Damage Control: the independent homeland of BapetiKosovoti

No country in their right mind recognised the the independence of Mickey Mouse apartheid republics like Bophutatswana and Transkei, but those who created the independent homeland republic of BapetiKosovoti are now hastening to do damage control. I doubt that even Evita Bezuidenhout would be willing to help them out at top spin-doctor rates. Perhaps they could call in Dame Edna Everage as a consutant?

Damage Control in the Balkans by Nebojsa Malic -- Antiwar.com:

During the 1999 attack on what was then Yugoslavia, the BBC was one of the vocal NATO cheerleaders (its correspondent from the NATO HQ later got the job as Alliance spokesman). So it is both amazing and infuriating to hear Alistair Burnett, editor of BBC’s The World Tonight, talk about 'reassessing Kosovo' today.

On one hand, Burnett is refreshingly frank when he says:

'The offensive against Serbia in 1999 was presented by western leaders as a humanitarian act to prevent widespread ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s Albanian population by Slobodan Milosevic’s forces. This was widely accepted by western commentators at the time and since then reporting of the conflict in western media has been largely been framed as a story of Albanian victims and Serb aggressors.'

Notice he doesn’t mention that every word of this reasoning, and the ensuing media coverage, was a lie. What he says is merely that 'some of the recent commentary… has challenged this account and questioned whether the intervention and support for independence were misguided.'

Yes, all three of Tony Blair's wars when he was in office were "misguided", to say the very least. And Nato was, and remains, the North Atlantic Terorist Organisation.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace.

Neil Clark: Kosovo and the myth of liberal intervention

The death was announced this week of Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat who was described by one Christian blogger thus On the anniversary of the Dayton Accords | Again and Again:

Holbrooke was one of the architects of a US foreign policy that has targeted Christians around the world for extinction–in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in EAst Timor, and in Iraq, where the last remnants of an ancient Christian community are being extirpated even as I write.

Some years ago, I asked some Zionist Evangelicals about the wisdom of a policy that slaughtered Christians in order to help the Jewish state. “Iraqis? They’re not Christians.” They said the same thing of the Palestinian Christians. So the oldest Christian communities in the world are not Christian, and the one and only true church is some Zionist sect invented in the 19th century out of thin air and a misreading of Scripture ! But this is America, where new trumps old, and cheap trumps good every time.

But though many Europeans and some Americans realise that the Iraqi-American War was a war of unmitigated aggression, many of them still think that the Clinton-Blair war on Yugoslavia was a "good" war, a "humanitarian war". But the truth will out, perhaps.

Neil Clark: Kosovo and the myth of liberal intervention:

'The United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.' So declared the neocon US senator (and current foe of Wikileaks) Joseph Lieberman back in 1999 at the height of the US-led military intervention against Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia.

It would be interesting to hear what Senator Lieberman makes of the report of the Council of Europe – Europe's premier human rights watchdog – on his favourite band of freedom fighters. The report, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, details horrific rights abuses it claims have been carried out by the KLA, the west's allies in the war against Yugoslavia 11 years ago.

If there are any lingering doubts that Nato is the North Atlantic Terrorist Organisation, acting as the air force for a terrorist gang, the UCK/KLA, this should dispel them.

Collateral damage and the death of Ubuntu

Ubuntu is dead.

A few weeks ago my blogging friend Tom Smith wrote In memory of Martha Molaudi | Soulgardeners:

On Thursday we lost a dear friend, Martha Molaudi. Martha lived with us from 2006. To the children she was like a second mom. Martha was a remarkable woman of courage. She was the main provider for seven people. She passed away on Thursday evening due to liver failure.

The circumstances surrounding her liver failure has caused me to reflect a lot.

It failed due to the negligence of the clinic that gave her the wrong tuberculosis medication. When she was finally admitted to the hospital the staff couldn’t give her the care she needed because of the strikes that lasted for three weeks. In the space of three months the medical systems failed her miserably.

During the strike I watched an interview where they asked a hospital worker what he thinks about people who will die as a result of him striking. He mentioned the phrase, “collateral damage”. Collateral damage had a name – Martha.

"Collateral damage" is one of the most obscene phrases in the English language that I know of, and is diametrically opposed to the spirit of Ubuntu. It is a euphemism used by terrorists for their killing of civilians. It was given popular currency during the Nato (the North Atlantic Terrorist Organisation) attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999. And when it is used by strikers to justify the deaths of those who die as a result of their actions, we know that we have lost our Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is dead. That is no different from the way in which terrorists use people as human shields and hostages. When we start talking casually of "collateral damage", Ubuntu is dead.

