Holding on

My post from the other day on mixed marriages in Bosnia caught the attention of the Witch-King, and I thank him for it.

His conclusion made me think some more:

They may have retained their lives but lost their homeland and anything resembling an identity. There was very little option for them but to find another place to live, and start rebuilding from scratch, not only in a material but in spiritual sense as well.

The devil of it is, they aren't the only ones. All of us who've been through the 1990s have had to deal with this to some extent. Whether they want to admit it or not, many people's identities were tied into Yugoslavia, socialism, and Tito's cult of personality. Some folks still haven't got over any of them. Others found it easier to slip into the new, custom-made identities furnished by opportunistic politicians. And a few have chosen the thorny path of rediscovering what it truly meant to be a Serb, Croat, Muslim, or whatever.

Whoever it was that said that "you can never go home again" was right. For many people, not just those of mixed ancestry, Yugoslavia was home. That place is no more. There is something else, many something-elses, there now. Things may still look the same, sound, or smell, or taste the same. But the same they are not.

I can understand why many people choose to remember Yugoslavia fondly. Trying to build a new life in a foreign country can be frustrating at times, so to those who left memories are a way to cope. And those that stayed live in a world of cronyism, "transition" and crime, where all the seedy aspects of socialism seem to have endured, and none of the things that made it bearable: unimpeded travel, annual seaside vacations, and a country in which everyone had a job, a car and a place to live (and let's not quibble about the quality of any of those). Time burnishes their memory of Yugoslavia so that only the good things remain. This romantic vision of the past gives them hope that the world wasn't always bleak, cruel and capricious, and that things can be good again.

And they can. They might. But nothing can ever be the way it was.

I'm still trying to decide whether those of us who understand this are better off for it. I don't think I'll ever really know.

Strangers in Their Own Land

Though it may have appeared that way, Friday's post was not actually a response to Asma Ishak. I just used her invective as an illustration of projection, prejudice and name-calling that passes for internet debate these days. I've learned long since not to get into arguments with trolls; unlike them, I have better things to do with my time.

One of the commenters, however, was curious about the intermarriage of "Serbs and Bosnians" (sic - she meant Muslims, obviously) that Ishak had mentioned. There is this myth that Bosnia was a harmonious, perfectly integrated multi-cultural paradise that evil Serb nationalists brutally destroyed, forcing the Muslims to rediscover their identity. Those who believe this have it precisely backwards, as the subtitle of Alija Izetbegovic's "Islamic Declaration" (PDF) was "A Programme for the Islamization of Muslims." What better way to become the undisputed leader of Bosnia's Muslims and implement an Islamic agenda than to claim they were all in danger of perishing from "Serb aggressors" and their alleged "genocide"?

It is true enough that there were many mixed marriages in Bosnia. Previously, intermarriage required one of the spouses to convert to the other's faith, so they could be married in a church or a mosque. After 1945, however, the couple simply had to take two witnesses to a court clerk. With Communists actively discouraging religious practice (though not banning it outright, except for Party members), the faith of the children was a non-issue.

Few people in the countryside intermarried, though; it remained a characteristic of urban centers. The collapse of Communism and the rise of ethnic parties put mixed-marriage families under a lot of pressure. People found themselves sidelined because they had the "wrong" spouse. Children were pressured to "choose a side." Some did. Others packed up and left. Many found refuge in Serbia, where people were comparatively less obsessed with ethnic purity than in either Bosnia or Croatia. In fact, Serbia remains the most ethnically heterogeneous Balkans state even now - while in other republics, from Slovenia to Macedonia, the trend has been homogenization.

Official Truth has it that the Serbs engaged in "ethnic cleansing" while the Muslims were multi-ethnic and tolerant (Croats are somehow not mentioned at all). While the "Bosnian Army" did start out with a number of non-Muslims in its ranks (Serbs, Croats and those of mixed heritage who believed Izetbegovic's propaganda), that number dwindled down to nearly none by late 1993. From the army to the state, everything was becoming Islamized. When the reis-ul-ulema (head of the Islamic religious community) Mustafa Ceric called the children of mixed parentage "genetic garbage," there was no longer room for doubt.

Even though Annex VII of the Dayton peace treaty contained the "right of return" of refugees to their homes, and in 2000 a set of quotas was imposed to ensure representation of Muslims and Croats in the Serb Republic (RS) and Serbs in the Muslim-Croat Federation, both entities remain overwhelmingly ethnically homogeneous. People would return, reclaim their property, then sell it or exchange it and move back to areas where their own were the majority. While the RS has meticulously observed the quota system, the Federation never bothered, and somehow the "international community" never cared, either.

After the war, there were several immigration programs (notably in the U.S. and Canada) favoring mixed-marriage families. Not surprisingly, most people seized the opportunity. There is still some intermarriage in Bosnia. By and large, however, for those who found a mate in a different community it was much more bearable to become Americans, Canadians, or Australians than to be strangers in their own land.

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
~ Romeo & Juliet, Act II, scene 2

Poor Juliet. So right - and yet so wrong. For while it perhaps ought to be as she said, in reality names do matter. Names are one of the ways we perceive things around us. A rose is supposed to smell sweet; how many would give the benefit of the doubt to something dubbed "stinkrot"?

Names have power. If name-calling weren't so successful a tactic in arguments, would there be a Godwin's Law? I can't recall if it was Orwell who said that whoever controls the language controls the terms of the debate, but it's certainly true. Add to this that facts have increasingly taken a back seat to feelings - it doesn't matter whether something someone said is true, but rather how passionately they feel about it - and labeling becomes the way to win an argument without actually arguing at all. As long as you frame the question along the lines of "Do you still beat your wife?" it doesn't matter what the answer is.

Revealing his identity in today's column, "Spengler" of Asia Times explained the reason why he embraced a pseudonym years ago:

Why not openly identify myself? Because my readers then would have jammed my thinking into the Procrustean bed of their prejudice.

Oh, that sounds familiar, all right. For nigh ten years now, I've been publishing essays online. I had written before - a column here, a letter there, an editorial or dozen in the college newspaper - but my big break was in 1999. It was the year when the Internet first showed its potential as an alternate news medium, with Serbian proto-bloggers challenging the image of the Kosovo War crafted by the mainstream media that served NATO's war machine. (And serve they did: one of the BBC reporters covering the war later became the NATO spokesman.) Embittered by that war, I started writing. A Serbian diaspora website, which used to re-post a lot of the war reports, was happy to publish my essays. But it never occurred to me that I ought to hide behind a moniker. When Antiwar.com invited me aboard as a columnist, in late 2000, I used my real name. I even took time to offer a helpful lesson in Balkans spelling, so people would pronounce it properly.

Hate mail has been a constant. Only twice did someone challenge something I've actually said. Both were minor details. The rest of the time, complaints have run along the lines of "why are you publishing this raving Serbian chauvinist, genocide denier, apologist for atrocities, etc." You see, by questioning the propaganda about genocide, I was a "genocide denier." Never mind that I was later vindicated. Rising to fame and fortune (and let's not forget power) in the 1990s by fabricating the myth of "genocidal Serb aggressors" means never having to apologize.

Mind you, this sort of "criticism" wasn't limited to Albanians, Bosnian Muslims, or Croats (some of whom felt threatened by my "propaganda"). Some of the nastiest mail came from Serbia, after the Djindjic assassination in the spring of 2003. It was somewhat amusing, though, to see people curse me as a "son of Milosevic cronies" or "mercenary of the regime." My family lives in Bosnia, and I've never received one red cent from the Serbian government, but since I spoke of Djindjic in something other than awed reverence, I had to belong to a hated category. Their prejudice was so strong, they invented a fictional me to make my words fit their perceptions!

In November 2004, when I created this blog, I picked a handle that went with the theme, and also had a layer or two of metaphorical meaning. But my very first post linked to my work at Antiwar.com, so it's not like I tried to disguise my identity. I simply chose to make it a secondary concern, to try and put the focus on what I was saying, as opposed to who I was.

No such luck. That very month I broke the story of a Norwegian-commissioned report for the ICTY that put the death toll in Bosnia at just over 100,000. Within days, Reuters was talking about "Serbian weblogs" claiming that the research by Mirsad Tokaca (also funded by the Norwegians) "disproved the accepted fact that Muslims were by far the main victims" of the war. But there were no "Serbian weblogs," just little old me. I never did figure out whether the Reuters reporter researched the identity of Gray Falcon and said "Aha! A Serb!" or if he concluded that I must have been a Serb, since I dared challenge "the accepted fact."

The thing about prejudice is that you can't argue with it. Not rationally. Saying "No, I'm not really like that" doesn't work, either. And to be honest, I have no interest at all justifying myself to most of my critics. They haven't shown me that they deserve it.

