Guardian: Bell hits a strange note...

Instead of his usual drivel Martin Bell actually says some semi-sensible things here amongst the cliches. But check out some of the comments especially the one from a certain "nabla" which I excerpt below the article. His/her point on Zepa is one I make a lot in discussion but have rarely seen it anywhere else. Anyone know who NABLA is?

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/26/radovan-karadzic-trial-war-crimes?showallcomments=true

 

Karadzic isn't the only one on trial

The former Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic must face justice, but the war crimes tribunal is itself in the dock

The trial of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, must go ahead with or without the participation of the accused. He has attempted to stall proceedings at The Hague's war crimes tribunal, boycotting its opening on the grounds that he needs more time to prepare his case, and the presiding judge has adjourned the court until tomorrow. But Karadzic has had more than a year in which to prepare his defence. Justice delayed is justice denied. It is time that he faced the evidence against him.

He can rightly claim that much of the pre-trial publicity has been prejudicial. The same was true in the Slobodan Milosevic case. That is why it is more important than ever that the processes of justice are seen to be fair and scrupulous, with maximum attention to the rights of the accused, even if the accused is trying to obstruct them.

The war crimes tribunal is a prosecutor's court. Sometimes in the past it has seemed to be more interested in securing convictions than in delivering justice. That must not happen in this case. Karadzic's appearance in court cannot escape having some of the elements of a show trial, because the eyes of the world will be on it. The TV coverage will be broadcast, and widely viewed, throughout the Balkans. That is an additional reason, in my view, why an acquittal for lack of sufficient evidence would be more to the tribunal's credit than a conviction unsafely arrived at.

As one of many who has been approached to give evidence, I shall do so, if required, but with some trepidation. Memories fade. All the witnesses will be drawing on their recollection of events that occurred between 14 and 17 years ago. Documentary evidence will be crucial – especially any paper trail leading from Karadzic's headquarters in Pale to the actions taken by the Bosnian Serb army after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. Front lines were crumbling. It was a time of tension between Karadzic and his army commander, Ratko Mladic, who is still at large. "Maybe we went too far with General Mladic," Karadzic has observed, "we made a legend of him."

The centrepiece of the charge sheet against Karadzic is his alleged complicity in the Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in cold blood after the fall of the UN "safe haven". But this is also a good time to reflect on the blame that was shared by the western democracies with troops in Unprofor, the UN protection force that did not protect. The British, French and Dutch were the main players at the time. The Dutch capitulated at Srebrenica. The French proposed its relief. The British demurred. The massacre occurred at a time when there were more than 30,000 UN troops in Bosnia. The ability to intervene was there. The political will was not.

To claims that no one could have known what the Serbs would do, I would argue that the massacre was predictable, if not inevitable. The Serbs held the Muslims of Srebrenica collectively responsible for a series of killings in the area, notably a massacre of 50 Serbs in a village near Bratunac on 7 January 1993. Revenge was always the most likely option.

The war crimes tribunal is not about revenge. It is, or should be, about justice. Courts try cases. Cases also try courts. I believe that the tribunal will be judged by the fairness of its proceedings in this case more than any other than has come before it.

NABLA comment:

nabla

26 Oct 09, 2:35pm

No justice will be done here. No justice will be seen to be done here.

How can anyone possibly defend himself against 1.2 million pages of documentation? If the prosecutorion's case is so strong, couldn't they collect a few thousand pages of documents, such as written orders or transcripts of conversations by Karadzic where a policy of atrocities or specific atrocities were sanctioned? Or bring forth insider witnesses?

Clearly, rather that using a clear and direct chain of command, they're going to fling every real and potential atrocity perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs and claim that he was responsible for it all.

This has all been rehashed in the past, the criminality of Western forces, the criminality of Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, and Croats. What is most disturbing is that this court is systematically attempting to whitewash the crimes of non-Serbs by either ignoring them or selecting a few non-political widely publicized events and keeping the profile of those trials low. For Serb victims of Muslim/Croat camps, there was the camp at Celebici in Konjic; this was tried at the Hague. However, there were dozens if not hundreds more camps where Serbs were held. For non-Serb victims, there were many, many trials regarding Omarska, Crkvina, Trnopolje, Keraterm, Susica, etc. So a false picture is generated: Serbs have "systematic" camps all over the place and Muslims/Croats have this one isolated little camp in Celebici. Another instance: Croatian generals have been tried for atrocities in Krajina, yet no politician has been tried for a policy of persecution, expulsion, and murder, that ended in the flight of over 400,000 Croatian Serbs (2/3 of the entire population) in several waves (1990, 1991, 1993, May 1995, and August 1995) and the killings of thousands. So Karadzic and Milosevic are criminal politicians , but Tudjman is a good guy who just happened to preside over a few rogue general that drove out/killed 2/3 of Croatia's Serbs.

What is most disturbing is the lack of clarity regarding Srebrenica. What never made sense was how different what is alleged to have taken place there is from what took place at Zepa. If there was a policy of genocide at Srebrenica, why none at the other safe haven to fall - Zepa? What was different about them? Seems a very strange and inconsistent policy of genocide where you are taking the trouble to exterminate all the men in one village (and deporting the women and children, and burying all the victims) and in the next you are just deporting them all. Or, more likely, the events around Srebrenica from 1992 until 1995 were markedly different from those at Zepa - something the media refuses to report because it puts Muslims in a bad light. Carl Bildt's book does suggest that at Srebrenica less than half of the victims were massacred POWs/civilians and the rest died in ambushes and battles as they fled to Tuzla. Putting this together with Oric's atrocities, it emerges that Srebrenica was quite different from what the media has presented it as being.

The Butmir Farce - Byronica, Oct. '09

"Byronica": the quarterly newsletter of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies

 

Vol. XII, No. 4, Fall 2009

 

YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO REVISE DAYTON

THE FARCE AT BUTMIR

James George Jatras

 

[ … ] The failure of the latest attempt to reduce the Republika Srpska to an empty shell devoid of self-rule was inevitable. The meetings at Butmir on October 8 and again October 20-21 were arranged hastily on the American initiative in an ad-hoc forum composed of politicians who have no constitutional power or popular mandate to commit themselves to any fundamental changes – even if they wanted to do so. The gathering at Butmir had no legality and no legitimacy. Any further talks under this formula hold no prospect of any positive result. 

