Precisely because it has not been the theme of any Hollywood spectaculars, Jasenovac does not attract any school excursions and textbooks are largely silent about it. Some background information on Jasenovac therefore seems like a good place to start.

The Jasenovac death camp (1941 – 1945) is inextricably bound up with the World War II German satellite “Independent State of Croatia,” with which it is coeval and which set it up as an extermination facility for its undesirables (the “deplorables” of that period), Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. Conservative estimates put the number of victims at around 700,000. There is a fundamental difference, however, between Auschwitz and Jasenovac. While Auschwitz was an indisputably German operation, Jasenovac was set up by the native government of the German-allied Croat war-time state for the specific purpose of committing genocide against the racial groups it proscribed. It was run entirely by that government’s party militia, the Ustashi contingent, not by the Germans.

Another fundamental difference is that the German designed operation in Auschwitz was conducted with the primary goal of attaining industrial efficiency, the quantity of corpses clearly taking precedence over the qualitative details of the killing process. In Jasenovac under Croat Ustashi management, on the other hand, both dimensions were important. But the “qualitative,” referring to personal attention in the most sadistic forms given to the victims, was clearly given preference. Even the unflappable Germans were shocked. The German military commander in Croatia, Gen. Glaise von Horstenau, a faithful Nazi and no sympathiser of Serbs, Jews, or Gypsies, after visiting Jasenovac felt compelled to comment in his diary: “Jasenovac must be the apex of all evil, and no mere mortal is capable of even conceiving what it is like.” We may surmise that von Horstenau must have been on the right track in his description because the most thorough recent academic study of Jasenovac was published by Prof. Gideon Greif, an Israeli scholar. Prof. Greif’s main topic of interest before Jasenovac had been the Shoa, and specifically Auschwitz. Familiar as he thus was with horrors, after studying Jasenovac Prof. Greif nevertheless could not avoid experiencing the same shock that was felt by the Nazi general after inspecting it personally.

All the resources of the Croat state were consciously mobilized and intensely focused to make Jasenovac possible as the country’s premier mass killing field and slaughterhouse. That is not to neglect, of course, thousands of Serbian villages and other less well-known spots where the relentless extermination program, which shall forever blacken the name of that unhappy land, was being implemented.

In his monumental study “Jasenovac – Auschwitz of the Balkans” [2018], Prof. Greif documents 57 different methods of manual killing practiced by the Croatian Ustashi in Jasenovac, both to save fuel and ammunition and to provide perverse pleasure to the perpetrators. Jasenovac is undoubtedly the culminating point of the homicidal madness which animated the necrophilous Croat Ustashi state under German tutelage during World War II. Ljubo Miloš, the first commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp when it was organized in August 1941, boasted in 1942 at the first anniversary of the camp’s founding that in a single year more people had been exterminated in it than were killed over several centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule in the Balkans.

The Jasenovac extermination mechanism shocked even victim-hostile, perpetrator-friendly German observers due to the massiveness and needless depravity of the crimes that were committed there. They run not into thousands, but into the hundreds of thousands of victims of both sexes, all ages, and include children, for whom a special camp within the Jasenovac complex, a unique institution in Europe under fascist rule, was set up in Jastrebarsko.

In late January 1945, the Soviet Army at last liberated Auschwitz during its victorious march through Poland. Nothing of the sort, however, happened in Jasenovac, due to a number of invidious circumstances. As the Ustashi recognized that with the obvious defeat of Nazi Germany the end of their terror regime was at hand, they decided to destroy evidence and liquidate witnesses of their crimes by systematically shooting the remaining prisoners before evacuating the Jasenovac camp. On April 22 1945 the remaining 200 or so prisoners, aware of their imminent fate, staged an uprising and breakout from the camp, in the hope that some at least would survive. Only a few dozen did. So another of Jasenovac’s distinctions is that it was the only known fascist concentration camp to have, in effect, liberated itself.

Over the decades that followed, the grisly Jasenovac story was hostage to ruthless political motives which largely removed it from public awareness. One of these motives was the misguided policy of the Tito regime to obliterate evidence of World War II conduct of some of Yugoslavia’s constituent ethnicities in a vain attempt to forge the country’s unity. That illusory unity collapsed spectacularly in the 1990s, leading to an atrocious civil war and a resurgence of unrepentant Ustashi ideology in contemporary Croatia. The other key factor, paradoxically, was the close identification of Croatia’s Roman Catholic clergy with massive crimes committed in the wartime Croatian state and their enthusiastic support for the Ustashi regime which organized them. One of the commanders of Jasenovac, in fact, was Roman Catholic Franciscan friar, Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović. The other factor was that the Western allies were planning a strike against the Soviet Union (codenamed Operation Unthinkable) to begin shortly after Nazi Germany was subdued, and to include even remnants of the Wehrmacht. An understanding had been reached with the Vatican that the Roman Catholic church with all its considerable human resources would fully back that crusade. Revelation of the horrid crimes committed by its minions, in both religious and secular garb, in Croatia would have gravely undermined its moral prestige and mass mobilization capabilities and therefore usefulness to the Western Allies. As a result, another layer of oblivion was added to cover the inferno that was World War II Croatia. Otherwise inexplicable British connivance in installing Tito as the ruler of post-war Yugoslavia begins to make sense in light of these plans.

While the downplaying of Jasenovac during the Tito regime has a convoluted political rationale, though none at all morally, the consistent refusal since then to make factual knowledge of what happened there part of the indispensable global information patrimony is utterly bewildering and inexcusable. The fact that a scholar of Prof. Greif’s calibre has boldly tackled the issue, and with palpable resonance, is encouraging but not enough. Even he has been subjected to threats from the perpetrators’ unrepentant heirs and oddly his book on Jasenovac is currently “out of print” and for the moment unobtainable through regular bibliographic channels.

The war in the former Yugoslavia has been over for a quarter of a century, but the Jasenovac conspiracy of silence, or of extreme “discretion” if one prefers, continues. Ideological descendants of the perpetrators, encouraged by impunity, deny that anything untoward had even happened in Jasenovac and cynically portray it as a labor camp with generous amenities for the prisoners. They even shamelessly claim that it functioned as a safe house for potential persecution victims of the German occupation regime. The massive death toll of this extermination facility is brazenly reduced to just a few hundreds. The pattern of the crime apologists who minimize and trivialize Auschwitz is replicated in Jasenovac, with breath-taking audacity and imitational precision.

But while the main Jasenovac death camp was located on the Croatian side of the Sava River, many of its killing fields extended over to Gradina, on the river’s other bank, which is now fully under the control of the Republic of Srpska. The Gradina camp of the Jasenovac complex is beyond the reach of Croatian authorities and they cannot tamper with or misrepresent the evidence that lies there just under the surface of the earth. That is all the more important since historians and survivors are unanimous that most of the mass killings associated with Jasenovac actually occurred on the Gradina side of the Sava River.

When will the government of the Republic of Srpska invite teams of forensic experts and volunteers with shovels to start turning over the soil on its territory where an important part of the infamous Jasenovac camp was located and to catalogue their findings? When will Croatia take moral responsibility for the perpetration of this genocide?

Since 1990, there have been some sixty referenda by regions or territories wishing to become independent or autonomous from their parent nation. Of these, only about twenty have been successful in a change of status. Forty have either failed to pass, some in dubiously close votes amid charges of election fraudor were not recognized by the governing authority.

Successful independence or autonomy referenda have only been successful if a combination of the neo-colonial foreign affairs infrastructures of Foggy Bottom in Washington, Whitehall in London, and the Quai d’Orsay in Paris gave them their blessings or arranged for predetermined outcomes.

From 1990 to 1991, particularly with the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, there was a rash of independence referenda held in Slovenia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Estonia, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia (now North Macedonia), Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, Transnistria, Gagauzia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. All of the plebiscites resulted in independence, except for Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, and Gagauzia.