So, when a particularly vicious screed arrived two weeks ago to the Antiwar.com letters editor, and he asked if I wanted to comment on it, I said, "Why waste my breath?" Run the letter without comment, I said, because nothing I say will make the author - one Asma Ishak - look any worse than her own words. I actually urge you to read this masterpiece of ignorance, arrogance and stupidity. I'm particularly fond of the way she claims not to care about people's ethnicity, religion and race, as she finishes a rant against someone based solely on his ethnicity. Perhaps her definition of "people" specifically excluded the Serbs? She wouldn't be the first.

Had Asma Ishak not been so obsessed with my origin, she might have noticed that in the text she ranted against, I criticized an editorial not because of the identity of its author (I certainly don't care if Borut Grgic is Slovenian), but because it tried to disguise a business agenda (an Austrian company's takeover of BH Telekom) as caring about the future of Bosnia. Yet I'm supposed to be a hater, driven by ideas that Ishak "detests," herself being all emancipated and enlightened.

This kind of thinking is precisely why Romeo and Juliet committed suicide. He was a Montague, she a Capulet - the feud between their houses meant their love could never be. Today's obsession with names isn't about identity - most people's identities are crumbling under the onslaught of soulless secular humanism - but about identity politics, which is the very embodiment of prejudice. Seize upon one little thing, build an identity around it, fight with others over government-bestowed privileges based on it. Sounds just like a recipe for a harmonious future, does it not?

My work speaks for itself. There are hundreds of columns archived on Antiwar.com, and hundreds more on this blog. I've spoken out against the Empire, against war (and therefore against war crimes, which ought to be intuitively obvious to even a semi-literate observer), for liberty, private property, secession, law, justice... But because the name behind these arguments is Nebojsa Malic, and not Muhammad or Bob, many people reject them out of hand, and some even feel compelled to create an imaginary me as a target of their rage.

That doesn't say much about me, but speaks volumes about them.

Tito, Mihailovic and the British

Reader "Suvorov" was curious:

How many Chetniks were there under Mihajlovic's command? How many were there in other factions? How many people were in Nedic's guard and other similar "German-inspired" formations? How many Partizans were there and what percent of them were Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, (of course there were also Bosniaks, Albanians, and other small numbers of ethnic groups living in Yugoslavia)?

[...] By the way, is there any book in English about Balkans during WWII which you would recommend? Thanks again.

The numbers varied throughout the war. The leading authority on the WW2 Royalists in Serbia, Miloslav Samardžić, says that in the spring of 1944 there were "over 100,000" Chetniks* under Mihailović's command. Nedić's gendarmerie numbered around 20,000, and there were about 8,000 or so men loyal to Dimitrije Ljotić, a fascist who eagerly collaborated with the Germans.

Samardžić also says that Serbs made up the vast majority of the Partisans. When you hear about "Croatian" partisans and "Croatian" brigades, he says, those were actually Serbs from territories called Croatia, not necessarily Croats.

The most commonly used figure for Partisan numbers is 800,000. It comes from official Communist history. Even if we assume its accuracy, the figure comes from late 1944, when many Chetniks as well as Domobrani (Croatian regulars called up by the Pavelić regime) and Italians had joined up. (According to the same source, the partisans had suffered over 300,000 casualties during the war, mostly in the open battles of late 1944 and early 1945.)

I have heard good things about Michael Lees' "The Rape of Serbia" (subtitled "The British Role in Tito's Grab for Power 1943-1944"), published in 1990. I haven't actually managed to obtain a copy, but I've been following a lot of work in Serbia about the intrigue and power games involving the British, Tito, Mihailović and the royal government in exile. The picture that emerges is that the Brits sidelined the royal government, cherry-picked one of its members (Ivan Šubašić, the pre-war ban of Croatia) to sign a treaty with Tito, then bullied the young king into issuing a radio endorsement of Tito as the supreme commander of the resistance.

It wasn't just the Serbs who were used then abandoned by the British. The Poles and Czechs who escaped to the West were similarly betrayed when all of Easter Europe was given to Stalin. And then there was Operation Keelhaul...

(* The proper name for this force was the "Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland")

April 6

1941: Enraged by Belgrade's rejection of the Tripartite Pact, Adolf Hitler orders Unternehmen Strafgericht (Operation Punishment), the attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria join the invasion. By April 10, Croat troops had mutinied and the "Independent State of Croatia" was established, eagerly welcoming the Germans. By April 18, the war was over and Yugoslavia had ceased to exist, partitioned by the invaders.

What followed was four years of uprisings (by royalists and Communists), brutal reprisals by the occupiers, and a genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma by the "Independent State of Croatia." Whether the Yugoslav insurgency really disrupted the German war effort to any great extent is debatable, but the fact remains that Hitler's whim delayed the planned invasion of the USSR by five weeks.

1992: Washington and countries of the EEC (precursor to the EU) recognize Bosnia-Herzegovina as an independent state. The recognition was requested by the Muslim-dominated regime of Alija Izetbegovic, seeking to trump the objections of the country's Serbs. Just over a third of the country's population, the Serbs supported staying in Yugoslavia, but were willing to accept an independent Bosnia if it were organized on the Swiss model (a confederation of ethnic cantons). Bosnian Croats backed Izetbegovic's declaration of independence, but also sought territorial autonomy; units of Croatian Army were already present in many parts of Bosnia, skirmishing with the retreating Yugoslav federal army and Serb militias.

In February of 1992 it seemed that a compromised had been achieved under the aegis of the EEC, with all three groups agreeing on a proposal submitted by Portuguese diplomat Jose Cutilheiro. However, in March Izetbegovic reneged on the agreement, following a consultation with the U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman. Convinced (erroneously) that he had Croatia's backing, confident in U.S. support, willing to sacrifice as many lives as necessary to achieve his goal of Muslim-dominated Bosnia, Izetbegovic simply refused to make any deals with the Serbs. Recognition of his regime closed the door on all political and diplomatic avenues of resolving the Bosnian conundrum; Western policymakers claimed it was supposed to prevent a war; in fact, it made war inevitable.

The Kosovo War, Ten Years On

The bombing of then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, begun March 24, 1999, was in essence a demonstration of power by which the Atlantic Empire chose to reveal itself to the world. Until then, NATO was considered a defensive alliance; in the words of its first Secretary-General, Lord Ismay, its purpose was to "keep the Russians, out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." During the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia (1991-1995), the Alliance gradually claimed more and more authority, until it was driving the UN, and not the other way around. But on March 24, 1999, NATO - and Washington - would bypass the UN entirely.

It is said today that the war ("intervention") was fought to protect the innocent ethnic Albanians, who were being "oppressed" by a vicious Serbian regime. But insiders have admitted the purpose of the bombing had little to do with Serbs or the Albanians, and much to do with power politics, especially the U.S. relations with Russia.

As Madeleine Albright once famously asked Colin Powell, "What’s the point of... this superb military... if we can't use it?" That was in 1991, and the outcome of this argument was "Desert Storm": a four-day operation in which the overwhelming and technologically superior forces of the U.S.-led coalition obliterated Iraqi troops in open field. As a result, Americans - and their European allies - came to believe in their military invincibility. However, "Desert Storm" was not the first battle of the future, but the last battle of the past. This was shown by the conflict over Kosovo in 1999, which was conceived as a re-run of "Desert Storm," and ended up being anything but.

Washington's show of force was deliberately and carefully designed. The target was Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro), the only country in the Balkans, perhaps even Europe, without a client regime. President Milosevic may have helped the U.S. impose peace in Croatia and Bosnia (at the expense of some 2 million Serbs), but he insisted on being a free agent. That could not be allowed.

Much of the groundwork had been done already. During the early 1990s, the Serbs had been demonized as aggressors and genocidal murderers, based on propaganda from the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia. A proxy force was already in place: the "Kosovo Liberation Army," a terrorist organization seeking independence of the Kosovo province (as the first step in pan-Albanian "unification" sought by some since 1878 or so). Though Albanians have sought separation from Serbia since the early 1980s, the KLA represented an escalation of terrorism that Serbia could not ignore. From mid-1997, Serbian police and Yugoslav military tangled with the KLA, mostly to the KLA's detriment.

In October 1998, the U.S. demanded that Belgrade allow OSCE observers into Kosovo, and stop actions against the KLA (the KLA was under no such constraints). Milosevic agreed, hoping to avoid a war with NATO. But the mission was led by William Walker, veteran of black ops in Central America, who helped the KLA stage a "massacre" in January 1999 and prepare the ground for a war. Walker quickly declared the events in Racak an atrocity, which was then used to issue an insulting ultimatum to Serbia: "Let NATO occupy Kosovo and have free access to the rest of Serbia, and after 3 years give the Albanians independence. Or else."

It was meant to be rejected. And so it was. Everything was in place for a short, victorious war.

As usual, the Serbs proved difficult. They did not surrender on the first day. Or the second. Or the seventy-seventh. They shot down NATO missiles and drones in droves, and (at least) two aircraft, one of them the famous "stealth" F-117A. There is even a story of how Serbian pilots, flying 1970s bombers, demolished the base set up for U.S. Apache helicopters in Albania. Whether there is any truth in it or not, the Apaches never flew a single combat mission in Kosovo, and several were said to have been lost to mysterious "accidents" and "mechanical failures." Clever camouflage and ingenious use of decoys also fooled most NATO bombers. Yugoslav military losses were very low, even after 78 days of the war.