Let no one say that South Africa's guiding philosophy is Ubuntu. It's Greed, just like the rest of the world. Ubuntu is dead.

Terrorist Threat Has Roots in U.S. Policy by Sheldon Richman

Terrorist Threat Has Roots in U.S. Policy by Sheldon Richman:

It is not al-Qaeda that inspires affiliates and radicalizes homegrown terrorists. It is America’s violent policies in the Muslim world. Other government officials have acknowledged that Muslim radicals seek revenge for those policies in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, but Napolitano perpetuates the myth that anti-American activity is unprovoked. The American people deserve to hear the truth.

Napolitano referred to recent unsuccessful attacks in the United States: “Other al-Qaeda affiliates have actually attempted to attack the homeland in recent months. These include Tehrik-e Taliban (TTP) [Pakistan] and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) [Yemen] — which, until their respective claims of responsibility for the attempted Times Square and Christmas Day terrorist attacks, had only conducted attacks in their regions.”

What she left out was that the U.S. government regularly fires missiles into Pakistan and Yemen from aerial drones, killing innocent people. The desire for revenge is a natural consequence.

Hat-tip to The Western Confucian: None Dare Call It Blowback

I'm reminded of Madeleine Albright's famous "We think the price is worth it" comment -- the price in question being the lives of half a million Iraqi children who died to maintain American hegemony in the Middle East. Weigh that against the under 3000 killed on 9/11, and somehow the word "disproportionate" springs to mind.

Those killed on 9/11 just about balance the number killed in the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia, which was every bit as "terroristic" as 9/11, and was cowardly to boot, because, unlike 9/11, the bombers did not risk their own lives. But, brave or cowardly, terrorism is still terrorism, and the notion of terrorists waging a "war on terror" should lead to severe cognitive dissonance, but it somehow doesn't, at least not for those who support the terrorist "war on terror."

The Terrorism Quiz

How much do you know about terrorism and terrorists?

Since 1967 at least, when the Terrorism Act was passed by the South African parliament, I've known that at least nine times out of every ten times the word is used it is used for disinformation rather than information, so whenever I've seen it in print since then it has made my bullshit detectors very twitchy.

But I was still surprised to discover how little I knew about it and how much disinformation I had absorbed, in spite of being on by guard against it. Take the Terrorism Quiz to check your own knowledge.

Hat-tip to Clarissa, who posted this excerpt Clarissa's Blog: The Terrorism Quiz:

1. Who made the following statement? “To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom.”

5. How many suicide bombings had Iraq experienced before the 2003 US invasion?

13. True or False: The majority of terrorists come from the lower classes.

17. True or False: The religion of Islam is an important cause of terrorism.

One thing that I did know, though, or rather guessed, is that in the majority of cases the primary motive for terrorism is revenge, at least in the case of individuals. The majority of individuals who opt for terrorist methods do so because they have a close friend or relative who has suffered violence or injustice at someone else's hands, and they take revenge.

Violence and values

All yesterday Sky News was still full of the Cumbria shootings. They seem obsessed with them, to the exclusion of all other news. Now they are interviewing survivors and witnesses. A fellow taxi driver who was shot, a little boy who witnessed the man on a bicycle being shot. They tell their stories calmly and matter-of-factly, in contrast to the breathless hype of the interviewers, going on about how terrible it is for such events to take place in a small and close-knit community in a beautiful part of England.

And then there are the expert counsellors, talking about the lasting trauma of those who witnessed these things, and how long it will take the community to get over it, and it is all so over-the-top. British soldiers have been doing such things as Derrick Bird did every week for the last few years in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nobody talks about the trauma they have caused in the small closs-knit communities there. Nothing about the trauma of the people on the ships taking aid to Gaza, hijacked on the high seas by Israeli pirates. There is something hugely disproportionate about it somehow.

I suppose it is understandable that Israel wants to impose a blockade on Gaza. Bombs are expensive, and running an air force to deliver them is expensive. So when you use bombs to break things you want them to stay broken. When you bomb people out of house and home you want them to stay homeless. If people bring aid to help people to rebuild their homes, then you are going to have to go to all the effort and expense of bombing them again to make them homeless again. It's cheaper to stop them from rebuilding their homes.

When I was a child at school we used to amuse ourselves by kicking holes in anthills, and watching the termites scurrying around to repair the damage. And when they had just about repaired it we would kick holes in it again, easier the second time, because the mud was still damp and hadn't hardened yet.

