Karadzic and the dogs of war

In July 2008, after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, Brendan O'Neill wrote an article that provided the crucial missing piece to the puzzle of how the Atlantic Empire has interacted with jihadists: Bosnia.

Pointing out that America armed and trained a military machine that was using Mujahideen as "shock troops," O'Neill reminds us of the striking parallels between the positions of Al-Qaeda militants and "liberal hawks in newsrooms across America and Europe":

Indeed, many of the Mujahideen who fought in Bosnia were inspired to do so by simplistic media coverage of the sort written by liberal-left journalists in the West. Many of the testimonies made by Arab fighters reveal that they first ventured to Bosnia because they "saw US media reports on rape camps" or read about the "genocide" in Bosnia and the "camps used by Serb soldiers systematically to rape thousands of Muslim women." Holy warriors seem to have been moved to action by some of the more shrill and unsubstantiated coverage of the war in Bosnia.

Both Western liberals and the Mujahideen ventured to Bosnia in response to their own crises of legitimacy, and in search of a sense of purpose, O'Neill argues, citing a number of sources. The Serbs provided a convenient enemy to project all their pent-up frustration, anger and hatred onto.

"For both Western liberals (governments and thinkers) and the Mujahideen, Bosnia became a refuge from these harsh realities, a place where they could fight fantasy battles against evil to make themselves feel dynamic and heroic instead of having to face up to the real problems in their movements and in politics more broadly."

Both Western imperialists and Islamic jihadists became "super-moralized, militarized, internationalized" in Bosnia, as a result of their struggle against the "evil Serbs." Today, the Empire and its allies accuse Russia of "revisionism" but it was they who chose to trample international law and the existing order by inventing "humanitarian" wars and "responsibility to protect," reviving "coalitions of the willing" 200 years after Napoleon.

As for the Islamists, they went internationalist, spreading the message of jihad everywhere - fueled by Washington's wars, no less - from Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings to 9/11 and Brussels just this week.

O'Neill says Karadzic has much to answer for. I'll accept that. But he also says that the demonization of Karadzic and the Serbs, and the resulting "rehabilitation of both Western militarism and Islamic radicalism, has also done a great deal to destabilize international affairs and destroy entire communities." Just ask the Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians, Kurds...

Which brings me to a point I've been making here for years. I find it utterly disgusting that the same people who howl in outrage over the "genocide in Srebrenica" never seem to realize - or perhaps don't care - that "Srebrenica" has been used to justify the deaths of a million Muslims, and maybe more, in Western "humanitarian interventions" since 9/11. 

Kosovo: An Evil Little War

Still wrong, 17 years later

(This article originally appeared March 25, 2005 on Antiwar.com)

Belgrade, 1999

In the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For some reason, many in the targeted nation thought the name of the operation was "Merciful Angel." In fact, the attack was code-named "Allied Force" – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker. For, however much NATO spokesmen and the cheerleading press spun, lied, and fabricated to show otherwise (unfortunately, with altogether too much success), there was nothing noble in NATO’s aims. It attacked Yugoslavia for the same reason then-Emperor Bill Clinton enjoyed a quickie in the Oval Office: because it could.

Most of the criticism of the 1999 war has focused on its conduct (targeting practices, effects, "collateral damage") and consequences. But though the conduct of the war by NATO was atrocious and the consequences have been dire and criminal, none of that changes the fact that by its very nature and from the very beginning, NATO’s attack was a war of aggression: illegal, immoral, and unjust; not "unsuccessful" or "mishandled," but just plain wrong.

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.

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!

Debuts and Anniversaries

My first first column at Antiwar.com was published October 19, 2000. That's fourteen years ago. Even I forgot about the exact date, thinking it had been sometime in November.

Screencap of the very first column at Antiwar.com

"Balkan Express", as it was called, had 269 editions - more or less once a week. In 2007, we changed the name to "Moments of Transition", and the publication schedule to every other week. The latest column, "Two Parades and A Drone", was published this past Saturday. It was the 460th column for Antiwar.com that I have written over the past fourteen years.

Saturday was my debut as a columnist for RT's Op-Edge. The piece - "Ukraine's election: Behind the looking glass" - analyzed the background and possible outcomes of the ritual taking place in junta-controlled territories today. Looks like both the editors and the readers liked it, so look to more pieces from me over at Op-Edge soon.

I almost can't believe I've done all this, and plan to do more still. The very notion sounded surreal back in 1999, when I penned the first commentary in response to mainstream media rubbish concerning Kosovo, and had it published online. Yet here I am, fifteen years later, still standing. Still writing. Still flying.

Let's see what happens.

Truth, not Absolution

In this week's column over on Antiwar.com, I wrote of eerie similarities - too many to be coincidental - between the policies of the EU and the Atlantic Empire and those of the Third Reich. Specifically, I underlined the parallels between the dismemberment of Yugoslavia between 1941-45 and the one of 1991-95, as well as the hostility towards Russia.

via Wallpapers Online

Mind you, there is a distinction between arguing that the West today is implementing specific National-Socialist policies and simply calling them Nazis, which would be both facetious and inaccurate. To focus on labels and not the substance is a mark of postmodern who/whom-ism, which is not my thing.

