Sunday April 29, 2007
by AidaDS
by AidaDS
Sunday April 29, 2007 by AidaDS |
| ||||
|
Monday, 1 November, 2004
Croatia struggles for post-war harmony By Marko Kovac Beli Manastir, Croatia
"It is noon. You're listening to Radio Beli Manastir!"
The presenter struggles to lift the depression hanging over the rain-drenched empty streets of Beli Manastir in eastern Croatia.
In the central square a few mothers are taking their children home from school.
Another quiet day is drawing to a close for the local shops.
People have never spent less in Baranja, now one of Croatia's poorest regions, where unemployment rarely falls below 50%.
Beli Manastir still bears the scars of the ethnic conflict which pitted Croats against Serbs in the 1990s war that tore Yugoslavia apart.
Almost 10 years on, there is still little sign of reconciliation between the two equally represented ethnic groups.
Parallel lives
|
Cafes — the only places bustling with life — show just how deep the divide remains.
There is a clear distinction between Croat and Serb cafes — you can identify them by the radio station they are playing.
The town has only 10,000 inhabitants, yet it boasts two local radio stations — transmitting very different programmes.
Radio Beli Manastir is one of only a couple of Serb-run stations in Croatia. Its tiny offices resemble a wartime bunker. They are dusty, the equipment is outdated and the collection of music is mostly on old LPs and cassettes.
The technician doesn't react when a song finishes and, having worked for years on radio myself, I am uneasy during the 10 seconds of silence that follows as he slowly changes the CD. It seems the town's depression has invaded the airwaves as well.
The station plays almost exclusively Serbian folk music, as if it is not even trying to attract a Croat audience. I begin to wonder whether the local media are helping to maintain hostility between Croats and Serbs.
The radio's cult anchorman Milutin Kotrljanovic, previously a police inspector, assures me that their programme is multicultural.
"My show gives everyone a chance to speak out — a Croat or a Serb, a politician, or just ordinary citizens. We talk about living together and solving problems. Although I myself am Serbian, I think I have successfully engaged Croatian homes." Not an easy task.
Expulsion
|
During the war, Baranja was occupied by the rebel Serb minority and Croats were driven out.
Kotrljanovic says he is bridging the ethnic divide The painful memories of columns of women and children leaving their homes are still vivid in the minds of many.
The Croats started moving back during the 1996 reintegration initiative conducted under UN supervision.
For Croats, it is not easy to forget that it was their Serb neighbours who made them leave. Serbian folk songs about lost love find little fertile ground among the Croats.
Not a single Croat phoned in while I was at Radio Beli Manastir.
Mr Kotrljanovic thinks he can achieve the goal he has set for himself — of bridging the ethnic divide.
"Until a short time ago, there were incidents every day. Croatian and Serbian children went to different classes. There was abuse. Things have now changed, because of the harsh poverty and the role of media like ours."
His words are supported by his good friend Marko Posavec, a Croat, who joins us for coffee.
|
He is a member of the ruling centre-right party HDZ — formerly the bastion of the late nationalist president Franjo Tudjman.
Reconciliation
Unlike many of his colleagues in the HDZ, Croatia's biggest party, he avoids talk of hate.
Radio Baranja also claims to embrace multiculturalism
"The situation is calming down. It is important to talk to people and let them know that they won't survive if they continue to fight each other", says Mr Posavec.
But it seems it will be some time before this message is adopted more broadly.
Many ordinary Croats remain defiant.
"I don't listen to Radio Beli Manastir because it is Serbian. I hate Serbs. They made us leave our homes during the war. I will sell to them, but nothing more than that," says Ruzica, a middle-aged butcher, when I ask about her choice of music.
Pausing for a drink at a nearby kiosk, Ana, a young saleswoman, also speaks of Radio Beli Manastir with disdain. "Why should I listen to them, when there's a Croatian station in town?"
Rivalry
|
Just across the street stands a late 1980s glass building housing the town's other radio station — Croatian-run Radio Baranja.
Depression is all too prevalent — but at least there is no fighting. Its owner Zlata Marsic is proud of Baranja's modern offices, touch-screen computer technology and other hi-tech broadcasting equipment.
But smiles turn to frowns when I mention Radio Beli Manastir. She refers to them as "those Serbs who made me leave my hometown during the war".
The war is a sore point — she does not want to talk history, so I'm diverted towards the station's star presenter Sasa Lilovic.
As with the Serbian rival, multiculturalism is his buzzword as well. And yet — the only music I hear played is Croatian.
"We're a station for everyone and everyone is welcome, Croats or Serbs," says Mr Lilovic. But as I listened to the Baranja broadcast, not a single Serb phoned in. The divide remains too deep.
The radio presenters sound like lone voices calling for ethnic unity. Not many people are listening to their message.
The joint struggle against poverty might be forcing the people of Beli Manastir to push memories of war into the background — but for now that is as far as it goes.
|
|
SEE ALSO: Over a million Bosnians back home 21 Sep 04 | Europe Croatia is named candidate for EU 18 Jun 04 | Europe Roma return to Serbian neglect 13 Jan 04 | Europe Croatian Serbs win minority rights 20 Dec 03 | Europe Eating in two countries at once 27 Jun 03 | Europe |
|
Wednesday September 15, 2004 by cira2900 |
October 12, 2005
Using War as an Excuse for More War
by Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica Revisited
L ast summer, almost the entire political spectrum in the Western world joined in a chorus of self-flagellation on the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. The dominant theme was "nostra culpa": "we" let it happen, "we" didn't want to know about it, and "we" mustn't let it happen again.
|
Dear reader, who are "we" in this case? How in the world could "we" (you and I) have known or done anything about this at the time? And in fact, how much do "we" really know about it now? We know what we read in the newspapers or see on television. But how precise and accurate is that information? How do we know now that we are much better informed than we were before the event?
Such questions are virtually taboo. Srebrenica has become a sacred symbol of collective guilt, and to raise the slightest question is to be instantly condemned as an apologist for frightful crimes, or as a "holocaust denier".
A left that retains any capacity for critical thinking should regard the lavish public breast-beating over "Srebrenica" (the quotation marks indicate the symbol rather than the actual event) with a certain skepticism. If mainstream media commentators and politicians are so extraordinarily moved by "Srebrenica", this is because it has become an incantation to justify whatever future foreign war the U.S. government and media decide to sell under the label of "humanitarian intervention".
The Uses of a Massacre
Aside from the probable future use of "Srebrenica", there is the way it has already been used. Indeed, it was perhaps being used even before it happened.
From the U.N. Secretary General's 1999 Report on Srebrenica, it emerges that the idea of a "Srebrenica massacre" was already in the air at a September 1993 meeting in Sarajevo between Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic and members of his Muslim party from Srebrenica. On the agenda was a Serb proposal to exchange Srebrenica and Zepa for some territories around Sarajevo as part of a peace settlement.
