Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins

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TiM GW Bulletin 98/6-6

June 22, 1998

A Schizophrenic to Some, a Hero to Others

Milosevic: "A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma"

Mira Markovic: The Power Behind the Throne

PHOENIX, ARIZONA

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Topic: BALKAN AFFAIRS

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FOREWORD

As you may have noticed from the TiM GW Bulletins 98/6-3 and 98/6-4, your editor has just returned from a trip to Serbia, where he had met with scores of influential political, military, religious, media and arts personalities, as well as given a number of interviews to the local electronic and print media. Over the next several weeks, TiM is planning to run several pieces which will draw on experiences and conversations which have taken place during his visit. Here is the second of such articles...

BELGRADE, Serbia - Two gleaming white "corporate jets" with Yugoslav flags and crests painted on them were parked on the tarmac of the Belgrade airport on Monday, June 15, only about a hundred yards from the British Airways commercial flight which was about to take this writer from Belgrade to London. Two men, dressed in business suits, arms around each other's shoulders, as good friends in Eastern Europe tend to do, kept walking around one of the jets, evidently engaged in an animated conversation. Finally, they kissed three times on the cheeks, as Orthodox Christians tend to do. One of them, carrying a small briefcase, boarded the jet. The other walked back to a black Audi parked nearby.

"Bet these are some of the people accompanying (Slobodan) Milosevic on his trip to Moscow to meet (Boris) Yeltsin," this writer said to his companion.

Indeed, they were, as we found out later on from the British press. The man whom the U.S. government and media love to hate, yet treat as if he were the King of the Balkans, was off to see Boris, the Traitor of Russia. Who was supposed to get "Slobo," the Traitor of Serbia, to swallow some of the bad-testing NWO medicine about Kosovo, supposedly on account of traditional Russian-Serbian friendship, as western media allege (contrary to factual historical evidence in terms of government relations). Yet it was treason of their respective nations' interests that makes these two former communists birds of a feather.

What this writer did not know at the time he observed the proceedings at the Belgrade airport, however, was that a flying charade of 85 NATO planes had just finished its aerial saber-rattling demonstration over Albania and Macedonia, two of the post-Cold War vassal countries conquered by NWO dollars rather than bullets. Was that what the animated conversation between the two Serbian officials was about?

Mysteries and conjectures like that are as typical in the Balkans as night and day. And for a good reason. For, the man who seems to be "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" (Milosevic), to borrow Winston Churchill's 1939 description of the Soviet Union, revels in his role as the Balkans traffic cop between the East and the West, just as his communist predecessor, Josip Broz Tito, did during the Cold War.

But who is really Slobodan Milosevic? A communist Satan, or a nationalist hero? A pragmatic statesman, or a bumbling strategist? Like Americans, most Serbs have never met their president. But unlike his American counterpart, Milosevic rarely speaks in public or even on TV. Nevertheless, like Americans, most Serbs have strong opinions about their chief executive.

"(Slobodan) Milosevic is a schizophrenic; no doubt about it," declared a 66-year old doctor, who claimed that Serbia president's mannerisms are symptomatic of many psychiatric patients he had seen. The doctor may have a point, as both of Milosevic's parents committed suicide, something which this medical expert maintains is characteristic of patients in an advanced stage of this mental illness.

Yet some Serbs, typically older people who are members or sympathizers of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) - a successor to the old Communist Party of Yugoslavia, still regard Milosevic as a national hero, ignoring his repeated betrayals of the fellow-Serbs in the Krajina and Bosnia. But an increasing number of younger Serbs, many of them the old communist geezers' own children, led the nearly four-month long anti-Milosevic demonstrations in the streets of Serbia during the winter of '96/'97. They hate "Slobo's" guts.

