U.S. ends in 2007, says Koranic scholar

According to an Arab "scholar" named Ziad Silwadi, the United States will be destroyed in 2007 by a giant tsunami, as Allah's punishment for its "sins," reported the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. Silwadi drew this conclusion after a "thorough analysis" of Koranic verses.

I wish I could say this is an April's Fool, or another article from The Onion, but apparently Silwadi is quite serious.

Tempting as it is to dismiss him as a raving lunatic, one must keep two things in mind. One is that immanentizing the eschaton has been wildly popular in recent years among the so-called Christian fundamentalists in the U.S.; witness the phenomenon of the "Left Behind" books. Not a few Americans are convinced we live in the End Times prophesied in the Book of Revelation; they also tend to believe the U.S. government is on the side of the angels. So, apocalyptic Islamic scholars, though nuttier than a squirrel's cheeks in October, aren't necessarily the nuttiest folks around.

The second thing to bear in mind when considering this Silwadi character is that he does say something rather sensible:

"It would be fair to say that the world would be better off with a US that is not a superpower and that does not take advantage of weak nations than a world where this country does not exist at all," he added."The world will certainly lose a lot if and when this disaster occurs because of the great services that American society has rendered to the economy, industry and science."

Notice the "if and when" in Silwadi's statement. Unlike some soi-disant "prophets" in the West, he is absolutely certain of his claim. And if one reads the JP report, it becomes obvious why: it's based on dubious numerology and stretched interpretation of some Koranic verses.

Odds are, therefore, that we won't see the end of the U.S. in two years - although America's continued survival as such is by no means guaranteed for much longer. Only a complete idiot would deny that the world would be worse off without the United States, even as it manifestly would be better off without the American Empire.

Even a broken watch is right twice a day, and Silwadi happens to be right about something that most people - both advocates of the American Empire and its avowed enemies - tend to miss. When the collapse comes, and it is about as inevitable as anything in history, it would be good to keep this in mind.

"Reality Park"

Chris Deliso's by now traditional April Fools' column at balkanalysis.com is like satire from The Onion: uproarious, but too close to the truth for comfort. If there is anything the state-supermacists have demonstrated consistently over the years - besides the propensity for violence, anyway - it is that they are capable of far more outlandish and absurd things than even the cleverest satirist could conjure.

Anyway, Deliso's piece is worth reading in full, but here is just the part that pertains to Serbia, whose corrupt politicians and oblivious people continue to believe in the "earthly paradise" of the EUSSR:

Speaking of Serbia, [Stability Pact Commisar] Busek at the same time iterated that every diplomat’s favorite punching bag would in fact never join the union, but be preserved as a sort of “reality park,” in which smoking, drunkenness, unemployment, turbo-folk and dangerous, outdated cars would be preserved forever. “This way,” he said, “Europeans will have a chance to enjoy, at least for a few days of vacation, the visceral thrill of what life used to be like before we opted for a nanny state of total comfort and regulation,” he said.

A New Devil's Dictionary

Ambrose Bierce put together the original in the mid-1800s, but Tom Engelhardt thinks it's time for a new edition, to keep up the pace with the Imperials' frenzied pursuit of redefining language to mean whatever they want it to mean, and nothing else.

Some of my favorites:

Nationalism n: How foreigners love their country (when they do). A very dangerous phenomenon that can lead to extremes of passion, blindness, and xenophobia. (See, Terrorism)

Patriotism n: How Americans love their country. A trait so positive you can't have too much of it, and if you do, then you are a super-patriot which couldn't be better. (Foreigners cannot be patriotic. See, Nationalism)

Intelligence n: What Dick Cheney wants and the CIA must provide -- or else. (See, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction)

Democracy n: A country where the newspapers are pro-American.
(alt) Democracy n: [...] 2. When they vote for us. (See, tyranny: When they vote for someone else.)

Free Press: 1. Government propaganda materials covertly funded with a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money but given out for free to the press and then broadcast without any acknowledgment of the government's role in their preparation.

Greece Endorses the ICG Agenda

Friday's Washington Times carried a piece by Greek foreign minister Petros Molyviatis, unimaginatively titled "Back to Kosovo: Athens' view."

The moment Molyviatis mentions the 1999 war as "dramatic events," it becomes obvious something is seriously wrong. Indeed, the Greek FM suffers from a terminal case of absurd terminology. To him, the 2004 pogrom was "incidents;" Kosovo is a "country;" and security of Serbs, their property, and the Orthodox temples "remain major concerns," instead of being nonexistent.

"Fostering democracy, respect for human rights and—especially—minority rights, as well as good governance, have been the great challenge from the outset," says Molyviatis. "The international community’s initial goal of a stable, democratic and multiethnic Kosovo has not yet been achieved."

Challenge? More like an abysmal failure - even if these have been the goals of the so-called international community (what does that mean, anyway?). What is so challenging about some 40,000 occupying NATO troops failing entirely to prevent the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians, the plunder and destruction of their property, and the ongoing murder and violence against those who remained? All they had to do is stand and watch - a duty they performed superbly.

Despite all this, Molyviatis wants Belgrade and the Kosovo Serbs to become "involved" - i.e. collaborate with the occupation, offering a smarmy quote supposed to be a proverb: "the absent are always in the wrong." Huh?

It would be easy to say that Petros Molyviatis must have fallen off the stupid tree, hitting every branch on the way down. He is, however, Athens' foreign minister, and the editorial was titled "Athens' view." So this is not just his, but the Greek government's agenda. Its goal becomes obvious at the end of the article, when Molyviatis starts extolling the virtues of Greece as the best mediator for Kosovo, "as a member of the EU and NATO, as a member of the U.N. Security Council for 2005-2006, as a friend and ally of the United States, and as the chairman in office of the South East European Cooperation Process. And, of course, as a country with strong bonds of friendship and cooperation with all Contact Group members."

What this amounts to is Athens trying to score points with the EU and the Empire, while trying to appease Albanian territorial aspirations by throwing them the Kosovo bone and hoping the "Chamerian Liberation Army" never comes into being. This is both stupid and wrong - but I suppose the Greeks are about to find that out the hard way.

As for the Serbs who hoped for some kind of "friendship" with Greece, they should remember the crucial difference between the people and the State: while people may have friends, the State has only interests. If the Greek State had been friendly, it would have vetoed the 1999 bombing. Enough said.

Unholy Alliance

Six years ago today, NATO attacked what was then Yugoslavia. Alliance leaders claimed all sorts of reasons and justifications for their act of aggression, from political extortion (initially) to "helping the refugees" (who just conveniently happened to be under the thumb of their allies, the terrorist KLA).

On May 14, 1999, Empress Hillary Clinton went to visit the Albanian refugees in Macedonia. BBC ran this picture with the article about the visit.

The shape in the middle is Kosovo. On the right side is the Albanian eagle. The "UCK" is the Albanian acronym of the KLA. Are further comments really necessary?

A Kosovo Joke

Jason Miko writes on Reality Macedonia today, and tries to explain Kosovo through a joke:

It is today, nearly six years after NATO and the UN took over Kosovo. An elderly Albanian couple is sitting in their dark flat in Pristina. The electricity is out, yet again, and they are sitting in front of a blank television, lights out, food beginning to rot in the refrigerator which isn’t running, no hot water, and certainly no cooking to do. They are just sitting there, wondering what to do next when all of the sudden, the crackle of electricity is heard when the lights begin to flicker. The television comes to life, the hum of the refrigerator can be heard and the water heater starts up.

The old man looks at his wife and says “Honey, get my gun. The Serbs are back.”

This really says it all, on so many levels.

(By the way - Reality Macedonia is a fantastic site, and the people there have done some truly excellent work on explaining the Macedonian-Albanian relations and the situation in that beleaguered country. I should put up a permanent link to them first chance I get...)

Tyranny of Thoughtcrime

I don't feel much like the Stasi.

Otherwise, I find a lot of truth in Tina Brown's assessment of the "eggshell era," the current climate in which anyone who aspires to public life of any kind lives in constant fear of committing thoughtcrime according to constantly shifting perceptions.

The following is from Brown's ruminations on Condoleeza Rice, in today's Washington Post:

Every word out of a public figure's mouth is a hostage to fortune. Every private e-mail is a bomb that could blow up your life. [...] We are in the Eggshell Era, in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there's a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out - and a public that is slowly being trained to accept a culture of finks. We're always under surveillance; cameras watch us wherever we go; paparazzi make small fortunes snapping glamour goddesses picking their noses; everything is on tape, with transcripts available. No matter who you are, someone is ready and willing to rat you out. Even the rats themselves have to look over their shoulders, because some smaller rat is always waiting in the wings. Bloggers are the new Stasi. All the timidity this engenders, all this watching your mouth has started to feel positively un-American.

She's definitely got a point.

