Serbophobes, Unchained

Seems like the line is blurring between the "liars" and the "thugs" from yesterday's post, while the "cowards" might actually be owed an apology.

Here's the New York Times, as mainstream as it gets:

“We sincerely regret that people were offended by this song,” the agency’s spokesman, Martin Nesirky, told reporters.

There are three quotes in the article written by Neil MacFarquhar. This is one of them, another is a mangled mis-translation of the lyrics, and the third is an excerpt from the statement by Vuk Jeremic, Serbia's ex-FM now chairing the General Assembly, which makes it sound as if he's proud of the alleged atrocities allegedly accompanied by the song. 

MacFarquhar also calls the Battle of Cer "infamous". Okay, English is not my first language, so let me see if I understood that right. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the meaning of "infamous" as "having a reputation of the worst kind, notoriously evil". What?! The first Entente victory in the Great War, a triumph of the outnumbered, outgunned defenders turning back a cruel invader bent on eradicating them - that's "notoriously evil" and "having a reputation of the worst kind"? Who's editing the New York Times, Count Aerenthal?

Now, disregard for a second all the "editorial guidance" in the story, and focus on what the UN spokesman, Nesirky, actually said. "We sincerely regret that people were offended by this song." Not "The people who complained are absolutely right, this is a horrible atrocity," but a "Sorry you feel that way". It's not apology as much as an expression of sympathy. A diplomatic equivalent of a shrug.

Now look how the NYT, and the rest of the media, are choosing to ignore that fact and instead manage the perception:

This is a screenshot of a Google search, using the phrase "UN Serbia apology", this evening around 7 PM. Look at all the terms appended to the perfectly neutral statement.

"Militant". Well, it is a military march, but you never see the adjective used to describe Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," do you? And I'm sure the Vienna Philharmonic is routinely condemned as "militant" for playing the Radetzky March every New Year... What? It isn't?

"Nationalist"? What does that even mean?

The embellishments then go to the next level: "associated with massacres", "genocidal" (?!) "linked to the Srebrenica massacre" (?!) etc. Come again? Says who, the "Bosniak Congress"?  Is that where these "reporters" got their "facts"?

A couple of lazy journalists copy the loudmouths' handout, everyone else copies their notes - embellishing as they go along - and this is supposed to be journalism? Makes sense, I guess. Serbophobia is the only officially approved form of bigotry these days, after all.


I suppose an apology of my own is in order. I regret characterizing Nesirsky as a "spokesthing" and his organization as "spineless", having accepted at face value the mainstream media's misrepresentation of his statement. And as someone who has criticized the media for over a decade, I should have known better.

But if that can happen to me, imagine how people not disposed to mistrust the mainstream media will read the propaganda I've parsed above. Now that is truly infamous. In the dictionary sense of the word.

Liars, Cowards and Thugs

I've mentioned before that the Serbian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, which is currently about two weeks off from the Gregorian commonly used in the West and elsewhere. So the Gregorian January 14 was the Julian January 1, and hence New Year's Day.

This was the occasion for the current UN General Assembly chairman, formerly Serbia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, to organize a little concert and reception on East River. It revolved around the performance of an a capella choir "Viva Vox" (notice the "chauvinistic" Latin name). A recording of the show is available on YouTube. And one of the songs the choir performed - and received by the audience with quite a bit of enthusiasm - was the "Drina March."

Within a day, the UN was being harassed by haters: the "Congress of North American Bosniaks" and its satellites (I've written about their activities before) sent a nasty letter to the Secretary-General, claiming the song was a symbol of "aggressors" and insulting to "victims of genocide."

The GenSec's spokesthing (can't even call it a "person" anymore, might offend someone) instinctively apologized, of course. Such behavior is par for the course for the spineless bureaucracy on East River, used nowadays primarily as a forum for politically correct hatred of the West or a fig leaf for Imperial intervention, depending on what day of the week it is.

