Interesting Times

It has been a year since the self-proclaimed "Kosovian" authorities tried to take over the Serb-inhabited north of the occupied province. When they failed, NATO and EULEX were called in - only to be thwarted by non-violent protests of the local population. Tanks and live gunfire could clear the road temporarily, though it soon became clear that they could kill the Serbs - and face the consequences once the footage hit YouTube (which it would have within minutes) - but they could not compel them to obedience. Harassment has continued ever since - just this morning, Polish troops had sealed off one road, while "Kosovian" Very Special Police robbed a Serb bank last week - but it looks like both the "Kosovarians" and their Imperial sponsors are waiting for the new/old regime in Belgrade to find a way of surrendering the occupied territory and the Serbs therein.

(Yes, those were links from B92, because they were the only links in English I could find. There's definitely a gaping hole ready to be filled with English-language news coverage that would not be in service of Serbia's enemies.)

Saturday was also the anniversary of Austria-Hungary's 1914 ultimatum to Serbia, the true start of the Great War; a century hence, some still blame Serbia and Russia for upsetting the old Imperial order. Times change, but the argument remains the same; the invader always wonders why we refuse to just die already. Can't say I have much sympathy for either the argument, or the invaders making it.

When I say that "all of this has happened before, and is happening again", I'm not just using a catchphrase from Battlestar Galactica; the scenario developed for Balkans interventions (first in Bosnia, then in "Kosovia") is actually being applied to Syria. The trouble with imagining oneself as a knight-errant is that the rest of the world is then divided into two categories only: dragons and damsels in distress. Delusional much?

The other problem with interventionism is that it just doesn't work. Sure, it can force things temporarily - kind of like what KFOR does with the barricades in Thacistan - but that just creates more problems down the line. The 1878 Congress of Berlin, for example, "solved" the Balkans crisis in a way that made WW1 almost inevitable. Yet now some people want to do it again.

While I haven't done much writing here lately - most of my attention has been devoted to the other blog, Antiwar.com columns and some translation and editing work - I did manage to add some blog links. If you are interested in news from and about Syria (actual news, not the propaganda), the Moon of Alabama blog is the place to go. I've also added the blog of a sometime commenter and very astute writer, "Hero of Crappy Town" (fans of Firefly will get the reference). I should have done so much sooner.

I'll see July off with something I've said before, but may as well say again. The Empire is constantly harping on about how the people it has "helped" need to "come to terms with reality" - but by that it means the virtual reality, established and maintained through lies and coercion. Meanwhile, the Empire itself refuses to accept actual reality, and the gap between the two is widening by the day.

These are interesting times, indeed. In a very Chinese sense of the word.

RIP Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn, 1941-2012

Late yesterday I heard that Alexander Cockburn had passed away, at the age of 71. He had cancer that ended up being terminal, but chose not to make it into a public spectacle (unlike, say, Christopher Hitchens). A prolific writer and outstanding editor, he kept writing till the very end, and his pen remained as sharp as ever.

It was just a month ago that I caught one of his pieces in CounterPunch, and commented on it. The magazine had been one of the few voices consistently opposing Imperial meddling under the guise of "humanitarianism", whether in the Balkans or elsewhere.

The fact that Cockburn and his associates self-identified as leftists, yet as an avowed libertarian with a monarchist streak I found myself agreeing with them more often than not, just goes to show how pointless these labels are for understanding the business of humanity.

There is a line in the great Serb epic, The Mountain Wreath, that goes something like this: "Blessed are those who live forever, for their births had purpose." I can't think of a more fitting epitaph for this great man. I hope his soul finds peace, and his words continue to inspire others to fight the darkness, madness and despair that ever seek to drown the world.

Succor From an Unlikely Source

Lord of the Rings (from Wikipedia)

As a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's work, and Peter Jackson's screen adaptations thereof, I was amused by something a friend mentioned this morning. The amusing part is not that Jackson's movie trilogy is currently being shown in Serbia, but by whom: none other than a TV network originally established and funded by the Empire to spread pro-Imperial and anti-Serb (or am I repeating myself here?) propaganda. How ironic is it that they are now showing - most likely in a bid to improve their ratings - an epic that stands for everything they fight against, from liberty, tradition, honor and decency, to resisting the seemingly unstoppable military and propaganda might of Mordor?

That led me to contemplate how the "Lord of the Rings" would look if amended and adapted to fit the Imperial vision of the world, promoted by this particular network and the quisling cult it serves. Perhaps it would involve a panel of "expert analysts", explaining to the public what the story really means:

• Bilbo Baggins is a thief and a rogue, who stole the Ring from its rightful owner, Gollum;
• Gollum is an exemplar for progressive citizenry, putting above all the search for his personal pleasure, the "Preciouss";
• Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are dangerous terrorists who got a hold of a Weapon of Mass Destruction;
• Aragorn represents the anachronistic and outdated institution of hereditary monarchy;
• Legolas and Gimli are closeted LGBTQ persons;
• Elrond and Galadriel are selfish Elves who refuse to share their bountiful wealth with the underprivileged Orcs of Misty Mountains. Moreover, they aided the Fellowship's invasion and destruction of Moria, which the peaceful Orcs barely managed to liberate from their Dwarvish oppressors, with Sauron's selfless aid;
• Gandalf is the instrument of the Wizard-Elvish conspiracy against peace and welfare of all the peoples of Middle Earth, offered by the legitimate overlord Sauron;
• Sauron is the misunderstood, well-intentioned peacemaker, who only wishes to integrate all of Middle Earth and usher in an end to history of warfare and strife;
• Saruman is a realist, who understands the value of Mordor's politics of peace. He promotes industrial development and biological research, for which he is targeted by fanatical eco-terrorists;
• The Nazgul only wanted to retrieve the WMD from the Hobbit terrorists, but the evil Gandalf murdered their poor innocent horses at Bruinen, and later interfered in their humanitarian air patrols over the bandit Rohirrim and rebels of Gondor;
• Theoden is a crazed dictator, leading his people to ruin by choosing to fight Sauron and Saruman instead of reaching a peaceful settlement with them, abolishing the anachronistic monarchy and living in peace under the progressive, pragmatic democrat Grima Wormtongue;
• Denethor is a wise leader of Gondor, usurped by evil wizard-conspirator Gandalf, who also turned his sons to treason. Boromir is the misunderstood hero, while Faramir an incompetent fool holding outdated ideals;
• The siege of Minas Tirith was Mordor's legitimate response to the aggression of Elven "Axis of Evil" (Rivendell-Lothlorien), led by Gandalf, and the terrorist activities of the Fellowship...

And so on.

You may laugh at the obvious twisting of the story, but this is precisely the kind of poisonous drivel being poured into the eyes and ears of Serbs for years now, via this particular TV network and many others, by various servants of Empire: NATO lobbyists, self-proclaimed reformers, promoters of regional autonomy, "cultural decontamination," liberal and other Democrats, etc. The entire ideology of Serbia's quisling cult is servitude - to the Empire and its coercive might - expressed through contempt for liberty, justice, tradition and natural values.


There is a great quote from Gandalf, midway through The Two Towers: "Oft evil will shall evil mar." True enough, for in a bid to improve its ability to tell lies, the cult's TV is actually giving succor to those who oppose the present-day Sauron and his servants. Irony is not dead, and there is yet hope for the world.

Purported Proof

Regular reader jack brought to my attention this bit of news:

NATO tied to Muslim Slaughter at Srebrenica

BELGRADE – A French major, serving with their intelligence services, fled to Belarus with the evidence that war crimes committed in Srebrenica in 1995.

The documents he presented shows that the "genocide" blamed on Serbians was organized by the American, British and French secret intelligence service, and carried out by a paramilitary group known as the "Scorpions" in order for the alleged genocide to be blamed on the military and civilian officials of the Republic of Serbian (RS) – learned Pravda.

According to our source, the major French military intelligence DRM has evidence that the wartime commander of the VRS Main [sic] Staff, Ratko Mladic was not aware of these activities. From these documents, which are in the possession of Belarus, the French officer requested and received political asylum on the June 29, 2012 in Minsk.

The documents clearly show that Naser Oric and all the commanders of the Army of Bosnia/Herzegovina (Muslim) in this part of eastern Bosnia were under constant control of the western intelligence services.

