A Year of Revelations

It's become an annual tradition to reserve the last Antiwar.com article in December for a look back at the year that has passed. At least as far as the former Yugoslav lands are concerned, 2010 has not been a year of great upheavals - but it has been a year of revelations.

Many suspicions about the Empire have been confirmed by diplomatic dispatches published by Wikileaks. Those cables also confirmed many more suspicions - and introduced new ones - about the quisling regime in Belgrade. And of course, the mid-December Marty report to PACE exposed the mafia hellhole of Boss Snake, also known as the "Independent State of Kosovo" (ISK).

It is both entertaining and ghastly to watch as legions of Imperial and EU busybodies try to scrub off the stench of being "friends" with butchers. With even the Belgrade quislings helping, I would not be surprised if nothing much came of the entire affair. Being the Empire means never having to say you're sorry. Until it is far too late to do any good, anyway.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In 2010, the world has gained a lot of knowledge about the way Imperial "reality" really works. And it's not pretty. The question now is what, if anything, will be done with that knowledge. That's where 2011 comes in.

Cheers!

Shared Values

Russia Today has posted the clip from my live appearance on Wednesday morning, discussing the Council of Europe report about the organ-harvesting mafia in occupied Kosovo calling itself the government. Basically, Swiss rapporteur Dick Marty confirms the allegations first made by Carla Del Ponte (former Grand Inquisitor for Empire's faux war crimes court) two years ago. Worse yet, his report confirms that the Empire knew damn well what was going on, and who exactly they were dealing with - but chose to ignore that, in pursuit of crushing Serbia.

What has Serbia done to deserve such undying enmity, to the point of using a vicious gang of terrorist, gun-running, drug-dealing slavers and organ harvesters to occupy its ancient heartland and destroy all traces of Serb habitation therein? Nothing at all - save for existing.

Such imperial luminaries as Strobe Talbott openly admitted years ago that the 1999 Kosovo War was not about the Serbs, or the Albanians, but about Russia. Yes, the Empire is still fighting the Cold War, even as it chases the end of history.

One is know by the company one keeps. Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, John McCain, John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman, Eliot Engel, Tom Lantos, Mitch McConnell, James Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Holbrooke - those are just some of the names of people who have praised Hashim Thaci and the KLA over the past decade.

Lieberman actually said that "United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." (The Washington Post, April 28, 1999) He never retracted that statement.

So, according to this Senator and onetime vice-presidential candidate, the values of the US government are identical to those of an organized crime syndicate dealing Afghan heroin throughout Europe, trafficking in weapons and sex slaves, and chopping people up for body parts to be sold on the black market.

Good to know.

Sic Transit Holbrooke

It is an ancient Roman custom to speak no ill of the dead. Not being Roman, I don't feel bound by it. I shall speak truthfully instead.

Richard Holbrooke - who died yesterday, at age 69, of a ruptured aorta - was somewhat of a symbol of this age: a diplomat who took pride in his absence of tact. His job was to "lie for his country" - and did he ever! But he also enjoyed killing, cheating and stealing. This is the man who urged his superiors to "give us bombs for peace" (NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995); who admitted in his own memoirs that he tried to swindle the president of Serbia during the Bosnia peace talks; and who took up investment banking when on sabbaticals from diplomacy (Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers). Ironically, it was the latter that got him in the only spot of trouble in his career, when he had to settle charges of ethical violations before becoming Empire's ambassador to the UN.

Yes, he ended the Bosnian War - on America's terms, and only after Washington sabotaged every attempt to end it any other way. He then spent years on trying to undermine and destroy the very treaty he helped broker.

In 1998, he famously sat down with the KLA - shadowy militants his colleague Robert Gelbard had labeled a "terrorist organization". The photo of the shoeless Holbrooke sitting on the floor next to the bearded (and booted) KLA terrorist went around the world.



Later he told TIME magazine that he had been "furious". If he was, it never showed. He went to Belgrade as the Emperor's envoy again, and tried to repeat his 1995 performance. He bought the KLA three months to prepare for the coming NATO attack and set up the Racak "massacre," a pretext for it. But when the time came to try and bully Serbia into accepting the so-called Rambouillet Agreement, it was Holbrooke's boss, Madeleine Albright, who took over the limelight.

Holbrooke hitched his diplomatic career horse to John Kerry's wagon in 2004 and Hillary Clinton's in 2008. As a result, he never became the Secretary of State. He would eventually become Emperor Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before that, he would pontificate once a month from the pages of the Washington Post, a newspaper that's never seen a Russian or a Serb it did not love to hate - unless the said Russian or Serb did Empire's bidding without a second thought; then he merely could not be trusted.

In one such column, in July 2008, gloating over the arrest of former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, (in a piece called "The Face of Evil" no less), Holbrooke put forth at least four verifiable lies:
- that the war "had already taken the lives of nearly 300,000 people";
- that his colleagues, Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel and Nelson Drew traveled through "sniper-filled, Serbian-controlled territory" when their vehicle slid off the road into a mine-filled ravine;
- that his meeting with Karadzic in Belgrade "resulted in the lifting of the siege of Sarajevo," and
- that Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in 2003 "as a direct result of his courage in arresting Milosevic and sending him to The Hague in 2001."

When I challenged those lies, I called Holbrooke a "sanctimonious, uncouth, arrogant, corrupt slimebucket," and I stand by that assessment. Yet I've always had a measure of respect for him due to one thing, and one thing only. He was arrogant enough to eschew hiding what he thought and felt. This is why his 1998 memoir, "To End A War," is an invaluable source in understanding his mind, and the motives of Imperial diplomacy.

By way of example, he quoted a note Robert Frasure had slipped to him during a meeting in Zagreb:

Dick: We "hired" these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to "control" them. But it is no time to get squeamish about things.

Sure enough, Holbrooke was not squeamish at all. If it took the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic regime, a Nazi revival and the expulsion of half a million people to re-establish American hegemony in Europe and in the Balkans, so be it. Arrogance of power, or power of arrogance? He lived long enough to see that hegemony begin to crumble, though.

As someone who helped bring the American Empire into being, Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was a perfect embodiment of the vices it extolled as virtues. Ultimately, his brand of bullying "diplomacy" did America and Americans no favors. Oderint dum metuant didn't work even for Caligula. It absolutely debased the country that claimed to stand for values and principles, then went around the world violating them. Holbrooke either never realized this, or refused to let it stop him.

May God, whom he had forsaken to serve the earthly power instead, have mercy on his soul.

Angelina's Bosnian Adventure

Angelina Jolie is being hoisted with her own petard. Having decided to make her directorial debut a love story set in the Bosnian War, she is now being besieged by professional war victims, who want input on the script, money, or both. Just yesterday, one of these "victim associations" petitioned the UN to revoke Jolie's status as "Goodwill Ambassador", since the plot of the film is causing them "mental suffering."

How now? Rumors of the film's plot have been circulating for months, and the most persistent is that it involves a love affair between a Muslim inmate in a Serb "concentration camp" and her Serb guard. Eventually, it is said, the Serb kills the Muslim and surrenders to peacekeepers as a war criminal. However, one version of the story is that this is a "rape camp", and that the love affair is between a victim and her rapist - something Jolie and her crew have vehemently denied. It is important to note that these are all rumors - neither the professional victims nor the government officials who banned Jolie from filming in the country (the film is being shot in Hungary instead) have actually read the script. I don't think it would have made a difference, though.

I am reasonably sure that Jolie is motivated by her own bleeding-heart feelings towards the "women victims of war," and therefore cannot understand how they ended up being her worst enemy. This is because she is ignorant of what actually happened in Bosnia, and doesn't know a damned thing about the people living there.

There's a whole sub-genre in modern cinematography that has been termed "Chetnixploitation" (from "Chetniks" - a Serbian word for guerrillas, used as an insult by Muslims and Croats). It relies on prejudices and stereotypes created by the Communist propaganda since 1945, then distilled and recycled in the 1990s wars, to portray the Serbs as drunken, bearded, bloodthirsty butchers of innocents. (For some examples, look at the blog linked above and an essay I wrote back in 2002.) Any film made about the Balkans wars is expected to fit into the genre - and if it doesn't, expect professional victims to complain about it.

Jolie's film does fit, however. Her cast and crew have repeatedly said it would be a story of Serbs abusing Muslims. Back in July, a Serbian media magnate made public that he refused to work with Jolie on the project, because it was "disgusting" and "Serb-bashing." So why are the Muslims targeting Jolie, then?

One of the reasons is money. What the "Association of women victims" is doing is pure extortion. Ironically, it is Jolie's own bleeding-heart humanitarianism that is preventing her from doing what is expected under the circumstances: pay them off so they shut up. She sympathizes with the "victims" so much, the idea they would be extorting her is inconceivable.