On September 7, 1990, the ethnic Albanian members of the dissolved Kosovo Assembly in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo met in secret in Kačanik and declared the “Republic of Kosova.” The independence was rejected by Yugoslavia, but, more importantly, by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany. “Kosova” was only recognized by Albania. The neo-colonialists in Washington, London, and Paris, as well as the recently unified Germany, had plans for an independent Kosovo but 1990 was too early. The West had to demolish Yugoslavia completely before Kosovo was recognized as independent. That time would come in 2008, when the Kosovo Assembly, backed up by NATO and the European Union, declared the independence of the Republic of Kosovo.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), once deemed a terrorist group by NATO and the EU, was welcomed in Washington, London, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and the International Court of Justice as the new government of the ethnic Albanian-ruled nation. For the ethnic Serbs of the former Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, as well as Serbia, the move was rejected outright. Hypocritically, neither NATO nor the EU required an independence referendum. The 1990 referendum, which was never recognized by the West as legitimate, was, all of a sudden, seen as representing the will of the people of Kosovo. That is, of course, except for the Serbs of North Kosovo. Kosovo’s membership applicationwas rejected for United Nations. Russia, China, Spain, Hungary, and other nations rejected the former province’s declaration of independence.

It is noteworthy that the thorny issue of Macedonia, the name of which Greece rejected because Athens felt it represented territorial designs on parts of northern Greece, was settled when Macedonia became “North Macedonia.” However, when there was a vote by the Assembly of the Community of Municipalities of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohijain Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo that called for the Serbs, Gorani, Bosniaks, and Romani of North Kosovo to be recognized as autonomous under the name of North Kosovo, the idea was rejected without consideration by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels. Some democratic votes carry more weight than others among the status quo enthusiasts of Foggy Bottom, Whitehall, and the Q’uai d’Orsay.

A February/March 1992 referendum on independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, boycotted by Bosnian Serbs, resulted in 99 percent for independence. Bosnia-Herzegovina, which began its existence as a nearly-failed state, was recognized by the EU, NATO, and UN.

On the other hand, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Gagauzia, and Abkhazia all held referenda on their respective status. None of the referenda results were accepted by the EU and the UN. In the March 17, 1990 All-Union referendum designed by President Mikhail Gorbachev to continue the Soviet Union in some semblance, 52.3 percent of Abkhazia, an autonomous republic in Georgia, voted to retain their union with the Soviet Union, while Georgia boycotted the referendum.

Abkhazia’s vote resulted in a de facto separation from Georgia. Two successive referenda on independence held in 1992 and 2006 in South Ossetia, formerly a part of Georgia, were rejected by the UN, NATO, EU, and Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE). Transnistria’s referendum on independence from Moldova was 97.2 in favor of statehood. In 1991, the “Congress of People’s Deputies of the Steppe South of the Moldavian SSR” declared the Gagauz Republic. Although a majority of the people in the autonomous republic favored independence, it was rejected by Moldova and EU and NATO. 1991 and 2006 referenda on the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh as the Republic of Artsakh passed overwhelmingly but were rejected by the EU, OSCE, and UN. Rejected by the status quo enthusiasts of the UN and EU, Artsakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia have formed their own international organization, the Commonwealth of Unrecognized States.

The 1990s were turbulent times for would-be nation states. An April 1993 referendum on Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia passed with 99.83 percent in favor of statehood. Unlike some of the aspirant nations of the former USSR and Yugoslavia, Eritrea was warmly accepted into the international community of nations. In some territories, attempts to change official status were met with chicanery on the part of territorial and metropolitan governments. That was the case in 1993 with a status referendum in the U.S. Virgin Islands. A mere 31.4 percent turnout in the referendum, which opted for the status quo in any event, saw the referendum rejected as null and void. The manipulation of the referendum ensured a mere 4.96 favoring independence. Similar manipulative contrivances in political status referenda in Puerto Rico in 1993, 1998,2012, and 2017resulted in the independence option receiving paltry 4.4 percent, 2.2 percent, 5.5 percent, and 1.5 percent, respectively. President Donald Trump has repeatedly shown his racist and xenophobic disdain for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, often failing to recognize either territory as part of the United States or their residents as U.S. citizens.

The Netherlands has also cleverly manipulated status referenda in its Caribbean colonies of Curacao, Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Saba, and Saint Eustatius to maintain its colonial foothold in the region. A 1995 independence referendum in the British territory of Bermuda required independence to be approved by 40 percent of those eligible to vote and at least 50 percent of those who voted. The independence option failed with only 25.88 percent supporting nationhood. The Caribbean island of Nevis saw independence stymied in a 1998 referendum. Although 62 percent of voters opted for independence, it was rejected because a two-thirds majority was not achieved. The same machination was used by colonial power New Zealand in back-to-back referenda for the Tokelau islands to become an associated state, with de facto independence, in 2006 and 2007. Both times, 60 percent voted for associated state status, but a two-thirds majority wasrequired. In the world of aspirant nations, the game is changed and the math is negotiable in order to suit the desires of the neo-colonialists and transnational interests.

Quebec independence failed by less than 1 percent of the vote in a 1995 referendum. Turnout was massive, over 93 percent. There was evidence that the 1995 independence referendum, like that of 1980, was manipulated by outside forces, including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1997, Anjouan, an island of the Comoros, voted 99 percent for independence in a referendum. Anjouan separatism was ultimately quelled by an African Union military invasion in 2008. The AU has a policy of not accepting any changes to colonial borders imposed by European colonial powers. Only Eritrea and South Sudan, the latter voting for independence with 98.83 percent in a 2011 referendum, were exceptions.

A 2014 independence referendum in Scotland received 44.7 percent in favor and 55.3 percent opposed. There were later indications of social media manipulation affecting the outcome. U.S. President Barack Obama also took the unusual step of interfering in the vote by calling for a rejectionof independence. That same year, Catalonia’s independence referendum, which received 80.76 percent of the vote. It was rejected by Spain. A 2017 independence referendum received 92.01 percent in favor of nationhood. In reaction, Spain ordered the arrest and imprisonment of the Catalonian government, the suspension of the regional government, and the imposition of direct rule by Madrid.

Kurdistan held a non-binding independence referendum in 2017. Independence from Iraq was favored by 92.73 percent of voters with a 72.12 percent turnout in a region marked by a jihadist insurgency and open warfare. However, the referendum was rejected by Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, the United States, and Britain.

A 2018 independence vote in New Caledonia resulted in 43.3 percent in favor, with 56.67 percent opposed. On September 6, 2020, New Caledonia will hold another referendum. Independence for the French territory in the Pacific is prejudiced by the number of wealthy French Europeans who reside in the territory and outside political and intelligence influence by Australia. A similar independence referendum for the island chain of Chuuk in Micronesia is scheduled for March 2020. In August 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the first visit by a Secretary of State to Micronesia, a former U.S. Trust Territory. On the agenda was U.S. militarization of the region, as well as firm opposition to the impending Chuukese independence referendum. That same bellicose attitude by the Pompeo State Department has resulted in postponed status referenda in the Danish territories of the Faroes and Greenland, where U.S. militarization of the Arctic is high on the Trump administration’s agenda.

Breaking up is hard to do, especially if the political divorce is not sanctioned by the marriage counselors of Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels.

Of course, Greece’s involvement in this alliance (now renamed the 17+1 CEEC) has broadened its geographical boundaries to the west and is especially important as Greece’s Port of Piraeus is a strategic east-west trade gate way for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into Europe centered on the China-Europe Land-Sea Express Route. Greece is painfully aware that its survival depends upon China’s BRI, as the EU programs for austerity, privatization and bailouts have brought only death and despair with a collapse of youth employment, crime rate spikes and suicide. It is also not lost on anyone that this breakthrough follows hot on the heels of Italy’s joining of the Belt and Road Initiative on March 26 and also serves as a precursor to the second Belt and Road Summit which will take place in Beijing at the end of April, involving over 126 nations who have already signed MOUs with the BRI and thousands of international businesses.

Ten additional BRI-connected agreements were signed between Croatia and China before the 17+1 Summit including the modernizing of rail lines (especially from Zagreb to the Adriatic port of Rijeka), telecommunications cooperation between Huawei and Croatian Telecom and major port, roads, harbors, education and cultural cooperation.

The Belt and Road Initiative, as Tsipras aptly pointed out, is not just another set of infrastructure programs designed to counterbalance western hegemony, but is rather a “new model of regional and global cooperation” founded upon a principle of mutual development and long term thinking not seen in the west since the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the takeover of the Anglo-American Deep State that ensued.

The fact that China formalized an economic and trade cooperation agreement with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union in May 2018 is extremely relevant as it incorporated its five nation membership of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan directly into the BRI. Already China has invested $98 billion into the real economies of the EEU involving 168 BRI-connected projects.

