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But didn't the Iranian supply's come via Turkey, and via British Hercules planes

http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/rafhistory...199099.cfm

Iran Helped The Bosnians In The Balkans War - Bosnian Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGz4pP8o...e=youtu.be

The propensity for mass "bullshit" is incredible!

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http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/reports/Balka...nindex.htm

This on the site about 2004

Its a reminder to all those who claim to have been on the site at that time.

Its also serves as a reminder, to those suffering from amnesia, a daily health hazard!

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Syria and Lessons Unlearned from the U.S./NATO Bombing of Kosovo
by Jeremy R. Hammond |  September 6, 2013
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NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark at a press conference in march 1999 at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium (Getty Images)
NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark at a press conference in march 1999 at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium (Getty Images)
One theme we repeatedly hear about the Obama administration’s plan to bomb Syria is that the U.S./NATO bombing of Kosovo serves as a model. An examination of the reason for this is instructive.

It is well understood that the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) will not authorize this use of force against Syria, particularly given Russian opposition to such action. And short of using force in self-defense against armed aggression or with authorization from the UNSC for a specific mandate, such as to protect civilians, any resort to force against another country is under international law an act of aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime”.

Incidentally, Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg not only for waging aggressive war, but for conspiring to. Obama is already a war criminal, such as for his illegal bombing of Libya (and, no, the UNSC emphatically did not authorize the use of force to implement a policy of regime change by supporting the armed rebels whose ranks included al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic extremists); but he could be prosecuted under international law just for his efforts to gain support for bombing Syria, even if this doesn’t come to pass, since this is the crime of conspiracy to commit aggression.

Obama, being a lawyer, is presumably aware of this, which is presumably why he wants to get the Congress to “authorize” his war despite declaring for himself the power to do it without any Congressional authorization, even though the founders of the U.S. Constitution recognized the dangers inherent in giving one man such authority and so didn’t grant this power to the Executive branch, but to the Congress (Article I, Section 8). Obama, being a Constitutional lawyer, is presumably aware of this, also.

The thinking is that there would be strength in numbers; that is, if most members of the government are complicit in this crime, there is less likelihood that there will be any prosecutions for war crimes. Obama would argue that he was merely following orders and doing his job to execute the will of the Congress; that it was Congress, elected to represent the people, who “authorized” the war (still nevertheless illegal under international law, and thus, also ipso facto in violation of the U.S. Constitution, since the body of treaties comprising international law to which the U.S. is party are, like the Constitution itself, “the Supreme Law of the Land”). Thus, he would point his finger and try to pin responsibility on Congress — and by extension, the American people themselves, even though polls show that public opinion is against the bombing — if any charges were to be brought against him, an unlikely occurrence, but nevertheless one he deems it wise to have an insurance policy against.

Of course, this defense wouldn’t fly, either, as another principle established at Nuremberg is that “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.” Furthermore, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

But Congressional “authorization” would at least give Obama a fig leaf to hide behind.

Returning to the U.S./NATO bombing of Kosovo, the reason it is hailed as a model for Obama to follow in Syria is that it gave rise to the concept of “illegal but legitimate”, invented by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (headed up by one Mr. Richard Goldstone, perhaps more well known for co-chairing the U.N. fact-finding mission into Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, which found that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes) to try to ex post facto justify the bombing.

The bombing was “illegal” because it met neither of the only two conditions under which the use of force is considered legal under international law. Yet it was nevertheless paradoxically deemed “legitimate” on the grounds that it was a “humanitarian” intervention executed to protect civilians on the ground and put an end to the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians.

Apart from the inherent self-contradiction of the “illegal but legitimate” doctrine, this standard official narrative of the U.S./Kosovo bombing is a fiction.

The truth of the matter is that the bombing served not to mitigate but to escalate the violence on the ground in the former Yugoslavia, resulting in a higher civilian death toll in its first three weeks than had occurred during the three months prior, when the “humanitarian catastrophe” had occurred that had ostensibly served as a pretext for the bombing.

