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.

Do Try This at Home

To Doris Pack, MEP:

It has come to my attention that you have praised the so-called "citizen plenums" in Bosnia, calling them a "good idea" and urging people to "take to the streets and take control of their own destiny."

Noble words. But this is what that looks like in practice:

(AP, via Daily Telegraph)

How about this, Doris: you do that, in your native Schiffweiler, first.

Don't bother letting me know how it turns out. I honestly don't give a damn.

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.

A Telling Slip

Here is a still from the minute-long propaganda video by "Fatherland" party of Ukrainian "Prime Minister" Yahtzee, following his trip to Brussels:

Notice anything? Right between Italy and Romania? Instead of the shards of Yugoslavia, there is now just one country: Croatia.

Is this ignorance of geography, as some have suggested, or perhaps outdated maps? I doubt it. Unlike Americans, the rest of the world actually bothers studying geography, and while I can imagine getting some frontiers wrong, erasing half a dozen countries is still a bit much.

Nor is this a pre-1991 map, as Germany is united, while Czechs and Slovaks are separated. Also note that Cyprus (a tiny speck of blue disappearing off the southeastern edge of the picture) is correctly noted as an EU member.

Far be it from me to suggest that this map betrays a delusion of the Empire that some day all of what was once Yugoslavia would be "Croatia" - though I am kind of curious what Slovenians, "Bosnians," "Montenegrians", Macedonians and "Kosovians" think of that. And I can't shake off the feeling the Serbs are being systematically bullied and brainwashed to that very end.

Drawing Them a Picture

Yesterday, "Kosovian" politician Vlora Citaku tweeted an image celebrating the NATO aggression 15 years ago. It was quickly re-tweeted by the proud NATO press office:

screen capture from Twitter

I'm curious to see if Nike will react to this infringement of their trademark by mobsters, drug-runners, butchers, slavers and aggressors. Not betting on it.

However, it wasn't long before someone created a response graphic:

via Facebook (by M.V.)

And then someone else created another:

(via Facebook)

For those who don't remember, the top right panel is a photo of what remained of the F-117 stealth bomber, shot down over Serbia on March 27, 1999.

UPDATE (3/27/2014) And here is another design, also referring to the shoot-down:

(via Facebook(

Yet this one, posted by Young Americans for Liberty, is my personal favorite:

(via Facebook, Young Americans for Liberty)

Something to remember, every time you hear the phrase "the entire world" or "international community" coming from the mouths of State Department deputy assistant undersecretaries, or EU commissars.

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.

Four (Not So) Easy Pieces

Over on my Serbian-language blog, I have a weekly overview of interesting articles that runs every Sunday. I wish I had the time to do something like that here, but it's just not practical. So a quick round-up now and then will have to do.

Here is an interesting view of the Ukraine tug-of-war from China's People's Daily. My best guess is that this sums up Beijing's official position, and that interpreting China's abstention in the UNSC as weakness or disinterest would be a huge mistake.

And here is how an Indian commentator looks on Russia vs. the West. I don't know how mainstream this publication is, but the author is very pointedly dispensing advice to the likely incoming cabinet and arguing that the Atlantic Empire simply can't be trusted.

I first heard the name Anne Williamson via Steve Sailer's blog, three weeks ago, when he quoted at length her 1999 testimony describing the financial Rape of Russia after the Soviet Union'd demise. Imagine my interest, then, when an essay by Williamson appeared on LewRockwell.com this past week, talking about how the Empire has adopted Lenin's "logic." Especially since some of you may remember me making the same argument here, back in 2012.

And then there is the inimitable Fred Reed, whom I simply have to quote:

"I mean, by all the gods and little catfish, what does he think a tiny irrititing [sic] boat like that is going to do—torpedo the Crimea? It doesn’t float, Barack. It’s stuck to the bottom. You can’t sink it."

Meanwhile, the Western press is bleating how the "international community" (what's that, again?) or even "the whole world" is against Russia. Yeah, about that...

Handling Harridans

The uncouth behavior of Samantha Power, Empire's envoy to the UN, confirms once more former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's assessment that America, like the Roman Empire, has no need for diplomacy. "Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness," concluded Boutros-Ghali (p. 198 of his 1999 memoir Unvanquished)

I would argue the same applies to journalistic integrity. After all, if one believes one can just make up "reality" and impose it with lies or bombs, why bother dealing with the truth?

Empire's journalists are so used to getting their way, believing themselves to be the all-powerful shapers of reality, that they get outright bitchy when someone refuses to play along.

Enter Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN. A veteran diplomat, he first handled the hysterics of Ms. Power (who had zero diplomatic experience prior to being appointed to her post)
with a polite but firm request to get out of his face. Now he is refusing to bow before CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Back in November last year, Churkin appeared on Amanpour's show, only to see his interview on Syria sliced and diced. CNN claimed it was "cut down for length and time on-air", but the Russian mission argued the alterations left out "crucial" bits of the interview. Feel free to compare what was shown with the original remarks, and decide for yourselves.

