The Day (& 18 Years) After

From Intersections of Fate (Antiwar.com, September 13, 2001):

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, this country would become embroiled in an endless war against the entire world, 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.
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. One cannot fight terrorism and use it at the same time. (emphasis added)

From War Without End (September 27, 2001):

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 the battle – and with it, perhaps the entire war – was lost.
[...]
This week’s events in the Balkans clearly show that the war on terrorism is anything but, and that the only benefactor of Black Tuesday will be the apocalyptic vision of American Empire, now finally able to assert itself in a war without end.

From The Day Nothing Changed (September 12, 2002):

The time was right to re-examine America's Balkans policies 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.
[...]
The aftermath of Black Tuesday was a golden opportunity to redefine America as a Republic, not an Empire. It was missed.

From The Lost Terror War (September 11, 2003)

George [W.] Bush's claim that America was after terrorists everywhere was seriously undermined from the very beginning by its continued support for terrorists in the Balkans...

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."

[...]

Americans desperately need to decide whether to support a policy that aims to create a global Balkans, where US power and hypocrisy rule supreme. They should know that in the real Balkans, where US power is unchallenged, terrorism thrives...

From Eppur si muove (Gray Falcon, September 11, 2014),

I've said everything I've cared to say over the past thirteen years - how one cannot fight terrorism and support it at the same time, how there are no "good" terrorists just because they currently serve one's agenda, how it's madness to appease jihadists in hopes of earning their gratitude, etc. etc. Go through the posts tagged 9/11 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.

And I stand by my contention that there was never any war on terror(ism): the grand crusade was all about power.

Memory eternal to those who perished on 9/11. Maybe some day we can actually make sure their deaths have not been in vain. 

Some recent writings

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.

Of the things I'd like to point out here, I've written on the drumbeat of war with Iran, and the possibility Justin Raimondo's theory is correct and all this inept imperialism is a feature, not a bug.

I have also touched on the finale of 'Game of Thrones' and the very real lesson about the power of narratives, however poorly it was communicated in the show.

Closer to home, I touched on the embarrassing idolatry of "Kosovarianians" for their imperial overlords, and the self-serving lies they continue to tell to justify their crime.

I've also touched on the Culture War currently affecting the Empire itself, an ongoing conflict between the mainstream media and Big Tech, and the dissidents caught in the crossfire.

So if you're still hanging around these parts, give these a read. I promise I'll write more soon. 

Interesting Times

It has been a year since the self-proclaimed "Kosovian" authorities tried to take over the Serb-inhabited north of the occupied province. When they failed, NATO and EULEX were called in - only to be thwarted by non-violent protests of the local population. Tanks and live gunfire could clear the road temporarily, though it soon became clear that they could kill the Serbs - and face the consequences once the footage hit YouTube (which it would have within minutes) - but they could not compel them to obedience. Harassment has continued ever since - just this morning, Polish troops had sealed off one road, while "Kosovian" Very Special Police robbed a Serb bank last week - but it looks like both the "Kosovarians" and their Imperial sponsors are waiting for the new/old regime in Belgrade to find a way of surrendering the occupied territory and the Serbs therein.

(Yes, those were links from B92, because they were the only links in English I could find. There's definitely a gaping hole ready to be filled with English-language news coverage that would not be in service of Serbia's enemies.)

Saturday was also the anniversary of Austria-Hungary's 1914 ultimatum to Serbia, the true start of the Great War; a century hence, some still blame Serbia and Russia for upsetting the old Imperial order. Times change, but the argument remains the same; the invader always wonders why we refuse to just die already. Can't say I have much sympathy for either the argument, or the invaders making it.

When I say that "all of this has happened before, and is happening again", I'm not just using a catchphrase from Battlestar Galactica; the scenario developed for Balkans interventions (first in Bosnia, then in "Kosovia") is actually being applied to Syria. The trouble with imagining oneself as a knight-errant is that the rest of the world is then divided into two categories only: dragons and damsels in distress. Delusional much?

The other problem with interventionism is that it just doesn't work. Sure, it can force things temporarily - kind of like what KFOR does with the barricades in Thacistan - but that just creates more problems down the line. The 1878 Congress of Berlin, for example, "solved" the Balkans crisis in a way that made WW1 almost inevitable. Yet now some people want to do it again.

While I haven't done much writing here lately - most of my attention has been devoted to the other blog, Antiwar.com columns and some translation and editing work - I did manage to add some blog links. If you are interested in news from and about Syria (actual news, not the propaganda), the Moon of Alabama blog is the place to go. I've also added the blog of a sometime commenter and very astute writer, "Hero of Crappy Town" (fans of Firefly will get the reference). I should have done so much sooner.

I'll see July off with something I've said before, but may as well say again. The Empire is constantly harping on about how the people it has "helped" need to "come to terms with reality" - but by that it means the virtual reality, established and maintained through lies and coercion. Meanwhile, the Empire itself refuses to accept actual reality, and the gap between the two is widening by the day.

These are interesting times, indeed. In a very Chinese sense of the word.

Following the Money

Despite numerous cogent analyses, and even frank admissions by former and current Imperial officials, indicating that their interventions around the world - and specifically in the Balkans - have been motivated by considerations of power, there are still some who maintain that the wars were all about the money.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the force driving politicians. Most of us normal folk want money because with enough of it (and how much is ever enough?) we think we can afford all the comforts of life we desire. But once you reach a certain level of power, money ceases to be an object. You don't have to worry about purchasing things; you can simply take them.

The other day an Imperial propaganda outfit revealed that Wesley Clark, the "General who led NATO’s campaign against Serbia in 1999" (that's one way of putting it) has asked Kosovo's government (sic) "for a licence to transform the country’s untapped coal reserves into fuel". Sure enough, a chorus arose: See, Kosovo was all about the ore, the oil, the mineral wealth!

