Left, Right and Liberty

From an essay by Anthony Gregory, today at LRC:

To love liberty is to oppose the state’s timeless assault on it, whether wearing the cloak of tradition and cheered on by bloodthirsty generals, corporate suits and social conservatives, or donning the mask of humanitarianism and equality and trailed by a parade of social workers, bureaucrats, unionists, humanities professors and multilateral warmongers. [...] But the ugly thing about politics is, no matter how unsavory one side gets as it is exercising and vying for power, the power itself can always corrupt the other side. Left and right can turn on a dime, but the potential of the state itself to grow and worsen is ultimately constrained only by the laws of economics, by human nature, and by a public opinion inclined to resist the state’s advances, regardless of the garb it wears.

Cartoon Controversy

So, a Danish newspaper prints cartoons of Islam's prophet Muhammad several months ago, and the issue flares up two weeks ago into mass protests, flag-burnings, death threats, boycotts, attacks on embassies and missions...

One of the common misconceptions in mainstream reports about the "cartoon row" is that Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere did not riot because some of the cartoons depicted Muhammad in an unflattering manner, but because they depicted Muhammad at all. Visual depiction of Muhammad is strictly forbidden under Islamic law.

Fair enough - but Denmark, Europe, and the US for that matter, don't live under Islamic law, do they? In fact, they follow a set of laws protecting the freedom of expression (at least on paper). So in these countries, depiction of Muhammad - while some may consider it sinful - is not illegal.

This is where ignorance comes in. See, the cartoons were commissioned as commentary on self-censorship by illustrators who balked at drawing Muhammad for a children's book, fearful of provoking just this sort of reaction. Ironically, the book was supposed to teach Danish children tolerance towards Islam. But whoever was behind it obviously had no clue whatsoever that Muslims consider visual representations of their prophet a sin. Nor were they aware that in Islam, sin and crime and pretty much one and the same, because it is not just a faith, it is a social order. And not just that - it is a universal faith and social order, considered by its followers to be the ultimate divine revelation. Islam respects Judaism and Christianity's right to exist insofar as they are considered previous, "flawed" revelations of the divine message. As such, they get special, second-class status in Islamic societies, while all other faiths are deemed idolatrous and condemned to extermination. But they are not, under any circumstances, ever considered equal to Islam.

And because Islam considers itself universal and ultimate, it does not allow for coexistence with other social, religious or political systems: the dar-al-Islam is in constant conflict with dar-al-harb, the dark world of infidels who dare not accept the final revelation of god. To tell a Muslim that he should tolerate the freedom of a Dane to draw a picture of Muhammad is absurd; the injunction against it is at the heart of Islam, and thus applies everywhere, to everyone, especially the infidels. To deny the universal and ultimate character of Islam is to become apostate - and Islamic law says apostasy is punishable by death.

That is not to say that burning Danish embassies is the only response available to Muslims. Though violence in the name of the faith is considered a sacred charge, Muslims had many choices in how to react to the publication. Someone might have written to the editor and said, "Look, you are infidels and you do not understand. Any depiction of the Prophet is sacrilege to us, and we ask you to respect that." In today's West, obsessed with political correctness and "human rights," do you think anyone would deny this request?

But those who chose to make the cartoons into a focal point of mob violence did so on purpose. They wanted the riots, craved the outrage, desired violence, as it promoted their position within Islam as advocates of jihad against the West. The violence also played up old racist animosities; it should not surprise that Iranian papers thought a fitting response would be a cartoon depicting Anne Frank in bed with Hitler.

In a battle between free speech and "multi-culturalism," in today's Europe, free speech is bound to lose. The post-modern, post-Christian West simply cannot comprehend a religion like Islam, whose followers resort to aggression and murder at the smallest slight. Christians don't burn embassies when someone exhibits a crucifix soaked in urine, do they? Which goes to explain why Christianity is under constant attack by the secular state, and Islam is appeased at every step.

