Informazione
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Prof. R.K.Kent:DR. STRANGELOVE IS ALIVE, WELL
AND "VINDICATED" ( CORRECTED TEXT )
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 23:27:50 -0400
From: "minja m." <minja@...>
Reply-To: minja@...
( CORRECTED TEXT )
DR. STRANGELOVE IS ALIVE, WELL AND "VINDICATED"
How Madeleine got to Bomb the Serbs
R.K.Kent
A most revealing informtion comes out of two sources about the air war
for Kosovo. . Both merit attention and close reading. One is a former
United States Air Attache at London, Alan J. Parrington. The other is
James F. Rubin, Madeleine Albright_s closest State Department associate.
Parrington was on duty in London just before, during and after the
bombings (24 March 1999 through 5th June, officially 10th June 1999). In
his own words:
"I saw a war of underlying motives, missed
diplomatic opportunities,
misguided military strategies and questionable
outcomes. Worst of
all, the war never need happened: Milosevic
conceded major U.S.
demands two weeks before the war began."
(Colorado Sorings Gazette,
October 12, 2000, reported by Ben Works).
Parrington went on to relate how, on 11th March 1999, he was approached
at a British Diplomatic reception by the Yugoslav Defense Attache to
the Court of St.James,. The Attache, a Serb Colonel, told him that
Milosevic is allowing international and even NATO troops into Kosovo but
must "first have a letter from Clinton explaining the benefit Yugoslavia
will receive in exchange." At first, Parrington was taken aback because
the stationing of foreign troops in Kosovo was the "sticking point in
negotiations." The" benefits" expected finally came down to
"three things Yugoslavia must have." Yugoslavia must retain sovereignty
over Kosovo. The Kosovo Liberation Army must be disarmed. The
independence referendum must be "removed."
According to Parrington this was "apparently too much for the Clinton
Administration to accept." In the end, after eleven weeks of bombing:
"the Administration, running short of
precision weapons and
faced with the prospect of a bloody ground
war, abandoned the
bombing strategy and asked the Russians to
broker a deal based
ON MILOSEVIC’S ANTEBELLUM OFFER" (caps added
for emphasis).
Parrington concluded that the war achieved nothing beyond what Milosevic
had proposed beforehand and "only inflamed ethnic passions for
generations to come." De jure, Kosovo remains a part of Yugoslavia, no
referendum on independence as such is scheduled but the KLA has been
only marginally disarmed. Parrington quotes a KLA leader speaking to him
personally, "one day, the Serbs will be selling us guns to shoot at
NATO."
Clearly there was no need to go to war and, just as clearly, what was
unacceptable fourteen weeks earlier became even "useful" after the war
had spent itself. From a purely psychological point of view one could
say that the war took off to ratify the prerogative of superior power
to
react punitively and even with vengeance when its will is thwarted.
While , despite the NATO framework, the "air war" was primarily an
endeavor of the Clinton Administration, the real driving, dominat
force in it was Madeleine Albright. It is virtually certain that
without her around a diplomatic solution would have prevailed. Rubin
states that NATO_s violent advent into the ex-Yugoslav space "had
become a very personal war for Albright." Rubin joined her in this
respect, struggling to persuade "the West" to halt Serb "genocide" in
Bosnia. Rubin adds that
"by 1995, Albright’s views were
vindicated when NATO’s
air strikes forced the Serbs to the
bargaining table and a
Bosnian peace accord was finally reached
that automn ."
There are two items of disinformation in the quote. NATO’s air strikes
against Bosnian Serb positions did not "bring" the Serbs to the
negotiating table. In fact, they had been asking reapetedly for
negotiations but Alija Izetbegovic refused until NATO assured him of
an Air Force for the Bosnian Muslim side. Secondly, it is very easy to
advance"genocide" as a documented sin that cannot be left unpunished.
Its glib use immediately evokes the Holocaust (1939-1945)and is meant
to inflame to the point when no furher questions need be asked. A srtict
definition of genocide would exclude forcible expulsions of groups
regarded as inimical. What did happen in Bosnia fits "ethnic cleansing"
but not planned physical exterminations of entire groups of people.
Neither the Serbs nor the Croats palnned to exterminate two million
Bosnian Muslims, nor did the Bosnian Muslims plan to exterminate all of
the Serbs and Croats inside Bosnia since, combined, they accounted for
roughly half of Bosnia’s total population.
Be that as it may, Madeleine was hardly "vindicated" (a claim now being
repeated for the 78 days of bombing Serbia itself). It is not well known
that she was actually opposed to Holbrooke’s dealing with "Milosevic"
at Dayton. It is even less known that she once threatened all of the
U.N. Security Council Ambassadors with the severing of relations with
her U.S. Mission if any of them received a Yugoslav (Serb) minister of
state invited to come for talks. It would have been humiliating for the
U.S. had there been an "Ambassadorial Revolt" proposing to stop the
Council’s proceeding pending an apology for such an auto da fe but,
fortunately, the French and Chinese Ambassadors simply disregarded
Madeleine_s ulimatum. To return to Rubin’s account, in order to get her
personal war going, Madeleine had to overcome several hard obstacles.
The first one was Europe’s general reluctance and, in some cases,
outright opposition to bombing Serbia.
Rubin is very clear on this point. He relates how difficult it was to
"galvanize the West" to act in unison before 1999. While the Clinton
Administration was "deeply divided" within itsself:
"Nearly all our allies, including the
British, put roadblocks in
the way of decisive action prior to the
Rambouillet peace confernce
"in 1999. And during Rambouillet, the
French and the
Italians acted in ways that could have
derailed the Admini-
stration’s effort to unite against the
Belgrade regime."
Some Europeans did not wish to side with the KLA. In Rubin_s version
the Russian and German foreign ministers regarded the KLA as a terrorist
group. The "rebels were unknown figures raising money illegaly through
smugling, or worse." Such reservations did not even phase Madeleine
although some people in the State Department did not dismiss them
entirely. The Europeans even made "crude jokes about Albanian immigrants
and criminal gangs." Other European ministers did not wish to break
International Law, requiring prior U.N. Security Council action. They
defended this position on legal advice. Madeleine retorted "change the
laweyrs." It is obvious that she could not care less for International
Law and the U.N. Charter provisions if these interfered with an ardent
desire to" bomb the Serbs." Some months after the bombing of Serbia,
Secretary Albright claimed formally in the New York Times that she
honors the U.N. Charter ("which we helped write"). At the time, however,
the Europeans were not sufficiently "motivated" to go to war against
Serbia, espacially not on behalf of the KLA.
What was needed to push them over the point of no return? It should be
recalled here that the NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs took place just
hours after the so-called "third marketplace massacre at Sarajevo." A
U.N. Report in situ and quite "fresh" exculpated the Serbs nonetheless.
U.N. Ambassador Albright immediately demanded that this Report be kept
secret as it is to-date. The political value of yet another "massacre,"
this time of "Kosovars" by the"Serb butchers," was hardly out of sight.
It came at a place in Kosovo called Racak, according to Rubin , on
January 15, 1999, over the radio. This date is interesting because the
first claim of a "massacre at Racak" came on 16th January 1999 but,
there is no doubt how it was used to "galvanize" the "international
Community" into action. The "Racak massacre" has all the elements of
staging and circumstances that cannot be really explained in any other
way.
The first item of circumstantial evidence resides in the quick ad hoc
posting to Kosovo of William Walker as the Administration’s Special
Envoy. One would assume some Balkan diplomatic pedigree here. Instead,
Mr. Walker had headed the U.S.Embassy’s Political Section in Salvador,
1974-1977. He was posted to Honduras (l980-1982) when arms were being
funnelled via Honduras to the Contras in Nicaragua. He spent another
four years (1988-1992} as Ambassador to Salvador just when the local
death squads were liquidating anyone close to humanitarian concern,
including a Roman Catholic Bishop. A French source once described Mr.
Walker as the "control" of a "government of assassins which used its
last days in power before the end of civil war to _rub out_ all oif its
opponents." Threre can be no doubt that Mr. Walker had close relations
with the CIA. Why he came to Kosovo will become apparent with what
follows.
On 16th January 1999, the SERB police INFORMED "Ambassador" Walker that
an attack was being prepared against Racak, a KLA stronghold. Suddenly,
an open-mass grave with 47 bodies came into view as Walker was GUIDED to
it with a host of journalists and a TV crew. "It’s a massacre" said
Walker. It’s a "massacre" repetaed the journalists and the media
throughout the world in minutes and hours. There were no spent cartrages
at the grave site and no one even bothered to ask two key questions.
With an obvious international support for the KLA why would the Serb
Police inform Walker of their attack on Racak and then massacre what
looked like civilians? Why would the Serb Police furthermore not try to
hide its would -be crime by re-burying the bodies, practice the Serbs
had been consistenly accused of for some four years before Kosovo? A
week before the start of the "air war," on 17 March 1999, the medical
investigator, Dr. Helena Ranta of Finland, submitted a report (21
kilograms and 3,000 photos)plus a five-page resume yet unable to
confirm the instant, ersatz verdict of William Walker. There is,
however, no doubt in respect to one result. His statement, reproduced
everywhere fast, "galvanized," as Madeleine Albright put it, the
"International Community."Racak of January led to Rambouillet in
February. Rambouillet led, in turn, to the air war in late March
1999.Part One of the "galvanizing process" took place in Washington.
During the week of January l7th 1999, Madeleine Albright spent her time
in intensive pursuit of a green light to go to war with the Serbs. Her
working group consisted of Secretary Cohen, National Security Adviser
Sanford Berger, CIA Director George Tenet and General Shelton, Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A collective decision was made in a few
days and "the speed reflected the meeting of minds that had developed
between Albright and the President"She "worked" President Clinton by
pounding on his "indecision in Bosnia." With the
"wag-the-dog""possibility in the air(and posterity, no doubt, watching
his Legacy)the President took Madeleine’s door which allowed, at the
same time, an entry and an exit. Having thus gotten his "nod"she used
it then to "pass on" as the President’s "own" inclination to go into
action..Thereafter came "Galvanizing II." as she --in Rubin’s words--
"began to work the Europeans." By February 1999 Rambouillet was on.
The talks at Rambouillet were decidedly not going Madeleine’s way. She
expected the Serbs to reject the "Peace Plan." She even asked all the
NATO Members’ Foreign Ministers, according to Rubin, "to instruct"
their "ambassadors in Brussels to support air strikes should the Serbs
be responsible for a breakdown in the talks." The Ministers agreed but
"only after securing the pledge to punish the Albanian side in the event
the KLA caused a breakdown." The Serbs, who were supposed to reject
the granting of Autonomy to Kosovo and thus give her the pretext to
bomb, actually agreed to restore it, allowing foreign troops under the
U.N. but not yet under NATO. But, the KLA political leader Hashim
Thaci, unexpectedly, would not sign the "Peace Plan." He did not want
Autonomy. He stuck to the demand for Independence instead. Neither
Madeleine’s "charm" nor threats of losing U.S. support (an admission
that the U.S. was supporting the KLA in the field as well despite"
denials") could persuade Thachi to budge form his position. Apparently,
Madeleine mentioned nothing of "pledge" to Thaci despite an added
European demand that the Albanians defer the issue of Independence.
The "unity of the Europeans was cracking," as Rubin assessed the
situation. The French proved to be least prone to play according to
Madeleine’s game plan. "We knew the critical factor for the KLA was the
prospect of air strikes and NATO ground troops. So we had arranged for
NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark, to come to the
castle to brief them on NATO military plans and help win them over in
the final hours of the conference." The French woul not alllow the
"formidable figure" of General Clark to enter Rambouillet, "arguing
that his NATO role would somehow upset the diplomatic balance with the
Serbs." But, "Albright finally convinced Hubert Vedrine, the (French)
foreign minister to allow four KLA members to leave the castle for a
briefing with Clark at a military airfield." The formula was the same
as in the NATO air war over Serb Bosnian positions years earlier. Give
the KLA NATO’s planes and misssiles, show them exactly in a secret
military briefing, how you plan to "hit the Serbs." Hint to them that
the action is worth a "slight postponement" of Independence, along with
an eventual support for it, promise clandestinely that Kosovo will be
turned over to KLA at the exclusion of "moderate" Ibrahim Rugova, and
the result came out just the way Madeleine wanted it. Thaci would sign.
Since the Serbs, however, had just about accepted the major sticking
point of foreign troops, including NATOs, along with Autonomy for
Kosovo, the final pretext for bombs was still missing. Serbs had to be
MADE to reject the "Peace Plan."
The idea was brilliant in its evil banality. Someone recalled the 1914
ten-point ultimatum to Serbia by Austriua in 1914, after the
assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Two Appendices added
overnight to the previous text of the "Peace Plan." One of the two,
Appendix B, spelled out in great detail that Serbs must agree to an
immediate occupation of all of Yugoslavia, including Belgrade, by NATO
troops which not only had a total freedom of movement and acrtioin but
which would be a prioro immune from prosecution for any types of crime.
Colonial "Capitulations" come to mind, delivered with supreme arrogance.
When the Serb delegation walked out of Rambouillet, Albright spread the
word. "The SERBS have REJECTED the Peace Plan." She would quip after the
air war, that "we raised (at Rambouillet)the bar so Milosevich could not
jump over it. Yugoslavia needed a little bombing."
By the beginning of June 1999, thanks to the "vindicated" Madeleine
Albright , Serbia’s infrastructure was taken out to the tune of over
$100 billion. Hospitals ,factories,churches (even a Synagogue at Nis),
schools, soccer fields, shopping malls, generators, a TV station, even
the Chinese Embassy, were hit. Some 3,000 Serb civilians were killed
with about three times that many of the wounded, more or less seriously.
