[Blunderov] The news is full of Kosovos' unilateral declaration of independence. I recall when Rhodesia did the same thing and we all know how well THAT worked but perhaps Kosovo will fare better, who knows? The fact that George Bush approves of the move suggests to me this will not end well but perhaps he is not necessarily the kiss of death on every single thing to which he turns his attention; any day now a falsification of that hypothesis must surely arise and perhaps Kosovo will be the charm for him.
I wonder if he will be similarly sanguine about the cessesion of the Lakotah? I suspect not. I'm willing to bet that the "uniqueness" of Kosovo will not be deemed to be the same kind of "uniqueness" that would confer legitimacy on an independent Lakotah nation. We'll see.
"After declaring independence, Kosovo looks to cautious next steps President Bush hailed the controversial move, as the EU and UN met to form their responses."
Recently, our host was surprised that the Tomb’s American readership now equalled that of the UK. As an American, I'm not entirely surprised. Perspective is a bitter medicine, but once you realize you're living in a nation which doesn't admit its hegemonic relationship towards other States, but still expects to be obeyed by them without question, a fresh point of view is the only thing which convinces us that we're still the sane ones.
This slow creep to Empire began a long time ago. It now spans the globe, but its first victims are still at our doorstep. Before our 'special relationship' with Britain, before we were propping up and knocking down dictators to keep the sources of our energy reserves divided, there was the small matter of the people who were already living on this continent before we arrived. The most deplorable men of the 20th century looked to the American Reservation system as an example of how to deal with 'inconvenient' groups. With this history, and with the sorts of attitudes underscoring its design, it is no wonder that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is among the worst-managed branches of the American government. Since those subject to it have no say in how it operates, the BIA is run with the same 'genius' that decided to disband the entire Iraqi armed forces, from General to Private, so as to work from a 'clean slate.' Thanks to a court order in 2001, the BIA is cut off from the Internet to prevent them from losing any more of the Indians' funds in their care. As related in John Anderson's Follow the Money, the wholesale looting of everything the Bush Regime has their fingers in extended to the Department of the Interior and BIA. The infamous Jack Abramoff was involved in taking money from one tribe to lobby against another, then taking money from the party being lobbied against to lobby in the opposite direction, and while his days as a lobbyist with the scruples of an arms dealer are over, many reservations are still in ruinous condition.
Should someone be under the mistaken apprehension that the US moved smoothly from a conquest-driven, genocidal model to a faultless if bumbling bureaucracy, they may wish to reflect on the career of Dillion Meyers, who was placed in charge of the BIA from 1950 to 1952, and his successor, who followed many of his policies. One of the most interesting things about Meyers, apart from his conscious effort to abolish Indian hopes for autonomy by forcing the residents of the reservations to assimilate rather than renovating the reservations, was the job he had held previously. He was in charge of the Japanese interment camps during WWII, as Richard Drinnon relates in Keeper of the Concentration Camps.
Indigenous peoples across the world won a victory in September of 2007, when the U.N. general assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 143 to 4. (The reason that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States voted against it should be obvious.) A constant theme on Lenin's Tomb has been the Palestinians' right to, and need for, sovereignty. This is a need shared by the Lakota Indians in the United States. Unlike many of the tribes in the eastern US, the US government clearly treated the Sioux Nation as a sovereign entity prior to an expansionist campaign which left the Lakota without control over their own borders. In light of this recent UN Declaration, and the inability of the United States to comply with a succession of treaties it signed with these Indians' ancestors, prominent delegates reasserted the sovereignty of their nation in December of 2007. They argue that their recognized representatives are illegitimate patsies for the BIA, and have invited American citizens to join them in their new nation.
Their legal case, referencing national and international law, is laid out on the website of The Republic of Lakotah, an advocacy group working to promote a peaceful separation from the United States. They've also collected a sizable list of grievances against the US government.
Some have suggested that independence won't aid them in redressing their problems; however, it is difficult to see how exchanging an inept, corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs for a sovereign entity with control over its own borders wouldn't be preferable. As with the Palestinians, hopelessness is among the chief problems plaguing the reservation system. Alcoholism is also prevalent, and without the ability to control borders, activists have been arrested for preventing the flow of alcohol into the reservations.
