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Why people keep believing lies in the media

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You’d think people would learn – but they never do.

Animated news anchor

Call it the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect if you like. It’s about how we give undue credibility to journalists in the mainstream media who, either deliberately or negligently, get everything wrong.

Ed Driscoll at PJM describes it well:

The late Michael Crichton coined a phrase he called “the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect,” named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

There you have it.

Sloth!

The term sloth refers to one of the seven deadly sins, that of physical and mental laziness, with the closely related emotional and spiritual apathy. It is not unrelated to depression and despair. While sloth is perhaps the most boring of the seven deadly sins, it is the easiest to commit.

Sloth has always been part of the human condition, and it has been an ever-present temptation for even the most saintly of individuals. The ancient desert father Evagrius of Pontus labeled the spiritual form of sloth that shades into depression as acedia. His contemporary, St. John Cassian, called it “the noonday demon.” (More about acedia here, here, and here; specifically Orthodox material is here, here, and here.)

Actual sloths deserve a pass

Yawning baby sloth

The term sloth also refers to two varieties of slow-moving, tree-dwelling mammals that live in Central and South America. Unlike lazy human beings, sloths have ample reason for their slow-paced way of life: they need to conserve energy because their food supply has a very low concentration of nutrients, and their motionlessness helps them escape the notice of predators.

Human beings, on the other hand, are moral agents who are held accountable for all they do – or fail to do. This is where mental sloth comes in.

Sloth is no joke; it matters in the real world.

Taking what you read or hear at face value without checking it is mental sloth. It’s also a dereliction of one’s duty as a citizen and a voter. When many people fail in that regard, as so often happens, catastrophe ensues.

Perhaps you have heard of “low-information voters.” To vote is to govern. Low-information voters can’t be bothered to find out who the candidates are and what policies they stand for, much less what damage those policies might do. But they’ll cast ballots anyway if pressured to do so by their peers or by a political machine.

“Get real. Who has the time or resources to fact-check every news item?

Nobody does. But you can always take a moment to remind yourself that persuasive, emotion-packed stories that seem to be true often are not. You can also remind others not to take allegations at face value until verifiable information comes out.

The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect applies not only to the media, but also to the utterances of politicians whose constant lying is their primary tool for dealing with the public. Politicians are caught telling manifold lies, but the next time they open their mouths, their words are taken at face value – especially regarding foreign policy in parts of the world that are unfamiliar to most people.

Look at how the Clintons got away with bombing the Serbs, just because they could!

The dog ate my homework
The dog ate everyone’s homework

Bill Clinton had just been impeached for perjury, of all things. He was also facing credible rape allegations from Juanita Broaddrick. He needed a quick image makeover, and his sycophants in the media happily obliged. They made a hero out of Bill by creating the narrative that they had to act quickly and without deliberation to save those poor, persecuted Muslims from “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” being perpetrated by those eeeeevil Orthodox Christian Serbs. The Kosovo War got the Clintons back together, after a fashion.

They got away with this evil charade because hardly anybody could be bothered to find out where Serbia was, who the Serbs were, and what the Muslims in the area were up to. Had the media or the public done their homework, they would have found out that it was not the Serbs, but rather, the Muslims who were the perpetrators of atrocities and ethnic cleansing.

This propaganda onslaught allowed the Clinton Administration to proceed with their plans with no interference from Congress, the media, or the public. They succeeded in arm-twisting NATO into collaborating with the bombing of the Serbs and the occupation of Kosovo that continues to this day. The sacred land of Kosovo is effectively ruled by a narcoterrorist gang with ties to al Qaeda, whose long-term goal is to make Kosovo part of a Muslim “Greater Albania.” This demonstrates that politicians can indeed fool enough of the people enough of the time.

“It takes two people to lie. One to lie, and one to believe.”
- Homer Simpson

Think about it: liars would be out of business without a ready supply of gullible chumps. You have the freedom not to be one.


Serbian Patriarch Irinej Reminds the New Pope that Kosovo is Serbia

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In his greeting to newly-elected Pope Francis I, the Serbian Patriarch made it clear that Serbian territorial integrity includes the ancient providence of Kosovo.

His Holiness
Pope F R A N C I S

Vatican City

Your Holiness,

Filled with the spiritual joy on the occasion of Your election as the new Bishop of the ancient and glorious city of Rome – The Head of all Roman-Catholics throughout the world, We extend to You Our sincere congratulations.

God’s will is that all nations may know the One who is the true Way, Truth and Life – the only One who lovest mankind, Lord Jesus Christ. He, being the Savior of the World and the Deliverer from the darkness of sins, in Your personality acquires a new spiritual petitioner before His Throne.

Your priestly service will be followed by a great burden of tribulations of this world – measuring humanly perhaps immeasurable. However, we are all invited to follow Christ’s commandment: Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mt. 11:29-30)

The image of human dignity is clearly decaying before the pressures of various injustices, invasive wars, unfounded threats of totalitarian regimes and authorities which consider not the future of this world, let alone think about Christ’s Heavenly Kingdom.

Therefore, we offer our prayers to the Lord Jesus Christ to grant You abundance of His mercy and spiritual strength for Your new ministry to which the Holy Spirit called You upon , so You can prevail on the path of the Gospel with the Lord’s message to the world and the greeting that He would always greet His disciples with: Peace be with you!

Your Holiness, we hold firmly to the hope that You also, as Your Highly Esteemed Predecessor, searching for peace and justice, which this world needs more than anything else, will remain on the track of brotherly love and steady support to the Orthodox Serbian people in our great efforts to preserve territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia in the crisis of unilaterally proclamation of independence of the so-called “Republic of Kosovo”. [emphasis added]

Wishing to Your Holiness, Your Christ-loving clergy, as well as to all Roman-Catholic faithful throughout the World, every good thing from the Giver of all that is good, once again we greet You cordially and remain in the love of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ,

Serbian Patriarch

I r i n e j

Kosovo was the original Serbian land. It is consider a Holy land and is littered with Orthodox Monasteries. The 1999 Kosovo War was nothing more than President Clinton’s smokescreen to take American eyes off the Clinton Administration’s ill deeds. Even now, few Americans are aware that Clinton and his NATO allies fought to help spread Islamic terrorism in the Balkans.

Susan Rice: Shill and Enabler for Robert Mugabe

Serbian Government and Mind-boggling Decision: Kosovo, Loss of Territorial Integrity and EU Crisis

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Vojin Joksimovich, PhD – Modern Tokyo Times

Serbia: Church at night

We live in a complex world full of mind-boggling developments including cases of ruling administrations pursuing foreign policies clearly not in the national interests. A globalist agenda seems to transcend the national interests. In 2007/2008 this agenda led to the global economic meltdown, the worst since the Great Depression. Two US examples are only briefly mentioned herein and left for another piece. The US has sided with the jihadists in a number of local conflicts and civil wars, e.g. Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, Egypt, and Syria!!  The other example is that of generalissima Hillary Clinton, to borrow the term from Ralph Nader, who overcame opposition from the Defense Secretary Robert Gates and choreographed NATO overthrow of long-term Libyan leader Gaddafi, who most recently only focused on becoming an African leader. During her four-year term she led a militarized State Department which had little room for diplomacy.

It should be noted that the war in Libya was conducted not only without a congressional declaration of war but without a congressional authorization and appropriation. Hillary’s husband provided a model for lawlessness in the world by unleashing NATO’s force of 1150 planes, dropping 21,000 tons of bombs and firing 1,300 missiles on essentially the defenseless country of Serbia (probably the most one-sided military conflict in history). It was the first time in NATO’s 50-yr history that the alliance directed its military might –second to none in the world—at a sovereign nation.  In my books, Kosovo Crisis and Kosovo is Serbia, I had characterized this act of naked aggression as 78 days of infamy. The US/NATO campaign broke seven international laws including the UN charter (Article 5) and ignored the US Constitution and US law. The House of Representatives did not pass a resolution supporting bombing. The NATO political establishment had to demonize not only the Serbian president Milosevic but the whole Serbian nation in order to justify the illegal and unconstitutional war. The handmaiden reporters played their assigned parts by the political establishment in demonizing the Serbs, as a part of the so called packed journalism.

This article is dedicated to the case Kosovo claimed frequently as a western success—only by ignoring what has transpired in the province since it was stolen from Serbia by the US/NATO and handed over to the domestic Albanian terrorists turned statesmen as Washington Balkan clients. After eight years of resisting pressure to abandon the cradle of its civilization Serbia’s existing government has now decided to capitulate. The capitulation vehicle was entering into the EU sponsored dialogue with an illegal entity called the Kosovo Republic, which unilaterally declared independence five years ago as the US/German creation. Serbia entered into a no win situation since US/Germany are holding trump cards. Serbia has no friends in the West, only in the East but those friends are not involved and Russia in particular. Baroness Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign-policy chief, has been acting as the mediator.

Unless the Serbian government decides to pull out of this dialogue at the very last minute it will sacrifice its territorial integrity, in violation of its constitution, primarily to obtain a date for initiation of decade long negotiations for joining the EU!! At the time of this writing it appears that Serbia will get nothing. Aleksandar Vulin, director of Serbia government’s Kosovo office said: “Everything the EU asked of other countries we have long fulfilled, not for the sake of the EU but for our own sake. Many EU member states are in worse economic and political shape than Serbia and less stable. But since we are Serbia other rules apply, and the only question is how long we will take that. Hopefully, Serbian government will reach that point on April 2. This statement doesn’t offer a satisfactory explanation to why Serbia continues its pursuit of EU membership while sacrificing its territorial integrity and hence this belongs to the “mind-boggling category” to this writer.”

Kosovo Solution not amenable to US/German Impositions

My books address millennium-old Kosovo history about the Serbian and Albanian conflict, which I have routinely compared to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to illustrate the mass complexity. Historical animosities exist, which makes coexistence next to impossible. The Ahtisaari plan, not approved by the UN Security Council, but used by US/Germany as the blueprint for Kosovo independence. The plan was designed by the former Finnish president who was appointed by the UN Secretary General to be the UN special envoy for Kosovo. It recognized that the conflict in Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians could only be peacefully resolved if a way were found to allow the two communities to co-exist in a majority-run polity but also lived their own lives in their own communities. Kosovo is the cradle of Serbian civilization with some 1300 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries, a Serbian Jerusalem. The conflict must be adjudicated either by the UN, with participation of Russia and China, or by some European entity like the 1878 Berlin Congress with participation of Russia. Bombing Serbia and claiming that farcical humanitarianism was in play as well as imposing a Carthaginian peace on Serbia is the crudest way to resolve this complex conflict in particular in the 21st century. “Carthaginian Peace” is referred to as a brutal peace demanding total subjugation of the defeated side. Tacitus wrote: “They make a desert and call it peace.”  Julia Gorin, an accomplished blogger on Balkan subjects, on the occasion of deployment of Fort Bragg soldiers to Kosovo, wrote: “Bombing a country on behalf of its domestic terrorists is ‘easing tensions.” Only in America, kids. Only in America!

For eight years, Belgrade was ready to sacrifice almost everything to keep Kosovo within Serbia, including making a proposal for an unprecedented Kosovo autonomy compatible with the UN Resolution 1244, which terminated the 1999 war. However, in 2007 the US decided to abandon the UN process in favor of using the EU and NATO to impose the Ahtisaari plan on Serbia. Ahtisaari’s job was to choreograph the predetermined outcome: Kosovo independence. In 2007, the Finnish News Agency (STT) published two articles alleging that Ahtisaari was “bought” by the Albanian mafia.

Russia and Serbia backed diplomacy but the US backed force.  With the US and Russia at loggerheads, the EU was propelled into a pivotal position. At its annual summit, the EU asserted leadership by giving birth to a 2,000-2,500 person civilian mission named EULEX to replace the UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo). The EULEX, costing some $1.3bn since 2008, was supposed to be status neutral, given the EU’s lack of unity regarding Kosovo recognition, but instead became a main proponent of Kosovo independence reflecting the US/Germany influence. Previous Serbian president Boris Tadic and his Democratic Party accepted the EULEX mission, despite advice from Moscow to the contrary. The process of Serbian capitulation was thus initiated with Serbia making one concession after another including border management, Kosovo’s representation at regional meetings, university diplomas, trade, etc.

Serbia Capitulates to become German Colony

Given the availability of my books, as well as many others, I will shift quickly into December 2012. The Serbian government elected in May, 2012, consisting mainly of former Milosevic allies including Ivica Dacic as the Prime Minister (PM), former spokesman for president Milosevic when Serbia fought NATO. This government of former Serbian nationalists decided to violate the Serbian constitution, which explicitly says that Kosovo is part of Serbia. They rationalized that Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo exists only on paper and hence something might be accomplished through negotiations in order to prevent the final act of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Serbs refusing to accept the Pristina rule.

The EU has been demanding from Serbia to “improve neighborly relations” in order to advance its EU membership bid. Another term in use is “normalization of relations.” It should be remembered that five EU members have not recognized Kosovo independence. Hence it may not be proper to call it the US/EU creation but more appropriately the US/German. It should be remembered that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Serbian officials in Belgrade last year that the “path of Serbia into the EU can only lead through the normalization of its relations with Kosovo.”  It has widely been interpreted that she meant Serbia’s recognition of an independent Kosovo without redrawing the borders. This demand is in stark contrast with the EU’s decision to admit Cyprus without demanding recognition of the Turkish Republic in the north. Vice-president of the Serbian government Suzana Grubjesic said that the dialogue is taking place in Brussels but Berlin decides.  She was partially right as the US and Germany is deciding.

The western media has been reporting that once-sworn enemies have signaled a thawing of relations between the two countries. PM Dacic, on a number of occasions, stated that division of Kosovo was the best solution but that in Brussels they did not want to hear about it as they did not want to see another Republika Srpska in the Balkans. This opposition comes mainly from the US. The American ambassador in Belgrade Michael Kirby stated that Republika Srpka didn’t come out well in Bosnia! He may or may not know that late American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, an architect of the Dayton Accords which terminated the war in Bosnia, was a creator of the Republika Srpska. It may well be that in Washington they believe that Holbrooke acquiesced to demands from Milosevic. This was deemed to be a Serbian success and Serbia was not supposed to have any.

The US has followed two basic rules in the Balkans as eloquently summarized by former US diplomat turned foreign policy analyst James George Jatras. “Rule 1: The Serbs are always wrong, and claims and interests they might have must be thwarted. Rule 2: Muslims are always right, and all claims and interests they may have must be facilitated.” Another reputable Washington-based analyst Doug Bandow said: “the Serbs always lose,” as a general rule. Incidentally, while speaking at the Belgrade Law School, ambassador Kirby refused to apologize for the illegal US bombing of Serbia, while presidents Clinton and Obama have prolifically apologized to misdeeds in the past.

Kosovo Serbs

Ruined Kosovo church

Nobody can blame the Kosovo Serbs for refusing to accept tyranny by KLA terrorists turned politicians/statesmen on the US/NATO watch after experiencing the murders of thousands, ethnic cleansing (two thirds were expelled), demolition and burning of 155 Serbian churches and monasteries. 200,000 Kosovo refugees are still internally displaced persons (IDP) in Serbia. There are 120-130,000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo: approximately some 40,000 in the north and about 80,000 in enclaves scattered across Kosovo. On March 17, 2004, just as in the 1930s, Kosovo Kristallnacht took place, a pre-arranged orchestrated Albanian ethnic cleansing plan. 60,000 strong Albanian mobs drove 4,500 Serbs from their homes. There were 19 deaths and some 900 injuries. Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, slammed NATO/UNMIK for failing to protect minorities.

UNMIK Human Rights Advisory Panel (HRAP) established in 2006, in response to 250 complaints, announced a decision slamming the failure of UNMIK to investigate systematic killing of Serbs and other non-Albanians, including forced disappearances. HRAP requested from UNMIK an apology and compensation to a Prizren Serbian family for failure to find their father and son kidnapped by three KLA thugs in July 1999. In that timeframe according to some estimates the KLA had murdered 6,000 Serbs and other minorities who were mostly Roma.  Some consider this decision a landmark case. However, the competences were transferred to EULEX in 2008. Hence, this decision may prove to be too little, too late regarding accountability.

Even after universally condemning the 2004 pogrom the Kosovo Serbs have continued to be victimized. According to the Serbian office for Kosovo there had been 1025 attacks on the Serbs since Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence five years ago: 51 firearm attacks, 11 plantings of explosive devices, 15 hand grenades and Molotov cocktails thrown, 25 churches attacked, 201 Orthodox cemeteries desecrated, 197 tombstones destroyed, 135 Serbian houses stoned, and 48 fires set to properties owned by the Serbs. Four Serbs were murdered, 245 were injured, and the Serb population was attacked 203 times a year, an attack every other day.  Even during these EU sponsored “negotiations” on February 4 a bomb was thrown at a 3-yr old boy and a 9-yr old girl. The Visoki Decani monastery was attacked in an attempt to wrap the ethnic cleansing and to remove evidence of Serbian existence. Fortunately the Italian KFOR contingent prevented the monastery from being torched down.

10,000 Serbian monuments, including Serbian cemeteries, south of the Ibar River have been eradicated. Even the 30m high pine tree planted in Narodimlje by Serbian Tsar Dusan was cut on its 663 birthday. The only explanation for this vandalism is the sick minds of Albanian nationalist “neighbors” which are committed to eradicating the Serbian presence in Kosovo over a millennium. In contrast the monuments in northern Kosovska Mitrovica, where the Serbs constitute the majority, they are untouched.

These acts of terrorism and vandalism against the Serbs in the presence of KFOR, UNMIK, and EULEX received no due attention in Washington, Berlin and Brussels. There is no precedent in Europe for such ethnocide. The US/EU moral authority has been reduced to its lowest level in recent history. Do the European standards apply to Serbs in so-called independent Kosovo? James George Jatras wrote: “Evidence of Islamic evidence and intolerance in Kosovo—and in the Balkans in general—is almost completely ignored, since acknowledging it would challenge the cozy myth of successful US/NATO ‘humanitarian intervention’ and limit the application to future adventures.

Association (Community) of Serbian Municipalities

Given that Kosovo division was not an option, in late December the Belgrade media published a document termed the “platform,” believed to be composed by president Nikolic and his advisers, laying down the principles and guidelines for dialog with Pristina. The Serbian parliament passed the resolution on January 12, after 14 hours of discussion, paving the way for the consideration of high level territorial and political autonomy for Association or Community of Serbian Municipalities throughout  Kosovo where the Serbs constitute a majority, including the decisive role in the area of security, police and judiciary. This would require international guarantees and Serbia would have to adopt a constitutional law. The resolution fell short of recognizing Kosovo and was supported by the Kosovo Serbs.  Inclusion of Serbs south of Ibar represents some progress compared to the previous Serbian administration.

Brussels Dialog

In December the respective PMs of Serbia and Kosovo Ivica Dacic and Hashim Thaci met for the first time. The readers need to be reminded about Hashim Thaci’s background which is well known in Washington, Berlin and Brussels. Thaci, aka Snake, was a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander, highly recognized Kosovo thug, a narco-terrorist accused by the Council of Europe for selling organs of kidnapped and subsequently murdered Serbs. As a KLA commander he was involved in murdering the Serbs and others but was never indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He enjoyed immunity as he served US Balkans interests. President Bush said on numerous occasions that he would never meet with terrorists but he met with Thaci at the White House below the portrait of George Washington.  Thaci has been regularly getting kisses from US Secretaries of State: Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Everything goes in the Washington void of having any moral standards.

PMs Dacic and Thaci met seven times thus far with another session scheduled for April the 2nd. The EU has arranged for the Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic to meet with the Kosovo president Atifete Jahjaga on February 6. Hence, for all practical purposes Serbia has recognized the Pristina authorities. President Nikolic admitted during his visit to Egypt that the Serbian government was ready to recognize Kosovo institutions including the government, constitution, military and the police. However, he reiterated that: “Serbia has never, and never will recognize Kosovo…something created on injustice cannot be legal and just.”

The northern Kosovo area, bordering Serbia, has been under the control of so called parallel institutions funded by Belgrade including town councils, health authorities, schools and post-offices. These parallel institutions have been unacceptable not only to Pristina but to Washington and Berlin as well. Serbia’s position is that the proposed autonomy of Association of Serbian Municipalities would solve the problem. However, Pristina refused to consider providing the municipalities with any executive powers causing a serious stalemate in the dialog. Thaci has urged the US to support Pristina in its refusal to grant concessions to the Serbian minority in a February 27 letter to the US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.  The US dispatched assistant secretary of state Philip Reeker, who became available to meet with Dacic and Thaci in Brussels prior and after their sessions with Baroness Ashton. The US meddling will probably kill any agreement acceptable to Serbia. In parallel ambassador Kirby, speaking at the 20th Kopaonik Business Forum, urged that Serbia should change its image, “rebrand itself” and show its qualities to the world. He added that he saw Serbia in Europe and that it was up to Serbia to find its way to the EU.  This represents American position that Serbia should forget about the nation’s birthplace and focus on its foggy future in European and Atlantic integrations, i.e. EU and NATO.

