Informazione
( fonte: Scienzaepace mailing list -
http://liste.comodino.org/wws/info/scienzaepace
http://www.scienzaepace.it )
Il Male invisibile, sempre più visibile
E' uscito il volume:
AA.VV., "Il male invisibile, sempre più visibile. La presenza militare
come tumore sociale che genera tumori reali", a cura di Massimo
Zucchetti per il Comitato Scienziate e Scienziati contro la guerra.
Editore Odradek (Roma), giugno 2005, pp.284, euro 16,00.
La prima presentazione del libro avverrà presso la Libreria Comunardi,
Via Bogino 2, Torino, tel 011.8170036, il 30 giugno 2005 alle ore 21:00.
Un'altra presentazione avverrà praticamente al Camping Darby (PISA) il
30 giugno:
GIOVEDI' 30/06
Ore 17,00 Dibattito: DANNI VISIBILI E INVISIBILI DELLA GUERRA -
Conseguenze ambientali e sanitarie delle nuove guerre
Relatori: Giorgio Ferrari, Redazione Rosso Vivo; Monica Zoppè,
Scienziat* Italian* contro la guerra, Pisa; Mauro Cristaldi, Scienziat*
Italian* contro la guerra, Roma; Alberto Tarozzi, Scienziat* Italian*
contro la guerra, Bologna; Della Pina, Docente presso Corso di Laurea
in Scienze della Pace, Pisa. Coordina: Fabrizio Bertini, Coordinamento
dei Comitati Popolari liguri e toscani per la difesa dell'ambiente.
Un'altra/altre due presentazioni dovrebbero farsi in Sardegna nella
settimana dal 4 al 10 luglio, una alla Maddalena e l'altra a Sassari
presso la Libreria Odradek, caffè letterario di Rita Marras. Seguono
dettagli appena possibile.
**********************************************************
Per organizzare presentazioni del libro rivolgersi al curatore:
Prof. Dr. Massimo Zucchetti
DENER - Politecnico di Torino
Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24 - 10129 Torino (ITA)
Tel./Fax +39 - 011 - 564.4464 / 4499
email: zucchetti(a)polito.it
*********************************************************
Dalla quarta di copertina, una breve presentazione:
Il male invisibile, sempre più visibile. La presenza militare come
tumore sociale che genera tumori reali.
Se non dovesse risultare chiaro il titolo - a dire il vero non
immediatamente evidente - di questo volume, più chiaro è il
sottotitolo, che si riferisce alle conseguenze immediate e striscianti
di questa presenza sull’ambiente nel quale viviamo e sulla nostra
salute. Parliamo della mentalità militare che pervade sempre più il
nostro tessuto sociale, con un sistema di valori che desta repulsione
nella nostra coscienza civile. Parliamo delle conseguenze devastanti
sulla salute e sull’ambiente delle popolazioni cosiddette “nemiche”.
Parliamo delle conseguenze altrettanto devastanti sui corpi e sulle
menti dei “nostri”, di chi il militare e la guerra è mandato o
comandato a farli senza sapere. Parliamo di un tumore sociale quale il
drenaggio delle nostre risorse e del nostro lavoro, un tumore sociale
che non fa altro che generare tumori reali: non solo nei nostri corpi,
ma anche nella mente nostra e delle generazioni a venire.
Crediamo sia arrivato il momento di sollevare il velo di censure,
compiacenze, ignoranza coltivata ad arte che ricopre il mondo militare.
Vogliamo contribuire a rendere visibile e vivido questo male invisibile
che avvelena la nostra società. L’esistenza di una macchina complessa
come l’organizzazione militare non è di per sé evidenza della sua
indispensabilità. Occorre andare avanti, occorre andare oltre.
***********************************
Il Male invisibile, sempre più visibile
La presenza militare come tumore sociale che genera tumori reali.
Indice del Volume
01 - Introduzione (Elisabetta Galeotti, Massimo Zucchetti)
02 Programma del Convegno di Asti del 4.2.2005
03 - Ringraziamenti
04 Introduzione alla Sezione 1 NOI, che la guerra siamo
andati/mandati a farla
05 - Falco Accame: “La Truffa del Segreto di Stato. I Servizi Segreti e
le Stragi”.
06 - Valerio Gennaro, Silvana Salerno: “Per uno studio epidemiologico
sui soldati italiani inviati in Bosnia e Kosovo nel conflitto tra
segreti e rischi di cancro”.
07 - Testimonianza dei Coniugi Garro-Cremona, genitori di Roberto
Garro, Referenti del Co.Ge.Mil., Comitato Genitori di Militari Caduti
in Tempo di Pace.
08 Introduzione alla Sezione 2 LORO, che subiscono le conseguenze
delle guerre. Con un addendum: sarà l’Iran il prossimo cattivo di turno?
09 - Alberto Tarozzi, Federica Alessandrini, Zivkica Nedanovska: “Le
conseguenze striscianti di una guerra chimica. Informazioni e rimozioni
nel caso della 'ex-jugoslavia”
10 - Massimo Zucchetti: “Scenari di esposizione futura In Iraq:
convivere con l’uranio impoverito”
11 - Franco Marenco “Libertà duratura?”
12 - Mauro Cristaldi: “La nocività come strategia globale di dominio”
13 Introduzione alla Sezione 3 NOI, che studiamo la guerra e
proponiamo la pace come alternativa: potremo ancora farlo?
14 - Nanni Salio, “Cosa faresti con un trilione di euro all'anno? Costi
di opportunità e alternative al complesso
militare-industriale-scientifico-corporativo”
15 - Marco Cervino, S. Corradini, S. Diavolio: “La militarizzazione
(europea e italiana) dell'osservazione della terra dallo spazio”
16 - Chiara Cavallaro: “La revisione delle leggi penali militari (di
pace e di guerra) dello stato italiano”
17 - Vito Francesco Polcaro “Le vere armi di distruzione di massa: le
armi leggere”
18 - Mario Vadacchino “Un male immateriale: il danno alla democrazia ed
il pericolo di guerra nucleare”
19 - Angelo Baracca “I Legami tra Nucleare Civile e Militare: Ieri,
Oggi e (Soprattutto) Domani”
20 - Francesco Spinazzola, Monica Zoppè: “Le nuove guerre: armi
biologiche anche da noi?”
21 Introduzione alla Sezione 4 LORO, che le basi della guerra ce
l’hanno sotto casa
22 - Mariella Cao: “Sardegna sentina della portaerei Italia”, Comitato
“Gettiamo le basi” della Sardegna.
23 - Maia Maiore: “La Maddalena: una Comunità in Via di Estinzione”,
Comitato Cittadino Spontaneo di La Maddalena (COCIS), Sardegna.
24 - Fabrizio Aumento “Determinazione di radioattività in matrici
biologiche marine intorno alla Base de La Maddalena”
25 - Documento del “Comitato Scienziate e Scienziati contro la guerra”
sulle ricerche ambientali in Sardegna.
26 - Intervento di Sergio Olivieri, Assessore alla Protezione Civile
del Comune della Spezia
27 - Massimo Zucchetti “Sosta di unità navali militari a propulsione
nucleare nei porti italiani: dall’esame dei Piani di emergenza esterna
una semplice conclusione”
28 - Francesco Iannuzzelli: “Informare per disarmare. L'esperienza di
un'associazione di volontariato dell'informazione nella lotta contro la
presenza delle basi militari”.
***********************************
http://liste.comodino.org/wws/info/scienzaepace
http://www.scienzaepace.it )
Il Male invisibile, sempre più visibile
E' uscito il volume:
AA.VV., "Il male invisibile, sempre più visibile. La presenza militare
come tumore sociale che genera tumori reali", a cura di Massimo
Zucchetti per il Comitato Scienziate e Scienziati contro la guerra.
Editore Odradek (Roma), giugno 2005, pp.284, euro 16,00.
La prima presentazione del libro avverrà presso la Libreria Comunardi,
Via Bogino 2, Torino, tel 011.8170036, il 30 giugno 2005 alle ore 21:00.
Un'altra presentazione avverrà praticamente al Camping Darby (PISA) il
30 giugno:
GIOVEDI' 30/06
Ore 17,00 Dibattito: DANNI VISIBILI E INVISIBILI DELLA GUERRA -
Conseguenze ambientali e sanitarie delle nuove guerre
Relatori: Giorgio Ferrari, Redazione Rosso Vivo; Monica Zoppè,
Scienziat* Italian* contro la guerra, Pisa; Mauro Cristaldi, Scienziat*
Italian* contro la guerra, Roma; Alberto Tarozzi, Scienziat* Italian*
contro la guerra, Bologna; Della Pina, Docente presso Corso di Laurea
in Scienze della Pace, Pisa. Coordina: Fabrizio Bertini, Coordinamento
dei Comitati Popolari liguri e toscani per la difesa dell'ambiente.
Un'altra/altre due presentazioni dovrebbero farsi in Sardegna nella
settimana dal 4 al 10 luglio, una alla Maddalena e l'altra a Sassari
presso la Libreria Odradek, caffè letterario di Rita Marras. Seguono
dettagli appena possibile.
**********************************************************
Per organizzare presentazioni del libro rivolgersi al curatore:
Prof. Dr. Massimo Zucchetti
DENER - Politecnico di Torino
Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24 - 10129 Torino (ITA)
Tel./Fax +39 - 011 - 564.4464 / 4499
email: zucchetti(a)polito.it
*********************************************************
Dalla quarta di copertina, una breve presentazione:
Il male invisibile, sempre più visibile. La presenza militare come
tumore sociale che genera tumori reali.
Se non dovesse risultare chiaro il titolo - a dire il vero non
immediatamente evidente - di questo volume, più chiaro è il
sottotitolo, che si riferisce alle conseguenze immediate e striscianti
di questa presenza sull’ambiente nel quale viviamo e sulla nostra
salute. Parliamo della mentalità militare che pervade sempre più il
nostro tessuto sociale, con un sistema di valori che desta repulsione
nella nostra coscienza civile. Parliamo delle conseguenze devastanti
sulla salute e sull’ambiente delle popolazioni cosiddette “nemiche”.
Parliamo delle conseguenze altrettanto devastanti sui corpi e sulle
menti dei “nostri”, di chi il militare e la guerra è mandato o
comandato a farli senza sapere. Parliamo di un tumore sociale quale il
drenaggio delle nostre risorse e del nostro lavoro, un tumore sociale
che non fa altro che generare tumori reali: non solo nei nostri corpi,
ma anche nella mente nostra e delle generazioni a venire.
Crediamo sia arrivato il momento di sollevare il velo di censure,
compiacenze, ignoranza coltivata ad arte che ricopre il mondo militare.
Vogliamo contribuire a rendere visibile e vivido questo male invisibile
che avvelena la nostra società. L’esistenza di una macchina complessa
come l’organizzazione militare non è di per sé evidenza della sua
indispensabilità. Occorre andare avanti, occorre andare oltre.
***********************************
Il Male invisibile, sempre più visibile
La presenza militare come tumore sociale che genera tumori reali.
Indice del Volume
01 - Introduzione (Elisabetta Galeotti, Massimo Zucchetti)
02 Programma del Convegno di Asti del 4.2.2005
03 - Ringraziamenti
04 Introduzione alla Sezione 1 NOI, che la guerra siamo
andati/mandati a farla
05 - Falco Accame: “La Truffa del Segreto di Stato. I Servizi Segreti e
le Stragi”.
06 - Valerio Gennaro, Silvana Salerno: “Per uno studio epidemiologico
sui soldati italiani inviati in Bosnia e Kosovo nel conflitto tra
segreti e rischi di cancro”.
07 - Testimonianza dei Coniugi Garro-Cremona, genitori di Roberto
Garro, Referenti del Co.Ge.Mil., Comitato Genitori di Militari Caduti
in Tempo di Pace.
08 Introduzione alla Sezione 2 LORO, che subiscono le conseguenze
delle guerre. Con un addendum: sarà l’Iran il prossimo cattivo di turno?
09 - Alberto Tarozzi, Federica Alessandrini, Zivkica Nedanovska: “Le
conseguenze striscianti di una guerra chimica. Informazioni e rimozioni
nel caso della 'ex-jugoslavia”
10 - Massimo Zucchetti: “Scenari di esposizione futura In Iraq:
convivere con l’uranio impoverito”
11 - Franco Marenco “Libertà duratura?”
12 - Mauro Cristaldi: “La nocività come strategia globale di dominio”
13 Introduzione alla Sezione 3 NOI, che studiamo la guerra e
proponiamo la pace come alternativa: potremo ancora farlo?
14 - Nanni Salio, “Cosa faresti con un trilione di euro all'anno? Costi
di opportunità e alternative al complesso
militare-industriale-scientifico-corporativo”
15 - Marco Cervino, S. Corradini, S. Diavolio: “La militarizzazione
(europea e italiana) dell'osservazione della terra dallo spazio”
16 - Chiara Cavallaro: “La revisione delle leggi penali militari (di
pace e di guerra) dello stato italiano”
17 - Vito Francesco Polcaro “Le vere armi di distruzione di massa: le
armi leggere”
18 - Mario Vadacchino “Un male immateriale: il danno alla democrazia ed
il pericolo di guerra nucleare”
19 - Angelo Baracca “I Legami tra Nucleare Civile e Militare: Ieri,
Oggi e (Soprattutto) Domani”
20 - Francesco Spinazzola, Monica Zoppè: “Le nuove guerre: armi
biologiche anche da noi?”