There could also be a fear that Jolie's highlighting of the Bosnian rapes may actually draw unwanted attention to the allegation - never documented or substantiated in any way - that the Serbs engaged in systematic mass rape of Muslim women, as a weapon of war. This propaganda concoction has been widely accepted, and any attempt to question its veracity or even ask for elementary evidence would run into condemnations of "defending rape" and "violence towards women." The very last thing professional war profiteers want is for someone to actually look into the factual background of their sacred cow.

Last, but probably most important, is the mentality of the people Jolie is dealing with. As many other foreigners have discovered over the past two decades, it isn't enough to support the Muslims (or Croats, or Albanians) 99.9% of the time. Oh no, even that .01 percent of criticism of anything they've done is enough to disqualify one as a "Greater Serbian propagandist" and "apologist for aggression and genocide." Only total, unconditional submission to their vision of the truth - a difficult thing to do, seeing as how that changes with circumstances, mind you - is tolerated. Even then, don't expect any gratitude for doing so.

I don't imagine Jolie had any idea trying to make a pro-Muslim movie would end up being so frustrating. She's not alone. In his memoirs, Richard Holbrooke recounted this scene from the final days of the Dayton talks:

"Chris Hill, normally highly supportive of the Bosnians, exploded in momentary anger and frustration. ‘These people are impossible to help,’ he said. It was a telling statement from a man who had devoted years of his life to the search for ways to help create a Bosnian state."

Now, I doubt Jolie would have canceled her project if someone had got in touch with her and explained all this. This kind of behavior is so utterly irrational, it beggars belief - until one is forced to actually contend with it. But I wonder if she would have scrapped her plans had someone told her that in 2004, the Sarajevo-born Serbian director Emir Kusturica filmed "Life is a Miracle," a love story between a Serb soldier and his Muslim captive. Kusturica's film wasn't a politically correct piece of Chetnixploitation, so few in the West have heard of it. Yet even a passing acquaintance with it would have saved Jolie a lot of trouble.

Some Call It Peace

I remember it vividly, as if was just yesterday. It was a Tuesday, November 21. Just a day prior, we got word that the talks had collapsed - yet again - and that the war would go on. And then it was over.

It didn't seem over at the time. By the time I left Bosnia, two months later, the armies were still in position, the roads were still passable only to NATO peacekeepers, conscription was still in effect, and utilities were not yet restored. But the longer the ceasefire held, the less likely it seemed the shooting would restart. By the time the treaty was officially signed, in mid-December, it dawned upon us that it was peace at last.

Thus ended the Bosnian War.

There is still some contention as to when precisely it began. For me, it was April 5, 1992, when roadblocks appeared in Sarajevo. From that Sunday morning, until that Tuesday when the word came from Ohio, I had counted 1,376 days. Not the longest war in history, or the bloodiest, or the cruelest - but when it happens to you, that's hardly a consolation.

The day after the peace treaty was announced, my first ever article in English appeared, published by The Independent. The way I wrote it, it was a schmaltzy celebration of peace. The way it was headlined, it sounded like a one-cheer of a disappointed war victim. Unlike some folk, who were perhaps hoping for a "final victory" and a Bosnia remade according to their fantasies, I was not the least bit disappointed by the Dayton peace treaty. I didn't feel much like a victim, either. I just hoped it would last.

I was entirely too young to realize that the war would merely move back to the realm of politics. So, the headline - "At least there will be no more killing" - proved strangely prophetic.

Earlier this year, while visiting Bosnia, I wrote:

"In Bosnia, ethnic warfare was the direct result of the complete destruction of trust between the communities as the regime of Alija Izetbegovic pushed for independence at the expense of everything and everyone else. The Dayton settlement did not restore that trust, but offered a framework in which it could be re-forged if Bosnia’s peoples so chose. When the U.S. and the EU made Bosnia into a de facto protectorate shortly after the war, and began to impose their often conflicting but always confused visions of what Bosnia should be, they created a powerful disincentive for internal dialogue.

When Bosnian Serb PM Milorad Dodik said recently that it might be time to talk about a consensual separation, president Silajdzic angrily replied that this was impossible. "Those who dislike this country are free to leave, but they can’t take an inch of the land with them," Silajdzic said.

This very argument, that Bosnia belonged "100 percent" to Silajdzic and the Muslims, while everyone else is welcome to get out, is precisely what ignited the 1992-95 war and claimed 100,000 lives. After fifteen years of peace and "nation-building," Bosnia seems to be back at square one. And this is what the State Department describes as a great "success."

One shudders to think what failure would look like."

Whatever the Empire - or the Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders who signed it - intended to accomplish with the Dayton agreement, it did silence the guns. And it still offers hope, however fleeting, that the people who live in Bosnia may eventually sit down and figure out how to live together - or part ways - peacefully.

As for me, I will always remember that moment of unadulterated joy I felt when I heard the news that the war was over, when I realized that my family and I had made it through alive.

So many people take life for granted. I'm not one of them. And now you know why.

Revolutionary Acts

It is said that the 1991 "Desert Storm" was the first war waged live on cable TV. Eight years later, NATO attacked Serbia (Operation "Allied Force") and the attendant media adhered to the same matrix of behavior. Only this time, there was the internet. However clunky and amateurish citizen-reporting was back then, in its infancy, it nonetheless provided an alternative to the relentless propaganda churned out by compliant reporters regurgitating Alliance spokesman Jamie Shea's infamous briefings. Bit by bit, the truth of NATO's atrocities came out, while the rumors of Serbian atrocities were shown to be greatly exaggerated.

Many of the news sites and proto-blogs that helped expose the truth about NATO's "humanitarian war" are no longer around. One, however, has persevered - and continued the struggle for truth ever since, through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And as George Orwell so aptly put, "speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act."

All too many people in the United States today still see things through the darkened lens of partisan politics. Democrats this, Republicans that, liberals this, conservatives that. Yet what Antiwar.com has demonstrated over and over is that both parties march in lockstep when it comes to waging wars, empowering the state and repressing the citizenry. It doesn't matter whether the Emperor is Slick Willie, Bush the Lesser, or Saint Barack of Hopechange: the policy of killing people and breaking things always remains the same.

I've had a small part in this endeavor since October 19, 2000, when Antiwar.com published my first column. "Balkan Express" ran weekly for many years, eventually becoming the biweekly "Moments of Transition." I would like to think that I've helped prove the point about the Empire in my coverage of the troubles in the Balkans and Europe in general. Both the fan mail and hate mail accumulated over the years suggest that I have, as do some figures of speech - "Empire" itself being a case in point - that have since made their way into foreign policy discourse in the Balkans itself.

The Imperial government has created this fantasy world in which it can move nations around the Grand Chessboard by sheer strength of willpower - and a few smart bombs here and there. It need not concern itself with the "reality-based community," or such mundane things as money and facts. If needed, facts are invented, and money is simply printed (oh, is it ever!). But the rest of us, we live in the real world, and deal with real facts. And when bills come in, we need to pay them with real money.

Now, you'll notice this blog doesn't have a donation box or anything like that. I work for a living, and what I do here and at Antiwar.com is something I can afford to do on my own time. But I am well aware that running a major news website, collating news, editing and posting articles - all that costs money. Thanks to the government and the likes of the giant vampire squid, none of us have much. But what we have ought to be put to good use.

So, if you want to hear what the mainstream media refuse to tell you - for example, understand why the TSA gets to grope you, or what is really happening in the Balkans (and why that is relevant) - consider making a donation to keep Antiwar.com going. Unlike with the Empire and its attendant media, you actually have a choice in the matter.

Clinton Does the Balkans

I was on RT this morning (evening, if you're in Moscow), commenting on Hillary Clinton's Balkans trip. She won't say or do anything new, only deliver the same old demands. Centralize Bosnia, dismember Serbia, recognize the "Independent State of Kosovo," and maybe some day the Balkans "savages" might earn the right to clean NATO boots and fill NATO body bags. Or, if they really behave, wait tables in the EU.

But it is no longer 1999, and the Empire is destined for the fate of Ozymandias. Clinton's Potemkin promises aren't fooling anybody. Empire's clients will cheer at her words, but when she leaves they will realize that they made no difference. Perhaps only to bolster her own bid for the throne, two or six years from now - but that's another story...

Anti-Government, Not Anti-Gay

In the minds of the quisling government in Serbia, its lapdog media, and the Western press (used over the past two decades to demonizing the Serbs without a second thought), what happened on Sunday were "anti-gay riots" by "right-wing extremists."

That is simply not true.