Baroness Ashton met with the Serbian leadership, President Nikolic, PM Dacic and VP Vucic, on March 11 to discuss the Serbian proposal to create the Association of Serb Municipalities. Asked by the Belgrade media about his “red line,” Nikolic stated that Serbia recognizes Kosovo as a specific territory compared to other parts of Serbia and was ready to accept some facts Kosovo has accomplished with assistance from the UN and the EU like the constitution, the president, the government and the parliament. However on that territory we will never recognize its independence – a big Serbian community exists which must be preserved and enabled to return. Dacic said that “nothing less than an Association of Serb Municipalities with executive powers would be acceptable” and that “no Serb would concede to more than that. The Serbian trio returned from Brussels and made optimistic statements that Pristina made concessions and that an agreement would be signed either on the 20th or the 28th, which exemplifies naivety of the Serbian leadership. Thaci quickly denied that concessions were made. Ashton visited Pristina on March the 14th and then flew to Belgrade. PM Dacic denied that Pristina made concessions and said that Serbia is still far from being in agreement with Pristina. “Only Washington can push Pristina into making concessions but decided not to do it despite the fact that the Ahtissari plan allows the creation of a decision-making body.”  The seventh session on March the 20th didn’t break the impasse leading to yet another session scheduled for April the 2nd.

Given Pristina’s failure to make concessions, an appropriate approach for the Serbian leadership would be to thank the EU for their mediation services and unambiguously state that they must protect the human rights of about 130,000 Kosovo Serbs by quoting the Albanian record briefly summarized above. This would stall the Brussels dialog and freeze the Kosovo conflict which is in Serbia’s national interest. It would then be up to the EU to grant Serbia the date for EU membership negotiations or not.

In April the European Parliament has scheduled a debate on Belgrade/Pristina dialog. The EU Commission is scheduled by April 16 to submit a report about the progress in negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina as the principal subject. Progress in judicial reforms, fight against corruption, minority protection, will also be addressed.  This report will be considered by all EU members at their semi-annual summit on June 28 and a decision made to provide the date to Serbia for membership negotiations or not.

Lies were told that Kosovo was ours: Serbian De Gaulle!

Poster: 'Democracy?' with vandalized icon

Dacic writing in the Belgrade weekly NIN on March 7 wrote that Serbs had been lied to that “Kosovo is ours” for a decade. “For 10 years, Kosovo was a taboo. No one could officially tell the truth. Tales were told, lies were told that Kosovo is ours.”  But “the Serbian president cannot go to Kosovo, nor the prime minister, nor ministers, nor the police or army. Serbs can only leave Kosovo. That’s how much Kosovo is ours and what does our constitution and laws mean there.” So called “second Serbia”  (viewed by many as anti-Serbs typically supported by western finances) jumped to praise Dacic. Ms. Vesna Pesic, co-leader of the 90-day 1996-97 winter demonstrations against Milosevic, compared Dacic to Churchill and De Gaulle! Well, Ms. Pesic might be right if Dacic can pull an equivalent of Republika Srpska into Kosovo by copying Milosevic’s accomplishment at Dayton, which doesn’t seem to be on the cards.

Agency Strategic Marketing found on March 6 that 63% of Serbian citizens accept that Kosovo is in practice an independent state and that Serbia can only hope to fight to secure the best deal for remaining Serbs in Kosovo. On the other hand, the same poll found out that 65% wouldn’t like to see Kosovo sacrificed for the sake of joining the EU. 61% thought that Dacic was doing a good job.

Dacic and Serbian citizens do not need to be reminded that the UN Security Council Resolution #1244 says that Kosovo remains part of Serbia. However, the US/NATO has bypassed this resolution. Hence, independent Kosovo represents a text-book example of an international grand-theft similar to piracy. The Tadic’s government acceptance of EULEX to replace UNMIK represented the initial part of the indigenous Serbian contribution to this grand-theft.  Ms. Pesic should remember that De Gaulle abandoned Algeria, but Algeria was a French colony and not the cradle of French civilization.

Serbia’s Dependence on EU

Serbia is willing to give up its territorial integrity in order to obtain the date for opening membership negotiations with the EU!! These negotiations may last 7-10 years or even longer. Why? The VP Vucic said that without the EU that Serbia’s economic survival would be threatened. As an EU candidate Serbia receives grants to the tune of 170 million euros per year. Vucic continues that obtaining a date would enable imports of key machines and the transfer of technology to Serbian factories as well as more financial and economic aid. Given the high unemployment rate of some 26.2% (comparable to that of Greece and Spain), 2% contraction of the economy in 2012, the budget deficit and the lowest income per capita in the region then this grant is obviously welcome. During the last 5 years the international debt of 8.4bn euros has grown to 17.7bn euros. The Economist has published an article titled: “Serbia is the Sickest Man of Europe.” Given these dismal statistics, Serbia must act fast to fix its economy.

The new administration must look elsewhere to attract foreign investment as opposed to propagating the myth of previous Tadic’s administration that joining the EU has no alternative. Recently they have obtained credit of 300 million euros from Russia and are negotiating with Russia for another loan to the tune of $500 million as a budgetary supplement. However, Serbia should remember that a country cannot live on loans as the unfolding Eurozone crisis has clearly demonstrated. In addition they seem to be successful at obtaining investments from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). About four years ago this writer has advocated that Serbia should explore joining the BRICs club (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as a long-term solution. Since then South Africa has joined. The club may or may not accept Serbia’s application but no effort was made to explore this option. Besides this BRIC countries have supported that Kosovo is Serbia.

At the above mentioned Kopaonik Forum, the Italian ambassador has pointed out that Italian companies can work with Serbian companies and that Serbia is a dynamic market, which has improved Serbia’s image in Italy. Trade between the two nations amounted to 2.3bn euros in 2012. The German ambassador said: “Most officials of German companies are satisfied with their businesses and treatment in Serbia.”  So Serbia seems to be doing reasonably well with these two key EU countries without being an EU member.

It appears that Vucic and the Serbian government is confusing pre-2009 EU with the one in 2013. Has the Serbian government examined the experience of a number of euro-zone members such as Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, which have received the IMF/EU bail-outs in exchange for severe austerity programs? Cyprus has requested a bailout of 17bn euros for their banks. Spain, Italy and Slovenia are other bailout candidates. The currency union has worked very well for German growth and wealth at the expense of countries mentioned.

Also, does Vucic see an analogy between the EU and the Soviet Union? Rigidity of German response to deal with the euro-zone crisis is a case in point: government overspending and excessive bank risks. Voters in member countries can change and have changed the governments but cannot change the economic policies designed in Berlin to protect the German taxpayers in particular prior to September general elections in Germany. Of particular interest to Serbia should be the experience of Orthodox countries: Greece and Cyprus as well as that of Slovenia, as a former Yugoslav republic. The experience of Bulgaria and Rumania, with their governments replaced, are also highly relevant.

Slovenia: German Colony

Slovenia was by far the richest state to emerge from the dissolution of Yugoslavia as a privileged republic in the market of 24 million people. Slovenia was the first former socialist country to adopt the euro. The economy grew on average by 4.4% annually between 1997 and 2008 thereby outperforming the Eurozone on economic growth. It was the region’s richest country with the GDP per capita greater to those of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary and Poland. It was a showcase for the benefits of EU membership.  However, the euro crisis caused three years of recession with the economy contracting at 8% in 2009 and even 2.4% in 2012. Currently, the unemployment rate exceeds 12% and the economy is expected to fall another 1.4% in 2013. Now, Slovenia might need a bail-out from its Eurozone partners. The German austerity model of cutting spending did not result in an economic revival. Slovenia had a problem with corporations financing operations through debt rather than equity. Slovenia’s banks are tottering under $9bn in non-performing loans, about 19% of GDP (higher than even Spain’s 16%). The government started implementing a bank bailout plan. Early in February 20,000 people protested against the austerity measures. PM Janez Jansa had to go and Alenka Bratusek became the new PM.

A Slovenian social scientist Rastko Mocnik said that Slovenia was now at the same level as other southern EU members like Greece, Portugal and Spain. It has become the Europe’s south. The EU operates on the principle of colonies with countries like Germany, France, and Scandinavian countries having privileged access to southern countries. Hence, Slovenia has become German’s colony with no political influence in the EU. Mocnik anticipates a conflict between developed capitalist countries with the surplus of capital and the undeveloped ones seeking that capital. The undeveloped ones, sooner or later, will be looking for alternatives. Asked if Serbia has an alternative to the EU, he recalled that after the demise of Yugoslavia, Slovenia was led to believe that the EU was the only way and that economically it wouldn’t survive. He thought that Serbia should integrate but not necessarily the same way as Slovenia. Mocnik was against the breakup of Yugoslavia and thinks that it was a great historic mistake.

Cyprus Drama

Eight months after the Cypriot government requested a bail-out to the tune of 17bn euros, bleary-eyed Eurozone finance ministers produced a contentious package on a Saturday the 16th. This crisis-mode of operation is EU’s modus operandi. The finance ministers demanded from Cyprus to extract 5.8bn euros from bank depositors in order to cut the size of the rescue package to 10bn euros. This was unprecedented. Peter Bofinger, a German economist, voiced the view that trying to make small savers pay to secure a European bailout of the Cypriot banking system is dangerous. “It will shake the trust of depositors across the Continent. Europe’s citizens now have to fear for their money. The Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese may not run for their money today or tomorrow, but as soon as the crisis intensifies in a Eurozone country, the bank customers will remember Cyprus. They will withdraw their money and, but doing so, intensify the crisis.”

In the bailouts of Portugal (78bn euros) and Ireland (67.5bn euros), it was those countries taxpayers and the Eurozone partners bearing the risk of lending money to them. In Greece (172.6bn euros), the Eurozone did the same but shared the pain with the country’s bondholders. With little Cyprus (population 800,000, GDP of 17bn euros, and 0.06% economic output), whose major banks suffered huge losses in Greek investments and souring real-estate market, the bank depositors had to suffer the pain. The Cypriot legislature rejected the deal with Chancellor Merkel reportedly outraged. Cyprus was “exhausting the patience of its euro partners.”  On the streets of Nicosia, like on the streets of Athens, she has been viewed as a hate figure with images of an SS guard or donning a Hitler moustache. On the other hand she continues to be popular at home as the Germans do not like their taxes to be used for bail-outs. Yuri Pyankykh, President of the Russian Business Association of Cyprus, blamed the Cyprus crisis on the German special services which reported that Cyprus banks were teaming with cash laundered by Russian oligarchs and that bailing out Cyprus means helping out those tycoons.

Another bleary-eyed session took place the morning of the 25th. The so called troika (IMF, ECB and EU) imposed their bail-out terms but secured the deal by bank restructuring which doesn’t need approval of the Cypriot Parliament. The deal shuts Cyprus’ second largest bank (Cyprus Popular Bank) imposing steep losses on deposits over 100,000 euros. The country’s largest bank, Bank of Cyprus, will be downsized aggressively with large depositors taking the hit. Russian PM Medvedev has characterized the deal as robbery. Russian and other foreign investors have been robbed. The troika will be in touch with the Russian government. The country faces a big recession that it may need more money to survive in the Eurozone. Economists predict a GDP decline of 10% this year and 8% in 2014. The banks will open on the 28th after 12 days of shutdown. During this period no electronic transactions were available with the ATP machines dispensing only 100 euros per day.

The bells should be ringing in Belgrade that the experiences of Cyprus, Greece and Slovenia are highly applicable and necessitate immediate re-examination of the Serbian government infatuation with the EU.

Kostunica Warnings

Vojislav Kostunica, former President of Yugoslavia, former PM of Serbia and now the President of the Democratic Party of Serbia, warned the Serbian government not to do what no previous governments had done. The EU is directly endangering not only the territorial integrity but also the national identity, culture, national self-respect and dignity, and economic interests of the country. The theft of the Serbian territory will resonate in younger generations with anger and will undermine stability of the country. The issues of provinces Vojvodina and Raska will be opened including the survival of Serbia as a country.

Kostunica has requested the session of the Serbian Parliament in order for the government to inform deputies regarding the EU demands and to reject the proposals of Brussels. Serbia would be the first nation to voluntarily hand over its territory. No state in Europe has done anything similar nor has anything similarly been requested from a nation state. It is expected from Serbia to kill its own statehood in order for independent Kosovo to be created. Every sovereign state must reject such a proposal. This writer cannot agree more with Kostunica.


 

Vojin Joksimovich is the author of three books and over one hundred articles.

The Revenge of the Prophet by Dr. Vojin Joksimovich is another classic book which gives great insight and knowledge about the Balkans, radical Islam, US foreign policy and other important areas. 

The Revenge of the Prophet (book)

Dr. Vojin Joksimovich wrote an in depth book called Kosovo is Serbia and please check this athttp://www.gmbooks.com/product/Kosovo-GM.html – it  is a must read if you want deep knowledge about this complex topic.

Kosovo Is Serbia (book)

Please check and buy these books if you care deeply about the Balkans and the plight of Serbs in Bosnia, Kosovo and throughout the former Yugoslavia.

leejay@moderntokyotimes.com
http://moderntokyotimes.com

Shrapnel bombs used in Boston 2013; shrapnel-loaded cluster bombs dropped on Serb civilians in 1999

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Shrapnel was used on Marathon Runners in Boston in April 2013; Shrapnel loaded cluster bombs were dropped on thousands of Serbian civilians in April 1999

By Wm. Dorich, April 19, 2013

The New York Times chilling front-page headline read: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “Rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.”

Much less crude but weighing about 1,000 pounds each, CBU-87/B warheads was used 14 years ago on Serbia’s people. In this writer’s opinion, those cluster bombs were used by a terrorist called, Gen. Wesley Clark. His shrapnel bombs were unloaded on the city of Nis, in the vicinity of a farmer’s market. According to the San Francisco Chronicle on May 8, 1999, “The bombs struck next to the hospital complex and near the market, bringing death and destruction, peppering the streets of Serbia’s third-largest city with shrapnel.” BBC correspondent John Simpson wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: “Used against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most savage weapons of modern warfare.”

Savagery did not stop their usage by Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton with a total disregard that Serbians were American allies in two World Wars and never attacked another country. Each cluster bomb Clinton and Clark dropped had more than 60,000 jagged pieces of steel shrapnel. The weapon’s maker describes their death product as “useful for soft targets,” in other words, human flesh?

In an article quoted in the LA Times Dr. Grbic, a surgeon at Pristina’s main hospital in Kosovo said: “I have been an orthopedist for 15 years now, working in a crisis region where we often have injuries, but neither I nor my colleagues have ever seen such horrific wounds as those caused by cluster bombs.” He added: “They are wounds that lead to disabilities to a great extent. The limbs are so crushed that the only remaining option is amputation. It’s awful, awful.”

Today, the U.S. State Department remains opposed to outlawing Cluster Munitions.“Their elimination from U.S. stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk.” The State Department position statement adds:”Moreover, cluster munitions can often result in much less collateral damage than unitary weapons, such as a larger bomb or larger artillery shell would cause, if used for the same mission.” Perhaps the Muslim terrorists who stuffed nails and ball bearings into pressure cookers for use against marathon runners in Boston this week have the same warped minds.

The late Col. David Hackworth, a personal friend, was the highest decorated American soldier in our nation’s history. In one of my interviews with the Col. he called Wesley Clark a “Perfumed Prince” and criticized him and these so called NATO experts for being “out-smarted by the Serbs whose pilots managed to bring down the multi-billion dollar Stealth Bomber, the most expensive and most advanced aircraft in history, used for the first time in war, while claiming it was ‘invisible’ to radar.” In the days that followed Serbs carried signs that read: “Sorry we didn’t know it was invisible.”

When the war ended it was discovered that the Serbs built decoy aircraft out of balsa wood outsmarting Clark into using multi-million dollar bombs to blow up wooden boxes as he shot at Serbs like fish in a barrel from 30,000 feet. The Serbs also figured out a way to use microwave ovens with the doors open that attracted Clark’s ‘heat-seeking’ weapons, again forcing this American general to spend tens of millions of dollars to blow up $40 microwave ovens. When the war ended, the “Perfumed Prince” made claims of “destroying the Serbian army” as the Serbs again embarrassed the general by parading out of their hiding places in Kosovo with over 350 tanks that were barely scratched.

My contempt is therefore reserved for Gen. Wesley Clark, who withheld the maps for ten years of where he dropped cluster bombs on Serbian territory. In that ten-year period, dozens of Serbs, mostly children, were killed or lost limbs due to these unexploded cluster bombs as this immoral American general continued to terrorize the Serbian people to serve his political ambition as he arrogantly ran for the U.S. presidency.

As the Turks say: “A fish rots from the head down.”

Richard Mack, the county sheriff who sued the Clinton Administration

From a Jew to an Irishman about Serbs

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Peter,

I have been thinking a lot about your continuing efforts in defending Serbia. Of course I agree completely with you, but perhaps I have a different perspective on the problem. Ultimately the problem is not arguing with fools over particular incidents, who, what, when. The real problem now, in 2013, was horribly illustrated by something I heard on TV that I wrote to you about I think, a few weeks ago.

A group of talking heads, panelists, were comparing presidencies, Bush, Obama, Clinton. One mentioned Clinton’s personal scandals, and then another said in his defense, “well, at least Clinton didn’t get us into any war…”

I was shocked and screamed at the TV. No one else disagreed, much less contradicted. So now, in 2013, the real problem is that the whole Yugoslav affair will go down the memory hole of history and be forgotten. Ask the people you run into to state 5 important things they remember about the Clinton presidency, and see what you get. This is what I have been thinking about.

So at this point what do you want? Correcting “reporters” and “journalists” who have a vested interest in their world views and are not known to recant? The New York Times still hasn’t apologized for that Pulitzer Prize-winning guy [Duranty] in the 30’s who said that collectivization was not killing anybody in Russia. What would be a reasonable goal to achieve?

News reporting is called the first draft of history.

Maybe you should think about the second draft and the final version.

To analogize: immediately after ’45 there wasn’t much talk about the Holocaust—the word wasn’t used.

Survivors who made it to America in ’49 or ’50 were not queried about their experiences, nor did anyone want to hear what they had to say. The start of the second draft was in my opinion, books. Diary of Anne Frank was very important in creating a public mind set. The modern establishment perspective and history did not fully emerge until the 60’s.

So what can be done now on behalf of Serbia and the Serbs at this point? It would be too facile to say someone should write a Serb Diary…

A publicist works with each client’s particulars. Why don’t we know more about Serb heroism and suffering in WW 2? People know vague factoids about the war. If you asked the average person which underground was more heroic, the French or the Serbs?, what would be the answer. The French were disgusting collaborators, but have good propaganda. Think Casablanca.

I have persuaded friends to rethink the 90’s by reminding them who were the good guys and who the bad in WW II. Then I challenge them, by asking how they can turn against the Serbs in favor of Croats and Moslems, considering what happened.

I don’t get into the particulars that engage you because the facts are not at my fingertips and people’s eyes would glaze over hearing a list of Balkan place names and surnames.

But this is the work of a generation of propagandizing [meant in a good sense], not the work of one person.

Idea: on the anniversary each year of the date that Belgradians lined up on their bridge to keep it from being bombed by NATO, RESTAGE the event! Have it well photographed and post it on UTube. Make it clear who they were saving the city from…

Do it every year even if the world ignores it, in fact, make it more out there each year; the dynamic of “going viral” is a mystery but ultimately your goal [???] is to make public opinion see what happened as an attack on the Serbs, not the Serbs as aggressors. Just an idea…

Maybe this is all foolish, but as you see I have been thinking about it, and what can be done..

Best,

NN

Serbia: NATO’s Uranium Embrace

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Strategic Culture Foundation has the story.

Serbia bombing

Anna FILIMONOVA | 29.01.2013 | 00:00

Most depleted uranium (DU) arises as a byproduct of the production of enriched uranium for use in nuclear reactors and in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is used in conventional munitions to enhance their penetrating capability. As is known, the warheads of munitions used by NATO for bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 contained depleted uranium. The use of DU in combat has collateral damage – chemical and radioactive contamination, the period of its long radioactive half-life is 4.5 billion years. The main danger of human life and environment comes from high-toxic aerosol or spallation frangible powder produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions which can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites, leading to possible inhalation by human beings. After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble uranium oxide particles on the battlefield, they remain suspended in air and travel around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating humans, animals and environment. It is widely accepted that uranium, inhaled as insoluble particles, is carcinogenic to the lung through its radioactive emissions and that if soluble will cross the blood /air barrier of the lung to become systemic and be physiologically toxic to the kidney. It also leads to chromosomal abnormalities. A latent period may be measured by many years. The radioactive toxic agents are assimilated in the roots of plants and then get into foodstuffs poisoning men and animals again. It’s almost impossible to establish the origin of illness.

