Balkanalysis.com

Archive for January, 2004

Major Foreign Investment for Skopjeís SAEM Exhibition Center

Just one month after the Turkish holding company Koc weighed in with a $30 million investment, in the form of a new shopping mall for Skopje’s city center, a project at least twice as costly has just been announced: the complete renovation and enlargement of Skopje’s SAEM Exhibition Center.
At a press [...]

Disregarding the World’s New Rules: America’s Disingenuous War on Terror

In significant ways, the post-9/11 world is unlike any before it. In previous epochs, when empires that made all the rules and made all others play by them were defeated, their powers of domination were merely transferred to a successor. Today, however, there exists no potential [...]

Rogue Newspaper Arrives in Skopje

An upstart newspaper, ‘Vreme’ (’Time’) will open in Skopje within days, Balkanalysis.com has learned.
The paper comes as a result of a defection of first 15 and now  20 members of the country’s largest daily, ‘Dnevnik,’ which had been taken over by the German WAZ (Westdeutsche Allemeiner Zeitung) in the summer. While the Vreme team has [...]

Democrats- Just look, all this could be yours!

An email making the rounds, dispatched by Democrat National Committee chairman Terry McCauliffe, calls on supporters to “…help us shape America’s future without George W. Bush” by donating money in return for various gimmicks.
Depending on the size of the donation, one gets gimmicks of greater or lesser value. For example, we have the “Presidential Partners” [...]

Eternal Expenditures and Eternal War: Defense Lobbying and our Public Servants

Like a pig slowly roasting on a spit, the American taxpayer is being cooked- most often, without even knowing it. It’s business as usual in Washington, where pork-barrel politics continue to shape defense spending. The irony here is that spending deemed to be necessary for homeland security and anti-terrorist efforts so often turns out to [...]

Another Century of War?

By Gabriel Kolko
2002, 165 pp.
Reviewed by Christopher Deliso
Regarded as the “foremost modern historian of war” by the Guardian, scholar Gabriel Kolko is the author of many books on American history and its policy of foreign   intervention. His 1994 opus, Century of War, covered the 20th century’s destructive and almost cataclysmic pattern of [...]

Amnesty International confirms its irrelevence- the case of Jovan

Yesterday was the official ‘name day’ for St. Jovan in Macedonia, a mini-holiday for all those born with that name in the country. There was little celebrating, however, for “Jovan the Schismatic,” as Reality Macedonia memorably dubbed this sycophant of the Serbian church, bent on causing disruption and defamation of the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
For [...]

Sofia bombing mafia, not terrorist related

An explosion in downtown Sofia on Monday, in which four people were killed and seven injured, comes as “…the latest in a series of violent attacks attributed to turf wars in Bulgaria’s organised crime,” according to the Bulgarian News Network. In other words, despite al Qaeda fears every time a bomb goes off, US-friendly [...]

Note to readers- book reviews and links!

Balkanalysis.com would like to remind readers, first of all, of the growing links directory (located through clicking on the ‘web links’ box on the left side of this page), which contains links to useful websites organized in the same fashion as are our topic folders. Also interesting for travelers and those interested in international affairs [...]

The Olympic terror threat: some conceptions and misconceptions

Among the many fears Western officials have for non-conventional terrorist threats, the ‘dirty bomb’ ranks near the top. The legacy of shoddily maintained Soviet nuclear facilities housing the raw materials for a homemade nuclear device, one that could be placed even in a suitcase, has prompted international cooperation for removing said materials across the former [...]

Macedonians asked to help victims of Iran earthquake

Skopje newspapers reported earlier this week that an initiative is underway to collect money and goods for the victims of last month’s catastrophic earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam. The massive tremors left upwards of 20,000 dead in this ancient city of mud-baked houses. Many of the survivors became homeless overnight. The traditionally conservative [...]

Ominous Rumblings in Montenegro?

Another one from the don’t-say-we-didn’t-warn-you file: a new and unknown Albanian militant organization, the so-called “Montenegro National Army,” has sprung up and issued its own list of demands, namely, de facto autonomy for Albanian-inhabited parts of the Adriatic republic.
It has been quite clear that such a thing would happen. All one had to do was [...]