Ten years ago, the "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" came to power in the October 5 coup. Funded by NED and the CIA, it was the trial run for "color revolutions" later organized elsewhere. Back then, these very same "democrats" eagerly employed these very same "hooligans" when it came to storming the state TV, the party offices of President Milosevic and his wife, and the national Parliament, which was set on fire. But, you see, violence is "democratic" when it democratically serves the interests of democratic democrats. Employed against them, why, it's fascism!

Sunday's riots had very little to do with the "gay pride" parade. The parade itself was nothing but the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. The camel, in this instance, is the Serbian people, who were "rewarded" for their "democracy" with a decade of systematic pillaging, corruption and destruction of everything worth anything, and a never-ending series of humiliations.

The government has long since stopped pretending it had any democratic legitimacy, demonstrating in no uncertain terms that it held to Mao maxim that "power came from the barrel of the gun" - or in this case, the police baton. It envisioned the "Pride parade" as a show of dominance over the general populace, and a way to impress its masters in Brussels and Washington. At a time when almost half of Serbia lives in abject poverty, and rummaging through rubbish has become a major branch of agriculture, the government set aside twelve million dinars (about $160,000) to organize the "Pride parade."

This was not about the homosexuals. There were barely a thousand people who "marched" on Sunday. Among them were government officials and foreign ambassadors. The rest were professional homosexuals, "gay activists," people who have reduced their entire lives down to their "queerness" and the need to rub it into everyone else's face, so they can get pity and special treatment for being "victims of oppression" when people who aren't into face-rubbing react predictably. They didn't want rights, they wanted attention. The parade was first and foremost a political event, a message from the government that its will is the law, that some people are going to be "equaler" than others, that the opinion of ordinary folks isn't worth a dime.

On Saturday, October 9, some ten thousand people rallied in downtown Belgrade, and peacefully marched through the city, singing, walking with their children, sending a message to the government that this was, in fact, Serbia. The mainstream media either completely ignored this event or reported that "several hundred citizens" rallied "against the gays." Nor did the Western press make a peep.

Sunday, it was a different kind of Serbs on the streets. The young, the angry, the people with nothing left to lose. Yes, some of them hate homosexuals. Yes, some of them may fancy "far right" ideas. And yes, they let their fists and rocks and sticks do both the thinking and the talking. But their rage was directed principally against the government. Just look at their targets: a bus with the logo of B92, a hated propaganda network; the RTS building, the state TV that also broadcasts government propaganda; the HQ of the ruling Democratic party. According to the police, they also attacked "a mosque and some foreign embassies."

What do all these things have in common? They are all symbols of the quisling government and the foreign powers that have de facto occupied Serbia. (Why the mosque? Because a militant Islamic cleric has been fanning the flames of hatred and war in southwestern Serbia for the past six months; except the rioters were so incensed, they didn't stop to make a difference between his followers and those of the moderate Mufti of Belgrade, whose mosque they - allegedly - attacked).

It was the government that cynically manipulated and abused the homosexuals, setting them up for violence and bloodshed so it could assert power over the "hooligans" that responded. Now we're treated to proclamations by Brussels that the Belgrade regime is "protecting human rights." What rights?!

Sunday's events shattered what little was left of this government's legitimacy. It didn't have much to begin with, composed of two coalitions that ran against each other in 2008 (no one, not a soul, actually voted for the current regime). As of Sunday, it has none. It rules not by the will of the people, but by the will of the Empire. While it lasts.

10-10-10 may well turn out to be a turning point in modern Serbian history, a day when open revolt against the quislings finally began. Yes, it is ironic that it would start over a "pride parade" as opposed to countless acts of robbery and treason the regime is responsible for. But history tells of many major upheavals that started with the seemingly unlikeliest of events.

For the past decade, and especially the past two years, Serbia has been in the grip of a regime so abominable, that any attempt to restore normalcy appears extreme. It was only a matter of time before some people concluded that extremism in defense of virtue was no vice.

Madness? This is BOSNIA!

To say that Bosnia-Herzegovina is a strange place would be an understatement. Little about that country makes sense. It is theoretically one state, comprised of two "entities" (a Republic and a Federation) and a District (which isn't the capital). It has three major ethnic groups, five Presidents and thirteen Prime Ministers. No one knows exactly how many people live in the country, because there hasn't been a census since the war - and some politicians are blocking a new census from being conducted. Though nominally independent and sovereign, the ultimate authority in the country is a viceroy (called "High Representative") acting on behalf of a self-appointed group of external powers (called the "Peace Implementation Council"). And there is no such thing as a "Bosnian," strictly speaking; one is either a Serb, Croat, "Bosniak" (Slavic convert to Islam) or "other." To keep the (uneasy) peace between them, ethnic quotas are enshrined in the Constitution.

In short, the place is a mess of epic proportions. But just as I think that it cannot possibly get any crazier, something happens along to prove me wrong.

The internet is a wonderful place insofar as it allows ordinary folk, like yours truly, to share their thoughts and ideas with the general public without dealing with governmental or big business gatekeepers. Whereas you can be reasonably certain that the governments and the official media will lie to you about any given issue any given time, with the internet you have to make your own decision about what is true and what is a howling blast of nonsense.

It isn't the fault of Blogger, or Wordpress, or the do-it-yourself PR portal "i-Newswire" that some of their users may be raving lunatics, or folks a few beers short of a six-pack. But when I saw a link to a release on i-Newswire two days ago announcing that the "Bosnian Royal Family" has reasserted sovereignty, my jaw came very close to hitting the floor.

Quoth the release:

Under international law and customs pertinent to monarchical reinstatements, the Bosnian Royal Family recently reclaimed their "divine right to sovereignty". The claim was met by 85% public approval, but also by insults from the media financed by NED, USAID, etc. The Bosnian medieval state thrived between 1153 and 1527, when the Ottomans committed regicide of the last Prince-pretend and established their first occupying administration. Bosnia has not had her own sovereign de jure (a monarch; a president) ever since.

While it is true enough that the Ottoman Turks killed the last king of Bosnia (also the last despot of Serbia), that was in 1463, not in 1527. But the real howler here is the line about "85% public approval." How could they possibly tell? What public? Bosnia is so fragmented, this kind of polling is just plain impossible.

At first I thought this was some kind of practical joke, like the pranks played by a group of Serbian linguists over the past few years, who would plant false news and then mock the gullible press for taking them at face value. But this "royal family" seems to be taking itself seriously. This is also indicated by the tone of their press release, which goes on to accuse the powers administering Bosnia of working "...in the interest of none other but the Anglo-Zionist geostrategy, apparently aimed at destabilizing the continental (mainly Catholic) Europe..."

Just the other day someone asked me why I never tried my hand at writing fiction. How can I, with stuff like this existing in actual reality? A fiction writer who imagined this "royal family" would be laughed out of any serious publishing house. Yet here they are, quite real.

In 2002, British peacekeepers found a man living in the mountains of Western Bosnia with only a bear for company. He didn't know the war had ended (well, sort of), but he seemed remarkably sane, all things considered. Perhaps he was on to something.

Capitulation, Not Compromise

Though the terrorist bombing of a market in Vladikavkaz and the Yaroslavl summit have been top news on RT, the TV station did not neglect to note the tragedy at the UN General Assembly, where Serbia stood before the world, agreed to be violated and humiliated, and then spat on its allies while praising its violators.

Earlier in the day, RT interviewed Diana Johnstone (author of the excellent "Fools' Crusade"). I joined the late night newscast from the Washington DC studio, sometime after 2 AM Moscow time, and offered a few observations as well, along the lines of what I said yesterday.

To recap: the proposed resolution was not a compromise, but a capitulation. The original resolution, not very strong to begin with, was completely gutted by the EUrocrats. This was done with the full knowledge and approval of President Tadic and Foreign Minister Jeremic, who then openly lied to their people that the new resolution would not recognize the "Independent state of Kosova" in any form. In actuality, the revised resolution is an implicit recognition of the occupied and detached province, a public renunciation of international law, and a blanket endorsement of Empire's actions - past, present and future.

In exchange for this absolute abdication of sovereignty, Serbia got - nothing. Only a vague promise of possibly, some day, maybe, eventually being considered for possible annexation by the EU. This would happen whenever the EU decides, and to whatever is left of Serbia at that point; which may not be much.

Simply put, the EU has chosen to pursue the exact same Balkans policy as Austria-Hungary exactly a century ago. The Royal and Imperial court in Vienna saw Serbia as a direct threat to the Empire's existence, as its independence emboldened the disenfranchised Slavic majority. As a solution, Austria-Hungary envisioned not a weak Serbia, but no Serbia at all. A hundred years and two world wars - in which that concept seemed to have been defeated - later, Serbien muss sterben once again.