Again, the post-modern, post-Christian society running the West has only one religion - power - and only one saint, violence. Force is the only thing they worship, and the only thing they respect. When Christians are offended by something, they protest with words, and are answered with mockery. When Muslims are offended, people die - and Muslims are answered with apologies and claptrap about sensitivity, respect and tolerance: words they see in a completely different context, one the post-religious West doesn't understand.

Something you can do

It's a twisted, crazy, surreal world we live in, where guardians of Official Truth are telling us things are exactly the opposite of what they appear to be. Oppression is celebrated as liberty and liberty denigrated as treason. Patriotism is labeled criminal, and nihilistic globalism celebrated as progress. What you see, hear and read in the media often contradicts itself, let alone independent observation.

What can one do against such vile corruption? Refuse to accept it, of course. Seek out the truth, wherever it may still survive, and challenge the lies. One way to do this is to support those who challenge the Official Truth: Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com, to name just two.

Ask youself: how much is liberty worth to you? How much should the truth cost? What is the price of sanity? Then reach into your wallet, or don't. It's up to you - and it should be. You fund the omnipotent state, the perpetual war and perpetual inflation because you have to; the government takes your money no matter what. But you can choose to fight it. This is one way.

Decide.

A Glaring Omission

There is an excellent piece by H. Arthur Scott Trask on LRC today, dealing with the state of perpetual war so beloved of the Imperial government these days. It makes a lot of good points about the Cold War, the imperial mentality and the current "war" on terrorism or whatnot. But it makes one glaring omission: the Balkans.

In Trask's piece, 9-11 follows the 1991 Gulf War, drawing on the continuity between the Bushes. I beg to differ. It was Clinton who ran on an interventionist platform in 1992, and presided over the transformation of NATO into an aggressive alliance, first in Bosnia (1995) then Serbia (1999). It was Clinton who sent troops into Somalia and Haiti, and waged a lengthy air war on Iraq from 1998-99 (stopping only to switch to Serbia). British historian Kate Hudson saw this in 2003, when she called attention to a "pattern of aggression" characterizing the US foreign policy.

Another important aspect of Balkans interventions is that they were gradual. Involvement in Bosnia began as one demilitarized zone for humanitarian aid delivery (Sarajevo airport), then expanded to the no-fly zone, "safe havens," punitive air strikes, and finally a joint military operation with local proxy forces on the ground. Then that precedent was used in 1998 to threaten Serbia over Kosovo, and ratcheted up to full conventional war in March 1999, without even a fig leaf of UN authorization. "Desert Storm" was grounded in international law and authorized by the UN; "Allied Force" was emphatically neither. Can anyone seriously argue that without all those precedents, it would have been possible for Bush II to invade Iraq in the manner he did?

It isn't just the "neocons" that are the problem. Clinton's wars were engineered by "neoliberals," while the neocons cheered on. Both are united in the cause of American Empire, which is the problem. Much as I agree with Trask's article, and the points it's making, I don't see how anyone can fully understand how the Empire came about after the end of the Cold War if the ground-work done in the 1990s isn't at least mentioned. That, rather than personal attachments to the region, is the primary reason I still write about the Balkans.

Better to lose

From an excellent post by Chris Deliso over on Balkanalysis:

"Today we live in an imperial moment like any other. And when it becomes necessary to grovel at the feet of empire to curry favor, those who have neither self-respect nor an interest in self-reliance always win. Sometimes it's better to lose."

Perhaps it is worth noting that people who habitually grovel before empires are triumphant only temporarily; as soon as their patrons are defeated, so is their cause - and they seek out another sponsor (usually ending up doing their bidding in the process; it's how it works). Any sort of lasting achievement comes from those who stand with honor and dignity.

Something to think about.

AI, UPI and "job cleansing"

Amnesty International warned this week that ethnic discrimination in employment is still a problem in Bosnia. Specifically, the advocacy group said, the issue of unlawful terminations in 1992 prevents many people from returning to their homes and resuming their lives.

AI names both the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation as culprits, saying that neither have done much to resolve the problem. But to hear United Press International (UPI) tell the story, AI has placed the blame squarely on the Serbs, who "block Muslims" from returning home and to work (see here).

