(NOTE: Antiwar.com is a conservative website.
Nevertheless it opposes the Western imperialist
interference in the Balkans and publishes many
interesting pieces. One of these is the following
article, which we choose to redistribute although
it contains some ideologic stands and definitions,
e.g. about "communism", which we find inappropriate
and misleading. JUGOINFO)
> http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
ANTIWAR, Thursday, January 24, 2002
Balkan Express
by Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar.com
Ten Years in the Twilight Zone
A Brief Overview of a Morbid Experiment
When the French king and the Holy Roman
Emperor signed a peace treaty in
Munster, Westphalia, on October 24, 1648,
they were hardly aware that by
ending Europe's worst war to date they had
also established the foundations
of the modern system of international
relations. The Treaty of Westphalia
introduced and enshrined the principle of
territorial sovereignty, without
which modern nation-states would have been
impossible.
Three and a half centuries later, their
heirs - aspiring to lord over the
creation of a new European superstate -
chose to casually reject this
legacy. On January 15, 1991, the European
Union formally recognized the
declarations of secession by two of
Yugoslavia's federal republics, Slovenia
and Croatia, declaring Yugoslavia no
longer existed.
At best, this was a heavily assisted
suicide of an already dying country; at
worst, an act of incalculable malice.
Whatever it was, it plunged the people
of Yugoslavia into the abyss they've been
in ever since.
EMPIRE RISING
Between the outbreak of the Wars of
Yugoslav Succession [1] and the end (?) of
Macedonia's Apartheid Rebellion, both the
Balkans and the world changed
beyond recognition. The "hour of Europe,"
heralded by Yugoslavia's
enthusiastic executioners, was more like
the proverbial fifteen minutes.
Having shrugged off the unpleasant
distractions of Somalia and Haiti, the
United States rolled into the Balkans in
full force, leveling anything in
its path and rewriting history as it went
along. With massive amounts of
propaganda supplementing brute force, the
United States used the Balkans to
assert its position as the world's
"indispensable nation," the global
Empire incarnate.
The Empire's scions claim to have brought
"peace" to the Balkans, along with
"democracy" and "human rights." All they
really brought were subjugation,
kleptocracy [2] and conquerors' privileges:
sex slavery, drug-running and
widespread organized crime in general.
None of the problems between Yugoslav
peoples has been resolved - with the
possible exception of Croatian and
Albanian distaste for Serbs, largely cured
by mass expulsions and, equally,
mass murder.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Last November, Bosnia entered its sixth
year of existence as the Empire's
protectorate divided, impoverished and
despairing. To make matters worse,
the Empire's erstwhile Arab and Afghan
allies, who also helped out during
the war in Bosnia, had just committed mass
murder in New York and
Washington. Soon thereafter, five
Algerians and a Yemeni - who stayed in
Bosnia and were even granted citizenship
by a grateful Muslim regime - had
been arrested at US urging, based on the
CIA's claims they were connected to
Al-Qaeda.
The men had violent criminal records in
Bosnia, but no hard evidence linked
them to terrorism. So the six were
released last week - into the custody of
the US military. At US urging, they were
stripped of their citizenship, then
shipped to the luxury cages in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, while their families
and supporters rioted outside the Sarajevo
city jail.
A loyal vassal of the Empire for years,
the Muslim regime in Sarajevo thus
found itself in dire straits. The current
government is still mostly Muslim,
though it includes many of Bosnia's Croat
and Serb Christians. Both facts
prevent it from dealing with the issue of
its predecessor's dalliances with
militant Islam in a forceful manner. On
one hand, Bosnian Muslims still
depend on support and aid of many Middle
Eastern charities. On the other
hand, many of those charities are
suspected fronts for organizations the US
labels "terrorist" - and the US does not
tolerate any debate on this
particular subject right now.
If they crack down on the fundamentalists,
the Muslim authorities risk the
full wrath of the "holy warriors," with
Bosnia's Christians the first likely
target. But if they do nothing, the
fundamentalist influence will grow and
Bosnia might find itself on the US
blacklist as "collateral damage" in the
War on Terrorism.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
The Empire's "help" is also felt in Serbia
these days. The future of its
union with Montenegro is so obfuscated by
Imperial meddling, many people are
increasingly willing to settle for any
solution, to the benefit of various
politicians with illegitimate aspirations.
As if that were not tragic enough,
Serbia's 18-headed hydra of a government
is busy not only plundering its citizens
through the destruction of banks,
but also destroying the state from the
inside. The Serbian Parliament is
likely to approve the "omnibus" law
proposed by several power-hungry
separatist parties in the ruling
coalition, giving the northern province
of Vojvodina its Communist-era "autonomy."
