“Srebrenica” and the Power of Reason
“Truth and reason are eternal,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Rev. Samuel Knox in 1810. “They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail . . . ” Jefferson was wrong. His belief that “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it” was naive. As Patrick J. Buchanan proves in a passing reference in his otherwise sound latest column, even men of generally sound understanding and good intentions end up the victims of the disinformation campaigns that pass for media reporting.
“In none of the Libyan towns affected by fighting in recent weeks,” Buchanan writes, “has anything like the massacre in the Ivory Coast taken place, let alone Srebrenica.”
It is noteworthy that “Srebrenica” is used here not as a geographic location that needs to be preceded by a noun (“the massacre in…”) but as a stand-alone term that denotes horror, on par with “Auschwitz,” or “Katyn,” or “Hiroshima.”
“Srebrenica” used in this sense has established itself as a myth based on a lie. As the introduction to an enlightening recent article points out, we need to transcend the routine banalities of the Srebrenica debate which turns mostly on numbers; but the very term “debate” is rejected by those who should be on one of the two sides in that debate:
They deny as a matter of principle that there is anything to debate. So many thousand prisoners were executed and a distinguished international judicial forum of unquestioned authority has found it to constitute genocide. (These are the “routine banalities” that define the parameters of Srebrenica as an issue at least, if not as a debate.) According to our hypothetical debating partners there is nothing to debate because everything is settled and clear.
Reasonable people with no ethno-religious axe to grind in the Balkan quagmire have long fought such “routine banalities,” including the claim that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed in cold blood and the systematic misuse of the term “genocide.”
BACK TO THE NUMBERS—The fact beyond dispute is that during the Bosnian war thousands of Muslim men were killed in the region of Srebrenica. Most of them died in July of 1995 when the enclave fell almost without a fight to the Bosnian Serb Army and the Muslim garrison—the 28th division of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army—attempted a breakthrough. A significant number reached safety at the Muslim-held town of Tuzla, 60 km to the north; a few found shelter in Serbia, across the Drina River to the east. An unknown were killed while fighting their way through; and many others—numbers remain disputed—were taken prisoner and executed by the Bosnian Serb army.
The numbers remain unknown and misrepresented. With “8,000 executed” and—inevitably—thousands more killed in the fighting or reaching the Muslim lines, the column attempting to break out should have counted 12 to 15,000 men—an impossibly large number. There should have been huge gravesites and satellite evidence of executions, burials, and body removals. The UN searches in the Srebrenica vicinity, breathlessly frantic at times, still falls far short of the sanctified figure of 8,000. The Islamic shrine at Potocari, where the supposed victims are buried, includes those of soldiers killed in action, Muslim and Serb, between May 1992 and July 1995.
The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) never came up with a conclusive breakdown of casualties. That a war crime did take place is undeniable. The number of its victims remains forensically and demographically unproven. According to the former BBC reporter Jonathan Rooper, “from the outset the numbers were used and abused” for political purposes. The number of likely casualties corresponds closely to the ‘missing’ list of 7,300 compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Rooper says. But the early estimates were based on nothing more than the simple combination of an estimated 3,000 men last seen at the UN base at Potocari and an estimated 5,000 people reported ‘to have left the enclave before it fell’:
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the 7-8,000 figure is that it has always been represented as synonymous with the number of people executed. This was never a possibility: numerous contemporary accounts noted that UN and other independent observers had witnessed fierce fighting with significant casualties on both sides. It was also known that others had fled to Muslim-held territory around Tuzla and Zepa, that some had made their way westwards and northwards, and that some had fled into Serbia. It is therefore certain that nowhere near all the missing could have been executed.
The Red Cross reported at the time that some 3,000 Bosnian Army soldiers managed to reach Muslim lines near Tuzla and were redeployed by the Bosnian Army “without their families being informed.” The number of military survivors was also confirmed by Muslim General Enver Hadzihasanovic in his testimony at The Hague.
