=== * ===

http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=24538

Civil Georgia - March 10, 2012

Georgia in Senator Lugar's NATO Enlargement Bill


Tbilisi: U.S. Republican Senator Richard Lugar has introduced the NATO Enlargement Bill, calling on President Obama to provide “a clear roadmap” for the accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, and Montenegro to NATO at the Chicago summit in late May.

“I am hopeful that the Senate will pass this measure before the NATO Summit in Chicago this May,” said Lugar, who is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

The bill, which he says aims at encouraging further enlargement of NATO, declares “for the first time in U.S. legislation”, that Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, and Montenegro, which currently aspire to join the Alliance, are to be considered NATO “aspirants.”

Georgia has been referred to as “aspirant” country in a final statement of NATO foreign ministerial meeting in Brussels on December 7, 2011, which triggered Russia’s protest with its Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that he had “openly warned” his counterparts from the Alliance that such statements might serve as an encouragement for President Saakashvili to undertake “an adventure similar to the one of August, 2008.”

Senator Lugar’s bill, if approved, will require reports to the Congress on U.S. efforts towards further NATO enlargement and on the readiness of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia and Montenegro to join the Alliance, as well as a report on “U.S. policies to uphold Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

If approved the bill will make Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro eligible to receive U.S. assistance for NATO accession under the 1994 NATO Participation Act and will reauthorize assistance under the same act for Georgia and Macedonia.

"La Repubblica" con un ampio dossier multimediale ci descrive per filo e per segno lo sfruttamento neo-coloniale praticato dalle imprese italiane in Serbia - dalla FIAT a GOLDEN LADY passando per BENETTON e tutte le grandi banche. "Bassi salari, sovvenzioni e partecipazioni... Sindacato spalle al muro". 

A pagare a caro prezzo questa "Eldorado delle aziende" non sono solo i lavoratori serbi, ma anche quelli italiani vittime delle delocalizzazioni: devono ringraziare Massimo D'Alema e la furibonda campagna anti-Milosevic che mirava in realtà all'imposizione manu militari di questo "capitalismo reale" in tutte le repubbliche jugoslave, contribuendo così alla riscrittura delle regole del mercato del lavoro. 

Ben prima di Repubblica, ovviamente, tutto questo era stato detto e scritto, non solo da noi. Si vedano ad esempio:

* il video FIGLI DELLA FIAT (RaiNews24 - 27 ottobre 2011)

http://www.rainews24.rai.it/it/canale-tv.php?id=24899

oppure http://www.insutv.it/blog/2011/10/30/figli-di-fiat/ oppure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzM6crVRQXM

* il reportage dal programma PRESA DIRETTA (Rai 3 - 19 febbraio 2012, con particolare riferimento alle riprese dalla Serbia dal minuto 57 e 40 per circa mezz’ora)

http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-681d9560-8816-4fda-bd7f-553fcdbe4a5d.html#p=0

Tra gli aggiornamenti di quest'ultima segnaliamo in particolare il documento pervenuto attraverso la Onlus Non Bombe Ma Solo Caramelle, con la spiegazione del recente contenzioso in merito alla negazione del diritto all'assistenza sanitaria per molti lavoratori di Kragujevac: https://www.cnj.it/AMICIZIA/sindacale.htm knjizice2012

(a cura di Italo Slavo)

--- 1 ---

IL REPORTAGE 1 di PASQUALE NOTARGIACOMO e PIETRO CALVISI

continua: http://inchieste.repubblica.it/it/repubblica/rep-it/2012/03/12/news/investimenti_italiani_in_serbia-31234386/?inchiesta=%2Fit%2Frepubblica%2Frep%2Dit%2F2012%2F03%2F12%2Fnews%2Findustria_fuga_nei_balcani%2D31250164%2F

