The Yugoslav wars of disintegration: Graveyard Humor in Belgrade

 

Diana Johnstone

понедељак, 04. јун 2012.

Global Research, May 23, 2012 Since graveyard humor is a Serbian specialty, it seems appropriate that Serbs just played a little joke on everybody by electing a former undertaker as President. In the May 20 runoff, affable former funeral home manager Tomislav Nikolic won slightly over 50% of valid votes cast against the incumbent, Boris Tadic, who had spent his eight years in office doing everything possible to please the Western powers that have in return done all they could to keep Serbia alone and humiliated. Constantly compared to Nazi Germany, Serbs have been subjected to a sleazy imitation of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, but no Marshall Plan billions to revive the economy. Conditions are increasingly desperate. More than half the electorate, perhaps considering the election itself a joke, did not bother to vote. Nikolic promised change, but there is no sign that he has either a plan or the means to bring it about. Earlier in the month, parliamentary elections were tainted by evidence of massive ballot rigging in favor of the ruling coalition. Even before the presidential runoff, the Socialist Party leader made a deal to form a coalition with Tadic's Democratic Party – the coalition favored by Western embassies. So Nikolic may find himself only a figurehead, with the government run by a prime minister from the same old Tadic majority. Still, voters at least get a chance from time to time to say "no", and saying "no" to Tadic brought a fleeting illusion of freedom. For Western media and politicians, Serbia serves only one purpose: to be the bad example of "nationalism" that enhances the virtuous anti-nationalism of the EU and NATO. In an era when in EU countries a mere disparaging remark against any ethnic or religious group may lead to lawsuits for "incitement to racial hatred", the Serbs are there to allow cartoonists, editorialists and film-makers to stigmatize the pariah group to their heart's content. Serbia's most prized export to Europe is its "genocidal war criminals", sent to The Hague to feed Europe's pride in its humanitarian values. So the best thing Serbia could do for Western media was to elect "an extreme nationalist" – well, not exactly – only a "former extreme nationalist", or "a former ultranationalist", or "a former strident nationalist". In The Guardian, Ian Traynor fretted that "Serbia's hopes of fast-track integration into Europe suffered a severe setback" with the defeat of the endlessly accommodating Tadic. This "fast track" is another sour joke. After eight years of giving in to EU pressure, all Tadic got this spring was grudging permission for Serbia to become an "official candidate" to join the EU. To join when? Only when Serbia makes some more "reforms" and above all, when Belgrade accepts the "independence" of Kosovo, stolen from Serbia by NATO bombing in 1999 and handed over to Albanian gangsters with friends in Washington. That is something no Serbian government dares to do. At least not openly. Like Tadic, Nikolic has promised to pursue two mutually exclusive policy aims: EU membership, and refusal to recognize that the historic Serb province of Kosovo is now an "independent State". The election of Nikolic probably shows that enthusiasm for joining the EU is waning, which would make sense considering the current crisis of the euro zone. But even a sinking ship may look like salvation to a drowning man. Ever since the 1999 NATO war, Serbia has been a semi-occupied country, surrounded by NATO. Its politicians must seek approval of Western embassies and pro-Western media. Many have been groomed in the United States. Nikolic is an exception, but to compensate, he has turned to former U.S. Ambassador William Montgomery for advice on how to improve his image in the West. As a "former extreme nationalist", Nikolic may be called upon by EU gatekeepers to do even more (if such is possible) to prove his conversion to "Western values". He started off with the rather astonishing statement that he was eager to meet Angela Merkel, his "best ally in Europe" – astonishing since everyone knows that Germany and Austria, as Serbia's historic enemies (Sarajevo 1914) were first to sponsor Croatian and Slovenian secession from Yugoslavia and have vigorously pursued their century-old vendetta against Serbs ever since. Nikolic has modified his former vow to pursue closer relations with Russia into a suggestion that Serbia must "have friends all over the world". The "former extreme nationalist", who left the Serbian Radical Party to form his own Progressive Party, does not appear to be the man to defy Serbia's Western tormentors. "Take Him to The Hague!" Since only "former extreme nationalists" are left in Serbia, whatever happened to the real thing? Whatever happened to Vojislav Seselj? Nikolic's political mentor, the lawyer and Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj, has been in prison in the Netherlands for over nine years, as his trial for belonging to an alleged "joint criminal enterprise" gets nowhere. On February 24, 2003, learning that the Prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) had issued a secret indictment against him, Seselj booked his own regular flight to the Netherlands to give himself up before the indictment could be issued. He announced boldly that he was "convinced that I'm capable of winning against The Hague tribunal and refuting these Western allegations against the Serbian people." A farewell rally was held in Belgrade. He has been in the ICTY prison in the Netherlands ever since. The ICTY chief Prosecutor at that time, Ms. Carla Del Ponte, wrote in her memoirs "The Hunt" that the indictment was issued at the request of the authorities in Belgrade. At a meeting on February 17, 2003, Zoran Djindjic, who owed his position as Serbian Prime Minister to support from NATO powers, and was assassinated shortly thereafter, allegedly told her: "As far as Vojislav Seselj is concerned, we have only one request –take him away, never to bring him back again!" The reason for getting Seselj out of Serbia was obvious. He was a popular politician who had lost elections to Milosevic, but with Milosevic out of the way, he might be a formidable opponent for the pro-Western politicians sponsored by the NATO powers. Or so they might worry. The Seselj case illustrates an original purpose of the Hague tribunal, as described by one of its designers, Michael Scharf, a State Department adviser who took part in the creation of the ICTY. In an August 2004 Washington Post column, Scharf recalled: "In creating the Yugoslavia tribunal statute, the U.N. Security Council set three objectives: first, to educate the Serbian people, who were long misled by Milosevic's propaganda, about the acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his regime; second, to facilitate national reconciliation by pinning prime responsibility on Milosevic and other top leaders and disclosing the ways in which the Milosevic regime had