So when Amanpour wanted to repeat the experience, Churkin gave her a cold shoulder. Frustrated, the CNN anchor got personal:

“Churkin’s own daughter is the US-based reporter for ‘Russia Today’ in New York. She's shown here, quizzing US State Department spokesman, Jen Psaki, over this whole Ukraine crisis. And in the past, she's even reported on her own father.”

To which Churkin replied:

...I wouldn't be writing to you if you did not also choose to personally attack my daughter... a Russian TV journalist. I am very proud of her – not only is she a good journalist, but she strictly keeps her professional distance from me.

Incidentally, I recall you married the State Department Spokesman. How was your professional credibility in the course of your courtship?

Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor in chief, added this:

When you don’t know what to say, fall back on those [double] standards at the double, as it were. But it is getting tedious and hard to stomach anymore.

If this is beyond the pale in the hallowed halls of American journalism, Amanpour would do well to remember this charming little video where she interviews her husband, James Rubin (former aide to State Secretary Madeleine Albright).

The interview is conducted alongside Victoria Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan, who sits on the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). The FPI, incidentally, has been roundly implicated in the now well-worn story surrounding the dramatic on-air resignation of our anchor, Liz Wahl.

In fact, CNN hasn’t been bothered in the slightest by the fact that two relatives have hammed it up on opposite ends of the camera, on more than one occasion. For example, here is a video of another CNN anchor, Chris Cuomo, interviewing his brother, New York governor, Andrew Cuomo.

Now how do you like them apples?

In the Media

Here's an excerpt from my March 19 interview with the Voice of Russia radio (full transcript here):

Of all the legacies of communism that the West had denounced, the borders drawn up by the commissars, whether Stalin in the Soviet Union or Khrushchev, or Tito in Yugoslavia, they are the only thing that the West has been defending. Why?

I was also a guest on today's edition of CrossTalk, with Sir Michael Arthur in London and Jacques Cheminade in Paris.

You can watch the show on RT, or on YouTube.

Meanwhile, reporters from TruthDig dug up an interesting revelation: RT anchor Liz Wahl's public meltdown earlier this month was orchestrated by the neocon war lobby. The stunt was run by none other than Jamie Kirchick, the neocon operative who tried to smear Ron Paul as racist and anti-Semitic a few years back. Kirchick and Wahl tried to dismiss the story via Twitter, but it didn't quite work out the way they intended...

And over on CNN, Stephen Cohen schooled Christiane Amanpour on Russia. A joy to watch.

Clearly an Outrage

This letter appeared today in The Boston Globe. Make sure you read it carefully, and all the way to the end:

IT’S TRULY an outrage that, in this day and age, a region within a sovereign country can be taken over and declared independent simply because they have a majority of residents with an ethnic identity different from the majority of citizens in their country. That this sort of thing can be successfully orchestrated militarily by a foreign power is alarming. This is a blatant violation of international law and should be strongly opposed by the citizens of every free and law-abiding country where respect for national borders is held high. After all, if it can be permitted to happen even once, there will be no end to it.
Therefore, we must stand firm and refuse to recognize Kosovo.

Theodore L. Bosen
Plymouth

Well done, sir.

Well done. 

RIP, David Yeagley

Dr. David Yeagley, a great scholar, American patriot and Comanche, passed away last week. Among the many issues he had addressed during his prolific writing career was the plight of the Serbs. To honor his memory, I am reposting his most recent article on the subject.

I can't help but think that his desperate plea from the last paragraph was finally answered this week.

- Gray Falcon

Serbia: A Lesson for the Modern World

By David Yeagley, November 7, 2013
BadEagle.com

To this day, because of liberal, biased media, most people in the world still do not know what has happened to Serbia. The fraud, the corruption, and the international robbery of a nation go unrecognized, unjustified, and unpunished. Is this to be the fate of every country facing the same issues?

Serbians of their northern Kosovo resisted Albanian Muslim government elections in the internationally usurped province.

BadEagle.com has written numerous articles on Serbia, pointing out the ironies and agonies, and the stark shame due the United States government under President Bill Clinton and his NATO commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, as well as President Bush following, and the Obama administration to date.

It was all about crime, heroin, and Albanian Muslims. That’s how Kosovo became an “independent” nation, a heroin haven forworld corruption, with such renowned leaders as former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. The media never once pointed out these underlying evils. “Ethnic Albanians” who had migrated en mass into Serbia’s Kosovo province were presented as victims! Whoever helped them was heroic, just, and to be greatly honored, regardless of reality.

Serbia was branded barbarian, when the Serbians were simply white Christian nationalist patriots, trying to protect and preserve their own. The liberal West wouldn’t have it.

Yet, there are still Serbian patriots, even in the norther area of Kosovo, some 40 to 50 thousand of them. They refused to vote for the integration into Kosovo, and disrupted the recent mayoral voting process in Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo.

