Israel Gets Serbed

I don't normally deal with Israel here, or the whole Middle East question (one emotionally charged intractable conflict is plenty, thank you), but what happened the other day does have a fair bit to do with things I've been writing about for the past decade or so.

It should be obvious by now that the "Gaza flotilla" was a trap. Israel walked right into it. Fortunately for the Israelis, they too were filming the whole thing, and knew how to use blogs and YouTube, so they may have even come out ahead in the propaganda skirmish that followed. But there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the whole flotilla operation was designed from the start to be a propaganda stunt. The "activists" (is that what they are called these days?) aboard those ships were armed and ready. They wanted to be stopped and boarded, so they could scream to high heaven about being abused by the Israeli "pirates" on the high seas. It almost worked, too.

As I said over on Ilana Mercer's blog earlier in the week, the entire strategy employed by Hamas seems to be a reprise of Sarajevo. So the Israeli presence on its borders becomes a "siege", the legitimate blockade of a hostile polity becomes "strangling", and Israeli raids in response to missiles fired from Gaza become "terror." Israel is dubbed an occupying power even though it unilaterally retreated from Gaza in 2005, leaving it as a de facto independent city-state. And Israeli inspections in international waters, though legal, become "piracy."

Hamas routinely fires missiles from Gaza at Israeli civilians across the border. They see nothing wrong with this - remember, to Hamas, Israel has no right to exist, and needs to be obliterated. But if Israel retaliates, whether by assassinating Hamas leaders or sending tanks into Gaza to destroy missile launchers, or by enforcing a perfectly legal blockade to deny Hamas weapons and ammunition, while allowing food and other civilian supplies in - ah, that's nothing short of "genocide," then!

Israel has a powerful conventional army, navy, air force, and most likely even nuclear weapons (though not officially acknowledged). It has defeated Arab armies on numerous occasions in open warfare, and has successfully fought terrorism and insurgency through special operations. So those who wish it destroyed came up with a way of turning that strength into a weakness: cast themselves as innocent, unarmed, helpless victims and howl as loud as possible about being abused by that very Israel whose strength no one can dispute.

There are two recent examples of this approach being enormously successful. In Bosnia, the government of Alija Izetbegovic (revered in the Muslim world as an ideologue of jihad and Islamic revolution, but still believed in the West to have been a multicultural democrat) provoked an armed confrontation with the Serb and Croat populations, then raised hell in the media about being a victim of "aggression" and "genocide." European and American public were steadily bombarded with the most outlandish claims of atrocities, courtesy of legions of "advocacy journalists" stationed in Sarajevo, who somehow never saw thousands of armed Muslim troops in the city, or their artillery, but only "helpless civilians." Likewise, they never saw any of the Serb civilians killed by Muslim fire on the other side of the line; oh no, every Serb in Bosnia was a drunken, bearded savage with a machine gun in one hand, a bottle of brandy in the other, and a bloody knife in his teeth.

This distortion of reality went so far as to actually exaggerate the military strength of the Serbs, in an effort to make them seem even more formidable (and their enemies that much more innocent/unarmed/endangered). In this kind of 4th-generation warfare, weakness was an asset, and strength became a liability.

Not only was the Muslim (and Croat) version of the war propagated as gospel truth in the West, the Serbs were prevented from saying anything in their own defense through the second-worst regime of UN sanctions in history (the worst being what was imposed on Iraq). By the time the sanctions were officially lifted, the Serbs had been so thoroughly demonized, few dared question the official story when NATO attacked Serbia itself and occupied one of its provinces in 1999. Once again, the world was told of the Evil Genocidal Serb Aggressors wantonly killing and abusing innocent "Kosovarian" civilians, which was obviously so egregious that it required NATO to violate its own charter and that of the UN to launch a "humanitarian" intervention.

Here was identity politics brought to its logical extreme: a situation in which the designated victim could literally get away with murder (Izetbegovic, the KLA) yet be seen as innocent and virtuous, while the designated culprit (the Serbs) could be slandered with impunity, and anything they did would be perceived as purely evil. It isn't just about delegitimizing one's means of defense, but delegitimizing one's right to exist at all.

The problem with trying to explain this to people is that this sort of demonization has so far been practiced only against the Serbs. Even Iraqis, who have suffered horrifically, were not singled out as a nation (rather, the hatred was focused on the persona of Saddam Hussein, and the odium largely dissipated after his execution). Only a few careful observers have seen it as a general trend, applied beyond the Balkans. As a result, no one in the world really believes they could one day get "Serbed" (for lack of a better term) themselves.

But as we see from the flotilla incident, some folks have taken the lessons of Bosnia and Kosovo to heart, even if no one else has. Not surprisingly, the organizer of the propaganda stunt is a Turkish "NGO" first formed to provide aid to the Bosnian Muslims. Among the "activists" detained on the ships were a Syrian with Bosnian citizenship and the "President of Muslim Forum of Kosova" (sic). There are Balkan connections all over - all but guaranteeing that the mainstream press in the West won't say a word about any of them. Because, as we know, the Balkans is a sacred cow and the pure, innocent victimhood of "Bosnians" and "Kosovars" must and shall not be brought into question. Ever.

Why, even the Israelis won't say anything about it, so as not to hurt their own cause. Can't allow oneself to be associated with those Evil Serbs, right? That's how thorough the demonization has been. But if it can happen to the Serbs, it can happen to anyone. The real question is, who is next?

Premature Jubilation

I don't actually check the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog"; they are obsessed with me, not vice versa. But while doing some research on the attempted slaughter of General Krstic from the other day, I found this interesting result on Google:

(screen capture of a search done May 14, 2010; click to enlarge)

Up top is the new post, now merely supporting the attack and eagerly repeating the official line that it was "revenge" for the (alleged) genocide in Srebrenica. In fact, it is uncanny how the SGB post resembles the official reports in the British media on the Krstic near-slaying. Or is that the other way around?

Either way, the original, since-deleted post actually celebrated the murder of Gen. Krstic. It was deleted, and replaced by the new post so quickly, Google didn't even have time to cache it. But the old title remained. Just goes to show one can't hide anything on the Internet. Also, I suppose, the true extent of SGB's actual commitment to justice, human rights and whatnot.

I mean, you have to admit that, "When They kill Us, that is genocide and horrible, but when We kill Them it's a fantastic thing!" is simply a piss-poor excuse for morality.

The Easter Victory

In the evening of May 6, 1945, General Alfred Jodl arrived at the Western Allies' headquarters in Reims. His mission: surrender to the Allies, ending what became known as World War Two. He eventually signed the surrender treaty in the early morning hours of the following day.

But the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin could under no circumstances accept this. He insisted that the Germans officially surrender to the Soviets as well, which General Wilhelm Keitel did in Berlin on May 8 - May 9, Moscow time.

Part of the reason for this was pride; the USSR had borne the brunt of Allied casualties in fighting the Nazis. Stalin took credit for the Soviet war effort, and wanted the credit he considered his due. Another consideration, though, was more symbolic.

May 6 in the old Julian calendar still followed by the Orthodox faithful (whom the Communists had cruelly repressed) was the feast of St. George, the fabled dragon-slayer. In 1945, it was also the date of Easter. One can certainly understand why Stalin, as an atheist and Communist, would absolutely refuse to give that particular date any more meaning.

After the end of the war, Stalin had hundreds of thousands of liberated Soviet POWs either executed or sent to the gulag, so they would not be witnesses to his bumbling incompetence in 1941. He also turned on the victorious generals like Zhukov, jealous of their popularity. There was no room on the victor's pedestal for anyone but him. Especially not for God.

And so, May 9 became Victory Day in the Soviet Union, while the fact that the Germans surrendered on Easter became obscured by the fog of war.

Be Very Afraid...

A lot is being said and written today about the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Professional panic-mongers and witch-hunters are once again screaming about "right-wing extremists" and warning that OKC could happen again. Yet the impression I get is that this noise has less (if anything) to do with the 168 dead and 600 injured in Oklahoma City 15 years ago, and more with the efforts of the government to deflect criticism by painting those who disagree with it as lunatics and potential terrorists.

Anthony Gregory of LRC puts it into perspective:

Seventeen years ago in 1993, the federal government did in fact murder dozens of Americans who were no threat to anyone. The same government has in fact violated the rights of American citizens, rounded people into concentration camps, silenced and infiltrated politically peaceful groups, conspired against the people in numerous ways, drugged, poisoned and withheld medicine from Americans without their knowing, lied repeatedly about war and serious law enforcement matters, jailed people without due process, imposed martial law on segments of the domestic population, seized guns from law-abiding gunowners, broken down American doors and held scared children at gunpoint, planned the creation of extralegal judicial institutions to process American citizens, targeted political enemies with the IRS and other police agencies, forced Americans to labor and even kill and die under threat of imprisonment, overseen the largest prison system in the world, shoveled trillions of borrowed dollars to corrupt financial institutions and killed millions of civilians abroad – all in the lifetime of many who are still alive. The U.S. police state has in fact been growing since 9/11 and even before – and Obama has done nothing to stem its growth. On the contrary, he has continued the mix of economic fascism, imperialism, surveillance and lawless detention policy that characterized the Bush years.

