by StarmanSkye » Sat Mar 11, 2006 9:56 pm
How convenient indeed. But apparently, a prisoner unexpectedly dying of untreated 'natural causes' for which he was refused medical care is now what passes for 'normal' in this bizzaro-world version of neocon reality, the intersection between the Twilight Zone, the Bushco. Brave New World Gulag (populated by indefinitely-detained, uncharged, unacknowledged [secret] Terrorista suspects, administered by the increasingly gray-zone of US-International military/intelligence and para-military/private security-mercenary Goons who work in Prison-complexes scattered around the world), Disneyesque-Dystopia.<br><br>With the 'prosecution' of Milosevic, the Hague Criminal Court had become the latest victim of the monstrous criminal fraud which is American Foreign Policy continuing it's long tradition of toppling governments, provoking economic crises and waging warfare for the sake of 'winning' industries and majority-stake market-shares, buying-up businesses and properties at fire-sale prices, and imposing autocratic terms and conditions as the legacy of neoliberal 'liberation'.<br><br>What do you suppose the ratio is of sufficiently aware-and-interested Americans who have made an effort to pierce the abysmal fake-news bullshit media and understand the reality of the Yugoslavia debacle caused by American 'diplomacy' delivered via bombs and propaganda under the rationale of 'humanitarian intervention' c/o UN and NATO -- one per 1000? One per 10,000? Less, or more?<br><br>Yugoslavia, before the west with European connivance destroyed it, was a modern, thriving, highly-developed and successful state comprised of 6 semi-autonomous Republics with a high standard of living. But as Yugoslavia featured a highly successful socialist economy with democratic institutions it was apparently an unbearable affront to the capitalist west's political elites -- the 'threat' of a good example bit, much as Cuba and Venezuala are red-capes waving in the face in the self-styled bullfighters of America's Banking/Oil & War Industry klepto-corporatocracy.<br><br>America, partnered with Germany and Britain, worked behind the scenes following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to undermine Yugoslavia's economy, governments and society, using lessons and plans developed over a half-century of perfecting 'benign' neocolonialism, reinforced by the mailed-fist of scientifically-applied scorched-earth 'counterinsurgency' techniques to make the alternative to western proxy-rule too terrible to contemplate.<br><br>Michel Chossudovsky's article 'Dismantling Yugoslavia' remains the single best overview of the incredible betrayal which the west perpetrated on the people of Yugoslavia, using classic divide-and-conquer strategies to pit once-peaceful neighbors against each other by aggravating percieved injustices and blaming the hardships caused by economic sabotage on 'those others', while secretly siding with and arming potential adversaries -- truly a masterful performance of inciting conflict behind the scenes -- made more reprehensible by the west's demonization of fall-guys like Milosevic while blithely ignoring and covering-up evidence of it's own opportunistic murder -- crimes which are a thousand times greater than even the most inventive accusations leveled against those like Milosevic.<br><br>It exasperates me, even as it shames me to be part of the same 'public' who remain so willfully dumb and silent and unconcerned, and thereby complicit, with the monsters and murderers who are our 'leaders' <cough, retch> -- as they moved-on from the death-squads and imposed-starvation-killings and proxy-conflict and deals with brutal despots, in Latin America to the Sudan to Haiti to Grenada, to Iraq and Afghanistan and Yugoslavia and Panama and the Balkans, and back to Haiti and the Sudan and Afghanistan and Iraq, and thence to ... Syria? Iran? Lebanon? Really, I think the US in the Middle East and the Balkans today is actually fighting the EU and Russia, and perhaps even China. When will the killing and despoilation and betrayals and horror end, when will the people finally say 'Enough!' and mean it?<br> <br>Starman<br>*********<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.swans.com/library/art7/sbasu002.html">www.swans.com/library/art7/sbasu002.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>The OTHER War Criminals<br>Sanjay Basu<br>July 23, 2001<br>--Editorial remarking on the transparent hypocrisy of the West's sudden silence on the previously hot-button-topic issue of genocide and its quiet disapproval in the wake of two locally-popular 'War Hero' Croatian ex-Generals being transferred to the Hague, accused of the war crimes massacre of hundreds of Serbian citizens in the Croatian 'Homeland Wars' of '93-'95-- this following on the heels of the US's successful grandstanding and arm-twisting, threatening an economic-aid boycott to compel Serbian Leader Djinjik to hand Milosevic over to the Hague Tribunal, having demonized Milosevic in the court of public opinion and referring to him as "...one of the most dangerous and maniacal European Leaders since Hitler." The hidden irony of course is that the US was instrumental in meticulously choreographing the dismantling of Yugoslavia, using the IMF and World Banks, so-called 'Democracy-building' NGOs and 'advisors', trade-associations and the arming and training of Croatian and Bosnian forces, and providing crucial battlefield intelligence to the indicted Croatian ex-Generals in their brutal terrorizing and targetting of resident Serbian farmers, forcing the dislocation of more than 200,000 Serbs.<br>--quote--<br>"What all of this evidence indicates is that even as individual army generals receive indictments at the Hague, the focus of the international community should not only be on the actions of these individuals and armies, but on the actions of the larger international community and those world players (including our own country) who allowed war crimes to take place. While most articles on U.S.