The new model of development which has increasingly won over central, and eastern Eurasian countries as well as Greece and Italy have provided a breath of fresh air for citizens everywhere who are looking with despair upon a Trans-Atlantic system which can do nothing but demand obedience to a defunct set of rules that commands only austerity, hyperinflationary banking practices and no long term investment into the real economy. Thus the technocratic mobilization against the BRI over the past days in response to this new paradigm can only be seen as an absurd attempt to save a system which has already failed.

The Technocrats Defend their New World Disorder

Two recent counter-operations against the BRI and the new win-win operating system it represents are worth mentioning. The first is found in the formation of a trilateral alliance between the American-based Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Canada’s Finance and Development Agency (FinDev Canada) and fifteen members of the European Union announced on April 11. A second counter-operation was created several days earlier with the Canada-Germany-France-Japan “Alliance for Multilateralism” during the G7 meeting in France.

OPIC Acting President and CEO David Bohigian (Center) signed a memorandum of understanding with FinDev Canada Managing Director Paul Lamontagne (right) and EDFI Chairman Nanno Kleiterp (left).

While OPIC was founded in 1971, its use as a subversive force against the BRI was formalized on July 30, 2018 when it created a trilateral alliance with Japan and Australia in order to finance infrastructure in the Pacific basin. Added to this, a second trilateral alliance was created on April 11, 2019 when Canada’s Paul Lamontagne (head of FinDev Canada), the European Development Finance Institution’s Nanno Kleiterp and OPIC President David Bohigian signed a new agreement to create a parallel infrastructure financing mechanism. Taking aim at China, the press release stated that the alliance “will enhance transactional, operational, and policy-related cooperation among participants and underscores their commitment to providing a robust alternative to unsustainable state-led models.”

At this signing Bohigian stated “we’re trying to hold up an example for the world of the way development finance should work” clearly attacking China’s “incompetent” concept of development finance and thus ignoring the fact that over 800 million people have directly been lifted out of poverty by China’s approach to investment. Bohigian was clearly hoping that the world would ignore the vast debt slavery and chaos spread by 50 years of IMF-World Bank dominance that has produced no real growth of nations. Although the American BUILD Act has increased US government funding to OPIC from $29 billion to $60 billion over one year, no serious integrated design for development has been presented and instead provides fodder for laughter at best.

The other anti-BRI operation mentioned is the German-French-Japanese-Canadian “Alliance for Multilateralism” which saw Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland stating at a press conference in France that “Canada has formally joined a German French coalition armed at saving the international world order from destruction by various world dictators and autocrats”. While Freeland didn’t mention Trump by name here, France’s ambassador to Canada Kareen Rispal was more candid stating “Mr. Trump doesn’t like to value multilateralism”. Citing his withdrawal from COP21, and criticism of the WTO, UN and NATO the envoy continued “it sends the wrong message to the world if we think that because Mr. Trump is not in favor of multilateralism, it doesn’t mean we- I mean countries like Canada, France and Germany and many others- are not still firm believers.”

What exactly this “Alliance for Multilateralism” IS remains another question entirely, as no actual policy was put forth. After the smoke had cleared, it appears to be nothing more than a lemming-like club of hecklers yelling at Putin, Xi Jinping, Trump and other “bad people” who don’t wish to commit mass suicide under a Green New Deal and technocratic dictatorship.

Commenting on these developments in an April 10 webcast from Germany, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-Larouche made the following apt observation: “Geopolitics has to be thrown out of the window, and the New Silk Road is the way to industrialize Africa, to deal with the Middle East situation to get peace there, to establish a decent working situation between the United States, Russia and China: And that is for Europe what we should demand. And the best way to do that is that all of Europe would sign MOUs with the Belt and Road Initiative, then that would be the single most important thing to stabilize world peace and get the world into a different domain.”

With Russia and China leading a new coalition of nations fighting to uphold the principles of sovereignty, self-development and long term credit generation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, a great hope has presented itself as the Titanic that is the City of London and Wall Street continues to sink ever faster into the icy waters of history.

As the Serb civilians retreated, Croatian fighter planes bombed and strafed the refugee columns, killing many, even those that had already crossed into neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H). Some of the refugees were met by Croatian mobs hurling rocks and concrete at them. Compiling accounts from various, mostly Western news reports, Gregory Elich put together a harrowing account of the Croatian military operation, with full US and NATO support:

“A UN spokesman said, ‘The windows of almost every vehicle were smashed and almost every person was bleeding from being hit by some object.’ Serbian refugees were pulled from their vehicles and beaten. As fleeing Serbian civilians poured into Bosnia, a Red Cross representative in Banja Luka (B-H) said, ‘I've never seen anything like it. People are arriving at a terrifying rate.’ Bosnian Muslim troops crossed the border and cut off Serbian escape routes. Trapped refugees were massacred as they were pounded by Croatian and Muslim artillery… The Croatian rampage through the region left a trail of devastation. Croatian special police units, operating under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, systematically looted abandoned Serbian villages. Everything of value – cars, stereos, televisions, furniture, farm animals – was plundered, and homes set afire. A confidential European Union report stated that 73 percent of Serbian homes were destroyed. Troops of the Croatian army also took part, and pro-Nazi graffiti could be seen on the walls of several burnt-out Serb buildings.

Massacres continued for several weeks after the fall of Krajina, and UN patrols discovered numerous fresh unmarked graves and bodies of murdered civilians. The European Union report states, ‘Evidence of atrocities, an average of six corpses per day, continues to emerge. The corpses, some fresh, some decomposed, are mainly of old men. Many have been shot in the back of the head or had throats slit, others have been mutilated… Serb lands continue to be torched and looted.’

Following a visit in the region a member of the Zagreb Helsinki Committee reported, ‘Virtually all Serb villages had been destroyed…. In a village near Knin, eleven bodies were found, some of them were massacred in such a way that it was not easy to see whether the body was male or female.’”

Croatia’s then president, notorious WWII revisionist Franjo Tudjman, triumphantly celebrated the expulsion of the Serbs and the fact that they “disappeared… as if they have never lived here… They didn't even have time to take with them their filthy money or their filthy underwear!” This was the same man who had stated in 1990, at the beginning of his presidency, that he was “glad my wife is neither Serb nor Jew,” and, as the renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal charged, claimed that only 900,000 Jews had perished in the Holocaust.

But this did not much faze Israeli officials playing their own version of the Art of the Deal. On August 5, 2018, as the Croatian daily Vecernji list gleefully announced, “Operation Storm has at last been given the stamp of approval of its allies – the USA. and Israel,” adding that the overflight by Israeli F-16s carrying the Star of David represented a “symbolic act of international recognition of the ethical soundness of military operation Storm,” which Croatia had been seeking “since August 1995.” Obviously, half a billion dollars buys quite a lot these days, Star of David and all, even for Holocaust deniers.

In a statement to the Times of Israel, Serbia’s ambassador in Tel Aviv said that his country was “deeply disappointed about the participation of Israeli pilots and fighter jets,” stressing that Operation Storm was a “pogrom” and “the biggest exodus of a nation since the Second World War,” and that Israel’s participation in Croatia’s victory celebration “is not a friendly gesture toward Serbia.”

On the other hand, according to the same report, Brigadier General (Ret.) Mishel Ben Baruch, head of the Israeli defense ministry’s International Defense Cooperation Directorate, said that it was “an honor to be able to participate” in the 23^rd anniversary of Operation Storm. In addition, the Israeli embassy in Belgrade defended the participation of its warplanes in the celebration, stating that it was “entirely connected with the announced purchase” of the planes, that it carried “no political elements or any connection to the historic relations between Serbia and Croatia,” and that the “solid friendship” between Israel and Serbia “will never be jeopardized in any way.”

Serbian foreign minister Ivica Dachich was, however, not impressed, referring to the participation of Israeli jets as “immoral to their own people, the Jewish people, because so many Jews had perished in the Jasenovac [death camp], and the Croatian regime relativizes the Jewish victims,” adding that he “could not understand” the presence of the Israeli flag at the celebration, and that it would be a “mark” that the Israeli state would henceforth carry.