21 Introduzione alla Sezione 4 LORO, che le basi della guerra ce
l’hanno sotto casa
22 - Mariella Cao: “Sardegna sentina della portaerei Italia”, Comitato
“Gettiamo le basi” della Sardegna.
23 - Maia Maiore: “La Maddalena: una Comunità in Via di Estinzione”,
Comitato Cittadino Spontaneo di La Maddalena (COCIS), Sardegna.
24 - Fabrizio Aumento “Determinazione di radioattività in matrici
biologiche marine intorno alla Base de La Maddalena”
25 - Documento del “Comitato Scienziate e Scienziati contro la guerra”
sulle ricerche ambientali in Sardegna.
26 - Intervento di Sergio Olivieri, Assessore alla Protezione Civile
del Comune della Spezia
27 - Massimo Zucchetti “Sosta di unità navali militari a propulsione
nucleare nei porti italiani: dall’esame dei Piani di emergenza esterna
una semplice conclusione”
28 - Francesco Iannuzzelli: “Informare per disarmare. L'esperienza di
un'associazione di volontariato dell'informazione nella lotta contro la
presenza delle basi militari”.
***********************************
Meglio tardi che mai?
Con 10 anni di ritardo la BBC "scopre" da un articolo del Vecernje
Novosti che anche in Bosnia ci sono stati casi di decapitazioni. L'ANSA
si accoda subito, precisando però in maniera quasi razzista che si
tratta di un giornale "nazionalista serbo", in maniera da depotenziare
subito l'articolo alla prima riga.
A giudicare dai tempi, dovremo attendere il 2009 per vedere riportati
sulla BBC e sull'ANSA i casi di decapitazioni in Kosovo...
( a cura di Pino.
Sulle decapitazioni effettuate dagli alleati della NATO in Kosmet vedi
ad esempio:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/3163
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2997
http://resistance.chiffonrouge.org/article.php3?id_article=291
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/77934
e le foto su:
http://www.novosti.co.yu/zlocin.htm
http://www.antic.org/KLA
http://www.kosovo.com/kla_decapit.jpg
http://www.kosovo.com/kla_decapit.pdf )
--------------------------------
BOSNIA: SU GIORNALE FOTO DECAPITAZIONE PRIGIONIERO SERBO
(ANSA) - ROMA, 16 giu - Un giornale nazionalista serbo ha pubblicato la
fotografia di un soldato musulmano che decapita un prigioniero serbo
durante la guerra civile in Bosnia Erzegovina del 1992-95. Lo ha
scritto oggi la Bbc nel suo sito online. L'immagine e' presa da un
video privato girato durante il conflitto.
Il Tribunale penale internazionale per i crimini di guerra in ex
Jugoslavia (Tpi) ha respinto l'accusa del giornale di non aver voluto
mostrare il video a causa della sua brutalita', secondo la Bbc.
L'uomo decapitato, secondo il giornale Vecernje Novosti, di Belgrado,
e' Rade Rogic, della cittadina bosniaca di Sanski Most. Il giornale ha
detto che i suoi giornalisti hanno potuto visionare il video privato
della 505 brigata 'Buzim' delle forze armate del governo bosniaco in
cui si vedono mucchi di cadaveri mutilati, villaggi incendiati e la
decapitazione di Rogic.
La pubblicazione della foto avviene una settimana dopo che la
televisione serba ha trasmesso un video in cui si vedono paramilitari
serbo bosniaci che uccidono prigionieri musulmani a Srebrenica, 10 anni
fa. Il video e' stato mostrato al Tpi e in seguito a cio' almeno 12 dei
miliziani serbi che vi compaiono sono stati arrestati. (ANSA). LG
16/06/2005 08:04
Con 10 anni di ritardo la BBC "scopre" da un articolo del Vecernje
Novosti che anche in Bosnia ci sono stati casi di decapitazioni. L'ANSA
si accoda subito, precisando però in maniera quasi razzista che si
tratta di un giornale "nazionalista serbo", in maniera da depotenziare
subito l'articolo alla prima riga.
A giudicare dai tempi, dovremo attendere il 2009 per vedere riportati
sulla BBC e sull'ANSA i casi di decapitazioni in Kosovo...
( a cura di Pino.
Sulle decapitazioni effettuate dagli alleati della NATO in Kosmet vedi
ad esempio:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/3163
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2997
http://resistance.chiffonrouge.org/article.php3?id_article=291
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/77934
e le foto su:
http://www.novosti.co.yu/zlocin.htm
http://www.antic.org/KLA
http://www.kosovo.com/kla_decapit.jpg
http://www.kosovo.com/kla_decapit.pdf )
--------------------------------
BOSNIA: SU GIORNALE FOTO DECAPITAZIONE PRIGIONIERO SERBO
(ANSA) - ROMA, 16 giu - Un giornale nazionalista serbo ha pubblicato la
fotografia di un soldato musulmano che decapita un prigioniero serbo
durante la guerra civile in Bosnia Erzegovina del 1992-95. Lo ha
scritto oggi la Bbc nel suo sito online. L'immagine e' presa da un
video privato girato durante il conflitto.
Il Tribunale penale internazionale per i crimini di guerra in ex
Jugoslavia (Tpi) ha respinto l'accusa del giornale di non aver voluto
mostrare il video a causa della sua brutalita', secondo la Bbc.
L'uomo decapitato, secondo il giornale Vecernje Novosti, di Belgrado,
e' Rade Rogic, della cittadina bosniaca di Sanski Most. Il giornale ha
detto che i suoi giornalisti hanno potuto visionare il video privato
della 505 brigata 'Buzim' delle forze armate del governo bosniaco in
cui si vedono mucchi di cadaveri mutilati, villaggi incendiati e la
decapitazione di Rogic.
La pubblicazione della foto avviene una settimana dopo che la
televisione serba ha trasmesso un video in cui si vedono paramilitari
serbo bosniaci che uccidono prigionieri musulmani a Srebrenica, 10 anni
fa. Il video e' stato mostrato al Tpi e in seguito a cio' almeno 12 dei
miliziani serbi che vi compaiono sono stati arrestati. (ANSA). LG
16/06/2005 08:04
[ Dal Comitato britannico per la Difesa di Slobodan Milosevic -
http://www.free-slobo-uk.org/ (CDSM UK) - riceviamo e giriamo ]
Dear Friends,
The article below was written for a political journal in the north of
England, it does not deal exclusively with Yugoslavia.
However we are circulating it on our CDSM lists as it may be of
interest. IJ.
KOSOVO, CRIMINALITY & TONY BLAIR.
By Ian Johnson
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong". – Voltaire.
Following the illegal Nato attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
British prime minister Tony Blair made a speech in his Sedgefield
constituency in which he complained about the restrictions of current
international law in the ‘changed circumstances of the present’. He
bemoaned the fact that the actions of his government continually came
into conflict with the accepted norms of international law. Rather than
examine the conduct of his own government Blair called for changes in
the law, which would allow for ‘more flexibility’.
In this call he was echoing the demands of the new United States
president George Bush.
Today we can witness the result of this process of change as expressed
in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and in the reactionary and
anti-democratic US Patriot Act and the imminent introduction of new
British ‘terrorism laws’.
Both these developments permit the detention and arrest of US or
British citizens without the need to provide evidence of guilt, without
even a charge being laid, without the accused being allowed access to
legal counsel and the right of US and British governments to hold
indefinitely all those who are named by the relevant politician. The
‘due process of law’ is abandoned and eight hundred years of judicial
development is eradicated at the whim of a politician.
As journalist John Pilger noted prior to the recent British general
election:
"By voting for Blair, you will invite more lies about terrorist scares
in Britain so that totalitarian laws can be enacted. "I have a horrible
feeling that we are sinking into a police state," said George
Churchill-Coleman, the former head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist
squad. Like the fake reasons for Blair's tanks around Heathrow on the
eve of the greatest anti-war demonstration in British history, so
anything, any scare, any arrest, any "control order", will be
possible". (New Statesman 21/4/05).
While these developments have caused outrage it has not been generally
recognised that the blueprint for the attack on international law and
on democratic and civil rights that US and British citizens are now
facing can be found in the previous, illegal, establishment of the UN
ad hoc tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR).
For instance it is clear to anyone following the Slobodan Milosevic
trial at the ICTY that he is not using his defence case to defend
himself, he is using it to expose the truth about what was done to
Yugoslavia, and he is using his defence case to defend Yugoslavia and
its people and by extension he is exposing the corruption of legal
norms and the shattering of international law being undertaken by Blair
and Bush with Clinton before him.
INTERNATIONAL.
In 1999 Blair became the cheerleader in chief for the Nato aggression
against Yugoslavia, a nation that had never attacked another country,
nor indeed had ever threatened to do so.
The term ‘humanitarian intervention’ was coined to justify this illegal
act and a propaganda campaign launched that was reminiscent of 1930s
Germany with its falsifications, faked photographs and unsubstantiated
‘evidence’ of ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘mass graves’ and ‘rape camps’,
claims that were later so discredited that some British newspapers
actually apologised to their readers for misleading them.
The Daily Mail of 5th November 1999 stated,
"The scale on which the public was misled about the atrocities…and not
just Nato’s bombing ‘successes’….threatens to be mind-boggling."
Emilio Perez Pujol, head of the Spanish Forensic Team in Kosovo,
attached to the International Criminal Tribunal, commented on the 12th
October 1999, " I called my people together and said, ‘We’re finished
here’. I informed my government and told them the real situation. We
have become part of a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machine,
because we did not find one…not one…mass grave.’
The New Statesman issue of 15th November 1999 stated, ‘Other atrocities
of particular media interest, such as the ‘rape camps’ that so
horrified Cherie Blair, are turning out to be fiction.’
Doctor Richard Munz who was based at Stenkoval Refugee Camp confirmed
that, ‘The majority of media people I talked to, came here and looked
for a story which they had written already. The entire time we were
here, we had no cases of rape.’
Blair’s claim that, ‘up to 100,000 Kosovars have been murdered’ was
also later exposed as untrue by Andrew Alexander who wrote in November
1999 in the Daily Mail,
"The head of the Spanish team sent out ready to provide 2000 post
mortems, left last month having found only 187 corpses, some of which
may have been bombing casualties!"
However, by the time these and many other similar reports had come out
the damage had been done, and Blair was in a position to use one of his
favourite phrases, ‘let’s move on’. That a sovereign nation had been
destroyed, that thousands had died, that the entire region was now in
chaos, was to Blair of no relevance.
(Coincidentally his phrase of ‘let’s move on’ is now being used in
regard to Iraq and the non-existent WMDs).
Blair’s reasons for destroying Yugoslavia had little to do with
‘humanitarian’ concerns but had everything to do with the sections of
society he actually represents.
It is relevant to note that prior to his first election victory in 1997
Blair and his colleagues spent much of their time convincing Wall
Street and the City of London financial institutions that their
interests would be ‘safe in the hands of a future Labour government’.
Indeed Blair hosted so many dinners and cocktail parties for this
financial elite that the nickname for the Labour party in the City of
London is ‘the prawn cocktail party’.
Moreover, even at this early date, Blair felt confident enough to
inform the assembled bankers at a meeting of the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development that ‘when the East is opened up it will
be bonanza time for the banks’.
Indeed the East is being opened up just as Blair promised his financier
friends. But what has this development meant for the inhabitants of
these countries?
James Petras in his article (http://globalresearch.ca/articles/PET406B
) outlined the results of this road as seen in countries over the last
fifteen years. His findings are worth quoting at length:
‘In Poland, the former Gdansk Shipyard, point of origin of the
Solidarity Trade Union, is closed and now a museum piece. Over 20% of
the labor force is officially unemployed (Financial Times, Feb. 21/22,
2004) and has been for the better part of the decade. Another 30% is
"employed" in marginal, low paid jobs (prostitution, contraband, drugs,
flea markets, street venders and the underground economy). In Bulgaria,
Rumania, Latvia, and East Germany similar or worse conditions prevail:
The average real per capita growth over the past 15 years is far below
the preceding 15 years under communism (especially if we include the
benefits of health care, education, subsidized housing and pensions).
Moreover economic inequalities have grown geometrically with 1% of the
top income bracket controlling 80% of private assets and more than 50%
of income while poverty levels exceed 50% or even higher. In the former
USSR, especially south-central Asian republics like Armenia, Georgia,
and Uzbekistan, living standards have fallen by 80%, almost one fourth
of the population has out-migrated or become destitute and industries,
public treasuries and energy sources have been pillaged. The
scientific, health and educational systems have been all but destroyed.
In Armenia, the number of scientific researchers declined from 20,000
in 1990 to 5,000 in 1995, and continues on a downward slide (National
Geographic, March 2004). From being a center of Soviet high technology,
Armenia today is a country run by criminal gangs in which most people
live without central heat and electricity’.