The last census results, from 1991, counted 37,211 inhabitants in Srebrenica and the surrounding villages, of which 27,118 were Muslims (72.8 percent) and 9,381 Serbs (25.2 percent). Displaced persons from Srebrenica registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995 totaled 35,632. With 3,000 Muslim men who reached Tuzla “without their families being informed” we come to the figure of over 38,000 survivors. The Hague Tribunal’s own estimates of the total population of the Srebrenica enclave before July 1995—notably that made by Judge Patricia Wald—give 40,000 as the maximum figure. It does not add up.
Having spent five days interviewing over 20,000 Srebrenica survivors at Tuzla a week after the fall of the enclave, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Henry Wieland declared, “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” A decade later a Dutch field investigator, Dr Dick Schoonoord, confirmed Wieland’s verdict: “It has been impossible during our investigations in Bosnia to find any people who witnessed the mass murder or would talk about the fate of the missing men.”
A “PROTECTED ZONE”?—It is often pointed out that Srebrenica was an UN “protected zone,” but it is seldom noted that the enclave was simultaneously an armed camp used for attacks against Serb villages in the surrounding areas. Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Muslim Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the “safe haven” status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.
French General Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR commander who first called international attention to the Srebrenica enclave, is adamant that the crimes committed by those Muslim soldiers made the Serbs’ desire for revenge inevitable. He testified at The Hague Tribunal on February 12, 2004, 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.” 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… he didn’t even look for an excuse… One can’t be bothered with prisoners.”
Cees Wiebes, who wrote the intelligence section of the Dutch Government report on Srebrenica, notes that despite signing the demilitarization agreement, Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica were heavily armed and engaged in provocations (“sabotage operations”) against Serbian forces. Professor Wiebes caused a storm with his book Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, detailing the role of the Clinton administration in allowing Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims.
On 11 July, 1995, the Muslim garrison was ordered to evacuate the town which the Serbs entered unopposed. Local Deputy Director of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, wrote in 2004 (“Was Srebrenica a Hoax?”) that Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery because “military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim,’ which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.”
POLITICAL BACKGROUND—Two prominent supporters (at the time) of the late Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, his Srebrenica SDA party chairman Ibran Mustafic and police commander Hakija Meholjic, have subsequently accused Izetbegovic of deliberately sacrificing the enclave in order to trigger NATO intervention. Meholjic is explicit: in his presence, Izetbegovic quoted Bill Clinton as saying that 5,000 dead Muslims would be sufficient to provide the political basis for an American-led intervention on the side of the Muslims.
Testifying at The Hague Tribunal, Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic confirmed this theory by describing how 18 top officers of the Srebrenica garrison were abruptly removed in May 1995. Ibran Mustafic, the former head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, is adamant that the scenario for the sacrifice of Srebrenica was carefully prepared:
Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order. I would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica, so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo.
Military analyst Tim Ripley agrees that Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by the Muslim political leaders. He noted that Dutch UN soldiers “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica past their observation points, carrying brand new anti-tank weapons [which] made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.”
The term “genocide” is even more contentious than the exact circumstances of Srebrenica’s fall. Local chief of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, noted that if there had been a premeditated plan of genocide, instead of attacking in only one direction, from the south to the north—which left open escape routes to the north and west, the Serbs would have established a siege in order to ensure that no one escaped:
The UN observation posts to the north of the enclave were never disturbed and remained in activity after the end of the military operations. There are obviously mass graves in the outskirts of Srebrenica as in the rest of ex-Yugoslavia where combat has occurred, but there are no grounds for the campaign which was mounted, nor the numbers advanced by CNN. The mass graves are filled by a limited number of corpses from both sides, the consequence of heated battle and combat and not the result of a premeditated plan of genocide, as occurred against the Serbian populations in Krajina, in the Summer of 1995, when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there.
