http://www.croatia.org/crown en-us http://www.croatia.org/crown N/A letters@croatia.org Sat, 02 May 2026 20:12:40 +0000 20 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/11441/1/Zrinka-Ljutic-winning-Small-Crystal-Globe-in-slalom-skiing-March-2025.html Zrinka Ljutiæ, a successor of the most successful Croatian skierJanica Kosteliæ, has won her first Small Crystal Globe in Slalom, in Sun Valley in the USA, in March 2025. This is a great achievement of Croatian sports. Congratualtions to Zrinka, her family, the surrounding staff, and to Croatian Olympic Committee. darko@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach and Darko ®ubriniæ) Fri, 28 Mar 2025 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/9698/1/Erik-Margan-praised-on-EN-Genius-Network-Why-we-break-the-protons.html You can't make an omelet without breaking the eggs. Likewise, you can't pretend to know a thing or two about Life, the Universe, and Everything, without breaking a few of its constituent parts. Like a child breaking his new toy, driven by a sheer desire to see what's inside, the physicists at CERN will break the protons to see what will show up. letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/9372/1/Marco-Polos-Croatian-roots-based-on-solid-research---London-Financial-Times.html The article mentions that Croatians believe Marco Polo was born in the town of Korcula on the island of the same name in Croatia. His being born there, or certainly his family coming from there, is based on solid research of the Polo Croatian family roots - by Hilda Marija Foley hmfgsf@juno.com (Hilda Marija Foley) Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/8853/1/Tomislav-Kuzmanoviae-Esq---Croatian-Rising-Star---8220Super-Lawyer8221-for-the-second-time.html   In November 2006, Mr. Kuzmanovic was named for the secondtime a "Super Lawyer" in the area of Business Litigation byWisconsin Super Lawyers and Rising Stars 2006 magazine. Inaddition, he was profiled as the subject of "A Small Part to Play,"an article in Super Lawyers describing his litigation practice andhis human rights work on behalf of independent Croatia. letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/8819/1/Jelena-Vukotiae-again-in-The-New-Yorker.html Check a current issue of The New Yorker. Born in Pula, Croatia. Jelena's photographs have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Forbes's Four Seasons Magazine, Prague Business Journal and others. Her work was exhibited at solo and group shows in Czech Republic, Croatia, France, Germany, Slovenia and USA.   letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/8687/1/-Coming-Home-to-Croatia-A-Spiritual-Journey.html Don Wolf has spent the past 28 years photographing the country of Croatia. He says he feels compelled to capture the essence of the land and the character of its people not only because it's part of his family heritage, but also because he wants to share the country and its rich history with others.    stecak@sbcglobal.net (Marko Puljiæ) Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7541/1/E-The-Register-published-Hilda-Foleys-letter.html ÂCroatia -Why call it frontier region ?Letters to the Editorcc: Foreign News Editor12/16/05The Orange County RegisterSanta Ana, Ca.Dear Editor:Re: 'Croat enters not guilty plea' news article, (12/13/05):Just what is meant by the statement 'frontier region', in the article'Croat enters not-guilty plea', (News, Dec13)? This Croatian area was last called the 'frontier region' during the 400 years of wars between Croatia, as part of Austria-Hungary, and the conqueringOttoman Turks. It was the border of Christendom and Islam. Serbs think that because they were in the majority in some areas of this so-called Krajina region of Croatia, mainly after the WWII influx, that they could proclaim it theirindependent 'Republic of Serb Krajina', which does not border on Serbia - and never did. Theyoccupied it by force with the help of the Yugoslav-Serb army in 1991, ethnically cleansing theentire Croatian population, while looting and burning their homes and committing untold atrocities. Morethan 140 mass graves attest to these massacres. Croatian General Ante Gotovina, leading the Croatianarmy and with the quiet assistance of the United States Government, liberated that area and ismost responsible for also bringing an end to the war in Bosnia.Sincerely,Hilda M. Foley13272 Orange KnollNorth Tustin, CA 92705714 832-0289 letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Mon, 02 Jan 2006 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7542/1/E-Published-letter-on-ISN-website-by-Brian-Gallagher.html ÂInternational Relations and Security NetworkSecurity Watch - LettersRe: The farcical, wearisome 'hunt' for Karadzic16/08/2004 Dear SirRe: The farcical, wearisome 'hunt' for Karadzic This excellent article touched on the UN war crimestribunal's dealings with Radovan Karadzic. Revelationsof such dealings are increasingly corroding publicfaith in the Tribunal both in the countries of theex-Yugoslavia and outside of it. The Tribunal has of course made many deals withSerbian war crimes suspects, especially plea bargains.The most infamous of which was with ex- Bosnian SerbPresident Biljana Plavsic, who received lenienttreatment in return for a guilty plea. There wasspeculation that this deal was a result of her havingworked closely with the west after the war.Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic was apparentlyinvolved with the 'Serbian Guard', accused in Croatia.Mr Draskovic is a supporter of co-operation with theTribunal. Clearly, he does not fear investigation.Again, there is speculation of a deal.Also, we have the well-known Savo Strbac. He was asenior figure in the 'Republika Srpska Krajina' whichoccupied one third of Croatia, terrorising thousandsof Croats - as the Tribunal themselves point out.Strbac extensively helped Tribunal prosecutorsinvestigate the American-controlled Croatian offensive'Operation Storm' which stopped Milosevic. Theprosecutor provided him with a "letter ofendorsement". One does not need to be a Croat - orindeed an American - to consider this somewhatquestionable.Considerable damage has been done to the Tribunal'scredibility by all this, and it is not likely to berepaired.Brian GallagherUnited Kingdom Âhttp://www.isn.ethz.ch/infoservice/secwatch/index.cfm?output=letters&parent=menu&menu=9 letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Wed, 18 Aug 2004 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7544/1/E-IN-POSTWAR-BALKANS-ERRANT-LESSONS-By-Max-Primorac.html ÂOTHER VIEW: IN POSTWAR BALKANS, ERRANT LESSONSBy Max Primorac -- Special to The Sacramento Bee - (September 25, 2003)ZAGREB, Croatia -- Once Iraq's security situation stabilizes, a plethora of embassies, aid agencies and other international institutions will rush in as they did a decade ago in postwar Yugoslavia. The first order of business in this nation-building exercise will be to hire hundreds of Iraqis to administer aid programs and to serve as our intermediaries to their countrymen. This is when the United States could succeed or fail in establishing a firm foundation for Iraqi democracy.The Balkans provide sobering lessons of the ill effects on democratic development that ensue from relying on former regime apparatchiks. Western agencies did not disqualify ousted Communist regime members from employment or grants. In fact, former loyalists, many from hated military and police structures with no record of dissent, became the main beneficiaries and administrators of democracy aid.As a result, a leading human rights activist in the region is ruefully remembered by the public as a regime intellectual who helped land dissidents in jail. A favored women's activist's previous position as director of the Museum of Communist Revolution caused a deep rift within the women's movement, pitting ex-regime-against non-regime-led groups. A top minority leader, handpicked by the U.S. Embassy, was a proxy of Slobodan Milosevic, who was responsible for brutal ethnic cleansing. Despite their compromised records millions of dollars in aid came their way, casting them as "leaders" of the democratic process.Democracy is seen as the peaceful way to resolve simmering ethnic and religious disputes. Yet, the importance of civil society and human rights can get lost in the illegitimacy of past collaboration. After a decade and millions in regional aid, a U.S. government study found "the capacity of NGOs [non-government organizations] to develop their constituency is an uncommon concept to most ... and public understanding of and support for the NGO sector remains limited." Inter-ethnic tensions have not abated either, and NATO peacekeepers are still the only glue holding Bosnia-Herzegovina together.Here is the dilemma: The very skills we in the international community seek in our local hires and aid grantees -- foreign language, education, and administrative and international experience -- could scarcely have been gained other than through collaboration with this regime. Already there is talk of transforming Baathist associations of lawyers, doctors and other professional groups into a basis for an emerging civil society.It is reasoned, as it was in the Balkans, that such individuals have skills needed to rebuild the country and thus should be given a stake in a democratic future. But in the Balkans cooption works the other way around. Itinerant Western officials and contractors become dependent on local staffs that promote former colleagues for grants, scholarships and other aid benefits. Those who never collaborated and more genuinely represent their country's aspirations are again "disqualified."Ironically, the unintended consequence is to re-establish former undemocratic elites under the auspices of democratization.Iraqis can determine themselves the criteria for electing their representatives and rules governing lustration. If they choose to include ex-Baathists, so be it. However, a more stringent vetting process must be set for people the United States hires and funds, those who will serve not only as our eyes and ears on the ground, but who also will be our faces to the Iraqi public.This is our choice alone. We cannot expect to win the hearts and minds of those who suffered under the iron fist of Baathist officials if we employ those very same officials. The democratic message we would want to send through them will be rejected, discredited by the messengers delivering it.This is not to say we should not draw from those inside Iraq, untainted by regime affiliation. But given the high stakes we should primarily draw from the thousands of Iraqis who escaped Saddam's tyranny, forged new lives in the West, and adopted our democratic values and practices. They bring invaluable professional and language skills, cultural sensitivity and good judgment. Most important, they are most likely to stay the course in Iraq and serve as reliable long-term builders of the country's incipient democratic institutions.This approach can better ensure that we help those inside Iraq who merit help, the ones with the credibility to sell democracy to, and have it embraced by, the larger Iraqi public.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Max Primorac has more than a decade of work experience in postwar democratization and conflict resolution in the Balkans.Max.Primorac@ccs.open.hr letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sun, 28 Sep 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7545/1/E-Croatia-and-Israel-victims-of-similar-intolerance.html ÂCroatia and Israel victims of similar intoleranceÂVictims of a common intolerance by Vitomir Miles RaguzJerusalem PostJuly 13, 2003 President Moshe Katsav's weekend visit to Croatia makes him the first senior Israeli leader to visit the country since it gained independence 12 years ago. The wait is not surprising given Croatia's World War Two record as well as the controversial writings about the Holocaust by Croatia's founder Franjo Tudjman.But Zagreb has a new leadership now, and its wartime history is being deconstructed in a new light. Katsav and his counterpart, President Stipe Mesic, are scheduled to spend three days together, with the itinerary that includes a visit to the Jasenovac memorial and a tour of the ancient city of Dubrovnik, home to the second-oldest synagogue in Europe. One has to wonder whether in their talks the two leaders will have moved from the troubled past to a present in which Israel and Croatia share a common predicament. By now a strong case has been made that the European Left is intolerant of Israel, to some bordering on anti-Semitic. But Israelis are not the only people to face the wrath of the internationalist elite in Brussels. Croats remain at a loss to explain their exclusion from the European mainstream by Left-led Brussels. Zagreb's applications for EU and NATO membership continue to be fobbed off regularly by new conditions. Croatia certainly deserves candidate status in both organizations. It has earned entry by managing its economy admirably during the double transition to privatization and from war with virtually no international assistance. Moreover, it should be rewarded for ending the catastrophe in Bosnia in 1995, and saving the country's Muslim population when Brussels was powerless.But at the November 2002 Prague summit NATO humiliated Croatia by placing it on a waiting list for membership, saying that Croatia needed to further democratize and upgrade its army. Military experts know, however, that Croatia and Slovenia are the only two transition countries whose armies meet Western standards of readiness. On the issue of democracy, Croatia's top leaders, Stipe Mesic and Prime Minister Ivica Racan, are usually heralded in the West as prime examples of democracy. Yet this reality evaporates at invitation time. Why is the European Left so cold toward Croatia? To the big powers it is a strategically irrelevant country. And, like Israel, Croatia has no allies in today's Europe. Ideological issues come into play as well. Israel is despised for rejecting its socialist Kibbutz paradise roots. Similarly, Croatia is viewed as having betrayed the utopian ideal of Yugoslavia, once revered by the Left as the epitome of modern socialism and worker self-management. Internal criticism also plays a role. Israel's left-leaning elite indulges in extensive self-criticism that serves to provide fodder to anti-Israel partisans abroad. Croatia has a similar problem. Zagreb's elite has taken the concept of the proverbial self-hating Jew to unseen heights. Trashing the young state abroad has become a badge of honor in high society.Then there is the issue of guilt. The Left's uneasy feeling that its early support for Israel allowed it to become too strong is similar to its uneasiness over seeing Croatia move quickly ahead of its eastern neighbors. That's because EU policy toward the Balkans calls for no winners, no losers. To the European Left Croatia is a winner; something pointed out by Greek foreign minister George Papandreou during his January stopover in Zagreb. And since the adjoining states are not winners, Croatia is expected to wait in line with the slower bunch. Friends of Israel point to notoriously Arabist-leaning foreign offices of certain European governments. In the Balkans the "foreign office" plays a similarly biased role. Since 1993, it has favored a policy of compensating the Muslim community in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the expense of the Croats. This, because the West could not stand up to Serb radicals. Such a policy also demands a feeble Croatia, one compelled to control the disillusioned Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina in hope of being rewarded. Also keeping Croatia in check are spurious charges at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague against fugitive general Ante Gotovina concerning alleged ethnic cleansing, and assertions against Croatia itself about its policies in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-93. One would expect that the West could never be so cynical. But consider that during the 50-year communist rule in Yugoslavia, Croat pleas for democracy and human rights were consistently labeled as dangerous nationalism. Croat grievances were seen as threatening the unity of Yugoslavia, and its strategic position as a dividing line between East and West. To weaken the Croat case, the West readily perpetuates the view that during World War Two Croatians sided with the Nazis to the last man, while the pro-Yugoslavia Serbs fought with the Allies. A fresh look at history reveals that both Serbia and Croatia had Nazi puppet regimes, but the Croats and not the Serbs initiated the Yugoslav antifascist Partizan movement. Croats were its senior leaders and disproportionately its most numerous foot soldiers. Regrettably, some Jews too have embraced this fallacy about Croats for decades.Clearly, both Israel and Croatia are victims of similarly convoluted European tendencies that are worrisome for Jews and saddening for Croats. What should come out of the Katsav-Mesic meetings is a realization that Israel and Croatia share a common cause vis-a-vis Europe's leadership. The writer was Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the EU and NATO in 1998-2000. He now lives and works in Vienna.This article can also be read athttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1058011618190 or:http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/FrontPage/FrontPage&cid=1002116796299 Go to Editorial Page letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Mon, 14 Jul 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7546/1/E-Los-Angeles-Daily-Journal---by-Vitomir-Raguz.html ÂForum Column By V. M. RaguzLos Angeles Daily JournalMay 30, 2003Forum ColumnBy V. M. RaguzThe Bush administration has determined how it will protect U.S. citizensÂfrom potential politically charged lawsuits filed at the InternationalÂCriminal Court and similar courts: nonrecognition. It also is signing theÂso-called Article 98 agreements with friendly states that prevent theÂtransfer of U.S. citizens and select noncitizens serving abroad to suchÂinstitutions. So far, it has signed on 35 countries.However, Washington has yet to formulate a policy to protect all of itsÂworldwide employees from similar hazards, let alone its foreign agents andÂallies.At a time when Washington will need foreign proxies to help fight its war onÂterrorism and will rely on friendly governments, such as Poland, to supportÂU.S.-led solutions in Iraq and elsewhere, this policy gap must be filledÂquickly.An opportunity to move in this direction exists with the case of CroatianÂGeneral Ante Gotovina, who is under indictment at the International CriminalÂTribunal at The Hague.Gotovina was an operational U.S. agent on the ground in 1995, when hisÂtroops were used to break the siege of the U.N. safe area of Bihac by SerbÂGeneral Ratko Mladic. He was used later as a ground advance component toÂsupplement the U.S.-led NATO bombings of Serb troops in western Bosnia.This joint action altered territorial control in Bosnia between the SerbsÂand the Muslim-Croat coalition close to a 49-51 split, as envisioned in theÂpeace plan on the table at that time, which was later concluded in Dayton.Western policy on Bosnia was in disarray in 1995, and inaction atÂSrebrenica, where 6,000 mostly noncombatant men were massacred, reinforcedÂits haplessness. The Europeans were gearing up for complete withdrawal fromÂBosnia. The United States was preparing a peace plan that would have severedÂthe country in two. Then, in July 1995, the government in Zagreb proposed aÂplan to deblockade Bihac and offer Bosnia a chance for survival.A Washington Post editorial Aug. 1, 1995, three days before CroatiaÂcommenced Operation Storm, stated: "All along, the United States and itsÂallies have been looking for a force - other than themselves - that couldÂcheck Serbian and Bosnian Serb adventurism and produce a military balance onÂwhich a realistic settlement could be built. Maybe such a force is nowÂemerging: Croatia."Washington gave Zagreb a clandestine green light - in order not to anger theÂother permanent members of the Security Council - and jumped in withÂassistance to ensure that Operation Storm would succeed. It provided theÂCroats with Predator drone intelligence-gathering facilities two weeksÂbefore the operation began and neutralized the Serb communication systemsÂwith single-purpose Prowler aircraft on the day it started.The Hague Tribunal indicted Gotovina on the grounds that Operation Storm wasÂcarried out with the intention of expelling Serbs from Croatia. Serbs didÂsuffer because of the operation, but not because of Gotovina's campaign.ÂThey were victims of the unrealistic plans of their leaders and, on the dayÂthat the operation began, of orders by those leaders to withdraw.Operation Storm had completely different objectives (one was to save theÂMuslim community in Bosnia) which the United States aided. In that respect,ÂGotovina is innocent. Washington has ample evidence that would overturn theÂindictment.In the past, the Clinton administration hesitantly accepted the fallaciousÂcharges of the tribunal for a number of reasons. They included theÂconvenient "all sides are equally guilty" policy objectives in the region,Âthe administration's unconditional support for the tribunal which it saw asÂa forerunner to the International Criminal Court, and the traditional U.S.Âfirmness in not sharing intelligence in order to protect its sources andÂmethods.However, the Clinton policy objectives regarding the Balkans and theÂInternational Criminal Court no longer are relevant. Moreover, becauseÂovercoming obstacles that would make potential agents and allies diffidentÂat a crucial time is becoming more important, the Bush administration needsÂto find ways to improve its credibility. Gotovina's case, if not handledÂproperly, could end up being a negative precedent and hurting U.S. effortsÂworldwide.Washington should relax its intelligence safeguarding rules where necessary,Âwhich would solve the problem for Gotovina. Other steps should beÂconsidered, such as refocusing State Department consistency on the subjectÂand extending Article 98 protection to all U.S. employees and relevantÂforeign nationals.Gotovina was, in the language of some Article 98 agreements, a "contractor"Âand would be entitled to protection. The same should be true for the PolishÂsoldiers and officials in Iraq; Poland does not yet have the internationalÂweight to fob off possible future lawsuits at the International CriminalÂCourt and other venues.Clearly at issue is not only Gotovina but many other men and women aroundÂthe world who are taking on the burden of serving U.S. interests in fightingÂterrorism and are at risk of falling victim to governments and internationalÂbodies that are, at times, hostile to any and all use of force.Also at issue are other U.S. allies such as top Israeli officials. ArielÂSharon already is facing judicial harassment in Belgium and elsewhere byÂthose who would like to warp international law to limit the right ofÂnational self-defense and to harm the strength of the United States byÂindirectly indicting America through its friends and proxies.The Gotovina case is interesting because it is easy to substantiate andÂcrucial because it would send a message that those who serve the interestsÂof the United States, and serve them with honor, can count on equalÂprotection from wrongful lawsuits, as can U.S. citizens and some employees.