Indeed, the most dangerous rightwing extremist in my lifetime was George W. Bush. Obama is following in his footsteps. That so many Americans are more frightened of rightwingers out of power than in power – more bothered by conservatives who hate Washington than those who control or want to control it – and more offended by anti-government rhetoric than the Democratic president continuing the policies they claimed to hate under Republican rule – shows how little they have learned from Waco and all that has happened since.

Read the rest of the essay at LewRockwell.com.

The Art of Hate

Harry Knowles, the premier movie geek of Ain't It Cool News, says "Serbian Film" (Srpski film) is "brilliant", "tremendous" and "extreme", and has to be seen to be believed.

It is also a story about the sickest, most depraved dark corners of the underground porn industry. We're talking things that are illegal for a reason. But, you see, what first-time director/producer Srdjan Spasojevic set out to do was not make just a snuff or exploitation movie (which this most assuredly is). Oh no, his intent was to make a metaphor for Serbia itself.

That is why it's called "Serbian Film" and not, for example, "Snuff". All the sick depravity in it is supposed to represent the country, the society, the people of Serbia. In the words of reviewer Todd Brown, "This is a film meant to punish, not to entertain, and it succeeds absolutely. It is genuinely sickening and that is entirely the point."

"Serbian Film" is actually an anti-Serbian film.

Spasojevic, the director, doesn't deny his film is meant to be a metaphorical representation of Serbia. He claims that the film was entirely financed "privately, with donations and contributions from friends." Donations from whom? What sort of "friends"? This kind of money doesn't grow on trees, least of all in Serbia - where the only people with money are crooks and politicians (or is that redundant?). And oh yes, foreigners. Could it be that the "Serbian Film" was funded by the same people who fund Natasa Kandic, Sonja Biserko and other "NGO" vampires, whose only job for the past two decades has been to denigrate, defame and destroy everything Serbian? This is mere speculation on my part, mind you, but I would not be shocked if it ends up being true.

At least we know that Spasojevic didn't get a penny from the government; that's sort of surprising, given that official Belgrade shares his Serbophobia and automasochism. In fact, Spasojevic complains about the lack of official support, arguing that "This is a matter of culture, that represents Serbia in the world." (see interview in Serbian, here)

He has a point, in a way; a horrific, self-hating botched WW1 epic ("St. George Slays the Dragon") got copious government funding, even though its levels of Serb-hate and defamation are child's play compared to "Serbian Film". If one can't get paid for Serb-hating in today's Serbia, what can one get paid for?

That even the government is drawing the line at Spasojevic's magnum opus speaks volumes about its depravity.

The damage is already done, of course. Spasojevic's cinematic equivalent of "Piss Christ" is already touring the festivals in the US and elsewhere, "representing Serbia" to people already all to willing to see it as demonic, depraved and deserving of destruction. In the words of one reviewer,

Never again will you be able to hear or read the innocent phrase "a Serbian film" without a reflexive awakening of the searing images that Aleksandar Radivojevic (screenplay) and Srdjan Spasojevic (co-writer and director) have put on screen.

I just hope Spasojevic gets the reward he so richly deserves for this immense contribution to his nation's culture and history.

Still a Believer

After lengthy negotiations with his captors, Russian television channel RT successfully obtained a written interview with former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadžić. (They also had me as a guest in their studio on Friday evening, to comment on the case; see YouTube clip here.)

To me, the issue of whether Richard Holbrooke and the Empire promised Karadžić immunity isn't all that interesting. Empire going back on deals? Um, that's what they do. Let's see here: the Vance Plan, the UN arms embargo, the Dayton agreement, the Kumanovo Military-Technical agreement, the UNSCR 1244... Not to mention the NATO Charter and the U.S. Constitution. There isn't an official piece of paper that the Empire hasn't violated in the Balkans, often with a contemptuous "So what?".

I am not entirely certain that Dr. Karadžić is fully aware of this, though. His RT interview has some worthwhile insights. He's entirely correct, for example - though way too polite - when he compares NATO to "an old tool that is more trouble to keep than it is worth to maintain."

And he is absolutely on target when he claims that:

Serbs and Serbia are not really an objective of Western imperial intentions and we should not over-estimate our own significance. But this crisis has served as preparation for the forthcoming events. Serbia and the Republika Srpska were a sort of voodoo doll for Russia.

Here is what I simply don't understand. Even though the EU has been one of Empire's principal tools in grinding the Serbs into dust, Karadžić still has a soft spot for "Europe". Even though at one point he describes the EU as "a dormitory of retired people, students, and unemployed," he still argues that "Serbia should join Europe immediately"!

"There are many contradictions in Serbia's relations with EU countries, but that has not hindered integration with Europe," he says, adding:

It would be great if we joined Europe without these kinds of humiliations, bombardments, blackmails and finally attempts to impose the unacceptable price of giving up Kosovo. Otherwise, we share all European values and it would not be difficult for us to get along with Europe. Serbian people living throughout Europe are very integrated without any cultural problems, and they are very prominent in their own professions.

What values are those? Omnipotent government, gay "rights", political correctness, Islamophilia, cultural Marxism? That's the Europe of today, the Europe Karadžić hasn't seen in the two decades he spent first fighting a war, then living as a faith healer in Belgrade. To say that it would be "great" if only Europe weren't the way it is... that's just naive. And kind of sad, too.

Even though he was a psychiatrist by training, Karadžić was also a poet. And he has always thought more like a poet. He never understood how the propaganda in the West cast the Serbs as the new Nazis and twisted all the facts to fit that predetermined perception. Nor did he understand the mind of Alija Izetbegović, who was willing to sacrifice as many lives as it took for his dream of a Muslim Bosnia.

Karadžić is a man that very "Europe" (and the US) has cast as the principal villain of the Balkans Wars (having been unable to do so to Slobodan Milošević), and he's still dreaming of a Europe that has not existed in years. He doesn't understand that the Europe he speaks of has been methodically dismantled, with malice aforethought, just like his former country (Yugoslavia) - and by the same people, too.

Milošević figured this out eventually - too late to make a difference in Serbia, but just in time to destroy the Inquisition's show trial. Only time will tell if Karadžić will manage to do the same.

War and Remembrance

Arthur "Jibby" Jibilian, the last surviving member of the Halyard Mission, passed away on March 23. To his dying day, he fought for recognition of the people who helped him and his OSS colleagues rescue hundreds of Allied airmen shot down by the Nazis over what is today Serbia. They were given aid and shelter, in spite of both brutal German reprisals and Allied bombings of Serbian civilians in 1944. But this amazing escape remained secret and forgotten, because of the identity of their Serbian rescuers.

It was the royalists of Gen. Draža Mihailović who took part in the Halyard rescue. Meanwhile, however, the Western Allies switched their support to Tito and the Communists. Assisted by Soviet troops, they took power in Yugoslavia as the Nazis retreated. Mihailović was captured in 1946 and executed by the Communists for "treason." His grave is yet to be found.

In 1948, Mihailović was posthumously decorated by President Truman, for "organising and leading important resistance forces against the enemy which occupied Yugoslavia from December 1941 to December 1944". The citation stated that the royalists, "fighting under extreme hardships, contributed materially to the Allied cause and were materially instrumental in obtaining a final Allied Victory." It was never made public, though, for fears of alienating the Tito government. Meanwhile, Communist history books nurtured a narrative of Mihailović and his troops as Nazi collaborators, equating them with actual Nazi sympathizers, the Croatian Ustaša, and the Bosnian Muslim and Albanian Waffen-SS.

As Tito's Yugoslavia was torn apart in the 1990s, this rape of history went a step further: the pro-Nazi forces in 1940s Yugoslavia and their modern heirs were re-cast as "freedom fighters", while the modern-day Serbs as well as Mihailović were smeared as the actual "Nazis"! The ignorant Western public swallowed the story hook, line and sinker. One can only imagine how the few Americans that knew the truth, like Jibilian, must have felt.

In a March 30 letter to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mim Bizic explains the tragedy of it all:

Bill David, an Ohio pilot, was in the Boston airport when he learned of "Jibby's" passing. He wrote this in an e-mail to me: "Art and his fellow soldiers were honest-to-God real live American heroes, the kind that you would read about in comic books. Over 500 lives were saved during WWII and nobody knows about it. The guys they rescued went on to live their lives, father families, build careers, help make America great. Nobody knows of all of this.

"This is not the news of the day. We as a nation are worse off because of it. It disconnects us from our gallant values and what made us great as a country in the first place.

