THE ELITE'S EXPLANATION OF
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN CHECHNYA

INTRODUCTION

The war in the south Balkans is by now already far-advanced. Despite the presence of NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia, it has now spread to Kosovo where it is threatening to draw into the conflagration Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and Turkey - and ultimately the entire Islamic and Orthodox worlds. The American media, dominated as it is by a multicultural elite, refuses to see the war in its religious dimension - i.e., as a clash of civilizations. But this is exactly how the war is perceived on the ground by those who are involved - a war which is pitting "Christian Civilization" (specifically, the Orthodox world) against "Islamic Civilization," and the world's global elites [which the Orthodox world sees as being allied with the Muslims (and that's a whole story in and of itself - more about that in upcoming articles)].

One would think, of course, that if given the choice, most average Americans (the great majority of whom consider themselves to be Christian) would support the Serbs [who - while they are NOT NATO members - are, nonetheless, Christian (Orthodox)] over and against the Muslims. That, of course, isn't what's happening - largely because the American elites have done everything they can to obfuscate the "Christian vs. Muslim" aspect of the conflict and - in connection with this - to demonize the Serbs (i.e., the Orthodox Christians) by "playing up" their atrocities (and these atrocities are indeed real and quite widespread) while at the same time "playing down" the atrocities the Muslims have been involved in.

THE REAL REASON BEHIND
AMERICA'S KOSOVO INTERVENTION

And why is this so? - the immediate reason is the elite establishment's strategic "tilt" towards Muslim Turkey [which historically has infuriated the Greeks (who are Orthodox Christians)]; the United States has an extremely close military and intelligence relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally, that lets U.S. pilots fly missions against Iraq from a NATO base at Incirlik. That military post also serves as an electronic-eavesdropping station for the U.S. intelligence community in the Middle East - a post that the CIA considers more vital to U.S. hegemony over the area than even Israel.

And then, of course, there's the matter of oil - and not just Middle Eastern oil, [where American and British multinationals (Exxon, Shell, Mobil, etc.) have billions and billions of dollars invested], but also Caspian Sea oil (where the same multinationals are preparing to spend billions more in pipelines which they plan to build across Turkey and / or in countries close to Turkey - and all this to say nothing of the additional billions these same multinationals are spending in drilling rights and pumping operations in Azerbaijan, a country contiguous to Turkey which is populated by "Turkik Muslims." The multinationals could very well see all these billions go up in smoke if Turkey - which has a growing problem with militantly anti-American Islamic fundamentalists - were destabilized as a result of being drawn into the conflict in the Balkans; hence America's "tilt" towards the Muslims and Turkey - a "tilt" which, again, necessarily demands that the elite "play down" the religious aspect of the war while at the same time "demonizing" the Serbs (i.e., the Orthodox Christians). "Big Oil" must be able to show the Muslims of the Middle East that they can "deliver" American support in this kind of crisis.

Some Christians, of course, naively believe that "Big Oil" simply doesn't have this kind of clout - the kind that can dictate U.S. foreign policy. But they do! Take Exxon and Mobil, for instance. Exxon is the largest oil company in the world; Mobil is the third largest. The two are merging. Together they will have enormous financial and industrial power, which translates, naturally, into political power. Only two dozen nations in the world have Gross Domestic Products larger than the combined annual sales of these two giants ($180 billion in 1997). Greece has a Gross Domestic Product of only half that size, which is why Greece's concerns in the Balkans don't count for much at the State Department - and the same applies to all the other Orthodox states in the Balkans. No, Mobil's and Exxon's interests lie with the Muslim nations of the Middle East and the Caspian Sea; it's these nations that Mobil and Exxon want to ingratiate themselves to - and to hell with the Orthodox world. Of course, if the shoe were on the other foot, it's the Muslims that "Big Oil" would hang out to dry. In the world of Mobil and Exxon (and, ipso facto, the American elite's world), money rules!

Naturally, the State Department doesn't want its real reasons known as to why the U.S. is intervening in Kosovo - after all, it's pretty hard to justify sending American soldiers into battle for the sake of Mobil's, Exxon's, Shell's, BP's, and Standard Oil's "bottom line." Other reasons have to be given: hence America's sudden "humanitarian concerns" for the Kosovar Muslims - a concern which, strangely enough, hasn't manifested itself insofar as Africa (Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, Ethiopia, etc.) is concerned where many more human beings have been killed over the past few years than have ever been killed in the former Yugoslavia - and this is to say nothing about what's been occurring in East Timor, certain parts of Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. [And one shouldn't make the mistake that just because Africans are "black" and Asians are "yellow" that "race" has had anything to do with the elites' unconcern with regard to the humanitarian debacles going on in Africa and Asia; if money were involved there, the elite would be very concerned. But there is no money involved: hence the lack of concern. To the elites, it's not race that matters, it's money!