induced ordinary Serbs to commit atrocities; and third, to promote political catharsis while enabling Serbia's newly elected leaders to distance themselves from the repressive policies of the past." To put it in slightly different terms, the purpose of the Tribunal was to oblige the Serbian people to accept the NATO version of events in their country. Already in 1992, U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger called for a war crimes tribunal as an instrument to force the Serbian people to see things our way: While "waiting for the people of Serbia, if not their leaders, to come to their senses, we must make them understand that their country will remain alone, friendless, and condemned to economic ruin and exclusion from the family of civilized nations for as long as they pursue the suicidal dream of a Greater Serbia. They need, especially, to understand that a second Nuremberg awaits the practitioners of ethnic cleansing, and that the judgment, and opprobrium, of history awaits the people in whose name their crimes were committed." In reality, the Tribunal, precisely because it intervened in a complex civil war against the Serb side, has never been credible among most Serbs, but instead has served to strengthen the NATO countries' own view of the conflict as caused solely by Serbian nationalism. The enemies of the Serbs, nationalist leaders of the Albanians, Bosnian Muslims or Croats, use the Western anti-Serb bias for their own purposes, first of all to portray themselves as pure innocent victims with no responsibility for the mayhem that tore Yugoslavia apart. That version is far too simplistic to convince Serbs who are aware of the complexities, even when they admit that crimes were indeed committed by Serbs during the bloody conflicts. Far from fostering reconciliation, the Tribunal has cemented divisions and made eventual reconciliation all but impossible. Seselj, however, is a special case. There is no evidence that he ever took part in combat, much less in war crimes, or that he exercised any command responsibility. He joined a national unity government briefly during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, but for the rest of the time was an often bitter and vehement political opponent of President Slobodan Milosevic. As a witness at the Milosevic trial in The Hague, Seselj surprised the prosecution by insisting that he, Seselj, was the real champion of "Greater Serbia", while Milosevic was always opposed to the concept and instead wanted to preserve multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Milosevic died in his cell before the end of his trial. In short, Seselj is spending years on trial for what he said, not for what he did. The Crime of the "Rusty Spoons" Some twenty years ago, Seselj became notorious in Western media for having allegedly boasted of "tearing out the eyes of Croats with rusty spoons". This was one of the main horror stories that built the reputation of Serbs as genocidal maniacs. Vojislav Seselj was never one to be concerned with political correctness. He gained a certain prominence in the early 1980s as one of Yugoslavia's best-known political prisoners. Internationally known intellectuals of the Praxis group rallied to his defense on grounds of free speech, even though they disagreed with him on just about all major questions, as they tended to be reformist Marxists and Seselj was strongly anti-communist. But even his adversaries acknowledged his courage and intelligence. Under Milosevic, political prisoners were released, and in the early 1990s Seselj became leader of the Serbian Radical Party, a revival of Serbia's main historic political party from Serbia's democratic heyday in the early 1900s, before World War I and the creation of Yugoslavia at the Versailles conference. As Yugoslavia began to break up under the pressure of Croatian and Slovenian secessionism, Seselj became the leading champion of Serb nationalism, meaning roughly the idea that if Yugoslavia were to break up into its component nations, Serbia should revert to the nation it could have been as a victor in World War I before the creation of Yugoslavia, World War II, and the Communist division of Yugoslav territory – in short, "Greater Serbia". Milosevic never endorsed this idea. In 1991, conflict was brewing between ethnic Serbs and nationalist Croats in regions of Croatia with a large Serb population. Some Serbs fled to Serbia, fearful of a return of the Nazi-backed Ustasha movement that massacred Serbs after Nazi Germany invaded and broke up Yugoslavia in 1941. While the conflict aroused Serb fears of Ustasha, it also aroused Croat fears of Chetniks – the name for Serb guerrillas in wars against the Ottoman Empire or against the Nazi occupation. That year, Seselj was guest on a satirical television show called Minimaxovision that made fun of the accusations against Serbs. "So you Chetniks are slaughtering people again?" Seselj was asked. He replied deadpan: "of course, only we have changed our methodology. Now, instead of knives we use shoe horns. And rusty ones at that, so that it cannot be established whether the victim died because of butchering or from tetanus." The talk show participants laughed at the absurdity of using shoe horns. This was graveyard humor in a tradition understood perhaps in Belgrade, but not everywhere. Urged on by their Croat friends, Western reporters took the whole thing seriously. The tasteless joke became a testimony to the fact that Seselj had boasted that his men slaughtered Croats with rusty spoons (the word kasika means both spoon and shoe horn in Serbian). Since then, Seselj has explained repeatedly that he was joking. But the story lives on. The May 22 report on Nikolic's election in the International Herald Tribune included a background reference to Vojislav Seselj who "said he would like to gouge out the eyes of Croats with a rusty spoon. He is now in The Hague for war crimes." An unmentioned aspect of this story is that in a paradoxical way it echoes the Italian author Curzio Malaparte, who wrote in "Kaputt", his autobiographical account of Italy's role in World War II, that when he visited the Leader of the fascist Independent State of Croatia, Ustasha chief Ante Pavelic, he was shown a basket of what looked like oysters and was told they were "human eyes… gouged from Serbs". Personally, I have never been able to take Malaparte's story literally, and tend to think that it, too, is an illustration of a certain Balkan humor. The simplistic belief that the Yugoslav wars of disintegration were caused solely by evil Serbs, imitating Hitler, is necessary to justify NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in order to "save the Kosovars". This myth must be upheld as precedent for further "humanitarian intervention" whenever the United States and NATO decide to overthrow another recalcitrant government somewhere. Until NATO goes broke, or Western citizens wake up and oppose endless war, the Serbs have no chance of achieving truth or justice. They can only console themselves with graveyard humor.