The Belgrade Jewish Community issued its own statement, saying that the celebration of Operation Storm was “neither the time, the place, nor the destination for Jewish pilots,” that “Jews remember their horrible suffering from World War II, when, just like the Serbs, we were victims of a terrible pogrom,” and that “absolutely no concession should be given, not even a thousandth of a millimeter, to the rehabilitation of either that or, unfortunately, the present-day glorification of the ‘success’ of Croatian soldiers.”

Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, tweeted the following just before the event: “Very upset that Israeli AirForce jets will be flying in event to mark “Operation Storm” during which Croatia expelled 250,000 Serbs from their homes in Croatia. Until today no foreign country has ever participated!!”

Ironically, just days before the Israeli pilots joined in the celebration of Croatia’s “final solution” to its Serbian problem, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin paid an official visit to Croatia and, during a visit to the notorious Nazi-era death camp, Jasenovac, often referred to as “Croatia’s Auschwitz,” urged Croatia to “deal with its past… and not to ignore it,” (not so) subtly referring to, as Zuroff put it in a recent Jerusalem Post column, Croatia’s “failure to sincerely and honestly confront” the crimes of its Nazi-collaborating Ustasha movement and regime, which “has plagued Croatia since it obtained independence” in 1995.

Strangely, instead of continuing to hold Croatia to account, the Israeli government and armed forces have chosen to legitimize that country’s glorification of slaughter and ethnic cleansing, built on a foundation of Holocaust relativization and WWII revisionism. While helping fortify modern Croatia’s foundations, Israel’s leaders have just managed to shake their own.

The Croatian index.hr website recently recapitulated an extensive report by the German Deutschlandfunk public radio, describing Croatia as a country “imprisoned by its own past, which it refuses to face” and “veering increasingly to the right,” in which “radical political discourse” and a “climate of hate and intimidation” predominate, and have actually worsened since the country’s accession to the European Union in July 2013.

The main target of hate is the remaining Orthodox Christian Serb minority (Croats are overwhelmingly Catholic), mostly ethnically cleansed from Croatia during Croatia’s war of secession from Yugoslavia between 1991-95, its numbers having been reduced from about 600,000 (about 12.2% of the population) to fewer than 190,000 (about 4.4% of the population) today. As the German radio report puts it, “In the narrative of national heroism, the enemy role is reserved for the Serbs, except if they give up their identity and declare themselves as Croats.”

What should be even greater cause for alarm, especially for Israel and Jews everywhere, is the report’s assessment that the next phase of Croatian nationalism is the rehabilitation of the WWII Ustashe regime, almost certainly the most despicable of all the Nazi puppet regimes, responsible for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Serbs and tens of thousands of Jews and Roma.

The German radio report, while certainly newsworthy and valuable, is hardly a revelation. Warnings about Croatia have been circulating for years. Among others, British historian Rory Yeomans, author of books such as Visions of Annihilation: the Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941-1945 and The Utopia of Terror: Life and Death in Wartime Croatia, has labeled Croatia’s WWII revisionism as “terrifying,” and that “revisionist views of the wartime Ustasha movement and the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia, NDH, have entered Croatia’s political mainstream in recent years.”

 This should come as no surprise, in view of the fact that the father of today’s Croatia and its first president, Franjo Tudjman, after whom the airport in Croatia’s capital city, Zagreb is named, along with numerous streets, institutions, parks, schools and public venues throughout Croatia, was a notorious WWII revisionist who emphasized newly independent Croatia’s continuity with the WWII puppet state, which, in his own words, “reflected the centuries-old aspirations of the Croatian people.” His attempt to whitewash his past by attending the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC in April 1993, was met by condemnation on the part of Holocaust historians and survivors, including Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.

In a letter to the New York Times of December 24, 1992, David A. Harris, Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee, warned of Tudjman’s anti-Jewish views:

“Croatian Jews, Mr. Tudjman wrote in his book ‘Wastelands: Historical Truth’ (1988), used their supposed traits of ‘selfishness, craftiness, unreliability, miserliness, underhandedness and secrecy’ to gain control of the Jasenovac concentration camp (where tens of thousands of Yugoslav Jews and others perished) and victimize others. Jews, he alleged, are commanded to ‘exterminate others and take their place’ because they consider themselves the chosen people. Israeli policy toward the Arabs, according to him, makes them nothing less than ‘Judeo-Nazis’.”

Perhaps Tudjman would’ve been kinder in his remarks had he anticipated that the “Judeo-Nazis” he despised would be offering his own successors (Croatian Prime Minister Plenkovic is also president of HDZ – the political party that Tudjman founded) advanced fighter planes just a couple of decades later. In any case, once again, realpolitik (or, perhaps, just plain greed) has brought together the oddest of bedfellows…

As irony would have it, on the same day (January 25, 2018) that Mr. Netanyahu was pitching his F-16’s to Croatia, Israeli professor Gideon Greif was giving a lecture entitled “Jasenovac – the Auschwitz of the Balkans” at the UN building in New York, as part of a joint Serbian-Jewish exhibition “Jasenovac – the Right Not to Forget.” Jasenovac was the most notorious Croatian WWII death camp, in which, according to the report of a post-war Yugoslav government commission, 500.000-600.000 people were savagely slaughtered, mostly Serbs, followed by Jews and Roma. Dr Greif, a renowned scholar and chief historian of the Israeli Shem Olam Faith and Holocaust Institute for Education, Documentation and Research, deems Jasenovac to have been “even more brutal by its atrocities than Auschwitz.” As he put it in a 2017 interview for the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti, as a reaction to Croatian attempts to revise history, specifically the push for the canonization of WWII Croatian Catholic Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac:

“It was hell on earth. That is why in Jasenovac the Croatian hands are completely covered in blood… The Germans had camps for women, men or mixed, where children were with the adults, but the Croats went a step further and even had children’s camps. Horror.”

(Nikola Popović, a member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts gives a figure of 24,911 children, mostly Serbian, exterminated in Jasenovac.)

As expected, the Croatian government vehemently protested the exhibition at the UN, accusing Serbia of “manipulating and disseminating false information,” after previously unsuccessfully trying to block the exhibition. Greif would have none of it. In an interview for Deutsche Welle in Serbian, he dismissed the official Croatian complaints:

“In my opinion, this exhibit should in no way be controversial. It is based on historical data and does not contain anything that could not be supported with evidence.”

He also cautioned regarding further attempts at historical revisionism, by Croats and others:

“As a historian, I can only say that the twisting of history is a dangerous thing. And it is dangerous what some people are trying to do in terms of twisting historical facts connected with Jasenovac victims.”

In an October 2017 article for the American Jewish online Tablet magazine, Menachem Z. Rosensaft, General Counsel of the World Jewish Congress, accused today’s Croatia of “brazenly attempting to rewrite its Holocaust crimes out of history.” Enough said.

Finally, it should be added that present-day Croatia is mimicking its WWII predecessor state in another important way – in its enthusiasm to fight on the “Eastern Front.” In July 1941, thousands of Croats enthusiastically volunteered to join the German invasion of the Soviet Union, initially as part of the Croatian 369th Reinforced Regiment of the Wehrmacht, attached to the 100^th Jäger-Division, which was ultimately destroyed at the Battle of Stalingrad, where it was the sole non-German unit participating in the attack. But the Croat anti-Russian enthusiasm could not be contained, leading to the formation of the 369th (Croat) Infantry Division, nicknamed “Vražja” or the “Devil’s Division.”

Today, according to Croatian media reports, Croatian troops are, proportionally, the most numerous NATO troops deployed towards the Russian border, in Lithuania and Poland, with a total of 258 soldiers, NCOs and officers (Croatia joined NATO in April 2009). In addition, Croatia has offered to help Ukraine with the “peaceful reintegration of the occupied territories" of Donetsk and Lugansk, prompting Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to remind of the “peacefulness” of Croatia’s own recent reintegration efforts:

“It is a well-known fact that large-scale military operations by the Croatian army in 1995 resulted in many casualties and the forced the exodus of some 250,000 Serbs from the country.”

Will revisionist and “peaceful” Croatia soon be reinforced by Israeli F-16s, proudly displaying, in what would make for historical irony par excellence, the trademark Croatian checkerboard, barely distinguishable from the notorious Croatian Nazi puppet coat of arms? Stay tuned.