Many have questioned the legitimacy of the activists. In response, I wonder who elected Nehru, Gandhi, Jomo Kenyatta, or Mandela, or any of the other anti-colonial champions of the 20th century. Many of those leaders were subsequently democratically elected by grateful citizens of newly reborn states. The process of independence for the Republic of Lakotah continues with Russell Means, an AIM co-founder and Republic of Lakotah spokesperson, visiting the Mohawk Indians to relate in his own words what they are trying to accomplish and to answer questions. They continue to seek the support of other nations, and considering the number of post-colonial nations in the world, have some reason to hope they'll be recognized. Bolivia's President is an Indian peasant by birth, and there are any number of governments outside of the American Hegemony (Venezuela, Cuba, Iran) who might recognize the young nation out of solidarity.
Means is, however, a problematic figure. He has had his differences with the rest of AIM in the past, notably when he travelled to Nicaragua to help organise Miskito rebels against the Sandinistas. The 19th century American capitalist ideology he appeals to was once championed by the same men who advocated extermination of his people. That the colonial powers were capitalist was not simply some accident of history, but rather this expansion is central to capitalism. Means is a libertarian, but past libertarian experiments have not fared well, to put it mildly. Should this enterprise succeed, it will do so because it is not, in fact, a libertarian experiment. Though damaged by centuries of abuse, there remains a core social structure, a central idea, of how the Sioux people relate to one another. Should this new nation be recognized by the Repubic of Ireland, by Bolivia, by Cuba, it is likely these groups will have as much impact on the new nation as Russell's libertarianism, and the culture which is to be preserved by this separation will have a stronger impact still.
It is my hope that the base Means is attracting is better than his faults and as good as his most worthy ideals, as this may well take decades to fully resolve and it will be those who are attracted to this cause now who see it through. Further, while Means is certainly the most visible activist promoting this cause, he is certainly not the only one. At this stage, calling attention to their legitimate right to secede from the United States, as well as present and past abuses, is much more important than whether or not they immediately are recognized as a country or the specific details of the form of that nation. Surely, there is a better answer than casinos for some and abject poverty for others. I, for one, wish the whole movement the best of luck. Hegemony ends one revolution at a time.
by Patrick J. Buchanan When the Great War comes, said old Bismarck, it will come out of "some damn fool thing in the Balkans."
On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip shot the archduke and heir to the Austrian throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, setting in motion the train of events that led to the First World War.
In the spring of 1999, the United States bombed Serbia for 78 days to force its army out of that nation's cradle province of Kosovo. The Serbs were fighting Albanian separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). And we had no more right to bomb Belgrade than the Royal Navy would have had to bombard New York in our Civil War.
We bombed Serbia, we were told, to stop the genocide in Kosovo. But there was no genocide. This was propaganda. The United Nations' final casualty count of Serbs and Albanians in Slobodan Milosevic's war did not add up to 1 percent of the dead in Mr. Lincoln's war.
Albanians did flee in the tens of thousands during the war. But since that war's end, the Serbs of Kosovo have seen their churches and monasteries smashed and vandalized and have been ethnically cleansed in the scores of thousands from their ancestral province. In the exodus they have lost everything. The remaining Serb population of 120,000 is largely confined to enclaves guarded by NATO troops.
"At a Serb monastery in Pec," writes the Washington Post, "Italian troops protect the holy site, which is surrounded by a massive new wall to shield elderly nuns from stone-throwing and other abuse by passing ethnic Albanians."
On Sunday, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized by the European Union and President Bush. But this is not the end of the story. It is only the preface to a new history of the Balkans, a region that has known too much history.
By intervening in a civil war to aid the secession of an ancient province, to create a new nation that has never before existed and to erect it along ethnic, religious, and tribal lines, we have established a dangerous precedent. Muslim and Albanian extremists are already talking of a Greater Albania, consisting of Albania, Kosovo, and the Albanian-Muslim sectors of Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
If these Albanian minorities should demand the right to secede and join their kinsmen in Kosovo, on what grounds would we oppose them? The inviolability of borders? What if the Serb majority in the Mitrovica region of northern Kosovo, who reject Albanian rule, secede and call on their kinsmen in Serbia to protect them?