I can see how it happened. The UPI story quotes this part of the AI statement: "Discriminatory dismissals were in many cases the first step in aggressive campaigns of 'ethnic cleansing'....which included killings, forcible transfers and deportations." So, since everybody knows that only Serbs engaged in "ethnic cleansing" and that Muslims were solely their innocent victims...

The truth, of course, is rather different. I know it from personal experience. In those chaotic early months of the war, every side was systematically purging "undesirables" from all public posts. The Muslim regime in Sarajevo kept some Serbs and Croats around for propaganda purposes, but they had no actual authority. After establishing the perception of "multi-cultural, tolerant" Muslims being victimized by "racist, genocidal" Serbs, Izetbegovic purged even those token infidels from his government.

While the media and "human rights" groups often cry crocodile tears about the refugee returns in the Serb Republic, the fact that Muslim and Croat parts of Bosnia are conspicuously devoid of Serbs even now, ten years after the war's end, is often ignored completely. After all, everybody knows...

Boris Tadic just doesn't get it

Serbian president Boris Tadic really doesn't know when to sit down and shut up. True enough, few politicians do - but this one makes choking on his own foot a veritable art form.

It's bad enough that he wanted to go to Kosovo to attend the funeral of Albanian separatist leader Ibrahim Rugova (who is being buried today at the KLA "martyrs' cemetery" in a ceremony celebrating not so much the man, but the idea of Greater Albania), and that he "requested permission" to do so from the UN occupation authorities. Now that the UN hasn't responded one way or another, but the Albanians have erupted in howls of protest about how Tadic - or any other filthy, criminal, disgusting, evil Serb - is not welcome to Rugova's funeral, or to their precious "Kosova" for that matter, Tadic "deeply regrets" it. Not asking permission to visit his own territory, or wishing to support Albanian separatism, but the fact that Albanians have snubbed him so.

According to the AP, Tadic issued a statement Wednesday saying that he "respected the stand of the Rugova family to whom the 'presence of a Serbian president was unacceptable',” and that his "desire was to pay respects to a man who was of a different political persuasion than myself, but who campaigned peacefully for his ideas and who was the legitimate representative of the Kosovo Albanians.”

Where to begin...? I do hope that Tadic is "of a different political persuasion" than Rugova - that is, that the current president of Serbia doesn't share Rugova's ideal of forcible separation of Kosovo from Serbia, involving by necessity the disposal of non-Albanians (Serbs, first and foremost) from the territory. And though many people - including the mainstream Serbian media and politicians - persist in the misconception that Rugova was a pacifist, it is worth noting that the crux of Rugova's strategy was never to negotiate, deal or otherwise engage the Serbs, but to get someone else (specifically, the American Empire) to achieve Albanian goals for them. It is worth noting that the "pacifist" Rugova also had an "army" (FARK) that was eventually absorbed by the KLA simply because the KLA had stronger foreign backing.

Tadic went on to say that, "Unfortunately neither political representatives of the Kosovo Albanians nor the international community realized what a chance this was for us to start changing relations between Serbs and (ethnic) Albanians.”

Let's face it, between the shameless cheer-leading for the separatist cause by viceroy Jessen-Petersen, and the ever-present fear of UNMIK that rampaging Albanians mobs might go medieval on them at the next perceived slight (much as they did to Serbs in 2004 and before), it should be obvious to a blind man that UNMIK doesn't give a rotting roadkill's posterior for Serb-Albanian relations. And neither do the Albanians, if the vitriolic response to Tadic's offer is anything to judge by.

Tadic himself, however, doesn't get it. “If the presence of a Serbian president at a funeral in Pristina is unacceptable, the begging question is whether we are acceptable to one another and whether we shall ever be so in the future,” he said (AP).

Judging by a lengthy history of Albanian violence against the Serbs in Kosovo; the establishment of "Greater Albania" including that territory in 1941-45; the periodic riots demanding independence since 1945; the emergence of the KLA and the NATO aggression in 1999; and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of Serbs ever since - should there be any doubt in anyone's mind that the majority of Kosovo Albanians have decided that no, Serbs are not acceptable to them in any way, shape or form? Not even when they come to validate their separatist agenda, making a complete mockery of themselves (as Tadic would have done)?

