tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92305922024-03-13T00:02:13.302-04:00Gray FalconCubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.comBlogger727125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-84326420648280729712024-03-04T16:29:00.002-05:002024-03-04T16:32:20.727-05:00The first time I've ever disavowed myself<p>I tend to stand by what I have written as a matter of principle, and never delete things because that would be altering the record. As someone trained in history, that's unacceptable behavior. Yet today I find myself hovering over the "delete post" button when it comes to this <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2006/09/voice-in-wilderness.html" target="_blank">September 2006 post</a>, in which I praise Keith Olbermann's vitriolic rant about George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. </p><p>I haven't changed a whole lot since then - I was a critic of Bush the Lesser and the Iraq War then, and I remain one now. As it turns out, neither has Olbermann: his rant did not come from principle, but from partisanship. He was a deranged Democrat then, and is one still. It just didn't become apparent until the Trump Derangement Syndrome hit and people like him openly lost their minds.</p><p>While I think I will keep that post, it will get a big fat asterisk from the future, as proof that even a hopelessly broken clock could be right twice a day. I hereby disavow any interpretation thereof that could be construed as an endorsement of Keith Olbermann, his positions or his character. I hope he gets the professional help he appears to need. </p>CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-45327968296396346772022-03-24T00:01:00.004-04:002022-03-24T00:01:00.191-04:00The East Still Remembers<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">1999 - 2022</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Evil then, <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2016/03/kosovo-evil-little-war.html" target="_blank">evil</a> now.</span></p><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-7140216899428979033" itemprop="description articleBody" style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 536px;"><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnjEZjnoj0NdG5DIdxI7YtefLt8CqBZ-LQcgD-tYZt8MVIghZqXzXiyPmUAq2fMYmX1G5qbKvG78j6IfsdZJ2klwufzimoBRRxyez2fcboNQndUUEBdRBHMlNwgOILwtaQYBSh/s1600/Belgrade_on_fire_1999.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #d52a33; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnjEZjnoj0NdG5DIdxI7YtefLt8CqBZ-LQcgD-tYZt8MVIghZqXzXiyPmUAq2fMYmX1G5qbKvG78j6IfsdZJ2klwufzimoBRRxyez2fcboNQndUUEBdRBHMlNwgOILwtaQYBSh/s1600/Belgrade_on_fire_1999.jpg" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0p9IkqwwtyQj55CAY9aMdv6LnTZ9S7mc6V3fDnZlt5dnOahyphenhypheng3K6aJ52ZiwYQlSAWHGqbcXJSeWOuuzH6lLxgcejAuaomXWJw8nG1_etrAKVBQ7IXD-A4E7-IWou6cKQGicen/s1600/chains1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #d52a33; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0p9IkqwwtyQj55CAY9aMdv6LnTZ9S7mc6V3fDnZlt5dnOahyphenhypheng3K6aJ52ZiwYQlSAWHGqbcXJSeWOuuzH6lLxgcejAuaomXWJw8nG1_etrAKVBQ7IXD-A4E7-IWou6cKQGicen/s1600/chains1.jpg" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqGr38lfg3K1ppu65AUo3g3oAyFSvag4M6ZaZa9Wiu-2e2PcNuOIKYkFscUBKKGC4ytt-fDng3Jb8wHv8hrkQ_3Ccrg9yYyLqSlAYhnccfagyz6qRsrD9HOo04Jg5uBM2AHOIn/s1600/bombedtodemocracy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #d52a33; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqGr38lfg3K1ppu65AUo3g3oAyFSvag4M6ZaZa9Wiu-2e2PcNuOIKYkFscUBKKGC4ytt-fDng3Jb8wHv8hrkQ_3Ccrg9yYyLqSlAYhnccfagyz6qRsrD9HOo04Jg5uBM2AHOIn/s1600/bombedtodemocracy.jpg" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglnyUNSRrhyqnD8cS8TOENKfI_ZIxx85xXxUCQ00hKHjzD9QA_G1zDb6ovVwF1cD7NDNWyZOdXCeZpu4C8SSboD74ebAzmAad3aMM_Ia9tmsQYJDZNIMJosLxRdDBRMpES6Jlk/s1600/mitrovica-v.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #d52a33; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglnyUNSRrhyqnD8cS8TOENKfI_ZIxx85xXxUCQ00hKHjzD9QA_G1zDb6ovVwF1cD7NDNWyZOdXCeZpu4C8SSboD74ebAzmAad3aMM_Ia9tmsQYJDZNIMJosLxRdDBRMpES6Jlk/s1600/mitrovica-v.jpg" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Unforgotten.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Unforgiven.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">The East Remembers.</div></div></div>CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-39128155162375180612021-12-31T23:55:00.000-05:002021-12-31T23:55:09.149-05:00Goodbye 2021<p>...and good riddance.</p><p>I can't think of a single good thing that has come out of this nightmare of a year, filled with broken promises, bait-and-switch, gaslighting, deceit and outright lies that made hypocrisy look normal and virtuous by comparison. All this misery may yet give birth to something good in the days and months to come. Yet as the tally stands just minutes before midnight, there's none to be found in 2021.</p><p>Things could carry on as they have, and get worse. Normally, on New Year's Eve, we wish for it to be otherwise - and so I shall, now. For "oft evil will shall evil mar," as the old saying goes, and I do have faith that the almighty Lord will smile on us sinners sooner or later, if we but try to earn His grace. </p>CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-58853108434335296052021-06-25T15:03:00.000-04:002021-06-25T15:03:02.374-04:00Ignore the lessons of Yugoslavia at your peril<b><i>or, why 'Balkanization' isn't what you think and "retreat to hold" strategy is doomed to fail<br /></i></b><br />On this day, 30 years ago, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence and the slow and violent death of Yugoslavia officially began. My American readers may not care about this quaint historical fact, except they should. As someone who lived through the demise of Yugoslavia, it's my duty to warn them there are entirely too many similarities between what happened there and what's afflicting their own country right about now. <div><br /></div><div>Yugoslavia, too, believed in diversity as strength (called "brotherhood and unity") and "equity" (equality of outcomes, achieved by elevating some and denigrating others). There, too, everyone was equal - but the ruling politicians were more equal than others. There, too, inflation and national debt were spiraling out of control.<br /><br />The political system was a version of Communism adapted by Dear Leader Josip Broz Tito, who was 11 years dead by that point. The country was divided into six "republics" - and one of them was subdivided further , with two provinces carved out - and ruled by a Presidency, a council of eight. Things were already falling apart, but once Germany reunited and Communism failed across eastern Europe, all of a sudden ethnic nationalism flared up.<br /><div><br /></div><div>What I'm going to say next will probably go against what you've read in the news, seen on CNN or learned from "history" books. I don't care. I know what happened because <i>I was there</i>. My goal isn't to relitigate whose cause in Yugoslavia was just (the rest of this blog speaks to that) but to address the argument of some Americans along the lines of "Balkanization is the way! Get out of cities, move to the countryside, form communities with like-minded people, build our own society there, etc." Because I don't think that will work. Let me explain why. </div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><div>In June 1991, the republics of Slovenia and Croatia moved to secede. The Yugoslav presidency was deadlocked on how to react, with one of the key votes being the representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a weak-willed Serb whose mysterious and murky elevation to that position over a better qualified candidate suddenly became clear. In the power vacuum, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) - where Marxist indoctrination trumped warfighting ability - decided to send a small, lightly armed force of fresh conscripts to "restore constitutional order" on the border between Slovenia and Austria. Due to their rules of engagement, they were ambushed and massacred by Slovenian militia.<br /><br />At this point, the political leader of Serbia (<a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2013/03/invictus.html" target="_blank">Slobodan Milosevic</a>) makes the biggest strategic mistake: he decides to let Slovenia go. On a moral level, that may have been the correct choice, as keeping the Slovenes in Yugoslavia by force seemed wrong. Yet by doing so, Yugoslavia's sovereignty and survival were effectively forfeit.<br /><br />Yugoslav military intelligence actually managed to infiltrate the Croatian government and secretly film them buying weapons from Germany and preparing for war. The footage was aired on national television. But instead of sending a force to occupy Zagreb, arrest those involved as traitors and crush the rebellion in its infancy, Belgrade did... nothing. <br /><br />When Croatia seceded, it was the local Serbs - who made up a majority on about a third of its territory, and had <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2005/04/28/whitewashing-the-holocaust" target="_blank">suffered a genocide</a> during WW2 when Croatia was an ally of Nazi Germany - rose up and counter-seceded. This was not done on orders from Belgrade, and the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) was never under Belgrade's direct command and control. This will prove important - and fatal - later on.<br /><br />At this point, it's important to note that Croatia was not fighting a "war for independence," as Zagreb claimed. The Croats' right to secede from Yugoslavia was obviously not contested - not by the disintegrating federal government, not by Milosevic, not even by the local Serbs. While doing that might have given them the upper hand from the standpoint of international law, instead they chose to dispute only the amount of territory Croatia could claim as its own. Naturally, the Croats seized the vacated high ground and claimed they were victims of "Yugo-Serbian aggression."<br /><br />The JNA actually got dragged into the conflict when Croat militias attacked their garrisons. When the JNA defended itself - de facto siding with local Serbs - the cries of "aggression" redoubled. The final ceasefire line, negotiated by the UN in late 1991, saw the Army and the Serbs in control of territories that mostly had a Serb majority. <br /><br />By then, however, the <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2004/05/20/good-fences/" target="_blank">Badinter commission</a> - a bunch of European lawyers that appointed itself the arbiter of Yugoslavia's fate - had decided that the country was "in dissolution." Though the Yugoslav constitution said its PEOPLE had the right to self-determination, the commission said no, it was was the REPUBLICS, not people, and their borders were to be considered international ones. <br /><br />In practice, this meant that the Serbs went from the legal and moral high ground (maintaining Yugoslavia as their homeland) to being minorities in Croatia and Bosnia - where its Muslim and Croat communities sought independence - and outlaws if they resisted. At the stroke of a foreign pen. <br /><br />The Serbs in Bosnia agreed to independence (see the pattern?) but sought a power-sharing agreement by which the new country would be partitioned into ethnic cantons - like Switzerland - that would guarantee their rights. Croats agreed. Muslims, backed by the US, reneged on the deal after it had already been signed.