Wednesday, August 24, 2016

John Pilger — The Bogus ‘Humanitarian’ War on Serbia

NATO’s war on Serbia in 1999 was the template for other “humanitarian” wars – in Iraq, Libya and now Syria – but it wasn’t “news” when the Serbian leader was cleared, notes John Pilger.
The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.
Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually “condemned ethnic cleansing,” opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590-page judgment on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified NATO’s illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.
Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented “international tribunal.” Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by U.S. officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.
Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the Western media as the “butcher of the Balkans” who was responsible for “genocide,” especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against “this new Hitler.”…
It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious “peace conference” in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the U.S. Secretary of State, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were “worth it.”
Albright delivered an “offer” to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces “outside the legal process,” and to the imposition of a neo-liberal “free market,” Serbia would be bombed.
This was contained in an “Appendix B,” which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe’s last independent “socialist” state.'…
All but a fraction of America’s vaunted “precision guided” missiles hit not military but civilian targets, including the news studios of Radio Television Serbia in Belgrade. Sixteen people were killed, including cameramen, producers and a make-up artist. Blair described the dead, profanely, as part of Serbia’s “command and control.”
In 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, revealed that she had been pressured not to investigate NATO’s crimes.…
This obeisance to the United States and its collaborators as a benign force “bringing good” runs deep in Western establishment journalism. It ensures that the present-day catastrophe in Syria is blamed exclusively on Bashar al-Assad, whom the West and Israel have long conspired to overthrow, not for any humanitarian concerns, but to consolidate Israel’s aggressive power in the region.…
The city of Aleppo is in the news. Most readers and viewers will be unaware that the majority of the population of Aleppo lives in the government-controlled western part of the city. That they suffer daily artillery bombardment from Western-sponsored Al Qaeda is not news. On 21 July, French and American bombers attacked a government village in Aleppo province, killing up to 125 civilians. This was reported on page 22 of the Guardian; there were no photographs.
Having created and underwritten jihadism in Afghanistan in the 1980s as Operation Cyclone – a weapon to destroy the Soviet Union – the U.S. is doing something similar in Syria. Like the Afghan Mujahedeen, the Syrian “rebels” are America’s and Britain’s foot soldiers. Many fight for Al Qaeda and its variants; some, like the Nusra Front, have rebranded themselves to comply with American sensitivities over 9/11. The CIA runs them, with difficulty, as it runs jihadists all over the world.
The immediate aim is to destroy the government in Damascus, which, according to the most credible poll (YouGov Siraj), the majority of Syrians support, or at least look to for protection, regardless of the barbarism in its shadows. The long-term aim is to deny Russia a key Middle Eastern ally as part of a NATO war of attrition against the Russian Federation that eventually destroys it.
Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the propaganda that convinces the American and British publics to support this travesty in the name of "freedom and democracy" wrapped in the respective flags, beginning with Vietnam.

Consortium News
The Bogus ‘Humanitarian’ War on Serbia
John Pilger

8 comments:

Kaivey said...

I love this guy. Her has done terrific work for justice. Pilger sees the world the way I do. How is it that the masses don't seem to care, or know?

MRW said...

Yubba-dubba-do!

As I noted the previous time this Milosovic clearance was brought up, I lost all my friends for my fierce--and it was the first time in my life that I was so publicly political--for denigrating US actions and the phony ginned-up war with Serbia and Kosovo. (Clinton wanted a significant geopolitical legacy to erase the stain of his domestic peccadiloes--some said at the time Hillary urged it on Bill--and Madeleine Albright was fucking "The Snake," the younger leader of Albanian ex-Nazi Muslims. Remember Geraldo Rivero running around Manhattan getting all verklempt over his solidarity with the Albanians?)

I grew up around Serbians, Yugoslavians, and Hungarians; my city was full of grateful refugees. As a kid, I would be invited to dinner at their kids' houses; these were my school friends. Grandma would be there, and that was when they told the kids the stories of their horrific time during WWII, and how they protected shot-down Americans, sometimes dying for them because they wouldn't give them up to the Nazis and escaped through the woods in summer and winter with the shirts on their back. None of this was made public. There was no public wailing about their experiences; neither were there any gnashing of teeth or hasbara-like campaigns of victimhood. These were private family stories told simply using identifiers like Uncle this and Auntie that. When you start hearing these stories when you're six and they continue until you're nine, they make an indelible impression.

I'm so glad John Pilger published this. Every Serbian deserves an apology--a global apology, from the UN--for what we did to that beautiful country. And it is beautiful. Or was when I was there.

And don't get me started on the destruction to the 12th C art that NATO and the Albanians destroyed in Kosovo. The precursor to the Renaissance.

Critical Tinkerer said...

The rticle's part on Yugoslavia was bogus.

Milošević can be "cleared by Haague" since they did not finish the process of his judgement. But read to where and when this supposed clearing took place,

"The March 24th Karadzic judgment states that “the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan” to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb claimed territory.[1]"

This was judgement on Karadžić, NOT from THE PROCESS ON MILOŠEVIĆ.