 

In fact, it is hard to see why is can be called a "process" at all. A "process" implies a linear movement from some starting position to a qualitatively different outcome. Whatever "Butmir" is, a "process" it is not. It is simply another variant of the same Made-in-Washington program to weaken and then dissolve the RS in order to create a Muslim-dominated unitary state in BiH. With the return of the Clinton crowd to the State Department, that program, after years of relative inactivity (without being reversed) under Bush, is now intensifying. As far as legitimacy, Butmir can have no status at all without the participation of all the guarantors of Dayton, and that must include Russia. In fact, even the so-called "Peace Implementation Council" – a centralizing mechanism par excellence – is an ad-hoc body that has acquired a degree of legitimacy simply because the Serbs went along with it.  But they must not repeat the same mistake. 

 

Some outside observers may be tempted to find cause for scandal in a proposed set of constitutional changes from the U.S. and EU officials who, in principle, have no legitimate voice on the question. But the only "scandal" in the eyes of Butmir's foreign designers and stage-managers is that the program of getting rid of the RS so far has not worked. The danger for the RS is that by trying to placate its critics by playing along, by "cooperatively" accepting invitations to what can only be called illegal ruses conjured up by State Department bureaucrats, it runs the risk of participating in a charade that can only serve to weaken Republika Srpska's integrity under Dayton and further them in its future options.

 

If the "maximalist" positions (as Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg has defined them) between which a "compromise" must be found, are the status quo and a unitary state – then any "compromise" can only mean steps toward unitarism, which means gerrymandering Muslim dominance in a majority non-Muslim state. This is a conscious goal of the State Department's policy. "State Department," not "American" policy, since almost no one in America remembers or cares that Bosnia-Herzegovina exists, much less the Republika Srpska. There has never been any debate in the U.S. over re-evaluating our goals and interests in the Balkans. This program is the hobby horse of, literally, no more than an dozen people in Washington, notably Deputy Secretary Steinberg, who still have to prove how right they were in the 1990s. 

 

The Europeans are also culpable, but more in their usual role of cravenly deferring to their betters in the U.S. But the EU will go along only provided the American story of the Bosnian "powder keg" does not become reality. If it starts to look like Washington's program is making things worse, not better, the Europeans – who have a lot more to lose and are sick of diktats from Washington anyway – will step back. But that will not happen automatically. First, the RS has to jump off the merry-go-round and appeal for Russian support.

 

What we see here is the ever-present "latent intent" to destroy the Republika Srpska being channeled into a new format. The goals of U.S. policy are obvious to anyone who has been following it from here since 1992. My fear is that the RS leadership may be tempted to believe Washington has adopted a more "reasonable" approach and are "manageable." That is not the case. The sad part is that RS's story can and needs to be told forcefully in the U.S. and in Europe.

Especially at a time when the U.S. has its hands full of disasters elsewhere, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan (not surprisingly, under the care of the same person who bears major blame for messing the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke), we can't afford an optional crisis of our own making. There are centers of influence in the U.S. who would be receptive to that message on RS's behalf, but it's not being made.

 

Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina would do well to maintain a healthy distrust of American policy. Indeed, anti-Serbism is worse in the Obama Administration than it was under Bush for the simple reason of so many recycled Clinton cadres are returning to power, because it's a Democratic administration. As we say here in Washington, "people are policy."

 

A reasonable observer might hope that a "failure" of Butmir (as measured in the eyes of its foreign authors) might finally convince Washington that no arrangements can be good for BiH as a whole unless it is good for all of BiH's three constituent peoples.  But the only way to teach a lesson to people of this kind is indeed a visible and tangible failure that would be registered as such in Washington and in Brussels. They have to be resisted, and the RS has to refuse to be sucked into the dishonest assumptions behind farces like Butmir. This would not be reckless but prudent: refusal on principle to entertain illegitimate premises needs to be combined with an intelligent, principled, and above all truthful advocacy of RS's case from a position of strength.

 

The kind of people we are dealing with at the State Department and a few think tanks will never "understand" anything except that the agenda laid out for the Serbs in the 1990s is to be brought to its "logical" conclusion: a Bosnia to Siladzic's taste, an independent "KosovA" recognized by Belgrade, and July 11 commemorated all over the Balkans as Srebrenica "Genocide" Day. 

 

As for American officialdom in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the real problem does not originate with the people on the ground. Not that they are not likely part of the problem, but the roots are here in Washington. Local people just do what they're told. No U.S. Ambassador in the region has ever tried to counter the line dictated from Washington while on duty. Even if they say something discordant – like William Montgomery did regarding Bosnia four months ago, or Charles Crawford last July – it happens years after they leave their official posts.

 

Nor should we suppose U.S. policy is the product of some all-powerful "Bosnian lobby," a much overrated notion. Not that there isn't a Bosnian (Muslim) lobby, but U.S. policy is not what it is because of direct influence from Sarajevo. In fact, the "Bosniak" lobbyists are often doing and demanding what the powers-that-be in Washington… shall we say, "suggest" they should do or demand, so that the architects of centralizing policy can use the illusion of "pressure" on the U.S. to "do something" about the Bosnian "crisis." Rather, the larger problem is that for important elements in both the Democratic and Republican parties, the idea of the U.S. and the global dominant power is the central concept. Related to that is the notion that the U.S. must be seen in the Islamic world as the champion of Muslim interests in Europe. That is the main reason why U.S. officials open refer to BiH as a "Muslim country" even though it has a Christian majority (combined Orthodox Serb and Catholic Croat communities). The same is even more true regarding U.S. policy in Kosovo and Metohija. Of course this is an absurdity that is easily demolished, but there's little or no push-back from Belgrade or Banja Luka.

 

To conclude, we must ask: is there a hope for the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina? Probably not, but there is hope for Republika Srpska. It is a viable and democratically based polity – whereas the "Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina" is neither of those things. The RS can be saved and it must be saved, not for the sake of the Serbs alone but for the sake of any durable post-Yugoslav architecture in Southeast Europe. That's what all those who care about peace, stability, and justice in the former Yugoslavia need to focus on.  