Thus, nuclear weapons have been used against the Serbs. “Small”, low-yield tactical nuclear warheads are produced by US Los Alamos laboratory. In Yugoslavia buster bombs yielding the equivalent of 10 tons of TNT (trinitrotoluene) were used to strike underground bunkers and oil reservoirs. Actually they were micro nuclear munitions 10 times more powerful than the 2000-pound projectiles used in Iraq. 100-ton warheads were used to strike air defense systems. 1000-ton warheads (small nuclear bombs) were used against ground targets. As a result of such massive depleted uranium use the area of combat action and adjacent states became a cancer and genetic disease risk zone. (1)

Western media, the United Nations World Health Organization and other international bodies shy away from tackling the problem of depleted uranium used for military purposes saying there is no objective evidence confirming its negative effect. In particular, the 2001 World Health Organization’s report says, “Soils testing for the presence of uranium does not seem to be necessary since it is understood that others (public bodies and military agencies) have found little or no radiation”, “Mass screening of the population is not recommended on the basis of evidence found in the literature, deductions made by the mission team and respected advice that was received. The mission is sensitive to the strong beliefs held by some members of the public. If these beliefs continue to be held, then a more limited testing regime could be considered based on a medical referral by a local doctor. Issues related to testing options are being considered separately by the Sustainable Development and Healthy Environments Cluster (Executive Director: Ms. A.Kern) at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva” (2). That’s all an authoritative international organization could say about the use of weapons of mass destruction with consequences unknown. Going into the details of the report one can come to conclusion the document lobbies the interests of NATO and military industry passing over in silence ecological, climatic and genetic aftermath of using munitions tipped with depleted uranium warheads. But this data is available in Serbia. Totally NATO used 15 tons of depleted uranium to strike targets in Yugoslavia. It was all converted into radioactive dust picked up by the wind and spread around the Balkans contaminating soil, air, plants and animals. The dust is to last forever, the radioactivity will reach its highest level after 100 years… The presence of uranium has started to tell in full measure. In the period 2001 to 2010 the number of people struck by carcinoma went up 20%, the cancer death toll increased by 25% (first of all leukaemia and lymphoma, that make up for more than 5% of malignant tumors in peacetime). Cancer will irreversibly go on the rise. (3) 40 thousand people are expected to be affected in Serbia in 2013 with fatal outcome in 22-23 thousand cases. The figures exceed by three thousand the number of fallen ill and by one-two thousand the number of fatal cases in comparison with 2010. The data has been adduced by Dr. Slobodan Čikarić, academician, who heads the Belgrade Oncological Clinic and Serbian Cancer Society. One can get introduced to it in the sensational book written with co-authors called Crime in War – Genocide in Peace and published in December 2012. According to him the depleted uranium munitions used by NATO were the immediate cause of mass cancer spreading around the country. Retired Serb General Petković says 44% of depleted uranium bombing took place the last 10 days of the operation, that is after the seize fire accord was concluded.

Taking it all into account it’s hard to understand why the Serbia’s authorities stopped screening the areas affected by depleted uranium use. Previously the government had paid for monitoring soil, water and air. The funds expired in April 2012. Tests went on without state funding for a few months thanks to the enthusiasm of scholars. But the required amount is too large for anyone else but the government to shoulder. The disease prevention program (launched in 2000) destined to monitor the health of local population in the bombings affected areas has been terminated too. Military Medical Academy and other large clinical centers had taken part in the program before. General Petković says there is no justification for stopping taking care of people who defended their country and lived on contaminated territory. They need an answer, especially against the background of dramatic increase of illness and lethality caused by cancer resulting from NATO’s depleted uranium bombings. (4)

Who are the Serbs for NATO? Formally military neutrality of Serbia is unacceptable for the Alliance; it’s a “dangerous anomaly” on the way of transforming the Balkan region into the territory of small, divided, dependent, pauperized United States and European Union’s protectorates. As the history shows, the Serbs are the people who have stood up to so many challenges and won many enemies. They have managed to preserve their national identity, faith and language under the most difficult conditions – they are an eyesore for the Western pseudo democratic world, which is being converted into the so called “civilization of nomads” right in front of our eyes. Serbia is a “Russian Balkans outpost”, the only Russia’s strategic ally in Europe. The West has always been and still is merciless dealing shortly with the Serbs not shying away from the most barbarian, inhuman ways to do it. One should not cherish hopes against hopes: Serbia is not the last target in the plans of transnational centers. To lend a helping hand to the Serbian people now means to prevent rowdiness and crimes at some stage in the future. A small nation cannot hold out against the full-scale attack on its own when its people are declared to be a “dangerous infection”. It is permitted to resort to any measures while dealing with it, including scorched earth policy and use of depleted uranium.

(1) A. Ivanchenko, M. Kravchuk. Uranium Ruses. NATO’s Present for Balkans// http://ruskolan.info/article/31/.
(2) Depleted uranium. Sources, Exposure and Health Effects. Department of Protection of the Human Environment. World Health Organization. Geneva. April 2001 …// http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2001/WHO_SDE_PHE_01.1.pdf.
(3) http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Srbija/276773/NATO-bombe-uzrok-raka
(4) http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/aktuelno.290.html:410246-Otrovi-radjaju-tumore


May 1, 2013: Everybody Blog About Pigford Day

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Andrew Breitbart on the Pigford story, part 1

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded on Jan 31, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Andrew Breitbart discusses the Pigford story, its complications, and upcoming developments that will turn it into a blockbuster story of fraud and conspiracy.

Andrew Breitbart on the Pigford story, part 2

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Uploaded on Jan 31, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Breitbart on Pigford at CPAC

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Uploaded on Feb 10, 2011 by j1234542

At CPAC 2011, Andrew Breitbart talks to Justin Elliott of Salon.com about Pigford and Egypt.

Eddie Slaughter explains how the Pigford settlements perpetuate fraud on the US taxpayer

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded on Feb 10, 2011 by pjtvtexas

Farmer Eddie Slaughter spoke at CPAC in Washington DC on Feb 10, and explained how as a black farmer, the USDA discriminated against him and other farmers, and how the Pigford settlement that was originally supposed to restore his lost land has ended up perpetuating his persecution while defraud the US taxpayers to the tune of more than $1 billion so far.

CPAC 2011: Andrew Breitbart Talks Pigford In The Bloggers Lounge

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Uploaded on Feb 13, 2011 by NDblogvideo

Andrew Breitbart visited the bloggers lounge after his 9:00a.m. CPAC speech, Saturday, Feb 12, 2011. He had meant to touch on the Pigford fraud a lot more in his speech, but instead, had gone off on another tangent. He made up for it in the bloggers lounge, spending about a half an hour just talking about the fraudulent Pigford settlement.

Breitbart.com wants you to get involved:

By Lee Stranahan

In the spirit of citizen journalism overriding mainstream media filters, Wednesday, May 1 will be “Everybody Blog About #Pigford” Day. All journalists, bloggers, and inspired writers are invited to contribute their thoughts about the Pigford scandal–one of Andrew Breitbart’s most important and passionate journalistic causes.

 
Whether through an official platform, or social media, you can make your voice heard–and now is the time to do it. After years of media denial, the Pigford story was featured on the front page of the New York Times last Friday. But many mainstream media outlets, and politicians of both parties, still refuse to acknowledge it.

Now you can help make a difference and make sure they can’t ignore it by joining other bloggers, writers and artists in making sure the story gets out there.

Whatever you may think of the Times, Sharon LaFraniere’s story is a huge breakthrough because it vindicates all the work of Andrew and the Breitbart News team, confirming the major conclusions we reached and adding new details.

The New York Times sets the agenda for much of the mainstream media, and it’s already had an effect, but we need your help to keep the momentum going.

Here’s What You Can Do

May 1st is a crucial date because corrupt farmers’ settlements for women and Hispanic farmers are STILL open –the claims form is at FarmerClaims.gov–but the deadline for these schemes is May 1st.

Right now: start to get educated on Pigford. There’s a ton of material on Breitbart.com and other places. Google and you’ll see.

If you have a blog, pick any topic related to the farmers’ settlements and write about it. It doesn’t need to be a long post, and pictures or video are great.

If you don’t have a blog, it’s a great time to start at a free service like Blogger, WordPress.com or Tumblr but you can also use social media like Facebook or Twitter. Be sure to use the #Pigford hashtag.

This is a big topic. A huge amount of new research can be done. Here are a few ideas:

  • Very little has been written about the Native American farmers’ settlement, called Keepseagle.
  • If you speak Spanish, write about how the Spanish language press has been covering the USDA settlement known as Garcia for Hispanic/Latino farmers.
  • Do you know someone who may have actually received a $50,000 check fraudulently who will talk about it?
  • Are you a farmer or know about agriculture and have some specialized knowledge to contribute?
  • Do you have a local angle on the story?
  • It’s also a great time for action–contact your Representative or Senator. Send encouragement to Pigford- exposing politicians like Rep. Steve King (R-IA) or Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Consider contacting members of Congress on the Agriculture committees (House and Senate) and the Judiciary committees (House and Senate).
  • Some of the people most damaged by this were the legitimate black farmers who suffered discrimination in the 1980s; reach out and tell their story.

Again, a quick search here on Breitbart News will also give you a world of information to get started.

Your contribution matters, big or small. Add your voice and help create a flood of information that the world can’t ignore.

Let’s make May 1st a memorable May Day for everyone who hates fraud, waste and corruption in government.

Benghazi coverup begins to unravel

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Benghazi: blood on the wall

CBS News – Official: We knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack “from the get-go”

(CBS News) “Everybody in the mission” in Benghazi, Libya, thought the attack on a U.S. consulate there last Sept. 11 was an act of terror “from the get-go,” according to excerpts of an interview investigators conducted with the No. 2 official in Libya at the time, obtained by CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

“I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning,” Greg Hicks, a 22-year foreign service diplomat who was the highest-ranking U.S. official in Libya after the strike, told investigators under authority of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Hicks, the former U.S. Embassy Tripoli deputy chief of mission, was not in Benghazi at the time of the attack, which killed Chris Stevens – then the U.S. ambassador to Libya – and three other Americans.

When he appears this week before the committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Hicks is expected to offer testimony at odds with what some American officials were saying in public – and on “Face the Nation” – just five days after the attack. Benghazi whistleblowers have rallied attention to discrepancies among the administration’s reaction to the attack, which The Weekly Standard suggests was frayed by ever-evolving talking points that sought to remove references to al Qaeda.

On Sept. 16, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice hit the media circuit, appearing on all five Sunday talk shows to dispel the notion that the strike was a premeditated terrorist act and to perpetuate the case that it began “spontaneously” out of protests in Egypt. Rice’s spot on “Face the Nation” that day was preceded by the new President of Libya Mohammed al-Magariaf, who said his government had “no doubt that this was preplanned, predetermined.”
[...]
Video and much more here.

Fox News: Clinton sought end-run around counterterrorism bureau on night of Benghazi attack, witness will say

On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a “whistle-blower” witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.

That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Fox News has also learned that another official from the counterterrorism bureau — independently of Thompson — voiced the same complaint about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October.

Extremists linked to Al Qaeda stormed the U.S. Consulate and a nearby annex on Sept. 11, in a heavily armed and well-coordinated eight-hour assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans.

Thompson considers himself a whistle-blower whose account was suppressed by the official investigative panel that Clinton convened to review the episode, the Accountability Review Board (ARB). Thompson’s lawyer, Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, has further alleged that his client has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress.

Sources close to the congressional investigation who have been briefed on what Thompson will testify tell Fox News the veteran counterterrorism official concluded on Sept. 11 that Clinton and Kennedy tried to cut the counterterrorism bureau out of the loop as they and other Obama administration officials weighed how to respond to — and characterize — the Benghazi attacks.

“You should have seen what (Clinton) tried to do to us that night,” the second official in State’s counterterrorism bureau told colleagues back in October. Those comments would appear to be corroborated by Thompson’s forthcoming testimony.
[...]
Video and much more here.

Breitbart: Benghazi Attack Eyewitness: Help Was Available

An eyewitness to 2012′s infamous Benghazi attack says the U.S. did not employ all of the defensive resources it could have to save the American lives lost the night of September 11th.

A special operations member who witnessed the attack on the U.S. Mission unfold in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 last year, as well as debriefed those who took part in the response, spoke with Fox News’ Adam Housley on Monday night and revealed information that directly contradicts the administration’s insistence that there was not enough time nor resources to send to Benghazi to help State Department employees, contractors, and intel operatives who were under a terrorist attack. FNC kept their source’s identity hidden, as witnesses to the Benghazi attack have reportedly been intimidated by the administration into silence. The assault left four Americans dead, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens.

“I know for a fact that C110 was doing a training exercise not in the region of northern Africa but in Europe and they have the ability to react and respond,” the special ops member told FNC.

The C110 is a 40-man special operations commanders and extremists force. They are capable of rapid response and deployment and are specifically trained for Benghazi attack-like incidents. The night of the attack, according to the special op, they were training 3 & 1/2 hours away in Croatia.

“We have the ability to load out, get on birds, at a minimum stage. C110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in 4 to 6 hours from their European theater to react. They would have been there before the second attack,” he said, adding, “And you hear a whole bunch of advisers say, ‘We wouldn’t have sent them there, because the security was an unknown situation.’ If it’s an unknown situation, at a minimum, you send forces there to facilitate the exfill—medical, injuries. We could have sent a C130 to provide medical evacuation for the injured.”

The State Department could have called another station for help, as well. According to the source, there were at least 15 special forces and highly skilled State Dept. security staff in the Libyan capital of Tripoli who were not deployed even though they were trained as a quick response force. By air, the travel time between Tripoli and Benghazi is roughly over one hour.
[...]
Video and story here.

Obama ‘covertly recruiting’ militant Muslims as diplomats

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We told you so! The US federal government is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood moles.

Judicial Watch: Obama Administration Colludes with Terrorist Front Groups?

(h/t: The Muslim Issue Worldwide)

[...]
Many Weekly Update readers will recall that in late January, we sounded the alarm about a top Obama State Department official, Mark Ward, participating in a December 2012, conference sponsored by two groups — the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) – both with chillingly close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known as the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda.

At the conference, Ward conducted a seminar focused on career opportunities for Muslim youth. Here is how the event was billed: “Besides being a citizenship duty, there are benefits that Muslims can add to the American Muslim community and the global Muslim world by joining the US Foreign Services. This session will shed light on the different career opportunities for Muslim youth in the US Foreign Services Department. It will also clear any concerns that many people have feared about pursuing in this career.”

Ward was joined at the Chicago, Illinois, by a number of speakers well known for advocating violent jihad.  Among them was Kifah Mustapha, a fundraiser for the terrorist group the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).  In November 2008, HLF was convicted on 108 counts of supporting international terrorism. The charges included funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Also at the podium with Ward was MAS co-founder Jamal Badawi , who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the HLF and who praised the jihad of Gaza terrorists during a speech titled “Understanding Jihad and Martyrdom.” With Ward and Badawi were Ayman Hammous and Oussama Jammal.  Hammous is the Executive Director of the New York chapter of MAS and Jammal is the president of the Mosque Foundation, an extremist Islamist mosque in Bridgeview, Illinois, that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the HLF and other Islamic charities accused of financing terrorism.

As Deputy Special Coordinator of the State Department’s Middle East Transition office Ward apparently heads a secretive campaign, discovered in the course of a Judicial Watch investigation, to add Muslims to its foreign service roster. It appears to be part of the administration’s Muslim outreach effort, which includes a variety of controversial moves.

Among the moves are Department of Homeland Security (DHS) meetings with extremist Islamic organizations; sending mosque leader Feisal Abdul Rauf, who blames U.S. foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks, on a Middle Eastern outreach mission; and revamping the way federal agents are trained to combat terrorism by eliminating all materials that shed a negative light on Muslims.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even signed a special order to allow the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties long banned them from the U.S.

So, it turns out that not only is the Obama administration providing cover, it is also working with known terrorists front groups to help them recruit their followers for key State Department positions. Judicial Watch is determined to get to the bottom of this unholy alliance. This past week, we filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking all records relating to a speech given by Ward, as well as all records of communication between any State Department employee and any representative of the Muslim American Society and/or the Islamic Council of North America regarding the Muslim recruitment conference.  The administration is in full stonewall on this issue and once again we have to go to court to get “the most transparent administration in history” to obey the federal government’s main transparency law, the Freedom of Information Act.
[...]
Much more here.

Just sayin’…

Anthony Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin failed to disclose outside consulting while working at State Dept.

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Huma Abedin is not only Hillary’s “body woman” (in more ways than one) but also a Muslim Brotherhood mole. Where is her security clearance?

Breitbart has the story on the latest Huma scandal:

Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime confidante and wife of disgraced former Congressman and soon-to-be New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, did not disclose that she consulted for outside groups while still employed by the State Department.

Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime confidante and wife of disgraced former Congressman and soon-to-be New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, did not disclose that she consulted for outside groups while still employed by the State Department.

According to reports in the New York Times and Politico, Hillary Clinton “created an arrangement” for Abedin to “work for private clients as a consultant while serving as a top adviser in the department” during her final months at the State Department last year.

The arrangement was reportedly made in June of 2012, when Abedin “quietly left her position” as deputy chief of and became a “special government employee.”

Abedin continued to be publicly identified as Clinton’s “deputy chief of staff,” and she allegedly “did not disclose the arrangement–or how much income she earned–on her financial report” that “requires officials to make public any significant sources of income.”

According to the Times, Abedin “worked for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm, which was founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.” The firm has “advised corporate clients like Coca-Cola and MF Global,” which collapsed while being run by disgraced former New Jersey Governor and top Obama bundler Jon Corzine.

Abedin also “served as a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and worked in a personal capacity” for Hillary Clinton “as she prepared to transition out of her job as secretary of state.”

Officials in the State Department are reportedly sensitive about the arrangement, which ended in March when Abedin became director of Clinton’s transition office.
[...]
More here.

The Mad Jewess: “Reach Out To Heal A Hurt: God Bless Heroic Serbians For Graciousness To Me & My Husband”

How To Dismember A Country: American Terrorism in the Balkans

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Article originally published in the New English Review

By Ares Demertzis (Sept. 2008)

Americans are a unique and privileged people. As a multi-cultural entity comprised of immigrants from every corner of the globe, they have resolved to obliterate memory. They are extraordinarily bereft of that significant capacity firmly established and carefully nurtured in other societies to consider as essential to their survival the sharing of a proudly remembered collective history; a past that one is born into from generation to generation and with which one persistently cohabits through an ongoing process of shared recollection. Criticism of that heroic past in what are sometimes referred to as “developing” societies is energetically discouraged as blatantly suicidal. I imagine that “developing” refers to those countries whose inhabitants still consider nationalism and ethnic distinctiveness as positive values to be defended; countries that have yet to accept the Orwellian future of one world people, one world government.

Those who tie an infant’s shoelaces and teach youngsters to ride a bicycle also imbue them with unsolicited commitments to a religion and an obligation to the homeland; right or wrong, it’s my country. The perceived unforgivable trespasses of long-ago by foreign groups against respected, albeit unknown ancestors are learned perched as a child on a fathers knee; relentlessly repeated as a Homerian Tragodia of a time long past. It is an essential ritual practiced to preserve the continuation of the society.

For modern Americans the atrocities of the Hun and the Gooks are forgotten; they are simply reference points for the obscure interest of historians in evolving their academic hypotheses, with no relevance to a contemporary reality. What are currently considered ethnic slurs, that language traditionally designed for the identification of a suspect foreigner, as well as those groups at present designated as enemies engaging in combat with American military forces, have been eliminated from the nation´s terminology. There is reluctance to name the adversary and by so doing risk the disparagement of an entire ethnic group.

The United States is relentlessly occupied with the future, regardless of consequences, notwithstanding it is surrounded by homogeneous millenarian cultures that are obsessed by their past. The United States harbors a conceit born of an overwhelming financially viable success, achieved primarily through rapacious taxation, that the world wants to live in societies that mirror theirs: “get over it” is the remarkable American government´s advice freely dispensed by Condoleeza Rice to other nations mired in their historical quagmire, although conspicuously her people of color apparently haven´t been able to overcome their own past humiliation. An angry Black Liberation Theology would be satisfied with nothing less than blood running down the asphalt streets of America, were that a viable scenario.

During America´s relentless campaign to extend a “new world order” into the Balkans, Donald Rumsfeld would complain (I paraphrase): “Every time I go there (Serbia), they want to talk history. I just want the ethnic cleansing to stop!” I am confident that this statement was fashioned exclusively for public consumption by the “ruthless little bastard,” as President Nixon is alleged to have referred to him; the product of an intricately designed, insincere and calculated political machination. Notwithstanding the lamentable state of American education, it strains credulity to assume that a twice serving Secretary of Defense would unintentionally exhibit such an acute level of appalling ignorance.

For some time it has been an open secret that the American government planned and initiated a confrontational strategy aimed at dismembering Yugoslavia, the only state in the Balkans that had failed to acquiesce to United States pressure in the headlong rush to extend Western domination to the borders of Russia. Americans are feared because of their military power, and disliked for that flaunted supercilious indifference to the world around them. Something akin to the boorish relative one is obligated to invite to a family dinner who thunderously blows his nose into the linen napkin at the table.

During the Second World War, in a land then called Yugoslavia, Orthodox Christians had the thumb and first two fingers of their right hands, which for them designate the Trinity in making the sign of the cross, severed. The Catholic Pope, Pius XII, Giovanni Pacelli, who is frequently referred to as “Hitler´s Pope,” is suspected of having instigated the Catholic clergy to take advantage of the international conflict which aligned Catholic Croatia to the Nazi Axis, in order to forcibly convert the Orthodox Christian population. Those who accepted conversion were protected by the Latin Church, those who refused were exterminated with the most appalling torture and physical mutilation witnessed in modern history, or sent to perish in Jasenovac by the Croatian Ustasi. These monstrosities were carried out with the full and open participation of the Catholic priesthood, which assured the practitioners of forgiveness by the Church, and by extension even God Himself. Indeed, this persecution has been termed unprecedented in the history of Christianity since the first centuries of the founding of this faith.

