"Human rights and American values"

"[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." (Senator Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn, quoted in the Washington Post, April 28, 1999)

Kosovska Mitrovica, March 2004

Almost fourteen years ago, the United States (via NATO) launched a war of aggression in support of the KLA, which resulted in the occupation of the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija. Some 40,000 NATO "peacekeepers" stood by while more than 200,000 non-Albanians were burned out of their homes, and the NATO cheerleader media dismissed the atrocities as "revenge attacks".

On March 17, 2004, some 50,000 Albanians rampaged through the occupied province, 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 ever held accountable. Instead, the United States and its allies, calling themselves the "international community," rewarded the pogrom by establishing the "Republic of Kosovo."

You want to know what "The West" stands for? This is it.

Invictus

The morning of March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milošević, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, was found dead in his cell at the Scheveningen detention facility near The Hague.  It was the second death in Scheveningen in a week; on March 5, Milan Babić, once a leader of the Serbs in what is today Croatia, had allegedly committed suicide while waiting to testify in another trial. Babić had plea-bargained with the ICTY, the Hague Inquisition, and received a sentence of “only” 13 years.

Slobodan Milošević (1941-2006)

In the West, Milošević was blamed for everything that had happened in the Balkans over the prior 15 years; not only has it been politically correct to hate him, but dangerous for one’s political credentials not to. News of his death prompted an outpouring of vitriol in the mainstream media, a race to see who could malign the man more. In producing this stream of abuse, they were guided by the assumption that all the charges against Milošević had been proven, if not in the court of law, then in the “court of public opinion” – in which they, of course, had been the judge, jury, and executioner.

Malicious Myths

One representative example is this editorial from the Washington Post:

“Ethnic and sectarian rivalry was real in a cobbled-together state, but few people expected, much less wanted, a civil war. Mr. Milosevic, a Communist Party apparatchik in Serbia, deliberately and methodically nursed this latent tension from a flicker to a conflagration and used it to consolidate a criminal regime in Belgrade. He bombarded Serbs with lies and hateful demagoguery about their supposed victimization at the hands of Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovo Albanians, and he convinced them that the only solution was a Greater Serbia created through war and ethnic cleansing. …

“More than is generally recognized, at least in his own country, he was personally responsible for the most destructive conflict, and most terrible atrocities, recorded in Europe since World War II. There were other protagonists and other criminals, some of them Croatian, Bosnian, and Albanian. But without Mr. Milosevic the Yugoslav wars wouldn’t have happened.”

Just about everything here is wrong. Worse yet, it accuses Milošević of things his enemies were doing. For one thing, he never called for war. His 1989 speech in Kosovo, often said to be a call for conflict, actually called for coexistence. That is why it is never actually quoted, only paraphrased, and wrongly.

By describing the very real atrocities of Croats, Muslims, and Albanians allied with Hitler as the fruit of Milošević's malicious imagination, the Post simply engaged in Holocaust denial. The claim that Milošević desired and pursued a “Greater Serbia” was likewise pure propaganda. As for his “personal responsibility”… well, the Hague Inquisition had spent years trying to prove it, with thousands of investigators, paid experts, and Imperial troops at its call, and managed to produce… nothing.

The House of Cards

Milošević rose to power in the late 1980s against the crumbling backdrop of the post-Tito Yugoslavia. The original Yugoslav kingdom, established in 1918, was destroyed by a 1941 Nazi invasion. Parts of it were annexed by Axis powers, a territory designated “Serbia” was occupied by the Germans, while an “Independent State of Croatia” run by a fascist Ustasha regime encompassed present-day Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. While the Serb-led royalist resistance (Chetniks) fought the Axis occupation, the Communist resistance (Partisans) saw the war as an opportunity for revolution. Having secured Allied support, the Communist leader Tito took over the country in 1945, banned the monarchy, and re-forged Yugoslavia as a Communist federation.

Tito's velvet dictatorship provided a high standard of living through foreign debt, and his diplomacy balanced Yugoslavia between the Soviet bloc and the West. Instead of promoting a Yugoslav identity, however, Tito exploited ethnic rivalries to secure his power. Expressions of ethnic identity were allowed only if they served the Party agenda. The horrific atrocities of WW2 were selectively suppressed or trumped up, in an effort to establish moral equivalence between all non-Communist factions, to the point of equating the Serb royalists with the murderous Ustasha.

In 1974, the ailing Tito signed off on a new Constitution transferring more power to the republics and  making Yugoslavia a de facto confederacy. So great was his personal power, though, that after his death in 1980, the Party was unable to choose a successor. For the next decade, Yugoslavia would be ruled by committee - and it showed. Decades of mismanagement, debt, and corruption came to a head in the 1980s, with all Yugoslavs becoming increasingly frustrated. Serbia in particular suffered from a peculiar arrangement under which its two provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo - the only such entities in Yugoslavia - had veto power over Serbian laws. Adding to the troubles was an Albanian rebellion in Kosovo, which began in 1981, and by 1987 required the deployment of federal riot police.

Heretic

His given name, Slobodan, means “a free man”. His surname, Milošević, is derived from an ancestor named Miloš, most likely after the knight who killed the Turkish sultan Murat at the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, forever remembered in song. Yet for most of his life Milošević had been an ordinary apparatchik, a banker who spent time in the United States and dutifully followed Serbia's Communist leader Ivan Stambolić. Then, in 1987, Stambolić sent him to Kosovo, to calm down the agitated Serbs protesting Albanian repression. When the overwhelmingly Albanian police started clubbing the Serbs gathered to air their grievances, Milošević bellowed, “No one is allowed to beat you!”

Disgusted by the cowardice and ineptitude of the Serbian Communist leadership, Milošević went back to Belgrade and began cleaning house. By the end of 1987, most of the old guard had been purged, including his former patron Stambolić. The following year, Milošević  launched a program of reforms, purging the provincial leaderships as well and amending Serbia's constitution to bring it in line with other Yugoslav republics. He became a hero to millions of Serbs, repressed for decades through politics of guilt.

Milošević's reforms alarmed the leadership of other republics, which benefited from Yugoslavia's schizophrenic setup. It was the purged Communists, however, who led the attacks on him. To them, he was a dangerous heretic for daring to challenge Tito's dogma of “Serbian bourgeois nationalism” as the greatest threat to Yugoslavia. Reinventing themselves as democrats, they began demonizing Milošević as someone who “abolished autonomy” of the provinces, and even accused him of harboring a desire for “Greater Serbia”- an Austro-Hungarian canard conjured prior to 1914 to justify Vienna's planned war of conquest. This invective fell on receptive ears in the rest of Yugoslavia, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany created a historical opportunity to revise the outcome of WW2.

Yugoslavia's End

Official History paints the dismemberment of Yugoslavia as a response of Slovenians, Croats, “Bosnians ”(Muslims), Albanians and Macedonians to Milošević's “nationalism.” To believe this, however, one would have to deny actual history - from Communism, via both world wars, all the way back to the Ottoman conquest.

There is no question some Yugoslav republics profited much more than others from Tito's arrangement. Though the leader of Slovenia, for example, was a Communist official, he had no trouble reinventing himself as a democrat and denouncing “Serbian Communist oppression”, once he received German and Austrian support. Franjo Tuđman, elected president of Croatia in 1990, harbored sympathies for the Ustasha and engaged in open Holocaust denial. Alija Izetbegović, an unrepentant political Islamist who emerged as the leader of Muslims in Bosnia, had been jailed in the 1980s for a manifesto written in 1971 that called for “Islamic revolution” throughout the world. Albanians have claimed Kosovo and other lands since 1878, and sought their union with Albania proper ever since its founding in 1912. They allied with Germany and Austria for that purpose in WW1, and again in WW2.

