Jugoinfo
* CANOSA - BARI - TORRITA TIBERINA - CAGLIARI - TRIESTE
* COORDINAMENTO NAZIONALE "LA JUGOSLAVIA VIVRA'"
===
CANOSA DI PUGLIA E BARI
Most za Beograd - Un ponte per Belgrado in terra di Bari
Associazione culturale di solidarietà con la popolazione jugoslava
c/o Rdb via M. Cristina di Savoia 40, 70126 BARI
tel/fax 0805562663 e-mail: ponte@... Web: www.isf.it/ponte
conto corrente postale n. 13087754 Codice Fiscale 93242490725
SABATO 2 SETTEMBRE ORE 21.00
CANOSA DI PUGLIA
P.ZZA S. SABINO
(ALL'INTERNO DELLA FESTA DI LIBERAZIONE)
GIORNATA DI SOLIDARIETA' CON LA POPOLAZIONE JUGOSLAVA
PROIEZIONE DEL VIDEO:
"SERBI DA MORIRE" DI FULVIO GRIMALDI
LETTURA DI POESIE DAL LIBRO "GLI ASSASSINI DELLA TENEREZZA"
MOSTRA FOTOGRAFICA
MERCATINO DI OGGETTI AUTOPRODOTTI, IL CUI RICAVATO SARA' DEVOLUTO AI
LAVORATORI DELLA ZASTAVA DI KRAGUJEVAC BOMBARDATA DALLA NATO
INCONTRO-DIBATTITO SUL TEMA "IL COSIDDETTO INTERVENTO UMANITARIO DELLA
NATO
NEI BALCANI"
INTERVENGONO
ANDREA CATONE, PRESIDENTE DELL'ASSOCIAZIONE MOST ZA BEOGRAD
NICO PERRONE, DOCENTE UNIVERSITARIO DI STORIA DEGLI STATI UNITI
MODERA: NUNZIO GALANTE, RESPONSABILE DEI GIOVANI COMUNISTI
MOST ZA BEOGRAD, in collaborazione con il CENTRO INTERCULTURALE ABUSUAN:
BARI MERCOLEDI' 6 SETTEMBRE ORE 20.30
AUDITORIUM DELLA VALLISA (strada Vallisa, CITTA' VECCHIA)
Dalla Libia a Cuba, dall'Iraq alla Jugoslavia, gli embargo costituiscono
una terribile arma di guerra "a bassa
intensità", utilizzata quando la guerra dei missili e delle bombe è
finita. Essi rappresentano una sorta di "punizione"
del tutto arbitraria per le scelte politiche di un popolo e comportano
per il paese colpito la mancanza di generi
fondamentali, a partire dal cibo, dai medicinali e da tutto quanto è
necessario alla sopravvivenza quotidiana.
Tale "punizione" sta colpendo dal 1991 il popolo iracheno, e ha
già provocato la morte di circa 1.500.000
persone. Adesso la stessa arma viene usata contro le popolazioni della
Federazione Jugoslava, dove pure sta
mietendo molte vittime, specie tra anziani, ammalati, bambini.
Subordinare, come hanno più volte dichiarato esponenti dei Governi
della Comunità Europea, la ricostruzione
della Jugoslavia al quadro politico interno, oltre che moralmente
inaccettabile, è contrario ad ogni norma del diritto
internazionale.
Infatti il diritto alla vita, al cibo, alle cure mediche, alla
difesa contro il freddo, ed anche allo sviluppo economico
e ad un ambiente salubre, sono diritti sanciti da convenzioni
internazionali validi per tutti gli esseri umani,
indipendentemente da considerazioni politiche; la Carta delle nazioni
Unite riserva l'applicazione di sanzioni
economiche al Consiglio di Sicurezza e solo in dipendenza di situazioni
di pericolo per la sicurezza internazionale.
La stessa assemblea generale delle Nazioni unite ha più volte condannato
l'applicazione di sanzioni economiche
unilaterali da parte di Stati o gruppi di Stati con finalità politiche.
Per la solidarietà e l'amicizia tra i popoli
Per l'abolizione degli embargo
Per rompere il muro dell'isolamento in cui questi paesi sono costretti
Per allargare la rete della solidarietà aderendo alle iniziative di
"adozioni a distanza" e raccolta di medicinali
Il giornalista Fulvio Grimaldi,
di ritorno dalla Jugoslavia e da un recente viaggio in Iraq
presenta in prima assoluta il video
POPOLI DI TROPPO: EMBARGO!
seguirà
IRAQ GENOCIDIO NELL'EDEN
intermezzi dell'associazione teatrale Grammelot di Molfetta:
Le 15 bugie di Jamie Shea
Gott mit uns: intervista al generale Wesley Clark
Carla dei miracoli alla corte dell'Aja
===
TORRITA TIBERINA
COMUNICATO STAMPA DEL CONVOGLIO DI SOLIDARIETA' GIORGIANA MASI E RADIO
CITTA' APERTA
IL 23 E 24 SETTEMBRE 2000 A TORRITA TIBERINA (ROMA) SI TERRA' UNA 2
GIORNI CONTRO L'EMBARGO ALLA JUGOSLAVIA.
QUEST'INIZIATIVA E' UNA TAPPA PER LA COSTRUZIONE DI UN PERCORSO COMUNE
PORTATO AVANTI INSIEME AD ALTRE ASSOCIAZIONI CHE PREVEDE IL 21 OTTOBRE
UNA MANIFESTAZIONE NAZIONALE A ROMA CONTRO L'EMBARGO ALLA JUGOSLAVIA E
PER LA FINE DI OTTOBRE LA PARTENZA DI UN CONVOGLIO DI MASSA VERSO LA
JUGOSLAVIA CHE ROMPERA' SIMBOLICAMENTE L'EMBARGO.
PROGRAMMA DELLA 2 GIORNI
SABATO 23 SETTEMBRE
ORE 16,00 AL CASTELLO BARONALE DIBATTITO SU GUERRA E EMBARGO
ORE 19,00 PROIEZIONE VIDEO- POPOLI DI TROPPO...EMBARGO (di F. Grimaldi)
MEDIATIC REDEMPTION (di E. Giardino)-
L'EMBARGO UCCIDE UCCIDI L'EMBARGO (Convoglio di Solidarietà
Internazionalista Giorgiana Masi e Radio Città Aperta)
ORE 20,00-TEATRO ALL'ANFITEATRO
ORE 21,00 ALLA PIAZZA CENTRALE CONCERTO CON: JACKIN THE BOX-INDACO+F.DI
GIACOMO
DOMENICA 24 SETTEMBRE
ORE 9,00- DISCESA IN CANOA DEL TEVERE-VISITA ALLA RISERVA NATURALE
TEVERE FARFA-PRESENTAZIONE PROGETTO ARCHEOLOGICO DI TORRITA TIBERINA
CON PASSEGGIATA AI SITI
ORE 16,OO TEATRO PER I BAMBINI
ORE 17,30-MUSICA CON I TITUBANDA
ORE 19,00-TEATRO
ORE 21,00-CONCERTO DI MASSIMO CARRANO (PERCUSSIONI)
ORE 22,00 ESTRAZIONE DELLA LOTTERIA
ORE 22,30 CONCERTO CON NIKOLA DIKLIE (FOLK TURBO DALLA JUGOSLAVIA)
PER CHI VUOLE SOGGIORNARE E' DISPONIBILE UNO SPAZIO CAMPEGGIO, INOLTRE
E' POSSIBILE PORTARE MATERIALI DA DESTINARE ALLA JUGOSLAVIA
IL RICAVATO DELL'INIZIATIVA ANDRA' A SOSTEGNO DEL PROGETTO "UNA CASA
PER SASHA" PORTATO AVANTI DAL CONVOGLIO DI SOLIDARIETA'
INTERNAZIONALISTA GIORGIANA MASI E DA RADIO CITTA' APERTA CHE PREVEDE
LA COSTRUZIONE DI ALCUNE CASE PER I RIFUGIATI IN JUGO
---
LEZIONE DI CIVILTA' (da "Il Manifesto" del 9/8/2000)
Torrita Tiberina, è un piccolo comune di frontiera tra
la provincia di Roma e quella di Rieti. Un piccolo
comune che ha fatto un passo da gigante ma soprattutto
un passo di grande civiltà. Da sabato scorso Torrita
Tiberina ha sei nuovi "Amici". E' stato il Convoglio
di solidarietà internazionalista Giorgiana Masi a
presentare al comune romano una proposta che prevede
un patto di amicizia e solidarietà con i comuni
jugoslavi (serbi cattivi) di: Backa Topola: Sicevo;
Priepolje; Nova Varos; Bela Palanka e Pirot. Tutti e
sei i comuni hanno una particolarità, lì moltissimi
profughi (i serbi invisibili) hanno trovato rifugio,
molti sono arrivati dal Kosovo cacciati dall'Uck
rivestito con altro nome e altra uniforme sotto
l'occhio cieco della Kfor, altri sono quelli
dimenticati scacciati dalle Bande ustasa dell'ormai
defunto Tudjman. La proposta presentata al comune di
Torrita prevedeva inoltre una mozione contro la guerra
e contro l'embargo alla Jugoslavia e verso tutti i
Paesi che sono colpiti da questa mannaia . La proposta
è stata dibattuta sabato 29 luglio. Il consigliere
comunale e vicesindaco Marco Giometti (prc) ha
presentato l'ordine del giorno che ha subito trovato
un muro da parte dei Ds che, tramite il consigliere
"Papa", hanno dichiarato "inammissibile un ordine del
giorno che prevede un patto di solidarietà e di
amicizia con dei comuni di uno stato governato da un
macellaio sanguinario" "e inoltre lo stesso ordine del
giorno non prevede un riconoscimento "del valore che
hanno avuto Onu, esercito, Forze dell'Ordine e
Protezione civile nel portare e garantire la pace". A
questo punto, dopo aver verbalizzato il dissenso dei
Ds e i motivi, L'odg viene approvato. Viene data la
parola al Convoglio di solidarietà internazionalista
Giorgiana Masi che uno ad uno smonta i tasselli di
un'impostazione che nella sostanza vuole giustificare
e legittimare l'intervento umanitario o, che dir si
voglia, "la dolorosa necessità" . "Quello che è
mancato e continua a mancare è proprio il ruolo
dell'Onu con sistematiche violazioni del diritto
internazionale. Il nostro esercito ha forse sganciato
bombe più umanitarie degli altri eserciti Nato? Le
forze dell'ordine in Kosovo non sembra abbiano fatto
molto per impedire le scorrerie dell'ex Uck che hanno
già provocato migliaia di morti e centinaia di
migliaia di profughi, per quanto riguarda la
Protezione civile e la Missione Arcobaleno la storia è
già scritta sui verbali dei tribunali. Il giorno
successivo si è svolta la cerimonia ufficiale al
Castello del dodicesimo secolo di Torrita Tiberina ma
i sindaci jugoslavi non sono potuti venire in quanto
le lungaggini burocratiche per ottenere il visto
necessario per poter entrare in Italia non hanno reso
possibile la loro presenza. Le pergamene vengono
consegnate dal sindaco di Torrita Tiberina, Luciano
Forconi (indipendente), all'incaricato d'affari della
Rf di Jugoslavia che provvederà a farle controfirmare
ai sindaci dei 6 comuni. Alla cerimonia hanno
partecipato anche Radio Città Aperta, Fabio Sebastiani
di Liberazione e Vittorio Tranquilli di Abc
Solidarietà e pace il quale ha ribadito la necessità
di una battaglia contro l'embargo perché questo è un
crimine contro i più deboli , inoltre ha rilanciato
l'iniziativa che sta portando avanti insieme al
manifesto che prevede l'acquisto di strumenti per il
monitoraggio dell'inquinamento a Pancevo. La cerimonia
finisce con un annuncio del Convoglio "Giorgiana Masi"
che donerà al comune di Torrita Tiberina 78 alberi di
Castagno che rappresentano i 78 giorni di
bombardamento Nato sulla Jugoslavia, saranno piantati
"a cerchi concentrici" in maniera che ogni aereo che
passerà dall'alto vedrà il simbolo che ha
contraddistinto il popolo jugoslavo durante i raid "il
Target". Sarà questo il primo "Bosco della Pace", un
monumento vivente da cui le future generazioni
potranno trarre un'insegnamento su quelli che sono
stati gli errori e gli orrori che moltissimi non
avrebbero mai immaginato di vedere nel cuore della
"Civile Europa", quegli errori che in maniera umile
dovrebbero riconoscere anche coloro che si ostinano a
giustificare "'Intervento umanitario".
Il 23 e 24 settembre 2000 a Torrita Tiberina una 2
giorni contro l'embargo alla Jugoslavia con numerosi
gruppi musicali e teatrali e una discesa in canoa del
Tevere.
- Il 21 ottobre, giorno della strage nazista (avvenuta
nel 1941 dove persero la vita trucidate oltre 7000
persone) di Kragujevac città della Zastava giornata
mondiale a sostegno della Jugoslavia a Roma
manifestazione nazionale indetta dalla Jugocoord.
- Il 27 ottobre: la Jugoslavia vivrà - Carovana di
massa per rompere l'embargo alla Jugoslavia, una nave
per la vita che partirà dall'Italia carica di aiuti
proibiti alla quale parteciperanno delegazioni di
tutto il mondo.
- 31 marzo 2001 - Una casa per Sasa - Apertura del
cantiere a Backa Topola per costruire alcune case per
i rifugiati.
Convoglio di solidarietà internazionalista Giorgiana
Masi
===
COMITATO CONTRO LA GUERRA di Cagliari
LEMBARGO UCCIDE
UCCIDI LEMBARGO
Le sanzioni che sottopongono la Jugoslavia a disperate condizioni di
sopravvivenza debbono essere ritirate.
Ci rivolgiamo a tutti coloro che rifiutano la violenza nei confronti dei
popoli.
Intendiamo formare un vasto fronte di solidariet contro gli embarghi,
moderno strumento di sterminio dei popoli,
PER
linvio in Jugoslavia di medicine e strumenti diagnostici e chirurgici
"ladozione" dei malati pi gravi
laiuto medico e alimentare ai profughi del Kossovo monoetnico e
rifugiati
nella martoriata Serbia
Il Comitato Contro la Guerra di Cagliari aderisce alle iniziative
proposte
dalla rete nazionale dellassociazionismo di base e dalle realt
antagoniste
raccolta di medicinali - punti di raccolta presso
COBAS, via Donizetti 52 a Cagliari (tel. 070 485378 070 454999)
ASCE, vico I San Nicol a Selargius (tel. 070 846281)
manifestazione nazionale del 1 ottobre a ROMA, CONTRO GLI EMBARGHI
convoglio di solidarieta e di disubbidienza civile e sfida allarroganza
NATO, che il 27 ottobre 2000 partir da Bari su di una nave slovena, per
sbarcare nel Montenegro e proseguire poi in treno per Belgrado. Qui, i
medicinali raccolti, saranno consegnati agli operai della fabbrica
Zastava, ricostruita dagli operai a impossibilitata a commercializzare
i
suoi prodotti a causa delle sanzioni NATO).
APPUNTAMENTI A CAGLIARI:
venerd 1 settembre ore 19: RIUNIONE comitato c/o COBAS
via Donizetti 52, Cagliari
lunbed 9 ottobre: Conferenza stampa
mercoled 11 ottobre: ASSEMBLEA "Embarghi come e perch" ERSU CAGLIARI
mercoled 18 ottobre: MANIFESTAZIONE CITTADINA a CAGLIARI
riferimenti: tel 070 485378 070 454999
===
TRIESTE
ASSOCIAZIONE INTERNAZIONALISMO E SOLIDARIETA' - TRIESTE
CAMPAGNA D'AUTUNNO - ROMPIAMO L'EMBARGO !
LA JUGOSLAVIA VIVRA' !
Internazionalismo e Solidarietà è un'associazione aperta formata da un
gruppo di cittadini di Trieste, provenienti da diverse esperienze
politiche e sociali, ritrovatisi nella necessità di perseguire un'azione
di denuncia delle attuali scelte di politica estera portate avanti in
varie parti del mondo dal nostro Paese e dalle alleanze
politico-militari
di cui è membro, e di solidarietà verso i popoli vittime di queste
politiche imperialiste e neocoloniali.
In questa fase storica il capitalismo attua quella che viene definita
"globalizzazione" - del mercato, dei saperi, dell'economia e della
politica - attraverso pressioni economiche ed interventi militari, con
strumenti nazionali (anche di parte italiana!) o internazionali (NATO,
UE,
...). Nei paesi che si assoggettano a tali politiche ciò significa
rapina
delle risorse, ulteriore impoverimento delle classi povere, corruzione
della classe dirigente, perdita dell'autonomia politica ed economica.
Per
gli altri ci sono gli embarghi e le bombe.
In questo quadro l'associazione attualmente è impegnata in iniziative di
solidarietà verso i popoli della Jugoslavia, di contatto tra lavoratori
delle due sponde dell'Adriatico e di controinformazione sulla realtà
balcanica, scenario su cui si è scatenata la disinformazione di guerra e
la violenza prima delle sanzioni economiche, poi dei bombardamenti sulle
città ed ora dell'embargo.
Internazionalismo e Solidarietà ha rapporti costanti con altre
associazioni in Italia, in Europa e nel mondo, e sulla questione
jugoslava
aderisce al Coordinamento Nazionale "La Jugoslavia vivrà", recentemente
costituitosi (vedi sotto).
Le prossime iniziative in cui è impegnata Internazionalismo e
Solidarietà
insieme a tutto il Coordinamento Nazionale prevedono:
* in settembre iniziative locali di informazione e di raccolta di
materiali e fondi da destinare a vari progetti di solidarietà, tra i
quali
la prosecuzione della campagna di adozioni a distanza a favore di
famiglie
e minori in difficoltà a causa dell'aggre ssione Nato e dell'embargo;
* in ottobre due giornate internazionali contro l'embargo alla
Jugoslavia
nel 59mo anniversario della strage nazista di Kragujevac;
* fine ottobre - primi di novembre: partenza di un convoglio - nave
internazionale carico di merci vietate dall'embargo da destinare a varie
zone della Jugoslavia, tra cui Kragujevac, Backa Topola, Kosovska
Mitrovica.
PROSSIME INIZIATIVE A TRIESTE
26 Agosto - 3 settembre, P.zza Hortis
In occasione della Festa di Liberazione di P.zza Hortis l'Associazione è
presente nella festa con un banco informativo, di raccolta di materiali
e
fondi, di moduli per le adozioni a distanza. I compagni
dell'Associazione
sono a disposizione per illustrare le iniziative in corso e con un
elenco
dei materiali e dei medicinali di importanza primaria e urgente.
Nel corso della festa l'Associazione si propone intervenire al dibattito
sulla attuale situazione internazionale e sugli embarghi promosso
nell'ambito della festa.
8 e 9 Settembre, Bottega del mondo e Androna degli Orti
"Jugoslavia: progetti di solidarietà" - Una due-giorni di dibattito e di
musica in solidarietà con la Jugoslavia.
Il giorno 8 settembre presso 'La bottega del mondo' verrà organizzato un
incontro-dibattito sulla situazione jugoslava, con la proiezione di
video
e diapositive, testimonianze del recente viaggio in Jugoslavia del
Convoglio Giorgiana Masi (Roma).
Il giorno 9 settembre MUSICA IN PIAZZA a Androna degli Orti: danze
serbe,
il gruppo Estensione Est di Monfalcone (Balkan Rock), musicisti serbi.
Sarà presente la comunità serba di Trieste.
Intervengono e promuovono l'incontro il Convoglio di Solidarietà
Internazionalista Giorgiana Masi, Radio Città Aperta (Roma), Ass. Senza
Confini - Brez Meja, Associazione Bioest, ABC Solidarietà e Pace(Roma),
Mediterraneo Folk Club.
VI ASPETTIAMO A P.ZZA HORTIS, BOTTEGA DEL MONDO, ANDRONA DEGLI ORTI
PARTECIPATE IN MASSA E PORTATE MATERIALI E IDEE !
Internazionalismo e Solidarietà - INFO tel. 040416855
e-mail: glr_y@...
===
Coordinamento Nazionale "La Jugoslavia vivrà"
L'embargo uccide come le bombe, come l'uranio, come l'indifferenza
Rompiamo l'embargo contro la Jugoslavia!
Con pretesti vergognosamente definiti "umanitari" gli USA e la NATO
hanno
aggredito la Jugoslavia, paese sovrano non disposto ad accettare le
ricette del Fondo Monetario Internazionale, allo scopo di imporre il
proprio dominio coloniale sui Balcani.
La Jugoslavia è stata prima sottoposta, da USA ed Unione Europea, ad 8
anni di sanzioni economiche ed infine bombardata. Fabbriche, ponti,
centrali elettriche, scuole, ospedali ed abitazioni civili sono stati
distrutti, mentre a causa dell'inquinamento di aria, acque e terreni
agricoli c'è una crescente diffusione di turbe psichiche e gravi
malattie
che colpiscono particolarmente i più deboli, ad iniziare dai bambini.
La popolazione jugoslava, come quella irachena, oltre ad aver subito gli
effetti di nuove micidiali armi di distruzione di massa, sta tuttora
scontando un infame embargo che la priva di beni e strumenti
indispensabili alla propria sopravvivenza. Questo em bargo rappresenta
un
vero e proprio atto di guerra il cui fine è quello di ottenere la resa
dei
cittadini jugoslavi costringendoli a scelte politiche allineate ai
diktat
del nuovo ordine mondiale dell'imperialismo USA-NATO.
Di fronte alla disinformazione strategica, alla criminale partecipazione
del governo italiano all'aggressione con basi militari, uomini e mezzi
per
la guerra prima e per l'occupazione del Kosovo poi, all'ambiguità di
parte
della sinistra e dei movimenti p acifisti, molti comitati contro la
guerra
ed associazioni di solidarietà con il popolo jugoslavo si sono
costituiti
nel:
Coordinamento Nazionale "La Jugoslavia vivrà"
Difendiamo l'integrità territoriale e la multietnicità della Repubblica
Federale di Jugoslavia!
Basta con le aggressioni contro gli stati che non si allineano al nuovo
ordine mondiale!
La Jugoslavia vivrà!
Il Coordinamento Nazionale invita ad aderire alle seguenti iniziative
per
rompere l'embargo
- A partire dall'inizio del mese di settembre, presidi cittadini di
controinformazione e raccolta di materiali (medicinali, viveri, beni
sottoposti a regime di embargo) per la Jugoslavia
- 21/22 ottobre giornate internazionali di lotta contro l'embargo e la
NATO
- inizio novembre partenza della nave di solidarietà contro tutti gli
embarghi dal porto di Bari verso il Montenegro e prosecuzione della
carovana fino a Belgrado
e-mail del Coordinamento Nazionale: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.
C/C ABI 07601 CAB 02400 N° conto 13437421
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* COORDINAMENTO NAZIONALE "LA JUGOSLAVIA VIVRA'"
===
CANOSA DI PUGLIA E BARI
Most za Beograd - Un ponte per Belgrado in terra di Bari
Associazione culturale di solidarietà con la popolazione jugoslava
c/o Rdb via M. Cristina di Savoia 40, 70126 BARI
tel/fax 0805562663 e-mail: ponte@... Web: www.isf.it/ponte
conto corrente postale n. 13087754 Codice Fiscale 93242490725
SABATO 2 SETTEMBRE ORE 21.00
CANOSA DI PUGLIA
P.ZZA S. SABINO
(ALL'INTERNO DELLA FESTA DI LIBERAZIONE)
GIORNATA DI SOLIDARIETA' CON LA POPOLAZIONE JUGOSLAVA
PROIEZIONE DEL VIDEO:
"SERBI DA MORIRE" DI FULVIO GRIMALDI
LETTURA DI POESIE DAL LIBRO "GLI ASSASSINI DELLA TENEREZZA"
MOSTRA FOTOGRAFICA
MERCATINO DI OGGETTI AUTOPRODOTTI, IL CUI RICAVATO SARA' DEVOLUTO AI
LAVORATORI DELLA ZASTAVA DI KRAGUJEVAC BOMBARDATA DALLA NATO
INCONTRO-DIBATTITO SUL TEMA "IL COSIDDETTO INTERVENTO UMANITARIO DELLA
NATO
NEI BALCANI"
INTERVENGONO
ANDREA CATONE, PRESIDENTE DELL'ASSOCIAZIONE MOST ZA BEOGRAD
NICO PERRONE, DOCENTE UNIVERSITARIO DI STORIA DEGLI STATI UNITI
MODERA: NUNZIO GALANTE, RESPONSABILE DEI GIOVANI COMUNISTI
MOST ZA BEOGRAD, in collaborazione con il CENTRO INTERCULTURALE ABUSUAN:
BARI MERCOLEDI' 6 SETTEMBRE ORE 20.30
AUDITORIUM DELLA VALLISA (strada Vallisa, CITTA' VECCHIA)
Dalla Libia a Cuba, dall'Iraq alla Jugoslavia, gli embargo costituiscono
una terribile arma di guerra "a bassa
intensità", utilizzata quando la guerra dei missili e delle bombe è
finita. Essi rappresentano una sorta di "punizione"
del tutto arbitraria per le scelte politiche di un popolo e comportano
per il paese colpito la mancanza di generi
fondamentali, a partire dal cibo, dai medicinali e da tutto quanto è
necessario alla sopravvivenza quotidiana.
Tale "punizione" sta colpendo dal 1991 il popolo iracheno, e ha
già provocato la morte di circa 1.500.000
persone. Adesso la stessa arma viene usata contro le popolazioni della
Federazione Jugoslava, dove pure sta
mietendo molte vittime, specie tra anziani, ammalati, bambini.
Subordinare, come hanno più volte dichiarato esponenti dei Governi
della Comunità Europea, la ricostruzione
della Jugoslavia al quadro politico interno, oltre che moralmente
inaccettabile, è contrario ad ogni norma del diritto
internazionale.