No. Kosovo was about breaking Serbia, so as to conquer the Balkans and establish an axis with Turkey and the Middle East, while erecting a barrier around Russia. All ancient geopolitics, really. Any potential profit for Empire's camp-followers was merely icing on the cake. But the cake itself is hegemony in Eurasia.

The following is adapted from two emails sent to me by an astute reader, familiar with Balkans business deals. I won't reveal his name; suffice to say I have full confidence he knows what he's talking about.

The phrasing "License for Oil" is a bit deceiving. If you look at this API article (which can be read in full for free) then it seems that his company is seeking a license to 1) explore for coal, and, if found, 2) convert coal into gas and 3) convert gas into synthetic fuel ("oil").  If you look at the website of his company, Envidity Inc., you will see that they are already developing a coal-to-synfuel project in Mongolia, where they have obtained an exclusive license for coal extraction in an area of 774 sq. km.

On their page "About Us" you will see that they do not hide their association with Wesley Clark, and they are not entirely ignorant of his glorious military past: "...In his last assignment as Supreme Allied Commander Europe he led NATO forces to victory in Operation Allied Force, saving 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing." [!!!]

Looking over their website from a business point of view, it is clear that they are a bunch of experts with an idea, but no money or financial backing so far. They are betting everything on the theory of "peak oil"...  In addition, Kosovo's energy and transportation infrastructure is atrocious (probably not much better than Mongolia's), so unless the energy to run the conversion process will come from the coal itself then their facility would be a net consumer of electricity from the Kosovo power grid, and Kosovo is already a net importer of electricity, I believe.

Anyway, the thing seems to me like a pipe dream. Even their Mongolian project so far is merely at the stage of obtaining rights for the coal, and these people do not look to me like people who know about financing, building, and operating large chemical plants. (And they seem to be saying that this project would provide royalties to the Kosovo regime of €300 million/year, which implies sales of billions of euros per year, which would need a very large plant.) So unless we see them first succeed in finding someone with the pockets deep enough to backstop a construction project of a billion or two euros in Mongolia, we should conclude that they are just dreamers.

Sure, coal is known to exist in Kosovo, and in fact it is the only source that they have so far for producing electricity. And sure, there exist technologies to convert coal into gas and then into liquid. But these technologies are so expensive that I am not aware of any such plants operating at the present time. Here is an article posted yesterday about such a plant that is going to be constructed in West Virginia: this plant, which will produce 18,000 barrels of synfuel a day, is expected to cost $4 billion, so you can imagine how much Wesley Clark's plant would cost that "could eventually produce up to 15.9 million litres (100,000 barrels) a day". And no matter how many NATO troops may be available for free to guard their facilities, if they employ any of the local people then they will face horrendous problems with theft, corruption, careless maintenance, and so on.

The important thing is that due to this depression almost no projects of over €250 million are moving forward anywhere in SE Europe, and this would be a project of over €1,000 million. And it is entirely a gamble on "peak oil". In addition, the project would be in Kosovo, and I have the impression that no significant infrastructure, industrial, or energy project has moved forward in Kosovo since "independence", not even wind parks or hydro plants of €5-50 million, much less something of €1,000 million.

A few months ago I did some research, trying to find any register of "environmental impact assessments" (EIAs) in Kosovo. I found that the Priština regime did indeed publish a very rudimentary EIA law back in about 2004, requiring significant projects to file EIA studies and obtain EIA decisions. But I found no evidence at all - even in the Kosovo Official Register - that any such filings or decisions had ever been made.  I think to date it is all merely hypothetical.

More attractive than the coal would be the minerals, since the mountains of the Balkans are rich in all kinds of minerals, and the highest mountains - around KosMet - have some of the most exotic minerals. But if the Trepča mine complex is almost completely idle because no foreign investors have been willing to step forward, you can imagine that for an economically questionable project like coal liquefaction it will be harder still to obtain money from abroad.

So you see, Clark's project is a pie in the sky. It is much more likely, in my estimation, to be a front for some serious money-laundering than ever to actually produce any fuel. I suppose Clark figured he'd never be chairman of the Joint Chiefs, so he's settling for the next best thing, trying to cash in his "popularity" to profit from a snake-oil scheme. It's a long way from a self-styled noble knight saving the Albanians-in-distress to a vulture picking at their refuse - but I can't say I'm particularly surprised.

Thanks, Angie

It just occurred to me that I haven't posted anything here since mid-November; I've been entirely too preoccupied with my other blog, Antiwar.com, and travel.

So, to recap: the Kosovo Serbs' citizenship gambit failed, when Moscow refused them on a technicality. The barricades remain, however, in spite of all the attempts to get them dismantled. Speaking of which, the German and Austrian complaints about the "violence" - when it was their fully armed and armored troops that initiated violence against the Serb civilians - has to be the pinnacle of cynicism.

It did Belgrade no good to make yet another set of capitulations to the KLA "state" Saturday night; the EU decided to put its candidacy on ice until the formal recognition of "Kosovia", and whatever new demands they come up with thereafter. In a way - and quite unintentionally I'm sure - the Austro-German axis running the show is actually doing the Serbs a favor: had the quisling regime's obsequiousness been rewarded by a candidacy, meaningless and symbolic as it is, they'd have smooth sailing till the April elections regardless of their manifest ineptitude, and the Serb resistance in Kosovo would have been undermined. As it is, the EUrocrats are sabotaging the very people working to please them. Well, no one said they were logical...

So, German Chancellor Angela Merkel deserves a thank-you note for what she did, however inadvertently, to keep Serbia out of EU bondage. I'm sure once the Serbs sort out their politics, that note will be forthcoming in some shape or form.

I'm not so sure about Angelina Jolie, though. Her directorial debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" is yet another take on a real-life romance between a Serb and a Muslim during the Bosnian War. Judging from the trailer and the few snippets of footage floating around, it's a derivative and disappointing bit of chetnixploitation, borrowing heavily from movies about the Holocaust. While Bosnia was a nasty (un)civil war, comparing it to the Holocaust is in horrifically poor taste at the very least, if not an outright insult to Holocaust victims.

