L'm,
I hope for that too, and for something more


The West's self-satisfaction cannot disguise the reality of the Balkans

This is Serb business - and it's still unfinished
Simon Jenkins
The Times (London), October 7 2000 OPINION


No, it was not the bombing, the sanctions and the posturing of Nato politicians. It was not the "fall of the last Communist dictator". It was certainly
not the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, endlessly lecturing the Serbs on "what they should do" and "what we want to create in Yugoslavia".
Nor is the Yugoslav question answered. It will begin again.

Despite Nato's efforts to bomb Slobodan Milosevic from power, indeed to kill him in his house, he was toppled by a self-inflicted, democratic
miscalculation. Tony Blair presented him as a dictator akin to Hitler. But Mr Milosevic was elected President of Serbia in 1989 and as President of
Yugoslavia in 1997.

He corrupted government, censored the media, killed enemies and perverted justice, like many "good friends of Britain" round the world. But his
elections were contested. Opposition candidates campaigned and Yugoslav local government has been solidly anti-Milosevic since 1996. Sanctions
helped to ruin the Serbian economy, though not as much as communism and the mafia. They exasperated many citizens of Belgrade. But they
strengthened Mr Milosevic and made his family one of the richest ruling houses in Europe, leaving potential opponents in the Serb middle class
isolated and impoverished.

Mr Milosevic's mistake was to bring forward next year's scheduled presidential election. Only when he refused to accept the result did provincial
Serbs join urban radicals on the streets of Belgrade. Only when the army and police denied their support to the President's annulling of the election
result did street protest prove overwhelming.

The geography of central Belgrade is perfectly fashioned for the photogenic "revolution of the crowd", with parliament, broadcasting and
government offices within easy walking distance of each other. Streets and squares are hard for soldiers to isolate. But the mob needed the
election to win legitimacy in the eyes of the true arbiters of power, the army. As Jonathan Eyal pointed out in this paper yesterday, this was not a
street revolution so much as a military coup to protect a democratic decision.

Slobodan Milosevic was a popular rabble-rouser turned autocrat. He rose to power by defending Serbs against Albanian atrocities in Kosovo and
orchestrated the expulsion of non-Serbs from much of Bosnia and Kosovo. In doing so he committed what are now considered "war crimes" and
besmirched the name of his country and people. But his greatest ally was the hypocrisy of the West, which fêted his partner in Balkan Fascism,
Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, a blatant partiality bitterly resented by Serb opinion. American collusion in Tudjman's murderous "cleansing" of 250,000
Krajina Serbs and Nato's current supervision of the KLA's "final solution" to the Serbs in Kosovo enhanced that paranoia. Serbs will never forget this.
Visitors to Belgrade in the past year have found antagonism towards Nato no less ferocious than antagonism towards Mr Milosevic.

One of the most articulate critics of Nato action was the man whom the West is now eulogising as another Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel. Vojislav
Kostunica is a dull, old-style Serb nationalist who opposed Mr Milosevic's signature of the Dayton accords as capitulation. He has never criticised
Serb ethnic cleansing and called the Kosovan conflict "America's private war". Like Mr Milosevic in 1989, he has been elected to restore his
country's pride and good order. Mr Kostunica has no more accepted Serb defeat than did Mr Milosevic. He may be a moderate, an intellectual and a
passionate democrat, but he dare not be less of a Serb if he is to survive in the snakepit of Balkan politics.

Yet since "my enemy's enemy must be my friend", the West's dumbed-down diplomacy has taken Mr Kostunica to its heart. He will reciprocate. He
will expect Nato to honour its promise for Serb troops to police Kosovo's frontiers and holy places - those Orthodox churches that have not yet
been demolished or desecrated under Nato "protection".

Mr Kostunica owes his power to a fiercely nationalistic army. He is also host to the largest concentration of refugees in Europe, possibly half a
million Serbs and Gypsies driven from Croatia and the Nato/UN protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo. These people are squatting in schools, hospitals
and office blocks. Mr Kostunica will want them repatriated and guarded, or an open border could send them in a vast diaspora westwards.

