For the Initiated and Uninitiated
R.K.Kent
Judge May
We have decided to call upon witness against you Mr. Milosevic. It will be en endless procession before we can return to the broader charges against you and reiterate them more forcefully. In all fairness, I take it upon myself to ask you if you would wish to conclude your anterior self-defense in some relatively brief fashion?
Milosevic
You do not have any serious and credible witnesses that can sustain the charges that I worked against peace, that I am a war criminal and that I am guilty of the crime of genocide. And the reason is simple. The charges derive from a decade’s worth of propaganda and nothing more solid. But, I have anticipated that, on the one hand, you will give me the opportunity just presented but that, on the other, you will –as you have all too frequently done- disconnect the microphone through which I am allowed to speak. For that reason I have thought of two inspiring models. One is Emile Zola, the other Martin Luther. Thus, I have prepared my own Protestant and Accusatory Declaration which I am nailing on the door of this Tribunal by way of an already released text on the Internet. It will reach a dozen E-mail networks and upwards of 5 million recipients, within minutes. Too bad for the Tribunal that it does not have at least a learned Doctor Eck to enter into a really SERIOUS discussion with me
Judge May (interrupting),
I am suspending this afternoon’s proceedings in order to see a copy of your prepared text so that we know what we are dealing with.
Milosevic
‘Tis fine with me. I refer you to the posting on .www. Up.
Your.Arts.And.Sciences.com
A copy arrived by E-mail
It is Reproduced without anyone’s permission
And has not been cleared with
Either Judge May or the CIA
(the rhyme being unintended)
After the Fall of the Soviet Union the Western Tribes have lost their head. The Great America, which prides itself on being a nation of diverse peoples, religions and cultures had an Administration throughout the Nineties that did everything to destroy another similar if much smaller nation within the Yugoslav space. Its numerically major ethnic component, the Serbs, had been U.S, allies in Two World Wars. They even returned in 1944 some 500 downed USAF pilots to duty. The new Democratic Germany(or the Fourth Reich) could not resist paying back for the defeat of the Third Reich to which the Serbs made some heavy contributions in blood and guts. The New Germany supported in a host of ways the nationalist secessionists in Slovenia and Croatia, even with neo-Nazi German mercenaries. In the dark days of 1941, when England stood alone against the mighty Nazi war machine, the Serbs became England’s only open allies. Winston Churchill was ecstatic in the Parliament about the “Serb soul.” Less than six decades later , his successor at 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair, became the most vocal and bullying Serb hater among western leaders and has done everything he could to inflict all kinds of punishment on the Serb People. But, these are only some broad brush strokes, for flavor.
There are far more fundamental problems in the West which reveal its MALAISE and a state of ANOMIE, of loss of its DISCERNIBLE IDENTITY. It is drifting into a Nazi-like reincarnation, espousing the discredited Nazi geo-political cosmology. The explosion in communications has given the Western corporate media an unprecedented power to manipulate, often in savage fashion, their home publics. Where, in the old days, sacerdotal persons were the arbiters of morality, today this endeavor is in the hands of sensationalist media superstars, scribal and audio-visual. . They have dispensed altogether with such burdens as logic and respect of truth for its own sake. They CULTIVATE ignorance of History, especially since it takes time to learn it (Elle fatigue la memoire) and one cannot really write or read quickie books of any real value about it.
Anything is possible in this Brave New World of virtual realities --wars that are not wars, bombs that are humanitarian, especially when dipped into depleted uranium, constant and massive cerebral terror masked as a prelude to the creation of “civil societies,” the staging of mass graves, uncritical acceptances of deliberate disinformation from sources with vested political and economic interests, the destruction of non-capitalist economies with their social nets, the application of an Ideology on a global scale after attacking previous Ideologies for their inhumanities to man.
Take the present International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia since 1991. I have insisted that this Tribunal admit its own illegality and violation of International Law, such as it has developed since the times of its founder, Hugo Grotius, here in Holland. I do not expect, realistically, that Prosecutor del Ponte and others will divest themselves of triple perks and a very high standard of living but I do believe that it has slipped the leash of any civilized laws by fomenting and abetting the kidnappings of alleged “war criminals.” There are also two generic and most destructive aspects that STAND OUT for ALL to see.
The West has roundly condemned POLITICAL TRIALS with predictable verdicts in former totalitarian states. Today, its leaders are actively promoting them, mine being simply the currently most publicized and certainly the most politicized POLITICAL trial. What is even worse, the Tribunal has been and is –like its principal patron, NATO- a documented RACIST INSTITUITION. Both NATO and the Tribunal have completely expurgated “the Serbs” from the ranks of the human race. “The Serbs” became the sole “aggressors” in the Balkans, never anyone’s victims and when their victimization became too gross to be swept under the rug a visceral understanding was passed around as “justifiable retribution.”
