URL for this article:
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/borislav.htm
=======================================
A CONVERSATION WITH AMBASSADOR BORISLAV
MILOSEVIC, SLOBODAN'S BROTHER (Part 1)
[Posted 2 June 2002]
=======================================
Note from Jared Israel: On May 24th I
spoke via three way telephone with
BORISLAV MILOSEVIC, Yugoslav Ambassador to
Russia from 1998-2000 and before
that Ambassador to Algeria.
We discussed the significance of
widespread Russian support for Slobodan
Milosevic; the New World Empire's efforts
to destroy international judicial
standards and political discourse; and the
highly deceptive character of
Sept. 11 and the War on Terror.
Ambassador Milosevic mainly spoke
Serbo-Croatian, which was kindly translated
by Vladimir Krsljanin, International
Secretary of the Socialist Party of
Serbia. A few times Ambassador Milosevic
spoke English, as indicated in the text.
-- JARED ISRAEL
[To make following the conversation
easier, we have preceeded comments with
the name of the speaker.]
* JARED ISRAEL
Mr. Ambassador it's a great honor to speak
with you.
For our readers, let me say that your
brother, Slobodan Milosevic, has just
won the Sholokhov prize, named for Mikhail
Sholokhov, author of the great
Russian novel, 'And Quiet Flows the Don.'
Could you say a bit more about the prize?
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes. It is perhaps the most distinguished
Russian award, given to artists and
political leaders of outstanding
achievement. Today at the award ceremony I
accepted the prize for Slobodan Milosevic
because, as the writer Yuri
Bondarev said in bestowing this honor,
Slobodan is being held in the dungeon
of The Hague.
* JARED ISRAEL
Dungeon is the word, isn't it? They don't
even let him meet with Chris Black,
the head of his lawyers' committee. And
his living conditions are outrageous
- terrible food, no exercise, no right to
see his own doctors - or any heart
specialist - even though his heart
condition is a matter of record. And
forced to be in court all day and to
cross-examine witnesses virtually every
day, week after week, which is unheard-of.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
I think this award will further strengthen
the fighting spirit of Slobodan
Milosevic and his courage as well.
* JARED ISRAEL
Also it suggests that the Russians see
President Milosevic's resistance as
important to their own experience.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes. The greater part of Russian society
strongly supports Slobodan and
practically nobody approved his delivery
to The Hague, not even those
Rightist parties who were hostile to his
government. Both houses of the
Russian parliament voted overwhelmingly to
condemn his kidnapping. Even the
mainstream newspapers publish articles
critical of The Hague.
Russian people consider Slobodan Milosevic
a hero of resistance to
imperialist intervention, a patriot who
defends his country and his people.
* JARED ISRAEL
This support from Russia is very
encouraging to me.
I interviewed your brother on March 23rd
2001, just before he was arrested.
During that interview he said that one of
the things US and West European
leaders hated about Yugoslavia was the way
you handled the question of
national and religious group relations.
There had been so much conflict in
the past. Some groups had been organized
by the Nazis and earlier by the
Ottoman Empire to attack Serbs, and Roma
and Jews as well of course - and yet
in Yugoslavia, and this is still true in
Serbia, you had schools in 24
different languages and court proceeding
in nine languages. When I was in
Serbia this past year I saw that there is
still an attitude of mutual
appreciation among different groups.
It seems to me that the strategy of the
New World Empire that has attacked
you is to stir up hatred. They use the
guidelines laid down by the Nazis,
finding points of weakness in ethnic or
religious groups that will allow the
Empire's mass media and operatives to play
on cultural traits that if left
alone wouldn't necessarily be a problem.
They stir up hatred in one culture
against another in a hideous way,
especially appealing to groups that were
once in a dominant position, empowering
their worst elements. The Empire does
this more effectively than the Nazis
because they have much more
sophisticated mass media. Perhaps the
worst thing is that the mass media
romanticizes racist violence by calling it
revenge.
But, contrary to the media lies, (1) your
government never engaged in racism.
You always tried to promote fraternity.
This was clear in Slobodan
Milosevic's speech at Kosovo Field in 1989
(2) and before then too, despite
the extremely provocative situation.
Some people say Russia and Serbia are
linked, that Serbia is little Russia.
