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Utter madness. Sure enough. <br>
<br>
But Mort, and all, beyond calling out the misrepresentations from
our politicians and our media, what can we do? Despite the
suggestion that European bankers have too much to lose to let
sanctions go so far as to drive Russia to shrug off its debts to
them, the madness just keeps escalating from week to week. I'm
increasingly alarmed, as it seems many are, but lacking a focus for
action.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/22/14 10:57 PM, Morton K. Brussel
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:7C0A5802-29F7-4EE0-80B8-F34AC698798B@gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<h2 style="line-height: 21px; "><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://portside.org/2014-03-22/ukraine-and-yugoslavia"><span
style="color: rgb(178, 34, 34); ">Ukraine and
Yugoslavia</span></a></h2>
</div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; "><br
class="webkit-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>Diana Johnstone<br>
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2014-03-22T00:00:00-04:00">March 22, 2014</span><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/ukraine-and-yugoslavia/">ZNet</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div><em>So up to now, I have remained speechless in the
face of what appears to me to be utter madness.</em></div>
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<div style="font-size: 10px; width: 300px; margin-top:
0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 0px;
margin-left: auto; ">Diana Johnstone, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2011/03/RIR-110327.jpg">Red
Ice</a>,</div>
</div>
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<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">PARIS</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Five years
ago, I wrote a paper for a Belgrade conference
commemorating the tenth anniversary of the start of
the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In that paper I
stressed that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had
been used as an experimental laboratory to perfect
various techniques that would subsequently be used in
so-called "color revolutions" or other "regime change"
operations directed against leaders considered
undesirable by the United States government.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">At that time,
I specifically pointed to the similarities between the
Krajina region of former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. Here
is what I wrote at the time:<br>
_____</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Where did the
wars of Yugoslav disintegration break out most
violently? In a region called the Krajina. Krajina
means borderland. So does Ukraine – it is a variant
of the same Slavic root. Both Krajina and Ukraine are
borderlands between Catholic Christians in the West
and Orthodox Christians in the East. The population is
divided between those in the East who want to remain
tied to Russia, and those in the West who are drawn
toward Catholic lands. But in Ukraine as a whole,
polls show that some seventy percent of the population
is against joining NATO. Yet the US and its
satellites keep speaking of Ukraine’s "right" to join
NATO. Nobody’s right not to join NATO is ever
mentioned.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">The condition
for Ukraine to join NATO would be the expulsion of
foreign military bases from Ukrainian territory. That
would mean expelling Russia from its historic naval
base at Sebastopol, essential for Russia’s Black Sea
fleet. Sebastopol is on the Crimean peninsula,
inhabited by patriotic Russians, which was only made
an administrative part of Ukraine in 1954 by Nikita
Khrushchev, a Ukrainian.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Rather the
way Tito, a Croat, gave almost the whole Adriatic
coastline of Yugoslavia to Croatia, and generally
enforced administrative borders detrimental to the
Serbs.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">As the same
causes may have the same effects, US insistence on
"liberating" Ukraine from Russian influence may have
the same effect as the West’s insistence on
"liberating" the Catholic Croats from the Orthodox
Serbs. That effect is war. But instead of a small
war, against the Serbs, who had neither the means nor
even the will to fight the West (since they largely
thought they were part of it), a war in Ukraine would
mean a war with Russia. A nuclear superpower. And
one that will not stand idly by while the United
States continues to move its fleet and its air bases
to the edges of Russian territory, both in the Black
Sea and in the Baltic, on land, sea and air.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Every day,
the United States is busy expanding NATO, training
forces, building bases, making deals. This goes on
constantly but is scarcely reported by the media. The
citizens of NATO countries have no idea what they are
being led into. (…)</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">War was easy
when it meant the destruction of a helpless and
harmless Serbia, with no casualties among the NATO
aggressors. But war with Russia – a fierce superpower
with a nuclear arsenal – would not be so much fun.<br>
_____</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">So, now here
we are five years later, and I am about to attend
another commemoration in Belgrade, this time of the
fifteenth anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia. And this time, I really have nothing
to say. I have already said it, over and over.
Others are saying similar things, with more authority,
from Professor Stephen Cohen to Paul Craig Roberts.
Many of us have warned against the dangerous folly of
seeking endlessly to provoke Russia by enlisting her
neighbors in a military alliance whose enemy could
<foolsjohnstone.jpeg>only be… Russia. Of all
Russia’s neighbors, none is more organically linked to
Russia by language, history, geopolitical reality,
religion and powerful emotions. The U.S.
Undersecretary of State for Europe and Eurasia,
Victoria Nuland, has openly boasted that the United
States has spent five billion dollars to gain
influence in Ukraine – in reality, in order to draw
Ukraine away from Russia and into the U.S. military
alliance. It is now no secret that Ms Nuland
intrigued even against America’s European allies – who
had a less brutal compromise in mind – in order to
replace the elected President with the American
protégé she calls "Yats", who indeed was soon
installed in a far right government resulting from
violent actions by one of the very few violent fascist
movements still surviving in Europe.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">True, Western
media do not report all the facts at their disposal.
