March 19, 2010

NATO RiP? Well, Hopefully... by S. Trifkovic

NATO RIP? Well, Hopefully

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/exit-strategies/nato-rip/

Ukraine's announcement that it will pass a law that will bar the country from joining NATO has been greeted with barely concealed relief in Moscow, Paris, Berlin and Rome. It is also good news for the security interests of the United States. The time has come not only to give up on NATO expansion, but also to abolish the Alliance altogether.

Encouraging an impoverished, practically defenseless nation such as Ukraine to join a military alliance directed against the superpower next door, thereby stretching a nuclear tripwire between them, had never been a sound strategy. Article V of the NATO Charter states that an attack on one is an attack on all, and offers automatic guarantee of aid to an ally in distress. The U.S. would supposedly provide its protective cover to a new client, right in Russia's geopolitical backyard, in an area that had never been deemed vital to America's security interests.

From the realist perspective, accepting Ukraine into NATO would mean one of two things: either the United States is serious that it would risk a thermonuclear war for the sake of, say, the status of Sebastopol, which is insane; or the United States is not serious, which would be frivolous and dangerous.

President Clinton tried to evade the issue, over a decade ago, by questioning the meaning of words and asserting that Article V "does not define what actions constitute 'an attack' or prejudge what Alliance decisions might then be made in such circumstances." He claimed the right of the United States "to exercise individual and collective judgment over this question."

Such fudge cannot be the basis of serious policy. It evokes previous Western experiments with security guarantees in the region -- leading to Czechoslovakia's carve-up in 1938, and to Poland's destruction in September 1939 -- which warn us that promises nonchalantly given today may turn into bounced checks or smoldering cities tomorrow. After more than seven decades, the lesson of is clear: security guarantees not based on the provider's resolve to fight a fully blown war to fulfill them, are worse than no guarantees at all. It would be dangerously naïve to assume that the United States, financially and militarily overextended, would indeed honor the guarantee under Article V, or assume responsibility for open-ended maintenance of potentially disputed frontiers (say in the Crimea) that were drawn arbitrarily by the likes of Khrushchev and bear little relation to ethnicity or history,

A necessary and successful alliance during the Cold War, NATO is obsolete and harmful today. It no longer provides collective security -- an attack against one is an attack against all -- of limited geographic scope (Europe) against a predatory totalitarian power (the USSR). Instead, NATO has morphed into a vehicle for the attainment of misguided American strategic objectives on a global scale. Further expansion would merely cement and perpetuate its new, U.S.-invented "mission" as a self-appointed promoter of democracy, protector of human rights, and guardian against instability outside its original area. It was on those grounds, rather than in response to any supposed threat, that the Clinton administration pushed for the admission of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1996, and President Bush brought in the Baltic republics, Bulgaria, and Rumania in 2004.

Bill Clinton's air war against the Serbs, which started 11 years ago (March 24, 1999), marked a decisive shift in NATO's mutation from a defensive alliance into a supranational security force based on the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention." The trusty keeper of the gate of 1949 had morphed into a roaming vigilante five decades later.

The limits of American power became obvious in August 2008. Saakashvili's attack on South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, was an audacious challenge to Russia, to which she responded forcefully. Moscow soon maneuvered Washington into a position of weakness unseen since the final days of the Carter presidency three decades ago. The Europeans promptly brokered a truce that was pleasing to Moscow and NATO's expansion along the Black Sea was effectively stalled, with no major Continental power willing to risk further complications with Russia. They understood the need for a sane relationship with Moscow that acknowledges that Russia has legitimate interests in her "near-abroad."

America, Russia and NATO -- The Soviet Union came into being as a revolutionary state that challenged any given status quo in principle, starting with the Comintern and ending three generations later with Afghanistan. Some of its aggressive actions and hostile impulses could be explained in light of "traditional" Russian need for security; at root, however, there was always an ideology unlimited in ambition and global in scope.

At first, the United States tried to appease and accommodate the Soviets (1943-46), then moved to containment in 1947, and spent the next four decades building and maintaining essentially defensive mechanisms -- such as NATO -- designed to prevent any major change in the global balance.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been trying to articulate her goals and define her policies in terms of "traditional" national interests. The old Soviet dual-track policy of having "normal" relations with America, on the one hand, while seeking to subvert her, on the other, gave way to naïve attempts by Boris Yeltsin's foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev to forge a "partnership" with the United States.

By contrast, the early 1990s witnessed the beginning of America's futile attempt to assert her status as the only global "hyperpower." The justification for their project was as ideological, and the implications were as revolutionary as anything concocted by Zinoviev or Trotsky in their heyday. In essence, the United States adopted her own dual-track approach. When Mikhail Gorbachev's agreement was needed for German reunification, President George H.W. Bush gave a firm and public promise that NATO wound not move eastward. Within years, however, Bill Clinton expanded NATO to include all the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central Europe. On a visit to Moscow in 1996, Clinton even wondered if he had gone too far, confiding to Strobe Talbott, "We keep telling Ol' Boris, 'Okay, now here's what you've got to do next -- here's some more [sh-t] for your face.'"

Instead of declaring victory and disbanding the alliance in the early 1990s, the Clinton administration successfully redesigned it as a mechanism for open-ended out-of-area interventions at a time when every rationale for its existence had disappeared. Following the air war against Serbia almost a decade ago, NATO's area of operations became unlimited, and its "mandate" entirely self-generated. The Clinton administration agreed that NATO faced "no imminent threat of attack," yet asserted that a larger NATO would be "better able to prevent conflict from arising in the first place" and - presumably alluding to the Balkans -- better able to address "rogue states, the poisoned appeal of extreme nationalism, and ethnic, racial, and religious hatreds." How exactly an expanded NATO could have prevented conflicts in Bosnia or Chechnya or Nagorno Karabakh had remained unexplained.

Another round of NATO expansion came under George W. Bush, when three former Soviet Baltic republics were admitted. In April 2007, he signed the Orwellian-sounding NATO Freedom Consolidation Act, which extended U.S. military assistance to aspiring NATO members, specifically Georgia and Ukraine. Further expansion, according to former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, was "historically mandatory, geopolitically desirable." A decade earlier, Brzezinski readily admitted that NATO's enlargement was not about U.S. security in any conventional sense, but "about America's role in Europe - whether America will remain a European power and whether a larger democratic Europe will remain organically linked to America." Such attitude is the source of endless problems for America and Europe alike.

President Obama and his foreign policy team have failed to grasp that a problem exists, let alone to act to rectify it. There has been a change of officials, but the regime is still the same - and America is still in need of a new grand strategy. Limited in objectives and indirect in approach, it should seek security and freedom for the United States without maintaining, let alone expanding, unnecessary foreign commitments.

The threat to Europe's security does not come from Russia or from a fresh bout of instability in the Balkans. The real threat to Europe's security and to her survival comes from Islam, from the deluge of inassimilable Third World immigrants, and from collapsing birthrates. All three are due to the moral decrepitude and cultural degeneracy, not to any shortage of soldiers and weaponry. The continued presence of a U.S. contingent of any size can do nothing to alleviate these problems, because they are cultural, moral and spiritual.

NATO: unnecessary and harmful -- In terms of a realist grand strategy, NATO is detrimental to U.S. security. It forces America to assume at least nominal responsibility for open-ended maintenance of a host of disputed frontiers that were drawn, often arbitrarily, by Communist dictators, long-dead Versailles diplomats, and assorted local tyrants, and which bear little relation to ethnicity, geography, or history. With an ever-expanding NATO, eventual adjustments -- which are inevitable -- will be more potentially violent for the countries concerned and more risky for the United States. America does not and should not have any interest in preserving an indefinite status quo in the region.

Clinton's 1999 war against Serbia was based on the his own doctrine of "humanitarian intervention," which claimed the right of the United States to use military force to prevent or stop alleged human rights abuses as defined by Washington. This doctrine explicitly denied the validity of long-established norms -- harking back to 1648 Westphalia -- in favor of a supposedly higher objective. It paved the way for the pernicious Bush Doctrine of preventive war and "regime change" codified in the 2002 National Security Strategy.

The Clinton-Bush Doctrine represented the global extension of the Soviet model of relations with Moscow's satellites applied in the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Ideological justification was provided by the Brezhnev Doctrine, defined by its author as the supposed obligation of the socialist countries to ensure that their actions should not "damage either socialism in their country or the fundamental interests of other socialist countries." "The norms of law cannot be interpreted narrowly, formally, in isolation from the general context of the modern world," Brezhnev further claimed. By belonging to the "socialist community of nations," its members had to accept that the USSR -- the leader of the "socialist camp" -- was not only the enforcer of the rules but also the judge of whether and when an intervention was warranted. No country could leave the Warsaw Pact or change its communist party's monopoly on power.