"Race" and "religion" are of no concern to the elites; that may be what drives the masses, but not the elites, except when "race" and "religion" can be used to "tame" the masses' folly. It's precisely because of this indifference towards "race" and "religion" that the elites seem on occasion to be embracing the liberal left's concept of "multiculturalism;" when one harbors no real thoughts for "race" and "religion," one can easily adopt a "neutral" attitude towards them which, to those who are ignorant of the elite's ways, seems to indicate "tolerance," but which in reality is nothing more than indifference. And it's exactly here that minorities like the Albanian Kosovars and the Bosnian Muslims are making a big mistake, thinking that there is conviction behind America's "tilt" towards them. But there is none, and should circumstances change, the elite will shrug them off without even so much as a "fond goodby."

MONEY - THE FUEL THAT DRIVES THE ELITE

Money! - this is what the American elite is all about. Not race! Not religion! Not "humanitarianism!" These people have no real concern beyond money; indeed, the very real fact of the matter is, they don't even have any real sense of "right" and "wrong." As we have indicated previously, "right" to the elite is simply that which advances their own selfish pecuniary ends; "wrong" is that which hinders them; these words possess no other meaning beyond this - and it's for this reason that, when their "money interests" are in jeopardy [as they are in the Balkans (at least insofar as preventing Turkey from being drawn into the fighting)], they have no real compunction about sending in the military; after all, it's not their sons and daughters who are in danger, but the sons and daughters of the working-class, and who cares about them? Certainly not the elite!

Some people, of course, will say that we are being too harsh in our condemnation of the American elite; that certainly they stand for some "greater good" beyond their lust for wealth; that some kind of "greater purpose" lies at the heart of what they're doing. But they're wrong! As the late Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University writes,

"The pursuit of the moneyed-life is ... (the elite's) commanding value, in relation to which the influence of other values has declined, so ... (that they have) easily become morally ruthless in its pursuit ..."

GREAT SWELLING WORDS OF VANITY

The sad truth is, when the elite speaks of "good," "purpose," "humanity," etc. there is nothing behind their speaking except a vacuum. Indeed, there is a certain morose void to all the "purposes" of the elite - a hollowness that resembles the emptiness of a body without a soul. Their idealism is nothing more than a subterfuge, a contrivance, a masquerade - an excuse for what really drives them, which is the actual process of wealth accumulation - though they all too often possess an uncanny and extraordinary way of hiding this fact behind a pretense of flattery and charm. Indeed, Peter warned,

"For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure (people) ... through much wantonness ..." (2 Pet. 2:18)

Mills continues:

"Whenever the standards of the moneyed life prevail, the man with money, no matter how he got it, will eventually be respected. (In America), it is not only that men want money; it is that their very standards are pecuniary. In a society (i.e., the American society) in which the money-maker has ... no serious rival for repute and honor, the word 'practical' comes to mean 'useful for private gain' and 'common sense', 'the sense to get ahead financially'."

And it's precisely these people who are behind America's intervention in Kosovo. God help us all! - for these are the basest of all people; they are vile, sinister, ungodly and wretched, and so much so that Jesus said of them -

"... How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! "... how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:23-25)

No! - humanitarian matters have nothing to do with the elite's (and, ipso facto, the State Department's) "concern" for the "Albanian Kosovars." It's money that's driving the American intervention in Kosovo - the lust for "black gold" (oil) which the Muslims have and the Serbs don't.

EXPOSING THE ELITES LIES: THE MATTER
OF KURDISTAN AND ABDULLAH OCALAN

Nonetheless, the State Department continues on with its subterfuge - i.e., that the American intervention in Kosovo relates to its "humanitarian concerns" for the "Albanian Kosovars" and not to the American elite's concern for Middle Eastern and Caspian Sea oil; but interventions in the civil wars of a sovereign state are usually considered off limits by the so-called "international community," and though the United States is acting in concert with the NATO countries, the United Nations has not authorized the strikes - if only because the Russians would have vetoed such an intervention. Indeed, Ruth Wedgewood, a Yale Law School professor who's now on leave at the Naval War College, has remarked that insofar as the Kosovo intervention is concerned, the Russians are probably right - that the Kosovo intervention is "... without easy precedent."

