Informazione
Annullata la parata del 2 giugno
Questa è la lettera di risposta che Lelio Basso scrisse all’allora ministro della Difesa Arnaldo Forlani che decise di sospendere la parata militare del 2 giugno 1976 dopo il terremoto che sconvolse il Friuli.
Sono personalmente grato al ministro Forlani per avere deciso la sospensione della parata militare del 2 giugno, e naturalmente mi auguro che la sospensione diventi una soppressione.
Non avevo mai capito, infatti, perché si dovesse celebrare la festa nazionale del 2 giugno con una parata militare. Che lo si facesse per la festa nazionale del 4 novembre aveva ancora un senso: il 4 novembre era la data di una battaglia che aveva chiuso vittoriosamente la prima guerra mondiale. Ma il 2 giugno fu una vittoria politica, la vittoria della coscienza civile e democratica del popolo sulle forze monarchiche e sui loro alleati: il clericalismo, il fascismo, la classe privilegiata. Perché avrebbe dovuto il popolo riconoscersi in quella sfilata di uomini armati e di mezzi militari che non avevano nulla di popolare e costituivano anzi un corpo separato, in netta contrapposizione con lo spirito della democrazia?
C’era in quella parata una sopravvivenza del passato, il segno di una classe dirigente che aveva accettato a malincuore il responso popolare del 2 giugno e cercava di nasconderne il significato di rottura con il passato, cercava anzi di ristabilire a tutti i costi la continuità con questo passato. Certo, non si era potuto dopo il 2 giugno riprendere la marcia reale come inno nazionale, ma si era comunque cercato nel passato l’inno nazionale di una repubblica che avrebbe dovuto essere tutta tesa verso l’avvenire, avrebbe dovuto essere l’annuncio di un nuovo giorno, di una nuova era della storia nazionale. Io non ho naturalmente nulla contro l’inno di Mameli, che esalta i sentimenti patriottici del Risorgimento, ma mi si riconoscerà che, essendo nato un secolo prima, in circostanze del tutto diverse, non aveva e non poteva avere nulla che esprimesse lo spirito di profondo rinnovamento democratico che animava il popolo italiano e che aveva dato vita alla Repubblica.
La Costituzione repubblicana, figlia precisamente del 2 giugno, aveva scritto nell’articolo primo che l’Italia è una repubblica democratica fondata sul lavoro.
Una repubblica in primo luogo. E invece quel tentativo di rinverdire glorie militari che sarebbe difficile trovare nel passato, quel risuonare di armi sulle strade di Roma che avevano appena cessato di essere imperiali, quell’omaggio reso dalle autorità civili della repubblica alle forze armate, ci ripiombava in pieno nel clima della monarchia, quando il re era il comandante supremo delle forze armate, “primo maresciallo dell’impero”. Le monarchie, e anche quella italiana, eran nate da un cenno feudale e la loro storia era sempre stata commista alla storia degli eserciti: non a caso i re d’Italia si eran sempre riservati il diritto di scegliere personalmente i ministri militari, anziché lasciarli scegliere, come gli altri, dal presidente del consiglio. Ma che aveva da fare tutto questo con una repubblica che, all’art. 11 della sua costituzione, dichiarava di ripudiare la guerra come mezzo di risoluzione delle controversie internazionali? Tradizionalmente le forze armate avevano avuto due compiti: uno di conquista verso l’esterno e uno di repressione all’interno, e ambedue sembravano incompatibili con la nuova costituzione repubblicana.
Repubblica democratica in secondo luogo. In una democrazia sono le forze armate che devono prestare ossequio alle autorità civili, e, prima ancora, devono, come dice l’art. 52 della costituzione, uniformarsi allo spirito democratico della costituzione. Ma in questa direzione non si è fatto nulla e le forze armate hanno mantenuto lo spirito caratteristico del passato, il carattere autoritario e antidemocratico dei corpi separati, sono rimaste nettamente al di fuori della costituzione. I nostri governanti hanno favorito questa situazione spingendo ai vertici della carriera elementi fascisti, come il gen. De Lorenzo, ex-comandante dei carabinieri, ex-capo dei servizi segreti ed ex-capo di stato maggiore, e, infine, deputato fascista; come l’ammiraglio Birindelli, già assurto a un comando Nato e poi diventato anche lui deputato fascista; come il generale Miceli, ex-capo dei servizi segreti e ora candidato fascista alla Camera. Tutti, evidentemente, traditori del giuramento di fedeltà alla costituzione che bandisce il fascismo, eppure erano costoro, come supreme gerarchie delle forze armate, che avrebbero dovuto incarnare la repubblica agli occhi del popolo, sfilando alla testa delle loro truppe, nel giorno che avrebbe dovuto celebrare la vittoria della repubblica sulla monarchia e sul fascismo. E già che ho nominato De Lorenzo e Miceli, entrambi incriminati per reati gravi, e uno anche finito in prigione, che dire della ormai lunga lista di generali che sono stati o sono ospiti delle nostre carceri per reati infamanti? Quale prestigio può avere un esercito che ha questi comandanti? E quale lustro ne deriva a una nazione che li sceglie a proprio simbolo?
Infine, non dimentichiamolo, questa repubblica democratica è fondata sul lavoro. Va bene che, nella realtà delle cose, anche quest’articolo della costituzione non ha trovato una vera applicazione. Ma forse proprio per questo non sarebbe più opportuno che lo si esaltasse almeno simbolicamente, che a celebrare la vittoria civile del 2 giugno si chiamassero le forze disarmate del lavoro che sono per definizione forze di pace, forze di progresso, le forze su cui dovrà inevitabilmente fondarsi la ricostruzione di una società e di uno stato che la classe di governo, anche con la complicità di molti comandanti delle forze armate, ha gettato nel precipizio?
Vorrei che questo mio invito fosse raccolto da tutte le forze politiche democratiche, proprio come un segno distintivo dell’attaccamento alla democrazia. E vorrei terminare ancora una volta, anche se non sono Catone, con un deinde censeo: censeo che il reato di vilipendio delle forze armate (come tutti i reati di vilipendio) è inammissibile in una repubblica democratica.
Lelio Basso
The Belgrade Forum welcomes initiative of the Head office of the World Peace Council (WPC), in Athens and the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation to hold this meeting, which we consider very important. The dramatic events in several countries over the recent years, planned and implemented by direct involvement of the USA, NATO and the EU, also threatening to propagate to some other countries, are a huge threat to peace and security, especially in the region of the Mediterranean, Asia Minor and Middle East. We are faced with new and dangerous challenges, with new threats and with the introducing of new unrests and turmoil in various parts of the world, targeted by conquering and domination intent of the masterminds of the new world order. The leading Western countries with imperialist ambitions, primarily the USA, are increasingly assuming the right to decide on who can and who cannot lead any given country in the world. The new arms race imposed by the USA, NATO and the EU, establishment of new military bases and new zones of influence, ever more frequent use of force and blatant violation of the fundamental principles of the international law are the ultimate threat to peace, stability and security.
After the failure of bipolar world from the early 1990s, the world revealed true colors of NATO and true intentions of its masters, first of all, the USA. Ever since, the USA and its Western allies, with the use of their NATO arm, have been trying to introduce new rules of international conduct, such as concepts of “humanitarian intervention”, “human rights above sovereignty”, “exceptionalism” and “responsibility to protect” in a bid to secure the excuse for the use of force to instigate civil wars, change of regimes, dissolution of sovereign states.
The first victim of this new USA/NATO doctrine was former Yugoslavia, or Serbia, exactly 13 years ago. Under the pretext of “humanitarian intervention”, led by the USA and without any UN Security Council mandate, NATO committed aggression against Serbia (Yugoslavia) on 24 March 1999 and went on with it for 78 days and nights. For the first time since its establishment, the USA-led NATO applied deadly force against a sovereign country, thus grossly breaching not only its Founding Act but also the UN Charter and the fundamental principles of the international law. In the build-up for this aggression, the USA was strongly supported by its Western allies, primarily by Germany, France and the UK. That-time President Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO leadership told their citizens that bombing of Serbia was a “humanitarian intervention”, cynically named “Merciful Angel”, aiming at preventing the alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Albanian minority in Kosovo. These manufactured lies were all too ready accepted by the so-called free western media in supporting and justifying the aggression. This was the twilight of the Western ethics, twilight of media freedoms.
The focus of such policy was neither democracy nor human rights, but solely the U.S. interests; they employed NATO to harness the entire Balkans under its control, with a view further its imperialist goals in the Asia Minor and the Middle East, the Caspian basin and, ultimately, Russia. Pursuing their hegemonic goals, they embarked on dismembering the territory of Serbia and forcible separating of Kosovo in spite of this Province being a part of Serbia and the cradle of Serbian statehood. The aggressors turned it into a NATO-made pseudo-state called Kosovo, and erected one of the largest American military bases, the Bondsteel Camp, which facilitates control of all strategic routes between Europe and the Middle East. This project was accompanied with systematic destruction of the national, cultural and spiritual heritage of Serbian nation in this part of Serbia.