To secure independence, the separatists all claimed to be victims of “aggression” by the Federal Army and/or Serbia. Slovenia had pioneered that approach in June 1991, when the Yugoslav Army sent lightly armed recruits to secure border crossings. When Tuđman'a government tried to assert control over Serb-inhabited territories, their residents rebelled, calling on the Yugoslav Army to protect the country's constitutional order. Tuđman's militia, armed from Germany, responded by attacking Army garrisons while claiming “aggression from Serbia”.

In April 1992, when Izetbegović's government declared independence and Bosnia slid into full-scale civil war, the claim of “Serbian aggression” was used once again, to the point of outright falsifying the history of WW2 and the Holocaust. But the greatest absurdity was NATO's claim, in March 1999, that Milošević was the “aggressor” in Kosovo, when NATO itself had launched a textbook case of aggression against Serbia.

Yet Milošević never disputed the right of Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims or Macedonians to leave Yugoslavia; he supported the right of two million Serbs living in Croatia and Bosnia (the “Transdrina Serbs”, for lack of a better term) to stay. Milošević was the driving force behind the creation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in April 1992, a union of Serbia and Montenegro that implicitly recognized the secession of all other republics. The EU used the Soviet precedent to argue that Yugoslavia had ceased to exist; but while Yeltsin's Russia was recognized as the legal heir of the USSR, the FR Yugoslavia was denied that right.

Milošević wanted to negotiate Yugoslavia's future, and even invited the European Community to mediate - to the Serbs' detriment, as it turned out. Tuđman (“There would not have been a war had Croatia not wanted it.” ) and Izetbegović (“For a sovereign Bosnia, I would sacrifice peace.”) chose otherwise.

It wasn't Milošević who “started four wars”, but his enemies, backed by the West.

Peacemaker

Throughout the 1991-95 conflict, the West acted as if Milošević were the true power behind the Transdrina Serbs. From April 1992 to 1996, Serbia was under a crippling UN blockade, imposed as punishment for the massacre of a breadline in Sarajevo, blamed on the Bosnian Serbs. Milošević got no credit from the West when he set up a blockade on the Drina in 1994, after the Bosnian Serb leadership refused an unfavorable peace; nor for standing by while U.S.-backed Croatian forces ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Serbs from zones officially under UN protection.

At that point, however, he must have realized that the policy of protecting Serbia by not becoming officially involved in Bosnia and Croatia not only hadn't worked, but came close to jeopardizing the very survival of the Transdrina Serbs. For four years they had kept the numerically superior Muslim and Croat forces at bay, but now NATO had stepped in with a bombing campaign (“Operation Deliberate Force”) backing the combined Croat-Muslim offensive.

Washington also had the (U.S.-sponsored) ICTY accuse the Bosnian Serb leaders of war crimes, deliberately making it so Milošević was the only politician who could go to the Dayton peace conference and represent Serb interests. Those who hatched this plan later probably wished they hadn't.

Dayton was not a typical peace conference, but rather one where the U.S. “mediators” represented Croat and Muslim interests - often getting frustrated by Muslim and Croat delegations, in fact - in talks with Milošević. In his memoirs, U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke proudly described how he tried to cheat Milošević in Dayton, and only regretted getting caught. Yet Milošević managed to secure a good deal for at least some Transdrina Serbs, which endures to this day in spite of efforts by the U.S. and the Bosnian Muslims to dismantle the Dayton order. Holbrooke himself credited Milošević with saving the talks, after Izetbegović almost wrecked them. Milošević's claim to the mantle of “Balkans peacemaker” may sound pretentious, but it was actually earned.

Three years later, however, it was the very same Holbrooke spearheading Washington’s effort to force Milošević into a war over Kosovo, where the terrorist “Kosovo Liberation Army” was fighting for secession with Washington’s support.

Betrayed and Demonized

Holbrooke later claimed Milošević had broken every deal he’d signed. That is a lie. It was Holbrooke’s employer who has done so, from Dayton to Kumanovo. Washington was responsible for the 1999 Rambouillet “agreement” – a travesty of diplomacy not seen since the 1914 Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Belgrade. The Empire accused Milošević of starting the 1999 war over Kosovo by “negotiating in bad faith,” but it is hard to imagine diplomacy in worse faith than the “peace effort” in Rambouillet, the frame job in Račak, and the subsequent naked aggression disguised as “humanitarian intervention.”

In May 1999, Milošević was charged with war crimes by the ICTY, a move that “coincided” with the crisis of morale in NATO headquarters, as Serbia refused to surrender and images of NATO’s civilian victims became increasingly available to the Western public. NATO's media cheerleaders used the indictment to further demonize Milošević, routinely comparing him to Hitler and the Serbs in general to Nazis. He had become the Emmanuel Goldstein of the new world order, bellyfelt as evil.

Fall and Rise

Though NATO later claimed it that Milošević had capitulated in June 1999, this was not the case. Where Rambouillet would have allowed a purely NATO occupation of Kosovo and guaranteed separation within three years - not to mention the Annex B, giving NATO free reign in Serbia itself - the armistice signed at Kumanovo put NATO on a UN leash, kept it out of the rest of Serbia, and retained sovereignty over Kosovo on paper. Though NATO violated it almost right away, the very fact that there was an armistice after 78 days, instead of a surrender after a week as envisioned in Washington, was a victory. Moreover, damage to the Yugoslav military from the bombing was minimal.

Having failed to oust Milošević by force, the Empire changed tactics. Washington bought the government of Montenegro, and set it on course for separation. In Serbia, the NED cobbled together, trained and funded a coalition of opposition parties. Milošević tried to warn the public about what was coming, but his warning fell on deaf ears. The propaganda had taken its toll. On October 5, 2000, the mob organized by the “Democratic Opposition of Serbia” sacked the federal parliament, stormed the state TV and claimed election fraud. Ballots documenting the alleged DOS victory conveniently perished in the fires set by protesters. This would later become a pattern for “color revolutions” elsewhere.

Unwilling to plunge the country into civil war, Milošević stepped down as president of Yugoslavia. The DOS soon established a new government, under the leadership of Zoran Đinđić. In April 2001, Đinđić had Milošević arrested; in June, he broke half a dozen Serbian and Yugoslav laws and handed Milošević over to the ICTY.

At The Hague, however, there was no trace of the once-accommodating, compromising Milošević. That man had probably perished in 1999, with the first NATO bombs. Instead, the inquisitors faced a proud and defiant man, who threw the accusations back into their faces and insisted not only on his innocence, but on the illegitimacy of the ICTY and the culpability of NATO and Washington for the bloodshed in Yugoslavia. The prosecutors took over two years to present their “kitchen sink” indictment, charging him for war crimes in Croatia and Kosovo and genocide (!) in Bosnia. Milošević systematically demolished their witnesses in cross-examinations and successfully challenged their “evidence,” despite the hostility of the judges, who would often cut him off. In September 2004, Milošević began his defense, after defeating the efforts of the “tribunal” to impose counsel on him without consent.

But the trial had taken a toll on his health, and he would complain of high blood pressure, headaches, and heart problems. Prosecutors and the media derisively claimed he was “faking it.” In February 2006, the “Tribunal” refused his request for medical treatment at a Russian hospital, despite Moscow’s guarantees that he would return. Three days after he wrote to the Russian government, claiming he was being poisoned, Milošević was found dead in his cell.