Oric was the Bosnian Muslim commander in Srebrenica and was convicted by the ICC of war crimes against Serbs but found "not guilty" of broader crimes of ethnic cleansing.

What do I make of this? I take it with a chunk of salt. For one thing, there seems to be a bit of confusion about the militia that is supposed to have been operating on foreign orders: this report has it as the “Scorpions”, but where does the 10th Sabotage Detachment (which includes "star witness" Erdemovic) fit in, then? The Milosevic assassination plot that men from the 10th were previously associated with ("Operation Spider") has somehow morphed into a plot to kill Mladic. In other words, I'd like to see some of the purported evidence before I come to any sort of conclusion.

I understand why some Serbs might jump on to this as proof of Serb innocence in the Srebrenica case. But it's worth remembering what they say about things too good to be true. For all I know, this could be a "Hitler diaries" type plot, aiming to discredit the legitimate criticism of the official Srebrenica narrative - based on cold, hard facts and forensic criticism of "evidence" produced by the ICTY - through association with crackpot theories.

That said, there is still a mystery of why Oric was put through a show trial - first convicted and sentenced to two years for the laughable charge of "knowing that prisoners were mistreated", then acquitted altogether. Unlike other warlords who served Izetbegovic, only to learn that one of his few principles was that "dead men tell no tales", Oric is still alive - and a prosperous "businessman" at that. I'm honestly curious as to how. But I can't riddle whether him being an Imperial asset, and not just Izetbegovic's, would have made his survival more or less likely. After all, Empire's Serbian assets have been given lengthy sentences (Perisic, Plavsic) or may die before their verdict (Stanisic).

We'll have to wait and see.

The Stench of Puppetry

Imperial envoy P. T. Reeker (Wikipedia)

Asked why he was visiting Serbia this week, Imperial envoy Philip Reeker responded that Belgrade was a "beautiful city." True, but entirely beside the point. Only a complete naif would believe that the real motive of this Foggy Bottom operative (with lengthy prior experience in the Balkans, no less) was sightseeing the indisputable natural beauties of the Serbian capital during the unprecedented midsummer heatwave - rather than, say, the delicate talks concerning the new government of Serbia.

Two months after the general election, reasonably believed to have been rigged, Serbia has a President and a parliament, but no cabinet yet. At first it appeared that the previous alliance of coalitions around the Democrats and the Socialists would be in charge again, until the Socialists switched partners and began talking to the Progressives.

(If you need a cheat sheet to keep track who's who, look here.)

All of a sudden the Empire noticed that the Socialists' leader used to be an aide to Slobodan Milošević; this bothered them not a bit four years ago, when his "pragmatism" enabled the Democrats' total takeover of state and institutions of society. Even though the new, Progressive president pledged to be a good and loyal client, the Empire doesn't know whether he can be trusted. So to preclude any possibility of Serbia wiggling out of its chains, Reeker was sent to Belgrade. And after he leaves, another Foggy Bottom official, Philip Gordon, will visit to reinforce the message.

The notoriously unreliable mainstream media in Serbia - largely controlled by the ousted Democrats - are churning out the wildest rumors, so it's difficult to figure out what that message might be. But not impossible.

One possibility is that Reeker and Gordon are trying to put together a "Grand Coalition", between the Progressives and the freshly ousted Democrats, in which the former president and Imperial sycophant Boris Tadić would have a role. Unlikely as this may sound, the Empire did manage to force just such a coalition on Vojislav Koštunica, back in 2007. Granted, the Democrats backstabbed that cabinet at every opportunity, and were directly responsible for toppling that government just as the Empire declared the occupied province of Kosovo "independent" - so that experience alone ought to serve as a cautionary tale.

Another option is that the envoys are not trying to dictate the cabinet's composition as such; Washington doesn't really give a damn who runs Serbia, so long as they remain aware they only rule at Imperial sufferance, and that any power they have is there solely in service of orders from Foggy Bottom. That means not just selling the Serbs of Kosovo down the Ibar River and acquiescing in the occupied province becoming Albania II, but continuing the policies of their predecessor in destroying the rest of Serbia from within. Remember: any size Serbia is too big for Empire's liking, and the only good Serb is an ex-Serb.

By far the most optimistic scenario is that Reeker and Gordon are merely trying to secure the new government's submission on the question of "Kosovia." So long as Belgrade leaves the "independent republic of Thacistan" alone, and delivers the defiant Serb remnant into its "loving" embrace, Washington couldn't care less what else they do. However, that would mean the Empire abandoning the notion of dominating Serbia itself, for both fun and profit. Given that having a puppet Serbia is pretty much the linchpin of Empire's "responsibility to protect" and "atrocity prevention" narrative, how likely is that?

All of the leaders and parties involved in the cabinet dance have pledged to obey the Empire, to greater or lesser extent. Tadić may have been the most flamboyant quisling, but Mlađan Dinkić has been steadily ravaging Serbia's economy for 12 years now. Ivica Dačić hopped on the Imperial bandwagon four years ago. And let's not forget that Tomislav Nikolić "rebooted" himself to be more to Empire's liking when he stopped being a Radical and became Progressive.

Will any of them have the intestinal fortitude to tell Reeker that Empire's vision for Serbia stinks? I doubt it.

Spoiled Wards of Nanny State

The past several days I've had to deal with power, phone and internet outages due to a freak storm that swept through the Imperial capital on Friday. Much as I'm tempted to rail against such poorly set-up infrastructure that tends to collapse under any sort of inclement weather, I'll save it for another time.

What I missed in the ensuing chaos was the storm of vitriol directed at my friend and colleague Ilana Mercer, over the column wherein she criticized the emotional response to the story of the bullied bus monitor. Being as I focus on Imperial shenanigans in my ancestral lands, I had not seen the video of Karen Klein being cruelly mocked by teenage boys. Once I watched it, I found Ilana's conclusion entirely reasonable. Why did Klein just sit there and take it? What has this society come to, when children can bully adults, and the adults are too craven to talk - let alone fight - back?

I hear the same thing is happening in the lands of my birth now. Elementary and high school students bringing weapons, abusing teachers, even threatening and physically assaulting them. But we had wars and societal collapse (a.k.a. "transition"); what's America's excuse?

Even worse than the outrageous behavior of boys on the bus - which would've been unthinkable even a generation ago, as their fathers would have seen to it they couldn't sit down for a while thereafter - was the vitriolic response to Ilana's article. I won't quote any of it, for it is far too foul; see for yourself. Nothing better than displaying one's "compassion" by being contemptuous of someone else, right? What the hell has happened to this country, when people react like this to a reasoned argument, just because their precious feelings are hurt?

And then it struck me: the bus monitor, her tormentors, and those trolls - they were all children. Children of the Nanny State, who's always coddled them from any criticism and taught them they were entitled to everything they could beg, borrow and steal, without any responsibility, ever.

Worse, I know children who have actually exhibited a grasp of logic and the ability to use it. These spoiled brats, real and metaphorical, don't bother. They operate purely on emotion, getting offended, "feeling" this and that (never "thinking" - that'd be presumptuous and might offend Nanny), and ever crying at the top of their lungs when something isn't to their liking. So calling them children is an insult to honest children everywhere - but I'm at a loss for metaphors here.

A semi-literate farmer in the era of Jefferson, Washington and Franklin possessed more reason than most "educated" Americans today (and I daresay many in other countries, also afflicted with nanny-statism). People back then took up arms against what they saw as excessive taxation and meddling - what their descendants today would deride as "not enough government", sadly - and even accepted the challenge to explain why, using the philosophical language of Locke and Hume, talking about liberty, equality before the law and natural rights. Most of their descendants today wouldn't recognize a natural right if it socked them on the jaw. Or identify tyranny, even if it's been systematically pilfering their pockets and their minds for years.

It's a sad state of affairs - pun very much intended. And while I'm sorry Ilana had to deal with the tantrums of spoiled brats, at least her experience offers a lesson to us all about the stunted minds of postmodern "citizens" and their complete disrespect for actual adults.