13 years since NATO aggression, the Balkans remains unstable. Under the UN and EU mandates, Kosovo turned into a training ground for terrorists, a transit base for heroin and human trafficking, and a precedent for dismantling free sovereign states. Albanian separatism is rising once again in the South of the Central Serbia, and Tirana hosts conferences dedicated to creation of Greater Albania. These are the results of spreading “democracy” by Tomahawk/Patriot missiles, unmanned aircrafts, depleted uranium, cluster bombs and graphite bombs.
The USA/NATO aggression against Serbia (Yugoslavia) was a historic turning point and a fatal step leading into destruction of the previously valid limits and rules governing international peace and security introduced since WWII. This illegal act set a dangerous precedent that NATO and the USA keep applying in other parts of the world ever since, threatening the entire structure of international relations, peace and stability. This is how creators of the new world order willfully and by argument of weapons imposed a new reality on the ashes of the international legitimacy, in the form of a parallel “international law”, authored and implemented by the USA through NATO as its implementing tool. This process, unfortunately for us, was followed with marginalization of roles of the United Nations and its Security Council, as the ultimate global body for preserving the peace and stability in the world.
Pursuing its imperial arrogance and misusing the tragic and heinous terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and backed by its most loyal NATO allies, the USA continued with aggression in Afghanistan in 2001, and then in Iraq in 2003, blatantly violating the international law. They forcibly changed the regimes in both countries. The continued decade-long use of brute force and most advanced weaponry against the peoples in these states caused vast human casualties, tremendous anguish of people and huge material destructions. Just like the aggression against Serbia was based on lies, the aggression against Iraq was also based on defrauding national and global public with lies of alleged production of weapons of mass destruction in that country, which was never found.
The most recent example of illegal and violent behavior of the USA and NATO is aggression against Libya in 2011. The Western leaders praised this NATO campaign as the first example of “responsibility to protect”. In fact, NATO action in Libya is the latest example of USA/NATO violent practice and brute misuse of UN Security Council resolution adopted at the beginning of the conflict in Libya in early 2011. This seven-month long NATO-allies aggression was concluded with forcible change of regime in that country and apprehension, torture and execution of years-long Head of State, President Qaddafi, supported by direct involvement of NATO special forces. The key roles there were played by France, the UK and the U.S., whereas some Arab countries, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, provided ample financial support, especially to those media which supported the aggression and campaigned in demonizing of President Qaddafi and his regime, for the sake of justifying the aggression.
What can be said about the result of such US/NATO “humanitarian interventions”? A full analysis would take too much time, but we could recall its basics:
- During aggression against Serbia (Yugoslavia) was killed more than 3,500 persons out of whom two-thirds were civilians including 79 children under the age of ten; more than 10,000 people were heavily wounded and suffered lasting effects; during and after the aggression, the policy of terror and pre-planned ethnic cleansing resulted in expulsion of more than 230,000 Serbs and non-Albanian people, with only few thousand of them managing to return to their homes in all these years; Serbs who remained in Kosovo have no freedom of movement, have to live in closed enclaves sometimes surrounded by barbed wire, and under constant exposure to harassment and arbitrariness of local Albanian authorities; the whole country suffered material damage of the order of 100 billion dollar; the effects of mass-scale use of weapons with depleted uranium and consequential radiation have lasting adverse consequences on health of the current and the future generations;
- During the years of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, hundreds of thousand of civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed, and heavy material devastation inflicted, resulting in poverty, chaos and instability; both countries became breeding grounds for conflicts and terrorist groups with tragic outcome for the inhabitants, because the hand-picked governments do not enjoy trust of people; the world will remember brutal and ruthless behavior of the aggressor against local people such as tragic exercise of humiliating prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or incessant night killings of civilians in Afghanistan by the so-called guided missiles, or recent killing of 17 members of several Afghan families including 9 children in a rampage of a US soldier; in its arrogance, the aggressor put tag value on these lives with as little as 50,000 dollars, in damages to families; 11-year long American war and its atrocities strengthened the resolute and the will of the Afghan people to fight for their country and expel foreign arrogant and inhuman enemy;
- No less tragic is the outcome of seven-month aggression against Libya - thousands of killed civilians, destroyed cities and infrastructure, tens of thousands of jailed proponents of former regime under grave humiliation and torture; the report of UN Human Rights Council and recent reports of some other humanitarian organizations claim that in Libya, including the period of NATO aggression, were committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some of these reports include conclusive proof of involvement of NATO forces in crimes committed in Libya; once decades-long stable and prosperous country, Libya of today is devastated and facing conflicts along the regional and tribal lines, under a realistic threat of disintegration that will inflict far-reaching consequences not only for Libya but also for the entire region; Libyan oil reserves, Africa’s richest, were taken over mainly by the Western companies, and Libya was finally integrated in NATO’s so-called Mediterranean Dialogue, a military partnership with NATO, which was the very goal of the aggression.
Recently, the world’s attention has been focused on events in Syria and increasingly direct threats against Iran vocalized by Israel and the USA. Concerning conflict in Syria, one can notice a great similarity with pre-NATO Libya’s developments. Both were caused by direct involvement of foreign factor. As previously in Libya, the dominant roles in Syria belong to foreign mercenaries and paramilitary forces close to radical Islamic groups, which are directly supported by NATO and certain countries from the region. As in Libya, the financial support to insurgents comes from Saudi Arabia and some other countries from the region. The West/NATO repeat in Syria the same method as used in Libya: support to terrorist actions, infiltration of mercenaries to execute military actions, and instigation of conflicts against the regime, smuggling arms to insurgents, training insurgents in training compounds located in some adjacent countries, especially in Turkey; as in Libya, the basic USA/NATO goal is creating instability and chaos, instigating and inciting armed conflict with maximum civilian deaths, as precursor for foreign intervention and overthrowing the regime in Syria.
I wish to use this opportunity and express, on behalf of the Belgrade Forum, our sincere solidarity with nations of Syria and Iran who are exposed to dangerous activities in destabilizing and threatening their respective sovereignty, peace and freedom. I also offer full support to the fight of people of Palestine for freedom and creation of independent state of Palestine within its historic borders from 1967, and Jerusalem as its capital.
We wish to believe that countries and forces defending the peace, sovereignty and observance of the UN Charter and fundamental principles of the international law, combined and in joint exercise, will muster strength to prevent new aggressive “humanitarian interventions” by the USA and NATO. There lies the importance of this meeting, its conclusions and messages, and our joint future activities. The Belgrade Forum gives its full support to the World Peace Council in its tireless efforts to mobilize broadest peace-loving forces in fight against imperialism and in defense of peace, freedom and democracy. The basis for international relations should be the international law with the overarching role of the United Nations in resolving international problems and safeguarding the peace, rather than desires of mighty ones to forcibly change borders and regimes in any country.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Dragomir Vučićević,
Member of the Steering Board of the
Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/balkans-to-caspian-u-s-and-nato-continue-cold-war/
Stop NATO - April 30, 2012
Balkans To Caspian: U.S. And NATO Continue Cold War
Though infrequently acknowledged if even given consideration, the current historical period remains what it has been for a quarter century, the post-Cold War era.
Beginning in earnest in 1991 with the near simultaneous disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – instantaneous in the first case, comparatively slower in the second, only complete with the independence of Montenegro in 2006 – the bipolar world ended with the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the nonaligned one with the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The dissolution of the two nations, the only both multi-ethnic and multi-confessional countries in Europe, was accompanied by violent ethnic conflicts often reinforced by religious differences. In Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, the South Caucasus, the Russian North Caucasus and on the east bank of the Dniester River.
In many instances, in Serbian-majority areas of Croatia and Bosnia and in Transdniester, memories of World War II gave rise to legitimate fears of revanchism among populations that recalled the death camps and pogroms of Adolf Hitler’s allies in the early 1940s and witnessed the recrudescence of the ideologies, the irredentism and the political trappings that gave rise to them.
Transdniester refused to become part of post-Soviet Moldova as it foresaw both states being reabsorbed into Romania. Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adjara, parts of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, didn’t desire to be included in the Republic of Georgia and majority-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh adopted a similar approach to post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The above are collectively known in certain circles as the frozen conflicts in former Soviet space.
The centrifugal dynamic reached more dangerous proportions when armed secessionist movements went beyond federal republics – the Leninist constitutions of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia formally allowed for their independence under the proper conditions – and arose in autonomous republics, former autonomous republics and other regions: Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia and Kosovo and the Presevo Valley in Serbia. Northwestern Macedonia was the site of the same destabilization in 2001, the direct – and inevitable – result of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war against Yugoslavia two years earlier on behalf of Kosovo separatists.
The area collectively assailed by the above violence and national vivisection stretches from the Adriatic Sea to the Caspian Sea, north of the Broader (or Greater or New) Middle East which in turn begins in Mauritania and ends in Kazakhstan, from Africa’s Atlantic coast to China’s western border.