In the year before the bombing, 2,000 people had been killed and several hundred thousand had become refugees, according to NATO, most of the victims being ethnic Albanians. According to U.S. intelligence, the number of internally displaced was 250,000. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported a similar figure of 230,000. But after less than two weeks of bombing, the UNHCR reported that 350,000 refugees had fled Kosovo just since the bombing began, and by the time it stopped put the number of refugees at 671,500.

NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark explained that it was “entirely predictable” that the atrocities on the ground would escalate as a consequence of the bombing. “The military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out”, he confessed.

On the purpose of the bombing, Clark also clarified, “We were operating, however, under the instructions from the political leadership. It was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a way of waging war against the Serb and mob forces in Kosovo in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea.”

The Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss, similarly observed that, “Our intelligence community warned us months and days before that we would have a virtual explosion of refugees over the 250,000 that was expected as of last year, that the Serb resolve would increase, that the conflict would spread, and that there would be ethnic cleansing.”

Goss remarked further that, “One of the consequences surely would be that if you stick in this nest, you’re going to stir it up more, and that was one of the things that might have happened and in fact that is one of the things that did happen because Milosevic did in fact, instead of caving in, he reacted by striking back harder against the Kosovars, harder, more quickly, more ruthlessly.”

The intelligence community’s predictions in that regard “were very accurate”, Goss boasted.

All of this led BBC reporter Gavin Hewitt to remark, “A NATO campaign intended to protect the Albanians appeared to accelerate their misery. Western governments were shocked by the speed and brutality of a forced exodus, but the White House accepts that some ethnic cleansing was expected.”

But never mind the actual facts. They may be swept down the memory hole. Thus, a bombing that not only did result in an escalation of atrocities on the ground but was expected to could be reframed as a “humanitarian” intervention and stamped with the Orwellian label of “illegal but legitimate”.

While the standard official narrative in the U.S. mainstream media is that the Obama administration has been reluctant to get involved, with regular criticisms that he should not have stood on the sidelines so long before taking action in support of the rebels, the truth is that the U.S. has long since been intervening on the side of the rebels to implement a policy of regime change. The CIA since at least May 2012 has been coordinating the flow of arms to the rebels, whose ranks include al-Qaeda affiliated organizations Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, with most of the arms ending up in the hands of the Islamic extremists.

This, too, of course, was swept down the memory hole, replaced by the end of last year with the narrative that the U.S. has been too-long on the sidelines and must intervene to mitigate the violence. Never mind the fact that the U.S. has already been intervening and in a way that has served only to prolong the conflict and escalate the violence on the ground.

And as was the case in Kosovo, there is an expectation that any U.S. bombing of Syria would serve only to further escalate the atrocities taking place there.

The case of the U.S./NATO bombing of Kosovo is indeed a useful model for Syria, if the right lesson is drawn from it.

Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and a recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founding editor of Foreign Policy Journal and the author of Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis and The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict. His forthcoming book is on the contemporary U.S. role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

No relation to that philantropist "Hammond"?


Re-reading a September article in Foreign Policy by Jeremy Hammond (about the inverted way the establishment was applying the Kosovo “non-precedent” as a precedent for Syria intervention), I learned that the name Richard Goldstone — the UN judge who signed the Mladic and Karadzic indictments in 1995; who indicted a fictional Serb character; who refused to view dossiers on crimes against Serbs or exculpatory evidence of the Serb side; and who most famously tried to accuse Israel of war crimes in Gaza — came up in a big way also in the Balkans chapter of Kosovo:

Returning to the U.S./NATO bombing of Kosovo, the reason it is hailed as a model for Obama to follow in Syria is that it gave rise to the concept of “illegal but legitimate”, invented by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (headed up by one Mr. Richard Goldstone, perhaps more well known for co-chairing the U.N. fact-finding mission into Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip…) to try to ex post facto justify the bombing.

