("Quid coniuratio est?")
BOSNIA: HOW THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND MEDIA HAVE FAILED AND MISLED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Special thanks to my "Chicago connection" for sending a videotape of a public access program, "Broadsides", which was taped on June 6, 1995. Host is Mr. Sherman Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts; co-host is Mr. Robert E. Cleveland, an attorney and associate of Mr. Skolnick. Guests are James Nagle, an attorney with the law firm of Querry & Harrow, Andrew B. Spiegel, also an attorney, and Mike Pavlovic, a Serbian-American.
Pardon spelling errors. If you know the correct spellings, please let me know.
Contact info: Andrew B. Spiegel, PO Box 396, Wheaton, IL 60187
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[...continued...]
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
In Chicago there are descendants of all these factions, right?
There's Moslems, there's Serbs, there's Croats -- all these
different factions live in the Chicago area. Am I correct?
JAMES NAGLE:
Yes.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Do they get along with one another? Or do they (unknown to the
rest of us) fight around?
MIKE PAVLOVIC:
There's lots of good Croatian people, lots of good Moslem people,
lots of good Serbian people. But that time, the Second World War,
Ustashe was organization that was able to work together with
German Nazis.
I have a Croatian guy at work in my office, together with me.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So that makes it a little sensitive?
MIKE PAVLOVIC:
It's not sensitive. We are very reasonable about talking about
what's going on; we don't want war. We want to stop killing.
That's very important. And I know that we can stop killing! And
then, we start negotiating.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So for that purpose, the three of you formed a goodwill mission
earlier this year [1995]. Tell us a little bit about it. What was
the idea behind it?
ANDREW SPIEGEL:
Well Mike has been very concerned about the situation in
Yugoslavia, which was his homeland. He came up with the idea at
the beginning of this year that if the Serbs could live under a
system of government like we have in the United States, that
would help solve the problem. So he asked me to put together a
document that they could use to form this type of government. So
we put together a "declaration of independence agreement" that
was modelled on the Declaration of Independence of the United
States; we put together a constitution that was modelled on our
own Constitution, but taking out some of the defects in our
Constitution that has let the U.S. government get way out of
control -- at least in my opinion. And [Unclear] hand-carried
these documents to President Karadzic in Pale, which is the
capital of the Republic of Srpska. In January, he had invited us
to put together a delegation to consult with them in Pale about
their use of this declaration.
It's important for your audience to understand the legal situation here. Yugoslavia was made up of six republics. It was a violation of the Yugoslav Constitution for any republic to secede from Yugoslavia. At the time, in 1991, Yugoslavia was a member of the United Nations. Three of the six republics -- Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia -- decided that they were going to secede, in violation of the Yugoslav Constitution. In order to stop that, the leader of Yugoslavia, President Milosovich(sp?), not unlike our own President Lincoln, sent in the national army to stop them from seceding from Yugoslavia.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Is that a quick and simplistic way of trying to understand a
complicated thing? That when one of the provinces, like the
southern states, tried to secede from the national government, it
caused the American Civil War? (At least that's what some people
think caused it.) Is that an uncomplicated way of trying to
understand what appears to be a civil war in Yugoslavia?
ANDREW SPIEGEL:
That's only part of it. The second part of it is that the Serbs
living in Croatia and the Serbs living in Bosnia -- like the
Virginians living in West Virginia -- did not want it to secede
from Yugoslavia. So they seceded from the Republic of Croatia
and the Republic of Bosnia and set up their own independent
republic which was independent from those republics, but not
independent from Yugoslavia. So today, in fact, the constitutions
of Croina(sp?) (which is the Serb republic in Croatia) and the
Republic of Srpska (which is the Serb republic in Bosnia) -- it's
a violation of those constitutions for them to secede from
Yugoslavia!
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Bob, you've studied this thing. What's your take on what appears
to be a civil war over there?
ROBERT CLEVELAND:
Well it appears to be a matter of these people looking out for
their own problems and not being subject to outside interference.
For whatever reason that may be, certain European countries wish
to get in and interfere in the guise of "peacekeeping", when
there is no peace!
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Who's interfering? The Germans?
ROBERT CLEVELAND:
The Germans and the French... proclivity. And they're encouraging
us, the United States, to send armed forces over in the area.
They use the planes for the "fly over". They've done other things
there that...
Really, they're trying to influence decisions that could be done internally, within the country.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So all these provinces are claiming a separate sovereignty and a
separate government? Do they all have separate governments,
separate taxing, separate everything?
ANDREW SPIEGEL:
Well they do now. Slovenia is an independent country now. Croatia
is an independent country now. Bosnia is an independent country
now. Macedonia is an independent country. And the new
Yugoslavia, also called the "rump Yugoslavia" -- which is
comprised now of Serbian Montenegro -- is an independent country.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Mike, I think our viewers would like to know what do the people
over there subsist on? They're so busy killing each other; do
they manufacture anything to make money in the meantime? How do
they get all this money to buy arms, food and whatever they need?
Where does it come from?
MIKE PAVLOVIC:
That's a good question. It's very hard to answer.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Do they manufacture anything over there?
MIKE PAVLOVIC:
They don't manufacture nothing right now.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So on what do they subsist?
JAMES NAGLE:
Well what they subsist on... You have to understand: 90 percent
of the Republic of Srpska is agriculture. So they're self-
sustaining.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Tell our viewers what or how you organized by way of a peace
mission, a goodwill mission, or what. How did you go about it?
ANDREW SPIEGEL:
Well, because we were trying to get them to form a democratic
form of government, I asked Jim Nagle to accompany me, who in
addition to being a trial lawyer is a constitutional law expert.
And I asked Mike Ginsberg(sp?), who is a senior buyer with United
Air Lines and is a businessman and familiar with free market
principles, to join the delegation so we could try and convince
President Karadzic that this is the type of government he should
have.
And ironically enough, when we sat down with him on Saturday, April 22nd to discuss these issues, the first words out of his mouth was that he wants to set up the very type of government that we were trying to convince him to set up: a limited government, with the private ownership of property, where everybody has equal rights.
[Document shown on the screen.]
What we're looking at now is the April 22nd letter that we convinced President Karadzic to fax to President Clinton, on April 22nd. The most important portion of this letter is the last paragraph, where Karadzic states: "What we are proposing, therefore, is a permanent peace treaty to end the war completely, and negotiations to resume at the same time under the auspices of the international community."
President Karadzic was so impressed with what we had to tell him that he called a special meeting of his cabinet for Sunday, April 23rd. This was 8 o'clock in the morning, on their Easter Sunday. They took the time out to meet with us to discuss these documents.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That is the Eastern Orthodox Easter.
ANDREW SPIEGEL:
Eastern Orthodox Easter.
And right from that meeting, they went to Eastern Orthodox services, and we went to the front lines in Sarajevo.
[...to be continued...]
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
See also: ftp ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred