Appropriate, right?
What a beautiful song. And yes, Bono is an eejit.
Appropriate, right?
What a beautiful song. And yes, Bono is an eejit.
March 25, 2023
© AP Photo / Hidajet delic
Andrei Dergalin
All materialsWrite to the author
Depleted uranium (DU) munitions have become a hot topic of late after London announced its intent to supply them to Kiev to be used in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Concerns about the health hazard posed by these munitions’ byproducts have been raised in the past, following the use of depleted uranium shells by NATO forces during several conflicts in the 1990s, such as the Gulf War in 1991, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the attack on Yugoslavia in 1999.
Dr. Radomir Kovacevic, a toxicologist and former director of the Radiological Defense Center in Belgrade, told Sputnik that four reports regarding this matter had been published by different groups of experts, including the United Nations Environment Program, with only one of these reports – the fourth one, which included experts from Serbia – containing accurate data.
“This report showed exactly what had been found. Including that uranium was found in the air; the presence of plutonium was also established,” Kovacevic said. “They had to admit that they fired 31,000 missiles, which is about nine tons. Our army claimed it was 45,000 to 51,000 missiles, which is 15 tons. Russian sources say that about 90,000 missiles or about 30 tons of depleted uranium were used.”
He also shared some chilling details about the people he interviewed in DU-contaminated areas in Serbia.
“I remember a man, a locksmith, in the village of Borovac, who had a concentration of 3,759 nanograms per litre of urine, which is 3.7 milligrams,” he said. “I think this man has long since died. These are the concentrations of uranium that we found in our officers, even though they were fully equipped.”
Ignoble Anvil: How US Lust for Power Pushed Yugoslavia to Depths of Hell
Kovacevic also recalled how people in villages near Vranje had an average concentration of the toxic substance of 36-231 nanograms per liter of urine, while they should have had none; and that many of the experts from his team who were involved in the research ended up dying of cancer.
One could say that there is more than one “street of death” in Vranje, Kovacevic remarked.
Never mind the slow but steady dismantling in the fabled West of the “welfare state”, that temporary horror the elites grudgingly used to tolerate. But that was only as a means of pacifying their subjects and winning over-credulous hearts and minds in the competing socialist camp, while it still existed. To be fair, concern for public wellbeing never was an ideological item in the Western “value” system to begin with. It was dissimulated for a while merely as a tactical measure to confuse the masses. But one assumes that at least the various personal “freedoms” that Western countries used to be famous for indeed were an integral element of their political institutions, values deeply ingrained in their culture.
Canada is the latest champion of Western, trans-Atlantic values that is sending a clear message to the world that such assumptions are poppycock.
A major scrupulously legal assault on freedom of speech and conscience as well as scholarly research (and we are not talking here about the rampaging of informal terror squads such as Antifa) is in the works in Canada. A Srebrenica genocide denial law is coming up soon for a parliamentary vote in Ottawa. It is being sponsored by MP Brian Masse (brian.masse@parl.gc.ca). The pending bill is the result of a petition filed by a Bosniak lobby group in Canada, “Institute for genocide research.” The “institute” is not known to have published a single serious and academically viable book or scholarly paper on any subject whatsoever, including Srebrenica. It is a comically misnamed ethnic pressure group financed, as usual, by mysterious patrons. But given the manufactured climate of opinion, unless this bill is strongly and competently opposed, there is little doubt about the outcome.
Here is some basic information about this parliamentary project, now known as Petition No. 421-03975, presented to the House of Commons on May 29, 2019.
And here is the maudlin nonsense the measure’s sponsor, Brian Masse, spouted in Canada’s House of Commons as he put the matter before his colleagues:
“Madam Speaker … the House unanimously declared April as ‘Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Awareness Month’ and named genocides, which have been recognized by Canada’s House of Commons, including the Srebrenica genocide.
“It is time for the government to extend resources to commemorate the victims and survivors of genocide, educate the public and to take specific action to counteract genocide denial, a pernicious form of hate which reopens wounds and reinvigorates division. Truth is justice; honesty is the path to reconciliation and peace.”
