedicated to gaslighting the general populace, and as likely to spread confusion and cognitive dissonance as actual news.

It turns out that Donald Trump did talk to Larry King about Kosovo - but everyone is leaving out that this took place in October 1999. That is sort of important, though: by that point, the Serbian province had been "liberated" by NATO occupation forces, and the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians by the terrorist KLA had been going on since mid-June.

Here is the segment touching on Kosovo, from the official CNN transcript (with my emphasis):

KING: But, we don't know the - for example, you and Kosovo. Would you have done what Clinton did?

TRUMP: Well, I would have done it a little bit differently. And I know this would sound terrible. But look at the havoc that they have wreaked in Kosovo. I mean, we could say we lost very few people. Of course, we had airplanes 75,000 feet up in the air dropping bombs. But, look at what we've done to that land and to those people and the deaths that we've caused.

Now, they haven't been caused with us and the allies because we were way up in the air in planes. But, at some point, you had to put troops in so not everybody could go over the borders and everything else, and a lot of people agree with that.
Now, would people have been killed? Perhaps, perhaps more. But, at least ultimately, you would have had far fewer deaths. And you wouldn't have had the havoc and the terror that you've got right now. So, you know, I don't know if they consider that a success because I can't consider it a success.

KING: You don't.

TRUMP: They bombed the hell out of a country, out of a whole area, everyone is fleeing in every different way, and nobody knows what's happening, and the deaths are going on by the thousands.

He could be referring to the KLA ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Roma, and other groups here. But true to himself, Trump is being very vague and it is impossible to pin the statements down. At the time, he was considering running for the presidency, but ultimately decided against it.

It would certainly be interesting if someone asked him the same question today, 17 years later, when he is actually running for president (and may be getting the nomination, too). 

No to Kosovo in UNESCO

It ought to be the elementary standpoint of any civilized human being that those who destroy heritage (not to mention living houses of worship) absolutely do not belong in organizations whose purpose is to protect it.

The #EU wants us to say "This is perfectly fine." #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/HwA4XEaac6

— Boris Malagurski (@malagurski) October 14, 2015

After gaining membership in the corrupt and morally bankrupt FIFA, "Kosovo," a NATO-occupied Serbian territory pretending to be a country, is trying to become a member of UNESCO.

The "Kosovar" Albanian treatment of Serbian churches, monasteries, cemeteries, libraries, books and monuments - deliberately destroyed and desecrated since the NATO occupation began in 1999 - has been no different than the one afforded by the so-called Islamic State to the antiquities in Mosul or Palmyra.

#ISIS is more qualified than Kosovo for member of UNESCO. Less monuments were destroyed. @UNESCO #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/cAp02knvuF

— Марко (@MorgulValaris) October 16, 2015

Worse yet, these are not some ancient heritage sites, but living houses of worship - whose congregants have been expelled or murdered under NATO sponsorship in the past 16 years!

"Kosovo" does not belong in UNESCO. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

Mad about Serbia

Seeing as it's the anniversary of the 1999 armistice that ended NATO's aggression, and began the Alliance's occupation of Kosovo, I wanted to comment on a recent attempt to force Russia into the US narrative about the Balkans.

Shocking, I know.

A few weeks back (May 22, to be precise), the Washington Times ran an opinion piece by L. Todd Wood about why the Russians love Putin regardless of Western propaganda, sanctions, etc. Wood's explanation is that Putin restored Russia's honor by confronting NATO, "mad" (angry, not crazy) over the 1999 war on Serbia.

Left to right: KLA terror boss Hashim Thaci; NATO viceroy Bernard Kouchner; UK general Michael Jackson
KLA "general" Agim Ceku; US general Wesley Clark. Occupied Kosovo, 1999.

Way to discover the obvious! I've said as much a year ago, and Putin has indeed mentioned 1999's evil little war (seriously, read that) time and again. But Wood appears to be so devoted to the mainstream Western narrative about Russia - and Serbia - that he turns Russia's justified anger over NATO's illegal, illegitimate aggression into some kind of proof that Putin is a fascist.

