Srebrenitsa Massacre: Genocide of Muslims of Serbs?

Front page / World / Europe

01.04.2010 Source: Pravda.Ru

 

 

 

Serbian Skupshtina criticized massacre of Muslims by Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenitsa in 1995. 127 out of 173 members voted for the document. The events that took place in this Bosnian town are considered one of the most horrifying episodes of Bosnia and Herzegovina war. In the beginning of July, soldiers of the army of Bosnian Serbs broke into the city populated by Muslims and protected by the UN peacemaking forces. Nearly the entire male population of the town was eliminated. The Hague tribunal blames the ex-leader of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic for the crimes against the humanity and believes the massacre in Srebrenitsa to be one of the most significant episodes. Yet, the supporters of this position often ignore the affairs that preceded those tragic events. In 1992, by the beginning of the war, Serbs accounted for more than a quarter of the town population. Yet, Muslim troops occupied the town killing Serbs and forcing the rest of them flee. In 1993, military initiative changed hands. Bosnian Serbs won back the villages next to Srebrenitsa and surrounded the town. The town, populated by then primarily by Muslims, was taken under the UN shelter. Muslim troops took advantage of it and kept attacking Serbian positions. This made Serbian leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic make a decision to attack the town. In the West, the events in Srebrenitsa have been called the genocide of the Muslims for a long time. However, Serbia, remembering the event before the tragedy of 1995, did not think so. The local community demanded that the world aknowledges the crimes committed by Muslims against the Serbs. Pro-western President Boris Tadic who took office in 2004 came to Bosnia five years ago and criticized the actions of his compatriots. Muslim leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina took advantage of the situation and demanded that Serbia compensates them for the genocide in Srebrenitsa. In 2007 the Hague tribunal accepted the fact but denied compensation. At the same time, Serbia did not accept any official document assessing those events. President Tadic spent several years trying to talk Skupshtina members into accepting a resolution criticizing genocide of Muslims in Srebrenitsa. A few days ago, the resolution was drafted. Yet, there was no unanimous vote, and the parliament was turmoiled. The draft resolution was introduced by Tadic's supporters from the coalition "For a European Serbia" who represented the majority. The document did mention genocide. The authors indicated that the EU has been trying to get this condemnation for a long time. It is one of the stipulations if Serbia wants to join the EU and make peace with its Balkan neighbors The partners of pro-presidential forces from the Socialist party once chaired by Slobodan Milosevic, who died in the Hague prison, were ready to support the document. The only significant condition was that the document could not contain the word "genocide."They justified it with the fact that the biggest losses in the wars accompanying the collapse of Yugoslavia were incurred by the Serbs. The leaders of pro-western Liberal-Democratic party, on the contrary, called for even sterner wording to brand the crimes, end with the shameful past and satisfy the demands of the EU. Nationalistic forces refused to vote for the resolution. Serbian radical party believes that all facts concerning Srebrenitsa were still not revealed. The party representatives believe that the international community has to recognize genocide of Serbs, Jews and gypsies committed during World War II by the Nazi accomplices, Croats and Muslims. As a result, there was a compromise. Parliamentarians acknowledged the crimes committed by their compatriots against Muslims. Yet, there was no mentioning of "genocide" in the document. Additionally, Skupshtina called the world community to acknowledge the crimes committed by Muslims and others against Serbs. Now it is up to the world community. As of now, the Hague Tribunal has not criticized any high ranking Muslim, Croat or Kosovo Albanian who gave orders to wipe out the Serbs. Before, the judges could say that Serbia does not officially recognize its crimes. Now this excuse is absolutely ungrounded. Vadim Trukhachev Pravda.Ru

http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/01-04-2010/112805-srebrenitsa-0

ABOUT SAHAKASHVILI , THE GEORGIAN OPPOSITION AND FEMALE LOYALTY

ABOUT SAHAKASHVILI, THE GEORGIAN OPPOSITION AND FEMALE LOYALTY

 

The transmission of Imedi Georgian TV, showing a staged Russian attack against Georgia, allegedly launched on 13 March, is still one of the top stories discussed in mass media.
I suppose there is no need considering the reasons for broadcasting this programme that took away the lives of several old people from the Georgian nation, enriching the lamentably impressive list of the victims of the "policy" conducted by Mikhail Sahakashvili. There is another point calling for special attention. On 16 March, the press published the telephone conversation of Georgi Arveladze, Director General of Imedi TV, with Eko Tsamalashvili, the host of the Special Report Programme, that had taken place the day before the aforementioned TV broadcast. During their emotional talk, G. Arveladze refers to the direct instructions given by "Misha" (i.e. Sahakashvili), forcing his employee into airing the programme without notification of its being staged.
In his comments on this material, the Director General of Imedi declared that his conversation had been simulated and made public by the Special Services of Russia. This version, however, is highly doubtful. Firstly, it implies that prior to its publication, the CIA, FIS or FSB organised the airing of the report on a TV channel controlled by the Georgian authorities, which is impossible. Secondly, it is incredible that the broadcast was shown on the initiative of the journalists themselves. Were they dreaming of reaching the glory of Orson  Welles, who frightened half of America in 1938 with his radio version of the War of Worlds? Even Kshishtof Dombrovski, Head of the Polish portal kaukaz.pl who is known for his loyalty to the Georgian powers, stated the following in his interview to Talk FM Radio Station: "This channel used to represent the Opposition, but today... it is controlled by a person from the ruling camp. It is hard to think that such a powerful video could have been released without permission from the supreme powers." Thirdly, the broadcast of the staged chronicle of events following the alleged Russian invasion inflicted such heavy damage on the image of Sahakashvili and his camp outside Georgia that Russia no longer needs to do anything to that end (the statements by the French and British ambassadors, Eric Fournier and Denis Keefe, who severely condemned the broadcast of Imedi, speak for themselves).
The source of the "leakout" of information on the conversation between G. Arveladze and the programme host  should rather be searched for inside Georgia, or among its former citizens who abandoned it for fear of sharing the fate of many Georgian political figures and businessmen who once got in Sahakashvili's way. So let us enumerate the versions that seem more verisimilar:
First ("conflict due to business"): the printed conversation "leaked out" into the press with the efforts of the relatives of the former head of Imedi, Badra Patarkatsishvili, who is trying, by applying to international courts, to restitute the TV company Sahakashvili took from him.
Second ("vendetta in a Georgian way"): in its publication might be involved the former companions-in-arms of the Georgian President, who remain deadly insulted by him—ex-Minister of Defence Irakli Okruashvili, or the ex-representative of Georgia in the UN, Irakli Alasaniya. It might also be of benefit to certain forces in the USA and the West which counted on these political figures.
Third ("oppositional"): the "leakout" of the conversation of G. Arveladze is the response of the Opposition leaders—first of all, ex-Speaker Nino Burjanadze and ex-Premier Zurab Nogaideli—accused by Sahakashvili of treason and ties with Moscow. It might also be viewed as part of the ongoing struggle towards the mayoral elections of Tbilisi, scheduled for the end of May.
Fourth ("clannish"): this story might involve people from the camps of ex-President Edward Shevardnadze, or former "master"of Ajaria Aslan Abashidze (the latter was banished by Sahakashvili), who have lost money and power, but not influence. This is further substantiated by the recent press publications about the February meeting in Batumi between Sahakashvili and Berezovsky. At that time, the runaway oligarch allegedly gave the Georgian President the idea of a TV broadcast on a staged attack. It is beyond doubt that these (and many other) people find it advantageous for themselves to harm Sahakashvili, doing for this everything within their power. However, it remains uncertain how they were technically able to intercept the conversation by satellite. It is at this very point that the fifth ("treachery") version arises. According to it, the transmission showing the Russians' attack against Georgia and the subsequent press expose of G. Arveladze were the consequences of an inner conflict in Sahakashvili's team. As reported by Regnum Agency, Georgian Minister of Interior Affairs Vano Merabishvili violently objected to the broadcast of the staged transmission. For this reason, it was aired when the Head of the Ministry of Interior Affairs had gone abroad. This has given rise to the presumption that the intercepted telephone conversation of the Director General of Imedi was made public by the very Ministry headed by V. Merabishvili.
By the way, until very lately the Minister of Interior Affairs was considered one of Sahakashvili's best companions-in-arms. To him is ascribed the organisation of the majority of the "dark" episodes of the recent history of Georgia connected with the disappearance, or mysterious deaths of many of the opponents of the President, the activity of the so-called "squadrons of death" in the regions of the country inhabited by ethnic minorities, and the establishment of "blocking detachments" (or anti-retreat forces) during the war of August 2008.
Apparently, even this companion-in-arms of Sahakashvili's realises that the collapse of his regime is near and is attempting to dissociate himself from his half-sane boss as soon as possible.

