Monthly Archives: May 2024

The Srebrenica “genocide” UN resolution – a closer look

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On the 24th of May 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted the scandalous resolution on the “genocide in Srebrenica”:

84 countries voted in favour,
19 against,
68 abstained.

On our Telegram channel “Beorn and the Shieldmaiden”, we published a note of protest and translated two responses – one from the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Nebenzia, and one from Serbia:

Nebenzia said that the initiators of the adoption of the resolution on the “genocide in Srebrenica” are pushing Bosnia and Herzegovina to confrontation. The Russian Federation sees the resolution as a threat to peace and security in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the region as a whole

🇷🇸🇷🇸🇷🇸

In response to the scandalous UN resolution on Srebrenica, Belgrade began displaying a running line on a high-rise building:
“We are not a genocidal people. We remember.The proud Serbia and Republika Srpska.”

This elicited a rather vehement reply in the chat from someone who claims to have lived through the events. The ensuing discussion did not result in any agreement. However, the discussion itself was very valuable and polite. In the discussion, we referenced fragments of one report that we now decided to present in full below.

Genocide is a term that needs the strictest caution when used. The discussion directed attention to several points as to whether the claim of genocide is substantiated. These points get omitted when emotional responses to the tragedy in 1995 stand alone. Here, we want to address and outline those points:

  1. Was what happened in Srebrenica a genocide? No! The very name, limiting the scope of the crime to one place, indicates this. In the discussion, Israel and the genocide of the Palestinians was argued as a parallel with a request that we abstain from using double standards.
    Here, the case in point is: if some IDF officer bombed out one Palestinian village without the consent of the top command, then that would not be a genocide either, but a war crime, a massacre. What makes the killing in Gaza a genocide is precisely the fact that the IDF is acting systematically and methodically, exterminating all Palestinians with political consent of Netanyahu and the top Israeli military command.
    Hence, Srebrenica can be classified as a war crime, a massacre – just like the massacre of the Serbs in the village of Sijekovac by the Croatian army in April of 1992.
  2. In continuation, what the UN ruling on Srebrinica does is to dilute the definition of what “genocide” is, making it less meaningful in those cases when the genocide is really taking place.
  3. The resolution seeks to place guilt on the Serbs alone. This is done as a continuation of the fragmentation of the Serbian society into several enclaves and, where they can not be displaced, sucking the life force out of them as a nation. The same was done to Russia during the “Wild ’90s” when the constant imposition of guilt and the demand to apologise for all the achievements of the USSR was forced upon the Russians, singling out that one nationality.
  4. Who profits? The strong Serbian communists were the backbone of the Yugoslavian anti-fascist partisan forces during WWII, and the Serbian people to this day carry the collective memory of suffering from collaborators and horror.
    The festering ripping off of old wounds and the push for disintegrating internalisation of blame into a feeling of guilt is intended to become for Serbia what the “Versailles Treaty” was to Germany. The two likely outcomes – either Serbia collapses directly and Serbs disappear, or Serbs fight back, causing the war to flare up again with chaos and countless victims, including as many Serbs as possible – are equally beneficial to US-NATO as they both serve the ultimate goal since the start of the breakup of Yugoslavia: To end the existence of a Serbian people.
  5. The long-term goal of the “Srebrenica genocide” resolution is the real systematic genocide of the Serbs – just like the one that happened during WWII – and which won’t be treated as a genocide as the USA would say it’s OK, having pre-emptively labelled the Serbs as “sub-humans” with, among other things, this resolution.

Before going on, a highly-recommended documentary to watch is “The Murder of Yugoslavia. The Shadow of Dayton.” A Documentary by Alexei Denisov with English subtitles. The interview with Thierry Meyssan at VoltairNet, “Serbia was my textbook about lies”, is also of highest relevance.

