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Saturday, 1 October 2011

NATO issues Kosovo shoot to kill warning


http://rt.com/news/kosovo-kfor-clash-serbs-771/

Published: 30 September, 2011, 14:50
Kosovo Force KFOR soldiers guard the border crossing Jarinje between Serbia and northern Kosovo (AFP Photo / Dimitar Dilkoff)
(25.6Mb)embed video

Violence has flared again in Northern Kosovo after NATO troops brutally dispersed a crowd of Serbian protesters at a makeshift roadblock, firing live ammunition at peaceful demonstrators, and have now established an armed presence in the area.
Over 100 KFOR troops arrived at the scene on Friday and forced the Serbs to leave the then-intact barricade, threatening the use of lethal force. KFOR said they would shoot anyone who failed to comply. They also ordered journalists to leave the immediate area.  NATO’s force in Kosovo has said it will shoot to kill anyone who crosses a barricaded area near the disputed checkpoint on Serbia's border with Kosovo, reports RT’s Aleksey Yaroshevsky.
Allied pro-Kosovo forces then brought in bulldozers and demolished the barricade built by ethnic Serbs on the Kosovo side of the border with Serbia.
But Serbs at the remaining barricades say they will not leave their positions.
“We have lost a battle, but not the whole war,” they told RT.
The Kosovar Serbs added that their move to erect barricades in Kosovo is driven by fear that Belgrade might abandon them in pursuit of EU membership.
Ethnic Serbs are more determined than ever to show that they do not wish to be part of the Kosovo republic.
“They are telling us to leave but we have nowhere to go,
'
explained Petra, a local resident.
“This is because Kosovo is our land, our home and our life. It seems that we are on our own now and we will stand our ground.”
After peacefully retreating from the barricades, the Serbs established another makeshift checkpoint by putting two large trucks on a bridge, thus blocking access to northern Kosovo for the KFOR troops.
The situation remains tense but not violent with Serbs pulling back and grouping at a nearby bridge block post. The barricade secured by NATO troops is just one of about half a dozen constructed by Serbs, so the stand-off is continuing and an escalation of tension remains a possibility. RT’s correspondent reports that he saw a group of Serbs tearing down a road sign posted by KFOR, indicating that their fighting spirit is far from lost.
Still, more than 10 wounded people remain in hospital in the town of Mitrovice after Tuesday’s clashes with KFOR forces. Some of them have bullet wounds.
RT spoke to them to get first-hand information about the clashes.
“We were standing by the barricade when the soldiers started shouting and shooting at us,” recalls injured Aleksander Radunovic. “I did not know what they were shooting with so I got scared and started running away. Then I thought I had been hit on the shoulder, but it turned out I had received a perforating wound of my lung.”
Significantly, KFOR and NATO are trying to convince the public that they only used rubber bullets and tear gas grenades against the Serbs to pacify them. But doctors in the local hospital told RT that the patients have unmistakable gunshot wounds.
“We received seven men in a serious condition: gunshot wounds, fractures and bruises – they were not rubber bullets, not a single one of them had rubber bullet wounds,” revealed the head surgeon of Mitrovica hospital, Radomir Ivankovic. “All those wounds were caused by regular bullets which we extracted from the bodies [of injured].”
The conflict zone in Kosovska Mitrovica is split between the Albanians and the Serbs, and as RT’s crew witnessed last night, the latter are currently reinforcing their barricades with fresh piles of sandbags being placed across roads to block access to KFOR forces and the Kosovo police.
NATO helicopters are bringing additional troops to the conflict zone, and are reported to be flying over the border crossings approximately every 30 minutes.
There has been a strong international response on this week’s developments in Kosovo.
The US has accused Serbs of provoking violence, while the Russian Foreign ministry has expressed deep concern over the situation in Kosovo, saying that this conflict, largely perceived as a border incident, could destabilize the situation in the whole region.
Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has criticized NATO for a crude breach of the UN resolution on Kosovo, saying the alliance has failed to remain neutral.
In this situation, NATO has definitely taken Pristina’s side,” Rogozin told Russia’s TV channel Rossiya 24. 
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has also expressed deep concern over news suggesting an emergency carriage taking the injured to hospital was fired on by Kosovo forces during Tuesday clashes at the disputed checkpoint.
On Wednesday, members of the United Nations Security Council gathered for emergency consultations in New York to discuss the situation in southern Serbia, but failed to reach a common stance on the conflict in the turbulent region.
On Thursday, Kosovo's Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi said that roadblocks put up by local Serbs will be removed, pledging, though, that ethnic Albanian-dominated authorities will make no unilateral moves, AP reports. The removal of barriers is “inevitable” as they prevent “freedom of movement for people and goods,'' the minister said, adding that any action would be coordinated with the NATO-led KFOR forces and the European Union mission.

