2015: The year everything changed

Let's start with the obvious and personal: this is the year I found my home as a writer at RT. That has meant more work behind the cameras, rather than in front - though I've had a few of those as well - and a lot more focus on US and world stories, rather than my usual Balkans beat. Between that and the disclaimer on top of the page, that accounts for the relative scarcity of blog posts.

The Balkans has been the sole exception to the year of change. Though the peace in Bosnia has formally turned 20, the quiet, dirty war continues apace, with no end in sight. In Serbia, the quisling regime has continued the policy absolute surrender to the Empire, however gradual (see "frog, boiling of"). Everywhere else, NATO and the Atlantic Empire have reign supreme.

Until the end of September in Syria.

Just days before, Vladimir Putin thundered from the UN General Assembly dais, asking the arrogant Imperials, "Do you even realize what you have done?" The wreckage of Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen testified to the "great success" of Empire's jihad against secular Arab regimes and for Saudi and Turkish interests across the Middle East and Europe.

Then, in just a month, a handful of Russian bombers did more to fight the so-called "Islamic State" than the US-led "coalition" has done in a year. Shamed into actually fighting the terrorists they were hoping to use as proxies, the Imperials still dragged their feet - and had no trouble claiming credit for Russian victories, whether in cutting off the "living pipeline" across the Syrian desert or claiming they were the ones "bringing peace and security to Syria."

The desperate Empire even tried shooting down Russian planes, with Sultan Erdogan clutching NATO's skirts immediately afterwards. The Russian response was polite but firm: air defense systems that have kept the "coalition" mostly out of the Syrian sky, and trade embargoes that have hurt Erdogan's wallet far worse than his pride. If anyone in the Middle East will "have to go," it will be that wannabe-Suleiman, not the Lion of Damascus.

Let it also be said that Erdogan was the one that launched the Great Migration in late 2015, using the trek field-tested by Kosovo Albanians in February. After Angela Merkel of Germany singlehandedly revoked the EU's visa policy, the human wave was all too happy to set off from the squalid Turkish camps towards the promise of German and Scandinavian welfare. The Hungarian fence only diverted them a bit, and temporarily. Along with the Syrians came others, mostly from places where Empire's endless benevolence had established progressive liberal democracy (meaning, feudal oligarchy) through "humanitarian bombing."

With anyone who merely objected to the mass influx was demonized as a bigot, hateful hater, xenophobe or Nazi, the Europeans - and some Americans, too - began to wonder whether they were allowed to have their own countries at all. And so the seeds of the rebellion against the transnational oligarchy were sown, and began to sprout.

Regardless how any of these processes unfold, things will never be the same as they were just a year ago. For any of us.

(again, see the Disclaimer at the top right)

Peace In Our Time

Some may say the Dayton Agreement was made to be broken; that it was a temporary patch on the gaping wound that was Bosnia, scheduled to hold it together past a US election cycle and then - back to the way it was. Others say it was meant to "evolve" into something else, some sort of postmodern, omnipotent managerial state the likes of which we're seeing implode all across the West today.

Yet somehow, it held. The Guns of April fell silent, the armies were disbanded, and even the "peacekeepers" that still drive around are a bare handful, there just for show and a hefty per diem. The "High Representatives" proved to be a joke, tin-pot viceroys attempting to play God - and failing. Forces that tore Bosnia apart before it even came into existence have continued to seethe, and the underlying problem shows no sign of being solved anytime soon. But the armistice has held for twenty years now. That's something.

Five years ago, I wrote a personal account of those days. This time, I made it a history lesson. Lest we forget.

The Dayton miracle: Bosnia armistice, still alive at 20 (Op-Edge) https://t.co/nlH7ykhriz pic.twitter.com/ZVEHSOaCkQ

— RT (@RT_com) November 21, 2015

I meant to post this earlier this week, but the War In Our Time got in the way. Sometimes I think it's the extension of the same one I went through, 20 years ago. We'll see what happens. I figured I'd post it today, though, on the day Americans celebrate as Thanksgiving, in honor of something I am thankful for.

Here's to us, the living.

The Essential Saker - now available on Amazon

One of my long-time readers, the Saker soared into prominence last year following the Maidan putsch in Kiev, cutting through the smokescreen of lies about Russia and the Ukraine with his incisive analysis. He has not always been right, but he has been consistently straightforward about his opinions, and that's a rare quality in a blogger these days.

He has also accomplished something that I have only thought about doing, and collected his most important articles into a book. "The essential Saker: From the trenches of the emerging multipolar world" came out yesterday, on Kindle and in hardcover. I would go so far as to describe it as an essential resource for understanding the conflict between the Atlantic Empire and Russia.

I'll strive to post a proper review once I've read through the 600+ pages of the volume, but I confess to skipping ahead to the latter chapters, when he puts the events of Yugoslavia's demise into the context of Empire's war on dissenters. If the Saker's explanation of how the Empire has used Islam and Muslims as a weapon (always to their detriment) is the only thing you take away from the book, it will make a big difference in your understanding of the world today. 

No to Kosovo in UNESCO

It ought to be the elementary standpoint of any civilized human being that those who destroy heritage (not to mention living houses of worship) absolutely do not belong in organizations whose purpose is to protect it.