The civilians were not so lucky. NATO went after bridges, railroads, buses, hospitals, marketplaces, water and power supply, and industry nodes. Even the Albanians - whom NATO was supposedly protecting - found themselves targeted, as at least two columns of refugees were struck. One of them was moving back from the Albanian border, defying KLA calls for a mass exodus from the province.

The exodus, by the way, came at just the right time for NATO. Its excuse of trying to impose the Rambouillet ultimatum was wearing thin as the war went on, so it was changed to stopping "ethnic cleansing." The media went into overdrive, looking for stories of Serb atrocities that the KLA was all too eager to furnish. Genocide! Secret plans for ethnic cleansing (fabricated)! Mass murders! Hundreds of thousands dead! All were shown to be ephemeral after the war. Only a handful of journalists admitted being duped; the rest went on repeating the fiction about "10,000 Albanian dead."

The longer the war went on, the more "mistakes" resulted in gruesome civilian deaths, the worse things became for NATO. It was now a "test of credibility," a battle not to crush Serbia but to save NATO's own hide. Exasperated, the Alliance bluffed, threatening total war and ground invasion (which was not feasible in the least) unless Belgrade agreed to yield. The terms they offered were actually better than Rambouillet: the UN would guarantee that Kosovo would remain a part of Serbia. It looked good on paper. Moscow urged Belgrade to accept. So Milosevic did.

In June 1999, the Yugoslav Army pulled out of Kosovo in good order. NATO drove in. With it came the KLA. What followed was an orgy of murder, rape, robbery, arson and wanton destruction. Some 200,000 or more Serbs, Roma, Turks, Jews, and even other Albanians who would not support the KLA fled the occupied province. Hundreds of Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries, chapels and cemeteries were demolished and desecrated. NATO "peacekeepers" stood by and watched.

The terror - dismissed by the cheerleader media as "revenge attacks" - continued for months, then years, reaching a frenzied peak in 2004. So much for "humanitarian" motives of the war.

Eventually, the Empire pushed to violate the armistice, and worked with the provisional Albanian government to create an "independent" Kosovo (February 2008). By that time, they'd already conquered Serbia. Milosevic was deposed in October 2000, by a coalition of opposition parties brought together by U.S. diplomats and spies, funded with "suitcases of cash." The new regime arrested Milosevic - and the rest of the military and civilian leadership - and shipped them off to the Hague Inquisition. Milosevic died there in 2006, under mysterious circumstances. Shortly thereafter, Montenegro seceded, and Yugoslavia was no more. And the Army that successfully survived the bombing? Gutted by the new regime, in the name of "peace and cooperation."

No wonder the Empire continues to believe Kosovo was a triumph. Sure, it didn't go as smoothly as planned, but in the end Serbia was conquered, Albanians had Kosovo, and the UN was once again shoved aside as irrelevant. Except that pummeling Serbia achieved an effect opposite of the one the Empire desired.

The Chinese never forgave the bombing of their Belgrade embassy. In Russia, the war was a turning point; within months, American client Boris Yeltsin was out of power, replaced by Vladimir Putin.

As for the Americans themselves, their leaders learned all the wrong lessons of Kosovo, using the precedent of this evil little war to launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protracted occupation and insurgency have bled the American military and treasury over the past six years, and the troops are still stuck there.

Nor was Kosovo a triumph for NATO; the Alliance was exposed as a paper tiger, as European nations demonstrated complete inability to conduct their own operations, and had to rely on Americans for almost everything.

Just a decade after its supposed moment of triumph (which, appropriately, owed more to media spin than reality) the Empire is failing. Whatever happens to it eventually, the days when it could assert the "right" to bomb anyone, anywhere, for any reason are most likely gone. And the seeds of that destruction were sown in Kosovo. We should remember that.

As for the Serbs and the Albanians, and the fate of Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia... that remains very much an unfinished tale.

A Footnote On Democracy

In researching this week's column for Antiwar.com, I stumbled across this piece, which I may or may not have noticed last year when discussing the Serbian elections. Philip Cunliffe of Spiked argued that the Serbian vote wasn't really relevant, because the great powers would decide its fate anyway. And that much turned out to be true - although having a client regime in Belgrade certainly helped.

Here is the passage that caught my attention, and prompted this post (emphasis mine):

The Western response to the election results was best articulated by Javier Solana. Solana welcomed the results by flagging up the fact that the Radicals did not win the majority of votes: ‘the majority of Serbs voted for forces that are democratic and pro-European.’ (4) But even the most ardent EU election monitor would be hard-pressed to use Solana’s new measure as a way of uncovering the difference in democratic value between votes cast in the same election. What Solana really means is that what counts as democracy is what the EU decides is democratic, and the democrats are those who are anointed by the international community, regardless of who actually receives the votes.

I cringe every time the present quisling regime in Serbia, but even the so-called opposition, try to argue that Serbian rights (e.g. sovereignty, territory, etc.) should be respected because Serbia is a democracy. First of all, because they don't get to define democracy - their tormentors do. And secondly, because those rights bloody well should be universal, whether the country in question practices democracy or not. Otherwise, one implicitly recognizes the "right" of the Empire to commit aggression against "undemocratic" countries - and therefore to define "democracy" as it sees fit!

Remember

Five years ago today, tens of thousands of Albanians rampaged through the NATO-occupied Kosovo, terrorizing Serbs, burning their villages, destroying their churches and cemeteries, even killing their livestock. It was a classical pogrom, described by one UN official as a "Kristallnacht," and by one American officer as "ethnic cleansing."

"Death to Serbs" they spray-painted on the charred ruins:


and gloried in desecrating them:


Not a single perpetrator of any of these acts was held accountable. Instead, the "international community" rewarded the perpetrators with the "Independent State of Kosovo." This abomination is a monument to hypocrisy, depravity, and abject failure of the Western civilization.

Look upon their deeds, and know them for what they are.

Inquisition: Serbia Wanted To Be Bombed

Almost two weeks ago, when I wrote about the Hague Inquisition's latest travesty of "justice," I had not actually seen the text of the verdict yet. Few have; it is a mastodonic affair, hundreds of pages filled with obfuscatory legalese and newspeak, millions of words wasted to conjure a lie and call it truth.

I was glad to see today the commentary of veteran Tribunal observer Andy Wilcoxson, who points out the sheer absurdity of the judgment.

Quoting extensively from the verdict - unlike the mainstream media that reported on it - Wilcoxson shows that the Inquisition simply asserted the existence of a conspiracy to displace the Albanians from Kosovo, and dismissed all evidence against this allegation as motivated by self-interest of the witnesses. Unlike, say, the Prosecution, whose motives are assumed to be pure as driven snow.

I entirely share Wilcoxson's sentiments when he says:

"This is the dumbest conspiracy theory that has ever been imagined. How could such a massive conspiracy have been undertaken out without any record being made? Without any plans being drawn-up, and without any orders being given to the troops on the ground? Are we supposed to believe that the Serbs did this through some kind of mental telepathy? A person would have to be stupid to believe that the conspiracy being alleged here actually happened."

Worse yet is the "explanation" that the NATO bombing was an "opportunity" for the (alleged) conspirators to put in effect their (alleged) plan: "The partial responsibility of the FRY delegation in causing the talks to fail, when viewed in light of the movement of additional forces to Kosovo, gives rise to the inference that this was being done to gain time.”

Yet elsewhere in the verdict is this:

"The Chamber is of the view that the FRY/Serbian delegation went to Rambouillet genuinely in search of a solution” but “the international negotiators did not take an entirely even-handed approach to the respective positions of the parties and tended to favour the Kosovo Albanians.”

But then, why did they just say that the Serbs wanted Rambouillet to fail in order to get bombed so they could put in effect a phantom conspiracy to persecute Albanians?! Talk about far-fetched conspiracy theories!

Wilcoxson saves the best for last, quoting the portion of the verdict examining the reasoning offered by none other than Emperor Clinton on Rambouillet and the bombing:

“President Clinton stated that the provision for allowing a referendum for the Albanians in Kosovo went too far and that, if he were in the shoes of Milošević, he probably would not have signed the [Rambouillet] draft agreement either."

Once the bombing began, however, "the issues that led to the bombing no longer mattered and that the main issues, which ensured the bombing would continue indefinitely, were that the credibility of the U.S. was at stake, the credibility of NATO was at stake, and his personal credibility as President of the United States was at stake.”

So, who exactly has engaged in a self-serving abuse of diplomacy and force? Who has engaged in conspiracies? Clearly not the men who were convicted two weeks ago.