Ambassador demands investigation of NATO’s firing at Kosovan Serbs

Photo ITAR-TASS

BRUSSELS, September 28 (Itar-Tass) – Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin has issued a demand that NATO officials investigate the incident, in which NATO forces opened fire at Kosovan Serbs near the Jarinje check-post in Kosovo.
He wrote about his demand at his Twitter microblog.
“I’ve demand an investigation of the fact of fire by NATO servicemen at Kosovan Serbs, who protested against the blocking of the administrative border between Kosovo and Serbia,” Rogozin said.
“What I’ve heard in response is apologies only,” he said. “Irresponsibility of this sort leads to a war.”... more at : 

The Irish Times: KFOR shooting at Serbs

The Irish Times - Saturday, October 1, 2011http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/1001/1224305086199.html

Kosovo Serbs dig in as border dispute turns bloody

DANIEL McLAUGHLIN in Jarinje
Cultural claims persist in regions as Belgrade refuses to acknowledge independence of Kosovo
MILEVA PREMOVIC and her neighbours while away the afternoon in the shade of a broad tree. The unseasonable warmth makes it hard to imagine that the green Kapaonik mountains, rising up a few miles away in Serbia, will soon be white with snow and busy with skiers.
It would also be hard to believe that bullets were fired and blood shed here just a few days ago, were it not for the scars that blight Kosovo’s border zone.
Nearby fields are burned black from recent rioting and, just over the rise, US soldiers move warily behind a huge earth barricade and glinting coils of barbed wire. They warn off anyone approaching their position while they are still hundreds of metres away, their rifles clearly showing.
“It was frightening to see the demonstrators running, tumbling over each other to get away,” Premovic says of Tuesday’s clashes between Serbs and Nato troops. “There were hundreds of local people, young and old, and I could hear gunfire – tap-tap-tap. If the Americans want to kill me, then go ahead, I have nowhere else to go. But this has always been Serb land; there have never been Albanians here.”
Serbs accuse Nato troops, specifically Americans, of using live ammunition to disperse people who were protesting against ethnic-Albanian Kosovo police efforts to take control of customs points along the border with Serbia – a frontier that local Serbs insist they will never recognise.
The Nato-led operation in Kosovo, called Kfor, says the demonstrators rammed a vehicle at checkpoint, tried to seize a soldier’s gun, and then threw home-made pipe bombs and fired gunshots at its personnel, forcing them to retaliate. The local EU mission is investigating the incident.
Tuesday’s violence injured at least six Serbs and four Kfor soldiers, ramped up tension in northern Kosovo, and prompted the postponement of EU-brokered talks between Belgrade and Pristina to solve practical problems stemming from Kosovo’s 2008 independence declaration.
The Belgrade government, like most Serbs, refuses to recognise the sovereignty of Kosovo, which from 1999-2008 was run by the UN after Nato bombing forced Slobodan Milosevic’s forces to withdraw from the region, ending a brutal crackdown that killed more than 10,000 people.
Many Serbs fled Kosovo after the 1998-1999 war and the 100,000 that remain are divided between almost entirely Serb northern regions and enclaves in the south where they are surrounded by Kosovo’s 90 per cent ethnic Albanian majority.
Serbs in northern Kosovo refuse to acknowledge the authority of the Pristina government and still look to Belgrade for political leadership, protection and finance.
In a bid to tighten control of the rebellious north, Pristina dispatched special police to take over custom points in July. Local Serbs resisted and killed one of those policemen.
The row has rumbled on, and this week’s clashes came when Kfor troops tried to clear barricades built by Serbs across local main roads and to block one of the many rough tracks that they use to bypass official checkpoints and enter Serbia.
“Those who are doing this are isolating themselves, and the common people suffer as they are hostages to various criminal groups and political extremists in the north,” said Kosovo’s interior minister Bajram Rexhepi.
That echoes a commonly heard view in Pristina that violent radicals and smuggling groups have most to lose in the customs battle.
But Serbia’s bid to secure EU candidate status this year could also fall victim to any further deterioration in relations with Kosovo. A few days after the fighting, the only smoke rising at one barricade comes from a makeshift grill covered with sizzling sausages.
About a dozen Serbs sit in the sun, eating, drinking and making gentle fun of the Greek Kfor troops watching them from behind barbed wire. The Serbs insist they are neither radicals nor puppets of the local mafia, but patriots who refuse to be dictated to in their ancient homeland.
“We want to remain part of Serbia.
“I live on my grandfather’s land, but this situation means I have to hope my kids find a future in Belgrade or Europe. That’s the sad truth,” says Sladjan Radosavljevic from the nearby village of Leposavic, home to many of the protesters.
“Serbs are disappearing everywhere,” he adds. “Croatia, Macedonia, and they are under pressure in Montenegro. What could we possibly hope for from the Albanians?”
Offering food and strong home-made rakia to visitors, local man Stanko Lakic brandishes a fork and insists it is the protesters’ deadliest weapon.
“Every river has a source and every nation has its birthplace. The birthplace for every Serb is Kosovo.
“And what happens when a river loses its source? It disappears,” he says.
“But Serbs will never leave Kosovo.
“No price and no amount of violence will force us out.”

James Jatras and Michael Pravica on NATO attacks on Serbs

Now on Free Republic at:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2784604/posts

Thank you to James George Jatras and Michael Pravica for their responses to the current crisis in our beloved Kosovo.