It is evident that not only V. Merabishvili, but also others from the presidential team avoid commenting on the scandal connected with Imedi TV. It is only the female members of Sahakashvili's camp that manifest unswerving faithfulness to him. His Press Secretary Manana Manjgaladze held a pompous meeting with journalists during which she did her utmost to defend "the leader of all Georgians." In her turn, in her attempts to save her boss's image, Secretary of the Security Council of Georgia Eka Tkeshelashvili hysterically called on the Western PR companies to help them (in this field, the authorities of Georgia work in close partnership with David Cracknell's British Firm Project Associates, Public Strategies American Company, as well as prominent PR specialists Daniel Kunin, Gregory Maniatis and others).
However, after the scandal connected with Imedi, even their efforts will hardly be enough for anybody in the West to take Sahakashvili for a political figure of at least partly sound mind.

 

 

Alexei MUKHIN

                                                     Director General of the Centre of Political Information

 

http://www.standard.rs/

Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie : I'm news in Sarajevo again'

I'm news in Sarajevo again'

OTTAWA — It's the war that won't end. Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie is once again making headlines in Sarajevo, where, 18 years ago, he led a United Nations peacekeeping operation that attempted to keep Bosnian Muslims and Serbs from killing each other.

"I'm news in Sarajevo again," the now retired officer said Wednesday. "I'm very sensitive to the fact that in Sarajevo today they're reading that MacKenzie said 'Muslims were killing Muslims.' "

MacKenzie is news because Sarajevo papers published remarks attributed to him by Peter Robinson, the American lawyer leading the legal team defending Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader being tried on war crimes charges before a tribunal in The Hague. The lawyer was in Ottawa this week to interview MacKenzie and others in preparation for Karadzic's defence. In an interview Tuesday, Robinson praised MacKenzie for being "courageous enough to say that, in fact, the Muslims were involved in killing their own people."

However, in an interview with the Citizen Wednesday, MacKenzie said the statements attributed to him were "incomplete" in that they did not reflect his equal denunciation of the Serb forces under Karadzic's command for their indiscriminate shelling of Sarajevo in the spring and summer of 1992.

"There's more than enough blame to go around for all sides," he said, adding that if he was called to testify in the Karadzic case, he would not hesitate to lay blame at the former Bosnian leader's feet. "Of the most serious accusations against Karadzic, I do consider the use of heavy artillery against civilian targets in Sarajevo ... to strike fear into the heart of the population to be a war crime."

MacKenzie and his small UN command arrived in Sarajevo in April 1992. By the time he left on July 31 — and despite his best efforts and those of his under-armed command — much of Sarajevo had been shelled into rubble, hundreds had died, and he was persona non grata with the Bosnian Muslims for not blaming only the Serbs.

But MacKenzie suggested that if fault lies anywhere for sparking Bosnia's descent into civil war, it lies with the United States.

In 1992, under the auspices of the European Community, the Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats signed a peace agreement, the Lisbon Agreement, in which Bosnia would be carved into ethnic cantons. But according to some accounts, former U.S. ambassador Warren Zimmermann met the Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic and told him that if he withdrew from the agreement and unilaterally declared independence, the United States would support him. In effect, Izetbegovic was encouraged to think he would be establishing the first Muslim nation in the heart of Europe.

However, as far as the Bosnian Serbs were concerned, they weren't going to be ruled by Muslims, who, the Serbs believed, were intent on creating an Islamic fundamentalist state. War was the only alternative once the Bosnian Muslims withdrew from the Lisbon Agreement.

The problem for the Muslims was that the Serbs had the stronger military, and unless they could win international support and intervention, they would likely be defeated.

MacKenzie recalled a meeting with Izetbegovic in which the president said, " 'Look, Gen. MacKenzie, I've been told that when I have 10,000 dead, I'll get intervention. How am I doing?' he was asking me every day, sarcastically." Izetbegovic would never reveal who promised the intervention, MacKenzie said, except that it was a "senior diplomat."

MacKenzie also recalled meeting U.S. congressmen, who told him then president George Bush Sr., "didn't want to touch Bosnia with a 10-foot pole."

Only after Bill Clinton, the Democrat's presidential candidate in 1992, promised to intervene if he was elected, did the Bush administration involve itself in the conflict.

Does MacKenzie hold the Americans responsible for the civil war?

"Let's put it this way, if the EC's plan had been agreed to, and agreed to by Izetbegovic, my personal opinion is there wouldn't have been a conflict Bosnia."

But that didn't happen, of course.

The Bosnian Serbs soon started shelling Sarajevo and, as it seems, the Muslims tried to gain the world's sympathy and U.S. intervention by supposedly staging atrocities against their own people.

"It wasn't a black or white situation," MacKenzie said. "The Serbs were 60 per cent to blame and the Bosnian Muslims 40 per cent.

"To achieve international sympathy there was circumstantial evidence that mortar rounds landing amongst Bosnian Muslim civilians were fired from Bosnian Muslim territory and not from the Bosnian Serb side," MacKenzie said, adding, however, that it was possible at least some of those attacks were perpetuated by "criminal elements" who wanted to keep the fighting going so they could make profits on the black market.

As for the Serbs, while they had "legitimate concerns" regarding the Muslims' political motives and intentions, their means of opposition were, as MacKenzie put it, "disproportionate" to those concerns. "They had a first-world army at their disposal, but you don't just sit back and use heavy weapons" on civilians.

The Serbs, in effect, lost the public relations war. When a few dozen members of the international media were watching every move the Serbs made, reporting every shell that hit a marketplace, it was "stupid" to use heavy artillery on civilian populations.

MacKenzie said he would like to put the issues and recriminations behind him, but that luxury has not been granted. Indeed, over the last decade he's been asked half-a-dozen times in one war crimes case or another. He expects he will be again.

"It seems I'm in it for life."