A Free Man

Although the Western media had already declared him Hitler Reborn, Slobodan Milošević was never convicted of any crime, in any court, even the kangaroo “tribunal” in The Hague. His show trial was officially adjourned on Mach 14, 2006, without reaching a verdict.

At the time of his death, Milošević was a prisoner. Unlike the quisling regime installed in his country, however, he refused to accept his captivity and fought against it any way he could. Rather than save his body by denouncing the country and people that turned on him, he saved his soul by defending them. Whatever one may think of the way he lived or governed, in his final four years he stood alone against the Empire, embodied in the Inquisition: an overwhelming force seeking to dominate all of humanity, willing and able to twist history, facts, and logic into a sinister fiction. Milošević did not have to resist it; he chose to. For years, the greatest coercive force in the world tried to break him, and failed.

He died true to his name.

Weapons to Syria: A Croatian Confessional

Much as the mainstream media would like to fudge it with talk of "former Yugoslavia", the fact that Croatian weapons have found their way to the Syrian jihadists is becoming more difficult to deny. The Croatians themselves, in fact, aren't even bothering to try. The Zagreb daily Jutarnji List (The Morning Paper) published a story on March 7, explaining where the weapons came from, who delivered them and how, and who was behind it all. The original article can be found here. My translation follows below.

Jutarnji Reveals: 
In four months, 75 airplanes with 3,000 tons of weapons departed Zagreb Pleso airport for Syria in the past four months.

By Krešimir Žabec, March 7, 2013

(Jutarnji.hr)

Between the beginning of November last year and February this year, altogether 75 civilian cargo planes departed Zagreb's Pleso airport, loaded with weapons for Syrian rebels, Jutarnji has learned from diplomatic sources. In addition to Croatian weapons, the aircraft carried weapons from other European countries, gathered in the organization of the United States of America.

According to our sources, the first two or three deliveries went via Turkish Cargo, a subsidiary of Turkish Airlines. Subsequent deliveries were made via Jordanian International Air Cargo.

Related story: NY Times on our soldiers withdrawal from Golan: "Our report compromised safety of Croat Blue Helmets"

Until recently, it was thought that a high-raking Croatian official had arranged with his American colleagues the transport of surplus Croatian arms to the Syrian rebels, which was reported by the New York Times. Reliable diplomatic sources indicate, however, that the plan to arm the Syrian rebels was part of a broader context. 

Namely, American officials had enlisted several partners - Croatia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey - to arm the opponents of the Syrian regime. The USA organized the procurement of weapons, the Saudis paid for it, and Jordan and Turkey made the deliveries, via Jordan, to Syria.

Croatia had a dual role. It supplied part of its weapons surplus, including the M79 and RPG-22 launchers, and M60 recoil-less cannon. A yet unknown quantity of those departed from Pleso in early November last year, on a Turkish A310. However, the Americans organized deliveries of weapons from several other European countries, including the UK, to Pleso, from where it was loaded into Jordanian cargo plans and sent to Syria via Jordan.

Related story: CROAT WEAPONS TRANSFERRED TO SYRIAN REBELS: Everything arranged last summer in Washington!

Thus it could be said that Pleso has been the international hub of arms deliveries to the Syrian rebels, over the course of several months. As the cargo aircraft involved were A310 and Ilyushin 76MF, it is estimated that around 3,000 tons of weapons and ammunition have been transported on 75 flights.

YouTube videos confirm that the Syrian rebels are receiving large quantities of arms and ammunition. Videos show the rebels bragging about the new weapons they have received. Western media claim that Americans and Turks have organized the weapons deliveries.

As our sources tell us, the security of the operation came into question after the Bosnian air traffic control started making inquiries about the large number of Jordanian cargo flights from Zagreb. Nor did the sudden frequency of Jordanian cargo flights go unnoticed among the Zagreb populace. Our sources indicate it isn't know exactly how many of the weapons ended up with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, as opposed to several dozen militant jihadist militias, also fighting against the Syrian regime.

Recent YouTube videos suggest that part of the weapons that came from Croatian stores ended up with the jihadist movement Ahram al-Sham. This was confirmed by their spokesman, who said they shared weapons with the Free Syrian Army.

There have also been allegations that some of the weapons that reached Syria via Zagreb have ended up with the Yarmuk Martyrs' Brigade, the jihadists who seized 30 Filipino UN peacekeepers on the Golan Heights two days ago. Afraid that the weapons might end up with militants, most Western politicians insist on keeping the EU's embargo on exports to Syria. Croatia has stated its support for the embargo, and is technically not in violation of it, since the weapons were sold to Jordan.

The entire affair has demonstrated that Croatia is a reliable partner of the United States. Washington has played a crucial role in Croatia's admission to NATO and subsequently the EU. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Defense is greatly supporting the Croatian Army in Afghanistan with weapons and equipment, and provides free transport to our troops that are part of the ISAF. So it is natural that Croatia, as a faithful ally, positively responded to the American request for taking part in a weapons delivery operation for Syria.

Sidebar: Josipović officially requested withdrawal of Croatian peacekeepers

President Josipović has requested parliamentary confirmation of his decision to withdraw 97 Croatian soldiers from the UN mission on Syria's Golan Heights. He justified the decision by the deteriorating security situation in the Golan, and argued that withdrawing the soldiers would remove them from danger. The Sabor is due to debate the decision in their next session, and confirmation requires a two-thirds majority. If the Sabor rejects the President's decision, the soldiers will remain in the Golan.

The withdrawal from UNDOF mission was announced last week by Prime Minister Milanović, who said it was the consequence of media reports of Croatian arms deliveries to Syrian rebels. The military command is already preparing for the withdrawal, and Defense Minister Ante Kotromanović announced the soldiers could return within a month. The retreat will be organized via Israel.

All the "news" you wish to hear

A good case study of modern propaganda is the false "news" that gets taken seriously. Think The Onion declaring North Korea's Kim "sexiest man alive". Or when "serious" media post stuff from The Duffel Blog - and lawmakers believe it. Or the shark-killing Serb of Sharm el Sheikh, one of the best-known hoaxes by the satirical Njuz.net.

Partly to blame is the style of actual news reports. Purposefully designed to be formulaic and dense, it can be imitated fairly easily. And by adjusting certain words and tone, it is very conducive to perception management (as I've documented before). Imitate the style of authentic news in a spoof report, and you'll find a lot of people will believe it.

But the other element here is wishful thinking. Even if the fake report doesn't bother with passing as authentic, it will still be believed by some people simply because it tells them what they want to hear. Wishful thinking is an ally of all manipulators.

Last week, "news" that the actor Tom Hanks allegedly expressed support for the Serbs in Kosovo quickly made the rounds, fooling both the legacy media and the blogosphere in Serbia. Even the Imperial propaganda outfit Balkan Insight reported on it, though they actually contacted Hanks' publicist and established the report as false. Still, many in Serbia - and abroad - believed the story. Why?

It was packaged to be believable. Supposedly, Hanks was driven by his alleged Orthodox faith (his wife Rita is Greek, so the whole Orthodox connection is cleverly insinuated). Confirmation bias did the rest. Furthermore, the report claimed Hanks' alleged declaration that Kosovo was "Serbia's Jerusalem" supposedly took place on "E!" network. This is not a coincidence; the network is familiar to many Serbs from a 2011 scandal, when Chelsea Handler belittled the former Defense Minister for his idiotic tweets following an Amy Winehouse concert. Yet few seemed to notice the lack of a date, time, occasion, or actual name of the show where Hanks supposedly said what he said. Which makes sense, because it never happened.