Such a policy would be ghastly enough by itself. But it is both enabled and embraced by the craven and corrupt quisling government in Belgrade, willing to sacrifice the entire country to stay in office (and keep to plunder accumulated while therein). At this moment, nowhere in the world is there so much treason per square meter per second. Meanwhile, the government, the media and the so-called civil society are force-feeding the Serbs a diet of lies, apathy and despair. Many suffer from cognitive dissonance as a result. But while there may not be limits to malice and stupidity, there are limits to gullibility and wishful thinking. In any other place in the world, the camel's back would have broken by now; perhaps this could be the proverbial last straw for Serbia.

God only knows what happens next.

EUssisted Suicide

If there are people in Serbia still who wondered whether some residual patriotism remained in their government officials, as of today there should be none.

Serbia's proposed resolution before the UN General Assembly, scheduled to be presented tomorrow, was at the last moment sent for "consultations" with the government's "friends and allies" in Brussels. The result was entirely predictable. Of the original resolution, which one Serbian commentator described as "a possibility for the UN to shine for at least a moment and protest an injustice in a world without justice" and an undertaking "worthy of our ancestors and covenants", nothing remains.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Instead of even a verbal protest against the obvious sophistry and hypocrisy of the ICJ verdict, the new proposal calls for the UN to "take note" of the verdict and acknowledge its "careful consideration" of the question asked!

As a reminder, the ICJ never actually did answer Serbia's question, asked through the General Assembly back in 2008. The question was whether the declaration of independence by the PISG (an Albanian-run provisional government) was legal. Under the current international law, including the UNSCR 1244 that governed the status of the occupied Serbian province, there was no way that answer could have been "yes." So the ICJ resorted to redefining reality, by declaring that the Albanians who issued the declaration weren't really the provisional government (even though they clearly were) but "direct representatives of the Kosovo people" (sic)!

And now Serbia itself is proposing to the UN General Assembly to "take into account" this malicious misinterpretation as fact!

But wait - there's more! In addition to thanking the ICJ for its "careful consideration" of the question (!), Serbia does not ask the General Assembly to condemn the occupation and separation of Kosovo, and the sponsors thereof. Quite the contrary, it thanks them!

Section F of the proposed resolution reads as follows:

f) Welcomes the readiness of the EU to facilitate the process of dialogue between the parties. The process of dialogue by itself would be a factor of peace, security and stability in the region. This dialogue would be aimed to promote cooperation, make progress on the path towards the EU and improve people's lives.”

(source: Serbian government; emphasis added)

So, this "dialogue" facilitated by the EU - 22 of whose members already recognize the "Independent State of Kosova" (ISK), and whose EULEX mission has already usurped the UN presence in the occupied province, with Serbian quislings' approval - would by itself be good, regardless of what it achieves. It isn't hard to imagine what that "dialogue" would look like: Brussels says "Jump," Belgrade replies "How high?" Just as it happened with this resolution. And if the hypothetical dialogue ever involved the usurper regime in Pristina, they would be considered equal to Belgrade, and the only things on the table would be cooperation, path to the EU, and the phantom better life. What about the status of Kosovo? There is nothing about it in the resolution - explicitly.

Implicitly, however, the entire resolution - and Section F in particular - are nothing short of an outright recognition of the ISK. See for yourself: since the ICJ ruled that the declaration was not illegal, and Serbia itself is taking note of that decision, thanks them for all the deliberation, and asks the General Assembly to do the same; and since it doesn't even ask anything, but instead thanks the EU for its efforts to sponsor dialogue about cooperation and better life (but not status!) that is by itself good regardless of outcome, what do you get when you add that all up? An implicit recognition that the "Republic of Kosova" is, in fact, an independent state.

So much for President Tadic's claim that the proposed resolution "excludes recognition of Kosovo's independence."

If this proposal even makes it before the General Assembly, let alone gets adopted, it would be a tragedy for Serbia. Such an outcome would be an unprecedented capitulation - worse than the Kumanovo armistice in 1999, or the March 1941 treaty with Hitler, or the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum of 1914. It would also mean a crowning success in Empire's effort to commit a crime in full view of the world, and have the victim express gratitude for it.

By proposing this resolution, the Serbian government is renouncing not just a piece of territory, but Serbia's sovereignty, any claims to justice, and even the right to continued existence. This is nothing short of national suicide - assisted by its "friends" from the EU.

When, some day soon, Boris Tadic, Vuk Jeremic and all the other participants in their joint criminal enterprise find themselves facing judgment, this proposed resolution will be the crucial evidence that these people were traitors, crooks, liars and scoundrels. May God have mercy on their souls.

(Updated 9/10: The government of Serbia is so inept it uses dynamic links on its website, so the link to the text of the resolution was broken the very next day. It has been updated and should be functional.)

Remembering the Storm

(This article originally appeared on Antiwar.com, on August 5, 2005)

In the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 1995, on the heels of an incessant artillery and air bombardment, some 200,000 Croatian troops moved in to “liberate” Krajina, a stretch of mountains inhabited by Serbs who had rejected Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia four years prior. Overrunning the token UN observation posts, the U.S.-trained Croatian army quickly overwhelmed localized Serb resistance. President Franjo Tudjman declared Aug. 5, the day Croat troops entered the Serb capital of Knin, a national holiday: “Homeland Thanksgiving Day.” By Aug. 7, the “Republic of Serb Krajina” was no longer in existence.

A grand celebration is scheduled for tomorrow in Knin. Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, the late Tudjman’s political heir, will no doubt give a rousing patriotic speech, glorifying Croatia’s “defenders from Serbian aggression.” Some mainstream media will report that the offensive resulted in civilian casualties, and that one high-ranking Croatian general, Ante Gotovina, is a fugitive from war crimes charges at the Hague Inquisition. And that will be the end of it. Dwelling on “Operation Storm” (Oluja) serves no purpose in the official narrative of the Balkans wars. Its victims are that narrative’s principal villains, so their suffering must be suppressed. The victors, on the other hand, are no longer useful to the Empire. “Storm” is something Washington would like to forget. Serbs and Croats don’t have that luxury.

Frustrated Dreams

The area of Krajina was for several centuries the borderland between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, a buffer zone that protected the inner Hapsburg lands from Turkish raids. It was populated largely by Orthodox Serbs, who had fled Ottoman persecution, and who became frontiersmen for the Hapsburgs in exchange for land and liberty. By the 19^th century, the Ottoman Turks were in retreat; the new danger to the Hapsburg Empire was Slavic nationalism. Vienna turned on its frontiersmen, encouraging conflict between the Orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats, who became its staunchest supporters. Vienna’s Serbophobia eventually led Austria-Hungary into a fatal conflict that destroyed much of European civilization.

It also nurtured the hatred that would explode in 1941 as the vicious Ustasha genocide. These homegrown Croatian Nazis, led by Ante Pavelic, set out to destroy the “race of slaves” (A. Starcevic) with ruthless abandon, but ran out of time. Still, by 1945 they had killed anywhere between half a million and 750,000 Serbs.

With the end of communism in 1990, Franjo Tudjman and his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) brought a revival of Pavelic’s symbols and vocabulary. Some of the top supporters of the HDZ were Ustasha émigrés. Tudjman himself expressed relief that his wife was “neither Serb nor Jewish.” Tudjman’s constitutional reform redefined the republic as a nation-state of Croats, with Serbs as an ethnic minority. When Tudjman’s government declared independence from the Yugoslav federation in 1991, most Serbs saw 1941 all over again. This – and not some imaginary “aggression” from Serbia – was the root of their “rebellion,” and the genesis of the Krajina Republic. After several months of bitter fighting, marked by massacres, ambushes, and the most vitriolic propaganda, the UN brokered an armistice. The so-called Vance Plan envisioned four “protected areas,” with a Serb majority, whose eventual status would be resolved through negotiations.

Over the next three years, Tudjman’s government feverishly prepared for war, training its troops on the battlefields of Bosnia and staging quick, limited offensives at the strategic edges of UN-protected areas (most infamous being the Medak Pocket attack in 1993). Although enjoying political, diplomatic, and even military support from Vienna and Berlin since 1991, it was only when it got Washington’s support that Zagreb was ready – and able – to strike. “Retired” American officers, working for government contractor MPRI, claimed to teach Croat officers “democracy” and “human rights.” The events of May and August 1995 would demonstrate MPRI’s definitions of both.

Junkyard Dogs

"Dick: We ‘hired’ these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to ‘control’ them. But it is no time to get squeamish about things."
– To End a War, Chapter 6

US envoy to the Balkans Richard Holbrooke thus described the note slipped to him by Ambassador Robert Frasure, during a meeting with Croatian officials in 1995. Holbrooke’s own account of how the U.S. officially condemned Croatian attacks even as he was meeting with Tudjman and telling him which cities to take, suggests he was hardly “squeamish” about using Croats to fight what he – and hundreds of advocacy journalists, lobbyists, and policymakers – had termed “Serb aggression.”