Srebrenica, facts without propaganda

11.01.2022

While collecting material on the events in Srebrenica, I very often saw references to this article or quotes from it, but this is how I saw the entire article for the first time. I hope the reader will be interested to read it. Moreover, over the past few months, Srebrenica has once again become a very hot topic. This happened after the publication in July 2021 of the report of the Independent International Commission for the Study of Crimes against All Peoples in the Srebrenica region in 1992-1995. The chairman of this Commission, Gideon Greif, who himself survived all the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp in childhood, made a report to the Government of the Republika Srpska on June 11 last year [2021]. The need to create such a Commission is also mentioned in this article.

Of course, the events in Srebrenica were investigated before the work of this Commission, and many research papers were written. I would like to bring one of them to your attention. There are a lot of myths and various judgments around the events in Srebrenica. Let’s try to figure out the most common ones.

SREBRENICA 1995 – 2015

DRY FACTS WITHOUT PROPAGANDA AND EMBELLISHMENTS

Authors: Stefan Karganovich, Aleksandar Pavich
Consultants: Branko Pavlovic, Chaslav Mancic
Preparation: Miodrag Zharkovich
Editor: Mr. Anya Filimonova
Published by the Strategic Culture Foundation
Belgrade, June 2015

Introduction

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in July 1995 is a very important event. We appeal to those who are primarily interested in the truth, not the politicization of events. The 20th anniversary is an occasion to draw a line. Enough time has passed to collect in one place everything that is reliably known, what can be assumed, what can only be guessed. This is an event whose consequences have shaken the entire former Yugoslavia and influenced global world politics in general. The purpose of this publication is to present both to an expert and a layman in this matter in a concise form everything that has been determined so far on the basis of the verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as what is still being disputed.

What motivated us to work on this publication?

– The truth is always needed by both victims as well as the accused and convicted, by historians who care about science, and politicians who care about the moral side of the case.

– When we do not know for sure what happened, we can confidently say that it did not happen, and the denial will be presented as the truth. The figures presented in the information space at the international level, on the territory of the former SFRY and for the Serbian public – about the “genocide” and the execution of 7-8 thousand Muslim prisoners of war from the Srebrenica enclave committed by “Serbian forces” do not stand up to any criticism. They simply do not correspond to the established facts;

– Arbitrary figures, virtually unsupported accusations, parliamentary and international “resolutions” and even sentences are used to poison the social, political, interreligious and interethnic atmosphere, sow discord, deepen disagreements and encourage extremism in the territory of the former SFRY. And this is definitely not in the interests of all countries and peoples. Except for those who are interested in constant destabilization, unrest and artificial separation of peoples;

– Srebrenica has been used many times and is still used as a convenient pretext for military aggression against sovereign states or interference in their internal affairs and for provoking internal conflicts (“we must prevent another Srebrenica” is a usual battle cry). That’s why it’s so important to establish the truth about what happened there, no matter how painful or cruel the truth may be for any party in that tragedy;

– After almost 20 years, the ICTY has failed to establish the truth, but only to label an event that has not yet been properly investigated, there is no reliable information about it. Therefore, in order to definitively establish the truth about the events in Srebrenica in July 1995, it is extremely important to create an international independent commission to determine exactly what happened in Srebrenica, so that this event ceases to have a political connotation and the mention of it ceases to be abused. This would finally bring peace to the victims, satisfy the families of the victims – and all normal people sympathize with these families, and it is not disputed anywhere that a crime occurred. The work of such a commission would open up an opportunity for truly facing up the past and for the reconciliation.

This publication is our contribution to the establishment of the truth about Srebrenica in the hope that it may encourage interested international forces, albeit with a huge delay, to take appropriate measures to finally determine its rightful place for this international problem. Without abuse, not to be used as a tool in politics, with no hidden intentions.

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How the US and NATO reuse the 1990s Yugoslavia wars playbook in Ukraine – RT repost

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The following is an article published on the 29th of March 2023 on RT, written by Nebojsa Malic, a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. The article becomes even more relevant now that UN has played the faux-“genocide” card with regard to Srebrenica. I am reposting it in full in the blog.