 

EDITORIAL

TIME TO LEAVE BOSNIA ALONE

 

[ … ] Constitutional reform is a codeword for establishing what in effect what would be a Muslim-dominated unitary state – in a majority-Christian country! – and amounting to the end of the RS in fact if not in name. In addition to being certain to re-ignite old animosities, this scenario is incongruous with the trend towards devolution and decentralization in some of the world's most stable democracies, from Quebec to the Basque Country, or Scotland, or Catalonia.

 

Whatever the defects of Dayton, the essential fact is that for over 14 years Bosnians have not been killing each other. Nothing should be done that risks a new confrontation among Bosnia's communities and possibly reigniting the horrors of the 1990s. With all that America has on its plate today, it is ill advised to trigger an optional crisis. The Republic of Srpska is not only a legitimate selfgoverning entity under an internationally binding treaty. It is also an oasis of relative prosperity and financial stability, compared not only to the Muslim-Croat Federation, but also neighboring Croatia and Serbia.

 

What is really impeding Bosnia's progress is heavy-handed international bureaucracy and excessive foreign meddling in local affairs. Such meddling is detrimental to the spontaneous growth of democratic institutions. Going a step beyond and imposing centralization would be a gross violation of democracy, law and logic… Bosnia-Herzegovina has suffered a lot through history, almost invariably due to some distant powers' ambitions and policies. It deserves to be left well alone.

 

America’s Tangled Kosovo Web

October 21st 2009 01:45:42 PM

America's Tangled Kosovo Web

Posted by Julia Gorin

Re-reading a 2007 Der Spiegel article recently, I came across some information about the brother of indicted war criminal and U.S. buddy Ramush Haradinaj. Daut Haradinaj was speaking at an event honoring a dead Albanian poet-nationalist after serving a prison sentence for manslaughter.

According to the article, many saw his appearance at the ceremony "as a sign of his willingness to fill the breach if his brother Ramush is sentenced at his upcoming trial in The Hague."

As we know, some heavy U.S. and UN pressure (and evidence-tampering) later — and a few dead witnesses later — Ramush Haradinaj was acquitted because of "insufficient evidence."

Haradinaj picked up his political career where he left off, with the blessing of the U.S. and UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo), and so Daut didn't need to step in, but at least we know our pal Ramush has an equally competent and murderous brother who would have been encouraged to pursue politics had things turned out differently. Indeed, according to the article, the Haradinaj clan has more than just two such winners:

According to the indictment, Ramush Haradinaj, a.k.a. "Smajl", was accused of 37 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, kidnapping and torture, during the Kosovo war in 1998.

The indictment also stated that his brothers, Daut, Frasher and Shkelzen, were among the members of the "criminal organization" headed by Haradinaj, and that the family home in Glodjane was periodically used as a command center to plan and commit the crimes. Thirty-two corpses of Serbs, gypsies and Albanians, some severely mutilated, were found near the farm. So far Haradinaj has denied all accusations.

Sören Jessen-Petersen, the former UN administrator, long viewed the presumed war criminal as a "close partner and friend" who "sacrificed and contributed so much to a better future for Kosovo."

By 2005, that Haradinaj homestead lined with mutilated bodies served as "a banquet hall where [high-ranking UN and NATO representatives] could meet with Haradinaj to discuss bringing peace to the region."

I'll get back to Daut Haradinaj in a moment, but just to complete the picture about this great friend of the U.S., Ramush Haradinaj:

A report by the UN police force in Kosovo has linked Haradinaj to the cocaine trade. And according to a 2005 analysis by Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Haradinaj and his associates play a key role in "a broad spectrum of criminal, political and military activities that significantly affect the security situation throughout Kosovo. The group, which counts about 100 members, is involved in drug and weapons smuggling, as well as illegal trading in dutiable items."

If the BND analysis is correct, Haradinaj has apparently made himself a major player in one of Kosovo's key industries. According to experts, the €700 million budget of this province, 90 percent of which is populated by ethnic Albanians, pales in comparison to the revenues earned in the drug trade in Kosovo.

As if this weren't messy enough as regards Ramush, who is welcomed to our shores by our leaders with open arms, let's go back to that ceremony at which Daut spoke:

When the event ends [Daut] Haradinaj jumps into a waiting car in front of the center and is taken to a secret restaurant. At the restaurant, Besiana-F, he meets Ali Ahmeti, the leader of the 2001 Albanian uprising in Macedonia. Ahmeti and his equally famous uncle, Fazli Veliu — both of whom are on a US terrorism watch list and have been banned from entering the United States since May 2003 — have crossed the border into Kosovo to join in the day's celebration. [There is no longer any effective border between Kosovo and Macedonia.]

Upon leaving the restaurant Ahmeti and Haradinaj embrace briefly. Then they climb into SUVs with darkened windows.

So what we have is our good friends the Haradinaj Family naturally being in close ties with folks who are on our terrorism watch list. While Ahmeti and Veliu aren't doing anything in Macedonia that the Haradinaj clan didn't do in Kosovo — indeed, Ahmeti is the leader of a governing political party in Macedonia — the former two randomly ended up as "terrorists" just as Haradinaj randomly ended up as a "peace partner."

The difference between them? Once the Albanians expanded their war into Macedonia, we figured out what their game was, and while the Albanians knew that Kosovo was just one leg of the war for Greater Albania, we had only signed on for Kosovo. Realizing our mistake but unable to undo it, we've been keeping up the charade and continuing to term the Kosovo-Albanian terrorists our "allies," while trying to figure out how to discourage their allies in Macedonia.

Over time, we've been given a better "understanding" of our agenda in the region, and therefore eventually started facilitating Albanian terror in Macedonia. After all, if we want to keep the Haradinajs as "friends" in Kosovo, eventually we're going to have to make friends with their friends in Macedonia. Otherwise, try navigating around this one: "Throughout the fighting," Chris Deliso writes in his book The Coming Balkan Caliphate, "jihadis were also penetrating Macedonia from the other, western front in Tetovo and reportedly had connections with Kosovo Albanian officials such as Daut Haradinaj, chief of general staff of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)…according to other Macedonian military sources."