Would we go to war against Serbia, once again, to maintain the territorial integrity of Kosovo, after we played the lead role in destroying the territorial integrity of Serbia?
Inside the U.S.-sponsored Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the autonomous Serb Republic of Srpska is already talking secession and unification with Serbia. On what grounds would we deny them?
The U.S. war on Serbia was unconstitutional, unjust, and unwise. Congress never authorized it. Serbia, an ally in two world wars, had never attacked us. We made an enemy of the Serbs, and alienated Russia, to create a second Muslim state in the Balkans.
By intervening in a civil war where no vital interest was at risk, the United States, which is being denounced as loudly in Belgrade today as we are being cheered in Pristina, has acquired another dependency. And our new allies, the KLA, have been credibly charged with human trafficking, drug dealing, atrocities, and terrorism.
And the clamor for ethnic self-rule has only begun to be heard.
Romania has refused to recognize the new Republic of Kosovo, for the best of reasons. Bucharest rules a large Hungarian minority in Transylvania, acquired at the same Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina were detached from Vienna and united with Serbia.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two provinces that have broken away from Georgia, are invoking the Kosovo precedent to demand recognition as independent nations. As our NATO expansionists are anxious to bring Georgia into NATO, here is yet another occasion for a potential Washington-Moscow clash.
Spain, too, opposed the severing of Kosovo from Serbia, as Madrid faces similar demands from Basque and Catalan separatists.
The Muslim world will enthusiastically endorse the creation of a new Muslim state in Europe at the expense of Orthodox Christian Serbs. But Turkey is also likely to re-raise the issue as to why the EU and United States do not formally recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Like Kosovo, it, too, is an ethnically homogeneous community that declared independence 25 years ago.
Breakaway Transnistria is seeking independence from Moldova, the nation wedged between Romania and Ukraine, and President Putin of Russia has threatened to recognize it, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia in retaliation for the West's recognition of Kosovo.
If Putin pauses, it will be because he recognizes that of all the nations of Europe, Russia is high among those most threatened by the serial Balkanization we may have just reignited in the Balkans.
Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence should not be recognized by Canada. It has not been authorized by the United Nations and is therefore in violation of international law, the United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Final Accords. In addition, UN resolution 1244, which ended the bombing of Serbia, reaffirms Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo.
The basic principles of territorial integrity and state sovereignty have governed the relations between states since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. While they have been violated many times in the intervening years, usually by acts of aggression by dictators, they remain the essential components of international law.
After the cataclysmic events of two world wars and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the framers of the United Nations incorporated the principles of territorial integrity and state sovereignty into the United Nations Charter. The Charter was seen as the primary safeguard of peace and security in a nuclear age. The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 reinforced these principles by adding to them the principle of the inviolability of borders.
These are fundamental principles and they have universal application. They cannot be set aside because of special cases or because they present an obstacle to the policy objectives of a powerful nation. Their message is simple and clear --borders cannot be changed without the consent of the state involved. In the spring of 1999 the U.S.-led NATO countries intervened militarily in Kosovo and, in violation of the UN Charter, bombed Serbia. The bombing was justified on allegations that genocide and ethnic cleansing were taking place in Kosovo. We now know these allegations were completely unfounded.
In the three years of armed conflict in Kosovo leading up to the bombing by NATO the UN estimates there were a total of 4,600 people killed during the fighting and this figure includes both Serbs and Albanians. In fact, so far there have been only a little over 2,000 bodies discovered. This in itself is a tragic figure, but it is not genocide.
As for ethnic cleansing it is now generally acknowledged that the mass expulsion of the Albanians took place after the bombing started. While there were thousands of Albanians displaced within Kosovo as a result of two years of armed conflict there was not a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing taking place.
Although the western media continue to justify the independence of Kosovo on the grounds of ethnic cleansing and atrocities committed by Slobodan Milosevic's security forces the facts do not support these allegations. They do stand, however, as testimony to the success of NATO's propaganda machine.