Mainstream coverage of the apology was predictably laced with Serbophobic drivel. An AP piece published by just about everyone contained "facts" about the song taken off Wikipedia and characterizations that may as well have been copy-pasted from CNAB's letter. By way of example:

- the song was "originally written as a nationalist hymn after World War I".
Wrong! Stanislav Binički composed it following the Battle of Cer, in August 1914, after the outnumbered and outgunned Serbs fought off an invasion from Austria-Hungary.

- it "became a favorite of fascists and Serb nationalists".
Says who? First of all, this facetiously pretends that "fascist" and "Serb nationalist" are the same, and they are not. Were "fascists" decorated by the U.S.? Were they the people who saved U.S. airmen that bombed them? Or those who opposed the Communist takeover of Yugoslavia and the amnesty of Croatian Nazis (some of them later known as "Bosniaks") that followed? I know that "Serb nationalists" are somehow supposed to be evil incarnate, but can anyone actually coherently explain why - without relying on thoroughly debunked propaganda by their enemies, who just so happen to have been Nazi allies back in the day?

- it was "banned by Yugoslavia's Communist government after World War II".
Wrong again. In fact, the Communists produced a movie about the Battle of Cer in 1964 (on its 50th anniversary), praising the Serb military prowess, featuring the song prominently throughout, and even sharing its title.

There was even a bit about how it was voted the new Serbian national anthem in 1992, but the government decided against it - supposedly because it would have been inappropriate due to the Bosnian War. But CNAB and the Empire and AP accuse that particular government of being the "aggressor" in the said war, so its supposed sensitivity in this instance makes zero sense whatsoever. Or rather, as much sense as the mainstream narrative.

So what is one supposed to make of the multiple covers of the catchy trumpet tune, from a 1960s acoustic version by "The Spotnicks"  (heard here in a Greek film), to a modern electric guitar cover? Never mind any of that, you're supposed to hate the song, and feel ashamed for liking it and demanding an encore - because professional victims of the CNAB claim it was a "favorite of [imaginary] fascists and [supposedly evil] Serb nationalists." And the AP says so as well, so it must be true, right?

Add that to the constant stream of apologies you're supposed to make, to anyone who demands them, for anything they can think of. Anything else would be "racist" or "insensitive," the two only sins of modernity in which all the other sins and vices have been declared virtuous, hypocrisy most of all.

On the Great War, Again

As the anniversary of the Great War draws near, expect the mainstream media and academia in the West to blame the Serbs for it. A few already have, here and there, but I would not be surprised if it becomes a concerted effort in the coming days.

The first shot may have already been fired: a reader let me know this morning that a new book is out by Cambridge historian Christopher Clark, that does just that. I wasn't surprised in the least to see that Clark is an acclaimed historian of Prussia, and therefore minimizes Germany's role in starting the war, shifting it to the Serbs and Russians instead.

I've addressed before this persistent tendency to blame the suicide of the West on the Other - i.e. the Orthodox Russians and Serbs, who were just rude and inconsiderate enough not to roll over and die when invaded by their Teutonic "betters."

"Serbia must die" - Austrian cartoon from 1914

The old-fashioned approach would be to write letters to the editor and comment on each article, but that's way too much work for one person (who is also engaged on other fronts). But a number of people working together, now, that's a different matter. For your reference, should you choose to avail yourself of them, here are some of my articles on the subject:

Triumph of Tragedy: A general view of the Great War (2008)

The Endless Summer of 1914: my first response to the "blame the Serbs and Russians" crowd (2010).

Age of Absurdity: another response to the same argument (2012)

The Enduring Schism: examining the Western hostility towards the Orthodox (2012).

Echoes of 1878 (2012) doesn't deal with the Great War per se, but examines the behavior of Western powers in the four decades prior, and the Balkans Wars.

Then, as now, the Serbs were a "disruptive factor" to the Mitteleuropäische Ordnung dreamed of by the Western powers - the Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Saxe-Coburg-Gothas (a.k.a. the Windsors) then, the Atlantic Empire and the Brussels Union now. Not because they were "lawless", or had dreams of conquest, but because they insisted on being free. It was the Serbs who started to complicate the Eastern Question for the West, by launching a successful uprising against the Turks in 1804. It was the Serbs who resisted enormous pressure from Vienna to embrace Catholicism and drown in the Hapsburg melting pot. The only people in the Balkans without German kings or princes. That just could not be tolerated. Then, or now.