I'm not using that word lightly, either. Wood literally writes: "Russians would much rather have a leader who makes the trains run on time and can stand up to perceived Western aggression." The particular phrase I italicized up there has been commonly used to describe Benito Mussolini, the father of actual fascism.

The other propaganda trick in that sentence is describing Western behavior as "perceived aggression." Yeah, because when Washington backs an illegal coup and endorses a Russian-hating regime dead-set on glorifying its Nazi ancestors - and proceeds to gruesomely murder anyone who objects - everything's just peachy and any idea this might be wrong or objectionable is entirely in Vladimir Putin's head. Right?

Then there is Wood's description of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic (my take on him here):

"[Milosevic] presided over a reign of terror in several of the Yugoslav provinces; that is a fact. He used mass media to delegitimize certain ethnic groups and accused them of fascist tendencies, setting up justification for military action. Sound familiar? He turned a blind eye to genocide, especially in Kosovo, and supported ethnic cleansing of Kosovo for Serbia." 

One sentence at a time, shall we?

He did not; this is not a fact, it's pure fiction. What some Serbian media (others were paid by the West and actually defended any and all Serb-killing) pointed out were not "fascist tendencies" but actual fascism (see here, and here, and here). This only "sounds familiar" because Wood is trying to shoehorn Putin into the "mythical Milosevic" mold. That last sentence doesn't even make sense; for years the West accused Milosevic of committing "genocide," and now he's merely supposed to have looked the other way? Well, which is it? Plus, the phrase "ethnic cleansing" actually originated from an Albanian appalled by Albanian efforts to expel or kill the Serbs in the 1980s - efforts that eventually succeeded only thanks to NATO's aggression and the subsequent trampling of the 1999 armistice.

Wood also mentions that Milosevic died in a holding cell while being on trial for genocide by the ICTY. That "court" has been a bonfire of absurdities since its very beginning, but its greatest "accomplishment" surely has to be using third-hand perjured hearsay to accuse the Serbs of genocide by invoking a Nazi Croatian plot to genocide the Serbs. Enough said.

Anyway, in Wood's telling, Putin is as bad as the Very Evil Milosevic, and Russia is just like Serbia only (a lot) bigger. While he doesn't actually follow through to the natural conclusion of that "logic", I have to: therefore, the West (meaning the US, really) must do to Russia what they have done unto Serbia.

Just to be clear, the mainstream Western narrative is that Serbia was "liberated" in October 2000, when a popular revolution (albeit assisted with "suitcases of cash" and overseen by the National Endowment for Democracy and a series of US ambassadors) overthrew the Very Evil Milosevic and introduced the country to progressive liberal democracy and human rights. Naturally, it took several election cycles to "filter out" the "recidivists" until the country could get its Most Progressive Government Ever.

Washington isn't even bothering to hide that the ultimate objective of the sanctions and the propaganda is "regime change" in Moscow. What they want is a return to the 1990s, when Russia was systematically looted by a cabal of US "advisers", while its president was a drunken puppet who shelled the parliament and stole at least one election.

That's the real reason the noun "democracy" and the adjective "liberal" are considered insults in modern Russian, right there on par with "fascist."

(see the Disclaimer at top right of page)

Kosovo's Kristallnacht

2004-2015

The East Remembers

Bus People

In the first six weeks of 2015, some 50,000 Albanians have reportedly left the "independent state of Kosovo", setting off in buses across Serbia towards Hungary and the EU. Their number may be even higher: some "Kosovian" media mention up to 120,000 migrants. And now there is word they are also crossing over into Albania proper. 

While the Western media reflexively blame the Serbs, nobody actually knows what is happening. Perhaps this account, from an ethnic Serb traveling from her enclave in Kosovo to Belgrade on a bus filled with Albanian migrants, may help shed some light on the phenomenon.

This Looks Like 1999
By Yanya Gachesha (Јања Гаћеша)
Novi Standard, February 9, 2015. (original)

When I set out for Belgrade with a group of friends, early in the morning, and saw a group of Albanians at the bus depot in Gračanica, I realized the trip would take at least three hours more - but that this was also the opportunity to get to know these migrants better.

