-Greek military dictator Colonel George Papadopoulos (1967-74) “was trained by the US Army and recruited by the CIA. Indeed, he was the first CIA asset to govern a European country.” – link
2018 Youtube interview – Stevo Pendarovski uncomfortable discussing his pro Serb-Yugoslavist past.
by Sasha Uzunov
The US installing Stevo Pendarovski as President of Macedonia is, in fact, a dastardly but very clever Machiavellian move. He was pro Slobodan Milosevic and anti US upto 2000 before the Serb strongman was taken down by the US.
Pendarovski now has to be 100 percent loyal to Washington which is what the US has factored in. It is a cunning political chess move of the highest order. The question now remains will Pendarovski agree to partition the country via cantonisaton/federalisation to satisfy pro-US Albanian extremist demands?
Bulgarian nationalists will, no doubt, rejoice in Pendarovski as the new President. In the past when the Social Democrats (SDSM), the now ruling party of Macedonia, were staunchly suspicious of anything linked to Bulgarian demands over Macedonian identity, Pendarovski would have been person non-grata in Sofia.
But the 180 degrees about-turn by both SDSM and Pendarovski has been instigated by the US, which needs to lower Bulgar and Greek opposition-enough at least -to allow Macedonia, albeit hollowed out, joining NATO and thereby denying Russia any access to some vital Balkan real estate. The whole Russia scare was largely exaggerated but it served a purpose.
It is not surprising that Pendarovski supports the Prespa Agreement and name change which erases Macedonian identity for US strategic needs.
The Prespa Agreement in effect turns Macedonia into a de facto Greek protectorate, a Hellenic Hong Kong, with Greece having sweeping powers to censor Macedonian history, block trade and so on under the Agreement if Athens is “offended” by any display of independent behaviour by Macedonians.
Five Years of Stevo-in-Chief: ‘North’ Macedonia Prepares for a President Pendarovski
The swearing-in of Stevo Pendarovski on 12 May as the first president of ‘North Macedonia’ is being hailed as a triumph of democracy and affirmation of the ‘pro-Western’ attitude of the Macedonian people- even though he had the support of a minority of the total voting population. In fact, the whole vote was almost scuppered, as it was in danger of not reaching the 40-per cent turnout threshold until a sudden surge in voting on the evening of 5 May pushed it over the top.
This begs the question of whether or not Pendarovski really personifies democracy in action and the people’s choice. But this is no matter to his ‘Euro-Atlantic’ puppet-masters and their media mouthpieces. As a darling of the West, Pendarovski will spend the next five years living up to the bogus narrative the West has created, to justify its own heavy-handed intervention that created ‘North Macedonia’ in the first place during the political crisis since 2014.
One might argue that crisis has not ended, and that Pendarovski won the race because of some forced voting on the ethnic Albanian side. (The Zoran Zaev government led by SDSM has DUI, the perennial Albanian powerhouse as its coalition partner and they are sure to have special demands for the new president). Whatever the case, the Albanians are sure to demand further concessions for their narrow ethnic interests which ultimately are to partition and destroy the country.
Pendarovski, a former advisor to both SDSM president Branko Crvenkovski (2004-2009) and his VMRO-DPMNE predecessor Boris Trajkovski (1999-2004) proved that the second time’s the charm when he won the presidential race he had lost in 2014, to Gjorge Ivanov of the VMRO-DPMNE, who finished his second and final term last week.
Unlike that race, or any other presidential race before it, there was little in the way of fiery rhetoric or drama between the two candidates- Pendarovski and VMRO-DPMNE’s candidate, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova. Something smelled fishy about the whole race from the beginning, considering that the alleged conservative party in February hunkered down for advice from NDI (National Democratic Institute, associated with the US Democratic Party). NDI has been known locally for years as a close supporter of SDSM.
Macedonians also showed little enthusiasm for the losing candidate because she was in the end perceived as no different from the winner, Pendarovski. Both are eager to please Western puppet-masters and have long affiliations with the liberal billionaire activist George Soros, whose Open Society Institute was heavily involved with the 2016 ‘Colourful Revolution’ against the VMRO government of the time.
Ironically, the supposedly ‘non-governmental organization’ FOSIM (Foundation Open Society Macedonia) recently signed an official partnership with the Zaev government meaning that the Macedonian public will now get to pay Soros through the government to continue his agenda while further adding to his wealth! According to the FOSM press release as quoted by Republika, “the memorandum will establish ‘the basis for a transparent and trustworthy model of state funding of civil organizations.’”