The ever more extensive breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, correlated with – and more than correlated with – the development of NATO as an expansionist, aggressive and bellicose regional and global military force.
Twenty-one nations and five smaller breakaway states (including Kosovo) where earlier there had been only two created that many more opportunities for the West to expand southward and eastward from Cold War-era NATO territory. Every one of the 21 former Soviet and Yugoslav federal republics is now either a full member of NATO or engaged in a partnership program. Thirteen of them have troops serving under NATO command in Afghanistan.
Two recent announcements demonstrate the constantly increasing penetration and domination of the area that begins in Slovenia and ends in Azerbaijan, a swathe of land that on its eastern extreme borders Russia to its north and Iran to its south.
Recently NATO’s Allied Command Operations website announced the resumption of what had been annual military exercises employed to integrate partners in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
The dual exercise, Cooperative Longbow and Cooperative Lancer, respectively a command and a field exercise, will occur this year in Macedonia from May 21-29 with the participation of several NATO members – if the preceding versions are an indication, the U.S. Britain, Canada, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Turkey and others – and perhaps twice as many partnership adjuncts from the Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative programs. The exercise, like its predecessors, is based on a “crisis response” scenario and a United Nations mandate. Like Libya last year, for instance.
In the last Cooperative Longbow/Cooperative Lancer exercises, in Georgia in 2009, NATO members the U.S., Britain, Canada, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Albania participated. Longbow/Lancer 2009 was held less than nine months after the five-day war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 and was also to have included NATO members Estonia and Latvia and twelve partnership nations.
This year’s version is slated to involve the largest number of Partnership for Peace states in any Longbow/Lancer exercises, thirteen: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Switzerland and Ukraine. NATO hasn’t yet disclosed which Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partners will participate this year.
The first Longbow/Lancer exercises were held in Moldova in 2006 with seven NATO members, twelve Partnership for Peace nations (all of the above-mentioned except for Serbia, which joined the Partnership for Peace in that year) and Mediterranean Dialogue partner Israel. Mediterranean Dialogue member Morocco and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative members Qatar and the United Arab Emirates sent observers.
Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2007 was conducted in Albania and the following year’s exercise in Armenia. All five nations – Moldova, Albania, Armenia, Georgia and Macedonia – are deeply involved, either on their own territory or in neighboring nations, in one or more of the conflicts discussed above. In 2009 Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Serbia withdrew beforehand because of the Georgia-Russian war of a few months earlier and Estonia and Latvia did also because of an anti-government mutiny staged the day before the almost month-long exercise began.
What role the NATO and partnership troops may have played had the military uprising progressed further than it did can be easily imagined.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ Black Sea Rotational Force posted on its Facebook account (and to date nowhere else) that its six-month rotation for this year will “build enduring partnerships with 19 nations throughout Eastern Europe.” More accurately, as the Marine program formed two years ago identifies as its mission, in “the Black Sea, Balkan and Caucasus regions.”
Two years ago twelve nations were involved, by last year there were thirteen – Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine – and this year nineteen. The six new participating nations were not named.
Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 began its half-year-long deployment in Georgia by joining Agile Spirit 2012 in March at the Vaziani Training Area where the last Cooperative Longbow/Lancer exercises took place. Serbia may host its first military exercises with the force as well.
The U.S. Marine Corps is not only building bilateral and multilateral ties with nineteen countries in the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the Caucasus and other parts of the former Soviet Union, it is also consolidating NATO’s expansion into those areas with the ultimate aim of full Alliance membership for those not already among the bloc’s 28 member states.
It can be argued that the Cold War didn’t end, that the U.S. and NATO continue to wage it with wars and preparations for wars.
Stop NATO - May 4, 2012
British Defence Chief: NATO Absolves Germany Of Nazi Past
Rick Rozoff
While British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was in Berlin earlier this week touting global NATO ahead of the military alliance's summit in Chicago two weeks from now, he urged Germany to overcome its "historic reluctance" to waging military aggression in Europe and around the world. Regarding the West, a case of what oft was thought, but ne'er so - candidly - expressed.
After meeting with his German counterpart Thomas de Maiziere, Hammond told the British press that World War II "was quite a long while ago” and as such Germany must cast off whatever residual misgivings it may harbor about reassuming an international military role within NATO, as "it is self-evident that there is still huge potential in the German defence structure to deliver more useful firepower to the alliance.” Germany must "significantly increase its military capability,” Hammond advocated.
As Europe's major economic force, it must also be its main military contributor.
The deadliest war in history is yesterday's news, old hat. Time to get over it and move on. To new wars. Concerns about the 1945 Potsdam agreement on the demilitarization of Germany, the Nuremberg principles and the German constitutional ban on preparing wars of aggression are, to use contemporary colloquial language, like so 20th century.
Hammond's remark about Germany's hesitance to get back into the war business, though, is outdated, as the country did so thirteen years ago in support of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia in 1999.
The United Kingdom's defense chief also delivered an address at his country's embassy in Berlin on May 2, co-sponsored by the German Council on Foreign Relations, entitled "Shared Security: Transforming Defence to Face the Future," which reiterated the common Western position of internationalizing NATO for a broader range of missions outside of the Euro-Atlantic area.
His comments included these unequivocal assertions:
"The responsibility of European nations to defend their citizens can no longer be discharged by a strategy of homeland defence and a Fortress Europe.
"The threats we face are no longer territorial, so a passive defence of national territory is no longer adequate protection for our citizens.
"Our security requires that we do not sit back and let threats come to us - but that we project power to meet them - wherever in the world they are forming."
Global NATO, led by its major, its only significant, powers - the United States, Britain, France, Germany and sometimes Italy - will unilaterally and arbitrarily define threats that must be confronted; will practice alleged defense of its territory by going on the offensive half a world away if desired, as the reasons for war are "no longer territorial"; will not let largely chimerical dangers present their calling cards in Brussels, London, Washington, Berlin and Paris, but will anticipate them before they even exist, if they are even capable of existing, and "project power" to preempt them, whether the threats are real or fancied, imminent or remote, latent or without foundation either in the present or the future.
Hammond further stated, "we need to take that final step up from the defensive posture of the Cold War, to respond to a future in which threats can originate thousands of miles away..."
As such, "the NATO Alliance, and the European part of it in particular, must continue to develop together the capability and the political will to act when necessary - to project power, including, but not limited to, military power, and to deploy it rapidly when we must."
And where. And against whom. And under whatever contrived rubric it chooses. Hammond was disabusing Germans of any lingering, antiquated illusions that their armed forces are designed to protect their nation's borders and population.
Hammond applauded the six-month NATO bombing campaign against Libya last year as "a coalition success" within the context he discussed. For as "it is in Europe’s interest that the United States rises to the challenge that the emergence of China as a global power presents and we should support the decisions the US has made," then the inextricable correlate of that is Europe's "Shouldering the major burden in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, but also being prepared, if necessary to take a bigger role in relation to North Africa and the Middle East."
The major NATO powers divide up the world.
But even the alliance of 28 European and North American nations, consisting of three members with nuclear weapons in Europe (which include American tactical nuclear bombs in Germany) and most of the world's largest and most lethal armed forces, are not enough for Hammond and for NATO.
The bloc must expand its already existing partnerships around the world, to date with no less than 40 countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the South Caucasus, the South Pacific and Central, South and East Asia, to yet broader stretches of the planet.
In Hammond's words, "Both Libya and Afghanistan have shown how agile NATO can be in incorporating the contributions of outsiders." In the second instance with troops from 50 nations.
He also cited "The new Northern Group of nations, which includes Germany, the Baltic and Nordic countries (including Sweden), Poland and the Netherlands, as well as the UK," in reference to the initiative of Hammond's superior, Prime Minister David Cameron, last year to launch an Arctic-Baltic "mini-NATO" aimed against Russia.
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/britain-spearheads-mini-nato-in-arctic-ocean-baltic-sea/
German F-4F Phantom II fighter-bombers were deployed for NATO's Baltic air patrol in a four-month rotation ending on April 25, where they were within a three-minute flight from Russia's second largest city, St. Petersburg.
The British defence secretary praised the role of Germany in Afghanistan, where with 4,900 troops (and another 400 held in reserve), exceeding parliamentary limitations on the number of soldiers permitted to be deployed abroad, it is the third largest troop contributor for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
He also hailed German military deployments to the Balkans, where the nation has the largest number of troops serving with NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR), almost twice as many as the next biggest contributor, the U.S. The last three KFOR commanders - Erhard Drews, Erhard Bühler and Marcus Bentler - are German generals.
NATO has sent reinforcements to Kosovo, 550 German and 150 Austrian troops, ahead of Serbian presidential and parliamentary elections because the few remaining ethnic Serbs there intend to vote in the elections of what they (and most of the world) still consider their country.
According to Kosovo Force spokesman German Major Marc Stümmler, KFOR is "preparing for...a higher level of tensions."