http://www.nspm.rs/nspm-in-english/the-yugoslav-wars-of-disintegration-graveyard-humor-in-belgrade.html

 

Pentagon Consolidates Control Over Balkans - US Military Presence in the former Yugoslavia

Pentagon Consolidates Control Over Balkans: US Military Presence in the former Yugoslavia   By Rick Rozoff
Global Research, May 30, 2012
Stop NATO
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31128
Ahead of, during and after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 25th summit in Chicago on May 20-21, the Pentagon has continued expanding its permanent military presence in the former Yugoslavia and the rest of the Balkan region.   The military bloc's two-day conclave in Chicago formalized, among several other initiatives including the initial activation of its U.S.-dominated interceptor missile system and Global Hawk-equipped Alliance Ground Surveillance operations, a new category of what NATO calls aspirant countries next in line for full Alliance membership. Three of them are former Yugoslav federal republics - Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro - and the fourth is Georgia, conflicts involving which could be the most immediate cause of a confrontation between the world's two major nuclear powers.   This year new NATO partnership formats have sprung up like poisonous toadstools after a summer rain: Aspirants countries, the Partnership Cooperation Menu, the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme, the Connected Forces Initiative and partners across the globe among them.   The military bloc's inauguration as an active, aggressive military force in Bosnia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s laid the groundwork for the U.S.'s already unmatched military to move troops, hardware and bases into Southeast Europe for actions there and to points east and south: The Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa and Central and South Asia.   Since 2004 several nations in the east and west Balkans - Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia and Albania - have been incorporated into the alliance as full members and the remainder - Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the generally unrecognized Republic of Kosovo - have in the first four instances joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program and in the last had its nascent armed forces, the Kosovo Security Force, built from scratch by the leading alliance powers.   Macedonia, which would have become a full member in 2009 except for the lingering name dispute with Greece, and Montenegro have been granted the Membership Action Plan, the final stage before full accession, and Bosnia will be accorded the same once the quasi-autonomous Republika Srpska is deemed properly stripped of the last vestige of self-governance.   NATO and the wars waged under its command, not only in the Balkans but in Afghanistan and all but officially in Iraq, have provided the Pentagon the mammoth Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and three major air bases in Bulgaria and Romania as well as headquarters for new military task forces and jumping-off points for "downrange" operations outside Europe. The U.S. Department of Defense has also acquired subservient legionaries for wars in Asia and Africa and training grounds for American and multinational expeditionary units employed in 21st century neo-colonial wars far beyond the Euro-Atlantic area. Romania will host 24 U.S. Standard Missile-3 interceptors starting in three years.   NATO's Cooperative Longbow and Cooperative Lancer 2012 command and field exercises started in Macedonia on the second day of the Chicago NATO summit, May 21, and ended on May 29. The largest of four such exercises held within the framework of the Partnership for Peace program - "to train, exercise, and promote the interoperability of Partnership for Peace forces using NATO standards" - to date, this year's Longbow/Lancer drills included 2,200 troops from several NATO and a dozen Partnership for Peace nations, a total of 25 countries including the U.S.   On May 26 U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Air Forces in Europe launched the Immediate Response 2012 exercise in Croatia with military personnel from the host country, Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro and Slovenia. Macedonia and Serbia sent observers.   A report on the opening of the exercise posted on the website of U.S. European Command appended this paragraph:   "U.S. Army Europe is uniquely positioned to advance American strategic interests across Eurasia, building teams, assuring allies and deterring enemies. The relationships we build during more than 1,000 theater security cooperation events in more than 40 countries each year lead directly to support for U.S. actions such as in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya."   Balkan states Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Slovenia deployed troops to Iraq after 2003 and all those nations as well as Montenegro (which became independent in 2006) have troops under NATO command in Afghanistan currently.   NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples has military missions in Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia.   On May 28 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff began a two-week disaster management and crisis response exercise, Shared Resilience 2012, in Bosnia. In addition to the U.S. and Bosnia, participating nations include Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Slovenia.   Immediately before the NATO summit, the U.S. Marines Corps' Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 held multinational exercises near Constanta, Romania from May 7-18. The Black Sea Rotational Force was established in 2010 and last year doubled the duration of its training exercises in the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the South Caucasus from three to six months annually.   Now spending half the year in the geopolitically vital area, the Black Sea Rotational Force recently announced its mission of building "enduring partnerships with 19 nations throughout Eastern Europe.” The U.S. Marines are being hosted by Romania from April 2 to September 1. Prior to that Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 participated in the Agile Spirit 2012 exercise in Georgia in March.   U.S. Army Europe's Task Force East, employing Stryker combat vehicles, also operates out of Romania as well as Bulgaria: The Mihal Kogălniceanu Airfield and the Babadag Training Area in the first country and the Novo Selo Training Area in the second. In 2009 Task Force East spent three months training in Romania and Bulgaria, primarily preparing troops from the U.S. and the two host nations for operations in Afghanistan.   This year NATO officially identified Afghanistan and Iraq as military partners, in the category of partners across the globe. Since the end of NATO operations against Libya last October, the bloc's secretary general and its American ambassador, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Ivo Daalder, have mentioned Libya joining NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership with the other nations of North Africa.   Each NATO military operation over the past 17 years, in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, has provided the alliance with bases, centers, troops and logistics for later and for future wars. Air bases in Bulgaria and Romania were employed for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and, as noted above, every Balkan nation but Serbia has supplied troops for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon and NATO military personnel, aircraft, ships and radar in Southeast Europe can be used in attacks on Syria and Iran and in any new armed conflict in the South Caucasus, such as the five-day war between Georgia and Russia four years ago.   The U.S. and its NATO allies are expanding their military presence and infrastructure ever closer to new theaters of war.