The Pendarovski Presidency: Goodbye the ‘Evil Slavs,’ Hello to the ‘Western Allies’
As the first president of ‘North’ Macedonia, Pendarovski will no doubt continue his role as a faithful American stooge. The man has no other function, except to keep carrying out orders as he always had. The difference now is that by changing its name, throwing away its history to please the Greeks and Bulgarians, tolerating ethnic Albanian neo-Nazis in the midst all to join NATO, Macedonia has to live up to the media narrative created in the last few months.
This is the one that created the image of Zoran Zaev as a visionary leader worthy of the Nobel Prize, of his foreign minister, Nikola Dimitrov (another CIA informer) as an ace negotiator and his defence minister Rada Sekerinska as the genius who organised Macedonia’s military into a NATO-worthy fighting force, at least on paper. It has been a long time since 2001, when ethnic Albanians from mostly Kosovo (called ‘murderous thugs’ at the time by NATO chief Lord George Robertson) started a war against Macedonia to seize territory, and the leader of those terrorists- DUI’s Ali Ahmeti- is still Washington’s man on the ground, using the Albanian vote to swing every election. In 2001, when Macedonia tried for a few months to fight back, however, the Western media played on the well-worn theme of ‘evil Slavs’ persecuting the pure and innocent ‘freedom fighters’ of Albanians seeking human rights, It was all lies then, and it’s all lies now.
This cartoonish coverage is continuing now, but with a new twist reflecting the ‘pro-Western revolution’ in Macedonia. For example, in what has got to be the poorest quality reporting ever written on Macedonia, the Christian Science Monitor printed a pre-election puff piece on the sheer greatness of the Zaev government and brilliant American diplomacy that brought about the name change in Macedonia. Indeed, this cringe-inducing article could have been written by the State Department itself, it is that biased.
The author of the cringe-worthy piece, Peter Ford, opens by admitting that he had not visited Macedonia once since the 2001 war, before his pre-election trip to Skopje this year. In the piece, he goes on to flesh out a fairy story of the 18 years in between by interviewing all the usual suspects – from the former colour revolutionary Urania Pirovska to the pro-Serb pundit Borjan Jovanovski. Ford even brings in forgotten heroes like the former EU envoy, Erwan Fouere, who was well-known as a supporter of SDSM while in opposition, and a proponent of the idea that the VMRO government of the time represented dangerous Slav nationalism.
Not only does Ford fail to interview anyone remotely critical of the Zaev government or Western meddling, he completely ignores the brutal tactics used by Western diplomats like former US Ambassador Jess Baily in forcing Macedonia at every step to bend to his wishes. As this video interview by Tean Uzunov from 2018 showed, in which Baily becomes visibly enraged, America’s key diplomat in the crisis does not handle critical questions well.
VIDEO OF JESS BAILY
But critical journalism could not be expected of the Ford piece, which is clearly designed to mislead an ignorant American public about the behavior of their diplomats in Macedonia.
Skeletons in the Closet of Stevo-in-Chief?
There are other reasons why the new president will not do anything contrary to the wishes of his American masters. He has been active in Macedonian politics and particularly the police structures since the late 1990s. There are too many unanswered questions about his past, and that is why he has always been cautious.
Firstly, Pendarovski was a Yugoslav intelligence (UDBa) and post-independence became a Macedonian counterintelligence officer in the 1990s, under SDSM’s Branko Crvenkovski. He was a Slobodan Milosevic supporter complicit in UN sanctions-busting in Macedonia for Serbia during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia. Then, he magically transformed into a ‘pro-Western’ figure soon after. Conveniently, the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) like all the other Western media outlets ignores that side of the story even though the CSM reported about UN sanctions-busting in Macedonia back in 1993!
“The participation in sanctions-busting by Macedonian police, as witnessed by this reporter, refutes denials by officials, including President Kiro Gligorov, who insist the former Yugoslav republic rigorously enforces the blockade.” – 1993 CSM reporter Jonathan S. Landay
Ford makes a point of noting that candidate Pendarovski “has the backing” of the ethnic Albanian DUI, something that “has never happened before.” Thus he makes the implication that the Zaev-Ahmeti pact was not cynical politics as usual, but rather some great victory for multi-ethnic co-existence. This is basically a simple extension of how the Western media treated SDSM and DUI when they won power following the Ohrid Agreement, in 2002 elections. The point is that whenever the West creates a problem through its proxies in Macedonia, it is also there to sort things out and congratulate itself in the media for doing so.