There have been many films dealing with the Balkans wars in the past twenty years, but none of them have done any good financially. One would think Hollywood would have got the point by now.

In other news, the EU is coming apart at the seams, the Empire is trying to engineer a color revolution in Russia, the Iranians claim to have shot down a U.S. drone, and Pakistan is bolstering air defenses after "NATO" aircraft mauled two dozen of their troops last week. None of that is likely to turn out very well.

Why It Should Matter

I have a new post up on Barely a Blog, run by the brilliant Ilana Mercer. (Ilana is a terrific writer, superb researcher and a classical liberal par excellence; if you're not a fan of hers, you should be.)

If you want to help others understand why what is happening in the Balkans matters in the grand scheme of things, I've laid it out there, in 700 words or less. I can expand upon just about anything in there, at great length - but that's the gist of it.

As for the why and wherefore, my theory is that it's all about power. As Robert Higgs has documented, the U.S. government has a history of claiming more powers for itself in times of emergency. Not surprisingly, that ends up resulting in a constant state of emergency, with government authority approaching infinity.

Now apply that to the international stage. The Cold War is over, the rules you once agreed upon to constrain your rival (who vanished almost overnight) are now constraining you, and you need to find a new cause to justify your dream of a "benevolent global hegemony". So you find (and just in case, instigate and stoke) a brutal civil war somewhere prominent, which gives you a pretext to posture at white-knighting, and get rid of those pesky laws and rules in the process.

If that happens to replicate the policies of Hitler 50 years prior - who's going to notice? Your people only know Hollywood history anyway. If you can declare your targets the Nazis Reborn, adding insult to injury, so much the better. All for the sake of bringing about the desired End of History...

People who dismiss American exceptionalism don't realize that it actually does exist - albeit not in the way its proponents would appreciate. This may well be the first hegemon in world history that self-destructs by dismantling the underlying principles of its own hegemony, because they are considered inconvenient. The proverbial cutting the branch one's posterior rests upon, as it were.

Blind Spot

Reading James Bovard's review of Derek Leebaert's "Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy From Korea to Afghanistan," I am struck by how persistently the Balkans shows up as a blind spot for critics of the U.S. foreign policy.

Leebaert puts together an interesting read about how arrogance and ignorance have led the policymakers down disastrous paths, yet he offers the 1999 Kosovo war as a contrasting example of success! Bovard disagrees, and it is worth quoting him at length:

Leebaert actually understates the U.S. debacle rate abroad. He hails the American-led NATO bombing of Serbia: “The 1999 eleven weeks’ war over Kosovo was undertaken by a coalition of Western governments, preceded by two months of negotiation that legitimized and clarified its objectives, then followed by a UN peacekeeping mission. The presence of overwhelming backup forces nearby as well as American military leadership resting on political good sense and seasoned diplomacy further increased the chances of success.”

What success? After NATO planes killed hundreds if not thousands of Serb and ethnic Albanian civilians, Bill Clinton could pirouette as a savior. Once the bombing ended, many of the Serbs remaining in Kosovo were slaughtered and their churches burned to the ground. NATO’s “peace” produced a quarter-million Serbian, Jewish, and Gypsy refugees. At least the Serbs were not murdering people for their body parts, as the Council of Europe recently accused the Kosovo Liberation Army of doing to Serb prisoners in recent years. (“When the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the [Serbian] captives were … summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic,” where their kidneys were harvested for sale.)

Perhaps even worse, Clinton’s unprovoked attack on Serbia set a precedent for “humanitarian” warring that was invoked by supporters of Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq.

That the Serbs were vicious, genocidal fascist aggressors who could have only been stopped by an American intervention - details such as law and truth be damned - is an article of faith in the U.S. mainstream, and it is not often someone like Bovard dares to defy it. It takes a lot of courage to go against the self-appointed guardians of Official Truth.

A Year of Revelations

It's become an annual tradition to reserve the last Antiwar.com article in December for a look back at the year that has passed. At least as far as the former Yugoslav lands are concerned, 2010 has not been a year of great upheavals - but it has been a year of revelations.

Many suspicions about the Empire have been confirmed by diplomatic dispatches published by Wikileaks. Those cables also confirmed many more suspicions - and introduced new ones - about the quisling regime in Belgrade. And of course, the mid-December Marty report to PACE exposed the mafia hellhole of Boss Snake, also known as the "Independent State of Kosovo" (ISK).

It is both entertaining and ghastly to watch as legions of Imperial and EU busybodies try to scrub off the stench of being "friends" with butchers. With even the Belgrade quislings helping, I would not be surprised if nothing much came of the entire affair. Being the Empire means never having to say you're sorry. Until it is far too late to do any good, anyway.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In 2010, the world has gained a lot of knowledge about the way Imperial "reality" really works. And it's not pretty. The question now is what, if anything, will be done with that knowledge. That's where 2011 comes in.

Cheers!

Revolutionary Acts

It is said that the 1991 "Desert Storm" was the first war waged live on cable TV. Eight years later, NATO attacked Serbia (Operation "Allied Force") and the attendant media adhered to the same matrix of behavior. Only this time, there was the internet. However clunky and amateurish citizen-reporting was back then, in its infancy, it nonetheless provided an alternative to the relentless propaganda churned out by compliant reporters regurgitating Alliance spokesman Jamie Shea's infamous briefings. Bit by bit, the truth of NATO's atrocities came out, while the rumors of Serbian atrocities were shown to be greatly exaggerated.

Many of the news sites and proto-blogs that helped expose the truth about NATO's "humanitarian war" are no longer around. One, however, has persevered - and continued the struggle for truth ever since, through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And as George Orwell so aptly put, "speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act."

