Decline and Fall of Conservatism

Apologies for the lack of posts. Between certain personal obligations and the blistering heatwave rolling across the United States, it's been very hard to think, let alone make coherent comments about anything.

Butler Shaffer of LewRockwell.com doesn't have that problem . Indeed, he continues to write amazing philosophical essays. His latest, "The Decline and Fall of Conservatism," explains how a once-great philosophy of individual liberty, property rights and society-over-state degenerated into a totalitarian institution that tramples liberty, destroys property and elevates state above all.

I really shouldn't quote from the article, as taking anything out of context would be doing it injury; but there is a metaphor I cannot resist mentioning:

"...when the Soviet Union collapsed, conservatives were left without a raison d’être. Their very existence, as a political movement, ceased to be. They had accumulated weapons and powers – along with an army of defense contractors eager to keep the game going – but no "enemy." Conservatives – and, I should add, so-called "liberals" – were like a man with a leash, desperately in search of a dog."

Simply brilliant.

Conscience and freedom

I'm backdating this post to July 13, when it should have appeared. That I forgot to post it does not mean its message is any less important; only that I can be incredibly absent-minded at times.

This is a quote from a 1987 book, specifically from a lecture given by one Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI. The full text is on LewRockwell.com.

"Where conscience prevails there is a barrier against the domination of human orders and human whim, something sacred that must remain inviolable and that in an ultimate sovereignty evades control not only by oneself but by every external agency. Only the absoluteness of conscience is the complete antithesis to tyranny; only the recognition of its inviolability protects human beings from each other and from themselves; only its rule guarantees freedom."

These are certainly words to live by. One does not have to be Catholic to agree.

Long Way From Over

At Monday's commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the fall of Srebrenica, a column of Bosnian Muslims marched in wearing T-shirts with the photo of warlord Naser Oric and the slogan "Is self-defense a crime?" This presumably refers to Oric's wartime actions, which resulted in thousands of Serb civilians brutally murdered and dozens of villages destroyed.

Others bore the wartime sigil of the Bosnian Muslim government, the cynically appropriated shield of medieval Christian kings. They chanted "Long live the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina" - the name under which the Muslim-dominated government declared independence in 1992 - and "Death to the Serb Republic!"

Think the Bosnian War ended in 1995? Think again...

(photo: Zoran Šaponjić, Glas Javnosti, 12. July 2005)

Montenegrin Separatists Lose It

Say something the Montenegrin separatists don't like, and you may find yourself shot - or accused of terrorism. Last spring, the editor of a Podgorica newspaper who wrote about president/prime minister Milo Djukanovic's shady adventures in cigarette-smuggling was gunned down. The recent accusation of terrorism came at the expense of Srdja Trifkovic, Chronicles editor, prolific historian and commentator, after his recent appearance at a forum opposing Montenegrin separatism.

According to Trifkovic's colleague (and author of a great history of Montenegro) Thomas Fleming, papers close to the government accused Trifkovic of authoring a death threat to Djukanovic; the purported threat is a crude and sloppy forgery - which did not prevent the leading Empire-glorifying daily in Belgrade (the Jacobin Danas) from eagerly parroting the charge.

Aware that American money won't keep their criminal gang in power forever, that support for "independence" has consistently remained low (were it not so, the referendum Djukanovic keeps threatening to call would have taken place years ago), that their attempts to establish separate"Montenegrin" nation, culture, church, history and language have been recognized as a demented joke, and that the only way to avoid Italian smuggling indictments is diplomatic immunity, Djukanovic and his cronies have become desperately delusional enough to believe they could shape reality through propaganda.

Earth to Milo: it doesn't work, not even for the American Empire. Sooner or later, reality bites back. Looks like his time is just about up.

[As a side note, Dr. Fleming's condemnation of this smear campaign soon drew the attention of rabid Islamists (see writeback), whose absurd and hysterical charges against Dr. Trifkovic also named yours truly. Though signed "CAIR," the post actually reeked of Stephen Schwartz.]

Useless Power

Charles Featherstone of LRC had another fantastic commentary yesterday, which I somehow missed. For all its belligerence and bluster, he says, the Empire is already crumbling:

America's Army, Navy and Air Force have become useless instruments. Our soldiers can occupy, our planes can bomb relentlessly and with precision, our ships can patrol the seas, but who fears us now? Five years ago, when the glow of the War to Liberate Kuwait and air offensive against Yugoslavia still made American arms appear invincible, perhaps the governments and peoples of the world trembled at the thought of the United States military. But today, when a few thousand insurgents can tie down, tire and incapacitate that Army, what is there to left to fear?

Some governments may still quake at the thought of air strikes and the destruction of government "capital" and "investments" they would bring. But a people determined to resist us can look at Iraq and take heart – yes, we can be beaten. It's not all that hard.

[Paul] Harvey is right to fear defeat. In many ways, we have already lost.

When our whole approach to fighting "terror" is to inflict pain on people until they behave they way we want, what do we do when they can take all the pain we have to give? How much more pain are we willing – or able – to inflict until we realize the pointlessness of it all? Or until conscience confronts us?

And how many hydrogen bombs are we willing to use? One? Two? A dozen? A hundred? And if people still resist, or are driven to resist, what then? Shall we destroy the entire world?

We have unleashed our power upon the world only to discover that it is terribly finite, a great deal more limited than we hoped and imagined. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on bombs, tanks, planes, soldiers, and every passing day we are less and less able to bend the world to our will.

A whole arsenal of useless power.

Those who engineered the rise of the American Empire in the mid-1990s wanted it to be both feared and loved. Bush II decided to dispense with love; "Oderint dum metuant" really did become the Imperial motto. But now the fear is almost gone, and hate is all that remains. Now what?

Newton's Third Law

On Wednesday, June 29, there was a commentary in the Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti that captured the ire of the Serbian public over the relentless media campaign concerning the "genocide" in Srebrenica. Titled "Srebrenica and Reaction," it can be read in a BBC translation here.

However, considering the BBC translation somewhat lacking, I'm offering my own. You be the judge of how they compare, but do note the point the author is making, for when you hear the next round of Srebrenica hysteria.

Action causes reaction. There is no principle more simple and more true. If you beat your wife, your daughter will certainly fall for some local thug. If you write something about Dinkić, he will sic his BIA (Badgering Inspectors' Armada) on you. If you mess with Brankica "Insider" Stanković, you will have to extradite Radovan Karadžić to avoid arrest...

This natural law applies to Serbs as well. If you tell us a story about Srebrenica every night at bedtime, we will wish to never hear it again. If every session of the parliament turns into an argument over Srebrenica, we will elect other MPs, who will argue about something different. If you continue to invite Nataša Kandić to your shows, we'll change the channel...

Since the Scorpions' atrocity video was shown, we have been watching a sort of Olympics for NGO-profiteers. Nataša Kandić & Co. can hardly manage to run from B92 studios to an exhibit on Srebrenica, then take their seats at a round table on Srebrenica, then dash to a conference on Srebrenica, from which they would race to a debate on Srebrenica, after which they would saunter to a forum about Srebrenica, finishing it off with a rally about Srebrenica. All along telling the foreign media, who paint them as local pillars of democracy and free speech, about their "martyrdom" in uncovering the "truth" about Srebrenica.

Meanwhile, Bojan Pajtić of the Vojvodina Executive Council proposes that Serbia declares a day of mourning for Srebrenica (yes, the same Bojan Pajtić who told Serbia that there is no need for Bodrum Day - imagine that, he's still a free man!), and Exit organizers decide that the entire festival will fall silent in the night of July 10-11, to commemorate Srebrenica... If it didn't smell like Nenad Čanak, it would downright Kandić-like. Speaking of Exit, what is Maja Gojković doing? What's the use of having a Radical as the mayor of Novi Sad, if Exit organizers can fall silent at will?

The hysterical campaign of "All Serbs are guilty of Srebrenica" will make us all eventually say, "Enough with the 'truth' about Srebrenica". Action and reaction.

You know, Americans never adopted a resolution on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, not to mention Iraq, Milica Rakić, the Indians... The English will never declare a day of mourning over the Falklands Islands. Croats will never so much as think of silencing the Split festival over Jasenovac, or the bombings of refugee columns in "Flash" and "Storm". It's a good bet the Bosniaks [sic] will never apologize for the suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo, or around Srebrenica, or because Izetbegović rejected the Cutilheiro peace plan.

Instead of learning from Americans, the English, Croats and Bosniaks, we Serbs constantly holler about "crimes in our name". So it makes sense that the United States Senate declares us - and only us - the culprits for a crime that took place 10 years ago, with a special resolution. There could be a connection: clamor about "crimes in our name" and the Senate slaps you down. Action, and reaction.