Serbia’s (and Kosovo’s) air, soil and water were polluted with chemical
toxins of all kinds, with depleted uranium and graphite, assuring
mutation of genes yet to come. Thousands of the internationally banned
cluster bombs were dropped and
are still killing both Serb and Albaniuan children who find them esily
because of their colors. General Clark certainly knew what he was doing.
Before becoming a Vice-Presidential Candidate, Senator Lieberamn
proclaimed that the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was "fighting
for American values." Vice-President Al Gore has been going around the
country telling the American People about "our" "victory" at Kosovo.
Following the fall of Milosevic, the main scribal media at home went
into overdrive about the "vindication" of Madeleine Albright. General
Wesley Clark went even further. He claimed on Public Television that the
eleven weeks of NATO bombings in Serbia and Kosovo brought Milosevic
down.
Since NATO "liberated Kosovo" from "Serb oppression" unadulterated
day-to-day realities have turned Senator Lieberman_s claim into a
tragic joke. At Kosovo, the "ex-KLA" members are engaged in organized
white slavery and prostitution, drug dealing, kidnapping, beatings and
murder. Just recently, KFOR with British Marines arrested an entire KLA
clan involved in such activities. Albanian piecemeal terror, on a daily
basis (and long after the advent of NATO) has "cleansed" some 300,000
non Albanians (mainly Serbs but also half a dozen other minorities).
Actual results reveal that there was no struggle for "liberation" but
for power, a struggle induced from outside of Kosovo and bankrolled by a
drug cartel seeking a free zone for huge profits. It wanted to replace
the constraints of State in favor of an acephalous area dominated by
Albanian clans engaged in criminal enterprise. Among thousands of
refugees in the post-NATO era there are Albanians who fled to
Serbia. The U.S. deliberately turned Kosovo over to its "air war"
ally, the KLA and its political head Hashim Thachi, dropping support for
of the only true leader of Kosovo_s Albanians, the poet Ibrahim Rugova.
The architect of this stunning success was the "vindicated" Madeleine
Albright. To get to bomb the Serbs she would have made a pact with the
Devil. Only one major and intriguing question remains.Was her
Serbophobia driven by some deeply hidden demons or was it merely
grafted on some geopolitical strategies pushed on the makers of foriegn
policy by Madeleine’s mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski?
It would appear from all the gloating about who did Milosevic in,
about the "Victory at Kosovo," that nothing has been learned at the
top. It is very likely that a similar NATO intervention will never come
about in Europe. NATO in present-day Europe is an oxymoron.
It has no one to "defend" or attack on"humanitarian" grounds unless it
wishes to hit the French over Corsica, Spaniards over their Basque
problem and the English over their Colonialism in Ireland. Its
peace-keeping mission in Bosnia and Kosovo has not really settled
anything fundamental. The .U.S., if not alone, has been a major part of
the bloody problems in ex-Yugoslavia. It killed two viable peace
treaties in 1992 and in 1993. It sided with anyone who was against the
Serbs, arming and training the Croat Army to ethnically cleanse Krajina
of its long-time resident Serbs, some 250,000 of them. It allowed Shiite
Muslim extermists and arms into Bosnia and it has taken the side of
Kosovo’s Muslim Albanians under entirely false pretexts.
Assisted by the main media, the gross and continuous disinformation of
the current U.S. Government, about the realities on the ground in
Kosovo, meant to secure the support of the American People, reveal with
dramatic force that an American Government, claiming to act in the
National Interest, is manipulating our Democracy, silencing informed
criticism, and acting against its own People. Its arrogance abroad, and
especially, against the small Serb people, has taken the Imperial Mask
off the New Uncle Sam’s face. It cannot grasp that the use of its
military might (without loss of a single American soldier), the economic
conquests in the globe and the cultural flooding out of other
societies, coupled with obvious arrogance ( do read Chalmer Johnston’s
book "Blowback")and propensity to lecture everyone(reflected beautifully
in Al Gore’s public posturing for the election) --that all of this
combined is fanning the latent fires of universal hate against the New
World Order and its Global Master. The Republican Presidential Candidate
has recognized the problem of arrogance and is promoting the need for
"humility." It may already be too late unless the Amewrican People take
foreign policy from the hands of experts, "hawks" out to "punish" and
"teach" the rest of the world about Democracy while losing it at home.
Subject: Prof. R.K.Kent:DR. STRANGELOVE IS ALIVE, WELL
AND "VINDICATED" ( CORRECTED TEXT )
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 23:27:50 -0400
From: "minja m." <minja@...>
Reply-To: minja@...
( CORRECTED TEXT )
DR. STRANGELOVE IS ALIVE, WELL AND "VINDICATED"
How Madeleine got to Bomb the Serbs
R.K.Kent
A most revealing informtion comes out of two sources about the air war
for Kosovo. . Both merit attention and close reading. One is a former
United States Air Attache at London, Alan J. Parrington. The other is
James F. Rubin, Madeleine Albright_s closest State Department associate.
Parrington was on duty in London just before, during and after the
bombings (24 March 1999 through 5th June, officially 10th June 1999). In
his own words:
"I saw a war of underlying motives, missed
diplomatic opportunities,
misguided military strategies and questionable
outcomes. Worst of
all, the war never need happened: Milosevic
conceded major U.S.
demands two weeks before the war began."
(Colorado Sorings Gazette,
October 12, 2000, reported by Ben Works).
Parrington went on to relate how, on 11th March 1999, he was approached
at a British Diplomatic reception by the Yugoslav Defense Attache to
the Court of St.James,. The Attache, a Serb Colonel, told him that
Milosevic is allowing international and even NATO troops into Kosovo but
must "first have a letter from Clinton explaining the benefit Yugoslavia
will receive in exchange." At first, Parrington was taken aback because
the stationing of foreign troops in Kosovo was the "sticking point in
negotiations." The" benefits" expected finally came down to
"three things Yugoslavia must have." Yugoslavia must retain sovereignty
over Kosovo. The Kosovo Liberation Army must be disarmed. The
independence referendum must be "removed."
According to Parrington this was "apparently too much for the Clinton
Administration to accept." In the end, after eleven weeks of bombing:
"the Administration, running short of
precision weapons and
faced with the prospect of a bloody ground
war, abandoned the
bombing strategy and asked the Russians to
broker a deal based
ON MILOSEVIC’S ANTEBELLUM OFFER" (caps added
for emphasis).
Parrington concluded that the war achieved nothing beyond what Milosevic
had proposed beforehand and "only inflamed ethnic passions for
generations to come." De jure, Kosovo remains a part of Yugoslavia, no
referendum on independence as such is scheduled but the KLA has been
only marginally disarmed. Parrington quotes a KLA leader speaking to him
personally, "one day, the Serbs will be selling us guns to shoot at
NATO."
Clearly there was no need to go to war and, just as clearly, what was
unacceptable fourteen weeks earlier became even "useful" after the war
had spent itself. From a purely psychological point of view one could
say that the war took off to ratify the prerogative of superior power
to
react punitively and even with vengeance when its will is thwarted.
While , despite the NATO framework, the "air war" was primarily an
endeavor of the Clinton Administration, the real driving, dominat
force in it was Madeleine Albright. It is virtually certain that
without her around a diplomatic solution would have prevailed. Rubin
states that NATO_s violent advent into the ex-Yugoslav space "had
become a very personal war for Albright." Rubin joined her in this
respect, struggling to persuade "the West" to halt Serb "genocide" in
Bosnia. Rubin adds that
"by 1995, Albright’s views were
vindicated when NATO’s
air strikes forced the Serbs to the
bargaining table and a
Bosnian peace accord was finally reached
that automn ."
There are two items of disinformation in the quote. NATO’s air strikes
against Bosnian Serb positions did not "bring" the Serbs to the
negotiating table. In fact, they had been asking reapetedly for
negotiations but Alija Izetbegovic refused until NATO assured him of
an Air Force for the Bosnian Muslim side. Secondly, it is very easy to
advance"genocide" as a documented sin that cannot be left unpunished.
Its glib use immediately evokes the Holocaust (1939-1945)and is meant
to inflame to the point when no furher questions need be asked. A srtict
definition of genocide would exclude forcible expulsions of groups
regarded as inimical. What did happen in Bosnia fits "ethnic cleansing"
but not planned physical exterminations of entire groups of people.
Neither the Serbs nor the Croats palnned to exterminate two million
Bosnian Muslims, nor did the Bosnian Muslims plan to exterminate all of
the Serbs and Croats inside Bosnia since, combined, they accounted for
roughly half of Bosnia’s total population.
Be that as it may, Madeleine was hardly "vindicated" (a claim now being
repeated for the 78 days of bombing Serbia itself). It is not well known
that she was actually opposed to Holbrooke’s dealing with "Milosevic"
at Dayton. It is even less known that she once threatened all of the
U.N. Security Council Ambassadors with the severing of relations with
her U.S. Mission if any of them received a Yugoslav (Serb) minister of
state invited to come for talks. It would have been humiliating for the
U.S. had there been an "Ambassadorial Revolt" proposing to stop the
Council’s proceeding pending an apology for such an auto da fe but,
fortunately, the French and Chinese Ambassadors simply disregarded
Madeleine_s ulimatum. To return to Rubin’s account, in order to get her
personal war going, Madeleine had to overcome several hard obstacles.
The first one was Europe’s general reluctance and, in some cases,
outright opposition to bombing Serbia.
Rubin is very clear on this point. He relates how difficult it was to
"galvanize the West" to act in unison before 1999. While the Clinton
Administration was "deeply divided" within itsself:
"Nearly all our allies, including the
British, put roadblocks in
the way of decisive action prior to the
Rambouillet peace confernce
"in 1999. And during Rambouillet, the
French and the
Italians acted in ways that could have
derailed the Admini-
stration’s effort to unite against the
Belgrade regime."
Some Europeans did not wish to side with the KLA. In Rubin_s version
the Russian and German foreign ministers regarded the KLA as a terrorist
group. The "rebels were unknown figures raising money illegaly through
smugling, or worse." Such reservations did not even phase Madeleine
although some people in the State Department did not dismiss them
entirely. The Europeans even made "crude jokes about Albanian immigrants
and criminal gangs." Other European ministers did not wish to break
International Law, requiring prior U.N. Security Council action. They
defended this position on legal advice. Madeleine retorted "change the
laweyrs." It is obvious that she could not care less for International
Law and the U.N. Charter provisions if these interfered with an ardent
desire to" bomb the Serbs." Some months after the bombing of Serbia,
Secretary Albright claimed formally in the New York Times that she
honors the U.N. Charter ("which we helped write"). At the time, however,
the Europeans were not sufficiently "motivated" to go to war against
Serbia, espacially not on behalf of the KLA.
What was needed to push them over the point of no return? It should be
recalled here that the NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs took place just
hours after the so-called "third marketplace massacre at Sarajevo." A
U.N. Report in situ and quite "fresh" exculpated the Serbs nonetheless.
U.N. Ambassador Albright immediately demanded that this Report be kept
secret as it is to-date. The political value of yet another "massacre,"
this time of "Kosovars" by the"Serb butchers," was hardly out of sight.
It came at a place in Kosovo called Racak, according to Rubin , on
January 15, 1999, over the radio. This date is interesting because the
first claim of a "massacre at Racak" came on 16th January 1999 but,
there is no doubt how it was used to "galvanize" the "international
Community" into action. The "Racak massacre" has all the elements of
staging and circumstances that cannot be really explained in any other
way.
The first item of circumstantial evidence resides in the quick ad hoc
posting to Kosovo of William Walker as the Administration’s Special
Envoy. One would assume some Balkan diplomatic pedigree here. Instead,
Mr. Walker had headed the U.S.Embassy’s Political Section in Salvador,
1974-1977. He was posted to Honduras (l980-1982) when arms were being
funnelled via Honduras to the Contras in Nicaragua. He spent another
four years (1988-1992} as Ambassador to Salvador just when the local
death squads were liquidating anyone close to humanitarian concern,
including a Roman Catholic Bishop. A French source once described Mr.
Walker as the "control" of a "government of assassins which used its
last days in power before the end of civil war to _rub out_ all oif its
opponents." Threre can be no doubt that Mr. Walker had close relations
with the CIA. Why he came to Kosovo will become apparent with what
follows.
On 16th January 1999, the SERB police INFORMED "Ambassador" Walker that
an attack was being prepared against Racak, a KLA stronghold. Suddenly,
an open-mass grave with 47 bodies came into view as Walker was GUIDED to
it with a host of journalists and a TV crew. "It’s a massacre" said
Walker. It’s a "massacre" repetaed the journalists and the media
throughout the world in minutes and hours. There were no spent cartrages
at the grave site and no one even bothered to ask two key questions.
With an obvious international support for the KLA why would the Serb
Police inform Walker of their attack on Racak and then massacre what
looked like civilians? Why would the Serb Police furthermore not try to
hide its would -be crime by re-burying the bodies, practice the Serbs
had been consistenly accused of for some four years before Kosovo? A
week before the start of the "air war," on 17 March 1999, the medical
investigator, Dr. Helena Ranta of Finland, submitted a report (21
kilograms and 3,000 photos)plus a five-page resume yet unable to
confirm the instant, ersatz verdict of William Walker. There is,
however, no doubt in respect to one result. His statement, reproduced
everywhere fast, "galvanized," as Madeleine Albright put it, the
"International Community."Racak of January led to Rambouillet in
February. Rambouillet led, in turn, to the air war in late March
1999.Part One of the "galvanizing process" took place in Washington.
During the week of January l7th 1999, Madeleine Albright spent her time
in intensive pursuit of a green light to go to war with the Serbs. Her
working group consisted of Secretary Cohen, National Security Adviser
Sanford Berger, CIA Director George Tenet and General Shelton, Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A collective decision was made in a few
days and "the speed reflected the meeting of minds that had developed
between Albright and the President"She "worked" President Clinton by
pounding on his "indecision in Bosnia." With the
"wag-the-dog""possibility in the air(and posterity, no doubt, watching
his Legacy)the President took Madeleine’s door which allowed, at the
same time, an entry and an exit. Having thus gotten his "nod"she used
it then to "pass on" as the President’s "own" inclination to go into
action..Thereafter came "Galvanizing II." as she --in Rubin’s words--
"began to work the Europeans." By February 1999 Rambouillet was on.