And so the fact that the Russian people,
after what they've been through, the
terrible trauma of the 1990s, the fact
that they can see as their beacon this
man who stands for social justice and
tolerance, this gives me hope. Because
there is another possible beacon - ethnic
hatred, anti-Semitism, which has
reared its head in Russia in the past, a
Black Hundreds solution.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
You're completely right. There was no kind
of discrimination in Yugoslavia,
and while some former Yugoslav Republics
have become virtual mono-ethnic
states, Serbia hosts a million refugees of
all national and religious groups
and one third our population is not ethnic
Serbs. (3)
Serbia did not abolish the autonomy of
Kosovo in 1989 as some so-called
experts claim. Only certain extreme and
inappropriate elements of statehood
were removed from what was after all a
provincial government. This was done
to prevent the de facto creation of a
separate state in Kosovo.
* JARED ISRAEL
Which is precisely what NATO and the UN
are supporting now - a separate
Kosovo.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes.
Kosovo Albanians were not deprived of any
human or cultural rights in 1989.
The same was true of people in [the
Serbian province of] Vojvodina. In fact,
Kosovo Albanians continued to have
cultural rights unequalled in the rest of
Europe.
The accusations of loss of autonomy were
contrived. The secessionists
organized or forced ethnic Albanians to
boycott State institutions and set up
parallel institutions for purely political
reasons. (4)
Everyone knows that schools, universities,
the press, hospitals and TV were
maintained in Kosovo in the Albanian
language, even during this decade-long
boycott. The secessionists organized this
boycott to provide Western media
with provocative images and to create a
no-alternative situation for
Albanians. All political manipulation. (4a)
This is clear from the leaflet which
Slobodan Milosevic showed The Hague
'court' while he was cross-examining
[ethnic Albanian leader] Ibrahim Rugova.
The leaflet, which was signed by the KLA
and Rugova, ordered ethnic Albanians
to leave Kosovo during the bombing. Do you
see the game they played?
This demonstrates their dual purpose:
creating the false appearance that
Serbia was causing ethnic Albanians to
suffer, so that this could be
broadcast to the NATO countries, and
fostering a situation within Kosovo
where compromise was near impossible. This
was behind everything they did,
including the so-called Racak massacre and
the exodus of the ethnic Albanian
population during the NATO aggression.
[ Note: regarding the above, please see,
'The Racak Hoax' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/racakhoax.htm
And 'Why Albanians Fled During NATO
Bombing,' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/keys.htm ]
* JARED ISRAEL
And once they got the Albanians to leave,
they put them in refugee camps
under KLA control, with NATO's blessing.
Even the Western media had stories
reporting that these camps featured
non-stop hate-the-Serbs-and-'Gypsies'
indoctrination.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yet during the three months in this Hague
'court', we have seen one after
another witness testify they never even
heard of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
* JARED ISRAEL
It would embarrass NATO. They claim they
are fighting terrorism, but these
people are all members - or leaders - of a
terrorist group.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes. It is a problem.
At the very beginning of the trial it
seemed as if Mr. May, whom they call
'judge,' was trying to create the
impression of impartiality. But now he
openly behaves as an extension of the
prosecutor. He prompts and assists
witnesses, allowing them every liberty
including making political speeches.
But he cuts off Slobodan Milosevic and
does not allow him to conduct
cross-examination fully or to express his
opinion.
This is very alarming. It creates a
precedent for violating accepted legal
principles including the impartiality of
courts, the very basis of law. It
requires the strongest international
protest.
This on top of the fact that Slobodan
Milosevic is a head of state,
overthrown by foreign money and then
kidnapped by foreign agents. Who is next?
* JARED ISRAEL
I think this so-called trial makes the
Reichstag Fire case look good. At
least Dimitrov was allowed to present his
case.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes, this Hague 'court' behaves like
someone's instrument. Since its
foundation it has been a tool of
aggression against Yugoslavia.
In some of my statements here in Russia I
often say that the Yugoslav crisis
was created in order to reorganize the
whole of international relations in
accordance with American interests and
expansionism and it was done in a very
conscious way.
* JARED ISRAEL
You know, also it was a step towards the
encirclement of Russia, wasn't it?
