The East Remembers

1999 - 2015

Unforgotten.

Unforgiven.

The East Remembers.

Kosovo's Kristallnacht

2004-2015

The East Remembers

Why Empire Needs a Conquered Serbia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Truth Points to Itself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Points to the disclaimer) No comment.

Interludes and Examinations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blair? Seriously?

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

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

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

Column Update and Fundraiser

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

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

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

Minsk

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

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

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

(from Colonel Cassad)

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

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

Bus People

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facts and Fascist Fantasies

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

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

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

Croats in the Nazi "Azov" battalion  (source)

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

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

Trouble in Kosovo? Must be the Serbs' Fault

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bombing for Peace, and Other Hypocrisies

From Sputnik News, January 26, 2015:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mercenaries in Mariupol?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damned Lies and Donetsk Airport

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Losing on purpose?

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

They failed. Badly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Columns Update

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

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

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

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

Feel free to post your questions in the comments!

Serbia's PM: Puppet and Lackey

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

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

Trigger warning: Noticing and Remembering ahead. Also logic.

Uncivilized

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

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

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

Christ is Born - Glorify Him!

(Full playlist here)

Today is Christmas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Christmas.

Stench Along The Trail

What can I say about 2014?

At best, that it wasn't another 1914 - though not by much. And who knows what future historians might say about that, provided there are any.

It was a year of anniversaries: 15 years ago this March, NATO attacked Serbia (which occasioned a gut-wrenching documentary and a war of images on Twitter and Facebook). A hundred years ago this July, Austria-Hungary had attacked Serbia and set off the Great War.

Vienna had claimed it was a victim of "Serbian terrorism" and was conducting a "punishment expedition" against "bandits." It was a monstrous lie. Austria-Hungary perished in the ensuing cataclysm, though its specter continues to haunt Europe to the present day. It is hardly a coincidence that today's flashpoint - the Ukraine - was also the site of Austro-Hungarian ethnic engineering over a century ago. Or that there is an unbroken line between 1914 and today, running straight through Hitler...

To me personally, the events in the Ukraine were an uncanny re-run of the early 1990s and the demise of Yugoslavia. Even the instigators were the same: NATO, United States, the Atlantic Empire - as was the pattern of fomenting dissent, double standards, and backing Nazis.

There was also the incessant propaganda, as brazen as it was stupid. And yet, the sheer amount of it has generated enough poison that even the critics have not been able to resist the toxic residue. Perhaps the best example of how the media operate has been the "PUTIN KILLED MY SON" hysteria over the Malaysian airliner, which abruptly stopped once the Russians offered evidence to the contrary. Without any acknowledgment of the lies, of course.

You won't hear many challenges to the mainstream media reporting in the supposedly "free and democratic" West. At most you will laugh at the skewering of lies and lying liars in a German comedy show. Yet it should tell you much about the times we live in that only comedians are allowed to challenge the powerful...

Meanwhile, Bosnia and Serbia were hit by some of the worst flooding in a century. Western media only began noticing once tennis champion Novak Djokovic called them out on it - and donated his entire winnings from a tournament for the relief effort. Months later, USAID tried to influence the Bosnian elections by producing TV ads accusing the local governments of embezzling Western flood aid - though such aid never actually came. That election, by the way, was a veritable parade of plagiarism and absurdity.

In 2014, the Islamic State arose in Iraq and Syria, to the great joy of the Empire. Albanians were able to disrupt a soccer game with a drone - the first such attack in history - with impunity. And the U.S. government tried to use "Serbian music promoters" in a failed bid to conquer Cuba - only to abruptly abandon the decades-long blockade in December (while keeping the goal of regime change in Havana).

It was the year Falcon got a graphical update, but I ended up being too busy to wish it a happy 10th anniversary.

The oddest thing is, while I obviously couldn't predict the details of what would come to pass, a month before the Empire-backed coup in Kiev unleashed Hell I wrote this:

"[A]s the great Serbian poet Njegos once wrote, "He whose law lies only in the cudgel, has a trail that reeks of inhumanity."
This isn't about Ukraine, or about democracy, or human rights, or "freedom" - it's about having only the cudgel, and the entire world looking like something to beat with it.
It's about crushing any thought of there being an alternative to the "end-of-history" West.
It's about power.
Just follow the stench along the trail.

So, while I am grateful this wasn't another 1914, I am really glad 2014 is over. And I wish us all a better 2015, with all the help from the Almighty we can hope for. I have a feeling we'll need it.