Intervention only possible if 5,000 people are to be killed
"The delegation opposed the idea, and the subject was not discussed further. Some surviving members of the Srebrenica delegation have stated that President Izetbegovic also told them he had learned that a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible, but could only occur if the Serbs were to break into Srebrenica, killing at least 5,000 of its people." (1)
|
Izetbegovic later denied this, but he is outnumbered by witnesses. It is clear that Izetbegovic's constant strategy was to portray his Muslim side in the bloody civil war as pure helpless victims, in order to bring U.S. military power in on his side. On his death bed, he readily admitted as much to his ardent admirer Bernard Kouchner, in the presence of U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke. Kouchner reminded Izetbegovic of a conversation he had had with French President Mitterrand in which he "spoke of the existence of 'extermination camps' in Bosnia."
"You repeated that in front of the journalists. That provoked considerable emotion throughout the world. [...] They were horrible places, but people were not systematically exterminated. Did you know that?
Yes. I thought that my revelations could precipitate bombings. I saw the reaction of the French and the others — I was mistaken. [...] Yes, I tried, but the assertion was false. There were no extermination camps whatever the horror of those places." (2)
Like the Bosnian Serbs, the Muslims also herded their adversaries into "horrible" camps at the start of the civil war, on the way to expulsion.
High-powered U.S. public relations experts in the Washington-based Ruder Finn agency
Unlike the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian Muslims enjoyed the services of high-powered U.S. public relations experts in the Washington-based Ruder Finn agency who knew how to "spin" the Bosnian conflict in order to equate the Serbs with the Nazis — the quickest and easiest way to win public opinion over to the Muslim side.
The news media and political figures were showered with press releases and other materials exaggerating Serb atrocities, whereas Muslim atrocities (such as the decapitations of Serb prisoners, fully documented) remained confidential. To the public, this was a one-sided conflict between a Serbian "fascist aggressor" and innocent victims, all unarmed civilians.
The general public did not know that Srebrenica, described as a "safe area", was not in fact simply a haven for refugees, but also a Muslim military base.
The general public did not know what Lord Owen knew and recounted in his important 1995 book, Balkan Odyssey (p.143), namely that in April 1993, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was extremely anxious to prevent Bosnian Serb forces from overrunning Srebrenica.
Serb Milosevic and Muslim Izetbegovic aware Srebrenica takeover favorable to Muslim cause, disastrous for Serbs
"On 16 April I spoke on the telephone to President Milosevic about my anxiety that, despite repeated assurances from Dr. Karadzic that he had no intention of taking Srebrenica, the Bosnian Serb army was now proceeding to do just that.
The pocket was greatly reduced in size.
I had rarely heard Milosevic so exasperated, but also so worried: he feared that if the Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica there would be a bloodbath because of the tremendous bad blood that existed between the two armies.
The Bosnian Serbs held the young Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, responsible for a massacre near Bratunac in December 1992 in which many Serb civilians had been killed.
Milosevic believed it would be a great mistake for the Bosnian Serbs to take Srebrenica and promised to tell Karadzic so."
Thus, many months before the July 1995 "Srebrenica massacre", both Izetbegovic and Milosevic were aware of the possibility and of its potential impact — favorable to the Muslim cause, and disastrous for the Serbs.
A few other indisputable facts should not be overlooked:
Shortly before the Bosnian Serb attack on Srebrenica, the Muslim troops stationed in that enclave carried out murderous attacks on nearby Serb villages. These attacks were certain to incite Serb commanders to retaliate against the Srebrenica garrison.
Sacrificing them to the 'interests' of the State
Meanwhile, the Muslim high command in Sarajevo ordered the Srebrenica commanders, Oric and his lieutenants, to withdraw from Srebrenica, leaving thousands of his soldiers without commanders, without orders, and in total confusion when the foreseeable Serb attack occurred. Surviving Srebrenica Muslim officials have bitterly accused the Izetbegovic government of deliberately sacrificing them to the interests of his State.
|
According to the most thorough study of Srebrenica events, by Cees Wiebes for the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation report, the Bosnian Serb forces set out in July 1995 to reduce the area held by Bosnian Muslim forces on the outskirts of Srebrenica, and only decided to capture the town itself when they unexpectedly found it undefended.
Town deliberately left undefended?
"The VRS [Republika Srpska Army] advance went so well that the evening of July 9 saw an important 'turning point' [...] The Bosnian Serbs decided that they would no longer confine themselves to the southern part of the enclave, but would extend the operation and take the town of Srebrenica itself.
Karadzic was informed that the results achieved now put the Drina Corps in a position to take the town; he had expressed his satisfaction with this and had agreed to a continuation of the operation to disarm the 'Muslim terrorist gangs' and to achieve a full demilitarization of the enclave.
In this order, issued by Major General Zdravko Tolimir, it was also stated that Karadzic had determined that the safety of UNPROFOR soldiers and of the population should be ensured.
Orders to this effect were to be provided to all participating units. [...] The orders made no mention of a forced relocation of the population. [...] A final instruction, also of significance, was that the population and prisoners of war should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. On July 11 all of Srebrenica fell into the hands of the Bosnian Serbs."
In testimony to a French parliamentary commission inquiry into Srebrenica, General Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR officer who first called international attention to the Srebrenica enclave, stated his belief that Bosnian Serb forces had fallen into a "trap" when they decided to capture Srebrenica.
Subsequently, on February 12, 2004, testifying at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, General Morillon stressed that the Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, "engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region, and this prompted the region of Bratunac in particular — that is the entire Serb population — to rebel against the very idea that through humanitarian aid one might help the population that was present there."
|
Asked by the ICTY prosecutor how Oric treated his Serb prisoners, General Morillon, who knew him well, replied that:
"Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in his area and over the population itself. I think that he realized that these were the rules of this horrific war, that he could not allow himself to take prisoners. According to my recollection, he didn't even look for an excuse. It was simply a statement: One can't be bothered with prisoners."
Morillon recounted how:
"the Serbs took me to a village to show me the evacuation of the bodies of the inhabitants that had been thrown into a hole, a village close to Bratunac. And this made me understand the degree to which this infernal situation of blood and vengeance [...] led to a situation when I personally feared that the worst would happen if the Serbs of Bosnia managed to enter the enclaves and Srebrenica."
"I feared that the Serbs, the local Serbs, the Serbs of Bratunac, these militiamen, they wanted to take their revenge for everything that they attributed to Naser Oric. It wasn't just Naser Oric that they wanted to revenge, take their revenge on, they wanted to revenge their dead on Orthodox Christmas."
* * *
In short, Srebrenica, whose Serb population had been chased out by Muslim troops at the start of the civil war in 1992, was both a gathering point for civilian Muslim refugees and a Muslim army base. The enclave lived from international humanitarian aid. The Muslim military did not allow civilians to leave, since their presence was what ensured the arrival of humanitarian aid provisions which the military controlled.
When the Bosnian Serb forces captured the town on July 11, 2005, civilians were clamoring to leave the enclave, understandably enough, since there was virtually no normal economic life there.
