Nebojsa Malic brought up an excellent point with regard to conflict of interest. The board of ICG is made up of George Soros who is trying to destroy regimes in eastern Europe so that he can economically exploit and loot them. Doesn’t he have a stake in the outcome? Isn’t there a conflict of interest here? Morton Abramowitz, who is the top advocate for Albanian secessionists in Serbia and who orchestrated the illegal 1999 US/NATO attack against Yugoslavia, is a board member. He is also a former ambassador to Turkey. Of course, Abramowitz is committed to working for his proxies and surrogates, the Albanian minority of the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija, now almost ethnically cleansed of Serbs and non-Albanians thanks to the ICG, IWPR, and Abramowitz.
What is important to note, however, is that “journalists,” presstitutes, also make up ICG. This is another glaring conflict of interest. There is the case of Anna Husarska, who was one of the key presstitutes of the Bosnian civil war. Husarska was one of the key advocacy journalists in Bosnia, vociferously supporting the Bosnian Muslim faction. She even referred to the Muslim-held part of Sarajevo as “my” Sarajevo. She developed her advocacy journalism skills against the Communist regime in Poland writing for Gazeta Wyborcza. She became a darling of the US media because she was anti-Russian, anti-Orthodox, anti-Communist.
What happened to her after the Bosnian civil war? Husarska joined ICG as one of these Balkan “experts” although she is not from the Balkans, but from Poland. So here we have a journalist who becomes an “expert” in an NGO think tank. The important thing about Husarska is that she reveals the ICG modus operandi. Here is what Husarska said about intervention in Kosovo in 1999:
“For a decade Albanians living in Kosovo have complained about their lack of an independent state. Yet they don’t do anything about it. No graffiti, no signs, no demonstrations…”
First, this statement reveals the cynicism of Slobodan Milosevic’s alleged oppression /repression of the Kosovo Albanian minority in Yugoslavia so harped on in the media of the West. But Husarska reveals that the conflict is really about secession and creating a Greater Albania, which is illegal under the UN and international law. Second, she advocates violence in the form of terrorism in Kosovo and by extension later in Macedonia. Only terrorism gets results is what Husarska is saying. She would approve of the destruction of 30 Serbian Orthodox Churches that occurred last week in Kosovo and the burning of Kosovo Serb houses. That gets results. Talk is cheap. This shows that the MO of the ICG is to support terrorism, not oppose it. Third, Husarska doesn’t have to explicitly state that such terrorism gets headlines and gets CNN’s attention. In other words, the media of the West can exploit the violence that results. This MO is neat and concise. It really is, in a nutshell, how ICG operates. This is their MO. ICG must be seen in the context of the Cold War. It is just war as politics by other means. It is about destroying the Soviet influence in eastern Europe and the establishment of new capitalist markets in the east. That is what it is really all about.
The ICG is a government within a government, it is a quasi-governmental body. It exists under the camouflage of “private” think tank. But it shows that the “free world” is not so free after all. These self-interested robber barons and political hacks are secretly pulling the strings, are manipulating foreign relations and foreign policy. ICG/IWPR need to be outed. They are not elected. They are self-appointed. This runs counter to democracy. Who elected these people anyway? Their role is thus antidemocratic. This, however, is a phenomenon of the post-Cold War era, the New World Order. It is war by other means.
With regard to the presstitutes, the media of the so-called free world, it should be remembered that journalists always consult with the US government, the US State Department, on how they will cover a news story. In other words, the US media is state-run just as the Soviet one was. With regard to Kosovo, the journalists merely report on it however the US government wants them to. In other words, they advance the US government agenda. We saw this with the embedded journalists in Iraq who were just government mouthpieces. But as in the Soviet/eastern bloc media, US media is also state-run and government-controlled in essence. Most people are deluded about this. But this has always been so. Just ask journalists who espoused Communism in the 1950s McCarthy witch hunts and see what happened to them!
ICG/IWPR should be outed and exposed for the antidemocratic quasi-governmental interest groups that they are. ICG is the new danger and greatest threat to democracy we face in the New World Order. Why aren’t more people concerned about this danger?
