During World War II, Japan’s imperialist military invaded Northeast China and afterward spread throughout Southeast Asia, then on to an ill-fated attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese crimes were many during the war and included the coerced services of ianfu (comfort women) for Japanese troops, slave labor, and experimentation on living humans.Today Japanese right-wingers clamor for a re-expansion of Japanese militarism; prime minister Abe Shinzo pays visits to a shrine venerating Japanese dead — among them war criminals; the Diet demonstrates belligerence toward North Korea, a country Japan had formerly occupied; Okinawans’ (Japanese living on the southern archipelago) call for the removal of ...
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“We could become the first country to go fascist through free elections.” — William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third ReichGenerally, we avoid using the word “fascism” in polite company, and until recently, a person pointing out parallels between Nazi Germany and the current United States would invite elevated eyelids along with the outworn charge of sounding like a “conspiracy theorist“. The current electoral cycle seems to be changing that, so I will trust that now is the right time to convey some ideas I’ve been marinating regarding fascism in my US Homeland. The ruling plutocrats are clearly ferrying the ...
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Genocide accusations are, it would seem, the latest fashion spreading out of the Balkans. On December 5, a former minister in the “government” of NATO occupied and administered Kosovo, Ivan Todosijević, who happens to be an otherwise occupation friendly and cooperative ethnic Serb, was sentenced to a two-year prison term. The court found him guilty of making what it considered the outrageous claim that the so-called genocidal “Račak massacre,” which in 1999 triggered NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, was an imposture. Since the trial began just two days before, by Balkan standards the swiftly reached verdict was remarkably expeditious, suggesting the ...
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Split, Croatia, September 14th, 2018: "Kill Serb" written on the car with the plates from SerbiaThe mugshots show Ivo Goldstein, a Jewish librarian and book dealer, looking bright-eyed and calm — even after nine days of confinement in a Croatian police cell. One of the prints bears the number 28888 and a date: April 21, 1941.Seventy-six years after they were taken by a police photographer, the photos hang as a triptych on the bedroom wall of Goldstein’s son, Daniel, in a drab apartment block in Zagreb’s Zaprudje neighborhood.Daniel, 85, is a historian and human rights activist. He was nine when ...
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There is nothing extraordinary in the science in Serbia. It would not deserve particular attention of the European scientific community, if it were not for the fact that the case of Serbia turns out extraordinary, indeed.Let us start with an extraordinary question: would it be possible a state in contemporary Europe to sucumbe to a fashist rule (or communist or any other totalitarian government)? The answer is extraordinary too - yes. The case in point is Serbia.The trick is marked by Kosovo (see, e.g. P. Grujić, Kosovo Knot, 2014). When this southern province of Serbia, Kosovo and Metohia (Kosovo in ...
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One of the most steadfast beliefs regarding the United States is that it is a democracy. Whenever this conviction waivers slightly, it is almost always to point out detrimental exceptions to core American values or foundational principles. For instance, aspiring critics frequently bemoan a “loss of democracy” due to the election of clownish autocrats, draconian measures on the part of the state, the revelation of extraordinary malfeasance or corruption, deadly foreign interventions, or other such activities that are considered undemocratic exceptions. The same is true for those whose critical framework consists in always juxtaposing the actions of the U.S. government ...
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“Show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.” – Popular conservative Sun (a British daily newspaper) commenting on the homeless war refugees from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. who are fleeing their militarily de-stabilized and devastated countries after their homes and homelands had been reduced to bloody rubble by soldiers obeying orders from their commanders (including NATO and American “interventionism” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc, etc).Hopkins appears to be in good company. But she was probably just paraphrasing what she had been hearing from a multitude of ultra-nationalist ...
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established to prosecute culpable individuals for crimes of war, against humanity and genocide.Its mandate calls for “end(ing) impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern.”US and Israeli officials are guilty of the highest of high crimes. Yet none of their officials ever were held accountable – not by their own courts or the ICC.The international body operates on the principle of complementarity. It can only prosecute when governments won’t or can’t – even against officials of non ICC-member countries like America and Israel.On December 31, 2000, Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute ...
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On December 7, 1941 the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by Japanese forces. President Roosevelt, in his well known Infamy speech delivered on December 8, claimed the attack was “unprovoked” and, on this basis, asked for and received a declaration of war from the U.S. Congress. But the evidence suggests the attack was not unprovoked. On the contrary, it was carefully and systematically provoked in order to manipulate the U.S. population into joining WWII. This provocation game, spectacularly successful in 1941, is currently being played with North Korea. The stakes are high.Many good people are reluctant to look critically ...
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Note: We are republishing this essay by S. Brian Willson describing the true history of genocide in the United States which stands in stark contrast to the myth of Thanksgiving because of its popularity with readers and its educational value.The Defining and Enabling Experience of Our “Civilization” As we again plan to celebrate what US “Americans”call Thanksgiving, let us pause for a moment of reflection. Let us recognize that accounts of the first Thanksgiving are mythological, and that the holiday is actually a grotesque celebration of our arrogant ethnocentrism built on genocide.Native Americans in the Caribbean greeted their 1492 European invaders ...