More than three decades after Prague 1968 the USSR was gone and the Warsaw Pact dismantled, but the principles of the Brezhnev Doctrine are not defunct. They survive in the neoliberal guise.

In 1991 the Maastricht Treaty speeded up the erosion of EU member countries' sovereignty by transferring their prerogatives to the Brussels regime of unelected bureaucrats. The passage of NAFTA was followed by the 1995 Uruguay round of GATT that produced the WTO. The nineties thus laid the foundation for the new, post-national order. By early 1999 the process was sufficiently far advanced for President Bill Clinton to claim in The New York Times in May 1999 that, had it not bombed Serbia, "NATO itself would have been discredited for failing to defend the very values that give it meaning." This was but one way of restating Brezhnev's dictum that "the norms of law cannot be interpreted narrowly, formally, in isolation from the general context of the modern world."

Like his Soviet predecessor, Clinton used an abstract and ideologically loaded notion as the pretext to act as he deemed fit, but no "interests of world socialism" could beat "universal human rights" when it came to determining where and when to intervene. The key difference between Brezhnev and Clinton was in the limited scope of the Soviet leader's self-awarded outreach. His doctrine applied only to the "socialist community," as opposed to the unlimited, potentially world-wide scope of "defending the values that give NATO meaning." The "socialist community" led by Moscow stopped on the Elbe, after all. It was replaced by the "International Community" led by Washington, which stops nowhere.

The subsequent Bush Doctrine still stands as the ideological pillar and self-referential framework for the policy of permanent global interventionism. It precludes any meaningful debate about the correlation between ends and means of American power: we are not only wise but virtuous; our policies are shaped by "core values" which are axiomatic, and not by prejudices.

The Axis of Instability -- The mantra's neocon-neolib upholders are blind to the fact that, after a brief period of American mono-polar dominance (1991-2008), the world's distribution of power is now characterized by asymmetric multipolarity. It is the most unstable model of international relations, which -- as history teaches us -- may lead to a major war.

As I wrote in takimag.com a year ago, during the Cold War the world system was based on the model of bipolarity based on the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The awareness of both superpowers that they would inflict severe and unavoidable reciprocal damage on each other was coupled with the acceptance that each had a sphere of dominance or vital interest that should not be infringed upon. Proxy wars were fought in the grey zone all over the Third World, most notably in the Middle East, but they were kept localized even when a superpower was directly involved. Potentially lethal crises (Berlin 1949, Korea 1950, Cuba 1963) were de-escalated due to the implicit rationality of both sides' decision-making calculus. The bipolar model was the product of unique circumstances without an adequate historical precedent, however, which are unlikely to be repeated.

The most stable model of international relations that is both historically recurrent and structurally repeatable in the future is the balance of power system in which no single great power is either physically able or politically willing to seek hegemony. This model was prevalent from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) until Napoleon, and again from Waterloo until around 1900. It is based on a relative equilibrium between the key powers that hold each other in check and function within a recognized set of rules. Wars do occur, but they are limited in scope and intensity because the warring parties tacitly accept the fundamental legitimacy and continued existence of their opponent(s).

If one of the powers becomes markedly stronger than others and if its decision-making elite internalizes an ideology that demands or at least justifies hegemony, the inherently unstable system of asymmetrical multipolarity will develop. In all three known instances -- Napoleonic France after 1799, the Kaiserreich in 1914, and the Third Reich after 1933 -- the challenge could not be resolved without a major war. Fore the past two decades, the U.S. has been acting in a similar manner. Having proclaimed itself the leader of an imaginary "international community," it goes further than any previous would-be hegemon in treating the entire world as the American sphere of interest. Bush II is gone, but we are still stuck with the doctrine that allows open-ended political, military, and economic domination by the United States acting unilaterally and pledged "to keep military strength beyond challenge."

Any attempt by a single power to keep its military strength beyond challenge is inherently destabilizing. Neither Napoleon nor Hitler knew any "natural" limits, but their ambition was confined to Europe. With the United States today, the novelty is that this ambition is extended literally to the whole world. Not only the Western Hemisphere, not just the "Old Europe," Japan, or Israel, but also unlikely places like Kosovo or the Caucasus, are considered vitally important. The globe itself is now effectively claimed as America's sphere of influence

The U.S. became the agent of revolutionary dynamism with global ambitions, in the name of ideological norms of "democracy, human rights and open markets," and NATO is the enforcement mechanism of choice. That neurotic dynamism is resisted by the emerging coalition of weaker powers, acting on behalf of the essentially "conservative" principles of state sovereignty, national interest, and reaffirmation of the right to their own spheres of geopolitical dominance. The doctrine of global interventionism is bound to produce an effective counter-coalition. The neoliberal-neoconservative duopoly still refuses to grasp this fact. Ukraine's decision to give up its NATO candidacy makes a modest but welcome contribution to the long-overdue return of sanity inside the Beltway "foreign policy community."

# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Friday, March 19, 2010 0 Comments Links to this post

March 17, 2010

New Jersey Governor Proposes closings of state psychiatric institutions

March 16, 2010

New Jersey Governor Proposes Deep Spending Cuts

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

TRENTON — Christopher J. Christie, the first Republican elected governor of New Jersey in 12 years, unveiled a $29.3 billion budget on Tuesday that relies almost exclusively on spending cuts to reverse the sagging fortunes of a state he sees as battered by the recession and choking on its tax burden.

To close a deficit that he asserted was approaching $11 billion, Governor Christie called for the layoffs of 1,300 state workers, closings of state psychiatric institutions, an $820 million cut in aid to public schools, and nearly a half-billion dollars less in aid to towns and cities. He also suspended until May 2011 a popular property-tax rebate program, breaking one of his own campaign promises.

Democrats were quick to characterize Mr. Christie's proposal as falling disproportionately on the backs of the middle class, the poor, the elderly, schoolchildren, college students and inner-city residents, while leaving largely unscathed the wealthy and most businesses.

But Mr. Christie was ready for that line of attack.

"Today, we are fulfilling the promise of a smaller government that lives within its means," he said at a joint legislative session here. "The defenders of the status quo have already begun to yell and scream. They will try to demonize me. They will seek to divide us rather than unite us. But even they know in their hearts, if not yet in their minds — it is time for a change."

Mr. Christie's budget stands as a stark example of how a fiscal conservative determined not to raise taxes grapples with the budget of a once-expansive, now-humbled state government in challenging economic times.

Over all, his budget would spend $29.3 billion, including $1 billion in remaining federal stimulus money. Setting that aside, it represents a 5 percent reduction in state spending.

New Jersey's budget crunch is hardly unique; dozens of states face similar predicaments. But a budget relying almost exclusively on spending cuts puts the state in a much smaller peer group, along with Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — all led by Republicans, a number of them with national aspirations.

"Time has run out, and the bill has come due," Mr. Christie said in a speech frequently interrupted for applause, mostly from Republicans.

The budget would probably mean higher property taxes for most homeowners, at least in the short term, as local governments try to make up for the diminished state financing. But the governor is also proposing constitutional amendments and legislation to cap property taxes and spending at the local, county and school-district level.

Mr. Christie campaigned last year attacking the teachers' and public workers' unions and their costly contracts, and his budget lived up to his words: The $820 million cut in school aid is 7 percent of the total funding, and the 1,300 state workers being laid off come from a work force of about 65,000.

The governor said "the watchwords of this budget are shared sacrifice and fairness," yet his spending plan calls for only modest tax increases on insurers and hospitals, eliminates the film-production tax credit, and halves a tax credit for high-tech businesses.

The battle to ensue is likely to shape up around the so-called millionaire's tax, a one-year income-tax surcharge on people making more than $400,000 that Mr. Christie vowed not to renew. (Democrats allowed it to lapse in December.) If that surcharge were renewed, it would bring in close to $1 billion.

In his speech, Mr. Christie affirmed his stance on the issue, saying New Jersey's tax burden was already the nation's costliest. "Mark my words today: If a tax increase is sent to my desk, I will veto it," he said.

He said that to accede to any tax increases would be to "kill a job market already on life support."

Democrats greeted this with dismay, while vowing to work closely with the governor on the budget.

"The fact that the governor took that higher income tax off the table, I think is a major mistake on his part," said the Senate president, Stephen M. Sweeney, a Gloucester County Democrat who has been an ally of Mr. Christie's in cutting public-sector pensions. "This is a very cold budget. There has to be a little more compassion for the middle class and poor, because all the burden is being put on them."