Infatti il diritto alla vita, al cibo, alle cure mediche, alla
difesa contro il freddo, ed anche allo sviluppo economico
e ad un ambiente salubre, sono diritti sanciti da convenzioni
internazionali validi per tutti gli esseri umani,
indipendentemente da considerazioni politiche; la Carta delle nazioni
Unite riserva l'applicazione di sanzioni
economiche al Consiglio di Sicurezza e solo in dipendenza di situazioni
di pericolo per la sicurezza internazionale.
La stessa assemblea generale delle Nazioni unite ha più volte condannato
l'applicazione di sanzioni economiche
unilaterali da parte di Stati o gruppi di Stati con finalità politiche.
Per la solidarietà e l'amicizia tra i popoli
Per l'abolizione degli embargo
Per rompere il muro dell'isolamento in cui questi paesi sono costretti
Per allargare la rete della solidarietà aderendo alle iniziative di
"adozioni a distanza" e raccolta di medicinali
Il giornalista Fulvio Grimaldi,
di ritorno dalla Jugoslavia e da un recente viaggio in Iraq
presenta in prima assoluta il video
POPOLI DI TROPPO: EMBARGO!
seguirà
IRAQ GENOCIDIO NELL'EDEN
intermezzi dell'associazione teatrale Grammelot di Molfetta:
Le 15 bugie di Jamie Shea
Gott mit uns: intervista al generale Wesley Clark
Carla dei miracoli alla corte dell'Aja
===
TORRITA TIBERINA
COMUNICATO STAMPA DEL CONVOGLIO DI SOLIDARIETA' GIORGIANA MASI E RADIO
CITTA' APERTA
IL 23 E 24 SETTEMBRE 2000 A TORRITA TIBERINA (ROMA) SI TERRA' UNA 2
GIORNI CONTRO L'EMBARGO ALLA JUGOSLAVIA.
QUEST'INIZIATIVA E' UNA TAPPA PER LA COSTRUZIONE DI UN PERCORSO COMUNE
PORTATO AVANTI INSIEME AD ALTRE ASSOCIAZIONI CHE PREVEDE IL 21 OTTOBRE
UNA MANIFESTAZIONE NAZIONALE A ROMA CONTRO L'EMBARGO ALLA JUGOSLAVIA E
PER LA FINE DI OTTOBRE LA PARTENZA DI UN CONVOGLIO DI MASSA VERSO LA
JUGOSLAVIA CHE ROMPERA' SIMBOLICAMENTE L'EMBARGO.
PROGRAMMA DELLA 2 GIORNI
SABATO 23 SETTEMBRE
ORE 16,00 AL CASTELLO BARONALE DIBATTITO SU GUERRA E EMBARGO
ORE 19,00 PROIEZIONE VIDEO- POPOLI DI TROPPO...EMBARGO (di F. Grimaldi)
MEDIATIC REDEMPTION (di E. Giardino)-
L'EMBARGO UCCIDE UCCIDI L'EMBARGO (Convoglio di Solidarietà
Internazionalista Giorgiana Masi e Radio Città Aperta)
ORE 20,00-TEATRO ALL'ANFITEATRO
ORE 21,00 ALLA PIAZZA CENTRALE CONCERTO CON: JACKIN THE BOX-INDACO+F.DI
GIACOMO
DOMENICA 24 SETTEMBRE
ORE 9,00- DISCESA IN CANOA DEL TEVERE-VISITA ALLA RISERVA NATURALE
TEVERE FARFA-PRESENTAZIONE PROGETTO ARCHEOLOGICO DI TORRITA TIBERINA
CON PASSEGGIATA AI SITI
ORE 16,OO TEATRO PER I BAMBINI
ORE 17,30-MUSICA CON I TITUBANDA
ORE 19,00-TEATRO
ORE 21,00-CONCERTO DI MASSIMO CARRANO (PERCUSSIONI)
ORE 22,00 ESTRAZIONE DELLA LOTTERIA
ORE 22,30 CONCERTO CON NIKOLA DIKLIE (FOLK TURBO DALLA JUGOSLAVIA)
PER CHI VUOLE SOGGIORNARE E' DISPONIBILE UNO SPAZIO CAMPEGGIO, INOLTRE
E' POSSIBILE PORTARE MATERIALI DA DESTINARE ALLA JUGOSLAVIA
IL RICAVATO DELL'INIZIATIVA ANDRA' A SOSTEGNO DEL PROGETTO "UNA CASA
PER SASHA" PORTATO AVANTI DAL CONVOGLIO DI SOLIDARIETA'
INTERNAZIONALISTA GIORGIANA MASI E DA RADIO CITTA' APERTA CHE PREVEDE
LA COSTRUZIONE DI ALCUNE CASE PER I RIFUGIATI IN JUGO
---
LEZIONE DI CIVILTA' (da "Il Manifesto" del 9/8/2000)
Torrita Tiberina, è un piccolo comune di frontiera tra
la provincia di Roma e quella di Rieti. Un piccolo
comune che ha fatto un passo da gigante ma soprattutto
un passo di grande civiltà. Da sabato scorso Torrita
Tiberina ha sei nuovi "Amici". E' stato il Convoglio
di solidarietà internazionalista Giorgiana Masi a
presentare al comune romano una proposta che prevede
un patto di amicizia e solidarietà con i comuni
jugoslavi (serbi cattivi) di: Backa Topola: Sicevo;
Priepolje; Nova Varos; Bela Palanka e Pirot. Tutti e
sei i comuni hanno una particolarità, lì moltissimi
profughi (i serbi invisibili) hanno trovato rifugio,
molti sono arrivati dal Kosovo cacciati dall'Uck
rivestito con altro nome e altra uniforme sotto
l'occhio cieco della Kfor, altri sono quelli
dimenticati scacciati dalle Bande ustasa dell'ormai
defunto Tudjman. La proposta presentata al comune di
Torrita prevedeva inoltre una mozione contro la guerra
e contro l'embargo alla Jugoslavia e verso tutti i
Paesi che sono colpiti da questa mannaia . La proposta
è stata dibattuta sabato 29 luglio. Il consigliere
comunale e vicesindaco Marco Giometti (prc) ha
presentato l'ordine del giorno che ha subito trovato
un muro da parte dei Ds che, tramite il consigliere
"Papa", hanno dichiarato "inammissibile un ordine del
giorno che prevede un patto di solidarietà e di
amicizia con dei comuni di uno stato governato da un
macellaio sanguinario" "e inoltre lo stesso ordine del
giorno non prevede un riconoscimento "del valore che
hanno avuto Onu, esercito, Forze dell'Ordine e
Protezione civile nel portare e garantire la pace". A
questo punto, dopo aver verbalizzato il dissenso dei
Ds e i motivi, L'odg viene approvato. Viene data la
parola al Convoglio di solidarietà internazionalista
Giorgiana Masi che uno ad uno smonta i tasselli di
un'impostazione che nella sostanza vuole giustificare
e legittimare l'intervento umanitario o, che dir si
voglia, "la dolorosa necessità" . "Quello che è
mancato e continua a mancare è proprio il ruolo
dell'Onu con sistematiche violazioni del diritto
internazionale. Il nostro esercito ha forse sganciato
bombe più umanitarie degli altri eserciti Nato? Le
forze dell'ordine in Kosovo non sembra abbiano fatto
molto per impedire le scorrerie dell'ex Uck che hanno
già provocato migliaia di morti e centinaia di
migliaia di profughi, per quanto riguarda la
Protezione civile e la Missione Arcobaleno la storia è
già scritta sui verbali dei tribunali. Il giorno
successivo si è svolta la cerimonia ufficiale al
Castello del dodicesimo secolo di Torrita Tiberina ma
i sindaci jugoslavi non sono potuti venire in quanto
le lungaggini burocratiche per ottenere il visto
necessario per poter entrare in Italia non hanno reso
possibile la loro presenza. Le pergamene vengono
consegnate dal sindaco di Torrita Tiberina, Luciano
Forconi (indipendente), all'incaricato d'affari della
Rf di Jugoslavia che provvederà a farle controfirmare
ai sindaci dei 6 comuni. Alla cerimonia hanno
partecipato anche Radio Città Aperta, Fabio Sebastiani
di Liberazione e Vittorio Tranquilli di Abc
Solidarietà e pace il quale ha ribadito la necessità
di una battaglia contro l'embargo perché questo è un
crimine contro i più deboli , inoltre ha rilanciato
l'iniziativa che sta portando avanti insieme al
manifesto che prevede l'acquisto di strumenti per il
monitoraggio dell'inquinamento a Pancevo. La cerimonia
finisce con un annuncio del Convoglio "Giorgiana Masi"
che donerà al comune di Torrita Tiberina 78 alberi di
Castagno che rappresentano i 78 giorni di
bombardamento Nato sulla Jugoslavia, saranno piantati
"a cerchi concentrici" in maniera che ogni aereo che
passerà dall'alto vedrà il simbolo che ha
contraddistinto il popolo jugoslavo durante i raid "il
Target". Sarà questo il primo "Bosco della Pace", un
monumento vivente da cui le future generazioni
potranno trarre un'insegnamento su quelli che sono
stati gli errori e gli orrori che moltissimi non
avrebbero mai immaginato di vedere nel cuore della
"Civile Europa", quegli errori che in maniera umile
dovrebbero riconoscere anche coloro che si ostinano a
giustificare "'Intervento umanitario".
Il 23 e 24 settembre 2000 a Torrita Tiberina una 2
giorni contro l'embargo alla Jugoslavia con numerosi
gruppi musicali e teatrali e una discesa in canoa del
Tevere.
- Il 21 ottobre, giorno della strage nazista (avvenuta
nel 1941 dove persero la vita trucidate oltre 7000
persone) di Kragujevac città della Zastava giornata
mondiale a sostegno della Jugoslavia a Roma
manifestazione nazionale indetta dalla Jugocoord.
- Il 27 ottobre: la Jugoslavia vivrà - Carovana di
massa per rompere l'embargo alla Jugoslavia, una nave
per la vita che partirà dall'Italia carica di aiuti
proibiti alla quale parteciperanno delegazioni di
tutto il mondo.
- 31 marzo 2001 - Una casa per Sasa - Apertura del
cantiere a Backa Topola per costruire alcune case per
i rifugiati.
Convoglio di solidarietà internazionalista Giorgiana
Masi
===
COMITATO CONTRO LA GUERRA di Cagliari
LEMBARGO UCCIDE
UCCIDI LEMBARGO
Le sanzioni che sottopongono la Jugoslavia a disperate condizioni di
sopravvivenza debbono essere ritirate.
Ci rivolgiamo a tutti coloro che rifiutano la violenza nei confronti dei
popoli.
Intendiamo formare un vasto fronte di solidariet contro gli embarghi,
moderno strumento di sterminio dei popoli,
PER
linvio in Jugoslavia di medicine e strumenti diagnostici e chirurgici
"ladozione" dei malati pi gravi
laiuto medico e alimentare ai profughi del Kossovo monoetnico e
rifugiati
nella martoriata Serbia
Il Comitato Contro la Guerra di Cagliari aderisce alle iniziative
proposte
dalla rete nazionale dellassociazionismo di base e dalle realt
antagoniste
raccolta di medicinali - punti di raccolta presso
COBAS, via Donizetti 52 a Cagliari (tel. 070 485378 070 454999)
ASCE, vico I San Nicol a Selargius (tel. 070 846281)
manifestazione nazionale del 1 ottobre a ROMA, CONTRO GLI EMBARGHI
convoglio di solidarieta e di disubbidienza civile e sfida allarroganza
NATO, che il 27 ottobre 2000 partir da Bari su di una nave slovena, per
sbarcare nel Montenegro e proseguire poi in treno per Belgrado. Qui, i
medicinali raccolti, saranno consegnati agli operai della fabbrica
Zastava, ricostruita dagli operai a impossibilitata a commercializzare
i
suoi prodotti a causa delle sanzioni NATO).
APPUNTAMENTI A CAGLIARI:
venerd 1 settembre ore 19: RIUNIONE comitato c/o COBAS
via Donizetti 52, Cagliari
lunbed 9 ottobre: Conferenza stampa
mercoled 11 ottobre: ASSEMBLEA "Embarghi come e perch" ERSU CAGLIARI
mercoled 18 ottobre: MANIFESTAZIONE CITTADINA a CAGLIARI
riferimenti: tel 070 485378 070 454999
===
TRIESTE
ASSOCIAZIONE INTERNAZIONALISMO E SOLIDARIETA' - TRIESTE
CAMPAGNA D'AUTUNNO - ROMPIAMO L'EMBARGO !
LA JUGOSLAVIA VIVRA' !
Internazionalismo e Solidarietà è un'associazione aperta formata da un
gruppo di cittadini di Trieste, provenienti da diverse esperienze
politiche e sociali, ritrovatisi nella necessità di perseguire un'azione
di denuncia delle attuali scelte di politica estera portate avanti in
varie parti del mondo dal nostro Paese e dalle alleanze
politico-militari
di cui è membro, e di solidarietà verso i popoli vittime di queste
politiche imperialiste e neocoloniali.
In questa fase storica il capitalismo attua quella che viene definita
"globalizzazione" - del mercato, dei saperi, dell'economia e della
politica - attraverso pressioni economiche ed interventi militari, con
strumenti nazionali (anche di parte italiana!) o internazionali (NATO,
UE,
...). Nei paesi che si assoggettano a tali politiche ciò significa
rapina
delle risorse, ulteriore impoverimento delle classi povere, corruzione
della classe dirigente, perdita dell'autonomia politica ed economica.
Per
gli altri ci sono gli embarghi e le bombe.
In questo quadro l'associazione attualmente è impegnata in iniziative di
solidarietà verso i popoli della Jugoslavia, di contatto tra lavoratori
delle due sponde dell'Adriatico e di controinformazione sulla realtà
balcanica, scenario su cui si è scatenata la disinformazione di guerra e
la violenza prima delle sanzioni economiche, poi dei bombardamenti sulle
città ed ora dell'embargo.
Internazionalismo e Solidarietà ha rapporti costanti con altre
associazioni in Italia, in Europa e nel mondo, e sulla questione
jugoslava
aderisce al Coordinamento Nazionale "La Jugoslavia vivrà", recentemente
costituitosi (vedi sotto).
Le prossime iniziative in cui è impegnata Internazionalismo e
Solidarietà
insieme a tutto il Coordinamento Nazionale prevedono:
* in settembre iniziative locali di informazione e di raccolta di
materiali e fondi da destinare a vari progetti di solidarietà, tra i
quali
la prosecuzione della campagna di adozioni a distanza a favore di
famiglie
e minori in difficoltà a causa dell'aggre ssione Nato e dell'embargo;
* in ottobre due giornate internazionali contro l'embargo alla
Jugoslavia
nel 59mo anniversario della strage nazista di Kragujevac;
* fine ottobre - primi di novembre: partenza di un convoglio - nave
internazionale carico di merci vietate dall'embargo da destinare a varie
zone della Jugoslavia, tra cui Kragujevac, Backa Topola, Kosovska
Mitrovica.
PROSSIME INIZIATIVE A TRIESTE
26 Agosto - 3 settembre, P.zza Hortis
In occasione della Festa di Liberazione di P.zza Hortis l'Associazione è
presente nella festa con un banco informativo, di raccolta di materiali
e
fondi, di moduli per le adozioni a distanza. I compagni
dell'Associazione
sono a disposizione per illustrare le iniziative in corso e con un
elenco
dei materiali e dei medicinali di importanza primaria e urgente.
Nel corso della festa l'Associazione si propone intervenire al dibattito
sulla attuale situazione internazionale e sugli embarghi promosso
nell'ambito della festa.
8 e 9 Settembre, Bottega del mondo e Androna degli Orti
"Jugoslavia: progetti di solidarietà" - Una due-giorni di dibattito e di
musica in solidarietà con la Jugoslavia.
Il giorno 8 settembre presso 'La bottega del mondo' verrà organizzato un
incontro-dibattito sulla situazione jugoslava, con la proiezione di
video
e diapositive, testimonianze del recente viaggio in Jugoslavia del
Convoglio Giorgiana Masi (Roma).
Il giorno 9 settembre MUSICA IN PIAZZA a Androna degli Orti: danze
serbe,
il gruppo Estensione Est di Monfalcone (Balkan Rock), musicisti serbi.
Sarà presente la comunità serba di Trieste.
Intervengono e promuovono l'incontro il Convoglio di Solidarietà
Internazionalista Giorgiana Masi, Radio Città Aperta (Roma), Ass. Senza
Confini - Brez Meja, Associazione Bioest, ABC Solidarietà e Pace(Roma),
Mediterraneo Folk Club.
VI ASPETTIAMO A P.ZZA HORTIS, BOTTEGA DEL MONDO, ANDRONA DEGLI ORTI
PARTECIPATE IN MASSA E PORTATE MATERIALI E IDEE !
Internazionalismo e Solidarietà - INFO tel. 040416855
e-mail: glr_y@...
===
Coordinamento Nazionale "La Jugoslavia vivrà"
L'embargo uccide come le bombe, come l'uranio, come l'indifferenza
Rompiamo l'embargo contro la Jugoslavia!
Con pretesti vergognosamente definiti "umanitari" gli USA e la NATO
hanno
aggredito la Jugoslavia, paese sovrano non disposto ad accettare le
ricette del Fondo Monetario Internazionale, allo scopo di imporre il
proprio dominio coloniale sui Balcani.
La Jugoslavia è stata prima sottoposta, da USA ed Unione Europea, ad 8
anni di sanzioni economiche ed infine bombardata. Fabbriche, ponti,
centrali elettriche, scuole, ospedali ed abitazioni civili sono stati
distrutti, mentre a causa dell'inquinamento di aria, acque e terreni
agricoli c'è una crescente diffusione di turbe psichiche e gravi
malattie
che colpiscono particolarmente i più deboli, ad iniziare dai bambini.
La popolazione jugoslava, come quella irachena, oltre ad aver subito gli
effetti di nuove micidiali armi di distruzione di massa, sta tuttora
scontando un infame embargo che la priva di beni e strumenti
indispensabili alla propria sopravvivenza. Questo em bargo rappresenta
un
vero e proprio atto di guerra il cui fine è quello di ottenere la resa
dei
cittadini jugoslavi costringendoli a scelte politiche allineate ai
diktat
del nuovo ordine mondiale dell'imperialismo USA-NATO.
Di fronte alla disinformazione strategica, alla criminale partecipazione
del governo italiano all'aggressione con basi militari, uomini e mezzi
per
la guerra prima e per l'occupazione del Kosovo poi, all'ambiguità di
parte
della sinistra e dei movimenti p acifisti, molti comitati contro la
guerra
ed associazioni di solidarietà con il popolo jugoslavo si sono
costituiti
nel:
Coordinamento Nazionale "La Jugoslavia vivrà"
Difendiamo l'integrità territoriale e la multietnicità della Repubblica
Federale di Jugoslavia!
Basta con le aggressioni contro gli stati che non si allineano al nuovo
ordine mondiale!
La Jugoslavia vivrà!
Il Coordinamento Nazionale invita ad aderire alle seguenti iniziative
per
rompere l'embargo
- A partire dall'inizio del mese di settembre, presidi cittadini di
controinformazione e raccolta di materiali (medicinali, viveri, beni
sottoposti a regime di embargo) per la Jugoslavia
- 21/22 ottobre giornate internazionali di lotta contro l'embargo e la
NATO
- inizio novembre partenza della nave di solidarietà contro tutti gli
embarghi dal porto di Bari verso il Montenegro e prosecuzione della
carovana fino a Belgrado
e-mail del Coordinamento Nazionale: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.
C/C ABI 07601 CAB 02400 N° conto 13437421
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
ON THE PUNISHING CULTURE, GLOBALIZATION, SOVEREIGNTY AND GEOPOLITICS
R.K.Kent
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s created a
moment in time when a very real friendship could have been forged
between the American. and Slavic peoples of Russia and the Ukraine.
Together with United Europe, this would have been a formidable alliance
for stability for decades to come. During the years of Cold War, there
grew in the United States a huge industry with two major components
actually threatened by the fall of an enemy that not only united them
but which provided the very reason for their continuous growth and
power.The two components are the" Military-Industrial Complex" focused
on the Pentagon and the "Intelligence Community" with the CIA at its
center. Both have outgrown even the Behemoth, commanding mega-billion
dollar budgets. Both are taking huge chunks of tax payers’ moneys,
beyond any reasonable defense needs, for rather dubious undertakings in
the name of "National Security" and "National Interest." Both are
creating ever new "enemies" abroad. Neither is willing to shed the
"Cold -War" mentality. Their "New" NATO is , on the one hand, an
oxymoron really useless in Europe, "reinvented" to perfect hi-tech
warfare in missions that give the appearance of victories while making
the situations worse, even insoluble. It also provides the frameworks
for going to war while by-passing Congress as well as assuring the U.S.
domination of Europe. There is an added bonus to the"
Military-Industrial Complex" through the transfer of U.S.-built weapons
systems to NATO’s "new members" guaranteed by loans from Uncle Sam which
will be ultimately repaid not by European but by American tax payers..
The Pentagon-CIA Galaxy is mocking a Democracy that lasted two
centuries and became the bastion of freedom against all emerging
totalitarian ideologies . Its erosion in America did not come with a
sudden military coup d’etat but with an endemic duping and manipulation
of the American People. Major decisions in foreign policy are now made
by a power elite, in secrecy. without any real care for a population
that votes and foots the bills.So far, for example, the monetary outlays
covering just the first serious U.S. enagement in Southeastern Europe
have run past $20 billion, with no end in sight and with results that
contradict most of the anticipated "benefits." Never in a period of
general peace have the White House and to a somewhat lesser extent
Congress been more willing to yield to the unelected foreign-policy
"experts" than duruing the Clinton Administration. Of the 47 U.S.
military interventions abroad since 1945 , 33 have taken place in the
last eight years. This transformation of Athens into Sparta is
parallelled by the increasing use of an Intelligence Establishment to
penetrate our own audio-visual and scribal media precisely in order to
misinform and disinform the American People in respect to the real
purposes of an action abroad.
(2)
In the Cold War, the CIA was mandated to confine its activities to the
external world. . Specific legislatiion even excluded a similar
domestic role. This has changed in a major way, disregarding
legislation just as a monarchical President violates the Constitution by
waging a foreign war
without the consent and approval of Congress.It does not even seem to
matter any longer. The attempt to impeach President Clinton over the
Lewinsky scandal seems almost comical in comparison with the type of
Constitutional violation that could, some day, lead to World War III
What disturbs too, "We," the people, are actually paying the high
salaries of hundreds of inadequately -educated, bloody -minded and
pretentious foreign-policy "thinkers" and "shapers" who, with rare
exceptions, perceive" US" as imbeciles badly in need of their
enlightened services. . Nothing illustrates more dramatically the
results of this growing Evil than our entry into the deconstruction of
Second Yugoslavia (1945-1991} and the deliberate trasnformation of
an ally in two World Wars, the Serbs, into an "enemy," served as a
great "achievement" with a "victory at Kosovo."
First, the secrecy factor. When the decision to enter into the
ex-Yugoslav space was made, the American People were in no mood to
support this involvement in a faraway area hardly close to a vital
national interest. As late as November 1994, after more than a year of
our actual intelligence and military presence in Croatia and Bosnia, the
Pentagon vigorously denied all the mounting reports to the contrary in
the Europen Press. Here was a major foreign-policy decision, with
implications far beyond even the entire Balkan Peninsula, well hidden
from the American People. When this could no longer continue it became
necessary to endow actions of the U.S. "team" with a moralistic
mythology and promote a well-orchestrated and constantly escalating
satanization of a newly designated "enemy," the Serbs.Only, this
mythology was not directed at the "enemy." Its target has been from the
start the home audience. There was a long -term purpose in deforming
the Serbs beyond recognition. It was to pave the ground for a more
substantial military operation against Serbia somewhere down the road.
In 1993, a would-be "international" Criminal Tribunal was set up at the
Hague to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity in
ex-Yugoslavia since 1991. To be sure, this Tribunal came out of the
U.N.and included jurists from different countries but it became in fact
a tool of our State Department’s drive to smear and punish the Serbs
collectively. . It was set up originally by Madeleine Albright who
secured the earliest funds and hand-picked the jurists neither of whom
came from any country apt to be pro-Serb In the beginning three years
of the Tribunal’s operation, all the indicted war criminals were Serbs
despite a tripartite civil war which was "re-defined" as a war between
states in order to "legitimize" the international competence of this
Tribunal. Even three more years down the road, as a few Croats and
Bosnian Muslims were indicted too none had anything to do with crimes
against the Serbs but only against one another. The Tribunal
established, in a pseudo-legalistic sense, that the Serbs are eternal
aggressors in the Yugoslav space and never the victims of anyone
else’s aggression .Although the Tribunal was hatched behind closed
doors to mask its anti-Serb purpose and although its prosecutors and
supporters enageged in every kind of casuistry to keep the mask on, its
practice pulled the mask down.A
(3)
Tribunal’s major and specific disregard of crimes against the Serbs
cannot successfully put the mask back on. Between August 1991 and
February 1992, Croatia’s Army and para-military carried out the first
massive "ethnic cleansing" after World War II. This took place in
Western Slavonia, producing some 40,000 Serb refugees, several thousand
deaths and the systematic destruction of all Orthodox Churches. So far,
after seven years of the Tribunal , no one has been indicted .
Similarly, a major and self-admitted war criminal among the Bosnian
Muslims, thriving in the U. S. .dominated town of Tuzla, is not even on
the "secret" Tribunal list. A similar record applies to the military
leader of the KLA at Kosovo, saluted today by NATO troops. It has just
come to light that this ostensibly "dignified judicial body" has been
engaged int abeting the kidnapping by mercenaries of alleged "Serb
criminals" from the still-sovereign Yugoslavia.
