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<DIV>As they say, “the lunatics are running the asylum.” Unfortunately,
Pogo was right; “we have met the enemy and it is us” – the ordinary everyday
man-on-the-street who listens and believes the mass establishment media, elects
the politicians, buys into the lack of real accountability of our national
security establishment, courts that favor the government over the people, and
elected officials who fail to control the decisions and actions of appointed and
civil service bureaucrats when they engage in unconstitutional activities or
questionable behaviors, as well arrogantly supporting U.S. exceptionalism and
the right to violate other country’s rights while condemning other country’s for
doing the same. </DIV></FONT>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=stuartnlevy@gmail.com
href="mailto:stuartnlevy@gmail.com">Stuart Levy</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> March 23, 2014 12:04 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=mkb0029@gmail.com
href="mailto:mkb0029@gmail.com">Morton K. Brussel</A> ; <A
title=peace-discuss@anti-war.net href="mailto:peace-discuss@anti-war.net">Peace
Discuss</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Peace-discuss] Diana Johnstone says… (Ukraine and
Yugoslavia)</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>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>
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<H2 style="LINE-HEIGHT: 21px"><A
href="https://portside.org/2014-03-22/ukraine-and-yugoslavia"
moz-do-not-send="true"><SPAN style="COLOR: rgb(178,34,34)">Ukraine and
Yugoslavia</SPAN></A></H2></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 15px"> </DIV>
<DIV>Diana Johnstone<BR><SPAN class=date-display-single
content="2014-03-22T00:00:00-04:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
property="dc:date">March 22, 2014</SPAN><BR><A
href="http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/ukraine-and-yugoslavia/"
moz-do-not-send="true">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></TD>
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<DIV style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><IMG
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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 10px; WIDTH: 300px; MARGIN: 0px auto">Diana
Johnstone, <A
href="http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2011/03/RIR-110327.jpg"
moz-do-not-send="true">Red Ice</A>,</DIV></DIV></DIV></TD>
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<DIV>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 15px">PARIS</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">The facts are there. The facts are
eloquent. What can I say that are not said by the facts?</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">A. This is not surprising, since setting
such a precedent was one of the motives for that air war.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">Q. You often use the term "US and its
European satellites". Please explain.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">Q. How do you see current goings on in
Ukraine and Crimea, especially in terms of US-Russia relations?</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">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: 0px 0px 15px">Diana Johnstone is the author of <A
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/158367084X/counterpunchmaga"
moz-do-not-send="true">Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western
Delusions</A>. She can be reached at<A
href="http://diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr/"
moz-do-not-send="true">diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr
</A></P></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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