Victory Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dragon Wins

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

They failed. The dragon won.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Goebbels Gambit

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

Photo: onizive.wordpress.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Twice the Winners" of WW2

In April 1945, with the Soviets and their Yugoslav Communist allies approaching, the Ustasha (Croatian Nazis) tried to exterminate the surviving inmates of their principal death camp complex. The 760 women at the adjacent camp of Stara Gradiska had already been massacred. Of the 1,000-plus men in Jasenovac, 700 chose to risk a breakout on April 22. Only 90 of them succeeded.

Communist authorities were happy enough to declare the Ustasha enemies of the state, but made every effort to suppress the exact extent of their atrocities, for the sake of "brotherhood and unity" in the new Yugoslavia. Yet there is no question that a genocide happened. There was clear intent, manifested in speeches, official proclamations and laws of the "Independent State of Croatia" (NDH) There were the countless pits in Herzegovina and Dalmatia, where butchered Serb civilians were disposed of until Italian outrage put a stop to it. By then, the Jasenovac complex had become operational, with death camps not just for men, but for women and even children. German sources suggest anywhere between 750,000 and one million dead, between the pits and the camps.

In 1941, there were 2 million Serbs in territories claimed by the NDH. In 1991, there were almost as many in the same territories - now claimed by Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Yet the overall population of Yugoslavia had grown from just over 15 million in 1948 (after the war and genocide) to 23.5 million in 1991. You do the math. 

Today the Croatian leadership - President Josipović, Prime Minister Milanović and speaker of the parliament Šprem - visited the Jasenovac memorial and swore that "fascist, Nazi and Ustasha ideas will never again" hold sway in Croatia. Well, why should they, having served their purpose?

The few Serbs remaining in Croatia live in fear and face constant abuse and discrimination. Yet when they tried to rebel against Franjo Tuđman's Ustasha revival in 1990, they were branded "aggressors" and the Empire funded, trained and supported their destruction - specifically, "Operation Storm," the mass ethnic cleansing campaign of August 1995. Since the anniversary of "Storm" is a national holiday in Croatia ("Homeland Thanksgiving Day"), the very same officials who were in Jasenovac today will see nothing wrong in celebrating come August. 

It brings to mind the words of Josipović's predecessor, Stjepan Mesić, who once said: 

"in the Second World War, the Croats won twice and we have no reason to apologize to anyone... We won on 10 April [1941] when the Axis Powers recognized Croatia as a state, and we won because we sat after the war, again with the winners, at the winning table." (BBC Monitoring; December 10, 2006)

Sure enough, in 1945, the Communist leader Tito "punished" Croatian atrocities by creating a large Croatian republic in the federated Yugoslavia. In 1991, with the backing of Berlin, Vienna and the Vatican, Franjo Tuđman declared this republic an independent state. Croatia was admitted to NATO in 2009. Next year it will be joining the European Union. American weapons, propaganda and diplomacy served the same Croatian agenda in 1991-95 as Hitler's had half a century prior. 

Lest there be any doubt as to the character of that "Croatia as a state," here are just three wartime posters (more can be found here) testifying to the relationship between Zagreb and Berlin:  

"United Europe fights in the East", poster for the 1942 exhibit in Zagreb. Nazi eagle, center; Croatian checkerboard over to the right 

"Great Leaders Adolf Hitler and poglavnik Dr. Ante Pavelić call on you to defend your homes - join the volunteer Croatian SS!" And yes, that's a mosque over on the right, and one of the SS is wearing a fez.

"A German victory is a victory for Europe: the German-Croatian brotherhood in arms"

All this ought to make you wonder who really won WW2.

An April 2012 guide to Serbian Politics

My newest column on Antiwar.com this weekend deals with the upcoming elections in Serbia. Due to considerations of space and time, however, I couldn't elaborate on the parties and candidates involved, just mention them in the broadest of strokes. So, here is a handy guide to who's who of politics in Serbia at the moment.

The Democrats

Boris Tadić, currently the President of Serbia, is also (quite improperly) the head of the Democratic Party (DS). He narrowly won the presidential election in January 2008, which was rightly seen by the Empire as the go-ahead for proclaiming the "Independent State of Kosovo".

Following that announcement, in February 2008, the Democrats ran in the general election as the senior partner in a coalition called "For European Serbia", with banksters (G17+) and two regional separatist outfits. The coalition didn't get enough votes to form a government, until July when - in a stunning turn of events - they were joined by a coalition led by the Socialists. Given that the Socialists had run on a platform openly opposing the Democrats, this resulted in a government no one had actually voted for - except for the U.S. and EU ambassadors involved in its creation.

Originally set up by the well-meaning opponents of Communism, the Democrats quickly turned into a haven for old Communist cadres purged by Slobodan Milošević (e.g. Dragoljub Mićunović). In 1994, Zoran Đinđić, a Frankfurt School graduate with a PhD in coup d'etat, took over as party chair.

Đinđić and the Democrats came to power through DOS, a coalition created by the National Endowment for Democracy as an experiment in "astroturf revolution." DOS stood for the "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" (though in practice, it was opposition to Serbia). Đinđić was the coalition's campaign manager and became the PM of Serbia in December 2000. Following his assassination in 2003 - which was blamed on former Special Forces and a shadowy organized crime syndicate, but questions about it remain - the DOS and the Democratic Party were taken over by the people Đinđić had purged as rotten or incompetent. Following a bad electoral defeat in December 2003, the Democrats recovered by electing Boris Тadić, a psychologist formerly in charge of the postal service and the military. Тadić became President of Serbia in mid-2004.

While only controlling a third of the legislature themselves, the Democrats have a chokehold on the media: the entire advertising spectrum in the country is controlled by agencies run by Тadić's advisor Srđan Šaper and high-ranking DS official Dragan Đilas (who is also the mayor of Belgrade). But back in 2000, they had to take a back seat to Vojislav Koštunica - the only candidate NED managed to find that seemed decent, among the 18 pocket parties whose leaders were either unpopular or outright reviled.

The Other Democrats

Koštunica was once a Democrat, too - but split off in the early 1990s, unhappy with the DS position on Serb national interests (i.e. that none existed). He named his splinter the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and stayed on the sidelines of politics, teaching law and translating the Federalist Papers. As the figurehead of DOS, he stood for Yugoslav presidency in September 2000. He didn't win, but that was soon made moot: the plan called for DOS to claim election fraud and overthrow the government through mass protests. As part of these protests, DOS agents stormed the Parliament and torched the ballots, making it impossible to ascertain the actual results of the vote.