The fact that The Hague Tribunal called the massacre in Srebrenica “genocide” does not make it so. 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 hundreds of thousands of Muslims living peacefully in Serbia itself, including thousands of refugees who fled there from Srebrenica and other parts of Bosnia? Or the Muslims in the neighboring enclave of Žepa, 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. Such psychobabble turns the term “genocide” into a gruesome joke.
Yet it was on the basis of this definition that in August 2001, the Tribunal found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of “complicity in genocide.” Even if the unproven figure of “8,000” is assumed, it affected less than one-half of one percent of Bosnia’s Muslim population in a locality covering one percent of its territory. On such form, the term “genocide” loses all meaning and becomes a propaganda tool rather than a legal and historical concept. On that form, America’s NATO ally Turkey—a major regional player in today’s Balkans—committed genocide in northern Cyprus in 1974. On that form, no military conflict can be genocide-free.
As Diana Johnstone explained in a seminal “Counterpunch” article, the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is part of a dominant culture discourse that is highly relevant, some years later, to the ongoing intervention in Libya:
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.’ … The subliminal message in the official Srebrenica discourse is that because ‘we’ let that happen, ‘we’ mustn't let ‘it’ happen again, ergo, the U.S. should preventively bomb potential perpetrators of ‘genocide’.
The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically correct nor morally satisfying. The relentless Western campaign against the Serbs and in favor of their Muslim foes—which is what “Srebrenica” is really all about—is detrimental to the survival of our culture and civilization. It seeks to give further credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Serb viciousness, and Western indifference, and therefore weaken our resolve in the global struggle euphemistically known as “war on terrorism.” The former is a crime; the latter, a mistake.
In more ways than one “Srebrenica is, indeed, a totem for the new world order. And I hope that Pat Buchanan reads this.
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Robert, the quote comes to mind:
"Where there was no solution, there was no problem."
The irreversible atrocities of the 20th century can not be reversed. There is thus no solution. They are thus no problem.
Prateek,
Yes, but it does remain more than a little disconcerting to listen to liberals, who believe we live at the apex of respect for human rights and dignity, to cite as their confirmation of this falsehood all ages but their own. Poor Chris Hitchens is probably the most pathetic example but for conservatives who attempted to answer these absurd assertions, it was like killing ants: As one was eleminated, a thousand more would arrive for the fallen's funeral.
I do admire Chronicles for asking the better question of what remains after all the good that leftists can possibly do has been done and the country providing for their solutions is no longer a viable as a country?
Quick research indicates that the origin of the quote “where there is no solution, there is no problem” is from an Israeli advisor, James Burnham, on the issues facing Israel (from the American Conservative magazine)-----which is a very bankrupt and criminal context. Targeting the leaders of any group for assassination is heinous and should be known. For example, Israel’s fairly recent policy of targeted assassinations (of Palestinians) included all who were exceptional in any way (who could become leaders or spokepeople just due to their exceptional talent or brains in any field or endeavor).
I strongly disagree that the major issues facing Americans have anything to do with left versus right---as the elite have captured both major parties (ergo, Obama outdoes GWB, the worst ever). Neither party is ending the mindless wars or investigating the fraudulent WOT or 9/11 or instituting action for criminal prosecution of Wall Street and Banksters or recoupment of the money, or ending hypocrisy or loss of freedoms. Rather than address the mindless wars on false pretext (or the secret control of nation by the elite) or the devastation to unemployed Americans (in contrast to undisclosed mindless enrichment of the elite) or rampant corruption, the Republicans want to shave Medicare and chide the suffering to prepare for more suffering. Both parties are out of touch with reality----with only Ron Paul and Dennis Kuncinich showing any sanity. Our country is slated to be destroyed and truth adverse to the culprits is not permitted in our media or either the Republican party or the Democratic one.
