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)

Invictus

The morning of March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milošević, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, was found dead in his cell at the Scheveningen detention facility near The Hague.  It was the second death in Scheveningen in a week; on March 5, Milan Babić, once a leader of the Serbs in what is today Croatia, had allegedly committed suicide while waiting to testify in another trial. Babić had plea-bargained with the ICTY, the Hague Inquisition, and received a sentence of “only” 13 years.

Slobodan Milošević (1941-2006)

In the West, Milošević was blamed for everything that had happened in the Balkans over the prior 15 years; not only has it been politically correct to hate him, but dangerous for one’s political credentials not to. News of his death prompted an outpouring of vitriol in the mainstream media, a race to see who could malign the man more. In producing this stream of abuse, they were guided by the assumption that all the charges against Milošević had been proven, if not in the court of law, then in the “court of public opinion” – in which they, of course, had been the judge, jury, and executioner.

Malicious Myths

One representative example is this editorial from the Washington Post:

“Ethnic and sectarian rivalry was real in a cobbled-together state, but few people expected, much less wanted, a civil war. Mr. Milosevic, a Communist Party apparatchik in Serbia, deliberately and methodically nursed this latent tension from a flicker to a conflagration and used it to consolidate a criminal regime in Belgrade. He bombarded Serbs with lies and hateful demagoguery about their supposed victimization at the hands of Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovo Albanians, and he convinced them that the only solution was a Greater Serbia created through war and ethnic cleansing. …

“More than is generally recognized, at least in his own country, he was personally responsible for the most destructive conflict, and most terrible atrocities, recorded in Europe since World War II. There were other protagonists and other criminals, some of them Croatian, Bosnian, and Albanian. But without Mr. Milosevic the Yugoslav wars wouldn’t have happened.”

Just about everything here is wrong. Worse yet, it accuses Milošević of things his enemies were doing. For one thing, he never called for war. His 1989 speech in Kosovo, often said to be a call for conflict, actually called for coexistence. That is why it is never actually quoted, only paraphrased, and wrongly.

By describing the very real atrocities of Croats, Muslims, and Albanians allied with Hitler as the fruit of Milošević's malicious imagination, the Post simply engaged in Holocaust denial. The claim that Milošević desired and pursued a “Greater Serbia” was likewise pure propaganda. As for his “personal responsibility”… well, the Hague Inquisition had spent years trying to prove it, with thousands of investigators, paid experts, and Imperial troops at its call, and managed to produce… nothing.

The House of Cards

Milošević rose to power in the late 1980s against the crumbling backdrop of the post-Tito Yugoslavia. The original Yugoslav kingdom, established in 1918, was destroyed by a 1941 Nazi invasion. Parts of it were annexed by Axis powers, a territory designated “Serbia” was occupied by the Germans, while an “Independent State of Croatia” run by a fascist Ustasha regime encompassed present-day Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. While the Serb-led royalist resistance (Chetniks) fought the Axis occupation, the Communist resistance (Partisans) saw the war as an opportunity for revolution. Having secured Allied support, the Communist leader Tito took over the country in 1945, banned the monarchy, and re-forged Yugoslavia as a Communist federation.

Tito's velvet dictatorship provided a high standard of living through foreign debt, and his diplomacy balanced Yugoslavia between the Soviet bloc and the West. Instead of promoting a Yugoslav identity, however, Tito exploited ethnic rivalries to secure his power. Expressions of ethnic identity were allowed only if they served the Party agenda. The horrific atrocities of WW2 were selectively suppressed or trumped up, in an effort to establish moral equivalence between all non-Communist factions, to the point of equating the Serb royalists with the murderous Ustasha.