The intervention in Kosovo had nothing to do with humanitarian reasons but was deliberately designed to justify the continued existence of NATO and to fundamentally change its role from a purely defensive organization acting in accordance with the UN Charter into one that could intervene wherever or whenever it decided to do so, and with or without UN approval.
There have been numerous reports that western security agencies trained, equipped and armed members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and sent them back into Kosovo to assassinate Serbian mayors, police officials and Albanians who did not support their cause. It was a highly successful operation and it fuelled the armed rebellion by the KLA.
In August 1998 -- seven months before the NATO bombing -- the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee reported that, "planning for a U.S.-led NATO intervention in Kosovo is largely in place. ... The only missing element seems to be an event with suitably vivid media coverage that could make the intervention politically saleable. ... That the administration is waiting for a 'trigger' is increasingly obvious." That trigger was soon to be pulled. It was the highly suspicious "Racak" massacre that, as Madeleine Albright said, was the galvanizing incident that led to the bombing.
The bombing of Serbia by NATO without UN approval was a historical turning point. The precedent had been set. The UN Charter could be subverted if the military intervention could be cloaked and justified in terms of humanitarianism.
The intervention in Iraq was to follow but this time not all of the NATO countries went along with the American initiative. Many of those who supported the bombing of Serbia condemned the invasion of Iraq. There seemed some hope that a lesson had been learned- that violation of the UN Charter leads to a slippery slope and a return to the days when the resolution of international disputes would only be by the use of force. The recognition of Kosovo outside of the UN framework will set a dangerous precedent. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that Canada should make foreign policy decisions that are not only independent but are noticed by other powers around the world. Here is an opportunity for Canada to illustrate both of these objectives and stand firm for the UN Charter -- by saying no to the recognition of Kosovo.
James Bissett served as Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia.
Large Potential Albanian Oil and Gas Discovery Underscores Kosovo's Importance
by Stephen Lendman
Global Research, February 19, 2008
On January 10, Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corporation broke the news. Gustavson Associates LLC's Resource Evaluation identified large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. They are in areas called blocks A, B, C, D and E, encompassing about 780,000 acres along the northwest to southeast "trending (geological) fold belt of northwestern Albania."
Assigned estimates of the find (so far unproved) are up to 2.987 billion barrels of oil and 3.014 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. However, because of their depth, oil deposits may be capped with a layer of gas. If so, Gustavson calculates the potential to be 1.4 billion barrels of light oil and up to 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Further, if only gas is present, the discovery may be as much as 28 trillion cubic feet. In any case, if estimates prove out, it's a sizable find.
In its statement, Gustavson reported: "The probability of success for a wildcat well in a structurally complex area such as this is relatively high (because) it is in a structurally favorable area (and) proven hydrocarbon source and analogous production exists only 20 to 30 kilometers away."
Currently, the Balkans region has small proved oil reserves of about 345 million barrels, of which an estimated 198 million barrels are in Albania. Proved natural gas reserves are much larger at around 2.7 trillion cubic feet.
In December 2007, Albania's Council of Ministers allowed DWM Petroleum, AG, a Manas subsidiary, to assist in the exploration, development and production of Albania's oil and gas reserves in conjunction with the government's Agency of Natural Resources.
This development further underscores Kosovo's importance and the cost that's meant for Serbia. Since the 1999 US-led NATO war, it's been all downhill for the nation, the region and its people:
--Kosovo is part of Serbia; at least it was; since 1999 it's been a Washington-NATO occupied colony stripped of its sovereignty in violation of international law;
-- it's been run by three successive US-installed puppet Prime Ministers with known ties to organized crime and drugs trafficking;
-- it's the home of one of America's largest military bases in the world, Camp Bondsteel; the province/country is more a US military base than a legitimate political entity;
-- its part of Washington's regional strategic objective to control and transport Central Asia's vast oil and gas reserves to selected markets, primarily in the West;
-- on February 17 during a special parliamentary session, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence; the action violates international law; Kosovo is as much part of Serbia as Illinois is one of America's 50 states; to no surprise, Washington and dominant western countries support it; opposed are Serbia, Russia, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus;
-- might makes right; the issue is a fait accompli; the February 17 declaration ignores EU division pitting one-third of its 27 members in opposition; and
-- unilateral western-supported independence mocks the 1999 UN Security Council Resolution 1244; it only permits Kosovo's self-government as a Serbian province; the resolution recognizes the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;" only a new UN resolution in compliance with international law can change that legally; nonetheless, it happened anyway on another historic day of infamy when Washington again trashed international law and the rules and norms of civil society.