Miodrag Zarković

Hourglass Hypocrisy

I've long intended to address the activities and existence of the Jacobins in Serbia: the militant, Empire-worshipping, media-dominating "non-governmental" and "civic" faction that is small in numbers, but loud enough to drown any reasoned debate in that beleaguered society.

Recently, political commentator Marinko M. Vučinić took to task the editors of "The Hourglass," a popular show on the Jacobin B92 television, on the site of Nova Srpska Politička Misao (see original here). I've taken the liberty of translating just one passage from his commentary, which in my opinion describes extraordinarily well the main discourse of the Jacobins - their hatred, frustration and alien relationship with ethics:

"What are the main positions of these passionate zealots for truth in Serbia? Without even trying to appear objective, they treat their opinions as absolute. For them, Serbia today is a place of horror, a bandit state, a black hole of Europe where it is impossible to live or think in a civilized manner. National mentality dooms the Serbs to be manipulated slaves; our history and traditions are nothing but illusions and myths; we are prisoners of the past, unable to embrace Europe and modernity. We are steeped in chauvinism and clericalism, unable to face the past; politics is dominated by thugs, liars and swindlers.
The exception, of course, are representatives of the so-called civic intelligentsia, who always merit approval. So what if no one ever explained to Biljana Srbljanović how the "terribly interesting, competent and fascinating" Čeda Jovanović came to own a house with a pool in Ripanj, multiple apartments, horses...? It matters not. Such things are trivial compared to the importance of this ideological stormtrooper's modernization efforts. So you see, the relentless criticism of the "Hourglass" editors does know some limits, if only when it concerns the like-minded."

Liberty, Congress and Old Glory

Musing on the flag-burning amendment recently passed in the House, Anthony Gregory of LRC offers this for thought:

"...ever since the Washington administration, federal politicians have attempted to circumvent, and all too often have succeeded in circumventing, the Bill of Rights’ limits on government power. From the first National Bank to the Federal Reserve, from the Alien and Sedition Acts to Japanese Internment, from the first U.S. invasion of Canada to the second war on Iraq, the busybodies in Washington have frequently carried out colossal projects for which one searches in vain for Constitutional authority."

And also:

"Almost everyone in Congress actively and consistently votes against American liberty. Those who desecrate the Bill of Rights and yet feign a tear at the trumped-up intellection of Old Glory being burned in protest by dangerous anti-American radicals have little understanding of freedom – or America, in the best sense of the word."

A Pagan Theocracy?

LRC blogger Charles Featherstone noted yesterday that when a U.S. Army reservist desecrated the Quran as supposed retaliation for Muslims burning the American flag, he was unwittingly (or perhaps not?) comparing the Stars and Stripes to what the Muslims believe is "God's speech, an attribute of God, present with God from the beginning." In other words, the soldier was claiming that the United States and its banner were a manifestation of God.

Lew Rockwell isn't surprised:

"The Tomb of the Unknown is a temple complete with mock religious ceremonies... Mt. Rushmore mimics religious statuary in Luxor or Babylon. A Roman temple offers us Lincoln Best and Greatest on his fasces-encrusted throne. The Jefferson Memorial is a Greek temple. The Washington Monument is an Egyptian religious symbol. DC is strewn with these chilling edifices. And the Christian right, in the Yankee-Puritan tradition, regards the US state as God's chosen instrument on earth, and Bush as his prophet. This kid is simply a cruder version of the official view, which will have no other gods before DC."

Atrocity Porn Failure Frustrates Peddlers

Since the video of Serb militiamen executing six Bosnian Muslim captives first appeared two weeks ago, there has been a relentless barrage of propaganda in the Western press about how this was the "irrefutable" proof that the "genocide" in Srebrenica really happened, and that units and authorities from Serbia itself were involved. But despite the initial confusion, born of understandable nausea at the shocking images, many people in Serbia still refuse to swallow the pail of garbage the Imperial propaganda is so insistently shoving down their throats.

I've got a whole column dedicated to this coming out tomorrow on Antiwar.com, so I won't rehash the points I've made therein. But another article came across my desk this morning, by one Beth Kampschror of the Christian Science Monitor - a champion of Balkans intervention if there ever was one, and a paper with vested interest in the Official Truth about Srebrenica, as it was one of their reporters, David Rohde, who helped craft the original story.

Kampschror's piece is simply awful, wallowing in double-talk, deceptive phrasing and outright lies. One is tempted to take it apart sentence by sentence - but it would actually take more time and space than it takes to write such trash. I'll try to hit just the salient points.

The "images are gripping and seem irrefutable," she says. They are indeed; no one can refute that six Muslims were killed on that slope, just as shown in the video. No one has tried. It's the implication that this somehow proves that 8000 Muslims were killed, or that the killers were Serbian police, that is rightly doubted. So Kampschror complains the video "has not yet busted the myth that Serb officers did not commit Europe’s worst massacre since the Holocaust." That is because the real "myth" here is precisely what she asserts to be the truth. And where is the Anti-Defamation League when you need it, to put a stop to these incessant and fraudulent comparisons to the Holocaust?

While maintaining that somehow the executioners of the six men were "Serbian officers," Kampschror actually calls the Scorpions - a militia unit formed in 1992 by Serbs who rebelled against Croatian rule - "Serbian-funded." Well, what is it? Were they Serbians, or funded by Serbia? Were they under orders from Belgrade, as Kampschror's colleagues far and wide keep repeating, or was Belgrade paying for their lunch? The question itself is absurd when considering who is CSM's source on this: yes, none other than Natasa Kandic. She claims no one could have gone to Bosnia without government approval and support - an assertion as false as it is idiotic.

"Public opinion in Serbia has long held that the Srebrenica massacre never happened, or that the Muslims were equally guilty if it did," goes Kampschror's straw-man argument. Certainly, Serbians did not believe the official story of the "genocide" in Srebrenica, partly out of instinctive refusal to believe one's own people can commit such atrocities, but also because the same media that authored the Official Truth on Srebrenica have lied shamelessly about other things - e.g. never mentioning the documented atrocities against Serbs. Crimes of the Muslim militias against the Serbs in and around Srebrenica are even more horrifying than the Kandic video (see here).

Eventually, Kampschror gets to the real gripe, and its source: the Hague Inquisition and its collaborators, who were frustrated that their conference on Srebrenica this past weekend was ignored by the Serbian government. The ICTY representative in Belgrade, Alexandra Milenov, tells Kampschror that despite the "overwhelming quantity of evidence," the Krstic conviction, and the Republika Srpska report that "confirmed what the tribunal had already ruled on, you still have voices of denial." Yet the ICTY's "evidence" is hardly overwhelming in quality, consisting mostly of allegations repeated ad nauseam, assumed to be true. General Krstic was convicted of "aiding and abetting" genocide, but the genocide itself was simply asserted as a fact. The RS report from last year was extorted by viceroy Ashdown, and is as valid as the confessions of Stalin's purge victims.

Finally, Kampschror objects that the "nationalist majority" in the Serbian parliament refused to pass a resolution written by Kandic and her fellow ICTY partisans, because they insisted "that crimes were committed individually, rather than blaming the Serbian institutions that made those crimes possible."

What institutions? Kampschror names them earlier in the article as "traditional voices of denial" and "Milosevic-era leftovers": the military, the police, the Serbian Orthodox Church. Tie this back in with the distasteful but deliberate Holocaust comparison from the opening paragraph, and you realize that CSM's correspondent is arguing that the Serbian people and its government were the modern incarnation of the Third Reich. She's not the only one, either.

There is much more legerdemain in the article, but it all follows the same pattern: how dare these Nazis still deny what the Official Truth has proven through endless repetition?

It's because they aren't Nazis, Beth, and the "truth" and "proof" you claim they should accept is nothing but a rotting pile of lies.

Cold-blooded Lies

"Web of cold-blooded lies" is the title of Eric Margolis's column at the Toronto Star today, linked on the news page of Antiwar.com, about the UK memos revealing the effort to deceive the British and American public into supporting the invasion of Iraq. As Kevin Zeese reveals on LewRockwell.com, there are actually seven documents indicating what could be rightly termed the conspiracy to commit aggression.

Margolis, Zeese and not a few other commentators who have addressed the issue of Downing Street memos, wonder where is the popular outrage. The US and UK have manipulated the United Nations into providing an excuse for an illegal, immoral and illegitimate aggressive war and occupation of another country's territory. Shouldn't their people be angry that they've been deceived?