The #EU wants us to say "This is perfectly fine." #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/HwA4XEaac6

— Boris Malagurski (@malagurski) October 14, 2015

After gaining membership in the corrupt and morally bankrupt FIFA, "Kosovo," a NATO-occupied Serbian territory pretending to be a country, is trying to become a member of UNESCO.

The "Kosovar" Albanian treatment of Serbian churches, monasteries, cemeteries, libraries, books and monuments - deliberately destroyed and desecrated since the NATO occupation began in 1999 - has been no different than the one afforded by the so-called Islamic State to the antiquities in Mosul or Palmyra.

#ISIS is more qualified than Kosovo for member of UNESCO. Less monuments were destroyed. @UNESCO #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/cAp02knvuF

— Марко (@MorgulValaris) October 16, 2015

Worse yet, these are not some ancient heritage sites, but living houses of worship - whose congregants have been expelled or murdered under NATO sponsorship in the past 16 years!

"Kosovo" does not belong in UNESCO. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

Remember Ukraine?

In the hubbub about the Syrian crisis - on which I will post some thoughts in the next couple of days - the world seems to have forgotten about the fiasco that is Ukraine.

Fortunately, CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle has not - and he was joined by Mark Sleboda, Alexander Mercouris and yours truly to discuss what is going on in Washington's dysfunctional satrapy on the Dnieper.

I'm not sure either that the intent of Minsk was to buy time until the Kiev regime inevitably self-destructed, but that sure seems to be how it worked out in practice. Any sort of progress towards a real solution can only be made after the political spectrum in the US puppet state of Ukropia stops being limited to fifty flavors of fascist.

That may seem like a long ways away... but winter is coming.

CrossTalk: Kiev's cul-de-sac

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

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

Air date: June 24, 2015

Mad about Serbia

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

Shocking, I know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One sentence at a time, shall we?

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

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

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

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

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

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

(see the Disclaimer at top right of page)

Macedonia - what gives?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Vladimir Petreski (@VPetreski) June 7, 2015

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

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

(see Disclaimer at top right of page)

Challenging the Enduring Fallacies

Croats and Muslims called to join the
Waffen-SS (WW2 recruiting poster)

A book by Croatian-American economist Jozo Tomasevic, tellingly titled "War and Revolution," has served as the authoritative work of "history" on the matters of Yugoslavia in WW2. Published in 1975, it remains the foundation for numerous pseudo-histories written since, with the aim of somehow proving that it was really the "greaterserbian bourgeois oppressors" (actual Communist phrase) to blame for wartime slaughter and the interwar "oppression" of other groups.

In present-day Serbia, the cult of Serbian collective guilt has dominated politics, culture and academia since the 2000 astroturf revolution. That explains why few, if any, challenges to Tomasevic's myth have been put forth. Until now.

Miloslav Samardzic, another economist who turned historian, has researched archives, interviewed eyewitnesses, and written over a dozen books about WW2, focusing on the royalist resistance (aka the "Chetniks"). He is also one of the authors of a documentary series about Yugoslavia in WW2, mentioned here before - which will be shown in Washington DC on April 19 (see here for more information).

Samardzic has recently written a two-part essay addressing the numerous problems in Tomasevic's work, too lengthy to reproduce here. I do, however, commend them to the attention of anyone interested in WW2 history of Yugoslavia:

- “Chetniks” by Jozo Tomasevich: The Fallacy that Endures (Part 1)
- “Chetniks” by Jozo Tomasevich: The Fallacy that Endures (Part 2)

If it were just the Communists distorting the history of the war, to justify their takeover in 1945, that would be one thing. Quite another is to see Communist-invented history championed (example) by heirs of Nazi collaborators in present-day Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. Baffling as that might appear at first, once you realize that the common thread of these "histories" is the shared hatred of Serbs, things will begin to click into place.

Truly He is Risen!

Christ is Risen!

Христос воскресе!

Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Just yesterday it would seem that the last hope for salvation had been lost, while today we have acquired firm expectation of eternal life ‘in the never-fading Kingdom of God.’ Just yesterday the ghost of corruption prevailed over creation, casting doubt over the meaning of our earthly life, while today we proclaim to each and all the great victory of Life over death.
[...]
Belief in Christ’s Resurrection is inextricably harnessed to the Church’s belief that the incarnate Son of God, in redeeming the human race and tearing asunder the fetters of sin and death, has granted to us genuine spiritual freedom and the joy of being united with our Maker. We are all in full measure communicants of this precious gift of the Saviour, we who have gathered on this radiant night in Orthodox churches to ‘enjoy the banquet of faith,’ as St. John Chrysostom puts it.
[...]
When spiritual heroism becomes the substance not only of the individual but of an entire people, when in striving for the celestial world the hearts of millions of people are united, ready to defend their homeland and vindicate lofty ideals and values, then truly amazing, wondrous things happen that at times cannot be explained from the perspective of formal logic. The nation acquires enormous spiritual strength which no disasters or enemies are capable of overcoming. The truth of these words is evidently attested by the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, achieved by the self-sacrificing heroism of our people. We shall mark the seventieth anniversary of this glorious date in the current year.