Amid the claims that the U.S. team for Yugoslavia worked "hard" for
peace , its actions reveal just the opposite. The U.S. Ambassdor to
Yugoslavia scuttled an agreed-upon tripartite (Serbs,Croats,Bosnian
Muslims) peace treaty, arrived at Lisbon in February 1992, on behalf of
the European Community. In January 1993, Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen
presented to all three parties in the conflicts an intelligent and
workable plan for a lasting peace. It listed ten constitutional
principles, it provided for a precise and detailed accord on how to
stop armed hostilities and offered a new map. It did not take long for
the Clinton Administration to kill this too. It claimed that the Plan
"rewarded Serb aggression" in Bosnia. The truth is at hundred-and
-eighty degrees from this brazen misinformation since the legitimate
Serb land-holdings in Bosnia were reduced from 63% to 4l%, hardly a
"reward’" to say nothing of the presence of an all-around and not
exclusively Serb aggression. Even Richard Holbrooke, no "Serb
apologist," recommended that the Vance-Owen Plan be approved. Instead
David Owen was ridiculed as "Lord Owensky" to tar him with a pro-Serb
and hence unacceptable bias. ..
The Clinton Cabinet simply did not want peace. It opted to prolong the
civil war and give the New NATO a violent "pedigree." Some "robust"
bombing of the Bosnian Serb targets would establish NATO’s "credibility"
and "validate" its serious nature. Still, a dramatic event to trigger a
protracted bombing mission was badly needed. As an ABC crew just
happened to be in situ to film, there took place the so-called "third
market place massacre" at Sarajevo. Within hours, NATO planes wre in the
air in a campaign that lasted about three weeks killing and maiming
about a thousand Serb .civilians. A fresh UN report exculpated the Serbs
and placed the blame for this particular carnage on the Bosnian Muslim
side.The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright, demanded that
the report be kept secret. It remains secret to this day but its major
conclusion was leaked out by Mr. Akashi, a respected U.N. official.
The latest example of a neurotic and virtually uncontrollable desire to
violently "punish" "the Serbs in Serbia came at the Rambouillet
Conference in February and early March 1999. To Madeleine Albright
surprise, the Serbs were willing to restore autonomy to Kosovo as the
U.S.
(4)
plan demanded. But, the Albanian KLA leader Hashim Thaci would not sign
for autnomy. He wanted independence instead. At this point Madeleine
came up with the "Appendix B" to the plan. It demanded that the Serbs
agree to an impossible condition, the occupation of all of Yugoslavia,
including Belgrade, by NATO troops. As the Serb delegation walked out,
Thaci signed the Plan and the bombing mission was cosmetically
"legalized." Madeleine would quip long after the 78 days of destruction
from the air in Serbia and Kosovo that "we raised the bar (at
Rambouillet) so that Milosevic could not jump over it; Yugoslavia needed
a little bombing." There was also another "massacre" blamed on the
Serbs, at Racak, a KLA stronghold, one that "galvanized" the
"International Community" as Madeleine put it, into punishing the
Serbs. It was a blatantly doctored, non-event, "certified" by none
other than a local U.S. envoy with long years of service in areas
replete with Latin American massacres that were quite real.
When all the dust settled, the U.S. had allied itself in ex-Yugoslavia
with the successors of WWII anti-American extreme nationalists in
Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo while blaming its long-time, repeated
allies, the Serbs, and a single man for all the ills except bad
weather. It is absolutely clear that no massive blood-letting would have
taken place in ex-Yugoslavia without the meddling of Clinton’s team.
Similarly, the" humanitarian intervention" at Kosovo was a sham
predicated on exaggerated claims of mass executions and mass graves,
"genocide," ranging in figures from 100,000 to 10,000 dead Albanians and
no Serb victims at all from a guerrilla war carried out by the armed
branch of an international drug cartel in the name of "Liberation" As
events subsequent to the NATO occupation of Kosovo have shown, nothing
that has happened
since June 1999 should allow for continued support extended to a KLA
now in disguise. Yet, Kosovo and its Albanian ethnics have been turned
over to the drug dealers, white slavers and smugglers. Albanian mafiosi
and extortion-minded youths are rampant. Despite this, Hashim Thaci,
the KLA civilian leader, who has so far assassinated at least half a
dozen of his political opponents without pulling the trigger himself,
has attended the Democratic Convention in Los Amgeles. on kissin’ terms
with Madeleine Albright . This is perverse and obscene theater yearning
for a Bertold Brecht and his" Arturo Ui " with Thachi in disguise ,
Kurt Weil and an American version of the" Thre Penny Opera," featuring
a female Mack The Knife as the body of a Serb is oozing blood and The
Fat Lady sings like Lotte Lenya
Globalization and
Sovereignty
Why did the Clinton team really jump into ex-Yugoslavia? Why was
everything done to dismantle it? Why were the civil armed conflicts
promoted in the name of peace? Why was an open support for Human Rights
of one group used to deny Human Rights of another? Why were the Serbs
targeted from the outset as the sole aggressor, an enemy to be defetaed
even before any of the atrocities assigned to them took place? Why did
they become subhuman through an orchestrated
(5)
international satanization, not just after May-June 1992 (start of
Bosnian war) but even three years earlier?
Floating bits and pieces of the U.S. entry into the Balkans suggest
numerous strands and imputs. There is the" German Connection. " Early in
the 1990’s a US-German cooperation for the Balkans developed to involve
the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND. It seemed that Germany’s
Industrial giants wanted to transform Yugoslavia into half a dozen
statelets that could easily be dominated as extensions of the German
economy. There is another dimension to the German "drang nach"
Yugoslavia, namely re-alliance with successors of the Third Reich’s
local allies in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and revenge against the
Serbs as contributors to the Third Reich’s ultimate defeat in WWII. But,
that was revived mainly within Croatia and through a very large Croat
diaspora in West Germany. A nagging fact has somehow fallen out of the
loop. As Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, first in Slovenia. dozens of
German firms rushed to sign commercial agreements even with Serbia.
Despite a revanchist mentality of some of West German officials, its
Industry did not need a war against Serbia to eventually dominate the
industrial part of its economy. Hundreds of thousands of skilled Serb
workers would have welcomed good paying jobs created by German capital
and management. Nor was the government of Serbia opposed to economic
modernization with Germany’s help. Over 150,000 Serbs were working in
West Germany as well.
There was also an "Ideological Connection." With active support of the
Vatican, Germany and Margaret Thatcher President Reagan wanted to
dismantle all the lingering "neo-Communist" regimes in Europe. When
Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, the Slovenes and Croats were
.certified at once as "Democrats." The Serbs remained "Communists"
despite the fact that both Presidents Kuchan of Slovenia and Tudjman of
Croatia had been active and prominent members
of the Yugoslav League of Communists for decades. In this new political
"universe." Serbia was set-up as one of the earliest candidates for
economic and political destabilization. A joint U.S.-German plan
surfaced in 1998 for cooperation between the CIA and the BND going back
to 1991-1992 to "get to the Serbs." Called by its code name "Operation
Roots," it aimed at stripping Serbia of Kosovo, Montenegro and
Vojvodina, removing Yugoslavia from the map altogether and denying its
full re-entry into the U.N.
Economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia in 1992 and have not been
removed to-date despite all kinds of evidence that they punished mainly
the children, the old, the infirm and the middle class. The sanctions
made it easier to attribute all the deficiencies of an entrenched
bureaucracy to "foreign meddling," solidifying in power the very
"undesirable" leaders whose fall was most intensely desired in
Washington. That exactly the same happened in Iraq hardly prevented the
bombings from going on to this day. That the Serbs , as a people who
never harmed America’s interests and who sided with the U.S. in two
major wars, were being punished way out of proportion to the alleged
egregious crimes of some Serbs, hardly caused insomnia to the "shapers"
of this cruel policy. The mentors, some of whom would express contrived
horror when
(6)
a Bosnian or a Kosovo Muslim suffered from Serb thugs, could be nowhere
near a crisis of conscience as our Tomahawks and bombs killed about
3,000 Serbs, mainimg three times the number, destroyed their
infrastructure and poisoned their environment with lasting mutants and
toxins. To kick one to death while one is down reflects aberrant
individual behavior but does not come out as a recognizable American
cultural and national trait.With a million refugees now in Serbia,
"cleansed" from other parts of ex-Yugoslavia with tacit and active
support of the Clinton foreign-policy team, with eight years of
deliberately cruel sanctions imposed on Serbia, after 78 days of
destruction, this team, spearheaded by an extreme and verifiable
Serbophobe, is still seeking to punish the Serbs and destabilize them
even into a civil war. Something has decidedly changed in Washington to
produce a vindictive and twisted mentality that cannot be called
"American" at all.
Indeed, this leads directly into the factor of "Bloody-Mindedness." Its
most prominent exponent has been Madeleine Albright, the self-styled
champion of Universal Human Rights, a championship that cannot withstand
serious scrutiny. Her retort to Leslie Stahl in "60 Minutes" that the
punishment meted out to Iraq was worth the cost of 500,000 child deaths
, is only the tip of a deeper and wider phenomenon, a Punishing Culture
which emerged with Mr.Clinton in the White House. Where regional and
overseas Empires collapsed by imposing on and seeking to maintain
direct rule over recalcitrant foreign populations, the modern Clintonian
Imperial version is "global" in scope, overtly benign and informal and
hence difficult to pinpoint. It is not rooted in territorial
acquisitions and it avoids expenses associated with direct rule.Instead,
an Imperialism of "Free Trade" and super-imposed "Liberal Democracy" is
to Globalize and unite the whole world, do away with the pernicious
influence of history, put to death all forms of Nationalism(with
endless help from George Soros), bring an end to the" impediment" of
Sovereignty, transpose the limitless new" Electronic Universe" into
unlimited economic domination of mega-corporations, oligopolies and
cartels and assure that social and political engeneering will "explain"
this New World Order as a" benefit" to all.
This formula is not, however, a self-generating inducement to " join
Globalization or be left out of its benefits," as Thomas Freedman would
have it.The electronic- communication -and- information -Globalization
can be universally beneficial. Its economic counterpart can easly hurt
the many for the benefit of few . Right now about a fifth of the total
world population owns some 80 % of the global resources.An uncontolled,
rampant economic Globalization would polarize even further.It would thus
in the long run inexorably come to face certain defeat itself as
resistance movements crop-up everywhere in resurgent
and"globally-induced" Nationalisms.In effect, as one critic puts it,
Globalization "requires submission, faith, worshjp and new rites."
Globaliztion "has become a new kind of Totalitarianism ." This is not
admitted but . "Globalization" in toto must be accepted and anyone or
anything that blocks in any way the total submission to it must be
physically punished to the limits of endurance, must undergo cerebral
(7)
terror, must be psychologically re-programmed, educated anew
("pierevaspitach" Soviet-style) without exception, pity, sorrow or
remorse.
.If one cannot logically grasp why the Serbs have ben denied any rights
at all (self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, self-defense at
Kosovo} it is because they have been turned not only into
the sole "aggressors" in ex-Yugoslavia. Years of premeditated
satanization have mutated them internationally into present-day
"untermenchen" (subhumans) Subhumans cannot, by definition,
have Human Rights. A state deprived de facto of its Sovereignty
becomes a "zone" that can be violated with arrogance and impunity,
from the air or by exacerbating internal turmoil. If some of the more
powerful states still retain Sovereignty all the others can be declared
not to" deserve" it for a variety of reasons, including externally
decreed forms of "internal oppression" which more than "justify"
"humanitarian" interventions. . In what looks like another of Albright’s
"brilliant" ideas to finish-off the Serbs, the State Department is
establishing an office in Hungary to "run" the
opposition to Milosevic in Serbia. It does not take a doctorate in
Political Science to perceive at once that this plays right into
Milosevic’s hands and represents the kiss of death to bring even a
candidate of united Serb opposition to power in his place. It is also
likely to pave the ground for a
civil war in Serbia, possibly and even probably its real goal so that
Serbia can be occupied by NATO troops to "bring peace to the Serb
people," another " virtuous "gesture, strangling them with affection of
a boa constrictor. .
A recent attempt to hook-up "historically" periods of would-be "
dilution" in America’s Sovereignty with moments of economic
prosperity came from the pen of a high-ranking ex-member of the
Intelligence "Community," General Odom. Writing in the Wall Street
Journal, now as a Yale Professor, the General comes up short on both
Economics and History. .Economic prosperity is hardly incompatible with
Sovereignty. Moreover, without an iron-clad respect of Sovereignty,
International Law , as it has evolved since the time of its Dutch
founder Grotius, is replaced by something atavistic even in its most
modern, virtual-reality sense, namely that Might is Right. When the
"requirements" of the New World Order are added to this throw-back, the
Ends come to justify the Means employed and we have in effect a return
to Fascism with its Mussolinian and Hitlerite strands.
All of this comes with an Orwellian Language, too. . You can murder
civilians from 15,000 feet in the air. and call it "collateral
damage." You can call a one-way bombing campaign without harming the
bombers an "air war" as if it consisted of areal combat between two
equal and opposing air-forces. You can endow the shells tipped in
depleted uranium with a humanitarian purpose. You can take a mass of
refugees you have helped create in a major way and declare that they are
returning home thanks to your help without feeling uneasy about the
mutilation of logic. You can transform a communal into a "mass"grave and
advertise who is in it before any serious investigation can be carried
out. You can proclaim "genocide" where it does not exist by either
"re-defining it" or by cynically invoking the Jewish Holocaust in WWII
to "never let it happen again." You can insert Government "Psy-Ops"
into a major media outlet and put out the fairy
(8)
tale that they are on a "training mission." You can formally claim not
to be at war as you destroy a country from the air.
There are, in fact, no constraints to disinformation and no limits to
what can be used to deceive the American People, all in the name of
"extendeing Democracy" and"promoting Human Rights." A Democracy
leap-froging abroad while being gradually lost at home. Two of the
recent blatant examples of this manipulating process came on PBS-TV, one
before the "air war" and the other after it. The one in July 1998 was an
obvious attampt to launder the Kosovo" Liberation "Army’s criminality.
In this way, the American public would not be likely to oppose a NATO
intervention slated to help the"Kosovar" "freedom fighters." Sentaor
Lieberman, now the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, went as far as
to claim that the KLA fought for "American Values." This was not too
long after even the State Department had branded the KLA as "terrorists
."A recent checking of PAC contributions in Congress reveals that
Senator Lieberman received $10,000 from the Albanian diaspora in the
U.S.
The other example, in two parts, sought to transform the destruction
of Serbia into a "Virtuous War" through subtle but outrageous
propaganda using the techniques which turn Dr. Goebbels into a rank
amateur. While all three endeavors were exposed and ripped to shreds
there was "no response" from the PBS-TV funded by tax payers’ money.
Yet, behind the emerging Punishing Culture and the New World Order there
is something older, something that the Nazis have discredited but
something that has come to dominate many in the foreign policy
power-elite whose members are perpetualluy fighting their own
intellectual boredom and personal inconsquence with some sort of a
"coherent world view" that makes them feel "superior," "special"and
out of reach to the incompetent "ordinary" citizens.That "something" is
"Geopolitics," term first proposed by a Swede (Rudolf Kjellen ) in 1900
but going back as an emerging "discipline" into the mid-Nineteenth
Century.
Geopolitics
Although "Geopolitics" never transcended the pseudo-scientific self
there is a an aura to it as a "discipline." No reputable American
university offers it as such but , to demystify "Geopolitcs" and come
to understand to what uses this would-be "science" can be put, a
background outline becomes essential. Its real developers are two
Germans (Karl Ritter and Friedrich Ratzel) and three Frenchmen ( Pierre
Vidal de La Bache, Jean Brunhes and Albert Demangeon). By way of an
over-simplified explanation, these developers tried to show the
inevitable relationships of geography, space and demography, resources
and political history. Nonetheless, they failed to converge as a single
school in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. The
French side maintained that, in the multitude of components that enter
into geopolitical thought,
(9)
the human factor is both dominant and determining . It could be said
that the French geographers (and de La Bache was one of the greatest in
Europe) rejected the notion that the scientific, hence the ,
"rational," rules the world , through Universal Laws. They came up with
endless examples of the "humanistic," hence non-rational"modifiers"
acting as a sort of continuous trip-wire. This direction led to the
disappearence of Geopolitical intellectual endeavors in France. . The
discipline was "rescued" on the German side by a Prussian General (Karl
Haushofer) and at Oxford by a Scottish scholar (Halford Mackinder}. In
1904, he came out with the idea of "The Heartland" or the land mass of
continental Eurasia which could be threatened only by the surrounding
maritime powers in control of communications.A U.S. Admiral (Mahan}
combined Geopolitics with Strategic Thinking "perfecting" Mackinder.
>From there on, through one or more champions of naval power , the
world-subdivisions and power relationships become rather arcane,
"sliced" in a number of "equally valid" ways. . Yet, two things are
beyond dispute. Strategic concerns skewed Geopolitics in search of
world-dominance, " politicizing" its applications. They also figured in
pan-Germanism before World War I and in the Nazi ideology bwteen 1933
ans 1945. The geographico-scientific limitations of Geopolitics became
clear at the end of World War II. While intellactualy stimulating,
Geopolitical "determinism" fails to explain anything scientifically.
On the other side, yielding to whatever the politico-strategic views are
in demand at any given time, Geopolitics loses any real scientific
promise as it comes to justify national ambitions.
During the Cold War, there was a sort of Geopolitical Renaissance among
the U.S." strategic thinkers" coming up behind Admiral Mahan and his
even more influential naval-power follower , N.J.Spykman. Its
centerpiece was the idea that the U.S. naval strength could contain the
Eurasian giant, U.S.S.R. Coupled with the famous article of Mr.
"X"(George Kennan) it proved that Geopolitocal and Strategic thinking
could "win" in the long run. This sent Geopolitics into the
"strategic-thinking" overdrive. In 1978, Zbigniew Brzezunsky, the latest
American Geopolitical "guru" declared in Sweden that all of Europe was
now basically under the U.S. benevolent hegemony (he called it
"patronage"}. He added that "nothing endangering the American vital
interests" will be permitted to solidify in that region. Then he
proceeded to lay out "the law" in respect to the Balkans years before it
would be applied. The U.S. objectives in the Balkans as "Zbig" defined
them included a "New Order" (term which appears in one of the earliest
Geopolitical texts} fitting into the West; U.S. dominance in the Balkans
but in close cooperation with Germany in the "political reorganization"
of the Balkans (echoed by President Clinton recently as "deBalkanizing
the Balkans" after he did everything to re-Balkanize Yugoslavia);
special and detailed cooperation with Islamic states, especially
Turkey and Albania." Madeleine Albright was "Zbig’s" foremosr disciple
and what neither of them will admit, they both detest Orthodox Slavs,
primarily Russians (hiding it behid" opposition to Communism"} ut also
Russia’s closest "kin" in the Balkans, the Serbs.
(10)
One might be permited to conclude that a President without any
experience in foreign policy, a "Bubba " from Arkansas, despite his
stint as a Rhodes scholar, turned over his entire foreign policy in the
Balkans to a domineering , power-driven "expert." Madeleine Albright
who subdued even the Republican Secretary of Defense, Cohen, in her
neurotic drive to" punish the Serbs," a drive that might go back to her
childhood in Belgrade but one that has been as hidden as her own
awareness of Jewish antecedents in the Korbel family.The tragedy is that
both the Polish and Czech-born high ranking officials of the U.S.
Government made the distrust and even hate of Orthodox Slavs an integral
part of the U.S. world strategy and thus prevented forever the
possibility stated at the beginning of this essay.
If, after reading this text, there is anyone left who still believes in
all the sick propaganda about "the Serbs" as "neo-Nazi butchers" of the
Fin du Siecle, who still believes in "virtuous wars," who still supports
a new American Imperialism as a "humanitarian" enterprise, there is only
one conclusion left. An American People does not exist and our Political
Leaders have grasped this. We are getting exactly the government we
deserve.
.
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720
510/642-1971
.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
R.K.Kent
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s created a
moment in time when a very real friendship could have been forged
between the American. and Slavic peoples of Russia and the Ukraine.
Together with United Europe, this would have been a formidable alliance
for stability for decades to come. During the years of Cold War, there
grew in the United States a huge industry with two major components
actually threatened by the fall of an enemy that not only united them
but which provided the very reason for their continuous growth and
power.The two components are the" Military-Industrial Complex" focused
on the Pentagon and the "Intelligence Community" with the CIA at its
center. Both have outgrown even the Behemoth, commanding mega-billion
dollar budgets. Both are taking huge chunks of tax payers’ moneys,
beyond any reasonable defense needs, for rather dubious undertakings in
the name of "National Security" and "National Interest." Both are
creating ever new "enemies" abroad. Neither is willing to shed the
"Cold -War" mentality. Their "New" NATO is , on the one hand, an
oxymoron really useless in Europe, "reinvented" to perfect hi-tech
warfare in missions that give the appearance of victories while making
the situations worse, even insoluble. It also provides the frameworks
for going to war while by-passing Congress as well as assuring the U.S.
domination of Europe. There is an added bonus to the"
Military-Industrial Complex" through the transfer of U.S.-built weapons
systems to NATO’s "new members" guaranteed by loans from Uncle Sam which
will be ultimately repaid not by European but by American tax payers..
The Pentagon-CIA Galaxy is mocking a Democracy that lasted two
centuries and became the bastion of freedom against all emerging
totalitarian ideologies . Its erosion in America did not come with a
sudden military coup d’etat but with an endemic duping and manipulation
of the American People. Major decisions in foreign policy are now made
by a power elite, in secrecy. without any real care for a population
that votes and foots the bills.So far, for example, the monetary outlays
covering just the first serious U.S. enagement in Southeastern Europe
have run past $20 billion, with no end in sight and with results that
contradict most of the anticipated "benefits." Never in a period of
general peace have the White House and to a somewhat lesser extent
Congress been more willing to yield to the unelected foreign-policy
"experts" than duruing the Clinton Administration. Of the 47 U.S.
military interventions abroad since 1945 , 33 have taken place in the
last eight years. This transformation of Athens into Sparta is
parallelled by the increasing use of an Intelligence Establishment to
penetrate our own audio-visual and scribal media precisely in order to
misinform and disinform the American People in respect to the real
purposes of an action abroad.
(2)
In the Cold War, the CIA was mandated to confine its activities to the
external world. . Specific legislatiion even excluded a similar
domestic role. This has changed in a major way, disregarding
legislation just as a monarchical President violates the Constitution by
waging a foreign war
without the consent and approval of Congress.It does not even seem to
matter any longer. The attempt to impeach President Clinton over the
Lewinsky scandal seems almost comical in comparison with the type of
Constitutional violation that could, some day, lead to World War III
What disturbs too, "We," the people, are actually paying the high
salaries of hundreds of inadequately -educated, bloody -minded and
pretentious foreign-policy "thinkers" and "shapers" who, with rare
exceptions, perceive" US" as imbeciles badly in need of their
enlightened services. . Nothing illustrates more dramatically the
results of this growing Evil than our entry into the deconstruction of
Second Yugoslavia (1945-1991} and the deliberate trasnformation of
an ally in two World Wars, the Serbs, into an "enemy," served as a
great "achievement" with a "victory at Kosovo."
First, the secrecy factor. When the decision to enter into the
ex-Yugoslav space was made, the American People were in no mood to
support this involvement in a faraway area hardly close to a vital
national interest. As late as November 1994, after more than a year of
our actual intelligence and military presence in Croatia and Bosnia, the
Pentagon vigorously denied all the mounting reports to the contrary in
the Europen Press. Here was a major foreign-policy decision, with
implications far beyond even the entire Balkan Peninsula, well hidden
from the American People. When this could no longer continue it became
necessary to endow actions of the U.S. "team" with a moralistic
mythology and promote a well-orchestrated and constantly escalating
satanization of a newly designated "enemy," the Serbs.Only, this
mythology was not directed at the "enemy." Its target has been from the
start the home audience. There was a long -term purpose in deforming
the Serbs beyond recognition. It was to pave the ground for a more
substantial military operation against Serbia somewhere down the road.
In 1993, a would-be "international" Criminal Tribunal was set up at the
Hague to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity in
ex-Yugoslavia since 1991. To be sure, this Tribunal came out of the
U.N.and included jurists from different countries but it became in fact
a tool of our State Department’s drive to smear and punish the Serbs
collectively. . It was set up originally by Madeleine Albright who
secured the earliest funds and hand-picked the jurists neither of whom
came from any country apt to be pro-Serb In the beginning three years
of the Tribunal’s operation, all the indicted war criminals were Serbs
despite a tripartite civil war which was "re-defined" as a war between
states in order to "legitimize" the international competence of this
Tribunal. Even three more years down the road, as a few Croats and
Bosnian Muslims were indicted too none had anything to do with crimes
against the Serbs but only against one another. The Tribunal
established, in a pseudo-legalistic sense, that the Serbs are eternal
aggressors in the Yugoslav space and never the victims of anyone
else’s aggression .Although the Tribunal was hatched behind closed
doors to mask its anti-Serb purpose and although its prosecutors and
supporters enageged in every kind of casuistry to keep the mask on, its
practice pulled the mask down.A
(3)
Tribunal’s major and specific disregard of crimes against the Serbs
cannot successfully put the mask back on. Between August 1991 and
February 1992, Croatia’s Army and para-military carried out the first
massive "ethnic cleansing" after World War II. This took place in
Western Slavonia, producing some 40,000 Serb refugees, several thousand
deaths and the systematic destruction of all Orthodox Churches. So far,
after seven years of the Tribunal , no one has been indicted .
Similarly, a major and self-admitted war criminal among the Bosnian
Muslims, thriving in the U. S. .dominated town of Tuzla, is not even on
the "secret" Tribunal list. A similar record applies to the military
leader of the KLA at Kosovo, saluted today by NATO troops. It has just
come to light that this ostensibly "dignified judicial body" has been
engaged int abeting the kidnapping by mercenaries of alleged "Serb
criminals" from the still-sovereign Yugoslavia.