Much has been made of the fact that Serb forces separated the population, providing buses for women, children and the infirm to take them to Tuzla, while detaining the men.
In light of all that preceded, the reason for this separation is obvious: the Bosnian Serbs were looking for the perpetrators of raids on Serb villages, in order to take revenge.
However, only a relatively small number of Muslim men were detained at that point, and some of them are known to have survived and eventually been released in exchange for Serb prisoners.
|
When the Serb forces entered the town from the south, thousands of Muslim soldiers, in disarray because of the absence of commanding officers, fled northwards, through wild wooded hills toward Tuzla.
It is clear enough that they fled because they feared exactly what everyone aware of the situation dreaded: that Serb soldiers would take vengeance on the men they considered guilty of murdering Serb civilians and prisoners.
Thousands of those men did in fact reach Tuzla, and were quietly redeployed. This was confirmed by international observers.
However, Muslim authorities never provided information about these men, preferring to let them be counted among the missing, that is, among the massacred.
Another large, unspecified number of these men were ambushed and killed as they fled in scenes of terrible panic. This was, then, a "massacre", such as occurs in war when fleeing troops are ambushed by superior forces.
Counting the victims
So we come to the question of numbers. The question is difficult, both because of the uncertainty that surrounds it, and because merely pointing to this uncertainty is instantly denounced as "revisionism" and lack of respect for the victims.
This reproach is not logical. Victims are victims, whether few or many, and respect is not in proportion to their numbers.
The question of numbers is complex and has been dealt with in detail by others, recently by an independent international Srebrenica research group which will soon publish its findings in book form. (3)
Suffice it here to note the following:
|
1. The sacralization of the estimated number of victims —
In many if not most disasters, initial estimates of casualties tend to be inflated, for various reasons, such as multiple reports of the same missing person, and are subsequently corrected downwards.
This was the case for the World Trade Center disaster, where initial estimates of up to 10,000 victims were finally brought down to less than 3000, and there are many other examples.
In the case of Srebrenica, the figure of 8,000 originated with September 1995 announcements by the International Committee of the Red Cross that it was seeking information about some 3,000 men reportedly detained as well as about some 5,000 who had fled to central Bosnia.
Neither the Bosnian Serbs nor the Muslims were ever forthcoming with whatever information they had, and the "8,000" figure has tended ever since to be repeated as an established total of "Muslim men and boys executed by Serb forces".
It can be noted that this was always an estimate, the sum of two separate groups, the smaller one of prisoners (whose execution would be a clear war crime) and the larger one of retreating troops (whose "massacre" as they fled would be the usual tragic consequence of bitter civil war).
Anyone familiar with the workings of journalism knows that there is a sort of professional inertia which leads reporters to repeat whatever figure they find in previous reports, without verification, and with a marked preference for big numbers. This inertia is all the greater when no truly authoritative figures ever emerge.
The number of bodies exhumed.
Despite unprecedented efforts over the past ten years to recover bodies from the area around Srebrenica, less than 3,000 have been exhumed, and these include soldiers and others — Serb as well as Muslim — who died in the vicious combats that took place during three years of war. Only a fraction have been identified.
2. The political desire for the largest possible number —
Aside from the journalistic inertia mentioned above, the retention of the unproven high figure of massacre victims in the case of Srebrenica is clearly the result of political will on the part of two governments: the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic and, more importantly, the government of the United States.
More importantly, the government of the United States
From the moment that Madeleine Albright brandished satellite photos of what she claimed was evidence of Serb massacres committed at Srebrenica (evidence that was both secret, as the photos were shown in closed session to the Security Council, and circumstantial, as they showed changes in terrain which might indicate massacres, not the alleged massacres themselves), the U.S. used "Srebrenica" for two clear purposes:
To draw attention away from the U.S.-backed Croatian offensive which drove the Serb population out of the Krajina which, as much as Srebrenica, was supposed to be protected by the United Nations;
To implicate Bosnian Serb leaders in "genocide" in order to disqualify them from negotiating the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina. (The U.S. preferred to replace them at Dayton by Milosevic, whose eagerness to end the war could be exploited to get concessions the Bosnian Serbs might refuse.)
Exploitation of "Srebrenica" then helped set the stage for the Kosovo war of 1999:
By blaming the United Nations (whose failure to defend Srebrenica was in reality the inevitable result of the unwillingness of the United States to give full support to U.N. ground forces), NATO emerged as the only agent capable of effective "humanitarian intervention".
By falsely identifying Milosevic with the Bosnian Serb leadership and by exploiting the notion that Srebrenica killings were part of a vast Serb plan of "genocide" carried out against non-Serbs for purely racist reasons, Madeleine Albright was able to advocate the NATO war against Yugoslavia as necessary to prevent "another Srebrenica" in Kosovo, where the situation was altogether different.
To use "Srebrenica" as an effective instrument in the restructuring of former Yugoslavia, notably by replacing recalcitrant Serb leaders by more pliable politicians, the crime needed to be as big as possible: not a mere war crime (such as the United States itself commits on a serial basis, from Vietnam to Panama to Iraq), but "genocide": "the worst atrocity in Europe since the Holocaust".
|
That arouses the Hitler image, which is always good for the image of the United States as saviour from across the seas, and implies a plan decided at the highest levels, rather than the brutal behavior of enraged soldiers (or paramilitaries, the probable culprits in this case) out of control.
But what plan for genocide includes offering safe passage to women and children?
And if this was all part of a Serb plot to eliminate Muslims, what about all the Muslims living peacefully in Serbia itself, including thousands of refugees who fled there from Bosnia?
Or the Muslims in the neighboring enclave of Zepa, who were unharmed when the Serbs captured that town a few days after capturing Srebrenica?
To get around these common sense obstacles, the ICTY prosecution came up with a sociologist who provided an "expert" opinion: the Srebrenica Muslims lived in a patriarchal society, therefore killing the men was enough to ensure that there would be no more Muslims in Srebrenica.
This amounts to shrinking the concept of "genocide" to fit the circumstances.
It was on basis of this definition that in August 2001 the Tribunal found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of "complicity in genocide".
|
Although he neither ordered, participated in or was even aware of any executions, the judges ruled that he took part in what the ICTY calls a "joint criminal enterprise" simply by capturing Srebrenica, since he must have been aware that genocide was "a natural and foreseeable consequence".
This is the ruling that established "genocide" as the official description of events at Srebrenica.
Why such relentless determination to establish Srebrenica as "genocide"?
|
A December 27, 2003, Associated Press dispatch provided an explanation by U.S. jurist Michael Scharf, one of the designers of the ICTY who has also coached the judges for the trial of Saddam Hussein:
On a practical level, if the court determines Srebrenica does not fit the legal definition of genocide, it would be very difficult to make the charge stick against Milosevic, said Michael Scharf, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
"And it is crucial that he be convicted of genocide," Scharf said. If Milosevic can't be convicted, "then who can you convict of genocide in the modern age?" he asked. |
|
CNN — October 25, 1996
War crimes tribunal jeopardized by witness tampering
|
Robert Reid, a United Nations war crimes investigator testified that authorities in Sarajevo had forced Dragan Opacic, known as witness "L," to give false evidence against Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb accused of committing atrocities against Muslims and Croats early in the Bosnian conflict.
