Informazione
MILOSEVIC'S ARREST OCCASION FOR MORE NATO LIES AND HYPOCRISY
by Stephen Gowans
"We cannot and must not forget the chilling images of...mass graves
unearthed by UN investigators," said President George W. Bush, on the
occasion of Slobodan Milosevic's arrest over the weekend.
And as Milosevic was beginning his first day in a Belgrade jail, British
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook reminded us that he had visited some of the
mass graves himself.
One newspaper remarked, "[T]his is only the beginning of what could be a
long procedure leading to Mr. Milosevic's being tried for war crimes
committed two years ago in Kosovo, where an estimated 10,000 ethnic
Albanian civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands driven from
their
homes."
Images of mass graves are indeed chilling. But has anyone ever seen the
mass graves in Kosovo? Did Robin Cook really visit them? And were there
10,000 Albanian civilians killed in Kosovo?
If you want to be spectacularly misinformed, said author Henry Miller,
buy
a newspaper.
George Orwell, in his famous essay, Politics and the English Language,
complained that a lot of political writing consisted of gumming together
phrases like the sections of a prefabricated hen house, an easy way of
writing, he said, once you had the habit. Reach into a handy grab-bag of
weathered phrases, and you don't have to think critically about what
you're
writing. To journalists spoon fed copy by government sources, tacking
together ready made, prefabricated phrases and ideas is an easy way to
meet
deadlines without a lot of effort.
Dutifully reporting the words of political figures, without questioning
even the most conspicuous deviations from the truth, goes along way too
toward effortlessly filing copy.
Press coverage of Milosevic's arrest has been very much like the
building
of prefabricated hen houses. The words of Bush, Cook and former US
Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, are reported uncritically, while
Milosevic, just as uncritically, is denounced as a "tyrant,"
"cold-blooded
autocrat," "war-lord," "strongman," and "iron-fisted dictator."
He's also "terrifying," "ruthless," "brutal," "the mastermind of the
worst
European wars since the Nazis."
Altogether a bad egg. Certainly, someone who could exterminate 10,000
Albanians and have their corpses dumped into mass graves, say, at the
bottom of the infamous Trepca mines, the repository it, is said, of the
remains of tens of thousands of brutally murdered ethnic Albanian
Kosovars.
Certainly someone who could be responsible for the mass graves Bush is
chilled by and Cook remembers visiting.
But take apart the cairn of ready made phrases to see what lies below
and
you'll find little more than what Orwell said you'd find behind
prefabricated phrases -- pure wind. And little more than what was found
at
the bottom of the Trepca mines, once pathologists were dispatched to
excavate the site -- some rubble and a few scattered animal bones.
Nothing
more.
But that's not the only bit of nothingness that has been found.
Operation Horseshoe, the alleged Milosevic plan to ethnically cleanse
Kosovo, turned out to be a hoax.
The Racak massacre, the slaughter of some forty ethnic Albanian
civilians
by Serb security forces -- said to have provided the impetus for Nato to
bomb Yugoslavia -- looks, now, after the release of a Finnish forensic
pathology report, to have been faked by the KLA.
One hundred thousand Kosovars were said to have been killed by
Milosevic's
forces, a number later revised downward to 10,000, and then, after
pathologists rushed to Kosovo at the end of Nato's 78-day air war ready
to
inspect dozens of alleged mass graves, was revised downward further
still,
when pathologists failed to uncover what Nato darkly warned the world
they'd find. Fewer than 2,000 autopsies were performed. Bodies were
found
buried alone or in pairs -- not in the mass graves Cook says he visited
or
Bush remembers chilling images of. Whether the corpses were Serb or
Albanian, indeed whether they met their deaths at the hands of Serb
security forces or KLA guerillas, was never certain.
What then are we to make of this? Most of the atrocities Milosevic stood
initially accused of turn out never to have happened, which may be why
the
first press reports of Milosevic's arrest steered clear of the specifics
of
the reasons for his apprehension, preferring instead Orwell's
prefabricated
phrases. Being a strongman, ruthless and iron-fisted, seemed reason
enough
for his arrest. About as concrete as anyone got was in attributing "the
worst European wars since the Nazis" to Milosevic, an accusation that
could
only be made by turning a blind eye to what was truly one of the worst
post
World War II European wars -- the Nato air strikes on Yugoslavia. And it
was hardly Milosevic who initiated that war, although I suppose, in some
perverted twist of logic it could be said that Milosevic was
responsible,
in the same way that a kid who refuses to relinquish his lunch money to
the
school yard bully is responsible for his own bloodied nose.
Largely unreported is that Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia was precipitated
by
Milosevic's refusal to allow Nato to occupy the entire country -- one of
the ultimata Nato issued at Rambouilett. Milosevic was ready to agree to
a
UN force in Kosovo, something, it will be recalled, Nato finally agreed
to,
but only after turning the country into a polluted desert.
Nato's pummelling of Yugoslavia, with its toll of hundreds, if not
thousands of civilians killed, and many more thousands injured,
apparently
doesn't count as one of the worst European wars since the Nazis, though
it
might be recalled that before Nato it was the Nazis who last bombed
Yugoslavia.
The flexing of Nato's military muscle was called a humanitarian
intervention, not a war, and therefore doesn't count. Goebbels would
have
admired the audacity. The euphemistic evasion "humanitarian
intervention"
calls to mind the Fuggs' 1966 underground hit, Kill for Peace.
Kill, it will give you the mental ease
Kill it will give you a big release
Kill, kill, kill for peace.
It also calls to mind Orwell's charge that political language is
designed
to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
Human Rights Watch says that Nato bombs killed 500 civilians.
The total body count for which Milosevic stands indicted on war crimes
is
391, not 100,000 and not 10,000. Less than the number of Yugoslav
civilians
killed by a humanitarian Nato. That's never mentioned by the media.
And all of the incidents cited in the indictment against Milosevic but
one
-- the phoney Racak incident -- happened after Nato's bombs started
their
ugly exercise of ushering Serb civilians to an early grave or to a life
of
permanent disability. Which is curious, because Nato said it needed to
bomb
Yugoslavia to stop Serb atrocities.
So what exactly is George W. Bush talking about when he mentions the
chilling images of mass graves? And exactly what graves did Robin Cook
visit anyway?
Chilling images of mass killing, indeed, are something we should never
forget. The near genocide of the East Timorese by Indonesia, which went
on
for decades under the eyes of successive US administrations; the burning
of
Kurd villages by Turkish security forces, both in Turkey, and across its
border, in Northern Iraq, where American and British patrols supposedly
fly
to protect the Kurd minority -- except when Turkish jet fighters loaded
with bombs, generously paid for by US military aid, are razing Kurd
villages; Colombian peasants driven from their homes and murdered by
death
squads linked to the Colombian military the US has given $1.3 billion
to;
the hundreds of Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defence Forces, and
the
thousands injured and permanently disabled, in the latest intifada;
these
are chilling images we should begin to notice, much less never forget.
And what of the chilling images of thousands of Iraqi children dying
every
month because of the US-led sanctions regime, or Serb hospitals,
schools,
bridges, factories, destroyed by Nato bombs -- can they be forgotten?
Nor should we overlook -- or forget -- the complicity of the press in
lending the appearance of solidity to the emptiness of the words of the
likes of Bush and Cook, a press which boasts of being free and
independent,
yet allows itself to be spoon-fed mendacious drivel which it neither
questions nor parses.
And we shouldn't forget the troubling lies that roll so easily off the
tongues of Nato leaders -- about massacres that didn't happen, and
master
plans for ethnic cleansing that never existed, and death tolls that are
wildly exaggerated.
Mr. Steve Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa,
Canada.
Source: Antiwar.com
---
STATEMENT OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF SERBIA
Belgrade, April 4, 2001
Socialist Party of Serbia has requested the competent authorities that
Party President Slobodan Milosevic is released from detention and given
possibility to legally defend himself free. Slobodan Milosevic is symbol
of
defending dignity of Serbian nation, national and state interests as
well
as of cooperation based on equality with all countries and peoples.
Milosevic had organized and united citizens of Yugoslavia in resisting
NATO
armed aggression which provoked thousands of human victims, destruction
of
the country and which led Balkans, Europe and whole world the heritage
of
unpredictable lasting dangers. Let nobody stay with illusions that
history
and truth can be changed by detaining Slobodan Milosevic.
Socialist Party of Serbia is grateful to numerous friendly parties,
statesmen and world public personalities, who condemned detention of
Slobodan Milosevic as an attempt to amnesty those who have been
destroying
Yugoslavia and committing genocide over Serbian nation and blame victims
of
the crimes - defenders of legitimate interests of Yugoslavia and Serbian
people.
Socialist Party of Serbia urges the competent state authorities to
prevent
Democratic Party from being headquarters for public lynches,
orchestration
of political trials and ransom detention of political opponents.
The new DOS authorities succeed in only one election promise: freeing
from
jails Albanian terrorists and filing jails with Serbian patriots. These
authorities having no national and state policy, neglecting dignity and
interest of Serbia - have accepted to negotiate with Albanian terrorists
about Serbian territories in Southern Serbia, thus offering time to
terrorists to amass, build fortifications from which they kill every day
Serbian citizens, policemen and soldiers. Separatism program of DOS
leaders
in Vojvodina and Raska region is publicly destroying Serbian state as
the
only pillar of the whole Serbian nation and all citizens of Serbia.
In these conditions the Socialist Party of Serbia will continue to
resolutely defend interest of Serbia and its citizens, safeguarding
Yugoslavia as the Balkans and European state, the most important factor
of
peace, stability and cooperation based on equality in the region.
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals)
http://www.24casa.co.yu/ (the only free daily newspaper in Yugoslavia)
---
SPS ON MILUTINOVIC RESIGNATION
Belgrade, April 4, 2001
President of the Republic of Serbia Milan Milutinovic submitted
yesterday
his resignation from the posts of vice-chairman and of the member of
Head
Committee of the Socialist Party of Serbia, the principal opposition
party
on both - Serbian and Federal levels. His letter to the Head Committee
followed only a day after the President of the Party Slobodan Milosevic
was
put in detention by Serbian authorities. Milutinovic who has acquired
extraordinary political carrier being one of the closest friends of
Milosevic and who won Serbian presidential elections as the candidate of
Socialist Party, has kept him self completely away from public political
life ever since Democratic opposition took power in Yugoslavia and in
Serbia towards the end of last year.
Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Serbia has issued today a
statement reacting to complaints of Mr. Milutinovic that he has been
asked
in various occasions to act beyond his powers. The statement says that
Socialist Party has been expecting President Milutinovic to publicly
condemn escalation of Albanian terrorism in Kosovo and Metohija and
southern districts of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja as it is his
principal duty to defend peace, stability, integrity of the Republic and
human rights of all citizens. He has been asked to visit those regions,
the
same way as many other less competent officials have been doing.
The statement confirms that Milutinovic has been urged by his Party
colleagues to use his constitutional powers and refrain from signing
certain laws considered by the Party to be contrary to the interest of
the
Republic, such as Amnesty law and law on abolishing the Law on
privatization. He was also asked to amnesty Dragoljub Milanovic, former
director of the state television (RTS), who was accused and detained two
months ago under accusation of being responsible for the death of
sixteen
RTS employees, who were killed by NATO bomb on April 23, 1999.
All these expectations and initiatives of Socialist Party of Serbia have
been ignored by Mr. Milutinovic.
The Socialist Party of Serbia has strongly criticized Milutinovic's
move,
reminding him that he has never been dissatisfied while exploiting the
Party and friendship with Milosevic for very fast and privilege
rendering
rising-up to the top of the power - first Ambassador to Athens, then
Minister of Foreign Affairs and finally President of Serbia.
Milutinovic's resignation will soon be considered by the Head Committee
of
the Party.
---
http://serbianunity.net/index.html
Serbian Unity Congress
MARCH 24th 1999
REMEMBER KOSOVO
March 24, 1999 - a day that will live in infamy. On
that day, NATO fired the opening shots of what was to
be a 78-day war against Yugoslavia. In the following
eleven weeks, thousands of people were killed as
civilian infrastructure was systematically targeted by
NATO's air force. Using forbidden and toxic weapons,
such as cluster bombs and depleted uranium rounds,
NATO hit marketplaces and hospitals, oil refineries,
the power grid, chemical plants, bridges, apartment
buildings, passenger trains, refugee columns and
camps, two television stations, and an embassy of a
neutral foreign country.
Justifications for the attack were alleged Serb
atrocities against Albanian population in Kosovo,
which NATO claimed were part of a systematic plan of
ethnic cleansing. Some US officials claimed that
100,000 Albanians were murdered. The world press
agreed on 10,000. Two years later, these accusations
have been proven false. There was no massacre of
civilians at the village of Racak. There was no
"Operation Horseshoe." There was no crematorium in the
Trepca mines. There were no death camps. There were no
mass graves. There was no genocide.
Investigators of the International Criminal Tribunal
found less than three thousand dead, in individual
graves, without disclosing the manner of death or even
the ethnicity of the exhumed.
In the end, Yugoslavia accepted NATO's temporary
control of Kosovo in exchange for guarantees of safety
for all its citizens in the province. Within two
months of NATO's entry, most non-Albanians had been
expelled from the province at gunpoint, their homes
burned, looted or expropriated by the KLA, a militant
organization trained and equipped by the United States
and other NATO members. One American officer, a
veteran of World War Two, Korea and Viet Nam,
described them as "one of the most cutthroat gangs of
terrorists in the world."
But the KLA's terror did not stop there. Over a
hundred Orthodox churches were dynamited, torched or
otherwise demolished. Hundreds of non-Albanians were
brutally murdered, on the streets, in their offices,
in their fields, or in buses under NATO's armed
escort. Over 1800 are missing. Kosovo's remaining
non-Albanians - Serbs, Roma, Jews, Turks, Bosniaks and
Gorani - live in ghettos, surrounded by barbed-wire
fences and armed guards. Anyone speaking Serbian on
the street risks being murdered, even UN employees.
Kosovo is ruled by violence and terror, despite the
presence of almost 40,000 NATO troops, about 5000 of
which are Americans.
Furthermore, NATO trained some KLA members for further
attacks on Serbs. These Albanians are currently
occupying villages in Serbia's Presevo valley, and
attacking the second largest city in Macedonia - the
same country that generously gave refuge to thousands
of Albanians trying to escape the bombing and the war
in Kosovo. Today's Balkans is still feeling the
consequences of what started on March 24, 1999.
By attacking Yugoslavia, NATO violated the UN Charter,
its own Charter, the Geneva Convention, the Helsinki
Final Act and a series of other conventions and
agreements its members had signed. Its bombs destroyed
the rule of law and the international order NATO
claimed to have been defending.
On this day, Serbs and their friends across the world
will light candles and say prayers in memory of NATO's
victims - both the people, and the peace, that the
bombs of March 24 so brutally killed.
March 24, 2001
Serbian Unity Congress
Washington, DC
---
Subject: from chris soda
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 08:27:33 -0500
From: Chris Soda <chriss12@...>
Open letter to Serbian churches and organizations in Canada
Thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts at this solemn
occasion. This weekend marks the
second anniversary of our government's murder of innocent people in
Yugoslavia. As a Canadian citizen born
and raised in this country I and my family have been lucky enough to
have never suffered from a foreign
military aggression. Consequently, I didn't have a personal common
history nor a personal common
experience with many of you until two years ago; now, we all live
together in a country whose government has
broken our laws and stolen our money to murder both the helpless and the
honourable.
We all read the same lies here in our newspapers, listened to the same
lies on radio. We still do.
We all waited for the same Russian cavalry which never arrived.
Who amongst you gathered here today didn't watch CNN ask, "What's wrong
with our society?" as children
shot each other at Columbine High School- while it reported the
justification of adults from the same country
bombing children in high schools overseas?
I'm still waiting for an answer as to how directing a cluster bomb near
a World Heritage Site or a marketplace
or a bus station helps to save the lives of innocent people hundreds of
miles away who are running from
those same types of bombs- all dropped by the same so-called
'humanitarians'. I'm still waiting for an answer
as to how yesterday's terrorists who killed the innocent became Canadian
allies, freedom fighters, and the
police force of Kosovo all wrapped into one- while still killing the
innocent even as you are gathered here
today.
I'm asking myself how a government that agrees to autonomy during
meetings at Rambouillet can be
accused of plotting something called "Operation Horseshoe" at the same
time. I'm wondering how
Canadians could murder the children of a country that at the same place
and at the same time just asked our
country if they could join their NATO alliance. I'm wondering about why
anyone anywhere would believe
accusations of this so-called 'ethnic cleansing' coming from a country
that not that long ago systematically
deployed racial segregation. And I'm wondering how our country can allow
'language laws'.
And it puzzles me how both the US and Canada can point the finger at
anyone after forcing their own natives
onto reservations. I also wonder how a 'dictatorship' using 'repressive'
means can guarantee education,
health, and employment in over twenty languages to those it is
'repressing'- or how a 'human rights violator'
somehow allows the schools, hospitals, and churches of those it is
'ethnically cleansing' to remain intact; in
fact, the 'violating' state even pays for most of it.
I wonder how so-called 'ethnic cleansing' involves riding an
air-conditioned bus to safety, escorted by none
other than what our government calls the 'Serb aggressors'.
I wonder how defending your country constitutes 'aggression'. I wonder
how those who paid for and
perpetrated the real aggression are known as 'peacekeepers'.
Since our beloved CBC found the time and resources to produce an
award-winning documentary of a KLA
woman whose sister was 'murdered by the Serbs', I'm wondering two
things: why this sister turned up alive
and well and unharmed- but the CBC still kept their award anyway; and
secondly, why couldn't this same
CBC find the time and resources to interview and film some of the many
hundreds of thousands of Muslims
who fled north from Kosovo- to Belgrade, which welcomed them with open
arms- for safety during what we
are still being told was a 'humanitarian intervention' to save
them..........................from Belgrade.
I'm puzzled by the silence of the Globe and Mails and National Posts of
Canada who watch as Agim Ceku
first tries to murder Canadians in Croatia, then is protected by
Canadians in Kosovo as the new police chief.
I'm puzzled as to why none of our mainstream media comment as to why the
Germans have to force back to
Kosovo so-called 'victims of the Serbs' long after these 'Serb
aggressors' have left.
There are also two other things we have in common now. We have many
questions that we ask of the
bombers, and we have no truthful answers from any of them.
Try to get a truthful answer from Canadian child killers and their
superiors by asking how someone who
suffered tuberculosis and is sheltered, fed, and cared for by Serbs
suddenly becomes 'a victim of Serb death
camps' photographed by trickery to appear to be imprisoned behind barbed
wire- followed shortly after by
NATO bombings of innocent people. Try to get a truthful answer from the
cripplers of ordinary hard-working,
law-abiding people by asking how "a massacre of innocent civilians at
Racak, forced to kneel in the mud and
beg for their lives" really means gunpowder residue on the hands of
armed insurrectionists shot while firing
weapons at the police- after refusing to surrender.
Then ask how this "massacre" was attended by film crews invited to watch
by "the perpetrators of this
massacre" before the "massacre" even took place - followed shortly
thereafter by yet another NATO bombing
of innocent people.
Ask anyone of our 'independant' news media or anyone of our country's
political leaders from any of our
political parties in the House of Commons how a regularly-scheduled
passenger train is bombed twice within
minutes by "accident"- the first time to cripple the machine, the second
time to kill the defenceless people
trapped inside- when this "accident" involves manually using a joystick
to divert missiles AWAY from the
unoccupied part of a bridge and TOWARDS the target.
We all know this particular event was also filmed- and shown to us at
three times normal speed, also by
"accident" according to our government's real spokesmen: Jamie Shea,
Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Madeleine
Albright (herself saved by Serbs, the very same people whose friends and
relatives she orders murdered
years later) and the other savages in NATO.
The questions are innumerable but all of them have only one answer. The
same answer. This answer can be
found at a press conference given by this same Jamie Shea in April/99,
in which he congratulates his fellow
NATO personnel for "...another very effective day of operations..."
Less than 24 hours earlier, NATO had just murdered hundreds of ordinary
people in and around Korisa-
ordinary people moving in different groups and in different directions.
Ordinary people in Yugoslavia who
were moving to begin with because hours earlier NATO had bombed them out
of their homes in what
everyone tells us was an example of "protection" from the Serbs who had
defended them while they were still
in their homes.
That answers any of my questions, and any of yours I'm sure. For me, it
answers how 19 countries can share
the technology to sit on the edge of outer space and read a license
plate miles below, and yet tell us that they
can't read the correct address of an embassy listed in a phone book an
inch away from their faces. It
answers how a TV station can be bombed because they tell us it's
reporters are a propaganda machine of
Milosevic, while the same types of bombers sit together with the
reporters at CNN and invite an elected
Yugoslav Member of Parliament to an interview in that same TV station-
at the exact time the station is
scheduled to be bombed- by those who are sitting at those same desks at
CNN.
We all know what has happened here. We all know that there is no shame
amongst the plotters of murder,
theft, and deception. We all know that I'm speaking of the highest
elected officials of this country. We all know
who elected them and we all know most of those don't bear any shame
either.
The best thing we can do is to keep asking the questions for which we
already know the answers to; only by
embarassing the electors can we hope to unsettle the elected. Ask your
police chiefs and your police officers
why those who fought cold-blooded murderers and drug traffickers are
considered 'criminals' by those whom
the same police chiefs and their officers are sworn to protect. Ask the
representatives of all religious
denominations in this country why their leaders have not come out with
ongoing, direct statements
condemning the targeting of innocents. Ask your school boards why they
can't find the will to author a joint
statement condemning the theft of taxpayer dollars that should have been
used for education here, rather than
being stolen and then used for the destruction of buildings of learning
in Yugoslavia. Ask your medical boards
and the federal Health Ministry why money could not be found by the
Canadian federal government to keep
hospitals open in this country, while at the same time revenue was
stolen to finance the bombing of hospitals
overseas.
Put them all on the spot. Ask your elected Members of Parliament why
they have always been silent on these
issues except to patronize us and insult our intelligence with
propaganda. Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis may
prove to be an exception if approached with written questions in this
regard- he's the only one I've found who
(once, and I believe it was in the House of Commons, May 10/99) decried
this government's targeting of
civilians during those 78 days of murder.
Commemoration of the dead means remembering the honourable, the
innocent, and the perpetrators. Let's
remember-and remind- the guilty with our questions.
Ask these same federal MPs what their definition of a 'two-tier' health
system means in practice. Ask them
why their 'two-tier' actions have supported one level of health safety
here, and one level of health destruction
elsewhere.
Ask your Globe and Mails and your National Posts and your local papers
how they can call something
'collateral damage' when it is planned many years ahead of time, and how
this 'collateral damage' is caused
by repeatedly and deliberately circling over a target before firing.
Call your CBC office and inquire as to when they plan to do an
'exclusive interview' with the Spanish Air
Force pilot who told us early on in these Canadian-sponsored atrocities
in Yugoslavia that the ordinary
people were the target from Day One.
And ask all of these people this: if our government embarked on such a
noble cause, then why is it that they
still have to keep lying to us?
Thank you again for your time today. I hope to meet some of you one day
and shake the hands of those with
such spirit and determination.
Sincerely, Chris Soda
---
WORLDNETDAILY, Saturday, February 10, 2001
How the New World Order is 'helping' Serbia
By Aleksandar Pavic
(C) 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
The way things are going, it seems that it's just a matter
of time
before Bill Clinton, the man who ordered the NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia
in 1999 will come to Belgrade offering "help." For, this
past week, the
country was a positive place of pilgrimage for all those
who had
previously contributed to its ruin in one way or another.
It started a week ago when U.S. Senators Biden and McCain
led a
delegation of senators and representatives to Belgrade to
wave the
carrot and stick. Back in 1999, Biden was one of the
louder proponents
of arming the Albanian KLA guerilla force fighting the
Serb population
and police in Kosovo - the same force that effectively
cleared the
region of its Serb population, in the wake of the bombing,
and went on
to transform Kosovo into the main European center of drug
smuggling,
white slavery and prostitution. John McCain, on the other
hand, was a
fierce advocate of launching a ground invasion of
Yugoslavia when the
bombing failed to give the expected "results."
Now, these two gentlemen have come humbly to Belgrade to
offer to do
their part so that Yugoslavia would recover a fraction of
a percent of
the estimated damage from the bombing and the resulting
after effects --
but not so humbly as to make the offer unconditional. No,
the generous
gift of $100 million was conditioned on the country's
leadership
agreeing to turn over ex-president Slobodan Milosevic to
the Hague "war
crimes tribunal." Thus, one man who openly called for the
arming of a
guerilla insurgency inside a sovereign country -- who
openly called for
an invasion of that same sovereign country without even a
formal
declaration of war -- came to that country asking for
"international
justice" to be satisfied.
At the beginning of the week, a second great "helper"
appeared on the
scene a little further south -- in the Presevo and
Bujanovac region of
Serbia -- where the Kosovo Albanians "disarmed" by the
50,000-strong
NATO-led force are trying to import the virtues of the
newly
"democratized" Kosovo to the south of Serbia by starting a
brand new
guerilla insurgency. The man in question was U.S. diplomat
James Pardew,
now "U.S. Special Envoy to the Balkans," but a man far
better known for
running the "arm-and-train" program in neighboring Bosnia
(formerly a
part of Yugoslavia) during that country's civil war. Under
this program,
U.S. arms and training were used to "level the playing
field" in that
country by arming the Bosnian Muslims and Croats until
they eventually
became twice as well-armed as the Bosnian Serbs. Now,
Pardew's sense of
sportsmanship was set on firmer legal ground than was
Biden's. For,
although the Bosnian Croats and Muslims also had their
beginnings as
illegal secessionist paramilitary units within a sovereign
country, by
the time Pardew came on the scene, Bosnia had already been
recognized as
a newly sovereign country by the "international
community." (That's the
way things are done according to international law
nowadays. As soon as
recognition came in the spring of 1992, the Yugoslav Army
troops on the
territory of Bosnia all of a sudden became the
"aggressors," while
yesterday's illegal guerillas became a legitimate army
worthy of Western
support and arms.)
Anyway, Mr. Pardew was in the south of Serbia offering his
good offices
at the beginning of the week. He publicly called for the
KLA-backed
insurgents to "seriously consider" the Serbian
government's call for a
peaceful settlement of the problem. Coincidentally or not,
a couple of
days later came a statement from NATO and U.S. Admiral
Ellis, saying
that the "international community" should appoint some
sort of a "Peace
Minister" to mediate between the legally-elected
government of Serbia
and the illegal guerilla force. This possibly shed light
on the "Special
Envoy's" earlier visit: to help the negotiations along,
could Mr. Pardew
once again do something to "level the playing field?"
Then on Thursday, the influx of peace pilgrims reached its
height when
the present E.U. Commissioner for Security, Javier Solana,
made his way
to Belgrade. Before his present position, Solana held the
post of NATO's
Secretary-General, which made him the formal number one
during that
military organization's illegal bombing campaign of
Yugoslavia. But now
he had come to "help." He wouldn't have come if he didn't
think he could
help, he said, adding that he was very happy to be in
Belgrade and that
the visit personally meant a great deal to him. After
Solana, nothing
less than Bill Clinton will do -- except, perhaps, for
Madeleine
Albright.
It would be too easy to say that these were cases of
criminals returning
to the scene of the crime. It has more to do with the
further
development of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" -- evil
that has
become so banal as to become unrecognizable to many of its
bearers. So
unrecognizable, in fact, that they have started seeing it
as something
that is, in fact, good. "Leveling the playing field,"
"arming the
oppressed," "bombing to prevent (unproven) genocide,"
demanding
"international justice." It is under these abstract,
noble-on-the-surface battle-cries that the Devil is
currently doing his
finest work.
It is no surprise that Javier Solana was once a fierce
left-wing
opponent of NATO, as was Joschka Fisher, the current
German Defense
Minister and another supporter of the NATO bombing. In
their youthful
projections of heaven-on-earth, NATO was something evil,
something
militaristic that openly contradicted the ideals of their
own,
peace-and-flower generation. Having come to positions of
substantial
political power -- where they could actually help mold the
ideal world
with their own hands -- the raw military power of NATO had
become their
instrument for bringing good and righting the world's
wrongs. And, of
course, in this way, anything and everything can be
justified. Even
NATO's aggressive march eastward can be portrayed as the
advancement of
the benefits of Western democracy. The hunger to gain
control of natural
resources can also be seen as a way to bring "prosperity"
to previously
poor regions.
Of course, not all the mavens of intervention and carriers
of the New
World Order's institutionalized cynicism are secularized
do-gooders
blinded by their own hubris and lack of humility. What is
sad is that
they are the best of the bunch and that they actually
believe many of
the things that come out of their mouths.
Aleksandar Pavic in Belgrade has covered Yugoslavia's
historic election
and its dramatic aftermath for WorldNetDaily.com.
---
The url for this article
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/djindjic.htm
'These Djindjic people are brown shirts!'
An Interview with a Serbian political activist, by Jared Israel
www.tenc.net
[Emperor's Clothes]
The following interview took place several days after the October 5 coup
in Belgrade. The person interviewed has been a member of the Serbian
Radical party, a nationalist group. When I conducted the interview, I
had the impression she was still a member but she has informed me that
now she is in no party.
**
Jared: What's going on?
Gordana: Some very aggressive people from the opposition are grabbing
everything around here, in particular taking the institutions that have
some money, for instance the telecommunications company. They are
scaring people and beating people.
They want to destroy the results of previous elections by declaring that
new elections have to be held for the Serbian Parliament. Elections are
not supposed to be held for a year but they want them this fall. That
would mean the Serbian people would lose their representatives because
the elections would be held in an impossible situation. Whole groups of
political parties have no access to media. In the past we had many
viewpoints because we had government media and even more widespread was
various shades of opposition media. Now only one view. And there is day
to day terrorizing of people. Mr. Djindjic hopes that people will be too
scared to run as candidates from those parties which stand in his way.
Jared: You say there is "day to day terrorizing"?.
Gordana: Take this example. A friend of mine is intellectual. Every time
her phone rings she gets a threat from the other side. They stop her car
in traffic to threaten her, and so on. And this is a professional woman,
the daughter of a well-known professor. Even these people who are well
known are subject to threats. Another such woman, a reporter, visits me,
and she is afraid to go home alone and stays over - and this is in
Belgrade! Can you imagine how the common people feel? They are even more
afraid. I was on a bus full of tired, worried working people and one of
these Otpor types got on and demanded that the bus stands still and he
says: "Listen! We have the power now and you will see what we do!"
Jared: So you think that people will be afraid to vote for the Socialist
or Radical parties or other parties that oppose the coup?
Gordana: No, I think that people may be afraid to run as candidates for
these parties.
The Djindjic people took over all the radio stations and TV stations and
newspapers. On TV now you can't see even the regular old shows. It is
propaganda. The old ladies in Serbia like to watch soap operas from
South America but now they can't do that. You see they are poor and they
have such a hard life and now they don't have even this small pleasure.
Instead we have to watch stupid American government lies, even about the
wars in Bosnia and Croatia and so on. They have programs that blame the
Serbs, for everything. Can you believe this? Do they think we are
morons, not to know our own history. But the purpose here is also a kind
of terror, to break the spirit. To make people feel hope is lost.
Today they had a show on the television telling lies about Dubrovnik,
showing pictures to prove it was burned down in 1991 by the Yugoslav
army. But Dubrovnik has all the old buildings in perfect condition and I
know this because friends have been back to see the town, and it was not
damaged.
And these movies they now show to prove to us that the Serbs were
responsible for the wars this past decade. Why? Did we try to secede?
Doesn't Yugoslavia have a right to exist? .Would other countries allow
secessionists and foreign factors to destroy their nation? I have never
seen such lies. Can you imagine, having a situation where you can't
stand to watch the TV or read the papers.
Jared: I'm afraid I can imagine. What we mainly do on Emperor's Clothes
is expose lies. They create 'em faster than we can expose them. All I do
is expose fiction.
Gordana: Today is 1941 in Yugoslavia. If there are people who don't
know, well, they will know it very soon. Even some people I spoke to who
were supporting the DOS now see this violence that is going on and they
say, "These Djindjic people are brown shirts."
[Brown shirts is a term for Fascists or Nazi's - E-C]
***
Afterthoughts - The lies they now tell in Serbia
I am writing a book on Western media lies about Yugoslavia. As part of
the research, I've read news reports written in 1991 about Dubrovnik. As
Gordana says, the Western claim is that the Yugoslavs (read: Serbs)
burned down the priceless Old City. This lie was broadcast in the
Western mass media in order to prove the Serbs were ruthless monsters.
When the first stories broke describing the (in fact fictitious) burning
of the Old City, they produced popular anti-Serb response. So, wanting
to make the most of a good thing, the controllers of the media has the
lie repeated.
But there is only so much mileage you can get from a single burning; so
they burned it down several times.
The first time Dubrovnik was fictitiously burned down, a decent interval
was allowed, whereupon it was fictitiously burned to the ground a second
time, and then a third, and so on. Dubrovnik is Burning, Redux.
The London "Independent" reported that Dubrovnik was burned to the
ground no less than five times over a four months period. These reports
were mostly signed by one Phil Davison.