Arguably, Koštunica helped Serbia avoid civil war by negotiating a transfer of power with Slobodan Milošević. He also refused to remain a figurehead and let Đinđić rule, which resulted in the next two years being a constant struggle for power between the two. Đinđić won, kicking the DSS out of DOS and its legislators out of the parliament; he even destroyed Yugoslavia so Koštunica would be out of a job. But then he was killed, and his cronies fumbled so badly that they were kicked out of power in 2004.

Prime Minister from 2004 to 2008, Koštunica succeeded in bringing about a new Constitution and thwarted Imperial designs to some extent. On the other hand, he kept the banksters running the economy and outright traitors running the foreign ministry. Koštunica reneged on a deal with the opposition Radicals and caved in to Imperial pressure to form a "democratic" government with the DS in 2007, which resulted in the electoral fiasco of 2008 and the triumph of Тadić. The DSS is going at it alone this May, campaigning on the ultimate beta platform of "neutrality."

The Socialists

Once the Communist Party, then the League of Communists, they changed their name to the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) in 1990. Their victory at the first multi-party election in 1990 wasn't due to communism, though, but to their leader's defense of Serb rights in then-Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milošević rose to power in the late 1980s by hammering the old, cowardly Communist leadership for pandering to separatism and anti-Serb chauvinism within the country. Smeared by the West as the "Butcher of the Balkans" (which he wasn't), Milošević frustrated Empire's attempts to dominate Serbia, until his ouster in October 2000. His last speech to the nation warned of the Imperial threat, but he was so demonized by that point that the people were unwilling to listen. He was arrested on spurious charges in May 2001, and on June 28 that year sent to the Hague Inquisition. There he died in 2006, before the end of his show trial.

Milošević's successor at the head of the party was his former spokesman Ivica Dačić. The SPS was a silent partner in Koštunica's first government, but kept running afoul of the Empire. Maybe that factored into his decision to make a pact with the Democrats. The "legitimacy" thus gained with the Empire was paid with betraying Milošević's legacy, party principles and the electoral platform. It also resulted in SPS officials landing many cushy government jobs; Dačić himself ended up in charge of police, becoming Tadić's chief enforcer. May 6 will show whether the Socialists' voters think that was worth it.

On an interesting aside, Dačić's deal with the Democrats represented a sort of reconciliation of the old Communist factions; the old guard defeated by Milošević in 1987 had mostly joined the DS. Only this time, obviously, the anti-Serb line they represented had emerged triumphant.

The Lunatic Fringe

Čedomir Jovanović started out as a "student protester", back when he was studying drama in 1996. He soon became a confidant of Đinđić's, and ended up the PM's parliamentary whip and go-to guy for shady deals (liaisons with organized crime syndicates, arresting Milošević, etc.). Eventually he became so much of a liability, Đinđić quietly sidelined him - but after the PM's assassination in March 2003, Jovanović roared back into power. At the end of 2003, DOS suffered a crushing defeat at the polls, and Jovanović suffered a similar defeat in the bid to lead the Democrats.

Desperate to avoid having to work (he eventually got that acting degree, somehow), Jovanović first set up the "liberal democratic faction" within the DS, then spun it off as an actual party in 2005. He quickly established himself as Empire's favorite Serb, advocating unconditional obedience to Washington and Brussels. His hatred of everything Serbian - though he once styled himself a nationalist - can be partly explained by the influence of Latinka Perović, a Serb-hating Communist historian purged by Tito in the 1970s for being too loony (and that's saying something), and partly by the present profitability of such a position. Thanks to the backing of the Empire and its "NGO" cultists, Jovanović enjoys a media presence disproportionate to his actual political strength.

Recently, Jovanović's "Reversal" (Preokret) initiative was joined by Vuk Drašković, the most infamous chameleon in Serbia. Once a raging Communist, Drašković reinvented himself in 1990 as a nationalist, creating an image cobbled together from Communist propaganda stereotypes about the WW2 royalists. He is best known for trying to lead a street revolt against Milošević in March 1991. Having refused to join DOS, Drašković saw his party (SPO) nearly disappear, but made a comeback in 2003, when he became Foreign Minister in Koštunica's cabinet. After a disastrous mandate, he reinvented himself again - this time as the most fanatical supporter of NATO and the Empire.

Basically, the task of "Reversal" is to anchor the Democrats to the Empire, while enabling them to pretend they have freedom of action. The Democrats have also made alliances of convenience with ethnic minority and separatist parties, promising them privileges and entitlements, and even parts of Serbia. This includes the ethnic Hungarians in the northern province of Vojvodina (a legacy of Tito's strategy of dividing Serbia), though separatism there is actually driven by Nenad Čanak and his "League of Social-democrats" (LSV) and the regional Democrat leadership. The Democrats also seek support with the Muslim separatists in the southwestern region of Raška (also known as the "Sanjak"), whose mufti, Muamer Zukorlić, is running for president (!).

The Banksters

The economic platform of DOS was developed by "experts" of the G-17, a collection of international banksters of Serbian origin with "transition" experiences of serving the Empire in places like Russia and Poland. Over the past decade, they have successfully dismantled most of Serbia's economy, achieving what neither the UN blockade nor NATO bombs could. While G17 is still around, its former leader jumped ship some months ago, to establish the "United Regions" (URS) party. He hopes everyone will forget how he despoiled the country for a decade and lied through his teeth, and believe he is now a champion of the provincial farmer.

The Radicals

A minor opposition party during the 1990s, the Radicals became the principal opposition to DOS following the October 2000 coup. Led by the outspoken Vojislav Šešelj, the party publishes a newspaper called "Greater Serbia" and firmly opposes the Empire, NATO and the EU.  Šešelj was such a thorn in the DOS side that Đinđić actually asked the Hague Inquisition to indict him for anything and take him away (long a rumor, this was confirmed last year by Wikileaks). He has been imprisoned since 2003, eventually standing a sham trial for "inciting hatred" (i.e. hate speech). A verdict is expected in May.

Though it would routinely win the largest chunk of votes in any election since 2000, the SRS could never claim victory. No other party dared form a coalition with them, because of the immense pressure from the Empire, which dubbed the Radicals "undemocratic" and "ultranationalist" (whatever that means).

Šešelj's deputy, Tomislav Nikolić, ran the party in his absence. He was twice narrowly defeated in presidential contests, following hysterical media campaigns predicting apocalypse unless a properly "democratic" candidate won. In 2007, he became speaker of the parliament for all of three days, until PM Koštunica caved to Imperial pressure and backed someone else. It remains unclear whether the Radicals had offered an alliance to Koštunica in 2008, but rather than contemplate a coalition with them and the  Socialists, he called a general election - thus paving the way for a total Tadić takeover.