The U.N.'s Reid told the U.N. criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia that Opacic, convicted by a Bosnian court of "serious crimes," had been trained by Bosnian military police to go to the Hague court and lie, or be killed.
Opacic appeared for the prosecution in mid-August and, in closed session, said he had been a guard at the Serb-run Trnopolje camp where he saw Tadic commit atrocities.
|
Since then, prosecutors said they had had doubts about Opacic's testimony.
"L" was one of 30 witnesses testifying on the first of 33 counts against Tadic.
In a meeting Friday, Opacic told Reid how he had been trained by Bosnian military police in Sarajevo for up to seven hours a day on what to say in court against Tadic.
"Opacic said he had been told that if he refused, he would be executed.
By that, I understood, murdered," Reid said, declining to speculate as to why the Bosnian authorities might want to send a "false witness" to the trial.
Tadic, 41, is accused of visiting three camps in northwest Bosnia — Trnopolje, Omarska and Keraterm — to kill, torture and rape non-Serbs as part of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign in the region in 1992.
He denies the charges.
Defense lawyer Michail Wladimiroff told reporters earlier that he had been convinced all along that Opacic had made up his story about being at Trnopolje.
"Right from the start it was clear that "L's' testimony didn't ring true," he said.
After Reid's brief testimony, Tadic himself took the stand.
Smartly dressed in a blue suit and tie and speaking through an interpreter, the accused took the oath and answered questions on his background from British defense attorney Stephen Kaye.
|
Raised to ignore ethnic differences
He said that as a child growing up in the mainly-Muslim village of Kozarac, he had no Serb friends and had been brought up to ignore ethnic differences.
He told the court that Emir Karabasic, a Muslim from Kozarac whom he is accused of beating to death at Omarska, was "like a brother to me."
"We were always at each other's side," he added.
The tribunal, set up by the U.N. Security Council in 1993, has indicted 75 suspected war criminals.
It has seven in its custody, but the rest, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, remain at liberty.
|
Prosecutor Grant Niemann said that after reviewing Opacic's testimony, he was dropping a charge relating to Trnopolje.
"Over the past couple of weeks we have been investigating this witness and ... can no longer support (him) as a witness of truth," Niemann told presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald. |
|
October 12, 2005
Using War as an Excuse for More War
by Diana Johnstone
The legal definition of genocide could also come into play in an Iraqi war-crimes tribunal, which has vowed to follow international legal precedent.
It is striking that from the very start, the effort of the United States and of the Tribunal in The Hague — which it mainly finances, staffs and controls — has been to establish what it calls "command responsibility" for Serb crimes rather than individual guilt of actual perpetrators. The aim is not to identify and punish men who violated the Geneva conventions by executing prisoners, but rather to pin the supreme crime on the top Serb leadership.
The office of the ICTY prosecutor has chosen to rely heavily on a single confessed participant in the Srebrenica massacre.
This person is one Drazen Erdemovic, a petty criminal of Croatian nationality who was hospitalized in Serbia in March 1996 after a near-fatal brawl in a bar in Novi Sad.
Quite possibly in order to escape further threats from his personal enemies, Erdemovic confessed to Western news media to having taken part in mass murder in Bosnia. He was arrested by Serb authorites who then, at his request, turned him over to the Hague Tribunal.
From then on, the prosecution has used Erdemovic repeatedly as its star witness, using the U.S. procedure of "plea bargaining" by which a confessed criminal gets off lightly by incriminating somebody else the prosecution wants to convict.
He has told his story to the judges at his own brief trial, where he was exempted from cross examination thanks to his guilty plea, as well as at a hearing incriminating Karadzic and Mladic (in the absence of any legal defense) and at various trials whenever "Srebrenica" comes up.
His story goes like this:
Srebrenica Revisited
After briefly serving in the Bosnian Muslim army, Erdemovic joined an international mercenary militia unit that seems to have been employed by the Bosnian Serb command for sabotage operations on enemy territory.
On July 16, 1995, his unit of eight men executed between 1,000 and 1,200 Muslim men near the village of Pilice, some 40 kilometers north of Srebrenica.
From around 10:30 in the morning to 3 o'clock in the afternoon, these eight mercenaries emptied bus load after bus load of prisoners and lined them up to be shot by groups of ten.
Now in fact, it seems that a serious crime was indeed committed in Pilice.
Subsequent forensic investigators exhumed 153 bodies.
One hundred and fifty-three executions of prisoners of war is a serious crime, and there is material evidence that this crime was committed.
But 1,200?
According to the manner of execution described by Erdemovic, it would have taken 20 hours to murder so many victims.
Yet the judges have never questioned this elementary arithmetical discrepancy, and Erdemovic's word has consistently been accepted as gospel truth by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. (4)
Why this insistence on an implausibly higher number than can be supported by material evidence?
Obviously, the Tribunal wants to keep the figures as high as possible in order to sustain the charge of "genocide".
The charge of "genocide" is what sharply distinguishes the indictment of Serbs from indictments of Croats or Muslims for similar crimes committed during the Yugoslav disintegration wars. |
|
CNN — November 29, 1996
Bosnian war crimes participant sentenced
|
|
The International War Crimes Tribunal on Friday sentenced a Bosnian Croat, who admitted to taking part in the massacre of 1,200 unarmed Bosnian Muslims last year, to 10 years in prison.
It is the first sentence passed by the tribunal for ethnic massacres relating to the Balkan war and also the first international war crimes sentence since the post-World War II tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo.
Drazen Erdemovic, a 25-year-old Bosnian Croat soldier, pleaded guilty in May for taking part in the massacre, organized by the Bosnian Serb army at a farm in Pilica, about 40 miles (70 km) north of Srebenica, in July 1995.
Prosecutors have described the massacre as one of the worst in Bosnia's bloody 43-month war.
|
|
The court announced its decision at a 45-minute hearing. Presiding judge, Claude Jorda of France, told Erdemovic he should serve the 10-year term, minus time already served since his transfer to The Hague at the end of March.
In reaching its decision, the three-judge panel had taken into account Erdemovic's age, low military rank, remorse "and the cooperation he has provided" investigators, Jorda said.
The judge added that Erdemovic was not considered a threat to the public.
Erdemovic, who has been in tribunal custody since March 31, sat impassively throughout hearing and was consoled by his lawyer before being led out of court by two U.N. guards.
He will likely serve his sentence in Norway, Finland or Italy, which have volunteered to take prisoners sentenced by the U.N. court.
Prosecutors had sought leniency in Erdemovic's sentencing, recommending a sentence of no more than 10 years.