Of course, the new, liberal-leaning Serbian government in Belgrade is trying desperately to get Serbia integrated into the European Union, and wants all Serbians to acknowledge the independent Kosovo. Thus, the new Serbian government has betrayed Serbians, calling them ulta-nationalists, instead of patriots, non-cooperatives, hold-outs, hardliners,etc., condemning them as the problem for the rest of Serbia. Kosovo plans another election, in defiance of such patriotism.

Serbians of Kosovo are being presented as those needing to be integrated into the new “foreign country” of Kosovo, created by masses of migrated Albanian Muslims who moved in on Serbian territory. Imagine, being “integrated” into a new country on your own land–robbed from you by a liberal, Western world united against you.

The last of the Mohicans, I’ve called these Serbian patriots. They are Christian, Serbian orthodox. They are denied by Muslims, liberals, and Western drug machines. White Christian is out, Muslim tyranny is in. Western governments, including the United States, prefer it this way.

It is an international disgrace, this betrayal of Serbia. That the United States should have had such a profound role in it only shows just how corrupt the United States government has become. Bi-partisan betrayal, indeed. It is nearly unfathomable.

Mass migration of foreigners, enemies of the culture they invade; international government cooperation with the invaders, business cooperation, criminal pay-offs; and utter misrepresentation of liberal media; these things create cosmic crime. These are the lessons of Serbia to the world. Beware.

No nation is safe today. No, not one. International forces have gained the ascendancy. Whatever your nation has that is valuable to the internationals, it will be taken from you, by coercion, by government force, by arms if necessary. Whatever it takes.

We can only pray for divine intervention. When the patriots are outnumbered by the world, how can they defend what’s theirs? When the patriots are out-manned, out-monied, out-gunned, the most they can hope for is “reservations,” like the American Indians. Is that where all true honor ends, on reservations?

The Only Principle

Time and again, RT presenters and hosts ask me what I make of the U.S. selectively applying international law. Why is secession of X perfectly acceptable, while secession of Y is wrong and condemned? Why is territorial integrity of Z not up for debate, but Q can be carved up, and is?

One can analyze the details of each particular case, examine the legality of each actor and action, and still be none the wiser. Not because the pattern does not exist, but because those details are, quite frankly, irrelevant to it. The answer is in understanding how the West thinks.

In a particularly ironic turn of history, the political class in "the West" has internalized Lenin's "logic" of Who/Whom. According to this way of thinking, the "what" does not matter, only "who" does it to "whom". If Washington is carving up a country, that's fine (e.g. Yugoslavia, then Serbia). If Washington is backing a coup ("color revolutions"), that's fine too. If Washington is invading and occupying countries on made-up pretexts (Iraq, Libya) or fomenting civil wars (Syria), or waging undeclared drone warfare (Yemen, Pakistan) that is likewise fine. Washington, and its clients, can do anything, because they are by (their own) definition the "good guys."

Anyone else, however, is a different matter. (U.S. clients) Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceding from Yugoslavia is OK, but Serbs seceding from them is "aggression." Croatian and Bosnian borders are sacred, and cannot be changed, but borders of Serbia can and should, because ethnic Albanians (U.S. client) want to claim the province of Kosovo as their own independent state. And then the borders of "Kosovo" become sacred, and cannot be changed.

Not only was Serbia denied the right to defend itself from the armed Albanian rebellion, it was attacked by NATO in a clearly illegal war of aggression. NATO occupied Kosovo, and in 2008 recognized the illegal declaration of independence that clearly contravened the UN resolution (1244) upholding the territorial integrity of Serbia. It doesn't matter what the Albanians have done, or what the Serbs have not - the Serbs are a priori wrong.
 
Just to make sure, Washington installed a quisling regime in Belgrade that said all this was perfectly acceptable, and even muscled the World Court to redefine the question in order to make the land grab appear legal.

To summarize: it is an article of faith in the Atlantic Empire that Washington and its clients (EU, etc.) can do no wrong, while their victims can do no right. Once you understand that as their sole guiding principle (for lack of a better word), all the other pieces fall into place.

Kosovo's Kristallnacht Remembered

March 17, 2004. NATO "peackeepers" had occupied the Serbian province of Kosovo for almost five years, following an illegal war. In practice, they had turned over the province to the "Kosovo Liberation Army" - an ethnic Albanian terrorist organization praised in Washington as fighting for "human rights and American values" (Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn, quoted in the Washington Post, April 28, 1999). After the occupation, the KLA split up into multiple organized crime clans.

After claiming that the surviving Serbs - living within barbed-wire enclosures and under NATO armed guard - had caused the drowning deaths of three Albanian children (blood libel), over 50,000 Albanians launched a province-wide pogrom that one NATO official openly compared to Kristallnacht.

For four days, Kosovo burned.

Fold and Fumble

A month ago, Barack Obama used an inderesting turn of phrase in a message to Moscow, when he said America wasn't playing on "some Cold War chessboard." Because Foggy Bottom was doing just that in Ukraine, trying to make into reality Zbigniew Brzezinski's 1997 book called - "The Grand Chessboard".