But the internet is there, and the facts are on the
internet. And despite all this, European governments
do not protest, there are no demonstrations in the
streets, much of public opinion seems to accept the
notion that the villain of this story is the Russian
president, who is accused of engaging in unprovoked
aggression against Crimea – even though he was
responding to one of the most blatant provocations in
history.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">The facts are
there. The facts are eloquent. What can I say that
are not said by the facts?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">So up to now,
I have remained speechless in the face of what appears
to me to be utter madness. However, on the eve of my
trip to Belgrade, I agreed to answer questions from
journalist Dragan Vukotic for the Serbian daily
newspaper Politika. Here is that interview.<br>
____</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Q. In your
book Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western
Delusions, you have brought a different stance about
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia than many of your
intellectual colleagues in the West. What prompted you
to make such an unpopular conclusion?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">A. Long ago,
as a student of Russia area studies, I spent several
months in Yugoslavia living in a student dormitory in
Belgrade and made friends there. I turned to such old
friends for viewpoints rather than to the sources
consulted by Western reporters. And I have a lifelong
interest in US foreign policy. I began my inquiry
into Yugoslav conflicts by reading key documents, such
as speeches of Milosevic, the Serbian Academy
memorandum and works by Alija Izetbegovic, noting the
inaccuracy of the way they were represented in Western
media. I was never under instructions from editors,
and indeed my editors soon refused to publish my
articles. I was not the only experienced observer to
be excluded from Western media coverage.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Q. Although
subsequent events have confirmed that the operation of
illegal bombing of one country without permission of
the Security Council was completely wrong, the
mainstream western media and politicians still refer
to successful „Kosovo model". Can you please comment
on this matter?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">A. For them,
it was a success, since it set a precedent for NATO
intervention. They will never admit that they were
mistaken.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Q. When it
came to the preparation of the "humanitarian
intervention" against Syria, Obama administration
reported they were studying "the NATO air war in
Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a
mandate from the United Nations". (Please comment on
this)</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">A. This is
not surprising, since setting such a precedent was one
of the motives for that air war.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Q. In one of
your articles you asked the question about what the
ICC stood for in the case of Libya. You recalled the
"familiar pattern" with the case of ICTY and
Yugoslavia. What do you really think of those
instruments of international justice and their role in
international relations?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">A. In the
context of the present world relationship of forces,
the ICC like the ad hoc tribunals can only serve as
instruments of United States hegemony. Those criminal
tribunals are used only to stigmatize adversaries of
the United States, while the main role of the ICC so
far is to justify the ideological assumption that
there exists an unbiased "international justice" that
ignores national boundaries and serves to enforce
human rights. As John Laughland has pointed out, a
proper court must be the expression of a particular
community that agrees to judge its own members.
Moreover, these courts have no police of their own but
must rely on the armed force of the United States,
NATO and their client states, who as a result are
automatically exempt from prosecution by these
supposedly "international" courts.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Q. What is,
in your opinion, the main purpose of declaring the
so-called humanitarian intervention? Does it have more
to do with the domestic public opinion or with the
international partners?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">A. The
ideology of Human Rights (a dubious concept,
incidentally, since "rights" should be grounded in
concrete political arrangements, not on abstract
concepts alone) serves both domestic and global
purposes. For the European Union, it suggests a
"soft" European nationalism based on social virtue.
The United States, which is more forthright than
today’s Europe in proclaiming its national interest,
the ideology of Human Rights serves to endow foreign
interventions with a crusading purpose that can appeal
to European allies and above all to their domestic
opinion, as well as to the English-speaking world in
general (Canada and Australia in particular). It is
the tribute vice pays to virtue, to echo
LaRochefoucauld.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Q. You often
use the term "US and its European satellites". Please
explain.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">A.
"Satellites" was the term used for members of the
Warsaw Pact, and today the governments of the NATO
member states follow Washington as obediently as the
former followed Moscow, even when, as in the case of
Ukraine, the United States goes against European
interests.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Q. How do you
see current goings on in Ukraine and Crimea,
especially in terms of US-Russia relations?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">A. US-Russian
relations are determined primarily by an ongoing U.S.
geostrategic hostility to Russia which is partly a
matter of habit or inertia, partly a realization of
the Brzezinski strategy of dividing Eurasia in order
to maintain US world hegemony, and partly a reflection
of Israeli-dominated Middle East policy toward Syria
and Iran. Between the two major nuclear powers, there
is clearly an aggressor and an aggressed. It is up to
the aggressor to change course if relations are to be
normal.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Simply
compare. Is Russia urging Quebec to secede from
Canada so that the province can join a military
alliance led by Moscow? Evidently not. That would be
comparable, and yet mild compared to the recent U.S.
gambit led by Victoria Nuland aimed at bringing
Ukraine, including the main Russian naval base at
Sebastopol, into the Western orbit. The material
reality of this political orbit is NATO, which since
the end of the Soviet Union has systematically
expanded toward Russia, which stations missiles whose
only strategic function would be to provide the United
States with a hypothetical nuclear first strike
capacity against Russia, and which regularly holds
military manoeuvers along Russian borders. Russia has
done nothing against the United States, and recently
provided President Obama with a face-saving way to
avoid being voted down in Congress in regard to
military action against Syria – action which was not
desired by the Pentagon but only by the fraction of
Israeli-oriented policy makers called "neocons".
Russia professes no hostile ideology, and only seeks
normal relations with the West. What more can it do?
It is up to Americans to come to their senses.<br>
_____</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px;
margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; ">Diana
Johnstone is the author of <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/158367084X/counterpunchmaga">Fools’
Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions</a>.
She can be reached at<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr/">diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr </a></p>
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