Whatever was the mess left behind by Communism, it has been made worse by intervention. From the end of the 1980s, Balkan realpolitik demanded
repartition as the only path to long-term stability. This was bound to involve nasty conflicts. Nato's actions escalated the nastiness, prolonged the
resolution and increased the cost. The flames this week in Belgrade could yet rekindle the fires of Kosovo. Whether or not Mr Milosevic might have
fallen sooner had he not been propped up by Nato bombing, that intervention ensured that Mr Kostunica must be a Serb nationalist first and
foremost.

At the very least, outsiders such as Mr Cook should stop rewriting history to their own gain. They did not topple Mr Milosevic. They did not bomb
democracy into the last Communist dictatorship in Europe. They merely blocked the Danube and sent Serb politics back to the Dark Ages of
autocracy. It was not sanctions that induced the army to switch sides; generals did well from the black market. The fall of Mr Milosevic began with
an election that he called and then denied, spurring the electors to demand that the army respect their decision and protect their sovereignty. For
that, Yugoslavia's democracy deserves the credit, not Nato's Tomahawk missiles.

simon.jenkins@the-times.co.uk

This is a fantastic piece of journalism !


Thursday, 5 October 2000 20:53 (ET)

Analysis: Fall of Milosevic filled with irony By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI Senior News Analyst

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (UPI)-- Publicly, the U.S. government is celebrating the fall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic as a great triumph. And
it looks certain to give Vice President Al Gore a welcome boost as a timely foreign policy achievement during the U.S. presidential election
campaign.

But the fall of Milosevic is filled with ironies and new problems for the U.S. government. And privately, many senior U.S. officials have for years
regarded the possible victory of Vojislav Kostunica, the man who toppled Milosevic, as a cause for despair rather than rejoicing.

A year ago, a U.S. official for a quasi-governmental organization working in Belgrade told UPI, on condition of anonymity:

"From our point of view, Kostunica's victory would be the worst possible outcome. He would be determined to hold on to the territories seized by
Milosevic. But unlike Milosevic, he would enjoy strong popular support for perhaps several years in power. It could be very difficult for us."

Indeed, Kostunica's rise has proven to be far from welcome to the Clinton administration, especially to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

The U.S. government poured millions of dollars into the Yugoslav opposition to Milosevic over the past five years.

Robert Hayden, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, said in a statement Thursday, "Since
Milosevic made it impossible for the opposition to have any kind of access to internal funding, they had to turn to outside sources."

However, this allowed Milosevic to portray the fractious, divided opposition to the Serbian people as tools of the United States, who would allow
the nation to be dismembered and left at the mercy of its ancient enemies if they took power.

However, this tactic did not work against Kostunica. He was the one prominent figure who did not accept any U.S. money.

"I know .. Vojislav Kostunica. He's a constitutional lawyer, a Serbian patriot, a democrat. ... He's untainted by dealings with either the Milosevic
regime or the Clinton administration," Hayden said.

To the puzzlement and then chagrin of U.S. officials, this only served to make him the one credible alternative to Milosevic in the eyes of the
Serbian people.

Albright has spearheaded the efforts to make an example of Milosevic by having him handed over to the International Court of Justice in The Hague,
capital of the Netherlands, and tried there as a war criminal.

But Kostunica implacably opposed having Milosevic or any other prominent Serb tried as a war criminal, no matter how terrible was their conduct
during the last nine years of conflict in the fragmented former communist federal state.

He also regularly denounced the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year as "criminal." This also gave him a popularity credibility all the U.S.-backed
opposition figures who did not criticize the bombing lacked.

Stephen Zunes, associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, said Thursday in a statement, "Change in Eastern Europe has
come not from the armed force of NATO but from large-scale nonviolent action of the subjugated peoples themselves. .. If anything, NATO's
bombing last year may have set back the growing anti-Milosevic movement."