That's some powerful hatred there, folks. And Boris Tadic is either too naive, or unbelievably stupid not to see it. Neither of which is exactly a desirable characteristic in a president, however ceremonial his post might be.

Albanians 1, Tadic 0

The not-unexpected death of Ibrahim Rugova last weekend may have delayed the sham talks about the separation of occupied Kosovo, but is, predictably, being used to make that separation just about inevitable. It has also offered yet another opportunity for Serbian president Boris Tadic to humiliate himself and the nation he supposedly represents.

As Reuters reports, Tadic "made a request" to attend Rugova's funeral, and was rejected by the outraged Albanians, who saw this as an insult and provocation. After all, Reuters continues, "the Albanian majority rejects any return to Serb rule after years of discrimination and often violent repression."

First of all, if Tadic really believed Kosovo was Serbian territory, he would not be asking permission to visit - not of KFOR or UNMIK, but especially not of the separatist, Albanian "provisional government." Secondly, why would he, or any other Serbian official, want to attend the funeral of a separatist leader like Rugova, especially when it will be taking place at a KLA cemetery?! Last time I checked, Serbia was still classifying the KLA as a terrorist organization. So how does the president going to a terrorist monument (KLA cemetery) to pay homage to a terrorist ally (Rugova) represent anything remotely legal, legitimate, constitutional or proper?

Oh, some may quibble that Rugova was really opposed to the KLA, a pacifist, a democrat and whatnot. Did he fight for an independent "Kosova"? Yes. Does the KLA? It does. Did Rugova ally himself with the KLA as "president" of the occupation government? He sure did (Ramush Haradinaj's AAK is part of the "government" with Rugova's LDK). QED.

Which brings us back to Tadic. A man who has shown himself to be a sycophant of the Empire, with a penchant for posturing in just the wrong way, in the wrong place, at the wrong time (Srebrenica commemoration, anyone?), has gone and done it again. I don't much care that he's embarrassing himself - stupidity like that deserves a comeuppance - but that, through the misfortune of being the president of Serbia, he gets to project that embarrassment onto an entire nation.

Blackened by the vilest propaganda as the intellectual heirs of the Third Reich, blockaded, bombed and put on show trials by kangaroo courts and two-bit hack journalists, displaced from homes, stripped of rights and land - all over the past 15 years of "democracy" and "liberation" by the Empire - the Serbs at least had some remaining dignity in their tragedy. Boris Tadic and others like him are working real hard to destroy that dignity. Makes me wonder if they are doing it on purpose.

Without A Doubt

The choice of Martti Ahtisaari to lead the "negotiations" over the fate of occupied Kosovo should have been yet another warning sign to anyone in Serbia still in possession of a shred of sanity. The Finn was not only instrumental in "negotiating" a ceasefire in 1999 that NATO proceeded to treat as unconditional surrender, he proceeded to serve on the board of the International Crisis Group along with Gen. Wesley Clark. Even without Clark, the ICG has established itself as a violently Serbophobic supporter of Imperial intervention in the Balkans, and its platform of independence for (Albanian) Kosovo, separatist Montenegro and centralized Bosnia has been adopted as official US policy back in May.

Given all that, there should be absolutely no doubt as to what "status" he - or more accurately, the interests he represents - will work towards when the "talks" start next year. After Rambouillet, the bombing, and the occupation (with its ethnic cleansing and plunder), can anyone still seriously believe the "international community" (i.e. the Empire) will not award Kosovo to the Albanians? Of course, since the Empire wants to keep Albanians in its thrall, the process won't be quick, straightforward or simple; there will be many strings attached. But the intent is clear, beyond reasonable doubt.

Ahtisaari himself dropped another clue yesterday, telling reporters in Pristina how he could envision Kosovo as self-sufficient. "I think there is in the future the possibility for sustainable economic development," he's quoted by Reuters. Kosovo has abundant natural resources, and "(e)veryone wants to create conditions in which these can be properly exploited."