One of the readers, however, made a comment I want to expand on here:

Guest, May 11:
"...The only thing that held Yugoslavia together for 35 years was its supreme leader, Marshal Josip Broz “Tito”...."
This, I think, is both a wrong conclusion and harmful to Mr. Malic's argument itself. It is a convenient myth in the West that Yugoslavia was a low hanging fruit, ready to be picked, after Tito's passing away. That is not so.
West has vested interest in promothing that falacy and thereby absolving itself of the horrendous crimes perpetrated on the people of Yugoslavia and of any responsibility for attacking and dismantling a sovereign state.
A handful people with an ax to grind (Tudjman, Izetbegovic, Jansha,) and other anti-Yugoslav elements were supported by the West and assisted in bringing about what is now where Yugoslavia once was.
I do not understand Mr.Malic gifting these criminals an absolution by repeating the myth created in the West, that Yugoslavia existed only because of Tito. Mr. Malic is a good analyst, but, for some unknown reason, naively promotes this myth.

Where to begin? Perhaps with this 2005 essay about Tito, which contains the same argument as I've laid out, albeit much condensed, in the column.

Pointing out facts about the Communist approach to Yugoslavia, the internal boundaries, ethnic engineering and the 1974 Constitution does not, and never shall, absolve the murderers of Yugoslavia, internal or external. Just as pointing out the problems of the first Yugoslavia doesn't validate the Axis invasion and dismemberment of it. Though the Communists certainly did just that, arguing that the "rotten" old Yugoslavia deserved to be destroyed and then reborn in a "revolution".

As I've noted in another essay, the Serbs have paid with millions of lives for believing the lie that those who identified as Croats and Muslims considered the Serbs their kin. Some have, and perhaps given enough time and peace, that could have become the belief of the majority. But time and peace were not to be had. The bitter truth is that becoming Catholic (in Austrian-held lands) or Muslim (in Turkish-held lands) meant escaping the life of oppression and contempt in which the Orthodox Serbs were held by both empires. These converts did not see the Serbs as their kin, but as their inferiors. And in some cases, officially sanctioned victims.

This was the problem with the first Yugoslavia, which King Aleksandar tried to fix by promoting the idea of "one nation, three faiths." After Aleksandar was assassinated in 1934, Regent Prince Pavle tried appeasing the Croats, a policy culminating in 1939 with the unprecedented creation of their own ethnic province (Aleksandar's provinces were geographical, named after rivers). Not two years later, Croat officers sabotaged Yugoslav Army units, Croat civilians greeted the Nazi tanks with flowers, and the Ustasha regime of Ante Pavelić found plenty of those willing to slaughter Serbs with knives, pickaxes, mallets and whatever else was handy.

To argue that Croat atrocities were somehow caused by "Serb oppression" is to ignore the rabid Serbophobia of the Croat identity as articulated by Starčević and Frank, and adopted by Radić and Pavelić. Or the fact that similar atrocities were perpetrated during WW1 in Serbia by the Austro-Hungarian occupation forces. Among them were many that would later welcome the "Independent State of Croatia," including a metalworker from Zagorje called Josip Broz.

Broz supposedly became a Communist during the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, survived the purges of the 1930s and became leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party (KPJ) in 1937. Almost a decade prior, at the 1928 congress in Dresden, the KPJ had decided that Yugoslavia needed to be destroyed, and that the "captive nations" such as Croats, Macedonians, Albanians and Slovenes needed to be "liberated" from "Greater Serbian tyranny."

During the war, the priority of Tito's partisans was establishing pro-Communist institutions, preparing for the inevitable Axis defeat. Their primary target was not the Germans, but the royalist resistance of General Mihailović, which tried to help the Allied war effort by sabotaging roads, railways, and communications and harassing German garrisons. Both sides were aware that they could not defeat the Germans alone; Tito waited for the Soviets, Mihailović waited for the British. In the end, the Soviets showed up, and the British sold out Mihailović.

Triumphant, Tito executed Mihailović, declared the monarchy abolished and the exiled king undesirable, and proceeded to reinvent Yugoslavia. The result was a compromise between the vision from 1928 and practicalities of the time. Why break up a country, when you can rule it as pharaoh? Under Tito, Slovenia exploited the rest of the country for raw materials, Croatia had the entire coastline, and Serbia was cut up into "autonomous provinces" and reduced to WW2 occupation borders (more or less). But the worst part was the imposed doctrine of moral equivalence, in which the royalists were just as evil as the Ustasha, or the Waffen-SS recruited from Muslim populations. Serb guilt for "Chetnik atrocities" (real and imagined) and "oppression" of others in the old kingdom was supposed to balance out the Croatian genocide of Serbs.

Still the Croats were not happy. Even Tito's Yugoslavia was too stifling for them. As Communists in Serbia  (e.g. the so-called "liberals" like the book-banning Latinka Perović, today the gray eminence of the most rabidly pro-Empire "liberal democrats") plumbed the depths of self-hatred, in Croatia they demanded more Croatian pride! Though Tito purged both party leaderships, he gave the Croats most of what they wanted: the 1974 Constitution empowered the republics at the expense of the federal government. Serbia, however, was paralyzed by the requirement that both provinces approve every single decision of the republic legislature, effectively giving the Albanian-dominated Kosovo and a pro-Croat establishment in Vojvodina veto power over Belgrade's affairs.