The party is still officially run by Šešelj, who is also running for president by way of his wife, Jadranka.

The Progressives

Following the establishment of the Democrat-Socialist government in 2008, Nikolić split from the Radicals and in 2009 formed the Progressive party (SNS). It is unclear what their actual platform is. The Progressives are basically telling whoever listens whatever they want to hear: e.g. friendship with Russia to the patriots, EU integration to the EUrophiles, "partnership" with the U.S. to fans of the Empire. They aren't even terribly original: their slogan - "Let's get Serbia moving" - was outright copied from the disgraced former PM of Croatia.

The Progressives are a parliamentary party even though they've never actually participated in an election. This is possible due to the seemingly paradoxical Serbian electoral law, which considers the parliamentary mandates as belonging to individuals, even though they are allocated to parties based on the voting results. Consequently, when Nikolić left the SRS, a number of Radical legislators switched allegiance to him, and kept their seats. So even though they claim to be the principal opposition to the government,  because they've never stood for election the extent of their support is impossible to gauge.

Mockingbirds and Believers

Understandably, many in Serbia are revolted at the shenanigans of the political class, the lack of moral compass and complete depravity of which might be forgivable if they at least let the country eke out a living. Instead, the politicians live lives of obscene wealth and privilege, while more and more common people scavenge from garbage bins. With everyone but the Radicals choosing to serve the Empire in one way or another, and the Radicals becoming obsessed with their Progressive heretics, a large vacuum in Serbian politics opened up, simply begging to be filled.

Some have chosen to make a mockery of the existing system. "None of the above" (NOPO) registered as a party of the Wallach minority, exploiting the lower threshold loophole of the electoral law and just about guaranteeing the election of its leading candidate for legislature: Đorđe Vukadinović, analyst, columnist and pollster. Once a strong critic of the Empire and its servants in Serbia, Vukadinović has been notably softer on the current coalition, going so far as to endorse its disastrous capitulation on Kosovo as a wise and statesmanlike policy. His election will have shown the system to be a joke - but as this is already common knowledge, it is unclear what else  it will accomplish.

And then there are Dveri. Officially the "Movement for the life of Serbia," they claim they aren't a party in the classical sense of the word, but rather a family. Originating as an Orthodox Christian student society (their name refers to the sacred doors to the church altar), they organized as a political force late last year.
They are entirely unlike any other party in the country, in a number of ways. That alone ought to recommend them, but in their program they also call for far less government meddling into people's lives (not an end to it altogether, but it's a step in the right direction), reforming the system entirely, prosecuting banksters and oligarchs, liberating the country from foreign domination and ending the campaign against Serbian language, culture, history and traditions that has been going on for a lifetime.

It is almost inevitable that they will be dubbed "Orthodox fundamentalists" and "ultranationalists" and "right-wingers" and a number of other choice derogatory terms used to smear opponents of Empire's "democratic" favorites. Because they really do threaten to upset the proverbial apple cart.

So, who will win?

It depends on many things. First, how many people will actually get out and vote - and how many will give in to the regime's message of despair and not bother. Of those that do vote, the question is how many have lives that depend on the current system - government or public jobs, contracts that depend on bribes to those in power, etc. - and have a vested interest in seeing it survive. How many will vote for the sideshows created to bamboozle the voters, such as the "Peasant and Worker Party" led by a NATO lobbyist pretending to be a populist patriot? Who will count the votes, and not whether there will be voter fraud, but how much of it? Last, but not least, it depends on what the Empire has planned for after the votes are counted, e.g. a replay of the 2008 surprise super-coalition or something like it. Note also that the Empire may not be the only outside power with a vested interest in Serbian politics that is both willing and able to influence things.

The Serbs have displayed remarkable resilience. After a century of fighting horrific wars; surviving several attempts to obliterate them physically and culturally; social engineering seeking to obliterate their identity, language, culture and history; demonization designed to crush their spirit; communism and banksterism nearly wiping out their economy and enterprise - they are still hanging on. Many others would have broken long ago.

It is tempting to make an apocalyptic appeal and say that, if the quislings triumph again, this might be the end of the Serbs. This might be what the Empire wants, and what its death cult - represented not only by the sycophantic politicians but also by the legions of "NGO activists" - tries to bring about. But I doubt they will succeed where far mightier forces have tried and failed.

Let's see what happens.

The Hurt Locker

Official history has the Bosnian War breaking out on April 5, 1992. There is some room to argue that a more appropriate date would be March 1, or March 26, or March 28. Certainly, the barricades I remember hearing about on April 5 didn't seem any different from the ones a month prior. Following the declaration of independence on March 1, there had been barricades, then a mass protest, followed by the panicked politicians negotiating, the barricades being dismantled, and the war averted - or so we thought.

We were wrong.

What began that day would end 1,326 days and some 100,000 deaths later. Nothing quite prepares you for a war on your very doorstep. Experiences from WW2 were useless - or worse, could get one killed. This was a different war. And even learning all the tricks didn't guarantee survival. Whatever Imperial propaganda may say, warfare is neither neat nor surgical.

No historical event is truly inevitable - just more or less likely to happen. At any time in March, or even through most of April, the Bosnian War could have been prevented, or stopped before it really started. Some people were pushed into it. Others did the pushing. In any case, it quickly spiraled out of control, morphing from a very local dispute about land and power into some sort of global crusade (or rather, jihad). Neither the ideologues of Empire, nor the jihadist firebrands, nor the media cared much about the actual Bosnian War; they all built up a Bosnia myth and used it for their own purposes.

Today, on the 20th anniversary of the war (which basically coincided with Europe's recognition of Bosnia's dubious declaration of independence - a fact that doesn't get mentioned much), media all over the world have Bosnia on their tongues - but it's the mythical Bosnia, the narrative collection of cliches and tropes and lies that can be used to justify nation-building, humanitarian bombing, invasions, occupations, terrorism, whatever. Open any newspaper today, and I guarantee you there will be an op-ed comparing Syria to Bosnia, with a message that the "international community" needs to "act now" and kill people in the name of saving them.

Rubbish, yes. But that sort of rubbish is aimed at the average reader, who hasn't exactly spent the past 15 years tracking reports about Bosnia (and other shards of what was once Yugoslavia), and cannot know that all the tropes being trotted out - mass rapes, death camps, genocide, vast conspiracy to commit ethnic cleansing, 300,000 dead civilians - have been conclusively debunked with cold, hard facts. But the Empire doesn't care about facts, only about the usefulness of the myth. There are countries to bomb, regimes to change, demonized subhumans to kill.