Ante Starcevic, graduate of the Catholic Senj Seminary, who had contemplated the priesthood and is considered the father of Croatia, claimed that “the Serbs are a breed of filthy spawn, horrible slaves, people only fit for the axe.” In 1944 a Berlin newspaper wrote: “An extraordinary ecclesiastical struggle is going on in Croatia. The Ustasi government is persecuting the Orthodox Church and is trying to convert as many Orthodox people as possible to Catholicism by means of intimidation and all kinds of devices.”

The Serbian Orthodox Christian church estimates that three quarters of a million of its most devout followers were martyred for repudiating conversion to Catholicism; Serbians today resolutely believe the Vatican is covertly involved in the current dismemberment of their country as well. Their history is one of perpetual invasion by those who would obliterate their culture. It is proudly articulated amongst themselves that having endured the barbarian Muslim horde, they know they will also survive their current subjugation to the new conquerors who will ultimately prove to be nothing more than a historically transient moment. Once again in the interest of ethnic survival, they assume a humble posture, for there is no viable alternative; until that moment, on another day, when vengeance can be satisfied.

Let me for a moment return to America´s Negro population. The designated racist word for Black Americans was “nigger,” just as the bigoted Croatian expression for the Serbian “horrible slaves” was “filthy spawn.” Americans were persuaded, in the name of cultural sensitivity, to eliminate this deprecating word from the collective lexicon, notwithstanding its acceptably robust use within the Black community as a term alternately of affection or scorn, thereby creating a de facto apartheid vocabulary among the general populace. The offensive word was unfortunately replaced by the embarrassingly infantile terminology expected of a scolded child, employed by purportedly intelligent individuals during public discourse: “the n word.” However, not to digress from the current paper´s topic, given this singular American cultural achievement, it is deplorable that Rumsfeld, in exploring viable political consequences, refused to recognize the pain of Serbians whose entire families were tortured, mutilated and murdered a scant two generations ago. How is it they are expected to simply “get over it”? We all want the ethnic cleansing to stop, but how is justice to be served? How are the Furies to be assuaged? Along with other voices raised in lamentation, I judge that the millenarian tragedy of the Balkans has not been resolved, rather it is once again positioned on a course for future carnage and devastation.

After lunch, sitting on the terrace of a monastery on a Greek island, overlooking a tranquil, azure sea with the Archimandrite (abbot), I put into his hand a small gold pendant representing a dove, the symbol of peace, that my Catholic wife had removed from her necklace and asked me to give to him. “Graciela would like you to have this,” I said to him in Greek, “it has been blessed by the Pope.”

His features darkened, and there was a very long silence as he held the ornament between his thumb and forefinger. Finally, with a poignant sigh, he responded. “Tell Graciela that I thank her very much for this gift which I will always treasure as a reminder of our afternoon together. However, I will have to remove from it the curse of Satan.” He was obviously referring to the Papacy as the institution held accountable for the schism of Western Christianity from the orthodoxy of the Original Church, the covetous betrayal of Byzantium, and the Croatian massacre of the Serbs. Memory is eternal in that part of the world; one does not forget, one seldom forgives.

There is a definite relationship between the Balkans and the Caucasus; South Ossetia and Abkhazia provide a mirror image to the West for their clandestine aggression and subsequent usurpation of an historical Russian political ally and devotee of an identical religion. It´s the mendacious purveyors of agenda-driven disguised fiction, the mainstream media who in recognizing the relationship – not out of intelligence, but because the Russians told them so – that refuse to report it.

The following material was culled from the internet with links to the originals:
[most of these links no longer exist five years later]

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

International Media Corporation Defense and Strategy Policy, US Commits Forces, Weapons to Bosnia, London, 31 October 1994:

“Reliable sources report that the United States is now [1994] actively participating in the arming and training of the Muslim forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina in direct contravention of the United Nations accords … It was [also] reported that 400 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran) arrived in Bosnia with a large supply of arms and ammunition.

It was alleged that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had full knowledge of the operation and that the CIA believed that some of the 400 had been detached for future terrorist operations in Western Europe.

During September and October [1994], there has been a stream of “Afghan” Mujahedin … covertly landed in Ploce, Croatia (South-West of Mostar) from where they have traveled with false papers … before deploying with the Bosnian Muslim forces in the Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka areas.

These forces have recently [late 1994] experienced a significant degree of military success. They have, according to sources in Sarajevo, been aided by the UNPROFOR Bangladesh battalion, which took over from a French battalion early in September [1994].

The Mujahedin landing at Ploce are reported to have been accompanied by US Special Forces equipped with high-tech communications equipment, … The sources said that the mission of the US troops was to establish a command, control, communications and intelligence network to coordinate and support Bosnian Muslim offensives — in concert with Mujahideen and Bosnian Croat forces — in Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka. Some offensives have recently been conducted from within the UN-established safe-havens in the Zenica and Banja Luka regions.

The US Administration has not restricted its involvement to the clandestine contravention of the UN arms embargo on the region … It [also] committed three high-ranking delegations over the past two years [prior to 1994] in failed attempts to bring the Yugoslav Government into line with US policy. Yugoslavia is the only state in the region to have failed to acquiesce to US pressure.

A Congressional report by the Republican Party Committee (RPC) published in 1997, largely confirms the International Media Corporation report quoted above:

The RPC Congressional report accuses the Clinton administration of having “helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base” leading to the recruitment through the so-called “Militant Islamic Network,” of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world:

Perhaps most threatening to the SFOR mission – and more importantly, to the safety of the American personnel serving in Bosnia – is the unwillingness of the Clinton Administration to come clean with the Congress and with the American people about its complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo.That policy, personally approved by Bill Clinton in April 1994 at the urging of CIA Director-designate (and then-NSC chief) Anthony Lake and the U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, has, according to the Los Angeles Times (citing classified intelligence community sources), “played a central role in the dramatic increase in Iranian influence in Bosnia.”

Along with the weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and VEVAK intelligence operatives entered Bosnia in large numbers, along with thousands of mujahedin (“holy warriors”) from across the Muslim world. Also engaged in the effort were several other Muslim countries (including Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey) and a number of radical Muslim organizations.

For example, the role of one Sudan-based “humanitarian organization,” called the Third World Relief Agency, has been well documented. The Clinton Administration’s “hands-on” involvement with the Islamic network’s arms pipeline included inspections of missiles from Iran by U.S. government officials… the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization … has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. … TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi émigré believed to bankroll numerous militant groups. [Washington Post, 9/22/96] (Congressional Press Release, Republican Party Committee (RPC), US Congress, Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base, 16 January 1997, available on the website of the Centre of Research on Globalisation (CRG) here. The original document is on the website of the US Senate Republican Party Committee (Senator Larry Craig) here.

In other words, the Republican Party Committee report confirms unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton Administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organisations including Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

The “Bosnian pattern” described in the 1997 Congressional RPC report was replicated in Kosovo.

With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO’s war effort.

The Scotsman, Glasgow, 29 August 1999:

Confirmed by British military sources, the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Services MI6, together with “former and serving members of 22 SAS [Britain's 22nd Special Air Services Regiment], as well as three British and American private security companies”.

The US DIA approached MI6 to arrange a training programme for the KLA, said a senior British military source. `MI6 then sub-contracted the operation to two British security companies, who in turn approached a number of former members of the (22 SAS) regiment. Lists were then drawn up of weapons and equipment needed by the KLA.’

While these covert operations were continuing, serving members of 22 SAS Regiment, mostly from the unit’s D Squadron, were first deployed in Kosovo before the beginning of the bombing campaign in March.

Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, Arizona, 2 April 1999:

While British SAS Special Forces in bases in Northern Albania were training the KLA, military instructors from Turkey and Afghanistan financed by the “Islamic jihad” were collaborating in training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.

Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998:

Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. He was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, … Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 … Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists

US Congress, Testimony of Frank J. Cilluffo , Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime, Program director to the House Judiciary Committee, 13 December 2000:

What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the “Balkan Route” that links the “Golden Crescent” of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe.

US Congress, Testimony of Ralf Mutschke of Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence Division, to the House Judicial Committee, 13 December 2000:

The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden.” Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict

US Congress, Transcripts of the House Armed Services Committee, 5 October 1999:

These KLA links to international terrorism and organised crime documented by the US Congress were totally ignored by the Clinton Administration.

In fact, in the months preceding the bombing of Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was busy building a “political legitimacy” for the KLA. The paramilitary army had –from one day to the next– been elevated to the status of a bona fide “democratic” force in Kosovo. In turn, Madeleine Albright has forced the pace of international diplomacy: the KLA had been spearheaded into playing a central role in the failed “peace negotiations” at Rambouiillet in early 1999.

US Congress, Transcripts of the House Armed Services Committee, 5 October 1999:

While the various Congressional reports confirmed that the US government had been working hand in glove with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, this did not prevent the Clinton and later the Bush Administration from arming and equipping the KLA. The Congressional documents also confirm that members of the Senate and the House knew the relationship of the Administration to international terrorism. To quote the statement of Rep. John Kasich of the House Armed Services Committee: “We connected ourselves [in 1998-99] with the KLA, which was the staging point for bin Laden…”

In 1999, Senator Joe Lieberman had stated authoritatively that “Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.”

In the hours following the October 7 missile attacks on Afghanistan, the same Joe Lieberman called for punitive air strikes against Iraq: “We’re in a war against terrorism… We can’t stop with bin Laden and the Taliban.” Yet Senator Joe Lieberman, as member of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate had access to all the Congressional documents pertaining to “KLA-Osama” links. In making this statement, he was fully aware that that agencies of the US government as well as NATO were supporting international terrorism.

In the wake of the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, the terrorist activities of the KLA were extended into Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Meanwhile, the KLA –renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)– was elevated to United Nations status, implying the granting of “legitimate” sources of funding through United Nations as well as through bilateral channels, including direct US military aid.

And barely two months after the official inauguration of the KPC under UN auspices (September 1999), KPC-KLA commanders – using UN resources and equipment – were already preparing the assaults into Macedonia, as a logical follow-up to their terrorist activities in Kosovo. According to the Skopje daily Dnevnik, the KPC had established a “sixth operation zone” in Southern Serbia and Macedonia:

Sources, who insist on anonymity, claim that the headquarters of the Kosovo protection brigades [i.e. linked to the UN sponsored KPC] have [March 2000] already been formed in Tetovo, Gostivar and Skopje. They are being prepared in Debar and Struga [on the border with Albania] as well, and their members have defined codes. (BBC, 29 January 2001)

According to the BBC,”Western special forces were still training the guerrillas” meaning that they were assisting the KLA in opening up “a sixth operation zone”in Southern Serbia and Macedonia.

Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001:

Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001) in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA’s proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as well as “soldiers of fortune” from Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army. (See also UPI, 9 July 2001.)

For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Washington behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia, Centre for Research on Globalisation, August 2001, and here, see also UPI, 9 July 2001. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Washington behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia, Centre for Research on Globalisation, August 2001.

Macedonian Information Agency (MIA), 26 September 2001, available at the Centre for Research on Globalisation

Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the “Islamic Militant Network” are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen.

It is happening right now in Macedonia. And it is confirmed by numerous press reports, eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence as well as official statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister, who has accused the Western military alliance of supporting the terrorists. Moreover, the official Macedonian New Agency (MIA) has pointed to the complicity between Washington’s envoy Ambassador James Pardew and the NLA terrorists.

Pardew’s background is revealing in this regard. He started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channeling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. Coronel Pardew had been put in charge of arranging the “air-drops” of supplies to Bosnian forces. At the time, these “air drops” were tagged as “civilian aid”. It later transpired –confirmed by the RPC Congressional report– that the US had violated the arms embargo. And James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake.

Pardew was later involved in the Dayton negotiations (1995) on behalf of the US Defence Department. In 1999, prior to the bombing of Yugoslavia, he was appointed “Special Representative for Military Stabilisation and Kosovo Implementation” by President Clinton. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the “Bosnian pattern” in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia.

Also recommended: Walid Phares, South Ossetia: The Perfect Wrong War

If you enjoyed this article by Ares Demertzis and want to read more of his work, please click here.


Bill Clinton’s Bastard Army: Covert Exploits, Encouraging Islamic Jihad; Operation Storm; Rambouillet

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Article originally published in the New English Review

By Ares Demertzis (Feb. 2009)

I: A Brief Synopsis.

  • Part 1:
    • (i) Covert Exploits; Encouraging Islamic Jihad.
    • (ii) Catholic Croatia; Operation Storm.
    • (iii) Rambouillet
  • Part 2:
    • (iv) The “Air Campaign.”
    • (v) The Catholic Croatians.
    • (vi) The Muslims
  • Part 3:
    • (vii) Genocide
    • (viii) Disinformation & Misinformation.
    • (ix) The Breadline Massacre, The Market Massacres & Racak
  • Part 4:
    • (x) Iconic Images.
    • (xi) On Trial.
    • (xii) Follow the Money

II: Links, plus

  • Czechoslovak Documentary (Video):
  • “Stolen Kosovo.”
  • International Criminal Tribunal (Video):
  • “Milosevic On Trial.”
  • “The Hague Tribunal”
  • “Slobodan Milosevic vs. New World Order”

“The breakup of Yugoslavia provided the fodder for what may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years. The journalistic and historical narratives that were imposed upon these wars have systematically distorted their nature, and were deeply prejudicial, downplaying the external factors that drove Yugoslavia’s breakup while selectively exaggerating and misrepresenting the internal factors.

Perhaps no civil wars…have ever been harvested as cynically by foreign powers to establish legal precedents and new categories of international duties and norms. Nor have any other civil wars been turned into such a proving ground for the related notions of “humanitarian intervention” and the “right (or responsibility) to protect.”

Yugoslavia’s conflicts were not so much mediated by foreign powers as they were inflamed and exploited by them to advance policy goals. The result was a tsunami of lies and misrepresentations in whose wake the world is still reeling.”

Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

I: A BRIEF SYNOPSIS.

(Note: For those readers who entertain a certain confusion concerning the adversaries in the Yugoslav conflict, encouraged in large measure by a media reluctant to explicitly identify the contenders for reasons not relevant to this paper, be advised that references to “Kosovo,” or “Kosovar,” signifies Muslims, and “Croat” or “Croatian,” Roman Catholics – unless preceded by “Serb,” or the individual designation “Serb,” which in all cases connotes Orthodox Christians).

(i) Covert Exploits; Encouraging Islamic Jihad.

I suspect that when historians analyze the successful revival of Islam in the twentieth century, they will without doubt harshly judge the enigmatic contribution of three recent Presidents of the United States who have emerged as unexpected supporters of a Muslim ideology dedicated to the annihilation of a despised Western civilization, thereby accommodating the consequent universal supremacy of Islam. The most respected and venerated Muslim political and religious leaders publicly express a Global Caliphate as their goal; Western governments and the accredited media paradoxically encourage their success. The twenty-first century may well evolve into the much dreaded, tyrannical “Muslim Century.”

One of those injudicious American supporters of supremacist Islamic ideologues is President Jimmy Carter, who was reportedly considered the worst President of the United States until George Walker Bush seriously disputed the title. It was Jimmy who allowed the overthrow of a Westernized Iranian regime because he felt uncomfortable that the Shah was a dictator, replacing him with a man of faith in whom he could deposit his confidence – the Ayatollah Khomeini, who promptly instituted an oppressive, authoritarian anti-American Islamic theocracy.

The second President was William Clinton who instigated a clandestine undertaking against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia although there was no national security threat – not even the vituperative, pernicious rhetoric of loutish, braggart bluffers such as Kim Jong-il, Castro, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, or Saddam. Clinton´s imprudent exploit was in violation of the United Nations Charter which provides for non-interference in the internal affairs of member states and obliges respect for each other’s sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity. George W. Bush enjoyed more international authority, granted by the United Nations, for his invasion of Iraq and subsequent annihilation of Saddam Hussein. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights accuse the United States, and consequently the Clinton Administration of violating international law. Furthermore, Clinton´s illegal and imprudent hostile undertaking, conceived with calculated and premeditated deliberation, irresponsibly provided Islam with a Muslim state in the heart of Europe, strategically poised for the projected creation of what Bat Ye’or incisively described as “Eurabia.”


 
BBC Online, July 6, 1999: “President Clinton has authorised an all-out campaign to topple Slobodan Milosevic, according to sources close to the US Government. Earlier this spring, Mr. Clinton signed a secret presidential ‘finding’ giving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the green light to try to bring down the Yugoslav president, said sources quoted in the US news-magazine Time.”

The Observer (U.K.), March 11, 2001: “The United States secretly supported the ethnic Albanian (Muslim) extremists now behind insurgencies in Macedonia and southern Serbia. The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army (KLA) fighters to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, according to senior European officers who served with the international peace-keeping force in Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading Macedonian and US sources…European officers are furious that the Americans have allowed guerrilla armies in its sector to train, smuggle arms, and launch attacks across two international borders.”

“One European K-For battalion commander told The Observer yesterday: “The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic. Now he’s gone the US State Department seems incapable of reining in its bastard army.” He added: “Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with US support for the radical (Muslim) Albanians.”

Republican Policy Committee (RPC) of the U.S. Senate, March 31, 1999: “… the (Muslim) KLA is closely involved with Terrorist organizations motivated by the ideology of radical Islam, including assets of Iran and of the notorious Osama bin-Ladin.”

Washington Post, Sept 22, 1996. Congressional Press Release: “(The) Republican Party Committee (RPC) accused the Clinton administration of having “helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base” leading to the recruitment through the so-called “Militant Islamic Network,” of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world”

“Perhaps most threatening…is the unwillingness of the Clinton Administration to come clean with the Congress and with the American people about its complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo. That policy, personally approved by Bill Clinton in April 1994 at the urging of CIA Director-designate (and then-NSC chief) Anthony Lake and the U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, has, according to the Los Angeles Times (citing classified intelligence community sources), “played a central role in the dramatic increase in Iranian influence in Bosnia.”

“Further, according to the Times, in September 1996 National Security Agency analysts contradicted Clinton Administration claims of declining Iranian influence…it is irresponsible in the extreme for the Clinton Administration to gloss over the extent to which its policies have put American personnel in an increasingly vulnerable position while performing an increasingly questionable mission. In short, the Clinton Administration’s policy of facilitating the delivery of arms to the Bosnian Muslims made it the de facto partner of an ongoing international network of governments and organizations pursuing their own agenda in Bosnia: the promotion of Islamic revolution in Europe.”

“The Administration repeatedly deceived the American people about its Iranian green light policy…two Clinton Administration officials bear particular responsibility: Ambassador Galbraith and then-NSC Director Anthony Lake, against both of whom the House of Representatives has referred criminal charges to the Justice Department. Mr. Lake, who personally presented the proposal to Bill Clinton for approval, “played a central role in preventing the responsible congressional committees from knowing about the Administration’s fateful decision to acquiesce in radical Islamic Iran’s effort to penetrate the European continent through arms shipments and military cooperation…There is evidence that Ambassador Galbraith may have engaged in activities that could be characterized as unauthorized covert action.” –Republican Policy Committee report (1997)

BBC Video: “The scope of these activities included bugging UN Commanders and diplomats.”

Former UN Commander in Bosnia General Sir Michael Rose was aware that the Americans were secretly bugging his office. “We were always very careful in what we said in that office. And if we did say something, it was with deliberate intent.” Two Clinton Administration officials bear particular responsibility: Ambassador Galbraith and then-NSC Director Anthony Lake, against both of whom the House of Representatives has referred criminal charges to the Justice Department.”

“Senior European negotiators believe that with US backing, the war could have ended two years earlier, but US desire to see the (Orthodox Christian) Serbs punished meant that they instead encouraged the (Muslim) Bosnian Government to continue fighting.”

“The price in human terms? Over 15,000 dead and nearly 600,000 refugees.”

”For some time it has been an open secret that the American government planned and initiated a confrontational strategy aimed at dismembering Yugoslavia, the only state in the Balkans that had failed to acquiesce to United States pressure in the headlong rush to extend Western domination to the borders of Russia.”

The Guardian (U.K.) April 22, 2002: “The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been staggered by its findings and the Dutch government has resigned.”

“One of its many volumes is devoted to clandestine activities during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. His findings are set out in “Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995.” It includes remarkable material on covert operations, signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder. Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims – some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in “the war against terrorism”.

“In the 1980s Washington’s secret services had assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans.”

“Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation – in flagrant violation of the UN Security Council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.”

“The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah.”

“Rather than the CIA, the Pentagon’s own secret service was the hidden force behind these operations. The UN protection force, UNPROFOR, was dependent on its troop-contributing nations for intelligence, and above all on the sophisticated monitoring capabilities of the US to police the arms embargo. This gave the Pentagon the ability to manipulate the embargo at will: ensuring that American AWACS aircraft covered crucial areas and were able to turn a blind eye to the frequent nighttime comings and goings at Tuzla.”

Weapons flown in during the spring of 1995 were to turn up only a fortnight later in the besieged and demilitarised enclave at Srebrenica. When these shipments were noticed, Americans pressured UNPROFOR to rewrite reports, and when Norwegian officials protested about the flights, they were reportedly threatened into silence.”