Nebojsa Malic replies:
There is obviously no conflict of interest in the work done by ICG, IWPR and the governments that sponsor them: they all aim to destroy any social and political structures in Eastern Europe that are hostile to serving the Empire in any fashion. Whether their goal is exploitation (not capitalism – as that would actually entail investment instead of plunder) or domination, they all enthusiastically advocate and use force to achieve it. They are indeed self-proclaimed and self-appointed (kind of like the Empire), and I’ve been trying to explain the misled masses of the Balkans for several years now that these “experts” are pernicious frauds who should be run out of town on a rail, preferably after being tarred and feathered (now there’s a good American custom worth exporting). Fortunately, most people in Serbia and elsewhere have never had much use or respect for their ilk, and have even less after seeing them at work. It is the self-proclaimed “elite” – already ashamed of themselves and enamored of coercion – that fawns over these missionaries. Between the missionaries and the presstitutes, it is no wonder the common folk in the West have a perception of the Balkans that is almost entirely composed of lies. For the sake of both Westerners and ex-Yugoslavs, that construct should be destroyed. Thank you for pointing that out.
I‘m guessing Sascha had a load of negative e-mails, or had second thoughts about his essay. Since I was an English teacher in Beijing for two years I would like to add my own thoughts.
I can not write to condemn or applaud his ideas about future European and Chinese guanxi, but I can about the Chinese. His descriptions are spot on. From “Heil Hitler!” to Han cultural superiority, to hatred of Japanese, “You foreigners…”, “We Chinese…”, maddeningly simple and stereotypical views about the outside world, “Can you use chopsticks?”, “Chinese is very difficult for foreigners.” Young men yelling “Laaaoooowaiii!” (foreigner!), etc. In these regards, Sascha is spot on.
If you are American you must have many guns. If you are Thai you must be a “lady boy.” If you are Mongolian you are actually Chinese. If you are a Jew or left handed, you must be very smart. If you are a farmer (Chinese or foreign) you must be uneducated. …
Sascha Matuszak replies:
I did have second thoughts and I did receive a load of negative emails. All from Chinese. The “clarification” I wrote (“Chinese Generalizations“) is still necessary for the following reasons:
1) China has 1.3 billion people – how can you generalize? Even though to a foreigner it sometimes seems as if everybody echoes everybody else here, anybody who has lived here for a few years has met hundreds of amazing people and made lasting friendships. Living in a country of 1.3 billion individuals is a mindboggling experience.
2) If I am to write about generalizations, I should try my best to refrain from generalizations myself.
3) My point, as I spoke about in the latest column, was not exactly generalizations, but Sino-EU relations.
4) Imagine a Chinese writing about America (as you mentioned in your letter) – an American’s gut reaction would be to attack pretty much every thing he/she would say. So I understand why most Chinese (but not all) really really dislike some of my columns.
I generally run away screaming from travelogues, because they are insufferable works written by insufferable people. They are generally written by wannabe experts who seem to believe that they can generalize an entire universe from a single grain of sand. Far from yielding any true insight, they are much more likely mislead, for the simple reason that they tend to abuse the scientific method of induction like George Bush abuses the truth about Iraqi WMD. Mr. Matuszak has probably spoken with a few Chinese businessmen – a hopelessly inadequate sample, both in terms of size and randomness – so he feels perfectly OK to generalize about “The Chinese” and “their” culture and how “they” admire Hitler and how “they” will never understand modern business practice. It is not surprising that such shoddy “method” should lead to laughable results: apparently he thinks the Chinese so admire the Europeans for the latter’s long history that they are “destined for a beautiful friendship” of ever increasing trade. But why then does China trade far more with the United States, a nation with an official history of only 200 years, than with the Europeans? Or even better: why is China’s biggest trading partner Japan, a country that – we are told – the Chinese hate?
Another common trait among all travelogues is that the author will present some pathetically mundane fact as a penetrating insight of historic significance. What is this “revering the big men” effect but the common human tendency of admiring successes? What is this “revering the big culture” effect but the common human tendency of admiring impressive foreign cultures? So the Chinese are no different from other people of the world – well, I would have never thought of that!
If one reviews Mr. Matuszak’s past columns, such examples are numerous. On balance, I highly doubt if the readers of Antiwar.com have become any better informed about China by reading his columns.
Rice Never Spoke About Al-Qaeda, bin Laden Before 9/11
We folks in the Heartland of America don’t take to kindly to your high tech lynching of good people like Condoleezza Rice. She is nobody’s house slave!:
HANNITY: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask you this. This new book by Mr. Clarke that is out there, he accused Condoleezza Rice, I think he was particularly vicious towards her, of having never heard of al Qaeda until he mentioned it to her in early 2001. Quote, he said, “Her facial expression gave the impression she’d never heard of al Qaeda before.”
Well, I have a tape of Condi Rice. She was on a WJR radio interview in Detroit with David Newman, and I want to play this because it contradicts that frankly mean-spirited lie that’s in this book.