Erdemovic's attorney, Jovan Babic, had demanded an acquittal, arguing that Erdemovic had no choice but to participate in the mass killings of unarmed civilians because he faced being shot by his own firing squad if he didn't carry out orders.
|
|
'It destroyed me'
In pre-sentencing hearings, Erdemovic told the court he cannot remember exactly how many people he executed, but it could have been as many as 100.
He said his commanding officer in a Bosnian Serb army execution squad repeatedly ordered him to shoot groups of 10 Muslims, many blindfolded and with their hands bound behind their backs.
"It destroyed me. It killed me. I simply thought that my life was worthless after that," said Erdemovic, describing the July 16, 1995, massacre.
Prosecutor Mark Harmon called for leniency because of the significant assistance Erdemovic has given in detailing to the tribunal the extent of ethnic slaughters in the Balkans.
"His testimony exposed the lies of Bosnian Serb political and military leaders that the killings of civilians from Srebrenica was nothing but Muslim propaganda," Harmon said.
|
|
Erdemovic, a rank- and-file soldier, has never denied his role at the Pilica farm massacre and has repeatedly expressed sorrow at taking part. He was never accused of planning it.
He also testified at public hearings in July against deposed Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his former military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic.
Both men have been indicted for genocide for allegedly planning and overseeing the attack on Srebrenica and subsequent slaughter of more than 6,000 Muslims. But both men remain at large in Serb-controlled areas of Bosnia. |
|
October 12, 2005
Using War as an Excuse for More War
by Diana Johnstone
In August 2000 after not quite four and a half years in jail, the self-confessed mass murderer Erdemovic was freed, given a new identity, residence in an unspecified Western country and a "job", so to speak, as occasional paid and "protected" witness for the ICTY.
In contrast, General Krstic was sentenced to 35 years in prison and will be eligible for parole in 20 years.
Clearly, the purpose of the "genocide" charge is not to punish the perpetrators but to incriminate the Bosnian Serb, and the Yugoslav Serb, chain of command right up to the top.
Srebrenica As Myth
The transformation of Srebrenica into myth was illustrated last July by an article in the Italian leftist daily Liberazione (close to the "Communist Refoundation" party) reporting on a semi-documentary film entitled "Srebrenica, luci dall'oblio" ("Srebrenica, lights from oblivion"). The title suggests that the film-makers have rescued from oblivion a tragically neglected event, when in fact, rarely in the history of warfare has a massacre been the focus of so much attention.
Here we have the usual self-flagellation:
Srebrenica Revisited "...what happened in Srebrenica: the massacre of 9,000 civilians, in the most total silence/absence on the part of the world institutions [responsible for] peace..."
The author accepts without question the term "genocide" and raises the figure of victims to new heights.
"Around 9,000 men between the ages of 14 and 70 were transported by truck to nearby centers where they were massacred and buried in mass graves..."
This was "the greatest mass genocide committed since the days of Nazism until today"...
What is the point of this exaggeration, this dramatization?
Why is Srebrenica so much more terrible than the war that ravaged Vietnam, [Three million plus people dead, unknown amount of injuries — TheWE.biz] with countless massacres and devastation of the countryside by deadly chemicals, or the cold-blooded massacre of surrendering Iraqis at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991?
But that is a genuinely forgotten massacre — not only forgotten, but never even recognized in the first place, and the "international community" has not sent teams of forensic scientists to find and identify the victims of U.S. weapons.
|
In all probability the film-makers, aspiring artists and "genocide experts" who consider "Srebrenica" suitable material for touching the emotions of the public believe that they are serving the interests of peace and humanity.
But I would suggest quite the contrary.
The misrepresentation of "Bosnia" as scene of a deliberate "genocide" against Muslims, rather than a civil war with atrocities on all sides, contributes to a spirit of "conflict of civilizations".
It has helped recruit volunteers for Islamic terrorist groups.
The political exploitation of Srebrenica has turned the Bosnian war into a morality pantomimew between pure good and pure evil, a version of events which the Serbs can never really accept and the Muslims have no desire to give up.
This stands in the way of unbiased investigation and serious historical analysis. Reconciliation is in fact ruled out by the moralistic insistence that a stark distinction must be made between "aggressor" and "victim".
Where an overwhelmingly superior military power deliberately launched an aggressive war
This stark difference exists between NATO and Yugoslavia, or between the U.S. and Iraq, where an overwhelmingly superior military power deliberately launched an aggressive war against a sovereign country that neither attacked nor threatened it.
But the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not of that nature.
The war there was the result of an extraordinarily complex legal situation (an unsettled small Federal Republic constitutionally composed of three "nationalities": Serb, Muslim and Croat, itself part of a disintegrating larger Federal Republic) exacerbated by myriad local power plays and the incoherent intervention of Great Powers.
Moreover, this occurred in a region where memories of extremely bloody civil war during World War II were still very much alive.
To a large extent, the fighting that broke loose in 1992 was a resumption of the vicious cycle of massacres and vengeance that devastated Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1941-44, when the Nazi occupation broke up Yugoslavia and attached Bosnia-Herzegovina to Greater Croatia, which proceeded to eliminate Serbs.
|
Today it is an unquestioned dogma that recalling atrocities is a "duty of memory" to the victims, something that must be endlessly repeated, lest we forget.
But is this really so obvious?
The insistence on past atrocities may simply prepare the next wave, which is what has already happened in the Balkans, and more than once. Because in reality, the dead victims cannot profit from such memories. But the memory of victimhood is a moral and political capital of great value for the heirs of victimhood and especially for their self-appointed champions.
And in the case of Bosnia, it promises to bring considerable financial gain. If Milosevic, as former president of Serbia, can be convicted of genocide, then the Bosnian Muslims hope to win billions of dollars in reparations that will keep Serbia on its knees for the foreseeable future.
* * *
The obsessive reference to "Srebrenica" has a negative effect far beyond the Balkans.
The "Srebrenica massacre" is part of a dominant culture discourse that goes like this:
We people in the advanced democracies have reached a new moral plateau, from which we are both able and have a duty both to judge others and to impose our "values" when necessary. The others, on a lower moral plateau, must be watched carefully, because unlike us, they may commit "genocide".
It is remarkable how "genocide" has become fashionable, with more and more "genocide experts" in universities, as if studying genocide made sense as a separate academic discipline. What would all these people do without genocide? I wonder what is behind the contemporary fascination with genocide and serial killers, and I doubt that it is a sign of a healthy social psychology.
In the world today, few people, including Bosnian Muslims, are threatened by "genocide" in the sense of a deliberate Hitler-style project to exterminate a population — which is how most people understand the term.
But millions of people are threatened, not by genocidal maniacs, but by genocidal conditions of life: poverty, disease, inadequate water, global climate change.
The Srebrenica mourning cult offers nothing positive in regard to these genocidal conditions. Worse, it is instrumentalized openly to justify what is perhaps the worst of all the genocidal conditions: war.
The subliminal message in the official Srebrenica discourse is that because "we" let that happen, "we" mustn't let "it" happen again, ergo, the United States should preventively bomb potential perpetrators of "genocide".