In Memoriam: March Pogrom, 2004

One year ago: An Albanian urinates on the ruins of the burned Cathedral of St. George in Prizren, after the March 17, 2004 pogrom. Graffiti celebrating the "Kosovo Liberation Army" are scrawled on the ruined fenceposts. Another Albanian, armed with a cell-phone camera, immortalizes the sight.

(probably taken by a wire service photographer in March 2004; original at www.kosovo.com)

Outrunning Entropy

The first time I read this, I was reminded of the European Union, which I only semi-jokingly call "Soviet" nowadays. The book it comes from is the fifth in a space-opera series (of which I will admit to being an unabashed fan) by David Weber. All emphasis added.

(“Flag in Exile,” Chapter 7):

There'd been a time when the Republic of Haven—not "the People's Republic," but simply "the Republic"—had inspired an entire quadrant. It had been a bright, burning beacon, a wealthy, vastly productive renaissance which had rivaled Old Earth herself as the cultural and intellectual touchstone of humanity. Yet that glorious promise had died. Not at the hands of foreign conquerors or barbarians from the marches, but in its sleep, victim of the best of motives. It had sacrificed itself upon the altar of equality. Not the equality of opportunity, but of outcomes. It had looked upon its own wealth and the inevitable inequities of any human society and decided to rectify them, and somehow the lunatics had taken over the asylum. They'd transformed the Republic into the People's Republic—a vast, crazed machine that promised everyone more and better of everything, regardless of their own contributions to the system. And, in the process, they'd built a bureaucratic Titan locked into a headlong voyage to self-destruction and capable of swallowing reformers like gnats.

[…] The Legislaturalists' parents and grandparents had taken too many workers out of the labor force in the name of "equality," debased the educational system too terribly in the name of "democratization." They'd taught the Dolists that their only responsibilities were to be born, to breathe, and to draw their Basic Living Stipends, and that the function of their schools was to offer students "validation"—whatever the hell that was—rather than education. And when the rulers realized they'd gutted their own economy, that its total collapse was only a few, inevitable decades away unless they could somehow undo their "reforms," they'd lacked the courage to face the consequences.

Perhaps they … actually could have repaired the damage, but they hadn't. Rather than face the political consequences of dismantling their vote-buying system of bread and circuses, they'd looked for another way to fill the welfare coffers, and so the People's Republic had turned conquistador. The Legislaturalists had engulfed their interstellar neighbors, looting other economies to transfuse life back into the corpse of the old Republic of Haven, and, for a time, it had seemed to work.

But appearances had been misleading, for they'd exported their own system to the worlds they conquered. They'd had no choice—it was the only one they knew—yet it had poisoned the captive economies as inexorably as their own. The need to squeeze those economies to prop up their own had only made them collapse sooner, and as the revenue sources dried up, they'd been forced to conquer still more worlds, and still more. Each victim provided a brief, illusory spurt of prosperity, but only until it, too, failed and became yet another burden rather than an asset. It had been like trying to outrun entropy, yet they'd left themselves no other option, and as conquest bloated the People's Republic, the forces needed to safeguard those conquests and add still more to them had grown, as well.”

Bosnian Catholics Discover the Obvious

Catholic Croats in Bosnia are feeling "written out of the script," according to IWPR's Marcus Tanner, writing in today's Independent. Says Tanner, "no one can dispute that the Catholic church faces extinction in much of the country, outside a triangle of land in the barren hills of Herzegovina on the Croatian border, where Bosnian Croats rule the roost."

The Catholic hierarchy waxes nostalgic about the Austro-Hungarian occupation (1878-1918), when Catholics were on top in Bosnia. Almost 25% of the population then, they are clinging on to 10% now. The predictable culprit is quickly identified: the Serbs. "The Serbs won’t let returnees go home," says Fr. Mato Zovkic, vicar of the Sarajevo archdiocese.

Hogwash. No one can really block refugee returns in today's Bosnia, where Viceroy Ashdown is lording it over the Serbs in particular with an iron fist. What Zovkic and Tanner do not mention is that Croats now control and inhabit areas in the west of Bosnia and in the Krajina region of Croatia, that were until recently almost entirely Serb, and have been thoroughly ethnically cleansed. If Croats aren't returning to their homes in Serb-controlled territory, it's because they've been given Serb properties in Croat-controlled territory.

In their misguided obsession with the Serbs, neither Tanner nor Zovkic, nor the Cardinal VInko Puljic in Sarajevo, so much as touch the main problem of Croats in Bosnia. Even Fra Marko Orsolic, the dissenting Franciscan who criticizes the Jesuit-dominated hierarchy for "a history of too-close ties to the forces of Croatian nationalism and their main party, the Croat Democratic Union [HDZ]," misses the point, even if by an inch.

The Bosnian Croats' main problem have never been the Serbs, but the Muslims. More specifically, the ideology of majoritarian rule over a centralized Bosnian state, adopted throughout the Muslim political spectrum. This ideology was championed by the late Alija Izetbegovic, who enjoyed the support of HDZ - but more importantly, the vast majority of Croats, regardless of party affiliation - for an illegal and unilateral declaration of independence that touched off the Bosnian War.

In 1992, the HDZ leadership in Zagreb (of which the Bosnian branch was a mere satellite) considered as their main enemy the Serbs (both those native to Croatia and in general) and supported Izetbegovic as the enemy of their enemy. But while regional ethnic autonomy or secession were taboo in Croatia, in Bosnia these ideas were in the Croats' best interest. Once the principle of ethnic democracy was established, only some form of ethnic federalization could prevent the tyranny of the central, Muslim-dominated government. This was the idea behind the Serb cantonization proposals, which the Croats initially backed. But between the historical grudges (Croats blamed Serbs for ending the Austro-Hungarian bonanza, Serbs blamed Croats for a brutal WW2 genocide, when Bosnia was part of the "independent" fascist Croatia) and the ongoing war in Croatia proper, the Croats of Bosnia sacrificed political prudence and joined forces with Izetbegovic's SDA.

Once they figured out they had been used - by early 1993 - they clashed with the Muslims. They were losing, slowly but steadily, when the United States bailed them out from the frying pan - and into the fire - with the 1994 Washington Agreement. This pact created a Muslim-Croat alliance against the Serbs, and established today's "Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina" (which, rumors still abound, used to be called "Federation of Bosniaks [Muslims] and Croats [Hrvata]," hence the same initials: FBiH). The 1995 Dayton Accords established the Federation as one of the Bosnian "entities." But subsequent erostion of the Dayton Constitution - always benefiting the Muslim centralizers - eliminated what few provisions the Croats had protecting their ethnic rights vis-a-vis the Muslim hypermajority.

Yes, hypermajority - when seen in the framework of the Federation, anyway. In 1991, Muslims had been 43% of the total population of Bosnia, a plurality with which Izetbegovic was unable to impose his centralist program even if he had the support of all of them. And he didn't - only the war allowed him to homogenize Muslim public opinion and establish near-total political control; one is tempted to say he knew this and pushed for war deliberately, but that is another topic for another time. The point is, Izetbegovic could not have pursued his belligerent majoritarian agenda without Croat support. Between the SDA and the HDZ members of parliament, Izetbegovic had a 60-percent supermajority that allowed him to claim legitimacy when he illegally pushed through an independence referendum.

Though the mujahedin who cut a bloody swath through Bosnia fighting for Izetbegovic would disagree, the religious aspect of the Bosnian conflict was perhaps the least important. The fundamental issue in Bosnia has been a clash of two political principles: centralism (exemplified by Izetbegovic's concept of "unified," Muslim-dominated Bosnia) and self-government, which was the basis of both Serb and Croat policies.

It is a tremendous irony that by seeking to harm the Serbs the Croats actually harmed themselves, by helping the centralizers at the expense of self-government. Now they complain about the fruits of their struggle, without realizing what exactly they had planted and when. And they still have the knee-jerk response to lash out at Serbs (though the Serbophobic Tanner may have something to do with it). I fully sympathize with their plight, but they should stop the gripe-fest and wake up to their own responsibility in the matter. Maybe then they can do something about it, instead of complaining to hacks employed by the Empire, which - let's remember - very much helped them get into the present mess.

Violence and State

As usual, Butler Shaffer has a fantastic column on LRC today on how some lives are considered more important than others, through examining the role of the state in outbursts of violence such as the recent murders in Atlanta, Chicago, and Wisconsin. Here's one of the best passages:

We live in an age of politicogenic conflict, wherein any condition that a sizeable number of people wish to see changed is presumed to give rise to state authority to redirect people’s lives. Farmers are subjected to criminal penalties for plowing their lands if their acreage is the nesting ground for some favored species of bird or rat. Homeowners have had their residences condemned, through eminent domain, and turned over to private businesses for the building of a factory or shopping center. Before one can enter various trades or professions, one must secure a license, to be issued by a state agency controlled by those already licensed. Prisons are over-populated with individuals whose only crime has been to choose which chemicals to ingest into their bodies. Parents are penalized for not educating, medicating, supervising, or raising their children in accordance with the preferences of those who presume the state’s role of “super-parent.” Individuals are subject to state mandates regarding health care alternatives, including forthcoming government controls over vitamins and supplements. The police system expands its surveillance and weaponry into more and more corners of life. Our world has become as dystopian as that envisioned by Herbert Spencer, in which “no form of co-operation, small or great, can be carried on without regulation, and an implied submission to the regulating agencies.”