Global Research Associate Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at www.lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on www.RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussion of world and national topics with distinguished guests.
Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman
Someone with a good memory of the conversation once told me how Lord Carrington, then one of the "mediators" of the incipient post-Yugoslavia war, came to the conclusion that Slobodan Milosevic was a highly dangerous man. Well-disposed toward Serbia (as the British establishment has always been), Carrington told the late dictator that he understood Serb concerns about significant Serbian minorities in Bosnia and Croatia. But why did Milosevic also insist on exclusive control over Kosovo, where the Albanian population was approximately 90 percent? "That," replied Milosevic coldly, "is for historical reasons." It's a shame, in retrospect, that it took us so long to diagnose the pathology of Serbia's combination of arrogance and self-pity, in which what is theirs is theirs and what is anybody else's is negotiable.
We used to read this same atavistic proclamation by the hellish light of burning Sarajevo, and now we glimpse it again through the flames of the blazing U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, and by the glare of similar but less dramatic arsons set by Serbs in ski masks in northern Kosovo itself. But it needs to be understood that "Serbia" itself has lost nothing and has nothing to complain about. With the independence of Kosovo, the Yugoslav idea is finally and completely dead, but it was Serbian irredentism that killed the last vestige of that idea, and it is to that account that the whole cost ought to be charged.
Forget all the nonsense that you may have heard about Kosovo being "the Jerusalem" of Serbia. It may contain some beautiful and ancient Serbian and Serbian Orthodox cultural sites, but it is much more like Serbia's West Bank or Gaza, with a sweltering, penned-up, subject population who were for generations treated as if they were human refuse in the land of their own birth. Nobody who has spent any time in the territory, as I did during and after the eviction of the Serb militias, can believe for a single second that any Kosovar would ever again submit to rule from Belgrade. It's over.
But how did it begin? In fact, Kosovo has never been recognized internationally as part of Serbia. It was only ever recognized as part of Yugoslavia, and with the liquidation of that state Serbian claims upon its territory became null and void. A little history here is necessary.
During the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, the then-distinct kingdom of Serbia, with some regional allies, did manage to invade and annex a formerly Ottoman territory that had been the scene of a Serbian military defeat in—wait for it—1389. (In that year, England was laying emotional claims to large and beautiful areas of France.) Serbian monarchist and nationalist propaganda hailed the "liberation" of the ancestral land, but the shrewdest foreign correspondent of the day took a different line:
Do not the facts, undeniable and irrefutable, force you to come to the conclusion that the Bulgars in Macedonia, the Serbs in old Serbia, in their national endeavor to correct data in the ethnological statistics that are not quite favorable to them, are engaged quite simply in systematic extermination of the Muslim population in the villages, towns and districts?
Leon Trotsky, writing this in January 1913 as an open letter in the (Menshevik) paper Luch ("The Ray") was addressing the "liberal" Russian chauvinist politician Pavel Miliukov. So, as you can see, the arrogant Russian support for Orthodox Christian ethnic cleansing in the Balkans is not a new problem. (Under Russian President Vladimir Putin's pious rule, though, our own timorous press prefers not to call attention to the way in which Russian political thuggery is increasingly backed by an Orthodox religious hierarchy.)