Meanwhile, in Bosnia itself, while some people are trying to mind their own business, work for a living and raise their children right, an entire media/government apparatus has a vested interest in keeping things firmly stuck in 1992. As long as the war continues, mentally if not actually, they have power and the privilege that comes with it. So they keep their own people trapped in a cruel spasm of hatred, fear and suffering - feeding on it, thriving while everything around them rots away.

From half the world away, and when I drop in to visit, I can see clearly what they are doing. But the people there, driven mad by fear and hatred, can't - even as the pain of it is quite literally killing them. It took me close to a decade to claw my own way out of this "hurt locker". There are millions still inside.

Contrary to protestations by well-funded Imperial stooges, "coming to terms" with the past and "moving on" doesn't mean embracing a convenient set of lies about it. Rather, it is about dealing with the world that is, and working towards a world that should be. Every survivor left a piece of their soul in that war.  The longer they stay in that mental prison of eternal 1992, the greater the odds they will lose themselves in it entirely.

Then, as now, they have a choice: embrace the myth and continue to self-destruct, or come to terms with reality and give themselves a chance to live, make peace, and heal. But it is something they have to do on their own. No one can do it for them - especially not the Empire, or "well-wishers" the world over, all of whom have a vested interest in their continued misery.

An Evil Little War

On the 13th anniversary of NATO's attack on then-Yugoslavia, I'm re-posting a piece that ran on Antiwar.com in March 2005. Even after the creation of the "Independent state of Kosovia" in 2008 - or perhaps even more so because of it - every word still applies.

An Evil Little War 

[13*] Years Later, Kosovo Still Wrong

  In the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For some reason, many in the targeted nation thought the name of the operation was "Merciful Angel." In fact, the attack was code-named "Allied Force" – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker. For, however much NATO spokesmen and the cheerleading press spun, lied, and fabricated to show otherwise (unfortunately, with altogether too much success), there was nothing noble in NATO’s aims. It attacked Yugoslavia for the same reason then-Emperor Bill Clinton enjoyed a quickie in the Oval Office: because it could.

Most of the criticism of the 1999 war has focused on its conduct (targeting practices, effects, "collateral damage") and consequences. But though the conduct of the war by NATO was atrocious and the consequences have been dire and criminal, none of that changes the fact that by its very nature and from the very beginning, NATO’s attack was a war of aggression: illegal, immoral, and unjust; not "unsuccessful" or "mishandled," but just plain wrong.

Illegal

There is absolutely no question that the NATO attack in March 1999 was illegal. Article 2, section 4 of the UN Charter clearly says:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Some NATO members tried to offer justification. London claimed the war was "justified" as a means of preventing a "humanitarian catastrophe," but offered no legal grounds for such a claim. Paris tried to create a tenuous link with UNSC resolutions 1199 and 1203, which Belgrade was supposedly violating. However, NATO had deliberately bypassed the UN, rendering this argument moot.

Article 53 (Chapter VIII) of the UN Charter clearly says that:

"The Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilize such regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority. But no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council." (emphasis added)

Furthermore, Article 103 (Chapter XVI) asserts its primacy over any other regional agreement, so NATO’s actions would have been illegal under the UN Charter even if the Alliance had an obligation to act in Kosovo. Even NATO’s own charter – the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 – was violated by the act of war in March 1999:

"Article 1
"The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. […]
"Article 7
"This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security." (emphasis added)

The attack violated other laws and treaties as well: the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (violating the territorial integrity of a signatory state) and the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (using coercion to compel a state to sign a treaty – i.e., the Rambouillet ultimatum).

Yugoslavia had not attacked any NATO members, nor indeed threatened the security of any other country in the region; it was itself under an attack by a terrorist, irredentist organization. What NATO did on March 24, 1999 was an act of aggression, a crime against peace.

Illegitimate

Perfectly aware that the bombing was illegal, NATO leaders tried to create justifications for it after the fact. They quickly seized upon a mass exodus of Albanians from Kosovo, describing it as "ethnic cleansing" and even "genocide." But as recent testimonies of Macedonian medical workers who took care of Albanian refugees suggest, the Western press was engaging in crude deceit, staging images of suffering refugees and peddling the most outrageous tall tales as unvarnished truth.

Stories abounded of mass murder, orchestrated expulsions, mass rapes, seizure of identity papers, even crematoria and mine shafts filled with dead bodies. Little or no evidence was offered – and not surprisingly, none found afterwards. The stories were part of a Big Lie, aimed to justify the intervention, concocted by professional propagandists, and delivered by the KLA-coached refugees. The KLA ran every camp in Macedonia and Albania, and there are credible allegations they organized the exodus in many instances. Albanians who did not play along were killed.

Eventually, the "genocide" and other atrocity stories were debunked as propaganda. But they had served their purpose, conjuring a justification for the war at the time. They had allowed NATO and its apologists to claim the war – though "perhaps" illegal – was a moral and legitimate affair. But there should be no doubt, it was neither.

Unjust

Even if one can somehow gloss over the illegal, illegitimate nature of the war and the lies it was based on, would the war still not be justified, if only because it led to the return of refugees? Well, which refugees? Certainly, many Kosovo Albanians – and quite a few from Albania, it appears – came back, only to proceed to cleanse it systematically of everyone else. Jews, Serbs, Roma, Turks, Ashkali, Gorani - no community was safe from KLA terror, not even the Albanians themselves. Those suspected of "collaborating" were brutally murdered, often with entire families.

According to the Catholic doctrine of "just war," a war of aggression cannot be just. Even if one somehow fudges the issue, "the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated." The evil conjured by NATO’s and KLA’s propaganda machine was indeed grave. But it was not real. In contrast, what took place after the war – i.e., under the NATO/KLA occupation – is amply documented. At the beginning of NATO’s aggression, there were fewer dead, fewer refugees, less destruction, and more order than at any time since the beginning of the occupation. NATO has replaced a fabricated evil with a very real evil of its own.

Monument to Evil

What began six years ago may have been Albright’s War on Clinton’s watch, but both Albright and Clinton have been gone from office for what amounts to a political eternity. For four years now,* the occupation of Kosovo has continued with the blessing – implicit or otherwise – of Emperor Bush II, who launched his own illegal war in Iraq. Kosovo is not a partisan, but an imperial issue; that is why there has been virtually no debate on it since the first missiles were fired.