Turns out, our pal Ramush's own brother is on our blacklist as well. He reportedly met in August 2001 — just two months after we rescued 400 Albanian terrorists from Macedonian security forces — with Ayman al-Zawahiri's brother Muhammad. According to the Serbian daily Blic, a "number of intelligence services know about this. There is proof that Daut Haradinaj took part in the clashes with Macedonian security services, because of which he was put on the U.S. terrorist blacklist and thrown out of the Kosovo Protection Corps."

This reminds us that Albanians walk their own tightrope, in their equally contradictory dealings with us. They are constantly torn between — and always playing — their two key allies, which are each other's mortal enemies: Washington/London/Brussels vs. the Saudis and bin Laden himself (who helped train and arm the KLA while we did the same).

How to serve and shower love on both, without offending the other? That is the Albanian dilemma.

Of course, even if the Albanians paraded their al-Qaeda connections, would anyone in the mainstream establishment — the same one that repeated their lies and came up with their own to justify the "liberation" and "independence" — actually call them on it? Somehow I doubt it.

To further illustrate the randomness of which Albanians we term "allies" and which ones "terrorists," let's take the last name Thaci. If it's Thaci of Kosovo, it gets a warm welcome in the U.S., since it's probably our friend, "prime minister" Hashim Thaci. However, if it's Thaci from Macedonia, it's probably Mendux (or Menduh) Thaci, the leader of the main opposition Albanian party but for some reason on the U.S. blacklist.

Yet our friend Ramush Haradinaj just had a lovely meeting last month with our blacklisted Thaci, in Tetovo, Macedonia.

Thaci's name also came up recently because he went on TV in Albania, on a station appropriately titled "Klan," expecting to be coddled in the country that was the genesis of the Greater Albania plan. Instead, he found that Albania's Albanians had wised up about…Albanians.

DPA Leader shocked in Tirana (Oct. 9):

Albanian intellectuals attacked the leader of Macedonia's DPA party in last night's political debate on Tirana's popular TV channel Klan.

While speaking about the Encyclopedia, Thaci unexpectedly received a major slap for the behavior of Albanians and ethnic Albanian parties in Macedonia.

This is referring to the first Macedonian encyclopedia, which just came out but is already being revised, with the entire board of editors already fired, because it accurately depicts the 2001 Albanian insurgency against the state. It also says that Albanians came to Macedonia in the 16th century, when everyone knows that Albanians were always everywhere before anyone else was. (Uncannily similar to Muslim claims all over the world.)

"Hatred towards their own country, extreme Islamism, extremely low culture". These were the quali[ties] which several Albanian intellectuals used in attacking Thaci, who had come to expect certain political benefits by the Albanian media during his visit.

Thaci's assessment that the Encyclopedia was a political provocation by the Macedonian Government was met with dismay by the participants in the debate, who sharply attacked Thaci and the Albanians in Macedonia as "ungrateful towards the state in which they live".

This is a strikingly rare and honest statement coming from an Albanian, whose intellectuals don't often distinguish themselves from the mob mentality of pan-Albanianism that governs the Albanian outlook. It is also the first recognition I've heard by an Albanian of Albanian ingratitude, to put mildly the quality of a people who demand pensions for the insurgencies they wage against their host states. What we also have here is an Albanian pointing to what our own leaders, along with most Albanians, continue to deny and dismiss: rising Islamism among Albanians.

"Macedonia is the only state in the Balkans where there is internal denial. Albanians always deny the state, even [fight] against it. You made war in the middle of Europe and took up arms against your own country. To this day you ambush Macedonian policemen," said Maks Velo, Albanian writer-critic.

Actually, Macedonia is not the only state in which Albanians deny its legitimacy. Serbia was such a state, and the Albanians in Kosovo — with the help of Albanians in Albania — also "made war in the middle of Europe and took up arms against your own country. To this day, you ambush [Serbian] policemen."

According to Mr Velo, there is a frightening, extreme Islamism among the Albanian parties in Macedonia and it is not a coincidence that DPA's leader Mendux Thaci is on the U.S. blacklist for years.

"The mosques in the villages in Macedonia seem like Iranian missiles. If the Albanians there can not climb to a higher cultural level of social life, not to discriminate against women, to build civil society, you will never be able to go up against the Macedonians in any way, especially not intellectually. With minarets you are not going in Europe. We must achieve greater cultural and economic level," said Velo to Thaci who clearly wished he wasn't there.

Fatos Lubonja, [another] critic…[said,] "When will we learn our lesson that divisions do not lead anywhere, but only to war and discontent?…So I think it is good for you to identify yoursellf as Macedonian. To live in Yugoslavia and then in Macedonia and to speak and work against the state in which you live, it is a cultural disadvantage, it is wrong.
…
DPA's leader Thaci appeared flabbergasted wearing a sour smile on his face. He had hoped to gain political points by visiting Tirana. On his last visit to the Albanian capital, Mr. Thaci had lobbied Albanian politicians to be against Macedonia's admission to NATO.

What we have, finally, are Albanians weighing what is right and what is wrong, as opposed to just what is Albanian. Imagine how wrong things had to go in order for the wrongness to become manifest even to Albanians. It is a wrongness that's gotten as far as it has thanks to the indulgence of Albanian wrongness by U.S.-led Western powers. Recall this from Chris Deliso:

Macedonia took in over 400,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees. However, when the country was no longer needed for Clinton's military adventures, it was forgotten, and the long-term consequences of Kosovo — an emboldened pan-Albanian Balkan insurgency — were ignored…[America] began secretly supporting the NLA [(Albanian) National Liberation Army] from its Kosovo base, Camp Bondsteel, through logistical and communications support as well as secret arms airdrops to Albanian-held mountain villages in northwestern Macedonia.
…
For Macedonians, the nadir was reached in June [2001, post-Clinton], during a three-day battle at the Skopje-area village of Aracinovo, where NATO ordered the Macedonian Army to stop its operations and then spirited the heavily armed Albanian fighters off to freedom…[T]he public was shocked when it was reported that Islamic fighters and 17 American military contractors from the Virginia-based Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) had been found amongst the NLA's ranks…From that moment, the humiliated and disappointed Macedonian public's worst suspicions seemed to have been confirmed: America and NATO were in full favor of the Albanian guerrillas.

