User:Serbian Defense Forces



Hey guys, check out http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ SETI@home.

Kërkesë mbështetës punëtor punëtor Wikipedia. Shumë të fala. I want to say a few things. We have the ability to pierce through clouded thinking. The ability to rise above the turmoil of our emotions. To control our actions. Edit Wikipedia accordingly. Don't simply write something because you are born within one country. Strive to develop your mind and your thinking.
 * "Disunity among people is the source of all hatred and violence, regardless of who is right or wrong"
 * Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. Albert Einstein (1979-1955)
 * Every moments a new man is born (It means that every new information that we are exposed changes us into a "new" person.)
 * I sympathies with Palestinians yet support Israel 100%.
 * Honor should be prevalent in modern society yet its unfeasible because people without honor have the upper hand.





This is a great outline of the Serb-Croat misunderstanding
Psychology and history allow us to understand the world. If you subject a psychology class to a staged event, and ask for a report, you get a great variety of versions of the events. But only one thing happened. Joe quite pleasantly said something to Jack, who then hit him. Not vice-versa. Jack's behavior may be explained on the basis of what happened earlier, off stage. Maybe Jack is the good guy. Yet, only one thing happened on stage. Only one version of the events is true; the others are false. If the experiment involves the power of group control, you may prearrange with most of the students to present a false version of events to the student who is the subject of the experiment. Most of the subjects presented with a false version of events will internalize it and alter their own memory to make it fit with the majority view.

History allows us to figure out who hit whom first and why. Maybe Jack, who hit Joe first, was right. Maybe Joe drowned Jack's hamster in the bathtub and asked him with a smirk if his hamster had a nice little swim. Kids--and nations--will do some awful things. Still, no point to deny that Jack hit Joe, just because we like Jack better. We must find out exactly what happened. Once we get a clear view of events, we can engage in mediation with a reasonable chance of success. Otherwise we might step in on the side of the guy who drowned the hamster.

In conflicts between nations, unfortunately, over the course of time, all sides have drowned some hamsters, and that is why international conflict resolution is so difficult for democratic politicians: they have to run for office, they have to make noble speeches. The purpose of the noble speech on injustice and our duty to right it is to create fervor and excitement that will bring in contributions and volunteer party workers and voters. Foreign evil means foreign danger. Nothing brings in votes as fast as a good speech about danger from some evil ruler of some evil empire or kingdom. Everybody wants to be Luke Skywalker. As H. L. Mencken said, "the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins." Without foreign evil there can't be Luke Skywalker. Politicians need foreign evil, thus must demonize their opponents. It gives them great heroic lines, great speech opportunities, until election day. Afterwards, they are stuck. They cannot negotiate with the "forces of evil": if they did, some opponent would accuse them of collaborating with the evil empire. Thus it is extremely difficult for politicians to mediate a foreign conflict once one of the two sides has been cast as the evil empire. They are much more likely to mediate war than to mediate peace. That is what happened to the Second Yugoslavia. (1944-1991)

In the 1970's and 1980's NATO countries sabotaged the economy of Yugoslavia by offering great deals on loans and then jacking up the rates. As condition for loan refinancing, they required Yugoslavia to close down any business with a month of unpaid bills, which caused massive unemployment and inflation. As ethnic groups in the country began to point the finger at each other, as the cause of their own economic problems, the west offered aid to the separate ethnic states that made up the Yugoslav Federal Republic and financed right wing parties. One of these, the HDZ, proposed the rehabilitation of the Croat Nazis of WWII and won the election in Croatia in April 1990. On the basis of 41.5% of the votes they hoped to be able to secede, but did not dare doing it yet.

Serbs and Croats look the same, speak the same language, and are widely intermarried. The major difference between them is that the Serbs are of the Eastern Orthodox faith while the Croats are Roman Catholic. That is the reason why the Catholic Church gave very strong support to the Croat Nazi government imposed by Hitler in 1941, allowed massed forced conversions of the Serbs, and did not stop priests and monks from taking part in the slaughter of the Serbs. It could all have been easily prevented had Pope Pius XII had been willing to use the weapon of excommunication.