Six years* to the day since NATO aircraft began their onslaught, Kosovo is a chauvinistic, desolate hellhole. Serbian lives, property, culture, and heritage been systematically destroyed, often right before the eyes of NATO "peacekeepers." Through it all, Imperial officials, Albanian lobbyists, and various presstitutes have been working overtime to paint a canvas that would somehow cover up the true horror of occupation.

Their "liberated" Kosovo represents everything that is wrong about the world we live in. It stands as a monument to the power of lies, the successful murder of law, and the triumph of might over justice. Such a monument must be torn down, or else the entire world may end up looking like Kosovo sometime down the line. If that’s what the people in "liberal Western democracies" are willing to see happen, then their civilization is well and truly gone.

(*originally published March 25, 2005)

About the "Liberated" Libya...

(first posted March 14 on Barely A Blog, archived here with links added)

As part of its great white-knighting enterprise to charm the jihadists of every color an hue, the Empire launched a "kinetic military action" last spring to "liberate" Libya from its own government. That evil little war is now being invoked to justify a similar endeavor in Syria.

But was Libya really liberated? Depends on your definition of liberty. If it involves keeping dark-skinned folk in cages and torturing them, then yes. Establishing Sharia law? Check. Desecrating Christian cemeteries, a la Kosovo (another one of Empire's "liberation" projects)? Ditto.

A few days ago, the "free and democratic" Libyans vandalized a number of gravestones of both Allied and Axis troops who died during the North African campaign of WW2. The campaign, pitting Italian and German (Afrika Korps) troops against the British and Commonwealth forces, had swept back and forth across today's Libya between 1940 and 1942, with some of the fiercest fighting around Tobruk and Benghazi. The cemeteries survived Libyan independence and Col. Gadhafi's reign, but not the NATO-installed "transitional" government.

Now, it is entirely possible that the "government" in Tripoli has nothing to do with this, and that it was the handiwork of local, Benghazi jihadists, noted veterans of the Iraqi insurgency. But that is precisely the constituency - for lack of a better word - which the Empire sought to "protect" by intervening. And now there is word that Cyrenaica (the area in question) is seeking "autonomy" from Tripoli.

Back in March 2011, as the "kinetic military action" became imminent, Justin Raimondo noted that Libya was a construct - three disparate provinces with different tribal composition. First under Ottoman rule (1551-1911), then under Italy (1911-1941), the regions were put together into the independent Kingdom of Libya (1951-1969) by the British. Colonel Gadhafi overthrew the monarchy in 1969, and ruled it until last year. And now the country is - predictably - coming apart.

Kosovo offers some clues about what might happen next. It, too, was a "humanitarian" intervention on behalf of a terrorist "liberation army," with the goal of "regime change" (replacing Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic with someone more to Empire's taste - i.e. the October 5 cabal and their current  incarnation). The deliberate and systematic destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches and cemeteries began almost immediately, along with the murder and expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Roma, Turks and other "unwanted" communities. The UN and NATO occupation authorities did nothing to stop this persecution, which peaked in March 2004 with a 3-day pogrom. Not only was no one involved punished, the Albanians were rewarded in 2008 with US and EU recognition of their illegal declaration of independence (sure, the ICJ said it wasn't illegal, but only after torturing the facts).

The Empire now insists on inviolability of "Kosovo" borders, seeking to suppress the remaining Serbs who refuse to accept "independence". Yet carving out Kosovo clearly violated Serbia's borders, which the Empire had no trouble with. Chances are it will seek to suppress the "autonomy" in Cyrenaica, then - unless the separatists there are the actual clients of Empire, in which case the "transitional council" might be thrown under the bus.

In other words, there really are no principles involved; just power. For all the media prattle about saving innocent civilians and helping democracy and freedom, "humanitarian" interventions - be they "kinetic military actions" involving bombers or ground troops or "regime change" operations involving astroturf revolutionaries - are never actually humanitarian.

They have, however, involved murder, destruction, terrorism, organized crime, butchery, and of course, lies. Those are the fruits by which we ought to know them.

The Grand Betrayal

On February 14-15, the Kosovo Serbs conducted a referendum that withdrew consent from the quisling regime in Belgrade to sell them out and recognize the abominable "Republic of Kosovo".

Response from Germany (speaking for the EU, no less) greatly resembled Berlin's reaction following the March 27, 1941 coup against the Yugoslav government that had signed a pact with Hitler.

Jumping to please their overlords, the Belgrade quislings ordered their special border police (gendarmerie) to attack the Serb civilians last night, dismantling several roadblocks and cutting off alternate approaches to the province. The assailants were masked and wore no insignia, but the government media confirmed this morning that they were, in fact, gendarmes acting on government orders. By doing so, they basically forced the besieged Serbs to use the NATO/EU/controlled "customs crossings" manned by "Kosovian" police.

Thus betrayed, the Serbs of Kosovo have sent the following plea to Russian Ambassador A.V. Konuzin, presented here in the English translation for the sake of historical record:

"Honored Excellency Aleksandr Vasilevich,
Dear brothers,

Serbs in Kosovo are surrounded on all sides. All alternate routes towards inner Serbia have been blocked.
Our official government is negotiating with the so-called authorities in Pristina.
They are negotiating on our behalf, but we have no idea what they are negotiating away.
All roadblocks on alternate routes to inner Serbia have been removed by masked men with no insignia. We do not know who they were.
The lives of 150,000 Serbs in Kosovo are in danger. We are blocked from receiving aid. We are denied freedom of movement.
We beg Russia to raise its voice against this abuse. We beg Russia to help us, because no one else will.

If someone doesn't act, the occupiers will get their wish: Kosovo will not be Serb anymore, because there won't be any Serbs left in Kosovo." 

Think about this the next time you hear someone in the West preach about democracy, human rights, and intervening to help civilians being abused by their government. Here are civilians, peacefully defending their rights, liberty and property, being systematically abused - not just by their own government (and this is true whether one considers "their" government to be in Belgrade or in Pristina), but by the so-called international community (EULEX, KFOR) as well. But because the abused are Serbs, and the abusers are Albanians, Belgrade quislings and the "international community," that's supposed to be OK.

Well, it isn't. And while Russia may be a bit busy fighting off a NED-spawned "revolution," something tells me Moscow knows that as well.

Are we to be spared nothing?

I understand that diplomacy is the art of saying "Ow!" while stepping on someone else's foot. And I understand that a diplomat is an "honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country" (Wotton). But even so, there ought to be a line somewhere.