Such was the situation that Slobodan Milošević sought to repair in 1987-89, only to be accused of "nationalism" and "greater Serbian hegemonism" - both by the self-hating Communists in Serbia that he'd purged, and the leadership of Croatia and Slovenia, who felt their privileged position within Yugoslavia would be endangered. I am not sure Milošević ever understood that the second-rate status of Serbs in Tito's Yugoslavia was never a bug, but a very deliberate feature - he never spoke of it that way, and kept defending Yugoslavia till his dying day. But the party leaderships in other republics understood Tito's setup entirely too well.

This was no "handful of malcontents" as Guest implies in his commentary - Kučan received overwhelming support for his separatist policies in 1990. Tuđman's plan to separate Croatia and expel the Serbs was never challenged by the Croatian opposition. Albanians have laid claim to certain territories since at least 1878, long before there was ever a Yugoslavia, or Tito, or Milošević. Only in the case of Bosnia was there a handful of zealots that ended up running things.
Izetbegović, however, did manage to set himself up as the leader of Muslims - with American help, and the war played no small part in the process - and the parameters he set remain the framework of Bosnian Muslim politics even today, no matter which party nominally runs things.

If you read the mainstream Western propaganda about Yugoslavia's demise, you'll notice very quickly that it rejects the notion of internal conflict between Yugoslavia's inhabitants. Rather, it sings paeans to Yugoslavia's multiethnic diversity and peaceful cohabitation, disturbed only by the periodic eruptions of "Greater Serbian ultranationalism." So to save Yugoslavia, they had to destroy it:

"The consequences of this campaign are extraordinary. In view of the fact that a small set of conspirators in Belgrade again were able to foment trouble... the radical elimination of this danger means the removal of an element of tension for the whole of Europe."

Does this not sound like something an EU commissar or State Department errand boy would say? Was it written by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Wesley Clark, Richard Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright, or any of the "judges" or prosecutors at the ICTY? Though it could have come from any of them, the quote in question is actually from Adolf Hitler's address to the Reichstag, on May 4, 1941, following the conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece.

Again, pointing out Yugoslavia's flawed premises doesn't absolve those who destroyed it, be that the West in the 1990s, or Hitler fifty years prior. It does, however, explode the premise that Yugoslavia was some sort of "Greater Serbian" project, or that those who destroyed it from within not once but twice were somehow oppressed or terrorized.

Once the Serbs themselves realize this, as well as the disturbing fact that Hitler and the Atlantic Empire apparently share the same view of them, they may rebel against the doctrine of "Serb guilt" and end the policy of capitulation to Imperial demands. Which probably explains why these issues remain a taboo topic, even today.

Revolutionary Acts

It is said that the 1991 "Desert Storm" was the first war waged live on cable TV. Eight years later, NATO attacked Serbia (Operation "Allied Force") and the attendant media adhered to the same matrix of behavior. Only this time, there was the internet. However clunky and amateurish citizen-reporting was back then, in its infancy, it nonetheless provided an alternative to the relentless propaganda churned out by compliant reporters regurgitating Alliance spokesman Jamie Shea's infamous briefings. Bit by bit, the truth of NATO's atrocities came out, while the rumors of Serbian atrocities were shown to be greatly exaggerated.

Many of the news sites and proto-blogs that helped expose the truth about NATO's "humanitarian war" are no longer around. One, however, has persevered - and continued the struggle for truth ever since, through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And as George Orwell so aptly put, "speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act."

All too many people in the United States today still see things through the darkened lens of partisan politics. Democrats this, Republicans that, liberals this, conservatives that. Yet what Antiwar.com has demonstrated over and over is that both parties march in lockstep when it comes to waging wars, empowering the state and repressing the citizenry. It doesn't matter whether the Emperor is Slick Willie, Bush the Lesser, or Saint Barack of Hopechange: the policy of killing people and breaking things always remains the same.

I've had a small part in this endeavor since October 19, 2000, when Antiwar.com published my first column. "Balkan Express" ran weekly for many years, eventually becoming the biweekly "Moments of Transition." I would like to think that I've helped prove the point about the Empire in my coverage of the troubles in the Balkans and Europe in general. Both the fan mail and hate mail accumulated over the years suggest that I have, as do some figures of speech - "Empire" itself being a case in point - that have since made their way into foreign policy discourse in the Balkans itself.

The Imperial government has created this fantasy world in which it can move nations around the Grand Chessboard by sheer strength of willpower - and a few smart bombs here and there. It need not concern itself with the "reality-based community," or such mundane things as money and facts. If needed, facts are invented, and money is simply printed (oh, is it ever!). But the rest of us, we live in the real world, and deal with real facts. And when bills come in, we need to pay them with real money.

Now, you'll notice this blog doesn't have a donation box or anything like that. I work for a living, and what I do here and at Antiwar.com is something I can afford to do on my own time. But I am well aware that running a major news website, collating news, editing and posting articles - all that costs money. Thanks to the government and the likes of the giant vampire squid, none of us have much. But what we have ought to be put to good use.