Amid the claims that the U.S. team for Yugoslavia worked "hard" for
peace , its actions reveal just the opposite. The U.S. Ambassdor to
Yugoslavia scuttled an agreed-upon tripartite (Serbs,Croats,Bosnian
Muslims) peace treaty, arrived at Lisbon in February 1992, on behalf of
the European Community. In January 1993, Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen
presented to all three parties in the conflicts an intelligent and
workable plan for a lasting peace. It listed ten constitutional
principles, it provided for a precise and detailed accord on how to
stop armed hostilities and offered a new map. It did not take long for
the Clinton Administration to kill this too. It claimed that the Plan
"rewarded Serb aggression" in Bosnia. The truth is at hundred-and
-eighty degrees from this brazen misinformation since the legitimate
Serb land-holdings in Bosnia were reduced from 63% to 4l%, hardly a
"reward’" to say nothing of the presence of an all-around and not
exclusively Serb aggression. Even Richard Holbrooke, no "Serb
apologist," recommended that the Vance-Owen Plan be approved. Instead
David Owen was ridiculed as "Lord Owensky" to tar him with a pro-Serb
and hence unacceptable bias. ..
The Clinton Cabinet simply did not want peace. It opted to prolong the
civil war and give the New NATO a violent "pedigree." Some "robust"
bombing of the Bosnian Serb targets would establish NATO’s "credibility"
and "validate" its serious nature. Still, a dramatic event to trigger a
protracted bombing mission was badly needed. As an ABC crew just
happened to be in situ to film, there took place the so-called "third
market place massacre" at Sarajevo. Within hours, NATO planes wre in the
air in a campaign that lasted about three weeks killing and maiming
about a thousand Serb .civilians. A fresh UN report exculpated the Serbs
and placed the blame for this particular carnage on the Bosnian Muslim
side.The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright, demanded that
the report be kept secret. It remains secret to this day but its major
conclusion was leaked out by Mr. Akashi, a respected U.N. official.
The latest example of a neurotic and virtually uncontrollable desire to
violently "punish" "the Serbs in Serbia came at the Rambouillet
Conference in February and early March 1999. To Madeleine Albright
surprise, the Serbs were willing to restore autonomy to Kosovo as the
U.S.
(4)
plan demanded. But, the Albanian KLA leader Hashim Thaci would not sign
for autnomy. He wanted independence instead. At this point Madeleine
came up with the "Appendix B" to the plan. It demanded that the Serbs
agree to an impossible condition, the occupation of all of Yugoslavia,
including Belgrade, by NATO troops. As the Serb delegation walked out,
Thaci signed the Plan and the bombing mission was cosmetically
"legalized." Madeleine would quip long after the 78 days of destruction
from the air in Serbia and Kosovo that "we raised the bar (at
Rambouillet) so that Milosevic could not jump over it; Yugoslavia needed
a little bombing." There was also another "massacre" blamed on the
Serbs, at Racak, a KLA stronghold, one that "galvanized" the
"International Community" as Madeleine put it, into punishing the
Serbs. It was a blatantly doctored, non-event, "certified" by none
other than a local U.S. envoy with long years of service in areas
replete with Latin American massacres that were quite real.
When all the dust settled, the U.S. had allied itself in ex-Yugoslavia
with the successors of WWII anti-American extreme nationalists in
Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo while blaming its long-time, repeated
allies, the Serbs, and a single man for all the ills except bad
weather. It is absolutely clear that no massive blood-letting would have
taken place in ex-Yugoslavia without the meddling of Clinton’s team.
Similarly, the" humanitarian intervention" at Kosovo was a sham
predicated on exaggerated claims of mass executions and mass graves,
"genocide," ranging in figures from 100,000 to 10,000 dead Albanians and
no Serb victims at all from a guerrilla war carried out by the armed
branch of an international drug cartel in the name of "Liberation" As
events subsequent to the NATO occupation of Kosovo have shown, nothing
that has happened
since June 1999 should allow for continued support extended to a KLA
now in disguise. Yet, Kosovo and its Albanian ethnics have been turned
over to the drug dealers, white slavers and smugglers. Albanian mafiosi
and extortion-minded youths are rampant. Despite this, Hashim Thaci,
the KLA civilian leader, who has so far assassinated at least half a
dozen of his political opponents without pulling the trigger himself,
has attended the Democratic Convention in Los Amgeles. on kissin’ terms
with Madeleine Albright . This is perverse and obscene theater yearning
for a Bertold Brecht and his" Arturo Ui " with Thachi in disguise ,
Kurt Weil and an American version of the" Thre Penny Opera," featuring
a female Mack The Knife as the body of a Serb is oozing blood and The
Fat Lady sings like Lotte Lenya
Globalization and
Sovereignty
Why did the Clinton team really jump into ex-Yugoslavia? Why was
everything done to dismantle it? Why were the civil armed conflicts
promoted in the name of peace? Why was an open support for Human Rights
of one group used to deny Human Rights of another? Why were the Serbs
targeted from the outset as the sole aggressor, an enemy to be defetaed
even before any of the atrocities assigned to them took place? Why did
they become subhuman through an orchestrated
(5)
international satanization, not just after May-June 1992 (start of
Bosnian war) but even three years earlier?
Floating bits and pieces of the U.S. entry into the Balkans suggest
numerous strands and imputs. There is the" German Connection. " Early in
the 1990’s a US-German cooperation for the Balkans developed to involve
the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND. It seemed that Germany’s
Industrial giants wanted to transform Yugoslavia into half a dozen
statelets that could easily be dominated as extensions of the German
economy. There is another dimension to the German "drang nach"
Yugoslavia, namely re-alliance with successors of the Third Reich’s
local allies in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and revenge against the
Serbs as contributors to the Third Reich’s ultimate defeat in WWII. But,
that was revived mainly within Croatia and through a very large Croat
diaspora in West Germany. A nagging fact has somehow fallen out of the
loop. As Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, first in Slovenia. dozens of
German firms rushed to sign commercial agreements even with Serbia.
Despite a revanchist mentality of some of West German officials, its
Industry did not need a war against Serbia to eventually dominate the
industrial part of its economy. Hundreds of thousands of skilled Serb
workers would have welcomed good paying jobs created by German capital
and management. Nor was the government of Serbia opposed to economic
modernization with Germany’s help. Over 150,000 Serbs were working in
West Germany as well.
There was also an "Ideological Connection." With active support of the
Vatican, Germany and Margaret Thatcher President Reagan wanted to
dismantle all the lingering "neo-Communist" regimes in Europe. When
Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, the Slovenes and Croats were
.certified at once as "Democrats." The Serbs remained "Communists"
despite the fact that both Presidents Kuchan of Slovenia and Tudjman of
Croatia had been active and prominent members
of the Yugoslav League of Communists for decades. In this new political
"universe." Serbia was set-up as one of the earliest candidates for
economic and political destabilization. A joint U.S.-German plan
surfaced in 1998 for cooperation between the CIA and the BND going back
to 1991-1992 to "get to the Serbs." Called by its code name "Operation
Roots," it aimed at stripping Serbia of Kosovo, Montenegro and
Vojvodina, removing Yugoslavia from the map altogether and denying its
full re-entry into the U.N.
Economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia in 1992 and have not been
removed to-date despite all kinds of evidence that they punished mainly
the children, the old, the infirm and the middle class. The sanctions
made it easier to attribute all the deficiencies of an entrenched
bureaucracy to "foreign meddling," solidifying in power the very
"undesirable" leaders whose fall was most intensely desired in
Washington. That exactly the same happened in Iraq hardly prevented the
bombings from going on to this day. That the Serbs , as a people who
never harmed America’s interests and who sided with the U.S. in two
major wars, were being punished way out of proportion to the alleged
egregious crimes of some Serbs, hardly caused insomnia to the "shapers"
of this cruel policy. The mentors, some of whom would express contrived
horror when
(6)
a Bosnian or a Kosovo Muslim suffered from Serb thugs, could be nowhere
near a crisis of conscience as our Tomahawks and bombs killed about
3,000 Serbs, mainimg three times the number, destroyed their
infrastructure and poisoned their environment with lasting mutants and
toxins. To kick one to death while one is down reflects aberrant
individual behavior but does not come out as a recognizable American
cultural and national trait.With a million refugees now in Serbia,
"cleansed" from other parts of ex-Yugoslavia with tacit and active
support of the Clinton foreign-policy team, with eight years of
deliberately cruel sanctions imposed on Serbia, after 78 days of
destruction, this team, spearheaded by an extreme and verifiable
Serbophobe, is still seeking to punish the Serbs and destabilize them
even into a civil war. Something has decidedly changed in Washington to
produce a vindictive and twisted mentality that cannot be called
"American" at all.
Indeed, this leads directly into the factor of "Bloody-Mindedness." Its
most prominent exponent has been Madeleine Albright, the self-styled
champion of Universal Human Rights, a championship that cannot withstand
serious scrutiny. Her retort to Leslie Stahl in "60 Minutes" that the
punishment meted out to Iraq was worth the cost of 500,000 child deaths
, is only the tip of a deeper and wider phenomenon, a Punishing Culture
which emerged with Mr.Clinton in the White House. Where regional and
overseas Empires collapsed by imposing on and seeking to maintain
direct rule over recalcitrant foreign populations, the modern Clintonian
Imperial version is "global" in scope, overtly benign and informal and
hence difficult to pinpoint. It is not rooted in territorial
acquisitions and it avoids expenses associated with direct rule.Instead,
an Imperialism of "Free Trade" and super-imposed "Liberal Democracy" is
to Globalize and unite the whole world, do away with the pernicious
influence of history, put to death all forms of Nationalism(with
endless help from George Soros), bring an end to the" impediment" of
Sovereignty, transpose the limitless new" Electronic Universe" into
unlimited economic domination of mega-corporations, oligopolies and
cartels and assure that social and political engeneering will "explain"
this New World Order as a" benefit" to all.
This formula is not, however, a self-generating inducement to " join
Globalization or be left out of its benefits," as Thomas Freedman would
have it.The electronic- communication -and- information -Globalization
can be universally beneficial. Its economic counterpart can easly hurt
the many for the benefit of few . Right now about a fifth of the total
world population owns some 80 % of the global resources.An uncontolled,
rampant economic Globalization would polarize even further.It would thus
in the long run inexorably come to face certain defeat itself as
resistance movements crop-up everywhere in resurgent
and"globally-induced" Nationalisms.In effect, as one critic puts it,
Globalization "requires submission, faith, worshjp and new rites."
Globaliztion "has become a new kind of Totalitarianism ." This is not
admitted but . "Globalization" in toto must be accepted and anyone or
anything that blocks in any way the total submission to it must be
physically punished to the limits of endurance, must undergo cerebral
(7)
terror, must be psychologically re-programmed, educated anew
("pierevaspitach" Soviet-style) without exception, pity, sorrow or
remorse.
.If one cannot logically grasp why the Serbs have ben denied any rights
at all (self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, self-defense at
Kosovo} it is because they have been turned not only into
the sole "aggressors" in ex-Yugoslavia. Years of premeditated
satanization have mutated them internationally into present-day
"untermenchen" (subhumans) Subhumans cannot, by definition,
have Human Rights. A state deprived de facto of its Sovereignty
becomes a "zone" that can be violated with arrogance and impunity,
from the air or by exacerbating internal turmoil. If some of the more
powerful states still retain Sovereignty all the others can be declared
not to" deserve" it for a variety of reasons, including externally
decreed forms of "internal oppression" which more than "justify"
"humanitarian" interventions. . In what looks like another of Albright’s
"brilliant" ideas to finish-off the Serbs, the State Department is
establishing an office in Hungary to "run" the
opposition to Milosevic in Serbia. It does not take a doctorate in
Political Science to perceive at once that this plays right into
Milosevic’s hands and represents the kiss of death to bring even a
candidate of united Serb opposition to power in his place. It is also
likely to pave the ground for a
civil war in Serbia, possibly and even probably its real goal so that
Serbia can be occupied by NATO troops to "bring peace to the Serb
people," another " virtuous "gesture, strangling them with affection of
a boa constrictor. .
A recent attempt to hook-up "historically" periods of would-be "
dilution" in America’s Sovereignty with moments of economic
prosperity came from the pen of a high-ranking ex-member of the
Intelligence "Community," General Odom. Writing in the Wall Street
Journal, now as a Yale Professor, the General comes up short on both
Economics and History. .Economic prosperity is hardly incompatible with
Sovereignty. Moreover, without an iron-clad respect of Sovereignty,
International Law , as it has evolved since the time of its Dutch
founder Grotius, is replaced by something atavistic even in its most
modern, virtual-reality sense, namely that Might is Right. When the
"requirements" of the New World Order are added to this throw-back, the
Ends come to justify the Means employed and we have in effect a return
to Fascism with its Mussolinian and Hitlerite strands.
All of this comes with an Orwellian Language, too. . You can murder
civilians from 15,000 feet in the air. and call it "collateral
damage." You can call a one-way bombing campaign without harming the
bombers an "air war" as if it consisted of areal combat between two
equal and opposing air-forces. You can endow the shells tipped in
depleted uranium with a humanitarian purpose. You can take a mass of
refugees you have helped create in a major way and declare that they are
returning home thanks to your help without feeling uneasy about the
mutilation of logic. You can transform a communal into a "mass"grave and
advertise who is in it before any serious investigation can be carried
out. You can proclaim "genocide" where it does not exist by either
"re-defining it" or by cynically invoking the Jewish Holocaust in WWII
to "never let it happen again." You can insert Government "Psy-Ops"
into a major media outlet and put out the fairy
(8)
tale that they are on a "training mission." You can formally claim not
to be at war as you destroy a country from the air.
There are, in fact, no constraints to disinformation and no limits to
what can be used to deceive the American People, all in the name of
"extendeing Democracy" and"promoting Human Rights." A Democracy
leap-froging abroad while being gradually lost at home. Two of the
recent blatant examples of this manipulating process came on PBS-TV, one
before the "air war" and the other after it. The one in July 1998 was an
obvious attampt to launder the Kosovo" Liberation "Army’s criminality.
In this way, the American public would not be likely to oppose a NATO
intervention slated to help the"Kosovar" "freedom fighters." Sentaor
Lieberman, now the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, went as far as
to claim that the KLA fought for "American Values." This was not too
long after even the State Department had branded the KLA as "terrorists
."A recent checking of PAC contributions in Congress reveals that
Senator Lieberman received $10,000 from the Albanian diaspora in the
U.S.
The other example, in two parts, sought to transform the destruction
of Serbia into a "Virtuous War" through subtle but outrageous
propaganda using the techniques which turn Dr. Goebbels into a rank
amateur. While all three endeavors were exposed and ripped to shreds
there was "no response" from the PBS-TV funded by tax payers’ money.
Yet, behind the emerging Punishing Culture and the New World Order there
is something older, something that the Nazis have discredited but
something that has come to dominate many in the foreign policy
power-elite whose members are perpetualluy fighting their own
intellectual boredom and personal inconsquence with some sort of a
"coherent world view" that makes them feel "superior," "special"and
out of reach to the incompetent "ordinary" citizens.That "something" is
"Geopolitics," term first proposed by a Swede (Rudolf Kjellen ) in 1900
but going back as an emerging "discipline" into the mid-Nineteenth
Century.
Geopolitics
Although "Geopolitics" never transcended the pseudo-scientific self
there is a an aura to it as a "discipline." No reputable American
university offers it as such but , to demystify "Geopolitcs" and come
to understand to what uses this would-be "science" can be put, a
background outline becomes essential. Its real developers are two
Germans (Karl Ritter and Friedrich Ratzel) and three Frenchmen ( Pierre
Vidal de La Bache, Jean Brunhes and Albert Demangeon). By way of an
over-simplified explanation, these developers tried to show the
inevitable relationships of geography, space and demography, resources
and political history. Nonetheless, they failed to converge as a single
school in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. The
French side maintained that, in the multitude of components that enter
into geopolitical thought,
(9)
the human factor is both dominant and determining . It could be said
that the French geographers (and de La Bache was one of the greatest in
Europe) rejected the notion that the scientific, hence the ,
"rational," rules the world , through Universal Laws. They came up with
endless examples of the "humanistic," hence non-rational"modifiers"
acting as a sort of continuous trip-wire. This direction led to the
disappearence of Geopolitical intellectual endeavors in France. . The
discipline was "rescued" on the German side by a Prussian General (Karl
Haushofer) and at Oxford by a Scottish scholar (Halford Mackinder}. In
1904, he came out with the idea of "The Heartland" or the land mass of
continental Eurasia which could be threatened only by the surrounding
maritime powers in control of communications.A U.S. Admiral (Mahan}
combined Geopolitics with Strategic Thinking "perfecting" Mackinder.
>From there on, through one or more champions of naval power , the
world-subdivisions and power relationships become rather arcane,
"sliced" in a number of "equally valid" ways. . Yet, two things are
beyond dispute. Strategic concerns skewed Geopolitics in search of
world-dominance, " politicizing" its applications. They also figured in
pan-Germanism before World War I and in the Nazi ideology bwteen 1933
ans 1945. The geographico-scientific limitations of Geopolitics became
clear at the end of World War II. While intellactualy stimulating,
Geopolitical "determinism" fails to explain anything scientifically.
On the other side, yielding to whatever the politico-strategic views are
in demand at any given time, Geopolitics loses any real scientific
promise as it comes to justify national ambitions.
During the Cold War, there was a sort of Geopolitical Renaissance among
the U.S." strategic thinkers" coming up behind Admiral Mahan and his
even more influential naval-power follower , N.J.Spykman. Its
centerpiece was the idea that the U.S. naval strength could contain the
Eurasian giant, U.S.S.R. Coupled with the famous article of Mr.
"X"(George Kennan) it proved that Geopolitocal and Strategic thinking
could "win" in the long run. This sent Geopolitics into the
"strategic-thinking" overdrive. In 1978, Zbigniew Brzezunsky, the latest
American Geopolitical "guru" declared in Sweden that all of Europe was
now basically under the U.S. benevolent hegemony (he called it
"patronage"}. He added that "nothing endangering the American vital
interests" will be permitted to solidify in that region. Then he
proceeded to lay out "the law" in respect to the Balkans years before it
would be applied. The U.S. objectives in the Balkans as "Zbig" defined
them included a "New Order" (term which appears in one of the earliest
Geopolitical texts} fitting into the West; U.S. dominance in the Balkans
but in close cooperation with Germany in the "political reorganization"
of the Balkans (echoed by President Clinton recently as "deBalkanizing
the Balkans" after he did everything to re-Balkanize Yugoslavia);
special and detailed cooperation with Islamic states, especially
Turkey and Albania." Madeleine Albright was "Zbig’s" foremosr disciple
and what neither of them will admit, they both detest Orthodox Slavs,
primarily Russians (hiding it behid" opposition to Communism"} ut also
Russia’s closest "kin" in the Balkans, the Serbs.
(10)
One might be permited to conclude that a President without any
experience in foreign policy, a "Bubba " from Arkansas, despite his
stint as a Rhodes scholar, turned over his entire foreign policy in the
Balkans to a domineering , power-driven "expert." Madeleine Albright
who subdued even the Republican Secretary of Defense, Cohen, in her
neurotic drive to" punish the Serbs," a drive that might go back to her
childhood in Belgrade but one that has been as hidden as her own
awareness of Jewish antecedents in the Korbel family.The tragedy is that
both the Polish and Czech-born high ranking officials of the U.S.
Government made the distrust and even hate of Orthodox Slavs an integral
part of the U.S. world strategy and thus prevented forever the
possibility stated at the beginning of this essay.
If, after reading this text, there is anyone left who still believes in
all the sick propaganda about "the Serbs" as "neo-Nazi butchers" of the
Fin du Siecle, who still believes in "virtuous wars," who still supports
a new American Imperialism as a "humanitarian" enterprise, there is only
one conclusion left. An American People does not exist and our Political
Leaders have grasped this. We are getting exactly the government we
deserve.
.
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720
510/642-1971
.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
NEOLIBERALISM - THE BALKANS SCENARIO
The following paper attempts to address the subject of neoloberalism as
dominant ethos imposed by the West on, for one, Bosnia. Neoliberalism
being
carried out in the Balkans scenario under the guise of 'humanitarian'
intervention with that intervention effected through an overwhelming
media
propaganda campaign of global dimension devised principally by public
relations companies on behalf of such diverse clients as the Vatican,
oil
rich families of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei and wealthy business men
and
women in Germany and the United States of America.
In order to gain some understanding of the complexities inherent to the
recent war in the Balkans and events thereafter it is of vital
importance
to jettison propaganda masquerading as information foist upon the public
by
unscrupulous and venal opinion makers.
"Contrary to common assumptions", writes Australian scholar Alex Carey,
"propaganda plays an important role - and certainly a more covert and
sophisticated role - in technologically advanced democratic societies,
where the maintenance of the existing powers and privileges is
vulnerable
to popular opinion".
Propaganda has a long and dishonourable tradition in the West. As early
as
1933 the Nazis turned for guidance to Ivy Lee the US pioneer of public
relations. Lee's firm was hired for $25,000 a year by the German Dye
Trust,
I,G, Farben which invited him to visit Germany to meet Hitler and
Hitler's
propaganda minister Josef Goebbels and other Nazi Government officials.
Lee's 28 year old son, James Lee, went to work for Farben in Berlin for
$33,000 a year.
An employee of Lee's firm drafted a report suggesting that Joachim von
Ribbentrop, the German general who later became Hitler's foreign
minister,
"undertake a definite campaign to clarify the American mind" by
"speaking
over the radio to the American people" and writing "a considered article
for an important American publication".
So. Then as Now. He who pays the Piper calls the Tune.
In essence PR companies have been charged with mounting and sustaining a
case against, for example, the Serbs as international pariahs to justify
Western military intervention in ex Yugoslavia. In fact in the Balkans
scenario, the Serbs have simply been in the way in that they have
represented an impediment to the take over of territories rich in
mineral
and oil deposits and human resources and offering enormous potential to
outside interests in terms of political and strategic spheres of
influence
at the heart of Europe. (1).
The lie projected by the persuaders was that the Serbs were the
"aggressor"
in ex Yugoslavia. Invaders commandeering other peoples territories. For
example, PR firms via the Western media told the world that the Serbs
had
invaded and illegally occupied 70% of Bosnian territory.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth, casualty of war, is
that indigenous Bosnian Serbs owned, resided on and farmed some 68% of
Bosnian territory prior to the outbreak of this war. (2).
>From the seemingly bottomless coffers associated with oil, military and
drugs barons in the West, US and British-based PR firms have received
vast
sums of money to organise propaganda campaigns on behalf of their
clients
in the Balkans - The Izetbegovic administration in Sarajevo, the Tudjman
government in Zagreb and the heroin mafia New York-based Albanian|Kosovo
Separatist Movement. (Source: US Department of Justice).
This is what James Harff, Director of the Washington-based PR firm Ruder
&
Finn Global Public Affairs company had to say to Jacques Merlino a
respectable associate editor of France's Channel Two - "To be frank I
can
tell you that the vast majority of Americans wondered in which AFRICAN
country to locate Bosnia. No one could understand what was going on in
Bosnia", he said. Mr Harff in acknowledging the general public's lack of
comprehension of issues related to Bosnia exults over the golden
opportunity this presented to people such as himself. "In one shot", he
said, "we were able to offer a simple story a history of good guys and
the
bad guys".
In the Channel Two interview, the PR firm boss went on to describe in
some
detail how the demonisation of the Serbs was achieved. Principally he
said
through the spreading of false rumour and unsubstantiated reports of
atrocities and war crimes. Omission of the more salient facts to a story
often achieved the effect of scapegoating Serbs. "There were all sorts
of
reasons", said James Harff, "why the Jewish intellectuals and
organisations
were hostile to the Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Our challenge was to
obtain
a reversal of this situation. We succeeded in doing so, in a masterly
manner, between the 2nd and 5th of August 1992, when the New York paper
Newsday led with a story on Serbian camps". French newsman Jacques
Merlino
said that Elie Wiesel told him that there was no comparison between the
Nazi slaughter houses of World War Two and the prison camps where
Muslims
and Croats had been held prisoner by Serbs. Wiesel had visited these
prisoner of war camps in ex Yugoslavia.
James Harff went on to speak gleefully of how Ruder & Finn had jumped on
the "death camp" potential of the Newsday report which carried with the
story a photograph which had tugged at the world's heart strings. This
was
of a horribly emaciated man. The world's assumption was that this man
was a
Muslim who had been starved and mistreated by Serb prison guards. The
truth
behind this photograph has only just been published. (See over).
James Harff again ... "We convened 3 major Jewish organisations. B'nai
B'Riths Anti Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the
American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them that they print an
insert
in the New York Times and organise a protest in front of the UN
building.
This really worked. The engagement of Jewish organisations on the side
of
the Bosnian Muslims was a super poker play", Harff said. He continued -
"Immediately thereafter we were able to associate the Serbs with the
Nazis
in public opinion. It was not long before there was a clear change in
the
press language with emotional terms like "concentration camps" evoking
Nazi
Germany and the gas chambers at Auschwitz", Harff concluded. In his book
"The Truth From Yugoslavia is not Being Reported Honestly" published by
Albin Michel SA in Paris in 1993, Jacques Merlino also mentioned that as
a
result of the "concentration camp" story, many Jewish MP's put their
signatures to the famous collective letter, headed by Margaret Thatcher,
to
the Wall Street Journal in September 1993, calling on the West to arm
the
Muslims and bomb the Serbs.
No one has so transgressed the rules pertaining to good taste by going
so
far as to suggest, that Mrs Thatcher, pace her arms dealing son Mark,
may
have had something of a vested interest in plumping for the arming of a
supposedly unarmed Muslim and Croatian military force in ex Yugoslavia.
Only writers of the calibre of Jonathon Swift or in our day Kurt
Vonnegut
or Joseph Heller could do justice to the subject matter here. Slaughter
House 5 and Catch 22 expose the myths associated with so-called "just
wars".
War is just war. It is nothing more and nothing less.
War has never been anything other than slaughter of human and animal
life -
It is destruction of the environment. Capitalism cannot exist without an
enemy. It must create an enemy to justify its 'just' wars. No enemy - No
excuse for military intervention - No intervention - No commercial take
over - No arms profits.