ÂThis is not much to ask of the United States, and the benefits would beÂsubstantial.V.M. Raguz was ambassador of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the European Union andÂNATO in 1998-2000. This article is based on his forthcoming essay in theÂ43rd edition of the Journal of Croatian Studies. letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Mon, 30 Jun 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7547/1/F-LEurope-et-terrorisme-intellectuel.html  Grande Europe et terrorisme intellectuelhttp://www.rivarol.com/ÂChers collegues,Vous pouvez utiliser, afficher mon article publie dans Rivarol...amitiesTomislavRIVAROL (le 16 août, 2003) Grande Europe et terrorisme intellectuel par Tomislav Sunic C'est le 16 avril, après le oui triomphal (83,8 %) des Hongrois à l'Union, qu'a été "couronnée" à Athènes l'Europe de 25, sanctionnée par un traité de 5 000 pages qu'ont signé pour la France Jean-Pierre Raffarin et Dominique de Villepin avec la bénédiction de Kofi Annan, secrétaire général de l'ONU, sous l'égide de laquelle s'inscrit donc la "Nouvelle Europe". Un parrainage assez inquiétant, notamment en ce qui concerne la liberté d'expression. La police de la pensée est difficile à repérer car elle se cache souvent sous les concepts rassurants de "démocratie" et "droits de l'homme." Si les Quinze exhibent volontiers les beautés de leurs paragraphes constitutionnels, ils admettent rarement les ambiguïtés de leur Code pénal. Et c'est dans une grande discrétion que l'an dernier, la Commission européenne avait tenu a Bruxelles, et à Strasbourg des réunions d'une importance historique sur l'avenir de la libre parole. Sujet de discussion? La promulgation de la nouvelle législation européenne instituant le "crime de haine" et appelée à se substituer aux législations nationales pour devenir automatiquement la loi dans tous les Etats européens, de la Grèce à la Belgique, du Danemark au Portugal. Si bien que toute personne poursuivie pour "crime de haine" dans tel pays de l'Union pourra être jugée et condamnée dans tel autre. Rétrospectivement, cette loi supranationale apparaît inspirée du code criminel communiste de la défunte Union . En Amérique et en Angleterre, la pratique légale présuppose que ce qui n'est pas spécifiquement interdit est permis. C'est la raison pour laquelle l'Allemagne a adopté des lois rigoureuses contre le « négationnisme ». En 2002, lors de sa visite en Allemagne, l'historien américain d'origine juive, Norman Finkelstein a suggéré à la classe politique allemande de cesser d'être la «victime délibérée » des groupes de pression "de l'industrie de l'holocauste" ( titre de son essai tant controversé). Il a également fait remarqué que l'attitude servile des Allemands pourrait être totalement contre-productive en favorisant un antisémitisme aujourd'hui bien caché. Mais personne n'a su réagir positivement aux avertissements de Finkelstein, de peur d'être dénoncé comme antisémite. A l'inverse, le gouvernement allemand a accepté pour la énième fois de verser 5 milliards d'euros supplémentaires aux 800 000 survivants de la Shoah. Quand on interdit la discussion de matières taboues, le climat de lâcheté intellectuelle s'alourdit. Une nation empêchant la libre parole et l'expression libre de vues politiques diverses - même si ces vues peuvent paraître aberrantes - peut-elle être encore appelée démocratique ? Bien que les Etats-Unis se targuent de leur «First Amendement », le discours libre dans les média et dans les universités y est pratiquement impossible. L'autocensure didactique l'emporte. Souvent les professeurs américains évitent les expressions ou avis politiquement incorrects, redoutant de compromettre leur carrière. Une pratique croissante en Amérique veut que les professeurs donnent de bonnes notes à des médiocres étudiants de souche non européenne, afin d'éviter des ennuis judiciaires, ou pis, de perdre leur travail. En France, depuis la loi Fabius-Gayssot, proposée par un député communiste et adoptée en juillet 1990 (puis aggravée à l'initiative du député chiraquien Pierre Lellouche en décembre 2002), toute personne exprimant en public un doute au sujet de l'historiographie contemporaine risque de sérieuses amendes et même l'emprisonnement. Un certain nombre d'auteurs et de journalistes français, allemands et autrichiens sont persécutés, pourchassés, emprisonnés, d'autres ont demandé l'asile politique en Syrie, en Suède ou en Amérique. Quelques-uns se sont même installés dans les pays de l'Est. Des mesures répressives semblables ont été récemment décrétées en Australie, au Canada et en Belgique multiculturelle. Plusieurs dirigeants nationalistes est-européens, en particulier croates, souhaitant rendre visite à leurs compatriotes expatriés au Canada ou en Australie n'ont pas obtenu le visa pour ces pays en raison de leurs prétendues vues «extrémistes ». Pour l'instant la Russie et d'autres pays ex-post-communistes ne pratiquent pas la même répression de la pensée libre et l'on voit dans les libraires croates des traductions d'ouvrages français ou allemands impubliables en France ou en Allemagne. Mais en raison de la pression croissante de Bruxelles et de Washington, cela va changer. L'adhésion à l'Union européenne des anciens satellites requiert de ces derniers un alignement sur la pensée unique et l'apprentissage d'une nouvelle langue de bois aussi redoutable que celle de l'époque communiste. Croire que la terreur d'Etat, c'est-à-dire le totalitarisme, ne peut qu'être le produit d'une idéologie violente véhiculée par une poignée de bandits, est fort répandu et l'on a beaucoup entendu cet argument récemment à propos de l'Irak . Mais cette idée est fausse. La démocratie triomphante aussi, qui pousse à l'abdication intellectuelle dans le grand consensus mou, constitue une tentation totalitaire. Le terrorisme intellectuel grandit et se propage grâce à la croyance généralisée que, d'une façon ou d'une autre, les choses finiront par s'améliorer toutes seules. Or, l'apathie sociale croissante et l'autocensure galopante parmi un nombre croissant d'intellectuels européens apportent de l'eau au moulin de la police de la pensée. Au fond, comme l'écrit Claude Polin, l'esprit totalitaire est l'absence de tout esprit.TOMISLAV SUNICÂwww.watermark.hu/doctorsunicÂtomislav.sunic@zg.hinet.hr letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Thu, 22 May 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7548/1/E-To-be-free-is-to-rid-oneself-forever-from-the-notion-of-reward.html ÂTo be free is to rid oneself forever from the notion ofrewardTo be free is to rid oneself forever from the notion of reward; to expect nothing from people or gods; to renounce not only this world and all worlds, but salvation itself; to break up even the idea of this chain among chains. (Le mauvais demiurge, p. 88.)Emile Cioran and the Culture of DeathÂby Tomislav SunicHistorical pessimism and the sense of the tragic are recurrent motives in European literature. From Heraclitus to Heidegger, from Sophocles to Schopenhauer, the exponents of the tragic view of life point out that the shortness of human existence can only be overcome by the heroic intensity of living. The philosophy of the tragic is incompatible with the Christian dogma of salvation or the optimism of some modern ideologies. Many modern political theologies and ideologies set out from the assumption that "the radiant future" is always somewhere around the corner, and that existential fear can best be subdued by the acceptance of a linear and progressive concept of history. It is interesting to observe that individuals and masses in our post-modernity increasingly avoid allusions to death and dying. Processions and wakes, which not long ago honored the postmortem communion between the dead and the living, are rapidly falling into oblivion. In a cold and super-rational society of today, someone's death causes embarrassment, as if death should have never occurred, and as if death could be postponed by a deliberate "pursuit of happiness." The belief that death can be outwitted through the search for the elixir of eternal youth and the "ideology of good looks", is widespread in modern TV-oriented society. This belief has become a formula for social and political conduct.ÂThe French-Rumanian essayist, Emile Cioran, suggests that the awareness of existential futility represents the sole weapon against theological and ideological deliriums that have been rocking Europe for centuries. Born in Rumania in 1911, Cioran very early came to terms with the old European proverb that geography means destiny. From his native region which was once roamed by Scythian and Sarmatian hordes, and in which more recently, secular vampires and political Draculas are taking turns, he inherited a typically "balkanesque" talent for survival. Scores of ancient Greeks shunned this area of Europe, and when political circumstances forced them to flee, they preferred to search for a new homeland in Sicily or Italy--or today, like Cioran, in France. "Our epoch, writes Cioran, "will be marked by the romanticism of stateless persons. Already the picture of the universe is in the making in which nobody will have civic rights."[1] Similar to his exiled compatriots Eugène Ionesco, Stephen Lupasco, Mircea Eliade, and many others, Cioran came to realize very early that the sense of existential futility can best by cured by the belief in a cyclical concept of history, which excludes any notion of the arrival of a new messiah or the continuation of techno-economic progress.Cioran's political, esthetic and existential attitude towards being and time is an effort to restore the pre-Socratic thought, which Christianity, and then the heritage of rationalism and positivism, pushed into the periphery of philosophical speculation. In his essays and aphorisms, Cioran attempts to cast the foundation of a philosophy of life that, paradoxically, consists of total refutation of all living. In an age of accelerated history it appears to him senseless to speculate about human betterment or the "end of history." "Future," writes Cioran, "go and see it for yourselves if you really wish to. I prefer to cling to the unbelievable present and the unbelievable past. I leave to you the opportunity to face the very Unbelievable."[2] Before man ventures into daydreams about his futuristic society, he should first immerse himself in the nothingness of his being, and finally restore life to what it is all about: a working hypothesis. On one of his lithographs, the 16th century French painter, J. Valverde, sketched a man who had skinned himself off his own anatomic skin. This awesome man, holding a knife in one hand and his freshly peeled off skin in the other, resembles Cioran, who now teaches his readers how best to shed their hide of political illusions. Man feels fear only on his skin, not on his skeleton. How would it be for a change, asks Cioran, if man could have thought of something unrelated to being? Has not everything that transpires caused stubborn headaches? "And I think about all those whom I have known," writes Cioran, "all those who are no longer alive, long since wallowing in their coffins, for ever exempt of their flesh--and fear."[3]The interesting feature about Cioran is his attempt to fight existential nihilism by means of nihilism. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Cioran is averse to the voguish pessimism of modern intellectuals who bemoan lost paradises, and who continue pontificating about endless economic progress. Unquestionably, the literary discourse of modernity has contributed to this mood of false pessimism, although such pessimism seems to be more induced by frustrated economic appetites, and less by what Cioran calls, "metaphysical alienation." Contrary to J.P. Sartre's existentialism that focuses on the rupture between being and non-being, Cioran regrets the split between the language and reality, and therefore the difficulty to fully convey the vision of existential nothingness. In a kind of alienation popularized by modern writers, Cioran detects the fashionable offshoot of "Parisianism" that elegantly masks a warmed-up version of a thwarted belief in progress. Such a critical attitude towards his contemporaries is maybe the reason why Cioran has never had eulogies heaped upon him, and why his enemies like to dub him "reactionary." To label Cioran a philopsher of nihilism may be more appropriate in view of the fact that Cioran is a stubborn blasphemer who never tires from calling Christ, St. Paul, and all Christian clergymen, as well as their secular Freudo-Marxian successors outright liars and masters of illusion. To reduce Cioran to some preconceived intellectual and ideological category cannot do justice to his complex temperament, nor can it objectively reflect his complicated political philosophy. Each society, be it democratic or despotic, as a rule, tries to silence those who incarnate the denial of its sacrosanct political theology. For Cioran all systems must be rejected for the simple reason that they all glorify man as an ultimate creature. Only in the praise of non-being, and in the thorough denial of life, argues Ciroan, man's existence becomes bearable. The great advantage of Cioran is, as he says, is that "I live only because it is in my power to die whenever I want; without the idea of suicide I would have killed myself long time ago."[4] These words testify to Cioran's alienation from the philosophy of Sisyphus, as well as his disapproval of the moral pathos of the dung-infested Job. Hardly any biblical or modern democratic character would be willing to contemplate in a similar manner the possibility of breaking away from the cycle of time. As Cioran says, the paramount sense of beatitude is achievable only when man realizes that he can at any time terminate his life; only at that moment will this mean a new "temptation to exist." In other words, it could be said that Cioran draws his life force from the constant flow of the images of salutary death, thereby rendering irrelevant all attempts of any ethical or political commitment. Man should, for a change, argues Cioran, attempt to function as some form of saprophytic bacteria; or better yet as some amoebae from Paleozoic era. Such primeval forms of existence can endure the terror of being and time more easily. In a protoplasm, or lower species, there is more beauty then in all philosophies of life. And to reiterate this point, Cioran adds: "Oh, how I would like to be a plant, even if I would have to attend to someone's excrement!"[5]Perhaps Cioran could be depicted as a trouble maker, or as the French call it a "trouble fête", whose suicidal aphorisms offend bourgeois society, but whose words also shock modern socialist day-dreamers. In view of his acceptance of the idea of death, as well as his rejection of all political doctrines, it is no wonder that Cioran no longer feels bound to egoistical love of life. Hence, there is no reason for him to ponder over the strategy of living; one should rather start thinking about the methodology of dying, or better yet how never to be born. "Mankind has regressed so much," writes Cioran, and "nothing proves it better than the impossibility to encounter a single nation or a tribe in which a birth of a child causes mourning and lamentation."[6] Where are those sacred times, inquires Cioran, when Balkan Bogumils and France's Cathares saw in child's birth a divine punishment? Today's generations, instead of rejoicing when their loved ones are about to die, are stunned with horror and disbelief at the vision of death. Instead of wailing and grieving when their offsprings are about to be born, they organize mass festivities:ÂIf attachment is an evil, the cause of this evil must be sought in the scandal of birth--because to be born means to be attached. The purpose of someone's detachment should be the effacement of all traces of this scandal--the ominous and the least tolerable of all scandals.[7]Cioran's philosophy bears a strong imprint of Friedrich Nietzsche and Indian Upanishads. Although his inveterate pessimism often recalls Nietzsche's "Weltschmerz," his classical language and rigid syntax rarely tolerates romantic or lyrical narrative, nor the sentimental outbursts that one often finds in Nietzsche's prose. Instead of resorting to thundering gloom, Cioran's paradoxical humor expresses something which in the first place should have never been verbally construed. The weakness of Cioran prose lies probably in his lack of thematic organization. At time his aphorisms read as broken-off scores of a well-designed musical master piece, and sometimes his language is so hermetic that the reader is left to grope for meaning.ÂWhen one reads Cioran's prose the reader is confronted by an author who imposes a climate of cold apocalypse that thoroughly contradicts the heritage of progress. Real joy lies in non-being, says Cioran, that is, in the conviction that each willful act of creation perpetuates cosmic chaos. There is no purpose in endless deliberations about higher meaning of life. The entire history, be it the recorded history or mythical history, is replete with the cacophony of theological and ideological tautologies. Everything is "éternel retour," a historical carousel, with those who are today on top, ending tomorrow at the bottom.ÂI cannot excuse myself for being born. It is as if, when insinuating myself in this world, I profaned some mystery, betrayed some very important engagement, made a mistake of indescribable gravity.[8]This does not mean that Cioran is completely insulated from physical and mental torments. Aware of the possible cosmic disaster, and neurotically persuaded that some other predator may at any time deprive him of his well-planned privilege to die, he relentlessly evokes the set of death bed pictures. Is this not a truly aristocratic method to alleviate the impossibility of being?:In order to vanquish dread or tenacious anxiety, there is nothing better than to imagine one's own funeral: efficient method, accessible to all. In order to avoid resorting to it during the day, the best is to indulge in its virtues right after getting up. Or perhaps make use of it on special occasions, similar to Pope Innocent IX who ordered the picture of himself painted on his death-bed. He would cast a glance at his picture every time he had to reach an important decision... [9]At first, one may be tempted to say that Cioran is fond of wallowing in his neuroses and morbid ideas, as if they could be used to inspire his literary creativity. So exhilarating does he find his distaste for life that he suggests that, "he who succeeds in acquiring them has a future which makes everything prosper; success as well as defeat."[10] Such frank description of his emotional spasms makes him confess that success for him is as difficult to bear as much as a failure. One and the other cause him headache.The feeling of sublime futility with regard to everything that life entails goes hand in hand with Cioran's pessimistic attitude towards the rise and fall of states and empires. His vision of the circulation of historical time recalls Vico's corsi e ricorsi, and his cynicism about human nature draws on Spengler's "biology" of history. Everything is a merry-go-round, and each system is doomed to perish the moment it makes its entrance onto the historical scene. One can detect in Cioran's gloomy prophecies the forebodings of the Roman stoic and emperor Marcus Aurelius, who heard in the distance of the Noricum the gallop of the barbarian horses, and who discerned through the haze of Panonia the pending ruin of the Roman empire. Although today the actors are different, the setting remains similar; millions of new barbarians have begun to pound at the gates of Europe, and will soon take possession of what lies inside:Regardless of what the world will look like in the future, Westerners will assume the role of the Graeculi of the Roman empire. Needed and despised by new conquerors, they will not have anything to offer except the jugglery of their intelligence, or the glitter of their past. [11]Now is the time for the opulent Europe to pack up and leave, and cede the historical scene to other more virile peoples. Civilization becomes decadent when it takes freedom for granted; its disaster is imminent when it becomes too tolerant of every uncouth outsider. Yet, despite the fact that political tornados are lurking on the horizon, Cioran, like Marcus Aurelius, is determined to die with style. His sense of the tragic has taught him the strategy of ars moriendi, making him well prepared for all surprises, irrespective of their magnitude. Victors and victims, heroes and henchmen, do they not all take turns in this carnival of history, bemoaning and bewailing their fate while at the bottom, while taking revenge when on top? Two thousand years of Greco-Christian history is a mere trifle in comparison to eternity. One caricatural civilization is now taking shape, writes Cioran, in which those who are creating it are helping those wishing to destroy it. History has no meaning, and therefore, attempting to render it meaningful, or expecting from it a final burst of theophany, is a self-defeating chimera. For Cioran, there is more truth in occult sciences than in all philosophies that attempt to give meaning to life. Man will finally become free when he takes off the straitjacket of finalism and determinism, and when he realizes that life is an accidental mistake that sprang up from one bewildering astral circumstance. Proof? A little twist of the head clearly shows that "history, in fact, boils down to the classification of the police: "After all, does not the historian deal with the image which people have about the policeman throughout epochs ?"[12] To succeed in mobilizing masses in the name of some obscure ideas, to enable them to sniff blood, is a certain avenue to political success. Had not the same masses which carried on their shouldered the French revolution in the name of equality and fraternity, several years later also brought on their shoulders an emperor with new clothes--an emperor on whose behalf they ran barefoot from Paris to Moscow, from Jena to Dubrovnik? For Cioran, when a society runs out of political utopia there is no more hope, and consequently there cannot be any more life. Without utopia, writes Cioran, people would be forced to commit suicide; thanks to utopia they commit homicides.ÂToday there are no more utopias in stock. Mass democracy has taken their place. Without democracy life makes little sense; yet democracy has no life of its own. After all, argues Cioran, had it not been for a young lunatic from the Galilee, the world would be today a very boring place. Alas, how many such lunatics are hatching today their self-styled theological and ideological derivatives! "Society is badly organized, writes Cioran, "it does nothing against lunatics who die so young."[13] Probably all prophets and political soothsayers should immediately be put to death, "because when the mob accepts a myth--get ready for massacres or better yet for a new religion."