Serb “Ostrich Revolution” Was Anything But Spontaneous (Oct 11, 2000)

logolittle.jpg (9114 bytes)

TiM GW Bulletin 2000/10-4

Oct. 11, 2000

The DOS Vote Fraud: Ballots Go Up in Smoke?

Serb "Ostrich Revolution" Was Anything But Spontaneous

Serb “Revolutionaries” Munched on NATO MRE’s; “The Professional” (2000 Edition): Another Change of “Praetorian Guard;” Germany to Send Its Bundeswehr (Army) to “Help Serbia”

Belgrade 5. Belgrade Soccer Fan Boasts about Burning BallotsOctober 12, 2000

London 7. London Paper on Djindjic: “American Stooge” Behind KostunicaOctober 12, 2000

Berlin 8. Germany to Send Its Bundeswehr (Army) to “Help Serbia”October 12, 2000

Belgrade 9. Belgrade Museum Also Ransacked by “Revolutionaries”October 12, 2000

Pristina 10. Kosovo Albanians Threaten New War If Yugoslav Troops ReturnOctober 12, 2000

BELGRADE, Oct. 10 - The Serb “ostrich revolution” that followed the Yugoslav electoral “demo farce,” and culminated in the Oct. 5 storming and partial burning of the Yugoslav parliament, was about as spontaneous as the Rose Bowl or May Day parades. It was anything but spontaneous.

Nor was it carried out by the Belgrade residents, as it appeared to viewers around the world who watched the TV images of the storming of the Yugoslav parliament. It was a carefully planned and staged show, carried out by well paid mercenaries brought in from Serbia’s interior, with the western “black ops” directors pulling their strings from the background, and greasing their palms.

Text Box: Velimir Ilic (highlighted) in front of the Yugoslav parliament building

One of the leaders of such “democratic” mercenaries was Velimir Ilic, the mayor of Cacak (pronounced "Chachak," a small town in Central Serbia, some 60 miles south of Belgrade. Ilic, who was swept into power in the 1996 local elections, is a former member of Vuk Draskovic’s pro-western Serbian Renewal Movement (a Serb political party). He now heads up the New Serbia party, which is said to be close to Zoran Djindjic.

(In fact, the Times comments about how Ilic introduced Djindjic and the former Yugoslav Army chief, Gen. Momcilo Perisic, to his paratroopers).

In an unusually candid interview with the New York Times, which ran in the daily’s Oct. 9 issue under the headline, “How Small Town Turned Out for Kostunica at a Key Time,” this boastful “democratic” "Cacak Stormtrooper" gushed out gobs of new details that confirmed what we have been saying all along - that the entire Kostunica “election-revolution” show was a “bought and paid for by the West” charade.

Here are some excerpts from the Times report (also, see the photos at our web site):

“It was personal contribution from Cacak, said Mr. Ilic, 49, a broad-shouldered, energetic man who led 10,000 people [TiM Ed.: in the CNN interview, however, aired three days later, Ilic claimed to have led 20,000 people out of Cacak] from his town 60 miles north to Belgrade… He rallied a 12-mile-long columns of cars and trucks, and set off from Cacak at 7:30 in the morning for Belgrade… He had organized a core team of tough young men, and crucially, off-duty members of the police and the army, he said.

They took bulldozers and trucks to help break though police barricades, and in case they needed to build their own barricades. For weapons, they took three truckloads of stones…

Mr. Ilic said: “We established a team of young professionals, paratroopers from the Yugoslav Army and young policemen, and we coordinated this with the most elite units in the Interior Ministry Police in Belgrade. We got martial arts experts and professional boxers to join us. We even had plainclothes police coordinating with nearby towns….

He said his personal agreement with two special policemen in Belgrade, and two from Cacak, had caused major elements of the police in the capital to join the side of the demonstrators. As several hundred thousand people converged in front of the Parliament at 3 p.m., and started to clash with police, his contacts refused orders to move against the demonstrators.”

TiM Ed.: Let us recap, Ilic’s “ team of tough, young professionals… paratroopers… elite special

police… martial art experts… boxers…” lead an assault on the Parliament and on the state-owned Serb TV building (only a few hundred yards away, where they actually did use bulldozers - see the photo).