The talks at Rambouillet were decidedly not going Madeleine’s way. She
expected the Serbs to reject the "Peace Plan." She even asked all the
NATO Members’ Foreign Ministers, according to Rubin, "to instruct"
their "ambassadors in Brussels to support air strikes should the Serbs
be responsible for a breakdown in the talks." The Ministers agreed but
"only after securing the pledge to punish the Albanian side in the event
the KLA caused a breakdown." The Serbs, who were supposed to reject
the granting of Autonomy to Kosovo and thus give her the pretext to
bomb, actually agreed to restore it, allowing foreign troops under the
U.N. but not yet under NATO. But, the KLA political leader Hashim
Thaci, unexpectedly, would not sign the "Peace Plan." He did not want
Autonomy. He stuck to the demand for Independence instead. Neither
Madeleine’s "charm" nor threats of losing U.S. support (an admission
that the U.S. was supporting the KLA in the field as well despite"
denials") could persuade Thachi to budge form his position. Apparently,
Madeleine mentioned nothing of "pledge" to Thaci despite an added
European demand that the Albanians defer the issue of Independence.
The "unity of the Europeans was cracking," as Rubin assessed the
situation. The French proved to be least prone to play according to
Madeleine’s game plan. "We knew the critical factor for the KLA was the
prospect of air strikes and NATO ground troops. So we had arranged for
NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark, to come to the
castle to brief them on NATO military plans and help win them over in
the final hours of the conference." The French woul not alllow the
"formidable figure" of General Clark to enter Rambouillet, "arguing
that his NATO role would somehow upset the diplomatic balance with the
Serbs." But, "Albright finally convinced Hubert Vedrine, the (French)
foreign minister to allow four KLA members to leave the castle for a
briefing with Clark at a military airfield." The formula was the same
as in the NATO air war over Serb Bosnian positions years earlier. Give
the KLA NATO’s planes and misssiles, show them exactly in a secret
military briefing, how you plan to "hit the Serbs." Hint to them that
the action is worth a "slight postponement" of Independence, along with
an eventual support for it, promise clandestinely that Kosovo will be
turned over to KLA at the exclusion of "moderate" Ibrahim Rugova, and
the result came out just the way Madeleine wanted it. Thaci would sign.
Since the Serbs, however, had just about accepted the major sticking
point of foreign troops, including NATOs, along with Autonomy for
Kosovo, the final pretext for bombs was still missing. Serbs had to be
MADE to reject the "Peace Plan."
The idea was brilliant in its evil banality. Someone recalled the 1914
ten-point ultimatum to Serbia by Austriua in 1914, after the
assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Two Appendices added
overnight to the previous text of the "Peace Plan." One of the two,
Appendix B, spelled out in great detail that Serbs must agree to an
immediate occupation of all of Yugoslavia, including Belgrade, by NATO
troops which not only had a total freedom of movement and acrtioin but
which would be a prioro immune from prosecution for any types of crime.
Colonial "Capitulations" come to mind, delivered with supreme arrogance.
When the Serb delegation walked out of Rambouillet, Albright spread the
word. "The SERBS have REJECTED the Peace Plan." She would quip after the
air war, that "we raised (at Rambouillet)the bar so Milosevich could not
jump over it. Yugoslavia needed a little bombing."
By the beginning of June 1999, thanks to the "vindicated" Madeleine
Albright , Serbia’s infrastructure was taken out to the tune of over
$100 billion. Hospitals ,factories,churches (even a Synagogue at Nis),
schools, soccer fields, shopping malls, generators, a TV station, even
the Chinese Embassy, were hit. Some 3,000 Serb civilians were killed
with about three times that many of the wounded, more or less seriously.
Serbia’s (and Kosovo’s) air, soil and water were polluted with chemical
toxins of all kinds, with depleted uranium and graphite, assuring
mutation of genes yet to come. Thousands of the internationally banned
cluster bombs were dropped and
are still killing both Serb and Albaniuan children who find them esily
because of their colors. General Clark certainly knew what he was doing.
Before becoming a Vice-Presidential Candidate, Senator Lieberamn
proclaimed that the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was "fighting
for American values." Vice-President Al Gore has been going around the
country telling the American People about "our" "victory" at Kosovo.
Following the fall of Milosevic, the main scribal media at home went
into overdrive about the "vindication" of Madeleine Albright. General
Wesley Clark went even further. He claimed on Public Television that the
eleven weeks of NATO bombings in Serbia and Kosovo brought Milosevic
down.
Since NATO "liberated Kosovo" from "Serb oppression" unadulterated
day-to-day realities have turned Senator Lieberman_s claim into a
tragic joke. At Kosovo, the "ex-KLA" members are engaged in organized
white slavery and prostitution, drug dealing, kidnapping, beatings and
murder. Just recently, KFOR with British Marines arrested an entire KLA
clan involved in such activities. Albanian piecemeal terror, on a daily
basis (and long after the advent of NATO) has "cleansed" some 300,000
non Albanians (mainly Serbs but also half a dozen other minorities).
Actual results reveal that there was no struggle for "liberation" but
for power, a struggle induced from outside of Kosovo and bankrolled by a
drug cartel seeking a free zone for huge profits. It wanted to replace
the constraints of State in favor of an acephalous area dominated by
Albanian clans engaged in criminal enterprise. Among thousands of
refugees in the post-NATO era there are Albanians who fled to
Serbia. The U.S. deliberately turned Kosovo over to its "air war"
ally, the KLA and its political head Hashim Thachi, dropping support for
of the only true leader of Kosovo_s Albanians, the poet Ibrahim Rugova.
The architect of this stunning success was the "vindicated" Madeleine
Albright. To get to bomb the Serbs she would have made a pact with the
Devil. Only one major and intriguing question remains.Was her
Serbophobia driven by some deeply hidden demons or was it merely
grafted on some geopolitical strategies pushed on the makers of foriegn
policy by Madeleine’s mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski?
It would appear from all the gloating about who did Milosevic in,
about the "Victory at Kosovo," that nothing has been learned at the
top. It is very likely that a similar NATO intervention will never come
about in Europe. NATO in present-day Europe is an oxymoron.
It has no one to "defend" or attack on"humanitarian" grounds unless it
wishes to hit the French over Corsica, Spaniards over their Basque
problem and the English over their Colonialism in Ireland. Its
peace-keeping mission in Bosnia and Kosovo has not really settled
anything fundamental. The .U.S., if not alone, has been a major part of
the bloody problems in ex-Yugoslavia. It killed two viable peace
treaties in 1992 and in 1993. It sided with anyone who was against the
Serbs, arming and training the Croat Army to ethnically cleanse Krajina
of its long-time resident Serbs, some 250,000 of them. It allowed Shiite
Muslim extermists and arms into Bosnia and it has taken the side of
Kosovo’s Muslim Albanians under entirely false pretexts.
Assisted by the main media, the gross and continuous disinformation of
the current U.S. Government, about the realities on the ground in
Kosovo, meant to secure the support of the American People, reveal with
dramatic force that an American Government, claiming to act in the
National Interest, is manipulating our Democracy, silencing informed
criticism, and acting against its own People. Its arrogance abroad, and
especially, against the small Serb people, has taken the Imperial Mask
off the New Uncle Sam’s face. It cannot grasp that the use of its
military might (without loss of a single American soldier), the economic
conquests in the globe and the cultural flooding out of other
societies, coupled with obvious arrogance ( do read Chalmer Johnston’s
book "Blowback")and propensity to lecture everyone(reflected beautifully
in Al Gore’s public posturing for the election) --that all of this
combined is fanning the latent fires of universal hate against the New
World Order and its Global Master. The Republican Presidential Candidate
has recognized the problem of arrogance and is promoting the need for
"humility." It may already be too late unless the Amewrican People take
foreign policy from the hands of experts, "hawks" out to "punish" and
"teach" the rest of the world about Democracy while losing it at home.
The Global Reflexion Foundation contributes, according to her ability,
to
the distribution of information on international issues that in the
media
does not recieve proper attention or is presented in a distorted way. We
receive information from different sources, that does not necessary
reflect
our opinion. If you don't want to receive it, please send us an e-mail.
******************************************************
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
- Will Moldova be the next Kosovo
- It Turns Out Depleted Uranium Is Bad For NATO Troops In Kosovo [What
About Everyone Else?]
- Activists planned uprising that led to Milosevic's ouster
- "Democracy" will not be for all pockets
*****************************************************
TARGETS, a Dutch monthly publication on international affaires, will
organize a public meeting to discuss the current developments in
Yugoslavia and the role of the Western powers.
The meeting will be adressed by:
· Jürgen Elsässer, editor of the German monthly publication KONKRET and
· Nico Varkevisser, editor-in-chief of TARGETS
Date: Sunday, October 29
Place: Akhnaton, Nieuwezijds Kolk 25, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Time: 15.00h
Jürgen Elsässer will present his new book: 'Kriegsverbrechen'. Die
tötlichen Lügen der Nato und ihre Opfer im Kosovo-Konflikt. (including a
file on Srebrenica)
*************************************************************
Will Moldova be de next Kosovo
NEW ANTI-RUSSIAN NATO MACHINATIONS
by Denis Petrov
On October 2, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow saw fit to deny the existence
of a
secret plan cooked up by American spooks and the Organization for
Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to partition Moldova. Bearing in mind
events in the Balkans in recent years, this denial was enough to
convince
most Russian and Moldovan/Romanian patriots that the plan is already
operational.
The State Department was reacting to a September 23 article in the
influential Izvestiya daily, claiming that talks between Russia and
Moldova
on the fate of the breakaway “Dniester Moldovan Republic”
had
broken down because of a “secret plan” pushed by the West to
annex Moldova to Romania and the Dniester region to Ukraine.
(This self-styled Dniester Republic, sometimes referred to as
Transdnistria, is a predominately Slavic, Russian-speaking region. In
1940
it was fused with the former Romanian province of Bessarabia to form the
Soviet Moldovan Republic in one of Stalin’s notorious land grabs.)
According to Izvestiya, the plan would involve annexation of the
Dniester
region by a nationalist Ukraine. The paper strongly implied that the
West
was backing the resurgent Ukrainian nationalist movement in pro-NATO
Western Ukraine-as a prelude to further NATO expansion. As in Kosovo,
however, the NATO-crats plan on exploiting nationalism only tactically:
the
real aim is to force the unconditional removal of the Russian 14th army
from the Dniester region, making way for an eventual NATO military
presence. Meanwhile, a suitably tamed and re-united Romania -- one that
would be bound by OSCE guidelines on "human rights" not to enforce
recent
laws giving the Romanian language legal predominance -- would be
absorbed
by OSCE/EU structures. The price for eventual integration into the
European
Union would be the negation of a distinct Romanian identity.
Izvestiya further claimed that a delay in Russian-Moldovan talks was
forced
on the Russian delegation, led by former Prime Minister Yevgeniy
Primakov,
as a prelude to scuttling the Russian plan to transform Moldova into a
confederation that would leave the Moldovan state intact while granting
the
Dniester region autonomy. Under the American plan Russia would carry out
a
phased withdrawal of the 14th Army, which the OSCE would pay for.
The Primakov plan, which appears to have suited both the Moldovans and
the
Russians -- at least for now -- was not enough to satisfy the NATOcrats:
Russia would still maintain ties with an autonomous Dniester Republic,
ties
which would probably include a guarantee of Dniester self-determination
should Moldova eventually rejoin Romania. Moreover, the region would
probably seek admittance to the Russian-Belarussian Union under such
circumstances, thereby maintaining Russian influence in the region. The
“secret plan” was devised to pre-empt such eventualities.
On the same day as the Izvestiya article, Kommersant, a
business-oriented
Russian daily, filled in the missing pieces to the diplomatic puzzle.
Kommersant pointed out that the U.S. Congress had recently allocated $45
million for funding "military assistance" to certain former Soviet
republics, including Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and
Moldova.
The aim appears to be to weaken Russian influence in those states by
undermining the Russian-brokered CIS, a commonwealth of former Soviet
republics, and strengthening a Western-influenced GUUAM
(Georgia-Ukraine-Uzbekistan-Azerbaijan-Moldova) counterpart.
The net effect of the NATO/OSCE/EU machinations would be to isolate
Russia
by creating a NATO-dominated buffer zone on the periphery of the former
Soviet empire. This buffer zone would also just so happen to include a
number of states acting as gas and oil transit lines, states whose
importance will only increase as Caspian sea deposits are developed.
It
is small wonder then that an increasing number of Russians view the West
with suspicion and downright hostility: The ultimate objective of
NATO’s version of the Anaconda plan would be to weaken, if not
dismember, Russia.
***************************************
The URL for this article is
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/arbuth/port.htm
It Turns Out Depleted Uranium Is Bad For NATO Troops In Kosovo [What
About
Everyone Else?]
by Felicity Arbuthnot [10-26-2000]
[Felicity Arbuthnot has written a great deal about the Gulf War and
depleted uranium, as well as about the attack on Yugoslavia. An
interview
with Ms. Arbuthnot follows.]
In a week which has seen the French government follow their Italian
counterparts in launching an enquiry into the effects of depleted
uranium
(DU) on their soldiers in Kosovo, the Portugese Defence Minister, Julio
Castro Caldas has informed NATO Headquarters that he is withdrawing
Portugese troops from Kosmet. They were not, he said, going to become
uranium meat.
DU, first used in the 1991 Gulf war, is both chemically toxic and
radioactive and is used as coating, ballast or core for weapons.