*Arms* - In the Balkans alone, since the late 1980's, vast fortunes
have
been made by mainly US and German arms companies. Mortars to MiG fighter
aircraft have been shipped to the region via various 'aid' agencies, the
UN
and even NATO for use against the Serbs by the "defenceless"
Muslim|Croat
Armies. (Refer Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy DFASP of
Act|Nov
1992 and UN reports). Bill Clinton, The Irish Times 30.8.94 - "Despite
the
UN Arms Embargo the CIA will continue to send arms to the Bosnian
Muslims".
During the course of their violent war of secession from the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991|92 Croat and Muslim separatist
forces in synchronised attacks took siege of all Yugoslav People's Army
(JNA) barracks across Croatia and Bosnia rendering the JNA useless in
its
defense of civilians in most areas. (These actions are detailed in the
book
"Breaking of Yugoslavia and Armed Secession of Croatia" by Dusan Vilic
and
Bosko Todorovic. The book contains copies of authentic military
transcripts). Simon Wiesenthal, Director of the Jewish Documentation
Centre
Vienna - Slobodna Bosna Sarajevo 21.5.97 - "There were factories of
military ammunition and weapons throughout the country, and when the war
in
Yugoslavia started, everybody had ammunition and weapons, everybody was
armed".
Bosnian Muslim businessmen already owned the arms factories in Gorazde -
Local Muslim forces backed by foreign Mujahedin had launched massive
attacks on Serb communities around Gorazde during 1991|92 - 2 years
before
the media began to talk of Serb attacks on Gorazde.
(The media did not mention that Muslim forces used the tops of high
buildings, to include the hospital in Gorazde, as military
installations.
(Read: The Truth About Gorazde - Task Force on Terrorism &
Unconventional
Warfare - US House of Representatives Washington 14.5.94).
In November 1996 under its new PROGRAMME FOR BOSNIA so called, the US
launched another megabucks ($400 million of them) military training and
equipment programme for the Muslim|Croat Federation Armies. This is what
is
duplicitously known as 'Aid'.
Arms and the Man. With Peace verboten.
'Retired' US Generals have been training Muslim and Croat forces in
Bosnia
for years.
There are those who fervently believe that war could have been avoided
in
the Balkans had it not been for the imperialist actions of a supremely
arrogant cabal of Western capitalists.
With their obscene race to effect 'independence' for Croatia et al,
their
insane need to sweep away the last crumbs of socialism in Yugoslavia and
grab the markets there, they caused this terrible war. A war which
brought
chaos, horror and loss of every kind to all the peoples of the ex SFR of
Yugoslavia. Furthermore, their use of special agents to carry out
terrorist
attacks and rig election results has ensured the placing in to power of
fascist leaders who are dedicated to suppression of working class and
poorer populations in the region. These entrepreneurs, their hired thugs
in
the field and those in the media who promoted their case, are the true
War
Criminals in the Balkans scenario.
Whilst on the subject of Fascism|Capitalism - This is what the President
of
Croatia Franjo Tudjman had to say in support for the Nazi 'ideology' in
his book titled "Wastelands of History" - "Genocide is a natural
phenomenon, in harmony with the societal and mythologically divine
nature.
Genocide is not only permitted, it is recommended even commanded by the
word of the Almighty, whether it is useful for the survival or the
restoration of the Kingdom of the Chosen Nation, or for the presersation
and the spreading of its one and only correst faith".
The curriculum vitae for the President of the other new Western created
puppet state or Banana Republic in the Balkans, Alija Izetbegovic, reads
thus -
"As a teenager he co founded Bosnia's version of "Hitler Youth", the
"Young
Muslims". Helped establish the Nazi Muslim SS Khanjar Division which was
responsible for appalling atrocities in Yugoslavia in the1940's. 1946:
Arrested and jailed for 3 years for founding the fascist journal
MUDZAHID.
Played major role as ABWEHR and special GESTAPO agent during World War
II.
In 1983 arrested and jailed for 6 years for anti-social fascist
activities.
President Izetbegovic has exploited and abused the Muslim faith to the
detriment of the Muslim people of Bosnia. Here is his "Islamic
Declaration"
which was reprinted in Sarajevo in 1990: "There can be no peace or
coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith and
institutions. The Islamic movement must and can take power as soon as it
is
morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the
non-Islamic
power, but to build up a new Islamic one ..."
Nazism is represented at highest order to this day in ex Yugoslavia.
Upon
achieving power in 1991 Tudjman surrounded himself with fellow right
wing
extremists. These included ageing former operatives with the World War
II
Croatian Nazi regime. Some of whom had been incorporated into service
during the Cold War era with Western Intelligence Agencies. Perhaps the
most sinister figure to emerge, though certainly not from the shadows in
recent times since he lived the good life in Australia for 50 years, is
one
Dinko Sakic. Sakic was the last Commander of the Jasenovac extermination
camp in Croatia. On Sakic's return to Croatia in 1991, Tudjman appointed
him to a Senior position in the Croat Government. Tudjman gave Ustashe
member Julienne Bushich, who in September 1976 took part in the hijack
of a
TWA airliner, the job of adviser to the Croatian Ambassador to
Washington.
Her husband Zvonko, also a Croat member of the Ustashe Nazi forces, is
serving a life term for planting a bomb at New York's main railway
station.
Many more high ranking Nazi|Ustashe members were appointed to positions
in
the Tudjman Government. Despite efforts by the powers that be to
diminish
the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi forces during the 1940's amd
attempts
by certain writers in the West to re write history pertaining to that
time,
people nevertheless across the world manage to learn about what happened
in
camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau etc. There has though been a very
successful conspiracy by forces in the West to totally censor the
holocaust
which took place in Yugoslavia during the 1940's. (3).
The subject of censorship regards the Yugoslav Holocaust was raised in
Belgrade by organisers of ceremonies held recently to mark the May 9th
1945
end to World War II in Europe. The Belgrade Daily Tanjug wrote on 8th of
May last - "The unconditional surrender of Germany on May 9th 1945,
officially ended WWII in Europe, the bloodiest military conflict in the
history of mankind. WWII spilled into Yugoslavia when a dawn bombardment
rocked Belgrade on April 6th, 1941, followed by an invasion of German,
Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian troops, that eventually
reached
900,000. Croatian fascist leaders, known as Ustashes, allied themselves
to
Hitler (and the Vatican), proclaiming the clerico-fascist Independent
State
of Croatia on April 10th 1941. The Ustahse aimed to purge multi-ethnic
Croatia, then populated by about 1.5 million Serbs, by converting to
Catholicism about one third of the Serbs, routing one third, and
exterminating the rest. The extermination of hundreds of thousands
Serbs
followed diligently. About 700,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist
Croatians were killed most brutally in the Jasenovac concentration camp
alone. More than 17,000 children perished in separate death camps for
children. WWII was waged by 61 nations - a total of 2.1 billion people,
which was 96% of the world's population. Over 50 million people died, 30
million of them civilians. About 12 million perished in the camps.
Yugoslavia lost 1.7 million people, most of them Serbs and about 400,000
were wounded. Belgrade was the only city in Europe that had 2 death
camps,
Sajmiste and Banjica, in which 80,000 patriots were executed". End
quote.
Director of the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna Simon Wiesenthal
in
an interview on 21st May last in which he too highlighted the cover up
on
facts about the suffering of people in Yugoslavia during WWII said -
"The
Croat ustashe committed horrendous crimes. Many thousands of Serb
civilians, innocent people, were killed by the Ustashe at Jasenovac
death
camp". Simon Wiesenthal told the Independent Sarajevo review Slobodna
Bosna
- "Serbs saved Jews many times". He also went on to recall the horrors
suffered by the Serb, Jews and Gypsy people at the hands of the Nazis.
(4).
Continuing on the theme of censorhip, , holocaust, media and Public
Relations firms - PR company Ruder & Finn et al failed to suck all
Jewish
organisations into the rediculous anti socialist | anti Serb whirlpool
regards Bosnia -
For example - in March 1995 the "World Affairs" journal published the
following: Quote - While the "Jewish Frontier", along with all advocates
of
humane behaviour, abhors the slaughter in Bosnia, we feel it appropriate
to
publish a statement by survivors of Buchenwald on the historic
background
of the Serb-Bosnian conflict sent to us by John Ranz, Chairman of
Survivors
of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp group based in the USA: "The
gigantic
campaign to brainwash America by our media against the Serbian people is
just incredible, with its daily dose of one-sided information and
outright
lies. It is an outstanding achievement by the powerful public relations
Madison Avenue 'Boys' who have at their disposal large amounts of money
provided by a coalition of US and Middle Eastern oil countries. To our
shame, the Izetbegovic Government in Sarajevo, with its powerful
backers,
seem even to convince some Jewish 'leaders' who indirectly help the
murderers of our people in their war to subjugate the Serbs. We are not
being told that the Croatian Nazi collaborators and the Bosnian SS
Khanjar
Muslim units killed 95% of the Jewish people in Yugoslavia during WWII.
We
are not being told that the same Bosnian_Muslim and Croat Nazi allies
massacred 900,000 Serbs and the entire Gypsy population (20,000 or
more)of
men, women and children, just as they did to the Jews. Every Jew, every
victim of Nazism and every human being ought to know and understand why
the
Serbs are so desperately fighting against such powerful forces and why
they
adopted our post Holocaust slogan of 'Never Again'. Our media does not
tell
us that the Bosnian Muslims had two SS Divisions fighting at Stalingrad
on
the side of the Nazis, in the most crucial battle that decided a Nazi
victory or defeat. What is today's reality? The murderers of Jews, Serbs
and Gypsies are back from the US, Canada, Argentina and Australia where
they fled after WWII. These criminals were never punished. There were no
trials of Nazi criminals in Yugoslavia after the war. They are now
restoring Nazi symbols (in Croatia and Bosnia); they eliminated
anti-Nazi
anti-fascist monuments. Their military units use Nazi slogans like 'Sieg
Heil'. The international Nazi organisation , the International Brigade
(including the US Branch) announced a drive for volunteers to fight in
Bosnia and Croatia against the Serbs, the Communists and the Jews. (See
the
US Nazi organ 'The New Order' of January|February 1993, copies are
available on request). The Serbs fought the Nazis, they paid a terrible
price for standing at the side of the Allies against Hitler. They saved
many allied soldiers including hundreds of American fliers. They
welcomed
Jewish partisand as brothers.
Hitler bombed the Serbs for their stubborn resistance. Are our President
and NATO going in the same direction (instead of finding a peaceful
solution)? I shudder to think of it. Hitler and Clinton, no, it cannot
be".
John Ranz, Chairman of Survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in
"World Affairs" London March 1995.
Belgrade Daily Tanjug 6th April 1996 - "Some 2,270 people died when the
Germans began their dawn bombing raids on Belgrade on 6th April 1941.
According to German statisticians, 484
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Belgrade Daily Tanjug 6th April 1996 - "Some 2,270 people died when the
Germans began their dawn bombing raids on Belgrade on 6th April 1941.
According to German statisticians, 484 bombers dropped 360 tonnes of
bombs.
About 700 buildings, including the central post office and the railway
station were destroyed and 1,700 buildings were damaged in the bombings.
The total of 350,000 books were destroyed in the raids. During the 11
day
April war, 136 Yugoslav pilots were killed and 80 German aircraft were
downed. Serbian Information Bureau in Dublin 14th August 1993 - "As we
wait
for the first American bombs and missiles to fall on Serbian so-called
military targets in Bosnia, we remember US bombing raids on Yugoslavia
in
WWII. It was Orthodox Easter Sunday morning 1943 and a beautiful sunny,
cloudless day, when US bombers made their first appearance over
Belgrade.
Their targets: bridges over the River Sava, railway yards, German
barracks
etc. Their first direct hit? THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL in the centre of
Belgrade, with a large RED CROSS painted on its roof. Thousands of
Belgrade
citizens died that Easter morning, while the German military targets
remained largely undamaged. One four storey building in the residential
centre of Belgrade, destroyed in the US raid, is today the US Embassy in
Yugoslavia. Similar fate awaited the citizens of towns like Kraljevo,
Leskovac etc. Can we expect that the first "Military" target destroyed
in
Bosnia will be a hospital, school, homes and vital services? Of course,
today's technology is far more advanced, and the missiles hit the
intended
targets; tell that to the dead school children in Baghdad, the British
soldiers in their armoured vehicle in the desert, the residents and
staff
of the El Rashid Hotel inBaghdad, or the Somali civilians in the 'WAR
LORD'S HQ" in Mogadishu! When the p ower of the "mighty dollar" falls,
military thuggery follows. The anti-nuclear protests of the sixties were
inevitably accompanied by the slogan `'Yankee Go Home". Maybe it's time
they did". End Quote. SIB Dublin.
*OPERATION DELIBERATE FORCE * - On 29th August 1995, NATO war planes
backed by British, French and Muslim ground troops began a week long
series
of attacks on Serbian centres in Bosnia. Hundreds of civilia;ns died in
these attacks. Hospitals, schools, homes, bridges and civilian vital
services facilities were deliberately targetted and destroyed. This NATO
Blitzkrieg was titled 'Operation Deliberate force' and was coordinated
by
the US War Ship John F `kennedy moored at the time in the Adriatic Sea.
NATO's use of radioactive ammunition has ruined farmlands and people
continue to die from the effects of this ammunition. (The Allied Forces
dropped 88,500 tons of bombs on Baghdad in January and February 1991 -
US
warships joined in with further bombing raids in the form of long
distance
missiles etc. As part of their weaponry the Allies used what they
euphemistically called depleted uranium tipped rockets or tank busters.
Nuclear weapons in short. United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority reports
show that allied armies left at least 40 tons of depleted uranium on the
Gulf war battlefield, leaving vast areas of southern Iraq and much of
Kuwait polluted by radioactive waste. Tank ammunition alone contained
enough radioactive material, the International Committee of Radiology
Protection estimates, to cause "500,000 potential deaths if inhaled". PR
firm Hill & Knowleton received £11+ million from the Kuwaiti Royal
Family
to promote Allied intervention in the "war").
To return to the Bosnian scenario - Lisbon newspaper "Diaria de Noticias
(9.2.96) said of UN|NATO "Operation Deliberate Force" - "NATO DROPPED
MORE
BOMBS ON BOSNIAN SERB COMMUNITIES IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1995 THAN THE
GERMANS DID ON LONDON DURING WORLD WAR II"
On the 10th February 1994, six months prior to the execution of
"Operation
Deliverate Force", the London Independent wrote - "US A-10 tankbusters
armed with 30mm cannon that fire depleted uranium shells would be the
most
likely to be used against the few Bosnian Serb tanks. Laser-guided bombs
would be used against artillery positions, ammunition dumps and other
slightly 'softer' targets". The London Independent, 7.2.94 - "The
laser-guided bomb is the favourite and is mouned on the British Spartans
in
a special turret. The local forces would probably not know they were
'lases' until they went blind or were hit by a bomb". On the day that
this
article was published, on behalf of the people of so-called neutral
Ireland, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr
Dick
Spring endorsed NATO raids and the use of these weapons against the
Bosnian
Serbs. The BBC 13.2.94 - An American air pilot based in Italy poised to
hit
Serb positions in Bosnia said quote - "NATO pilots expect collateral
damage
but will try to stay with an acceptable level of collateral damage and
keep
the killing of neutrals at a minimum". The Irish Times 23.11.94 - "7
children and a pregnant woman were killed when NATO jets bombed a
factory
in the UN 'safe haven' of Bihac yesterday". 4.9.95 - Belgrade Daily
Tanjug
stated that "NATO used nuclear, toxic and cluster bombs on Serb civilian
centres and facilities in Bosnia". The Irish Times 30.8.95 - "The
Tanaiste
and Minister for Foreign Affairs in Ireland Mr Spring, said the 'NATO
bombing of Bosnian Serb positions was justified in view of the shelling
of
the Market place in Sarajevo earlier this week".
The pretext for UN\NATO attacks on the Serbs being alleged Serb
responsibility for the shelling of the Market market in Sarajevo on
28.8.95.
*MARKET PLACE ETC ATTACKS* - `of the August 1995 market bombing, the
Defence & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy vol XXIII No 7-8 of
July|August
1995 states - "Once again, the Sarajevo administration planted a charge
in
the market place in the city and when it was detonated with considerable
loss of life, it was blamed on the Bosnian Serba as a "mortar attack"
against innocent civilians. US intelligence sources told this journal
that
there was no radar tracking of an incoming round (although radar was in
place). There was also no collateral damage consistent with an incoming
round. And, just as was proven and stated by UN observers after the
previous market place "mortar attack", it was clear that this was also a
pre-placed charge by the Izetbegovic people designed to sacrifice their
own
citizens so that blame could be placed on the Bosnian Serbs, just before
important peace talks were to begin". A woman who witnessed the August
95
attack on Markale market from her flat window describes in her statement
to
the UN how she watched TV crews and ambulances converge on the market
PRIOR
to the explosion.
This was not the first time the leader of the Sarajevo or Bosnian
government, Alija Izetbegovic , had ordered the carrying out, with the
hiring of special agents, of atrocities against mainly innocent Muslim
people in Sarajevo. People in high places in the West knew full well
that
Izetbegovic agents bore responsibility for attacks on civilians in the
market, cemetery, food and water queues - as well as for sniper attacks
on
civilians and UN personnel in Sarajevo. Izetbegovic's army has carried
out
the most notorious of attacks on Muslim communities in Bosnia. Hitherto
these attacks were blamed on the Serbs. Shamefully Western politiicians
and
journalists conspired to prevent this information being broadcast to the
world at large.
An earlier attack in February 1994 on the Markale market claimed 68
lives.
This explosion was also described by the Defence & Foreign Affairs group
in
its July|August 95 report as a pre-placed mine set in place by agents of
the Izetbegovic Bosnian Govt. Despite the publication to a vast number
of
foreign journalists, the UN document which detailed facts and Muslim
Govt
culpability for this terrible crime, the document was used by one
Western
journalist only, Bernard Volker of the French TFI Network. Volker was
persecuted for broadcasting the UN document but has since been fully
vindicated as other military and UN personnel have gradually opened up
on
Bosnian Muslim Govt responsibility for this attack.
Realpolitik prevails - The late French President Francois Miterrand
states
in his book L'Annees des Adieux that the (now ex) UN Secretary General
Boutros Boutros Ghali had told him that he had irrefutable evidence as
to
Bosnian Govt culpability for the Markale bombings. This evidence not
revealed then for reasons of political expendiency.
Yet an earlier atrocity covered so explicitly by ex BBC reporter Martin
Bell, was the explosion in May 1992 which killed people queueing for
bread
in Sarajevo's Vase Miskin Street. Martin Bell in his report on what
became
known as the Bread Queue Massacre, blamed the Serbs for this crime. On
st
September 1992, 4 months after the Vase Miskin Street bombing, the
Republican group for the Investigation of Terrorism of the US Congress
issued a previously confidential report which details Bosnian Muslim
Govt
culpability for the Vase Miskin Street bombing. How often did viewers to
BBC coverage of the war in Bosnia hear Martin Bell speak of 'Sniper
Alley'
- Serbs as snipers - Muslims as victims. (5).
n its report of 29th Sebruary 1996 the Defence & Foreign Affairs group
in
London spoke further on the subject of pre-placed mines and the use by
the
Bosnian Govt of special foreign agents. Quote - "Very reliable sources
in
Sarajevo have confirmed that the number of mujahedin - foreign Islamist
mercenaries - fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina in support of the
Izetbegovic
administration is between 15,000 and 20,000. About half the mujahedin
number in the country make up the Khanjar Division". (As per the Nazi SS
Khanjar of the 1940's). "One senior US Congressman said of the mujahedin
-
'We know that the Izetbegovic people have been as barbarous as any in
the
Balkans, and yet the White House will not hear of anyone in the US Govt
or,
for that matter, among the NATO partners attempting to bring any Muslim
war
criminals to justice'. NATO troops did, however, raid one Iranian-run
terrorist camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina in February 1996, finding, among
other
things, booby-trapped toys which were to be planted in the countryside".
The Defence report went on to say that mujahedin activities in and
around
Sarajevo had led to some 60,000 indigenous Serb civilians fleaing from
that
city by late February 1996 to avoid living under an Izetbegovic-led
administration. Many Serbs had already left Sarajevo during the course
of
this war. By the end of 1992 40,000 Serb civilians had fled their homes
in
Sarajevo.
Another example of genocide against civilian Muslim communities carried
out
by the Bosnian Government was the August 1994 ground attack on the UN
"safe haven" of Bihac. Over 500 Muslim civilians died in the raids and
over
600,000 people were forced to flea the enclave. Many Serb people were
also
killed in the attacks. The Bosnian Government was assisted in its
assaults
by special forces rented from the US and Saudi Governments. The
so-called
rebel Muslim forces of Bihac represented the poorer peasant Muslim and
Serb
populations of that region. Serb and Bihac Muslim forces fought
together
here against the Western backed Bosnian Governemnt and the Western
backed
Croatian Government. Serb and Muslim forces fought together in several
areas in Bosnia against Western mercenary imperialist forces.
*MERCENARIES* - According to the Belgrade daily 'Politika' of
8.12.1994,
all warring sides in the ex Yugoslavia have had mercenaries from across
the
world fighting with them. The Serbs have been backed by hundreds of
Russian
volunteer soldiers - 300 of whom have been reported killed in action.
The
Croatian and Muslim sides have been supported by mercenaries from France
(French Foreign Leagion) Italy, Germany, Poland, England, the USA,
Indonesia, Algeria, Syria, Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia. The 'Politika'
said
that the mercenary forces fighting with the Croat and Muslim forces had
been recruited mainly from Western-based Nazi organisations. The daily
said
that German authorities, for one, when questioned about mercenaries in
the
Balkans, had paid no heed to a massive number of its citizens joining
the
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Croatian Army and that only on one occasion in 1992, the German Criminal
Bureau had said that a - quote - "considerable number of German
right-wing
extremists had participated in the Croatian struggle against Serb
communists".
In fact foreign mercenaries have operated in the Balkans on the payroll
of
wealthy businessmen and Western Governments anxious to effect
'independence' for the now ex Yugoslav states. Australian Ustashe forces
trained with the Australian Army in Aubury|Wodonga for decades prior to
returning to Yugoslavia to carry out terrorist activities against Serbs,
Croats or anyone protesting against the breakup of Yugoslavia. Their key
function was to create distrust and hatred between the thnic communities
in
the region. Between 1983 and 1992, the various anti Yugoslav|pro
separatist
mercenaries tortured and killed some 14,000 Serb people and effected the
"ethnic cleansing" of over 250,000 Serbs from their Krajinan an `Bosnian
homelands. It was not uncommon for these psychopaths to film their
monstrous crimes. One Italian born mercenary Roberto dela Feve happily
admitted in an interview with Epoca in 1995 that he had made billions of
liras from the sale of the tapes on the Western European black market.
The
videos show Serbs being raped and murdered by Italian, German, French
and
mujahedin mercenaries. Feve is with the 109th Nazi 'International
Brigade'
stationed in Rijeka and is paid by the Croat Government.
The Vienna daily Taeglich Alles - 15.8.95 wrote of British mercenaries
who
founded a 'Travel Agency' with branch offices in Munich and Zagreb who
were
offering 'Serb hunts' in Croatia.
Living Marxism Magazine May 1993 journalist Joan Phillips wrote of one
British mercenary, Robert Loftus, who went to Bosnia in 1992 to work
for
the Bosnian Muslim Government. In the report, Loftus is exposed as
having
sold stories of "Serb atrocities" to Western journalists. Loftus admits
in
his diary that he was a mercenary, receiving money for fighting with the
Muslism. His diary reveals that he had no hard evidence for his atrocity
stories. One of the reporters Loftus worked for was an American, Roy
Gutman. Gutman was US Newsday's European Bureau Chief at the time - Soon
after making himself famous and richer by publishing Loftus's totally
fabricated stories of "Serb run death camps", "Serb mass rape", "Serb
concentration camps" etc, Gutman won America's top press award, the
Pulitzer Prize. (6).
(On 5.8.92 Penny Marshall (ITN) with her cameraman Jeremy Irvin
and
fellow reporter Ian Williams (ITN) and Martin Bell's mate Ed Vulliamy
(The
Guardian) visited Trnopolje camp in Bosnia. Their "Belsen '92" picture
of
Fikret Alic supposedly "behind barbed wire fence in Serb death camp" won
Marshall's team armfulls of prizes to include the BAFTA Award. For the
truth behind this story refer the articles "The Picture That Fooled The
World" LM Mag Feb 97 and "The Mag ITN Wants To Gag" LM Mag 98 March
1997.
*OPERATION STORM* _ In August 1995, Croat and Muslim government forces
backed by special US troops launched a massive attack on mainly Serbian
communities in Krajina. This combined action, coordinated by the USS JF
Kennedy and assisted by NATO jets finally finished the job Hitler had
set
out to do in the 1940's via the Ustashe. They totally "cleansed" the
Krajina of all but a handfull of its Serbian population. Thousands of
civilians died in these attacks and another 300,000 people fled ahead of
the raids. Hundreds of people died when Muslim and US forces launched
ground attacks on the fleeing Serb refugees. Croat MiG fighter planes
bombed the miles and miles long trail of refugees. Many people died in
these air attacks, many more are still missing. 'Operation Storm' has
been
described in the F
Defence & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy report of September 1995 as
"A
WAR CRIM MORE THAN WORTHY OF THE NAME".
*REFUGEES* _ Muslim refugees from Bosnia have been accorded assistance
in
their host countries and quite rightly. They have also been granted
unlimited media attention wherein they have had the opportunity to speak
of
their experience of war. What though of the plight of hundreds of
thousands
of Serb, Muslim, Croat, Romany and other refugees who have sought refuge
in
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia? Red Cross figures published on 1st
Febuary 1993 show that 575,000 people had registered as refugees in the
FR
Yugoslavia. Statistics show the ethnic breakdown of refugees from the
war
zones of ex Yugoslavia as follows: Serbs 84.2% (484,000) Muslims 6.2%
(36,000) Croats 1.6% (9,000) Other meaning Albanians, Jews, Gypsies,
Bulgarians, Hungarians etc 8% (46,000). The 1997 census on refugees
living
in the FR Yugoslavia shows that there are now over 650,000 registered
refugees in that country. Only the number of Croatian refugees had
dropped
(from 9 to 3,000 people. Due to the criminal UN sanctions on RF
Yugoslavia
, over 20,000 people have died due to lack of vital medicines and foods.