Obviously, whoever crafted this fake report knew which buttons to push. Take a network previously involved in a verbal spat, add a long jump to conclusions about Hanks, garnish with the Serb sentiment about their occupied territory, and voila - instant propaganda.

Figuring out who was behind the fake story, however, may require more resources than a blogger half the world away possesses. To the best of my knowledge, the story was traced to "Pravda," a paper close to the ruling Progressive party. If true, this suggests a government ploy to distract the public from its unconditional surrender demands from Brussels and Washington regarding Kosovo.

Yet there might be more to it. The fact that many critics of the government swallowed the fake story hook, line and sinker may be used to discredit them (with the legacy media being collateral damage). Also, all these false reports may annoy the celebrities dragged into them, to the point where they embrace the causes of Serb enemies (if they haven't done so already, that is).

I don't think for a second that Serbia's current regime would have any moral qualms about engaging in something like this. They are already thieves and traitors, a bit of lying won't bother them. I do, however, doubt they are clever enough to come up with this by themselves. They are, after all, clients of the Empire - which relies on a manipulating media establishment to conjure and support the virtual reality it inhabits. 

On internet culture, or lack thereof

Earlier this month, I came upon a blog post (via GLPiggy) that was meant as a year-in-review essay, but actually contained more than a few interesting observations on how people act on the internet. I recommend reading it in full, and also checking out Matt Inman's (The Oatmeal) take on the topic.

Here are some of my thoughts, for what it's worth, below some of Baldur Bjarnason's points.

3. Best case scenario for doing stuff online is that people will start knocking on your door, asking you to work for free, never offering to give anything in return.  

While price isn't the same as value (only a proximate metric thereof, in a map/territory kind of way), it is often treated as such. It next to impossible to ask for a payment for something, having previously given it away. People value things they expend effort or resources to obtain more than things they get for free.

8. There is little to no discourse online. What you get are dug in factions and people’s opinion on you are based solely on whether your argument supports what they have chosen to be ‘their team’. If you try and stick to facts and logic, most factions will reject you. It’s ideological trench warfare and the best you can hope for is that the machine-gun nests don’t notice you.

Very true. However, some writers have realized this from the beginning, and the very purpose of their blogs (such as this one, for example) has been to smash up some of those trenches and machine-gun nests. And one doesn't do that with pikes and swords, but with tanks and artillery. There is nothing intrinsically dishonorable in using rhetoric (in addition to facts and logic, not to the exclusion thereof) as a weapon. It is incredibly effective in demolishing the trenches and machine-guns made out of pure rhetoric.

10. Writing isn’t highly regarded by anybody, even in publishing. There’s a lot of romanticism and inane adolescent fantasy about being a writer, but little to no follow-through by anybody, especially not those who call themselves writers.

Considering the adolescent fantasies that pass for writing these days, it's just as well I don't call myself a writer any more than I'd call myself a journalist.

12. People love to send you argumentative, angry, or otherwise negative emails. That is, if they aren’t asking you to work for free.

The key here is motivation. Dissent is a stronger motivator than consent. Words that validate people's views are expected and normal; words that rock the boat are cause for action. Successful rhetoric first gets the audience angry, then directs that anger at the desired target. 

14. Praise is generally only handed out on disposable media, like Twitter, and rarely anywhere where it counts (like blogs, reviews, or other writing), unless you pay for it... The end result is that positive feedback is ephemeral while negative feedback gets preserved forever on angry blogs, comments and forums.

In addition, praise is rarely constructive or cogent. It's not that I don't enjoy getting comments of the "Good job" kind, but it is far more useful when feedback elaborates a point I've made, or asks about something I may have missed. Paying for praise may produce some results in the short run, but there has to be substance behind the buzz, or the bump in interest will fade away fast.

15. People will always prefer you to state the obvious and spout common sense. If you say anything that requires a bit of thinking, or that would require them to learn new skills or ideas, your audience will evaporate into nothing, no matter how important those new things are. (Also see point 8 above.) You can trust that ideas that are new and unfamiliar to an audience will be either ignored or met with anger.

But anger is better than being ignored. Anger can at least be leveraged sometimes, while ambivalence cannot.

16. Nobody cares when you’re right but a lot of people really enjoy it when you’re wrong. They will rub it in your face.

Mistakes are inevitable. Which is why the best course of action when one occurs is to own up to it, make it a teachable moment by explaining why the mistake was made, and do one's level best to not make the same mistake again.

20. The only thing people like more than a post that states the obvious is an angry post that states the obvious. Angry and unreasonable will easily get ten times the attention of even-handed and rational.

See above under 12. Again, motivation. But this works both ways. If everyone is always talking and always shouting, the usually silent person who finally speaks up, in a normal voice, gets a lot of attention. However, that attention quickly evaporates if one has nothing to say.

21. Communities get the discourse they deserve. When either the inane and obvious, or frothing lunacy are all that get attention, then that’s all you end up getting. Moreover, it’s your own damn fault. People may well instapaper the good stuff fully intending to read it at some point in the future (hah!), but bile is the stuff they actually read and it certainly is the only thing they respond to.

It is tempting to "give the people what they want." But everyone else is already doing that. If one is targeting the disappointed, who are looking for a fresh perspective, then give them what they need.

The reason I prefer blogging over Facebook posts, forum posts and tweets is persistence. Today's world is a maelstrom of ephemera and emotions. History is an anchor. This is why I keep linking to things I've written previously, because I'm adding layers to what I've already built, not reinventing the wheel. Continuity helps with credibility - and credibility is the actual currency of the blogosphere, not the number of trolls or sycophants.

When the Drone is the Sword

I read Daniel Greenfield's "Sultan Knish" blog regularly. When he's right, he usually cuts to the very heart of the issue and his observations merit quoting. When he's wrong, however, he is very wrong - and that, too, merits quoting.

He has long been hostile towards Ron Paul, former representative in the House and presidential candidate, believing him to be hostile to Israel. This belief is misplaced. Dr. Paul is opposed to all foreign "aid" on principle, including that to Israel (but also that to, say, Egypt). Unlike most of his fellow Republicans, Paul really does believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the fundamental principles the United States were (notice the plural) founded on. And Paul is also opposed to the American Empire, which he rightly regards as antithetical to the American Republic.

But in Greenfield's latest essay, Paul is lumped with the "left" and denounced as a traitor, together with anyone who opposes Empire's foreign entanglements:

"The anti-war position automatically picks the other side and because of the innate whiff of treason in such a choice, it must justify that treason by utterly damning and demonizing its own side. It cannot afford nuance at home, though it often calls for it abroad, because to concede complexity is to endanger its own moral standing. The only thing standing between the anti-war movement and  treason is its ceaseless effort to demonize its own government, soldiers and people as monsters."

That last sentence is somewhat baffling, because I would think the demonization of one's own government, soldiers and people as monsters would not be an impediment to treason, but rather a component thereof. But Greenfield's point is nonetheless clear: anyone who argues against the American Empire is a traitor.

That is because in Greenfield's understanding, the Empire is America; the soldiers that invade, bomb and occupy across the world are "defending freedom"; and the Empire is actually fighting a rightful defensive war against Islamic jihad. Yet none of these things are true.