"Tiger Woods will take center stage for his indiscretions. That is the kind of stuff that is important to us now. Everybody knows who Tiger and Paris are, but nobody knows who Draza Mihailovich was and what he and the Serbian people did for our country, the sacrifices they made so that our boys could live."

Perhaps if Americans did know, this wouldn't have been written on the 11th anniversary of the illegal bombing of Serbia by NATO forces.

Rest in peace, "Jibby". And thank you.

Truth and Submission

I've seen it happen over and over again. For years, the self-styled "international community" delivered food to the Bosnian Muslims (and looked the other way as the food was redirected to the ruling elite, then the troops, with what was left being sold for cold hard cash to the civilians it was intended for in the first place), looked the other way as weapons and jihadists came in, and tried to broker a peace agreement that the Bosnian Muslim regime would accept. But instead of gratitude, they would be accused of "appeasing the aggressors" and "not doing enough."

Eventually, the UN openly sided with the Muslims. In August 1995, UN "peacekeepers" put on their NATO hats and turned their guns on the Bosnian Serbs. Yet even today, the Bosnian Muslim media stoke the fires of propaganda that the UN and the West "favored the Serb aggressors" and "failed" Bosnia. There are monuments mocking international aid. And even the most outspoken pro-Muslim officials, such as Daniel Serwer of the U.S. Institute of Peace, are denounced as "Karadzic's propagandists" if they so much as suggest that the Muslims may not have been absolutely right about everything, always.

One of the people high up on this hate-list is Lewis MacKenzie, Canadian general and veteran of many peacekeeping missions, who commanded the UN in Sarajevo during the first several months of the war in 1992. As such, he brokered a deal to turn over the Sarajevo airport to the UN, enabling the humanitarian aid to reach the beleaguered civilians. This saved quite a few lives, but wrecked the Izetbegovic government's plans to provoke a Western military intervention on their behalf - plans that Alija Izetbegovic openly admitted to MacKenzie at the time.

So the Muslims turned on MacKenzie with the full force of propaganda at their disposal, intent on making his name mud in Canada and beyond. He was accused of patronizing a (fictitious) "rape camp," of being a Serb, of being paid by the Serbs... Such accusations, though blatantly false, easy to debunk and clearly designed with defamation in mind, always got reported in Canada without qualifications, sometimes costing MacKenzie dearly. And all because he dared to speak about what he actually saw in Sarajevo, as opposed to what the official propaganda wanted the West to see.

His name is back in the news this week, as Radovan Karadzic's lawyer recently visited Canada and interviewed him - among others - as a potential defense witness. Sarajevo papers, whose hate-o-meter is stuck on 11 lately, immediately commenced a game of "Let's Hate Lew MacKenzie."

Thing is, MacKenzie is no Serb apologist, or even some sort of Serb sympathizer. I mean, he still blames Karadzic for the bombing of Sarajevo (and rightly so). He's simply a man of honor - you know, the kind soldiers actually ought to be - who tries to do what's right. And for that, he gets smeared by crooks and jihadists. Meanwhile, his own country stands idly by - or worse yet, joins in on the calumny.

No doubt, Gen. MacKenzie has no great desire to stay involved in Bosnia. But so long as he insists on telling the truth, rather than the officially preferred lies, the Muslims won't stop slandering him. They don't care much that he puts a lion's share of the blame for the Bosnian tragedy on the Serbs. Whether he or any other Western official thinks the Serbs were 50% or 75% or 99% to blame is entirely irrelevant. "100% of Bosnia" is not just a party slogan of the ruling Muslim nationalist these days; it's a political dogma. One must buy into Sarajevo's official "truth" 100%, or risk the wrath of the smear brigades. They will tolerate nothing less than full submission. And even if one offers it, they still reserve the right to viciously attack anyone, anytime, for any reason. Gratitude? Forget about it.

There ought to be a lesson in there somewhere. I'll let you figure it out for yourselves.

Lies Liars Tell

Some time last year, the professional victim and proprietor of the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog" (no, I'm not going to link it) seems to have made me an object of his personal little jihad. Time and again, he's been Google-bombing me with claims I'm a "discredited genocide denier" and so on.

Following my latest post, he went on a comment spree (guess what I did with those), and then finally put up a piece denouncing me on the SGB. Normally I wouldn't pay this much heed, but the way he did it amused me to no end, and I thought I'd share it here. Namely, he said that I had sent in a comment to the SGB - which he deleted - and then offered a response allegedly proving me wrong (by quoting the ICTY, the old fallacy of appeal to false authority again).

Except I did no such thing. My alleged "comment" was copy-pasted from the actual essay, "Bleiburg in Potocari." It wasn't deleted. It didn't violate his comments policy. It did not exist. But SGB spun a whole yarn about it nonetheless. Kind of like the whole "Srebrenica genocide," actually.

Here's a pro tip: if you are trying to paint someone as a liar, it helps to not be one.

The Bleiburg in Potocari

(The Bleiburg memorial, with the Ustasha and Muslim symbols, dedicated "In memory of the innocent victims of the Bleiburg tragedy, May 1945")

At the end of February, Al-Jazeera showed an interview with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, currently on trial before the ICTY in The Hague. It was done as part of a 40-minute report with Rageh Omaar. The report opened with the rows of green funeral shrouds, wailing Muslim women, and the rows of names on the Potočari monument, near Srebrenica. The images that follow suggest that the Serbs rounded up some eight thousand civilians, and shot them in broad daylight. This is what the Arab world thinks happened. It doesn't matter that it isn't true. This imaginary Srebrenica has become a symbol for the entire Bosnian War: evil Serbs, unprovoked and driven by hatred, killing innocent, unarmed, peaceful Muslims while the West watches the "genocide" and does nothing.

For years, the Western media took for granted the death toll of 250,000 people, mostly Muslims. A report by ICTY-commissioned demographers (Tabeau/Bijak) from 2003, indicating a death toll of 102,000, remained hidden for a year. Its accidental revelation in late 2004 caused a firestorm of denial and declarations that the final, official report, compiled by Mirsad Tokača, would establish the real number, closer to 150,000. That, however, did not happen. Tokača's report, completed in late 2005, put the final number of war dead at 97,000. And yet despite these constant revisions, even it maintained that the number of dead in Srebrenica was 8,000!

ICTY's own investigations suggest otherwise. Of the 7,661 persons listed as missing after Srebrenica was taken by the Bosnian Serbs in July 1995, some 5,371 are members of the Bosnian Army (ARBiH). Remains of 3,837 have been identified. Of those, 3,602 were men age 15-65, 201 were men aged 65 and over, 9 were boys under 14, 11 were women, and 14 of age and sex unknown. Tribunal investigators also found 448 blindfolds and 423 ligatures, indicating executions. They determined that "1,785 individuals died of gunshot wounds, 169 died of probable or possible gunshot wounds, 67 died of Shrapnel wounds or blast injuries, 11 died of gunshot and blast injuries, 6 died of other causes (trauma, suffocation, etc.), and 1441 died of undetermined causes."

So, the "eight thousand civilians" turn first into 5,300 military men, 3,800 identified bodies, 1800 gunshot victims, and 450 executed. Keep in mind that the women and children abandoned by the "brave fighters" of the 28th Bosnian Army Division (from the "demilitarized safe area" no less) at the UN base in Potočari were safely evacuated by Bosnian Serb troops, using trucks and buses hastily requisitioned from Serb civilians. What kind of "genocide" leaves the women and children alive?

There are more problems with the mainstream narrative. Some 3,000 names from the list of the missing are shown as having voted in the 1996 elections. Either they were alive, or there was massive electoral fraud. Either way, someone lied. Serb researched Milivoje Ivanišević(”Srebrenica ID Card”) accuses the Sarajevo government of burying people who died long before the war, as well as soldiers who died prior to July 1995, at the Potočari memorial cemetery. Bulgarian researcher Germinal Civikov questions the testimony of Dražen Erdemović, the "crown witness" of the ICTY prosecution whose accounts were used in every Srebrenica-related case. In his book, Civikov shows that Erdemović and his confederates could not have possibly killed 1,200 people in one night, as he claimed. Sure enough, only 127 bodies were found at the location.

Gen. Krstić, the first Serb officer convicted as "accessory to genocide" was nowhere near Srebrenica, having taken command on July 20, 1995 (five days after the town was taken). Momir Nikolić, another valuable witness for the prosecution, admitted to perjury - but his testimonies were kept! And the ICTY itself admitted that the actual facts of the case remain unknown, but the judges nonetheless believe some 8,000 men were killed. In a true court of law, it doesn't matter what one believes - only what one can prove. And there is simply no proof for the "genocide" in Srebrenica, because it did not happen.

