Significance of Milosevic's Death for International Relations by Tfataona P. Mahoso --Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe)

Significance of Milosevic's Death for International Relations by Tfataona P. Mahoso --Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe)

[Here's another analysis of the Milosevic execution that would have curled the toes of certain of the 'polite' defenders of the late President: Milosevic as Mugabe, Serbia/Yugoslavia as Zimbabwe. After an edit by Rick Rosoff, many of the pieces of recent Balkan history seem to be in place. But I still sense a terrible absence in all the stories I've read so far. We'll try to fill that hole here soon. --mc]

Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe)
March 19, 2006


Significance of Milosevic’s death for international
relations
AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso


Supporters of US and Nato hegemony last week were
quick to draw their usual analogies in order to bury
the history of former Yugoslavia and its last
President Slobodan Milosevic. Slobodan Milosevic died
in his cell at The Hague after accusing his Nato
captors of poisoning him in order to stop the
embarrassment which Nato heads of state and commanders
felt about his rigged trial.

The neo-Rhodesian Press in Zimbabwe were quick to jump
on the anti-Milosevic and anti-Serb bandwagon, with
The Financial Gazette naively lumping together the
former Yugoslav leader with former Chilean fascist
leader Augusto Pinochet, former Cambodian mass
murderer Pol Pot and former Iraq President Saddam
Hussein. Clearly demonstrating the gross ignorance of
history and international relations prevalent in the
neo-Rhodesian ranks. The Financial Gazette even told
its readers that Augusto Pinochet was the leader of
Argentina rather than Chile. The Financial Gazette
article was strangely entitled "Catch and punish
despots before they die".

This is the technique of relying on arbitrary
classification and mere analogy as substitutes for
analysis and explanation. Any thinking follower of
international relations would notice immediately that
Milosevic’s captors and persecutors were the ones
responsible for covering up the crimes of Pol Pot,
Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein.

The kidnappers of Slobodan Milosevic were instrumental
in creating and arming Augusto Pinochet and Saddam
Hussein. So, how could Slobodan Milosevic be in the
same class as these collaborators with US imperialism?

First, let us look at the consequences of the reckless
use of false classification and uncritical analogy in
recent African and Zimbabwean history in order to
appreciate the magnitude of the disservice of the
neo-Rhodesian Press to its readers. The Financial
Gazette of March 16 2006 simply fell back on the same
lazy habit which oppositional forces have employed
over and over again.

The MDC and its oppositional allies have tended to
rely for strategy, analysis and projection on
oversimplified analogies, as follows: In 1956, when
the British government wanted to overthrow the
Egyptian government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser,
they unleashed media propaganda to frame him as a new
Hitler. The Rhodesians used the same tired analogy and
tactic against President Robert Mugabe before 1980.

It is interesting to notice that the MDC and its
allies have tried the same tactic of framing President
Mugabe as an African Hitler and that same tired
approach is also being used to dismiss the kidnapping,
persecution and death of Milosevic.

When the people of Chile finally got rid of their
CIA-imposed dictator and murderer Augusto Pinochet,
the MDC and the British tried to create a false
analogy between President Mugabe and Pinochet,
Zimbabwe and Chile. When Indonesian President Suharto
resigned in May 1998, the forces who later formed the
MDC tried to create an analogy between President
Mugabe and President Suharto, Zimbabwe and Indonesia.

When in 2001 President Didier Ratsiraka of Madagascar
was defeated in a power struggle by Marc Ravalomanana,
the MDC and its allies again tried to equate
Madagascar with Zimbabwe, President Ratsiraka with
President Mugabe and new President Ravalomanana with
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

When in October 2000 the US and the European Union
finally overthrew the government of former Yugoslavia
after waging an illegal Nato war against that country,
the MDC and its allies created a false analogy between
Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe, President Slobodan Milosevic
and President Mugabe. They fantasised that there
"could do a Milosevic" against Mugabe just like the
Serbian collaborators.

Indeed the false analogies are endless and they
illustrate two things: an attempt to gloss over the
national state’s needs for independence, the nation’s
need for liberation and the people’s demand for
revolution against the forces of imperialism, and a
dismal failure to engage in independent, original
readings of historical reality. The MDC’s readings and
projections were mostly based on mass media
speculation and propaganda. The most notorious one
being the Daily News story of February 21 2001
predicting that President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF
Government would be out of office by June 2001.

All these analogies were wrong and have been proven
wrong as bases for national political choice and
decision. And in Perception and Misperception in
International Politics, Robert Jervis suggests that:
"When interpretation of the past is strikingly
incorrect it is likely that it was influenced by
current preferences rather than the other way around."


In other words, it is not a deep understanding of the
real histories of Cambodia, Iraq, Chile, Germany or
Yugoslavia at The Financial Gazette and within the MDC
which caused those ridiculous analogies to be made.
Rather it is the publisher’s and the editor’s current
preference for Euro-American apartheid and hegemony
which causes the paper to gloss over the profound
significance of Yugoslavia and Milosevic so easily and
cheaply.

The over-reliance on one type of analogy in
international relations is usually caused by ignorance
and narrow-mindedness or by sheer propagandistic
mischief.