And furthermore:

The state’s relentless efforts to regulate and micromanage the lives of people frustrates goal-directed behavior and, as a consequence, produces the anger and violence that manifests itself in so many sectors of modern society.

Now doesn't this just make more sense than all the pseudo-philosophical hokum we hear from the legacy media?

This is also the first time I've seen the phrase "state-supermacists" to describe people who follow and worship the state. It's much more descriptive than "statists," and I intend to use it with alarming regularity.

ICG's Tangled Web

Is there some sort of unholy alliance between the NY Times/International Herald Tribune and the International Crisis Group (ICG)? It seems hardly a week goes by without the IHT publishing at least one editorial by ICG board members, sympathizers or partisans, recycling the Group's message about the "independence" of occupied ("liberated," in their parlance) Kosovo.

The latest in this string of atrocities is an op-ed by one John Norris, a "special adviser to the president" of the ICG, who spins the indictment and surrender of Ramush Haradinaj as a "stern test of maturity" in Saturday's IHT.

I'll give the Imperials one thing: they sure can talk pretty. Norris's prose is very persuasive, if one  forgets for even a minute that he traffics in euphemisms alone. Indeed, the vocabulary of the editorial consists almost exclusively of select spin-words and phrases. Thus Ramush is not an "indicted war criminal" like other ICTY prisoners, but a "wildly popular prime minister who has generally said and done all the right things while delivering on a wide array of requests made by the UN administration." The anthropomorphic Kosovo (conjured as a more acceptable image than the KLA, or Albanians) "has languished awkwardly in a netherworld, uncertain whether it would become a country, remain a protectorate indefinitely or be forced back into a desperately unhappy and manifestly unworkable union with Serbia." Notice the use of "forced", "desperately unhappy" and "manifestly unworkable" to describe Kosovo's proper legal status. Brilliant!

When Norris says "many international officials wonder if prosecutors in The Hague lost sight of the forest for the trees in going after Haridinaj [sic] at this exact moment," one is not supposed to ask whether these unnamed multitudes reflect only the Albanian partisans hand-picked by the ICG. Similarly, one is not supposed to understand that the "growing body of sentiment that Kosovo should be granted conditional independence" is actually the KLA/ICG position, presented here as self-evident truth.

But while Norris is true to form in repeating the independence mantra and attempting to manipulate people's sentiments through choice phraseology, he departs from other ICG editorials by addressing himself partially at the Albanians. Consider this:

"Rather than lashing out in anger, they need to understand that the end game for their aspirations is here, and that by continuing to hold their anger in check, avoiding attacks on the Serb minority and forming a government that can make real progress on international standards, they can show they are ready to assume the mantle of statehood."

He follows this up with an appeal to Ibrahim Rugova and Hashim Taqi to "rise above a long history of mutual animus and political rivalry." (Political unificiation of Albanians is somewhat of an ICG fetish, yet they go out of their way to deny its ultimate logical outcome, Greater Albania.) And there you have it, the message every Albanian partisan in the West has been shouting for the past week: keep it cool, play along, and you'll get what you want.

Two questions spring into a skeptical mind. Why say this in the IHT, and not, say, Koha Ditore or Kosova Sot? The NY Times' European avatar is hardly the Kosovo Albanian daily of choice. So, Norris is making his pitch for the benefit of Western audiences as much as that of the Albanians.

The second question is whether another pogrom on the scale of March 17, 2004 would really be such a threat to the Albanian cause. The initial outrage with the raging mob was quickly spun into momentum for accelerated status talks. The ICG itself argues that to delay independence would provoke bloody Albanian violence. Would proof not help their argument?

This, in turn, suggests that while the message to the Albanians may well be genuine, its originators are hedging their bets and preparing the groundwork for another pogrom, which they could blame on "irresponsible elements" among the Albanians or better yet the Serbs, labeled by Norris and others as the only possible beneficiary of further violence. So whether there is a pogrom or not, the ICG has its bases covered.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we conspire to deceive...

Deliso Dismantles CNN

Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis.com does a number on CNN and its disgraced chief exec, Eason Jordan - not for Jordan's alleged comments in Davos about US targeting journalists that forced his resignation, but for CNN's inexcusable whoredom in peddling the Imperial war in Kosovo, almost 6 years ago now.

Jordan, says Deliso, is being both vilified and defended for all the wrong reasons, while no one is asking the right questions about CNN's involvement in Empire's wars:

It's as if Rummy was fired after being found to have a predilection for prancing around in little pink tutus, instead of for causing the needless deaths of tens of thousands.

The piece, today on Antiwar.com, is a real treasure.

Thanks, Chris!

A Template for War

Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute engages in a fascinating exercise today on LewRockwell.com, presenting a template for the current Iraq war/occupation. He then reveals that the text was cribbed entirely from a 1979 Walter Karp book on the 1898 Spanish-American war! The comparison between Bush the Lesser and William McKinley is eerie.

Since no one has done this yet, I thought I would try to apply the template to the 1999 Kosovo War. My adjustments to the original text are noted in brackets, following the lead of Prof. Higgs. Not surprisingly, the fit is nearly perfect:

To gain popular support for so useless a policy [as attacking Serbia] Democrats were unrelenting in their efforts to arouse jingo sentiment in the country. The Republicans too, were eager for a foreign adventure. . . .

the American people could indeed be diverted from their domestic concerns if the right sort of foreign crusade was offered. By inciting hatred of [Milosevic], by crying up interventionist pretexts, by encouraging the [Albanians] to prolong their struggle, by entangling America officially in [Serbian] affairs, the interventionists bent themselves to the task of turning passive, if promising, sympathy [for oppressed Albanians] into active, fighting support.

. . . interventionist sentiment ran strong in both parties.

. . . there was nothing independent about the American press. It was, overwhelmingly, a party press, a press that echoed to the point of slavishness the policies and propaganda of one or the other major party. Of the mendacious warmongering journalism of the American press, suffice to say that everything that would inflame public sentiment against [Milosevic's regime] was prominently reported, exaggerated, or fabricated.

There was nothing subtle about [Clinton's] dealings with [Serbia]. From the start he claimed the right to dictate [Serbia's] conduct . . . and to intervene by force should that conduct fail to meet the American government's approval.

The Democrats, by now, were a united, vociferous war party . . . .

. . . the [Racak "massacre"] wrought a profound change in American public sentiment.

Although the [Racak "massacre"] produced no clamor for war [against Serbia], it had made the great majority of Americans impatient for the first time to see matters settled in [Kosovo], by American intervention if necessary.

The American ultimatum [to the Yugoslav government] was harsh. Had [Clinton] been seeking a peaceful solution, the [Yugoslav] concessions certainly provided the basis for one. Few sovereign nations have ever made such concessions to a foreign power in peacetime over their own internal affairs. It availed [Belgrade] nothing.

[On March 24, 1999] . . . the President delivered his war message . . . . the President concluded quite falsely that he had "exhausted" all diplomatic means to secure peace. ["We act to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military offensive. We act to prevent a wider war; to diffuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results. And we act to stand united with our allies for peace. By acting now we are upholding our values, protecting our interests and advancing the cause of peace," Clinton declared.]

Popular support for the war was more than overwhelming. It was joyful, exuberant, ecstatic. Americans greeted the war in a tumultuous holiday spirit . . . .

What was there to fret about? America was good! America was true! [Stop the genocide in Kosovo!] In that spirit, generous and giddy, righteous and irresponsible, the American people rallied to war against a fifth-rate power under the leadership of their ostensibly peace-loving President.

To conquer and rule [Kosovo] as [a de facto] American [protectorate] was [Clinton's] principal war aim.

The [U.S. armed forces] . . . . in about [11 weeks'] time, . . . . destroyed the hapless hulks that passed for the [Yugoslav civilian infrastructure]. The battle was no more perilous than target practice since [U.S. bomber crews and cruise missile crews] simply fired at will out of range of the [Yugoslav] guns. . . . News of [quick U.S. victories] sent the populace into a fit of ecstatic rejoicing.

Logic is no help to the vanquished. . . . international law is no help to the vanquished either.

Reluctant acceptance of a fait accompli was the keynote of the propaganda campaign. . . . The American people were invariably described as already demanding what the propagandists were trying to get them to accept. The debasement of language by political mendacity was never more aptly illustrated than in the [humanitarians'] desperate pretense that imperialism was a popular movement. . . .

Above all, the propagandists, again following [Clinton], made frantic efforts to deny any imperialist intentions. . . .

America's control of [Kosovo], so the propagandists insisted, brought distasteful but unavoidable "duty" in its train, namely the duty to rule [Kosovo, until the "final solution" is achieved]. . . . [Clinton] himself sternly repudiated the term "imperialism." . . . If America was becoming an imperial power, it was an empire purely by inadvertence. So the propagandists insisted.