Robert Sibley is a senior writer for the Citizen.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

 

If it's good enough for Serbia's goose, why not for Croatia's gander? by Stella Jatras, 12/7/00

http://antiwar.com/orig/jatras5.html

 

 

If It's Good Enough for Serbia's Goose, Why Not for Croatia's Gander? by Stella L. Jatras 12/7/00

 

INTRODUCTION In an AP article dated 21 November, Croatia's president, Stipe Mesic, insisted that "ousting Slobodan Milosevic was not enough," and "urged Yugoslavia's new leaders on Tuesday to hand him over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal and face up to their country's role in the Balkan wars. Croatian President Stipe Mesic praised Yugoslavia's democratization, which began with the election Sept. 24 of the new president, Vojislav Kostunica. But he said Kostunica should apologize for Milosevic's policies, which engulfed Croatia in a 1991 war." Mesic is quoted as saying, "But for us, it is of primary interest that Yugoslavia itself prosecute all those who committed war crimes and make it clear ... it would extradite those who carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide," he said. "We are more interested in deeds than in words." If President Mesic's pronouncement is good enough for Serbia's goose, then it is should be good enough for Croatia's gander. Not only is it fair, but it is necessary to know just what role Croatian President Mesic, himself, played during the 1991-1995 conflict. Furthermore, if President Mesic insists that President Kostunica apologize for Serbia's past, then is President Mesic also ready to apologize for those in Croatia's past who committed war crimes, such as former dictator Franjo Tudjman? According to a report from The Hague, dated 8 November (AFP), "Croatia's late autocratic leader Franjo Tudjman would have been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague if he were still alive, a senior prosecutor for the tribunal said Wednesday." For that matter, perhaps Mesic should clear the collective Croatian conscience by apologizing for the crimes during World War II of Ante Pavelic, head of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941. According to Johnny Byrne, popular British film and television drama writer, and author of "Heart of Croatian Darkness," (15 August 1996), " They [Croatians] refuse to acknowledge that the only true genocide committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia was that committed against mainly Serbs, but also Jews and Romanies. Some 700,000 Serbs were butchered in manner so unspeakable that even their Nazi German masters were appalled." Pavelic is quoted as saying, "A good Ustasha [Croatian Nazi] is one who can use his knife to cut a Serb child from the womb of his mother." For those who may consider it unfair to lay the 60 year old crimes of Ante Pavelic at the feet of President Mesic, we may limit ourselves to modern history. CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING In 1991, Stipe Mesic was the Croatian representative to the collective Yugoslav Presidency, and it was the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Ante Markovic, also a Croatian who ordered the Yugoslav National Army (JNA), to take action against Croatian succession. It should be noted that in 1991, the JNA was a multinational force made up of Croatians, Muslims, Serbs, Albanians, Hungarians, Slovenes, Montenegrins, and Macedonians. The JNA did not effectively become a Serbian army until after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Not only does President Mesic, along with then-Prime Minister Markovic, bear some responsibility for beginning the 1991-1995 war, he should take a hard look at the way Croatia conducted the war before pointing the finger of blame at others. In late 1991, the Yugoslav Army captured the city of Vukovar from Croatian forces who were systematically massacring the ethnic Serb minority in the city. A Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy article in London in December 1992 said, "At least 1,000 Serbs, mostly women, old people and children, were shot, knifed, axed or bludgeoned to death systematically, one-by-one, in two main centres...One visiting Croat female journalist during the Vukovar fighting, unfamiliar with firearms, asked one of the young gunmen to cock a pistol for her so that she could feel what it was like to kill a Serb. She shot, indiscriminately, an old Serb woman who was standing under Croat guard." In November 1991, the Toronto Star said that "a photographer reported seeing black plastic bags containing pieces of the bodies of [Serb] children about 5, 6, or 7 years old." In line with biased reporting that existed throughout the war, the media, especially in the U.S., paid scant attention to Croatian atrocities against Serbian women and children in Vukovar, choosing instead to concentrate on reports that Serbs massacred 200 wounded Croatian soldiers in a Vukovar hospital. Only a few European papers carried the story that Croatian soldiers who had participated in the massacre of civilians, fled to the hospital and jumped into bed along with their weapons in a futile attempt to escape the outrage of the Serbian troops who had discovered their grisly crimes. If President Mesic is genuinely interested in bringing war criminals to justice, he should demand the extradition and trial of General Agim Ceku who commanded Croatia's army during "Operation Storm," when ethnic Serbs were driven out of the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995 (the same Gen. Ceku who commands the Kosovo Liberation Army). Over 250,000 Krajina Serbs were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homes, thousands slaughtered, and those too old or infirm to flee remained only to have their throats slit. Approximately 650,000 Serbs have been driven out of Croatia since 1992 with little prospect of ever returning. It was military aid and technology provided by the Clinton Administration, on the advice of Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, that made it possible for Croatian forces to conduct "Operation Storm" in order to achieve their goal of a pure Croatian state that Hitler could only promise. Nor was there any outrage from Congress when Croatian jets bombed and strafed Serbian refugee columns. No general media outrage to what Charles Krauthammer described in Newsweek (April 5, 1999) as "the largest ethnic cleansing of the entire Balkan wars. Investigators with the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague have concluded that this campaign was carried out with brutality, wanton murder and indiscriminate shelling of civilians . . . No denunciation. No sanctions. No bombing. No indignant speeches about ethnic cleansing and the slaughter of innocents. In fact, in justifying the current bombing of Serbia, Clinton made an indirect reference to this Croatian campaign when he credited the 'courageous people in Bosnia and in Croatia' who 'fought back' against the Serbs and 'helped to end the war.' Indeed, they did. Croatia's savage ethnic cleansing so demoralized the Serbs that they soon agreed to sign the Dayton peace accord of 1995." The Washington Times reported on 5 September, 1995, that Croatian soldiers were given heroin or cocaine twice daily in order to help them face up to the horrors of war in reference to the expulsion of Croatian Serbs from Krajina. A Croatian soldiers, identified only as Davor, stated, "To attack villages, to cut throats and to kill in cold blood you need a strong anesthetic-a shot of heroin or cocaine was ideal." This report was also substantiated in The Guardian, on September 1, 1995. "Operation Storm" was not the only incident of Croatian criminal brutality for which President Mesic evidently see no reason to make amends. In 1993, Canada's Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry unit attempted to enter a town where they could hear the Serbian civilian population being massacred. Croatian troops attacked the Canadians and engaged them in some of Canada's worst battles since the Korean war. The battle came to be known as the Battle of the Medak Pocket. The Ottawa Citizen wrote: "Almost five years after it happened, a House of Commons committee has heard details of Canada's finest hour during its peacekeeping mission to the former Yugoslavia." From the Calgary Herald: "Sgt. Rod Dearing couldn't see the Croatian soldiers who were trying to kill him but he could hear the rattle of their AK-47s and see their bullets kick up earth just centimeters away. The Croats wanted to delay the Canadians to enable their ethnic cleansing units to finish their killing and looting [of Serbs]. A Croatian general stood in the middle of the road, glaring and yelling at the Patricians [Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry]. The soldiers came on the remains of two teenagers who had been held captive by the Croats. They had been shot and set on fire. What was left of their bodies were still smoldering when the Canadians found them." HAS CROATIA CHANGED? HARDLY In a Reuter's report published in the Washington Times on 28 January 1998, "Three Croatian ex-soldiers tell media of atrocities" committed in 1991 against the ethnic Serb minority and Croatians in Gospic who did not agree with hard-line nationalist policies. One of the Croatian ex-soldiers spoke of seeing "truckloads of bloated, stinking bodies, mothers and children blown up by bombs and someone wearing a necklace made of ears." How similar this is to reports by Holocaust survivors who described what happened in 1941: "To give a little variety, noses and ears were cut off, and eyes scratched out. The Italians photographed an Ustashi [Croatian Nazi] wearing two chains of human tongues and ears around his neck." (Testimonies from Holocaust survivors, Jean-Marc Sabatier in Paris-Match, May 25, 1957 and Edmon Paris, "Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1961, Chicago, American Institute for Balkan Affairs). Be it 1941 or 1991, it appears that history repeats itself in Croatia. Columnist A.M. Rosenthal: "In World War II Hitler had no executioners more willing, no ally more passionate, than the fascists of Croatia. They are returning, 50 years later, from what should have been their eternal grave, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Western Allies who dug that grave with the bodies of their servicemen have the power to stop them, but do not." The Washington Times of 29 December 1995: "Croats will 'kill people for the color of their skin'." [US Colonel Fontenot, Commander of NATO forces in northeastern Bosnia]. The Washington Times on 15 June, 1997: "A German tank rolls through a small village, and the peasants rush out, lining the road with their right arms raised in a Nazi salute as they chant 'Heil Hitler!' Mobs chase minorities from their homes, kicking them and pelting them with eggs as they flee into the woods. Europe in the 1940s? No, Croatia in the 1990s." The International Herald Tribune, 4 September 1995, headlines, "Croatia Eradicates Traces of Its Serbs," and from Edward Pearce of the London Evening Standard, 7 August 1995, "But you can understand Croatia best by saying flatly that if there is one place in the world where a statue of Adolph Hitler would be revered, it would be in Zagreb," but an excellent quote comes from John Ranz, Chairman of Survivors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, USA, who said, "The gigantic campaign to brainwash America by our media against the Serbian people is just incredible, with its daily dose of one-sided information and outright lies...What is today's reality? The murderers of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies are back (in Croatia) from the US, Canada, Argentina where they fled after World War II. The Serbs fought the Nazis, and paid a terrible price for standing at the side of the allies against Hitler. Humanity owes them a debt of gratitude." And how have the Serbs been repaid? What was their reward for their loyalty? Seventy-eight days of unmerciful US-led NATO bombing and continued vilification by the US media. From the Daily Telegraph of 15 November, 2000, Julius Strauss writes, "Five years may have passed since the end of the Bosnian war but in Ljubuski, one of dozens of Croat villages scattered through the mountains of southwestern Bosnia, hardliners are still in control. By way of greeting the Croat party official said: "I hope you're not a Jew or an American. My father fought at Stalingrad. He wore the German insignia with pride. At the end it was only us Croats who stayed faithful to the SS." Today, Croatia arrogantly and blatantly flies its fascist checkerboard flag without fear of condemnation from the world. It has renamed its streets after its Nazi war heroes, and proudly displays its "Sieg Heil" salute at Croatian weddings, funerals, and other functions. CONCLUSION There is enough blame to go around in the Balkan Tragedy. Before Croatian President Mesic makes any demands from the new president of Serbia, perhaps he should look inward and cooperate to bring to trial war criminals such as Agim Ceku who is still walking free, apparently with the president's blessings. It would also be nice of this Croatian president showed some remorse for Croatia's part in atrocities, past and present, committed against the Serbian people before he makes demands from others. As a career military officer's wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely and has lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years where her husband, George, was the Senior Air Attaché), and while there, worked in the Political Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived in Germany, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries. She is the author of the "Open Letter to General Michael Short," which antiwar.com carried on 11/3/99, "From Camp Swampy to Camp Bondsteel!" on 4/6/00, and "Srebrenica" – Code Word to Silence Critics of US Policy in the Balkans" on 7/31/00.