Indeed, Mr. Christie's budget would squeeze those with lower incomes by eliminating cash welfare for the able-bodied, imposing new $310 deductibles and doubling some drug co-payments for Medicaid patients, cutting state-financed school breakfasts and rental assistance and trimming the state's earned-income tax credit to 20 percent of the federal benefit, from 25 percent.

Jon Shure, an expert on state finances at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning group in Washington, said he believed this would be the first time a state had reduced its earned-income tax credit.

"That's the kind of decision that could be avoided by going for more on the revenue side," he said. "You're spreading the pain to the lowest-income working people in the state."

Mr. Christie also wants to make steep cuts in aid to towns and counties, impound the $88 million in sales taxes collected in urban enterprise zones, and eliminate efforts by his predecessor, Jon S. Corzine, to prod local governments to consolidate or share expenses.

Mr. Corzine cut property-tax rebates for homeowners last year, though he preserved them for the elderly, the disabled and people making less than $75,000. Mr. Christie, positioning himself as a champion of the middle class, attacked the cuts fiercely and vowed to restore a portion of the rebates.

But in his budget, he is now canceling rebates entirely until next year, when they will begin showing up as credits on quarterly property-tax bills instead of arriving in the mail as yearly refund checks.

He also wants to reduce by attrition the so-called senior freeze that caps property taxes for the elderly, by not admitting new homeowners into the program.

Mr. Christie pointed to a few areas that were spared: state parks, food banks, prescription-drug coverage for the elderly and health insurance coverage for children. He called for sizable increases in food-stamp eligibility and in charity care, which pays hospital bills for the indigent. But taxes on hospitals would rise by $45 million.

The governor took pains to mitigate some of his cuts. The sharp reduction in school aid will be apportioned to limit the blow to any one district to 5 percent of its current-year budget. Districts relying on the state for less than that will see their state aid eliminated. Administration officials could not immediately say how many fell into that category.

Similarly, a broad reduction in state aid to municipalities was structured to raise the tax bill of the average taxpayer in each town by $250.

Mr. Christie's idea for a 2.5 percent cap on increases in property taxes, modeled on Proposition 2 ½ in Massachusetts, would allow no exceptions except by local referendum and would apply to towns, school boards and counties. He also is calling for new handcuffs on towns and school districts as they bargain with unions, to prohibit towns from awarding contracts with pay increases, including benefits, of more than 2.5 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/nyregion/17budget.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, March 17, 2010 0 Comments Links to this post

Ukraine's "No" to NATO: An Example for Serbia

http://www.balkanstudies.org

Ukraine's "No" to NATO: An Example for Serbia

By Srdja Trifkovic
Wednesday, 17 Mar 2010

Ukraine's decision to pass a law that will prevent the country from joining NATO should be a model for Serbia to follow. The government in Belgrade is still intent on seeking NATO membership, and it is still encouraged to do so by various ill-informed and not necessarily well-meaning Americans, such as Senator George Voinovich. His advice should be rejected: it is contrary to Serbia's interests, and detrimental to peace and stability in the Balkans.

Bill Clinton's air war against the Serbs eleven years ago marked a decisive shift in NATO's mutation from a defensive alliance into a supranational security force based on the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention." The defensive alliance of 1949 thus had morphed into a blatant aggressor in 1999. The bombing had a profound effect on the Russian perception of NATO. In the eyes of the Russians, it was aimed to prove that NATO is the decisive force in the post-Cold War Europe, and to reassert the leading positionof the United States in that organization. Better than any other post-Soviet event, the Kosovo war exposed the position of Russia in the new world order. Earlier warnings by Moscow's NATO-skeptics were suddenly validated: the US was attempting to encircle Russia, after all. This conclusion has not changed over the years. The National Security Strategy approved by President Medvedev in May 2008 and reiterated last winter identified NATO as a threat to Russian national security.

The Traps of Membership - If Serbia were to join NATO, it would inevitably face two major challenges: sharp internal divisions that would further undermine the country's stability, and Russian counter-measures. It is worth pondering what would Serbia do, once in NATO, if the US asked it to play host to elements of an anti-ballistic missile system, like those introduced to Romania? Far from treating Serbia as a friendly nation, Russia would be perfectly within her rights to respond by targeting Serbia with nuclear missiles. Clearly, in that case there would be a threat, but it would be a threat of Washington's own manufacture. Moscow views plans to deploy an ABM system in Eastern Europe as major threats to Russia's core security interests: if these plans were to come to pass, Russia's deterrent capability—the key to its security—would be drastically undermined. European Russia would be surrounded by hostile forces.

NATO and the uses to which Washington puts it constitute a messy tangle of contradictions. Outwardly, it appears to be what it always was: a defensive organization dedicated to collective security. Inwardly it is something else entirely. NATO's mission was to contain the USSR—universally perceived as a threat—through collective security: an attack against one would be an attack against all. Although NATO had a war fighting doctrine, it sought mainly to deter attack. In this it succeeded splendidly; but with Marxism-Leninism relegated to the ash heap of history, NATO morphed from a defensive alliance to fend off a commonly acknowledged threat into a vehicle for the attainment of the United States' global ambitions.

By virtue of its location, Russia controls the crossroads of Eurasia and therefore access to its huge natural resource wealth. As Washington craves cheap and easy access to that wealth, Russia is its target – and the U.S. has an ideology to complement its geo-strategic ambitions. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice described it succinctly: in U.S. foreign policy there is no distinction between ideals and self-interest, she asserted, they are one in the same. U.S. foreign policy is its values, and the US will stop at nothing to assure that its values prevail. The world is divided into two camps: one is made up of states that share U.S. values; the other of states such as Russia and China, who are consigned to a lesser status because their relations with the US are "rooted more in common interests than in common values." Some of Dr. Rice's statements reflected a mindset reminiscent of the early Bolshevik leaders' revolutionary dynamism: "It is America's job to change the world, and in its own image… The old dichotomy between realism and idealism has never really applied to the United States because we do not accept that our national interests and our values are at odds… We prefer preponderances of power that favor our values, over balances of power that do not. We have dealt with the world as it is, but we have never accepted that we are powerless to change to world."

Whether viewing U.S. foreign policy through the prism of geo-strategy or ideology, Russia remains in NATO's crosshairs. It has become an important means of changing the world in America's image. If Serbia were to join, Belgrade would be enlisting in a crusade to encircle Moscow for the benefit of those who bombed Belgrade for 78 days eleven years ago. Such policy would be not only geopolitically self-defeating, but also morally criminal.

At a time of extreme political, economic, military and moral weakness Serbia needs to pursue its key national interest—that of maintaining friendly relations with Russia. This cannot and will not happen if Serbia resorts to provocative acts such as joining a NATO bent on Russia's encirclement. In defining its security arrangement Belgrade should adopt certain criteria based on the conventional understanding of Serbia's national interest. They should include:

Attention to cost. The cost of force modernization required to meet NATO standards would overburden and overwhelm the already weak Serbian economy;

Refusal to commit Serbian forces and use them as American cannon-fodder in missions (e.g. in Afghanistan) not directly connected to the country's national interests;

Resistance to being pulled into geo-strategic alignments that are not in the national interest, that are overwhelmingly rejected by Serbia's popular opinion, and would only exacerbate regional tensions.

Serbia should seek its place within a European security architecture that embraces (and balances) the diverse security arrangements maintained by European states. They include NATO members, from Portugal to Estonia and Iceland to Greece; West European states that are not in NATO, such as Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland; ex-Communist countries with scant interest in or prospect of joining NATO (Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia); and Russia, which occupies a category of its own.

The reality is even more complex when the European Union is taken into account. Some states belong to both NATO and the EU—France, Germany, Britain, Poland and a host of others; some belong to the EU but not NATO—Austria, Finland, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and Sweden; some belong to NATO but not the EU—Norway, Turkey, Croatia and Albania. In rejecting NATO and working to establish a new security strategy Serbia would be establishing a security system that addresses not only its own needs, but those of all of Europe. Serbia is ideally placed to overcome the artificial division of Europe into "civilizational blocs" and serve as a bridge between the key parts of pan-Europe. There is more of a future for Serbia in this role than in becoming an apple of discord, an irritant in relations between East and West, and a satellite of a remote, unreliable, and often hostile foreign power.

# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, March 17, 2010 0 Comments Links to this post

March 13, 2010

"The Srebrenica Massacre" : Analysis of the History and the Legend

by George Pumphrey

Introductory statement

Under pressure from the ICTY tribunal in The Hague and the European Union, Serbia's President Boris Tadic is preparing to submit a resolution to the parliament in Belgrade, asking that the Serbian parliament acknowledge "guilt" for the Bosnian Civil War's "Srebrenica massacre" and declare that this "massacre" constitutes "genocide."
Subsequently, in an appeal (http://inicijativagis.wordpress.com/?s=appel) addressed to the Serbian president and parliament, intellectuals from EU nations, the USA and Canada called on President Tadic and the Serbian parliament not to pass this resolution. But the intellectual's appeal regettably overlooks two basic facts: 1) It is not for Serbs of Serbia to take on guilt for actions that they themselves have not committed or to declare Bosnian Serbs "guilty". 2) Evidence, that a mass-execution of up to 8,000 Muslims following the takeover by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica had ever taken place, has never materialized.

