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Before I begin I would like to thank Congressman Weldon, Representatives
Dennis Kucinich, Rod Blagojevich and Randy Cunningham for ...
Before I begin I would like to thank Congressman Weldon, Representatives
Dennis Kucinich, Rod Blagojevich and Randy Cunningham for sponsoring this
book presentation before this
distinguished audience.
In the Balkans, the Serbian people have played an important role in the
history of the 19th century. Serbs single-handedly freed themselves from 415
years of Ottoman slavery. British historian William Harold Temperley said of
the Serbs in 1918, ''There is no race which has
shown a more heroic desire for freedom than the Serbs or achieved it with
less aid from others or at more sacrifice to itself.'' Those words still
apply today.
As the publisher of 90 books in this decade, I have an abiding respect for
Balkan history, my company has published 10 books on the Balkans since 1991
with two currently in the editing stages. In Croatia and Bosnia, 220 Serbian
churches were razed. In 1992, I wrote the book
Kosovo to document the existence of the 1,300 Serbian holy shrines in the
fear that if these hostilities engulfed Kosovo these churches and
monasteries would be in grave danger. My intuition proved correct. Since the
arrival of KFOR, 84 Serbian churches have been razed and
dozens more severely damaged. This cultural genocide is being ignored by the
Clinton administration as though Serbs deserve this depth of persecution.
Bridges that were downed to punish Serbia now punish the Danube nations who
are losing millions of dollars per week in revenue, as the Danube River
carried 60% of European commerce before the bombing. Madeleine Albright
convinced these European nations to commit financial suicide by going along
with NATO. Now these countries hate us for betraying them to further punish
the Serbs.
One third of all casualties were Serbian children who watched helplessly as
more than 400 of their schools were destroyed, then suffered the
psychological torment of being victims of direct bombing attacks in places
like Aleksinac, on April 6th, that leveled 450 Serbian homes, killing 10
innocent victims. These attacks on civilian targets violated the Geneva
Conventions and will leave scars on the Serbian people who will never
forgive us for killing their children.
If we as a nation truly believe in peace and charity and we spent $50
billion to destroy Serbia in the name of peace, then what do we do in the
name of charity? The answer, unfortunately, has been nothing. Instead we
continue with an ugly policy that tortures the young, the old, the sick and
helpless.
While I do not support Milosevic I am convinced that if he were to die
tomorrow the State Department would revise the sanctions not lift them.
However, we cannot have a strong European Union with 10 million people in
the heart of Europe living in the biggest ghetto since Warsaw. Fortunately
or unfortunately, Serbia is located in crossroads of Europe. A weak Serbia
will be a weak Europe.
Withholding food and medicine from 10 million people in Serbia for the last
9 years when these items are not on any sanctions list was inhumane. The 78
days of bombing did not remove Milosevic from power. How does forcing the
people of Serbia to endure a brutal winter
without heat advance our goals? There no longer seems to be any American
moral proportionality. We so successfully demonized the Serbian nation with
collective guilt that we can now starve them or freeze them to death with an
apparent clear conscience that violates every tenant of our Christian roots.
And we do this unashamedly at the close of the 20th century in which Serbs
lost 52% of their adult male population in WWI and 1.7 million victims in
the Holocaust as our allies.
I have provided each of you with a photograph that appears on page 406 of
Kosovo Crisis. I ask the question, ''why are they congratulating
themselves?'' For their successful humiliation? Those arrogant smiles mask
the truth revealed by the Spanish pilots who confessed that bombing of
civilians was no accident.
Hasim Thaci, seen on the left, is head of the KLA and anoints himself as
prime minister of Kosovo. He was seen in recent pictures kissing Secretary
Albright. He is accused of assassinating 6 of his lieutenants to maintain
power.
Next to Thaci is Dr. Bernard Kouchner, administrator of Kosovo, a former
French Socialist minister. He headed Doctors Without Borders which received
the Nobel prize for their humanitarian work. According to the press,
recently seized documents indicate the French military hate him for his
obsessive bias against Serbs.
Greece was the first nation to rush to the aid of Turkish earthquake
victims. However, for showing compassion and for coming to the aid of
suffering and dying Serbs, the Greeks were expelled from Doctors Without
Borders, illustrating that their Hippocratic Oath ends at the
Serbian border.
Dr. Kouchner displays an offensive and insulting level of racism and
Serbophobia. In a speech he gave before an Albanian audience he said
unabashedly, ''Kosovo does not belong to anyone, except the Kosovars,'' the
new buzzword for Albanians.