Still, the Administration - whipped up to a furor by the commercial interests of "Big Oil" - plods on, preferring to believe that, as Robert Turner, the associate director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, says - the principle of national sovereignty can be "trumped" by pressing humanitarian demands. But if that were the case, why hasn't the United States intervened in Turkey itself where the Turks have been involved in an appallingly bloody war against the Kurds. The Kurds, who number around twenty million people (more people than in either Syria or Iraq, and more people in fact than the great majority of nations at the end of the twentieth century), inhabit the great mass of territory in eastern Turkey where they constitute, like the Albanians in Kosovo, the overwhelming majority of the population. But here - unlike the situation in Kosovo where the U.S. sides with the rebels - the U.S. sides decisively with the central government (i.e., the Turks), and so much so that it has for years supplied the Turks with the arms and intelligence necessary for the Turks to destroy the Kurds. And just how deeply is the U.S. involved? - very deeply as the recent case of Abdullah Ocalan demonstrates.

Ocalan is the leader of the Kurdish rebellion in eastern Turkey; he is considered a folk hero and a "freedom fighter" by the great mass of Kurds living in the area. He leads the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged an intense and persistent campaign against Turkey for the past 15 years, seeking - like the Albanians in Kosovo - autonomy for the Kurdish people. About 37,000 people have died in this fight - mostly Kurds. But the U.S. government considers Ocalan a terrorist. Since October 1998, largely as the result of U.S. diplomatic pressure, Ocalan had been on the run - from Syria to Italy to Russia to Greece. Each time Ocalan thought he had found refuge, the CIA was able to persuade the host country to refuse him sanctuary, forcing him to take flight again in an increasingly desperate search for asylum. He finally landed in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, on February 2.

It was a poor choice of hideouts. More than 100 U.S. intelligence officers and law enforcement agents, along with Kenyan security officials, were in Nairobi investigating the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy, which took 213 lives in August. Members of that team quickly discovered Ocalan had arrived in Nairobi. They immediately placed the Greek Embassy under surveillance and monitored Ocalan's cell phone conversations, while he placed calls to political contacts, seeking sanctuary. The surveillance information gave Turkish commandos the chance to capture Ocalan with the help of Kenyan security officers acting at the behest of the CIA. The commandos captured Ocalan after he had agreed to be driven to the Nairobi airport by a Kenyan security officer working with the CIA.

The thing to be remarked upon in all this is the utter hypocrisy of the U.S. government's stand with regard to the situation in Kurdistan as compared to its stand with regard to the Albanians in Kosovo. There is no real difference between the two situations - except oil! Oil (and, ipso facto, money) is the difference. It seems that America's humanitarianism is linked to money; those who have it are the recipients of America's "humanitarian" concern; those who don't have it are ignored, or - as in the case of Ocalan and the Kurds - are hunted down and butchered.

THE BLINDNESS OF THE ELITES

The blindness of the elites in all this - their utter disregard of the consequences of their action - is enough to take one's breath away. In blindly pursuing their economic interests, they have allowed themselves to be blinded to other forces which in the end have the potential to destroy them. The fact is, in intervening in the Balkans (and specifically Kosovo), they have "let slip the dogs of war" and unleashed forces over which they have little understanding and no control. The elites are not quite as omniscient and "all knowing" as they would like people to believe. The great mistake of all elites is to underestimate the passion of the masses, especially insofar as "religion" and "race" are concerned, and in doing so igniting conflagrations which, as we just indicated, have in the past devoured them. This may be exactly what is in store for the elites in the Balkans. "Race" and "religion" may not mean much to the American elites, but they certainly do to the contestants on the ground in the Balkans.

Take the Serbs, for example: what follows is a description by the Serbian press of what's happening in the south Balkans. The article is permeated with Serbian nationalist fervor and religious hype; but before one condemns it as nothing more than the blather of uneducated, narrow-minded buffoons, one should remember that this is exactly the kind of hype the Religious Right is engaged in here in the United States; different players, a slightly different dialogue, but essentially the same play - and not so much different from what was in vogue in this country not more than a generation ago. This is the kind of hype that is - in the end - prone to make devils out of one's opponents and set them up for extinction - and all in the name of God. And Christians in this country are making a big error in believing that they are immune from these passions. The fact is, if the Serbs can fall victim to this kind of pathology, Americans can too!!

For instance, consider what Senator Beveridge once said from the Senate floor with regard to America's religious and political destiny - it isn't so different from what appears below with regard to Serbia, and not that much different from how the Religious Right would present its case - again, different players, a slightly different dialogue, but the same play:

"We will not repudiate our duty ... we will not renounce our part in the mission of our ... (people) as the trustee under God, of the civilization of the world ... We will move forward to our work ... with gratitude ... and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His Chosen People, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world ..."