And it seems that grown-ups are no different, and just as cruel. It's just that they can afford bigger bombs, and attack their own species. And no, I'm not overlooking Hamas as some have accused me of doing. Hamas and Likud are both terrorist organisations, playing a zero-sum game[1]. As my former blogging friend Facebook | Simon Hewitt says, "in spite of being utterly opposed to the attack on the Flotilla, will not be demonstrating tomorrow. Reason? : I'm just sick of marching alongside Hamas supporters and people chanting 'we are all Hezbollah'. My enemy's enemy is not my friend. My enemy's enemy is an authoritarian, misogynistic, murdering bastard." And they continue playing zero-sum games because it suits the more influential spectators for them to go on doing so.

So when it happens in Cumbria, Shock! Shock! Horror! Horror! from the Brit media. But when British soldiers do it elsewhere, they are heroes. Perhaps they should take Derrick Bird's coffin in procession through Wootton Bassett.

_________

[1] terrorist n. one who favours or uses terror-inspiring methods of governing or of coercing government or community (from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of current English, Fifth Edition).

Piracy spreads -- first Somalia, now Israel

t r u t h o u t | Israeli Commandos Kill Gaza Aid Volunteers:

At around 5 a.m. this morning, the live feed on the IHH ship showed helicopters floating above the desk of the Mavi Manara, and paratroopers rappelling onto the decks. Israeli army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibowitz claimed that the navy confiscated light weapons and handguns from the flotilla. 'We basically encountered a lynch,' she said. 'We had to control this violence.' All evidence suggests that Leibowitz is lying. The boats and passengers were rigorously checked for guns by international monitors before leaving the port. According to FGM, the commandoes opened fire from their machine guns practically as soon as they hit the deck.

'Under darkness of night, Israeli commandoes dropped from a helicopter onto the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck,' the FGM report says. Some of those they shot were asleep.

Critics of violent and aggressive actions by the Israeli military are often told that "Israel has the right to defend itself." It seems, from this action, that Israel's claim to a a "right to defend itself" is the same right claimed by a rapist to justify attacking those who try to help his victims.

And piracy on the high seas seems to have spread from the south to the north of the Suez Canal. Any lingering doubts that Israel is a rogue and terrorist state should now be dispelled completely.

Some other bloggers' responses:

Neil Clark: Israeli forces ‘kill up to 19 people’ in raid on Gaza aid ship: "can you imagine Hague and co's response if Iran had violently stormed ships in international waters on which there were 28 British civilians?"

would it have been like this?

CalumCarr on .... Whatever: Israel: Hague’s, UK Government’s Weasel Words: "The Foreign Secretary William Hague has called on the Government of Israel to open all crossings for aid to enter Gaza and deplored the loss of life during the interception of the Gaza Flotilla.

In a statement this morning the Foreign Secretary said:
' I deplore the loss of life during the interception of the Gaza Flotilla. Our Embassy is in urgent contact with the Israeli Government. We are asking for more information and urgent access to any UK nationals involved.

We have consistently advised against attempting to access Gaza in this way, because of the risks involved. But at the same time, there is a clear need for Israel to act with restraint and in line with international obligations. It will be important to establish the facts about this incident, and especially whether enough was done to prevent deaths and injuries."

Tell Obama: free the human rights activists, conduct an impartial investigation: A Jewish Voice for Peace.

Britain: Eyewitnesses reveal Jean Charles De Menezes shot without warning

from most of the evidence given at the inquest so far, it seems that the police were behaving like terrorists.

Britain: Eyewitnesses reveal Jean Charles De Menezes shot without warning: "No commuters were called to give evidence at last year’s Metropolitan Police health and safety trial over the shooting. This is the first time they have told their stories in public. It is also the first time the two officers who shot de Menezes have given evidence. The inquest has been adjourned until December 1, when the coroner will begin summing up the evidence.

De Menezes was shot after being wrongly identified as a terrorist suspect on July 22, 2005, the day after the bungled terror attempt on the London underground, when four men left rucksacks packed with explosives on London’s transport network that failed to detonate."

Anglican church linked to terrorism

No, we're not in a time warp, reporting on a speech from B.J. Vorster in the old South Africa. This one was from a UK TV network, which made the link to St Mary and St George Sands Church in High Wycombe.

Bishop Alan’s Blog: Keeping the Faith in High Wycombe:

SMSG featured on one UK TV news channel after the arrests of nearby alleged terrorists in 2006, as an extremist mosque! OK, it’s got a green dome. It’s also got a 9 ft Cross on top. You'd think that would be enough to make a UK TV editor question whether it really was a mosque but, er, you’d be wrong.

.
Just goes to show you can't believe everything you see on TV, especially when they're reporting on religion. A reminder, if one were needed that the media don't get religion.

