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NEBOJSA MALIC: GRAVEYARD OF AMERICAN
EMPIRE?
A year ago, Macedonia was known for being the only part
of the former socialist Yugoslav federation to gain independence without a war;
for having a bitter dispute with Greece over its name, and with Bulgaria over
its ethnic identity; for sheltering hundreds of thousands of Albanians who left
Kosovo during NATO's 1999 air assault; for serving as a logistical base for
NATO's occupation of southern Balkans; and for its superb food and textile
products.
But Macedonia has been flayed alive -- then accused of suicide. Its
people have been stripped of their ethnic identity, nationhood and even their
right to life and property. Albanian thugs control swathes of its territory
while pretending to disarm. German tanks rumble through its landscape again,
after sixty years, while British paratroopers pretend to be gathering weapons
from the bandits they helped train.
LEAVE? WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED!
The farcical operation "Essential
Harvest" in Macedonia, is essential in only one regard: to convince the
citizenry of the "international community" that their governments honestly
intended to stay in Macedonia for only 30 days and help the "peace process"
there. Alas, cruel fate has forced the brave defenders of democracy to stay
much, much longer, because peace has been so elusive. Yet what did they expect?
As daily images from Northern Ireland, Israel and now Macedonia keep proving,
"peace process" is the exact opposite of peace.
Denizens of Imperial lands
may be such complete morons as to believe this claptrap, but their rulers
certainly know better. In a shockingly rare display of honesty, a British
Defense Ministry source told The Scotsman on Monday, "This mission was a way of
getting in. Once you're on the ground it's much easier to justify staying." For
someone who has seen the slow creeping infiltration of NATO into Croatia, Bosnia
and Kosovo, this statement should be quite enough.
DEATH BY DESCRIPTION
However many times it has been said before, it
needs to be said again: none of this would be possible without a powerful and
committed propaganda apparatus. Slow to react at first, it is a terrifying sight
when operating in full gear. Who, what, where, when and how are usually drowned
in the sea of editorial guidance, which seeks to present a politically correct
version of the "why."
Thus Macedonia's Prime Minister, top policeman and even
chairman of the Parliament are smeared as "hard-liners," "nationalists," even
"certified hardliners" and "ultra-hardliners," in an effort to bolster the
subservient President Boris Trajkovski at their expense. This is the same
president who invited foreign "mediators" to compose an ultimatum to his own
government, invited foreign troops to occupy his country, and sold his people
for hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, none of which will ever materialize.
No matter. All that makes him a "moderate," and all those who see something
wrong with this picture are… "certified ultra-nationalist hardliners"
perhaps?
RIPPLES ON THE SEA OF FATE
Why, then, are Georgievski and others still
going along with NATO's nefarious scheme? Why is everyone in the Balkans so
pathetically willing to do NATO's bidding, almost always at their own expense?
For answers, look just across the Macedonian border to the northwest, and some
two and a half years in the past.
"We should not play with NATO's authority,"
said Georgievski in his bitter address to the Sobranie, in which he urged the
delegates to ratify the Treaty of Ohrid despite its treasonous implications. He
knows, as everyone should, what happens to those who defy that authority. NATO's
power comes out of missile tubes and off the bomb racks, from legions of
obedient reporters, millions of dollars in bribes, and millions of willing
servants throughout the world. This power set a haunting example when it
pulverized the Serbs and turned them into a pathetic, servile rabble.
SURRENDER, OR I'LL SUE
Another reason could be that Macedonia's
leaders might be afraid of ending up like the Serb leadership, imprisoned in a
Dutch castle at the mercy of NATO's judges and prosecutors, whose only rule is
"guilty until proven innocent -- and we dare you to try!" Where else in the
world can anyone be tried multiple times on the same charges by a self-appointed
court, given harsher sentence after appealing, accused by anonymous, protected
witnesses and already convicted in the media before the arrest, let alone
trial?
The Hague Harpy is currently roaming Belgrade, asking for more heads
for her collection, but she may well soon descend upon those "hardliners" who
just can't seem to get with the program in Macedonia. Then again, Georgievski
and others should not worry -- if it so desires, the Inquisition will come for
them regardless of what they do. Even without the examples of Croatia and
Bosnia, Macedonians ought to know that submissiveness to NATO has never been a
guarantee of protection.
THE MARCH TO MINSK
Rightfully important as they are to their
residents, who are most affected by imperial meddling and the incessant
pandering of local collaborators, Macedonia and the Balkans are but a strand in
the vast web of the Empire's policy. Just as the Empire's experiences in Latin
America, the Middle East and Afghanistan were used in staging massacres and
arming "insurgents" in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and now Macedonia, experiences
from the Balkans are now being applied in other corners of the world.
The
Great Belgrade Experiment, which produced the 18-headed creature now supposedly
in charge of the hemorrhaging Yugoslavia, is now set to be replicated in
Belarus.
Geographically speaking, Belarus is as far from the Balkans as
France. Belarus is, however, no older than Macedonia in terms of statehood. For
the past decade, it has been an exception to the rule in Eastern Europe,
surviving as an oasis of peace and relative prosperity as other former socialist
countries slid into a social, political and economic morass. Unlike her
neighbors, Belarus did not sell off its economy to foreign predators, nor did it
pledge allegiance to NATO -- quite the contrary, it expressed a desire to rejoin
Russia in a federation! Belarus did not attack anyone; there have been no wars
on its soil in the past decade, nor has it expressed territorial ambitions or
aggressive tendencies. Its only sin is that President Lukashenko refuses to bow
to the "international community" and its notions of "democracy" and "human
rights," which have so devastated the rest of Eastern Europe.
Now Lukashenko
is being targeted for removal, the same way Slobodan Milosevic was targeted in
2000.
What happened in the Balkans is already being used as a template for
other parts of the world. Yesterday Serbia, today Macedonia, tomorrow (it is
planned) Belarus. After all, they are all "Slavs" to the Western media.
AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT
As the macabre spectacle in Macedonia
continues, one is left with an exasperating question: if this is happening
despite everything that was said and written about Kosovo, everything that was
said and written about Bosnia, everything that has been said and written about
Macedonia itself… is there hope?
The answer should, perhaps, lie in history.
It is not for nothing that the Balkans is known as "graveyard of empires." Its
people have shrugged off the Communists, defeated the Nazis, broken the teeth of
the Hohenzollerns and smashed the scepters of the Hapsburgs -- not to mention
surviving five centuries of oppression under the Ottoman Turks.
Perhaps this
time, this particular empire bit off more than it can chew.
One can only
hope.
NEBOJSA MALIC
ANTIWAR.COM http://english.pravda.ru/yougoslavia/2001/09/11/14793.html
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