In 1995, the Serb Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, had essentially dropped the Krajina Serbs, with the hope that he could improve his relationship with the West. At the time, Russia was weak and Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) was somewhat war weary and faced with a good degree of international isolation through hypocritically applied sanctions against it.

Going into Operation Storm, the Croat government likely knew that Yugoslavia wouldn’t give any military support to the Krajina Serb leadership – something which proved to be correct. Thereafter, Yugoslavia saw some easing of hostility against it. This changed a few years later when events in Kosovo became increasingly more violent – thereafter prompting another hypocritical Western led condemnation of Belgrade.

The Donbass rebels and Russian government are fully aware of this. Hence, they’ve good reason to be on guard against a Kiev regime advance on the rebel held territory. A successful military attack on the Donbass rebels puts their position as a political factor in jeopardy. In turn, Russia will be seen as weak. As is, the Russian government has faced some criticism for not doing enough to support the counter Euromaidan opposition in the former Ukrainian SSR.

In any event, as a major power, Russia isn’t in as much a vulnerable predicament as Yugoslavia. This reality lessens the chance of the Kremlin feeling a need to go against its interests. Analytical omissions aside, the aforementioned December 28 Euromaidan piece, acknowledges some potential problems with implementing a victorious attack against the Donbass rebels.

This can change if the Kremlin were to become extremely annoyed with the rebels and cheery with the Kiev leadership and its Western backers. For now, this appears unlikely. Furthermore, there’s division within Western and pro-Kiev regime circles. The support for increased US military aid to the Kiev regime has been met with some reasoned second guessing that’s worth notice.

Among other things, US Naval War College academic Lyle Goldstein’s November 30 National Interest article, pointedly criticizes the hardline pro-Kiev regime stance of Kurt Volker – the Trump administration’s appointee for handling former Ukrainian SSR matters like Donbass. In a February 15, 2015 Washington Post piece, Brookings Institute analyst Fiona Hill argued against arming the Kiev regime. Hill now serves as a Trump administration adviser on Russia related matters. Over the past couple of years, City College of New York professor Rajan Menon has opposed US military aid to the Kiev regime. Menon hasn’t been sympathetic to pro-Russian concerns (which encompass a good number of folks in the former Ukrainian SSR), as is true of his Rutgers University affiliated peer Alexander Motyl.

The latter is on record for believing that Ukraine could be better off without the rebel held Donbass area – on the basis that its territory has become economically problematical, coupled with a population which by and large doesn’t share Motyl’s negative perception of Russia – a slant evident among many on the pro-Euromaidan side. Motyl’s opinion aside, Donbass has the potential to regain and improve upon its prior status as a key economic area, relative to the former Ukrainian SSR. Granted that much needs to be done for this to happen.

The Trump administration’s decision to provide the Kiev regime with arms represents an ongoing tug of war between the realists and hardline elements against pro-Russian sentiment. Despite their clear differences, Trump’s exhibited realism on Russia was supported by his predecessor Barack Obama in a lengthy 2016 exchange he had with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. While being decidedly biased against Russia (as noted by yours truly), that dialogue included a realistic assessment by Obama, which noted Ukraine’s importance to Russia and how Moscow has a geographic advantage over Washington, when it comes to military action in the former Ukrainian SSR.

There’s also the matter of the US having a pecking order of other foreign policy concerns, with the former Ukrainian SSR probably not ranking in the top three or more.

With all this in mind, a prolonged, geopolitically boring frozen conflict seems like the most probable scenario for Donbass. This possibility isn’t necessarily so bad, if the violence ends with improved socioeconomic conditions for both sides. Meantime, the Kiev regime’s ongoing economic problems, ultra-nationalist element and talk of a Croatian scenario for Donbass, might very well increase the likelihood of a skirmish – especially with the announced US military aid package.

Another trigger point could be armed conflict within Kiev regime controlled Ukraine between anti-Russian and pro-Russian groups. Such an occurrence  could lead to claims of Russian meddling with Donbass potentially blamed as a base for the trouble – never minding the internal dynamic within Kiev regime controlled Ukraine.

David L. Glotzer writes for Déclassé Intellectual. 

It’s late in the afternoon and we are stuck behind a school bus in Northern Croatia as we drive through the what the GPS says is the miserable little town of Apatija, which my Croatian friend Juraj says literally translates to “apathy” in Croatian.

We are following Balkan Route in the footsteps of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa who are fleeing the Syrian Civil War, ISIS, Al-Shabbab, the Taliban, African despots and America’s drone war.

I’m impressed with how the school bus can navigate the dirt and gravel roads that crisscross this Croatian nowhere. Before the Croatian government set up transit camps to provide people with food, shelter, medical care bus and train rides to Western Europe, refugees without the money to pay for their own transportation had to walk these roads.

We split with the bus at fork between two fields and make our way through another little nowhere called Gola which makes us both laugh because its slang for a naked woman. Which makes sense, Gola looks almost entirely abandoned; other than some half painted houses along the main road and a relatively well kept church it looks like no one has lived here since the end of the Yugoslav wars. The vibe is certainly bare, at the edge of the town we pass by ill clad children riding their bikes through water filled potholes, Juraj says it’s a Gypsy village, and then we make it to a field recently bisected by the new Hungarian border fence.

Hungary quarantined itself off from Croatia and Serbia with a 13 foot fence topped with razor wire in response to refugees crossing on their way to Western Europe. Between September and October of 2015 of over 200,000 had made the journey. It is now January 2016, and the combined number of refugees crossing into Hungary since the fence went up has totaled less than 1,000.

We come up to a small gap policed by Hungarian soldiers and a squad car from the adjacent Hungarian town. The soldiers are young, bored and don’t speak very much English but they tell us they haven’t seen any refugees trying to cross in weeks.

On the Croatian side of the border there are only empty tool booths and an abandoned police station which has been stripped of everything valuable. The only thing left is an old air-conditioning unit dangling from a broken window. Six months ago, before the refugee crisis picked up, you couldn’t tell which country you were in until you heard someone speak. Croatia is in the process of joining the Schengen region, which Hungary is already part of, which is supposed to guarantee freedom of movement for all people between the 26 member nations. The Hungarian fence is in clear violation of this agreement.

Earlier in the day we had been to the Slovene border near Samobor. The Slovenes had laid barbed wire along the Bregana River which separates them from Croatia. About a mile from the official border crossing we tried entering Slovenia by taking an old stone bridge when we were held up by a guard sitting in what looked like a telephone booth. As he told us we needed to go through the official border an old man walked passed, into Slovenia, as calmly as he must have done when these two countries were both part of Yugoslavia. The guard gave him no trouble.

Before turning the car around, the guard told us the barrier was built to make sure Refugees go through the established transit camps and don’t freeze to death crossing the river or in the forest.

In March, both Slovenia and Croatia closed their borders to refugees trying to enter Western Europe.  It must have been nice to have already laid out 400 miles of razor wire.

But it’s not just the Balkans who are preparing to defend themselves from hordes of desperate people. Earlier in April Austrian Defense minister Hans Peter Doskozil told Die Welt, “as the EU’s external borders are not yet effectively protected, Austria will soon ramp up strict border controls. That means massive border controls at the Brenner (Pass), and with soldiers,” its border with Italy. Both are signatories of Schengen.

Since the flow of refugees picked up Germany has restricted rail travel from Austria, Sweden on travel from Denmark, Denmark from Germany, Belgium from France and Norway from the entire European Union. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has barricaded itself from refugees crossing from Greece causing a humanitarian crisis and Hungary will hold a referendum on whether or not to accept the EU’s refugee quotas as it tries to build its own European hermit kingdom.

In March the EU signed a deal with Turkey to stop refugees from smuggling themselves into Europe, which includes a plan to “swap” refugees who pay their life savings to smugglers to cross the Aegean on a raft. Through neglect, the EU is literally forcing asylum seekers into the hands of the criminals they are afraid they will become once they enter Europe, while any tourist can pay €20 to do the same on a ferry and get trashed for a weekend on any number of Greek islands.

According to Eurostat the EU received approximately 2.3 million applications for asylum between 2013 and 2015. With more than 500 million people and the world largest economy, there should be no problem absorbing what is, in fact, less than 0.5% of the EU’s current population.

