We are in Vinkovci in a cab arranged from Osijek, from where the Habsburg world still dominated the architecture, the pulse, the very DNA of the city. The old Hungarian city of Eszék, some would argue and I would agree. Before the demons who arranged so-called World War I exploded the peaceful world of European monarchies in the name of the demon democracy, where two people can vote to slit your throat.
Oh it was not perfect, they claimed. So then they went on to murder millions and install the brutalism, the “democracy,” that continues to this day with absolute ciphers like Ursula von der Leyen, who would not have been fit to pull the burr from HRH Charles’ sandal. A woman astonishingly devoid of any sentience. Not even worthy of contempt. Merkel was a monster, but would could have imagined – at a time like this – that apres soi le deluge?
_____
We are in Vinkovci in a cab arranged from Osijek going to Vukovar. It is 1998. Earlier I am with Maarten in Osijek in the main square in the morning. Maarten did not like to get up early, as he, an Oxford PhD in modern history/philosophy, preferred to begin his day in the main square of Osijek barely before noon with endless cigarettes and espressos.
There was no rush, as he smoked his cigarettes with bleary red eyes and espressos. He had his notes and even in his desperate state he knew the plan for the day.
The evening before, we were dining al fresco near the Great Cathedral when suddenly a wedding party exploded from the church, flush with Croatian flags and a strong sense of national identity. Extremely Catholic, even as a political signature. Such a boy and beautiful woman. Croatia as a Catholic and nationalistic state had emerged from the ruins of Yugoslavia and if in a pure and platonic form we believe in secession it was a good thing. But of course it was all fake and contrived.
_____
Nationalism is a funny thing as Yugoslavia imploded, as it was a main tool of the US regime-change empire to destruct – and deconstruct – a multi-cultural, multi-confessional entity in the heart of Europe that could have posed a huge challenge to US/NATO plans to subjugate the former Soviet-sympathetic world into the new US satellite world.
The plan for the US to become the new USSR.
There was no NATO-expansion with a pan-slav identity. Hundreds of millions of well-placed dollars solved that. Whores for Moscow happily became whores for DC. Easy money. The worst communists became the best “democrats” because the systems were identical: fund the elites and suppress any opposition. The whores or their protegees still govern Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, etc.
_____
Ironically the multi-confessional Yugoslavia was held together by the strength of one of history’s unsung geniuses – Tito – (regardless of whether he was a force for good or evil), who somehow was able to carve out of nothing a sense of South Slav identity that was neither Soviet nor Langley. A convenient thorn in then-Moscow’s side…
Divide and conquer was not invented by President Clinton and his murderous neocons. Yet what could have been a normal “secession” according to confessional and even political lines, with an eye to cooperation heeding regional realities, was coaxed by the Strobe Talbot monsters of the day to benefit from the carpet bombing – metaphorically and physically – of the last pan-slav entity.
[Arab unity had long been blown up in service of the US empire – and, ahem – BTW]
Again back to normal secession, which is healthy. The Serbs and Croats could have had their bitch-fit and realized that as much as they hate each other they can still be trading partners. But Langley had other plans: impoverish them all and kill the best of them. Yeah they were so dumb, but no dumber than the highest “educated” American who watches any of the television or cable networks.