Jean Charles de Menezes Inquest

Justice for Jean has set up a blog to raise public awareness of the forthcoming inquest on the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent commuter who was shot as a suspected terrorist by officers of London's Metropolitan Police as he boarded a train three years ago.

Jean Charles de Menezes Inquest:

* We know that the IPCC “Stockwell 1” investigation raised grave concerns about the effectiveness of the police response on 22 July 2005, not only the risk of an entirely innocent member of the public being killed “but also whether the police response would stop a terrorist who was intent on causing harm.”

* We know that the Old Bailey jury at the trial into breaches of the Health and Safety Act found that Scotland Yard commanders had made a string of errors that culminated in an unwarranted risk to the public and ultimately to Jean’s death.

Hat tip to Nemeton.

Bush vetoes anti-torture bill

BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush vetoes interrogation limits:

US President George Bush says he has vetoed legislation that would stop the CIA using interrogation methods such as simulated drowning or 'water-boarding'.

He said he rejected the intelligence bill, passed by Senate and Congress, as it took 'away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror'.

Need one say more?

Well, I could add this: Red Star Coven: Death to America

British double standards on WMD and terrorists

The British government uses double standards over weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and also over which "terrorist" governments it recognises and fails to recognise.

How Labour used the law to keep criticism of Israel secret | Politics | The Guardian:

The full extent of government anxiety about the state of British-Israel relations can be exposed for the first time today in a secret document seen by the Guardian.

The document reveals how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier. At the heart of it was nervousness at the top of government about any mention of Israel's nuclear arsenal in an official paper accusing Iraq of flouting the UN's authority on weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier was made public this week, but the FCO succeeded before a tribunal in having the handwritten mention of Israel kept secret.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk The removal of a negative reference to Israel from a draft of the discredited Iraq weapons dossier released this week illustrated the double standards which contribute to Palestinian anger and violence, a Labour MP said today. Richard Burden, chair of the British-Palestine all-party parliamentary group, was responding to the revelation in today's Guardian that a comment on Israel flouting United Nations resolutions was removed from the "Williams draft" after the Foreign Office appealed to the information tribunal, which had ordered the document's publication. But the Birmingham Northfield MP insisted the international community should "not be afraid" of saying that "Israel has been developing weapons of mass destruction for some years". Burden compared the government's reluctance to offend Israel to the reaction after Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006. He said that after the Islamist group called a truce the response was "to ignore that and refer to them as terrorists".

As Burden points out, the recent revelations about British double standards on the question of WMD in the Middle East also highlight other double standards as well -- denouncing Hamas as "terrorists", but recognising the UDI by the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army), which is just as much a terrorist organisation as Hamas.

US, Germany agree to recognize Kosovo after Serbia elections - The Boston Globe

The US and Germany, which fuelled the Wars of the Yugoslav succession in the 1990s, are planning to fan the embers to a flame again.

US, Germany agree to recognize Kosovo after Serbia elections - The Boston Globe:

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia - The United States and Germany have agreed to recognize Kosovo and get the rest of Europe to follow suit after the province declares independence following the Serbian elections next month, according to senior European Union diplomats close to negotiations over the future of Kosovo.

In a recent conversation about the future of Kosovo, EU officials said President Bush and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had agreed it was imperative to secure the stability of the western Balkans by coordinating the recognition of Kosovo after the second round of Serbian elections planned for Feb. 3.

They said Washington was aggressively pressing the EU to ensure that the recognition of Kosovo was not delayed by even a week.

Remember how it started?

As Samuel Huntington (1998:282) described it in his book The clash of civilizations:

The breakup of Yugoslavia began in 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia moved toward independence and pleaded with Western European powers for support. The response of the West was defined by Germany, and the response of Germany was in large part defined by the Catholic connection. The Bonn government
came under pressure to act from the German Catholic hierarchy, its coalition partner the Christian Social Union Party in Bavaria, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and other media. The Bavarian media, in particular, played a crucial
role in developing German public sentiment for recognition. 'Bavarian TV', Flora Lewis noted, 'much weighed upon by the very conservative Bavarian government and the strong, assertive Bavarian Catholic Church which had close connections with the church in Croatia, provided the television reports for all of Germany when the war began in earnest. The coverage was very one-sided'... Germany pressured the European Union to recognise the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, and then, having secured that, pushed forward on its own to recognize them before the Union did in December 1991.