So, if you want to hear what the mainstream media refuse to tell you - for example, understand why the TSA gets to grope you, or what is really happening in the Balkans (and why that is relevant) - consider making a donation to keep Antiwar.com going. Unlike with the Empire and its attendant media, you actually have a choice in the matter.

Remembering the Storm

(This article originally appeared on Antiwar.com, on August 5, 2005)

In the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 1995, on the heels of an incessant artillery and air bombardment, some 200,000 Croatian troops moved in to “liberate” Krajina, a stretch of mountains inhabited by Serbs who had rejected Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia four years prior. Overrunning the token UN observation posts, the U.S.-trained Croatian army quickly overwhelmed localized Serb resistance. President Franjo Tudjman declared Aug. 5, the day Croat troops entered the Serb capital of Knin, a national holiday: “Homeland Thanksgiving Day.” By Aug. 7, the “Republic of Serb Krajina” was no longer in existence.

A grand celebration is scheduled for tomorrow in Knin. Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, the late Tudjman’s political heir, will no doubt give a rousing patriotic speech, glorifying Croatia’s “defenders from Serbian aggression.” Some mainstream media will report that the offensive resulted in civilian casualties, and that one high-ranking Croatian general, Ante Gotovina, is a fugitive from war crimes charges at the Hague Inquisition. And that will be the end of it. Dwelling on “Operation Storm” (Oluja) serves no purpose in the official narrative of the Balkans wars. Its victims are that narrative’s principal villains, so their suffering must be suppressed. The victors, on the other hand, are no longer useful to the Empire. “Storm” is something Washington would like to forget. Serbs and Croats don’t have that luxury.

Frustrated Dreams

The area of Krajina was for several centuries the borderland between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, a buffer zone that protected the inner Hapsburg lands from Turkish raids. It was populated largely by Orthodox Serbs, who had fled Ottoman persecution, and who became frontiersmen for the Hapsburgs in exchange for land and liberty. By the 19^th century, the Ottoman Turks were in retreat; the new danger to the Hapsburg Empire was Slavic nationalism. Vienna turned on its frontiersmen, encouraging conflict between the Orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats, who became its staunchest supporters. Vienna’s Serbophobia eventually led Austria-Hungary into a fatal conflict that destroyed much of European civilization.

It also nurtured the hatred that would explode in 1941 as the vicious Ustasha genocide. These homegrown Croatian Nazis, led by Ante Pavelic, set out to destroy the “race of slaves” (A. Starcevic) with ruthless abandon, but ran out of time. Still, by 1945 they had killed anywhere between half a million and 750,000 Serbs.

With the end of communism in 1990, Franjo Tudjman and his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) brought a revival of Pavelic’s symbols and vocabulary. Some of the top supporters of the HDZ were Ustasha émigrés. Tudjman himself expressed relief that his wife was “neither Serb nor Jewish.” Tudjman’s constitutional reform redefined the republic as a nation-state of Croats, with Serbs as an ethnic minority. When Tudjman’s government declared independence from the Yugoslav federation in 1991, most Serbs saw 1941 all over again. This – and not some imaginary “aggression” from Serbia – was the root of their “rebellion,” and the genesis of the Krajina Republic. After several months of bitter fighting, marked by massacres, ambushes, and the most vitriolic propaganda, the UN brokered an armistice. The so-called Vance Plan envisioned four “protected areas,” with a Serb majority, whose eventual status would be resolved through negotiations.

Over the next three years, Tudjman’s government feverishly prepared for war, training its troops on the battlefields of Bosnia and staging quick, limited offensives at the strategic edges of UN-protected areas (most infamous being the Medak Pocket attack in 1993). Although enjoying political, diplomatic, and even military support from Vienna and Berlin since 1991, it was only when it got Washington’s support that Zagreb was ready – and able – to strike. “Retired” American officers, working for government contractor MPRI, claimed to teach Croat officers “democracy” and “human rights.” The events of May and August 1995 would demonstrate MPRI’s definitions of both.

Junkyard Dogs

"Dick: We ‘hired’ these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to ‘control’ them. But it is no time to get squeamish about things."
– To End a War, Chapter 6

US envoy to the Balkans Richard Holbrooke thus described the note slipped to him by Ambassador Robert Frasure, during a meeting with Croatian officials in 1995. Holbrooke’s own account of how the U.S. officially condemned Croatian attacks even as he was meeting with Tudjman and telling him which cities to take, suggests he was hardly “squeamish” about using Croats to fight what he – and hundreds of advocacy journalists, lobbyists, and policymakers – had termed “Serb aggression.”

On May 1, 1995, Croatian troops tested both their readiness and the UN’s will by staging a lightning strike at an exposed Serb enclave of Western Slavonia. The operation was code-named Bljesak – “flash,” or perhaps more appropriately, “Blitz.” The clear violation of the armistice went unpunished. The stage was set for Oluja.