In the summer of 1992, British reporters took a photo of an emaciated Muslim man and arranged it so it appeared behind barbed wire, like an inmate of Nazi death camps. Western media howled about "Belsen '92" and spoke of the Serbs as the new Nazis. A magazine that ran an analysis of the deception in Trnopolje was forced into bankruptcy by British libel laws, yet the truth of the analysis was never actually disputed. Deemed libelous was only the insinuation that the crew shot the photo with malicious intent. Because fabricating genocide photos is proof positive of humanitarianism, what? Anyway, the truth was out and the story of "Serb death camps" has mostly disappeared since. It was replaced by the constant invocation of Srebrenica as the "greatest atrocity in Europe since Hitler."

A massive memorial complex was built in Potočari, at the former UN peacekeeper compound where those women and children sought - and found! - refuge. Bill Clinton, that paragon of honesty and virtue, attended the grand opening. While the Bosnian Muslims are broke and without jobs, their government spent lavishly on the Potočari shrine. So that "vengeance could become justice", as the dedication in Arabic says. So that a lie could become true.

At the end of WW2, during the withdrawal from Yugoslavia before the advancing Communist troops, a number of Croat fascists (Ustasha) were captured in northern Slovenia and southern Austria. The British also turned over several thousand POWs to the Communists. The Communists shot a number of them at the town of Bleiburg, the same way they executed tens of thousands of "class enemies" in Serbia and elsewhere, since 1944. However, after the war, Bleiburg was turned into a shrine by the surviving Ustasha and the Catholic Church. Modern Croatian history claims that 60,000 people were killed in Bleiburg (!). British historian D.B. MacDonald explains:

Inflating the numbers of dead at Bleiburg had several layers of significance. Firstly, it gave the Croats their own massacre at the hands of Serbs and/or Communists, which allowed them to counter the Serbs' Jasenovac genocide with one of their own. Secondly, it allowed Croats to distance themselves from the Serbs and the Communist regime that had carried out the massacres. They could portray Croatia as an unwilling participant in the SFRY, more a prisoner than a constituent nation. Thirdly, by suffering such a massacre, the Croats underwent their own 'way of Cross', as it was frequently dubbed in Croatian writings.

(Balkan holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian victim-centered propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia, David Bruce MacDonald, Manchester University Press, April 19, 2003)

While inflating the number of dead in Bleiburg, the new Croatian government reduced the number of victims of Jasenovac, to establish the moral equivalence of the Ustasha and the "Serbo-Communists" (led by Tito, a Croat...), going so far as to declare the Ustasha the real victims, claiming that Jasenovac was a work camp in which the Jews killed each other and there were hardly any Serbs there anyway...

Even President Mesić, hardly a Serbophile, called Bleiburg an Ustasha festival at government expense. He also added that those buried at Jasenovac were innocents, while many of those buried at Bleiburg were their executioners. It didn't change a thing.

Just as the Ustasha created a shrine in Bleiburg to cast themselves as victims (committing a horrific blasphemy by comparing themselves to Jesus), the shrine to the false genocide in Potočari serves to mask an aggressive ideology - whose insistence on a Muslim-dominated, centralized Bosnian state led to the war in the first place - with a halo of victimhood. Mustafa Cerić, the Bosnian Muslim religious leader, even put this "genocide" on the same level as the Holocaust at an interfaith conference last year.

The Bleiburg in Potočari is a symbol of the Bosnian War, though not in the way its creators intended. It is a fitting representation of a war steeped in manipulation and lies - an insult not only to the victims of Hitler's "final solution," but to reason and decency as well.

Follow the Money

In the latest installment of the saga of Ejup Ganic, we read he was bailed out by "Diane Jenkins," born Sanela Catic, "former Bosnian refugee who became the wife of Britain's highest paid banker." Forgive me if I doubt the account in the Daily Mail that gives her middle name as "Dijana"; Bosnians, whether Muslim or Christian, simply don't have middle names.

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. A mystery bottle blonde bombshell bails out the war crimes suspect, only to be revealed as a poor little refuge girl who struck gold by becoming the bride of London's richest bankster? Hollywood, eat your heart out.

While we're on the subject of money, here's something I've been meaning to mention for almost a month now, but never got round to. You see, frantic clamoring by investors in the Bank of Collective Serbian Guilt (hat tip to Chris Deliso for this memorable phrase) to have the "international community" get involved in Bosnia again is always justified by the alleged necessity to impose reforms and create a "functional state". They won't deny that Bosnia has sucked in enormous amounts of foreign aid (though they won't mention it either, unless pressed), but their explanation is that all of it was wasted because those evil Serbs (who else?) are blocking the central government from functioning properly and making the best use of it.

The only problem with this is that in Bosnia itself, centralization is championed by people who have by far the most abysmal record of governing their own affairs. So when they demand they get to govern everyone else's, why the surprise when everyone else is not exactly inclined to agree?

Let's leave aside for the moment the question of values and principles, and the paradox of federated and subsidiary governments such as the UK, Germany and the United States of America (or should that be United State?), whose representatives want for Bosnia a degree of centralization unacceptable in their own countries. And let's not dwell at this point on the fact that the de facto international protectorate in place since 1996 has provided a powerful disincentive for Bosnian communities to actually work out the differences over which they waged a war and continued to bicker about after the armistice. The fundamental issue at stake is whether the communities can live together in peace, or if one would try to lord it over the others. When you have three communities deeply mistrustful of each other, the very last thing you want to do is give them a powerful central government to fight over. Yet that is precisely what the Empire is trying to do.

Of the three communities that live in Bosnia, only the Muslims desire a centralized government. In part, this is because they believe Bosnia ought to be a nation-state, with them as the "nation", while Serbs and Croats are simply interlopers with "spare homelands". They also believe their suffering during the war entitles them to things. But beneath the rhetoric and emotions, this agenda is also driven by a very real financial motive.

You see, the Muslim-Croat Federation is broke.

During the war, the Islamic world sent countless amounts of money to the regime of Alija Izetbegovic, to support the holy war against the alleged "genocide" of Muslims at the hands of Serbs and Croats. Very little of that money ever reached the Muslim civilians; some was spent to equip the military, but most was simply appropriated by Izetbegovic's cronies. After the war, a river of financial aid came from the West. It was calculated at one point that Bosnia had received more foreign aid per capita than all of Western Europe under the Marshall Plan. But while the Marshall Plan funds went into resurrecting the economy, the Bosnian aid was like pouring water into the desert. It simply vanished.

Oh, some of it went to rebuilding the war-torn housing and roads. Much went to a plethora of non-governmental organizations organizing seminars about tolerance and peace and whatever. A lot went to fund elections every year, then every two years, or support a gargantuan bureaucracy within the Muslim-Croat Federation (eleven sets of governments. ELEVEN!). Some surely ended up paying for a host of new mosques and their imams. The rest lined the pockets of government officials and "businessmen" who became tycoons thanks to government connections and support. But hardly anything went into producing anything of value. Bosnia had a lot of industry prior to the war. Now it has almost none.

As governments throughout the world are becoming aware, it is easy to come up with new welfare and entitlement programs when the money is flowing in. But what do you do when it dries up? Cutting the entitlements can often result in angry mobs in the streets.

The Federation government was reminded of that in October 2009, when a host of war veterans shut down the capital for a day, protesting the announced 10% cut to their benefits. Besieged, the government caved in to their demands, even though the cut was required by the IMF as one of the conditions for a new loan that would go towards servicing the budget obligations. Yes, you heard right - Bosnia is borrowing money to cover welfare bills.

This isn't to say that the Serb Republic is in a stellar shape. But it has a more sensible tax structure and isn't being dragged down by welfare payments. For years, Muslim politicians (Croats have very little say in the Federation) bribed their voters and lined their pockets with someone else's money. Now that the money spigot is drying up, they can't cut back on the bribes, or the masses will get nervous. So they want to punt the problem up to the central government. No doubt they plan to have it distribute tax revenue "fairly". And not surprisingly, the Serbs and Croats are having none of it. Their refusal is neither selfish nor spiteful, but rather a rejection of this scheme for plunder - robbing Peter and Paul to pay Mustafa, if you will.

May as well ask "Diane Jenkins" and her bankster husband to bail them out.

Lying to Defend Official Truth

It was only a matter of time before the guardians of Official Truth embarked on a campaign to defend Ejup Ganić from charges of war crimes. Radio Free Europe, an official propaganda outfit of the US government nonetheless posing as a bastion of journalistic integrity, did so through an interview with Jovan Divjak, titled "What Really Happened During the Dobrovoljacka Attack?"

The intent of the story is obvious from the choice of Divjak as the principal witness. He is a Serbian-born former Yugoslav Army colonel, who in April 1992 joined the Izetbegovic regime and was expressly promoted to general rank. Along with Vehbija Karić and Stjepan Šiber he was part of the first (decorative) "multiethnic" staff of the Bosnian Territorial Defense, and therefore nominally in charge of the militia that undertook the Dobrovoljačka ambush.