Marjorie Cohn, associate professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, Calif., agreed that Kostunica's strong stance against the
bombing had contributed greatly to his credibility and popularity in Serbia as a leader who would try and defend them from being subjugated by the
NATO alliance, led by the United States.

She told Washington's Institute for Public Accuracy on Thursday, "Many people in Yugoslavia oppose Milosevic but they also despise NATO, which
subjected them to a ruthless 11-week bombing campaign (in 1999). .. The long term question is who will run Yugoslavia once Milosevic is ousted --
Kostunica or NATO?"

Kostunica also flatly opposed granting Kosovo province, with its more than 90 percent Albanian Muslim majority, any independence from Orthodox
Christian Serbia.

In many respects, Kostunica's triumph presents the Clinton administration -- and its successor, whether Vice President Al Gore or Texas Gov.
George W Bush -- with a far trickier problem than Milosevic did.

U.S. leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, were used to attacking Milosevic as if not a Hitler, then at least a Saddam Hussein figure.

They made clear they hoped that a pro-American opposition candidate would eventually succeed him and agree to U.S.-mediated solutions to
Bosnia and Kosovo.

But Kostunica is not pro-American. He is as virulent a critic of recent U.S. policies as Milosevic himself. And he has said he is determined to not to
give an inch on the Kosovo issue.

Yet he had nothing to do with Serbian ethnic cleansing activities in Kosovo or any previous acts of aggression, mass murder or ethnic cleansing in
the 1991-95 Bosnia conflict.

He even opposed the operation of the International Court of Justice in The Hague that U.S. officials now believe is essential to serve as a deterrent
to any future European leaders who might contemplate such massive state crimes.

From Washington's point of view, a Kostunica victory leaves Serbia under the control of a tough, implacable nationalist for another political cycle
and many more years to come.

It would derail U.S. hopes of negotiating a broad settlement to Yugoslav issues on Washington's terms. And it would even remove whatever
optimism remained before that Milosevic was the only obstacle to the desired U.S. outcome because he was standing in the way of the democratic
aspirations of his own people.

From the Clinton administration's point of view, the trouble with Kostunica is precisely that he does appear to accurately express the democratic
aspirations of the Serbian people.

The only trouble is that they are not the aspirations that the Clinton administration would like them to be.

Nationalism is alive and well in the bosom of the new Serb president


By Marcus Tanner

8 October 2000

The victory speech to the crowds outside the Belgrade parliament set a tone
for the new era. "Our beautiful Serbia has arisen," Yugoslavia's about-to-be
president told the dense mass. "I am proud to be a citizen of Serbia. I am
proud to belong to our sacred church."

Our sacred church? The phrase was a quick reminder that liberal western
values have yet to touch the heart of the Balkans. Orthodox bishops were set
to play the lead role in Vojislav Kostunica's inauguration ceremony. Serbia
has waved goodbye to communist nationalism. It has welcomed back a more
traditional nationalism – a kind that dominated Serbia before the Second
World War.

The new man's advisers have reassured the world that he is a "moderate
nationalist". But the other inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia remember a
politician more than just "aware" of his nationality.

Throughout the 1990s, Mr Kostunica's gloomy, foghorn voice was a familiar
background noise to the thunder of the Milosevic propaganda machine. But it
was never a voice of conscience. As Serbia staggered deeper into its
bloodthirsty territorial wars in Croatia and then in Bosnia, Mr Kostunica
did not decry the bloodshed. Instead, he lambasted Milosevic's failure to
seize yet more territory, and then to hold on to it.

It should come as no surprise. Yugoslavia's communist authorities expelled
Mr Kostunica from the Belgrade law faculty in 1974 for opposing the late
President Tito's moves to share power more equitably. In 1992, he left the
Democratic Party because it was not nationalist enough for him. He has
regularly called for a return to the "old" Yugoslavia before Tito took over,
when all the power was in Serbian hands.

Mr Kostunica is a clean pair of hands. He is personally decent. He has a
record for principled opposition to the communist system. He is committed to
the rule of law. He has never presided over killings. That alone marks him
out from his predecessor.

