On a dramatic exit, fake news and fake justice

I meant to post something about the ICTY - or as I have called it over the years, the Hague Inquisition - after they reached the preordained verdict against Ratko Mladić last week, but didn't get a chance to do so before another defendant decided to spite the fake court with a dramatic gesture.

Slobodan Praljak, the former movie director who became a general during the Bosnian War (and "directed" the destruction of Mostar's Old Bridge in 1993), rejected the Inquisition's verdict "with contempt" and drank poison in the courtroom. His gesture prompted me to contemplate the ICTY's existence, practices, and effects:

Rather than promoting reconciliation, by selectively prosecuting Serbs and Croats over killing Muslims (but not each other), the ICTY has nurtured the feeling of righteous victimhood that has prevented Muslims from reaching any sort of viable accommodation with the Christian majority. As a result, 22 years after the Dayton Peace Accords, Bosnia is still a gunshot away from another war.

Read the rest at RT.com

Karadzic and the dogs of war

In July 2008, after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, Brendan O'Neill wrote an article that provided the crucial missing piece to the puzzle of how the Atlantic Empire has interacted with jihadists: Bosnia.

Pointing out that America armed and trained a military machine that was using Mujahideen as "shock troops," O'Neill reminds us of the striking parallels between the positions of Al-Qaeda militants and "liberal hawks in newsrooms across America and Europe":

Indeed, many of the Mujahideen who fought in Bosnia were inspired to do so by simplistic media coverage of the sort written by liberal-left journalists in the West. Many of the testimonies made by Arab fighters reveal that they first ventured to Bosnia because they "saw US media reports on rape camps" or read about the "genocide" in Bosnia and the "camps used by Serb soldiers systematically to rape thousands of Muslim women." Holy warriors seem to have been moved to action by some of the more shrill and unsubstantiated coverage of the war in Bosnia.

Both Western liberals and the Mujahideen ventured to Bosnia in response to their own crises of legitimacy, and in search of a sense of purpose, O'Neill argues, citing a number of sources. The Serbs provided a convenient enemy to project all their pent-up frustration, anger and hatred onto.

"For both Western liberals (governments and thinkers) and the Mujahideen, Bosnia became a refuge from these harsh realities, a place where they could fight fantasy battles against evil to make themselves feel dynamic and heroic instead of having to face up to the real problems in their movements and in politics more broadly."

Both Western imperialists and Islamic jihadists became "super-moralized, militarized, internationalized" in Bosnia, as a result of their struggle against the "evil Serbs." Today, the Empire and its allies accuse Russia of "revisionism" but it was they who chose to trample international law and the existing order by inventing "humanitarian" wars and "responsibility to protect," reviving "coalitions of the willing" 200 years after Napoleon.

As for the Islamists, they went internationalist, spreading the message of jihad everywhere - fueled by Washington's wars, no less - from Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings to 9/11 and Brussels just this week.

O'Neill says Karadzic has much to answer for. I'll accept that. But he also says that the demonization of Karadzic and the Serbs, and the resulting "rehabilitation of both Western militarism and Islamic radicalism, has also done a great deal to destabilize international affairs and destroy entire communities." Just ask the Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians, Kurds...

Which brings me to a point I've been making here for years. I find it utterly disgusting that the same people who howl in outrage over the "genocide in Srebrenica" never seem to realize - or perhaps don't care - that "Srebrenica" has been used to justify the deaths of a million Muslims, and maybe more, in Western "humanitarian interventions" since 9/11. 

The Karadzic "conviction"

The more astute readers of this blog will remember that I have written and spoken against the so-called Hague Tribunal for years. It is a pretend-court that simply has zero legitimacy to begin with - regardless of its actions - since the UN Security Council cannot delegate (judicial) powers it does not possess. So, it is not meritorious to pass judgment on anyone.

Officials of the Atlantic Empire have outright bragged about creating the Tribunal for their own ends, writing its laws and procedures to ensure the desired outcome. "Sentence first - verdict afterwards," as Lewis Carroll so memorably put it.

The sham court was created to delegitimize the Serbs' right to exist, while legitimizing the aggression of the Empire and its clients. Pure and simple. Even if it were not founded on lies, even if its practices weren't sketchy and sleazy, its own presiding "judge" betrayed the truth behind the curtain when he treated the Big Lie as fact in pursuit of his mission.