In other words, the U.S. and NATO have managed to out-Albanize the Albanians.

Indeed, rather than teaching Albanians the ways of the civilized world and multi-ethnicity — as is our "mission" in Kosovo — we've been coming around to their way of looking at things. Just check out this job advisory at Camp Bondsteel:

camp bondsteel jobs

JOBS JOBS JOBS.INFO

Just visit Camp Bondsteel and ask someone. But you should know that for most jobs available to locals you will need to be fluent in English. You should also be aware that they don't offer as many jobs to people of Serbian nationality because of the risk of infiltration, so basically this means that if you are Albanian you have a better chance of getting a job.

The most Swiftian part of this is the "risk of infiltration" by Serbs. No worries about infiltration by Islamists or KLA elements, since that is precisely whom Bondsteel serves.

Notice that while rational Albanians like Velo and Lubonja found the Albanian reaction to, and pressure on, the Macedonian encyclopedia shameful, America speaks in one voice with the irrational Albanians:

US and ethnic Albanian officials condemned Macedonia's first encyclopedia yesterday over its description of an inter-ethnic conflict in 2001 and the history of the country's Albanian presence.

[Keep in mind that this conflict which, believe it or not, blindsided us — had us threatening armed conflict that year against the over-reaching Albanians. But again, we eventually came around to their way of looking at things, lent some weapons and manpower, and now are offended at Macedonia's accurate description of that conflict.]

Macedonia was on the brink of a civil war in 2001 when the ethnic Albanian rebel movement, the National Liberation Army (NLA), fought Macedonian security forces for seven months.

The encyclopedia, published by the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts, says the NLA was an "armed formation trained in camps in Albania and Kosovo by American and British officers and paratroopers." An official at the US Embassy in Skopje, who asked not to be named, dismissed the claims as ridiculous.

"Allegations that American officers trained the former NLA soldiers are baseless and outrageous," the official said. "We are disappointed that this institution would put its name on such a ridiculous claim," the official added. […]

Albanians in Kosovo, meanwhile, burned the Macedonian flag, and the prime minister in neighboring Albania, Sali Berisha, called the encyclopedia unacceptable and urged Macedonian officials to change it.

Indeed, developments such as the following should have rational Albanians like Velo and Lubonja very worried, since it's probable that rather than a Greater Albania, what Albania and Macedonia are becoming part of will have all the lawlessness and irrationality of a Greater Kosovo:

Albanians "one nation" across borders, Albanian PM Berisha says

Pristina - Albanians in Albania and Kosovo are a single nation, Prime Minister Sali Berisha asserted Tuesday at the start of a two-day visit aimed at forging closer ties with the former Serbian province.

'The nation is one and inseparable in spirit and identity,' Berisha told reporters after arriving in Kosovo….Berisha, who started his second term in the office last month, is due to sign a series of protocols in Pristina to further ease the flow of people and goods across the border…

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said 'it is not a secret' that Albanians in Kosovo and Albania have 'brotherly relations,' adding that they were reflected in the effort to enable free movement across borders.
…
Also, most among the ethnic Albanians who make up the majority in parts of southern Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo aspire to join their compatriots in a single country, which is another source of tension.

Balkans: Kosovo and Albania intensify cooperation

Pristina, 6 October (AKI) - Visiting Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha and his Kosovo host Hasim Taci on Tuesday signed several bilateral agreements which will facilitate movement of people and goods between the two countries and promote customs and border police cooperation.
…
On his second visit to Kosovo since the country gained independence from Serbia last year, Berisha said "There are no two Albanian nations and a national ideal of Albanians must be a European ideal". [He has just put all of Europe on notice that it has no alternative but to accept the eventual reality of a single Albania, consisting of land stolen from Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and parts of Greece. This was of course after denying, as Thaci and Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu have been doing for years, that anything like a unification plan is afoot.]

Berisha and Taci also signed agreements in regard to the legalisation of status of the people which have illegally settled in the two countries.

After the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo in 1999, the province was put under United Nations control and many Albanian citizens have since illegally settled in Kosovo. […]

As they were doing for a century prior to the war.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to deny that anything like a Greater Albania is in the works. Like I said, out-Albanizing the Albanians.

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2211

Serbia slams Macedonia's establishment of diplomatic relations with Kosovo

Serbia slams Macedonia's establishment of diplomatic relations with Kosovo

Mon, Oct 19 2009 11:30 CET

The signing of the October 17 2009 agreement between Macedonia and Kosovo to establish diplomatic relations will exacerbate tensions between Skopje and Belgrade, Serbian ministers said.
 
Kosovo foreign minister Skender Hyseni and his Macedonian counterpart Antonio Milososki signed the agreement after the two countries resolved their border dispute.
 
Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic said that the decision by Macedonia's government was a "pity" and said that the decision would "have consequences".
 
"For border demarcation issues with Serbia, neighboring countries can only talk with the government in Belgrade," Jeremic said.
 
Belgrade has refused to recognise Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia.
 
Serbian minister for Kosovo Oliver Ivanovic said that the decision by the Macedonian parliament to ratify the agreement with Kosovo "might solve the boundary problem, but this will bring additional tensions to the already fragile relations between Serbia and Macedonia".
 
Macedonian authorities should understand that it was in their own strategic interest to have good relations with Serbia, Ivanovic said.

 

 

 

NYT 1987: "In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict"

"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict"

By David Binder (Special to the N.Y.Times)

---

The New York Times, November 1, 1987, Late City Final Edition (p.14)

---

Belgrade, Yugoslavia:

Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of "civil war" in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.

The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.

A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others. The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Vicious Insults

Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.

Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.

Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.

Radicals' Goals

The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an "ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself." That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.

Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.

There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance.

The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo,a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

Worst Strife in Years

As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an "ethnically pure" Albanian region, a "Republic of Kosovo" in all but name.

The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to "the worst in the last seven years."

Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today.

Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.

"We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians," said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

Attacks on Slavs

Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months.In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.

In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.

As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.

Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.