How the US and NATO reuse the 1990s Yugoslavia wars playbook in Ukraine

If certain strategies and tactics seem familiar, that’s because they are over 20 years old

The emotionally charged and often hyperbolic terms used by the US and its allies to describe the conflict in Ukraine gives the notion that it is something unprecedented and unseen since the Second World War. That is quite literally not true.

If anything, the behaviours, tactics and even strategies embraced by the government in Kiev and its Western patrons bear an uncanny similarity to the conflicts that destroyed Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In sharp contrast to all the reminiscing – though nowhere near enough remorse – on the recent anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, even the critics of the Western establishment seem to have forgotten about the Kosovo War, which began on March 24,1999.

After all, Operation Allied Force (NATO’s official name for the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia) is proof that NATO’s claim of being a “defensive alliance” is a lie. So is the notion that changing borders by force is something that is simply not done in the “rules-based world order,” what with the US-led bloc occupying Serbia’s province of Kosovo and endorsing its “independence” in 2008. The West was so law-abiding, it tried to justify the unjustifiable by inventing the doctrine of “responsibility to protect” and setting up an “independent” commission to declare the war “illegal but legitimate.”

No wonder, then, that the “international community” wants this forgotten, to the point where they are trying to pressure Serbia to legitimize it by threatening sanctions, isolation, and “internal turmoil.”

In May 1999, after weeks of failing to bomb Serbia into submission, NATO sought to shore up its unity and credibility by having its pet tribunal in The Hague charge President Slobodan Milosevic with war crimes. Parallels with events of the past weeks write themselves.

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The Sad State of the Modern Ukrainian Anthem

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Ukraine hasn’t died yet…

Those who have heard the present-day Ukrainian anthem wondered what it is they’ve just listened to. It’s such a sorry wailing, indeed… In fact, one a capella performance inspired a netizen to overlay it with Frédéric Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre” (Funeral March), which resulted in a perfect match! Many think that the Ukrainian anthem starts with the line “Ukraine hasn’t died yet…”, and while not exactly correct, there is a grain of historical truth to it.

But it wasn’t always like this. As a republic of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had a joyous anthem, starting with the words “Live, Ukraine, beautiful and strong,…”. But then came 1992, and Ukraine – like the rest of the former republics of the Union – traded its heroes for ghosts.

State Anthem of the Ukrainian SSR (1949 – 1953)

More about this edition of the anthem at our Beorn And The Shieldmaiden Telegram channel.

State Anthem of the Ukrainian SSR (1978 – 1992)

More about this edition of the anthem at our Beorn And The Shieldmaiden Telegram channel.

The article below is one of a series tackling the myths surrounding Ukraine, addressing the history of their modern anthem. Some of the surrounding events are also described in Project ‘Ukraine’. Documentary by Andrei Medvedev (with English subtitles)

Myths about the origin of Ukraine and Ukrainians.
Myth 4. A requiem instead of an anthem

The origin of the anthem of Ukraine, like everything related to Ukrainians, is shrouded in a fog of lies. When you listen to the Ukrainian anthem, its tedious, drawling melody, there is no desire to cry with pride for the country and admire this symbol of the state. Many people don’t even want to stand up. It is not so much an anthem, but a requiem, a memorial song.

It cannot be said that when listening to the anthem, there is a feeling of weight and spaciousness. On the contrary, the very first line of the anthem (“Ukraine hasn’t died yet…”), combined with the melody in minor tune, creates a feeling of heaviness, monotony, sadness and oppression. Why is that? Why is the Ukrainian anthem – a carbon copy of the Polish anthem, which outlines the program for the revival of the Polish state?