Had the [Republicans] marshaled their party strength against [Clinton's] designs, those designs would never have succeeded. Even without a Republican opposition, the American people, with nothing to guide them save ceaseless [war] propaganda, were painfully divided and confused about [Kosovo]. Even at war's end, with the American flag flying over [Pristina], there was no grass-roots demand for retaining [Kosovo] and no evidence that a majority even favored it. . . . For the success of [Clinton's] imperial design the silent complicity of the [Republicans] proved decisive.

Nothing further, Your Honor. The defense rests.

Playing the Anti-Semitic Card

The already noxious London IWPR (Institute for War and Peace Reporting) ventured yet again into criminal propaganda this week, making charges that Serbia is "anti-Semitic." To a nation that has the highest percentage of "righteous gentiles" recognized at Yad Vashem, and has suffered horribly right alongside the Jews in the death camps of WW2, this slur is as offensive as it is absurd.

To achieve the desired effect, the IWPR reporters make vague claims, engage in fanciful speculation, and falsify logic. "Many bookstores," they say, sell the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the anti-Jewish tract concocted by the Tsarist Russian secret police over a century ago. How many? Which ones? Would it be so hard to mention a specific example, so one may establish if they are fringe enterprises or mainstream booksellers? After all, there is most certainly a difference between, e.g. "Uncle Adolf's Racial Rack" and "Barnes & Noble." But the IWPR does not say, and does not care.

Then they mention a "list of Jews in Serbia" posted on the neo-Nazi site Stormfront, supposedly posted by someone in Serbia, "most Serbian commentators conclude." Again, who is "most"? There are all sorts of commentators in Serbia, dozens of whom would be delighted to accuse their country and people (both of which they loathe) of the vilest things. Just so I don't commit the same transgression I accuse IWPR of, I'll mention the roster of columnists for the daily Danas as an example. Any opinion can be had for the right price, and having many rich sponsors, IWPR certainly doesn't lack money.

Next, the IWPR hacks try an assumption:

"Other experts agree that Serbia is becoming a hotbed of extreme racist ideologies – partly a consequence of a decade of warfare under Slobodan Milosevic, when the media painted Croats, Muslims and Albanians as the demonic enemies of innocent Serbs."

Not only is this a brazen thesis reversal of the obvious truth (that Croats, Muslims, Albanians and the mainstream Western media demonized the Serbs as enemies of innocent whoever - and this article is part of that demonization legacy!) but further down in the article, they contradict themselves! According to the Serbian Jewish leader Aca Singer, "anti-Semitic incidents have increased since the fall of the Milosevic regime in October 2000," and that "In the past five years over a hundred anti-Semitic books have been published in Serbia." But if anti-Semitism supposedly exploded once Milosevic was gone, how could it be his fault?

Singer "believes this may be because the advent of democracy has released feelings about Jews that were previously well concealed." So, Serbs have always been evil, but the evil Milosevic held them in check?! Where does this nonsense come from?!

IWPR does quote one specific case of anti-Semitism, a small "Christian" publishing house called IHTUS, which has published the notorious "blood libel" and other anti-Semitic diatribes. Its owner is a former member of a pre-WW2 fascist movement, who recently returned from decades of living in - the United States. The above-mentioned Stormfront is hosted in - the United States. "Serbian Defence [sic] League," another site they mention, is also hosted in - the USA, and owned by a U.S. resident who claims to be a Serb. So far, all that these examples of "Serbian anti-Semitism" have in common is their American origin. But IWPR does not claim America is anti-Semitic, does it?

IWPR reporters also target Obraz, a conservative movement reviled by Serbia's Jacobins, claiming that since its website threatens "Zionists," it is anti-Semitic. But are "Zionist" and "Jew" one and the same? Can one be Jewish and not advocate the establishment of the Jewish State? I'd suggest asking the Hassidic Jews, and other Orthodox Jewish groups, who emphatically reject the esablishment of Israel as sinful. Are they anti-Semitic?

Finally, the IWPR brings out the Big Guns: "one taxi driver" and "another woman interviewed on the street," who both make anti-Semitic remarks. Well, congratulations, folks - you've just discovered the key to establishing the prevailing sentiments of a nation! Let's interview one New York cabbie, at random (not fishing for a story, like IWPR), and see what we can conclude about the U.S. public opinion...

The "woman on the street" dared question the sacred orthodoxy of victim politics: “Jews use anti-Semitism on purpose to gain privileges for themselves," she reportedly said. However, when Singer argues that “The penal code should include a provision on anti-Semitism as a criminal offence,” as he does just a few paragraphs away, does he not prove her right? Why should libeling Jews be a special criminal offfense, but libeling Serbs one of the most profitable enterprises in the news media today?

What's truly tragic about all this is that there is a campaign of anti-Semitism in Serbia, but conducted by a Hungarian nationalist organization "Youth movement of the 64 counties" (HVIM), which has been organizing projections of a Hungarian-made political documentary "Trianon." The film, which advocates the resurrection of the pre-1918 Hungary, is reportedly anti-Semitic (see the RFE/RL Newsline for January 11, 2005, Southeastern Europe, penultimate paragraph). The Serbian authorities are not going after HVIM, probably because they fear a campaign of accusations they are "persecuting Hungarians," like the one launched last summer.

But actual anti-Semitism and Hungarian irredentism don't interest the IWPR; they don't reflect badly on Serbs, so something must be made up that does. The Open Society Fund, the Foreign Office and the State Department should give their propagandists a raise. They are doing an excellent job.

The Real Incubator Baby

Many Americans whose memories reach back to the Dark Ages of Gulf War 1 remember the "incubator babies" story: according to a weepy testimony of a Kuwaiti "nurse," Saddam Hussein's soldiers threw newborn babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital and left them to die. The "discovery" so outraged the American public, it helped generate public support for turning "Desert Shield" (originally sold as protection of Saudi Arabia from a phantom Iraqi attack) into "Desert Storm."

There was only one problem with the story: none of it was true.

The weepy nurse was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., carefully coached by PR firm Hill & Knowlton, which had cooked up the hoax. The American public opinion had been taken for a ride, and the result was thousands of dead Iraqis, burning oil wells - and a Short Victorious War for Bush the Elder. In the 12 years between "Desert Storm" and "Iraqi Freedom," the near-total blockade of Iraq imposed by the UN at U.S. insistence reportedly killed half a million Iraqi children. Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the UN and later Secretary of State, said that mass murder was "worth it."

A dozen fictitious Kuwaiti babies, invented by an American PR firm, were used to kill half a million real children - and that's not counting the deaths following the March 2003 invasion and the subsequent occupation of Iraq. Those civilian deaths have been estimated at anywhere from 18,000 to 100,000, and growing daily.

There hasn't been any real soul-searching about this; people do not want to confess to being fooled. So of course, it happens again, and again, and again... "Weapons of mass destruction," anyone? Anyone at all?

So it should come as a shock to learn that there were babies who died in their incubators, but who had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side, of the wrong nationality. They didn't have Hill & Knowlton publicizing their plight - but rather working to bury it, alongside another PR firm, Ruder Finn.

In the spring of 1992, when the government of Alija Izetbegovic declared independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina and civil war erupted throughout this former Yugoslav republic, the maternity hospital in Banja Luka ran out of oxygen for their incubators. The region was cut off from any friendly territory; there was no way to bring in the oxygen. Twelve babies died. This fact, well-known in Bosnia, is virtually unknown in the West. A Google search reveals only three mentions of it, two in ICTY transcripts.

Then in mid-February, a Serbian paper published an appeal: save Sladjana Kobas, the 13th baby! Apparently, not all the babies in Banja Luka died. One managed to survive. Now she has bone cancer, which has already spread to her lungs (weakened by the incubator damage, along with her eyesight). Doctors everywhere told her she might live, but had to lose a leg. Only a hospital in Florida said the leg could be saved. After the appeal, a big fundraising drive in Serbia secured the $100,000 needed to get Sladjana to Florida. But they could not get her a U.S. visa.

The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade says it sympathizes with the Kobas family, and is doing everything within the law to help. But Sladjana has already missed her window; according to her father, saving her leg is no longer an option. The cancer has advanced too far.

For 13 years, Sladjana Kobas has been a living reminder of the real incubator babies, a story no one in the West wanted to hear. Slim as her chances are, they were worse in the spring of 1992. She survived then, and here's to hope that she will survive now. Maybe that's impossible in this world of rules, regulations and politically expedient propaganda. But it would be justice.

Post scriptum: Sladjana Kobas passed away on February 10, 2006.

KFOR Reinforcing

NATO's occupation force in Kosovo will receive a 600-strong reinforcement contingent at the end of this week, reports AP.