Because isn't it true that those who would
attack Russia need to consolidate
their hold in the Balkans first? And if
you look at what has happened, NATO
now surrounds Russia from Central Asia to
the Baltic. They have penetrated a
dozen countries. (5)
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
The aggression in Yugoslavia was an
attempt to impose new International rules
to justify NATO, a regional military
organization, usurping the sovereign
rights of countries outside its previously
claimed zone of responsibility. So
military and geopolitical expansion is
presented as humanitarian peace
making. Terrorist attacks are launched and
then intervention is threatened if
a country defends itself, and all this is
justified by a whole new
interpretation of international law so
that now even the United Nations is
employed to legitimize geopolitical expansion.
There were in the past many other examples
of violations of the UN charter:
Vietnam, Granada, and so on, and this
includes the sending of Russian troops
to Afghanistan. However, none of these
instances were sanctioned by the
Security Council.
In this sense, the Yugoslav case was
something new, an attempt to create an
international legal framework to justify
the destruction of a country by
terrorist forces. And what took place
after Sept. 11, that is NATO's
expansion into Central Asia, is a
continuation.
So, in the Yugoslavia crisis we saw this
new quality - aggression condoned by
international law and international legal
structures. And after September 11
we see this process moving into a new
stage. This makes it clear that both
the aggression against Yugoslavia and the
expansion of NATO from a West
European organization into Eastern Europe
- these were of more than regional
importance. (5)
* JARED ISRAEL
You know one of the interesting things
about September 11th is that here we
see an Empire which has organized most of
the terrorism in the world, mainly
starting with Afghanistan, but they claim
to be leading a crusade against terrorism.
The whole strategy of the US intervention
in Afghanistan, beginning in 1979,
was to promote terrorism. They and the
Saudis used the Wahhabi form of Islam,
pouring money into the madresses which
became schools training the terrorists
that subsequently plagued Chechnya,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kashmir and I
think they are in the Middle East as well.
And this same terrorism which they have
created - and there is a lot of
indication that Mr. bin Laden is still
connected with the CIA (6) although
now that NATO is entrenched in Central
Asia they conveniently stopped talking
about him - this same terrorism which they
unleash in order to destabilize
areas is also used as an excuse to
intervene. So it is a tool of many
purposes. Very convenient and very
American, because it's very American to
have a tool that does two things at once.
A gadget. Terrorism is a political
gadget because on the one hand they can
use it to attack multiethnic society
as they did in Bosnia and then on the
other hand they can use it as the
excuse to invade, as they are now doing
with Central Asia.
But what shows their hypocrisy is - and
you may or may not know about this -
the United States is still shipping in
millions of militant Islamic
fundamentalist textbooks (6a) into
Afghanistan. Now why on earth would they
be doing this if they were sincerely
fighting against Islamic fundamentalism?
They just used this terrorist movement
which they themselves had created as
an excuse to move in.
Just one other point that occurred to me
when you were talking is that the
conduct and discourse of your government,
which was the last legitimate
government in Yugoslavia since what's
there now was created by the US,
Germany and Norway - the discourse of your
government respected political
ideas. (7)
This New World Empire attacks the very
possibility of political discourse by
shattering the link between words and what
they define - the Empire bombs
people and calls it humanitarian. They
manufacture events - we saw that with
Racak. And they simply rewrite history
(8), including manufacturing a
fictional version of your brother's famous
1989 speech. (1)
By doing these things they undermine the
possibility of rational discussion
because truth becomes whatever the
powers-that-be and their media portray as
true - it's a function of what's shown on
TV. And at the same time, they
reduce politics to threat and violence and
then they say, "Alas, that's
reality." But your brother takes ideas
seriously.
One of the organizations orchestrating the
*anti-human* actions at The Hague
is called, amazingly, Human Rights Watch.
I was present the first few days of
President Milosevic's 'trial' at The Hague
and I got to observe Richard
Dicker, a top HRW bureaucrat, in
operation. Not only was he virtually the
only person representing the 'Tribunal' to
the press - I mean, he was Carla
del Ponte's spokesman! - but both the
press and 'Tribunal' officials clearly
deferred to him, and he was often closeted
with the prosecutors. I saw this
with my own eyes. I commented to one of
the senior reporters, "It looks like
Dickers is running the show," and the
reporter laughed and said, "Dickers
*is* the show."