All too many people in the United States today still see things through the darkened lens of partisan politics. Democrats this, Republicans that, liberals this, conservatives that. Yet what Antiwar.com has demonstrated over and over is that both parties march in lockstep when it comes to waging wars, empowering the state and repressing the citizenry. It doesn't matter whether the Emperor is Slick Willie, Bush the Lesser, or Saint Barack of Hopechange: the policy of killing people and breaking things always remains the same.

I've had a small part in this endeavor since October 19, 2000, when Antiwar.com published my first column. "Balkan Express" ran weekly for many years, eventually becoming the biweekly "Moments of Transition." I would like to think that I've helped prove the point about the Empire in my coverage of the troubles in the Balkans and Europe in general. Both the fan mail and hate mail accumulated over the years suggest that I have, as do some figures of speech - "Empire" itself being a case in point - that have since made their way into foreign policy discourse in the Balkans itself.

The Imperial government has created this fantasy world in which it can move nations around the Grand Chessboard by sheer strength of willpower - and a few smart bombs here and there. It need not concern itself with the "reality-based community," or such mundane things as money and facts. If needed, facts are invented, and money is simply printed (oh, is it ever!). But the rest of us, we live in the real world, and deal with real facts. And when bills come in, we need to pay them with real money.

Now, you'll notice this blog doesn't have a donation box or anything like that. I work for a living, and what I do here and at Antiwar.com is something I can afford to do on my own time. But I am well aware that running a major news website, collating news, editing and posting articles - all that costs money. Thanks to the government and the likes of the giant vampire squid, none of us have much. But what we have ought to be put to good use.

So, if you want to hear what the mainstream media refuse to tell you - for example, understand why the TSA gets to grope you, or what is really happening in the Balkans (and why that is relevant) - consider making a donation to keep Antiwar.com going. Unlike with the Empire and its attendant media, you actually have a choice in the matter.

Clinton Does the Balkans

I was on RT this morning (evening, if you're in Moscow), commenting on Hillary Clinton's Balkans trip. She won't say or do anything new, only deliver the same old demands. Centralize Bosnia, dismember Serbia, recognize the "Independent State of Kosovo," and maybe some day the Balkans "savages" might earn the right to clean NATO boots and fill NATO body bags. Or, if they really behave, wait tables in the EU.

But it is no longer 1999, and the Empire is destined for the fate of Ozymandias. Clinton's Potemkin promises aren't fooling anybody. Empire's clients will cheer at her words, but when she leaves they will realize that they made no difference. Perhaps only to bolster her own bid for the throne, two or six years from now - but that's another story...

Israel Gets Serbed

I don't normally deal with Israel here, or the whole Middle East question (one emotionally charged intractable conflict is plenty, thank you), but what happened the other day does have a fair bit to do with things I've been writing about for the past decade or so.

It should be obvious by now that the "Gaza flotilla" was a trap. Israel walked right into it. Fortunately for the Israelis, they too were filming the whole thing, and knew how to use blogs and YouTube, so they may have even come out ahead in the propaganda skirmish that followed. But there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the whole flotilla operation was designed from the start to be a propaganda stunt. The "activists" (is that what they are called these days?) aboard those ships were armed and ready. They wanted to be stopped and boarded, so they could scream to high heaven about being abused by the Israeli "pirates" on the high seas. It almost worked, too.

As I said over on Ilana Mercer's blog earlier in the week, the entire strategy employed by Hamas seems to be a reprise of Sarajevo. So the Israeli presence on its borders becomes a "siege", the legitimate blockade of a hostile polity becomes "strangling", and Israeli raids in response to missiles fired from Gaza become "terror." Israel is dubbed an occupying power even though it unilaterally retreated from Gaza in 2005, leaving it as a de facto independent city-state. And Israeli inspections in international waters, though legal, become "piracy."

Hamas routinely fires missiles from Gaza at Israeli civilians across the border. They see nothing wrong with this - remember, to Hamas, Israel has no right to exist, and needs to be obliterated. But if Israel retaliates, whether by assassinating Hamas leaders or sending tanks into Gaza to destroy missile launchers, or by enforcing a perfectly legal blockade to deny Hamas weapons and ammunition, while allowing food and other civilian supplies in - ah, that's nothing short of "genocide," then!

Israel has a powerful conventional army, navy, air force, and most likely even nuclear weapons (though not officially acknowledged). It has defeated Arab armies on numerous occasions in open warfare, and has successfully fought terrorism and insurgency through special operations. So those who wish it destroyed came up with a way of turning that strength into a weakness: cast themselves as innocent, unarmed, helpless victims and howl as loud as possible about being abused by that very Israel whose strength no one can dispute.

There are two recent examples of this approach being enormously successful. In Bosnia, the government of Alija Izetbegovic (revered in the Muslim world as an ideologue of jihad and Islamic revolution, but still believed in the West to have been a multicultural democrat) provoked an armed confrontation with the Serb and Croat populations, then raised hell in the media about being a victim of "aggression" and "genocide." European and American public were steadily bombarded with the most outlandish claims of atrocities, courtesy of legions of "advocacy journalists" stationed in Sarajevo, who somehow never saw thousands of armed Muslim troops in the city, or their artillery, but only "helpless civilians." Likewise, they never saw any of the Serb civilians killed by Muslim fire on the other side of the line; oh no, every Serb in Bosnia was a drunken, bearded savage with a machine gun in one hand, a bottle of brandy in the other, and a bloody knife in his teeth.

This distortion of reality went so far as to actually exaggerate the military strength of the Serbs, in an effort to make them seem even more formidable (and their enemies that much more innocent/unarmed/endangered). In this kind of 4th-generation warfare, weakness was an asset, and strength became a liability.

Not only was the Muslim (and Croat) version of the war propagated as gospel truth in the West, the Serbs were prevented from saying anything in their own defense through the second-worst regime of UN sanctions in history (the worst being what was imposed on Iraq). By the time the sanctions were officially lifted, the Serbs had been so thoroughly demonized, few dared question the official story when NATO attacked Serbia itself and occupied one of its provinces in 1999. Once again, the world was told of the Evil Genocidal Serb Aggressors wantonly killing and abusing innocent "Kosovarian" civilians, which was obviously so egregious that it required NATO to violate its own charter and that of the UN to launch a "humanitarian" intervention.