Foundation of Lies

Bombs for "democracy"

Earlier this month, "Kosovarians" marked the anniversary of their "liberation" - i.e. the beginning of NATO's occupation of the Serbian province claimed by the terrorist KLA. Now, the Kosovo War was illegal and illegitimate, and its conduct doubly so - characterized by barbaric attacks on Serbian infrastructure and civilian targets, with the intent to demoralize and disrupt civilians. Most casualties suffered by the Yugoslav Army were along the Albanian border, while repelling the KLA invasion, and not from NATO airstrikes.

After the armistice was signed, however, the Empire wasn't satisfied merely with selectively applying its terms - it falsified the war's aftermath as well. A commission of "independent experts" was hired to proclaim it "illegal but legitimate." Despite solemn proclamations that the sovereignty of Yugoslavia (and later Serbia) would not be violated, the process of creating the "independent state of Kosovo" began almost right away. But perhaps most importantly, the actual combat reports were falsified in order to create the impression that the war was "won" by air power alone.

As Alexander Cockburn notes in Couterpunch yesterday, that falsification had far-reaching effects:

"[t]he Kosovo campaign’s apparent confirmation that bombs and missiles could achieve a victory at no cost in friendly casualties, and in a good cause too, undoubtedly prepared the political landscape for the automated drone warfare so eagerly embraced by our current leadership."

Indeed, as early as March 2003 it was obvious to some observers that Kosovo provided a precedent for the invasion of Iraq (and subsequently Libya).

Now, if NATO had not in fact beaten the Yugoslav Army, why did Belgrade surrender? The answer is very simple: it didn't. Even Cockburn makes a mistake of saying that Yugoslav President Milošević "accepted the allied terms", attributing that decision to Moscow's betrayal. While Yugoslavia was in fact betrayed by the puppet government of Boris Yeltsin - which some have argued played a crucial role in Yeltsin's subsequent demise and the rise of Vladimir Putin - it happened following the armistice, not prior.

The terms agreed upon in Kumanovo and built into UNSCR 1244 were different from NATO's demands prior to the war, in three crucial respects: NATO accepted UN authority over the province, there was no clause giving the Albanians independence after three years, and there was no mention of NATO's open access to the rest of Serbia (the infamous Appendix B of the Rambouillet ultimatum). On paper at least, NATO did not win an unconditional victory. That's why they proceeded to creatively reinterpret the paper.

Cheating the Serbs by altering the deal at gunpoint was one thing. Wrecking what was left of international law to establish the "independent Republic of Kosovo," was something else altogether. But perhaps worst of all, the falsified narrative of Kosovo as both the "good war" and a successful one has contributed to the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disaster of Libya and the bloodshed in Syria. Something similar happened with the deceptive success of the "revolution" in Serbia (2000), leading to its replication around the world.

The lies then beget atrocities, which beget more lies. And so on, until the whole thing comes crashing down, in fire and blood.

Life Imitating Art

HBO's recent comedy hit Veep was inspired - well, adapted from - a fantastic British comedy called  The Thick of It, which shows politics from the (sordid, self-serving, incompetent) inside. The creator of both shows is Armando Ianucci, who was recently honored with the OBE (in a funny twist, this prompted a Twitter war with Blair spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who is generally assumed to be the inspiration for the character of Malcolm Tucker on the show).

Showing just how accurately Ianucci's comedy skewers British politicians is a video of actual events that was uploaded to YouTube yesterday, and has since gone viral. It shows the EU commissar for foreign relations, Baroness Ashton, panicking before meeting the new president of Serbia (who visited Brussels last week), because she doesn't know what he looks like!

Fellow Brit Robert Cooper, Ashton's envoy for the "talks" between Serbia and the self-proclaimed "Republic of Kosovo", is no help. "Neither do I," he responds to Ashton's request. Fortunately, an aide has a picture, and Ashton is soon happily grinning next to the visiting Serb.

The ignorance is particularly embarrassing considering that Nikolić had been a presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008, narrowly losing to EU's preferred quisling Boris Tadić; upon winning this time, he was criticized by numerous EU officials for his "nationalism" and statements challenging the Official Truth about the Yugoslav Wars. And they don't even know what he looks like!

Yes, they really are that incompetent. And far less powerful than they seem.

A Scoop of Quisling Pabulum

It isn't often that I want to facepalm when watching RT, but yesterday was one such moment.

Serbia's new President just returned from Brussels, where he basically assured the Eurocrats he  would continue the suicidal policies of his predecessor and EU/US drone, Boris Tadić. But Serbia doesn't have a new cabinet yet, so figuring out whether its policies will actually change remains a matter for speculation.

I suppose RT thought it would be a good idea to bypass the political operatives and speak to a diplomat, whose job after all is to represent the country, regardless of who were in charge. After all, as English diplomat Henry Wotton once famously observed, an ambassador is a "honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." So they interviewed Serbia's Ambassador to the UK, Dejan Popović. Now, in a normal country, their assumption would have been entirely warranted. But remember, this is Serbia we're talking about. And in post-2000 Serbia, the "good of his country" part was officially redacted from that observation, and replaced with "for the EU and the Empire."

"Serbian" ambassador to the UK

Two minutes on Wikipedia, or even the Embassy's own website, could have saved them the trouble. Popović, a former law professor, was Deputy Finance Minister in the 2001-2004 DOS government, and subsequently deputy chancellor of the Belgrade University. Before becoming ambassador, he was on president Тadić's "privy council." He may claim not to be affiliated with any party, but how plausible is that? In post-2000 Serbia, no one can get even menial jobs without party connections. Yet this man was a deputy minister, vice-chancellor of the country's biggest university, member of the president's inner circle and an ambassador, supposedly without any party pull. Not possible. The only question is only which party, the Democrats or the disgraced bankster G-17, which has now morphed into United Regions?

Judging by the stupidities he spewed in the interview, it could be either. Supposedly the voters didn't care for the EU or Kosovo, but were "not satisfied with the performance of the economy." So that's how one says "you bastards ruined the country so badly, we're eating out of trash bins" in European, the language of the ruling quisling cult! More importantly, however, the only basis for his conclusion are the official election results. Which, let's remember, were absurdly unreal, doctored and tampered with. Anyone trying to make sense of them is wasting time, as they are nonsensical.

The way Popović prattles on about the economy is simply offensive, as if Serbia magically woke up in its present predicament, and this development had nothing whatsoever to do with his Democrat-bankster bosses. Nope, must have been unicorns from outer space who indebted the country to 45% of the GDP, brought unemployment to 25%, and put the country in a position where there would be no choice but to "enter a very strict domain of austerity measures".

That's rich, by the way, coming from a government that's grown in size even as it mercilessly suffocated every productive endeavor in the country. Božidar Đelić, Popović's direct superior in the DOS government, was nicknamed "the Flayer" (Derikoža) for the array of taxes he imposed upon the economy devastated by war and sanctions. Somehow I don't see the new Serbian government getting any smaller, lowering taxes on productive enterprises, or stopping the funding of soul-sucking NGOs. Oh yes, that's a pretty paradox right there, a government drowning the country in debt while giving 44 million Euros annually to fund the "non-governmental organizations" by and large focused on destroying the country from within! That's like deliberately infecting someone with AIDS, then feigning surprise that they are bleeding to death from Ebola.

Asked whether it was feasible for Serbia to pursue EU annexation and stay friends with Russia, he gushed that it absolutely was. Why, such "very good friends of Russia, for instance Bulgaria or Croatia" were in the EU or about to join! Um, last I heard, both of those were members of NATO and Washington's obedient vassals. How did he figure they were "friends of Russia"? Is that like the "friends of Syria"?

What about NATO membership? Oh no, no, Tadić said Serbia would be neutral, and the Constitution said Kosovo was part of Serbia. Surely no politician can disobey the Constitution, right? Or say one thing to his people and the other to the Empire? Right?

The ambassador showcased the "depth" of his economic and political understanding by arguing that the EU was a lofty collection of noble values, which will outlast the economic and fiscal woes. He best not leave the kiddy-pool without a life vest. The EU was built on a promise of prosperity through welfare statism. Clearly, that concept is now collapsing - as is its American variation, prosperity through oligarchy and conquest. Which country is actually prospering, debt-free and trying to hammer out a new form of government that would guarantee the liberty of its citizens without devolving into teleoperated mob rule? You've guessed it: Russia.