NAPRED.

Sincerely,

Aleksandra Rebic
("Ravnagora")

*****


Our Tax Dollars at Work – NATO Troops in Kosovo Open Fire on Serb Protesters!

The American Council for Kosovo ^ | September 27, 2011 | James George Jatras 
Posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 6:31:53 PM by Ravnagora

NATO Tries to Force Christian Serbs to Submit to Criminal Albanian Muslim “Authority”

 

   September 27, 2011: Today, NATO forces in Kosovo opened fire on Serbian demonstrators protesting efforts by KFOR (NATO’s “Kosovo Force”) and the ironically designated European Union “rule of law” mission (“EULEX”) to force Serbs to submit to the illegal Albanian Muslim “authority” posing as an independent government in Priština. As summarized by retired U.S. diplomat Gerard Gallucci, who formerly served in Kosovo:On September 27, the NATO force in Kosovo (KFOR) lost completely its guise as UN peacekeepers and became a repressive, lawless military occupation force. After seeking to use force to remove peacefully maintained barricades and to close a alternate road used by northern Kosovo Serbs, some locals apparently threw stones at the KFOR soldiers who then responded - in "self defense" - by firing at the otherwise defenseless Serbs, wounding at least six. The NATO action ought to be thoroughly investigated by an independent body to verify whether or not war crimes were committed. KFOR and EULEX ought to stand down and stop trying to change the political reality on the ground through such bullying and repressive measures before they provoke real violence.
At this time, writes Gallucci, “Details about the day's events remain somewhat unclear. Various reports have suggested that the NATO shots fired were either rubber bullets or live ammo. It is also unclear whether the soldiers involved were German or perhaps American or Polish.” But make no mistake: if not for a political green light from Washington, NATO would not have taken the initiative of authorizing violence to remove Serbian barricades.
This latest escalation follows weeks of rising tensions since late July, when Hashim “Snake” Thaci – so-called “prime minister” of Kosovo, mafia kingpin, war criminal, and organ-trafficker – placed illegal checkpoints on the administrative line between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, in a bid to force Serbs in northern Kosovo to submit his illegal administration. Incredibly, KFOR and EULEX, in violation of their “status neutral” mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which is the only legal authority for their presence in the province, have backed up Thaci and his criminal cronies. The question now is, does this latest resort to violence mean NATO has decided on use of force – in the pattern of the genocidal 1995 “Operation Storm” in the Serbian Krajinas with the help of U.S. mercenaries – to impose a final solution on Serb resistors to the the Albanian Muslim administration? Or will public attention force them to back off?
No less dismal than the spectacle of American and other NATO soldiers acting as enforcers for Thaci & Co. is that of Serbia’s supine “pro-western” government, under President Boris Tadic. Aptly dubbed “Vichy Serbs” by writer and analyst Vojin Joksimovic, Tadic and his government, seeing their own citizens under fire on their own national territory, can think only of stepping up “technical negotiations” with the Priština-based terrorists. For that reason, in a Joint Statement of the All-Serbian National Council “Serbs Rally Together,” on September 17, 2011, Kosovo Serbs declared (in part, read the full statement here):
WHEREAS we are committed to the ideal of freedom and inspired by our sacred spiritual heritage of Kosovo but mindful of our future generations, while never forgetting our obligation to respect the will and the sacrifice of our glorious ancestors who created Serbia and left it for us to preserve,
WHEREAS, determined to stop and prevent further dismemberment and occupation of Serbia and united under the blessing and leadership of His Grace Bishop Artemije, we have resolved and hereby announce to Serbia and the international community our resolution as follows:
KOSOVO AND METOHIJA ARE UNDER OCCUPATION
The Belgrade regime of Boris Tadic considers the occupying powers his partners; it negotiates with them, draws up agreements, pacts and treaties, but always to the detriment of the Serbian nation as a whole and, particularly so, to the detriment of the Serbs who live in Kosovo and Metohija.
If the Serbs could call their enemy by its rightful name—OCCUPIER—and the conditions under which they have been living in Kosovo and Metohija for the past 12 years—OCCUPATION—then they would do as one does under occupation: they would endure and fight until the end, until the liberation.
We give notice to NATO and to Albanian terrorist occupying powers in Priština that we do not recognize any agreement or treaty they have signed or will sign with Tadic and his coalition. Treaties concluded during occupation through blackmail and trickery have always been considered invalid.
We particularly want to point out that we shall not tolerate further threats, attacks on our security and efforts at assimilation of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija. Those who have done this or are planning to do so will soon be confronted with legitimate forms of self-defense.
We remind our people that no shame is attached to being under enemy occupation, but it is certainly shameful to praise the occupier or collaborate with him. Not only is it shameful, it is a sin against our ancestors who had fought for hundreds of years to liberate Kosovo and Metohija from centuries long Turkish occupation.
It now remains to be seen who will prevail: the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija, who have declared themselves against occupation of their country, or their occupiers: the Albanian Muslim separatists and their NATO and EU enablers in Washington, Brussels, Berlin, London – and worst of all, in Belgrade.
The blackest deeds occur when the perpetrators believe no one is watching. Most Americans have long since forgotten about Kosovo, and about the Balkans in general. Today, how many Americans remember the 78 days of “humanitarian” bombing in 1999 by the Bill Clinton administration on behalf of the Thaci’s “Kosovo Liberation Army” – a gaggle of jihadists and Albanian Mafia kingpins? How many recall George W. “the Decider” Bush’s announcement in 2007 in Tirana, Albania, that to please our Islamic “allies” in the “War on Terror,” he would simply proclaim, on no authority whatsoever, “enough’s enough, Kosovo’s independent.” (And then the grateful Albanians stole his watch!)
Almost no one.
But the fact that few Americans remember doesn’t change the fact that at this very moment, under the authority of President Barack Hussein Obama, NATO – acting in our name, and supported by our tax dollars – is bringing force to bear against Christian people living in their own country, to force them to submit to hostile Muslim occupation and to accept their eventual extinction.

