#481 CONTINUATION OF ETHNIC CLEANSING IN BOSNIA BY “FRIENDS OF BOSNIA”

National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (NCR B&H)

ONLINE NEWSLETTER No. 481 - International issue

August 7, 2007

1. ASSIMILATED JEWS: FINCI'S SERBIAN NATIONALISM STRONGER THAN JUDAISM

2. Holocaust History Misappropriated

3. CONTINUATION OF ETHNIC CLEANSING IN BOSNIA BY “FRIENDS OF BOSNIA”

4. Bosnian Geophysicist Uncovers a Pyramid Scheme

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1. ASSIMILATED JEWS: FINCI'S SERBIAN NATIONALISM STRONGER THAN HIS JEWISH IDENTITY

By Sahin Pasic,
NCR B&H

Last week, the Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Nikola Spiric, who is a Serbian nationalist, criticized Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj, who is Jewish, by stating, among other things, that nobody wants Alkalaj to be minister because he is a member of "other nationalities".

The term "other nationality" in BiH means neither Bosniak, nor Serb, nor Croat, so it is clear that Spiric referred to the fact that Alkalaj is Jewish. In fact, under the ridiculous apartheid constitution of BiH written in the Dayton agreement, all public offices, including ministerial posts, are reserved for the Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, with no posts to be filled by the "others". This apartheid is self-enforcing because that division ferments distrust and resentment, and none of the three major ethnicities can afford to cede any of their positions and be left at a disadvantage.

There are calls from parties that are predominantly Bosniak and Croat to end such divisions. Minister Alkalaj was nominated by a Bosniak-dominated "Party for BiH" to fill a post slated for a Bosniak, and won the post because Bosniak lawmakers supported him. Alkalaj's presence aggravates Spiric and other Serb nationalists, because he symbolizes a break from the apartheid thinking that keeps the entity "Republic of the Serbs" (RS) in existence.

Spiric also is hostile to Alkalaj personally because of several moves that asserted the statehood of BiH over RS. For example, Alkalaj recently made it known that the RS foreign office in Bruxelles is not legal because the RS does not have the constitutional authority to carry out foreign policy. That authority is reserved for BiH as a state, and carried out through the foreign ministry led by Alkalaj.

Premier Spiric did come under much criticism from the Bosnian public for his display of bigotry, and Alkalaj has admitted feeling hurt and insulted by Spiric. However, to Spiric's defense came Jacob Finci, another prominent Bosnian Jew, saying that Spiric's statement that Alkalaj is undesirable as one of the "others" is not anti-Semitic because Spiric never explicitly mentioned that Alkalaj is Jewish! Finci therefore thinks that it is OK to discriminate against people for being Jewish as long as that reason is only implied very clearly.

Also, Finci avoids this perfect opportunity given to him to comment on the discrimination against Jews and the rest of the "others" by the constitution, which is much more important than just Spiric's bigotry.

Jakob Finci is a type of person who boasts about his Jewish heritage in every public appearance, but his political initiatives have always betrayed him to hold Serbian nationalist convictions. In that he is no different from many chest thumping "social democrats" or "Muslims clerics" or "Croat Ustashe" in Bosnia who never miss an opportunity to score a victory for Serb nationalism into which they have been indoctrinated while growing up in Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Notably, Finci was behind an initiative for a war crimes and genocide public forum. The idea was to have a public debate between accused war criminals and victims to replace the court trials because, according to Finci, it would lead to "reconciliation". The problem with such public forums is that facts are not checked, witnesses are not protected, and equality between "the sides" is assumed from the start -- there are no defendants or prosecutors. So manipulation and twisting of the truth and public intimidation of witnesses would all become tools to convince everyone that "all sides were equally guilty", which is the line that Serbian nationalists have been trying to sell about the war for years.

