Skewering the Liars

A satirical German TV show "Die Anstalt" (The Institution) has aired a segment on September 25 mocking the Western coverage of the conflict in the Ukraine.

Someone was kind enough to post it with English subtitles. Watch and enjoy:

Operation Bagration

On June 22, 1944, three years to the day since Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union, the Red Army launched the biggest counterattack of the war, crushing the German Army Group Center.

The offensive was named after prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration, hero of Borodino.

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.

Victory Day

"To our Victory!" Soviet propaganda poster, 1945 (source)

Sixty-seven years ago, Nazi Germany officially surrendered to the Soviet forces in the ruins of Berlin. The "Thousand-year Reich" had lasted not even a dozen. Lacking courage to face defeat and blaming everyone but himself for it, Hitler had committed suicide a week earlier. The war that had devastated Europe for a second time in a generation was officially over.

But who won? Oh, we're supposed to believe it was the "good guys," the noble Allies who bravely sacrificed millions of lives to stop the unprecedented evil of Nazism and its genocidal plans. Yet the cold hard truth is that no one but the Jewish resistance fought Hitler because of what he was doing to the Jews. British, French, Soviet or American governments couldn't have cared less. They all entered the war for entirely selfish reasons: London and Paris to keep their empires, Washington to make America into one, and Stalin to stay alive.

Of all the major Allied powers, only the people of the Soviet Union actually had a legitimate reason to fight: they were being invaded and murdered en masse. Perhaps that is why only the Russians still commemorate the victory today.

The West doesn't dwell on the actual facts of WW2. It prefers useful myths, such as that D-Day and the campaign in France equaled the struggle on the Eastern Front (which was 90% of the actual war effort against Germany). Or that the war was about stopping the "Final Solution." Or that the Nuremberg trials were about the genocide (the Nazis were actually condemned for starting the war). Or that Pearl Harbor somehow deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki in return. Hypocritical cries of "Munich!" and reductio ad Hitlerum are used against the ruler of any country the American Empire wishes to invade.

Yet when you look at the EU, it resembles nothing so much as what Nazi slogans described as the "European family of nations" working together for the prosperity of all. The whole endeavor has roots in National-Socialism. Modern managerial state lives up to Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato." Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. All demands to retain national sovereignty, or stop social engineering through the flood of immigrants and the tyranny of diversity, are branded "fascist". Meanwhile, EU bodies adopt resolutions equating Fascism, Nazism and Communism, spitting in the face of Russia - a nation itself grievously harmed by Communism, but refusing to dishonor the banner under which it bore the brunt of the fighting against Hitler.

Then there is the bizarre situation that the map of Europe today looks suspiciously like the one from 1942, and all of Hitler's allies in the Balkans are now the staunchest allies of the American Empire. In that corner of Europe, at least, WW2 is still being fought. Only this time, the Luftwaffe and the panzers are supposedly the "good guys".

In April 1941 Hitler made it a personal mission to obliterate a country called Yugoslavia. Partly to make an example of anyone attempting to weasel out of surrendering to his demands, and partly to indulge grudges from the previous war. Remember, WW1 started with an Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia. After two failures, the Austrians and their German and Bulgarian allies finally thought they'd crushed the Serbs, only to have them return in 1918 and win a decisive victory that collapsed the Central Powers' southern flank.

So Hitler wiped Yugoslavia off the map. Parts of its territory were annexed directly to the Reich, others given to Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania (an Italian protectorate until 1943, a German ally thereafter). An "independent" Montenegro was set up as an Italian protectorate, while most of today's Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina became the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The remainder was dubbed Serbia and placed under German occupation.