That figure to end of 1994 only. Many of the victims of sanctions come
from
people within the refugee community. Despite pleas from the current High
Commissioner for Refugees for urgent aid for Yugoslavia, instead of an
increase in aid or a total lifting of UN sanctions on that state,
international aid organisations have been instructed by the UN bosses to
stop all aid - even the little that was getting in to the country has
now
virtually stopped.
*THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL* _ As Dr Raymond Kent, Emeritus Professor of
History,
University of California Berkley and Sec. for Americans for
International
Justice Committee wrote in an open letter and petition published in 'Den
Haag' 23.7.96: The Hague Tribunal on war crimes in ex Yugsoslavia "had
been conceived in mischief, and motivated by political expediency and
might
for right'. Dr Kent went on to explain that the court existed only for
Serbs. The reason the Hague Tribunal refuses to put Dr Radovan Karadzic
and Gen Ratko Mladic on the stand, despite their appeals for a Hearing,
is
that they (the ex Serb leaders) know too much - Who the real criminals
are
in Bosnia - What the UN, NATO and other Western agencies have been up to
during the time of their involvement in the Balkans war. Who is running
the heroin trade in the region ..... This would all be exposed to the
Tribunal.
All cases against Serbs so far brought before the Tribunal have
collapsed
due to lack of hard evidence and exposure of dirty tricks.
(1) Under the Contact Group Plan (CGP) the Serbs agreed to relinquish
21%
of their ancestral lands in Bosnia to the Muslim|Croat Federation. Under
the CGP for Bosnia the Muslim|Croat Federation stand to gain 70 to 100%
of
all lead, zinc, ore, bauxite, salt, magnesite, asbestos, dolomite, OIL,
coal and lignite deposits. 75% of existing hydro electric power
facilities
and 78% of all thermal power plants. 13 Serb cities. Serb roads and
waterways would be cut off allowing no access to industrial facilities.
The
biggest railway juncture at Dodoj with river ports would become property
of the Muslim|Croat Fed. Under the CGP, Serbs would lose most of their
hospitals, ALL ARMS FACTORIES WOULD BE RETAINED BY THE MUSLIM|CROAT
FEDERATION and all river valleys would become territory of the
Federation.
Elizabeth Morrisey of Kleinman International Consultants NY said in
November 1995 "SERBIA CAN OFFER CHEAP, SKILLED LABOUR, A MARKET OF 10.5
MILLION PEOPLE AND A UNIQUE POSITION IN THE HEART OF THE BALKANS".
(2) Land inhabited by indigenous Bosnian Serbs, which, with a stroke of
a
pen (in Brussels), on the 6th April 1992, was illegally and
unconstitutionally annexed to the newly declared 'independent' state of
Bosnia. Just months earlier, the same situation had been forced on the
Serbian communities of the Krajina. With the stroke of a pen, Krajinan
Serb
homelands were summarily, illegally and unconstitutionally annexed to
the
newly declared 'independent' state of Croatia. The Serbs though were not
supposed to complain about becoming overnight second class inhabitants
of a
foreign state let alone take up arms.
(3) The German|Vatican backed Ustashe were the clero-fascist forces of
the
Independent state of Croatia in the 1940's. The Muslim SS Khanjar
forces
were allied to the Ustashe against the anti fascist Partisan volunteers.
(4) Read: "The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican" by Vladimir Dedijer.
(5)
UN report of 1.8.95 shows Bosnin Govt agents to be responsible for
sniping
attacks. They had been operating from atop Bosnian Govt buildings in
Sarajevo. The sniping stopped when the UN threatened the Muslims with
publication of its reports on Markale etc attacks. (6) Rape in Bosnia -
Final UN etc reports show less than 300 victims. Not 60,000, Bosnian
Govt
subitted 126 cases to the UN. Also read: "Censored -The News That didn't
Make the News and Why. 1996 Project Censored Year Book 20th Anniv -Ed
by
Carl Jensen|Walter Cronkite Seven Stories Press. War Crimes Reports plus
"The Truth About Srebrenica" available from PAW Dublin Fax 2806185.
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--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
The following paper attempts to address the subject of neoloberalism as
dominant ethos imposed by the West on, for one, Bosnia. Neoliberalism
being
carried out in the Balkans scenario under the guise of 'humanitarian'
intervention with that intervention effected through an overwhelming
media
propaganda campaign of global dimension devised principally by public
relations companies on behalf of such diverse clients as the Vatican,
oil
rich families of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei and wealthy business men
and
women in Germany and the United States of America.
In order to gain some understanding of the complexities inherent to the
recent war in the Balkans and events thereafter it is of vital
importance
to jettison propaganda masquerading as information foist upon the public
by
unscrupulous and venal opinion makers.
"Contrary to common assumptions", writes Australian scholar Alex Carey,
"propaganda plays an important role - and certainly a more covert and
sophisticated role - in technologically advanced democratic societies,
where the maintenance of the existing powers and privileges is
vulnerable
to popular opinion".
Propaganda has a long and dishonourable tradition in the West. As early
as
1933 the Nazis turned for guidance to Ivy Lee the US pioneer of public
relations. Lee's firm was hired for $25,000 a year by the German Dye
Trust,
I,G, Farben which invited him to visit Germany to meet Hitler and
Hitler's
propaganda minister Josef Goebbels and other Nazi Government officials.
Lee's 28 year old son, James Lee, went to work for Farben in Berlin for
$33,000 a year.
An employee of Lee's firm drafted a report suggesting that Joachim von
Ribbentrop, the German general who later became Hitler's foreign
minister,
"undertake a definite campaign to clarify the American mind" by
"speaking
over the radio to the American people" and writing "a considered article
for an important American publication".
So. Then as Now. He who pays the Piper calls the Tune.
In essence PR companies have been charged with mounting and sustaining a
case against, for example, the Serbs as international pariahs to justify
Western military intervention in ex Yugoslavia. In fact in the Balkans
scenario, the Serbs have simply been in the way in that they have
represented an impediment to the take over of territories rich in
mineral
and oil deposits and human resources and offering enormous potential to
outside interests in terms of political and strategic spheres of
influence
at the heart of Europe. (1).
The lie projected by the persuaders was that the Serbs were the
"aggressor"
in ex Yugoslavia. Invaders commandeering other peoples territories. For
example, PR firms via the Western media told the world that the Serbs
had
invaded and illegally occupied 70% of Bosnian territory.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth, casualty of war, is
that indigenous Bosnian Serbs owned, resided on and farmed some 68% of
Bosnian territory prior to the outbreak of this war. (2).
>From the seemingly bottomless coffers associated with oil, military and
drugs barons in the West, US and British-based PR firms have received
vast
sums of money to organise propaganda campaigns on behalf of their
clients
in the Balkans - The Izetbegovic administration in Sarajevo, the Tudjman
government in Zagreb and the heroin mafia New York-based Albanian|Kosovo
Separatist Movement. (Source: US Department of Justice).
This is what James Harff, Director of the Washington-based PR firm Ruder
&
Finn Global Public Affairs company had to say to Jacques Merlino a
respectable associate editor of France's Channel Two - "To be frank I
can
tell you that the vast majority of Americans wondered in which AFRICAN
country to locate Bosnia. No one could understand what was going on in
Bosnia", he said. Mr Harff in acknowledging the general public's lack of
comprehension of issues related to Bosnia exults over the golden
opportunity this presented to people such as himself. "In one shot", he
said, "we were able to offer a simple story a history of good guys and
the
bad guys".
In the Channel Two interview, the PR firm boss went on to describe in
some
detail how the demonisation of the Serbs was achieved. Principally he
said
through the spreading of false rumour and unsubstantiated reports of
atrocities and war crimes. Omission of the more salient facts to a story
often achieved the effect of scapegoating Serbs. "There were all sorts
of
reasons", said James Harff, "why the Jewish intellectuals and
organisations
were hostile to the Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Our challenge was to
obtain
a reversal of this situation. We succeeded in doing so, in a masterly
manner, between the 2nd and 5th of August 1992, when the New York paper
Newsday led with a story on Serbian camps". French newsman Jacques
Merlino
said that Elie Wiesel told him that there was no comparison between the
Nazi slaughter houses of World War Two and the prison camps where
Muslims
and Croats had been held prisoner by Serbs. Wiesel had visited these
prisoner of war camps in ex Yugoslavia.
James Harff went on to speak gleefully of how Ruder & Finn had jumped on
the "death camp" potential of the Newsday report which carried with the
story a photograph which had tugged at the world's heart strings. This
was
of a horribly emaciated man. The world's assumption was that this man
was a
Muslim who had been starved and mistreated by Serb prison guards. The
truth
behind this photograph has only just been published. (See over).
James Harff again ... "We convened 3 major Jewish organisations. B'nai
B'Riths Anti Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the
American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them that they print an
insert
in the New York Times and organise a protest in front of the UN
building.
This really worked. The engagement of Jewish organisations on the side
of
the Bosnian Muslims was a super poker play", Harff said. He continued -
"Immediately thereafter we were able to associate the Serbs with the
Nazis
in public opinion. It was not long before there was a clear change in
the
press language with emotional terms like "concentration camps" evoking
Nazi
Germany and the gas chambers at Auschwitz", Harff concluded. In his book
"The Truth From Yugoslavia is not Being Reported Honestly" published by
Albin Michel SA in Paris in 1993, Jacques Merlino also mentioned that as
a
result of the "concentration camp" story, many Jewish MP's put their
signatures to the famous collective letter, headed by Margaret Thatcher,
to
the Wall Street Journal in September 1993, calling on the West to arm
the
Muslims and bomb the Serbs.
No one has so transgressed the rules pertaining to good taste by going
so
far as to suggest, that Mrs Thatcher, pace her arms dealing son Mark,
may
have had something of a vested interest in plumping for the arming of a
supposedly unarmed Muslim and Croatian military force in ex Yugoslavia.
Only writers of the calibre of Jonathon Swift or in our day Kurt
Vonnegut
or Joseph Heller could do justice to the subject matter here. Slaughter
House 5 and Catch 22 expose the myths associated with so-called "just
wars".
War is just war. It is nothing more and nothing less.
War has never been anything other than slaughter of human and animal
life -
It is destruction of the environment. Capitalism cannot exist without an
enemy. It must create an enemy to justify its 'just' wars. No enemy - No
excuse for military intervention - No intervention - No commercial take
over - No arms profits.
*Arms* - In the Balkans alone, since the late 1980's, vast fortunes
have
been made by mainly US and German arms companies. Mortars to MiG fighter
aircraft have been shipped to the region via various 'aid' agencies, the
UN
and even NATO for use against the Serbs by the "defenceless"
Muslim|Croat
Armies. (Refer Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy DFASP of
Act|Nov
1992 and UN reports). Bill Clinton, The Irish Times 30.8.94 - "Despite
the
UN Arms Embargo the CIA will continue to send arms to the Bosnian
Muslims".
During the course of their violent war of secession from the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991|92 Croat and Muslim separatist
forces in synchronised attacks took siege of all Yugoslav People's Army
(JNA) barracks across Croatia and Bosnia rendering the JNA useless in
its
defense of civilians in most areas. (These actions are detailed in the
book
"Breaking of Yugoslavia and Armed Secession of Croatia" by Dusan Vilic
and
Bosko Todorovic. The book contains copies of authentic military
transcripts). Simon Wiesenthal, Director of the Jewish Documentation
Centre
Vienna - Slobodna Bosna Sarajevo 21.5.97 - "There were factories of
military ammunition and weapons throughout the country, and when the war
in
Yugoslavia started, everybody had ammunition and weapons, everybody was
armed".
Bosnian Muslim businessmen already owned the arms factories in Gorazde -
Local Muslim forces backed by foreign Mujahedin had launched massive
attacks on Serb communities around Gorazde during 1991|92 - 2 years
before
the media began to talk of Serb attacks on Gorazde.
(The media did not mention that Muslim forces used the tops of high
buildings, to include the hospital in Gorazde, as military
installations.
(Read: The Truth About Gorazde - Task Force on Terrorism &
Unconventional
Warfare - US House of Representatives Washington 14.5.94).
In November 1996 under its new PROGRAMME FOR BOSNIA so called, the US
launched another megabucks ($400 million of them) military training and
equipment programme for the Muslim|Croat Federation Armies. This is what
is
duplicitously known as 'Aid'.
Arms and the Man. With Peace verboten.
'Retired' US Generals have been training Muslim and Croat forces in
Bosnia
for years.
There are those who fervently believe that war could have been avoided
in
the Balkans had it not been for the imperialist actions of a supremely
arrogant cabal of Western capitalists.
With their obscene race to effect 'independence' for Croatia et al,
their
insane need to sweep away the last crumbs of socialism in Yugoslavia and
grab the markets there, they caused this terrible war. A war which
brought
chaos, horror and loss of every kind to all the peoples of the ex SFR of
Yugoslavia. Furthermore, their use of special agents to carry out
terrorist
attacks and rig election results has ensured the placing in to power of
fascist leaders who are dedicated to suppression of working class and
poorer populations in the region. These entrepreneurs, their hired thugs
in
the field and those in the media who promoted their case, are the true
War
Criminals in the Balkans scenario.
Whilst on the subject of Fascism|Capitalism - This is what the President
of
Croatia Franjo Tudjman had to say in support for the Nazi 'ideology' in
his book titled "Wastelands of History" - "Genocide is a natural
phenomenon, in harmony with the societal and mythologically divine
nature.
Genocide is not only permitted, it is recommended even commanded by the
word of the Almighty, whether it is useful for the survival or the
restoration of the Kingdom of the Chosen Nation, or for the presersation
and the spreading of its one and only correst faith".
The curriculum vitae for the President of the other new Western created
puppet state or Banana Republic in the Balkans, Alija Izetbegovic, reads
thus -
"As a teenager he co founded Bosnia's version of "Hitler Youth", the
"Young
Muslims". Helped establish the Nazi Muslim SS Khanjar Division which was
responsible for appalling atrocities in Yugoslavia in the1940's. 1946:
Arrested and jailed for 3 years for founding the fascist journal
MUDZAHID.
Played major role as ABWEHR and special GESTAPO agent during World War
II.
In 1983 arrested and jailed for 6 years for anti-social fascist
activities.
President Izetbegovic has exploited and abused the Muslim faith to the
detriment of the Muslim people of Bosnia. Here is his "Islamic
Declaration"
which was reprinted in Sarajevo in 1990: "There can be no peace or
coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith and
institutions. The Islamic movement must and can take power as soon as it
is
morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the
non-Islamic
power, but to build up a new Islamic one ..."
Nazism is represented at highest order to this day in ex Yugoslavia.
Upon
achieving power in 1991 Tudjman surrounded himself with fellow right
wing
extremists. These included ageing former operatives with the World War
II
Croatian Nazi regime. Some of whom had been incorporated into service
during the Cold War era with Western Intelligence Agencies. Perhaps the
most sinister figure to emerge, though certainly not from the shadows in
recent times since he lived the good life in Australia for 50 years, is
one
Dinko Sakic. Sakic was the last Commander of the Jasenovac extermination
camp in Croatia. On Sakic's return to Croatia in 1991, Tudjman appointed
him to a Senior position in the Croat Government. Tudjman gave Ustashe
member Julienne Bushich, who in September 1976 took part in the hijack
of a
TWA airliner, the job of adviser to the Croatian Ambassador to
Washington.
Her husband Zvonko, also a Croat member of the Ustashe Nazi forces, is
serving a life term for planting a bomb at New York's main railway
station.
Many more high ranking Nazi|Ustashe members were appointed to positions
in
the Tudjman Government. Despite efforts by the powers that be to
diminish
the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi forces during the 1940's amd
attempts
by certain writers in the West to re write history pertaining to that
time,
people nevertheless across the world manage to learn about what happened
in
camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau etc. There has though been a very
successful conspiracy by forces in the West to totally censor the
holocaust
which took place in Yugoslavia during the 1940's. (3).
The subject of censorship regards the Yugoslav Holocaust was raised in
Belgrade by organisers of ceremonies held recently to mark the May 9th
1945
end to World War II in Europe. The Belgrade Daily Tanjug wrote on 8th of
May last - "The unconditional surrender of Germany on May 9th 1945,
officially ended WWII in Europe, the bloodiest military conflict in the
history of mankind. WWII spilled into Yugoslavia when a dawn bombardment
rocked Belgrade on April 6th, 1941, followed by an invasion of German,
Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian troops, that eventually
reached
900,000. Croatian fascist leaders, known as Ustashes, allied themselves
to
Hitler (and the Vatican), proclaiming the clerico-fascist Independent
State
of Croatia on April 10th 1941. The Ustahse aimed to purge multi-ethnic
Croatia, then populated by about 1.5 million Serbs, by converting to
Catholicism about one third of the Serbs, routing one third, and
exterminating the rest. The extermination of hundreds of thousands
Serbs
followed diligently. About 700,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist
Croatians were killed most brutally in the Jasenovac concentration camp
alone. More than 17,000 children perished in separate death camps for
children. WWII was waged by 61 nations - a total of 2.1 billion people,
which was 96% of the world's population. Over 50 million people died, 30
million of them civilians. About 12 million perished in the camps.
Yugoslavia lost 1.7 million people, most of them Serbs and about 400,000
were wounded. Belgrade was the only city in Europe that had 2 death
camps,
Sajmiste and Banjica, in which 80,000 patriots were executed". End
quote.
Director of the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna Simon Wiesenthal
in
an interview on 21st May last in which he too highlighted the cover up
on
facts about the suffering of people in Yugoslavia during WWII said -
"The
Croat ustashe committed horrendous crimes. Many thousands of Serb
civilians, innocent people, were killed by the Ustashe at Jasenovac
death
camp". Simon Wiesenthal told the Independent Sarajevo review Slobodna
Bosna
- "Serbs saved Jews many times". He also went on to recall the horrors
suffered by the Serb, Jews and Gypsy people at the hands of the Nazis.
(4).
Continuing on the theme of censorhip, , holocaust, media and Public
Relations firms - PR company Ruder & Finn et al failed to suck all
Jewish
organisations into the rediculous anti socialist | anti Serb whirlpool
regards Bosnia -
For example - in March 1995 the "World Affairs" journal published the
following: Quote - While the "Jewish Frontier", along with all advocates
of
humane behaviour, abhors the slaughter in Bosnia, we feel it appropriate
to
publish a statement by survivors of Buchenwald on the historic
background
of the Serb-Bosnian conflict sent to us by John Ranz, Chairman of
Survivors
of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp group based in the USA: "The
gigantic
campaign to brainwash America by our media against the Serbian people is
just incredible, with its daily dose of one-sided information and
outright
lies. It is an outstanding achievement by the powerful public relations
Madison Avenue 'Boys' who have at their disposal large amounts of money
provided by a coalition of US and Middle Eastern oil countries. To our
shame, the Izetbegovic Government in Sarajevo, with its powerful
backers,
seem even to convince some Jewish 'leaders' who indirectly help the
murderers of our people in their war to subjugate the Serbs. We are not
being told that the Croatian Nazi collaborators and the Bosnian SS
Khanjar
Muslim units killed 95% of the Jewish people in Yugoslavia during WWII.
We
are not being told that the same Bosnian_Muslim and Croat Nazi allies
massacred 900,000 Serbs and the entire Gypsy population (20,000 or
more)of
men, women and children, just as they did to the Jews. Every Jew, every
victim of Nazism and every human being ought to know and understand why
the
Serbs are so desperately fighting against such powerful forces and why
they
adopted our post Holocaust slogan of 'Never Again'. Our media does not
tell
us that the Bosnian Muslims had two SS Divisions fighting at Stalingrad
on
the side of the Nazis, in the most crucial battle that decided a Nazi
victory or defeat. What is today's reality? The murderers of Jews, Serbs
and Gypsies are back from the US, Canada, Argentina and Australia where
they fled after WWII. These criminals were never punished. There were no
trials of Nazi criminals in Yugoslavia after the war. They are now
restoring Nazi symbols (in Croatia and Bosnia); they eliminated
anti-Nazi
anti-fascist monuments. Their military units use Nazi slogans like 'Sieg
Heil'. The international Nazi organisation , the International Brigade
(including the US Branch) announced a drive for volunteers to fight in
Bosnia and Croatia against the Serbs, the Communists and the Jews. (See
the
US Nazi organ 'The New Order' of January|February 1993, copies are
available on request). The Serbs fought the Nazis, they paid a terrible
price for standing at the side of the Allies against Hitler. They saved
many allied soldiers including hundreds of American fliers. They
welcomed
Jewish partisand as brothers.
Hitler bombed the Serbs for their stubborn resistance. Are our President
and NATO going in the same direction (instead of finding a peaceful
solution)? I shudder to think of it. Hitler and Clinton, no, it cannot
be".
John Ranz, Chairman of Survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in
"World Affairs" London March 1995.
Belgrade Daily Tanjug 6th April 1996 - "Some 2,270 people died when the
Germans began their dawn bombing raids on Belgrade on 6th April 1941.
According to German statisticians, 484
************************************************************
The Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC) is an initiative
for cultural promotion, development education and
campaigning solidarity, linking Ireland and Latin America.
LASC 5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2, Ireland
Phone and Fax: +353-1-6760435
email: lasc@...
Email services kindly donated by Ireland On Line.
************************************************************
Belgrade Daily Tanjug 6th April 1996 - "Some 2,270 people died when the
Germans began their dawn bombing raids on Belgrade on 6th April 1941.
According to German statisticians, 484 bombers dropped 360 tonnes of
bombs.
About 700 buildings, including the central post office and the railway
station were destroyed and 1,700 buildings were damaged in the bombings.
The total of 350,000 books were destroyed in the raids. During the 11
day
April war, 136 Yugoslav pilots were killed and 80 German aircraft were
downed. Serbian Information Bureau in Dublin 14th August 1993 - "As we
wait
for the first American bombs and missiles to fall on Serbian so-called
military targets in Bosnia, we remember US bombing raids on Yugoslavia
in
WWII. It was Orthodox Easter Sunday morning 1943 and a beautiful sunny,
cloudless day, when US bombers made their first appearance over
Belgrade.
Their targets: bridges over the River Sava, railway yards, German
barracks
etc. Their first direct hit? THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL in the centre of
Belgrade, with a large RED CROSS painted on its roof. Thousands of
Belgrade
citizens died that Easter morning, while the German military targets
remained largely undamaged. One four storey building in the residential
centre of Belgrade, destroyed in the US raid, is today the US Embassy in
Yugoslavia. Similar fate awaited the citizens of towns like Kraljevo,
Leskovac etc. Can we expect that the first "Military" target destroyed
in
Bosnia will be a hospital, school, homes and vital services? Of course,
today's technology is far more advanced, and the missiles hit the
intended
targets; tell that to the dead school children in Baghdad, the British
soldiers in their armoured vehicle in the desert, the residents and
staff
of the El Rashid Hotel inBaghdad, or the Somali civilians in the 'WAR
LORD'S HQ" in Mogadishu! When the p ower of the "mighty dollar" falls,
military thuggery follows. The anti-nuclear protests of the sixties were
inevitably accompanied by the slogan `'Yankee Go Home". Maybe it's time
they did". End Quote. SIB Dublin.
*OPERATION DELIBERATE FORCE * - On 29th August 1995, NATO war planes
backed by British, French and Muslim ground troops began a week long
series
of attacks on Serbian centres in Bosnia. Hundreds of civilia;ns died in
these attacks. Hospitals, schools, homes, bridges and civilian vital
services facilities were deliberately targetted and destroyed. This NATO
Blitzkrieg was titled 'Operation Deliberate force' and was coordinated
by
the US War Ship John F `kennedy moored at the time in the Adriatic Sea.
NATO's use of radioactive ammunition has ruined farmlands and people
continue to die from the effects of this ammunition. (The Allied Forces
dropped 88,500 tons of bombs on Baghdad in January and February 1991 -
US
warships joined in with further bombing raids in the form of long
distance
missiles etc. As part of their weaponry the Allies used what they
euphemistically called depleted uranium tipped rockets or tank busters.
Nuclear weapons in short. United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority reports
show that allied armies left at least 40 tons of depleted uranium on the
Gulf war battlefield, leaving vast areas of southern Iraq and much of
Kuwait polluted by radioactive waste. Tank ammunition alone contained
enough radioactive material, the International Committee of Radiology
Protection estimates, to cause "500,000 potential deaths if inhaled". PR
firm Hill & Knowleton received £11+ million from the Kuwaiti Royal
Family
to promote Allied intervention in the "war").
To return to the Bosnian scenario - Lisbon newspaper "Diaria de Noticias
(9.2.96) said of UN|NATO "Operation Deliberate Force" - "NATO DROPPED
MORE
BOMBS ON BOSNIAN SERB COMMUNITIES IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1995 THAN THE
GERMANS DID ON LONDON DURING WORLD WAR II"
On the 10th February 1994, six months prior to the execution of
"Operation
Deliverate Force", the London Independent wrote - "US A-10 tankbusters
armed with 30mm cannon that fire depleted uranium shells would be the
most
likely to be used against the few Bosnian Serb tanks. Laser-guided bombs
would be used against artillery positions, ammunition dumps and other
slightly 'softer' targets". The London Independent, 7.2.94 - "The
laser-guided bomb is the favourite and is mouned on the British Spartans
in
a special turret. The local forces would probably not know they were
'lases' until they went blind or were hit by a bomb". On the day that
this
article was published, on behalf of the people of so-called neutral
Ireland, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr
Dick
Spring endorsed NATO raids and the use of these weapons against the
Bosnian
Serbs. The BBC 13.2.94 - An American air pilot based in Italy poised to
hit
Serb positions in Bosnia said quote - "NATO pilots expect collateral
damage
but will try to stay with an acceptable level of collateral damage and
keep
the killing of neutrals at a minimum". The Irish Times 23.11.94 - "7
children and a pregnant woman were killed when NATO jets bombed a
factory
in the UN 'safe haven' of Bihac yesterday". 4.9.95 - Belgrade Daily
Tanjug
stated that "NATO used nuclear, toxic and cluster bombs on Serb civilian
centres and facilities in Bosnia". The Irish Times 30.8.95 - "The
Tanaiste
and Minister for Foreign Affairs in Ireland Mr Spring, said the 'NATO
bombing of Bosnian Serb positions was justified in view of the shelling
of
the Market place in Sarajevo earlier this week".