The soldiers, along with 200 vehicles, will stay through mid-April, as part of an "operation aimed at showing the alliance’s ability to reinforce its peacekeepers in the troubled province," NATO said. The operation is codenamed "Determined Effort 2005".

Now why would KFOR possibly send mobile reinforcements, under the banner of "determined effort" no less, into Kosovo right around the anniversary of the 2004 pogrom, and amid unconfirmed reports that "Prime Minister" and KLA chieftain Ramush Haradinaj has been indicted by the Hague Inquisition? Color me cynical, but methinks they are attempting to forestall another Albanian riot.

But since the troops they are sending are just worthless Germans, maybe it's all just for show.

Troubled in Kosovo

Chris Deliso's post called my attention to the International Herald Tribune editorial from yesterday, titled "Waiting on Kosovo." It showed up in the New York Times today as well, under the title "Still Troubled After All These Years."

"Troubled" is the right word, and how! At first I expected more pro-Albanian, pro-independence talk. After all, this is the paper that published an op-ed by ICG chairman Gareth Evans on January 25, calling for immediate independence for Albanian Kosovo. The NY Times, ran an op-ed by Carlyle Group's Frank Carlucci a month later, repeating the ICG line. And though the editorial did surprise, in this particular respect it did not really disappoint.

Here is the crux of it:

"Setting a detailed timetable to independence, with a promise that Kosovo will neither be partitioned nor fall back under Belgrade, simply rewards bad faith... [The Contact Group] "should clearly and forcefully set out what Kosovo needs to accomplish and work should begin immediately on a settlement, at least temporarily including provisions for a semi-autonomous zone for the Serbs. That would choke off the Serb minority’s hopes of seizing control again. The Albanians should need no further incentive to behave properly."

Three times in the article (and above is just one of them) the editors speak with a tone of disgust and disdain of the prospect of Kosovo returning to Serbian control, never quite explaining why this would be wrong. If Serbia has "forfeited sovereignty" over Kosovo by the supposed "abuses" of Albanians - a favorite argument of ICG's, by the way - then why haven't Albanians forfeited their claim just as much, by terrorizing Serbs and others? The editors do say that "Kosovo Albanians have trampled the rights of the Serb minority in a fashion not easily distinguishable from the treatment they justly complained about at the hands of the Serbs."

Actually, that might be the problem. The Serb "treatment" the Albanians "justly" complained about is shrouded in the fog of misinformation, fabrication and outright lies. Albanians allege systematic discrimination, from mass firings and school poisoning to ethnic cleansing and even genocide. But at the first serious sign of questioning, their stories explode like soap bubbles. That is not to say that some state abuse didn't happen, but let's face it, state abuse is a fact of life in post-Communist Eastern Europe. Serbs complained of state abuse by Milosevic, even though he was never as tyrannical as DOS in the aftermath of the Djindjic Assassination.

Which leads me to the final point, one that reveals the IHT's point of departure: "Slobodan Milosevic no longer wields tyrannic [sic] power and a bloodlust for cleansing every ethnic minority," they write.

A bloodlust for cleansing every ethnic minority - are these people from the Moons of Jupiter? Do they not know that Serbia is the most multi-ethnic of all the Successor States? Yet they published Nicholas Wood's piece just the other day, on how Muslim Serbians are now studying "Bosnian" - a language invented just a few years ago, and one they never spoke - and thinking of themselves as "Bosniaks." Belgrade is not only not "repressing" them, the whole endeavor is being sponsored by the Department of Education! There are large numbers of Croats, Albanians, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Wallach, Roma and many, many others in Serbia. Granted, not all of them felt entirely welcome during the wars (and Muslims in the United States do nowadays, right?), but there they are still. Where are the Serbs of Knin, Drvar, or Zenica? Or Pec, Pristina, and Podujevo? Moreover, where are the Roma, Turks, Gorani, Ashkalli, and others who used to live in Kosovo? Gone! The "bloodlust for cleansing every ethnic minority" wasn't Milosevic's, but Albanian.

What's worse, the vast majority of Albanian abuses took place with NATO troops (some 65,000 at the outset) and the UN mission in attendance. Unlike the "crimes" of Milosevic and the Serbs - which despite the resources of the "international community" and the Hague Inquisition remain mostly speculation (and that's a generous euphemism for "vicious lies") - Albanian persecution of Serbs is a well-documented fact.

The NYT/IHT editors expect Albanians to "behave properly" if the Contact Group promises them Kosovo would never return to Serbia. What they don't understand is that Albanians are behaving properly - for a value system in which brute force is the judge of righteousness, and whatever succeeds is deemed virtuous. It's a value system the Empire seems to share, for all its hypocritical harping otherwise.

No Lie Too Brazen

Commenting this morning on the smear campaign against Russia and Syria, Justin Raimondo says it all:

This nonsensical fiction, which sounds like some third-rate hack's rejected screenplay, is more than just a bit vulgar – but in the Age of Bush, no lie is too brazen. The more vulgar, the better: it's the only way to capture the attention of a people who require the crudest and strongest possible stimulus. That's what it means to be decadent.

Redesigns?

I apologize for redesigning the blog for the second time in a month, but I am trying to find the best template to accommodate a list of links and maybe even an ad banner (yeah, I like private enterprise), if I ever get around to figuring how to incorporate the HTML code properly.

This one looks just right, though.

With malice for Tadic

Reporting on last week's visit by Serbian president Boris Tadic to Kosovo, AFP took care to note that “Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian-dominated government has barely acknowledged Tadic’s visit and there were no plans for him to meet any local officials.”

Reuters claimed that “Kosovo’s Albanian prime minister Ramush Haradinaj—whom Serbia has branded a war criminal—left the province before Tadic arrived.”

But the New York Times – or rather, its European avatar, the International Herald Tribune – published a hatchet job on February 15, berating Tadic for “giving [Kosovo’s] majority Albanians little overt sign of the kind of reconciliation that would be needed for a lasting solution” and “deliberately [having] no meetings with leaders of the majority Albanian community.”

The NYT/IHT reporter Nicholas Wood also quoted Albanian media, who described Tadic as a “criminal” and objected that he “did not ask for forgiveness for all the crimes that the Serbs have done in this country.” Furthermore, the article was rife with insinuations and outright lies about Kosovo (such as the “10,000 Albanians killed”), exemplifying the worst kind of official propaganda. Given the Reuters and AFP reports cited earlier, presenting Tadic’s visit as deliberately snubbing Albanians was not only dishonest, but untrue.

The Associated Press also chose to interpret the visit maliciously. “President’s Visit Fuels Tensions,” the headlines proclaimed, going on to say that “U.N. officials had hoped the visit by Boris Tadic would promote reconciliation… [but] Tadic’s declarations that Serbia would never accept an independent Kosovo angered ethnic Albanians.”

Also, the AP questioned Tadic's practice of handing out "giant" Serbian flags to enclaves he visited. Why should the Serbs not have a right to fly their own flag, in their own country? Albanians fly the flag of Albania proper, and UNMIK, AP or anyone else says not a word.

To repeat something I said a little while ago, this isn't double standards - it's no standards at all.

Ephraim Kishon, RIP

I was reading the latest piece by Matt Taibbi in New York Press, courtesy of a link from LRC, and went back to the main page to see if there were other articles worth perusing; that's when I saw it: Ephraim Kishon, 80.

Kishon may not be known to many North Americans, but I remember his satire fondly; several of his short story collections were translated by a Croatian publisher. In fact, it was the quality of Kishon translations that hinted at the rapidly deteriorating situation in Yugoslavia. Camel through the eye of the needle was brilliant; the following collection (whose name escapes me now) came out on the eve of Croatia's secession, and reflected the imposition of new words and language rules. It was marginal and damn-near illegible, but that wasn't Kishon's fault.

He wrote about Israel in a fashion that someone living in Yugoslavia - beset by similar bureaucratic and socialist challenges - could understand; but he also wrote about people, and whether in Israel or Yugoslavia, or the U.S., human nature is still pretty constant. I can still quote bits and pieces of his stories, and I've used his linguistic gambit from Operation Babylon (or whatever the story was actually called) many times. Dvargichoke plokay gvishkir? is perfect when you have to feign ignorance of the local language.

Since coming to the States, I've tried - mostly unsuccessfully - to find his work in English. I guess I'll have no choice but to improve my German.

Kishon may have passed on, but his readers will keep on laughing for ever, just like his Job Kunstatter, a poor trucker driven mad by the parking police.

Dvella, Ephraim. Dvella.

Belgrade Paralyzed

Another excellent analysis from Srdja Trifkovic of Chronicles was posted on their website today. His visit to Serbia left him with an impression that the Belgrade authorities are "paralyzed." To which extent that paralysis comes from ineptitude, malice, a wrong reading of the situation or a combination of all three is up for discussion, but doesn't alter one whit the fact that Serbia is "the most threatened and the most poorly defended polity in today’s Europe."