Welcome to the Desert of the Real!

By Slavoj Zizek
Verso, 2002, 154 pp.
Reviewed by Christopher Deliso
Not only a Slovene, Slavoj Zizek is also one of today’s leading critical theorists. As the book goes on, we are reminded of the former increasingly often, while also forced to wonder about the veracity of the latter, as the barrage of rhetorical [...]

Richard Perle to the rescue in Russia

The last months have seen neocons, worst of all being Richard Perle, protest the growing power of Russian president Vladimir Putin. He sparked their ire by cracking down on the country’s oligarchs, especially Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The real outrage for the neocons was how this act sidelined a deal between Exxon-Mobil and Yukos, a deal which would have enormously enriched a professed political enemy of Putin while putting a large chunk of Russia’s energy supply under the control of an American company.

Yet it’s not just Exxon. Neocons fear that Russian oil might be diverted into pipeline projects to not only Japan but- most fearsome of all- China.

The capper- that event that really drove the neocons ballistic- was when the Russian people disagreed with them and strengthened Putin’s party hold on parliament in December’s elections. One can only imagine the inflammatory rhetoric we will be subjected to following the Russian presidential elections of March, which Putin will win. Even these events beside, Vladimir Putin fundamentally represents what neocons hate most- a foreign politician who is actually a leader and who actually stands up to the US. In the neocon political universe, the word “leader” is synonymous with “evil dictator,” and opposing the US could only logically be done by “rogue states” and spiteful, impotent former allies. Foreign governments are respectfully asked to be caretakers, sycophants, “willing” to join coalitions and more besides. Anything less is tantamount to betrayal and roguery.

Yet there are solutions for insolence. On 31 October, following the arrest of Yukos boss Khodorkovsky, “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle demanded that Russia be expelled from the G-8: “No (other) G-8 country is allowed to treat its leading businessmen the way Russia treated Khodorkovsky,” he spewed. “I believe Russia is moving fast in the wrong direction.”

As the neocons would have it, this was yet another example of Soviet-minded politicians crushing the valiant free-market reformers of the business class. On the same day, a very loaded commentary from the Neocon-dominated American Enterprise Institute bombastically declared that:

“… a scandal of Watergate proportions is rocking Moscow. It threatens Russia’s economic revival and endangers President Vladimir Putin’s long-term political survival. Russians are calling it a signal event in their country’s history, comparable to Stalin’s purges of the 1930s or the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968.”

The tacit absurdity of this statement is only reinforced by the failure to cite anyone- anyone- except “Russians” in general in defense of the comparison with Stalin or the invasion of Prague. Unfortunately for the neocons, when somebody did ask ordinary Russians for their opinion, they voiced it loud and clear at the ballot box, just over a month later. And that was the final straw for the neocons.

The parliamentary elections of 7 December saw a big victory for pro-Putin “United Russia” candidates. Rather than countenance the possibility that a majority of Russians might actually have voluntarily supported a president with 80 percent approval ratings, they instantly joined the chorus of outside voices charging electoral unfairness and corruption. That international cuckold, the OSCE, complained the election was a “regression in the democratization process.” And US media fretted that elections were “unfair” to the opposition parties. The San Francisco Chronicle offered this misleading description of the state of affairs in Russia today:

“…as parliament looked on, he (Putin) has turned Russia into what Kremlin insiders and analysts call ‘managed democracy’- a state where democratic institutions are too weak and the opposition is too vulnerable to make a difference, and where political elites, not voters, decide the country’s future.”

The subtle implication of this approximation is that in other places (i.e., America) it is the voters and not “political elites” who decide the country’s future. However, the alternative to Putin’s “managed democracy” is not voter empowerment- rather, it is the rule of the financial elite, Russia’s oligarchs. And that, come to think of it, wouldn’t be too different from the political realities operative in today’s America.

The timing of Khodorkovsky’s arrest was politically significant, of course. A report from Reuters cited well-connected foreign investors as saying Khodorkovsky was planning to ‘buy’ 150 seats in the Duma:

“‘…he was trying to control 150 votes in the Duma,’ said one international banker who asked not to be identified. ‘He had at least 100 people lined up who would vote as he wanted.’