Today, that "court" declared Radovan Karadžić guilty of "genocide" they had to rape reality to define as such - and on the anniversary of the NATO attack on Serbia, no less. It is no accident; the sham court has shown before that it chooses its timing with great precision.

Regardless of what he did, or did not do, they had to convict him. That was their mission from the Empire, their entire raison d'etre. But if you really want to know why, read Julia Gorin's excellent breakdown here.

All I have to say is that, if they think their dominion over this world is eternal and unquestionable... they clearly haven't been paying attention. 

A death and a reminder

Zdravko Tolimir (1948-2016) died in The Hague today, of causes unknown.

Reports of his passing will without exception note he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. None will say the verdict was passed in a kangaroo court, established by the Atlantic Empire to conjure a fig leaf of legitimacy for its conquest of Yugoslavia.

Everyone will quote the pious proclamations of presiding "judge" Theodor Meron, who said Tolimir "was aware of the genocidal intent of the Bosnian Serb leadership and was responsible for genocide.”

Likewise, everyone will bring up Srebrenica, and the supposed Serb massacre of Muslim "men and boys" (always that phrase), not missing to call it the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two.

Just about no one - in the West, anyway - will mention Prisca Matimba Nyambe, a Zambian judge appalled by her colleagues' abominable standards of evidence. Buried behind 534 pages of farcical "fact" findings, Nyambe's brave dissent calls out the other "judges" for failing to prove even a single charge in the indictment.

“Without a single piece of evidence adduced during this trial of a written plan of a JCE to Murder, or any evidence of direct statements showing such an intent, the Majority relies upon circumstantial evidence to draw conclusions of a culpable mens rea,” Nyambe wrote. 

By JCE she meant the notorious doctrine of "Joint Criminal Enterprise," concocted by an American lawyer for the specific purpose of securing convictions of people the Tribunal sought to convict on the basis of who they were, rather than what they may or may not have done.

The entirety of the Tribunal's evidence against Tolimir, Nyambe wrote, was circumstantial and based on presumptions and suppositions of the other judges.

"On the totality of the evidence on the record, I am wholly unpersuaded that the Accused is
guilty of any of the charges alleged in the Indictment," she concluded.

Not only was Tolimir not guilty, but the prosecutors - and the judges that sided with them - failed to prove that many of the things in the indictment actually happened, Nyambe argued. For heaven's sake, this is the court that decided the killing of three people represented "genocide."

Not seven months after convicting Tolimir, Meron cited as credible third-hand hearsay "evidence" accusing the Bosnian Serbs of a plot that was actually a WW2 Nazi Croatia plan targeting the Serbs themselves. So much about his credibility, or that of the actual joint criminal enterprise that is the ICTY.

I have little doubt the kangaroo court will sink to even lower depths before its fell purpose is served. Until then, however, Zdravko Tolimir will remain a prime example of what Empire's "truth" and "justice" really look like.

Peace In Our Time

Some may say the Dayton Agreement was made to be broken; that it was a temporary patch on the gaping wound that was Bosnia, scheduled to hold it together past a US election cycle and then - back to the way it was. Others say it was meant to "evolve" into something else, some sort of postmodern, omnipotent managerial state the likes of which we're seeing implode all across the West today.

Yet somehow, it held. The Guns of April fell silent, the armies were disbanded, and even the "peacekeepers" that still drive around are a bare handful, there just for show and a hefty per diem. The "High Representatives" proved to be a joke, tin-pot viceroys attempting to play God - and failing. Forces that tore Bosnia apart before it even came into existence have continued to seethe, and the underlying problem shows no sign of being solved anytime soon. But the armistice has held for twenty years now. That's something.

Five years ago, I wrote a personal account of those days. This time, I made it a history lesson. Lest we forget.

The Dayton miracle: Bosnia armistice, still alive at 20 (Op-Edge) https://t.co/nlH7ykhriz pic.twitter.com/ZVEHSOaCkQ

— RT (@RT_com) November 21, 2015

I meant to post this earlier this week, but the War In Our Time got in the way. Sometimes I think it's the extension of the same one I went through, 20 years ago. We'll see what happens. I figured I'd post it today, though, on the day Americans celebrate as Thanksgiving, in honor of something I am thankful for.

Here's to us, the living.

"Vote or Suffer"

I have already written about some incongruities in the campaign preceding the Bosnian general elections, scheduled for next weekend, but there is one thing I left out, as it deserved a post of its own.