According to Serb documentation, the three-day offensive in August 1995 resulted in the expulsion of 220,000 people. Some 1,943 people have been listed as missing/presumed dead, including 1199 civilians, 523 women, and 12 children. The death toll would have been greater had the Serbs not fled en masse before the advancing Croat tanks; all who stayed behind were killed. The Croats, and their American sponsors, were definitely not squeamish.

Ten years later, Krajina is still a wasteland, with “scattered ghost villages strewn with shell-scarred houses overgrown with ivy and tall grass” (Reuters). Only a tenth of some 400,000 Serbs who lived in Croatia before it seceded have returned, only to face bureaucratic abuse and frequent physical violence. Tudjman made Pavelic’s dream to rid Croatia of Serbs a reality. It seems everything is in the choice of allies.

Unpleasant Comparisons

After obliterating Krajina, the conquering Croatian army moved into western Bosnia, aiding the Izetbegovic government to crush a dissident faction led by Fikret Abdic and assisting in the major Muslim offensive that “coincided” with NATO’s massive bombing of Bosnian Serbs. But after the Dayton Agreement was signed and peace imposed on Bosnia, Empire’s junkyard dogs discovered the supply of Milk Bones had run out. They had served their purpose.

Today’s Croatia is frustrated that its ambitions to enter the EU and NATO hinge upon the capture of Ante Gotovina, a general involved in Oluja who is universally considered a war hero, but whom the Hague Inquisition accuses of war crimes. Some of the truth about atrocities against the Serbs is slowly coming to light, but interestingly enough, only after the prominent personalities accused have fallen out of political grace. The Zagreb leadership snaps back at any hint that Oluja might have been anything but just, right, and noble. When Serbian president Boris Tadic called it an “organized crime” in a statement Monday, President Mesic replied it could hardly compare to Serb crimes such as Srebrenica.

But by all means, let’s compare. In both cases, a UN “safe area” was targeted by the attack. In Srebrenica, the UN at least tried to protect Muslim civilians; in Krajina, it did no such thing. Serbs evacuated Muslim noncombatants from Srebrenica; Serbs who did not flee Krajina were killed. Yet Srebrenica is somehow “genocide,” while Oluja is a victory worth a national holiday?!

Another reason the Empire prefers to keep Oluja out of sight and out of mind is the push to establish an independent, Albanian-dominated Kosovo. If Croatia’s conquest of Krajina was legitimate, because Krajina’s existence violated its sacrosanct administrative borders, then why did Serbia not have the right to uphold its borders when it came to Kosovo? If obliterating the Serb population did not disqualify Croatia from keeping Krajina and Slavonia, how can the exodus of less than half of Kosovo’s Albanians disqualify Serbia from keeping Kosovo? If the Serbs, a constituent Yugoslav nation, did not have the right to ethnic self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, how can the Kosovo Albanians (an ethnic minority) have one?

The “Abramowitz Doctrine”

This apparent paradox was “explained” by Morton Abramowitz, the eminence grise of U.S. foreign policy, in an interview last summer: “there is no entirely rational answer … you seek perfect reasoning, which does not correspond to reality on the ground.” Logic does not apply to the Empire, because it creates its own reality; where have we heard that before?

The “reality” Abramowitz and his like-minded policymakers have sought to establish, by force, has been one in which, whatever the circumstances, Serbs are in the wrong. Apologists for the Empire dismiss this observable, verifiable fact as a “conspiracy theory” and claim the Serbs have a “victim complex,” even as their entire Balkans “reality” rests on the claim that everyone else has been victimized by the Serbs.

What “perfect reasoning” is involved in recognizing the simple fact that the centuries-old Serb community in Krajina is practically extinct, and that the Serb community in Kosovo – from which most of their ancestors came – is facing the same prospect? Where the Nazis failed, the American Empire has succeeded. Is that really something to be thankful for?

More on the ICJ: a Column and Video

Following my initial impressions about the ICJ verdict, I've now put together a more detailed analysis over at Antiwar.com.

Yesterday morning, when news of the verdict came, I was at the RT studio in Washington, DC. What I said in the following clip was literally at a moment's notice, without any prior knowledge of the questions:



They usually identify me as "Columnist, Antiwar.com"; not sure why this time they used the misnomer "journalist".

Update (July 28): Many thanks to Ilana Mercer, who re-posted the video and linked to my column on Barely A Blog.

Resurrecting the Caliphate

Due to some scheduling and technical difficulties, my regular Friday column on Antiwar.com appeared today.

In it I touch on the recently begun - and adjourned - show trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić in light of the disturbing initiative by the Turkish government to engage in neo-Ottoman foreign policy aiming to "reintegrate" the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. I understand why many in Ankara may wax nostalgic for the times of Mehmet II or Suleiman, but there is much less enthusiasm for this in either of those three areas.

Unlike Turkey's FM Ahmet Davutoglu, I think it's precisely Ottoman rule that is to blame for many conflicts and hatreds in these regions over the past century or so. Even if we take that out of consideration, any sort of Ottoman revival clashes directly with the Kemalist ideology that underpins the modern Turkish republic.

Finally, making Davutoglu's vision a reality is impossible without the force of arms. But if he believes that modern Turks are the military equivalent of the Ottomans, he's sorely mistaken. And if the neo-Ottomans honestly think that Turkey can fill the vacuum that is likely to appear with the withdrawal of the American Empire, they are putting the cart before the proverbial horse, and forgetting where their own power and influence came from.