More Albanians boarded the bus at Ajvalija, Priština, Podujevo, all the way to Merdare. Most of them were young men, and young couples with children. When a few Serbs came on board at Miloševo we cheered up - until then, it seemed we were the only ones not traveling to Subotica.

They are leaving en masse, literally disappearing overnight. None of the Serbs know what's gotten into them all of a sudden. What I saw on the bus only confirmed the doubts that I and many other Kosovo-Metohija Serbs share: they are up to no good again. Apart from one woman headed to Subotica with her husband and children, who came on board in tears, everyone else looked entirely carefree. Neither her, nor her family looked like they were suffering, impoverished, or starving. Nor did anyone else. Few had more luggage than a single backpack, even those with children in tow. They were completely relaxed, laughing and talking on their phones, couples necking and kissing, as if they were all going to a seaside holiday and were about to burst into song.

Facts and Fascist Fantasies

On Friday, February 6, six Bosnian Muslims ("Bosnians", per the US media) living in Missouri, New York and Illinois were arrested on charges of aiding ISIS. The day before, police in Manchester (UK) raided 17 homes, targeting an Albanian drug-trafficking ring. Meanwhile, thousands of Albanians are leaving their "free, independent state of Kosovo" - carved out of Serbia for them by NATO in 1999, and declared independent in 2008. Nobody seems to know why - though that doesn't stop the Western media for blaming the Serbs.

Over in Bosnia - the place that set the precedent for America's "white knighting" in the 1990s - an entire village has been taken over by Wahabi jihadists flying ISIS flags. This is news all of a sudden; yet the village's Serb inhabitants were driven out 20 years ago, and it has been a jihadist commune ever since - and no one in the West gave a damn. "See no jihad" was the order of the day, even after 9/11. Why? Perhaps because of Washington's plan to earn the jihadists' gratitude - even though they've clearly showm what they thought of the idea, over and over again.

Last week, Russian agencies reported that "up to 200 mercenaries from the Balkans" were fighting for the Nazi junta in the Ukraine. According to the report, the US corporation formerly known as Blackwater recruited Croats and Albanians.

Croats in the Nazi "Azov" battalion  (source)

It wouldn't be the first time; when the tattered remnants of the German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad in February 1943, among them were troops of the Croatian Legion - a unit personally deployed to the Eastern Front by the Croatian Nazi leader Ante Pavelić, proud of his alliance with the "Thousand-Year Reich." Albanians also served Hitler faithfully, as he (and Mussolini) gave them today's Kosovo and western Macedonia, a Waffen-SS division, and a blank check to murder and expel as many Serbs as they could.

Fast-forward fifty years after the end of WW2. Pavelić's heirs again hitched their wagon to the strongest power, and used the status of its "junkyard dogs" to fulfill their iron dream. But the International Court of Justice just said you shouldn't worry your pretty little heads about that.

Trouble in Kosovo? Must be the Serbs' Fault

Something strange is going on in the "Independent state of Kosovia" these days - but only if you're a mainstream Western media reporter.

Voice of America is stumped by the fact that some ten thousand "Kosovianians" have fled for the EU since the beginning of the year. Their explanation? It's Serbia's fault (of course, always) for making it easy for the "Kosovistanis" to travel freely, which "coincided" with "political turmoil and street unrest in Kosovo fueled by poverty, high unemployment and economically debilitating corruption."

Now wait just a bloody, bombed-out minute. Aren't "poverty" and "high unemployment" trotted out every time to explain every riot in "Kosovia"? Remember the 2004 pogrom resulting in the expulsion of some 40,000 Serbs? Within days, the Albanians' Western apologists were spinning it as a natural consequence of unemployment, poverty, etc. Their proposed solution? Independence, independence, independence!

NATO soldiers inspect a destroyed Serbian church in Prizren, following the March 2004 pogrom; the graffiti (in gutter Albanian) reads "Death to Serbs" (photo: SrbijaDanas)

You see, at the time Kosovo was legally considered a province of Serbia, albeit under NATO and UN occupation since NATO's illegal war of 1999. After almost four years of pro-independence propaganda, in February 2008 the provisional government proclaimed the "Republic of Kosovo." Two years later, the International Court of Justice tortured logic into declaring that this wasn't necessarily illegal.