Whatever happened in Srebrenica could have best been prevented, not by U.S. or NATO bombing, but by preventing civil war from breaking out in Bosnia Herzegovina to begin with.
|
This prevention was possible if the "international community", meaning the NATO powers, Europe and the United States, had firmly insisted that the Yugoslav crisis of 1990 should be settled by negotiations.
But first of all, Germany opposed this, by bullying the European Union into immediate recognition of the secession of Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia, without negotiation.
All informed persons knew that this threatened the existence of Bosnia Herzegovina.
After the U.S. ambassador encouraged him to hold out for more
The European Union proposed a cantonization plan for Bosnia Herzegovina, not very different from the present arrangement, which was accepted by leaders of the Bosnian Muslim, Serb and Croat communities. But shortly thereafter, Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic reneged, after the U.S. ambassador encouraged him to hold out for more.
Throughout the subsequent fighting, the U.S. put obstacles in the way of every European peace plan. [6]
These years of obstruction enabled the United States to take control of the eventual peace settlement in Dayton, in November 1995.
This rejection of compromise, which plunged Bosnia-Herzegovina into fratricidal war, was supported at the time by a chorus of humanitarians — not least politicians safely ensconced in the European Parliament who voted for "urgent resolutions" about situations of which they were totally ignorant — claiming that Bosnia must be a centralized State for the sake of "multiculturalism".
These were the same humanitarians who applauded the breakup of multicultural Yugoslavia — which in fact created the crisis in Bosnia.
Clearly, whoever executes unarmed prisoners commits a very serious crime whether in Bosnia or anywhere else.
But when all is said and done, it is an illusion to think that condemning perpetrators of a massacre in Bosnia will ensure that the next civil war somewhere in the world will be carried out in a more chivalrous manner.
War is a life and death matter, and inevitably leads people to commit acts they would never commit in peacetime.
The notion that war can be made "clean", played according to rules, should not be the main focus of international law or of peace movements. War first of all needs to be prevented, not policed.
The false interpretation of "Srebrenica" as part of an ongoing Serb project of "genocide" was used to incite the NATO war against Yugoslavia, which devastated a country and left behind a cauldron of hatred and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
The United States is currently engaged in a far more murderous and destructive war in Iraq.
In this context, the Western lamentations that inflate the Srebrenic massacre into "the greatest mass genocide since Nazi times" are a diversion from the real existing genocide, which is not the work of some racist maniac, but the ongoing imposition of a radically unjust socio-economic world order euphemistically called "globalization".
Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions published by Monthly Review Press.
NOTES
1. Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 (1998), Section IV, paragraph C.115.
2. Bernard Kouchner, "Les Guerriers de la Paix", Grasset, Paris, 2004, pp. 372-375.
3. "Srebrenica: The Politics of War Crimes", by George Bogdanich, Tim Fenton, Philip Hammond, Edward S. Herman, Michael Mandel, Jonathan Rooper and George Szamuely. See http://www.srebrenica-report.com/politics.htm.
4. Germinal Civikov, "Kalaschnikow und Einzelfeuer: Der Fall Drazen Erdemovic", Freitag, 16 September 2005.
5. Davide Turrini "Il genocidio jugoslavo rivive sullo schermo", Liberazione, 12 July 2005.
6. See David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, Victor Gollancz, London, 1995. Lord Owen, who, as co-chairman of the steering committee of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, attempted from August 1992 to June 1995 to negotiate a peace settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, concludes (Indigo paperback, p.400): "From the spring of 1993 to the summer of 1995, in my judgement, the effect of US policy, despite its being called 'containment', was to prolong the war of the Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina."
|
|
The Serial Lying Before and After Srebrenica.
At each stage in the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, its ethnic cleansing, and before and during the NATO war over the Kosovo province of Serbia in 1999, propaganda lies played a very important role in forwarding conflict and anti-Serb actions.
There were lies of omission and lies that directly conveyed false impressions and information.
An important form of lie of omission was the regular presentation of Serb misbehavior as unique to the Serbs, not also characteristic of the behavior of the Muslims and Croatians or of the conflict overall.
In case after case the media would report on Serb attacks and atrocities, having neglected to report the prior assaults on Serbs in those same towns and making the Serb behavior seem like unprovoked acts of aggression and barbarity.
This was evident from the very start of the serious fighting in 1991 in the republic of Croatia.
In their treatment of the Eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, for example, the media (and ICTY) focused exclusively on the federal Yugoslav army’s capture of the town in the fall of 1991, completely ignoring the prior spring and summer’s slaughter by Croatian National Guard troops and paramilitaries of hundreds of ethnic Serbs who had lived in the Vukovar area.
According to Raymond K. Kent, “a substantial Serb population in the major Slavonian city of Vukovar disappeared without having fled, leaving traces of torture in the old Austrian the spring catacombs under the city along with evidence of murder and rape. The Western media, whose demonization of the Serbs was well underway, chose to overlook these events…”
This selective and misleading focus was standard media and ICTY practice.
|
| ||||
|
Monday, 21 November 2005
Ex-foes make peace at Omarska By Nick Hawton BBC News, Omarska, Bosnia
|
A horse is grazing close to the buildings. Birds flutter in the winter breeze and land on the dilapidated roof of the "White House". A peaceful scene.
But 13 years ago, this place, and especially the White House, witnessed some of the most horrific acts of the Bosnian War.
"There was a roll-call at night and the men were taken out," says Muharem Murselovic, 58, a Muslim businessman who spent more than two months at Omarska, a former iron ore mine, in the summer of 1992.
"They were beaten and tortured. In the morning their bodies would be lying all around here on the grass."
Like hundreds of other Muslims and Croats from the area around the town of Prijedor he was rounded up by Bosnian Serb soldiers at the start of the war and sent to the Omarska camp.
|
"How could they do this?" Muharem asks.
"Neighbours, former school friends and work colleagues."
"I don't understand."
But on the 10th anniversary of the Dayton peace deal which ended the war, there are glimmers of hope here at Omarska.
Proof of change
A memorial is to be built to the victims of the camp.
But what is different about this memorial is that, for the first time, members of all three communities — Muslims, Croats and Serbs — are involved in the design of the project.
"This is a mainly Serb area, but young Serbs have got involved in the project," says the Reverend Donald Reeves, from Soul of Europe, a British charity that has been encouraging the reconciliation process in Bosnia.
|
"They say we have to deal with this because our future is here.
"They don't want to be driven out and feel that this place has no soul to it, no spirit, no heart.
"They feel justice has to be done."
Zoran Ergarac, a local Serb teacher who has been involved in the memorial designs, says it is time to face the past.
"There were many people who said Bosnia will remain divided and that we are doomed to our ethnic clans and divisions, but this memorial site will prove that we are able to put our differences aside," he says.
Hopeful sign
Not everyone is happy with the memorial plans.
One worker at the iron mine told me it was not an appropriate place for a memorial because it was a working environment. He described the plans as a "provocation".