Here's Hillary Clinton's note to the people of Serbia (right from State.gov):

On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I am delighted to send best wishes to the people of Serbia as you celebrate your National Day this February 15.

The United States and Serbia share a long history of friendship and cooperation based on mutual interest and mutual respect. Today, we stand with Serbia as you work toward European Union integration, and we will continue to support your progress until this goal becomes a reality. I look forward to continuing to strengthen our relationship and deepening our work together in the coming year as we promote stability and prosperity in the region and around the world.

As you celebrate your National Day, know that the United States is a partner and friend. I wish all the people of Serbia and Serbians around the world a peaceful and a prosperous future.

Um, no.

You're most certainly not delighted, Madam Secretary, and it's simply offensive to pretend otherwise.

The U.S. and Serbia had a long history of friendship and cooperation. That history ended on March 23, 1999. And not because of the Serbs, either.

Likewise, there is nothing "mutual" about the current relationship between Washington and the quisling regime in Belgrade. The successive U.S. administrations have repeatedly demonstrated that only the U.S. is allowed to have interests, and only the U.S. is entitled to respect - while anyone else in the world, Serbia included, is not.

To speak of "promoting stability and prosperity" anywhere, while chiefly involved in bombing and occupying countries around the world - or seeking to overthrow their governments through astroturf "popular revolutions" and staged rebellions - surely has to be the pinnacle of cynicism. Especially since the U.S. has done all those things to Serbia over the past 13 years, making it decidedly less stable and prosperous.

If these are the actions of a "partner and friend," who needs enemies?

Serbia's Foreign Minister is in Washington today, and he will smile and nod and shake hands and pretend everything is all right. It isn't. And unlike him, I'm not afraid to say it.

As for those who are missing the whole "National Day" reference, today is the anniversary of the first Serb uprising against the Ottoman rule (1804), as well as the anniversary of Serbia's first Constitution (1835). The quisling regime celebrates it as "Statehood Day" - something they themselves know nothing of. And apparently, neither does Madam Clinton.

War Porn

I've already addressed the dreary slog of Angelina Jolie's Bosnian War movie from the artistic standpoint; now that I've had a chance to observe the promotional efforts and official commentary, I'd like to address its political implications.

The film opens in Mordor-on-the-Potomac this weekend, and Jolie, Pitt and their brood were in town promoting it. Jolie even paid an emotional visit to the Holocaust Museum, and its Bosnia exhibit.

Critics mostly agree that the movie is a stinker. The fact that it's being shown in only a small number of art-house theaters suggests the producers are aware of this too. As Peter Brock (author of the outstanding "Media Cleansing") noted in his write-up, propaganda movies about the Balkans have never done well at the box office.

Then again, moneymaking never figured highly in Empire's motivations to intervene in the Balkans. Whether the goal was sticking it to the Russians, keeping Europeans in their place, enjoying the worshipful groveling of eager regional clients, seeking to impress jihadists worldwide - or any combination thereof - the Empire's white-knighting project in the Balkans has been about power.

Commercial films seek to make a profit. Art films want at least to break even while telling a story. Propaganda films aim to preach; for them, breaking even or profiting at the box office is useful, but not necessary. Jolie's film, a textbook example of "chetnixploitation", is intended to reinforce the official narrative by demonizing the designated villain. So, Serbs bad, Muslims (Croats, Albanians, etc.) good, and the Empire is the shining savior from aggression, rape and genocide. And if not, it should be - so says the Power Doctrine.

The title of the film was outright stolen from photographer Ron Haviv, a major source for Balkans imagery favoring the mainstream narrative. And Jolie herself has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (since 2007), a body behind much of Empire foreign policy.

Lo and behold, all the elements come together in a review in The Atlantic: Jolie "gets the war right", there is mention of the CFR and Power's work, all the memes and motifs are reinforced - and then Jolie is mildly criticized for being less than subtle (!) about hammering them home. Because the Empire is all about subtlety, after all...

To the Imperial establishment Jolie represents, it doesn't really matter that the film stinks. The story is hackneyed. Though the actors do their best (I've seen them in other productions), their lines are just terrible. Even the imagery itself is derivative, trying hard to present the Bosnian War as a re-run of the Holocaust - as seen in movies.

Why now, though? Could it be that, faced with a bleak economy at home and the inglorious end of two foreign wars, the Empire needs to trumpet a "success" to its populace (and oh so coincidentally, one that the Clintons can claim credit for)? Thing is, the Bosnian War ended 16 years ago. Few Americans cared about it at the time, and fewer still care about it now. Worse yet, Empire's white-knighting experiment turned out to be a complete and utter failure. The "rescued damsels" did not respond with gushing gratitude - quite the contrary. So all Jolie's film actually manages to do is underscore the Empire's pathetic disconnect from reality.

As for the whole knights-in-shining-armor rescuing-the-world myth, authentic war footage just exploded that. Professionally produced war porn, just like the actual kind, just cannot compete with amateurs anymore.

Chetnixploitation

Two years ago, a group of film critics launched a blog dedicated to "Chetnixploitation" - a subgenre in modern cinema devoted to the demonization of Serbs. Though in recent years it appeared to have been a passing fad, Chetnixploitation recently made a comeback, from a couple of throwaway lines in the latest Mission: Impossible movie to Angelina Jolie's directorial debut.

So, in the interest of public edification, and having been unable to find an adequate English-language explanation of the term, I've decided to provide a translation of the definition, as offered by the authors:

Chetnixploitation, noun

A common name for primarily cinematic works depicting the wars in the former Yugoslavia in a naive, one-sided, and grotesquely simplified manner; whether out of laziness/stupidity/ignorance or malice, all or almost all the horrors and atrocities are blamed on the Serbs ("Chetniks") while the responsibility of other participants in the wars (Croats, Bosnian Muslims, etc.) is either minimized, dismissed or even denied outright.
Such movies pretend to be art, yet amount to more or less camouflaged propaganda, seeking to "affirm" the black-and-white narrative of the Western media concerning the wars, with rigid roles allocated thus:

- Serbs ("Chetniks") are the aggressors, war criminals, rapists, robbers, murderers, terrorists, sadists. Bearded, with bloodshot eyes, bloodthirsty werewolves.

- Serb enemies (Bosnian Muslims, Croats, Albanians) are the VICTIMS: passive, pitiful, powerless, unarmed, principally women (to be tortured and raped) and children (poor crying orphans), innocent, with tear-washed suffering faces, sheep.

These films exploit the ethnic bigotry and the established imagery of the Serbs as war criminals, seeking to show (or in more sophisticated examples, suggest) their primary or even exclusive culpability for all the horrors of the Balkans Wars.