While the Serbs in the NDH faced wholesale extermination (the visceral brutality of which appalled even the Nazis), the brutality of the occupation forces in "Serbia" rivaled that of the Eastern Front. In June 1941, royalists guerrillas (commonly mislabeled "chetniks") launched an uprising against the Germans. With Germans executing up to 100 civilian hostages for every one of their soldiers killed, and 50 for every soldier wounded, the royalists were quickly compelled to adopt a lower profile. Soon they were engaged in a shooting war with the Communists, who launched their own insurrection in June, after Hitler invaded the USSR. While the royalists expected an Anglo-American landing, the Communist waited for the Soviets, meanwhile slaughtering each other and occasionally raiding German supplies.

In the end, the Communists prevailed. By 1944, they had secured British backing, and successfully lobbied the Allies for massive air strikes against cities in Serbia, which did little damage to the German war effort but caused great loss of civilian life in royalist strongholds. In September 1944, Soviet forces – reinforced by Bulgarian troops, who had switched their allegiance from Hitler to Stalin – entered Serbia and drove out the Germans.

Think about that for a second: the territory of Nazi-occupied Serbia had to deal with four years of brutal repression, a civil war, tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Croatia's genocide, heavy bombing by the Allies, and a Communist takeover. Having been thus despoiled, Serbia was then ground into dust by the Communists, who in the true tradition of victim politics claimed the principal problem had been the old kingdom’s alleged "Greater Serbian hegemony", rather than alliances of other groups with Axis powers, and the atrocities they committed.

After the war, the  Communists  made Hitler's dismemberment more or less official. Parts annexed by Germany ended up the "republic" of Slovenia. The NDH was split into Croatia and Bosnia, with Croatia getting the entire Adriatic coast. Montenegro remained separate, while the territories held by Bulgaria became Macedonia. The stump Serbia created by Hitler became the "Republic of Serbia", while the Hungarian- and Albanian-occupied areas in the north and the south became its "autonomous provinces" of Vojvodina and Kosovo. The borders didn't correspond exactly, but the spirit of the division was what counted.

Future generations were taught that “Yugoslavia” had been among the victors in WW2. Official history claimed that Tito's multiethnic Communist partisans were the only real resistance movement, fighting the very few Croatian Ustasha, the Albanian Balli Kombetar, and the worst of the lot - the bloodthirsty Greater Serbian nationalist "chetniks". Any suggestion that the royalists had actually helped the Allied war effort was suppressed - and the West went along with it.

Ten years after Tito's death, the myths collapsed under their own weight, no longer propped by Western credit and Eastern markets. The newly reunited Germany, the nascent European Union and the rising American Empire all saw an opportunity in dismembering Yugoslavia.

What followed was an eerie re-run of the 1940s carnage. Croatia's "democratic" president, Franjo Tudjman, led a NDH revival - but because he was allied with the U.S. and not Hitler this time around, he succeeded where his predecessor failed. In Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic had Washington's support to make a bid for an Islamic state, causing a bloodbath when both Serbs and Croats objected. Albanians were likewise armed and supported to re-establish the "Natural Albania" of 1941-45.

But the cruelest twist was that these Imperial allies accused the Serbs of Nazism - and their PR flacks used Communist propaganda to do so. And they are still at it, even today. The Serbs, for their part, reacted with utter confusion. They didn't create a grievance lobby, as is common in modern politics. Rather, they followed their instinct and history and reached for their guns - fighting first for Yugoslavia, then for independence, then for survival, but all the while unable to understand what was happening. That confusion is also an enduring condition, unfortunately.

Even though they were the principal victims of Nazi aggression, and the overwhelming majority in both the Communist and the royalist resistance movements, the Serbs first became second-class citizens in Yugoslavia (which they allegedly "dominated") and then got smeared as Nazis reborn - by actual Nazi heirs, people who had their own Waffen-SS, two-time winners of WW2. Who would have ever thought to see American bombers, German tanks and Communist propaganda working together towards a goal Hitler once had: to crush Serbia as an example to others.

When Hitler invaded, Yugoslavia had been rotten already. Croats actually greeted the Wehrmacht with flowers. Few have dared ask how Tito could have put Yugoslavia back together, after all that. Yet the answer is very simple: he allowed many of the Nazi collaborators to change their uniforms at the last moment, defecting to the winning team, while smearing the Serb royalists as traitors and quislings, thus imposing moral equivalence. The laundering process was completed in the 1990s, by projecting the stigma of Nazism onto the Serbs.

