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August
29, 2002
Balkans,
Unhinged
Open
Season On Logic And Sanity Continues
Given
the amount of sheer lunacy that has been exhibited in the
Balkans over the past decade, both by the Empire and its local
vassals, it is tempting to say that things could hardly get
any more irrational. And also very, very wrong. For just when
you thought it was safe to go back to the Balkans, the idiots
in charge of the place decide to reach shocking new limits
of both madness and sheer stupidity.
Scare
Tactics And Soccer
Two
weeks ago, NATO’s occupation troops in Bosnia launched
another operation to hunt down Radovan Karadzic, former
war leader of the Bosnian Serbs now accused of genocide by
the Hague Inquisition. Hundreds of troops, dozens of tanks,
vehicles and helicopters, held a backwater sliver of eastern
Bosnia under
siege for two days. Officially, NATO said
it was not after Karadzic per se, but was rooting
out his "support network" and "gathering
information." Unofficially, what was happening looked
suspiciously like a show of force aimed to intimidate the
local populace. Whatever it was, it
did not work. Very much like the Bosnian "peace process,"
actually.
"I
got a petuliar feelin that putty-tat is up to something..."
No
less hare-brained was the idea of holding a friendly game
of soccer between Bosnia and Yugoslavia last weekend. In this
part of the world soccer is not just a sport – it’s an obsession.
Fans don’t just wear their team’s colors: they form gangs
and bash other fans’ heads in. Soccer is war, only with rules.
Furthermore,
Bosnian Serbs don’t identify with the Bosnian state anyway,
and even less so when the national team has no Serb players.
So the match was really an internal ethnic conflict, with
Bosnian Serbs showing up to cheer for the Yugoslavs, and the
Muslims cheering "their" national team. When Yugoslavia
handily beat Bosnia 2:0 (in both the junior match and the
main event), the enraged Muslims rioted.
Serb fans had to be escorted
to safety by the police, and several people were injured.
Some have deemed
it progress that the game took place at all. Officials
from both soccer federations tried to put a positive spin
on everything. But the game has shown the truth: Bosnia is
nowhere near being a normal country, let alone a nation.
Pure
Hollywood
The
stupidest bit of news about Bosnia came from outside the country,
though. Former U.S. Air Force captain Scott
O’Grady sued Twentieth Century Fox studio for making "Behind
Enemy Lines," a bad, crass
propaganda movie (very) loosely based on his experiences
in the Bosnian War. O’Grady not only claimed unjust enrichment
on part of Fox and demanded billions
in damages, but claimed that the movie’s protagonist ruined
his image by "using foul language" and "disobeying
orders."
Problem
is, O’Grady said nothing when the movie was released last
year. He said nothing when the first DVDs hit the shelves
earlier this summer. He said nothing, until the movie made
some money. Now he wants a cut. He may find that a tad more
difficult than surviving for six days in the mountains of
Bosnia. As things go, he should be grateful Fox embellished
his story. O’Grady was shot down by an old, Soviet-made missile,
on a clear summer day. Even Hollywood thought that was stupid.
How
High?
After
the arrests of one former KLA commander and the indictment
of another two weeks ago, Imperial troops occupying Kosovo
have had to deal with raging
mobs demanding their release. According to the rioters,
the accused KLA leaders were heroes,
not terrorists. Since NATO violated international law
to help the KLA, and NATO is headed by the U.S., and the U.S.
is fighting terrorism, the KLA can’t possibly be terrorists,
right?
Mistakenly
believing that the occupiers were really cracking down on
terrorists, Serbia’s justice minister Vladan Batic requested
the arrest
and extradition of Hashim Taqi and Agim Ceku, wanted on
charges of terrorism, murder and armed rebellion. The UN response
was a predictable "No!", showing that the "crackdown"
on terrorists is about as serious as their "war on drugs."
Caring
little that Kosovo is a paradise for Albanian heroin smugglers,
the UN/NATO occupiers are going after those suspected of growing…
marijuana. Such is the zeal to stamp out pot in Kosovo, that
earlier this month NATO troops detained
Mother Efrosinia, abbess of the Gracanica Monastery, for
growing "marijuana" in a monastery field. Never
mind that the plant was really industrial hemp, grown throughout
the Balkans to make durable natural fabric. Never mind that
the 70-year-old abbess was a spiritual leader of a handful
of Serbs who barely survived the KLA’s campaign of murder
and rampage those same NATO troops did nothing to prevent.