<br /><br />So what did the Serbs do? Instead of declaring the Muslim-dominated government illegitimate and its referendum illegal, they pulled back and basically abandoned several cities - most notably, the capital of Sarajevo. Their strategy was to stake out the territory where they were the majority and declared the Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SRBiH, later known as Republika Srpska, RS). The idea was to leverage their military power to negotiate a political deal. <br /><br />Belgrade had already implicitly recognized Bosnia's separation (again, perhaps the moral thing to do, but a strategic mistake), declaring the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia and Montenegro. It didn't matter - foreign powers refused to recognize it as Yugoslavia's successor, and blamed Belgrade for "aggression" against Bosnia (!). <br /><br />At this point, Muslims and Croats made a major <i>tactical </i>mistake: they attacked the JNA, which had been recalled and was retreating towards the FRY. Their officers later said this was in an attempt to capture the JNA's heavy weapons. In that, they mostly failed - but they radicalized the Serbs officers, NCOs and enlisted who might have otherwise stayed neutral to enlist in the Bosnian Serb military (VRS). One of those officers was Gen. Ratko Mladic, who took command from the ineffective JNA generals and proceeded to made quick work of Muslim commanders over the next three years. So it's not as if the Serbs were the only ones to make mistakes here.<br /><br />As a consequence of Serbs giving up the moral and legal high ground, however, their situation was grim. Yugoslavia, <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2013/05/truth-not-absolution.html">built</a> on some two million Serb lives over the two world wars, was gone. In less than a year, from June 1991 to May 1992, some two million Serbs went from being equal citizens of their own nation-state to being outlaws in their own homes. Their own RS and RSK were considered rogue states, while the separatists in Croatia and the Muslim government of Bosnia were internationally recognized as legitimate! That whole "let them go and hold our own in the countryside" worked out <i>so</i> well, didn't it?</div><div><br />It gets worse. By 1993, the US and NATO are openly involved, aiding Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims. Washington stops a war between Croats and Muslims - who had fallen out over territory - and forges them into an anti-Serb alliance. That's another example of their strategic error, as they thought it temporary but it's ended up poisoning their relations ever since. But for the US purposes, it worked perfectly.<br /><br />UN peacekeepers were swept aside in May 1995, by US-trained Croatian troops, who overwhelmed the RSK enclave of Western Slavonia ("Operation Flash"). Then, in August, Croats launch a <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2018/08/americas-junkyard-dogs-operation-storm.html" target="_blank">blitzkrieg</a> against the rest of RSK. Neither the UN nor Yugoslavia lift a finger; it is said that Milosevic was either angry the RSK leadership was disobeying him, or was trying to disavow them to protect FRY proper. As we'll see later, it didn't work. With the RSK wiped out, the Croat troops move into Bosnia, while NATO launches airstrikes against the RS.<br /><br />What happens then is an anomaly. The US sidelines the RS leadership by charging them with war crimes, so Milosevic would have to negotiate on behalf of all Serbs - thus validating the Narrative about the wars being "Serbian aggression." Yet by some miracle (if you read my <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/malic/2003/05/29/bosnias-founding-stepfather/" target="_blank">review</a> of Richard Holbrooke's memoir, you'll understand) he somehow manages to negotiate the <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/322974-dayton-bosnia-armistice-anniversary/" target="_blank">Dayton Peace Agreement</a>. The Muslims ended up being the reluctant ones in Dayton. They believed they could hold out and achieve "final victory" - i.e. destruction and expulsion of Serbs like in RSK - but the Clinton administration needed a peace deal right then and there, so it pressured them to sign. <br /><br />Dayton pulled a partial victory from the jaws of defeat. While the RS leadership was angry that Milosevic gave up "too much" territory - including all of Sarajevo - they eventually realized that Dayton gave them recognition as a legitimate political entity within Bosnia. <br /><br />Meanwhile, the RSK was a total loss. Even the eastern region bordering with FRY was eventually handed over to Zagreb, "reintegrated" into Croatia. Two thirds of the Serbs living there pre-war had been expelled, and any who thought of returning - mostly the very old - harassed and abused. <br /><br />Being a "key factor of peace" in Dayton didn't save Milosevic, though. In March 1999, the US launches <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2016/03/kosovo-evil-little-war.html" target="_blank">an attack on Serbia</a> itself and occupies Kosovo, on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists there. Because suddenly the Badinter opinion is irrelevant and the law is whatever NATO says it is. <br /><br />The Serbs complain this is unfair and point to a UN resolution (1244) that says Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia. So the Americans organize a "<a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2017/10/remembering-patient-zero-of-color.html" target="_blank">color revolution</a>" in Belgrade in October 2000, get rid of Milosevic, and have him put on trial for war crimes - where he dies under mysterious circumstances, without a verdict, in March 2006. Two months after his death, the US-backed regime in Montenegro <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2006/05/montenegrin-victory.html" target="_blank">rigs</a> the independence referendum and the last vestige of Yugoslavia is officially abolished.<br /><br />Macedonia (aka FYROM, now North Macedonia) got some UN peacekeepers in 1992 out of fear of "Serbian invasion" that never materialized. Instead, its service to the West was repaid by forcing it to federalize in 2001, after US-backed Albanian separatists claimed a third of its territory. Again, some rebellions are more legitimate than others. Might makes right, etc.<br /><br />While the sordid history of Yugoslavia's demise is an object lesson in the perils of making deals with foreign empires to fight your wars - only to realize that you were used to fight theirs, and to hell with your goals - that's cold comfort to the Serbs, or the point I set out to make about the merits of the "retreat and Balkanize" strategy.<br /><br />Remember, at no point did it occur to anyone in the Serb leadership to deny Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims or "Macedonians" their independence (Albanians were different; they had a nation-state next door, and were trying to claim historic Serbian lands). The prevailing thinking every step of the way was "we'll retreat and regroup and try to preserve our own and maybe they'll leave us alone, and if they don't we'll fight until they do." <br /><br />How did that Grand Strategy work out? Objectively speaking, overwhelmingly poorly. Dayton was an outlier, obviously. And even Dayton didn't really end the war, but only its <i>kinetic</i> dimension. Since then, the Muslims have endeavored to dismantle the RS and create a centralized state by means ranging from lawfare and leveraging foreign support to tactical demographics (targeted resettling of internally displaced people) and even a rigged census. <br /><br />Croats and Albanians did not stop until they claimed all the territory they could, and expelled or killed all the Serbs living there that could be a "disrupting factor." As I just described, the Bosnian Muslims are still working on it. The "let them go we'll protect the Serbs' minority rights" backfired spectacularly in Montenegro as well, where the NATO-backed regime embarked on a campaign of aggressive nation-building and historical revisionism intended to turn the once-proudest part of Serbdom into a new group identity that's rabidly anti-Serb.<br /><br />THIS is why I am skeptical of Americans who believe some kind of peaceful separation and Balkanization of their own country is, or may, be possible. Once you cede legitimacy to the other side, especially an enemy that has no intent or incentive to leave you alone - but seeks to either subjugate or eliminate you outright - you lose the war even before the first bullet is fired. <br /><br />Believe me. I was there. <br /></div></div></div></div></div>CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-21637884240130787672021-03-24T13:25:00.001-04:002021-03-24T13:43:50.191-04:00Kosovo: Still an Evil Little WarMarch 24, 1999 is a date that rightly lives in infamy. On that day, NATO launched an unprovoked war of naked aggression, <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2005/03/24/an-evil-little-war/">violating</a> its own charter and international law, while claiming to be on a "humanitarian" mission.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAnpu6MSBc_wAVaNKO295QmVnRS6X9DRV-lwjDOH5r4szLOr0IHDY1VzqPqbx5ydj6yBQAEelW_fdGsohh-RCzOnp7Lmh22N-9XuaR-LP2ZqI8HCafxsJ1aVSIOjodxzxivxPr/s1440/chains1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAnpu6MSBc_wAVaNKO295QmVnRS6X9DRV-lwjDOH5r4szLOr0IHDY1VzqPqbx5ydj6yBQAEelW_fdGsohh-RCzOnp7Lmh22N-9XuaR-LP2ZqI8HCafxsJ1aVSIOjodxzxivxPr/s320/chains1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>For 78 days, the outnumbered and outgunned Yugoslavia (which would later be split into Serbia and Montenegro) <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2009/03/kosovo-war-ten-years-on.html">resisted</a>, turning back ground attacks from Albania, capturing a trio of US soldiers, and even shooting down a F-117 "stealth" bomber. In the end, abandoned by all and threatened with carpet bombing, the government in Belgrade accepted a compromise armistice - which NATO immediately tore up, letting the Albanian separatists terrorize the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMtjWxuOIbg_FddJW9q3vi21ZRLLizHjAxxyRNr6_fuoc4kAs10khYre4ARvBXplt4aUQ9OqV_Pi2vTi0U89kOWbq49aeKpzIJcfkNSR6EJJxQj9UCdRW_E7b4evSCKWyLXOig/s599/wedidit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="599" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMtjWxuOIbg_FddJW9q3vi21ZRLLizHjAxxyRNr6_fuoc4kAs10khYre4ARvBXplt4aUQ9OqV_Pi2vTi0U89kOWbq49aeKpzIJcfkNSR6EJJxQj9UCdRW_E7b4evSCKWyLXOig/s320/wedidit.jpg" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div>Thousands died in the war. Tens of thousands have died since, from cancers caused by depleted uranium dust. Most non-Albanians were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo, and the province turned over to warlords and organized crime. In 2008, the province <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2010/07/beyond-law.html">illegally</a> declared independence, which is not yet recognized by the UN.<br /><br />Thanks to the shameless propaganda and <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2010/07/international-court-of-injustice.html">spin,</a> the Kosovo War is considered by most American politicians to be a great success and even a shining example of virtue in the "liberal world order" the US is upholding through its military might. Only one candidate in the 2016 election <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-edge/337034-kosovo-us-candidates-war/">dared disagree</a> with that conventional wisdom even a little; once elected, he ended up sticking with the inertia of US policy, delivering a pointless "normalization agreement" that did something Israel, a bit for the "personal project" of the Clintons, and nothing at all for the US. He was then replaced by an establishment warmonger.<div> <div><div>Since the war, Serbia has served as the test bed for the first "color revolution" (October 5, 2000) and turned into a failed state ruled by a succession of servile slugs, each worse than the one before. The Atlantic Empire continued to enable Albanian aggression, in hopes of <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2007/04/jihadists-take-note.html">rekindling its romance</a> with dar-al-Islam even as it bombed and invaded Iraq, <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/03/about-liberated-libya.html">Libya</a> and Syria and fomented revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere that claimed even more Muslim lives.