Technology may have changed since, but that basic fact has not. Make of that what you will.

Fruits of the Forlorn

"By their fruits you will know them," it is written in the Gospel of Matthew (7:16). It is simple, straightforward advice: watch what they do, not what they say, or what is said about them.

Serbian church on fire, March 2004

If only such a standard could be applied to "Kosovars," Albanians who occupy the Serbian province of Kosovo and claim it as an independent state (with a little help of NATO and the Empire, of course).

Their "liberation army" began by murdering their own people - "loyalists" who wanted to live together with the Serb majority. Then they started murdering children, postal workers, and police. When the authorities responded by hunting them down as the terrorists they were, a hue and cry arose in the Western media: war crimes! Humanitarian crisis! Genocide! Something had to be done! But the drones, missiles, bombers and laptop bombardiers, even lawfare, all failed. It was treachery that won the day for the Empire in the end. Having seized the province, Imperial troops proceeded to shred the deal that let them in, letting the Albanians run rampant.

More than 200,000 non-Albanians (mainly Serbs, but also Jews, Turks, and many other communities that once lived in the province) were driven out, while NATO troops stood by, and NATO media called it "revenge attacks." Revenge for what? For daring to defy Albanian delusions of grandeur? In 2004, the "Kosovarians" launched a veritable Kristallnacht, singling out churches for destruction and desecration (video).

How did the Empire, which purports to fight for liberty, democracy, human rights and human dignity, react to this? By deciding to make "Kosovia" an independent, Albanian state - laws and treaties be damned. The grateful Kosovistanians then erected a golden idol of their "liberating" Emperor.

After a Trojan Horse "revolution" took over Serbia in 2000, the succession of governments in Belgrade have only occasionally attempted to pursue Serbia's own interests. Even such efforts have been the proverbial day late and a dollar short. More often, though, the Belgrade government prostrated itself before the Empire, hoping to end the torment by fulfilling the never-ending series of demands. Not surprisingly, the more they submitted, the more they've been tormented. But since it was the people paying the price, not the politicians, the debasement has continued.

The latest act of groveling was the decision to sign and implement the "Integrated Border Management" (IBM) agreement with the "Kosovians" and the EU. To their own public, the government lied that the "B" didn't really mean "border" but something else. Both the EU "law and order" mission that's overseeing "Kosovia" and the "Kosovarianians" themselves made sure to dispel that illusion this weekend, barring the president of Serbia from attending the Christmas ceremony at Grachanica monastery.

The report I linked above comes from AP and AFP, via Deutsche Welle (Germany's official propaganda service). Not surprisingly, it adds insult to injury by treating seriously the "Kosovarian" claim the ban was "in response to Belgrade refusing entry to Kosovar officials." This is nonsense. Serbia has tolerated Albanian provocations for years, including the recent Flag Day festivities, and has even sent police to protect the monument to the terrorist KLA, though it was their duty to tear it down.

No, the ban's purpose was to underscore the "independence" of "Kosovia" and the existence of the border that Belgrade has recognized as such. But don't expect the Western press to make note of this; they are just continuing to do what they've done for years: heaping abuse on the Serbs.

A prime example of this is the final paragraph of the story (as it is improper to call it a news article): "Serbs celebrate Christmas on January 7 in accordance with the Serbian Orthodox Church which adheres to the Julian calendar instead of the modern, more widely-used Gregorian."

The Serbian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on the same date as all other Christians: December 25. But the day of it falls on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar, due to the discrepancies between it and the Julian. And the reason the Serbian Orthodox Church (or the Russian, for that matter) does not use the Gregorian calendar has nothing to do with how "modern" or widely used it is, but the fact that it was established by a Roman Catholic Pope some 500 years after the schism between the Papacy and the Church.

One would think the Germans of all people would have a clue about religious differences, considering their history. On the other hand, knowing the Germans' history with the Serbs, this really doesn't come as a surprise.