James George Jatras

Director, American Council for Kosovo

Washington, September 27, 2011

__________________________


TOPICS: Politics;
KEYWORDS: albanianskosovonatoserbs;
1 posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 6:32:02 PM by Ravnagora

To: joan; Smartass; zagor-te-nej; Lion in Winter; Honorary Serb; jb6; Incorrigible; DTA; vooch; ...
 
Ping!

2 posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 6:34:10 PM by Ravnagora

To: Ravnagora
 
A few of Qaddafi’s missing manpads would certainly liven things up in Kosovo.
 
3 posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 6:54:19 PM by Truth29
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To: Ravnagora
 
Screw KFOR. We should just leave NATO.
 
4 posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 8:03:47 PM by Nowhere Man (General James Mattoon Scott, where are you when we need you? We need a regime change.)

To: Ravnagora
 
Thank you for the posting. I will share it with friends and family.
 
5 posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 8:37:49 PM by mckenzie7 (Democrats = Trough Sloppers!)

To: Ravnagora
 
More on this story from the American Council for Kosovo:
 
 
May our Lord and All Saints of Serbia defend the brave and long-suffering Kosovo Serbs!!!!
 
6 posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 10:26:58 PM by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)

To: Ravnagora
 
NATO is nothing less than a force used to build an empire not unlike the Turks, Austrian/Hungarian and Roman. However, history has shown that this too will come to an end because of the corruption and the injustice that it has projected. It's a mafia. NATO will collapse as well as the nations that back their unjust actions.
 
Whatever the case, they will learn peace and justice from a Judge that is far more knowledgeable on international law than they ever will be. When He returns He will not return as a servant but rather as Master.
 
7 posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 10:24:22 AM by SQUID

To: Ravnagora; All
 
Dear Fellow Serbs, Serbian-Americans, and supporters of the Serbian cause:
 
NATO’s recent illegal incursions into the Serbian province of Kosovo are deeply alarming and, if tacitly condoned by the Vichy government in Serbia, will set the stage for a “final solution” of Kosovo’s Serbs, further loss of Serbian territory in Vojvodina, the Sandzak, and elsewhere in the future as Germany desperately seeks to reduce Serbia to nothing demonstrating that she has learned nothing from the horrible tragedy of WWI and WWII and is willing to repeat history for her fanatical anti-Serbian aims.
 
I have heard many Serbs express their opinions that “Kosovo is lost” as a fait accompli and that it is a “cancer on Serbia” that must be excised. The problem is that first of all, Serbs live there and have been living there for over 1300 years. Kosovo is the spiritual Jerusalem of the Serbs and we cannot accept its loss lest we forget the struggles that our ancestors encountered over the past 600 years fighting for the right to worship as Orthodox Christians. This trend was observed elsewhere where the “Precani” Serbs (”Pioneers”) were betrayed in Croatia and Bosnia by Serbian (and Montenegrin) leaders.
 
Not to encourage bad relations within our people, but some of the greatest Serbs such as Nikola Tesla, Mihajlo Pupin, Ivo Andric, Rudjer Boskovic, and Jovan Ducic came from regions of Yugoslavia outside of Serbia. We can’t forget these Serbs as they suffered the most during the Nazi/Ustasa Holocaust and also during the recent war.
 
It is precisely this ability to endure unbelievable suffering that makes them so special. If we forget and betray our brethren in Kosovo, we will be cast into the rubbish bin of history. The famous statement by Tzar Lazar about fighting for Kosovo comes to mind now more than ever. I realize that our people are suffering in Kosovo. I realize that this is not a trivial problem that will be resolved for some decades.
However, there is much that we can do as a people to give these forgotten but incredibly brave people who remain in Kosovo.
 
First of all, why hasn’t the Serbian government called for a UN resolution condemning the violence?
 
Second, there are ways to get food and other supplies to the people in northern Kosovo outside of NATO checkpoints. The Serbs did it during WWII and can do it now - IR cameras/drones/”surveillance” or not.
 