On March 16th German policemen stationed in Kosovo accused Dr. Kouchner of
personally stopping any inquiry into the crimes of Albanians in the KLA. His
mandate over Kosovo is as much a failure as NATO's war of aggression in
violation of their own charter.
Dr. Kouchner and NATO are overseeing the creating of a mono-ethnic state
with Albanian ambitions to usurp parts of the territory of Macedonia,
Greece, Montenegro and Southern Serbia that will destabilize the entire
Balkans.
A map on the Albanian lobby web site here in Washington attest to their
territorial ambitions. It appears on page 55 of Kosovo Crisis. If
Milosevic's quest for a ''Greater Serbia'' was so vile, why are so many
nations supporting these Albanian narco-terrorists in their plot to create a
'Greater Albania' and the drug capital of Europe?
Next to Dr. Kouchner is British General Michael Jackson. To his credit, he
refused to follow General Wesley Clark's orders to bomb the Russians who
were first to enter Pristina. He said, ''I'm not going to start World War
III over you.'' When General Jackson turned over his
Kosovo post in October he pronounced that Kosovo has seen a return to
normality, succeeded in the demilitarization of the KLA and the
establishment of law and order. ''Sadly none of these claims are true,''
wrote Gary Dempsey of the Cato Institute on November 23rd after his trip to
Kosovo.
Next to General Jackson is Commander Agim Ceku, an Albanian general who
fought in the Croatian army in 1991. Under his direction thousands of
Serbian women and children were killed. As commander over the KLA forces
they have been transformed, as though by magic, into the Kosovo Protection
Corps by merely changing uniforms. The Protection Corp stands accused by the
United Nations of killings, torture, extortion and more in an internal U.N.
document recently leaked to the press.
Ceku is responsible for a major portion of anti-Serb violence in Kosovo that
preceded the NATO bombing. Although Ceku's crimes in the Gospic region of
Croatia in 1991 are legend, and the fact that he was the primary architect
of Operation Storm responsible for the destruction of 65 UN posts, the
killing of two UN troops, the use of 60 UN troops as human shields and the
ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina whom his troops bombed
and strafed, a war crime, General Ceku continues to escaped indictment by
The Hague,thanks in major part to his British and American supporters.
Finally we see General Wesley Clark who, in spite of tens of billions of
dollars and the most sophisticated military arsenal known to mankind, only
managed to destroy 13 Serbian tanks. His failed mission in Kosovo is the
life blood that flows through the body of this book by Dr. Joksimovich.
Now that most of the Serbs have been forced from Kosovo, the Albanians have
turned on each other in ancient blood feuds and vendettas in an endless
cycle of Mafia-style family rivalries all being financed by our tax dollars
or worse, extracted from Kosovo shopkeepers as ''liberation taxes'' or
''protection'' money.
In the current anarchy in Kosovo, NATO appears dysfunctional, afraid to
leave their barracks in fear of being killed by the Albanians they were sent
to defend. NATO's and the U.S. 'zero casualties' policy is arrogant. They
seem oblivious to how many thousands of innocent
women and children they kill, then further insult the surviving families by
referring to their dead as 'collateral damage.'
Just 60 years ago in my lifetime and that of Dr. Joksimovich, Serbs were a
simple majority in Kosovo. Today Serbs are nearly extinct. Dr. Joksimovich
has successfully documented the Serbian population changes over the past 6
decade; they are a shocking example of the failure of our so-called
humanitarian concerns. The cover of Kosovo Crisis begs the real question of
our moral compassion.
Dr. Vojin Joksimovich comes by Balkan history naturally. He is the sole
survivor of his family killed by German bombing raids in WWII. He has
experienced the totalitarian regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Tito.
His great uncle, Dragic Joksimovic, courageously defended General Draza
Mihailovic in the infamous Tito show trial of 1946. Jailed for defending
Mihailovic, he died in prison of mysterious causes. Mihailovic, for those
who don't know, rescued over 500 American
airmen downed over occupied Yugoslavia, the single largest rescue of
American troops from behind enemy lines in our nations history.
Congress awarded Gen. Mihailovic the Legion of Merit award in 1942. The
State Department kept that award secret for 22 years, a stain on our
nation's integrity that Congressman Cunningham talks about on the back cover
of Kosovo Crisis.
Dr. Joksimovich graduated from Belgrade University. He has a Ph.D. in
nuclear engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, at
London University. He was a two-term past president of the Serbian Unity
Congress and is known in that capacity by
several of you here today. Without further delay, I take great pride in
introducing you to our author, Dr. Vojin Joksimovich.
For further information, the live video of the speech and speeches by
Congressman Weldon and Cunningham and photographs of this event, please
visit www.citizensoldier.com.
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