The debate around President Boris Tadic's resolution on Srebrenica has again focused the spotlight on this Bosnian town in the Drina Valley. Inspired by the ad hoc tribunal set up in The Hague to punish (Serb) war crimes during the Bosnian Civil War, the resolution is causing dissention about whether Serbia should plead mea culpa and beg forgiveness for the crime supposedly committed nearly fifteen years ago.
There are many aspects to this debate. Whereas Rasim Ljajic, Serbia's Labor Minister and President of the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, says that he believes it is "important that the resolution on Srebrenica is adopted for moral and political reason(s),[1]" other parties insist that there be a resolution condemning also the war crimes committed against Serbs.

An appeal to Serbian President Boris Tadic, signed by Serbian and foreign intellectuals, soon to be published, demands that the president reconsider his efforts to put through a parliamentary resolution that "would treat the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 as a paradigmatic event of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and doing so with language that could be interpreted as Serbia's acceptance of responsibility for 'genocide'."

The resolution of the Serbian government would have wide-ranging negative effects, not only on Serbia. But the appeal of the intellectuals currently in circulation inadvertently also makes a historical mistake.

It has been nearly fifteen years since Srebrenica was handed over to Bosnian Serb forces to make way for a ceasefire accord. [2] Those were 15 years of heavy propaganda about an alleged execution of 7,000 to 8,000 Muslims.

Though the appeal strongly confronts – with very good arguments – the Tadic kowtow, it makes the mistake of opening the backdoor for a similar kowtow later. To date, all those who have claimed that a mass execution had taken place, have been unable to prove it. Yet the appeal gratuitously admits that the alleged mass execution had happened, even seeking – if not to justify – at least to relativize the importance of what they assume to have taken place. The second paragraph of the appeal reads in part:
"The execution of Moslem prisoners in July of 1995, after Bosnian Serb forces took over Srebrenica, was a war crime, but it is by no means a paradigmatic event. The informed public in Western countries knows that, at that time, Serbian forces executed in three days approximately as many Moslems as Moslem forces, raiding surrounding Serbian villages out of Srebrenica, had murdered during the preceding three years."

Fifteen years ago, there was such a deluge of propaganda that only very few attempted to go back upstream to examine the evidence of a mass execution at the story's source.

If one looks back into the history of the legend of Srebrenica, one will find that a "Srebrenica Massacre" has at least six sources of origin.

1. Hakija Meholjic, former president of the (Muslim) Social Democratic Party in Srebrenica, who served as police chief, was one of Srebrenica's delegates in September 1993 to his party's congress in Sarajevo. After the war, in an interview to the journal Dani, he recounted what Alia Itzetbegovic had told his delegation before the congress began: "You know, I [Izetbegovic] was offered by [US President Bill] Clinton in April 1993 (...) that [if] the Chetnik forces enter Srebrenica, carry out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, (...) there will be a [NATO-US] military intervention." [3]

Though the Srebrenica delegates turned down the offer, this provides an indication of what was needed to sway Western public opinion into accepting a NATO intervention in the Bosnian Civil War on the Muslim/Croat side against the Serbs. The Clinton and Izetbegovic governments had already the idea of a "Srebrenica massacre," even before Serb forces had marched into Srebrenica, to lock Bosnian Serbs into a strategic position where they could only accept terms dictated by the West.

2. August 10, 1995, in the midst of the Croat "Operation Storm" against the Krajina Serb population – the largest ethnic cleansing operation of the period carried out with US official and mercenary assistance – US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, hijacked a closed session of the UN Security Council, which was about to open a discussion on Croatia's "Operation Storm." Albright showed aerial surveillance photos purporting to show that Bosnian Serb troops "committed wide-scale atrocities against Muslim civilians" in the aftermath of the July 12 takeover of Srebrenica. She was not more precise than to say "wide-scale atrocities against Muslim civilians." When the NY Times, the following day, reported on Albright's peep-show, the journal noted: "Ms. Albright's presentation today came as thousands of Serbian refugees fled their homes after a Croatian military offensive, carried out with tacit American approval, overran an area of Croatia previously held by rebel Serbs."[4]

While making her presentation to the Security Council, Albright was already preparing political and public opinion for the fact that there would be no evidence to back up her claims. She warned: "We will keep watching to see if the Bosnian Serbs try to erase the evidence of what they have done."[5] The question today is, where is all that evidence that Albright was keeping her eye on?

3. August 18, 1995 – also during "Operation Storm" – the Christian Science Monitor published an exclusive "eyewitness" account by David Rohde, their young ambitious correspondent working out of Zagreb. He claimed to have been to Srebrenica – "without the permission of rebel Bosnian Serbs, look[ing] into charges by American officials that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Muslims were killed by the Serbs after they overran two UN-protected 'safe areas.' (...) The visit by this reporter was the first by a western journalist to the sites of alleged atrocities near the former safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa," alleges the journal. In other words, he claims to have gone to Bosnia to confirm what Madeleine Albright had alleged, when she hijacked the Security Council meeting on "Operation Storm."

Journalist and author Peter Brock had long since exposed the methods of work used by western war propagandists, in his excellently researched trail-blazing "Dateline Yugoslavia"[6] report on the degeneration of the news media to become a party to the Bosnian Civil War. In 1993, he wrote: "Reporters tended to foxhole in Sarajevo, Zagreb or Belgrade and depend on their networks of 'stringers' and outlying contacts. Most arriving correspondents spoke no Serbo-Croatian, and interpreters were often domestic journalists or 'stringers' with established allegiances as well as keen intuitions about what post communist censors in the 'new democracies' in Zagreb and Sarajevo preferred. Reporters began to rely on aggressive government spokespeople - the government Information Ministry in Zagreb soon acquired scores of English-fluent publicists, and the Bosnian government also mobilized scores of handlers for the Western media."[7]

In Rohde's "eyewitness" account there was nothing that indicates that the author had actually been in Srebrenica. The article is illustrated with archive photos.There were no photographs of the things he claimed to have seen. Had Rohde written the article in a hotel room or a bar in Zagreb?

After winning the (politicized) Pulitzer Prize for his "Srebrenica reporting", David Rohde inadvertently admitted in an interview with Newsweek magazine (April 23, 1996) that he had not taken a camera on, what he claims to have been, his first trip to Srebrenica. The ambitious journalist, seeking his big scoop, traveled all the way from Zagreb to Srebrenica to gather proof of mass executions, without a camera?

Two months later, in October 1995, Rohde did go to Srebrenica and was obviously acting so suspiciously that he was arrested by Serb military personnel, who, according to Rohde, thought he may have been working for the CIA. The Bosnian Serb authorities seemed more than anxious to send him back west.

In his, above mentioned, Newsweek interview, he answers that his "biggest disappointment" about his October trip to Srebrenica was the fact that he was captured. "I was very frustrated because the Serbs ended up getting the film I had of these graves, which were the first ontheground pictures, pictures of the bones, pictures of the canes taken from old men." He takes a camera to Srebrenica in October and, from what he reports in the interview, acted in a way that would get him arrested. This allowed him to claim that they took his film "evidence".

In his Srebrenica "eyewitness" reports in August and in October 1995 Rohde writes of "evidence" of large scale executions, e.g. empty ammunition crates, piles of canes etc all meant to obviously create an image of systematic mass slaughter reminiscent of Auschwitz.

Given the fact that the ongoing exhumations were not producing evidence that could come anywhere close to the original claims of mass executions of between 7,000 and 8,000, Rohde too began to cover his tracks by using imprecise "ambushes," "massacres" and "series of ambushes". In his NY Times article (Jul. 25, 1998) he began referring to "ambushes and massacres" and 2 years later (NY Times July 9, 2000) he writes of "a series of ambushes and mass executions." He gives no indication of how many were supposedly killed in warfare – "ambushes" – which is no war crime. The term "massacre" is merely an emotionally charged term that says nothing about the circumstances.

