Does FR Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and
Montenegro, fit into the new political concept of the
so-called international community regarding relations
in Southeastern Europe?

Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro fits into the
geopolitical
plans of the U.S., and to a lesser degree NATO countries,
because it's
there, strategically located, and this has to be addressed.

U.S./NATO plans involve the division and subjugation of
countries in the
region. Dividing them makes them more easily controlled and
exploited,
and the future will be greater poverty.

The per capita income of the six former republics of the SFRY is
today
less than half of what it was ten years ago. They're half as
well off
collectively. Serbia and Montenegro are even worse than that.

The same is generally true though with most of Eastern Europe,
so we
shouldn't be mislead. Bulgaria today is worse off economically.
Poland
seems to be doing better to many people, but per capita income
there is
40% of what it was, maybe less. The Russian Federation has
around 30%
less per capita income than in 1990. This has been a real human
disaster.

It's clear that the new concept for the Balkans is to divide,
exploit and
further impoverish. The idea that there will be more real aid
once a
country conforms to the demands of the U.S. and its
International
Monetary Fund is contrary to everything that's ever happened
after they
intervened. This is true whether it's little Grenada, Panama,
Viet Nam,
Nicaragua, or any other country. They have been continuously
harassed, or
kept under direct and/or indirect sanctions and further
impoverished.

How do you see the demands of the leadership of
Montenegro for a "redefinition of relations? in the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia?

Basically, only the people directly involved can decide the
details of their
relationship. What I passionately believe is that without a
strong
federation not only of Montenegro and Serbia but of the six
former
republics and beyond that, the region will remain poor. It will
remain
foreign dominated and become more so economically.

It will be afflicted with violence particularly between Muslims
and Slavs.
There are more than a 300 million Slavs in the world, and we've
seen the
deliberate fomenting of violence between Slavs and Muslims who
number
one billion. We've seen it in Afghanistan, Dagistan and Chechnya
and in
some of the larger predominantly Muslim republics on the
southern tier of
the former Soviet Union, and of course in Bosnia, Kosovo and
throughout
the Balkans.

Without unity, as we said in our revolutionary war, "we'll
either hang
together or we'll hang separately," even though, since then, we
have gotten
"too big for our britches." [Transcriber's note: this could be
translated as
being too big and arrogant. Britches mean, literally,
"pants."--PC]

The problem of Kosovo as a factor of destabilization of
Yugoslavia -
has it had, in the last two years, an internal character or
was it created
by the USA and Germany?

The entire disintegration of Yugoslavia has been caused
overwhelmingly
by external forces. They are numerous, but the two principal
violators are
Germany and the United States, and the consequences for the
region have
been a human disaster.

Kosovo itself, which is now under NATO occupation, had every
opportunity
to expect to live in peace, grow in prosperity and develop its
peoples and
resources for its own good. This was true until foreign
influences set the
people against themselves, and today you can't find anyone who
has
benefited.

You may think at the moment if you're KLA that you might be on
top, but
on top of what and at what cost? How many members of your
families did
you loose? How many homes did your friends loose? How long will
it take
you to get back to where you were if you ever do, and is this a
humanely
acceptable way to do it even if you could?

Tens of thousands of Serbs, Roma and others have been ethnically
cleansed from Kosovo, under the watchful eyes of the mighty
occupation
armies. This shows that NATO didn't intervene there for
humanitarian
reasons and that this claim is hypocritical.

Was the Rambouillet agreement an acceptable solution
for the Kosovo problem? Do you think that by accepting
it, FR Yugoslavia could have prevented the aggression
against it? What is the main effect of the Dayton
agreement? Has it solved the problems in the Balkans
or has it meant the establishment of U.S. domination
on the territories of the former Yugoslavia?

It's sad to see countries or peoples bullied into agreements
that are on
their face moral outrages.

When I think of the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian people who
are
suffering from violence today even more than the Yugoslavs, it
breaks my
heart. Since the Oslo Accords there's been nothing but
deterioration
politically, socially, and economically for the Palestinians.
Yet a coalition
of powerful interests forced them into it just as they forced
Yugoslavia into
the Dayton Accords. These accords, including the Rambouillet
scheme,
were unnatural "agreements" that would foment violence. They
also
violated the idea of peoples' independence and the sovereignty
of their
nations.

Any country that has a large foreign military population on its
soil is not
free--that is a truism. And both of those accords contemplated
foreign
troops on Yugoslav soil. But they ought to be out of there, just
as U.S.
money ought to be out of politics there. If the future of
Yugoslavia is to be
determined by the financing of political parties by the United
States, then
you might as well give up and deed the country over to General
Motors,
Coca Cola and Burger King.