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                         If It's Good Enough for
                   Serbia's Goose, Why Not for
                              Croatia's Gander?
                                       by Stella L. Jatras
                                            12/7/00

Serbia apologises for Srebrenica massacre

Serbia apologises for Srebrenica massacre

VALENTINA POP

Today @ 09:28 CET

The Serbian parliament on Tuesday (30 March) passed a landmark resolution condemning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims, ending years of denial about the killings, although it avoided using the term "genocide."

"The parliament of Serbia strongly condemns the crime committed against the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica in July 1995, as determined by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling," the text says.

The Serbian legislature apologised to the families of the Srebrenica victims (Photo: Konrad Zielinski)

Proposed by the ruling coalition of pro-Western President Boris Tadic, the resolution was adopted by 127 of the 173 parliamentarians present in the room, after 13 hours of debate.

The lawmakers also expressed "their condolences and an apology to the families of the victims because not everything possible was done to prevent the tragedy."

"We are taking a civilised step of politically responsible people, based on political conviction, for the war crime that happened in Srebrenica," said Branko Ruzic, whose own Socialist party was at the time led by Serbian nationalist Slobodan Milosevic during the 1990s.

In 1995, Bosnian Serb troops led by General Ratko Mladic executed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys and buried the bodies in various mass graves around the town of Srebrenica.

The Hague-based court has termed the events a genocide and ruled that Serbia was responsible for not stopping the massacre, although it was not blamed for the actual executions.

Serbian deputies however avoided use of the term "genocide" in order to win the widest support possible.

"We wanted a completely different resolution but apparently that is not possible," said Cedomir Jovanovic, of the Liberal opposition, according to Reuters.

Other MPs criticised the bill for failing to condemn what they called similar crimes against Serbs carried out by neighbouring Croatia during the war.

Still at large and revered as a hero among Serb nationalists, Mr Mladic remains Belgrade's biggest hurdle in its efforts to catch up with other former Yugoslav countries on their way towards EU membership.

Catching and delivering him to the ICJ is a precondition for Serbia becoming an EU member.

© 2010 EUobserver.com. All rights reserved. Printed on 31.03.2010.

 

 

http://euobserver.com/9/29801/?rk=1

 

 

Alstom at Center of Web of Bribery Inquiries

By CLAUDIO GATTI

Published: March 29, 2010

The detention last week of three executives at the British unit of the French industrial giant Alstom was the latest in a tangle of investigations regarding possible bribes paid by the conglomerate to secure contracts around the world, according to investigators in several countries.

Some cases go back years, while others are still being investigated and prosecuted. At least two arrests were made in Europe this year, while a recent case in Italy resulted in guilty pleas from four Alstom executives and two Alstom business units, as well as fines.

In addition, the fraud division of the Justice Department is looking into the possibility that the Italian case — which involved bribes paid by Alstom for a contract awarded by a division of the state-controlled utility Enel — was one of several incidents in which Alstom Power Inc., an American subsidiary, improperly used agents to acquire contracts around the world, according to investigators who did not want to be identified because the inquiry was not yet public.

The Alstom cases are part of an increasing number of investigations into corporate bribery in recent years. Prosecutors and advocacy groups like Transparency International have stepped up the pressure on multinational corporations after the adoption of an international convention outlawing bribery of foreign officials, which came into force just over a decade ago.

Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate, pleaded guilty in 2008 in the United States and Germany to paying more than $800 million in bribes to foreign officials through a network of fictitious agents. Siemens paid criminal and civil penalties of more than $1.6 billion.

Last week, The New York Times reported that the German carmaker Daimler had agreed to pay about $185 million in fines, and that two subsidiaries would plead guilty to bribing foreign government officials, to settle a multiyear corruption investigation.

Daimler, the maker of Mercedes-Benz and Smart brand cars, cooperated with the investigation and will avoid indictment, said a person with knowledge of the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the agreement had not yet been made public.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Thursday in Federal District Court in Washington.

"At this moment, I know of 345 cases worldwide in different stages of investigation for violation of national and international anticorruption legislation," said Mark Pieth, chairman of the working group on bribery of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. Five years ago, Mr. Pieth said, about 100 cases were under investigation.