In practice, this would mean creating a
separate state within Serbia - a
crazy idea if there ever was one. The
repressive statism of Zoran Djindjic
would be replaced by the even more
repressive statism of Nenad Canak and
other self-proclaimed "Vojvodina leaders,"
in comparison with whom Djindjic
appears downright saintly. President
Kostunica's party, far from opposing
this madness, is actually advocating a
proposal to divvy up Serbia into five
sub-states - six, counting the occupied
Kosovo.
LA SERBIE, C'EST MOI!
Djindjic himself is staying out of the
division debate, content that he
would end up ruling all the fiefdoms
anyway. He is also very busy setting up
his own national security council, which
would take control in a "crisis
situation." Given Djindjic's political and
academic credentials in the field
of power-grabbing through provoking
crises, this should be a red flag for
every Serbian patriot - well, that, and
his choice of ambassador in Washington.
Namely, Djindjic's allies in the
government approved the choice of Stojan
Cerovic for Yugoslavia's second Ambassador
to the Empire, after the first -
Milan St. Protic - was recalled late last
year. Cerovic has no diplomatic
credentials, but he does have a history of
maligning the Serbs to his
employers in the US Institute of Peace and
elsewhere. This has been enough
to force many American Serbs to bitterly
denounce Djindjic and his private
diplomacy, but few voices of opposition
were heard in Serbia itself, as usual.
NOT WITHOUT CAVIAR
These are but the most egregious examples
of distilled evil that has
festered in the darkness of the Balkans
under Imperial rule, and the list is
far from complete - nor is there enough
space here for it to be. But this
brief overview would be sadly lacking
without the news that the new governor
of occupied Kosovo is none other than
German diplomat Michael Steiner.
Formerly a deputy governor of Bosnia,
Steiner advised the German Chancellor
for a while, before resigning in a scandal
involving several German officers,
an airplane at the Moscow airport and
caviar that apparently wasn't there.
Word is that Steiner has quite a taste for
caviar, and that he is not known
for diplomacy or tact. So while Kosovo is
awash in murders, theft, slavery
and extremely distasteful politics - not
to mention the whole bit about it
being occupied territory of a nominally
sovereign state - at least its
occupiers and their subjects will now be
treated to some sharp German wit
and lots of caviar.
As a historical footnote, Steiner's
appointment means that for the first
time since World War One, Bosnia and a
part of Serbia will be ruled by an
Austrian and a German, respectively.
LAB RATS
Certainly, the demagogues that came to
lead the successor states of former
Yugoslavia bear a great deal of
culpability for the present sad state of
affairs in the once-promising region.
Their involvement with outside powers,
however, and those powers' incessant
meddling in the Yugoslav crises,
has exacerbated these consequences
exponentially.
The recognition of Slovenia and Croatia
created a precedent for future
"diplomatic aggression," destruction of
countries by recognition of their
seceding parts. Political pressure in
Macedonia, proxy warfare in Croatia,
outright force and occupation in Bosnia
and Kosovo were all meant as
precedents for other parts of the world -
their authors admitted as much, publicly.
Principles, logic, tradition, law and just
about everything else that even
remotely resembles sanity and civilization
were tossed aside for the sake of
a grand experiment in statist imperialism.
How well that has worked one can
see from the examples above. Having
performed the most gruesome procedures
on human beings declared lab rats, the
Empire turned its morbid curiosity to
other places. The experiment continues,
with less haste than before. The
Balkans lab rats are still alive, though
horribly mangled by the experience,
and still inhabit their despoiled cages
hoping for a better tomorrow or a
release from the nightmare of their
existence.
It sounds like a chilling script for a
Twilight Zone episode. Only it's all
too real.
___
NOTES:
[1] Since no one contested the
constitutional right of Yugoslav republics to
secession, but rather their stubborn
insistence on international recognition
of arbitrary Communist borders, the
1991-95 wars were fought over the
division of territory - i.e. succession of
Yugoslavia's property. The
subsequent conflicts in southern Serbia
(Kosovo, Presevo) and Macedonia were
wars of Albanian separatism, and thus
completely unrelated to the Succession
Wars.
[2] By strict definition, any government
is a "kleptocracy" - i.e. it rules
by stealing the property of its citizens
(through "taxes"). Therefore,
statist writers commonly misuse the term
to describe corrupt regimes. A
kleptocracy is not corrupt, it is simply a
state entirely devoted to plunder.
