Author: Nebojsa Malic

Here’s Tucker Carlson, a conservative TV pundit who recently began questioning the whole Empire thing:
“I was thinking this morning: ‘Diversity is the strength of our country.’ Oh yeah? How’s that? Why don’t you explain that to me? I don’t see that. I mean, is diversity the strength of the Balkans? No.”
Took them long enough…

Photos of Nick Berg’s beheading weren’t shown to the general public, but a colleague of mine nonetheless remembered something similar she saw during the Bosnian War. Apparently, decapitation of captured Serb soldiers and civilians was rather common for the mujahedin fighting for the Bosnian Muslims. These photos were never published, either, not because they were too graphic, but because they were politically incorrect. The executioners were designated victims by most international media, while the victims were considered genocidal aggressors. Ten years later, the pictures survive – an eerie parallel to what is happening in Iraq.

Just as a quick footnote to the April 29 article about Balkans and the EU: the BBC reported that EU’s Commissar – er, Commissioner – Chris Patten was in Belgrade pressuring Serbia to submit to ICTY’s demands.
“He said compliance with the court was a key step on Serbia’s path towards becoming a member of the European Union”, says BBC (my emphasis).
So this wonderful new mega-state considers its fundamental values to be expressed by submission to an illegitimate, politically motivated, criminally abusive and unprofessional kangaroo court? What more incentive does one need to bid it good riddance?

Spearheading the movement that clamored for US (and Western) intervention in Bosnia in the early 1990s – and Kosovo in 1998-99 – has been a diverse group of people united around a desire to stamp out “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. Naturally, their definitions of these terms have been rather flexible.
While I don’t think these voices have been the prime mover behind the American Empire, they have certainly been its useful idiots during the Clintonian era. While under George the Lesser their influence seems to have waned in favor of the bloodthirsty oil imperialists, they have by no means vanished.
Witness one Melanie Kintz, who offered an attempt at sarcasm Monday while trying to cajole students of Western Michigan University to oppose ethnic cleansing… Continue reading “Genocide crusaders at it again”

I suppose Tony Parsons’ apology of sorts in yesterday’s Daily Mirror is a giant step forward on the road to that warmonger’s redemption. And yet, his argument is tained by a simple fact that his comparison (Slobodan Milosevic and Tony Blair) is facetious.
Parsons assumes Milosevic was guilty of aggression and atrocities, calling him “the man at the top, and the indisputable architect of a mountain of misery.”
Indisputable? Not so. In fact, Milosevic’s exact role in the Balkans Mountain of Misery is very much in dispute. Evidence presented at his “trial” shows only that the prosecutors have a rich but depraved imagination.
On the other hand, Blair’s atrocities, lies and aggression are all amply documented, because he took pride in them. The question, then, isn’t “Why isn’t Blair on trial if Milosevic is?” but “Why is Milosevic on trial, and not Blair?” Or Clinton. Or Albright. Or Holbrooke. Or Robertson. Or any other Imperial official with blood on his or her hands from 1999.
We’ve yet to get a satisfactory answer. Or any answer at all.

A retired Russian general made some explosive allegations last weekend about the NATO attack on Serbia five years ago. It was obvious that in June 1999, NATO double-crossed Yugoslavia and Russia, occupying Kosovo despite the terms agreed in the Kumanovo armistice; they never seriously intended to honor the agreement, or even UNSCR 1244. Now retired Russian general Leonid Ivashov claims his team had negotiated the original armistice, far more favorable to Yugoslavia, only to see it betrayed by a Yeltsin crony close to the Americans.
Now, the agreement he describes looks rather unlikely to have been accepted by NATO. Consider this, however. Russian troops arrived in Pristina shortly before NATO occupiers and the KLA. Someone in Moscow who ordered the deployment must have known or assumed that a deal was made with NATO to include a Russian presence. Yet not only did NATO block reinforcements for those troops, but General Jackson was given orders to shoot at the Russians by his mad superior, Wesley Clark. So either the Russians assumed too much, or there really was a deal, and NATO reneged on it once in a position of strength (i.e. in Kosovo, with the Yugoslav forces gone). Given NATO’s record of trickery, the latter is more likely. Which means that if Ivashov is right, NATO was prepared to agree to anything so long as it could get troops into Kosovo, and planned the treachery in advance.
Ivashov’s statements, reported by Belgrade daily “Politika,” can be read in Serbian here.
Here is a translation, for English-speakers: Continue reading “Double-crossed by NATO?”