 

 

Voice of Russia: The victory of a “pro-Russian” candidate in Serbia a surprise to the West – lulled by its own Balkan PR

 

... A well-oiled NATO PR machine, which specialized on the Balkans since the wars of 1991-1999 can deceive Westerners – but not the locals. ... [ Albeit, that 'well-oiled PR machine' somehow managed to deceive almost half of the locals who voted. What's with them? ] ... Politicians from the EU and the US like to blame Serbs for "failing to learn the lessons of history." Meanwhile, the Americans and West Europeans demonstrate a unique ability to forget their own misdeeds – at least, in the case of the former Yugoslavia. [ Amen to that. ] http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_05_21/75489956/ The victory of a "pro-Russian" candidate in Serbia a surprise to the West – lulled by its own Balkan PR Voice of Russia Babich Dmitry May 21, 2012 The unexpected victory at the presidential election in Serbia of Tomislav Nikolic, the former leader of the much reviled Radical party, was a surprise to the world, but not to Serbia itself. Since Tomislav Nikolic replaced Vojislav Seselj, now on trial for alleged war crimes in the Hague, in 2003 as the head of the Radical party, he has reinvented himself as a moderate supporter of Serbia's integration into the EU and rebranded this political force as the Progressive party of Serbia. The country desperately wanted normalcy and some kind of international rehabilitation for the much publicized "crimes of Serb nationalism" of the 1990s. These developments did not mean, however, that Serbs forgot about the NATO bombings in 1999 or that NATO was as popular as the EU in Serbia. The Western media simply failed to remind its readers of this sentiment in Serbian society, hence the current feeling of bewilderment. A well-oiled NATO PR machine, which specialized on the Balkans since the wars of 1991-1999 can deceive Westerners – but not the locals. Instead of concentrating on the problems, the mainstream press in Europe and the United States had been lulling its readers with stories about the imminent victory of the pro-Western incumbent, Boris Tadic, who won elections on a "pro-European" platform during the 2000s. Even Tadic himself seems to have fallen victim to this delusion, opting for an early presidential election this spring. That move of Tadic, surprisingly, stunned only the Serbs themselves, it did not raise many eyebrows in the West – and for a reason. For decades the subject of the vast majority of Western press reports from Serbia was the obsessive hunt for the so called war criminals. So, when the two main suspects, former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, were captured, Brussels and Washington completely lost interest in Serbia, leaving it to its own devices. The decision to declare Kosovo an independent country, obviously taken not just in Pristina, but also in the Western capitals, was also expected to be easily "swallowed" by the Serbian public. Boris Tadic was expected to win, although his only "achievement" was a tentative agreement of the EU this year to start negotiations on Serbia's membership in the European Union (EU). Now, when predictions of Tadic's victory failed to materialize, the Western press is about to rush into another extreme, adopting an alarmist stand. Now the New York Times expresses doubts in Serbia's EU course towards and scares its readers with a perspective of Serbia's becoming "a province of Russia" – a view attributed by this newspaper to Tomislav Nikolic. The very tone of the polemic around the Serbian election in the West European and American press reveals primarily the strength of negative stereotypes about Serbia and Russia and an almost narcissist obsession with one's own practice of "nation building." "I don't think the general course of Serbian foreign policy will change under Nikolic, he is also for the EU," said Pavel Kandel, senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences. "But voting for Nikolic, the Serbs wanted to send the West a strong message that its projects in the Balkans are failing." Indeed, what are the results of the "nation building" in the Balkans, forced on Serbia and its neighbors by the US and the EU? Let us look at both history and modernity. This spring for Bosnia-Herzegovina, with its large Serb population, is the time of the 20th anniversary of the saddest events in its history – a series of clashes and attacks that ultimately led to the Bosnian war. The war formally ended in 1995 and Bosnia-Herzegovina became a de facto protectorate of the Western powers – the United States and the European Union. The term of "protectorate" belongs to Nebojsa Popov, a Serbian human rights activist, the founder of the Belgrad-based magazine Republika. 17 years after the start of the Bosnian experiment, even Western reports do not declare the project for "artificially multiethnic" Bosnia-Herzegovina a success. A recent survey conducted by the Western-financed Balkan Foundation for Democracy revealed that only 30 percent of Bosnia's citizens trust their "compatriots" from other ethnic groups. The result is much worse that even in the times of Slobodan Milosevic – Bosnian Moslems continue to distrust Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, the mistrust between Serbs and Croats has not in any way decreased. "It is interesting to note, that Croats and Serbs living in Bosnia are not fans of the Bosnian soccer team, which is formally "theirs," says Pavel Kandel of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "Instead, Serbs are fans of the Belgrade teams and young Croats dream of playing for Zagreb clubs. This is just an indicator of the failure of the experiment, in which several "generations" of West European governor-generals took part." Ironically, general Wesley Clark, the head of the military intervention against Yugoslavia in 1999, recently came out in the New York Times with an article pathetically headlined "Bosnia Still Needs Fixing." How did the Western experts expect the Serbs to react to such articles from a person many accuse of systematically destroying former Yugoslavia? Or to the anti-Serb movie on the war in Bosnia from Angelina Joli, an American who had never set foot to the Balkans, but tries to resolve local moral problems? The economic development does not inspire much enthusiasm neither. In Serbia, the much publicized "march towards the EU" brought about a situation when Nikolic could win claiming that the country now lives worse than before Tadic came to power in the year 2004. A recent visit by an IMF mission and numerous economic statistics paint a rather gloomy picture for Bosnia too – the country still has to make up for the 75 percent slump in the economy that occurred during the war of 1990s. Once a home to the Sarajevo Olympic Games in 1984, Bosnia never recovered from the war, which became a result of a hasty recognition of its independence from Yugoslavia by Western powers – Germany in the first place. Politicians from the EU and the US like to blame Serbs for "failing to learn the lessons of history." Meanwhile, the Americans and West Europeans demonstrate a unique ability to forget their own misdeeds – at least, in the case of the former Yugoslavia.

