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Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
April 12 , 2000
OUR WAR CRIMES, AND THEIRS
At the height of the Kosovo war hysteria, when we were being subjected to a
daily barrage of bawling refugees telling vivid horror stories of alleged
Serbian "atrocities," the estimates of dead Kosovars went as high as 100,000.
If "genocide" was committed in Kosovo, then where are all the bodies? This is a
question that the Western news media, and their overseers at NATO headquarters
in Brussels, dare not ask, let alone answer. For the fact is that, so far, a
full year after the Kosovo war was launched amid the self-righteous braying of
our "humanitarian" militarists, a grand total of 2,108 bodies have been
uncovered. How to account for the discrepancy?
TALL TALES
The reason is because every tall tale told by a Kosovar "victim" was considered
unbiased "testimony" and reported as "fact" by Western governments and the
media � and the story was, unsurprisingly, always the same. It was always the
Kosovars who were the victims, and the evil Serbs who were cast in the role of
"Milosevic's willing executioners," in the New Republic's typically hopped-up
phrase. The same methods were used to demonize the Serbs during the Bosnian
civil war, and now we have a spate of "war crimes" trials, with indictments
based on "testimony" of similar credibility. Bosnian Serb leader Momcilo
Krajisnik is the latest to stand in the dock for the "crime" of standing up for
the independence of the Serbian people: a few days ago, the NATO-crats came
knocking on his door in the night, dragging him out of bed and clapping him
into jail on the authority of a secret warrant issued by that star chamber
tribunal headquartered in The Hague. The gloating New York Times [April 8,
2000] account gives us the flavor of what life is going to be like in the new
world Tony and Bill and George and Al are building for us:
"Long a powerful figure, Mr. Krajisnik, 55, seemed just a slight figure in the
largest courtroom of the tribunal. Twice he tried to speak, first asking, 'May
I say a few words?' and then saying, "I would like to ask for a couple of
minutes at this hearing to say a few words in my own defense.' Both time Judge
[Richard] May [of Britain] cut him off, saying that no statements could be made
at this stage."
VYSHINSKY BACK IN VOGUE
Bound, gagged, and delivered before their tormentors, all who resist the New
World Order will grovel at the feet of the Tribunal's lord high executioners
and beg for mercy � or else find themselves in for long prison terms in the
Euro-Gulag. Communism may be dead, but show trials are even more vogueish than
ever. Not since Vyshinsky indicted Bukharin and Trotsky as agents of Hitler and
the Mikado have so many Stalinists had such a good time of it. Why, it's almost
like the old days of the Moscow Trials again, lacking only a Stalin of
sufficient stature to rival the towering evil of the original.
RESISTANCE
By a great coincidence, the arrest of Krajisnik occurred on the eve of the
Bosnian municipal elections � a model of the New Europe in which all Serbian
opponents of the NATO military occupation were banned from the ballot. In spite
of such measures, including the seizure of Serbian resistance radio and
television stations, and censorship imposed by the occupation forces, the
remaining Serbs, having been forcibly incorporated into the "multiethnic" state
of Bosnia-Hercegovina, stubbornly resist the NATO-ization of their nation.
Every effort to install a democratically-elected regime of Quislings has
failed, and the NATO-crats are fuming. The American ambassador, Thomas Miller,
complains: "I'm not interested in recommending to my bosses in Washington that
they put any money into areas where you have people who are doing all they can
to obstruct Dayton implementation." The Times> account of Bosnia's electoral
charade goes on to note that "such voting patterns have long obstructed
reconstruction efforts."
THE NAKED FACE OF EVIL INCARNATE
The history of these persistent voting patterns, and Western efforts to break
them, underscores the eerily Orwellian atmosphere of NATO-run Bosnia: In every
election held since the imposition of the Dayton Accords, the Serbian
Democratic Party, the party of Radovan Karadzic and Krajisnik, has maintained
full support in the Serbian regions, and the Croatian nationalists have
retained control of their own precincts. This time, too, it seems that in spite
of threats by the Western powers to starve them out and bring them to their
knees if they didn't vote the "right" way, the people outside the Muslim-
controlled urban centers such as Sarajevo have rejected the occupiers and their
collaborators. Yet still the NATO-crats issue press releases opining that these
elections augur the beginning of a "new era" � yet more evidence that the
forcible absorption of Serb and Croat communities into a "multicultural" state
led by a Muslim fundamentalist party is a glorious success. But what is truly
sinister is how brazenly the NATO-crats flaunt their authoritarian
proclivities, going so far as to post the names and "crimes" of those purged
from the electoral process on their website. This material, which reads like a
cross between The Trial and The Red Detachment of Women, is strangely
disquieting: it is like reading a transcript of one's worst nightmare, each
sentence building up to that truly terrifying climactic moment when the dreamer
is confronted with the naked face of evil incarnate.