Local TV stations aired two ads in the third and fourth week of September, produced by USAID - the Empire's "Agency for International Development." Both had the punchline "Vote or Suffer" (Glasaj ili trpi). 

Still from the USAID propaganda video - "Vote or Suffer"

The first ad (watch on YouTube) blames the Bosnian authorities for failing to help the victims of May and August floods (!). On the same day it aired, the Imperial embassy website published a blog post co-authored by the military attache and the USAID head of mission, which accused the Bosnian authorities of embezzling the flood aid funds!

Both the Serb Republic and Federation authorities responded right away that the Empire was flat-out lying: they couldn't have embezzled anything, as not a penny of the promised flood aid from the US and the EU had actually arrived. But the Imperial officials refused to retract their claims. A few days later, another ad appeared, this time criticizing the economic situation (watch on YouTube).

There is no question that Bosnia is in a dire economic predicament, but a great deal of blame for that lies in the absurd legislation the locals outright copied from the US and the EU, under constant pressure from Washington and Brussels. One example is a 2009 law on "animal rights" which turned the Sarajevo Canton into a free range for feral dogs.

Let's also remember that US and EU officials supported the "demonstrators" with supposedly economic and democratic grievances, who earlier this year torched government offices in Sarajevo, Zenica and Tuzla, Maidan-style.

Lest you think this is someone impersonating USAID on YouTube, you can see both videos featured on the agency's official website. The claim by the agency head and Embassy officials that this is purely a "get out the vote" campaign is absurd. The ads very specifically urge the voters to elect a different government - presumably one more willing to obey orders from Washington. More to the point, USAID is engaging in behavior that would be blatantly illegal in America itself. Imagine a foreign agency running TV ads urging Americans to "vote or suffer"!

This is but the latest in a series of attempts by the Empire to influence the outcome of Bosnian elections. Imperial officials have turned a blind eye to jihadist activity (even when directed against the US!) in Bosnia for years, backed the rioters who torched government offices in February, sent in additional troops as a way of signaling support to those they back and threaten those they oppose, and outright "midwifed" the opposition coalition in the Serb Republic, recycling a name of a previous creation in the process. Thanks to genuine activists on the ground, their interference has been documented and brought to light.

Keep that in mind when Empire's stooges begin crying foul, after they lose at the polls.

Bosnia 2014: The Recycled Election

General elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina will be held on October 12. The date was originally supposed to be October 5, but the whole thing was postponed by a week at the insistence of the Muslims, because October 4 is Eid-al-Adha.

In the Serb Republic (Република Српска), the contest will be between the ruling coalition - led by Milorad Dodik - and the opposition alliance slapped together by the Empire. Ironically, the opposition's mainstay is the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), once led by Radovan Karadžić (now before the Hague Inquisition on charges of "genocide") and demonized by both the Empire and its Muslim clients.

Is Washington hoping to replicate the 2012 Serbian scenario? If so, the effort is as lazy as it is transparent: the opposition calls itself the "Alliance for Change" - the same name as a contradictory coalition the US had created back in 2000, only in the Muslim-Croat Federacija.

The original "Alliance for Change" ended up being an abusive marriage of (in)convenience, in which the Social-Democrats were constantly undermined by the Party for Bosnia, a splinter of the Islamist SDA (Alija Izetbegović's Orwellian-named "Party of Democratic Action").

A decade later, the Social-Democrats got to try again; this time they chose to ally with the SDA and fringe Croat groups. After the SDA's sudden but inevitable betrayal, they tried a pact with another splinter party: Better Future Alliance (SBB), run by the shady media magnate and ex-SDA propaganda chief Fahrudin Radončić. That too ended badly, surprising precisely no one.

Properly explaining the dynamics of Bosnian Muslim politics would take years; suffice to say that the momentum currently seems to favor the SDA. Its chairman, Sulejman Tihić, died of cancer last week; the funeral rites were an occasion for much rhapsodizing and rallying around Tihić's longtime rival Bakir Izetbegović (yes, Son Of), who has now taken over the party and is running for re-election in the country's three-member Presidency. The SDA is also sure to get a last-minute boost from the Islamic clergy, during the Eid festivities.

After four years of ever-shifting mathematical coalitions, the SDA is running with a seductive message of "Strength in Unity" (U jedinstvu je snaga):

from the SDA campaign website, snagabih.ba

If that slogan sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it is. Here's a still from the 2005 movie "V for Vendetta", showing a poster of the Anglo-fascist ruling party "Norsefire":

"V for Vendetta"

It's a year for plagiarism in Bosnia, it seems. First the Empire "recycles" the name it used 14 years ago in the Federation for the political group it's now backing in the Serb Republic. Then the SDA runs on a fascist slogan from a Wachowski movie.