During most of the initial three years in operation (1993-1996), this Tribunal and its Prosecutors have gone EXCLUSIVELY after the Serbs despite the tripartite nature of armed conflicts within the Yugoslav space. This was done despite deliveries, even in diplomatic mail (signed for by the Tribunal) of prima facie evidence regarding the horrors inflicted ON THE SERBS. “The Serbs” have been lambasted for their alleged intolerance of other ethnicities and religions. In fact, Serbia is the sole remaining part of former Yugoslavia that has 26 ethnicities within it involving several different religions, while Croatia, Slovenia and Kosovo, under NATO occupation, are virtually “Serb-free” (a point to which I will return) just as Croatia was “Juden frei” by 1943.
It is clear that neither the Tribunal nor its NATO patrons can ALLOW the Serbs to exit from an imposed condition of “perpetual aggressors.” To do otherwise would bring the whole edifice of NATO cards down end expose its transformation from a purely defensive alliance into a criminal aggressor, dominated by the sole remaining super-power and acting with impunity. In Bosnia, it has replaced the Gestapo with manhandling raids on families, at dawn. It has also made a new contribution to the Civilized World. It has managed to CRIMINALIZE WARFARE, It has done so by using awesome firepower from the skies, with all the hi-tech weaponry, to attack civilians and civilian targets while making sure that none of its own soldiers go back home in body bags. The wars with opposing armies and air forces, in which soldiers paid the maximum price, are relics of the past.
During a decade of brutal economic sanctions, of divide-et -impera policies reverting to the medieval reasoning by analogy (all the enemies of my enemy are my friends), we were told three MAJOR lies. The FIRST one was that this was a war against Milosevic, the “Butcher of the Balkans,” and not a war against the Serbian People. The SECOND was a condemnation of “Serb Nationalism” while supporting and even fanning the most nationalist elements in Croatia, Muslim Bosnia and among the Albanian population at Kosovo. To this very day, “the Serbs” are lectured by some of the greatest salon non-entities on the planet Earth how they MUST “confront their past” and, at the same time “:CURE themselves of their historical memory.” I would have loved to ask them, where shall the Serbs truncate their past and still make it understandable in terms of casualty and on what “moral” authority are the Serbs being told to undergo historical amnesia as well. Some have and are even trying to demand that the Serbs accept external versions of their past and, in the process, lose both their identity and what is left of their battered self-respect.
The THIRD and perhaps the most pernicious Big Lie was that the Serbs are an intolerant people as they “ethnically cleanse” the non-Serbs. There are in excess of 1,000,000 Serb refugees in Serbia. They had been “cleansed” as Serb ethnic minorities in Croatia (once constituting 14% of the total population), from Bosnia (were they had been the second largest population component) and from Kosovo, in the latest wave of local ethnic cleansing under the watchful eyes of 40,000 NATO troops and a U.N. Administration. As shouts of “genocide”: were being hurled at ”the Serbs” (and not just Milosevic), from Croatia and from Kosovo the fact remains that there were some 60,000 Croats and some 80,000 Albanians living in the Greater Belgrade area during the peak of hostilities. The Serbs did not molest, harass or threaten them –the very opposite of the behavior observed in Croatia and at Kosovo toward the local Serb minorities. Curiously or perhaps not at all, hardly anything was heard in the Western media to protest the attacks on the human rights of the Serb minority in Croatia, from the late 1980’s well into 1995. The same deafening silence envelops Kosovo since June 1999.
While the Tribunal at the Hague has indicted a few minor individuals from Croatia and from the Muslim-controlled part of Bosnia, most of the indictments concern what one side did to the other but not to the Serb civilian populations. When Srebrenica is invoked as the ultimate “genocidal” crime, one almost never hears of up to about 3,000 SYSTEMATICALLY raided and exterminated Serb peasants in the surrounding rural areas. The Bosnian Muslim commander at Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, (one time my own bodyguard) who led these raids bragged about them openly to foreign journalists and showed his own video tapes of the mayhem. After he had fled Srebrenica with his “elite” and large group of men just days before it fell to the Bosnian Serb Drina Corps, he became owner of a disco for U.S. soldiers at Tuzla. The Tribunal has, to this day, shown no interest in Nasir Oric.
The same applies to the Albanian General Agim Ceku. I once saw a picture of him in jubilant victory, locking hands with Sir Michael Jackson and Wesley Clark after Kosovo was turned over to the so-called “Kosovo Liberation Army” which Ceku commanded. He led the Croat “Operation Storm” in August 1995 which led to the “cleansing” of some 250,000 local Serbs from Krajina amid considerable atrocities. Even the Tribunal has been finally pertsuaded to do something about this event which, by the way, disappeared from virtually all Western corporate media within about two days. Until March-June 1999, it had been the single largest “cleansing” tragedy of all internal strife within the “old”Yugoslavia. Boith Oric and Ceku are shielded by NATO and especially its U.S. commanders. You become a “Butcher of the Balkans” like Milosevic when you disobey the supper-power desiderata but when you are a real and documented butcher of Serbs, as is the case of both Oric and Ceku, they become “laundered” of blood on their hands as U.S. and NATO allies.