On May 1, 1995, Croatian troops tested both their readiness and the UN’s will by staging a lightning strike at an exposed Serb enclave of Western Slavonia. The operation was code-named Bljesak – “flash,” or perhaps more appropriately, “Blitz.” The clear violation of the armistice went unpunished. The stage was set for Oluja.

According to Serb documentation, the three-day offensive in August 1995 resulted in the expulsion of 220,000 people. Some 1,943 people have been listed as missing/presumed dead, including 1199 civilians, 523 women, and 12 children. The death toll would have been greater had the Serbs not fled en masse before the advancing Croat tanks; all who stayed behind were killed. The Croats, and their American sponsors, were definitely not squeamish.

Ten years later, Krajina is still a wasteland, with “scattered ghost villages strewn with shell-scarred houses overgrown with ivy and tall grass” (Reuters). Only a tenth of some 400,000 Serbs who lived in Croatia before it seceded have returned, only to face bureaucratic abuse and frequent physical violence. Tudjman made Pavelic’s dream to rid Croatia of Serbs a reality. It seems everything is in the choice of allies.

Unpleasant Comparisons

After obliterating Krajina, the conquering Croatian army moved into western Bosnia, aiding the Izetbegovic government to crush a dissident faction led by Fikret Abdic and assisting in the major Muslim offensive that “coincided” with NATO’s massive bombing of Bosnian Serbs. But after the Dayton Agreement was signed and peace imposed on Bosnia, Empire’s junkyard dogs discovered the supply of Milk Bones had run out. They had served their purpose.

Today’s Croatia is frustrated that its ambitions to enter the EU and NATO hinge upon the capture of Ante Gotovina, a general involved in Oluja who is universally considered a war hero, but whom the Hague Inquisition accuses of war crimes. Some of the truth about atrocities against the Serbs is slowly coming to light, but interestingly enough, only after the prominent personalities accused have fallen out of political grace. The Zagreb leadership snaps back at any hint that Oluja might have been anything but just, right, and noble. When Serbian president Boris Tadic called it an “organized crime” in a statement Monday, President Mesic replied it could hardly compare to Serb crimes such as Srebrenica.

But by all means, let’s compare. In both cases, a UN “safe area” was targeted by the attack. In Srebrenica, the UN at least tried to protect Muslim civilians; in Krajina, it did no such thing. Serbs evacuated Muslim noncombatants from Srebrenica; Serbs who did not flee Krajina were killed. Yet Srebrenica is somehow “genocide,” while Oluja is a victory worth a national holiday?!

Another reason the Empire prefers to keep Oluja out of sight and out of mind is the push to establish an independent, Albanian-dominated Kosovo. If Croatia’s conquest of Krajina was legitimate, because Krajina’s existence violated its sacrosanct administrative borders, then why did Serbia not have the right to uphold its borders when it came to Kosovo? If obliterating the Serb population did not disqualify Croatia from keeping Krajina and Slavonia, how can the exodus of less than half of Kosovo’s Albanians disqualify Serbia from keeping Kosovo? If the Serbs, a constituent Yugoslav nation, did not have the right to ethnic self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, how can the Kosovo Albanians (an ethnic minority) have one?

The “Abramowitz Doctrine”

This apparent paradox was “explained” by Morton Abramowitz, the eminence grise of U.S. foreign policy, in an interview last summer: “there is no entirely rational answer … you seek perfect reasoning, which does not correspond to reality on the ground.” Logic does not apply to the Empire, because it creates its own reality; where have we heard that before?

The “reality” Abramowitz and his like-minded policymakers have sought to establish, by force, has been one in which, whatever the circumstances, Serbs are in the wrong. Apologists for the Empire dismiss this observable, verifiable fact as a “conspiracy theory” and claim the Serbs have a “victim complex,” even as their entire Balkans “reality” rests on the claim that everyone else has been victimized by the Serbs.

What “perfect reasoning” is involved in recognizing the simple fact that the centuries-old Serb community in Krajina is practically extinct, and that the Serb community in Kosovo – from which most of their ancestors came – is facing the same prospect? Where the Nazis failed, the American Empire has succeeded. Is that really something to be thankful for?

Beyond the Law

It really takes a great deal of arrogance - hubris, even - to assume that one's actions will not have consequences. Or better yet, that those consequences can be tightly controlled. For almost two decades now, the powers meddling in the Balkans (and by this I am referring to the U.S. and its European satellites) have flip-flopped between whichever "principles" suited their policy at the time, with the only constant being that the Serbs would always come out on the losing end.

First they advocated self-determination for the peoples of Yugoslavia - until the Serbs in what are today Bosnia and Croatia asserted that right. Then the principle suddenly changed to sanctity of borders (of Croatia and Bosnia - not Yugoslavia), only to go back to "self-determination" in 1999, so that the ethnic Albanians could claim Serbia's province of Kosovo. Sanctity of borders? Oh, that doesn't apply to Serbia, don't you know?

In effect, Serbia and the Serbs have been put outside the law. There is no punishment for killing Serbs. You want proof of that? Ask Naser Oric, Ramush Haradinaj, Ejup Ganic or Florim Ejupi. Ethnically cleansing Serbs isn't a crime, either. Franjo Tudjman, Alija Izetbegovic and Hashim Thaci became respected statesmen by doing so. Invading and occupying Serbia doesn't seem to be a crime, either - the ICJ ruled in 1999 that Yugoslavia (as the union of Serbia and Montenegro was then called) had no standing to sue NATO, which was at that time conducting a campaign of aggression with the purpose of occupying Kosovo.

But the Empire couldn't stop there. Oh no. It insisted, instead, that this is all a special case - even as it reserved the right to treat anyone, anywhere as it has treated the Serbs. Well of course it was a special case, comments former Imperial official Matthew Parish, more special than even the Empire itself knows:

The enormity of the legal precedent being set by Kosovo’s independence cannot be overlooked. In Kosovo a consortium of foreign powers, acting initially without a United Nations mandate, intervened using force in a sovereign state to resolve that country’s ethnic conflict. They then occupied part of the country and oversaw its secession over a nine-year period. It is not clear that the ICJ should have lent its imprimatur to such an exceptional event. Whatever one’s view of Kosovo’s independence, it must be conceded that the events that led to UNMIK’s occupation and separation of the province from the rest of Serbia were unique.

To have lent these events a cloak of legal support may be to suggest that other disputed territories have a similar 'right' to secede, potentially fuelling ethnic civil wars elsewhere in the world.

It is the very peril I pointed out in December 2009, as the process Serbia initiated before the ICJ began: "It is one thing to flout the law with impunity. It is quite another to call such behavior legal."

What I call the Empire, Parish dubs - perhaps more accurately - a "consortium of foreign powers." But the point remains: they imposed their will, by force, explicitly against the laws of nations, on another country. Where once they maintained their actions were "illegal but legitimate" (in the words of Goldstone's "Independent commission"), now they insist that it was all perfectly legal. Thuggery has become law, thus making the law pointless.

This goes beyond Serbia, or the Albanians, or the territory of Kosovo itself. It is a nuclear bomb detonated amidst the already crumbling world order - by the very people who style themselves its foremost guardians. Now we brace for the inevitable fallout.

(Hat tip to reader "Aleks" for the Parish essay)

More on the ICJ: a Column and Video

Following my initial impressions about the ICJ verdict, I've now put together a more detailed analysis over at Antiwar.com.

Yesterday morning, when news of the verdict came, I was at the RT studio in Washington, DC. What I said in the following clip was literally at a moment's notice, without any prior knowledge of the questions:



They usually identify me as "Columnist, Antiwar.com"; not sure why this time they used the misnomer "journalist".

Update (July 28): Many thanks to Ilana Mercer, who re-posted the video and linked to my column on Barely A Blog.

The International Court of Injustice

After much hemming and hawing, the International Court of Justice finally declared today that the "declaration of independence" by the Albanian provisional government in the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo did not violate international law, or UNSCR 1244.

Seriously?

Certainly there is no law against declaring independence. But that doesn't mean "Kosovo" had the right to do so. Under UNSCR 1244, it had to remain a part of Serbia - even if under temporary UN control - pending the outcome of status talks. But there were never any talks - there was just NATO messenger Martti Ahtisaari, declaring that Kosovo ought to become an independent, Albanian state. And Serbia was told to take it or leave it.

Technical details, you'll say. After all, the Albanians are such an overwhelming majority. But you never wonder how they got to be such a majority over the past century. Could it be because they sided with the Austrians, the Nazis, the Communists, and NATO - every time at the expense of the Serbs? Between the murder and expulsion of non-Albanians, and the highest birthrates in Europe (much higher than in the neighboring Albania, and unrelated to the level of education), no wonder the Albanians are a majority today. Yet they claim they have historically been the victims of oppression....