"Milosevic has been a disaster for Serbia," said one 33-year old University of Belgrade assistant professor. "Were it not for him, Serbia would be a part of the West now." Freedom-loving Americans should keep in mind that the "Slobo-Saddam" posters were first displayed in Belgrade during the March 1991 anti-Milosevic demonstrations, not in Washington, DC or on Wall Street. So our above Belgrade academic source may have a point. Were it not for Milosevic, Serbia may be a part of the West now. But were it not for the West, Milosevic would no longer be a part of Serbia now.

Which is why the West tacitly supported Milosevic. The U.S.-led New World Order elite, needed a bogeyman in the Balkans so as to justify its trampling on a small country which was a founding member of the United Nations and the U.S. ally in two world wars of the 20th century. And so that the U.S. could now threaten to bomb the Serbs over Kosovo - in total disregard of international law, national sovereignty, or even the United Nations Security Council resolutions.

In return, Milosevic sold out Serbia's national interests for the same reason the globalist U.S. government has been selling out America's national interests - to stay in power. Why do you suppose the U.S. government refused to back openly the massive pro-democracy demonstrators' calls for Milosevic's resignation last winter? Because Milosevic has now learned when to wag his tail or bare his teeth, depending on what his NWO masters need in a given situation. Without him as a villain, the U.S. anti-Serbian policy would be shown for what it is - a genocide against an entire people, which is what the old and the new proposed sanctions are.

This vile NWO-pariah relationship is symbiotic in reverse, too. Every time a new crisis is manufactured, it enables local ruler to usurp more powers from his people on account of a national emergency. For the same reason, manufactured crises, such as the current Kosovo one, or the February one in Iraq, actually benefit the dictators like Milosevic or Saddam Hussein. They give them a chance to consolidate or increase their power over their own people.

I don't know Saddam Hussein. I've never met the man. But I have met Milosevic one-on-one. Twice. Once in January 1990. Another time in February 1992. Both times, after several hours of conversation, this former communist dictator left me with an impression of being woefully out of it when it came to foreign policy or world affairs.

Back in January 1990, for example, Milosevic told me that, in his opinion, the U.S. government was supposedly interested in the Kosovo Albanians' cause because Albania (geographically) denied the Soviet Union a direct access to the Mediterranean Sea.

I was stunned by Milosevic's ignorance, especially coming on the heels of Romania's Ceauscescu execution, which took place less than two weeks before our meeting. And considering that the Berlin Wall came down only two months before that.

"Hasn't that foreign policy card gotten a bit yellow by now?" I asked.

"Yes, it has. But the State Department bureaucrats take a long time to catch up to the real world," he replied.

Maybe they do. But it is obviously taking even longer for Serbia's president to figure out which end is up in global affairs.

The next time we met, in February 1992, just before the Bosnian war broke out, I warned Milosevic that he himself may face charges as a war criminal one day unless he condemned such crimes by the Serbs. He said he already had, grinning and making some notes about my comment in his pad. He evidently either didn't think he'd be prosecuted, or didn't care.

That's when it first started to dawn on me. The man could be a part of the con. The NWO elite need their "Hitlers," "Stalins," "Saddams," "Maos," so as to justify their basic foreign policy - PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL COMMERCE. Foreign wars and subsequent "peacekeeping" engagements are good for business of the global merchants of death.

This message has not been lost on the Serbs, either. A reporter from a TV station in southern Serbia said in an interview filmed during my recent visit to Belgrade, that "some people around here think that Milosevic is America's man. What do you think about that?"

"I don't know if he is America's man. As far as I am aware, he is Mira Markovic's man."

The reporter doubled up laughing so hard that the filming had to be stopped until she composed herself again.

"Mira Markovic? Who is that?," you may be wondering. She is Serbia's Hillary Clinton; the power behind the throne. Still a devout communist and proud of it, Serbia's tiny First Lady is spinning her big man around her little finger like a top on a table top. Many of Milosevic's flip-flops, which demonstrated that he does not have a consistent policy on almost any issue, are directly attributable to his wife's influence.

A senior Yugoslav official, for example, recalled the many hours which it took for him finally to move Milosevic from 'Position A' to 'Position B' on a foreign policy issue. "But the next day, after he had spent the night with that witch, he was back to 'Position A' again," this official bitterly lamented another Milosevic turn about face.