But Serbian nationalists cannot sell such an idea because their intentions are too transparent, so they have Finci do it for them. Similarly, it would have been pointless for Spiric's Serb nationalist colleagues to defend his anti-Semitic remarks. Finci, the Jew, is much more effective.

Finally, please note that Finci, as a Jew, should not naturally have such strong sympathy to Serb nationalism, because Serb nationalism has been historically very hostile to Jews. This hostility, including the story of how Belgrade became "Judenfrei" during The Second World War, is summarized in the article "Holocaust History Misappropriated" by Philip J. Cohen
(MIDSTREAM: A Monthly Jewish Review November 1992. Volume XXXVIII No.8).

For your convenience we post the article in the following item.

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2. Holocaust History Misappropriated

by Philip J. Cohen
MIDSTREAM: A Monthly Jewish Review
November 1992. Volume XXXVIII No.8.

In conjunction with the war in former Yugoslavia, Serbia has undertaken a campaign to persuade the Jewish community of Serbian friendship for Jews. This same campaign portrays Croats as a common threat to both Jews and Serbs, in an attempt to gain Jewish sympathy and support at a time when most nations have isolated Serbia as a Balkan pariah. However, even as Serbia courts Jewish public opinion, their propagandists conceal a history of well-ingrained anti-Semitism, which continues unabated in 1992. To make their case, Serbs portray themselves as victims in the Second World War, but conceal the systematic genocide that Serbs had committed against several peoples including the Jews. Thus Serbs have usurped as propaganda the Holocaust that occurred in neighboring Croatia and Bosnia, but do not give an honest accounting of the Holocaust as it occurred in Serbia.

During four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Jewish communities of Serbia enjoyed religious tolerance, internal autonomy, and equality before the law, that ended with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Serbian state. Soon after a Serbian insurrection against Turkish rule in 1804, Jews were expelled from the interior of Serbia and prohibited from residing outside of Belgrade. In 1856 and 1861, Jews were further prohibited from travel for the purpose of trade. In official correspondence from the late 19th century, British diplomats detailed the cruel treatment of the Jews of Serbia, which they attributed to religious fanaticism, commercial rivalries, and the belief that Jews were the secret agents of the Turks. Article 23 of the Serbian constitution granted equality to every citizen but Article 132 forbade Jews the right of domicile. The Treaty of Berlin 1878, which formally established the Serbian state, accorded political and civil equality to the Jews of Serbia, but the Serbian Parliament resisted abolishing restrictive decrees for another 11 years. Although the legal status of the Jewish community subsequently improved, the view of Jews as an alien presence persisted.

Although Serbian historians contend that the persecution of the Jews of Serbia was entirely the responsibility of Germans and began only with the German occupation, this is self- serving fiction. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. One year later on 22 October 1941, the rabidly anti-Semitic "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit" opened in occupied Belgrade, funded by the city of Belgrade. The central theme was an alleged Jewish- Communist-Masonic plot for world domination. Newspapers such as Obnova (Renewal) and Nasa Borba (Our Struggle) praised this exhibit, proclaiming that Jews were the ancient enemies of the Serbian people and that Serbs should not wait for the Germans to begin the extermination of the Jews. A few months later, Serbian authorities issued postage stamps commemorating the opening of this popular exhibit. These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols (but did not contain Nazi symbols), portrayed Judaism as the source of world evil and advocated the humiliation and violent subjugation of Jews.

Serbia as well as neighboring Croatia was under Axis occupation during the Second World War. Although the efficient destruction of Serbian Jewry in the first two years of German occupation has been well documented by respected sources, the extent to which Serbia actively collaborated in that destruction has been less recognized. The Serbian government under General Milan Nedic worked closely with local Nazi officials in making Belgrade the first "Judenfrei" city of Europe. As late as 19 September 1943, Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler, Serbs in Berlin advanced the idea that the Serbs were the "Ubermenchen"
(master race) of the Slavs.