'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia

High-ranking officials have spoken of the "Lebanonizing" of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland.

Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of "two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea," and of "practically the breakup of Yugoslavia." He added: "Time is working against us."

The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. "Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army," he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for "killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units."

Concerns Over Military

Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service.

Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birthrate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.

He said the army had "not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior." But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.

Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence- and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.

Region's Slavs Lack Strength

While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses,for the safety of the Slavic north.

Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.

But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for "the policy of the hard hand."

"We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists," Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.

Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. "There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit," said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.

Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that "relations are cold" between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many "people without hope."

But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.

Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems.

The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream

 

http://www.kunstradio.at/WAR/binder-nytimes.html

Alexander Dorin: “Srebrenica Massacre” is a Western Myth

Alexander Dorin: "Srebrenica Massacre" is a Western Myth

May 23rd, 2009 | By De-Construct.net | In Bosnia, Bytes 'n Bits, Featured Articles

Srebrenica — The History of Salon Racism

"In the West, the popular mythology about 7,000-8,000 Muslim men being executed in Srebrenica in 1995 is still alive and well, but independent research shows some 2,000 Bosnian Muslim fighters were killed in battle for Srebrenica and that is the number of bodies Hague investigators were able to find", said Swiss researcher Alexander Dorin, who has been investigating Srebrenica events for the past 14 years.

In his latest book titled "Srebrenica — The History of Salon Racism" (Srebrenica — die Geschichte eines salonfahigen Rassismus) published this month in Berlin, Dorin focuses on manipulations with the number of Muslims who lost their lives in Srebrenica.

"Regarding the events in Srebrenica in 1995, the media manipulations still reign in the West, claiming that after the town fell to Serbian hands some 7,000 to 8,000 of Muslim fighters and male civilians were killed. However, the researchers around the world have shown this bears no relation to the truth," Dorin told Srna News Agency.

According to data he had gathered, Dorin discovered that at least 2,000 Muslim fighters were killed in battle for Srebrenica. He added the facts are showing that neither civilian nor military leadership of Republic of Srpska (Serb Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina) ever ordered execution of the Muslim fighters and POWs.

"2,000 is approximately the number of bodies Hague investigators were able to find up to this day. To that number the Muslim side added several hundred Muslim fighters, most of whom came from abroad, who were killed in battle few years before the fall of Srebrenica, in Han Pijesak and Konjević Polje," Dorin said, adding that this is evidenced even by the Muslim documents captured by the Bosnian Serb Army.

Bosnian Serb Army Fought Against Orić's Cutthroats, Not Against Muslim Civilians

"Prior to the fall of Srebrenica, Naser Orić's troops withdrew from this small town, leaving 25,000 civilians behind, although a certain number of civilians, some of whom were armed, was withdrawing together with Orić's fighters," Dorin said.

He said that Bosnian Serb Army "did not kill a single Muslim civilian of those who remained in Srebrenica or Potocari, while it did engage Orić's column, which was breaking through to Tuzla in several groups, in fierce fighting."

"There is no way the Serb Army could have captured seven or eight thousand Muslim fighters and male civilians and execute them somewhere, partly because that was technically impossible," Dorin said. He explained that, among else, there was never enough Serb soldiers who could carry out a crime on such scale.

In his research, Dorin was using various sources, including statements by the Muslim fighters and commanders, as well as testimonies given by Dutch UNPROFOR troops who were stationed in Srebrenica at the time.

He pointed to a very interesting investigation carried out by the Bulgarian reporter and author Germinal Civikov, who wrote a book about the case of Croat Dražen Erdemović, former member of the Bosnian Serb Army, whose testimony represents the key Hague "evidence" of "Srebrenica massacre", who claimed that his commander Milorad Pelemiš "ordered him and few other soldiers to execute some 1,000-1,200 Muslim POWs".

But the analysis of that case, said Dorin, proves Erdemović invented most, if not all of that story.

Dorin explained that director of the Belgrade Center for Investigation of War Crimes Milivoje Ivanišević analyzed the lists of alleged Srebrenica victims. Ivanišević discovered that, a year after the fall of Srebrenica, some 3,000 Muslim men who were supposedly killed in 1995, were voting in the Bosnian Muslim elections.

In addition, at least 1,000 of the alleged 1995 "Srebrenica massacre victims" have been dead long before or after Bosnian Serb Army took the town over.

"It is perfectly clear that Muslim organizations listed as Srebrenica victims all the Muslim fighters who were killed in the fights after the fall of Srebrenica," the Swiss researcher said.

According to Dorin, some Western reporters wrote back in 1995 that part of Srebrenica Muslim population, after the town's takeover, migrated to other countries. This includes an American journalist who wrote that around 800 Srebrenica Muslims went abroad — from Serbia.

"It was not possible to conduct an in-depth investigation, since no one can search the entire world to pinpoint each and every name [from the lists of alleged Srebrenica victims]. Still, the available evidence already shows there were immense manipulations at play," Dorin said.

A number of photos of Muslim fighters taken during their breakthrough to Tuzla, which Dorin obtained from the Muslim sources, show Izetbegović's fighters in uniforms, with many of them wounded.

"On these photos one can see a number of wounded fighters who survived the battle against the Serb Army. Muslim side is now presenting its fighters who did not recover from their wounds as the victims of an execution", said Dorin.

He pointed out that some Muslims have admitted at least 2,000 of their Srebrenica-based fighters were killed in the battle.

Dorin also reminded of the statements by the Muslim politicians given to media about an "offer" American president Bill Clinton made to Bosnian Muslim war leader Alija Izetbegović back in April 1993, to have "the Chetnik [Serb] forces enter Srebrenica and massacre 5,000 Muslims, which would result in the [US-led NATO] military intervention" against Bosnian Serbs.

At the same time, Dutch UNPROFOR troops testified that Serb Army treated Muslim civilians in an entirely correct manner, while Srebrenica Muslim warlord Naser Orić with his fighters was massacring Serb civilians in the most monstrous fashion for years in Srebrenica municipality, and pillaging and destroying their property all the while.