In afflictions and temptations we are called upon to preserve peace and courage, for we have been given the great and glorious promise of victory over evil. Can we be discouraged and despair? No! For we comprise the Church of Christ which, according to the Lord’s true word, cannot be overcome by the ‘gates of hell’ (Mt 16:18)...

(from the Paschal Message of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, 2015)

The East Remembers

1999 - 2015

Unforgotten.

Unforgiven.

The East Remembers.

Kosovo's Kristallnacht

2004-2015

The East Remembers

Why Empire Needs a Conquered Serbia

Back in the summer of 2011, when most of the Western public still believed in the big lie of the "Arab Spring" - which ended up producing chaos in Libya, civil war in Syria, and the ISIS "caliphate" - I mentioned a great little documentary about Empire's revolution business. The filmmakers brought up the role an ostensibly private, non-violent, civil society NGO played in a string of "color revolutions," from Serbia to North Africa. In doing so, they committed the two cardinal sins in the modern West: Noticing, and Remembering.

CANVAS leader Srdja Popovic, with the logo of Empire's "color revolutions" (source) 

For you see, nobody is supposed to notice that "spontaneous peaceful activists" are in fact coached by an Empire-backed operation; that their slogans are always the same; that their graphics are always the same; and that, whatever their official claims may be, the outcome is always the same: self-destruction of the targeted society and state, often to the point of civil war. Nor is anyone supposed to remember seeing that same pattern anywhere else before.

After the October 2000 coup that replaced Slobodan Milosevic's government with a regime more or less loyal to the Empire (today, that loyalty is absolute), some of the "student activists" instrumental in duping the Serbian public became professional revolutionaries. They named their organization "CANVAS" - Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies. In English. Please notice and remember that, it's important.

This morning I came across a Russian analysis of a suspicious explosion in Kharkov (reportedly involving one Aleksandar "Aca" Kazun, an Otpor/CANVAS operative), against the backdrop of a little-too-convenient murder of Boris Nemtsov. A marginal political figure polling in single digits while alive, once dead Nemtsov was made into a sacred martyr of the "progressive opposition."

Anyway, the analysis (seen here in the English translation) keeps talking about the "Serbian trail", the "Serbian organization," etc. when referring to CANVAS. I understand this might be shorthand. But if it isn't, if the authors genuinely believe that CANVAS is a Serbian outfit, then they are playing right into Empire's narrative.

To wit, as I pointed out in the 2011 article mentioned above:

Branding Otpor and CANVAS as Serbian is no accident. Few in the world would be inclined to suspect a Serb of working for the Empire, after everything that happened in the Balkans in the 1990s. Washington policymakers have just about admitted that American bombers flew over Belgrade because of "Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform," rather than any reports of atrocities, exaggerated or fabricated on demand.

Merely defeating and conquering Serbia would not do. The Serbs had to be turned into the Empire’s most dedicated servants: when even a people like that can be so thoroughly crushed, resistance to the Empire must surely be futile.

This is why CANVAS has to be presented as a "Serbian" organization, when it is really a rabidly anti-Serb one. This is why the 2008-2012 government in Serbia was installed as puppets of Washington - because the junior partner in it were the Socialists once led by Milosevic, and demonstrating them broken was proving Empire's point. And this is why the current government, led by the former Radicals (now cynically rebranded as "Progressives") has plumbed the depths of submission and sycophancy like no other.

I may be personally invested in seeing Serbia throw off the yoke, but that last paragraph I quoted earlier is why Serbia ought to matter to everyone else.

The Truth Points to Itself

Item #1: Middle East Eye, August 15, 2014:

"The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan has been accused of acting as a proxy for the US and Israel in Eastern Europe while also attempting to exploit a loosely regulated Serbian arms market to distribute weapons across the Middle East.

Behind the huge investment lies the shadowy figure of exiled Palestinian strongman Mohammed Dahlan. He is said to be at the centre of a web facilitating communication between the UAE with American and Israeli intelligence figures while also aiding corrupt Emirati investments in Serbia that have lined the pockets of their political leaders."

IDEX-2013: then-Deputy PM Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, 18 February 2013 (source)

Item #2: InSerbia News, February 2, 2015:

"Ministry of Defence of Serbia announced that it will begin the sale of more than 480 tanks and howitzers, 220 armored vehicles, more than 20,000 rifles and pistols and a large quantity of ammunition and other equipment."

Item #3: Sputnik News, February 24, 2015:

"Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the signing of a deal on military and technical cooperation with the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, during his visit to the IDEX-2015 Arms Expo in Abu Dhabi.

The president told reporters that he had signed a 'very important memorandum about military and technical cooperation' with his UAE counterparts, without providing any more information on what the agreement will entail. The deal was struck between Ukrainian officials and UAE Crown Prince and Armed Forces Deputy Supreme Commander Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan."

(Points to the disclaimer) No comment.

Interludes and Examinations

You may have noticed I haven't posted much lately, even though there have been news.

The reason is very simple: in late February, I was hired by RT (formerly known as "Russia Today"). Many people have already assumed I worked for them, on account of my numerous appearances on shows, newscasts and such. However, as I've explained here before, all those appearances were pro bono, voluntary, free of any suggestion, guidance or coaching.