But the iron ore mine at Omarska is working again, recently bought by the world's biggest steel company Mittal Steel.
|
In a few months construction of the memorial, which will be based in and around the White House, should begin.
The fact that the project has got this far, and with the involvement of local Serbs, shows how much Bosnia-Hercegovina has moved on from those dark days.
A decade after the war ended there is peace in Bosnia.
Many refugees have returned home, there is freedom of movement across the country and the international community has done much to bring former foes together.
Some of those accused of crimes at Omarska, and other camps, have been jailed.
Milomir Stakic, the former mayor of Prijedor, was jailed for life for organising the setting up of detention centres in the region. Other cases are pending.
Full reconciliation is a long way off — but what is being achieved at Omarska is a sign of what can be done.
| ||||||||
ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL The United States has conducted 1,127 nuclear and thermonuclear tests — 217 in the atmosphere.
The Soviet Union/ Russia conducted 969 tests — 219 in the atmosphere.
France, 210 tests, 50 in the atmosphere.
The United Kingdom, 45 tests — 21 in the atmosphere.
China, 45 tests — 23 in the atmosphere.
India and Pakistan — 13 tests underground.
Israel — possible 1 test atmosphere South Africa 1979.
North Korea — 1 test underground, October 2006.
“The United states had drawn up a battle plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the United States has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran.”“The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its nuclear arsenal. In fact they're working to replace every nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities.”Jackie Cabasso — Western States Legal Foundation |
|
We are change 9/11 lies have sustained the ruling terrorism-threat paradigm The “why” is obvious: To justify an unjust war to serve corporate interests and greed |
|
9.11 Truth New York City Decades long history of political disruption the US has been responsible for 9/11 is part of a long series of criminal, imperialist conquests Another major highlight was surprise appearance of Cynthia McKinney |
|
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth A solid convincing case which architects & engineers will readily see: that the 3 WTC high-rise buildings were destroyed by both classic and novel forms of controlled demolition These buildings were professionally demolished with explosives |
|
|
Danish scientist Niels Harrit on nano-thermite in the WTC dust
— Click Here
Niels Harrit and 8 other scientists found nano-thermite in the dust from the World Trade Center.
Niels Harrit, you and eight other researchers conclude in this article that it was nano-thermite that caused these buildings to collapse. |
ITALIAN SAYS 9-11 SOLVED
It’s common knowledge, he reveals
CIA — Mossad behind terror attacks By the Staff of American Free Press
Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, has told Italy’s oldest and most widely read newspaper that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad, and that this was common knowledge among global intelligence agencies.
In what translates awkwardly into English, Cossiga told the newspaper Corriere della Sera:
“All the [intelligence services] of America and Europe… know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the Mossad, with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part … in Iraq [and] Afghanistan.”
Cossiga was elected president of the Italian Senate in July 1983 before winning a landslide election to become president of the country in 1985, and he remained until 1992.
Cossiga’s tendency to be outspoken upset the Italian political establishment, and he was forced to resign after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, Operation Gladio.
This was a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and ’80s.
Gladio’s specialty was to carry out what they termed 'false flag' operations — terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.
In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony:
“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game.
The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9-11 in 2001, and is quoted by 9-11 researcher Webster Tarpley saying:
“The mastermind of the attack must have been a sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel.
I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”
Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga’s assertion that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge among global intelligence agencies is illuminating.
It is one more eye-opening confirmation that has not been mentioned by America’s propaganda machine in print or on TV.
Nevertheless, because of his experience and status in the world, Cossiga cannot be discounted as a crackpot.
Free to redistribute as long as credit given to American Free Press |
Photo: Bentham-Open.org |
Bentham-Open.org Download pdf — 10mg document including images — Right click Save As |
The secret story of Mossad and the World Trade Center attack The Odigo Warning: Israeli employees get e-mail warnings of 9-11 SEC Secret Probe Of Stock Dealings Before 9/11 |
|
Truth Action LA Branch We are in the midst of a mass awakening 9/11 is the foundational myth upon which the entire agenda has been triggered for our generation |
|
|
Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice High Velocity Bursts of Debris From Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers Why Did the World’s Most Advanced Electronics Warfare Plane Circle Over The White House on 9/11? |
|
Your life, your children's lives — Will you live or die?Decided by small group of elite.Pure evil It doesn't get any clearer than this
Published on Friday, March 2, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
US to Develop New Hydrogen Bomb
by Ralph Vartabedian
The Energy Department will announce today a contract to develop the nation's first new hydrogen bomb in two decades, involving a collaboration between three national weapons laboratories, The Times has learned.
The new bomb will include design features from all three labs, though Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area appears to have taken the lead position in the project. The Los Alamos and Sandia labs in New Mexico will also be part of the project.
| |||||
Hiroshima, Nagasaki — George Weller report |
|
Why are the West's elites trying to start a nuclear war?
Because you pay for it |
|
BBC — Thursday, 6 September 2007
UK jets 'chase Russian bombers'
The UK's Royal Air Force has launched fighter jets to intercept eight Russian military planes flying in airspace patrolled by Nato, UK officials say.
Four RAF F3 Tornado aircraft were scrambled in response to the Russian action, the UK's defence ministry said.
The Russian planes - said to be long-range bombers - had earlier been followed by Norwegian F16 jets.
Russia recently revived a Cold War-era practice of flying bombers on long-range patrols.
A Norwegian officer, Lt Col John Inge Oegland, told the BBC the Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bombers flew in international airspace from the Barents Sea to the Atlantic, before turning back.
Two Norwegian F-16s shadowed them on Thursday morning and another two went up later, he said.
There have been several similar incidents in recent months, Lt-Col Oegland added.
"Norway is following the increased Russian activity in the far north with interest," he told the BBC News website.
He said the Russian flights were not causing alarm in Norway. "Our systems are adequate," he said, when asked whether Norway was bolstering its security in the area. |
|
Over time I was increasingly shocked by the speed and ease with which many intelligent and seemingly competent members of the CFR [ Council on Foreign Relations ] appeared to eagerly justify policies and actions that supported growing corruption.
|
|
The regularity with which many CFR members would protect insiders from accountability regarding another appalling fraud surprised even me.
Many of them seemed delighted with the advantages of being an insider while being entirely indifferent to the extraordinary cost to all citizens of having our lives, health and resources drained to increase insider wealth in a manner that violated the most basic principles of fiduciary obligation and respect for the law.
In short, the CFR was operating in a win-lose economic paradigm that centralized economic and political power.
I was trying to find a way for us to shift to a win-win economic paradigm that was — by its nature — decentralizing.
|
|
|
|
The reader can appreciate why Wall Street would welcome someone as accommodating as Gorelick at Fannie Mae.
This was a period when the profits rolled in from engineering the most spectacular growth in mortgage debt in U.S. history.
As one real estate broker said, “They have turned our homes into ATM machines.”
Fannie Mae has been a leading player in centralizing control of the mortgage markets into Washington D.C. and Wall Street.