Highlighting how the privatisation process has undermined the public
health system in these countries Petras goes on to observe:
‘A big contributor to the AIDS epidemic are the criminal gangs of
Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Baltic countries, who trade in
heroin and each year deliver over 200,000 'sex-slaves' to brothels
throughout the world. The violent Albanian mafia operating out of the
newly "liberated" Kosova (sic) controls a significant part of the
heroin trade and trafficking in sex-slaves throughout Western Europe
and North America. Huge amounts of heroin produced by the US allied
warlords of "liberated" Afghanistan pass through the mini-states of
former Yugoslavia flooding Western European countries’.
If we are to accept that Blair’s interventionist policies intentionally
destabilise countries then it is a valid question to ask how can this
policy assist his friends on Wall Street and in the City of London?
To clarify this it is worthwhile to quote some extracts from Naomi
Klein’s work ‘The Rise of Disaster Capitalism’ (May 2005).
Commenting on the reconstruction of countries hit by disaster or war,
Klein notes:
‘And there is no doubt that there are profits to be made in the
reconstruction business. There are massive engineering and supplies
contracts ($10 billion to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone);
"democracy building" has exploded into a $2 billion industry; and times
have never been better for public-sector consultants--the private firms
that advise governments on selling off their assets, often running
government services themselves as subcontractors.
But shattered countries are attractive to the World Bank for another
reason: They take orders well. After a cataclysmic event, governments
will usually do whatever it takes to get aid dollars--even if it means
racking up huge debts and agreeing to sweeping policy reforms.
In Afghanistan, where the World Bank also administers the country's aid
through a trust fund, it has already managed to privatize healthcare by
refusing to give funds to the Ministry of Health to build hospitals.
Instead it funnels money directly to NGOs, which are running their own
private health clinics on three-year contracts. It has also mandated
"an increased role for the private sector" in the water system,
telecommunications, oil, gas and mining and directed the government to
"withdraw" from the electricity sector and leave it to "foreign private
investors." These profound transformations of Afghan society were never
debated or reported on, because few outside the bank know they took
place:
The changes were buried deep in a "technical annex" attached to a grant
providing "emergency" aid to Afghanistan's war-torn infrastructure—two
years before the country had an elected government".
Klein further observes that:
".. the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that
the privatizations and land
grabs are usually locked in before the local population knows what hit
them.
"..The fires were still burning in Baghdad when US occupation officials
rewrote the investment laws and announced that the country's
state-owned companies would be privatized."
Consequently, the destabilisation or actual destruction of sovereign
countries creates the conditions for the privatisation of state owned
enterprises, and the reshaping and restructuring of once independent
economies into market-orientated and World Bank and IMF dependent
states.
In the pursuit of privatisation and bigger profits even natural
disasters are not necessarily a bad thing, as observed by one of Tony
Blair’s ideological colleagues in the US, the quite revolting
Condoleezza Rice, who described the tsunami disaster as "a wonderful
opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us."
Klein comments on the actions of the World Bank:
"Now the bank is using the December 26 tsunami to push through its
cookie-cutter policies. The most devastated countries have seen almost
no debt relief, and most of the World Bank's emergency aid has come in
the form of loans, not grants. Rather than emphasizing the need to help
the small fishing communities--more than 80 percent of the wave's
victims—the bank is pushing for expansion of the tourism sector and
industrial fish farms. As for the damaged public infrastructure, like
roads and schools, bank documents recognize that rebuilding them "may
strain public finances" and suggest that governments consider
privatization (yes, they have only one idea). "For certain
investments," notes the bank's tsunami-response plan, "it may be
appropriate to utilize private financing."
Further, commenting on the consequences of Hurricane Mitch in 1998,
Klein notes the following:
"Mitch parked itself over Central America, swallowing villages whole
and killing more than 9,000. Already impoverished countries were
desperate for reconstruction aid--and it came, but with strings
attached. In the two months after Mitch struck, with the country still
knee-deep in rubble, corpses and mud, the Honduran congress initiated
what the Financial Times called "speed sell-offs after the storm." It
passed laws allowing the privatization of airports, seaports and
highways and fast-tracked plans to
privatize the state telephone company, the national electric company
and parts of the water sector. It overturned land-reform laws and made
it easier for foreigners to buy and sell property. It was much the same
in neighboring countries: In the same two months, Guatemala announced
plans to sell off its phone system, and Nicaragua did likewise, along
with its electric company and its petroleum sector."
While millions now live in poverty and misery the banks and financial
institutions are able to announce record profits. This is the political
ideology of Tony Blair in action, and to achieve it he has shown no
reservations about deliberately misleading the people of Britain. As
John Pilger commented:
‘Blair is a liar on such an epic scale that even those who still
protect him with parliamentary euphemisms, like Robin Cook ("He knew
perfectly well what he was doing. I think there was a lack of candour")
and the Guardian and the BBC, now struggle to finesse his perjury’.
(New Statesman 21/4/05).
KOSOVO.
After the illegal intervention in Yugoslavia, Nato occupied the Serbian
province of Kosovo and created a United Nations protectorate, serving
until such time as a final status for the province could be determined.
That, at any rate, was the official story. However the decision was
taken long ago to declare an ‘independent’ Kosovo by mid-2006, thus
ripping the province from its legally recognised homeland as part of
Serbia and handing it to criminals of the KLA, an organisation that
acted as Nato’s ground troops during the 1999 aggression and an
organisation that is amply documented to be deeply involved in drugs
and arms smuggling, child prostitution and people trafficking. (The
involvement of both the US and Britain with such an organisation gives
the lie to the so-called ‘war on terrorism’. Rather than making war
against them they are in bed with them).
The task in the meantime however, was to create the impression that the
Nato intervention in Kosovo was a success, a claim Blair never tires of
making.
Despite the cooperation of a spineless British media in peddling this
lie it has become apparent that the intervention in Kosovo was an
unmitigated disaster, and that Kosovo today is, as described by one
observer, ‘the most dangerous place on earth.’
The reality is that since NATO's entry into Kosovo, the province has
been ethnically cleansed of Serbs and other minorities despite, or
perhaps because of, the watchful eyes of NATO and UNMIK. Coincidence or
not but since the province fell under UN control violence by the KLA,
under various names, has escalated alarmingly.
In a report to the U.N. Security Council on April 13th, 2004, U.N.
Peacekeeping Operations Director
Jean-Marie Guehenno described Kosovo, five years after the end of civil
war, as a simmering cauldron of ethnic suspicions. Mr. Guehenno stated:
"The onslaught led by Albanian extremists against Kosovo's Serb, Roma
and Ashkali communities was an organized, widespread and targeted
campaign."
The following is an extract from a letter sent to the UN from the Roma
Rights Center last year, its contents are self-explanatory:
Your Excellencies,
The European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), an international public
interest law organisation which monitors the situation of Roma in
Europe, is writing to express deep concern at the grave human rights
violations against Roma and Ashkaelia in Kosovo committed on and after
March 17, 2004 and currently ongoing.
Your Excellencies,
The situation of Roma, Ashkaelia, Egyptians and others regarded as
"Gypsies" in Kosovo is now extremely precarious. In March 2004, Roma,
Ashkaelia and others have again been targeted for extreme violence as
part of a campaign begun in 1999 by ethnic Albanians to expel
minorities from the province, to seize their property and to do them
serious physical harm. In the close to five years since an
international administration was established in Kosovo, rudimentary
security has never been durably established in Kosovo and minorities
have been daily unable to enjoy basic freedom from fear of physical
attack. A number of communities have lived for close to half a decade
without effective freedom of movement.
In their article ‘Aftermath of "Humanitarian" Intervention in Kosovo’
authors Carol Bloom, Eani Rifati and Sunil Sharma, state the following:
‘While the international civil presence is mandated to maintain civil
law and order, protect and promote human rights and assure the safe and
unimpeded return of all refugees and displaced persons to their homes,
reports by the UN ombudsperson office, UNHCR, OSCE, Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, and others state that KFOR and UNMIK
have failed to fulfil these obligations. If the Albanians succeed in
creating an independent Kosovo, it would seem that, in the end, they
are to be rewarded for their massive ethnic cleansing campaign.
Is this a picture of democracy in action? Is this what the US and NATO
are touting as a "success story"? Is another Diaspora, with no right to
settle and no hope of return, what the Roma of Kosovo can look forward
to in the 21st Century?’
Kosovo today is a province run by gangsters, it has an unemployment
rate of 57% according to Associated Press, it distributes 70% of the
world’s heroin trade, it is the largest supplier of child prostitutes
in Europe, yet Blair insists this is a ‘success story’. To any decent
person the above facts would constitute a vision of hell so why would
Blair argue otherwise?
The answer is very simple, if somewhat unpalatable to Blair’s dwindling
number of supporters.
His only concern is to represent his backers, the financial elite. It
is his job to open up countries and areas to exploitation, and open
their economies to privatisation, the fate of the ordinary people of
these regions is of no relevance to him. It is on this ruthless basis
that he sees Kosovo as a ‘success story’.
Here are extracts from two recent media reports on the sell-off of
Kosovo’s assets:
‘A nickel plant in Kosovo went up for sale Wednesday as the U.N.
mission in Kosovo agreed to give a mining license to the most
successful bidder, the United Nations said.
Companies have been asked to table bids for Feronikeli plant in central
Kosovo, which was badly damaged during NATO bombing of Serb forces in
this disputed province in 1999 and is one of the major plants in the
economically depressed province.
The United Nations, which administers the province, also agreed to
provide potential buyers with the
license for exploitation and exploration of the mines, said Mechtild
Henneke, a U.N. spokeswoman.
Kosovo is the poorest region in the Western Balkans with an annual
gross domestic product per capita of around euro1,000 (US$1,300) and a
jobless rate of at least 50 percent, according to EU figures despite
the fact that it is rich in mines and minerals.
The privatisation of Feronikeli would be the most important sell-off of
socially owned enterprises, a
term used for enterprises owned by the workers and managers under a
system set up under communist-era Yugoslavia’. (Business Week
Associated Press April 27, 2005).
And:
15 Kosovo Companies Up For Privatization –Officials PRISTINA
(AP)--Officials in Kosovo put 15 companies up for sale Tuesday, the
fifth batch of firms to be privatized in the economically depressed
province, a statement said.
The businesses include a former producer of plastic moldings, a
pharmaceutical wholesale trading company, an old rubber products
factory, an electrical mill, a brick factory, warehouses, a clothing
producer and a mineral water bottling plant.
Most of the companies will be sold to the highest bidder, while two
will go to buyers that have submitted investment plans and negotiated
workers' conditions with the Kosovo Trust Agency, a U.N.-run office
charged with selling hundreds of enterprises.
The agency advertised the 15 companies for sale on its Web site, saying
bids would be accepted from mid-July.
The U.N. mission that is running Kosovo recently set new rules for the
privatization process, pledging a faster sell-off of the province's
companies.
KOSOVA (sic) REPORT Tuesday, May 10, 2005.
As one astute observer correctly stated; ‘This is the rape of Kosovo.
All these companies were state owned so UNMIK is privatising what does
not belong to them. This is pretty much the Wild West!’
If a person breaks into someone’s home, steals their possessions and
then sells them on, he would be prosecuted accordingly, if his break-in
was with the use of a weapon, if he was armed, his sentence would
reflect the charge of armed robbery. For such an offence he would
certainly go to prison. What is the difference therefore, if, instead
of robbing just one house, you rob an entire country, indeed many
countries, you steal their assets by armed force and subsequently sell
them on at a bargain price to your business friends? This is what Blair
does for a living! Furthermore, is it any wonder that backward youth in
Britain now think it is acceptable to rob, mug and steal from others?
They have a prominent role model do they not?
Kosovo today is not only a dangerous place to live, it is a morally
sick province. While the victory over Fascism was recently celebrated
throughout the world the current Kosovo authorities, those same
authorities supported by Blair, decided to erect a memorial complex to
Nazi collaborators and members of the notorious Skenderbeg SS Division
from the Second World War.
A media report on this announcement states:
‘The decision foresees the building of a memorial park on a surface of
some 1.5 hectares and a monument in the location where Yugoslav
officials at that time and Partisan forces executed fascist
collaborators, the members of the Second League of Prizren.
This organization was founded in 1943 in Prizren upon the initiative of
the Gestapo.
Recorded in the chronicle of acts of terror by Albanians from Kosovo
and Metohija are crimes in Babuska municipality, forcible expulsion in
Urosevac, executions in Velika Hoca, forcible detention (of the
population) from Prizren and Grbol, murders in the village of
Vitomirica.... Two hundred
Serbs were killed just in the district of Djakovica and 5,000 Serbs
were taken away to fascist camps in Albania. The participation of the
Prizren League through its military formations in the extermination of
Kosovo Jews is one of the most shameful episodes in the history of
Kosovo. Out of 281 Jews arrested by the military formations of the
Second League of Prizren, more than 200 were killed in the Belsen Nazi
death camp. The entire Jewish population of Kosovo was destroyed and
never recovered to its pre-war numbers.
Hence it comes as no surprise that the Municipality of Pristina is not
planning any sort of commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the
victory against fascism. The memorial tomb dedicated to the heroes and
victims of Nazism during World War II in Pristina has been destroyed.