Just so that no one is taken in by this fine rhetoric, the geopolitical significance of Srebrenica (forget about truth, justice, reconciliation, and peace) should briefly be recalled. The alleged failure in July of 1995 of the collective West to come to the rescue of 8,000 “men and boys” in Srebrenica was transfigured into the pretext for the “Right to protect” (R2P) doctrine. That fraudulent rationale was used for subsequent “humanitarian interventions” which wrecked and plundered at least half a dozen countries and cost about two million mostly Muslim lives.
But contrary to interventionist propaganda and the simplistic cant of politicians, always campaigning to attract a few more ethnic votes and to impress the political correctness brigade with their loyalty to the right causes, in the real world there exist complex issues not given to simplistic reductionism. Srebrenica is one of them. (Also here, here, and here.) To paraphrase Polonius, there are indeed “more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of by politicians,” eager to please special interests.
One of the major pertinent issues here, of course, is the factual question of what actually happened in Srebrenica. A staggering amount of research has been done on that subject that one supposes busy politicians, long out of school, may be excusably ignorant of. Canadian politicians, in particular, may be generously excused for not keeping up with Srebrenica developments because their hands are presumably full sorting out genocides closer to home.
A fundamental issue that comes to mind straight away, and voters anxious to protect their liberties might want to bring it to the attention of their parliamentary deputies, has to do with freedom of speech and conscience, not whether or not genocide occurred in Srebrenica. Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms rather unambiguously guarantees “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” as fundamental rights. May the supreme law of the land be taken at face value? Or is it a flexible document, like the Stalin Constitution of 1936? How do MP Masse and colleagues who are contemplating to vote for his “genocide denial” bill propose to reconcile its language with the liberties which are constitutionally guaranteed to all citizens of Canada (and presumably also to foreign nationals on Canadian territory)? Or with the fact that Canada is also party to international agreements which guarantee freedom of conscience and expression, such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Articles 18 and 19 of the Declaration, which deal with freedoms of thought, opinion, and expression should, in particular, be pondered by Canada’s lawmakers.
The ghastly thing about this is that the Srebrenica genocide denial law would not even change anybody’s mind about Srebrenica. But it would suppress (have a “chilling effect,” as they aptly put it in neighboring America) public discourse on the subject and would therefore constitute a serious infringement of Canadian citizens’ human rights. That is the issue of principle. All but zealous Balkan combatants should manage easily to agree on this much, and it ought to be gently stressed to befuddled Canadian legislators. A member of parliament is free to think whatever he or she wants about Srebrenica, with or without adequate information on the subject, including that it was genocide. But for Canadian citizens of all stripes and backgrounds, including those who happen to be legislators, their fellow-citizens’ freedom of expression should take absolute priority over the agenda of a Balkan lobby. A legislator who sincerely thinks that Srebrenica was genocide can and should still vote against Petition no. 421-03975 on freedom of speech and conscience grounds alone. Assuming that those values matter in countries that boastfully claim to have copyrighted them.
It so happens that the aforementioned bogus “Institute for genocide research” has a record of attempts at free speech suppression, targeting those who think differently about its pet projects. In 2011 the “institute” made an unsuccessful attempt to steer a Srebrenica genocide denial law through the Canadian parliament. “Institute” scholars then took their revenge on American-Serbian professor Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, preventing his entry into Canada to deliver a lecture in Vancouver by falsely alleging to immigration authorities that he was a dangerous hatemonger, or something to that effect. The incident at the time was amply covered by Global Research. Prof. Trifkovic fought the spurious allegation against him energetically in Canadian courts and won. The upshot of it was that Canadian taxpayers lost considerable treasure in a wasteful judicial confrontation instigated by agenda-driven lobbyists.
The proposed law, be it mentioned in passing, is also manifestly discriminatory in relation to the Canadian-Serbian community. Considering the cultural role of spitefulness (inat is the native word) in the region that the lobbyists come from, that may well be its true and ultimate inspiration. Is there a single Canadian Serb who thinks that what occurred in Srebrenica was genocide? The proposed law would nevertheless have a discriminatory effect on the ability of members of the Canadian Serbian community, as such, to enjoy the freedom of expression guaranteed to them and to all Canadians by Canada’s constitution. As Canadian Serbs, they would be obliged to either maintain public silence about an issue they regard as being of vital interest to their nation and community or, were they to speak up in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, to face criminal prosecution. So much for all the “Atlantic Charters” and their associated “freedoms.”