Although the Serbian version of history portrays wartime Serbia as a helpless, occupied territory, Serbian newspapers of the period offer a portrait of intensive collaboration. In November 1941, Mihajlo Olcan, a minister in Nedic's government boasted that "Serbia has been allowed what no other occupied country has been allowed and that is to establish law and order with its own armed forces". Indeed, with Nazi blessings, Nedic established the Serbian State Guard, numbering about 20,000, compared to the 3,400 German police in Serbia. Recruiting advertisements for the Serb police force specified that "applicants must have no Jewish or Gypsy blood". Nedic's second in command was Dimitrije Ljotic, founder of the Serbian Fascist Party and the principal Fascist ideologist of Serbia. Ljotic organized the Serbian Volunteers Corps, whose primary function was rounding up Jews, Gypsies, and partisans for execution. Serbian citizens and police received cash bounties for the capture and delivery of Jews.

The Serbian Orthodox Church openly collaborated with the Nazis, and many priests publicly defended the persecution of the Jews. On 13 August 1941, approximately 500 distinguished Serbs signed "An Appeal to the Serbian Nation", which called for loyalty to the occupying Nazis. The first three signers were bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. On 30 January 1942, Metropolitan Josif, the acting head of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, officially prohibited conversions of Jews to Serbian Orthodoxy, thereby blocking a means of saving Jewish lives.

At a public rally, after the government Minister Olcan "thanked God that the enormously powerful fist of Germany had not come down upon the head of the Serbian nation" but instead "upon the heads of the Jews in our midst", the speaker of these words was then blessed by a high-ranking Serbian Orthodox priest.

A most striking example of Serbian anti-Semitism combined with historical revisionism is the case of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (1880-1956), revered as one of the most influential church leaders and ideologists after Saint Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. To Serbs, Bishop Velimirovic was a martyr who survived torture in the Dachau prison camp. In truth he was brought to Dachau (as were other prominent European clergy), because the Nazis believed he could be useful for propaganda. There he spent approximately two months as an "Ehrenhaftling" (honor prisoner) in a special section, dining on the same food as the German officers, living in private quarters, and making excursions into town under German escort. From Dachau, this venerated priest endorsed the Holocaust:

Europe is presently the main battlefield of the Jew and his father, the devil, against the heavenly Father and his only begotten Son... (Jews) first need to become legally equal with Christians in order to repress Christianity next, turn Christians into atheist, and step on their necks. All the modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers of Christ: democracy, strikes, socialism atheism, tolerance of all religions, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism and communism... All this has been done with the intention to eliminate Christ... You should think about this, my Serbian brethren, and correspondingly correct your thoughts, desires and acts. (Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic: Addresses to the Serbian People--Through the Prison Window. Himmelsthur, Germany: Serbian Orthodox Eparchy for Western Europe, 1985, pp. 161-162).

Despite Serbian claims to the contrary, Germans were not alone in killing the Jews of Serbia. The long concealed Historical Archives in Belgrade reveal that Banjica, a concentration camp located in Belgrade, was primarily staffed by Serbs. Funding for the conversion of the former barracks of the Serbian 18th infantry division to a concentration, came from the municipal budget of Belgrade. The camp was divided into German and Serbian sections. From Banjica there survive death lists written entirely in Serbian in the Cyrillic alphabet. At least 23,697 victims passed through the Serbian section of this camp. Many were Jews, including at least 798 children, of whom at least 120 were shot by Serbian guards. The use of mobile gassing vans by Nazis in Serbia for the extermination of Jewish women and children has been well documented.

It is less appreciated, however, that a Serbian business firm had contracted with the Gestapo to purchase these same victims cloths, which sometimes contained hidden money or jewelry in the linings. In August 1942, following the virtual liquidation of Serbia's Jews, Nedic's government attempted to claim all Jewish property for the Serbian state.

