“What was it like to be in Belgrade during the NATO bombings?”

It wasn’t boring, that’s for sure!

This is going to be a long writing. I’ll try to share my own experience, rather than going through well known facts. After all, I guess that’s what this question is all about. I’ll also share my own thoughts about events I describe. I might (try to) throw a joke, here or there. All the pictures used in this answer were found on the Internet.

So, to begin with, let’s set the theater of operations: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). For the readers are not familiar with the recent history of the Balkans, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the official (or spiritual or … call it whatever you like) successor of Socialistic Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). SFRY consisted of 6 republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia. After the secessionist/civil war that took place between 1991 and 1995 (although it started way before 1991, but that’s another story), the SFRY was turned into: FRY, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Macedonia. Obviously, FRY consisted of two republics: Serbia and Montenegro. Kosovo, where most fights in 1999 took place, is a southern province of Serbia. Some would say “was a province of Serbia” (but that’s also another story and I won’t tackle it here). Kosovo is bordering with Albania and in 1999 was mainly inhabited by ethnic Albanians (and still is, I think we can all agree on that). Some political movements among the population of Albanian origin have been calling and pushing for Kosovo independence for several decades before the war of 1999. Some of them got radicalized along the way. The capital of Serbia is Belgrade. The capital of Kosovo is Pristina. Take a look at the following picture.

You can continue reading this account by Đorđe Đurđević published on Quora here:

So they started World War No. 3 too? No, no, that can’t be true!…

The European Community (precursor to the EU) was almost unanimous in agreeing that the best way to avoid a war in Yugoslavia was for it to remain one nation. Member states voted 11 to 1 in 1991 to support a resolution that stated that “the best way of achieving stability in the Balkans was for Yugoslavia to remain united, albeit in a revised, looser federal form.”

The one ended up overruling the 11. Continue reading So they started World War No. 3 too? No, no, that can’t be true!…

Julia Gorin: “Big Picture Grand Strategy in Israel=Strategy in Balkans: Divide and Conquer the Infidel”

Below is an old email from Melana, who used to run Serbblog. I found it as instructive today as ever, so I’m finally posting it, though I’d meant to do so when she first wrote it back in 2008:

I had mixed feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a long time. While I had always admired brave little Israel — a sort of David against the Goliath Arab-Muslim world surrounding it — I had also met some Palestinians (some of them Christians) with horror stories about what happened to them at the hands of Israelis some years ago. Then one day, I met an Armenian woman from Lebanon who sort of set me straight.

This Lebanese Christian woman told me that she too had sympathized with the Palestinians (as had many Lebanese) — until they destroyed her country. Lebanon had been the Switzerland of the Middle East — beautiful, prosperous and comfortably multi-religious — until they took in the Palestinians when none of the other Muslim Arab countries would.

But the Palestinians used their new ‘home’ in Lebanon as nothing more than a base to launch attacks on Israel and to eventually start a civil war between Muslims and Christians in Lebanon. She thinks that this was part of their plan — and this is why Palestinians came to a mixed Christian/Muslim country and not to another purely Muslim country like Jordan (which was actually the ’settlement land/country’ in return for the founding of Israel.) It was part of the Muslim plan to get Lebanese Christians to hate Israel as much as Muslims hated Israel, so that eventually all Christians and the Western World might hate Israel, too. (Much like hating the Christian Serbs for what happened to Muslims in Yugoslavia, at the same time when we in the U.S. are fighting radical Islamic terrorists who perpetrated 9/11. Divide us against ourselves and we spend our energy fighting each other, instead of fighting our real enemy — militant Islam.)

Continue reading on Republican Riot (2 November 2015) 

“Who is the perpetrator, who is the victim?” German public TV “reporting” on the anti-Semitic Har Nof massacre – an example of the “balanced” German approach to the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”

Blessed be your quality weapons, the wheels of your cars, your axes and kitchen knives. By Allah, these are stronger than the arsenals of our enemy, because [they are being used] according to Allah’s will. We are the soldiers of Allah. – Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Senior Advisor of Mahmoud Abbas and Member of the Fatah Central Committee, one day after the massacre

How beautiful is your Martyrdom. / You have placed a crown [upon my head] / … / O Ghassan and Uday, / who carried out the operation / blessed be your hands and the tips of your fingers. / Blessed be the womb that bore you /… / Yesterday [I gave] the most beautiful gift. / The Martyrs’ blood was not spilled in vain. / I am a Palestinian. – Mother of Uday Abu Jamal

That – in stark contrast to the Jews or even any other people for that matter – the Germans have learned a lot from the Holocaust has long been perfectly clear. So far, they have already played a leading role in preventing a “new Auschwitz” in Kosovo, Serbia, coincidentally defeating in the process once again their (former!) “arch-enemy”, the Serbs, and carving a second Albanian “state”, a Muslim one, out of sovereign Serbian territory, where now, after a series of anti-Serbian, anti-Christian pogroms, if not much else, you can at least make good money if you’re an Albanian Hitler look-alike. In fact, the Germans have learned so much so that in the evening after the horrific slaughter of five people (four Rabbis and a Druze policeman) and the wounding of 10 others in a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood last November, an anchor of the major German public television station ZDF, Marietta Slomka, was able to stay perfectly “neutral” and – as they say in Italian – to “take things with philosophy” without letting even this story remind her and her public of anything.