The pretext for UN\NATO attacks on the Serbs being alleged Serb
responsibility for the shelling of the Market market in Sarajevo on
28.8.95.
*MARKET PLACE ETC ATTACKS* - `of the August 1995 market bombing, the
Defence & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy vol XXIII No 7-8 of
July|August
1995 states - "Once again, the Sarajevo administration planted a charge
in
the market place in the city and when it was detonated with considerable
loss of life, it was blamed on the Bosnian Serba as a "mortar attack"
against innocent civilians. US intelligence sources told this journal
that
there was no radar tracking of an incoming round (although radar was in
place). There was also no collateral damage consistent with an incoming
round. And, just as was proven and stated by UN observers after the
previous market place "mortar attack", it was clear that this was also a
pre-placed charge by the Izetbegovic people designed to sacrifice their
own
citizens so that blame could be placed on the Bosnian Serbs, just before
important peace talks were to begin". A woman who witnessed the August
95
attack on Markale market from her flat window describes in her statement
to
the UN how she watched TV crews and ambulances converge on the market
PRIOR
to the explosion.
This was not the first time the leader of the Sarajevo or Bosnian
government, Alija Izetbegovic , had ordered the carrying out, with the
hiring of special agents, of atrocities against mainly innocent Muslim
people in Sarajevo. People in high places in the West knew full well
that
Izetbegovic agents bore responsibility for attacks on civilians in the
market, cemetery, food and water queues - as well as for sniper attacks
on
civilians and UN personnel in Sarajevo. Izetbegovic's army has carried
out
the most notorious of attacks on Muslim communities in Bosnia. Hitherto
these attacks were blamed on the Serbs. Shamefully Western politiicians
and
journalists conspired to prevent this information being broadcast to the
world at large.
An earlier attack in February 1994 on the Markale market claimed 68
lives.
This explosion was also described by the Defence & Foreign Affairs group
in
its July|August 95 report as a pre-placed mine set in place by agents of
the Izetbegovic Bosnian Govt. Despite the publication to a vast number
of
foreign journalists, the UN document which detailed facts and Muslim
Govt
culpability for this terrible crime, the document was used by one
Western
journalist only, Bernard Volker of the French TFI Network. Volker was
persecuted for broadcasting the UN document but has since been fully
vindicated as other military and UN personnel have gradually opened up
on
Bosnian Muslim Govt responsibility for this attack.
Realpolitik prevails - The late French President Francois Miterrand
states
in his book L'Annees des Adieux that the (now ex) UN Secretary General
Boutros Boutros Ghali had told him that he had irrefutable evidence as
to
Bosnian Govt culpability for the Markale bombings. This evidence not
revealed then for reasons of political expendiency.
Yet an earlier atrocity covered so explicitly by ex BBC reporter Martin
Bell, was the explosion in May 1992 which killed people queueing for
bread
in Sarajevo's Vase Miskin Street. Martin Bell in his report on what
became
known as the Bread Queue Massacre, blamed the Serbs for this crime. On
st
September 1992, 4 months after the Vase Miskin Street bombing, the
Republican group for the Investigation of Terrorism of the US Congress
issued a previously confidential report which details Bosnian Muslim
Govt
culpability for the Vase Miskin Street bombing. How often did viewers to
BBC coverage of the war in Bosnia hear Martin Bell speak of 'Sniper
Alley'
- Serbs as snipers - Muslims as victims. (5).
n its report of 29th Sebruary 1996 the Defence & Foreign Affairs group
in
London spoke further on the subject of pre-placed mines and the use by
the
Bosnian Govt of special foreign agents. Quote - "Very reliable sources
in
Sarajevo have confirmed that the number of mujahedin - foreign Islamist
mercenaries - fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina in support of the
Izetbegovic
administration is between 15,000 and 20,000. About half the mujahedin
number in the country make up the Khanjar Division". (As per the Nazi SS
Khanjar of the 1940's). "One senior US Congressman said of the mujahedin
-
'We know that the Izetbegovic people have been as barbarous as any in
the
Balkans, and yet the White House will not hear of anyone in the US Govt
or,
for that matter, among the NATO partners attempting to bring any Muslim
war
criminals to justice'. NATO troops did, however, raid one Iranian-run
terrorist camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina in February 1996, finding, among
other
things, booby-trapped toys which were to be planted in the countryside".
The Defence report went on to say that mujahedin activities in and
around
Sarajevo had led to some 60,000 indigenous Serb civilians fleaing from
that
city by late February 1996 to avoid living under an Izetbegovic-led
administration. Many Serbs had already left Sarajevo during the course
of
this war. By the end of 1992 40,000 Serb civilians had fled their homes
in
Sarajevo.
Another example of genocide against civilian Muslim communities carried
out
by the Bosnian Government was the August 1994 ground attack on the UN
"safe haven" of Bihac. Over 500 Muslim civilians died in the raids and
over
600,000 people were forced to flea the enclave. Many Serb people were
also
killed in the attacks. The Bosnian Government was assisted in its
assaults
by special forces rented from the US and Saudi Governments. The
so-called
rebel Muslim forces of Bihac represented the poorer peasant Muslim and
Serb
populations of that region. Serb and Bihac Muslim forces fought
together
here against the Western backed Bosnian Governemnt and the Western
backed
Croatian Government. Serb and Muslim forces fought together in several
areas in Bosnia against Western mercenary imperialist forces.
*MERCENARIES* - According to the Belgrade daily 'Politika' of
8.12.1994,
all warring sides in the ex Yugoslavia have had mercenaries from across
the
world fighting with them. The Serbs have been backed by hundreds of
Russian
volunteer soldiers - 300 of whom have been reported killed in action.
The
Croatian and Muslim sides have been supported by mercenaries from France
(French Foreign Leagion) Italy, Germany, Poland, England, the USA,
Indonesia, Algeria, Syria, Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia. The 'Politika'
said
that the mercenary forces fighting with the Croat and Muslim forces had
been recruited mainly from Western-based Nazi organisations. The daily
said
that German authorities, for one, when questioned about mercenaries in
the
Balkans, had paid no heed to a massive number of its citizens joining
the
************************************************************
The Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC) is an initiative
for cultural promotion, development education and
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LASC 5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2, Ireland
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email: lasc@...
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Croatian Army and that only on one occasion in 1992, the German Criminal
Bureau had said that a - quote - "considerable number of German
right-wing
extremists had participated in the Croatian struggle against Serb
communists".
In fact foreign mercenaries have operated in the Balkans on the payroll
of
wealthy businessmen and Western Governments anxious to effect
'independence' for the now ex Yugoslav states. Australian Ustashe forces
trained with the Australian Army in Aubury|Wodonga for decades prior to
returning to Yugoslavia to carry out terrorist activities against Serbs,
Croats or anyone protesting against the breakup of Yugoslavia. Their key
function was to create distrust and hatred between the thnic communities
in
the region. Between 1983 and 1992, the various anti Yugoslav|pro
separatist
mercenaries tortured and killed some 14,000 Serb people and effected the
"ethnic cleansing" of over 250,000 Serbs from their Krajinan an `Bosnian
homelands. It was not uncommon for these psychopaths to film their
monstrous crimes. One Italian born mercenary Roberto dela Feve happily
admitted in an interview with Epoca in 1995 that he had made billions of
liras from the sale of the tapes on the Western European black market.
The
videos show Serbs being raped and murdered by Italian, German, French
and
mujahedin mercenaries. Feve is with the 109th Nazi 'International
Brigade'
stationed in Rijeka and is paid by the Croat Government.
The Vienna daily Taeglich Alles - 15.8.95 wrote of British mercenaries
who
founded a 'Travel Agency' with branch offices in Munich and Zagreb who
were
offering 'Serb hunts' in Croatia.
Living Marxism Magazine May 1993 journalist Joan Phillips wrote of one
British mercenary, Robert Loftus, who went to Bosnia in 1992 to work
for
the Bosnian Muslim Government. In the report, Loftus is exposed as
having
sold stories of "Serb atrocities" to Western journalists. Loftus admits
in
his diary that he was a mercenary, receiving money for fighting with the
Muslism. His diary reveals that he had no hard evidence for his atrocity
stories. One of the reporters Loftus worked for was an American, Roy
Gutman. Gutman was US Newsday's European Bureau Chief at the time - Soon
after making himself famous and richer by publishing Loftus's totally
fabricated stories of "Serb run death camps", "Serb mass rape", "Serb
concentration camps" etc, Gutman won America's top press award, the
Pulitzer Prize. (6).
(On 5.8.92 Penny Marshall (ITN) with her cameraman Jeremy Irvin
and
fellow reporter Ian Williams (ITN) and Martin Bell's mate Ed Vulliamy
(The
Guardian) visited Trnopolje camp in Bosnia. Their "Belsen '92" picture
of
Fikret Alic supposedly "behind barbed wire fence in Serb death camp" won
Marshall's team armfulls of prizes to include the BAFTA Award. For the
truth behind this story refer the articles "The Picture That Fooled The
World" LM Mag Feb 97 and "The Mag ITN Wants To Gag" LM Mag 98 March
1997.
*OPERATION STORM* _ In August 1995, Croat and Muslim government forces
backed by special US troops launched a massive attack on mainly Serbian
communities in Krajina. This combined action, coordinated by the USS JF
Kennedy and assisted by NATO jets finally finished the job Hitler had
set
out to do in the 1940's via the Ustashe. They totally "cleansed" the
Krajina of all but a handfull of its Serbian population. Thousands of
civilians died in these attacks and another 300,000 people fled ahead of
the raids. Hundreds of people died when Muslim and US forces launched
ground attacks on the fleeing Serb refugees. Croat MiG fighter planes
bombed the miles and miles long trail of refugees. Many people died in
these air attacks, many more are still missing. 'Operation Storm' has
been
described in the F
Defence & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy report of September 1995 as
"A
WAR CRIM MORE THAN WORTHY OF THE NAME".
*REFUGEES* _ Muslim refugees from Bosnia have been accorded assistance
in
their host countries and quite rightly. They have also been granted
unlimited media attention wherein they have had the opportunity to speak
of
their experience of war. What though of the plight of hundreds of
thousands
of Serb, Muslim, Croat, Romany and other refugees who have sought refuge
in
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia? Red Cross figures published on 1st
Febuary 1993 show that 575,000 people had registered as refugees in the
FR
Yugoslavia. Statistics show the ethnic breakdown of refugees from the
war
zones of ex Yugoslavia as follows: Serbs 84.2% (484,000) Muslims 6.2%
(36,000) Croats 1.6% (9,000) Other meaning Albanians, Jews, Gypsies,
Bulgarians, Hungarians etc 8% (46,000). The 1997 census on refugees
living
in the FR Yugoslavia shows that there are now over 650,000 registered
refugees in that country. Only the number of Croatian refugees had
dropped
(from 9 to 3,000 people. Due to the criminal UN sanctions on RF
Yugoslavia
, over 20,000 people have died due to lack of vital medicines and foods.
That figure to end of 1994 only. Many of the victims of sanctions come
from
people within the refugee community. Despite pleas from the current High
Commissioner for Refugees for urgent aid for Yugoslavia, instead of an
increase in aid or a total lifting of UN sanctions on that state,
international aid organisations have been instructed by the UN bosses to
stop all aid - even the little that was getting in to the country has
now
virtually stopped.
*THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL* _ As Dr Raymond Kent, Emeritus Professor of
History,
University of California Berkley and Sec. for Americans for
International
Justice Committee wrote in an open letter and petition published in 'Den
Haag' 23.7.96: The Hague Tribunal on war crimes in ex Yugsoslavia "had
been conceived in mischief, and motivated by political expediency and
might
for right'. Dr Kent went on to explain that the court existed only for
Serbs. The reason the Hague Tribunal refuses to put Dr Radovan Karadzic
and Gen Ratko Mladic on the stand, despite their appeals for a Hearing,
is
that they (the ex Serb leaders) know too much - Who the real criminals
are
in Bosnia - What the UN, NATO and other Western agencies have been up to
during the time of their involvement in the Balkans war. Who is running
the heroin trade in the region ..... This would all be exposed to the
Tribunal.
All cases against Serbs so far brought before the Tribunal have
collapsed
due to lack of hard evidence and exposure of dirty tricks.
(1) Under the Contact Group Plan (CGP) the Serbs agreed to relinquish
21%
of their ancestral lands in Bosnia to the Muslim|Croat Federation. Under
the CGP for Bosnia the Muslim|Croat Federation stand to gain 70 to 100%
of
all lead, zinc, ore, bauxite, salt, magnesite, asbestos, dolomite, OIL,
coal and lignite deposits. 75% of existing hydro electric power
facilities
and 78% of all thermal power plants. 13 Serb cities. Serb roads and
waterways would be cut off allowing no access to industrial facilities.
The
biggest railway juncture at Dodoj with river ports would become property
of the Muslim|Croat Fed. Under the CGP, Serbs would lose most of their
hospitals, ALL ARMS FACTORIES WOULD BE RETAINED BY THE MUSLIM|CROAT
FEDERATION and all river valleys would become territory of the
Federation.
Elizabeth Morrisey of Kleinman International Consultants NY said in
November 1995 "SERBIA CAN OFFER CHEAP, SKILLED LABOUR, A MARKET OF 10.5
MILLION PEOPLE AND A UNIQUE POSITION IN THE HEART OF THE BALKANS".
(2) Land inhabited by indigenous Bosnian Serbs, which, with a stroke of
a
pen (in Brussels), on the 6th April 1992, was illegally and
unconstitutionally annexed to the newly declared 'independent' state of
Bosnia. Just months earlier, the same situation had been forced on the
Serbian communities of the Krajina. With the stroke of a pen, Krajinan
Serb
homelands were summarily, illegally and unconstitutionally annexed to
the
newly declared 'independent' state of Croatia. The Serbs though were not
supposed to complain about becoming overnight second class inhabitants
of a
foreign state let alone take up arms.
(3) The German|Vatican backed Ustashe were the clero-fascist forces of
the
Independent state of Croatia in the 1940's. The Muslim SS Khanjar
forces
were allied to the Ustashe against the anti fascist Partisan volunteers.
(4) Read: "The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican" by Vladimir Dedijer.
(5)
UN report of 1.8.95 shows Bosnin Govt agents to be responsible for
sniping
attacks. They had been operating from atop Bosnian Govt buildings in
Sarajevo. The sniping stopped when the UN threatened the Muslims with
publication of its reports on Markale etc attacks. (6) Rape in Bosnia -
Final UN etc reports show less than 300 victims. Not 60,000, Bosnian
Govt
subitted 126 cases to the UN. Also read: "Censored -The News That didn't
Make the News and Why. 1996 Project Censored Year Book 20th Anniv -Ed
by
Carl Jensen|Walter Cronkite Seven Stories Press. War Crimes Reports plus
"The Truth About Srebrenica" available from PAW Dublin Fax 2806185.
************************************************************
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for cultural promotion, development education and
campaigning solidarity, linking Ireland and Latin America.
LASC 5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2, Ireland
Phone and Fax: +353-1-6760435
email: lasc@...
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--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
The Dissolution of Yugoslav Rock
by Kim Simpson
Throughout the 1970's and the 1980's, Yugoslavia boasted some of the
most
diverse and progressive rock music in Eastern Europe. During this
period,
state-run record labels like Jugoton and PGP RBT generated healthy
amounts of
rock recordings which were distributed and promoted throughout the
republics.
With the 1991 breakup of the pan-Yugoslav market, however, large-scale
record
production and distribution have been stifled
considerably. As a result, only a small influx of independent labels
throughout the region currently keep any hope alive for an eventual
revival
of Yugoslav rock and its audience (Janjatovic "Yugoslav" 1).
The music, drawing from a variety of ethnic influences, well reflected
the
country's make-up: a federation comprised of six independent republics,
each
having a culture and historical background different from the others.
Another
contributing factor was the way in which Tito's independent brand of
Socialism helped Yugoslavia maintain a (perhaps psychological) sense of
being
the most "westernized" of the Eastern bloc countries (Doder xiii).
Before 1991, both Zagreb-based Jugoton and PGP RBT in Belgrade actually
specialized in carrying various acts from all six republics. And while
the
labels, being state-run, weren't completely free from government
control,
they were granted generous amounts of leeway in relation to other
Eastern
European countries like Hungary, where specific rock groups were
officially
banned by the government on a regular basis (Pareles 13). But after the
breakup of Yugoslavia, the record industries of each republic have been
affected in different ways with only one common denominator-- an
isolation
from their neighboring republics (Janjatovic "Yugo slav" 1).
In the case of Croatia, musical isolationism appears to be the national
motive. Shortly after Croatia declared its independence in 1991, the
Jugoton
label transformed itself into Croatia records, cutting all non-Croatian
acts
from its roster. Oddly enough, the newly "democratic" government has
taken
tighter control over its company than was ever taken by
the communist regime, approving primarily music with nationalistic,
war-conscious themes. The result, naturally, has been a steady stream of
musical output with little to offer in the way of surprise (Meares).
Recently, one of the most popular releases by Croatia records was a song
called "My Homeland," recorded by "Croatian Band Aid," a group of
well-known
Croatian musicians. The song featured hymn- like music accompanied by
lyrics
that not only assert that "the stars are shining just for you/ the sky
is
always blue, mother country" but that "Europe is with us." The song more
or
less served in opening the floodgates for releases by Croatia records
with
strictly nationalistic overtones. After "My Homeland," for example, the
label
followed suit with the equally popular "Rock for Croatia," a 26-song CD
including many of the most well-known rock musicians in Croatia
(Janjatovic
"Yugoslav" 1).
According to Sinisa Skarica, director of the Croatia Records company,
the
releases are intended to boost people's morale. Not surprisingly, the
music
is popular with the Croatian troops, as the company has also made it a
point
to release material--songs like "Croatia Must Win" and "Go Guards, Smash
the
Bandits"--geared specifically for them. Musically, many of the songs
contain
elements of military marches or old traditional folk melodies identified
with
wars of the past (McKinsey 7).
In spite of such obstacles as heavy government control and a limited
market,
however, an active rock music scene still does exist within Croatia,
encouraging the emergence of privately-owned record labels. For example,
the
second annual Porin music awards show, the Croatian equivalent to the
Grammies, was held last April (Janjatovic "Global"). Considered the
"most
authoritative measure of recognition in the Croatian record business,"
the
winners are chosen among the nominees by a "distinguished panel" of more
than
400 music business professionals (musicians, publishers, record
executives,
and journalists). While this year's event, which was shown on national
network TV, was dominated by established rock group Parni Valjak, the
potential for recognition of more multi- cultural acts on independent
labels
is still a possibility within the show's framework.
One of the most appealing trademarks of independent labels throughout
the
entire Yugoslav region is their willingness to carry acts from different
republics. Blind Dog records in Zagreb, for example, recently signed
Lola V.
Stain, a Macedonian band special izing in the Byzantine-tinged folk
music
characteristic of their homeland. Their CD, entitled "The Loft" after a
novel
by Croatian novelist Danilo Kis, is a testament to the continued
association
of many Southern Slavs with their neighboring republics (Janjatovic
"Global").
Interestingly enough, the Communist-run country called Yugoslavia,
comprised
of Serbia and Montenegro, has the most promising independent record
scene of
all the former republics. An explanation for this may be a slightly
lower
sense of war hysteria since most of the fighting has taken place in
either
Bosnia or Croatia. Whatever the reason, several new and energetic labels
have
made considerable strides in balancing the nationalistic tendency of
popular
music in Serbia (Janjatovic "Labels"). One of the more notable releases
to
come out of Serbia recently is an eight CD compilation from Komuna, the
first
privately-owned record company in Serbia. The compilation, selected by
Belgrade rock critics Bogica Mijatovic and Petar Popovic, contains the
best
of 25 years of Yugoslav Rock. The CD's serve not only as a comprehensive
retrospective of a distinct musical era, but a sampler of the various
ethnic
influences that ran throughout the music (Janjatovic "Global").
Other young and agile independent labels, like Sorabia and Carlo, have
gotten
a jump on the major state-run company, PGP RBT, by signing much of the
newest
talent emerging throughout the country--most of them winners at the
"Fast
Bands of Serbia" festival. The festival, held for the first time this
year at
Belgrade's Youth Centre, was a four-day event full of rock videos and
live
performances, providing exposure for new bands like Dza Ili Bu and Bad
Musicians' Kids. For the past two years, these acts have been taken
under the
wing of a Television Serbia program called "Afirmator," allowing them to
make
their own videos. The festival offered a chronological presentation of
film
and video clips from the mid-60's to the present, then turned the stage
over
to up and coming local bands (Janjatovic "Labels").
The emergence of private record companies in Serbia has been a godsend
to
consumers who previously relied on the state-run record companies which
have
been "all but silenced," according to Belgrade rock critic Petar
Janjatovic,
by international trade sanctions (56). Labels like PGP RTB have been
reduced
to leasing out their plants, rather than letting them sit unused, since
the
availabillty of repertoire from Western labels has been altogether
halted by
the embargoes against Serbia and, with few exceptions, the company is
producing no Yugoslav records.
As Stanko Terzic, director of the company for the past fifteen years
puts it,
"I thought music knew no frontiers, but it is simply being prevented
from
reaching us." According to Terzic, the sanctions are "banning
cooperation"
and "making it impossible for PGP RTB to pay for licenses" and keep
Serbian
music fans up-to-date with what's going on in the world. "Young
audiences are
the biggest losers," he adds, "and I hope the sanctions will be
alleviated in
the field of culture." Terzic also believes the sanctions have prevented
the
label from saving the integrated rock scene that used to thrive in
Yugoslavia
(qtd. in Janjatovic "Labels" 56).
When foreign capital can again flow into the region, Terzic hopes that
PGP
RTB can step up CD production. "I'm also optimistic about reviving the
market
through what used to be Yugoslavia. Aside from the fact that it is in
our
common interest, obviously the music, emotions, and affinities of young
people throughout the former Yugoslavian republics are the same (qtd. in
Janjatovic "Labels" 56)."
Another result of Serbia's isolation from the rest of the world that
must be
mentioned is the immense popularity of "Turbo Folk," a homegrown musical
hybrid of Turkish and Slavic folk melodies, "disco beats, and Arabic
yowling," according to Belgrade critic Petar Lukovic (qtd. in "Balkan").
Turbo Folk singers are generally leggy women dressed in short sequined
minskirts, pushup bras and heavy makeup who socialize in the public
spotlight
with political figures and military thugs (Block 16).
Originally, in a period of particularly high Serbian chauvinism and
xenophobia, the form was endorsed and even promoted by the official
media as
an all-Serb alternative to outer influences. So popular has the genre
become,
in fact, that most discotheques have been replaced by "folkotheques,"
where
Turbo Folk is played exclusively (Chazan, Christian Science Monitor, 4).
If Turbo Folk has any one message in particular, according to Lukovic,
it's
"We're okay, sanctions cannot hurt us" (qtd. in "Balkan Blast" 88). The
lyrics vacillate between "dismal love songs," nationalistic boasting, or
just
plain boasting ("Coca-Cola, Marlboro and Suzuki/ Discotheques, Guitars
and
Bouzouki/ Nobody has it as good as me," is the chorus of one of the most
well-known hits) (Block 16). And while political boasting of the more
hard-
headed sort is actually part of Serbian tradition, as in songs such as
"Ko to
Kaze Ko to Laze Serbija je Mala (Whoever says that Serbia is small is a
liar)," never before have political themes been incorporated to such an
extent into the songs of the country's pop stars (Waters 7).
Naturally, Turbo Folk, funded largely by mafia money, is the most
thriving
record industry in Serbia. And inspite of recent campaigns led by
President
Slobodan Milosevic and Cultural Minister Nada Popovic-Persic to stamp it
out
and reintroduce Western culture into the Serbian mainstream, public
appetite
for the form doesn't appear to be fading (Nelson). As record executives
like
Nesa Jovanovic, business manager of ZAM, Serbia's largest folk recording
label see it, the "music is big business because it makes people happy"
(qtd.
in "Balkan Blast" 88). Even unfavorable critics like Lukovic see the
eventual
stamping out of Turbo Folk unlikely, as "the music was promoted as a
sedative
for the Serb population" in the first place (qtd. in "Balkan Blast" 88).
Along with the launching of a "Year of Culture" campaign, Cultural
Minister
Popovic-Perisic intends to attack what she refers to as "pseudo folk
music"
by taxing not only the actual recording of Turbo Folk, but store
cassettes as
well. She also plans on introducing a bill that will aim towards
destroying
for good the music's monopoly over radio and television. Popovic-Perisic
even
hopes to persuade the "noveau riche" who have funded Turbo Folk to
donate
some of their earnings to the "Year of Culture" cause, offering tax
incentives to all contributers (Block 16).
Needless to say, the Beograd intelligentsia supports Popovic-Perisic and
her
campaign. But another faction that appears to be standing behind the
Cultural
Minister are the fans of Yugoslav rock who still remain in Serbia. These
people believe that the stamping out of Turbo Folk just might give way,
once
again, to a rock scene that was put on hold so suddenly ("Balkan
Blast").
Many rock fans still bemoan the breakup of groups like Riblja Corba,
Crvena
Jabuka, and Plavi Orkestar--groups who once sold up to 500,000 copies of
their albums and toured the entire country two months at a time
(Janjatovic
"Yugoslav").