Of course they should - and that they are not reflects all the moral corruption of the "West" today. But not even the complacent Westerners deserve to be lectured on accepting lies and war by the likes of Eric Margolis, who has a vociferous champion of Imperial intervention in Kosovo - one just as illegal, immoral, illegitimate, and based on lies as Iraq. That web of cold-blooded lies, not a few of which have been enthusiastically parroted by Margolis over the past six years or so, remains - in the words of mainstream propaganda trying to present fiction as fact - "widely believed."

So where is the outrage?

Russia and the Yugoslav Template

Among the Serbs there is a certain Russophilia. It was born during the long dark of Ottoman occupation, where the notion of a Slavic, Orthodox power that could counter the pressures of the Muslim sultans as well as the Catholic Emperors of Austria, gave people hope for freedom. But Serbia's experiences with Russia have been mixed. When Russia withdrew its support from the Serb rebels in 1812 (pressed as it was by Napoloen), the Ottomans reconquered Serbia with a vengeance. The Obrenovic princes' Austrophilia meant the Russians were more favorably inclined to Bulgaria. St. Petersburg betrayed Belgrade during the 1908 Annexation crisis. Russia did stand with Serbia in 1914, but they both paid a heavy price. Perhaps most ironically, the Serbs' Russophilia was crudely exploited by the Communists, who used it to sell their ideology - only to imprison and purge the Russophiles in 1948, during the feud with Stalin. But in the minds of many Serbs, there remained a romantic notion of the "Russians" coming to the rescue - perhaps misguided, certainly unfounded, and definitely unrequited.

So it is not Russophilia that makes me pay attention when the Empire attacks Moscow. It is the uncanny similarities between the Imperial assault on Russia, and what has taken place in the Balkans over the past 15 years or so - patterns that have connected fully only after I read Justin Riamondo's column today at Antiwar.com.

Consider: the color-coded "revolutions" had their beginning in Serbia, in the fall of 2000. Indeed, anywhere a new "revolution" is being brewed, Imperial mercenaries from Serbia (former Otpor and other NGO acolytes) can be found "visiting" and "consulting."

There is also an analogy to be made between Chechnya and Kosovo. Though of course it is not the heartland of Russia (that was Ukraine - and it's already detached, courtesy of the Orangists), Chechnya's separation could mean the unraveling of Russia; its pseudo-federalist organization, a leftover from Communist times, leaves it vulnerable to regional separatism, just as Yugoslavia was. And though the KLA is decidedly more fascist than fundamentalist, it is no less terrorist - and has the same purpose to the Empire - as the Chechen jihadis.

One reason the pattern was not obvious earlier, perhaps, is that the Empire owned Russia for most of the 1990s, when a drunken idiot sat in the Kremlin and his "pro-Western" advisers ran amok. It was the American "privatizers" (or is that privateers?) who created the oligarchs, and systematically robbed Russia of what little wealth survived the Reds. Most of the oligarchs' money - and indeed, the oligarchs themselves - ended up in the West. Serbia, too, had its oligarchs and thieves - but they were not Imperial stooges, and their money ended up in neutral banks of offshore tax havens (Cyprus, Cayman Islands, etc.). While the Serbian people had every right to object to being fleeced like that, that was not the Empire's concern. Indeed, the one thing Serbia's post-revolutionary masters have been ruthlessly efficient at was taxing their subjects.

The current rulers of Serbia - witless, confused and obsequious - uncannily resemble Yeltsin's Kremlin. And the attacks on Vladimir Putin echo those made against Slobodan Milosevic.

Although the analogy should not be stretched too far, a pattern is there. The Empire seeks dominion, and won't accept anyone who refuses to serve, or stands in the way. The political elite that has built its career on fear of Communism for five decades has come to feel some of that fear itself; Russia to them is still a dangerous rival that must be destroyed, or prevented from rising again. They look at China with the same paranoid neurosis. Empires see the world in imperial terms; the very notion that a nation could not seek power over others is alien to them.

So, was Yugoslavia a test-bed for the Soviet Union and Russia? A laboratory for tactics of the New Order? Or was it a grim demonstration of Imperial ability to impose its will anywhere, anytime, an Alderaan of our time? The answer - while it hardly matters to people reduced to picking up the scraps of their lives - may help save others, elsewhere. If Solzhenytsin's interview is any indication, the Russians may already know what is coming. But knowing something and dealing with it are different things altogether.

A Crazed Cult

I'm an unabashed fan of LewRockwell.com, and I make a point of visiting every day. In many ways, I consider it valuable education - in history, philosophy, economics, even gourmet food. But one of my very favorites - no offense to others - has to be Butler Shaffer, whose musings on politics and philosophy never fail to impress.

His most recent essay, "Democrazies," explores the secular religion of the ballot-box in the aftermath of the French and Dutch referenda on the EU. He draws the conclusion that ought to be obvious - that in the Age of Empire, "democracy" means voting the way the government wants:

The impending collapse of our politically-structured world just might take with it the structured mindset upon which it has been built. And within its rubble may be found the remains of the secular religion “democracy,” whose catechisms are today preached from academic cathedrals and the media. In that day, perhaps, our archeological descendants may search the debris for an answer to the question our generation is too terrified to ask: by what justification do men and women organize to inflict violence upon their fellow humans?

Worth reading in its entirety.

Haradinaj Released

The Hague Inquisition has decided to grant provisional release to Empire's fair-haired boy. Our Man Ramush is heading home, as the “Trial chamber is satisfied that, if released, he will appear for trial and that there are no indications that he will pose any danger to victims, witnesses or other persons," according to the ICTY press release duly quoted by Reuters.

No indications? I've known from before that the ICTY has no relationship whatsoever with reality, but this is surely too rich. Aren't Albanian "narcs" routinely murdered in that province "liberated" from civilization? Isn't the Haradinaj clan notorious for killing rivals? Didn't Carla del Ponte herself complain that her biggest problem in Kosovo was Albanian witness intimidation?

But none of that matters, you see. Ramush is Empire's man, and he gets special treatment. As Reuters so helpfully informs, "diplomats say Haradinaj’s departure left a gaping hole in Kosovo’s government as the province nears negotiations on its final status." In plain English, Ramush is needed to help keep the KLA on a leash while its masters do their work. If there was any doubt about that message, the following paragraph dispels it:

Some analysts say Haradinaj’s presence, albeit behind the scenes, could give Kosovo’s leadership renewed direction and discipline as it strives to meet standards of democracy and minority rights the West has set as a condition for the talks.

These "analysts" are most likely ICG, which Reuters is unnaturally fond of quoting.

It all comes together, then: Ramush's indictment and surrender were a publicity stunt, aimed at boosting the Albanians' image and deceiving the Serbs into believing the "international community" actually had principles. His release, a political necessity that defies all law and logic, shows one more time that the ICTY is beyond any doubt a tool of the Empire. And it all fits Washington's "new" Kosovo policy, which the knuckle-dragging morons in Belgrade are doing their best to ignore.

Another day, another outrage.

Executions

I am not shocked.

Hey, I was in Bosnia during the war - spent the entire siege in Sarajevo, matter of fact - and have seen plenty of death, onscreen and off. I almost want to say I can't be shocked by any atrocity porn anymore, though I probably shouldn't; there seem to be no limits on human depravity, and someone, somewhere might just surprise me.

But the couple of minutes of "shocking" video that have been playing over the weekend as "proof" of Serbian involvement in the July 1995 events in Srebrenica - courtesy of the notorious Natasa Kandic and the crew from IWPR - while horrifying, are nothing that hasn't happened in dozens of places around Bosnia between April 1992 and November 1995. The cast of characters and locations differ - sometimes it is Serbs shooting Muslims or Croats, other times it is Croats shooting Serbs or Muslims, or Muslims shooting Croats or Serbs (and often other Muslims) - but the script remains the same. It proves absolutely nothing but the depravity of war and of people who make a spectacle of it, be they the executioners who film their own handiwork (e.g. "Naser Oric's Greatest Hits") or those who use such recordings to further their political agendas.

There is much to be written about this, and not enough time in the world to do so, but I shall give it a try over the next couple of weeks. The issue of how many people died in the aftermath of Srebrenica's fall - and how - is too serious to be addressed in an off-handed, hysterical or propaganda manner, which is what the general tone of reporting about it has been for nearly a decade. Indeed, the very vehemence with which the champions of the Official Truth push their story - which brims with righteous rage but often lacks sense - suggests there is more to it than meets the eye, the paper, or the screen.