Is that the image of democracy that conjured up in your mind when a jubilant Bill Clinton congratulated Vojislav Kostunica a day later on a historic “victory of democracy?” It sure didn’t in this writer’s head. But that is evidently the face of the “Klinton democracy.” We’ve seen a glimpse of it in Seattle last December (see Toward a New Multipolar World in the New Millennium - Dec. 17, 1999). How long before such “Klinton democracy” becomes pervasive in the U.S., too?

But back to Serbia and Ilic… We’ve highlighted the term “professionals” above. Unlike the hundreds of thousands of Belgrade amateur “revolutionaries,” who were mere extras in this Washington/EU-staged “Wag the Dog”-style “revolution,” professionals are people who get paid for what they do. Someone also had to pay for fuel used by that 12-mile column of bulldozers, cars and trucks in a country impoverished by the sanctions and under an oil embargo. Finally, police are not exactly know for standing down and refusing orders unless their palms had been greased beforehand.

So who paid all these people them off, and where did the money come from? We suspect that you already know the answer (see “Washington Funds Serb Opposition,” Sep. 19). But we’ll let a member of the Yugoslav parliament (MP) answer it in more details. Here’s an excerpt from a speech Dragan Todorovic, a Serb Radical Party MP, gave on Oct. 7 in Belgrade, during the proceedings at the "Sava Center" that led to the swearing in of Yugoslavia’s new president, Vojislav Kostunica:

It was on October 5, that we only realized what DOS (TiM Ed.: Democratic Opposition of Serbia) really stood for - "DEMOLITION OF SERBIA"!

What happened in Belgrade on October 5, unlike what major news agencies explained - was not a display of democracy - by it's display, it was an act of shear vandalism. By it's consequences and methods - it was a ruthless coup d'etat.

The gangs of drugged hooligans from provincial centers of Nis, Cacak Kraljevo, Smederevo, ransacked and torched the premises of the Federal Parliament, State Television and local branches of several political parties - representing people who didn't think quite like them.

Ever heard of Mr. Milosevic doing such a thing? No? Weren't the Nazi's famous for their little "crystal nights" launched against their political opponents like that? If anybody tells you it was all about democracy - think about it. How do you tell a coup from a democratic change of government?

One of the key conspirators - was mayor of Cacak - Mr. Velja Ilic. He managed to buy popular support - by injecting generous donations from the "democracy development in Serbia" black funds to his little town.

Mr. Ilic was crucial for recruiting police and army defectors, along with hooligans and local gangsters. The group he created consisted of several hundred "democratic" mercenaries with no scruples ready to spill blood. This group was behind storming and arson of the parliament building and RTS.

Individual fees were set for his mercenaries - but typical wage for participation in the coup paid by Mr. Ilic was 10.000 DEM (circa 4.500 USD). Before there was enormous unemployment problem in all of the towns where majority of the violent mob came from (Cacak, Kraljevo, Nis). Now they all seem to be loaded with money and don't seem to be interested in any work! I know because I used to have some business with these towns!

They obviously all profited very well from throwing stones and rocks at what was left of Yugoslavia!”

TiM Ed.: Nor did the cycle of violence end on Oct. 5. As we reported in our TiM home page News Flash on Oct. 9, our Belgrade sources tell us that some Kostunica/DOS representatives have been taking over government offices, as well as private firms, at gunpoint. Which gives rise to a new one-liner:

New World Order’s “gunboat diplomacy” (NATO bombing) has now evolved into a “gunpoint democracy.”

No surprise there. That’s how the Bolsheviks also took power. They called it "dictatorship of the proletariat." Which is why the Belgrade source who sent us this text, asked us not to use his name. His reasoning? Here it is, “from the horse’s mouth:”

“Personally - I don't mind repeating any of what I've said and I stand fully behind everything. But I don't want any of my friends to suffer any consequences from my big mouth again. The new authorities in Yugoslavia seem to be more ruthless than any Bolsheviks ever were.”

More ruthless than the Bolsheviks! Halleluiah. Hail to “democracy” in Serbia!

BELGRADE, Oct. 10 - Even before any votes had been cast, let alone counted, the Serb DOS leaders, including Vojislav Kostunica, kept accusing the Milosevic regime of the vote fraud they were supposedly about to commit. And the western and Serb media kept echoing these accusations without bothering to let a crime be committed first, before charging the alleged culprit with it.