[14]ÂUnmistakable as Cioran's resentments against utopia may appear, he is far from deriding its creative importance. Nothing could be more loathsome to him than the vague cliche of modernity that associates the quest for happiness with a peaceful pleasure-seeking society. Demystified, disenchanted, castrated, and unable to weather the upcoming storm, modern society is doomed to spiritual exhaustion and slow death. It is incapable of believing in anything except in the purported humanity of its future blood-suckers. If a society truly wishes to preserve its biological well-being, argues Cioran, its paramount task is to harness and nurture its "substantial calamity;" it must keep a tally of its own capacity for destruction. After all, have not his native Balkans, in which secular vampires are today again dancing to the tune of butchery, also generated a pool of sturdy specimen ready for tomorrow's cataclysms? In this area of Europe, which is endlessly marred by political tremors and real earthquakes, a new history is today in the making--a history which will probably reward its populace for the past suffering.ÂWhatever their past was, and irrespective of their civilization, these countries possess a biological stock which one cannot find in the West. Maltreated, disinherited, precipitated in the anonymous martyrdom, torn apart between wretchedness and sedition, they will perhaps know in the future a reward for so many ordeals, so much humiliation and for so much cowardice.[15]Is this not the best portrayal of that anonymous "eastern" Europe which according to Cioran is ready today to speed up the world history? The death of communism in Eastern Europe might probably inaugurate the return of history for all of Europe. Conversely, the "better half" of Europe, the one that wallows in air-conditioned and aseptic salons, that Europe is depleted of robust ideas. It is incapable of hating and suffering, and therefore of leading. For Cioran, society becomes consolidated in danger and it atrophies in peace: "In those places where peace, hygiene and leisure ravage, psychoses also multiply... I come from a country which, while never learning to know the meaning of happiness, has also never produced a single psychoanalyst."[16] The raw manners of new east European cannibals, not "peace and love" will determine the course of tomorrow's history. Those who have passed through hell are more likely to outlive those who have only known the cozy climate of a secular paradise.ÂThese words of Cioran are aimed at the decadent France la Doulce in which afternoon chats about someone's obesity or sexual impotence have become major preoccupations on the hit-parade of daily concerns. Unable to put up resistance against tomorrow's conquerors, this western Europe, according to Cioran, deserves to be punished in the same manner as the noblesse of the ancien régime which, on the eve of the French Revolution, laughed at its own image, while praising the image of the bon sauvage. How many among those good-natured French aristocrats were aware that the same bon sauvage was about to roll their heads down the streets of Paris? "In the future, writes Cioran, "if mankind is to start all over again, it will be with the outcasts, with the mongols from all parts, with the dregs of the continents.."[17] Europe is hiding in its own imbecility in front of an approaching catastrophe. Europe? "The rots that smell nice, a perfumed corpse." [18]Despite gathering storms Cioran is comforted by the notion that he at least is the last heir to the vanishing "end of history." Tomorrow, when the real apocalypse begins, and as the dangers of titanic proportions take final shape on the horizon, then, even the word "regret" will disappear from our vocabulary. "My vision of the future," continues Cioran is so clear, "that if I had children I would strangle them immediately."[19]*~*~*~*~*~*~*After a good reading of Cioran's opus one must conclude that Cioran is essentially a satirist who ridicules the stupid existential shiver of modern masses. One may be tempted to argue that Cioran offers aan elegant vade-mecum for suicide designed for those, who like him, have thoroughly delegitimized the value of life. But as Cioran says, suicide is committed by those who are no longer capable of acting out optimism, e.g. those whose thread of joy and happiness breaks into pieces. Those like him, the cautious pessimists, "given that they have no reason to live, why would they have a reason to die?" [20] The striking ambivalence of Cioran's literary work consists of the apocalyptic forebodings on the one hand, and enthusiastic evocations of horrors on the other. He believes that violence and destruction are the main ingredients of history, because the world without violence is bound to collapse. Yet, one wonders why is Cioran so opposed to the world of peace if, according to his logic, this peaceful world could help accelerate his own much craved demise, and thus facilitate his immersion into nothingness? Of course, Cioran never moralizes about the necessity of violence; rather, in accordance with the canons of his beloved reactionary predecessors Josephe de Maistre and Nicolo Machiavelli, he asserts that "authority, not verity, makes the law," and that consequently, the credibility of a political lie will also determine the magnitude of political justice. Granted that this is correct, how does he explain the fact that authority, at least the way he sees it, only perpetuates this odious being from which he so dearly wishes to absolve himself? This mystery will never be known other than to him. Cioran admits however, that despite his abhorrence of violence, every man, including himself is an integral part of it, and that every man has at least once in his life contemplated how to roast somebody alive, or how to chop off someone's head:ÂConvinced that troubles in our society come from old people, I conceived the plan of liquidating all citizens past their forties--the beginning of sclerosis and mummification. I came to believe that this was the turning point when each human becomes an insult to his nation and a burden to his community... Those who listened to this did not appreciate this discourse and they considered me a cannibal... Must this intent of mine be condemned? It only expresses something which each man, who is attached to his country desires in the bottom of his heart: liquidation of one half of his compatriots.[21]ÂCioran's literary elitism is unparalleled in modern literature, and for that reason he often appears as a nuisance for modern and sentimental ears poised for the lullaby words of eternal earthly or spiritual bliss. Cioran's hatred of the present and the future, his disrespect for life, will certainly continue to antagonize the apostles of modernity who never tire of chanting vague promises about the "better here-and-now." His paradoxical humor is so devastating that one cannot take it at face value, especially when Cioran describes his own self. His formalism in language, his impeccable choice of words, despite some similarities with modern authors of the same elitist caliber, make him sometimes difficult to follow. One wonders whether Cioran's arsenal of words such as "abulia," "schizophrenia," "apathy," etc., truly depict a nevrosé which he claims to be.ÂIf one could reduce the portrayal of Cioran to one short paragraph, then one must depict him as an author who sees in the modern veneration of the intellect a blueprint for spiritual gulags and the uglification of the world. Indeed, for Cioran, man's task is to wash himself in the school of existential futility, for futility is not hopelessness; futility is a reward for those wishing to rid themselves of the epidemic of life and the virus of hope. Probably, this picture best befits the man who describes himself as a fanatic without any convictions--a stranded accident in the cosmos who casts nostalgic looks towards his quick disappearance.ÂTo be free is to rid oneself forever from the notion of reward; to expect nothing from people or gods; to renounce not only this world and all worlds, but salvation itself; to break up even the idea of this chain among chains. (Le mauvais demiurge, p. 88.)Notes:[1] Emile Cioran, "Syllogismes de l'amertume" (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), p. 72 (my translation) return to text[2] "De l'inconvénient d'être né" (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p. 161-162. (my translation) (The Trouble with Being Born, translated by Richard Howard: Seaver Bks., 1981) return to text[3] Cioran, "Le mauvais démiurge" ( Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 63. (my translation) return to text[4] "Syllogismes de l'amertume", p. 87. (my trans.) return to text[5] Ibid., p. 176. return to text[6] "De l'inconvénient d'être né", p. 11. (my trans.) return to text[7] Ibid., p. 29. return to text[8] Ibid., p. 23. return to text[9] Ibid., p. 141. return to text[10] "Syllogismes de l'amertume", p. 61. (my trans.) return to text[11] "La tentation d'exister", (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), p. 37-38. (my trans.) (The temptation to exist, translated by Richard Howard; Seaver Bks., 1986) return to text[12] "Syllogismes de l'amertume", p. 151. (my trans.) return to text[13] Ibid., p. 156. return to text[14] Ibid., p. 158. return to text[15] "Histoire et utopie" (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 59. (my trans.) ( History and Utopia, trans. by Richard Howard, Seaver Bks., 1987). return to text[16] Syllogismes de l'amertume, p. 154. (my trans.) return to text[17] Ibid., p. 86. return to text[18] "De l'inconvénient d'être né", p. 154. (my trans.) return to text[19] Ibid. p. 155. return to text[20] "Syllogismes de l'amertume", p. 109. return to text[21] "Histoire et utopie" (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 14. (my trans.) return to textThe author is a writer and a former Croat diplomat. He writes from Europe.Source: http://www.mediamonitors.net/tomislavsunic3.html letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sun, 27 Apr 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7549/1/E-CO-OPERATING-WITH-THE-MAFIA.html  CO-OPERATING WITH THE MAFIAÂVIEWPOINT FROM LONDON CO-OPERATING WITH THE SERBIAN MAFIAThe Croatian Herald, Australia No. 959 - 21 March 2003For some time I have maintained that the "regionalco-operation" policies of the European Union willprimarily benefit organised crime, terrorists and thelike (read more), and will damage Croatia (read more).The assassination of Serbian Prime Minister ZoranDjindjic, apparently by gangsters, has emphasised thispoint. Who was Djindjic?When news broke of Djindjic's assassination, many newsagencies - CNN in particular - lauded him as a greatdemocrat, who took on Milosevic, organised crime etc. Let's un-spin that. Djindjic was a 'Prcani' - that isa Serb from outside Serbia - from Bosnia-Herzegovina.Like many such 'Prcani' politicians - "Arkan", RadovanKaradzic etc - he was notable for his Greater Serbiaextremism, supporting Serbia's wars. He helped RadovanKaradzic, endorsing him in elections.Indeed, in 1996he claimed that an opposition win against Milosevicwould mean the union of Republika Srpska (BiH) withSerbia itself.Djindjic studied Marxist philosophy in Germany,reportedly associating with far left Characters linkedwith terrorism. He was thus compared with Germanforeign minister Joschka Fischer, who has a similarpast. In 2002 Djindjic claimed he left Germany a'conservative' having apparently changed his views -but not before completing a Marxist thesis. Djindjic - who was himself linked to gangsterism - wasgiven millions by the US government to defeatMilosevic; he was in their pocket. This may helpexplain why he was left alone when it transpired thatSerbia had been providing military expertise to Iraq -which he must surely have known about. He was a firm believer in a hegemonic Serbia,enthusiastically supporting "regional co-operation"and believed the ex-Yugoslav republics should cometogether as a block. That would certainly benefitSerbia, but hardly Croatia, who would then be linkedwith a country described as possibly becoming"Europe's Columbia". The link is already happening;the BBC ran a headline "Balkan horror at Djindjicdeath" quoting President Mesic. It is a disaster forCroatia's image to be linked with mafia-riddledSerbia; people will assume Croatia is just the same. And this is why "regional co-operation" is dangerousfor Croatia. Serbia is a country where the mafia canmurder the Prime Minister. It's not as if this is anisolated event. Assassinations are regular in Serbia;a senior officer in the Federal Interior Ministry wasmurdered last November. EU imposed "regional co-operation" policies such asfreedom of movement - relaxing of visa requirementswill be of great assistance in helping the Serbianmafia spread its influence. Does Croatia want that? Does Europe? Ironically, itmay well be that the Serbian mafia killed someonewhose policies may have benefited them. Croatia - andEurope - needs to think seriously. And Croatia shouldalso ponder the implications of the West helping intopower a man like Djindjic.© Brian Gallagher My 'Viewpoint from London' column appears fortnightlyin the Australian 'Croatian Herald', and thereafter athttp://www.croatiafocus.com letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Tue, 08 Apr 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7550/1/E-Max-Primoracs-article-on-JNA-in-Herald-Tribune.html ÂÂMax Primorac's article on JNA in Herald TribuneWill the armed forces take over Serbia?Max PrimoracFriday, April 4, 2003After DjindjicZAGREB, Croatia After the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic,Serbia's fragmented democratic forces must deal with the loss of a possibly irreplaceable reformer while staving off the chaos that oftenfills such power vacuums. Looming ominously in the background, meanwhile,is a possibility that international and Yugoslav officials are failing to confront adequately - a de facto military takeover.The Yugoslav National Army, or JNA, is not only the strongest institution in the country, but also the one that Djindjic had the least success reforming. Deeply compromised by its close association with and support of former President Slobodan Milosevic, it is thoroughly penetrated by powerful crime syndicates.No other institution is in a better position to benefit from the vacuum left in the wake of Djindjic's departure. Serbia's neighbors are holding their breath - and for goodreason. Any move by Serbia's military-criminal complex to reassert its control over politics would undo the international community's efforts to bring peace, stability and democracy to the former Yugoslavia.It is difficult to determine where Serbia's criminal underworld ends and where its security and intelligence services begin. Although Djindjic's administration undertook significant reforms on several fronts, the security apparatus remained beyond civilian control. In fact, a leading suspect in Djindjic's murder is a Milosevic-era special forces commander and crime boss wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia for war crimes committed in Bosnia.A report by the International Crisis Group documents how Belgrade has soldmore than $1 billion worth of illicit arms to Baghdad and other rogue regimes since Milosevic's ouster, pointing to the "power of Communist-era networks linking military, industrial and criminal elites, and the unwillingness or inability ofcivilian political leaders to control the security sector."Several factors might lead the JNA to decide that it is in its best interests to stage a coup or, more likely, arrange for a de facto takeover by proxy.First, military leaders understand that full cooperation with the war crimes tribunal remains a precondition for desperately needed Western aid. This means sending their colleagues or themselves to jail - an obvious non-starter. The tribunal has accused the JNA of harboring several indicted Serbian officers. Djindjic'sassassination sends a clear message to his successors about what they riskshould they dare consider extraditing these suspects. The military may simply conclude that its interests are best served by taking power.Second, the JNA has seen its privileges and budget shrink as the countryfor which it was created to defend, Yugoslavia, has vanished. The illicit trade in arms, drugs, contraband and women, and the crime syndicates that broker it, has helped stem the financial decline. Reform threatens this illicit network.Third, there remains strong populist support for a greater Serbia, stokedby the stifling economic hardship that has accompanied tough reforms. Despite the warnings of many in the region, the West has never fully appreciated the continued popularity of Milosevic's imperial designs. In December's presidential elections,the extremist candidate Vojislav Seselj - now in a Hague jail awaiting prosecution - won more than a third of the popular vote, an alarming sign that radical nationalism still grips the Serbian political psyche.This danger extends beyond the radical nationalists. Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic has taken a hard-line position over Kosovo, advocating its territorial partition and demanding that Serbian security forces be allowed to reenter the province. At the same time Serbs in Kosovo have called for the creation of their own statelet.These developments chillingly echo the terrible events of 1991-1992, when Serb nationalist demands for separate states were preludes to war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The recent decision by Belgrade to establish a major new security base in Albanian-populated southern Serbia, near the border with Kosovo, is sure to inflame already tense Serbian-Albanian relations.Events in Belgrade are generating considerable concern in Bosnia about continued Serbian irredentist designs over half its territory. Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb republic, is already dominated by a security-criminal apparatus similar to that emerging in Serbia.Bosnia can take little comfort from the fact that Vojislav Kostunica, until recently president of Yugoslavia and Djindjic's main political antagonist, is now Serbia's most popular political figure, given his electoral campaign statement that Republika Srpska is only "temporarily" separated from Serbia. In fact, Kostunica's strident anti-Hague and anti-U.S. stances make him a convenient proxy candidate for the military.With Djindjic's death, the post-Dayton peace architecture may begin to unravel. Despite billions of dollars in foreign aid, the international community finds itself facing the very real possibility that the Balkans will once again become a flashpoint.The writer is president of the Center for Civil Society in Southeastern Europe and executive director of the Institute of World Affairs regional office in Zagreb.Copyright C 2003 The International Herald TribuneSource: http://www.iht.com/articles/92071.html letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Fri, 04 Apr 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7552/1/HE-Bog-Rat-Amerika-i-Hrvatska---on-TV.html  Bog, Rat, Amerika i Hrvatska" Iz Americke Krscanske PerspektiveÂAlpha & Omega Production Company presents TV documentary series premiere: Our Nation At War - Voices of America (Non Biblical and Biblical Views of Wars)Produced & directed by Croatian from Evanston, Zvonimir B. Ranogajec (Branko Rano)March 29, 2003 at 2:00 p.m. on Evanston TV Channel 6.Iz Americke Krscanske PerspektiveBOG, RAT, AMERIKA i HRVATSKA Pise: Zvonimir B. RanogajecKrscanski TV producentNekoliko pitanja svim prosvjednicima skupova i onima koji su se izjasnili ili se izjasnjavaju protiv rata, bez obzira dali su vjernici ili ne: odobrava li Bog rat? Postoji li Biblijski razlog odlaska u rat? Koje su posljedice ici u rat, a koje su posljedice ako se ne ide u rat? Je li zlocin ubiti neprijatelja u ratu?Meni kao krscaninu najmjerodavnije je sto Sveto pismo kaze u svezi s ratom, a ne misljenja pojedinih ljudi, koji potpuno iskljucuju Boga iz toga, kao da Bog ne postoji i nije uopce vazno sto Bog misli i govori o tome!? Kada nacija ide u rat Bozji ljudi moraju pravilno razumjeti sto Bog misli i kaze o ratu. Krscani moraju objasniti s mnogo ljubavi, razumijevanja i pomoci Duha Svetoga, i drugim ljudima bez obzira da li su vjernci ili ne, sto Bog misli i govori o ratu!Da cujemo sto apostol Pavao kaze u Svetom pismu o nasem odnosu prema drzavnoj vlasti, u odnosu vlasti prema nama, kolika je njihova moc nad nama i kako se mi trebamo vladati.Poslanica Rimljanima, glava 13, redak 1-4. "Neka se svatko pokorava visim vlastima, jer nema vlasti osim od Boga. I one koje postoje, od Boga su spostavljene. Zato onaj koji se suprostavlja vlasti protivi se odredbi Bozjoj. A koji joj se protive, navuci ce sami se osudu. Poglavara se ne treba bojati kad se radi dobro, vec kad se radi zlo. Hoces li da se ne moras bojati vlasti, cini dobro te ces s njezine strane imati hvalu! Jer ona sluzi Bogu za tvoje dobro. Ali cinis li zlo, boj se, jer ne nosi uzalud maca. Ona naime sluzi Bogu da kazni onoga koji cini zlo".Apostol Pavao nam ovdje jasno kaze da moramo postivati zakone vlasti. Drugo, drzavna vlast je postavljena od Boga. Kakav bi to svijet bio bez drzavnih vlasti. Postavljanjem vlade, koja se sastoji od pojedinaca, muskaraca i zena, Bog od njih ocekuje da razumiju Bozje zakone i da ih provede za dobrobit gradana. Od vlastodrzaca se ocekuje da budu na strani pravde i da se bore protiv nepravde, zla u drzavi. Vlastodrsci se moraju boriti protiv zla koji zeli je napasti.Zasto ratoviKada razmisljamo o ovim stvarima, tu su neka pitanja, koja traze odgovor. Upitajmo se prvo, zasto uopce narodi ratuju? U nekim slucajevima, kao na primjer u slucaju agresije na Hrvatsku gdje su Srbi zauzeli dio hrvatskog tla. Ekonomija je razlog ratu u nekim slucajevima, a ponekad mrznja prema drugom narodu ili dijelu toga naroda. Ponekad, kao u slucaju diktatora Adofa Hitlera, zelja za dominacijom nad cijelim svijetom.Vjera je takoder bila razlog mnogim ratovima.Ponekad se ide u rat da se oslobode oni kojima je oduzeta sloboda, a ponekad, kao u slucaju nase domovine Hrvatske, i domovinskog rata, kada je nacija morala ici u rat da obrani svoju domovinu od neprijatelja. Ponekad se ide u rat da se pomogne i zastite druge nacije od napada i okupacije drugih zlih diktatora. Ima mnogo razlicitih razloga zasto ljudi i narodi ratuju! Pitanje koje si moramo postaviti je slijedece; kako Bog gleda na rat medu ljudima? Naravno, Bog nije udusevljen ratom i svim onim uzasnim stvarima sto rat donosi, jednako kao sto ni mi nismo. Ali, mi moramo razumijeti da Bog ima poslas nama grijesnim i nesavrsenim bicima, o kojima u Svetom pismu ovako govori:"Podmuklije od svega je srce, jedva popravljivo, tko da ga pronikne?" (Jeremija 17,9)Ako zelimo vidjeti kako Bog vidi covjecanstvo, bez njega, zapravo kako covjek izgleda i kako se ponasa kada Boga iskljuci iz svoga zivota, pogledajmo Poslanicu Rimljanima 3, 10-18."Kao sto stoji pisano: "nema pravedna ni samo jednoga". Nema razumna, nema nikoga koji trazi Boga. Svi su zastranili, zajedno se pokvarili. Nema ni jednoga jedinoga koji cini dobro. Njihovo je grlo otvoren grob, jezicima svojim varaju, zmijski je otrov za njihovim usnama. Usta su im puna kleveta i gorcine. Noge su im brze na prolijevanje krvi. Rusevine s bijedom na njihovim su putovima. Put mira nisu priznali. Nema straha Bozjega pred njihovim ocima".Jasno je dakle vidljivo da su mnogi ljudi na nasoj zemaljskoj kugli protiv njega, bore se protiv njega i onih koji ga slijede. Kada Bog dotakne temu rata, On vidi rat na veoma specifican nacin. Iako Bog mrzi rat, On ponekad upotrebljava rat da postigne svoju namjeru i cilj! Postoji vrijeme koje je Bog izabrao, i kada ce izabrati rat kao nacin da ispuni svoju bozansku volju! Sjetimo se sto Bog kaze u Propovjedniku 3 "Sve ima svoje doba, i svaki posao pod nebom svoje vrijeme", a u Propovjedniku 8 gdje kaze da postoji "Vrijeme rata i mira".Nakon ovih rijeci Propovjednika