Germany reentered the world of war in 1999 when it provided Tornado warplanes for the 78-day air assault against Yugoslavia, marking the first time the nation's armed forces participated in a combat mission since World War Two. That the Luftwaffe was deployed over the skies of a country it had extensively bombed in 1941 confirmed with a vengeance, and no shadow of ambiguity, Germany's reemergence as an aggressive military power.
For Serbs and other Balkans peoples Germany's role in World War Two is not forgotten, if it is by Philip Hammond.
Immediately following the latter's visit to Berlin, on May 4th NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived in the city to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel, to visit the NATO-Mission for Freedom permanent exhibition at the Mauer Museum at Checkpoint Charlie and to lavish praise on his host for, to quote the NATO website, "Germany's steadfast support for the Alliance and its missions, notably in Afghanistan, Kosovo and off the coast of Somalia."
When Germany was reunited in 1990, contrary to the George H.W. Bush administration's pledge to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, NATO immediately moved not only "one inch" but over 200 miles to the east, beginning the process of absorbing all the Soviet Union's former partners in the now defunct Warsaw Pact.
Germany has aided NATO's expansionist and expeditionary designs in the past thirteen years and NATO has rewarded it: Germany is now the world's third largest weapons exporter, its arms sales abroad increasing with each succeeding year.
Britain and NATO insist its leaders demonstrate, to quote Hammond, "the ability to generate the political will and public support for the deployment of military resources more widely in the future in support of Alliance operations beyond our borders."
Post-Cold War NATO has attempted to re-legitimize war as a method of advancing geopolitical objectives. Nations whose constitutions explicitly prohibit the practice - NATO members Germany and Italy, NATO partner Japan - have troops and other military personnel serving under the Atlantic Alliance in Afghanistan. So do NATO partners Finland, which had not engaged in combat operations since the Second World War, and Sweden, which had not done so in two centuries.
But according to Defence Secretary Hammond nations like Germany are not sufficiently involved in the wars of the 20th century and must play an even more pronounced role in them, present and to come.
There is no "quite a long while ago" when it comes to wars of aggression. There is only "never."
L’eterna giovinezza della Nato
di Manlio Dinucci
Durante la guerra fredda, scrive nell’autobiografia ufficiale, non condusse alcuna operazione bellica, ma si limitò ad «assicurare la difesa del proprio territorio contro la minaccia del Patto di Varsavia». Non dice però che questo si formò sei anni dopo la Nato. È con la fine della guerra fredda, in seguito al dissolvimento del Patto di Varsavia e dell’Urss nel 1991, che la Nato rinasce a nuova vita.
Mantenendo però il suo imprinting: il comando Usa. Nel luglio 1992 lancia la sua prima operazione di «risposta alle crisi», la Maritime Monitor, per imporre l’embargo alla Jugoslavia. Nei Balcani, tra l‘ottobre ’92 e il marzo ’99, conduce undici operazioni dai nomi evocativi (Deny Flight, Sharp Guard, Eagle Eye e altri). Il 28 febbraio 1994, durante la Deny Flight in Bosnia, la Nato effettua la prima azione di guerra nella sua storia. Viola così l’art. 5 della sua stessa carta costitutiva, poiché l’azione bellica non è motivata dall’attacco a un membro dell’Alleanza ed è effettuata fuori dalla sua area geografica. Si arriva in tal modo all’operazione Allied Force, lanciata il 24 marzo 1999: per 78 giorni, decollando soprattutto dalle basi italiane, 1.100 aerei, per il 75% Usa, effettuano 38mila sortite, sganciando 23mila bombe e missili sulla Jugoslavia.
Nello stesso anno, il Summit Nato di Washington autorizza i paesi membri a «condurre operazioni di risposta alle crisi non previste dall’articolo 5, al di fuori del territorio dell’Alleanza». E la Nato inizia la sua espansione nell’Est, inglobando nel 1999-2009 nove paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia, di cui tre dell’ex Urss, e tre della ex Jugoslavia.
Senza più limiti, l’Alleanza nata come Patto del Nord Atlantico arriva sulle montagne afghane: nell’agosto 2003, con un colpo di mano, la Nato assume «il ruolo di leadership dell’Isaf, forza con mandato Onu». Inizia così «la prima missione al di fuori dell’area euro-atlantica nella storia della Nato».
Nel 2004 essa entra in Iraq, ufficialmente per una «missione di addestramento». Estende quindi le sue operazioni in Africa: nel 2005 in Sudan, nel 2007 in Somalia, nel 2009 nel Corno d’Africa e nell’Oceano Indiano. Nel 2011 è la volta della Libia: nell’operazione Unified Protector la Nato effettua (secondo quanto dichiara) 9.700 missioni di attacco aereo, in cui vengono sganciate 7.700 bombe di precisione allo scopo di «fare tutto il possibile per minimizzare i rischi ai civili».
Ora la Nato prende di mira Siria e Iran, ma sullo sfondo ci sono Russia e Cina. Nella sua «conquista dell’Est», essa è arrivata a ridosso della Cina, in Mongolia, con la quale ha avviato due mesi fa un «Programma individuale di partnership e cooperazione». Poiché dei 28 paesi dell’Alleanza solo cinque si affacciano sul Nord Atlantico, a Bruxelles si sta pensando a un cambio di nome: alcuni propongono «Alleanza Trans-Atlantica». Ma anche questo è restrittivo poiché, sulla scia degli Usa, essa si estende ormai alla regione Asia/Pacifico.
Così l’Alleanza si rinnova, abbeverandosi alla stessa fonte di giovinezza: la guerra.
Stop NATO - May 30, 2012
Pentagon Consolidates Control Over Balkans
Ahead of, during and after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 25th summit in Chicago on May 20-21, the Pentagon has continued expanding its permanent military presence in the former Yugoslavia and the rest of the Balkan region.
The military bloc's two-day conclave in Chicago formalized, among several other initiatives including the initial activation of its U.S.-dominated interceptor missile system and Global Hawk-equipped Alliance Ground Surveillance operations, a new category of what NATO calls aspirant countries next in line for full Alliance membership. Three of them are former Yugoslav federal republics - Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro - and the fourth is Georgia, conflicts involving which could be the most immediate cause of a confrontation between the world's two major nuclear powers.
This year new NATO partnership formats have sprung up like poisonous toadstools after a summer rain: Aspirants countries, the Partnership Cooperation Menu, the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme, the Connected Forces Initiative and partners across the globe among them.
The military bloc's inauguration as an active, aggressive military force in Bosnia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s laid the groundwork for the U.S.'s already unmatched military to move troops, hardware and bases into Southeast Europe for actions there and to points east and south: The Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa and Central and South Asia.
Since 2004 several nations in the east and west Balkans - Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia and Albania - have been incorporated into the alliance as full members and the remainder - Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the generally unrecognized Republic of Kosovo - have in the first four instances joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program and in the last had its nascent armed forces, the Kosovo Security Force, built from scratch by the leading alliance powers.
Macedonia, which would have become a full member in 2009 except for the lingering name dispute with Greece, and Montenegro have been granted the Membership Action Plan, the final stage before full accession, and Bosnia will be accorded the same once the quasi-autonomous Republika Srpska is deemed properly stripped of the last vestige of self-governance.
NATO and the wars waged under its command, not only in the Balkans but in Afghanistan and all but officially in Iraq, have provided the Pentagon the mammoth Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and three major air bases in Bulgaria and Romania as well as headquarters for new military task forces and jumping-off points for "downrange" operations outside Europe. The U.S. Department of Defense has also acquired subservient legionaries for wars in Asia and Africa and training grounds for American and multinational expeditionary units employed in 21st century neo-colonial wars far beyond the Euro-Atlantic area. Romania will host 24 U.S. Standard Missile-3 interceptors starting in three years.
NATO's Cooperative Longbow and Cooperative Lancer 2012 command and field exercises started in Macedonia on the second day of the Chicago NATO summit, May 21, and ended on May 29. The largest of four such exercises held within the framework of the Partnership for Peace program - "to train, exercise, and promote the interoperability of Partnership for Peace forces using NATO standards" - to date, this year's Longbow/Lancer drills included 2,200 troops from several NATO and a dozen Partnership for Peace nations, a total of 25 countries including the U.S.
On May 26 U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Air Forces in Europe launched the Immediate Response 2012 exercise in Croatia with military personnel from the host country, Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro and Slovenia. Macedonia and Serbia sent observers.
A report on the opening of the exercise posted on the website of U.S. European Command appended this paragraph:
"U.S. Army Europe is uniquely positioned to advance American strategic interests across Eurasia, building teams, assuring allies and deterring enemies. The relationships we build during more than 1,000 theater security cooperation events in more than 40 countries each year lead directly to support for U.S. actions such as in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya."
Balkan states Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Slovenia deployed troops to Iraq after 2003 and all those nations as well as Montenegro (which became independent in 2006) have troops under NATO command in Afghanistan currently.
NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples has military missions in Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia.
On May 28 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff began a two-week disaster management and crisis response exercise, Shared Resilience 2012, in Bosnia. In addition to the U.S. and Bosnia, participating nations include Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Slovenia.