Now, there is no doubt that Slobodan Milosevic did cheat with the subsequent vote count. His regime had become corrupt to the core during the last 10 years, so what’s one more little white lie to such people?

But did anyone pause, think, and then demand that the DOS leaders provide an independently corroborated PROOF of their own claims? (that Kostunica did win 52% of the vote). Not that we know of. After all, they claims are based on the reports of their own people from the polling stations. They are hardly independent and unbiased. And they had as much reason to lie and cheat as did Milosevic.

Once again, here’s that Belgrade source, who in another segment of his

text will help us understand why one of the top priorities of DOS leaders after taking power was to destroy electoral ballots:

Did Kostunica really have an outright majority? At first I also thought so - now I am not so confident anymore!

I've seen with my own eyes how the mob ransacked the seat of federal Electoral Commission within the Parliament building and set it on fire. They threw ballot papers from the windows and the firestorm they provoked evidently destroyed the rest of the electoral material.

Before - there were thoughts the second count of ballots was necessary to prove the real results. DOS insisted they had outright majority - DOS opponents insisted turnout was beyond 50 % necessary for declaring the winner in the first round. Now that the DOS instigated hooligans destroyed the ballot papers and other evidence - we will never know!

TiM Ed.: So some of the black smoke that rose above the Yugoslav Parliament building, an image flashed around the world on Oct. 5, may been the electoral truth going up in smoke.

Hitler burned the books; these New World Order “democrats” burned the ballots. Wonder if that’s just a coincidence? And which, do you suppose, is a worse crime?

BELGRADE, Oct. 10 - Our Belgrade source who asked to remain anonymous also showed himself to be very perceptive. Here’s what he said in another part of his text:

I closely monitored all TV and radio coverage of the events on October 5. Another detail, which made me seriously think, was seeing that the demo- supporters were eating from the NATO standard MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) packages!!! NATO marks were clearly visible and content surely looked typical.

That was definitely not any food donated by various food aid agencies in Serbia. Neither delivered such packages. Nor there were Yugoslav army or police ready meals (SDO/DDR - Dried Daily (Combat) Ration). They look quite different."

TiM Ed.: NATO’s MRE’s consumed by the Serb DOS “revolutionaries!” Does it get any more bizarre than that?

4. “The Professional” (2000 Edition): Another Change of “Praetorian Guard”

PHOENIX, Oct. 11 - Few Belgraders would have difficulties remembering Dusan Kovacevic’s hit play, The Professional , that opened in January 1990 at the “Zvezdara” theater, right after the rise to power of Slobodan Milosevic and the fall of the Berlin wall. This writer had the privilege of attending that premiere.

The event kicked off this writer’s five-year association (1990-1995) with this beautiful play and the theater arts world. During this time, the TiM editor’s translation and adaptation of The Professional was performed to rave reviews of the critics in San Francisco (1992), London (1992) and New York (1995).

(If interested, you can check out Djurdjevic’s Bio, or a special section at the TiM web site for details. Just click on The Professional).

Because one of the play’s two main characters is a former (communist) policeman who has been kicked out of the job when the new (Milosevic) regime took over. We’ve selected a passage from the play, written in 1989, that fits the current situation in Serbia to a tee. Just substitute Kostunica for Milosevic as the “good guy,” and Milosevic for Tito, as the “bad guy:”

In this particular scene, Luke, the old communist policeman, gently lectures Teya, a failed writer who became the head of a publishing house under the new regime:

“[…] TEYA: Yes. That's exactly what I think, Comrade Luke. I think that I belong here. Certainly more so than those locksmiths, plumbers, sheet-metal workers and other Bolshevik intellectuals who were getting their doctorates after two years of trade school. We make books here, not nails, horseshoes or metal joints!

LUKE: I agree, of course. But, I'd only like to know, Teya, how come you now believe that in Communism deserving people can get the positions to which they are entitled, when only yesterday you were saying that the entire autocratic Bolshevik system functions exclusively on the basis of servility, dog-like loyalty, and not on the basis of knowledge or intellect? What makes you think that suddenly you are an exception, when you know very well that they run the whole show, that they control absolutely everything, and that there are no exceptions. No exceptions, Teya, my son!