mozemo se upitati; da li je Bog naklonjen ratu? Okrenimo stranicu Svetog pisma na Ponovljeni zakon 20,1-18 i na stranicu Jeremija 5,15-17. Iz ovih biblijskih zapisa proizlazi da je Bog naklonjen ratu i zasto. Ne samo da je naklonjen ratu, Bog u ovom zapisu objasnjava na veoma razumljiv nacin i u detalje kako ratovati pod njegovom palicom da bi se ispunila njegova bozanska volja u tome ratu. Veoma je vazno zapamtiti sto pise u Ponovljenom zakonu 20,10 "Kada dodes pod koji grad da na nj navalis, najprije mu ponudi mir", dok Ponovljen zakon 20,12 kaze: "Ali ako odbije tvoj mir i zarati s tobom, opsjedni ga".Bog jasno kaze da se neprijatelju se mora dati prilika da se preda, da podigne bijelu zastavu u znak predaje. Ako to ne ucini, "opsjedni ga"! Ovdje kao Hrvat s americkim drzavljanstvom i iskrenim postovanjem i ljubavlju prema drzavi u kojoj zivim i radim vise od tridest godina zelim iznjeti slijedece: Amerika je cesto u svojoj povijesti bila u poziciji kada je neumorno trazila od neprijatelja de se preda i polozi oruzje. Amerika je sudjelovala u mnogim ratovima i uvijek je bila vise nego fer prema svojim neprijateljima. Meni nije poznata ni jedna nacija na svijetu koja je dobila rat, i odmah po zavrsetku rata potrosila miljune i miljune dolara poreza svojih gradana, kako bi pomogla podici iz pepela i izgraditi tu zemlju! (slucaj Njemacke).Potpuno se slazem s kanadskim novinarom Gordonom Sinclairom koji je svojevremeno kazao da su Amerikanci najnesebicniji i vjerojatno najmanje postovani narod na cijelome svijetu! Ja sam zahvalan dragom Bogu, gospodinu Isusu Kristu da zivim u Americi!Kaznjavanje zlihPo ovome sto smo dosad vidjeli, Bog je definitivno naklonjen vodenju ratova. Ponovljeni zakon 20, 1-18 to slikovito dokazuje. Ne samo da objasnjava u detalje kako i zasto ratovati, Bog takoder upotrebljava rat kao osudu prema svojim ljudima, za jednu vrstu osude prema onima koji cine zlo. Bog takoder upotrebljava rat kao osudu prema svojim ljudima, koji su se okrenuli nevjerstvu i nemoralu, kao sto je slucaj s izraelskom nacijom, i to nekoliko puta.U Jeremiji 5,15-17, Bog kaze da ce upotrijebiti rat, ne samo da kazni zle, nego ce disciplinirati i poduciti svoju djecu razumijevanju sto je rat, i sto neposlusnost, nevjerstvo i nemoralnost donose! Sveto pismo nas uci da postoji vrijeme kada nije mudro ni pametno ulaziti rat, ali isto tako Sveto pismo nas uci i upozorava da postoji vrijeme kada cemo platiti ogomnu cijenu ako ne udemo u rat! Primjer Izraelaca kada su odbiliBozju zapovijed da se bore za svoju obecanu zemlju, protiv neprijatelja koji je mrzio Boga, sluzi nam kao pouka, koju ne smijemo nikada zaboraviti. Za svoju neposlusnost i protivljenju Bozjoj zapovijedi da udu u rat, Izraelci su platili stavicno veliku cijenu. Sveto pismo ovako opisuje ovu tesku Bozju kaznu; (Brojevi, 32,13) "Jahve je gnjevom planuo na Izraelce pa ih je pustinjom povlacio cetrdeset godina, sve dok ne pomrije sav narastaj sto je u ocima Jahvinim zlo postupio!"Ako netko misli da nije dobro i pametno uopce ratovati, neka upamti sto se dogodilo Izraelcima. Proveli su punih cetrdest godina u divljini, gdje su bili izlozeni raznim bolestima i ostalim nedacama. Izgubili su jednu cijelu generaciju, jer nisu htjelu slusati Boga kada im je zapovjedio da idu u rat! Dakle, postoji vrijeme kada je daleko bolje ici u rat, jer u protivnom treba platiti golemu cijenu!U Svetom pismu, narocito u Starom zavjetu, gdje Bog uzdize i uzvisuje pojedince i stavlja ih na celne pozicije da ratuju u ratovima koje On odobrava. Na primjer Gideon, koji se borio za svoju Izraelsku naciju u ratu protiv neprijatelja. David, koji je bio general, ujedno i Kralj.Bog je izabrao i postavio te ljude na celne pozicije. Dakle, Bog definitivno nije protiv rata! No, netko ce sigurno reci da je Bog protiv bilo kakvog rata! To nigdje u Svetom pismu ne pise! Vjerojatno ce se spomenjati Novi zavjet, no o tome malo kasnije. Jedno je sigurno, Bog odobrava rat i to iz specificnog razloga, da bi kaznio zle izvrsio svoju volju.Mnogima se ne ce vjerojatno svidjeti ove rijeci, ali Bog ima svoje bozanske razloge.Zasto je Amerika na udaruBog ima bozanskih razloga za sve sto radi! Zahvaljuci mome dolasku u ovu krscanku zemlju, Bozjom miloscu sam nanovo roden, spasen! Krscani u Americi razumiju Bozju istinu. Zasto? Generacijama i generacijama, stoljecima i stoljecima Bog je sacuvao "dobru vijest" od onih koji su htjeli svim silama zabraniti Bozju rijec u Americi. Danas u Americi postoje mnogi ljudi i nacije koji bi htjeli pod svaku cijenu unistiti Krscansku vjeru i nametnuti svoju! No Bog to ne ce dopustiti, jer On voli svoje ljude i nacije. Bog ne voli samo Ameriku, Bog voli ljude svugdje, gdje god oni bili ili zivjeli.Sotona koji postoji, kao sto i Bog postoji, uvjerio je mnoge ljude da on ne postoji, i to je njegova najveca laz! Sotona neopisivo mrzi Ameriku, jer je Amerika danas tvrdava istine poslanja Isusa Krista! Po prvi puta u povijesti covjecanstva i ove zemlje, Amerika ima na raspolaganju najmoderniju tehnologiju na polju informacija i komunikacja da obuhvati cijeli svijet dobrom vijescu Isusa Krista! Osim toga, danasnji predsjednik Amerike George W. Bush je nanovo roden krscanin (u Svetom pismu pise da svatko tko Isusa Krista prihvati za svog osobnog Spasitelja, duhovno je nanovo rode i njegov zivot poprima novu dimenziju).No,vratimo se natrag pitanju odobrava li Bog rat? Netko ce sigurno reci da ne odobrava, jer ici u rat znaci ubijati. No, kad vojnik ubije neprijatelja u ratu to nije zlocin, jer vojnik izvrsava naredenja svoje drzave za koju se bori.On poslusno slusa i izvrsava svoj zadatak, koji mu je dodijeljen u ratu. To nije zlocin! Zlocin je kada nekoga ubijes iz mrznje, osvete, nesnosljivosti, kada covjek zeli unistiti drugog covjeka! Ima li pojedinaca u ratu koji namjerno ubijaju? Sigurno da ima! Ali ici u rat i boriti se casno za svoju domovinu, ne znaci da je covjek ratni zlocinac! Uzmimo slucaj naseg Domovinskog rata. Jesu li su nasi ratnici, dobrovoljci i generali bili ubojice ili ratni zlocinci? Svakako da nisu! Borili su se za svoju drzavu. "Neka se svatko pokorava visim vlastima, jer nema vlasti osim od Boga. I one koje postoje, od Boga su postavljene. Zato onaj koji se suprostavlja vlasti protivi se odredbi Bozjoj"(Rimljanima 13,1-2)Nasi ratnici ubijali su neprijatelja jer su morali, a ne sto su ga osobno mrzili! Borili su se za svoju domovinu. Razmislimo malo o danasnjoj situaciji u kojoj Hrvati optuzuju svoje branitelje, dobrovoljce i generale i nazivaju ih ubojicama i ratnim zlocincima i drugim imenima, samo zato jer su se borili za svoju domovinu. Razlozi za ratSveto pismo navodi i razloge za rat, a jedan od njih je obrana nacije. Bog kaze da je svaka drzavna vlast odgovorna za pripreme u obrani od neprijatelja.Bozja namjera je da svaka drzavna vlast je odgovorna za pripreme u obrani od neprijatelja. Svi ratovi se ne vode na isti nacin i sva ratista nisu uvijek negdje drugdje. Ovaj puta ratiste je ovdje gdje ja zivim. Amerika je u ratu vec od 11. rujna 2001. godine!Ljudi se ovdje pitaju kako reagirati na sve to? Mozda ce im pomoci Isusove rijeci (Evandelje po Luki 22, 35-36):"Zatim im rece" Kad vas poslah bez kese, bez torbe i obuce, je li vam sto nedostajalo?" Nista" odgovorise mu. Ali sada-rece im- tko ima kesu, neka je uzme! Isto tako i torbu! Tko nema maca, neka proda svoj ogrtac pa ga kupi". Ovo su Isusove rijeci! Naravno, sad ce opet netko upitati zasto se Isus nije borio kad su dosli po njega rimski vojnici?Odgovor je jednostavan: Isus nije dosao na ovaj svijet boriti se, svrha njegova dolaska bila je datri svoj zivot! Zar zaista netko misli da su ga Rimljani ili Zidovi ubili? Ne, Bog je poslao Isusa da umre. Isus je dosao na svijet umrijeti, a ne braniti ili boriti se.Jos jednom naglasavam, u Svetom pismu nema ni jednog retka protiv rata. U svetom pismu potpuno jasno pise da postoje dva razloga za rat. Prvi razlog je obrana, a drugi razlog je osloboditi druge od ropstva bezboznih sotonskih diktatora, koji nemilosrdno kaznjavaju, iskoriscuju i ubijaju svoje vlastite ljude. To su stvari koje su se dogadale u proslosti i koje se danas dogadaju!Svijet bi se trebao zapitati:"sto bi se dogodilo ili gdje bi svijet danas bio da se Amerika nije umjesala u Drugi svjetski rat i borbu protiv nacizma? Gdje bi Amerika bila danas da se nije branila od nenadanog napada Japanaca, koji nisu prije toga najavili rat Americi?" Hrvati se trebaju zapitati sto bi se dogodilo i gdje bi Hrvtska danas bila da se nije odlucila braniti protiv vojno daleko jaceg neprijatelja? Da li bi danas imali toliko ocekivanu i konacno slobodnu Hrvatsku drzavu? Lako je sada, iz udobnih fotelja i topline i sigurnosti nasih domova govoriti sto se u Domovinskom ratu nije smjelo raditi., nije nam upoce tesko sjediti kod kuce u udobnim foteljama, raskosi i sigurnosti i govoriti sto se u Domovinskom ratu nije smjelo raditi.Mnogi su dali svoje zivote u ratu kako bi nama (u Americi i u Hrvatskoj) omogucili da budemo to sto jesmo i da imamo to sto imamo! Nije bilo drugog nacina.Sto kaze Isus No, vratimo se Isusovim rijecima (Evandelje po Luki 6, 27-31) "A vama koji me slusate kazem: Ljubite svoje neprijatelje! Cinite dobro onima koji vas mrze! Blagoslivljajte one koji vas proklinju! Molite za one koji vas ogovaraju! Udara li te tko po jednom obrazu, pruzaj mu i drugi! Tko ti uzima ogrtac, ne brani mu ni kosulje!Tko ti god iste, daji mu! A od onoga koji uzima tvoje ne trazi to nazad! Kako zelite da vama cine ljudi, tako cinite i vi njima!" No, Bog sigurno ne zeli da stradaju nevini ljudi koji ne razumiju istinu Bozje rijeci, koji ne razumiju Bozje naume, da cijela nacija bude zrtvovana za one koji su zli, koji zele dominirati u svemu, kontrolirati i unistiti cijelu naciju. Zar da se nista ne poduzima i da se dopusti da zlo uspije u svom sotonskom naumu? Apsolutno ne! Obaveza nacije je, kaze Bog, da se brani svim sredtsvima koja joj stoje na raspolaganju protiv onih koje je zele unistiti! Ako smo pozvani od strane drzavne vlasti da idemo u rat, po rijecima apostola Pavla, (u Rimljanima 13) nasa je obaveza i duznost kao pojedinca da se stavimo na raspolaganje drzavnim vlastima i da idemo u rat! Na kraju, u ovome mome clanku ja nisam iznio moje misljenje. Sve sto sam napisao o ratu i ratnim situacijama, Bog kaze u Svetom pismu. Moje je iskreno i duboko uvjerenje da bi mi ljudi trebali zivjeti po onome sto Bog kaze u Svetom pismu. Mi mozemo ignorirati Sveto pismo i ne vjerovati Bozjoj rijeci, koja nam nepokoljebljvom sigurnoscu stavlja istinu pred oci. Sve tvrdnje nevjernih ljudi to ne mogu pobiti pa makar se netko od njih i cvrsto drzao svojih stavova i misljenja. To nista ne mjenja na cinjenicama o kojima Sveto pismo ovdje govori! Mi mozemo ne vjerovati u Boga, nasega gospodina Isusa Krista, ali to ne znaci da On ne postoji!. (Svi citati preuzeti iz prijevoda Biblije u nakladi "Krscanske sadasnjosti) letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sun, 30 Mar 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7551/1/E-A-hanging-court-that-shackles-innocent-lives.html ÂInternational lawyers court injusticeJerusalem PostInternational lawyers court injusticeBy V.M. Raguz and Barbara NovoselMar. 27, 2003ÂThe International Criminal Court (ICC) was inaugurated March 11th with the swearing in of its 18 judges. Israel does not recognize the ICC, and rightfully so.ÂIn fact, given the latest developments in international criminal law and practice, all responsible states, even if they are signatories of the ICC, will follow the Israeli lead if found in similar situations.ÂThe precedents at the precursor to the ICC, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the ICTY, will need to be substantially altered before international criminal law and courts can be viewed as credible institutions.ÂThe majority of supporters of international tribunals are universal justice enthusiasts probably like the writers of this article a decade ago, when they were helping the Organization of Islamic Conference draft the first paper submitted to the United Nations on the establishment of the ICTY.ÂEnthusiasm often gives away to reality. Having closely followed the work of the ICTY or practiced before it, our enthusiasm has given way not only to reality, but also to deep disappointment.ÂThe ICTY has established law and procedure, employed witnesses and evidence, and designed an appeals process of a type and in ways not seen in any national jurisdiction of the democratic world. Much of the blame lies not with the ICTY, but with its founder, the United Nations Security Council, that has refused to seriously review its work since its inception nine years ago.ÂThe ICTY has thus operated in a vacuum, serving the interests of its prosecutors, disregarding the interests of universal justice.ÂThe peoples in the Balkans have also been shortchanged, because the ICTY was to have been the primary vehicle for reconciliation. Because of its actions and decisions, the ICTY's credibility has been reduced to the lowest levels.ÂWar criminals like Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj now see it as a stage where they can become heroes, immortalized by large segments of their countrymen. Others, like fugitive Ante Gotovina, see it as a hanging court that shackles innocent lives.ÂPolicy failures notwithstanding, the ICTY is actually weakest on the issues of substantive law it created. At its founding in May 1993, the ICTY officials and future judges were instructed by the UN secretary-general and members of the Security Council to carry out their duties within existing international law.ÂSo much for a court taking cue from its legislature. The ICTY has created law that is practiced nowhere else.ÂFor example, at the time the crimes in the Balkans were committed and the ICTY was founded, the standing law said that crimes against humanity involved attacks against civilian population that must be both systematic and widespread. The Hague prosecution insisted that "and" should be "or," so that in proving this serious charge it would need to prove only one element.ÂMoreover, the court refused to design a legal test on either notion. Thus, in an extreme case, this could result in someone being convicted of a crime against humanity if there was a plan to kill one civilian during an attack, or if a number of civilians were killed but no premeditated plan existed.ÂThis drastic change in international criminal law was effected by changing a three-letter connector.ÂONE MAY be surprised, but just about any action by the Israeli army that results in civilian deaths would qualify as a crime against humanity. Neither will this reality escape the NGOs and other international humanitarian law enthusiasts, who will pursue lawsuits against the premiers of the UK and Spain in particular for their leading roles in the intervention against Iraq.ÂThe ICTY made it possible for anyone with superior status civilian or military to be convicted under command responsibility for any crime if he knew or had reason to know that a subordinate had committed crimes, or if he failed to take measures to prevent such acts, or punish the perpetrators.ÂFor example, a civilian defendant's conviction of crimes against humanity in a particular area was based solely on an order from a military commander to take a village. The commander claimed in the order that the civilian leaders had been informed about "everything." The court found this sufficient proof that the defendant had necessary knowledge.ÂIt is difficult to imagine a case where the ICTY would not find necessary knowledge. And it is almost certain that based on this precedent, the Belgian high court or any other could convict Ariel Sharon or any other senior Israeli official for crimes against humanity related to the Sabra and Shatilla massacres.ÂAnother drastic development in the law on crimes against humanity is the ICTY's definition of "civilian population." It has adopted a wide definition, so if the target is predominantly civilian, the attack it not permissible, which in itself appears acceptable.ÂHowever, in practice, the ICTY has in effect ruled that if there is shelling coming from a 50-resident building because of the presence of a mortar and a 40-person armed unit, it cannot be attacked.ÂSimilarly, if these 40 soldiers are alone in the building and they abandon arms, even unbeknownst to the attacker, they are considered civilian. One can just imagine the range of abuses in modern wars, such as the one on the streets of Israel, which such law promotes.ÂAs to the procedure, it is an accepted fact now that there is no guarantee of speedy proceedings at the ICTY. Defendants wait for years to have their trials commence. The trials and appeals take a few more years.ÂOne middle-ranking officer, Tihomir Blaskic, has been imprisoned over six years already, and his appeal is yet to begin. Once on trial the defendant is at a huge disadvantage, unless he is wealthy like Milosevic, since the ICTY allocates almost all of its funds to the prosecution.Many trials have turned into secret proceedings, because key witnesses are often heard in camera. The oral testimonies are full of hearsay evidence, acceptable at the ICTY.ÂAnother injustice to the rules of evidence used by today's democracies is the practice at the tribunal that allows newspaper articles, unsigned documents and copied documents as evidence. The obligation to provide exculpatory evidence seems not even to be a theoretical issue with the prosecutors.ÂFinally, there is the fundamental issue of the appeals process. Both the trial and appellate judges are judges of one institution, contrary to the practice in modern democracies, where the trial court is separate from the appeal instances. The trial judges regularly appear as appellate judges in closely related or effectively the same cases.ÂThe ICC has crafted an improved appeals process. It has separate trial and appeal chambers, and the judges cannot serve in both. But this is just one small step in improving the international criminal law, and restoring its credibility. That credibility will be crucial for the Arab world in particular, when Saddam Hussein and his immediate subordinates are eventually tried there.ÂV.M. Raguz was ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the EU and NATO in 1998-2000. Barbara Novosel practiced before the Tribunal on the defense side for two years.ÂThis article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1048678851540 letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sun, 30 Mar 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7554/1/E-Tomislav-Sunic-PRAVDA-Ten-European-Years-Jan-15-2003.html Distributed by CroatianWorldÂTen European Years Jan, 15 2003ÂPRAVDATen European YearsbyÂDr. Tomislav SunicGreat expectations that Europe, ten years after the signature of the historic Maastricht treaty, will become a flawless union, are boundless illusions. It is not yet clear to the European political class whether the new European order will have the label of federal units or the hallmark of sovereign states. In view of the unavoidableglobalization, the concept of the European Union becomes superfluous. To what good should one keep uniting Europeans, if in the global market most European enterprises have already branches scattered all over Eastern Europe, or tap on cheap resources and labor in Third World countries? The grandstanding project of uniting Europe is based on mercantile and consumerist principles and little on cultural and historical identities of European peoples. The Union was conceived at Maastricht, in 1992, as a pool of rootless merchants not as a trove of patriots. If the sacred economy slides into recession, each member country is bound to pay a heavy price.ÂThe idea of the unified Europe is not just meant for somebody or for something, but also against something and against somebody. Early European emperor, Charlemagne, in the ninth century, also thought about uniting Europe, but primarily as a shield to fend off the looming Arab threat coming from the Mediterranean basin, and as a common rampart against incursions of Asian hordes into the Panonian plains of central Europe. His dream about linking the Burgundy with the Black Sea through elaborate water channels via the Rhine and Danube rivers, was finally put to practice in 1993. Charlemagne's late successor, the Flemish-born German-Spanish emperor, Charles Quint, in the sixteenth century, also toyed with the idea to unite Christian Europe, albeit not only as a spear for throwing out infidel Turks from the Danube delta in the Balkans, but also as a sword to push back the rapacious French southwest off the Rhine river. Foreign powers have traditionally tapped on numerous European traitors and collaborators in order to weaken Europe. What is more, Europeans have a strange habit of constantly waging tribal wars among themselves. The French royal houses and their mundane Catholic clergy, nourished for centuries good diplomatic ties with Islamic Sublime Port in Turkey, which the peoples in central Europe and the Balkan peninsula paid very dearly. The French obsession was to weaken the European center and its prime spiritual and geopolitical locomotive, the Holy German Empire.ÂIt is not per chance that the biggest stumbling block among European Union bureaucrats today is not the clash between the left with the right, but the clash of the French "souverenistes" vs. German "f?d?ralistes." Must one follow the old principle of decentralized Germany and its current state policy of federalism, or rather lean toward the French aggressive agenda to preserve sovereign nation-states? Yet even the concept of sovereignty and state-building differs widely in both countries today, creating a great deal of confusion about the future of the Union. The early French state was created by lawyers. By contrast, the early German statehood was designed by itinerant poets and philosophers. It is not an accident that the French revolution, prior to severing of intelligent heads, first began with severing of all regional dialects. The French idea of the united Europe, which is embedded in the concept of centralized "empire," has nothing in common with the German idea of "Reich". The idea of the Reich presupposes the spatial infinity defying transient state borders. Many of the "reich" legal proviso are still strong in contemporary German Republic. The most elaborate form of the embryonic European union was practiced by the lasting Austro-Hungarian Empire, which housed for centuries a myriad of diverse European peoples living in relative solidarity.ÂThe imperial French tradition, carries along a merciless grinding wheel of cultural and ethnic assimilation. Not even in his wildest dreams does a French right-winger or a left-wing extremist think about granting complete autonomy to Brittany, Alsace or Corsica. In its centralistic and globalistic appetites the ancient royal France sold not only gaping mortars to the Ottoman empire in Istanbul. Its ruler Louis XIV also introduced the state -sponsored terrorist cannon diplomacy. By the end of the 17th century his troops lobbed with heavy howitzers the city of Brussels - a town which was then inhabited by the majority of Germanic speaking populace.