In 1974, the ailing Tito signed off on a new Constitution transferring more power to the republics and  making Yugoslavia a de facto confederacy. So great was his personal power, though, that after his death in 1980, the Party was unable to choose a successor. For the next decade, Yugoslavia would be ruled by committee - and it showed. Decades of mismanagement, debt, and corruption came to a head in the 1980s, with all Yugoslavs becoming increasingly frustrated. Serbia in particular suffered from a peculiar arrangement under which its two provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo - the only such entities in Yugoslavia - had veto power over Serbian laws. Adding to the troubles was an Albanian rebellion in Kosovo, which began in 1981, and by 1987 required the deployment of federal riot police.

Heretic

His given name, Slobodan, means “a free man”. His surname, Milošević, is derived from an ancestor named Miloš, most likely after the knight who killed the Turkish sultan Murat at the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, forever remembered in song. Yet for most of his life Milošević had been an ordinary apparatchik, a banker who spent time in the United States and dutifully followed Serbia's Communist leader Ivan Stambolić. Then, in 1987, Stambolić sent him to Kosovo, to calm down the agitated Serbs protesting Albanian repression. When the overwhelmingly Albanian police started clubbing the Serbs gathered to air their grievances, Milošević bellowed, “No one is allowed to beat you!”

Disgusted by the cowardice and ineptitude of the Serbian Communist leadership, Milošević went back to Belgrade and began cleaning house. By the end of 1987, most of the old guard had been purged, including his former patron Stambolić. The following year, Milošević  launched a program of reforms, purging the provincial leaderships as well and amending Serbia's constitution to bring it in line with other Yugoslav republics. He became a hero to millions of Serbs, repressed for decades through politics of guilt.

Milošević's reforms alarmed the leadership of other republics, which benefited from Yugoslavia's schizophrenic setup. It was the purged Communists, however, who led the attacks on him. To them, he was a dangerous heretic for daring to challenge Tito's dogma of “Serbian bourgeois nationalism” as the greatest threat to Yugoslavia. Reinventing themselves as democrats, they began demonizing Milošević as someone who “abolished autonomy” of the provinces, and even accused him of harboring a desire for “Greater Serbia”- an Austro-Hungarian canard conjured prior to 1914 to justify Vienna's planned war of conquest. This invective fell on receptive ears in the rest of Yugoslavia, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany created a historical opportunity to revise the outcome of WW2.

Yugoslavia's End

Official History paints the dismemberment of Yugoslavia as a response of Slovenians, Croats, “Bosnians ”(Muslims), Albanians and Macedonians to Milošević's “nationalism.” To believe this, however, one would have to deny actual history - from Communism, via both world wars, all the way back to the Ottoman conquest.

There is no question some Yugoslav republics profited much more than others from Tito's arrangement. Though the leader of Slovenia, for example, was a Communist official, he had no trouble reinventing himself as a democrat and denouncing “Serbian Communist oppression”, once he received German and Austrian support. Franjo Tuđman, elected president of Croatia in 1990, harbored sympathies for the Ustasha and engaged in open Holocaust denial. Alija Izetbegović, an unrepentant political Islamist who emerged as the leader of Muslims in Bosnia, had been jailed in the 1980s for a manifesto written in 1971 that called for “Islamic revolution” throughout the world. Albanians have claimed Kosovo and other lands since 1878, and sought their union with Albania proper ever since its founding in 1912. They allied with Germany and Austria for that purpose in WW1, and again in WW2.

To secure independence, the separatists all claimed to be victims of “aggression” by the Federal Army and/or Serbia. Slovenia had pioneered that approach in June 1991, when the Yugoslav Army sent lightly armed recruits to secure border crossings. When Tuđman'a government tried to assert control over Serb-inhabited territories, their residents rebelled, calling on the Yugoslav Army to protect the country's constitutional order. Tuđman's militia, armed from Germany, responded by attacking Army garrisons while claiming “aggression from Serbia”.