Another indicator of the story's slant can be found early on, in the description of the retreating Army column, allegedly "loaded with ammunition and weapons that Serbian forces would use during their three-year siege of Sarajevo." Even if this were true, how could anyone have possibly known this at the time of the ambush?

But as I explained before, it isn't true. The Army troops in the city at the time were fresh recruits, in early stages of their basic training. What was being evacuated on May 3 was the HQ complex of the 2nd Army District, the contents of which consisted overwhelmingly of paperwork, not weaponry. Ganić apologists have already claimed that the haul from the ambushed convoy was "40 rifles". Well, what was it - a handful of rifles, or truckloads of ammo that bombed Sarajevo for three years? They can't have it both ways.

Divjak gives a fanciful account of the events of that day, claiming that the Army was actually attacking Sarajevo and that his militia was acting in self-defense. He says the "Yugoslav Army tried to take control of the city" on May 2. But his entire evidence for this is a couple of trucks driving along the river! To understand that Divjak's account is rubbish, you need go no further than his claim that a "special forces unit from Niš" was "holed up in the Dom Armije building."

I can testify, under oath if necessary, that there was no such unit in that building. How do I know? I lived across the street and was able to actually see what was going on with my very own eyes. The Dom Armije (Army House) used to be an officers' club back during the days of Austria-Hungary. The Yugoslav Army used it as a concert hall and movie theater. The recruits stationed there at the time were trying to salvage music instruments when they were charged by the Muslim militia. There were no "Niš special forces."

The 63rd Airborne Brigade, based in Niš, was used by the Muslim media as a general bogeyman throughout the war. Over and over again, every time the Muslim troops suffered a crushing defeat in battle (which happened often), they'd blame "special forces from Serbia" and in particular the 63rd. Yet it never took part in the Bosnian War - except in the imagination of the Sarajevo regime.

Divjak's story of what "really" happened is riddled with inconsistencies and paradoxes, and doesn't correspond to reality whatsoever. This isn't necessarily his fault; that's how Official Truth reads, and he's just following the script. The reason he was chosen as the spokesman was that he's an ethnic Serb. This is supposed to demonstrate that the "Bosnia-Herzegovina Territorial Defense" and the "Army" it later became were multi-ethnic, democratic, tolerant, a strictly defensive force for the innocents beset by evil genocidal Serbs, whom even their own "honest" people abhorred and fought.

Facts, of course, indicate otherwise. Divjak "left" the Yugoslav Army after a court-martial conviction for illegally distributing ammunition and equipment to renegade TD forces. He joined Izetbegovic's regime to avoid prison. For the first few months of the war he was one of the public faces of the "Bosnian" army, and then quietly shunted aside to "cooperate with civilian structures." He didn't actually command the militia that besieged the Army posts or ambushed the columns; those men took their orders directly from Izetbegović (through Ganić or otherwise). Even though he was used and discarded by the Muslim regime he helped legitimize, Divjak cannot admit this, or two decades of his life would become meaningless. So he lies, both to himself and to the rest of the world.

What really happened in Dobrovoljačka was that the militia loyal to the Izetbegović regime illegally besieged the Yugoslav Army, and then proceeded to attack the Army convoy that was under UN protection and whose safety was guaranteed by Izetbegović himself. The only thing realistically in dispute is whether that guarantee was violated by Ganić and the militia commanders with Izetbegović's approval, or without.

Either way, any sort of trial will reveal that this was no "heroic defense." Worse yet, it will become obvious that the war was no "aggression by Serbia and the Yugoslav Army," undermining the entire narrative that forms the foundation of Official Truth about Bosnia. This is why the Bosnian Muslim public so vocally demands Ganić's release.

The Ganic Affair

The arrest of Ejup Ganic in London the other day was as surprising to me as I imagine it must have been to him. Namely, I never thought the Brits would actually honor an Interpol warrant originating in Serbia. There is an established precedent for ignoring or overriding Serbian warrants in the cases of Agim Ceku, Hashim Taqi and other "freedom fighters" of the "Independent state of Kosovia". In every case, the Empire insured their prompt release.

Then againk, Ganic is not a current client of the Empire, but a former one. Perhaps that is what makes all the difference.

Reports of his arrest commonly mis-identify him as "former President of Bosnia." He was nothing of the sort. He was, however, a loyal associate of Alija Izetbegovic, an Islamic revolutionary who schemed, lied and forced his way into becoming the leader of Bosnia's Muslims in the early 1990s. Ganic ran for the then-Yugoslav republic's presidency as an "other", declaring himself an ethnic "Yugoslav", thus exploiting a loophole in electoral rules and giving Izetbegovic an extra vote in the seven-member collective. One of the reasons the current Bosnian constitution has strict and even discriminatory rules governing presidential elections is to prevent just such a scenario from being repeated. When Izetbegovic moved to declare independence in March 1992, most other members of the presidency took exception. Only two remained loyal to Izetbegovic - Stjepan Kljuic, a Croat who was quickly marginalized, and Ganic.

On April 27, 1992, the government in Belgrade established the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, de facto recognizing the secession of the republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. The Yugoslav Army was in full retreat from the latter two, under an agreement negotiated with Izetbegovic and the Macedonian president Gligorov. It is worth noting that the YA retreated from Macedonia (aka FYROM) without incident. But in Bosnia, Izetbegovic's militia (organized by the paramilitary wing of his party, the Patriotic League) would have none of it. They set up blockades of Army facilities and demanded their surrender.

On May 2, 1992, Izetbegovic returned to Sarajevo from another failed attempt to head off a full-scale war (he had declared back in 1991 that he would "sacrifice peace for an independent Bosnia" and so he would) and found himself detained by the Army detachment stationed at the Sarajevo Airport. The Army decided to use him as a hostage, demanding the release of its blockaded troops at the 2nd Army HQ in the Bistrik neighborhood, and other units trapped in the city. Ganic, who declared himself acting president (with or without Izetbegovic's consent, it was never revealed), negotiated a deal to exchange Izetbegovic for the trapped HQ personnel with the Canadian UNPROFOR commander, Gen. Lewis MacKenzie.

What happened next is well-documented. There is a detailed account in MacKenzie's memoir "Peacekeeper" but also a video recording made by a Sarajevo TV crew. Muslim militiamen stopped the UN vehicle with Izetbegovic, MacKenzie and the Army commander Gen. Kukanjac, and staged a little drama for the cameras, with Ganic talking to Izetbegovic over walkie-talkies while further down the street the Army convoy was being massacred. This event is at the heart of the Serbian indictment against Ganic.

This was not the last attack on the Army, either. On May 15, an Army column evacuating Tuzla was ambushed and massacred on Brcko Road. This, too, was caught on camera. One might rightly assume that this may have had something to do with the decision of most Bosnian-born Army personnel to join the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) against Izetbegovic's regime.

Throughout the war, Ganic served Izetbegovic loyally, but the word on the street was that he dreamed of replacing Izetbegovic eventually. He was also known to be the go-to person when Washington needed something done in Sarajevo. Perhaps because of this, Izetbegovic eventually moved to sideline him, just as he had done with all his previous lieutenants. After the war, Ganic became President of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Muslim-Croat half of the country, but after falling out of Izetbegovic's graces retired from politics and opened a private university - right across the street from the former 2nd Army HQ building. For years he had stayed out of the limelight, until on a trip to London his past finally caught up.

As someone who was there, who lived in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War and experienced firsthand the "multicultural tolerance" and "democratic diversity" practiced by Izetbegovic and Ganic, I am disgusted by the way the Economist (for example) excuses their crimes. So, arresting a Muslim is "dragging up the past" and impeding peace and reconciliation, while putting the entire Serbian nation on trial and smearing it with the ludicrous charge of "genocide" is somehow conducive to both? Putting Ganic on trial would "fuel nationalist flames" but the trial of Radovan Karadzic is all about truth and justice (not)? Such cynicism. Such hypocrisy.

I would be very surprised if Ganic is actually extradited to Serbia. The media and political leaders that have considerable political capital in the Bank of Collective Serbian Guilt are already raising hell to have him released. The government in Belgrade is too obsessed with sucking up to Brussels and Washington and passing a parliamentary resolution blaming Serbia for the Srebrenica "genocide"; they have no interest in actually pursuing Ganic, and would probably be relieved if the whole affair subsided like the one with Agim Ceku last summer.

The cruel irony of this is that such a result would only further the myth of Muslim victimhood and Serb villainy. Then again, it would not be the first time that the Serbian authorities were actively working to harm their own country and people. I wonder if it will be the last.

New Book: The Krajina Chronicle

The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies has just published two new books: "Saving Peace in Bosnia" (PDF), earlier this month , and the just announced "The Krajina Chronicle: A History of Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia", by Srdja Trifkovic.

It promises to be an interesting book, filling in a major gap in the Western understanding of the Balkans. I'm currently working on a review of "Saving Peace in Bosnia", and hope to have a review of the "Krajina Chronicle" here soon as well.