Here was identity politics brought to its logical extreme: a situation in which the designated victim could literally get away with murder (Izetbegovic, the KLA) yet be seen as innocent and virtuous, while the designated culprit (the Serbs) could be slandered with impunity, and anything they did would be perceived as purely evil. It isn't just about delegitimizing one's means of defense, but delegitimizing one's right to exist at all.

The problem with trying to explain this to people is that this sort of demonization has so far been practiced only against the Serbs. Even Iraqis, who have suffered horrifically, were not singled out as a nation (rather, the hatred was focused on the persona of Saddam Hussein, and the odium largely dissipated after his execution). Only a few careful observers have seen it as a general trend, applied beyond the Balkans. As a result, no one in the world really believes they could one day get "Serbed" (for lack of a better term) themselves.

But as we see from the flotilla incident, some folks have taken the lessons of Bosnia and Kosovo to heart, even if no one else has. Not surprisingly, the organizer of the propaganda stunt is a Turkish "NGO" first formed to provide aid to the Bosnian Muslims. Among the "activists" detained on the ships were a Syrian with Bosnian citizenship and the "President of Muslim Forum of Kosova" (sic). There are Balkan connections all over - all but guaranteeing that the mainstream press in the West won't say a word about any of them. Because, as we know, the Balkans is a sacred cow and the pure, innocent victimhood of "Bosnians" and "Kosovars" must and shall not be brought into question. Ever.

Why, even the Israelis won't say anything about it, so as not to hurt their own cause. Can't allow oneself to be associated with those Evil Serbs, right? That's how thorough the demonization has been. But if it can happen to the Serbs, it can happen to anyone. The real question is, who is next?

New Book: The Krajina Chronicle

The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies has just published two new books: "Saving Peace in Bosnia" (PDF), earlier this month , and the just announced "The Krajina Chronicle: A History of Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia", by Srdja Trifkovic.

It promises to be an interesting book, filling in a major gap in the Western understanding of the Balkans. I'm currently working on a review of "Saving Peace in Bosnia", and hope to have a review of the "Krajina Chronicle" here soon as well.

Resurrecting the Caliphate

Due to some scheduling and technical difficulties, my regular Friday column on Antiwar.com appeared today.

In it I touch on the recently begun - and adjourned - show trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić in light of the disturbing initiative by the Turkish government to engage in neo-Ottoman foreign policy aiming to "reintegrate" the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. I understand why many in Ankara may wax nostalgic for the times of Mehmet II or Suleiman, but there is much less enthusiasm for this in either of those three areas.

Unlike Turkey's FM Ahmet Davutoglu, I think it's precisely Ottoman rule that is to blame for many conflicts and hatreds in these regions over the past century or so. Even if we take that out of consideration, any sort of Ottoman revival clashes directly with the Kemalist ideology that underpins the modern Turkish republic.

Finally, making Davutoglu's vision a reality is impossible without the force of arms. But if he believes that modern Turks are the military equivalent of the Ottomans, he's sorely mistaken. And if the neo-Ottomans honestly think that Turkey can fill the vacuum that is likely to appear with the withdrawal of the American Empire, they are putting the cart before the proverbial horse, and forgetting where their own power and influence came from.

What Turkey Wants

(Excerpts from the article originally published by the Sarajevo weekly BH Dani, on October 23, 2009. This speech and its implications received nearly no coverage in the West.
Full transcript of the original available here. Any errors in translation are my own, all emphasis added is mine - Gray Falcon)

"Yesterday, after a long day in Iraq, we came home at three o'clock, and only three hours later I set out for Sarajevo. Many were surprised and asked if I weren't tired. When I came to Sarajevo, to Bascarsija, I felt filled with energy. The spirit of Sarajevo, the spirit of Bascarsija, is the spirit of our common history. Sarajevo is no ordinary city. Without understanding Sarajevo one cannot understand the history of the Balkans, nor the culture of the Balkans," said [prof. Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's foreign minister] on Friday evening, October 16, at the opening of the conference "Ottoman Heritage and Muslim Communities in the Balkans Today."

Came on Horseback

Minister Davutoglu isn't a professional politician or diplomat but a scholar, who taught international relations in Malaysia and Turkey until the victory of Recep Erdogan and the AK in the November 2002 elections. He became the key foreign policy advisor of the Turkish PM, creating Ankara's new foreign policy. He became the FM only recently, on May 1, 2009. To understand the basis on which he formulated Turkey's foreign policy, approved by the AK party and the last two cabinets of PM Erdogan, one must turn to his scholarly work, such as the book Strategic Depth (2001), a new look at Turkey's international position...

He was greeted by an ex-student from Malaysia, Prof. Ahmet Alibašić and more than 200 guests, including the feuding factions of the [Muslim] SDA party. Davutoglu has cultivated an image of a mediator and conciliator; earlier this year he traveled to Novi Pazar [in Serbia], to publicly reconcile former SDA leaders Sulejman Ugljanin and Rasim Ljajić.

His decision to visit Bosnia during a Turkish diplomatic offensive elsewhere has puzzled the dipomats in Sarajevo. Why did the scholar-diplomat drop in, they asked?

"One diplomat asked me today, I cannot reveal where he was from, why did we intensify our efforts in Bosnia when we have all these other issues to deal with? When I met Hillary Clinton in Zurich concerning the Armenian question, I asked her about the Bosnian question, and we spent more time discussing Bosnia than Armenia. And when President Silajdžić visited Ankara, I changed my plans and decided to visit Sarajevo and then proceed to Albania. I told the diplomat that we didn't 'drop in', we came to Bosnia on horseback," answered Davutoglu.

