CrossTalk: Kiev's cul-de-sac

In which Patrick Smith, Marcus Papadopoulos, and yours truly discuss how Congress admitted there were Nazis in Ukraine, whether the US is seeking a way to back out of Banderastan, and if Washington's behavior is an expression of strength, or desperation.

Big thanks to Marcus for pointing out that the West destroyed its own world order by murdering Yugoslavia, a crime it has ever since pretended never happened.

Air date: June 24, 2015

Mad about Serbia

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

Shocking, I know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One sentence at a time, shall we?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Macedonia - what gives?

Roughly three weeks ago, protests began against the government in Macedonia (FYROM). The folks protesting said the government was "corrupt" and spying on them. Big surprise, I figured - like the rest of the Balkans, the regime in Skopje is run by a vassal of Washington, so what else were they expecting?

But then these opposition activists ignored the Albanian terrorists - who came in from Kosovo and tried to take over a village, then seemed surprised when Macedonian police and military actually dared attack and kill a bunch of them (who were later given heroes' funerals in "Kosovo", to wit).

In fact, these protesters claimed the government had staged the whole thing as a way to defeat the protests! So I looked into the whole thing a bit, and found an all too familiar pattern. Soros, NED, "human rights activists," an opposition politician polling terribly but crusading against "corruption," the fact that the government favored a Russian-backed pipeline (can't have that, oh no)...

Then there was the hashtag. My knowledge of the language spoken in Macedonia (FYROM) is a little rusty, but I thought it weird that the hashtag they were using was "#протестирам" (or even "#protestiram" for reasons unfathomable; unlike the occupied Serbs, I was not aware that even in the wildest self-hating fantasies the Macedonians would give up on Cyrillic).

I looked up the Macedonian phrases for "I protest" (протестираат) and "we protest" (протестираме). Neither matched.  So what does the word actually mean in Macedonian? Is it even Macedonian at all?

To me, it sounds like a foreign consultant picked something that maybe sounded Macedonian-ish, but was based on their knowledge of "Croatian" (a dialect most Westerners who bother studying the region tend to learn). Except they goofed, since in actual modern Croatian, the word for protest is "prosvjed," so the proper form would have been "prosvjedujem/prosvjedujemo."

I can't be sure, though. I was ready to reach out and ask, to borrow a phrase, "I'm confused. Can somebody help me?"

But then today, I saw this from a "media fact-checker" backing the protesters.

Defending #Mariupol is admirable/breathtaking task. Task legends are made of. My support for #Ukraine. #Macedonia http://t.co/Ouql9hFA4K

— Vladimir Petreski (@VPetreski) June 7, 2015

Lavishes praise on the Banderite regime in Ukraine, cites Interpreter as the authoritative source,  in another tweet praises Soros for "helping" Macedonia - and oh, funded by USAID. Greeaat.

Let's say I'm much less confused now.

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