But wait, there's more: the former chief mufti, Мustafa Cerić - now a private citizen running for the Presidency - outright plagiarized not one, but two Western designs: the logo of a Las Vegas casino, and that of the Virginia Mennonite Conference (!).

Though I suppose even that is better than the aforementioned Fahrudin Radončić's party advertising itself as a "Tsunami of justice" - in a country that's just been hit by two major floods...

Meanwhile, the politics of hatred and mistrust remain unchanged.

Deutschlandlied in Sarajevo

I used to enjoy the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts. Having been raised in an atheist society, I never stopped to wonder why a traditional concert in the capital of a staunchly Catholic thousand-year empire was held on January 1, rather than, say, Christmas Day. Then I found out the tradition was established in 1938, by none other than Josef Goebbels.

Another revelation came last year: a Bosnian-born journalist tracked down the photograph showing Adolf Hitler gazing at the marble plaque honoring Gavrilo Princip - the Bosnian Serb who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo. A modest monument, funded privately, the plaque had been put up in 1930. Within days of the Nazi occupation in 1941, the plaque was taken down and presented to Hitler as a birthday present. He had it displayed at the same museum as the railway car from Compiegne in which Germany had signed the armistice in 1918 - and where he insisted the French sign their surrender in 1940.

(Heinrich Hoffmann/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München/Bildarchiv)

In 1914, warmongers in Vienna used the assassination (ironically, it was the Archduke who had kept them in check) to launch a war of extermination against Serbia, which eventually destroyed the Hapsburg empire instead. Attempts have been made to blame the Serbs and Serbia for the Great War ever since.

The latest round of revisionism came as the centenary of the war approached. On June 28, mainstream media throughout the West carried stories about the "Serbian" assassin of the Archduke and his wife (Sophie Chotek was killed accidentally; Princip was aiming at General Potiorek, the hated military governor of Bosnia) and the assassination treated as the actual cause - and beginning - of the war. This fits the current narrative of (Western) European unity - under the Atlantic Empire - fighting the "evil" Russians and "troublemaker" Serbs, but it has little to do with the truth.

Flood testimonial: Doboj

Here is a video-testimonial of the flooding that hit Doboj (Serb Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina) last Friday, recorded by Ozren Stakić. In just six minutes, the angry river Bosna spills over into the town, drowning a busy intersection.

Here is how high the waters rose - a "before and after" photo of Doboj, found on Facebook:

The waters have receded, but the devastation remains. If you can, please help.

Vignettes from the Deluge

The rains have stopped, but the floodwaters have not receded yet. Reports are coming in like the tide - 1,5 million affected, dozens of dead. Enormous property damage includes crops and livestock, which will have an impact on food supply down the line.

Cataclysms bring out the best and the worst in people. Here are just some tidbits that have reached me over the past couple of days.

First, the good. Tens of thousands have volunteered to shore up the levees and save towns like Šabac from suffering the fate of Obrenovac (now completely underwater). Among them were Serbs from Kosovo, the very same people the current Serbian government renounced and tried to force to become "Kosovians". Reports from Bosnia suggest that Serbs and Muslims have banded together to survive the flooding, while Croats - whose strongholds in the south were unaffected - sent rescue teams to help both. Rescue teams from Croatia proper have lent aid to both Bosnia and Serbia.

Flood Aid for Serbia and Bosnia

Heavy rains over the past several days have resulted in flooding of "Biblical proportions" in much of Serbia and Bosnia.

Obrenovac, Serbia, May 2014

UPDATE: More charities added below

Thanks to a diligent reader, I have been informed that the humanitarian organization "Serbs for Serbs" (Срби за Србе) - which has worked since 2005 to provide assistance to endangered families, especially in Kosovo and among the Krajina refugees - has launched a drive to help those affected by the flooding.

I am passing on this information as a courtesy; for all questions, please contact SZS directly, via email or Facebook.

Here is how to donate:

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.

Woefully Unfit, Indeed

Reuters "reports" on the crisis in Bosnia today, including this bit of editorial guidance:

It [the Dayton peace agreement] has created a highly-decentralized and dysfunctional system of power-sharing woefully unfit to steer Bosnia through economic transition or the process of integration with the European Union, to many their best hope of prosperity.