Iowa

The furor over the Iowa caucuses tonight is an illustration of the sad state of democracy in America. The mainstream media have done their best to create an atmosphere in which the whole process will be dismissed as a fluke if a particular candidate wins. Especially since that candidate is a man they have first ignored, then laughed at, then demonized... And yes, the quote attributed to Gandhi does come to mind here.

Much as it was decided in 2008 that the best heir to Bush the Lesser would be Barack the Blessed of Hopechange, the establishment has decided that the Republican candidate in November shall be Mitt Romney. Just look at the pattern in the GOP race so far: Romney gets treated as the front-runner, while every other candidate is built up and then torn down - a phenomenon Vox Day dubbed the "Romney-alternative-who-is-not-Ron-Paul wheel."

Trouble is, Paul isn't going away. He's a clear alternative to the establishment (as Vox puts it, to "Newt Romney O'Bama"), or to borrow what Phyllis Schlafly said about Barry Goldwater, "a choice, not an echo."

Predictably, the "smearbund" (Murray Rothbard's expression) tried hard to paint Paul as a racist. Unfortunately for them, that accusation has been the first resort of political scoundrels for so long, people have grown tired of it. It doesn't quite work anymore. It also happens to be a lie. So they accused Paul of being an anti-Semite instead. That, too, is untrue.

Today, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post almost called Paul a Nazi, while praising all the Imperial interventions that Paul has opposed. Cohen, by the way, argued passionately back in 2003 that "bagging Karadzic" would show the Muslim world all the white-knighting virtue and love of the United States, and win its never-ending gratitude. Well, Karadzic was "bagged" in 2008, Ratko Mladic last year, the US has created not one but two Islamic states in the Balkans (per Tom Lantos)... where's all the gratitude? Oh wait.

Daniel Greenfield really dislikes Ron Paul. He's convinced Paul's policy of dismantling the Empire is bad for the Jews and bad for Israel, suspects him of Islamophilia, even argues that Paul is working with George Soros. But it is Greenfield that wrote the best rebuttal of Cohen's idiotic rant, by pointing out that the U.S. never actually intervened to stop genocide. Not today, not in WW2, not ever.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I like Ron Paul. Back in 2004, I interviewed him for NIN - then a premier Serbian news magazine, later sold to a German consortium and thoroughly ruined - mostly about his principled opposition to America's illegal foreign wars. To prep for the interview, I did a fair bit of research on his voting record and where he stood on issues. And I have to say, even when I disagree with him (on immigration, for example), I respect him and his integrity. Assuming there is a way to save the United States of America from the consequences of imperialism - and forgive me if I'm not entirely convinced at this point that there is - Paul is the man who might be able to pull it off.

But even if I thought otherwise, even if I disliked the man and his ideas entirely, I'd still be objecting to the obvious problem of his treatment at the hands of the mainstream media and the political establishment. As should we all. Because what we're seeing here is what Philip Cunliffe noted about the 2008 Serbian elections: that democracy means whatever the Empire says it means.

So the Iowa caucuses will be declared legitimate, meaningful and proper only if the establishment's preferred candidate (i.e. Romney) wins. If Paul carries Iowa, it will be dismissed as a fluke, the whole caucus system will be derided as stupid and obsolete, and a host of other excuses will be enlisted to tell the general populace why what just happened didn't matter at all. Nothing to see here, move along, vote Romney O'Bama and the Bank Party in November, thankyouverymuch.

That sounds very much like a diabetic being forced to make a "choice" between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. It's not just that he doesn't get to choose water, it's that either of those will kill him.

A Dreary Slog

I have not seen Angelina Jolie's directorial debut. As I mentioned the other week, the trailer was enough for me to dismiss it as derivative, and the strong opinions of those who have seen it have only fortified my determination not to actually pay Ms. Jolie for the privilege of being insulted.

For better or for worse, the Serbs don't have an ethnic lobby in the US - neither a political pressure group, nor an organization set up to be professionally offended. The only bit of public outcry so far has been on the social networks, as well as this review from the American Serb publisher William Dorich, deservedly taking the film to task for misrepresenting the Bosnian War.

The government in Serbia is so useless, it may well promote the movie to show its commitment to the Empire. Things are somewhat different in the Bosnian Serb Republic, where there have been calls for a boycott and even banning the movie. All things considered, though, a public campaign against Jolie - by the "evil Serbs" no less - could only give her publicity. What to do, then?

As with many problems, this one sort of solved itself. You see, in addition to wallowing in bigotry, the  movie is actually rather terrible. It appears I wasn't the only one less than impressed with Jolie's film-making skills. Last week, the Onion's AV Club dismissed "In the Land of Blood and Honey" as "fevered good intentions gone awry, a dreary slog of a message movie with little but noble if unfulfilled aspirations to commend it," giving it a D+.

Writes critic Nathan Rabin:

"Serbian groups have justifiably complained about Jolie’s glib stereotyping of Serbs as racist heavies. Kostic, for example, emerges as the film’s hero almost exclusively by virtue of being somewhat less terrible than his contemporaries. Subtlety and understatement become collateral damage as Jolie drives her points home as forcefully as possible and the film devolves into a grubby melodrama that fails to edify or entertain."

While Jolie has successfully attracted the attention of the Western public to international atrocities, Rabin continues, "It’s possible, if not particularly likely, that someday she will get around to dramatizing atrocities compellingly as well, though her colorless work here suggests she’s a lot more likely to do that as an actress than as a filmmaker."

There you have it, then. For a much better story about the horrors of war, go see "War Horse" instead.

The German Fixation

Angela Merkel may be an Ossie, but she was definitely channeling American emperors on Monday, telling the German occupation garrison in Kosovo that Germans "should always remember that our security and our peace back home are down to troops serving their country here."

Pray tell, Angie, how does re-enacting the Third Reich's Balkans adventure contribute to Germany's security and peace? It is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that such an argument is nonsensical - and then there is proof, too.

Equally obvious is that Germany gets off on bludgeoning Serbia. This goes beyond realpolitik and eternal interests, too. German companies already own much of the Serbian media and the banking sector. If they wanted a client state, Serbia was theirs for the taking - Djindjic was a Germanophile, and the Tadic government literally took groveling to a whole new level. No, there is clearly more at work here than political and economic interests. It could be historical memory - blaming the Serbs for thwarting German designs in both world wars, for example - or, more likely, an attempt to exorcise Germany's own ghosts through transference: if the Serbs are genocidal aggressors, surely the world can stop going to the Nazi well for the standard of villainy, right? (Yeah, good luck with that.)