The Hague "Tribunal" is the symbol of just about everything that has been wrong about the New American Empire over the past two decades. Once that Empire passes into history, so will the sham tribunal. Its judgments will indeed enter the historical record - as examples of travesty, and evidence of the hubris of people who thought they could manufacture reality and get away with murder if only they could call it charity.

Already Too Late?

Continuing the chronicle of warnings and predictions pointing out the untenable situation of the Empire, here's what Chalmers Johnson, author of "Blowback", "Sorrows of Empire" and "Nemesis, told a reporter of the San Diego Union-Tribune today:

"If we cannot cut back our long-standing, ever increasing military spending in a major way, then the bankruptcy of the United States is inevitable. As the current Wall Street meltdown has demonstrated, that is no longer an abstract possibility but a growing likelihood. We do not have much time left.”

The Johnsons, it's fair to note, are unencumbered by children or stocks, two common articles of faith in the country's prosperity. Johnson's UC pension is secure. He can afford to cast a cold eye on the future.

“It's possible that it's over – and there's nothing to be done,” he told me with a ghost of a smile.

It's anything but "fair" to note that Johnson lives on a "secure" pension (how much will it be worth if and when the US dollar follows its Zimbabwean cousin?), or that he and his wife are not "encumbered" by children. Matter of fact, belief that children are a burden probably has a lot to do with the overall decline of the Western civilization - but that's another topic for another time.

None of this should detract from the very real possibility that the Empire has already driven off the cliff, and that the "stimulus" and the Great Socialist Agenda amount to pushing on the accelerator pedal while in free fall.

Wishful thinking or fact? We'll find out soon enough.

Serbia's Top Spy Was CIA

Oh my.

Sunday's LA Times reveals that Serbian spymaster Jovica Stanisic was a CIA asset during the Balkans wars of the 1990s.

Normally I'd get all worked up over the rather vile Serbophobic propaganda (e.g. "regime that gave the world a chilling new term: 'ethnic cleansing'," or "Stanisic was setting up death squads for Milosevic that carried out a genocidal campaign") and whoppers (Ottoman Turks were "mostly Muslim"?) contained within the story. Or the fact that portions of it seem to be a PR piece for the Hague Inquisition. But the revelation that Stanisic was CIA - and his argument that this should entitle him to a measure of mercy from the Empire - is far more important.

More about this in a day or two, as I digest all the information now coming from Serbian sources that have picked up the story. For now, I'll just say two things.

Those "conspiracy theories" about Imperial involvement in the Balkans? Not so conspiratorial now. Also, Stanisic will probably get as much in the way of mercy as Biljana Plavsic.

Proof in the Pudding

Three weeks back, I wrote about the predictions made by Russian academic Igor Panarin, one of which was that the U.S. is heading for a breakup.

Two days ago, there was a piece on LRC by Will Grigg (of Pro Libertate), concerning the comments made by AG Eric Holder about racial politics in America. Grigg points out the agenda behind the race politics:

It would obviously be to the advantage of our rulers for Americans to think of ourselves as members of ethic collectives that they define for their purposes. The most obvious of those purposes would be simply to keep us divided and inconsolably hostile toward each other. This process, as Holder probably understands, begins with supplying a racial subtext for discussion of practically every public issue of consequence. As the economic decline accelerates, the temptation to racialize our grievances will become more seductive to an ever-greater number of people.

Unscrupulous, power-hungry governments exploiting identity politics to grab power in the aftermath of an economic implosion - now that sounds eerily familiar. That's Yugoslavia all over again.

Continues Grigg:

The unalloyed truth is that our rulers intend to make helots out of all of us, irrespective of race, creed, or color, and to that end they are eager to exploit the potential for conflict created by those divisions.

Perhaps the best we can hope for would be that the Regime will press too hard, too soon, causing the "union" to disintegrate with relatively little violence. Since there is, quite literally, not enough wealth in the entire world to service the Regime's financial obligations, the bleak reality is that the entity calling itself the United States of America simply cannot survive in its current form.

Isn't that precisely what Panarin said? Sounding very much like me from three weeks ago, Grigg concludes:

If the Obamunists employ the same heavy-handedness in race agitation that they've displayed in wealth redistribution, the crack-up may come much sooner – and be much uglier – than any of us expect.

Now, I've seen Panarin's gloomy predictions dismissed as envious ravings of an America-hater. Such people will no doubt dismiss Grigg - who passionately fights for key American ideals such as liberty - as a "kook," the same way they mocked Ron Paul for caring about the Constitution (After all, it's "just a goddamned piece of paper," right?).

Think about it for a second: defending liberty and upholding the country's founding document is considered weird and objectionable, while belief in a secular Messiah and the omnipotent government is mainstream. That convinces me, more than ever, that Panarin and Grigg may be right, and their detractors are mistaken.

Inquisition's Pyrrhic Victory

When the Hague Inquisition convicts a Serb, that's non-news, kind of like "dog bites man." When it acquits a Serb, however, that is news on par with "man bites dog."

That was my first reaction to the headlines concerning today's verdict in the case of "Kosovo six" - the political, military and security leaders of Serbia, surrendered to the Hague Inquisition by the quisling regime in Belgrade. Most headlines focused on the fact that Milan Milutinovic, former President of Serbia (1998-2002), was acquitted of all charges. Oh, and by the way, the deputy Prime Minister, Defense Minister, two top military commanders, and the internal security chief were all convicted of "a broad campaign of violence directed against the Kosovo Albanian civilian population."

See what they did there? Right now, agencies like AP are bemoaning the "blow to prosecutors who three years ago lost their chance of convicting former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of similar crimes." Nothing is made of the fact that key officials of the Serbian government have all been convicted of a conspiracy to expel Albanians from Kosovo. Yet. Oh but it will be, and soon.

Milutinovic's acquittal was as deliberate as the conviction of the other five. By acquitting him, the Inquisition convicted the late Slobodan Milosevic. As "judge" Bonomy - who was brought in to take over the Milosevic "trial" after the death of "judge" May - put it, "In practice, it was Milosevic, sometimes termed the 'Supreme Commander' who exercised actual command authority over the (Serb army) during the NATO campaign."

Such arrogance. Such stupidity. "Supreme Commander" is the literal translation from Serbian, but refers to the concept known in the U.S. as "Commander in Chief." In other words, in time of war, the President is the supreme commander of the military. Bonomy basically concluded that water was wet, and found sinister implications in that!

As for the arrogance... did he, or did he not, use the expression "NATO campaign"? Because the elephant in the room when it comes to any discussion of Kosovo in 1999 is the fact that the alleged crimes Serbia is accused of supposedly occurred during the so-called NATO campaign. So why did NATO start the campaign, again? There's a hole in the causal loop here one could drive the entire carrier battle group through: if Serb forces committed atrocities against Albanians (as the ICTY asserts) during the NATO "campaign" that was supposedly provoked by atrocities against Albanians... but not before that "campaign," then how could the "campaign" have been about preventing or punishing crimes that had not happened yet?

At which point it becomes obvious that the "campaign" was, in fact, an unprovoked war of aggression.

Now consider this: the ICTY issued its "indictment" of Milosevic during the NATO "campaign." But the "Tribunal" flat-out refused to investigate NATO:

"...the Prosecutor has announced her conclusion, following a full consideration of her team’s assessment, that there is no basis for opening an investigation into any of the allegations or into other incidents related to the NATO air campaign. Although some mistakes were made by NATO, the Prosecutor is satisfied that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during the campaign." (emphasis added)

Read the press release I linked. What it says is that the ICTY asked NATO officials if they had committed any crimes. NATO said, "Who, us? Never." And the ICTY then said "Well, OK then." That was it.

The purpose of today's verdict was threefold: to legitimize the NATO aggression from 1999 (i.e. NATO action was necessary and appropriate because the Serbs were engaging in a criminal conspiracy to murder and expel Albanians); to buttress the "Independent State of Kosovo," proclaimed last February but so far recognized by only 55 governments; and to brand Serbia as the aggressor and criminal, rather than the victim of NATO's aggression, occupation of Kosovo and the ethnic cleansing of its citizens that followed.

Yet I am not surprised by the verdict at all. Not because the charges are true (I personally believe they are entirely bogus, but that's beside the point, really), but because a different verdict would have been impossible. The ICTY is located on the territory of a NATO member. Most of its funding comes from NATO member governments (predominantly the U.S.). It relied on NATO to get access to sites of alleged atrocities, secure and protect local witnesses, even arrest suspects. The very purpose of this bastard court is to provide a quasi-legal context to the tragic Balkans wars of the 1990s by blaming everything on the Serbs. It's not just that Serbs make up the majority of the "indicted"; but that the entire Serb political, military and security leadership has by now been put on trial. Croats, Muslims and Albanians accused of atrocities, even on the spurious grounds of "command responsibility," are nonetheless tried as individuals. Serbs, however, are all supposed to be part of this phantom "joint criminal enterprise," evil masterminds behind the bloody Balkans wars.