J R,
All true but as Chilton Williamson has correctly pointed out on occassion, history is linear and doesn't simply end as in the preposterous and yet once popular notion over at National Review: "The End of History." Yes, there are transcendent qualities to human history and salvation history as well. We frail humans will find a way to persist against great odds always being intrigued more by goodness and beauty than its more diminished forms in uglines and corruption.
Thank you for your remarks. I appreciate the kind tone of your presentations generally.
I would recruit all not to be sheeple, and support truth and accountability. There are many brave and distinguished Americans who know and support truth, but our media wants to construct our reality and our choices ---so we tend to see an artificial reality and very little of truth or brave Americans of like mind .
The culprits are treasonous murderers and war criminals and thieves on monstrous, shocking scale---who have used our own secret technologies and secret institutions against us. The appropriate cures are understandably shocking also, as they should match and redress the crimes.
Recurrent cycles of excessive power and influence from frauds and swindles are a major part of history, with ultimate corrections. Doubtless we are in one of those, which is not inconsistent from viewing the culprits/opponents as organized crime, and in time it will be reversed and corrected. In my judgment, the sooner that occurs, the better for all (with less evil, less destruction of the country/world and less adverse consequences). This crisis is premised on fraud/deception and suppression of truth (and its converses, ignorance and too much trust).
The largest institution left standing (after the capture/compromise of media and government) is the church. Unfortunately, many ministers have “dumbed down congregations” and take glee in preaching the “end times”, oblivious to a recurrent long cycle in history which better (precisely) matches current events.
We face immense problems, including culprits (traitors within, including from the time of JFK assassination, who control media). I would encourage all not to accept destruction of our country, and spread the word and the alert as fast and as well as you can. With rare exceptions, Americans are absolutely leaderless and media-less at present, but they need to awaken and arise as one threatened community. Thanks for reading my views.
Mr. Nicoletti is quite right to point out the special nature of Katyn and the NY Times complicity in covering up Stalin's actions. This august "newspaper of record" certainly had precedence for this despicable act of selective journalism, as they also ignored the Ukrainian famine in the 30s. (I believe it was also Duranty who was the principal culprit here, too, although I'm going from memory.)
Returning to the issue of the Katyn massacre, there was a movie released in Poland in, I believe 2009, of the same name. An excellent film that explores one man's fate in this crime, but provides a good look at the overall scenario.
I am glad that there are apparently no "Katyn deniers". The link provided by JR was interesting. I had always been taught that the Red Army did it. I am not all that surprised that Roosevelt and his ilk lied to Americans about it.
As regards Serbia, I think that this article makes a good argument. Our intervention in the Balkans made about as much sense as Iraq II, Libya and the other unconstitutional adventures our nation has been involved in. Trifkovic handily demolishes the "party line" on this particular aspect of that war.
My question regarding the acceptability of anti-mohammedanism was not meant to be "ridiculous". It seems to me it is a simple matter of connecting the dots. Mohammedans have been killing us since the inception of their cult. Long before there was an Israel, EU or USA. Is it unacceptable to state this plainly? To me, it has nothing to do with post-1940's middle east policy. Rather, it appears that something within this worldview drives its followers to violence against Christians. The well-being of Kosovars, Bosnians, and others is not of the same level of concern as that of Christians and Europeans. Mohammedans, as followers of a false religion, merely reap the violence they have sown.
#58
"Mohammedans have been killing us since the inception of their cult. Long before there was an Israel, EU or USA. Is it unacceptable to state this plainly? To me, it has nothing to do with post-1940’s middle east policy."
Mr. Blankenship, by a vast historical sleight-of-hand you have tried to obscur the contemporary reality of Americano-Israeli aggression in the Muslim world. Furthermore, if one were to take a long view of history, the reality which emerges is that Muslims have fought against Christians, just as Christians have fought against Christians, and just as Muslims have fought against Muslims. The Anglo-Saxon peoples, in particular, have doubtful historical credentials to call for holy war against the Muslim world, given the long record of Anglo-Turkish piracy and their more recent (and continuing) patronage of the most fanatic Islamic militants.