Beveridge's belief that America was, in its origins, institutions, history, and international conduct, God's chosen nation is something few in the Right - including today's Religious Right - doubt. As with the Religious Right in this country, the Serbs believe that what's occurring in the Balkans has little to do with anything else except religion - and the extent to which this is true inosfar as the Serbs are concerned is clearly demonstrated by a poster in the office of General Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serbs; it depicts green paint symbolizing "fundamentalist Islam" spilling over the blue flag of the European Community. Mladic and his fellow Serbs are convinced that what's going on in Bosnia and Kosovo is part of a coordinated strategy they call the "green transversal" - the effort by Islamic fundamentalists to regain their lost Balkan possessions, possessions which at one time reached all the way to the borders of Austria.

Mladic and his followers believe that they are the only ones standing in the way of Islamic expansion northward into Europe, and that though they are little understood now - mainy because of the "obfuscation" of the elite press in the West - someday "Christian" Europe will thank them for the sacrifices they have made to stop this expansion - and there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the Serb's fear of Muslim expansion into Europe is being echoed by right-wingers throughout Europe - especially in Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Greece, and Italy.

RELIGION AND THE SERBS

The analysis is by Prof. Dusan Batakovic, considered by the Serbs to be one of their most distinguished scholars. He is a professor at the Historical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The article is entitled: "KOSOVO AND METOHIA: A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS."

Dr. Batakovic writes:

"Kosovo is the native and ancestral land of the Serbs. It encompasses an area of some 10,800 square kilometers and is considered to be the Serbian Jerusalem. Almost all of the great historical Serbian monasteries, churches and fortresses are located in this province. Kosovo is the scene of the famous battle fought on St. Vitas Day (June 28) in 1389, when Serbian Prince Lazar and the Turkish emir Murad both lost their lives. The Ottoman's breakthrough into the heart of Southeast Europe following Serbia's defeat at Kosovo marked the beginning of the five centuries long clash between Christianity and the Islamic World. This struggle continues to this day, and its most visible manifestation is the struggle between the Serbs, mainly Orthodox Christians, and the ethnic Albanians, mainly Muslims. The oath of Prince Lazar - the great prince which led the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo - is derived from the New Testament tradition of martyrdom: that it is better to obtain freedom in the celestial empire of Jesus Christ than to live humiliated under the oppression of the earthly kingdom. Indeed, during the long centuries of Turkish rule, this oath became the key to Serbian national ideology - and so much so that the Kosovo oath, woven into the national epic, became the basis upon which the Serbs built the ideology of resisting Muslim oppression rather than accepting injustice - even when the odds seem hopeless. The Kosovo pledge was like a flag raising resistance against the tyrannical rule of the Ottomans - a resistance which had as its final aim the restoration of the Serbian national state. Countless generations of Serbian children received their first notions of themselves and the world by listening to folk poems describing the Kosovo sufferings, the apocalyptic fall of the Serbian Empire, the heroic death of Prince Lazar, the betrayal of Vuk Brankovic, the heroism of Milos Obilic who, sacrificed himself to reach the tent of the emir during the Battle of Kosovo and cut him down with his sword.

"Over the centuries, the Serbs were forced to withdraw to the west and the north, and during this time, the only political tradition the Serbs retained was the Kosovo pledge. When the first national revolution directed against the Muslims in the Balkans broke out in Serbia in 1804, its leaders dreamed of a new battle of Kosovo through which they would reestablish their lost empire. The influence of the Kosovo covenant continued throughout the entire 19 century. At last, the centuries-dreamed-of fight with the Turks occurred in the fall of 1912. The Serbian army liberated Kosovo in a few week, while the forces of Montenegro, Serbia's sister state, marched triumphantly into Metohia. Negotiations on the final unification of the two Serbian states were interrupted by World War I.

"Kosovo was at the moment of liberation in 1912, a backward agricultural community with a mixed Serbian and ethnic Albanian population - a land devastated by the raging of tribal anarchy. Serbs, however, even then made up almost half of the entire population in spite of the huge waves of emigration in the previous period. The Pan-Islamic policy of Abdulhamid II (1878-1909) had made Kosovo and Metohia, beside Armenia, "the most unfortunate land in the world." The Muslims were crushing the Christian Armenians in Asia Minor, and Muslim Albanians in the European provinces (i.e., Turkey's holdings in the south Balkans) were dealing in the same way with the unreliable Christian subjects of the Sultan - i.e., the Serbs, the Greeks and the Bulgarians. The three centuries long domination of the Islamized ethnic Albanians in the Balkans, culminated at the beginning of the 20th century. Living for centuries with gun in hand, the Albanians had discovered in the plains of Kosovo and Metohia space for further expansion. The Islamic authorities of the Sultan had granted their co-religionists, the Albanians, the right to persecute Christians. In time, a strange conviction settled itself among the Albanians that Islam was the religion of the master race and Christianity that of slaves.