… For Those who Want to Know the Truth About Srebrenica

Despite all the evidence about what really took place in Srebrenica and the fact there was no 'massacre', Dorin doubts the Hague verdicts in regards to Srebrenica events can be contested or overturned, being that this "so-called tribunal has convicted a number of people for the alleged Srebrenica massacre without any evidence whatsoever".

He cited a case of the Serb Vidoje Blagojević, convicted to a long prison term even though he had no connection to Srebrenica events, while "the mass murderer Naser Orić was acquitted of all responsibility for killing the Serbs".

"That court routinely discards everything that proves Serbs are not the monsters they have been made out to be. That tribunal has a purely political function. It has no relation to the justice and truth", Dorin told Srna.

The Swiss researcher does not expect his book about Srebrenica events will be able to break down the stereotypes. He said the book was written for those who wish to learn the truth about the events Western mainstream media sold as "Srebrenica massacre" and even "genocide", in order to justify their war against the Serbs.

Dorin added that mostly left-oriented Western newspapers and organizations have shown an interest in his latest book and have offered cooperation.

Alexander Dorin's book about Srebrenica events is expected to be translated both into Serbian and English language.

Related

• Sarajevo Islamic Regime's Srebrenica Manipulations
• Srebrenica: Genocide or Major Hoax?
• Srebrenica Serbs
• Jihad in Bosnia
• More Proof of Srebrenica Manipulations
• Srebrenica Christmas Massacre
• Pogrom of Srebrenica Christians
• New Evidence Against Srebrenica Warlord
• Srebrenica: The Real Picture
• No Justice in the West
• Hague has Failed
• Srebrenica Myth
• Srebrenica Serbs
• Serbophobia Obscures the Facts
• Dutch Soldiers to Testify in Karadzic's Defense
• Dutchbat III
• Indictment Against War Criminal Naser Orić
• Agony of the Serbs in Srebrenica Death Camps
• 91 Dutchbat Witness for Radovan Karadžić
• Srebrenica ID, by Milivoje Ivanišević
• Yugoslav Civil War Yet to Be Properly Examined
• "Srebrenica Massacre" Invented by Bill Clinton and Alija Izetbegović

http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?p=6082

The Anti-Empire Report

September 29th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Ridding the world of the sickness of pacifism

 

Picture the scene: Afghanistan, two hijacked tankers filled with highly inflammable fuel, surrounded by a crowd of Afghans eager to syphon off some for free ... What's the last thing you want to do? Right — drop bombs on the tankers. That's what a German military commander signaled an American drone airplane to do September 4. Kaboom!! At least 100 human beings incinerated. This incident has led to a lot of controversy in Germany, for Article 26 of Germany's post-war Grundgesetz (Basic Law/Constitution) states: "Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense."

But NATO (aka the United States) can take satisfaction in the fact that the Germans have put their silly pacifism aside and acted like real men, trained military killers; although prior to this incident the Germans had engaged in some aerial and ground combat, there hadn't been such a dramatic and publicized taking of civilian lives. Deutschland now has more than 4,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent in the country after the US and Britain, and at home they've just finished building a monument to fallen members of the Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces), founded in 1955; 38 members (so far) have surrendered their young lives in Afghanistan.

In January 2007 I wrote in this report about how the US was pushing Germany in this direction; that circumstances at that time indicated that Washington might be losing patience with the pace of Germany's submission to the empire's needs. Germany declined to send troops to Iraq and sent only non-combat forces to Afghanistan, not quite good enough for the Pentagon warriors and their NATO allies. Germany's leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, reported the following:

At a meeting in Washington, Bush administration officials, speaking in the context of Afghanistan, berated Karsten Voigt, German government representative for German-American relations: "You concentrate on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the unpleasant things you leave to us." ... "The Germans have to learn to kill."

A German officer at NATO headquarters was told by a British officer: "Every weekend we send home two metal coffins, while you Germans distribute crayons and woollen blankets." Bruce George, the head of the British Defence Committee, said "some drink tea and beer and others risk their lives."

A NATO colleague from Canada remarked that it was about time that "the Germans left their sleeping quarters and learned how to kill the Taliban."

And in Quebec, a Canadian official told a German official: "We have the dead, you drink beer." ¹

Ironically, in many other contexts since the end of World War II the Germans have been unable to disassociate themselves from the image of Nazi murderers and monsters.

Will there come the day when the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents will be mocked by "the Free World" for living in peace?

The United States has also engaged in a decades-long effort to wean Japan away from its post-WW2 pacifist constitution and foreign policy and set it back on the righteous path of again being a military power, only this time acting in coordination with US foreign policy needs.

"Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

"In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized." — Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, 1947, words long cherished by a large majority of the Japanese people.

In the triumphalism of the end of the Second World War, the American occupation of Japan, in the person of General Douglas MacArthur, played a major role in the creation of this constitution. But after the communists came to power in China in 1949, the United States opted for a strong Japan safely ensconced in the anti-communist camp. It's been all downhill since then. Step by step ... MacArthur himself ordered the creation of a "national police reserve", which became the embryo of the future Japanese military ... Visiting Tokyo in 1956, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Japanese officials: "In the past, Japan had demonstrated her superiority over the Russians and over China. It was time for Japan to think again of being and acting like a Great Power." ²... various US-Japanese security and defense cooperation treaties, which, for example, called on Japan to integrate its military technology with that of the US and NATO ... the US supplying new sophisticated military aircraft and destroyers ... all manner of Japanese logistical assistance to the US in its frequent military operations in Asia ... repeated US pressure on Japan to increase its military budget and the size of its armed forces ... more than a hundred US military bases in Japan, protected by Japanese armed forces ... US-Japanese joint military exercises and joint research on a missile defense system ... the US Ambassador to Japan, 2001: "I think the reality of circumstances in the world is going to suggest to the Japanese that they reinterpret or redefine Article 9." ³ ... under pressure from Washington, Japan sent several naval vessels to the Indian Ocean to refuel US and British warships as part of the Afghanistan campaign in 2002, then sent non-combat forces to Iraq to assist the American war as well as to East Timor, another made-in-America war scenario ... Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2004: "If Japan is going to play a full role on the world stage and become a full active participating member of the Security Council, and have the kind of obligations that it would pick up as a member of the Security Council, Article Nine would have to be examined in that light." ⁴...