Trifkovic identifies six key issues, each a killer in its own right:

1. intended amputation of Kosovo;
2. centralization of Bosnia and abolition of the Serbian autonomy there;
3. ongoing separatism in Montenegro, contrary to the wishes of most of its people;
4. ongoing threats and pressure from the Hague Inquisition;
5. economic destruction caused by bad government policies;
6. "white plague"- birthrates so low, the nation is slowly dying out.

The first five, at least, are government-related, and can be resolved in that arena. The last problem is more intractable, and can only be countered with a societal and cultural revival - but one can argue (and I do) that the climate for it would be right once the burden of tyranny is lifted from the people's shoulders. Of course, they themselves ought to do some of the bloody lifting... but I'm getting off-topic.

Trifkovic mentions a climate in which "Internecine squabbling prevails ... with different groups, political parties, and influential individuals acting as free agents, or—some Belgraders suspect—as foreign agents."

"Even where nefarious motives appear to be absent, ineptitude prevails," he continues, citing the recent trip of President Tadic to Libya, which lacked even the elementary preparatory work:

"The art of improvisation at which the Serbs excel saved the day in this particular case, and a number of potentially lucrative contracts were initiated in Tripoli; but that is clearly no way to run a country."

Trifkovic is not as harsh on Tadic as I've sometimes been, though my own take is somewhat confounded by the President's behavior; one minute he is making a coherent argument, the other he's saying something unbelievably stupid. For all I know, Tadic's intentions might be entirely honest and honorable, but he keeps screwing up. Trifkovic suggests his advisors could be to blame:

"[Tadic's] team of advisors does not inspire full confidence that his positions will be uniformly consistent in the future. It includes some highly capable analysts... but it also includes at least two active supporters of the postmodern 'pro-Western' paradigm whose values are flawed, who have been personally bankrolled by 'the international community' and whose loyalty to their country is at best suspect."

On the government front, PM Vojislav Kostunica (a personal friend of Trifkovic's) is routinely sabotaged by "former" Dossies of the G17-Plus, who control the government's economic policy (which clarifies issue 5 above):

"[Miroljub] Labus and his chief party colleague, finance minister Mladjan Dinkic, are consistently undermining cabinet unity by ostensibly agreeing to a certain position at ministerial meetings and then promptly proceeding to advocate a different, often completely contrary position, in public utterances and media interviews."

Curiously, he does not mention Vuk Draskovic, the charlatan in charge of the Foreign Ministry who seems to forget he's also a junior partner in Kostunica's coalition. Draskovic has been doing far more damage than Tadic lately, and unlike the president, hasn't done anything good to atone for it. That's a strange omission in an otherwise brilliant analysis.

Anyway, Trifkovic proposes a way out of the present conundrum would be for Kostunica to bring the Radicals into the government. IMHO, there's about a 30% chance that could work the way he says, with Kostunica successfully tempering the Radicals' rhetoric and getting credit for it. I think it's much more likely that Serbia's foreign detractors will jump on the opportunity to further demonize the "ultranationalists," not to mention the orgy of white-hot fury pouring out from the Jacobins and globalists within Serbia, and the demagogic effect it (most unfortunately) has on a lot of otherwise decent people.

And yet, as Trifkovic notes, what's the alternative? Continuing along the present course is obviously leading into disaster. What Trifkovic deliberately terms a "radical turn" could actually make things better. The Empire and the quislings certainly demonize the Radicals furiously, almost as if their coming to power is a real threat - not to Serbia, as they keep saying, but their own plans for it.

I don't think the Radicals would be a panacea, but I am also disinclined to see them as Nazis incarnate. The Empire, on the other hand, has done plenty to invite just such a comparison. And the quislings - who often boast of Jacobinism and compete in foulness - may have the right, but certainly have no standing, to make value judgments.

Trifkovic's analysis pretty much corroborates my own, which was based - in absence of access to government officials and diplomats - on interpreting media reports and a little bit of personal observation, when I was in Serbia around Christmas. Hell of a thing to be right about, though.

Quisling or Tragic Idealist?

I must admit, the first time I heard about Slavisa Petkovic, the token Serb in the "government of Kosovo," I felt revulsion that a Kosovo Serb could possibly agree to legitimize the Albanian thugocracy and ipso facto the occupation of the province by participating in a sham government run by Ramush Haradinaj, a terrorist if there ever was one.

But here's the thing: Petkovic's interview with the notorious Patrick Moore of RFE/RL revealed this man not as a quisling by intent, merely someone who still harbors unrealistic optimism. I'd call him naive - but then, I'm pretty jaded.

Anyway, Petkovic says he took the job in order to help the return of the Serb refugees, and thinks he can succeed. Either he doesn't understand that these people were ethnically cleansed and that Albanian leaders (I can't say for the people, though they are incredibly regimented) want it that way, or he understands but chooses to ignore it. I've often said that one never knows what's possible until it's been tried; still, one ought to have at least a marginal chance of success. Petkovic's work seems doomed from the start.

He also told Moore that "Kosovo’s problems are '99 per cent economic...and only 1 percent political'." I obviously don't have firsthand knowledge of this (were I to show up in Pristina, I'd have to pass as an American, and even then I'd live only so long as no Albanian saw my name on the ID), but it strikes me that extremist nationalism, terrorism, ethnic hatred and occupation are all political issues. Obviously, any sort of decent economic activity is entirely impossible in a system that doesn't recognize any law save that of the gun. Private property, the foundation of market economy, is almost unheard of. A lot of Kosovo's land is owned by Serbs (whether privately or by the Church), but in the situation where even the most basic property right - that to life of one's own - is nonexistent, how can anyone speak of economic issues?

Petkovic's take on ethnic relations illustrates his naivete:

'there is so little democracy in Kosovo that one cannot speak “even of the ‘d’ in democracy” existing. He said he had told the Albanian leaders that they needed to tell their own people “every day...that the Serbs must return to their [homes], because we have lived in Kosovo for centuries”. That means that the Albanians cannot claim to be the “hosts” and consider the Serbs to be merely guests. “We must live together”...

Actually, what Kosovo has is absolute democracy: mob rule by the majority, which believes it has the right to do anything by the simple virtue of being the majority. There's a reason the Imperial press constantly harps on the "90-percent Albanian majority" when reporting on Kosovo. Not only are there no real limits to government power (whether UNMIK's, NATO's or that of the "provisional government"), there are no real limits on individual behavior - i.e. if Albanians decide to massacre Serbs, they go ahead and do so with impunity (see March 2004). NATO has previously disarmed the Serbs completely, and any attempt to resist is deemed "provocation from Belgrade," so there is little if anything the Serbs can do just to stay alive. Worst yet, their reliance on NATO's protection is then taken as consent to the occupation!

Anyway, I think that over the past century or so - and definitely for the past six years - Albanians have demonstrated repeatedly that they don't want to live together with Serbs, that they regard Serbs as interlopers, and have no compunction about buying them out, forcing them out, or just plain massacring them when they get impatient. Petkovic's hope runs counter to history - except that it indicates the Serbs have always been more tolerant of the Albanians than the other way around.

What I've mentioned so far would tend to paint Petkovic as a feeble-minded idealist who is at most a useful idiot for the Albanians. However, I have to give him points for a couple of things. First, he is one of the few people who doesn't genuflect before the ICG:

"he did not understand why so much attention was paid to the ICG. “It is [just] one informal group that writes such reports... as is its right, but it has no right to sow chaos in Kosovo.”

Second, he is scornful of the leadership in Belgrade - though for reasons different from my own. Petkovic accuses Belgrade of treating everything as a partisan issue, and being interested only in manipulating the Kosovo Serbs, not working in their best interest.

The leadership in Belgrade isn't interested in the welfare of Kosovo Serbs, or Serbia and Serbs in general; only in getting and keeping power, with all the privileges of plunder therewith. It is only natural they would see everything as a partisan issue, because partisan politics is all they know. Worst of all, their partisanship by and large isn't rooted in ideological differences, but in clique membership. So no, these people are mentally incapable of actually helping anyone, save inadvertently.

But here's the irony: for all his idealism and naivete, so is Petkovic. He wants to make a difference for the better, but by acting on this impulse he is legitimizing and aiding the system built with the express purpose of defeating his efforts. His diagnosis of the problem is wrong, and his belief in coexistence misguided. He may be honestly committed to improving the lot of Serbs in Kosovo, but he will fail. Not by anything he does (though that's a foregone conclusion), but by just being there, giving aid and comfort to the occupation.

Many people throughout history have collaborated with occupiers and invaders, claiming they only wanted to help and do what's best for their people. They may have been tragic idealists, but history will remember them as quislings.

Damn Lies and the NYT

I enjoyed reading Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames when they still wrote for The eXile. They both write for the New York Press now, and either one is still a great read.

For example, here's Taibbi on the spectacle of the New York Times confessing the WMD story was bogus:

"The problem wasn't a small, isolated ethical error, like Judith Miller's Chalabi reporting. The error here was not a mistake of fact. The problem was that a central tenet of our system of news reporting dictates that lies of consensus will never be considered punishable mistakes. In other words, once everyone jumps in the water, a story acquires its own legitimacy.
And now we get papers like the Times wondering aloud why they didn't feel the ground under their feet. Answer: you jumped in the water. And you knew what you were doing."