But the straw that broke the back of the proverbial camel was Popović's handling - or rather, mangling - of the Srebrenica question. Namely, president-elect Nikolić had recently told a radio show that Srebrenica was a horrific war crime, but not genocide - for which he was condemned by Bosnian Muslims, Brussels and Washington alike.

The Ambassador had plenty of room to maneuver here. Nikolić did condemn the atrocity, and executing POWs is bad enough there is no need to gild the lily by defining it as "genocide." The  ICJ verdict that keeps getting mentioned actually rejected the claim that "genocide" happened in Bosnia, and they only referred to Srebrenica as such because of a deliberate decision to take the verdicts of the ICTY (unlike the ICJ, an illegitimate court) at face value. Yet there is a growing body of level-headed evidence showing that the ICTY manifestly failed to prove the case for genocide in Srebrenica. Even the infamous parliamentary resolution promoted by the Tadic regime described Srebrenica as a "serious war crime", never mentioning the word "genocide."

No serious diplomat would allow himself to admit to genocide, regardless of his personal feelings in the matter, and even if it were true (which, again, is very much debatable). Instead, Popović did just that, and even reinforced it by saying he ought to know, as a lawyer and law professor! For that alone, he should be sacked immediately.

I don't know what RT was expecting out of the interview, but instead of getting a scoop on the new President's policies, what they got instead was a dollop of pabulum from the quisling regime still clinging to power, presented by a pathetic excuse for a diplomat who clearly cares more about the Brussels Reich than about his own country and people.

D'oh.

New Boss, Same as Old Boss

New face, same promises: Nikolic in Brussels

Though the jury was out on it for a few weeks, it is now apparent that the election of Tomislav Nikolic to Serbian presidency was leveraged into a victory of the Empire. Nikolic has just returned from Brussels professing undying devotion to the EU, which means he intends to continue Tadic's suicidal course.

On the other hand, the Imperial media are using his election as the opportunity to demonize Serbia once more (not that they need much of an excuse). In turn, Nikolic's handlers are invoking this to tell the confused Serbs, "Look, he's a nationalist! He's not actually a quisling! He's just pretending to be a quisling so he can fool the Empire. Trust him!"

If that's an act, give the man an Oscar right now.

Meanwhile, the cabinet talks are still ongoing. Yesterday a tabloid owned by the Democrats (most of them are) claimed that an agreement was reached for a grand coalition of the Democrats, Socialists, Liberal-Democrats and United Regions (reference my handy guide to Serbian politics if this is confusing). The rumor was never confirmed, but it spread through Serbia like wildfire. Meanwhile, the Progressives are talking to the Socialists and, well, whoever.

No doubt there will be someone from the previous government in the new one, making Serbian politics much like those of the Bosnian Federation. In other words, even if someone had in mind to reform the system, there's no way that can be done in a precarious coalition with a partner that benefited from that system. Vojislav Kostunica and Zlatko Lagumdzija have had to learn this the hard way. I doubt Nikolic is even interested in trying.

Until a prime minister is appointed, however, Serbia's day-to-day affairs are run by the previous cabinet - only now the ministers have even less responsibility for their actions, because they are lame ducks. Whose policies are they actually implementing? The ones in effect before the May 6 general election? Those of their respective party leaderships? Those of the new President? Well, hardly, because the president isn't supposed to make policy. One can forgive the confusion of people who didn't know this, since all they've had to go on is Tadic, who notoriously violated that principle by staying the boss of the Democratic Party while holding the office of President, and essentially ran the country as an autocrat - albeit one teleoperated from Brussels and Washington.

Nikolic and the Progressives have shown nothing to indicate they had any sort of vision for Serbia, or even how they intend to do things differently. In the current vacuum, the Empire and the old regime are doing their best to ensure that even if they decided to try and untangle Serbia from the web of servitude to the Empire, they would never get a chance.

No wonder that a country where politics comes down to parties calling themselves Democrats, Socialists and Progressives is in such horrible shape. I don't know what sort of reaction might emerge to Serbia's corrupt, quisling oligarchy, but I wouldn't be the least surprised if it turned out to be decidedly non-political.

Following the Money

Despite numerous cogent analyses, and even frank admissions by former and current Imperial officials, indicating that their interventions around the world - and specifically in the Balkans - have been motivated by considerations of power, there are still some who maintain that the wars were all about the money.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the force driving politicians. Most of us normal folk want money because with enough of it (and how much is ever enough?) we think we can afford all the comforts of life we desire. But once you reach a certain level of power, money ceases to be an object. You don't have to worry about purchasing things; you can simply take them.

The other day an Imperial propaganda outfit revealed that Wesley Clark, the "General who led NATO’s campaign against Serbia in 1999" (that's one way of putting it) has asked Kosovo's government (sic) "for a licence to transform the country’s untapped coal reserves into fuel". Sure enough, a chorus arose: See, Kosovo was all about the ore, the oil, the mineral wealth!

No. Kosovo was about breaking Serbia, so as to conquer the Balkans and establish an axis with Turkey and the Middle East, while erecting a barrier around Russia. All ancient geopolitics, really. Any potential profit for Empire's camp-followers was merely icing on the cake. But the cake itself is hegemony in Eurasia.

The following is adapted from two emails sent to me by an astute reader, familiar with Balkans business deals. I won't reveal his name; suffice to say I have full confidence he knows what he's talking about.

The phrasing "License for Oil" is a bit deceiving. If you look at this API article (which can be read in full for free) then it seems that his company is seeking a license to 1) explore for coal, and, if found, 2) convert coal into gas and 3) convert gas into synthetic fuel ("oil").  If you look at the website of his company, Envidity Inc., you will see that they are already developing a coal-to-synfuel project in Mongolia, where they have obtained an exclusive license for coal extraction in an area of 774 sq. km.

On their page "About Us" you will see that they do not hide their association with Wesley Clark, and they are not entirely ignorant of his glorious military past: "...In his last assignment as Supreme Allied Commander Europe he led NATO forces to victory in Operation Allied Force, saving 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing." [!!!]

Looking over their website from a business point of view, it is clear that they are a bunch of experts with an idea, but no money or financial backing so far. They are betting everything on the theory of "peak oil"...  In addition, Kosovo's energy and transportation infrastructure is atrocious (probably not much better than Mongolia's), so unless the energy to run the conversion process will come from the coal itself then their facility would be a net consumer of electricity from the Kosovo power grid, and Kosovo is already a net importer of electricity, I believe.

Anyway, the thing seems to me like a pipe dream. Even their Mongolian project so far is merely at the stage of obtaining rights for the coal, and these people do not look to me like people who know about financing, building, and operating large chemical plants. (And they seem to be saying that this project would provide royalties to the Kosovo regime of €300 million/year, which implies sales of billions of euros per year, which would need a very large plant.) So unless we see them first succeed in finding someone with the pockets deep enough to backstop a construction project of a billion or two euros in Mongolia, we should conclude that they are just dreamers.

Sure, coal is known to exist in Kosovo, and in fact it is the only source that they have so far for producing electricity. And sure, there exist technologies to convert coal into gas and then into liquid. But these technologies are so expensive that I am not aware of any such plants operating at the present time. Here is an article posted yesterday about such a plant that is going to be constructed in West Virginia: this plant, which will produce 18,000 barrels of synfuel a day, is expected to cost $4 billion, so you can imagine how much Wesley Clark's plant would cost that "could eventually produce up to 15.9 million litres (100,000 barrels) a day". And no matter how many NATO troops may be available for free to guard their facilities, if they employ any of the local people then they will face horrendous problems with theft, corruption, careless maintenance, and so on.

The important thing is that due to this depression almost no projects of over €250 million are moving forward anywhere in SE Europe, and this would be a project of over €1,000 million. And it is entirely a gamble on "peak oil". In addition, the project would be in Kosovo, and I have the impression that no significant infrastructure, industrial, or energy project has moved forward in Kosovo since "independence", not even wind parks or hydro plants of €5-50 million, much less something of €1,000 million.

A few months ago I did some research, trying to find any register of "environmental impact assessments" (EIAs) in Kosovo. I found that the Priština regime did indeed publish a very rudimentary EIA law back in about 2004, requiring significant projects to file EIA studies and obtain EIA decisions. But I found no evidence at all - even in the Kosovo Official Register - that any such filings or decisions had ever been made.  I think to date it is all merely hypothetical.