Fast-forward to 2015. "Kosovia" has been recognized by some 100 states, mostly vassals of the Atlantic Empire. Moreover, the quisling government in Serbia has de facto recognized the province's independence - government, flag, borders, customs, documents, etc. - and sold the remaining Serbs down the river, basically forcing them to participate in "Kosovarian" elections. Never mind that only a handful of Serbs vote, and that even fewer agree to be token symbols of "Kosovian" tolerance and multicultural democracy or whatnot. And there is still a problem?

"Kosovian" Suicide Bomber Behind Baghdad Attack

Serbian national television RTS reported earlier today that the March 25 suicide bombing in Baghdad was the work of Blerim Heta, a "Kosovian" Albanian. This, they say, is the first confirmed instance of any Balkans jihadist taking part in a suicide attack; there have been reports of Bosnian Muslims doing so in Iraq, but none could be corroborated.

Screenshot of the RTS report

Heta is a native of Uroševac (called Ferizaj by Albanians), and his family believed he was fighting in Syria. They confirmed his death, with Blerim's father Remzi denouncing religion and claiming his family followed "European values", while his son was "seduced".

RTS further cites a report on the website of the jihadist outfit ISIL, confirming Heta's death and referring to him as "Abu Habbab al-Kosowi".

Yet the most interesting detail of Heta's biography - that he worked for the U.S. military at Camp Bondsteel, the major military base right outside of Uroševac - is mentioned only in passing. When did he work there? What was he doing? Was he fired and then turned to jihad, or the other way around? Or was he recruited there to go to Syria? Questions about, yet RTS offers no answers. Maybe someone else will.

Residual Lies

One of the more ghastly features of Empire's war on reality is to what extent even those that have come to challenge its more recent lies still accept older ones as fact.

A perfect example is the otherwise enjoyable takedown of Mr. Obama's Brussels speech by Gayane Chichakyan on RT the other day. Responding to the Emperor's assertion that "NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years," Chichakyan simply said "Good point" and segued into talking about the civilian victims of NATO's 1999 aggression.

Here's the problem: it's not a "good point." It is just another lie.

NATO soldiers inspect a destroyed Serbian church in Prizren, following the March 2004 pogrom;
the graffiti (in gutter Albanian) reads "Death to Serbs" (photo: SrbijaDanas) 

Empire's War on Reality

I sure am glad I wasn't the only one telling the Emperor he had no clothes. The boy in Hans Christian Andersen's tale was lucky; in this day and age, he might have been hauled away for "diversity training".

Perhaps that is why the mainstream media are still silent on the (to put it mildly) Brussels gaffe. The Washington Post even quoted it without comment (!) while spinning Mr. Obama's speech as being a "generous spin" on the Iraq War. Fox News settled for reprinting the article written by two journalists at Breitbart London.

Just in case someone missed it, here is Mr. Obama's behind-the-looking-glass claim, made in the March 26 speech in Brussels:

"Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized – not outside the boundaries of international law but in careful cooperation with the United Nations, and with Kosovo’s neighbors."

And just to be clear, none of this ever happened. There was no UN-supervised referendum, no "careful cooperation" with anyone (least of all "Kosovo's neighbors", whoever that might be referring to), and no staying within international law. Why else would it have been necessary to bend it?

One possible explanation, as I noted yesterday, was that the Emperor's speechwriter mixed up the (nonexistent) referendum in Kosovo with the 2006 vote in Montenegro - a dirty affair in which the separatists barely scraped up the 55% majority arbitrarily decided upon by the EU. Bad enough when retired diplomats can't tell Kosovo and Bosnia apart, but the Emperor's own speechwriters mixing up his Balkans clients?

Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute may sound harsh when he calls this a "war on history," but he might actually be too lenient. This isn't just a war on history, but a war on reality. Remember Karl Rove's tirade to Ron Suskind, about the Empire shaping reality? Apparently this kind of delusional thinking is not just the province of Republicans and neocons. The party currently in power in Washington very much believes in the power of conjuring "reality" with words and images: Hope and change. Keep your doctor. Russia is an aggressor. There was a referendum in Kosovo. And so on.