"In the interwar period (1918 - 1940), the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, by colonizing the rich but uncultivated spaces of Kosovo and Metohia, tried not only to return the Serbian character to these areas, but also to establish modern European institutions, as it did in other provinces of the Yugoslav state. The Muslim Albanian population of Kosovo, however, found it very difficult to adjust to the new reality where, instead of a status of absolute privilege which they had enjoyed during the Ottoman rule, they received only civil and political equality with the people they had only recently treated as serfs. During World War II, the Muslims of Albania, taking advantage of their alliance with Hitler, drove out much of the Serbian population of Kosovo and burned their homes, set fires to and robbed the Serbian churches, and desecrated the Christian cemeteries of the Serbs. The development of political circumstances in communist Yugoslavia suited the further ethnic Albanians' national emancipation. Exhausted by the war (1,200,000 dead in World War I in Serbia alone, and at least that many in World War II), the Serbs became pawns in the hands of the new Communist regime. Tearing apart what little political power remained to the Serbs in Yugoslavia, the communists created several federal units by dividing up the Serbian lands. The communist authorities in 1945 forbade with a special decree the return of the Serbian population to Kosovo, while at the same time granting special status to the Muslims.

"Kosovo and Metohia were separated from Serbia and granted the attributes of a state within the Yugoslav federation. The confederalization of communist Yugoslavia excluded Kosovo from Serbian authority, turning it into a state with an almost independent government. In order to legalize formally the Albanization of the Province, the ethnic Albanian communist leadership threw out the name "Metohia" (which means in Greek "church-owned land") and encouraged hundreds of attacks on Orthodox believers, priests, monks, nuns, churches and monasteries, and annexed monastery property. These actions, of course, were merely manifestations of a centuries deep religious and national intolerance towards Christians. The restoration of religious life for the Muslims in Kosovo and Metohia was conducted parallel with the Albanization. New mosques sprang up (about 700 mosques were built in Yugoslavia under communist rule, more than during the several centuries long Ottoman dominion); the Muslim clergy's primary demand from the believers was for them to have as many children as possible. The highest birthrate in Europe derived also from the religious traditions of the ethnic Albanians. The aim in all this was to push out the Serbs. The Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia became, in their own state, a persecuted and unprotected minority. From making up almost half the population of Kosovo after World War II, the number of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia dropped to 15-20% of the population. One year after Tito's death, in March 1981, the Muslims of Kosovo announced their rebellion against inclusion in the Yugoslav state by setting a fire to the Pec Patriarchate, a complex of medieval Christian churches, where the throne of the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church is formally located.

"It surfaced again that religious intolerance remained the deepest layer of their obsession against the Serbs. Several days later the Muslims came out into the streets demanding that the Province get republic status and the right to self-determination - even the right of secession. Attacks on Serbian churches and the demolishing of Orthodox monuments became an everyday form of expressing Albanian (i.e., Muslim) identity. The persecution of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia and their innumerable appeals to the Serbian and Yugoslav public, finally managed to shake the Serbs out of their comfortable Yugoslavism (i.e., their multiculturalism). It appeared that Yugoslavism (i.e., multiculturalism) was only an ideological framework which did nothing more than neutralize the national potential of the Serbs. Evoking from the forbidden past their Kosovo pledge, they began to once again discover the essence of their national and religious identity - an awareness that vital Serbian and Christian interests were being threatened. This kind of thinking spread under the influence of certain Christian intellectuals throughout all of Greater Serbia as more and more Serbs began to realize that they were being threatened both as Christians and as Serbs. Realizing that their nation and their religion were endangered, Serbs began to return to their national traditions and their religion; realizing that once again, like in the age of the Ottoman rule, their lands would be the scene of the final phase of the centuries-long clash between Islam and Christianity."

ELITE DISCONNECTION

THIS IS RADICALIZATION, plain and simple! This kind of rhetoric leaves the elite - especially the American elite - dumbfounded. They simply do not understand it. To hear people like U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright tell it, Slobodan Milosevic and his ilk can be brought to heel by an appeal to the interest of their personal economic well-being; that if once they can be brought to see that the Serbian economy is being put into jeopardy, they will yield - and this is the problem with all elites. They believe that the great mass of people react the way they do: by a rational recourse to their wallets and the "bottom line." But that simply isn't the case. What the elites fail to comprehend is that there actually are people to whom things like "race" and "religion" really count.