Despite multiple burnings, Prof. Peter Maher, a knowledgeable witness,
shot a film of the Old City in March, 1992. Dubrovnik was still
standing, untouched by Yugoslav shells. It remains a prime tourist
attraction.
(I have seen the film.)
So what DID happen in Dubrovnik in 1991? There was indeed fighting. But
the Yugoslav Army deliberately avoided shelling the Old City. (This is
not surprising because, after all, they viewed it as a Yugoslav
treasure!)
Actually it was the secessionists who deliberately put Old Dubrovnik at
risk, trying to trick Yugoslav loyalist forces into shelling it. In this
they failed, so the media made it up.
Here is the basic sequence of events.
Croatian secessionist troops attacked Yugoslav Army barracks near
Dubrovnik. The Yugoslav Army gave chase. The secessionists retreated
behind the old city digging in areas dangerously close to hotels in
which they had housed refugees from the fighting . In a moment of
candor, Phil Davison, the reporter from the British "Independent" who
holds the record for reporting total destructions of Dubrovnik the most
times, admitted that by setting up near the hotels, the secessionist
army virtually guaranteed that hotels would get hit:
"The Croats have set up a mortar close to our hotel, just as they have
next to hospitals and refugee centres. This may make us a target for the
army. Sooner or later, they are going to lay a couple of rounds on us.
The army is zapping Lokrum island, 300 yards from my hotel. Mortars,
machineguns, ack-ack guns. It is deafening. A machinegun barrage rattles
my windows. It is just a matter of time."
(The 'Independent' November 17, 1991)
Other than this single, honest report, the Western media was full of
stories about how the heartless Yugoslav Army was shelling hotels that
housed refugees.
Did the secessionists set up their positions behind the Old City and
near hotels in order to get the Yugoslav Army and Navy to shell the Old
City and the hotels and thus provide ammunition for anti-Yugoslav
propaganda? Common sense suggests they did. And more than common sense:
consider the following, which appeared in only two English language
newspapers:
"Women And Children Barred From Leaving Croatian Town
"The six-member Dubrovnik crisis committee decided six days ago that the
defense of this coastal Adriatic city required the presence of all the
remaining women and children. UNICEF was informed of the decree three
days ago, and on Tuesday, it was first implemented when 200 people were
prevented from leaving the city on a UNICEF relief vessel that had
brought supplies to the city.
"First, he said, if the women and children stay, it will mean that the
attacking army would be shooting at them and not just at a walled city.
"Second, he said, their presence might force the army to hesitate before
shooting.
"Third, if there is an attack, the international public reaction to such
an attack would be a public-relations coup for Croatia, which has been
trying desperately for months to get diplomatic and military support
from the West…
"Only 100 of 300 people scheduled to leave on a ship Tuesday were
allowed to depart, and UNICEF was told by Dubrovnik officials that no
one else would be able to leave."(My emphasis, 'The Orange County
Register,' December 5, 1991.)
Note that the story was not covered by the 'N.Y.Times' .
***
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www.tenc.net
[Emperor's Clothes]
by Stephen Gowans
"We cannot and must not forget the chilling images of...mass graves
unearthed by UN investigators," said President George W. Bush, on the
occasion of Slobodan Milosevic's arrest over the weekend.
And as Milosevic was beginning his first day in a Belgrade jail, British
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook reminded us that he had visited some of the
mass graves himself.
One newspaper remarked, "[T]his is only the beginning of what could be a
long procedure leading to Mr. Milosevic's being tried for war crimes
committed two years ago in Kosovo, where an estimated 10,000 ethnic
Albanian civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands driven from
their
homes."
Images of mass graves are indeed chilling. But has anyone ever seen the
mass graves in Kosovo? Did Robin Cook really visit them? And were there
10,000 Albanian civilians killed in Kosovo?
If you want to be spectacularly misinformed, said author Henry Miller,
buy
a newspaper.
George Orwell, in his famous essay, Politics and the English Language,
complained that a lot of political writing consisted of gumming together
phrases like the sections of a prefabricated hen house, an easy way of
writing, he said, once you had the habit. Reach into a handy grab-bag of
weathered phrases, and you don't have to think critically about what
you're
writing. To journalists spoon fed copy by government sources, tacking
together ready made, prefabricated phrases and ideas is an easy way to
meet
deadlines without a lot of effort.
Dutifully reporting the words of political figures, without questioning
even the most conspicuous deviations from the truth, goes along way too
toward effortlessly filing copy.
Press coverage of Milosevic's arrest has been very much like the
building
of prefabricated hen houses. The words of Bush, Cook and former US
Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, are reported uncritically, while
Milosevic, just as uncritically, is denounced as a "tyrant,"
"cold-blooded
autocrat," "war-lord," "strongman," and "iron-fisted dictator."
He's also "terrifying," "ruthless," "brutal," "the mastermind of the
worst
European wars since the Nazis."
Altogether a bad egg. Certainly, someone who could exterminate 10,000
Albanians and have their corpses dumped into mass graves, say, at the
bottom of the infamous Trepca mines, the repository it, is said, of the
remains of tens of thousands of brutally murdered ethnic Albanian
Kosovars.
Certainly someone who could be responsible for the mass graves Bush is
chilled by and Cook remembers visiting.
But take apart the cairn of ready made phrases to see what lies below
and
you'll find little more than what Orwell said you'd find behind
prefabricated phrases -- pure wind. And little more than what was found
at
the bottom of the Trepca mines, once pathologists were dispatched to
excavate the site -- some rubble and a few scattered animal bones.
Nothing
more.
But that's not the only bit of nothingness that has been found.
Operation Horseshoe, the alleged Milosevic plan to ethnically cleanse
Kosovo, turned out to be a hoax.
The Racak massacre, the slaughter of some forty ethnic Albanian
civilians
by Serb security forces -- said to have provided the impetus for Nato to
bomb Yugoslavia -- looks, now, after the release of a Finnish forensic
pathology report, to have been faked by the KLA.
One hundred thousand Kosovars were said to have been killed by
Milosevic's
forces, a number later revised downward to 10,000, and then, after
pathologists rushed to Kosovo at the end of Nato's 78-day air war ready
to
inspect dozens of alleged mass graves, was revised downward further
still,
when pathologists failed to uncover what Nato darkly warned the world
they'd find. Fewer than 2,000 autopsies were performed. Bodies were
found
buried alone or in pairs -- not in the mass graves Cook says he visited
or
Bush remembers chilling images of. Whether the corpses were Serb or
Albanian, indeed whether they met their deaths at the hands of Serb
security forces or KLA guerillas, was never certain.
What then are we to make of this? Most of the atrocities Milosevic stood
initially accused of turn out never to have happened, which may be why
the
first press reports of Milosevic's arrest steered clear of the specifics
of
the reasons for his apprehension, preferring instead Orwell's
prefabricated
phrases. Being a strongman, ruthless and iron-fisted, seemed reason
enough
for his arrest. About as concrete as anyone got was in attributing "the
worst European wars since the Nazis" to Milosevic, an accusation that
could
only be made by turning a blind eye to what was truly one of the worst
post
World War II European wars -- the Nato air strikes on Yugoslavia. And it
was hardly Milosevic who initiated that war, although I suppose, in some
perverted twist of logic it could be said that Milosevic was
responsible,
in the same way that a kid who refuses to relinquish his lunch money to
the
school yard bully is responsible for his own bloodied nose.
Largely unreported is that Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia was precipitated
by
Milosevic's refusal to allow Nato to occupy the entire country -- one of
the ultimata Nato issued at Rambouilett. Milosevic was ready to agree to
a
UN force in Kosovo, something, it will be recalled, Nato finally agreed
to,
but only after turning the country into a polluted desert.
Nato's pummelling of Yugoslavia, with its toll of hundreds, if not
thousands of civilians killed, and many more thousands injured,
apparently
doesn't count as one of the worst European wars since the Nazis, though
it
might be recalled that before Nato it was the Nazis who last bombed
Yugoslavia.
The flexing of Nato's military muscle was called a humanitarian
intervention, not a war, and therefore doesn't count. Goebbels would
have
admired the audacity. The euphemistic evasion "humanitarian
intervention"
calls to mind the Fuggs' 1966 underground hit, Kill for Peace.
Kill, it will give you the mental ease
Kill it will give you a big release
Kill, kill, kill for peace.
It also calls to mind Orwell's charge that political language is
designed
to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
Human Rights Watch says that Nato bombs killed 500 civilians.
The total body count for which Milosevic stands indicted on war crimes
is
391, not 100,000 and not 10,000. Less than the number of Yugoslav
civilians
killed by a humanitarian Nato. That's never mentioned by the media.
And all of the incidents cited in the indictment against Milosevic but
one
-- the phoney Racak incident -- happened after Nato's bombs started
their
ugly exercise of ushering Serb civilians to an early grave or to a life
of
permanent disability. Which is curious, because Nato said it needed to
bomb
Yugoslavia to stop Serb atrocities.
So what exactly is George W. Bush talking about when he mentions the
chilling images of mass graves? And exactly what graves did Robin Cook
visit anyway?
Chilling images of mass killing, indeed, are something we should never
forget. The near genocide of the East Timorese by Indonesia, which went
on
for decades under the eyes of successive US administrations; the burning
of
Kurd villages by Turkish security forces, both in Turkey, and across its
border, in Northern Iraq, where American and British patrols supposedly
fly
to protect the Kurd minority -- except when Turkish jet fighters loaded
with bombs, generously paid for by US military aid, are razing Kurd
villages; Colombian peasants driven from their homes and murdered by
death
squads linked to the Colombian military the US has given $1.3 billion
to;
the hundreds of Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defence Forces, and
the
thousands injured and permanently disabled, in the latest intifada;
these
are chilling images we should begin to notice, much less never forget.
And what of the chilling images of thousands of Iraqi children dying
every
month because of the US-led sanctions regime, or Serb hospitals,
schools,
bridges, factories, destroyed by Nato bombs -- can they be forgotten?
Nor should we overlook -- or forget -- the complicity of the press in
lending the appearance of solidity to the emptiness of the words of the
likes of Bush and Cook, a press which boasts of being free and
independent,
yet allows itself to be spoon-fed mendacious drivel which it neither
questions nor parses.
And we shouldn't forget the troubling lies that roll so easily off the
tongues of Nato leaders -- about massacres that didn't happen, and
master
plans for ethnic cleansing that never existed, and death tolls that are
wildly exaggerated.
Mr. Steve Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa,
Canada.
Source: Antiwar.com
---
STATEMENT OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF SERBIA
Belgrade, April 4, 2001
Socialist Party of Serbia has requested the competent authorities that
Party President Slobodan Milosevic is released from detention and given
possibility to legally defend himself free. Slobodan Milosevic is symbol
of
defending dignity of Serbian nation, national and state interests as
well
as of cooperation based on equality with all countries and peoples.
Milosevic had organized and united citizens of Yugoslavia in resisting
NATO
armed aggression which provoked thousands of human victims, destruction
of
the country and which led Balkans, Europe and whole world the heritage
of
unpredictable lasting dangers. Let nobody stay with illusions that
history
and truth can be changed by detaining Slobodan Milosevic.
Socialist Party of Serbia is grateful to numerous friendly parties,
statesmen and world public personalities, who condemned detention of
Slobodan Milosevic as an attempt to amnesty those who have been
destroying
Yugoslavia and committing genocide over Serbian nation and blame victims
of
the crimes - defenders of legitimate interests of Yugoslavia and Serbian
people.
Socialist Party of Serbia urges the competent state authorities to
prevent
Democratic Party from being headquarters for public lynches,
orchestration
of political trials and ransom detention of political opponents.
The new DOS authorities succeed in only one election promise: freeing
from
jails Albanian terrorists and filing jails with Serbian patriots. These
authorities having no national and state policy, neglecting dignity and
interest of Serbia - have accepted to negotiate with Albanian terrorists
about Serbian territories in Southern Serbia, thus offering time to
terrorists to amass, build fortifications from which they kill every day
Serbian citizens, policemen and soldiers. Separatism program of DOS
leaders
in Vojvodina and Raska region is publicly destroying Serbian state as
the
only pillar of the whole Serbian nation and all citizens of Serbia.
In these conditions the Socialist Party of Serbia will continue to
resolutely defend interest of Serbia and its citizens, safeguarding
Yugoslavia as the Balkans and European state, the most important factor
of
peace, stability and cooperation based on equality in the region.
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals)
http://www.24casa.co.yu/ (the only free daily newspaper in Yugoslavia)
---
SPS ON MILUTINOVIC RESIGNATION
Belgrade, April 4, 2001
President of the Republic of Serbia Milan Milutinovic submitted
yesterday
his resignation from the posts of vice-chairman and of the member of
Head
Committee of the Socialist Party of Serbia, the principal opposition
party
on both - Serbian and Federal levels. His letter to the Head Committee
followed only a day after the President of the Party Slobodan Milosevic
was
put in detention by Serbian authorities. Milutinovic who has acquired
extraordinary political carrier being one of the closest friends of
Milosevic and who won Serbian presidential elections as the candidate of
Socialist Party, has kept him self completely away from public political
life ever since Democratic opposition took power in Yugoslavia and in
Serbia towards the end of last year.
Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Serbia has issued today a
statement reacting to complaints of Mr. Milutinovic that he has been
asked
in various occasions to act beyond his powers. The statement says that
Socialist Party has been expecting President Milutinovic to publicly
condemn escalation of Albanian terrorism in Kosovo and Metohija and
southern districts of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja as it is his
principal duty to defend peace, stability, integrity of the Republic and
human rights of all citizens. He has been asked to visit those regions,
the
same way as many other less competent officials have been doing.
The statement confirms that Milutinovic has been urged by his Party
colleagues to use his constitutional powers and refrain from signing
certain laws considered by the Party to be contrary to the interest of
the
Republic, such as Amnesty law and law on abolishing the Law on
privatization. He was also asked to amnesty Dragoljub Milanovic, former
director of the state television (RTS), who was accused and detained two
months ago under accusation of being responsible for the death of
sixteen
RTS employees, who were killed by NATO bomb on April 23, 1999.
All these expectations and initiatives of Socialist Party of Serbia have
been ignored by Mr. Milutinovic.
The Socialist Party of Serbia has strongly criticized Milutinovic's
move,
reminding him that he has never been dissatisfied while exploiting the
Party and friendship with Milosevic for very fast and privilege
rendering
rising-up to the top of the power - first Ambassador to Athens, then
Minister of Foreign Affairs and finally President of Serbia.
Milutinovic's resignation will soon be considered by the Head Committee
of
the Party.
---
http://serbianunity.net/index.html
Serbian Unity Congress
MARCH 24th 1999
REMEMBER KOSOVO
March 24, 1999 - a day that will live in infamy. On
that day, NATO fired the opening shots of what was to
be a 78-day war against Yugoslavia. In the following
eleven weeks, thousands of people were killed as
civilian infrastructure was systematically targeted by
NATO's air force. Using forbidden and toxic weapons,
such as cluster bombs and depleted uranium rounds,
NATO hit marketplaces and hospitals, oil refineries,
the power grid, chemical plants, bridges, apartment
buildings, passenger trains, refugee columns and
camps, two television stations, and an embassy of a
neutral foreign country.
Justifications for the attack were alleged Serb
atrocities against Albanian population in Kosovo,
which NATO claimed were part of a systematic plan of
ethnic cleansing. Some US officials claimed that
100,000 Albanians were murdered. The world press
agreed on 10,000. Two years later, these accusations
have been proven false. There was no massacre of
civilians at the village of Racak. There was no
"Operation Horseshoe." There was no crematorium in the
Trepca mines. There were no death camps. There were no
mass graves. There was no genocide.
Investigators of the International Criminal Tribunal
found less than three thousand dead, in individual
graves, without disclosing the manner of death or even
the ethnicity of the exhumed.
In the end, Yugoslavia accepted NATO's temporary
control of Kosovo in exchange for guarantees of safety
for all its citizens in the province. Within two
months of NATO's entry, most non-Albanians had been
expelled from the province at gunpoint, their homes
burned, looted or expropriated by the KLA, a militant
organization trained and equipped by the United States
and other NATO members. One American officer, a
veteran of World War Two, Korea and Viet Nam,
described them as "one of the most cutthroat gangs of
terrorists in the world."
But the KLA's terror did not stop there. Over a
hundred Orthodox churches were dynamited, torched or
otherwise demolished. Hundreds of non-Albanians were
brutally murdered, on the streets, in their offices,
in their fields, or in buses under NATO's armed
escort. Over 1800 are missing. Kosovo's remaining
non-Albanians - Serbs, Roma, Jews, Turks, Bosniaks and
Gorani - live in ghettos, surrounded by barbed-wire
fences and armed guards. Anyone speaking Serbian on
the street risks being murdered, even UN employees.
Kosovo is ruled by violence and terror, despite the
presence of almost 40,000 NATO troops, about 5000 of
which are Americans.
Furthermore, NATO trained some KLA members for further
attacks on Serbs. These Albanians are currently
occupying villages in Serbia's Presevo valley, and
attacking the second largest city in Macedonia - the
same country that generously gave refuge to thousands
of Albanians trying to escape the bombing and the war
in Kosovo. Today's Balkans is still feeling the
consequences of what started on March 24, 1999.
By attacking Yugoslavia, NATO violated the UN Charter,
its own Charter, the Geneva Convention, the Helsinki
Final Act and a series of other conventions and
agreements its members had signed. Its bombs destroyed
the rule of law and the international order NATO
claimed to have been defending.
On this day, Serbs and their friends across the world
will light candles and say prayers in memory of NATO's
victims - both the people, and the peace, that the
bombs of March 24 so brutally killed.
March 24, 2001
Serbian Unity Congress
Washington, DC
---
Subject: from chris soda
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 08:27:33 -0500
From: Chris Soda <chriss12@...>
Open letter to Serbian churches and organizations in Canada
Thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts at this solemn
occasion. This weekend marks the
second anniversary of our government's murder of innocent people in
Yugoslavia. As a Canadian citizen born
and raised in this country I and my family have been lucky enough to
have never suffered from a foreign
military aggression. Consequently, I didn't have a personal common
history nor a personal common
experience with many of you until two years ago; now, we all live
together in a country whose government has
broken our laws and stolen our money to murder both the helpless and the
honourable.
We all read the same lies here in our newspapers, listened to the same
lies on radio. We still do.
We all waited for the same Russian cavalry which never arrived.
Who amongst you gathered here today didn't watch CNN ask, "What's wrong
with our society?" as children
shot each other at Columbine High School- while it reported the
justification of adults from the same country
bombing children in high schools overseas?
I'm still waiting for an answer as to how directing a cluster bomb near
a World Heritage Site or a marketplace
or a bus station helps to save the lives of innocent people hundreds of
miles away who are running from
those same types of bombs- all dropped by the same so-called
'humanitarians'. I'm still waiting for an answer
as to how yesterday's terrorists who killed the innocent became Canadian
allies, freedom fighters, and the
police force of Kosovo all wrapped into one- while still killing the
innocent even as you are gathered here
today.
I'm asking myself how a government that agrees to autonomy during
meetings at Rambouillet can be
accused of plotting something called "Operation Horseshoe" at the same
time. I'm wondering how
Canadians could murder the children of a country that at the same place
and at the same time just asked our
country if they could join their NATO alliance. I'm wondering about why
anyone anywhere would believe
accusations of this so-called 'ethnic cleansing' coming from a country
that not that long ago systematically
deployed racial segregation. And I'm wondering how our country can allow
'language laws'.
And it puzzles me how both the US and Canada can point the finger at
anyone after forcing their own natives
onto reservations. I also wonder how a 'dictatorship' using 'repressive'
means can guarantee education,
health, and employment in over twenty languages to those it is
'repressing'- or how a 'human rights violator'
somehow allows the schools, hospitals, and churches of those it is
'ethnically cleansing' to remain intact; in
fact, the 'violating' state even pays for most of it.
I wonder how so-called 'ethnic cleansing' involves riding an
air-conditioned bus to safety, escorted by none
other than what our government calls the 'Serb aggressors'.
I wonder how defending your country constitutes 'aggression'. I wonder
how those who paid for and
perpetrated the real aggression are known as 'peacekeepers'.
Since our beloved CBC found the time and resources to produce an
award-winning documentary of a KLA
woman whose sister was 'murdered by the Serbs', I'm wondering two
things: why this sister turned up alive
and well and unharmed- but the CBC still kept their award anyway; and
secondly, why couldn't this same
CBC find the time and resources to interview and film some of the many
hundreds of thousands of Muslims
who fled north from Kosovo- to Belgrade, which welcomed them with open
arms- for safety during what we
are still being told was a 'humanitarian intervention' to save
them..........................from Belgrade.
I'm puzzled by the silence of the Globe and Mails and National Posts of
Canada who watch as Agim Ceku
first tries to murder Canadians in Croatia, then is protected by
Canadians in Kosovo as the new police chief.
I'm puzzled as to why none of our mainstream media comment as to why the
Germans have to force back to
Kosovo so-called 'victims of the Serbs' long after these 'Serb
aggressors' have left.
There are also two other things we have in common now. We have many
questions that we ask of the
bombers, and we have no truthful answers from any of them.
Try to get a truthful answer from Canadian child killers and their
superiors by asking how someone who
suffered tuberculosis and is sheltered, fed, and cared for by Serbs
suddenly becomes 'a victim of Serb death
camps' photographed by trickery to appear to be imprisoned behind barbed
wire- followed shortly after by
NATO bombings of innocent people. Try to get a truthful answer from the
cripplers of ordinary hard-working,
law-abiding people by asking how "a massacre of innocent civilians at
Racak, forced to kneel in the mud and
beg for their lives" really means gunpowder residue on the hands of
armed insurrectionists shot while firing
weapons at the police- after refusing to surrender.
Then ask how this "massacre" was attended by film crews invited to watch
by "the perpetrators of this
massacre" before the "massacre" even took place - followed shortly
thereafter by yet another NATO bombing
of innocent people.
Ask anyone of our 'independant' news media or anyone of our country's
political leaders from any of our
political parties in the House of Commons how a regularly-scheduled
passenger train is bombed twice within
minutes by "accident"- the first time to cripple the machine, the second
time to kill the defenceless people
trapped inside- when this "accident" involves manually using a joystick
to divert missiles AWAY from the
unoccupied part of a bridge and TOWARDS the target.
We all know this particular event was also filmed- and shown to us at
three times normal speed, also by
"accident" according to our government's real spokesmen: Jamie Shea,
Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Madeleine
Albright (herself saved by Serbs, the very same people whose friends and
relatives she orders murdered
years later) and the other savages in NATO.
The questions are innumerable but all of them have only one answer. The
same answer. This answer can be
found at a press conference given by this same Jamie Shea in April/99,
in which he congratulates his fellow
NATO personnel for "...another very effective day of operations..."
Less than 24 hours earlier, NATO had just murdered hundreds of ordinary
people in and around Korisa-
ordinary people moving in different groups and in different directions.
Ordinary people in Yugoslavia who
were moving to begin with because hours earlier NATO had bombed them out
of their homes in what
everyone tells us was an example of "protection" from the Serbs who had
defended them while they were still
in their homes.
That answers any of my questions, and any of yours I'm sure. For me, it
answers how 19 countries can share
the technology to sit on the edge of outer space and read a license
plate miles below, and yet tell us that they
can't read the correct address of an embassy listed in a phone book an
inch away from their faces. It
answers how a TV station can be bombed because they tell us it's
reporters are a propaganda machine of
Milosevic, while the same types of bombers sit together with the
reporters at CNN and invite an elected
Yugoslav Member of Parliament to an interview in that same TV station-
at the exact time the station is
scheduled to be bombed- by those who are sitting at those same desks at
CNN.
We all know what has happened here. We all know that there is no shame
amongst the plotters of murder,
theft, and deception. We all know that I'm speaking of the highest
elected officials of this country. We all know
who elected them and we all know most of those don't bear any shame
either.
The best thing we can do is to keep asking the questions for which we
already know the answers to; only by
embarassing the electors can we hope to unsettle the elected. Ask your
police chiefs and your police officers
why those who fought cold-blooded murderers and drug traffickers are
considered 'criminals' by those whom
the same police chiefs and their officers are sworn to protect. Ask the
representatives of all religious
denominations in this country why their leaders have not come out with
ongoing, direct statements
condemning the targeting of innocents. Ask your school boards why they
can't find the will to author a joint
statement condemning the theft of taxpayer dollars that should have been
used for education here, rather than
being stolen and then used for the destruction of buildings of learning
in Yugoslavia. Ask your medical boards
and the federal Health Ministry why money could not be found by the
Canadian federal government to keep
hospitals open in this country, while at the same time revenue was
stolen to finance the bombing of hospitals
overseas.
Put them all on the spot. Ask your elected Members of Parliament why
they have always been silent on these
issues except to patronize us and insult our intelligence with
propaganda. Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis may
prove to be an exception if approached with written questions in this
regard- he's the only one I've found who
(once, and I believe it was in the House of Commons, May 10/99) decried
this government's targeting of
civilians during those 78 days of murder.
Commemoration of the dead means remembering the honourable, the
innocent, and the perpetrators. Let's
remember-and remind- the guilty with our questions.
Ask these same federal MPs what their definition of a 'two-tier' health
system means in practice. Ask them
why their 'two-tier' actions have supported one level of health safety
here, and one level of health destruction
elsewhere.
Ask your Globe and Mails and your National Posts and your local papers
how they can call something
'collateral damage' when it is planned many years ahead of time, and how
this 'collateral damage' is caused
by repeatedly and deliberately circling over a target before firing.
Call your CBC office and inquire as to when they plan to do an
'exclusive interview' with the Spanish Air
Force pilot who told us early on in these Canadian-sponsored atrocities
in Yugoslavia that the ordinary
people were the target from Day One.
And ask all of these people this: if our government embarked on such a
noble cause, then why is it that they
still have to keep lying to us?
Thank you again for your time today. I hope to meet some of you one day
and shake the hands of those with
such spirit and determination.
Sincerely, Chris Soda
---
WORLDNETDAILY, Saturday, February 10, 2001
How the New World Order is 'helping' Serbia
By Aleksandar Pavic
(C) 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
The way things are going, it seems that it's just a matter
of time
before Bill Clinton, the man who ordered the NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia
in 1999 will come to Belgrade offering "help." For, this
past week, the
country was a positive place of pilgrimage for all those
who had
previously contributed to its ruin in one way or another.
It started a week ago when U.S. Senators Biden and McCain
led a
delegation of senators and representatives to Belgrade to
wave the
carrot and stick. Back in 1999, Biden was one of the
louder proponents
of arming the Albanian KLA guerilla force fighting the
Serb population
and police in Kosovo - the same force that effectively
cleared the
region of its Serb population, in the wake of the bombing,
and went on
to transform Kosovo into the main European center of drug
smuggling,
white slavery and prostitution. John McCain, on the other
hand, was a
fierce advocate of launching a ground invasion of
Yugoslavia when the
bombing failed to give the expected "results."
Now, these two gentlemen have come humbly to Belgrade to
offer to do
their part so that Yugoslavia would recover a fraction of
a percent of
the estimated damage from the bombing and the resulting
after effects --
but not so humbly as to make the offer unconditional. No,
the generous
gift of $100 million was conditioned on the country's
leadership
agreeing to turn over ex-president Slobodan Milosevic to
the Hague "war
crimes tribunal." Thus, one man who openly called for the
arming of a
guerilla insurgency inside a sovereign country -- who
openly called for
an invasion of that same sovereign country without even a
formal
declaration of war -- came to that country asking for
"international
justice" to be satisfied.
At the beginning of the week, a second great "helper"
appeared on the
scene a little further south -- in the Presevo and
Bujanovac region of
Serbia -- where the Kosovo Albanians "disarmed" by the
50,000-strong
NATO-led force are trying to import the virtues of the
newly
"democratized" Kosovo to the south of Serbia by starting a
brand new
guerilla insurgency. The man in question was U.S. diplomat
James Pardew,
now "U.S. Special Envoy to the Balkans," but a man far
better known for
running the "arm-and-train" program in neighboring Bosnia
(formerly a
part of Yugoslavia) during that country's civil war. Under
this program,
U.S. arms and training were used to "level the playing
field" in that
country by arming the Bosnian Muslims and Croats until
they eventually
became twice as well-armed as the Bosnian Serbs. Now,
Pardew's sense of
sportsmanship was set on firmer legal ground than was
Biden's. For,
although the Bosnian Croats and Muslims also had their
beginnings as
illegal secessionist paramilitary units within a sovereign
country, by
the time Pardew came on the scene, Bosnia had already been
recognized as
a newly sovereign country by the "international
community." (That's the
way things are done according to international law
nowadays. As soon as
recognition came in the spring of 1992, the Yugoslav Army
troops on the
territory of Bosnia all of a sudden became the
"aggressors," while
yesterday's illegal guerillas became a legitimate army
worthy of Western
support and arms.)
Anyway, Mr. Pardew was in the south of Serbia offering his
good offices
at the beginning of the week. He publicly called for the
KLA-backed
insurgents to "seriously consider" the Serbian
government's call for a
peaceful settlement of the problem. Coincidentally or not,
a couple of
days later came a statement from NATO and U.S. Admiral
Ellis, saying
that the "international community" should appoint some
sort of a "Peace
Minister" to mediate between the legally-elected
government of Serbia
and the illegal guerilla force. This possibly shed light
on the "Special
Envoy's" earlier visit: to help the negotiations along,
could Mr. Pardew
once again do something to "level the playing field?"
Then on Thursday, the influx of peace pilgrims reached its
height when
the present E.U. Commissioner for Security, Javier Solana,
made his way
to Belgrade. Before his present position, Solana held the
post of NATO's
Secretary-General, which made him the formal number one
during that
military organization's illegal bombing campaign of
Yugoslavia. But now
he had come to "help." He wouldn't have come if he didn't
think he could
help, he said, adding that he was very happy to be in
Belgrade and that
the visit personally meant a great deal to him. After
Solana, nothing
less than Bill Clinton will do -- except, perhaps, for
Madeleine
Albright.
It would be too easy to say that these were cases of
criminals returning
to the scene of the crime. It has more to do with the
further
development of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" -- evil
that has
become so banal as to become unrecognizable to many of its
bearers. So
unrecognizable, in fact, that they have started seeing it
as something
that is, in fact, good. "Leveling the playing field,"
"arming the
oppressed," "bombing to prevent (unproven) genocide,"
demanding
"international justice." It is under these abstract,
noble-on-the-surface battle-cries that the Devil is
currently doing his
finest work.
It is no surprise that Javier Solana was once a fierce
left-wing
opponent of NATO, as was Joschka Fisher, the current
German Defense
Minister and another supporter of the NATO bombing. In
their youthful
projections of heaven-on-earth, NATO was something evil,
something
militaristic that openly contradicted the ideals of their
own,
peace-and-flower generation. Having come to positions of
substantial
political power -- where they could actually help mold the
ideal world
with their own hands -- the raw military power of NATO had
become their
instrument for bringing good and righting the world's
wrongs. And, of
course, in this way, anything and everything can be
justified. Even
NATO's aggressive march eastward can be portrayed as the
advancement of
the benefits of Western democracy. The hunger to gain
control of natural
resources can also be seen as a way to bring "prosperity"
to previously
poor regions.
Of course, not all the mavens of intervention and carriers
of the New
World Order's institutionalized cynicism are secularized
do-gooders
blinded by their own hubris and lack of humility. What is
sad is that
they are the best of the bunch and that they actually
believe many of
the things that come out of their mouths.
Aleksandar Pavic in Belgrade has covered Yugoslavia's
historic election
and its dramatic aftermath for WorldNetDaily.com.
---
The url for this article
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/djindjic.htm
'These Djindjic people are brown shirts!'
An Interview with a Serbian political activist, by Jared Israel
www.tenc.net
[Emperor's Clothes]
The following interview took place several days after the October 5 coup
in Belgrade. The person interviewed has been a member of the Serbian
Radical party, a nationalist group. When I conducted the interview, I
had the impression she was still a member but she has informed me that
now she is in no party.
**
Jared: What's going on?
Gordana: Some very aggressive people from the opposition are grabbing
everything around here, in particular taking the institutions that have
some money, for instance the telecommunications company. They are
scaring people and beating people.
They want to destroy the results of previous elections by declaring that
new elections have to be held for the Serbian Parliament. Elections are
not supposed to be held for a year but they want them this fall. That
would mean the Serbian people would lose their representatives because
the elections would be held in an impossible situation. Whole groups of
political parties have no access to media. In the past we had many
viewpoints because we had government media and even more widespread was
various shades of opposition media. Now only one view. And there is day
to day terrorizing of people. Mr. Djindjic hopes that people will be too
scared to run as candidates from those parties which stand in his way.
Jared: You say there is "day to day terrorizing"?.
Gordana: Take this example. A friend of mine is intellectual. Every time
her phone rings she gets a threat from the other side. They stop her car
in traffic to threaten her, and so on. And this is a professional woman,
the daughter of a well-known professor. Even these people who are well
known are subject to threats. Another such woman, a reporter, visits me,
and she is afraid to go home alone and stays over - and this is in
Belgrade! Can you imagine how the common people feel? They are even more
afraid. I was on a bus full of tired, worried working people and one of
these Otpor types got on and demanded that the bus stands still and he
says: "Listen! We have the power now and you will see what we do!"