I won't call this verdict "shameful", even though it is, for that would imply the Hague Inquisition has some sort of moral code. It does not. It is a perversion, created for the sole purpose of manufacturing political cover for aggressive outside interference in the Yugoslav wars of succession. It has neither moral nor legal authority to try anyone, no matter what he may or may not have done in the course of the wars.

Today's verdict is the latest (but probably not the last) in a long line of insults and injuries aimed at Serbia, even - especially - after a U.S.-backed coup ousted the government of Slobodan Milosevic from power in October 2000. The current regime, utterly devoted to licking Imperial boots, will do nothing to protest or contest this atrocity. It will collaborate with the Empire in the diabolical plan to brand the Serbian people as aggressors and war criminals, justify the terror bombing of their cities, murder of their children, and seizure of their land. If the Serbs have any dignity left, they need to deal with their quislings appropriately, and soon.

What may seem like a triumph for the Inquisition and the Empire is entirely irrelevant to the big picture, though. The Empire's catalog of crimes is hefty enough even without this latest travesty. It is already drowning in its own iniquities, its fate already sealed and merely unfolding as the world watches. And though they have forsaken their own history, culture and traditions, its leaders would do well to recall the words of Thomas Jefferson: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

Better late than never

Eight-plus years after his overthrow and three years after his mysterious death in the Hague dungeons, Slobodan Milosevic is finally getting some credit. Writes Slobodan Antonic (Serbian original here, all emphasis mine):

Slobodan Milosevic has made many mistakes in his time. But his legacy to Serbia comprises at least three things:

1. the Dayton Agreement, guaranteeing the existence of the Bosnian Serb Republic;
2. UNSCR 1244, as proof of Serbia's ownership of Kosovo, and
3. Constitutional defeat of separatism and restored Serbian sovereignty in Srem, Banat and Backa [i.e. "Vojvodina"].

While the first two are under assault by powerful foreign factors, with Serbia able to defend them only to a limited extent, the third is being undermined primarily from within, by Serbian political forces. Most incongruously, one of these forces is the provincial leadership of Milosevic's own Socialist Party!

It is a historical irony that Milosevic's own party has embraced EUphoria, championed the [separatist] Vojvodina Statute, and joined Canak, Jelko Kacin and other true "Serbian friends" to hammer the last nail into the coffin of Milosevic's national legacy. We can criticize that legacy for the things it wasted and the potential it failed to live up to. It could have been, and perhaps should have been, far greater. But it is what it is. It is what we have today, and what we must defend. However minuscule, it is still far greater than anything Serbian leaders have done after 2000. And far greater than anything the Socialists have done after Milosevic.

Speaking of 2000, I remember a speech Milosevic gave on the eve of the CIA/NED "revolution" that deposed him. October 2, 2000 it was, when he spoke on Serbian television, warning about the quisling character of DOS:

Its boss is the president of the Democratic Party. For years he has collaborated with the military alliance that attacked our country. He could not even hide his collaboration. In fact, our entire public knows that he appealed to NATO to bomb Serbia for as many weeks as necessary to break its resistance.

So the 'democratic' grouping organized for these elections represents the armies and governments which recently waged war against Yugoslavia.

At the behest of these foreign powers our 'democrats' told the people that they would make Yugoslavia be free of war and violence, that Yugoslavia would prosper, the living standard would improve visibly and fast, that Yugoslavia would rejoin international institutions, and on and on.

Honored citizens,

It is my duty to warn you publicly, while there is time, that these promises are false.

He may have been wrong about other things, but about this, he was right.

At the Movies

Apropos my comment yesterday concerning a German Haguesploitation film, reader Deucaon asks:

Back to Bosnia
Beautiful People
Behind Enemy Lines
The Enclave
Grbavica
The Hunting Party
Life Is a Miracle
No Man's Land
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame
Savior
Shot Through the Heart
Warriors
Welcome to Sarajevo

Have you seen these films? Are any of them accurate (in any regard) in your opinion?

I have to admit, this is the first time I've heard about some of them. So let's take them in order.

"Beautiful People" - Never seen it, but this review suggests it's not ham-fisted manichean propaganda. As for authenticity, I've heard of plenty of refugees from different ethnic groups getting into fights in their adoptive homelands, and the heroin addict kind of sounds like the author of "My war gone by, I miss it so". Other things, like the rape story or the reporter's "Bosnia syndrome" may be exaggerated for dramatic effect, but they are there for symbolism.

"Behind Enemy Lines" - Utter rubbish. The only American pilot ever shot down over Bosnia was Lt. Scott O'Grady, and he flew a single-seater Air Force F-16. He spent several days in the forests of western Bosnia until the Marines located him and airlifted him out, without any interference by the Bosnian Serbs. In the movie, however, it's a Navy plane, the pilot dies, and the navigator survives to avoid deadly pursuit by rabid Serbs so he can deliver proof of an atrocity patterned after the Srebrenica story. I'm not going to waste words on such rubbish except to note the sheer idiocy of it.

"The Enclave" - Dutch miniseries spinning the story of Srebrenica from the standpoint of Official Truth. If the Dutch want to embrace the myth that casts them as evil enablers of genocide, who am I to stop them? Though judging by the troops that volunteered to testify for Karadzic's defense, maybe they've finally had enough.

"Grbavica" - Even if Jasmila Zbanic made a very artistic film, there is no denying that its main function is propaganda. Zbanic herself spoke about "raising awareness" and spearheaded an effort to get government subsidies for women who claimed to be rape victims.

As a sidebar: The whole "systematic rape" story, exploited endlessly by peddlers of atrocity porn, has never been substantiated. Of course there were rapes; no one denies there were rapes, or that this is repugnant. But organized on a large scale? Balkans wars were fought in an atmosphere of near-complete breakdown of society, closely resembling the Hobbesian "state of nature." Obviously, people capable of murdering their neighbors with glee, slitting throats, slicing off body parts and burning villages would not shirk from non-consensual sex. It would be interesting, however, to compare the supposed "mass rapes" of Bosnia with the numbers of women sexually assaulted by U.S. troops in Iraq - or, say, Okinawa (where there has been no war for almost 54 years).

Another issue are the "rape children." Bosnia was a very secularized place. Generations that had grown up in Communist schools were socialized in Communist morals - where abortion wasn't dirty or sinful, but practical. Only the very old were religiously observant, until the war and its aftermath (no atheists in foxholes, etc.). So I find it exceptionally hard to believe that many women would actually choose to keep rape-conceived children. Especially if they went to the West as refugees (see "Beautiful People," above). Perhaps that may have happened in some cases, for whatever reason, but as a widespread phenomenon it is simply unlikely. If someone has actual data to the contrary, I am prepared to revise my opinion, though.

Continuing on...

"The Hunting Party" - A horrid flop no one watched, and with good reason. Every time Hollywood tries to do a Bosnia story, it takes the already incredulous reality and makes it less believable by exaggerating it and changing it to seem more real.

"Life is a miracle" - Any Kusturica film is an exercise in "magical realism," where reality is just a convenient starting point for art and storytelling. However, there were more than a few inter-ethnic love stories (and even more inter-ethnic breakups) to base this on.

"No man's land" - This would have been a fantastic stage piece. Every time the film dwells on the two soldiers - the Serb and the Muslim trapped in the booby-trapped trench - you can feel the drama and the energy. Every time it tries to look like a Hollywood production - with the hapless Western journalist, the checkpoints, the clueless UN and the video clips of "news" - it goes off into hack territory. It's almost as if Tanovic made a tasty anti-war drama cake, then ruined it with the clumsy frosting of Muslim propaganda.

"Pretty village..." - If anything, this film is too realistic. Dust, mud, blood, rain, twitchy lighting of rural Eastern Bosnia, they are all here. Some characters may feel stereotypical, but they capture the archetypes (the mad machine-gunner, the slutty nurses, the "peace" protesters, the Army officer) that were all too real. It may simplify certain things, and contrive others for the purposes of storytelling, but for all its flaws it is still the most "accurate" of the lot.

"Savior" - Again, filled with contrivances, from the American protagonist to the events he encounters on his journey. And yet it depicts the Bosnian war with brutal honesty: Serbs rape Muslim women, Muslims rape Serb women, both sides kill children with impunity. Villainy is all around. That is enough for some to dismiss it as "Serb propaganda" (Serb director and actors, but American writer and producer - Oliver Stone, no less), but that's what happens when one strays from the manichean formula of "Serbs evil/Muslims good." I also want to point out that even though this film features a "rape baby" as the pivotal plot device, the circumstances of her birth and her fate actually make sense both within the context of the story and within the context of the war at large.

"Shot Through the Heart" - Based on a supposedly true story of two friends (a Serb and a Muslim) who end up as opposing snipers in Sarajevo, this HBO production is remarkable insofar as it admits there actually were Muslim snipers. Then again, it presents the Muslim as a marksman who merely fights the evil Serb, who is "terrorizing" the city by killing women and children. If you really want to watch a Hollywoodized sniper movie, go see "Enemy at the Gates."