Before talking about the authorship and melody of the anthem, it is worth recalling the historical period when this anthem was written. It is 1862, Poland as a state has not existed for more than half a century. It is divided between Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Polish uprising of 1830 was suppressed, and a new uprising was being prepared, which would also end in failure in the following 1863.
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A 1935 conversation between I.Stalin and Lord Keeper of the Seal of Great Britain, A.Eden

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The documentary by Andrey Medvedev, “The Great Unknown War” mentions an episode taking place towards the end of the meeting between Iosif Stalin and Anthony Eden in Moscow on the 29th of March 1935, illustrating that the Soviet leadership were fully aware of who igniters of the coming war are, and the inevitability of a war in Europe, despite Soviet Union’s best efforts to prevent it.

The League of Nations.
The Geneva Lawyer: “Where do you see war? Which war? I have no war registered here.”

This 1932 caricature by the famous Soviet caricaturist Boris Yefimov illustrates the reservations regarding the potency of the League of Nations, that the reader will notice in the transcript of the entire meeting, which adds more eye-opening details of the British-German-Soviet relations. And ponder, how similar this is to the West turning a blind eye on Ukraine – with the OCSE “not noticing” the regular shelling of Donbass by Ukraine between 2014 and 2022. (This caricature is presented in our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”)

Additional reading: President Vladimir Putin on keeping the records of the pre-WWII time straight.


Stalin I.V. – Recording of a conversation with the Lord Keeper of the Seal of Great Britain A. Eden

March 29, 1935

The source: Stalin I.V. Works. – Vol. 18. – Tver: Information-publishing center “Soyuz”, 2006. pp. 86-91.

The visit took place in the Kremlin, in the office of comrade Molotov. Attended by: comrades Stalin, Molotov, Litvinov, Maysky, and from the British side – Eden, the British Ambassador, Chilston and the head of the League of Nations section in the British Foreign Office, Strang. The whole conversation lasted about an hour and a quarter.

After the first greetings, Eden began the conversation. He said something like this:

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Exhibition of Samples of Trophy Weapons (1943-1948). An article and a documentary.

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The article you are about to read is dedicated to the exhibition of the weaponry from Germany and their accomplices, trophied after their invasion of the USSR on the 22nd of June 1941.

On the 22nd of June 1943, exactly two years after the Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, the central park of Moscow, bearing the name of Maxim Gorky, opened its gates to an extensive exhibition over the trophied armaments of Nazi-Germany and its accomplices. The exhibition lasted until 1948.

The article consists of three parts: first comes the cinematographic essay, filmed in 1943 to give an overview of the exhibition, then a short note with the documents from Moscow City Archive, and finally, a portion of a historiographic work, dedicated to the exhibition.

Only one thought to add – the tradition that started during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 has now seen a rebirth during the present-day Patriotic War, with the exhibition of the weaponry of the Nazi Germany’s successor being displayed on the Poklonnaya Mountain in Moscow from the 1st of May 2024.

We publish about the trophy exhibition, past and present, at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, for example in this and this post.

Let’s go!

Trophies of the Great Battles

A short cinematographic essay, filmed in colour, presented the visible testimony over the ongoing victories on the battlefield over the invading horde.

The essay is full of jabs and snide remarks, mixed with facts and figures – just the way we like to watch the parallel present-day events unfold now, 80 years later.

Visible evidence of our victories: The Moscow Main Archive tells about the exhibition of captured German weapons

23.04.2020

The Main Archive of the capital contains documents documenting the creation of an exhibition of samples of weapons and military equipment trophied by the Red Army in battles with Nazi troops and their allies. The exposition was opened on June 22, 1943 and operated until 1948.

The decision to create an exhibition pavilion “Trophies of War” on the territory of Gorky Park was made back in December 1941, when the successful counteroffensive of Soviet troops near Moscow provided residents of the capital with exhibits of the most diverse kind. In 1942, the exhibition pavilion began to operate. However, it was located deep inside the territory of the park, near the border with the Neskuchny Garden, and did not attract mass attention. A more impressive demonstration of our combat achievements was needed.
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