As I argued back in 2005:

"Being opposed to a gang of Muslim fanatics trying to re-create a VII (or XI?) century jihad with XXI-century technology did not, does not, and should not mean siding with the abomination that has murdered the American republic and possessed its cadaver. Or vice versa: just because George W. Bush and his minions have fabricated a danger that would justify their imperial adventure doesn't mean a danger does not exist. It just isn't the danger they are carping on about."

Because, you see, the Empire isn't opposed to jihad and Islam. Rather, it seeks to co-opt them for its own ends. Don't take my word for it. There's Charlie Wilson, the CIA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and here is the late Tom Lantos (D-CA):

"... just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led governments in this world that here is yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe. This should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also for jihadists of all color and hue."

Nor can one argue that this is "leftist" policy and therefore not applicable to the Bush II era, because Lantos said this in 2007, in support of a Bush II policy. Granted, it was a policy adopted verbatim two years prior, from a Democratic challenger Bush had defeated in 2004 - the same year occupied Kosovo became a bit more "predominantly Muslim" following a pogrom of Serbs.

Seemingly absurd, no? But it is an observable fact that the "left" and the "right" are of the same mind when it comes to imperialism. And one of Empire's articles of faith is that jihad can and should be used to achieve global dominance. That is why the CIA aided the jihadists in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s; why the Empire helped create the hysteria about Bosnia in the 1990s and "Kosovia" later on; why Washington has helped overthrow secular Arab dictatorships (Hussein, Gadhafi, Ben Ali, Mubarak) in favor of militant Islam. How successful that strategy has been, one ought to ask Ambassador Stephens.

Of course, Greenfield blames Obama for Stephens' death in Benghazi, and rightly so. But he doesn't blame Obama, as he ought to, for invading Libya in the first place. I can't seem to recall any Republican who actually argued against invading Libya and replacing Gadhafi's eccentric dictatorship with a Hobbesian hodgepodge of tribal and Al-Qaeda "rule" that followed the "liberation." Stephens went to Libya to help the jihadists take over the country. By way of a thank you, the jihadists murdered him. There is a lesson therein, for those willing to learn.

What prompted Greenfield's attack on "anti-war traitors" was Ron Paul quoting Jesus (Matthew 26:52, to be precise) apropos the death of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL sniper recently murdered by a fellow veteran at a shooting range. To Greenfield, Kyle is a hero, his sniping a valiant defense of American freedom. But what Kyle actually did had nothing to do with "defending America". He was killing Iraqis in their own country. He was the aggressor and the occupier, and as if that weren't bad enough by itself, that invasion had absolutely zero to do with fighting against jihad. Zip. Zilch. Bopkess. It was also, let's remember, illegal, immoral and illegitimate by every metric - except that of power.

Thus, paradoxically, Greenfield defends the very same argument of force he opposes (and rightly so) when it comes to Islam, and within the very same essay! It amounts to "It's different when we do it," and it is the very Marxist moral relativism he continuously condemns.

By that logic, Ron Paul is a traitor for opposing the invasions of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, etc. - while those who ordered and executed the invasions, are "defending freedom". Those who invade someone else's country half the world away and support jihad (in effect if not intentionally) are patriots and heroes, while, say, the Serb soldiers, snipers or generals who defend their own country and people from jihadists are war criminals.

If pointing this out is treason, then in the immortal words of Patrick Henry, "make the most of it."

Praising the Darkness

The good folks at Britic (a British Serb magazine) kept in mind my warning about the likely revisionism of the Great War in the run-up to its centennial, and noticed this atrocity perpetrated by the BBC:

Bosnia 1908… Austria annexed Bosnia in the Balkans. This annoyed Serbia, which wanted to take over the area. Russia wanted to help Serbia, but had to back down.
Balkan Wars 1912-1913…Serbia and other countries in the Balkans conquered most of Turkey’s land in Europe. Serbia became a powerful country, and said Austria-Hungary was its next target.
Assassination of Franz Ferdinand 1914…The heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was shot by Gavrilo Princip, a young Serb terrorist, in Sarajevo in Bosnia.

This is from the Beeb's "bitesize" study sheet for secondary school students (ages 14-16) taking their GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) tests. Bite-size, indeed - more like highly condensed, Grade A horse manure the kids are liable to choke on.

What is quoted above aren't so much distortions, as outright lies. The Balkans Alliance didn't "conquer" anyone's land, least of all Turkish, nor did Serbia ever say "Austria-Hungary was its next target" (though Austrian propaganda certainly did). And if Gavrilo Princip is a terrorist, then that word has lost all meaning.

It's bad enough that the Serbs and Russians are being cast as the villainous aggressors against the virtuous Turks, Austrians and Germans. The BBC obviously needs reminding, though, that these were the very Central Powers that Britain fought against in that war. Didn't anyone get the memo about the reason everyone wears a poppy on their lapels around November 11?

It is one thing to wish Britain had stayed out of the war (as Niall Ferguson does in "Pity of War"), but look at the questions the BBC is having the students ponder:

Think about the events that increased tension across Europe and the consequences of these events. Can you think which event(s):

1. Made the British public hate the Germans.
2. Made France think that Germany wanted to destroy its empire.
3. Showed that the British thought Germany wanted to challenge the British navy.
4. Made Austria-Hungary determined to destroy Serbia.
5. Made Russia determined to support the Serbs.
6. Made Austria-Hungary frightened of Serbia.
7. Made Britain think Germany wanted to destroy its empire.
8. Made Germany determined to stand up to France and Britain.

Take a second to parse the questions, the way they are phrased. Don't they generate an impression that the fault here was really with Britain and France, for being paranoid about Germany, and with Serbia and Russia for threatening the Austrians? That the Germans, Austrians and Turks were acting merely out of legitimate self-defense? Considering that the New York Times recently referred to the first Entente victory over the Central Powers as "infamous," this is dangerously close to crossing the lines of coincidence and happenstance, and seriously suggesting enemy action.

As European powers entered the war in August 1914, Sir Edward Grey famously said, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our time." Just as well he didn't live to see the day the British would actually praise the darkness.

Serbophobes, Unchained

Seems like the line is blurring between the "liars" and the "thugs" from yesterday's post, while the "cowards" might actually be owed an apology.

Here's the New York Times, as mainstream as it gets:

“We sincerely regret that people were offended by this song,” the agency’s spokesman, Martin Nesirky, told reporters.

There are three quotes in the article written by Neil MacFarquhar. This is one of them, another is a mangled mis-translation of the lyrics, and the third is an excerpt from the statement by Vuk Jeremic, Serbia's ex-FM now chairing the General Assembly, which makes it sound as if he's proud of the alleged atrocities allegedly accompanied by the song. 

MacFarquhar also calls the Battle of Cer "infamous". Okay, English is not my first language, so let me see if I understood that right. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the meaning of "infamous" as "having a reputation of the worst kind, notoriously evil". What?! The first Entente victory in the Great War, a triumph of the outnumbered, outgunned defenders turning back a cruel invader bent on eradicating them - that's "notoriously evil" and "having a reputation of the worst kind"? Who's editing the New York Times, Count Aerenthal?

Now, disregard for a second all the "editorial guidance" in the story, and focus on what the UN spokesman, Nesirky, actually said. "We sincerely regret that people were offended by this song." Not "The people who complained are absolutely right, this is a horrible atrocity," but a "Sorry you feel that way". It's not apology as much as an expression of sympathy. A diplomatic equivalent of a shrug.