 

Serbian Election: The End of the Beginning, by S. Trifkovic

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2012/05/21/serbian-election-ii-the-end-of-the-beginning/

Serbian Election: The End of the Beginning

by Srdja Trifkovic • May 21, 2012 • Printer-friendly

 

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning, quipped Churchill in November 1942, following Montgomery's modest success at El Alamein. The same applies to Tomislav Nikolić's victory in the second round of Serbia's presidential election last Sunday.

The defeat of Boris Tadić—amply and inappropriately assisted in the final stages of his campaign by the unspeakable, greasy-haired, gay-pride-marching U.S. ambassadress Mary Worlick—is certainly not the end of the global-imperial lethal grip on Serbia. It is to be hoped that is heralds the beginning of its end, but it certainly is the end of the "pro-Western" regime's four-year-long exercise in self-abasement abroad and ruthless robbery at home.

The robbery included the regime's theft of some hundreds of thousands of opposition votes following the parliamentary election on May 6. For reasons too technically complex to elucidate here—the seedy details are available to the curious (provided they are not faint of heart)—the ruling coalition of thieves and traitors seems poised to form the next government of this long-suffering land, regardless of Sunday's presidential race upset. That upset was only made possible by the fact that in a two-candidate race it is much, much harder to engineer the wholesale robbery (nearing 7 percent of all votes cast) that we have witnessed in the multi-party ballot on May 6.

The yawning gap between Serbia's popular will and Belgrade's declared political outcome was brazenly glossed over in the Western media two weeks ago, however. The Leninist dictum that the morality of an act depends on the progressive status of its perpetrator still applies. In that spirit, Mr. Nikolić's "ultranationalist" credentials of yore are routinely invoked as his defining trait of today. The comparison is somewhat strained, but just imagine our mainstream media insisting that a dubiously reconstructed "Anti-White, Foreign-Born Radical Leftist" was elected President in November 2008.

In media shorthand the accurate description of President-elect Nikolić would be "a pro-EU moderate nationalist." In reality it is hard to be both, of course, but many decent Europeans are trying to square the circle, from Scotland and Catalonia to Poland and Slovakia. The only issue on which the winner draws the line is "Kosovo or Serbia?" Unlike his defeated opponent, he realizes that it is impossible to compromise on a first-order priority—the country's territorial integrity—for the sake of what is a second-order objective of joining an organization. (Whether doing so is on offer, and whether it would confer any benefits on the joiner, is another issue—see my Endless Road interview on RT.) How many eminently clubbable "Europeans" would agree to cede their country's current sovereignty over Alsace-Lorraine, or South Tyrol, or Sudetenland, or Transylvania, or Schleswig-Holstein, or South Dobrudja, or Silesia (to name but a few of historically contentious provinces) for the sake of remaining in "Europe"?

Unsurprisingly, Nikolić's reluctance to do so is deemed extremist and criminal. No Serb unashamed of his name and ancestors will ever be deemed clubbable by those hell-bent on turning Europe into Eurabia and morbidly celebrating the demographic demise of European Americans as a great and glorious historical milestone.

Nikolić is a simple man. He is not a statesman but a politician. He made a shrewd move by splitting away from Vojislav Šešelj and his cult known as the Serbian Radical Party, an increasingly irrelevant cabal of aficionados devoted to the hero-worshipping of their unjustly imprisoned Leader. Does he have the guts and the vision to become a true national leader? It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Suffice to say, he has the guts and stamina to withstand a race that was spectacularly dirty—thanks to Boris Tadić and his Democratic Party—even by the Third World standards.

The Nikolić victory will not alter the catastrophic position of Serbia in the short term, her headlong economic, social, and above all moral downfall engendered by the plutocratic rule of Tadić and his "pro-Western" camarilla. That victory nevertheless matters a great deal because it has fundamentally altered the balance of political power in Serbia. For years Tadić and his kitchen cabinet have run the entire gamut of state institutions. For years he has doubled, incredibly, in the self-excluding roles of the president of his Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka, DS) while performing the functions of the head of state, thus effectively controlling the DS-dominated government in brazen violation of his constitutional prerogatives as president. Such twining of functions used to be the hallmark of Tito, Stalin and Enver Hoxha. It is unknown to the world deemed democratic today.

