[This
reposting is meant as a CAUTIONARY to RT, once a bright and shining light on
the informational Dark Ages through which the West, like Sisyphus, pushes its
own willful and self-devouring ignorance.
Recent
on-air statements by RT presenters and guests alike, some from a Canadian doc
about the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s that confuses irony with cuteness, have
dulled what was once a strategically very important coverage of the
degenerating situation in Ukraine.
Some examples: One of the several,
seductive 'hottie' news readers that RT has become famous for (like they don't
get the joke that is Fox News: Super-Babes, Babia-Majoras, Baberham Lincolns,
esp. blondes with high-gloss lips and tons of eyes, are better at flogging
boner meds than at giving credence to information) tossed off, "OJ got
away with murder 20 years ago!" Really? Not only is that factually incorrect, but it also points up RT's cloying attempts to
be POPular and HIPsterish by prioritizing ‘mass killings’ in the Swish Alps of West LA over those in less chic, dingier elsewheres, and, thereby, to obfuscate Western Waste Capitalism's role in the eco-decimation of certain Central European and Central African peoples in 1994, while
furthering the genetic fallacy that all these 'wanton killings', aka
‘genocides’, are brought about by 'terrorists', or 'white-supremacists with
mental health issues', or just ‘crazy niggers' who won’t be negotiated with
because their 'Extremism' makes them willing to die in pursuit of their
pointless atrocities.
Then
in an interview segment, a US diplomat suggested to his blonde (but, really,
quite smart interlocutor) that the effective benefits of the American foreign
policy that brought about regime change through militaristic murder and mayhem (see
the grotesque assassinations of Gaddafy, Habyarimana, Saddam, and even, iatrogenically, of Slobodan
Milosevic) is born out by national examples like Serbia, which is 'much better
off without Milosevic.'
RT
should be very careful about editorial details, because it is developing, in
microcosm, a situation eerily similar to those of countries in the old Soviet
bloc: They are still bound to Moscow by dint of commercial
and financial structures held over from the Soviet era (i.e., the State pays
their salaries or pensions), as well as by an adherence to a more accurate and
realistic Historical line (esp. as pertains to WWII and Imperialism) that predominates in the
East; but, like Serbia or Prednistrovia or Ukraine, they look to Europe and the
West to grow their commercial credibility and market share.
By
now they should be aware that Russia holds all the property cards in this bored game
and that, as far as Historical relevance is concerned, the West (esp. the US),
with all its Libertarian myths and Red boogiemen, is lost at the movies. --mc]
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2004
2Late4Slo--from Notes 4 Yugoslavia, by Mick Collins--1 April 2001
[Here's a little pre-9/11 analysis of how the Combine, after laying nuclear waste to Yugoslavia with DU-tipped Tomahawks (anyone who's seen the Army HQ or RTS in Belgrade knows exactly what hit the Pentagon on the day!), was working in Serbia to hang domestic corruption charges on President Milosevic (with some insinuated political assassinations back), essentially trying to make the defense of Serbia/Yugoslavia into a 'joint criminal enterprise'. In today's (1 Sept 2004) conclusion of his opening statement, the President made very clear that, two years and 295 witnesses later, the bogus Prosecution at this humbug Tribunal has produced no more evidence of his criminality than did the comprador Serbian government back after they'd deposed him in an NED/CIA-sponsored, riot-driven election/coup in Oct 2000--a kinda outta town try-out for the Florida follies later that year. About the only thing they can hang on him is being a 'premature anti-terrorist'. So maybe it's not 2 late at all. Maybe 4 the Milosevic defense, everything's running right on time.]
2Late4Slo
from Notes 4 Yugoslavia
by
Mick Collins
CirqueMinime/Paris
1 April 2001
Well, they've got Milosevic in a box in Belgrade now--making Yugoslavia just about ready to become the new Romania. So far he's just charged with crimes within Serbia, but if the extortion racket that the US's been running on this small country continues to play out as it looks like it's going to, Milosevic could answer for every crime from the non-existent mass graves in Kosovo to shooting JR and the US still wouldn't get up off Yugoslavia--not until every last piece of socially-owned property has a 'Sold by Goldman Sachs' sign out in front.
But has anybody else noticed that none of these charges made against Serbia, Milosevic's Greater Serbia or Yugoslavia, seems to stand up much longer than a month or so? Racak, Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo: After the KLA's recent invasions of Southern Serbia and Macedonia, can there be any doubt as to Milosevic's, Serbia's part in past wars? Serbia has been the sole source of resistance to the unnegotiated--no, the criminally motivated and sponsored--secessions of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, and the hub of the centripedal force against the total dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation. The latest Serb atrocity makes page one; the discovery that in fact there was no such atrocity--no mass graves in Kosovo or cadavers stuffed down the Trepca mine; the bodies at Racak were not executed at close range and continue to go unidentified, most likely, because their identities would make them as KLA soldiers; Operation Horseshoe, wherein the murderous Milosevic plotted to drive all the Albanians out of Kosovo, was a concoction of German Intelligence, and, as in the Presevo Valley and Macedonia, the refugees didn't start hooking it up until the KLA landed and started blowing their shit away--these stories just don't seem to make the mainstream papers at all. And, after all, why should they? The lies have served their purpose: to arouse the kind of stupid (i.e., ignorant, uninformed) anger that currently drives Western policy. To apply reason and a critical sense of history to an analysis of the situation in the Balkans would be to see through what is perhaps the shoddiest and most shameless example of an intellectual compromise to commerce--and all for the sake of the new imperialism, aka, globalization.