Canadian legislators should ponder the fact that Canada does not have a Holocaust denial law protecting the dignity of six million victims, yet its parliament is contemplating a massive curtailment of its citizens’ civil rights in a matter involving 8,000 unverified deaths. That is a degradation and in-the-face mockery of the pain of the Jewish community. But it gets even worse, or tragicomic if one prefers. In its Tolimir judgment in 2012, the vaunted Hague Tribunal ruled that the killing of three individuals in the nearby enclave of Zepa (which is part of the same conceptual package with Srebrenica) constituted genocide (Trial Judgment, Par. 1147 – 1154). That was allegedly because those individuals were endowed with such extraordinary importance within the community of Zepa that, as a result of their demise, the community was rendered unviable, hence subjected to genocide. The point is that denying this absurd and tortuously reasoned finding of the Hague Tribunal concerning Zepa (a place that assuredly no member of the Canadian parliament had ever even heard of) by operation of the projected genocide denial law would also subject the careless speaker who took his rights seriously to criminal liability. That is the absurd level to which the “genocide denial” rhetoric has degenerated.
As an American citizen, this writer is quite prepared to stand in any public square in Canada and to proclaim that Srebrenica was not genocide. It would in fact be a pleasure to be detained by Her Majesty’s authorities in order to accomplish a lofty civic purpose that should benefit all Canadians. The resulting proceedings would ultimately enhance Canada’s judicial culture by testing the constitutionality of this legal travesty before the Canadian supreme court.
In the immortal words of Diana Johnstone, the “denial” of Srebrenica “genocide” is sufficiently justified by the fact that it is not true. The Srebrenica lobby and its eager acolytes in Canada’s Federal Parliament in Ottawa should grow up and accept that.
With permission from
July 16, 2018
We spotted him at the end of a path beside the River Miljacka, bending over the rail with a fishing rod, staring at the fast-moving, shallow waters with a rare intensity, frowning – angry, I thought – the sort of guy you might avoid if you weren’t a journalist on a glowering, rain-spitting day, walking with a translator and ready to approach the down-and-outs of this gloomy city.
I’ve never found Sarajevo a cheerful place, not just because it endured the longest siege in modern history, but because its new tourist shops and tat, and its dodgy reputation as a restored symbol of ethnic unity, are undeserved. Besides, it sent my own father to the trenches of the First World War. It lives off that, too, turning political assassination – in this case, of course, that of the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince and his wife in June 1914 – into a holiday haunt. Come and see where Gavrilo Princip fired the fatal shot. There’s a museum on the corner and a spanking new four star hotel on the same street and just round the block a Lebanese restaurant – I kid thee not – called “Beirut”.
The fisherman, when I found him, was standing just across the river, scarcely fifty metres from the spot where Princip shot Franz Ferdinand in the jugular and Sophie in the abdomen a hundred and four years ago. And the fisherman’s story, too – obliquely – was a tale of murder most foul. He talked in snatches and his face was congealed into a mask of fury and contempt. He was 57, he said, but he looked at least ten years older, nearer seventy. Was he here in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, I asked?
He turned on me contemptuously. “I was in the war since 1991. I was with ‘Caco’, fighting the JNA. Caco was a good man. He was not what they’re saying he was. I could talk to you for days and days. He was killed by the ‘Seve’.”
In Bosnia, when you hear that a dead man was a good man, it can often mean something rather different. And like all Bosnian stories, this one needs a gloss. In 1991, Bosnian Muslims fought, for a while, alongside Croats against the Yugoslav National Army (the JNA) which was trying to preserve a Serb-dominated nation out of old Yugoslavia. But “Caco” – you pronounce it “Tsatso” in what we used to call the Serbo-Croatian language and which here we must now call Bosniak – was a vicious war criminal in the siege of Sarajevo until his violent death in 1993. And the fisherman says he fought with him.