In the words of Jervis citing Norwood Hanson: "Suppose
no alternative systems of concepts were available with
which to describe and explain a type of phenomenon,
the scientist would then have but one way of thinking
about the subject matter. It would then always make
sense to adjust or force the data to fit the theory or
ideology because the latter could not be abandoned. A
decision maker whose conceptual framework is dominated
by a few narrow categories will fit events into them
quickly and on the basis of little information."

The question then arises: What is the dominant theory
or ideology at The Financial Gazette which cannot be
abandoned and which causes the paper’s journalists to
forcefully lump Pinochet, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein,
Mengistu and Milosevic together? The theory or
ideology which cannot be abandoned is that the US and
Nato are not only democratic forces in the world but
also teachers and bearers of democracy wherever they
go and whatever means they use.

Their bombs, their embedded journalists, their guns,
their tanks, their jails, their apartheid war crimes
tribunals automatically become democratic simply
because they are North American and European. So, any
leader they condemn, whether in words only or in words
and deeds, also becomes a tyrant or despot. And any
leader they install, praise, sponsor, bribe or
manipulate also automatically becomes a democrat.

Unfortunately for the neo-Rhodesian Press and its
publishers and writers, the world knows too much about
the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its
leaders to be able to accept the naive analogies being
perpetrated. Our readers may remember how the road to
the death of Milosevic was prepared by the North
Atlantic powers.

The first step was to undermine the economies of the
member states of former Yugoslavia through economic
structural adjustment. Our readers are familiar with
this same strategy here. The second step was to use
the economic decline and hardships resulting from
structural adjustment to create regional tensions and
conflicts within the federation. The regional
differences caused by varying degrees of economic
decline and hardship were then ethnicised through the
media in order to make them look racially motivated.

When Yugoslavia realised that structural adjustment
was being used to destroy its sovereignty with very
few benefits coming from the World Bank, the IMF or
other global financial institutions, it tried to
resist further extensions of the programme. This gave
the imperialist powers the excuse to impose sanctions
on the country.

The third step was for the US and other Nato powers to
bribe, manipulate and protect sponsored parties and
individuals engaged in treason and destabilisation
against their own country.

Then when wars broke out among the various "ethnic"
groups, first UN forces were used and later replaced
by Nato forces to protect the sponsored
destabilisation movements and undermine the
government.

Eventually, Nato declared war on the biggest of the
Yugoslav republics, Serbia. The war was illegal, as it
was not authorised by the Security Council. The war
became an embarrassment because the most modern jets
and bombs from 19 Nato countries were employed for 79
days to bomb a small country less than the size of
Zimbabwe.

The targets were mostly civilian infrastructure and
the casualties were unarmed men and women going about
their daily activities or refugees trying to run away
from bombs to safer territories. So the war ended
without actually overthrowing President Milosevic’s
government. This had to be achieved much later by
rigging elections and bribing opposition parties.

But these are not the only reasons for condemning the
Nato intervention in Yugoslavia and the persecution to
death of an elected head of state. There are other
simple facts which the Western media will not reveal,
such as:

l That Milosevic and other leaders of Serb origin had
to be kidnapped by Nato forces and paid mercenaries
because they enjoyed support and security among the
people who had elected them.

l That the kidnapping of leaders to try for war crimes
ignored Croats and Bosnians of other ethnic groups
while targeting Serbs.

l That the new government of Serbia was bribed in
order to allow Milosevic to be kidnapped to The Hague.
The government was promised foreign aid money in
return for sacrificing Milosevic.

l That in order to manufacture evidence against
Milosevic and other Serbs, the US and Germany engaged
in the massive bribing of UN officials and NGO
activists. As David Hampson wrote on May 28, 1999:

". . . Many people who work for NGOs here in Spain
have returned with the story of how the new people
from UN organisations are actively seeking ‘evidence’
against the Serbs; and the refugees, knowing they will
be rewarded with better treatment, give them what they
want. Some reporters on the scene say that considering
this purchased information as evidence is laughable,
the problem is that it is presented by Louise Arbour
and accepted by the ‘kangaroo court’ called a War
Crimes Tribunal as fact."

In addition to bribing informers and mercenaries, the
North Atlantic states, especially Germany,
deliberately sidelined all the journalists and
witnesses who possessed contrary evidence.

Author Peter Handke referred to this silencing of
critical voices by mass media supporting US
imperialism and Nato expansionism. Handke was asked
whether he was the first German [born in Austria]
writer to travel through Yugoslavia and bring out
evidence starkly contrary to the US-Nato position. Why
was there so little information telling the story from
the point of view of the people of Yugoslavia? Handke
said:

"I have noticed one thing now in connection with my
article. I have concluded that in Germany there
existed a very strong group having a critical attitude
to the establishment of the states of Bosnia, Croatia,
Slovenia (that is, the splitting up by Nato of
Yugoslavia). However, nobody wanted to listen to these
people in Germany. Many German journalists have been
pushed out of their public work precisely because of
their differing opinions. . . They no longer dared to
act as they had been doing. Strict censorship was
exercised."