Now look how the NYT, and the rest of the media, are choosing to ignore that fact and instead manage the perception:

This is a screenshot of a Google search, using the phrase "UN Serbia apology", this evening around 7 PM. Look at all the terms appended to the perfectly neutral statement.

"Militant". Well, it is a military march, but you never see the adjective used to describe Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," do you? And I'm sure the Vienna Philharmonic is routinely condemned as "militant" for playing the Radetzky March every New Year... What? It isn't?

"Nationalist"? What does that even mean?

The embellishments then go to the next level: "associated with massacres", "genocidal" (?!) "linked to the Srebrenica massacre" (?!) etc. Come again? Says who, the "Bosniak Congress"?  Is that where these "reporters" got their "facts"?

A couple of lazy journalists copy the loudmouths' handout, everyone else copies their notes - embellishing as they go along - and this is supposed to be journalism? Makes sense, I guess. Serbophobia is the only officially approved form of bigotry these days, after all.


I suppose an apology of my own is in order. I regret characterizing Nesirsky as a "spokesthing" and his organization as "spineless", having accepted at face value the mainstream media's misrepresentation of his statement. And as someone who has criticized the media for over a decade, I should have known better.

But if that can happen to me, imagine how people not disposed to mistrust the mainstream media will read the propaganda I've parsed above. Now that is truly infamous. In the dictionary sense of the word.

Liars, Cowards and Thugs

I've mentioned before that the Serbian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, which is currently about two weeks off from the Gregorian commonly used in the West and elsewhere. So the Gregorian January 14 was the Julian January 1, and hence New Year's Day.

This was the occasion for the current UN General Assembly chairman, formerly Serbia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, to organize a little concert and reception on East River. It revolved around the performance of an a capella choir "Viva Vox" (notice the "chauvinistic" Latin name). A recording of the show is available on YouTube. And one of the songs the choir performed - and received by the audience with quite a bit of enthusiasm - was the "Drina March."

Within a day, the UN was being harassed by haters: the "Congress of North American Bosniaks" and its satellites (I've written about their activities before) sent a nasty letter to the Secretary-General, claiming the song was a symbol of "aggressors" and insulting to "victims of genocide."

The GenSec's spokesthing (can't even call it a "person" anymore, might offend someone) instinctively apologized, of course. Such behavior is par for the course for the spineless bureaucracy on East River, used nowadays primarily as a forum for politically correct hatred of the West or a fig leaf for Imperial intervention, depending on what day of the week it is.

Mainstream coverage of the apology was predictably laced with Serbophobic drivel. An AP piece published by just about everyone contained "facts" about the song taken off Wikipedia and characterizations that may as well have been copy-pasted from CNAB's letter. By way of example:

- the song was "originally written as a nationalist hymn after World War I".
Wrong! Stanislav Binički composed it following the Battle of Cer, in August 1914, after the outnumbered and outgunned Serbs fought off an invasion from Austria-Hungary.

- it "became a favorite of fascists and Serb nationalists".
Says who? First of all, this facetiously pretends that "fascist" and "Serb nationalist" are the same, and they are not. Were "fascists" decorated by the U.S.? Were they the people who saved U.S. airmen that bombed them? Or those who opposed the Communist takeover of Yugoslavia and the amnesty of Croatian Nazis (some of them later known as "Bosniaks") that followed? I know that "Serb nationalists" are somehow supposed to be evil incarnate, but can anyone actually coherently explain why - without relying on thoroughly debunked propaganda by their enemies, who just so happen to have been Nazi allies back in the day?

- it was "banned by Yugoslavia's Communist government after World War II".
Wrong again. In fact, the Communists produced a movie about the Battle of Cer in 1964 (on its 50th anniversary), praising the Serb military prowess, featuring the song prominently throughout, and even sharing its title.

There was even a bit about how it was voted the new Serbian national anthem in 1992, but the government decided against it - supposedly because it would have been inappropriate due to the Bosnian War. But CNAB and the Empire and AP accuse that particular government of being the "aggressor" in the said war, so its supposed sensitivity in this instance makes zero sense whatsoever. Or rather, as much sense as the mainstream narrative.

So what is one supposed to make of the multiple covers of the catchy trumpet tune, from a 1960s acoustic version by "The Spotnicks"  (heard here in a Greek film), to a modern electric guitar cover? Never mind any of that, you're supposed to hate the song, and feel ashamed for liking it and demanding an encore - because professional victims of the CNAB claim it was a "favorite of [imaginary] fascists and [supposedly evil] Serb nationalists." And the AP says so as well, so it must be true, right?

Add that to the constant stream of apologies you're supposed to make, to anyone who demands them, for anything they can think of. Anything else would be "racist" or "insensitive," the two only sins of modernity in which all the other sins and vices have been declared virtuous, hypocrisy most of all.

On the Great War, Again

As the anniversary of the Great War draws near, expect the mainstream media and academia in the West to blame the Serbs for it. A few already have, here and there, but I would not be surprised if it becomes a concerted effort in the coming days.

The first shot may have already been fired: a reader let me know this morning that a new book is out by Cambridge historian Christopher Clark, that does just that. I wasn't surprised in the least to see that Clark is an acclaimed historian of Prussia, and therefore minimizes Germany's role in starting the war, shifting it to the Serbs and Russians instead.

I've addressed before this persistent tendency to blame the suicide of the West on the Other - i.e. the Orthodox Russians and Serbs, who were just rude and inconsiderate enough not to roll over and die when invaded by their Teutonic "betters."

"Serbia must die" - Austrian cartoon from 1914

The old-fashioned approach would be to write letters to the editor and comment on each article, but that's way too much work for one person (who is also engaged on other fronts). But a number of people working together, now, that's a different matter. For your reference, should you choose to avail yourself of them, here are some of my articles on the subject:

Triumph of Tragedy: A general view of the Great War (2008)

The Endless Summer of 1914: my first response to the "blame the Serbs and Russians" crowd (2010).

Age of Absurdity: another response to the same argument (2012)

The Enduring Schism: examining the Western hostility towards the Orthodox (2012).

Echoes of 1878 (2012) doesn't deal with the Great War per se, but examines the behavior of Western powers in the four decades prior, and the Balkans Wars.

Then, as now, the Serbs were a "disruptive factor" to the Mitteleuropäische Ordnung dreamed of by the Western powers - the Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Saxe-Coburg-Gothas (a.k.a. the Windsors) then, the Atlantic Empire and the Brussels Union now. Not because they were "lawless", or had dreams of conquest, but because they insisted on being free. It was the Serbs who started to complicate the Eastern Question for the West, by launching a successful uprising against the Turks in 1804. It was the Serbs who resisted enormous pressure from Vienna to embrace Catholicism and drown in the Hapsburg melting pot. The only people in the Balkans without German kings or princes. That just could not be tolerated. Then, or now.

Technology may have changed since, but that basic fact has not. Make of that what you will.

Fruits of the Forlorn

"By their fruits you will know them," it is written in the Gospel of Matthew (7:16). It is simple, straightforward advice: watch what they do, not what they say, or what is said about them.

Serbian church on fire, March 2004

If only such a standard could be applied to "Kosovars," Albanians who occupy the Serbian province of Kosovo and claim it as an independent state (with a little help of NATO and the Empire, of course).