This is so self-explanatory, it doesn't need further comment. What does, however, is the idiotic "logic" of the witless quislings in Belgrade, who instead of making their case for Kosovo on grounds of law, sovereignty and principle prattle on about "preserving stability" and "endangering democracy" and how and independent Kosovo would not be self-sufficient.

Ahtisaari has just done a hatchet job on that last "argument," while the previous two are entirely vacuous to begin with. "Stability" and "democracy" are whatever the Empire says they are. Why would every report on Kosovo mention the "90% Albanian majority" if not to create the impression their desire for independence is democratic? (democracy = majority rule) As for stability... who is it that threatens violence and bloodshed if they don't get their way, Serbs or Albanians? Right. So, keeping the Albanians from getting medieval serves the interests of stability far better than not sticking it to the Serbs. They aren't likely to go on a rampage, set roadside and suicide bombs, or assassinate people, after all.

Ahtisaari's slip - or was it? - about Kosovo's abundant resources should be the final tip-off to everyone with even a single functioning brain cell as to what the "international community" intends to do. The real question now is how to stop it.

Freedom, Real and Imagined

From an article by Joseph Sobran, titled National Socialism Comes to America:

"Americans are still permitted to do a great many things, though not as many things as their ancestors could take for granted. Fine. But permission isn’t freedom. The privilege of a subject isn’t the right of a free man. If you can own only what the government permits you to own, then in essence the government owns you. We no longer tell the state what our rights are; it tells us.

Such is the servitude Americans are now accustomed to under an increasingly bureaucratic state. Permission, often in the form of legal licensing, is the residue of the old freedom; but we’re supposed to think that this is still “the land of the free,” and that we owe our freedom to the state, its laws, and especially its wars. The more the state grows — that is, the more it fulfills the character of national socialism — the freer we’re told we are."

These past several weeks, while I wasn't posting on the blog, I've been thinking about the American bureaucratic state and comparing it to the Socialist Yugoslavia of my youth. Back then, people had a distrust of government born out of many failed promises, and decades of experience with "gaming" the bureaucratic system to provide themselves and their relatives the services (monopolized by the state, and therefore both unreliable and shabby) they needed. We understood we were better of than Soviet client-states and even the USSR itself, but few fully realized the reason for that was a higher degree of economic liberty. To further complicate things, much of our "prosperity" was a result of easy credit, fueled by IMF and World Bank loans.

Now I look at the country where I've lived for almost 10 years, and I see the same state-supremacist thinking I grew up with in Socialism, the same credit boondoggles that preceded my country's downfall, the same bureaucratic incompetence that we used to joke about, then circumvent (something not easily achieved here). Add to that the gargantuan military, the National Security state, and a dictatorial Emperor - um, President, yes - and a population 10 times that of Yugoslavia in 1991, and the problems that killed my country are that much more amplified in this one.

But hey, people believe they are free - even though that word has lost all its meaning for them long ago. If you're completely oblivious to something, you can't really miss it when it disappears, right?

Extortion's New Name

According to Financial Times, it's "incentive."

Reporting on the Congressional hearing in which the State Department's Balkans point-man Nicholas Burns first overtly mentioned that Serbia's entry into EU and NATO would depend on the "successful outcome" of Kosovo talks, FT explained Burns's threat as "incentive" to Belgrade. Their headline declared: "US backs Kosovo incentives for Serbs."

Even Reuters was more honest, calling it a "new U.S. demand on Belgrade."

I don't doubt in the least that the sycophantic lowlives running Serbia will point to this "incentive" as a "necessary precondition for entering Euro-Atlantic integration and creating a normal, democratic state" or some such fatuous nonsense.