The most critical voices against Nato war crimes in
former Yugoslavia will therefore not be found in the
mainstream Western racist media but there are
thousands of them. They are not all Milosevic
loyalists or hard-core communists as AFP would like us
to believe. These voices include former US
Attorney-General Ramsey Clark. They include British
legal expert on international law Ian Brownlie. They
include professors Michel Chossudovsky of the
University of Toronto, Canada, and Raymond Kent of the
University of California in the US. They also include
the writers and intellectuals whose views were
published in a book called The Twilight of the West:
Statements made by World Intellectuals on the Killing
of Yugoslavia.

Thus David Hampson wrote in that book:

"Does a court paid for by the US, staffed by judges
paid by the US, considering ‘evidence’ compiled with
the very intention of getting an indictment against
already specified persons present justice at law? . .
. Any criminal lawyer with six months’ experience
could . . . have disqualified the evidence in 30
minutes."

Professor (Emeritus) Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology referred to this same issue
when he pointed out that the US role against
Palestine, Cuba, Iraq, Vietnam and Yugoslavia had
exposed a scandalous situation in the UN system.

"Look at the record of vetoes and the serious issues
in which the US is involved. Let’s take the Vietnam
war. The world was overwhelmingly opposed to it. It
almost never came up at the United Nations because one
of the high officials that I have talked to understood
that if they brought up the Vietnam war at the United
Nations Security Council the UN would simply be
destroyed. During the bombing of Serbia in 1999, there
was a brief moment — about five seconds — when it
looked as though the International War Crimes Tribunal
on former Yugoslavia might take a look at Nato crimes
instead of looking at Serbs alone. During that moment,
an American Congressman was interviewed by the
right-wing Canadian Press, the National Post, and they
asked him what would happen if the tribunal took this
up (that is the question of US-Nato war crimes) and he
(the US Congressman) said that we would take the
United Nations buildings in New York apart, brick by
brick, and throw them into the Atlantic Ocean."

On January 20 2000, the chairman of the US Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jesse Helms, in
fact told the UN Security Council in person that:

"Most Americans do not regard the United Nations as an
end in and of itself — they see it as just one part of
America’s diplomatic (and propaganda) arsenal. . .
Most recently, we learn that the chief prosecutor for
the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal has compiled a report
on possible Nato war crimes . . . At first the
prosecutor declared that it is fully within the scope
of her authority to indict Nato pilots and commanders.
When news of her report leaked [to the imperial
powers] she backpedalled . . . She realised, I am
sure, that any attempt to indict Nato commanders,
including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US
President Bill Clinton, would be the death knell for
the International War Crimes Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court."

This is the politics which explains Milosevic’s
kidnapping, persecution and death, not the fight for
human rights. The real terrorists and war criminals
have still not yet been indicted.

From Russia with love and farewell--Letters from President Milosevic's wife and son.

{Still can't clear this bile from my throat to write about the assassination of President Milosevic or anything else. But these letters of love and farewell from his wife and son touched and moved me very much. I hope they will counter balance some of the moral depravity that is drowning the current geopolitical discussion. --mc}

English translation of letters written by Slobodan Milosevic's widow, Mira Markovic, and their son Marko Milosevic read out at his funeral in Pozarevac on March 18, 2006.

MIRA MARKOVIC'S LETTER:

Our anniversary was on March 14, our love was born on March 17, March was our month and in March we are biding farewell.

We were constantly together ... You have spent five years in prison and I have not seen you in three years. You returned home from The Hague prison and I am not there with you. The criminals who murdered you in The Hague want my life, and maybe the life of our children. You were murdered by criminals who, by the achievement of our ideals, were deprived of the privileges they won through other people's work.

You have returned home to stay here forever in this spot.

I am not here with you, at our home.

Every struggle against injustice will in the future be inspired by you.

I will continue where you stopped, I will love our children, our country our home and I will fight for our ideals.

I was waiting for you for five long years, but I was not fortunate enough to see you. Now you are waiting for me.

Love, Your Mira.
 


MARKO MILOSEVIC'S LETTER:

Dad, I fulfilled what you asked of me and I sent you home, here with us, where you wished, where your place is. Here, where Marija and I grew up and where (grandson) Marko is growing up.

Here, to one of the most beautiful places in this holy Serbian land where the greatest Serbian heroes and martyrs lived and died for their homeland for more than two centuries, both under the Orthodox cross and five-point star.

Unfortunately, you are not the first to return here losing their life but, as all before you, winning the war and gaining freedom.

Let your death be holy and let it be remembered forever and let it be the last. Let it sober humiliated and deceived Serbian people. Let it remind them of all Serbian martyrs, from King Lazar, to you, so never again a single Serbian patriot will be betrayed and lose his life.

Let Serbia return all those from this shameful and doomed place where I saw you last. Never should aggressors and occupiers be allowed to set foot on this land. Do not allow freedom and dignity be buried with your death. Let freedom and peace replace violence, betrayal, persecution and humiliation that rule this country.

Traitors and cowards justify a betrayal of the homeland with national interests. Real patriots and heroes die for the homeland like you did. Dying for homeland means living forever.

Dad, when your heart stops beating, mine is just ticking.

Be finally in peace and free, you have come home.