In April 1992, when Izetbegović's government declared independence and Bosnia slid into full-scale civil war, the claim of “Serbian aggression” was used once again, to the point of outright falsifying the history of WW2 and the Holocaust. But the greatest absurdity was NATO's claim, in March 1999, that Milošević was the “aggressor” in Kosovo, when NATO itself had launched a textbook case of aggression against Serbia.

Yet Milošević never disputed the right of Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims or Macedonians to leave Yugoslavia; he supported the right of two million Serbs living in Croatia and Bosnia (the “Transdrina Serbs”, for lack of a better term) to stay. Milošević was the driving force behind the creation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in April 1992, a union of Serbia and Montenegro that implicitly recognized the secession of all other republics. The EU used the Soviet precedent to argue that Yugoslavia had ceased to exist; but while Yeltsin's Russia was recognized as the legal heir of the USSR, the FR Yugoslavia was denied that right.

Milošević wanted to negotiate Yugoslavia's future, and even invited the European Community to mediate - to the Serbs' detriment, as it turned out. Tuđman (“There would not have been a war had Croatia not wanted it.” ) and Izetbegović (“For a sovereign Bosnia, I would sacrifice peace.”) chose otherwise.

It wasn't Milošević who “started four wars”, but his enemies, backed by the West.

Peacemaker

Throughout the 1991-95 conflict, the West acted as if Milošević were the true power behind the Transdrina Serbs. From April 1992 to 1996, Serbia was under a crippling UN blockade, imposed as punishment for the massacre of a breadline in Sarajevo, blamed on the Bosnian Serbs. Milošević got no credit from the West when he set up a blockade on the Drina in 1994, after the Bosnian Serb leadership refused an unfavorable peace; nor for standing by while U.S.-backed Croatian forces ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Serbs from zones officially under UN protection.

At that point, however, he must have realized that the policy of protecting Serbia by not becoming officially involved in Bosnia and Croatia not only hadn't worked, but came close to jeopardizing the very survival of the Transdrina Serbs. For four years they had kept the numerically superior Muslim and Croat forces at bay, but now NATO had stepped in with a bombing campaign (“Operation Deliberate Force”) backing the combined Croat-Muslim offensive.

Washington also had the (U.S.-sponsored) ICTY accuse the Bosnian Serb leaders of war crimes, deliberately making it so Milošević was the only politician who could go to the Dayton peace conference and represent Serb interests. Those who hatched this plan later probably wished they hadn't.

Dayton was not a typical peace conference, but rather one where the U.S. “mediators” represented Croat and Muslim interests - often getting frustrated by Muslim and Croat delegations, in fact - in talks with Milošević. In his memoirs, U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke proudly described how he tried to cheat Milošević in Dayton, and only regretted getting caught. Yet Milošević managed to secure a good deal for at least some Transdrina Serbs, which endures to this day in spite of efforts by the U.S. and the Bosnian Muslims to dismantle the Dayton order. Holbrooke himself credited Milošević with saving the talks, after Izetbegović almost wrecked them. Milošević's claim to the mantle of “Balkans peacemaker” may sound pretentious, but it was actually earned.

Three years later, however, it was the very same Holbrooke spearheading Washington’s effort to force Milošević into a war over Kosovo, where the terrorist “Kosovo Liberation Army” was fighting for secession with Washington’s support.

Betrayed and Demonized

Holbrooke later claimed Milošević had broken every deal he’d signed. That is a lie. It was Holbrooke’s employer who has done so, from Dayton to Kumanovo. Washington was responsible for the 1999 Rambouillet “agreement” – a travesty of diplomacy not seen since the 1914 Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Belgrade. The Empire accused Milošević of starting the 1999 war over Kosovo by “negotiating in bad faith,” but it is hard to imagine diplomacy in worse faith than the “peace effort” in Rambouillet, the frame job in Račak, and the subsequent naked aggression disguised as “humanitarian intervention.”

