Political Views,

Milosvic: First Victim of US Franchised Street Revolutions "Dies" in Western Custody 
By K Gajendra Singh

"Those who control the present control the past." George Orwell in 1984

Western leaders and media , corporate controlled in US and government dominated in UK and Europe are having a field day after the death in the Hague tribunal jail of Serbian nationalist hero and former President of Serbia and of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic. Side by side another US created Kangaroo court , against all international norms and law ,is orchestrating the trial of Saddam Hussein , to titillate western audiences ,fed daily with gory violence and sex on their TV and film screens.

Western media describes Milosevic as the Butcher of the Balkans , but what about the well established  butchers of Falluja , Baghdad , verily , Iraq ( and Afghanistan) under the so called 'Operation Iraqi Freedom ',inspired by God . Then they talk about Mullahs , Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism ,which in any case was seeded, nurtured , and blossomed under US led West and others in the nurseries of Afghanistan and given fillip since March 2003 by the invasion of  Iraq.

What else would you expect when the Big Five, the global media conglomeration of Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, and News Corporation, which when combined now control approximately 90% of the world's headlines. Such control has undermined the foundations of democracy in USA. But for the rest of the world, the unidirectional war of words is as corrosive and deadly as the collateral damage of premeditated preventive wars.  

Allan Little of BBC News , wrote from Belgrade that "Slobodan Milosevic is like a character written by Goethe. The arc of his life, his rise and fall, is Faustian. He made a pact with the twin demons of Balkan nationalism and war. The demons propelled him to power and, for a while, kept him there. But he lost control of them, and they destroyed him in the end." In spite of millions of UK citizens marching against US-UK led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the BBC gave only 2% time to antiwar views in its coverage .Nationalist leaders are not popular with Western governments and their media.

Ramsey Clark ,a former US Attorney General, after paying respects to Milosevic's body in Belgrade said that the war crimes trial of Milosevic and the legal process against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein were "flawed," "Both commanders were courageous enough to fight more powerful countries," said Clark "History will prove Milosevic was right. Charges are just that, charges. The trial did not have facts," he insisted. "Milosevic was demonised. I have seen too much demonisation of that man, especially by media," added Clark.

It is also a futile Western attempt to earn brownie points by trumpeting how Albanians , Kosovars , Croats and even Serbs suffered under Milosevic. Muslims and even Balkan Muslims are not fooled. An Albanian diplomat told me recently that it was only a cover to hide the hell like sufferings being inflicted daily on the Iraqi people by Western occupation forces and since decades Israel terror acts against Palestinians, so described even by Israeli 'ally' like Turkish Prime Minister Tayep Erdogan.

Milosevic Funeral ;

Citing an official of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) Xinhua reported that over 50 foreign delegations were to attend Milosevic's funeral in his hometown of Pozarevac, some 80 km east of Belgrade. The dignitaries would include Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Russian State Duma Vice-President Sergei Baburin, Ramsey Clark, and others . Nearly 100,000 people from Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnian Serb republic were reportedly present at the burial ceremony . According to unofficial estimates, some 80,000 people had paid their respects to Milosevic's coffin on display at the Revolution Museum in Belgrade.

The Serb Orthodox Church, which backed Milosevic and his nationalism, will hold a funeral ceremony in Pozarevac, something of a surprise for a man who was not thought to be religious.

Milosevic's widow and political companion, Mira Markovic, now in Moscow but with an arrest warrant for her in Belgrade and their son, Marko did not attend the funeral. Daughter Marija, who lives in the neighbouring republic of Montenegro, said that her father would not have wanted to be buried at the house in Pozarevac, belonging  to Mira's family, and said that he should be buried at his ancestral village in Montenegro.

In the break up of a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi- linguistic and multi-cultural nation created by Marshal Tito of southern Slavs , US joined West European nations ,the former to destroy Yugoslavia , an Orthodox Slav nation in Europe ,friendly to Orthodox Slav Russia , the  latter to get back its influence and control over the Balkans , first snatched away by Ottoman Turks , who twice knocked at the Gates of Vienna . That memory still clouds European judgment on secular Turkish republic's entry into EU.

