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June
28, 2001
THE
EMPIRE
SHOWS ITS HAND
Macedonia: The cards are on the table
After
a decade of moves and countermoves, wars and rumors of wars,
slaughter and destruction, it seems all the cards are finally
on the table this week. As Macedonia is in the process of
being sacrificed to the Empire’s crazed attack dogs, and Serbia
is being forced to sell out the elementary principles of law
for less than the customary thirty pieces of silver, the forces
behind both campaigns of destruction must feel a power rush
of epic proportions. They no longer seem to need the smokescreen
of rhetoric and platitudes to obscure their sinister scheming.
As temperatures rise, so does their arrogance, approaching
again the preposterous levels of Rambouillet and the beginning
of NATO’s aggression in the spring of 1999.
MACEDONIA
AFLAME
Last
Thursday, as the armed wing of the Albanian movement for destroying
Macedonia perched above Skopje with big guns, the Macedonian
government bent over backwards to negotiate with their political
wing in the lake resort of Ohrid. It seemed that Macedonia
would surrender peacefully, welcoming a NATO occupation force.
But
the Albanians played too hard. They rejected an offer to make
Macedonia a citizen-state, demanding equal right to nationhood,
veto power and vice-presidency in perpetuity. Macedonia’s
police minister walked
out, and so did President
Trajkovski. In a rare display of character, he even called
the Albanian negotiators "dishonest."
Why
would the Albanians want to be reasonable, though? To begin
with, the entire strategy of the EU, the U.S. and NATO has
been to force the Macedonians to appease every demand of the
Albanian political wing (PDP and DPS) in order to sideline
the militant wing (the UCK) – claiming all along that
the two are completely separate and mutually exclusive. If
so, why had one of the parties supported the bandits when
they first attacked Tetovo? Why had both parties signed a
protocol with the bandits and their KLA brethren, in the NATO-occupied
Kosovo city of Prizren last month? And why did both Albanian
political leaders subsequently refuse to renounce that protocol?
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
Further
proof of the politicos’ connection to the bandits came when
the Macedonian army charged
the bandit positions in Aracinovo, which threatened the
city of Skopje, the airport and oil refineries. Albanian politicos
immediately
started complaining, and this time NATO joined them. Then,
after two
days of heavy shelling, the bandits decided to give up.
They got on US army trucks, with all of their weapons, and
were chauffeured by a company of American troops to a nearby
village.
ENOUGH!
On
that evening, the Macedonian people had had enough. Thousands
rallied in Skopje, storming
the Parliament, chasing away government officials, demanding
Trajkovski’s resignation, shooting in the air and demanding
weapons. But their rage was also aimed at the foreigners who
gleefully aided in Macedonia’s dismemberment – journalists,
who have recently been prone to publishing distasteful and
manipulative rubbish, aimed at rationalizing Albanian demands
and presenting Macedonians as aggressors without even recognizing
their right to exist, calling them "Slavs" instead.
From
the New
York Times and the BBC to London’s Guardian
and the Daily
Telegraph, the western media have faithfully served
the cause of the Albanian militants – inviting the question,
of course, who exactly might be behind the Albanians?
TOXIC
ALPHABET SOUP
There
is the OSCE, a Euro-American organization ostensibly charged
with helping observe elections. Of course, that didn’t stop
the American spy William Walker from abusing the OSCE mission
in Kosovo to stage the Racak massacre for the KLA’s benefit.
Nor did it stop Robert Frowick, a veteran of electoral manipulation
in Bosnia, from arranging the above-mentioned Prizren powwow
of Albanian bandits and their political counterparts. OSCE
is, apparently, proud
it has "played a key role" in advocating "greater
constitutional equality and linguistic rights" for the
Albanians.
It
does not take a genius to realize that the EU always sends
Javier Solana to Skopje when they need to strong-arm the Macedonians
to appease the Albanians some more. Having "supported"
the Macedonian government for months by urging it to compromise
its basic principles – indeed, its very existence – the EU
has finally spelled it out: unless Macedonia surrenders right
ruddy now, we won’t
give it a dime in aid.