A Pyrrhic Victory

The French have spoken. Chances are they objected to the EU not because it was a liberty-crushing bureaucratic Leviathan, but because it wasn't giving them enough tax loot. Still, that distinction - while crucial in principle - doesn't matter much right now. The obtuse, 300-page-plus EU Constitution has always been a waste of paper; the French voters just made it official.

Or did they? When the people fail to dance to the government's tune, the government hardly ever changes the tune. It changes the people instead. In Britain, Tony Blair is trying to weasel out of calling a referendum of their own, and will most likely try to sneak the Constitution past the Brits via the Parliament. Other EU tributaries, even France, may choose to do so rather than face the prospect of public embarrassment that comes with a "No" vote. They could keep calling votes till the desired result is achieved, but there is always the risk of failure.

A couple of years back, the residents of Northern Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington, DC, rejected overwhelmingly their government's proposal for a sales tax increase. The tax hike was supposed to fund roads and rapid transit (a problem particularly affecting the area, with tens of thousands of government drones heading to work and back to their hives every day), and was supported heavily by big business interests and the media. Yet the end result was well over 55% against.

Less than a year later, the Virginia legislature passed a slate of unprecedented tax hikes, including a sales tax increase.

Anyone still thinks democracy works? I pity you.

How Liberty Dies

Inspired by a truly great line from "Revenge of the Sith," Steven LaTulippe at LRC writes "So This Is How Liberty Dies." The ending is so beautifully written, it simply begs to be quoted at length:

Truly, we are seeing the visions of Yeats [see here] come to life before our very eyes.

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

A glance at the structure of our government in this late era of republican governance demonstrates a variety of oddities and ironies. The most interesting is the observation that each branch of our government is now ignoring those areas where its actual responsibilities lie while simultaneously intruding into areas where it was once explicitly forbidden. [...]

Thus, we have a judiciary that wants to be a legislature, a legislature that wants to be a sugar daddy, and a president who wants to be an emperor.

It is a sorry sight to behold, and one that will probably make for a great tragic adventure series someday.

Unfortunately, we are all cast in the role of the "innocent bystanders."

And everyone knows what usually happens to them.

Going Upstream

Gary North at LewRockwell.com writes that "mainstream" media (MSM) are being replaced by "upstream" media:

Issue by issue, readers are concluding, "We’ve been lied to." They are correct. The Establishment at some point will face the implications of widespread disbelief in everything it says. At some point, people will not voluntarily do what they are told when they perceive their leaders as liars. When that day comes, political consensus will disintegrate. So will the mainstream Establishment’s control systems.

Let's hope this happens sooner, rather than later.

More Balkan Lies

I don't read The Guardian much. It's a bastion of "humanitarian imperialism" in the UK, which had enthusiastically cheered the NATO aggression of 1999 and continued to cheer for the occupation since. To be fair, they have also featured commentaries by Neil Clark, whose Marxist criticism of the occupation has been surprisingly well-argued, and a splendid article by Kate Hudson (the historian, not the actress) about the parallels between Kosovo and Iraq. One of their columnists, Julie Burchill, also made a good case against the Kosovo war in her own inimitable style. And, of course, they publish commentaries by John Laughland of the BHHRG, whose analyses have been proven true repeatedly.

But none of that can excuse Jonathan Steele.

As one of the many journalists who profited from channeling Imperial propaganda during the 1990s Balkans crisis, Steele threw himself passionately into the cause of "independent Kosova" this spring, first arguing that anything else would be a "victory for Milosevic," and now producing a disgusting "analysis" of the "Balkan question," so unashamedly pro-Albanian it would have embarrassed even Enver Hoxha.

For Steele, Albanians can do no wrong, and they are ever and only victims. To hear him say it, the war in Kosovo was a Serbian "campaign of ethnic cleansing and the guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army sought to defend the majority Albanian community." The 2004 pogrom was "clashes and shooting between Serbs and Albanians," in which - he points out with relish - most of the 19 killed were Albanian. (Why yes, Jonathan, Albanians do get killed when they attack KFOR and KFOR shoots back.) He also repeats the deliberate lie about Serbs drowning Albanian children, without mentioning that no one had ever found so much as an indication (much less evidence) that it was anything but a malicious fabrication.

For Steele, the only good Serbs are the meek, forgiveness-begging, groveling apologists for "multi-ethnic hopes," who claim Albanians have every right to kill them if they so desire and show "great sensitivity to the much worse suffering of the Albanian community." The only good Macedonians are those who appease Albanian demands ("most Macedonian politicians saw the value of making appropriate concessions to the other community rather than going to war").

Steele laments Albanian poverty, but sees nothing wrong with KLA memorials sprouting everywhere, lavishly funded by diaspora money (and "voluntary contributions" to KLA "tax collectors", surely). A gigantic black eagle Albanians intend to erect above Tetovo will cost 40,000 Euros - about $50,000, give or take. I wonder (and Steele does not), how come the people supposedly mired in poverty, frustration and despair have all this money to throw on monuments to the KLA and provocative nationalist iconography? Steele calls it "patriotic," but he'd describe a Macedonian or Serbian monument as "ultranationalist."

Even Steele acknowledges that had 9/11 been an 8/11, the Ohrid Accords would have never happened - Ali Ahmeti's KLA spinoff, the "National Liberation Arrmy," would have been classified as terrorists. But since that didn't happen - and isn't that a relief for the Kosova-lovers of the West? - the murder of Macedonia was OK.

This facetious and execrable commentary reveals all the arrogance, ignorance, stupidity and bigotry of people who label themselves the "international community" as they traipse across the globe spreading the gospel of Empire. It was their meddling that brought the war to the Balkans in the first place, made "peace" a fraud and justice a mockery.

Now that Bush II has decided to officially embrace the Clintonist line on the Balkans, Steele and his ilk are no doubt delirious with joy. But they should not be too proud of this virtual reality they've constructed. The power to deceive the Earth is no match for the power of truth.

Walking on the Dark Side

Perhaps it was a mistake to go see the Revenge of the Sith.

The film is not bad - no, it's actually quite good, if somewhat squeaky in places. No, the problem was that the films' tragic pathos, the depiction of the downfall of good and the triumph of evil, came at a time when this actually appears to be happening.

This isn't a dig at Bush II per se. I've seen some people offended by the ham-handed references to the swelling Bushian empire in the film ("You are either with me, or you are my enemy"? I mean, really...), but I don't think they - or even the filmmakers - understand that the message of Sith transcends this particular moment.

Emperor Palpatine is not just Bush II - he is also Abraham Lincoln ("Grand Army of the Republic"), and Woodrow Wilson ("I love democracy"), and FDR ("Justice, peace, security"), all rolled into one disfigured ghoul. He represents imperial power, which - despite moral-relativist arguments to the contrary - is Satanic in nature. The ghoulish Palpatine, disfigured by the evil he unleashes, is a metaphoric distillation of evil known to man for millennia, under many names and faces. It is an evil we seem to have forgotten, having replaced God with the State and abandoned reason in favor of relativistic logic.

For while Palpatine is the one plotting and scheming to take over the galaxy, it is his willing servants and unwilling pawns that make it possible. The special interests (Trade Federation, Banking Clan, Commerce Guild, Techno Union) and their greed, the Jedi whose arrogance and stupidity blind them to the truth, the Senators who keep on voting more and more power to the Chancellor and applaud even as he declares the Republic dead... all of them paving the road to Empire with good intentions.

And then, of course, there is Anakin/Vader: a tragic character in every respect, a boy who wanted to do good so much, he ended up being the very hand of evil. His desire to gain and use power to help the people he loved destroyed both him, and those people. While a lot of people don't desire power, all too many do. And of those who don't, how many would refuse it were it offered to them? Too few. There is a kernel of evil, a bit of Darth Vader, in every one of us. We should be mindful of this.

When I saw Der Untergang earlier this year, I stumbled out of the theater with a better understanding of the Nazis than I ever got from any history book. They were human beings, just like us, who in their worship of power and violence created a value system that encouraged the very worst in people. This is the "Dark Side" Lucas speaks of, an inseparable portion of human nature that, in order to become and stay civilized, we must keep under control. It is a source of great power, but that power can only destroy.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: we are living the revenge of the Sith. George Lucas may have forgotten how to show and not tell, but that makes his clumsy allegory no less apt. This is how liberty dies; this is how things fall apart, civilization crumbles, and lights go out all over.

I don't regret seeing Sith. I just wish it had only happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Wages of Servitude

John Laughland's piece in yesterday's Guardian, quoted by Daniel McAdams on the LRC blog, warns that reports in Uzbekistan are to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the chief source of "information" from the Ferghana valley is IWPR (enough said).