And one last thing; by the standard of moral conduct you demand of the Muslims, the Chinese and Indians would be justified in believing that Christian Europeans are predisposed to violence against them. Maybe Beijing and New Delhi should order an all-out assault on the Old Continent once they are strong enough?
# 58: Every distinction in humans, from skin color to religion to tribal heritage and more, has bad examples of historical strife to exhume if one wishes to create adverse feelings. Every religion can find and present adherents who are wacko.
Islam is not a false religion, but maybe the largest in world. In the old Testament, Sarah demanded that the prophet Abraham leave his son, Ishmael, by his second wife or handmaiden, Hagar, at a spot that became Mecca (as I recall) (Sarah had been unable to produce a child and requested Abraham use Hagar) and God promised Abraham that each of his descendants would lead great tribes (or more be as numerous as the dust of the earth) and the one left is father of Arabs. And an angel appeared to Hagar and promised to make of her son a great nation. And at that spot God created a famous well of water that remains to this day; and later Abraham came back and helped his son build a temple (and piece of that exists in holy cube building today). Today when Muslims approach Mecca, they say the same prayer that Abraham said. The prophet Mohammed lived in 6th Century as I recall and wrote Quran. Prophets in Islam included Abraham and Jesus (not considered divine but prophet like Muhammed). It is not true to tout Islam as a false religion. Read Genesis, especially chapter 21, verses 11 to 21. Like many, if not most, religions, it has many beautiful features.
I recommend two higher points of emphasis and rejection of the propaganda (but understand source of your view). 99% of all terrorism emanates from intelligence agencies (most from Israel’s and second from our own)----and 100% of that is false flag designed to make one believe that someone else did the terrorism. [Read Webster Griffin Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism, free online and excellent.] Much of the terrorism in recent decades has been attributed to Muslims (via evidence, passports, photos, costumes, videos usually available with the event or immediately after); and those most familiar with the operations of intelligence agencies know that the vast, vast majority of those were false flag incidents. So, the news reports (generated by the intelligence agencies themselves) in the USA were false.
It has been my privilege to meet several medical doctors of the Muslim religion. They are exceptionally smart, shy and self effacing, but extremely principled (and not apt to be run over by unprincipled aggressiveness), which are very fine human qualities. Mix all these points in with the neocon agenda of surreptitious propaganda to enflame enmity against Muslims for purpose of perpetual war for power and profit of Zion (and control of USA), and contrast that with Muslims’ as rather exemplary world citizens on the whole (after subtracting false flags). Look at Iran---currently demonized, it has not initiated an attack against another nation in the last 2000 years---which is a remarkable record. Thanks for reading.
JR: "vast historical sleight-of-hand" is giving me a lot more credit than I have earned. My comment is not meant to be clever or tricky. Simply that Mohammedanism is antithetical to Christianity, both theologically and practically. I would say the same for a host of other false religions.
I gather that you don't care much for Judaism. The "source of my view" has nothing to with Zionism. I don't have any particular love for their false religion either.
The real purpose of my question was to determine if opposition to Mohammedanism is a permissible view by the readers of Chronicles. So far, I have only heard from you so the query remains only partially answered.
The point you make about Iran is an interesting one, and is appreciated. Do you have a theory as to why this is?
Since I don't know your name or gender, I will continue to refer to you as JR, unless you would like to tell me your name.
Finally, it would be nice to hear from others as to my actual query. I still find this article quite persuasive, and thank the author for posting it.
A more specific answer to MR. Blankenship's question is no, it is certainly reasonable, IMHO, to oppose Islam. Among others, Dr. Trifkovic has made the case in several books and tapes/cds about the inherently aggressive nature of Islam as it has been and currently is being practiced world-wide. This is not to say that there are smaller elements of Islam that are less fanatical in their opposition to non-Muslims, only that there numbers and influence are insignificant and should not influence our foreign policy. The demographic disparity alone between Islam and the West is cause for great caution and concern.