The plates bearing the names of fallen fighters (Serbs, Albanians,
Turks and Jews) have been removed and destroyed, and the monument is
today covered with graffiti celebrating the Kosovo Liberation Army.’
DOMESTIC.
During his investigations into the lobby firm LLM, journalist Greg
Palast discovered LLM’s guide to New Labour philosophy. On page three
of this ‘confidential guide’ was the headline, ‘ An Old World Is
Disappearing And A New One Emerging’ under the sub-heading ‘Emerging
World’ was written ‘Pragmatism will replace Ideals, Consumption will
replace Convictions and Buying takes the place of Belief.’ (Page 298).
Such is the nature of Blair’s New Labour.
The Blair rhetoric used to mislead the British people on international
issues is also used to mislead on the domestic front. The fawning
mainstream media never mentions the widening gap between a very rich
tiny minority and the rest of the population. Under Blair London has
become a leading tax haven for the world’s billionaires, and is the
only place where you can buy a 15 million pound diamond encrusted
swimsuit.
In contrast workers are searching for accommodation outside the capital
because of the exorbitantly high property prices.
At the same time as the major banks and financial institutions are
announcing record profits, personal debt in Britain has now surpassed
the one trillion pounds mark, and it is this debt, with its
accompanying stress, broken families and even suicides, that is
fuelling these record profits.
John Pilger commented on the economy in his article published in the
New Statesman 21/4/05:
"The ballyhooed "boom" and "growth" in Britain have been booms for the
rich, not for ordinary people. With scant media attention, the Blair
government has transferred billions of pounds' worth of public services
into private hands under the private finance initiative (PFI). The
"fees", or rake-off, for PFI projects in 2006-2007 will be in the order
of £6.3bn, more than the cost of many of the projects: a historic act
of corporate piracy. Neither is new Labour "supporting" the National
Health Service, but privatising it by stealth; by 2006-2007 private
contracts will rise by 150 per cent. Under Gordon Brown, Britain has
the distinction of having created more than half the world's tax
havens, so that the likes of Rupert Murdoch are able to pay minimal
tax. "Growth" has meant the rapid growth in the gap between rich and
poor".
When Blair came to power in 1997 he assured the Confederation of
British Industry (CBI), that ‘ a Labour government would put the
interests of business at the heart of its position.’ And when the EU
drew up its Charter of Fundamental Rights Blair sent the Attorney
General to demand that British anti-trade union laws should be
preserved. The EU agreed, which left Blair free to boast to the CBI
that, ‘ British law is the most restrictive on trade unions in the
western world.’
A recent study commissioned by Help the Aged charity showed that
two-thirds of elderly people in Britain have to cope with ‘medium to
high deprivation’. Help the Aged spokesperson Mervyn Kohler stated, ‘
The shocking poverty and low quality of life experienced by so many
older people is a disgrace’. The charity subsequently accused the
government of ignoring older people and called for a commitment from
the government to take account of their needs.
However Mr Kohler was mistaken. Mr Blair had no intention of ignoring
the elderly, indeed his government is going to address this question,
although unfortunately for the elderly, not quite in the way Help the
Aged have requested. Blair intends to make people work longer, at least
to seventy years of age, at the same time, while claiming a pension
crisis, he will abolish state pensions and bring in compulsory private
pensions, thus achieving what no previous government had dared to
attempt, the privatisation of the state pension.
The formerly disgraced David Blunkett has been brought back to head the
Work and Pensions department to complete this task.
Yet, as one opposition MP pointed out, since coming to power in 1997,
"The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, stole £5 billion a year from pension
funds." (Manchester Evening News 12th May 2005). So having robbed the
state pensions on a yearly basis Blair is now demanding that workers
pay for it.
Again we can draw a comparison with the petty criminal. There is seldom
a crime as despicable as the street mugging of an old aged pensioner,
often for the sake of only a few pounds. What are we to make then of a
government that ‘mugs’ pensioners to the tune of £5 billion a year?
ELECTION FRAUD.
Recent years have seen a pattern emerging whereby Tony Blair will be in
the forefront of accusing countries of holding ‘fraudulent elections’.
No credible evidence to back these claims up is ever produced but that
still doesn’t stop Blair demanding ‘regime change’ in these countries.
Indeed, not only demanding ‘regime change’ in words but by engaging in
active interference in the internal affairs of the targeted country. It
would appear that what Blair calls a rigged election is an election
that is won by a political party that wants to retain some kind of
independence from the threat of foreign control over their economy or
independence from the dictates of the European Union. However,
interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation is once
again a breach of international law, but with the might of the United
States alongside him Blair, like a bully in the school playground,
pursues his much smaller victim.
Rather than look at unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud, let
us look at some substantiated evidence, not in any foreign country but
here in Britain.
In a High Court ruling on April 4th this year, Richard Mawrey QC,
acting as election commissioner, issued s 192-page judgement stating
that the polls in two wards in Birmingham, the Aston and Bordesley
Green electoral wards, were corrupted by "massive, systematic and
organised" vote rigging by Labour party members during the June 2004
local elections.
This High Court ruling was briefly mentioned in some mainstream media
papers but what was not highlighted was the fact that investigations
into electoral fraud by Labour party members was ongoing in at least
six other areas.
The judge stated that between one third and half of all Labour votes in
some areas may have been fraudulent.
Mawrey was quoted as stating, "the evidence of electoral fraud would
disgrace a banana republic" and that the system of postal voting in the
UK, " is wide open to fraud and any would-be political fraudster knows
that it’s wide open to fraud."
The QC also accused Labour of attempting to delay the vote-rigging
hearings until after the general election.
When asked to change the election procedures to make fraud more
difficult Blair replied that there was no time before the general
election to do this. Apart from showing contempt for democratic norms,
this statement was untrue. The government was not legally obliged to
call a general election until the year 2006.
During the course of the court hearing the QC heard evidence that
voter-rigging was organised on a large scale and included the
fraudulent use of postal ballot, death threats and other forms of
intimidation.
In a submission to the court, one barrister identified fifteen
different types of fraud carried out in the elections, including:
Labour people stood on main roads attempting to bribe local people into
handing over their postal ballots.
Children were sent to steal election papers from letterboxes. (I would
have thought that this is hardly the correct way to educate children
away from a life of crime and it leaves Blair’s pledge of ‘being tough
on crime’ sounding somewhat hollow).
Householders were intimidated into handing over their election forms.
A postman was offered £500 for a sack of ballot papers. He was then
allegedly threatened with death if he refused.
As part of the rigging operation hundreds of voting forms were sent to
a ‘safe house’ to be filled in. Many had been changed with correcting
fluid.
Some votes were taken to the election counts in plastic bags. For
instance a bag full of 300 postal ballot votes in envelopes was
delivered to the counting station. After brief negotiations these were
accepted as valid votes.
The hearing was informed that this bag of ballot papers all recorded
votes for Labour candidates.
Really, all this should come as no surprise. Blair is a man who has a
completely different agenda to the spin he portrays. He has lied about
Yugoslavia, he has lied about Afghanistan and he has lied about Iraq.
On the domestic front therefore is it seriously expected that he will
tell the truth?
I was surprised some years ago when I heard a barrister, in private
conversation, call Blair a ‘thug and a gangster’. Today, I can only
marvel at the insightfulness of the comment.
Ian Johnson
May 2005.
Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yugoslaviainfo/
http://www.free-slobo-uk.org/ (CDSM UK) - riceviamo e giriamo ]
Dear Friends,
The article below was written for a political journal in the north of
England, it does not deal exclusively with Yugoslavia.
However we are circulating it on our CDSM lists as it may be of
interest. IJ.
KOSOVO, CRIMINALITY & TONY BLAIR.
By Ian Johnson
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong". – Voltaire.
Following the illegal Nato attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
British prime minister Tony Blair made a speech in his Sedgefield
constituency in which he complained about the restrictions of current
international law in the ‘changed circumstances of the present’. He
bemoaned the fact that the actions of his government continually came
into conflict with the accepted norms of international law. Rather than
examine the conduct of his own government Blair called for changes in
the law, which would allow for ‘more flexibility’.
In this call he was echoing the demands of the new United States
president George Bush.
Today we can witness the result of this process of change as expressed
in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and in the reactionary and
anti-democratic US Patriot Act and the imminent introduction of new
British ‘terrorism laws’.
Both these developments permit the detention and arrest of US or
British citizens without the need to provide evidence of guilt, without
even a charge being laid, without the accused being allowed access to
legal counsel and the right of US and British governments to hold
indefinitely all those who are named by the relevant politician. The
‘due process of law’ is abandoned and eight hundred years of judicial
development is eradicated at the whim of a politician.
As journalist John Pilger noted prior to the recent British general
election:
"By voting for Blair, you will invite more lies about terrorist scares
in Britain so that totalitarian laws can be enacted. "I have a horrible
feeling that we are sinking into a police state," said George
Churchill-Coleman, the former head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist
squad. Like the fake reasons for Blair's tanks around Heathrow on the
eve of the greatest anti-war demonstration in British history, so
anything, any scare, any arrest, any "control order", will be
possible". (New Statesman 21/4/05).
While these developments have caused outrage it has not been generally
recognised that the blueprint for the attack on international law and
on democratic and civil rights that US and British citizens are now
facing can be found in the previous, illegal, establishment of the UN
ad hoc tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR).
For instance it is clear to anyone following the Slobodan Milosevic
trial at the ICTY that he is not using his defence case to defend
himself, he is using it to expose the truth about what was done to
Yugoslavia, and he is using his defence case to defend Yugoslavia and
its people and by extension he is exposing the corruption of legal
norms and the shattering of international law being undertaken by Blair
and Bush with Clinton before him.
INTERNATIONAL.
In 1999 Blair became the cheerleader in chief for the Nato aggression
against Yugoslavia, a nation that had never attacked another country,
nor indeed had ever threatened to do so.
The term ‘humanitarian intervention’ was coined to justify this illegal
act and a propaganda campaign launched that was reminiscent of 1930s
Germany with its falsifications, faked photographs and unsubstantiated
‘evidence’ of ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘mass graves’ and ‘rape camps’,
claims that were later so discredited that some British newspapers
actually apologised to their readers for misleading them.
The Daily Mail of 5th November 1999 stated,
"The scale on which the public was misled about the atrocities…and not
just Nato’s bombing ‘successes’….threatens to be mind-boggling."
Emilio Perez Pujol, head of the Spanish Forensic Team in Kosovo,
attached to the International Criminal Tribunal, commented on the 12th
October 1999, " I called my people together and said, ‘We’re finished
here’. I informed my government and told them the real situation. We
have become part of a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machine,
because we did not find one…not one…mass grave.’
The New Statesman issue of 15th November 1999 stated, ‘Other atrocities
of particular media interest, such as the ‘rape camps’ that so
horrified Cherie Blair, are turning out to be fiction.’
Doctor Richard Munz who was based at Stenkoval Refugee Camp confirmed
that, ‘The majority of media people I talked to, came here and looked
for a story which they had written already. The entire time we were
here, we had no cases of rape.’
Blair’s claim that, ‘up to 100,000 Kosovars have been murdered’ was
also later exposed as untrue by Andrew Alexander who wrote in November
1999 in the Daily Mail,
"The head of the Spanish team sent out ready to provide 2000 post
mortems, left last month having found only 187 corpses, some of which
may have been bombing casualties!"
However, by the time these and many other similar reports had come out
the damage had been done, and Blair was in a position to use one of his
favourite phrases, ‘let’s move on’. That a sovereign nation had been
destroyed, that thousands had died, that the entire region was now in
chaos, was to Blair of no relevance.
(Coincidentally his phrase of ‘let’s move on’ is now being used in
regard to Iraq and the non-existent WMDs).
Blair’s reasons for destroying Yugoslavia had little to do with
‘humanitarian’ concerns but had everything to do with the sections of
society he actually represents.
It is relevant to note that prior to his first election victory in 1997
Blair and his colleagues spent much of their time convincing Wall
Street and the City of London financial institutions that their
interests would be ‘safe in the hands of a future Labour government’.
Indeed Blair hosted so many dinners and cocktail parties for this
financial elite that the nickname for the Labour party in the City of
London is ‘the prawn cocktail party’.
Moreover, even at this early date, Blair felt confident enough to
inform the assembled bankers at a meeting of the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development that ‘when the East is opened up it will
be bonanza time for the banks’.
Indeed the East is being opened up just as Blair promised his financier
friends. But what has this development meant for the inhabitants of
these countries?
James Petras in his article (http://globalresearch.ca/articles/PET406B
) outlined the results of this road as seen in countries over the last
fifteen years. His findings are worth quoting at length:
‘In Poland, the former Gdansk Shipyard, point of origin of the
Solidarity Trade Union, is closed and now a museum piece. Over 20% of
the labor force is officially unemployed (Financial Times, Feb. 21/22,
2004) and has been for the better part of the decade. Another 30% is
"employed" in marginal, low paid jobs (prostitution, contraband, drugs,
flea markets, street venders and the underground economy). In Bulgaria,
Rumania, Latvia, and East Germany similar or worse conditions prevail:
The average real per capita growth over the past 15 years is far below
the preceding 15 years under communism (especially if we include the
benefits of health care, education, subsidized housing and pensions).