But while the West is rushing to offer Serbia financial aid, their honeymoon
with Mr Kostunica may prove short-lived. The new leader is almost as
pathologically anti-American as Mr Milosevic. Against that, he is
pro-European. But what will happen when he tests his new friendship with
Europe and demands Kosovo's prompt reintegration into Serbia?

The Kosovo question cannot be side-stepped, though the Foreign Secretary,
Robin Cook, tried to do so on Friday when he told Channel 4 that
independence for Kosovo had never been on the cards anyway. But Mr Cook did
not explain how a return to Serbian rule will be sold to two million people
who have now tasted 15 months' freedom from Serbian rule.

Then there is Serbia's other explosive neighbour: Bosnia. Mr Kostunica
vehemently opposed the 1995 Dayton accords and has called for political
union between Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs – a move that threatens to
detonate the Dayton deal.

A third potential spanner in the wheel is the Hague War Crimes Tribunal on
Yugoslavia. The tribunal's tough Swiss prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, is
certain to press hard for action on the sizeable gang of high-level
indictees hiding out in Serbia. Mr Milosevic flatly refused to recognise the
Hague court and so far Mr Kostunica looks set to continue his policy.

Mr Kostunica may turn out to be an interim leader. After 13 years of Mr
Milosevic, the Serbs seem to yearn for a spell of dull worthiness. But they
are famously fickle. They adored Tito, and then hated him. They loved
Milosevic. Now they want to kill him. It is hard to imagine the phlegmatic
Mr Kostunica exciting such emotion, but his turn may come. In the meantime
the Serbs want reconciliation with Europe, but not at the cost of their
national pride.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2000-10/nationalism081000.shtml

L'menexe the Pawslayer:

Shy? Not moi!

$105 million is only the overt sums paid via the innocuous sounding Nat'l Endowment for Democracy, usually referred to as an NGO, but created and funded by the CIA. How much has been spent from the Pentagon's "black budget" or the NSA is anybody's guess, not to mention the sums spent on war materiel, troop maintenance, supplies, etc. in Kosovo and Bosnia. I'd estimate the US taxpayer has already been robbed of over a billion dollars financing the Clinton/Albright imperialist mania.

The same hipocrites that demand a congressional investigation of alleged foreign money (Chinese) funneled to the Clinton/Gore election campaign via a Buddhist temple in L.A. supports spending hundreds of millions of dollars subverting and destroying a soveriegn nation - it's government, it's election process, media, communications networks, and cultural institutions. What's worse, they don't even see the connection.

HIPOCRACY and MENDACITY!!!

Traitors have taken over the American government and an apathetic and ignorant population has allowed it. Now we have congress about to pass legislation permitting Law Enforcement to raid private homes suspected of drug use without search warrants or prior notice (like a knock on the door!). We've already seen the result in a wrong address raid in Tennessee last week. A 62 year-old man was shot dead in his own living room by cops wearing black ski masks!!

The American people are getting precisely the kind of government and society they deserve. By the time they come out of their gluttonous stupor it will be too late. The USA is already a police state and most of the population doesn't even know it!!

Daniela, Tguns et al..
Figures I gave were for Belgrade area, not all of Yugoslavia.

---

This whole thing seems to be getting stranger by the minute. Check this out from http://www.truthinmedia.org -- They are saying in so many words this whole thing was staged, orchestrated by the new world order, and all the "demonstrators" were puppets in this big play. Report is titled "Russia in Cahoots with New World Order-- Again." While I can neither confirm nor deny what is said in the article, it certainly seems strange that two sworn enemies are now suddenly buddy-buddy with each other just one day after it's all over, and that the Milosevic camp gave up almost without a fight.

In your own words:

Mr Milosevic's mistake was to bring forward next year's scheduled presidential
election. Only when he refused to accept the result did provincial
Serbs join urban radicals on the streets of Belgrade. Only when the army and
police denied their support to the President's annulling of the election
result did street protest prove overwhelming.

(What could be wrong about that?)