Immediately before the NATO summit, the U.S. Marines Corps' Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 held multinational exercises near Constanta, Romania from May 7-18. The Black Sea Rotational Force was established in 2010 and last year doubled the duration of its training exercises in the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the South Caucasus from three to six months annually.
Now spending half the year in the geopolitically vital area, the Black Sea Rotational Force recently announced its mission of building "enduring partnerships with 19 nations throughout Eastern Europe.” The U.S. Marines are being hosted by Romania from April 2 to September 1. Prior to that Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 participated in the Agile Spirit 2012 exercise in Georgia in March.
U.S. Army Europe's Task Force East, employing Stryker combat vehicles, also operates out of Romania as well as Bulgaria: The Mihal Kogălniceanu Airfield and the Babadag Training Area in the first country and the Novo Selo Training Area in the second. In 2009 Task Force East spent three months training in Romania and Bulgaria, primarily preparing troops from the U.S. and the two host nations for operations in Afghanistan.
This year NATO officially identified Afghanistan and Iraq as military partners, in the category of partners across the globe. Since the end of NATO operations against Libya last October, the bloc's secretary general and its American ambassador, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Ivo Daalder, have mentioned Libya joining NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership with the other nations of North Africa.
Each NATO military operation over the past 17 years, in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, has provided the alliance with bases, centers, troops and logistics for later and for future wars. Air bases in Bulgaria and Romania were employed for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and, as noted above, every Balkan nation but Serbia has supplied troops for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon and NATO military personnel, aircraft, ships and radar in Southeast Europe can be used in attacks on Syria and Iran and in any new armed conflict in the South Caucasus, such as the five-day war between Georgia and Russia four years ago.
The U.S. and its NATO allies are expanding their military presence and infrastructure ever closer to new theaters of war.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages
Website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com
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Tanjug News Agency - May 7, 2012
13 years since NATO bombing of Chinese Embassy
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to Serbia Zhang Wanxue, Belgrade correspondents of the Chinese media and representatives of the Association of Serbian Journalists (UNS) paid on Monday respects to the Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing that took place 13 years ago.
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to Serbia Zhang Wanxue, Belgrade correspondents of the Chinese media and representatives of the Association of Serbian Journalists (UNS) on Monday paid respects to the Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing that took place 13 years ago.
They laid wreaths at the site of the former Chinese embassy in New Belgrade, which at 11:45 p.m. on May 7, 1999, suffered a blast that left three Chinese journalists dead.
In 2009, then Chinese Ambassador to Belgrade Wei Jinghua and Belgrade Mayor Dragan Djilas unveiled a plaque in memory of the Chinese journalists: Xu Xinghu and Zhu Ying, correspondents of the Guang Ming Daily, and Shao Yunhuan, a correspondent of the Xinhua news agency.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/oct/17/balkans
The Observer - October 16, 1999
Nato bombed Chinese deliberately
Nato hit embassy on purpose
John Sweeney and Jens Holsoe in Copenhagen and Ed Vulliamy in Washington
Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces.
The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters.
The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles.
The intelligence officer, who was based in Macedonia during the bombing, said: 'Nato had been hunting the radio transmitters in Belgrade. When the President's [Milosevic's] residence was bombed on 23 April, the signals disappeared for 24 hours. When they came on the air again, we discovered they came from the embassy compound.' The success of previous strikes had forced the VJ to use Milosevic's residence as a rebroadcast station. After that was knocked out, it was moved to the Chinese embassy. The air controller said: 'The Chinese embassy had an electronic profile, which Nato located and pinpointed.'
The Observer investigation, carried out jointly with Politiken newspaper in Denmark, will cause embarrassment for Nato and for the British government. On Tuesday, the Queen and the Prime Minister will host a state visit by the President of China, Jiang Zemin. He is to stay at Buckingham Palace.
Jiang Zemin is still said to be outraged at the 7 May attack, which came close to splitting the alliance. The official Nato line, as expressed by President Bill Clinton and CIA director George Tenet, was that the attack on the Chinese Embassy was a mistake. Defence Secretary William Cohen said: 'One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map.'
Later, a source in the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the 'wrong map' story was 'a damned lie'.
Tenet apologised last July, saying: 'The President of the United States has expressed our sincere regret at the loss of life in this tragic incident and has offered our condolences to the Chinese people and especially to the families of those who lost their lives in this mistaken attack.
Nato's apology was predicated on the excuse that the three missiles which landed in one corner of the embassy block were meant to be targeted at the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, the FDSP. But inquiries have revealed there never was a VJ directorate of supply and procurement at the site named by Tenet. The VJ office for supplies - which Tenet calls FDSP - is some 500 metres down the street from the address he gave. It was bombed later.
Moreover the CIA and other Nato intelligence agencies, such as Britain's MI6 and the code-breakers at GCHQ, would have listened in to communication traffic from the Chinese embassy as a matter of course since it moved to the site in 1996.
A Nato flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of 'non-targets': churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this 'don't hit' map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO.
...
The Chinese military attache, Ven Bo Koy, who was seriously wounded in the attack and is now in hospital in China, told Dusan Janjic, the respected president of Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade, only hours before the attack, that the embassy was monitoring incoming cruise missiles in order to develop counter-measures.
Nato spokesman Lee McClenny yesterday stood by the official version. 'It was a terrible mistake,' he said, 'and we have apologised.' A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said yesterday: 'We do not believe that the embassy was bombed because of a mistake with an out-of-date map.'
8 mai 2012
Aujourd’hui encore, les projectiles de l’OTAN sèment la mort au Kosovo et en Métohie parmi les Albanais et les Serbes, mais aussi parmi les soldats de la KFOR et le personnel de l’UNMIK.
President-elect Tomislav Nikolic, who is looking for more intensive relations with Russia, has promised that Serbia will never become a member of NATO.
Nikolic, who met Putin in the Russian president’s first meeting with a foreign leader since being elected, stated that Serbia is “on the road” to the European Union, admitting that it will be “a long road, and we will base our relations on the rules of international law.”
He added that he wasn’t sure if Serbia would be admitted into the EU unless “we recognize the independence of Kosovo and Metohija.”
Many Serbs are ambivalent, if not outright hostile to the idea of restoring full relations with the European Union, not to mention the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1999 Belgrade was on the receiving end of a massive 78-day bombing campaign by the alliance (March 24 – June 10) aimed at removing Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.
"Our constitution forbids us to abandon Kosovo and Metohija," Nikolic said. Meanwhile, Russia is ready to allocate the second loan tranche of $800 million to Serbia, Putin assured his Serbian guest.
The Russian leader said that for the loan to be granted there should be concrete technical proposals to rebuild Serbia’s aging infrastructure.
Earlier, Russia already provided a $200 million loan to Serbia in an effort to consolidate the country's budget.
Moscow's total investment in Serbia stands at $1.4 billion, Putin recalled.
As for the next tranche, the president-elect should lend impetus to government structures in order to ensure that they expedite the preparation of technical proposals, Putin said.
Putin also wished Nikolic success in implementing all his campaign promises.
"These tasks are plenty and difficult," he said.
The Russian leader mentioned that cooperation between the two countries will help deal with the various complicated problems. Putin also referred to Serbia as Russia’s “spiritual brother.”
“While Russia sees Serbia as a reliable partner in the Balkans, we are also spiritual brothers,” he said. "This is how it was, and this is how it will be."
At the end of the meeting Putin made "an unusual request" to Nikolic: "I would like to say that we have worked with your political opponent, previous president Boris Tadic, as partners for a number of years, and I am asking you to pass along our words of gratitude for the joint work," Putin said.
The Russian president invited the Serbian president-elect to visit Russia following his inauguration "at any time that is convenient for you."
13 ГОДИНА ОД БОМБАРДОВАЊА ВАРВАРИНА
Данас се навршава 13 година од убиства десеторо и рањавања више десетина грађана Варварина током бомбардовања моста, од авијације НАТО на Великој Морави у том шумадијском граду. Међу погинулима је била и Сања Миленковић, ученица Математичке гимназије у Београду, победница многих регионалних и европских такмичара младих математичара. По њеном имену 1999. Године, основан је Фонд за стипендирање талената из математике и техничких наука за који су средства обезбедили припадници српског расејања.
Поводом ове годишњице, синоћ је у Дому културе у Варварину одржана промоција књиге – зборника „СРБИЈА И НАТО“, у издању Београдског форума за свет равноправних. Присутне грађане и учеснике промоције поздравио је председник Општине Варварин, Професор Зоран Миленковић, отац покојне Сање Миленковић. О књизи су говорили предсеник Београдског форума Живадин Јовановић, генерал у пензији Радован Радиновић и бивши амбасадори Др Станислав Стојановић и Драгомир Вучићевић.