We have several articles in preparation
about HRW. Their board of directors
is a Who's Who of the Imperial
establishment, including Warren Zimmermann,
the U.S. Ambassador who helped destroy
Yugoslavia including by sponsoring
Alijah Izetbegovic, the fundamentalist who
devastated Bosnia (9) and George
Soros who boasts that he helped his father
run an extortion racket for the
Nazis in Hungary during World War Two,
visiting Jewish families targeted for
death camps and demanding all their money
in exchange for safe passage. And
now he runs a privatized adjunct to the
CIA. And this is *Human Rights* Watch.
HRW demonizes anybody who stands up to
Imperial-organized terror. When NATO
sent the KLA to attack Macedonia, Human
Rights Watch condemned Macedonian
security troops for resisting.
When I interviewed President Milosevic I
asked why your government accepted
defeat during the coup of 2000 instead of
going to war against your
opponents. He said something like, "We
wanted to avoid being sucked into a
civil war, which would allow NATO to
intervene on the grounds that Serbs are
'hopelessly violent.' Moreover, it is easy
to kill people but it isn't easy
to bring them back."
Despite everything that has been done to
you, you resisted descending into a
nightmare pit. You have upheld political
discourse against this Imperial onslaught.
I read a thing the other day by Noam
Chomsky, whom a lot of people put on a
pedestal. In it Chomsky makes the sweeping
generalization that
counter-terrorism "is terrorism carried
out by the state." But that's a very
simple minded approach. Because, contrary
to what Chomsky says happened in
Yugoslavia, when you fought the terrorists
in Kosovo - who were themselves
sponsored by NATO countries - when you
fought them, the Yugoslav Army took
causalities rather than endangering
civilians. (10)
Now one cannot say that *taking*
causalities rather than hurting civilian
is the same as *not* taking casualties and
hurting the civilians. So all
counter-terror is not terror. There are
choices in the unfortunate situation
of fighting terrorism as in everything.
And of course saying,
"counter-terrorism is state terror" has
the effect of obscuring these choices
and may end up justifying terrorism -
because after all the terrorists are by
definition no worse than the people
fighting them.
*** THIS DISCUSSION IS CONTINUED IN PART 2 ***
www.tenc.net * Emperor's Clothes
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/borislav.htm
=======================================
A CONVERSATION WITH AMBASSADOR BORISLAV
MILOSEVIC, SLOBODAN'S BROTHER (Part 1)
[Posted 2 June 2002]
=======================================
Note from Jared Israel: On May 24th I
spoke via three way telephone with
BORISLAV MILOSEVIC, Yugoslav Ambassador to
Russia from 1998-2000 and before
that Ambassador to Algeria.
We discussed the significance of
widespread Russian support for Slobodan
Milosevic; the New World Empire's efforts
to destroy international judicial
standards and political discourse; and the
highly deceptive character of
Sept. 11 and the War on Terror.
Ambassador Milosevic mainly spoke
Serbo-Croatian, which was kindly translated
by Vladimir Krsljanin, International
Secretary of the Socialist Party of
Serbia. A few times Ambassador Milosevic
spoke English, as indicated in the text.
-- JARED ISRAEL
[To make following the conversation
easier, we have preceeded comments with
the name of the speaker.]
* JARED ISRAEL
Mr. Ambassador it's a great honor to speak
with you.
For our readers, let me say that your
brother, Slobodan Milosevic, has just
won the Sholokhov prize, named for Mikhail
Sholokhov, author of the great
Russian novel, 'And Quiet Flows the Don.'
Could you say a bit more about the prize?
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes. It is perhaps the most distinguished
Russian award, given to artists and
political leaders of outstanding
achievement. Today at the award ceremony I
accepted the prize for Slobodan Milosevic
because, as the writer Yuri
Bondarev said in bestowing this honor,
Slobodan is being held in the dungeon
of The Hague.
* JARED ISRAEL
Dungeon is the word, isn't it? They don't
even let him meet with Chris Black,
the head of his lawyers' committee. And
his living conditions are outrageous
- terrible food, no exercise, no right to
see his own doctors - or any heart
specialist - even though his heart
condition is a matter of record. And
forced to be in court all day and to
cross-examine witnesses virtually every
day, week after week, which is unheard-of.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
I think this award will further strengthen
the fighting spirit of Slobodan
Milosevic and his courage as well.