Their "liberation army" began by murdering their own people - "loyalists" who wanted to live together with the Serb majority. Then they started murdering children, postal workers, and police. When the authorities responded by hunting them down as the terrorists they were, a hue and cry arose in the Western media: war crimes! Humanitarian crisis! Genocide! Something had to be done! But the drones, missiles, bombers and laptop bombardiers, even lawfare, all failed. It was treachery that won the day for the Empire in the end. Having seized the province, Imperial troops proceeded to shred the deal that let them in, letting the Albanians run rampant.

More than 200,000 non-Albanians (mainly Serbs, but also Jews, Turks, and many other communities that once lived in the province) were driven out, while NATO troops stood by, and NATO media called it "revenge attacks." Revenge for what? For daring to defy Albanian delusions of grandeur? In 2004, the "Kosovarians" launched a veritable Kristallnacht, singling out churches for destruction and desecration (video).

How did the Empire, which purports to fight for liberty, democracy, human rights and human dignity, react to this? By deciding to make "Kosovia" an independent, Albanian state - laws and treaties be damned. The grateful Kosovistanians then erected a golden idol of their "liberating" Emperor.

After a Trojan Horse "revolution" took over Serbia in 2000, the succession of governments in Belgrade have only occasionally attempted to pursue Serbia's own interests. Even such efforts have been the proverbial day late and a dollar short. More often, though, the Belgrade government prostrated itself before the Empire, hoping to end the torment by fulfilling the never-ending series of demands. Not surprisingly, the more they submitted, the more they've been tormented. But since it was the people paying the price, not the politicians, the debasement has continued.

The latest act of groveling was the decision to sign and implement the "Integrated Border Management" (IBM) agreement with the "Kosovians" and the EU. To their own public, the government lied that the "B" didn't really mean "border" but something else. Both the EU "law and order" mission that's overseeing "Kosovia" and the "Kosovarianians" themselves made sure to dispel that illusion this weekend, barring the president of Serbia from attending the Christmas ceremony at Grachanica monastery.

The report I linked above comes from AP and AFP, via Deutsche Welle (Germany's official propaganda service). Not surprisingly, it adds insult to injury by treating seriously the "Kosovarian" claim the ban was "in response to Belgrade refusing entry to Kosovar officials." This is nonsense. Serbia has tolerated Albanian provocations for years, including the recent Flag Day festivities, and has even sent police to protect the monument to the terrorist KLA, though it was their duty to tear it down.

No, the ban's purpose was to underscore the "independence" of "Kosovia" and the existence of the border that Belgrade has recognized as such. But don't expect the Western press to make note of this; they are just continuing to do what they've done for years: heaping abuse on the Serbs.

A prime example of this is the final paragraph of the story (as it is improper to call it a news article): "Serbs celebrate Christmas on January 7 in accordance with the Serbian Orthodox Church which adheres to the Julian calendar instead of the modern, more widely-used Gregorian."

The Serbian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on the same date as all other Christians: December 25. But the day of it falls on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar, due to the discrepancies between it and the Julian. And the reason the Serbian Orthodox Church (or the Russian, for that matter) does not use the Gregorian calendar has nothing to do with how "modern" or widely used it is, but the fact that it was established by a Roman Catholic Pope some 500 years after the schism between the Papacy and the Church.

One would think the Germans of all people would have a clue about religious differences, considering their history. On the other hand, knowing the Germans' history with the Serbs, this really doesn't come as a surprise.

Despite the ongoing efforts of the Germans, the Empire and the Albanians, however, there are still entirely too many Serbs keeping the faith with God, and refusing - unlike their tormentors - to bow to the one who promises "all the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them."

Celebrating the birth of their Savior, the Serbs can take comfort in the knowledge that their cause is one of hope, while that of their tormentors is truly forlorn.

A Long, Twilight Struggle

2012 began with Angelina Jolie's war porn, and just got worse from there.

Guess who's the Balrog. 

April marked the 20th anniversary of Bosnia's recognition as an independent state - and the outbreak of the (un)civil war that ensued. It's somewhat of a mystery as to why the war, which ended in late 1995, had not restarted by 1997. Though the fact that it never ended for some people, but merely continues by other means, may harbor a clue.

Speaking of never-ending wars,WW2 is apparently still on. Did you know that someone "won" it not once, but twice? The answer may surprise you. Or maybe not. Either way, 50 years later the roles had been rearranged, with the once-and-present Nazi allies becoming the Atlantic Empire's new best friends, while Hitler's enemies are smeared as Nazis reborn.

No doubt that was the intent of an "artistic prank" wherein two NGO drones got a bunch of Serbian political parties to endorse a program originally written by Joseph Goebbels. Left out of the reports was the insignificant detail that all the parties involved were pro-Empire. When facts get in the way of a good story, too bad for the facts.

Prior to the May elections in Serbia, I put together a quick guide to political parties involved. The distinctions between them were smaller than it appeared, though. On St. George's Day, the Dragon won. Sure, it seemed like a small victory when the sycophantic Boris Tadic lost the presidency to Tomislav "Undertaker" Nikolic. Soon, however, the darkest suspicions about the "progressives" and their partners in crime began to seem downright benign compared to the actual betrayal in the works.

While as late as October is still seemed as if the new-old government in Belgrade was playing stupid, they soon demonstrated they weren't playing at all. Even as the Empire proclaimed an amnesty for murderers of Serbs, Belgrade signed "agreements" and promised "platforms" to recognize the Empire's monument to evil in fact, if not in name.

The besieged Serbs in Kosovo appealed to Moscow for protection, and organized a transparent, democratic plebiscite where they overwhelmingly voted against becoming "Kosovians". While Moscow offered moral support - but not much more - Belgrade responded with betrayal, and the Empire with violence.

Adding insult to injury, throughout the year, the Empire that no one could supposedly resist was revealed as a bumbling bully. Its contempt of decency was openly on display - not just when the Serbs were concerned, but also in other places it had occupied. Its propaganda has been having less effect. The invincibility it asserted was a result of self-deception and deliberate misunderstanding. How could such hubris and stupidity in service of twisted values continue to dominate? Not because the Empire itself is strong, I think, but because its victims are weak, infested by Empire's death cult.

The hostility and downright bigotry towards the Serbs can be explained in part by money, but more so by a lust for power, and a fair bit of historical baggage. Forcing a "gay pride parade" on places like Belgrade had nothing to do with actual homosexuals, or human rights and values, but everything to do with a display of power.

Why the Serbian politicians decided to outdo their predecessors in groveling is still a riddle; perhaps because they are spineless cowards, perhaps because they really believe the Empire means them well - even though it manifestly does not. Either way, at the end of 2012, treason in Serbia is still a profitable endeavor. How long that shall remain the case, I do not know.

Back in April, as I profiled the Serbian political scene, I wrote:

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

It may appear right now that this Empire will succeed where others have repeatedly failed.

But I think not.

Faith, Force and Freedom

Looking back over 2012, it's been one of my leaner blogging years. Not because nothing was happening worth mentioning - quite the contrary - but because I saw little point in addressing people who just didn't care to listen.

When ideology or prejudice trump reality in the minds of men, discussing reality with them becomes an exercise in pointless frustration. Thinking stops, and everything becomes a conditioned response. The campaign for Emperor demonstrated this on a daily basis. So did the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook elementary. Before the victims were even buried, the usual suspects began with the usual arguments: ban guns, register the mentally ill, whatever. Control, control, control, it's always about control.