The escalation in bribery investigations "may be seen as a sign of things getting worse," Mr. Pieth said. "But I see the positive of it. I see law enforcement agencies around the world, and not just the United States, that dare to act on suspicion of corruption."

Alstom, a power and transport conglomerate with 80,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of 18.7 billion euros, or $25.2 billion, has been named in connection with investigations in Australia, Europe and South America.

A spokesman at Alstom's corporate headquarters near Paris acknowledged that investigations were under way in Brazil, Britain and Switzerland, but said they had not led to any legal action against the parent company in France.

The settlement in Italy was "not for bribery but for mistakes in the contract process," the Alstom spokesman said. He added that the company had "put in place and reinforced over the past years a very strict ethics and compliance process."

He declined to comment on any cases in Australia, Poland or the United States.

The O.E.C.D. Anti-Bribery Convention, to which 38 countries are now signatories, forbids companies from making even indirect pay-for-play arrangements with governments. Companies, however, have used agents to go around that restriction.

An inquiry in Britain and Australia focuses on the use of one such agent in Europe to secure contracts in Vietnam. The agent, Company for Technology and Development, based in Hanoi, is believed to be a front for government officials in Hanoi, according to law enforcement officials, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

In November 2009, the Australian Federal Police opened an investigation into the use of Company for Technology and Development by Securency International, an Australian company that owns a patented formula for polymer-based bank notes, to help win a contract with the Vietnamese national bank.

According to European law enforcement officials, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak, Australia is now coordinating its investigation with the Serious Fraud Office in Britain because evidence was found that the same agent was used by European subsidiaries of Alstom. The three executives of the British unit of Alstom were questioned last week about allegations of bribery, money laundering and false accounting.

Alstom declined to comment on the case.

The Polish investigation involves Bohdan Zun, the former director general of Warsaw MetroProjekt, the capital's transportation authority, a representative for Marius Grzegorowski, the prosecutor investigating the case, said. Mr. Zun was in charge of MetroProjekt when it awarded a 105 million euro contract to Alstom for subway cars.

Mr. Zun was arrested by the Polish police in January and accused of fixing the results of the tender in Alstom's favor. In March a second suspect, a consultant named Tadeus Novak, was arrested by Spanish police in Barcelona and "accused of helping in the distribution of bribes" as the result of "an investigation regarding a contract between Metroprojekt and Alstom," a representative for Marius Grzegorowski said.

The Alstom spokesman said the company had "no information" on the case in Poland.

Another case under investigated in Brazil and Switzerland involves payments from Alstom to executives from Petrobras, the Brazilian state-run oil company, through a consulting firm called Aramza based in Montevideo, Uruguay, according to law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was active.

"Several federal and state authorities in Brazil have launched investigations which allegedly concern Alstom among other companies, but none of these investigations has legally concluded on any charge against Alstom," the Alstom spokesman said.

The investigation by Swiss authorities, which may turn out to be the most pervasive, began in 2006 and focuses on a subsidiary called Alstom Prom, which consisted of a single executive, Bruno Kälin, and two secretaries in Baden, Switzerland. Mr. Kälin was arrested by the Swiss police in August 2008 on charges of attempted bribery and mismanagement of company funds.

Three months later, a federal judge in Bellinzona, Switzerland, issued a statement saying that "due to the evidence presented to the court, there is a strong suspicion that the defendant actively participated in the laundering of money out of the Alstom Group for the purpose of corrupt payments."

The Alstom spokesman noted, however, that Swiss prosecutors "so far have not produced any evidence allowing them to charge the company."

Alstom Prom is, however, implicated in a different case in Lugano, Switzerland. It involves reports of payments of bribes to two top executives of EnelPower, a subsidiary of the Italian state-controlled electric conglomerate Enel, which in 2001 awarded Alstom a contract for a boiler at a power plant in Sardinia.

Four Alstom executives, including Mr. Kälin and Fritz Gautschi, the former head of a Connecticut-based subsidiary called Alstom Power Inc., pleaded guilty in the case. The consultant they used to pay the bribes to the Enel executives, a Dubai-based businessman named Hussein al-Nowais, acknowledged his role in the course of the proceedings.

In a deposition submitted to the Italian magistrate, Eugenio Fusco, Mr. Nowais said an EnelPower executive, Luigi Giuffrida, "expected a kickback from part of my fee. He said that there would have been more opportunities to do business."

Alstom Prom and Alstom Power pleaded guilty to an administrative offense.

Each was sentenced by a Milan court to reimburse the Italian state for the amount of the bribe, 597,220 euros, and to pay a fine of 240,000 euros.

 

Claudio Gatti is an investigative reporter based in New York for the Italian newspaper Il Sole-24 Ore and The International Herald Tribune.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/global/30alstom.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Radovan Karadzic: “Most Wanted” trial ....Video

Radovan Karadzic will be accused of war crimes by the Hague Tribunal, an expert told RIA Novosti. Konstantin Kachalin, political analyst and correspondent, shares his opinion in an interview with Samir Shakhbaz. Kachalin witnessed the atrocities of the war in Bosnia and later on was a witness at the Hague Tribunal. Kachlin tells his story of the war in Yugoslavia and the work of the Tribunal.

 

 

http://en.rian.ru/video/20100325/158306897.html

SERBIA: 11 YEARS AFTER NATO BOMBS, SIRENS SOUND IN BELGRADE

 

SERBIA: 11 YEARS AFTER NATO BOMBS, SIRENS SOUND IN BELGRADE

 

(ANSAmed) - BELGRADE, MARCH 24 - To mark the 11th anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing against the Federation of Serbia and Montenegro, the sirens once again sounded in Belgrade today at midday. Public ceremonies are planned in the capital and in other Serbian cities to commemorate the approximate 3,500 people killed (civilians and military personnel) and the over 12,000 people injured by the bombings decided by NATO against the Slobodan Milosevic's regime and his policy of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. In 78 days of bombing, 2,500 civilians were killed (including 89 children) and 1,031 servicemen and policemen were killed. The injured numbered around 6,000 amongst the civilians (2,700 children) and over 5,000 amongst servicemen and policemen. Material damage was enormous, in particular the destruction of bridges, roads, railways, military installations and public buildings. In the centre of Belgrade, one can still see some buildings - which at the time hosted the Ministry of Defence and the headquarters - completely disembowelled and semi-destroyed by the bombs. The bombing ceased with the agreement signed in Kumanovo (Macedonia) on June 9, 1999, and three days later the Yugoslav forces began to withdraw from Kosovo where, on the basis of UN Resolution 1244 , a contingent of NATO troops (KFOR) were sent, with a total of 37,000 men. This multinational force is being reduced over time and today totals some 10,000 soldiers. On February 17, 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, so far recognised by 65 countries (including Italy) but not by Belgrade or Russia. (ANSAmed).

2010-03-24 15:46

 

http://www.ansamed.info/en/news/ME03.XAM15454.html

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Holocaust Deniers at the U.S. State Department

http://www.balkanstudies.org/blog/holocaust-deniers-us-state-department

Holocaust Deniers at the U.S. State Department

By Srdja Trifkovic Saturday, 20 Mar 2010

The latest U.S. Department of State human rights report on Croatia, released on March 11, says matter of factly that "on September 24 [2009] ... Cardinal Josip Bozanic visited Jasenovac, the site of the largest concentration camp in Croatia during World War II where thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma were killed" [emphasis added; a daily scene from Jasenovac, l.]. This remarkable claim is the exact moral and factual equivalent of asserting that "tens of thousands" of Jews and others were killed in Auschwitz or Treblinka.