Jared: So you think that people will be afraid to vote for the Socialist
or Radical parties or other parties that oppose the coup?
Gordana: No, I think that people may be afraid to run as candidates for
these parties.
The Djindjic people took over all the radio stations and TV stations and
newspapers. On TV now you can't see even the regular old shows. It is
propaganda. The old ladies in Serbia like to watch soap operas from
South America but now they can't do that. You see they are poor and they
have such a hard life and now they don't have even this small pleasure.
Instead we have to watch stupid American government lies, even about the
wars in Bosnia and Croatia and so on. They have programs that blame the
Serbs, for everything. Can you believe this? Do they think we are
morons, not to know our own history. But the purpose here is also a kind
of terror, to break the spirit. To make people feel hope is lost.
Today they had a show on the television telling lies about Dubrovnik,
showing pictures to prove it was burned down in 1991 by the Yugoslav
army. But Dubrovnik has all the old buildings in perfect condition and I
know this because friends have been back to see the town, and it was not
damaged.
And these movies they now show to prove to us that the Serbs were
responsible for the wars this past decade. Why? Did we try to secede?
Doesn't Yugoslavia have a right to exist? .Would other countries allow
secessionists and foreign factors to destroy their nation? I have never
seen such lies. Can you imagine, having a situation where you can't
stand to watch the TV or read the papers.
Jared: I'm afraid I can imagine. What we mainly do on Emperor's Clothes
is expose lies. They create 'em faster than we can expose them. All I do
is expose fiction.
Gordana: Today is 1941 in Yugoslavia. If there are people who don't
know, well, they will know it very soon. Even some people I spoke to who
were supporting the DOS now see this violence that is going on and they
say, "These Djindjic people are brown shirts."
[Brown shirts is a term for Fascists or Nazi's - E-C]
***
Afterthoughts - The lies they now tell in Serbia
I am writing a book on Western media lies about Yugoslavia. As part of
the research, I've read news reports written in 1991 about Dubrovnik. As
Gordana says, the Western claim is that the Yugoslavs (read: Serbs)
burned down the priceless Old City. This lie was broadcast in the
Western mass media in order to prove the Serbs were ruthless monsters.
When the first stories broke describing the (in fact fictitious) burning
of the Old City, they produced popular anti-Serb response. So, wanting
to make the most of a good thing, the controllers of the media has the
lie repeated.
But there is only so much mileage you can get from a single burning; so
they burned it down several times.
The first time Dubrovnik was fictitiously burned down, a decent interval
was allowed, whereupon it was fictitiously burned to the ground a second
time, and then a third, and so on. Dubrovnik is Burning, Redux.
The London "Independent" reported that Dubrovnik was burned to the
ground no less than five times over a four months period. These reports
were mostly signed by one Phil Davison.
Despite multiple burnings, Prof. Peter Maher, a knowledgeable witness,
shot a film of the Old City in March, 1992. Dubrovnik was still
standing, untouched by Yugoslav shells. It remains a prime tourist
attraction.
(I have seen the film.)
So what DID happen in Dubrovnik in 1991? There was indeed fighting. But
the Yugoslav Army deliberately avoided shelling the Old City. (This is
not surprising because, after all, they viewed it as a Yugoslav
treasure!)
Actually it was the secessionists who deliberately put Old Dubrovnik at
risk, trying to trick Yugoslav loyalist forces into shelling it. In this
they failed, so the media made it up.
Here is the basic sequence of events.
Croatian secessionist troops attacked Yugoslav Army barracks near
Dubrovnik. The Yugoslav Army gave chase. The secessionists retreated
behind the old city digging in areas dangerously close to hotels in
which they had housed refugees from the fighting . In a moment of
candor, Phil Davison, the reporter from the British "Independent" who
holds the record for reporting total destructions of Dubrovnik the most
times, admitted that by setting up near the hotels, the secessionist
army virtually guaranteed that hotels would get hit:
"The Croats have set up a mortar close to our hotel, just as they have
next to hospitals and refugee centres. This may make us a target for the
army. Sooner or later, they are going to lay a couple of rounds on us.
The army is zapping Lokrum island, 300 yards from my hotel. Mortars,
machineguns, ack-ack guns. It is deafening. A machinegun barrage rattles
my windows. It is just a matter of time."
(The 'Independent' November 17, 1991)
Other than this single, honest report, the Western media was full of
stories about how the heartless Yugoslav Army was shelling hotels that
housed refugees.
Did the secessionists set up their positions behind the Old City and
near hotels in order to get the Yugoslav Army and Navy to shell the Old
City and the hotels and thus provide ammunition for anti-Yugoslav
propaganda? Common sense suggests they did. And more than common sense:
consider the following, which appeared in only two English language
newspapers:
"Women And Children Barred From Leaving Croatian Town
"The six-member Dubrovnik crisis committee decided six days ago that the
defense of this coastal Adriatic city required the presence of all the
remaining women and children. UNICEF was informed of the decree three
days ago, and on Tuesday, it was first implemented when 200 people were
prevented from leaving the city on a UNICEF relief vessel that had
brought supplies to the city.
"First, he said, if the women and children stay, it will mean that the
attacking army would be shooting at them and not just at a walled city.
"Second, he said, their presence might force the army to hesitate before
shooting.
"Third, if there is an attack, the international public reaction to such
an attack would be a public-relations coup for Croatia, which has been
trying desperately for months to get diplomatic and military support
from the West…
"Only 100 of 300 people scheduled to leave on a ship Tuesday were
allowed to depart, and UNICEF was told by Dubrovnik officials that no
one else would be able to leave."(My emphasis, 'The Orange County
Register,' December 5, 1991.)
Note that the story was not covered by the 'N.Y.Times' .
***
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[Emperor's Clothes]
Subject: WHAT THE US IS ACTUALLY AFTER IN YUGOSLAVIA?
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 00:28:44 EST
From: Pelkinsin@...
For Your Information and Contemplation.
Tika Jankovic
Part II
7. Badguys and Quislings
Professor Vukotic is the brains behind the secession of Montenegro.
His
former student, Milo Djukanovic, is the President of Montenegro.
Djukanovic
employed the good professor to hasten the privatization of state
property in
Montenegro. He was ubiquitous; Professor Vukotic marched into Kosovo
with
NATO forces in June 1999, at the height of Kosovar expulsions of ethnic
Serbs
and Gypsies (ROM) (who are by now 90% ethnically cleansed from the
province.)
(NATO remains mum about that.)
The IMF sent another G 17 member, Dr. Zeliko Bogetic, who oversaw
the
transition to capitalism in Bulgaria, to Montenegro. Recently, following
Bogetic's advice, Montenegro adopted the Deutchmark as its currency,
placing
the province, which claims to desire independence, in the hands of its
creditors. Dr. Bogetic is in line to become the director of Yugoslavia's
Central Bank. Yugoslavia would cease to be an economically sovereign
entity
if Dr. Bogetic follows the same policies in Belgrade as he did in
Montenegro.
29
Veselin Vukotic was on the "News Hour" with Jim Lehrer, on Public
television,
on Bastille Day, 1999 and said, "We want to be an open colony and an
open
society."
Although the West reassured Kostunica and his supporters that
Montenegro
and Kosovo were to remain Yugoslav provinces, powerful forces in the
United
States have other ideas.
Morton Abromowitz was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence
and
Research in the Reagan administration. I'm sure we'll see more of him
under
George W. He supported the arming of the Afghan Mujahaddin that served
to
discredit and destabilize the Soviet Union in the 1980s. He was part of
the
Council on Foreign Relations panel that advised the Clinton
administration
to
loosen restrictions on CIA operations dealing with criminals, using
journalists, and targeting unfriendly heads of state. He now works for a
right-wing think tank called The Century Foundation." In a recent
Washington
Post op ed. piece Mr. Abromowitz asserted, "the federal republic is
Serbia.
After the December 23rd elections-which should produce a government free
of
Mr. Milosovic's flunkies- fresh talks can be held between Montenegro and
Serbia." Abromowitz later in the article urged, "Effective management
of
Kosovo's own affairs . . . Prospects . . . would be better if the west
stopped encouraging Belgrade to believe it still has a future in ruling
Kosovo." 30
That is the future Kostunica faces: Yugoslavia, its people
impoverished
and trapped in an IMF/World Bank straightjacket, pared down to Serbia,
with
incursions on its territories encouraged and protected by NATO. With
Montenegro gone, it will become land-locked. It will be a Yugoslavia
forced
to borrow money to pay for the destruction of NATO bombings, and
finally,
faced with the decimation of its once productive economy.
And who is waiting in the wings? Every western corporations who see
"crucial assets for sale, includ(ing)the huge tobacco factory in Nis,
electric, oil, and gas companies, cement factories, and the government's
51%
stake in Telecom Srbja." McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Heineken are all
salivating
at
the prospects of investment and trade. Milan Panic, tossed out by
Milosovic,
is back at his old pharmaceutical company, which was nationalized by
Milosovic. 31
8. What is Vojislav Kostunica, really?
At the Serb Unity Congress in Toronto in October, the victory of
Kostunica was greeted with joy and celebration. But who is this fellow,
this
professor of law, this so-called leader of the Democratic Opposition of
Serbia?
Kostunica is a pathetic creature. In October he visited Republika
Srpska
in Bosnia. This Serbian enclave is the 49% of the land the Serbs were
allowed to keep in Bosnia after the war. The United States Institute of
Peace, closely associated with the likes of Madeline Albright, Jamie
Rubin,
and Richard Holbrooke, in their most recent publication urged that,
"Serbia
(under Kostunica) should end support to all political forces in Bosnia.
.
.and should recognize Bosnia's territorial integrity," and "the European
Union should . . . make the country a single economic space. . . with a
single integrated (intelligence and military) command." 32 Several
weeks
after Kostunica's visit, James Cunningham, deputy US representative to
the
United Nations rejected the election of candidates from the Serb
Democratic
Party in Republika Srpska saying "obstructionists should be kept out of
government." 33 .
(This was kind of funny since the Gore campaign was saying the same
thing
about the Bush "victory" in Florida.)
Kostunica is constrained by his financial supporters to "recognize
Bosnian sovereignty." And "conditional independence for Kosovo."34 But
there
was Vojislav, visiting the grave of a Yugoslav poet on his way to a
meeting
in Biarritz, France, at the European summit.
Greeted with cheers and congratulations in France, Kostunica was
the
man
of the hour. But his "welcome to the European family", was tempered with
the
knowledge that he was the front man for another more sinister fellow by
the
name of Zoran Djindjic. It is he who will probably become Prime Minister
of
Serbia 35 , and he who united the many dissident groups and managed
Kostunica's campaign, under the watchful eye of Madeline Albright. He
was a
founder of the Yugoslav Democratic Party, and worked for many years to
end
socialism in his own country.36 Djindjic is prepared to sink Yugoslavia
under the indebtedness of its previous IMF loans, which amount to $128
million, and a World Bank debt of $1.7 billion.37
But Djindjic, the G-17, OTPOR, D.O.S., all these shady characters,
including Kostunica, are just marionettes. The puppeteers reside
elsewhere,
in Washington and Bonn predominantly, pulling the strings, dismantling
what
is left of Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosovic is down, but not out, having
just
been elected to lead the Socialist party. And the West fears that the
upcoming December 23rd elections might go well for the Socialists. After
all,
the IMF and World Bank have been voted out of Yugoslavia before.
9. What are the Prospects for the Future?
It is instructive to look at another country for a moment, the
Republic
of Belarus. No sooner had Slobodan Milosovic been dispatched, the US
and
the
European press began another assault, this time on Alexander Lukashenko
as
Europe's last Communist-style leader." 38 Belarus is facing the same
kinds
of
so called "nationalist" opposition that Yugoslavia faced. "Lukashenko's
security forces were gearing up to meet "provocations" by "foreign
agents"
with "Harsh measures,"39 reported the Boston Globe. The State
Department,
commenting on a recent election called it, "undemocratic." And
Lukashenko,
who swept to power in a landslide in 1994, said, "We have our own way to
travel."
That way includes his appreciation for Fidel Castro whom he visited
in
September, calling Castro, "a legendary figure."40 That way includes
opposition to loans from the International Monetary Fund, and proposing
to
Russia to build a large force in Belarus to defend against NATO.41 The
Belarus way is a socialist economy under which unemployment is 1.7%,
hunger
is non-existent, though everyone is poor, and the wage gap between rich
and
poor is nothing like that found in Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, or the
Ukraine.
Education and medical care are still free, and cultural events are low
priced. 42
So here is another Yugoslavia in the making. Only this time we need
to
be
ready to counter the attacks of those who will swear up and down that
this
"dictator" has to go because he is so ruthless. Because if we say
nothing,
NATO forces, which are already in former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania,
Azerbajan, Czech Republic . . . will move east to counter the "threat"
of
another leader who dares to oppose the International Monetary Fund, NATO
and
"democratic liberal economic reforms."
10. What it is Really All About
When we read the economic news lately, we worry that the economic
"boom"
(which has really been good for only the top 20 percent of the
population,)
is about to end. My late husband, Sean Gervasi wrote a document, five
months
before he died in 1996, which was published in the book, NATO in the
Balkans
and disseminated widely in Europe (as the Prague Declaration). It was
called, "Why is NATO in Yugoslavia," and in his brilliant prescience, he
noted, "the Western system is experiencing a profound economic, social,
and
political crisis, . . . and sees the exploitation of the East as the
only
large scale project which might stimulate growth. . ." And he asked,
"will
the world accept the risks of East-West conflict and nuclear war" to
protect
this system?43
Sean was warning about a war for resources, a war for markets, a war
between Europe and America. Russia opposes NATO expansion. Germany, as
the
most powerful economy of the European Union is both coactive and
dangerously
competitive with Washington for power in the East. In 1996, Volker Ruhe,
German Defense Minister said, "Bonn is not counting on remaining number
two
forever."44 Reading recent articles about the European Union's
development
of
a large military strike force, Germany's financial dominance in Western
and
Eastern Europe, and German statements that are aggressive in tone,
remind us
of history. They remind us that this is a perilous world, a world of
nuclear
powers, and a world which is now facing the final race for resources.
And that is what this has always been about. The west has used
revanchist
nationalists as their pawns. The American and German strategy has been
to
splinter existing nations, demonize states which oppose the "Grand
Plan,"
and
support pro-capitalist forces. The purpose of this military, ideological
and
economic onslaught is to secure the exploitation of the East, with the
incredible natural resources including the cheap (and desperate) labor
of
the
Eurasian continent. But Germany and the United States are rivals for all
of
this. And inter-imperial rivalry means war. It always has.
Russia alone has $28 trillion dollars worth of resources!
Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, plus Russian Astrakhan have oil
and
gas. In these regions, Islam is the major religion. In these republics,
the
United States is once again supporting reactionary Islamic
Fundamentalist
nationalists just as they did in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Albania, Bosnia,
and
Kosovo.
In his book, The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke of a
long-term strategy for Eurasia. He urged the United States to establish
"global hegemony," and warned that there were only ten to 20 years to
take
control "before the door is closed."45 Brzezinski wrote of controlling
the
Eurasian corridor, from . . . the Balkans to Xinjiang and Tibet. Sean
Gervasi, a few days before he died, said that the US would try to push
NATO
all the way to China.
On November 19, 2000, a New York Times article on Xinjiang Province
in
western China described the Uighurs, a "Muslim majority (which) lives
restively under Chinese rule. " They "are well versed in the NATO
bombing
of
Yugoslavia last year which some celebrate for liberating the Muslims in
Kosovo; they fantasize about a similar 'rescue' here." 46 In last
week's
Times Magazine, the recipe for Xinjiang cabbage salad contained some
very
interesting information rarely found in most recipes, and NOT found in
the
news story from November 19th. "Recent discoveries of oil have made
Xinjiang
extremely attractive to international trade", it noted while comparing
the
conditions for its indigenous population to those in Tibet. (We are all
familiar with the Western media campaign to delegitimize China's control
over
Tibet, the recipe even alludes to the Richard Gere movie which swayed
filmgoers against the policies of the Peoples Republic of China in
Tibet).
The recipe cites Amnesty International's report on the Chinese
mistreatment
of Xinjiang's Moslem majority, and then advises cooks to buy Sichuan
peppers
for the recipe which "numb your tongue."47
11. What can we do?
Our tongues are not numb. Our eyes can see. Our minds are clearing.
This
is a moment for the Peace Movement to surge back into existence. With
the
international perspective of those who understand the political,
economic,
and military nature of these issues along with the tremendous vitality
of
the
ew generation of anti World Trade Organizations-, anti-IMF/World Bank
activists, I believe we are on the brink of a new and extraordinarily
vital
movement. And we are not alone, because these truths are clear to people
throughout the entire world.
Yugoslavia has been our teacher on American millennial treachery in
Eastern Europe, much as Vietnam was our textbook on 20th Century
American
foreign policy in the Third World. But the Vietnamese won their
confrontation
with the US and Yugoslavs- and the Serbs as a people- appear to have
lost.
The fall of Yugoslavia happened in part because the Peace Movement was
manipulated and misguided, and people thought that US foreign policy
could
be
benevolent. That was a big mistake.
The 21st Century may seem to be the zenith for American world
domination, but the contradictions within this system are too great, and
the
lies are just too transparent. Courageous people, need to join together
to
understand and counter this menace to the human race. Time is of the
essence.
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 00:28:44 EST
From: Pelkinsin@...
For Your Information and Contemplation.
Tika Jankovic
Part II
7. Badguys and Quislings
Professor Vukotic is the brains behind the secession of Montenegro.
His
former student, Milo Djukanovic, is the President of Montenegro.
Djukanovic
employed the good professor to hasten the privatization of state
property in
Montenegro. He was ubiquitous; Professor Vukotic marched into Kosovo
with
NATO forces in June 1999, at the height of Kosovar expulsions of ethnic
Serbs
and Gypsies (ROM) (who are by now 90% ethnically cleansed from the
province.)
(NATO remains mum about that.)
The IMF sent another G 17 member, Dr. Zeliko Bogetic, who oversaw
the
transition to capitalism in Bulgaria, to Montenegro. Recently, following
Bogetic's advice, Montenegro adopted the Deutchmark as its currency,
placing
the province, which claims to desire independence, in the hands of its
creditors. Dr. Bogetic is in line to become the director of Yugoslavia's
Central Bank. Yugoslavia would cease to be an economically sovereign
entity
if Dr. Bogetic follows the same policies in Belgrade as he did in
Montenegro.
29
Veselin Vukotic was on the "News Hour" with Jim Lehrer, on Public
television,
on Bastille Day, 1999 and said, "We want to be an open colony and an
open
society."
Although the West reassured Kostunica and his supporters that
Montenegro
and Kosovo were to remain Yugoslav provinces, powerful forces in the
United
States have other ideas.
Morton Abromowitz was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence
and
Research in the Reagan administration. I'm sure we'll see more of him
under
George W. He supported the arming of the Afghan Mujahaddin that served
to
discredit and destabilize the Soviet Union in the 1980s. He was part of
the
Council on Foreign Relations panel that advised the Clinton
administration
to
loosen restrictions on CIA operations dealing with criminals, using
journalists, and targeting unfriendly heads of state. He now works for a
right-wing think tank called The Century Foundation." In a recent
Washington
Post op ed. piece Mr. Abromowitz asserted, "the federal republic is
Serbia.
After the December 23rd elections-which should produce a government free
of
Mr. Milosovic's flunkies- fresh talks can be held between Montenegro and
Serbia." Abromowitz later in the article urged, "Effective management
of
Kosovo's own affairs . . . Prospects . . . would be better if the west
stopped encouraging Belgrade to believe it still has a future in ruling
Kosovo." 30
That is the future Kostunica faces: Yugoslavia, its people
impoverished
and trapped in an IMF/World Bank straightjacket, pared down to Serbia,
with
incursions on its territories encouraged and protected by NATO. With
Montenegro gone, it will become land-locked. It will be a Yugoslavia
forced
to borrow money to pay for the destruction of NATO bombings, and
finally,
faced with the decimation of its once productive economy.
And who is waiting in the wings? Every western corporations who see
"crucial assets for sale, includ(ing)the huge tobacco factory in Nis,
electric, oil, and gas companies, cement factories, and the government's
51%
stake in Telecom Srbja." McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Heineken are all
salivating
at
the prospects of investment and trade. Milan Panic, tossed out by
Milosovic,
is back at his old pharmaceutical company, which was nationalized by
Milosovic. 31
8. What is Vojislav Kostunica, really?
At the Serb Unity Congress in Toronto in October, the victory of
Kostunica was greeted with joy and celebration. But who is this fellow,
this
professor of law, this so-called leader of the Democratic Opposition of
Serbia?
Kostunica is a pathetic creature. In October he visited Republika
Srpska
in Bosnia. This Serbian enclave is the 49% of the land the Serbs were
allowed to keep in Bosnia after the war. The United States Institute of
Peace, closely associated with the likes of Madeline Albright, Jamie
Rubin,
and Richard Holbrooke, in their most recent publication urged that,
"Serbia
(under Kostunica) should end support to all political forces in Bosnia.
.
.and should recognize Bosnia's territorial integrity," and "the European
Union should . . . make the country a single economic space. . . with a
single integrated (intelligence and military) command." 32 Several
weeks
after Kostunica's visit, James Cunningham, deputy US representative to
the
United Nations rejected the election of candidates from the Serb
Democratic
Party in Republika Srpska saying "obstructionists should be kept out of
government." 33 .
(This was kind of funny since the Gore campaign was saying the same
thing
about the Bush "victory" in Florida.)
Kostunica is constrained by his financial supporters to "recognize
Bosnian sovereignty." And "conditional independence for Kosovo."34 But
there
was Vojislav, visiting the grave of a Yugoslav poet on his way to a
meeting
in Biarritz, France, at the European summit.
Greeted with cheers and congratulations in France, Kostunica was
the
man
of the hour. But his "welcome to the European family", was tempered with
the
knowledge that he was the front man for another more sinister fellow by
the
name of Zoran Djindjic. It is he who will probably become Prime Minister
of
Serbia 35 , and he who united the many dissident groups and managed
Kostunica's campaign, under the watchful eye of Madeline Albright. He
was a
founder of the Yugoslav Democratic Party, and worked for many years to
end
socialism in his own country.36 Djindjic is prepared to sink Yugoslavia
under the indebtedness of its previous IMF loans, which amount to $128
million, and a World Bank debt of $1.7 billion.37
But Djindjic, the G-17, OTPOR, D.O.S., all these shady characters,
including Kostunica, are just marionettes. The puppeteers reside
elsewhere,
in Washington and Bonn predominantly, pulling the strings, dismantling
what
is left of Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosovic is down, but not out, having
just
been elected to lead the Socialist party. And the West fears that the
upcoming December 23rd elections might go well for the Socialists. After
all,
the IMF and World Bank have been voted out of Yugoslavia before.
9. What are the Prospects for the Future?
It is instructive to look at another country for a moment, the
Republic
of Belarus. No sooner had Slobodan Milosovic been dispatched, the US
and
the
European press began another assault, this time on Alexander Lukashenko
as
Europe's last Communist-style leader." 38 Belarus is facing the same
kinds
of
so called "nationalist" opposition that Yugoslavia faced. "Lukashenko's
security forces were gearing up to meet "provocations" by "foreign
agents"
with "Harsh measures,"39 reported the Boston Globe. The State
Department,
commenting on a recent election called it, "undemocratic." And
Lukashenko,
who swept to power in a landslide in 1994, said, "We have our own way to
travel."
That way includes his appreciation for Fidel Castro whom he visited
in
September, calling Castro, "a legendary figure."40 That way includes
opposition to loans from the International Monetary Fund, and proposing
to
Russia to build a large force in Belarus to defend against NATO.41 The
Belarus way is a socialist economy under which unemployment is 1.7%,
hunger
is non-existent, though everyone is poor, and the wage gap between rich
and
poor is nothing like that found in Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, or the
Ukraine.
Education and medical care are still free, and cultural events are low
priced. 42
So here is another Yugoslavia in the making. Only this time we need
to
be
ready to counter the attacks of those who will swear up and down that
this
"dictator" has to go because he is so ruthless. Because if we say
nothing,
NATO forces, which are already in former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania,
Azerbajan, Czech Republic . . . will move east to counter the "threat"
of
another leader who dares to oppose the International Monetary Fund, NATO
and
"democratic liberal economic reforms."
10. What it is Really All About
When we read the economic news lately, we worry that the economic
"boom"
(which has really been good for only the top 20 percent of the
population,)
is about to end. My late husband, Sean Gervasi wrote a document, five
months
before he died in 1996, which was published in the book, NATO in the
Balkans
and disseminated widely in Europe (as the Prague Declaration). It was
called, "Why is NATO in Yugoslavia," and in his brilliant prescience, he
noted, "the Western system is experiencing a profound economic, social,
and
political crisis, . . . and sees the exploitation of the East as the
only
large scale project which might stimulate growth. . ." And he asked,
"will
the world accept the risks of East-West conflict and nuclear war" to
protect
this system?43
Sean was warning about a war for resources, a war for markets, a war
between Europe and America. Russia opposes NATO expansion. Germany, as
the
most powerful economy of the European Union is both coactive and
dangerously
competitive with Washington for power in the East. In 1996, Volker Ruhe,
German Defense Minister said, "Bonn is not counting on remaining number
two
forever."44 Reading recent articles about the European Union's
development
of
a large military strike force, Germany's financial dominance in Western
and
Eastern Europe, and German statements that are aggressive in tone,
remind us
of history. They remind us that this is a perilous world, a world of
nuclear
powers, and a world which is now facing the final race for resources.
And that is what this has always been about. The west has used
revanchist
nationalists as their pawns. The American and German strategy has been
to
splinter existing nations, demonize states which oppose the "Grand
Plan,"
and
support pro-capitalist forces. The purpose of this military, ideological
and
economic onslaught is to secure the exploitation of the East, with the
incredible natural resources including the cheap (and desperate) labor
of
the
Eurasian continent. But Germany and the United States are rivals for all
of
this. And inter-imperial rivalry means war. It always has.
Russia alone has $28 trillion dollars worth of resources!
Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, plus Russian Astrakhan have oil
and
gas. In these regions, Islam is the major religion. In these republics,
the
United States is once again supporting reactionary Islamic
Fundamentalist
nationalists just as they did in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Albania, Bosnia,
and
Kosovo.
In his book, The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke of a
long-term strategy for Eurasia. He urged the United States to establish
"global hegemony," and warned that there were only ten to 20 years to
take
control "before the door is closed."45 Brzezinski wrote of controlling
the
Eurasian corridor, from . . . the Balkans to Xinjiang and Tibet. Sean
Gervasi, a few days before he died, said that the US would try to push
NATO
all the way to China.
On November 19, 2000, a New York Times article on Xinjiang Province
in
western China described the Uighurs, a "Muslim majority (which) lives
restively under Chinese rule. " They "are well versed in the NATO
bombing
of
Yugoslavia last year which some celebrate for liberating the Muslims in
Kosovo; they fantasize about a similar 'rescue' here." 46 In last
week's
Times Magazine, the recipe for Xinjiang cabbage salad contained some
very
interesting information rarely found in most recipes, and NOT found in
the
news story from November 19th. "Recent discoveries of oil have made
Xinjiang
extremely attractive to international trade", it noted while comparing
the
conditions for its indigenous population to those in Tibet. (We are all
familiar with the Western media campaign to delegitimize China's control
over
Tibet, the recipe even alludes to the Richard Gere movie which swayed
filmgoers against the policies of the Peoples Republic of China in
Tibet).
The recipe cites Amnesty International's report on the Chinese
mistreatment
of Xinjiang's Moslem majority, and then advises cooks to buy Sichuan
peppers
for the recipe which "numb your tongue."47
11. What can we do?
Our tongues are not numb. Our eyes can see. Our minds are clearing.
This
is a moment for the Peace Movement to surge back into existence. With
the
international perspective of those who understand the political,
economic,
and military nature of these issues along with the tremendous vitality
of
the
ew generation of anti World Trade Organizations-, anti-IMF/World Bank
activists, I believe we are on the brink of a new and extraordinarily
vital
movement. And we are not alone, because these truths are clear to people
throughout the entire world.
Yugoslavia has been our teacher on American millennial treachery in
Eastern Europe, much as Vietnam was our textbook on 20th Century
American
foreign policy in the Third World. But the Vietnamese won their
confrontation
with the US and Yugoslavs- and the Serbs as a people- appear to have
lost.
The fall of Yugoslavia happened in part because the Peace Movement was
manipulated and misguided, and people thought that US foreign policy
could
be
benevolent. That was a big mistake.
The 21st Century may seem to be the zenith for American world
domination, but the contradictions within this system are too great, and
the
lies are just too transparent. Courageous people, need to join together
to
understand and counter this menace to the human race. Time is of the
essence.
ON HATE-MONGERING AND THE GUILTY SERBS
A Case of non-Justifiable Retribution
R.K.Kent
Emeritus Professor of History
University of California at Berkeley
27 March 2001
If there is a dominant feature of the Clinton era involvement in the
Balkans it can be summed-up with the saying that "the enemy of my
enemy is my friend." Science has abandoned "Reasoning by Analogy" for
at least two centuries but, than, there was nothing remotely
"scientific" involved in the Clintonite foreign "policy."despite the
pretensions of a Magister Dixit Dr. Seceratry of State. For a number
of complex reasons, the Serbs became the selected "enemy" of the
"West" as a whole through NATO, and even of Civilization itself. Ipso
facto, all other ethno-religious groups within the ex-Yugoslav space
became our "allies." The Croats, the Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo’s
ethnic Albanians ---all three were also transformed into "victims."
It was a "status" condition for which the Serbs were not allowed to
qualify. The "victims" had all the rights and deserved all the external
support. The "aggressors" had no rights. The Serbs were gradually
dehumanized through the Western media and governmental propaganda. They
were subjected to crippling and long-lasting economic sanctions.
NATO bombed the Serbs twice, once in Bosnia for three weeks and the
second time for eleven weeks in Serbia proper and Kosovo.
A Bogus Enemy and a War without Precedent
The 78-day attack had several unique features. First and foremost it
had no popular support at home. None of the "explanations" for it
seemed convincing enough. . Inter alia, it was regularly served to
the American People as a "humanitarian intervention." Few continued to
see it as such as the war went on and on. Anti-war activists began to
organize as it became clear that the American People had been simply
by-passed. Demonstrations were slated for 5th June 1999. It may be a
coincidence but the actual bombings stopped the day before while the
war’s "official end" was announced a week later.
Although it was presented as a joint Euro-American endeavor the U.S.
was the driving force and an 80 percent contributor to the total war
effort. It was the largest military undertaking in Europe since World
War II. It was launched without a declaration of war which the U.S.
Congress, for example, would not grant the President even 26 days into
the bombing campaign. For the first time, through control of NATO, the
U.S. bombed a state inside Europe and not in Asia, Africa
or Latin America. Yet, the United States was under no attack. The Serbs
had even been its allies in two World Wars. It had no economic
positions to defend in the Balkans. It was physically absent from the
Balkans in both World Wars, although it did bomb Roumania’s Ploesti
Oil Fields in 1944 as well as Belgrade, eleven times, at the request of
the Communist Tito, then trying to conquer Serbia. As others would do
more recently in ex-Yugoslavia, Tito "borrowed" the USAF to "soften"
Serbia. .
In a language reminiscent of Orwell, the "Air War" over Serbia
and Kosovo suggested air combat but it was nothing of the kind. .
Basically, the USAF, within NATO dropped bombs, Tomahawk and Cruise
missiles (and cluster bombs) firing shells dipped in depleted uranium
on a virtually defenseless nation. Another first, no single U.S. soldier
was lost in the Air War.
In the media drive to impose cerebral terror on "the Serbs," few
bona fide reporters made serious attempts to verify and fine- tune
into all the charges and horrors swirling about, in gore, on TV
screens, in articles dripping with blood, in pious postures of the
we-must-do-something hawks. The parlor-room Moral Giants, who own
and dominate most of the scribal and audio-visual media in the U.S.,
set up a political agenda. It was hardly advertised but it came into
view anyway. .The Serbs must not only be punished. They must be
humiliated, brought down on their knees. They must be "taught a
lesson." They are "collectively sick." They suffer from "pernicious
nationalism" and need to be "cured." They are the harbingers of another
Holocaust.. They should even be "hit in the genes" to induce collective
remorse through physical mutations in their yet-to-be-born children.
As that might take some time, a faster lane in which the Guardians of
Civilization could come to travel in their "justifiable retribution" was
to create a "special" Tribunal with another unstated but clear-cut
mission. By indicting and trying mainly and constantly "the Serbs,"
with a few cosmetic exceptions of several low and mid-ranking Croats
plus a Bosnian Muslim or two, "the Serbs" would continue to be "roasted"
on the spit of public opinion even long after the fratricidal wars had
stopped in ex-Yugoslavia. Needless to stress, this "Tribunal" is the
greatest violator of civilized laws, one step removed from a Kangaroo
Court and is even in constant violation of its own mandate’s provision
that it cannot accept funds from individuals (like George Soros) or be
supported by considerable aid from a single country, like the Unietd
States. In practice, if not widely known or understood, the Tribunal has
been basically a political arm of the State Department.