Part of that is the corruption of reasoning I did write about. Another part of it is solipsism. In America especially, countless people live their lives entirely obsessed with themselves, to the point where other people simply aren't real to them. They are like NPCs in a video game. And since one doesn't empathize with NPCs, having zero empathy for other people has become the norm. When these NPCs are seen as obstacles to one's happiness - the paramount purpose of life robbed of all other meaning - the next step is actively hating those other people, and finding ways of hurting them. The pathology has a scale, of course: from forum trolling, via committing suicide by jumping in front of a train at rush hour, to picking up a rifle and shooting up a mall, school or movie theater.

That is not to say that video games are to blame. Quite the opposite. Games offer an escape from a reality that has long since become virtual. Remember the Bushians' disdain for the "reality-based community"? The notion that they were creating reality by the sheer force of their willpower, while the pesky realists were merely observing and analyzing it? Well, they aren't the only ones to believe it, just arrogant enough to admit it openly.

Modern omnipotent government has made treating people as things into an art form. Look at the militarized police, or the callous disregard for the lives of people in invaded - oops, liberated - countries. Look at the drones and their pilots. Being a sociopath is almost a recommendation for the job.

If we're looking at a "culture of" anything to blame for the rotten mess we're living in, it's got to be this culture of narcissism, as Brendan O'Neill describes it. Guns? Serbia has the second-highest concentration of guns per capita, after the U.S., but there are no rampage murders there. The Orthodox Church, which is most definitely not concerned with an individual's feelings, might have something to do with it as well.

Of course, the Serbs have gone to the other extreme, refusing to use their weapons even for legitimate self-defense. 

Yet I've been unable to put into words the conclusion that simply leaps out from all this, for several days now. Until I saw this article. So I'll borrow Daniel Greenfield's turn of phrase, and say that what both the Serbs and the Americans need to learn is that "when you give up faith to force, then you also abandon any further reason to resist that force. Without faith, it is easier to let force win."

A Very Deliberate Injustice

ТIME cover, 9/11, 1995

As I noted before, the manifest injustice of the so-called war crimes Tribunal should hardly come as a surprise. Complaining about it is worse than worthless - it is harmful, since it only lends legitimacy to an institution that never had any from the start, and only barely managed to successfully conjure a pretense of it on a handful of occasions.

To a die-hard imperialist, who lives and breathes relativistic logic, even contemplating the possibility that the Serbs are not the blackest of villains while their enemies - supported by the Empire - are the purest of innocents would be absurd. In their minds, it is not the deed that merits condemnation, but the identity of the (alleged) perpetrator. So the Tribunal's decision to consciously render verdicts that amount to amnesty of Croatian and Albanian atrocities against the Serbs doesn't upset them in the least.

Trouble arises when people serving the Empire do so because they actually believe the official cover story - human rights, charity, justice, peace, reconciliation, etc. Such people are shocked by the Tribunal's travesty because from their standpoint, the Gotovina/Markac/Cermak and Haradinaj/Balaj/Brahimaj verdicts were stupid.

One example is David Harland, former senior UN official in Bosnia, whose essay criticizing the ICTY for "selective justice" appeared in the New York Times of all places. While making sure to repeat the dogma that the "Serbs committed many of the war’s worst crimes", Harland argues that they "were not at all alone, and it is not right, or useful, for them to carry the sole responsibility. Convicting only Serbs simply doesn't make sense in terms of justice, in terms of reality, or in terms of politics."

It is a fact, as Harland states, that "more Serbs were displaced - ethnically cleansed - by the wars in the Balkans than any other community. And more Serbs remain ethnically displaced to this day." But should he really be surprised that the Empire isn't the least interested in prosecuting the atrocities of Croats, Bosnian Muslims or Kosovo Albanians - who have, in his words, "taken ethnic cleansing to its most extreme form"?

Croats (and Albanian volunteers who went on to command the KLA) were Washington's "junkyard dogs", and the campaign commanded by the recently released generals was planned and executed with Washington's full knowledge, input and assistance. It wasn't the Europeans or the Saudis who persuaded Bosnian Muslim Alija Izetbegovic to renege on an already-signed compromise that would have spared Bosnia bloodshed, but the American ambassador Warren Zimmerman. By the time NATO troops poured into Kosovo to ensure the KLA could murder, pillage and torch with absolute impunity, killing Serbs had been a treasured Imperial practice for years.

Before Haradinaj, Gotovina and Markac, there were Naser Oric and Florim Ejupi. Oric was the Muslim warlord of Srebrenica, who boasted about raiding the surrounding Serb villages from his ostensibly demilitarized fiefdom, and taking no prisoners. He was acquitted by the ICTY as well. The Tribunal didn't even bother with Ejupi: the Albanian terrorist who had bombed a bus of Serb civilians first "escaped" from a major U.S. military base (!), and when he was eventually tracked down, arrested and convicted, the EU's "law and order mission" set him free within months.

While pretending to be even-handed might sound like a good policy, why bother? The Serbs aren't actually resisting - a succession of increasingly quisling regimes set up in 2000 has ensured that official Belgrade would serve the interests of Empire first and foremost, and never so much as contemplate the interests of Serbia. Time and again, the quislings have tolerated a veritable train of humiliations heaped on them by the Tribunal, UNMIK, EULEX, OHR, etc. A nice self-fulfilling prophecy there: treat the Serbs as cattle long enough, they begin to act like cattle, thus providing justification for the treatment.

What the Tribunal is doing isn't stupidity, but rather hubris, the boundless arrogance of a torturer whose victim has long since stopped resisting, and is practically begging for more. Whether this perception is accurate or mere wishful thinking is open to debate, but that it informs the torturer's actions is undeniable.

Harland himself doesn't have the excuse of ignorance. Quite the contrary. He has been a prosecution witness at several ICTY "trials" over the years, yet somehow never noticed that the Serbs he testified against by and large weren't charged with actual atrocities, but of a mythical crime of conspiracy invented specifically for the ICTY.

Or did he? Consider this answer of his at the "trial" of Gen. Ratko Mladic in July this year:

"A: That has been overstated. In -- that was chosen as the trigger, but had that not been the trigger the operation would have taken place a few days or weeks later or even earlier.
Q. But if Serbs -- in other words, Serbs had no way that they could avoid these NATO air-strikes according to you; is that so?
A. Not unless they stopped fighting."
(ICTY transcript, p. 879, lines 20-25)

Harland is saying that NATO would have bombed the Bosnian Serbs no matter what they had or hadn't done. Hard to believe? Not at all. Wasn't the name chosen for the bombing campaign  "Deliberate Force," of all things?

So it rings offensively naive (at best) when Harland concludes that ICTY's actions are "the opposite of what the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was created to achieve." Quite the contrary, it is precisely what it was established for: to impose a narrative of the wars that would blame exclusively the Serbs, while giving a blanket amnesty to their enemies and external sponsors thereof. It has always been about lawfare, rather than law, prejudice rather than judiciary.

This is, of course, cold comfort to the Serbs - but they have bigger problems right now than some self-appointed falsifiers of history in funny robes, or their media apologists. The ICTY's narrative will last only so long as the Empire can impose it through force and lies. And even a casual look at the world suggests that won't be the case much longer.

At which point it might be wise to remember the neglected words of Thomas Jefferson: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."

ADDENDUM

Fellow blogger Crappy Town notes the Tribunal's penchant for prosecuting Bosnian Croats, which fits perfectly into the prevailing paradigm. Why some Croats, but not others? Because the Croatian Croats were good Imperial proxies and fought Serbs ("bad guys"), while the Croats in Bosnia fought Muslims ("good guys") and therefore need to be punished. How's that for an illustration of Imperial "logic"?