In the same month, Dr. Harald Turner; the chief of the Nazi civil administration of Serbia, boasted that Serbia was the only country in which the "Jewish question" was solved. Turner himself attributed this "success" to Serbian help. Thus, 94 percent of Serbia's 16,000 Jews were exterminated, with the considerable cooperation of the Serbian government, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police and the Serbian public.

Today, many Serbs proudly cite the Chetniks as a resistance force and even claim that the Chetniks were somehow allied with the United States during the Second World War, but this is simply historical revisionism. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Chetnik resistance against the Nazis came to a complete stop as early as the end of 1941.

Thereafter, the Chetnik resistance actively collaborated with the both Nazis and Fascists, and for this reason Jewish fighters found it necessary to abandon the Chetniks, in favour of Tito's Partisans. In reality, the Chetniks, dedicated primarily to the restoration of the Serbian throne and territorial expansion of the Serbian state, were the moral counterpart of Croatia's Ustatsha. Both were quintessentially genocidal; the Chetniks committed systematic genocide against Muslims, who, for nearly all of 500 years had lived peacefully with the Sephardic Jewish community. Under explicit orders from their leader Draze Mihajlovic, the Chetniks attempted to depopulate Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia of all non- Serbs and in the process, massacred most of the 86,000 to 103,000 Muslims who perished during the war.

For years, the Serbian dominated Belgrade government has supported and trained PLO terrorists. Immediately after the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro in 1985, the terrorist mastermind Abu Abbas was welcomed in Belgrade. Since the late 1980's, Abu-Nidal has maintained a large terrorist infrastructure in Yugoslavia, in coordination with Libyan, Iraqi, and Yugoslav intelligence services. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as Iraqi missiles landed in Israel, Belgrade supported its ally Iraq. Support of anti-Israel terrorism may be a consequence of support for nonaligned Arab states, rather than an expression of anti-Jewish sentiment.

Although the Jewish community of Serbia is not currently experiencing persecution, overt expressions of Serbian anti-Semitism do surface in such mainstream institutions as the Serbian Orthodox Church and the official news media. The 15 January 1992 issue of the official publication of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje (Orthodoxy), carried an article entitled, "Jews Crucify Christ Again." In this polemic, "treacherous" and "surreptitious" Israeli politicians were said to be constrained from expressing their "pathological" hatred of Christians openly because "they know that Christian countries gave them the state." Allegedly, nuns are so frequently beaten in Israel, that one nun was actually "happy, because they only spit in her face." Only weeks later, when Russia extended diplomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia, the official Yugoslav (Serbian perspective) news agency Tanjug blamed "a Jewish conspiracy"
against Serbia, hauntingly reminiscent of the theme of the 1941 anti-Masonic exhibit.

The essential strategy of Serbian propaganda is to portray the spiritual kinship between Jews and Serbs as victims of the Holocaust and endangered by Croats. This concept is disseminated through the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society, founded in Belgrade in 1988 and supported by the Serbian government. In January and February 1992, Dr. Klara Mandic, the secretary-general and principal voice of this organization, syndicated a chilling article in the North American Jewish press. This article alleged that Ankica Konjuh, an elderly Jewish woman, was tortured and murdered by "Croat extremists" in September 1991.

However, even as she released this story to the press, Dr. Mandic knew that Ankica Konjuh was neither a Jew nor could have been killed by Croats. Bona-fide witnesses have testified that Ankica Konjuh, a 67 year-old Croat, was one of 240 civilians massacred by Serbian forces after the last Croat defenders were driven from the region. Moreover on 23 December 1991, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia met in Belgrade and demanded in writing that Dr. Mandic cease and desist misrepresenting Ankica Konjuh as the first Jewish victim of the war.