While all sorts of "indignant" hawks lambasted "the Serbs" for being
the "prisoners of their past," others accused them of failure to "face
their own past." Few could ask such a "sophisticated" question as
"where does one start or cut-off the Serb past?" To give an example, had
the "International Community" taken a long and hard look at Kosovo
between, say, 1974 and 1984 it would have iscovered that the Serb
minority was actually being victimized by the ethnic Albanian majority.
This happened because in 1974 the Federal Constitution of Yugoslavia was
changed radically to give virtually all powers to majorities in all the
Republics and Autonomous Regions. A decade later, the Serb minority got
the upper hand. To put it another way, why should the Serbs have to
accept and even favor external "explanations" of "Serb History," much
of it hardly a product of serious scholarship. Much of it has also been
"constructed" in haste, suffering from what professional historians
call "backward projection." This is an all-too prevalent habit to look,
usually with a strong partisan bias, at a given present and THEN
"explain it" by forcing the past to "fit" into it. The stronger
Victors are usually ‘VIRTUOUS" and apt to demand that only their
versions of History be perceived and accepted as valid.
The fall of "Milosevic" who was used as a substitute for the real
target, namely the Serb people and their Nationalism as defined
externally (but no one else’s in ex-Yugoslavia) did not eliminate the
political agenda. The entire Serb leadership from both Pale and
Belgrade has been on top of the Tribunal’s list of indicted war
criminals. The new Serb Government and its President Kostunica are now
being blackmailed. Unless they deliver Milosevic and his Cabinet to
the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) a Serbia that was bombed back into the
Nineteenth Century will not get the aid it needs to pull its people out
of economic and social misery. Why is an "international" trial of
alleged top Serb "war criminals" relative to Kosovo in 1998-1999, a
matter of such priority and urgency since there is no statute of
limitations for war crimes.?
What did the Serbs really do to deserve all the punishments? .Their
first "sin" was to attempt to preserve a Federal Yugoslavia threatened
at the same time from within and without by hardly new enemies. Strange
as it may seem today , the foreign-policy team of George Bush Senior
initially agreed with the Serb position. They were afraid of what could
happen if, by contagion, a dissolutioin of the USSR became too
violent. But, they all yielded to powerful and well-financed pressures
to crack-up Yugoslavia for good. These pressures came first from an
aggressive Croatian Lobby in Washington. It was reported to have spent
as much as $55 million to literally buy certain targeted U.S.
legislators, especially those considered to be "conservative." Germany’s
Chancellor Kohl also persuaded President Bush, Sr. to abandon any
defense of Federal Yugoslavia.
An American Public Relations firm (Ruder Finn) was hired to smear the
Serbs politically. Its CEO later bragged that his work turned the
Jewish organizations in the U.S .against the Serbs. He simply passed
on to them propaganda emanating from extreme Croat nationalist sources
in Zagreb and in the North American diaspora. In fact, Ruder Finn was
able to GLOBALIZE the pathological hate of the Serbs which had united
and is still the only sure-fire glue holding together the otherwise
disunited Croat nationalists everywhere..
The Earliest Victims in Disintegrating
Yugoslavia
Hardly anyone in the West knew that between August 1991 and February
1992 the new Croat Army and the para-military carried out the first
"ethnic cleansing" campaign in ex-Yugoslavia since WWII. It took place
in Western Slavonia as some 40,000 Serb civilians fled in panic, as all
of the elderly who remained behind were killed, as all of the Serb
Orthodox Churches were systematically destroyed. Hardly anyone knew in
the West that "human rights" of the Serbs in Krajina and Croatia in
general were being grossly violated in the newly Independent Croat
State under Franjo Tudjman. He had been a Communist General in Tito’s
Yugoslavia. His main job, at least until he went into opposition as a
Croat Nationalist, was to indoctrinate troops in the Yugoslav Federal
Army.
As that Army lost its non-Serb officers and tried to prevent Croatia’s
violent exit from the Yugoslav Federation, two YFA helicopters were shot
down by small arms ground fire from the Croat side. All of the two
dozen low-ranking YFA officers were wounded in the crashes. None died
from the impact but all of their heads were simply cut-off. The
"incident" never "reached" the Western media either. Similarly, as the
YFA was losing its Bosnian Muslim components, one of its Serb units,
600-men strong, negotiated a safe passage in exchange for not fighting
its way out of the Muslim -controlled area in Bosnia. Instead, half were
simply slaughtered and the few survivors from the other half stated that
the dead soldiers had a better deal in comparison what was done to the
survivors.
In short, the Serbs were the EARLIEST VICTIMS of post-WWII ethnic
cleansing and atrocities but the Western Governments and media did not
want to know or hear or report. The new "ethos" in the West was to smear
and keep smearing the Serbs and the Serbs only. Let us now review the
war crimes with which "the Serbs" have been charged in public and let
us try to provide some idea of context.
Arkan.
These fall into several categories. There are "war crimes" (actually
civil war crimes despite the international rhetoric to the contrary) of
which individual Serbs
and/or a specific Serb para- military group were actually guilty.
Here, the Serb warlord, Zeljko Raznjatovic or Arkan, and his "Tigers,"
mostly men released from jails in Serbia, top the list as the worst of
Serb wartime criminals. They committed initial atrocities in Eastern
Bosnia and later in parts of Croatia. To borrow Bernard Kouchner’s
twisted phrase at Kosovo, they saw their bloody work as "justifiable
retribution." This was not only for what was happening to
contemnporary Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia. It was also in memory of
what was done to hundreds of thousands of Serbs between 1941-1944 in
the "Independent State of Croatia" run by local Nazis, the Ustashe.
Bosnia was at the time under their rule as well. It was a gift from
Adolf Hitler for joining Nazi Germany in WWII. That is how it was. All
justifications aside, a crime is a crime, collective or individual. Two
Wrongs do not make a single Right, something that will be recalled in
connection with NATO’s "Humanitarian Intervention."
The First and Second Market-Place Massacres at
Sarajevo
Another category consists of crimes alleged to have been committed by
the Serbs without any real evidence. Such are the first and second
market-place "massacres at Sarajevo". After the first one, President
George Bush Senior was quoted as having said at a social gathering that
"the Serbs didn’t do it." Yet, no one supplied any solid evidence one
way or another. The Western media, parroting the Sarajevo
Government, accused the Serbs anyway. It is hard to believe, however,
that an American President, who had also been Director of the CIA,
would be uninformed about realities on the ground. .
Still, the Media optics were, in the case of Sarajevo, doubly skewed
against the Serbs. This is so because the Bosnian Serb Army attained no
victories at Sarajevo while shelling a very particular city from
adjacent hills. Even a part of Sarajevo inhabited mostly by the Serbs
was shelled from time to time. The hill gunners did not grasp the fact
that Sarajevo had endeared itself to the outside world because of
recently held Olympics. It had become everyone’s town. It was
constantly filmed by TV crews as the shelling went on.
The Sarajevo Government understood the context. It deliberately
provoked much of the shelling to gain more international support. In a
single move, it was able to gain the political loyalty of an entire
foreign press corps, residing in the local Hilton. A Bosnian Muslim
battery was positioned behind the Hotel and repeatedly drew ripostes
from the hills. Thereafter, no reporter in residence could adhere to
any effort that would resemble the craft of journalism. It all became
pure advocacy. .Like their bosses at home they WANTED to accept the
fare which came from the old hands of Tito’s Yugoslavia. They now
specialized
in disinformation working for the new Bosnian Ministries of Interior
and Information.
The Massacre at Srebrenica
Another category of war crimes and crimes against humanity leads into
those which are either deliberately severed from conext to remove
serious provocation or else exaggerated to gain international support..
The most poignant example of this kind, repeatedly brought-up in the
media, even six years later, is Srebrenica. It did not "surface" when
it was evolving but later, or more precisely at a particular moment in
time. It was in August 1995 that Madeleine Albright , then U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations, unveiled at the meeting of its
General Assembly an enlarged and dated CIA aereal photograph. . In it
was a freshly ploughed field that could have been anywhere but she
placed it at Srebrenica, a silver-mining town in Eastern Bosnia
inhabited mostly by Muslims. With a hint of a CIA in possession of
photographic evidence, she claimed that the field contained the buried
bodies of some 4,000 Muslim men, massacred in cold blood by the Bosnian
Serb Army. No such evidence ever surfaced.
Later, with the "help" of the Sarajevo Government, the figure
"escalated" to 7,000 and even 8,000, with added claims of "genocide."
It became by convention the worst blood-bath of the war in Bosnia.
Strictly speaking, this is not true. The entire Elite 5th Corps of the
Bosnian Muslim Army, trained by a retired U.S. General, was trapped by
the Bosnian Serbs and lost about 10,000 men to enfilade machine-gun,
tank and cannon fire, in a single encounter. For the record, this
happened inside the part of Bosnia under Serb control, now in Republika
Srpaska. The significance of the event and its location will be brought
out further below. At this point, it must be stressed that none of the
Western media involved in the heavy coverage of events in Bosnia
reported several aspects that would make the "Srebrenica Story"
considerably less one-sided with the local Muslims as the usual
"victims" and the Serbs as the perennial neo-Nazi "butchers."
Srebrenica had been declared a "Safe Zone," protected by U.N. Dutch
contingent, and containing presumably no armed Bosnian Muslim men. They
had been theoretically "disarmed." In fact, a local warlord, Nasir Oric
(a huge man and one-time Milosevic’s bodyguard) and his para-military
raided routinely the local countryside inhabited by the Serbs. This was
done over a period of months and it resulted in the looting and torching
of 42 Serb villages. Estimates vary for the civilians killed by Oric
and his men but the minimal one is 1,800 and the largest is 3,000. Oric
went even as far as to show to two Western reporters ( from Canada and
from Boston) a video tape of his own mayhem, bragging openly about his
"exploits."
The two top Generals of the Serb Bosnian Army that took Srebrenica manu
militare are now indicted war criminals at the Hague’s Tribunal for
Yugoslavia. Oric is running a disco for American G.I.s.in Tuzla. The
main General, Ratko Mladic, is accused even of "genocide" despite the
fact that he had ordered the busing out of Srebrenica all of the
Bosnian Muslim women and children. A rather sharp contrast in
comparison with what Oric did to the Serb women and children.
A tragic-comic story illustrates just how exclusively anti-Serb the
Tribunal has been. Two Serb university professors approached an
American who had gained some notoriety in "reporting" the miseries of
Bosnia. With simulated confidentiality, they revealed to him the
existence of a horrible Serb war criminal who had escaped attention.
They gave him a name. Within weeks, it appeared on the list of war
criminals wanted at the Tribunal. The only problem was that the man
never existed. It was a deliberate hoax to test "the channels." This was
still at the time when the Tribunal issued open indictments. Later,
these became secret.
Using an educated Mulsim intermediary, General Mladic demanded that
the Bosnian Muslim men hidden in the woods around Srebrenica surrender.
Instead, they made a run for Tuzla, a Bosnian Muslim stronghold. This is
when the Serb tanks began to shell and machinegun the woods
indiscriminately, killing in the view of its low-ranking commanders men
of a fleeing enemy army. It did not matter that most of hose in flight
did not carry any weapons. This is because, in civil wars, a man with a
rifle is a fighter. One without it is a civilian and they are and have
been entirely interchangeable. Suffice it to say that, at the end of the
Gulf War, USAF jets strafed the fleeing Iraqi soldiers much in the
same way. There was however one major difference.
At Srebernica, many of those in flight who had been caught were executed
in a summary fashion. This is where the real war crime comes in. Only
here Oric, by association, and as yet undesignated Bosnian Serb Army
soldiers, are the dual culprits in this the tragedy. The fleeing men
were afraid of reprisals for what Oric had done to the Serbs. The Serb
soldiers did not look only for the men that Oric used to exterminate
Srebrenica’s rural Serbs. All men of fighting age were automatically
regarded as Oric’s men. There remains the question of figures.
One needs to bring in some new elements up. Nasir Oric and his "elite
army" left Srebrenica a few days before the Bosnian Serbs went into
attack. They were incorporated into the Bosnian Muslim Army with the
request that it be kept a secret. There was even a Pentagon "angle"
here in that its strategists had concluded that Bosnian Muslim enclaves
like Srebrenica and Zepa were
indefensible and should be abandoned to the Serbs. Nasir Oric and his
para-military were almost certainly tipped-off about the impending Serb
Army invasion. Next, in the first municipal elections for Srebrenica,
after the Serbs took over, the names of 3003 Bosnian Muslim men listed
as "killed" showed up on the electoral rolls.
This writer was present at the University of California panel recently
on which a Bosnian Muslim politician without scholarly credentials
claimed, with a poker face, that no one from Srebrenica did any harm to
the rural Serbs because all were disarmed. He went further, all the
bodies found in the Serb part of Bosnia were those of Muslim men
"slaughtered in cold blood," within Serb territory, forgetting that
there were about 10,000 Muslim combatants’ bodies in there, from the 5th
Corps’ military disaster. He even claimed that 4,000 bodies had their
hands "tied" behind their backs. One was tempted to ask if they might
not have been tied after the excavations, even without imagining the
logistics involved in tying 8,000 hands for executions. Se non e
vero.
So, how many Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica were killed while
fleeing as against those killed execution style? It may take a
decade plus a Truth- and- Reconcilliation Commission to arrive at an
accurate number. At this time, if pre-departures and flights that
succeded are taken into account, the global figure of 4,000 dead, if
accepted by convention, needs to be sub-divided , with probably
one-third for the executed men. This is not very far from the Serb
victims of Oric to be found nowhere in the annals constructed by the
Moral Giants and their often breathless . "reporters." . The
"unreconstructed" Serb haters who read the present text will almost
certainly attempt to smear this writer for "trying to whitewash Serb
crimes." Nothing could be farther from such an endeavor. . It is an
attempt to confront the hysteria which blocks all serious inquiry into
the nitty-gritty of it all. One does get tired of having to read the
uninformed human parrots who keep repeating the same bogus "verdict"
in which the Bosnian Muslims are the innocent "lambs" " slaughtered" by
Bosnian Serb "Nazis" at Srebrenica.
One more item on Srebrenica. The reason why Madeleine Albright decided
to produce the CIA aereal fotograph that proved nothing visually by
itself, is that t the Croat Army "cleansed" out of Krajina some 250,000
Serbs, killing over 5,000 who could not flee and systematically looting
and torching their properties. Madeleine Albright and the National
Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, had given the green light to the Croat
Army knowing full-well what the result would be. After the NATO troops
occupied Bosnia without a shot, no bodies were found in the field made
famous by "Dr." Albright, as the New York
Times tried to boost her dubious "expertise" regarding the Balkans as
a whole. There is yet another and last category to be dealt with.
There are distinct war crimes for which the Serbs had been accused but
which they almost certainly did not commit. This is not the reference
to "minor" accusations. Among them, the sending of a bus full of
children through Sarajevo’s "Sniper Alley" and claiming that the Serbs
shoot children because a Bosnian Muslim girl was killed by an
apparently stray bullet. It mattered little that the victim was a Serb.
Or, a TV picture of a graveyard with tomb stones while the commentator
stated with assurance that it was the burial place of Bosnian Muslims
killed by the Serbs. The only problem was that the inscriptions were in
the Cyrillic alphabet and the tombs had crosses over them. It was, with
no chance of error, a Serb graveyard. No, reference here is to two
PIVOTAL "massacres." One led, in a few hours, to a three-week
bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs by the USAF within NATO. The
other was actually the triggering mechanism for eleven weeks of
U.S./NATO destruction of Serbia (and Kosovo).
The Massacre at Markale
The reference is to the Markale market- place massacre at Sarajevo
(sometimes called the Third Market-place massacre) and to the "massacre
at Racak.," Kosovo.It so happened that an ABC –TV crew was in place to
film the Markale massacre. It so happened also that a detailed U.N.
Report exculpated the Serbs, attributing this massacre to the Muslim
side. Enter again Madeleine Albright. She demanded that the U.N. Report
be kept under wraps. It remains secret to this day but the gist of its
findings leaked out through a respected Japanese U.N. official, Mr.
Akashi. Ambassador Albright had once told him arrogantly "to mind his
own business." Her Czech Jewish family was twice given shelter and
warm reception by the Serbs. Yet, she became the foremost Serb
hate-monger of the Clinton Administration. A case worth the extended
sessions that Sigmund Freud had with Frau Lou. After the Serb Army
took the town of Vukovar through intense fighting with the Croat
forces, she visited Vukovar to PUBLICIZE "yet another Serb atrocity."
It was the killing of some 300 wounded Croats, yanked out of the local
hospital and shot by "the Serbs." The killing was real but it was Arkan
and his Tigers who did the killings again, not the Serb Army and not
"the Serbs" collectively. She "neglected" to "tell the World" two other
very pertinent aspects. One was that an entire Serb population of
Vukovar under Croat control had disappeared without a trace but signs
of torture and killings were found by the Serb Army in the old Austrian
catacombs under Vukovar. Moreover, it would
appear that the 300 or so hospital "patients" turned out to have been
the extreme nationalist defenders of Vukovar who had kicked out the real
patients in
order to avoid being executed. But, that was Arkan’s claim. It may have
been true or not is the only rational assessment, the kind that has
been a rarity in the psychological bashing of "the Serbs" in the Western
and especially U.S. and German media.
The Massacre at Racak
.
The "massacre" at Racak differed significantly from the Markale
antecedent. Racak was a stronghold of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation
Army. It was attacked by the Serb police units on November 15 1999. The
next day , a special U.S. Envoy , Richard Walker, former U.S.
Ambassador to el-Salvador led a group of journalists and a TV crew to
a would-be "mass" grave filled with 47 bodies, all men, but left
completely open. It "was a massacre ," said Walker. Within hours, the
media across the globe had repeated his words. As Madeleine Albright
would say after the "air war," this ‘Serb atrocity’ did "galvanize the
International Community." It led to the talks at Rambouillet, France,
where the Serbs were set-up to take a fall big enough to justify the air
war itself. No one bothered to ask if there really was a mass execution
and whether the Serbs were really guilty. The verdict was carved in
stone before a jury of experts could convene. It still repeated from
time to time.
A forensic team led by a Finnish Doctor examined the bodies and the
site and produced 20 kilograms of research plus 3,000 photographs. The
lengthy report was never released but a summary did reach the media.
There were no spent cartridges at the site. The bodies had to be brought
from somewhere else. Only a single person in the all-male grave had been
shot at close range. Since the Serbs had been accused of hiding bodies
in Bosnia, why would they leave a "mass grave" open and deliberately
provoke an even more unfavorable opinion abroad that could lead to
military reprisals? But the clincher for an obvious "montage" was in the
record of Mr. Walker. He had close ties with both the CIA and the
Central American right-wing death squads. A French journal stated even
that he was "running them," all in character with his reputation as an
ardent anti-Communist warrior of long standing. Given that the day
before the "mass" grave was "discovered" there was heavy fighting at
Racak between the KLA and the Serb police, it would appear that the 47
bodies were those of the KLA soldiers fallen in battle. There was no
reason why they could not serve the KLA cause again even in death,
especially with Mr. Walker around So much for the "Racak massacre." One
thing is undeniable. Both the Markale and Racak massacres, one real and
the other unreal, provided the U.S.- led and dominated NATO with enough
"legitimacy" to respond with "justifiable retributions."
It would be claimed later that NATO’s intervention in Bosnia forced the
Serbs to come to the negotiating table at Dayton. Wrong again. Bosnian
Serbs in authority, both military and civilian, had been asking for
negotiations for almost a year before being bombed by NATO. But, the
Izetbegovic Government kept refusing until it secured the deadly
services of the USAF. It was the Bosnian Muslm Army Commander Rasim
Delic who selected its targets. With the U.S. air might behind them, a
brigade composed of grandmothers could beat "the Serbs." This was
essentially true at Kosovo as well.
Back in 1998, at Geneva, a U.S. diplomat met with members of the Kosovo
Liberation Army. For some time, the Clinton Administration wanted to
go to war against "Milosevic" but without using the American ground
troops. A "deal" was struck at Geneva. What had been an essentially
localized and containable guerrilla activity by a shadowy KLA, once
defined as "terrorists," would soon escalate. At home in the U.S, the
KLA was laundered away from its ties with the drug traffic and
transformed into a Freedom Fighting but under-armed outfit. The Pentagon
and the CIA had been in Albania itself for almost a decade, training and
supplying its army with weapons. It was never clear why? But, Albania
even became a "Cooperating Associate of NATO" and gave the U.S. its
first military base in the Balkans. It was thus hardly difficult to
extend this "alliance" to the KLA.within a Kosovo dominated by the
Albanian demographic majority. This alliance has not broken down to this
very day while the media are serving "splinter groups" of the KLA in the
"neutral zone" of southern Serbia and inside Macedonia. At the same
time, the Albanian Lobby in the U.S. has an unbreakable lock-in on
Congress. There is even an "Albanian Caucus" within it. But, the
American People have no voice in such matters.
By the time 1999 rolled-in, the KLA had killed, mostly from ambush, some
300 Serb policemen. Its tactic was "hit-and-run- and- melt" into their
clans thereafter. When Serb police managed to pinpoint and surround
the KLA fighters in a clan compound, the result would invariably be the
same. Some women and children would be killed along with the men with
guns. Such events only served to boost the level of international
indignation about the Serb atrocities against the ethnic Albanian
civilians. The KLA was almost never even mentioned, let alone the
right of every state to defend itself against insurgency. All civil
and guerrilla wars are particularly nasty but this perception was lost
entirely in the plethora of one-way accusations against the "guilty
Serbs." This would have ensued, most likely, even if the Serb police
had fought the KLA with sling-shots.
Psychological Warfare against the Serbs
Part I – Croatia and Bosnia
When all the dust had settled from various battles, massacres and
interventions in the ex-Yugoslav space the Serbs were left with a
wrecked economy and a bunch of toxins and mutants in their air, water
and soil. They had "become" the neo-Nazis of the Fin du Siecle, unable
to live with other ethnicities by virtue of the "fact" that they were
the "greatest" of "ethnic cleansers" within old Yugoslavia Yet, the
simple willingness to take a somewhat closer look would show a couple of
STARTLING revelations to those who cultivate their gnorance in order to
remain perpetually "indignant." At the height of shootings in
Croatia, some 60,000 Croats lived in Belgrade unmolested. No one ever
booted them out of Serbia. At the height of the Serb-KLA fighting, some
200,000 Albanians lived unmolested in Serbia, 80,000 of them inhabit
TODAY the Greater Belgrade. Not a few pro-Yugoslav Albanians, as yet
"unradicalized" by the KLA, had fled Kosovo into SERBIA and into the
hands of the Serb Red Cross. Serbia alone incorporates 26 different
ethnicities and is the only multi-ethnic state left in ex-Yugoslavia. As
such, Serbia should receive all the support possible, including war
reparations, from the champion of plural societies, the United States of
America. Instead, pure Croatia, pure Slovenia and pure Kosovo are today
the "good guys."
The second "surprise" comes from another set of figures. Ethnic Serbs
made up about 14% of Croatia’s total population. About 40,000 Serbs
were "cleansed" out of Western Slavonia and another 250,000 from
Krajina. Bosnia produced about 400,000 Serb refugees. Most recently,
after the "air war," some 150,000-200,000 Serb were cleansed out by a
supposedly "disarmed" KLA Today, there are almost a million Serbs in
Serbia proper that had been "cleansed" out of the rest of
ex-Yugoslavia.The Western media have conveniently covered this fact by
omission (it is hardly ever mentioned) and by psychological ploy found
in the following and endlessly repeated statement: "Milosevic lost four
wars." When the actually HEAVIEST "ethnic cleansing" affected the
Serbs who became refugees that is because they "lost wars." The
"winners," of course did not do anything so there are no Serb "victims"
only casualties of wars "the Serbs themselves had started." Really?
When the Yugoslav Army attempted to prevent Slovenia from orbiting out
of the Federation, there was relatively little fighting. In fact, YFA
troops and tanks were blocked in urban settings, going nowhere. There
was, however, no bad blood between the Serbs and the Slovenes deriving
from World War II. In fact, busloads of Serb mothers came to Slovenia
to take their sons back into Serbia, Neither the Serbs nor the Slovenes
were looking for a war. There were hardly any large numbers of Serbs in
Slovenia to be "cleansed out" either.
The case of Croatia was different entirely because the Croat Nazis
killed hundreds of thousands of Serb civilians (between 1941-1944),
many in the most bestial manner that offended even some of the German
officers. The Serbs of Krajina attempted simply to escape a Croat
State in the process of becoming independent from the Federal
Yugoslavia. Bad memories were a major factor but both the Western
media and the Croat Nationalists "helped" to revive them. Instead of
reporting the on-going and constantly escalating violations of Human
Rights of the Serb minority in Croatia, the Western media served another
psychological "canard." The Serbs wanted to create a "Greater Serbia."
In that way, no one needed to worry about what was being done to the
Serbs in the New Croatia. The Croats became the "certified" "victims"
of "the Serbs" collectively again.
Krajina was on its way to become a Croat Kosovo when local Serbs
refused to accept Croat over-rule. Only here, the Clinton Administration
helped the newly sovereign State of Croatia against the rebelling Serbs.
It saw to it that a U.S. General and other officers trained the new army
and modernized it. Electronic intelligence was given to Croatia’s Army
as well. When it launched Operation Storm in August 1995, U.S. jets
strafed the Serb radar positions around Knin, Krajina’s capital. This
was direct intervention without naming it. The U.S. General who trained
the new Army feigned utter surprise that it would come to expel by
terror and war a quarter of a million people, killing several thousand
in the process, with all the properties looted and torched. Given the
"American factor," Milosevic’s Yugoslav Army did not interfere and
Croatia became, at long last, ethnically pure one more time.It was
assisted in a major way by the Clinton Administration. In fact, the
Green Light for the Operation Storm was given by none other than
Madeleine Albright and Anthony Lake, then National Security Adviser.
Serbia itself did not lose this war because it did not enter it. But,
the Krajina Serbs lost a home which their ancestors began to settle
some three centuries earlier.
The situation in Bosnia, at end-game, left the local Serbs in
possession of about 40 percent of the real estate, having lost about 20
percent . They had legally owned about 62 percent of Bosnia, mostly
rural for a historical reason. Under the occupation of Ottoman Turks,
local Muslim overlords occupied the towns and the Christian raja got
the countryside. What ended the war in Bosnia was
Nothing that resembled anyone’s decisive military victory or defeat.
But, the war in Bosnia provided the Western media and some "publicity
scavengers" and "hogs" with a gold mine for sensationalism and
hate-mongering against the Serbs. There was the famous picture of an
emasciated Bosnian Muslim man in a Serb camp immediately "diagnosed"
as a "death camp." He was ostensibly behind the wire and he had a
gentle look in his face. The picture brough back immediately the
Holocaust and went Around the World. Newsweek had it as its
frontispiece. Beind all of this was a hoax. The Serbs allowed a British
TV crew and the producer to film the camp because they had nothing to
hide. It was a detention camp, noting more sinister. A closer look
inside the picture reveals a whole group of men who appeared well-fed
and well-dressed. A Serb TV crew was also filming their British guests
and it turned out that the emasciated man was in front of the wire, not
behind it. It also came out that he was suffering from Tuberculosis. The
producer saw the possibilities of a major media coup with which to pay
back the Serb hospitality and openness by a blow aiming to incite
forever against the Serb People men and women of Jewish faith in the
U.S. and Western Europe.
When fatigue was setting in among the Western publics about the war
crimes in Bosnia, there came out of Sarajevo the story of systematic
mass rapes of Muslim Women by Serb soldiers and para-military. Figures
of 20,000 to 40,000 were cited with assurances that can only accompany
the lack of any accuracy. A French TV reporter went to Tuzla,
Bosniuan Muslim stronghold, to verify the claim that some 4,000 of the
raped Bosnian women were in a large soccer field and vicinity.Half way
to Tuzla the numbers came down to 400. Near Tuzla they went down to 40.
In Tuzla, he found just 4. While the "mass rapes" of Muslim women were
circulated even in Muslim countries for an obvious reason, the
Yugoslav Government presented to the United Nations a formal dossier and
evidence. It revealed that hundreds of Serbian girls and women were
being abducted, brought into Sarajevo and put into brothels called"
troop entertainment centers." No one took notice. To get the "flavor "
also of non-Serb cruelty to alien women, herewith is briefly a story
that never reached the U.S. media. A young and idealistic woman from
Milan, Italy, went to Sarajevo to "help Bosnia." She was persuaded to go
with a man to Srebrenica where her help was "even more needed." Once
there, she was gang raped several times, sold and re-sold for a pack of
cigarettes. When the Serb Bosnian Army took Srebrenica its soldiers
found her in a dark cellar, in rags, chained to a wall and so
traumatized that she lost the power to speak. It took a week of hospital
care and a female social
worker to get her to talk and reveal what had happened. Some of the
reports from Kosovo reveal even more harrowing tales of cruelty to women
and girls "imported" by the Albanian freedom fighters and Mafiosi from
Albania, But, they are U.S. allies and who wants to diminish the great
achievement of NATO by revealing just how really out of hand the
situation inside Kosovo has gotten under the benevolent Gaulaiter
Bernard Kouchner and 40,000 NATO troops.
Out of the propaganda mill at Sarajevo came yet another set of figures
widely circulated. It concerned some 250,000 to 500,000 Bosnian Muslims
killed by the Serbs (this was BEFORE Srebrenica). A State Departmenbt
official who resigned his post reduced the figure down to about
40,000, a more realistic one. A few media sources did pick this up
because of his correct political pedigree but it was hardly enough to
prevent endless parroting of the higher mortality figures, for effect.
Psychological War Against the Serbs
Part II – Kosovo
For Kosovo, most of the fellow-Americans are still unaware of the
extent to which they had been savagely manipulated by the Clinton
Administration and the corporate media trying to "outrun" the White
House, the CIA and the Pentagon. After the bogus "massacre" at Racak,
there came the Rambouillet Conference in February 1999. The Big Lie that
came out of it was that the Serbs walked out and refused to sign the
"Peace Plan." There was "no alternative" but to "let" NATO bomb
Serbia. Facts tell otherwise. The Serbs were willing to restore Kosovo’s
autonomy, the original main provision of the "Peace Plan," and even
allow foreign troops to be stationed there under U.N. authority without
a fight. In return, the KLA was to be disarmed. The KLA’s political
head would not sign without the promise of formal independence for
Kosovo. Than came the con-game switch that hardly renders honor to the
American People or American professional Diplomacy. An Appendix (B) was
added in the last minute. Stripped of its meandering language, it simply
meant that the Serbs must accept the NATO occupation of Serbia,
including Belgrade. As Madeleine Albright would quip after the eleven
weeks of destruction and killing from the air, "we raised the bar so
Milosevic could not jump over it. Yugoslavia needed a little bombing."
Once assured by General Wesley Clark that it would de facto "borrow" the
USAF services over Serbia and the Serb Army positions at Kosovo, the
KLA signed the "Peace Plan" for war against Serbia. On 24 March 1999,
the U.S. (inside of NATO) went into action after having pre-planned
aerial attacks against Serbia since at least 1997. Now the propaganda
and the hate-mongering in full bloom.
A "humanitarian disaster" was being worked out in Belgrade to affect
ethnic Albanians. In a TV discussion, Senator Joseph Biden, was almost
foaming at the mouth while stressing the claim. The Serbs had beefed-up
their Third Army in order to carry this plan out..Shortly after the NATO
bombs and missiles began to fall on Serbia and Kosovo and the "Kosovars"
started to come out in large numbers, the German secret services came up
with the "discovery" of a would-be top secret Serb Plan to empty Kosovo
out of its Albanian majority. This was an ex-post-facto hoax as
documented in Germany itself. There never was such a plan. The reality
of it was that the Serb Third Army had been pulled out of Kosovo as a
resul of direct negotiations between Milosevic and Richard Holbrooke.
But, Holbrooke did not lift a finger to prevent the KLA from moving into
the power vacuum created by the Third Army’s removal from Kosovo. It was
now moving to retake the territories and put an end to the KLA. It did
not need anyone’s "permission" to so do.
Ah, but the Kosovars were fleeing Kosovo en masse. Proof positive of
"Operation Horseshoe," as the hoax was called.The difficulty was
obvious. No such flights occurred before 24th March 1999, the day of
NATO’s "humanitarian intervention" to "save the Kosovars." They were
leaving Kosovo for the first time in huge numbers to escape from
escalated fighting between Serb units and the KLA as well as from the
NATO bombs At that point Jewish Organizations in the U.S. ran a huge
picture in the New York Times of trainloads of European Jews being taken
to death camps in Nazi-occupied Europe, with Kosovo on the point and the
highlight of "Never Again." The analogy was pure emotional anti-Serb
hate-mongering because the fleeing Kosovars were going into the safety
of refugee camps across the borders. They were not going into the gas
chambers. Moreover, they were actually helped to do so by the Serb
military and were urged to leave Kosovo in big numbers by the KLA
itself.