---

Robert Hayden, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at
the University of Pittsburgh, said in a statement Thursday, "Since
Milosevic made it impossible for the opposition to have any kind of access to
internal funding, they had to turn to outside sources."

However, this allowed Milosevic to portray the fractious, divided opposition to the
Serbian people as tools of the United States, who would allow
the nation to be dismembered and left at the mercy of its ancient enemies if they
took power.

However, this tactic did not work against Kostunica. He was the one prominent
figure who did not accept any U.S. money.

(so it didn't work then, the:

"US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
US$105,000,000 One-hundred and five million US$
To topple a government!!!!!! ".

That's funny!!!

"one-hundred and 5 million yankee dollars on the
wall,

" one-hundred and 5 million yankee dollars,

you take one down
and kick milosevic around

one-hundred and 4 million yankee dollars on the
wall...."
==
merci, daniela
merci, m'sieu g

Kim Arx,

I beg to differ, but the $105 million (approved by the US Congress) plus the $71 million the US has admitted spending during the past year to fund the phony "independent" opposition, and the unknown millions from the undisclosed secret budgets of various spook agencies most certainly DID DO IT!! And will continue to do and the people of Yugoslavia will be squeezed of every last vestige of their independence and soveriegnty until even they won't recognize themselves.

Out of a population of 11 million, there was approximately 200,000 demonstrators in Belgrade, and a much smaller core of thugs that rushed the parliment building. Do you believe it was spontaneous? Do you really believe the ransacking of other buildings was spontaneous? A few million US dollars can buy a lot of thugs.

As I noted in one of my posts, the overthrow of the Mossadegh government and the return of the Shah in Iran was accomplished with a BOUGHT MOB paid with $1 million cash carried in diplomatic pouches by then US ambassador Kermit Roosevelt. The result was a 37 year totalitarian police state. Do you really think the Yugoslave, and the Serbs in particular, are going to fare any better?
You only have to look at Bulgaria, Romania, or Albania -- all in the clutches of the IMF/World Bank/Soros Foundation/etc. -- to see what awaits Yugoslavia. They are broken, bankrupt, corrupt, poverty-stricken, soul-destroyed colonies of the New World Order.

And please spare the excuse that it's all the result of their communist legacy. That's a red herring if there ever was one! There is no communist legacy in Latin America, yet you'll find the most wretched poverty and despair imaginable. In fact, the only place in Latin America where won't find people living in garbage dumps is Cuba! Wherever there is a considerable US corporate business presense and activity you will find extreme poverty, social dislocation, violence, and human degradation.

After your visit to Bulgaria, I'd suggest you try Colombia. The city of Barranquilla is a good place to start, if you've got the stomach for it or you find rats the size of cats jumping over rag-clothed people sleeping on the sidewalks.

>> "Milosevic made it impossible for the opposition to have any kind of access to internal funding, they had to turn to outside sources."

That's pure bullsh--t! Robert Hayden is one of the most consistent anti-Serb talking heads on the tube. He consistently repeats the same lies and excuses we've heard over and over from NATO and the rest of that ilk.

As I said in an earlier post, the real tragedy is that by the time the Yugoslavs/Serbs wake up and realize what they've allowed to take place it will be too late.

Hi L'menexe,

Cool little song you wrote there. Will you put it music and record it? :O) Ho,Ho,Ho.

Here's the next verse for you:

"one-hundred and 4 million yankee dollars on the wall,
one-hundred and 4 million yankee dollars,

take one down
and kick KOSTUNICA around

one-hundred and 3 million yankee dollars on the wall...."

cheers!

hey, dont look at me
i was just, like, the medium for the muse...