 
It is an uncomfortable experience to watch videos of the Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army (KLA) soldiers parading while singing in Arabic the U.S. Marine marching songs they were taught by their American military instructors. We can expect in future armed conflicts with Islam that these mujahedeen will see to it that this effective and costly training facilitates the premature return of American military personnel to the “green, green grass of home.” In body bags.

In the “Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States” (W.W. Norton & Co. 2004), at least two of the 9/11 terrorists Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, had fought as mujahedeen in Bosnia. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the “mastermind of the planes operation,” had also participated in the Bosnian Islamic jihad.

Unreported by America´s elite media which consistently shielded the Clinton Administration from negative reporting (excluding the internet), was that President Clinton had secretly armed and trained Muslim mujahedeen in Yugoslavia with the deliberate intent of provoking a civil war that would splinter Yugoslavia into geographically smaller, politically less significant, more manageable, independent states; in the process overthrowing (Serb) President Slobodan Milosevic whose government was clinging to what was considered by the United States as an obsolete socialist economic doctrine.

When the mujahedeen proved unable to effectively complete their mission, impeded by an unexpectedly effective Yugoslav government (Serb) military response (cleverly promoted by the West as “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” of non-Serbs), the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, and the indispensable regime change required the support of a major, albeit overt U.S. intervention. This arrived in the form of a brutally lethal bombing campaign that included disinformation as an essential component to validate the military assault against a sovereign state accredited with international legitimacy.

Also see: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/KLA-drugs.html
http://www.brasscheck.com/yugoslavia/directory/62399a.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=7042
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/10/terrorism.politics

(ii) Catholic Croatia; Operation Storm.

Proof of Milosevic´s intent to ethnically cleanse non-Serbs is contained in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) “Milosevic Trial Transcript” of February 12, 2002. Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice told the court that Milosevic “had broken the taboo of (Tito) against invoking nationalism by saying: “No one should beat you,” to the (Orthodox Christian) Serbs gathered at the Hall of Culture in Pristina in April 1987.

My interpretation of Milosevic´s admonition to his Serb audience is that it was a reference to the Croatian Holocaust (see section (v) below) rather than its opportunistic and expedient interpretation by Prosecutor Nice as a call to genocide.

In the same transcript referred to above, on June 26, 2003, the (Catholic) Croatian President, Franjo Tudjman is quoted as having instructed his generals to “inflict such a blow on the Serbs that they should virtually disappear.” Days after this exhortation, “Operation Storm,” a clandestine American supported military maneuver virtually eliminated the presence of 200,000 Serbian civilians, a majority population in the Croatian province of Krajina.


 
It is estimated that more civilians were killed in Krajina than Srebrenica, but this consequence was virtually ignored by the Western media and never regarded, as was Srebrenica, a genocide.

“More than two hundred thousand Serbs, virtually the entire population of Krajina, fled their homes, and 14,000 Serbian civilians lost their lives…According to a UN official, “Almost the only people remaining were the dead and the dying”…The roads were clogged with refugees, and Croatian aircraft bombed and strafed refugee columns…A UN spokesman said, “The windows of almost every vehicle were smashed and almost every person was bleeding from being hit by some object.” Serbian refugees were pulled from their vehicles and beaten. Bosnian Muslim troops crossed the border and cut off Serbian escape routes. Trapped refugees were massacred as they were pounded by Croatian and Muslim artillery. Nearly 1,700 refugees simply vanished. While Croatian and Muslim troops burned Serbian villages, President Clinton expressed his understanding for the invasion, and Warren Christopher said events “could work to our advantage.”

“Croatian assembly deputy Mate Mestrovic also claimed that the “United States gave us the green light to do whatever had to be done.”

Newsweek, August 21, 2001: “Americans in military uniform, operating from a cream-colored trailer near the runway, directed the GNAT-750 drone to photograph Serb troop positions and weapons emplacements. The images were transmitted back to base, analyzed and then passed on to the Pentagon. According to top Croat intelligence officials, copies were also sent to the headquarters of the Croatian general in command of “Operation Storm (Ante Gotovina).”

“Now a Newsweek investigation has shown that U.S. intelligence cooperation with Croatia went far deeper than Washington has ever acknowledged. According to Miro Tudjman, son of the late president Franjo Tudjman and head of the Croatian counterpart to the CIA in the mid-1990s, the United States provided encryption gear to each of Croatia’s regular Army brigades. He says the CIA also spent at least $10 million on Croatian listening posts to intercept telephone calls in Bosnia and Serbia. “All our [electronic] intelligence in Croatia went online in real time to the National Security Agency in Washington,” says Tudjman. “We had a de facto partnership.”

“Last month prosecutors (at The Hague Tribunal) announced the indictment of General Gotovina for atrocities committed during and after Operation Storm, including the murder of 150 Krajina Serbs, the forced displacement of as many as 200,000 others and the torching of thousands of homes. Yet he has refused to surrender to the tribunal, complaining that he would have to spend years in jail awaiting trial. Gotovina’s Chicago-based lawyer, Luka Misetic, argues that…”He was in the chain of command, but there was this other set of eyes and ears watching this operation,” says Misetic. “No one there [in the CIA] saw there was a problem with war crimes or a crime against humanity.” Neither did the pleased officers at the Pentagon, nor a comfortable President Clinton at the White House, all observing the slaughter relayed to them by the GNAT-750 in real time.

“I always said that the only people in Croatia who know everything are the Americans,” says Markica Rebic, the former head of military intelligence. When Gotovina stands trial, some of those Americans may be asked to testify about their country’s role in an ugly conflict.

HRVATSKI SVJETSKI KONGRES (CROATIAN WORLD CONGRESS)
PRESS RELEASE CONTACT: PROF. DR. SIMUN SITO CORIC
+41-32-62-19202. THE HAGUE JULY 4, 2002:

“The Croatian World Congress today submitted to Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a formal request to open a criminal investigation against senior U.S. officials for aiding and abetting indicted Croatian General Ante Gotovina in a 1995 Croatian military operation known as “Operation Storm.”

“Specifically named in the complaint are former President William Jefferson Clinton, former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, former Deputy National Security Advisor Samuel Berger, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith.”

“The complaint filed today alleges that the US officials aided Gen. Gotovina and the Croatian Army in Operation Storm by violating a UN arms embargo and allowing Croatia to obtain weapons.”

“Furthermore, the US officials established a CIA base inside of Gen. Gotovina’s military base which provided the US officials with real-time video footage of events transpiring on the ground during Operation Storm (and thus imputing to them knowledge of events on the ground), but also from which they could provide such intelligence data to General Gotovina to assist him in conducting Operation Storm.”

“If General Gotovina carried out a pre-planned campaign to deport 150,000 to 200,000 Croatian Serb civilians, then the CIA base was not only used to provide knowledge to US officials of such a plan and course of conduct on the part of General Gotovina, but was also used to assist General Gotovina in achieving the goals of his alleged plan.”

“The US officials gave the green light for the Operation and provided diplomatic and political support for it. The US officials at all times had the ability to halt the military operation.”

“Accordingly, the US officials named in the complaint should be indicted for having aided and abetted General Gotovina. The Croatian World Congress reiterates, however, that it believes the most just outcome would be to withdraw the indictment against General Gotovina.”

Washington Post, September 21, 2005: “The chief prosecutor for the U.N. tribunal for Balkans war crimes has said that a Roman Catholic monastery in Croatia is sheltering a fugitive Croatian general (Ante Gotovina) charged with atrocities against Serb civilians and that the Vatican has refused pleas to help find him. Carla Del Ponte of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that…”he is accused of overseeing the murders of at least 150 Serbs and the forced expulsion of tens of thousands near the end of the 1991-95 civil war.”

“Del Ponte said…”I have taken this up with the Vatican and the Vatican refuses totally to cooperate with us…The Catholic Church is protecting him. Del Ponte told the British daily that she visited the Vatican this summer and asked the foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, for help in flushing Gotovina out of one of 80 monasteries in Croatia where he might be hiding. “Msgr. Lajolo said to me: ‘Let me know in which monastery Gotovina is hiding,’ “Del Ponte said in the Daily Telegraph interview. “I said, if I knew, I would not be here in Rome.”

“Del Ponte said Vatican officials “said they have no intelligence, and I don’t believe that,” adding that she believes the Vatican could find Gotovina “in a few days” if it chose to.”

Balkan Insight, June 24, 2008: “A former US ambassador to (Catholic) Croatia has accused Zagreb of plotting and sanctioning the exodus of (Orthodox Christian) Serbs in 1995 to create an “ethnically clean” country. Peter Galbraith told The Hague war crimes trial of three Croatian generals, that the leadership headed by late President Franjo Tudjman used ‘Operation Storm’ to ‘cleanse’ Croatia of Serbs.”

“Croatian authorities either ordered or allowed a mass destruction of the Serb property in former (Serb-held region of) Krajina to prevent the return of the population. I consider that to have been a thought through policy. His testimony came as a surprise, since when he testified at the trial of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2003, Galbraith said Croatia was not responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Serbs.”

“On Monday he said he was sorry for saying that because it was understood as his justification for the Croatian army’s actions, which had not been his intention.”

Amnesty International: “…regarding the killings which took place after Operation Storm, it is important to note other human rights violations which took place at the time. Some of the (Serb) women who remained behind, including the elderly, were raped by Croatian soldiers, police or uncontrolled civilians.”

“The widespread and deliberate destruction of (Serb) houses and other buildings throughout the Krajina is the most visible evidence remaining of the gross human rights violations committed after Operation Storm…House destruction is an effective means of ensuring that a population which has fled has nowhere to return. Indeed, the deliberate destruction of property continues to be an effective means of making Croatian (Orthodox Christian) Serbs who wish to return to Croatia change their minds.”

“While the Croatian authorities are eager to facilitate the resolution of cases of “disappearance” when the victims are of Croatian nationality, are vigorous in pursuing the prosecution of Croatian Serbs and others accused of committing war crimes against Croatian victims, and are facilitating the return of displaced Croatians to their homes within Croatia, the authorities have done little to address violations committed by its own side…no attention has been given to the continuing impunity for the human rights violations suffered by the Croatian Serbs who did not leave Croatia in 1995. Crimes remain unacknowledged, uninvestigated, and the perpetrators unpunished.”

“The Croatian authorities’ initial reaction to the reports which emerged about killing, torture, house destruction and other human rights violations and acts of violence was denial, or else they claimed that all the victims had been engaged in military activity. As more cases continued to emerge, however, the authorities’ reactions shifted to admitting that some crimes had been committed, but that they were the acts of uncontrollable individuals, or else were committed by civilians dressed in military uniform.”


 
The United States was actively involved in the secret preparation, launching and monitoring of the Croatian offensive “Operation Storm.” Personally approved by President Clinton, the Croat military, trained and armed by the United States, attacked and ethnically cleansed the resident non-combatant, civilian Serb majority inhabitants. The operation was transmitted in real time directly to the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Where was the ethically uncompromising, morally offended, confrontational and belligerent, raucous multitude? Why was no one chanting: “Willy lied; people died!”
See also: http://www.thenation.com/doc/19990621/cockburn

(iii) Rambouillet

The President of the United States, William Clinton, exposed his magnanimity for global appreciation at Rambouillet, but only after assuring that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY), had formally indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his government for war crimes. Rambouillet was to be the final, altruistically charitable attempt by a United States government reluctant to escalate the dispute with Yugoslavia into a full scale military assault.


 
In an interview with L´Unita, reported in ANP English News Bulletin on July 27, 1995, ICTY president Antonio Cassese openly acknowledged that indictments were a politically motivated endeavor of the Tribunal: “The indictment means that these gentlemen will not be able to participate in peace negotiations. Let us see who will sit down at the negotiating table now with a man accused of genocide.”

The ICTY chief prosecutor Louise Arbour, in a press conference in May, 1999, admitted that Milosevic was primarily indicted in order to eliminate the possibility of his participation in peace negotiations: “evidence upon which this indictment was confirmed raises the serious questions about their suitability to be guarantors of any deal, let alone a peace agreement.”

“Milosevic had accepted the Rambouillet agreement which provided for the immediate withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo and the return of Kosova autonomy. However, Rambouillet did not provide for a UN presence in Kosovo, instead insisting on NATO military occupation of the entire country.”

“Appendix B, paragraph 8, reads: “NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including associated airspace and territorial waters.” Milosevic accepted all stipulations of Rambouillet except this last demand. No sovereign nation would agree to such outright capitulation.”

The general-secretary of Milosevic’s Socialist Party, Gorica Gajevic: “We are not accepting foreign military troops on our territory under any excuse and at any price, even at the price of bombing.”


 
On July 23, 1914, an ostentatious Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire delivered a ten demand ultimatum to Serbia after the Sarajevo assassination. The militarily inconsequential Serbian government submissively consented to all but one of the demands: Austrians on Serbian soil. Serbia was invaded; allies entered the conflict on both sides and World War I commenced. The fatuous Austro-Hungarian Empire was destroyed.

World War II also had a diffident beginning; Hitler accused Czechoslovakia of “atrocities” against ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland and demanded self-determination. Ethnic Germans and the Sudeten Nazi Party initiated worker strikes and riots; the Czechs responded with military force. Newsreels showed “evidence” of the violence; journalists hyped the situation.

Hitler threatened to invade, and at Munich on September 29 1938, the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany. “Peace for our time!” boasted a pusillanimous Chamberlain to the cheering crowd, claiming that the Fuhrer was “a man who can be relied upon.” Scarcely a year later, on September 2, 1939, World War II began.

Are we to trust that the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo will remain content with presiding over their Islamic states and not obey the Koranic injunction for world domination, commencing with Western Europe? Can we realistically believe that the Serbs, given their spirited history, will meekly accept the U.S. imposed humiliation?

At Rambouillet, President Clinton´s tenuous grasp of history was showing; there are those who believe in a future resurrection of the conflict. In a future Vidovdan, “The Day When We Shall See.” In the Balkans, no one forgets; no one forgives. The region will once again be engulfed in the flames of vengeance.

Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague (ICTY) Tribunal: “A similar situation under Turkish occupation lasted for all of 500 years. This one won’t last that long, and in the very moment it ends, Kosovo will again be completely under Serbian control, and here we are talking not only about Kosovo, but of Serbia as well, since Serbia too will be ruled again, and soon, by patriots. Patriots will rule in other countries as well, instead of this scheme of new colonialism and the establishing of various puppet governments.”


 
Global Policy Forum: “Rambouillet was never about negotiations. It was about presenting the Serbs with an ultimatum precisely designed to provide the pretext for NATO bombing. Rambouillet was a tragic farce, a low point in the history of diplomacy.”

The New Statesman (U.K.), December 13, 2004: “The trigger for the bombing of Yugoslavia was, according to NATO, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace conference. What went mostly unreported was that the Rambouillet accord had a secret Annex B, which Madeleine Albright’s delegation had inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia…As the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to a Commons defence select committee, Annex B was planted deliberately to provoke rejection.”

“Equally revealing was a chapter dealing exclusively with the Kosovan economy. This called for a “free-market economy” and the privatisation of all government assets. As the Balkans writer Neil Clark has pointed out: “The rump Yugoslavia . . . was the last economy in central-southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. ‘Socially owned enterprises’, the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated. Yugoslavia had publicly owned petroleum, mining, car and tobacco industries.”

Congressman Dennis Kucinich: “On February 6, talks began in Rambouillet, France. The Administration billed the talks as a promise to arrive at a peaceful resolution. Details that emerged weeks later about Appendix ‘B’ to the agreement — which gave NATO the right to go anywhere in Yugoslavia — mark Rambouillet as the start of the war, not the beginning of a peace.”

“Madeleine Albright issued a series of nonnegotiable demands to ensure that the only solution was to be bombing.”
The Progressive, Vol 63, No.8, August 1999

Not surprisingly, a persistently obfuscating President Clinton (“I never inhaled;” “I never had sex with that woman;” “It all depends on what your definition of is, is”) repeatedly and hypocritically described Rambouillet as an honest and humane attempt to negotiate a settlement acceptable to all those interested in peace.

Henry Kissinger disagrees: “Several fateful decisions were taken in those now seemingly far-off days in February, when other options were still open. The first was the demand that 30,000 NATO troops enter Yugoslavia, a country with which NATO was not at war, and administer a province that had emotional significance as the origin of Serbia’s independence. The second was to use the foreseeable refusal as justification for starting the bombing…Rambouillet was not a negotiation – as is often claimed – but an ultimatum.”


The International Crisis Group
, a private organization founded by former U.S. Senate Majority leader George Mitchell, (a) Washington and Brussels-based group, which is funded by the European Union and the U.S. government, interpreted the events at Rambouillet in a theoretically unbiased report titled, “Reality Demands: Documenting Violations of International Humanitarian Law in Kosovo 1999”: “…a conference was convened at Rambouillet, in France, at the beginning of February. Serbian and Kosovar Albanian leaders met over a period of two weeks to discuss the terms of settlement that had been put together by representatives of the Contact Group countries. However, these terms ultimately proved unacceptable to the Serbian government representatives and it became evident they were simply using the negotiations as a diversion.” (p 67)

See also:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/projectcensored/ackerman2317new.html
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_3497.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-muEj_E0PY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo1jJkIfWbc

Bill Clinton’s Bastard Army: The “Air Campaign,” The Catholic Croatians, The Muslims

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Article originally published in the New English Review

By Ares Demertzis (Feb. 2009)

I: A Brief Synopsis.

  • Part 1:
    • (i) Covert Exploits; Encouraging Islamic Jihad.
    • (ii) Catholic Croatia; Operation Storm.
    • (iii) Rambouillet
  • Part 2:
    • (iv) The “Air Campaign.”
    • (v) The Catholic Croatians.
    • (vi) The Muslims
  • Part 3:
    • (vii) Genocide
    • (viii) Disinformation & Misinformation.
    • (ix) The Breadline Massacre, The Market Massacres & Racak
  • Part 4:
    • (x) Iconic Images.
    • (xi) On Trial.
    • (xii) Follow the Money

II: Links, plus

  • Czechoslovak Documentary (Video):
  • “Stolen Kosovo.”
  • International Criminal Tribunal (Video):
  • “Milosevic On Trial.”
  • “The Hague Tribunal”
  • “Slobodan Milosevic vs. New World Order”

(iv) The “Air Campaign.”

The New Statesman, December 13, 2004: “Lies as great as those told by Bush and Blair were deployed by Clinton and Blair in their grooming of public opinion for an illegal, unprovoked attack on a European country. Following the same path as the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the media coverage in the spring of 1999 was a series of fraudulent justifications, beginning with the then US defence secretary William Cohen’s claim that “we’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged [Albanian] men missing…they may have been murdered.” David Scheffer, the then US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as “225,000 ethnic (Muslim) Albanian men aged between 14 and 59 may have been killed. Blair invoked the Holocaust and “the spirit of the Second World War.” The British press took its cue. “Flight from genocide,” wrote the Daily Mail. “Echoes of the Holocaust,” chorused the Sun and the Mirror. In parliament, the heroic Clare Short compared to Nazi propagandists those (such as myself) who objected to the bombing of defenceless people.”

“By June 1999, with the bombardment over, international forensic teams began subjecting Kosovo to minute examination. The American FBI arrived to investigate what was called “the largest crime scene in the FBI’s forensic history.” Several weeks later, having not found a single mass grave, the FBI went home. The Spanish forensic team also returned home, its leader complaining angrily that he and his colleagues had become part of “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find one – not one – mass grave.”

One year prior to the American sponsored NATO bombing war that was intended to stop the Serbs from killing Muslims, George Robertson, British Secretary of Defense, testified before the Select Committee on Defense in the U.K. House of Commons that the “Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army (KLA) were responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav (Christian Orthodox Serb) authorities.” This was also true of Bosnian Muslims and the Croatian Catholics; facts undisclosed by a mainstream media eager to caricature Serbs as “Milosevic´s willing executioners” intent on perpetrating genocide against the innocent.”

On March 23, 1999, the day before the air attacks, a last minute initiative by the Yugoslav National Assembly approved a ten-page resolution requesting immediate return of UN monitors “to facilitate a peaceful diplomatic settlement.” The resolution promised Kosovo full autonomy with guarantees of human rights. News of the legislature’s desperate resolution was reported worldwide, but received no coverage in the American press. To the contrary, The New York Times on March 24, 1999 falsely reported that the bombing had begun “because Milosevic refused to accept…or even discuss an international peacekeeping plan.”

“The order to bomb was signed by Javier Solana, General Secretary of NATO, contravening The Hague Convention of 1949, The Stockholm Declaration of 1972, and NATO´s own charter. Subsequently, NATO amended its Charter, stipulating that the organization is no longer solely a “defensive organization.” It authorized itself to strike outside its “sphere of influence.” Javier Solana further clarified this new concept during a speech in Brussels: “We must stop an authoritarian regime from repressing its people in Europe at the end of the 20th Century. We have a moral duty to do so. The responsibility is on our shoulders and we will fulfill it.”