A position opened on RT's news team. I applied, and was accepted. And it is good.

I went on RT shows for the same reason I have maintained this blog, its Serbian cousin, and a column over at Antiwar.com: to tell the side of the story that has not only been ignored, but covered up, suppressed, demonized and denied. I think I've had some success in that regard. I have no intention of abandoning that effort.  However, going forward, some clarifications are required.

Nothing you read here, not a single word, represents RT's official or unofficial position in any way, shape, or form. What you see here has been, and will be, strictly my own, private opinion. Nobody is reviewing, approving or censoring it - except me.

That said, expect posting to be considerably less frequent. Partly because at least some of the issues I've been tackling here will be handled through work now (in the Op-Edge section, for example), and partly because work is now taking up the lion's share of my time and energy. When I do post, expect it to be observations, musings and speculation that don't quite belong in the newsroom.

Onward we go. Can't stop the signal. Keep flying.

Blair? Seriously?

Former British PM, one of the Bombers of Belgrade and the butcher of Iraq, Anthony "Tony" Blair (or is it "Bliar"?) has actually visited the Empire's "puppet and lackey" in Serbia last June. Now he appears to have been officially hired as an "adviser" to what should be the Serbian government, but is in fact Empire's government in Serbia. Big difference.

Blair's speaking fees run into high six figures. A consulting retainer is probably much bigger. This isn't about money - though the systematically impoverished Serbia is plenty short thereof - but about principle, however. How self-hating, how spineless, how evil does one have to be, to cheerfully pay one's own aggressor and murderer?

John Bosnich and Višeslav Simić, both of whom I've had the privilege of meeting, explain the situation to RT's Anissa Nauai.

Column Update and Fundraiser

My new column about the Minsk truce and the rest of the conflict in the Ukraine is up on Antiwar.com this morning. It includes additional thoughts and considerations since my Thursday article here.

Antiwar.com is also having an emergency fundraiser, which I commend to your consideration. With the mainstream media basically an extended hand of the Empire, lying all day every day about everything, the American people are being merrily dragged to the slaughter at the altar of global empire. Twenty years after Bosnia, the same scenario is being used to demonize Russia, destroy Ukraine and control Europe. Meanwhile, America is drowning in debt, despair and deception.

It doesn't have to be this way. And you can help.

Minsk

Will the new ceasefire bring peace to Ukraine? I think not.

Reading through the points of the agreement reached this morning in Minsk, I am trying to figure out why it took a marathon, all-night session to essentially resurrect the September ceasefire. Aside from some slightly stronger language and specific timelines, to me this looks basically like the same paper. And the only part of "Minsk 1" ever implemented was the OSCE monitoring mission, which has been worse than useless.

Alexander Mercouris believes that the talks were a Franco-German effort to halt the fighting before the Kiev junta suffered a catastrophic defeat; that would have given Washington a pretext to send weapons to the junta, which in turn would have caused a Russian response - and WW3. Fair enough.

(from Colonel Cassad)

Here's a problem, though: as Andrew Korybko points out, Washington wasn't at the talks. While Mercouris thinks that Merkel and Hollande have kept the Atlantic Empire in the loop, this does not mean Washington is bound by the terms of the paper. Then again, the Empire has a history of oath-breaking, so that's a moot point.

It is important to note, as Mercouris has, that this is not a political settlement - not a peace treaty, then. At best, it's a ceasefire with theoretical potential to grow into an armistice. If Kiev abides by it, within a month we should see some steps towards a political settlement. But honestly, what are the odds of that?

Bus People

In the first six weeks of 2015, some 50,000 Albanians have reportedly left the "independent state of Kosovo", setting off in buses across Serbia towards Hungary and the EU. Their number may be even higher: some "Kosovian" media mention up to 120,000 migrants. And now there is word they are also crossing over into Albania proper. 

While the Western media reflexively blame the Serbs, nobody actually knows what is happening. Perhaps this account, from an ethnic Serb traveling from her enclave in Kosovo to Belgrade on a bus filled with Albanian migrants, may help shed some light on the phenomenon.

This Looks Like 1999
By Yanya Gachesha (Јања Гаћеша)
Novi Standard, February 9, 2015. (original)

When I set out for Belgrade with a group of friends, early in the morning, and saw a group of Albanians at the bus depot in Gračanica, I realized the trip would take at least three hours more - but that this was also the opportunity to get to know these migrants better.

More Albanians boarded the bus at Ajvalija, Priština, Podujevo, all the way to Merdare. Most of them were young men, and young couples with children. When a few Serbs came on board at Miloševo we cheered up - until then, it seemed we were the only ones not traveling to Subotica.

They are leaving en masse, literally disappearing overnight. None of the Serbs know what's gotten into them all of a sudden. What I saw on the bus only confirmed the doubts that I and many other Kosovo-Metohija Serbs share: they are up to no good again. Apart from one woman headed to Subotica with her husband and children, who came on board in tears, everyone else looked entirely carefree. Neither her, nor her family looked like they were suffering, impoverished, or starving. Nor did anyone else. Few had more luggage than a single backpack, even those with children in tow. They were completely relaxed, laughing and talking on their phones, couples necking and kissing, as if they were all going to a seaside holiday and were about to burst into song.