More attractive than the coal would be the minerals, since the mountains of the Balkans are rich in all kinds of minerals, and the highest mountains - around KosMet - have some of the most exotic minerals. But if the Trepča mine complex is almost completely idle because no foreign investors have been willing to step forward, you can imagine that for an economically questionable project like coal liquefaction it will be harder still to obtain money from abroad.

So you see, Clark's project is a pie in the sky. It is much more likely, in my estimation, to be a front for some serious money-laundering than ever to actually produce any fuel. I suppose Clark figured he'd never be chairman of the Joint Chiefs, so he's settling for the next best thing, trying to cash in his "popularity" to profit from a snake-oil scheme. It's a long way from a self-styled noble knight saving the Albanians-in-distress to a vulture picking at their refuse - but I can't say I'm particularly surprised.

The Speed of Truth

With last year's Libyan intervention proceeding according to an accelerated Balkans script, and Syrian "freedom fighters" going to "learn" from KLA terrorists, it was just a matter of time before a "massacre" would manifest and be used as justification for intervention in the name of "stopping genocide."

Enter Houla, a village where over 100 people were murdered, allegedly by the "Assad's regime." The story was the stuff of headlines in the mainstream Western media for days - and then it vanished. Why?

Because it has emerged that Houla was a frame job: the massacred civilians were loyal to the government, while the methods of murder suggested it was the "rebels" who did the killing. Daniel McAdams has more of the story on the LRC blog, quoting a variety of sources, and concludes:

"Syrian government responsibility for Houla was a lie; it was in fact a provocation by the rebels to get the Libya-style foreign intervention they need to overthrow the government. Will anyone listen now that a major mainstream outlet has reported it?"

Now, I doubt anyone will listen; the Imperial establishment has long disdained facts when they dared interfere with its conjured narrative. Even if the general public takes this story to heart, expect it to be taken by another forthcoming bit of atrocity porn. And if in some unlikely case it doesn't swallow the case for "saving Syria" by mass-murdering Syrians, the establishment will do it anyway. Just as they did in Libya, or Iraq, or Serbia. Impunity, thy name is Empire.

The silver lining, however, is in the speed with which lies can be debunked, thanks to new technology. It took a decade to get an accurate death toll of the Bosnian War, and years to expose the Racak hoax. But the "gay girl in Damascus" took a few months, and Houla was exposed as a fraud within weeks. That's still not good enough, but it shows promise.

A Message in Blood

There was some confusion in Serbia as to where the "international community" (i.e. the Empire and its long tail of servants) might stand on the newly elected president. After today, there shouldn't be.

Unarmed Serb civilian "threatens" NATO "peacekeepers"

In a shocking repeat of last September's bloodshed, this morning American KFOR troops fired upon Serb civilians trying to stop the demolition of the roadblocks in northern Kosovo. There are reports of 3-4 seriously injured people. KFOR immediately claimed several of their own soldiers were injured, but didn't provide any proof. Same as last time.


The roadblocks were erected after the KLA regime in Pristina tried to seize the "border" with Serbia in July last year. Serbs living in the north of the province refuse to recognize the illegally declared Albanian state, and continue to resist occupation.

The rest of their kin in the province has either been ethnically cleansed, or lives in ghettos surrounded by barbed wire and "protected" by the same NATO troops that established the Albanian "state" in the first place. While officially claiming to defend Serbia's claim to Kosovo, the quisling government in Belgrade has done everything to surrender the province. But the Serbs actually living there refuse to submit; in a referendum in February, they told both Belgrade and the KLA regime to bugger off.

NATO's "KFOR" mission has repeatedly tried to dismantle the roadblocks, asserting they were entitled to "freedom of movement" everywhere in "Kosovia." The local Serbs have defied them with sticks, stones and bodies, nothing more. There was an unofficial truce during the winter, as heavy snows blanketed the province (though contrary to KFOR's hopes, that didn't dampen the Serbs' resolve any).

Initially, the Serbs were blocking all traffic. But with KFOR outposts at risk of disease from waste accumulation, the blockade was relaxed: KFOR vehicles could pass, but Albanian "officials" and their EU enablers were still banned. Despite continuing to insist on unconditional passage, KFOR took the deal. According to local Serb leaders, after today, that deal is off.

Former UNMIK official and U.S. diplomat Gerard Gallucci - an outspoken critic of the occupation tactics, even as he supports "Kosovia" as "reality" - argued earlier this month that the Albanians aren't interested in a negotiated solution, only surrender. So they've been trying to provoke violence, in order to get NATO to do the job for them.

Albanian motives are hardly a mystery: they covet land, and hate the Serbs viscerally (as a legacy of the Ottoman era, not because of phantom "human rights violations"). But what is the Empire thinking? Though they've been used as an example of America-loving Muslims (though the Muslim angle is routinely downplayed in the West when Albanians commit acts of terrorism), creating the "Independent state of Kosovia" isn't really about the Albanians at all.

To conquer the Balkans, one must conquer the Serbs. To make sure the Serbs stay conquered - which a succession of empires in the course of history has found a challenging endeavor, to say the least - they must be lobotomized. And the way to do this is to destroy the nexus of their identity, the legend of their heroic defiance to Ottoman conquerors in the Battle of Kosovo. Once the Serbs embarked on the long, arduous road to freedom from the Ottoman Empire in 1804, they didn't stop fighting till they've liberated Kosovo - which they did in the First Balkan War of 1912. Ever since then, enemies have tried to take it away: from Austria-Hungary in WW1, Nazi Germany in WW2, the Communists since 1945, and now the Atlantic Empire.

Trouble is, there are still Serbs who refuse to surrender. Besieged, blockaded, bombed, betrayed by the quisling cult that rules in Belgrade - nothing seems to work. And nothing will. When people are set on liberty or death, there is little an aspiring conqueror can do. That's something KFOR and the Empire still have to understand.

Wherefore the Distortions?

On the pages of the Washington Post, Serbophobia tends to be impersonal: just your everyday sneering at nations standing in Empire's way.  Even the famously wrong Richard Cohen sticks to using the standard manual of Serbophobia, hitting the appropriate cliches in order to make a point about supporting interventionism.

Then there is the Washington Times, a paper claiming to be as conservative (i.e. GOP) as the Post is liberal (i.e. Democratic). True enough, over the years, the Times has printed criticism of the Democrats' Balkans policies. And in 2007, they did publish an unusually frank staff editorial condemning the "perception management" in the case of the Fort Dix Six. On the other hand, they employ Jeffrey T. Kuhner.

A regular columnist at the Times, Kuhner can be relied on for a good hysterical rant about the "Evil Serbs" just about anytime. In 2003, he blamed the Serbs for jihad in Bosnia. In 2004, he saw the sky falling when the Serbian Radical Party got the biggest chunk of votes in the election that saw the demise of DOS. Yet the apocalypse he foresaw failed to materialize. Now he's at it again, arguing that the election of Tomislav Nikolic to Serbian presidency is a "vote for war" in the Balkans.

Kuhner's latest screed is simply stuffed with so many factual errors that arguing with them would take up three times his word count: a clever strategy, when letters to the editor are typically limited to 150 words. But at its core is the smear of the newly elected President of Serbia as "neo-fascist", and the Serbs themselves as Nazi Germany reborn.

Per Kuhner:

"Mr. Nikolic embodies the worst forms of Serbian nationalism, whose ideological roots go back to the “Chetniks” - the term for Serbian royalists - of World War II. Led by Drazen Mihailovic, the Chetniks formed a racist far-right-wing movement that sought to forge an ethnically pure Great Serb empire incorporating Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, most of Bosnia and large chunks of Croatia. Allied to Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy, the Chetniks engaged in murderous ethnic cleansing, slaughtering tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, Croatians and Kosovar Albanians." (emphasis added)

Where to begin? First off, Kuhner doesn't even know the proper party line, which is that "Serbian nationalism" supposedly dates back to the 19th century (and Ilija Garashanin's "Nachertanie"). The whole "Greater Serbia" claim was manufactured by Austria-Hungary in the early 1900s, to create a pretext for a war against the independent principality that obstructed its plans for hegemony in the Balkans (a war Vienna finally got in 1914, but ended up not liking very much).