Ignore for the moment that the riots in (part of) Bosnia just coincidentally flared up during the lull in the Ukrainian drama, and petered out just in time for the predicted coup of "Maydanist" stooges this past weekend. For that matter, ignore the incongruity of EU being the "best hope of prosperity" for the unnamed "many"; to which the best response would be to list countries improved by their EU "integration": Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia... should I go on?

(photo: Antonio Bronic/Reuters)

No, I'd like to draw your attention to the "woefully unfit" language of the paragraph, implying - falsely - that the Dayton Accords are to blame for the malfunctioning of Bosnia as a whole, rather than - factually - that the problem lies in the corruption, bad faith and lack of responsibility in one part of Bosnia, the Federation. If there is a "dysfunctional system", it is the Federation, and that arrangement has nothing to do with Dayton (read for yourself), and everything to do with a wartime alliance set up by Washington in 1994.

While changing the Constitution of Bosnia would literally require rewriting a portion (Annex IV) of the peace agreement - and once that is done, the whole thing might well unravel - amending the Federation's constitution is far less of a chore. But it would require responsibility, a modicum of good will, and - perhaps most importantly - for Muslims and Croats to stop blaming the Serbs for all their problems and put their house in order.

Far easier to shift blame and demand Imperial intervention, through staged riots, arson, and "activist journalism" of the kind quoted above. 

Seeds of Chaos

So, according to the U.S. government, ransacking and burning government buildings, looting armories and attacking law enforcement are all part of "peaceful protests" and fighting them in any way is "repression" and "completely unacceptable"...

...as long as it happens elsewhere, the perpetrators are U.S. puppets and the target is a government that does not take orders from Washington, that is.

This is what all that talk of "human rights and American values" really means.

Between the "regime change" and "color revolutions" and overt meddling in others' elections to the point of making them meaningless, the Empire has sown chaos. The reaping cannot be far behind.

Trains to Nowhere

From AP:

They were seen as a shining example of Bosnia's rebirth from war: a fleet of high-speed trains built-to-order in the West. Eight years later, they haven't made a single ride.

The reason: They're just too fast for Bosnia's 60-year-old rails.

"It's as if you bought nine Ferraris and ... no roads to drive them on," said Samir Kadric, an official with the publicly-owned railway company that bought the trains.

Predictably, AP's Aida Cerkez prefers to insinuate the problem lies with Bosnia's division between the Serb ("dominated") Republic and the Muslim-Croat ("shared") Federation. And the article blames the "Bosnian-Croat railway company" (presumably Željeznice Herceg-Bosne, ŽHB) for the $90 million train flop.

Here's the thing, though: the train deal was supposedly made in 2005 (see "eight years later" above), but if Wikipedia is to be believed, ŽHB had merged with the Muslim-run BHŽ into the ŽFBH (i.e. Federation Railways) in 2001 - four years prior to the boondoggle.

I, for one, don't believe for a second that this was a product of simple stupidity. Remember, "Bosnia’s politicians have taken rent-seeking to the level of a dark art, systematically siphoning profits from public utilities and corporations to line party and personal pockets." (from Reality Bites Back) Someone made out like a bandit on this "deal", and - judging by the know-nothing attitude of people interviewed by AP - with impunity.

Perhaps the fact that the railroad execs intend to recoup the money by leasing the trains to Turkey might give us a clue as to who.

Enough with the NYTimesians

I was going to dissect here an op-ed that appeared in today's New York Times, penned by one of the usual suspects.

I wanted to explain how half the stuff in the piece is outright made up, and the rest is twisted half-truths, combined with the author's self-serving projections. Such as when he called the Bosnian Serb Republic a "crucible of imagined victimhood" - on par with other big lies that have just kept coming for the past 22-plus years.

I felt an urge to try and correct idiotic assertions such as that "young people" emigrate so "they could be plain 'Bosnians,' not some ethnic subgroup", or that "young people" (again) who supposedly protested supposed Serb racism last month "wanted to to be Bosnians — not Bosniaks, or Serbs or Croats." Because no actual people, young or otherwise, said that. Ever. And because, whether one likes it or not, there is no such thing as a "Bosnian" identity, divorced from group identities defined by religious legacies of foreign conquest.