Nevertheless, in late February 1992, when Dr. Mandic lectured at the Hillel House of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she provided the rabbi with a copy of that misleading article, delivered without further comment. It is noteworthy that this speaking engagement was part of a tour arranged by Wise Communications, a Washington-based public relations firm representing the Serbian oil company Jugopetrol, a thinly veiled proxy for the Communist Belgrade government. Beginning with the proposition that anti-Semitism has never existed in Serbia, Dr. Mandic portrayed Croatia as preparing to repeat the Holocaust. She claimed to be a "Jewish leader," although Jews are distinctly absent from her constituency. Less than half a dozen Jews are actual members of her society of several thousand. She introduced herself as an "eyewitness" speaking on behalf of Croatian Jews, although since the war began, she has had no contact with any of the nine Jewish communities of Croatia. When Dr. Mandic was asked to comment on Serbian (Yugoslav Army) shelling of the synagogue of Dubrovnik, the second oldest surviving synagogue in Europe, she denied that the synagogue had ever been damaged at all. Meanwhile, the attack has been well documented by the Jewish community of Dubrovnik and the World Monument Fund.

Jewish sensitivity to the Holocaust is similarly exploited by the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society of America (Granada Hills, California), an offshoot of Dr. Mandic's organization. Its newsletter equates the Jewish and Serbian positions during World War II, both as victims of Croats, but fails to mention Serbian complicity in the Holocaust, Serbian collaboration with the Nazis, and Serbian genocide against Croats, Gypsies, and Muslims. It warns of an imminent Holocaust being initiated in Croatia. A contrasting portrayal of Croatia, however, emerges from a spectrum of Croatian Jews, American Jews who have visited Croatia, and international Jewish agencies monitoring events on site.

All concur that there is no state-sponsored anti-Semitism in Croatia; the rights of the Jewish minority are respected; and anti-Semitic incidents are virtually unknown. Thus, only a few dozen of the 2,000 Jews of Croatia have chosen to emigrate to Israel since the war began.

Serbia of today and Germany in World War II offer striking parallels. In 1991, Vojislav Seselj, a member of the Serbian Parliament and leader of the Serbian irregulars who call themselves Chetniks, declared, "We want no one else on our territory and we will fight for our true borders. The Croats must either move or die." Croats in Serbian conquered regions are forced to wear red-and-white armbands, analogous to the yellow armbands worn by Jews in Serbia during the Holocaust. The stated purpose of the expulsion of Muslims and Croats from captured regions is "ethnic cleansing." The indigenous non-Serbian populations of the invaded territories are being driven from their homes, exterminated, or imprisoned in concentration camps, to create regions of Serbian ethnic purity. Jewish community centers, synagogues, and cemeteries have been damaged and destroyed by characteristically indiscriminate Serbian artillery attacks. To all of this, the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society has remained conspicuously silent.

Belgrade has promoted the myth of Serbian kinship with the Jews as fellow victims of Nazi oppression, while concealing the true extent of Serbian collaboration with the Nazis. It is ironic that Serbia is now seeking Jewish support for a war in which both the ideology and methodology so tragically echo Nazism. The European Community, the Helsinki Commission, the United Nations, and the United States have all condemned Serbia as the aggressor. Western diplomats have characterized the current Serbian regime as "a lying, terrorist criminal organization." Serbia, however, claims to be the victim and campaigns for Jewish sympathy and support, exploiting the powerful symbolism of the Holocaust. Serbia's professed solicitude for the Jewish people must be reexamined.


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3. CONTINUATION OF ETHNIC CLEANSING IN BOSNIA BY “FRIENDS OF BOSNIA”

By Muhamed Borogovac,
Editor of the Online Newslater of NCR B&H

In its latest newsletter, dated July 18, 2007, The Center for Balkan Development (CBD, formerly known as “Friends of Bosnia”), has announced an action to help people who are victims of genocide and refugees from Srebrenica. The proposed initiative may seem noble to an uninformed person, but it is actually a Trojan horse to the people of Srebrenica. Namely, the proposal is to help those people from Srebrenica who are temporarily resettled to Ilijas, near Sarajevo, to settle there permanently. This "sustainable resettlement" is simply a way to preserve the results of the genocide carried out in Srebrenica. It is in stark contrast to the sustainable return that was promised in the Dayton agreement to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which they still await.

