Author: Nebojsa Malic

According to Canadian military reporter Scott Taylor (“NATO in Kosovo, a place of divided goals” – The Halifax Herald Limited, Monday, April 19, 2004), various units among Kosovo’s NATO occupiers reacted quite differently to the March 17-19 pogrom.
For example, German troops offered no resistance to Albanian rioters, to the great disgust of their fellow peacekeepers:

“If Georgian troops were stationed there we would have defended this holy site,” said a young corporal from Tiblisi. “We understand the importance of such things. The Germans, on the other hand, are only intent on maintaining friendly relations with the local Albanians.”
Swedish troops, on the other hand, seem full of fight:

“My platoon suffered 14 wounded outside the village of Caglovica,” said Cpl. Anderson of the Swedish battalion. “While the incident took us by complete surprise, we are now looking forward to Round 2 with these Albanians – it will definitely be payback time.”

Czech troops also fought the Albanians, and don’t hesitate to give them a piece of their mind:

At the NATO checkpoint on the administrative boundary between Serbia and Kosovo, members of the Czech battalion now routinely flash Albanian motorists the three extended fingers hand-sign that symbolize Serbian nationalism. In response to these deliberate provocations, Albanian drivers draw a finger across their throats at the Czech troops.

And then there’s the British… Continue reading “Pogrom divides Kosovo occupiers”

Though not about the Balkans per se, this has universal application.
Here is the brilliant Butler Shaffer at LRC, on a historical choice before all of us (prompted by the 9/11 Commission three-ring circus):
“As the bloody and repressive history of the 20th century segues into the 21st, it is time for humanity itself to ask whether political systems have become outmoded relics to be added to history’s trash pile. Levels of state power now exceed our capacities to absorb the resulting conflicts, destructiveness, and oppression and still retain our sense of humanity. The very existence of mankind demands that we discover new principles and systems by which we can peaceably live and cooperate with one another. It is time for us to renounce the self-appointed “authorities” who represent no one but their own interests, and to reclaim for our individual lives the power and authority that nature has bestowed upon each of us.”
(my emphasis)
Read the entire article here…

Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was unversally acknowledged as a major advocate of intervention in the Balkans, from her sponsorship of the Hague Inquisition to her drive for the bombing of Serbia in 1999.
Now officially retired from politics, Albright has a lucrative “consultancy” business. According to a Belgrade-based news agency Inet (scroll down to the entry “17:20”), the Albright Group, LLC will “advise” the board of Ipko Net, a Kosovo (Albanian) ISP seeking a mobile telephony concession in the occupied province. Here is the text of the report, translated by Inet: Continue reading “Albright seeks profits in occupied Kosovo?”

Retired Canadian general and veteran UN peacekeeper Lewis McKenzie isn’t the first to say that, and may not be the last.

In an op-ed in Canada’s National Post today, McKenzie deals with the very same issues as last week’s Balkan Express: a seemingly (and likely) coordinated effort to ignore or spin away the truth behind the pogrom in Kosovo, going as far as omitting the discovery that gunmen who murdered two UN police were Albanians posing as Serbs.

McKenzie commanded the first UN contingent in Bosnia in 1992, and by managing to open up the flow of humanitarian aid to Sarajevo buggered up the Bosnian Muslim leadership’s plan to provoke a NATO intervention on its behalf. That earned him the burning hatred of Izetbegovic’s toadies and their foreign enablers, who smeared McKenzie endlessly as a “Serb-lover” and even accused him of war crimes! So he knows what he’s talking about, first-hand. Continue reading ““We Bombed The Wrong Side””

I almost did not notice this bit of news, but it seems that Derek Chappell, the UN police spokesman in occupied Kosovo, has been removed from his post for interfering with the spin the media and the occupiers tried to put on the Albanian pogrom of March 17-20.
Chappell, who had previously dutifully represented the occupying authority (UNMIK), even to the tune of calling Serb reports of Albanian attacks “lies” (which they turned out not to be), may have been moved by a sliver of remaining conscience to denounce the vicious Albanian libel about the drowning boys, which most media had eagerly seized upon as explanation for what they termed “clashes.” Predictably, he was punished, reports Serbian radio B92.
Trouble with B92 is, they don’t keep static links of their articles, but bury them in archives (an evil practice, if ever there was one; must have something to do with the fact that they are often funded by foreign aid…). The full story is therefore reposted here: Continue reading “UN transfers spokesman for telling the truth”

It is for some time now that the International Crisis Group has featured prominently in agency reports and newspaper articles, especially when dealing with the Balkans. If just one “expert” is quoted in any report, odds are it will be someone from the ICG. With more than one, it is guaranteed. But why?
Chris Deliso has done some great work on exposing the ICG-IWPR axis in Macedonia, which he called “the barking dogs of intervention” back in 2002. IWPR’s agenda is not a mystery, and neither is ICG’s, as it should be apparent from their reports. From denying the existence of Islamic terrorism in the Balkans to advocating the separation of Kosovo and Montenegro, occupation of Serbia and forcible unitarization of Bosnia, the ICG has been an extremist voice of Imperial intervention, saying things the regime in Washington (whoever runs it) could not say in public. Their board is a veritable Who’s Who of Imperial policy, including some “luminaries” of the previous decade’s Balkans cataclysm. This explains why, while technically just a minor NGO, staffed by second-hand analysts and advocacy journalists, ICG gets mention in the press all the time: it represents the Voice of Authority (i.e. the foreign policy-makers), always dear to the presstitutes. Better yet, because they are not the government, they – and the presstitutes – can pretend there is no agenda behind their rhetoric other than “peace” and “stability.” But every time you see an ICG “expert” (who is nothing of the sort) quoted in a media report of any kind, remember – this is a conduit of Empire, no more, no less. Continue reading “Presstitutes’ Darling”