Thing is, Russians are much better at chess. As I noted on CrossTalk two weeks ago:

"Americans are playing the only games they know, which is poker and American football. So brute force and bluffing. But in this case, they’re the scrawny nerd that can’t run and can’t pass and can’t throw the ball and they’re holding a pair of sevens. I’m honestly not sure who they think they are fooling." 

To be fair, the credit for the observation about poker and football rightly belongs to my colleague, Belgrade scholar Vladimir Trapara, who brought it up in an interview with Al-Jazeera Balkans I happened to see the day before. I just expanded upon it. A Bloomberg staffer tasked with mocking RT's "propaganda" quoted that segment as an illustration. He apparently thought it was absurd and funny. But was it? You decide.

Earlier today, the usually well-informed Moon of Alabama blog noted this item, via Reuters (emphasis added by MoA):

(Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry agreed on Sunday to seek a solution to crisis in Ukraine by pushing for constitutional reforms there, the Russian foreign ministry said.

It did not go into details on the kind of reforms needed except to say they should come "in a generally acceptable form and while taking into the account the interests of all regions of Ukraine".
...
"Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov and John Kerry agreed to continue work to find a resolution on Ukraine through a speedy launch of constitutional reform with the support of international community," the ministry said in a statement.

MoA proprietor notes that this is almost exactly what the Russians laid out in their recent "non-paper", and concludes:

Obama has given up. His empty threats had not worked and he now has largely accepted the Russian conditions for the way out of the crisis.

The U.S. plot to snatch the Ukraine from Russia and to integrate it into NATO and the EU seems to have failed. Russia taking Crimea and having 93% of the voters there agree to join Russia has made the main objective of the U.S. plans, to kick the Russians out of Sevastopol and thereby out of the Middle East, impossible.

The Russian (non public) threat to also immediately take the eastern and southern provinces from the Ukraine has pushed the U.S. into agreeing to the Russian conditions mentioned above. The only alternative to that would be a military confrontation which the U.S. and Europeans are not willing to risk. Despite the anti-Russian campaign in the media a majority of U.S. people as well as EU folks are against any such confrontation. In the end the U.S. never held the cards it needed to win this game.

Should all go well and a new Ukrainian constitution fit the Russian conditions the "west" may in the future well be allowed to pay for the monthly bills Gazprom will keep sending to Kiev.

So, then. Looks like Washington just folded - or fumbled. I'd like to ask the Bloomberg staffer whether he still thinks my (and Trapara's) observation was funny.

I won't lie, I am surprised at this development. It suggests a degree of common sense I wasn't prepared to credit Washington with. And the Empire doesn't exactly have a history of keeping its end of the bargain. Quite the contrary. But if they think they can use this as breathing room to create more "reality" on the ground, they are sorely mistaken. Russia's behavior in the past six months suggests they have taken the lessons of Serbia to heart (even if Serbia itself has not), and if Washington - or its Banderite clients on the ground - tries to twist this deal to their advantage, there are no doubt several contingency plans already in place.

And to be entirely fair, the Empire hasn't tried to weasel out of the arrangement it accepted last fall regarding Syria. Yet. So I am very cautiously optimistic about this. But let's see what happens.

On Stooges, Coups, Legitimacy and "Invasions"

Here is the transcript of my most recent interview with RT, on the topic of Ukraine and Crimea. I've cleaned up a couple of typos, and bolded certain passages for emphasis.

RT: The US, the UK and others insist that Russian troops have taken over Crimea. The armed men there say they are local self-defense units. So what proof does the West have of a Russian incursion?

Nebojsa Malic: I don’t think they have any proof, but then again, they’ve never needed any proof for any of their allegations over the past 25 years. They simply say what they want the public to believe, and expect the public to believe it. I don’t see a problem even if these were Russian troops because Russia has a treaty that allows it to keep a number of troops in the Crimean region, and the number of troops Russia does keep is far fewer than allowed by the treaty.

So again, I don’t really see a problem here. There’s been no invasion, the people in Crimea are happy enough. They’re posting selfies with these soldiers, they’re smiling, they are walking around with flowers. That’s not like a typical Western invasion, which involves lots of bombs and lots of dead people. This isn't exactly the kind of imagery the West usually projects when they go around flexing their power, and that’s why they’re trying to be as panicky and as alarmist as possible in their public announcements.

RT: They said Russia is violating Ukraine's sovereignty. But what about the EU and the US politicians propping up the Maidan opposition before it came to power?

NM: I would say that a far greater violation of sovereignty is actually staging a coup and replacing an elected government of a country with unelected stooges, like the United States has specifically done with the Maidan opposition. There was the intercepted phone call, which we all heard, where the United States government was plotting whom to install in power. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. That is a violation of sovereignty. Before that is resolved, nobody should really speak about any sort of other violations, real or imagined.

RT: The UK says the new government in Kiev is legit, while Yanukovich didn't honor the February 21 agreement with the then-opposition and fled. Do they have a point?