--- 2 ---

VIDEO: http://inchieste.repubblica.it/static/rep-locali/inchieste/includes/inchieste-nav.html?iframeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.repubblica.it%2Fle%2Dinchieste%2Fil%2Dmade%2Din%2Ditaly%2De%2Dserbo%2F90342%3Fvideo&inchiesta=%2Fit%2Frepubblica%2Frep%2Dit%2F2012%2F03%2F12%2Fnews%2Findustria_fuga_nei_balcani%2D31250164%2F

(anche in home: IL VIDEO 2

http://inchieste.repubblica.it/it/repubblica/rep-it/2012/03/12/news/industria_fuga_nei_balcani-31250164/ )

Russia Today - March 24, 2011

Source of the following documents in english language is the Stop NATO e-mail list 
Archives and search engine:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages
Website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com

=== 1 ===

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22909

Global Research/Politika Daily - January 22, 2011 

Fact and Propaganda: Yugoslavia and The "Politics of Genocide"

by Stanko Stojilkjovic 


Is it possible that the prevailing current usage of the word genocide is “an insult to the memory of the Nazi regime's victims”? 

This incisive thought of Noam Chomsky was taken from the preface he wrote to an astonishing book titled “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward Herman and David Peterson, published in Belgrade in 2010 by Vesna info. 

Edward Herman is a professor emeritus teaching finance at the University of Pennsylvania and David Peterson is a free-lance journalist. What an unusual match, you might think at first. However, if you check the exhaustive list of references you will find out that they have worked on at least two more published books, both dedicated to the former Yugoslavia and its disintegration. David Peterson is author of another dozen published books, either alone or in cooperation with other authors.  

According to Noam Chomsky, the end of the Cold War “opened an era of Holocaust denial,” in which the humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia (read: Serbia) is far from being the last piece of the puzzle.  

According to “Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda,” written by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, in the period between 1945 and 2009 the USA organized “major” military interventions in as many as 29 countries. “Thanks to its dominant position and its global counter-revolutionary efforts, the US has been the key single instigator, organizer and provider of moral and material support for some of the heaviest bloodshed that took place after the World War Two.  

"US officials, supported by the media and intellectuals close to the administration (“genocide intellectuals”), have mastered the skills of “crime management” used to draw the attention of the public away from the violence instigated and endorsed by the leading global super-power and direct the public eye towards the violence perpetrated by US enemies."

In line with this the authors [Herman and Peterson] have come up with an unusual classification of the bloodbaths into four categories: constructive, benign, criminal and mythical. 

“The largest genocidal act undertaken in the last thirty years was the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, both in respect of the number of victims and in respect of full awareness of the impact of this policy among its creators,” reads the introductory section of the book. 

The New York Times revealed that “in the long run, Iraq has been pushed back into pre-industrial times, though it still suffers from post-industrial dependence on energy and technology.” And the Washington Post, quoting a reliable source, stated that “the bombs… were targeted at everything that was vital for survival of the country.” Sounds familiar, doesn't it? 

Denis Halliday, the leading UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, resigned, issuing a statement that the overall effects of the sanctions were comparable to that of genocide. And Eleanor Robinson, lecturer at the Old Soul College in Oxford (England), added: ”You will have to go back in time as far as the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258 to find an example of pillage of comparable magnitude.” You can guess who was doing the pillage! 

Edward Herman and David Peterson have exposed the ill doings of politicians, intellectuals and reporters who used the word genocide in their reports on the most deadly world crisis since the end of the World War Two (5.4 million dead between 1998 and 2007 in DR Congo) only 17 times, while the killing of 4,000 Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija was qualified as genocide as many as 323 times! 

George Robertson, British Defense Minister, admitted during a hearing before Parliament: “Before Račak this year (24 March 1999), the KLA was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the authorities of Yugoslavia”. The number of killings since 1998 was estimated at 2,000, and 500 of these killings were attributed to Serbian forces.  