But he also shares another bit of wisdom that ought to be self-evident to anyone harboring delusions of "partnership" and "friendship" with the Empire:

"Washington is unforgiving towards people who think loyalty is a two-way street, and the Uzbek president is about to learn the lesson learned by Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Eduard Shevardnadze and scores of others: that it is better to be an enemy of the Americans than their friend. If you are their enemy, they might try to buy you; but if you are their friend they will definitely sell you."

To which I would add, for the benefit of people in the testing-chamber of the first "people power" revolution: the next time a politician talks about "working together with the international community" or other such imperialist agitprop nonsense, remember: whether they are selling or being bought, you get stuck with the bill.

Empire Takes Charge

Daniel McAdams writes on the LRC blog:

At an address to the Vanguard of the Demintern, the International Republican Institute, George W. Bush announced a bold new initiative to expropriate another $100 million (out of a total of $1.3 billion to “promote democracy”) from the American taxpayer for a new “Conflict Response Fund” to help consolidate the people power revolutions...

No more can these glorious “people’s power” revolutions be trusted in the hands of US-funded locals—too risky. Now, as John Laughland writes, the US controls both the government and the opposition movements within these countries so as to assure that no matter what happens, Washington’s interests will come out on top.

It may just be the spirit of Star Wars coming out this week, but the first thought I had upon reading this is, "Why, that's precisely the way of the Sith." People think they are fighting for worthy causes, but they are being manipulated by a sinister power all along. So much for the old Republic...

Of course, the Sith are but a metaphor. Says McAdams:

"Of course all of this will fail. History teaches us this and history is no liar. But it is the lives that will be ruined in the process, the lives lost, the economies ruined, the sorrow sown, that colors the imposition of ideology by force a deep black. The color of Satan smiling and reveling in this playground of the damned."

The Slippery Slope of Police "Reform"

For some time now, the Imperial overlords of Bosnia have been trying to bypass the Dayton Peace Agreement and the constitutional order it established in the torn-up quasi-country. Every single "reform" since 1996 has been in the direction of centralization. The most recent push to reform Bosnia's police force is no exception.

According to a proposal drawn up by international commissars, Bosnia ought to be reorganized into nine regional police districts, ultimately responsible to the central government. And though everyone from the EU to viceroy Ashdown claims that this would not in any way threaten the existing entities, that is simply not the case. Writing in the Banja Luka magazine Patriot (issue 168, 9 May 2005) - a publication generally favoring the EU and the Empire - commentator Slobodan Vaskovic says:

"Serb Republic politicians will no doubt be singled out as prime culprits for the evident failure of this important reform, as they almost unanimously oppose the internationals' intentions to erase not just the entity police ministries, but the entity borders as well. The intent is to continue this process of erasure through further reforms that would become necessary after this one, since police regions would no longer match the judicial districts. After that, the road to abolishing both entities and regionalizing Bosnia-Herzegovina would be both wide open and inevitable; the restructuring of police and the judiciary would have to be accompanied by a radical reform of the administration as well."

Vaskovic mentions a crucial detail: There are now 12 existing police administrations (11 in the Federation, one in the Republic); under the new plan, there would be 10. While a reduction in bureaucracy is a welcome thing on principle, this is hardly a reduction worth all the trouble. Much like the "administrative rationalization" proposals to abolish the Republic but not the ten times more complex Federation, this "reform" is a centralization push disguised as cutting bureaucracy.


All the ethnic, religious and historical animosities between Bosnia's communities are but manifestations of a simple clash of two principles - centralized state vs. ethnic autonomy. The deal in Dayton found a way to end the war by creating a common context for the two existing entities, the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation ("Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina"). Serb leaders thought this protected ethnic autonomy. Apparently, Muslim leaders saw it as a way of achieving centralization through subterfuge rather than the force of arms, as Croats have discovered to their detriment. The behavior of Imperial viceroys and various agencies and NGOs engaged in the country also supports the Muslim position. If Serbs or Croats object, they are beaten over the head with "war crimes" or "corruption" charges, and blamed for "Bosnia's failure" to move closer to the EU.

Though ethnic autonomy is not exactly libertarian, it does at least offer potential for re-establishing a free society - unlike the centralized state, which is its most bitter enemy. Attempts to centralize Bosnia against the wishes of the majority of its population can only lead to more conflict in a land that desperately needs not EU and NATO membership, not Imperial occupation, not more politics, but peace.

Kosovo Returns Pathetic

From beograd.com, Friday, 13 May 2005, 1500 hrs:

Between 2000 and December 2004, 12,218 people have returned to Kosovo-Metohija, according to the UNHCR office in Priština. As related by the chairman of the Kosovo-Metohija Coordination Center Nebojsa Čović at the regular weekly press conference, the UNHCR made a summary of "accomplished returns based on information from the field."

UNHCR has information about the municipalities of Dragaš, Prizren, Orahovac, Suva Reka, Gnjilane, Novo Brdo, Vitina, Kosovska Kamenica, Štrpce, Uroševac, Gnjilane, Leposavić, Vučitrn, Kosovska Mitrovica, Srbica, Dečani, Đakovica, Peć, Istok, Klina, Obilić, Lipljan, Podujevo, Priština and Kosovo Polje.

The spreadsheets provided indicate that the bulk of the returns - 9,916 - occurred between 2000 and 2003, while only 2,500 returns took place last year.

Let me get this straight: UNHCR has documented only 12,000 or so returns in four years, out of 200-something thousand who were forced out during and after the war? If we take 250,000 as the displaced total, than this is somewhat less than 5%. And that is assuming these people actually returned - that is, actually live in their homes, and haven't been either:

• burned out of them during the 2004 pogrom
• killed, or
• coerced into selling them to Albanians and leaving again.

In short, UNHCR's numbers - no doubt intended to show "progress" and provide another paper-thin excuse for the sham "standards" review about to take place - make it obvious that the expelled non-Albanians are not returning to the occupied territories. And why would they? To live in fear, risk injury and death, and - since they would be denied the right to self-defense - exist solely at the mercy of the KLA and the NATO occupiers? Please!

Serbs may be naive, gullible and even masochistic, but not that much.

BBC’s Propaganda Beat

Matt Prodger's most recent report from Kosovo for the BBC has to be read to be believed. In around 500 words, he spins, fudges and contradicts every bit of the ghastly reality of Albanian/NATO occupation, and smears the Serbian Orthodox Church in the process.

To Prodger and the BBC, there are no Serbian churches, only "heritage of Kosovo" and "Kosovo monuments." He blames the lack of reconstruction squarely on the Church, and Bishop Atremije in particular (the "biggest obstacle"):

"Raising the money for the Orthodox heritage is one thing, but getting the Serbian clergy to co-operate with the Kosovo government in the reconstruction has been much more difficult."

The clear insinuation is that the "Kosovo government" (provisional and Albanian) is falling all over itself to help, but the evil churchmen are sabotaging its goodwill. Prodger reinforces this by uncritically quoting "senior sources in the Kosovo government" (i.e. Albanians again), who have

"told the BBC that they believe the Serbian Orthodox Church has tried to keep the monuments in ruins for as long as possible - as a visual reminder to the international community of what Albanian extremists are capable of."

But the "international community" (as the Imperial occupiers of Kosovo and Bosnia pretentiously call themselves) already knows exactly what Albanians are capable of. Remember the 2004 pogrom? Actually, if you'd been enthralled by these presstitutes, you wouldn't; they've endeavored to cover it up and spin it away ever since.

In fact, Prodger's BBC was one of the media who lied shamelessly during the pogrom, repeating the Albanian blood libel that "Serbs drowned Albanian boys" even after being shown it was a lie. So it should not shock that Prodger still seeks to deny Serb suffering. This is how he describes the systematic destruction of Serbian culture after the Albanian occupation in 1999:

"The Serbian Orthodox Church says more than 80 of its monuments have been damaged since the war in 1999, but the figures are disputed."

Actually, the Church has documented almost 150 churches, chapels and monasteries – living temples, not “monuments” - destroyed, not “damaged” by Albanian terror since 1999. Only Albanian separatists dispute these numbers – well, they and people like Prodger, who serve as their useful idiots.

There have been many brazen lies launched by the Albanians to counter the reality of Kosovo since the NATO/KLA occupation began. They’ve claimed Serbs were destroying their own homes and churches, killing their own civilians, and even using “loyalist” Albanians to stage terrorist attacks against in Kosovo, simply to make Albanians look bad. These lies are as transparent as they are vicious. But the Prodgers of this world are either willfully blind, or too stupid to see them as such.