A Balkans Belgium

I initially wanted to post my take on Marcus Tanner's peculiar piece (insofar as it was surprisingly common-sense from someone who's spent years promoting the Official Truth) for The Independent, but it turned into a regular column, which can be found today at Antiwar.com.

Now that the Empire has come full circle, from Clinton's "humanitarian interventionism" through Bush's "war on terror" to Obama's "we're here because I say so," it may be time to look beyond the bogus labels of left and right, and realize that Antiwar.com has been among only a few organizations that has consistently opposed the Empire on principled grounds.

If you, too, oppose the perversion of true American values that is the Empire, if you are against murder, theft and enslavement, your choices at the ballot box are next to nonexistent. However, you can still vote with your wallet. I suggest you do so.

Moments of Transition: Overload

New column over at Antiwar.com:

At a meeting in March 2009, Secretary Clinton presented her Russian counterpart with a red button that was supposed to read "Reset" in Russian. Instead, it read "Overload." It seemed like an innocent mistake, a syllable lost in translation. But was it, really?

During his Moscow visit, Obama said he wants Russia as a "partner". Somehow, I don't think that word means what he thinks it means...

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
~ Romeo & Juliet, Act II, scene 2

Poor Juliet. So right - and yet so wrong. For while it perhaps ought to be as she said, in reality names do matter. Names are one of the ways we perceive things around us. A rose is supposed to smell sweet; how many would give the benefit of the doubt to something dubbed "stinkrot"?

Names have power. If name-calling weren't so successful a tactic in arguments, would there be a Godwin's Law? I can't recall if it was Orwell who said that whoever controls the language controls the terms of the debate, but it's certainly true. Add to this that facts have increasingly taken a back seat to feelings - it doesn't matter whether something someone said is true, but rather how passionately they feel about it - and labeling becomes the way to win an argument without actually arguing at all. As long as you frame the question along the lines of "Do you still beat your wife?" it doesn't matter what the answer is.

Revealing his identity in today's column, "Spengler" of Asia Times explained the reason why he embraced a pseudonym years ago:

Why not openly identify myself? Because my readers then would have jammed my thinking into the Procrustean bed of their prejudice.

Oh, that sounds familiar, all right. For nigh ten years now, I've been publishing essays online. I had written before - a column here, a letter there, an editorial or dozen in the college newspaper - but my big break was in 1999. It was the year when the Internet first showed its potential as an alternate news medium, with Serbian proto-bloggers challenging the image of the Kosovo War crafted by the mainstream media that served NATO's war machine. (And serve they did: one of the BBC reporters covering the war later became the NATO spokesman.) Embittered by that war, I started writing. A Serbian diaspora website, which used to re-post a lot of the war reports, was happy to publish my essays. But it never occurred to me that I ought to hide behind a moniker. When Antiwar.com invited me aboard as a columnist, in late 2000, I used my real name. I even took time to offer a helpful lesson in Balkans spelling, so people would pronounce it properly.

Hate mail has been a constant. Only twice did someone challenge something I've actually said. Both were minor details. The rest of the time, complaints have run along the lines of "why are you publishing this raving Serbian chauvinist, genocide denier, apologist for atrocities, etc." You see, by questioning the propaganda about genocide, I was a "genocide denier." Never mind that I was later vindicated. Rising to fame and fortune (and let's not forget power) in the 1990s by fabricating the myth of "genocidal Serb aggressors" means never having to apologize.

Mind you, this sort of "criticism" wasn't limited to Albanians, Bosnian Muslims, or Croats (some of whom felt threatened by my "propaganda"). Some of the nastiest mail came from Serbia, after the Djindjic assassination in the spring of 2003. It was somewhat amusing, though, to see people curse me as a "son of Milosevic cronies" or "mercenary of the regime." My family lives in Bosnia, and I've never received one red cent from the Serbian government, but since I spoke of Djindjic in something other than awed reverence, I had to belong to a hated category. Their prejudice was so strong, they invented a fictional me to make my words fit their perceptions!

In November 2004, when I created this blog, I picked a handle that went with the theme, and also had a layer or two of metaphorical meaning. But my very first post linked to my work at Antiwar.com, so it's not like I tried to disguise my identity. I simply chose to make it a secondary concern, to try and put the focus on what I was saying, as opposed to who I was.

No such luck. That very month I broke the story of a Norwegian-commissioned report for the ICTY that put the death toll in Bosnia at just over 100,000. Within days, Reuters was talking about "Serbian weblogs" claiming that the research by Mirsad Tokaca (also funded by the Norwegians) "disproved the accepted fact that Muslims were by far the main victims" of the war. But there were no "Serbian weblogs," just little old me. I never did figure out whether the Reuters reporter researched the identity of Gray Falcon and said "Aha! A Serb!" or if he concluded that I must have been a Serb, since I dared challenge "the accepted fact."

The thing about prejudice is that you can't argue with it. Not rationally. Saying "No, I'm not really like that" doesn't work, either. And to be honest, I have no interest at all justifying myself to most of my critics. They haven't shown me that they deserve it.