I also wanted to challenge the moronic attempt to blame a 2011 jihadist attack on the U.S. Embassy on the lack of centralized police command. It wouldn't be the first political abuse of that incident, after all.

Most of all, I wanted to vent my disgust at a shill who pretends to care about phantasmal "Bosnians" while in actuality shilling for one particular "subgroup" (hint: change one letter), as he has for the past two decades.

But then I realized something. People who complain about articles in the New York Times are under the mistaken impression that the New York Times still matters.

So I wrote this post instead.

An Enduring Mystery

On Veterans' Day (originally Armistice Day, commemorating the end of the Great War), a local newspaper in Bellingham, Washington published a letter from one of the local soldiers, who took part in the IFOR peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.

Officially, everyone was enthusiastic about the mission, and its success in stopping the previously intractable Bosnian War was later taken for granted. But one of the things I learned in Bosnia, while having the honor to work with retired Army colonel David Hackworth, was that one should always trust the grunts, not the "perfumed princes" with fruit salads on their uniforms. And from what I've heard from the grunts - much, much later - it was a near run thing that Bosnia did not relapse into war by the end of 1996.

Here's something PFC Matthew Levi Aamot, wrote in that letter to his grandmother Charlotte, in March 1996:

"One thing that bothers me here is all the kids who stand out at the road and beg food. Thing is, most of these kids so far are well fed and clothed, and are just trying to get something for nothing. ... Suspect that the kids are being paid by the Bosnian army to get ahold of our MREs (meals) to use for themselves.

I also think that these people are just using this year to rearm and recruit more troops. After we leave they will fight again. Maybe we can help get peace established, but somehow, I don't think that us being here will make a lasting impact."

Yet somehow, the peace took. The war has been in remission ever since. And there have been few attempts to explain why. Maybe because the U.S. troops stayed on beyond the one-year deployment that was originally promised? Perhaps because Washington refused to green-light a new war in Bosnia, as it had Serbia to fry? Or was it that the armistice, once it actually took hold and became peace, proved too seductive to people who had to be lied into war to begin with?

It is hard to tell. But until it is figured out, I'm afraid that deciding whether PFC Aamot was right or wrong may hinge solely on the definition of "lasting."

Parallel Perspectives

The Cults of Bosnia and Palestine, by Richard Ziegler
Baico Publishing, Ottawa, 2012
136 pages (softcover)

Two years or so ago, the "Gaza flotilla" incident made me wonder whether Israel was getting "Serbed." It was just a brief glance at some patterns too eerily similar to be coincidental. Yet the whole subject of propaganda, manufactured consent and perception management simply begged for a more detailed study, by someone who could devote enough time, resources and scrutiny to it.

Canadian author Richard Ziegler's second book, "The Cults of Bosnia and Palestine" is one attempt at such a study. A self-identified leftist (his first book was titled "Reclaiming the Canadian Left"), Ziegler has chosen to examine the strange parallel thinking on the Western Left when it comes to the Bosnian and Palestinian conflicts.

Having spotted the same "invective" used to describe the Bosnian Serbs in use against Israel, Ziegler ventures to answer the question "whether some of the charges against [Israel] are made in good faith, or are merely an imitation of a proven strategy." (p.2 ) This comparative approach characterizes all four sections of the book.

In the short, introductory chapter Ziegler explains that the Left's obsession with Bosnia and Palestine most likely lies in its tendency to look for the "victims of oppression" and identify with them. The second chapter dwells on the concepts of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing," both of which have been employed in crafting the narratives of Bosnia and Palestine. Ziegler notes the dubious emergence and questionable meaning of the term "ethnic cleansing", arguing it was used as a catch-all condemnation of Serbs. But he also tackles the thorny subject of genocide, first noting the absurd contortions applied to Rafael Lemkin's definition by war crimes prosecutors (p.29), then examining the implications of comparing Bosnia to the Holocaust (p.35). Of particular interest is Ziegler's argument that seeing genocide everywhere in effect tends to devalue the significance and distinctiveness of the Holocaust, thus indirectly amnestying its perpetrators.

Chapter 3 deals with Islam and history involved in both regions. Here Ziegler makes an important observation that the Left has not only adopted myths about peaceful coexistence of everyone under Islam, but generally dismissed history as a factor in both conflicts (p. 70-71). He explains the Leftist reluctance to criticize Islam as a result of perceiving the Muslims as the oppressed, and therefore being on the "good" side of identity politics.