The two experts interviewed by Breitbart reporters expressed expectations that the White House would issue a retraction, or at least an apology. That has not happened. Nor is it likely to happen, as that would undermine Washington's projected aura of infallibility - the only thing still hiding the fact that the Empire has no clothes.

WHY? - a RT Documentary

To mark the 15th anniversary of the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, RT has produced a documentary, asking the question in its title: Why?

NATO and its media apologist will give you a long list of excuses and justifications. But that won't be the actual answer. They did it for power, for kicks, because they could. And they will keep doing it, until they can't.

From the film's description:

Fifteen years after NATO’s 78-day bombardment of Yugoslavia, memories of the bombing still haunt present-day Serbia. NATO killed over 2,000 people, hundreds were civilians, 88 were children. Serbs ask ‘why?’ above all. Why did NATO smash their cities, kill their children, bomb hospitals and schools?
When the NATO bomb campaign began (on March 24th 1999) Jelena Milincic was a student at the University of Belgrade, and just 18 years old.
Jelena takes Anissa Naouai on a road trip, to remember the victims, and hear the survivors of NATO’s strike terror.

Watch "WHY?" on RT.

Directed by Pavel Baydikov
Written by Jelena Milincic, Anissa Naouai & Victoria Vorontsova
See RT for broadcast rights.

From Belgrade to Baghdad

Amidst all the activity concerning the Ukraine, I barely managed to set aside some time to commemorate the anniversaries of NATO's 1999 war of aggression and the 2004 pogrom it produced. And somehow I missed March 19, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq - one of those invasions "on completely trumped up pretext" that, according to John Kerry, no one does anymore.

Except, you know, the Empire.

Just before the invasion began, I wrote about the complete moral bankruptcy of invoking the Balkans precedent, and all the ghastly, appalling "arguments" proffered by both advocates and "critics" of the invasion.

Here was Richard Holbrooke, for example: "one should never underestimate the persuasive power of power itself." And here was Veton Surroi, a "moderate" ethnic Albanian demanding that Iraqis die to justify the American murder of Serbs four years prior: "Change will only come when the bombs begin to fall."

All the "debate" in the West, then as now, has focused on appearances of Imperial interventions. With a handful of notable exceptions such as Ron Paul, few have ever questioned their validity. Until it is recognized that the Empire had no right to initiate the use of force, whether in Serbia in 1999, or in Iraq 2003, comparisons between the different acts of aggression will be mere exercises in justification.

Considering the number of falsehoods per sentence in yesterday's statement by Mr. Obama, however, I wouldn't wager on that recognition coming any time soon.

The Real Day Everything Changed

The phrase "the day everything changed" is used in America to describe that Tuesday, the eleventh day of September, 2001, when hijacked airplanes destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.

Belgrade, March 1999

Yet a sober look back at the past dozen years reveals a continuity, not change - at least in the government's behavior. Meanwhile, a certain spirit has gone out of Americans, and they now tolerate the omnipotent surveillance state and accept the regular trampling of what remains of their liberty in exchange for empty promises of temporary safety.

The government of George W. Bush was quick to launch a punishment expedition against Afghanistan, which morphed into "nation-building" and eventually failed. NATO forces have now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviets, and with much the same result. In 2003, Bush invaded Iraq - a country entirely unrelated to the events of 9/11, but of personal interest to him and his advisors - on a manufactured pretext. Though U.S. troops have officially withdrawn by December 2011, some 25,000 "embassy staff" and "military contractors" have remained.

Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, was supposedly tracked down to Pakistan and killed in 2011 - though there have been claims he died way back in 2001 of kidney failure, and everything since had been chasing a phantom menace.

But there was definitely no War on Terror when it came to Islamic militants in the Balkans, for example - quite to the contrary, US lawmakers called out to "jihadists of all color and hue" to take note of Washington promoting jihadism in Europe. And in the very year Bin Laden was supposedly killed, Washington backed jihadists in Libya - and later in Syria.