The Western support for the Pendarovski presidency is, therefore, going to be similar to their support for the last president he advised, Branko Crvenkovski in 2004, who was presented as a ‘pro-Western’ leader determined to improve ethnic relations.
Considering that Pendarovski was named head of the State Election Commission in that election, only weeks after the previous president, Boris Trajkovski died in a still mysterious plane crash in Bosnia, one has to wonder what secrets have been hidden. Macedonians remember that the late Trajkovski refused to sign a bill that Branko’s SDSM government then in power was pushing- again, with strong Western backing- to decentralize municipalities in order to expand Albanian territorial power. The fact that Pendarovski was one of the few members of the Trajkovski Cabinet who did not board the president’s plane on the fateful day when the tragic crash occurred has always cast a shadow around Pendarovski.
The election of Crvenkovski that Stevo administered was similarly criticised at the time for suspicions of corrupt ballot-stuffing that helped the SDSM leader get into power.
Similarly, as TEAM UZUNOV has reported, Pendarovski was one of the officials who made sure the case of Khaled El-Masri (an innocent German-Lebanese man kidnapped by Macedonian police and handed over to the CIA for torture as a ‘terrorist’) was hushed up to not embarrass the Americans.
Pro VMRO-DPMNE newspaper Republika previously reported during the campaign, the VMRO claim that SDSM was using a Google Android App to collect personal data on citizens, to benefit the Pendarovski campaign. Prime Minister Zaev confirmed that the party campaign was using the App, but said that nothing was being done illegally. The State Election Committee looked into the matter, the App was withdrawn, and no further updates have been reported- another potential scandal swept under the rug to keep things nicely under the rug.
As advisor to two presidents and in other functions, Stevo has til now always been low-profile. He has never been in any position to take any blame, cleverly moving up one step at a time, without stepping on anyone’s toes. However, his new job as president will be more high-profile, meaning more public scrutiny. So long as Pendarovski follows orders and stays on the straight and narrow, he will not encounter any problems. But if he veers off course at all, his Western masters can turn on him in a second. Of course, he knows this well and is ready to play the game.
US END GAME – PARTITION OF MACEDONIA? What Does the Future Hold for Macedonia under Stevo-in-Chief?
The new President Pendarovski basically has three tasks, other than supporting the government in whatever way they tell him.
The first is ‘NATO integration’ of the military since the office of the presidency makes him the official commander-in-chief. (No surprise that his most recent role under the Zaev regime involved coordinating NATO integration reforms).
EXTREMISM, NAZI STATUES MASKED AS CIVIL RIGHTS?
The second is to help increase the ‘rights’ of ethnic Albanians. Pendarovski’s predecessor Gjorge Ivanov refused to sign a law on making Albanian a second official national language, but the law was passed anyway. Stevo will show that the sky’s the limit in giving Albanian rights, probably leading to the ethnic cantonisation or federalisation of the country in the next 5-10 years.
The third thing Pendarovski can do, to bolster the Western media narrative of ‘national reconciliation’ and ‘ethnic harmony’ peacemaker could be to use his presidential powers to amnesty the Macedonian protesters of the 27 April 2017 parliament-storming, as well as the Albanian terrorists involved in the Kumanovo shoot-out with Macedonian police in May 2015. During the political crisis, the diplomatic masterminds like Jess Baily and his EU opposite number, Aivo Orav, were frustrated because their own Soros-backed ‘Colourful Revolution’ had committed violent acts, as of course the Albanians had. They needed to establish some sort of moral equivalence with Macedonians protesting against foreign-backed coup forces.
After the ‘events of 27 April,’ the West got the pretext it needed when Macedonians stormed the parliament. The final insult will be if President Pendarovski cynically pardons Macedonian protesters who did not commit any violent attacks (but are anyway presently imprisoned), at the same time that he amnesties real Albanian terrorists. But if he does this, the Western media will no doubt lap it up, and dub him a president capable of making ‘difficult choices’ and ruling ‘for all communities’. The script has already been written, and now the characters just need to keep playing their roles- continuing the farce of an ‘independent’ Macedonia, whether you call it ‘North’ or otherwise.
– UPDATE:
CIA REJECTS FOIA REQUEST
I submitted a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) over any files it might hold on Stevo Pendarovski. But the request was rejected on the grounds it could be detrimental to US national security.