Austria and Italy promptly moved to recognize the two new states, and very quickly other Western countries, including the United States, followed. The Vatican also played a central role. The Pope declared Croatia to be the "rampart of Christianity," and rushed to extend diplomatic recognition to the two states before the European Union did. The Vatican thus became a partisan in the conflict, which had its
consequences in 1994 when the Pope planned visits to the three republics. Opposition by the Serbian Orthodox Church prevented his going to Belgrade, and Serb unwillingness to guarantee his security led to the cancellation of his visit to Sarajevo. He did go to Zagreb, however, where he honored Cardinal Alojzieje Stepinac, who was associated with the fascist Croatian regime in World War II that persecuted and slaughtered Serbs, Gypsies and Jews.

The focus then moved to Bosnia, where John Major agreed to recognise Bosnia's independence in return for German support for Britain's position on the Maastricht Treaty, thus condemning Bosnia-Herzegovina to a bloody civil war. And what was the result?

As Brendan O'Neill (Comment is free: The Bosnian connection) notes:

Far from being radicalised by the failure of the west to act, large numbers of Muslims were radicalised by western intervention in the Balkans. Their movement to Bosnia was facilitated by Washington's support for a military gateway between the Islamic world and Bosnia, and inside Bosnia they fought with a military outfit that Washington armed. They were also inspired to take up arms against the Serbs by western media depictions of the Serbs as sub-human savages who deserved 'punishment'. The mujahideen meted out such punishment, in the form of stabbings, beheadings and forced circumcisions, as well as ordinary warfare.

Many of the mujahideen who fought in Bosnia went on to become al-Qaida operatives. They learned their trade of simplistic moral fury and brutal violence on the battlefields of Bosnia, where they were enticed and inflamed to execute holy war against the Serbs by western meddling and western media coverage.

And now it's Kosovo -- deja vu all over again!

Terrorist threat to UK

Britain's MI5 chief recently said that several thousand young people in Britain were being recruited by terrorist organisations. A growing number of them are seriously considering the possibility of becoming suicide bombers.

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified. More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards active terrorism through being radicalised or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organised training events here and overseas, by images on television, through chat rooms and websites on the Internet.

One of the biggest recruiting factors is British foreign policy over the last few years. These young people can watch on TV and see the devastating effects of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and for many what begins as a burning sense of injustice ends in the despairing decision to become a suicide bomber.

A very good analysis, with lots of links to sources, may be found at The People's Republic of Teeside: All apologies.

London police guilty over Brazilian's shooting

Is it safe to go back underground? If the terrorists don't get you, the Metropolitan Police will.

clipped from ca.today.reuters.com London's police chief defied calls to resign on Thursday after a jury convicted his force of endangering the public by shooting dead an innocent Brazilian on an underground train, mistaking him for a suicide bomber. Police shot electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, seven times in the head after he boarded an underground train in south London on July 22, 2005. They had wrongly identified him as one of four men who had tried to attack the city's transport system a day earlier.

Jean Charles de Menezes exonerated

A report of the British Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), just released, has finally refuted all the rumours that Jean Charles de Menezes, shot by police officers at Stockwell underground station two years ago, was in some way responsible for his own death.

These rumours, spread by the police and the media, were that de Menezes had behaved suspiciously, or was dressed strangely, or had failed to stop after a police warning. The report, after an exhaustive examination of the evidence, shows that he did nothing whatever to cause the police to shoot him, and that nothing he had done or not done had contributed in any way to his death. There was nothing that he could have done to avoid his death, which was caused by circumstances entirely beyond his control.

There were several disturbing features of the report.

One was that a police press release had said that de Menezes had failed to stop after a warning. It turns out that this item of disinformation was routinely inserted in such press releases by the person who compiled them, regardless of whether they were true or not.

These were the same police sources that were urging the need for 90-day detention. It is yet another sign that Blair/Brown's Britain is more and more coming to resemble Vorster's police state in South Africa in the 1960s.

Vorster rules - in Britain!

Banning, detention without trial and other features of Vorster's South Africa are on their way to Britain, if Gordon Brown has his way, and 83% of Sky News viewers approve of 90-day detention, according to what I saw on the TV a few minutes ago.

Back in 1963, when Vorster introduced 90-day detention in South Africa, the British Labour Party was one of the outspoken opponents of such violations of human rights, and generally supported the anti-apartheid movement. Who would have thought, back then, that the day would come when South Africa would have a constitution that protected human rights, and the British Labour Party would be seeking to turn Britain into a fascist state?

Of course such measures are necessary to protect law-abiding members of the public against terrorism (that's exactly what Vorster said). But perhaps that would not have been necessary of Tony Blair had not led Britain into so many wars, and terrorised civilian populations in Yugoslavia, Iraq and other places by bombing them. He should have heeded the warnings of Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid in Charles Kingsley's The water babies.