This year ends as it started: with simmering discontent, hostility and frustration. The Empire is still broke, getting worse by the day. Yet Washington pretends it is business as usual. Wars without end continue consuming lives. Air travel has become a peep-show and grope-fest. Partisan politics makes for a great spectacle, but resolves nothing. Europeans have already realized this; their citizenry is increasingly resorting to riots in order to communicate with their rulers. Meanwhile, as one country after another falters and demands rescue, Germany’s patience wears thin.
The world is at a fork in the road; there is no option to continue straight ahead. Those who have invested everything into the Empire refuse to see this. Instead, they work even harder to chase the end of history, unaware that the only end they run towards is their own.
Prisoners of Myths
In February, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair spoke before a Senate committee about challenges to the Empire’s "security." From the contents of the testimony it was readily apparent that Washington lived in a perpetual state of fear. Threats were everywhere – from al-Qaeda to cyberspace, every civil war in Africa, oil and gas pipelines, even "climate change"!
On gem in particular was the claim that "persistent ethnic tensions in Bosnia" amount to the "biggest challenge to maintaining stability in Europe." Yes, forcing the inhabitants of Bosnia to live under a centralized government is far more important to the Empire than dealing with, say, terrorist cells in Bosnia. Yet terrorism is supposed to be the principal reason Blair’s office came into being, and this whole endless war is going on…
Why is the Empire pushing for a Bosnia that is not just imaginary, but impossible? Because a "multiethnic Bosnia" is the Empire’s founding myth, seen as a Clinton-era "success" in a sea of failures thereafter. Never mind that this success is a fiction, a cynical lie readily apparent to anyone who lives there, or even visits occasionally. From the myth of "aggression and genocide" to the myth of centralization bringing EU membership and prosperity, the very foundation of present-day Bosnia is a quicksand of lies. Nothing can be built on it. So nothing is.
The Depths of Treason
Meanwhile, in Serbia, the sycophantic regime of Boris Tadic continued to provide an object lesson in how to systematically destroy a country. If prior to 2010 there had been some doubts as to the degree to which the regime in Serbia was remotely controlled from Brussels and Washington, they have been decisively dispelled, time and again.
The first indication of rampant treachery in Belgrade was a cable in early February from the "Quint" — U.S., UK, Germany, Italy and France — in which they revealed that their "partners in Belgrade" had made assurances that the diplomatic defense of Kosovo would be "just a maneuver to remove Kosovo from the political agenda in Serbia." Even a rhetorical defense of Serbia’s claim to Kosovo — a self-proclaimed independent state — complained the Empire in effect, was not allowed.
Confirmation of Empire’s determination came in July, at the International Court of Justice. Resorting to sophistry and verbal sleight of hand, the judges re-framed the question Serbia had formulated with the UN General Assembly approval, so as to fit the answer they were commanded to give. The decision didn’t quite mean that the Albanians’ declaration of independence was legal — as the cheerleader press claimed at the time — only that it wasn’t illegal, but the tortured reasoning behind it was simply blown apart in the dissenting comments.
Tadic’s government then penned a draft resolution for the UN, acknowledging the verdict but maintaining that Kosovo’s secession was clearly illegal. The draft was weak and even questionable in places, but it won parliamentary approval and the backing of Russia, China, and many other countries. Whereupon the Empire threatened Belgrade and Tadic folded like a wet paper bag. The final resolution was written in Brussels, and amounted to a total capitulation. The UN General Assembly had the decency to pass it by acclamation; actually voting on it would have been in bad taste.
The RC President
In fact, at every point during the past year, Tadic never failed to do precisely as the Empire commanded. From January to March, his ruling coalition fought to ram through a parliamentary resolution accepting blame for the "genocide" in Srebrenica. Revealed by an arrogant and careless EU commissar to have been drafted in Brussels and demanded of Tadic as yet another in the line of endless conditions for (theoretical, hypothetical and never forthcoming) EU membership, the resolution finally passed in late March.
As the show trial of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic continued before the Hague Inquisition, a Muslim leader found himself detained in London on a Serbian war crimes warrant. In a spectacle that ensued, the very same media that have declared Karadzic guilty long ago now jumped to defend Ejup Ganic. Eventually, a British judge set Ganic free. However, the real scandal was the claim of the Bosnian Muslim representative that Tadic’s men had offered to drop the charges themselves, in exchange for Sarajevo’s acceptance of the Srebrenica resolution! Official Belgrade never denied this claim.
In April, Tadic pledged himself to a Turkish vision of Bosnia, bolstering Turkey’s efforts to restore Ottoman-era supremacy over the region. And in October, immediately preceding the visit by almost-Empress Clinton herself, the regime organized a "Gay Pride" parade. Three hundred foreign activists and domestic politicians marched down the ghostly streets of Belgrade, while five thousand police kept the rioting Serbs at bay. The American ambassador got a chance to parade under the sign "Death to the State and Capitalism." Democracy at its best, or what?
Nowhere else in the world can one find a specimen like Tadic. He either has a chip in his head, or one must wonder whether the Imperius Curse may not exist only in the fictional realm of Harry Potter…
Marty Trumps WikiLeaks
Thanks to its grip on Tadic, the Empire has been utterly certain of its complete mastery in the Balkans. Its diplomats in the region have come to express themselves freely, foregoing the encumbrance of manners. Therefore, the WikiLeaks’ publication of U.S. diplomatic cables in November only offered proof for what has been suspected all along. It wasn’t hard for them to be completely overshadowed in mid-December, when Swiss investigator Dick Marty released his report about the mafia-like regime of KLA terrorist Hashim Thaci, currently styling himself "prime minister of the Republic of Kosovo."
The product of a two-year investigation, Marty’s report details the practices of the KLA mafia state: heroin smuggling, murder, and trafficking in people and body parts. Patrons of the KLA boss in Europe and the U.S. reacted either by ignoring the charges or demanding to see "evidence". Tadic immediately came to their rescue, stating that Thaci was a "legitimate Albanian representative" and that he had no trouble sitting down and negotiating with the KLA boss.
What Next?
As the Empire continues to pursue the impossible dream of ending history on its own terms, its own grip on reality — never strong to begin with — is rapidly diminishing. All the posturing in the world cannot force Bosnia to become what it is not. No amount of rhetoric can blot out the facts of murder and mayhem by their "monster" friends in Kosovo. While Tadic’s impeccable servitude may lead some to believe that the Empire is all-knowing and all-powerful, the WikiLeaks cables reveal a distinctly different picture: one of chaos and confusion.
A standing ambassador marches in a Gay Pride parade under an Anarcho-Communist banner. A retired one endorses the partition of Bosnia. Another endorses the movement for "Natural Albania," and raises no eyebrows in the process. What gives?
The pursuit of empire has bankrupted America, and made Americans less safe than ever. Thanks to such typical Imperial diplomats as the recently departed Richard Holbrooke, the world has come to understand that Empire’s power is not based on ideas, but on fear. What happens when the world stops being afraid? The answer may come in 2011.