DESTRUCTION

OF THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES
IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA


http://www.decani.yunet.com/destruction.html


INTERNATIONAL PRESS ON DESECRATIONS

The Montreal Gazette, GOD'S HOUSES IN RUINS

NATO Turns the Blind Eye as Scores of Ancient Christian Churches
Are Reduced to Rubble, The Independent, UK, Nov 20, 99
***
LA Times, Christian Sites Being Decimated in Kosovo
Boston Globe, Serb Kosovo Heritage in Peril
SPECTATOR - Christmas Desecrations in Kosovo
BHHR, Christmas in Kosovo

KESTON, Kosovo: Attacks on Decani Monastery, July 31, 00
KESTON, Dynamiting of Orthodox Churches Continues, July 31, 00


ETC

http://www.kosovo.com/crucified/

http://www.kosovo.com/crucified/sp-amfilohije.html

Introductory word
by His Holiness
Patriarch Pavle

This humble publication is our cry and appeal to the Christian
and civilized world. It is distressing to learn that in the year of the
greatest Christian Jubilee, at the end of two milleniums of
Christianity, Christian churches are still being destroyed -- not in
a war but in the time of peace guaranteed by the international
community. We hope that these photos of the destroyed and
desecrated Orthodox shrines will stir the consciousness of those
who are in a position to stop the crimes and we believe that
those who already stood up against one evil will not remain mere
witnesses passively watching another kind of evil take place
before their eyes.

We also wish to make our appeal to all Kosovo Albanians, who
undoubtedly see their future in coexistence with the Serbs, to
resist and not allow the acts of insanity to happen.

In Kosovo and Metohija there will be no victory of humanity and justice while revenge and disorder prevail.
No one has a moral right to celebrate victory complacently for as long as one kind of evil replaces another
and the freedom of one people rests upon the slavery of another.

Patriarch Pavle


http://www.kosovo.com/crucified/intro-patriarch.html

Yeah, yeah, cool down t'gunns.
I mean't it was "funny" that so much money should be spent on the opposition and they still didn't the candidate they wanted! According to Daniela's post. you are contradicting yourselves.

And don't lecture me on interference by the US, if it wasn't for the amount of money raised in the states to fund the IRA each year a few more people might still be alive in England and Ireland.
You choose to live in the sodding place, I have never been there and have little desire to go there. I have travelled to South America, Africa, Russia, the Baltics, the balkans and eastern Europe. Been there talked to the people, lived with them, worked with them. I don't get my information from a bunch of cranks, who pose as "intrigue experts"
You seem to have a personal problem adding up the fact that you profit from the very system you are knocking. Is that why you support a "politician" who has consistently placed his own ambitions above those of the country he is supposed to represent. I guess its fine when its not happening at your backdoor.

If you don't mind, I'd like to see how Kostunica and Serbia get on for a while, before I decide on the truth.

And stop putting words in my mouth, thanks
"And please spare the excuse that it's all the result of their communist legacy. That's a red herring if there........bla bla bla.
Do you think you are the only one who can see what is going on in the world???????????

......

"Still, if Milosevic is not to be trusted, why not accept the assurances and congratulations offered to Kostunica by thehighest representatives of the
army and police? It seems that DOS's fear of one man and his presence is so great, that not even the fact that those institutions didn't react
during Thursday's vandalistic demonstrations can reassure the Serbian opposition.

Perhaps the DOS is simply being aware of its own fragility: from the very beginning, it has been highly dependent on foreign support and money.
This ad hoc alliance of some 18 parties has only one common ground and program - to oust Milosevic.

Not to forget that the DOS candidate, newly-proclaimed FRY president Kostunica, is a leader of a small party with low support from the people, and
a man of low significance. The person running the show for this particular puppet on a string is Zoran Djindjic, who in his own turn is a puppet of
the administration in Washington.

Not to forget that over 2 million Yugoslav citizens voted against Kostunica precisely for the above mentioned reasons, knowing who the powers
behind DOS are and not wanting to be a part of "Pax Americana".

[...]

"I didn't vote for Kostunica, he is nobody!" says Milan Ristic (24), a student from Belgrade. "But his victory might bring better days for Yugoslavia. I
voted against Milosevic...


http://www.sv-vaznesenje.org/forums/news/posts/113.html

Thank you, Daniela.

Just out of interest, how much as gone into funding the candidates in the presidential race in the US this year?