Whereas David Rohde claimed to have found mass graves, other journalists, who set out on similar expeditions had different results. Mira Beham, a media analyst mentioned in her book, "Kriegstrommeln" (War Drums) that,

"During the months following the fall of Srebrenica, 24 international journalists, among them Mike Wallace of CBS, a BBC team and several CNN journalists attempted to follow the indications derived from the known US satellite photos and all on-the-spot information about known mass graves – to no avail. The results of their fruitless search were not made public."[8]

Although based in Zagreb during the largest ethnic cleansing operation of the Yugoslav civil wars, David Rohde never published an article on Croatia's "Operation Storm," while it was going on.

4. Srebrenica was handed over July 12, 1995. Two months later, September 13, the International Committee of the Red Cross issued a press statement which affirmed: "The ICRC's head of operations for Western Europe, Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000 persons from Srebrenica, whom witnesses say, were arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees) and for details of any deaths. The ICRC has also approached the Bosnia-Herzegovina [Muslim] authorities seeking information on some 5,000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached [Muslim controlled] central Bosnia."[9]

On September 15, when the NY Times reported on this ICRC press release, one finds a very different count: "About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica, the first of two United Nations-designated 'safe areas' overrun by Bosnian Serb troops in July, the Red Cross said today. (...) Among the missing were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. After the collapse of Srebrenica, the Red Cross collected 10,000 names of missing people, said Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman. In addition to those arrested, about 5,000 'have simply disappeared,' she said."[10]

Aside from adding the 3,000 Muslim men arrested in Srebrenica upon arrival of the Bosnian-Serb military to the 5,000 Muslim men, reported to have left Srebrenica BEFORE the arrival of Bosnian Serb forces – this NY Times report makes no mention of the fact that a sizable portion of the 5,000 group had already reached Muslim territory and that the Red Cross was asking the Bosnia-Herzegovina [Muslim] authorities for information about these 5,000.

The NY Times, on September 15, had not only distorted the statement of the Red Cross, it had also disregarded what it had printed in its own pages two months earlier. A few days after the takeover of Srebrenica, the NY Times (July 18, 1995) reported: "some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims, who were considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica, have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory."[11] Similarly the Times of London also reported on August 2, 1995, that "thousands of the 'missing' Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica, who have been at the centre of reports of possible mass executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of Tuzla. (...) For the first time yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an area north of Tuzla. They had made their way there from Srebrenica 'without their families being informed', a spokesman said, adding that it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area."[12]

The NY Times' distortion of the Red Cross' statement combining the 5,000 of the one group and the 3,000 of the other is still today – 15 years later – the official count of 8,000 "missing and therefore presumed dead."

5. Soon after Bosnian Serb forces took over Srebrenica, the Hague Tribunal brought new charges of "crimes against humanity" and "genocide" against the Bosnian Serb leadership, based on the false information spread in the UN Security Council and by the media. For the US government, the main objective was to block these Serb leaders from participating in the peace negotiations in preparation at that time and to pressure them to leave active politics in Bosnia Herzegovina.

Though the ground was soon to thaw in the spring allowing exhumations, theprosecution in The Hague was apparently not anxious to exhume the suspected graves, knowing these would not contain enough evidence for "genocide." They needed other trial-worthy evidence of mass executions to make their indictment of the Serb leadership plausible. They were happy to have the "eyewitness'" testimony of Dragan Erdemovic, a Croat, who served in a Bosnian Serb military unit comprised almost exclusively of non-Serb mercenaries.

In early March 1996, Erdemovic, who had fled to Serbia, made contact to correspondents of the (US) ABCTV station, claiming to have participated in mass executions in the vicinity of Srebrenica as a soldier in the Republika Srpska Army, and asked them to help him "escape to The Hague."[13] He explained that he had participated in the execution of 1,200 Muslim civilians. The journalists then introduced him to the correspondent of the (French daily) Le Figaro, which is credited with breaking this story.

In early March 1996, Erdemovic was arrested in Serbia on charges of having participated in mass executions, but, by the end of the same month, was transferred to the Hague Tribunal. At the time, the media had reported that he had made a deal with the Tribunal prosecution. In exchange for his valuable testimony against the Serb leadership, he was offered the benefit of the "witness for the prosecution" regulation, to be freed from prosecution and have a guarantee of a new life abroad.[14] Of course, the tribunal denied these reports. Even though Erdemovic arrived in The Hague as a witness, the tribunal soon charged him with crimes against humanity, for his role in the executions he had described. He was convicted (November 29, 1996) sentenced to 10 years, which were later reduced to 5 and subsequently freed to live under a new identity in a North Western European country.

Since his conviction, the number 1,200 is officially recorded as the number of civilians executed at the Branjevo farm near Pilica (July 16, 1995). Erdemovic has repeated this number in one trial after another: July 5, 1996 during the public hearing in The Hague of Pres. Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic – in absentia, again November 19 – 20, 1996 in his own trial, once more on May 22, 2000 in the trial against Gen. Radislav Krstic and again August 25, 2003 as a prosecution's witness in the trial against Pres. Slobodan Milosevic.

Erdemovic claimed that the 1,200 were killed within a period of 5 hours. He claimed they were taken from busses in groups of 10, walked 100 – 200 meters and executed by firing squad. But a simple calculation would have shown that, to have executed 1,200 people, as Erdemovic claims, it would have taken 20 hours if the entire procedure would have lasted but a record 10 minutes for each group. For Erdemovic's version to be true, it had to have taken but 2.5 minutes per group of ten. Neither the prosecutor nor the judge was interested in this calculation. What's more, according to Erdemovic's own testimony, the corpses were buried at the scene of the execution. At the Branjevo farm, there were 153 bodies exhumed. This would constitute a serious war crime, but it would not suffice for charging the Serb leadership with "genocide".

A long-standing observer at the tribunal, Germinal Civikov, provides insight intoErdemovic's real role. Erdemovic gave the tribunal the names of nine others, who, he implied, had participated in the executions or commanded the operation. Also based on his testimony, the prosecution built their case accusing the Serb leadership – not just in Bosnia but also in Serbia of having ordered the massacre of Srebrenica as part of a campaign of "genocide".

The Erdemovic trial was the result of a "plea-bargain," an official practice of blackmail used in more than 90 percent of court cases in the United States, with a growing application in European nations as well. The major part of the proceedings takes place before one enters the courtroom: in exchange for pleading guilty to a certain number of (lesser) charges, one is promised leniency. This saves the prosecution from having to prove that a crime had been committed and that the defendant was personally involved in committing it. But on the other hand, if the defendant, insisting on his/her innocence to all of the charges, asserts his/her right to a fair trial, if convicted he or she will receive the highest sentence possible, because of not having "saved the state the costs of a full trial."

As one author observed, the Erdemovic conviction was being "heralded as a great 'first' in establishment of global justice. [The Erdemovic] case is considered of great importance to the Tribunal since his confession of taking part in executing over a thousand Muslims after the Serb capture of Srebrenica is considered prime evidence in the Tribunal's 'main event', the future trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic."[15]

But there is a catch: "(...) inasmuch as he confessed to his crimes, there was no formal trial and no presentation of material evidence to corroborate his story. In any case, since he had turned 'state's evidence', there would have been no rigorous cross-examination from either a contented prosecution or a complaisant defense regarding the discrepancy between the number of Muslims he testified having helped execute at a farm near Pilica -- 1,200 -- and the number of bodies actually found there by the Tribunal's forensic team: about 150 to 200."[16]

Of the nine other alleged accomplices in the massacre, not a single one has been indicted or even sought. Not having any indication that other indictments were to follow for the mass executions, the presiding judge, Claude Jorda, expressed his astonishment during the first session of Erdemovic's (plea-bargain) trial (November 19, 1996) that the prosecution was not going to call other witnesses to the stand, nor seek the extradition of the other alleged members of the execution commando, whose names they already had. Are there any indictments against anyone except Erdemovic? asked Claude Jorda. Marc Harmon, the prosecutor, responded solomonically that the court must "see it perspectively." In any case, they do intend to bring charges against more suspects in this case – but the indictments are not to be publicly announced.[17]

On the contrary, the alleged commander of the commando, Milorad Pelemis, lives apparently carefree in Belgrade and occasionally gives interviews to Serbian or US journals. Another of the alleged accomplices, Marko Boskic, was discovered to be an immigrant near Boston, Massachusetts in the USA. He was arrested and indicted in early August 2004, for having given false information to obtain entry into the United States. By August 23, 2004, the tribunal had already informed the USA that they were not interested in achieving his extradition to The Hague. "We only have a limited mandate and limited resources," explained Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte's advisor Anton Nikiforov. "Boskic will not be indicted; the concentration must be on the leaders."[18] A strange reasoning for a case that is considered the largest and most horrendous crime in Europe since World War II. Could it be that the tribunal was afraid of having to sort out contradicting testimonies, since Boskic, during his interrogation by the FBI, had contradicted Erdemovic in a key point: the number of people executed on the day in question?