But weren't there Serb atrocities? Genocide, mass ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands killed? In short, no. Lies your friendly NATO spokesman fed you to go along with the program. The KLA was romanticized by the media as this idealistic, young, progressive freedom-fighting movement. KLA hats are New York chic. Surely these people have nothing to do with jihadism, and all the church-burning and throat-slitting and bus-bombing - if you've ever heard of them, to begin with - are just righteous revenge for whatever evils the Serbs must have committed to merit such treatment. But then, what of the Albanian behavior in the 1980s, before any of the alleged Serb atrocities had taken place?

This isn't about democracy. It isn't about liberty. There is no such thing as a "Kosovar" ; it is just a matter of time and convenience before the "independent" Kosovo merges into Greater Albania (or "ethnic Albania," as its advocates claim). Meanwhile, Kosovo still buys most of its power, even most of its bread, from the rest of Serbia. Its "government" is a collection of murderous mobsters; between them, they've killed more Albanians than the Serbs were ever accused of.

Oh sure, the U.S. government, much of the EU and many of their client states elsewhere recognize the "Republic of Kosovo." And I suppose more will jump on the bandwagon now, as the propaganda mill spins the ICJ verdict as "justice". But saying something exists doesn't make it so.

No, dear reader, it really isn't as simple as the mainstream media, the State Department, NATO, and now even the ICJ would have you believe.

I know many of you out there can't be bothered to care about this. What's it to you that some country out there got robbed of a piece of land, along with its dignity? But if fabricating and exaggerating atrocities to attack and occupy a country on behalf of a separatist, terrorist movement, isn't illegal... then what, pray tell, is?

You may not care about it now, because the people being bullied are the Serbs, a people you've been told was OK - nay, necessary even - to hate and despise. But tomorrow, it may happen to you. And then it will be too late.

Pushing the Myth

A little while ago, several Liberal MPs in the Canadian Parliament proposed a resolution declaring July 11 "Srebrenica Remembrance Day." Fortunately, Prime Minister Harper would have none of it, so the proposal was taken off the table - for now.

The resolution was not a product of altruism and sheer goodness of the Liberals' hearts, but rather an initiative mounted by the Congress of North American Bosniaks, and something called the "Institute for the Research of Genocide" (whose URL identifies them as the "Institute for Genocide").

After Mr. Harper put the kibosh on the resolution, the CNAB and the Institute raised a ruckus. Their initial protest, on June 23, included a long list of people identified as an "international team of experts" and claiming illustrious academic titles. The post with the list, however, has since been taken down from the Institute website.

Here are just some of the names from the list:

• M. Cherif Bassiouni (former UN rapporteur on the events in Bosnia, who endorsed the ridiculously inflated casualty figures and the "mass rape" hoax)
• Francis A. Boyle (international ambulance-chaser and author of the "genocide" lawsuit by the Izetbegovic government against Serbia, rejected before an actual court)
• Florence Hartmann (once spokesperson for Carla Del Ponte at the ICTY)
• Marko Attila Hoare (a world-renowned Serbophobe-cum-historian)
  
• Daniel Toljaga (listed as member of the Board of Directors at the Congress of North American Bosniaks, but better known as proprietor of the Srebrenica Genocide Blog)
• Dzemaludin Latic and Fatmir Alispahic, champions of militant Islam and Serbophobia considered even in Bosnia to be the lunatic fringe.

Suffice to say that the list was a veritable who's who of professional victims, genocide entrepreneurs, and people who have built their careers on the myth of Bosnia. So, these folks have taken upon themselves to have the Canadian Parliament endorse their version of history by government fiat - i.e. by force, since they can't actually prove it in court. It is as if they don't believe their argument good enough to just persuade people, even though it has enjoyed almost uncontested dominance in the media for the past 15 years!

The much less organized Canadian Serbs have protested this proposal with letters. The response they got was pretty much a set of talking points reminiscent of the content found on the SGB, Hoare's blog, or the CNAB site.

The letter says that the "the genocidal nature of the particular incident at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 has been internationally recognized." It specifically mentions the ICTY and ICJ verdicts, claiming they were "thoughtful results of fair and independent investigation and testimony."

Yet the ICJ verdict specifically said it had not considered the Srebrenica events itself, but simply accepted the ICTY rulings at face value. To call the ICTY's verdicts "thoughtful", their investigations "independent" and the testimonies of serial perjurers "fair" - that's just rich. Let's see: their crown witness, on which the entire case hangs, is a liar. They have conducted sloppy forensic work and later destroyed much of the evidence. They refuse to show the DNA evidence, then claim it proves something that is physically impossible for DNA evidence to prove (i.e. manner of death). And that's just the tip of the iceberg! The ICTY verdicts have more holes in them than a kitchen sieve.

Another argument in the response is that others have done this - the European Parliament, the US House and Senate, and hey, even the (quisling) government of Boris Tadic in Serbia! - so why not the Canadian legislature? Well, since when did "everyone is doing it" become a valid argument? Just because some lawmakers in Europe and the US have voted with their hearts for a well-prepared piece of propaganda does not have the magical power to transform that propaganda into fact. Truth is not a matter of majority vote - or even consensus.

From the first days of the Bosnian War, the Izetbegovic regime's weapon of choice was propaganda. They aimed to win the war by getting outside forces to do the fighting for them, based on heart-rending stories of massacres, mass rape, concentration camps and genocide. One after another, those stories have been exposed as fabrications and deliberate distortions of the already horrifying reality, while the full horrors of the war were never reported, so as not to interfere with the mythical narrative. The Srebrenica "genocide" is the last lie that remains, the one myth that was built up and reinforced more than any of the others. By now, Srebrenica has become a post facto justification for everything: the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, the foreign mujahedin, the rise of Wahhabism and terrorism, the re-Islamization of Bosnia's Muslims (a goal Izetbegovic set for himself in the 1970s, mind you), the ongoing refusal of Muslim politicians to abide by the country's Constitution, and the equally ongoing attempts to fulfill their wartime objectives politically, by overturning the Dayton Accords.

All of this rests on the foundation of a myth that what happened in July 1995 in Srebrenica was "genocide". Even though the women and children were safely evacuated. Even though the column that refused to surrender and set off across the mountains and minefields to Tuzla was a military formation. Even though the actual number of people who died on that march was never established (the "8,000" figure is equally arbitrary as the "300,000" we'd heard for a decade, before facts became impossible to ignore), and the actual evidence suggests that the number of people actually murdered (as in executed, which indeed is a war crime) is several hundred. Even though nothing was ever produced to demonstrate intent on part of the Bosnian Serbs to actually exterminate the Muslims as a people - apart from the very strong belief by the Muslims that this was the case.

Yet in a proper court of law, it doesn't matter what one believes - only what one can prove. Fully aware that the ICTY judgments are based on belief and conjecture rather than actual facts, the believers in the Srebrenica Genocide Myth are now trying to impose it by force, by getting governments to pass resolutions. Next up will probably be demands that anyone questioning their myth be prosecuted as a "holocaust denier." So, not only are they disparaging the actual Holocaust by declaring Srebrenica a "genocide," they are also exploiting and abusing the mechanisms established so no one could strive to rehabilitate the Nazis and deny the suffering of the Jews. When you consider the fact that the ancestors of many of those Muslims actually helped the Nazis in their ghastly "Endloesung", it becomes obvious that Srebrenica is not just about the present and the future, but also about whitewashing the past.

I understand why it is in the interest of the Bosnian Muslims' religious, political and propaganda leadership (and their associates, fellow-travelers and useful idiots in the West and elsewhere) to promote the Srebrenica Genocide Myth. How that would serve Canada's interests, however, is beyond me. Stephen Harper appears to have reached a similar conclusion - and for that he deserves thanks, not just of the Serbs living in Canada, but all Canadians who care about their own country.

Enemies of Truth and Justice

Last Thursday (June 10), seven men were convicted by the Hague Inquisition (a.k.a. the ICTY) for "genocide" in Srebrenica. Naturally, the news made headlines all over the world, as yet another allegedly incontrovertible proof that Srebrenica was "the worst atrocity since WW2" in Europe, where the evil Serbs deliberately murdered 8,000 innocent civilians.

Fortunately for the cause of truth, there are people in this world who don't take ICTY press releases at face value, and actually bother to read what their verdicts contain: a bunch of nonsense, fabrications, unfounded assumptions and "logic" that would be expected of failed law school applicants, not these supposed paragons of international justice.