All this is does not mean that the logical response to Islam is acceptance and promotion of insane neo-con driven imperialism in support of Israeli aims. It seems nigh impossible, even for some posting on this site, to not see this situation as a one or the other choice - i.e. one either is eager to bomb Iran or one believes Islam is a "religion of peace."
We need to view Islam soberly from the vantage point of history and not from the multiculturalist assumptions of some in the West; in the same way we need not pursue an irrational course of empire that flagrantly antagonizes the Moslem world and makes their reaction to America and the West even more hostile.
Mr. Colin:
Thank you for this response. It expresses the view that this is not an either/or proposition much better than I could have. My view is we had no business in the Balkans, in Libya, in the Levant, in Egypt or Iraq.
As regards the different denominations within the Mohammedan world, a book by Yo'av Karny titled Highlanders was enlightening to me. He visited the Caucasus and met quite a few Sufi who seemed to have a tolerant attitude towards Christianity. We never hear about these folks from CAIR, Ibrahim Hooper or MSM.
I certainly believe that U.S. foreign policy should be to intervene as little as possible. It makes no sense to antagonize other nations and peoples. Libya did not attack us. Iraq did not attack us. If the peoples of these nations want a different order than that which currently obtains, it is up to them. God gave them the government they deserve, and He also gave us what we deserve. Which of course brings on the familiar refrain "May God help us all"!
I appreciate your comments and those of Mr. Colin.
Until we have an honest media on key issues of interest and passage of time for investigations and corrections of misinformation, most everyone should doubt their own understanding of the past.
The “unspeakable” in our country is a separate universe of truth. And the truth on all matters of current critical importance is not found in NYT or the WSJ or any mainstream media. In its most egregious, everyday form (excluding 9/11, JFK, Israel or typical elite interests), recall a couple or so years ago (August of 2008) when GWB announced that Russia had attacked South Ossetia, instead of Soviet Georgia attacking South Ossetia, and our entire nation maintained that lie in UN and in all mainstream media for six months or more. In fact, the entire rest of the world, and all readers of alternative news, knew that was a blatant lie ----willfully presented and maintained----just like proverbial old mother Russia. Our government knew better and had access to many agents on the ground. Roughly 2000 people were killed in the assault which was planned and implemented with Israeli advisors. After the murderous attack, Russia sent troops and tanks to the rescue. Yet our entire national dialogue on television with pundits arguing (and rattling nuclear weapons) was based on blatant lie---for a long time !!!
Israel and our country have been trying their best to provoke an attack from Iran and have taken many inexcusable actions to hurt Iran. In fairly recent times, many have worried about a false flag attack to sink our oldest aircraft carrier by an advance missile alleged to have come from Iranian shores. We actually postponed retirement of one carrier to send into precarious position, which many feared was for that express purpose. FYI, during the cold war, the Russians ceased competing on many weapons, but invested in super sophisticated anti-ship missiles and torpedoes---which many felt could not be blocked by our defenses, or at least reliably so. Cheney and his advisors were even reported to have suggested that our troops dress up like Iranians in small boats and feign an attack against our ships. During this time one of our admirals called the neocons “crazies” and he was removed; in fact a whole succession of military leaders have been replaced to suit the neocon agenda. Not too long ago, on GWB’s watch we shot down an Iranian airliner filled with passengers, Flight 655, with no apology as I recall, as it was supposedly in retaliation for Pam Am Lockerbie crash (without any good evidence linking that to Iran). In fact, the best evidence of Lockerbie suggested that it was our CIA. Iranians have had to prepare for numerous threats of attack from Israel and us, but they have been long suffering through many outrageous events, which included recurrent threat of use of nuclear weapons (which loss of our old carrier and murder of maybe 4500 sailors by false flag would provoke). We have been the monster, or rather Israel who controls us.