Kuhner can't even get Mihailovic's name right - it's Dragoljub, shortened to "Drazha", not "Drazen". "Chetnik" is actually a Serbian term for a guerrilla, dating back to the conflicts of the early 1900 (in particular the 1912-13 Balkan Wars). Mihailovic's forces were actually the Royal Yugoslav Army, a legitimate resistance movement fighting against the Axis occupation. The claim they fought for an ethnically pure Serbian state is a lie concocted by Communist propaganda, as are the allegations of their mass murder of innocent civilians. That was actually the policy of the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia; established in April 1941, it included most of present-day Croatia, Bosnia and parts of Serbia, and engaged in wholesale genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma.

Kuhner doesn't mention Nazi Croatia even once. Yet he can't possibly believe it's irrelevant, since he claims the "Chetniks" were allied with Mussolini's Italy. What actually happened is that there was a truce between the Royalists and the Italian troops stationed in southern "Croatia" (but not in Montenegro or Albanian-occupied Kosovo) - but only because Mussolini's men actually opposed the Croatians' mass murders. Why would they fight the Italians, when the Italians were trying to prevent genocide?

So "fascist" was the royalist resistance, Mihailovic was decorated by President Truman, and his men rescued over 500 Allied aviators (including the men who bombed Serb civilians), at great cost in lives. Kept under wraps for decades so as not to offend the Communists in Yugoslavia, the story only recently came to light, even as its heroic protagonists pass away.

But none of this fits Kuhner's narrative, so it isn't mentioned. He barrels on:

"As Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s, Belgrade launched brutal wars of aggression against Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. More than 250,000 were killed and nearly 2 million ethnically cleansed."

Here "disintegration" serves to sanitize the violent and illegal secessions by the above-named entities, accompanied by wholesale murder of Serbs and the resurrection of Nazi-era symbols and policies. To cover this up, propagandists concocted the story of "Serb aggression" and deliberately invoked Nazi imagery to defame the Serbs. Kuhner recycles the old, debunked figure of 250,000 dead, and doesn't count one million Serbs who were ethnically cleansed.

He then proceeds to talk of "death camps" in Croatia and Bosnia, quoting outlandish claims of alleged survivors - whereas even the Hague Inquisition (established for the purpose of blaming the Serbs for everything) has shied from such allegations. Even the most outspoken professional Serbophobes haven't dared to claim that Ovcara was a "death camp" for 2000 people, as opposed to a farm where about 200 Croatian POWs were executed. Until Kuhner, that is.

Kuhner's diatribe is basically another example of what happens when the official distortions of WW2 history are allowed to go unchallenged: we see a triumph of Hitler's allies and Hitler's policies, while those opposing them get smeared as "fascists".

Why would Kuhner engage in these distortions of history, so extensive they cannot possibly be accidental or a product of ignorance? He has a degree in history, and even taught it for a couple of years, if his Wikipedia page is correct. But the page also says he was "born in Montreal, Canada to Croatian immigrant parents."

The only conclusion I can draw from Kuhner's op-ed - which is just the latest in a long series of Serbophobic diatribes - is that he's harping on about Serbs-as-Nazis in order to cover for the real Nazi allies: the very same Croats, "Bosnians" and ethnic Albanians claiming to be victims of "Serb aggression."

If that's "conservatism" then Edmund Burke is spinning in his grave.

Rise of the "Undertaker"

No, this isn't an article about staged wrestling, but rather about the (somewhat) surprising triumph of Tomislav Nikolić in yesterday's presidential election in Serbia. Contrary to "journalist" fantasies, his graveyard-related moniker has nothing to do with the phantom "gruesome reputation... organising recruitment to Serbian paramilitaries to fight in Croatia and Bosnia" [sic], and everything to do with the fact that he once held a job as manager of a cemetery.

His enemies - who generally never held honest jobs in their lives, but had really good spin doctors - used this to smear him as a man who'd "bury" Serbia if elected. Meanwhile, they did "everything they could" (in the favorite phrase of the now ex-President) to destroy Serbia and salt the earth in their wake. They even resorted to wholesale fraud to ensure their continued rule. Yesterday's vote brought those plans to a halt.

Or did it? For all the bleating of Western "journalists", spoon-fed sordid political pornography by their well-paid Serbian (or rather, Serbophobic) sources, Nikolić is not the same man he was four years ago.

Having lost the second presidential election to Boris Tadić, and seeing his party once again left out of the cabinet - cobbled together in a mockery of electoral results by Western ambassadors - Nikolić snapped. He left the Radical Party, whose caretaker leader he'd been, and founded the Progressives. He also hired former American ambassador William Montgomery as a consultant, went to Brussels and Washington to pledge fealty, changed his tune on Serbia getting annexed by the EU, and offering a platform filled with nothing but fluff. His criticism of the Tadić regime boiled down to, "We'd do the same thing, only better."

Especially interesting was his choice of party name. It is possible it was chosen for him by Montgomery or some other foreign consultant, since progressivisim is all the rage in the West right now. But to the few who still have a working knowledge of Serbian history, the choice was very symbolic: the Progressives used to be the ruling party under the corrupt, Austrophile King Milan Obrenović, and were famously defeated by the Radicals in 1887. They were so hated by the people, that their final convention in 1889 was dispersed by an angry mob throwing stones and wielding clubs. For over a hundred years, their name was mud - until Nikolić resurrected it.

Wouldn't it be par for the course if the "nationalist" Nikolić was really an Imperial agent? It is a distinct possibility. What is certain, however, is that the Empire will now try to pressure him to continue Tadić's policy of unconditional surrender in order to prove he's not a "nationalist." It is, of course, an impossible quest: the moment Nikolić gives them an inch, they will move the goalposts and demand more, just as they've done with Tadić.

But while Tadić was ideologically committed to Imperial supremacy and even ran his mouth about the need to "transform society" and "change the mentality" of the Serbian people so they would fit better into the Brave New World of EUtopia, Nikolić's principal support comes from the frustrated, disenfranchised Serbs who still care about their identity, tradition, culture, history and nation. He wasn't their ideal candidate by any stretch, but they voted for him because Tadić was worse.

By the virtue of that victory, Nikolić is in the unenviable position of having many expectations to meet and very little room to maneuver. If he defies the Empire, expect the storm of abuse to increase. But if he chooses to be another Tadić, he will quickly draw the wrath of the Serbians - without having Tadić's media machinery and direct foreign backing to shield him. The question then remains who will Nikolić fear more, the foreign overlords or his own folk.

If this really turns out to be a ploy to replace a worn-out puppet with a fresh one (while fooling the Serbs they had a choice in the matter), it may well explode in its authors' faces. The fall of Tadić has opened the floodgates of frustration. No amount of marketing tricks will close them again.

Vampire Journalism

No sooner had Ratko Mladic's "trial" before the Hague Inquisition opened today, reports began appearing in the press of his "taunting the victims". Supposedly, Mladic motioned towards the "Mothers of Srebrenica" sitting in the observation gallery with a throat-slitting gesture.

The claim accompanied the descriptions of Mladic as the organizer of the "murder of 8,000 unarmed men and boys" in Srebrenica, which was of course the "worst massacre in Europe since World War Two," easily inducing the casual observer to instantly dislike Mladic.

The problems with this "trial" are many, from the ICTY lacking legitimacy to try anyone, the fact that it writes its own ex posto facto laws and rules, has standards of evidence that would be laughed out of any legitimate courtroom, to the consideration that the people brought before it have already been lynched in the court of public opinion, and therefore cannot have a fair trial even if the Tribunal itself weren't a travesty.

But the story of the taunting throat-slitting gesture is a prime example of journalistic misconduct when it comes to the Balkans, a case of not just gilding the lily, but of actually reversing the facts of the case.