Congressman Dennis Kucinich: “I thought NATO was a defensive organization. At least that’s what its charter said. But NATO’s war moved along like a giant unconscious force. Soon NATO was prepared to blockade Russian ships in Montenegro’s harbor, prompting Vladimir Lukin of the Yabloko party to warn that such an action was ‘a direct path to nuclear escalation.’ He didn’t have to say it. There were numerous quiet discussions taking place around Washington and across the country of people who were beginning to sense that NATO was out of control. They understood that NATO was moving into that fuzzy circumference of high violence where the possibility of nuclear war, on purpose or by accident, was beginning to be real.” (The Progressive, Vol 63, No.8, August 1999)

The Michigan Daily, March 24, 1999: “Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, in a dramatic gesture of opposition, canceled plans to visit Washington as the crisis intensified. Primakov was over the Atlantic, en route to Washington, but turned his jet around and headed back to Moscow after Vice President Al Gore refused to promise that airstrikes would not take place. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said Russia would step up its combat readiness if NATO attacks, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. But despite Russia’s bluster, Moscow has no effective means to prevent the NATO action.”


 
In an act of historical mendacity, or appalling ignorance inappropriate of a former Rhodes scholar, but more likely simply a confirmation of impertinent contempt for the intellect of his fellow citizens, on March 24, 1999, during a televised address to explain his decision to implement “the Air Campaign” against Yugoslavia, President Clinton declared “No, the Serbs did not only cause WWI; no, without them there would have been no Holocaust either.”
Tomahawk Cruise missiles were discharged from American combat aircraft on Serbia, including its civilian infrastructure; the latter considered a war crime in international jurisprudence. Evidence supports allegations that the American pilots were purposely given non-military targets within the resident population which included commuter trains, water treatment plants, 300 elementary schools, and a dozen health care facilities, killing over 5,000 innocent Serb and Kosovar civilian non-combatants in the process.


 
Washington Post, April 28, 1999: “The attack on Surdlica, 200 miles southeast of Belgrade, came as NATO stepped up its aerial assault against Serb-dominated Yugoslavia following a decision by allied leaders at their summit in Washington last weekend to grant military commanders broad new authority to strike a wider range of targets, including some that primarily affect civilians.”

“The bombing of Surdlica came a day after Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, criticized NATO for causing civilian casualties and damaging Yugoslavia’s civilian infrastructure with its airstrikes…Yugoslav state television showed wrecked single-family homes in Surdlica and rescue workers picking through bricks, beams and tiles trying to reach survivors and recover bodies…residents said in a telephone interview that 16 bodies had been found by tonight – 12 of them children between the ages of 5 and 12”

“An Associated Press reporter taken to the scene by police reported seeing 50 houses destroyed and 600 damaged. Rescue workers said 11 people, including five children, were believed trapped in the basement of one house…On April 12, an allied bomb intended for a railway bridge struck a passenger train near the Serbian town of Leskovac, killing 10 people. Last week, allied aircraft targeted the studios of state-run television in Belgrade on the grounds that its broadcasts were propaganda that inflamed public opinion and were prolonging the conflict.”

BBC News, June 1, 1999: “NATO has been coming under increasingly fierce criticism amid a mounting toll of innocent people killed or injured in its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. In its defence, the alliance has called on the world’s media to put its bombing campaign in perspective, arguing that fewer civilians have been killed or injured in the Kosovo campaign than in any other comparable conflict…”

“As of June 1, NATO had carried out around 31,000 campaign flights over 70 days…Speaking at NATO headquarters, alliance spokesman Jamie Shea said: “When we started this operation, we were conducting around 30 [sorties] a day. Now we are conducting up to 350 attacks every night…Serb officials say that a NATO bombing attack led to the deaths of at least three patients in a Belgrade hospital…State television reported that emergency services evacuated infants and pregnant women…At least 100 civilians died after NATO bombed what it said were “legitimate military targets” in the village of Korisa, southern Kosovo. Footage broadcast by Serbian TV showed charred remains, including at least two children, smouldering homes and burning tractors.”

“In the third NATO blunder in 26 hours, alliance missiles hit an apartment block in Novi Pazar, south-west Serbia, killing at least 11 people and injuring a further 23 residents…Tanjug said that 20 missiles fell on various targets in Novi Pazar with the apartment taking a direct hit. More bodies were believed buried in the rubble…The news agency also reported that NATO´s targets had included a publishing house, printing presses and regional television and radio headquarters close to a hospital and a bus station…Yugoslavia reported that at least 20 people lost their lives when NATO bombs hit a sanotorium and neighbouring old people’s home in Surdulica, south-east Serbia.”

“NATO spokesman General Konrad Freitag said “NATO cannot confirm any Serb claims of casualties or collateral damage.”…At least 11 civilians were reported killed and a further 40 injured when NATO bombers mounted a daylight raid on a bridge in Varvarin, south-central Serbia. Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said local people were attending the town’s market when the attack happened at 1pm local time. Witnesses said four cars fell into the River Velika Morava. Rescuers who went to aid of the injured were hit in the second attack. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said the alliance had bombed a “”legitimate designated military target.”

Spanish weekly “Articulo20,” Issue 30, June 14, 1999: “The suspicions that NATO’s repeated bombings of civilian victims and non-military targets are not the result of war “errors”, are confirmed by Captain Martin de la Hoz: “Several times our Colonel protested to NATO commanders why they select targets which are not military targets…I want to tell it to the whole world: once there was a coded order of the North American military that we should drop anti-personnel bombs over the localities of Prishtina and Nish. The colonel refused it altogether and, a couple of days later, the transfer order came.”

“They are destroying the country, bombing it with novel weapons, toxic nerve gases, surface mines dropped with parachute, bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison the crops and weapons of which even we still do not know anything. The North Americans are committing one of the biggest barbarities that can be committed against humanity…I will never be able to forget that what was being committed there was one the biggest savageries of history.”

Compelled by the withering destruction of the U.S./NATO bombing campaign, Milosevic´s continuing appeals for resuming negotiations were consistently ignored. On March 29, 1999, his Prime Minister declared, “Yugoslavia is prepared to resume talks on the Kosovo province if NATO calls off air strikes.” On April 7, Milosevic requested a ceasefire for (Serb) Orthodox Easter. The request was denied.

‘The end of the conflict will come when they stop persecuting innocent people in Kosovo,’ Vice President Al Gore said in Louisville, Ky. ‘We can’t stand by with that kind of atrocity going on.’

Oh, the offensive irony! The disreputable cynicism! NATO bombs slaughter 5,000 innocent civilians, yet the Vice President of the United States considers Serbs to be the violent aggressors.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich: “As the death toll began to mount, I thought of times when I rode trains in Europe and wondered what it would be like to be traveling to work or to visit relatives while, 15,000 feet above, a sophisticated targeting system was locking into the approaching bridge, and suddenly it is as if dozens of people never even existed. And who was taking responsibility for all of this? What was the purpose of any of it? Why did civilians in Serbia and Kosovo have to die in air attacks? Who made that decision?
(The Progressive, Vol 63, No.8, August 1999)


 
President Clinton´s “humanitarian intervention” employed two types of weapons considered illegal under international law (Geneva, The Hague, and Nuremberg): cluster bombs and weapons tipped with depleted uranium (DU) which results in radioactive poisoning and environmental contamination. UN General Assembly Resolution 96 specifically outlaws the use of DU bombs.

In her “Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,” Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague declared she was “very satisfied that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during the bombing campaign…The prosecutor judged these to be genuine mistakes on the part of NATO.” This conclusion was reached without any inquiry because the charges did not merit an investigation; the conclusion therefore, simply reflects an opinion of the Committee and chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.

It is important not to confuse the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), with the International Court of Justice, although both tribunals are based in The Hague. The ICTY was created in the Security Council in May 1993, and its formation is considered by some as illegal, ultra vires (beyond the powers) of the Security Council because they exceeded their authority granted by the U.N. Charter.


 
In a subsequent speech to the United Nations Security Council, ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte reiterated: “Although some mistakes were made by NATO, I am satisfied there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or any unlawful military targets during the NATO campaign.”
William Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg (Germany) War Crimes Tribunal: “The [1999] bombing war violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities” against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.”

According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, NATO heads of State and heads of government are responsible for the supreme crime: “the crime against peace.”


 
President Clinton defended the bombing as a means “to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military offensive.” Vaclav Havel assured the world that “war places human rights above the rights of the state.” And Tony Blair added “we now have a chance to build a new internationalism based on values and the rule of law.”

It is of interest to note that the United States and its allies didn´t judge it necessary, for “righteous humanitarian” purposes, “human rights above the rights of the state,” “a new internationalism based on values and the rule of law,” to undertake a military assault designed to curb civil war and the internal genocidal conflicts of countries such as Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Tibet, and Zimbabwe, among so many others; therefore it could be validly presumed that intervention in those theatres was of little interest given that they, unlike Yugoslavia, were unpromising from an economic cost-benefit consideration and the continuing progress of a “New World Order.”


 
WV World News, January 23, 2008: “Hashim Thachi, leader of the Kosovo (Muslim) Liberation Army (KLA) and later Prime Minister of a unilaterally declared independent Kosovo, at a press conference in the Caglavica Media Center was asked if he felt guilty of the crimes the KLA committed against Serbs. He responded: “We have made all achievements together with help from the international community.”

Europenews, January 19, 2008: “I am very proud of my past and the past of my people who, along with NATO, arrived at the goal,” he answered, in reference to the NATO bombing of Serbia in the spring of 1999, which ended after 78 days with the withdrawal of Serbian security forces from the province.”

The New Statesman (U.K.), December 13, 2004 “NATO’s clients were the Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army (KLA). Seven years earlier, the State Department had designated the KLA as a terrorist organisation in league with al-Qaeda.”

“The Kosovar (Muslim) Albanians played us like a Stradivarius violin,” wrote the former UN commander in Bosnia, Major General Lewis MacKenzie, last April. “We have subsidised and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early 1990s, and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today, in spite of evidence to the contrary.”

National Post – April 6, 2004. General Lewis MacKenzie: “The objective of the (Muslim) Albanians is to purge all non-Albanians, including the international community’s representatives, from Kosovo and ultimately link up with mother Albania thereby achieving the goal of “Greater Albania.”

“The campaign started with their attacks on Serbian security forces in the early 1990s and they were successful in turning Milosevic’s heavy-handed response into worldwide sympathy for their cause. There was no genocide as claimed by the West – the 100,000 allegedly buried in mass graves turned out to be around 2,000, of all ethnic origins, including those killed in combat during the war itself.”

Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague (ICTY) Tribunal: “Maybe you do not know, but the government of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohia in 1998 and 1999 – that is, during the war, until those who committed aggression installed their mercenaries in power – was formed of Serbs, Albanians, Moslems, Turks, Goranies, Roma and Egyptians. Serbs were a minority in that government. How can the notion that there was national discrimination be reconciled with that fact?!”

Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague (ICTY) Tribunal: ”For ten years since the time you claim Serbia “seized” control of its own territory, there were no murders, no expulsions, no plunder, no arson, no arrests in Kosovo. We did not have a single political prisoner in Yugoslavia – not one. Kosovo had 20 newspapers and other publications in Albanian which one could buy at every street corner. Not a single issue, not a single copy, was ever banned. Albanian political parties, even separatist ones, worked freely. Someone here said we tolerated them. No, our view was that everything should be permitted – except violence.”

“Then the powers behind Yugoslavia’s destruction and occupation rounded up criminals throughout Western Europe and sent them to Kosovo to establish a terrorist organization. They began terrorist attacks in the spring of 1998. Then they were crushed. By the fall of 1998, they were completely eliminated, surrendering by the truckload the weapons they had smuggled in. Within that year, they mostly killed Albanians. More (Muslim) Albanians than (Orthodox Christian) Serbs were killed by the terrorists in 1998. They killed Albanian police officers, postal carriers, forest rangers, even retirees – only because they received their retirement checks from the state. They were attempting to strike terror in the hearts of Albanians as well as kill Serbs. We protected our citizens – both Serbs and Albanians – from terrorism, and this operation was completed by the fall of 1998. Then [US envoy] Holbrooke came to demand a “Verification Mission” in order to create a pretext for attacking Yugoslavia.

“The most recent Serb murdered in Kosovo that I’ve heard of was killed on Christmas this year. Some 350,000 were expelled from Kosovo under the UN auspices, while Albanian terrorist activities were protected by the UN. Since the arrival of the so-called UN peacekeepers that were obligated by [UN Security Council] Resolution 1244 to guarantee the security of person and property to every inhabitant of Kosovo, Albanian terrorists have expelled 350,000 people and torched tens of thousands of homes. Sometimes they would burn 50, 60, all the Serb houses in villages, in plain sight of the [UN] troops. These are in fact occupation troops, who came [to Kosovo] under the UN banner only to transform themselves overnight into occupiers and allies of the terrorists who killed, who mutilated and butchered so many, and burned so much, and continue to do so even today. And they say they were unaware of it happening.”

“This is obviously a crime, and the thread running through it is obviously a crime against Yugoslavia. I want to point out that falsifying historical facts is not easy…With all due respect, the real judges in this trial – not you who wear the robes – …The real judge here is the people – not just the people of Yugoslavia, but the peoples of all the countries who care about liberty and equality.”

As a result of the Kosovo War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization created a second NATO medal, the NATO Medal for Kosovo Service, an international military decoration… Shortly thereafter, NATO created the Non-Article 5 Medal for Balkans service to combine both Yugoslavian and Kosovo operations into one service medal.”

“Due to the involvement of the United States armed forces, a separate U.S. military decoration, known as the Kosovo Campaign Medal was established by President Bill Clinton in the year 2000.

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War
http://www.iacenter.org/milos/milos_haguetrans.htm
http://www.newstatesman.com/200412130010
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/bodansky.html
http://www.csulb.edu/~dsidorov/articles/Kosovo%20fake%20cleansing%20sunday%20times01003.htm
http://www.ips.org/hap/yug1405.html
http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/chossudovsky.htm
http://www.serbianna.com/news/2008/01102.shtml

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-muEj_E0PY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FN33NTMpLU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf84gioy8hU

(v) The Catholic Croatians.

Caution: In this segment I provide an appallingly deplorable account of particulars which may be considered offensive to those excessively civilized and enlightened readers whose limited grasp of history makes them unaware of the barbarities committed, as recently as the second half of the twentieth century, in conflicts that were not conditional on the profoundly indulgent contemporary notion of “proportional response.” My objective is not to affront; rather the examples are intended to assist in an understanding of the shocking current events through graphic illustrations of that extreme cruelty which forms an integral component of the inerasable Yugoslav historic memory.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, “The Wasteland of Historical Reality,” 1989: “Genocide is a natural phenomenon, in harmony with the societal and mythologically divine nature. Genocide is not only permitted, it is also recommended, even commanded by the word of the Almighty, whenever it is useful for the survival or restoration of the kingdom of the chosen nation, or for the preservation and spreading of its one and only correct faith.”

On each anniversary of the United States government sponsored “Operation Storm” (August 5), Croatia celebrates a “Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day,” formally rejoicing in the single largest ethnic cleansing in Europe since the Third Reich.
It is worth noting that in the “Independent State of Croatia” (1941-45) the Croats constituted 3.3 million out of around 6.7 million people. There were 2.2 million Serbs, 60,000 Jews, 700,000 Muslims, 70,000 Protestants, as well as hundreds of thousands of Romas and other minorities. The Independent State of Croatia was created and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy; an Axis-created puppet state (much like the present Croatia vis-à-vis the West), which initiated a partially successful genocide, with the approval and active participation of Catholic clergy.


 
Carlo Falconi “The Silence of Pius XII,” Little, Brown and Co., 1970: “In 1940, an article appeared in the official Church publication “Catholic List,” praising Mein Kampf and adding that there was no conflict between being a good Catholic and a good Nazi. Indeed, similar articles were published by innumerable Catholic clergy all over Europe in the 1930′s and 1940′s. (p.409). The entire Catholic press in this period in Croatia was thoroughly pro-fascist, racist and supportive of the elimination of the “minorities.”

The Catholic priest Father Grga Peinovic, was President of the Ustashe Central Propaganda Office, a position corresponding to that occupied by Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany.

“They (Catholic Croats) persecuted the Serbs who were mostly Orthodox (Christians), yet they were tolerant toward the Bosnian Muslims because the Muslims were actually ethnic Croats that converted to Islam during the Ottoman Turk (Muslim) occupation of Croatian lands. These Muslim Bosnians joined in the Nazi and Ustashe forces as part of (Nazi) Waffen SS divisions.”

“Hundreds of thousands of Christian Orthodox Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were murdered by Catholic zealots. The professed goal was that one third of Orthodox Serbs, considered heretic Christians by the Catholic church, were to be forcibly converted to Catholicism, one third were to be expelled (ethnically cleansed), and the final third were to be killed…According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust) “Ustashe terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to Catholicism.”

“Croatian race laws were patterned after those of the Third Reich, which were aimed against Jews, Roma and Orthodox Christian Serbs who were collectively declared enemies of the Croatian people…(they were) interned in concentration camps…around 32,000 Jews were killed. Gypsies (Yugoslav Roma) numbered around 40,000…of Serbs who died, estimates tend to vary between 300,000 and 700,000.”

“Serbs had to wear blue bands on their sleeves with the letter “P” (for Orthodox) and Jews a band with the Star of David and the letter “Z” (for Jew). Serbs and Jews were forbidden to walk on sidewalks; signs were posted in public places stating “No Serbs, Jews, Gypsies or Dogs Allowed!” (European Law Division / Library of Congress).”

“The Role of the Vatican in the Break-Up of the Yugoslav State,” Milan Bulajic, Beograd Struchna kniga, 1994: The active participation of clergy in running concentration camps in Croatia was known by the German, Italian, British and American intelligence services, as well as the Vatican. The U.S. intelligence report of February 23, 1943 entitled “Massacres of Serbs in Croatia” speaks bluntly of “the bloody hands of the Catholic clergy in the camps.” (p. 159-161)

“The Vatican´s Holocaust,” Avro Manhatten, Ozark Books, 1986: “On the night of August 29, 1942, the (Croatian) prison guards made bets among themselves as to who could liquidate the largest number of inmates. One of the guards, Petar Brzica, reportedly cut the throats of about 1,360 new arrivals with a butcher knife…Other participants who confessed to participating in the bet included Ante Zrinusic, who killed some 600 inmates, and Mile Friganovic, who gave a detailed and consistent report of the incident. Friganovic admitted to having killed some 1,100 inmates. He specifically recounted his torture of an old man named Vukasin; he attempted to compel the man to bless Ante Pavelic (the Croatian Fuhrer), which the old man refused to do, although Friganovic cut off his ears, nose and tongue after each refusal. Ultimately, he cut out the old man’s eyes, tore out his heart, and slashed his throat. This incident was witnessed by Dr. Nikola Nikolic.” (p. 48)

“The Croatian/Nazi concentration camp in Jasenovac was commanded by Maks Luburic, who boasted that they “killed more Serbs in this camp (in) four years than the (Muslim) Turks did for 500 in the whole of Serbia.”

“Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia,” Lazo M. Kostic, Liberty Press, 1981: “The Ustashe Minister of Education, Dr. Mile Budak, summarized the racial policy of Croatia in a speech on July 22, 1941 in Gospic when he said:The movement of the Ustashe is based on religion. For the minorities – Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, we have three million bullets. We shall kill one part of the Serbs. We shall deport another, and the rest of them will be forced to embrace the Roman Catholic religion. Thus, our new Croatia will get rid of all Serbs in our midst in order to become one hundred percent Catholic within ten years.” (p. 272)

“The Role of the Vatican in the Break-Up of the Yugoslav State,” Milan Bulajic, Beograd Struchna kniga, 1994:In May 1940 the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, was called to the Vatican for briefings on the future invasion and partition of Yugoslavia.” (pp. 48-49)

“In the years immediately preceding the German and Italian invasion of Yugoslavia of April 1941, the head of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, Stepinac, met regularly with representatives from both the Italian foreign ministry and the illegal Ustashe terrorist organization, as Stepinac himself noted in his diary” (pp. 49-50)

“Among these visitors was the future Ustashe Minister of Education Mile Budak, a chief architect of the genocide in Croatia, who is best known for his infamous speech on the final solution for the Serbs: “We will kill a third, expel a third, and convert a third.” (p. 59)

On April 16th Stepinac held a dinner party in his residence in honor of Pavelic (the Croatian Fuher), and the Ustashe leadership. In his diary, Stepinac described the day and admitted that Pavelic told him of his plans to “exterminate” the non-Catholic religions in Croatia. Stepinac’s diary indicates that he too was prepared for an all out religious war, for he added that “If that man (Pavelic) rules Croatia for ten years…Croatia will be a paradise on earth.” (p. 74)

“Also revealed from entries in his diary, such as one from 1940 when he wrote: “… the Serbs have not learned anything… and in the end they will lose everything…. I wish them no evil because they are God’s children. But if nothing can teach them a lesson, distress will.” (p. 47).

“The Silence of Pius XII, Carlo Falcone, Little, Brown and Co., 1970: “(Archbishop) Stepinac was easily outdone in fascist criminality by other high ranking clergy, most infamously by the second highest ranking cleric in fascist Croatia, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Sharich – called “the Hangman of Serbs” by his fellow Ustase…Whereas Stepinac was willing to spare the lives of some Jews and Serbs who had converted to Catholicism, Sharich ridiculed those who did not have the stomach for total genocide, declaring it “stupid and unworthy of Christ’s disciples to think that the struggle against evil could be waged in a noble way and with gloves on.” Among Vatican documents that have emerged is one dealing with Sharich’s personal expropriations of property belonging to Jews in Bosnia.” (p. 294-296)

“Orthodox (Christian) clergy were marked for especially cruel torture, usually ending with the gouging out of their eyes or other forms of bodily mutilation. In one case the eighty-one year old Bishop of Banja Luka was shod like a horse and forced to walk until he collapsed, at which point his heart was cut out and he was set on fire.” (p. 287-293)

“One Franciscan monk, Miroslav Filipovic, was accused by a grade school teacher who recalled that “when Filipovi? and some Ustase entered her classroom…Filipovi? took a child, Vasilija Glamo?anin, and “slaughtered her with a knife” in front of the class. He urged the Ustashe troops who accompanied him to deal similarly with the other children and assured them that he would take the sin upon himself…(Nazi) General Edmund Glaise-Horstenau…implicated Filipovi? in a report where he stated that as well as being present “during the slaughtering” the priest had attended a planning meeting prior to the massacres, along with certain other Catholic priests.”

“The Vatican´s Holocaust,” Avro Manhattan, Ozark Books, 1986: “Father Srecko Peric… reassured his fellow Ustashe prior to a massacre by saying: “Kill all Serbs. And when you finish come here, to the Church, and I will confess you and free you from sin.” (p. 68)

“All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-1943,” Jonathan Steinberg, Routledge, 1990: “The Ustashe operations were carried out with incredible acts of sadism and torture. In some cases entire villages were axed to death, in others men and women were hanged, crucified, burned to death or buried alive, body parts mutilated, decapitated, infants impaled or hammered…Nazi Wehrmacht units attached to the Ustashe military were so impressed by the Ustashe’s methods for carrying out genocide that they established a commission to study the killings at Bjelovar, exhume the bodies, take photographs and write a report, later published under the title “Ustachenwerk bei Bjelovar.” (p. 57)

After the defeat of the Third Reich, (Fuhrer) Pavelic escaped from Croatia with what was believed to be the clandestine aid of the Vatican. He conferred the leadership of Croatia to Archbishop Stepinac.

U.S. News & World Report, January 22, 2009: “According to cable intercepts cited in a 1947 U.S. diplomatic report, Pavelic escaped in November 1947 to Buenos Aires, where he was said to have been met by a retinue of Catholic priests. Newly declassified documents also show that Bishop Rozman was funneling money to South America from a Swiss bank account set up “to aid refugees of the Catholic religion.”

“The British Foreign Office reported in January 1947 that Pavelic himself, by that time a wanted war criminal, was living “within the Vatican City.” An earlier report by Gowen, in October 1946, noted that Pavelic was in Rome.”

Colliers Magazine, “Blowback,” Christopher Simpson 1988: “The Vatican aided in the escape of thousands of war criminals from Croatia, transporting millions of fascists from POW camps to the Vatican with false International Red Cross identity papers. The Vatican ratlines, organized by the Vatican and Croatian-Ustashe clergy, would probably have never become widely known if not for the trial of Klaus Barbie who escaped through them. Because of the Barbie trial, the truth emerged.”

U.S. News & World Report, January 22, 2009: “According to secret reports from the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), written just after World War II and since declassified…(war criminals were aided) through an underground railroad of sympathetic priests, known as the “ratline,” the Ustashe could move from Trieste, to Rome, to Genoa, and on to neutral countries–primarily Argentina – where they could live out their days unpunished and unnoticed. Along the ratline, virtually the entire Ustashe leadership went free.”

“All these people were escaping – and this at a time when just getting a meal in Rome was a major accomplishment,” recalls William Gowen, a CIC officer in Rome after the war.”

“Documents include accounts of Ustashe being hidden at the pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo and being seen driving in Rome in cars with Vatican license plates. The recently declassified Golik memo reports that Ustase ate at the papal mess and that Father Golik was “declared to be in close contact with the Vatican.”

“…declassified documents from the archives of the United States and other nations suggest that – with the aid of Croatian Catholic priests – Ustashe plunder made its way from Croatia to Rome, and possibly to the Vatican itself. Some of the stolen wealth was used to help Croatian war criminals flee to South America.”

“We make no charges against the Vatican, but we keep building a very damning picture,” says Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress.

“Because of their silence in the face of accumulated evidence, the failure to uncover the truth can only be laid at the doors of the Vatican.”

“The memo, dated Oct. 21, 1946, was discovered last summer in the declassified files of the U.S. Treasury Department. Written by OSS agent Emerson Bigelow, it reports that money sent by Ustase from Croatia to Rome after the war had been partly intercepted by the British, but that 200 million Swiss francs – the equivalent of $170 million today – were being held in the Vatican for safekeeping. According to “rumor,” the memo says, the money was being used to finance Croatian war criminals in exile.”

“When the Bigelow memo was released last year, the Vatican swiftly dismissed it, insisting that the charges could not be true. But some researchers who have studied World War II intelligence matters note that other archival documents counter the notion that a Vatican-Ustashe link is implausible on its face. One is a British diplomatic memo from Oct. 17, 1947, cited in the 1991 book Unholy Trinity by journalist Mark Aarons and former Justice Department Nazi-hunter John Loftus. According to the memo, a San Giralomo priest named Father Mandic was a “liaison to the Vatican” who was involved in converting Ustase gold, jewelry, and foreign exchange into Italian lire.”

U. S. News & World Report, January 22, 2009: “A trial held by the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission in 1946 resulted in the conviction of a half-dozen Ustashe priests, among them former Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, a commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp where the Ustashe tortured and slaughtered hundreds of thousands with a brutality that shocked even the Nazis.”

“The Role of the Vatican in the Break-Up of the Yugoslav State,” Milan Bulajic, Beograd Struchna kniga, 1994:At his trial for war crimes in 1986, Andrija Artukovic emphasized that the management of forced conversions was entirely in the hands of Archbishop Stepinac and the church leadership.” (p. 88). In a letter to the Vatican dated May 8, 1944 Stepinac informed the Holy Father that to date 244,000 Orthodox Serbs had been “converted to the Church of God.” (p. 99)

“The Jesuit Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb, and the Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashe Army, was accused of supporting the Ustashe, and exonerating those in the clergy that collaborated with the Ustashe of complicity in forced conversions. On March 28, 1941 he declared: The (Orthodox-Catholic) “schism is the greatest curse in Europe, almost greater than Protestanism.”

“(After the war) a Belgrade court found him guilty of collaborating with the Ustashe and complicity in allowing the forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but after five years was released and confined to his home parish of Krasic.”

“He was appointed a Cardinal in 1952 by Pope Pius XII. In 1998, Pope John Paul II declared him a martyr and beatified him.”

“The current regime in Croatia today carries on a constant propaganda war of denial about Jasenovac and has desecrated the site itself. The Tudjman regime has not acknowledged that crimes of genocide were even committed by fascist Croatia during World War II and holds to the view that it represented a positive chapter in Croatian history.”


 
The Serbs during World War II were sacrificing their lives as American allies fighting German forces. It took half a century for them to recover from the deliberate and viciously wicked Croatian decimation of their population, only to find that once again a newly created independent Republic of Croatia was enacting laws disallowing jobs, pensions, citizenship, and land ownership to the resident Serb minority, and was intent on repeating the mass executions of the forties, this time supported not by the Nazis, but most ironically, Serbia’s former ally, the United States.

“Le Grand Charles” de Gaulle reputedly remarked, “Nations don’t have friends, they only have interests.

At the U.S. Holocaust Museum the history of the Holocaust has been tailored to fit the political fashions of the Clinton administration and the New World Order: hence, one finds the words “Serbs” and “Russians” are altogether absent from the official record of the Holocaust, and instead are replaced in the most obscene Orwellian manner by the words “Yugoslavs” and “Soviets.”

(vi) The Muslims

I will desist from even a brief account of Muslim atrocities during the Islamic colonization of the Balkans as further examples of pertinent regional historical violence. The incidents are further removed (although not forgotten, and never to be forgiven) from the twentieth century Croatian Holocaust, and therefore less relevant to the current Balkan propensity for savagery. I suggest that those interested initiate their own inquiry (or anxiously await a future reference paper such as this on the subject, written by me).

Alija Izetbegovic, considered an “Islamic Hero of the Western World,” the first President of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and supporter of Sharia in Bosnia, in his “Islamic Declaration” cites the “incompatibility of Islam with non-Islamic systems…there is neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and non-Islamic social and political institutions…having the right to govern its own world, Islam clearly excludes the right and possibility of putting a foreign ideology into practice on its territory. There is thus no principle of secular government, and the State must express and support the moral principles of religion.”


 
In 1995, the Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army (KLA) started terror against the (Orthodox Christian) Serbian civilians and Yugoslav army and police, bombing police stations and government buildings, killing Yugoslav police and innocent people of all nationalities, even (Muslim) Albanians who were not on their side. This triggered a Yugoslav (Serb) interior ministry counter strike aiming at crippling terrorist KLA-members…they (KLA) deliberately wanted civilians to die since this would trigger an international reaction.”

Baltimore Chronicle, December 1, 1999: The “International Crisis Group, a private organization founded by former U.S. Senate Majority leader George Mitchell…(a) Washington and Brussels-based group, which is funded by the European Union and the U.S. government, reported “systematic attacks on Serbs,” and that the “Albanian (Muslim) majority is determined to rid the [Kosovo] province of all non-Albanians.”

Human Rights Watch, March 19, 2004: “NATO peacekeepers and United Nations police must make the protection of the minority communities in Kosovo the top priority in the province, Human Rights Watch said today… most of the violence is being directed at the ethnic Serb minority. Unidentified attackers have burned churches, homes, public offices and at least one school. Particularly disturbing are reports of arson attacks on newly built homes of Serbs who had recently returned to Kosovo following their forced displacement in previous years.”

“The attacks bear similarity to the campaign of arson, abduction, intimidation and killing directed at Serbs and Roma (by Muslim Kosovars) in the summer of 1999. This campaign of violence forced 200,000 Serbs and thousands of Roma from the province.”

Human Rights Watch, August 1999: “Ethnic Albanian (Muslim) civilians have taken part in much of the burning and looting of Serb and Roma property, and, in a few instances, in violent attacks on their neighbors…The most serious incidents of violence, however, have been carried out by members of the (Muslim) KLA. Although the KLA leadership issued a statement on July 20 condemning attacks on Serbs and Roma, and KLA political leader Hashim Thaqi (Thachi) publicly denounced the July 23 massacre of fourteen Serb farmers, it remains unclear whether these beatings and killings were committed by local KLA units acting without official sanction, or whether they represent a coordinated KLA policy. What is indisputable, however, is that the frequency and severity of such abuses make it incumbent upon the KLA leadership to take swift and decisive action to prevent them.”

“It is also important to note that the KLA has been linked to earlier abuses against Serbs, Roma, and Kosovar (Muslim) Albanians (who were not KLA sympathizers) during 1998 and during the first three months of 1999. Specifically, reports by the Humanitarian Law Center, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Human Rights Watch’s own research indicate that dozens of Serbs, and a smaller number of Roma and (Muslim) Albanians, were detained by the KLA between mid-1998 and March 1999. At least 130 Serbs went missing during this time and are presumed dead.”


 
What the above statements make abundantly clear is that the nationalist/religious zeal in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was real, but attributed for political expediency to Slobodan Milosevic, a pawn in the mortal, high stakes competition of realpolitik, where if you aren´t winning, you’re losing. The myth that Milosevic incited the Orthodox Christian Serb population to violence has been a very effective propaganda endeavor by American and European governments; however Milosevic never expressed any ethnic/religious intolerance that even approaches the rabid utterances of the Catholic Croatian Franjo Tudjman and the Bosnian Muslim Alija Izetbegovic. Both men were later permitted to ascend to the presidency of their respective now independent nations, after the compulsory U.S. initiated violent fragmentation of the sovereign Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia under the leadership of Tito had been a prosperous economy based on his unique socialist concept of worker self-management of state enterprises; a “third way” between United States capitalism and the state socialism practiced by the European Union. The nation was a socialist, multiethnic, regional power with an enviable record of economic achievement. From 1960 to 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the rate of literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years. (World Bank, World Development Report 1991, Statistical Annex, Tables 1 and 2, Washington, 1991.)

By 1990, after succumbing to the generous credit available by the seductive siren song of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the annual rate of growth of GDP had collapsed to -7.5 percent. In 1991, GDP declined by a further 15 percent, to a staggering -22.5, while industrial output collapsed by 21 percent. (Judit Kiss, “Debt Management in Eastern Europe, Eastern European Economics,” May June 1894, (p 59)

Milosevic´s deplorable crime in America´s judgment was his unacceptable attempt to maintain Yugoslavia as a united, multi-ethnic federation. The United States was determined to dismantle what it considered an anachronistic, albeit successful, socialist democracy; the European Union governments were threatened by an economically thriving socialist system that discarded direct state intervention. Additionally, the U.S. plan called for a continuation of the encirclement of Russia by broadening its domination adjacent to Russia´s western borders; a politically and economically crushed USSR had already surrendered the republics on its southern frontier and at the moment was incapable of any credible response, being thoroughly occupied with a delicate transition from Communism to Democracy.

On June 28, 1989, in a speech given at Kosovo Field, Milosevic said: “Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. National composition of almost all countries in the world today, particularly developed ones, has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully.”

“Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect. The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people. Therefore, all people in Serbia who live from their own work, honestly, respecting other people and other nations, are in their own republic.”

“After all, our entire country should be set up on the basis of such principles. Yugoslavia is a multinational community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it.”

Despite an intense search by those who would judge and condemn him for war crimes in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), not one line has been found in which Milosevic displayed bigotry and intolerance for non-Serbs, or a single order to commit unlawful acts.

One irrefutable fact that disproves the Western fabrication of a Serb desire for an “ethnically pure” Serb state is the absence of any ethnic cleansing in Serbia proper. To the contrary, Serbia received refugees from other former republics although Serbs were being forcibly expulsed, with covert United States military assistance, from those very same areas. During Milosevic´s trial, Mihailo Markovic, a Serbian professor of philosophy and founder of the progressive Marxist/Socialist journal Praxis, inquired of the ICTY tribunal: “Why would Serbs be expelling (Catholic) Croatians from Croatia if they’re not expelling them from Serbia? Why would Serbs be expelling (Muslim) Albanians from Kosovo if they’re not expelling them from Belgrade and other parts of Serbia?”

Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague (ICTY) Tribunal: “There were no expulsions, from the beginning to the end of the Yugoslav crisis. All other republics had changed their ethnic makeup. Half a million Serbs were expelled from Croatia and we all know what happened in Bosnia, not to mention other parts of Yugoslavia…do you know that 70,000 Muslim refugees sought sanctuary in Serbia during the Bosnian conflict? Do you think someone would flee their home and take refuge in the very territory from which they were endangered?”

“Therefore, I would say this is a malicious, utterly hostile process aimed at justifying the crime against my country and use this court as a weapon against my country and my people.”

The Centre for Peace in the Balkans: “The civil war in Yugoslavia continues, with untold suffering on all sides. The media report the suffering of the Muslims in gruesome detail. The suffering of Croats at Muslim hands gets little attention. The suffering of Serbs is ignored. So it will surprise large sections of the American public that some 600,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia have sought refuge in beleaguered Serbia deprived of food and fuel by UN dictate during the deadly winter.”

See also:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/djhnstne.htm

Bill Clinton’s Bastard Army: Genocide; Disinformation/Misinformation; Breadline, Market, Racak Incidents

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Article originally published in the New English Review

By Ares Demertzis (Feb. 2009)

I: A Brief Synopsis.

  • Part 1:
    • (i) Covert Exploits; Encouraging Islamic Jihad.
    • (ii) Catholic Croatia; Operation Storm.
    • (iii) Rambouillet
  • Part 2:
    • (iv) The “Air Campaign.”
    • (v) The Catholic Croatians.
    • (vi) The Muslims
  • Part 3:
    • (vii) Genocide
    • (viii) Disinformation & Misinformation.
    • (ix) The Breadline Massacre, The Market Massacres & Racak
  • Part 4:
    • (x) Iconic Images.
    • (xi) On Trial.
    • (xii) Follow the Money

II: Links, plus

  • Czechoslovak Documentary (Video):
  • “Stolen Kosovo.”
  • International Criminal Tribunal (Video):
  • “Milosevic On Trial.”
  • “The Hague Tribunal”
  • “Slobodan Milosevic vs. New World Order”

(vii) Genocide

The most damning evidence of Serb genocidal criminality was to be found in the “Srebrenica Massacre.” Kofi Annan qualified it as “a terrible crime.” The claim that 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males were executed was reported by the New York Times on September 15, 1995.

Six years of subsequent meticulous independent forensic investigation yielded 2,028 individual remains; how many of those were executed, and how many were killed in battle is conjecture.

“Just as the weapons of mass destruction have never been found in Iraq, the charge of massacres, mass graves, ethnic cleansing and genocide proved to be an utter fabrication in Kosovo. Immediately after the war, 20 forensic teams were sent to Kosovo by the International Criminal Court at The Hague from 15 NATO countries, including the U.S.. They dug all summer of 1999 at the very sites where supposed witnesses had reported mass graves.”

By October 1999 they reported back to Chief Prosecutor for the Tribunal Carla Del Ponte that they had been unable to find any mass graves in Kosovo at all. They had found a total of 2,108 corpses in individual graves. How many of that number may have been killed by the NATO bombing they did not speculate.

This troubling fact notwithstanding, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in a contemptible judicial thuggery, without even a minimal pretense for acceptable Western standards of justice, convicted Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic of genocide, concluding in a breathtakingly arbitrary decision, without a shred of evidence, that the total number of Bosnian Muslim males executed was “likely within the range of 7,000 – 8,000.” (Judgment in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic, par. 82)

Madeleine Albright, speaking before the United Nations Security Council on August 10, 1996, reminded those present not to “forget the tragedy and outrages perpetrated earlier in Bosnia against the eastern enclaves of Srebrenica…(the) dead were not killed in the heat of battle, they were not killed in self-defense and they were not killed by accident, they were systematically slaughtered on the instructions of the Bosnian Serb leadership.”

US Representative Frank McCloskey (D. IN) wrote in the Christian Science Monitor on December 31, 1992: “Serb forces in Bosnia have killed between 128,000 and 200,000 persons – almost one in 10 Bosnian Muslims. They particularly target educated, white-collar Bosnia Muslims in the death camps. This is “elitocide,” or the sociopolitical decapitation of a people. Women of child-bearing age are also targeted for destruction in the rape/death camps. I know no name for this new horror.”

“The UN predicts up to 400,000 deaths this winter, from Serb weapons and from equally purposeful Serb subjection of Bosnian Muslims and Croats to freezing weather, famine, and disease. By winter’s end the death toll is likely to reach a half million – a quarter of Bosnia’s Muslims. Half of Bosnia’s Muslims have already been forcibly displaced, and their homes and cultural institutions destroyed.”

“We know that genocide is underway in the Balkans. Our television screens show us bits of it. The alarm is sounded by the press, human rights groups, political figures around the world, and many governments. Western leaders compare Serb fascists actions to those of the Nazis.”

The New Statesman, December 13, 2004: “In November 1999, the Wall Street Journal published the results of its own investigation, dismissing “the mass grave obsession.” Instead of “the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect…the pattern is of scattered killings [mostly] in areas where the separatist Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army has been active.” The Journal concluded that NATO stepped up its claims about (Christian Orthodox) Serbian killing fields when it “saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrary story: civilians killed by NATO’s bombs. The war in Kosovo was cruel, bitter, savage. Genocide it wasn’t.”

“One year later, the International War Crimes Tribunal, a body in effect set up by NATO, announced that the final count of bodies found in Kosovo’s “mass graves” was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Like Iraq’s fabled weapons of mass destruction, the figures used by the US and British governments and echoed by journalists were inventions – along with Serbian “rape camps” and Clinton’s and Blair’s claims that NATO never deliberately bombed civilians.”

George Robertson, British Secretary of Defense, before the Select Committee on Defense in the U.K. House of Commons: “Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army (KLA) were responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav (Christian Orthodox Serb) authorities.” This was also true of Bosnian Muslims and the Croatian Catholics; facts undisclosed by a mainstream media eager to caricature Serbs as “Milosevic´s willing executioners” intent on perpetrating genocide against the innocent.”

During a speech in Geneva reported by UPÏ on January 4, 1993, Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic in an exquisite exercise of Islamic taquiyya, repeated the unfounded and provocative claim of U.S. Representative Frank McClosky´s 200,000 figure, and added that the Muslim women of Bosnia had been subjected to the “most massive raping in human history.’’ Speaking to the Carnegie Endowment in Washington D.C. he emphatically declared: “In the last nine months, more than 200,000 people have been killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which means approximately almost 1,000 per day.” (Federal News Service, January 8, 1993).

Within hours, Izetbegovic’s spurious claim had been reported as fact by the self accredited disseminators of flawless information: National Public Radio, Associated Press, Washington Post, and New York Times.

“Ms. Magazine ran a cover story that accused Bosnian Serb forces of raping for the purpose of producing pornographic films. No such films were ever found and the charges were not supported by the findings of Helsinki Watch or Human Rights Watch.”

“In January 1993 the Warburton Report, authorized by the European Community, estimated 20,000 Muslim women had been raped as part of a Serb strategy of conquest. This report was widely cited as an independent, authoritative source. No coverage was given to a dissenting member of the investigative team, Simone Veil, a former French minister and president of the European Parliament. She revealed that the estimate of 20,000 victims was based on actual interviews with only four victims—two women and two men.”

“The Jan. 4, 1993, issue of Newsweek reported that up to 50,000 Muslim women had been raped in Bosnia. Tom Post, a contributor to the article, explained that the estimate of 50,000 rapes was based on interviews with 28 women.”

Covert Action Quarterly, Diana Johnstone, August 10, 1998, No 65: “No one denies that many rapes occurred during the civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, or that rape is a serious violation of human rights. So is war, for that matter. From the start, however, inquiry into rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina focused exclusively on accusation that Serbs were raping Muslim women as part of a deliberate strategy. The most inflated figures, freely extrapolated by multiplying the number of known cases by large factors, were readily accepted by the media and international organizations. No interest was shown in detailed and documented reports of rapes of Serbian women by Muslims or Croats.”

“The late Nora Beloff, former chief political correspondent of the London Observer, described her own search for verification of the rape charges in a letter to The Daily Telegraph (January 19, 1993). The British Foreign Office conceded that the rape figures being bandied about were totally uncorroborated, and referred her to the Danish government, then chairing the European Union. Copenhagen agreed that the reports were unsubstantiated, but kept repeating them.”

See: Norma von Ragenfeld-Feldman, “The Victimization of Women: Rape and the Reporting of Rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1993″, Dialogue, No 21, Paris, March 1997; and Diana Johnstone, “Selective Justice in The Hague”, The Nation, September 22, 1997, pp 16-21.

The World Association of International Studies, Stanford University: “It is extraordinary how the estimates of deaths in Kosovo shrank, from the 100,000 repeatedly asserted by US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, to the 4,600 claimed in a US State Department report issued in May 1999, to the 346 cited in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) war crimes indictment against Slobodan Milosevic.”


 
These figures hardly provide the evidence necessary to assert the systematic genocidal slaughter which NATO officials and the Western media claimed was taking place in Kosovo, and which provided the pretext for American military intervention. This cumulative death toll is far smaller that the number of fatalities inflicted on innocent civilian Serb non-combatants by the US-NATO bombing.

The hysteria and Serb bashing emanating from highly biased interventionist sources was enthusiastically accepted by individuals willing to believe the statements of such propagandists as former Assistant Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Richard Holbrooke, who wrote in his book “To End A War,” that “Between 1991 and 1995, close to three hundred thousand people were killed in the former Yugoslavia.” American journalists eagerly embraced, without investigation, this disinformation that presented the Serbs as rabid nationalist killers, notwithstanding that the European press was introducing contradictory evidence and skepticism of the established and highly promoted U.S. government narrative.

Media exaggeration and mendacity aside, the European Journal of Population (June 2005) reported that researchers for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), testified for the prosecution during the Milosevic trial (therefore their biases were not likely to neither reduce Muslim victims nor inflate Serb fatalities), that they estimated the total war-related deaths as approximately 100,000 on all sides. 55,000 deaths out of a total of 102,622 were civilians, among which were included over 16,000 Serbs; the remaining 47,000 were members of military groups.

Although these deaths are not negligible, they are far less notable than 200,000 or 300,000 strictly Bosnian Muslim deaths cited by supposedly knowledgeable sources. The estimated deaths by the researchers for the ICTY have not received media circulation because they make difficult a case for genocide against the Serbs in general and a despised Milosevic in particular. Database searches of news stories revealed that the death tolls for genocide being reported in the U.S. media was a ratio of 76 to 2 in favor of the higher, obsolete and unrealistic numbers.

In a shocking and deplorable display of prejudiced predisposition Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague (ITCY), during a guest appearance on the PBS Charlie Rose Show in June 2007, maintained that “more than 300,000” civilians had died as a result of the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo,” although she knew that this was sheer fabrication.


 
A dissenting voice with a contrasting, albeit far less widely circulated view was Representative Dennis Kucinich, who through his privileged position in the U.S. Congress had access to information available only to members of the U.S. government: ”I read the latest reports concerning a recent Executive Order that hands the CIA a black bag in the Balkans for engineering a military coup in Serbia, for interrupting communications, for tampering with bank accounts, freezing assets abroad, and training the Kosovo Liberation (Muslim) Army (KLA) in terrorist tactics, such as how to blow up buildings.”

“How this is intended to help establish a democracy in Serbia or Kosovo hasn’t yet been explained. Nor has the failure to substantially disarm and demilitarize the KLA been explained. Nor has the reverse ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo by the KLA while NATO rules the provinces been explained.”

“But the extracurricular activity is consistent with NATO’s policy of the ends justifying the means, of might makes right, of collective guilt, of retribution upon a civilian population. Part of the story of this war is how the Administration and NATO used events and sentiment to suppress criticism of the war and shroud the multitude of violations of international law.”
(The Progressive, Vol 63, No.8, August 1999)

See also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf84gioy8hU
http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/yugo_pumphrey3.htm
http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/yugo_sreb.htm

(viii) Disinformation & Misinformation.

The civil war in Yugoslavian was portrayed by the West, and accepted as such by a badly informed public receiving fictional, ideologically motivated reporting, as an ethno-religious conflict carried out by Serbs against the rest of the Yugoslav community. Carla Del Ponte, the Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Slobodan Milosevic summed it up: “The purpose of this joint criminal enterprise was the forcible and permanent removal of the majority of non-Serbs…” (IT-01-51-I), ICTY, November 22, 2001, para.5-9).

George Kenney, US State Department, Video, “Milosevic On Trial”: (In contrast to the public relations efforts of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo) “the Serbs were not only not cooperative with the United States; the Serbs were singularly indifferent to the media. They really didn´t like the media.” This proved to be a fatal Serb error in twentieth century hostilities where public relations and media hype can be far more effective than military combat success – as the Viet Nam war amply demonstrated. Viet Nam was the first conflict waged and won by the U.S. media.

An intense propaganda campaign to sway American public opinion and journalists, humanitarian organizations, politicians and academics was created by professional American public relations firms such as Global Communications, Hill & Knowlton, Ruder Finn, and Waterman & Associates, which were contracted by the Muslim terrorists in Kosovo, the Bosnian Muslims and the Croatian Catholics.


 
A storyline that on occasion included distortions and falsehoods originated at the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon, and was fashioned and legitimized by the governments of the United States, the European Union, the Vatican, and the mainstream media; a formidable assembly of conspirators who became, in effect, co-belligerents in Yugoslavia´s civil war. Those challenging the accepted argument were considered apologists for Milosevic, confronting malicious scorn and virtually insurmountable media censorship.

James Harff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the public relations company Global Communications in a 1993 interview with French journalist Jacques Merlino: “We have been working for the Republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as for the opposition in Kosovo. Throughout this period, we had many successes, giving us a formidable international image…Speed is vital…The first statement counts. The retractions have no effect…Our work is not to verify information. We are not equipped for that. Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to aim at judiciously chosen targets. It is not our job to verify information …We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not paid to be moral…And when the time comes to start a debate on all of this, we have a clear conscience. For, if you wish to prove that Serbs are in fact poor victims, go ahead, but you will be quite alone.”

“At the beginning of August 1992, “New York Newsday” came out with the affair of [Serb] concentration camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations – B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the “New York Times” and to organize demonstrations outside the United Nations. That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind.”

“Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia. The great majority of Americans were probably asking themselves in which African country Bosnia was situated. But by a single move we were able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys, which would hereafter play itself. We won by targeting a Jewish audience. Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content, such as “ethnic cleansing”, “concentration camps,” etc., which evoked images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers ofAuschwitz. The emotional charge was so powerful that nobody could go against it.”

“President Tudjman was too imprudent in his book, “Wastelands: Historical Truth.” A reading of his text could find him guilty of anti-Semitism. In Bosnia, the situation was no better: President Izetbegovic, in his book, “The Islamic Declaration,” strongly supported the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state (in Bosnia). Moreover, the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by a real and cruel anti-Semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps. So there was every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the Croats and Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude. And we succeeded masterfully.”

The Spectator, February 12, 1993: “All public relations firms working for foreign governments must register with the Justice Department. I found in documents obtained from the Justice Department that while Croatia was contracted to pay Ruder Finn $16,000 a month and Bosnia was to pay $12,000 in 1992, payments in some later months were as high as $200,000, and total payments per year were ultimately in the millions of dollars. Moreover, Ruder Finn was not the only P.R. firm employed in Bosnia. Hill and Knowlton was also contracted early in the war. Waterman & Associates was employed by Croatia. Financial backing came from countries such as Saudi Arabia, which alone funneled nearly $1 billion to the Sarajevo regime from 1993 to 1996, according to the Washington Post, 2 February 1996. Ruder Finn was also contracted by the non-existent “Republic of Kosovo” for $5,000 a month, according to a Justice Department document dated 1 November 1992.”

Il Manifesto, Jeannie Toschi Visconti: “In recent years a new method of waging war has evolved. It is cynical, amoral, and dangerous, because it is capable of mobilizing and influencing millions of people. It is called media war. The masters of this new type of warfare are experts in communications and visual images…The operators using this new methodology are called public relations agencies…The TV media and the press have responded with enthusiasm to the stimuli provided by these communications experts, often casting aside professional scruples in favor of sensationalism.”

Canada Free Press, August 30, 2004: “Was the “River Incident” in Yugoslavia, widely reported by the media, the work of a well-paid public relations firm? The media reported that at least two Serbs and a dog had chased four Albanian boys into the river Ibar in Mitrovica. According to the heart-catching story, three of the boys drowned, and only one made it to the safety of the other side. Revenge followed swiftly. Reprisal attacks on Serbs claimed 30 lives and wounded 600. United Nations representative Derek Chappell said the river event was “definitely not true,” he was promptly pulled by the UN and transferred to another job. “The UN said he was too frank in telling the truth,” said James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia.”

“Says Marjaleena Repo of Ruder-Finn: “The PR firm was piling hoax upon hoax. These stories and photos of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” (a la Hitler) in a civil war, in which Serbs are as guilty as sin and others are their innocent victims, are repeated ad nauseum by western reporters without the slightest evidence, and have provided the grounds for the public’s acceptance of the illegal and brutal war against the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia.”


 
There isn´t enough space available to identify all the authors, many of them Pulitzer Prize winners, who were complicit in this dishonorable and reprehensible assault on their ostensibly principled and respected profession with the shameful, counterfeit “information” they imposed on credulous readers. Let it suffice to publicly identify just a few who followed the standard narrative:

David Rieff in a vividly dramatic journalistic tract more consistent with a work of fiction than reportage, exaggerated in 1995: “The Serbs came, they slaughtered, they conquered, while the world looked on. As I write, the genocide is all but complete.”

Laura Silber and Allan Little: “Under Milosevic´s stewardship (Serbs were) the key secessionists (seeking) creation of a new, enlarged Serbian state encompassing as much territory of Yugoslavia as possible…his politics of ethnic intolerance provoke(d) the other nations of Yugoslavia, convincing them that it was impossible to stay in the Yugoslav federation and propelling them down the road to independence.”

Misha Glenny: “Without question it was Milosevic who had willfully allowed the genie out of the bottle, knowing that the consequences might be dramatic and even bloody.”

Noel Malcolm: “Two processes seemed fused into one: the gathering of power into Milosevic’s hands, and the gathering of the Serbs into a single political unit which could either dominate Yugoslavia or break it apart.”

Roy Gutman: “Serbia had harnessed the powerful military machine of the Yugoslav state to achieve the dream of its extreme nationalists: Greater Serbia.”

David Rieff: “even if (Croatia’s President) Tudjman had been an angel, Slobodan Milosevic would still have launched his war for Greater Serbia.”

Tim Judah: (Wars in) “Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo: four wars since 1991 and the result of these terrible conflicts, which began with the slogan ‘All Serbs in One State,’ is the cruelest irony.”

Florence Hartmann: “Long before the war began, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and, following his example, Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, had turned their backs on the Yugoslav ideal of an ethnically mixed federal State and set about carving out their own ethnically homogeneous States. With Milosevic’s failure in 1991 to take control of all of Yugoslavia, the die was cast for war.”

Marlise Simons: (Milosevic) “rose and then clung to power by resurrecting old nationalist grudges and inciting dreams of a Greater Serbia…the prime engineer of wars that pitted his fellow Serbs against the Slovenes, the Croats, the Bosnians, the Albanians of Kosovo and ultimately the combined forces of the entire NATO alliance.”
Ed Vulliamy: “Once Milosevic had back-stabbed his way to power and had switched from Communism to Fascism, he and Mirjana set out to establish their dream of an ethnically pure Greater Serbia cleansed of Croats and ‘mongrel races’ such as Bosnia’s Muslims and Kosovo’s Albanians.”


 
George Kenney, U.S. Foreign Service officer: “At many different levels there´s an element of groupthink. Everyone is going along saying the same thing, believing the same thing, and they´re all wrong.” (Video: Milosevic On Trial).
Covert Action Quarterly, August 10, 1998, No 65: “In fact, in the case of the Yugoslav tragedy, the irony is that “alternative” or “left” activists and writers have frequently taken the lead in likening the Serbs, the people who most wanted to continue to live in multi-cultural Yugoslavia, to Nazi racists, and in calling for military intervention on behalf of ethnically defined secessionist movements…American journalists who repeated unconfirmed stories of Serbian atrocities could count on getting published, with a chance of a Pulitzer prize. Indeed, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting was shared between the two authors of the most sensational “Serb atrocity stories” of the year: Roy Gutman of Newsday and John Burns of The New York Times. In both cases, the prize-winning articles were based on hearsay evidence of dubious credibility.”

“Gunman’s articles, mostly based on accounts by Muslim refugees in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, were collected in a book rather misleadingly entitled “A Witness to Genocide,” although in fact he had been a “witness” to nothing of the sort…Burns’ story was no more than an interview with a mentally deranged prisoner in a Sarajevo jail, who confessed to crimes some of which have been since proved never to have been committed.”.

“On the other hand, there was no market for stories by a journalist who discovered that reported Serbian “rape camps” did not exist (German TV reporter Martin Lettmayer), or who included information about Muslim or Croat crimes against Serbs (Belgian journalist Georges Berghezan for one). It became increasingly impossible to challenge the dominant interpretation in major media. Editors naturally prefer to keep the story simple: one villain, and as much blood as possible.”

“Still, the virtually universal acceptance of a one-sided view of Yugoslavia’s collapse cannot be attributed solely to political designs or to sensationalist manipulation of the news by major media. It also owes a great deal to the ideological uniformity prevailing among educated liberals who have become the consensual moral conscience in Northwestern Euro-American society since the end of the Cold War.”

(ix) The Breadline Massacre, The Market Massacres & Racak

Offensive in the Balkans, Yossef Bodansky, Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for the US House of Representatives: “After blaming the Bosnian (Christian Orthodox) Serbs “beyond reasonable doubt” for the “mortar shell” which caused the Market Street carnage, the Clinton Administration then used this incident to justify the massive bombing campaign which was launched against the Bosnian Serbs virtually immediately. On August 29, President Clinton called the still-escalating bombing campaign “an appropriate response to the shelling of Sarajevo.” Initial targets were around Sarajevo, giving credence to the fig-leaf claim of retaliation for the “mortar shell.” But, within a few hours, bombing raids were taking place all over Bosnia-Herzegovina.” (Foreword)


 
1992 Breadline Massacre: “United Nations officials and senior Western military officers believe some of the worst killings in Sarajevo, including the massacre of at least 16 people in a bread queue, were carried out by the city’s mainly Muslim defenders – not (Christian Orthodox) Serb besiegers – as a propaganda ploy to win world sympathy and military intervention.”

“Classified reports to the UN force commander, General Satish Nambiar, concluded… that Bosnian forces loyal to (Muslim) President Alija Izetbegovic may have detonated a bomb. “We believe it was a command-detonated explosion, probably in a can,” a UN official said then. “The large impact which is there now is not necessarily similar or anywhere near as large as we came to expect with a mortar round landing on a paved surface.” (“Muslims ‘slaughter their own people’,” (London) The Independent, 8/22/92)

“Our people tell us there were a number of things that didn’t fit. The street had been blocked off just before the incident. Once the crowd was let in and had lined up, the media appeared but kept their distance. The attack took place, and the media were immediately on the scene.” (Major General Lewis MacKenzie, Peacekeeper: The Road to Sarajevo, Vancouver, BC, 1993, pages 193-4)

February 5, 1994 First “Market Massacre”: “French television reported last night that the United Nations investigation into the market-place bombing in Sarajevo two weeks ago had established beyond doubt that the mortar shell that killed 68 people was fired from inside Bosnian (Muslim) lines.” (“UN tracks source of fatal shell,” (London) The Times, 2/19/94)

“For the first time, a senior U.N. official has admitted the existence of a secret U.N. report that blames the Bosnian Moslems for the February 1994 massacre of Moslems at a Sarajevo market. “…After studying the crater left by the mortar shell and the distribution of shrapnel, the report concluded that the shell was fired from behind Moslem lines.”

“The report, however, was kept secret; the context of the wire story implies that U.S. Ambassador Albright may have been involved in its suppression.

August 28, 1995 Second “Market Massacre”: “British ammunition experts serving with the United Nations in Sarajevo have challenged key ‘evidence’ of the Serbian atrocity that triggered the devastating NATO bombing campaign which turned the tide of the Bosnian war.” The Britons’ analysis was confirmed by French analysts but their findings were “dismissed” by “a senior American officer” at U.N. headquarters in Sarajevo. (“Serbs ‘not guilty’ of massacre: Experts warned US that mortar was Bosnian,” (London) The Times, 10/1/95)

“(A) crucial U.N. report (stating Serb responsibility for) the market massacre is a classified secret, but four specialists — a Russian, a Canadian and two Americans — have raised serious doubts about its conclusion, suggesting instead that the mortar was fired not by the (Christian Orthodox) Serbs but by (Muslim) Bosnian government forces.” A Canadian officer “added that he and fellow Canadian officers in Bosnia were ‘convinced that the Muslim government dropped both the February 5, 1994, and the August 28, 1995, mortar shells on the Sarajevo markets. An unidentified U.S. official contends that the available evidence suggests either “the shell was fired at a very low trajectory, which means a range of a few hundred yards — therefore under (Sarajevo) (Muslim) government control” or “a mortar shell converted into a bomb was dropped from a nearby roof into the crowd (of Muslims).” (“Bosnia’s bombers,” The Nation, 10/2/95)

“French magazine editor Jean Daniel put the question directly to Prime Minister Edouard Balladur: “They (i.e., the Muslims) have committed this carnage on their own people?” I exclaimed in consternation. “Yes,” confirmed the Prime Minister without hesitation, “but at least they have forced NATO to intervene.” (“No more lies about Bosnia,” Le Nouvel Observateur, 8/31/95, translated in Chronicles Magazine, January 1997)

Another successful media enthused (especially in the American press), Muslim deception was the Racak incident of January 15, 1999. It was the culmination of (Muslim) KLA attacks provoking (Christian Orthodox) Serbian reprisals that had continued unceasingly throughout the winter of 1998–1999. General Klaus Nauman, Chairman of NATO Military Committee, in a statement to the North Atlantic Council affirmed that “the majority of (ceasefire) violations was caused by the KLA.”

The Racak incident was immediately, without any investigation, advantageously seized by the U.N. the U.S. and the E.C., and proclaimed to be a massacre of Muslim civilians by Serbs. American Ambassador William Walker held a press conference categorically condemning the Serbs for the massacre. Although later proven to be a KLA hoax (the dead were KLA combatants killed in action, not civilians) it formed the basis for one of the charges of war crimes against Milosevic.

The political slanting of NATO favoring the (Muslim) KLA was reported in the BBC Television program “Moral Combat: NATO at War.”

See also:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/grattan_healy/johnston.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy1JzwpJ9ec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-muEj_E0PY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-muEj_E0PY

Fox News: What will happen to corruptocrat Eric Holder? Justice for the Tea Party?

Pristina: protest against arrest of KLA members for war crimes

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Well, well, ‘Hasim Taci’ is PM, and best pal of Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, and former head of terrorist KLA, but two others get arrested. How does that work?

inSerbia has the story:

Pristina protest
Photo from: www.rts.rs

Source: http://www.tanjug.rs/

PRISTINA – Several thousand people demonstrated in Pristina Monday against the arrest of former commanders of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The demonstration was organized by former KLA members, after a Pristina court has ordered that a number of their fellow soldiers and commanders of the KLA “Drenica Group,” including its two influential former leaders, Sami Ljustaku and Sulejman Selimi, be placed in house arrest.

The protest, which began Monday morning, ended at about 1 p.m. with the participants announcing new protests.

The court in Pristina ordered that all the seven men suspected of committing war crimes in 1998 and 1999 await their trial for war crimes in house arrest.

The order came after a marathon questioning of the suspects.

EULEX Prosecutor Maurizio Salustro has demanded that the suspects remain in custody until the completion of the process.

Sulejman Selimi, known by the nom de guerre “Sultan,” currently serves as the Ambassador of Kosovo to Albania.

Until the end of 1998, Selimi was chief military commander of the KLA. Following the disbanding of the KLA in 1999, he served as a senior officer of the Kosovo Protection Corps, and between 2009 and 2011, as the commander of the Kosovo Security Force.

Kosovo Prime Minister Hasim Taci reacted to the court order stating that the accusations against Selimi and others are “unfounded.”

Author

| E-Mail: m.djulic@inserbia.info | http://inserbia.info

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