What kind of intelectual gimnastics are needed that someone can claim that Milošević was exhounorated?

Critical Tinkerer said...

Please:

Army that did genocide in Bosnia was paid and armed by Serbia and Milošević as its president. Anybody wants to claim that he tried to peace out warring sides can point to his arming and paying serbian side in bosnia as proof. Plheeease.

How much stupidy is requierd not to look into finance of an army that is doing a genocide and ethnic cleansing? Anybody from MMT interested in finance?

Truth from article is that USA wanted to destroy last remaining "socialist" (old name was communist) example in the world and succesfull at that. It was USA that did give support to Milošević in destroying Yugoslavia by supporting his authoriatrian rule over it (at least his attempts) while on the other side supported and financed opposition to Milošević in Croatia and Slovenia.
USA started this civil war by supporting and financing the most adversary and radical elements on two sides.
Another truth is that they did not have to bomb Serbia since Milošević did not plan the war in Kosovo after 1998. Before that yes he did and as proof of that was what happened when 200 000 Serbians from Croatia went to Belgrade in 1995? He forcibly have sent them into Kosovo to repopulate it with Serbians. They resisted a lot and run away to Bosnia. But many were still sent there, and considering that those were 4 year soldiers with a revenge feelings due to such huge cowardly escape from Croatia, they were maltreating Kosovar population there and inciting the clashes.

Milošević have sent them there.

Milošević can act and pretend that he was trying to calm down Karadžić in his genocide in Bosnia but he finaced and armed Bosnian serbs, and then pretended that he did not controll them. Funny isn't it.

Critical Tinkerer said...

And USA should have bombed the Serbia but 8 years earlier, before all of that genocide happened under Milošević's coordiantion. No, USA with Bush 1 supported such plans by Milošević while at the same time financed resistance to him in Croatia and Slovenia.
And even in 1995 after major serbian defeat in Croatia, Bosnian and Croatian armies started coordinated offensive inside Bosnia to stop further massacres that later happened in Goražde and Srebrenica and in Sarajevo, but noo. USA ordered Croatian president to stop such coordination and return back to Croatia.

Yes, Balkan wars could have been stoped in 1995 by total and justifiable defeat of genocidal Serbian power, but USA needed further chaos and more genocide.
This you are right to blame USA for crimes in Balkans, but also Serbia for being the tool of american power and causing the 250 000 death toll there.

Critical Tinkerer said...

MRW you should be shamed for supporting and excusing genocidal actions of Srebian people and its leaders.

Did you have problems with Milošević sending the whole army group to fight in Vukovar in summer of 1991? This army went through Belgrade being cheered by population while some protestors were forcibly removed and imprisoned, soldier mothers were with demonstrators.
How did you feel when that army lay waste to Vukovar for 4 months ending in masacring of over thousand males after the surrender and raping woman? Did you yourself cheer that army that was traveling through Balgrade over one whole day?
Did you cheer the army that massacred Vukovar population and completely destroyed it by sending up to 5000 shells every day for 4 months?

Did you cheer?

Did you cheer masacre of Croatians?

Did you cheer that army?

Did you cheer such power that Milošević was exibiting and sending to do genocide and ethnic cleansing in Croatiain 1991?

Did you cheer Milošević?

Did you cheer killing of "ustaše" as Serbian hordes caled every Croatian even kids when they raped them and butchered them with knives and sulfur acid?

MRW did you cheer?

MRW did you cheer them?

MRW???????

Critical Tinkerer said...

MRW

And please do not attempt those PR manipulations about WWII pilots anymore.
It is well known that Serbians did not protect majorit of downed Allied pilots but gave them up for reward to Nazis. Četniks were colaborators with Nazies while at the same time claiming that they are the resistance and getting supplys from Allies up untill 1943 when finaly allies realized the con.
Saving few downed pilots was part of the con which stopped after 1943.

"(stories about downed pilots)..they make an indelible impression."
Yes thats why they were told no matter how made up. Or taken from the movies as part of the manipulation and personal elevation by manipulating "Uncle" or "Aunt" to their familly.

Please stop your manipulative insertion of fake stories into disccussion about war criminal and what USA or Serbia with Milošević did.

You are following the steps of Milošević in manipulating just as he was succesful in manipulating international community in letting him do his genocide and pouplation "management" in Balkans.

I would not be surprised that you "Uncle" or "Aunt" have stories about how they went to Vukovar to save Croatians from themselves in 1991.

Critical Tinkerer said...

Anyone interested in truth about "exonoration" here are the words of main prosecutor at ICTY Serge Brammertz:
"Some, including the Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, contend that earlier this year the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) exonerated Milosevic in its trial verdict convicting former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

The arguments are not only misguided, but wrong. The only person on trial in Karadzic's case was Karadzic himself."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/08/slobodan-milosevic-hero-160823124808287.html