Ah, but the Serbs had killed 100,000 Albanian men assured Secretary
of Defense Cohen. This was later scaled down to 10,000 but still with
"mass graves" populating the countryside at Kosovo. After the NATO
occupation a total of 2008 bodies had been excavated by forensic teams.
There was one particular
grave containing 150 bodies. They were quickly re-buried under the eyes
of NATO commanders when it was found that the bodies were those of
Serbs. The very near- crime of re-burial was committed to again deny the
Serbs even the right to be the victims of someone else in death. With
all the outcries about "mass graves" at Kosovo, the Spanish forensic
team walked out in frustration since the claim had outpaced the reality
by an unbearable distance. The desire to unearth a real mass grave
containing Albanian ethnic bodies was intense in June 1999 that a TV
crew offered a reward of $250,000 for such a bona fide find. The Medium
is the Message and no one did more to uphold this simulated reality than
CNN. It was the first TV outfit to second and surpass the propaganda
emanating
from the Clinton team and its lower-ranking associates. It even allowed
the Government’s psychological warfare personnel to be at the Network,
ostensibly for "training purposes," another canard served to the public.
Even after twenty-one months of NATO and U.N. presence at Kosovo, after
the expulsion of not only the Serbs from most of it but also all the
other minorities,after the kidnappings and murders of over 1,000 Serb
civilians, the "psy-ops" are "publicizing" the would-be gruesome
incinerations of 1,500 ethnic Albanian men in the smelter furnace of
the Trepca mine during the air war. This has been refuted by foreign
experts who went into the mine and examined the furnace. It is further
documented as another attempt to keep smearing the Serbs –now
"inconvenient" because Milosevic has been replaced by a democratic
Government—by the fact that the Serbs had shut the smelter furnace and
the mine during the whole period of NATO’s air war. But, no matter what
evidence is presented to the contrary by real experts who are neither
Serbs nor pro-Serb, the human parrots are constantly at work.
. As a result of a decade of hate-mongering against the Serbs the
Clinton Administration and the corporate media have spawned several
hundred clerks whose career advances are inter-linked with continued
cerebral bashing of "the Serbs." They are to be found on newspaper
staffs, in editorial rooms, in various NGOs and Governmental agencies
and nothing apparently delights many of them more than to "develop"
same new "variant" of the same bashing endeavor. But that is only one
duct into protracted smearing of a single ethnicity.. There are two
others with far greater influence in the corridors of power. One can be
called the "anti-Serb brigade." It populates various think tanks,
peace institutes, human rights centers, Congressional staffs and the
like. Time and time again, these are the same people who are called upon
by Congressional Committees to "testify" and "inform" what policies
should be pursued in respect to ex-Yugoslavia as a whole. It is a
replica of Catch-22.
The Serbs invariably get the short end of the stick without much by
way of real carrots. We had real wars with the Japanese and the Germans
and we rebuilt their economies. Even an unreal war of our own making
has not produced anything close as yet. Just three months after the new
Government was elected in Belgrade, the same coterie of real
intellectual pygmies and a few phoney Moral Giants is shedding
crocodile tears about the slow pace into Democracy and capitalist
underpinnings within Serbia They keep insisting that Belgrade MUST
deliver Milosevic and his Cabinet to the Hague in order to "prove" that
"real" reforms are taking place. Against the background of NATO
destruction and a million refugees, the Serbs are not even allowed to
set their own priorities, a given in any valid concept of Democracy. It
cannot be IMPOSED from outside. In an unguarded moment, even Morton
Abramowitz conceded that the Serbs are the pivotal people of
ex-Yugoslavia. Negotiating and siding with the KLA insurgents against
the Serbs sets a most destabilizing example of reckless risk- taking.
There are some 5,000 ethnicities in about 150 countries. If their
sovereignty is downgraded and even non-existent there will be no end to
an imploding and un-manageable international chaos but it is a sure
bet that neither the U.S. nor NATO will wish to attain another
Kosovo-like "victory." Had they not internationalized a local and minor
guerrilla it would have been eliminated by now and foreign troops would
not have been necessary along with a U.N. Trusteeship. To say nothing of
pouring billions of dollars don the drain. Some 1300 European (OSCE)
Observers at Kosovo just beore the air war had concluded that the Serb
units at Kosovo did NOT TARGET ethnic Albanians as a people but the KLA
instead. The Clinton Administration would not listen. It did not even
wish to make the massive report of OSCE Observers available to the
public. As a prominent ethnic Albanian in Macedonia said aptly, foreign
intervention at Kosovo allowed the Genie to "get out of the bottle."
The coterie does not see it that way.
Some in it are "Senior Fellows," like Morton Abramowitz who had been a
Political Adviser to the KLA at Rambouillet and has a long anti-Serb and
anti-Armenian record. He is now the most vocal and influential
point-man for the Kosovo Albanians in demands that Kosovo be given
independence from Yugoslavia. He argues that there is "no other way."
But, someone should remind him that, in the Balkans, the unspoken rule
of politics is that hardly anybody gets everything they would wish to
have. An internationally backed partition of Kosovo, with the northern
and much smaller area remaining Serb and the rest free to be independent
or unite with Albania could be a possible resolution of the "Kosovo
Problem" that would allow our troops to come home instead of staying
there for a generation.
But, this cannot happen as long as the "ex-KLA" "factions" are not
disarmed completely by a NATO able and willing to show its teeth. This
goal was one of the three main provisions in the "Peace Plan" at
Rambouillet. The KLA even signed it. . It cannot happen as long as the
same people keep "testifying" and "informing " repeatedly a Congress
that is already "captured" by the Albanian Lobby. It cannot happen
while NATO looks the other way. The political head of the "e-KLA," the
main general of the KLA{who is an attested war crimnal for what he did
in Croatia to the Serbs) and the ONCE-MODERATE leader of most Kosovo
Albanians are all in accord that ethnic Albanians in southern Serbia,
western Macedonia and eastern Montenegro "deserve" self-determination.
There is a third level at home in the U.S., the one that really counts
because it is composed of the actual decision makers who command the
military, political, and economic resources of the United States. They
define strategic objectives without communicating with the American
People that ultimately pays the bills and will come to benefit or to
harm for what they do or not do abroad. Until the change in Presidency,
many in this group defined themselves through the Holocaust. It is a
powerful influence, just like the World War II, which impacted an
entire generation in Europe and the U.S. But, as was pointed earlier,
the analogy with what happened at Kosovo does not work. It may even be
extremely counter-productive to the U.S. National Interest.
The preceding "determinators" have been replaced by what one could call
the "oil men," a practical, hard-ball bunch ready to be real tough only
when clear and widely discernible aspects of the National Interest are
at stake. It is too early to tell what this group, now in-charge, will
come up with but whatever it does come up with it will fail ultimately
unless it develops a real respect for facts and contexts in which these
devolve. In short, until they avoid the tendency to dupe the American
People in pursuit of "geo-political strategies" and "higher goals" that
only they grasp and for which they are ultimately not accountable even
in cases of egregious errors. They can learn a most profitable lesson by
a close and real look at what has been done to "the Serbs." It should
ring the bell on how NOT to deal with peoples out there and avoid, at
the same time, a Balkanization of America in the belief that they can
promote Democracy abroad while losing it at home.
Raymond K. Kent
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, Ca. 97720
(510/642-1971)
A Case of non-Justifiable Retribution
R.K.Kent
Emeritus Professor of History
University of California at Berkeley
27 March 2001
If there is a dominant feature of the Clinton era involvement in the
Balkans it can be summed-up with the saying that "the enemy of my
enemy is my friend." Science has abandoned "Reasoning by Analogy" for
at least two centuries but, than, there was nothing remotely
"scientific" involved in the Clintonite foreign "policy."despite the
pretensions of a Magister Dixit Dr. Seceratry of State. For a number
of complex reasons, the Serbs became the selected "enemy" of the
"West" as a whole through NATO, and even of Civilization itself. Ipso
facto, all other ethno-religious groups within the ex-Yugoslav space
became our "allies." The Croats, the Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo’s
ethnic Albanians ---all three were also transformed into "victims."
It was a "status" condition for which the Serbs were not allowed to
qualify. The "victims" had all the rights and deserved all the external
support. The "aggressors" had no rights. The Serbs were gradually
dehumanized through the Western media and governmental propaganda. They
were subjected to crippling and long-lasting economic sanctions.
NATO bombed the Serbs twice, once in Bosnia for three weeks and the
second time for eleven weeks in Serbia proper and Kosovo.
A Bogus Enemy and a War without Precedent
The 78-day attack had several unique features. First and foremost it
had no popular support at home. None of the "explanations" for it
seemed convincing enough. . Inter alia, it was regularly served to
the American People as a "humanitarian intervention." Few continued to
see it as such as the war went on and on. Anti-war activists began to
organize as it became clear that the American People had been simply
by-passed. Demonstrations were slated for 5th June 1999. It may be a
coincidence but the actual bombings stopped the day before while the
war’s "official end" was announced a week later.
Although it was presented as a joint Euro-American endeavor the U.S.
was the driving force and an 80 percent contributor to the total war
effort. It was the largest military undertaking in Europe since World
War II. It was launched without a declaration of war which the U.S.
Congress, for example, would not grant the President even 26 days into
the bombing campaign. For the first time, through control of NATO, the
U.S. bombed a state inside Europe and not in Asia, Africa
or Latin America. Yet, the United States was under no attack. The Serbs
had even been its allies in two World Wars. It had no economic
positions to defend in the Balkans. It was physically absent from the
Balkans in both World Wars, although it did bomb Roumania’s Ploesti
Oil Fields in 1944 as well as Belgrade, eleven times, at the request of
the Communist Tito, then trying to conquer Serbia. As others would do
more recently in ex-Yugoslavia, Tito "borrowed" the USAF to "soften"
Serbia. .
In a language reminiscent of Orwell, the "Air War" over Serbia
and Kosovo suggested air combat but it was nothing of the kind. .
Basically, the USAF, within NATO dropped bombs, Tomahawk and Cruise
missiles (and cluster bombs) firing shells dipped in depleted uranium
on a virtually defenseless nation. Another first, no single U.S. soldier
was lost in the Air War.
In the media drive to impose cerebral terror on "the Serbs," few
bona fide reporters made serious attempts to verify and fine- tune
into all the charges and horrors swirling about, in gore, on TV
screens, in articles dripping with blood, in pious postures of the
we-must-do-something hawks. The parlor-room Moral Giants, who own
and dominate most of the scribal and audio-visual media in the U.S.,
set up a political agenda. It was hardly advertised but it came into
view anyway. .The Serbs must not only be punished. They must be
humiliated, brought down on their knees. They must be "taught a
lesson." They are "collectively sick." They suffer from "pernicious
nationalism" and need to be "cured." They are the harbingers of another
Holocaust.. They should even be "hit in the genes" to induce collective
remorse through physical mutations in their yet-to-be-born children.
As that might take some time, a faster lane in which the Guardians of
Civilization could come to travel in their "justifiable retribution" was
to create a "special" Tribunal with another unstated but clear-cut
mission. By indicting and trying mainly and constantly "the Serbs,"
with a few cosmetic exceptions of several low and mid-ranking Croats
plus a Bosnian Muslim or two, "the Serbs" would continue to be "roasted"
on the spit of public opinion even long after the fratricidal wars had
stopped in ex-Yugoslavia. Needless to stress, this "Tribunal" is the
greatest violator of civilized laws, one step removed from a Kangaroo
Court and is even in constant violation of its own mandate’s provision
that it cannot accept funds from individuals (like George Soros) or be
supported by considerable aid from a single country, like the Unietd
States. In practice, if not widely known or understood, the Tribunal has
been basically a political arm of the State Department.
While all sorts of "indignant" hawks lambasted "the Serbs" for being
the "prisoners of their past," others accused them of failure to "face
their own past." Few could ask such a "sophisticated" question as
"where does one start or cut-off the Serb past?" To give an example, had
the "International Community" taken a long and hard look at Kosovo
between, say, 1974 and 1984 it would have iscovered that the Serb
minority was actually being victimized by the ethnic Albanian majority.
This happened because in 1974 the Federal Constitution of Yugoslavia was
changed radically to give virtually all powers to majorities in all the
Republics and Autonomous Regions. A decade later, the Serb minority got
the upper hand. To put it another way, why should the Serbs have to
accept and even favor external "explanations" of "Serb History," much
of it hardly a product of serious scholarship. Much of it has also been
"constructed" in haste, suffering from what professional historians
call "backward projection." This is an all-too prevalent habit to look,
usually with a strong partisan bias, at a given present and THEN
"explain it" by forcing the past to "fit" into it. The stronger
Victors are usually ‘VIRTUOUS" and apt to demand that only their
versions of History be perceived and accepted as valid.
The fall of "Milosevic" who was used as a substitute for the real
target, namely the Serb people and their Nationalism as defined
externally (but no one else’s in ex-Yugoslavia) did not eliminate the
political agenda. The entire Serb leadership from both Pale and
Belgrade has been on top of the Tribunal’s list of indicted war
criminals. The new Serb Government and its President Kostunica are now
being blackmailed. Unless they deliver Milosevic and his Cabinet to
the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) a Serbia that was bombed back into the
Nineteenth Century will not get the aid it needs to pull its people out
of economic and social misery. Why is an "international" trial of
alleged top Serb "war criminals" relative to Kosovo in 1998-1999, a
matter of such priority and urgency since there is no statute of
limitations for war crimes.?
What did the Serbs really do to deserve all the punishments? .Their
first "sin" was to attempt to preserve a Federal Yugoslavia threatened
at the same time from within and without by hardly new enemies. Strange
as it may seem today , the foreign-policy team of George Bush Senior
initially agreed with the Serb position. They were afraid of what could
happen if, by contagion, a dissolutioin of the USSR became too
violent. But, they all yielded to powerful and well-financed pressures
to crack-up Yugoslavia for good. These pressures came first from an
aggressive Croatian Lobby in Washington. It was reported to have spent
as much as $55 million to literally buy certain targeted U.S.
legislators, especially those considered to be "conservative." Germany’s
Chancellor Kohl also persuaded President Bush, Sr. to abandon any
defense of Federal Yugoslavia.
An American Public Relations firm (Ruder Finn) was hired to smear the
Serbs politically. Its CEO later bragged that his work turned the
Jewish organizations in the U.S .against the Serbs. He simply passed
on to them propaganda emanating from extreme Croat nationalist sources
in Zagreb and in the North American diaspora. In fact, Ruder Finn was
able to GLOBALIZE the pathological hate of the Serbs which had united
and is still the only sure-fire glue holding together the otherwise
disunited Croat nationalists everywhere..
The Earliest Victims in Disintegrating
Yugoslavia
Hardly anyone in the West knew that between August 1991 and February
1992 the new Croat Army and the para-military carried out the first
"ethnic cleansing" campaign in ex-Yugoslavia since WWII. It took place
in Western Slavonia as some 40,000 Serb civilians fled in panic, as all
of the elderly who remained behind were killed, as all of the Serb
Orthodox Churches were systematically destroyed. Hardly anyone knew in
the West that "human rights" of the Serbs in Krajina and Croatia in
general were being grossly violated in the newly Independent Croat
State under Franjo Tudjman. He had been a Communist General in Tito’s
Yugoslavia. His main job, at least until he went into opposition as a
Croat Nationalist, was to indoctrinate troops in the Yugoslav Federal
Army.
As that Army lost its non-Serb officers and tried to prevent Croatia’s
violent exit from the Yugoslav Federation, two YFA helicopters were shot
down by small arms ground fire from the Croat side. All of the two
dozen low-ranking YFA officers were wounded in the crashes. None died
from the impact but all of their heads were simply cut-off. The
"incident" never "reached" the Western media either. Similarly, as the
YFA was losing its Bosnian Muslim components, one of its Serb units,
600-men strong, negotiated a safe passage in exchange for not fighting
its way out of the Muslim -controlled area in Bosnia. Instead, half were
simply slaughtered and the few survivors from the other half stated that
the dead soldiers had a better deal in comparison what was done to the
survivors.
In short, the Serbs were the EARLIEST VICTIMS of post-WWII ethnic
cleansing and atrocities but the Western Governments and media did not
want to know or hear or report. The new "ethos" in the West was to smear
and keep smearing the Serbs and the Serbs only. Let us now review the
war crimes with which "the Serbs" have been charged in public and let
us try to provide some idea of context.
Arkan.
These fall into several categories. There are "war crimes" (actually
civil war crimes despite the international rhetoric to the contrary) of
which individual Serbs
and/or a specific Serb para- military group were actually guilty.
Here, the Serb warlord, Zeljko Raznjatovic or Arkan, and his "Tigers,"
mostly men released from jails in Serbia, top the list as the worst of
Serb wartime criminals. They committed initial atrocities in Eastern
Bosnia and later in parts of Croatia. To borrow Bernard Kouchner’s
twisted phrase at Kosovo, they saw their bloody work as "justifiable
retribution." This was not only for what was happening to
contemnporary Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia. It was also in memory of
what was done to hundreds of thousands of Serbs between 1941-1944 in
the "Independent State of Croatia" run by local Nazis, the Ustashe.
Bosnia was at the time under their rule as well. It was a gift from
Adolf Hitler for joining Nazi Germany in WWII. That is how it was. All
justifications aside, a crime is a crime, collective or individual. Two
Wrongs do not make a single Right, something that will be recalled in
connection with NATO’s "Humanitarian Intervention."
The First and Second Market-Place Massacres at
Sarajevo
Another category consists of crimes alleged to have been committed by
the Serbs without any real evidence. Such are the first and second
market-place "massacres at Sarajevo". After the first one, President
George Bush Senior was quoted as having said at a social gathering that
"the Serbs didn’t do it." Yet, no one supplied any solid evidence one
way or another. The Western media, parroting the Sarajevo
Government, accused the Serbs anyway. It is hard to believe, however,
that an American President, who had also been Director of the CIA,
would be uninformed about realities on the ground. .
Still, the Media optics were, in the case of Sarajevo, doubly skewed
against the Serbs. This is so because the Bosnian Serb Army attained no
victories at Sarajevo while shelling a very particular city from
adjacent hills. Even a part of Sarajevo inhabited mostly by the Serbs
was shelled from time to time. The hill gunners did not grasp the fact
that Sarajevo had endeared itself to the outside world because of
recently held Olympics. It had become everyone’s town. It was
constantly filmed by TV crews as the shelling went on.
The Sarajevo Government understood the context. It deliberately
provoked much of the shelling to gain more international support. In a
single move, it was able to gain the political loyalty of an entire
foreign press corps, residing in the local Hilton. A Bosnian Muslim
battery was positioned behind the Hotel and repeatedly drew ripostes
from the hills. Thereafter, no reporter in residence could adhere to
any effort that would resemble the craft of journalism. It all became
pure advocacy. .Like their bosses at home they WANTED to accept the
fare which came from the old hands of Tito’s Yugoslavia. They now
specialized
in disinformation working for the new Bosnian Ministries of Interior
and Information.
The Massacre at Srebrenica
Another category of war crimes and crimes against humanity leads into
those which are either deliberately severed from conext to remove
serious provocation or else exaggerated to gain international support..
The most poignant example of this kind, repeatedly brought-up in the
media, even six years later, is Srebrenica. It did not "surface" when
it was evolving but later, or more precisely at a particular moment in
time. It was in August 1995 that Madeleine Albright , then U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations, unveiled at the meeting of its
General Assembly an enlarged and dated CIA aereal photograph. . In it
was a freshly ploughed field that could have been anywhere but she
placed it at Srebrenica, a silver-mining town in Eastern Bosnia
inhabited mostly by Muslims. With a hint of a CIA in possession of
photographic evidence, she claimed that the field contained the buried
bodies of some 4,000 Muslim men, massacred in cold blood by the Bosnian
Serb Army. No such evidence ever surfaced.
Later, with the "help" of the Sarajevo Government, the figure
"escalated" to 7,000 and even 8,000, with added claims of "genocide."
It became by convention the worst blood-bath of the war in Bosnia.
Strictly speaking, this is not true. The entire Elite 5th Corps of the
Bosnian Muslim Army, trained by a retired U.S. General, was trapped by
the Bosnian Serbs and lost about 10,000 men to enfilade machine-gun,
tank and cannon fire, in a single encounter. For the record, this
happened inside the part of Bosnia under Serb control, now in Republika
Srpaska. The significance of the event and its location will be brought
out further below. At this point, it must be stressed that none of the
Western media involved in the heavy coverage of events in Bosnia
reported several aspects that would make the "Srebrenica Story"
considerably less one-sided with the local Muslims as the usual
"victims" and the Serbs as the perennial neo-Nazi "butchers."
Srebrenica had been declared a "Safe Zone," protected by U.N. Dutch
contingent, and containing presumably no armed Bosnian Muslim men. They
had been theoretically "disarmed." In fact, a local warlord, Nasir Oric
(a huge man and one-time Milosevic’s bodyguard) and his para-military
raided routinely the local countryside inhabited by the Serbs. This was
done over a period of months and it resulted in the looting and torching
of 42 Serb villages. Estimates vary for the civilians killed by Oric
and his men but the minimal one is 1,800 and the largest is 3,000. Oric
went even as far as to show to two Western reporters ( from Canada and
from Boston) a video tape of his own mayhem, bragging openly about his
"exploits."
The two top Generals of the Serb Bosnian Army that took Srebrenica manu
militare are now indicted war criminals at the Hague’s Tribunal for
Yugoslavia. Oric is running a disco for American G.I.s.in Tuzla. The
main General, Ratko Mladic, is accused even of "genocide" despite the
fact that he had ordered the busing out of Srebrenica all of the
Bosnian Muslim women and children. A rather sharp contrast in
comparison with what Oric did to the Serb women and children.
A tragic-comic story illustrates just how exclusively anti-Serb the
Tribunal has been. Two Serb university professors approached an
American who had gained some notoriety in "reporting" the miseries of
Bosnia. With simulated confidentiality, they revealed to him the
existence of a horrible Serb war criminal who had escaped attention.
They gave him a name. Within weeks, it appeared on the list of war
criminals wanted at the Tribunal. The only problem was that the man
never existed. It was a deliberate hoax to test "the channels." This was
still at the time when the Tribunal issued open indictments. Later,
these became secret.
Using an educated Mulsim intermediary, General Mladic demanded that
the Bosnian Muslim men hidden in the woods around Srebrenica surrender.
Instead, they made a run for Tuzla, a Bosnian Muslim stronghold. This is
when the Serb tanks began to shell and machinegun the woods
indiscriminately, killing in the view of its low-ranking commanders men
of a fleeing enemy army. It did not matter that most of hose in flight
did not carry any weapons. This is because, in civil wars, a man with a
rifle is a fighter. One without it is a civilian and they are and have
been entirely interchangeable. Suffice it to say that, at the end of the
Gulf War, USAF jets strafed the fleeing Iraqi soldiers much in the
same way. There was however one major difference.
At Srebernica, many of those in flight who had been caught were executed
in a summary fashion. This is where the real war crime comes in. Only
here Oric, by association, and as yet undesignated Bosnian Serb Army
soldiers, are the dual culprits in this the tragedy. The fleeing men
were afraid of reprisals for what Oric had done to the Serbs. The Serb
soldiers did not look only for the men that Oric used to exterminate
Srebrenica’s rural Serbs. All men of fighting age were automatically
regarded as Oric’s men. There remains the question of figures.
One needs to bring in some new elements up. Nasir Oric and his "elite
army" left Srebrenica a few days before the Bosnian Serbs went into
attack. They were incorporated into the Bosnian Muslim Army with the
request that it be kept a secret. There was even a Pentagon "angle"
here in that its strategists had concluded that Bosnian Muslim enclaves
like Srebrenica and Zepa were
indefensible and should be abandoned to the Serbs. Nasir Oric and his
para-military were almost certainly tipped-off about the impending Serb
Army invasion. Next, in the first municipal elections for Srebrenica,
after the Serbs took over, the names of 3003 Bosnian Muslim men listed
as "killed" showed up on the electoral rolls.
This writer was present at the University of California panel recently
on which a Bosnian Muslim politician without scholarly credentials
claimed, with a poker face, that no one from Srebrenica did any harm to
the rural Serbs because all were disarmed. He went further, all the
bodies found in the Serb part of Bosnia were those of Muslim men
"slaughtered in cold blood," within Serb territory, forgetting that
there were about 10,000 Muslim combatants’ bodies in there, from the 5th
Corps’ military disaster. He even claimed that 4,000 bodies had their
hands "tied" behind their backs. One was tempted to ask if they might
not have been tied after the excavations, even without imagining the
logistics involved in tying 8,000 hands for executions. Se non e
vero.
So, how many Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica were killed while
fleeing as against those killed execution style? It may take a
decade plus a Truth- and- Reconcilliation Commission to arrive at an
accurate number. At this time, if pre-departures and flights that
succeded are taken into account, the global figure of 4,000 dead, if
accepted by convention, needs to be sub-divided , with probably
one-third for the executed men. This is not very far from the Serb
victims of Oric to be found nowhere in the annals constructed by the
Moral Giants and their often breathless . "reporters." . The
"unreconstructed" Serb haters who read the present text will almost
certainly attempt to smear this writer for "trying to whitewash Serb
crimes." Nothing could be farther from such an endeavor. . It is an
attempt to confront the hysteria which blocks all serious inquiry into
the nitty-gritty of it all. One does get tired of having to read the
uninformed human parrots who keep repeating the same bogus "verdict"
in which the Bosnian Muslims are the innocent "lambs" " slaughtered" by
Bosnian Serb "Nazis" at Srebrenica.
One more item on Srebrenica. The reason why Madeleine Albright decided
to produce the CIA aereal fotograph that proved nothing visually by
itself, is that t the Croat Army "cleansed" out of Krajina some 250,000
Serbs, killing over 5,000 who could not flee and systematically looting
and torching their properties. Madeleine Albright and the National
Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, had given the green light to the Croat
Army knowing full-well what the result would be. After the NATO troops
occupied Bosnia without a shot, no bodies were found in the field made
famous by "Dr." Albright, as the New York
Times tried to boost her dubious "expertise" regarding the Balkans as
a whole. There is yet another and last category to be dealt with.
There are distinct war crimes for which the Serbs had been accused but
which they almost certainly did not commit. This is not the reference
to "minor" accusations. Among them, the sending of a bus full of
children through Sarajevo’s "Sniper Alley" and claiming that the Serbs
shoot children because a Bosnian Muslim girl was killed by an
apparently stray bullet. It mattered little that the victim was a Serb.
Or, a TV picture of a graveyard with tomb stones while the commentator
stated with assurance that it was the burial place of Bosnian Muslims
killed by the Serbs. The only problem was that the inscriptions were in
the Cyrillic alphabet and the tombs had crosses over them. It was, with
no chance of error, a Serb graveyard. No, reference here is to two
PIVOTAL "massacres." One led, in a few hours, to a three-week
bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs by the USAF within NATO. The
other was actually the triggering mechanism for eleven weeks of
U.S./NATO destruction of Serbia (and Kosovo).
The Massacre at Markale
The reference is to the Markale market- place massacre at Sarajevo
(sometimes called the Third Market-place massacre) and to the "massacre
at Racak.," Kosovo.It so happened that an ABC –TV crew was in place to
film the Markale massacre. It so happened also that a detailed U.N.
Report exculpated the Serbs, attributing this massacre to the Muslim
side. Enter again Madeleine Albright. She demanded that the U.N. Report
be kept under wraps. It remains secret to this day but the gist of its
findings leaked out through a respected Japanese U.N. official, Mr.
Akashi. Ambassador Albright had once told him arrogantly "to mind his
own business." Her Czech Jewish family was twice given shelter and
warm reception by the Serbs. Yet, she became the foremost Serb
hate-monger of the Clinton Administration. A case worth the extended
sessions that Sigmund Freud had with Frau Lou. After the Serb Army
took the town of Vukovar through intense fighting with the Croat
forces, she visited Vukovar to PUBLICIZE "yet another Serb atrocity."
It was the killing of some 300 wounded Croats, yanked out of the local
hospital and shot by "the Serbs." The killing was real but it was Arkan
and his Tigers who did the killings again, not the Serb Army and not
"the Serbs" collectively. She "neglected" to "tell the World" two other
very pertinent aspects. One was that an entire Serb population of
Vukovar under Croat control had disappeared without a trace but signs
of torture and killings were found by the Serb Army in the old Austrian
catacombs under Vukovar. Moreover, it would
appear that the 300 or so hospital "patients" turned out to have been
the extreme nationalist defenders of Vukovar who had kicked out the real
patients in
order to avoid being executed. But, that was Arkan’s claim. It may have
been true or not is the only rational assessment, the kind that has
been a rarity in the psychological bashing of "the Serbs" in the Western
and especially U.S. and German media.
The Massacre at Racak
.
The "massacre" at Racak differed significantly from the Markale
antecedent. Racak was a stronghold of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation
Army. It was attacked by the Serb police units on November 15 1999. The
next day , a special U.S. Envoy , Richard Walker, former U.S.
Ambassador to el-Salvador led a group of journalists and a TV crew to
a would-be "mass" grave filled with 47 bodies, all men, but left
completely open. It "was a massacre ," said Walker. Within hours, the
media across the globe had repeated his words. As Madeleine Albright
would say after the "air war," this ‘Serb atrocity’ did "galvanize the
International Community." It led to the talks at Rambouillet, France,
where the Serbs were set-up to take a fall big enough to justify the air
war itself. No one bothered to ask if there really was a mass execution
and whether the Serbs were really guilty. The verdict was carved in
stone before a jury of experts could convene. It still repeated from
time to time.
A forensic team led by a Finnish Doctor examined the bodies and the
site and produced 20 kilograms of research plus 3,000 photographs. The
lengthy report was never released but a summary did reach the media.
There were no spent cartridges at the site. The bodies had to be brought
from somewhere else. Only a single person in the all-male grave had been
shot at close range. Since the Serbs had been accused of hiding bodies
in Bosnia, why would they leave a "mass grave" open and deliberately
provoke an even more unfavorable opinion abroad that could lead to
military reprisals? But the clincher for an obvious "montage" was in the
record of Mr. Walker. He had close ties with both the CIA and the
Central American right-wing death squads. A French journal stated even
that he was "running them," all in character with his reputation as an
ardent anti-Communist warrior of long standing. Given that the day
before the "mass" grave was "discovered" there was heavy fighting at
Racak between the KLA and the Serb police, it would appear that the 47
bodies were those of the KLA soldiers fallen in battle. There was no
reason why they could not serve the KLA cause again even in death,
especially with Mr. Walker around So much for the "Racak massacre." One
thing is undeniable. Both the Markale and Racak massacres, one real and
the other unreal, provided the U.S.- led and dominated NATO with enough
"legitimacy" to respond with "justifiable retributions."
It would be claimed later that NATO’s intervention in Bosnia forced the
Serbs to come to the negotiating table at Dayton. Wrong again. Bosnian
Serbs in authority, both military and civilian, had been asking for
negotiations for almost a year before being bombed by NATO. But, the
Izetbegovic Government kept refusing until it secured the deadly
services of the USAF. It was the Bosnian Muslm Army Commander Rasim
Delic who selected its targets. With the U.S. air might behind them, a
brigade composed of grandmothers could beat "the Serbs." This was
essentially true at Kosovo as well.
Back in 1998, at Geneva, a U.S. diplomat met with members of the Kosovo
Liberation Army. For some time, the Clinton Administration wanted to
go to war against "Milosevic" but without using the American ground
troops. A "deal" was struck at Geneva. What had been an essentially
localized and containable guerrilla activity by a shadowy KLA, once
defined as "terrorists," would soon escalate. At home in the U.S, the
KLA was laundered away from its ties with the drug traffic and
transformed into a Freedom Fighting but under-armed outfit. The Pentagon
and the CIA had been in Albania itself for almost a decade, training and
supplying its army with weapons. It was never clear why? But, Albania
even became a "Cooperating Associate of NATO" and gave the U.S. its
first military base in the Balkans. It was thus hardly difficult to
extend this "alliance" to the KLA.within a Kosovo dominated by the
Albanian demographic majority. This alliance has not broken down to this
very day while the media are serving "splinter groups" of the KLA in the
"neutral zone" of southern Serbia and inside Macedonia. At the same
time, the Albanian Lobby in the U.S. has an unbreakable lock-in on
Congress. There is even an "Albanian Caucus" within it. But, the
American People have no voice in such matters.
By the time 1999 rolled-in, the KLA had killed, mostly from ambush, some
300 Serb policemen. Its tactic was "hit-and-run- and- melt" into their
clans thereafter. When Serb police managed to pinpoint and surround
the KLA fighters in a clan compound, the result would invariably be the
same. Some women and children would be killed along with the men with
guns. Such events only served to boost the level of international
indignation about the Serb atrocities against the ethnic Albanian
civilians. The KLA was almost never even mentioned, let alone the
right of every state to defend itself against insurgency. All civil
and guerrilla wars are particularly nasty but this perception was lost
entirely in the plethora of one-way accusations against the "guilty
Serbs." This would have ensued, most likely, even if the Serb police
had fought the KLA with sling-shots.