That was from last week's issue. And here's Ames this week, reviewing a mild, rational critique of the NYT:

"...rather than seeing the Times for the nest of Vichy collabos that it is, [authors of the book] engage the beast with punishing salvoes [sic] of rational argument. [...] The problem with this thesis is that it assumes that the New York Times people are nice guys ... How do you present rational counter-arguments to powerful people who lie intentionally solely in order to remain powerful? You can't."

His proposed solution?

"In 1999, America bombed the main TV tower in Belgrade and killed several Serbian journalists, citing the Geneva Conventions articles that say that any organ propagandizing for genocide is itself a legitimate target in warfare and for prosecution of war crimes. Let the Geneva Conventions be the basis for a similar argument against the New York Times: It is guilty of war crimes in Iraq and Serbia... Don’t ask them to consider international law in their work—apply international law to them instead, based on their records, and apply it roughly. That is the only language these people understand."

Ames and Taibbi both suggest lying deliberately on behalf of power is in the Gray Lady's institutional psychology. After all the lies the paper (along with many others, who've done even worse!) peddled about the Balkans, I'm inclined to agree.

As for the "why" of it all, read Stephen Bender's story about Edward Bernays on LRC today.

The Democratic Emperor

Just like with the Coronation Speech two weeks ago, the Emperor's Agenda 2005 (a.k.a. SOTU) speech occasioned some pretty piercing analysis.

Over at Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo takes the speech apart and declares it a rehash of the Second Inaugural, an announcement that we can look forward to more war, more death, more Empire.
"It isn't a dream but a nightmare that is coming to birth: one that is an affliction to us and a threat to the rest of the world." writes Raimondo, taking Bush II to task for quoting FDR.

He also caught Bush taking credit for Ukraine's electoral coup. Sure, Yushchenko may have been installed in power by a mob, (the very definition of democracy!) but the mob leaders were paid by the Empire (not that they wouldn't have done this for free, what with power and privilege at their fingertips.). Any resemblance to Serbia is purely coincidental, of course...

Meanwhile, on LewRockwell.com, Anthony Gregory analyzes the "democratic peace" theory that permeates Bush II's speech and policies, and finds it so much claptrap:

it looks as though the word "democracy" is simply being used, through circular reasoning, to describe only those countries that fit the democratic peace theory. ... Under the theory, a "democracy” essentially seems to mean the U.S. government and its allies. A “non-democracy” means any country the U.S. government happens to want to go to war with. [...]
Democracies implicitly and not so implicitly have a right, maybe even a duty, to go to war and convert as many countries to “democracy” as possible, at which point we can expect the newly converted to be at peace with other “democracies” – that is, the U.S. and its allies... what this assurance of peace really means is that once a country has been forcefully converted to “democracy” by the United States, the U.S. will no longer go to war with it.
In the end, “democracy” simply describes a government that does not deserve to be violently overthrown by the United States. And this can change at the whim of the United States.

What it boils down to is that the world is facing a belligerent Empire motivated by an aggressive ideology, stronger in terms of sheer military power than any individual nation (excepting the use of nuclear ordnance, which instantly nullifies any issue of scale), which has arrogated itself the right to attack anyone, anywhere, anytime it deems fit, on the flimsiest of excuses.

It is tempting to say this is all Bush II's fault, but Clinton attacked Serbia in 1999 using equally false excuses. Madeleine Albright's infamous "indispensable nation" comment was used in an argument supporting U.S. military adventures worldwide.

Why don't Americans understand how dangerous this is, how... well, evil?

Gregory suggests that "there’s nothing like being on the side of those who hold power to make one believe that that power is legitimate." In other words, there is nothing like being an Empire to make one really fond of imperialism. At least until the price becomes much more readily apparent. By then, it will be too late for too many. Might be even too late for America.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever...."

The alarm bells are certainly ringing.

Bosnia 's Skool Daze

I received this observation by email Monday, from a colleague who works in Bosnia with an Imperial agency that shall remain nameless:

"It reminds me of a college campus with so many people sitting around over pots of coffee and pizza crusts, complaining about the restrictive regulations, too much to read, lack of pristine dorm rooms, lack of committee funds, leather furniture in the president’s office, and a student council president who does little more for the college than the homecoming queen. The students sit around and yet don’t get off their asses to clean up the dorm room, kick out the apathetic council president and elect a worker bee. Ah, the similarities are endless - everyone waiting for the magic alum to pop in with a billion-dollar gift and golden job recommendations."

The comparison is incredibly apt when it comes to describing the apathy and shiftlessness of Bosnians (of all ethnicities). One should also note that the local government in Bosnia has great power over its own unfortunate citizens, as the Communist-era laws give it authority to control nearly every aspect of people's lives - and yet, when it comes to actually running Bosnia, they are as powerless as a student government.

Meanwhile, for all his/her authority, no college president is anywhere near as powerful as Paddy Ashdown, Baronet Norton-sub-Hamdon, by the grace of the Contact Group the autokrator of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Imperial Viceroy and Potentate Extraordinary.

It is he who does not allow the Bosnians to elect a worker bee, but insists on homecoming queens and Potemkin officials. Folks in the Serb Republic can elect whoever they want, Ashdown will sack him whenever he feels ornery. He's done it before; his predecessors have done it before; and there is nothing to stop him from doing it again. The one time people in the Muslim-Croat Federation actually elected someone decent, with a plan and an independent streak, he was forced into an alliance with chauvinist slime, sabotaged every step of the way, and finally shoved out of power when Ashdown himself supported the Old Guard in the 2002 election.

Bosnia has a host of problems, starting with its paradoxical existence, but a major one is surely that even if someone bothers to try and get out of the mire, the local kleptocrats and the Empire - currently in the persona of Viceroy Ashdown - are always there to grind them back down. Is it a wonder no one bothers, then?

Atrocity Porn

William Norman Grigg over at The New American writes scathingly about "atrocity porn": fabrications that have accompanied the Imperial war adventure in Iraq. He calles them that because they bear as much resemblance to real atrocities as pornography does to lovemaking, and has the same prurient purpose.

Writes Grigg:

"Atrocity porn plays a critical role in the process of mobilizing mass hatred on the part of the state’s designs. Like its sexual equivalent, atrocity porn (especially, and obviously, in the case of stories describing rape and other sexual abuse) appeals to prurient interests to manipulate base impulses. [...] authors of atrocity porn also cynically exploit the predictable reactions it will provoke from decent people."

Though he starts of debunking one of the most graphic atrocity stories from Iraq - that of Jumana Hanna's "rape" - Grigg puts in it the historical context, quoting three specific examples of atrocity porn: the "incubator babies" lie of the First Iraqi War, the lies about Spanish atrocities in Cuba that served to whip up the frenzy for the 1898 Spanish-American War and the WW1 "Belgian atrocities" attributed to Germans by British propaganda.

Obviously, atrocity porn has been a staple of imperialism for at least a century, because it is so damned effective. Grigg doesn't say it in so many words, but anyone who has been a victim of Western media coverage from the Balkans should find it obvious.

Crowds, Civilization and Democracy

Bill Bonner reviews James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds, over on LRC:

Mr. Surowiecki seemed to us like a teenager who had just discovered sex. He didn’t quite know what to make of it, but he was clearly looking forward to it. [...] He is so fascinated by the mechanics of it, he has not yet thought about the perverseand cynical possibilities.

What he had stumbled upon was civilization, the infinite and subtle private arrangements that allow people to get along and make progress, without anyone in particular telling them what to do.
[...] What he is describing as "wise crowds" is really the fluid, unfettered interactions between individuals in a civilized society.

[...] a group of people working together is not the same as a crowd. And a crowd is not the same as a mob.
[...] where the crowd really goes wrong is where it turns from cooperation to force...when it begins to insist...and build concentration camps. This is where it becomes uncivilized. [...] When the crowd takes up a corrupt wish – to get something for nothing...or to make the world a better place by killing people – the last thing it wants is another point of view. It is already too late for that. The few people who are able to think clearly can only try to get out of the way.
[...]
Democracy, says Surowiecki, demonstrates the wisdom of the crowd. And yet, it seems to demonstrate the exact opposite. [...] Democracy replaces cooperation with force...consensual civilization with the tyranny of the majority...the wise crowd of independent citizens with a mob of voters, with silly slogans on their bumpers and mischief in their hearts.

These are just some salient points; the piece is definitely worth reading in full.

Cheney Wore a Parka?!

The Washington Post, ordinarily all too willing to worship the Empire, ran a story today (front page, albeit in the Style section) about the Grand Vizier's choice of, ah, couture during the Auschwitz commemoration. Photographs show Dick Cheney wearing an olive fur-trimmed parka and a ski cap, standing out like a sore thumb in the crowd of black-clad European politicians and camp survivors. The parka was embroidered with Cheney's name; the ski cap bore the inscription "Staff 2001." The Grand Vizier also wore brown lace-up hiking boots.