One outcome or symptom of all this can perhaps be seen in the 2005 case of Kimiko Nezu, a 54-year-old Japanese teacher, who was punished by being transferred from school to school, by suspensions, salary cuts, and threats of dismissal because of her refusal to stand during the playing of the national anthem, a World War II song chosen as the anthem in 1999. She opposed the song because it was the same one sung as the Imperial Army set forth from Japan calling for an "eternal reign" of the emperor. At graduation ceremonies in 2004, 198 teachers refused to stand for the song. After a series of fines and disciplinary actions, Nezu and nine other teachers were the only protesters the following year. Nezu was then allowed to teach only when another teacher was present. ⁵

Which brings us to Italy, the remaining member of the World War Two Tripartite, or Axis. Article 11 of the 1948 Italian Constitution says in part: "Italy rejects war as a means for settling international controversies and as an instrument of aggression against the freedoms of others peoples." ⁶

But Washington laid claim early to Italy's post-war soul. In 1948 the United States all but took over the Italian election campaign to insure the Christian Democrats (CD) defeat of the Communist-Socialist candidate. (And the US remained an electoral force in Italy for the next three decades maintaining the CD in power. The Christian Democrats, in turn, were loyal Cold-War partners.) ⁷ In 1949, the US saw to it that Italy became a founding member of NATO. This was not seen as a threat to Article 11 because NATO has always painted itself as a "defensive" organization, even in 1999 when it carried out a 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia as both Italy and Germany supplied military aircraft and a NATO air base at Aviano, Italy served as the main hub for the daily bombing runs. For decades, Italy has been the home of US military bases and airfields used by Washington in one military adventure after another from Europe to Asia.

There are now some 3,000 Italian soldiers in Afghanistan performing a variety of services which enables the United States and NATO to engage in their bloody warfare. And 15 Italian soldiers have also lost their lives in that woeful land. The pressure on Italy, as on Germany, to become full-fledged combatants in Afghanistan and elsewhere is unrelenting from their NATO comrades. ⁸

The Berlin Wall — Another Cold War Myth

Within a few weeks many of the Western media can be expected to turn on their propaganda machines to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don't like people to be free, to learn the "truth". What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. The wall was built primarily for two reasons:

1. The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: "West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin." ⁹
2. During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country's economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from terrorism to juvenile delinquency; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions ... all this and much more. ¹⁰

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets' erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West.

Let's not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union and wipe out Bolshevism forever. After the war, the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.

In 1999, USA Today reported: "When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism." ¹¹

About the same time a new Russian proverb was born: "Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth."

Health care: ignoring the huge red elephant in the room

In the frenzied search of recent months for a better way of delivering health care to the American people, the American media has often discussed health-care systems in other countries, particularly Europe. Usually, little, if anything, is mentioned about Cuba's system, where everyone is covered, for everything, where pre-existing conditions do not matter, and no patient pays for anything; i.e., nothing at all. The reason the Cuban system is seldom mentioned in the mass media is probably that it's kind of embarrassing that this otherwise poor country, laboring under the awful yoke of (choke, gasp) socialism, can deliver health care that most Americans can only dream of.

Now we have a new book by T.R. Reid, former correspondent for the Washington Post and commentator for National Public Radio. It's called "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care". Reid does not avoid giving some credit to the Cuban system, but he makes sure that the reader knows that he's not taken in by any commie propaganda. He refers to the Cuban government as "a totalitarian Communist fiefdom", and adds: "In every country (except, perhaps, a police state like Cuba) there is one group of citizens who are not bound by the unified health care system: the rich." ¹² Thus, the fact that Cuba has an egalitarian health care system is made to seem like something negative, something one could expect to find only in a police state.

In discussing the World Health Organization's giving Cuba high marks for fairness in its system, Reid points out: "Of course, fairness and equal treatment extend only so far; when Fidel Castro himself fell ill in 2007, medical experts were flown in from Europe to treat him." ¹³ Aha! I knew it! Americans, and not just the right-wing crazies, would never accept a medical system where everyone got completely free care for all ailments if the president ever got any kind of special treatment. Would they? We could at least ask them.

Speaking of the right-wing crazies, there was a report in the New York Times which said: "Tomorrow night, getting right into the thick of the battle," the president will "carry his message to the people in a nationwide television and radio speech" fighting for enactment of his health reform bill, which opponents tagged as "socialized medicine" and "an entering wedge for the takeover of private medicine by the federal government." The president was John F. Kennedy, the program was Medicare, the Times story was published on May 20, 1962. Despite the speech, the effort failed until passage in 1964. ¹⁴

And speaking of the totalitarian communist socialist fascist Cuban police-state dictatorship, Mr. Reid and others might be interested in an article I wrote which demonstrates that during the period of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.

But how to get past a lifetime of conditioning and reach the American mind with that message? At the recent convention of the AFL-CIO, the country's leading labor organization, there was a very progressive resolution put forth calling for the right of all Americans to travel to Cuba and for an end to the US embargo against the island nation. But at the end of the resolution the authors reminded us that they're Americans, calling upon Cuba "to release all political prisoners". ¹⁵

To appreciate what's wrong with that resolution one must understand the following: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government officials, particularly in Havana through the United States Interests Section. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the United States, evidence gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such dissidents.

Notes

1. Der Spiegel (Germany), November 20, 2006, p.24 ^↩
2. Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1994 ^↩
3. Washington Post, July 18, 2001 ^↩
4. BBC, August 14, 2004 ^↩
5. Washington Post, August 30, 2005 ^↩
6. Wikipedia: "Article 11 of Italian Constitution" ^↩
7. William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapters 2 and 18 ^↩
8. For further discussion of US opposition to Post-WW2 Axis pacifism, see "Former Axis Nations Abandon Post-World War II Military Restrictions" ^↩
9. New York Times, June 27, 1963, p.12 ^↩
10. See Killing Hope, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion ^↩
11. USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1 ^↩
12. p.234 of Reid's book ^↩
13. Ibid., p.150-1 ^↩
14. Washington Post, September 9, 2009 ^↩
15. PDF of resolution ^↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

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