"It is with considerable regret that the High Representative and the OSCE
[Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] Head of Mission announce
the removal from office of various public officials. These officials have
failed the voters who elected them by pursuing anti-Dayton, anti-peace, anti-
reconciliation and extra-legal agendas � especially at the local level where
their obstructionism hurts the very people they should be helping. They have
consistently refused to take ownership of the laws of their own nation by
refusing to obey the letter or the spirit of law, regulation and court
rulings."
A DEAD GIVEAWAY
There is something about the very language of totalitarianism that is always a
dead giveaway, no matter how hard they try to dress it up in the guise of
"democracy." Naturally, it is for London, Bonn, Paris, and Washington to decide
whom has "failed the voters" of Banja Luka, Note, too, the piling-on of
epithets, as well as the rather arcane sound of the epithets themselves: to be
called "anti-Dayton, anti-peace, and anti-reconciliation," in this context, is
like being called a "Trotskyite wrecker and spy" in the Pravda of the 1930s.
Written in the style of a letter announcing a death in the family � "we regret
to inform you" � this unsigned pronunciamento is in effect an obituary for
democracy in Europe. The eeriest parts list those elected officials
unceremoniously kicked out of office and summarize their alleged "crimes." We
learn, for example, that the Mayor of Banja Luka, Djordje Umicevic, has been
"removed for serious and persistent obstruction with regard to all issues
involving implementation of the General Framework Agreement for Peace.
Specifically, inflammatory statements creating a non-conducive environment on
returns and responsibility for non-implementation of Human Rights Chamber
decisions."
THE LINGO
The opacity of this totalitarian lingo, meant to obscure its real meaning, only
underscores its ominous aspect. Anything that lights up the linguistic murk
emanated by bureaucrats and their journalistic allies is, nowadays, considered
"inflammatory" � and in "free," "liberated," NATO-occupied Bosnia today, it is
a high crime for which you can be deprived of your right to vote and to run for
office, like Dragan Meter; the elected Mayor of Prozor-Rama, deposed for
"persistent and serious obstruction of the General Framework Agreement for
Peace, including discrimination against minority populations, failure to
implement agreements reached with the International Mediator, obstructing the
education of minority children, obstruction in enforcing property laws, and a
long and wide record of deliberate attempts to undercut reconciliation."
INTOLERANCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED
Translated into simple English, Mayor Meter wasn't going along with the
program, and so they purged him for having the wrong politics. That's
"democracy," Western European-style, for you � a little experiment in political
science, funded by the ever-generous American taxpayers, the implications of
which are ominous in the extreme. What is growing in the Bosnian laboratory,
nurtured by NATO and generously funded by American taxpayers, is a new kind of
European authoritarianism, one even more brazen than the last. This is clear
from the rhetoric of OSCE administrators, with its shrillness and unintended
ironies, which invariably give their pronouncements a comic opera air � such as
when some anonymous writer of OSCE press releases declares that the purging of
these politically incorrect Serbian officials should "once again make clear
that intolerance and obstructionism will not be tolerated."
THE "CRIME" OF MILADIN SIMIC
Reading on, we discover that Miladin Simic, the elected President of the
Municipal Assembly of Bratunac, has been "removed for persistent, serious and
aggressive obstruction to Annex seven of the General Framework Agreement for
Peace." Wow! Surely this is a "war crime" of major proportions: I mean, to have
your right to run for office revoked, it must be a serious charge indeed �
except it turns out that it isn't. "Annex seven" of the General Framework is a
long tirade of conditions imposed by the victorious Muslim-Croat-NATO forces on
the defeated Serbs concerning the treatment of so-called returnees. Second only
to a demand for "the repeal of domestic legislation and administrative
practices with discriminatory intent or effect" is an edict calling for "the
prevention and prompt suppression of any written or verbal incitement, through
media or otherwise, of ethnic or religious hostility or hatred." Under a not
very imaginative interpretation of these rules, an article reporting the news
of KLA ethnic cleansings in Kosovo, photos showing the burning of Serbian
Orthodox churches by Kosovar Muslim mobs, and probably more than half the
material on this website are all against the law in "democratic" Bosnia.
A THREE-RING CIRCUS
Along with Krajisnik's show trial, the upcoming "rape camp" hearings, and the
ongoing investigations of alleged Serbian war crimes, the Hague is being turned
into a three-ring propaganda circus that would've made Joe Stalin proud. Based
on the testimony of Bosnian Muslim "victims," which is never questioned, the
criminalization of all resistance to NATO, political as well as military, is
now to be officially established and given the imprimatur of the Tribunal. One
such Bosnian Muslim "victim" is cited in the Times piece on the Krajisnik
indictment: we are told that "prosecutors and defense lawyers alike sat
spellbound as the unidentified survivor described how column after column of
Muslim prisoners arrived by bus" and were shot down by Serbian soldiers.
Unidentified? In America, everyone accused of a crime is given the right to
face his accusers, to know their identity and answer their charges: in The
Hague, secret indictments are handed down based on the testimony of secret
witnesses. This is not anything Americans would recognize as a fair trial by
jury.