In the end Tadić suffered the fate of Slobodan Milošević. He became cocky, arrogant, and convinced of his own infallability. Just like Milošević, he cut his presidential mandate short, convinced he could manipulate the electorate by controlled media and pliant institutions. Just like Milošević in the fall of 2000, he lost—only one-fifth of all eligible voters supported him—because Serbia is still a real country composed of real people... the efforts of Ms. Mary Worlick and her paymasters notwithstanding.

Greetings in our Risen Lord,

 

Christos Anesti!

 

Every time one hears about the idea that Serbs are threatened to leave Kosovo/Metohija hardly will we hear nothing whatsoever in the media of the West or even from the EU, who have all Crucified Kosovo/Metohija and put the Serbs on the Cross and forget about their humanitarian struggles and constant persecution on a daily basis.

 

The way to achieve Independence has been the current situation in the region is that push and make sure ever Serb leaves and thus indicating that the majority is not Serb but Albanian! The West listens to this factor and thus tells the free world –the majority is no longer Serbs!!!!

 

The second thing to bring down the Serbs was to destroy their monasteries, and churches –over 153! Everyone knows how much the Serbs love their Orthodox faith and if they do not have a Church available then they move to another place where this is possible. At the same time it's without a doubt what is at hand at this hour is the West wants to make sure Holy Orthodoxy will perish in the region throughout Kosovo/Metohija!

 

All humanitarian organizations as well as the free should hear these words: Serbs will remain in Kosovo/Metohija!

 

Serbs will not despair!

 

Serbs will seek to pray anywhere if they have to travel several miles to attend Church!

 

Serbs will remain in Kosovo/Metohija!

 

Serbs will be faithful to their forefathers and to the Holy Orthodox faith they love!

 

Serbs will just eat bread and soup from the fields and go hungry because they know no one cares and have betrayed them all!

 

Serbs will pray and Serbs will not give up!

 

Let the West and let the free world know this for sure!

 

The betrayal of the Serbs must now end today at this hour!

 

Now I humbly ask you during these Holy Paschal days of the Resurrection of our Lord the following let us together offer our prayers for peace and understanding, and that the hour should be to cease from threatening Serbs and realize they will remain!

 

We can help those who are so desperate for our assistance at this time and perhaps you would like to send a loving donation to the Decani Monastery Relief Fund.

 

Please email me: father@serfes.org

 

Thank you and may our Risen Lord watch over us all!

 

Peace to your soul!

 

God love and bless you!

 

Humbly in Christ our Lord,

+ Very Reverend Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes

President of The Decani Monastery Relief Fund

Who prays for you and with you!

 

I have run to the fragrance of your myrrh,

O Christ God, for I have been wounded by your love;

do not part from me, O heavenly Bridegroom.

 

"Wounded by Love," The Life and The Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios

 

See us at facebook.com/orthodoxchurchboise

 

 

Serb returnees feel intimidated after flyers were distributed in their villages in Metohija, calling for them to once again be driven out of their homes.  ...

 

[ NATO's 'allies' (as in 1999) might need NATO's help to 'drive out' the remaining handful of Serbs.  NATO will be meeting in Chicago next week.   No doubt NATO brass know that their work on behalf of 'the Kosovars' is very much appreciated, and their presence just might be needed to finish the job.  And, to bring a supply of bombs, in case needed. 

 

It's mostly elderly Serbs remaining in Metohija, so it should not require too much more bombing to 'drive the oldsters out'.   ]

 

 

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2012&mm=05&dd=15&nav_id=80259

Kosovo: Serb returnees threatened with expulsion

Source: Tanjug     Politics | May 15, 2012

KLINA -- Serb returnees feel intimidated after flyers were distributed in their villages in Metohija, calling for them to once again be driven out of their homes.

 

(Tanjug, file)

The flyers were signed by a group calling itself "the Albanian People's Army".

This was confirmed by Jovo Jović, a representative of the village of Klinavac, in the municipality of Klina.

In a statement for the Tanjug news agency on Tuesday, Jović said the flyers, which refer to Serbs as "criminals, either directly or indirectly", are causing fear among the returnees in Klinavac and other nearby villages.

The threats appeared on Monday, and were placed on the thresholds of Serbs' houses in Drsnik, Berkovo and Klina, villages inhabited by a total of some 100 Serb families, Jović explained.

"We are trying not to prejudge anything. We will inform all institutions in Kosovo and central Serbia about this, as we do not want to conceal these serious threats," he underlined.

"We have not reported the case to the police, because we do not trust them. KFOR told us that the police know about this and that they will be patrolling the villages, but we have not run across any of them as yet," Jović added.

Meanwhile, the Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija condemned the threats and called on the EU mission in the province, EULEX, "to find out who was responsible". The ministry also urged the NATO mission, KFOR, "to reinforce their troops in the returnee villages".

Reacting to these reports, a KFOR spokesman told Tanjug that they were "concerned about the emergence of the flyers", but that he would not discuss "any concrete steps KFOR will or will not undertake", saying it concerned "operative issues".

The spokesman also noted that KFOR "takes seriously any security threat".

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World » Europe

European Elections: Who forgot Serbia?

07.05.2012

 

Turn on a western TV outlet, open a western newspaper. Two elections: France and Greece. What about Serbia, you know, that "forgotten" nation in the Balkans that shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters fighting against imperialism and fascism in two world wars? And what about the serious allegations of irregularities?