"Warriors" - I was unfamiliar with this BBC series. Apparently, it focuses on the British peacekeepers caught in the middle of a nasty war between Muslims and Croats in central Bosnia. I have no idea how accurate it may have been.

"Welcome to Sarajevo" - This was actually the first movie about Bosnia to be filmed on location, and just after the war ended. Unfortunately, while locations may have been somewhat authentic, the story was not. There really was a journalist who tried to help some orphans, and managed to evacuate one in particular - but the orphanage was nowhere near the front line, and the orphan in question was a Serb (in the movie, she's a Muslim; can't have your victims mixed up, right?). The filmmakers ruined a perfectly good story of genuine humanitarianism by bending it to fit the incongruous "Serbs evil, Muslims good" dogma. Typical.

Hague Goes Hollywood

Couple of years back, the Berlin film festival went crazy over Jasmila Zbanic's "Grbavica", a propaganda flick about the Bosnian war that harped on the theme of (alleged, fictitious) mass rapes of Muslim women. This year, a German director is tapping into the Bosnian atrocity porn, with a film described as "critical" of the Hague Inquistion (ICTY), but in fact another exercise in mendacity and propaganda.

Reuters reports: "German Bosnia film takes critical view of tribunal." Sounds intriguing, right? Except the story is described as one of a "determined prosecutor....struggling against time pressure and Serb nationalists." Huh? But wait, there's more:

In "Storm," the prosecutor's investigation of rape and murder charges is hindered by a powerful network of nationalist Serbs and then foiled by her own poorly prepared case. But just before it collapses, a witness to the rapes comes forward.

The trial is short-circuited by a behind-the-scenes deal involving the judge, the Serb's defense counsel and the prosecutor's pragmatic boss.

Let me see if I get this. The heroic Prosecutor knows that these evil Serbs (is there another kind?) are guilty of horrible murders and systematic mass rapes, but there's just no darn evidence for it. I mean, why else would the case be "poorly prepared"? Does that imply she's incompetent? Oh no, no, the heroic Tribunal is probably just short of money, or something, and you know, having to actually prove these charges is just so damned inconvenient... And then, of course, there's a "powerful network of nationalist Serbs" - which is probably based on the equally chimeric "joint criminal enterprise to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia". That would be the alleged grand conspiracy every single Serb politician, soldier, policeman and whoever else they finger is automatically guilty of until proven innocent, never mind that it actually doesn't exist.

But never fear! For our heroine will be saved by the Last Minute Miraculous Plot Device (i.e. the witness)! And then, just to be properly postmodern and angsty (it is, after all, a German movie - so optimism is verboten), the righteous victory is thwarted at its moment of triumph by Lawyer Show Trope #37, the "pragmatic boss" making a deal with a wicked defense counsel.

The director, Hans-Christian Schmid, said "his film was fiction but was based on elements of cases he studied." Oh it's fiction, all right. Because none of these elements bear any resemblance to anything that's happened at the Inquisition.

So, again, how is any of this actually critical of the ICTY? Oh sure, right, the incompetent (kind of?) prosecutor we're supposed to root for, and the evil "pragmatic" boss who cuts deals with war criminals. Right. Except, you know, the deal-making boss is a complete and utter fabrication, as are the Serb lawyers and the "nationalist network." The only thing that even remotely rings true is the "poorly prepared" indictment - but even then that's supposed to be a charming character flaw of the woman we're supposed to like.

This isn't art, this is propaganda. The "criticism" amounts to accusing the Tribunal of not persecuting (not a typo) the Serbs hard enough - an accusation anyone even casually familiar with the Inquisition's opus over the past decade and a half would find utterly absurd.

Almost every single Serb who was seized ended up convicted, bullied into false confessions, or dead. Meanwhile, "commanders" of the terrorist KLA are acquitted, as are Muslim warlords who've openly boasted of their butchery to the cheering Western press.

Of course, had he tried to make a movie about the ICTY's epic failure to convict Albanian or Muslim warlords, Schmid wouldn't have received any funding. Had he somehow completed the movie anyway, it would have gone straight to DVD, rather than garner attention and praise at film festivals. But that's somewhat of a moot point, because it didn't even cross Schmid's mind to try, now did it? Everybody knows only the evil Serbs are criminals. And besides, note how the case at hand is about mass rape? Mass rape always gets media attention. Bleeding-heart interventionists in the West really love themselves some mass rape to get them in the proper mood of righteous indignation. Never mind that it's fiction, it's good fiction. In their minds, it should be true, and therefore it is. Kind of like Schmid's flick.

But for all the shlock, tropes, cliches, racist stereotypes resurrected from Nazi propaganda and pure old horse manure, this little piece of Tribunal propaganda just had to go that extra inch, and add insult to injury by adopting the very name of a Croatian military operation that ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Serbs in 1995.

I understand the Germans have a vested interest in declaring the Serbs genocidal; they probably think having someone else labeled that way would somehow water down the stain on their character that remains from WW2. And it would also provide a handy justification for German crimes against the Serbs back then, just in case the Serbs ever bring them up. But even so, this Scheisse is just too much.

Whither America?

Igor Panarin believes that the United States is doomed. Within the next two years, he says, this country will cease to exist, much like the USSR. Is this ex-KGB analyst, dean of the Moscow Academy of Diplomacy and a guest of the Davos economic forum a prophet, or a crank? His predictions attracted attention of the Wall Street Journal, which reported on them with marked incredulity. Other commentators, such as Doug Bandow, also gave Panarin little credence.

Now, it is entirely possible Panarin is engaging in projection. Having witnessed the dissolution of the USSR, he sees parallels in the current U.S. situation that might not really be there. For that matter, I have been viewing the situation in the U.S. through the prism of my experience with the end of Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War. Fractured society, a credit-fueled boom that turned into a disaster when the bills came due, the same "it can't happen here" conviction that blindsided many Bosnians... do I see them here? Absolutely. This is why I tend to take Panarin a bit more seriously than most people. If current trends continue, then I really do think this country is headed to perdition. I am far less certain of what shape that perdition might take than Igor Panarin, however. It is one thing to posit likelihoods, and quite another to speak of exact timelines and even territorial divisions.

In a recent exclusive interview with the premier Serbian weekly NIN on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, Panarin compared the new president to the last leader of the USSR (translations mine):

The new American president is a very good speaker, and reminds me a lot of Gorbachev. His role is very similar, to soften the dissolution of the USA as much as possible. If the attempt to rescue the financial system fails, he can be the scapegoat: it's his lack of experience, etc. It would be USSR-like scenario, except it took us six years to collapse, and the USA will do it in 18 months. Things move faster these days...
He impressed me, too, in the beginning: he spoke well, and very reasonably. But I kept watching and he kept repeating the same things. He offered nothing new. He kept reminding me of Gorbachev. When Gorbachev came to power, many thought it a good thing - myself included. But after just six months, it became obvious that the words were all well and good, but the actual effect was the country's collapse.

He went on to explain how the USSR fell apart because Gorbachev had racked up foreign debt and bankrupted the state. (Yeltsin's henchman Yegor Geidar explained this in some detail in a paper he wrote for the American Enterprise Institute a couple years back.) So, in his mind, the crushing government debt will destroy the U.S. analogously.

The wrinkle here is that American debt is held in American-printed dollars; so long as the rest of the world maintains the dollar as the global reserve currency, the Fed will be able to print money and "create wealth" out of thin air with impunity. Where do you think those billions for the so-called "stimulus" are coming from? But if Washington keeps printing money, sooner or later it will reduce its worth below the level acceptable to foreign buyers. I don't know what that level might be; it depends on a variety of facts and perceptions and is essentially subjective. But any economic theory says that such a point must exist. And once it's reached, the U.S. dollar will be worth about as much as its Zimbabwean namesake.

One of the things Panarin only mentions in passing, but which I consider crucial, is the Americans' mental state. Modern politicians are fond of invoking the line about how "all men are created equal" from the Declaration of Independence, forgetting that the rest of that sentence, lifted almost entirely out of Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government, talks about the "unalienable Rights...[of] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (or, as Locke put it, property). Whereas European governments of the time were still built around the medieval concept of a monarch being in charge of the landed gentry that lorded over the serfs, with some free citizenry thrown in, America was supposed to be the land of the free - i.e. those who owned property and did not depend on laboring for someone else. (Obviously, the whole slavery thing was a glaring fly in the ointment, but keep in mind that the Founders by and large considered the slaves less than fully human). Even if one was reduced to what Marx would call a proletarian - with no property but himself - the "American dream" was always to save up enough to buy one's own farm or shop, to be one's own boss.

Most people in today's America work for someone else, though. Most productive assets are owned by big businesses, which became big by collaborating with an ever-expanding government. And the government regulates and taxes everything to a degree where no one is actually free, and people in effect live and work at the government's sufferance. Now I know many will disagree with this assessment; small business owners who have to spend time and money making sure they are in compliance with the ever-expanding body of regulations and tax codes, however, know exactly what I mean.