Two Italian K-FOR soldiers have been flown to Rome suffering from
cancers
and the Rome Military Attorney has joined his colleagues in Milan,
Turin
and Venice in investigating DU in Kosovo and the Balkans and effects on
Italian troops. Last month the Yugoslav Ambassador to the Czech
Republic,
Djoko Stojicic told media in Prague that K-FOR soldiers in
Kosovo-Metohia
had long been experiencing health problems associated with DU. Quoting
NATO
French Air Force Commander, General Joffret he said the West apparently
wanted to get rid of their nuclear waste, contaminating the region.
Belgium
and Dutch troops are instructed by their governments not to eat local
produce and that clothes must be destroyed on departure and vehicles
decontaminated. K-FOR contingents have drinking water flown in.
Portuguese Defense Minister Julio Castro Caldas said his decision
should
have been made earlier and that Portugese forces should not have
participated in last year's 72 day war in the Balkans. Former
UK Minister of Defence, now NATO Secretary General, George Robertson
was
well aware of the dangers posed by DU, he said.
Portugese soldiers were sent on missions in the area poisoned with
depleted uranium, Pereira wrote in the influential Lisbon journal
'Diario
de Noticias'. NATO confirmed that the area was contaminted by DU and the
UN
representative also confirmed and apologised. Pereira stated that there
was
opposition in the headquarters of other countries performing missions in
poisoned areas. If it is hard to persuade military circles in
Washington,
Paris, London or Berlin to send their troops to the critical areas in
Kosovo, does that mean that the Portugese are to represent uranium
meat?
Earlier this year a seven page document warning of the hazards of DU
was
placed in the mail boxes of all personel working out of the UN building
in
Pristina and the Supreme Headquarters Allied
Command in Europe (SHAPE) issued warnings to United States Commands
urging
the widest possible dissemination to forces of other nations. A recent
meeting of the United Nations Environment
Programme attended by bodies including the International Atomic Energy
Authority and the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute resulted in
ongoing consultations as to how to proceed with a scientific field
assessment of DU sites, according to Director Klaus Toepfer. Previous
assessments had been hampered by NATO's refusal to provide maps of
affected
areas.
This Wednesday, Dr Asav Durakovic and Dr Hari Sharma, world renowned
radiation experts who tested sick Gulf war veterans for the presence of
DU
in their bodies and found up to one hundred
times the safe limit remaining eight years after the Gulf war, will
brief
the Justice and Human Rights Commission at the European Parliament.
If Balkans Syndrome is proven to affect K-FOR and reportedly other
people
working in the region, might not the native population of Kosovo also
suffer the cancers and birth deformities from DU
which as we know have devastated Iraq?
And how does this question figure in the calculations of NATO?
***
Interview with Felicity Arbuthnot
I spoke to Felicity Arbuthnot, author of the above article, in the wee
hours of this morning, October 25th. She told me the following story:
"In
June of 1999, on the day that they announced they were sending ground
troops into Kosovo, I rang the Ministry of Defense and I said, "Are we
now
going to see a wave of Balkans War Syndrome?" And they said, "Absolutely
not! The Minister himself has given strict instructions that no
personnel
must go near anything that might have been hit by depleted uranium
weapons
and if it is unavoidable they must wear full radiological protective
clothing."
Jared Israel: Doesn't that slightly contradict their other positions?
That
Gulf War Syndrome has nothing to do with depleted uranium?
Felicity Arbuthnot: Exactly. So I said, "What about refugees we're
encouraging to return not to mention the people who did not leave, the
Serbs and Roma and so on," and they said, "Oh, that has
nothing to do with us. That's UNHCR [the UN refugee organization]."
So I rang up UNHCR and put the same question to them: "What is going to
happen to these people?" And I said one of the things that the Ministry
person had told me was they had been told not to
disturb the soil lest dust should come up. I said, "How are they going
to
rebuild their homes if you don't disturb the soil?"
Israel: Especially since the homes that had been hit with shells
containing DU would be exactly the ones where you would have to tear
down,
consequently distrubing dangerous soil.
Arbuthnot: That's exactly right. Then UNHCR said to me, "What's DU?" So
I
sent them about three trees worth of material.
Israel: They didn't know what DU was?
Arbuthnot: I sent them piles and piles of stuff and they then said,
"You
know, this is really extremely alarming. Do you think we should pull our
personnel out?" And I said "Well, if you are encouraging the refugees to
go
back and you pull your personnel out and they get sick and I were they
I'd
be reaching for my lawyer." So they went very quiet. And you know, in
the
article I speak of this report which mysteriously appeared in the pigeon
holes of all the personnel that work out of the UN headquarters in
Pristina
warning of the dangers of DU. And you know there are hundreds and
hundreds
of people working out of there. And then, there are the people who live
there as well as those who have been driven out since NATO arrived and
who
should like to come back, aren't there?
www.tenc.net Emperor's Clothes]
******************************************
Activists planned uprising that led to Milosevic's ouster
Special coverage of the unrest in Yugoslavia
By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press
CACAK, Yugoslavia (October 20, 2000 3:27 p.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - The farmhands and factory workers who
surged
through the doors of Yugoslavia's parliament seemed to be acting on
impulse, seizing the moment to oust Slobodan Milosevic.
Truth is, every step was planned.
Activists from this central Yugoslav city had been planning the uprising
long before they drove to the Yugoslav capital on Oct. 5. They brought a
list of targets, 10 days worth of food, a front-end loader and trucks
full
of rocks - ready to do battle with the Milosevic regime.
"People were ready for this," said Dragan Kovacevic, a local coordinator
for pro-democracy forces. "We had had enough of these piecemeal acts. We
needed concrete action."
The Cacak activists had also infiltrated the ranks of Milosevic's feared
police and said they knew in advance how they were likely to react.
The groundwork for the tumultuous events that toppled Milosevic had been
laid as much as four years earlier, when the opposition won elections in
Cacak and Velimir Ilic became mayor.
The job came with a television and radio station, one of many local
media
outlets that dotted the Yugoslav countryside. Considered too small to
worry
about, Milosevic loyalists didn't bother to shut them down when they
muzzled the Belgrade media.
Tensions had been building since the Sept. 24 elections, which the
opposition claimed Vojislav Kostunica had won. A showdown loomed.
Then, Knez, Bozo, Janjo, Vaske and other activists, who spoke on
condition
they only be identified by their first names, heard radio reports that
miners in the nearby town of Kolubara were on strike to pressure
Milosevic
to step down.
Urged on by their mayor, the men, who had lost much of their youth
fighting
wars that kept Milosevic in power, headed to the mine. They joined
thousands of others who had already swept past police blockades.
The events at the Kolubara mine provided a dress rehearsal for the next
day. That's when Kovacevic unleashed the next phase of the plan.
Thousands gathered at 7:30 a.m., along with 230 trucks loaded with
rocks,
farming tools and other equipment, "ready for God knows what," Kovacevic
recalled.
The mood was somber. Most of the crowd knew only that they were going to
"liberate" Belgrade. Details weren't revealed until the convoy was under
way, passed from car to car as it snaked along the 60 miles of twisting
highway.
The first target was the parliament building. Then the state television
station. Finally, the presidential palace.
"Every time I fought, I fought for my countrymen," Knez said. "This was
the
same."
On the road to Belgrade, others joined in, heeding a call by Kostunica's
forces to converge on the capital. The Milosevic regime knew people
would
be coming and had erected roadblocks.
Ilic led the Cacak group, just behind a truck carrying the front-end
loader.
After a brief effort at negotiation, they smashed through two police
barricades, crushing trucks blocking the road, using crowbars, hammers
and
stones.
Some police officers stepped aside after subtle persuasion: Those in the
convoy reminded their neighbors they knew where they lived.
By the time the Cacak convoy arrived in Belgrade, it stretched for 10
miles. People in the capital watched in disbelief as it rolled in.
Participants stopped to smoke and regroup before taking on the
parliament,
the symbolic seat of power.
They stormed its steps, then stopped. Thousands joined the Cacak group.
After nearly two hours, someone in the crowd hit a police officer with a
bottle. Tear gas flew.
The crowd surged into the building. At about this time, the crowd split
in
two, with half staying behind to secure the parliament and the others
moving to the television station, according to plan.
Ilic said the opposition had recruited some of the elite police units
safeguarding the regime's most important asset - its propaganda voice.
"This Belgrade unit, that Milosevic counted most on for special actions,
was completely on our side," Ilic said. "We had an agreement with them
to
do this together, and they supported us fully."
Just in case the police unit changed its mind, the pro-democracy forces
sent along another front-end loader. With little resistance from police,
the station fell quickly. Ringleaders opted not to march to the third
target - Milosevic's palace. They feared their ranks were too depleted.
Back in Cacak, another element of the plan snapped into shape:
Pro-democracy operatives reminded the local police they knew where they
lived and the officers quickly surrendered.
The Kostunica camp seized a transmitter belonging to the
Milosevic-controlled state television network and broadcast news of the
events in the capital to as much as two-thirds of the country.
Soon, everyone learned about front-end loader revolution.
****************************************************
Hungary active in Yugoslav affairs
http://www.centraleurope.com/hungarytoday/news.php3?id=211147
Hungary Lobbying For Amnesty For Yugoslav War "Deserters"
BUDAPEST, Oct 19, 2000 -- (BBC Monitoring) It has been promised to the
Hungarian foreign affairs state secretary [Ivan Baba] in Yugoslavia that
those who have been convicted at home on charges of desertion from the
army
after fleeing from Vojvodina to Hungary will be given amnesty.
[Reporter] The administrative state secretary of the Hungarian Foreign
Ministry has conveyed the Hungarian government's message to the
democratic
forces of Yugoslavia. At a press briefing on his return to Budapest,
Ivan
Baba summed up the key point of this message in the following way:
[Baba] We definitely and unambiguously continue to be interested in the
strengthening of democratic forces and European democratic values in
Yugoslavia and in Yugoslavia becoming a democratic constitutional state
in
the European sense.
[Reporter] The state secretary forwarded an invitation to President
Vojislav Kostunica to take part as a special guest in the summit of the
Central European Initiative in Budapest in November. The Hungarian state
secretary's Yugoslav partners promised that they would help the
restoration
of the
navigability of the Danube as soon as possible, agree to the abolition
of
border crossing duties and deal with the question of amnesty for
Hungarian
and non-Hungarian Yugoslav citizens who had been convicted at home on
charges of desertion for fleeing from Vojvodina to Hungary. According to
Ivan Baba, their number is several thousands.
Ivan Baba repeated to his Serb negotiating partners in Vojvodina that
the
Hungarian government was interested in cross-border cooperation and
supported the autonomy demands of Vojvodina Hungarian organizations.
In Szabadka [Subotica, northern part of Vojvodina], Ivan Baba met Jozsef
Kasza [chairman of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, SVM], who was
recently elected, for the fifth time, as the mayor of Szabadka. Kasza,
as
other leaders in Yugoslavia, asked for Hungarian fuel and energy aid
before
the winter, which is expected to be hard.
Asked by "Chronicle" [this program], Ivan Baba said that the Yugoslav
side
noted Hungary's request for a Hungarian consulate to be opened in
Szabadka
and a Hungarian trade mission - with diplomatic or non-diplomatic status
-
to be opened in the smaller member republic, Montenegro.
Source: Hungarian Radio, Budapest, in Hungarian 1600 GMT 18 Oct 00
Miroslav Antic
http://www.antic.org/SNN/
*************************************************
"Democracy" will not be for all pockets
IN BELGRADE, OIL JUMPED FROM 15 TO 51 DINARS
"Democracy" will not be for all pockets
In Belgrade, the price of one liter of oil had jumped from 15 to
51dinars,
price of bread from 6 to 14 and of sugar from 6 to 45. "Democratic
prices",
mock the consumers, already disappointed. In
Kragujevac, trade unionists of Zastava are beaten and persecuted. At the
same time, financed western press celebrates "good affairs in sight".
And
finally, one US senator already threatens Kostunica to expand NATO to
Slovenia. What are the connections between these four facts?
Michel Collon
Our Western media do not speak about Yugoslavia anymore. Still,
important
things are happening there. And revealing... Before, government gave
subsidizes for the production of basic food products. So farmers and
merchants still had enough gain, but consumers could buy in spite of
embargo. Nobody was dying of hunger. But the DOS opposition had
announced,
in its "G 17 plus" program, that
"the new government will immediately suspend all the subsidization, with
no
regret or hesitation, because it will be difficult to apply this measure
latter". Indeed, it didn't take them long at all!
Los Angeles Times of 15th writes: "When Kostunica supporters forced out
most managers in state-owned shops and factories and put their own
people
in charge, that system of controls collapsed and prices immediately shot
up. New directors are moving quickly to make their plants more
profitable. "
Problem: consumers are dissatisfied and elections are in two months. So,
director of G 17, Mladjan Dinkic, is accusing...Serbian government,
still
run by SPS socialists, of "wanting to create chaos". But argument is not
holding water: this government is not functioning precisely because of
the
chaos created by DOS, its street-violence and "crisis comittees" which
forcibly took over the control of all institutions.
"We will be able to export to Yugoslavia"
Therefore we see already that the "prosperity" announced in election
promises will not benefit to all the pockets. But who will? Answer of
Italian financial supplement of International Herald Tribune of 10th
(Italy is Yugoslav economic partner No. 2) "Perspectives seem good and
Italian export goods - shoes, textile, food products - will be the first
to
profit the occasion. But privatization in Yugoslavia might also attract
the
interest of foreign investors. Lot of public sectors - counting in
energy
and airports - can be licenses soon and their re-structuring might give
the
space to new foreign capital.
What does it mean to "give space"? At the spot, at the moment of putsch,
a
friend of mine, Radmila, warned me: "Actually, our electricity worked
really well. Foreign companies would want to put its hands on it. But to
invest, they demand significant profits, which means huge tariffs
growths.