Moreover economic inequalities have grown geometrically with 1% of the
top income bracket controlling 80% of private assets and more than 50%
of income while poverty levels exceed 50% or even higher. In the former
USSR, especially south-central Asian republics like Armenia, Georgia,
and Uzbekistan, living standards have fallen by 80%, almost one fourth
of the population has out-migrated or become destitute and industries,
public treasuries and energy sources have been pillaged. The
scientific, health and educational systems have been all but destroyed.
In Armenia, the number of scientific researchers declined from 20,000
in 1990 to 5,000 in 1995, and continues on a downward slide (National
Geographic, March 2004). From being a center of Soviet high technology,
Armenia today is a country run by criminal gangs in which most people
live without central heat and electricity’.
Highlighting how the privatisation process has undermined the public
health system in these countries Petras goes on to observe:
‘A big contributor to the AIDS epidemic are the criminal gangs of
Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Baltic countries, who trade in
heroin and each year deliver over 200,000 'sex-slaves' to brothels
throughout the world. The violent Albanian mafia operating out of the
newly "liberated" Kosova (sic) controls a significant part of the
heroin trade and trafficking in sex-slaves throughout Western Europe
and North America. Huge amounts of heroin produced by the US allied
warlords of "liberated" Afghanistan pass through the mini-states of
former Yugoslavia flooding Western European countries’.
If we are to accept that Blair’s interventionist policies intentionally
destabilise countries then it is a valid question to ask how can this
policy assist his friends on Wall Street and in the City of London?
To clarify this it is worthwhile to quote some extracts from Naomi
Klein’s work ‘The Rise of Disaster Capitalism’ (May 2005).
Commenting on the reconstruction of countries hit by disaster or war,
Klein notes:
‘And there is no doubt that there are profits to be made in the
reconstruction business. There are massive engineering and supplies
contracts ($10 billion to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone);
"democracy building" has exploded into a $2 billion industry; and times
have never been better for public-sector consultants--the private firms
that advise governments on selling off their assets, often running
government services themselves as subcontractors.
But shattered countries are attractive to the World Bank for another
reason: They take orders well. After a cataclysmic event, governments
will usually do whatever it takes to get aid dollars--even if it means
racking up huge debts and agreeing to sweeping policy reforms.
In Afghanistan, where the World Bank also administers the country's aid
through a trust fund, it has already managed to privatize healthcare by
refusing to give funds to the Ministry of Health to build hospitals.
Instead it funnels money directly to NGOs, which are running their own
private health clinics on three-year contracts. It has also mandated
"an increased role for the private sector" in the water system,
telecommunications, oil, gas and mining and directed the government to
"withdraw" from the electricity sector and leave it to "foreign private
investors." These profound transformations of Afghan society were never
debated or reported on, because few outside the bank know they took
place:
The changes were buried deep in a "technical annex" attached to a grant
providing "emergency" aid to Afghanistan's war-torn infrastructure—two
years before the country had an elected government".
Klein further observes that:
".. the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that
the privatizations and land
grabs are usually locked in before the local population knows what hit
them.
"..The fires were still burning in Baghdad when US occupation officials
rewrote the investment laws and announced that the country's
state-owned companies would be privatized."
Consequently, the destabilisation or actual destruction of sovereign
countries creates the conditions for the privatisation of state owned
enterprises, and the reshaping and restructuring of once independent
economies into market-orientated and World Bank and IMF dependent
states.
In the pursuit of privatisation and bigger profits even natural
disasters are not necessarily a bad thing, as observed by one of Tony
Blair’s ideological colleagues in the US, the quite revolting
Condoleezza Rice, who described the tsunami disaster as "a wonderful
opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us."
Klein comments on the actions of the World Bank:
"Now the bank is using the December 26 tsunami to push through its
cookie-cutter policies. The most devastated countries have seen almost
no debt relief, and most of the World Bank's emergency aid has come in
the form of loans, not grants. Rather than emphasizing the need to help
the small fishing communities--more than 80 percent of the wave's
victims—the bank is pushing for expansion of the tourism sector and
industrial fish farms. As for the damaged public infrastructure, like
roads and schools, bank documents recognize that rebuilding them "may
strain public finances" and suggest that governments consider
privatization (yes, they have only one idea). "For certain
investments," notes the bank's tsunami-response plan, "it may be
appropriate to utilize private financing."
Further, commenting on the consequences of Hurricane Mitch in 1998,
Klein notes the following:
"Mitch parked itself over Central America, swallowing villages whole
and killing more than 9,000. Already impoverished countries were
desperate for reconstruction aid--and it came, but with strings
attached. In the two months after Mitch struck, with the country still
knee-deep in rubble, corpses and mud, the Honduran congress initiated
what the Financial Times called "speed sell-offs after the storm." It
passed laws allowing the privatization of airports, seaports and
highways and fast-tracked plans to
privatize the state telephone company, the national electric company
and parts of the water sector. It overturned land-reform laws and made
it easier for foreigners to buy and sell property. It was much the same
in neighboring countries: In the same two months, Guatemala announced
plans to sell off its phone system, and Nicaragua did likewise, along
with its electric company and its petroleum sector."
While millions now live in poverty and misery the banks and financial
institutions are able to announce record profits. This is the political
ideology of Tony Blair in action, and to achieve it he has shown no
reservations about deliberately misleading the people of Britain. As
John Pilger commented:
‘Blair is a liar on such an epic scale that even those who still
protect him with parliamentary euphemisms, like Robin Cook ("He knew
perfectly well what he was doing. I think there was a lack of candour")
and the Guardian and the BBC, now struggle to finesse his perjury’.
(New Statesman 21/4/05).
KOSOVO.
After the illegal intervention in Yugoslavia, Nato occupied the Serbian
province of Kosovo and created a United Nations protectorate, serving
until such time as a final status for the province could be determined.
That, at any rate, was the official story. However the decision was
taken long ago to declare an ‘independent’ Kosovo by mid-2006, thus
ripping the province from its legally recognised homeland as part of
Serbia and handing it to criminals of the KLA, an organisation that
acted as Nato’s ground troops during the 1999 aggression and an
organisation that is amply documented to be deeply involved in drugs
and arms smuggling, child prostitution and people trafficking. (The
involvement of both the US and Britain with such an organisation gives
the lie to the so-called ‘war on terrorism’. Rather than making war
against them they are in bed with them).
The task in the meantime however, was to create the impression that the
Nato intervention in Kosovo was a success, a claim Blair never tires of
making.
Despite the cooperation of a spineless British media in peddling this
lie it has become apparent that the intervention in Kosovo was an
unmitigated disaster, and that Kosovo today is, as described by one
observer, ‘the most dangerous place on earth.’
The reality is that since NATO's entry into Kosovo, the province has
been ethnically cleansed of Serbs and other minorities despite, or
perhaps because of, the watchful eyes of NATO and UNMIK. Coincidence or
not but since the province fell under UN control violence by the KLA,
under various names, has escalated alarmingly.
In a report to the U.N. Security Council on April 13th, 2004, U.N.
Peacekeeping Operations Director
Jean-Marie Guehenno described Kosovo, five years after the end of civil
war, as a simmering cauldron of ethnic suspicions. Mr. Guehenno stated:
"The onslaught led by Albanian extremists against Kosovo's Serb, Roma
and Ashkali communities was an organized, widespread and targeted
campaign."
The following is an extract from a letter sent to the UN from the Roma
Rights Center last year, its contents are self-explanatory:
Your Excellencies,
The European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), an international public
interest law organisation which monitors the situation of Roma in
Europe, is writing to express deep concern at the grave human rights
violations against Roma and Ashkaelia in Kosovo committed on and after
March 17, 2004 and currently ongoing.
Your Excellencies,
The situation of Roma, Ashkaelia, Egyptians and others regarded as
"Gypsies" in Kosovo is now extremely precarious. In March 2004, Roma,
Ashkaelia and others have again been targeted for extreme violence as
part of a campaign begun in 1999 by ethnic Albanians to expel
minorities from the province, to seize their property and to do them
serious physical harm. In the close to five years since an
international administration was established in Kosovo, rudimentary
security has never been durably established in Kosovo and minorities
have been daily unable to enjoy basic freedom from fear of physical
attack. A number of communities have lived for close to half a decade
without effective freedom of movement.
In their article ‘Aftermath of "Humanitarian" Intervention in Kosovo’
authors Carol Bloom, Eani Rifati and Sunil Sharma, state the following:
‘While the international civil presence is mandated to maintain civil
law and order, protect and promote human rights and assure the safe and
unimpeded return of all refugees and displaced persons to their homes,
reports by the UN ombudsperson office, UNHCR, OSCE, Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, and others state that KFOR and UNMIK
have failed to fulfil these obligations. If the Albanians succeed in
creating an independent Kosovo, it would seem that, in the end, they
are to be rewarded for their massive ethnic cleansing campaign.
Is this a picture of democracy in action? Is this what the US and NATO
are touting as a "success story"? Is another Diaspora, with no right to
settle and no hope of return, what the Roma of Kosovo can look forward
to in the 21st Century?’
Kosovo today is a province run by gangsters, it has an unemployment
rate of 57% according to Associated Press, it distributes 70% of the
world’s heroin trade, it is the largest supplier of child prostitutes
in Europe, yet Blair insists this is a ‘success story’. To any decent
person the above facts would constitute a vision of hell so why would
Blair argue otherwise?
The answer is very simple, if somewhat unpalatable to Blair’s dwindling
number of supporters.
His only concern is to represent his backers, the financial elite. It
is his job to open up countries and areas to exploitation, and open
their economies to privatisation, the fate of the ordinary people of
these regions is of no relevance to him. It is on this ruthless basis
that he sees Kosovo as a ‘success story’.
Here are extracts from two recent media reports on the sell-off of
Kosovo’s assets:
‘A nickel plant in Kosovo went up for sale Wednesday as the U.N.
mission in Kosovo agreed to give a mining license to the most
successful bidder, the United Nations said.
Companies have been asked to table bids for Feronikeli plant in central
Kosovo, which was badly damaged during NATO bombing of Serb forces in
this disputed province in 1999 and is one of the major plants in the
economically depressed province.
The United Nations, which administers the province, also agreed to
provide potential buyers with the
license for exploitation and exploration of the mines, said Mechtild
Henneke, a U.N. spokeswoman.
Kosovo is the poorest region in the Western Balkans with an annual
gross domestic product per capita of around euro1,000 (US$1,300) and a
jobless rate of at least 50 percent, according to EU figures despite
the fact that it is rich in mines and minerals.
The privatisation of Feronikeli would be the most important sell-off of
socially owned enterprises, a
term used for enterprises owned by the workers and managers under a
system set up under communist-era Yugoslavia’. (Business Week
Associated Press April 27, 2005).
And:
15 Kosovo Companies Up For Privatization –Officials PRISTINA
(AP)--Officials in Kosovo put 15 companies up for sale Tuesday, the
fifth batch of firms to be privatized in the economically depressed
province, a statement said.
The businesses include a former producer of plastic moldings, a
pharmaceutical wholesale trading company, an old rubber products
factory, an electrical mill, a brick factory, warehouses, a clothing
producer and a mineral water bottling plant.
Most of the companies will be sold to the highest bidder, while two
will go to buyers that have submitted investment plans and negotiated
workers' conditions with the Kosovo Trust Agency, a U.N.-run office
charged with selling hundreds of enterprises.
The agency advertised the 15 companies for sale on its Web site, saying
bids would be accepted from mid-July.
The U.N. mission that is running Kosovo recently set new rules for the
privatization process, pledging a faster sell-off of the province's
companies.
KOSOVA (sic) REPORT Tuesday, May 10, 2005.
As one astute observer correctly stated; ‘This is the rape of Kosovo.
All these companies were state owned so UNMIK is privatising what does
not belong to them. This is pretty much the Wild West!’
If a person breaks into someone’s home, steals their possessions and
then sells them on, he would be prosecuted accordingly, if his break-in
was with the use of a weapon, if he was armed, his sentence would
reflect the charge of armed robbery. For such an offence he would
certainly go to prison. What is the difference therefore, if, instead
of robbing just one house, you rob an entire country, indeed many
countries, you steal their assets by armed force and subsequently sell
them on at a bargain price to your business friends? This is what Blair
does for a living! Furthermore, is it any wonder that backward youth in
Britain now think it is acceptable to rob, mug and steal from others?
They have a prominent role model do they not?
Kosovo today is not only a dangerous place to live, it is a morally
sick province. While the victory over Fascism was recently celebrated
throughout the world the current Kosovo authorities, those same
authorities supported by Blair, decided to erect a memorial complex to
Nazi collaborators and members of the notorious Skenderbeg SS Division
from the Second World War.
A media report on this announcement states:
‘The decision foresees the building of a memorial park on a surface of
some 1.5 hectares and a monument in the location where Yugoslav
officials at that time and Partisan forces executed fascist
collaborators, the members of the Second League of Prizren.
This organization was founded in 1943 in Prizren upon the initiative of
the Gestapo.