Facts and Fascist Fantasies

On Friday, February 6, six Bosnian Muslims ("Bosnians", per the US media) living in Missouri, New York and Illinois were arrested on charges of aiding ISIS. The day before, police in Manchester (UK) raided 17 homes, targeting an Albanian drug-trafficking ring. Meanwhile, thousands of Albanians are leaving their "free, independent state of Kosovo" - carved out of Serbia for them by NATO in 1999, and declared independent in 2008. Nobody seems to know why - though that doesn't stop the Western media for blaming the Serbs.

Over in Bosnia - the place that set the precedent for America's "white knighting" in the 1990s - an entire village has been taken over by Wahabi jihadists flying ISIS flags. This is news all of a sudden; yet the village's Serb inhabitants were driven out 20 years ago, and it has been a jihadist commune ever since - and no one in the West gave a damn. "See no jihad" was the order of the day, even after 9/11. Why? Perhaps because of Washington's plan to earn the jihadists' gratitude - even though they've clearly showm what they thought of the idea, over and over again.

Last week, Russian agencies reported that "up to 200 mercenaries from the Balkans" were fighting for the Nazi junta in the Ukraine. According to the report, the US corporation formerly known as Blackwater recruited Croats and Albanians.

Croats in the Nazi "Azov" battalion  (source)

It wouldn't be the first time; when the tattered remnants of the German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad in February 1943, among them were troops of the Croatian Legion - a unit personally deployed to the Eastern Front by the Croatian Nazi leader Ante Pavelić, proud of his alliance with the "Thousand-Year Reich." Albanians also served Hitler faithfully, as he (and Mussolini) gave them today's Kosovo and western Macedonia, a Waffen-SS division, and a blank check to murder and expel as many Serbs as they could.

Fast-forward fifty years after the end of WW2. Pavelić's heirs again hitched their wagon to the strongest power, and used the status of its "junkyard dogs" to fulfill their iron dream. But the International Court of Justice just said you shouldn't worry your pretty little heads about that.

Trouble in Kosovo? Must be the Serbs' Fault

Something strange is going on in the "Independent state of Kosovia" these days - but only if you're a mainstream Western media reporter.

Voice of America is stumped by the fact that some ten thousand "Kosovianians" have fled for the EU since the beginning of the year. Their explanation? It's Serbia's fault (of course, always) for making it easy for the "Kosovistanis" to travel freely, which "coincided" with "political turmoil and street unrest in Kosovo fueled by poverty, high unemployment and economically debilitating corruption."

Now wait just a bloody, bombed-out minute. Aren't "poverty" and "high unemployment" trotted out every time to explain every riot in "Kosovia"? Remember the 2004 pogrom resulting in the expulsion of some 40,000 Serbs? Within days, the Albanians' Western apologists were spinning it as a natural consequence of unemployment, poverty, etc. Their proposed solution? Independence, independence, independence!

NATO soldiers inspect a destroyed Serbian church in Prizren, following the March 2004 pogrom; the graffiti (in gutter Albanian) reads "Death to Serbs" (photo: SrbijaDanas)

You see, at the time Kosovo was legally considered a province of Serbia, albeit under NATO and UN occupation since NATO's illegal war of 1999. After almost four years of pro-independence propaganda, in February 2008 the provisional government proclaimed the "Republic of Kosovo." Two years later, the International Court of Justice tortured logic into declaring that this wasn't necessarily illegal.

Fast-forward to 2015. "Kosovia" has been recognized by some 100 states, mostly vassals of the Atlantic Empire. Moreover, the quisling government in Serbia has de facto recognized the province's independence - government, flag, borders, customs, documents, etc. - and sold the remaining Serbs down the river, basically forcing them to participate in "Kosovarian" elections. Never mind that only a handful of Serbs vote, and that even fewer agree to be token symbols of "Kosovian" tolerance and multicultural democracy or whatnot. And there is still a problem?

Bombing for Peace, and Other Hypocrisies

From Sputnik News, January 26, 2015:

Addressing reporters in New Delhi on Sunday, US President Obama has once again repeated his famous mantra "large countries shouldn't bully smaller countries," prompting the question: Wouldn't it be nice if the US President looked in the mirror before blaming others?

Trouble is, I think Nobel Peace Prize Winner Just For Showing Up has been looking in the mirror all these years - and seeing only the prettiest, cleverest, nicest, most righteous man in the world, who can literally do no wrong.

The race card has little to do with it, mind. His two predecessors acted the exact same way, even though - in the "social justice" narrative imposing itself on the American public today - they were steeped in "privilege." It's as if to ascend to the Throne of Saint Abraham, one has to recite the Creed: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

That, by the way, is Latin for "What Jupiter is allowed, an ox is not" - fittingly enough, from the story of the Rape of Europa. So these self-appointed Jupiters declare themselves exempt from all rules and strictures, while using the very law they flout as a cudgel to clobber others with. Public declarations of their righteousness and others' (supposed) wickedness are just insult to injury.

Only in the demented minds of these reality-deniers can there exist such a thing as "humanitarian intervention" via "bombs for peace". I don't know whether the latter phrase was actually coined by the late, unlamented "Dick" Holbrooke, but he used it to argue for "humanitarian" intervention in Bosnia, in 1995.