Let's review the situation:

• The UN abandoned its own policy of "Standards before status," though it only required a pretense of tolerance on part of the Kosovo Albanians, and they refused to show even that. The same envoy who whitewashed the 2004 pogrom now recommended the final status talks;
  
• Kosovo viceroy and OSCE have been coaching Albanian negotiators;
• the government of Bush II has adopted a Balkans policy crafted by Clinton-era officials, notably Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke (who was once again in the Balkans recently as official US envoy);
• The UN envoy charged with Kosovo talks is Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland who was instrumental in deceiving the Milosevic government into surrendering Kosovo to NATO in 1999, and has since served on the ICG board with Wesley Clark and other interventionists;
  
• The ICG, created in the heyday of Clinton interventionism, has consistently advocated the independence of Kosovo, centralization of Bosnia and secession of Montenegro - all of which have now become part of the official U.S. policy;
• Serbia's membership in EU and NATO - a remote prospect at best, and on careful analysis actually undesirable - is now being conditioned by the separation of Kosovo and Montenegro, just as Holbrooke and the ICG have been saying for years.
  

Coincidence? There is no such thing in politics.

It should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer what the Empire's intentions are concerning the Balkans, and specifically the Serbs. If the unelected rulers of Serbia refuse to see it, perhaps it is time for Serbia to get new rulers. While there is still any Serbia left.

A Birthday Gift

A month from now, Antiwar.com will be 10 years old. It was set up as a protest against Bill Clinton's interventionism in the Balkans, and has continued to oppose the military (and political) violence by the emergent American Empire ever since.

Unlike many situational opponents of particular foreign adventures, Antiwar.com opposes foreign intervention on principle, arguing that it goes not only against the Constitution and other laws, but against the true American values. They have opposed Emperor Clinton as well as Emperor Dubya, the war in Kosovo as well as that in Iraq; and will, no doubt, oppose any future emperor and his or her wars.

I've been a columnist there since late 2000, and my 231st piece ran yesterday.

Antiwar.com is running their quarterly Pledge Drive this week. They are counting on their readers, freedom-lovers and opponents of aggression to put their money where their values are. Don't think of it as a donation - think of it as a subscription, a payment for the value you are receiving from reading news, commentary and blog posts that tell you what the mainstream media tries to omit, reveal what the powers that be want hidden, and spread the word about things the Empire would rather be kept silent.

If you value the service Antiwar.com provides, you'll go over to the site and make your contribution. You pay a lot more to get "news" from the mainstream, and you know well enough how truthful and honest those are. So go ahead, vote with your wallet. Whatever the Empire may say or do, that right, that choice, is still yours.

Recycled Lies

Here is the current mandatory propaganda meme in stories by Reuters, tracked across several articles:

"Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombing forced then-President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces. Some 10,000 civilians were killed during his two-year crackdown on an Albanian guerrilla insurgency.

Kosovo’s 90-percent Albanian majority has been clamoring for independence ever since."

There are at least four things here that, mildly put, do not correspond with reality. First, the phrase "his forces," referring to Slobodan Milosevic, as if the Serbian police and the Yugoslav Army were his private institutions. Nobody calls the U.S. troops in Iraq "George Bush's forces," especially not Reuters.

Second, the "factoid" that "10,000 civilians were killed" in Kosovo is an absolute, unvarnished lie. Not only has the number of dead associated in any manner with the terrorist campaign of the KLA and the NATO bombing never exceeded 3,000, a substantial portion of that were KLA bandits. Are they to be counted as "civilians"? What about the actual civilians, Serb and Albanian, murdered by the KLA, or killed by NATO? Reuters here clearly misrepresents both the number of dead and their identity.

As for the last sentence, which often stands as a paragraph of its own, it is both inaccurate and deceptive. Kosovo only became 90% Albanian through the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and birth rates far exceeding those in Albania or Macedonia, and only in the latter part of the 20th century, specifically during the period when the province was under control of ethnic Albanians (whether of the Communist or fascist variety). It is specious to posit Albanian numerical superiority as the basis of their claim for independence, without noting how it came into being.

Finally, the Albanians of Kosovo have not been "clamoring for independence" since 1999, but since 1981, or even earlier. This claim is completely fabricated.

Now look at the meme in its entirety: It is geared to insinuate (and none too subtly) that Milosevic personally oppressed and mass-murdered the Albanians of Kosovo, the majority in the region, until NATO and the UN came to their rescue in 1999. On that basis, the Albanians are asking for independence. Presented with such an argument, who wouldn't be sympathetic to their claim? And that is precisely the purpose of this confabulation.