Recorded in the chronicle of acts of terror by Albanians from Kosovo
and Metohija are crimes in Babuska municipality, forcible expulsion in
Urosevac, executions in Velika Hoca, forcible detention (of the
population) from Prizren and Grbol, murders in the village of
Vitomirica.... Two hundred
Serbs were killed just in the district of Djakovica and 5,000 Serbs
were taken away to fascist camps in Albania. The participation of the
Prizren League through its military formations in the extermination of
Kosovo Jews is one of the most shameful episodes in the history of
Kosovo. Out of 281 Jews arrested by the military formations of the
Second League of Prizren, more than 200 were killed in the Belsen Nazi
death camp. The entire Jewish population of Kosovo was destroyed and
never recovered to its pre-war numbers.
Hence it comes as no surprise that the Municipality of Pristina is not
planning any sort of commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the
victory against fascism. The memorial tomb dedicated to the heroes and
victims of Nazism during World War II in Pristina has been destroyed.
The plates bearing the names of fallen fighters (Serbs, Albanians,
Turks and Jews) have been removed and destroyed, and the monument is
today covered with graffiti celebrating the Kosovo Liberation Army.’
DOMESTIC.
During his investigations into the lobby firm LLM, journalist Greg
Palast discovered LLM’s guide to New Labour philosophy. On page three
of this ‘confidential guide’ was the headline, ‘ An Old World Is
Disappearing And A New One Emerging’ under the sub-heading ‘Emerging
World’ was written ‘Pragmatism will replace Ideals, Consumption will
replace Convictions and Buying takes the place of Belief.’ (Page 298).
Such is the nature of Blair’s New Labour.
The Blair rhetoric used to mislead the British people on international
issues is also used to mislead on the domestic front. The fawning
mainstream media never mentions the widening gap between a very rich
tiny minority and the rest of the population. Under Blair London has
become a leading tax haven for the world’s billionaires, and is the
only place where you can buy a 15 million pound diamond encrusted
swimsuit.
In contrast workers are searching for accommodation outside the capital
because of the exorbitantly high property prices.
At the same time as the major banks and financial institutions are
announcing record profits, personal debt in Britain has now surpassed
the one trillion pounds mark, and it is this debt, with its
accompanying stress, broken families and even suicides, that is
fuelling these record profits.
John Pilger commented on the economy in his article published in the
New Statesman 21/4/05:
"The ballyhooed "boom" and "growth" in Britain have been booms for the
rich, not for ordinary people. With scant media attention, the Blair
government has transferred billions of pounds' worth of public services
into private hands under the private finance initiative (PFI). The
"fees", or rake-off, for PFI projects in 2006-2007 will be in the order
of £6.3bn, more than the cost of many of the projects: a historic act
of corporate piracy. Neither is new Labour "supporting" the National
Health Service, but privatising it by stealth; by 2006-2007 private
contracts will rise by 150 per cent. Under Gordon Brown, Britain has
the distinction of having created more than half the world's tax
havens, so that the likes of Rupert Murdoch are able to pay minimal
tax. "Growth" has meant the rapid growth in the gap between rich and
poor".
When Blair came to power in 1997 he assured the Confederation of
British Industry (CBI), that ‘ a Labour government would put the
interests of business at the heart of its position.’ And when the EU
drew up its Charter of Fundamental Rights Blair sent the Attorney
General to demand that British anti-trade union laws should be
preserved. The EU agreed, which left Blair free to boast to the CBI
that, ‘ British law is the most restrictive on trade unions in the
western world.’
A recent study commissioned by Help the Aged charity showed that
two-thirds of elderly people in Britain have to cope with ‘medium to
high deprivation’. Help the Aged spokesperson Mervyn Kohler stated, ‘
The shocking poverty and low quality of life experienced by so many
older people is a disgrace’. The charity subsequently accused the
government of ignoring older people and called for a commitment from
the government to take account of their needs.
However Mr Kohler was mistaken. Mr Blair had no intention of ignoring
the elderly, indeed his government is going to address this question,
although unfortunately for the elderly, not quite in the way Help the
Aged have requested. Blair intends to make people work longer, at least
to seventy years of age, at the same time, while claiming a pension
crisis, he will abolish state pensions and bring in compulsory private
pensions, thus achieving what no previous government had dared to
attempt, the privatisation of the state pension.
The formerly disgraced David Blunkett has been brought back to head the
Work and Pensions department to complete this task.
Yet, as one opposition MP pointed out, since coming to power in 1997,
"The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, stole £5 billion a year from pension
funds." (Manchester Evening News 12th May 2005). So having robbed the
state pensions on a yearly basis Blair is now demanding that workers
pay for it.
Again we can draw a comparison with the petty criminal. There is seldom
a crime as despicable as the street mugging of an old aged pensioner,
often for the sake of only a few pounds. What are we to make then of a
government that ‘mugs’ pensioners to the tune of £5 billion a year?
ELECTION FRAUD.
Recent years have seen a pattern emerging whereby Tony Blair will be in
the forefront of accusing countries of holding ‘fraudulent elections’.
No credible evidence to back these claims up is ever produced but that
still doesn’t stop Blair demanding ‘regime change’ in these countries.
Indeed, not only demanding ‘regime change’ in words but by engaging in
active interference in the internal affairs of the targeted country. It
would appear that what Blair calls a rigged election is an election
that is won by a political party that wants to retain some kind of
independence from the threat of foreign control over their economy or
independence from the dictates of the European Union. However,
interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation is once
again a breach of international law, but with the might of the United
States alongside him Blair, like a bully in the school playground,
pursues his much smaller victim.
Rather than look at unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud, let
us look at some substantiated evidence, not in any foreign country but
here in Britain.
In a High Court ruling on April 4th this year, Richard Mawrey QC,
acting as election commissioner, issued s 192-page judgement stating
that the polls in two wards in Birmingham, the Aston and Bordesley
Green electoral wards, were corrupted by "massive, systematic and
organised" vote rigging by Labour party members during the June 2004
local elections.
This High Court ruling was briefly mentioned in some mainstream media
papers but what was not highlighted was the fact that investigations
into electoral fraud by Labour party members was ongoing in at least
six other areas.
The judge stated that between one third and half of all Labour votes in
some areas may have been fraudulent.
Mawrey was quoted as stating, "the evidence of electoral fraud would
disgrace a banana republic" and that the system of postal voting in the
UK, " is wide open to fraud and any would-be political fraudster knows
that it’s wide open to fraud."
The QC also accused Labour of attempting to delay the vote-rigging
hearings until after the general election.
When asked to change the election procedures to make fraud more
difficult Blair replied that there was no time before the general
election to do this. Apart from showing contempt for democratic norms,
this statement was untrue. The government was not legally obliged to
call a general election until the year 2006.
During the course of the court hearing the QC heard evidence that
voter-rigging was organised on a large scale and included the
fraudulent use of postal ballot, death threats and other forms of
intimidation.
In a submission to the court, one barrister identified fifteen
different types of fraud carried out in the elections, including:
Labour people stood on main roads attempting to bribe local people into
handing over their postal ballots.
Children were sent to steal election papers from letterboxes. (I would
have thought that this is hardly the correct way to educate children
away from a life of crime and it leaves Blair’s pledge of ‘being tough
on crime’ sounding somewhat hollow).
Householders were intimidated into handing over their election forms.
A postman was offered £500 for a sack of ballot papers. He was then
allegedly threatened with death if he refused.
As part of the rigging operation hundreds of voting forms were sent to
a ‘safe house’ to be filled in. Many had been changed with correcting
fluid.
Some votes were taken to the election counts in plastic bags. For
instance a bag full of 300 postal ballot votes in envelopes was
delivered to the counting station. After brief negotiations these were
accepted as valid votes.
The hearing was informed that this bag of ballot papers all recorded
votes for Labour candidates.
Really, all this should come as no surprise. Blair is a man who has a
completely different agenda to the spin he portrays. He has lied about
Yugoslavia, he has lied about Afghanistan and he has lied about Iraq.
On the domestic front therefore is it seriously expected that he will
tell the truth?
I was surprised some years ago when I heard a barrister, in private
conversation, call Blair a ‘thug and a gangster’. Today, I can only
marvel at the insightfulness of the comment.
Ian Johnson
May 2005.
Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yugoslaviainfo/
Ringraziamo Ivan per la trascrizione dell'intervento.
---------------------------
Intervento di Vitomir Grbac, all?iniziativa "Partigiani", Roma, 7-8 maggio
2005
Sono onorato dell?invito a partecipare a questo raduno di antifascisti e
partigiani, in occasione del sessantesimo anniversario della vittoria ul
fascismo, soprattutto per il fatto che ho aderito alla lotta armata primadel
compimento del mio sedicesimo anno di età.
In questa lotta mi ha coraggiosamente accompagnato mia madre Maria, che vi
ha perso la vita l?11 agosto 1942, quale primo operatore sanitario della
regione.
Sono stato il più giovane tra le guardie di Tito, e ho trascorso al suo fianco
otto mesi di guerra, impegnato nelle due più cruenti battaglie della nostra
lotta. Riguardo a quest?esperienza ho pubblicato un libro intitolato "Al
seguito di Tito" (U Titovoj pratnji).
Durante la seconda guerra mondiale, sotto la direzione del Partito comunista,
con a capo Josip Broz Tito, in Jugoslavia è stata organizzata una guerra
antifascista vittoriosa e di grandi proporzioni.
In essa ha svolto un ruolo di rilievo anche la Croazia antifascista, che
si è opposta alla dittatura di Pavelic; le è stato reso merito nella Costituzione
dell?attuale stato autonomo di Croazia, che in essa viene definito "un paese
fondato sulle conquiste della lotta antifascista".
Purtroppo in questa stessa Croazia, dopo i cambiamenti sociali degli anni
novanta, sono pur sempre presenti, come in nessun?altra parte al mondo, idee
e attività di estrema destra.
Per illustrare quanto affermo citerò solo alcuni dati.
In Croazia, dopo i cambiamenti sociali degli anni novanta sono stati demoliti
o danneggiati 3.000 mila monumenti e lapidi dedicate alla lotta antifascista.
I diritti acquisiti dai combattenti antifascisti sono stati radicalmente
limitati. Alcune vie sono state intitolate a politici fascisti (ustascia).
I libri di testo traboccano di errori storici relativi all?epoca recente,
cosicché i giovani non hanno modo di trarre alcun insegnamento riguardo alla
lotta antifascista. Sono stati eretti e successivamente smantellati anche
dei monumenti dedicati a delinquenti fascisti. A Zara i neofascisti hanno
organizzato una marcia indossando uniformi e recando insegne fasciste.
Il 27 dicembre è stato minato anche il monumento al maggiore e più noto combattente
antifascista, Josip Broz Tito, nei pressi della sua casa natale a Kumrovec.
Poco tempo fa, sull?isola di Murter è stato minato ancora uno dei tanti monumenti
partigiani.
La lotta antifascista nel litorale croato e nella regione del Gorski kotar
si è evoluta prima e in modo più massiccio rispetto alle altre regioni croate.
Vi hanno contribuito il movimento operaio consolidato prima della guerra,
la forte influenza del Partito comunista della Croazia, l?orientamento antifascista
della popolazione stessa ed altri fattori.
Per tali motivi, già nel 1941 venne creato un numero considerevole di accampamenti
partigiani; sul finire dello stesso anno quello del Tuhobic contava ben 120
combattenti.
Parallelamente, evolvevano anche altre istituzioni ed organi del potere popolare
legate al movimento di liberazione. Continuava ad aumentare il numero dei
membri e delle organizzazioni del Partito comunista e della gioventù, venivano
istituite le organizzazioni del partito comunista e della gioventù, venivano
istituite le organizzazioni del fronte antifascista delle donne e della gioventù,
che avrebbero rivestito un ruolo importantissimo nel corso della guerra.
L?entità numerica delle unità partigiane andava aumentando di giorno in giorno.
Il 10 marzo 1942 il Distaccamento litoraneo montano contava 608 combattenti.
Le unità partigiane portavano a termine operazioni di successo in tutte le
direzioni.
L?eco di queste gesta faceva accorrere un numero sempre più grande di nuovi
partecipanti. Dalla cittadina di Delnice si unirono alla lotta ben 150 giovani.
Alla fine di marzo fu costituito ancora un battaglione. In meno di un mese
il distaccamento aumentò di 700 nuovi combattenti, mentre il 10 aprile ne
contava già 1.136.
A quei tempi, in base alle esperienze positive delle prime brigate proletarie,
il Comandante supremo Josip Broz Tito diede il via ad un?azione su vasta
scala, tesa a fondare truppe e battaglioni proletari d?assalto e giovanili
in tutte le regioni della Jugoslavia, in quanto aveva già una visione netta
riguardo alla progressiva creazione di un esercito di liberazione popolare
della Jugoslavia, poiché solo un organismo militare regolare avrebbe portato
alla realizzazione dei fini strategici.
Alla fine del 1942 vennero pertanto formate 28 brigate partigiane e 85 distaccamenti.
Nel corso del 1943 furono istituite 21 divisioni e 90 brigate. Si proseguì
inoltre con la formazione di distaccamenti partigiani il cui compito era
quello di coprire e difendere i territori e mobilitare nuovi combattenti.
L?Esercito di liberazione popolare contava allora 350 mila combattenti. Durante
il 1944 vennero formati 15 corpi d?armata, 35 divisioni, 180 brigate e 142
distaccamenti.