That is not to say there hasn't been an actual turning point in modern history, however. You just have to go back a bit more to find it. I would argue it is 3/24/1999, when the Atlantic Empire - believing itself at the pinnacle of power, exceptional, and exempt from the rules it sought to impose on others by force - launched an evil little war against a country called Yugoslavia.

Those who waged that war openly described it in terms that perfectly fit the definition of terrorism. Look at the photos from Yugoslavia 1999 and New York 2001 side by side, and contemplate the eerie similarities.

The war was a clear-cut act of aggression, violating both NATO's charter and the U.S. Constitution and lacking any UN authorization. It was illegal, illegitimate, and unjust. Ostensibly fought for "humanitarian" reasons, in practice it backed a terrorist Albanian insurgency aimed at carving out a province from Serbia (one of the two states federated within then-Yugoslavia).

Empire's "diplomats" and perfumed generals believed the Serbs would surrender within a week. It took a Trojan truce, eleven weeks later, for NATO to actually occupy the province of Kosovo (and not all of Serbia, as initially demanded). Undeterred by reality, NATO leaders believed their own lies, ensuring they would make the same - and worse - mistakes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya...

Most importantly, perhaps, the bombing of Yugoslavia had one effect no one in the West had anticipated. Up to that point, Russians were still enraptured with the West, despite nearly a decade of financial and political rape. But the first bomb that hit Belgrade was a wake-up call.

Fifteen years later, the leadership in Moscow has demonstrated they had neither forgotten, nor forgiven. And something tells me that the West hasn't yet begun to pay the real price for that golden idol in Pristina, or the train of abuses and atrocities inflicted upon Serbia since. 

About That Gratitude, Again

I have written before on the downright idiotic belief of the Imperial establishment that their white-knighting around the world on behalf of jihadists would result in gratitude. Except, you know, not.

In fact, there is a lengthy list of jihadists attacks perpetrated by those very "secular, modern, democratic, etc." Muslims from the Balkans the Empire has waged several wars to "save" or "liberate" - and it keeps growing.

Two commenters just sent in links to a developing story from southern Turkey. It appears that a Turkish patrol was ambushed on a highway near the Syrian border, and two soldiers and a policeman were killed. The Turks have captured three suspects, described as "two Albanians and a Kosovan [sic]" who were likely fighting the anti-government jihad in Syria. Which, by the way, Turkey has supported.

Here is a Macedonian news agency quoting the AFP quoting Turkey's Interior Minister:

Two Albanians and a Kosovan have been arrested for a suspected 'terror' attack that claimed the lives of two soldiers and a policeman in southern Turkey, Interior Minister Efgan Ala said Friday, AFP reports.

And here is that AFP story, as posted by Lebanon's Daily Star:

Two Albanians and a man from Kosovo have been arrested for a suspected "terror" attack that claimed the lives of two soldiers and a policeman in southern Turkey, Interior Minister Efgan Ala said Friday.

The three men were arrested after Thursday's attack, in which assailants opened fire on security forces carrying out a highway patrol near the town of Ulukisla, close to the Syrian border.

"The suspects captured were two citizens of Albania and the third from Kosovo," the official Anatolia news agency quoted Ala as saying.

Albania's interior ministry, however, denied that any of those arrested were Albanian citizens.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had labelled the shooting a "vile act of terror" and said the three security officers killed were "martyrs".

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said the attackers had "a link with Syria", without giving further details.

Local media reported they were affiliated with militant Islamist organisations operating in Syria.

Recall that the Empire had arranged for the Syrian "rebels" to "train" with the KLA back in 2012. And there are obviously Albanian (and Bosnian) jihadists fighting for the "rebels", as reports keep coming in about many of them reaching their goal of martyrdom (i.e. getting killed). Meanwhile, Turkey has not only backed the jihad in Syria, but also the Muslims of Bosnia and the "Kosovian" Albanians in their claims on Serb territory.

Perhaps this instance of Albanian jihadists biting the hand that fed them might cause the Turks to reconsider their position, if not on the Syrian jihad then "Kosovistan." But I'm not holding my breath.