While the immediate cause of the refugee crisis is undoubtedly the global war on terror and specifically the war in Iraq, this does not explain why Europe is failing to handle what, with the threat of climate change, may be nothing more than the runt of 21st century migrant crises.

Greece alone took in nearly 1 million people, mostly Albanians, after the USSR fell and the Yugoslav Wars began, yet these people were integrated into Greek society and there was never a threat that Europe would collapse even though the majority of Albanians are Muslim.

But that was before the Maastricht treaty formerly created the European Union and the Euro which bound disparate economies together with a common currency under the conditions that they gave up fiscal and monetary sovereignty.

In its creation, Germany, recalling the vivid history of Post-Wiemar Hyperinflation, made sure that the new European Currency would be a “hard” currency designed after the pre-WWII Gold Standard, a common currency that spread the Great Depression in the United States to the rest of the developed world after 1929.

So when the 2008 financial crisis raced across the Atlantic like a tsunami and crushed Europe’s banking system under the banner of “Sound fiscal policies” deficits and national debts were restricted to 3% and 60% of GDP respectively and the European Central Bank was restricted from purchasing national debts, which is the reason why central banks were invented in the first place.

Now individual countries can’t generate the deficits necessary to pull the European economy out of recession without entering a debt crisis. Unlike the United States, interest rates on national debts for Eurozone countries are set by markets and countries are restricted from pursing expansionary fiscal policies during times of crisis. Eurozone nations gave up their individual economic sovereignty in order to come together without creating European economic sovereignty and it’s tearing them apart.

In the US, but also in any country with its own currency like, austerity is a political choice and real resources are the main constraint, this is not the case for Eurozone nations for whom finance is a scarce resource. Now Southern Europe is in permanent debt deflation and Northern Europe is decaying from lack of investment even though their real interest rates are negative, workers are at each other’s throats because the empowered parties refuse to acknowledge austerity was a mistake and change course, and the only groups winning belong to the xenophobic right wing.

Certainly by historical standards this is not the largest refugee crisis Europe has faced; after World War II more than 50 million people were displaced and Europe was in ashes, yet they recovered. Today the trauma of war does not haunt them; freedom of movement for EU citizens has culturally linked more disparate people than at any other time in their recent history; they have common intuitions; they have the productive capacity to provide all of their citizens with meaningful lives and a historically unprecedented level comfort. And yet, with all the physical and human means to solve their problems, the European project is falling apart, they are “divided by a common currency” according to former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

In the ultimate vindication of Camus’ La Peste Europeans forgot that it was not the hyperinflation of the 1920’s, but the deflation of the 1930’s which brought Hitler and the Nazi’s to power. And once again, following economic catastrophe, fascism is crawling back onto the surface of European politics because a dissolving common currency has made the politicians trying to save it economically impotent.

Add to the economic fire an influx of refugees and let the scapegoating begin.

The AfD, which didn’t even exist until 2013, is now the third largest party in Germany and has a leader, Frauke Petry, who boosted her poll numbers after suggesting that German Police should shoot refugees at the border if they tried enter the country. After taking a nearly quarter of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt she said, “yesterday we made an important first step in the right direction to break the cartels of consensus parties.” And she is right. Nationally the Social Democratic Party has fallen to 21% while Angela Merkel’s coalition government fell to just 34%.

Get on a train and travel east for a few hours and you can hear Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban talk about refusing Asylum seekers “to keep Europe Christian,” which is apparently not enough for much of the Hungarian public as he faces a serious challenge from Jobbik, a radical nationalist party whose party leader thinks that “the Land Law has to be amended so that the Solomons cannot buy land in Hungary,” and that the major problem facing the Hungarian people, other than some dangerous Jews, is “Gypsy crime.” Jobbik holds more than 20% of Hungarian parliamentary seats.

Or head west to France where the “Socialist” party is criminalizing the hijab and evicting asylum seekers from refugee camps in order to out-right the proto-fascist National Front. The French Government is also being subsidized by the British Government to militarize the border crossing in Calais to keep refugees from crossing over into Dover.

Hollande’s “Socialist” Government is showing the people of Europe that you don’t have to elect proto-fascists in order to get right wing policy because without a credible left the center will gladly be the handmaiden of bigots and racists.

Across the Channel the Brits will be holding referendum on staying in the European Union on June 23rd. Why? Because even though the UK has its own currency and is entirely unimpeded from achieving full employment and boosting badly needed investment, the conservative government doesn’t feel like it. That would show that government could somehow be useful, and obviously the British malaise should be the fault of foreigners and poor people, not austerity and neglect.

In the Netherlands Geert Wilders’ ironically named Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) is leading in the polls for the upcoming 2017 parliamentary elections. The PVV’s platform includes, among other things, “the abolition of the senate, shutting down of all Islamic Schools, withdrawal from the EU, the abolition of the European Parliament and no cooperation in any EU activities, repeal of the carbon tax, taxes on the Islamic headscarves and prohibition of the Koran,” and “no more windmills” or funding for durability or CO₂ reduction.”

If that’s not ridiculous enough the Dutch version of PVV’s platform also rails specifically against “integration courses,” valiantly declaring “not in theaters, not at libraries, not in swimming pools or anywhere!” Because why not? Apparently integrated swinging pools a greater national threat than climate change in a country that is 26% below sea level.

Oh, and actual Nazis make up the third largest party in Greece.

Welcome to fortified Europe, where the walls might not be as big and beautiful as a Trump fantasy but they do have German efficiency and other than the creeping sense that we’re reliving the 1930’s everything is just fine.

The rivalry between Croatia and Serbia is centuries-long, stretching to before either of them were modern-day nation states and back to the time when they were still under the occupation of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, respectively. It’s been argued that both people are of the same ethnic origin, with their only substantial differences being in dialect and adherence to a particular Christian branched (Catholicism for Croats, Orthodoxy for Serbs). Extended research has already been published on the fraternal similarities between these two people and the reasons for their contemporary perception of “separateness” as regards the other, so the present study will refrain from repeating what has already been established long before it and begin the historical discourse from the more relevant period of World War II.

Leading up to the intercommunal hostilities that formally broke out after the Nazi invasion (although incidents of violence were indeed present right before then), the Croats had been agitating for an autonomous ethno-centric sub-state within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and they finally received their wish with the August 1939 Cvetkovic-Macek Agreement that established the CroatianBanovina. The Ustase, a hyper-fascist Croatian organization led by Ante Pavelic, had been pushing for this for quite some time, seeing it as a stepping stone to outright independence and the fulfillment of their nationalist ambitions to forge Greater Croatia. Observed from abroad, the Croatian fascists obviously seemed like ideal and natural partners for the Nazis to cooperate with before and after their forthcoming invasion of Yugoslavia, and it’s no surprise that Hitler would later work hand-in-glove with Pavelic in exterminating the Serbs. Their pre-war collaboration was so deep that the “Independent State of Croatia”, the Nazi-controlled puppet project during World War II (the most radical manifestation of Greater Croatia), would be declared right after Hitler’s invasion and over a week prior to the formal capitulation of the Yugoslav government, suggesting that its supporters were eagerly awaiting the offensive and understood that it was only with Nazi support that their nationalist nightmare could become a reality.

Balkan states in 1939

The pertinence that all of this has to the present era is that the Hitler-Pavelic project for Greater Croatia incorporated the entirety of Bosnia and created a precedent (however ethically disturbing and brief) of ‘leadership’ in the Western Balkans that imprinted a very specific form of geo-nationalism on the historical memory of most Croats. While thankfully never carried out to the ultra-extreme form of its fascist predecessors, this brand of radical Croatian nationalism would return as a factor during the destructive dissolution of Yugoslavia. The Croatian military wanted not only to purge ethnic Serbs from the Republic of Serbian Krajina that they had established in part of the former Socialist Republic of Croatia (itself the post-war formalization of most of the Croatian Banovina), but they wanted to take it even further and cleanse their rival demographic from most of Bosnia as well (although this latter objective thankfully failed). Indicative of just how intimately intertwined the genocide against Serbs has become in the modern-day Croatian national identity, 5 August, the date that the Republic of Serbian Krajina was destroyed, is annually celebrated as the “Day of Victory and Thanksgiving and the Day of Croatian Defenders”.

