Fw: A Superbly Organized Crime: Imperial Occupation Of The Balkans

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

 http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m031402.html
 
 March 14, 2002
 
 
 A Superbly Organized Crime
 Imperial Occupation of the Balkans
 by Nebojsa Malic
 
 The Voice of America, Empire's official propaganda
 broadcasting service, reported this Monday that NATO
 pledged to "crack down on organized crime in Kosovo."
 Well, that's just wonderful. NATO stormtroopers should
 be knocking down the door of their Secretary-General
 any minute now, along with the entire state leadership
 of Britain, France, Germany - and oh yes, the United
 States. Not that we should hold our breath.
 
 It is Lord George Robertson himself the VOA report
 quotes, claiming that "criminal groups made Kosovo a
 center for drug smuggling, arms contraband and the
 trafficking of human beings." He also said these
 groups were "undermining progress made in the province
 since the U.N. and NATO took charge of the
 administration there nearly three years ago" and
 "stealing Kosovo's future from its people." 
 
 How can this be, Your Lordship? Did these groups
 appear before 1999, when the "clearly terrorist" KLA
 was attacking police officers and civilians with
 weapons bought with drug funds? Or after, when NATO's
 intervention brought the KLA into power? Did they
 spring up as part of "resistance" to Serbia, or under
 the protection of NATO occupation troops? Shocking!
 And since the "people of Kosovo" are routinely
 referred to as "Kosovars," and that in turn is a
 synonym for "Albanian," is Robertson saying these
 "gangs" are Serbs? 
 
 Organized And Other Crimes
 
 Not exactly. It turns out "several ethnic Albanian
 politicians are suspected of being linked to the
 gangs." Like who? Hashim Taqi, head of the KLA,
 nicknamed "Snake" for assassinating his rivals? Agim
 Ceku, former general in the Croatian army who
 specialized in ethnic cleansing? Bajram Rexhepi, the
 current Prime Minister, who is said to have
 decapitated a Serb prisoner during the NATO-KLA "war
 of liberation"? Robertson does not say, and neither
 does the VOA. All that matters is that NATO (good) is
 pledging to fight some unspecified organized crime
 (bad).
 
 NATO has committed the worst crime under international
 law by attacking Yugoslavia in 1999 to begin with. It
 has occupied Kosovo for three years, with 50,000
 troops and God only knows how many civilian clerks. It
 watched (even helped?) as 300,000 non-Albanians were
 driven out of the province, and their homes looted,
 seized or torched. It stood idly by as over 100
 Serbian churches and thousands of other cultural
 monuments were destroyed. It did nothing as scores of
 Albanians were murdered by their fellow Albanians. It
 intervened to legitimize the Albanian bandits as they
 seized a part of Macedonia, and forced the government
 in Skopje to give them special rights. It has
 tolerated (fueled?) the explosion of sex slavery, gun-
 and drug-running in Kosovo since 1999. After all this,
 how can anyone in their right mind believe NATO is
against "organized crime"? Please.
> 
Fudding Around in Bosnia
 
 Two weeks ago, NATO stormtroopers descended on a Serb
 hamlet in Eastern Bosnia. They smashed doors on
 houses, ransacked a church, held schoolchildren and
 teachers hostage, and turned the entire village upside
 down.  They were looking for Radovan Karadzic, wartime
 leader of the Bosnian Serbs accused by The Hague
 Inquisition of genocide and other war crimes. He was
 nowhere to be found, though.
 
 If the raid itself was ugly, the aftermath was even
 uglier. The fuming Americans accused the French of
 tipping Karadzic off. The Associated Press blamed the
 Bosnian Serbs. Everyone was trying to shift blame from
 NATO - and more specifically the US troops, who were
 behind the operation - and ignore the obvious. The
 entire affair looked like one of Elmer Fudd's
 hare-hunts, as NATO spokesman Mark Laity - former BBC
 "journalist" who found his true calling as paid
 mouthpiece of the Alliance - told his former
 colleagues, "Shhh, we'we hunting waw cwiminaws," and
 pretended nothing was wrong when the whole thing
 exploded in their faces. 
 
 This sudden interest in catching Karadzic and his
 former military commander, General Ratko Mladic, might
 have more to do with Empire's propaganda needs than
 with some imaginary effort to "help Bosnia heal."
 Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen brazenly
 suggested back in November that Karadzic and Mladic
 should be "bagged" to show the Muslim world the US is
 after other people, too. And in a Sunday Telegraph
 guest column on March 10, former BBC editor John
 Simpson made a direct comparison between Karadzic and
 Osama Bin Laden. Ironic, given that Osama's mujahedin
 fought against Karadzic's troops in Bosnia - but hey,
 back then they were our terrorists, not yet Evil
 Incarnate.
 