NM: Who decides the legitimacy of these things? Normally it would be the Ukrainian people. The last time they were polled, they elected Viktor Yanukovich as their president. The crowd in Maidan didn't have any sort of democratic legitimacy. What they did have is weapons. And they had money from the West, and the diplomatic support of Western governments. And using those levers, they actually took over power by force on February 22. The agreement that was purportedly achieved between European ministers and President Yanukovich was violated by the Maidan protesters who resorted to violence and forced the issue. So honestly, for the Western governments propping up these rebels, to declare them legitimate is obviously expected. But they don’t get to decide the legitimacy of these things.

RT: We've seen how many people in Crimea aren't happy with the Kiev leaders. Why is the will of the people not taken into account by Western nations then?

NM: Western governments generally don’t take will of the people into consideration at all, anywhere, ever. The only will that matters to them is their own. So if they want to achieve something, if they want to carve up Yugoslavia, or Serbia, or Russia, or Ukraine, or anywhere else, they just find stooges that they can manipulate, install them in power, and then claim that the stooges’ decisions are legitimate because they represent a will of some phantom people or other. And that’s usually how they've been doing business for the past two decades. Sooner or later, somebody is going to have to stand up to them and say, “No, you can’t do this. This is against your own rules, this is against everybody's rules. Stop.”

RT: Washington says the rights of minorities are protected in Ukraine. But what about those ultra-nationalists affiliated with the government, who made no secret about their hatred towards Russians and other ethnic groups?

NM: How can the United States government say the minority rights are protected in Ukraine when the very first thing that the rebel government did was pass a law banning the use of Russian language? If that is a protection of minorities, then what’s going on in Kosovo is multi-ethnic democracy, and Kosovo has been ethnically cleansed of everybody but Albanians, and even the Albanians who disagree with the current regime – which was also installed by the United States. Obviously some definitions are not all straight here.

RT: What do you think the international community will ultimately do if the referendum in Crimea goes ahead, and people vote to re-join Russia?

NM: It’s hard to predict what the international community will do, because there is no such thing as the international community. The United States uses this phrase to represent what it and its NATO allies are doing around the world. If the referendum in the Crimea is legitimate, and by all democratic standards, it looks like it is, have any treaties been violated? No. Has any force been used? No. By all rights, it should be a legitimate decision. However, this is not in the interest of the people who just overthrew the government in Ukraine and want to claim the entire country for themselves, including the people that don’t want to have anything to do with these neo-Nazi parties involved in the new government. And they will try to impose their will by force, and I fear what might happen then.

RT: Many in the international community want Russia to start negotiating with Kiev's government. What would it take for that to happen?

NM: I think the Russian government has repeatedly said that they would be perfectly willing to negotiate with a legitimate government in Kiev. So for any sort of negotiations, there has to be a legitimate government in Kiev to negotiate with, and right now we don’t have that. I think there would need to be some sort of political solution within Ukraine that would create an actual legitimate government in Kiev that would be able to conduct negotiations about any of these issues, from the status of minorities or any other groups, to all sorts of international treaties, to EU accession, etc. But right now, there is no legitimate government. There’s just a group that proclaimed itself the new government based on violence and foreign support.

RT: Yatsenyuk has passionately argued many times that Russia should not intervene into Crimea’s affairs and that Kiev wouldn't recognize the results of Crimean referendum. Is that an attempt to protect Ukrainian territorial integrity or is it what Washington and Brussels want him to say?

NM: Mr. Yatsenyuk can certainly give a fairly impassioned speech, but who does he actually represent? Does he represent the Ukrainian people? Does he represent a portion of the Ukrainian people? Does he represent the international banker interests? Does he represent the US government that put him in the position he’s currently in? Who exactly is he speaking for? Until we can figure that out, we can’t really figure out what any of his words mean.

The Sane Hitchens on Russia

Peter Hitchens, the younger (and saner) brother of the late Christopher, offers a refreshing view of the entire Ukraine mess, writing in the Mail on Sunday. Excerpts followed by my comments:

Any visitor to Sevastopol will find it contains many monuments to genuinely heroic defences of that city against invasion (one of those invasions was our more or less incomprehensible incursion into the Crimea 160 years ago, which achieved a good deal less than nothing and cost a great deal of lives). The biggest memorials commemorate the 1941-44 invasion by Germany, which was resisted and eventually expelled at great human and material cost, in battles whose names and nature are unknown to most in the ‘West’.

If they knew more about it, they might understand why Russians are ‘paranoid’. The country has no natural defensible borders. A street in southern Moscow, Ulitsa Bolshaya Ordinka (the street of the Great Horde) commemorates to this day the five-yearly visits to Moscow of the Great Horde, to collect tribute from that frontier city. We tend to think that the Urals, supposedly mountains but really rather unimpressive hills, form Russia’s eastern boundary. But it isn’t really true. From every direction, the heart of Russia lies open to invaders. Moscow has been invaded or occupied by Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, The Golden (or Great)  Horde, Crimean Tatars, Napoleon,  No wonder the Russian word for ‘security’ (Byezopasnost) is a negative construction (‘Byez’ means ‘without’ ; ‘Opasnost’ means ‘danger’). The natural state of things is danger.