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Syria and the Reality of the CIA, MI6 and Gulf Petrodollars: From Afghanistan to Bosnia

Syria and the Reality of the CIA, MI6 and Gulf Petrodollars: From Afghanistan to Bosnia

Boutros Hussein and Lee Jay Walker

Modern Tokyo Times

bosniasyria-1-1

The role of the secret services of America, Pakistan and the United Kingdom run deep and this applies to the CIA, ISI and MI6 respectively. These intelligence units, which switch terrorism on and off, have been involved collectively or between two agencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (Siege of Mecca) and now against Syria. It is also known that you have many militant Sunni and Western covert ratlines linking Gulf petrodollars with many murky developments throughout the Caucasus region of the Russian Federation. Indeed, in much of the above it is clear that you have a very anti-Russian Federation dimension.

According to several sources the Taliban in Pakistan have entered Syria in order to assist in Islamist indoctrination, military warfare, doing special operatives, information technology and related to other important areas. The Afghan connection still runs deep and of course we all know that throughout the 1980s, and early 1990s, that the CIA, ISI and MI6 were doing everything in their power in order to create a major militant Islamist killing machine. This shared interest of Gulf petrodollars, CIA, ISI and MI6 then moved onto other parts of the world in order to boost al-Qaeda based terrorist groups. Therefore, the Bosnian civil war between 1992 and 1995 witnessed the usual terrorist networks working hand-in-hand with powerful security agencies.

The Bosnia and Afghanistan connection is abundantly obvious and this also applies to the role of the CIA, MI6, ISI, and others; in enabling between 6,000 and 10,000 international jihadists to enter this part of the Balkans. One of the mystifying realities is that international jihadists can somehow move so freely between nations despite the alleged tight security aimed at eradicating terrorism. Obviously something is amiss because jihadists from all over the world have entered the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and in other parts of the world; whereby worrying about passport controls doesn’t appear to be an issue.

John R. Schindler, author of the acclaimed book called Unholy Terror, highlights the role of Bosnia within the tragedy of September 11 and other major terrorist attacks. He comments that “Although Sarajevo’s supporters went to great lengths to deny it, there was no avoiding the reality that after 9/11, as al-Qa’ida attacks multiplied across the world, a disturbing number of the terrorists involved had close ties to Bosnia and the holy war waged there. The dedicated cadres bin Laden had first nurtured in Afghanistan and brought to fruition in Bosnia were ready for the all-out confrontation with the “apostates” and “infidels” that al-Qa’ida had promised.” (Page 296 – Unholy Terror)

John R. Schindler further states that “The role of the West in the fate of Bosnia cannot be underestimated. The willful blindness of Western elites, the dishonest and mendacious representations of Bosnia and its war presented by intellectuals, academics, entertainers and journalists, decisively influenced the course of the conflict, to the benefit of radical Islam.” (Page 324 – Unholy Terror)

Therefore, it isn’t surprising that the Bosnian Muslim angle, Chechnya, Croatia, Kosovo, Libya and other parts of the Caucasus region in the Russian Federation – are all involved to various extents in the crisis in Syria. This either applies to utilizing nation states in the case of Croatia and Libya (Libya is a failed state but under Gulf and Western power mechanisms). Or, in the case of Chechen Islamists, then this applies to utilizing anti-Russian Federation terrorist networks which have links with the CIA and MI6. Indeed, it must be stated that you have several clandestine ratlines just like the Iran-Contra affair which serve powerful vested interests within internal security agencies.