The number of victims at Jasenovac is still uncertain. The lowest estimate with any pretense to methodological seriousness – tens of thousands of victims – was made by the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, famous for saying "Thank God, my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew." Tudjman's "estimate" on Jasenovac fits in with his other assessments:

"In his book Wastelands: Historical Truths, published in 1988, Mr. Tudjman wrote that the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust was 900,000 – not six million. He has also asserted that not more than 70,000 Serbs died at the hands of the Ustashe – most historians say around 400,000 were killed." (The New York Times, August 20, 1995)

Other sources provide estimates tens of times greater than Dr. Tudjman's, and hundreds of times greater than that presented as fact by the U.S. State Department:

"JASENOVAC" by Menachem Shelach in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, 1990, pp. 739-740: "Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustasa regime."

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team: "It is estimated that close to 600,000 … mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, were murdered at Jasenovac."

So much for the Jewish sources. This is what the contemporary German allies of the Ustasa regime had to say on the subject.

Hermann Neubacher, Hitler's foremost political expert for the Balkans, in his book Sonderaufrag Südost 1940-1945. Bericht eines fliegenden Diplomaten (Goettingen: Muster-Schmidt-Verlag, 1957, p. 18):

"The prescription for the Orthodox Serbs issued by the leader and Führer of Croatia, Ante Pavelić, was reminiscent of the religious wars of the bloodiest memory: One third must be converted to Catholicism, another third must be expelled, and the final third must die. The last part of the program has been carried out." [i.e. one-third of cca. 1.9 million were killed]

In a report to Himmler, SS General Ernst Frick estimated that "600 to 700,000 victims were butchered in the Balkan fashion." General Lothar Rendulic, commanding German forces in the western Balkans in 1943-1944, estimated the number of Ustaša victims to be 500,000. In his memoirs Gekaempft, gesiegt, geschlagen (Welsermühl Verlag, Wels und Heidelberg, 1952, p.161) he recalled a memorable exchange on this issue with a Croat dignitary:

"When I objected to a high official who was close to Pavelic that, in spite of the accumulated hatred, I failed to comprehend the murder of half a million Orthodox, the answer I received was characteristic of the mentality that prevailed there: Half a million, that's too much – there weren't more than 200,000!"

The U.S. Department of State may have in its possession some newly discovered and incontrovertible evidence that Yad Vashem's researchers had exaggerated the number of victims at Jasenovac a hundredfold or more, that German eyewitnesses were wrong, that even the Holocaust-denying President Tudjman was wrong, and that the number of victims was indeed in some "thousands" rather than tens or hundreds of thousands.

If it does, the State Department should make such evidence for its claims public. If it does not, it should issue a detailed correction and an unreserved apology.

____________________________________________________________

NATO RiP? Well, Hopefully... by S. Trifkovic

 

NATO RIP? Well, Hopefully

By Srdja Trifkovic

 

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/exit-strategies/nato-rip/

 

Ukraine's announcement that it will pass a law that will bar the country from joining NATO has been greeted with barely concealed relief in Moscow, Paris, Berlin and Rome. It is also good news for the security interests of the United States. The time has come not only to give up on NATO expansion, but also to abolish the Alliance altogether.

Encouraging an impoverished, practically defenseless nation such as Ukraine to join a military alliance directed against the superpower next door, thereby stretching a nuclear tripwire between them, had never been a sound strategy. Article V of the NATO Charter states that an attack on one is an attack on all, and offers automatic guarantee of aid to an ally in distress. The U.S. would supposedly provide its protective cover to a new client, right in Russia's geopolitical backyard, in an area that had never been deemed vital to America's security interests.

From the realist perspective, accepting Ukraine into NATO would mean one of two things: either the United States is serious that it would risk a thermonuclear war for the sake of, say, the status of Sebastopol, which is insane; or the United States is not serious, which would be frivolous and dangerous.

President Clinton tried to evade the issue, over a decade ago, by questioning the meaning of words and asserting that Article V "does not define what actions constitute 'an attack' or prejudge what Alliance decisions might then be made in such circumstances." He claimed the right of the United States "to exercise individual and collective judgment over this question."

Such fudge cannot be the basis of serious policy. It evokes previous Western experiments with security guarantees in the region -- leading to Czechoslovakia's carve-up in 1938, and to Poland's destruction in September 1939 -- which warn us that promises nonchalantly given today may turn into bounced checks or smoldering cities tomorrow. After more than seven decades, the lesson of is clear: security guarantees not based on the provider's resolve to fight a fully blown war to fulfill them, are worse than no guarantees at all. It would be dangerously naïve to assume that the United States, financially and militarily overextended, would indeed honor the guarantee under Article V, or assume responsibility for open-ended maintenance of potentially disputed frontiers (say in the Crimea) that were drawn arbitrarily by the likes of Khrushchev and bear little relation to ethnicity or history,

A necessary and successful alliance during the Cold War, NATO is obsolete and harmful today. It no longer provides collective security -- an attack against one is an attack against all -- of limited geographic scope (Europe) against a predatory totalitarian power (the USSR). Instead, NATO has morphed into a vehicle for the attainment of misguided American strategic objectives on a global scale. Further expansion would merely cement and perpetuate its new, U.S.-invented "mission" as a self-appointed promoter of democracy, protector of human rights, and guardian against instability outside its original area. It was on those grounds, rather than in response to any supposed threat, that the Clinton administration pushed for the admission of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1996, and President Bush brought in the Baltic republics, Bulgaria, and Rumania in 2004.

Bill Clinton's air war against the Serbs, which started 11 years ago (March 24, 1999), marked a decisive shift in NATO's mutation from a defensive alliance into a supranational security force based on the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention." The trusty keeper of the gate of 1949 had morphed into a roaming vigilante five decades later.

The limits of American power became obvious in August 2008. Saakashvili's attack on South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, was an audacious challenge to Russia, to which she responded forcefully. Moscow soon maneuvered Washington into a position of weakness unseen since the final days of the Carter presidency three decades ago. The Europeans promptly brokered a truce that was pleasing to Moscow and NATO's expansion along the Black Sea was effectively stalled, with no major Continental power willing to risk further complications with Russia. They understood the need for a sane relationship with Moscow that acknowledges that Russia has legitimate interests in her "near-abroad."

America, Russia and NATO -- The Soviet Union came into being as a revolutionary state that challenged any given status quo in principle, starting with the Comintern and ending three generations later with Afghanistan. Some of its aggressive actions and hostile impulses could be explained in light of "traditional" Russian need for security; at root, however, there was always an ideology unlimited in ambition and global in scope.

At first, the United States tried to appease and accommodate the Soviets (1943-46), then moved to containment in 1947, and spent the next four decades building and maintaining essentially defensive mechanisms -- such as NATO -- designed to prevent any major change in the global balance.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been trying to articulate her goals and define her policies in terms of "traditional" national interests. The old Soviet dual-track policy of having "normal" relations with America, on the one hand, while seeking to subvert her, on the other, gave way to naïve attempts by Boris Yeltsin's foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev to forge a "partnership" with the United States.

By contrast, the early 1990s witnessed the beginning of America's futile attempt to assert her status as the only global "hyperpower." The justification for their project was as ideological, and the implications were as revolutionary as anything concocted by Zinoviev or Trotsky in their heyday. In essence, the United States adopted her own dual-track approach. When Mikhail Gorbachev's agreement was needed for German reunification, President George H.W. Bush gave a firm and public promise that NATO wound not move eastward. Within years, however, Bill Clinton expanded NATO to include all the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central Europe. On a visit to Moscow in 1996, Clinton even wondered if he had gone too far, confiding to Strobe Talbott, "We keep telling Ol' Boris, 'Okay, now here's what you've got to do next -- here's some more [sh-t] for your face.'"

Instead of declaring victory and disbanding the alliance in the early 1990s, the Clinton administration successfully redesigned it as a mechanism for open-ended out-of-area interventions at a time when every rationale for its existence had disappeared. Following the air war against Serbia almost a decade ago, NATO's area of operations became unlimited, and its "mandate" entirely self-generated. The Clinton administration agreed that NATO faced "no imminent threat of attack," yet asserted that a larger NATO would be "better able to prevent conflict from arising in the first place" and - presumably alluding to the Balkans -- better able to address "rogue states, the poisoned appeal of extreme nationalism, and ethnic, racial, and religious hatreds." How exactly an expanded NATO could have prevented conflicts in Bosnia or Chechnya or Nagorno Karabakh had remained unexplained.

Another round of NATO expansion came under George W. Bush, when three former Soviet Baltic republics were admitted. In April 2007, he signed the Orwellian-sounding NATO Freedom Consolidation Act, which extended U.S. military assistance to aspiring NATO members, specifically Georgia and Ukraine. Further expansion, according to former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, was "historically mandatory, geopolitically desirable." A decade earlier, Brzezinski readily admitted that NATO's enlargement was not about U.S. security in any conventional sense, but "about America's role in Europe - whether America will remain a European power and whether a larger democratic Europe will remain organically linked to America." Such attitude is the source of endless problems for America and Europe alike.

President Obama and his foreign policy team have failed to grasp that a problem exists, let alone to act to rectify it. There has been a change of officials, but the regime is still the same - and America is still in need of a new grand strategy. Limited in objectives and indirect in approach, it should seek security and freedom for the United States without maintaining, let alone expanding, unnecessary foreign commitments.

The threat to Europe's security does not come from Russia or from a fresh bout of instability in the Balkans. The real threat to Europe's security and to her survival comes from Islam, from the deluge of inassimilable Third World immigrants, and from collapsing birthrates. All three are due to the moral decrepitude and cultural degeneracy, not to any shortage of soldiers and weaponry. The continued presence of a U.S. contingent of any size can do nothing to alleviate these problems, because they are cultural, moral and spiritual.

NATO: unnecessary and harmful -- In terms of a realist grand strategy, NATO is detrimental to U.S. security. It forces America to assume at least nominal responsibility for open-ended maintenance of a host of disputed frontiers that were drawn, often arbitrarily, by Communist dictators, long-dead Versailles diplomats, and assorted local tyrants, and which bear little relation to ethnicity, geography, or history. With an ever-expanding NATO, eventual adjustments -- which are inevitable -- will be more potentially violent for the countries concerned and more risky for the United States. America does not and should not have any interest in preserving an indefinite status quo in the region.

Clinton's 1999 war against Serbia was based on the his own doctrine of "humanitarian intervention," which claimed the right of the United States to use military force to prevent or stop alleged human rights abuses as defined by Washington. This doctrine explicitly denied the validity of long-established norms -- harking back to 1648 Westphalia -- in favor of a supposedly higher objective. It paved the way for the pernicious Bush Doctrine of preventive war and "regime change" codified in the 2002 National Security Strategy.

The Clinton-Bush Doctrine represented the global extension of the Soviet model of relations with Moscow's satellites applied in the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Ideological justification was provided by the Brezhnev Doctrine, defined by its author as the supposed obligation of the socialist countries to ensure that their actions should not "damage either socialism in their country or the fundamental interests of other socialist countries." "The norms of law cannot be interpreted narrowly, formally, in isolation from the general context of the modern world," Brezhnev further claimed. By belonging to the "socialist community of nations," its members had to accept that the USSR -- the leader of the "socialist camp" -- was not only the enforcer of the rules but also the judge of whether and when an intervention was warranted. No country could leave the Warsaw Pact or change its communist party's monopoly on power.

More than three decades after Prague 1968 the USSR was gone and the Warsaw Pact dismantled, but the principles of the Brezhnev Doctrine are not defunct. They survive in the neoliberal guise.

In 1991 the Maastricht Treaty speeded up the erosion of EU member countries' sovereignty by transferring their prerogatives to the Brussels regime of unelected bureaucrats. The passage of NAFTA was followed by the 1995 Uruguay round of GATT that produced the WTO. The nineties thus laid the foundation for the new, post-national order. By early 1999 the process was sufficiently far advanced for President Bill Clinton to claim in The New York Times in May 1999 that, had it not bombed Serbia, "NATO itself would have been discredited for failing to defend the very values that give it meaning." This was but one way of restating Brezhnev's dictum that "the norms of law cannot be interpreted narrowly, formally, in isolation from the general context of the modern world."

Like his Soviet predecessor, Clinton used an abstract and ideologically loaded notion as the pretext to act as he deemed fit, but no "interests of world socialism" could beat "universal human rights" when it came to determining where and when to intervene. The key difference between Brezhnev and Clinton was in the limited scope of the Soviet leader's self-awarded outreach. His doctrine applied only to the "socialist community," as opposed to the unlimited, potentially world-wide scope of "defending the values that give NATO meaning." The "socialist community" led by Moscow stopped on the Elbe, after all. It was replaced by the "International Community" led by Washington, which stops nowhere.

The subsequent Bush Doctrine still stands as the ideological pillar and self-referential framework for the policy of permanent global interventionism. It precludes any meaningful debate about the correlation between ends and means of American power: we are not only wise but virtuous; our policies are shaped by "core values" which are axiomatic, and not by prejudices.

The Axis of Instability -- The mantra's neocon-neolib upholders are blind to the fact that, after a brief period of American mono-polar dominance (1991-2008), the world's distribution of power is now characterized by asymmetric multipolarity. It is the most unstable model of international relations, which -- as history teaches us -- may lead to a major war.

As I wrote in takimag.com a year ago, during the Cold War the world system was based on the model of bipolarity based on the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The awareness of both superpowers that they would inflict severe and unavoidable reciprocal damage on each other was coupled with the acceptance that each had a sphere of dominance or vital interest that should not be infringed upon. Proxy wars were fought in the grey zone all over the Third World, most notably in the Middle East, but they were kept localized even when a superpower was directly involved. Potentially lethal crises (Berlin 1949, Korea 1950, Cuba 1963) were de-escalated due to the implicit rationality of both sides' decision-making calculus. The bipolar model was the product of unique circumstances without an adequate historical precedent, however, which are unlikely to be repeated.

The most stable model of international relations that is both historically recurrent and structurally repeatable in the future is the balance of power system in which no single great power is either physically able or politically willing to seek hegemony. This model was prevalent from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) until Napoleon, and again from Waterloo until around 1900. It is based on a relative equilibrium between the key powers that hold each other in check and function within a recognized set of rules. Wars do occur, but they are limited in scope and intensity because the warring parties tacitly accept the fundamental legitimacy and continued existence of their opponent(s).