The following is a commented unabridged translation of the entire introduction by Slomka and of the entire following “report” by a ZDF correspondent in Israel for the news program “Heute Journal”. Continue reading “Who is the perpetrator, who is the victim?” German public TV “reporting” on the anti-Semitic Har Nof massacre – an example of the “balanced” German approach to the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”

In lutto per la perdita di un altro gran bel pezzo dell’Italia

Quando i tedeschi vincono, io, “tedesco”, perdo sempre molto. Muoio. È stato il caso quando sono riusciti a formare un racket abbastanza compatto per risuscitare nuovamente il jihad contro i serbi (e, in ultima istanza, anche gli ebrei e gli americani), incorporando in esso l’Italia “fondata sul lavoro”, per bombardarli (o meglio: soprattutto farli bombardare) infine senza pietà, ed è il caso anche ora che, dopo avere smontato il da sempre troppo americano Berlusconi, stanno definitivamente riconquistando l’Europa con mezzi “pacifici”, anche se magari “solo” per poi unterzugehen (you know the movie, Der Untergang, don’t you?) tutti insieme nella lotta contro il “potere giudaico-finanziario internazionale”, la “plutocrazia”. Continue reading In lutto per la perdita di un altro gran bel pezzo dell’Italia

Quote of the day (from yesterday)

Anyone who cared to dig through the graveyards of Sudan already knew that Muslims mattered more than Africans to us. The sky full of jets that we dispatched to bomb Yugoslavia on behalf of Muslim terrorists never clouded the skies of Khartoum. But they did show up to bomb Tripoli so that Islamist thugs could begin torturing and murdering Africans.
Sultan Knish (Daniel Greenfield), Remembering Muslim Colonialism on September 11

Sultan Knish: Bin Laden is winning

Osama Bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa against America was the first domino in a chain of events that was meant to accomplish three goals.

1) Unify Muslims in a war against Western civilization

2) Topple the governments of the Muslim world, and replace them with fully Islamist regimes

3) Build a regional and then global Muslim Caliphate

Phase 2 is now well under way. And America and European warplanes are bombing Libya to help clear the way for it. Just as we already did in Yugoslavia and Iraq. It is unknown whether Bin Laden is still alive or not, but his goals are being met. Muslims now see the defeat of Western civilization as an important and an achievable goal. Our democracy and nation building efforts have toppled much of the old order, and those best positioned to benefit from it are the Islamists. Continue reading Sultan Knish: Bin Laden is winning

Lula, an arsonist declaring war on Israel

Shortly before deadly fire started raging in the Carmel region, according to the Jerusalem Post, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the anti-Semitic terrorist (Arafat) admirer, or Brazil, recognized a “state” whose “president” has not even gotten any “democratic mandate” anymore, and whose party, Fatah, has just declared once more its will to “liberate” the whole of “Palestine” from the Jews. Continue reading Lula, an arsonist declaring war on Israel

Quotation of the decade (so to speak)

Isn’t it something the way the same names that helped dismantle Yugoslavia and Serbia seem to be resurfacing to dismantle Israel? All the names that fingered Serbia as it dealt with terror are giving Israel the same trouble. They and their credibility and careers could have been demolished, these people stopped in their tracks, if anyone gave a damn about Western machinations in the Balkans. Instead they’re coming back to haunt more than just the Serbs.

Julia Gorin, October 27th, 2009

Did the Vatican do too little to hurt the Nazis? Or too much to help them?

A 1941 New York Times article provides key evidence in a momentous dispute

by Jared Israel
Editing and translation by Samantha Criscione

A well-informed, Vatican-friendly voice from the past — The New York Times — reports a Vatican policy of subversion to push Yugoslavia into the Nazi camp and, failing that, break it up and bring the clerical-Fascist Ustasha to power in a faux-independent Croatia.

[from: The Emperor’s New Clothes (TENC), June 15, 2009]

==============================================

“The pope does not go to the museum.”
— Vatican Ambassador Antonio Franco, quoted in
“Pope to shun disputed Israel photo: envoy,” Agence France Presse, March 10, 2009

In April 2007, Vatican ambassador to Israel Antonio Franco threatened to boycott that year’s observances at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Authority. Following bitter criticism, the Vatican backed down, and Franco attended the observances.

In March 2009 Franco announced that, during his Middle East trip in May, Pope Benedict XVI would visit Yad Vashem but would definitely not enter the Yad Vashem museum, thus contradicting standard protocol for visiting dignitaries. And in May, Benedict XVI did indeed boycott the museum.