No wonder only Russia still celebrates Victory Day. In the rest of Europe, it's Hitler's ghost that rejoices.

The German Fixation

Angela Merkel may be an Ossie, but she was definitely channeling American emperors on Monday, telling the German occupation garrison in Kosovo that Germans "should always remember that our security and our peace back home are down to troops serving their country here."

Pray tell, Angie, how does re-enacting the Third Reich's Balkans adventure contribute to Germany's security and peace? It is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that such an argument is nonsensical - and then there is proof, too.

Equally obvious is that Germany gets off on bludgeoning Serbia. This goes beyond realpolitik and eternal interests, too. German companies already own much of the Serbian media and the banking sector. If they wanted a client state, Serbia was theirs for the taking - Djindjic was a Germanophile, and the Tadic government literally took groveling to a whole new level. No, there is clearly more at work here than political and economic interests. It could be historical memory - blaming the Serbs for thwarting German designs in both world wars, for example - or, more likely, an attempt to exorcise Germany's own ghosts through transference: if the Serbs are genocidal aggressors, surely the world can stop going to the Nazi well for the standard of villainy, right? (Yeah, good luck with that.)

Part of the trouble is that the victorious Allies chose to impose victors' justice at the Nuremberg trials, rather than try to explain to the Germans why the Nazi ideology was evil. In effect, Germans were to consider the Nazis evil because the powers that defeated them said so - and that's been their ongoing frustration ever since. It wasn't until recently, with Oliver Hirschbiegel's Der Untergang (2004), that the Nazis were approached as three-dimensional human beings rather than cardboard cut-outs, their villainy actually shown and explained. I dare you to watch the part where Frau Goebbels murders her children and make apologies for National-Socialism afterwards. If you are somehow able to do so, then seek help.

Yet it does seem that the Germans have "learned nothing and forgotten nothing", to borrow a phrase from Talleyrand. How else to explain the fact that Berlin, no matter the party in charge, thinks nothing of overtly supporting Hitler's henchmen (see here, with photos, and also here)? Far more troubling is that the British, the French and especially the Americans not only don't object, but actively support such policy. The only ones to object are the Russians - but they are shrugged off as impotent Cold War losers. Indeed, the Soviet contribution to defeating Hitler (90% or so of the war effort in Europe) is routinely minimized, and the Eurocrats are now endeavoring to equate Nazism and Communism. Russian support for the Serbs is dismissed as irrational feelings of ethnic and religious kinship, while Western support for Serbenrein Croatia or Magna Albania is supposedly noble, pure, and the paragon of humanitarianism (!?)

Germans understandably want to avoid constantly being compared to the Nazis. Don't act like the Nazis, then. Bombing Belgrade, supporting a Serb-persecuting chauvinist regime in Croatia and the establishment of a greater Albanian state, occupying Serb territory with tanks and troops, and insisting that Serbia become a member of the "European family of nations" but only if it gives up much land and its own identity - those are all things Germany did not just back in 1941-45, but again from 1991 onwards.

Want greatness again? Remember Bismarck. He wanted friendship with Russia, thought the Balkans wasn't worth the "bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier", and (reportedly) died with "Serbia" on his last breath.

Speaking of grenadiers, I'd like to remind those German (and Austrian) troops in Kosovo that, before they act on any desires they may have to shoot those pesky Serbs refusing to roll over and die, they ought to remember their Bible:

Da sprach Jesus zu ihm; Stecke dein Schwert an seinen Ort! denn wer das Schwert nimmt, der soll durchs Schwert umkommen.(Matthaeus, 26:52, Martin Luther's translation)

And with that in mind, fröhliche Weihnachten!

