Peace, peace, where there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14)

It was one of the EU’s major claims that it had brought peace to Europe. Many well-intentioned people believed it. In the Nineties, I had frequent local wrangles with the late Phillip Whitehead MEP (Lab) – a decent man of this persuasion. As a TV producer he had been responsible for several episodes of “The World At War” and there was no doubt of his sincerity. But for those with eyes to see, the mask slipped as Germany with American support completed its long-laid plans for the destabilisation and destruction of Yugoslavia. This eventually culminated in the unprovoked and illegal NATO/EU attack in 1999.

The lady so proudly displaying the flag in this picture is Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, the present President of Croatia. The flag is not today’s Croatian flag but that of the World War II Nazi puppet state of Croatia which included most of Bosnia-Herzogovina as well as parts of today’s Serbia and Slovenia. It was one of the most appallingly genocidal regimes in history. Wartime German and Italian army commanders were horrified. Even the SS were queasy! The main victims were Serbs, Roma and Jews.

This picture was published by a Professor Tihomir Janjicek with the President’s permission. She was congratulated on her “sincere Croatianism”. If Angela Merkel was photographed with a swastika banner being congratulated on her sincere National Socialism, we would be a little uneasy. But because Croatia is “ a faraway country of which we know nothing” and its wartime symbols are unfamiliar, it passes unremarked.

Most people accepted the NATO line that the Serbs were uniquely genocidal aggressors. The propaganda was co-ordinated by those two gifted manipulators – Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell, who were sent over to Brussels to reinforce Jamie Shea, NATO’s chief propaganda officer.

As they used to say in exam papers “compare and contrast” the following quotations by Balkan leaders, guess who they were and which were supported as bringers of “European values”.

1. “Protect brotherhood and unity… Nationalism always means isolation from others, being locked in a closed circle and stopping growth…Emerge from a state of hatred, intolerance and mistrust”.
2. “Genocide is a natural phenomenon in keeping with the human-social and mythological divine nature. It is not only permitted but even recommended by the Almighty …for the maintenance and spreading of the One True Faith..”
3. “There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic institutions .The Islamic movement must take power as soon as it is morally strong enough not only to destroy the non Islamic power but to build a new Islamic one”.

The answers may surprise. They are

1. Slobodan Milosevic – Speech at Kosovo Polje 24 April 1987. Later characterised as “The Butcher of the Balkans”
2. Franjo Tudjman – first President of post war independent Croatia in his book “Wastelands of Historical Reality” – a sort of clerico-fascist Mein Kampf
3. Alia Isetbegovic – first President of post war independent Bosnia in his “Islamic Declaration”

Whilst Milosevic was tried for war crimes, Tudjman and Isetbegovic were installed by the NATO powers under EU tutelage as the upholders of the peaceful, new EU order of Europe.

Again, as they used to say in exam papers, “Discuss”.