LUKE: There is no "but," my pal! No "but!" After 30 years of working for them, I am telling you there is no "but." Only "either-or!" Either you are one of them, even though you may think you are not, or you really are not -- in which case you are a nobody, or you simply do not exist. You were brought here...

TEYA: May I please ask you to refrain from using your police expressions like "brought" and "taken" in this room. This is not a police precinct. And if you'd really care to know, certain people did ask me to come here, to get rid of these jerks, to try to save this publishing house from liquidation. Of course, that's impossible, but I will still try, because we have two hundred employees here...

TEYA: All right, one hundred and fifty six workers with as many families which a bunch of sleazebags and thieves has brought to the edge of starvation. Only a madman would have accepted this job, because it is impossible to help anybody without a change in the entire system. I know that all too well from personal experience. The books and words are no match against the army and the police. And if indeed somebody "brought" me here, as you claim, if somebody authorized my coming here, if somebody asked somebody, and that somebody said "don't worry, everything is OK, because this job would finish me anyway, that I would go down with a lot of fanfare, and drag down with me this entire house!" I know all that very well, Comrade Luke, but I am still surprised that you don't know the reason they ran you out...

LUKE: Ran me out "just like peasants run out an old dog, who can no longer run, who doesn't bark or bite anymore." I hope you'll allow me to quote you, as you intellectuals would say.

TEYA: I am sorry, but I never told you that. If you think that that's what I thought, then that's your problem.

LUKE: The day my son told me that repeating the words you spoke about your own father.

TEYA: The last time I had a fight with my father, I told him that his generation was serving masters who were worse than the servants themselves; that they fought against injustice -- for injustice, against evil -- for an even greater evil, against fictitious enemies -- for real existing enemies!

LUKE: You described how the peasants would take an old dog to a forest, and how they would kill it there out of kindness, far away from the house which he guarded, and the family and children who learned to walk hanging on to his fur. And in the evening, on the same leash, they would bring in a new dog which would serve them until it was time to go to the same forest again...”

TiM Ed.: So how about it, Dusan (Kovacevic)? Shall we do an encore? Launch The Professional (2000 Edition)? Gosh, this time, we may be even invited to cast it at the White House!

Wouldn’t that be something? Eight years ago, when I co-produced the San Francisco and London shows, you were just a scribe in exile in Cyprus. And now, the “famous Serbian playwright” at the White House! Dusan, you’d be a Havel story all over again…

But, I’m afraid, my friend, you’d have to go without me. Couldn’t stand the odor in that house of ill-repute. Nor shake hands with war criminals. That’s why I gave my 1999 White House speeches OUTSIDE the White House, where there’s still some fresh air left.

Take Kostunica in my place. Unlike Milosevic or Zimmermann[1], who never bothered to see our play, I am sure he’d be delighted.

A “P.S.” for the uninitiated: The playwright, Dusan Kovacevic, has been a staunch Kostunica supporter, we have been told by our Belgrade sources.

[1] Warren Zimmermann was the American ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time The Professional opened in Belgrade in January, 1990. After I had attended the premiere, I recommended the play to both Milosevic and Zimmermann in the subsequent (separate) meetings I had with them. Neither has ever bothered, as far as I know.

BELGRADE, Oct. 6 - In addition to the TiM report about the destruction of electoral evidence during the Oct. 5 storming of the Yugoslav parliament building (see Item 2 of this Bulletin), the London Daily Telegraph has also published a story about it. Lutz Kleveman, a Telegraph reporter in Belgrade, interviewed a soccer fan on Oct. 6 who openly boasted about setting the ballots on fire.

“The hooligans have for years been in the forefront of the anti-Milosevic opposition and clashed regularly with the police forces… Once inside the building demonstrators ran past more policemen scurrying to hide behind furniture. They rushed from door to door in the endless corridors, searching for the rooms where the electoral commission had stored the ballot papers.

When they found the stacks of ballot papers on the first floor, they ripped them up, threw them out the windows and set them on fire. Mr (Aleksandar) Bozic admitted to a real adrenalin rush as he stormed in: "I wanted to show to the world how many votes for Milosevic had been stolen".”