So, from a country of free farmers and small businessmen, America has become a nation of regulated wage slaves. Worse yet, this economic transformation has gone hand in hand with a cultural and societal change. The growth of cities and the development of suburbs and highways has fractured and scattered families. In many places across the U.S. there is no longer a sense of community. Even regional identities have suffered due to migration patterns. Racial and linguistic identity politics aren't helping, either. And while this social atomization may seem like a fine thing to the government, as it promotes conflict and therefore enables control and encourages dependence (on the government, as the "solution"), it sows the seeds of misfortune for when the government eventually goes under.

Do Americans even have shared values anymore? What might those be? Self-reliance? Individualism? Liberty? Hardly, anymore. It seems that pursuit of money and the belief in government omnipotence are the only things America's diverse inhabitants have in common. That's a mighty thin fabric for a nation. Once money evaporates in a cloud of inflation and the government is shown to be impotent, what's left?

When someone asked me, a couple years back, whether I thought U.S. would have another civil war, I replied, "If and when it happens, there won't be anything civil about it." Yes, it's a pun. And yes, it's gallows humor. But look at it from my perspective: the American equivalent of what happened to Bosnia - and that's under the charitable assumption that things here would not turn out far worse - would be 150 million refugees and 6 million dead. I don't want to see that happen. No one in their right mind would.

And that is why I take Panarin's predictions seriously, if with a chunk of salt. While it may not happen as soon as he thinks, or in the manner he laid out, the end of the U.S. is both possible and increasingly likely. If and when it happens, I pray only that it resembles the Czech/Slovak "velvet divorce," or even the relatively bloodless Soviet model (where conflicts were confined to the periphery), rather than the bloody and tragic demise of Yugoslavia. I've lived through that already. Once was enough.

Continuity, Confirmed

The title says it all: "Obama the Imperialist," writes Richard Seymour in The Guardian.

I couldn't have written it better myself, though I've tried.

Hide! They are "Helping" Again!

Being in the U.S. myself, I can't watch Voice of America news. You see, VOA is official Washington propaganda directed to the outside world, so it can't be shown to Americans. Might interfere with all the brainwashing done by PBS, CNN, Fox and so on, somehow, I guess.

So I could not verify for myself what Serbian agencies reported today, about what Ambassador Robert Gelbard told Voice of America. But I'll take their word that Gelbard said that "Washington must help Serbia progress and consolidate democracy and stability."

Gee, Bob, hasn't America "helped" enough? First it helped destroy the country built on the blood of over 2 million Serbs, while making a million Serbs into refugees or second-class citizens. A part of Serbia has been occupied and declared an "independent state," following an illegal war of aggression undertaken by NATO at Washington's orders. Then Washington used Serbia as a Petri dish for testing the formula of "popular revolution" that was later deployed in Georgia, Ukraine, and (without success) Belarus. In its efforts to "help" Serbia, Washington has not only supported the very people Bob Gelbard has called terrorists, it has also funded the very worst quisling scum, both within the government and the so-called "civil society."

“The Balkans are a very important region and the United States of America should closely cooperate with the European Union and Russia in order to preserve the progress made in the last decade,” Gelbard is said to have told VOA.

Progress? Yeah, the nightmare I just described above is considered "progress" in Washington. Through a combination of aggression and Trojan takeover, Washington is finally completely in control of "the most important country in the Balkans that has an influence on the whole region” (Gelbard to VOA, as quoted). And just to be on the safe side, it will grind it down to a more manageable size soon.

Once a Balkans envoy until his candid remark about the KLA got him exiled to Indonesia, Gelbard is now a member of Obama's policymaking posse, and in that capacity he criticized the freshly departed Emperor, who "completely ignored the Balkans in the first four years" and then focused solely on Kosovo thereafter.

But hey, according to both Washington policymakers and their paid presstitutes in Serbia itself, carving out Kosovo was supposed to help Serbia overcome the handicaps of having a culture, history and heritage that were holding it back from become a proper member of the "international community" - you know, a lobotomized postmodern society that obeys Imperial commands unconditionally. So you see, Bush the Lesser was actually helping Serbia, just like Clinton before him bombed it, with nothing but the best of intentions in mind.

In their minds, maybe. I'm aware that sarcasm isn't readily apparent in writing, so I'm laying it on with a trowel here; if you really believe this garbage, I've got a sweet coastal property in Kansas for you...

Now, where was I? Oh yes. Gelbard also praised "a very good authority there with President Boris Tadic at its head." He probably said a good government, but thanks to the idiot who translated the interview we got "authority." Whatever. The point is, Gelbard and his people like Tadic. And why shouldn't they? He's doing their bidding to the letter, while pretending to care about the country and people of Serbia. He's selling them down the river with a song in his heart. Who in Washington wouldn't be proud of such a creature?

So chin up, Serbians - Uncle Barack is coming to "help," just like George and Bill before him. Between the brotherly affections of the American people (as represented by the enlightened policies of their democratically elected government) and the sheer brilliance, competence and honesty of your own elected officials, a brighter future of prosperity and democracy is just around the corner. Any day now. Soon. Real soon. Almost there.

Now, about that beachfront property in Kansas...

Pathetic Plavsic

In 1990, Biljana Plavsic was elected into the 7-member Presidency of what was then still the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, part of the Yugoslav federation. She was still in her home in downtown Sarajevo when war broke out in April 1992 (so much for the whole "conspiracy of Serbian aggressors" theory); I remember watching the footage of her being evacuated from the city in an armored car.

In 1996, Plavsic allied with Bosnia's NATO overlords in an effort to destroy the power base of her former political party. She also helped the "reforms" that had started to modify the Dayton peace agreement from its original form into the "living document" it is now. Plavsic and her Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik, were seen as American puppets, and lost the 1998 elections due to a backlash from their excessive servility. (Dodik is now being attacked as "nationalist" by those very same Americans that ran him a decade ago, just because he's refusing to dismantle the Serb Republic and lead his people meekly into a Muslim-dominated centralized state.)

Having outlived her usefulness in Bosnian politics, Plavsic could do one more thing for the Empire, though. In 2000, she was accused of war crimes by the Hague Inquisition. She turned herself in, and in 2002 agreed to plead guilty.

Googling the news from back then, I found this description by Australian radio's Michael Brissenden that's pretty typical of the Western media coverage of Bosnia, Plavsic, and the Serbs in general:

She was one of those most driven by the racist dream of an ethnically pure Serb nation. Many who covered the war remember her as one of the true ideologues.

She spoke often and with considerable passion to the international media. She advocated the division of the Bosnian state and the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, along ethnic lines and by her own admission, she was part of a political leadership that collaborated closely with the former Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic in the conception and execution of the objective of ethnic separation by force.

Now she's the first senior Serb leader to admit guilt for the crimes and atrocities committed in Bosnia and she's told the final hearing of her trial that the leadership of which she was a part led an effort that victimised countless innocent people.

There was never a "racist dream of an ethnically pure Serbian nation" - except in the sick minds of Serbophobes. If this were true, how does one explain the fact that Serbia is the most ethnically diverse part of the former Yugoslavia today, and all those poor victimized "democracies" such as Croatia, Slovenia, "Independent state of Kosovo" and parts of Bosnia dominated by the Muslims are over 90% ethnically homogeneous? Besides, the Bosnian Serb leadership did not take orders from Milosevic; Richard Holbrooke went through a lot of trouble to force Milosevic to negotiate on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs, because Washington found them unwilling to bend to its will. And Plavsic was rather inconsequential in wartime Serb politics; it was the media and the Inquisition that declared her an ideologue and a policymaker, because for the whole setup to be effective, they needed her to be.

Plavsic's miserable attempt to save her own skin by damning her people failed. At age 72, Plavsic was sentenced to 11 years in prison and sent to Sweden. Her "confession" had some limited propaganda value at the time, but she later lapsed into oblivion. Bitter at the Inquisition, she refused to testify in any other trials, and was left to rot in the Swedish lockup.

Now she has given an interview to a Swedish magazine, saying she wanted to retract her confession, and that it was just an effort to save her skin. Ironically, even this is being used to further anti-Serb propaganda, providing yet another occasion for old tropes about systematic killings of non-Serbs and genocide. The magazine even makes the absurd allegation that Plavsic "has been accused of playing a key role in the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, where at least 8000 Muslims were killed."

As a Christian, I believe in redemption of just about everyone. Even those who shamefully betray their people to say their own skin (and don't even manage to do that, because the Empire went back on its word. Shocked? Just ask the American Indians). But it would be a lot easier to pity Plavsic were it not for the example of Slobodan Milosevic.

Whatever one may think of his conduct while in power, once he was rendered to the Inquisition in 2001, Milosevic fought tooth and nail - not to save himself, because the outcome of his show trial was a foregone conclusion, but to defend his country and his people from accusations of war crimes, atrocities and genocide. The Inquisition was used to breaking its victims easily; Milosevic not only refused to bend, he destroyed their case in court. When everyone else lawyered up and bargained for the most lenient sentence, Milosevic actually fought back and challenged the Inquisition to prove their case. Which they manifestly could not.