* JARED ISRAEL
Also it suggests that the Russians see
President Milosevic's resistance as
important to their own experience.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes. The greater part of Russian society
strongly supports Slobodan and
practically nobody approved his delivery
to The Hague, not even those
Rightist parties who were hostile to his
government. Both houses of the
Russian parliament voted overwhelmingly to
condemn his kidnapping. Even the
mainstream newspapers publish articles
critical of The Hague.
Russian people consider Slobodan Milosevic
a hero of resistance to
imperialist intervention, a patriot who
defends his country and his people.
* JARED ISRAEL
This support from Russia is very
encouraging to me.
I interviewed your brother on March 23rd
2001, just before he was arrested.
During that interview he said that one of
the things US and West European
leaders hated about Yugoslavia was the way
you handled the question of
national and religious group relations.
There had been so much conflict in
the past. Some groups had been organized
by the Nazis and earlier by the
Ottoman Empire to attack Serbs, and Roma
and Jews as well of course - and yet
in Yugoslavia, and this is still true in
Serbia, you had schools in 24
different languages and court proceeding
in nine languages. When I was in
Serbia this past year I saw that there is
still an attitude of mutual
appreciation among different groups.
It seems to me that the strategy of the
New World Empire that has attacked
you is to stir up hatred. They use the
guidelines laid down by the Nazis,
finding points of weakness in ethnic or
religious groups that will allow the
Empire's mass media and operatives to play
on cultural traits that if left
alone wouldn't necessarily be a problem.
They stir up hatred in one culture
against another in a hideous way,
especially appealing to groups that were
once in a dominant position, empowering
their worst elements. The Empire does
this more effectively than the Nazis
because they have much more
sophisticated mass media. Perhaps the
worst thing is that the mass media
romanticizes racist violence by calling it
revenge.
But, contrary to the media lies, (1) your
government never engaged in racism.
You always tried to promote fraternity.
This was clear in Slobodan
Milosevic's speech at Kosovo Field in 1989
(2) and before then too, despite
the extremely provocative situation.
Some people say Russia and Serbia are
linked, that Serbia is little Russia.
And so the fact that the Russian people,
after what they've been through, the
terrible trauma of the 1990s, the fact
that they can see as their beacon this
man who stands for social justice and
tolerance, this gives me hope. Because
there is another possible beacon - ethnic
hatred, anti-Semitism, which has
reared its head in Russia in the past, a
Black Hundreds solution.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
You're completely right. There was no kind
of discrimination in Yugoslavia,
and while some former Yugoslav Republics
have become virtual mono-ethnic
states, Serbia hosts a million refugees of
all national and religious groups
and one third our population is not ethnic
Serbs. (3)
Serbia did not abolish the autonomy of
Kosovo in 1989 as some so-called
experts claim. Only certain extreme and
inappropriate elements of statehood
were removed from what was after all a
provincial government. This was done
to prevent the de facto creation of a
separate state in Kosovo.
* JARED ISRAEL
Which is precisely what NATO and the UN
are supporting now - a separate
Kosovo.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes.
Kosovo Albanians were not deprived of any
human or cultural rights in 1989.
The same was true of people in [the
Serbian province of] Vojvodina. In fact,
Kosovo Albanians continued to have
cultural rights unequalled in the rest of
Europe.
The accusations of loss of autonomy were
contrived. The secessionists
organized or forced ethnic Albanians to
boycott State institutions and set up
parallel institutions for purely political
reasons. (4)
Everyone knows that schools, universities,
the press, hospitals and TV were
maintained in Kosovo in the Albanian
language, even during this decade-long
boycott. The secessionists organized this
boycott to provide Western media
with provocative images and to create a
no-alternative situation for
Albanians. All political manipulation. (4a)
This is clear from the leaflet which
Slobodan Milosevic showed The Hague
'court' while he was cross-examining
[ethnic Albanian leader] Ibrahim Rugova.
The leaflet, which was signed by the KLA
and Rugova, ordered ethnic Albanians
to leave Kosovo during the bombing. Do you
see the game they played?
This demonstrates their dual purpose:
creating the false appearance that
Serbia was causing ethnic Albanians to
suffer, so that this could be
broadcast to the NATO countries, and
fostering a situation within Kosovo
where compromise was near impossible. This
was behind everything they did,
including the so-called Racak massacre and
the exodus of the ethnic Albanian
population during the NATO aggression.