Here, you will be with us forever. Although your heart does not work any more, we give you ours, to remain with you forever.

I love you forever and ever, the most in the world.

May you rest in peace,

Marko.

Hey, Granma! Encore: SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC -- La mort et la pluie -- par Elsa Claro, de Granma international

 {This is the latest, though not the last, article on the latest, though sadly and certainly not the last, hostage execution at the ICe Houses. President Milosevic was wasted by the Waste Culture, and now the Jackals that the Jackals would despise are picking over the body. And all the other prisoners in the US/UN death centers in The Hague and Arusha, predominantly Serb and Hutu representatives of the targeted Yugoslav and Rwandan revolutions, must now be feeling the chilly breath of NATO's 'humanitarian exterminations' just a little closer to their piteously undefended necks. As a long-time defender of the President and Yugoslavia--Ch'uis toujours serBo-positif!--I am still too ashamed at how little our friend was protected against the wasting forces of global terrorism (which, contrary to much of the Milosevic defense strategy, find precious little impetus in the Arab World! How many Islamist bases in the NATO countries? How many US bases in the Muslim world? Tuzla, to which the bloodthirsty legions of Naser Oric slinked after marauding and murdering hundreds of Yugoslav civilians, with active UN complicity, throughout the area around the 'safe haven' of Srebrenica, is now, along with Incirlik in Turkey, one of the key US bases in the bombing of Iraq--and, who knows, even Iran.) to find the requisite politeness (gentility, really--a fancy form of hypocrisy) to join in the current deconstruction of the deconstruction of Yugoslavia. And I find myself both inhibiteed and disgusted by this feeling that now that he's been martyred, the flood gates to Balkan History have been opened to all kinds of reformed bounders and carpetbaggers, who hadn't the cahones to associate themselves with his name for fear of offending the 'rich Serbs' they'd marked to jack up in their money-grubbing campaigns, shunned all attempts at linking the Milosevic defense in solidarity with other struggles against occupation and militarization (e.g., Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Sudan, Palestine, and on and on) but staunchly protected, in the name of 'Left solidarity', their fellow carnies in Balkan circus, and visited the site of President Milosevic's calvaire only to flog their stale and stolen wares--or give a moral enema to their flagging TVQs. But more of this anon. For now, c'est à vous, Mamy.--mc}

*****************************

Hey, Granma! Encore: SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC -- La mort et la pluie -- par Elsa Claro, de Granma international

[Here's the way Granma tells the story of the recent murder of our friend--the hostage execution, really, of President Milosevic. The English version of this article (attached below the version française) is almost unreadable, but our strong right fin, le requin canadien, sent us the French version and the two romance languages seem more sympathetic to the writer's heart-felt recounting of these epic lives--the life of Slobodan Milosevic and that of his beloved nation, Yugoslavia/Serbia. Though both have been untimely cancelled and cast into murky revisionist history, the courage and dedication to Justice and Democracy they exemplified will live on as long as people value these endangered qualities. --mc]

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
La mort et la pluie

PAR ELSA CLARO, de Granma international

Un effort de mémoire ne fait pas de mal. Cela permet de mieux comprendre les faits, les processus et même les actes les plus crapuleux

ON le dit enterré au pied de son arbre préféré, dans la cour de sa maison natale. Il n’y avait ni famille, ni amis ni témoins gênants. Ses partisans lui rendirent les derniers honneurs à Belgrade quelques heures avant, et peut-être durent-ils aussi dire adieu, pour l’occasion, à un certain nombre de potentialités ou d’illusions qui n’avaient pas toujours eu la couleur ou le poids désirés ni trouvé leurs dignes défenseurs.

Des soupçons bien inopportuns pèsent sur la véritable cause de ce décès (le quatrième de Serbes emprisonnés à La Haye): à supposer qu’il eût été le plus naturel du monde, il laisse pourtant derrière lui pas mal de réserves sur la légitimité du tribunal qui incarcéra Milosevic pendant près de quatre ans pour le soumettre à un procès dont la probité est douteuse.

S’il y eut fautes passibles de sanctions judiciaires, le procès aurait dû avoir lieu dans son pays où les lois interdisent en particulier l’extradition des inculpés, et s’il avait été décidé en l’occurrence de faire exception, les cellules voisines de la sienne auraient dû être occupées par ceux qui forcèrent le cours des événements vers de véritables culs-de-sac ou s’immiscèrent de manière décisive dans des affaires qui n’étaient pas de leur ressort, bouchant pratiquement toutes les issues pour aboutir à des résultats dont aujourd’hui on n’a guère de raison d’être fier.

çComment l’ancien chef de l’Etat aboutit-il dans la capitale hollandaise? Il fut d’abord sorti de sa résidence et conduit dans la prison de Belgrade: un premier pas qui facilite l’enlèvement, nocturne, organisé par la CIA (peut-être avec l’aide d’autres services secrets européens) avec la complicité de Zoran Djinjic, alors premier ministre, par la suite assassiné par des mafias qu’il aurait aussi trahies, à ce que l’on suppose.