Turn on a western TV outlet, open a western newspaper. Two elections: France and Greece. What about Serbia, you know, that "forgotten" nation in the Balkans that shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters fighting against imperialism and fascism in two world wars, the one the west thanked by carving off its southernmost province of Kosovo and recognising it as a "country"?

And what happened in the Serbian elections? The early forecasts give incumbent President Boris Tadic (DS-Demokratska Stranka) a marginal lead (26.8%) over Tomislav Nikolic (SNS-Srpska Napredna Stranka) 25.6%. However, let us see how.

Accusations of serious irregularities have been levelled at Tadic and his party in the elections in which 7,026,579 Serbian citizens had the right to vote for among 12 Presidential candidates and 250 Members of Parliament choosing among 18 electoral lists.

In Novi Sad, several people were detained after offering 2,500 dinars to vote for Tadic, according to b92. Also in Novi Sad, there are accusations that a political rally was held in a concert given by George Balasevic, despite the fact that this took place on Saturday night, when there was a political blackout, or supposed to be. It is claimed that Tadic attended this event and gained political capital from it.

Globally, there are accusations that 261,000 voting papers have gone missing and will be introduced in the ballot boxes. Inside Serbia there is a considerable weight of public opinion which accused the Tadic government of being controlled by foreigners, of usurping the position in government to pander to the caprices of the foreign paymasters and there is a very heavy climate of suspicion that Tadic will try to rig the election.

Watch this space.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru

 

Russia Warns Against Training Syrian Rebels In Kosovo

 

http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?pg=2&id=331687

Interfax
May 14, 2012

Moscow opposes plans to train Syrian militants in Kosovo

MOSCOW: The Russian Foreign Ministry is concerned by the reports that Syrian militants will be trained in Kosovo, and has urged the international community to prevent that from happening.

"Lately there have been media reports about contacts between Syrian opposition representatives and the authorities of the so-called Republic of Kosovo. This is not just about 'exchange of experience' in organizing separatist movements aimed at toppling existing regimes, it is also about training Syrian militants in Kosovo," the ministry said in a statement issued on Monday.

They intend to use areas that are geographically similar to the Syrian landscape, the ministry said. It is likely that training centers will be opened at the former bases of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

"Such intentions raise concerns. They run counter to the efforts of United Nations-Arab League Special Envoy Kofi Annan, backed by the entire international community. Moreover, turning Kosovo into an international site for training militants from various militant groups could become a serious destabilizing factor spreading beyond the Balkan region," the statement said.

"We are calling on international organizations present in the province to take whatever steps necessary to foil such schemes," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

----------------------------------------------------------

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20120514/173451677.html

Russian Information Agency Novosti
May 14, 2012

Russia Warns Against Training Syrian Rebels in Kosovo

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday urged international bodies operating in Kosovo to prevent the region from turning into a training ground for Syrian rebels.

A delegation from the Syrian opposition visited Kosovo in April to allegedly make a deal on exchanging experience in guerilla warfare against ruling authorities.

So far, the fractured Syrian opposition has been unable to form a steady front against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Russian ministry said in a statement that the talks covered not only the ways of organizing armed resistance against authorities but also the training of Syrian militants in Kosovo.

"There are plans to use the areas [in Kosovo] that resemble the terrain in Syria. The possibility of setting up training camps at the former bases of the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] is also being discussed," the statement said.

"Transforming Kosovo into an international training ground for armed militants may become a serious destabilizing factor that could extend beyond the Balkans," the document said. "We urge international bodies operating in Kosovo to take all necessary steps to prevent these plans."

The ethnic Albanian KLA fought a separatist war against the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic in 1998-99. About 10,000 people died in the Kosovo conflict.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008.

Both Serbia and Russia have refused to recognize Kosovo's independence.

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Edmonton Journal (Letters): Less rewriting of Serb past - by Amb. James Bissett

 

Friday, May 11, 2012, 4:45 PM Note:  Many thanks to former Amb. Bissett for taking the time to reply to Srdja Pavlovic's piece of lying propaganda, published the other day.     Below is Mr. Bissett's letter:    ...  Perhaps the professor should do more research and less rewriting.   [ Amen to that! ]     http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/letters/Less+rewriting+Serb+past/6604892/story.html   Less rewriting of Serb past   Edmonton Journal May 11, 2012 Re: "Rewriting the past a bad idea; Don't use Nazi-era figures for modern agendas," by Srdja Pavlovic, Ideas, May 9. If Srdja Pavlovic thinks rewriting the past is a bad idea he shouldn't do it. His condemnation of Serbian guerrilla leader Dragoslav Mihailovic as a convicted war criminal and Nazi sympathizer is a blatant rewrite of history and contrary to the facts. Mihailovic was one of the first resistance leaders in Europe to fight the Nazi occupiers. He did this when Muslims in Bosnia were enlisting by the thousands into the 13th Waffen SS Division Handschar and the Croatian puppet leader, Anton Pavlic, and his fascist Ustashi were slaughtering the Jewish, Roma, and Serbian populations of Croatia. During the early months after the Nazi invasion, only Mihailovic's Serbs were fighting the occupiers. His communist enemies and the ones who brought him before a typical communist show trial after the war and executed him did not begin to fight the Germans until ordered to by their boss, Josef Stalin. On May 25, 1942, Time magazine featured Mihailovic on its cover, describing how the Germans placed a price of $1 million on his head and how his resistance fighters were holding down seven German divisions who otherwise could have been on the Russian front. Some war criminal! Some Nazi sympathizer! Perhaps the professor should do more research and less rewriting. James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, Ottawa © Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