JR is completely right on the American media lie on Georgia's attack against Russians and South Ossetians on 08/08/08.
On April 8, 2011, 34 Anti- Iranian government Iranians were killed by Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq at Camp Ashraf, with American military equipment and there was not a single American article for days. In this case, The State Department talks of " national sovereignty" and sound as devotees of Westphalia.
I stand corrected, there was an April 8, 2011 NYT story that mentioned the Camp Ashraf massacre, but I wonder into what page it was buried. It happened when Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Iraq. The leader of Camp Ashraf, Ms. Maryam Rajavi, the cultish leader of the Marxist-Islamic group is crying "Srebrenica." Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy has called on Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to be arrested by the International Criminal Court for the 34 deaths.
Mr. Nicoletti has demonstrated an important point on publication but insufficient exposure to register (which requires prominent publication---mainstream---and often/high frequency repetition and affirmation). For example, one could prepare an indictment of Israel from the articles over decades in the NYT written by their best writers, but that message would be the exact opposite of the overall message of the NYT because the piercing truthful articles are buried and outnumbered 5000 to 1 by the opposite messages. Many books touch on the various ways that intelligence agencies control media (including ownership, embedded agents, written agreements with editors or owners, and many subtle ways, including work stoppage or reassignment of writers or refusal to publish items that point wrong way), but one of best is The Missing Times by Terry Hansen (2000) [ostensibly half about media reporting of UFOs but really exposes relationship of media to intelligence agencies---a revolving door] --- often beginning with summer college internships for Ivy league students interested in journalism.
Our downing of Iran’s jumbo jet passenger plane reminded me that the whole topic of downed commercial airliners deserves better exposure. The evidence is overwhelming that our government was involved in the Watergate flight (December 8, 1972) which crashed in Chicago (read The Yankee and Cowboy War by Carl Oglesby) and more recently in the flagrant cover up by our FBI of the crash of (July 17, 1996) TWA Flight 800 which involved hundreds of witnesses to missile from ship (that sped away at more than 30 knots), and the Egypt Air flight 990 ( October 31, 1999, with 26 Egyptian military graduates of Cobra helicopter school on board—to which Israel strongly objected----and by suspicions is linked to Israel’s remote control technology (Dov Zakheim’ s company in advance of his job at Pentagon where he and Rumsfeld announced 2.3 trillon missing on 9/10/2001)---which remote control technology also has suspected role in 9/11 flights (9/11/2001), and per some, to a much earlier (May 6, 1981) USAF ec-135n crash—an AWACS plane slated for Saudia Arabia over the objections of Israel)---to name a few, and many others which point to intelligence agencies blowing many innocent passengers out of the air for very few targets (read Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism)---which is in addition to suspicions (with fewer witnesses and fewer forms of evidence) for isolated Senators or whistleblowers on private planes---(a la Senator Wellstone, who received threat from Cheney, van sped away following shot like noises (suspected to disable electronic devices) and crash, and FBI was on remote scene amazingly quick).
But 9/11 is the first step. That is the key. Most do not realize what an extensive staged operation that was; and better elucidation on that will lead to understanding and cures (and perhaps recoupment of trillions stolen/restoration of country). Thanks for reading my views.
The former never misses an opportunity to peddle anti-Muslim bigotry...
What a complete prat you are. A man is thoroughly entitled to cherish enmity against the antagonists of his people and country, who are, in this case, the inveterate and declared enemies of Christ and His Church. The Albanians, the apostate spawn of Ottoman despotism, are guilty of perennial molestations against the native Christians of the lower Danube. How many wars or massacres has your effete drawing-room cant avoided? Or is it a means of exciting moral stimulus in an otherwise boring, plodding bourgeois life, a mollusc-like existence of accumulation and compromise incapable of conceiving of anything above worldly bustle and secular rules.