Historical Depth

This return to the traditional, historical connections of Turkey with numerous nations and states in three different regions is the "historical depth" that prof. Davutoglu is building the new Turkish foreign policy around. His Sarajevo lecture was basically the summary of this policy's underpinnings. Davutoglu first asked what were the things particular to the Balkans, and what was the role of the Ottoman state in the history of the Balkans and the world:

"There are three identifiable characteristics of the Balkans. One is that this region is a geopolitical buffer zone, a crossing between Europe and Asia, Baltics and the Mediterranean, and Europe to Africa. Why is this important? How did this influence the region's history?" he asked.

"The other characteristic is geo-economic. Balkans is a region of commerce, since the ancient times. Balkans is a region of cultural interaction as well. Several cultures intermingle and influence each other in the Balkans. Many people migrate and encounter others and mingle with them. If you have a region with these three characteristics - geopolitical buffer, economic and cultural interaction - you have two possible destinies in history. One is to be the center of world history, and the other to be a victim of global conflict and controlled by alien powers," Davutoglu explains.

"Because of this, when we speak of the Balkans, we say it's the periphery of Europe. But is the Balkans really a periphery? No. It is the heartland of Africa-Eurasia. Where does this perception of periphery come from? If you asked Mehmet-Pasha Sokolović, he wouldn't have said that Sarajevo or Salonica were the periphery, whether of Europe or the Ottoman state. Look at history. The only exception in history is the Ottoman state. During the Ottoman times, in the 16th century, the Balkans was at the center of world politics. That was the golden age of the Balkans. This is a historical fact."

"Who created world policy in the 16th century? Your ancestors! They weren't all Turks. Some were of Albanian origina, others were Greek converts. Mehmet-pasha Sokolović is a good example. Were it not for the Ottoman Empire, he would have been a poor Serb peasant with a small farm or whatever, because they didn't have developed farming in this part of the world then. Thanks to the Ottoman state, he became a leader in world politics. Ottoman history is Balkans history, in which the Balkans held special importance in the history of the world."

..."In the 14th century Belgrade was a village, maybe a small town. During the Ottoman era Belgrade became the capital of the Danube, the heart of Europe at the time. Culturally, there were hundreds of mosques and churches. (…) Sarajevo is a miniature of Ottoman heritage. If you don't understand Sarajevo, you cannot understand Ottoman history. Sarajevo is the prototype of Ottoman civilization, the template for Balkans ascendant."

Center of victims: Then he noted an example from the 19th century of an Albanian who established modern Egypt. "Kavalali Mehmet Ali-Pasha was Albanian. He didn't become just a key Ottoman figure at the time, he's also the founder of modern Egypt. Were it not for the Ottoman state, he would have amounted to at most a smart but petty nobleman somewhere in the Balkans. What can we learn from this? The Balkans has a geopolitical, geocultural and geoeconomic destiny, and it will either be the center of the world or a victim of the world," said Davutoglu.

The key issue in his reinterpretation of Balkans history is the division of the region after the 19th century and the history of ethnic conflict since then. "Without cultural interaction, cultures come in conflict. Without economic interaction, commerce, there is economic stagnation. Without political authority, this becomes a buffer zone for conflicts," Davutoglu explains."

"Now is the time for reunification. Then we will rediscover the spirit of the Balkans. We need to create a new feeling of unity in the region. We need to strengthen regional ownership, a common regional conscience. We are not angels, but we are not beasts either. It is up to us to do something. It all depends on which part of history you look to. From the 15th to the 20th century, the history of the Balkans was a history of success. We can have this success again. Through reestablishing ownership in the region, through reestablishing multicultural coexistencde, and through establishing a new economic zone," Davutoglu argued.

A New Balkans

According to him, "multicultural coexistence is very important because the life of civilizations can only be understood through analyzing the structure of cities and cultural life in the cities. All Balkans cities are multicultural. We lived together. And this cultural integration is what produced such strong cultural heritage. Those who organized the massacres in Srebrenice in the 1990s are barbarians who did not want to tolerate diversity. The spirit of Sarajevo is the spirit of coexistence and living together."

"We desire a new Balkans, based on political values, economic interdependence and cultural harmony. That was the Ottoman Balkans. We will restore this Balkans. People call this 'neo-Ottoman'. I don't point to the Ottoman state as a foreign policy issue. I emphasize the Ottoman heritage. The Ottoman era in the Balkans is a success story. Now it needs to come back," says Davutoglu.

[...]

"Turkey is partly a Balkans country, partly a Caucasus country, and partly a Middle Eastern country. There are more Bosnians living in Turkey than in Bosnia! There are more Albanians in Turkey than in Albania, more Chechens than in Chechnya, more Abkhaz than in Abkhazia. Why? Because of the Ottoman heritage. For all these different nations in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Turkey is a safe haven, their homeland. You are welcome! Anadolia belongs to you, our brothers and sisters! And we are confident that Sarajevo belongs to us! If you wish to come, come! But we want you to be secure here, as owners of Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. What is happening in Bosnia is our responsibility."

"We have a common history, a common destiny, a common future. Like in the 16th century, when the Ottoman Balkans was ascendant, we will once again make the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East - together with Turkey - the center of world politics in the future. That is the goal of Turkish foreign policy, and we will achieve it. We will reintegrate the Balkans, we will reintegrate the Middle East, and we will reintegrate the Caucasus on these principles of regional and world peace, not just for us, but for all of humanity."

[...]

"For diplomats from elsewhere in the world, Bosnia is a technical matter. To us it is a matter of life and death. That's how important it is. For us the integrity of Bosnia is just as important as the integrity of Turkey. For Turkey, the security of Sarajevo is equally important as the security and prosperity of Istanbul. This is not just the mood of the Turkish government, but a feeling of every individual Turk, no matter where in Turkey he resides. There were two great spontaneous gatherings of Turks that I remember. One was in 1993, when news came that the Serbs used chemical weapons against Goražde. This was broadcast around seven or eight in the evening, and within two hours there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Spontaneously. Had someone asked of them to march on Bosnia, they would have marched. We had that feeling. That shows how much we love each other."