Why Governments Torture

Charles Featherstone is fast becoming one of my favorite LRC writers. Here's an excerpt from his piece on government and torture, published today:

"[Governments] don't torture because of need. Governments torture to humiliate and destroy. They torture to strip a person of his humanity, to make him or her face unrestrained state power alone, unaided and helpless. States torture and kill because they can, because even if the state isn't really God, it can play God by taking life when it pleases and how it chooses. Because it is a way to annihilate a human being, slowly, one atom at a time."

Returning the "favor"

A friend directed to my attention this afternoon to a new blog, Balkans Without Borders, billed as "Helping to make the world into what the world is making of the Balkans." I'm guessing it grew out of frustration with the Imperial policy in the peninsula - towards the Serbs in particular - and was inspired by the ongoing riots in France.

Today's "Protest to Mr. Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic..." turns the Imperial rhetoric back against its authors, claiming that if Serbia has lost its right to Kosovo because of alleged excessive force against its Albanian immigrants, surely the French have relinquished their right to Paris for the same exact reason.

Of course, the wonderful send-up of imperial "logic" won't make an impression on the policymakers, who seem to universally believe in the "Abramowitz doctrine" of arbitrary principle. Nonetheless, it might shake awake at least some of the people - both in the Balkans and in the West - who still believe the nonsensical drivel that is the Official Truth.

Because the Empire really is bent on creating a global Balkans, with or without this witty blogger's help.

Tragedies in the Lives of Nations

Fans of Hoppean history should rejoice, says Jørn K. Baltzersen today on LRC, over the new book by Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson, "The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy," published by the Foundation for Economic Liberty.

On this anniversary of Red October, Dr. Johnson's book mourns for the world that was lost when the Russian tsarist government was destroyed by Communism. His book examines and explodes the myths about Russia in the West, some generated by Communists and others engendered by prejudice towards Orthodoxy, and reveals the Romanov empire as far more liberal than Western Europe at the time (the tax rate comparison in particular is very instructive).

It is doubtful that the Romanov Russia can be restored. Communism and "transition" have left their marks, and the future generations of Russians (provided there are any) will have to cope with them. But they - and other nations whose histories were altered by this destructive creed - would do well to seek clues to this healing process in their own history, tradition, culture and faith, rather than aping the present-day imperial West.

As Worthless as Dollars

Here is what James Grant wrote in the New York Times on October 26 this year, commenting on the choice of Ben Bernanke as the new Fed Chairman:

"...the post-1971 dollar is purely faith-based. Not since the Nixon years has a holder of dollars had the privilege of exchanging them for a statutory weight of gold. Rather, the dollar is a piece of paper, or electronic impulse, of no intrinsic value. It is legal tender whose value is ultimately determined by the confidence of the people who hold it."

If faith can make dollars valuable, it stands to reason that lack of faith can make them worthless. Something to ponder.

The Heart of the Matter

Today on LRC, Anthony Gregory admonishes those who avoid seeing the forest from the trees:

The state is not about laws on pieces of paper. It is about looting and violence. Its principal methods of funding are theft and counterfeiting, its regular modus operandi is extortion and its most conspicuous projects are assault and murder.

[...]

The state is an organization of coercion, a monopoly on aggression, falsely legitimized by its own fiat and sanctified in idolatrous mythology and through lying propaganda. There is no technicality that can curb its inherent conflict with the natural law and individual liberty. It draws actual blood, bankrupts actual companies, bombs actual cities and taxes actual wealth. Its soldiers shoot to kill, its taxmen are equally ruthless. In principle, it is no more bound by a subsection of its tax code than a mobster is bound by his vague promise to protect you. It is for all these reasons that the state must be understood and eventually dismantled wherever and whenever possible. Don’t get too distracted by the fine print and neglect the big picture.

Gregory doesn't deal here with the Empire (the state writ global), but his argument applies to it as well. Those people who still believe international law serves to restrain the Empire from visiting its whims upon whomever it chooses, or that the Empire has any intention of respecting the treaties it signed, are just as deluded as those who seek loopholes in the US tax code.