"Apart from the admission about the massacre, the key point about Erdemović's testimony is that he alleges that his unit acted on orders from the Bosnian Serb leadership. Yet as Čivikov shows[19] with excruciating attention to detail, Erdemović's own statements about the command structure in his little platoon are self-contradictory and untrue."[20] But the prosecution and judges have sought to maintain Erdemovic's version as the sole official account of what took place at the Branjevo farm, to insinuate that this sort of operation was not isolated but widespread.

It was during cross-examination in the Milosevic trial that things became a bit clearer. "As Milosevic said during his own gripping cross-examination of Erdemović – gripping because, whenever he [Milosevic] started to get close to the truth, Judge Richard May intervened to prevent him from pursuing his line of questioning – there were reports in Serbia of a rogue French secret service unit operating on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and later involved in a plot to overthrow him, known as "Operation Spider". There had also been reports that these people had been present at Srebrenica. The West, it is implied, 'needed' a big atrocity at Srebrenica, and it was indeed immediately following the fall of that town - and thanks largely to pressure exerted by the French president, Jacques Chirac, who took the lead on the matter – that NATO intervened and brought an end to the Bosnian war."[21] (See source number one.)

6. The last origin of the legend of a mass execution is the conviction of Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic in August 2001, six years after Bosnian Serb troops marched into Srebrenica, and five years after the ICTY began digging up every molehill in the area to look for bodies. According to the NY Times (August 3, 2001) Gen. Krstic was convicted "of genocide (...) for his role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims by Bosnian Serbs at the town of Srebrenica in July 1995. It was the first ruling of genocide in Europe handed down by an international tribunal." The NY Times failed to inform its readers that Gen. Krstic was not even present in Srebrenica at the time in question. But the article does give important information about the evidentiary basis of the Bosnian Serb general's conviction. The article indicates that "Tribunal investigators have exhumed 2,028 bodies from mass graves in the region. An additional 2,500 bodies have been located."[22]

This means that at the time of the verdict, the tribunal had no evidence that the crime Gen. Krstic was convicted of – the summary execution of "more than 7,000 people" – had ever been committed. In a region where a civil war had raged for years, the media and the tribunal parted from the thesis that Serbs were doing all the shooting and Muslims all the dying. During the process of exhumation, the tribunal showed neither interest in the identity of the bodies, nor in the times and causes of death. The tribunal did not even have evidence that more than 2,028 people were dead – regardless of when or under what circumstances they had died. How then could they convict him of the deaths of "more than 7,000" people?

Gen. Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison, 4.6 times the sentence of Adolf Hitler's successor, Admiral Karl Doenitz (10 yrs.) and 2.3 times the sentence of Albert Speer (20 yrs.), the Nazi's head architect.

There is a second legal aspect closely connected to both the Tadic resolution and the appeal of the intellectuals. The starting point of both is the affirmation that "the massacre" had taken place. Neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia was implicated in what was supposed to have happened in Srebrenica, Bosnia. What rights do they, President Tadic, the Serbian Parliament, or North American and European intellectuals have to declare for Bosnian Serbs that they should be guilty?

In September 2002, the Documentation Centre of Bosnia's Srpska Republic published its "Report About Case Srebrenica (The First Part)." This report was the result of years of research and investigations. Its conclusions were differentiated in spite of the intense pressure on Bosnian Serbs from the US/West European colonial administration represented, at the time, by Jeremy "Paddy" Ashdown. Under pressure of the colonial administration, the report was withdrawn from circulation, because it did not confirm what the ICTY, the EU and the USA had been claiming. Some copies had already made it into circulation. Both the Tadic resolution and the appeal of the intellectuals have ignored the results of Republika Srpska's research and investigative work.

From the very beginning of the civil wars that broke up Yugoslavia, it became clear that these were all anti-Serb wars. At any given stage in the breakup of Yugoslavia, local Serbs were being targeted as Serbs and because they were Serbs, be they Krajina Serbs in Croatia, Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Serbian Serbs in the province of Kosovo or throughout the rest of Serbia. For anti-Serbs "a Serb is a Serb is a Serb ..." regardless of what he does, how he thinks, how deeply he bows to the west or how tall and proud he stands as part of the human race. To anti-Serbs it makes little difference if it is Radovan or Marko Karadzic.

Srebrenica was important for involving Serbia in the Dayton negotiations, representing the Srpska Republic. With the accusation of mass executions in Srebrenica and an international arrest warrant for Bosnian leaders, Karadzic and Mladic, President Milosevic negotiated on their behalf. Remember "a Serb is a Serb is a Serb...".

History will judge whether this was a political mistake leading to the linkage of Bosnian Serb affairs – and fate – to Serbia. In any case, in public opinion it helped strengthen the strategic design of implicating all Serbs in whatever (wrong) any Serb does.

Over the past 15 years, the ICTY has been trying to pin a mass execution on Serb defendants with little or no success. Therefore they are putting the government of Serbia under pressure to admit to a war crime, it had nothing to do with. "A Serb is a Serb is a Serb...".

There are political forces, particularly in the German-speaking realm, who have sworn vengeance on "the Serbs" not only for having resisted Teutonic conquest throughout history, for being among the victorious in both the First and Second World Wars, but also because it was basically Serb initiatives and interests that united the Southern Slavs across religious lines to create a Yugo–Slavia.

West Germany could only shake off its stigmata as ex-Nazi, if it creates for public opinion a new group to be stigmatized as "worse than the Nazis". Over the past 15 years, some of these forces, particularly in media and politics, have sought to make Serbs "untouchables", not just Bosnian Serbs or Serbs of Serbia, but Serbs in general. A Serb "guilt" is supposed to replace "German guilt" left in public memory by the Second World War.

This can only be accomplished in trivializing German war crimes. Serbs are being accused of having executed up to 8,000 people. German politicians compared this to Auschwitz. In May (1999) a German court convicted the Gestapo helper Alfons Götzfrid to 10 years – suspended sentence – for "complicity in the murder" of 17,000 Jews, while, in the same month the German Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentencing of Bosnian Serb, Nikola Jorgic to 13 years (his sentence was not suspended) for "genocide" carried out on 30 Bosnian Muslims. Why is there no outcry at this historical revisionism? Why is the Serbian government participating in it?

The anti-Serb propaganda used to create this image, though widespread in the USA, did not originate in the United States and served no strategic purpose for US interests. In this case US-Americans were duped as much as West Europeans. Most US-Americans have no idea who the Chetniks, Handschars, Ustashi or Skandebegs were.

The German "Blut und Boden" ethnic concept of nation and national entity runs counter to multi-ethnic republics. During the post-war period (1945 – 1990), West Germany appeared cosmopolitan, in foreign policy it was discrete. With the annexation of the German Democratic Republic, some in the German leadership saw a chance for Germany to regain the old status as a leading European power, and therefore also as a world power, dictating its own conditions and rules. German European policy includes "Germandom" policy, a consolidation of German-speaking regions throughout Europe, while fomenting ethnic dissention, even secessionist strivings, among the ethnic minorities of other nations.

At the 6th Fürstenfeldbrucker Symposium for the Leadership of the German Military and Business, held September 23 – 24, 1991, the former CDU Minister of Defense, Rupert Scholz (who is an expert in constitutional law and was the spokesperson for the legal policy section of the right-wing Christian Democratic Party) explained why Germany should promote the breakup of Yugoslavia by recognizing the Slovenian and Croat secessionist Yugoslav republics. He explains:

"(...) the Yugoslav conflict undeniably is of fundamental pan-European significance. (...) We believe that we have overcome and dealt with the principle sequels (...) of the Second World War.[By this he is referring mainly to the annexation of the GDR, the German "unification" and regaining full sovereignty from the victorious WW II powers.] But in other areas we are today still confronted with overcoming the consequences of the First World War. Yugoslavia is, as a consequence of the First World War, a very artificial construction, having nothing to do with the right of self-determination. (...) In my opinion, Slovenia and Croatia must be immediately recognized internationally. (...) When this recognition has taken place, the Yugoslavian conflict will no longer be a domestic Yugoslav problem, where no international intervention can be permitted."[23]

When one looks in the direction of The Hague, one can easily understand why the President of the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, Rasim Ljajic, is so supportive of the government's resolution.