Defeat becomes permanent only when it is accepted from within. The Balkans has always been in a state of flux. Kosovo will come back to Serbia eventually. No nation willingly gives up territory without a fight. Everything surrounding the theft of Kosovo from some Western governments was illegal no matter how much they pretend otherwise.
 
To accept this is far more dangerous globally than many Serbs realize. We must always remain unified in the view the KOSOVO IS SERBIA! To accept otherwise is to accept defeat and to accept the loss of our uniqueness as a people who have suffered so much but who are closer to God because of it.
 
Kosovo Serbs live in a ghetto but must remain in that ghetto as they have nowhere else to go and we must help them survive.
 
The strategy of the West has always been to divide and conquer. By sticking together, helping one another, and resisting NATO’s anti-Serbian agenda, NATO can only do so much.
 
We must remember who we are and help our fellow brothers and sisters to resist this unprecedented evil. Even the Ottomans and Nazis were unable to destroy our spiritual heritage and spirit as NATO with its quisling robots has been able to do in the recent conflicts. We have to draw a collective line in the sand and realize that evil cannot be appeased - cannot be compromised with - it must be defeated.
We must seek allies within the international community - particularly within BRIC nations - to condemn the recent actions in Kosovo and stop this merciless persecution of Serbs there. This can be done but not while entertaining the fantasy that Serbia will someday join the failing European Union. For goodness sakes, look at what is happening in Greece if you want to see how Serbia will be treated there!
It reminds me of how the Serbs in many cases were invited back into Austro-Hungarian lands (e.g. Zemun) and were so persecuted as Orthodox Christians that they WILLINGLY returned to the Ottoman empire because the persecution they suffered there was far less than in “Catholic” lands.
 
Think about it people! History IS repeating itself!
 
Let’s all work together to help expose the truth of what the West is doing in Kosovo by first accepting that is WRONG and that in our hearts and minds, Kosovo IS and will always be Serbia!
 
Sincerely,
 
Michael Pravica, Ph.D.
 
_____________________
 
8 posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 11:47:40 AM by Ravnagora

To: Ravnagora
 
 
 
   
Photos: "Politika Online" Sept. 28, 2011
 
9 posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 11:59:04 AM by Ravnagora

