Balkans
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There are times in history when war and politics converge with economics to
create a true turning point, a point at which things cannot and will not ever
be the same. Such points in time are marked by fierce struggle....
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A meeting in Tehran starting Aug. 26 puts into the sharpest perspective the
waning position of U.S. imperialism globally and especially in the Middle East.
Both the U.S. and Israel’s demands for a boycott of the meeting were
ignored. Clearly the U.S. hold is slipping....
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Five years ago Yugoslavia's president died in The Hague. The local UN tribunal denied him adequate medical treatment. A conversation with Catherine
Schütz...
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Less than a dozen years after NATO bombed Yugoslavia into pieces, detaching
the province of Kosovo from Serbia, there are signs that the military alliance
is gearing up for another victorious little “humanitarian war”,
this time against Libya. The differences are, of course, enormous. But
let’s look at some of the disturbing similarities....
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On Oct. 5, 2000, a coup engineered by U.S. imperialist agencies and
supported by Western European imperialist governments overthrew the Socialist
Party government in Yugoslavia led by Slobodan Milosevic. At the time —
only 16 months after a vicious 79-day U.S.-led NATO air war against the people
of Yugoslavia — there was much confusion even among progressive and
anti-war forces in the imperialist countries due to the overwhelming
anti-Milosevic propaganda in the corporate media. The following interview by
Cathrin Schütz with former Milosevic aide Vladimir Krsljanin throws light
on those events and the developments in Serbia in the last 10 years....
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The United Nations’ International Court of Justice ruled that a 2008 declaration of separation by the parliament of Serbia’s Kosovo province was legal under international law. Although the judges explained their July 22 decision on a narrow basis, it may still encourage recognition of the historically Serbian province’s secession....
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An international movement has been established to protest the already seven-year-long imprisonment of Dragoljub Milanovic, a target of NATO's effort to blame the victim following its U.S.-led bombing campaign against Yugoslav civilians 10 years ago....
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It is an honor to address this meeting of the International Committee to
Defend Slobodan Milosevic. This organization has never faltered in its resistance to NATO, defending the people of Serbia and of all of the former Yugoslavia....
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We are gathered here today to remember historical facts, interpret them
under the light of experience and extract the necessary lessons to guide our
efforts and our struggles for peace and a new world governed under the primacy
of justice and solidarity. ...
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Hundreds of representatives are meeting in Belgrade on March
23-24 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led 78-day bombing of
Yugoslavia and the heroic resistance of its people and military during NATO's aggressive and illegal war. ...
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NATO held a three-day meeting in Bucharest, Romania, on April 2 to 4, attended by George W. Bush and other heads of state. It was a stormy affair. This alliance of imperialist military powers, long dominated by the U.S., was divided on several proposals being pushed by Washington....
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On the eve of the NATO summit, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said an additional 7,500 soldiers and 3,000 military trainers
needed to be sent immediately to Afghanistan....
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A march more than five blocks long went from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, near
the United Nations, through Times Square and past Madison Square Garden to
protest the U.S. theft of Serbia's Kosovo. Many New Yorkers and tourists
watched with interest as the marchers went on their way to the St. Sava Serbian
Orthodox Church on 25th Street near Broadway....
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Some 5,000 people, about 90 percent of them originally from Serbia but now
part of the working class in the factories in and around Vicenza, marched Feb.
24 through that northern Italian town to protest the secession of Kosovo from
Serbia....
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On Feb. 24 hundreds gathered in front of the White house to
oppose the latest U.S. attack on Serbia, organized by the STOP (Stop Terrorizing Orthodox Peoples) Coalition. Major protest demonstrations
were held in Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland; Vienna, Austria; Athens, Greece; Vicenza, Italy; Montreal and Toronto; Cleveland and Chicago. This week demonstrations will continue, including a major demonstration in front of the U.N. on March 2 from 2 to 4 p.m....
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The very instability and wrenching poverty that imperialism has brought to
the region will in the long run be the seeds of its undoing. The history of the
achievements made when Yugoslavia enjoyed real independence and sovereignty
through unity and socialist development will assert itself in the future....
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The demonstration of over 500,000 people in Belgrade and the attack on the U.S.
Embassy show the depth of outrage and anger over the seizure of the Serbian
province of Kosovo. Two Kosovo border posts were destroyed, one by fire the other in an explosion, along with ten McDonald's outlets and several Western banks and other hated targets. The Western media had overwhelming applauded the U.S. destruction in 1999 and
it now has a responsibility to explain the reason for the mass anger of millions of people. The outrage is because the province of Kosovo is not
actually being granted "independence." Millions of people see recognition of Kosovo's "independence" as an effort to legitimize a direct U.S. colony and to permanently secure a giant U.S. military base in the region....
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Some 60,000 people protested in front of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, on Dec. 2. They were demanding the right of political prisoner Vojislav Seselj to defend himself before the anti-Yugoslav tribunal at The Hague, which the U.S. and other NATO forces set up through the United Nations in 1992. The tribunal is known as the ICTY....
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The ultra-right-wing forces now running Serbia's Kosovo province plan to announce its secession from Serbia in 2008. The U.S. and most NATO powers support this reactionary move, continuing their strategy of "divide and conquer" in the Balkans. This strategy has pulled Yugoslavia into pieces, leaving the region unstable, divided and now facing new internecine wars....
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he U.S. calls it "Operation Status." The United Nations calls it "The Ahtisaari Plan." It is the U.S./NATO
"independence" project for Kosovo, which has been a province of Serbia since the 14th century. With NATO's 17,000 troops backing it, Kosovo's government is set to secede on Feb. 6, declaring itself a separate country....
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In
the summer of 2004 I met with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
in Scheveningen prison when I was approved as a defense witness. Before
I could get in, I had to pass four totally separate check points, unable
to take in anything but papers. Each level of security was more rigid
than the one before. ...
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The United States may have the world's largest military machine but
ultimately this government cannot control the forces it has unleashed. There is
a rising global movement against this ruthless competition and spiraling
economic chaos. Six months after NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia a new
movement against corporate globalization was born in Seattle. Hundreds of
thousands of young activists have focused on the brutal policies imposed by the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank;and the trade agreements such
as NAFTA and the FTAA, and the World Trade Organization. This is a movement
outraged at sweatshop conditions, prisons, environmental devastation and
capitalist chaos...
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The imperialist media tries
to demonize all those who defy U.S. hegemony of the planet, from Saddam
Hussein to Robert Mugabe to Slobodan Milosevic. Rarely have they been
so successful in imposing these falsehoods on those considered on the
left as they were with Milosevic; they even managed to extend this demonization
to Serbs in general. Even this last summer, the media rehashed all the
old stories of Srebenica during the civil war in Bosnia. In the article
below, Diana Johnstone, a meticulous journalist and careful observer of
events in the Balkans, presents a different view of what happened that
summer 10 years ago. ...
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Poison DUst tells the story of three young men from New York who could not get answers for their mysterious ailments after their National Guard unit's 2003 tour of duty in Iraq. A mother reveals her fears about the extent of her child's birth defects and the growing disability of her young husband -- a vet. ...
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