The same senior official had told this writer in an earlier conversation about Mira Markovic's trip to India at the height of the 1997 election campaign. The purpose of the trip? A visit to a crystal ball fortune teller in India from whom she wanted to find out who would win. Other sources have also told me that Markovic had traveled to India for the same reason at the height of the Belgrade anti-Milosevic demonstration in the Winter '96/'97.

The official also said that he had been observing and analyzing Milosevic for a long time. "I believe that he is a psychotic who believes in occult power. As does his wife. Milosevic says he does not believe in God, but he and his wife do believe in some supernatural power." Enter a Serbian version of "voodoo communism."

"She seems to have built her persona with smoke and mirrors," the Los Angeles Times reported on Dec. 26, 1996. "Markovic is an academic who is said to have purchased her credentials; her political party claims to be leftist but is led by the country's wealthiest and most crass entrepreneurs?"

"She calls herself Mira ("peace"), having adopted the nom de guerre used by her mother, a Communist resistance fighter in World War II who, shortly after her baby's birth, was shot as a traitor for having revealed names of fellow partisans to the Gestapo," the LA Times also said. "Rejected by her father, an important party leader, Mira became fast friends with the young Milosevic, who also suffered childhood tragedy when his father committed suicide. His mother committed suicide a decade later."

Markovic's influence on her husband has also driven many talented people away from Milosevic. Brana Crncevic, for example, a well known Serbia writer and the first non-communist member of the old, communist Yugoslavia's Parliament, initially supported Milosevic while the latter was playing the Serbian nationalist card (roughly in the 1988-1992 period). After a while, however, Milosevic's wife even got to Crncevic. As he submitted his resignation as a Member of Parliament, he reportedly explained his reasons as follows:

"I resign for health reasons. Not mine... the wife's. Not my wife's..." The sarcastic reference, of course, was to the (mental) health of Milosevic's wife.

Mira Markovic in Serbia may rival Hillary Clinton in America as possibly the country's most hated women. But not all people speak badly of her. Zoran Djindjic, for example, the leader the Democratic Party in Serbia, told this writer during a July 1994 dinner conversation in Belgrade, that he knew Markovic quite well, as she was one of his professors at the Belgrade University. Djindjic thought that she was very smart, which is why she is pulling the strings behind Milosevic.

But Djindjic added that Markovic has no personal charisma. "She stutters and has a tremendous stage fright when speaking in public," he said. "She is also extremely short, even for a woman."

What irked Djindjic more than Markovic's pulling the strings behind Milosevic was the Serbian president's aloofness and disdain for his people. "They have to be beaten like cattle twice a day," Milosevic apparently told Djindjic in a 1993 conversation. "Frankly, I am getting a little tired of it," the Serbian strongman added.

This impression squares with a part of this writer's conversation with Milosevic in February 1992 - the one in which I warned him that he may be eventually prosecuted for war crimes unless he acted to stop them. While this writer was critical of the so-called Vance's Plan, which ended the war in Croatia in late 1991, but internationalized the Yugoslav civil war by injecting the U.N. "peacekeeping" troops into the Balkans, Milosevic defended his acceptance the plan.

"And now, when the 'blue helmets' arrive, the Serbian people will be safe," he said. "Isn't that a good outcome?"

Well, six years later, with more than half a million Serbs ethnically cleansed from Croatia and Bosnia, Milosevic's 1992 naivete looks more like stupidity. Or treason, even without his subsequent betrayal of the Bosnian Serbs (in the summer of 1994, and again at Dayton in 1995). But what Milosevic said next was even more staggering. For, it revealed his callousness about human life.

"And just think, we've accomplished all that with a loss of only 1,000 lives," he gloated about his wisdom in accepting the U.N. deployment.