RICE: Osama bin Laden do two things [sic]. The first is you really have to get the intelligence agencies better organized to deal with the terrorist threat to the United States itself. One of the problems that we have is a kind of split responsibility, of course, between the CIA and foreign intelligence and the FBI and domestic intelligence.
There needs to be better cooperation because we don’t want to wake up one day and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory.
Jason Leopold replies:
That tape was from 2000.
It’s important that people like Mr. Clark read my story carefully and quit knee-jerking. I wrote that Rice never spoke of al-Qaeda between JANUARY 1, 2001 AND SEPTEMBER 10, 2001.
I have read your Casualties In Iraq since last year. A note that may clarify something.
I notice that the official wounded figure keeps going up. It never goes down. It is now 3,490. It is unreasonable to believe that with 3,490 wounded that some have not died of their wounds. It is statistically impossible, with that size of a number, that some have not died of their wounds.
I would believe that what we are seeing is a slight of hand by Bush & Co. When a soldier is wounded, he is then quickly and “technically” transferred out of Iraq and to some other military base, and then listed as a soldier at that base. When this soldier dies of his Iraq wounds, they are then listed as having died at some stateside base not a death in Iraq, yet in reality they were killed in the war in Iraq. Thus Bush & Co. artificially keep the killed number low.
Is there any way to track the wounded?
Mike Ewens replies:
In fact, the military has been releasing names of those who die from their wounds days, if not weeks, after they receive them. Here is one from today: UPDATE ON COALITION CASUALTIES.
Check this page for perhaps a dozen others: http://antiwar.com/casualties/list.php.
Regarding tracking the wounded: I don’t believe that is possible. Unfortunately, we have to rely on CentCom and the DoD to release names.
While your article makes some very good points, it leaves out a very critical element.
Could you or any other author at Antiwar.com present or show any actual evidence whatsoever that Osama bin Laden was behind the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon? My recollection was that the U.S. government planned to release a White Paper outlining the evidence for bin Laden’s role in the attack just prior to invading Afghanistan.
I don’t believe any such evidence was ever presented. Perhaps I am mistaken and the evidence was presented. What is your recollection of this matter?
Anthony Gregory replies:
I don’t see any reason not to believe that bin Laden was behind the attacks.
Bin Laden and al Qaeda are guilty of international terrorism, and I would shed no tears to see them destroyed.
However, I do believe it is the duty of the government to present convincing evidence to the American people as to who was guilty. It is just and proper to go after the mass murderers behind 9/11, but for the government to act it must show evidence. I do not believe sufficient evidence has been presented, and if it exists I can think of no good reason to hide it.
Whether or not bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks, I consider the Afghanistan War unjust, to say nothing of the obviously imperialistic Iraq War. I wanted to show in my article that just based on the information available to us now, the American people need to seriously reconsider the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan.
Saying It Ain’t So
WOW! Right on! Thanks! Could you send frequently to the following schools for international relations and conflict resolution and so on:
Harriman Institute / SIPA Columbia U.
School of International Service American U.
Nitze SAIS / Johns Hopkins U.
Fletcher Institute / Tufts U.
Elliott SIA / George Washington U.
Ohio State Slavic and Eastern European Studies, and the following undergrad studies in International Relations:
DePauw Wellesley Youngstown State Barnard
Drew Duke Fordham
City College CUNY Cornell Ohio State.
Thank you. Just keep sending to them.
Nebojsa Malic replies:
Well, the articles are out there… whether anyone at these institutions chooses to pick them up or not is really up to them. If there is a group out there that specializes in Balkans scholarship that challenges the prevalent propaganda, they are more than welcome to forward my articles to whoever they please. Some are doing that already.
Doubtedly
You guys and gals aren’t antiwar, you’re anti-Bush – never a word about Clinton’s 8 years of failed security. You undoubtedly like liberal wars as in Kosovo. Give me the Mennonites any day.
Eric Garris replies:
I guess you didn’t read that we started Antiwar.com in 1995 to fight against Clinton’s illegal wars in the Balkans.
I have been a Republican for over 20 years. Democrats are always the biggest warmongers.
I suggest that you read a little on the site before you write to us again.
While I very much appreciate Mr. Raimondo’s sentiments and most of the arguments in his article, and scarcely anyone could agree more with his assessment of the Iraq war as complete folly than I, is it not perhaps a bit much to say that its folly already exceeds that of American involvement in Vietnam and W.W.I?