You see, the throat-slitting gesture was first mentioned in June last year, when it supposedly took place at Mladic's "status conference" hearing. News agencies and papers relying on their feeds reported that the general had taunted his (alleged) victims with a throat-slitting gesture. However, some careful research by an observant reader quickly produced the actual story:

Kada Hotic, who has relatives who were killed at Srebrenica, said Mladic taunted her when she threatened him.
“I told him he will pay the price for murdering my son,” she said, adding that she drew her finger across her throat. Mladic could not hear her, but she said he gestured back, holding his thumb and forefinger close together to indicate she was insignificant. (emphasis added)

So, the gesture did happen. But it wasn't Mladic who made it, but a Muslim observer! She admitted to it, proudly - and the only interpretation of Mladic's finger gesture is hers, too. Now, it is obvious why the AP would mis-report that Mladic had made the motion - it makes the designated villain look properly villainous, and fits the propaganda narrative. But how dare they, when it was so obviously not true? Did they think they wouldn't get caught?

Apparently so. Until someone did catch them, and informed blogger Julia Gorin. She then sent letters to the offending agencies and newspapers, pointing out the problem. Finally, on September 30, 2011, the Toronto Star - one of the papers that ran AP's story on July 4, issued the following correction:

"Online News Correction for September 30
Published On Fri Sep 30 2011
A July 4 article about the war crimes tribunal of Gen. Ratko Mladic incorrectly stated that Mladic drew his finger across his throat while looking at the public gallery. In fact, a person in the gallery made the threatening gesture to Mladic." (emphasis added)

The Star's correction prompted a chain reaction of retractions by other papers, and the AP itself. Gorin's blog entry provides a complete list and many details of the case.

Of course, the retraction got very little attention, while the lie of Mladic threatening the women in the gallery got spotlight treatment. And now the story has been raised from the dead, reported in the exact same words - again, with no visual evidence to back it up, no indication that it refers to an event from last year, or that it was originally mis-reported in a manner that merited an official retraction!

There you have it, folks: vampire journalism, courtesy of your mainstream media. Ready the garlic and the stakes.

Victory Day

"To our Victory!" Soviet propaganda poster, 1945 (source)

Sixty-seven years ago, Nazi Germany officially surrendered to the Soviet forces in the ruins of Berlin. The "Thousand-year Reich" had lasted not even a dozen. Lacking courage to face defeat and blaming everyone but himself for it, Hitler had committed suicide a week earlier. The war that had devastated Europe for a second time in a generation was officially over.

But who won? Oh, we're supposed to believe it was the "good guys," the noble Allies who bravely sacrificed millions of lives to stop the unprecedented evil of Nazism and its genocidal plans. Yet the cold hard truth is that no one but the Jewish resistance fought Hitler because of what he was doing to the Jews. British, French, Soviet or American governments couldn't have cared less. They all entered the war for entirely selfish reasons: London and Paris to keep their empires, Washington to make America into one, and Stalin to stay alive.

Of all the major Allied powers, only the people of the Soviet Union actually had a legitimate reason to fight: they were being invaded and murdered en masse. Perhaps that is why only the Russians still commemorate the victory today.

The West doesn't dwell on the actual facts of WW2. It prefers useful myths, such as that D-Day and the campaign in France equaled the struggle on the Eastern Front (which was 90% of the actual war effort against Germany). Or that the war was about stopping the "Final Solution." Or that the Nuremberg trials were about the genocide (the Nazis were actually condemned for starting the war). Or that Pearl Harbor somehow deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki in return. Hypocritical cries of "Munich!" and reductio ad Hitlerum are used against the ruler of any country the American Empire wishes to invade.

Yet when you look at the EU, it resembles nothing so much as what Nazi slogans described as the "European family of nations" working together for the prosperity of all. The whole endeavor has roots in National-Socialism. Modern managerial state lives up to Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato." Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. All demands to retain national sovereignty, or stop social engineering through the flood of immigrants and the tyranny of diversity, are branded "fascist". Meanwhile, EU bodies adopt resolutions equating Fascism, Nazism and Communism, spitting in the face of Russia - a nation itself grievously harmed by Communism, but refusing to dishonor the banner under which it bore the brunt of the fighting against Hitler.

Then there is the bizarre situation that the map of Europe today looks suspiciously like the one from 1942, and all of Hitler's allies in the Balkans are now the staunchest allies of the American Empire. In that corner of Europe, at least, WW2 is still being fought. Only this time, the Luftwaffe and the panzers are supposedly the "good guys".

In April 1941 Hitler made it a personal mission to obliterate a country called Yugoslavia. Partly to make an example of anyone attempting to weasel out of surrendering to his demands, and partly to indulge grudges from the previous war. Remember, WW1 started with an Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia. After two failures, the Austrians and their German and Bulgarian allies finally thought they'd crushed the Serbs, only to have them return in 1918 and win a decisive victory that collapsed the Central Powers' southern flank.

So Hitler wiped Yugoslavia off the map. Parts of its territory were annexed directly to the Reich, others given to Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania (an Italian protectorate until 1943, a German ally thereafter). An "independent" Montenegro was set up as an Italian protectorate, while most of today's Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina became the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The remainder was dubbed Serbia and placed under German occupation.

While the Serbs in the NDH faced wholesale extermination (the visceral brutality of which appalled even the Nazis), the brutality of the occupation forces in "Serbia" rivaled that of the Eastern Front. In June 1941, royalists guerrillas (commonly mislabeled "chetniks") launched an uprising against the Germans. With Germans executing up to 100 civilian hostages for every one of their soldiers killed, and 50 for every soldier wounded, the royalists were quickly compelled to adopt a lower profile. Soon they were engaged in a shooting war with the Communists, who launched their own insurrection in June, after Hitler invaded the USSR. While the royalists expected an Anglo-American landing, the Communist waited for the Soviets, meanwhile slaughtering each other and occasionally raiding German supplies.

In the end, the Communists prevailed. By 1944, they had secured British backing, and successfully lobbied the Allies for massive air strikes against cities in Serbia, which did little damage to the German war effort but caused great loss of civilian life in royalist strongholds. In September 1944, Soviet forces – reinforced by Bulgarian troops, who had switched their allegiance from Hitler to Stalin – entered Serbia and drove out the Germans.

Think about that for a second: the territory of Nazi-occupied Serbia had to deal with four years of brutal repression, a civil war, tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Croatia's genocide, heavy bombing by the Allies, and a Communist takeover. Having been thus despoiled, Serbia was then ground into dust by the Communists, who in the true tradition of victim politics claimed the principal problem had been the old kingdom’s alleged "Greater Serbian hegemony", rather than alliances of other groups with Axis powers, and the atrocities they committed.

After the war, the  Communists  made Hitler's dismemberment more or less official. Parts annexed by Germany ended up the "republic" of Slovenia. The NDH was split into Croatia and Bosnia, with Croatia getting the entire Adriatic coast. Montenegro remained separate, while the territories held by Bulgaria became Macedonia. The stump Serbia created by Hitler became the "Republic of Serbia", while the Hungarian- and Albanian-occupied areas in the north and the south became its "autonomous provinces" of Vojvodina and Kosovo. The borders didn't correspond exactly, but the spirit of the division was what counted.

Future generations were taught that “Yugoslavia” had been among the victors in WW2. Official history claimed that Tito's multiethnic Communist partisans were the only real resistance movement, fighting the very few Croatian Ustasha, the Albanian Balli Kombetar, and the worst of the lot - the bloodthirsty Greater Serbian nationalist "chetniks". Any suggestion that the royalists had actually helped the Allied war effort was suppressed - and the West went along with it.

Ten years after Tito's death, the myths collapsed under their own weight, no longer propped by Western credit and Eastern markets. The newly reunited Germany, the nascent European Union and the rising American Empire all saw an opportunity in dismembering Yugoslavia.

What followed was an eerie re-run of the 1940s carnage. Croatia's "democratic" president, Franjo Tudjman, led a NDH revival - but because he was allied with the U.S. and not Hitler this time around, he succeeded where his predecessor failed. In Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic had Washington's support to make a bid for an Islamic state, causing a bloodbath when both Serbs and Croats objected. Albanians were likewise armed and supported to re-establish the "Natural Albania" of 1941-45.

But the cruelest twist was that these Imperial allies accused the Serbs of Nazism - and their PR flacks used Communist propaganda to do so. And they are still at it, even today. The Serbs, for their part, reacted with utter confusion. They didn't create a grievance lobby, as is common in modern politics. Rather, they followed their instinct and history and reached for their guns - fighting first for Yugoslavia, then for independence, then for survival, but all the while unable to understand what was happening. That confusion is also an enduring condition, unfortunately.