 What, Me Unhappy?
 
 Given Bosnia's realities under NATO occupation, should
 it be surprising that some Serbs sympathize with
 Karadzic? Just one glance at recent headlines offers a
 plethora of clues. Muslim leaders still advocate a
 monolithic state in which they would be a majority - a
 fixation that caused the 1992-95 war. Croats have
 named a major new bridge after Croatia's late
 president Franjo Tudjman, whose troops invaded Bosnia
 in 1992 and are responsible for many atrocities
 against Serbs and Muslims. Serb and Croat cemeteries
 in Muslim-dominated areas have been desecrated. At US
 behest, Islamic charities are raided and their assets
 seized under suspicion of links with terrorism. Yet
 the Bosnian Prime Minister found time to thank Iran
 for its support to "the Bosnian people" during the
 war. Iran sent money, weapons and volunteers to the
 Bosnian Muslims, not the Bosnian "people" - unless
 those two have somehow come to mean the same thing,
 just as the Muslim integrationists have been
 advocating all along...
 
 Besides, it is extremely difficult to find Karadzic's
 methods of waging war objectionable now that NATO has
 made them legitimate. Bombing civilians, starving them
 out and depriving them of food, water and other
 supplies, killing journalists and targeting hospitals
 is wrong regardless of who does it - it can't be wrong
 only if Karadzic and Mladic are accused of it, and
 acceptable if NATO pilots are pulling the trigger.
 
 With all that in mind, favoring Karadzic over his
 persecutors is actually a drop of reason in the vast
 sea of insanity that is the Bosnian protectorate.
 Earlier this week, twelve Bosnian police officers were
 fired by the UN police oversight mission, because they
 had helped organized a post office robbery in order to
 foil it and thus gain recognition. Now where could
 they have possibly gotten that idea.?
 
 Instances of Advanced Dementia
 
 Events in Macedonia and Serbia further prove the
 extent to which the Empire's all-pervading presence
 has already corrupted all aspects of Balkans life,
 beginning with the process of logical thinking.
 
 Vlado Popovski, Macedonia's defense minister, told the
 national radio last week that the country's only
 future was in joining NATO and the EU. According to
 him, this would be the only way to stabilize the
 country and the region. Even if they did not admit
 Macedonia, he averred, the Skopje government would
 still implement all of their practices and demands, so
 it could be a virtual member.
 
 Has Mr. Popovski by any chance lain his hands on some
 primo Afghan heroin the Albanian mafia specializes in
 smuggling through his country? NATO and the EU have
 just about destroyed Macedonia by giving aid and
 comfort to the Albanian militants. Last week,
 Macedonian police discovered irrefutable proof that
 international terrorists were at work in the country,
 aiding the UCK. Now the man who should be in charge of
 defending Macedonia advocates joining the sponsors of
 Macedonia's destruction?
 
 Under Zoran the Foul, Serbia has long been a
 logic-free zone. Recent news from another official
 Imperial propaganda outlet, Radio Free Europe/Radio
 Liberty, is thus not surprising, though it is superbly
 ironic. RFE/RL reported last week that Djindjic's
 government has started a campaign against corruption,
 one criticized as not serious enough by the
 "government watchdog" organization Otpor. This is the
 same Zoran Djindjic who sold Slobodan Milosevic to the
 Hague Inquisition in exchange for empty promises of
 financial aid. This is the same Otpor which was
 organized and funded by the CIA to topple Milosevic's
 government. And they are investigating corruption?
 Good luck.
 
 The Obvious Truth
 
 It takes a major case of block-headedness to ignore
 the obvious: the Empire is the source of most Balkans
 problems, and thus cannot - now or ever - provide a
 solution to them. Like those police officers in
 Bosnia, who probably only sought to please their
 foreign masters by demonstrating "efficiency," the
 Imperial occupiers of the Balkans seek credibility by
 claiming to be "solving" problems their very presence
 is responsible for creating. 
 
 Just look at the facts. Terrorism, smuggling, graft,
 slavery, drug-running, murder and prostitution - were
 there any in the former Yugoslavia prior to 1991, when
 outside forces first intervened in local disputes? No
 more than elsewhere in Europe, and often less. Now,
 after ten years of Imperial meddling, and thanks to
 the presence of at least 100,000 foreign occupiers
 (civilian and military), the place is a den of darkest
 depravity.
 
 The truth speaks for itself. It is the masters of lies
 who make it seem otherwise.