-Croat relations were focusing on Ivanisevic winning at Wimbledon, another more sinister relationship between our two countries has resulted in countless deaths, and the silence of Washington voices on the issue is deafening to our peers in Europe. <br>****<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.swans.com/library/art10/johns03.html">www.swans.com/library/art10/johns03.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>The Debacle of the Hague<br>John Stebbing<br>--concluding paragraph excerpt--<br>The script for the ICTY was to blame Serbian aggression for the wars in the Balkans. The Serbs must then accept guilt and voilà, history will be re-written to accommodate the US strategic and business interests. The destruction of legality evident at the ICTY is important for other reasons as well. If such kangaroo courts are given credibility and accepted, then one can pretty well expect a similar erosion of due process when the courts are prosecuting junkies and homeless people, black teenagers and Latino gang members. They can all expect to have to adhere to even more stringent standards of innocence, while Poindexter, Negroponte or Elliot Abrams can continue to find work in high places and sleep comfortable in the knowledge that their privileges are guaranteed. The same folks who lied about WMD previously lied about Yugoslavia. The National Endowment for Democracy and the co-opted US media trotted out all manner of myth and fiction, most now roundly discredited, and yet those myths stuck. Everything from disguising the identity of the narco-gangsters of the KLA as plucky freedom fighting underdogs (with help from Paul Wolfowitz and the Balkan Action Council, and Bob Dole, for whom Albanian-Americans raised over a million dollars to assist his election campaign -- Diana Johnstone is particularly good on this subject), to the negative labeling of Milosevic as a hyper-Nationalist (we all know Bush and Kerry are nothing of the sort) and a fascist. All managed to find traction in the popular consciousness on the Balkans. The fundamental illegality and outright criminality of The Hague is obvious even if one insists on buying into the rest of the US story on Milosevic. At the very least I would hope the naked and blatant lack of fairness involved at the ICTY will be acknowledged, for it is the starting point for a re-examination of this entire shabby chunk of revisionist history. I hope that at the least, the biases and contradictions of the jingoistic press will be denounced; for to continue to accept the glaring lack of impartiality of this Tribunal, and its coverage, is to accept another step in the police state's death grip on our existence. <br>*******<br>America at War in Macedonia<br>--quote--<br>WAR, "DOLLARISATION" AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER<br><br>"Protection" of the pipelines, covert activities and the recycling of drug money in support of armed insurgencies, militarisation of strategic corridors, defence procurement to "Partnership for Peace" (PfP) countries are all an integral part of the Anglo-American axis and its quest to dominate oil and gas routes and transport corridors out of the Caspian sea basin and from the Black sea across the Balkans. <br><br>More generally, what is happening in the broader region linking Eastern Europe and the Balkans to the former Soviet republics is a relentless scramble for control over national economies by competing business conglomerates. And behind this process is the quest by Wall Street's financial establishment --in alliance with the defence and oil giants-- to destabilise and discredit the Deutschmark (and the Euro) with a view to imposing the US dollar as the sole currency for the region.<br><br>Control over "money creation" --imposing the rule of the US Federal Reserve system throughout the World-- has become a central feature of US expansionism. In this regard, Washington's military-intelligence ploy not only consists in undermining "EU enlargement", it is also intent upon weakening and displacing the dominion of Germany's largest banking institutions (e.g. Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and WestDeutsche Landesbank) throughout the Balkans.<br><br>In other words, the New World Order is marked by the clash between Europe and America for "colonial control" over national currencies. And this conflict between "competing capitalist blocks" will become increasingly acute when several hundred million people from Eastern Europe and the Balkans to Central Asia start using the Euro as their "de facto" national currency on January 1st 2002. <br><br>****<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/2006/pi234_PeacePrevention.html">www.transnational.org/pre...ntion.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Western peace prevention continues in former Yugoslavia* <br>--excerpt--<br>From 1993, Ceku went down and helped the most extremist people in his native Kosovo to build the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army behind the back of Dr. Rugova, the only pacifist leader in the now chopped-up country. (I know what Ceku did because I have had him tell me the story himself). KLA and Ceku was generously assisted by the German Intelligence Service, BND and - after the US took KLA off its list of terrorist organizations - by the CIA. The moderate, pragmatically non-violent Kosovo-Albanian leader Dr. Rugova, who recently passed away, was dangerous; imagine he had achieved an independent Kosovo by non-violent means: what a catastrophe for those who believe in violent intervention, bombings and occupations as roads to peace.