</div><br />Yet the Kosovo War served as a wake-up call for Russia, which had until then lionized the West even as it was being robbed blind and buried alive by Western "democratizers" and their domestic helpers. Within six months of NATO's land grab, Vladimir Putin was at the helm in the Kremlin. The rest, as they say, is history.<div><br /></div><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">🔻<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OTD?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OTD</a> in 1⃣9⃣9⃣9⃣ <a href="https://twitter.com/NATO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NATO</a> started bombing <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yugoslavia?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Yugoslavia</a>. For the first time since <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WWII?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WWII</a> an aggression was committed against a sovereign European nation, an active participant in the anti-Hitler coalition, one of the <a href="https://twitter.com/UN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UN</a> founders.<br />🔻<a href="https://t.co/EZqgWPmryq">https://t.co/EZqgWPmryq</a> <a href="https://t.co/fdPjy0eFz6">pic.twitter.com/fdPjy0eFz6</a></p>— Russian Embassy in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) <a href="https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/1374734677542592512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 24, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />It is tempting to declare the saga of Kosovo over, 21 years after the war, as the quisling regime in Belgrade is busily recognizing the Albanian land grab. But the Atlantic Empire wouldn't be the first to write the Serbs off and declare them conquered and beaten, only to see them rise again. <div><br /></div><div>Next year in Prizren. The East Remembers.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>(If this sounds familiar, it's because you may have read an earlier version <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2017/03/kosovo-evil-little-war-turns-18.html" target="_blank">here</a>)</i></div></div></div></div>CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-76381505466290672632020-07-07T11:25:00.001-04:002020-07-07T11:25:48.596-04:00A tale of two civilizations, or why there is hope<div><br /></div><div>Last month, after the coronavirus-delayed Victory Parade in Moscow marking the 75th anniversary of the triumph over Nazi Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to nearby Rzhev to unveil a new monument.</div><div><br /></div><div>The 25-meter memorial pays homage to uncounted Soviet soldiers who perished in the Rzhev salient between 1941 and 1943, in bitter fighting described as a "meat grinder." The monument was reportedly entirely crowdfunded, designed by young architects, and depicts a soldier turning into a flock of cranes.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxh9qtP1YW5lK4HKuTy68KtXFfZR5j_oqcfdSBNEcdS78MPVqtxH_UhaHMS3XcY3FBx-IHLsH6f8F1QGKT0May_uFzITYL4EoMzB09PbFhg8uDpGn_WL6EWSjvViDOk5vhGUDY/s2600/rzhev_monument.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1470" data-original-width="2600" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxh9qtP1YW5lK4HKuTy68KtXFfZR5j_oqcfdSBNEcdS78MPVqtxH_UhaHMS3XcY3FBx-IHLsH6f8F1QGKT0May_uFzITYL4EoMzB09PbFhg8uDpGn_WL6EWSjvViDOk5vhGUDY/w500-h283/rzhev_monument.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Cranes have a powerful symbolism in Soviet and Russian memory of WW2. A 1957 film about the suffering of civilians is named "The cranes are flying," and the flock of birds seen in the sky bookends the plot. A decade later, Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov will write "Cranes," a heart-rending poem about fallen soldiers turning into white cranes. It was set to music in 1969, and recorded by actor and singer Mark Bernes shortly before he died of cancer. Hence the cranes, you see.</div><div><br /></div><div>Shortly before the Rzhev monument opened, Putin also unveiled the grand cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, at the heart of a new WW2 museum outside Moscow.</div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">It's interesting to observe the contrast between the West and Russia recently. As the West has been dismantling its monuments, Russia has been erecting massive Orthodox churches, like the new Armed Forces Cathedral, and WWII memorials, like the one of Rzhev, in this month alone. <a href="https://t.co/jNyNqCIuBK">pic.twitter.com/jNyNqCIuBK</a></p>— Nina ☦️ Byzantina (@NinaByzantina) <a href="https://twitter.com/NinaByzantina/status/1278047482694365185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 30, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><div>Meanwhile, the "greatest country in the world" that is fond of deriding Russia as a "gas station with missiles" is undergoing a Cultural Revolution-style purge of monuments, revision of history and destruction of memory. </div><div><br /></div><div>It may have started with century-dead Confederate generals, but quickly escalated to Union generals, Catholic saints, Christopher Columbus, and even the founding fathers of the American republic. Absolutely nothing is sacred, and everything must be torn down in the name of intersectional social justice or something. </div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">This is what a dying civilization looks like. <a href="https://t.co/HQeeixN68z">https://t.co/HQeeixN68z</a></p>— John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) <a href="https://twitter.com/johnddavidson/status/1278368980022038531?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 1, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>The irony is that, insofar as the monument-toppling revolutionaries have an articulated agenda beyond destruction, it's race-based Communism. Russia went through that starting a century ago, and though it took a while, it has obviously recovered rather well, as physical evidence shows. So, there is hope. Nothing is inevitable. One just has to be willing to learn from the mistakes of others, lest they be repeated. </div>CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-92001001087113171942020-05-23T12:38:00.001-04:002020-05-23T12:38:39.828-04:00On 'historical grievances,' or how to ask the wrong questions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My latest commentary piece for RT (I have <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/authors/nebojsa-malic/" target="_blank">my own page</a> there now, you should check it out) tries to explain why the rift between Poland and Russia over recent history is insurmountable. It's not about the history itself, but how the two countries approach it - from two completely different perspectives that are mutually exclusive.<br />
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‘While Russia has chosen to regard its <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WWII?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WWII</a> experience in the traditional terms of heroism and sacrifice, Poland has opted for a very postmodern angle of victimhood’<br /><br />- Nebojsa Malic (<a href="https://twitter.com/NebojsaMalic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NebojsaMalic</a>)<a href="https://t.co/vSjcWu2JSE">https://t.co/vSjcWu2JSE</a></div>
— RT (@RT_com) <a href="https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1264108806981607424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 23, 2020</a></blockquote>
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I'd like to add some context to what I said there, not because it's necessary for the argument I made - because it stands just fine on its own - but because I know it will reflexively be denounced as "Russian propaganda" because of where it was published.<br />
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My own people, the Serbs, have grappled with both sides of this discussion. For instance, the argument how "May 1945 wasn't liberation but the beginning of Communist occupation" has been persuasively made by many a Serb. I explored the reasoning behind it <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/05/victory-day.html" target="_blank">here</a>, back in 2012. But there are important distinctions to be made here.<br />
<br />First of all, the <i>only</i> people in Eastern Europe who can plausibly make the claim that they did not deserve "Communist occupation" are those who did not join the Axis or contribute volunteers to the SS - so basically, Czechs, Poles and Serbs. That said, those three may want to reassess to which extent their plight resulted from trusting Britain, and maybe readjust their blame scale accordingly.<br />
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Even the rabidly anti-Communist Serbs don't have the kind of visceral hostility towards Russia displayed today in Czechia or Poland, because they understand that a) Russia is not the Soviet Union, b) ethnic Russians were among the most numerous victims of Communism and c) the USSR had at best a marginal role in bringing Communists to power in Yugoslavia. That last point is obviously not applicable to Czechs and Poles, but it matters.<br />
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Much is being made of Soviet "brutality" during the Cold War. Tell me, however, did the Czechs or Poles end up converting the script in which they write, or butchering their languages? Were they partitioned into new and hostile nations, with cultures and values intrinsically opposite to their own? Because that's literally what happened to the Serbs. Did the Soviets cover up the Nazi atrocities against Poles or Czechs, the way Tito minimized the Croatian genocide of Serbs? Even Katyn, the mass execution of captured Polish officers by Stalin's secret police, is nowhere close to the absolute or relative numbers of Serbs killed in the process of imposing Communism on them.<br />
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As I hope I've made clear, we'd have a quite a bit of "victim points" in the metaphorical bank. But the postmodern Western narrative in which being a victim is the fountainhead of virtue is alien to us, so we haven't rewritten our history around it.<br />
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Meanwhile, the Czechs and Poles were so eager for "freedom" that they rushed into the arms of the EU and NATO. That's not freedom or independence, that's just switching masters. The great irony is that the EU and NATO <i>actually </i>practice nation-destroying cultural, societal and linguistic engineering, the scale and scope of which would make the Soviets blush.<br />
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Let's not even get into the sheer hypocrisy of joining NATO in March 1999, even as it had the <i>Luftwaffe </i>launch its first bombing raids since WW2. You <i>really</i> don't want to have that discussion with me.<br />
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As for the Russians, I keep hearing from them the same kind of talk that has bedeviled the Serbs for decades, which can be best summed up as "What do we need to do for Them to stop hating us?" To which I try to explain that there is no right answer to what amounts to being the wrong question.<br />
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Even if it were somehow conceivable for a self-respecting Russian state to renounces the Soviet heroes of WW2 - which it absolutely should not - it will gain nothing by doing so. The "West" has a problem not with Communism or the Soviet Union, but with Russia itself.<br />