ÂThe European Union and its apparatus in Brussels and Strasbourg, cost very much money and employ over 40 thousandapparatchiks. Side by side with state bureaucracy, an anonymous supra-state bureaucracy keeps growing and growing, which only hampers smooth and unanimous decision making. The salaries of EU bureaucrats are amazingly high - even for West European standards - and everybody pretends to ignore that all expenses are being indirectly fueled to Brussels by German tax payers. Long time ago, in multiethnic Holy German Empire, official languages were Latin and German, and no career could be dreamt of without solid knowledge of these two languages. In the European Union headquarters today, in theory all 7 European languages are equally represented. Yet in order to avoid linguistic effort regarding the plight of Portuguese wine makers or Greek fishermen, official statements are made in broken English - which seems to be the trademark of the bearded and stuttering NATO spokesman Javier Solana. Foreign policy of the EU is non-existent. Given that the heads of the EU are unwilling to trot in the mine fields of independent decision making, each foreign overture must have a prior stamp of the Washington benediction. Such political paralysis resulted recently in additional thousands of dead in the Balkan killing fields. Today, the paranoid fear of any foreign wrong-doing, which in the minds of EU officials may be wrongly interpreted as anti-Israeli, makes EU diplomacy a mockery in the burning Middle East. In addition, since even among equals there must be those who are more equal, the German nation, unlike other EU member states, never had a chance to vote in plebiscite for the introduction of the euro currency. Indeed, even the uttering of a word plebiscite ("Volksbegehren") triggers amidst the German political class, immediate historical neuroses and may result in loss of a well paid career. To offset this complex of historiographic inferiority, the Germans must therefore counter their back-seat role in the EU by endlessly jumpstarting their charitable and culinary diplomacy - to the great joy and big laughter of other member states. In its architectural design the EU buildings in Strasbourg and Brussels project the late, albeit air-conditioned carbon copy of the Soviet monumentalism, and its last palace standard bearer the late Romanian communist Dracula, Nicolae Ceausescu. And should one consider this as an accident that exactly 2 years ago a postage stamp was introduced by the Belgian authorities with facial traits and goat beard of the late communist leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin?ÂThe dream of the united Europe is as old as Europeans themselves. In reality though it turns into regular nightmare. About the united Europe millions of European romanticists hallucinated: from papist to atheists, from Guelfs to Ghibelins, from anarchists to Trotskysts. Their wishful thinking as a rule ended up in chain catastrophes. Hence the fact that even today the concept of the European union remains fluid, lending itself to thousands of work hypotheses. By the end of 1943, the national-socialist authorities decided to start printing in the German village of Vlotho, first European passports destined for a million or more European Waffen SS volunteers coming from Germany, Chechnya, Croatia, Flanders, Albania, France, Spain, a handful of Irishmen etc. These lost souls also had their vision of united Europe. On May 3, 1945 in the late evening hours, accompanied by gusty winds, around 300 hundred French Waffen SS soldiers side by side with a handful of Latvian and Hungarian SS troopers defended Berlin along the left bank of the Spree river on fire, against the incoming Soviet tanks. These were the remnants of the French Waffen SS division Charlemagne.ÂTomislav SunicÂThe author is a writer and a former Croat diplomat. He writes from Europe.ÂCopyright (c)1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, reference to Pravda.RU should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.Âhttp://english.pravda.ru/columnists/2003/01/15/42070.html letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sun, 26 Jan 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7553/1/E-WSJ----Amb-Prosper--Gotovina-is-Innocent.html Distributed by CroatianWorldÂCROATIA - USANatural alliesÂJanuary 24, 2003ÂAmb. Prosper And the Wanted MenBy VITOMIR MILES RAGUZWashington's envoy for war crime issues, Pierre Richard Prosper, is ending his visit to the Balkans today, after a trip meant to reinforce the U.S. commitment to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague. Mr. Prosper also pressed Belgrade, Podogorica, Sarajevo and Banja Luka to fulfill their key obligations quickly so that the international community can focus on winding down the Tribunal with some semblance of success. The Tribunal is to close its investigations by the end of next year, and complete its trials by 2008. Surprisingly, the envoy bypassed Zagreb at the last moment.In Belgrade, Mr. Prosper praised the surrender of Milan Milutinovic, a top Milosevic era diplomat, but cautioned his hosts that the Bush administration is under a congressional obligation to end assistance to Serbia after March 31, unless the Djindjic government moves forward on handing over other big-fish indictees, such as Gen. Ratko Mladic and the remaining two of the Vukovar Three: Maj. Veselin Sljivancanin and Col. Miroslav Radic. After that, Mr. Prosper said, Serbia can try the majority of other cases in its own courts.In Sarajevo, the American envoy was received by the new government of Prime Minister Adnan Terzic, still viewed with suspicion in the West. He stressed the importance of establishing a national ad hoc court that would take over for the Tribunal as it phases out its caseload. The onus falls on the new-old Serb entity leaders, though.High representative Paddy Ashdown has called for unspecified "smart" sanctions against the Serb entity due to its history of complete non-cooperation. This may involve travel bans and financial sanctions against Radovan Karadzic cronies in politics and commerce. Given the complexity of the situation, however, aid carrots also are on the table if the entity can deliver on Karadzic, seemingly the least most-wanted man in the world. He has been hiding in an area the size of Luxembourg, yet it appears no one is really willing to nab him.As for Zagreb, it was dreading Mr. Prosper's scheduled visit. Only a month before Croatia submits its EU membership application, it was expecting to hear hard words about its slight EU and NATO prospects unless it delivers on generals Janko Bobetko and Ante Gotovina. Media reports say the Prosper visit was postponed for technical reasons; awaiting the outcome of the medical exam performed on Gen. Bobetko last week by Tribunal doctors.Yet it's possible Mr. Prosper also wanted to segregate Zagreb from the previous group because Croatia has been largely cooperative with the Tribunal -- and so help the beleaguered Prime Minister Ivica Racan. He is faced with dipping poll numbers due to now-unpopular cooperation with the Tribunal; and a threat of widespread labor strikes against his much needed social and economic reforms. Yet neither the threat of strikes nor Gen. Bobetko is Mr. Racan's chief worry. Strike plans seem to be fizzling out and Bobetko's health has worsened to the point where Tribunal's doctors may let Mr. Racan off the hook on this one.Gen. Gotovina is another issue. The prime minister is faced with serious societal division there, and many speculate about civil upheaval if he is arrested. A delicate situation for Mr. Racan, especially in an election year.Ambassador Prosper can help both Mr. Racan and The Hague if Washington is truly committed to its stated goal that the Tribunal is to be one of truth, justice and reconciliation. Gen. Gotovina is innocent. Ambassador Prosper may not know it personally, but Washington certainly does. Further, Washington has ample evidence to submit to the Tribunal to reverse the present indictment.Gen. Gotovina is charged with planning and carrying out a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing of some 100,000 Serbs from Croatia via Operation Storm in August 1995. Yes, Serbs did suffer as a result of that operation, but not because of Gen. Gotovina nor for that matter of Zagreb. They were victims of their own leaders' folly, Milosevic's promises to make them part of a larger Serbia, and Belgrade's later orders to evacuate its forces, as testified recently in the Milosevic trial by Milan Babic, his former confidant-turned-prosecution witness, among others.Operation Storm was motivated by completely different reasons, unrelated to ethnic cleansing. Its first objective was to de-blockade the U.N. safe area of Bihac in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), after it became threatened in July 1995 by Gen. Ratko Mladic, days after he overran Srebrenica. Visions of another Srebrenica-like massacre, with an even higher number of fatalities, were on everyone's mind, including Washington's.When Zagreb special envoy Miomir Zuzul came to Washington with the Operation Storm plan in mid-July, the Clinton administration hesitated only for a moment. The green light on Bihac as well as the occupied Krajina territories in Croatia came from Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff, Assistant Secretary Richard Holbrooke and the late senior Balkan negotiator Robert Frasure.After Washington saw that Zagreb was serious about carrying out the operation, and the West helpless, it moved to make sure the Croats would succeed. Washington jumped in and provided crucial intelligence-gathering facilities. It set up a 40-person Predator drone base in Sepurina, near Zadar, with two real time feeds: one to the Pentagon, and one to Gen. Gotovina's headquarters. Further, on the day the Storm started, the U.S. sent two specialized Prowler planes to the region to disable the rebel Serb communication systems.After the Storm ended, Washington used Gen. Gotovina's ground troops to supplement NATO air bombings in western Bosnia. The joint operations altered the territorial control close to the 51-49 two-entity split envisioned for the eventual Dayton peace deal.Despite using Croatia as its proxy in 1995 to achieve its objectives in BiH, Washington has in the past leaned to accept fallacious charges regarding the goals of Storm because Zagreb failed to protect the remaining Serbs and their property in the occupied territories after the operation ended. More importantly, the charges were seen as a necessary fiction to pressure Franjo Tudjman in respect of possible Serb returnees and the fragile BiH, and later as a vehicle to remove him for power.But there is a new leadership in Zagreb, one that has been cooperative on issues that Tudjman once balked at, and there seems to be no reason for the Bush administration to play Clinton to Tribunal chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte anymore.Moreover, it would behoove the administration -- one that is notably skeptical about international tribunals in general because they are prone to political adventurism -- to grasp the opportunity to imprint its persuasions, and provide exculpatory evidence where it clearly exists. (Then, there is something to be said about Gen. Gotovina in effect acting as a U.S. agent, where Washington would be obligated to at least morally assist his case.) The practical side for Washington is that providing evidence on the real goals of the Storm will stem this and similar cases in the future, and substantially limit the expenditures of an already very costly operation at the Hague.Unless the Bush administration has withdrawn from serious policy discussions on the Balkans and decided to operate on the autopilot set by the Clinton administration, Ambassador Prosper has the clout in Washington to pursue changes on such issues. This would make his work much more productive. It would allow him to concentrate his energies on the real war criminals in the Balkans -- Karadzic and Mladic. Knocking on doors in Zagreb is unnecessary now or later. Croatia already is pursuing potential war criminals in its own courts.Mr. Raguz was ambassador of BiH to the EU and NATO in 1998-2000. This article is adapted from his essay in the forthcoming 50th anniversary issue of the Journal of Croatian Studies.URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1043363038819845144,00.html letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sun, 26 Jan 2003 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7555/1/E-Nothing-to-Gain-By-Sanctioning-Croatia.html October 4, 2002ÂNothing to Gain By Sanctioning CroatiaBy VITOMIR MILES RAGUZThe usually compliant Croatia, seemingly eager to become a member of the EU and NATO at all cost, surprised everyone last week by refusing to act on the international arrest warrant for its early 1990s chief military commander Janko Bobetko. It told the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague that the indictment drafted by chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte falls outside her mandate, lacks legal basis and goes against common sense, in that the incident cited was in effect an isolated police action, having nothing to do with a grand scheme of ethnic cleansing that the suit alleges. Therefore, the popular WWII anti-fascist commander and later general, with a physique closer to Santa Claus' than to Slobodan Milosevic's, is to remain at home.The international and local media were quick to raise the specter of sanctions of one sort or another. This week, both the EU and NATO suggested that failure to comply with the ICTY's demand for Gen. Bobetko could jeopardize Croatia's ambitions to join both organizations. The Western capitals, however, even though calling for full cooperation, have been tepid regarding possible consequences of non-compliance, and understandably so. On one hand, Zagreb does have a legal case for resisting extradition under commonly accepted international law that is thought and practiced outside the Hague circles. On the other hand, even if it did not, punishment for Zagreb at this point -- by diplomatic or economic isolation, for instance -- would be a losing proposition for many actors in the region and elsewhere. In many ways, Washington's and Brussels' hands are tied.Croatia's Prime Minister Ivica Racan, often labeled in the West as a poster boy for democracy in southeast Europe, could do nothing else but support Gen. Bobetko. Ever since his coalition government decided to cooperate with Ms. Del Ponte on the extradition of generals Ante Gotovina and Rahim Ademi last summer, the popularity of Mr. Racan's Social Democrats has been in steady decline.Moreover, the country that was initially slightly in favor of the Tribunal has turned strongly against it. Opinion polls indicate that more than two-thirds of Croats are now willing to face sanctions or other consequences rather than see Gen. Bobetko extradited. By now many say they feel humiliated by the Tribunal's repeated attempts to rewrite their history.While Mr. Racan has decided to read the writing on the wall regarding his re-election chances, the Western governments have much more to worry about than Croatia if he is pressed and loses.Unlike Zagreb, which has fulfilled its obligations to the Tribunal in large degree, Belgrade has been hardly cooperative other than on the Milosevic handover. In addition, the Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has not cooperated at all--although this week a plea agreement was entered on behalf of former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic by her lawyer. If the West were to take measures against Croatia, it would then have to do the same or more against the other two in cases of non-cooperation. But if it did so, it would generate local public backlashes that would place at risk governments considered pro-Western. Simply put, it would open doors for parties that the West worked so hard to sideline over the past four years.But the question of Croatia also comes with issues beyond the ballot box that make it quite different from Yugoslavia and BiH. Relative to its neighbors, Croatia is economically quite independent. It receives hardly any grant assistance. In fact, Croatia may be the only European state in modern history that received no substantial reconstruction aid from the West after suffering from war. All in all, over the past decade, given its spending for Bosnian refugees and costs to establish the balance of power in BiH, Croatia may have been a net provider of aid. The threat of ending financial assistance has been the stick the West has used before against Belgrade and Banja Luka. In the case of Zagreb, it would not be meaningful. Mr. Racan, like Franjo Tudjman in the past, gets little if anything in any event. Similarly, Zagreb's investment-grade credit rating allows it to tap the international capital markets whenever necessary. It is not dependent on the IMF for liquidity or on the other IFIs for development funds as are the other two countries.To add, Croatia by now has welcomed a substantial amount of foreign investment, especially in the banking, telecommunications and tourism sectors. So if Mr. Racan is to look for solidarity he will find it first in Italian, German and Austrian banks that manage 94% of the country's financial assets -- in value almost equal to the country's gross domestic product. The same may be true for the European development bank, the EBRD, which has invested more in Croatia per capita than in any other Central and East European country. If Croatia were to sneeze, these foreign investors might not get a cold, but they would certainly get cold feet in respect to the region in general.Therefore, Brussels and Washington may be left with only one stick -- the threat of delayed EU and NATO membership, as suggested by the European Council statement on Monday and the NATO Secretary General on Wednesday.But in effect Croatia is already under such sanctions. Economically, it is ahead of some 2003 EU candidates. Yet, it is not even slated for membership in the next group of less developed states. As for military preparedness, NATO military experts will tell you that Croatia and Slovenia are the only two states that ought to get a Prague nod on strictly technical terms of military preparedness. They are on par with Spain when it joined in 1982.In short, Zagreb's membership in both organizations will continue to be on ice no matter what it does. Some EU members believe that early integration would strengthen Croatia too much at a time when it still has many outstanding issues to settle with its neighbors BiH and Yugoslavia. Both of these countries are of greater importance to the West, the former for ideological reasons and the latter for strategic ones, than is Croatia. Many in Zagreb are now becoming cognizant of its position and, on the issue of Gen. Bobetko, feel they have nothing to lose, but perhaps something to gain -- if, for instance Mr. Racan's stance helps him stay in political power. Or because they believe that compliance in Gen. Bobetko's case would only feed a Tribunal appetite for endless indictments, including some of popular people.Washington and Brussels can also benefit if they are finally ready to hear out reasonable people like Mr. Racan on the issue of the Tribunal and some of its actions. No doubt the Tribunal has done many things well. But for years it has been left accountable to no one. Thus, it has also taken on a life of its own, at times far removed from legal and regional realities. In this vacuum some of its decisions have come to the detriment of the developing field of international criminal law, and even more so, to the detriment of its credibility and the well-being of the region it was envisioned to serve and heal.The West has been hesitant to intervene, arguing the point of judicial independence, overlooking the point of checks and balances. No court in the West, however, is so independent to the point of being infallible. A court whose decisions cannot be challenged through an independent appeals process is not really a court, and a court whose rules of procedure and laws are said to be permanent and immune to periodic legislative review is not really a court.All Mr. Racan and others want is to be heard, and for the first time in nine years, to know which international institution is responsible to resolve complaints about the work of the Tribunal. Can such a plea be a cause for sanctions or other punishment? Clearly, it is but a call for reason.Mr. Raguz was ambassador of BiH to the EU and NATO in 1998-2000, and now is a banker in Vienna.URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1033686175778131553.djm,00.htmlÂUpdated October 4, 2002 letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sat, 12 Oct 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7556/1/E-Published-Letter-re-Bobetko-in-Transitions-on-Line-by-Brian-Gallagher.html ÂDouble standards of the international community4 October 2002Dear Editor,Your report, "Croatia: General Unease," fails to mention the double standards of the international community and the real concerns over the Hague prosecutor.Croatia being threatened with international sanctions for refusing to hand over General Janko Bobetko is the most appalling hypocrisy.ÂNo such threats have been made against Serbia. At least 10 indictees roam free and the Serbian government refuses to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Indeed, Carla Del Ponte complained about this only recently. Why no threats against Serbia?ÂFurthermore, it seems the prosecutor is endorsing ethnic cleansing. The "Krajina" structure was part of a joint criminal enterprise--as pointed out in the Milosevic indictment--set up on the back of the invasion, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of one-third of Croatia. Remember Vukovar?The prosecutor treats "Krajina" as a legitimate state in the Bobetko indictment by cleverly not mentioning how it was created and by refusing to accept that Croatia was occupied--contradicting the Milosevic indictment.In the other indictments of Croat generals, those of Ante Gotovina and Rahim Ademi, the prosecutor goes further by saying that "Krajina" "officially declared independence." Who gave the prosecutor the power to recognize "Krajina"? The prosecutor is defying the UN recognition of Croatia and legitimizing ethnic cleansing. Is it then really "extreme" to say the Croatian state's existence is under threat?What is more, the prosecutor uses a former "Krajina" official, a Mr. Savo Strbac, as a top adviser. Mr. Strbac is a Greater Serbia enthusiast. He wishes to restore the "Krajina" state. Incredibly, the prosecutor has given him and his Veritas organization a "letter of endorsement" in order to help his group raise funds. The prosecutor has thus endorsed the concept of a Greater Serbia. The sad evidence is at www.veritas.org.yu, where Veritas proudly displays the letter (under references), along with "Krajina" imagery.The prosecutor is compromised. Generals Bobetko, Gotovina, and Ademi would have their human rights infringed by being turned over to a tribunal whose prosecutor supports the "Krajina" structure, a structure based upon crimes against humanity perpetrated against Croats.The indictments against all the Croat generals should be dropped and a full independent inquiry launched into a prosecutor that is clearly running amok.Brian GallagherLondonhttp://www.tol.cz/look/TOLnew/section.