As the folks at Srebrenica Historical Project explain, the Tribunal once again based the entire process on the testimony of "crown witness" Drazen Erdemović, who claimed (among other things) to have seen a Lt. Colonel at the site where he claims to have executed 1200 people. Since anything Erdemović says must and shall be treated as gospel truth, the "judges" reasoned thus:

“There is no evidence before the Trial Chamber of any other Lieutenant Colonel in Pilica at this time. In light of this, the Trial Chamber is satisfied that there is no other reasonable conclusion available on the evidence but that the Lieutenant Colonel whom Erdemović saw at Branjevo Military Farm and in Pilica town on 16 July was Popović. (paragraph 1134)

Being as there had to have been a Lt. Colonel in the area (otherwise Erdemović would be lying, and we can't have that, right?), then there shall be one. See how easy it is to establish "facts" when you can just make them up? Of course, there was a tiny little problem of Erdemović actually not recognizing Col. Popović in a line-up, but worry not - the ICTY had that covered as well:

“The Trial Chamber has carefully considered the fact that Erdemović was unable to identify Popović in a photo line up … However, the Trial Chamber considers that given the traumatic circumstances in which Erdemović met Popović and the significant passage of time since then, Erdemović’s failure to identify Popović in a photo line up does not raise a reasonable doubt as to the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the man whom Erdemović saw at Pilica on 16 July was, in fact, Popović”. (paragraph 1135)

Never mind the evidence, then, or the burden of proof, or reasonable doubt - the "judges" simply know what happened, because, well, they just do. Better than Erdemović himself, even!

There are other, no less significant, incongruities in the June 10 verdict, which you can read at the SHP site. What I want to address here, once again, is the ICTY itself.

The media often refer to the ICTY as the "UN War Crimes Tribunal." In the Balkans, the shorthand for it is "The Hague." This was done deliberately, as The Hague is actually home to the International Court of Justice, a legitimate UN court adjudicating disputes between states. The ICTY, however, was established by a body (the Security Council) that has no authority to establish courts - because it lacks judicial powers. It's elementary logic that one cannot delegate the powers one does not have in the first place. Of course, we live in a world where laws are creatively interpreted to serve the needs of the political class, so it's not surprising that the ICTY is considered legitimate simply because the people who established it say it is.

The ICTY's role isn't to punish the guilty, effect reconciliation or serve the course of justice. It is to write the history of the Yugoslav Succession Wars as one of "greater Serbian aggression", by accusing the entire political and military leadership of the Serbs (be it in Serbia or the territories of present-day Croatia and Bosnia) of a preposterous grand conspiracy. By doing so, it seeks to label the Serbs as perpetrators of "genocide" (which has been redefined to mean just about anything). This is also meant to absolve not only the other parties to the conflict, but also the European powers, the U.S. and NATO, of any wrongdoing. At the same time, imposing the genocidal label on the Serbs is meant to neutralize any investigation of the actual genocide committed between 1941 and 1945 by the Croatian Ustasha (whose primary victims were Serbs, Jews and Roma, in that order). It also helps whitewash the atrocities of Nazi Germany, e.g. the Holocaust.

To truly counter the Tribunal's lies, one must expose them for what they are. One has to have the courage to say the Emperor is wearing no clothes. For years now, the ICTY and its sponsors have been deceiving the world, claiming that this was an independent, legitimate court of law. It is not hard to expose this as the proverbial Big Lie - as you've seen above, it can be done simply by quoting the Tribunal's own verdicts and the idiocy contained therein. There is a limit to how many people they can lie to, and for how long.

This fight has only just begun.

A New Look

Gray Falcon has been around a few years, and I figured it was time to update the look a bit.

This ought to be easier on the eyes a little - though the subject matter will remain the same.

Ceterum censeo census...

Back in April, commenter Dejo asked about the census in Bosnia, or rather the fact that the Bosnian Muslims were adamantly against including ethnic or religious affiliation on the census forms:

The [Muslim] politicians have built their careers on the war and the myths surrounding that war. If there is a census then a lot of things about the war will come to light including how many Serbs and Croats are still left in central Bosnia, who of those which have been listed as missing or dead are actually alive and the radical changes in the religious dynamic among [Muslims] in Bosnia since they've started importing foreign Mudjahedin during the war. Not to mention how many babies were really born from rape during the war and how many battles were incorrectly listed as massacres. Among other things.

I daresay I have a pretty good understanding of Bosnia and the Balkans in general. Only a few things truly baffle me. The Muslim politicians' position on the census is one of them.

Now, some libertarians may regard opposition to the census in general, or disclosing ethnic or religious background in particular, to be a worthy cause on grounds of liberty, privacy, etc. Be that as it may, it isn't a factor in Bosnia. In most cases, it is easy to figure out one's ethnic or religious (as, by Ottoman legacy, ethnicity is based on religion) affiliation simply by their name. There are exceptions, of course, but they only confirm the rule. So trying to hide that data from census-takers is rather pointless, as it can be extrapolated (at great expense, mind, and somewhat inaccurately) later. Furthermore, in Bosnia ethnicity is a constitutional category; with public offices set aside for quotas of Serbs, Croats and Muslims, being "undeclared" is simply not an option if one desires government work. And there isn't much of another kind these days.

One explanation I've tended to credit for the past several years is that the Muslims simply fear no longer being the most numerous. But would it really fatally undermine their argument about Bosnia being their nation-state (with Serbs and Croats as interlopers or "aggressors") if they became outnumbered? Muslims weren't a majority in 1991, ether - Bosnia was over 55% Christian back then. Yet that didn't stop Izetbegovic from trying to create an Islamic government. The argument holds no water either way, census or no census.

Dejo's explanation above sounds a bit more plausible. The trouble I have with it is that the number of war dead has been pretty well established, at just under 100,000. It isn't really clear how a census would prove how any of those 100,000 perished. However, it stands to reason that official numbers showing precisely how many Serb and Croat villages have been obliterated and how many Serbs and Croats actually live in Muslim-controlled areas, would easily explode the claims of Muslim multi-ethnicity and tolerance.

Currently the lack of a census allows Muslim officials to maintain the fiction that the Muslim-Croat Federation has implemented Annex VII of the Dayton Accords, and that Serb refugees have returned to their homes. But if the census shows that all those Serbs (and in some cases, Croats) returned only nominally and claimed their ID cards so they could reclaim their property, sell it and leave again - as has overwhelmingly been the case - that would certainly deprive people like Haris Silajdzic of the ability to claim they represented progressive humanitarianism, rather than, say, radical Islam. The fact that Muslim lawmakers have tried to propose using ID card data in the census - knowing that it didn't reflect reality - indicates there might be something to this.

And yet... anyone who cares to spend a day researching can easily reach the same conclusion. But myths are myths precisely because they are immune to facts and reason. The Western media (and hence the public) persist in thinking Sarajevo is still a paragon of multi-ethnic tolerance. Yet there's nothing "multiethnic" about a city whose councilmen interpret "diversity" as giving representation to "Bosnians," "Bosniaks" and "Muslims."

Come to think of it, that may be another reason Muslim politicians fear the census. Back in 1991, they actually declared themselves as "Muslims" (Muslimani). It was a 1993 meeting of self-proclaimed national leaders that changed their name to "Bosniaks" (Bošnjaci), in an attempt to assert nation-statehood. What if some people are still confused, and put "Bosnian" or "Muslim-Bosnian" or just "Muslim" on the census form? Oh what a nightmare that will be for the statisticians...

The argument Bosnian lawmakers are currently chewing over - whether Eurostat regulations require ethnic or religious data - is pointless; they may not require it, but they certainly allow it. Besides, Bosnia has its own laws and regulations that must be followed, and the underlying principle of those may be called habeas ethnos. How do Muslim politicians imagine protecting "Bosniak rights" if, by the census, there are no "Bosniaks"?

It just doesn't add up. Such vociferous opposition has to be motivated by something. What are they trying to hide? What are they trying to achieve? Is this malice at work, or stupidity, or both?

As I said, few things about the Balkans baffle me, but this remains one of them.

Israel Gets Serbed

I don't normally deal with Israel here, or the whole Middle East question (one emotionally charged intractable conflict is plenty, thank you), but what happened the other day does have a fair bit to do with things I've been writing about for the past decade or so.

It should be obvious by now that the "Gaza flotilla" was a trap. Israel walked right into it. Fortunately for the Israelis, they too were filming the whole thing, and knew how to use blogs and YouTube, so they may have even come out ahead in the propaganda skirmish that followed. But there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the whole flotilla operation was designed from the start to be a propaganda stunt. The "activists" (is that what they are called these days?) aboard those ships were armed and ready. They wanted to be stopped and boarded, so they could scream to high heaven about being abused by the Israeli "pirates" on the high seas. It almost worked, too.