In May 1999, Milošević was charged with war crimes by the ICTY, a move that “coincided” with the crisis of morale in NATO headquarters, as Serbia refused to surrender and images of NATO’s civilian victims became increasingly available to the Western public. NATO's media cheerleaders used the indictment to further demonize Milošević, routinely comparing him to Hitler and the Serbs in general to Nazis. He had become the Emmanuel Goldstein of the new world order, bellyfelt as evil.

Fall and Rise

Though NATO later claimed it that Milošević had capitulated in June 1999, this was not the case. Where Rambouillet would have allowed a purely NATO occupation of Kosovo and guaranteed separation within three years - not to mention the Annex B, giving NATO free reign in Serbia itself - the armistice signed at Kumanovo put NATO on a UN leash, kept it out of the rest of Serbia, and retained sovereignty over Kosovo on paper. Though NATO violated it almost right away, the very fact that there was an armistice after 78 days, instead of a surrender after a week as envisioned in Washington, was a victory. Moreover, damage to the Yugoslav military from the bombing was minimal.

Having failed to oust Milošević by force, the Empire changed tactics. Washington bought the government of Montenegro, and set it on course for separation. In Serbia, the NED cobbled together, trained and funded a coalition of opposition parties. Milošević tried to warn the public about what was coming, but his warning fell on deaf ears. The propaganda had taken its toll. On October 5, 2000, the mob organized by the “Democratic Opposition of Serbia” sacked the federal parliament, stormed the state TV and claimed election fraud. Ballots documenting the alleged DOS victory conveniently perished in the fires set by protesters. This would later become a pattern for “color revolutions” elsewhere.

Unwilling to plunge the country into civil war, Milošević stepped down as president of Yugoslavia. The DOS soon established a new government, under the leadership of Zoran Đinđić. In April 2001, Đinđić had Milošević arrested; in June, he broke half a dozen Serbian and Yugoslav laws and handed Milošević over to the ICTY.

At The Hague, however, there was no trace of the once-accommodating, compromising Milošević. That man had probably perished in 1999, with the first NATO bombs. Instead, the inquisitors faced a proud and defiant man, who threw the accusations back into their faces and insisted not only on his innocence, but on the illegitimacy of the ICTY and the culpability of NATO and Washington for the bloodshed in Yugoslavia. The prosecutors took over two years to present their “kitchen sink” indictment, charging him for war crimes in Croatia and Kosovo and genocide (!) in Bosnia. Milošević systematically demolished their witnesses in cross-examinations and successfully challenged their “evidence,” despite the hostility of the judges, who would often cut him off. In September 2004, Milošević began his defense, after defeating the efforts of the “tribunal” to impose counsel on him without consent.

But the trial had taken a toll on his health, and he would complain of high blood pressure, headaches, and heart problems. Prosecutors and the media derisively claimed he was “faking it.” In February 2006, the “Tribunal” refused his request for medical treatment at a Russian hospital, despite Moscow’s guarantees that he would return. Three days after he wrote to the Russian government, claiming he was being poisoned, Milošević was found dead in his cell.

A Free Man

Although the Western media had already declared him Hitler Reborn, Slobodan Milošević was never convicted of any crime, in any court, even the kangaroo “tribunal” in The Hague. His show trial was officially adjourned on Mach 14, 2006, without reaching a verdict.

At the time of his death, Milošević was a prisoner. Unlike the quisling regime installed in his country, however, he refused to accept his captivity and fought against it any way he could. Rather than save his body by denouncing the country and people that turned on him, he saved his soul by defending them. Whatever one may think of the way he lived or governed, in his final four years he stood alone against the Empire, embodied in the Inquisition: an overwhelming force seeking to dominate all of humanity, willing and able to twist history, facts, and logic into a sinister fiction. Milošević did not have to resist it; he chose to. For years, the greatest coercive force in the world tried to break him, and failed.

He died true to his name.

Invictus

"He was a statesman with a flaw. These people today, they are flaws without statesmanship."