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2726
*****UPDATE AT BOTTOM*****
As the son of Cuban exiles, junior Florida senator Marco Rubio should be particularly sensitive to attempts at painting a people as crazed criminals, often done in service of an underlying political agenda. But in his speech last week at the Jesse Helms Center in North Carolina, Senator Rubio said, “The American armed forces have been one of the greatest forces of good….They stopped Nazism and Communism and other evils such as Serbian ethnic cleansing.”
A year after our leaders lied to us in 1999 about the particularly insidious but ultimately mythical “Operation Horseshoe” (the ethnic cleansing plansubsequently shown to have been a Croatian-assisted concoction by a resurgentGermany delivering payback to Serbs for WWII), it was the Miami Cubans’ turn.
In the Elian Gonzalez saga, the Cuban community was depicted as wild extremists and the Gonzalez family as “kidnappers” who were breaking the law, when they merely expected us to follow our own laws and give Elian due process. But the larger agenda was to deliver the boy back into Castro’s clutches, for reasons that remain mysterious to this day.
As with the Balkan wars, no one paid attention when, once the agenda was fulfilled, the truth came out. In the Gonzalez case, not only did Elian’s father Juan call ahead to tell the Miami relatives that Elian and his mother were coming, but he was speaking under duress when saying he wanted his son back in Cuba. He had also made his own attempts to leave Cuba. What caused the Cuban-Americas to go so “wild” was that word got out (but not to the wider American public) that Juan Gonzalez was seeking asylum for both himself and the boy. Most of this came out in a belatedly revealed INS memo that could have changed Elian’s fate but was ordered destroyed by then INS Commissioner Doris Meissner.
As appalling as a senator singling out one of the warring nationalities to perpetuate a long debunked lie about it, is the fact that by equalizing the fictitious ethnic cleansing with the Nazis, he reinforces the WWII inversions that we’ve been fed by the Serbs’ enemies — Croatians, Albanians and Bosniaks — all of whom sided withthe Axis powers. (This of course made it doubly important to paint the Serbs as the modern-day Nazis in the 90s, since it was their stubborn WWII resistance that delayed Hitler’s attack on Stalingrad, with decisive consequences.)
The Balkans are precisely an example of where America and its military were the opposite of “a force for good,” giving wings — and continued support today — to a state ruled by fear, with an elite that is above the law and where prosecution witnesses drop out or drop dead. A “Mafia society based on ‘capture of the state’ by criminal elements,” is how the Institute for European Policy put it in 2007. This was seconded by a Foreign Policy magazine article last February titled “Thug Life”: “It is difficult to see how democracy or respect [for] the rule of law could develop and flourish amid such overt displays of American support for a corrupt and criminal leadership…The [ethnic Albanian] war crimes…have never been fully investigated — in fact, in some cases they have been covered up.”
So it’s rather rich when Rubio cites Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan as introducing a “‘morality in foreign policy’ plank to the 1976 Republican platform [which stated,] ‘The goal of Republican foreign policy is the achievement of liberty under law….’” This, while applauding a war which was achieved by the breaking or ignoring of every international law (and also without UN or even Congressional approval). A gratuitous war whose criminal spawn was born in likewise criminal fashion, without regard for the international order or any existing norms of state craft.
There are two iconic harbingers of the force against liberty that America risked becoming, and they came in back-to-back symbolic years at the turn of the millennium: the surreal sight in 1999 of the U.S. Air Force bombing Yugoslavian children in their beds, and in 2000 the image of a Federal agent’s machine gun fixed on a six-year-old boy in the arms of the fisherman who rescued him.
The free world was not there for Elian or his father, and it was downright murderous to the Orthodox Serbs. Some might even draw the connection that in one case, we betrayed a Catholic community on Easter in service to communism, and in the other we betrayed Orthodox Christians in favor of Islamic propaganda traceable to the Bosnian Ministry of Information and Albanian disseminators. (And no, we didn’t hold the bombs on Easter in that case either, though we do so on Ramadan.)
As a Jewish conservative who vigorously defended Cuban-Americans during the Elian siege (and was offended by the mainstream defamation of them), I am sickened that Senator Rubio would turn the same kind of spear — though far more elaborate and psychologically entrenched — onto another maligned people. I was always of the hope that if ever there were a swath of Americans who could be convinced of the disinformation campaign perpetrated against the truly besieged Serbs, it was Cubans. Shame on you, Senator Rubio.
UPDATE:
Below are some relevant items about the Free World attacking Christians on Easter. Bombing Serbs on Easter had its precedent in history. Hitler bombed Serbia on Easter 1941. Germans wrote “Frohe Ostern” (”Happy Easter”) on the bombs they dropped on Serbian women and children.
This fact was not lost on our victims. Fast-forward to 1999:
Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister, Vuk Draskovic, condemned the Nato attack as “a crime against the Serbian nation'’.
“Downtown Belgrade is on fire on the biggest Christian day of Easter,'’ he told the British satellite station Sky. ‘’The last time Belgrade was on fire [over] Easter was in 1941 when Hitler bombed it.”
The Harrier Hawks, which are housed in huge white tent-hangars, carry 1,000lb bombs covered with graffiti, some of which was less than friendly: “Happy Easter” and “Hope you like it!”
– The Independent, March 26, 1999
I must tell you, Mr. Clinton, I was deeply saddened when I heard reports that NATO forces have written “Happy Easter” on some of the bombs dropped over Yugoslavia.
It is interesting to note that the Clinton administration in the winter of 1998-1999 stopped its brief bombing campaign on Iraq due to the period of Ramadan on the Islamic calendar. However, both English and American warplanes continued to bomb the Serbian Christians throughout the Christian Holy Week and especially on Easter Sunday of the Orthodox Christian calendar. Some of the bombs that were dropped by English pilots had the message painted on them, “Happy Easter.”
– Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver, March 24, 2002