People do not understand that this G17 program will ruin them!"
About the export of Italian shoes...Having forgotten my moccasin's back
home, I had to buy a new pair in Belgrade: 1 100 dinars. Tree times
less
than the Italians, which I usually buy. Maybe somewhat less "chick", but
comfortable and solid. What will happen, with new regime? With their
financial power, western multinationals will take the control over
Yugoslav
factories, closing a big part of them, and western products will flood
over
the local market. Europe would be able to get rid of its food-stocks, at
unbeatable prices, because of European Union subsidization (so there! in
this case, it's good to subsidize, isn't it?). "Crazy cows" and other
genetically trafficked food-products can feed the Serbs then, they're
too
numerous anyway, right? But West will throw in some help, they
say..."Help"? Germany wants absolutely to re-open the Danube, so it will
open funds. Gifts? No, loans. To keep Yugoslavia "cooperative" in
extortion
of payment like numerous other countries forced by spiral of debts to
always the biggest concessions.(???) In short, Yugoslavia will pay for
the
bombing damages!
Scandalous. And what will this cleaned Danube serve for? First of all,
to
flood the country with German merchandise, which will eliminate local
products from the market.
In short, instead of promised prosperity, one New York Times editorial
of
15th predicts that "at worst Yugoslavia's economy could follow Russia's
path, to corruption and decline".
Why are syndicate activists beaten?
In Kragujevac, car factory Zastava trade unionists have been
sequestered
and beaten by ex-opposition gangs, people responsible for truck
department
were forced to resign. Progressive Italian daily Manifesto (which rather
supported Kostunica) is appalled:
" Syndicate members have been independent, as much from Milosevic as
from
opposition. They relayed humanitarian operations of Italian syndicates.
But
opposition syndicate activists (formed in Rumania by US experts) are
pressuring the workers, threatening them with massive layoffs. "We
fought
for the workers, without engaging ourselves in politics. This is our
crime!" concluded one of them".
All those facts are linked together. To push through this IMF policy -
high
prices , closing ups, layoffs and gifts to multinationals, every
possibility of syndicate or leftist resistance - must be eliminated. In
Belgrade, one office of New Communist Party has been burned down by
rightist militia.
And if all this is not enough, listen to the threats of American senator
Biden: " If Mr. Kostunica thinks he will be able to continue with one
aggressive nationalist Serbian politics, only under milder appearance,
then
we'll have to talk him out of it. In this case, we should concentrate
our
ex Yugoslavia politics on preparing more democratic and more prosperous
Slovenia, for the next NATO enlargement".
NATO, again? So there, and they kept telling us that Milosevic was the
only
problem over there! And what if the problem was the resistance of
Serbian
people in general, to economical imperialism and military interventions
of
the West? Kostunica - or some other soon - being put in charge to bring
those people up to date. The game is far from being finished in
Yugoslavia.
A lot will depend on the resistance capacity of workers. Some leftist
alternative is indispensable, and resistance is being prepared. We'll be
back there.
******************************************************
Global Reflexion - Amsterdam - The Netherlands
to
the distribution of information on international issues that in the
media
does not recieve proper attention or is presented in a distorted way. We
receive information from different sources, that does not necessary
reflect
our opinion. If you don't want to receive it, please send us an e-mail.
******************************************************
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
- Will Moldova be the next Kosovo
- It Turns Out Depleted Uranium Is Bad For NATO Troops In Kosovo [What
About Everyone Else?]
- Activists planned uprising that led to Milosevic's ouster
- "Democracy" will not be for all pockets
*****************************************************
TARGETS, a Dutch monthly publication on international affaires, will
organize a public meeting to discuss the current developments in
Yugoslavia and the role of the Western powers.
The meeting will be adressed by:
· Jürgen Elsässer, editor of the German monthly publication KONKRET and
· Nico Varkevisser, editor-in-chief of TARGETS
Date: Sunday, October 29
Place: Akhnaton, Nieuwezijds Kolk 25, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Time: 15.00h
Jürgen Elsässer will present his new book: 'Kriegsverbrechen'. Die
tötlichen Lügen der Nato und ihre Opfer im Kosovo-Konflikt. (including a
file on Srebrenica)
*************************************************************
Will Moldova be de next Kosovo
NEW ANTI-RUSSIAN NATO MACHINATIONS
by Denis Petrov
On October 2, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow saw fit to deny the existence
of a
secret plan cooked up by American spooks and the Organization for
Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to partition Moldova. Bearing in mind
events in the Balkans in recent years, this denial was enough to
convince
most Russian and Moldovan/Romanian patriots that the plan is already
operational.
The State Department was reacting to a September 23 article in the
influential Izvestiya daily, claiming that talks between Russia and
Moldova
on the fate of the breakaway “Dniester Moldovan Republic”
had
broken down because of a “secret plan” pushed by the West to
annex Moldova to Romania and the Dniester region to Ukraine.
(This self-styled Dniester Republic, sometimes referred to as
Transdnistria, is a predominately Slavic, Russian-speaking region. In
1940
it was fused with the former Romanian province of Bessarabia to form the
Soviet Moldovan Republic in one of Stalin’s notorious land grabs.)
According to Izvestiya, the plan would involve annexation of the
Dniester
region by a nationalist Ukraine. The paper strongly implied that the
West
was backing the resurgent Ukrainian nationalist movement in pro-NATO
Western Ukraine-as a prelude to further NATO expansion. As in Kosovo,
however, the NATO-crats plan on exploiting nationalism only tactically:
the
real aim is to force the unconditional removal of the Russian 14th army
from the Dniester region, making way for an eventual NATO military
presence. Meanwhile, a suitably tamed and re-united Romania -- one that
would be bound by OSCE guidelines on "human rights" not to enforce
recent
laws giving the Romanian language legal predominance -- would be
absorbed
by OSCE/EU structures. The price for eventual integration into the
European
Union would be the negation of a distinct Romanian identity.
Izvestiya further claimed that a delay in Russian-Moldovan talks was
forced
on the Russian delegation, led by former Prime Minister Yevgeniy
Primakov,
as a prelude to scuttling the Russian plan to transform Moldova into a
confederation that would leave the Moldovan state intact while granting
the
Dniester region autonomy. Under the American plan Russia would carry out
a
phased withdrawal of the 14th Army, which the OSCE would pay for.
The Primakov plan, which appears to have suited both the Moldovans and
the
Russians -- at least for now -- was not enough to satisfy the NATOcrats:
Russia would still maintain ties with an autonomous Dniester Republic,
ties
which would probably include a guarantee of Dniester self-determination
should Moldova eventually rejoin Romania. Moreover, the region would
probably seek admittance to the Russian-Belarussian Union under such
circumstances, thereby maintaining Russian influence in the region. The
“secret plan” was devised to pre-empt such eventualities.
On the same day as the Izvestiya article, Kommersant, a
business-oriented
Russian daily, filled in the missing pieces to the diplomatic puzzle.
Kommersant pointed out that the U.S. Congress had recently allocated $45
million for funding "military assistance" to certain former Soviet
republics, including Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and
Moldova.
The aim appears to be to weaken Russian influence in those states by
undermining the Russian-brokered CIS, a commonwealth of former Soviet
republics, and strengthening a Western-influenced GUUAM
(Georgia-Ukraine-Uzbekistan-Azerbaijan-Moldova) counterpart.
The net effect of the NATO/OSCE/EU machinations would be to isolate
Russia
by creating a NATO-dominated buffer zone on the periphery of the former
Soviet empire. This buffer zone would also just so happen to include a
number of states acting as gas and oil transit lines, states whose
importance will only increase as Caspian sea deposits are developed.
It
is small wonder then that an increasing number of Russians view the West
with suspicion and downright hostility: The ultimate objective of
NATO’s version of the Anaconda plan would be to weaken, if not
dismember, Russia.
***************************************
The URL for this article is
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/arbuth/port.htm
It Turns Out Depleted Uranium Is Bad For NATO Troops In Kosovo [What
About
Everyone Else?]
by Felicity Arbuthnot [10-26-2000]
[Felicity Arbuthnot has written a great deal about the Gulf War and
depleted uranium, as well as about the attack on Yugoslavia. An
interview
with Ms. Arbuthnot follows.]
In a week which has seen the French government follow their Italian
counterparts in launching an enquiry into the effects of depleted
uranium
(DU) on their soldiers in Kosovo, the Portugese Defence Minister, Julio
Castro Caldas has informed NATO Headquarters that he is withdrawing
Portugese troops from Kosmet. They were not, he said, going to become
uranium meat.
DU, first used in the 1991 Gulf war, is both chemically toxic and
radioactive and is used as coating, ballast or core for weapons.
Two Italian K-FOR soldiers have been flown to Rome suffering from
cancers
and the Rome Military Attorney has joined his colleagues in Milan,
Turin
and Venice in investigating DU in Kosovo and the Balkans and effects on
Italian troops. Last month the Yugoslav Ambassador to the Czech
Republic,
Djoko Stojicic told media in Prague that K-FOR soldiers in
Kosovo-Metohia
had long been experiencing health problems associated with DU. Quoting
NATO
French Air Force Commander, General Joffret he said the West apparently
wanted to get rid of their nuclear waste, contaminating the region.
Belgium
and Dutch troops are instructed by their governments not to eat local
produce and that clothes must be destroyed on departure and vehicles
decontaminated. K-FOR contingents have drinking water flown in.
Portuguese Defense Minister Julio Castro Caldas said his decision
should
have been made earlier and that Portugese forces should not have
participated in last year's 72 day war in the Balkans. Former
UK Minister of Defence, now NATO Secretary General, George Robertson
was
well aware of the dangers posed by DU, he said.
Portugese soldiers were sent on missions in the area poisoned with
depleted uranium, Pereira wrote in the influential Lisbon journal
'Diario
de Noticias'. NATO confirmed that the area was contaminted by DU and the
UN
representative also confirmed and apologised. Pereira stated that there
was
opposition in the headquarters of other countries performing missions in
poisoned areas. If it is hard to persuade military circles in
Washington,
Paris, London or Berlin to send their troops to the critical areas in
Kosovo, does that mean that the Portugese are to represent uranium
meat?
Earlier this year a seven page document warning of the hazards of DU
was
placed in the mail boxes of all personel working out of the UN building
in
Pristina and the Supreme Headquarters Allied
Command in Europe (SHAPE) issued warnings to United States Commands
urging
the widest possible dissemination to forces of other nations. A recent
meeting of the United Nations Environment
Programme attended by bodies including the International Atomic Energy
Authority and the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute resulted in
ongoing consultations as to how to proceed with a scientific field
assessment of DU sites, according to Director Klaus Toepfer. Previous
assessments had been hampered by NATO's refusal to provide maps of
affected
areas.
This Wednesday, Dr Asav Durakovic and Dr Hari Sharma, world renowned
radiation experts who tested sick Gulf war veterans for the presence of
DU
in their bodies and found up to one hundred
times the safe limit remaining eight years after the Gulf war, will
brief
the Justice and Human Rights Commission at the European Parliament.
If Balkans Syndrome is proven to affect K-FOR and reportedly other
people
working in the region, might not the native population of Kosovo also
suffer the cancers and birth deformities from DU
which as we know have devastated Iraq?
And how does this question figure in the calculations of NATO?
***
Interview with Felicity Arbuthnot
I spoke to Felicity Arbuthnot, author of the above article, in the wee
hours of this morning, October 25th. She told me the following story:
"In
June of 1999, on the day that they announced they were sending ground
troops into Kosovo, I rang the Ministry of Defense and I said, "Are we
now
going to see a wave of Balkans War Syndrome?" And they said, "Absolutely
not! The Minister himself has given strict instructions that no
personnel
must go near anything that might have been hit by depleted uranium
weapons
and if it is unavoidable they must wear full radiological protective
clothing."
Jared Israel: Doesn't that slightly contradict their other positions?
That
Gulf War Syndrome has nothing to do with depleted uranium?
Felicity Arbuthnot: Exactly. So I said, "What about refugees we're
encouraging to return not to mention the people who did not leave, the
Serbs and Roma and so on," and they said, "Oh, that has
nothing to do with us. That's UNHCR [the UN refugee organization]."
So I rang up UNHCR and put the same question to them: "What is going to
happen to these people?" And I said one of the things that the Ministry
person had told me was they had been told not to
disturb the soil lest dust should come up. I said, "How are they going
to
rebuild their homes if you don't disturb the soil?"
Israel: Especially since the homes that had been hit with shells
containing DU would be exactly the ones where you would have to tear
down,
consequently distrubing dangerous soil.
Arbuthnot: That's exactly right. Then UNHCR said to me, "What's DU?" So
I
sent them about three trees worth of material.
Israel: They didn't know what DU was?
Arbuthnot: I sent them piles and piles of stuff and they then said,
"You
know, this is really extremely alarming. Do you think we should pull our
personnel out?" And I said "Well, if you are encouraging the refugees to
go
back and you pull your personnel out and they get sick and I were they
I'd
be reaching for my lawyer." So they went very quiet. And you know, in
the
article I speak of this report which mysteriously appeared in the pigeon
holes of all the personnel that work out of the UN headquarters in
Pristina
warning of the dangers of DU. And you know there are hundreds and
hundreds
of people working out of there. And then, there are the people who live
there as well as those who have been driven out since NATO arrived and
who
should like to come back, aren't there?
www.tenc.net Emperor's Clothes]
******************************************
Activists planned uprising that led to Milosevic's ouster
Special coverage of the unrest in Yugoslavia
By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press
CACAK, Yugoslavia (October 20, 2000 3:27 p.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - The farmhands and factory workers who
surged
through the doors of Yugoslavia's parliament seemed to be acting on
impulse, seizing the moment to oust Slobodan Milosevic.
Truth is, every step was planned.