<br><br>• Immediately after the West's UN-NATO-EU-OSCE occupation of Serbia's province, we were told that they disarmed the KLA. They didn't, and everybody knew. KLA was a leading agency in effecting about 200,000 Serbs to leave Kosovo; proportionately it was the largest ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. But it was ours, so the Western free press turned a blind eye. KLA people also orchestrated the warfare across the border in Southern Serbia, and the 8-months war in Macedonia. It's all conveniently forgotten today; it has to be since Western interests are heading for an independent Kosovo/a. It's the logical consequence of NATO's bombing in 1999. And it does not seem to bother too many that this whole process is also a violation of UN Security Council resolution 1244. With Mr. Ceku entering the scene as the West's preferred statesman, Dr. Rugova is dead in more than one sense.<br><br>****<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/2001/pf118_MacedoniaVictim.html">www.transnational.org/pre...ictim.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Macedonia: Victim of Western Conflict-Mismanagement<br>--excerpt--<br>The international community lied about KLA/UCK demilitarisation. <br><br>Macedonia's deep crisis now is a consequence of the abominable moral and political fiasco of KFOR/NATO and the UNMIK mission in occupied Kosovo/a. In contrast to the politico-military-media complex' amnesia, some of us can still remember what happened two years ago. Rambo-like NATO generals rolled in and carved up Kosovo in sectors, sent the Yugoslav forces, soldiers, administrators and their families over to Serbia and declared self-confidently that the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA/UCK, had been disarmed and dissolved and that stability had been introduced. KLA and related politicians had been wonderfully co-operative and were rewarded for this demobilisation and abolition by the establishment of the Kosovo Protection Corps, KPC, run by virtually the same generals but said to be completely civilian and serving, among others, as fire fighters. While the KLA numbered some 20,000 troops, the KPC was 5,000. We never heard what the rest chose to do.<br><br>The UN and NATO/KFOR turned a blind eye to KLA aggression.<br><br>Less than a year after this complete demilitarisation of the KLA, KLA units have passed unimpeded, it seems, through the American sector into the demilitarised zone and set up bases there from which they attack targets in Serbia. If Kosovo is an international protectorate, KLA's activity inside Serbia amounts to an international aggression. Virtually no media or Western politicians ask the simple question: how could a disbanded KLA from which all weapons have been taken, mount an attack across an internationally guarded and protected border? How could they do so under the eyes of 40.000 NATO/KFOR soldiers? Neither is the question raised: did they in fact keep the weapons (which means that NATO lied to the world) or were they disarmed and afterwards given weapons by someone?<br><br>As if this was not enough, Albanian military units turned up inside Macedonia in March. According to virtually all observers, they are predominantly armed from Kosovo/a, most performing openly as UCK. They tell world media that they can mobilise 40.000 man at arms and that the only things Macedonians understand is the language of weapons.<br><br>The dark forces of the West: CIA and all that.<br><br>A series of independent "dissident" analyses have focused on the question: who armed, and keeps on arming, Albanian extremists? Most of them point toward the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA (once run by a Bush), and the German BND (once run by Klaus Kinkel). It is no longer a secret, if it ever was, that CIA infiltrated the OSCE Verifiers' Mission; it provided one pretext for the bombing by, among other activities, deciding on the spot and before investigations were made that the people found dead in Racak were victims of massacre by Serbs. Expert reports have challenged this, at the time unfounded, assertion. But it served its purpose: helping Clinton and Albright to justify the bombing.<br><br>The United States arms both sides!<br><br>Perhaps more conspicuous: Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), a mercenary company in Virginia, the United States, working on contract with Pentagon has trained BOTH the KLA and the Macedonian Army. It has worked also for the Bosnian Army and was deeply involved in training the Croatian Army which drove out some 200.000 legitimate Serb citizens from Croatia in 1995. In short, the type of actor that really helps bring about the specific EU and NATO type of peace.<br><br>In summary, while we are told that "suddenly" Macedonians and Albanians have started fighting each other, the truth is a bit more complex. The general underlying reason must be found in a decade of Western policies while the specific reasons are the NATO bombing and the failure of the NATO/KFOR and UN mission in Kosovo. These factors have destabilised the region beyond repair.<br>******<br>OUTSTANDING collection of Swan Commentary archived articles on the War in Yugoslavia and its Aftermath -- to be added to 1Tal's excellant Transnational.org link:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.swans.com/library/subjects/yugoslav.html">www.swans.com/library/sub...oslav.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>IMAGINE -- it's almost too absurd to consider the idiocy of some vain braindead dupe (who 1Tal refers to on a forum discussion-board) who discounts as 'conspiracy-theory' any and all of the abundant information (but not published in the MSM) that diverges from the simplistic, pathetic US official-script that Milosevic is a 'terrible bad guy' that the US had to destroy Yugoslavia and Macedonia to overthrow -- another kind of Saddam fall-guy. What's REALLY awful to contemplate is the the US manufactures such intellectually-vapid goofballs by the kind of brain-numbing curriculum-pap forcefed to children in our public schools.<br>--sigh--<br>--S<br>on edit -- added the swans.com link to the ref. above which I forgot (: <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=starmanskye>StarmanSkye</A> at: 3/11/06 8:11 pm<br></i>