Psychological Warfare against the Serbs
Part I – Croatia and Bosnia
When all the dust had settled from various battles, massacres and
interventions in the ex-Yugoslav space the Serbs were left with a
wrecked economy and a bunch of toxins and mutants in their air, water
and soil. They had "become" the neo-Nazis of the Fin du Siecle, unable
to live with other ethnicities by virtue of the "fact" that they were
the "greatest" of "ethnic cleansers" within old Yugoslavia Yet, the
simple willingness to take a somewhat closer look would show a couple of
STARTLING revelations to those who cultivate their gnorance in order to
remain perpetually "indignant." At the height of shootings in
Croatia, some 60,000 Croats lived in Belgrade unmolested. No one ever
booted them out of Serbia. At the height of the Serb-KLA fighting, some
200,000 Albanians lived unmolested in Serbia, 80,000 of them inhabit
TODAY the Greater Belgrade. Not a few pro-Yugoslav Albanians, as yet
"unradicalized" by the KLA, had fled Kosovo into SERBIA and into the
hands of the Serb Red Cross. Serbia alone incorporates 26 different
ethnicities and is the only multi-ethnic state left in ex-Yugoslavia. As
such, Serbia should receive all the support possible, including war
reparations, from the champion of plural societies, the United States of
America. Instead, pure Croatia, pure Slovenia and pure Kosovo are today
the "good guys."
The second "surprise" comes from another set of figures. Ethnic Serbs
made up about 14% of Croatia’s total population. About 40,000 Serbs
were "cleansed" out of Western Slavonia and another 250,000 from
Krajina. Bosnia produced about 400,000 Serb refugees. Most recently,
after the "air war," some 150,000-200,000 Serb were cleansed out by a
supposedly "disarmed" KLA Today, there are almost a million Serbs in
Serbia proper that had been "cleansed" out of the rest of
ex-Yugoslavia.The Western media have conveniently covered this fact by
omission (it is hardly ever mentioned) and by psychological ploy found
in the following and endlessly repeated statement: "Milosevic lost four
wars." When the actually HEAVIEST "ethnic cleansing" affected the
Serbs who became refugees that is because they "lost wars." The
"winners," of course did not do anything so there are no Serb "victims"
only casualties of wars "the Serbs themselves had started." Really?
When the Yugoslav Army attempted to prevent Slovenia from orbiting out
of the Federation, there was relatively little fighting. In fact, YFA
troops and tanks were blocked in urban settings, going nowhere. There
was, however, no bad blood between the Serbs and the Slovenes deriving
from World War II. In fact, busloads of Serb mothers came to Slovenia
to take their sons back into Serbia, Neither the Serbs nor the Slovenes
were looking for a war. There were hardly any large numbers of Serbs in
Slovenia to be "cleansed out" either.
The case of Croatia was different entirely because the Croat Nazis
killed hundreds of thousands of Serb civilians (between 1941-1944),
many in the most bestial manner that offended even some of the German
officers. The Serbs of Krajina attempted simply to escape a Croat
State in the process of becoming independent from the Federal
Yugoslavia. Bad memories were a major factor but both the Western
media and the Croat Nationalists "helped" to revive them. Instead of
reporting the on-going and constantly escalating violations of Human
Rights of the Serb minority in Croatia, the Western media served another
psychological "canard." The Serbs wanted to create a "Greater Serbia."
In that way, no one needed to worry about what was being done to the
Serbs in the New Croatia. The Croats became the "certified" "victims"
of "the Serbs" collectively again.
Krajina was on its way to become a Croat Kosovo when local Serbs
refused to accept Croat over-rule. Only here, the Clinton Administration
helped the newly sovereign State of Croatia against the rebelling Serbs.
It saw to it that a U.S. General and other officers trained the new army
and modernized it. Electronic intelligence was given to Croatia’s Army
as well. When it launched Operation Storm in August 1995, U.S. jets
strafed the Serb radar positions around Knin, Krajina’s capital. This
was direct intervention without naming it. The U.S. General who trained
the new Army feigned utter surprise that it would come to expel by
terror and war a quarter of a million people, killing several thousand
in the process, with all the properties looted and torched. Given the
"American factor," Milosevic’s Yugoslav Army did not interfere and
Croatia became, at long last, ethnically pure one more time.It was
assisted in a major way by the Clinton Administration. In fact, the
Green Light for the Operation Storm was given by none other than
Madeleine Albright and Anthony Lake, then National Security Adviser.
Serbia itself did not lose this war because it did not enter it. But,
the Krajina Serbs lost a home which their ancestors began to settle
some three centuries earlier.
The situation in Bosnia, at end-game, left the local Serbs in
possession of about 40 percent of the real estate, having lost about 20
percent . They had legally owned about 62 percent of Bosnia, mostly
rural for a historical reason. Under the occupation of Ottoman Turks,
local Muslim overlords occupied the towns and the Christian raja got
the countryside. What ended the war in Bosnia was
Nothing that resembled anyone’s decisive military victory or defeat.
But, the war in Bosnia provided the Western media and some "publicity
scavengers" and "hogs" with a gold mine for sensationalism and
hate-mongering against the Serbs. There was the famous picture of an
emasciated Bosnian Muslim man in a Serb camp immediately "diagnosed"
as a "death camp." He was ostensibly behind the wire and he had a
gentle look in his face. The picture brough back immediately the
Holocaust and went Around the World. Newsweek had it as its
frontispiece. Beind all of this was a hoax. The Serbs allowed a British
TV crew and the producer to film the camp because they had nothing to
hide. It was a detention camp, noting more sinister. A closer look
inside the picture reveals a whole group of men who appeared well-fed
and well-dressed. A Serb TV crew was also filming their British guests
and it turned out that the emasciated man was in front of the wire, not
behind it. It also came out that he was suffering from Tuberculosis. The
producer saw the possibilities of a major media coup with which to pay
back the Serb hospitality and openness by a blow aiming to incite
forever against the Serb People men and women of Jewish faith in the
U.S. and Western Europe.
When fatigue was setting in among the Western publics about the war
crimes in Bosnia, there came out of Sarajevo the story of systematic
mass rapes of Muslim Women by Serb soldiers and para-military. Figures
of 20,000 to 40,000 were cited with assurances that can only accompany
the lack of any accuracy. A French TV reporter went to Tuzla,
Bosniuan Muslim stronghold, to verify the claim that some 4,000 of the
raped Bosnian women were in a large soccer field and vicinity.Half way
to Tuzla the numbers came down to 400. Near Tuzla they went down to 40.
In Tuzla, he found just 4. While the "mass rapes" of Muslim women were
circulated even in Muslim countries for an obvious reason, the
Yugoslav Government presented to the United Nations a formal dossier and
evidence. It revealed that hundreds of Serbian girls and women were
being abducted, brought into Sarajevo and put into brothels called"
troop entertainment centers." No one took notice. To get the "flavor "
also of non-Serb cruelty to alien women, herewith is briefly a story
that never reached the U.S. media. A young and idealistic woman from
Milan, Italy, went to Sarajevo to "help Bosnia." She was persuaded to go
with a man to Srebrenica where her help was "even more needed." Once
there, she was gang raped several times, sold and re-sold for a pack of
cigarettes. When the Serb Bosnian Army took Srebrenica its soldiers
found her in a dark cellar, in rags, chained to a wall and so
traumatized that she lost the power to speak. It took a week of hospital
care and a female social
worker to get her to talk and reveal what had happened. Some of the
reports from Kosovo reveal even more harrowing tales of cruelty to women
and girls "imported" by the Albanian freedom fighters and Mafiosi from
Albania, But, they are U.S. allies and who wants to diminish the great
achievement of NATO by revealing just how really out of hand the
situation inside Kosovo has gotten under the benevolent Gaulaiter
Bernard Kouchner and 40,000 NATO troops.
Out of the propaganda mill at Sarajevo came yet another set of figures
widely circulated. It concerned some 250,000 to 500,000 Bosnian Muslims
killed by the Serbs (this was BEFORE Srebrenica). A State Departmenbt
official who resigned his post reduced the figure down to about
40,000, a more realistic one. A few media sources did pick this up
because of his correct political pedigree but it was hardly enough to
prevent endless parroting of the higher mortality figures, for effect.
Psychological War Against the Serbs
Part II – Kosovo
For Kosovo, most of the fellow-Americans are still unaware of the
extent to which they had been savagely manipulated by the Clinton
Administration and the corporate media trying to "outrun" the White
House, the CIA and the Pentagon. After the bogus "massacre" at Racak,
there came the Rambouillet Conference in February 1999. The Big Lie that
came out of it was that the Serbs walked out and refused to sign the
"Peace Plan." There was "no alternative" but to "let" NATO bomb
Serbia. Facts tell otherwise. The Serbs were willing to restore Kosovo’s
autonomy, the original main provision of the "Peace Plan," and even
allow foreign troops to be stationed there under U.N. authority without
a fight. In return, the KLA was to be disarmed. The KLA’s political
head would not sign without the promise of formal independence for
Kosovo. Than came the con-game switch that hardly renders honor to the
American People or American professional Diplomacy. An Appendix (B) was
added in the last minute. Stripped of its meandering language, it simply
meant that the Serbs must accept the NATO occupation of Serbia,
including Belgrade. As Madeleine Albright would quip after the eleven
weeks of destruction and killing from the air, "we raised the bar so
Milosevic could not jump over it. Yugoslavia needed a little bombing."
Once assured by General Wesley Clark that it would de facto "borrow" the
USAF services over Serbia and the Serb Army positions at Kosovo, the
KLA signed the "Peace Plan" for war against Serbia. On 24 March 1999,
the U.S. (inside of NATO) went into action after having pre-planned
aerial attacks against Serbia since at least 1997. Now the propaganda
and the hate-mongering in full bloom.
A "humanitarian disaster" was being worked out in Belgrade to affect
ethnic Albanians. In a TV discussion, Senator Joseph Biden, was almost
foaming at the mouth while stressing the claim. The Serbs had beefed-up
their Third Army in order to carry this plan out..Shortly after the NATO
bombs and missiles began to fall on Serbia and Kosovo and the "Kosovars"
started to come out in large numbers, the German secret services came up
with the "discovery" of a would-be top secret Serb Plan to empty Kosovo
out of its Albanian majority. This was an ex-post-facto hoax as
documented in Germany itself. There never was such a plan. The reality
of it was that the Serb Third Army had been pulled out of Kosovo as a
resul of direct negotiations between Milosevic and Richard Holbrooke.
But, Holbrooke did not lift a finger to prevent the KLA from moving into
the power vacuum created by the Third Army’s removal from Kosovo. It was
now moving to retake the territories and put an end to the KLA. It did
not need anyone’s "permission" to so do.
Ah, but the Kosovars were fleeing Kosovo en masse. Proof positive of
"Operation Horseshoe," as the hoax was called.The difficulty was
obvious. No such flights occurred before 24th March 1999, the day of
NATO’s "humanitarian intervention" to "save the Kosovars." They were
leaving Kosovo for the first time in huge numbers to escape from
escalated fighting between Serb units and the KLA as well as from the
NATO bombs At that point Jewish Organizations in the U.S. ran a huge
picture in the New York Times of trainloads of European Jews being taken
to death camps in Nazi-occupied Europe, with Kosovo on the point and the
highlight of "Never Again." The analogy was pure emotional anti-Serb
hate-mongering because the fleeing Kosovars were going into the safety
of refugee camps across the borders. They were not going into the gas
chambers. Moreover, they were actually helped to do so by the Serb
military and were urged to leave Kosovo in big numbers by the KLA
itself.
Ah, but the Serbs had killed 100,000 Albanian men assured Secretary
of Defense Cohen. This was later scaled down to 10,000 but still with
"mass graves" populating the countryside at Kosovo. After the NATO
occupation a total of 2008 bodies had been excavated by forensic teams.
There was one particular
grave containing 150 bodies. They were quickly re-buried under the eyes
of NATO commanders when it was found that the bodies were those of
Serbs. The very near- crime of re-burial was committed to again deny the
Serbs even the right to be the victims of someone else in death. With
all the outcries about "mass graves" at Kosovo, the Spanish forensic
team walked out in frustration since the claim had outpaced the reality
by an unbearable distance. The desire to unearth a real mass grave
containing Albanian ethnic bodies was intense in June 1999 that a TV
crew offered a reward of $250,000 for such a bona fide find. The Medium
is the Message and no one did more to uphold this simulated reality than
CNN. It was the first TV outfit to second and surpass the propaganda
emanating
from the Clinton team and its lower-ranking associates. It even allowed
the Government’s psychological warfare personnel to be at the Network,
ostensibly for "training purposes," another canard served to the public.
Even after twenty-one months of NATO and U.N. presence at Kosovo, after
the expulsion of not only the Serbs from most of it but also all the
other minorities,after the kidnappings and murders of over 1,000 Serb
civilians, the "psy-ops" are "publicizing" the would-be gruesome
incinerations of 1,500 ethnic Albanian men in the smelter furnace of
the Trepca mine during the air war. This has been refuted by foreign
experts who went into the mine and examined the furnace. It is further
documented as another attempt to keep smearing the Serbs –now
"inconvenient" because Milosevic has been replaced by a democratic
Government—by the fact that the Serbs had shut the smelter furnace and
the mine during the whole period of NATO’s air war. But, no matter what
evidence is presented to the contrary by real experts who are neither
Serbs nor pro-Serb, the human parrots are constantly at work.
. As a result of a decade of hate-mongering against the Serbs the
Clinton Administration and the corporate media have spawned several
hundred clerks whose career advances are inter-linked with continued
cerebral bashing of "the Serbs." They are to be found on newspaper
staffs, in editorial rooms, in various NGOs and Governmental agencies
and nothing apparently delights many of them more than to "develop"
same new "variant" of the same bashing endeavor. But that is only one
duct into protracted smearing of a single ethnicity.. There are two
others with far greater influence in the corridors of power. One can be
called the "anti-Serb brigade." It populates various think tanks,
peace institutes, human rights centers, Congressional staffs and the
like. Time and time again, these are the same people who are called upon
by Congressional Committees to "testify" and "inform" what policies
should be pursued in respect to ex-Yugoslavia as a whole. It is a
replica of Catch-22.
The Serbs invariably get the short end of the stick without much by
way of real carrots. We had real wars with the Japanese and the Germans
and we rebuilt their economies. Even an unreal war of our own making
has not produced anything close as yet. Just three months after the new
Government was elected in Belgrade, the same coterie of real
intellectual pygmies and a few phoney Moral Giants is shedding
crocodile tears about the slow pace into Democracy and capitalist
underpinnings within Serbia They keep insisting that Belgrade MUST
deliver Milosevic and his Cabinet to the Hague in order to "prove" that
"real" reforms are taking place. Against the background of NATO
destruction and a million refugees, the Serbs are not even allowed to
set their own priorities, a given in any valid concept of Democracy. It
cannot be IMPOSED from outside. In an unguarded moment, even Morton
Abramowitz conceded that the Serbs are the pivotal people of
ex-Yugoslavia. Negotiating and siding with the KLA insurgents against
the Serbs sets a most destabilizing example of reckless risk- taking.
There are some 5,000 ethnicities in about 150 countries. If their
sovereignty is downgraded and even non-existent there will be no end to
an imploding and un-manageable international chaos but it is a sure
bet that neither the U.S. nor NATO will wish to attain another
Kosovo-like "victory." Had they not internationalized a local and minor
guerrilla it would have been eliminated by now and foreign troops would
not have been necessary along with a U.N. Trusteeship. To say nothing of
pouring billions of dollars don the drain. Some 1300 European (OSCE)
Observers at Kosovo just beore the air war had concluded that the Serb
units at Kosovo did NOT TARGET ethnic Albanians as a people but the KLA
instead. The Clinton Administration would not listen. It did not even
wish to make the massive report of OSCE Observers available to the
public. As a prominent ethnic Albanian in Macedonia said aptly, foreign
intervention at Kosovo allowed the Genie to "get out of the bottle."
The coterie does not see it that way.
Some in it are "Senior Fellows," like Morton Abramowitz who had been a
Political Adviser to the KLA at Rambouillet and has a long anti-Serb and
anti-Armenian record. He is now the most vocal and influential
point-man for the Kosovo Albanians in demands that Kosovo be given
independence from Yugoslavia. He argues that there is "no other way."
But, someone should remind him that, in the Balkans, the unspoken rule
of politics is that hardly anybody gets everything they would wish to
have. An internationally backed partition of Kosovo, with the northern
and much smaller area remaining Serb and the rest free to be independent
or unite with Albania could be a possible resolution of the "Kosovo
Problem" that would allow our troops to come home instead of staying
there for a generation.
But, this cannot happen as long as the "ex-KLA" "factions" are not
disarmed completely by a NATO able and willing to show its teeth. This
goal was one of the three main provisions in the "Peace Plan" at
Rambouillet. The KLA even signed it. . It cannot happen as long as the
same people keep "testifying" and "informing " repeatedly a Congress
that is already "captured" by the Albanian Lobby. It cannot happen
while NATO looks the other way. The political head of the "e-KLA," the
main general of the KLA{who is an attested war crimnal for what he did
in Croatia to the Serbs) and the ONCE-MODERATE leader of most Kosovo
Albanians are all in accord that ethnic Albanians in southern Serbia,
western Macedonia and eastern Montenegro "deserve" self-determination.
There is a third level at home in the U.S., the one that really counts
because it is composed of the actual decision makers who command the
military, political, and economic resources of the United States. They
define strategic objectives without communicating with the American
People that ultimately pays the bills and will come to benefit or to
harm for what they do or not do abroad. Until the change in Presidency,
many in this group defined themselves through the Holocaust. It is a
powerful influence, just like the World War II, which impacted an
entire generation in Europe and the U.S. But, as was pointed earlier,
the analogy with what happened at Kosovo does not work. It may even be
extremely counter-productive to the U.S. National Interest.
The preceding "determinators" have been replaced by what one could call
the "oil men," a practical, hard-ball bunch ready to be real tough only
when clear and widely discernible aspects of the National Interest are
at stake. It is too early to tell what this group, now in-charge, will
come up with but whatever it does come up with it will fail ultimately
unless it develops a real respect for facts and contexts in which these
devolve. In short, until they avoid the tendency to dupe the American
People in pursuit of "geo-political strategies" and "higher goals" that
only they grasp and for which they are ultimately not accountable even
in cases of egregious errors. They can learn a most profitable lesson by
a close and real look at what has been done to "the Serbs." It should
ring the bell on how NOT to deal with peoples out there and avoid, at
the same time, a Balkanization of America in the belief that they can
promote Democracy abroad while losing it at home.
Raymond K. Kent
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, Ca. 97720
(510/642-1971)
NATIONALISMS AND THE ABSOLUTE
CORRUPTABILITY OF IMAGINED
ABSOLUTE POWER
(a slight embelishment of Lord Acton’s Dictum)
R.K.Kent
18 Mar 2001
International legalities mean nothing any longer as individuals in
Congress of the United States as well as in the Executive Branch
continuously state and re-state in a host of ways that the U.S. Might
makes everything Right. Last year, the U.N. General Assembly passed
Resolution 54/168 as a step toward an upward growth of Democracy around
the globe. It simply requires of all the member states not to interfere
in foreign elections. Yet, quite openly and with unabashed arrogance,
millions of dollars are funnelled into Yugoslavia precisely to do the
opposite.A State Department Bureau is openly set-up in Budapest to
"run" the Yugoslav opposition in the name of "Democracy." A CIA
office is now in Sofia to train Serb university students in the arts of
resistance to the existing government. Somewhere along the line it will
be grasped that the Serbs are massively against Milosevic because he
stole another, much bigger, election and not because they were "bought"
by the CIA. Even a mega-founded "Intelligence Community" with a huge
capacity for mischief abroad is far from having anything close to
absolute power.
Our Solons and high ranking members of the Clinton Administration are
constantly lecturing Serbs about how they must re-arrange their
government, economy and society They have just invented a thermometer
which monitors the temperature of "Serb Nationalism." Anything less than
complete compliance with the dicta from Washington certifies high fever
and the mounting Nationalist disease requiring strong medecine and even
major surgery. The electoral winner who leads the Serb Democratic
opposition is already on notice that if he does not turn Kosovo over to
the "Kosovars" (almost an endearing name along the Beltway), if he does
not deliver "Serb War Criminals" to the "Hague Tribunal," if he does not
grant autonomy to Vojvodina (with its 3 milion Serbs and a Hungarian
minority of 300,000), sanctionas will be re-imposed and Serbia will be
"boxed-in" from all sides, completely isolated, and doomed to become a
backwater. Even the West European States and other members of the NATO
alliance are warned not to tolerate "Serb Nationalism with a kinder
face" or the U.S. will pursue its own agenda in the Balkans without
seeking Europe’s cooperation or approval. It is astonishing to find two
key Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee plus a Vice-Presidential
candidate, willing to subordinte U.S. relations with the European Union
to an obssession with "Serb Nationalism" which is almost certainly not
even understood in its historical context.
Until only yesterday, the Clinton Administration used "Milosevic" as a
substitute for "the Serbs." It did not bomb the Serbs for 78 days. It
bombed Milosevic. Open threats are now made to and demands are made
upon his Democratic successor-in- the- making who has yet to even
assume the Presidency. As, up front, the Serbs are suddenly transformed
from a nation of neo-Nazi "subhumans" into a "brave and valiant
people," a decade of carefully nurtured Serbophobia lurks in the
background. A host of people in governmemnt, politics, intellectual
journals , scribal and
(2)
audio-visual media have gained in careers and prominence through
hate-mongering against the Serbs. This will not be given up easily. It
does not only threaten long-range relations with the European Union. It
negates, upon minimal reflection, a number of widely understood
Democratic ideals. There is no divine right to "run" other peoples’
democracies. Despite approval in the Senate, the American People have no
desire for an "opportunity" to spend $77 million of tax-payers money ,
with more dollars to come, to "buy" elections abroad so that local
politicians can act as U.S. forign- policy surrogates. A recent
attempt, attributed to China, to buy votes in the U.S. caused an uproar.
It is not an American cultural value to threaten again and again a
people bombed for eleven weeks by the USAF, punished with a decade of
brutal economic sanctions and satanized through the major media just as
long without posing any real threat to the American People. Apparently,
a few dozen influential persons in the U.S. Government have slipped the
civilized leash, descending into the kind of punishing, vengeful
violence-prone passion attributed to "Milosevic" himself. Milosevic is
no longer around to oblige them They will be forced by events to either
find new ways of gratifying their dislike and hate or else shed years of
Serbophobia. In practice,however, they are accountable to no one. All
share the same conviction that the U.S.is omnipotent. None will admit
to any egregious foreign-policy errors and none see any serious
adversities generated mainly by their own arrogance.
Following the demise of the Soviet Union, the U.S., too, jumped on "the
Serbs," first gingerly during the Bush Administration and far more
actively by 1993. One of the short-term goals was to provide a
re-defned NATO with a New Enemy, tough enough to validate the New NATO
as a military arm of the New World Order and yet not strong enough to
threaten NATO’s defeat. The Serbs drew the lot. . They were reputed to
have one of the best armies in Europe. Two of their known national
traits, love of independence and sustained bravery in wars, made them an
ideal choice for the role through which to make the New NATO
"credible." From the outset, hence, the U.S. became a clandestine and
open supporter of any and all anti-Serb forces rising out of
Yugoslavia’s ashes. It sided with the Croat and Bosnian Muslim
successors of extreme Nationalists who had opposed the U.S. in World War
II. At the same time, it condemned strongly the proven Serb allies for
their own nationalist reactions to a replay of Yugoslavia under Hitler.
The cardinal , most pointed Serb "crime" was a refusal to live inside
Franjo Tudjman’s neo-Fascist Croatia and Alija Izetbgovic’s
fundamentally Islamic State. Its close second was Belgrade’s effort to
hold the Federal Yugoslavia together. Thus, while supporting the Croat
and Bosnian Muslim nationalist drives, while promoting
self-determination of ethnicities opposed to the Serbs the Clinton
Administration isolated "Serb Nationaism" as the enemy of Mankind
itself. .
It even went back to the Medieval formula that "the enemy of my enemy is
my friend"and applied it to the Kosovo Liberation Army which has been
the armed tentacle of an international drug
(3)
cartel. One remembers Senator Lieberman’s lofty claim that the "KLA
fights for American Values" According to recently released PAC
contributions and sources, Senator Lieberman
accepted a $10,000 contribution from ethnic Albanians in the U.S.He is
also the co-sponsor of a recent bill that re-states the obssession with
"Serb Nationalism" in the post-Milosevic era.Since Kosovo was
"liberated" from the Serb army and police a clandestine KLA has been
the real ruler of this area. In roughly one year, some 300,000
non-Albanians have been cleansed from Kosovo by Albanian terror. Over
1,000 Serbs have been kidnapped along with hundreds of Kosovo minorities
and even Albanians. . Drug dealing, white slavery, fraud, theft (even
KFOR treasuries have been raided and looted) ) and general lawlessness
dominate Kosovo as the U.S. continues to support the "ex" KLA military
and civilian leadership. Internal oponents of KLA’s political leader
have simply been assassinated. The main sponsor of the logically faulty
Medieval formula was Madeleine Albright. To gain the KLA signature to a
non-existing Accord at Rambouillet and thus have the cosmetic green
light to bomb the Serbs, Madame Secretary of State almost certainly made
a "deal" to get independence for Kosovo in the not too-distant future
She also abandoned the only true representative of the Kosovo Albanians
, the Poet Ibrahim Rugova, believer in non-violence. In turn, this
abandonment entrenched the KLA in Kosovo and makes it impossible to
arrive at some future democratic solution to the Kosovo Problem.The KLA
is working to create a Greater Albania. U.S. and other European troops
are still in Kosovo. Perceived as saviors last year, they will become
soon the "occupying force of Colonial Powers." .
An article written five years ago(1) pointed out a striking historical
pattern in respect to Serbia and the Great Powers. First Austria,
followed by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, found obsession
with the Serbs fatal to their real interests. Austria’s 10-point
ultimatum in 1914 became a pretext to launch a massive attack on Serbia.
Initially, Austria was badly beaten on the battlefield and its" body
bags" brought German fury and, with it, the start of World War I. It
obliterated an entire generation in Europe, helped establish Communism
in Russia and paved the ground for Hitler and World War II. When the
Serbs defied Hitler on 27th March 1941 and alone stood with Britain
against the Nazi might in Europe, Hitler promised to reduce Serbia to
ashes. He sent the Stukas and the Wermacht to teach the Serbs a lesson.
Hitler’s little Serb side- show retarded his attack on Russia
(Operation Barbarossa) by three crucial months. His troops got bogged
down in the merciless Russian winter and a number of Germany’s divisions
remained in
Yugoslavia to deal with those recalcitratnt Serbs, royalists and
partisans alike. Without "the Serbs" Hitler might well have won World
War II in Europe. He might even have developed the missle technology
well ahead of anyone else. When the Serbs disobeyed Stalin he kicked
Yugoslavia out of the Cominform in 1948. That was the beginning of the
"poly-centric Communism" gradually dominated by Nationalisms and
decidedly a major factor in the U.S. ability to survive the Cold War as
the only super-Power around . Indeed "Nationalism" had been an
important U.S.ally against Moscow’s attempts to dominate the world
through a Communist Orthodoxy and local parties.It was re-used in
Yugoslavia against the Serbs and their attempts to preserve the Federal
Yugoslavia.
(4)
A sustained international campaign came into being subjecting the
Serbs to cerebral terror. Sporadic Serb atrocities, mainly by the
para-military nationalist revanchists, were blown out of
proportions into full-fledged "genocide" filling the landscape with
"mass garves." Staged "Serb " massacres at Sarajevo and Racak were
employed to use NATO force against the Serbs without serious public
opposition at home, first in Bosnia and later in Serbia . A Tribunal was
set up at the Hague by Madeleine Albright in 1993. Until 1996 it
indicted and tried only alleged Serb war criminals. It even attempted
to try two officers of the Bosnian Serb army who were not accused of
anything and were kidnapped in Sarajevo even after Dayton assured free
movement. Their only "crime" was Serb ethnicity and uniform. Although
mandated by the U.N. Security Council, the Tribunal has had no real
connection to either the International or criminal Law as practiced,
say, in the United States In the U.S. the burden of proof is on the
accuser. At the "Tribunal" it is the other way around. .A fair trial of
such already indicted and publicly condemned "war criminals" as Radovan
Karadzic, General Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic is simply not
possible at this "Tribunal." But, fair trials are not on Tribunal’s
agenda when it comes to "the Serbs." Even a substantial part of its
most recent funding comes from a single private donor, George Soros, a
Serbophobe with billions to spend in his"eternal combat" against the
dragons of Nationalism. Unfortunately, the fig leaf of such phrases as
the "Hague Tribunal" and "indicted war criminals" has hidden in general
from the American People the true nature of this quasi-legalistic
perversion.
At the same time, while the Serbs were being routinely accused of
everything except bad weather, war crimes and crimes against humanity
perpetrated by the Croat and Bosnian Muslim forces (later by the
Albanian KLA) were hardly ever reported, if at all. The Serbs became
sub-human, without the right of self-determination at Krajina and in
Bosnia, without the right of self-defense at Kosovo. They were set-up to
take the fall no matter what they did or did not do. Serb para-military
"avengers," the stupid and unnecessary shelling of Sarajevo (an"Olympic
Town" in Western eyes}, the holding of U.N. hostages, the
"Macho"counter-poise ("inat") to the far more powerful NATO member
states and the total denial of any atrocities committed against other
ethnic groups played right into the hands of the Serb haters. Hate
invariably warps. It makes caricatures of those who are seduced by it.
It robs them of reason, logic, willingnes to listen and learn. It robs
them of the very humanity they profess with astounding contradictions.
The Clinton foreign policy team, infected by Madeleine Albright’s
masked but acute Serbophobia with a record, could not tolerate defiance
and"disobediance" to its dicta any more than Hitler. Secretary of
Defense Cohen even said that if the Serbs continue to defy the U.S.
Serbia "will be reduced to ashes." It came close to that after
Rambouilled in February 1999 over Kosovo. Serbia and Kosovo werre
bombed mainly by the USAF for 78 days ostensibly to force "Milosevic" to
accept a "Peace Plan" and return Autonomy to Kosovo. The Rambouillet
(5)
ultimatum actually demanded the occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO
troops. It was even harsher than the Austrian ultimatum of 1914 which
may have inspired its March 1999 drafters.
The invincible U.S., sole remaining International Giant , had used air
power to impose its will on a peanut country in Europe.It did not work
at all. It even proclaimed total "victory" at Kosovo. an
interpretation questionable by anyone familiar with facts on the ground
and capable of minimal logic. There is an old Slavic proverb. It
states that when God wishes to punish an individual He first removes the
capacity to reason.
It is obvious that foreign policy makers in Washington are unwilling to
be impressed by the historical pattern of results that have affected
three great powers in their obsession with the Sertbs. With the Soviet
Union out of the way Washington’s foreign-policy, intelligence and
military elites convinced themselves that America’s power is today so
absolute that they can do anything and get away with it, usually on
moralistic grounds The main reason why the Presidential race hardly
touches on foreign policy is not the claim that the American People are
totally disinterested in what goes on "out there." It is becuse the
perception and feeling of omipotence, of absolute power, has eliminated
the need to be held accountable to the American People for egregious
foreign-policy errors in both theory and practice.The leading question
poses now itself. Will the U.S. obssession with" the Serbs" allow it to
orbit out of the historical pattern outlined at the beginning of this
essay? Having proclaimed " victory" at Kosovo, are there losses
involved at all? This is a virtually unexplored area of serious
inquiry. It is in dire need of analysis in its domestic and foreign
dimensions. Some preliminary observations suggest themselves.
Deceit, disinformation, violations of elementary logic through
well-planned lobotomies on the public mind, and misuse of the
"Intelligence Community" to "trick" the American People into supporting
military actions in the name of "National Interest," enter immediately
into view. Of the 47 military engagements since 1945, 33 took place in
the last eight years. The United States had no vital national interests
in the Balkans in World Wars One and Two. Betwen 1956 and 1989 it
supported the Federal and Communist-ruled Yugoslavia’s independence
from Moscow but it committed no major military and financial resources
to prevent a Soviet take-over. Yugoslavia never became a part of NATO
and its is extremely doubtful that Washington would have risked a
thermonuclear war with Moscow over such an attempt. That is because the
U.S. did not really have a vital National Interest in the Yugoslav
space. Now, suddenly in the 1990’s, without any Soviet threat, one is
told that American troops, planes, bombs and missiles and an expenditure
of billions of dollars are there to defend a vital National Interest.
As yet, no one has been able to define persuasively what it is today.