“During the civil wars in the wake of the disintegration of the former SFR Yugoslavia in the nineties, the USA, Germany, NATO and EU supported national minorities which insisted on breaking away from the federal state and acted against the national group of Serbs who persisted in their efforts to save the former Yugoslavia. That is why the Western powers strongly supported first Croats and Slovenes, later Bosnian Muslims, and finally Kosovo Albanians,” explained Edward Herman and David Peterson, quoting a number of critically acclaimed works. 

We are also informed that the NATO forces supported, “even coordinated war operations, and as there were numerous cases of ethnic cleansing and ethnically motivated killings, it was only natural that expressions such as ethnic cleansing, massacre and genocide were applied primarily to the war acts of the Serbs.” Regarding the “Srebrenica massacre”, they say that there is no proof that Serbian forces killed anyone but “Muslim men capable of army service,” taking care to evacuate all children, women and the elderly by buses.  

“If Račak was a contrived crime, and we believe that it was, then the war sold to the world on the strength of this crime was based on a lie, and therefore any claims that the war was waged on humanitarian grounds must be disputed, if for no other reason then on account of this fact alone,” said Edward Herman and David Peterson, referring to their own article “CNN: Sale of a NATO War on a Global Scale” from 2009.  

“The Račak massacre” perfectly suited the needs of Bill Clinton's administration and NATO and provided them with an excuse to launch the air attacks against Yugoslavia (Serbia), which had been prepared for a long time, soon after the failure of the negotiations in Rambouillet, “one of the greatest staged deceptions in recent history.” 

When Madeleine Albright was first informed that the attacks had been launched, she commented with delight: “Spring has come early to Kosovo this year.” 

This valuable book meticulously reveals the double standards applied to war acts in Darfur (Sudan), Rwanda, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and so on.                 

=== 2 ===

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/24/c_13890288.htm

Xinhua News Agency - May 23, 2011

Commentary: Libya overshadowed by "Kosovo model"  

Wu Liming


BEIJING: The latest moves by Western allies against Libya have shown marked similarities to "strategies" they adopted in Kosovo in the 1990s.

Catherine Ashton, EU's foreign policy chief, opened the bloc's office on Sunday in Benghazi,the Libyan opposition's base camp when he visited the city on Sunday.

Earlier last Monday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requested arrest warrants for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and his brother-in-law Abdullah Al-Sanousi who is Libya's head of intelligence.

In retrospect, NATO adopted a three-step strategy in the Kosovo war back in 1999.

NATO first supported the Kosovo authority and launched 78-day bombings against former Yugoslavia, forcing the late Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces.

The West then stirred up political unrest in Serbia, leading to the downfall of Milosevic.

The last step was to send Milosevic to The Hague to face trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. Later on, Milosevic died in custody.

Twelve years later, the Western allies again resorted to a similar three-step strategy in Libya.

NATO is launching continuous air strikes against Gaddafi's forces, while the Western allies are heaping political and psychological pressures on Gaddafi and openly supporting the opposition, in a bid to force Gaddafi to give up power. This was followed by ICC's issuance of an arrest warrant to bring Gaddafi to The Hague.

Yet, there are some differences between the two scenarios.

In 1999, the West unleashed the bombings without bothering to ask for a UN Security Council mandate, while 12 years later the West launched airstrikes on Libya by overstepping the authorization of UN Resolution 1973 to impose a "non-fly" zone supposedly to protect the civilians in Libya.

In addition, NATO has expanded its military actions from Europe, the defense area defined by the North Atlantic Treaty, to Africa, which is far beyond NATO's traditional legitimate defense area.

Ironically, the West has claimed to seek a "political solution" while continuing its airstrikes in Libya, but what it really means by "political solution" is something quite different from what is understood by the international community.

Since March 19 when several Western nations started air raids, the West has organized a so-called "Contact Group" on Libya and held several meetings to coordinate actions, claiming to "seek a political solution to resolving the Libya crisis."

However, the "Contact Group" has openly urged support for the Libya opposition on several occasions.

In short, what happened in Kosovo and Libya may well serve as perfect examples of the so-call "neo-interventionism" pursued by some Western powers.