But speaking of real crimes: Does anyone remember the 'shell' in the Markale marketplace in Sarajevo? Who shot the shell? Or for whom? Lord Owen speculated that it must have been Croats under contract to the Muslims to further demonize the Serbs (or some kind of Fassbinder-esque triangle of deception). But here's a little something-something from the latest Balkans Infos that kind of blows a lot of theories right out of the marketplace. Pardon my translation from the French:
--Serb Civilians? Not Important.
28 August 1995, an explosion in the Markale marketplace in Sarajevo left 29 dead and 90 wounded. Without waiting for any evidence to be analyzed, it was immediately attributed to the Serbs and used as a pretext for the Americans and NATO to launch an air assault, Operation Deliberate Force. This pretext was completely invented as the UN experts were unable to determine where the shell had come from. General Charles G. Boyd, commander and chief of the US European Command from 1992 to 1995, testified:
From American intelligence reports of radar surveillance of Sarajevo, we have confirmed that there were no penetrations by any kind of projectiles. . . Once again, the government of Sarajevo planted an explosive charge in the marketplace of its own city. . . . Members of the US Congress as well as representatives of US and British Intelligence know well of the strong collusion between US officials and members of the Izetbegovic government in the creation of a casus belli. . . What the Americans want is to turn the war in favor of the Muslims. (cf, Defense and Foreign Affairs, 7/8/95)
In the course of the next two weeks, the NATO bombers flew 3,400 sorties, targeting (among others) the Serb positions around Sarajevo, Gorazde, Doboj, Tuzla and Mount Ozren. The weapons utilized included Tomahawk missiles and bombs and shells of Depleted Uranium (DU). In all, 10,800 such munitions.
In June 1996, 20 Dutch soldiers who had served in Lukavica (a quartier of Sarajevo) in a unit of the SFOR testified on TV in Holland that they had contracted a sort of 'Gulf War Syndrome'. The union for Dutch servicemen and women and the Green Party demanded that these reports be investigated, but the whole affair was quashed.
Two and a half years later, in December 1998, the Belgrade newspaper Dnevni Telegraf published an alarming report. In the town of Doboj, there had been a sharp increase in the incidence of certain cancers, illnesses almost unknown there until then. During the previous spring, instead of sprouting as usual, the leaves on the trees immediately dried up. The same phenomenon was observed among different flora and fauna in the neighboring region of Mount Ozren, which was home to the TV transmission tower that had been destroyed by NATO bombs. In this location there were unusually strong reading of radioactivity and a large increase in cancers and other maladies: anemias, headaches, respiratory difficulties, exhaustion, etc.
Since then, silence. It wasn't until 2000 and the death from leukemia of an Italian soldier who had served in Bosnia, Sergeant Andrea Antonacci, that the scandal over DU exploded and public opinion began to change. Some questions were asked of different parliamentary bodies, and various European Defense ministers found themselves in very uncomfortable positions. These officials who swore, with their hands over their hearts, during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, that not a single bomb of DU had been used (like the German Sharpling and the Brit Robertson), were forced to face some real hard evidence, especially when the death toll mounted: seven dead and eleven other soldiers stricken with leukemia in Italy; five cases in France, two dead in Germany, and two more in Portugal. But, (in the words of an old French song) 'qu'a cela ne tienne, tout va bien, madame la marquise' (loosely, 'Don't you worry 'bout a thing, sweet mama, 'cause e'rythang's gonna be aw'ight--oh, yeah, oh, yeah.) was NATO's chirpy refrain. Absolutely no connection between these deaths and DU was ever established. Go back to sleep, we're just gonna keep on using these weapons as long as they work so well. . .
No connection, really? If the examples of Doboj and Mount Ozren are not enough, there's the story of Bratunac (in Eastern Bosnia) where Serbs who fled the 1995 NATO bombing of Hadzici, a suburb of Sarajevo, still live: In one day, NATO aircraft dropped more than 500 bombs. Balkans Infos did a long story on this in its No 52.
Obviously, these were only Serb civilians who died by the dozens. No reason to make a big deal out of a few Serbs, right? Messieurs les ministres? This 'Balkans Syndrome' is another myth--just like the Gulf War Syndrome from 1991. It's just propaganda by those who were against the NATO intervention, as the Albanian pacifist (sic) Ibrahim Rugova put it. As for the 12 tons of DU generously dumped on Bosnia and Kosovo, it looks like just more of that funky-cold fertilizer we've gotta thank the West for. --Bosko DUKANAC, Avrille--
US diplomat on RT: Isn't Serbia better off without Milosevic?
So why does Milosevic have to go down for war crimes? Because only by the constant and abusive (i.e., irrational, unjust) exercise of its unchallenged power can the US keep the Serbs, the Yugoslavs, the rest of the world on its knees. I'm talking about all of us, folks. We all have to believe that Yugoslavia is the one time the US got it right--well, yeah, maybe Iraq, too. All those people who were hip to Vietnam and Grenada and Panama and Somalia, all of a sudden are trying to get into a VFW marching band.
So, you've gotta believe, right? You've gotta believe Milosevic is Hitler and the Serbs are the new Nazis,--or else, maybe, it's Bush and y'all who are the heinie scum.
Do I expect the West--or any of the several friends I have lost to this horrible ideological dependency on duplicity--to wake up from the nightmare and admit their errors? Of course not. Because, in fact, the West, the US have not made any errors. Just as blowing unrestricted amounts of CO2 into the air and drilling up the Alaskan reserve and paving over the old growth forests are not errors, only ways of getting the lights back on in California. It's all part of a divine plan to make the whole world just like America--without a pot to piss in, a window to throw it out of, or a single original idea left in its head.
1 April 2001
Paris
POSTED BY CIRQUEMINIME/PARIS AT 8:43 PM 
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