Defense of Human Rights is about the only "over-arching" argument
advanced. It collapses upon closer scrutiny. While professing acute
concerns for Serb violations of Human Rights the "National-Interest"
promoters could not care less for what was done to the Serbs. The
record is there , it is clear and offers a devastating
(6)
indictment of moral poverty involved in the bogus claim to a "vital
National Interest." In Kosovo, today, under NATO and the U.N., the
gross, daily and witnessed violations of Human Rights, perpetrated by
the clandestine KLA against the dwindling Serb and other minorities, has
not produced a single major voice in the Administration or in Congress
to crack down on and dismantle the KLA completely, arrest its leaders
and deliver them to the Hague Tribunal. Instead, members of the
"ex-KLA," transformed into the U.N. Constabulary at Kosovo have just
been funded in Congress despite repeated evidence that they have engaged
and engage in extortion, beatings and even murder. While a five million
dollar reward is offered to anyone able to deliver Milosevic to the
Hague , the political head of the "ex-KLA" attends the Democratic
Convention in Los Angeles exchanging kisses with Secretary of State
Albright. .
As an outgrrowth of deciet and disinformation needed to justify
military interventions abroad, an unusually intimate relationship of
the major scribal and audio visual media and the Administration has
emerged in the shaping of foreign policy. While a "patriotic
mutuality" of government and media was commonplace in major wars, it
never loomed as large in peace-time as in the last decade while focusing
on the Balkans and the Yugoslav tragedy. Most of this "mutuality" was
not directed at any real "enemy" of the United States. Nor was the
country in a state of formal war. Its planes and missiles did bomb
Serbia and Kosovo relentlessly for eleven weeks but lack of casualties
on the NATO side confirmed the purely punitive nature of this military
intervention. A real war between two countries simply did not
materialize. As the USAF General Nash said in plain English, the "air
war": was meant"to break the will of the Serb people." Instead, it
prolongued their support for a leader they had wanted to ditch years
earler, first in 1991 and again in 1996/1997.
It cannot be said enough times that anti-Serb propaganda saturating the
print, the images and the waves was directed mainly at the home
audience. Quite simply, the American People have been massively cheated
out of getting the truth. Thus, from both the foreign and domestic
points of reference there is nothing to brag about despite claims of
"victory." If this is not altered by a re-emergence of true sequence of
events, by the discovery that the Clinton Administration’s meddling in
Yugoslavia was the greater part of the problem and hardly a part of its
solution, the American People risk losing any control at all over a
foreign policy that could spell major disasters yet to come or manifest
themselves. . That is why our politicl leaders do not wish to discuss
openly and at length the truth about American foreign policy in the
1990’s in the Balkans.They are afraid of revealing their own moral and
intellectual fragilities. They invent Geopolitical fantasies because
they do not really know where they are going. But that is not all.
The 78 days of bombing a small European country which hardly put up any
defense created a major problem with its own offshoots. No matter what
moralistic braggadocio comes out of Washington about "protecting
Democratic values ," the mask is off an Imperial Power out to control
the World with a new process and a new ideology, a newly perceived "
Evil Empire." The process has been called "Globalization," the ideology
"Globalism." Millions have died in the
(7)
name of various "isms." There is every chance that millions more will
die. Today, military-political strategists in Washington are asking for
additional billions in order to be able to "fight simultaneously on two
fronts." Reference here is clearly to "regional conflicts" which will
be"sold" to the American People much in the same ways as already worked
out in the Balkans. The process of Globalization was anticipated by
James Burnham in the early 1940’s when he wrote about the "Managerial
Revolution" but localized it in the U.S. In simplified language,
globalized economy will reduce the state to a janitorial role and
replace sovereignty with Multinationals.
In a short cross-over from process to dogma, Globalism replaces
Communism whih also sought to impose itself on the whole world and
dissolve the state. Those who dilligently promote Globalism as an
idology and Globalization as its tool need to be reminded that no global
"ism" has ever defeated local "isms." The former are synthetic while
local Nationalisms are visceral and tend to prevail or re-assert
themselves either aggressively or defensively. Wherever Globalization
and economic prosperity march hand in hand and are visibly
inter-conncted, detonators with which to trigger - off visceral
reactions of latent Nationalism will be missing. At the moment , the
tendency is to jump into the Globalizing band-wagon pulled by the
mighty Multinationals. Yet, it is hardly difficult to predict a host of
the coming defensive Nationalist reactions . If the U.S. uses its
capacity to actually fight in two (or more) regional conflicts at the
same time to attack one ethnic group in support of another it will
neither manage to promote the cause of universal Human Rights nor remove
the detonator that goes off in defense of a tribe. By using a selective
approach to Nationalism in ex-Yugoslavia and, indeed in the Balkans,
the Clinton Administration has already made a most egregious error.
It has shown convincingly that there is no such thing as "humanitarian
military intervention," tnat it is Might that decides who shall and who
shall not have access to Human Rights and that international obedience
to its imagined absolute power has already corrupted Washington
absolutely. One might add, without redemption unless the American
People take their government back. In respct at least to the Serbs and
Yugoslavia this is not so very difficult despite the lasting and
lingering Serbophobia which needs to be cured. To this end a few
concrete proposals seem in order.
It is high time to deliver on the claim that "the U.S. has never been
against the Serb people" but only "against Milosevic." For starters,
home-grown Serbophobes should be made increasingly uncomfortable in
further attempts at getting their jollies by bashing "the Serbs."
Outright hate-mongering of the Serb ethnicity might be something that
Serb-Americans and other fellow-Americans might wish to pursue through
courts.Secondly, if there is no will to downgrade or even punish we
should at least stop glorifying as our "heroes" Madeleine Albright,
Generals Clark and Short.We are demanding that all ethnicities in
Yugoslavia --but especially the Serbs-- stop glorifying as their
"heroes" such people as Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic
(Serbs),General Rasim Delic and Warlord Nasir Oric (Bosnian Muslims),
deceased General Franjo Tudjman and very much live General Agim Ceku
(Croat and Albanian in Croatia’s Army)
(8)
and, again, Agim Ceku and Hashim Thaci (Kosovo Albanians). Next, even
our current President Clinton can issue an Executive Order to all the
Armed forces that the Serbs are not considered to be an enemy of the
United States. A claim is standing that the" moment Milosevic steps
down" and is replaced as the Yugoslavia’s President by an election, all
sanctions are to be lifted. It is time to stop a decade of a cruel
economic punishment and deliver on the claim no matter what else
happens with or to "Milosevic." At the same time, the White House should
honor the request of Western Europe to extend immediate recogniion to
Vojislav Kostunica. It would be a serious mistake to start labelling him
as a "Serb Nationalist with a kinder face" simply because he is not
immediately assuming the role of Washington’s likeable lapdog. While
stating and restating that the U.S. will share with Western Europe the
burden of paying Yugoslavia for the damages caused by eleven weeks of
bombing its civilian infrastructure and properties, it would be useful
to repair specific damages by an advance of funds. Sending our own
medical experts to determine the extent of released toxins and a mutant
like depleted uranium would show also also some real concern for genetic
damages in the making. We should reopen the Embassy in Belgrade and send
a diplomat untainted by Serbophobia.
There should be no immediate demands for deliveries to the Hague
Tribunal of alleged Serb war criminals. A little healing time is needed.
A hemorrage has been stopped with a strong bandage and it is too early
to remove it. A little patience is required. In the cited article of
five years ago, this writer suggested that the only sure way of ending
ethnic conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia for good would be to strengthen local
judicial systems to have them try their own alleged war criminals
perceived as "heroes." At the same time, the high life with perks of
those associated with the Hague Tribunal should be no longer funded, the
Tribunal’s funding should go to Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and
Kosovo and the Tribunal should be replaced by an already ratified in
part World Court to deal with future war crimes and crimes against
humanity. It is not out of question for an ordinary citizen to make
another suggestion. The Puritans, who are the antecedents of America,
absolutely rejected displays of arrogant behavior. Could our present
foreign policy elites be perdsuaded, while forming the United States of
the World, to be at least overtly humble?
MILOSEVIC, THE SERBS AND THE WEST
R.K.Kent
Emeritus Professor of History
University of California at Berkeley
13 Mar 2001
Those who know Serb History will recall that in 1804 Karadjordje almost
refused to lead a revolt against the Turks because of his choleric
nature. " When men disgree with me," he said, "I lop their heads off."
"Can you accept this (kind of leadership)" he asked at an assembly."That
is why we precisely wish you to lead us now." Later on "when you are no
longer needed we will lop YOUR head off." This is exactly what happened.
A page, torn out of the Serb past, connects with the universal fact
that no individual -- declared "bad" or" good"-- can or should replace
an entire people when it comes to its National Interest. It also reveals
that different times and different crises require different types of
leadership. While in power, Milosevic wrapped himself in Serb
Nationalism everywhere in ex-Yugoslavia except in Kosovo where he
attempted to "play the Yugoslav card." Neither of the two constitute an
unforgivable political sin and let it be noted at once that Milosevic
came to Dayton, Ohio, and signed an international agreement without
being considered, charged or arrested at that time as a "war criminal."
There were no other armed conflicts between Dayton and 1998/1999 when
the Kosovo Liberation Army escalated its guerrila war until it
resulted in the NATO (primarily U.S.)"air war" of eleven weeks.
The NATO "humanitarian intervention," dipped in depleted uraniam and
sprinkled with cluster bombs, was a war crime and a crime against
humanity under an Open Sun. It did enrmous and as yet incompletely
assessed damage to the Serb people , their properties, land, air and
rivers. It was not only criminal in nature, deliberately hitting
civilian targets in order "to break the will of the Serbian people," as
General Nash said in public after the "air war" of 78 days. . It was
both an unneccessary and an avoidable war. Its driving mechanism was an
almost insane desire to assert power through physical punishment and
humiliation of a people demonized during an entire decade (1989-1999).
As a result, Milosevic became both a Hero of Serb Resistance to
Foreign Imperialism and an unhappy choice as the Serb leader at a time
when the United States underwent a hi-tech revolution that could shape
and re-shape public opinion at will, within days. Or conduct a war
without losing a soldier. At the same time the ""prevailing ethos"
precluded the labelling of entire populations as "inherently evil."
That would be both "uncivilized" and "undemocratic." It thus found in
Milosevic a villian that could be depicted as the evil "Butcher of
the Balkans." After playing a hefty part in the fall of Milosevic from
power, the Clintonites are demanding --despite losing the
Presidency--that he be delivered to the Hague Tribunal for Yugoslavia.
He has been indicted in public for alleged war crimes and "genocide"
exclusively at Kosovo. No credible, prima facie, evidence to support
this indictment has surfaced in public.Yet, in the post-Clinton America,
the new Sereb Government is now being blackmailed via denials of
economic aid unless they at least arrest and try Milosevic in
Belgrade. A subsequent delivery to the Hague, along with other indicted
top Serb officials in the Milosevic_s government would follow.
(2)
A Petition is being circulated at this moment demanding the end of a
witch hunt involving Milosevic. It castigates all Serbs prone and
willing to deliver Milosevic to the Hague. But, it also attacks all
those willing to put him on trial in Belgrade as boot-lickers and
lackeys of American Imperialism who are selling the Serb people out. The
Petition has chosen the Hero model and only a Serb Medal of Honor is
lacking. This is a gut reaction against international injustice both at
the Hague and over the skies of Serbia and Kosovo. It is also an
attampt, at least indirectly, to uncouple the reconstruction aid which
is owed by any civilized standards as well as promised if Milosevic
fell from power. The drafters and co-signers of the Petition, all
time-honored and tested defenders of the Serbs in the U.S.thus
interpret the current National Intrest of the Serb people not on the
basis of reason but emotion. Let this writer make the case for reason
and see if it can prevail over visceral reactions.
First and foremost, the Serbs have no real friends among the influential
persons in the U.S. who make foreign policy. Many among them have
convinced themselves that they can prevent another Holocaust by
developing a new bunch of "Neo-Nazis" slated not only for punishment but
also for collective humiliation. Most of them are interventionist
hawks, regardless of party affiliation. Some are quite bloody-minded
They would kill and maim and attack the genetic code of Serb civilians.
One is even a political adviser to the KLA.They have no intention of
letting go of either Milosevic or the Serbs. Since "Milosevic" is out
of power these Establishmentarians must have him at the Hague Tribunal
because only THERE he can be humiliated beyond physical punishment. The
Tribunal is a DE FACTO political weapon and not a court of law. It
would provide basically a show trial, for him as well as the other
"indicted" top members of his government.
But, there is a world of diference if Milosevic comes to trial in
Belgrade. In a real domestic Court of Law Milosevic will have the kind
of legal defense he could never secure at the Hague. His attorneys, in
defense, can just as well put NATO on trial for war crimes and crimes
against humanity and peace. They can demand that the Hague Tribunal_s
Prosecutor realease documents which provide prima facie evidence agaisnt
Milosevic as a "genocidal" "war criminal" at Kosovo. This can be done,
amicus curae, to "assist" the High Serb Court in fact- finding in
respect to alleged Hague accusations. A trial of Milosevic in Belgrade
with INVITED FOREIGN OBSERVERS OF LEGAL STATURE could turn the tables on
his Hague indictment, resulting in a law suit at the World Court for
"MALICIOUS DEFAMATION. " Damages could be asked for in the neighborhood
of $100,000,000. At the same time Milosevic would be undeliverable to
the Hague if the indictment for alleged genocide and war crimes
directly linked to him cannot be supported. There would have to be some
prima facie evidence, subject to detailed scrutiny of his defense
attorneys. REAL LAW IS THE ARENA FOR COMBAT, not emotional petitions
even when the sentiment is shared. Witch -hunts die out when
dissected and singed by truth. Some last observations, now..
(3)
When Carla del Ponte wanted to open a Tribunal Office in Belgrade, the
same visceral reaction took place as some wre horrified at the lack of
national backbone in opposing "legitimization" of the Tribunal. The
Tribunal is a political fact of life. It has to be dealt with as
such.This means that an Office of the ICTY should be allowed to open in
Belgrade only to be flooded with thousands of Serb victims willing to
provide evidence of what has been done to them in other parts of
ex-Yugoslavia. The story of atrocities against the Serbs during the last
decade is far from being told or even known to the wider publics in the
U.S. and Western Europe.
It is very much in the Serb National Interest to put Milosevic on
trial in Belgrade to determine the extent and scope of his alleged
guilt. It is his turn to have the symnbolic "head lopped off " if he
is really found guilty of genocide and war crimes. But, there is more to
it. For 36 years (1944-1980), Serbia was ruled by Tito and the
Communist League. . After a rotating Presidency of about a
decade(1980-1990) former Yugoslav Communists became Socialists overnight
and all of their top leaders enveloped themselves in ethno-religious
nationalist cacoons. This writer refuses to accept the contention that
only the supporters of Milosevic and of Tito_s Yugoslavia have the right
to monopolize the interpretation of the current Serb National
Interest.
Serbia has a broken infrastructure. Half of its working force is
without jobs or a social and medical net as the old economy is not quite
out and the new economy has not quite gotten in. Almost a million of the
"precanski Srbi" are now refugees in Serbia proper, not to mention a
couple of hundred thousand ethnic Albanians, thousands of mixed-marriage
Yugoslavs, Croats, Hungarians and other minorities, 26 ethnicities
altogether. Leaving aside the potentially gruesome medical outcome of
the air war that lasted almost three months, Economic Recovery is the
top priority that dominates the National Interest of the Serb People. It
is not the affirmation of National Pride or the perception that it is
gone forever through some "bending" by the new Government in
Belgrade. To put National Pride on a pedestal that cannot be "violated"
through a trial of Milosevic in Belgrade would almost certainly play in
the hands of the anti-Serb brigades throughout the "West" and
especially in the U.S. At the moment, they are eating their collective
liver becuae Kostunica is no Milosevic and the DOS is willing to take
the"capitalist road" into Liberal Democracy. Liberal or not, Winston
Churchill has called Democracy the worst form of government on earth.
The trouble, he added, is that we have not been able to invent anything
better.
Raymond K. Kent
Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley. Ca. 94720
Subject: Prof. R.K.Kent: An open letter to senator Jesse A. Helms
Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 17:19:42 -0500
From: "minja m." <minja@...>
To: KPAJ 3A HATO <kpaj-3a-hato@...>
The Honorable Jesse A. Helms,
Chairman,
Foreign Relations Committee,
United States Senate’
Washington D.C.
24.2.2001
Dear Senator Helms,
I still treasure a note you had sent me requesting copies of my
writings as you had found them generally interesting to read. I did not
have the heart to comply fully with your request. The volume is so
large that you could not possibly find the time to read all of the
texts. This is not preventing me from sending you just four. They are
entitled respectively: (1)Dr. Strangelove is Alive and Well - How
Madeleine got to Bomb the Serbs; (2)Beltway’s Moral Giants and Lessons
from Clio, the Muse of History; (3)Suggestions on Kosovo (with
sub-title); and (4) "Old and New Fascism -Eviva la Pace Americana."
While I am under no illusion that you will agree with all the
major points and suggestions, I regard you as a quintessential Old
American Patriot, one who knows the difference between Right and Wrong ,
one who grasps that the long-lasting attraction of America has come in
three parts. Its magnetic freedoms, its unsurpassed Constitution and
its powerful economy.. It is my contention that the luster of the first
two has dimmed in the last decade. Only the third retains its glow. The
Administration of William Jefferson Clinton was not only "corrupt." It
has attempted to transform America into a Fascist country with a new
face. With a strange resemblance of the First Family to Peron and Evita.
This thesis is stated, with some humor and sexual metaphor most
clearly in the piece on "Old and New Fascism." It is a road that should
be most repugnant to both Republicans and Democrats who can see the
forest and not succumb to a single-tree myopia, supporting any
Presidential action abroad and indulging in humanitarian asymmetry.
It is unfortunate how so many have persuaded themselves that the
"Indispensable Nation" and "sole remaining Super-Power" can do
anything it wants, "Exceptionally," in any society around Planet
Earth. As if the U.S. possesses unlimited Absolute Power. New Moral
Giants came on the Beltway. They are far above us ordinary Americans.
They disregard completely even citizens with specialized knoweldge
and the will to prove that we, the People, are no real pygmies who must
invariably follow their phoney giants. Today, after bombing a small
state and its people into the Nineteenth century for nothing
substantial at all , some of our Solons are blackmailing Belgrade
instead of showing at least tolerance after 78 days of bombings if not
remorse for damages in human lives and unremunerated property. To say
nothing of the totally missing capacity to be magnanimous even in a
self-proclaimed "Victory." Permit me now to summarize the arguments in
the three articles apart from the one on Fascism, old and new. I do so
in an amplified way as a reading option. . Representative Dan Burton
told me once:
Anything longer than six pages is not likely to be read." The reduction
here is to four pages.
President Clinton and Secretary Albright bombed both Kosovo and Serbia
to "save" Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians from "the Serbs." In so doing, they
used false reports, outright lies
and crass duplicity both at home and abroad. They certainly violated
the U.S.Constitution and broke International Law with impunity. The
often repeated trite phrase that "truth is war’s first vicitim " does
not even apply .The U.S. Congress had not declared war on Serbia. The
intended victim of their contemptible manipulations was the American
People. In seeking to impose a Pax Americana in the Balkans the
media-driven Clinton Administration (with some support in Comgress) )
has gradually succumbed to a re-birth of Fascism in a new form. Yet, it
was pre-disposed by its own amorality and will-to-power which are
central to Fascism as a phenomenon and noumenon.
Anyone with sustained knowledge of Balkan History in the 1900’s could
easily perceive that the Clinton Administration turned an American
ally in two World Wars, the Serbs, into an "enemy" without any real
threat to any serious aspect of the National Interest. . It was hardly
a foreign-policy "accomplishment." Training and arming directly and
indirectly the nationalist successors of proclaimed U.S. enemies in
World War II coupled with the doctrine of "levelling battlefield
opportunities" was hardly conducive to peace in the Balkans.
Had the Clinton foreign-policy team not stood in the way of even one of
the two most workable peace proposals (the Lisbon Agreement of February
1992 and Vance-Owen Plan of 1993) most of the fratricidal carnage in
Bosnia would have been avoided. There would have been no Dayton to
inspire an ever-escalating ethnic Albanian insurgency at Kosovo. Had
what was left of Yugoslavia been completely opened as a free market
economy with Western support , Milosevic would have fallen a lot
sooner. Instead, we punished the Serb people with brutal economic
sanctions.While proclaiming the New Age of Humanitarianism , our
sanctions hurt mostly the children , the elderly and the sick. One of
this writer’s friends had sent some bottles of Aspirin to a sick, old
relative in Belgrade. The package was returned by the Post Office ,
citing the embargo.
Had the enclosed "Suggestions" for a solution to the Kosovo Problem
been taken seriously , the U.S. would not have had to post and keep
our troops in a danger zone indefinitely and spend additional
billioins of dollars needed at home. Copies had been sent to the entire
Foreign Relations Committeee of the Senate. Equally, Kosovo today is in
such a state that even some Albanians who had fought with the "Kosovo
Liberation Army " have had enough. It is no longer "liberation" of
Kosovo from "the Serbs." Since June 1999, they have ben virtually
cleansed out, along with all the other ethnic minorities. This took
place with 40,000 NATO troops in a Kosovo under the UN Administration.
This writer has invested huge amounts of time over the years to find
out what National Interest was really involved in the ex-Yugoslav
space and how did the Clinton-Albright foreign policy relate to it.
German influence was perceived. The Vatican was not too far behind.
These were the "traditional" anti-Yugoslav forces, along with a
nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian Empire among some and for a
re-creation of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, among others. But, a
U.S. National Interest? If one were to extract the major claims on its
behalf they could be reduced to just a few. One is a virtual
declaration of war on "ethnic nationalism." "Humanitarian intervention"
came into view as a twin. The two were rooted in an "unbendable" claim
that "our" (please note the Royal "we") policy objective was to insure
peace in the area. Let us quickly look at the broad picture.
No one can credibly claim today that there has been any symmetry in
the would-be "Humanitarian Interventions," from Krajina to Bosnia and
Kosovo. While roundly blasting "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs in
Bosnia, the Clinton Administration took an active part in developing and
permitting the Croat Operation Storm in August 1995 which produced by
far the greatest instance of "ethnic cleansing" up to that time. This
involved between 200,000 and 250,000 Serbs whose ancestors settled in
Krajina centuries earlier. Clearly, support for one ethnicity’s
Nationalism was used to "eliminate the problem" of dealing with
another.. The
architects of the "Kosovo Policy" first "laundered" the
"terrorists" (as defined by the State Department) into a "Liberation
Army." Next, they went on to support the KLA in a number of ways. In
so doing , they sided de facto with ethnic Albanian Nationalism. Most
could and did perceive the rapid advent of " ethnic cleansing " But,
since, this time, those "cleansed" were mainly Serbs the KLA’s crime
against humanity was explained away as "justifiable retribution."
Such a dogmatic explanation of crimes against humanity -even war
crimes- committed , say, by Serb individuals, army soldiers and
para-military units, not only in Bosnia but also in Kosovo, could
only earn "nationalist" accolades. What about the establishment of
peace? Two torpedoed peace proposals, imports of weapons, training of
armies,lending of the USAF to one against another --such is the PATTERN
revealing that "Peace" becomes an Orwellian term meaning "War." If not
peace, as the pivot of foreign policy in the area from 1992 to 1999,
why war? To believe simply that "Milosevoc" was the only or main reason
would require two things. One is to re-write the History of this period
. The second would be that Mickey is a real, ever-live , Mouse. A
strong case can be made for a perceived need to "resurrect" NATO
after the Cold War. Yet, it cannot explain what National Interest was
served in saving NATO from self-extinction by exacerbating the
southeastern Europe’s turmoil? One other "explanation." a
"geo-political" one has been advanced. The route to tapping the
reportedly huge Caspian oil reserves would require an indefinite U.S.
military presence at Kosovo-Metohija. Not an absolute necessity. Yet,
Even if certain, this would and could not explain the U.S. involvement
in ex-Yugoslavia before 1998. So, what is the one, fundamental,
underpinning of the Clinton-Albright policy here? It finally emerges
that there was no policy relating to any real National Interest. In
fact, there was no
policy at all. Its substitute was a capricious use of power for the sake
of power , using different component parts and accents. This was no
crude Fascism of Benito’s time. Our military did not drop captured Serbs
from planes without parachutes as did the Fascists in Lybia witn
Arabs who resisted. Instead, the "missions" have been and are still
endowed with High Moral Purposre which can only exist as a Kantian
noumenon that cannot be demonstrated . All of the phenomena of the
Clinton-Albright policy in ex-Yugoslavia show the contrary. There is
also another revelation. It is INCOMPETENCE masked as "achievement ."
The best example is found in the "Kosovo Policy." Most of its
architects saw in the KLA an Albanian Nationalism at work, aiming at
Kosovo’s independence. Some perceived a drive for "Greater Albania" as
its ultimate goal.One or two even wished it would come about.
What virtually none of the architects grasped is that "Greater Albania"
is a misleading cunstruct. It coveys an ultimate Nationaist Agenda.
In reality, as has clearly emerged at Kosovo since June 1999, the aim
of a "Greater Albania" is not some sort of national unity of all
Albanians under a single government. They have had a time-honored
acephalous society, dominated by clans. Moreover, hardly all of the
Albanians in Albania look with favor to a single, unfied Greater
Albania. Albania’s southern Christians do not wish to see more of the
Albanian Muslims added north into a unified state. The ultimate goal
of the main forces behind the KLA is to secure and control a
Commercial Empire enageged in illegal and criminal activities. It is
not only destabilizing the region. It is destibilizing Western European
societies as well. Over 80 percent of heroin goes into them via Kosovo
despite NATO’s presence in situ. .Many of the West European prostitution
rings and networks are Albanian-controlled as is the flow if illegal
shipments of humans from Asia and Africa. This is surely not a result
working in favor of the NATO intervention. Yet, it remains favored
as such to maintain the myth of an " Air Victory at Kosovo" and
rescue NATO for a second time from becoming irrelevant in one Europe.
In conclusion, I hope that you might find the time to read the four
articles enclosed and perhaps persuade you to enter them into the
Congressional Record, with this letter, despite their political
incorrectness or, possibly, because of it. Can we Amricans transcend
an endless dialogue of the deaf?
Respectfully
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720
(510/642-1971).
CORRUPTABILITY OF IMAGINED
ABSOLUTE POWER
(a slight embelishment of Lord Acton’s Dictum)
R.K.Kent
18 Mar 2001
International legalities mean nothing any longer as individuals in
Congress of the United States as well as in the Executive Branch
continuously state and re-state in a host of ways that the U.S. Might
makes everything Right. Last year, the U.N. General Assembly passed
Resolution 54/168 as a step toward an upward growth of Democracy around
the globe. It simply requires of all the member states not to interfere
in foreign elections. Yet, quite openly and with unabashed arrogance,
millions of dollars are funnelled into Yugoslavia precisely to do the
opposite.A State Department Bureau is openly set-up in Budapest to
"run" the Yugoslav opposition in the name of "Democracy." A CIA
office is now in Sofia to train Serb university students in the arts of
resistance to the existing government. Somewhere along the line it will
be grasped that the Serbs are massively against Milosevic because he
stole another, much bigger, election and not because they were "bought"
by the CIA. Even a mega-founded "Intelligence Community" with a huge
capacity for mischief abroad is far from having anything close to
absolute power.
Our Solons and high ranking members of the Clinton Administration are
constantly lecturing Serbs about how they must re-arrange their
government, economy and society They have just invented a thermometer
which monitors the temperature of "Serb Nationalism." Anything less than
complete compliance with the dicta from Washington certifies high fever
and the mounting Nationalist disease requiring strong medecine and even
major surgery. The electoral winner who leads the Serb Democratic
opposition is already on notice that if he does not turn Kosovo over to
the "Kosovars" (almost an endearing name along the Beltway), if he does
not deliver "Serb War Criminals" to the "Hague Tribunal," if he does not
grant autonomy to Vojvodina (with its 3 milion Serbs and a Hungarian
minority of 300,000), sanctionas will be re-imposed and Serbia will be
"boxed-in" from all sides, completely isolated, and doomed to become a
backwater. Even the West European States and other members of the NATO
alliance are warned not to tolerate "Serb Nationalism with a kinder
face" or the U.S. will pursue its own agenda in the Balkans without
seeking Europe’s cooperation or approval. It is astonishing to find two
key Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee plus a Vice-Presidential
candidate, willing to subordinte U.S. relations with the European Union
to an obssession with "Serb Nationalism" which is almost certainly not
even understood in its historical context.
Until only yesterday, the Clinton Administration used "Milosevic" as a
substitute for "the Serbs." It did not bomb the Serbs for 78 days. It
bombed Milosevic. Open threats are now made to and demands are made
upon his Democratic successor-in- the- making who has yet to even
assume the Presidency. As, up front, the Serbs are suddenly transformed
from a nation of neo-Nazi "subhumans" into a "brave and valiant
people," a decade of carefully nurtured Serbophobia lurks in the
background. A host of people in governmemnt, politics, intellectual
journals , scribal and
(2)
audio-visual media have gained in careers and prominence through
hate-mongering against the Serbs. This will not be given up easily. It
does not only threaten long-range relations with the European Union. It
negates, upon minimal reflection, a number of widely understood
Democratic ideals. There is no divine right to "run" other peoples’
democracies. Despite approval in the Senate, the American People have no
desire for an "opportunity" to spend $77 million of tax-payers money ,
with more dollars to come, to "buy" elections abroad so that local
politicians can act as U.S. forign- policy surrogates. A recent
attempt, attributed to China, to buy votes in the U.S. caused an uproar.
It is not an American cultural value to threaten again and again a
people bombed for eleven weeks by the USAF, punished with a decade of
brutal economic sanctions and satanized through the major media just as
long without posing any real threat to the American People. Apparently,
a few dozen influential persons in the U.S. Government have slipped the
civilized leash, descending into the kind of punishing, vengeful
violence-prone passion attributed to "Milosevic" himself. Milosevic is
no longer around to oblige them They will be forced by events to either
find new ways of gratifying their dislike and hate or else shed years of
Serbophobia. In practice,however, they are accountable to no one. All
share the same conviction that the U.S.is omnipotent. None will admit
to any egregious foreign-policy errors and none see any serious
adversities generated mainly by their own arrogance.
Following the demise of the Soviet Union, the U.S., too, jumped on "the
Serbs," first gingerly during the Bush Administration and far more
actively by 1993. One of the short-term goals was to provide a
re-defned NATO with a New Enemy, tough enough to validate the New NATO
as a military arm of the New World Order and yet not strong enough to
threaten NATO’s defeat. The Serbs drew the lot. . They were reputed to
have one of the best armies in Europe. Two of their known national
traits, love of independence and sustained bravery in wars, made them an
ideal choice for the role through which to make the New NATO
"credible." From the outset, hence, the U.S. became a clandestine and
open supporter of any and all anti-Serb forces rising out of
Yugoslavia’s ashes. It sided with the Croat and Bosnian Muslim
successors of extreme Nationalists who had opposed the U.S. in World War
II. At the same time, it condemned strongly the proven Serb allies for
their own nationalist reactions to a replay of Yugoslavia under Hitler.
The cardinal , most pointed Serb "crime" was a refusal to live inside
Franjo Tudjman’s neo-Fascist Croatia and Alija Izetbgovic’s
fundamentally Islamic State. Its close second was Belgrade’s effort to
hold the Federal Yugoslavia together. Thus, while supporting the Croat
and Bosnian Muslim nationalist drives, while promoting
self-determination of ethnicities opposed to the Serbs the Clinton
Administration isolated "Serb Nationaism" as the enemy of Mankind
itself. .
It even went back to the Medieval formula that "the enemy of my enemy is
my friend"and applied it to the Kosovo Liberation Army which has been
the armed tentacle of an international drug
(3)
cartel. One remembers Senator Lieberman’s lofty claim that the "KLA
fights for American Values" According to recently released PAC
contributions and sources, Senator Lieberman
accepted a $10,000 contribution from ethnic Albanians in the U.S.He is
also the co-sponsor of a recent bill that re-states the obssession with
"Serb Nationalism" in the post-Milosevic era.Since Kosovo was
"liberated" from the Serb army and police a clandestine KLA has been
the real ruler of this area. In roughly one year, some 300,000
non-Albanians have been cleansed from Kosovo by Albanian terror. Over
1,000 Serbs have been kidnapped along with hundreds of Kosovo minorities
and even Albanians. . Drug dealing, white slavery, fraud, theft (even
KFOR treasuries have been raided and looted) ) and general lawlessness
dominate Kosovo as the U.S. continues to support the "ex" KLA military
and civilian leadership. Internal oponents of KLA’s political leader
have simply been assassinated. The main sponsor of the logically faulty
Medieval formula was Madeleine Albright. To gain the KLA signature to a
non-existing Accord at Rambouillet and thus have the cosmetic green
light to bomb the Serbs, Madame Secretary of State almost certainly made
a "deal" to get independence for Kosovo in the not too-distant future
She also abandoned the only true representative of the Kosovo Albanians
, the Poet Ibrahim Rugova, believer in non-violence. In turn, this
abandonment entrenched the KLA in Kosovo and makes it impossible to
arrive at some future democratic solution to the Kosovo Problem.The KLA
is working to create a Greater Albania. U.S. and other European troops
are still in Kosovo. Perceived as saviors last year, they will become
soon the "occupying force of Colonial Powers." .