While a considerable amount of independent recording activity is taking
place
in Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro despite countless troubles, the
recording
industries of Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia don't appear to be as
resilient. Needless to say, the violent situation in Bosnia is highly
unfavorable to most indus tries of any sort. And it's a shame--the
concentrated ethnic mix in Bosnia lent a rich, exotic air to much of
Bosnian
rock. Bands like Bijelo Dugme and Plavi Orkestar, two of the most
well-known
Yugoslav bands ever, have since broken up or moved out of the country.
Bijelo
Dugme bandleader Goran Bregovic, for example, one of the most creative
of
Bosnian rock musicians, moved to Paris and has been writing music for
film
director Emir Kusturica as well as others (Janjatovic "Yugoslav").
In the case of Macedonia, a sickly recording industry has been balanced
out
by a legacy, similar to Bosnia's, of colorful rock laced with
traditional
folk melodies and instruments. Established Macedonian bands like Leb i
Sol
remain popular throughout the Yugoslav region, having recently defied
ethnic
assumptions by playing three sold out shows at Belgrade's Sava Centre in
celebra tion of their "Live in New York" CD. Another group, Anastasia,
has
also found wide recognition by writing and performing the music for the
Macedonian film "Before the Rain," the soundtrack of which has been
released
by Poly Gram records (Janjatovic "Global").
Slovenia, the most western of all the former republics both
geographically
and culturally, has always been, as noted by journalist Robert Kaplan, a
bit
of a sideshow to the larger Yugoslav picture (13). In musical terms, a
good
illustration of this is Laibach, not only the prototypical Slovenian
band,
but also the most well-known Yugoslav band ever. Laibach has developed
its
worldwide industrial rock audience largely through its adherance to "New
Slovenian Art," a self-titled movement that smacks heavily of Western
artistic traditions along the lines of "art for art's sake" (Thompson
42-43).
The band is famous for dressing up in Nazi uniforms and re-working
classic
rock and pop songs, for example, into dark, "poker-faced," militaristic
marches (Suselj). While Slovenian musicians do have much to gain through
an
integrated Yugoslav audience, the example of Laibach shows that Western
acceptance may be found for them without the support of any of their
Slavic
neighbors.
Although independent labels continue to emerge throughout the former
Yugoslavia, the extent to which the Yugoslav record market may revive
itself
in a short period of time remains a tough question. According to
Slovenian
concert promoter Igor Vidmar, the country's emerging hard-currency music
market is only temporarily suspended. Vidmar, during a discussion on the
opportunities in Eastern Europe, said that Yugoslavia has a population
of 24
million with a strong interest in contemporary music--and convertible
dinars
to buy it with. Pointing to the fact that two regions have already
seceded
from Yugoslavia, Vidmar said he believed that when the situation
stabilized,
the nation would still be one market (Clark-Meads 76).
He further stated that there was already an "emerging network of
privately
owned record stores selling local indie product and imports." In
addition,
domestic record companies were well organized and "there are no record
pirates in Yugoslava," he declared. Vidmar outlined the geopgraphic
effects
of the civil war by saying it was highly localized and taking place
entirely
in Croatia. Vidmar appealed for the music industry and the world in
general
to take an approach to Yugoslavia that was as normal as possible as a
way of
calming militaristic attitudes. "Music can have a very positive role in
this
respect" (qtd. in Clark-Meads 76).
Indeed, it appears as though the only forces actively at work at
reuniting
the republics within Yugoslavia are rock musicians: Recently, concerts
in
Berlin and Prague featured Serbian bands Catherine the Great, Electric
Orgasm
and the Party-Breakers teamed up with other Croatian and Slovenian
bands. The
audience consisted primarily of refugees from all six republics. Serbian
band
Bad Musicians' Kids makes it a point to sing songs in Slovenian and
Croatian
as well as in Serbian. Another Serbian band, Dza Ili Bu, has a popular
song
called "Soon You'll Be Sweeping the Streets," in reference to Communist
government. Veteran Serbian band Galija recently released a single
covering a
song by Croatian band Film as well as a song by Indexi, a Sarajevo band,
and
the tenth release of the Serbian band Electric Orgasm is dedicated to
"all
our friends in Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo, with whom we seem to
have
lost touch" (Janjatovic "Labels"). While such gestures may seem minute,
their
very existence in such hostile times are significant enough.
Also interesting is the development of gathering spots at dance clubs
throughout Europe for Yugoslavs of all "nationalities." The Nest in
London,
for example, holds gatherings for "Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats--gypsies,
students and refugees" every Saturday night. Politics are never
discussed,
and popular Yugoslav records, many of them reissues released by
independent
labels, from the 70's and 80's are played. It gives Yugoslavs an
opportunity
to talk about old times, sing folk songs they all know, and dance
traditional
dances from each others' republics (Ditmars 22). Such activity, not
surprisingly, is branded by Croatian and Serbian nationalists as
"Yugonostalgic," indicating a sense of betrayal to one's true homeland
(Moseley 21).
If there is to be a positive side at all to the conflict in Yugoslavia,
it
just might be this active emergence of private record labels, many of
them
run by "Yugonostalgists" who hold fast to the musical values that
initially
drove them into business, and provide those who remember a retrospective
look
at some of the richness and variety they used to have. As more and more
stress is put by each independent record company on carrying an
ethnically
diverse roster, more of this music may be availabe and play some minor
role,
perhaps, in reopening the perceptions of Yugoslav rock's original
audiences,
wherever they may be.
Works Cited
"Balkan Blast." The Economist. 9 Jul. 1994: 88.
Block, Robert. "Ethnic Cleansing's Balladeers Get Their Marching
Orders." The
Independent. 25 Sep. 1994: 16.
Chazan, Yigal. "Ex-Warmonger Milosevic Turns Culture-Vulture." The
Ottawa
Citizen. 8 Apr. 1995: 1.
Chazan, Yigal. "Popular Folk Music Strikes a Bad Chord Among Serb
Leaders."
Christian Science Monitor. 11 Jul. 1994: 4A.
Clark-Meads, Jeff. "Slavic Music Biz Ready For Battle Again; Civil War
Interrupts, Doesn't Deter, Promoter Says." Billboard. Nov 2/1991: 76.
Ditmars, Hadani. "The Good Old Days; Despite the Situation in Former
Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats Still Meet in a London Club to Recall
Better
Days. Hadani Ditmars Joined Them." The Independent. Jul 13 1994: 22.
Doder, Dusko. The Yugoslavs. Random House: New York, 1978.
Janjatovic, Petar. "Yugoslav War Halts Growth of Local Music Biz."
Billboard.
11 July 1992: 1.
_________________. "Labels Unite Divided Market; New Bands, Scenes
Emerge in
Balkans." Billboard. Mar 13 1993: 56.
_________________. "Global Pulse: Croatia." Billboard. Apr 22, 1995.
Kaplan, Robert. "A Reader's Guide to the Balkans." The New York Times.
Apr 18
1993: 13.
McKinsey, Kitty. "Serbia May Be Winning War but Croatia Has Best Songs."
The
Gazette (Montreal). Dec 10 1991: 7B.
Meares, Richard. "Patriotic War Songs Replace Love on Rebel Croatia's
Airwaves." The Reuter Library Report. Nov 4 1991.
Moseley, Ray. "Media War Erupts i Yugoslavia." Chicago Tribune.Oct. 11
1991:
21C.
Nelson, Mark. "New Music of War Offers Serbs Escape With A Disco Beat."
Wall
Street Journal. 27 June 1995: 1A.
Pareles, Jon. "Rock Music of Eastern Europe: So Western, So Familiar, So
Old." The New York Times. Feb 28 1990: 13C.
Susmelj, Marta. "Laibach: The Ambassadors of 'Yugo Rock.'" Newsday. Feb
3,
1989.
Thompson, Mark. A Paper House: The Ending of Yugoslavia. New York:
Pantheon,
1992.
Waters, Tim . "Around the South Bay: A Big Name From Yugoslavia Wows 'Em
At
Revived Theater." Los Angeles Times. 25 Apr. 1985: 2.
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 14:37:46 EDT
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
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------------------------------------------------------------
by Kim Simpson
Throughout the 1970's and the 1980's, Yugoslavia boasted some of the
most
diverse and progressive rock music in Eastern Europe. During this
period,
state-run record labels like Jugoton and PGP RBT generated healthy
amounts of
rock recordings which were distributed and promoted throughout the
republics.
With the 1991 breakup of the pan-Yugoslav market, however, large-scale
record
production and distribution have been stifled
considerably. As a result, only a small influx of independent labels
throughout the region currently keep any hope alive for an eventual
revival
of Yugoslav rock and its audience (Janjatovic "Yugoslav" 1).
The music, drawing from a variety of ethnic influences, well reflected
the
country's make-up: a federation comprised of six independent republics,
each
having a culture and historical background different from the others.
Another
contributing factor was the way in which Tito's independent brand of
Socialism helped Yugoslavia maintain a (perhaps psychological) sense of
being
the most "westernized" of the Eastern bloc countries (Doder xiii).
Before 1991, both Zagreb-based Jugoton and PGP RBT in Belgrade actually
specialized in carrying various acts from all six republics. And while
the
labels, being state-run, weren't completely free from government
control,
they were granted generous amounts of leeway in relation to other
Eastern
European countries like Hungary, where specific rock groups were
officially
banned by the government on a regular basis (Pareles 13). But after the
breakup of Yugoslavia, the record industries of each republic have been
affected in different ways with only one common denominator-- an
isolation
from their neighboring republics (Janjatovic "Yugo slav" 1).
In the case of Croatia, musical isolationism appears to be the national
motive. Shortly after Croatia declared its independence in 1991, the
Jugoton
label transformed itself into Croatia records, cutting all non-Croatian
acts
from its roster. Oddly enough, the newly "democratic" government has
taken
tighter control over its company than was ever taken by
the communist regime, approving primarily music with nationalistic,
war-conscious themes. The result, naturally, has been a steady stream of
musical output with little to offer in the way of surprise (Meares).
Recently, one of the most popular releases by Croatia records was a song
called "My Homeland," recorded by "Croatian Band Aid," a group of
well-known
Croatian musicians. The song featured hymn- like music accompanied by
lyrics
that not only assert that "the stars are shining just for you/ the sky
is
always blue, mother country" but that "Europe is with us." The song more
or
less served in opening the floodgates for releases by Croatia records
with
strictly nationalistic overtones. After "My Homeland," for example, the
label
followed suit with the equally popular "Rock for Croatia," a 26-song CD
including many of the most well-known rock musicians in Croatia
(Janjatovic
"Yugoslav" 1).
According to Sinisa Skarica, director of the Croatia Records company,
the
releases are intended to boost people's morale. Not surprisingly, the
music
is popular with the Croatian troops, as the company has also made it a
point
to release material--songs like "Croatia Must Win" and "Go Guards, Smash
the
Bandits"--geared specifically for them. Musically, many of the songs
contain
elements of military marches or old traditional folk melodies identified
with
wars of the past (McKinsey 7).
In spite of such obstacles as heavy government control and a limited
market,
however, an active rock music scene still does exist within Croatia,
encouraging the emergence of privately-owned record labels. For example,
the
second annual Porin music awards show, the Croatian equivalent to the
Grammies, was held last April (Janjatovic "Global"). Considered the
"most
authoritative measure of recognition in the Croatian record business,"
the
winners are chosen among the nominees by a "distinguished panel" of more
than
400 music business professionals (musicians, publishers, record
executives,
and journalists). While this year's event, which was shown on national
network TV, was dominated by established rock group Parni Valjak, the
potential for recognition of more multi- cultural acts on independent
labels
is still a possibility within the show's framework.
One of the most appealing trademarks of independent labels throughout
the
entire Yugoslav region is their willingness to carry acts from different
republics. Blind Dog records in Zagreb, for example, recently signed
Lola V.
Stain, a Macedonian band special izing in the Byzantine-tinged folk
music
characteristic of their homeland. Their CD, entitled "The Loft" after a
novel
by Croatian novelist Danilo Kis, is a testament to the continued
association
of many Southern Slavs with their neighboring republics (Janjatovic
"Global").
Interestingly enough, the Communist-run country called Yugoslavia,
comprised
of Serbia and Montenegro, has the most promising independent record
scene of
all the former republics. An explanation for this may be a slightly
lower
sense of war hysteria since most of the fighting has taken place in
either
Bosnia or Croatia. Whatever the reason, several new and energetic labels
have
made considerable strides in balancing the nationalistic tendency of
popular
music in Serbia (Janjatovic "Labels"). One of the more notable releases
to
come out of Serbia recently is an eight CD compilation from Komuna, the
first
privately-owned record company in Serbia. The compilation, selected by
Belgrade rock critics Bogica Mijatovic and Petar Popovic, contains the
best
of 25 years of Yugoslav Rock. The CD's serve not only as a comprehensive
retrospective of a distinct musical era, but a sampler of the various
ethnic
influences that ran throughout the music (Janjatovic "Global").
Other young and agile independent labels, like Sorabia and Carlo, have
gotten
a jump on the major state-run company, PGP RBT, by signing much of the
newest
talent emerging throughout the country--most of them winners at the
"Fast
Bands of Serbia" festival. The festival, held for the first time this
year at
Belgrade's Youth Centre, was a four-day event full of rock videos and
live
performances, providing exposure for new bands like Dza Ili Bu and Bad
Musicians' Kids. For the past two years, these acts have been taken
under the
wing of a Television Serbia program called "Afirmator," allowing them to
make
their own videos. The festival offered a chronological presentation of
film
and video clips from the mid-60's to the present, then turned the stage
over
to up and coming local bands (Janjatovic "Labels").
The emergence of private record companies in Serbia has been a godsend
to
consumers who previously relied on the state-run record companies which
have
been "all but silenced," according to Belgrade rock critic Petar
Janjatovic,
by international trade sanctions (56). Labels like PGP RTB have been
reduced
to leasing out their plants, rather than letting them sit unused, since
the
availabillty of repertoire from Western labels has been altogether
halted by
the embargoes against Serbia and, with few exceptions, the company is
producing no Yugoslav records.
As Stanko Terzic, director of the company for the past fifteen years
puts it,
"I thought music knew no frontiers, but it is simply being prevented
from
reaching us." According to Terzic, the sanctions are "banning
cooperation"
and "making it impossible for PGP RTB to pay for licenses" and keep
Serbian
music fans up-to-date with what's going on in the world. "Young
audiences are
the biggest losers," he adds, "and I hope the sanctions will be
alleviated in
the field of culture." Terzic also believes the sanctions have prevented
the
label from saving the integrated rock scene that used to thrive in
Yugoslavia
(qtd. in Janjatovic "Labels" 56).
When foreign capital can again flow into the region, Terzic hopes that
PGP
RTB can step up CD production. "I'm also optimistic about reviving the
market
through what used to be Yugoslavia. Aside from the fact that it is in
our
common interest, obviously the music, emotions, and affinities of young
people throughout the former Yugoslavian republics are the same (qtd. in
Janjatovic "Labels" 56)."
Another result of Serbia's isolation from the rest of the world that
must be
mentioned is the immense popularity of "Turbo Folk," a homegrown musical
hybrid of Turkish and Slavic folk melodies, "disco beats, and Arabic
yowling," according to Belgrade critic Petar Lukovic (qtd. in "Balkan").
Turbo Folk singers are generally leggy women dressed in short sequined
minskirts, pushup bras and heavy makeup who socialize in the public
spotlight
with political figures and military thugs (Block 16).
Originally, in a period of particularly high Serbian chauvinism and
xenophobia, the form was endorsed and even promoted by the official
media as
an all-Serb alternative to outer influences. So popular has the genre
become,
in fact, that most discotheques have been replaced by "folkotheques,"
where
Turbo Folk is played exclusively (Chazan, Christian Science Monitor, 4).
If Turbo Folk has any one message in particular, according to Lukovic,
it's
"We're okay, sanctions cannot hurt us" (qtd. in "Balkan Blast" 88). The
lyrics vacillate between "dismal love songs," nationalistic boasting, or
just
plain boasting ("Coca-Cola, Marlboro and Suzuki/ Discotheques, Guitars
and
Bouzouki/ Nobody has it as good as me," is the chorus of one of the most
well-known hits) (Block 16). And while political boasting of the more
hard-
headed sort is actually part of Serbian tradition, as in songs such as
"Ko to
Kaze Ko to Laze Serbija je Mala (Whoever says that Serbia is small is a
liar)," never before have political themes been incorporated to such an
extent into the songs of the country's pop stars (Waters 7).
Naturally, Turbo Folk, funded largely by mafia money, is the most
thriving
record industry in Serbia. And inspite of recent campaigns led by
President
Slobodan Milosevic and Cultural Minister Nada Popovic-Persic to stamp it
out
and reintroduce Western culture into the Serbian mainstream, public
appetite
for the form doesn't appear to be fading (Nelson). As record executives
like
Nesa Jovanovic, business manager of ZAM, Serbia's largest folk recording
label see it, the "music is big business because it makes people happy"
(qtd.
in "Balkan Blast" 88). Even unfavorable critics like Lukovic see the
eventual
stamping out of Turbo Folk unlikely, as "the music was promoted as a
sedative
for the Serb population" in the first place (qtd. in "Balkan Blast" 88).
Along with the launching of a "Year of Culture" campaign, Cultural
Minister
Popovic-Perisic intends to attack what she refers to as "pseudo folk
music"
by taxing not only the actual recording of Turbo Folk, but store
cassettes as
well. She also plans on introducing a bill that will aim towards
destroying
for good the music's monopoly over radio and television. Popovic-Perisic
even
hopes to persuade the "noveau riche" who have funded Turbo Folk to
donate
some of their earnings to the "Year of Culture" cause, offering tax
incentives to all contributers (Block 16).
Needless to say, the Beograd intelligentsia supports Popovic-Perisic and
her
campaign. But another faction that appears to be standing behind the
Cultural
Minister are the fans of Yugoslav rock who still remain in Serbia. These
people believe that the stamping out of Turbo Folk just might give way,
once
again, to a rock scene that was put on hold so suddenly ("Balkan
Blast").
Many rock fans still bemoan the breakup of groups like Riblja Corba,
Crvena
Jabuka, and Plavi Orkestar--groups who once sold up to 500,000 copies of
their albums and toured the entire country two months at a time
(Janjatovic
"Yugoslav").
While a considerable amount of independent recording activity is taking
place
in Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro despite countless troubles, the
recording
industries of Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia don't appear to be as
resilient. Needless to say, the violent situation in Bosnia is highly
unfavorable to most indus tries of any sort. And it's a shame--the
concentrated ethnic mix in Bosnia lent a rich, exotic air to much of
Bosnian
rock. Bands like Bijelo Dugme and Plavi Orkestar, two of the most
well-known
Yugoslav bands ever, have since broken up or moved out of the country.
Bijelo
Dugme bandleader Goran Bregovic, for example, one of the most creative
of
Bosnian rock musicians, moved to Paris and has been writing music for
film
director Emir Kusturica as well as others (Janjatovic "Yugoslav").
In the case of Macedonia, a sickly recording industry has been balanced
out
by a legacy, similar to Bosnia's, of colorful rock laced with
traditional
folk melodies and instruments. Established Macedonian bands like Leb i
Sol
remain popular throughout the Yugoslav region, having recently defied
ethnic
assumptions by playing three sold out shows at Belgrade's Sava Centre in
celebra tion of their "Live in New York" CD. Another group, Anastasia,
has
also found wide recognition by writing and performing the music for the
Macedonian film "Before the Rain," the soundtrack of which has been
released
by Poly Gram records (Janjatovic "Global").
Slovenia, the most western of all the former republics both
geographically
and culturally, has always been, as noted by journalist Robert Kaplan, a
bit
of a sideshow to the larger Yugoslav picture (13). In musical terms, a
good
illustration of this is Laibach, not only the prototypical Slovenian
band,
but also the most well-known Yugoslav band ever. Laibach has developed
its
worldwide industrial rock audience largely through its adherance to "New
Slovenian Art," a self-titled movement that smacks heavily of Western
artistic traditions along the lines of "art for art's sake" (Thompson
42-43).
The band is famous for dressing up in Nazi uniforms and re-working
classic
rock and pop songs, for example, into dark, "poker-faced," militaristic
marches (Suselj). While Slovenian musicians do have much to gain through
an
integrated Yugoslav audience, the example of Laibach shows that Western
acceptance may be found for them without the support of any of their
Slavic
neighbors.
Although independent labels continue to emerge throughout the former
Yugoslavia, the extent to which the Yugoslav record market may revive
itself
in a short period of time remains a tough question. According to
Slovenian
concert promoter Igor Vidmar, the country's emerging hard-currency music
market is only temporarily suspended. Vidmar, during a discussion on the
opportunities in Eastern Europe, said that Yugoslavia has a population
of 24
million with a strong interest in contemporary music--and convertible
dinars
to buy it with. Pointing to the fact that two regions have already
seceded
from Yugoslavia, Vidmar said he believed that when the situation
stabilized,
the nation would still be one market (Clark-Meads 76).
He further stated that there was already an "emerging network of
privately
owned record stores selling local indie product and imports." In
addition,
domestic record companies were well organized and "there are no record
pirates in Yugoslava," he declared. Vidmar outlined the geopgraphic
effects
of the civil war by saying it was highly localized and taking place
entirely
in Croatia. Vidmar appealed for the music industry and the world in
general
to take an approach to Yugoslavia that was as normal as possible as a
way of
calming militaristic attitudes. "Music can have a very positive role in
this
respect" (qtd. in Clark-Meads 76).
Indeed, it appears as though the only forces actively at work at
reuniting
the republics within Yugoslavia are rock musicians: Recently, concerts
in
Berlin and Prague featured Serbian bands Catherine the Great, Electric
Orgasm
and the Party-Breakers teamed up with other Croatian and Slovenian
bands. The
audience consisted primarily of refugees from all six republics. Serbian
band
Bad Musicians' Kids makes it a point to sing songs in Slovenian and
Croatian
as well as in Serbian. Another Serbian band, Dza Ili Bu, has a popular
song
called "Soon You'll Be Sweeping the Streets," in reference to Communist
government. Veteran Serbian band Galija recently released a single
covering a
song by Croatian band Film as well as a song by Indexi, a Sarajevo band,
and
the tenth release of the Serbian band Electric Orgasm is dedicated to
"all
our friends in Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo, with whom we seem to
have
lost touch" (Janjatovic "Labels"). While such gestures may seem minute,
their
very existence in such hostile times are significant enough.
Also interesting is the development of gathering spots at dance clubs
throughout Europe for Yugoslavs of all "nationalities." The Nest in
London,
for example, holds gatherings for "Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats--gypsies,
students and refugees" every Saturday night. Politics are never
discussed,
and popular Yugoslav records, many of them reissues released by
independent
labels, from the 70's and 80's are played. It gives Yugoslavs an
opportunity
to talk about old times, sing folk songs they all know, and dance
traditional
dances from each others' republics (Ditmars 22). Such activity, not
surprisingly, is branded by Croatian and Serbian nationalists as
"Yugonostalgic," indicating a sense of betrayal to one's true homeland
(Moseley 21).
If there is to be a positive side at all to the conflict in Yugoslavia,
it
just might be this active emergence of private record labels, many of
them
run by "Yugonostalgists" who hold fast to the musical values that
initially
drove them into business, and provide those who remember a retrospective
look
at some of the richness and variety they used to have. As more and more
stress is put by each independent record company on carrying an
ethnically
diverse roster, more of this music may be availabe and play some minor
role,
perhaps, in reopening the perceptions of Yugoslav rock's original
audiences,
wherever they may be.
Works Cited
"Balkan Blast." The Economist. 9 Jul. 1994: 88.
Block, Robert. "Ethnic Cleansing's Balladeers Get Their Marching
Orders." The
Independent. 25 Sep. 1994: 16.
Chazan, Yigal. "Ex-Warmonger Milosevic Turns Culture-Vulture." The
Ottawa
Citizen. 8 Apr. 1995: 1.
Chazan, Yigal. "Popular Folk Music Strikes a Bad Chord Among Serb
Leaders."
Christian Science Monitor. 11 Jul. 1994: 4A.
Clark-Meads, Jeff. "Slavic Music Biz Ready For Battle Again; Civil War
Interrupts, Doesn't Deter, Promoter Says." Billboard. Nov 2/1991: 76.
Ditmars, Hadani. "The Good Old Days; Despite the Situation in Former
Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats Still Meet in a London Club to Recall
Better
Days. Hadani Ditmars Joined Them." The Independent. Jul 13 1994: 22.
Doder, Dusko. The Yugoslavs. Random House: New York, 1978.
Janjatovic, Petar. "Yugoslav War Halts Growth of Local Music Biz."
Billboard.
11 July 1992: 1.
_________________. "Labels Unite Divided Market; New Bands, Scenes
Emerge in
Balkans." Billboard. Mar 13 1993: 56.
_________________. "Global Pulse: Croatia." Billboard. Apr 22, 1995.
Kaplan, Robert. "A Reader's Guide to the Balkans." The New York Times.
Apr 18
1993: 13.
McKinsey, Kitty. "Serbia May Be Winning War but Croatia Has Best Songs."
The
Gazette (Montreal). Dec 10 1991: 7B.
Meares, Richard. "Patriotic War Songs Replace Love on Rebel Croatia's
Airwaves." The Reuter Library Report. Nov 4 1991.
Moseley, Ray. "Media War Erupts i Yugoslavia." Chicago Tribune.Oct. 11
1991:
21C.
Nelson, Mark. "New Music of War Offers Serbs Escape With A Disco Beat."
Wall
Street Journal. 27 June 1995: 1A.
Pareles, Jon. "Rock Music of Eastern Europe: So Western, So Familiar, So
Old." The New York Times. Feb 28 1990: 13C.
Susmelj, Marta. "Laibach: The Ambassadors of 'Yugo Rock.'" Newsday. Feb
3,
1989.
Thompson, Mark. A Paper House: The Ending of Yugoslavia. New York:
Pantheon,
1992.
Waters, Tim . "Around the South Bay: A Big Name From Yugoslavia Wows 'Em
At
Revived Theater." Los Angeles Times. 25 Apr. 1985: 2.
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 14:37:46 EDT
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