What was the role of the USA in the military strenghtening of
Croatia,
in Operation Storm, which had as a consequence a massive
exodus of
Serbian people from Krajina?

In time we'll know a lot more, but we know from Richard
Holbrook's
autobiographical account of that period that while Washington
was saying
to Croatia "don't do it," Holbrook and others in Zagreb were
saying "drive
the Serbs out." How much protest did you hear internationally in
what was
the biggest single ethnic cleansing in the last 50 years in the
Balkans?
None! The cleansing from Krajina of the Serb population was in
fact
ignored or applauded internationally. So it's another interplay
between
media presentation and the use of force for the West to have its
way.

The Twentieth Century has been marked by many different
ideas, but a
majority of them have not been confirmed by history. Why do
you think?

Populations everywhere are manipulated by ideas that often have
no
validity. There's a French saying that I've always liked,
"Nothing is so
cruel on Earth as the murder of a beautiful idea by a brutal
gang of facts."
If we look at the facts you'll see that many of the fictions
that have been
imposed on people are false and harmful.

Let's talk about democracy, which is a difficult concept. People
think the
U.S. is the greatest example of democracy. But the U.S. is not a
democracy
at all; it's a pure plutocracy--a government of wealth.
Elections here
have nothing to do with the will of the people. They are in fact
a minor
contest between representatives of the plutocracy vying for
power; the
poor of the country are left out.

I'm not talking about just the billions of dollars that have
been spent on
political campaigns. The U.S. has spent almost as much on the
election
campaign in Yugoslavia as it has on its own presidential
campaign this
year. That's an economic fact that ought to be investigated.
You're not free
if a foreign power is buying your elections. The same is true of
us in the
U.S.; we can't be free as long as rich capitalists continue to
buy our
elections, and of course that's exactly what they do.

You might not have heard of the presidential candidate Ralph
Nader. He
has worked in the interests of consumers, poor people, and the
ecology for
years. But he doesn't get to participate in the debates, and he
won't get a
significant vote. If by democracy you mean government should
follow the
needs and interests of the people then the U.S. is not a
democracy even
with elections held here periodically.

Washington has, moreover, used elections to take over other
countries.
They basically stole Nicaragua from the Sandinista government by
pumping in money to the opposition, unifying it, and sending in
death squad
terrorists--not unlike the KLA. They were trained and financed
to destroy
villages and kill Nicaraguans. The U.S. then told them that if
they wanted
peace and "prosperity" they had to elect the opposition. In the
meantime,
the media was given over to the opposition and they were given
money and
other communications resources. It worked, the opposition won,
and now
the Nicaraguans are living in abject poverty.

We also tried to steal Angola through the ballot box--through an
abuse of
democracy. We told the Dos Santos government that they had to
have an
election. Then we told them they couldn't hold the voting until
they
dismantled two-thirds of the army. They did it and the
government won at
the polls. But the U.S.-backed opposition led by Jonas Savimbi
immediately attacked with an enormous military force and overran
two-thirds of the country, which the government is still
fighting to win
back.

We're told that there's only one idea in economic life that
works and that's
capitalism. Every country has to convert to capitalism and do
what the
World Bank and the IMF says. You've got to privatize--open up to
"free
trade." But the countries that have done that have been
absolutely
devastated.

In the former Soviet Union, for example, the people there had
jobs, homes,
medical care, education, a decent economy, but now they've lost
all of that.
They have no health care system, and their schools are falling
apart. They
have few jobs, lost their homes. They have had to sell their
private
possessions just to make out. The country is an economic basket
case.

The Ukraine is worse, and the same is true of countries in the
Western
Hemisphere. We take a country like Peru and we tell it to borrow
money
from the IMF and privatize--to do what the World Bank says. But
the
poor have gotten poorer there, and President Fujimori sits on
the necks of
the people with his economic policies, and police and military
power
backed by Washington.

We have to examine these ideas for ourselves and decide what's
best for
the children. But we have to do it in the face of a media that
tries to tell us
there's only one way--and with nuclear intimidation and the
threat of
starvation from sanctions hanging over our heads.

When the U.S. government can't manipulate elections--and they
are
masters at it--they'll instigate a military coup like they did
in Guatemala
in the 1950s, in Chile in the 1970s and in Haiti in 1991, to
name a few
places.

What did the 20th Century bring in terms of the
development of human civilization, especially for the
peoples of the Balkans?