Despite the ongoing efforts of the Germans, the Empire and the Albanians, however, there are still entirely too many Serbs keeping the faith with God, and refusing - unlike their tormentors - to bow to the one who promises "all the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them."

Celebrating the birth of their Savior, the Serbs can take comfort in the knowledge that their cause is one of hope, while that of their tormentors is truly forlorn.

A Long, Twilight Struggle

2012 began with Angelina Jolie's war porn, and just got worse from there.

Guess who's the Balrog. 

April marked the 20th anniversary of Bosnia's recognition as an independent state - and the outbreak of the (un)civil war that ensued. It's somewhat of a mystery as to why the war, which ended in late 1995, had not restarted by 1997. Though the fact that it never ended for some people, but merely continues by other means, may harbor a clue.

Speaking of never-ending wars,WW2 is apparently still on. Did you know that someone "won" it not once, but twice? The answer may surprise you. Or maybe not. Either way, 50 years later the roles had been rearranged, with the once-and-present Nazi allies becoming the Atlantic Empire's new best friends, while Hitler's enemies are smeared as Nazis reborn.

No doubt that was the intent of an "artistic prank" wherein two NGO drones got a bunch of Serbian political parties to endorse a program originally written by Joseph Goebbels. Left out of the reports was the insignificant detail that all the parties involved were pro-Empire. When facts get in the way of a good story, too bad for the facts.

Prior to the May elections in Serbia, I put together a quick guide to political parties involved. The distinctions between them were smaller than it appeared, though. On St. George's Day, the Dragon won. Sure, it seemed like a small victory when the sycophantic Boris Tadic lost the presidency to Tomislav "Undertaker" Nikolic. Soon, however, the darkest suspicions about the "progressives" and their partners in crime began to seem downright benign compared to the actual betrayal in the works.

While as late as October is still seemed as if the new-old government in Belgrade was playing stupid, they soon demonstrated they weren't playing at all. Even as the Empire proclaimed an amnesty for murderers of Serbs, Belgrade signed "agreements" and promised "platforms" to recognize the Empire's monument to evil in fact, if not in name.

The besieged Serbs in Kosovo appealed to Moscow for protection, and organized a transparent, democratic plebiscite where they overwhelmingly voted against becoming "Kosovians". While Moscow offered moral support - but not much more - Belgrade responded with betrayal, and the Empire with violence.

Adding insult to injury, throughout the year, the Empire that no one could supposedly resist was revealed as a bumbling bully. Its contempt of decency was openly on display - not just when the Serbs were concerned, but also in other places it had occupied. Its propaganda has been having less effect. The invincibility it asserted was a result of self-deception and deliberate misunderstanding. How could such hubris and stupidity in service of twisted values continue to dominate? Not because the Empire itself is strong, I think, but because its victims are weak, infested by Empire's death cult.

The hostility and downright bigotry towards the Serbs can be explained in part by money, but more so by a lust for power, and a fair bit of historical baggage. Forcing a "gay pride parade" on places like Belgrade had nothing to do with actual homosexuals, or human rights and values, but everything to do with a display of power.

Why the Serbian politicians decided to outdo their predecessors in groveling is still a riddle; perhaps because they are spineless cowards, perhaps because they really believe the Empire means them well - even though it manifestly does not. Either way, at the end of 2012, treason in Serbia is still a profitable endeavor. How long that shall remain the case, I do not know.

Back in April, as I profiled the Serbian political scene, I wrote:

"The Serbs have displayed remarkable resilience. After a century of fighting horrific wars; surviving several attempts to obliterate them physically and culturally; social engineering seeking to obliterate their identity, language, culture and history; demonization designed to crush their spirit; communism and banksterism nearly wiping out their economy and enterprise - they are still hanging on. Many others would have broken long ago."

It may appear right now that this Empire will succeed where others have repeatedly failed.

But I think not.

Faith, Force and Freedom

Looking back over 2012, it's been one of my leaner blogging years. Not because nothing was happening worth mentioning - quite the contrary - but because I saw little point in addressing people who just didn't care to listen.