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=37&NrSection=8 letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7557/1/E-DRUGS-AND-DEMOCRACY.html ÂDRUGS ANDDEMOCRACYÂTHE RIGHT STUFF (DRUGS AND DEMOCRACY)Morphine is said to be good for people subject to severe depressions, or even pessimism. Although the drug first surfaced in a laboratory at the end of the last century, its basis, opium, had been used earlier by many aristocratic and reac-tionary thinkers. A young and secretive German romantic, No-valis, enjoyed eating and smoking opium juice, probably be-cause he had always yearned to alleviate his nostalgia for death. Probably in order to write his poem Sehnsucht nach dem Tode. Early poets of Romanticism rejected the philosophy of rational-ism and historical optimism. They turned inward to their irra-tional feelings, shrouding themselves in the pensive loneliness which opiates endlessly offer.ÂOnce upon a distant time we met Homer's Odysseus, who was frequently nagged by the childish behavior of his pesky sailors. Somewhere along the shores of northern Africa, Odysseus and his sailors had strayed away into the mythical land of the lotus flower. As soon as his sailors began to eat the lotus plant, they sank into forgetfulness, and immediately for-got their history and their homeland. It was with great pain that Odysseus succeeded in extracting them from artificial par-adises. What can be worse for a nation than to erase its past and lose its collective memory?ÂUnlike many modern wannabe conservatives and televange-lists, Greeks and Romans were not hypocrites. They frankly ac-knowledged the pleasures of wine and women. Sine Cerere et Bacco friget Venus - without food and wine sexual life withers away, too.ÂThe escape from industrial reality and the maddening crowd was one of the main motives for drug use among some reac-tionary poets and thinkers, who could not face the onset of mass society. The advent of early liberalism and socialism was accompanied not only by factory chimneys, but also by loneli-ness, decay, and decadence. If one could, therefore, not escape to the sunny Mediterranean, then one had to craft one's own artificial paradise in rainy and foggy London. The young En-glish Tory Thomas De Quincey, in his essay Confessions of an English Opium Eater, relates his Soho escapades with a poor prostitute Anna, as well as his spiritual journeys in the aftertaste of opium. De Quincey has a feeling that one life-minute lasts a century, finally putting an end to the reckless flow of time.ÂThe mystique of opium was also grasped by the mid-19th century French symbolist and poet Charles Baudelaire. He continued the aristo-nihilistic-revolutionary-conservative tradi-tion of dope indulgence via the water pipe, i.e., the Pakistan huka. Similar to the lonely albatross, Baudelaire observes the decaying France in which the steamroller of coming liberalism and democratism mercilessly crushes all esthetics and all poetics.ÂWhen studying the escapism of postmodernity, it is impos-sible to circumvent the leftist subculture and its pseudo-intel-lectual sycophants of 1968. The so-called sixty-eighters hollered out not only for liberty from all political authority, but also for free sex and drugs. Are these leftist claims not part of the modern religion of human rights? At the beginning of the 60's, the musical alter egos of the Western left, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, called out to millions of young people throughout America and Europe, telling intruders to "get off of my cloud" and concluding that "everybody must get stoned."ÂPredictably, the right-wing answer to the decadence of liber-al democracy was nihilistic counter-decadence. The main dif-ference, however, between these two is that reactionary and rightist addicts do drugs for elitist and esoteric purposes. By their temperament and literary style they reject all democra-cy- whether it is of a socialist or liberal brand. When in the 20th century the flow of history switched from first gear into fifth gear, many rightist poets and thinkers posed a question: What to do after the orgy? The French right-leaning author Jean Cocteau answered the question this way: "Everything that we do in our life, even when we love, we perform in a rapid train running to its death. Smoking opium means getting off the train."ÂHashish and marijuana change the body language and en-hance social philanthropy. Smoking joints triggers abnormal laughter. Therefore hashish may be described as a collectivistic drug custom-designed for individuals who by their lifestyle loathe solitude and who, like Dickens' proverbial Ms. Jellyby, indulge in vicarious humanism and unrepentant globalism. In today's age of promiscuous democracy, small wonder that mar-ijuana is inhaled by countless young people all over liberalized Europe and America. In the permissive society of today, one is allowed to do everything-provided one does not rock the boat, i.e., "bogart" political correctness. Just as wine, over the last 2,000 years, has completely changed the political profile of the West, so has marijuana, over the last 30 years, completely ruined the future of Western youth. If Stalin had been a bit more intelligent he would have solemnly opened marijuana fields in his native Transcaucasia. Instead, communist tyrants resorted to the killing fields of the Gulag. The advantage of lib-eralism and social democracy is that via sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, by means of consumerism and hedonism, they function perfectly well; what communism was not able to achieve by means of the solid truncheon, liberalism has achieved by means of the solid joint. Indisputably, Western youth can be political-ly and correctly controlled when herded in techno-rap concerts and when welcomed in cafes in Holland, where one can freely buy marijuana as well as under-the-table "crack," "speedball," and "horse." Are these items not logical ingredients of the lib-eral theology of human rights?ÂCocaine reportedly induces eroticism and enhances the sex act. The late French fascist dandy and novelist Pierre Drieu La Rochelle liked coke, desiring all possible drugs and all impossi-ble women. The problem, however, is that the coke intaker of-ten feels invisible bugs creeping from his ankles up to his knees, so that he may imagine himself sleeping not with a beautiful woman but with scary reptiles. In his autobiographical novels Le feu follet and L'homme couvert de femmes, La Rochelle's hero is constantly covered by women and veiled by opium and heroin sit-ins. In his long intellectual monologues, La Rochelle's hero says: "A Frenchwoman, be she a whore or not, likes to be held and taken care of; an American woman, unless she hunts for a husband, prefers a passing relationship... Drug users are mystics in a materialistic age. Given that they can no longer animate and embellish this world, they do it in a reverse manner on themselves." Indeed, La Rochelle's hero ends up in suicide-with heroin and revolver. In 1945, with the approach-ing victory of the Allies, and in the capacity of the intellectual leader of the defunct Eurofascist international, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle also opted for suicide.ÂThe English conservative and aristocrat Aldous Huxley is unavoidable in studying communist pathology (Brave New World Revisited) and Marxist subintellectual schizophre-nia (Grey Eminence). As a novelist and essayist his lifelong wish had been to break loose from the flow of time. Mexican mesca-line and the artificial drug LSD enabled him new intellectual horizons for observing the end of his world and the beginning of a new, decadent one. Apparently mescaline is ideal for sensing the colors of late impressionist and pointillist painters. Every drop on Seurat's silent water, every touch on Dufy's leaf, or every stone on the still nature of old Vermeer, pours away into thousands of billions of new colors. In the essay The Doors of Perception, Huxley notes that "mescaline raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is com-pletely blind." His intellectual experiments with hallucino-genic drugs continued for years, and even on his deathbed in California in 1963, he asked for and was given LSD. Probably to depart more picturesquely into timeless infinity.ÂAnd what to say about the German centenarian, enigmatic essayist and novelist Ernst J?nger, whom the young Adolf Hitler in Weimar Germany also liked to read, and whom Dr. Joseph Goebbels wanted to lure into pro-Nazi collaboration? Yet J?nger, the aristocratic loner, refused all deals with the Nazis, preferring instead his martial travelogues. In his essay Ann?herungen: Drogen and Rausch, J?nger describes his close encounters with drugs. He was also able to cut through the merciless wall of time and sneak into floating eternity. "Time slows down. . . . The river of life flows more gently... The banks are disappearing." While both the French president Fran?ois Mitterrand and the German chancellor Helmut Kohl, in the interest of Franco-German reconciliation, liked meeting and reading the old J?nger, they shied away from his contacts with drugs.ÂErnst J?nger's compatriot, the essayist, early expressionist, and medical doctor Gottfried Benn, also took drugs. His medical observations, which found their transfigurations in his po-ems "Kokain" and "Das Verlorene Ich," were collected by Benn as a doctor-mortician in Berlin of the liberal-Weimarian Germany in decay. He records in his poetry nameless human destinies stretched out dead on the tables of his mortuary. He describes the dead meat of prostitutes out of whose bellies crawl squeaking mice. A connoisseur of French culture and ge-netics, Benn was subsequently offered awards and political baits by the Nazis, which he refused to swallow. After the end of the war, like thousands of European artists, Benn sank into obliv-ion. Probably also because he once remarked that "mighty brains are strengthened not on milk but on alkaloids."ÂModern psychiatrists, doctors, and sociologists are wrong in their diagnosis of drug addiction among large segments of Western youth. They fail to realize that to combat drug abuse one must prevent its social and political causes before attempt-ing to cure its deadly consequences. Given that the crux of the modern liberal system is the dictatorship of well-being and the dogma of boundless economic growth, many disabused young people are led to believe that everybody is entitled to eternal fun. In a make-believe world of media signals, many take for granted instant gratification by projecting their faces on the characters of the prime-time soaps. Before they turn into drug addicts, they become dependent on the videospheric surreality of television, which in a refined manner tells them that every-body must be handsome, rich, and popular. In an age of TV-mimicry, headless young masses become, so to speak, the impresarios of their own narcissism. Such delusions can lead to severe depressions, which in turn can lead to drugs and suicide. Small wonder that in the most liberal countries of the West, notably California, Holland, and Denmark, there is also the highest correlation between drug addiction and suicide.ÂIf drug abuse among some reactionary and conservative thinkers has always been an isolated and Promethean death wish to escape time, the same joint in leftist hands does more than burn the fingers of the individual: it poisons the entire so-ciety.ÂTomislav Sunic for PRAVDA.RuÂPravda.RU: More in detail 2002-08-01Tomislav Sunic is the author of Against Democracy and Equality; The European New Right (1990).Âhttp://www.watermark.hu/doctorsunic letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sun, 01 Sep 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7558/1/E-The-Ghost-of-Islam.html  The Ghost of Islam in the Balkans by Tomislav SunicIn the historical memory of Central and EasternEuropean peoples, the words "Muslim" and "Islam" often evokeimages of terror and violence. Derided by leftist and liberal intellectuals as"xenophobic," these negative images are still associated with theTurks and their centuries-long military incursions into the heart of Europe.Even the verbal derivatives of the word "Turk" in Slavic and Germaniclanguages often carry pejorative meanings. In Austrian Carinthia, Turks areremembered as Renner und Brenner ("runners and fire-setters"), who,while burning their way into the Alps, left terror and destruction in theirwake. Far worse was the case of the Northern Italian region of Furlany, whoseransacking was depicted by the late Italian filmmaker and writer Pietro PaoloPasolini. Shortly before the Croatian catastrophe on the field of Krbava in1477, from the top of St. Mark's in Venice, observers could witness the flamesand smoke billowing all the way to the town of Udine. In their incendiaryincursions, the Turks used the Balkan Wallachs, Albanians, and scores ofmarauding gypsies as front-line ethnic cleansers.Even the recent war in the Balkans and thekillings of Bosnian Muslims cannot be understood unless we take into account thecenturies of Turkish terror in the Balkans. The onslaught of Islam resulted inmassive transfers of populations. It was pure historical coincidence thatHungary and Croatia did not become part of the Ottoman Empire. Thanks to foreignvolunteers from all parts of the Holy Roman Empire, including large numbers ofKrajina Serbs and Danubian Germans, these regions still preserve their CentralEuropean and Catholic heritage. Still, it is a great shame that the role ofPrince Eugene of Savoy, the liberator of Central Europe, is widely ignored inpolitically correct school syllabi and by the European media. After theexpulsion of the Turks from the Panonian fields and the Danubian basin, the HolyRoman Empire decided to repopulate these devastated but fertile European regionswith hundreds of thousands of German settlers who, until 1945, were known inHungary and monarchic Yugoslavia as Donauschwaben. During World War II, manyDanubian Germans volunteered for the Prinz Eugene Division of the Waffen SS,named after their patron hero. On May 18, 1945, 1,600 disarmed Germanlegionnaires were swiftly executed by Tito's victorious Communist partisans; therest were shipped to the zinc mines in Bor.In monarchic and conservative circles in modernEurope, Prince Eugene remains a Christian hero. Born in France, Eugene strayedvery early into the intrigues of Louis XIV's corrupt court. The French kingmocked Eugene's flat nose, shrunken body, and huge head (and homosexualinclinations), and suggested to his royal coterie that Eugene was cut out lessfor a military career than for the life of a village priest. Out of hatred forLouis XIV, Eugene, who originally came from Italian-speaking Savoy, left Franceand offered his services to her mortal enemy: The Holy Roman Empire. In 1683, heparticipated in the defense of Vienna against the Turkish siege, and in thefollowing decades, he liberated the entire Danubian region-including Belgrade,in 1717. Thus, the armed empire halted the anti-Christian invasion and theTurkish destruction of European civilization. Unfortunately, Eugene failed toliberate Sarajevo and to chase the Turks out of Europe for good. Battle alongthe Rhine forced him to pull back his troops to defend the empire against theFrench. The Islamic Sublime Porte maintained close ties with Catholic France,whose age-old obsession was to disrupt German-controlled access to the Black Seavia the Danube. He who controls the Danube, it is often said, controls Europe.Despite their Asian origin, Turks absorbed manyethnic Europeans, particularly through the importation of white slaves fromTurkish-occupied Central European regions to the Anatolian Peninsula. TheOttoman regime provided excellent career opportunities to young IslamicizedEuropeans-a development encouraged by the Turks in the Balkans and exemplifiedby the Bosnian Muslims. Suspicion lingers today among Catholic Croats andOrthodox Serbs in Bosnia toward the Slavic Muslim government in Sarajevo. It isentirely possible that some type of reconciliation will take place between theSerbs and Croats despite a century of mutual enmity. Such a development seemsmuch less likely between either of these groups and the Slavic Muslims.The founding father of modern secular Turkey,Kemal Pasha Ataturk, resembled a German patriarch more than an Asian despot. Hisplace of birth in the Balkans suggests that he was either of Slavic or Albaniandescent. No insult can be worse to a Turk than to call him an "Arab."By contrast, Turkey has close ties to modern Israel. After Isabella II expelledthe Jews from Spain in the 15th century, many Sephardic Jews took refuge in thevast Ottoman Empire, which encompassed not only the Balkans but a solid chunk ofArabic North Africa. The state of Israel closely cooperates with Turkey'smilitary intelligence. Turkey's appalling human-rights record is usuallyoverlooked, and the European Union, pressured by the United States, must go togreat lengths to accommodate the never-ending Turkish bid to enter the union.For the United States, both Israel and Turkeyare important allies in the NATO-controlled eastern Mediterranean. Turkey isvital for access to the Central Asian basin, and she serves, with her powerfulhalf-a-million man army, as the chief arbiter of "hydropolitics,"controlling the main water routes to the Middle East.During the war in the Balkans, with the fullblessing of the United States, Turkey provided covert support to Bosnian Muslimsand Albanians. Turkey's memories of her lost European "glacis" arevivid, and she still longs to restore the past glory that once stretched to thedoors of Vienna. Despite the prominent role of the Turkish military apparatusand the high prestige of the Turkish military in public life, Turkey has beenplagued for decades by the separatist Kurds, who make up approximately 15million of Turkey's population and whose goal is secession. Turkey is oftenannoyed by Armenian and Greek lobbies in France and America who openly demand apublic apology for the Turkish genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.Without exception, Turkey's political and intellectual class rejects anyallegation of genocide. While Germany must publicly demonstrate atonement forher sins in World War II, Turkey seems to be light years away from apologies forher genocidal practices against Slavs and Armenians.Over eight million Muslims live in the Balkanstoday, an autochtonous population that once converted to Islam, either out ofopportunism or sheer terror. Well over ten million Muslims reside in the statesof the European Union, mostly immigrants from North Africa and Turkey. Germanyalone boasts three million Muslims, mostly immigrant Turks and Kurds. In theUnited Kingdom, there are over 2.5 million Muslims, mostly immigrants fromPakistan and Arabic countries, and France has a staggering four million Muslims,mostly immigrants from North and Central Africa.Modern liberalism preaches racial tolerance andmulticultural conviviality. Yet after the terrorist strikes against the UnitedStates, and in the wake of the U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan, themulticultural utopia is beginning to show its dark side. It is a great irony ofhistory that national socialists and fascists had many supporters and avidmilitary volunteers in the Balkans and in the Middle East during World War II.In hindsight, Croatian fascist and Catholic leader Ante Pavelic appears the trueadvocate of liberal multiculturalism. In the center of Catholic Zagreb, he builta large mosque-whose minarets were pulled down and destroyed by the victoriousYugoslav Communists in 1945.Tomislav Sunic, a writer and former Croatdiplomat, resides in Europe. http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/June2002/0602Sunic.html letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Sat, 27 Jul 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7559/1/E-A-New-Monarch-in-the-Balkans.html A New Monarch in the BalkansBy VITOMIR MILES RAGUZBosnia has a new monarch. That's how the Scotsman newspaper billed the May 27th transfer ofÂauthority in the country from Wolfgang Petritsch to Paddy Ashdown. Over the years, the chiefÂadministrator of Western policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) certainly has evolved from aÂbureaucratically dry high-representative, to a colorful colonial-like governor with all the trappingsÂ-- an effective monarch. The increasing powers of the office have done mostly good for the countryÂand the region as a whole. But in order to succeed, Mr. Ashdown will need to be more realistic,Ânon-ideological and iconoclastic than his three predecessors.In his inaugural speech to the BiH parliament, Mr. Ashdown hinted that he may indeed be headingÂin this direction. He said that the regeneration of BiH's economy is his priority, while, among otherÂchanges, he will hold back on interfering in the elections and will work to remake the image of hisÂomnipotent seat of power.The economic policy in BiH has been to prepare the country so it can move away from dependenceÂon donor funds to reliance on private capital for its development needs. Mr. Ashdown suggestedÂthat this transition might not be possible so soon, as the state is already heavily indebted.BiH external debt stands at €2.9 billion, and amounts to 220% of its exports. When a country'sÂdebt-to-export ratio reaches 160%, banks usually place it on their watch lists, and when it risesÂabove 200%, the country is generally considered to be a high default risk. True, the bulk of BiH'sÂexternal debt is priced below market rates, and its export earnings don't include grants andÂtransfers, so the real ratio may be somewhat lower. Yet it would be enough for international debtÂmarkets to say no to BiH.The country's entities and municipalities have borrowed domestically, too. Due to the already highÂlevel of external obligations, the IMF has been vigilant in dissuading local banks from making loansÂto government institutions. Most banks followed this advice, but some did not, and this may also beÂdeveloping into a problem area.As the debt markets seem to be fully tapped, BiH may be left with only the international equityÂmarkets to restart its moribund production capacity. Mr. Ashdown will face difficulties here asÂwell. BiH is too small a market to attract big investors. Moreover, corruption in the bureaucracyÂand a politicized judicial system often turn away smaller regional players. They don't have theÂclout of multinationals to protect them if problems arise with local authorities or partners, andÂmust be able to rely on efficient, independent courts.Mr. Ashdown is right to focus on fixing up the judiciary, and energizing local resources -- primarilyÂthe small-to-medium enterprise sector, or SMEs. But here he will need the banks again, as he wantsÂthese "small businesses to borrow and expand." As most SMEs in BiH come to the banks with littleÂoperational history, and with substandard financials and collateral, banks are rightly hesitant toÂlend to them.To enter this sector wholeheartedly, the banks would need credit guarantees, such as thoseÂavailable to SMEs in Austria and the Netherlands, for instance. The World Bank recently pursuedÂthe idea of such a program for BiH, in the form of credit insurance purchased by SMEs and financedÂby the banks themselves, but concluded that it would be too expensive. Hopefully, a new programÂcan be crafted for this crucial sector, but on a larger scale, and with guarantees of WesternÂsovereigns.The only other outside resource that may be available to Mr. Ashdown would be experiencedÂWestern managers. They could be invited to restructure and jump-start the failing state enterprisesÂin lieu of foreign direct investment that is unlikely to ever come to some of the enterprises, many ofÂwhich employ thousands.BiH simply cannot move forward without realism focused on the economy. As former BiH defenseÂminister Miroslav Prce noted (applying the management theories of Albert Maslow) in the WinterÂ2001 issue of the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs: "A society which cannot satisfy the economic andÂsecurity needs of its members nor provide them with a sense of identity and belongingness will beÂhard-pressed to make gains in higher order areas of human rights and democratization."To reintegrate the fragmented BiH society, however, Mr. Ashdown may also need to practise theÂidea of "triangulation" made famous during Bill Clinton's U.S.presidential campaign in 1992. FacedÂwith dipping poll numbers, the Clinton team decided to sidestep its largely leftist program, andÂinstead adopt the main objectives of the left and the right, satisfying both on the key issues, andÂthus rising -- triangulating -- above both ideologies and to the middle of the political spectrum.BiH was torn apart by radical nationalists, who were hostile to co-existence and multi-ethnicÂsocieties, and is now being stitched together largely by romantic internationalists, who areÂgenerally intolerant toward identity issues and prone to social experimentation. This pendulumÂswing from the right to the left was a natural reaction to the horrific crimes during the tenure ofÂradicals, primarily on the Serb side, lasting many years. As BiH is largely a rural society whereÂtradition takes paramount importance, it will be difficult to building a cosmopolitan society of theÂleft there. In this respect, BiH is no different than any other rural part of Europe.The divide between the internationalist left and the traditionalist right must be bridged if theÂsociety is to find peace with itself. The country is divided enough already along the ethnic lines.