The new Croat government in 1991 brought back the flag that had flown over the extermination camps where hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Romany had perished. It rehabilitated and allowed the return of the Croat Nazis, fired all Serb civil servants, allowed the firing of all Serbs from private businesses, and removed all Serb road signs in Serb areas of Croatia. At a March 13, 1991 HDZ meeting in Vukovar, the "cleansing of disobedient Serbs" was approved. This took place before armed conflict started. Croat Nazis instituted a program of Nacht und Nebel. That's German for "night and fog". It means that they come to get your husband at night. In the morning you try to bring him some food and some fresh clothes. You go to every police station, but they say: "Madam, maybe he run off with his girlfriend. We sure don't have him. " He's gone. Into the night and fog. Another famous Nazi phrase was Kristall Nacht. That means "night of glass", it's a special night when "the boys" go around town smashing the windows of stores owned by Jews. In Croatia they improved on that program, they used dynamite. Serbs began to disappear, the houses and businesses of Serbs in Croat majority areas began to be blown up. The Serbs run away, but they did not run from the areas of Croatia which had been theirs for three hundred years. Their answer to the Zagreb government was: "Go ahead, leave if you wish, but you are not taking us with you."

Still, it is much easier to kill some opposition leaders or members of a minority than to declare independence. In Yugoslavia the leaders of each of the eight federal units had rank similar to that of an American governor. Independence would have given him a presidential, if not royal rank. A very attractive thought... As Julius Caesar once said I would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second in Rome. Still, secession would have involved challenging a strong internal opposition and superior federal Yugoslav military forces. That could have meant losing power, maybe losing one's head. In the case of Croatia's President Tudjman, he had come to power with only 41.5% of Croatian voters backing him, and was militarily very weak. But Croatia's patrons were very confident. " Nema problema," said Bonn and Vienna to the Croats, "we've got you covered." So President Tudjman chose war.

The Germans decided that the Serb areas of Croatia should not have the right of self-determination. The Serbs of Krajna and Slavonia dared to disagree with the new masters of Europe and declared their secession from Croatia. Civil war ensued. The government in Belgrade allowed NATO countries to "mediate". The European Community "mediators" decided to buy time for Croatia to arm itself, and gave the Serbs a false sense of security by creating United Nations Protected Areas in Serb majority parts of Croatia. Meanwhile, they weakened Serbia through sanctions. They even managed to snooker the Serbs into giving up their heavy weapons to U.N. control. Croatia's Serbs fell for the trick and were crushed and expelled from Croatia in 1995.

The reason for deciding that the Serbs were "evil aggressors" is the "buddy principle." It is the major reason for war, unless you be a Marxist. If two neighbors are having an argument over a cow that strayed over the fence, you naturally support the one of the two who happens to be your friend, even more so if you have a business relationship as well. The Austrians did lots of business with the Croats. They used to own them, now they just own property there. Naturally the Austrians saw the Croats as the good guys. The Germans are good neighbors of the Austrians, speak the same language, and do a lot of business together. So the Germans as well decided that the friends of their friends were the good guys. After all, they had been on the same side in WWI and WWII. Having decided that the Croats were the good guys and were oppressed by the Serbs, they applied themselves to the task of giving the Croats their independence. Bonn used its economic muscle to force the European Community to support the break-up of Yugoslavia. The Germans announced that they would support the Croats' right to secede before a political settlement was achieved. Their European Community partners, after quite a bit of arm twisting, agreed. Everyone involved knew this meant war. The former Foreign Minister of Italy DeMichelis calls the all-nighter during which the Germans forced their European partners to accept the dismemberment of Yugoslavia "la notte maledetta", the accursed night. As expected, it was followed by war--never before had Croatia and Serbia been at war, there was no need or desire for war in either country, there was no hatred yet, and six out of eight federal units were opposed to the dissolution of the country. Quite a few people in NATO countries and a few families in the new Balkanic countries made lots of money out the break-up of Yugoslavia. Everyone else lost big.

The Germans took part in the war by financing Croatia and by sending in neo-Nazi military units. Fighting for Croatia was a natural move, and it provided a good training ground for German Nazis. President Tudjman, the leader of of the HDZ party and of Croatia, had written a book claiming that the Jews had run the Croat Nazi extermination camp of Jasenovac and had persecuted the other inmates. Too bad that the Jews involved, having been all killed, were unavailable to answer the charges. Soon the Croatian government, while gratefully accepting German neo-Nazi help, finally became aware of the fact that they had a little Jewish American Problem and decided to play down the Nazi issue. So when "the boys" burned at the stake a woman they thought was a Jew, the Croatian government released a press release to the effect that no, this was not a Jewish issue at all, the woman involved was not Jewish one bit, and everything was all right in Croatia. The woman had dared to openly complain about the burning of the houses of Serbs.