Contrast this with the British and American world view, predicated on having a large body of water as a moat securing them from any attack. In the Anglo-American mind, war is something that happens "over there". Russian wars generally begin with someone invading Russia, and generally end with the Russians gloating in the defeated invader's capital.

One might add that states which supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the attack on Libya, cannot really get very hot under the collar about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

But they are - because their worldview is Who/Whom, where they can do no wrong, and the designated Other can do no right.

It’s also interesting that Ukraine, while giving Crimea a great deal of autonomy, always strove to prevent a referendum on the region’s future, knowing for certain that it would lead to open calls for a return to Russian rule. Were I a Ukrainian politician or citizen, I would actively support the return of Crimea to Russia, because it was always bound to lead to trouble...

In fact, a fellow blogger suggested just yesterday that Russia may not want to take Crimea out of Ukraine, as that would only strengthen the Banderovtsi.

What continues to strike me about this whole row is the inability of most people to view Russia as a country, or Russians as people. Russia is portrayed as a bogeyman, and its people as either oppressed or as tools of a new Hitler.

This should actually not be so surprising. Isn't the key characteristic of the postmodern Western mind the lack of actual empathy, and the tyranny of the false one? Other people are never seen as having agency, they are either oppressors or oppressed.

Let me remind readers that Russia existed as a civilisation long before Lenin turned it into a Communist slum.... Russia still contains a large, educated, cultured middle class, who of necessity care more about history, literature and patriotism than their complacent, spoiled, semi-conscious western equivalents.  They, their parents and their grandparents have seen with their own eyes what can go wrong with a happy life, how suddenly it can happen, how little you can do about it, if invaders come, or if fools are in charge of your country, or both.

This is why "Pussy Riot" is rightly condemned by most Russians for what it really is - a group of spoiled, entitled brats acting like animals in public to get attention. Meanwhile, the "liberals" - the kind of Russians favored in the West, who don't even like to call themselves Russians - go so far as to complain the Nazis had lost the war, because had Germany won, they'd all be driving BMWs and making German wages. I kid you not.

For years now, trivial-minded, historically ignorant, efficient, glinting people have tried to turn Ukrainian independence into an attack on Russia. They did it in the ‘Orange Revolution’ and failed because the victors turned out to be as corrupt and divided as those they replaced (a problem which may well emerge again now they have had a second go). And now they have done it again.

As I've said before, this is not about the Ukrainians, just as Kosovo was not about the Albanians. This is about the Empire seeking to destroy Russia. And Imperial officials have admitted as much.

...I suspect that Mr Putin, and most Russians do not really regard Ukraine as a proper sovereign state, and I think they may be on to something.  They view its existence  as an artificial and accidental result of a moment of Russian weakness, which has since been maintained, for cynical reasons, by Western interference. Is Ukraine really sovereign, economically, diplomatically, militarily or in any other important way? Has it ever been?

I might add that Russia, bound by the modern rules of diplomacy, has refrained from compelling Ukraine to return to Moscow rule by naked force, as it would not have hesitated to do 50 or 100 years ago.  Instead the Russians have sought to ensure that Ukraine remains very much under their influence, while Kiev retains formal independence. Something very similar can be said of the EU’s treatment of many of the former countries now under its rule, including our own. The polite fiction of sovereignty is maintained for the convenience of ruler and ruled.
But, because of the EU’s (and NATO’s, and the USA’s) aggressive and repeated attempts to disrupt this tactful arrangement,  Russia feels the need to take some firm concrete action, both to stop this going further, and to deter future attempts to disaffect areas which Moscow believes are in its sphere of influence.

Compare and contrast: the West (Empire, EU, etc.) keeps meddling, keeps pushing for "reforms" that enrich (their) oligarchs and impoverish everyone else, keep treating Ukraine as a puppet or a piece on the gameboard. Yet Russia, that does nothing of the sort, is accused of "meddling" and "aggression." Typical propaganda tactic, blaming the target.

Such disaffection has gone quite far enough already, thanks to the weird, selective anti-Russian prejudices of so many in the USA. What exactly do these people see as the concrete reason for their hostility to Russia? What is it actually about?
[...]
This is about globalism versus national sovereignty, and the curious anomaly of Russia, an old-fashioned European country that is too big to be sucked into the EU, too small to be a superpower (and so invulnerable, like China) , too patriotic to be persuaded to dissolve itself. 

Spot on. There are other factors involved, to be sure - a Russophobia prevailing in the Anglo (and later American, by extension) ruling circles since the 1800s; a passionate hatred for the Orthodox nurtured by Rome for a thousand years - but Hitchens has zeroed in on the intersection of both.