As I said over on Ilana Mercer's blog earlier in the week, the entire strategy employed by Hamas seems to be a reprise of Sarajevo. So the Israeli presence on its borders becomes a "siege", the legitimate blockade of a hostile polity becomes "strangling", and Israeli raids in response to missiles fired from Gaza become "terror." Israel is dubbed an occupying power even though it unilaterally retreated from Gaza in 2005, leaving it as a de facto independent city-state. And Israeli inspections in international waters, though legal, become "piracy."

Hamas routinely fires missiles from Gaza at Israeli civilians across the border. They see nothing wrong with this - remember, to Hamas, Israel has no right to exist, and needs to be obliterated. But if Israel retaliates, whether by assassinating Hamas leaders or sending tanks into Gaza to destroy missile launchers, or by enforcing a perfectly legal blockade to deny Hamas weapons and ammunition, while allowing food and other civilian supplies in - ah, that's nothing short of "genocide," then!

Israel has a powerful conventional army, navy, air force, and most likely even nuclear weapons (though not officially acknowledged). It has defeated Arab armies on numerous occasions in open warfare, and has successfully fought terrorism and insurgency through special operations. So those who wish it destroyed came up with a way of turning that strength into a weakness: cast themselves as innocent, unarmed, helpless victims and howl as loud as possible about being abused by that very Israel whose strength no one can dispute.

There are two recent examples of this approach being enormously successful. In Bosnia, the government of Alija Izetbegovic (revered in the Muslim world as an ideologue of jihad and Islamic revolution, but still believed in the West to have been a multicultural democrat) provoked an armed confrontation with the Serb and Croat populations, then raised hell in the media about being a victim of "aggression" and "genocide." European and American public were steadily bombarded with the most outlandish claims of atrocities, courtesy of legions of "advocacy journalists" stationed in Sarajevo, who somehow never saw thousands of armed Muslim troops in the city, or their artillery, but only "helpless civilians." Likewise, they never saw any of the Serb civilians killed by Muslim fire on the other side of the line; oh no, every Serb in Bosnia was a drunken, bearded savage with a machine gun in one hand, a bottle of brandy in the other, and a bloody knife in his teeth.

This distortion of reality went so far as to actually exaggerate the military strength of the Serbs, in an effort to make them seem even more formidable (and their enemies that much more innocent/unarmed/endangered). In this kind of 4th-generation warfare, weakness was an asset, and strength became a liability.

Not only was the Muslim (and Croat) version of the war propagated as gospel truth in the West, the Serbs were prevented from saying anything in their own defense through the second-worst regime of UN sanctions in history (the worst being what was imposed on Iraq). By the time the sanctions were officially lifted, the Serbs had been so thoroughly demonized, few dared question the official story when NATO attacked Serbia itself and occupied one of its provinces in 1999. Once again, the world was told of the Evil Genocidal Serb Aggressors wantonly killing and abusing innocent "Kosovarian" civilians, which was obviously so egregious that it required NATO to violate its own charter and that of the UN to launch a "humanitarian" intervention.

Here was identity politics brought to its logical extreme: a situation in which the designated victim could literally get away with murder (Izetbegovic, the KLA) yet be seen as innocent and virtuous, while the designated culprit (the Serbs) could be slandered with impunity, and anything they did would be perceived as purely evil. It isn't just about delegitimizing one's means of defense, but delegitimizing one's right to exist at all.

The problem with trying to explain this to people is that this sort of demonization has so far been practiced only against the Serbs. Even Iraqis, who have suffered horrifically, were not singled out as a nation (rather, the hatred was focused on the persona of Saddam Hussein, and the odium largely dissipated after his execution). Only a few careful observers have seen it as a general trend, applied beyond the Balkans. As a result, no one in the world really believes they could one day get "Serbed" (for lack of a better term) themselves.

But as we see from the flotilla incident, some folks have taken the lessons of Bosnia and Kosovo to heart, even if no one else has. Not surprisingly, the organizer of the propaganda stunt is a Turkish "NGO" first formed to provide aid to the Bosnian Muslims. Among the "activists" detained on the ships were a Syrian with Bosnian citizenship and the "President of Muslim Forum of Kosova" (sic). There are Balkan connections all over - all but guaranteeing that the mainstream press in the West won't say a word about any of them. Because, as we know, the Balkans is a sacred cow and the pure, innocent victimhood of "Bosnians" and "Kosovars" must and shall not be brought into question. Ever.

Why, even the Israelis won't say anything about it, so as not to hurt their own cause. Can't allow oneself to be associated with those Evil Serbs, right? That's how thorough the demonization has been. But if it can happen to the Serbs, it can happen to anyone. The real question is, who is next?

Premature Jubilation

I don't actually check the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog"; they are obsessed with me, not vice versa. But while doing some research on the attempted slaughter of General Krstic from the other day, I found this interesting result on Google:

(screen capture of a search done May 14, 2010; click to enlarge)

Up top is the new post, now merely supporting the attack and eagerly repeating the official line that it was "revenge" for the (alleged) genocide in Srebrenica. In fact, it is uncanny how the SGB post resembles the official reports in the British media on the Krstic near-slaying. Or is that the other way around?

Either way, the original, since-deleted post actually celebrated the murder of Gen. Krstic. It was deleted, and replaced by the new post so quickly, Google didn't even have time to cache it. But the old title remained. Just goes to show one can't hide anything on the Internet. Also, I suppose, the true extent of SGB's actual commitment to justice, human rights and whatnot.

I mean, you have to admit that, "When They kill Us, that is genocide and horrible, but when We kill Them it's a fantastic thing!" is simply a piss-poor excuse for morality.

The Easter Victory

In the evening of May 6, 1945, General Alfred Jodl arrived at the Western Allies' headquarters in Reims. His mission: surrender to the Allies, ending what became known as World War Two. He eventually signed the surrender treaty in the early morning hours of the following day.

But the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin could under no circumstances accept this. He insisted that the Germans officially surrender to the Soviets as well, which General Wilhelm Keitel did in Berlin on May 8 - May 9, Moscow time.

Part of the reason for this was pride; the USSR had borne the brunt of Allied casualties in fighting the Nazis. Stalin took credit for the Soviet war effort, and wanted the credit he considered his due. Another consideration, though, was more symbolic.

May 6 in the old Julian calendar still followed by the Orthodox faithful (whom the Communists had cruelly repressed) was the feast of St. George, the fabled dragon-slayer. In 1945, it was also the date of Easter. One can certainly understand why Stalin, as an atheist and Communist, would absolutely refuse to give that particular date any more meaning.

After the end of the war, Stalin had hundreds of thousands of liberated Soviet POWs either executed or sent to the gulag, so they would not be witnesses to his bumbling incompetence in 1941. He also turned on the victorious generals like Zhukov, jealous of their popularity. There was no room on the victor's pedestal for anyone but him. Especially not for God.

And so, May 9 became Victory Day in the Soviet Union, while the fact that the Germans surrendered on Easter became obscured by the fog of war.

Be Very Afraid...

A lot is being said and written today about the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Professional panic-mongers and witch-hunters are once again screaming about "right-wing extremists" and warning that OKC could happen again. Yet the impression I get is that this noise has less (if anything) to do with the 168 dead and 600 injured in Oklahoma City 15 years ago, and more with the efforts of the government to deflect criticism by painting those who disagree with it as lunatics and potential terrorists.

Anthony Gregory of LRC puts it into perspective:

Seventeen years ago in 1993, the federal government did in fact murder dozens of Americans who were no threat to anyone. The same government has in fact violated the rights of American citizens, rounded people into concentration camps, silenced and infiltrated politically peaceful groups, conspired against the people in numerous ways, drugged, poisoned and withheld medicine from Americans without their knowing, lied repeatedly about war and serious law enforcement matters, jailed people without due process, imposed martial law on segments of the domestic population, seized guns from law-abiding gunowners, broken down American doors and held scared children at gunpoint, planned the creation of extralegal judicial institutions to process American citizens, targeted political enemies with the IRS and other police agencies, forced Americans to labor and even kill and die under threat of imprisonment, overseen the largest prison system in the world, shoveled trillions of borrowed dollars to corrupt financial institutions and killed millions of civilians abroad – all in the lifetime of many who are still alive. The U.S. police state has in fact been growing since 9/11 and even before – and Obama has done nothing to stem its growth. On the contrary, he has continued the mix of economic fascism, imperialism, surveillance and lawless detention policy that characterized the Bush years.

Indeed, the most dangerous rightwing extremist in my lifetime was George W. Bush. Obama is following in his footsteps. That so many Americans are more frightened of rightwingers out of power than in power – more bothered by conservatives who hate Washington than those who control or want to control it – and more offended by anti-government rhetoric than the Democratic president continuing the policies they claimed to hate under Republican rule – shows how little they have learned from Waco and all that has happened since.

Read the rest of the essay at LewRockwell.com.