When ideology or prejudice trump reality in the minds of men, discussing reality with them becomes an exercise in pointless frustration. Thinking stops, and everything becomes a conditioned response. The campaign for Emperor demonstrated this on a daily basis. So did the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook elementary. Before the victims were even buried, the usual suspects began with the usual arguments: ban guns, register the mentally ill, whatever. Control, control, control, it's always about control.

Part of that is the corruption of reasoning I did write about. Another part of it is solipsism. In America especially, countless people live their lives entirely obsessed with themselves, to the point where other people simply aren't real to them. They are like NPCs in a video game. And since one doesn't empathize with NPCs, having zero empathy for other people has become the norm. When these NPCs are seen as obstacles to one's happiness - the paramount purpose of life robbed of all other meaning - the next step is actively hating those other people, and finding ways of hurting them. The pathology has a scale, of course: from forum trolling, via committing suicide by jumping in front of a train at rush hour, to picking up a rifle and shooting up a mall, school or movie theater.

That is not to say that video games are to blame. Quite the opposite. Games offer an escape from a reality that has long since become virtual. Remember the Bushians' disdain for the "reality-based community"? The notion that they were creating reality by the sheer force of their willpower, while the pesky realists were merely observing and analyzing it? Well, they aren't the only ones to believe it, just arrogant enough to admit it openly.

Modern omnipotent government has made treating people as things into an art form. Look at the militarized police, or the callous disregard for the lives of people in invaded - oops, liberated - countries. Look at the drones and their pilots. Being a sociopath is almost a recommendation for the job.

If we're looking at a "culture of" anything to blame for the rotten mess we're living in, it's got to be this culture of narcissism, as Brendan O'Neill describes it. Guns? Serbia has the second-highest concentration of guns per capita, after the U.S., but there are no rampage murders there. The Orthodox Church, which is most definitely not concerned with an individual's feelings, might have something to do with it as well.

Of course, the Serbs have gone to the other extreme, refusing to use their weapons even for legitimate self-defense. 

Yet I've been unable to put into words the conclusion that simply leaps out from all this, for several days now. Until I saw this article. So I'll borrow Daniel Greenfield's turn of phrase, and say that what both the Serbs and the Americans need to learn is that "when you give up faith to force, then you also abandon any further reason to resist that force. Without faith, it is easier to let force win."

A Very Deliberate Injustice

ТIME cover, 9/11, 1995

As I noted before, the manifest injustice of the so-called war crimes Tribunal should hardly come as a surprise. Complaining about it is worse than worthless - it is harmful, since it only lends legitimacy to an institution that never had any from the start, and only barely managed to successfully conjure a pretense of it on a handful of occasions.

To a die-hard imperialist, who lives and breathes relativistic logic, even contemplating the possibility that the Serbs are not the blackest of villains while their enemies - supported by the Empire - are the purest of innocents would be absurd. In their minds, it is not the deed that merits condemnation, but the identity of the (alleged) perpetrator. So the Tribunal's decision to consciously render verdicts that amount to amnesty of Croatian and Albanian atrocities against the Serbs doesn't upset them in the least.

Trouble arises when people serving the Empire do so because they actually believe the official cover story - human rights, charity, justice, peace, reconciliation, etc. Such people are shocked by the Tribunal's travesty because from their standpoint, the Gotovina/Markac/Cermak and Haradinaj/Balaj/Brahimaj verdicts were stupid.

One example is David Harland, former senior UN official in Bosnia, whose essay criticizing the ICTY for "selective justice" appeared in the New York Times of all places. While making sure to repeat the dogma that the "Serbs committed many of the war’s worst crimes", Harland argues that they "were not at all alone, and it is not right, or useful, for them to carry the sole responsibility. Convicting only Serbs simply doesn't make sense in terms of justice, in terms of reality, or in terms of politics."

It is a fact, as Harland states, that "more Serbs were displaced - ethnically cleansed - by the wars in the Balkans than any other community. And more Serbs remain ethnically displaced to this day." But should he really be surprised that the Empire isn't the least interested in prosecuting the atrocities of Croats, Bosnian Muslims or Kosovo Albanians - who have, in his words, "taken ethnic cleansing to its most extreme form"?