Основне поруке свих учесника промоције су да се злочини као што је бомбардовање Варварина и убиство његових грађана, не смеју заборавити и да за агресију НАТО на Србију (СРЈ) нема оправдања. Књига „СРБИЈА И НАТО“ , оцењено је, представља велики допринос разумевању правих узрока и циљева агресије који се виде у стварању преседана, одузимању Косова и Метохије од Србије и ширењу НАТО на Исток. Учесници промоције су подсетили на чињеницу да се око 70 одсто грађана Србије противи чланству у НАТО и истакли да Србији, као мирољубивој европској земљи, није место у НАТО – у као офанзивној, интервенциoнистичкој војној организацији.
У програму су учествовали књижевници, песници и ученици који су читали своје радове о злочинима НАТО – а.
Southeast European Times - April 23, 2014
BiH edging closer to NATO process
Sarajevo: The clock is running for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The country has roughly four weeks to determine ownership of dozens of military facilities - bases, barracks and warehouses - before NATO holds its annual spring summit, this year in Chicago.
The sorting process is a crucial step in BiH's path to potential membership in the Alliance.
On April 10th, NATO members meeting in Brussels made clear that BiH is on track to get the green light for a Membership Action Plan (MAP). Since then, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a letter to BiH's Presidency, asking authorities "to register these assets as soon as possible so that BiH can enjoy all benefits that MAP has to offer."
Specifically, 69 pieces of property are on the table. Ownership is in question because they were all once in the hands of the former Yugoslav army. For example, in Republika Srpska, there are about 45 barracks. Just over half of them are to be registered to the state. The rest will be handed over to local authorities, who will convert them into a range of purposes.
...
NATO wants the list winnowed down so that BiH's military can use what is left to its full capacity. When finally registered to the state, the armed forces will have unlimited use of these properties.
Currently, the value of all this property is unclear, but by some estimates it could be worth hundreds of millions of euros.
So while a political agreement was struck last month regarding the process, the Council of Ministers must implement it by the May 22nd summit.
Denis Hadzovic, director of the Sarajevo-based NGO Centre for Security Studies, told SETimes, “I think that the technical part of the property registration is much easier than the political part. I am sure that BiH will succeed in doing this; that we will bring a document to the NATO summit in Chicago that proves that we earned the MAP."
Deputy Defence Minister Mirko Okolic seems optimistic.
"The Council of Ministers has already begun to work on this and I think that the job will be completed by the NATO summit," he told SETimes.
But larger issues loom. "After MAP, I think political debate will follow on whether BiH even needs to join NATO, because there are different views on this issue in Sarajevo and Banja Luka," Okolic added.
In mid-March, RS President Milorad Dodik reopened the issue of BiH’s membership, reiterating that the citizens of RS will decide in a referendum whether they wish to join NATO when the time comes.
Regardless, Ines Kuburovic, spokeperson for NATO Headquarters in Sarajevo, said the headquarters has continuously co-operated with state institutions to help them meet the requirements to activate the MAP.
...
After meeting with BiH Presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic earlier this month, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Alliance is committed to BiH receiving full membership.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
May 14, 2012
NATO OPEN DAYS TO BE HELD IN TURKISH CULTURAL CENTER, SARAJEVO
NATO OPEN DAYS is a five day event to be held 15 - 19 May, with the goal to provide to wider public more information about NATO Alliance, NATO integrations processes in BiH, activities of NATO HQ SARAJEVO in 2011/2012 period, and to mark 60th anniversary of Turkish membership in NATO.
Specifically, Open Days will engage students and academic community in public discussions on various NATO related topics.
In the light of NATO Chicago Summit in May, the whole event, and the opening event in particular will be an opportunity to share with general public and media information about the Summit, BiH's participation in the event, including the current phase of NATO integrations processes in BIH.
During NATO Open Days, Turkish Cultural Center premises will offer:
1. Two separate exhibition floors, which will offer a photo exhibition of NATO HQ Sarajevo activities in 2011/2012 period, and a photo exhibition to present the NATO – Turkey relationship in past 60 years,
2. In the cinema hall (30 seat capacity) NATO movies will be screened daily, and the hall will be used for student lectures/round tables.
3. Event will be an opportunity to distribute various NATO promotion materials to the visitors and wider public.
PROGRAM:
EVENT TOPIC DATE AND TIME
Opening event
15 May 2012, 19:00 hrs – 21:00 hrs
Round Table/Lecture
"NATO and BiH”
"NATO's fight against organised crime and terrorist groups”
"NATO and Gender”
16 May 2012, 12:00 – 13:00 hrs
Round Table/Lecture
"NATO and BiH”
"Role of Strategic Communications in NATO”
17 May 2012, 12:00 – 13:00 hrs
Round Table/Lecture
NATO's New Strategic Concept
"Role of Strategic Communications in NATO”
18 May 2012, 13:00 – 14:30
Serbia – past and present
by Mirjana Andjelkovic Lukic
You cannot talk about Serbia without mentioning the recent bombings, which are the cause of all our current problems.
Exactly 13 years ago, on 24 March 1999 at 8:45 pm the bombing of Serbia began. The first return of the NATO aircraft to Aviano in Italy was accompanied by a festive mood in Europe. The pilots were praised for having hit their targets with surgical precision. Pictures of villages and towns full of smoke, destroyed homes and crying people as the first victims of war were shown.
Germany’s role
In the twentieth century, the Serbs have been attacked 3 times. Enormous human suffering and material damage was inflicted to them. As in 1941, when on 6 April Germany bombed Belgrade without any declaration of war very early in the morning, the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization attacked Serbia again without prior notice. This time there were Germans among the ranks of NATO forces. Once again they flew over the land, which they knew well from two previous world wars. Belgrade is the only capital that has been bombed more than 40 times since it came into existence.
The reason for the war was worked out under the government of Schröder, Fischer and Scharping in Germany. Lacking the real reasons for an attack, they made use of big lies, such as a massacre of civilians in Racak. Another one was the supposedly massive expulsion of the Albanian population, which was actually on the run, because they had been informed by the Western countries about the attack on our country.
In order to justify the longed-for war, Scharping claimed the Serbs had turned the soccer stadium in Pristina into a concentration camp. This allegation has never proven right.
Apart from these lies, they also spoke about the alleged plan of the Serbs to torture the Albanian population and expulse them. Scharping was handed out this plan in Serbian language. He ignored, however, that this document with the name “Horseshoe Plan” was written in the Croatian language. In Serbia, the document was known to nobody. Moreover, a Serb never writes in Croatian. The reports of German officers, and many witnesses who tried to tell that this was a lie, were also ignored.
Helena Ranta, the Finnish member of the commission investigating the events in Racak, was also involved in the network of lies. In her biography she later admitted to having worked under great pressure from the Finnish foreign ministry and the then head of the Kosovo mission, William Walker. They searched and ordered hard-hitting facts about Serbian crimes. Since Walker was not satisfied with her coverage, he broke a pencil and threw it at Mrs Ranta, from whom he demanded a more convincing account of the Serbian crimes which they needed to be able to start the war.
“It started with a lie”
Only a few years later, German media revealed that story about the alleged crimes was false. “It started with a lie” was the title of the TV program in which Scharping was confronted with his lies. He played the innocent ignorant.
Another one who has also spoken, but too late, was Carla del Ponte in her book “The Hunt” in which she revealed the awful truth that during the KFOR occupation organs of kidnapped Serbs and other non-Albanians were harvested and sold in Europe. There are indications that this is still being carried out today. The Italian journalist Marilina Veca also wrote about these facts. The entire Italian public was therefore in a state of turmoil.
Dick Marty, politician in Switzerland, member of the Council of Europe and member of the Commission on Human Rights in the OSCE, also reported on this issue.
On 14 December 2010, he published a report for the Council of Europe in which he confirmed that Hashim Taci and other leaders of the UÇK were involved in the sale of organs of Serb prisoners, in many contract killings as well as in various other crimes.
Everything was too late for the Serbian people
None of the people responsible for this manipulation and war propaganda was made liable for the crimes that have cost thousands of lives. For all this, a culprit was needed. They found it in Miloševic, the democratically elected president of Serbia, who had been the only serious interlocutor for the West for a long time. With the change of Western targets, he became the worst dictator in Europe overnight. These methods were also used for other statesmen.
The fruitful fantasy of the West reached its peak in denouncing this personality. He was compared to Hitler – it was even claimed that he was worse than this and that he had created a new Auschwitz. So the Germans succeeded in removing their Auschwitz to Serbia. In the Western media we could only hear the respective country’s own comments, not the original words of Miloševic, by which all people would have been able to make their own judgment.
The trial in The Hague was to bring the truth to light. But even there all the news came from only one direction. The indictment was presented by Carla del Ponte, who had collected a lot of evidence. What really happened in court was not shown – not in the Western media – for example, that she could not prove one single charge. Usually, the Serbian politicians and generals lost their lives in this situation. However, nobody cared about this.
Audiatur et altera pars – listen to the other side as well
In every conflict there are at least two sides. To get to know the truth – which would be essential with damage of such magnitude – you must listen to both sides. This is the only prerequisite for the understanding among the peoples, and the only way to peace.
