Some recent writings

Just because I've neglected posting here for a while doesn't mean I haven't been busy at work. We live in interesting times, after all.

Of the things I'd like to point out here, I've written on the drumbeat of war with Iran, and the possibility Justin Raimondo's theory is correct and all this inept imperialism is a feature, not a bug.

I have also touched on the finale of 'Game of Thrones' and the very real lesson about the power of narratives, however poorly it was communicated in the show.

Closer to home, I touched on the embarrassing idolatry of "Kosovarianians" for their imperial overlords, and the self-serving lies they continue to tell to justify their crime.

I've also touched on the Culture War currently affecting the Empire itself, an ongoing conflict between the mainstream media and Big Tech, and the dissidents caught in the crossfire.

So if you're still hanging around these parts, give these a read. I promise I'll write more soon. 

Libya, 5 years later

It's been five years since the Atlantic Empire "liberated" Libya - turning the once prosperous North African nation into a jihadist hellhole. The very same governments that conspired to overthrow the regime of Col. Gadhafi in 2011 now bemoan that Libya is becoming a sanctuary for Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists.

Oh? You mean the Western "estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids" (as my friend Ilana Mercer so aptly described it) didn't result in a liberal-democratic republic based on diversity and human rights? I'm shocked.

Back in September 2011, when the Empire was basking in its "victory" in Libya, I went on CrossTalk to argue that the intervention was wrong on principle. The relevant passage is about 14 minutes in:

"This is no way to run the world. You can’t run a dog-catching operation like this without it backfiring... What we saw happening in Libya was basically the entire circle of Balkans interventions accelerated to hyperspeed – within weeks instead of years – and you ran through the whole gamut of excuses, from refugees to mistreatment of minorities to this and that and the other, to install in power a shadowy movement that we don’t really know much about – except that it’s composed of Al-Qaeda veterans (which isn’t supposed to bother us at all). But that’s sort of not the point. It doesn’t matter how this ended. The outcome of it is frankly irrelevant. It’s the principle of the thing."

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

Nazis and Countries That Back Them

After Canada, USA and Ukraine were the only countries that voted "No" in the UN General Assembly to a resolution proposed by Russia condemning the glorification of Nazis, Peter Lavelle had Alexander Mercouris, Dimitri Babich and I over to discuss the meaning of that on CrossTalk.


(or watch on YouTube)

As you can see, I agree with the other two guests on almost everything - except for their assertion that Washington has ever actually regretted the consequences of its misdeeds. From where I stand, the Empire is not only absolutely unrepentant, it declares its wrongdoing to be right and just!

I mean, the New York Times of all media recently published an admission that a thousand (at least!) actual German Nazis still receive Social Security. How many thousands were brought over after WW2, and how many were propped up in Europe to "fight Communism"? And that's not counting the seven decades of collaborating with Nazis from the so-called "captive nations" (the Baltics, Ukraine, Croatia, etc), documented in The Nation (again, of all places). So it's fine that Croatians are sieg-heiling at fooball games while Kyevite militias are flying swastikas, since that represents "democracy and European future" merely defending themselves against "Serbian and Russian aggression" (see here, for example).

Another thing we didn't get a chance to mention is that all of the EU - and its hangers-on - abstained from voting. The sole European country that supported the resolution was Serbia. Personally, I'm shocked the quisling regime in Belgrade dared oppose Brussels and Washington on this, considering their absolute willingness to cut Serbia's throat on every other issue. Perhaps even they draw the line at backing Nazis, for what it's worth.

The show aired on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and was recorded the day prior. Thus there was no time to fix the error in the titles identifying me as director of the Reiss Institute (I resigned earlier this month. It was a personal decision - nothing against the Institute, and I wish it all the best in future endeavors.)

Wastelands Called Democracy

Friday was a year since the start of the "EuroMaidan" protests in Kiev, which would lead to the February 21 coup and the subsequent fracturing of the Ukraine.

In spite of the overwhelming evidence of U.S. government involvement in funding, organizing and even controlling the protests, the mainstream Western media continue to present the events in Ukraine as a spontaneous popular revolt for the sake of "democracy and European future." Just like Serbia was (not). Or Libya. Or Georgia. Or any other place where "color revolutions" brought devastation and called it democracy.

Want to know what "European future" looks like? Here's Odessa, on May 2:

(RIA Novosti / Maxim Voitenko)

I spoke with RT on the subject Friday; here's the video and here a (mostly accurate) transcript. I also wrote a special feature on the subject, which was published this morning.

And while Biden the Deputy Emperor and Victoria "Biscuit-Giver" Nuland were posting for cameras in Kiev with their stooges, Nazi death squads and the Ukrainian Army were terror-bombing civilians.

Well, at least that explains why the US, UK and Canada were the only states to vote against a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism.

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.