The same Balkan war—as Trotsky had predicted—went on to draw in the whole of Europe and indeed the rest of the world, and by the time it ended, the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires had imploded entirely and there was to be a new state, Yugoslavia, where they had once jostled at the borders. You might argue that Kosovo was now part of Serbia by "right" of conquest (in other words, de facto), but in fact, not even Serbia had adjusted its own laws to make it a legal province de jure, and this was in any case moot because all future treaties and agreements were signed between Yugoslavia and the no-less-new state concept calling itself republican Turkey. Legal instruments agreed between these two entities recognized Belgrade's sovereignty over Kosovo, but solely in the sense that they recognized Belgrade as the capital of Yugoslavia. (For a more extended discussion of this essential constitutional point, see Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History.) Thus, and if we exempt some decisions made by Stalinist bureaucrats after the re-creation of Yugoslavia in 1945, Kosovo has never been treated or recognized as Serb territory within Yugoslavia and never at all by international treaties outside that former state. Even those hasty Stalinist decisions were later undone by Tito, who granted Kosovo a large measure of autonomy in 1974. It is very important to remember that Slobodan Milosevic launched his own petty and violent career, as the head of a Serb-Montenegrin crime family, precisely by canceling Kosovo's pre-existing autonomy in 1990, remaking himself as a nationalist demagogue instead of a Communist one, and bringing in the roof of the Yugoslav federation.
You will by now have read dark remarks made by partisans of the Russian and Serb Orthodox viewpoint, to the effect that if one "secession" is allowed, then what is to prevent every Gypsy or Chechen or Ossetian from proclaiming their own statelet? You should, first, ask if the Bosnian Serbs ought not to have thought of this first and been better advised by the "realist" or Kissinger school that now weeps such hypocritical tears. You should, second, ask if you know of any case comparable to the Kosovo one, where a national minority was so long imprisoned within an artificial state.
Of course, one ought to acknowledge that this is a calamity for the Serbs and indeed an injustice in the sense of an insult to their pride and history. But the injustice was self-inflicted. I remember seeing, in Kosovo, the "settlements" for Serbs that the Milosevic regime was building in a vain effort to alter the demography. And who were the bedraggled "settlers"? The luckless Serbian civilians who had been living in the Krajina area of Croatia until their fearless leader's war of conquest for "Greater Serbia" had brought general disaster and seen them finally evicted from farms and homesteads they had garrisoned for centuries. Promised new land on colonized Albanian territory, they had been uprooted and evicted once again. Where are they now, I wonder? Perhaps stupidly stoning the McDonald's in Belgrade, and vowing fervently never to forget the lost glories of 1389, and maybe occasionally wondering where they made their original mistake.
Serbs are a heroic nation proud of their glorious exploits. We have seen the latest such achievement in the arson attack on the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, along with similar violence against embassies representing other countries that recognized the independence of Kosovo.
Embassies symbolize international mutual respect and civility. But Serbs, who revel in their bravery when it comes to murdering children and old people – 1,200 children were deliberately killed by Serb snipers in the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995 – interpret diplomacy as aggression and attempted genocide.
In Belgrade, the stars and stripes has been torn down. What will now be said by the isolationists, Albanophobes, and sellouts to Serbian and Russian influence, inside the Beltway, who spent the last few weeks agitating against Kosovo independence? Will they be happy to see our flag burned? Our flag was torched because we were slow to assist the Kosovar Albanians in really securing their freedom against Serbian fascism, and, being generous, kept giving the Serbs more chances to change their ways. But Serbs do not change.
Of course, there are plenty of people inside America – supporters of the Ron Paul element in national politics – who will try to justify Serb violence against our embassy and flag, as they tried to deny the reality of Serbian mass murder at Srebrenica in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and at Racak in Kosovo.
In Washington and New York, we also have to bear with the “experts” at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), who boasted about their supposed victory in Belgrade in 2000, when the frowning fascist Slobodan Milosevic was replaced by the grinning fascist Vojislav Kostunica, now Serbian prime minister. The NED still brags about their “success” in backing the phony Otpor reform movement in Serbia. Some admirers of Otpor have the nerve to suggest a similar tactic be applied to support change in Iran. Thanks for that – by all means, let’s see Ahmadinejad replaced by a pseudo-alternative. The same NED hacks tell us that “dialogue” is possible with peaceful Islamists. Maybe it’s time for the people at NED to get real, honest work.
But I digress. Serbs are indomitable fighters. They were tough and courageous when they sold out the Jews, making Belgrade the first officially “judenrein” city in Europe. They were hardy and principled when their bogus patriots, the Mihailovic Chetniks of World War II, collaborated with the Italian and German occupiers. They claimed the Chetnik terrorists fought the Nazis and were betrayed when the Allies supported Tito’s Partisans. Serbs did not join the Partisans until it was clear the Nazis were losing. The Chetniks were too busy cutting the throats of elderly Bosnian Muslim women. The Partisans – mainly Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians – fought for our side.