A source of Serbian crimes was created from many constructed lies. These lies shook the whole world. NATO had long been ready for action. The aircraft engines were already running. The war had to be started.
With their aggression on Serbia, all NATO countries violated many international conventions, protocols and resolutions of the UN, among others against:
• the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 1997 [Kyoto Protocol],
• the “Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage” from 1972 (World Heritage Convention),
• the “Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977”
• the “Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons” from 1980 (UN weapons ban convention)
• the UN Human Rights Commission’s resolutions for the prevention of discrimination and the protection of minorities from 1996 to 1997 and many others.
By ignoring many international conventions, the NATO alliance has committed the greatest crime against peace in the area of Europe. The bombing of Serbia with depleted uranium, but also with newly developed weapons, has contaminated the areas on Serbian territory forever, because the half life of DU [depleted uranium] is 4.5 billion years. The increasingly larger number of people with cancer nowadays bears witness to this fact.
Despite all these findings, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently said on television that she was happy that there have been no more wars in Europe since the Second World War. The processes in Serbia used to be called a “humanitarian intervention” by the mainstream.
Whatever the future of Serbia will be, no one will ever be able to justify NATO’s war against this small country and the participation of Germany, Ralph Hartmann wrote.
Alastair Campbell on the other hand, the second most powerful man in the UK and the first press secretary to Tony Blair, stated the following in an interview for the newspaper “Novosti” in Belgrade: He did not feel sorry that NATO had bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Without batting an eyelid, he admitted to having been one of the strategists of the propaganda war against Serbia. (Source: “Vecernje novosti” dated 01/21/2011)
Gifts of the Good Angel
As they “have endowed us from a humanitarian point of view with bombs, I called my book in which all aspects of the bombing and its aftermath are published, “Gifts of the Good Angel”.
In the US, this operation was known as “Operation Noble Anvil” whereas in Serbia it was called “Merciful Angel”.
The bombing of Serbia lasted for 78 days, from 24 March to 10 June 1999. In this act of aggression 1,031 soldiers were killed, 5,173 soldiers and policemen were wounded, 2,500 civilians were killed, including 78 children, and more than 6,000 civilians were wounded. Particularly memorable is the tragic fate of the three year old Milica Rakic from Batajnica. She was hit by a NATO bomb on 14 April 1999 at 21:45 in the bathroom while she was sitting on her potty.
At the beginning of the bombings 370 planes flew over Serbia daily. In the end, the number rose to 1,200 a day.
Apart from the projectiles with depleted uranium on the territory of Serbia, other explosive combinations and rocket fuels with certain chemical compounds have been used in the bombings, whose explosive effects are very toxic and cause cancer.
NATO has admitted 30,000 bullets; the military of Serbia speaks of 50,000, the Russians of 90,000. About 200 targets were hit, mainly in Kosovo. Against us a very special chemical and radiological war was waged with the aim of destroying both the people and their property.
Although no chemical weapons were used, the NATO war against Serbia has also chemical aspects. They refer to the bombing of transformer stations, electric power plants, chemical factories, oil refineries and their oil depot. This way the combustion products, various cyclic compounds, cancerous dioxins, but also phosgenes were blown into the atmosphere.
The transformer station that had been hit released the toxic Pyralene [French trade name for polychlorinated biphenyls]. The Pyralen oils are genotoxic and should not come into contact with the environment. They are highly carcinogenic and mutagenic. Since 2001, these oils have been prohibited in Europe.
My husband and his team visited the destroyed objects during the war to study the effect of explosive projectiles in laboratories. He has also studied the effect of the electrically conductive fibers, which were thrown on electrical systems, substations and transmission lines. These fibers have caused a short circuit that led to power failure in all districts and knocked them out. These systems were applied in our country for the first time ever.
They are commonly called “soft” or “graphite bombs”, although they are not. They were part of the so-called CBUs, i.e. cluster bombs produced in the US. A CBU contains 202 clusters with a mass of electro-permeable fibers of 1 kg each. During the fall, these fibers wound on bobbins unfold like a spider’s web, cover power lines and cause short circuits making them useless.
The fibers are very light and the wind blows them in all directions. If they fall off the lines, they often rise up and cause damage once again. The professionals in my husband’s team managed to neutralize them, so they stuck to the ground and could not rise again. Therefore, our transformer stations were later attacked with real bombs, which was much more difficult to repair. My husband paid for such actions and the desire to help his people with his life. 36 young people paid with their lives in similar actions.
In addition to these objects, hospitals, TV stations, bridges, children’s nursery homes and many neighborhoods were attacked, in which innocent civilians lived. Even travelers were not spared: trains were bombed, in which not a single soldier but only civilians were traveling. The entire war damage was estimated at 120 billion dollars.
Environmental and health effects of war
It is hard to describe what we have witnessed during these 78 days. Only after several years we have become aware of the environmental, health and political consequences. The use of uranium 238 and other weapons tells us that a radioactive and nuclear war has been waged with terrible aftermaths for people and nature.
In Kosovo the watershed of three river sources was also bombed – although there were neither soldiers nor civilians:
• Sitnica – Ibar – Morava – Danube – Black Sea
• Pinja – Vardar – Aegean Sea
• Crni and Beli Drim – Skadarsko Jezero [Lake Skadar] – Bojana – Adriatic Sea.
The goal was the contamination of rivers and the people on their banks.
The Geneva Convention has also been obviously violated by the use of cluster bombs. They were dropped twice on Nis – on the market and the hospital – on Valjevo, Kraljevo, on the oil refineries in Novi Sad and other cities such as Pancevo, Pe and Prizren in Kosovo and Metohija and many more areas. 93 targets on the territory of Serbia were hit by cluster bombs where they have caused great damage among the population. Besides many deaths there is an even greater number of wounded with dilacerated body parts who are now invalids. People are still dying today from leftover bombs.
Before the bombing Serbia was a green oasis in Europe, famous for the production of organic products that were exported to large parts of Europe. Many places were protected, the mountains of Fruska Gora, Tara, Zlatibor, as well as the Deliblatska Pescara [Banat Sand Desert], a rare example of a dry landscape in Europe. Large areas around industrial zones such as Pancevo, Novi Sad and Kragujevac, Nis, Belgrade and other cities are contaminated.
In the south of Serbia, alongside Kosovo and Metohija, where yet no decontamination has taken place, mainly the areas around Vranje, Bujanovac and Presevo were attacked. In his film “Deadly Dust”, Frieder Wagner described similar situations, with precise explanations by Dr Günther. The number of cancer patients is growing from year to year.
The aftermath of the bombing is best seen in the newborn. According to doctors from the hospital in Vranje, 21 children were brought there with deformities in 1998. With a constant birth rate of between 800 and 1,000 births per year, the number rose to 73 children in 2008 [an increase of 248%].
The physician Dr. Nebojsa Srbljak from Kosovska Mitrovica stated that by 1998 one out of 1,000 children suffered from leukemia. By 2008 this number had risen to 10 to 15 children. In Vranje, it is impossible to buy the expensive equipment needed for the blood test to identify the traces of uranium. The doctors from Vranje hope to be able to use the experience of Japanese experts after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In addition to the increase of cancer patients, the number of malformed newborns is also growing. The father of one child was involved in the decontamination of DU near Vranje. It is not only in children but also in animals that an increase in deformities is being observed.
The tragic aftermath of this war is clearly visible in Nikola Jovi, a 10-year boy from Kosovska Mitrovica. As a baby he had cancer of the eyes. The eyes were then removed and replaced with artificial eyes. For a time he attended the school for the blind in the Belgrade suburb of Zemun. Since his parents live in Kosovska Mitrovica, Nikola was very unhappy. Later he was in a normal fourth grade class in Kosovska Mitrovica and was greatly helped by his school friends. He uses Braille.
The Petkovic family, which survived all the bombing in Kosovo, fled to Bor in northeastern Serbia. A few years later, her daughter Nikolina was born without eyes. Later, she received artificial eyes. The parents are very poor and cannot help her much. We do not have institutions that can take care of such children.
The town of Leposavi in Kosovo was also bombed heavily during the war. Kristina Milutinovic lives with her parents in Leposavi. [we reported about Kristina 6 February].
In Serbia, more than 33,000 cancer cases are registered every year, with about 21,000 people dying each year. In the last 10 years the number of patients has increased constantly (see charts below). Serbia has now the largest cancer rate in Europe.
Serbia today
Serbia has now changed from a socialist system to liberal capitalism, suffering economic, moral, cultural and every other form of damage. In Serbia today, there is poverty, and the social culture of its people is getting worse.
10,000 companies have been closed, and 60,000 are blocked or face extinction. The closed companies include mainly crafts, trades, dental and veterinary offices and agencies for various purposes. The most important companies in the country are being sold to foreign companies. Some of them work well, thanks to cheap labour from Serbia, because the products are sold at high prices abroad.