Under the pretext of "human rights above sovereignty," they try to interfere in the domestic affairs of sovereign states, even to resort to military means to split them.

The strategies of these neo-interventionists are, more often than not, deceptive.

On the Libya issue, for instance, the Western powers seemed to have complied with international procedures and norms: they first tried to push UN Security Council resolutions and then seek an ICC arrest warrant to bring Libyan leader Gaddafi to justice.

These strategies, however, are merely employed on a selective basis to get rid of political figures the West dislikes, including Gaddafi and Milosevic. The West would turn a blind eye to similar cases in countries which are considered its own allies.

To put it clearly, some forces in the West are using just procedures of the international laws to serve their own political purposes.

In the 21st century, some Western countries take "neo-interventionism" as their standard practice and even try to apply the so-called "Kosovo model" elsewhere in the world. This should ring an alarm bell to the international community. 

=== 3 ===

http://rt.com/usa/news/usa-libya-yugoslavia-anniversary-war/

RT - March 24, 2011

Yugoslavia anniversary highlights parallels with Libya


In March the seasons change and sunshine falls on America. In March American politicians venture to foreign counties – to drop bombs. 

March 1999 – the United States entered Yugoslavia. 

“Our armed forces joined our NATO allies in air strikes against Serbian forces responsible for the brutality in Kosovo,” said US President Bill Clinton. 

March 2011 – the United States entered Libya. 

“The UN Security Council passed a strong resolution that demands an end to the violence against [Libyan] citizens. It authorizes the use of force,” US President Barack Obama said. 

From one democratic president to another, bombing commences. The US and coalition forces reign down on Libya over the anniversary of the Yugoslavia bombings. 

The attack on Libya was sanctioned by the UN Security Council, in contrast to the bombings in Yugoslavia. Without approval in 1999, NATO took the lead in the first time the alliance attacked an independent and sovereign nation which posed no threat to the organization’s members. Similarly, Libya poses no threat to the nations leading the campaign of aggressive attacks. 

There are many sticking parallels between the two wars.

The enemy in 1999 was Slobodan and “The New Hitler” – Milosevic. Today it is Moammar Ghadafi who has been in power in Libya for over 40 years. 

“As much as Ghadafi is this John Galliano-dressed freak show, he modernized Libya for a while,” said Pepe Escobar, a correspondent from the Asia Times. 

Nevertheless, America seeks regime change and a nation friendlier to US interests. 

“Ghadafi needs to step down and leave,” Obama stated. 

“What we are seeing is a full-fledged war, including attempting evidently to kill the head of state of the targeted country. That again is a page from a Yugoslav book from 12 years ago,” said Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO. “What has the world learned? Evidently, not much.” 

Officially, the US and allied intervention is one of humanitarian concern – the same rational argued in 1999 when bombings commenced in Yugoslavia. 

“You can bomb a country because you are coming to save its people, and essentially that was what the rationale behind the war in Yugoslavia,” explained Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montréal. “You don’t come to the rescue of civilians with bombs and missiles, ok? Bombs and missiles are part of a killing machine, and they inevitable will kill civilians.” 

Like Yugoslavia, a no-fly zone has ignited the engine of the war machine – a green light to use bombing and airstrikes. 

The UN agreement on Libya created the no-fly zone and went further to allow “all means necessary” which opens the doors for nearly any type of assault. 

In Yugoslavia thousands of people were killed and millions displaced. 

“After the war, when they did a count, they found that US and NATO bombs had destroyed 14 tanks in Serbia. But, they had also bombed 473 schools,” said Sara Flounders from the International Action Center.

Experts are predicting a similar outcome in Obama’s war in Libya. 

The White House is promising the conflict will last only days, not week – just days. Initially, the same guarantee was given for the war in Yugoslavia. That conflict lasted two and a half months. 

“They think that a quick bit of bombing will sort the matter out, but in fact, I think they will find that it will last far longer than they’ve gambled for,” remarked journalist John Laughland. 