In Bosnia the Bill Clinton administration gave the go ahead for international terrorists, covert security agencies, Iran and many other forces to unite together, in order to massacre Orthodox Christians in the name of democracy. Sky News reports on seeing vast numbers of al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Bosnia but of course much of this information came out afterwards. More important, this angle is still ignored today because it doesn’t suit the “Bosniak Muslim victim card” which serves the agenda of Gulf petrodollars and their willing co-conspirators in the West. After all, it is noticeable that while the Middle East is being cleansed of Christians by forces supported by America and the United Kingdom; that in the Balkans the new emergence of major Muslim areas in parts of Bosnia, northern Cyprus and Kosovo is part of the Western and Gulf axis. Indeed, for most Orthodox Christians in the Balkans it is abundantly clear that in three wars in this part of the world since the 1970s, that on each occasion the West supported Muslim forces. Therefore, in northern Cyprus and in most parts of Kosovo you have many non-Christian zones courtesy of the intrigues of Gulf petrodollars, America and the United Kingdom.

The other reality is that while conservative Middle East nations in the Gulf region have close ties with Washington and London respectively. It is clear that the same can’t be said about the relationship between secular forces in Egypt under Nasser, Iraq and in independent Syria today. Indeed, Sharia Islamic law often follows in the footsteps of the policies enacted by America and the United Kingdom. Two examples being the support of Islamic Sharia law after the demise of secular power bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. Likewise, if independent Syria is defeated by Gulf powers, major Western nations and a host of different terrorist factions; then clearly secularism in Syria will be under threat.

Given this reality, the knowledge that Pakistan Islamist involvement in Syria is growing isn’t surprising given the closeness between the CIA, ISI, MI6 and international terrorist groups. The ISI is clearly a major enigma because while Pakistan worked hand-in-glove with America and the United Kingdom in the 1980s and much of the 1990s; it is clear that they have clashed in recent times. Despite this, the money channels keep on flowing between all three nations.

The BBC reports that “Mohammad Amin, a senior Taliban operative and “co-ordinator of the Syrian base”, told the BBC that the cell to monitor “the jihad” in Syria was set up six months ago.”

“He said that the cell has the approval of militant factions both within and outside of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella organisation of militant groups fighting the Pakistani forces.”

“They were facilitated by our friends in Syria who have previously been fighting in Afghanistan.”

The BBC further reports that “…anti-Shia groups in Pakistan have access to considerable charity funds raised in some Middle Eastern sheikhdoms that see their domestic Shia populations as a problem…”

In other words, just like the recent murder of a member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) by al-Qaeda took place during an open meeting between both forces in Syria. Then not only are the leaders of America, France, Turkey and the United Kingdom siding with the FSA despite its closeness towards various al-Qaeda affiliated groups; but like the BBC implies, it is clear that so-called friendly Gulf states are helping to export terrorism and sectarianism in many parts of the world. However, despite this, it appears that President Obama, President Hollande and Prime Minister Cameron not only care little about being aligned with terrorist organizations and nations that sponsor terrorism and sectarianism. Equally alarming, is that the same ruling elites in America and the United Kingdom don’t care that their anti-Syrian policies are extremely unpopular at home. Therefore, democracy in major Western nations is being tainted to a terrible extreme.

The House Subcommittee in America in 1997 lambasted Bill Clinton by stating that “….the Clinton green light would lead to this degree of Iranian influence, it is necessary to remember that the policy was adopted in the context of extensive and growing radical Islamic activity in Bosnia. That is, the Iranians and other Muslim militants had long been active in Bosnia; the American green light was an important political signal to both Sarajevo and the militants that the United States was unable or unwilling to present an obstacle to those activities — and, to a certain extent, was willing to cooperate with them. In short, the Clinton Administration’s policy of facilitating the delivery of arms to the Bosnian Muslims made it the de facto partner of an ongoing international network of governments and organizations pursuing their own agenda in Bosnia: the promotion of Islamic revolution in Europe. That network involves not only Iran but Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan (a key ally of Iran), and Turkey, together with front groups supposedly pursuing humanitarian and cultural activities.”

Likewise, powerful political leaders in America like Senator Rand Paul are lambasting the current administration for its policy towards Syria. In The New American it reports that Rand Paul is against the arming of groups in Syria which will boost al-Qaeda terrorism. Rand Paul states that “This is an important moment. You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda.”