Durante l?intero corso della guerra, in Jugoslavia vennero costituite 68
divisioni, 4 delle quali italiane, 367 brigate e 556 distaccamenti partigiani.
L?Esercito di liberazione popolare e i distaccamenti partigiani della Jugoslavia
contavano, alla fine della guerra, all?incirca 800.000 mila combattenti.
La creazione e l?evoluzione dell?Esercito di liberazione popolare della Jugoslavia
è un esempio unico nella storia. Praticamente dal nulla, oltre ai 6.000 membri
del Partito comunista
e ai 12.000 membri della gioventù comunista (SKOJ), in un clima popolare
antifascista, fu costituito un esercito sotto la guida di Tito, che alla
fine della guerra fu in grado di combattere ad armi pari a fianco degli Alleati,
per sbaragliare il nazismo, ossia il male più grande della storia umana.
L?esercito di liberazione popolare della Jugoslavia s?impegnò, nelle operazioni
finali, a difendere parte del fronte alleato dall?Ungheria al mar Adriatico.
Sfondando il fronte dello Srijem il 12 aprile 1945, continuò a procedere
vittoriosamente verso occidente liberando il paese con le proprie forze.
Il forte afflusso di combattenti nelle unità della regione di Brinj, portò
alla costituzione del Quarto battaglione battezzato col nome della coraggiosa
partigiana Ljubica Gerovac, caduta il 16 aprile.
Alla compagnia delle cittadine di Susak e Kastav si accodò in una quindicina
di giorni un centinaio di nuovi combattenti per cui venne istituito anche
il Quinto battaglione, che ebbe il nome del partigiano istriano Vladimir
Gortan. E? di particolare importanza il fatto che esso venne costituito nei
pressi del confine italo - jugoslavo, col compito di penetrare con una parte
delle sue forze in Istria, per sostenere lo sviluppo del movimento di liberazione
popolare.
La situazione militare e politica nel territorio della Quinta zona operativa
era molto favorevole. Le azioni militari erano frequenti e di successo. La
mobilitazione dei combattenti nuovi procedeva molto bene. Il comando della
zona istituì pertanto due nuovi distaccamenti verso la fine del 1942.
L?occupatore non riusciva ad arginare la situazione, terrorizzava e minacciava
il popolo. Iniziò bruciare i villaggi e ad uccidere la popolazione inerme.
Nel Castuano, il 5 giugno furono uccisi dodici giovani, mentre il 12 luglio
del 1942 nel villaggio di Podhum furono fucilati oltre 100 uomini dai 16
ai 65 anni d?età; le case furono depredate e incendiate e le donne, i vecchi
e i bambini furono deportati nei campi di concentramento.
L?occupatore italiano diede quindi il via all?offensiva denominata "Operazione
Risnjak". Le forze impiegate erano di 20.000 uomini circa e furono dispiegate
nel territorio controllato dal Secondo distaccamento.
Venne però catturata nei boschi parte della popolazione che vi aveva trovato
rifugio e che quindi venne deportata nei campi di concentramento.
Nel settembre 1942 l?occupatore italiano intraprese un?operazione ancor più
massiccia, denominata "Velika Kapela", diretta nuovamente al territorio del
Secondo distaccamento. L?occupatore ingaggiò 40.000 soldati, parte dei quali
erano traditori del popolo.
Il comandante della Quinta zona operativa aveva però eseguito la ritirata
di tutte le forze partigiane per cui l?offensiva andò a vuoto. I villaggi
abbandonati furono messi a ferro e fuoco. Otto battaglioni partigiani riuscirono
ad attaccare l?occupatore alle spalle infliggendogli notevoli perdite.
Fallì ancora un tentativo dell?occupatore di distruggere le forze partigiane
della zona litoraneo montana.
Si verificò invece un loro sostanziale rafforzamento, cosicché subito dopo
l?operazione "Velika Kapela" (nome della montagna), il 6 ottobre 1942 a Dreznica
venne fondata la prima brigata litoraneo montana, cui fece seguito la seconda
il 26 novembre. Queste due unità tattico - operative diedero molto filo da
torcere all'occupatore nel periodo successivo.
Verso la metà dell?aprile 1943 dalla loro fusione nacque la Tredicesima divisione
litoraneo montana.
L?Italia fascista di Mussolini capitolò l?8 settembre. L? esercito di liberazione
popolare della Jugoslavia si preparava già a quest?evento.
Le unità vennero indirizzate alle guarnigioni italiane per effettuarne il
disarmo. Nel corso della capitolazione dell?Italia vennero requisiti grandi
quantitativi di armi e materiale bellico.
In tutte le regioni si manifestò un? insurrezione di massa. In Istria venne
fondata la Prima brigata "Vladimir Gortan".
Un gran numero di militari italiani passò all?esercito di liberazione popolare.
Si costituirono anche delle unità italiane speciali, ovvero ben 14 brigate
e 2 divisioni.
L?occupatore tedesco reagì tempestivamente e in modo energico, allo scopo
di calmare il vuoto venutosi a creare con la capitolazione dell?Italia.
Numerose unità dell?esercito popolare, completate con gran numero di combattenti
inesperti, vennero a trovarsi in una situazione difficile. Alcune di esse
furono temporaneamente smembrate.
Era l?inizio dell?inverno 1943/1944, le unità della Tredicesima divisione
continuavano la lotta nel territorio montano della Lika e del Gorski Kotar.
Dopo scontri cruenti con i tedeschi, circa 1.600 combattenti vennero sorpresi
l?11 e il 12 di febbraio da una tremenda tormenta nella regione montana quasi
del tutto disabitata, poiché la popolazione si era ritirata nei boschi.
Un simile raggruppamento di soldati e civili in una regione inospitale provocò
tutta una serie di problemi sia per quanto riguardava il riparo che i rifornimenti.
La seconda brigata si trovò nella situazione più difficile. Essa si riunì
alla propria divisione dopo tre mesi di marce quotidiane e di scontri violenti
e sfibranti, oramai ridotta allo stremo. Persero la vita, furono feriti o
si ammalarono gravemente più di 200 dei suoi combattenti.
Più della metà dei rimanenti giunse priva di calzature, vestita di indumenti
nient?affatto idonei al rigore d?inverno.
Prendendo in considerazione tutto ciò si fece strada l?idea di trasferire
tutto il contingente in un altro territorio per evitare conseguenze tragiche.
Venne quindi approvata la proposta del comando della Seconda brigata di organizzare
il trasferimento nel Gorski kotar. Il 19 febbraio 1944, al mattino presto,
dopo una frugale colazione, la Seconda brigata con 680 combattenti circa
partì in marcia da Dreznica diretta a Mrkopalj attraverso Jasenak e la piana
di Matic.
I combattenti e i loro ufficiali erano contenti di trasferirsi in una zona
che avrebbe offerto loro condizioni di sopravvivenza migliori. Nessuno di
essi immaginava ciò che sarebbe accaduto la tragica notte tra il 19 e il
20 febbraio. La giornata invernale era rigida ma serena. Dopo un paio di
soste, la brigata giunse al villaggio di Jasenak, dove si sarebbe rifocillata
e avrebbe pernottato. Qui però non trovò né cibo né rifugio, per cui i combattenti
proseguirono la marcia.
Gli inverni della zona sono noti per loro rigidità e lunghezza. Alle ore
17 il freddo si fece più pungente. Nella neve alta e nel gelo i cavalli e
i muli cominciarono dapprima a perdere il passo, poi a cadere ed infine a
soccombere. Alcuni furono fatti tornare a Dreznica, per cui i combattenti
si sobbarcarono il loro carico.
Il tempo cominciò a peggiorare. La neve, cadendo sempre più fitta, rallentava
il passo e allungava la colonna dei combattenti. La stanchezza, la fame e
lo sfinimento rendevano l?avanzata quasi impossibile.
La tormenta non dava tregua, il vento schiantava i rami e addirittura gli
alberi. La lunga colonna conduceva una battaglia impari con le forze della
natura. Il freddo gelava il sangue nelle vene, sventrava gli alberi di faggio
come nemmeno un?arma sarebbe riuscita a fare. Chi conosce quei luoghi dice
che ciò accade a temperature inferiori ai 35° sotto zero.
La colonna procedeva ormai quasi impercettibilmente; i combattenti si trascinavano
le gambe quasi fossero di piombo.
Il comando cercava di alleviare la marcia alternando le unità alla testa
ella colonna, per aprire la pista nella neve alta due metri. Parte degli
armamenti pesanti venne abbandonata e nascosta. Tornare era impossibile e
proseguire sempre più difficile. La morte bianca affilava i suoi denti e
prima ancora di giungere alla piana di Matic falciò i più esausti e affamati.
Ci fu chi sparò con i fucili automatici per strappare i compagni da quello
strano sonno che portava direttamente alla morte. Alcuni morirono già lungo
la salita. Il peggio però li aspettava nella piana di Matic dove la temperatura
era ancora più bassa e la tormenta più forte.
Proprio qui, non molto lontano dal paese di Mrkopalj, designato come punto
di arrivo, trovarono la morte ben 26 partigiani e circa 200 subirono pesanti
conseguenze dovute all?assideramento.
Le 17 donne partigiane superarono tutte la tremenda marcia. Nessuna di esse
morì per assideramento. Antonia Dovecar era al settimo mese di gravidanza.
Due mesi dopo partorì un maschietto dal peso di 5 kg destando la sorpresa
di tutti. Il medico della divisione gli diede il nome di Ratimir (guerra
e pace), come buon auspicio di una vita serena.
Il "partigiano" più piccolo di questa colonna ha oggi 61 anni, è professore
alla Facoltà di marineria di Portorose (Slovenia) ed è qui tra noi, oggi.
Sua madre Antonija ha 90 anni e vive a Capodistria. Il padre, uno sloveno
di nome Miroslav, combattente della prima ora, si è spento vent?anni fa.
Durante questa marcia la brigata riportò le perdite maggiori dal giorno della
sua fondazione. Riuscì però a recuperare, arricchita di forze nuove e a reinserirsi
nella divisione al suo posto di combattimento.
C?era ancora tanto da combattere fino alla fine della guerra, per annientare
la Germania nazista.
La Seconda brigata diede il suo contributo sino alla fine del suo cammino,
ossia alla liberazione del paese.
La marcia eccezionale della Seconda brigata è il tema centrale del mio libro
intitolato "LA MORTE BIANCA".
Grazie!
Vitomir Grbac, master in Scienze storiche
Il libro "La morte bianca" (Bijela smrt), edito dalla Casa editrice Adamic
s.p.a, Rijeka ? Fiume, 2004
__________________________________________________________________
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---------------------------
Intervento di Vitomir Grbac, all?iniziativa "Partigiani", Roma, 7-8 maggio
2005
Sono onorato dell?invito a partecipare a questo raduno di antifascisti e
partigiani, in occasione del sessantesimo anniversario della vittoria ul
fascismo, soprattutto per il fatto che ho aderito alla lotta armata primadel
compimento del mio sedicesimo anno di età.
In questa lotta mi ha coraggiosamente accompagnato mia madre Maria, che vi
ha perso la vita l?11 agosto 1942, quale primo operatore sanitario della
regione.
Sono stato il più giovane tra le guardie di Tito, e ho trascorso al suo fianco
otto mesi di guerra, impegnato nelle due più cruenti battaglie della nostra
lotta. Riguardo a quest?esperienza ho pubblicato un libro intitolato "Al
seguito di Tito" (U Titovoj pratnji).
Durante la seconda guerra mondiale, sotto la direzione del Partito comunista,
con a capo Josip Broz Tito, in Jugoslavia è stata organizzata una guerra
antifascista vittoriosa e di grandi proporzioni.
In essa ha svolto un ruolo di rilievo anche la Croazia antifascista, che
si è opposta alla dittatura di Pavelic; le è stato reso merito nella Costituzione
dell?attuale stato autonomo di Croazia, che in essa viene definito "un paese
fondato sulle conquiste della lotta antifascista".
Purtroppo in questa stessa Croazia, dopo i cambiamenti sociali degli anni
novanta, sono pur sempre presenti, come in nessun?altra parte al mondo, idee
e attività di estrema destra.
Per illustrare quanto affermo citerò solo alcuni dati.
In Croazia, dopo i cambiamenti sociali degli anni novanta sono stati demoliti
o danneggiati 3.000 mila monumenti e lapidi dedicate alla lotta antifascista.
I diritti acquisiti dai combattenti antifascisti sono stati radicalmente
limitati. Alcune vie sono state intitolate a politici fascisti (ustascia).
I libri di testo traboccano di errori storici relativi all?epoca recente,
cosicché i giovani non hanno modo di trarre alcun insegnamento riguardo alla
lotta antifascista. Sono stati eretti e successivamente smantellati anche
dei monumenti dedicati a delinquenti fascisti. A Zara i neofascisti hanno
organizzato una marcia indossando uniformi e recando insegne fasciste.
Il 27 dicembre è stato minato anche il monumento al maggiore e più noto combattente
antifascista, Josip Broz Tito, nei pressi della sua casa natale a Kumrovec.