Anyone who knows anything about the country (Glenn Ruga, President and mastermind of the CBD certainly does) understands that the major struggle that overshadows all aspects of life in Bosnia-Herzegovina right now is between those who invented and carried out Ethnic Cleansing, and those who wish to reverse its effects. Ethnic cleansing is a fancy word for genocide, a mechanism devised and carried out by Serbian ultra-nationalists in the 1990's to transform BiH, a multicultural nation that was for centuries ethnically and religiously mixed virtually everywhere, into one with as large ethnically homogenous (Serb) territories as possible. Ethnic cleansing started by means of mass murder of non-Serb civilians, torture, rape and intimidation. That initial part of the campaign has been confirmed in various international courts to constitute genocide.

The Dayton Agreement, signed at the end of the war in BiH, created an entity within the country, called Republika Srpska (RS, meaning Republic of the Serbs), on precisely those territories from which all non-Serbs had already been violently expelled. It gave RS all attributes of statehood -- executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Also, it gave RS the power of veto over the function of the BiH government. Moreover, there are laws that explicitly discriminate against all non-Serbs living in RS, such as the election law that forbids non-Serbs to run for certain government posts, including the presidency. By establishing those powerful "legal" (apartheid) mechanisms, the Dayton Agreement actually serves to continue the ethnic cleansing campaign. Imagine a situation after World War II, in which high level Nazi officials are on trial for their crimes, but their former underlings govern most of Europe, the SS is in charge of protecting Jews when they return, Poland is renamed "Republic of the Aryans", and pictures of the Fuhrer can occasionally be seen in the streets. That is the Republic of the Serbs today, except the war criminals in the pictures are different. It is not meant to welcome back refugees and victims of genocide.

The Dayton decree that all people should be enabled to return to their homes is clearly meaningless when compared to those elaborate mechanisms that prevent return. The main problem is neither the significant economic hardship for returnees, nor the fact that the two main war criminals have not been apprehended. Rather, the problem is the existence of the Republic of the Serbs as the major "accomplishment" of those same war criminals, where the many followers of their thriving ideology are guaranteed to stay in power by the constitution. People cannot return because they are not safe living under the same institutions that slaughtered their loved ones. Before the war, the majority of the rural people lived from their land, and the fact that so many of them still reside in the squalor of their temporary resettlements shows that it is not the lack of employment, but fear, that is preventing them from returning. Furthermore, all the NGO and advocacy organizations started by the refugees from the Srebrenica region argue for taking Srebrenica administratively out of the Republic of the Serbs, in order to enable return.

The “Friends of Bosnia” newsletter runs contrary to the wish of the people of Srebrenica to return home in safety and freedom. The initiative to settle them in Ilijas permanently, where they do not own any land, would help only the war criminals who committed the genocide, and who are eager to keep the Republic of the Serbs as it is right now -- ethnically clean. The CBD asks others not to "manipulate" the people of Srebrenica, victims of genocide. Yet Glenn Ruga uses the offer of economic aid to refugees from Srebrenica, in order to manipulate them to give up their right to go back to their home towns and achieve freedom and equality. If the CBD truly wants to help, it should instead offer those resources and support to those people who have returned, in order to encourage more to do so. More importantly, the CBD should use its newsletters to argue against the continued ethnic cleansing through apartheid laws, not for it.

At the end let me mention that I met Mr. Glenn Ruga personally on many events regarding Bosnia. He is an intelligent man, who built his career on the Bosnian tragedy, and is knowledgeable about the essence of the Bosnian problem. The harm that this action would cause is not the result of any naiveté or foolishness on his part, but rather of intent.