In the same article it states that “In an exclusive interview with The New American, Senator Paul pointed out the irony in the fact that the original Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) enacted after September 11, 2001 called for finding and destroying al-Qaeda, while the legislation passed on May 21 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would arm known associates of that very organization.”

“These people [Syrian rebels] will say they love America knowing that that’s how to get weapons. They lie to us and then shoot us in the back,” Paul explained.”

Also, turning all the way back to Afghanistan then The New American reports that “Another bit of irony apparently lost on 15 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is the fact that the United States has walked this road before. In the 1980s, Congress voted to arm militant Islamic forces under the pretext that the enemy of our enemy was our friend. Then, within 20 years, the very beneficiaries of U.S. military largesse in Afghanistan seized control of that country and reportedly sheltered and trained the men who carried out the attacks of September 11.”

In Bosnia vast numbers of Orthodox Christian civilians were killed by taxes which were abused by political elites in major Western nations. This applies to beheading people, nailing Orthodox Christians to trees, defiling the bodies of women and so forth. Indeed, it was the barbarity of al-Qaeda forces and elements within the Bosnian Muslim army which triggered the terrible bloodletting in eastern Bosnia. However, all this was brushed under the carpet in order to paint a picture which suited the agenda of powerful Gulf and Western nations. Not only this, if it wasn’t for Bill Clinton encouraging Izetbegovic (leader of Bosnian Muslims) then a deal would have been done two years earlier. If so, then this would have spared the lives of innocent Christians and Muslims who were killed on both sides.

Once more today it is clear that the Russian Federation is trying to solve the crisis by inviting all external powers involved in Syria. Yet, the leaders of America, France, Turkey and the United Kingdom just seem to want to extend the conflict. Therefore, major terrorist ratlines are supporting sectarian and terrorist forces against the government of Syria. Of course, the longer this goes on then the more unstable Syria becomes and likewise Iraq and Lebanon are suffering because of the policies of major Gulf and Western nations. Once more, Christians are fleeing from forces being supported by London and Washington – and this time Paris is playing its part in assisting Takfiri and Salafist forces which hate the Alawites, Christians and the Shia.

Fox News reports that “Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said in a recent Op-Ed in the Albuquerque Journal that the U.S. risks repeating past mistakes, noting that weapons given to the Afghan mujahadeen in the 1980s to help them repel the Soviets fell into the hands of the Taliban, which in turn harbored Al Qaeda.”

“In a statement sent to Fox News….Udall reiterated his concerns, saying, “I am very skeptical that arming rebels we know little about and intervening in a Middle East civil war, will serve U.S. interests.”

“Arming groups whose members likely have links to Al Qaeda and other radical groups, and may not have the ability to secure their weapons, is not only unwise but could increase the amount of weapons in the region and exacerbate the terrorist threat to the U.S. and our allies.”

Various terrorist and sectarian forces in Syria are committing unimaginable massacres including beheading people, raping Alawite and Christian women, killing children for alleged blasphemy, killing Christian and Sunni Muslim holy men, phoning parents of captured soldiers and then killing them slowly, cutting up Syrian soldiers, brutally murdering women and then throwing them down holes in the ground – and other barbaric acts. Most of these crimes are being filmed by terrorist forces in Syria because they are proud of butchering and because it will entice more Gulf petrodollars. It is time to stop this madness and for Western and Gulf powers to be held accountable for their actions otherwise democracy and accountability means zilch.