The takeaway from this broad overview is that the Croatian political-military establishment is vehemently anti-Serbian and that the geo-nationalist historical memory still lingering from World War II can be easily manipulated to gin the population up for supporting another crusade. The focal point in any forthcoming conflict for carving out a Greater Croatia (whether in fact or in form) is undoubtedly Bosnia, and the provocations that Sarajevo has lately launched against Republika Srpska bode quite negatively for the entity’s future stability. More than likely, the Croatian deep state (the permanent military, diplomatic, and intelligence apparatuses) is interested in unbalancing Bosnia in order to create the opportunity for wiping Republika Srpska from the map and turning the entirety of the country into an American-Croatian protectorate, or in other words, the post-modern manifestation of the Hitler-Pavelic project for Greater Croatia.

Missile vs. Missile

This brings the study to the point of discussing the missile race that’s begun between Croatia and Serbia. It was reported in mid-October 2015 that Croatia is planning to purchase 16 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) from the US. Although no formal statement was yet to be issued on the topic, it’s predicted that Croatia will claim that the MLRS are for “defensive” purposes and shouldn’t trigger worry from anyone, but the fact that they give the country the capability to strike Serbia is a cause for serious concern. It’s perplexing to try and make sense of what’s foreseen to be Croatia’s “defensive” ‘justification’ for the arms purchase considering that the system only has an offensive purpose. It’s thus not for naught that Serbian Prime Minister Vucic spoke about his interest in purchasing Russian anti-missile systems and other equipment during his late-October visit to Moscow, since Serbia now needs to find a way to nullify this emerging military threat.

Of course, if Serbia for whatever reason backs out of its verbal commitment to purchase the Russian arms, then it would automatically place itself in a position of military blackmail vis-à-vis Croatia (acting as a Lead From Behind proxy on behalf of the US) and would be powerless to correct the military imbalance. Provided that both transfers go through, then it’s inevitable that the US will push its Croatian proxy into purchasing different sets of weaponry in order to upset the strategic equilibrium that Serbia’s Russian-made anti-missile systems would bring to the region. This would beget a symmetrical response from Serbia, thus plunging the two neighbors into an American-initiated arms race that neither of their two frail economies might be able to sustain.

In this sense, Croatia would have an institutional advantage over Serbia since its NATO membership might entitle it to discounted weaponry that could prove effective in shifting the military balance, while Serbia has no such agreement with Russia. Nonetheless, in such a case Russia would probably propose an advantageous and deferred payment plan to allow Serbia to receive the necessary defensive armaments in maintaining its security. Cyclically, one sale leads to another, and before anyone realizes what happened (except of course the US, which engineered this whole scenario), the Western and Central Balkans’ strongest militaries are engaged in a spiraling arms race across every military spectrum, drawing their American and Russian allies closer to a New Cold War proxy confrontation with the other.

Battleground Bosnia

Going back to the conclusion reached after the historical overview at the beginning of this article, Croatia and its Western backers are working closely with Sarajevo in engineering the pretexts (whether legal, military, or ‘socially driven’ through a Color Revolution) to abolish Republika Srpska. Such a struggle won’t come easy, however, as the Serbs are sure to symmetrically fight back against any aggressive infringement on their sovereignty, be it legal and/or military. Everything that’s happening right now as regards the Croatian military buildup is predicated on preparing Zagreb to take the lead in any prospective anti-Srpska operation, whether through a direct or indirect role. The Bosnian Armed Forces are not capable on their own of carrying out the task, considering also that the Serbian members would immediately mutiny and fight for their constituent republic as opposed to the overall federation (which is being hijacked by the Croat-Muslim entity as it is). Therefore, from the perspective of American grand strategy in waging the next battle in the War on Serbia and drawing Belgrade into a Reverse Brzezinski trap, it’s imperative for it to use Croatia as its vanguard proxy in achieving this geo-critical objective.

At this juncture, Croatia’s missile buildup makes complete sense, since it gives Zagreb the capacity to project force into Serbia to counter any support that Belgrade gives to Banja Luka. It’s not for sure that Croatia would ever directly attack Serbia itself (although it might feel compelled to if the US pressures it in this direction), but the mere fact that American missiles could once more rain down on Serbian cities would certainly affect Serbia’s strategic calculations in this scenario. If the country didn’t have adequate defenses for nullifying this threat, then Croatia would be able to blackmail Serbia and prevent it from directly or indirectly intervening to support Republika Srpska. However, if Serbia’s defenses were buffeted with state-of-the-art Russian-built anti-missile technology, then Croatia’s blackmail threat instantly disappears and Belgrade would have a much freer course of action in assisting Republika Srpska however it deemed fit.

Croatia would then only have the choice of attacking Serbia directly in face-to-face aggression either in the Bosnian ‘middle ground’ or directly on its own soil and risk escalating the war to unforeseen heights. Depending on the global New Cold War conditions at the time, the US and NATO might not be so eager to directly assist in Croatia’s offensive, thus hanging it out to dry in fighting Serbia on its own. This isn’t a risk that Croatia’s decision makers would want to take lightly, thus meaning that if their surface-to-surface missile blackmail is deterred by Serbia’s Russian-provided anti-missile defense systems, then it becomes markedly less likely that they’d directly attack Serbian soil and would probably contain their aggression to the Bosnian battlespace. In turn, this increases the chances that Republka Srpska can withstand whatever joint Croatian-Muslim offensive is being planned against them, knowing that they can depend on Serbian assistance if need be without having to fear that their ally is under ballistic-missile blackmail in being forced to stay on the sidelines. From a larger and conclusive perspective, Serbian-Russian military cooperation in balancing against the Croatian-American buildup might even indefinitely delay a unipolar offensive on Republika Srpska and give the multipolar world the adequate time that it needs in brainstorming a solution to this impending brinksmanship.

Andrew Korybko, orientalreview.org

I purposefully use the term satellites, not allies, in case of Croatia and Ukraine (to a lesser extent Serbia and Macedonia). They are not exactly US allies. An ally is associated out of good will by mutual relationship. Being an ally presupposes readiness to support another country as a free choice of government corresponding to the general will of nation.

It has no whatsoever relation to Ukraine where the pro-US regime came to power as a result of «the most overt coup in history», according to George Friedman of Stratfor. The intensive rapprochement with the United States and European Union provoked the civil war raging inside the country. It’s particularly hard to call Serbia or Macedonia US allies. In 1999 Serbia was a target for US air strikes. Due to US pressure Macedonia had to reject the participation in the lucrative Turkish Stream project which envisioned Russian gas transit through its territory. The governments and people of all these countries were lectured by Mrs. Nuland. It may seem to be a strange thing but whatever she said became a reality pretty soon. Macedonia is the most recent example. Visiting Dubrovnik, Croatia, on July 10 Victoria Nuland said «Our message to Macedonia is equally tough: every opportunity for unity and prosperity awaits you; NATO and EU membership await you. But the major political forces must stop squabbling and get on the path to democratic reform sketched out by EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn with US support, and then move on to settle the name issue with Greece. Again, don’t squander the moment».

http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2015/jul/244800.htm

The words were spoken on July 10. All of a sudden the leaders of the four main parties and two groups representing Albanian minority of Macedonia reached an agreement on solving the political crisis. It became effective on July 15. They did it! What a lucky occurrence! Now who do you think acted as intermediaries? No one else but European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Johannes Hahn and United States Ambassador Jess Baily. The political crisis in the country had been raging for a few months. It was sparked by publishing taped conversations of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and other Macedonian leaders. Only special services of leading powers could do it. US and European media painted Gruevski as a corrupted pro-Russian politician using authoritarian methods to rule the country.

Zoran Zaev, the political leader of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) and the leader of opposition in the country, who combines his considerable personal fortune with allegiance to social democracy, organized «peaceful protests» in front of government building. It made remember the events in Ukraine. Zaev did his best to look like Poroshenko or Yatsenyuk. He probably would find this comparison flattering.

As soon as Mrs. Nuland delivered the speech, the protests subsided and the document appeared with the provision that opposition will be represented in the cabinet starting from October to be followed by new elections slated for April 2016 (100 days after the opposition enters the government). It was all done in strict accordance with what Victoria Nuland said in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Martin Sieff, former bureau chief of The Washington Times in Eastern Europe, said he couldn’t believe his eyes. Mrs. Nuland spoke like if she were Roman emperor Trajan introducing his provinces to new laws they will be governed by. The both speeches were pronounced in almost same geographic locations. Looks like everything the new Trajan said has been brought into life. Gruevski even agreed to let representatives of opposition join the government 100 days before the new election. He also refused to take part in the Turkish Stream till the European Union and Russia iron out the differences. The emperor’s speeches could lead to bad results. 