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Oh sure, Washington and Brussels talk about democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, human rights, etc. But one, they don't actually practice any of that at home (and <i>that's</i> an argument I'd enjoy explaining in detail), and two, none of those existed in Russia of the 1990s, when President Boris Yeltsin literally sent tanks to bomb the parliament. Yet Yeltsin was beloved in the West, as was the weak, lawless, subservient Russia of his time. If that doesn't tell you something, I'll just be wasting time drawing you a picture. </div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-59274459534952652252020-02-27T12:43:00.001-05:002020-02-27T12:43:47.170-05:00Kosovo is Serbia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />March 24 will mark the 21st anniversary of NATO’s occupation of Serbia’s Kosovo province, and so we reaffirm: Kosovo is Serbia. Serbia does not and will not ever recognize Kosovo’s claims of sovereignty. We call on NATO to end its occupation of Kosovo.<br /><br />NATO’s occupation of Kosovo and its increasing militarization of the province is a threat to the world’s common security. Albanian occupation authorities continue their assault on human rights and fundamental freedoms, brutally silencing critics in civil society and the media, and curtailing religious freedom. Hundreds of individuals from Kosovo, including members of the Serb community, have been imprisoned by NATO-backed ethnic Albanian authorities – and some subjected to torture – for peaceful opposition to the occupation.<br /><br />Members of the Serb community continue to experience unjustified raids on their homes and churches, surveillance and intimidation by occupation authorities, restrictions on cultural events, and the criminalization of their representatives. Occupation authorities severely limit religious freedom, target religious believers with bogus terrorism charges, and destroy Orthodox Church shrines. Serbia calls on the United States to free all Serbs wrongfully imprisoned in Kosovo in retaliation for their peaceful dissent and to end Albanian abuses of fundamental freedoms in Kosovo.<br /><br />Twenty one years on, the US and NATO continue to rely on lies and disinformation in their failed attempt to legitimize the illegitimate. Their efforts are doomed to failure. The world will never forget NATO’s unprovoked invasion of Serbia. We condemn NATO’s illegal actions in Kosovo and its continued aggressive actions against Serbia, and will maintain sanctions against the US until NATO returns control of Kosovo to Serbia and fully implements its commitments under UN Security Council Resolution 1244.<br /><br /><i>(Inspired by <a href="https://www.state.gov/crimea-is-ukraine-3/">this</a>. Only the names were changed. See if you can spot the raging hypocrisy.)</i><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-32658925366702707372020-01-03T14:23:00.003-05:002020-01-03T14:23:27.463-05:00Killing Soleimani<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you thought 2019 was suffering from a time-compression effect, where every day seemed like a month and every month a year, it looks like 2020 is going to be more of the same.<br /><br />Last night, US helicopters or drones attacked a convoy outside the Baghdad airport in Iraq. The convoy was transporting several several leaders of the Iraqi Shia militia that Washington blamed for Tuesday's siege of the US embassy in Baghdad, but also Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran. Later that evening, US President Donald Trump confirmed Soleimani was the target of the operation. Seems like several high-ranking militia leaders were just a bonus objective, so to speak.<div>
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I won't get into whether Soleimani was a terrorist - as the American Empire claims - or not. There is ample evidence that his forces contributed massively to the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, however, and among the people celebrating his death are some of the vilest neocon warmongers known to humanity, including the crew responsible for the 2003 invasion of Iraq that was a <i>prima facie </i>crime against peace.</div>
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There is no doubt, however, that the hit was a quintessentially <i>imperial</i> act. What else do you call assassinating someone who is traveling openly with diplomatic papers, in a country where the US is not at war and its troops only have a tenuous legal pretext for being present? States care about sovereignty, legality and legitimacy; empires do not.</div>
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What's especially ironic is that, while he acts like the God-Emperor of memes abroad, Trump is the polar opposite at home, either powerless or unwilling to do anything - aside from tweeting - about the media-Democrat-Deep State complex that is relentlessly persecuting his supporters, or anyone who dares step out of the ever-shifting line they keep redrawing.</div>
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One would think the domestic "Resistance" would be a lot more circumspect with an Emperor that is willing to be this ruthless abroad, but they're not. That should tell you a thing or three about the real character of the Empire, and the extent of Trump's actual power.</div>
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-22145300474109156152019-10-11T14:44:00.000-04:002019-10-11T14:44:07.291-04:00'Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
Since at least 1945, the US has treated people around the world like pawns on the grand chessboard (as <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2017/05/sic-transit-zbig.html">Darth Zbigniew</a> titled his <i>magnum opus</i>). Yet time and again, I see leaders and entire nations convince themselves that <b>this time </b>it will be different.</div>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
EU summit to discuss <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Turkey?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Turkey</a> sanctions next week – Paris<br /> <br />STORY: <a href="https://t.co/77Mph1vsCY">https://t.co/77Mph1vsCY</a><br />VIDEO: Civilians in northeastern <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Syria?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Syria</a> flee Turkish <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OperationPeaceSpring?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OperationPeaceSpring</a> <a href="https://t.co/Zs6BoK7DLc">pic.twitter.com/Zs6BoK7DLc</a></div>
— RT (@RT_com) <a href="https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1182616835587338241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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That <b>this time</b>, they will get Washington to fight and win their wars for them, and then have their backs forever, because freedom and democracy and human rights, or whatever. That <b>they </b>are different, better, more deserving.<br />
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<br /></div>
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It may even seem like that's happening, for a while - a year, or four, or ten, or even twenty. But it never lasts. It can't. And each and every time, they curse Washington's sudden but inevitable betrayal, wondering why they had to suffer the sad fate of a used and discarded tool - not realizing that's exactly what they were to Washington, even as they thought it was the other way around.</div>
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Time and again, this happens. Because leaders and entire nations refuse to learn the simple truth that Empires have no friends, partners or allies - only vassals and victims. </div>
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-13612914378124399792019-09-12T07:00:00.000-04:002019-09-12T07:00:01.504-04:00The Day (& 18 Years) After<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
From <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m091301.html">Intersections of Fate</a> (Antiwar.com, September 13, 2001):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
America is now emerging from the shock of Black Tuesday with an understandable desire to avenge its dead. Many suggestions on how to do that are outlandish, and some border on insanity. If the most vocal warmongers get their way, <b>this country would become embroiled in an endless war against the entire world,</b> destroying entire cities at a whim. Any effort to make the world safe for America while making the world less safe for everyone else is ultimately both futile and paradoxical.<br />
Opposing all terrorism as a principle is a truly noble endeavor, one which the author of these lines would eagerly join. Experiences in the Balkans point to a different reality, though. <b>One cannot fight terrorism and use it at the same time.</b> (emphasis added)</blockquote>
From <a href="http://war%20without%20end/">War Without End</a> (September 27, 2001):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Far from the eyes of the American public, still intently focused on a scorched patch of mountains in central Asia, the first battle of "Operation Enduring Freedom" ("Supreme Irony" having been too obvious) has already been fought. No shots were fired. No lives were lost, not yet. But <b>the battle – and with it, perhaps the entire war – was lost</b>.<br />
[...]<br />
This week’s events in the Balkans <b>clearly show that the war on terrorism is anything but</b>, and that the only benefactor of Black Tuesday will be the <b>apocalyptic vision of American Empire, now finally able to assert itself in a war without end</b>.</blockquote>
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From <a href="http://the%20day%20nothing%20changed/">The Day Nothing Changed</a> (September 12, 2002):</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The time was right to <b>re-examine America's Balkans policies</b> of the past decade, and possibly even extricate itself from an Imperial commitment in the peninsula that seemed irrelevant and wasteful in the light of the new "War on Terror." Was this done? No.<br />
[...]<br />
The aftermath of Black Tuesday was a golden opportunity to redefine America as a Republic, not an Empire. <b>It was missed</b>.</blockquote>
From <a href="http://the%20lost%20terror%20war/">The Lost Terror War</a> (September 11, 2003)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
George [W.] Bush's claim that America was after terrorists everywhere was <b>seriously undermined from the very beginning by its continued support for terrorists in the Balkans</b>...</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Those familiar with events in Kosovo and Macedonia, and certain personalities in Bosnia, were forced to conclude that terrorism was considered "evil" only when it targeted Americans. Others were fair game, especially when the terrorists were American "allies."</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[...]</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Americans desperately need to decide whether to support a policy that aims to create <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m092602.html">a global Balkans</a>, where US power and hypocrisy rule supreme. They should know that in the real Balkans, where US power is unchallenged, terrorism thrives...</blockquote>