Part of the trouble is that the victorious Allies chose to impose victors' justice at the Nuremberg trials, rather than try to explain to the Germans why the Nazi ideology was evil. In effect, Germans were to consider the Nazis evil because the powers that defeated them said so - and that's been their ongoing frustration ever since. It wasn't until recently, with Oliver Hirschbiegel's Der Untergang (2004), that the Nazis were approached as three-dimensional human beings rather than cardboard cut-outs, their villainy actually shown and explained. I dare you to watch the part where Frau Goebbels murders her children and make apologies for National-Socialism afterwards. If you are somehow able to do so, then seek help.

Yet it does seem that the Germans have "learned nothing and forgotten nothing", to borrow a phrase from Talleyrand. How else to explain the fact that Berlin, no matter the party in charge, thinks nothing of overtly supporting Hitler's henchmen (see here, with photos, and also here)? Far more troubling is that the British, the French and especially the Americans not only don't object, but actively support such policy. The only ones to object are the Russians - but they are shrugged off as impotent Cold War losers. Indeed, the Soviet contribution to defeating Hitler (90% or so of the war effort in Europe) is routinely minimized, and the Eurocrats are now endeavoring to equate Nazism and Communism. Russian support for the Serbs is dismissed as irrational feelings of ethnic and religious kinship, while Western support for Serbenrein Croatia or Magna Albania is supposedly noble, pure, and the paragon of humanitarianism (!?)

Germans understandably want to avoid constantly being compared to the Nazis. Don't act like the Nazis, then. Bombing Belgrade, supporting a Serb-persecuting chauvinist regime in Croatia and the establishment of a greater Albanian state, occupying Serb territory with tanks and troops, and insisting that Serbia become a member of the "European family of nations" but only if it gives up much land and its own identity - those are all things Germany did not just back in 1941-45, but again from 1991 onwards.

Want greatness again? Remember Bismarck. He wanted friendship with Russia, thought the Balkans wasn't worth the "bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier", and (reportedly) died with "Serbia" on his last breath.

Speaking of grenadiers, I'd like to remind those German (and Austrian) troops in Kosovo that, before they act on any desires they may have to shoot those pesky Serbs refusing to roll over and die, they ought to remember their Bible:

Da sprach Jesus zu ihm; Stecke dein Schwert an seinen Ort! denn wer das Schwert nimmt, der soll durchs Schwert umkommen.(Matthaeus, 26:52, Martin Luther's translation)

And with that in mind, fröhliche Weihnachten!

Havel

There is a particular group of politicians who emerged in central and eastern Europe (as well as the Balkans) in the late 1980s, who played a major role in the dismantling of Communism and bringing about "democracy". Along with Nelson Mandela of South Africa, NATOland has made these people into a fetish of sorts, epic heroes deserving of worship.

It is indicative, though, that in their own countries they are either shunned, or outright reviled (as is the case with Gorbachev, for example), rightfully regarded as people who made out well for themselves and their cronies, but brought widespread misery to everyone else, through the great robbery project known as "transition".

One of these men, Vaclav Havel, died yesterday. His opus as a writer is already pretty much forgotten. Likewise his tenure as Czech president. What Havel may well end up being remembered for is his enthusiastic support for the Imperial doctrine of "humanitarian intervention", which he preached in 1999 as bombs were raining on Serbia. As victims of the original Munich "agreement," the Czechs may also find it ironic that Havel supported its modern-day equivalent. 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the events of the past two decades were not some sort of "end of history," but rather a temporary distortion of world affairs due to the demise of the USSR and the ensuing vacuum the Atlantic Empire endeavored to fill. What order of affairs will end up replacing this age of transition, I do not know. However, I do hope it won't remember Havel and his ilk as heroes.

Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens built his career on hating. That is why I never really dwelt on his Serbophobia in particular. He hated the Serbs because hating the Serbs was the fashionable thing to do in the circles he moved in, and it is pointless to debate one's tastes in fashion, however ghastly they might be.

Hitchens was perhaps best known for his obnoxious atheism, a hatred of [the Jewish and Christian] God. So I think it most appropriate to cite here the elegant epitaph penned by blogger Vox Day, author of The Irrational Atheist:

The conglomeration of atoms that were, for a very brief moment in history, collectively known by the name Christopher Hitchens, have begun to disperse. The universe continues as before, uncaring and unaware.

Thanks, Angie

It just occurred to me that I haven't posted anything here since mid-November; I've been entirely too preoccupied with my other blog, Antiwar.com, and travel.

So, to recap: the Kosovo Serbs' citizenship gambit failed, when Moscow refused them on a technicality. The barricades remain, however, in spite of all the attempts to get them dismantled. Speaking of which, the German and Austrian complaints about the "violence" - when it was their fully armed and armored troops that initiated violence against the Serb civilians - has to be the pinnacle of cynicism.

It did Belgrade no good to make yet another set of capitulations to the KLA "state" Saturday night; the EU decided to put its candidacy on ice until the formal recognition of "Kosovia", and whatever new demands they come up with thereafter. In a way - and quite unintentionally I'm sure - the Austro-German axis running the show is actually doing the Serbs a favor: had the quisling regime's obsequiousness been rewarded by a candidacy, meaningless and symbolic as it is, they'd have smooth sailing till the April elections regardless of their manifest ineptitude, and the Serb resistance in Kosovo would have been undermined. As it is, the EUrocrats are sabotaging the very people working to please them. Well, no one said they were logical...

So, German Chancellor Angela Merkel deserves a thank-you note for what she did, however inadvertently, to keep Serbia out of EU bondage. I'm sure once the Serbs sort out their politics, that note will be forthcoming in some shape or form.

I'm not so sure about Angelina Jolie, though. Her directorial debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" is yet another take on a real-life romance between a Serb and a Muslim during the Bosnian War. Judging from the trailer and the few snippets of footage floating around, it's a derivative and disappointing bit of chetnixploitation, borrowing heavily from movies about the Holocaust. While Bosnia was a nasty (un)civil war, comparing it to the Holocaust is in horrifically poor taste at the very least, if not an outright insult to Holocaust victims.

There have been many films dealing with the Balkans wars in the past twenty years, but none of them have done any good financially. One would think Hollywood would have got the point by now.

In other news, the EU is coming apart at the seams, the Empire is trying to engineer a color revolution in Russia, the Iranians claim to have shot down a U.S. drone, and Pakistan is bolstering air defenses after "NATO" aircraft mauled two dozen of their troops last week. None of that is likely to turn out very well.