6. Russian Source: DOS Vote Fraud Occurred before Storming of ParliamentOctober 12, 2000

MOSCOW, Oct. 11 - We received the following reaction to our DOS Vote Fraud-story (see Item 2 above) from a TiM reader in Moscow. As you can see from the article this reader had enclosed, the real cheating by DOS may have occurred well before the storming of the Yugoslav parliament on Oct. 5:

“Bob, regarding the TiM article "The DOS Vote Fraud?" in your latest Bulletin, there's an article on my site, "Two-Faced Democracy", showing that Kostunica actually fell short of the 50% needed for a first-round win.”

Is that why it was “convenient,” as our Belgrade source put it, to destroy the evidence and burn some of the ballots?

Vyacheslav Tetekin, the author of this Oct. 7 Russian article, said among other things that, “on October 3, the Yugoslav Federal Election Commission published a document exposing the disinformation upon which the claims of the "democrats" are based.” Here’s an excerpt from this article:

“As it turns out, the "democrats" announced their unconditional victory even before they had even the roughest idea of how many votes they'd received. First, on the 26th of September, two days after the elections, they claimed to have received 2,783,000 votes. But by the next day, they'd already lowered that figure to 2,649,000, or 52% of the total 5,041,000 votes cast.

By September 30, however, the "democrats" admitted that they'd won 330,000 votes less than previously claimed, or 2,424,000; and by October 2, they'd lowered their figures even further, to 2,414,000. As you can see, that's less than 50% of the total 5 million votes cast. Therefore, runoff elections would have been necessary, even by the "democrats'" own figures!

Then the "democrats" resorted to a pure sham. Suddenly they declared all votes cast in Kosovo and Metohija as well as in Montenegro to be invalid, which lowered the total votes cast by 360,000, to 4,704,000. In this fashion, Kostunica's 2,414,000 votes formed a narrow majority. It's on this simple deception that the claims of the "democrats" to a first-round victory are based.

The "democrats" undoubtedly felt the shakiness of their position, and for that reason they did everything they could to avoid runoff elections in spite of their 10% lead in the first round. This is why they provoked their supporters into storming the parliament, which ended in a frenzy of looting, according to witnesses.”

Sources in Serbia, who have been keeping a close tab on the voting results, agreed. One of them said that both sides (SPS and DOS) were manipulating results, “but nobody seems to care.” Here’s what this source, who asked to remain anonymous, but whose identity is known to TiM, had to say about the above Russian report:

“This report falls into line with what many here also concluded after frequent daily changes in DOS results that ranged from 57% for Kostunica to 51.34% and down.

Now, nobody knows how many votes Kostunica got, and nobody seems to care. It looks like both sides were manipulating the vote, but one of the sides was more determined to defend its version. In spite of everything, many people (remember the statements of some foreign dignitaries from Greece and elsewhere) say that the runoff was necessary and that no candidate went over the 50% margin.

As you said already, all this looks like a staged coup. The question remains who steals the show in the end.”

This source added that the democratic “revolutionaries” took over today the Novi Sad “financial police” (the equivalent of the provincial central bank). As they proclaimed the takeover on one of the local radio stations, “they greeted the citizens of Vojvodina with, ‘Dovidjenja dodjosi’!” (Goodbye newcomers!).

7. London Paper on Djindjic: “American Stooge” Behind KostunicaOctober 12, 2000

BELGRADE, Oct. 11 - The London Daily Telegraph seems the only western paper that is reporting the whole truth about the Serb “demo farce.” In its today’s (Oct. 12) report, headlined “‘American Stooge’ Behind Kostunica,” the Telegraph said that Zoran Djindjic “has gone from unemployed philosopher to revolutionary director-general.”

Some months ago, the Democratic Party leader was marked out as opposition presidential candidate, the Telegraph said, but he was vilified by the regime as an American stooge, and the coalition's opinion surveys showed too many voters questioned his patriotism.

“Since last week's revolution, he has steadily shed the pretence that he is solely an agent of Mr Kostunica's will. He has taken charge of many aspects of the opposition's organization, including security arrangements…

Mr Djindjic is the archetypal Balkan politician, maintaining links with all manner of shady characters. Shortly before Arkan, the infamous paramilitary leader, was killed in January, he was in negotiations with Mr Djinjdic over the possibility of forming some kind of alliance. Some analysts believe that Arkan was killed by Milosevic as a result.”