- Brana Crncevic, poet, on Slobodan Milosevic (20 August 1941 – 11 March 2006)

Still Smearing the Serbs

As I predicted last month, the Hashim Thaci Defense League has come out swinging, trying to discredit the Marty report as "Serb propaganda" aimed at "smearing Kosova." One good example is Dennis McShane (a Serbophobic former Labour official), writing in the War Street Journal this Tuesday, but the full extent of Empire's efforts to cover up their KLA monster can be found in Julia Gorin's excellently researched expose.

Note that the common strand in all arguments in favor of Thaci, the KLA and their "independent state" is the call for "evidence" to back up Marty's report. This is very important. These very people telling you today that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and that we shouldn't judge an entire nation based on allegations without evidence? They are the ones who have, for the past two decades, done precisely that: leveled outlandish allegations against an entire nation, without a shred of evidence - worse yet, with actual evidence running counter to their claims! But you see, the nation we should not judge are the Albanians (specifically, the made-up "Kosovars") and the nation we've become used to instinctively condemning against all the evidence to the contrary are the Serbs - so that's perfectly all right, then.

As if on cue, an example appears. There are many objectionable things in Newsweek's "Deposed Despots" feature, posted on Monday. I don't have time or inclination to go into all of them. Of the eleven "dictators" they list, only two were not clients of the Empire. Actually, I'm not so sure about Romania's Ceausescu. The one whose mention is the occasion for this post, of course, is Slobodan Milosevic.

Here's Newsweek's description:

This genocidaire brought horror to ’90s Europe and died while on trial for war crimes. After the fall of the “Butcher of the Balkans,” Serbia remains a hotbed of organized crime, and Kosovo’s independence sparked violent protests. But at least the mass ethnic slayings are gone.

Ah yes, the old Big Lie about the 1990s wars being Milosevic's fault. They weren't. There are confessions by Croat and Muslim leaders proving it, and memoirs of US officials who wanted to "give war a chance." That Milosevic is to blame for everything is an article of propaganda-induced faith; once you start looking for evidence for it, there simply isn't any. That is the problem the Hague Inquisition (a.k.a the ICTY) ran into when they put Milosevic in the dock. After almost 300 witnesses, they had no case. Milosevic's death, under suspicious circumstances, saved the ICTY the embarrassment of having to convict against facts - though that hasn't stopped them before, or since.

There was no genocide. The 2007 decision by the ICJ - an institution hardly biased towards the Serbs - rejected all the Bosnian Muslim claims to that extent, noting only that the events of July 1995 were categorized as genocide by the ICTY (a definition that insults elementary logic, as explained elsewhere).

It was the British tabloids that labeled Milosevic the "Butcher of the Balkans." With the details of KLA's butchery of captives to sell their body parts to rich Westerners beginning to emerge, it is becoming clear that Hashim Thaci is far more deserving of the moniker.

The declaration of independence by the Albanian provisional government in occupied Kosovo, three years ago, did actually spark protests. They were by and large peaceful - much more than the ones in Egypt, for example - but the propaganda machine seized on several smashed shop windows and an attempt to set the US embassy on fire. I actually do think that's the Serbs' own fault: they should have called it an "unfortunate accident," and claimed they really wanted to burn the Albanian embassy, but couldn't find it on the map. Hey, it worked for NATO when it bombed the Chinese embassy in 1999...

As a matter of fact, I agree that Serbia is a hotbed of organized crime: the current government, installed by Washington and Brussels, is the foremost criminal organization in the country. But I doubt that's what Newsweek had in mind. Conventional crime, then? Again, Serbia can't hold a candle to the "freedom fighters" in its occupied province of Kosovaristan.

"At least the mass ethnic slayings are gone"? Tell that to the Serbs remaining in today's independent Croatia, or the Bosnian Muslim-Croat Federation, or "independent" Kosovo (where you can also check on the Roma, Jews and Gorani). If you can find any.