And that means as people were rounded up and shipped to prison as part of Operation Safe Home, Fannie was right behind to finance the gentrification of neighborhoods.
And that is before we ask questions about the extent to which the estimated annual financial flows of $500 billion–$1 trillion money laundering through the U.S. financial system or money missing from the US government are reinvested into Fannie Mae securities.
|
|
|
James Forrestal’s oil portrait always hung prominently in one of the private Dillon Read dining rooms for the eleven years that I worked at the firm. Forrestal, a highly regarded Dillon partner and President of the firm, had gone to Washington, D.C. in 1940 to lead the Navy during WWII and then played a critical role in creating the National Security Act of 1947.
He then became Secretary of War (later termed Secretary of Defense) in September 1947 and served until March 28, 1949.
Given the central banking-warfare investment model that rules our planet, it was appropriate that Dillon
partners at various times lead both the Treasury Department and the Defense Department.
Shortly after resigning from government, Forrestal died falling out of a window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside of Washington, D.C. on May 22, 1949.
There is some controversy around the official explanation of his death — ruled a suicide.
Some insist he had a nervous breakdown. Some say that he was opposed to the creation of the state of Israel.
Others say that he argued for transparency and accountability in government, and against the provisions instituted at this time to create a secrete “black budget.”
He lost and was pretty upset about it — and the loss was a violent one.
Since the professional killers who operate inside the Washington beltway have numerous techniques to get perfectly sane people to kill themselves, I am not sure it makes a big difference.
Approximately a month later, the CIA Act of 1949 was passed.
The Act created the CIA and endowed it with the statutory authority that became one of the chief components of financing the “black” budget — the power to claw monies from other agencies for the benefit of secretly funding the intelligence communities and their corporate contractors.
This was to turn out to be a devastating development for the forces of transparency, without which there can be no rule of law, free markets or democracy.
|
Protecting the brand with dirty tricks — Enforcement Terrorism The profitable liquidation of every place — Coutts, bank for British Queen and royals Catherine Austin Fitts — Dillon Reid and Co. Inc. And the Aristocracy of Stock Profits |
|
What Briody does not mention is allegations regarding Brown & Root's involvement in narcotics trafficking. Former LAPD narcotics investigator Mike Ruppert once described his break up with fiance Teddy — an agent dealing narcotics and weapons for the CIA while working with Brown & Root, as follows:
“Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found her living in an apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones, night vision devices and working from sealed communiqués delivered by naval and air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, Teddy was involved in something truly ugly.
She was arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran.
At the same time she was working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate the movement of service boats that were bringing large quantities of heroin into the city.
The boats arrived at Marcello controlled docks, unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced me to, along with divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA personnel.
“The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs in international waters, oil rigs built and serviced by Brown and Root.
The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased by Brown and Root.
And more than once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans I met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root employees who were boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days.
Once, while leaving a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an attempt to scare me off.”
Source: "Halliburton’s Brown and Root is One of the Major Components of the Bush-Cheney Drug Empire" by Michael Ruppert, From the Wilderness
|
Dark Alliance — The Story Behind the Crack Explosion The "Good Guys" Who Can Do No Wrong
Profoundest suspicions of white malfeasance were true |
|
The Clinton Administration took the groundwork laid by Nixon, Reagan and Bush and embraced and blossomed the expansion and promotion of federal support for police, enforcement and the War on Drugs with a passion that was hard to understand unless and until you realized that the American financial system was deeply dependent on attracting an estimated $500 billion-$1 trillion of annual money laundering.
Globalizing corporations and deepening deficits and housing bubbles required attracting vast amounts of capital.
Attracting capital also required making the world safe for the reinvestment of the profits of organized crime and the war machine.
Without growing organized crime and military activities through government budgets and contracts, the economy would stop centralizing.
The Clinton Administration was to govern a doubling of the federal prison population.
|
|
'Oh! You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
'Plane fuel! Substance never burns higher then a gas stove! That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
'Steel melting!
'Concrete vaporizing!
'
'No! I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
'Cheney! Bush! Rudy Giuliani! HA! HA!
'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
'You believe that, eh!
'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
Had to be blown up!
'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
'Take your pick: The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
'Him who allows himself to be used.
'Oh! I can't really blame you, Television it turns minds to pulp.
'Turn off the television. It's the only way.'
'Turn off the television?'
'Get rid of it really. I mean what else is there to do!'
'Get rid of the television?'
'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
'The ones they refer to as News
'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
'It really is the only way!'
'Oh!'
Kewe — TheWE.biz
|
|
9/11
By all accounts, the unprecedented events of September 11th, 2001 changed the way our country functions, and in turn, the world.
It is therefore critical that conscientious Americans, as well as people around the globe, understand these events in detail.
Unfortunately the official reports, including The 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST WTC Report, written by those working under the direction of the Bush Administration, have been proven to be elaborate cover-ups.
Film: 9/11 Revisited
September 11th Revisited is perhaps the most riveting film ever made about the destruction of the World Trade Center.
This is a powerful documentary which features eyewitness accounts and archived news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001 but never replayed on television.
Featuring interviews with eyewitnesses & firefighters, along with expert analysis by Professor Steven E. Jones, Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeffrey King, and Professor James H. Fetzer.
This film provides stunning evidence that explosives were used in the complete demolition of the WTC Twin Towers and WTC Building 7.
|
For Film: 9/11 Revisited
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
An excellent documentary about the families of the victims of 9/11 and their fight to uncover and expose the truth about what happened that day.
|
For Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Mysteries
90 minutes of pure demolition evidence and analysis, laced with staggering witness testimonials.
Moving from “the myth” through “the analysis” and into “the players,” careful deconstruction of the official story set right alongside clean, clear science.
The 9/11 picture is not one of politics or nationalism or loyalty, but one of strict and simple physics. How do you get a 10-second 110-story pancake collapse?
|
|
Image: Natasha Mayers |
| It's kind of a fun gameYou see the aim of those inner forces who guide the Elite —
For them the real agenda is depopulation
To kill off you your children your grandchildren It is to have fun watching our stupidity as we allow the destruction of our planet — but most haven't figured this out yet! If we stop them with the nuclear and biological weapons then it's the 400+ MPH, KPH wind the increase in UVB, UVC, UVA rays due to loss of stratospheric ozone. It's the climate! It's the reduction and elimination of food coming from all levels of cunning World Elite — tools and servants of Lucifer |
Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton |
The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
|
Agent Orange Dioxin — Vietnam Cleft palate, Canoe footed, Clawed fingers continue in births I didn't know what it was then, but it was white |
UVC in the 10 to 290 nanometer band UVB, 290 to 320 nanometers UVA, 320 to 400 nanometers |
Soot's effect on ice melt and glaciers Washington State's Glaciers are Melting |
Remnants of knowledge would be retained with those on higher ground. A few people here, a few there. Translations of discussions with The WE |
|
Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues...
|
|
For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.biz website.The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. |
This memorial site will prove that we are able to put our differences aside