12 years on Serbia still remembers the losses it suffered at the hands of US led NATO bombings and the US is now entering its fourth set of attacks on foreign soil in the past 12 years.

Gerald Celente, the director of the Trends Research Institute argued that the first great war of the 21st century has now begun – in Libya. 

“Any excuse that the United States has to attack another county, they just make up,” said Celente. 

It’s all hypocrisy, he argued. The US invaded Libya over supposed humanitarian concerns, but as governments in Yemen, Somali and other nations continue to kill their people, the US is not talking about intervention and invasion there. 

“All this is the United States doing what it has become accustom to do, and that is attack any country it wants to at any time for any reason it can make up. And the new reason they made up is perfectly Orwellian – humanitarian crisis. So, you kill people to solve a humanitarian crisis and you take dictators out that you don’t like,” Celente said. 

He argued the drive to war is oil and other resources. If the major export was anything less significant, like vegetables, the US would not have invaded, Celente contended. 

=== 4 ===

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/fruits-of-humanitarian-intervention-destruction-of-states-huge-civilian-casualties-destabilization-of-countries/

Fruits Of “Humanitarian Intervention”: Destruction Of States, Huge Civilian Casualties, Destabilization Of Countries
  

====
 
[W]e cannot rule out that Washington is preparing to launch a military campaign against Syria. McCain’s statement is intended to prepare world opinion for an inevitable war.
In other words, the U.S. is seriously considering staging a “humanitarian intervention” in the Middle East.
 
The decision taken in Dayton [in regards to Bosnia] in fact created a protectorate controlled by NATO, the EU and the U.S., a kind of modern colony almost in the center of Europe. The solution was in the spirit of Lloyd George and Clemenceau. Thus, we can assume that the entire military operation in the former Yugoslav republic had a single goal, i.e. to strengthen the position of Western powers in the Balkans.
 
The air campaign in Yugoslavia led to the formation of a de facto independent Kosovo, where ethnic minorities live behind barbed wire and cannot even go to the store without armed guards. Another result is the appearance on Kosovo territory of Europe’s largest U.S. military base, Camp Bondsteel…
 
The Libyan tragedy began in February 2011. It has passed through all stages, from the systematic military destruction of an independent state to the unleashing of chaos and lawlessness.
 
====
 
Republican Senator John McCain this week called for air strikes against Damascus. According to AFP, he said that it is necessary to disable the Syrian air defense system, at least in some parts of the country, to “establish and defend safe havens in Syria”. 
 
McCain makes no attempt to conceal the purpose of these “safe zones”. They could be used by an armed opposition to “organize and plan political and military activities”. The American politician openly advocated providing military assistance to the militants, “including weapons and ammunition.”
 
Of course, McCain is not the U.S. president. He lost the battle for the post to Barack Obama in 2008, and this time around he is not even standing for election. Nonetheless, the Senator has a clear influence on the formation of U.S. foreign policy. We recall that his proposal to launch an operation to oust Muammar Gaddafi received a warm response at the White House. John McCain even visited the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to show U.S. support for Libyan opposition fighters. Thus, we cannot rule out that Washington is preparing to launch a military campaign against Syria. McCain’s statement is intended to prepare world opinion for an inevitable war.
 
In other words, the U.S. is seriously considering staging a “humanitarian intervention” in the Middle East. In the American political establishment, we can find many supporters of using military force for humanitarian purposes. If necessary, they are prepared to act (and have acted before) without the sanction of the United Nations. However, the success of such operations is highly relative. They often result in a high number of victims and significantly worsen the situation in the country under the banner of “intervention with noble aspirations.”
 
Examples are easy to find. In 1995, NATO forces launched an air campaign against Bosnian Serbs, thereby getting involved in the civil war in Bosnia. 
 