Activists from this central Yugoslav city had been planning the uprising
long before they drove to the Yugoslav capital on Oct. 5. They brought a
list of targets, 10 days worth of food, a front-end loader and trucks
full
of rocks - ready to do battle with the Milosevic regime.
"People were ready for this," said Dragan Kovacevic, a local coordinator
for pro-democracy forces. "We had had enough of these piecemeal acts. We
needed concrete action."
The Cacak activists had also infiltrated the ranks of Milosevic's feared
police and said they knew in advance how they were likely to react.
The groundwork for the tumultuous events that toppled Milosevic had been
laid as much as four years earlier, when the opposition won elections in
Cacak and Velimir Ilic became mayor.
The job came with a television and radio station, one of many local
media
outlets that dotted the Yugoslav countryside. Considered too small to
worry
about, Milosevic loyalists didn't bother to shut them down when they
muzzled the Belgrade media.
Tensions had been building since the Sept. 24 elections, which the
opposition claimed Vojislav Kostunica had won. A showdown loomed.
Then, Knez, Bozo, Janjo, Vaske and other activists, who spoke on
condition
they only be identified by their first names, heard radio reports that
miners in the nearby town of Kolubara were on strike to pressure
Milosevic
to step down.
Urged on by their mayor, the men, who had lost much of their youth
fighting
wars that kept Milosevic in power, headed to the mine. They joined
thousands of others who had already swept past police blockades.
The events at the Kolubara mine provided a dress rehearsal for the next
day. That's when Kovacevic unleashed the next phase of the plan.
Thousands gathered at 7:30 a.m., along with 230 trucks loaded with
rocks,
farming tools and other equipment, "ready for God knows what," Kovacevic
recalled.
The mood was somber. Most of the crowd knew only that they were going to
"liberate" Belgrade. Details weren't revealed until the convoy was under
way, passed from car to car as it snaked along the 60 miles of twisting
highway.
The first target was the parliament building. Then the state television
station. Finally, the presidential palace.
"Every time I fought, I fought for my countrymen," Knez said. "This was
the
same."
On the road to Belgrade, others joined in, heeding a call by Kostunica's
forces to converge on the capital. The Milosevic regime knew people
would
be coming and had erected roadblocks.
Ilic led the Cacak group, just behind a truck carrying the front-end
loader.
After a brief effort at negotiation, they smashed through two police
barricades, crushing trucks blocking the road, using crowbars, hammers
and
stones.
Some police officers stepped aside after subtle persuasion: Those in the
convoy reminded their neighbors they knew where they lived.
By the time the Cacak convoy arrived in Belgrade, it stretched for 10
miles. People in the capital watched in disbelief as it rolled in.
Participants stopped to smoke and regroup before taking on the
parliament,
the symbolic seat of power.
They stormed its steps, then stopped. Thousands joined the Cacak group.
After nearly two hours, someone in the crowd hit a police officer with a
bottle. Tear gas flew.
The crowd surged into the building. At about this time, the crowd split
in
two, with half staying behind to secure the parliament and the others
moving to the television station, according to plan.
Ilic said the opposition had recruited some of the elite police units
safeguarding the regime's most important asset - its propaganda voice.
"This Belgrade unit, that Milosevic counted most on for special actions,
was completely on our side," Ilic said. "We had an agreement with them
to
do this together, and they supported us fully."
Just in case the police unit changed its mind, the pro-democracy forces
sent along another front-end loader. With little resistance from police,
the station fell quickly. Ringleaders opted not to march to the third
target - Milosevic's palace. They feared their ranks were too depleted.
Back in Cacak, another element of the plan snapped into shape:
Pro-democracy operatives reminded the local police they knew where they
lived and the officers quickly surrendered.
The Kostunica camp seized a transmitter belonging to the
Milosevic-controlled state television network and broadcast news of the
events in the capital to as much as two-thirds of the country.
Soon, everyone learned about front-end loader revolution.
****************************************************
Hungary active in Yugoslav affairs
http://www.centraleurope.com/hungarytoday/news.php3?id=211147
Hungary Lobbying For Amnesty For Yugoslav War "Deserters"
BUDAPEST, Oct 19, 2000 -- (BBC Monitoring) It has been promised to the
Hungarian foreign affairs state secretary [Ivan Baba] in Yugoslavia that
those who have been convicted at home on charges of desertion from the
army
after fleeing from Vojvodina to Hungary will be given amnesty.
[Reporter] The administrative state secretary of the Hungarian Foreign
Ministry has conveyed the Hungarian government's message to the
democratic
forces of Yugoslavia. At a press briefing on his return to Budapest,
Ivan
Baba summed up the key point of this message in the following way:
[Baba] We definitely and unambiguously continue to be interested in the
strengthening of democratic forces and European democratic values in
Yugoslavia and in Yugoslavia becoming a democratic constitutional state
in
the European sense.
[Reporter] The state secretary forwarded an invitation to President
Vojislav Kostunica to take part as a special guest in the summit of the
Central European Initiative in Budapest in November. The Hungarian state
secretary's Yugoslav partners promised that they would help the
restoration
of the
navigability of the Danube as soon as possible, agree to the abolition
of
border crossing duties and deal with the question of amnesty for
Hungarian
and non-Hungarian Yugoslav citizens who had been convicted at home on
charges of desertion for fleeing from Vojvodina to Hungary. According to
Ivan Baba, their number is several thousands.
Ivan Baba repeated to his Serb negotiating partners in Vojvodina that
the
Hungarian government was interested in cross-border cooperation and
supported the autonomy demands of Vojvodina Hungarian organizations.
In Szabadka [Subotica, northern part of Vojvodina], Ivan Baba met Jozsef
Kasza [chairman of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, SVM], who was
recently elected, for the fifth time, as the mayor of Szabadka. Kasza,
as
other leaders in Yugoslavia, asked for Hungarian fuel and energy aid
before
the winter, which is expected to be hard.
Asked by "Chronicle" [this program], Ivan Baba said that the Yugoslav
side
noted Hungary's request for a Hungarian consulate to be opened in
Szabadka
and a Hungarian trade mission - with diplomatic or non-diplomatic status
-
to be opened in the smaller member republic, Montenegro.
Source: Hungarian Radio, Budapest, in Hungarian 1600 GMT 18 Oct 00
Miroslav Antic
http://www.antic.org/SNN/
*************************************************
"Democracy" will not be for all pockets
IN BELGRADE, OIL JUMPED FROM 15 TO 51 DINARS
"Democracy" will not be for all pockets
In Belgrade, the price of one liter of oil had jumped from 15 to
51dinars,
price of bread from 6 to 14 and of sugar from 6 to 45. "Democratic
prices",
mock the consumers, already disappointed. In
Kragujevac, trade unionists of Zastava are beaten and persecuted. At the
same time, financed western press celebrates "good affairs in sight".
And
finally, one US senator already threatens Kostunica to expand NATO to
Slovenia. What are the connections between these four facts?
Michel Collon
Our Western media do not speak about Yugoslavia anymore. Still,
important
things are happening there. And revealing... Before, government gave
subsidizes for the production of basic food products. So farmers and
merchants still had enough gain, but consumers could buy in spite of
embargo. Nobody was dying of hunger. But the DOS opposition had
announced,
in its "G 17 plus" program, that
"the new government will immediately suspend all the subsidization, with
no
regret or hesitation, because it will be difficult to apply this measure
latter". Indeed, it didn't take them long at all!
Los Angeles Times of 15th writes: "When Kostunica supporters forced out
most managers in state-owned shops and factories and put their own
people
in charge, that system of controls collapsed and prices immediately shot
up. New directors are moving quickly to make their plants more
profitable. "
Problem: consumers are dissatisfied and elections are in two months. So,
director of G 17, Mladjan Dinkic, is accusing...Serbian government,
still
run by SPS socialists, of "wanting to create chaos". But argument is not
holding water: this government is not functioning precisely because of
the
chaos created by DOS, its street-violence and "crisis comittees" which
forcibly took over the control of all institutions.
"We will be able to export to Yugoslavia"
Therefore we see already that the "prosperity" announced in election
promises will not benefit to all the pockets. But who will? Answer of
Italian financial supplement of International Herald Tribune of 10th
(Italy is Yugoslav economic partner No. 2) "Perspectives seem good and
Italian export goods - shoes, textile, food products - will be the first
to
profit the occasion. But privatization in Yugoslavia might also attract
the
interest of foreign investors. Lot of public sectors - counting in
energy
and airports - can be licenses soon and their re-structuring might give
the
space to new foreign capital.
What does it mean to "give space"? At the spot, at the moment of putsch,
a
friend of mine, Radmila, warned me: "Actually, our electricity worked
really well. Foreign companies would want to put its hands on it. But to
invest, they demand significant profits, which means huge tariffs
growths.
People do not understand that this G17 program will ruin them!"
About the export of Italian shoes...Having forgotten my moccasin's back
home, I had to buy a new pair in Belgrade: 1 100 dinars. Tree times
less
than the Italians, which I usually buy. Maybe somewhat less "chick", but
comfortable and solid. What will happen, with new regime? With their
financial power, western multinationals will take the control over
Yugoslav
factories, closing a big part of them, and western products will flood
over
the local market. Europe would be able to get rid of its food-stocks, at
unbeatable prices, because of European Union subsidization (so there! in
this case, it's good to subsidize, isn't it?). "Crazy cows" and other
genetically trafficked food-products can feed the Serbs then, they're
too
numerous anyway, right? But West will throw in some help, they
say..."Help"? Germany wants absolutely to re-open the Danube, so it will
open funds. Gifts? No, loans. To keep Yugoslavia "cooperative" in
extortion
of payment like numerous other countries forced by spiral of debts to
always the biggest concessions.(???) In short, Yugoslavia will pay for
the
bombing damages!
Scandalous. And what will this cleaned Danube serve for? First of all,
to
flood the country with German merchandise, which will eliminate local
products from the market.
In short, instead of promised prosperity, one New York Times editorial
of
15th predicts that "at worst Yugoslavia's economy could follow Russia's
path, to corruption and decline".
Why are syndicate activists beaten?
In Kragujevac, car factory Zastava trade unionists have been
sequestered
and beaten by ex-opposition gangs, people responsible for truck
department
were forced to resign. Progressive Italian daily Manifesto (which rather
supported Kostunica) is appalled:
" Syndicate members have been independent, as much from Milosevic as
from
opposition. They relayed humanitarian operations of Italian syndicates.
But
opposition syndicate activists (formed in Rumania by US experts) are
pressuring the workers, threatening them with massive layoffs. "We
fought
for the workers, without engaging ourselves in politics. This is our
crime!" concluded one of them".
All those facts are linked together. To push through this IMF policy -
high
prices , closing ups, layoffs and gifts to multinationals, every
possibility of syndicate or leftist resistance - must be eliminated. In
Belgrade, one office of New Communist Party has been burned down by
rightist militia.
And if all this is not enough, listen to the threats of American senator
Biden: " If Mr. Kostunica thinks he will be able to continue with one
aggressive nationalist Serbian politics, only under milder appearance,
then
we'll have to talk him out of it. In this case, we should concentrate
our
ex Yugoslavia politics on preparing more democratic and more prosperous
Slovenia, for the next NATO enlargement".
NATO, again? So there, and they kept telling us that Milosevic was the
only
problem over there! And what if the problem was the resistance of
Serbian
people in general, to economical imperialism and military interventions
of
the West? Kostunica - or some other soon - being put in charge to bring
those people up to date. The game is far from being finished in
Yugoslavia.
A lot will depend on the resistance capacity of workers. Some leftist
alternative is indispensable, and resistance is being prepared. We'll be
back there.
******************************************************
Global Reflexion - Amsterdam - The Netherlands
" The "October surprise" that brought a change of power in Belgrade was
actually two events, one superimposed on the other. One was a democratic
election, made in Serbia. The other was a totally undemocratic putsch,
made in the "international community", otherwise known as NATOland. "
---
http://www.zmag.org/johnstonem.htm
11 October 2000
IN A SPIN
by Diana Johnstone
The "October surprise" that brought a change of power in Belgrade was
actually two events, one superimposed on the other. One was a democratic
election, made in Serbia. The other was a totally undemocratic putsch,
made
in the "international community", otherwise known as NATOland.
The democratic election would have been sufficient to oblige Slobodan
Milosevic to retire as Yugoslav President. The majority of Yugoslav
voters
had long wished a change in leadership, and Vojislav Kostunica emerged
as
an acceptable alternative.
But the NATO-backed putschists wanted more. They wanted two things that
the
legal elections could not provide: a dramatic media spectacle that would
fit the Western "spin", and a seizure of power beyond the limited powers
of
the Yugoslav presidency.
The Democratic Election
The Yugoslav elections were called by Milosevic himself. Having been
elected President of Serbia in the country's first multi-party elections
in
1990, the "dictator" had followed the constitutional rules and left the
Serbian presidency at the end of his second term, whereupon he was
elected
by the Yugoslav parliament to the mainly symbolic office of Yugoslav
president. Having sponsored a constitutional change which would allow
him
to be re-elected, but by universal suffrage, he went on to call early
elections, months before his term was to run out in mid-2001.
Milosevic was lured into this move by advisors pointing to deceptive
public
opinion polls indicating that he could win by a margin of 150,000 votes
in
the autumn, before winter hardships turned voters against him. This is
similar to the "joke" played on French president Jacques Chirac, who
called
the early elections that brought his left opposition headed by Lionel
Jospin into office. In Paris, it is even rumored that it was a French
advisor who urged Milosevic to make this fatal error.