Holding on

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

His conclusion made me think some more:

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 6

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

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

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

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

Missing the Point, Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illyrian And Other Myths

Most Albanians today will tell you they are direct descendants of Illyrians, an ancient people that inhabited the Balkans in pre-Roman times. Rome conquered the peninsula early in the first century AD and it is universally assumed that the Illyrians became Romanized. As Goths, Alans, Huns, Magyars and Slavs passed through or settled in the Balkans in the two centuries following the fall of Rome, it was assumed the Illyrians vanished as a distinct population, merging into the overall gene pool of the Slavic settlers. Except, so it is claimed, in the rough country of today's Albania.

The Illyrian hypothesis was advanced by Franjo Rački (1828-1894). A Roman Catholic priest and politician, Rački "promoted the merging of Dalmatia with Croatia ruled by the ban, he wrote discussions about the Croatian nature of Srijem and Rijeka, but he spent most energy on analyzing the relationships between Croatia and Hungary, fighting against the Hungarian expansionism," says his Wikipedia entry.

(As a side note, few today question the "Croatness" of Dalmatia or Rijeka and Istria in general, but in the XIX century these were very much in dispute. Istria was claimed by Italy, as was a lot of Dalmatia, and the dialects spoken there even today sound nothing like the Slovenian-related speech of the region around Zagreb. For "Srijem", see Syrmia/Srem. The only time in history this area was a part of Croatia was 1941-1944.)

Rački also originated the "Bogomil hypothesis," claiming that the Christianity of medieval Bosnia was a heresy that originated in Bulgaria, and had nothing to do with Serbian Orthodoxy. Croat politicians have used this hypothesis to argue that the inhabitants of Bosnia are really apostate Catholics (and hence, Croats). Similarly, conventional wisdom among the Bosnian Muslims is that the "Bogomils" all converted to Islam and became the "Bosniaks" of today, while those who identify as Serbs and Croats are interlopers.

There's а gap in that theory one could drive a carrier battlegroup through: the Ottomans would have considered the so-called "Bogomils" just as Christian as the Orthodox and the Catholics. Therefore, as "people of the Book," they would have been permitted to keep their faith. There are other Christian churches in the East, once persecuted by the Byzantines, that survived under Islamic rule: e.g. Coptic, Maronite, Chaldaean. Yet there are no "Bogomils" in Bosnia. Zero, zip, zilch, nada, not a single one remaining. Bosnia must be the only Ottoman province in which a Christian church simply vanished like it never existed. Strange, is it not?

About a week or so ago, I read a short tidbit in a Bosnian newspaper about the shocking results of genetic research by a Swiss institute IGENEA, indicating that only 20% of Albanians has Illyrian DNA, while it was actually present in 40% or so of Bosnians!

As soon as I returned, I searched for any sign of independent confirmation. What I found suggests that the revelation came as a side effect of research done to settle the issue of Macedonians' (FYROM) genetic origin. Digging some more, I found the following post in the "Antic macedonians" thread of an IGENEA forum:

Albania:
30% Illyrians
15% Phoenician
14% Hellene
18% Thracian
2% Viking
20% Slavs

Macedonia:
30% Macedonian
10% Illyrian
15% Hellene
5% Phoenician
20% Germanic
5% Hun
15% Slavs

IGENEA spokeswoman Inma Pazos has made it clear several times that "our numbers in statistics are an average from more than 150 genetic studies published in Science, Nature or AJHG" and that they were not contacted by the journalist who wrote the story. She also appealed that politics should be kept out of the thread or it would be locked. Fat chance - 90% of the thread's content was in the form of "Hahaha, stupid [insert name of ethnic group here], you are wrong!", and that's putting it politely.

Also, this particular thread does not cite any figures about Bosnia at all - Pazos mentions only Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Macedonia (FYROM). So I'm not sure where the whole "40% of Bosnians have Illyrian roots" came from. Also, the Illyrian percentage in Albania is listed as 30%, not 20% as cited in most articles.

I've thought for a while that it would be nice to do some genetic testing in the Balkans, on fairly large samples of the population, to put an end to a lot of baseless, politically driven speculation. Romantic nationalism was all the rage in the 19th century, with everyone trying to claim ancient origins. Sure, that was easy for the Germans, but all of a sudden people claimed they were Goths, Gauls, Illyrians...

In fact, the "Illyrian movement" was the name adopted by the Croatian activists of the early 1800s. But unlike these activists, who saw similarities between Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and even went so far as to argue that they shared a language, Rački's contemporary and fellow politician Ante Starčević advanced the idea of Croats as a distinct and superior volk in the late 1860s. This idea eventually triumphed; modern notions of Croatian identity are almost entirely in line with Starčević's work.

Would disproving Rački's theories right any of the numerous wrongs perpetrated by chauvinists who have subscribed to them? Unlikely. But it could at least prevent their further use as "historical" arguments, and that by itself is a step in the right direction. So, let's see some actual science at work - more DNA studies, more actual historiography and history - while the theories of Franjo Rački ought to be retired where they belong, alongside the Piltdown Man and the Ptolemaic theory.

Back in the Saddle

I'm back from overseas, and trying to catch up; before regular posts resume, I'll try and answer some questions posed in my absence.

lassejohansson wants to know:

As a libertarian, what is your view of the radical party in Serbia? They seem to have wind in their sails right now. Do you think this is good for Serbia? And if they win, what will it mean for Kosovo? Finally, what do you think it will mean for the cooperation between Serbia and Russia?