Ziegler's venture into explaining the development of anti-Serbism on the Western Left in the final chapter is a very intriguing read. He may not be entirely right to dismiss the lack of prior anti-Serb sentiment on the Left - Engels wrote a scathing attack on the Slavs following the failure of the Hungarian Revolution in 1849, which is often mistakenly attributed to Marx and even excerpted out of context to sound worse - but certainly paints a detailed picture of the circumstances in which the modern anti-Serb thought in the West coalesced in the early 1990s. This is contrasted with prior anti-Semitism on the Left, and the many projections, false analogies and cognitive dissonance that characterize the Left's hostility to both Serbs and Jews. A good overview of the pattern that emerges in both instances is laid out at the very end (p. 118-119). Ziegler's conclusion is that leftist beliefs about Serbs and Jews are almost religious in nature, "and thus impregnable to argument, evidence or reason." (p. 120).

If anything, the book is too short. Documenting the instances of anti-Serbism in the Western press, both mainstream and alternative, over the past two decades would result in a multi-volume work by itself. Yet if Ziegler's conclusion is correct, and the quasi-religious conviction on the Left is impervious to reason, the quantity of evidence becomes somewhat irrelevant, and the quality of the argument more important than ever. To someone who has decided that Serbs and Jews must be evil, no amount of proof to the contrary will suffice to persuade them otherwise.

Nonetheless, Ziegler has done extensive research. Fully 54 pages of the volume's 136 are filled with  often explanatory footnotes. He doesn't cherry-pick favorable authors, either, but includes arguments from all over the spectrum (including myself at one point). Unlike many a scholar, however, he doesn't try to pad the volume with needlessly complex verbiage; Ziegler's prose is crisp, clean, and legible. One doesn't have to be a scholar to understand what he's arguing, or to appreciate the amount of time and effort that went into condensing what could have been a sprawling argument into such a compact volume.

Though plenty of targets of Imperial "liberation" have been softened up by propaganda, no one else has received the "full Serb" just yet. But with the demonization proving so effective, that may only be a matter of time. A great deal of its effectiveness is due to the involvement of the Left, which has successfully styled itself as standing for niceness and tolerance and against all name-calling. Except when it comes to those "disgusting Serbs" and Jews, of course.

The Cults of Bosnia and Palestine, by Richard Ziegler, will be presented on November 14, at Ottawa's Collected Works bookstore.

The Hurt Locker

Official history has the Bosnian War breaking out on April 5, 1992. There is some room to argue that a more appropriate date would be March 1, or March 26, or March 28. Certainly, the barricades I remember hearing about on April 5 didn't seem any different from the ones a month prior. Following the declaration of independence on March 1, there had been barricades, then a mass protest, followed by the panicked politicians negotiating, the barricades being dismantled, and the war averted - or so we thought.

We were wrong.

What began that day would end 1,326 days and some 100,000 deaths later. Nothing quite prepares you for a war on your very doorstep. Experiences from WW2 were useless - or worse, could get one killed. This was a different war. And even learning all the tricks didn't guarantee survival. Whatever Imperial propaganda may say, warfare is neither neat nor surgical.

No historical event is truly inevitable - just more or less likely to happen. At any time in March, or even through most of April, the Bosnian War could have been prevented, or stopped before it really started. Some people were pushed into it. Others did the pushing. In any case, it quickly spiraled out of control, morphing from a very local dispute about land and power into some sort of global crusade (or rather, jihad). Neither the ideologues of Empire, nor the jihadist firebrands, nor the media cared much about the actual Bosnian War; they all built up a Bosnia myth and used it for their own purposes.

Today, on the 20th anniversary of the war (which basically coincided with Europe's recognition of Bosnia's dubious declaration of independence - a fact that doesn't get mentioned much), media all over the world have Bosnia on their tongues - but it's the mythical Bosnia, the narrative collection of cliches and tropes and lies that can be used to justify nation-building, humanitarian bombing, invasions, occupations, terrorism, whatever. Open any newspaper today, and I guarantee you there will be an op-ed comparing Syria to Bosnia, with a message that the "international community" needs to "act now" and kill people in the name of saving them.

Rubbish, yes. But that sort of rubbish is aimed at the average reader, who hasn't exactly spent the past 15 years tracking reports about Bosnia (and other shards of what was once Yugoslavia), and cannot know that all the tropes being trotted out - mass rapes, death camps, genocide, vast conspiracy to commit ethnic cleansing, 300,000 dead civilians - have been conclusively debunked with cold, hard facts. But the Empire doesn't care about facts, only about the usefulness of the myth. There are countries to bomb, regimes to change, demonized subhumans to kill.