 

Prof. Jasmina Vujic: Systematic Efforts not to Allow Serbian Diaspora to Vote in Serbian Elections

Systematic Efforts not to Allow Serbian Diaspora to Vote in Serbian Elections


The Serbian nation is considered to have a sizable Diaspora. The number of expatriate Serbs around the globe is estimated at around 3.5 million - about a third of the nation - primarily located in North America, Germany, Austria, Australia and New Zealand. The period after WW II also saw subsequent waves of emigration, first sparked by political motives, and later shifting more to socio-economic grounds. The latter eventually affected the intellectual elite as well, resulting in an increasing and serious "brain drain" over the past two decades. Since the October 2000 democratic changes in Serbia and Montenegro, the Serbian Diaspora hoped for a better relationship with the Homeland, and for joint work on further development of democratic civil society and crucial economic reforms in order to speed up the painful transitional period.

As one of two representatives of the Serbian Diaspora from USA in the Diaspora Council that was established by President Kostunica in 2002, and as a Vice-President of that Council, I worked very hard in promoting the rights of Serbs abroad to citizenship, voting rights, denationalization, and rehabilitation of wrongly accused, and participation in the economic, social, cultural and moral renewal of the Serbian nation. The Council proposed many ways how the Serbian Diaspora could effectively contribute to the rebuilding of the Serbian nation with their knowledge, experience, and worldwide connections.

After more then 10 years, very little of what was promised to the Serbian Diaspora was fulfilled. Although the Serbian government admitted that without ongoing financial help from the Diaspora, entire regions of Serbia would have been reduced to poverty, and that in 2011 at least 5.5 billion of dollars was obtained from Diaspora, still the Serbian Diaspora investors have been treated as second-class investors. Experts from the Serbian Diaspora (engineers, scientists, professors, businessmen,..) have not been welcomed in Serbia, and even the most basic right of the citizens of one country, the right to vote, has been denied to the Serbian Diaspora.

In 2002, the Diaspora Council proposed that the Serbian citizens abroad could vote either in Serbian embassies and consulates, or by mail ballot or by electronic voting. Only the first option was accepted, which created tremendous problems for the majority of Serbian Diaspora due to a very limiting number of voting locations, large distances that the voter needed to travel  (sometimes, thousands of kilometers), and a very complicated process off registration to vote.

I will only present several examples from my own experience with voting. The Western USA including California where I live, are under the jurisdiction of the Consulate General of Republic of Serbia in Chicago. One of the two voting location for the Serbian elections in 2007 was open there. I went through the lengthy registration process, and flew to Chicago to vote. However, nobody was able to vote, because the voting lists from Chicago jurisdiction were sent to Washington Embassy and, from Washington jurisdiction to Chicago. In 2008, me and several colleagues were able to collect enough registered voters, and the voting location was opened in the Silicone Valley, where at least several hundred young Serbian engineers live and work. All of us had to again go through the lengthy registration procedure. However, the lists of registered voters were again not accurate, so that the large percentage of those who registered to vote were not on the lists.

In the most recent elections that were held on May 5-6, 2012, basically nobody from California was able to vote. Information about the elections and the procedure how to register was sent very late, in my case only one day before the registration deadline. For the third time we had to go through the lengthy registration procedure. In addition, it was not specified that the deadline was midnight of April 14 (but Belgrade time), so that California voters deadline for registration was shortened by 9 hours. Many of those registered on April 14 were denied registration for being late. However, the same people were already registered to vote in 2008! Until 2 to 3 days before the election date (May 5), nobody informed the voters in California if and where they could vote. Only then, a small percentage of registered voters received information that they need to travel to Chicago to vote. It was already late for people to find any reasonably priced tickets to fly to Chicago. Additional complication was that traveling and personal documents for Serbian citizens were changed several times over the last 10 years. The last change – the biometric documents – required  people to travel to Chicago to get the new documents, which many were not able to do.

For the 2012 elections, the number of voting location for the Serbian Diaspora was reduced by more than 2 (no voting locations for Australia, and only 3 or 4 for Northern America), and the procedure was twice as complicated. The end result is that less than 1000 Serbian citizens around the world were able to cast their ballots. All of the above could have been prevented if mail ballot or electronic voting was allowed. After more that 10 years of advocating simplified ways of voting for the Serbian Diaspora, I must say that somebody obviously does not want to allow it.

Prof. Jasmina Vujic, California, USA, May 10, 2012

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Serbia Is at Crossroads, while Kosovo is Unstable

Published: April 30, 2012 18:38, Adelina Marini, Sofia

In the Western Balkans there is a feeling of new hope but there also is a feeling that only a spark would be enough to inflame the old hostilities again. The EU is too consumed by its own problems, popular discontent is rising, the nationalists score success after success. USA is far away and it has already changed its foreign policy focus - it is now watching the Pacific region and China in particular. Russia is also busy with the developments in the Middle East, Iran and North Korea. And the Western Balkans' neighbouring countries continue to be too insecure what they want from life. Such is the situation on the Balkan peninsula a few days before extremely important and even crucial elections in Serbia on May 6th - the day when there will be not less important and crucial elections in Greece and France. Crucial, because on the outcome of the elections will depend the future of relations between Serbia and Kosovo. This was made clear by two politicians - a Serb and a Kosovar. The former is a former official and is pro-European and the latter - incumbent and sober realist.

 

CONTINUED……………. http://www.euinside.eu/en/faces/serbia-is-at-crossroads-and-kosovo-is-unstable

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SJ-8kOmqtoY