The contrast between Milosevic and Plavsic is just overwhelming.

Biljana Plavsic is now 79, well beyond the average Bosnian's life expectancy. Perhaps she believes in God, and hopes He will forgive her for the things she has said and done in life. He might. Her people? Don't bet on it.

Sic Transit 2008

As I wrote last week on Antiwar.com, this was a year in which the Empire won a victory in the Balkans, but lost just about everywhere else. And though I understand the argument for "the worse, the better" in theory, I certainly took no joy in watching everything that's good and decent, both in the Balkans and here in America, sink ever lower into the cesspit of politics and violence.

The economic meltdown isn't over. The Empire wants to escalate the Afghan war, and is preparing to go back to the Balkans, probably figuring it the most likely venue for a short, victorious butt-kicking that would improve morale at home and divert attention from widespread system failure. Provided it's a victory - which is by no means guaranteed.

I have no doubt that things will continue to get worse in 2009. Perhaps at some point it will get so bad that things will turn around and both the Imperialists and their local quislings will get their comeuppance. I have no illusions that this will be without painful consequences for everyone else trapped in this malignant matrix. Whether we want to snap out of it or not, however, entropy will have its own. There is only so much denial and wishful thinking can do, and we're long past the point of diminishing returns on both.

I won't wish you a happy 2009, as that would be a lie. The best I can do is wish we all live through it. And God help us.

Irrelevant Roots

As soon as I heard that Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was indicted on corruption charges, I knew that the media would inevitably bring up his Serbian roots. I'm just surprised it took days, as opposed to hours, or minutes.

In this era of political correctness and mandatory "diversity," there are still groups (entire nations, really) one is allowed, supposed, or even required to hate. Serbs are one of those groups.

As M. Pejakovich of SerbBlog points out, did anyone make a fuss over ex-governor Ryan's Irish ancestry? Of course not.

Yet, the media just can't seem to get enough of rubbing everyone's nose in Rod Blagojevich's "ethnic roots" -- even going so far as to publish quotes from the Blagojevic family in Europe for their reaction to the cousin that they've never met, and quoting headlines from German and Soros owned newspapers from Eastern Europe.

Others went to his local boyhood church for reactions from parishioners. Rod Blagojevich is 52 years old and hasn't gone there in 30 years. What's this got to do with anything?

Although some people in Serbia may have felt a misplaced sense of national pride that one of "their own" made it to the Illinois governor's mansion, what the hack journalists and tabloids that harp on this neglect to mention is that Blagojevich renounced his heritage decades ago.

Perhaps he felt he had to; being a Serb, or even half-Serb, is a liability in American politics. Ohio Senator George Voinovich has also denied his Serbian roots (he actually claimed to be Slovenian at one time). Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.), who never hid her Serbian roots, was viciously attacked by a Republican candidate because she opposed the "independence" of the Albanian-occupied Kosovo. Steve Greenberg claimed that Bean favored "interests of radical foreign nations above the interests of freedom and democracy," a travesty of logic if ever there was one.

Yet for all this, somehow I don't think there was anything reluctant in Blagojevich's rejection of his Serbian heritage. Everything known about him indicates that he did it consciously, deliberately, in pursuit of power and money. He isn't the first man who did so, nor will he be the last, sadly. Which brings us to Pejakovich's second point:

Rod Blagojevich's "ethnicity" is American and his religion is "corrupt politician". That should have been plain for all to see when back in 1999, he supported the twisted and corrupt NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, using the same hateful anti-Serb rhetoric as the rest of his twisted fellow corrupt politicians.

The man not only abandoned his heritage, he betrayed it. To try and blame his Serbian roots for his American behavior is disingenuous, and perhaps even deliberately misleading.

Missing the Point, Again

It has been almost ten years since I started publishing commentary on-line, and it never ceases to amaze me that people seem to possess a remarkable capacity of completely missing the point of entire articles to zero in on one particular sentence or phrase and make a huge deal of it.

My piece on Antiwar.com last week was inspired by a posting here, in which I challenged Pat Buchanan's interpretation of the 1914 Sarajevo assassination. In the column, titled "Triumph of Tragedy," I wrote:

In the Yugoslavian pot, the Serbian identity had melted away, while people who used to consider themselves Serbs (or Turks, Croats, or Bulgarians) became "Montenegrins" or "Macedonians" or "Bosnians." When all the consequences of Yugoslavia's creation are added up, it is easily a worse historical disaster for the Serbs than the Ottoman conquest.

This was obviously toned down from what I said in "Missing the Point":

Furthermore, in 1918 there was no such nation as "Bosnians," or Montenegrins, or Macedonians. People in what are today Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia considered themselves Serbs, Croats, Turks, even Bulgarians. It was Communist social engineering and propaganda that manufactured them into distinct "nations" - while destroying the Serbian sense of nationhood in general.

Now, I may have oversimplified things somewhat. Certainly there were at least some who considered themselves other things. However, even a cursory glance at contemporary sources would reveal that my claim here is factual.

The Montenegrin identity had been inseparable from Serbian until the end of the Great War, when some supporters of the Petrovic dynasty resented the merger with Serbia. Communists exploited this divide and worked for decades to create a "Montenegrin nation"; the pinnacle of this project is today's independent Montenegro, whose rulers are building a national identity on a foundation of Serbophobia.

Austria-Hungary attempted to create a "Bosniak" nation during its occupation mandate, without much success. Bosnian Muslims identified themselves as Turks, or - following the Great War - as Serbs or Croats with a distinct religion. It was Tito's Yugoslavia that incubated their nationhood, trying to use them as a counterbalance to Serbs and Croats. And a fine job that turned out to be, if the 100,000 dead and the smoldering ruins of Bosnia are anything to judge by.

Now as for Macedonia... Google "Antiwar.com" and "Macedonia" and see how many hits you get for my columns on the subject, and what I wrote therein. At the time when damn near no one in the West objected to the KLA's butchering of that country, I wrote about the murder of Macedonia and the futile surrender of its leaders to Imperial demands. But I dare argue that only under Tito did the Macedonian national movement actually succeed in creating a nation, and all of a sudden I'm a villain?

Look, I'm routinely attacked by Albanians because I'm a Serb (it doesn't matter what I say, really - unless I endorse the KLA somehow; then I'm a poster child for what needs to be done). I get grief from Greeks, because I dare say "Macedonia" instead of FYROM or what have you (look, Alexander was a barbarian, OK? Just because he embraced the culture of Hellas and spread it around the known world doesn't make him any more Greek than my Orthodox faith makes me one).

And now I'm marked for malice by Macedonians for daring to point out that hey, today's Macedonia exists within the boundaries of the territory liberated from the Ottoman Empire by the Kingdom of Serbia. What about the areas controlled by Bulgaria and Greece? How come we never hear about them? Also, am I wrong in saying that most people in that area at that time considered themselves Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians or even Turks, since the whole concept of the Macedonian nation was in its infancy? I doubt it. Find me some contemporary sources that argue otherwise and I'd be willing to change my mind.

While you're at it, can you give me a publication date for the first dictionary and grammar of the distinct Macedonian language? Also, please explain how come that many residents of northern Macedonia have distinctly Serbian names, except they've been "Macedonized"? And finally, that whole talk about modern Macedonians being descendants of Alexander's folk? About as plausible as the "bogomil Bosnians" or "Albanians as Illyrians" arguments. Spare me.

Bulgarians and Greeks spend decades denying that Macedonians even exist. As a result, they get to keep the territories gained in the Balkans Wars. Serbs go along with emancipating Macedonians as a nation, and they lose the territories, and get accused of being hostile to Macedonia and Macedonians! Not exactly an argument for tolerance or open-mindedness, is it?

I've told my Macedonian friends before, and I'll say it again: the real danger to your continued existence, let alone prosperity, isn't from the north. The Serbs have accepted Macedonia and Macedonians, and all the questions that I raise here are merely historical nitpicking. An attempt to teach my own people an important lesson, as the case may be. Meanwhile, Bulgarians are issuing dual citizenships, Greeks insist there is no such country, and Albanians are taking the land. And this Serb is one of the few people in the world pointing that out and disagreeing with it.

Down to One Question

One can write a dozen essays and argue oneself hoarse over the merits of market economy and still get the ignorant response typical of most people, that governments need to "regulate" the market else it "fails."

I can't count the number of such situations I've found myself in over the past decade or so, and I wish I had this pearl from William Norman Grigg (Pro Libertate), published today on LRC:

Obama is a reasonably bright fellow. Somebody he respects – assuming there is any great enough to command his attention and rebuke his errors – needs to ask him this question, and compel him to answer:

"If the key to prosperity is a centrally planned economy fueled by fiat currency, why isn’t Zimbabwe the wealthiest nation in history?"

Yes, indeed, why not?