Le mobile de Djinjic était de se débarrasser de Milosevic –qui continuait d’avoir des sympathisants—et d’obtenir en même temps une aide financière occidentale, pour sortir la Yougoslavie de l’asphyxie économique à laquelle l’avaient réduite les sanctions commerciales prolongées des Etats-Unis et de l’Union européenne. C’est contre ces quelques pièces qu’il vendit l’ex-chef de l’Etat, passant outre à la volonté du président en poste à cette date (juin 2001), Vojislav Kostunica: une décision basse, prise sans aucune espèce de concertation, qui eut pour effet de briser la coalition du gouvernement en place et de précipiter dans l’anarchie un pays en cours de démembrement depuis dix ans, trois mois seulement après les intenses bombardements de l’OTAN (autrement dit des Etats-Unis).

LE FIL D’ARIANE

çEn 1991, la Slovénie se sépare de la Yougoslavie. Le gouvernement allemand, avec à sa tête le chancelier Helmut Khol, n’a rien de plus pressé que de la reconnaître (janvier 1992), et le reste de l’Union européenne ne peut plus que suivre le mouvement. Les Etats-Unis, sous la présidence de Bush père, se relèvent péniblement d’une première guerre du Golfe dont les résultats n’ont pas été à la hauteur escomptée; il ne semble pas qu’il ait été dans leurs plans d’approuver cette sécession, soit parce qu’ils concevaient certaines craintes face au processus conflictuel de reconversion du bloc socialiste, soit parce qu’un quelconque conseiller avait jugé peu souhaitable de tracer de nouvelles frontières sur le Vieux Continent, a fortiori dans cette région complexe qui, comme la déesse Psyché, semble formée de petits morceaux d’âmes de tous les êtres humains.

çLa Croatie suit vite l’exemple de la Slovénie et, à la fin de la même année, Croates et musulmans font de même en Bosnie-Herzégovine. Jusqu’à cette date, les trois communautés qui forment la Bosnie avaient réussi à cohabiter par la voie du partage du pouvoir, une idée vaguement inspirée du maréchal Tito qui avait proposé une rotation à la présidence de la Yougoslavie afin d’éviter les faux pas, les jalousies, les envies des dirigeants de cette mosaïque humaine.

çToutefois, les premiers affrontements éclatèrent le 4 février 1992. Bruxelles et Washington reconnurent presque immédiatement la souveraineté de la Bosnie-Herzégovine alors qu’ils la refusèrent à la République fédérale de Yougoslavie, héritière légale de l’ancienne, reconstituée dès avril 1992 et formée par la Serbie et le Monténégro.

çIl y a seulement quelques mois, le 21 novembre dernier, les Accords de Dayton avaient dix ans. Au moins en théorie, ce pacte mettait fin à ce qu’on a appelé la guerre de l’ancienne Yougoslavie. En fait, ceux qui se concertèrent dans la ville des Etats-Unis qui a donné son nom au pacte n’avaient cherché qu’une issue à un conflit sanglant qui avait duré trois ans et qui avait commencé lorsque les musulmans (44% de la population) de Bosnie-Herzégovine, provisoirement alliés aux Croates (environ 15%) avaient déclaré cette république indépendante. Les Serbes (32%) tentèrent de mettre un frein à la sécession et, une fois en guerre, obtinrent le contrôle de 70% du territoire.

Avant une victoire imminente, qui aurait pu aboutir à l’adjonction de la zone à la semi-proscrite Yougoslavie, l’Occident s’interpose et s’adjuge le droit d’intervention militaire dans un conflit civil étranger. Tout ceci en marge de l’ONU et contre les préceptes du Droit international.

Les bombardements de l’OTAN visent les positions serbes pour inverser le rapport de forces, sans mandat ni prétexte digne de foi, mais en semant aux quatre vents des histoires macabres qu’on ne se lasse pas de répéter pour justifier l’injustifiable.

Malgré la puissance de l’Occident, il n’eut d’autre alternative que d’ouvrir la voie aux négociations, car la situation empirait au lieu de connaître un dénouement civilisé, ce qui eut sans doute été possible mais fut définitivement compromis par l’intervention de personnages du genre de Ben Laden: en effet, Washington fit en sorte que des extrémistes musulmans (y compris des talibans) s’impliquent dans un conflit qualifié pour l’occasion d’ethnique mais qui était, avant toute chose, politique et économique.

Pourquoi? En premier lieu parce que la simple idée de l’existence, en plein cœur de l’Europe, d’un Etat qui se proclamât socialiste les inquiétait, même si l’expérience singulière de la Yougoslavie était différente de celle de l’Est, et même si à cette étape Slobodan Milosevic aurait accepté les conditions imposées à coup d’étranglement financier.

L’accord de Dayton fabrique de toutes pièces un gouvernement qui ne fonctionne toujours pas et n’a résolu aucun problème. Des troupes d’interposition demeurent en Bosnie où les conditions de vie restent totalement anormales. Le même genre de scénario a été reproduit dans la province serbe du Kosovo, où plusieurs chapitres de la même histoire se répètent scandaleusement.