During the pogrom, distinguished Canadian peacekeeper in retirement, General Lewis McKenzie, famously commented, “The [Albanians] have played us like a Stradivarius.” Given the vulgar nature of KLA propaganda in Prodger’s piece, I’d rather compare the BBC with a worn-out drum capable of striking only one note: Serbs bad, Serbs bad, Serbs bad, Serbs bad…

Our Arrakis

A resource-rich desert, easily seized from its previous owner by a military operation that was the result of a devious scheme; but the expected flow of riches is being thwarted by the ignored and underestimated desert-dwelling religious fanatics, who strike at will and melt away into the shadows; efforts of the occupying force to subjugate the fanatics, despite overwhelming firepower, are futile.

Sounds like Iraq? It is. But I was actually walking about the setting of Frank Herbert's Dune. The parallels are eerie, aren't they?

Someone better get the White House and the Pentagon some copies of Herbert's masterpiece, before any more Sardaukar get slaughtered. Now that would be supporting the troops!

Victory Day

Abdulhakim Ismailov, planting the Soviet flag on the Reichstag
Photo: Yevgeny Khaldei, May 1945

Today is the 60th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany, which ended World War Two. Americans call it "V-E day" (Victory in Europe), because they don't consider the war ended till September, with the surrender of Japan; but it would be much more accurate to say that Europe and the Pacific were actually two separate wars, sharing the U.S. as one of the principal belligerents.

Anyway, there is a ceremony in Moscow today to mark the anniversary, given that the bulk of casualties against the Reich were sustained by the Red Army and Soviet civilians; I believe the figures featured recently were 150,000 Americans vs. 11 million Soviet soldiers alone. The Red Army lost tens of thousands of men street-fighting into Berlin, before its troops could hoist the hammer-and-sickle on the ruins of the Reichstag.

But sixty years after the defeat of Hitler, there ought to be some soul-searching as to whose victory it was. The USSR was devastated. The British Empire was shattered. And to the real detriment of its people, America stopped being a republic and became a full-fledged, big-government, military-industrial Empire.

After 45 years of fearing a nuclear holocaust, the collapse of Communism scrambled the map of Europe again, to the point where today's reach of EU and NATO resembles the reach of the Reich in 1942. Further, the collapse of the USSR left the American Empire without a counterweight, and gave the world the "benevolent global hegemony" of Uncle Sam's cruise missiles. Between the democide, nuclear madness and a comprehensive assault on human liberty and dignity, that's hardly a victory.

One could argue that defeat would have looked like a global Auschwitz, but that's hardly appropriate. First, because anything would be better (so that's hardly an argument in favor of the present condition), and second, because the war wasn't fought over the Holocaust, regardless what today's propaganda tends to say.

The 60th anniversary of Nazi surrender is marred by arrogant American pontification about modern Russia's lack of atonement for the sins of Communism. The Baltic republics, Poland, and other nations formerly annexed or allied with the USSR don't seem to regard 1945 as a moment of liberation. And that's their right - though it would be vastly less hypocritical if those same countries weren't staunch satellites of Washington now. Or if they hadn't been allied with the Nazis back then. Or if the "Atlantic Empire" wasn't so obsessed with establishing a hostile perimeter around Russia, which is hurting badly from 70 years of Communist misrule. As Justin Raimondo puts it:

"That Moscow now finds itself in a circle of steel, surrounded by enemies armed and brought to power by the West, should disabuse Putin of any notion that he can successfully appease the West and avoid being targeted as the latest "dictator" to fall. They will come for him, or they will come for his successor. They are already on the way."

Stalin's reasoning for invading eastern Poland and annexing the Baltic republics in 1939 was to create a buffer between him and the Nazis (they may have signed a non-aggression pact, but only a fool could not see that a war between them was inevitable). Those extra miles - along with Hitler's two-month delay to attack Yugoslavia - may well have meant the difference between Barbarossa succeeding, and its eventual miserable failure in the mud and ice just short of Moscow. Stalin employed the same reasoning when at the end of the war, he claimed everything east of the Oder-Neisse line as a buffer against the Western Allies. Now the Empire's investment of Russia appears to be vindicating Stalin. How's that for irony on Victory Day?

Vuk Draskovic's Private Politics

It wasn't enough for the maverick Foreign Minister of Serbia-Montenegro to attack Serbia's security service in a Financial Times interview back in April. Now he's gone and asked NATO to intervene and "overhaul" Serbian security. Here's the leader of a Reuters article from May 2:

Serbia and Montenegro called on NATO to help overhaul Belgrade’s security services on Monday, saying this would boost efforts to transfer top war crimes fugitives like Ratko Mladic to The Hague tribunal.

The agency presumes Draskovic is Serbia, since foreign ministers usually represent their countries in foreign media. But for a long time now, Draskovic has represented only himself. Driven by a pathological obsession with secret services, and convinced that a grand conspiracy of spies tried to kill him twice, he continued to focus on his personal agenda, rather than his job.

Remember, back in April he told told Financial Times that the Serbian security service (BIA) knew the whereabouts of Ratko Mladic:

"It is only logical that the security services know where Mladic is. They know if he is in Serbia, and they know if he is not. They are paid to know …"

The Hague Inquisition and its partisans rejoiced. BIA chief Rade Bulatovic rejected the insinuation, calling the FM irresponsible and his claim "not based on evidence." And that was that. In any other country in the world, Draskovic would have faced at least censure, and certainly a parliamentary inquiry. Government officials throughout the world have been forced to resign over far more innocuous remarks. Yet official Belgrade didn't even give him the proverbial slap on the wrist. Emboldened by this kind of impunity, Draskovic took it to the next level with this recent statement to Reuters.

Fortunately, an Alliance spokesman rightly dismissed Draskovic's logorrhea, saying that Serbia-Montenegro "already has a programme of cooperation which offers quite a lot of what PfP offers to partner nations." While this means NATO is far more involved in Serbia than it should be, it also means Draskovic's sycophantic rants are recognized as such.

It appears that Draskovic is following closely in the footsteps of his Dossie predecessor, the treacherous Goran Svilanovic, whose most recent initiative involved agitation for an independent, Albanian Kosovo as part of the "Independent commission on the Balkans." He, too, pursued private agendas as Belgrade's foreign minister, and never got called to account for it. In any case, Draskovic ought to be sacked. Even a Montenegrin separatist - something Podgorica proposed just recently - could hardly do worse as his replacement.

Horrifying and embarrassing as they are, Draskovic's antics are just the tip of the iceberg. At this point, one has to wonder what goes through the mind of Serbian PM Vojislav Kostunica, who was behind the appointments of both Svilanovic and Draskovic, and whose government currently survives thanks in no small part to support from Draskovic's party. His other major coalition partner, Miroljub Labus of the G-17 Plus, is also known for usurping government authority for the sake of personal agendas. As a matter of fact, it seems every two-bit politician associated with the current government has a greater role in policy-making than Kostunica, who is hardly ever heard from. A year later, it's come down to "meet the new DOS, same as the old DOS."

UPDATE: I remain convinced Draskovic is clinically insane, but if so, he must be bipolar. I just heard reports that on Sunday, he said that a good model for Kosovo would be South Tyrol (here's the interview in question). In that part of Italy, the "Austrian majority has practical sovereignty, while the Italian minority has special rights." Now, the Albanians have rejected this proposal (they say they won't accept anything short of independence), but it still makes a surprising amount of sense. This leads me to believe that when he isn't ranting about the secret police, Draskovic may have a thought or two worth listening to. And that makes all this so much more tragic, doesn't it?

Help fund Antiwar.com

I should have said something sooner, but I've just realized Antiwar.com seems to be falling short of its fundraising goal for the next quarter. Which comes as a surprise.

I thought people were sick of war and the Empire, of the arrogance, hubris, posturing, lies and deceit we are forced to listen to every day in the mainstream, "legacy" media that are dedicating to serving the Imperial idea. That if maybe half the people who visited Antiwar.com for news and commentary would part with the price of a couple of lattes (or a couple of beers) in exchange for continuing to read something meaningful. Maybe I've judged wrong.

But if I haven't, if I'm right about everyone who's been reading Balkan Express and liking it, then all of you out there will find a minute today to stop by Antiwar.com and donate. It will help keep alive not just Balkan Express, but an entire realm of alternative thought in a world that desperately needs it.

Remembering Tito

Twenty-five years ago, on May 4, 1980, Yugoslavia died.