The same applies to the increasingly noted subject of terrorism in discussions which somehow end in obfuscating it. For a whole year before NATO bombed Serbia and Kosovo, ethnic Albanian terrorists (so defined even by the U.S. State Department) killed, mostly from ambush., some 300 Serb policemen at Kosovo. The Albanian “revolt” under the banner of the “Kosovo Liberation Army” was financed mostly from abroad but when the Serb Third Army and local police turned on the KLA everything was done to deny a legitimate state its own self-defense. The KLA terrorists were transformed overnight into “Freedom Fighters.” They even fought for “American Values,” as one U.S. Senator put it. One will never know if he had Al Capone’s values in mind but there was nothing remotely resembling a single major American value within the KLA. Today, it is in-charge, in a less structured way, of much of the drug export into Western Europe, especially Northern Italy and Switzerland. It controls a large segment of white slavery rings that cater primarily to the NATO troops. In addition to expelling over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians (including some Christian and pro-Yugoslav Albanians), the KLA has kidnapped and assassinated over 1,000 Serbs within Kosovo since June 1999. The “ex” KLA terrorists are aided and abetted by U.S. field commanders to this day at Kosovo, in Macedonia, in Southern Serbia and in western Montenegro. This is done while the U.S. has gone half way around the globe to deal with terrorists who acted as such in New York and in Washington.
It is impossible to conclude without mentioning two major and pivotal events. For one, I was applauded as “Man of The Year” in the U.S. (Cover of Time Magazine). The other simply poured more mud on Milosevic for being “intransigent as usual” and “responsible” for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. I refer to Dayton in 1995 and to Rambouillet in early 1999. I shall say little of the former because it is well known that I went to Ohio. Instead of being charged and arrested for alleged war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, as is the new charge today, I signed the Accord. Rambouillet is a very different matter.
The Rambouillet Conference was a set-up to pave some sort of legal-looking grounds for the bombing of Yugoslavia, long in the making by the NATO commanders. The basic initial demand was an immediate return of Autonomy to Kosovo. When my Delegation agreed to so do, the KLA side refused to sign. Madeleine Albright and General Clark just about turned Kosovo over to the KLA in return for the “Albanian” signature. Then, Madeleine Albright upped the ante (“we raised the bar, so Milosevic could not jump over it,” she said later) with a sudden Appendix B, drafted overnight by a team of State Department lawyers. It demanded the stationing of NATO troops in Serbia without any interference or any restrictions and without any claims against NATO personnel, no matter what any of its units or members did. In short, it asked for the NATO occupation of Yugoslavia. What has not been revealed except just recently, I was willing to allow a restricted entry of NATO into Yugoslavia. Albright ‘s somewhat too immediate “answer” was that “Washington would not allow it.” My Delegation had NO CHOICE but to go home without signing anything. Tomahawks, Cruise missiles and bombs came next.
The unreasonable Milosevic had obliged the U.S. once before Rambouillet, with
another price tag. After an agreement between Milosevic and Richard Holbrooke, I
pulled my Army out of Kosovo. Apparently, back in Washington, Madeleine
Albright blocked any attempt to prevent the KLA from simply taking most of the
Kosovo over without a fight. When it so did I sent an enlarged Third Army to
eliminate the KLA altogether and “horror projections” flashed all
over the Western media.” Something needed to be done.” The answer came with the
Racak Massacre hoax which, in turn, led to Rambouillet.
After a decade of brutal economic sanctions, after the destruction
caused by eleven weeks of bombing mainly civilian targets and infrastructure,
after helping his opposition massively to defeat Milosevic in an early
election, and even after promising a lot of dollars to kidnap Milosevic and send
him to the Hague, the expressed MAIN concern is to arrest other prominent
Serbs and deliver them to the Hague Tribunal Nearly half of Serbia’s
labor force is without jobs. Social and economic misery has assumed huge
proportions and yet, the refugees who fled to Serbia, including many
pro-Yugoslav non-Serbs, are not in any camps. They share what little the rest of
the Serbs have. It is astounding how years of structured propaganda and cerebral
terror can deform a people whose stoicism, courage and basic simple
humanity outweigh by far their alleged or real shortcomings.
Let the world not be duped again in accepting Carla del Ponte’s
recent remark that the Serbs are not COLLECTIVELY on trial here, but just
Milosevic for “his crimes.” In order to survive into the 21st Century,
NATO needed a new enemy. General Wesley Clark admitted it in a documentary aired
on the PBS-TV about “What the War in Europe Accomplished.” General Nash,
in direct charge of the air strikes, stated himself that “:we
were out to break the will of the Serbian people,” a phrase repeated verbatim by
a U.S. Senator as well.