Le point culminant est atteint en 1999 : après avoir offert son soutien aux Albano-kossovars séparatistes, le gouvernement Clinton ordonne des bombardements qui se prolongent pendant trois mois, sous le prétexte que Belgrade se livre à un « nettoyage ethnique ». Curieux, s’étonnerait Monsieur de La Palisse : depuis lors, plus personne ne défend les Serbo-kossovars qui se sont vus voler leurs maisons et leurs terres, et que les troupes prétendument neutres, cantonnées dans la région, assassinent ou humilient.

Ce trimestre de 1999 et ses dégâts collatéraux dont furent victimes des individus et des objectifs civils, cibles des bombes à fragmentation des Etats-Unis et de l’OTAN, ne rentreront pas dans l’histoire par la grande porte.

EPILOGUE PROVISOIRE

On confond souvent la Cour de La Haye créée par l’ONU en 1947 pour juger des Etats et non des individus avec cette Cour spéciale financée et manipulée par les Etats-Unis et plusieurs de leurs multinationales, qui devait juger Milosevic. On confond aussi celle-ci avec le Tribunal pénal international constitué à Rome en juillet 1998 et que George W. Bush a menacé d’une attaque à main armée s’il osait extrader un seul de ses soldats, pour tortionnaire qu’il fût.

Encore un truquage monté par la Maison Blanche et entretenu par ses partenaires. Voici ce qu’en dit Jaime Shea, porte parole de l’alliance militaire commandée par Washington:

«Le TPI n’enquêtera (sur les crimes de l’OTAN) que si nous le lui permettons.» Il faisait allusion à des accusations surgies en Yougoslavie contre ce pacte belliciste, mais indique surtout le sens de l’impunité avec lequel il agit.

Le cas de Milosevic n’est ni le premier ni le dernier des actes arbitraires, on en connaît d’autres terribles, mais si la justice n’est pas aussi impartiale qu’on le prétend, les gouvernants qui, des deux côtés de l’Atlantique, ont aidé à détruire un pays et à augmenter la quantité de victimes par des interventions illégales passeront un jour devant des tribunaux authentiques et non fabriqués sur mesure par les «vainqueurs», c’est-à-dire le nouvel Empire.

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(Version anglaise)

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/marzo/vier24/13milosevic.html
 
Granma Digital
 
Havana. March 24, 2006


SLOVODAN MILOSEVIC
Death and the rain

BY ELSA CLARO—Granma International staff writer—


THERE are inopportune suspicions as to the real cause of the death of Milosevic (the fourth of Serbs imprisoned in The Hague) which, even if it was the most natural of all, leaves behind it a trail of reservations as to the legitimacy of the court that has held him for more than four years and that subjected him to a trial whose probity is questionable. Even with motives for having put him on trial for faults committed, that should have happened within his country, where legislation prevents the extradition of prisoners, and of having decided to make an exception: the placing in cells adjoining his of those who forced events into a one-way street or made themselves the decisive participants in a matter that was beyond their competence, thus rarefying results that, at the end of the day, have not turned out for the best.

There was no cleanness in the way in which the former head of state was taken to the Dutch capital. First he was pulled out of his residence and incarcerated in Belgrade. That was an initial step to facilitate his kidnapping via a nocturnal operation organized by the CIA (possibly with the help of other European secret services) and with the complicity of the then Prime Minister Zoran Djinic, who ended up being a priori assassinated by the mafia that he likewise betrayed, according to conjectures.

Djinic’s motive was to get rid of Milosevic – who continued having followers – and at the same time to obtain Western financial aid, supposedly to pull Yugoslavia out of the economic strangulation to which it was subjected by the United States and the European Union with lengthy trade sanctions. For those pieces of silver he sold the former statesman, going over the head of Vojislav Kostunitca, president of the country at that time (June 2001), in an act so contemptible and self-seeking that he broke the existing government coalition and created anarchy out of what was an already highly delicate situation for Yugoslavia at the end of 10 years of dismemberment as a country and almost three months of intensive NATO (read the United States) bombardments.


ARIADNE’S THREAD

In 1991 Slovenia affirmed its decision to become independent of Yugoslavia. The German government headed by Helmut Kohl hastened to recognize it in early January 1992, thus forcing the EU to act likewise. The United States, with Bush Sr. experiencing the hangover of the first Gulf War, did not appear to have approved that secession among his plans, perhaps because of certain fears of the conflictive and immature process of the Socialist bloc’s re-conversion or because one of his advisers had warned him that it was not a healthy idea to establish new borders in Europe.

Croatia followed the Slovenian impulse and, almost at the end of the same year, the Croats and Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina did likewise. To that point, a certain coexistence had been attained in Bosnia with power sharing among the three human groups that inhabited it, to an extent similar to that established by Marshall Tito when he legislated that the presidency of Yugoslavia should rotate as a way of avoiding setbacks, jealousy or envy of any of the leaders of this human mosaic.

Nevertheless, the first confrontations occurred on February 4, 1992. Almost immediately, Brussels and Washington accepted the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while withholding support for the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, recreated that same month (April 1992) and made up of Serbia and Montenegro, as the legal inheritors of the former.

In the face of an imminent triumph which could have resulted in the area asking to be annexed to the semi-proscribed Yugoslavia, the West entered the scenario, affording itself the right of military intervention in an alien civil conflict. It did outside of the UN and in violation of its precepts of international law.