I want to retch every time I hear some two-bit wannabe diplomat from Belgrade "defend" Serbia's territorial integrity by invoking Resolution 1244, for example. Quibbling about details in Empire's arbitrary proclamations is futile - after all, it can simply make another, and move along on its merry pillaging way.

Tom Friedman and Imperial Hypocrisy

I've considered Thomas Friedman scum since way back in the spring of 1999, when he was baying for Serbian blood as NATO bombers pounded Belgrade and KLA set Kosovo on fire. Nothing he has written since has made me change my mind.

But after the relentless repetition of the "NATO took control of Kosovo to stop evil Serbs from slaughtering innocent Albanians" lie by just about every print and broadcast medium in the US for the past six years, I thought no one remembered Friedman's bloodlust anymore. Turns out I was mistaken. Someone named Drew Hamre wrote an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune this Saturday, attacking Friedman for demonizing the Sunnis of Iraq (see text here); to underline the sheer hypocrisy of Friedman calling the Sunnis terrorists and murderers, Hamre used the following examples:

"Friedman has urged terror bombing to force regime change in Serbia ("Let's see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does," April 6, 1999)... Friedman has advocated bombing electrical grids, knowing full well the mortal damage that results when refrigerators and filtration pumps die ("It should be lights out in Belgrade," April 23, 1999)... Friedman has previously argued for war on a people, not just its government ("Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation").

All of this is in the context of Friedman's comments on Iraq, which have run in the same vein. "He appears intent on caricaturing a people, and then demonizing them," Hamre says, describing 9perhaps unwittingly) the US media coverage of the Balkans - and Iraq - over the past 15 years.

Of course, the advocates of Empire - be they social-democratic "liberals" or national-socialist "conservatives" - will at this point argue that there is nothing hypocritical about Friedman's rants against either Serbs or Sunnis. They are, after all, evil, and Americans who bomb them are good; "everyone knows" that. But what makes one good or evil, if not their deeds? If something is considered a heinous crime when attributed to Serbs, should it not be considered a crime when perpetrated by Americans? Quod liced Iovi non licet bovi is such a Roman sentiment. If the Imperialists are saying they are to the rest of the world as gods unto cattle, then we are indeed cattle for not shoving that opinion down their arrogant gullets, so they may choke on it.

Someone has already done something like that for Friedman; earlier this year, Matt Taibbi penned a superb takedown of the pompous blowhard, worth referencing every time some ignorant idiot in your environs mentions that columnist as worthy of anything but contempt:

"Friedman is... a genius of literary incompetence... It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of writer the Imperialists consider a "sage." Says a lot about them, doesn't it?

Loving the Emperor

Gene Healy wrote an interesting piece in Reason online, concerning Americans' love affair with the Imperial Presidency, as manifested in a current television show starring Geena Davis.

"what's interesting about the show isn't the idea of a woman president, and it certainly isn't the hackneyed dialogue. If C in C is worth watching at all, it's for what it tells us about modern, popular views of the presidency. Judging by the first three episodes, and the show's popularity, the romance of presidential power transcends left and right.
[...]
"Geena Davis' Mac Allen is an independent, and if her politics are thus far difficult to discern, it may be because they consist of convictions shared by both parties, such as dedication to a militarized drug war and a hyper-Wilsonianism that sees all the world's quarrels as our own.
[...]
"there can be no doubt that the Imperial Presidency is alive and well. And most Americans, liberal or conservative, can't imagine it any other way. The public is no longer content to accept a mere chief magistrate, charged with faithful execution of the laws; instead, over the 20th century, the president has been transformed into a national Father-Protector, who is supposed to keep us safe from everything from economic dislocation to bad weather."

Though the facts of the American Empire should seem crystal clear to just about everyone who cares to look, all too many people are still convinced that this country is a constitutional republic. To steal the line from a movie, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled is convincing people he did not exist. So long as the illusion of a republic persists, Americans will not challenge the American Empire, and keep thinking it's the measure of being "presidential" when Geena Davis - or Martin Sheen, for that matter - order other countries blown up.