Poco tempo fa, sull?isola di Murter è stato minato ancora uno dei tanti monumenti
partigiani.
La lotta antifascista nel litorale croato e nella regione del Gorski kotar
si è evoluta prima e in modo più massiccio rispetto alle altre regioni croate.
Vi hanno contribuito il movimento operaio consolidato prima della guerra,
la forte influenza del Partito comunista della Croazia, l?orientamento antifascista
della popolazione stessa ed altri fattori.
Per tali motivi, già nel 1941 venne creato un numero considerevole di accampamenti
partigiani; sul finire dello stesso anno quello del Tuhobic contava ben 120
combattenti.
Parallelamente, evolvevano anche altre istituzioni ed organi del potere popolare
legate al movimento di liberazione. Continuava ad aumentare il numero dei
membri e delle organizzazioni del Partito comunista e della gioventù, venivano
istituite le organizzazioni del partito comunista e della gioventù, venivano
istituite le organizzazioni del fronte antifascista delle donne e della gioventù,
che avrebbero rivestito un ruolo importantissimo nel corso della guerra.
L?entità numerica delle unità partigiane andava aumentando di giorno in giorno.
Il 10 marzo 1942 il Distaccamento litoraneo montano contava 608 combattenti.
Le unità partigiane portavano a termine operazioni di successo in tutte le
direzioni.
L?eco di queste gesta faceva accorrere un numero sempre più grande di nuovi
partecipanti. Dalla cittadina di Delnice si unirono alla lotta ben 150 giovani.
Alla fine di marzo fu costituito ancora un battaglione. In meno di un mese
il distaccamento aumentò di 700 nuovi combattenti, mentre il 10 aprile ne
contava già 1.136.
A quei tempi, in base alle esperienze positive delle prime brigate proletarie,
il Comandante supremo Josip Broz Tito diede il via ad un?azione su vasta
scala, tesa a fondare truppe e battaglioni proletari d?assalto e giovanili
in tutte le regioni della Jugoslavia, in quanto aveva già una visione netta
riguardo alla progressiva creazione di un esercito di liberazione popolare
della Jugoslavia, poiché solo un organismo militare regolare avrebbe portato
alla realizzazione dei fini strategici.
Alla fine del 1942 vennero pertanto formate 28 brigate partigiane e 85 distaccamenti.
Nel corso del 1943 furono istituite 21 divisioni e 90 brigate. Si proseguì
inoltre con la formazione di distaccamenti partigiani il cui compito era
quello di coprire e difendere i territori e mobilitare nuovi combattenti.
L?Esercito di liberazione popolare contava allora 350 mila combattenti. Durante
il 1944 vennero formati 15 corpi d?armata, 35 divisioni, 180 brigate e 142
distaccamenti.
Durante l?intero corso della guerra, in Jugoslavia vennero costituite 68
divisioni, 4 delle quali italiane, 367 brigate e 556 distaccamenti partigiani.
L?Esercito di liberazione popolare e i distaccamenti partigiani della Jugoslavia
contavano, alla fine della guerra, all?incirca 800.000 mila combattenti.
La creazione e l?evoluzione dell?Esercito di liberazione popolare della Jugoslavia
è un esempio unico nella storia. Praticamente dal nulla, oltre ai 6.000 membri
del Partito comunista
e ai 12.000 membri della gioventù comunista (SKOJ), in un clima popolare
antifascista, fu costituito un esercito sotto la guida di Tito, che alla
fine della guerra fu in grado di combattere ad armi pari a fianco degli Alleati,
per sbaragliare il nazismo, ossia il male più grande della storia umana.
L?esercito di liberazione popolare della Jugoslavia s?impegnò, nelle operazioni
finali, a difendere parte del fronte alleato dall?Ungheria al mar Adriatico.
Sfondando il fronte dello Srijem il 12 aprile 1945, continuò a procedere
vittoriosamente verso occidente liberando il paese con le proprie forze.
Il forte afflusso di combattenti nelle unità della regione di Brinj, portò
alla costituzione del Quarto battaglione battezzato col nome della coraggiosa
partigiana Ljubica Gerovac, caduta il 16 aprile.
Alla compagnia delle cittadine di Susak e Kastav si accodò in una quindicina
di giorni un centinaio di nuovi combattenti per cui venne istituito anche
il Quinto battaglione, che ebbe il nome del partigiano istriano Vladimir
Gortan. E? di particolare importanza il fatto che esso venne costituito nei
pressi del confine italo - jugoslavo, col compito di penetrare con una parte
delle sue forze in Istria, per sostenere lo sviluppo del movimento di liberazione
popolare.
La situazione militare e politica nel territorio della Quinta zona operativa
era molto favorevole. Le azioni militari erano frequenti e di successo. La
mobilitazione dei combattenti nuovi procedeva molto bene. Il comando della
zona istituì pertanto due nuovi distaccamenti verso la fine del 1942.
L?occupatore non riusciva ad arginare la situazione, terrorizzava e minacciava
il popolo. Iniziò bruciare i villaggi e ad uccidere la popolazione inerme.
Nel Castuano, il 5 giugno furono uccisi dodici giovani, mentre il 12 luglio
del 1942 nel villaggio di Podhum furono fucilati oltre 100 uomini dai 16
ai 65 anni d?età; le case furono depredate e incendiate e le donne, i vecchi
e i bambini furono deportati nei campi di concentramento.
L?occupatore italiano diede quindi il via all?offensiva denominata "Operazione
Risnjak". Le forze impiegate erano di 20.000 uomini circa e furono dispiegate
nel territorio controllato dal Secondo distaccamento.
Venne però catturata nei boschi parte della popolazione che vi aveva trovato
rifugio e che quindi venne deportata nei campi di concentramento.
Nel settembre 1942 l?occupatore italiano intraprese un?operazione ancor più
massiccia, denominata "Velika Kapela", diretta nuovamente al territorio del
Secondo distaccamento. L?occupatore ingaggiò 40.000 soldati, parte dei quali
erano traditori del popolo.
Il comandante della Quinta zona operativa aveva però eseguito la ritirata
di tutte le forze partigiane per cui l?offensiva andò a vuoto. I villaggi
abbandonati furono messi a ferro e fuoco. Otto battaglioni partigiani riuscirono
ad attaccare l?occupatore alle spalle infliggendogli notevoli perdite.
Fallì ancora un tentativo dell?occupatore di distruggere le forze partigiane
della zona litoraneo montana.
Si verificò invece un loro sostanziale rafforzamento, cosicché subito dopo
l?operazione "Velika Kapela" (nome della montagna), il 6 ottobre 1942 a Dreznica
venne fondata la prima brigata litoraneo montana, cui fece seguito la seconda
il 26 novembre. Queste due unità tattico - operative diedero molto filo da
torcere all'occupatore nel periodo successivo.
Verso la metà dell?aprile 1943 dalla loro fusione nacque la Tredicesima divisione
litoraneo montana.
L?Italia fascista di Mussolini capitolò l?8 settembre. L? esercito di liberazione
popolare della Jugoslavia si preparava già a quest?evento.
Le unità vennero indirizzate alle guarnigioni italiane per effettuarne il
disarmo. Nel corso della capitolazione dell?Italia vennero requisiti grandi
quantitativi di armi e materiale bellico.
In tutte le regioni si manifestò un? insurrezione di massa. In Istria venne
fondata la Prima brigata "Vladimir Gortan".
Un gran numero di militari italiani passò all?esercito di liberazione popolare.
Si costituirono anche delle unità italiane speciali, ovvero ben 14 brigate
e 2 divisioni.
L?occupatore tedesco reagì tempestivamente e in modo energico, allo scopo
di calmare il vuoto venutosi a creare con la capitolazione dell?Italia.
Numerose unità dell?esercito popolare, completate con gran numero di combattenti
inesperti, vennero a trovarsi in una situazione difficile. Alcune di esse
furono temporaneamente smembrate.
Era l?inizio dell?inverno 1943/1944, le unità della Tredicesima divisione
continuavano la lotta nel territorio montano della Lika e del Gorski Kotar.
Dopo scontri cruenti con i tedeschi, circa 1.600 combattenti vennero sorpresi
l?11 e il 12 di febbraio da una tremenda tormenta nella regione montana quasi
del tutto disabitata, poiché la popolazione si era ritirata nei boschi.
Un simile raggruppamento di soldati e civili in una regione inospitale provocò
tutta una serie di problemi sia per quanto riguardava il riparo che i rifornimenti.
La seconda brigata si trovò nella situazione più difficile. Essa si riunì
alla propria divisione dopo tre mesi di marce quotidiane e di scontri violenti
e sfibranti, oramai ridotta allo stremo. Persero la vita, furono feriti o
si ammalarono gravemente più di 200 dei suoi combattenti.
Più della metà dei rimanenti giunse priva di calzature, vestita di indumenti
nient?affatto idonei al rigore d?inverno.
Prendendo in considerazione tutto ciò si fece strada l?idea di trasferire
tutto il contingente in un altro territorio per evitare conseguenze tragiche.
Venne quindi approvata la proposta del comando della Seconda brigata di organizzare
il trasferimento nel Gorski kotar. Il 19 febbraio 1944, al mattino presto,
dopo una frugale colazione, la Seconda brigata con 680 combattenti circa
partì in marcia da Dreznica diretta a Mrkopalj attraverso Jasenak e la piana
di Matic.
I combattenti e i loro ufficiali erano contenti di trasferirsi in una zona
che avrebbe offerto loro condizioni di sopravvivenza migliori. Nessuno di
essi immaginava ciò che sarebbe accaduto la tragica notte tra il 19 e il
20 febbraio. La giornata invernale era rigida ma serena. Dopo un paio di
soste, la brigata giunse al villaggio di Jasenak, dove si sarebbe rifocillata
e avrebbe pernottato. Qui però non trovò né cibo né rifugio, per cui i combattenti
proseguirono la marcia.
Gli inverni della zona sono noti per loro rigidità e lunghezza. Alle ore
17 il freddo si fece più pungente. Nella neve alta e nel gelo i cavalli e
i muli cominciarono dapprima a perdere il passo, poi a cadere ed infine a
soccombere. Alcuni furono fatti tornare a Dreznica, per cui i combattenti
si sobbarcarono il loro carico.
Il tempo cominciò a peggiorare. La neve, cadendo sempre più fitta, rallentava
il passo e allungava la colonna dei combattenti. La stanchezza, la fame e
lo sfinimento rendevano l?avanzata quasi impossibile.
La tormenta non dava tregua, il vento schiantava i rami e addirittura gli
alberi. La lunga colonna conduceva una battaglia impari con le forze della
natura. Il freddo gelava il sangue nelle vene, sventrava gli alberi di faggio
come nemmeno un?arma sarebbe riuscita a fare. Chi conosce quei luoghi dice
che ciò accade a temperature inferiori ai 35° sotto zero.
La colonna procedeva ormai quasi impercettibilmente; i combattenti si trascinavano
le gambe quasi fossero di piombo.
Il comando cercava di alleviare la marcia alternando le unità alla testa
ella colonna, per aprire la pista nella neve alta due metri. Parte degli
armamenti pesanti venne abbandonata e nascosta. Tornare era impossibile e
proseguire sempre più difficile. La morte bianca affilava i suoi denti e
prima ancora di giungere alla piana di Matic falciò i più esausti e affamati.
Ci fu chi sparò con i fucili automatici per strappare i compagni da quello
strano sonno che portava direttamente alla morte. Alcuni morirono già lungo
la salita. Il peggio però li aspettava nella piana di Matic dove la temperatura
era ancora più bassa e la tormenta più forte.
Proprio qui, non molto lontano dal paese di Mrkopalj, designato come punto
di arrivo, trovarono la morte ben 26 partigiani e circa 200 subirono pesanti
conseguenze dovute all?assideramento.
Le 17 donne partigiane superarono tutte la tremenda marcia. Nessuna di esse
morì per assideramento. Antonia Dovecar era al settimo mese di gravidanza.
Due mesi dopo partorì un maschietto dal peso di 5 kg destando la sorpresa
di tutti. Il medico della divisione gli diede il nome di Ratimir (guerra
e pace), come buon auspicio di una vita serena.
Il "partigiano" più piccolo di questa colonna ha oggi 61 anni, è professore
alla Facoltà di marineria di Portorose (Slovenia) ed è qui tra noi, oggi.
Sua madre Antonija ha 90 anni e vive a Capodistria. Il padre, uno sloveno
di nome Miroslav, combattente della prima ora, si è spento vent?anni fa.
Durante questa marcia la brigata riportò le perdite maggiori dal giorno della
sua fondazione. Riuscì però a recuperare, arricchita di forze nuove e a reinserirsi
nella divisione al suo posto di combattimento.
C?era ancora tanto da combattere fino alla fine della guerra, per annientare
la Germania nazista.
La Seconda brigata diede il suo contributo sino alla fine del suo cammino,
ossia alla liberazione del paese.
La marcia eccezionale della Seconda brigata è il tema centrale del mio libro
intitolato "LA MORTE BIANCA".
Grazie!
Vitomir Grbac, master in Scienze storiche
Il libro "La morte bianca" (Bijela smrt), edito dalla Casa editrice Adamic
s.p.a, Rijeka ? Fiume, 2004
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