About That Triumphant Air War...

I found this interesting tidbit buried in an AP story about the new Israeli drones on Sunday:

During NATO's aerial onslaught against Serbia in 1999, for example, Serbian quickly forces [sic - should be "forces quickly"] shot down 42 U.S. drones, drastically reducing the effectiveness of the bombing campaign.

This is the first such admission in the West to date.

Back in 1999, the Serbian media (and a handful of proto-bloggers and internet ur-journalists) claimed that Yugoslav AA defenses had shot down a number of NATO aircraft. NATO spokescritters routinely dismissed these claims as propaganda. In some instances, though, such as when the footage of the wrecked F-117 traveled around the world, denial was impossible.

Still, those who knew a thing or two about military operations thought it odd that NATO aircraft kept on flying at very high altitudes. Or that the Apache helicopters never saw combat, but rather mysteriously "crashed" into nonexistent power lines in northern Albania.

Now we have admission that Serbian air defenses did hurt the Alliance after all. And it comes from the same media that shamelessly repeated NATO lies at the time, over ten years ago. Better late than never, I suppose.

Serbs, Enemies of Allah

From a 2006 BBC report on the trial of Abu Hamza al-Masri, charged with soliciting murder, stirring up racial hatred, and possession of terrorist materials:

He went on to tell his audience that there was no liquid loved more by Allah "than the the liquid of blood".

"Whether you do it by the lamb, or you do it by a Serb, you do it by a Jew, you do it by any enemies of Allah," he said.

That drop of blood "is very dear."

This is from the sermon Abu Hamza gave in October 2000.

He was convicted in 2007 and is currently in British prison. Odd how nobody has picked up so far on this inclusion of Serbs into the lofty ranks of "enemies of Allah." Hardly news to me, of course, but there's still plenty of people (including many Serbs) in denial. But there we have it, from the horse's mouth. Good to know.

No Human Rights For You!

In a couple of months - April, to be exact - Amnesty International will organize a "Human Rights Arts Festival" in Silver Spring, Maryland. A first event of this kind, the purpose of the festival is to "bring together artists, local businesses and politicians to use socially transformative art to raise awareness of human rights and justice issues, as well as the important work of Amnesty International".

Human rights and justice issues? Sounds like a good venue to present the plight of the non-Albanians precariously surviving in the "Independent State of Kosovo," right? At least that's what the folks at RAS thought, when they recommended Boris Malagurski's documentary "Kosovo: Can You Imagine?" as one of the films to be featured at the festival.

Nothing doing, came the reply from AI. The film "does not fit with the atmosphere" they wanted to create, described as "advocating for a cause without advocating against another people." The movie, AI argued, "seems to be clearly anti-Albanian."

Zvezdana Scott of RAS replied to this dismissal with the following note, which she allowed me to make public:

Human rights are not violated without a perpetrator violating those rights, and it is puzzling to me as to why you believe this film is anti-Albanian. Is any film dealing with the topic of the Holocaust - anti-German perhaps? Or is this film supposedly anti-Albanian simply because it does not talk about crimes committed against Albanians during the 1990s, something that has generated more media attention than any crimes against Serbs for the last century.

This is not an anti-Albanian film, and I would love to hear your arguments as to why you classify it as such. The film is against what is happening to the Serbs in Kosovo, and the only ones currently responsible for such a state are representatives of the Albanian ethnic group who do have the power to change things, as well as the international community which is doing little to help.

I'm sure most people within that same community often react such as yourself - because the Serbs were thoroughly demonized during the 1990s, it has become irrelevant whether they have the same rights as Albanians or not, and anyone who voices their opinion in favor of even-handedness towards the Serbs - must be anti-Albanian by default. I suggest you look at the film once again and take a bold step because it's not easy breaking from the mainstream. The people want to see something new, original and different from what they've been fed for the last decade.

No thank you, replied the AI official. Not interested.

So there you have it, folks. "Human rights" are great when you can use them as an excuse to launch a war of aggression or three, occupy someone's territory, condone ethnic cleansing (and excuse it as "revenge attacks"), and deliberately turn the other way when an entire people and its heritage are systematically obliterated - so long as the people thus targeted are Serbs.

Any attempt to protest this sort of treatment is labeled "Islamophobic" or "anti-Albanian" or "anti-Croat" or whatever. Having been declared inhuman, how dare they claim to have human rights!? The nerve of these people! Why can't they just die already!?

Many "human rights" groups have eagerly supported the demonization of Serbs. Amnesty International seemed to be an exception, given that they actually dared accuse NATO of war crimes during its 1999 assault on Serbia. Turns out they weren't all that different after all.

Now, you can either take AI's word that pointing out what the KLA has done with occupied Kosovo is "anti-Albanian", or you can watch Malagurski's film, and judge for yourself.

Freedom is safe!

Of all the reactions to the "underwear bomb" plot (which I actually predicted back in 2006), I liked Fred Reed's the most. I haven't laughed so hard since I re-read some of Ephraim Kishon's short stories a couple years back. I don't know if Reed has ever read Kishon, but "The Price of Freedom" captured his style perfectly: a seemingly normal sequence of events quickly spinning into patently absurd without anyone batting an eyelash, told in a perfectly nonplussed manner.

It would be funnier still if it weren't almost entirely true.

Happy 2010

I'm well aware that things won't magically change with the turning of a new calendar page, but we all like to pretend they will. Hope springs eternal, and all that. So in that spirit, I wish you all a happy 2010, a better year than the one behind us.

If you are a believer, may God bless you and keep you. If you are a non-believer, may randomness favor you. And may everyone get what they wished for, if they truly deserve it.

Happy new year!

Dear Santa...

In today's Financial Times there was an unusual op-ed about the Empire and its protectorate otherwise known as Bosnia-Herzegovina. Signed by two authors and three co-authors, it is a call for renewed intervention by the "international community" in "broken" Bosnia, where everything they've fought for over the past two decades is (allegedly) endangered by the evil Serbs.

Everything here rings fake, from the concern for Bosnia's well-being to fears for EU and US credibility. Even the choice of who gets credited is calculated: since FT is a British paper, let's put the two Brits as the primary authors. The only authentic thing is the Serbophobia that permeates the piece. And the hypocrisy, of course.

Next to the undersigned Ashdown (ex-viceroy of Bosnia and disgraced politician at home) and Hague (Tory Shadow Foreign Secretary), the rest of the committee that put the piece together is American. There's Morton Abramowitz, founder of the ICG and the eminence grise of American foreign policy. Jim O'Brien was Madeleine Albright's right hand in the Balkans. And Jim Hopper used to head the Washington, DC office of ICG, as well as the rabidly interventionist Balkans Action Council prior to that.

Knowing where the authors are coming from, the content of the commentary is neither new nor surprising. Except for one thing - a clear articulation of their vision for Bosnia:

A robust international approach should focus on a single goal: a central government in Bosnia effective enough to meet the responsibilities of EU and Nato membership. Each Bosnian leader should have to stand for, or against, that simple idea – and face consequences for his or her answer.

Uhh, no. This was what caused the war, remember? And now they want to remake Bosnia to fit the vision of "Ein Land, Ein Volk, Ein Führer"? Do they also have the One Leader in mind? Pity that Alija Izetbegovic, "father of his nation" (as Ashdown wept at his funeral), has departed from this world. But Bosnia is not one land, nor is it inhabited by only one people, so it cannot have one government, no matter how much the authors of this op-ed wish it. Or their proteges in Bosnia itself.

Nothing else ought to be expected from people obsessed with safeguarding the political and other capital gained over the past two decades of their involvement in Blame the Serbs for Everything, LLC. However, their wishes remain just that - wishes. The Empire has no means to make them reality. The U.S. government debt is many times the GDP, while all its troops are either in Iraq, Af-Pak, or counseling after coming back from there. How dare they publish this in a financial publication, amidst the news of bankruptcies and the free-falling pound and dollar?

Ah, now I get it! It wasn't really a wish-list intended for the ailing Empire, but rather a letter to Santa Claus! But this is what happens when things are done in committee... Christmas was five days ago. Financial Times' op-ed page isn't quite the North Pole mailroom. And the "multiethnic, multicultural Bosnians" have outlawed Santa Claus anyway.

Oops?

Domination and Discrimination

My Antiwar.com column last week dealt with the decision at the European Court of Human Rights that the Dayton Constitution discriminates against minorities in Bosnia, and I also had a live guest appearance on RT about the story as well.

Not surprisingly, I said the same thing in both venues: yes, the Constitution shortchanges Bosnians that do not belong to the three constituent communities - Serbs, Croats and Muslims ("Bosniaks"), and that obviously ought to be fixed. However, this should not be used as an excuse to tear down what little is left of the Dayton accords, because there exists no viable alternative to the 1995 armistice. The fundamental problem of Bosnia - the fact that its three main ethnic communities disagree whether the country should exist in the first place, let alone how it ought to be organized, and that there is little trust between them, if any - remains just as acute today as it was in April 1992 when it spiraled into bloody ethnic warfare.