[ Note: regarding the above, please see,
'The Racak Hoax' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/racakhoax.htm
And 'Why Albanians Fled During NATO
Bombing,' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/keys.htm ]
* JARED ISRAEL
And once they got the Albanians to leave,
they put them in refugee camps
under KLA control, with NATO's blessing.
Even the Western media had stories
reporting that these camps featured
non-stop hate-the-Serbs-and-'Gypsies'
indoctrination.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yet during the three months in this Hague
'court', we have seen one after
another witness testify they never even
heard of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
* JARED ISRAEL
It would embarrass NATO. They claim they
are fighting terrorism, but these
people are all members - or leaders - of a
terrorist group.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes. It is a problem.
At the very beginning of the trial it
seemed as if Mr. May, whom they call
'judge,' was trying to create the
impression of impartiality. But now he
openly behaves as an extension of the
prosecutor. He prompts and assists
witnesses, allowing them every liberty
including making political speeches.
But he cuts off Slobodan Milosevic and
does not allow him to conduct
cross-examination fully or to express his
opinion.
This is very alarming. It creates a
precedent for violating accepted legal
principles including the impartiality of
courts, the very basis of law. It
requires the strongest international
protest.
This on top of the fact that Slobodan
Milosevic is a head of state,
overthrown by foreign money and then
kidnapped by foreign agents. Who is next?
* JARED ISRAEL
I think this so-called trial makes the
Reichstag Fire case look good. At
least Dimitrov was allowed to present his
case.
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
Yes, this Hague 'court' behaves like
someone's instrument. Since its
foundation it has been a tool of
aggression against Yugoslavia.
In some of my statements here in Russia I
often say that the Yugoslav crisis
was created in order to reorganize the
whole of international relations in
accordance with American interests and
expansionism and it was done in a very
conscious way.
* JARED ISRAEL
You know, also it was a step towards the
encirclement of Russia, wasn't it?
Because isn't it true that those who would
attack Russia need to consolidate
their hold in the Balkans first? And if
you look at what has happened, NATO
now surrounds Russia from Central Asia to
the Baltic. They have penetrated a
dozen countries. (5)
* BORISLAV MILOSEVIC
The aggression in Yugoslavia was an
attempt to impose new International rules
to justify NATO, a regional military
organization, usurping the sovereign
rights of countries outside its previously
claimed zone of responsibility. So
military and geopolitical expansion is
presented as humanitarian peace
making. Terrorist attacks are launched and
then intervention is threatened if
a country defends itself, and all this is
justified by a whole new
interpretation of international law so
that now even the United Nations is
employed to legitimize geopolitical expansion.
There were in the past many other examples
of violations of the UN charter:
Vietnam, Granada, and so on, and this
includes the sending of Russian troops
to Afghanistan. However, none of these
instances were sanctioned by the
Security Council.
In this sense, the Yugoslav case was
something new, an attempt to create an
international legal framework to justify
the destruction of a country by
terrorist forces. And what took place
after Sept. 11, that is NATO's
expansion into Central Asia, is a
continuation.
So, in the Yugoslavia crisis we saw this
new quality - aggression condoned by
international law and international legal
structures. And after September 11
we see this process moving into a new
stage. This makes it clear that both
the aggression against Yugoslavia and the
expansion of NATO from a West
European organization into Eastern Europe
- these were of more than regional
importance. (5)
* JARED ISRAEL
You know one of the interesting things
about September 11th is that here we
see an Empire which has organized most of
the terrorism in the world, mainly
starting with Afghanistan, but they claim
to be leading a crusade against terrorism.
The whole strategy of the US intervention
in Afghanistan, beginning in 1979,
was to promote terrorism. They and the
Saudis used the Wahhabi form of Islam,
pouring money into the madresses which
became schools training the terrorists
that subsequently plagued Chechnya,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kashmir and I
think they are in the Middle East as well.
And this same terrorism which they have
created - and there is a lot of
indication that Mr. bin Laden is still
connected with the CIA (6) although
now that NATO is entrenched in Central
Asia they conveniently stopped talking
about him - this same terrorism which they
unleash in order to destabilize
areas is also used as an excuse to
intervene. So it is a tool of many
purposes. Very convenient and very
American, because it's very American to
have a tool that does two things at once.