JOHN MACPHEE, SOLDIER OF DEMOCRACY
Whatever crimes Krajisnik may be guilty of, they certainly pale in comparison
to the crimes of NATO and the Western powers, who bombed civilians from 15,000
feet and poisoned the rivers and the land itself with "low-grade" radioactive
bombs. And speaking of war criminals, Britain's Sunday Herald [April 9, 2000]
reports that a Scots mercenary, who admits to having committed the most
sickening war crimes and boasted about them in a sensationalistic book, has
escaped prosecution by the International Criminal Tribunal. A Scottish bank
robber and all around criminal type, John MacPhee joined the Croatian militia
in 1992 after being released from Manchester's Strangeways prison. With a rap
sheet that seemingly begins at the moment of his conception, including drug
convictions and being a suspect in 13 murders, MacPhee was at one time on the
UK's most wanted list. But scratch an ordinary criminal, and you find a moral
idealist � a process that seems to work both ways these days. As the Herald
reports:
"MacPhee claims he found 'peace in war,' saying: 'After all my years in jail
and all the violence I saw in children's homes, I was basically a maniac. When
I heard about the Serbian atrocities in Bosnia I was in jail, and I thought
[that] my life has been a waste. I decided I'd go there and fight for something
I believed in.'"
CRIMES OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Now there was a likely recruit to the ranks of the US/NATO "humanitarian"
intervention: a vicious thug who had no trouble passing muster in the US-funded-
and-backed Croatian army, which carried out the cleansing of the Krajina region
in which thousands of Serbs were slaughtered and hundreds of thousands forced
to flee. In his book, The Silent Cry, MacPhee admits to what the Herald calls
"a series of barbaric murders." That is an understatement, considering the
following passage from his book. He has just arrived at a hamlet near the town
of Gorny Vakuf, where the retreating Muslim army has just raped, tortured, and
killed 37 men, women, and children:
"Two enemy soldiers were captured," he writes. "Guilty or innocent I knew they
had to die. I fixed my bayonet and before I knew it one of them was beneath me.
My hand was ripping at his flesh, my fingers gouging his eyes, I was becoming
worse than an animal ... my aim was to kill ... I bit into his face, blood
poured down my chin, my 18 inch knife stabbed and chopped and slashed. I
speared my bayonet into his neck one final time and lifted his body into the
air with such force that I broke the bayonet ... They shot the other enemy
soldier before I could lay a hand on him."
THE AMERICAN CONNECTION
Having such a way with words, not to mention a knack for giving the worst news
just the right "spin," MacPhee will soon be working for NATO, an even more
authentically working class shill than Jamie Shea. This demon admits to raping
and killing civilians, but defends himself masterfully: "I don't consider
myself a war criminal. I regret what I did, but I don't think it was wrong."
While in theory MacPhee could still be called to account by the Tribunal, don't
hold your breath. To focus on the atrocities committed by the Muslim and Croat
armies in the Bosnian civil war would inevitably bring up the issue of American
complicity. Reports of a group of retired American generals, operating as
"Military Professional Resources Inc.," and based in suburban Virginia, as the
real architects of the Krajina blitzkrieg were widely published at the time. In
1996, MPRI won the contract to equip and train the Bosnian-Croat army, then
fighting to crush Serbs who wanted out of the Federation.
THE TERRORISTS
Another MPRI alumnus, Agim Ceku, is now the commander of the "Kosovo Protection
Corps," whose members are currently engaged in what the London Observer called
a "reign of terror" in Kosovo. It was Ceku who commanded "Operation Storm," the
name given by its American sponsors to the four-day ethnic cleansing of the
Krajina, during which our friend, MacPhee, wallowed in blood to his heart's
delight. You can bet that none of these murderers, neither the commanders or
their blood-crazed stormtroopers, will ever be brought to the bar of justice by
the International Tribunal.
BY WHAT AUTHORITY?
And a good thing, too, for the most egregious aspect of this whole
International Tribunal business is the question: by what authority does this
exalted panel make its judgments? The NATO-crats invoke the Dayton Accords and
the joint declarations of the Western powers and their Muslim and Croat
protectorates, as well as the authority of the United Nations, but their
actions are essentially as lawless as any by MacPhee: the Serbian population of
Bosnia never agreed to be governed by the diktat of a transnational judiciary.
The Tribunal's "legal" authority comes out of the barrel of a gun, as Mao
explained the Marxist theory of the state. Of course, the Great Helmsman had in
mind the "dictatorship of the proletariat" established in the wake of the 1949
victory of the Chinese Communist Party over the Kuomintang, but the
dictatorship of NATO is no different in principle or operation. Neo-Stalinism
is the rising power in southeastern Europe, sponsored not by the old Stalinist
apparatchiks of Milosovic's sclerotic Serbian Socialist Party, but by the New
Labour-New Democrat-Eurosocialist alliance, the international champions of
"democracy" and "human rights." And if that isn't enough irony for one column,
then perhaps all of us are in danger of becoming just a little bit jaded.
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