So, when a particularly vicious screed arrived two weeks ago to the Antiwar.com letters editor, and he asked if I wanted to comment on it, I said, "Why waste my breath?" Run the letter without comment, I said, because nothing I say will make the author - one Asma Ishak - look any worse than her own words. I actually urge you to read this masterpiece of ignorance, arrogance and stupidity. I'm particularly fond of the way she claims not to care about people's ethnicity, religion and race, as she finishes a rant against someone based solely on his ethnicity. Perhaps her definition of "people" specifically excluded the Serbs? She wouldn't be the first.

Had Asma Ishak not been so obsessed with my origin, she might have noticed that in the text she ranted against, I criticized an editorial not because of the identity of its author (I certainly don't care if Borut Grgic is Slovenian), but because it tried to disguise a business agenda (an Austrian company's takeover of BH Telekom) as caring about the future of Bosnia. Yet I'm supposed to be a hater, driven by ideas that Ishak "detests," herself being all emancipated and enlightened.

This kind of thinking is precisely why Romeo and Juliet committed suicide. He was a Montague, she a Capulet - the feud between their houses meant their love could never be. Today's obsession with names isn't about identity - most people's identities are crumbling under the onslaught of soulless secular humanism - but about identity politics, which is the very embodiment of prejudice. Seize upon one little thing, build an identity around it, fight with others over government-bestowed privileges based on it. Sounds just like a recipe for a harmonious future, does it not?

My work speaks for itself. There are hundreds of columns archived on Antiwar.com, and hundreds more on this blog. I've spoken out against the Empire, against war (and therefore against war crimes, which ought to be intuitively obvious to even a semi-literate observer), for liberty, private property, secession, law, justice... But because the name behind these arguments is Nebojsa Malic, and not Muhammad or Bob, many people reject them out of hand, and some even feel compelled to create an imaginary me as a target of their rage.

That doesn't say much about me, but speaks volumes about them.

The Choice That Actually Counts

It is now obvious the "change" we were promised will be a trip back to 1999. I don't see how even the most ardent mob of Obama-worshippers, the one likely to go after me with torches and pitchforks for even daring to question their secular saint, could argue otherwise if and when Hillary Clinton takes over Foggy Bottom from Condi Rice.

So, now we know the "change" we're actually going to see is a n application of lipstick on the imperial pig, rather than translating the whole bloated monster into some tasty chops and sausage. What are you planning to do about it?

I didn't know about Antiwar.com when I first came to the U.S., back in 1996. I was a good little liberal-democrat leftist mainstream-media reader. Over the years, between them and LewRockwell.com, I've learned that being a patriotic American means opposing the Empire, not enabling it. Unlike some sites and magazines, Antiwar.com has been a consistent critic of Empire itself, rather than Democrats or Republicans that took turns at its helm. It should be intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer that the Empire is a bipartisan effort, and that opposing it isn't a matter of criticizing William J. Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack H. Obama personally, but as men who were elected to be chief magistrates of a confederated republic yet crowned themselves Emperors of the known universe instead.

Needless to say, serving the Empire is much more profitable in material terms than opposing it. But while American citizens and residents have no choice in giving up a portion of their earnings to the Leviathan, they do have a choice when it comes to supporting Antiwar.com. With the failing Empire trying to bolster its image (but not mend its ways) by crowning Obama, it's clear that the fight to save the American Republic is nowhere near over.

If you are true American patriots, if you believe in your country as "well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all" but "champion and vindicator only of her own," a country that "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy" but "will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example," then I urge you to contribute to Antiwar.com today and thus make a real choice for actual change.

Full disclosure: While I am a columnist for Antiwar.com, and they do pay me for it, this isn't about me. I would just as gladly write for free (and have in the past), because I believe in the ideas of liberty and justice.

Can you handle the truth?

Well, can you? Or are you happy to listen to the insipid drivel served to you by the mass media on government orders? If you want to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, that there were WMDs in Iraq, that there was a genocide in Kosovo, and that Russia was the aggressor in Georgia... why the hell are you here, reading this blog?

But if you are here, and you've been reading, you know that fighting the lies is a full-time job. I do it in my spare time, as much as I can. These guys do it 24/7/365.

Now sure, I write a column for the site. Been doing so for almost eight years now. I do it because I believe in truth, justice and liberty. If you do as well, vote with your wallet and help out Antiwar.com today. It's the best choice you will make this year.

The Unholy Alliance

After some struggling and contemplation, I wrapped up last week's column for Antiwar.com with the following passage:

There is something disturbing about how Karadzic's arrest is being cheered by slimy Eurocrats, Imperial interventionists and frenzied jihadists alike. Either he actually is a paragon of evil – which, assertions and allegations notwithstanding, there is little evidence for – or the three most destructive forces in the world today can agree on somebody (or a whole nation of somebodies, rather) they all love to hate.

Around that time, Mick Hume was writing for Spiked about how Western imperialists manufactured the myth of Bosnia (and Serbs as the "new Nazis") to give itself purpose and meaning.