In fact, Brigadier Musan “Caco” Topalovic, the “good man” of our fisherman’s story, was the head of the Bosnian Army’s 10th Mountain Brigade who turned his military career into a campaign of extortion, hostage-taking, large-scale rape and mass murder of both Serbs and Muslims in besieged Sarajevo, proving, alas, that Muslim could kill Muslim while fighting the Serbs. He was eventually put to death by an almost equally ruthless Bosnian paramilitary police force called “Seve” – it means “larks” in Bosniak, those nice friendly birds about which poets write – which was loyal to the Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic.
In a final battle, nine of the “Seve” cops were murdered – one had his eyes put out, another was disemboweled – and Caco surrendered after a total of 18 people, half of them civilian hostages, were killed. Caco himself was then “shot while trying to escape”; in reality, he was almost certainly executed by the father of the “lark” who was disemboweled. Caco was buried in an anonymous grave – but later still, he was exhumed to lie in a “veterans” cemetery among heroes who deserved better than to share their last resting place with a war criminal.
The fisherman of Sarajevo speaks to Robert Fisk beside the Miljacka river of wars past and future (Nelofer Pazira)
Our fisherman did not choose to elaborate his services for Caco, but when I asked him who won the Bosnian war, he spat out the reply: “They won! Look what they are doing to the veterans. Look, we were fighting Croats, Croats were fighting us, and we together were fighting Serbs – and the politicians are now just making deals. This is going to end up with us all fighting each other, Muslims versus Muslims, Croats against Croats, Serbs against Serbs. You see how things are developing?” – and here he pointed in the direction of the parliament building – “In the end we will have a real civil war, worse than the one we had.”
Veterans like our fisherman are angry because parliament is planning to pass an increase in benefit pensions to “veterans” of the war, without much proof of how many real veterans there are or what they did in the conflict. And some of those veterans fought each other. Who gets the most? Things are not made better for the fisherman by the fact that Bakir Izetbegovic, the son of the late Alija Izetbegovic – the former president whose “larks” did for Caco – is now in the revolving presidency of modern Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as president of the Party of Democratic Action.
Bosnia itself is still so divided that when the federal police tried to move a thousand Syrian, Afghan and other refugees from Sarajevo to Mostar during Turkish President Erdogan’s visit, the Mostar police blocked the Sarajevo government police from bringing the refugee convoy south.
Well, the fisherman wanted to talk no more. He was staying, he said, up in the hills above Sarajevo, in the area where Serbs used to live until the end of the war, and he sleeps in the home of his brother and his brother’s wife and family. He was obviously a lonely man, and he scampered away from us along the old quay a few seconds later, holding his fishing rod in his arms.
Strange, though, that while there are some lakes elsewhere in the river, there are – as everyone here knows – no fish in the Miljacka as it flows through Sarajevo, past the spot where Princip shot the Archduke more than a century ago and where the fisherman was “fishing” on that rainy day this week.
Source: Largest mysterious man-made sphere discovered in Bosnia — Secret History — Sott.net
What about this mysterious man-made sphere discovered by a controversial archeologist in Bosnia?The specialist claims this bizarre natural sphere is the world’s oldest man-made sphere proving Europe has an advanced lost civilisation that used impressive technology more than 1,500 years ago.
The giant ball of rock has a radius of between four and five feet (1.2 to 1.5 metres) and is extremely iron rich. Semir Osmanagic discovered the ‘stone ball’ near the town Zavidovici in central Bosnia and Herzegovina and said it is the heaviest man-made ball in the world.
Dr Osmanagic had previously hit the headlines for his work on the supposed existence of ancient pyramids in the Visoko Valley, which he believes are hidden in plain sight as a cluster of hills. The phenomenon of stone balls has been linked with ancient civilisations around the world with the most famous being the stone spheres of Costa Rica. In total there are around 300, weighing up to 15 tonnes, which are believed to have been created by the now extinct Diquis culture, potentially making them up to 1,500 years old.
It is unclear how they were created but it is believed they were first sculpted from a local stone before being hammered and polished with sand.
If the huge stone in Bosnia is found to be made by human hands, it would be the largest man-made stone ball ever found – twice as heavy as the Costa Rican ones.
But there seems to be no proof that the ‘sphere’ is anything more than an unusual product of nature at the moment. These images actually reminds me of the Moeraki boulders in New Zealand.
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