This doesn't mean I endorse second-class citizen status for Jews, Roma, or anyone else. But there has to be a better way to ensure one's civil rights than playing into the hands of people like Haris Silajdzic, who hide their agenda of making everyone a second-class citizen behind the rhetoric of "citizen state" and multiethnic multiculturalism. One way or another, the three principal communities in the country have to agree to live together - or separately, if it comes to that - in a way that doesn't trample the rights of anyone, including minorities. If there's a better way to do so than Dayton, by all means let's hear it.

But the real problem for Jews in Bosnia isn't that Jakub Finci can't run for President. Once there was a vibrant Jewish community in Sarajevo. Then came the Independent State of Croatia, with its ideas about "Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and dogs" and support of the "community of European nations" led by Nazi Germany. The descendants of those that survived packed up and left when the civil war broke out in 1992, and never came back. Sarajevo is now over 90% Muslim. There's barely a handful of Jews left, so few that a rabbi has to fly in from Israel to hold services at major holidays.

Somehow I doubt that's the fault of the Dayton agreement.

KLA chic

Having more pressing and important business, I have paid little attention to the scandal over golfer celebrity Tiger Woods' adventures in blondeland. Suffice to say I was feeling somewhat sorry for the people involved, as their behavior would have hardly occasioned a reaction had it not involved a celebrity.

Until I saw a photo of alleged Tiger squeeze, Rachel Uchitel, in a National Enquirer article (spotted by one of Julia Gorin's readers), sporting atrocity headwear:



For the uninitiated, the emblem on the hat is the patch of the "Kosovo Liberation Army," the ethnic Albanian terrorist outfit that fought for "human rights and American values" by massacring Serb and Albanian civilians. Due to their usefulness to Washington's Balkans plans, they morphed from terrorists to "freedom fighters" within mere weeks, courtesy of PR agencies and a pliant press corps. In March 1999, NATO launched its first war of aggression on their behalf. When Serbia allowed NATO to occupy the Kosovo province, in June 1999, the KLA was allowed to run rampant - murdering and expelling people, pillaging and burning their possessions. Over the next eight years, it has "governed" the province, orchestrating a campaign of murder, destruction and intimidation aimed not only at the surviving non-Albanians, but at any Albanians who refused to submit. These paragons of tolerance, humanitarianism and democracy have also laid waste to some 150 Serbian Orthodox churches, chapels and monasteries, with nary a peep from Christians in the West.

But wait, there's more! Going by the same acronym was the "National Liberation Army" of Albanians in the country known by some as Macedonia. In the summer of 2001, this other KLA terrorized the Macedonian countryside until its Western sponsors could put enough pressure on the government in Skopje to surrender. Now they are guaranteed government jobs and subsidies.

Previously one could only find KLA "gear" among the ethnic Albanians in the U.S. (one of their strongest supporters - money, guns, volunteers and all). But Rachel Uchitel isn't Albanian, leastways not that I know of. I'm of the same mind here as Julia Gorin: if KLAwear has become the new street chick, joining other totalitarian brands like Che T-shirts, there ought be no more doubt whether their values are American; they clearly aren't the values of the America that exists on paper, that people still swear allegiance to, and fight for.

About the Imperial America, the one that goes forth to kill and conquer on behalf of terrorists, liars and philanderers... I'm not so sure.

Some Thoughts on Language

Back in June, I expressed my reservations about the official story concerning the "Twitter revolution" in Iran. Several other people noted how events surrounding the presidential election had a distinctly familiar flavor - that of "color revolutions," a soft coup technique pioneered by the U.S. government in 2000 to overthrow the government in Serbia.

This morning I read this on the LRC blog:

It turns out that .027% of Iranians are on Twitter, and–surprise–the whole thing was foreign-funded war propaganda.

Rockwell also quotes a comment on the main story (see the link above), calling the while thing a NED-backed "astroturf campaign."

Here's the thing about the modern state: though it has set itself up as God, it is lacking in the creation department. It is really good at destruction, but about the only thing it can create is a false reality.

So what it does instead is twist - corrupt, bend, deform - things beyond recognition. Few people today know how to define capitalism, communism, fascism, democracy, human rights or freedom. These words are tossed around freely, but their meaning (what little of it remains) has almost nothing to do with the concepts they originally described. While it is true that languages evolve, this is not a case of such evolution. These terms have been stripped of meaning deliberately, so that they could come to mean whatever the state says they mean.

War is thus peace, ignorance is strength, and slavery is freedom: Orwellian dystopia made flesh, in which criticizing the "democratic revolutions" in Iran or Serbia makes one a "hardline ultranationalist" and "enemy of freedom." But that's "freedom" in terms of Statespeak, not the genuine article. How does one make the distinction in communicating this?

That's precisely why language was corrupted in the first place, you know. So even if we decide to oppose what is going on, we would lack the means to articulate our thoughts and ideas.

Resurrecting the Caliphate

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

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

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

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

Jihad at Fort Hood

The story of the murders at Fort Hood is still developing.

Base commander, Lt. Gen Bob Cone, told CBS (video) that there are "unconfirmed reports" that Major Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, was saying "Allah Akbar" during his methodical killing spree yesterday.

Fox News spoke to Hasan's cousin, who said that Hasan wanted to get out of the Army before being deployed (whether to Iraq or Afghanistan remains unclear).

Now, mind you, this is the mainstream media. After years and years of seeing them lie about the Balkans, if they said the sky was blue I'd have to verify it myself . So far, the spin is directed at talking up the soldiers' courage under fire. The fact that Major Hasan was a disgruntled Muslim is grudgingly noted, but not really dwelt upon. Watch the CBS reporter sigh when Gen. Cone mentions "Allah Akbar," then change the subject.

Another segment of the Fox News story was intriguing to me. Here's a quote from Hasan's former colleague, retired Colonel Terry Lee:

"He said maybe Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor... At first we thought he meant help the armed forces, but apparently that wasn't the case. Other times he would make comments we shouldn't be in the war in the first place."

The very fact that Col. Lee thought that "standing up and fighting against the aggressor" could even possibly translate into "help[ing] the armed forces" reveals a disconnect from reality within the U.S. military. Was everyone in Ft. Hood oblivious to the fact that some Muslims view them as aggressors?

It boggles the mind.

How is this not terrorism?

From MSNBC:

A U.S. soldier opened fire Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, killing at least 11 people and wounding 31 others, military officials said. The gunman was shot to death, and two others were in custody.

Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, commanding general of the Army’s III Corps, who confirmed the shootings, said the gunman used two handguns. NBC News’ Pete Williams reported that a U.S. official identified the gunman as Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, who was 39 or 40.

Took them a while to ID the gunman, too. NBC doesn't spell it out, so it's up to me to point out the obvious: Maj. Hasan is a Muslim.

So, a Muslim opens fire at soldiers in one of the busiest Army bases, two other officers are in custody (no names, no explanation as to why), and yet a "senior Obama administration official told NBC News that the shootings could have been a criminal matter rather than a terrorism-related attack and that there was no intelligence to suggest a plot against Fort Hood." (details as of 1800 hrs Eastern time, all emphasis added)

Sure, it could be something else, theoretically, but this just screams jihad. And if there is no "plot," how come two people are in custody? Lone nuts are usually, well, alone.

Now, I understand why the government would try and claim this wasn't terrorism. It's one thing to have a bunch of "roofers" from the "former Yugoslavia" plot an attack on Ft. Dix. But an Army Major going postal in Ft. Hood? How embarrassing.

How about the Trolley Square massacre in Salt Lake City, on Valentine's Day 2007? The investigators refused to even consider jihad as the possible motive, and the case was closed with "motive unknown." The shooter was buried in Bosnia at the expense of Salt Lake City residents who donated money to show they were sufficiently "multicultural" and "tolerant."

How many people remember the June 2009 attack on the recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark. by a certain Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad? It was hardly mentioned, amid the uproar about the shooting of an abortion doctor in Kansas. And when it did get mentioned, it was spun by the New York Times as no big deal ("bomb threats and vandalism against recruiting offices are not uncommon").

If we ignore it, it doesn't happen, right?

Right?

What Turkey Wants

(Excerpts from the article originally published by the Sarajevo weekly BH Dani, on October 23, 2009. This speech and its implications received nearly no coverage in the West.
Full transcript of the original available here. Any errors in translation are my own, all emphasis added is mine - Gray Falcon)

"Yesterday, after a long day in Iraq, we came home at three o'clock, and only three hours later I set out for Sarajevo. Many were surprised and asked if I weren't tired. When I came to Sarajevo, to Bascarsija, I felt filled with energy. The spirit of Sarajevo, the spirit of Bascarsija, is the spirit of our common history. Sarajevo is no ordinary city. Without understanding Sarajevo one cannot understand the history of the Balkans, nor the culture of the Balkans," said [prof. Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's foreign minister] on Friday evening, October 16, at the opening of the conference "Ottoman Heritage and Muslim Communities in the Balkans Today."