The Hague Tribunal has built its entire reputation on the thesis that Serbs – it doesn't matter which Serbs – committed genocide in Bosnia. Srebrenica is their "proof". Now that the ICTY is about to expire, they would like to "go out with a bang." That possibility was handed them on a silver platter when Dr. Radovan Karadzic was abducted to The Hague. Throughout the 15 years since Srebrenica, the ICTY has not assembled enough evidence to support either a charge of genocide – under the UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – nor one that summary executions of up to 8,000 people had occurred in Srebrenica, so they have put pressure on the Serbian government to make an official public mea culpa declaration. In exchange for its "cooperation," the Serbian government will be "taken into consideration" for eventual membership in the EU and/or NATO. But there is only one hitch: once the declaration is made, one cannot take it back and the nebulous promises being given the government in Belgrade are just that: promises and nothing concrete.

This all leads to a last very unfortunate aspect of the intellectual's appeal. Many of those who have already signed, are long-term activists for justice in the Balkans; some are among the few who have continued to criticize the travesty taking place in the inquisitions at the ad hoc tribunals both in The Hague and in Arusha. Some are authors, who have come under heavy attack and been slandered by the anti-Serb camp because they have placed the official Srebrenica version into question.

It is easily understandable that they would be among the first to recognize the multiple long-term dangers posed by the Tadic resolution. Unfortunately they overlooked that the second paragraph of the appeal is also a historical error. Signing their names to a document that unequivocally claims that mass executions had taken place in Srebrenica is a setback to the years of work that they individually have invested.

The appeal also points to existing skepticism in one of its later paragraphs, which reads in part: "More importantly, the issue is still not settled what really happened in Srebrenica in July of 1995, why, and who was behind it. The accepted version of events, shaped mainly by war propaganda and hyperbolic media reports, is becoming increasingly obsolete because it is being vigorously questioned and reassessed by critical thinkers in the Western world. Much reliable information on these events is still unavailable and needs to be researched, but without it responsible conclusions on the nature and scope of the Srebrenica massacre cannot be drawn."

The appeal should have maintained this skepticism throughout.

George Pumphrey was born in Washington D.C. in 1946. While living in political exile in Paris he became a French citizen in 1986. He is a long-time anti-racist and anti-war activist and independent researcher and author. He lives today in Berlin, Germany. He has written various articles among them, "The Srebrenica Massacre": A Hoax?

URL:http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bip/docs/kosovo_polje/srebrenica_hoax.html and together with his wife, wrote the book, "Ghettos und Gefängnisse: Rassismus und Menschenrechte in den USA" Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne, West Germany 1982

Notes

[1] "Parliament preparing two texts on war crimes," Blic, Jan. 12, 2010,http://english.blic.rs/News/5827/Parliament-preparing-two-texts-on-war-crimes
[2] In fact the takeover of Srebrenica was part of a territorial/population exchange to be able to reach a peace agreement before the US elections in 1996. Bosnian Serb forces were to receive Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazda while Bosnian Muslim forces were to be handed Serb areas of Sarajevo and Bosanska Krajina. This had been the plan. See Interview with Mihailo Markovic, Nordland, Rod, "Dayton: The Inside Story" Newsweek, February 5, 1996.
[3] Meholjic, Hakija; 5,000 Muslim Lives for Military Intervention; Interview by Hasan Hadzic in "Dani", June 22, 1998. (http://www.ex-yupress.com/dani/dani2.html) also mentioned in §115 of the Srebrenica Report of the UN Secretary General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35 (1998)
[4] Crossette, Barbara; U.S. Seeks to Prove Mass Killings; NY Times, Aug 11, 1995. Contrary to the NY Times article, the Krajina was not an area "held by rebel Serbs" but a region where Serbs had been at home for several centuries, in fact longer than Europeans had settled North America.
[5] Weiner, Tim; U.S. Says Serbs May Have Tried To Destroy Massacre Evidence; NY Times, Oct. 30, 1995
[6] Brock, Peter, Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press, Foreign Policy, Number 93, Winter 1993 – 94 pgs. 152 – 172.
[7] Ibid pg. 156 – 157
[8] Beham, Mira, Kriegstrommeln, Medien, Krieg und Politik; Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich (1996) pg. 228
[9] Former Yugoslavia: Srebrenica: help for families still awaiting news; ICRC News 37
[10] AP; Conflict in the Balkans; 8,000 Muslims Missing; New York Times; Sep 15, 1995; p. 8.
[11] Chris Hedges; Conflict in the Balkans: In Bosnia; Muslim Refugees Slip Across Serb Lines; New York Times; July 18, 1995, p. 7. The same day, the Washington Post reported the number closer to the upper estimate: "About 4,000 Bosnian army soldiers trudged for five days through Serb-held territory to escape from Srebrenica and reach a safe haven in Medjedja" (Pomfret, John; Bosnian Soldiers Evade Serbs in Trudge to Safety; Washington Post, Jul 18, 1995)
[12] Evans, Michael and Kallenbach, Michael; Missing' enclave troops found; The Times; 02 August 1995 p. 9.
[13] Klarin, Mirko; Defendant for the Prosecution: To the Prosecutors, Erdemovic is above all a valued witness; The Institute of War and Peace Reporting 1996
[14] cd sg Bosnien/UN/Jugoslawien; Tribunal verlangt in Belgrad Auslieferung von SrebrenicaZeugen, dpa 12.03.1996 12:57
[15] Johnstone, Diana; Selective Justice in The Hague: The War Crimes Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia is a Mockery of Evidentiary Rule; The Nation, 22.9.97
[16] Johnstone, Diana; Ibid
[17] Civikov, Germinal, Kalaschnikow auf Einzelfeuer: Der Fall Drazan Erdemovic, "Freitag," 16.09.2005 http://www.freitag.de/2005/37/05370801.php
[18] ibid
[19] See Civikov, Germinal, "Srebrenica. Der Kronzeuge" Promedia, Vienna, 2009
[20] Laughland, John, "The Crown Witness at The Hague", The Brussels Journal,http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3894
[21] Laughland op cit
[22] Simons, Marlise, Genocide Verdict for Ex-General, International Herald Tribune (N.Y. Times), August 3, 2001
[23] From the Protocol of the Bildungswerk der Bayerischen Wirtschaft "BBW-Dokumentationsreihe Nr. 20, 1991 pp 20 - 21

Global Research Articles by George Pumphrey

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18077

# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 13, 2010 0 Comments Links to this post

March 11, 2010

Milorad Dodik: Purely Islamic state set up in Europe

Purely Islamic state set up in Europe

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Published 04 June, 2009, 11:25

In Kosovo, a Muslim state has been allowed to spring up in the heart of Europe, says Milorad Dodik, the Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, one of the two parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

RT: What you make of the latest allegations against you? Do you think that they are politically motivated largely because of your ties to Russia?

Milorad Dodik: Of course the last thing you mentioned is a factor, but the main issue is the fact that foreigners, mainly westerners, have created institutions which they wish to keep under their control. Both the prosecutor's office and the criminal investigation unit, SIPA, are under their control, and in the past, whenever they wanted to destroy someone politically, they would use those instruments to try to discredit him. There have been several instances where high public officials, who were unsuitable from the standpoint of western officialdom, were prosecuted on concocted charges, only ultimately to be acquitted by the court.

A notable example is that of Mr. Sarovic, a Serbian member of the Presidency, against whom the prosecutor's office filed charges under pressure from Paddy Ashdown. He was kept in prison for a year and then ultimately exonerated in court. So there is a clear pattern where politicians who are not to the liking of the West are first demonized in the media, and then prosecuted on trumped up charges in an effort to destroy them politically.

This time around they miscalculated, and they failed to take into account our determination, and mine in particular, to see this through to the end. We will show them to be wrong. It is relevant to point out that the director of SIPA asked that the officials who were involved in this witch hunt be dismissed because they tried to set up an illegitimate parallel structure under the control of foreigners. This demonstrates that the main troublemakers here in Bosnia and Herzegovina are foreign factors, who are trying to hold on to their control and influence. Clearly, it is very convenient for them to keep their well-paid jobs in Bosnia and Herzegovina instead of being transferred to Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, where they would encounter real hardships. This is why they keep trying to find or fabricate problems.

So this story about me that they've fabricated must be seen in that context, and it will, of course, ultimately fail when it is properly scrutinized by the judicial system. Their goal is to show that there are issues and criminal structures in Bosnia and Herzegovina which make their continued presence here indispensable. It makes no difference to them that they have hurt me, my party, and the republic of Srpska, because they are not here to support and strengthen local institutions, but to undermine them and to turn them into obedient tools.

RT: How would you describe the economic and political relationship today between the Republic of Srpska and Russia, as one of the guarantors of the Dayton Peace Accords?

M.D.: Yes, of course, Russia is one of the guarantors of the Dayton Agreement, and we've always viewed with joy Russia's economic recovery and its return to the world stage as a significant player. That is not at all in dispute. That status, that Russia now has, helps the republic of Srpska by creating a more balanced correlation of forces. The republic of Srpska generally has had a negative connotation in the west and we were always being treated as offenders, even when we had done nothing wrong. So I think that Russia's voice can contribute to clarify things in a more objective way.