Is it not particularly overwrought to claim that this intervention, preposterous, unjustifiable and mad as it is, has the potential to be more destructive than American intervention in W.W.I? It is scarcely possible to overestimate the destructive consequences of that intervention in all their terrible forms in later twentieth century history. But simply beginning with the destruction of Americans in the war itself, with 50,280 killed in action and tens of thousands more who died later of their injuries, and the perfidious revolution in American foreign policy that the intervention encouraged, can this admittedly senseless war begin to compare to it?
Invading Iraq is certainly the worst foreign policy decision of the last thirty years, and it is the undoubtedly the most unjust and pointless of any American war in history, so why set up an even more exaggerated assessment of its perfidy when a proportionate judgment about the conflict is already damning and very difficult to refute? The introductory remarks certainly catch the attention of the reader, but do they really do justice to the situation?
The invasion of Iraq continues to be a staggeringly appalling act of hubris and political idiocy, and I understand all too well how admirable sentiments of indignation and outrage at this perfidy can magnify the damage it is causing (which is not to deny that it is nonetheless causing significant damage), but all opponents of the war should take care to avoid using language in a way that exaggerates and thus falsifies an otherwise solid claim, if only because the sane use of language is one of the best advantages that we have against those who are engaged in constant distortion and subversion of the plain meaning of words to advance their cause of perpetual war.
~ Daniel Larison, Chicago, Illinois
President Bush Owes Martha Stewart a Pardon
Let us be clear. An inquisition was conducted to ascertain whether Martha Stewart had engaged in insider trading. Mrs. Stewart answered questions pertaining to her sale of ImClone shares truthfully and in full, for government investigators were satisfied and able to conclude no case could be made against her for violating insider-trading laws. Untruths with which she was subsequently charged were, therefore, immaterial to the government’s investigation and rise to the level of lying about baking cookies or planting daisies. (And it remains to be seen – doesn’t it? – that Mrs. Stewart provided misinformation even about matters immaterial to the government’s insider-trading probe.)
In light of the misrepresentations of juror Chappell Hartridge (palpable instances of obstruction of justice as opposed to Mrs. Stewart’s doubtful lapses in this regard), and in light further of the scrupulous attention to judicial propriety shown recently by the presiding judge in the Tyco trial (where charges against the accused make those against Stewart look preposterous), Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum should do “a good thing” and end forthwith the government’s fun and games.
This whole charade has been bush-league from the start and smacks of the show trials staged by rogue, totalitarian, third-world regimes. The Ashcroft Justice Department’s artful entrapment of Martha Stewart is unworthy of a great nation priding itself on liberty and justice.
You’re assuming that we want to set up some sort of democracy. Where have we ever set up a democracy? You might point the finger at the Philippines. I lived in the Philippines. I saw first hand the sort of plutocracy-theocracy we put in order. A couple of wealthy landowner dynasties take turns ruling those impoverished people.
Take Iran for example. The CIA overthrew a democratically elected country and installed the Shah, King of Kings, as he called himself. Why did we doing it? Because President Moushedek had nationalized British Petroleum. Oil! That’s why we are in Iraq instead of Liberia.
How about Chile? The CIA under the command of Kissinger overthrew Allende and installed a mass murderer. Kissinger and his boys loved Pinochet. Like Ahmad Chalabi, he was their boy. With Chalabi the situation is worse. He is a criminal. An embezzler.
The list goes on and on. I liked your article but the focus should be on oil-GREED.
Yes, absolutely. Bush and Rice are both the biggest liars in the world. I enjoyed your article – well written.
Here’s a story about Bush, before he became President:
On June 22, 1990, George W. Bush sold his Harken stock at $4 a share. At the time, he was on the financial audit committee at Harken and as such he was told that the company was about to take a huge loss of $23 million. He sold just before the shares plummeted to $1, thereby saving himself $600,000 and leaving other investors holding the bag. Perhaps this isn’t surprising: the head of the SEC at the time was appointed by Bush the elder. Because his father, George H.W. Bush, was President at the time, the SEC took NO ACTION against the President’s son.
Pres. Bush will be laughing at Martha Stewart when she goes to prison while he got away with it. Where is the justice?
~ Diane C. Bonacci, Syracuse, NY
I agree that President Bush owes Martha Stewart a pardon. I’m a Republican and have been shocked at the things that are coming out about this administration. Martha Stewart should have never been tried for anything. She not only deserves a pardon but an a apology. I support Martha Stewart 100%.
~ Deborah Thomas (a loyal consumer of Martha Stewart products), Ohio