In short, Milosevic was not a "dictator" but a calculating politician
trying to stay in office in a multi-party electoral system he had
largely
introduced. Aware that his popularity ratings had long been in decline,
he
counted on several factors to help him get the necessary 50% of the vote
to
be re-elected President of Yugoslavia. These were
· the chronic squabbling of the so-called "democratic" (meaning
bourgeois, as the Swedes call the center right) opposition and the
public
rejection of its main leaders (especially Democratic Party leader Zoran
Djindjic);
· the fact that Montenegrin president Milo Djukanovic was sure to
call for a boycott of the elections as part of his secession strategy,
which would leave only pro-Milosevic voters willing to go to improvised
polling stations;
· the prospect of a couple of hundred thousand solid votes from
Kosovo constituencies (where ethnic Albanians would, as usual, boycott
the
election) and from the armed forces.
Aware of its weakness, the opposition which had first loudly demanded
early
elections then threatened to boycott them, claiming that they would be
rigged by Milosevic. The NATOland chorus joined in, proclaiming that
Yugoslav elections would not be "fair and free" and that Milosevic was
certain to cheat.
In fact, thanks to a normal democratic system of multi-party supervisors
at
polling stations, cheating in Yugoslav elections was nearly impossible
in
Serbia proper, except perhaps for the hundred thousand or so soldiers
who
vote in barracks. Kosovo and Montenegro offered limited opportunities
for
cheating only because of the obstructionism of the separatists. In the
end,
Milosevic was a whopping 700,000 votes short. Official results gave
Kostunica over 48% of the vote in a five-man race. This fell slightly
short
of the 50% required to win, but indicated an almost certain landslide in
the runoff against Milosevic, who trailed by some ten percentage points.
(Yugoslav electoral law calls for a second round if no candidate wins an
absolute majority in the first round.)
Here is where both sides contributed to a confusion that gave an
opportunity to the putschists to move to steal the election. Apparently
in
a state of shock, the government announced the results slowly and
without
complete details. The "Democratic Opposition in Serbia" (DOS) backing
Kostunica demanded recognition of a claimed first round victory and
announced it would boycott the second round. This raised the danger of a
second round that Milosevic could win by default. The prospect of two
winners -- one in the first round, the other in the second -- would have
created a dangerous civil war situation, favorable to NATO intervention.
Kostunica's backers argued that since Milosevic had cheated in the first
round, he would cheat even more in the second -- this was not plausible,
but widely believed anyway, as the demonization of the former leader and
future scapegoat picked up momentum.
The DOS thereby moved the contest from the ballot box into the streets,
where "the people" would demand recognition of Kostunica's election.
This
prepared the way for power -- and property -- to change hands amid
confusion and violence.
Neither the police nor the Army was willing to support Milosevic against
a
patriotic Serb like Kostunica who had won popular support in a legal
election. Their neutrality seems to have been ensured by the influence
of
two key figures dismissed by Milosevic two years ago, former security
chief
Jovica Stanisic and former army chief of staff Momcilo Perisic, who
retained friends and influence in the police and the armed forces
respectively. The rallying of other figures who had been part of the
Milosevic power structure was hastened by Kostunica's reiterated
assurances
that there would be no vengeance. Former Milosevic followers began
flocking
to the side of Kostunica seeking protection from his short-run supporter
and long-term rival, Zoran Djindjic, well known as Germany's man in
Serbia.
Thus Kostunica gained the Yugoslav presidency both because he was _not_
Milosevic and because he was _not_ Djindjic. But Djindjic has been
strikingly active in grabbing the substance of victory away from the
successful DOS candidate.
The Media Spectacle
It is arguable that Kostunica -- considered the most honest of political
leaders -- could have won the presidential election just as easily (more
easily, some supporters claim) if the United States and its NATO allies
had
refrained from pumping millions of dollars and deutschmarks into the
country to support what they called "the democratic opposition". But it
is
far less likely that without all that excess cash, we would have been
treated to the spectacle of the October 5th "democratic revolution",
when a
large crowd stormed the venerable Skupstina, the parliament building in
the
center of Belgrade. That event, presented to the world public as the
most
spontaneous act of self-liberation, was probably the single most planned
act of all. It was staged for the TV cameras which filmed and relayed
the
same scenes over and over again: youths breaking through windows, flags
waving, flames rising, smoke enveloping what some newspapers described
as
"the symbol of the Milosevic regime".
This was utter nonsense. It was like calling Big Ben the "symbol of the
Blair regime" or the Capitol the "symbol of the Clinton regime". But the
Western spinners needed symbols and drama for the latest episode in the
hit
TV fiction series of the 1990s starring the "genocidal dictator",
Slobodan
Milosevic. It wouldn't do for "Europe's last communist dictator" simply
to
lose a democratic election. Something more exalted was needed. So there
was
an attempt to revive a hit drama of a decade earlier, the "fall of
Ceaucescu", which was also contrived and staged. If Milosevic and his
wife
met the same bloody fate as the Rumanian ruling couple, that would be
"proof" enough for the media that they were equivalent to the dictator
couple of Bucharest.
But they weren't and fortunately it didn't happen quite like that. In
Belgrade there was no equivalent of the Securitate (Rumanian secret
police)
to stage the drama. There was only a gang of toughs bussed in from
Cacak,
as the town's mayor later boasted to Western media, who led the mob up
the
Skupstina steps and easily broke into the scarcely guarded building,
which
was systematically vandalized and set on fire, causing considerable
damage
to public property. The liberators then went on to smash shop windows
and
steal property in nearby shopping streets. This failed to provoke the
bloodshed that would have improved the TV show, but the vandals did
their
best.
The fiercely anti-communist mayor of Cacak, Velimir Ilic, told the
French
news agency AFP that his armed "commando" of 2,000 men had set out quite
deliberately on October 5 to "take control of the key institutions of
the
regime, including the parliament and the television".
"Our action had been prepared in advance. Among my men were ex-parachute
troops, former army and police officers as well as men who had fought in
special forces," he told AFP. "A number of us wore bullet-proof vests
and
carried weapons", he added proudly. Ilic said contact was maintained
throughout the action with high police and Interior Ministry officials,
but
that president-elect Kostunica was unaware of what was going on. "We
were
afraid he'd be opposed", said Ilic. And indeed, when he got word of what
was going on, Kostunica by all accounts prevented the commandos from
hunting down Milosevic and giving their spectacle a bloody finale.
Some of these former "special forces" commandos included veterans of the
civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia. The peak of irony lies in the fact
that
such paramilitaries, primarily responsible for giving the Serbian people
the (unjustified) reputation of "ethnic cleansers" and war criminals,
were
instantly promoted by Western media into heroes of an inspiring
"democratic
revolution". But there is a consistency about it: the same tiny group of
men are able to perform for world media as an exaggerated caricature of
"the Serbs", first as villains, later as heroes.
The ordinary citizens of Belgrade deplored the violence of October 5th,
as
they had deplored the violence of the civil wars. And the large crowds
who
gathered in Belgrade squares to support their candidate, Kostunica, were
blissfully unaware of how they were being used as extras in an
international TV production.
Violence Versus Votes
The law-abiding citizens of Belgrade were also unaware of how the
euphoria
in the streets would provide cover for an ongoing campaign of violence
and
intimidation aimed at changing the whole power structure in Serbia,
outside
of any democratic or legal process. The Skupstina that was targeted for
vandalism was not "the symbol of Milosevic's regime" but a parliament
where
the Socialist Party and its allies still had a duly elected majority.
The
"democratic revolution" in the streets did not attack a Bastille prison
to
liberate dissenters, but the seat of the democratically elected
representatives of the people. The mob ransacked and set fire to the
federal Electoral Commission offices inside the Skupstina, reportedly
setting fire to ballots collected there, making it highly unlikely that
the
disputed first round score will ever be satisfactorily clarified.
The spectacle enabled the managers of street violence to claim the
"democratic revolution" as their own, openly attempting to relegate
Kostunica to a figurehead role.
Since then, throughout the country, Socialist Party headquarters have
been
assaulted and demolished, officials have been beaten and expelled from
their functions by gangs of "democrats". The most lucrative enterprises
have been seized. Strange parallel governments called "crisis
headquarters"
have been set up without any democratic mandate to redistribute property
and offices. The "revolutionaries" can be sure the NATO benefactors of
Serbian democracy will not ask for their money back so long as they
target
the left, which is identified only as "the Milosevic regime". The clear
lesson: "democracy" is not defined by elections, but by NATO approval.
Methods don't matter. The end justifies the means.
Franco-German Rivalries
All through the Yugoslav drama of the past decade, not to mention for
well
over a century, internal conflicts have reflected external great power
rivalries. This is still going on.
Among these rival powers, Russia scarcely counts any more. The Russians
have more to lose from the Western absorption of Serbia than the Serbs
have
to gain from the Russians, who have been too weak to do anything to stop
the steady erosion of their influence in the Balkans. As one observer
put
it, "the Serbs have the impression that the Russians only want to share
their poverty, while the Serbs would rather share American wealth".
The rival powers are now all Western. A few years ago, Paris tried to
support Vuk Draskovic against both Milosevic on the one hand and the
German
party (represented by Djindjic) on the other, but Draskovic proved too
unreliable. Today, the implicit rivalry is between Kostunica, supported
by
France, and Djindjic, supported by Germany.
This division is a matter of political principle as well as personality,
and relates to conflicting French and German views of the future of
Europe.
Kostunica, as is constantly repeated is a "nationalist" or, we could
say, a
patriot, who wants to preserve his nation-state, by giving it a new,
modern
democratic constitution. As a scholar of American federalism, he would
base
a political order for the future Yugoslavia on the American 18th century
model.
For Djindjic, this is old-fashioned nonsense, good only for a
transitional
moment toward the dissolution of all the Balkan nations into a modern
European Union where politics will take a backseat to business.
Djindjic,
who studied Germany, believes in "civil society" where the private
sphere
outweighs the _res publica_, and public political life is reduced to
imagery. Business versus politics could sum up the conflict between
these two.
Kostunica plans to stay in office for only a year, just the time to
complete his constitutional reform. Thereupon Djindjic, who could never
have won this election, openly hopes to take over.
The Economy, Stupid
For many years, the alternate currency in Serbia has been the
Deutschmark,
traded on every street corner by men murmuring "_devize, devize_".
During
the weeks leading up to the fall of Milosevic, so many D-marks have
flooded
into the country that the precious currency recently lost half its
value.
Everyone believes that most of this money flows in through Djindjic. It
seems to have been spent less on the election (Yugoslav election
campaigns
are not the expensive affairs run in the United States) than on
preparing
aspects of "the putsch" that followed: the forceful takeover of media by
"independent" (i.e., NATO-approved) journalists, of key businesses and
official positions which has been going on since the October 5 arson of
the
Skupstina.
The European Union has moved quickly to lift some economic sanctions
against Serbia and Madeleine Albright has also proclaimed the need to
give
the Serbian people "some dividends out of democracy" and to help
President
Kostunica. "We want to support him, we want to get assistance to him.
I've
been talking to our European partners. We will be lifting certain
economic
sanctions to make sure that the people can recover and the Danube is
cleared," she declared.
Here the key word is "Danube". NATO bombing destroyed Serb bridges and
blocked the Danube to European shipping, much of it German. The priority
for Germany is to reopen the Danube, and it is for this purpose that
important funds will be provided. To be precise, funds will be _lent_:
Western generosity will take its usual form of the "debt trap", and
Yugoslav public services will have to be cut back for years to come in
order to repay the Western powers for rebuilding the transportation
structure they themselves destroyed. The reconstructed transportation
structure will be used to ship other people's commercial goods through
the
country to other people's markets. The "democratic dividend" will mainly
benefit German business.
But for the moment, the Serbian voters do not want to worry about that.
They have been bombed, isolated, sanctioned, banned from traveling to
other
countries, reduced to poverty and treated as pariahs. Their main "crime"
was to have wanted to preserve multiethnic Yugoslavia and to have been
reluctant to give up all the benefits of self-management socialism in
favor
of the "shock treatment" impoverishing people in Russia and neighboring
Bulgaria. Since Yugoslavia was not part of the Soviet bloc, its people
were
slow to realize that the defeat of the Soviet bloc meant that they too
had
to bow to the dictates of the West. Now they can dream of being "normal"
Europeans again. For a relatively small minority, the dream of
prosperity
will no doubt come true. For others, there will be some unpleasant
surprises. But that doesn't matter now. People have had enough of not
being
paid their wages more than a couple of months out of the year, of having
to
heat only one room, of shortages and travel bans. Young people,
especially,
want to live like other Europeans of their generation
"People in Serbia are not looking for the truth", observed Serbian
writer
Milan Ratkovic, who lives in Paris. "They are looking for comforting
lies."
From being portrayed as monsters, the Serbs are suddenly being
celebrated
by Western media as heroes. They can turn on Western TV and see heroic
images of themselves. "Look," says Ratkovic, "we held out longer than
anybody else in Eastern Europe. Against us, the West had to use all its
weapons and all its tricks." Sometimes the only way to solve a problem
is
to change problems.
actually two events, one superimposed on the other. One was a democratic
election, made in Serbia. The other was a totally undemocratic putsch,
made in the "international community", otherwise known as NATOland. "
---
http://www.zmag.org/johnstonem.htm
11 October 2000
IN A SPIN
by Diana Johnstone
The "October surprise" that brought a change of power in Belgrade was
actually two events, one superimposed on the other. One was a democratic
election, made in Serbia. The other was a totally undemocratic putsch,
made
in the "international community", otherwise known as NATOland.
The democratic election would have been sufficient to oblige Slobodan
Milosevic to retire as Yugoslav President. The majority of Yugoslav
voters
had long wished a change in leadership, and Vojislav Kostunica emerged
as
an acceptable alternative.
But the NATO-backed putschists wanted more. They wanted two things that
the
legal elections could not provide: a dramatic media spectacle that would
fit the Western "spin", and a seizure of power beyond the limited powers
of
the Yugoslav presidency.