Russia's goal in this region is a stable peace that opens the way for co-operation with us. The basic pre-condition, which is the economic strengthening of Russia, has made it possible for Russia to enter other markets including our own, and that is why it came here. And I can frankly say that in all areas where I have worked with the Russians in economic matters, these were the most positive experiences that I've ever had and we've always had the best possible results.

RT: What are your views on Bosnia and Herzegovina joining the European Union?

M.D.: That is an option that we have supported and we can hardly avoid it because the other countries in the region are traveling down that road. We think that joining the EU could contribute to the stabilization of the region. However, we are not prepared to sacrifice our autonomy in the Republic of Srpska for the sake of any process of integration, including that of the European Union. Of course, there are many within the European Union who do not like to hear this, but the fact is that the internal affairs of various countries are not a proper subject of concern for Europe. We realize that certain conditions have to be met on the way into the European Union, and we are not opposed to that. What we reject is using European integration as a vehicle for the restructuring and re-composition of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

RT: How do you see the future of republic of Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

M.D.: That is an open question. It is a question that permeates our everyday and long-term issues, and the position on that question will vary depending on relations within Bosnia and Herzegovina at any given time. The thing that is fundamental for us is the permanence of the Republic of Srpska. It is beyond challenge and it is the Republic of Srpska that must function with all the competencies with which it was endowed by the Dayton Agreement. It must have its own institutions, its own government, its own president and parliament, its own way of life and, of course, its own place within Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is the only way that the framework called Bosnia and Herzegovina can be sustained. Otherwise, if we have to choose between Bosnia and the Republic of Srpska, we will always choose the Republic of Srpska. We are not questioning the framework called Bosnia and Herzegovina: it is a given. It is the result of an international agreement with many signatories, including ourselves. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a member of the United Nations, with corresponding privileges. But within that framework, we want to retain the full measure of our autonomy and to exercise all our rights, and we want to fully safeguard all our interests within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

RT: How do you see Muslims, Serbs, Bosnians and Croats living together in the future? Isn't that something that Tito tried to achieve and failed?

M.D.: All these years there has been talk of living together, but that, of course, has to be on the basis of mutual respect without anybody imposing their own will upon the rest and without anybody being out-voted. And of course, just when we thought the issue of ethnic relations in the former Yugoslavia had been resolved, a brutal war broke out in which no-one was innocent. There are just people who suffered more and those who suffered less, and greater and lesser war criminals. But these are effects that should be dealt with by legal institutions.

Of course, along the way to European integration, we have to make some adaptations, but only on condition that everybody's rights are respected, and that no-one is humiliated and imposed upon in the process.

RT: Is a multi-ethnic state possible again in the Balkans?

M.D.: We heard from people from the West when Kosovo's independence was proclaimed, that living together was impossible there. Allegedly, that was the basic reason for separating Kosovo from Serbia. But now we hear them say that a multi-ethnic life must be built in Kosovo itself. That is a very strange position, because if multi-ethnic life was not possible a year ago, how could it be possible in the future? It is the same here. It depends how you define your basic terms. If by multi-ethnicity you mean peace and security for all, I accept that. That is something that I have to provide for everybody. Peace and security is a pre-condition for everything else. When we talk about the European Union, we cannot say that anyone who joined it has therefore lost their identity or whatever attributes of sovereignty they brought into it. So this is our way of looking at that issue. But if what they have in mind is to wipe out national identity and to promote multi-ethnicity at its expense; that is something that simply will not work at all anymore.

RT: Would the Republic of Srpska ever deal with an independent Kosovo?

M.D.: No, not until Serbia settles its own relations with Kosovo. We had a completely absurd situation where many in the West thought, when Kosovo declared its unilateral independence, that the republic of Srpska was just waiting for that moment to declare its own independence. There was fear of destabilization here, and many were concerned about the possibility of armed conflict as well. But the Republic of Srpska sailed through it all peacefully, aware of what it can and cannot do. We are not a separate country but we can influence the organs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will never recognize an independent Kosovo. For that decision to be made, the consent of the Serbs is required, and it will never be given. I am not saying that Kosovo should be returned to Serbian sovereignty at any price, but a portion of Kosovo – yes. The portion of Kosovo that is inhabited mainly by Serbs should be allowed to remain in Serbia, following the same principle upon which the Albanians relied in order to separate from Serbia.

RT: It has been proven that the 9/11 attacks on the US were planned in Bosnia and some of the attackers in fact had Bosnian passports. The same is true for Spain and Mumbai. Why are western countries not cracking down more on Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

M.D.: Clearly the west has an issue with the Islamic world, and they need an oasis where they can say that their conflict is not with Islam as such, but only with extremist organizations. Of course, that relationship is more complex, and oil fields and the like in various Arab countries are also a big factor within it. When western countries recognized the independence of Kosovo, that was touted as proof that the West is not opposed to Islam as such, although, semi-officially, quite a few western officials have stated that they will never allow a purely Islamic state to be set up in Europe.

Of course, there is a paradox, because in Kosovo they have allowed a Muslim state to spring up, but in Bosnia they would not permit Serbs and Croats to separate, leaving Bosnian Muslims in control of a state of their own. Experience has shown that there were a significant number of Mujahideen in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war – about 4,000 – and that they were being trained for operations not only here, but elsewhere, to the point where no important terrorist operation was undertaken anywhere in the world that did not have a link to a Mujahideen unit that had been based in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war. We know that there are still about 140 Mujahideen in the Federation who have married local women and formed families here, and four or five of them were sent to Guantanamo. Now the issue is what to do with them: should they be returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina? A significant number of Bosnian Muslims think they should be allowed to come back here, but we think they should be sent to their countries of origin, although, of course, if that happens, they might have to face charges there. So this is a very complex and frustrating question to which there are no clear answers.

http://rt.com/Politics/2009-06-04/Purely_Islamic_state_set_up_in_Europe.html

# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 11, 2010 0 Comments Links to this post

March 09, 2010

Recognition of Kosovo a boon for terrorists - Ltr. by Michael Pravica - The Washingotn Times

yourletters@washingtontimes.com

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/09/recognition-of-kosovo-a-boon-for-terrorists/comments/ (comments)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/09/recognition-of-kosovo-a-boon-for-terrorists/

Recognition of Kosovo a boon for terrorists

March 9, 2010

Thank you for publishing Julia Gorin's excellent column on Albanian blackmail of U.S. leaders vis-a-vis Kosovo ("The blackmail of America," Opinion, Thursday). It was an accurate portrayal of the sort rarely seen in our mainstream media.

The illegal recognition of Kosovo's independence initiated by our government stands as one of the greatest failures and embarrassments of our foreign policy. It continues to haunt us in the form of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Madrid train bombings, attempted attacks on Fort Dix and the London bus bombings (among numerous other examples). That our State Department initially proclaimed the Kosovo Liberation Army to be a terrorist drug-running group and then suddenly switched its position to support the group speaks volumes about our leaders. They were not interested in pursuing true justice and resolving a decades-old conflict but instead were interested in stealing territory from the Serbs to establish the largest U.S. base outside of America (Camp Bondsteel) to use against Russia and to protect the AMBO oil pipeline, being constructed through Kosovo.

By assenting to Albanian extremist demands, we have set an example for the world: The borders of sovereign nations can indeed be altered by terrorism, and international law is meaningless. We have created a terrorist safe haven that will always be a failed, landlocked and impoverished territory with plenty of desperate Muslim extremists and anti-Western recruits. We also have established a road map for irredentists in our own nation.

I strongly encourage President Obama to learn what is really going on in Kosovo and rescind our recognition of Kosovo's independence. Only honest compromise on both sides - not just the long-suffering Serbs - will enable a peaceful resolution to this long-standing conflict. If the Albanians try to blackmail him against doing this, he can wash his hands of the region and let the Serbs and Albanians find a solution on their own.

MICHAEL PRAVICA

Henderson, Nev.

# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Tuesday, March 09, 2010 0 Comments Links to this post

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Recognition of Kosovo a boon for terrorists - Ltr. by Michael Pravica - The Washingotn Times

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NATO RiP? Well, Hopefully... by S. Trifkovic

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New Jersey Governor Proposes closings of state psychiatric institutions

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By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Ukraine's "No" to NATO: An Example for Serbia

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By Srdja TrifkovicWednesday, 17 Mar 2010

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Milorad Dodik: Purely Islamic state set up in Europe

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March 09, 2010

Recognition of Kosovo a boon for terrorists - Ltr. by Michael Pravica - The Washingotn Times

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