Even though they were the principal victims of Nazi aggression, and the overwhelming majority in both the Communist and the royalist resistance movements, the Serbs first became second-class citizens in Yugoslavia (which they allegedly "dominated") and then got smeared as Nazis reborn - by actual Nazi heirs, people who had their own Waffen-SS, two-time winners of WW2. Who would have ever thought to see American bombers, German tanks and Communist propaganda working together towards a goal Hitler once had: to crush Serbia as an example to others.

When Hitler invaded, Yugoslavia had been rotten already. Croats actually greeted the Wehrmacht with flowers. Few have dared ask how Tito could have put Yugoslavia back together, after all that. Yet the answer is very simple: he allowed many of the Nazi collaborators to change their uniforms at the last moment, defecting to the winning team, while smearing the Serb royalists as traitors and quislings, thus imposing moral equivalence. The laundering process was completed in the 1990s, by projecting the stigma of Nazism onto the Serbs.

No wonder only Russia still celebrates Victory Day. In the rest of Europe, it's Hitler's ghost that rejoices.

The Dragon Wins

Sunday was the feast of St. George, the fabled dragonslayer. It was also the day of general elections in Serbia, offering the people there an opportunity to challenge the record of misrule and abuse of their corrupt, unelected quisling regime.

They failed. The dragon won.

Oh, the New York Times is spinning a tale of angry voters turning to "nationalist and populist leaders once allied with Mr. Milosevic" - but conveniently forgets that one of those parties, the supposedly evil Milosevic Socialists, was part of the government for the past four years with Empire's beloved Democrats! (The phrase "supported by Brussels and Washington" actually appears in the article.) A government, remember, that Brussels and Washington put together against the wishes of Serbian voters.

As for Nikolic and his "Progressives," even the clueless NYT reporter calls him a "former pro-Russian hard-liner" (emphasis added) and notes he "had been an ardent supporter of Russia but now says he supports Serbia’s membership in the European Union." Oh, but unnamed "experts" - harpies on Empire's payroll, naturally - say it's all just a ruse, and imply Nikolic is really a Moscow stooge. If only!

For years, Nikolic managed the Radical Party while its leader, Vojislav Seselj, was on trial on trumped-up charges of "hate speech" before the Hague Inquisition. Election after election, the Radicals would win the largest single bloc of votes, but could never form a government, as the various and sundry "democrats" would combine and recombine to stay in power. Nikolic himself nearly defeated Tadic twice, only to narrowly lose in second-round polls accompanied by enormous pressure from abroad and media hysterics at home. So in 2009, probably having had enough of this, he ditched the party, took many of its elected legislators with him, and established the "Progressives" in a hijacking made possible by Serbia's ill-designed laws. Then he went to Brussels and Washington and swore fealty. That is why I don't consider the Progs true opposition; they aren't a part of the outgoing government, but their aim is to become a part of the pro-Empire establishment.

Now, if the results that were announced yesterday are correct - that is, if the elections haven't been rigged or stolen, which is a very distinct possibility - the Empire can rub its hands with glee. As I explained a couple of weeks ago, Washington and Brussels had a stranglehold on Serbian politics already. The Progs are sworn to them. The Socialists will most likely continue their profitable association with the Democrats, only on better terms. And the Democrats get to keep Serbia on course for total destruction. Whether they do it with the help of "United Regions" - the rebranded banksters - or the Empire-worshipping cult of "Reversal", or both, is entirely irrelevant.

The quisling establishment actually benefited from being split into a multitude of parties. This effectively diluted the anger of the electorate, who thought they were punishing the Democrats by voting for their coalition partners. Yes, it's entirely irrational, but there you have it.

On the other hand, the opposition forgot Franklin's memorable phrase, and ended up being hanged separately. The only opposition party that actually made it into the parliament are the passive, waffling Serbian Democrats, who - predictably - said they were "entirely content" with their results. The Radicals didn't even get enough votes to qualify for a single mandate. Depending on whether they successfully challenge the fraud, Dveri might get a seat or two - far less than what they were aiming for.

Apparently, there was also a great deal of invalid, creatively desecrated ballots - which, as predicted, did nothing to invalidate the election and had the effect of helping the quisling establishment win.

There is abundant anecdotal evidence of fraud, theft, bribes and bought votes. But the plural of anecdote is not data. Unless someone actually manages to produce hard evidence of massive fraud, the election is likely to stand. Moscow didn't send observers. There were no cameras at the polls. The Empire has already declared everything was peachy (they would, wouldn't they?). Rotten as it was, it really seems like a done deal.

So, now it gets worse. Whereas over the past four years Serbians could at least say they had an unelected government that worked against the wishes of the majority, this election just seated a parliament that is overwhelmingly in favor of Serbia being the sex slave of Brussels and Washington, only differing on the degree of S&M involved in the relationship.

"Hell: No need to die, you're already there"

The question now is whether there are any people left who will fight this state of affairs, and in what way. I don't know the answer. But I suspect we'll be finding out very soon.

The Goebbels Gambit

This is a tale of two experiments, one deliberate, and one incidental - but both quite interesting.

Photo: onizive.wordpress.com

Back in February, two Serbian artists decided to mock the political establishment (both the regime and the "opposition"). They did so by joining the Democrats, Serbian Democrats, Progressives, Socalists, Liberal Democrats, United Regions and another, minor party - all at the same time! To all these parties, they offered a "marketing program" which was entirely plagiarized from a 1928 treatise by Joseph Goebbels, called "Knowledge and Propaganda". Until the duo made their deception public, no one had figured out the Goebbels connection, nor did they realize these "bright young things" were prostituting themselves to a half-dozen parties all at once.

That in itself is quite a story, demonstrating empirically that Serbia's mainstream political parties are callous as well as clueless, obsessed with gaining power at all cost. I'm not really surprised that nobody recognized the Goebbels treatise, though. Few know much about Hitler's chief propagandist save for the fact that he was the Reich's minister of propaganda, and fewer still have read any of his work. Furthermore, a lot of the manipulation techniques he wrote about and used are still in use around the world, because they are effective. Sad but true. Also, expecting the Serbs to remember history - which has been systematically corrupted by a succession of regimes over the past 70 years, if not more - is a tall order these days. Even Americans routinely fail the Hitler test.

But the way this story ended up being reported is an experiment as well - one that concerns journalism, rather than politics. Imperial propaganda mills such as RFE and B92 set the tone, suggesting that Serbs like Nazi ideas. Inter Press Service actually headlined its story "Nazi Propaganda Gets a Makeover in Serbia." While technically true, it misses the point, doesn't it? Instead of the story being how two young artists pranked the mainstream political establishment, it ends up tarring the Serbs (yet again) with the Nazi brush.

Left out of the story was the notable fact that nearly all the parties that got pranked are part of the establishment created by the October 2000 coup, which was organized, financed and managed from Washington. This includes the Socialists, who in 2008 accepted Imperial dominance and signed a pact with the Democrats. The Progressives came into being when a former Radical leader defected to the "Empire is great" camp. One would think it might prove embarrassing for the Empire if its "democratic progressive social liberal democrats" turned out to be Nazi sympathizers, if unwittingly. Then again, maybe not.

The one exception are the Serbian Democrats - a party whose leader once fronted the 2000 coup, but which has opposed the Empire ever since. While they don't take marching orders from the U.S. Embassy like everyone else, they haven't been terribly effective, either - preferring to strategically withdraw from confrontations and more given to sulking than leading. Their leader translated the Federalist Papers, so they should have known better than to like the disguised Goebbels tract.

Finally, note that two parties that don't take orders from Washington are absent from this list: the Radicals and Dveri. Ironically, it is these two that get labeled (unfairly and inaccurately) as "clerical fascists", "hardline ultranationalists" and "right-wing extremists", by both the Western and the Empire-controlled Serbian media - while it is Empire's favorite Serbs who express enthusiasm for Nazi techniques repackaged as "democracy".

So you see, it's a bit more complicated than both the pranksters and the presstitutes would have you believe. But that's hardly "news," is it?