RADICALIZATION IN THE ORTHODOX WORLD

It's hardly surprising then that the elite media in the West keeps missing important - and troubling - political trends throughout the Slavic world as NATO and the West continue to press their attack against the Serbs. The effect that all this is having throughout the Orthodox world - in Greece, in Macedonia, in Bulgaria, in Romania, in the Ukraine, in Belarus, etc. - is disturbing. In pressing home their attack against the Serbs, the West is galvanizing Orthodoxy against themselves, as the recent demonstrations in Skopje, Moscow, Sophia, Minsk, Athens, etc. so clearly demonstrate. The West is erring greatly in thinking that economic matters trump "religion" and "race" in the Orthodox world; that in order to get IMF funding for their troubled economy, Moscow is willing to see their brother Slavs in Serbia pounded into insensibility.

As Alexander Yanov tells it, such predominance of economics might have been excused in the heady years of President Boris N. Yeltsin's power, but not any more. Yanov writes:

"The trouble is that not just Yeltsin but an entire era is fading from the picture. A new and dangerous one looms on the horizon while we refuse to see its omens. One can't help but recall the Western press of the early 1930s, still engrossed in the Weimar Republic's financial agony, on the verge of the Nazi takeover of Germany.

"Some of the omens ignored by our media include, for instance, the extraordinary visit to Russia of Vojislav Seselj, the vice premier of Serbia, as well as his sensational appeal for a Slavic Union of Russia, Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Belarus. Of course, Seselj is habitually called the "mad dog" of Serbian nationalism, an "irreconcilable" next to whom even Slobodan Milosevic looks like a peace-loving moderate. What's really important, though, is that in the Russian city of Yaroslavl, Seslej's appeal was met with a standing ovation ...

"The main thing missed, however, was that Seselj and Lukashenko are politicians, not amateur travelers. Unlike our media, they must have smelled change in Moscow's political air. Why otherwise would they bother suddenly forging an alliance with Russia's own "irreconcilables," the anti-Western nationalists who worked hard for the last seven years trying to provoke a confrontation with the West? It's a fact that, for all their ravings about the Zionist conspiracy deliberately ruining Russia, these gentlemen were until now of limited value to their Serb and Belarus brethren. With Yeltsin in the Kremlin and lacking a credible and popular leader, they had no chance to radically change Russia's foreign policy. Not any more (especially now in light of the American attack on Serbia) ...

"If so, their political program would seem to deserve some media scrutiny. Especially the points that are of such concern to Seselj and Lukashenko: (1) the immediate Anschluss of Belarus (which for Russia would be the same as Austria's consolidation with Germany in 1938); (2) The return to Russia of the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol (compare it to Hitler's demand for the return of the city of Danzig on the eve of World War II); (3) the creation of a Slavic Union of Russia-Belarus, Yugoslavia and the Ukraine, which Lukashenko intends to lead. If the "treasonous" Ukrainian leadership [half of the Ukraine is "Western Christian" (i.e., Catholic), and the other half is Orthodox - though they are all Slavs] refuses to join the ranks, Seselj and Lukashenko will threaten a civil war - 10 million Russians, after all, live in Ukraine. "

A RUSSIAN-UKRANIAN-BELARUS-SERBIAN ALLIANCE

Yanov continues:

"So what happens if Lushkov indeed wins the presidential elections? Given that he is one of the most fervent champions of incorporating Belarus as well as of the return of Sevastopol, some kind of Russian-Ukranian confrontation would certainly be in the cards. It's hard to imagine, if that occurs, the U.S. not intervening on behalf of Ukraine. And here we see clearly what Seselj and Belarus President Alexander G. Lukashenko are up to - American intervention is all that the "irreconcilables" need to turn Russia into a Serbia-in-the-making.

"There is no doubt in this case that Russia would be hopelessly ruined economically, just as Serbia is. Yet, again like Serbia, Russia would be fueled by an all-consuming "patriotic" fervor of imperial restoration. It's easy to envisage what the emergence of such a nuclear mega-Serbia would mean for us. Just imagine the mayhem that Iraq in the Middle East or Serbia in the Balkans might create if allowed to operate with impunity behind a Russian nuclear shield."

Yanov warns that what the West has been doing to Russia in the last seven years is a carbon copy of what it did to Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Should we be surprised, then, if identical policies produce identical results? And now with the American intervention in Kosovo, the Western elite is pushing this process forward that much more rapidly.

Carol J. Williams of the Los Angeles Times writes concerning the Western elites:

"Western politicians continue to speak of breaking Milosevic's unfathomable power (over the Serbs) to turn isolation into honor and suffering into patriotic virtue, but their hopes of bombing the mastermind of Balkan violence into submission are likely pinned on the misguided assumption that Milosevic (and the Serbian people) expects victory.