Are the Croats evil? Not at all, they just had the bad luck of having a new government in Belgrade in 1941, which offended Hitler. They had the misfortune of having madmen imposed upon them as rulers. They had the misfortune of having an odd archbishop, later Cardinal Stepinac, who suffered from a pathological fear of his Serb neighbors and felt that the Nazis were decent although overly eager allies in a good cause. The Croats had the misfortune of having a pope in Rome who did not see it appropriate to order his priests and bishops to stop organizing the genocide of Serbs. Once again, in 1990, the Croats had the misfortune of having a pope in Rome who did not know that Catholic priests and monks had physically participated in the genocide against the Serbs. Since he did not know, he did not see fit to apologize for it or work against the revival of hatred. On the contrary, he saw fit to kneel at the tomb of the strange Cardinal Stepinac. He had him beatified, thus creating the cult of a man who had not been neutral in World War II. Stepinac had been very strongly and openly pro-Axis. Thus Pope Wojtyla legitimized the WWII Croat Nazis as well-meaning nationalists and legitimized their hatred against the Serbs. Such hatred had never been a mainstream feeling in Croatia; the parties that espoused such hatred had never obtained more than a tiny percentage of votes and achieved power only through German arms and money. The moral legitimization of such hatred allowed it to become acceptable. In some countries similar hatred permeates the whole of society. Poland, the country of birth of Pope Wojtyla, is a good example. There the hatred of the Jews achieved such a pathological level that during WWII a major activity of non-communist Polish guerrillas was the hunting down of escaped Jews. When the survivors of Auschwitz returned to their homes they found themselves targets of attack and mass murder at the hands of Polish Catholics. Poland gave us the wonder of the practice of "anti-Semitism without Jews". The last surviving Jews have all fled, but the "Jewish Problem" is still part of the political discourse in Poland into the present day. No wonder that a person who was inured to such political pathology would not notice that he was legitimizing murderous anti-Serb hatred in Croatia.

Civil unrest is easy to start. At any one time, in most countries, there is some serious injustice and there are aggrieved people who would like to start a revolution if they just knew how to do it, if they had some financing, and if they were certain of foreign sanctuary should they lose the gamble. They are just waiting for someone to show them or help them a bit. In some places there is terrible oppression on the people and they just take it. They are waiting for direction. Any foreign ruler can provide it. Italy in 1918 grabbed South Tyrol from Austria, in contravention of all SAPs (Sacred Allied Promises) of self-determination. There was no historical or ethnic ground for grabbing South Tyrol. Its Austrian inhabitants suffered persecution under Italian Fascism, and after the war, as late as the 1950's Tyroleans died under torture in police custody. In the 1950's a small liberation movement arose there. After a few years it died out. Italian nationalism had mellowed, the European Community was established, and the issue of belonging to Austria or to Italy lost much of its importance. Borders became less and less important, and today when you cross the border between Italy and Austria you do not even slow down. However, had the Austrians supported South Tyrol's secession like they supported Croatia's, NATO might be involved there today. There are secessionist forces in northern Italy today. If Germany had given them the kind of support it gave to northern Yugoslav secessionists, NATO might be bombing Rome today, "to deter Italian aggression."

In 1991 the Yugoslavs had the misfortune of having uncommonly ignorant men in charge of foreign policy in Bonn and Washington. The President of Montenegro at that time, during a talk with the U.S. Secretary of State, stole a glance at Baker's briefing notes for the talks. The notes contained one line: "Montenegro is the smallest of the Yugoslav Republics." Such was the level of ignorance of these people, that they had to be shepherded around the world by handlers feeding them information of primary school level. The men deciding the fate of the region were not diplomats, they were lawyers or businessmen, men who might have had great ability and competence at organizing prizefights or taking over companies, but no awareness of history or diplomatic skills. Shopkeepers saddled with the job of treating cancer. Barbers promoted to surgeons. The presence of barber-surgeons at the Department of Justice brought us the Waco massacre. A barber-surgeon ordered the ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, to tell Saddam Hussein that the U.S. was not taking sides in Iraq's coming conflict with Kuwait. A barber- surgeon decided that the U.S. Army ought to start a war against clan leader Aidid in that now forgotten little adventure, in which dozens of young Americans and hundreds of Somalis died.

The cause of war in Croatia was not uppity Serbs, unwilling to get stepped upon, or even Nazi Croats. Every country has a few crazed Nazis, and so did Croatia. The Croats are not evil. I have not discerned evil amongst my Croat relatives, just normal belief in government propaganda. The result is normal fear, which causes conflict, which very quickly turns into hatred. The "ancient hatreds" usually blamed as the root of the war in the Second Yugoslavia were months old. Ethnic hatred was confined to a minority of right wing lunatics until the day when the west began financing right wing parties in the 1930's and once again in the 1980's. Their rehabilitation of WWII Nazis brought a fearful Serb backlash. The Serbs are not evil. I have found patience and tolerance in the Serbs I have met in my travels in Yugoslavia. I have found great generosity and decency in the Albanians I met in Kosovo. They all just had the bad luck of living in a time when barbers like Bush, Baker, Clinton, and Albright were in charge of surgery.