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Yada…yada…yada. The discussion on the unprovoked and planned aggression by Georgia on South Ossetia is futile and moot because Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced last week that the Russian Government would recognize the independence and freedom of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 25, 2008, both houses of the Russian Parliament or Duma voted unanimously to recognize the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 26, 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that the government of the Russian Federation officially recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.Save your rhetoric. Georgia has lost those areas permanently. Ossetians and ...
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Taking the extraordinary USA and EU economic sanctions against Russia and low oil prices since 2014 into account, Russia’s economic outlook looks excellent going forward while that of Trump’s America looks bleak, to put it mildly. Paraphrasing the memorable 1992 Presidential candidates debate between a then-young William Jefferson Clinton and George H.W. Bush, “It’s the debt, stupid.”In the past few years too many US economists and analysts such as Moody’s Credit Rating have tried to dismiss the economy of the Russian Federation as a near-bankrupt Soviet-era oil and gas-dependent economy, devastated by the 2014 collapse in oil price. This is ...
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As Europe’s longest ruler, it is a surprise that Milo Djukanovic is only 58. He has served as prime minister or president of various iterations of Montenegro since 1991 – spanning the collapse of Yugoslavia and across and beyond independence of the nation in 2006.What is the secret to Mr Djukanovic’s success? The answer is depressingly predictable: clientelism and the buying – or, depending on your perspective, stealing – of power.The beauty of Montenegro hides this ugly truth. Most know it as a tourist idyll with pristine beaches, crystal lakes and picturesque mountains. But holidaymakers rarely realize they enter less ...
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Should anyone have had any doubts, the barbaric murder of US photojournalist James Foley fully exposes the true nature of the Islamist terrorists menacing the Middle East. Unfortunately, the savagery exhibited in what happened to James Foley was not unique—beheadings and suicide bombings have become standard tactics in the Islamist terrorists’ way of war. Just weeks before Foley’s murder Kosovo jihadi Lavdrim Muhaxheri posted similar photos of himself “in action” in Iraq. Such Islamist-terrorist ritual beheadings were seen during the Bosnian jihad as well, when extremists would produce “promotional videos” of their efforts showing the decapitation of Serb prisoners, or, in another case, ...
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For decades, much of the world seemed to believe the fairy tale that the United States was a neutral broker, working for a solution to the issues plaguing Palestine and Israel. The U.S. sponsored endless rounds of negotiations, ostensibly looking for an end to these issues.Before this writer points out the nonsense of that belief, allow him to state two, self-evident (one would think) truths:(1) No broker is needed. All that is required is for Israel to adhere to international law. This means removing all the illegal settlers, ending the blockade of the Gaza Strip, allowing all Palestinian refugees to ...
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In an email sent to his business partner and Democratic fundraiser Jeffrey Leeds, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote of Hillary Clinton, “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State during Barack Obama’s first term was an unmitigated disaster for many nations around the world. Neither the Donald Trump campaign nor the corporate media have adequately described how a number of countries around the world suffered horribly from Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy decisions.Millions of people were adversely harmed by Clinton’s misguided policies and her “play-to-pay” operations involving favors in return for donations ...
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NATO - The North Atlantic Treaty - was formed by the US and European countries after WW2 as a defensive alliance with the simple goal of deterring a Soviet Russian attack or invasion of western democracies. However, ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has been used in several aggressive and offensive military campaigns against countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. NATO bombed a European country, Serbia (as part of then Yugoslavia), invaded an Asian country, Afghanistan, and attacked and destroyed a Middle Eastern country Libya.In 1995 NATO launched its first offensive bombing campaign ...
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From a geopolitical perspective, the war on Yugoslavia in the 1990s was about restructuring Southeast Europe after the end of the Cold War. To this end, the US even deployed the combatants with which it had previously fought the USSR in Afghanistan and which it would later call „Al Qaeda“.The political and media propaganda regarding the war on Yugoslavia has been well researched by now. Interestingly, however, many media outlets and commentators are still trying to uphold the official narrative of the time, in contrast to the later war in Iraq, for example.There may be various reasons for this. On ...
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The conflicts that engulfed the former Yugoslavia still remain unresolved in the political arena and open to Western political shenanigans and covert meddling from Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Bosnia and Kosovo. Orthodox Christianity faces many attacks and only a naïve individual would claim that America and the hands of Turkey and Saudi Arabia are clean.Central Bosnia in 2016: Flags of the ISISAmerica and other Western nations did little to stop Turkey invading Cyprus in 1974 and creating a de-facto nation and altering the demographics of northern Cyprus and using this area for military purposes.Irrespective of the rights and wrongs ...
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Bulgaria says there is no Macedonian language but rather it is a Bulgarian dialect. There is academic consensus that the Ancient Macedonians were Greek. Albanians claim nearly half of North Macedonia in their project for Greater Albania. North Macedonia is a complex and complicated country, but despite this fact, on Friday, it became NATO’s thirtieth member, with Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, saying “North Macedonia is now part of the NATO family, a family of thirty nations and almost one billion people. A family based on the certainty that, no matter what challenges we face, we are all ...
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