BARKING
OFF-KEY
Should
one even bother to single out Human Rights Watch, that annoying
yelping dog of the United States government tasked with barking
as loudly as possible at the enemy du jour? It was
the HRW that gave enormous publicity to a badly written and
entirely
phony-sounding pamphlet, allegedly printed by an organization
called "Macedonia paramilitary 2000."
Ought
one even bother to note that in the Balkans, no militia calls
itself "paramilitary"? Even the word (paravojska
in Serbian) sounds effete and derogatory. No, it is always
the "Guards," the "Lions," the "Tigers,"
the "Volunteers," the "Lads" – never,
ever "paramilitary." No self-respecting US street
gang would ever call itself the "hardened delinquents."
Similarly,
HRW and the media parade the fact that their IQ level barely
matches toast when they explain the term "Shiptar"
as "derogatory name for Albanians." Shiptar,
you see, is merely a transliteration of Shqiptar, an
Albanian word meaning…"Albanian." There is no "q"
in Slavic languages – Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian or any
other.
FOR
A FEW BARRELS MORE
Ambassador
Frowick’s secret treaty-making should have been a clear sign
the United States is involved in Macedonia far more than its
media would like the people to know. Even that might be just
the tip of the iceberg. A recent BBC report revealed an entire
secret
war the US waged in Bosnia, causing the war to last two
more years and claim 150,000 additional casualties.
Yet
one might still wonder why the Emperor of the Known Universe,
Lord Protector of Kosovo and Bosnia, God-Anointed Champion
of Democracy, Leader of the Free World, His Imperial Presidential
Majesty George II Bush would have any interest in helping
the pseudo-socialist
EU dismember a country that has proven a fairly faithful
US client.
Part
of the answer could be in the extremely
vocal Albanian lobby in the United States Congress. Another
part could be the current US government’s fascination with
oil, combined with the fact that Macedonia sits right on top
of the proposed
Balkans pipeline. Bulgaria and Albania control the ends
of the pipeline, though, which makes them far more important
US clients. Perhaps that is why the GIs are acting as UCK’s
van pool.
TEACHING
BY EXAMPLE
One
of the reasons the Macedonians are so apprehensive about fighting
back is the horrific lesson Washington has given their northern,
and much stronger, neighbor. Not only has Yugoslavia been
bombed in order to save the Kosovo Albanian separatists –
many of whom are now among the bandits in Macedonia –
but its current government largely owes its position to millions
of dollars in "aid" from Washington. And the United States
is determined to get a pound of flesh for every penny of it.
Last
Saturday, the Yugoslav government chose to violate
the Constitution along with the fundamental principles
of law, federalism and democracy. Aware that a law allowing
for extradition of Yugoslav citizens would never pass in the
Parliament, it issued
a government decree instead. Not only was this unconstitutional,
it also violated the rights of Yugoslav citizens, wrecked
the code of criminal law, and destroyed
the coalition with representatives of Montenegro, the
other part of the Yugoslav federation.
Blackmailed
by Washington and the EU, brow-beaten with a foreign debt
that miraculously tripled over just a few years, sapped by
relentless propaganda and itself filled with opportunistic,
unprincipled scoundrels,
it is a miracle the new Yugoslav government has resisted for
a full eight months.
Milosevic,
hated as he is both by Washington and the current regime in
Belgrade, is peripheral to the entire issue. At stake was
the principle of obedience to US wishes, superseding constitutions,
sovereignty, borders and logic. If Milosevic is indeed delivered
to Madeline
Albright’s pet court, it will be a small victory for the
politicians who fought him, a giant victory – and ultimate
justification – of NATO’s 1999 aggression, and a colossal
defeat for the people of Yugoslavia, especially the Serbs.
Given
all that, President Kostunica’s support of this blatantly
illegal action is at the very least baffling. If he thinks
temporary security can be bought by sacrificing liberty, he
must have skipped reading Ben
Franklin while translating Jefferson.
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