Croats (and Albanian volunteers who went on to command the KLA) were Washington's "junkyard dogs", and the campaign commanded by the recently released generals was planned and executed with Washington's full knowledge, input and assistance. It wasn't the Europeans or the Saudis who persuaded Bosnian Muslim Alija Izetbegovic to renege on an already-signed compromise that would have spared Bosnia bloodshed, but the American ambassador Warren Zimmerman. By the time NATO troops poured into Kosovo to ensure the KLA could murder, pillage and torch with absolute impunity, killing Serbs had been a treasured Imperial practice for years.

Before Haradinaj, Gotovina and Markac, there were Naser Oric and Florim Ejupi. Oric was the Muslim warlord of Srebrenica, who boasted about raiding the surrounding Serb villages from his ostensibly demilitarized fiefdom, and taking no prisoners. He was acquitted by the ICTY as well. The Tribunal didn't even bother with Ejupi: the Albanian terrorist who had bombed a bus of Serb civilians first "escaped" from a major U.S. military base (!), and when he was eventually tracked down, arrested and convicted, the EU's "law and order mission" set him free within months.

While pretending to be even-handed might sound like a good policy, why bother? The Serbs aren't actually resisting - a succession of increasingly quisling regimes set up in 2000 has ensured that official Belgrade would serve the interests of Empire first and foremost, and never so much as contemplate the interests of Serbia. Time and again, the quislings have tolerated a veritable train of humiliations heaped on them by the Tribunal, UNMIK, EULEX, OHR, etc. A nice self-fulfilling prophecy there: treat the Serbs as cattle long enough, they begin to act like cattle, thus providing justification for the treatment.

What the Tribunal is doing isn't stupidity, but rather hubris, the boundless arrogance of a torturer whose victim has long since stopped resisting, and is practically begging for more. Whether this perception is accurate or mere wishful thinking is open to debate, but that it informs the torturer's actions is undeniable.

Harland himself doesn't have the excuse of ignorance. Quite the contrary. He has been a prosecution witness at several ICTY "trials" over the years, yet somehow never noticed that the Serbs he testified against by and large weren't charged with actual atrocities, but of a mythical crime of conspiracy invented specifically for the ICTY.

Or did he? Consider this answer of his at the "trial" of Gen. Ratko Mladic in July this year:

"A: That has been overstated. In -- that was chosen as the trigger, but had that not been the trigger the operation would have taken place a few days or weeks later or even earlier.
Q. But if Serbs -- in other words, Serbs had no way that they could avoid these NATO air-strikes according to you; is that so?
A. Not unless they stopped fighting."
(ICTY transcript, p. 879, lines 20-25)

Harland is saying that NATO would have bombed the Bosnian Serbs no matter what they had or hadn't done. Hard to believe? Not at all. Wasn't the name chosen for the bombing campaign  "Deliberate Force," of all things?

So it rings offensively naive (at best) when Harland concludes that ICTY's actions are "the opposite of what the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was created to achieve." Quite the contrary, it is precisely what it was established for: to impose a narrative of the wars that would blame exclusively the Serbs, while giving a blanket amnesty to their enemies and external sponsors thereof. It has always been about lawfare, rather than law, prejudice rather than judiciary.

This is, of course, cold comfort to the Serbs - but they have bigger problems right now than some self-appointed falsifiers of history in funny robes, or their media apologists. The ICTY's narrative will last only so long as the Empire can impose it through force and lies. And even a casual look at the world suggests that won't be the case much longer.

At which point it might be wise to remember the neglected words of Thomas Jefferson: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."

ADDENDUM

Fellow blogger Crappy Town notes the Tribunal's penchant for prosecuting Bosnian Croats, which fits perfectly into the prevailing paradigm. Why some Croats, but not others? Because the Croatian Croats were good Imperial proxies and fought Serbs ("bad guys"), while the Croats in Bosnia fought Muslims ("good guys") and therefore need to be punished. How's that for an illustration of Imperial "logic"?