It appears Brendan O'Neill, Hume's colleague at Spiked, had a similar thought to mine - and chose to put it together with Hume's thesis, producing a fascinating essay. "Bosnia, Hysteria Politics, and the Roots of International Terrorism" was published yesterday on Antiwar.com, and is a great read.

Essentially, O'Neill points out that the Empire and the jihadists worked together during the Bosnian War, both seeking a new purpose in a changed world, and finding a shared enemy in the Serbs. Their relationship was almost symbiotic: mujahedeen would be Empire's proxies on the ground, fighting the war, while the Empire recruited fighters for the jihad by making outlandish propaganda claims about "genocide", "rape camps" and Muslim suffering.

Concludes O'Neill:

There is nothing so bitter as a conflict between former allies. We should remind ourselves that much of today's bloody moral posturing between Western interventionists and Islamic militants – which has caused so much destruction around the world – springs from the hysterical politics of "good and evil" that was created during the Bosnian war. No doubt Karadzic has a great deal to answer for. But the West/East, liberal/Mujahideen demonization of Karadzic and the Serbs, and through it the rehabilitation of both Western militarism and Islamic radicalism, has also done a great deal to destabilize international affairs and destroy entire communities.

Read the entire article. It will open your eyes. That is, if you don't have them wide shut already...

Someone Got It Right

Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo, that is. One would think that after eight years of Clinton "humanitarianism" and another eight years of Bushian "humble foreign policy" the American people would not be eager to elect another warmongering imperialist to the White Marble Throne. Not so.

This week Antiwar.com is doing its quarterly pledge drive, soliciting donations from readers in order to continue its operations. As part of illustrating the consistent opposition of Antiwar.com to imperialism (which is bad for both the people being "liberated" and Americans), Raimondo has posted excerpts from his 1996 brochure opposing intervention in Bosnia. From his introduction:

It was the Kosovo incursion that set the stage for the Iraq invasion, from the rhetoric of "liberation" to the mechanics of "nation-building." Operation Allied Force had all the elements that were later developed to the max in Operation Enduring Freedom – an allied group that provided phony "intelligence," i.e., war propaganda, and had the same hubristic, hectoring style. Militant interventionists, such as John McCain, jumped on board the war bandwagon because they realized that a precedent had to be set in the post-Cold War world, an assertion of American hegemony.

Today, we are all paying the consequences.

Whether you want to or not, you are already funding murder and pillage at home and abroad, through taxes you are forced into paying. If you value your freedom and oppose the soul-sucking and murderous enterprise that is the Empire, I urge you to make a voluntary contribution to a cause of liberty and justice today.

(Yes, I'm a columnist for Antiwar.com and as such, keeping them in existence is in my self-interest; but that doesn't make anything I've said here any less true, and you know it.)

Why you should support Antiwar.com

If you are sick of war and the Empire, of the arrogance, hubris, posturing, lies and deceit we are forced to listen to every day in the mainstream, "legacy" media that are dedicated to serving the Imperial idea, what are you to do?

Look at all the candidates for Emperor, already preening and posturing. They all want to be Bush, not beat him. The only candidate who actually wants to be a Constitutional President - Ron Paul - is being ignored by the legacy media, in their arrogant belief that if they can just deny the existence of something or someone, that something or someone would actually cease to exist. How is that different from that famous neocon sneer at the "reality-based community"?

I know times are hard. Because of war and the Empire, the dollar is worth less than ever before. You think it will be worth any more if there's a war with Iran soon? Oh, wait, you didn't know about that one? But Antiwar.com features news, analysis and opinion exposing the Empire's war plans every day... and they don't charge for it! All they ask is that you donate, however much you think it's worth to you.

What price truth? What price liberty?

Of course, I have a dog in this fight; Antiwar.com runs my own column, Moments of Transition, on Thursdays, so obviously I have a vested interest here. But if you donate - and you should - don't do it for me. Do it for the millions of Americans who oppose the war, who cherish liberty and reject the Empire as an abomination.

Do it for yourself.

How much is truth worth?

I know Balkan Express has been on-and-off lately, but if you'd like to keep reading it, you may want to consider sending a contribution to Antiwar.com. Think about it - you fund Imperial propaganda every time you buy a mainstream newspaper. How much do you value the ability to read something different? Perhaps we don't know the true value of things till they are gone - but by then it is too late.

http://antiwar.com/donate

Something you can do

It's a twisted, crazy, surreal world we live in, where guardians of Official Truth are telling us things are exactly the opposite of what they appear to be. Oppression is celebrated as liberty and liberty denigrated as treason. Patriotism is labeled criminal, and nihilistic globalism celebrated as progress. What you see, hear and read in the media often contradicts itself, let alone independent observation.

What can one do against such vile corruption? Refuse to accept it, of course. Seek out the truth, wherever it may still survive, and challenge the lies. One way to do this is to support those who challenge the Official Truth: Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com, to name just two.

Ask youself: how much is liberty worth to you? How much should the truth cost? What is the price of sanity? Then reach into your wallet, or don't. It's up to you - and it should be. You fund the omnipotent state, the perpetual war and perpetual inflation because you have to; the government takes your money no matter what. But you can choose to fight it. This is one way.

Decide.