ÂBeyond that, virtually its entire professional class is criminal in somebody's eyes, for differentÂreasons: communism, nationalism, corruption, and/or war crimes.Mr. Ashdown is trying to change perceptions of the office of high representative. He has begun byÂreferring to himself as the servant of the Bosnian-Herzegovene people, by avoiding the use of hisÂroyal title of Lord while on duty in BiH, and by keeping open the imposing iron gates at his officeÂcompound. But this symbolic shattering of images must also include overtures in the policy area.BiH has changed substantially from its wartime years, and new times require new solutions. ForÂinstance, addressing the smallest community in BiH, the Croats, who have been systematicallyÂdisenfranchised by earlier high representatives, will require discarding trite clichés. How Mr.ÂAshdown handles issues like this will be the real test whether he will pass into history as yetÂanother monarch, or as the first wise public servant BiH has ever had.Mr. Raguz was ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European Union from 1998 to 2000,Âand is now a banker.Updated June 21, 2002http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1024610746934366840,00.html letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Fri, 21 Jun 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7560/1/E-THE-COMING-BELGOSLAVIA-by-Tomislav-Sunic.html Â(Chronicles, A Magazine of American Culture), April 2002ÂÂhttp://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/April2002/0402Sunic.htmÂÂFrom the April 2002 issue of Chronicles:ÂÂLetter From BelgiumÂby Tomislav SunicÂÂThe Coming Belgoslavia?ÂÂWhat was meant to grow separately cannot last long as an artificial whole.ÂThis prehistoric wisdom seems to be forgotten by advocates ofÂmulticulturalism-which is just a misleading euphemism for polyethnism andÂmultiracialism. The unpredictable side of multiracial conviviality seems toÂbe deliberately overlooked by political elites in multiethnic andÂmultiracial Belgium, a miniscule country that has recently been rocked byÂpedophile scandals in the lofty corners of high politics. Its venerableÂroyal court, under King Albert, and the liberal-leftist coteries in powerÂhave found themselves popularly referred to as the "Chester Molesters inÂcharge of running Belgoslavia."ÂThe separatist-minded Flemings also derisively dub the Belgian state "theÂlast Soviet republic." There may be some truth to that appellation, and notÂjust because Brussels is the site of the Ceausescu-style building thatÂhouses the E.U. eurocrats. The Belgian postal authorities have recentlyÂproduced a stamp with Lenin's face on it. That which would be violentlyÂrejected in the more virile postcommunist Balkans or Russia seems to enjoyÂmarket value among the political class and socialist trade unions in thisÂartificial state. By contrast, any minor and inoffensive joke against theÂrising tide of illegal Asian immigrants, or any criticism of the Asian andÂAlbanian drug dealers who have invaded Antwerp, can get you into legalÂtrouble and earn you the label of a racist right-winger.ÂA complicated coalition government, elected on a proportional basis, runsÂthe country. Belgium has two parliaments but refuses to accept the FlemingsÂas a separate and distinct ethnic group within the clearly defined federalÂrepublic. Instead, the leftist-controlled media refer to the Flemings asÂthe "Dutch-speaking residents of Belgium residing in the 'region' ofÂFlandres." The phrase "region de Flanders" is in every politician's mouth.ÂIn the early 1970's, the Flemings, after a century-long legal (and oftenÂviolent) fight, had managed to win a great deal of linguistic and culturalÂautonomy, but Francophile Jacobinism still lurks everywhere. TheÂpro-government media quickly rebukes as racism any sign of FlemishÂseparatism or nationalist sentiment.ÂThe towering irony is that the Flemings are not an ethnic minority inÂBelgium. They represent the absolute majority, totaling 6.6 millionÂresidents. Unlike the 3.5 million French-speaking Belgian Walloons, who areÂlocated in the southern half of Belgium, the Flemings have a moreÂpronounced sense of national identity and cultural distinctiveness, whichÂcannot be solely attributed to their Germanic roots or their distinctÂlanguage. For over a century, Flanders has been part and parcel of a largerÂentity, and most Flemings, regardless of their political credo, rejectÂcentralism, which has been exported to them by neighboring France since theÂ14th century. Within this context, we can understand why the so-calledÂright-wing nationalist Vlaams Blok has a rather poor and awkwardÂrelationship with Jean-Marie le Pen's Front National in France. The partyÂis, however, rather supportive of the separatist Quebecois in Canada andÂshows no hesitation in backing the autonomy of Northern Ireland or theÂBasques. In France, on both the right and left wings of the politicalÂspectrum, hardly anyone questions the centralized structure of the FrenchÂstate.ÂThat is not the case in Flanders, which nurtures a strong central-European,Âconfederalist, and quasi-imperial attitude toward former bits and pieces ofÂthe defunct Habsburg Empire. The Belgian government, eager to show itsÂpolitically correct credentials, was in the forefront of the condemnationÂtwo years ago of the alleged xenophobia of Austria's Jorg Haider. FlemishÂnationalists quickly responded to the Belgians' undiplomatic posturing. TheÂVlaams Blok loudly sided with Haider's beleaguered FPO party and hisÂcoalition government, rapidly dispatching truckloads of Flemish youngstersÂto mountainous Austrian Corinthia on skiing holidays.ÂThe Flemings' pro-Central European inclinations are firmly grounded inÂhistory. During the Flemish-born Charles V's reign, Flanders became part ofÂthe vast, confederal Holy Roman Empire, whose longevity and solid structureÂovershadows the nebulous Soviet-inspired European Union. The Holy RomanÂEmpire's main goal was to chase the Turks out of Europe and to keep theÂTurkish ally in the West-treacherous proto-Jacobin France-from crossing theÂRhine River. The terrorist artillery bombardment of Brussels by Louis XIVÂis often cited among Flemings as a warning against any rapprochement withÂFrance. By the end of the 17th century, while Louis XIV was realizing hisÂaggressive dreams in the west, Flemish volunteers, along with thousands ofÂCentral European fighters under the charismatic Prince Eugene of Savoy,Âwere desperately trying to stem the Turkish tide in Central Europe. EvenÂtoday, Flemings harbor a great deal of sympathy for the Habsburg Empire andÂits mythic queen Maria Theresa. Not surprisingly, Flemish nationalists wereÂamong the first to flock to the aid of Croatia after Croatia's proclamationÂof independence in 1991. The Walloons, as well as the neighboring French,Âwere not happy with the dissolution of multiethnic Yugoslavia. Its breakupÂvividly reminded them of their own historical miscreants.ÂA foreigner must be cautious in addressing a Flemish passerby in French. AÂFleming will feign ignorance and play dumb, although he may speak perfectÂFrench. Yet, when approached by a foreign tourist, he will immediatelyÂstart speaking fluently in both English and German and will escort theÂtourist to the next village and show hospitality. Even a simple FlemishÂgarbage collector gets by in three different languages. In Wallonia, it isÂa miracle to encounter a public official who speaks a word of Dutch, letÂalone one who can stutter broken English or mutter some German words.ÂAlthough smaller nations are seldom enamored of their big neighbors,ÂFlemish nationalists are amicable toward Germany. Their overtly warm tiesÂto Germany during the past century have led to setbacks in their quest forÂindependence. They are immediately called "former Nazi collaborators" byÂleftist journalists each time the Vlaams Blok makes some politicallyÂincorrect statement. And while the Flemings speak the same language as theÂneighboring Dutch (and despite the fact that Flanders was, from 1816 toÂ1830, part of the larger United Kingdom of the Netherlands), they do notÂhave pronounced affection for the Dutch. Their Catholic tradition and theirÂbaroque mentality have separated them from their Protestant and mercantileÂnext-door neighbors. An important figure from the Vlaams Blok Youth, lawyerÂKarim Van Overmeire, told me that the Flemings reject with horror theÂpermissiveness and decadence of the Dutch and cannot accept their toleranceÂfor drug consumption.ÂThis is not to say that the Flemings are pious Catholic believers. In fact,Âthe Vlaams Blok includes a considerable number of agnostics and pagansÂamong its ranks. At political gatherings, you seldom see a CatholicÂpriest-as is almost always the case in Croatia-pontificating on the virtueÂof global brotherhood or multiracialism. Flemish nationalists, unlike otherÂEuropean nationalists, have also avoided clannish nationalism and partyÂintrigues, which have been a hallmark of Umberto Bossi's Lega Nord in ItalyÂand Le Pen's Front National.ÂThe greatest weapon that Flemish nationalists wield in their quest for moreÂautonomy is their thriving economy, built on their exceptional serviceÂindustry, which is the best in Western Europe. The Flemings could easilyÂbail out of Belgium, but the Walloons, whose work ethic is poor and whoseÂcorrupted politicians and trade unions have become addicted to generousÂFlemish subsidies, could not. A prominent Flemish scholar of Hinduism, Dr.ÂKoenraad Elst, who is also critical of "Belgoslavia," summarized theÂpsychology of the Walloons in one curt sentence: "The debtors always hateÂtheir creditors." Until 1970, the Walloons had run the Belgian military andÂdiplomatic show, but their economic clout began to fade by the late 70's.ÂWallonia-which had been, since the Industrial Revolution, the main EuropeanÂlocation of industry-lies barren and destitute today. Closed-down factoriesÂin the cities of Liege and Charleroi, decorated by throngs of idle andÂdestitute Arab youth, look like they belong in Third World countries.ÂBy contrast, the Flemings-who, until the early 1950's, were held inÂcontempt and often derided by Walloon high bourgeoisie as lowly proles whoÂare only good for milking cows and shoveling horse dung-have surpassed theÂWalloons in wealth. Flanders' economic growth has been on the order of 2.5Âto 3.2 percent annually over the past decade, while the growth in WalloniaÂhas not exceeded 1.9 percent during the same period. The number ofÂunemployed in Flanders stands at 4.9 percent of the population; inÂWallonia, it is a staggering 15 percent. Flanders accounts for 86 percentÂof the country's exports. A major point of contention is the centralizedÂsocial-security system and government-run pension funds, whose primeÂbenefactors are Walloons. Flemish fiscal transfers to Wallonia are aboutÂ120 billion Belgian francs annually (approximately three billion U.S.Âdollars). In other words, each Flemish family pays over $500 per month inÂwelfare to Wallonia.ÂAlong with the historical and cultural gap between these two peoples, theÂeconomic arguments seem reason enough to write the country off the map.ÂThis may not be easy, considering that the European Union chose the tinyÂmultiethnic and multiracial Belgium as its Politburo. Only when BelgiumÂbegins balkanizing into Euroslavia will some eurocrat in Brussels likelyÂstart scratching himself behind the ear. As in the case of the formerÂYugoslavia, it may be too late.ÂÂTomislav Sunic, a writer and former Croat diplomat, resides in Europe.ÂCopyright 2002, www.ChroniclesMagazine.orgÂÂDistributed by www.CroatianWorld.net. This message is intended for Croatian Associations/Institutions and their Friends in Croatia and in the World. The opinions/articles expressed on this list do not reflect personal opinions of the moderator. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, please delete or destroy all copies of this communication and please, let us know! letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Mon, 08 Apr 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7561/1/E-Letter-published-in-Orange-County-Register.html ÂMilosevic Trial ProperÂÂPortraying Slobodan Milosevic as "small fry" ("International CourtÂDangerous", letters, Feb. 14) is an insult to all his victims in Croatia,ÂBosnia and Kosovo. A man who instigated and pursued four wars in nineÂyears, in which 200,000 were killed and several million "ethnicallyÂcleansed", deserves to be tried in an international court.ÂÂWho else would try him? Certainly not the Serbs, who only accuse him ofÂruining Serbia because of corruption and mismanagement, not because ofÂthe wars he led against the legally seceding Republics of Croatia, BosniaÂand Slovenia or the bloodbath in Kosovo.ÂÂSincerely,ÂHilda FoleyÂSanta Ana, CaÂÂÂDistributed by www.CroatianWorld.net. This message is intended for Croatian Associations/Institutions and their Friends in Croatia and in the World. The opinions/articles expressed on this list do not reflect personal opinions of the moderator. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient,Âplease delete or destroy all copies of this communication and please, let us know! letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Thu, 28 Feb 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7562/1/E-Sunics-interview-in-Pravda.html ÂI 1. i 2. svj. rat bili su imperijalisticki ratovi, ratovi koje su vodiliÂveliki imperiji: Velika Britanija, Francuska, Njemacka, Austro-Ugarska,ÂRusija, SAD (predsjednicki kandidat Pat Buchanan kaze kako je i SADÂiperijalisticka drzava, ali tek nakon sto je okupirao Filipine, 1900.), dokÂje Srbija bila na putu da postane mini-imperij. Nacionalizam je nesto drugo,Âgrobar imperijalnih sila, patriotizam. Mnogi autori tvrde, da jeÂnacionalizam pretpostavka i preduvjet za demokraciju.ÂÂrudolf arapovicÂÂÂSunic's interview.ÂÂhttp://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/25/26639.htmlÂÂ2002-02-25ÂÂ"DUE TO ITS VIOLENT TRANSPARENCY, POOR ECONOMIC RESULTS, AND NEGATIVEÂSOCIAL-BIOLOGICAL SELECTION, ALONG WITH THE NAMELESS TOPOGRAPHY OF TERROR,ÂCOMMUNISM LOST ITS INTELLECTUAL APPEAL. BY CONTRAST, MODERN CAPITALISM,ÂWHICH OPERATES TODAY UNDER THE TERM OF "GLOBALISM," IS MORE SUCCESSFUL INÂPROMOTING THE SAME TOTALITARIAN GOALS, ALBEIT WITH DIFFERENT RHETORIC. ITÂIS UTOPIA ACHIEVED. MANY FAILED COMMUNIST PRACTICES ARE NOW FULLYÂOPERATIONAL, ALBEIT UNDER DIFFERENT LABELS IN THE EU AND USA."ÂÂGreetings from Russia Mr. Sunic! We at PRAVDA.Ru are very pleased that youÂhave agreed to become one of our columnists. As a Croatian diplomat, youÂare able to share with our readers valuable commentary on today's Croatia.ÂWe feel that by conducting this interview, our readers will come away withÂa better understanding of who you are and your basic political stances.ÂÂPlease tell our readers a little about yourself. What experiences have youÂhad that have shaped your outlook on politics and life in general? When didÂyou first become interested in politics? Also, please tell us somethingÂabout your diplomatic career.ÂÂÂPolitics was part of family life. My father, a Catholic attorney and aÂformer political prisoner, was constantly at loggerheads with the YugoslavÂcommunist authorities. Back in communist Yugoslavia, I expressed myÂresentments against the mendacity of the system by dropping out andÂbecoming a hippy and even hiking down to India. Being reared on books inÂseveral languages helped me to complete my university degrees and putÂmyself into a wider perspective. I like to speculate as to how myÂinterlocutor or enemy perceives me. This requires a great deal ofÂintellectual effort and emotional detachment. After the breakup ofÂYugoslavia, I was called by Tudjman's government to do some diplomatic lÂobbying for Croatia.ÂÂÂWhat is your position on the Croat-Serb war? At one point, it was reportedÂthat Serbia and Croatia had actually reached a compromise that would haveÂstopped the war, but Croatia was pressured by the West to form an allianceÂwith the Bosnian Muslims and to fight against the Serbs. Is there any truthÂto this? In your opinion, did outside powers benefit from the civil war?ÂÂI must have heard a myriad of rumors and conspiracy theories regarding theÂbreakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. I do not blame so much the Serbs as I do theÂdecade-long EU and USA upholding of the frail legality of the multiethnicÂbrew called Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was the product of Versailles architectsÂin 1919 with a refill of the allied blessing in 1945 in Potsdam. SlobodanÂMilosevic strictly knew that; notably while trying to salvage Yugoslavia byÂforce, which actually sped up its forceful demise. Hence, the real reasonÂhe is paying a hefty price now in the Hague.ÂÂIt is known that many Croatian communists became nationalists afterÂCroatia's succession from Yugoslavia. Were these conversions genuine, orÂwere these politicians merely opportunists?ÂÂÂThe latter is true. However, almost all former Croatian communists are nowÂultra-liberal free marketers. This is a trademark not just of Croatia butÂof all post-communist countries, including Russia. What is worrisome,Âhowever, is not so much the make-believe volume of civic and democraticÂparlance of the new political class; rather, it is the shiftiness andÂphenomenal feel-good lightness by which it betrayed its former MarxistÂmythology. If some other political myth holds sway tomorrow, the sameÂpeople will flock to new secular deities with no feelings of guilt.ÂÂWhile Serbia has traditionally had close ties with Russia, Croats seem toÂidentify more with Western European nations, such as Germany. In fact, itÂhas been reported that many volunteers from Western nations came to CroatiaÂto participate in the civil war. It was also reported that many RussiansÂand other Slavs participated on the side of Serbia. Do you have anyÂknowledge of this being the case? If so, to what extent did foreignÂvolunteers participate in the civil war?ÂÂOver 2000 foreign volunteers from Chile to Canada, from the USA toÂAustralia, and served at some point in early Croatian rag-tag units duringÂthe so-called Homeland War. This was partly due to cultural affinities andÂpartly to the strong anticommunist feelings of many. The Serb-dominatedÂYugoslav army displayed the communist red star insignia until 1995, whichÂinvariably boosted the early Croatian separatist cause among European andÂUS conservatives. The unfortunate religious cleavage between the OrthodoxÂEast and Catholic West violently erupted to the fore. Many WesternÂvolunteers and many Croat expatriates came to fight. I cannot be moreÂspecific at this stage.ÂÂÂWhat is your opinion of Ante Pavelic, the Croatian leader during WW2? ItÂhas been claimed that the Ustashe government committed many atrocitiesÂagainst Serbs, Jews, and other non-Croats. How much of this is propagandaÂand how much is true?ÂÂÂThe English historian Edward Carr wrote that, before one studies history,Âone must study a historian. Failure to look at different, i.e., revisionistÂhistorical accounts, leads to misperceptions, paranoia, and, eventually,Âarmed conflicts. The former Yugoslav propaganda had committed a mistake byÂhyper-inflating Croatian fascist crimes of WWII. Tudjman in 1990, dared toÂdemolish this antifascist victimology. His public speeches, given theÂwidespread foreign media prone "historical linkages," soon earned him a badÂreputation among liberal pressure groups, both in the USA and Europe.ÂMoreover, his speeches were a big enough reason to alter the mindset of theÂlocal, largely rural, Serbs in Croatia, who were already whipped into aÂfrenzy by Milosevic's communist propaganda. The spiral of fear andÂmisperception, backed by mythical and histrionic narratives on both sides,Âresulted in war in 1991.ÂÂAs for Ante Pavelic, the leader of WWII Croatia, his role must be put intoÂhis epoch, i.e., along with the Romanian, Corneliu Codreanu, the Fleming,ÂStaf De Clercq, the Englishman, Oswald Mosley, the Russian-American,ÂAnastase Vonsiatsky, the Spaniard, Franco, etc., and other real or would-beÂfascist leaders.ÂÂDuring my visit to Croatia, I came away with the impression that manyÂCroats cheered when NATO launched its military campaign against Serbia. InÂyour opinion, do ordinary Croats still hold such hostile feelings towardsÂSerbia?ÂÂÂUnfortunately, this is largely true. Many Croats, even in academic circles,Âuse this type of "negative legitimization." Serbs are often used asÂscapegoats for Croatia's own failures, be it in the field of diplomacy orÂeconomy. However, centralistic-minded Serbs have traditionally nourished aÂcult of a "chosen people" destined to play a leading role in policing theÂBalkans. Hence, the reason that they alienated other non-Serb peoples. TheÂend result was war.ÂÂ>From the Berlin Congress in 1878 until 1991, Serbs were the darlings of theÂanti-German Western powers. I think that, eventually, these two similarÂpeoples will be on speaking terms. Croats must realize that Serbs willÂremain their first neighbors. However, from a wider anthropologicalÂperspective, it is worth alerting the political class in the EU and USAÂthat multicultural, let alone multiracial states, never last long. SuchÂideas are uncontrolled and irresponsible Third-world immigration, theÂAmerican government, and the EU are paving the way for their ownÂbalkanization. The case of multiethnic ex-Yugoslavia speaks volumes.ÂÂÂThe current Croatian government has indicated that it would like to joinÂboth the EU and NATO. If Croatia is accepted into either of theseÂorganizations, what changes do you think might take place in Croatia? InÂyour view, would these changes be positive or negative?ÂÂÂThere are no "yes's," "no's," or "ifs." Joining the EU and NATO is the onlyÂoption for Croatia, short of becoming a pariah state. The only problems areÂthe Croatian methods. The Croatian political class does not know theÂlinkages, the possible setbacks, the terms of juridical engagements, etc.