Technically, it was Josip Broz "Tito," the Beloved Leader, who had passed away at the age of 88. But though few could see it back then, the country he created would not live much longer, either. There is a compelling argument to say it could not. Tito was Yugoslavia, an apotheosis of the Leader Cult that was in itself a logical extreme of the State-as-God idea that cut a bloody swath through the 20th century.

Tito died as Yugoslavia reached its zenith. Then the years of bad economics, foreign loans, repressed or deliberately engineered ethnic tensions came home to roost. Having purged everyone who could have threatened his grip on power, Tito left no successor; the bureaucrats and committees that took over after him could not cope with the Dear Leader's legacy. Only Slobodan Milosevic, who ascended the political stage seven years after Tito's demise, had anything similar to Old Man's flair.

But he was a Serb, and Tito's Yugoslavia was kept together in no small part through the constant harping about the "threat of Greater Serbian hegemonism." The bureaucrats used to power and privilege since 1974 (when Tito's right hand, Edvard Kardelj, redefined Yugoslavia into a de facto confederation) feared Milosevic both as a Serb, and as a potential centralizer. Having just buried Tito, they did not want another. So they either became nationalists, or allowed the nationalists to win. When the League of Yugoslav Communists began fracturing in 1990, Yugoslavia itself wasn't far behind.

Fifteen years of wars, blockades, ethnic cleansing, death, destruction and an ocean of lies have reduced the once-proud Yugoslavia to a patchwork of impoverished, semi-barbaric successor states under various degrees of domination by the Euro-Atlantic Empire. The tyranny of witless bureaucrats has been replaced by the tyranny of vicious thugs, kleptocrats and Imperial satraps; both have understandably spawned nostalgia for the days of Tito's "benign dictatorship," its harsher edges softened by the passage of time.

People now remember Tito as a "symbol of a better life, of social justice and freedom" (AFP). They don't really know what freedom is - they didn't have much under Tito, and they have even less now. Nor do they really understand the concept of "social justice," which is meaningless outside the self-referential, arbitrary Marxist logic. But at least they remember living better in Tito's times. Maybe because those were simpler times just about everywhere.

But those who have read beyond the grade-school textbooks, and even the supplemental volumes used in "Tito's Paths of Revolution" academic contests, can see that Tito's most important legacy surely is the creation of Yugoslavia, and sowing the seed of its destruction. Using the cult of personality developed around him (along the Stalinist pattern) during the 1941-45 war, Tito and his aides reinvented the country that had probably been erroneously established to begin with. Following the Soviet model, they carved up the country into "socialist republics," drawing borders any which way they pleased. Instead of a common Yugoslav identity, they nurtured particularism: republics were mostly ethnic; in addition to Serbs, Croats and Slovenes of the old kingdom, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Muslims were elevated to nationhood. Ethnic politics was also behind the subdivision of Serbia, with two "autonomous provinces" of Vojvodina and Kosovo. The reinvention of Muslims as "Bosniaks" and Albanians as "Kosovars" that took place in the 1990s owes much to Tito's ethnic politics.

Paradoxically, prior to World War Two the Yugoslav Communists advocated the destruction of Yugoslavia and its partition along ethnic lines, "freedom" for "captive nations" from the "Greater Serbian bourgeois imperialists." They backed a slew of ethnic separatist movements, from Croat Ustasha to Albanian kachaks in Kosovo and the pro-Bulgarian VMRO in what is today Macedonia. The Nazi invasion in April 1941 was a godsend: here was the ally of the Soviet Union, doing to the wicked Serbian hegemonists exactly what the Communist party always wanted. Only when the Reich turned on the Socialist Motherland three months later, Tito and the comrades changed the tune. And made damned sure no one ever brought that up. History began in July 1941; everything prior was the "darkness of oppression." Whoever disagreed was shot.

After the war, when Yugoslavia was all theirs, they were less willing to smash it up. Tito liked being a Beloved Leader himself, rather than a sock puppet of Comrade Dzhugashvili in Moscow. So he built a country - but never a nation - along the pre-war political blueprint for its destruction. The only thing that held it together was the Beloved Leader, Tito himself, whose word was law. Keeping the peace between the constantly frictious Yugoslav ethnics may seem like a praiseworthy deed, but for two things: Tito created the frictious system himself, and he had apprently given no thought whatsoever as to what would happen after his passing. Surely someone so politically astute would have at least tried to look ahead?

Unless he did. Unless what came to pass in the 1990s is precisely what he wanted to happen anyway. Could he have thought, like Madame de Pompadour, Apres moi, le deluge? It is not something the Tito- and Yugo-nostalgics want to hear. So in the dreary aftermath of Yugoslavia's death they remember Tito and his legacy fondly, oblivious to the fact that the Old Man from Kumrovec, the Sutla Boy who rose from a humble metalworker to incredible power, riches and fame, only cared for Yugoslavia as long as he was around to enjoy it. After all, Communists don't believe in Heaven.

Devil's Sacrament

In today's article, titled "The Glory of War," Lew Rockwell writes:

War is the devil's sacrament. It promises to bind us not with God but with the nation state. It grants not life but death. It provides not liberty but slavery. It lives not on truth but on lies, and these lies are themselves said to be worthy of defense. It exalts evil and puts down the good. It is promiscuous in encouraging an orgy of sin, not self-restraint and thought. It is irrational and bloody and vicious and appalling. And it claims to be the highest achievement of man.

It is worse than mass insanity. It is mass wallowing in evil.

And then it is over. People oddly forget what took place. The rose wilts and the thorns grow but people go on with their lives. War no longer inspires. War news becomes uninteresting. All those arguments with friends and family – what were they about anyway? All that killing and expense and death – let's just avert our eyes from it all. Maybe in a few years, once the war is out of the news forever and the country we smashed recovers some modicum of civilization, we can revisit the event and proclaim it glorious. But for now, let's just say it never happened.

Of course, being a country that fights wars exclusively overseas, Americans have the luxury of being able to forget. People who've fought at home, or close to it, have to live with the consequences of war every day. They can't forget, even if they want to. The only people who call war glorious are those who profited from it - or whose lives have been so shattered, they would have no meaning unless the war was good, just, and necessary. And this is what breeds new war, time and again.

Col. David Hackworth (1930-2005)

Yesterday, I lost a friend.

Col. David H. Hackworth passed away from cancer, at the age of 75. A legend within the U.S. military for his combat exploits, and later among the media for his intrepid reporting on every field of battle the U.S. troops saw since Vietnam, "Hack" journeyed to Bosnia in the winter of 1995, which is where we met.

I worked as his translator for several weeks, as NATO troops deployed to police the Dayton Peace Accords. He taught me many things about journalism, and not a few about life in general. And when I was leaving Sarajevo, it was Hack's military and press connections that got me safely out aboard a plane. That may have well saved my life.

I've kept in touch sporadically over the past nine years. I've read many of his columns, and I remember seeing him during the Kosovo War on Fox News, wearing a helmet in the studio after the bombing of Serbian Television. He was making a point: if NATO bombed the RTS because it challenged its propaganda, then Fox News could be a legitimate target as well.

And though later he endorsed the presidential candidacy of Wesley Clark, the Bomber of Belgrade, I chalked it up to a honest mistake of a man who has always cared for the well-being of his country and the honor of his troops.

My condolences go out to his family - but also to the American troops, for they have lost a great friend. There will never be another like him.

Goodbye, Hack. And thank you.

UNMIKistan

Chris Deliso over on Balkanalysis likes the new Balkan Express and points out a few more things:

"there are still other problems that emerge from the UN's failure to perform adequate passport checking from the start. Under UNMIK, Kosovo is where the war on terror went to die. [...] you have a situation whereby Osama himself could merrily motor into Kosovo without any problems. Sorry to say, this sort of thing has and does happen, if not with the big chief himself, at least with others of his ilk."

Deliso further argues that:

The UN in Kosovo has been playing 'I'm OK, you're OK' for far too long. It failed in the beginning to show a firm hand, and its cowardice has been noted and abused ever since. There's little chance that this belated attempt to bravely impose law and order will do anything of the sort. There may still be a golden future for UNMIKistan yet.

Could be because I'm a bit more cynical, but I've been skeptical of UNMIK and KFOR's bona fides from the start. They came into existence as a result of an illegla war of aggression and as agents of an illegal occupation. KFOR's job has been to "protect" Kosovo from Serbia, not anyone in Kosovo from the KLA and other terrorists. Similarly, UNMIK's job has never been to get the war-interrupted (Serbian) government up and running, but to build a new, Albanian government as a replacement. That in the midst of those perverted priorities they have paid as much attention to controlling the borders as to the KLA terror should not be surprising.