In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the federation, followed by the Republics of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The large Serb minorities in Croatia and Bosnia demanded to stay in Yugoslavia based on the same right of self-determination claimed by their Croat and Muslim neighbours. The Serbs of Croatia started organizing their own autonomy as early as mid-1990, and they were supported in this by the Yugoslav government. The recognition of Slovenia and Croatia by European powers was the first spark in the fire which consumed Yugoslavia and led to the ensuing blood bath in the Balkans.

In 1995, Miloševic negotiated the Dayton Agreement in the name of the Bosnian Serbs. Armed actions by Albanian separatist groups and Serbian police and military counter-action in Serbia`s previously autonomous province of Kosovo culminated in escalating warfare in 1998, NATO air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between March and June 1999, and finally a full withdrawal of all Yugoslav security forces from the province, now ruled by a European Viceroy and a veritable tinderbox.

After the collapse of the USSR and the reunification of Germany in 1991, a resurgent German state  saw its interests in the Balkans—historically a German sphere of influence—best served through the promotion of secession by Slovenia—the most prosperous Yugoslav region—and then Croatia.

Washington, which first opposed Germany's intervention and the breakup of Yugoslavia, got in the act itself in order to further its goal of hegemony over the former Eastern bloc countries and open them to globalisation. USA became the chief sponsor of Bosnian independence, and later backed Albanian nationalism and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army in the run-up to the 1999 US-NATO war. It even transported Muslim Jihadis from Afghanistan to fight the Serbs .Many have married locally and thus become sleepers , a possible menace to Europe itself .

Those with the knowledge of Yugoslav history and politics had warned that this piecemeal breakup of the Yugoslav federation would inevitably lead to civil war. The forging of new nation states based upon ethnic nationalism led inexorably to the practice called "ethnic cleansing."

Washington, having thrown its support to Yugoslavia's dissolution, targeted pro Russian Orthodox Slav Serbia, which defended the unitary state, as its enemy. The US opposed ethnic cleansing only when it was carried out by Serbs, while actively supporting it when Croatia, Bosnia and the Kosovo Albanians pursued identical aims through the same bloody methods.

The tribunal itself was established and financed by the very same powers that launched the illegal war against Yugoslavia and carried out what were clearly war crimes—the bombing of civilian targets—during that intervention. The victor's justice!

Milosevic was toppled on Oct. 5, 2000, through a US franchised street revolution  He was arrested and transferred on June 28, 2001 to the Hague , by US installed Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic , against vehement opposition by President Kostunica, now Serbia's Prime Minister. Djindjic thus signed his death warrant by this ignoble act and was very soon assassinated. Belgrade was promised Western aid for this ignoble act , most of it was  cornered by the mafia style new elite , with masses condition , with 60% unemployment, getting worse .

Indian diplomat Chinmay Gharekhan, who was adviser to two UN Secretary Generals during the Balkan wars of 1990s , in his book on United Nations ,the Hexagonal Table , observed that none of parties to the conflict were free from blame in intensifying the violence.

Western Crusade – a present day repeat ;

In a replay of historic Western Crusades vs Jihad , the current US led campaign has followed the old pattern. Western Christianity against Islam and even Eastern Orthodox Christianity and their lands ,except that unlike the first Crusades , when the Jews were mercilessly butchered by Crusaders  , they are now with the Western Christians as the driving force  .In the fourth Crusade called by Pope Innocent III in 1198, the Crusader army sacked Constantinople , the capital of Orthodox  Byzantine Empire , dealing it a mortal blow and making it easier for the Muslim Turks to over run it . The 119 attacks were exploited to establish US bases around the Russian Federation and puppet rulers installed in former Russian strategic space beginning with Serbia . This was successfully implemented in Georgia and Ukraine , with Georgia being encouraged to let Muslim Chechen rebels use it territory against Russia. Recent Popes , some inveterate travelers around the world and the heads of the Russian Orthodox Church , Byzantine's successors, still remain un-reconciled .

So it was but natural for Slobodan Milosevic's family and brother to find shelter in Moscow. Ironically it was former Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin , sent to negotiate between Milosevic and US led Nato forces  and about whose massive bank balances in Western Banks , Financial Times had made allegations , but threats to sue the paper amounted to nothing , who sold out Milosevic . Curiously Chernomyrdin was the Russian Ambassador in Kiev, when pro West Victor Yushchenko , married to a former US State department employee was installed through the so called 'Orange Revolution' in place of pro-Russian Victor Yukanovic.