Now I know the age of dressing properly has passed like the European civilization with the Great War - and more's the pity - but there are still some standards about dressing for solemn occasions, at least for State rulers and their coteries.

Was this a "wardrobe malfunction"? Ms. Cheney was dressed appropriately. Did someone lose Dick's formalwear bag? Or is it simply that the Grand Vizier of the American Empire lacks the sensitivity to dress for the commemoration of mass murder of unprecedented scale for any one place? It's not like he's been bothered by the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths he is responsible for, one way or another. It's bad enough the horrific anniversary is being used as an occasion to worship the modern state (a concept without which the Holocaust could not have happened). Everyone could have done without Dick dressing up as an Ugly American.

Name Adjustment

(until this day, the blog was called "Black Lamb and Gray Falcon")

It's not really a "change" as such, more of an adjustment to what this has been from the start.

The address has always been just "grayfalcon".

I've decided there's nothing much lamb-like about either this blog or its author.

Plus, there's the whole image of the gray falcon as the Prophet Elijah, the messenger of God, from Serbian epic poetry - not that I aspire to being a prophet, or a messenger of God! That I leave for folks with delusions of grandeur; but the image is powerful nonetheless.

So, from now on, this is the Gray Falcon, proud member of the "reality-based community" the Emperor so clearly scorns. Same content, same author, slightly different name.

Who won the Cold War?

Karen Kwiatkowski at LRC has a new theory:

"The Soviet Union won when they threw off the yoke, and began to expose and destroy seventy years of lies on top of depraved lies piled on top of mendacity of which even the most cynical Russian didn’t believe their government was capable."

Meanwhile, in the United States:

"The liberal pillars of America’s wealth, productivity, and freedom have been gnawed and hacked away in the dark damp cellar of too much government, yet we continue the party upstairs. Our republican values that would condemn the diddling desire of despots have already evaporated, and the new drink is intoxicating."

Some people are nostalgic for the old USSR - not all of them are in the USA, either - because they were part of the ancien regime so much that everything they had vanished after its collapse. For that matter, there are still plenty of people in the former Yugoslavia - which was economically far more liberal - all too accustomed to sucking on government teat, and unable to adapt to the post-Communist world. I'm beginning to think a major reason former Communist countries haven't done better economically and socially is that too many of their residents haven't mentally said farewell to Communism.

All of which makes me wonder what will happen when the U.S. Imperium eventually fails, as it is bound to do. I'm not talking some Marxist "dialectic" here, just the basic laws of entropy, which can only be defied for so long...

"Freedom!"?

It must be a sign of the times that the Imperator Orbis can make a speech proclaiming his commitment to freedom and opposition to tyranny - with a straight face.

I've long enjoyed the alternate-history works of Harry Turtledove, even though he sometimes took shortcuts and easy roads by making things in his alt-timelines unfold almost exactly as they have in real history ("second-order counterfactuals"). How Few Remain and his Great War series - in which the Confederacy won its independence, and faced the Union again on the opposing sides of the Great War in 1914 - largely avoided this pitfall of alt-history. Until, that is, Turtledove introduced the character of Confederate artilley sergeant Jake Featherston in a clear analogy to a certain Austrian-born corporal with a handlebar mustache. The post-war series, American Empire, unfolds very much like our timeline, with Featherston coming to power on a racist, revanchist platform and starting a war against the USA in 1941.

But here's the reason I mentioned this in the first place: Featherston's party aren't the National Socialists, but the incongruously named "Freedom Party." Instead of "Heil Hitler!" they salute each other "Freedom!"

And I just can't help but think of Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party when I hear that word defiled and desecrated by the current Emperor, when what he is doing - and intends to continue doing - is the exact opposite of freedom in just about every way. I'm not accusing Bush the Lesser of being a Nazi (though he may be a fascist); it's just a word-association that rings all sorts of eerie bells.

But by far the worst thing is that there was no political alternative to the American Empire this past election; Kerry wasn't a voice, but an echo. And that's another parallel to Turtledove's alt-universe. Once the Great War starts, there are no "good guys," only power, interest and carnage. However horribly depressing that may seem, at least Turtledove is honest about it and pulls no punches. At first I was taken aback by this seeming nihilism. But on second glance, I suspect the actual history of the XX century was just as grim. It's just that we've all lied to ourselves so well, we actually believe this arguably the darkest age of humanity was really about something good in the end.

Now I'm the farthest thing from a nihilist. I actually believe in liberty and redemption. But this ain't it. Not even close.

The "Red State Faithful"

Today on LRC, in a piece titled "Coronation Day Diary," Charles H. Featherstone writes:

This is an odd ruling elite, the Red State faithful, many of whom reverted to type and wore their cowboy boots and their fur coats to the parade. They are inheritors of both 19th century Methodist notions of human perfectibility and chosenness while, at the same time, the much-older Scotch-Irish sense of swagger and persecution. They are a people who both hate and fear the world and yet want to save it, to teach it what they desperately believe it needs to learn, for its own good. They are people who are convinced they are entitled to run the planet but are also scared to death by almost all of the strange and mysterious folks who inhabit it. That's why it's always fun to watch them take mass transit, like the DC Metro, because they dislike the notion of something like an underground train just anyone can get on to begin with, and look warily at anyone who isn't one of them and hold tight to their wallets. Alternately in charge, and yet completely at the mercy, of everything around them.

The entire article is worth reading, but this is a particularly apt description. His writing style is so literary, if Featherstone ever wrote a novel, I'd be the first to buy it.

Triumph of Believers

William S. Lind, premier theorist of Fourth Generation warfare, writes today on Antiwar.com:

"Fourth Generation war is triumphing over the products of rationalism because people who believe in something will always defeat people who believe in nothing at all. (emphasis added)
If we look at those who are fighting Fourth Generation war ... one characteristic they share is that they believe very powerfully in something. The "something" varies; it may be a religion, a gang, a clan or tribe, a nation (outside the West, nationalism is still alive), or a culture. But it is something worth fighting for, worth killing for, and worth dying for. The key element is not what they believe in, but belief itself."

As for the West - a.k.a. the European Civilization - it has long since stopped believing in anything but force, after the cultural suicide launched in 1914:

As Martin van Creveld points out in his key book on Fourth Generation war, The Rise and Decline of the State, up until World War I the West believed in something, too. Its god was the state. But that god died in the mud of Flanders. After World War I, decent Western elites could no longer believe in anything: "the best lack all conviction." Fascism and Communism offered new faiths, but in the course of the 20th century, they too proved false gods (all ideologies are counterfeit religions). Now, all that the West's elites and the "globalist" elites elsewhere who mimic them can offer is "civil society." Unlike real belief, civil society is not worth fighting for, killing for, or dying for.

Ironically, the fiercest force in service of the moribund Empire are the mimicking globalists (the "missionary intellectuals" of Serbia, for example), who actually believe the claptrap about "civil society," "democracy" and "human rights."

But I don't think the proponents of "civil society" are necessarily reluctant to kill in the name of their quasi-ideology; they've done so all too often in the past 15 years, notably in the Balkans. They are, however, reluctant to die for it. And that makes sense. Killing is easy; dying - not so much.

Decline of Creativity

A good friend commented to me today:

"It's beginning to dawn on me that the problem with most TV may not be want of talent; it may be that the talent is not what is wanted."

Writers that flourished on certain shows under the creative leadership of talented producers often languish in other shows when managed by network suits, who for all their business sense display an appalling lack of creativity. Thanks to its obsolete business model - selling advertising based on viewer estimates compiled by a vastly outdated system - network TV is going the opposite of the Web: trying to be all things to all people. The result is predictably bland, formulaic and focus-grouped to death.

I won't even go into how so-called "reality" shows dealt an additional blow to scripted television, both good and bad; that sort of base voyerism is barely short of the Roman circenses. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say the only reason we haven't seen actual gladiator games yet is that animal "rights" groups would protest the cruelty of feeding lions with idiots.

Books aren't much better. Most popular fiction is painfully formulaic. Science fiction and especially fantasy are even worse. Though I've seen plenty of gems, often their authors fall prey to assembly-line writing and start churning out neverending series that falter midway through. Even my favorite recent subgenre, alternate history, often suffers from second-order counterfactuals (i.e. despite a major fork in the road, events unfold just as they have in our timeline, only the actors are different. Please!).

I've thought J.K. Rowling a breath of fresh air (though I've dismissed the Pottermania for a couple of years, till I finally got persuaded to read the books; I finished the four then available in a week!), but The Order of the Phoenix filled me with dread that she, too, has succumbed to success-induced cluelessness.

Maybe this is all just a reflection of the cultural decline of the West; perhaps it is time for a last-ditch effort to preserve civilization? Appreciating creativity and shunning mediocrity would certainly be a good start.