Nevertheless it opposes the Western imperialist
interference in the Balkans and publishes many
interesting pieces. One of these is the following
article, which we choose to redistribute although
it contains some ideologic stands and definitions,
e.g. about "communism", which we find inappropriate
and misleading. JUGOINFO)
> http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
ANTIWAR, Thursday, January 24, 2002
Balkan Express
by Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar.com
Ten Years in the Twilight Zone
A Brief Overview of a Morbid Experiment
When the French king and the Holy Roman
Emperor signed a peace treaty in
Munster, Westphalia, on October 24, 1648,
they were hardly aware that by
ending Europe's worst war to date they had
also established the foundations
of the modern system of international
relations. The Treaty of Westphalia
introduced and enshrined the principle of
territorial sovereignty, without
which modern nation-states would have been
impossible.
Three and a half centuries later, their
heirs - aspiring to lord over the
creation of a new European superstate -
chose to casually reject this
legacy. On January 15, 1991, the European
Union formally recognized the
declarations of secession by two of
Yugoslavia's federal republics, Slovenia
and Croatia, declaring Yugoslavia no
longer existed.
At best, this was a heavily assisted
suicide of an already dying country; at
worst, an act of incalculable malice.
Whatever it was, it plunged the people
of Yugoslavia into the abyss they've been
in ever since.
EMPIRE RISING
Between the outbreak of the Wars of
Yugoslav Succession [1] and the end (?) of
Macedonia's Apartheid Rebellion, both the
Balkans and the world changed
beyond recognition. The "hour of Europe,"
heralded by Yugoslavia's
enthusiastic executioners, was more like
the proverbial fifteen minutes.
Having shrugged off the unpleasant
distractions of Somalia and Haiti, the
United States rolled into the Balkans in
full force, leveling anything in
its path and rewriting history as it went
along. With massive amounts of
propaganda supplementing brute force, the
United States used the Balkans to
assert its position as the world's
"indispensable nation," the global
Empire incarnate.
The Empire's scions claim to have brought
"peace" to the Balkans, along with
"democracy" and "human rights." All they
really brought were subjugation,
kleptocracy [2] and conquerors' privileges:
sex slavery, drug-running and
widespread organized crime in general.
None of the problems between Yugoslav
peoples has been resolved - with the
possible exception of Croatian and
Albanian distaste for Serbs, largely cured
by mass expulsions and, equally,
mass murder.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Last November, Bosnia entered its sixth
year of existence as the Empire's
protectorate divided, impoverished and
despairing. To make matters worse,
the Empire's erstwhile Arab and Afghan
allies, who also helped out during
the war in Bosnia, had just committed mass
murder in New York and
Washington. Soon thereafter, five
Algerians and a Yemeni - who stayed in
Bosnia and were even granted citizenship
by a grateful Muslim regime - had
been arrested at US urging, based on the
CIA's claims they were connected to
Al-Qaeda.
The men had violent criminal records in
Bosnia, but no hard evidence linked
them to terrorism. So the six were
released last week - into the custody of
the US military. At US urging, they were
stripped of their citizenship, then
shipped to the luxury cages in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, while their families
and supporters rioted outside the Sarajevo
city jail.
A loyal vassal of the Empire for years,
the Muslim regime in Sarajevo thus
found itself in dire straits. The current
government is still mostly Muslim,
though it includes many of Bosnia's Croat
and Serb Christians. Both facts
prevent it from dealing with the issue of
its predecessor's dalliances with
militant Islam in a forceful manner. On
one hand, Bosnian Muslims still
depend on support and aid of many Middle
Eastern charities. On the other
hand, many of those charities are
suspected fronts for organizations the US
labels "terrorist" - and the US does not
tolerate any debate on this
particular subject right now.
If they crack down on the fundamentalists,
the Muslim authorities risk the
full wrath of the "holy warriors," with
Bosnia's Christians the first likely
target. But if they do nothing, the
fundamentalist influence will grow and
Bosnia might find itself on the US
blacklist as "collateral damage" in the
War on Terrorism.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
The Empire's "help" is also felt in Serbia
these days. The future of its
union with Montenegro is so obfuscated by
Imperial meddling, many people are
increasingly willing to settle for any
solution, to the benefit of various
politicians with illegitimate aspirations.
As if that were not tragic enough,
Serbia's 18-headed hydra of a government
is busy not only plundering its citizens
through the destruction of banks,
but also destroying the state from the
inside. The Serbian Parliament is
likely to approve the "omnibus" law
proposed by several power-hungry
separatist parties in the ruling
coalition, giving the northern province
of Vojvodina its Communist-era "autonomy."