The NATO bombardments were directed at Serb positions in order to twist the existing reality, without having any mandate or credible excuses, but by spreading macabre stories that are still repeated to justify the unacceptable.

In spite of the power of the Western allies there was no alternative but to accede to negotiations to halt what they were contributing to make worse and which could easily have reached a civilized outcome. However, to tell the truth, that was difficult, because Washington also utilized people of the likes of Osama Bin Laden in this episode to attract to the conflict extremist Muslims (including Talibans), who participated in this allegedly ethnic war but what was one of a political-economic nature before anything else.

The reasons? In the first place they were frightened of the existence in the very heart of Europe of a state that called itself socialist, although the unique experience of the Yugoslavs was distinct from that of Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union, and Slobodan Milosevic had already been forces to accept conditions imposed in the context of financial strangulation.

The Dayton Accords fabricated a government that is unable to function or to have resolved anything to date, given that troops are still in place in Bosnia and the scenario is one of total anomaly.

Something does seem to have occurred and is still occurring in the Serb province of Kosovo, where certain chapters of the same story have been barefacedly repeated.

The culminating point occurred in 1999 when, after giving support to the separatist Albanian Kosovars, the Clinton government ordered bombardments that continued for three months under the pretext that Belgrade was undertaking "ethnic cleansing." Strangely, enough since then and to date they have neither defended or helped the Serb Kosovars from whom they stole houses and possessions or whom they have killed and humiliated, even though the troops stationed in the area are supposedly neutral.

Those three months of 1999 and their collateral damage inflicted on individuals and civilian targets, with U.S. and NATO cluster bombs – what’s the difference – will not go down in history through the gate of decorum.

PROVISONAL EPILOGUE

The special court financed and manipulated by the United States and various of its multinationals in which Milosevic was tried is usually confused with the International Court of Justice in The Hague created by the UN in 1947 and which judges states, not individuals. There are also people who confuse it with the International Criminal Court created in Rome in July 1998. The latter is the one that George W. Bush threatened with an armed assault if it extradited even one of its soldiers, however much of a torturer or genocidal killer he might be.

The fact that it is one of the many White House falsifications admitted by its partners is borne out by what Jaime Shea stated as spokesman for the military alliance commanded by Washington:

"The International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) will only investigate (NATO crimes) if we permit it." He was alluding to charges in Yugoslavia against that military pact but above all indicates the feeling of impunity with which it acts.

Neither the first or only arbitrariness was committed with Milosevic, other equally terrible legal procedures have been experienced, but if justice is as impartial as it is enshrined to be, governments on both sides of the Atlantic that helped to destroy a country and to increase the volume of victims via illegal interventions, them should all stand trial and in authentic courts, not one fabricated by "conquerors;" in other words, the new empire.

Hey, Granma! THE TRUTH ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11 -- BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS

Hey, Granma! THE TRUTH ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11 -- BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS

[This just in from our faithful Fidelistos in Havana. And pls note that it doesn't even factor in the first brazen lie of Sept 11: Rumsfeld's declaration that American Airlines flt 77 had crashed into the Pentagon. The desperataion of the US administration to dance the duck and cover on this preposterous cluster gaffe, has made the rest of that tragic day almost impossible to sell as 'Arab terrorism'. But then today, the general public is buying the 'Arab terrorism' shuck, the way pilgrims buy viles of holy water at Lourdes. More on this preposterous atrocity and its public test in Rwanda in a subsequent post. --mc]

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Havana. March 7, 2006

THE TRUTH ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11
Must we wait for Bush to fall?
• New revelations incriminate the U.S. government in the tragic events that cost thousands of lives in New York

BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS

EXACTLY what happened on September 11, 2001 in New York is still is a mystery. Investigators say that they are just waiting for the Bush administration to fall to demand the declassification of documents that would reveal the truth about what happened that day.

For many, indications and criminal evidence are already sufficiently overwhelming regarding the complicity of the U.S. administration in the events of that fateful day, when endless hours of broadcasts on U.S. television networks showed, one million times, an image that engraved itself on humanity’s memory as the Twin Towers collapsed in flames after being hit by two planes, as well as the official version of those events.

Since then, the world has been informed of what some experts are calling a fraud, because they are stating that the Twin Towers were destroyed by the U.S. administration itself to justify its current wars.

Just a few days after the dreadful event, some writers dared to hint that they did not believe the official information. They based themselves on flagrant facts; for example, the collapse of the World Trade Center occurring just as if it were a controlled demolition, referred to by highly experienced specialists.

Seasoned journalists began investigating along those same lines in order to confirm that today’s world history is built on an enormous shady deal.

In February 2002 it was announced that the Pentagon had decided to enter the media business. From then on the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), discreetly created after September 11, placed news items and other material supporting U.S. interests in the international media in order to create a favorable atmosphere for U.S. military operations and to counteract opposing views, such as the one that the attacks on New York on September 11, 2001 and on London on July 7, 2005 were to be simulated ones¼

It also refuted a documentary by British director Adam Curtis titled The Power of Nightmares, an entry in the Cannes Film Festival, in which he affirms that the nightmare of international terrorism known as Al Qaeda does not exist. According to the documentary, it is just another invention of the United States, which manufactures such horrors to justify its interventions and interests.