From <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2014/09/eppur-si-muove.html">Eppur si muove</a> (Gray Falcon, September 11, 2014),<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I've said everything I've cared to say over the past thirteen years - how <b>one cannot fight terrorism and support it at the same time</b>, how <b>there are no "good" terrorists</b> just because they currently serve one's agenda, how it's <b>madness to appease jihadists in hopes of earning their gratitude</b>, etc. etc. Go through the posts <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/search?q=9%2F11">tagged 9/11</a> if you wish, and see for yourselves whether the questions I've posed are not just as relevant today as a year ago, or five, or ten.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And I stand by my contention that <b>there was never any war on terror(ism): the grand crusade was <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2011/05/dont-you-dare-call-it-victory.html">all about power</a></b>.</blockquote>
Memory eternal to those who perished on 9/11. Maybe some day we can actually make sure their deaths have not been in vain. </div>
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-29346559532904502192019-09-08T14:30:00.000-04:002019-09-11T22:29:43.435-04:00Some thoughts on guns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;">(another collection of takes from Twitter, rearranged and slightly expanded for your convenience in this medium)</i><br />
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Before you endorse a ban on "assault weapons," take a deep breath. There is no such thing.<br />
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The term "assault rifle" is literally a translation of <i>Sturmgewehr</i>, a name bestowed by Adolf Hitler himself on a strange hybrid of a rifle and an automatic pistol that Nazi weaponmakers had developed behind his back.<br />
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The "AR" in AR-15 does not stand for "assault rifle" but for "ArmaLite Rifle," its maker.<br />
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Military - i.e. fully automatic - weapons in civilian hands have been illegal in the US since 1938. The so-called "assault weapons ban" of 1994 relied on arbitrary COSMETIC features of weapons. It was easily circumvented, and did nothing to prevent the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.<br />
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A ban on "semi-automatic" weapons would leave only revolvers, bolt-action rifles and some shotguns legal. Good luck with that.<br />
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American founders understood that "certain inalienable rights" made the difference between a citizen and a subject: freedom of speech, due process, and the "right to keep and bear arms." That is why they are in the Constitution, via the Bill of Rights. If you can't understand that this is fundamental to America, and why, then this might not be the country for you - whether you were born here or not.</div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-56976484426583442012019-09-06T22:19:00.000-04:002019-09-11T22:20:36.216-04:00 Decoding US politics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>(or, a collection of takes from Twitter, rearranged and slightly expanded for your convenience in this medium)</i></div>
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There are two "filters" that make it possible to accurately decode approximately 97% of US politics. One is projection - the tendency to project one's own misdeeds on someone else, preferably the designated evildoer. The other is "who/whom," named after V.I. Lenin's famous distillation of politics.<br />
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To the who/whom crowd, it doesn't matter what you say or do. It's all about WHO YOU ARE. If they've designated you as virtuous, you can do no wrong, and if they've designated you as villainous, you can do no right. And there is no persuading them otherwise.<br />
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"Everyone that disagrees with me is racist, everything I disagree with is a conspiracy theory, and anything that challenges my current feelings is dangerous hate speech that should be banned and its authors deplatformed. This is called liberal democracy."</div>
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If you are screaming about something when X does it to Y, but not when Y does it to X, you're not principled, you're a hypocrite.<br />
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Semantic word games and slaying straw men aren't "fact-checking," but gaslighting.<br />
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US President Donald Trump’s tactic has been the same all along: condemn something that's obviously deserving of condemnation, then watch his critics go nuts trying to defend the indefensible. It keeps working in his favor every time, yet his enemies keep taking the bait over and over. Remarkable.<br />
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Trump's "superpower" (whether you consider him a hero or a villain) is to reveal reality that has long been obfuscated by both pretty and ugly lies.<br />
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You're welcome.</div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-76604233649697531312019-06-29T17:14:00.004-04:002019-06-29T17:14:51.332-04:00RIP Justin Raimondo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I am old enough to remember the dawn of the now-bygone Blog Age, when the internet was new and full of promise. A time that offered a choice to ignore the mainstream media and its "facts" (or rather, fantasies) about the wars half the world away - or in my case, on my doorstep - because there were people posting their first-hand accounts online. </div>
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One of those places was Antiwar.com, where I checked in daily during the Kosovo War of 1999 (a formative experience for me, in many ways), and kept returning to in the sordid aftermath. Justin Raimondo's "Behind the Headlines" column was a breath of fresh air in the fetid swamp or mainstream media garbage, which all followed the same talking points that I <i>knew</i> were lies from just a few years prior, when I <i>lived</i> all that and more in Bosnia.</div>
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I had poured my frustration with the lies, propaganda, fake news and atrocity porn out in "letters to the editor" format essays that ended up being posted on a couple of websites. Somehow - I don't remember exactly how - one of those texts made it to Antiwar.com. It was late 2000 by that point, and the "color revolution" was about to happen in Serbia. So imagine my shock when Justin himself reached out to me and asked if I would be the Balkans columnist for Antiwar.com.</div>
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Would I ever! And so I did. </div>
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Over the next 14 years, I learned a lot from Justin - about writing, about liberty, about perseverance. I am what I am today in great part thanks to writing hundreds of essays and blog posts published by Antiwar.com.</div>
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When he announced he had cancer, but was responding well to treatment, I was hopeful. When he stopped writing and tweeting, I feared the worst. He passed away on June 27.</div>
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The cause of liberty - and of America's redemption from Empire to the republic it was meant to be - has lost one of its greatest champions. I have lost a dear colleague and a mentor. But Justin's legacy will endure so long as people remember him, and carry on the torch of freedom, non-aggression and peace that he held forth for so long. </div>
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Now his watch has ended. May he rest in peace. But Antiwar.com is still around. And its current writers and editors - as well as alumni like me, who have moved on to other things but still believe in its mission - still have a war against war to fight, and win. </div>
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Let's be about it.</div>
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-45278816084275431862019-06-15T12:18:00.001-04:002019-06-15T12:18:20.737-04:00Some recent writings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just because I've neglected posting here for a while doesn't mean I haven't been busy at work. We live in interesting times, after all.<br />
<br />
Of the things I'd like to point out here, I've written on the <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/459938-iran-us-tiger-repellent/" target="_blank">drumbeat of war</a> with Iran, and the possibility Justin Raimondo's theory is correct and all this inept imperialism is a <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/458688-trump-neocons-iran-venezuela/" target="_blank">feature, not a bug</a>.<br />
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I have also touched on the finale of 'Game of Thrones' and the <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/460083-game-thrones-powerful-story/" target="_blank">very real lesson</a> about the power of narratives, however poorly it was communicated in the show.<br />
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Closer to home, I touched on the <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/461635-kosovo-albright-clinton-monument/" target="_blank">embarrassing idolatry</a> of "Kosovarianians" for their imperial overlords, and the <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/461819-clark-serbia-kosovo-russia/" target="_blank">self-serving lies</a> they continue to tell to justify their crime.<br />
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I've also touched on the Culture War currently affecting the Empire itself, an <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/452511-social-media-censorship-bans/" target="_blank">ongoing conflict</a> between the mainstream <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/461916-clickbait-media-censorship-youtube/" target="_blank">media and Big Tech</a>, and the dissidents caught in the crossfire.<br />
<br />
So if you're still hanging around these parts, give these a read. I promise I'll write more soon. </div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-10992644805597063202019-01-18T17:01:00.000-05:002019-01-18T17:01:03.393-05:00Putin in Serbia: what means?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
What better occasion for my first post here in 2019 than President Vladimir Putin's first foreign trip this year!<br />
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Putin's 1st official trip of 2019<a href="https://t.co/LdUMu5Mzpa">https://t.co/LdUMu5Mzpa</a></div>
— RT (@RT_com) <a href="https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1086173805960138752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
The one-day visit to the last holdout against NATO’s ambitions in the Balkans may have been somewhat short on substance, but was certainly loaded with symbolism.<br /><br />Even before he landed, the Russian leader was given an honor guard by Serbian air force MiGs, a <a href="https://www.rt.com/business/405520-russia-mig-fighter-jets-serbia/">2017 gift from Moscow</a> to replace those destroyed by NATO during the 1999 air campaign that ended with the occupation of Serbia’s province of Kosovo. Russia has refused to recognize Kosovo’s US-backed declaration of independence, while the US and EU have insisted on it.<br /><br />Upon landing, Putin began his first official trip of 2019 by paying respects to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Belgrade from Nazi occupation in 1944. While most Serbians haven’t forgotten their historical brotherhood in arms with Russia, it did not hurt to <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/445146-ukraine-west-fascism-threat/">remind the West</a> just who did the bulk of the fighting against Nazi Germany back in World War II.<br /><br /><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>(Read the rest <a href="https://on.rt.com/9mif" target="_blank">on RT.com</a>)<br />