ÂCroatia does not have civil society, as it was destroyed after WWII by theÂYugoslav leader Tito and his communist followers, who were very largelyÂmade up of the semi-rural, bewildered populace. The Croatian public doesÂnot fully know the underpinnings of the EU or NATO. It envisions entry intoÂthese two supra-national bodies as entry into a self-serving rich men'sÂcountry club. What Croatia needs first is total de-communization. WithoutÂthis, Croatia will constantly be plagued by a traumatic lack ofÂdecision-making. At this stage, Croatia, similar to the Russian politicalÂclass, is engaged in broken English mimicry of all things Western.ÂÂÂYou are known as a very outspoken anticommunist. Please explain the reasonsÂfor your opposition to communism? In addition, you have said that Croatia'sÂcurrent, main threats are the "Western" ideals of capitalism andÂconsumerism. If you consider yourself to be an anticommunist as well as anÂanticapitalist, what political system would you like to see take shape inÂCroatia, a sort of third-position?ÂÂÂThere are different forms of anticommunism. However, being an anticommunistÂdoes not presuppose that one must, therefore, embrace its only presentÂcounterpart, i.e., global capitalism. Both systems have inherent principlesÂof egalitarianism, economism, and universalism, i.e., the belief in theÂabstract ideology of "human rights" and the dogma of perpetual economicÂgrowth. Due to its violent transparency, poor economic results, andÂnegative social-biological selection, along with the nameless topography ofÂterror, communism lost its intellectual appeal. By contrast, modernÂcapitalism, which operates today under the term of "globalism," is moreÂsuccessful in promoting the same totalitarian goals, albeit with differentÂrhetoric. It is utopia achieved. Many failed communist practices are nowÂfully operational, albeit under different labels in the EU and USA. FormerÂpaleo-communist political romanticism, such as multiculturalism,Âmultiracialism, academic self-censorship, intellectual opportunism, whichÂis known as political correctness, and the loss of the sense of the tragic,Âis in full swing in the West. Moreover, unlike communism, modernÂliberalism, i.e., global capitalism, does not leave visible traces of bloodÂand cohorts of martyrs in its wake. Its destructive longevity isÂguaranteed.ÂÂÂYou have also spoken out against blind nationalism, which, in your opinion,Âwas used to manipulate the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. However, youÂhave also indicated that you consider yourself to be pro-European. What areÂyour reasons for your opposition to nationalism? Do you consider yourselfÂto hold pan-European ideas?ÂÂÂIn hindsight, inter-European nationalism has done irreparable harm to allÂpeoples of European extraction, starting with civil war in America in 1861Âand then during the Great Civil War, WWI and WWII. Petty provincialÂnationalism at the expense of next door similar looking European neighborsÂis self- defeating. It serves the purpose of non-Europeans and other alienÂphenotypes. Even in terms of territorial imperative, petty nationalism isÂtoday outdated. The only solution lies in supra-statal pockets of culturalÂresistance by the Europeans in the USA, Chile, South Africa, Europe, allÂthe way to Russia, i.e., in places where remnants of the European peoplesÂstill live. Failure to clearly define the enemy today may lead in the veryÂnear future to the definite demise of European heritage. Only in thisÂextraterritorial way one must define oneself today as a European and noÂlonger in a narrow autistic, chauvinistic, nation-state framework.ÂÂYou have spent a portion of your life in the United States. From myÂpersonal experience as an American living in Europe, I know that manyÂEuropeans have a false sense of reality when it comes to life in the USA.ÂYou, as a European who lived many years in the United States, have seenÂfirsthand the difference between what is presented the movies and mediaÂthat Europeans watch and the reality of the everyday American. Please shareÂfor our readers your thoughts on the subject. Also, please tell usÂsomething about Croatian-Americans. Are many of these immigrantsÂpolitically active?ÂÂÂThe problem with all Eastern Europeans, including Croats, is an identityÂcrisis and a deep inferiority complex. The lack of self- assertiveness,Âwhich is due to perpetual historical tremors in this region, often resultsÂin surreal and self-complacent political romanticism. Most Croats haveÂinherited strong residues of the homo sovieticus mendacity combined withÂthe Melrose Place soap opera dream world. Croat expatriates did play aÂsignificant role in financing Tudjman's campaign. However, they also liveÂin their own dream worlds, romanticizing Croatia in folkoristique limeÂlights. There is also a fundamental psychological gap between Croats inÂCroatia and Croat expatriates. It is this vicarious misperception of twoÂvirtual worlds, respectively, that leads to the breakdown in communication.ÂAs far as the new post-Tudjman, left-leaning government in Croatia isÂconcerned, it has shoved aside the Croatian expatriates.ÂÂÂI would like for you to give our readers an assessment of the currentÂCroatian government. Can you make a prediction regarding the nextÂelections? If the presidential election were held today, in your opinion,Âwho would win?ÂÂÂThe cumulative votes of opposition right-wing parties today could easilyÂdislodge the current left-leaning government in a would-be election. Due toÂtheir constant bickering and clannish approach to body politics, this isÂhardly going to be the case. Although a small nation of 4 million citizens,ÂCroatia has phenomenal regional differences between north and south and theÂMediterranean Croats, who often make their electoral choices on the basisÂof their regional in-group decisions. Almost the same replica exists amongÂexpatriate Croats, unlike the Flemish, Irish, or Palestinian nationalists,Âwho all have a solid supra-regional political platform. This endlessÂinfighting does not make Croatia a serious partner in the eyes of WesternÂobservers. It was only during Tudjman's leadership, a man with deep insightÂinto Croatian diversity, that Croatia managed to become an independentÂstate. The actual coalition government, which is made up of fiveÂleft-leaning parties, has brought the country to administrative standstill.ÂCroatia functions today by EUÂÂÂHow is late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman remembered in Croatia? ManyÂin the West consider him to be a war criminal that should have been triedÂin the Hague. However, during the war, Tudjman received the West'sÂbacking and seemed to know how to "play ball" with the Western powers. IsÂhe remembered as the father of independent Croatia or has his reputationÂsuffered as a result of criticism from the West?ÂÂÂTudjman's Croatia did not receive any backing from the West, not untilÂ1995. The emergence of Croatia was primarily the result of namelessÂvolunteers, committed individuals with strong will to power. Prior to 1995,ÂCroatia was subject to an arms embargo, just like the heavily armed rumpÂYugoslavia, i.e., Serbia. It had to build its administration and army fromÂscratch. It was a moment that briefly united all Croats of differentÂpolitical persuasions. The EU never liked Tudjman. He was a formerÂcommunist turned a staunch revisionist and anticommunist, a large enoughÂreason for the Western opinion makers to isolate Croatia. The so-calledÂinternational community is now firmly behind the more docile left-leaningÂgovernment in Croatia.ÂÂÂSpeaking of the Hague, how is the issue of the extradition of Croatian warÂveterans treated by the Croatian press? How does the common Croat feelÂabout the issue? On one hand, it seems that Croatia and Serbia are in theÂsame boat. Both nations are being asked to send people some feel are warÂheroes to be judged by a foreign court in a foreign land.ÂÂÂEven heroes do not last long. Again, Croat soldiers, due to the pressure ofÂvarious international bodies, are often portrayed as a bunch of criminals.ÂThe Hague judiciary looks for "legal equidistance" between the YugoslavÂaggressor and the Croat victims. Average Croats are bedazzled andÂbewildered. Whose gods should they trust today?ÂÂYet, I do not blame the Hague or the international community for theirÂhalf-baked legal practices. Being a disciple of sociologist Vilfredo ParetoÂand the jurist Carl Schmitt, I blame the lack of leadership in Croatia, theÂlack of the new elites, and the lack of a meritocracy able to outsmart theÂoften ignorant New World Order architects. Playing meek and hollering "meaÂculpa" won't help. Pareto wrote,"Whoever becomes a sheep will find a wolfÂto eat him." This is the case with the Croatian administration staffed byÂformer communists with no initiative, many of whom have a murky past.ÂÂÂIn your opinion, should the Croatian government do anything to help theÂBosnian Croats? It seems that they are in a rather difficult position, asÂtheir most popular politicians and political parties have been banned. ItÂis quite clear that they feel as if they are not properly represented inÂthe Bosnian government and that they would like to form an independentÂCroat state. Is there any chance that, in the future, the Bosnian CroatiansÂcould be annexed by Croatia?ÂÂÂPlaying dumb in politics is often a virtue, but living under the cover ofÂdelusions may be dangerous. Bosnia and Hercegovina form a small and belatedÂreplica of the failed multiethnic Yugoslavia. It can be upheld on the map,Âas it currently is, only by foreign, including US, troops and half-ignorantÂEU commissars. We must remember how former multiethnic Yugoslavia ended itsÂvoyage into the darkness. I have spoken with some foreign leaders andÂmembers of the media. They are aware of this make-believe country, but theyÂmust rhetorically abide by the new "multicultural role models."ÂÂCroats and Serbs in Bosnia do not have the problem of deciding who to joinÂin the putative future. By contrast, if Bosnian Muslims do not make theirÂown executive decision about their identity, somebody else soon will inÂtheir stead.ÂÂÂMr. Sunic, please tell us about your latest book, Against Democracy andÂEquality. What are the basic ideas of this book? What was your motivationÂfor writing it?ÂÂÂThis book is a survey of some prominent figures of the so-calledÂconservative revolution of the first part of the XX century, such as theÂsociologist Vilfredo Pareto, the political scientist Carl Schmitt, theÂhistorian Oswald Spengler, and many others. The book also covers their newÂintellectual followers in today's European New Right. I am appalled by theÂdogmatic spirit and bias in the American and EU higher education, which hasÂfor decades been subject to leftist brainwashing and to fraudulentÂFreudo-Marxian scholasticism. I am also shocked by the false meritocracy inÂthe American establishment and by the ridiculous affirmative action system,Âwhich definitely reminds me of the quota system in hiring that was in placeÂin the ex-communist multiethnic Yugoslavia. The best and the brightest are,Âas a rule, shoved aside. The modern liberal theology of the big buck, theÂdictatorship of well-being, coupled with the false misnomer ofÂ"multiculturalism," destroys all values and all cultures, including ourÂown. I do not blame non-Europeans, and I reject conspiracy theories. IÂprimarily hold responsible lazy and corrupted academics, the modern media,Âand politicians who are mortgaging the Euro-American future. However, mostÂlikely, we need more chaos in our polity, because only out of chaos newÂelites and a new value system can emerge.ÂÂÂDr. Sunic, thank you very much for the interview! It was very informativeÂand we at PRAVDA.Ru look forward to our further cooperation.ÂÂQUESTIONS COMPILED BY JUSTIN COWGILLÂÂThe author is a writer and former political science professor in the USA.ÂHe is also a Croatian diplomat. Mr. Sunic writes from Europe. His websiteÂcan be found at http://www.watermark.hu/doctorsunic/ÂÂÂÂDistributed by www.CroatianWorld.net. This message is intended for Croatian Associations/Institutions and their Friends in Croatia and in the World. The opinions/articles expressed on this list do not reflect personal opinions of the moderator. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient,Âplease delete or destroy all copies of this communication and please, let us know! letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Tue, 26 Feb 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7563/1/E-letter-to-editor-Foreign-Policy-Focus.html Âhttp://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/volume6/v6n05_body.htmlÂhttp://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/volume6/v6n05_body.html#globalÂÂNEED TO FATHOM THE DEPTHSÂÂIf you have listened and followed the comments of Bosnian Croat leaders in recent months, you would not have come to such an uninformed conclusion that Bosnian Croat "policies may indicate movement toward integration with Croatia...." This, coupled with your citation of multiple and dubious Yugo sources, makes me doubt seriously that you fathom the depth of how the Serbs almost succeeded in carving out a Greater Serbia. [See "New Balkan Policy Needed," April 2001, "Keys to Stability in the Balkans," November 1999] Your proposal for amnesty to Milosevic in exchange for a financial bailout of Yugo is both morally and ethically repugnant. This points out the complete lack of accountability you attribute to the Serbian people for the multiple wars they began. Bury it under the rug and it will go away. Those weren't thousands of mannequins throwing roses at Serb tank columns on the way to Vukovar in November 1991. Until the Serbian people can come to grips with the facts, nothing will change. Throwing money at them and letting off the criminals in their government, both past and current, does nothing but justify their means. The following quote is an accurate description of how the Serbs view their current situation: "The main thing we are interested in," said Dejan Milojevic, a town official in Aleksinac, south of Belgrade, "is how to cash in on all the misery we've been through. We are willing to admit guilt in Kosovo if that will bring in money." [New York Times, Feb. 11, 2002 "The Trial of Milosevic Will Peel Layers of Balkan Guilt, Too."]ÂÂKostunica and company say one thing to sound good to the West and do something completely different for domestic political consumption. The current political and cultural situation for Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) is as bad as it was, or even worse, than during the war. True, there is no more military activity. However, there has been practically no Croat repatriation. There were about 800,000 Croats in Bosnia before the war, most of which lived outside of Herzegovina. Now, barely 300,000 are left. With their democratically elected representatives summarily dismissed, their cultural rights repressed, and grievances ignored both by the Sarajevo government and the Office of the High Representative, what other choices are there but to try to do things on their own? Unlike the Republika Srpska, they are the first to tell you that they cannot survive on their own. They are the first to tell you that they want to be a constitutive nation, co-equal with the other two groups, just like the BH Constitutional Court ruled in the not too distant past. Talk is cheap. Unless the rights of the largest minority in BH, the Croats, are adequately addressed with the representatives who are supported by the majority of the BH Croats, not some lackeys appointed by the High Rep, there will be no resolution to the political morass that is BH.ÂÂYour recommendation that any status changes in BH (or Yugo) must be achieved through the consent of all parties within the state sounds like a prescription for disaster. This proposal is much like the way the beginnings of the war in Slovenia, Croatia, and BH was handled by the likes of Carrington, Owen, and the rest of the spineless mealy mouths who talked about peace but were satisfied with the status quo as long as it didn't spill out of ex-Yugoslavia proper. The clamoring for minority rights must include those rights of Croats in BH, the largest minority in BH. Without seriously addressing those rights, BH is doomed to either permanent protectorate status or failure.ÂÂ- Tom Kuzmanovic ÂÂÂ(Editor's Note: For the most recent FPIF analysis of Bosnia-Herzegovina, see Robert Belloni, "Bosnia-Herzegovina Conflict Profile," at http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/bosnia.html .)ÂÂÂDistributed by www.CroatianWorld.net. This message is intended for Croatian Associations/Institutions and their Friends in Croatia and in the World. The opinions/articles expressed on this list do not reflect personal opinions of the moderator. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient,Âplease delete or destroy all copies of this communication and please, let us know! letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Fri, 22 Feb 2002 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/7564/1/E-Quest-For-The-Opulent-West.html Âhttp://www.whtt.org/articles/rpr021025.htmÂQuest For The Opulent West 01/25/02ÂBy Tomislav SunicÂÂCatching up with the West is the big dream of all post-communist countriesÂin Eastern Europe. This dream transpires through imported liberal slogansÂsuch as "transition," "integration" and "market democracy" aired daily onÂall local TV and radio wavelengths. This rhetorical switch from formerÂsocialist command economy to capitalist market economy appears to EastÂEuropean leaders far more palatable than the necessity of removing theirÂown ossified past. In fact, proponents of globalism and their institutionalÂtransmission belts, such as the IMF and WTO had never given the green lightÂfor the Eastern European masses to forcefully remove communist officialsÂfrom power. With the choice between local nationalists and localÂex-communists, the global plutocrats have opted for the latter.ÂÂIn reality though, the transition to market economy has been going on forÂÂyears, yielding meager results and only in some areas of Eastern Europe.ÂThe countries of Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary now on theÂfastest track to "catching up with the West," benefit from their geographicÂvicinity of affluent Germany. Other post-communist countries further to theÂEast do not have the same comparative geographic advantage, offering littleÂincentive for direct foreign investments.ÂÂThe modern financial network based in Brussels and New York, makes aÂmistake, despite its financial ingenuity. These assume that rapid economicÂgrowth in Eastern Europe could be solely achieved through liberal formulasÂor by resorting to some Asian role modeling. What was successful inÂdenazified Germany in the 1950's, in Thailand and Singapore in the 1980's,Âdoes not apply to present day Rumania, Ukraine, or Croatia. It is also aÂfrequent error among many US politicians to project their own wishfulÂthinking onto Eastern Europe, pumping their taxpayers' money into the handsÂof bankrupt East European leaders.ÂÂThe gap between Eastern and Western Europe is bigger today than ever andÂlikely to get even bigger. In terms of economic output, from a ratio 12 inÂ1989, the gap in productivity between East and West increased threefold inÂ1999, notably to the ratios of 13 and 14 respectively. On the whole, eastÂEuropean countries have reached only 60 to 70 per cent of their 1989Âcommunist GDP level. In plain English it means that the purchasing power ofÂthe majority of east European citizens is worse off than during the lastÂdays of communism.ÂÂThe leading slogan which had brought down communist economies was theÂpopular outcry, "join Europe." The main motor behind this naive idea wasÂthat Western affluence would suddenly follow suit. But catching up with theÂWest has not occurred. One can now sense a widespread nostalgia for theÂeconomic predictability and guaranteed social security which communism onceÂprovided for all.ÂÂA Western visitor should not be duped by the shopping mall glitz inÂCroatia's Zagreb, Hungary's Budapest, or Russia's Moscow. Nor should theÂpresence of rowdy young "conspicuous consumers" be viewed as the trademarkÂof an improvement in living standards. The core of any democracy is itsÂmiddle class. However, in late 1945, the communists physically destroyedÂthe middle class.ÂÂAn overzealous mimicry by east European leaders copies the free marketÂcanons with the incessant regurgitation of slogans such as "the rule ofÂlaw," and "market democracy." But the real market is a mixture of banditÂcapitalism and shadow economy in full swing. This is true not only forÂRussia, but also for every other country in the region. The so-calledÂbasket-case economies of neo-communist Croatia and the bankruptÂpost-Milosevic Serbia garner little support from their respectiveÂcitizenry. This will result in a mass appeal for yet another muscled man inÂthe not too distant future. In such a fragile economic environment that isÂstill governed by never repentant communists now turned phony liberals, itÂwould be unwise for individual US businessmen to make any professionalÂcommitments.ÂÂOf course, for global sharks it is easy to lecture East EuropeanÂpoliticians on the virtues of market democracy. Despite their planetaryÂinfluence modern plutocrats ignore the heritage of communist psychology.ÂAll the present political elites from the Baltic to the Balkans areÂbasically recycled communists who have no idea of what a free market reallyÂmeans other than verbal virtuosity in free market recitals.ÂÂThe road to genuine democracy in Eastern Europe can only be achievedÂthrough reeducation and the removal of all former communists from power.ÂPrior to its economic miracle, post-war Germany had to start the process ofÂdenazification first - in order to attain the certificate of democracy muchÂlater. It is impossible for the present recycled neo-communist politicalÂclass in Eastern Europe to shed its old Bolshevik carapace. Half a centuryÂof communist social leveling, a culture of mendacity and the lack ofÂpersonal initiative have left deep scars on the souls of all EastÂEuropeans. This tragic area of Europe has historically been subject toÂunpredictable tremors. A new version of bandit capitalism mixed with theÂlegacy of communism creates a breeding ground for all sorts of terroristÂtemptations. -ÂÂTOMISLAV SUNICÂÂMr Sunic is an author, former professor in political science and contributorÂfrom Europe.ÂÂRelated study Divide and Disarm The Warmakers Plan for the Occupation ofÂYugoslavia.ÂÂCopyright (c) 2001, We Hold These Truths All Rights ReservedÂMay be reproduced only in full.ÂPlease send questions and comments to info@whtt.orgÂÂdistributed by CROWN - www.croatianworld.net - CroWorldNet@aol.comÂNotice: This e-mail and the attachments are confidential information.If youÂare not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified thatÂany dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail and the attachmentsÂis strictly prohibited and violators will be held to the fullest possibleÂextent of any applicable laws governing electronic Privacy. If you haveÂreceived this e-mail in error please immediately notify the sender byÂtelephone or e-mail, and permanently delete this e-mail and any attachments. letters@croatia.org (Nenad N. Bach) Tue, 29 Jan 2002 07:00:00 +0000