Newsweek's treatment of Milosevic actually fits Thaci more. But we can't have that, oh no. That would be smearing, and might just offend Dennis McShane. Every single claim made in the one-paragraph, drive-by character assassination is either completely false, or true in a sense Newsweek's reporter absolutely did not intend it to be.

It is amazing that in this world, where "progressives" of all stripes have declared tolerance, diversity and inoffensiveness to be the highest virtues, it is not only allowed to be hateful, and offensive towards the Serbs, it is expected as proof of one's political correctness. The Newsweeks and McShanes of this world see nothing wrong with demanding evidence when their ox is being gored, but inventing or ignoring it when they wish to smear someone else.
That's actually a bigger problem for them, and their countries and societies, than it is for the Serbs, who are used to such treatment by now and don't give a damn.

For all the faults and flaws he had, Slobodan Milosevic was a democratically elected president, who has done more for peace in the Balkans than any of the "democrats" in the surrounding client-states of the Empire. However, his insistence that he, his country, and his people would not be anyone's servants earned him Empire's enmity and endless demonization of the kind described and dissected above.

At least he is still treated with more respect and dignity than Saddam Hussein - who, interestingly enough, didn't make Newsweek's list, even though he was supposedly so evil that the U.S. absolutely had to invade Iraq and have him executed. Go figure.

Better late than never

Eight-plus years after his overthrow and three years after his mysterious death in the Hague dungeons, Slobodan Milosevic is finally getting some credit. Writes Slobodan Antonic (Serbian original here, all emphasis mine):

Slobodan Milosevic has made many mistakes in his time. But his legacy to Serbia comprises at least three things:

1. the Dayton Agreement, guaranteeing the existence of the Bosnian Serb Republic;
2. UNSCR 1244, as proof of Serbia's ownership of Kosovo, and
3. Constitutional defeat of separatism and restored Serbian sovereignty in Srem, Banat and Backa [i.e. "Vojvodina"].

While the first two are under assault by powerful foreign factors, with Serbia able to defend them only to a limited extent, the third is being undermined primarily from within, by Serbian political forces. Most incongruously, one of these forces is the provincial leadership of Milosevic's own Socialist Party!

It is a historical irony that Milosevic's own party has embraced EUphoria, championed the [separatist] Vojvodina Statute, and joined Canak, Jelko Kacin and other true "Serbian friends" to hammer the last nail into the coffin of Milosevic's national legacy. We can criticize that legacy for the things it wasted and the potential it failed to live up to. It could have been, and perhaps should have been, far greater. But it is what it is. It is what we have today, and what we must defend. However minuscule, it is still far greater than anything Serbian leaders have done after 2000. And far greater than anything the Socialists have done after Milosevic.

Speaking of 2000, I remember a speech Milosevic gave on the eve of the CIA/NED "revolution" that deposed him. October 2, 2000 it was, when he spoke on Serbian television, warning about the quisling character of DOS:

Its boss is the president of the Democratic Party. For years he has collaborated with the military alliance that attacked our country. He could not even hide his collaboration. In fact, our entire public knows that he appealed to NATO to bomb Serbia for as many weeks as necessary to break its resistance.

So the 'democratic' grouping organized for these elections represents the armies and governments which recently waged war against Yugoslavia.

At the behest of these foreign powers our 'democrats' told the people that they would make Yugoslavia be free of war and violence, that Yugoslavia would prosper, the living standard would improve visibly and fast, that Yugoslavia would rejoin international institutions, and on and on.

Honored citizens,

It is my duty to warn you publicly, while there is time, that these promises are false.

He may have been wrong about other things, but about this, he was right.

Hague Update: Muzzled no more?

Slobodan Milošević was back in court this morning, after witness Kosta Bulatović had refused to testify in his absence. It could be that Bulatović's refusal to testify - similar to another witness boycott last year, when the Inquisition tried to impose counsel on Milošević - showed the Inquisitors that any attempt to muzzle the defendant would only backfire.