These actions, diplomatically severe and aggressively publicized by the Vatican through statements to the media, are part of an intense struggle between Israel and the Vatican over Eugenio Pacelli, otherwise known as Pope Pius XII. The bone of contention? A caption under a picture in the Yad Vashem museum, criticizing Pacelli for his role during the Holocaust. [1]

Continue reading Did the Vatican do too little to hurt the Nazis? Or too much to help them?

Srebrenica – still questions?

I certainly don’t agree with all the views expressed at that site, especially as far as some (tendentially) anti-Semitic, anti-Western and outright anti-American statements are concerned, and supposed parallels with the opposite, e.g. the Western Iraq intervention, and cartoons which are at least to be called stupid. But for people who are suspicious of the Srebrenica myth and who have the impression or the fear that “Srebrenica” could really have something to do with Auschwitz, but in a more intricate way than the mainstream media and many politicians have been trying to tell the public for more than a decade now, it can be a good starting point.

Hitler, in his “political last will”, said that a main mistake of his could have been that he had failed in forging a more audacious alliance with Islam. And it is doubtlessly quite audacious, at least for an International “war crimes court”, to base its assumptions and accusations on dubious testimonies, media propaganda, and at least exaggerated numbers, while isolating the supposed misdeeds (“massacres”) from the context in which they took place, if they happened at all.

In my view, the pattern is exactly the same as in the case of “criticism of Israel” and exactly as dangerous. While the “best” combination of both, as far as I know, can be found in the BBC, where often, when they talk about the Serbs, who supposedly can never be trusted, really seem to be some kind of “Jew substitutes”, whom you may accuse of any kind of immoral behavior without fear of being held responsible for your own immoral deeds or lack of courage, and whom you may humiliate as long as you like, just because, as a raging British soldier told me in the early 1990’s in order to justify his refusal to think by himself: “The whole world is against the Serbs”.

Dutch Soldiers to Testify in Karadzic’s Defense

Dutch Peacekeepers in Srebrenica

“In Srebrenica at the time we had to protect ourselves from the Bosnian Muslims, rather than protect the Muslims from the Serbs”, Dutch soldiers who served as UN peacekeepers in Srebrenica during the Bosnian civil war said in Belgrade. Photo: Dutch battalion in Srebrenica, 1995.

[…]

Some 15 Dutch soldiers of the former Netherlands battalion stationed in Srebrenica during the Bosnian civil war came to Belgrade on Wednesday, offering to testify in the Hague tribunal on behalf of Dr. Karadzic, a member of Radovan Karadzic’s defense team Milivoje Ivanisevic told Vecernje Novosti.

“We talked about their possible testimony. They stressed that the Serbs did not commit war crimes against the Muslim civilians when they were passing through several dozen of their villages [in Srebrenica municipality] the Dutch soldiers were securing. They came over at their own expense and said they will testify and invite more of their fellow soldiers to testify too. They left Belgrade on Thursday,” Ivanisevic said.

To see how relevant their testimonies would be, Ivanisevic talked to each Dutch soldier who came to Belgrade, individually, about when and where he was and what was he doing. Asked by Vecernje Novosti why haven’t they showed up before to say what really happened in Srebrenica, Ivanisevic said he didn’t pose that question, but added that Dutch soldiers complained there is a complete repression against them in Holland that had lasted for the past 10 years because they are blamed for allegedly “failing to protect Srebrenica”.

“Perhaps the things are finally getting ripe now”, Ivanisevic said. “They told me they came here in apprehension and worried, because they expected to be hated in Serbia just like back home. They said in Srebrenica at the time they had to protect themselves from the Muslims, rather than protect Muslims from the Serbs. Serb Army, according to them, was helping the Muslim women and their children, bringing them food and water”, Ivanisevic conveyed the conversation he had with Dutch soldiers who were stationed in Srebrenica in 1995.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: two distinct kinds of Euros

A striking characterization by Caroline Glick, just found in the Jerusalem Post Online Edition:

[…] how will a President Hillary Clinton or a President Barack Obama respond after being shown that appeasement of the Palestinians has once again failed and that appeasement or deterrence of the Iranian regime has also failed once again? Given their distinct emotional makeup, it can be assumed that Obama will argue that reality is wrong and continue on – Carter-like – into the abyss and drag his country and Israel down with him. Acting in a Clinton-like way, Clinton on the other hand, would be more likely to pick a fight with Serbia – or call for a federal ban on chewing tobacco in a bid to change the subject.

 

Ne damo Kosovo

Snow neve Schnee

fällt falls càde

auf on su

brènnendes burning cuòre

heart ardènte herz

two due zwei

mondi welten worlds

in war against each other si guerrèggiano bekriegen sich

+

il terzo the third one die dritte

muore dies

(Written geschrieben scritto in Utrecht, April, 13th 1999, while a band was playing Rosamunde “for the Kosovo“ – in German)

Kosovo je Srbija.