Never mind that throughout Kosovo, church lands are being
seized by Albanians and the UN does nothing. Never mind that
the field in question was used by NATO as a helipad (without
compensation, of course), and was effectively expropriated
to begin with. So never mind the KLA, those pesky Serbian
nuns are the real danger for the 40,000 NATO troops
in Kosovo!
Maybe
someone should check what the NATO generals are smoking.
Serbian
Nukes and Other Tales
Last
week it was suddenly announced that a research reactor near
Belgrade contained enough uranium to make two nuclear weapons,
and that the materials were safely
evacuated to Russia with U.S. blessing and assistance.
Most
news stories dealt with the possible
dangers of the uranium in Serb hands: it might have been
sold to Saddam Hussein or Al-Qaeda; Milosevic had invested
in a nuclear program; and similar rubbish. Making a nuclear
device is actually astonishingly simple, and the hardest part
is getting the uranium. Milosevic had enough uranium for two
bombs, yet he neither made them, nor sold the material
to someone who would have. And it’s not like he couldn’t have
used the deterrent, or the money, over the past decade. Belgrade
was too civilized, or too stupid – or both – to get into the
nuclear game.
Thing
is, Milosevic’s Serbia would have never sold weapons to Al-Qaeda.
While the U.S. supported the fundamentalist regime in Bosnia
and the medieval
barbarians of Kosovo, Serbs fought them, and were
pilloried as murderers. Now Djindjic’s Serbia… that’s
another matter altogether. He sold his soul to the Empire
and most of the country to
the Germans, so what’s another "pragmatic" deal
if it helps fund "reforms"? In that light, maybe
the US-Russian uranium evacuation wasn’t such a dumb idea
after all…
Thou
Shalt Not Bear False Witness…
No
account of Balkans follies would be complete without the Hague
Inquisition, which this week continued
its process against Milosevic. After hearing its case demolished
by the former State Security head Rade Markovic last month,
the Inquisitors returned to the proven practice of calling
KLA
members to testify of "horrible Serb atrocities."
The
newest KLA yarn is that their members killed by NATO bombs
at the Dubrava prison near Istok were really "massacred"
by Serb guards. Yet if that was so, how come the "witness"
not only survived, but was transferred to another prison?
Were the Serbs that stupid? BBC’s reporter Jackie Rowland
volunteered to testify that the KLA was right, and the AP
has already declared her footage "consistent
with the testimony." But how, when the testimony
wasn’t consistent with itself?
Off
The Deep End
Perhaps
all this madness in the "trial" chamber has finally
unhinged even Milosevic. However canny and resilient he may
be in The Hague, he made a total idiot of himself in Serbian
politics last week, when he urged his party to
back fringe Radical Vojislav Seselj as the joint candidate
of the "patriotic opposition." While reasoning that
a joint candidate has better chances of beating both government
candidates (of which, more later) makes sense, his choice
stinks: Seselj is about as popular in Serbia as syphilis.
In
all honesty, the past decade in the Balkans has been a continual
open season on truth, logic, and sanity. What is happening
now is no more outrageous that the original decision to butcher
federal Yugoslavia in favor of its "republics,"
to divide Bosnia so it would be united, or to bomb Serbia
and occupy Kosovo to protect KLA’s "human rights"
to pillage, murder, rape and burn. So it’s accepted as normal.
But
it gets worse. This fall, most Yugoslav successor states are
holding elections, the ultimate Balkans reality show. Get
ready for politicians to compete for brownie points with Imperial
governors, occupation troops, international bankers, European
bureaucrats and NATO generals (oh, and their own people, if
time and money allow); for the press to show the world the
real meaning of "tabloid journalism"; and for the
people to yet again stuff the ballot boxes with votes for
their next chosen savior, despite having done so for years
with disastrous consequences.
Stupidity
is infectious, after all.
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