Trial in Absentia

According to the BBC, the Hague Inquisition physicians declared that Slobodan Milošević's blood pressure was "too high," and that he was at risk of a heart attack. So the "judges" banned him from the courtroom and tried to continue the "trial" without him.

This is precisely what Canadian attorney Tiphaine Dickson warned about, in February this year:

Elsewhere in the Appeals Chamber ruling, however, President Meron made a startlingly ominous claim: the right to be tried in one’s presence is not absolute (it, too, it seems, is but a "presumption") and can be obviated by "substantial disruption" of the proceedings. This disruption need not be deliberate or even intended by the accused, and can be caused merely by illness. The possibility of holding in absentia proceedings in the [Milošević] case as a result of illness... had just been approved ...

The British Helsinki Human Rights Group published a similar analysis the same day (February 20), making the following point:

no legal system in the world recognises a difference between a defendant being too ill to defend himself, and too ill to stand trial. If Mr. Milošević is too ill, the trial should come to an end immediately. The ICTY has invented this distinction for the purposes of imposing defence counsel on Mr. Milošević, just as soon as his defence got under way...

This sudden muzzling of Milošević comes as a shock only to those who haven't monitored the course of the "trial" over the past couple of months. While the Prosecution was presenting its case, mainstream media eagerly published trial updates, most often simply repeating prosecutors' claims as if they were established truth. Milošević's defense, by contrast, has been ignored almost completely.

If reports by a well-informed and knowledgeable supporter of Milošević are accurate - and they are based on official transcripts, so it's easy to check - the prosecution's case has been repeatedly exposed as a convoluted mess of lies, distortions, fabrications and conjecture. From the top EU observer, through Macedonian medical workers, to the CSI examiners of Racak dead, defense witnesses have been destroying the Prosecution's case. Prosecution's cross-examinations have consisted mainly of cheap, racist ad hominems and attempts to disprove evidence with pro-Imperial propaganda.

At a status conference on Thursday, April 14 - Milošević once again refused to introduce written testimonies in lieu of live witnesses, demanding the right to a public trial. He also demanded equal time to present his case; the "court" gave him only 150 days, while the Prosecutors had over 300 - not to mention years of time to prepare a case, millions of dollars in resources, and complete domination over the media, which Milošević is forbidden to contact.

In short, the "trial" has been going so badly for the Inquisition, it has decided to resort to trickery and have Milošević tried in absentia.

Whether the trial takes two more days or two more years, everyone knows what the verdict will be; the evidence to convict Milošević may be nonexistent, but to acquit him would destroy the ICTY, its backers, and the hordes of their sycophants. The entire justification for Washington and Brussels' meddling in the Balkans would be shot to pieces, the entire forged history of the 1990s exposed as a fraud that it is.

This is a show trial - it always has been - trying to create a perception of fairness (note that most ICTY supporters argue for just that - "perception" - not actual fairness). Milošević has already been convicted in the Empire-dominated court of public opinion; his "trial" at The Hague is only an effort to give the propaganda an official imprimatur. Everything the Prosecution has done - from issuing the indictment during NATO's war; adding to it retroactively Bosnia and Croatia; amending the indictment afterwards; calling 300 witnesses, none of which was worth a damn; and resorting to logical fallacies, creative reasoning and routine violations of common sense, not to mention jurisprudence - demonstrates that they just don't have a case. But Milošević isn't fighting their meaningless indictment, he is fighting the ICTY itself, and its paymasters - and apparently, too well. Like him or hate him, agree with his policies or not, one must respect the man's courage and tenacity.

After Milošević was prevented from attending his own lynching, defense witness Kosta Bulatović refused to testify. The Inquisition accused him of being "in contempt of the court." He wasn't, really - but he should be. Contempt is the only proper animus towards this malicious, fraudulent circus that defiles justice with every fiber of its being.