Patrick Moore's Putrid Fiction

The April 28 issue of Balkans Report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Libety (a US propaganda outfit with a HQ in Prague) features another piece by analyst Patrick Moore, Bota Sot's 2003 Person of the Year (notorious for his exclusive use of "Kosova" as the name for the occupied Serbian province). Moore is trying to describe the legacy of WW2 in what used to be Yugoslavia. But in attempting to describe the numerous crimes against humanity that had ravaged the region, he commits many crimes against reality.

One could raise many issues with Moore's history, but the most egregious has got to be his deliberate downplaying of the role, extent and atrocities of the Croatian Ustasha, first claiming the Pavelic regime was reluctantly accepted by the Germans "as the next best alternative" when Croat populist Vlatko Macek refused to become a quisling, then by claiming the Germans (i.e. not Pavelic) "lost little time in implementing their racial policies" in the NDH, and that German murders of Serbs "by the tens of thousands" were "assisted by Ustasha zealots." He also claims that Ustasha - an official government - had "command-and-control problems over their often widely scattered followers." This isn't history - it's pulp fiction!

The history of Yugoslavia is obscured by many dark shadows and deliberate distortions, and it is hard to distinguish between truth and fabrication. But I do think it is safe to say Moore's perspective is firmly tilted to the latter.

Christ is risen!

In the light of the Resurrection we comprehend our entire life and rejoice in it. This day of the Resurrection is a day to rejoice in life and Life Eternal. We must witness to this world and to this time the joy which the Resurrection of Christ brings us today, for this is a Joy which no one else can ever give us, and which cannot be taken away.

(Patriarch Pavle, Paschal Encyclical 2005)

"There can be no partition of Serbia"

Historian Dušan Bataković, author of the Kosovo Chronicles and currently Ambassador of Serbia-Montenegro in Athens, gave a very interesting interview to NIN magazine this week. I've taken the liberty of translating some highlights:

...what is bad for Kosovo is bad for Serbia. Taken together, they are an organic whole, and despite the differences in mentality, chronic violence and contrary political tendencies, they are bound by many unbreakable ties.
...
It is Serbia's duty, regardless of the seemingly intractable conflict, to protect in the long-term the interests of all its citizens in the province - Albanians, Serbs and others.
...
Any form of independence of Kosovo is absolutely unacceptable for Serbia, not just because that endangers Serbia's vital interests, but also because Serbia and Montenegro, as responsible members of the international community, cannot accept dangerous precedents with long-term catastrophic consequences... The independence of Kosovo would not only violate the UN Charter, the entire international order and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, it would also set a dangerous precedent encouraging all other aggressive separatist movements in Europe and Eurasia. ... There is no separate "Kosovar" nation with a separate identity; there are only Albanians and Serbs.
...
The old notion of the Albanian lobbyists – to pay off Serbia for ceding Kosovo - de facto recognizes that Kosovo does not belong to them. They may not be aware of this, but the subconscious is at work here. If you want to buy something, that means you are conceding it belongs to someone else.
...
The independence of Kosovo would mean the partition of Serbia. Whenever it is said there can be no partition of Kosovo, I always agree, because there can be no partition of Serbia, either.
...
We are... at the crossroads of highways, railways, riverways, oil and gas pipelines, and in that context the issue of Kosovo - though threatening and incendiary - becomes only part of a geopolitical jigsaw. Which is why I always emphasize the following: you cannot satisfy the extremely particular interests and 19th-century ideological demands of 1.7 million Albanians in Kosovo, while permanently frustrating eight million Serbs, who are the key to the long-term stability of Western Balkans.

Bataković is a fan of "Euro-Atlantic integration," which I am not, but his positions on Kosovo are easily the best-articulated Serbian policy I've heard in a long time.

Also interesting is his answer to the question about "certain officials" (i.e. former FM Svilanović and others) who "privately" renounce Kosovo in talks with foreign officials:

If that is true... then it is an act of ultimate political irresponsibility. Part of the political elite that holds such opinions - and the foreigners need to be aware of this - does not represent the majority political opinion in Serbia. Those are private opinions of suck-ups, not positions reflecting official state policy. We have here a dangerous mix of provincialism and false cosmopolitanism, both reflections of a pathetic personal and political inferiority complex among the political class.

Bliar

No, that's not a typo, just a "term of endearment" for the current UK Prime Minister, who recently dared say he "never told a lie." Right. And I'm the reincarnation of Sultan Saladin.

I don't know who took this photo, on today's front page of Antiwar.com, but it's worth a ten thousand words...

Lots of Hot Air

AP quotes the latest bloviation of Serbia's deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus: “That is the task of our whole society... we must all work together to join the E.U.,” he said after the Brussels Leviathan approved the possibility of annexation talks (presumably refraining from licking its chops). Ah yes, nothing so refreshing as a blast of collectivist claptrap in the mid-afternoon... though to be fair to Labus, it was just around lunchtime in the States when the story hit the wires.

Showing it isn't only the Eurocrats and neo-imperialists who have a pathos for symbolism, the perpertually whiny Keynesian also "expressed hope that stabilization and association talks would start Oct. 5 - the fifth anniversary of Milosevic’s ouster from power."

Well, not much trumps getting rid of a tyrant at home (stipulating that's what Milošević was) except to replace him with thousands of tyrants abroad, now does it? Worked for the French, right?

Sickening. Just sickening.

Remember the Armenians!

When speaking of forgotten genocides, it would be a colossal oversight and horrible injustice to omit the suffering of the Armenians. In 1915, under the pretext of preventing "rebellion" in areas bordering tsarist Russia, the Ottoman Empire deported Armenians en masse from their historical homeland, killing anywhere from 800,000 to 1.5 million in the process.

This was the first real genocide of the 20th century, and its success - the Ottomans were never called to account, and the Ataturk government that replaced them finished the job by ethnically cleansing the Greeks - inspired others. Adolf Hitler reportedly quipped, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of Armenians?" Thanks to Ankara's efforts to suppress any inquiry, and Turkey's strategic value as American ally during the Cold War, few speak of it even today.

For more information, see Gary North's excellent article today on LewRockwell.com. And remember the Armenians.

Hague Update: Muzzled no more?

Slobodan Milošević was back in court this morning, after witness Kosta Bulatović had refused to testify in his absence. It could be that Bulatović's refusal to testify - similar to another witness boycott last year, when the Inquisition tried to impose counsel on Milošević - showed the Inquisitors that any attempt to muzzle the defendant would only backfire.

Putin, Truth Irritate Empire

According to AP, Russian president Vladimir Putin lamented the demise of the USSR in his equivalent of the "state of the union" address:

"First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century," Putin said. "As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory. The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself."

The agency immediately cast this statement in a sharply negative light, reminding of Putin's KGB past and his "resurrection" of communist symbols. Complaints of dictatorship, curtailing democracy, muzzling the media, cracking down on "businessmen" (i.e. oligarchs loyal to the Empire) followed, rounded off by criticism from the usual gaggle of Imperial sycophants - whose political following in Russia is nonexistent, but who can always be counted on to say something bad about Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Here's the thing: USSR's collapse wasn't tragic in principle, but it certainly was a tragedy in practice, and about that, Putin is absolutely right. Thanks to the witless American puppet in the Kremlin, the USSR fractured along the Stalinist borders, leaving tens of millions of ethnic Russians stranded in hostile territory. The successor states came under the rule of pro-Western (i.e. anti-Russian) nationalists, who have been trying their best to invent anti-Russian ethnic identities, suppress Russian language an heritage, and even celebrate their Nazi alliances.

Nor has the Soviet collapse been bad only for Russians. Central Asian republics are having jihad trouble. The Caucasus has been writhing in open or covert warfare since 1991 - from the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict to factional strife in Georgia and the southernmost regions of Russia (Chechnya, Ingushetia, Ossetia, Dagestan).

In fact, only a very small segment of society in the former USSR profited from its collapse: politicians and criminals (or do I repeat myself?). While the "new class" parties in glitzy night clubs with the best vodka, best cocaine and best whores, the normal, ordinary folk - clerks, workers, farmers, teachers, etc. - struggle to survive, while their sons turn to crime and their daughters to prostitution. Is this not a tragedy? If not, what would be?

Yet the American Weltreich has the nerve to accuse Russia of "imperialism" whenever it tries to get up from her knees and the mud she's been shoved into. Putin has been increasingly demonized - and no, that's not too harsh a term to describe it - in the western press, almost like Slobodan Milosevic. Indeed, the Empire has practiced many policies eventually used in the former USSR in the Balkans, from manipulating ethnic conflict to "democratic revolutions."

Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn't it?