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A couple things left on the editing room floor: Yes, Bosnia-Herzegovina is technically not in NATO either, but it's basically still a EU/NATO protectorate, so it doesn't count. It was also blatantly obvious that Vucic sought to use Putin to bolster his credibility in Serbia, but Putin deftly sidestepped that by saying only "Thank you for your friendship" to the crowd gathered outside the church and carrying on with his visit.<br />
<br />
The point a lot of people miss is that Russia can definitely tell the difference between Serbia and whoever rules it, which is a distinction lost on not just the West, but many of its acolytes and cultists on the ground.</div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-2858790869368968292018-09-14T11:35:00.002-04:002018-09-14T13:00:38.066-04:00Obsession, hubris and downfall: Austria-Hungary and the Great War<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Folly and Malice: The Hapsburg Empire, the Balkans, and the Start of World War One </i>by John Zametica<br />
<a href="https://shepheard-walwyn.co.uk/product/folly-and-malice-habsburg-first-world-war-one/" target="_blank">Shepheard-Walwyn</a>, London, 2017<br />
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The centenary of the Great War has occasioned many historical retrospectives of the event that fundamentally changed the world, with not a few historians attempting to retroactively reshape the narrative to suit the current political and ideological climate.<br />
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Simply put, the 21st-century revisionists are seeking to project the blame for the war onto their once and future favorite bogeymen, Russia - and Serbia, on whose behalf Nicholas II entered the war - going so far as describing the 1903 May Coup as the root cause of all ills that befell European empires in 1914-18.<br />
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I've <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2013/05/twisted-projections-of-conjured-present.html" target="_blank">referred to this</a> phenomenon before, and written not a few <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-great-war-again.html" target="_blank">essays about WW1</a> myself, before work diverted my time and resources from further dwelling on the matter. The short answer is that the above-referenced argument is entirely bogus. For the long answer, I urge you all to read an <i>exhaustively</i> researched tome by John Zametica, "Folly and Malice."</div>
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And I do mean exhaustively: of the book's 766 pages, over 100 are taken up by endnotes and bibliographical references. The hardcover edition is a doorstop, no getting around it. My running criticism of Serbian historians is that they tend to produce hefty academic volumes, suitable for scholars and university libraries but at best impractical for the masses - leaving them at the mercy of fake pulp "histories" penned by the ilk of Noel Malcolm instead. Yet to level the same criticism of Zametica's book would be both folly and malice; he <i>had </i>to go into great detail in order to not only rebut the modern mainstream "scholarship," but also show the extent to which Austria-Hungary and its obsession with the Serbs are at the root of the Great War.</div>
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The title itself pays homage to a quote from Anton Mayr-Harting's 1988 tome "Der Untergang: Österreich-Ungarn, 1848-1922" (Downfall: Austria-Hungary, 1848-1922), which actually clocks in at a whopping 932 pages and as far as I can tell is only available in German. Zametica's bibliography includes many German sources, as well as English, French and Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian, if you prefer), to paint a comprehensive picture of relations between Vienna and Belgrade that led to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the subsequent declaration of war.</div>
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Rather than the centenary revisionist narrative blaming post-1903 Serbia for supposedly provoking Austria-Hungary, in the 18 chapters of 'Folly and Malice' Zametica walks us through the Hapsburg monarchy's crisis of identity and existence that led Vienna to regard Serbia as an existential threat.</div>
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Zametica looks not just at the Viennese court, but at the politics behind the occupation and annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Austrian-backed Croat nationalism seen as a counterweight to the allure of a free Serbia, the Austro-German relations that led Vienna to believe it had a <i>carte blanche</i> in the Balkans, and the "red herring" of blaming the June 28 Sarajevo assassination on the Serbian secret society "Black Hand" - among other things. It would be doing his volume an immense injustice to try and distill those chapters here.</div>
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If you consider yourself a scholar of history, or if your heritage goes back to these troubled lands, or if you merely wish to learn more about a region systematically and deliberately misrepresented for the past century, this book is for you. And while Zametica did not set out to create a parable about the madness of empires, the clear takeaway from 'Folly and Malice' is that obsession with a perceived adversary can quickly turn into self-fulfilling prophecy, and that the war seen as the only way to salvation can instead become the instrument of one's demise.<br />
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-4987442268408267072018-08-04T15:56:00.001-04:002018-08-04T15:56:21.488-04:00America's 'junkyard dogs' : Operation Storm, 23 years on<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>(The original version of this article <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/311687-junkyard-dogs-storm-croatia/" target="_blank">appeared on RT.com</a> on August 5, 2015)</i><br />
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‘Operation Storm’ in August 1995, when Croatia overran the Serb-inhabited territory of Krajina, was the biggest single instance of ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav Wars, Because the attack was backed by the US, however, it was never treated as a crime.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMVp8Ho95kcMwLjd-ZnBB5oMDTzvY6KHd_sRoxZCbB2r7u1Lm9MklJkVwN7RyHYC4jlBX-gA49_dco_ky9I9roku6iXHjCh00s7DOEx5hErFk8vrPuD07DPhbdVvToC9GhY78X/s1600/thompsonnazi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMVp8Ho95kcMwLjd-ZnBB5oMDTzvY6KHd_sRoxZCbB2r7u1Lm9MklJkVwN7RyHYC4jlBX-gA49_dco_ky9I9roku6iXHjCh00s7DOEx5hErFk8vrPuD07DPhbdVvToC9GhY78X/s400/thompsonnazi.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Between August 4 and August 7, up to 2,000 people were killed and over 220,000 driven from their homes by the Croatian army. No “invaders,” these Serbs had lived in the Krajina – their word for borderlands – for centuries. The 1995 onslaught was not just a final phase of the war that began in 1991, but a continuation of the 1940s Nazi atrocities, and a long, sordid history of oppression and betrayal going back to the 1800s.<br />
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In the late 1600s, the Hapsburg Empire (later Austria-Hungary) established a buffer zone along the border with the Ottoman Turks. in exchange for military service, the Orthodox Serb frontiersmen were granted religious liberties by the Catholic Hapsburgs. By the 1800s, the Ottomans were in retreat and Austria became <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2013/05/twisted-projections-of-conjured-present.html" target="_blank">obsessed with subjugating</a> the Serbs and trying to subsume them into the Catholic Croat population. When Austria-Hungary disintegrated in 1918, the Croats chose to join the Serbs in a new South Slav kingdom – Yugoslavia – rather than be partitioned between Hungary, Austria and Italy. In April 1941, as Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers, Croatian Nazis known as “Ustasha” declared an independent state with the backing of Hitler and Mussolini.<br />
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This Ustasha Croatia conducted a campaign of mass murder, expulsion and forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism, which outright disgusted the Italians and made even some Germans recoil in horror. A Croatian legion was sent to the Eastern Front, where it perished under Stalingrad. When the Communist regime of Marshal Tito took over Yugoslavia in 1945, however, Croatian atrocities were hushed up for the sake of “brotherhood and unity.”<br />
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The end of Communism in 1990 saw a revival of Nazi symbols and vocabulary in Croatia. President Franjo Tudjman denied Ustasha atrocities and expressed joy his wife was “neither Serb nor Jewish.” Serbs were stripped of equal citizenship and declared a minority. When Tudjman declared independence in June 1991, the Serbs saw 1941 all over again. They took up arms and declared the Krajina Republic – not denying the Croats their right to independence, but disputing Zagreb's claim to lands Croatia acquired under the same Yugoslavia it now sought to leave.<br />
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When the disintegrating Yugoslav Army backed the Krajina Serbs, Zagreb cried “Serbian aggression.” International pressure and UN sanctions sought to cut off Belgrade’s support for the rebels. When Tudjman failed to crush the Serb resistance, an armistice was arranged in January 1992. Krajina was placed under the protection of UN peacekeepers, dubbed UNPROFOR.<br />
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Meanwhile, the Clinton administration began backing Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims in their war against the local Serbs. In 1994, MPRI – a private company staffed with retired US military officers – was paid to train and equip the Croatian military. Officially, of course, they were teaching them democracy and human rights.<br />
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In May 1995, Croatia launched a strike on the Serb enclave of Western Slavonia. The UN did nothing, while the Western media was firmly focused on Bosnia. Everything was ready for the main event, dubbed “Operation Storm.” It began on August 4, with a predawn artillery barrage and the assault by 200,000 Croatian troops, trained by MPRI and armed with surplus Warsaw Pact weapons procured from eager Eastern European aspirants to NATO membership.<br />
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Three days later, most of Krajina’s Serbs had been expelled from their homes, while around 2,000 were dead. Churches, cemeteries and entire villages were razed to the ground, while refugee columns were strafed by fighter jets. Serbia did not react at all, prompting speculation to this day that Slobodan Milosevic was somehow “in on it” with Zagreb and Washington. A simpler explanation may lie in the fact that his Army Chief of Staff and spymaster were both working for the CIA at the time, as General Momcilo Perisic and Jovica Stanisic admitted years later.<br />
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The US-backed war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia made a show of demanding the arrest and extradition of several Croatian generals involved in “Storm.” In April 2011, the tribunal convicted Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, while acquitting Ivan Cermak. However, the basis for their convictions was an arbitrary standard for artillery strikes never previously used – indeed, one that would have acquitted all the Serb officers charged with shelling civilians. The purpose of this became apparent when the tribunal cited this arbitrary standard as grounds for reversing Gotovina and Markac’s convictions on appeal, in November 2012.<br />