Today’s New York Times provided another example of the kinds of “shady characters” with whom Djindjic associates and who he uses for his power plays- as in his failed attempt to forcibly install his man to head up the Yugoslav Customs office.

Vojislav Kostunica, Djindjic’s electoral partner, also complained to the Times that Djindjic was “trying to consolidate the popular revolt against Mr. Milosevic, but in a way that has sometimes caused anger.”

The best-known example was Mr. Djindjic's effort to put an ally, a well-known businessman, in charge of the Customs office after ousting the old minister. The appointment of Mr. Djindjic's ally caused an uproar among other political leaders and it was rescinded in a day.

What the Times didn’t say, though, is the manner in which Djindjic did it. Once again, that’s where the London Telegraph steps in. Check out its Oct. 9 report from Belgrade, “Young guns sign up to defend the new order,” as told by a 24-year history student, Veljko, one of the “revolutionary guards” whom Djindjic had recruited.

Young Veljko was “issued a fold-down Kalashnikov assault rifle and 10 magazines of ammunition and sent off to defend the revolution.” This apparently included bullying his way along with other conscripted DOS paramilitaries into the office of Mihalj Kertes, minister of Customs, and forcing him to resign at gunpoint.

No wonder so many Serbs are already starting to refer to Djindjic as the new “brown shirt” leader.

Kostunica wasn’t happy with his DOS partner for yet another reason, either, according to today’s Times report. Djindjic has made announcements that Kostunica has not approved. Such as that the Yugoslav Army chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, would be fired. Djindjic named his own candidate to take over the military, Gen. Momcilo Perisic, the former Yugoslav Army chief whom Milosevic fired in December 1998.

But Kostunica, who met with the army commanders on Oct. 11, said he had no intention of firing Pavkovic, the general who had led a heroic defense of Kosovo during the NATO bombing. “At least for now,” the Times added.

Kostunica and his staff also bridled at another Djindjic announcement that usurped federal presidential powers. Djindjic proclaimed that Miroljub Labus, an economist and a member of the so-called G-17 group (a pro-western liberal globalist think-tank), would become provisional prime minister of Yugoslavia.

But Kostunica said on Oct. 11 that he would choose a prime minister from Montenegro, as the Constitution required. Which means that the person would be a member of the Socialist People's Party, the only Montenegrin party to field candidate in the federal election.

And just what kind of a man is Djindjic pushing for prime minister? One of whom the late Yugoslav communist dictator, Josip Broz Tito, would be proud.

At yesterday’s press conference in Belgrade, Labus said that, “workers self-management (a Tito invention) was not so bad after all. There were many positive elements in such a practice. We encourage similar takeover of the firms and companies by their employees that is taking place all across the Serbia."

“Another proof that some DOS leaders are the new Bolsheviks,” a Belgrade source, who sent us this news clip, commented. “I couldn't believe my own ears. It didn't take them long,” he added.

8. Germany to Send Its Bundeswehr (Army) to “Help Serbia”October 12, 2000

BERLIN, Oct. 11 - A TiM reader from Germany, who asked to remain anonymous, but whose identity is known to TiM, has sent us his translation of a German language Associated Press report from Berlin, in which the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer was quoted as saying in the parliament that Germany would send Bundeswehr (Army) to help Serbia.

“German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, addressing the Parliament on Wednesday, expressed his opinion that Germany should not only provide material help to Yugoslavia, but that the Bundeswehr and non-military organizations should establish a permanent presence there.

He declared that this was a unique chance to create a democracy in the context of further European unification. Reunited Germany has a special responsibility for stabilizing democracy in Serbia. Democracy, said Mr. Fischer, is the basis for a lasting peace in the Balkans."

TiM Ed.: Now, notice Fischer’s words “permanent presence?” If there are still any Serb ostriches left who are in doubt about what they really voted for when they supported Kostunica/Djindjic/DOS, these two ominous words should dispel any doubt. The German foreign minister has just confirmed what we have been saying all along - that a supposed “victory of democracy” in Serbia means that NATO has just expanded one more country to the East.

Wonder how well this third return of German troops to Serbia in less than a century would go over with the general Serbian populace? But we can think of at least one man who is likely to cheer it - the German-educated and German-speaking “American stooge,” Zoran Djindjic.