Vojin Joksimovich in the book called The Revenge of the Prophet comments that “Osama Bin Laden saw a great opportunity in Bosnia and established a base of operations in Europe against Al Qaeda’s true enemy, the U.S. The Afghan Jihad and the Gulf War combined to produce fertile ground for 9/11. However, Bosnia became the direct springboard for 9/11, the Madrid train bombings and probably London.” Page 298 – The Revenge of the Prophet

Likewise, in another Modern Tokyo Times article it was stated that “Shaul Shay in his book Islamic Terror and the Balkans comments about the connection between the Madrid bombing, Al Qaida camps in Bosnia and the Sarajevo connection and clearly these ratlines were aided by the Bill Clinton Administration either covertly or by turning a blind eye – either way, part of the responsibility belongs to the Bill Clinton administration. Therefore, in Madrid the former leader of America should be held accountable alongside leaders in the Bosnian Muslim leadership for allowing this.”

Shaul Shay states that “Dragomir Adnan, the commander of the police in Sofia, Bulgaria stated during a press conference that the terrorists who had perpetrated the attacks on Madrid trains had been trained in Al Qaida camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina and that eleven of the suspects had reached Spain via Sarajevo. He also claimed that the explosives used for the preparation of the bombs had been manufactured in Bosnia.” (Page 167 – Islamic Terror and the Balkans)

Syria today is fighting for its survival against many forces of darkness which will use any means possible in order to crush this secular nation. In the last thirty plus years al-Qaeda and various different terrorist forces have gained because of major Gulf and Western nations. After September 11, it was hoped that America wouldn’t drag itself back down again by selling democracy to geopolitical self interests and Gulf petrodollars. However, the terrorist switch is on once more therefore Syria is on the frontline against extremely sinister forces which seek compliance by supporting chaos.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23285245

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/...z2Z0JcvdK2

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Local residents stand in front of an apartment block damaged by recent shelling in the settlement of Makiivka, on the outskirts of Donetsk, August 19, 2014 (Reuters / Maxim Shemetov)

There have been at least two countries in Europe in recent history that undertook ‘anti-terrorist’ military operations against ‘separatists’, but got two very different reactions from the Western elite.

The government of European country A launches what it calls an‘anti-terrorist’ military operation against ‘separatists’ in one part of the country. We see pictures on Western television of people’s homes being shelled and lots of people fleeing. The US and UK and other NATO powers fiercely condemn the actions of the government of country A and accuse it of carrying out ‘genocide’ and ’ethnic cleansing’ and say that there is an urgent ‘humanitarian crisis.’Western politicians and establishment journalists tell us that ‘something must be done.’ And something is done: NATO launches a ‘humanitarian’ military intervention to stop the government of country A. Country A is bombed for 78 days and nights. The country’s leader (who is labeled ‘The New Hitler’) is indicted for war crimes – and is later arrested and sent in an RAF plane to stand trial for war crimes at The Hague, where he dies, un-convicted, in his prison cell.

The government of European country B launches what it calls an ‘anti-terrorist’ military operation against ‘separatists’ in one part of the country. Western television doesn’t show pictures or at least not many) of people’s homes being shelled and people fleeing, although other television stations do. But here the US, UK and other NATO powers do not condemn the government, or accuse it of committing‘genocide’ or ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Western politicians and establishment journalists do not tell us that‘something must be done’ to stop the government of country B killing people. On the contrary, the same powers who supported action against country A, support the military offensive of the government in country B. The leader of country B is not indicted for war crimes, nor is he labeled ‘The New Hitler’despite the support the government has got from far-right, extreme nationalist groups, but in fact, receives generous amounts of aid.

Anyone defending the policies of the government in country A, or in any way challenging the dominant narrative in the West is labeled a “genocide denier” or an “apologist for mass murder.” But no such opprobrium awaits those defending the military offensive of the government in country B. It’s those who oppose its policies who are smeared.

What makes the double standards even worse, is that by any objective assessment, the behavior of the government in country B, has been far worse than that of country A and that more human suffering has been caused by their aggressive actions.

In case you haven’t guessed it yet – country A is Yugoslavia, country B is Ukraine.