Morality without Religion is a useless empty husk, at once both cloying and insipid. It is Religion, which consists of the consecration to a loftier, nobler and supernatural purpose the customs and institutions of the world, that animates and directs morality. It's little wonder that Americans are amoral and aimless; disgusted by it they repudiated an ethical system drawn from a Judaising heresy. Protestant morality is mawkishness ("Poor Haitian children!"), cheque-writing ("I'll send the Haitians some money") and aimless individualistic aggrandisement ("I'll adopt a Haitian kid!"). Examining the "massacre" at Srebenica in this matter-of-fact light, where there are no duties or principles only rules and feelings of emotional gluttony, where nothing is sacred or divine only "legal" and "humanitarian", you confound purposeless violence (say robbing a highway traveller) with that violence which is a necessary, rightful and pious part of the world; the justice of violence done out of duty must be judged by the justice of its consequences, and importantly, by Almighty God.
JR's comments about the ties between media and intelligence agencies are important. The Daily Telegraph reported Qaddafi was on his way to Venezuela and the Times of London was known to have British intelligence ties during WWII. The Nation (Old home of Alexander Cockburn) has reported that the NYT seeks White House approval before any Wikileaks based story.
JR refers to Dr. Webster G. Tarpley, a Princeton Fulbright scholar who knows 6 languages. Tarpley is always an interesting source who is sincere, but I don't know if he is always right. He wrote a report for the Italian Parliament on the Aldo Moro affair, which blamed P2, Propaganda Due, and said the Red Brigades were a tool of NATO "stay behind" networks. His website has him debating Neo-Con tool Daniel Pipes on Press TV. Pipes is conventional in thought and does not appear to be sincere. I would love to know who funds his Philadelphia based Middle East Forum, but I think I already know the answer.
#67: "The Albanians, the apostate spawn of Ottoman despotism..."
To be corrected to "the Bosnians", but the argument remains unchanged.
Mr. Arnold, your poetic words and mastering of the English language remind me of Father Johannes Grun, (A native German speaker) who now teaches Old Testament at the SSPX seminary in Australia. Vivat Christus Rex!
Correction to my faulty memory: Iranian flight 655 was shot down in July of 1988, during Reagan's term but while GHWB was running for President by USS Vincennes killing 290 passengers including 66 children. It was an Airbus A 300 which the crew of our missile crusier somehow allegedly mistook as an attacking F-14 Tomcat Fighter. The Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am was six months later in December of 1988 and thus was not linked. A Libyaian was convicted for Lockerbie, but later articles focused on computer board debris which allegedly pointed to our CIA. But the overall point is that this (flight 655) was a grevious wound to Iran----not to mention our CIA 1953 coup to topple the duly elected Mosaddegh as Prime Minister and instal the Shah of Iran as our man instead.
#60
"The point you make about Iran is an interesting one, and is appreciated. Do you have a theory as to why this is?"
If I may offer a partial explanation:
Iran is a plurimillenarian civilization whose cultural influence from Anatolia in the West to Central Asia in the East is comparable to that of Greece and Rome in Europe and that of China in East Asia. Surrounded by enemies, the peoples of the Iranian plateau could hardly afford to be a nation of pacifists. Yet their wars, both before Islamicization and after, have mostly been defensive in nature, fending off ferocious steppe nomads from Central Asia to the north, savage mountaineers from Afghanistan in the east, and their perennial imperial rivals to the west (Romans, and later Ottomans). The last time a Persian Emperor launched himself on grandiose campaigns of conquest was Nadir Shah who ruled from 1736-1747 (so not 2000 years of peace...but still a pretty good record for non-belligerence).
Mr. Blankenship, the answer to your question can be found in Dr. Trifkovic's book, Defeating Jihad, in which he says that we must keep the U.S out of Mecca and keep Mecca out of the U.S. Islam is not just a religion, like Communism, it is a political ideology that is not compatible with our republican form of government. There is no separation of Church and state. Islam is the state.