"Instead of capitulating to the Western powers ... Milosevic may be more disposed to take his place among Serbian martyrs ... Defeat at the hands of formidably larger forces is the conerstone of Serbian national identity, and it has been Milosevic's keen sense of how to make his people feel innobled by the role of underdog that has enhanced his power."

She's right!

RADICALIZATION IN THE "CHRISTIAN WEST"

And it's not just in the Slavic world that the elite's idiotic "globalization" policies are pushing radicalization. Consider what's happening in our own backyard in the West. To countless numbers of ordinary, "every-day" Europeans, the thought of a Muslim state (Albanian, Bosnian or otherwise) in the center of the Balkans strikes a certain terror in their hearts. As we have already indicated, to the Austrians, Germans and other Western Europeans - if not to Americans - it was not such a long time ago that the "Muslim terror" stretched all the way up to the gates of Vienna and threatened the heart of "Christian" Europe with destruction and ruin. The disconnection here between the media and what ordinary people are thinking screams out for recognition - and, more somberly, as a warning to those who will listen.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former American Ambassador to the United Nations under the Reagan Administration, writing for the Los Angles Times News Syndicate, believes that

"... in France, Britain, (and) Germany (as well as in the) United States, leaders have involved their countries more deeply ... in international and multilateral relationships than voters desire, and have cared less than voters have desired about their national interest."

She believes that this has occurred largely as a result of a growing gap between the leadership elites in these countries and the people. For example, Kirkpatrick cites the gap which has developed in France between the French leadership and the people. She writes,

"The gap between the French political elite and rank-and-file voters could be clearly seen in the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. It took an intense effort by the government and the elite press to rally the barest majority to approve the proposal.

"That so much effort was required to produce so narrow a victory was a reproach not only to the President, but to France's political ... (elite) ... The French news magazine L'Express described the contest this way: 'On one side was the France of the elites: of university graduates, property owners, residents of the great cities, all those who see Europe as a single place. On the other side is the France of the unemployed, the outsiders, peasants and workers - the Europe of all the 'little people' who fear they will be abandoned, who have in the back of their heads many unfulfilled promises, and who, when finally asked their opinion, took great pleasure in saying zut to the left, the right, the bosses, to the whole elite all crowded on this occasion into the same boat'."

She continues,

"Whatever happens, it seems clear that many European leaders have seriously underestimated popular resistance to the pace of European integration. More specifically, they have underestimated popular concerns about the loss of sovereignty, identity and control to a remote bureaucracy in Brussels."

And when it comes to the matter of "race" and "religion," this is especially true. The disconnection between the political elites in Europe and what Kirkpatrick calls the "little people" makes this abundantly clear. For example, take Austria where Jorge Haider, an increasingly popular nationalist politician, recently railed against the growing Moslem presence there. He charged that -

"... we didn't win the war against the Moslems 500 years ago at the gates of Vienna to be told now that we can't wear crucifixes in our public schools."

He was reacting to pressure by the secular elites to ban the wearing of crucifixes in public school as "inflammatory" against the Moslem community. Kirkpatrick concludes ominously,

"In the United States, there is also evidence of popular discontent with the government's level of international commitment (and its increasing penchant for multiculturalism) ... Surveys show widespread criticism of ... (the elite) as being too concerned about foreign affairs and too little devoted to promoting American interests."

Daniel Yankelovich writes in Foreign Affairs magazine that many Americans feel their political leaders have been shortsighted and ineffective in the promotion of American interests. Yankelovicy believes that the elite has gotten dangerously ahead of most Americans in their enthusiasm for "globalism." It is easy to understand how this could happen. Summits are enormously attractive to political leaders. They like to talk things over with equals and share the responsibility for decisions. Moreover, Yankelovich writes, the political culture encourages multilateral consultation and decision-making as more "high-minded" than national decision-making. Multinational organizations are more likely than purely national ones to emphasize long-range, altruistic, global goals. They also permit leaders to forget their dependence on the people - and it is here that elites run the very great risk of being swept from power.

ELITE POWER IS A VERY DELICATE AND FRAGILE THING

The fact is, despite the mythology which surrounds elite power, it is in reality a very delicate and fragile thing. Indeed, throughout history elites have been challenged and eventually destroyed - and this is especially so in democracies or in democratically controlled organizations, although it is also true in absolutist countries as the outcome of the French Revolution and the recent collapse of communism so adequately demonstrate.