Other companies were bought and then closed to prevent competition with the buyer’s own products on the market. That was the case with the Zastava car factory in Kragujevac, which before the war employed 50,000 workers, and was bought by Fiat. Today, only a small part of the plant is working, where our politicians like to be photographed and thereby deceive the people about the productivity of this factory. Fiat cars are available on the market in Serbia, but only available to a small proportion of the population.
Sugar factories, brick plants, breweries and cement plants have been sold. Our cigarette factory in Nis was bought by Philip Morris. In five years they transferred about 10 billion euro out of Serbia, but paid hardly any taxes to the Serbian budget! A large number of workers became unemployed. All these companies have been sold to foreign investors at a price far below their value.
The number of unemployed in Serbia has reached a historic high. According to the national employment office, there are 730,000 people unemployed. According to unofficial sources in Serbia more than 1 million people are unemployed.
According to the Statistical Office, the number of people living below the poverty line in Serbia grew to 700,000, i.e. 9.2% of the population, between 2008 and 2010. In 2010 the minimum salary was 8500 dinars or 85 euro.
The number of soup kitchens has increased. Every day 30,000 people queue up for a loaf of bread and a hot meal in Serbia, which in itself represents an increase of 50% over the past year. According to alarming data from the Red Cross, 6,000 children need these meals, 2500 of them younger than 10.
For 2012, a minimum income of 19,500 dinars is predicted (195 euro), but prices have already reached the level of European countries, where salaries are much higher.
The territory of Serbia is rich in water, medicinal herbs and spas. As far as the amount of water is concerned, we are in 40th place in the world.
Today, we do not even own all the springs. The best known mineral springs are in the hands of foreign companies. The Knjaz Milos mineral water and juice factory in Arandjelovac has been bought by the Dutch company Clates Holding.
The Rosa natural mineral water spring is at 1550 meters above sea level in the pristine nature reserve of Vlasina. The water is bottled at optimum temperature while maintaining natural properties directly by the spring. Because of its low mineral content, especially sodium, it is good for daily use. It is owned entirely by Coca-Cola.
Mivela mineral water is owned by the Croatian Agrokor company. The spring is located in the village of Veluce near Trstenik. The Mivela mineral water contains about 330 mg of magnesium per litre, which covers the body’s daily requirements.
The banks
Of the Serbian banks only three are still existing, the Serbian Bank, the Komercijalna banka and the Postbank. There is talk that these banks are to be sold as well.
Kosovo – Serbia deprived of a part of his country
The greatest injustice, however, was afflicted on Serbia in Kosovo. There is talk of many aspects, here are only two of them:
The robbery began with the greatest mine Trepca, situated in the North and the South of Kosovska Mitrovica. It had contributed to Serbian export with a major part before and had employed 23,000 workers. In late 2008 the lead reserves alone had been estimated to b e 425,000 tons, those of cink 415,000 tons, of silver 800 tons, of nickel 185,000 tons and of cobalt 6,500 tons. In the mine Grbenik, also situated in Kosovo, there are reserves of one million and 700,000 tons of bauxite, from which about 425,000 tons of aluminum could be produced. The export of ore is growing steadily. Only in the period between 2009 and 2010 it rose to an amount worth 557 million dollar. Almost the complete Serbian area covers brown coal, the value of which has been estimated to be 1000 billion dollar. No wonder, Soros visited Kosovo several times and tried to buy all of that for just 300 million dollar.
The Hashim Taci government promised US state secretary Hilary Clinton, US companies were to be the main buyers of these riches. Bill Clinton, former US president, was the initiator of the Kosovo war. The depletion is worked with Serbian infra-structure for which we are still paying off the debts, today.
Camp Bondsteel: Little Guantánamo?
It is not by accident that Camp Bondsteel, the biggest American military base outside the USA is situated in Kosovo. That is a town of its own. The food is taken there from the USA, the water is, too, and everything that might protect the soldiers from contamination. All the same the West is pretending that the poisons that they threw onto our country are not dangerous. You need not talk about the importance of strategic aims either. They are well-known.
Alvaro Gil-Robles, former Commissioner for Human Rights in the Council of Europe visited the prison of Camp Bondsteel in 2002, but he talked about it only in 2005. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper “El País” he said that he had seen a miniature Guantánamo there. He had found that KFOR had been authorized to arrest people without any previous judicial examination in court before.
The Serbs would never have agreed to that, under no circumstances. Neither would they admit that their property was robbed. Therefore reasons were invented to expel them. Here is but one of them: German sources pretended that the Serbs were massively expelling Albanian people. In reality the following happened: during the Second World War 10,000 Serbs were killed in Kosovo although no essential fights against the occupying forces (Germany, Italy, who were supporting the Albanians) had taken place. Between the Second World War and 1999 in total 200,000 Serbs were expelled several times. Their houses were used to lodge Albanian people coming in from Albania.
The biggest expulsion took place in 1999, when Kosovo became a protectorate of UNO (KFOR). Around 300,000 Serbs and inhabitants of Montenegro left their territory. So you see very well who expelled whom. The West knew all this, it is for that reason that they had to use lies.
As in many other European countries, more people die in Serbia than are born. According to a census there were 300,000 less people living in Serbia. This amounts to the size of a town as Cacak.
Since in Serbia people cannot find any work because of the ruined economy our young people go to the USA, to Canada or to European countries after finishing their studies.
A great number of medical students, of IT specialists, of electric engineers and other very highly qualified people are leaving Serbia after Serbia has given them education and instruction. They are in search of a better life.
On 1st March Serbia gained the status of a candidate to EU access. The commitment of Serbia with respect to their candidate status is considerable.
Nobody has made his people believe more seriously that Kosovo is still a part of their country, i.e. Serbia’s integrity than the present government with Boric Tadic. The Serbian leaders did not focus on the integrity of Serbia which has been destroyed just by its deprivation of Kosovo. Today both are orienting themselves towards Europe, are going in that direction, but as two separate states. Serbia is expected to maintain peaceful relations with her neighbors. It is only on this basis that they will be able to fly the blue flag with the little stars.
The Serbs will remember President Tadic as a person who served everyone except his own people. The EU promised Serbia payments totaling 60 million euro, which need not be given back. Serbia could easily earn this amount through her own mineral resources which have been taken away from her. The amount of 60 million does not even cover part of the interests on all the treasures which have been taken away.
After they have renounced everything so carelessly, not only me, but many Serbs are afraid that the future Serbia will look as the one shown in a commercial by the US firm Calgon on our TV channels: the Vojvodina is lacking. •
(Translation Current Concerns)
Mirjana Andjelkovic Lukic studied in Belgrade at the faculty of technology and metallurgy, where she met her husband Mirko Lukic. After he finished his studies at the Army High School in Paris both received their doctorate in the field of technology applied to explosives and later became research assistants at the institute of military technology for research and processing of explosives.
During the war professor Mirko Lukic visited some of the bombed areas in Belgrade and its surroundings. As a result he developed cancer and died in 2003.
Mirjana Lukic paid particular attention to the ecological affects of the bombings. After her husband had died she continued the activities she had previously shared with him which were the investigation of the bombings’ chemical and radiological effects on the citizens of Serbia. Besides numerous publications about politics and ecology she worked as judicial consultant in the field of technology applied to explosives. She also published a book which deals with her investigations into the ramifications of the Nato-war: “The presence of the merciful angle” (Serbian: Darovi milosrdnog andjela).
“Emotional Charge“ – “a great bluff“
The campaign, which Ruder Finn set in motion in August 1992, had particularly grave consequences on the perception and assessment not only of the Bosnian war, but later on the conflict in Kosovo, when first Western media reports about prisoner camps in Bosnia were published. According to James Harff the PR agency then succeeded in engaging Jewish circles in the United States for the Bosnian issue, and thus brought about the comparison of events in the Bosnian war with the Holocaust against the Jews.
James Harff described as his greatest PR success that during the war in Bosnia he had succeeded “masterfully […]. We outwitted three Jewish organizations” (quoted according to Merlino 1999, 155). And in fact, three of the largest Jewish organizations in the US published a full-page protest ad in the “New York Times” in August 1992, in which the Serbs were equated with the Nazis and the Bosnians with the Jews. According to Harff, the following happened after that:
“That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. […] Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content such as ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, etc, which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The emotional charge was so powerful that no one risked to contradict, to avoid of being accused of revisionism. We had hit the mark.”
Source: Jörg Becker/Mira Beham. Operation Balkan: Werbung für Krieg und Tod. ISBN 978-3-8329-3591-7.
(English quotation see: http://www.antipasministries.co/html/file0000059.htm)
Charter of the United Nations
Preamble
We the peoples of the United Nations determined
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
and for these ends
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims [...].
Extracts from the Charter of the United Nations
Article 41
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
Article 51
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
“Nuremberg Principles”
1. Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, adopted by the International Law Commission, 29 July 1950:
Nuremberg Principles
Principle I. Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.
Principle II. The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III. The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV. The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Principle V. Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
– Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
– Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour of for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII. Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
Source: http://home.snafu.de/kdv/contentpages/nuernberg.html