An article written five years ago(1) pointed out a striking historical
pattern in respect to Serbia and the Great Powers. First Austria,
followed by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, found obsession
with the Serbs fatal to their real interests. Austria’s 10-point
ultimatum in 1914 became a pretext to launch a massive attack on Serbia.
Initially, Austria was badly beaten on the battlefield and its" body
bags" brought German fury and, with it, the start of World War I. It
obliterated an entire generation in Europe, helped establish Communism
in Russia and paved the ground for Hitler and World War II. When the
Serbs defied Hitler on 27th March 1941 and alone stood with Britain
against the Nazi might in Europe, Hitler promised to reduce Serbia to
ashes. He sent the Stukas and the Wermacht to teach the Serbs a lesson.
Hitler’s little Serb side- show retarded his attack on Russia
(Operation Barbarossa) by three crucial months. His troops got bogged
down in the merciless Russian winter and a number of Germany’s divisions
remained in
Yugoslavia to deal with those recalcitratnt Serbs, royalists and
partisans alike. Without "the Serbs" Hitler might well have won World
War II in Europe. He might even have developed the missle technology
well ahead of anyone else. When the Serbs disobeyed Stalin he kicked
Yugoslavia out of the Cominform in 1948. That was the beginning of the
"poly-centric Communism" gradually dominated by Nationalisms and
decidedly a major factor in the U.S. ability to survive the Cold War as
the only super-Power around . Indeed "Nationalism" had been an
important U.S.ally against Moscow’s attempts to dominate the world
through a Communist Orthodoxy and local parties.It was re-used in
Yugoslavia against the Serbs and their attempts to preserve the Federal
Yugoslavia.
(4)
A sustained international campaign came into being subjecting the
Serbs to cerebral terror. Sporadic Serb atrocities, mainly by the
para-military nationalist revanchists, were blown out of
proportions into full-fledged "genocide" filling the landscape with
"mass garves." Staged "Serb " massacres at Sarajevo and Racak were
employed to use NATO force against the Serbs without serious public
opposition at home, first in Bosnia and later in Serbia . A Tribunal was
set up at the Hague by Madeleine Albright in 1993. Until 1996 it
indicted and tried only alleged Serb war criminals. It even attempted
to try two officers of the Bosnian Serb army who were not accused of
anything and were kidnapped in Sarajevo even after Dayton assured free
movement. Their only "crime" was Serb ethnicity and uniform. Although
mandated by the U.N. Security Council, the Tribunal has had no real
connection to either the International or criminal Law as practiced,
say, in the United States In the U.S. the burden of proof is on the
accuser. At the "Tribunal" it is the other way around. .A fair trial of
such already indicted and publicly condemned "war criminals" as Radovan
Karadzic, General Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic is simply not
possible at this "Tribunal." But, fair trials are not on Tribunal’s
agenda when it comes to "the Serbs." Even a substantial part of its
most recent funding comes from a single private donor, George Soros, a
Serbophobe with billions to spend in his"eternal combat" against the
dragons of Nationalism. Unfortunately, the fig leaf of such phrases as
the "Hague Tribunal" and "indicted war criminals" has hidden in general
from the American People the true nature of this quasi-legalistic
perversion.
At the same time, while the Serbs were being routinely accused of
everything except bad weather, war crimes and crimes against humanity
perpetrated by the Croat and Bosnian Muslim forces (later by the
Albanian KLA) were hardly ever reported, if at all. The Serbs became
sub-human, without the right of self-determination at Krajina and in
Bosnia, without the right of self-defense at Kosovo. They were set-up to
take the fall no matter what they did or did not do. Serb para-military
"avengers," the stupid and unnecessary shelling of Sarajevo (an"Olympic
Town" in Western eyes}, the holding of U.N. hostages, the
"Macho"counter-poise ("inat") to the far more powerful NATO member
states and the total denial of any atrocities committed against other
ethnic groups played right into the hands of the Serb haters. Hate
invariably warps. It makes caricatures of those who are seduced by it.
It robs them of reason, logic, willingnes to listen and learn. It robs
them of the very humanity they profess with astounding contradictions.
The Clinton foreign policy team, infected by Madeleine Albright’s
masked but acute Serbophobia with a record, could not tolerate defiance
and"disobediance" to its dicta any more than Hitler. Secretary of
Defense Cohen even said that if the Serbs continue to defy the U.S.
Serbia "will be reduced to ashes." It came close to that after
Rambouilled in February 1999 over Kosovo. Serbia and Kosovo werre
bombed mainly by the USAF for 78 days ostensibly to force "Milosevic" to
accept a "Peace Plan" and return Autonomy to Kosovo. The Rambouillet
(5)
ultimatum actually demanded the occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO
troops. It was even harsher than the Austrian ultimatum of 1914 which
may have inspired its March 1999 drafters.
The invincible U.S., sole remaining International Giant , had used air
power to impose its will on a peanut country in Europe.It did not work
at all. It even proclaimed total "victory" at Kosovo. an
interpretation questionable by anyone familiar with facts on the ground
and capable of minimal logic. There is an old Slavic proverb. It
states that when God wishes to punish an individual He first removes the
capacity to reason.
It is obvious that foreign policy makers in Washington are unwilling to
be impressed by the historical pattern of results that have affected
three great powers in their obsession with the Sertbs. With the Soviet
Union out of the way Washington’s foreign-policy, intelligence and
military elites convinced themselves that America’s power is today so
absolute that they can do anything and get away with it, usually on
moralistic grounds The main reason why the Presidential race hardly
touches on foreign policy is not the claim that the American People are
totally disinterested in what goes on "out there." It is becuse the
perception and feeling of omipotence, of absolute power, has eliminated
the need to be held accountable to the American People for egregious
foreign-policy errors in both theory and practice.The leading question
poses now itself. Will the U.S. obssession with" the Serbs" allow it to
orbit out of the historical pattern outlined at the beginning of this
essay? Having proclaimed " victory" at Kosovo, are there losses
involved at all? This is a virtually unexplored area of serious
inquiry. It is in dire need of analysis in its domestic and foreign
dimensions. Some preliminary observations suggest themselves.
Deceit, disinformation, violations of elementary logic through
well-planned lobotomies on the public mind, and misuse of the
"Intelligence Community" to "trick" the American People into supporting
military actions in the name of "National Interest," enter immediately
into view. Of the 47 military engagements since 1945, 33 took place in
the last eight years. The United States had no vital national interests
in the Balkans in World Wars One and Two. Betwen 1956 and 1989 it
supported the Federal and Communist-ruled Yugoslavia’s independence
from Moscow but it committed no major military and financial resources
to prevent a Soviet take-over. Yugoslavia never became a part of NATO
and its is extremely doubtful that Washington would have risked a
thermonuclear war with Moscow over such an attempt. That is because the
U.S. did not really have a vital National Interest in the Yugoslav
space. Now, suddenly in the 1990’s, without any Soviet threat, one is
told that American troops, planes, bombs and missiles and an expenditure
of billions of dollars are there to defend a vital National Interest.
As yet, no one has been able to define persuasively what it is today.
Defense of Human Rights is about the only "over-arching" argument
advanced. It collapses upon closer scrutiny. While professing acute
concerns for Serb violations of Human Rights the "National-Interest"
promoters could not care less for what was done to the Serbs. The
record is there , it is clear and offers a devastating
(6)
indictment of moral poverty involved in the bogus claim to a "vital
National Interest." In Kosovo, today, under NATO and the U.N., the
gross, daily and witnessed violations of Human Rights, perpetrated by
the clandestine KLA against the dwindling Serb and other minorities, has
not produced a single major voice in the Administration or in Congress
to crack down on and dismantle the KLA completely, arrest its leaders
and deliver them to the Hague Tribunal. Instead, members of the
"ex-KLA," transformed into the U.N. Constabulary at Kosovo have just
been funded in Congress despite repeated evidence that they have engaged
and engage in extortion, beatings and even murder. While a five million
dollar reward is offered to anyone able to deliver Milosevic to the
Hague , the political head of the "ex-KLA" attends the Democratic
Convention in Los Angeles exchanging kisses with Secretary of State
Albright. .
As an outgrrowth of deciet and disinformation needed to justify
military interventions abroad, an unusually intimate relationship of
the major scribal and audio visual media and the Administration has
emerged in the shaping of foreign policy. While a "patriotic
mutuality" of government and media was commonplace in major wars, it
never loomed as large in peace-time as in the last decade while focusing
on the Balkans and the Yugoslav tragedy. Most of this "mutuality" was
not directed at any real "enemy" of the United States. Nor was the
country in a state of formal war. Its planes and missiles did bomb
Serbia and Kosovo relentlessly for eleven weeks but lack of casualties
on the NATO side confirmed the purely punitive nature of this military
intervention. A real war between two countries simply did not
materialize. As the USAF General Nash said in plain English, the "air
war": was meant"to break the will of the Serb people." Instead, it
prolongued their support for a leader they had wanted to ditch years
earler, first in 1991 and again in 1996/1997.
It cannot be said enough times that anti-Serb propaganda saturating the
print, the images and the waves was directed mainly at the home
audience. Quite simply, the American People have been massively cheated
out of getting the truth. Thus, from both the foreign and domestic
points of reference there is nothing to brag about despite claims of
"victory." If this is not altered by a re-emergence of true sequence of
events, by the discovery that the Clinton Administration’s meddling in
Yugoslavia was the greater part of the problem and hardly a part of its
solution, the American People risk losing any control at all over a
foreign policy that could spell major disasters yet to come or manifest
themselves. . That is why our politicl leaders do not wish to discuss
openly and at length the truth about American foreign policy in the
1990’s in the Balkans.They are afraid of revealing their own moral and
intellectual fragilities. They invent Geopolitical fantasies because
they do not really know where they are going. But that is not all.
The 78 days of bombing a small European country which hardly put up any
defense created a major problem with its own offshoots. No matter what
moralistic braggadocio comes out of Washington about "protecting
Democratic values ," the mask is off an Imperial Power out to control
the World with a new process and a new ideology, a newly perceived "
Evil Empire." The process has been called "Globalization," the ideology
"Globalism." Millions have died in the
(7)
name of various "isms." There is every chance that millions more will
die. Today, military-political strategists in Washington are asking for
additional billions in order to be able to "fight simultaneously on two
fronts." Reference here is clearly to "regional conflicts" which will
be"sold" to the American People much in the same ways as already worked
out in the Balkans. The process of Globalization was anticipated by
James Burnham in the early 1940’s when he wrote about the "Managerial
Revolution" but localized it in the U.S. In simplified language,
globalized economy will reduce the state to a janitorial role and
replace sovereignty with Multinationals.
In a short cross-over from process to dogma, Globalism replaces
Communism whih also sought to impose itself on the whole world and
dissolve the state. Those who dilligently promote Globalism as an
idology and Globalization as its tool need to be reminded that no global
"ism" has ever defeated local "isms." The former are synthetic while
local Nationalisms are visceral and tend to prevail or re-assert
themselves either aggressively or defensively. Wherever Globalization
and economic prosperity march hand in hand and are visibly
inter-conncted, detonators with which to trigger - off visceral
reactions of latent Nationalism will be missing. At the moment , the
tendency is to jump into the Globalizing band-wagon pulled by the
mighty Multinationals. Yet, it is hardly difficult to predict a host of
the coming defensive Nationalist reactions . If the U.S. uses its
capacity to actually fight in two (or more) regional conflicts at the
same time to attack one ethnic group in support of another it will
neither manage to promote the cause of universal Human Rights nor remove
the detonator that goes off in defense of a tribe. By using a selective
approach to Nationalism in ex-Yugoslavia and, indeed in the Balkans,
the Clinton Administration has already made a most egregious error.
It has shown convincingly that there is no such thing as "humanitarian
military intervention," tnat it is Might that decides who shall and who
shall not have access to Human Rights and that international obedience
to its imagined absolute power has already corrupted Washington
absolutely. One might add, without redemption unless the American
People take their government back. In respct at least to the Serbs and
Yugoslavia this is not so very difficult despite the lasting and
lingering Serbophobia which needs to be cured. To this end a few
concrete proposals seem in order.
It is high time to deliver on the claim that "the U.S. has never been
against the Serb people" but only "against Milosevic." For starters,
home-grown Serbophobes should be made increasingly uncomfortable in
further attempts at getting their jollies by bashing "the Serbs."
Outright hate-mongering of the Serb ethnicity might be something that
Serb-Americans and other fellow-Americans might wish to pursue through
courts.Secondly, if there is no will to downgrade or even punish we
should at least stop glorifying as our "heroes" Madeleine Albright,
Generals Clark and Short.We are demanding that all ethnicities in
Yugoslavia --but especially the Serbs-- stop glorifying as their
"heroes" such people as Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic
(Serbs),General Rasim Delic and Warlord Nasir Oric (Bosnian Muslims),
deceased General Franjo Tudjman and very much live General Agim Ceku
(Croat and Albanian in Croatia’s Army)
(8)
and, again, Agim Ceku and Hashim Thaci (Kosovo Albanians). Next, even
our current President Clinton can issue an Executive Order to all the
Armed forces that the Serbs are not considered to be an enemy of the
United States. A claim is standing that the" moment Milosevic steps
down" and is replaced as the Yugoslavia’s President by an election, all
sanctions are to be lifted. It is time to stop a decade of a cruel
economic punishment and deliver on the claim no matter what else
happens with or to "Milosevic." At the same time, the White House should
honor the request of Western Europe to extend immediate recogniion to
Vojislav Kostunica. It would be a serious mistake to start labelling him
as a "Serb Nationalist with a kinder face" simply because he is not
immediately assuming the role of Washington’s likeable lapdog. While
stating and restating that the U.S. will share with Western Europe the
burden of paying Yugoslavia for the damages caused by eleven weeks of
bombing its civilian infrastructure and properties, it would be useful
to repair specific damages by an advance of funds. Sending our own
medical experts to determine the extent of released toxins and a mutant
like depleted uranium would show also also some real concern for genetic
damages in the making. We should reopen the Embassy in Belgrade and send
a diplomat untainted by Serbophobia.
There should be no immediate demands for deliveries to the Hague
Tribunal of alleged Serb war criminals. A little healing time is needed.
A hemorrage has been stopped with a strong bandage and it is too early
to remove it. A little patience is required. In the cited article of
five years ago, this writer suggested that the only sure way of ending
ethnic conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia for good would be to strengthen local
judicial systems to have them try their own alleged war criminals
perceived as "heroes." At the same time, the high life with perks of
those associated with the Hague Tribunal should be no longer funded, the
Tribunal’s funding should go to Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and
Kosovo and the Tribunal should be replaced by an already ratified in
part World Court to deal with future war crimes and crimes against
humanity. It is not out of question for an ordinary citizen to make
another suggestion. The Puritans, who are the antecedents of America,
absolutely rejected displays of arrogant behavior. Could our present
foreign policy elites be perdsuaded, while forming the United States of
the World, to be at least overtly humble?
MILOSEVIC, THE SERBS AND THE WEST
R.K.Kent
Emeritus Professor of History
University of California at Berkeley
13 Mar 2001
Those who know Serb History will recall that in 1804 Karadjordje almost
refused to lead a revolt against the Turks because of his choleric
nature. " When men disgree with me," he said, "I lop their heads off."
"Can you accept this (kind of leadership)" he asked at an assembly."That
is why we precisely wish you to lead us now." Later on "when you are no
longer needed we will lop YOUR head off." This is exactly what happened.
A page, torn out of the Serb past, connects with the universal fact
that no individual -- declared "bad" or" good"-- can or should replace
an entire people when it comes to its National Interest. It also reveals
that different times and different crises require different types of
leadership. While in power, Milosevic wrapped himself in Serb
Nationalism everywhere in ex-Yugoslavia except in Kosovo where he
attempted to "play the Yugoslav card." Neither of the two constitute an
unforgivable political sin and let it be noted at once that Milosevic
came to Dayton, Ohio, and signed an international agreement without
being considered, charged or arrested at that time as a "war criminal."
There were no other armed conflicts between Dayton and 1998/1999 when
the Kosovo Liberation Army escalated its guerrila war until it
resulted in the NATO (primarily U.S.)"air war" of eleven weeks.
The NATO "humanitarian intervention," dipped in depleted uraniam and
sprinkled with cluster bombs, was a war crime and a crime against
humanity under an Open Sun. It did enrmous and as yet incompletely
assessed damage to the Serb people , their properties, land, air and
rivers. It was not only criminal in nature, deliberately hitting
civilian targets in order "to break the will of the Serbian people," as
General Nash said in public after the "air war" of 78 days. . It was
both an unneccessary and an avoidable war. Its driving mechanism was an
almost insane desire to assert power through physical punishment and
humiliation of a people demonized during an entire decade (1989-1999).
As a result, Milosevic became both a Hero of Serb Resistance to
Foreign Imperialism and an unhappy choice as the Serb leader at a time
when the United States underwent a hi-tech revolution that could shape
and re-shape public opinion at will, within days. Or conduct a war
without losing a soldier. At the same time the ""prevailing ethos"
precluded the labelling of entire populations as "inherently evil."
That would be both "uncivilized" and "undemocratic." It thus found in
Milosevic a villian that could be depicted as the evil "Butcher of
the Balkans." After playing a hefty part in the fall of Milosevic from
power, the Clintonites are demanding --despite losing the
Presidency--that he be delivered to the Hague Tribunal for Yugoslavia.
He has been indicted in public for alleged war crimes and "genocide"
exclusively at Kosovo. No credible, prima facie, evidence to support
this indictment has surfaced in public.Yet, in the post-Clinton America,
the new Sereb Government is now being blackmailed via denials of
economic aid unless they at least arrest and try Milosevic in
Belgrade. A subsequent delivery to the Hague, along with other indicted
top Serb officials in the Milosevic_s government would follow.
(2)
A Petition is being circulated at this moment demanding the end of a
witch hunt involving Milosevic. It castigates all Serbs prone and
willing to deliver Milosevic to the Hague. But, it also attacks all
those willing to put him on trial in Belgrade as boot-lickers and
lackeys of American Imperialism who are selling the Serb people out. The
Petition has chosen the Hero model and only a Serb Medal of Honor is
lacking. This is a gut reaction against international injustice both at
the Hague and over the skies of Serbia and Kosovo. It is also an
attampt, at least indirectly, to uncouple the reconstruction aid which
is owed by any civilized standards as well as promised if Milosevic
fell from power. The drafters and co-signers of the Petition, all
time-honored and tested defenders of the Serbs in the U.S.thus
interpret the current National Intrest of the Serb people not on the
basis of reason but emotion. Let this writer make the case for reason
and see if it can prevail over visceral reactions.
First and foremost, the Serbs have no real friends among the influential
persons in the U.S. who make foreign policy. Many among them have
convinced themselves that they can prevent another Holocaust by
developing a new bunch of "Neo-Nazis" slated not only for punishment but
also for collective humiliation. Most of them are interventionist
hawks, regardless of party affiliation. Some are quite bloody-minded
They would kill and maim and attack the genetic code of Serb civilians.
One is even a political adviser to the KLA.They have no intention of
letting go of either Milosevic or the Serbs. Since "Milosevic" is out
of power these Establishmentarians must have him at the Hague Tribunal
because only THERE he can be humiliated beyond physical punishment. The
Tribunal is a DE FACTO political weapon and not a court of law. It
would provide basically a show trial, for him as well as the other
"indicted" top members of his government.
But, there is a world of diference if Milosevic comes to trial in
Belgrade. In a real domestic Court of Law Milosevic will have the kind
of legal defense he could never secure at the Hague. His attorneys, in
defense, can just as well put NATO on trial for war crimes and crimes
against humanity and peace. They can demand that the Hague Tribunal_s
Prosecutor realease documents which provide prima facie evidence agaisnt
Milosevic as a "genocidal" "war criminal" at Kosovo. This can be done,
amicus curae, to "assist" the High Serb Court in fact- finding in
respect to alleged Hague accusations. A trial of Milosevic in Belgrade
with INVITED FOREIGN OBSERVERS OF LEGAL STATURE could turn the tables on
his Hague indictment, resulting in a law suit at the World Court for
"MALICIOUS DEFAMATION. " Damages could be asked for in the neighborhood
of $100,000,000. At the same time Milosevic would be undeliverable to
the Hague if the indictment for alleged genocide and war crimes
directly linked to him cannot be supported. There would have to be some
prima facie evidence, subject to detailed scrutiny of his defense
attorneys. REAL LAW IS THE ARENA FOR COMBAT, not emotional petitions
even when the sentiment is shared. Witch -hunts die out when
dissected and singed by truth. Some last observations, now..
(3)
When Carla del Ponte wanted to open a Tribunal Office in Belgrade, the
same visceral reaction took place as some wre horrified at the lack of
national backbone in opposing "legitimization" of the Tribunal. The
Tribunal is a political fact of life. It has to be dealt with as
such.This means that an Office of the ICTY should be allowed to open in
Belgrade only to be flooded with thousands of Serb victims willing to
provide evidence of what has been done to them in other parts of
ex-Yugoslavia. The story of atrocities against the Serbs during the last
decade is far from being told or even known to the wider publics in the
U.S. and Western Europe.
It is very much in the Serb National Interest to put Milosevic on
trial in Belgrade to determine the extent and scope of his alleged
guilt. It is his turn to have the symnbolic "head lopped off " if he
is really found guilty of genocide and war crimes. But, there is more to
it. For 36 years (1944-1980), Serbia was ruled by Tito and the
Communist League. . After a rotating Presidency of about a
decade(1980-1990) former Yugoslav Communists became Socialists overnight
and all of their top leaders enveloped themselves in ethno-religious
nationalist cacoons. This writer refuses to accept the contention that
only the supporters of Milosevic and of Tito_s Yugoslavia have the right
to monopolize the interpretation of the current Serb National
Interest.
Serbia has a broken infrastructure. Half of its working force is
without jobs or a social and medical net as the old economy is not quite
out and the new economy has not quite gotten in. Almost a million of the
"precanski Srbi" are now refugees in Serbia proper, not to mention a
couple of hundred thousand ethnic Albanians, thousands of mixed-marriage
Yugoslavs, Croats, Hungarians and other minorities, 26 ethnicities
altogether. Leaving aside the potentially gruesome medical outcome of
the air war that lasted almost three months, Economic Recovery is the
top priority that dominates the National Interest of the Serb People. It
is not the affirmation of National Pride or the perception that it is
gone forever through some "bending" by the new Government in
Belgrade. To put National Pride on a pedestal that cannot be "violated"
through a trial of Milosevic in Belgrade would almost certainly play in
the hands of the anti-Serb brigades throughout the "West" and
especially in the U.S. At the moment, they are eating their collective
liver becuae Kostunica is no Milosevic and the DOS is willing to take
the"capitalist road" into Liberal Democracy. Liberal or not, Winston
Churchill has called Democracy the worst form of government on earth.
The trouble, he added, is that we have not been able to invent anything
better.
Raymond K. Kent
Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley. Ca. 94720
Subject: Prof. R.K.Kent: An open letter to senator Jesse A. Helms
Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 17:19:42 -0500
From: "minja m." <minja@...>
To: KPAJ 3A HATO <kpaj-3a-hato@...>
The Honorable Jesse A. Helms,
Chairman,
Foreign Relations Committee,
United States Senate’
Washington D.C.
24.2.2001
Dear Senator Helms,
I still treasure a note you had sent me requesting copies of my
writings as you had found them generally interesting to read. I did not
have the heart to comply fully with your request. The volume is so
large that you could not possibly find the time to read all of the
texts. This is not preventing me from sending you just four. They are
entitled respectively: (1)Dr. Strangelove is Alive and Well - How
Madeleine got to Bomb the Serbs; (2)Beltway’s Moral Giants and Lessons
from Clio, the Muse of History; (3)Suggestions on Kosovo (with
sub-title); and (4) "Old and New Fascism -Eviva la Pace Americana."
While I am under no illusion that you will agree with all the
major points and suggestions, I regard you as a quintessential Old
American Patriot, one who knows the difference between Right and Wrong ,
one who grasps that the long-lasting attraction of America has come in
three parts. Its magnetic freedoms, its unsurpassed Constitution and
its powerful economy.. It is my contention that the luster of the first
two has dimmed in the last decade. Only the third retains its glow. The
Administration of William Jefferson Clinton was not only "corrupt." It
has attempted to transform America into a Fascist country with a new
face. With a strange resemblance of the First Family to Peron and Evita.
This thesis is stated, with some humor and sexual metaphor most
clearly in the piece on "Old and New Fascism." It is a road that should
be most repugnant to both Republicans and Democrats who can see the
forest and not succumb to a single-tree myopia, supporting any
Presidential action abroad and indulging in humanitarian asymmetry.
It is unfortunate how so many have persuaded themselves that the
"Indispensable Nation" and "sole remaining Super-Power" can do
anything it wants, "Exceptionally," in any society around Planet
Earth. As if the U.S. possesses unlimited Absolute Power. New Moral
Giants came on the Beltway. They are far above us ordinary Americans.
They disregard completely even citizens with specialized knoweldge
and the will to prove that we, the People, are no real pygmies who must
invariably follow their phoney giants. Today, after bombing a small
state and its people into the Nineteenth century for nothing
substantial at all , some of our Solons are blackmailing Belgrade
instead of showing at least tolerance after 78 days of bombings if not
remorse for damages in human lives and unremunerated property. To say
nothing of the totally missing capacity to be magnanimous even in a
self-proclaimed "Victory." Permit me now to summarize the arguments in
the three articles apart from the one on Fascism, old and new. I do so
in an amplified way as a reading option. . Representative Dan Burton
told me once:
Anything longer than six pages is not likely to be read." The reduction
here is to four pages.
President Clinton and Secretary Albright bombed both Kosovo and Serbia
to "save" Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians from "the Serbs." In so doing, they
used false reports, outright lies
and crass duplicity both at home and abroad. They certainly violated
the U.S.Constitution and broke International Law with impunity. The
often repeated trite phrase that "truth is war’s first vicitim " does
not even apply .The U.S. Congress had not declared war on Serbia. The
intended victim of their contemptible manipulations was the American
People. In seeking to impose a Pax Americana in the Balkans the
media-driven Clinton Administration (with some support in Comgress) )
has gradually succumbed to a re-birth of Fascism in a new form. Yet, it
was pre-disposed by its own amorality and will-to-power which are
central to Fascism as a phenomenon and noumenon.
Anyone with sustained knowledge of Balkan History in the 1900’s could
easily perceive that the Clinton Administration turned an American
ally in two World Wars, the Serbs, into an "enemy" without any real
threat to any serious aspect of the National Interest. . It was hardly
a foreign-policy "accomplishment." Training and arming directly and
indirectly the nationalist successors of proclaimed U.S. enemies in
World War II coupled with the doctrine of "levelling battlefield
opportunities" was hardly conducive to peace in the Balkans.
Had the Clinton foreign-policy team not stood in the way of even one of
the two most workable peace proposals (the Lisbon Agreement of February
1992 and Vance-Owen Plan of 1993) most of the fratricidal carnage in
Bosnia would have been avoided. There would have been no Dayton to
inspire an ever-escalating ethnic Albanian insurgency at Kosovo. Had
what was left of Yugoslavia been completely opened as a free market
economy with Western support , Milosevic would have fallen a lot
sooner. Instead, we punished the Serb people with brutal economic
sanctions.While proclaiming the New Age of Humanitarianism , our
sanctions hurt mostly the children , the elderly and the sick. One of
this writer’s friends had sent some bottles of Aspirin to a sick, old
relative in Belgrade. The package was returned by the Post Office ,
citing the embargo.
Had the enclosed "Suggestions" for a solution to the Kosovo Problem
been taken seriously , the U.S. would not have had to post and keep
our troops in a danger zone indefinitely and spend additional
billioins of dollars needed at home. Copies had been sent to the entire
Foreign Relations Committeee of the Senate. Equally, Kosovo today is in
such a state that even some Albanians who had fought with the "Kosovo
Liberation Army " have had enough. It is no longer "liberation" of
Kosovo from "the Serbs." Since June 1999, they have ben virtually
cleansed out, along with all the other ethnic minorities. This took
place with 40,000 NATO troops in a Kosovo under the UN Administration.
This writer has invested huge amounts of time over the years to find
out what National Interest was really involved in the ex-Yugoslav
space and how did the Clinton-Albright foreign policy relate to it.
German influence was perceived. The Vatican was not too far behind.
These were the "traditional" anti-Yugoslav forces, along with a
nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian Empire among some and for a
re-creation of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, among others. But, a
U.S. National Interest? If one were to extract the major claims on its
behalf they could be reduced to just a few. One is a virtual
declaration of war on "ethnic nationalism." "Humanitarian intervention"
came into view as a twin. The two were rooted in an "unbendable" claim
that "our" (please note the Royal "we") policy objective was to insure
peace in the area. Let us quickly look at the broad picture.
No one can credibly claim today that there has been any symmetry in
the would-be "Humanitarian Interventions," from Krajina to Bosnia and
Kosovo. While roundly blasting "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs in
Bosnia, the Clinton Administration took an active part in developing and
permitting the Croat Operation Storm in August 1995 which produced by
far the greatest instance of "ethnic cleansing" up to that time. This
involved between 200,000 and 250,000 Serbs whose ancestors settled in
Krajina centuries earlier. Clearly, support for one ethnicity’s
Nationalism was used to "eliminate the problem" of dealing with
another.. The
architects of the "Kosovo Policy" first "laundered" the
"terrorists" (as defined by the State Department) into a "Liberation
Army." Next, they went on to support the KLA in a number of ways. In
so doing , they sided de facto with ethnic Albanian Nationalism. Most
could and did perceive the rapid advent of " ethnic cleansing " But,
since, this time, those "cleansed" were mainly Serbs the KLA’s crime
against humanity was explained away as "justifiable retribution."
Such a dogmatic explanation of crimes against humanity -even war
crimes- committed , say, by Serb individuals, army soldiers and
para-military units, not only in Bosnia but also in Kosovo, could
only earn "nationalist" accolades. What about the establishment of
peace? Two torpedoed peace proposals, imports of weapons, training of
armies,lending of the USAF to one against another --such is the PATTERN
revealing that "Peace" becomes an Orwellian term meaning "War." If not
peace, as the pivot of foreign policy in the area from 1992 to 1999,
why war? To believe simply that "Milosevoc" was the only or main reason
would require two things. One is to re-write the History of this period
. The second would be that Mickey is a real, ever-live , Mouse. A
strong case can be made for a perceived need to "resurrect" NATO
after the Cold War. Yet, it cannot explain what National Interest was
served in saving NATO from self-extinction by exacerbating the
southeastern Europe’s turmoil? One other "explanation." a
"geo-political" one has been advanced. The route to tapping the
reportedly huge Caspian oil reserves would require an indefinite U.S.
military presence at Kosovo-Metohija. Not an absolute necessity. Yet,
Even if certain, this would and could not explain the U.S. involvement
in ex-Yugoslavia before 1998. So, what is the one, fundamental,
underpinning of the Clinton-Albright policy here? It finally emerges
that there was no policy relating to any real National Interest. In
fact, there was no
policy at all. Its substitute was a capricious use of power for the sake
of power , using different component parts and accents. This was no
crude Fascism of Benito’s time. Our military did not drop captured Serbs
from planes without parachutes as did the Fascists in Lybia witn
Arabs who resisted. Instead, the "missions" have been and are still
endowed with High Moral Purposre which can only exist as a Kantian
noumenon that cannot be demonstrated . All of the phenomena of the
Clinton-Albright policy in ex-Yugoslavia show the contrary. There is
also another revelation. It is INCOMPETENCE masked as "achievement ."
The best example is found in the "Kosovo Policy." Most of its
architects saw in the KLA an Albanian Nationalism at work, aiming at
Kosovo’s independence. Some perceived a drive for "Greater Albania" as
its ultimate goal.One or two even wished it would come about.
What virtually none of the architects grasped is that "Greater Albania"
is a misleading cunstruct. It coveys an ultimate Nationaist Agenda.
In reality, as has clearly emerged at Kosovo since June 1999, the aim
of a "Greater Albania" is not some sort of national unity of all
Albanians under a single government. They have had a time-honored
acephalous society, dominated by clans. Moreover, hardly all of the
Albanians in Albania look with favor to a single, unfied Greater
Albania. Albania’s southern Christians do not wish to see more of the
Albanian Muslims added north into a unified state. The ultimate goal
of the main forces behind the KLA is to secure and control a
Commercial Empire enageged in illegal and criminal activities. It is
not only destabilizing the region. It is destibilizing Western European
societies as well. Over 80 percent of heroin goes into them via Kosovo
despite NATO’s presence in situ. .Many of the West European prostitution
rings and networks are Albanian-controlled as is the flow if illegal
shipments of humans from Asia and Africa. This is surely not a result
working in favor of the NATO intervention. Yet, it remains favored
as such to maintain the myth of an " Air Victory at Kosovo" and
rescue NATO for a second time from becoming irrelevant in one Europe.
In conclusion, I hope that you might find the time to read the four
articles enclosed and perhaps persuade you to enter them into the
Congressional Record, with this letter, despite their political
incorrectness or, possibly, because of it. Can we Amricans transcend
an endless dialogue of the deaf?
Respectfully
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720
(510/642-1971).