Challenges to that control occur when the disconnection between the elites and the "common man" become too great to sustain - and once such challenges take hold, they have a way of expanding until they at last gain "critical mass," at which time all bets are off and the elite can easily become prey to the mob. THIS IS WHAT RADICALIZATION IS ALL ABOUT, and the strange and ironic thing about all this is that the elites, more than anyone else, are responsible for "letting slip the dogs of war" insofar as ethnic radicalization is concerned.

It is already well advanced in the Islamic world, and now - as a result of the American intervention in Kosovo - is gaining "critical mass" in the Orthodox world. It's also beginning to take hold in the West as radicalization in one civilization plays off the radicalization of the other civilization.

DON'T GET CAUGHT

As we indicated in our last journal, the only way we can avoid being caught up in these currents is to begin walking in the light of God's Word, specifically that Christ's Kingdom has nothing to do with this world ["... My kingdom is not of this world ..." (John 18:36)] - and that out political involvement in it will not make it a nicer place in which to live; all it will likely accomplish is to pollute us. Christ's Kingdom is a heavenly kingdom whose builder and maker is God (Heb. 11:10) - and it is only there that the reality of Galatians 3:28 can be truly lived out; it's only there where there is -

"... neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

In this world, such distinctions will remain, and there is nothing we can do to alter that fact. Our job while we remain here on earth (and it is, in the final analysis, a pretty short stay) is not to reform the earth (it is fit now only for judgment), but to get as many people out of it as we can. As the words of that old Baptist hymn of long ago declare, our home now is with Christ in the heavens, it has NOTHING to do with this present EVIL world:

"This world is not our home, we're just a passing through, Our treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue, The angels beckon us from heaven's open door, And we can't feel at home in this world anymore.

"Oh Lord you know, we have no friend like you, If heaven's not our home, then, Lord, what will we do, The angels beckon us from heaven's open door, And we can't feel at home in this world anymore."

The Bible says that we are "partakers of a heavenly calling" (Heb. 3:1) having nothing to do with the affairs of this earth. Paul declares that all those who wish to serve God must consider the world as alien territory, and they themselves as only "sojourners" in it - people who are merely transiting through it on their way to another land - a heavenly country whose "builder and maker is God" (Heb. 11:10); and that while here on earth, there is a necessity laid upon them to continually remind themselves of their "alien status" by -

"... confessing (both in word and in the way they live) that they are strangers (foreigners) and pilgrims (travelers, wanderers, wayfarers) on the earth ..." (Heb. 11:13)

DO NOT LOVE THE WORLD

The Bible says:

"Do not love the world, or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world ... comes not from the Father ..." (1 John 2:15-16)

and -

"The whole world lieth in the evil one." (1 John 5:19)

As God's children, we have been called out of the world for there is NOTHING that we can do to make it any better. The church is a "calling out" from the world (John 15:19; 17:14-16; Gal. 6:14; James 4:4) - she is called out to witness that she is not of this world, but of heaven; that she is united to a glorified Christ in heaven (Eph. 1:18-23; Eph 2:6), and not of this world, even as He is not of this world (John 18:36).

The world - including, as a simple extension of logic, the United States - is like some great passenger ship which has struck an iceberg; it is sinking; the damage is of such a nature that the ship is beyond repair and doomed. As Christians, we have not been called to busy ourselves in the hopeless effort of repairing the damage, but instead we have been called to get as many people off the ship as is possible before it sinks. The ship itself is doomed! We are to jump into the lifeboats and get as far away from the sinking ship as is possible, lest we ourselves get caught in its undertow as it sinks.

Thus, while it's true that God has anointed the church to be a shining example of righteousness and holiness in the world, He has not called upon it to participate in its political activities - which activities are controlled by Satan. We are to be examples of righteousness and holiness, and by doing so to contrast the light of the church with the darkness of this world. It is this - and not the church's involvement in the political process - which has acted as a preservative of righteousness in the world.

The power and influence of a good and righteous example - humbly portrayed - is far more effective than the force of any political process. Men will never be convicted of their sin by the church taking sides with the state and placing guns to the heads of those who refuse to conform; but countless numbers of sinners have renounced their sin and turned to Christ because of the living example of humble and holy men and women of God. We are, therefore, commanded by God to abstain from the affairs of this world; to not get involved with them. True, we are to "occupy" until He comes (Luke 19:13); but this means only that we are to vocationally sustain ourselves and not be a burden on others while we pass through - and that's all it means. In no way can this verse be construed to mean anything else. Moreover, not only are we not to involve ourselves with the world, we are not even to be "friendly" with it. The Bible says:

"You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4)

God's advise, then, to His people - the church - is to stay clear of the political currents that are being unleashed in the "Last Days." If we don't, we will be surely swept away.

God bless you!

S.R. Shearer