Look at the way the European Union treats Greece or the attitude adopted by US when it deals with Russia and Ukraine. The contemporary Western emperors know how to divide and want to rule but they have lost the ability to compromise – a much needed skill for those who want to govern.

The Greek Syriza tried to reach a compromise with the West (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund). Greece used democratic ways to tackle the problem (a referendum). It wanted to be met halfway (the Greece’s collapse will be a lose-lose situation for everybody). The first thing the European Union did was to threaten Greece and then offer it an austerity plan with even tougher conditions than before. 

This is a bad sign for those who always advocate the policy of compromise – the European Social Democrats. Greek expert Kostas Pliakos says it should not be forgotten that Syriza is the coalition of radical left Social Democrats. For more than a century the European Social Democrats have been looking for a compromise with capitalism (represented today by unified West). That’s what made them differ from Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. It worked in the 1960s and 1970s. After the Second World War the West became reasonable, humane and flexible – it was scared by the Russian revolution and the response to it – German Nazism, which led to even more horrible terror.

It’s all changed now. The West does not seek compromises and the tried and true tactic of Social Democrats serves no purpose. There is only one way out of the situation. Greek and Macedonian opponents of EU policy should unite with such an ally as Russia, and, perhaps, with other countries of BRICS. Neither Greece nor Eastern Europe has been able to understand it as yet.

The Ustasha, along with their Slovenian and Serb loyalists to the Nazi puppet regime, were killed by the partisans under the command of anti-fascist guerrilla leader Josip Broz Tito. Most of the Ustasha were killed in the Austrian town of Bleiburg, as well as in the Slovenian towns of Macelj and Tezno. The Ustasha were attempting to flee among hordes of other refugees from Tito's forces who were mopping up the last remaining pockets of Nazi resistance in Yugoslavia. The Ustasha actually sought the protection of British forces that were advancing from Austria toward the Yugoslav border. It was known to the Ustasha that the Serbian Chetnik guerrilla leader, the non-Communist, Draza Mihailovic, who had battled the Ustasha had maintained a special relationship with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) intelligence and military officials while also cooperating with the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. However, the British had struck a deal with Tito’s partisans at the expense of the Chetniks and although they did not directly aid the Ustasha, they had no problem letting the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Vatican help spirit out of Yugoslavia some of the top Ustasha officials in the infamous «Rat Line» operation coordinated with Croatian Catholic war criminal Monsignor Krunoslav Draganovic. 

British intelligence had, for some time, played an underhanded role in the Balkans. British intelligence had ties to the «Crna Ruka» (Black Hand) operation of which Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was a member. Princip’s assassination of Ferdinand in 1914 helped trigger off World War I. At the same time, British intelligence was kick-starting another Black Hand group in Palestine, known as «al-Kaff al-Aswad» in Arabic, which began attacking Jewish settlers at the same time British Lord Balfour was promising Palestine to the Zionists as a future Jewish homeland. The British and their American allies, mostly through the auspices of NATO, continue to play dangerous intelligence games in the Balkans.

Many of the Ustasha leadership, including the Nazi puppet dictator Ante Pavelic, managed to escape the firing squads planned by Tito’s partisans and they fled to Argentina, courtesy of hastily-prepared Vatican passports authorized by Pope Pius XII. During the Cold War, Draganovic, Pavelic, and other Croatians served as exiled members of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Operation Gladio. From 1959 to 1962, Draganovic helped the CIA run Ustasha clandestine agents in Yugoslavia who passed on intelligence about the Tito government to the West.

Grabar-Kitarovic laid wreaths at Ustasha memorials in the three towns where the Ustasha forces met their fates. The memorial in Bleiburg serves as a rallying point for neo-Nazis annually who come to pay tribute to the Nazi Ustasha killed by Tito's forces. Grabar-Kitarovic was accompanied at the ceremonies by Croatian Prime Minster Zoran Milanović, a member of the Social Democratic Party and a former member of Croatia's delegation to NATO in Brussels, and who, as is typical for a Soros loyalist, is a strong promoter of gender equality and human artificial insemination.

Grabar-Kitarovic represents a phalanx of Nazi sympathizers and aspirant nations who serve in senior government positions throughout NATO countries in Eastern Europe, including the three Baltic States, Albania, Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine. NATO headquarters has always been rife with pro-Nazi senior officers on its staff, particularly those from Denmark, the Baltic nations, and Belgium. Rasmussen was the prime minister of Denmark before becoming NATO Secretary-General.

Grabar-Kitarovic’s actions, during the period the world was commemorating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis has led to condemnations from her own country, as well as others, including Russia and Serbia, that helped defeat Hitler and his allies. In April 2015, Grabar-Kitarovic failed to attend a commemoration at the Nazi concentration camp of Jasenovac where an estimated 83,000 people died at the hands of the Ustasha. The victims, although primarily Serbs, also included Roma (gypsies), Jews, and anti-Nazi Croatians in that order, mainly because the names of the many of the Roma killed were never registered.

The CIA’s interest in using Yugoslav minority groups led by Nazi and neo-Nazi elements is illustrated in a SECRET limited copy document, dated October 1985, titled «Yugoslavia: Internal Security Capabilities». The document points out that Yugoslavia’s decentralized internal security forces after Tito's death in 1980 provided some unique opportunities to make common cause with those seeking to foment «ethnic or interregional conflict» in the country. The CIA took comfort in the fact that in 1985, Yugoslavia’s state security network was «an array of regional and provincial organizations only loosely controlled by the federal government». In other words, Yugoslavia was a sitting duck for penetration by CIA-supported Nazi emigré groups, particularly the Croatians and Albanians.

Ustasha leader Draganovic arranged for the Nazi «Butcher of Lyon,» Klaus Barbie, to escape to Argentina at the end of World War II. When Barbie asked Draganovic why he was helping him to escape, the Catholic prelate tipped his hand on future Western intelligence operations in the Balkans and Europe, replying, «We have to maintain a sort of moral reserve on which we can draw in the future».

That «moral reserve» would later be used by the CIA inside Yugoslavia to incite ethnic tensions to bring down the Communist-led government. In fact, the CIA report appears to relish in the fact that Albanians in Kosovo were the first to rebel against the federal government in 1981, the year after Tito's death. The CIA document also states that for any significant regional discontent to materialize, the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA), «the national institution least affected by regional divisions,» would have to be dealt with by the external forces hoping to capitalize on Yugoslavia’s ethnic divisions. The 1981 Kosovo riots by Albanian nationalists apparently had the tacit support of the regional Kosovo communist leader and his two top security officials. They were removed from office by the federal government. A redacted paragraph providing more information on the Kosovo officials may include details of previous contact with them or their associates by the CIA station in Belgrade. The CIA report does state that Yugoslav Interior Minister Dobroslav Culafic stated that in 1984 and 1985, «16 underground organizations and groups with 362 members had been uncovered» in Kosovo. The former Interior Minister, Stane Dolanc, is quoted in the CIA report as stating that the Kosovo Communist leadership failed to apprise Belgrade on the extent of the Albanian nationalist problems in Kosovo. The CIA report also describes nascent nationalist uprisings in Croatia, Vojvodina, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The CIA report mentions the Croatian "rebellion" of 1971, which saw a number of Croatian nationalists propose rights for the Croatian language and the idea of incorporating Herzegovina into the Yugoslav republic of Croatia. 

The Croatian nationalist rebellion of 1971, now dubbed by the Sorosites and one of their their virtual house organs, Wikipedia, as the "Croatian Spring," was put down by force and among those jailed was the future first president of independent Croatia, communist-turned-nationalist Franjo Tudjman. The current president, Grabar-Kitarovic, is a member of Tudjman’s party, the Croatian Democratic Union, seen by many as the successors to the Nazi Ustasha fascists. From Croatia to Ukraine and Romania to Latvia, there is a resurgence of Nazism in Europe, brought on by decades of machinations by the CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Soros’s Open Society Institute. This resurgence could be referred to as the «Fourth Reich Lite».