The current Western model of "liberal democracy" and "capitalism" is said to be the pinnacle of human political evolution, the "end of history" and the inevitable state of Man. Yet the existence of Russia - almost vanishing under Yeltsin's wholesale adoption of the Western model, then flourishing rapidly as soon as Putin abandoned it - proves this is not so. As with any system based on blind dogmatism, any deviations from the dogma must be eradicated, lest someone start doubting. So even though Russia is not seeking to export its system, or impose its values, or control the world - its very existence is a threat to those that do. In a world of meddlers, minding your own business is the cardinal sin.

A Sacred War

Empire's politicians who wish to whip up popular frenzy for invading other countries in the name of "freedom, democracy and human rights" (or on some other such imaginary pretext) always invoke the specter of Adolf Hitler, supposedly defeated by American men, guns and tanks. And oh yes, some Russians and Brits may have helped a little bit. But it was Private Ryan's war - Spielberg showed us so.

Rubbish. You want to know who actually ended Hitler? Who did the bulk (90%) of the fighting against him in Europe, and the bulk of the dying as well? The Soviets. To 185,000 American soldiers who died fighting in Europe (total American deaths in WW2, including the Pacific campaigns: 418,500), the Soviets lost anywhere from 8 to 13 million troops. Their total war losses, factoring civilians, may have reached as high as 28 million people.

This may help explain why, when Elena Vaenga starts singing "The Sacred War," people in the audience stand up, as if for the national anthem:

Because for Russians - and all other Soviet citizens who fought against Hitler back then, such as Galina Shaykislamova - the fight against Hitler is the holiest of wars. This is why they cannot abide neo-Hitlerites, in Ukraine or elsewhere. And why anyone, especially cowardly foreign REMFs, who spits upon that memory will be treated with as much respect as the "rotten fascist filth" from the third verse. 

Logic and the West

As actual aggressors and actual perpetrators of Munich continue to accuse Putin of being Hitler, perhaps Philosoraptor could explain the problem with their "reasoning":

(via Facebook)

Translation: If Putin is Hitler, shouldn't the Banderovites be taking orders from him?

Instead, they are taking orders from Washington.

Questions?

RT and the Media War

I seem to have picked up the flu, so even reading is difficult, and writing doubly so. But I did want to weigh in on the whole RT non-issue.

As you may have heard, RT American anchor Liz Wahl quit, live on air, on Tuesday. A day prior, her colleague Abby Martin - anchor of the popular investigative show "Breaking the Set" - had some harsh words for the Russian government. The Western legacy media immediately swarmed like sharks smelling blood. Proof that RT is just vile Putinist propaganda! they all exclaimed in unison. Having reached that conclusion independently and impartially, of course.

But RT's editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, pointed out the other part of the story:

See for yourselves what they did to poor Abby. First, she openly voiced disagreement with Russia’s stance on air – and was virtually made an American hero. But then Abby reminded everyone how much she disagrees with America’s stance as well, adding she takes pride in working at RT, where she is free to express her views. Less than an hour passed before Abby had her name dragged through something I have difficulty finding a decent name for this late at night.

It is no secret that I've been a frequent guest on RT, in particular over the course of the Ukraine crisis, but also many times before. All my engagements with RT are pro bono. They are not paying me for being a guest. Neither is the Russian government. And nothing I say on the air is in any way different than what I've written here, or at Antiwar.com, or at the Reiss Institute, in English or in Serbian. I don't need to lie to bolster my case; truth is not only more powerful, but requires far less effort.

Back in March 2008, when a group of Serbs gathered in front of the White House to protest the shameful "independence" of occupied Kosovo-Metohija, several crews showed up to cover the event. Being the designated media contact for the group, I spoke with all of them. CNN used one sentence of mine, plucked out of context to support their Serbophobic story. A local network didn't even use the clip. But the RT crew heard me out.

Now, I know a thing or two about the media, though journalism is not my profession. Back in Bosnia, in 1995, I'd worked with damn near every news house that had a correspondent in Sarajevo. None of them thought a thing about spiking the truth if it didn't correspond with the narrative they were tasked with manufacturing. On the other hand, RT has never censored me, never asked me to walk back a statement, never spiked an interview.

And what of the integrity of their journalists? When I read Alexei Yaroshevsky's report from a place he was emotionally tied to, I couldn't help but relate to my own experience - one no American (save, perhaps, those from Detroit) can imagine: watching your entire world torn to shreds before your very eyes. If fate is particularly cruel, you'll live through the torment, maimed and broken, and be condemned to living in the ruins. Oh yeah. I can relate.

But I'm not asking you to trust my feelings. I am not even asking you to trust my logic. Those who have made up their minds about Russia being evil, and RT being propaganda - an opinion helpfully prepackaged for them by the mainstream media octopus, natch - won't be swayed by proof. However, my conscience demands that I declare my belief - based on nearly two decades of observing the media - that RT is a hell of a lot more independent and objective than any supposedly "independent and objective" outfit that answers to the State Department, Langley, Whitehall, or corporate boardrooms somewhere.