Thanks, Angie

It just occurred to me that I haven't posted anything here since mid-November; I've been entirely too preoccupied with my other blog, Antiwar.com, and travel.

So, to recap: the Kosovo Serbs' citizenship gambit failed, when Moscow refused them on a technicality. The barricades remain, however, in spite of all the attempts to get them dismantled. Speaking of which, the German and Austrian complaints about the "violence" - when it was their fully armed and armored troops that initiated violence against the Serb civilians - has to be the pinnacle of cynicism.

It did Belgrade no good to make yet another set of capitulations to the KLA "state" Saturday night; the EU decided to put its candidacy on ice until the formal recognition of "Kosovia", and whatever new demands they come up with thereafter. In a way - and quite unintentionally I'm sure - the Austro-German axis running the show is actually doing the Serbs a favor: had the quisling regime's obsequiousness been rewarded by a candidacy, meaningless and symbolic as it is, they'd have smooth sailing till the April elections regardless of their manifest ineptitude, and the Serb resistance in Kosovo would have been undermined. As it is, the EUrocrats are sabotaging the very people working to please them. Well, no one said they were logical...

So, German Chancellor Angela Merkel deserves a thank-you note for what she did, however inadvertently, to keep Serbia out of EU bondage. I'm sure once the Serbs sort out their politics, that note will be forthcoming in some shape or form.

I'm not so sure about Angelina Jolie, though. Her directorial debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" is yet another take on a real-life romance between a Serb and a Muslim during the Bosnian War. Judging from the trailer and the few snippets of footage floating around, it's a derivative and disappointing bit of chetnixploitation, borrowing heavily from movies about the Holocaust. While Bosnia was a nasty (un)civil war, comparing it to the Holocaust is in horrifically poor taste at the very least, if not an outright insult to Holocaust victims.

There have been many films dealing with the Balkans wars in the past twenty years, but none of them have done any good financially. One would think Hollywood would have got the point by now.

In other news, the EU is coming apart at the seams, the Empire is trying to engineer a color revolution in Russia, the Iranians claim to have shot down a U.S. drone, and Pakistan is bolstering air defenses after "NATO" aircraft mauled two dozen of their troops last week. None of that is likely to turn out very well.

Third Time A Charm?

“Germany should now, as it has become peaceful and reasonable, get all that Europe and the whole world has refused in two gigantic wars, a sort of smooth hegemony over Europe.”
- Joschka Fischer, former German Foreign Secretary

It sure seems today, 72 years after its start, that it was Germany that had actually won World War Two. Overlay the map of the EU with that of the German Reich at the height of its power. Look how Yugoslavia was "wiped off the map" once again - this time by decree, and only then by bombs and boots on the ground. Behold, the same ethnic groups that once allied with Hitler find themselves the most enthusiastic "allies" of Berlin - or rather, its patron, the Atlantic Empire. That partnership probably goes a long way to explain the success of Germany's latest drive for European hegemony.

Julia Gorin just did a write-up about a presentation by Rodney Atkinson - former British Ministerial Adviser, author, and lecturer at University of Mainz in Germany - made in February 2008 (coincidentally, when German-supported Albanians declared the "Independent state of Kosova" in the occupied Serbian province) at the British House of Commons. The above quote is mentioned at the very end of Atkinson's presentation, the transcript of which can be found on Gorin's blog. The arguments presented there are culled from two books that Atkinson had written by then about the EU's roots in German designs for European hegemony.

Far-fetched? Not at all. Several years ago, one Serbian blogger tracked down several Nazi propaganda posters from the 1940s that extolled the virtues of National-Socialism and promised the Serbs an idyllic future in the "European family of nations" if only they'd just roll over and serve the Fuehrer. The similarity with pronouncements and promises from Brussels - often parroted by the sycophantic Serbian politicians - was uncanny. That is, until Atkinson pointed out the direct connection between Brussels and the 1940s Berlin. If the shoe fits...