In this case, NATO armed forces appeared to be intervening in the conflict on the side of Bosnian Muslims and Croats. According to eyewitnesses of those events, the Serbs’ adversaries would attack after massive NATO air raids. As a result, a very original state appeared on the political map of Europe, consisting of two parts: the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serb Republic. The decision taken in Dayton in fact created a protectorate controlled by NATO, the EU and the U.S., a kind of modern colony almost in the center of Europe. The solution was in the spirit of Lloyd George and Clemenceau. Thus, we can assume that the entire military operation in the former Yugoslav republic had a single goal, i.e. to strengthen the position of Western powers in the Balkans.
 
Proof of who is actually the master of the situation in Bosnia can be found in the Brcko District, which, in violation of Article 5 of the Dayton Agreement of 1999, has been given an autonomous status. This area, which has great strategic importance, is out of the control of both the Federation and the Serb Republic. The real power is in the hands of an administrator, American diplomat Roderick Moore, who has been in the position since 2010. Does he not resemble a colonial governor-general?
 
In 1999, Kosovo was the scene of dramatic events that until recently were considered a classic example of “humanitarian intervention”. The U.S. and its NATO allies actually intervened in the internal conflict (bypassing the UN Security Council) in Yugoslavia and incited armed rebellion in a Serbian province. During the three-month air campaign, the strikes hit more than just military targets. Industrial facilities, infrastructure, hospitals, schools and homes were destroyed. At the time of the Kosovo campaign, NATO waged war against the press for the first time. On the night of 22 to 23 April 1999, NATO aircraft launched a missile strike on the building of Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 journalists.
Why not draw direct parallels with the current situation in Syria? Of course, the death of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik in Homs is a tragedy, and the international media quite rightly put this issue at center stage. However, they were war correspondents who had been in the besieged city for a long time and entered it illegally, and they were fully aware of the inevitable risks. The killing in Belgrade in 1999, however, involved Yugoslav journalists working in their own country and city and at their workplace. They were killed deliberately, and no one took responsibility for this crime. It simply disappeared from the world’s mainstream media.
 
The air campaign in Yugoslavia led to the formation of a de facto independent Kosovo, where ethnic minorities live behind barbed wire and cannot even go to the store without armed guards. Another result is the appearance on Kosovo territory of Europe’s largest U.S. military base, Camp Bondsteel, named after an American sergeant and hero of the Vietnam War. In fact, in Europe there has appeared a second enclave (after the one in Bosnia) under the control of NATO and the European Union. Based on available information, Kosovo is now ruled by organized crime. The region has become a nexus for drug trafficking from Afghanistan and Africa to European consumers.
 
Finally, the most recent example of “humanitarian intervention” was the regime change in Libya carried out by NATO allies. Formally, it was sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution, though the latter was completely turned on its head. It dealt with the establishment on Libyan territory of a useless zone. Let me remind you that John McCain has called for the same actions in Syria. Thus, we can guess what he has in mind for the Syrian government.
 
The Libyan tragedy began in February 2011. It has passed through all stages, from the systematic military destruction of an independent state to the unleashing of chaos and lawlessness. At present, Libya is in a state of low-intensity civil war, and the situation in the country is not completely clear. Even the countries that supported the rebels in 2011 cannot build any effective dialogue. There is a total loss of control processes in Libya. If this happens in Syria, which is one of the key states of the Arab world, the consequences for the entire Middle East would be hard to imagine.
 
These examples show that the doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” espoused by politicians like McCain only leads to one thing: the destruction of statehood, huge civilian casualties, and the complete destabilization of the country being intervened in. 
Of course, it is not a foregone conclusion that Washington will adopt Senator McCain’s proposed approach in Syria. However, statements by influential American hawks suggest it is at least being considered by the political leadership of the United States. This is quite worrying. 
 
Therefore, Russia should closely monitor the mood on Capitol Hill. And if necessary, together with countries that share the same positions as Moscow, take diplomatic and other measures to prevent armed action against Syria in defiance of the UN Security Council. In the end, has nothing in the world changed since 1999?
 

*Alexey Pilko, Associate Professor at the Moscow State University Faculty of History