The other grievance was who Nato was targeting. From the foreign broadcasts (CNN, SKY, BBC) the message came across loud and clear — we have no quarrel with the people of Serbia, only with the president and the army. So why, asked the people of Serbia, did you have to bomb over Easter, one of the most holy periods in the Serb calendar, as the Nazis had done in 1941? Why did we find an unexploded bomb with the words “Happy Easter” engraved, if you were on the side of the “people?”
– Unknown Questioner
Throughout May, Nato repeatedly targeted the town of Kraljevo, destroying its school and a hospital clinic. More than 20 civilians have been injured. A message on one of the bomb casings found at Kraljevo read, “Do You Still Want to Be a Serb Now?”
– “Who NATO Killed,” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, June 15, 1999
It is one of the most underreported aspects of the bloody wars that have taken place in the Balkans: the same Clinton administration that now professes concern about the Kosovo refugee crisis promoted a similar crisis almost four years ago. In August 1995, the Clinton administration supported the Croatian Army when it drove hundreds of thousands of Serbs from Krajina…?
A major war was averted when Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, who is now demonized as a new Hitler, failed to send his army to defend the Krajina Serbs, who had set up an independent mini-state. The U.N. says the Croatian attack included the shelling and burning of Serb villages and the bombing of refugees. The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague is gathering evidence to determine if the Croats should be charged with war crimes. The U.S. has been slow to supply satellite images that have been requested by the prosecutors.
Walter Roberts, a retired foreign service officer, said in an April 10 column in the Washington Post, “The pictures from the borders of Kosovo have outraged the whole world. But where was the outrage when more than 300,000 Serbs were evicted by the Croatian government from the Krajina, a Croatian land inhabited by Serbs for centuries?”
Footage of Krajina Serbs loading what possessions they could onto wagons had been shown on TV, but there were no touching interviews with pathetic Serb refugees telling tales of woe in the refugee camps where many of them have lived for nearly five years. On May 5, President Clinton, addressing our troops in Germany, declared, “We have no quarrel with the Serb people….Our quarrel is with ethnic cleansing.” That was not the position he took when the Serbs were driven from Krajina.
– Reed Irvine, Accuracy in Media, May 1999
“What the former communist Vuk Draskovic was not telling the truth about,” wrote “Serbstvo,” whose research most of this last segment is, “was the last time Serbia was bombed on Easter. It was in fact Serbia’s own allies that carpet-bombed her in service to Communism, and they chose to do it on Easter Sunday of 1944. The Nazis and Allies bombed Belgrade over Easter, which is regarded as the holiest day by Orthodox Christians. Serbs would gather in greater numbers for Easter Sunday Mass than they would on any other day of the year. The Germans, British and Americans took advantage of knowing that bombing Serbs over Easter would inflict the maximum amount of civilian casualties. The Allies showed they were as cynical as the Nazis and also wrote ‘Happy Easter’ on the bombs.”
The city of Belgrade was bombed during two campaigns in World War II, the first undertaken by the Luftwaffe in 1941, and the latter by Allied air forces in 1944…Belgrade was bombed by Anglo-American air forces on April 16 and 17, 1944, which was Orthodox Easter Day. The most important unit that took part was American 15th Air Force, based in Foggia in the south of Italy. This carpet bombing raid was executed by 600 bombers flying at high altitude.
[The] bombing of Belgrade on Easter Sunday 1944 was deliberate — UXO was found with [the] inscription “Happy Easter” written in Serbian. According to flight documents, bombers were heading to Romania, but UXO shows otherwise. [Belgrade’s] city core was deliberately targeted, more than
2000 civilians were killed while the damage to occupying Wehrmacht forces was negligent (several dead and wounded)
– Comment Poster on FreeRepublic.com, Sept. 22, 2004
The Allies claimed Serbia was bombed for the purpose of destroying German occupying troops, but what association did Germans have with an Orthodox holiday and why were only several Germans killed compared to the thousands of Serbian civilians? How was bombing churches filled with Christian believers in Easter Mass supposed to harm the Nazis? How were they killing Germans if they were targeting churches, schools and hospitals?
– Serbstvo
It was supposed to break down the Germans but actually had destroyed Belgrade more than the German bombs. On some found bombs, it was written in Serbian Cyrillic “Happy Easter.”
– eNotes
[The] campaign of bombing civilian buildings, hospitals, bridges and residential quarters was carried out without permission of the UN Security Council and is one of the major crimes at the end of the XX century. Belgrade was bombed three times more during the same century: in 1914 by Austrians and Germans, in 1941 by Hitler and in 1944 by the British Royal Air Force (on Easter day) - Serbia forgives but will never forget.
Serbstvo closes with a note on Allied support for the communist takeover of Yugoslavia:
Churchill promised Tito would rule over a communist Yugoslavia. He was aware that Tito’s communist movement was not popular in Serbia (as far as Serbs went, his army was mostly composed of Bosnian and Krajina Serbs) as [those] in Serbia mostly favored Draza’s Chetniks, who were both anti-fascist and anti-communist in defense of the Monarchy. The Allies realized that the only way they could bring Tito to seize power in Yugoslavia was by crushing the Ravna Gora Movement and terrorizing civilians through carpet-bombing.
The Allies ensured that Yugoslavia would be communist after WWII, and once we defeated the Nazis we adopted many of them and proceeded to actualize parts ofHitler’s vision of the world — ostensibly to defeat Communism. So when Rubio invokes American opposition to Nazism, Communism and Serbs, let’s keep in mind that only one of those oppositions by us was full-hearted — and it wasn’t either of the first two. Unless we’re talking specifically about Ronald Reagan who — incidentally — knew the value of a Serb. Also while pondering that list — Nazism, Communism, and Serbs — let’s keep in mind that, heartbreakingly, the U.S. and her NATO allies have more in common with Nazi Germany than most would be willing to admit.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