Smoke loomes over Yugoslav capital of Belgrade from Pancevo’s chemical plant after NATO air strike on this April 18, 1999 file photo (Reuters)

Yugoslavia, a different case

In 1998/9 Yugoslavian authorities were faced with a campaign of violence against Yugoslav state officials by the pro-separatist and Western-backed Kosovan Liberation Army (KLA). The Yugoslav government responded by trying to defeat the KLA militarily, but their claims to be fighting against’terrorism’ were haughtily dismissed by Western leaders. As the British Defence Secretary George Robertson and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook acknowledged in the period from 1998 to January 1999, the KLA had been responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav authorities had been.

In the lead-up to the NATO action and during it, lurid claims were made about the numbers of people who had been killed or ‘disappeared’ by the Yugoslav forces. “Hysterical NATO and KLA estimates of the missing and presumably slaughtered Kosovan Albanians at times ran upwards of one hundred thousand, reaching 500, 000 in one State Department release. German officials leaked ‘intelligence’ about an alleged Serb plan called Operation Horseshoe to depopulate the province of its ethnic Albanians, and to resettle it with Serbs, which turned out to be an intelligence fabrication,” Edward Herman and David Peterson noted in their book The Politics of Genocide.

“We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe – from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing from a brutal dictatorship,” a solemn-faced Prime Minister Tony Blair told the British Parliament – just four years before an equally sombre Tony Blair told the British Parliament that we must act over the ‘threat’ posed by Saddam Hussein’s WMDs.

Taking their cue from Tony Blair and Co., the media played their part in hyping up what was going on in Kosovo. Herman and Peterson found that newspapers used the word ‘genocide’ to describe Yugoslav actions in Kosovo 323 times compared to just 13 times for the invasion/occupation of Iraq despite the death toll in the latter surpassing that of Kosovo by 250 times.

In the same way we were expected to forget about the claims from Western politicians and their media marionettes about Iraq possessing WMDs in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion, we are now expected to forget about the outlandish claims made about Kosovo in 1999.

But as the award winning investigative journalist and broadcaster John Pilger wrote in his article Reminders of Kosovo in 2004, “Lies as great as those told by Bush and Blair were deployed by Clinton and Blair in grooming of public opinion for an illegal, unprovoked attack on a European country.”

The overall death toll of the Kosovo conflict is thought to be between 3,000 and 4,000, but that figure includes Yugoslav army casualties, and Serbs and Roma and Kosovan Albanians killed by the KLA. In 2013, the International Committee of the Red Cross listed the names of 1,754 people from all communities in Kosovo who were reported missing by their families.

The number of people killed by Yugoslav military at the time NATO launched its ‘humanitarian’ bombing campaign, which itself killed between 400-600 people, is thought to be around 500, a tragic death toll but hardly “genocide.”

“Like Iraq’s fabled weapons of mass destruction, the figures used by the US and British governments and echoed by journalists were inventions- along with Serbian ‘rape camps’ and Clinton and Blair’s claims that NATO never deliberately bombed civilians,” says Pilger.

No matter what happens in Ukraine…

In Ukraine by contrast, the number of people killed by government forces and those supporting them has been deliberately played down, despite UN figures highlighting the terrible human cost of the Ukrainian government’s ‘anti-terrorist’ operation.

Last week, the UN’s Human Rights Office said that the death toll in the conflict in eastern Ukraine had doubled in the previous fortnight. Saying that they were “very conservative estimates,” the UN stated that 2,086 people (from all sides) had been killed and 5,000 injured. Regarding refugees, the UN says that around 1,000 people have been leaving the combat zone every day and that over 100,000 people have fled the region. Yet despite these very high figures, there have been no calls from leading Western politicians for ‘urgent action’ to stop the Ukrainian government’s military offensive. Articles from faux-left ‘humanitarian interventionists’ saying that ‘something must be done’ to end what is a clearly a genuine humanitarian crisis, have been noticeable by their absence.