The bombing was completely unnecessary; Holbrooke's vaunted peace treaty was little different from the 1992 treaty his client - jihadist fanatic Alija Izetbegović - rejected at Washington's urging. In another ironic twist, the bombs continued to kill the very people they were supposed to be "saving": the bombed-out areas were abandoned by the Bosnian Serbs after the treaty, and settled by Bosnian Muslims - dying in droves ever since from both unexploded ordnance and effects of the oh-so-"safe" depleted uranium.

That quote from Tacitus comes to mind: they make a desolation, and call it peace.

But don't take my word for it: read George Szamuely's excellent book, "Bombs for Peace: NATO's Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia". One of these days - soon, I promise! - I will give it a proper review; been meaning to do this for months, but life got in the way. Suffice to say that Szamuely meticulously documents the West's destruction of Yugoslavia, from its very beginning in the late 1980s, to the evil little war over Kosovo.

More and more people - the Russian leadership, for example - each day are coming to the realization that the Atlantic Empire rests largely on this false narrative of the noble knight riding to humanitarian rescue, and that the root of these lies can be found in Yugoslavia. Szamuely's book is a handy compendium of facts that can help you take apart that false narrative. So perhaps the next time whoever is Jupiter-in-Chief says something breathtakingly stupid and hypocritical, it will be easier to see it for what it is.

Mercenaries in Mariupol?

You may have heard of Mariupol back in May 2014, when local citizens of this seaside town in the Donetsk Oblast tried to stop Nazi squads loyal to the Kiev junta from taking over. The Nazis shot at the crowd, killing several people (as you can see in videos at the linked page). Eventually, Kievite armor broke into the city and imposed "democracy and human rights" at gunpoint.

Mariupol then became the base of the Nazi "Azov" battalion - you know, the one with the SS insignia as their banner and Nazis from around the world flocking to their ranks? The ones even the Western mainstream media are queasy about, even as they try to paint them as "freedom fighting democrats"?

"Out of my face" - an English-speaker at the scene of the Mariupol shelling (via RT)

This week, as troops loyal to the governments in Donetsk and Lugansk - which declared independence in May 2014, following the butchery in Odessa and Mariupol - defeated a half-witted attack by Kiev's "cyborgs" and once again made advances towards the edges of Mariupol, a city block on the eastern side of town came under rocket fire.

Of course, the junta immediately cried out "the terrorists are killing us!" Western media reporting on the incident blamed the "Russians" (i.e. the Donetsk forces) - but that's no surprise, since they lie routinely.

What makes this incident different is that the path of the rocket volley was easy enough to ascertain: it came from deep behind the junta lines. My colleague the Saker, ever reasonable, thinks it may have been a mistake by the junta artillery - a volley meant for the advancing Novorossian troops, falling short.

While I would not normally go looking for malice where stupidity will suffice, the junta forces have been proven malicious time and again. As the Saker himself points out, they shell Donetsk, Lugansk, Gorlovka and many other places, on a daily basis. But the reason I am inclined to think this may have been deliberate is that a local news crew on the site accidentally ran into an odd man speaking English.

Hiding his face from the camera, the man - wearing fatigues and carrying a rifle - tells the reporter "Out of my face, out of my face please" in what to me sounds like American English. What was he doing there? Removing the evidence? Why was an ordnance disposal team, seen in another video, speaking English as well?

I spoke with RT about that earlier today. While it is possible these men could be "Azov" volunteers from the West, such men would not bother hiding their faces from - presumably friendly - cameras. Far more likely, these are Western "advisors" sent to bolster the ineffective junta military. Rather than regular troops - though there was an announcement US troops would be setting up a "training center" in Galicia in a couple of months - I figure these are mercenaries (Blackwater, aka Academi) that have been rumored to be in the area since this summer.

One correction: in the segment, I mentioned today's resignation of the Bosnian Defense Minister over the pressure from the West to sell weapons and ammunition to Kiev. Turns out I was slightly off the mark: the official in question is the Minister for Foreign Trade, Boris Tučić, and he resigned Thursday. However, the reason he cited was indeed the political pressure to sell weapons to the junta. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Damned Lies and Donetsk Airport

Alexander Mercouris has an interesting article on Russia Insider today, pointing out that the Western media deliberately ignored the facts about the fighting at Donetsk airport:

"... whilst the Ukrainians were pretending to be still in control of the airport, conclusive evidence existed that this was untrue.
What is extraordinary about this affair is that the Western media nonetheless went along with the Ukrainian pretence they were still in control of the airport. Reports from the rebels, the Russians and Graham Phillips, clearly showing the airport controlled by the rebels, were largely ignored. Instead the Western media uncritically reproduced the Ukrainian claims they still controlled the airport."

And that's putting it politely. Mercouris is being too kind when he wonders that the Western media are choosing to tell only the story told by the Kiev junta - "despite the fact that what Kiev says is repeatedly shown to be untrue." Despite, or because?