Or to influence voters, as was the case a few days before the U.S. presidential elections, when surprise TV reports disclosed a statement by Bin Laden threatening to attack the United States. When referring to the video broadcast four days before the November 2, 2004 elections, Bush confessed that the Al Qaeda leader “didn’t mean to” but had helped him to win.

In addition, U.S. investigator Michael C. Ruppert pointed to Vice President Dick Cheney as the top suspect in the September 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, in a series of conferences on Sept. 11 organized in Europe’s main capitals, U.S. journalists and writers affirmed the Bush administration’s responsibility for organizing the attacks, with an outcome that has enabled the stabilization of an exceptional regime in that country.

According to Andreas von Bulow, former German minister of defense and head of intelligence, in a revelation that has passed by unnoticed, the Sept. 11 attacks were the product of an undercover CIA operation, with immediate destruction of the evidence left at the sites of the events.

It is also claimed that the attack on the World Trade Center was anticipated by arms manufacturers, who are constantly asking for more money for their military budgets. According to analysts at the Rand Corporation in the United States, the Sept. 11 events were unimaginable, and constitute a revolution in terrorist acts, thus justifying the allocation of unlimited funds to combat terrorism. However, they themselves had analyzed in detail the unimaginable. Six months before the attacks, there was discussion at a U.S. Air Force Academy on the possibility of an air attack on the Twin Towers.

$7 BILLION LAWSUIT

In addition, Stanley Hilton, who was head of the team of former U.S. presidential candidate Bob Dole, accused the U.S. government of having been involved in the attacks. Hilton said that a group of high-ranking military officers affirm that members of the government were involved in the attacks.

He believes that Bush ordered the attack with the complicity of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, and the director of the CIA.

Alex Jones, a U.S. journalist, interviewed Hilton, a lawyer, who represents the majority of the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, who are suing the government for $ 7 billion. Today, according to a survey by Zogby, half of New York’s residents believe the government was involved in the events.

Another argument of Hilton’s – for which he says he has evidence – is that the plane hijackers were FBI and CIA double agents who infiltrated different Islamic groups resident in the United States. He also affirms that when the U.S. population witnessed Bush’s indifference on television when the New York attacks were being explained to him, it was because the president already knew what was planned for that day.

Maneuvers by World Trade Center owners before and after the attack on the Twin Towers are similarly suspicious. Seven weeks before the attacks, Larry Abraham Silverstein, backed by a large number of investors, signed a 99-year leasing contract on those buildings. The names of those very wise investors remain a secret; seven weeks after that action, they cashed in on the colossal insurance of $3.5 billion.

Let’s say that the tragedy was not what those investigators are claiming. If that is the case, it turns out that for almost a decade, more than 200 countries, headed by the United States and the United Kingdom, have been at the mercy of one single organization that acts throughout the planet at its whim, without all of the arsenals and repressive agencies of those countries being sufficient to overcome that sinister terrorist monopoly. The most astute and efficient terrorist organization in the world in humanity’s entire history is supposedly in hiding in the Islamic Third World...

And to force it out of its lair, the United States and Britain have launched two wars in Middle Eastern countries and are threatening others. But four years later, after hundreds of thousands of deaths and the extraction of millions of barrels of oil, neither of them has any idea of the whereabouts of its main ringleader, Osama Bin Laden, who has not even shaven off his beard to give them the slip.

They don’t even know where the “second-in-command” is after he disappeared into the Afghan mountains on a motorcycle.

Goebbels, the Nazi, used to say that if lies are repeated often enough, they become the truth. He was right, but only for a short while. In 1930 and post-1930, they could be sustained for quite some while; but the current very bombardment of information means they don’t last as long.

At the very moment that the attacks took place, people who tuned into CNN might well have thought they were watching a movie when the first plane crashed. When they saw the second one, they realized that it was not a movie, and heard the announcer say off-air, very excited, that at least 50,000 people were probably in the buildings at the time. Perhaps someone remembers that. That was followed by pandemonium, shouting, etc.

When the total number of dead was given, the announcer’s quote sounded very concise. How did it drop from 50,000 to 5,000, and subsequently to the final count of 3,500? What happened to the other 42,500 people? The next day, on a Spanish-language radio station, Latin American residents of New York who worked at the Twin Towers were interviewed by Uruguayan and Argentine journalists, and told them why they had not gone to work that day. Their explanations were suspiciously identical: “My boss called and said not to come in;” “I work at such-and-such a company and they told me the day before not to go in on the 11;” “a coworker called to say that he had received instructions not to go in.”

Suspiciously, almost all the deaths were of maintenance and cleaning personnel. That detail alone led to the thinking that there was a cat in the bag, and later, further evidence emerged after exhaustive studies. History is full of versions aimed at preparing the terrain for an invasion; later, it was learned that the police and firefighters were banned from making statements about the events of Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, the U.S. people are living in a cloud of ignorance, and a half century will have to go by before other generations find out about the secrets kept locked away in safes by the masterminds of the crime.