There is, it seems, no “responsibility to protect” civilians being killed by government forces in the east of Ukraine, as there was in Kosovo, even though the situation in Ukraine, from a humanitarian angle, is worse than that in Kosovo in March 1999.

To add insult to injury, efforts have been made to prevent a Russian humanitarian aid convoy from entering Ukraine.

The convoy we are told is ‘controversial’ and could be part of a sinister plot by Russia to invade. This from the same people who supported a NATO bombing campaign on a sovereign state for“humanitarian” reasons fifteen years ago!

For these Western ‘humanitarians’ who cheer on the actions of the Ukrainian government, the citizens of eastern Ukraine are “non-people”: not only are they unworthy of our support or compassion, or indeed aid convoys, they are also blamed for their own predicament.

There are, of course, other conflicts which also highlight Western double standards towards‘humanitarian intervention’. Israeli forces have killed over 2,000 Palestinians in their latest ruthless ‘anti-terrorist’ operation in Gaza, which is far more people than Yugoslav forces had killed in Kosovo by the time of the 1999 NATO ‘intervention’. But there are no calls at this time for a NATO bombing campaign against Israel.

In fact, neocons and faux-left Zionists who have defended and supported Israel’s “anti-terrorist”Operation Protective Edge, and Operation Cast Lead before it, were among the most enthusiastic supporters of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Israel it seems is allowed to kill large numbers of people, including women and children, in its “anti-terrorist” campaigns, but Yugoslavia had no such“right” to fight an “anti-terrorist” campaign on its own soil.

In 2011, NATO went to war against Libya to prevent a “hypothetical” massacre in Benghazi, and to stop Gaddafi ‘killing his own people’; in 2014 Ukrainian government forces are killing their own people in large numbers, and there have been actual massacres like the appalling Odessa arson attack carried out by pro-government ‘radicals’, but the West hasn’t launched bombing raids on Kiev in response.

The very different approaches from the Western elite to ‘anti-terrorist’ operations in Kosovo and Ukraine (and indeed elsewhere) shows us that what matters most is not the numbers killed, or the amount of human suffering involved, but whether or not the government in question helps or hinders Western economic and military hegemonic aspirations.

In the eyes of the rapacious Western elites, the great ‘crime’ of the Yugoslav government in 1999 was that it was still operating, ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an unreconstructed socialist economy, with very high levels of social ownership – as I highlighted here.

Yugoslavia under Milosevic was a country which maintained its financial and military independence. It had no wishes to join the EU or NATO, or surrender its sovereignty to anyone. For that refusal to play by the rules of the globalists and to show deference to the powerful Western financial elites, the country (and its leader) had to be destroyed. In the words of George Kenney, former Yugoslavia desk officer at the US State Department: “In post-cold war Europe no place remained for a large, independent-minded socialist state that resisted globalization.”

By contrast, the government of Ukraine, has been put in power by the West precisely in order to further its economic and military hegemonic aspirations. Poroshenko, unlike the much- demonized Milosevic, is an oligarch acting in the interests of Wall Street, the big banks and the Western military-industrial complex. He’s there to tie up Ukraine to IMF austerity programs, to hand over his country to Western capital and to lock Ukraine into ‘Euro-Atlantic’ structures- in other words to transform it into an EU/IMF/NATO colony- right on Russia’s doorstep.

This explains why an ‘anti-terrorist’ campaign waged by the Yugoslav government against ‘separatists’in 1999 is ‘rewarded’ with fierce condemnation, a 78-day bombing campaign, and the indictment of its leader for war crimes, while a government waging an ‘anti-terrorist’ campaign against ‘separatists’ in Ukraine in 2014, is given carte blanche to carry on killing. In the end, it’s not about how many innocent people you kill, or how reprehensible your actions are, but about whose interests you serve.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/kosovo-and-...st/5396746

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The Krajina Chronicle by Srdja Trifkovich:

https://www.google.rs/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&..._omd3EHGDw

https://www.google.rs/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&...WL3BqOo66g

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