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By that time, Croatia had already been admitted to NATO (2009), and cleared for membership in the European Union, which it joined in 2013.<br />
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Washington claims to be engaged in Croatia to foster “a democratic, secure, and market-oriented society that will be a strong partner in Euro-Atlantic institutions.” Yet in his 1998 memoir 'To End A War,' US diplomat <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/malic/2003/05/29/bosnias-founding-stepfather/" target="_blank">Richard Holbrooke</a> paints a different picture, quoting a note from his colleague Robert Frasure written during a meeting with Croatian officials on August 17, 1995:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Dick: We ‘hired’ these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to ‘control’ them. But this is no time to get squeamish about things.”</blockquote>
This was just ten days after the mass expulsion and murder of Serbs, as US diplomats directed the Croatian troops’ incursion into Bosnia. Meanwhile, Tudjman’s government gloated over achieving what their Nazi predecessors only dreamed of, thanks to its choice of sponsors. A 2001 census showed 380,000 fewer Serbs in Croatia than a decade prior, a change from citizens with equal rights to a statistical error. The US government was most certainly not “squeamish” – not then, and not now.<br />
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[...]<br />
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Croatia marked the 20th anniversary of its victorious crime with a military parade and a statue of President Tudjman in the formerly Serb city of Knin. The lands “liberated” in 1995 remain “scattered ghost villages strewn with shell-scarred houses overgrown with ivy and tall grass,” to quote a Reuters description from 2005.<br />
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Washington was not content with crushing Krajina. In <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/03/evil-little-war.html" target="_blank">1999, NATO attacked</a> what was left of Yugoslavia and occupied Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia, declaring it an independent state in 2008. In October 2000, the US organized a “color revolution” in Belgrade, the <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2017/10/remembering-patient-zero-of-color.html" target="_blank">first of its kind</a>, bringing into power a puppet government. Serbia has been ruled by client regimes ever since.<br />
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By rewarding Tudjman's atrocities, the West has effectively endorsed the Croatian Nazi atrocities from the 1940s, of which the 1990s policy was a continuation. Two decades after “Operation Storm,” Krajina stands as a symbol of the conviction that the US and its “junkyard dogs” – whether in Zagreb, Kiev, or elsewhere – can act with absolute impunity. Likewise, the fate of Krajina and the Serbs in general is meant to be a message to the world that resistance to US goals is futile.<br />
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But the East remembers.</div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-58779078388012475502018-06-28T19:54:00.002-04:002018-06-28T19:54:27.283-04:00Vidovdan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;">Today is Vidovdan.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;">Gavrilo Princip sends his regards.</span></div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-67961053094797143772018-02-17T13:35:00.002-05:002018-02-17T13:35:43.918-05:00'Kosovo' at 10: Still wards of Washington<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When they declared "independence" ten years ago, the KLA terrorists no doubt it was a transit stop on their 130-journey towards "Natural Albania." They had forgotten the crucial characteristic of the Atlantic Empire: any deals with it are Faustian in nature.<br />
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Ten years later, "Kosovian" independence is stalled, the promised prosperity is nowhere to be found, and instead of supporting Albanian expansionism the Empire is setting up special courts to keep KLA chiefs under control. Nor are "Kosovians" the first or only ones to have their hopes so dashed - but that's another topic, for another time.<br />
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Read more in <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/419064-kosovo-independence-anniversary-state/" target="_blank">my latest at RT.com</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kosovo?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kosovo</a>: A decade of dependence (Op-Ed by <a href="https://twitter.com/NebojsaMalic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NebojsaMalic</a>) <a href="https://t.co/ae25oTB3DR">https://t.co/ae25oTB3DR</a> <a href="https://t.co/sEJzwkrS6s">pic.twitter.com/sEJzwkrS6s</a></div>
— RT (@RT_com) <a href="https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/964892195357675520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2018</a></blockquote>
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-63037753634080512012017-12-21T14:36:00.000-05:002017-12-21T14:36:20.140-05:00Vucic might be setting up Putin to take the fall on Kosovo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
"Once bitten, twice shy" goes the old saying, and Serbs have been bitten a few more times besides. While the Empire is renewing interest in "finishing the job" in the Balkans, Russia is relying on Empire-made Aleksandar Vucic to be the patriot. What could go wrong?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While Moscow treats President Vucic as a credible partner, he reportedly said he was “satisfied” with the Atlantic Council’s proposals and wished they would become official US policy. Having previously conducted an “internal dialogue” with himself on the topic of surrendering the Serbian claim to Kosovo ‒ in the pages of Western-owned newspapers, no less ‒ he now says he’d be happy to hand the issue over to Russia for mediation.</blockquote>
Read the rest in my <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-edge/413852-vucic-russia-serbia-nato/" target="_blank">latest piece on RT</a>. God help us all.<br /><br /></div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-84945403674637013202017-11-30T20:47:00.003-05:002017-11-30T20:47:34.666-05:00On a dramatic exit, fake news and fake justice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I meant to post something about the ICTY - or as I have called it over the years, the Hague Inquisition - after they reached the preordained verdict against Ratko Mladić last week, but didn't get a chance to do so before another defendant decided to spite the fake court with a dramatic gesture.<br />
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Slobodan Praljak, the former movie director who became a general during the Bosnian War (and "directed" the destruction of Mostar's Old Bridge in 1993), rejected the Inquisition's verdict "with contempt" and drank poison in the courtroom. His gesture prompted me to contemplate the ICTY's existence, practices, and effects:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Rather than promoting reconciliation, by selectively prosecuting Serbs and Croats over killing Muslims (but not each other), the ICTY has nurtured the feeling of righteous victimhood that has prevented Muslims from reaching any sort of viable accommodation with the Christian majority. As a result, 22 years after the Dayton Peace Accords, Bosnia is still a gunshot away from another war.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.rt.com/op-edge/411466-hague-court-serbia-nato-icty/" target="_blank">Read the rest at RT.com</a><br />
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-55935930574378256432017-10-07T23:23:00.006-04:002017-10-07T23:24:55.029-04:00The "patient zero" of Color Revolutions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
While it should be obvious why the "Yellow October" of 2000 matters to the Serbs and Serbia, the oft-unanswered question is, why should it matter to anyone else?<br />
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In my most recent <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-edge/405771-october-2000-remembering-yugoslavia-nato/" target="_blank">op-edge on RT.com</a>, I strive to explain just that:<br />
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"Wherever they go, these agents of chaos infect the target country’s politics, manipulating genuine local activists into becoming the agents of their people’s demise. While they preach democracy, their dirty tricks are effectively destroying its credibility in the long term. That’s fine with them, however; the objective is not democracy but obedience. Besides, they won’t stick around to see the consequences - there is always the next revolution to plan and execute."<br />
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October 5, 2000: Flashback to Yugoslavia, West's first color revolution victim (<a href="https://twitter.com/NebojsaMalic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NebojsaMalic</a> for RT) <a href="https://t.co/eLP9Ev6YXs">https://t.co/eLP9Ev6YXs</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ol8x2epUqA">pic.twitter.com/Ol8x2epUqA</a></div>
— RT (@RT_com) <a href="https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/916041557891002369?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
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It's not just that having done it once, the Empire proceeded to do it again elsewhere (and whether it succeeded or failed, made the lives of those involved miserable to some degree or another), but that it used these Janissaries to spread its virus far and wide - and calling them Serbs all along, thus adding insult to injury.</div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-8110713198704363382017-08-05T13:32:00.002-04:002017-08-05T13:32:38.552-04:00Remembering the Storm<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(The original version of this article appeared on <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2005/08/04/remembering-the-storm/" target="_blank">Antiwar.com in 2005</a>).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKsnI6Vrt5jSfWWhVaRDOmOMGKLCL5FJFf1Nvd0IY1NubLGJ3k26oYdNsIZYERl-XZWrEn83Zbymocu7B3T20BJgj09qe1JxQZymrrycGe2sn-cGvbwjZLri1ITJp0KwCJJrw1/s1600/thompsonnazi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKsnI6Vrt5jSfWWhVaRDOmOMGKLCL5FJFf1Nvd0IY1NubLGJ3k26oYdNsIZYERl-XZWrEn83Zbymocu7B3T20BJgj09qe1JxQZymrrycGe2sn-cGvbwjZLri1ITJp0KwCJJrw1/s400/thompsonnazi.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Croatian Nazi salutes, caps and shirts at concerts of "patriotic" singer Marko Perković-Thompson celebrating Croatia's 1995 destruction of Serbs (via tatrenutek.si) </td></tr>
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In the early morning hours of August 4, 1995, on the heels of an incessant artillery and air bombardment, some 200,000 Croatian troops moved in to “liberate” Krajina - a stretch of mountains inhabited by Serbs who had rejected Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia four years prior. Overrunning the token UN observation posts, the US-trained Croatian army quickly overwhelmed localized Serb resistance. President Franjo Tudjman declared August 5, the day Croat troops entered the Serb capital of Knin, a national holiday: “Homeland Thanksgiving Day.” By August 7, the “Republic of Serb Krajina” was no longer in existence.<br />