I mean, if this happened once or twice, I would buy the idea that the media were somehow being deceived. But if it's happening on an everyday basis, the logical conclusion is that they are deliberately going along. Remember the piece by Phillip Butler I mentioned in Wednesday's post? He explains how it took five Reuters writers/editors to come up with a completely bogus story. Does that strike you as coincidental? Me neither.

Sure, the Kiev junta is spewing propaganda out of every orifice - but the Western media is lapping it up because they serve the Empire. And the Empire needs the Narrative of "democratic, free, etc. etc." Ukraine resisting the "evil Russian aggression". So that is what the media report. Case in the point: yesterday's Foreign Policy feature making sure to hit every single propaganda note in the Narrative, while bemoaning the death of Ukie "Cyborgs" at the hands of "Russian invaders."

Now come the reports that U.S. troops will deploy to Lvov (Lwow, Lviv, Lemberg...) "in the spring", supposedly to train the Ukie military in "rule of law." The same way MPRI taught "democracy and human rights" to Croatians in 1995, most likely. Now I'm imagining US Army officers trying to explain to "Right Sector" Nazis the importance of following the Geneva Conventions using the slides from Abu Ghraib...

The long and short of it is, mainstream Western reports out of Ukraine are worse than worthless: they are outright lies. Relying on them to understand what is happening is like relying on Newspeak to oppose IngSoc.

Want to know what's really happening? The rebels put almost everything up on YouTube. Feel free to take everything with a grain of salt, and judge for yourself. That's what you're supposed to do.

Losing on purpose?

After some three months of (very) relative armistice, the war in Donbass rages again. Not long after the new year, the Kiev junta's artillery opened up on the civilians of Donetsk. Then, on Sunday or so, junta tanks and infantry began attacking.

They failed. Badly.

Not that you'd know this from the mainstream Western reporting... See here for Phillip Butler's glorious fisking of Reuters' coverage. But while I was fairly sure the junta troops were losing (I'll explain why in a moment) when I took part in a discussion of the hostilities on RT's CrossTalk yesterday morning, I didn't realize how bad it was.

Apparently, a brigade commander - and a major "Right Sector" officer - was captured at the Donetsk airport, which is fully under Novorussian control at this point. Mind you, Kiev and the Western media keep pretending this is not the case. They are also screaming about another "Russian invasion" - which always happens when they suffer a major defeat. So it is entirely possible the battlefield fiasco of the junta's "punishers" was due to the fact they bought into their own propaganda.

I may have said it here, or elsewhere (it's hard to keep track) that I fully expected hostilities to resume come spring. The junta cannot make peace, because the identity that drives them demands a conflict with Russia and the Russians, going back to the shadowy origins of "Ukrainianism" a century ago in Austrian-terrorized Galicia. But even if they could, they don't want to - believing that the Atlantic Empire has their back.

Logically, they would bide their time until they had rebuilt their army - shattered last fall by the dramatic defeats at the hands of Novorossian rebels - and rearmed with US equipment. Kind of like the Croatians in 1995 - in fact, that's precisely what Poroshenko's adviser, one Yury Lutsenko, said last September as the armistice took effect.

In clear preparation for just such a turn of events, Kiev announced a new draft of 50,000 men last week. As the Saker put it, it is "rather evident for anybody with a semblance of intelligence that [Poroshenko] is really conscripting cannon fodder, not a capable fighting force." Sure enough, many Ukrainians are already defecting to Russia, not eager to become the Nazis' cannon fodder.

So, why launch a half-witted attack now? Not only was the weather atrocious, but the artillery was aiming at civilians (rather than the Novorossian positions) and the attacks were small and not very coordinated, enabling the rebels to shred them to bits.

The crucial bit of information is that there is a high-ranking U.S. general visiting Kiev this week. Reportedly, his mission is to asses whether and how to implement Washington's insane "Ukraine Freedom Support Act" - those weapons and supplies the junta says it desperately needs. At first I thought the plan was to score a tactical victory somewhere - the airport seemed the logical place, especially if the Ukies believed their own propaganda about "winning."

But this morning another thought occurred to me: what if the plan all along was to lose? Basically, send some men to get slaughtered in order to prove a point to the Americans that "brave threatened Ukraine needs help to defend the Free World from evil Russian aggression" - or whatever the official line in Banderovsk is these days.

I've seen this before, in Bosnia. In fact, one of the reasons I've been able to accurately parse the events in Ukraine over the past year or so is that I've seen them before: the Maidan was basically a re-run of the October 2000 coup in Serbia. The snipers were a repeat of the tactic used in Bosnia in April 1992. Kiev's howling about "Russian invaders" and "aggression" is likewise right out of the propaganda manual written during the Bosnian War. As is the false-flag murder of innocents (MH17, the Volnovakha bus) for propaganda purposes. I am well aware of the dangers of false analogies, and forcing the facts to fit preconceptions. But time and again, the shoe fits.

Anyway, if the Banderites in Kiev are thinking they can manipulate the U.S. to fight their war for them, they have learned nothing from the Bosnian experience. Sure, the Izetbegovic regime got NATO to lend a hand - eventually. But instead of a triumph, they got the same peace treaty they were offered prior to four years of bloodshed - the one Washington had slyly advised them to reject. So, who used whom, exactly?