BELGRADE, Oct. 12 - Another TiM source in Serbia who asked to be anonymous (my, oh my… looks like more Serbs are scared of the DOS “democrats” than of the Milosevic regime!?), filed the following report about the looting of a Belgrade Museum:

“The revolutionaries did not only destroy the Federal Parliament building and many shops, they looted and demolished the Ethnographic Museum in the center of Belgrade. Many priceless artifacts were destroyed. Even coins from the time of medieval Serbian kings have been stolen. All this seems to be unimportant to the newly "liberated" media, which is now behaving exactly like the former "tool of Milosevic's regime" (TiM Ed.: only in the opposite direction - as a tool of western propaganda).

One of our prominent painters and patriots said in an open letter to the Serbian public today that he does not want to be a Serb anymore, and that he would rather be an Irishman or a Greek after seeing the looting and destruction of the Parliament and the museum that happened on that "revolution" day (Oct. 5).

Now that the negotiations on the Serbian transitional government seem to be stuck over the issue who is going to be in charge of the police, the revolutionaries are threatening more street protests. One wonders if they are going to be openly Bolshevik this time?

Crisis committees? Worker's councils? Soviets? Sovjetska Republika Jugoslavija? Just joking, of course, but there are some striking similarities. What's going to be the target of the revolution re-run? Serbian Parliament? National Museum? God knows.

When you take a cold look on everything that happened last Thursday (Oct. 5), it all comes down to the ugly scenes of destruction. Police did not try to intervene and those who "guarded" the Parliament were directly leading Velimir Ilic's hooligans from Cacak (TiM Ed.: pronounced “Chachak; also see Item 1 above), showing them what to do and where to go as Ilic admitted himself in last night's CNN interview.

The police unit in front of the Parliament was a part of the practically nonexistent Federal Police force. I realized this much later when I saw that they had Yugoslav coats-of-arms on their helmets and shoulders.”

TiM Ed.: Something else that CNN reported today was that Ilic had led a column of 20,000 people from Cacak, as opposed to the figure of 10,000 that the New York Times cited on Oct. 9. Interesting, how the number has doubled in the three days of Ilic’s western media fame.

Now, Cacak is a small town. If 20,000 people left Cacak to protest in Belgrade, wonder how many were left in Cacak?

10. Kosovo Albanians Threaten New War If Yugoslav Troops ReturnOctober 12, 2000

PRISTINA, Oct. 12, - Kosovo Albanians are threatening a new war if the Yugoslav troops return to Kosovo, as provided by the U.N. Resolution 1244, under which NATO and UNMIK forces were deployed in this Serbian province.

The renewed call to arms by the Albanian guerillas was apparently caused by another Zoran Djindic proclamation, published in Belgrade papers, that 1,200 Serb police and Yugoslav troops would return to Kosovo by the end of the year.

"If they ever came back in uniform, we'd know how to react," Naim Maloku, head of the Central Liberal Party of Kosovo and a former fighter in the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), told the Agence France Presse. "If anyone thinks the KLA is dead, they're kidding themselves," he warned.

But Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla leader and head of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, said the Serbian forces would be turned back at the province's frontier by fighters from Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

"If they ever tried to come they would not be able to cross the border," he said, adding: "There are NATO forces there and Kosovo Albanian forces which would be well-prepared to resist them."

Bilal Sherifi, chief of staff to Hashim Thaci, the former political chief of the KLA and now leader of the Democratic party of Kosovo, described the idea that Yugoslav troops could return as a "dream." "This idea is over forever," he insisted.

General Juan Ortuno, leader of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in charge of maintaining security in Kosovo, said that it was his decision when Yugoslav troops could return, and that no discussions had begun with the new Belgrade authorities.

TiM Ed.: Well, the Kosovo Albanians have another think coming. Having served out their purpose as the surrogate NATO “ground troops” during the 1999 conflict, the KLA guerillas are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

In fact, given their criminal activities in dealing drugs and arms, and running prostitution rings, and their occasional violence against the NATO troops, the Albanians are now seen as more of a burden than an asset. Especially after NATO has just claimed the grand prize of the Balkans - Serbia.

The Kosovo Albanians had better start getting used to the idea that they will soon be a fifth wheel of the NATO Balkans policy - with or without the arrival of the Yugoslav troops in Kosovo.