Dr. Muhamed Borogovac

Editor of the “Online newsletter of the National Congres of the Republic Bosnia-Herzegovina”

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4. Bosnian Geophysicist Uncovers a Pyramid Scheme

A rational explanation of the Visoko “phenomena”

Dear Dr. Khavroshkin,

I am writing in reference to your locally televised statement at a Sarajevo press-conference of 28 July, on your involvement in the so-called "Bosnian pyramids project". While describing your recent preliminary geophysical measurements, you asserted that humans had shaped Visocica hill. As a geophysicist, I have no reason to doubt your measurements interpretation (even though early interpretations may seem quite premature at this point). However, your being a scientist of international repute gives a whole new twist to one unfortunate story that has no counterpart in damaging my country's image.

Let me note at the outset that this hill (as you correctly call it yourself) seems semi-shaped, not fully shaped. However, even if semi-shaped, that geometrical peculiarity couldn't be due to some 10+ kyr civilization as the man who dragged you into his world of deceit would have it. This has been so well established by researchers in the past, that I won't even quote any references. I would also like to inform you that our culture minister Mr. Gavrilo Grahovac has recently called for an investigation into that man's tax fraud; see yesterday's edition of Science magazine, at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol317/issue5837/newsmakers.dtl.

The oldest known archaeological artifact found anywhere on Visocica is a Roman observation post sitting on top of the hill. This comes as no surprise, since Bosnia used to be a most important regional crossroads of ancient times, with the Drina River serving as the border between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Given that some important supply corridors, connecting East and West (North and South) traversed my country at that time, Roman rulers (senators) and their successors obviously had an enormous interest in Bosnia. Indeed, the high-level Roman military presence is found throughout the country; the military-post remains at the Visocica peak being one such artifact.

Therefore it seems most – if not only – plausible that it was Roman legionaries who had shaped Visocica too, applying an ancient military tactics of ironing the hill-slopes (note: only those overlooking the river Bosna corridor!). Because, what's the purpose of an observation post unless you secured it against siegecraft first? As a geodesist, I can see why they would have set it out parallel to the cardinal lines and then corrected it for the Moon orbital plane inclination (some 5 degrees to the ecliptic): moonlight could thus (under always favorable conditions), assuming clear skies, naturally expose any adversaries attacking the post. Once moonlit, the attackers could then be deflected by pouring molten lead or boiling water (oil) on them, or by rolling stone balls from the post down the slopes, and so on.

Similarly, I am amazed by how unaware people are of the network of tunnels (found inside Visocica) resembling an artifact of the sapping – the most typical military tactics for conquering ancient fortifications. I'm sure your grandchildren' encyclopedias contain more detail on those primitive military tactics, as I remember such readings being the "Harry Potter" of my childhood. Advanced reader should see Epitoma rei militaris ("Military matters") by Flavius Vegetius Renatus (www.intratext.com/ixt/LAT0189 ). Obviously, given a whole slew of feasible military-relic explanations, chances for a 10+ kyr civilization in Bosnia are virtually none!

Finally, even if one assumes, as the only alternative, that Romans hadn't leveled the Visocica slopes for tactical purposes, but in sapping a settlement Illyrians-Teutans had built even earlier on the artificially excavated/cut limestone terraces of Visocica (resembling the 1st century BC Fetele Albe monumental findings in the Orastie Mts. in Dacia – Sureanu Mts. in present-day Romania), this still would mean that expert archaeologists, not geophysicists, are the ones to make such calls, if required.

Therefore, without getting into motives for your involvement, I urge you to consider immediately withdrawing from this outrageous "project". I say outrageous because from the time of its inception – some two years ago – no mainstream scientist has supported it in any way. Those who opened their minds for just a moment were swiftly sucked into a smutty media campaign that twisted their words beyond recognition. Therefore, your prolonged involvement could not only harm your repute, but could also weaken the position of science in a society devastated by corruption and ruse.

Respectfully yours,
Mensur Omerbashich, Ph.D.
geophysicist & geodesist
Sarajevo

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