A gadget. Terrorism is a political
gadget because on the one hand they can
use it to attack multiethnic society
as they did in Bosnia and then on the
other hand they can use it as the
excuse to invade, as they are now doing
with Central Asia.
But what shows their hypocrisy is - and
you may or may not know about this -
the United States is still shipping in
millions of militant Islamic
fundamentalist textbooks (6a) into
Afghanistan. Now why on earth would they
be doing this if they were sincerely
fighting against Islamic fundamentalism?
They just used this terrorist movement
which they themselves had created as
an excuse to move in.
Just one other point that occurred to me
when you were talking is that the
conduct and discourse of your government,
which was the last legitimate
government in Yugoslavia since what's
there now was created by the US,
Germany and Norway - the discourse of your
government respected political
ideas. (7)
This New World Empire attacks the very
possibility of political discourse by
shattering the link between words and what
they define - the Empire bombs
people and calls it humanitarian. They
manufacture events - we saw that with
Racak. And they simply rewrite history
(8), including manufacturing a
fictional version of your brother's famous
1989 speech. (1)
By doing these things they undermine the
possibility of rational discussion
because truth becomes whatever the
powers-that-be and their media portray as
true - it's a function of what's shown on
TV. And at the same time, they
reduce politics to threat and violence and
then they say, "Alas, that's
reality." But your brother takes ideas
seriously.
One of the organizations orchestrating the
*anti-human* actions at The Hague
is called, amazingly, Human Rights Watch.
I was present the first few days of
President Milosevic's 'trial' at The Hague
and I got to observe Richard
Dicker, a top HRW bureaucrat, in
operation. Not only was he virtually the
only person representing the 'Tribunal' to
the press - I mean, he was Carla
del Ponte's spokesman! - but both the
press and 'Tribunal' officials clearly
deferred to him, and he was often closeted
with the prosecutors. I saw this
with my own eyes. I commented to one of
the senior reporters, "It looks like
Dickers is running the show," and the
reporter laughed and said, "Dickers
*is* the show."
We have several articles in preparation
about HRW. Their board of directors
is a Who's Who of the Imperial
establishment, including Warren Zimmermann,
the U.S. Ambassador who helped destroy
Yugoslavia including by sponsoring
Alijah Izetbegovic, the fundamentalist who
devastated Bosnia (9) and George
Soros who boasts that he helped his father
run an extortion racket for the
Nazis in Hungary during World War Two,
visiting Jewish families targeted for
death camps and demanding all their money
in exchange for safe passage. And
now he runs a privatized adjunct to the
CIA. And this is *Human Rights* Watch.
HRW demonizes anybody who stands up to
Imperial-organized terror. When NATO
sent the KLA to attack Macedonia, Human
Rights Watch condemned Macedonian
security troops for resisting.
When I interviewed President Milosevic I
asked why your government accepted
defeat during the coup of 2000 instead of
going to war against your
opponents. He said something like, "We
wanted to avoid being sucked into a
civil war, which would allow NATO to
intervene on the grounds that Serbs are
'hopelessly violent.' Moreover, it is easy
to kill people but it isn't easy
to bring them back."
Despite everything that has been done to
you, you resisted descending into a
nightmare pit. You have upheld political
discourse against this Imperial onslaught.
I read a thing the other day by Noam
Chomsky, whom a lot of people put on a
pedestal. In it Chomsky makes the sweeping
generalization that
counter-terrorism "is terrorism carried
out by the state." But that's a very
simple minded approach. Because, contrary
to what Chomsky says happened in
Yugoslavia, when you fought the terrorists
in Kosovo - who were themselves
sponsored by NATO countries - when you
fought them, the Yugoslav Army took
causalities rather than endangering
civilians. (10)
Now one cannot say that *taking*
causalities rather than hurting civilian
is the same as *not* taking casualties and
hurting the civilians. So all
counter-terror is not terror. There are
choices in the unfortunate situation
of fighting terrorism as in everything.
And of course saying,
"counter-terrorism is state terror" has
the effect of obscuring these choices
and may end up justifying terrorism -
because after all the terrorists are by
definition no worse than the people
fighting them.
*** THIS DISCUSSION IS CONTINUED IN PART 2 ***
www.tenc.net * Emperor's Clothes