Yet, this writer cringed. "Only 1,000 lives?" Even though that figure was a gross understatement of actual Serb losses, these 1,000 lost lives meant many thousands of bereaved wives, husbands, children, parents, brothers, sisters... a fact which was obviously lost on this power-hungry man.

"That's all?" this writer replied in bewilderment. "And what about the Croatian losses?"

"They were much heavier," Milosevic agreed. "In Vukovar alone, they lost about 4,000 soldiers. But they were mostly the 'black shirt' Hercegovina Croatians, the most cruel 'Ustashe' (descendents of the murderous Nazi-collaborators in WW II). I am not exactly sorry for them." He added that Croatian forces also included all sorts of mercenaries, even some blacks.

Well, black or white, "Ustashe" or "Chetnik" - they all bleed the same. And their families all weep the same. I know. I saw some victims bleed and their families weep...

Which brings us the full circle back to Kosovo, where the Balkan conflict started in the 1980s. Once again, the victims - both Albanian and Serbian - are bleeding. Once again, their families are weeping. Once again, the media are feeding us lies about what's really happening.

The day this writer left on his trip to Serbia (June 3), the Arizona Republic carried a story which included a photo of a grieving Serbian family at the funeral of their son, a Serb policemen killed by the Albanian insurgents. But the story headline read: "Weeping Kosovo refugees describe 'ethnic cleansing'; Serbs 'shell first... then they burn'." No wonder an old native Arizonan told this writer's daughter at yesterday's Father's Day dinner, "you're Serbian? Aren't the Serbs the bad guys?"

While one cannot fault an old Arizonan for paying attention to only to the headlines, an identical reaction by a senior Washington-based CNN correspondent, when he learned that his niece had a Serbian friend, certainly cannot be excused as a case of ignorance. It was malice. It was racism. And it was wrong.

Here is, for example, what Charley Reese, a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote in his June 18 column. "Kosovo is Serbian territory and has been for centuries. The Albanian majority are mostly illegal immigrants or non-citizens. They have often made life miserable for native Serbs. The Albanian separatists are wrong; the Serbs are right."

Reese also said that "the efforts of Serbia to retain its own territory is none of NATO's business. It's not our business either. If anyone is deserving of assistance, it is the Serbs, not the Albanian separatists."

Patrick Buchanan, a 1996 Republican presidential candidate and also a nationally syndicated columnist, expressed similar sentiments in his June 17 Washington Times column, "What vital U.S. interest in Kosovo?" Buchanan concluded that there was none. Which is why "America should stay out" (of Kosovo). "Kosovo is not our quarrel; it is not our war," he argued, adding that the U.S. had no right to kill either Serbs or Albanians.

Buchanan also lashed out against the Republican Congress. "Many in that body are today whining that President Clinton moved unilaterally into Bosnia, and they had no choice but to back him," he wrote. "Well, now they do have a choice. Congress should vote this week to instruct the president that he has no authority to wage war against Yugoslavia unless Congress votes its approval."

Hear, hear... Nor against any other sovereign country. And especially not against our own, evidently not so sovereign citizens, such as those killed by the U.S. government agents at Waco or Ruby Ridge. It's high time that "never again"-slogan be applied first and foremost to our government's (mis)adventures.

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Also, check out... "Biting the Hand That Feeds You", "A Balkan Affairs Potpourri", "Put the U.N. Justice on Trial", "International Justice 'Progresses' from Kidnapping to Murder", "Milosevic: 'A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery'...", "Kosovo Lie Allowed to Stand", "New World Order's Inquisition in Bosnia", "Kosovo Heating Up""Decani Monastery Under Siege?", "Murder on Wall Street""Kosovo: 'Bosnia II'""What If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot?", "Green Interstate - Not Worth American Lives", and/or "Clinton arme secrètement les musulmans bosniaques"

Or Djurdjevic's WASHINGTON TIMES columns: "An Ugly Double Standard in Kosovo Conflict?", "NATO's Bullyboys", "Kosovo: Why Are We Involved?", and "Ginning Up Another Crisis"