In practice, this would mean creating a
separate state within Serbia - a
crazy idea if there ever was one. The
repressive statism of Zoran Djindjic
would be replaced by the even more
repressive statism of Nenad Canak and
other self-proclaimed "Vojvodina leaders,"
in comparison with whom Djindjic
appears downright saintly. President
Kostunica's party, far from opposing
this madness, is actually advocating a
proposal to divvy up Serbia into five
sub-states - six, counting the occupied
Kosovo.
LA SERBIE, C'EST MOI!
Djindjic himself is staying out of the
division debate, content that he
would end up ruling all the fiefdoms
anyway. He is also very busy setting up
his own national security council, which
would take control in a "crisis
situation." Given Djindjic's political and
academic credentials in the field
of power-grabbing through provoking
crises, this should be a red flag for
every Serbian patriot - well, that, and
his choice of ambassador in Washington.
Namely, Djindjic's allies in the
government approved the choice of Stojan
Cerovic for Yugoslavia's second Ambassador
to the Empire, after the first -
Milan St. Protic - was recalled late last
year. Cerovic has no diplomatic
credentials, but he does have a history of
maligning the Serbs to his
employers in the US Institute of Peace and
elsewhere. This has been enough
to force many American Serbs to bitterly
denounce Djindjic and his private
diplomacy, but few voices of opposition
were heard in Serbia itself, as usual.
NOT WITHOUT CAVIAR
These are but the most egregious examples
of distilled evil that has
festered in the darkness of the Balkans
under Imperial rule, and the list is
far from complete - nor is there enough
space here for it to be. But this
brief overview would be sadly lacking
without the news that the new governor
of occupied Kosovo is none other than
German diplomat Michael Steiner.
Formerly a deputy governor of Bosnia,
Steiner advised the German Chancellor
for a while, before resigning in a scandal
involving several German officers,
an airplane at the Moscow airport and
caviar that apparently wasn't there.
Word is that Steiner has quite a taste for
caviar, and that he is not known
for diplomacy or tact. So while Kosovo is
awash in murders, theft, slavery
and extremely distasteful politics - not
to mention the whole bit about it
being occupied territory of a nominally
sovereign state - at least its
occupiers and their subjects will now be
treated to some sharp German wit
and lots of caviar.
As a historical footnote, Steiner's
appointment means that for the first
time since World War One, Bosnia and a
part of Serbia will be ruled by an
Austrian and a German, respectively.
LAB RATS
Certainly, the demagogues that came to
lead the successor states of former
Yugoslavia bear a great deal of
culpability for the present sad state of
affairs in the once-promising region.
Their involvement with outside powers,
however, and those powers' incessant
meddling in the Yugoslav crises,
has exacerbated these consequences
exponentially.
The recognition of Slovenia and Croatia
created a precedent for future
"diplomatic aggression," destruction of
countries by recognition of their
seceding parts. Political pressure in
Macedonia, proxy warfare in Croatia,
outright force and occupation in Bosnia
and Kosovo were all meant as
precedents for other parts of the world -
their authors admitted as much, publicly.
Principles, logic, tradition, law and just
about everything else that even
remotely resembles sanity and civilization
were tossed aside for the sake of
a grand experiment in statist imperialism.
How well that has worked one can
see from the examples above. Having
performed the most gruesome procedures
on human beings declared lab rats, the
Empire turned its morbid curiosity to
other places. The experiment continues,
with less haste than before. The
Balkans lab rats are still alive, though
horribly mangled by the experience,
and still inhabit their despoiled cages
hoping for a better tomorrow or a
release from the nightmare of their
existence.
It sounds like a chilling script for a
Twilight Zone episode. Only it's all
too real.
___
NOTES:
[1] Since no one contested the
constitutional right of Yugoslav republics to
secession, but rather their stubborn
insistence on international recognition
of arbitrary Communist borders, the
1991-95 wars were fought over the
division of territory - i.e. succession of
Yugoslavia's property. The
subsequent conflicts in southern Serbia
(Kosovo, Presevo) and Macedonia were
wars of Albanian separatism, and thus
completely unrelated to the Succession
Wars.
[2] By strict definition, any government
is a "kleptocracy" - i.e. it rules
by stealing the property of its citizens
(through "taxes"). Therefore,
statist writers commonly misuse the term
to describe corrupt regimes. A
kleptocracy is not corrupt, it is simply a
state entirely devoted to plunder.