…Putin is known to have been infuriated when Khodorkovsky mobilized support in the Duma earlier in the year to vote down an increase in taxation of oil company profits. ‘They (the Kremlin) believe he was launching some initiative to take over the reins of power and that it was a very well thought out attempt,’ said a prominent investment banker in frequent contact with Kremlin insiders.”

While neocons portray the situation as one of a Soviet-style Putin versus champions of the “free market,” not a word is said about how Russia’s oligarchs were able to enrich themselves so much and so quickly. In fact, there is an entire website devoted to exposing the oligarchs. It begins with this summary:

“…using their links with the state and, sometimes, shadowy business connections made before the collapse of the Soviet Union, a small number of well-placed and ruthless men managed to thrive in the early days of Russia’s bandit capitalism. When the great Soviet enterprises, oil companies and fields, media outlets and mines worth billions of dollars were privatized, they used their inside positions to amass huge wealth, in the process acquiring the hatred of the Russian population and, often, the adulation of a Western press eager to find successful businessmen in the hub of the former communist empire.”

In 2000, there were no billionaires in Russia, whereas today there are 17. Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo recounted the
oligarchs’ Soviet-style methods of enrichment, and notes the following irony in regards to Putin’s chief neocon accuser:

“…it is oh-so-appropriate that Richard Perle should become the chief Western defender of the crony capitalist Khodorkovsky: Perle’s links to such companies as Trireme Partners, Boeing, and Hollinger International have paid off as a direct result of his high-level political connections.”

Indeed, the neocon affinity for dubious causes the world over is well attested in the story of Comrade Perle and his noble quest for international justice. When Perle decries Putin’s way of “treating their leading businessmen like that,” he is simply expressing his shock and confusion that now-capitalist Russia nevertheless fails to attain the same heights of state socialism so prevalent in the US today- the cozy cronyism at taxpayer expense that has made chickenhawks such as Richard Perle so fat and happy. Indeed, the innate contradictions so characteristic of Perle’s thought- attacking France while at the same time vacationing there, demanding a bloody war while having no intention of fighting in it, ordering the removal of political influence from capital in Russia while clearly not planning to play by the same rules in America- is symptomatic of all the bloated hypocrisies of neoconservative thought in general, one that is tiresome, oafish and increasingly untenable.

The Holocaust in Macedonia, 1941-1945

This article by guest author and noted Balkan historian Carl Savich was originally published by www.serbianna.com. (more information about Mr. Savich is available there). It serves as a compelling reminder of the extent and scope of genocide carried out in Macedonia by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Introduction  
Over 7,000 Macedonians Jews were killed during [...]

Travelers Tales-Turkey

Edited by James Villers, Jr., with contributions from Stephen Kinzer, Tim Cahill, Robert D. Kaplan, Richard Halliburton, and more
2002, 284 pages
Reviewed by Christopher Deliso
For those who may not know of it, Traveler’s Tales is a San Francisco-based publishing house that has earned a reputation for producing high-quality, well-designed books that bring together [...]

Don’t let them Catch You Reading! Some Notes on the Inherent Evil of Almanacs

As al Qaeda threatens a new round of spectacular mayhem, and America steps up requests for armed marshals on incoming flights, the latest warning from the FBI cuts straight to the heart of the terrorist threat in America today. No, we’re not talking about lethal chemical weapons owned by disgruntled militiamen – we’re talking about [...]

Dreamworld and Catastrophe

Dreamworld and Catastrophe by Susan Buck-Morss
A classic review from guest author Dr. Sam Vaknin.
“Dreamworld and Catastrophe” is a cry of anguish disguised as the interdisciplinary analyses of a (neo-) Marxist scholar. It is a fragmentary and tortured reaction to the betrayal of history, in the best of Walter Benjamin’s [...]

Macedonia 2004: Our Predictions

After two years of procrastination, lethargy and ambivalence, Macedonia is set to finally make headway in 2004. Either that, or it will come under renewed threat. There is potential for both scenarios to play out in a year of converging external and internal influences, but the odds are weighed more heavily [...]