The Germans certainly have perseverance. One would think that, failing to conquer Europe twice, in a spectacular and bloody fashion and at great cost to themselves (and others), they'd stop trying. It appears, however, they are still at it. Both times prior, their plans ran afoul of the Serbs and their stubborn resistance. That helps explain the present hostility for Belgrade and Berlin's support for its "legacy" allies in the region.

Thing is, Germans aren't the only people capable of holding a grudge, or soldiering on against the odds. I'm not sure about the Brits, or the rest of Europe, but somehow I don't quite think Serbia is as defeated as its enemies believe. And I doubt the third time will be a charm for Fritz.

All about the Germans?

Simon Tisdall of the Guardian echoes the blustery bloviations of Richard Holbrooke from Tuesday’s Washington Post, seeking to blame Russia for a "possible new war in Europe."

Per Holbrooke, if Albanians don’t get exactly what they want, they will start a war – but it will really be Russia’s fault, and Serbia’s (of course), not theirs. Or, heaven forbid, that of London and Washington, who were behind the 1999 occupation of Kosovo and have supported Albanian separatists since.

In and of itself this British parroting of American imperialist drivel wouldn’t be extraordinary, were it not for some choice words from Martti Ahtisaari, the ICG – er, UN – envoy charged with finding a way to independence – er, a solution (there I go again, evil Serb that I am) for Kosovo…

According to Tisdall, Ahtisaari dismisses several EU members’ concern about the potential fallout from such a toxic precedent as seizing a country’s territory in clear violation of international law, UN, OSCE, NATO and other charters, calling it “mithering” (sic). Tisdall quotes from “a recent interview” Ahtisaari gave in London:

"If the EU cannot do this, it can forget about its role in international affairs. If we can't do this during the German presidency, we should give up and admit we can't do anything." (emphasis added)

Um, what’s the German presidency have to do with anything? Is Germany supposed to be the strongest power in the EU, and therefore if it cannot force a decision on this, its power is largely fictitious? Or is it that Germany is a driving force behind EU involvement in the Balkans? Let's not forget, it was Germany that in 1991 strong-armed its EU fellows into recognizing Croatia and Slovenia - one of the first in a chain of illegal and illegitimate actions outside powers have taken in the region in the past decade and a half. In 1999, Germany was one of the most vocal supporters of (and participants in) NATO's aggression in Kosovo, turning the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and Bundeswehr loose on the world for the first time since 1945. Ahtisaari’s words make it sound as if his frantic attempt to separate Kosovo from Serbia is really all about German-led EU asserting its imperial prerogative and imposing a “solution” to Balkans “savages,” sticking it to Russia in the process.

Maybe it is.

But now we have proof that it's not some "Serb conspiracy theorist with delusions of victimhood" saying it, but a Chairman Emeritus of the ICG Board of Trustees.

The Germans are coming!

Germany is about to turn Bundeswehr into an international intervention force, writes Financial Times. Great. In the words of another blogger, "that's the real problem with the European Union, isn't it... not enough armed Germans with a mandate for international intervention."

On one hand, more German involvement in "peacekeeping" makes me nervous. One of the first things the reunified Germany did was browbeat the nascent EU into dismembering Yugoslavia, back in 1991. Berlin used the Bosnian war to deploy the Luftwaffe outside of Germany for the first time since 1945. The Kosovo Albanian terrorists ("KLA") were originally trained by BND, the German intelligence. The 1999 NATO aggression was actually the first time German troops went to war since 1945, against a country and a people their Nazi predecessors had targeted for destruction with particular malice.

On the other hand, once German troops occupied Kosovo (again), they acted more like caricatures of Nazis from BBC comedies, fleeing in panic before Albanian mobs when even the French showed more spine.

There isn't much anyone can to do stop the Bundestag and Frau Kanzler Merkel from sending German boys to kill and die in foreign lands for the "greater glory of humanitarian imperialism." That is, until those occupied by the "humanitarians" let their displeasure show through bombs and bullets, just as those occupied by the Nazis once did.