The Democratic Election
The Yugoslav elections were called by Milosevic himself. Having been
elected President of Serbia in the country's first multi-party elections
in
1990, the "dictator" had followed the constitutional rules and left the
Serbian presidency at the end of his second term, whereupon he was
elected
by the Yugoslav parliament to the mainly symbolic office of Yugoslav
president. Having sponsored a constitutional change which would allow
him
to be re-elected, but by universal suffrage, he went on to call early
elections, months before his term was to run out in mid-2001.
Milosevic was lured into this move by advisors pointing to deceptive
public
opinion polls indicating that he could win by a margin of 150,000 votes
in
the autumn, before winter hardships turned voters against him. This is
similar to the "joke" played on French president Jacques Chirac, who
called
the early elections that brought his left opposition headed by Lionel
Jospin into office. In Paris, it is even rumored that it was a French
advisor who urged Milosevic to make this fatal error.
In short, Milosevic was not a "dictator" but a calculating politician
trying to stay in office in a multi-party electoral system he had
largely
introduced. Aware that his popularity ratings had long been in decline,
he
counted on several factors to help him get the necessary 50% of the vote
to
be re-elected President of Yugoslavia. These were
· the chronic squabbling of the so-called "democratic" (meaning
bourgeois, as the Swedes call the center right) opposition and the
public
rejection of its main leaders (especially Democratic Party leader Zoran
Djindjic);
· the fact that Montenegrin president Milo Djukanovic was sure to
call for a boycott of the elections as part of his secession strategy,
which would leave only pro-Milosevic voters willing to go to improvised
polling stations;
· the prospect of a couple of hundred thousand solid votes from
Kosovo constituencies (where ethnic Albanians would, as usual, boycott
the
election) and from the armed forces.
Aware of its weakness, the opposition which had first loudly demanded
early
elections then threatened to boycott them, claiming that they would be
rigged by Milosevic. The NATOland chorus joined in, proclaiming that
Yugoslav elections would not be "fair and free" and that Milosevic was
certain to cheat.
In fact, thanks to a normal democratic system of multi-party supervisors
at
polling stations, cheating in Yugoslav elections was nearly impossible
in
Serbia proper, except perhaps for the hundred thousand or so soldiers
who
vote in barracks. Kosovo and Montenegro offered limited opportunities
for
cheating only because of the obstructionism of the separatists. In the
end,
Milosevic was a whopping 700,000 votes short. Official results gave
Kostunica over 48% of the vote in a five-man race. This fell slightly
short
of the 50% required to win, but indicated an almost certain landslide in
the runoff against Milosevic, who trailed by some ten percentage points.
(Yugoslav electoral law calls for a second round if no candidate wins an
absolute majority in the first round.)
Here is where both sides contributed to a confusion that gave an
opportunity to the putschists to move to steal the election. Apparently
in
a state of shock, the government announced the results slowly and
without
complete details. The "Democratic Opposition in Serbia" (DOS) backing
Kostunica demanded recognition of a claimed first round victory and
announced it would boycott the second round. This raised the danger of a
second round that Milosevic could win by default. The prospect of two
winners -- one in the first round, the other in the second -- would have
created a dangerous civil war situation, favorable to NATO intervention.
Kostunica's backers argued that since Milosevic had cheated in the first
round, he would cheat even more in the second -- this was not plausible,
but widely believed anyway, as the demonization of the former leader and
future scapegoat picked up momentum.
The DOS thereby moved the contest from the ballot box into the streets,
where "the people" would demand recognition of Kostunica's election.
This
prepared the way for power -- and property -- to change hands amid
confusion and violence.
Neither the police nor the Army was willing to support Milosevic against
a
patriotic Serb like Kostunica who had won popular support in a legal
election. Their neutrality seems to have been ensured by the influence
of
two key figures dismissed by Milosevic two years ago, former security
chief
Jovica Stanisic and former army chief of staff Momcilo Perisic, who
retained friends and influence in the police and the armed forces
respectively. The rallying of other figures who had been part of the
Milosevic power structure was hastened by Kostunica's reiterated
assurances
that there would be no vengeance. Former Milosevic followers began
flocking
to the side of Kostunica seeking protection from his short-run supporter
and long-term rival, Zoran Djindjic, well known as Germany's man in
Serbia.
Thus Kostunica gained the Yugoslav presidency both because he was _not_
Milosevic and because he was _not_ Djindjic. But Djindjic has been
strikingly active in grabbing the substance of victory away from the
successful DOS candidate.
The Media Spectacle
It is arguable that Kostunica -- considered the most honest of political
leaders -- could have won the presidential election just as easily (more
easily, some supporters claim) if the United States and its NATO allies
had
refrained from pumping millions of dollars and deutschmarks into the
country to support what they called "the democratic opposition". But it
is
far less likely that without all that excess cash, we would have been
treated to the spectacle of the October 5th "democratic revolution",
when a
large crowd stormed the venerable Skupstina, the parliament building in
the
center of Belgrade. That event, presented to the world public as the
most
spontaneous act of self-liberation, was probably the single most planned
act of all. It was staged for the TV cameras which filmed and relayed
the
same scenes over and over again: youths breaking through windows, flags
waving, flames rising, smoke enveloping what some newspapers described
as
"the symbol of the Milosevic regime".
This was utter nonsense. It was like calling Big Ben the "symbol of the
Blair regime" or the Capitol the "symbol of the Clinton regime". But the
Western spinners needed symbols and drama for the latest episode in the
hit
TV fiction series of the 1990s starring the "genocidal dictator",
Slobodan
Milosevic. It wouldn't do for "Europe's last communist dictator" simply
to
lose a democratic election. Something more exalted was needed. So there
was
an attempt to revive a hit drama of a decade earlier, the "fall of
Ceaucescu", which was also contrived and staged. If Milosevic and his
wife
met the same bloody fate as the Rumanian ruling couple, that would be
"proof" enough for the media that they were equivalent to the dictator
couple of Bucharest.
But they weren't and fortunately it didn't happen quite like that. In
Belgrade there was no equivalent of the Securitate (Rumanian secret
police)
to stage the drama. There was only a gang of toughs bussed in from
Cacak,
as the town's mayor later boasted to Western media, who led the mob up
the
Skupstina steps and easily broke into the scarcely guarded building,
which
was systematically vandalized and set on fire, causing considerable
damage
to public property. The liberators then went on to smash shop windows
and
steal property in nearby shopping streets. This failed to provoke the
bloodshed that would have improved the TV show, but the vandals did
their
best.
The fiercely anti-communist mayor of Cacak, Velimir Ilic, told the
French
news agency AFP that his armed "commando" of 2,000 men had set out quite
deliberately on October 5 to "take control of the key institutions of
the
regime, including the parliament and the television".
"Our action had been prepared in advance. Among my men were ex-parachute
troops, former army and police officers as well as men who had fought in
special forces," he told AFP. "A number of us wore bullet-proof vests
and
carried weapons", he added proudly. Ilic said contact was maintained
throughout the action with high police and Interior Ministry officials,
but
that president-elect Kostunica was unaware of what was going on. "We
were
afraid he'd be opposed", said Ilic. And indeed, when he got word of what
was going on, Kostunica by all accounts prevented the commandos from
hunting down Milosevic and giving their spectacle a bloody finale.
Some of these former "special forces" commandos included veterans of the
civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia. The peak of irony lies in the fact
that
such paramilitaries, primarily responsible for giving the Serbian people
the (unjustified) reputation of "ethnic cleansers" and war criminals,
were
instantly promoted by Western media into heroes of an inspiring
"democratic
revolution". But there is a consistency about it: the same tiny group of
men are able to perform for world media as an exaggerated caricature of
"the Serbs", first as villains, later as heroes.
The ordinary citizens of Belgrade deplored the violence of October 5th,
as
they had deplored the violence of the civil wars. And the large crowds
who
gathered in Belgrade squares to support their candidate, Kostunica, were
blissfully unaware of how they were being used as extras in an
international TV production.
Violence Versus Votes
The law-abiding citizens of Belgrade were also unaware of how the
euphoria
in the streets would provide cover for an ongoing campaign of violence
and
intimidation aimed at changing the whole power structure in Serbia,
outside
of any democratic or legal process. The Skupstina that was targeted for
vandalism was not "the symbol of Milosevic's regime" but a parliament
where
the Socialist Party and its allies still had a duly elected majority.
The
"democratic revolution" in the streets did not attack a Bastille prison
to
liberate dissenters, but the seat of the democratically elected
representatives of the people. The mob ransacked and set fire to the
federal Electoral Commission offices inside the Skupstina, reportedly
setting fire to ballots collected there, making it highly unlikely that
the
disputed first round score will ever be satisfactorily clarified.
The spectacle enabled the managers of street violence to claim the
"democratic revolution" as their own, openly attempting to relegate
Kostunica to a figurehead role.
Since then, throughout the country, Socialist Party headquarters have
been
assaulted and demolished, officials have been beaten and expelled from
their functions by gangs of "democrats". The most lucrative enterprises
have been seized. Strange parallel governments called "crisis
headquarters"
have been set up without any democratic mandate to redistribute property
and offices. The "revolutionaries" can be sure the NATO benefactors of
Serbian democracy will not ask for their money back so long as they
target
the left, which is identified only as "the Milosevic regime". The clear
lesson: "democracy" is not defined by elections, but by NATO approval.
Methods don't matter. The end justifies the means.
Franco-German Rivalries
All through the Yugoslav drama of the past decade, not to mention for
well
over a century, internal conflicts have reflected external great power
rivalries. This is still going on.
Among these rival powers, Russia scarcely counts any more. The Russians
have more to lose from the Western absorption of Serbia than the Serbs
have
to gain from the Russians, who have been too weak to do anything to stop
the steady erosion of their influence in the Balkans. As one observer
put
it, "the Serbs have the impression that the Russians only want to share
their poverty, while the Serbs would rather share American wealth".
The rival powers are now all Western. A few years ago, Paris tried to
support Vuk Draskovic against both Milosevic on the one hand and the
German
party (represented by Djindjic) on the other, but Draskovic proved too
unreliable. Today, the implicit rivalry is between Kostunica, supported
by
France, and Djindjic, supported by Germany.
This division is a matter of political principle as well as personality,
and relates to conflicting French and German views of the future of
Europe.
Kostunica, as is constantly repeated is a "nationalist" or, we could
say, a
patriot, who wants to preserve his nation-state, by giving it a new,
modern
democratic constitution. As a scholar of American federalism, he would
base
a political order for the future Yugoslavia on the American 18th century
model.
For Djindjic, this is old-fashioned nonsense, good only for a
transitional
moment toward the dissolution of all the Balkan nations into a modern
European Union where politics will take a backseat to business.
Djindjic,
who studied Germany, believes in "civil society" where the private
sphere
outweighs the _res publica_, and public political life is reduced to
imagery. Business versus politics could sum up the conflict between
these two.
Kostunica plans to stay in office for only a year, just the time to
complete his constitutional reform. Thereupon Djindjic, who could never
have won this election, openly hopes to take over.
The Economy, Stupid
For many years, the alternate currency in Serbia has been the
Deutschmark,
traded on every street corner by men murmuring "_devize, devize_".
During
the weeks leading up to the fall of Milosevic, so many D-marks have
flooded
into the country that the precious currency recently lost half its
value.
Everyone believes that most of this money flows in through Djindjic. It
seems to have been spent less on the election (Yugoslav election
campaigns
are not the expensive affairs run in the United States) than on
preparing
aspects of "the putsch" that followed: the forceful takeover of media by
"independent" (i.e., NATO-approved) journalists, of key businesses and
official positions which has been going on since the October 5 arson of
the
Skupstina.
The European Union has moved quickly to lift some economic sanctions
against Serbia and Madeleine Albright has also proclaimed the need to
give
the Serbian people "some dividends out of democracy" and to help
President
Kostunica. "We want to support him, we want to get assistance to him.
I've
been talking to our European partners. We will be lifting certain
economic
sanctions to make sure that the people can recover and the Danube is
cleared," she declared.
Here the key word is "Danube". NATO bombing destroyed Serb bridges and
blocked the Danube to European shipping, much of it German. The priority
for Germany is to reopen the Danube, and it is for this purpose that
important funds will be provided. To be precise, funds will be _lent_:
Western generosity will take its usual form of the "debt trap", and
Yugoslav public services will have to be cut back for years to come in
order to repay the Western powers for rebuilding the transportation
structure they themselves destroyed. The reconstructed transportation
structure will be used to ship other people's commercial goods through
the
country to other people's markets. The "democratic dividend" will mainly
benefit German business.
But for the moment, the Serbian voters do not want to worry about that.
They have been bombed, isolated, sanctioned, banned from traveling to
other
countries, reduced to poverty and treated as pariahs. Their main "crime"
was to have wanted to preserve multiethnic Yugoslavia and to have been
reluctant to give up all the benefits of self-management socialism in
favor
of the "shock treatment" impoverishing people in Russia and neighboring
Bulgaria. Since Yugoslavia was not part of the Soviet bloc, its people
were
slow to realize that the defeat of the Soviet bloc meant that they too
had
to bow to the dictates of the West. Now they can dream of being "normal"
Europeans again. For a relatively small minority, the dream of
prosperity
will no doubt come true. For others, there will be some unpleasant
surprises. But that doesn't matter now. People have had enough of not
being
paid their wages more than a couple of months out of the year, of having
to
heat only one room, of shortages and travel bans. Young people,
especially,
want to live like other Europeans of their generation
"People in Serbia are not looking for the truth", observed Serbian
writer
Milan Ratkovic, who lives in Paris. "They are looking for comforting
lies."
From being portrayed as monsters, the Serbs are suddenly being
celebrated
by Western media as heroes. They can turn on Western TV and see heroic
images of themselves. "Look," says Ratkovic, "we held out longer than
anybody else in Eastern Europe. Against us, the West had to use all its
weapons and all its tricks." Sometimes the only way to solve a problem
is
to change problems.
