By Michael Pravica
Two weeks ago, I was invited to give a presentation on the genocide of Serbs during WWII in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina. As a result, I was a personal witness to the suffering of the people living in the Balkans wrought by the enormous flooding there. It is during these times of crisis wherein the best and worst of humanity are revealed. It is during these trying periods that alleged "friends" are tested, and the true ones are revealed. The superficial or false "friends" are exposed just these recent rains exposed bones of Serbian victims of the WWII genocide.
Though I was not directly impacted by the flooding, the chaos in the region was obvious: canceled bus service across the region, people en route stuck in flooded cities, diverted road travel, wide swaths of flooding visible from the air outside of Belgrade (when flying to Banja Luka from Belgrade), refugees from all over the region including many Roma staying at the Slavija Hotel where I stayed, and mudslides in mountainous Bosnia (even at higher elevations) that were being actively cleared up.
I was deeply impressed with the speed and "can do" attitude of ordinary people, determined to help their displaced fellow citizens. I saw a spontaneous musical concert performed by Belgrade University music students in Trg Republika in central Belgrade, random youth offering "hugs" of support and soliciting donations of any kind nearby on Knez Mihajlo ulica (King Michael street) and ubiquitous donation receptacles in grocery stores and churches, all for flood relief. I was also impressed with how former combatants, Serbs, Bosniak's (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats, were and are continuing to reach out to help one other. This cooperation is so significant that the Balkan news media celebrated and commented on it repeatedly.
I was told by a number of Serbs that one of the reasons why this crisis reached such epic proportions was that NATO had "de-fanged" Serbia and Bosnia by encouraging the Serbian and Bosnian Serb armies to destroy military equipment and reduce their military personnel. (This was probably for some promised financial "carrots" that would never materialize given the poor track record of NATO and western leaders delivering on their promises.) As a result, both nations were largely unprepared for this Biblical-level flooding.
Nevertheless, I did observe various levels of help from foreign governments with a few notable exceptions. A large Russian transport plane was parked in the Nikola Tesla airport in Belgrade. Doctors, nurses, and other aid workers from a variety of nations were working in Hotel Slavija, rushing to and fro to supervise and staff a health clinic on the second floor of the Hotel. The aid workers were largely Slavic (based on their accents that I heard) and I found very few (if any) citizens from Western nations.
Thus, given these observations, it should come as no surprise that my government (USA) gave next to nothing in aid (about $100,000 USD) and neither did Canada (roughly $30,000 CAD). In two days of fundraising, Serbian-Americans in Las Vegas collected some $50,000 to give some comparison and perspective. This tiny amount of aid was proffered by my government despite the fact that nearly one million civilians have been displaced due to the floods. This humanitarian catastrophe compares in numbers to those who were displaced from the Yugoslav civil wars in the 1990's by fighting. However in this case, the West and NATO squandered billions of dollars illegally arming combatants, encouraging Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic to renege on the Lisbon agreement vis a vis US ambassador American Warren Zimmerman [1-2] (which prolonged the fighting in Bosnia by a few years), propping up failing and corrupt governments throughout the former Yugoslavia, and illegally bombing Serbia, professing "humanitarian concern" about the suffering of civilians in the former Yugoslavia decades ago.
This demonstrates that the "humanitarian" intervention in the former Yugoslavia then was really political and regime-changing in nature (which continues in other nations such as Libya, Syria and the Ukraine today) and that Western governments could care less about helping these peoples when they really need it unless there is something in it for Western leaders.
The strategy for Western leaders is to make the ordinary plebians totally dependent on government/globalist "aid," which, in the case of Hurricane Katrina and many other natural and manmade calamities, never really came or was too little too late. This, of course, conveniently expedites and furthers the goals of globalists which entail significant reduction of the world's population and makes them seem awfully "mighty" and "generous" with the few delayed crumbs of "aid" that they offer to the desperate. However, little Serbia is showing the world, yet again, how to rely on her own people and goodwill during times of crisis yet again.
Serbia allied herself with the US and Canada during both world wars at an astonishing sacrifice so that democracy would ultimately prevail in both cases.
When it comes to helping a former friend in need, Western leaders have fallen short. They just don't understand the meaning of the term, "humanitarian."
References:
1. http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=139634
2. Warren Zimmerman
Michael Pravica