If one of the powers becomes markedly stronger than others and if its decision-making elite internalizes an ideology that demands or at least justifies hegemony, the inherently unstable system of asymmetrical multipolarity will develop. In all three known instances -- Napoleonic France after 1799, the Kaiserreich in 1914, and the Third Reich after 1933 -- the challenge could not be resolved without a major war. Fore the past two decades, the U.S. has been acting in a similar manner. Having proclaimed itself the leader of an imaginary "international community," it goes further than any previous would-be hegemon in treating the entire world as the American sphere of interest. Bush II is gone, but we are still stuck with the doctrine that allows open-ended political, military, and economic domination by the United States acting unilaterally and pledged "to keep military strength beyond challenge."

Any attempt by a single power to keep its military strength beyond challenge is inherently destabilizing.  Neither Napoleon nor Hitler knew any "natural" limits, but their ambition was confined to Europe. With the United States today, the novelty is that this ambition is extended literally to the whole world. Not only the Western Hemisphere, not just the "Old Europe," Japan, or Israel, but also unlikely places like Kosovo or the Caucasus, are considered vitally important. The globe itself is now effectively claimed as America's sphere of influence

The U.S. became the agent of revolutionary dynamism with global ambitions, in the name of ideological norms of "democracy, human rights and open markets," and NATO is the enforcement mechanism of choice. That neurotic dynamism is resisted by the emerging coalition of weaker powers, acting on behalf of the essentially "conservative" principles of state sovereignty, national interest, and reaffirmation of the right to their own spheres of geopolitical dominance. The doctrine of global interventionism is bound to produce an effective counter-coalition. The neoliberal-neoconservative duopoly still refuses to grasp this fact. Ukraine's decision to give up its NATO candidacy makes a modest but welcome contribution to the long-overdue return of sanity inside the Beltway "foreign policy community."

New Jersey Governor Proposes closings of state psychiatric institutions

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March 16, 2010

New Jersey Governor Proposes Deep Spending Cuts

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

TRENTON — Christopher J. Christie, the first Republican elected governor of New Jersey in 12 years, unveiled a $29.3 billion budget on Tuesday that relies almost exclusively on spending cuts to reverse the sagging fortunes of a state he sees as battered by the recession and choking on its tax burden.

To close a deficit that he asserted was approaching $11 billion, Governor Christie called for the layoffs of 1,300 state workers, closings of state psychiatric institutions, an $820 million cut in aid to public schools, and nearly a half-billion dollars less in aid to towns and cities. He also suspended until May 2011 a popular property-tax rebate program, breaking one of his own campaign promises.

Democrats were quick to characterize Mr. Christie's proposal as falling disproportionately on the backs of the middle class, the poor, the elderly, schoolchildren, college students and inner-city residents, while leaving largely unscathed the wealthy and most businesses.

But Mr. Christie was ready for that line of attack.

"Today, we are fulfilling the promise of a smaller government that lives within its means," he said at a joint legislative session here. "The defenders of the status quo have already begun to yell and scream. They will try to demonize me. They will seek to divide us rather than unite us. But even they know in their hearts, if not yet in their minds — it is time for a change."

Mr. Christie's budget stands as a stark example of how a fiscal conservative determined not to raise taxes grapples with the budget of a once-expansive, now-humbled state government in challenging economic times.

Over all, his budget would spend $29.3 billion, including $1 billion in remaining federal stimulus money. Setting that aside, it represents a 5 percent reduction in state spending.

New Jersey's budget crunch is hardly unique; dozens of states face similar predicaments. But a budget relying almost exclusively on spending cuts puts the state in a much smaller peer group, along with Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — all led by Republicans, a number of them with national aspirations.

"Time has run out, and the bill has come due," Mr. Christie said in a speech frequently interrupted for applause, mostly from Republicans.

The budget would probably mean higher property taxes for most homeowners, at least in the short term, as local governments try to make up for the diminished state financing. But the governor is also proposing constitutional amendments and legislation to cap property taxes and spending at the local, county and school-district level.

Mr. Christie campaigned last year attacking the teachers' and public workers' unions and their costly contracts, and his budget lived up to his words: The $820 million cut in school aid is 7 percent of the total funding, and the 1,300 state workers being laid off come from a work force of about 65,000.

The governor said "the watchwords of this budget are shared sacrifice and fairness," yet his spending plan calls for only modest tax increases on insurers and hospitals, eliminates the film-production tax credit, and halves a tax credit for high-tech businesses.

The battle to ensue is likely to shape up around the so-called millionaire's tax, a one-year income-tax surcharge on people making more than $400,000 that Mr. Christie vowed not to renew. (Democrats allowed it to lapse in December.) If that surcharge were renewed, it would bring in close to $1 billion.

In his speech, Mr. Christie affirmed his stance on the issue, saying New Jersey's tax burden was already the nation's costliest. "Mark my words today: If a tax increase is sent to my desk, I will veto it," he said.

He said that to accede to any tax increases would be to "kill a job market already on life support."

Democrats greeted this with dismay, while vowing to work closely with the governor on the budget.

"The fact that the governor took that higher income tax off the table, I think is a major mistake on his part," said the Senate president, Stephen M. Sweeney, a Gloucester County Democrat who has been an ally of Mr. Christie's in cutting public-sector pensions. "This is a very cold budget. There has to be a little more compassion for the middle class and poor, because all the burden is being put on them."

Indeed, Mr. Christie's budget would squeeze those with lower incomes by eliminating cash welfare for the able-bodied, imposing new $310 deductibles and doubling some drug co-payments for Medicaid patients, cutting state-financed school breakfasts and rental assistance and trimming the state's earned-income tax credit to 20 percent of the federal benefit, from 25 percent.

Jon Shure, an expert on state finances at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning group in Washington, said he believed this would be the first time a state had reduced its earned-income tax credit.

"That's the kind of decision that could be avoided by going for more on the revenue side," he said. "You're spreading the pain to the lowest-income working people in the state."

Mr. Christie also wants to make steep cuts in aid to towns and counties, impound the $88 million in sales taxes collected in urban enterprise zones, and eliminate efforts by his predecessor, Jon S. Corzine, to prod local governments to consolidate or share expenses.

Mr. Corzine cut property-tax rebates for homeowners last year, though he preserved them for the elderly, the disabled and people making less than $75,000. Mr. Christie, positioning himself as a champion of the middle class, attacked the cuts fiercely and vowed to restore a portion of the rebates.

But in his budget, he is now canceling rebates entirely until next year, when they will begin showing up as credits on quarterly property-tax bills instead of arriving in the mail as yearly refund checks.

He also wants to reduce by attrition the so-called senior freeze that caps property taxes for the elderly, by not admitting new homeowners into the program.

Mr. Christie pointed to a few areas that were spared: state parks, food banks, prescription-drug coverage for the elderly and health insurance coverage for children. He called for sizable increases in food-stamp eligibility and in charity care, which pays hospital bills for the indigent. But taxes on hospitals would rise by $45 million.

The governor took pains to mitigate some of his cuts. The sharp reduction in school aid will be apportioned to limit the blow to any one district to 5 percent of its current-year budget. Districts relying on the state for less than that will see their state aid eliminated. Administration officials could not immediately say how many fell into that category.

Similarly, a broad reduction in state aid to municipalities was structured to raise the tax bill of the average taxpayer in each town by $250.

Mr. Christie's idea for a 2.5 percent cap on increases in property taxes, modeled on Proposition 2 ½ in Massachusetts, would allow no exceptions except by local referendum and would apply to towns, school boards and counties. He also is calling for new handcuffs on towns and school districts as they bargain with unions, to prohibit towns from awarding contracts with pay increases, including benefits, of more than 2.5 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/nyregion/17budget.html?hp=&pagewanted=print