Came on Horseback

Minister Davutoglu isn't a professional politician or diplomat but a scholar, who taught international relations in Malaysia and Turkey until the victory of Recep Erdogan and the AK in the November 2002 elections. He became the key foreign policy advisor of the Turkish PM, creating Ankara's new foreign policy. He became the FM only recently, on May 1, 2009. To understand the basis on which he formulated Turkey's foreign policy, approved by the AK party and the last two cabinets of PM Erdogan, one must turn to his scholarly work, such as the book Strategic Depth (2001), a new look at Turkey's international position...

He was greeted by an ex-student from Malaysia, Prof. Ahmet Alibašić and more than 200 guests, including the feuding factions of the [Muslim] SDA party. Davutoglu has cultivated an image of a mediator and conciliator; earlier this year he traveled to Novi Pazar [in Serbia], to publicly reconcile former SDA leaders Sulejman Ugljanin and Rasim Ljajić.

His decision to visit Bosnia during a Turkish diplomatic offensive elsewhere has puzzled the dipomats in Sarajevo. Why did the scholar-diplomat drop in, they asked?

"One diplomat asked me today, I cannot reveal where he was from, why did we intensify our efforts in Bosnia when we have all these other issues to deal with? When I met Hillary Clinton in Zurich concerning the Armenian question, I asked her about the Bosnian question, and we spent more time discussing Bosnia than Armenia. And when President Silajdžić visited Ankara, I changed my plans and decided to visit Sarajevo and then proceed to Albania. I told the diplomat that we didn't 'drop in', we came to Bosnia on horseback," answered Davutoglu.

Historical Depth

This return to the traditional, historical connections of Turkey with numerous nations and states in three different regions is the "historical depth" that prof. Davutoglu is building the new Turkish foreign policy around. His Sarajevo lecture was basically the summary of this policy's underpinnings. Davutoglu first asked what were the things particular to the Balkans, and what was the role of the Ottoman state in the history of the Balkans and the world:

"There are three identifiable characteristics of the Balkans. One is that this region is a geopolitical buffer zone, a crossing between Europe and Asia, Baltics and the Mediterranean, and Europe to Africa. Why is this important? How did this influence the region's history?" he asked.

"The other characteristic is geo-economic. Balkans is a region of commerce, since the ancient times. Balkans is a region of cultural interaction as well. Several cultures intermingle and influence each other in the Balkans. Many people migrate and encounter others and mingle with them. If you have a region with these three characteristics - geopolitical buffer, economic and cultural interaction - you have two possible destinies in history. One is to be the center of world history, and the other to be a victim of global conflict and controlled by alien powers," Davutoglu explains.

"Because of this, when we speak of the Balkans, we say it's the periphery of Europe. But is the Balkans really a periphery? No. It is the heartland of Africa-Eurasia. Where does this perception of periphery come from? If you asked Mehmet-Pasha Sokolović, he wouldn't have said that Sarajevo or Salonica were the periphery, whether of Europe or the Ottoman state. Look at history. The only exception in history is the Ottoman state. During the Ottoman times, in the 16th century, the Balkans was at the center of world politics. That was the golden age of the Balkans. This is a historical fact."

"Who created world policy in the 16th century? Your ancestors! They weren't all Turks. Some were of Albanian origina, others were Greek converts. Mehmet-pasha Sokolović is a good example. Were it not for the Ottoman Empire, he would have been a poor Serb peasant with a small farm or whatever, because they didn't have developed farming in this part of the world then. Thanks to the Ottoman state, he became a leader in world politics. Ottoman history is Balkans history, in which the Balkans held special importance in the history of the world."

..."In the 14th century Belgrade was a village, maybe a small town. During the Ottoman era Belgrade became the capital of the Danube, the heart of Europe at the time. Culturally, there were hundreds of mosques and churches. (…) Sarajevo is a miniature of Ottoman heritage. If you don't understand Sarajevo, you cannot understand Ottoman history. Sarajevo is the prototype of Ottoman civilization, the template for Balkans ascendant."

Center of victims: Then he noted an example from the 19th century of an Albanian who established modern Egypt. "Kavalali Mehmet Ali-Pasha was Albanian. He didn't become just a key Ottoman figure at the time, he's also the founder of modern Egypt. Were it not for the Ottoman state, he would have amounted to at most a smart but petty nobleman somewhere in the Balkans. What can we learn from this? The Balkans has a geopolitical, geocultural and geoeconomic destiny, and it will either be the center of the world or a victim of the world," said Davutoglu.

The key issue in his reinterpretation of Balkans history is the division of the region after the 19th century and the history of ethnic conflict since then. "Without cultural interaction, cultures come in conflict. Without economic interaction, commerce, there is economic stagnation. Without political authority, this becomes a buffer zone for conflicts," Davutoglu explains."

"Now is the time for reunification. Then we will rediscover the spirit of the Balkans. We need to create a new feeling of unity in the region. We need to strengthen regional ownership, a common regional conscience. We are not angels, but we are not beasts either. It is up to us to do something. It all depends on which part of history you look to. From the 15th to the 20th century, the history of the Balkans was a history of success. We can have this success again. Through reestablishing ownership in the region, through reestablishing multicultural coexistencde, and through establishing a new economic zone," Davutoglu argued.

A New Balkans

According to him, "multicultural coexistence is very important because the life of civilizations can only be understood through analyzing the structure of cities and cultural life in the cities. All Balkans cities are multicultural. We lived together. And this cultural integration is what produced such strong cultural heritage. Those who organized the massacres in Srebrenice in the 1990s are barbarians who did not want to tolerate diversity. The spirit of Sarajevo is the spirit of coexistence and living together."

"We desire a new Balkans, based on political values, economic interdependence and cultural harmony. That was the Ottoman Balkans. We will restore this Balkans. People call this 'neo-Ottoman'. I don't point to the Ottoman state as a foreign policy issue. I emphasize the Ottoman heritage. The Ottoman era in the Balkans is a success story. Now it needs to come back," says Davutoglu.

[...]

"Turkey is partly a Balkans country, partly a Caucasus country, and partly a Middle Eastern country. There are more Bosnians living in Turkey than in Bosnia! There are more Albanians in Turkey than in Albania, more Chechens than in Chechnya, more Abkhaz than in Abkhazia. Why? Because of the Ottoman heritage. For all these different nations in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Turkey is a safe haven, their homeland. You are welcome! Anadolia belongs to you, our brothers and sisters! And we are confident that Sarajevo belongs to us! If you wish to come, come! But we want you to be secure here, as owners of Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. What is happening in Bosnia is our responsibility."

"We have a common history, a common destiny, a common future. Like in the 16th century, when the Ottoman Balkans was ascendant, we will once again make the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East - together with Turkey - the center of world politics in the future. That is the goal of Turkish foreign policy, and we will achieve it. We will reintegrate the Balkans, we will reintegrate the Middle East, and we will reintegrate the Caucasus on these principles of regional and world peace, not just for us, but for all of humanity."

[...]

"For diplomats from elsewhere in the world, Bosnia is a technical matter. To us it is a matter of life and death. That's how important it is. For us the integrity of Bosnia is just as important as the integrity of Turkey. For Turkey, the security of Sarajevo is equally important as the security and prosperity of Istanbul. This is not just the mood of the Turkish government, but a feeling of every individual Turk, no matter where in Turkey he resides. There were two great spontaneous gatherings of Turks that I remember. One was in 1993, when news came that the Serbs used chemical weapons against Goražde. This was broadcast around seven or eight in the evening, and within two hours there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Spontaneously. Had someone asked of them to march on Bosnia, they would have marched. We had that feeling. That shows how much we love each other."

No Justice There, Move Along

Over the past ten years as a commentator, columnist and Balkans-watcher, I've given many interviews - radio, TV and print - but I've never been a guest on a talk show. Until this morning, that is, when RT had me on Crosstalk (now available online).

Host Peter Lavelle talked with ICTY spokeswoman Nerma Jelačić, John Laughland (at the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in Paris), Milenko Bodin from the Belgrade University, and yours truly, about whether Radovan Karadžić could get a fair trial.

Readers of this blog and my columns at Antiwar.com can already guess what I said: No, never in a million years, the ICTY isn't a place anyone can get a fair trial. The theory of "joint criminal enterprise" used to prosecute the Serbs is proof that the ICTY isn't prosecuting individuals for specific things (as they continue to claim), but an entire nation - for something that's abstract, alleged, assumed and asserted (i.e. the "genocide" in Bosnia).

I recommend the show, however, not for my appearance on it (which could have been better, but I'm still new to this, eh?) but for the outlandish statements made by Jelačić and the way Laughland simply destroyed them.