I've written about my mixed feelings concerning the Radicals before. I still think their greatest shortcoming is that they essentially subscribe to the same exact model of governance as the demoncrats and Jacobins. Yes, patriotism is and should be a major issue, but one can't neglect the importance of putting food on the table, either. Look, economics ain't hard; less taxation means more capital for investments, more profit, higher wages and better living. A gargantuan bureaucracy regulating every aspect of life, from the price of rapsberries to banking, is going to require confiscatory taxation even if none of its employees were corrupt in any way. The solution is clear - but the Radicals and Kostunica are yet to grasp it. Surely I'm not the only one pointing this out... am I?

This doesn't mean any sort of "wild capitalism" or "neoliberalism" or what have you; it merely means that the government has become so obsessed with plunder, it's abandoned its ostensible main reason for existence: protection.

Now, the Radicals are Russophiles, while the demoncrats are EUrophiles, so it's to be expected that a Radical government would have better relations with Moscow. There's lessons to be learned from Russia. In 1998 it was a wasteland, ruled by a corrupt puppet of the Empire and lorded over by oligarchs and organized crime. In just a decade, it's turned itself around almost completely, just because the government was business-friendly and cracked down hard on both oligarchs and criminals. For all that the West is criticizing Putin, he has neither sent tanks to bomb the parliament (like Yeltsin) or invaded anyone (like Bush the Lesser).

What any of this may mean for Kosovo, it's hard to tell. The Empire seems convinced that the Serbs will roll over and give up, accepting the Albanian usurpers. I don't think that's going to happen, well, ever. Still, it would not hurt the Serbs to make that known rather explicitly. Just so there's no misunderstanding.

Speaking of which, eudaemonism has a good question:

I'm doing some background research on the term "Merciful Angel" as metaphor for NATO's 1999 Operation Allied Force, and wondered if you could help me identify the origin - if not specific originator - of the term.

Honestly, I have no idea. It's always been clear to me that NATO's 1999 attack was named "Allied Force" - they weren't even pretending to have humanitarian motives, it was just naked aggression, pure and simple. Judging by how widespread the misconception about the operation's name being "Merciful Angel" is in Serbia, I'd hazard a guess it originated from the Serbian television at some point. I know that's not very helpful, but that's the best I've got.

Ok, now back to catching up with emails and news; My latest column about the Balkans contains most of my observations from Bosnia. I'll post some more thoughts later.

Empire's Ostpolitik

It's a rough time to be an American Serb. (For the sake of clarification, I'm an ethnic Serb who lives in America, but I'm not a U.S. citizen; I just happen to live here for the time being, resentful that the taxes bleeding me dry are funding the Empire but not having much of a choice in the matter.)

First there is the matter of the U.S. being the principal sponsor of the "independent state of Kosova," the illegally occupied and severed province of Serbia. Listening to lies and hatred coming from Daniel Fried and Nicholas Burns, and knowing it is official U.S. policy, has to be infuriating.

Worst of all, though, is the awareness that all three front-runners for the post of Emperor this fall share the dreadful Serbophobia that governs America's Ostpolitik.

Hillary Clinton is, well, a Clinton. She is fully behind her husband's illegal 1999 war, and eagerly uses the Albanian term for the new false state, "Kosova" (even though the Albanians actually declared recognition as "Kosovo," the province's proper name). Riding on her coattails (petticoats?) are Madeleine Albright, Wesley Clark, and Richard Holbrooke, war criminals we all know and love from the 1990s.

John McCain is an enthusiastic supporter of the Albanian cause, and specifically the terrorist KLA. 'nuff said.

What of Obama? Surely, he's got to be better than these two, right? Not so fast.
As Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com puts it today, "there is a problem with Obama's foreign policy stances, and I can boil it down to two words: George Soros."

Kosovo is proof positive that there's no shred of difference between the two major parties governing U.S. affairs. American Serbs voted for George W. Bush in 2004 not because they approved of the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, or anything else he and Darth Cheney have inflicted upon the world, but because John Kerry was in bed with the KLA. Unsurprisingly, though disappointingly, the lesser of two evils turned out to be, well, evil.

"It seems to me," comments Raimondo, "that the division of labor between the two wings of the War Party is, to a large degree, geographical." While the Republicans focus on the Middle East, the Democrats obsess about Europe, and more specifically, Russia. Now, Raimondo holds out some hope that Obama is not entirely in Soros's pockets yet, and may be using Soros as a means of getting to power. So far, however, he seems to be following the same Soros playbook Clinton, Albright, Holbrooke and Clark played by a decade ago.

As Daniel Larison of the American Conservative points out:

Recognizing separatist states... is how the Balkan Wars of the ’90s became international conflicts that drew in outside powers. It is how the West could make the wars of Yugoslav succession into an occasion for isolating and humiliating the rump Yugoslavia [i.e. Serbia] and backing up the historic proxies of… Germany, bizarrely enough. It is through the persistent mistaken belief that outside powers have some stake in the conflicts of the Balkans that great powers collide with one another and risk a more general war.

One question a whole lot of Serbs are asking right about now is WHY the Empire is so hell-bent on supporting Greater Albania and dismembering Serbia? To say that atrocities - both real and quite made up - were the actual cause of Imperial intervention in the Balkans is folly; they were an excuse - hence all the fabrications - nothing more. Ignoring the real genocide in Rwanda while making up a genocide in Bosnia; imposing a UN blockade harsher than the one against Iraq because of alleged "Serb aggression," then launching aggressive wars of its own (1999, 2003); condemning "ethnic cleansing," but sponsoring the largest instances thereof (half a million or so Serbs from today's Croatia and Kosovo) - how much more proof do we need that the Empire does not have a moral compass?

Almost 2000 years ago, Apostle Paul wrote, "there is nothing new under the sun." That is certainly a good description of American foreign policy. Its Russophobia is British in origin; its dislike of Serbs appears to be borrowed from Austria-Hungary and Nazi Germany (as is its choice of "allies" in the region). But the sheer stupidity of demolishing the international order over a patch of land utterly insignificant to anyone but the Serbs and the Albanians... that's 100% Made in America.

They should have outsorced it. Seriously.