Meanwhile, in Bosnia itself, while some people are trying to mind their own business, work for a living and raise their children right, an entire media/government apparatus has a vested interest in keeping things firmly stuck in 1992. As long as the war continues, mentally if not actually, they have power and the privilege that comes with it. So they keep their own people trapped in a cruel spasm of hatred, fear and suffering - feeding on it, thriving while everything around them rots away.

From half the world away, and when I drop in to visit, I can see clearly what they are doing. But the people there, driven mad by fear and hatred, can't - even as the pain of it is quite literally killing them. It took me close to a decade to claw my own way out of this "hurt locker". There are millions still inside.

Contrary to protestations by well-funded Imperial stooges, "coming to terms" with the past and "moving on" doesn't mean embracing a convenient set of lies about it. Rather, it is about dealing with the world that is, and working towards a world that should be. Every survivor left a piece of their soul in that war.  The longer they stay in that mental prison of eternal 1992, the greater the odds they will lose themselves in it entirely.

Then, as now, they have a choice: embrace the myth and continue to self-destruct, or come to terms with reality and give themselves a chance to live, make peace, and heal. But it is something they have to do on their own. No one can do it for them - especially not the Empire, or "well-wishers" the world over, all of whom have a vested interest in their continued misery.

War Porn

I've already addressed the dreary slog of Angelina Jolie's Bosnian War movie from the artistic standpoint; now that I've had a chance to observe the promotional efforts and official commentary, I'd like to address its political implications.

The film opens in Mordor-on-the-Potomac this weekend, and Jolie, Pitt and their brood were in town promoting it. Jolie even paid an emotional visit to the Holocaust Museum, and its Bosnia exhibit.

Critics mostly agree that the movie is a stinker. The fact that it's being shown in only a small number of art-house theaters suggests the producers are aware of this too. As Peter Brock (author of the outstanding "Media Cleansing") noted in his write-up, propaganda movies about the Balkans have never done well at the box office.

Then again, moneymaking never figured highly in Empire's motivations to intervene in the Balkans. Whether the goal was sticking it to the Russians, keeping Europeans in their place, enjoying the worshipful groveling of eager regional clients, seeking to impress jihadists worldwide - or any combination thereof - the Empire's white-knighting project in the Balkans has been about power.

Commercial films seek to make a profit. Art films want at least to break even while telling a story. Propaganda films aim to preach; for them, breaking even or profiting at the box office is useful, but not necessary. Jolie's film, a textbook example of "chetnixploitation", is intended to reinforce the official narrative by demonizing the designated villain. So, Serbs bad, Muslims (Croats, Albanians, etc.) good, and the Empire is the shining savior from aggression, rape and genocide. And if not, it should be - so says the Power Doctrine.

The title of the film was outright stolen from photographer Ron Haviv, a major source for Balkans imagery favoring the mainstream narrative. And Jolie herself has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (since 2007), a body behind much of Empire foreign policy.

Lo and behold, all the elements come together in a review in The Atlantic: Jolie "gets the war right", there is mention of the CFR and Power's work, all the memes and motifs are reinforced - and then Jolie is mildly criticized for being less than subtle (!) about hammering them home. Because the Empire is all about subtlety, after all...

To the Imperial establishment Jolie represents, it doesn't really matter that the film stinks. The story is hackneyed. Though the actors do their best (I've seen them in other productions), their lines are just terrible. Even the imagery itself is derivative, trying hard to present the Bosnian War as a re-run of the Holocaust - as seen in movies.

Why now, though? Could it be that, faced with a bleak economy at home and the inglorious end of two foreign wars, the Empire needs to trumpet a "success" to its populace (and oh so coincidentally, one that the Clintons can claim credit for)? Thing is, the Bosnian War ended 16 years ago. Few Americans cared about it at the time, and fewer still care about it now. Worse yet, Empire's white-knighting experiment turned out to be a complete and utter failure. The "rescued damsels" did not respond with gushing gratitude - quite the contrary. So all Jolie's film actually manages to do is underscore the Empire's pathetic disconnect from reality.

As for the whole knights-in-shining-armor rescuing-the-world myth, authentic war footage just exploded that. Professionally produced war porn, just like the actual kind, just cannot compete with amateurs anymore.