Make of that what you will.

False Flag in Kiev

Remember those "Yanukovich" snipers that - suddenly, inexplicably, following months of appeasement and a capitulation to the Empire-backed opposition - supposedly opened fire on the "peaceful protesters", thus providing a pretext for the Maydanists to violently overthrow the government in Kiev?

According to Estonia's FM Urmas Paet, who recently came back from a fact-finding mission in Kiev, the "civil society" representatives he met with have said "all the evidence shows" the snipers who shot Berkut officers and demonstrators were one and the same.

This revelation comes from a phone conversation Paet had with EU ForPolCom Catherine Ashton, which RT says was "reportedly uploaded to the web by officers of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) loyal to ousted President Viktor Yanukovich who hacked Paet’s and Ashton’s phones."

Here is Paet:

“And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.”

You can listen to the conversation yourself; the part above is around the 8:20 mark.

Now, add that this that a violent "surge" in the protest was announced by EU commissar Jelko Kacin two weeks prior, and that Western officials have declared in advance they would pin any deaths on the government, and you get a pretty clear picture of cui bono.

Unless you're a fan of triple-blind conspiracy theories, like Anne (Sikorski) Applebaum.

The Crimean Crucible

RT's CrossTalk is a show noted for vigorous debate. I've been a guest several times over the past few years, more often as the minority opinion than not.

Yesterday, I taped a special edition of the show, where the guests (in addition to yours truly, Mark Sleboda and Alexander Mercouris were tuning in from Moscow and London, respectively) and the moderator weren't arguing with each other, but with the absolute madness of warmongering mendacity in the rest of the English-language media (see here for a good analysis of some examples).

The only reason we were commenting on John Kerry's inane "19th century" quip (he must have been thinking of the Crimean War) instead of the remark that ought to accompany the dictionary entry for "hypocrisy" is that we were recording the show as he was saying this:

“You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests.”

That's right, one shouldn't. So, Mr. Kerry, why has your country invaded Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya on phony pretexts? And if funding "color revolutionaries" and hand-picking new Prime Ministers in intercepted phone calls isn't meddling in other countries' internal affairs and violating their sovereignty, then pray tell what is? That, in fact, is the point Vladimir Putin has been making for years.

Invade the world; invite the world; break the law and lie about it; ally with Nazis - you name it, the Imperial government has done it. Are we still talking about rational actors, or the lunatics running the asylum?

Watch CrossTalk here. 

No Idle Comparison

It is generally a good thing to be mindful of Godwin's Law in political discussion, though I haven't noticed it stopping many people of describing those they disagree with as "fascist" or "racist" even if they stop short of Nazi (without even knowing what any those words mean). But what happens in instances where one is dealing with, well, actual Nazis? People parading in SS uniforms, giving Nazi salutes, using Nazi language, and generally bring back the "glory days" of the "thousand-year Reich" (actual duration: 12 years)?

Yesterday, my friend Nikola Tanasic tweeted this cartoon:

self-explanatory

with the following comment: "The EU is showing once again where it got the notion of the 'great European family of nations'."

He is referring to a German propaganda poster from WW2, describing "What will happen once National-Socialism triumphs". It was featured in a 2002 study, "German Propaganda Posters in Serbia, 1941-1944" (Немачки ратни плакат у Србији, 1941-44) by historian Kosta Nikolic. Here is a low-resolution picture of the poster in question:

If you read Serbian, you can take a look at a slightly higher-resolution picture here, in the scanned version of the book (see page 102). There are other posters with similar rhetoric - on pages 41 and 46, respectively.

Here is the translation of the text on the right, extolling the Nazi new world:

The Serbian people will become a member of the great European family. Serbia will no longer be the petty change, to be used in bargains between world powers. There will be no fear of future wars, and the people will devote themselves to their own and general well-being, supported by the united Europe. Labor will become the only true value. Spiritual heritage, faith, family, all the cultural heritage and private property - the real engine of prosperity - will be protected and secured. A new, better life will begin. In the blood of Europe's finest sons, a new era will dawn for Serbia as well - an era of peace and prosperity for the people.

Lest one be tempted to nod along with some of these arguments, remember that as they were preaching this, the Germans were sponsoring a genocide of Serbs in "Independent State of Croatia," and executing 100 Serb civilian hostages for every one of their soldiers killed (and 50 for every wounded) in battles against the Serb freedom fighters. 

Is it surprising that the EU would use Nazi propaganda imagery and phrases? It really shouldn't be.

New Look, Same Falcon

Last November, on Falcon's blogiversary, I noted there might be some changes to the look of the blog. Those changes have mostly been minor and barely noticeable, until today, when the kind folks at Грамата design sent me the finalized visual identity package.

They also did a full visual redesign of Falcon's sister site, Сиви Соко.

Here is a banner, for those wishing to share:

New banner

Onward we go. Can't stop the signal. Keep flying.