The 20th Century has brought the most uncivilized and violent
acts of
human history. There has never been before such disasters caused
by
human conduct. There were the two world wars, and the Cold War
arms
race, which impoverished people. There were also the bloody
fights that
came from the neo-colonial drive to divide and conquer Africa,
Asia and
the Balkans.

The Balkans had many problems in the 1900s. But the culture was
still
intact in most places despite the history of oppression by the
Ottoman
Empire, the Austrio-Hungary Empire and all the rest. These were
rich
cultures; people knew what and who they were. They loved their
traditions,
had their own art, music, literature, meaning to life, religious
faiths. They
had their own philosophy, and could sit around in the evenings
or on a
bridge across the Drina to talk about life and love and things.

Today there's chaos, the disintegration of institutions, random
violence,
impoverishment and insecurity. But you have your strength, your
people
and your history of resistance. If you unite you have a part of
the earth
that's beautiful, that provides abundant food, natural resources
and other
essentials of life. If you organize it can be used for your own
well being.
Your future is largely in your hands, but without unity you will
be turned
against each other.

What can we expect in the 21st Century?

What we're seeing is the spread of fomented violence by those
who want to
divide and weaken. Just look at India, with all its history and
more than a
billion people, with the Tamils in the south and the terrible
violence that's
going on there. This 70-million strong population of Tamils is
struggling
for survival from Sri Lanka up into southern India.

If you go north you find the Casmiris and Pakistanis and the
Indian
government fighting in some of the most spectacularly beautiful
countries
in the world. It's hard to find a region there where you don't
have conflicts
between Muslims and Hindus, Tamils and Buddhists. You can see
conflicts
all over the world.

In South Africa we hope there will be unity. The government
there still
faces terrible risks, but under the current leadership--with its
many heroic
figures--they've been able to hold their country together.

In West Africa you see bloodletting everywhere much of which is
promoted
from abroad. We all know about Rwanda and the Hutus and the
struggle
for the Congo.

It must be recognized that if you let foreign governments choose
your
leaders you will be in for bad times. That's exactly what has
been
happening in the last half of the 20th Century.

The U.S. chose the Shah for Iran; he was literally imposed. The
CIA said
it was their greatest accomplishment. The Shah reigned for 25
years, but
the people finally rose up and threw him out when they couldn't
stand it
any more. Over 35,000 people were killed by the Shah's
U.S.-trained
soldiers and secret police. That's what letting the U.S. choose
their leader
did for the Iranis after a democratically-elected government was
overthrown.

In the Congo, a huge country with enormous natural resources,
Patrice
Lumumba was elected after independence from a colonial power.
But he
was soon murdered. His body was found in the trunk of a CIA car.
Mobutu
was then put in power, and from 1962 until 1997 the people of
the Congo
were ravaged. Today, you have armed soldiers from 12 different
countries
fighting in the Congo, some of them in the interests of U.S. big
business.

In our hemisphere Salvadore Allende was elected president of
Chile. He
was a medical doctor who wanted to heal the sick in a country
that never
had a rural health care program. He started to install them and
to make
other progressive changes when the U.S. overthrew him in a coup
that led
to his death. Allende was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet,,
one of
the major petty tyrants of recent history. More than 5,000
Chileans were
killed under the U.S.-backed dictator.

Then there was the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in
Guatemanala,
who was overthrown by the U.S. government. Tens of thousands
died as a
result, many of them indigenous people of Mayan descent.

It's imperative that people overcome the differences in their
communities
and regions and unite to protect themselves from foreign
domination,
which will only mean more violence, suffering and poverty.

What would you like to say to the people of Yugoslavia at
this moment?

This time is critical to the future of the heroic peoples of the
former
Yugoslavia and the entire region. You are peoples with deep and
rich
cultures who are being eaten up by foreign powers that are
skilled at
fomenting internal and external violence.

The imperative need for your children and the survival of all
that your
predecessors and ancestors brought to you depends on the ability
to unite
and resist foreign intrusion and domination.

It's an extremely difficult time, but you have to resist with
all your
strength the efforts by rich countries to control your destiny,
such as the
U.S., Germany, and some of your richer neighbors in Europe.

Stronger ties are needed with your immediate neighbors and the
poorer
countries in eastern Europe as well as the Slavic people who
resisted the
U.S. in the Cold War and who today remain the enemy of the U.S.
and
other NATO powers.

With such unity you can triumph and inspire us all.



posted 9 Oct 2000

International Action Center
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(2. fine; fonte: http://www.iacenter.org/yugo_rc.htm )

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