BBC Monitoring Europe - Political
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

January 16, 1999, Saturday

YUGOSLAV COMMENTATOR DETAILS CIA "SECRET OPERATIONS"
SOURCE: RTS SAT TV, Belgrade, in Serbo-Croat 1830 gmt 15 Jan 99

LENGTH: 1323 words

Text of report by Serbian TV
Commentary by Milovan Drecun - recorded So-called unconventional activity plays the role of an advance guard for the US's policy of conquering the world. Secret operations, planned, financed and carried out by the US intelligence services, have a central place in this activity. The CIA, which employs 20,000 people and spends an annual 1.5bn dollars, and the military intelligence service DIA, are the main organizers of this activity. These two services are part of the US intelligence community which encompasses 25 institutions, organizations and agencies, which are all supervised by the National Security Council. 

The CIA's subversive activity in Eastern European countries, based on the so-called consortium of well-known experts for secret activities, was defined in the early eighties, when Ronald Reagan became president. Such an activity in the then-Yugoslavia is contained in Reagan's statement, made during his campaign, that Yugoslavia had to be won over either in its entirety or in parts. Secret activities carried out by the CIA, independent of US official diplomacy, in countries defined as targets, are being carried out in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, whose defence of its national interests and territorial integrity is an obstacle to American hegemony in the Balkans. The CIA carries out its secret operations and actions through its agency, but also through other channels, mediators and institutions which cooperate and are based in the targeted countries. The CIA 's outposts abroad work under the supervision of regional directorates for operations in almost all countries in the world, as a rule are stationed in US diplomatic missions. The CIA's officers use diplomatic status to conceal their activities and diplomatic immunity for protection.
The goal of the CIA's secret operations modelled on the so-called (Bissell) philosophy is the instalment of a puppet regime in the targeted country. If it is not successful in installing its man at the helm of the state, the CIA conducts secret operations in various domains of a given society, specifically, the social, political and economic domains. It does this by winning over the leaders of opposition parties, by influencing public opinion, creating an agency for the so-called independent media, compromising prominent personalities from political and public life and by maintaining secret ties with the so-called underground forces such as the terrorists in Kosmet Kosovo and Metohija .
The CIA has tried for years to establish illegal outposts in countries that have an important strategic position. These outposts are established in the host country without the knowledge of the official US state institutions, and they rely on the representatives of companies, banks, commercial enterprises. The CIA has frequently influenced the internal conditions of development in various countries through covert actions, special operations, and measures of so-called low intensity warfare.
The CIA's secret activity in Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia FRY is proven by a statement made by then Secretary of State Baker who said in 1991 that Serbia had to be pared down to pre-Kumanovo borders, and also by Congress's foreign affairs committee which in 1992 concluded that Kosmet had to be activated whenever there was a need to win concessions from Serbia. The instruments which the CIA uses to achieve the defined goals of US policy, specifically, the breaking up of Serbia and the FRY, and the installation of a puppet regime, are secret activities to activate and support nationalist and separatist forces in Kosmet, Raska, Vojvodina, and Montenegro, the promotion of ideological and political differences and conflicts with the aim of destroying national unity and provoking a civil war in Serbia, and the provoking of social tension and unrest through economic sanctions.
The CIA is particularly active on the psychological and propaganda plan and in the media. According to renowned US writer (Sean Jervassy), propaganda and psychological warfare is waged by US governmental organizations through the information agency which employs 9,000 people including the Voice of America, mass media with which the governments of Western countries maintain ownership relations, financial aid, and officials installed by the agency. The CIA promotes secret propaganda, as do other intelligence services with the CIA's approval. These operations consist of two phases: the establishment of a network of agents and organizations, and the operative phase of promoting special purposes propaganda. The CIA has for years been funding its helpers, among which the media, which comes up, elaborates and promotes the ideas, has a particular place. There is no doubt that the CIA is conducting secret operations in Kosmet. These operations are coordinated with Hill's shuttle diplomacy and with official US policy with the aim of supporting terrorists, provoking destabilization in Kosmet, and creating conditions for the deployment of NATO forces.
CIA operatives in Albania are engaged in this activity. According to Albanian secret service chief Fatos Klosi, these operatives are stationed in northern Albania. Fatos Klosi claims that the CIA has for years maintained offices in northern Albania, surveillance centres for Yugoslavia, and a drone centre. The conference on Kosovo and the Balkans, held behind closed doors in New York in December 1993, attests to the fact that these activities have been going on for some time . The conference was organized by the council for international relations and the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. Morton Abramowitz was the president of the foundation; at the beginning of the destruction of former Yugoslavia, Abramowitz was tasked with research and intelligence operations in the State Department. At the conference, speaking on behalf of the council for international relations, (Leslie Gelb) advised Clinton to arm the Albanians in Kosovo.
It is worth noting that the New York Times reported on the CIA's secret activities at the end of March 1997. Congress routinely approves millions of dollars which are routed through secret and public channels and are used to exert political influence and to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, the New York Times reported. In addition to the CIA, which has been engaged in this secret activity a full 50 years, Congress and special institutions also formed the National Fund for Democracy which does the job openly. The fund was established 15 years ago, and it directly provides political parties, trade unions, dissidents, and the so-called independent media in foreign countries with an annual 30 million dollars, the New York Times reported.
An article by Warren Zimmerman, former US Ambassador to the FRY, published in US newspapers, best illustrates how the CIA influences the media and consequently the Serbian people. While posted in Belgrade, Zimmerman coordinated the CIA's secret activities in the area. Zimmerman writes in his article that the majority of Serbs think within the framework of absurd, racist stereotypes. Zimmerman came to this conclusion on the basis of a survey carried out in January by the Open Society Institute, the so-called prominent human rights organization sponsored by the US financier George Soros. The survey was to find out how the Serbs see themselves and others. The results showed that the Serbs see themselves as hard-working, intelligent, courteous, sincere, honest, pure, generous, peace-loving, and well-intentioned towards other nations, proud, and hospitable people. That is why Zimmerman concluded that the Serbs think within the framework of absurd, racist stereotypes. In other words, the CIA does not allow the Serbian people to have a good and positive opinion of themselves. Even coming from the CIA, it is too much.


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