The Serb lobby in the U.S. told us for decades how they saved U.S. Army Air Force pilots whose planes were shot down during World War II. They demanded special recognition, monuments, and medals, as if all the heroism was on the side of Serbian troglodytes and our pilots were mere technicians.
Serbs hate Muslims because Muslims wash before praying. As a Serbian Orthodox “theologian” put it, Serbs are unafraid of dirt, because, according to them, their souls are pure. Serbian “saint” Nikolaj Velimirovic Zicka was locked up in Dachau for three months in 1944. He blamed his imprisonment, and the war, on… the Jews! And the phony humanitarian Artemije Radosavljevic, a Kosovo Serb cleric who has toured the U.S. portraying Albanians as savages, was among the biggest promoters of the sainthood of this Jew-baiting Serb Christian “thinker.”
Serbs told the world for two centuries that they had defended the freedom of Europe against the Ottomans, when in reality they sold out to the Ottomans for the privilege of collecting taxes (the much-criticized Islamic cizye) from Christians under Islamic rule, and turned against the Ottomans only when Turkish power diminished and the Serbs feared the loss their status as tax farmers.
And lest we be fooled by Serbian propaganda, there would have been no Yugoslav wars in the 1990s but for the unwillingness of Serbia to surrender the tax and financial control it exercised, from Belgrade, over the rest of the peoples in former Yugoslavia.
That’s Serbian heroism. A lot like “Serbian truth” – a term used by Serbs themselves to refer to lying.
Serbian apologists in America like Lawrence Eagleburger appeared surprised by the embassy attacks. But everybody who has been in Kosovo, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Croatia in the past six months knew the Serbs would attempt to answer the independence declaration of the Kosovars with “Serbian statesmanship” – rioting, arson, desecration of our flag, attacks on the UN border posts in Kosovo.
The U.S. must be prepared for worse adventurism from Serbia. Airhead commentators on the news channels also acted shocked by an outcome they should have known was coming. Some of them recycled Serbian myths about Kosovo being the alleged “heartland” of their so-called “culture.” In fact, the Serbian heartland was in Raska, north of Kosovo. And Serbian “culture” and “civilization” have been displayed to the world once again, as they were when the Serbs in 1991 bombed and shelled the historic Croatian city of Dubrovnik – a city that protected Jews during World War II; when the Serbs raped 60,000 women and girls in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and when the Serbs tried to expel two million Albanians from their homes in Kosovo.
The whole world knows who the aggressors were in ex-Yugoslavia. But who stands behind crimes like the attack on our embassy? Such an action could not have taken place without the complicity of Kostunica, whose photograph was displayed waving a Kalashnikov when he ran for the Serbian presidency in 2000.
And behind the Belgrade political mafia stands the proud “former” KGB agent Vladimir Putin, who is using Kosovo to revive Russian meddling in Europe and restart the cold war. Putin is willing to provoke a repetition of that grand chapter in Serbian history, the Sarajevo assassination of 1914, which touched off the first world war.
America’s embassy in Belgrade is burning. Our flag has been torn down and set afire by the fearless Serbs. Americans should mute the repulsive gabble of the TV talking heads and just watch the spectacle, which speaks for itself. At least this is real history, not Serbian disinformation.
Let Serbs dance in the ashes of their undeserved reputation for honor and glory. They will be the black hole of Europe for a hundred years. Albanians kiss our flag and express their gratitude and love for us. Let us not forget who have been our honorable and truthful friends.
Stephen Schwartz is author of Kosovo: Background to a War, with a preface by Christopher Hitchens, published in 2000.
Re:Kosovo (and others?)
« Reply #5 on: 2008-02-23 10:37:33 »
hey B, not a newspaper link, but here's limbic's take on the whole sorry affair..he lives in that part of the world.
for those not in the know..limbic is a virian(ex?...i havent seen him in here for a while, but i am not current) who has an interesting blog and views that i dont always subscribe to...but i always enjoy parking there at his reading shelf.
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