<br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><b>Frustrated Dreams</b><br /><br />The area of Krajina was for several centuries the borderland between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, a buffer zone that protected the inner Hapsburg lands from Turkish raids. It was populated largely by Orthodox Serbs, who had fled Ottoman persecution, and who became frontiersmen for the Hapsburgs in exchange for land and liberty. By the 19th century, the Ottoman Turks were in retreat; the new danger to the Hapsburg Empire was Slavic nationalism. Vienna turned on its frontiersmen, encouraging conflict between the Orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats, who became its staunchest supporters. Vienna’s Serbophobia eventually led Austria-Hungary into <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2013/05/twisted-projections-of-conjured-present.html" target="_blank">a fatal conflict</a> that destroyed much of European civilization. <br /><br />It also nurtured the hatred that would explode in 1941 as the vicious <a href="http://antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=5751">Ustasha genocide</a>. These homegrown Croatian Nazis, led by Ante Pavelić, set out to destroy the “race of slaves” (as the founder of Croatianism Ante Starčević put it) with ruthless abandon, but ran out of time. Still, by 1945 they had killed anywhere between half a million and 750,000 Serbs.<br /><br />With the end of communism in 1990, Franjo Tuđman and his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) brought a revival of Pavelić’s symbols and vocabulary. Some of the top supporters of the HDZ were Ustasha émigrés. Tuđman himself expressed <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1530644,00.html">relief</a> that his wife was “neither Serb nor Jewish.” His constitutional reform redefined the republic as a nation-state of Croats, with Serbs as an ethnic minority. When Tuđman’s government declared independence from the Yugoslav federation in 1991, most Serbs saw 1941 all over again. This, not some imaginary “aggression” from Serbia, was the root of their “rebellion,” and the genesis of the Krajina Republic. After several months of bitter fighting, marked by massacres, ambushes, and the most vitriolic propaganda, the UN brokered an armistice. The so-called Vance Plan envisioned four “protected areas” with a Serb majority, whose eventual status would be resolved through negotiations.<br /><br />Over the next three years, Tudjman’s government feverishly prepared for war, training its troops on the battlefields of Bosnia and staging quick, limited offensives at the strategic edges of UN-protected areas (most infamous being the Medak Pocket attack in 1993). Although enjoying political, diplomatic, and even military support from Vienna and Berlin since 1991, it was only when it got Washington’s support that Zagreb was ready – and able – to strike. “Retired” American officers, working for government contractor MPRI, claimed to teach Croat officers “democracy” and “human rights.” The events of May and August 1995 would demonstrate MPRI’s definitions of both.<br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><b>Junkyard Dogs</b><br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><i>"Dick: We ‘hired’ these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to ‘control’ them. But it is no time to get squeamish about things."<br />– To End a War, </i>by Richard Holbrooke, Chapter 6<br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" />US envoy to the Balkans <a href="http://antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=706">Richard Holbrooke</a> thus described the note slipped to him by Ambassador Robert Frasure during a meeting with Croatian officials in 1995. Holbrooke’s own account of how the US officially condemned Croatian attacks even as he was meeting with Tudjman and telling him which cities to take, suggests he was hardly “squeamish” about using Croats to fight what he – and hundreds of advocacy journalists, lobbyists, and policymakers – had termed “Serb aggression.”<br /><br />On May 1, 1995, Croatian troops tested both their readiness and the UN’s will by staging a lightning strike at an exposed Serb enclave of Western Slavonia. The operation was code-named Bljesak – “flash,” or perhaps more appropriately, “Blitz.” The clear violation of the armistice went unpunished. The stage was set for Oluja.<br /><br />According to Serb documentation, the three-day offensive in August 1995 resulted in the expulsion of 220,000 people. Some 1,943 people have been listed as missing/presumed dead, including 1199 civilians, 523 women, and 12 children. The death toll would have been greater had the Serbs not fled <i>en masse </i>before the advancing Croat tanks; all who stayed behind were killed. The Croats, and their American sponsors, were definitely not squeamish.<br /><br />Ten years later, Krajina is still a wasteland, with “scattered ghost villages strewn with shell-scarred houses overgrown with ivy and tall grass” (Reuters). Only a tenth of some 400,000 Serbs who lived in Croatia before it seceded have returned, only to face bureaucratic abuse and frequent physical violence. Tuđman made Pavelić’s dream to rid Croatia of Serbs a reality. It seems everything is in the choice of allies.<br /><b><br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" />Unpleasant Comparisons</b><br /><br />After obliterating Krajina, the conquering Croatian army moved into western Bosnia, aiding the Izetbegovic government to crush a dissident faction led by <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j072001.html">Fikret Abdic</a> and assisting in the major Muslim offensive that “coincided” with NATO’s massive bombing of Bosnian Serbs. But after the Dayton Agreement was signed and peace imposed on Bosnia, Empire’s junkyard dogs discovered the supply of Milk Bones had run out. They had served their purpose.<br /><br />Croatia and Albania joined NATO in 2009, ten years after the Alliance launched its <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/03/evil-little-war.html" target="_blank">first illegal war</a> against what was left of Yugoslavia. Zagreb was admitted to the European Union in 2013 - a year after General Ante Gotovina and several others accused by the Hague Inquisition of <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2011/04/injustice-for-all.html" target="_blank">war crimes</a> during Oluja were <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/11/injustice-for-all-redux.html" target="_blank">acquitted on appeal</a> in yet another show trial. <br />
<br />Some of the truth about atrocities against the Serbs is slowly coming to light, but interestingly enough, only after the prominent personalities accused have fallen out of political grace. The Zagreb leadership snaps back at any hint that Oluja might have been anything but just, right, and noble. In 2005, when Serbian president Boris Tadić called it an “organized crime,” Croatia's President Stipe Mesić replied it could hardly compare to Serb crimes such as Srebrenica.<br /><br />But by all means, let’s compare! In both cases, a UN “safe area” was targeted by the attack. In Srebrenica, the UN at least tried to protect Muslim civilians; in Krajina, it did no such thing. Serbs evacuated Muslim noncombatants from Srebrenica; Serbs who did not flee Krajina were killed. Yet Srebrenica is somehow “genocide,” while Oluja is a victory worth a national holiday! <br /><br />Another reason the Empire prefers to keep Oluja out of sight and out of mind is <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=5995">the push</a> to establish an independent, Albanian-dominated Kosovo. If Croatia’s conquest of Krajina was legitimate, because Krajina’s existence violated its sacrosanct administrative borders, then why did Serbia not have the right to uphold its borders when it came to Kosovo? If obliterating the Serb population did not disqualify Croatia from keeping Krajina and Slavonia, how can the exodus of less than half of Kosovo’s Albanians disqualify Serbia from keeping Kosovo? If the Serbs, a constituent Yugoslav nation, did not have the right to ethnic self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, how can the Kosovo Albanians (an ethnic minority) have one?<br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px;" /><b>The “Abramowitz Doctrine”</b><br /><br />This apparent paradox was “explained” by Morton Abramowitz, the <i>eminence grise</i> of U.S. foreign policy, in a 2003 <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=1148_0_1_0_C">interview</a>: “there is no entirely rational answer … you seek perfect reasoning, which does not correspond to reality on the ground.” Logic does not apply to the Empire, because it creates its own reality; where have we <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2004/10/20/delusions-of-empire/" target="_blank">heard that before</a>? <br /><br />The “reality” Abramowitz and his like-minded policymakers have sought to establish by force has been one in which, whatever the circumstances, <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=4203">Serbs are in the wrong</a>. Apologists for the Empire dismiss this observable, verifiable fact as a “conspiracy theory” and claim the Serbs have a “victim complex” – even as their entire Balkans “reality” rests on the claim that everyone else has been victimized by the Serbs.<br />
<br />What “perfect reasoning” is involved in recognizing the simple fact that the centuries-old Serb community in Krajina is practically extinct, and that the Serb community in Kosovo – from which most of their ancestors came – is facing the same prospect?<br />
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Where the Nazis failed, the American Empire has succeeded. Is that really something to be thankful for?<br />
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(<i>Nota bene</i>, August 2017: Croatia and Albania remain the axis of Empire's dominion over the Balkans today. But the Empire itself is losing its grip on the fake "reality" it created with force and lies, and <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-east-remembers.html" target="_blank">the East remembers</a>.)</div>
CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9230592.post-12238152914340675352017-07-12T22:03:00.002-04:002017-07-12T22:03:44.627-04:00Forbidden history: WW2 documentary series now complete<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have just found out that the final parts of the documentary series "Kingdom of Yugoslavia in WW2" - which I've <a href="https://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2014/04/WW2-documentary.html" target="_blank">mentioned here</a> before - have been finalized and posted, completing the 18-episode project.</div>
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According to executive producer Miloslav Samardžić, the trailer for episodes 13-18 has been posted on Vimeo, where the <a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/kingdomofyuinwwii1318" target="_blank">entire 18-episode run</a> is up for purchase or rent. </div>
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It took the Kragujevac-based Pogledi and the society of former Royal Yugoslav Army soldiers in the UK nearly four years to crowdfund and produce the series, which shows the previously untold story of the war in Yugoslavia. </div>
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The first twelve episodes were offered to the Serbian Radio Television (RTS), which was supposed to reply by the end of May but has yet to do so, Samardžić said.<br />
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He says the series shows a much-needed alternate perspective to the movies glorifying the Communist Partisans, which are currently being shown on RTS in re-runs.</div>
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"Our story isn't made up," Samardžić said, adding that buying or renting the series on Vimeo will support the producers' new project, a 90-minute documentary "General Draža Mihailović."</div>
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CubuCokohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14128683147101484237noreply@blogger.com5