Columns Update

Having heard some rumors of my demise as a columnist - both from the genuinely concerned fans as well as concern-trolling detractors - I assure you they have been vastly exaggerated. Long-time readers know I don't tend to write much for the first couple weeks of every calendar year for the very simple reason of keeping the Serbian holiday calendar.

Unfortunately, Christmas this year was marked by the terror acts in Paris. I've blogged the immediate impressions about the Charlie Hebdo affair. Now my first columns of 2015 look at the big picture through the prism of those attacks.

In the latest piece on RT's Op-Edge, I examine the hypocritical reactions - directed by rather transparent perception management and emotional manipulation - of the Western public to the murders at Charlie Hebdo, the faked "leadership" at the Paris solidarity march, and the tolerance of actual terrorism so long as its victims are non-Westerners (specifically in the east of the Ukraine, but there were horrific massacres in Nigeria last week that were likewise overlooked). The title, by the way, is French for "They are hypocrites".

Meanwhile, over at Antiwar.com, I take issue with the knee-jerk reactions to the Paris attacks from both sides of the mainstream, bringing up a brilliant analysis by Brendan O'Neill from a few years back to argue that the Atlantic Empire has an obsession with making jihad into a weapon it could use - even though it keeps blowing up in their face and injuring bystanders.

Feel free to post your questions in the comments!

Serbia's PM: Puppet and Lackey

It didn't take very long for the terrorist rampage at the offices of Charlie Hebdo - a pretty obvious case of blowback from Western-promoted jihadism - to be re-framed by the Powers That Be as an issue of free speech. To believe that, however, one would have to purge all memory of the past several years of a West gone mad, in which free speech and those who accidentally practiced it were repeatedly burned at the stake of political correctness and "social justice" (e.g. "Shirtgate"). And they'd have gotten away with it, if not for us folks who notice and remember things.

This came to mind as I was reading reports from Serbia that the Prime Minister had thrown a tantrum over allegations made by an Imperial propaganda outfit. Apparently, BIRN had run a story last Thursday - overshadowed by the events in France - alleging that the government in Belgrade had acted "wastefully" by giving the contract to dredge a flooded mine to an "inexperienced" company. The PM responded by whining that the "EU paid BIRN to print lies" and that the contract was given to a lower domestic bidder because Serbia can't afford a 23-million-euro price tag from an EU conglomerate.

Trigger warning: Noticing and Remembering ahead. Also logic.

Uncivilized

Yesterday, three masked men - which the French government and media have identified as French-born Algerians - attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and murdered 10 employees (deliberately targeting the magazine's cartoonists). They also killed two police officers on the scene, one of whom was reportedly named Ahmed - so, a French Muslim.

The bodies of the slain have hardly gone cold before the Narrative Wars began. For some, this was a vile act of Islamic terror, signaling the need to defend the West from jihad. Far enough - except that many of these very people have been allied with jihadists and terrorists for decades, in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia ("Kosovo" and "Sanjak"), Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan) and more recently, Libya and Syria. The way they spun it, these were the "good" jihadists, attacking the "enemies" of the West - you know, those folks who refused to submit to demands for unconditional surrender of their independence, economies, values, societies, faiths and traditions to the bankers, market speculators and the false god of Multiculturalism.

In other words, I'll believe the West is fighting against the jihad when I see it.

Christ is Born - Glorify Him!

(Full playlist here)

Today is Christmas.

Many Orthodox believers will feel the need to explain the discrepancy, and I've heard some well-meaning Serbs even grumble about having to explain to their children "the whole two Christmases thing". But there are no "two Christmases", no "Serbian Christmas" or - as the above series of truly wonderful videos erroneously states - "Russian Christmas." There is just Christmas.

Simply put, today is December 25, 2014 - according to the calendar that was in effect at the time of the Church's founding. Most (though not all) Orthodox churches have refused, for reasons of faith and principle, to accept the modified calendar created by the Bishop of Rome (aka "the Pope" - whom they consider a renegade) in the 16th century. Eventually, most Western countries adopted Pope Gregory's calendar, and - through colonialism and globalization - it became the "secular standard".

The thing about Orthodoxy is that it doesn't care about secular standardization, trends or passing fancies. Because of this, it has endured horrific persecution by Catholics, Muslims, Protestants and atheists - and survived.

Here is an excerpt from this year's Christmas message by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus, Kirill:

At the bottom of all conflict, hatred and division is sin. According to St. Justin Popović, sin ‘exploits all its power to accomplish one thing: to render the human person godless and inhuman’ (St. Justin Popović, Philosophical Abysses). And we see in what infernal state the human person at times abides when he has lost the dignity granted to him by the Creator.

Yet the Church in the name of God, tirelessly proclaiming to people the ‘great joy’ (Luke 2:10) of the birth of the Saviour, calls upon each dweller on earth to believe and transform himself for the better. She offers to us the way of ascent: from seeking out God to the knowledge of God, from the knowledge of God to communion with God, and from communion with God to becoming like God [...]

In congratulating you all on the great feast of the Nativity of Christ and the New Year I would like to wish you from the bottom of my heart good health, peace, prosperity and abundant succour from on high in following our Lord and Saviour without stumbling.

So, as the Orthodox would say: Christ is Born - Glorify Him!

Merry Christmas.