IAC: GREETINGS ON THE COMMEMORATION OF THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF NATO AGGRESSION AND WAR AGAINST YUGOSLAVIA.

From Heather Cottin, International Action Center, New York

March, 2009

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.

The International Action Center organized conferences, rallies, and marches against NATO and for Yugoslavia since that multinational state came under imperialist attack in the early 1990s. We published four books on Yugoslavia including the English edition of President Milosevic's The Defense Speaks.

The U.S. and its NATO allies were determined to break up Yugoslavia, to destroy Yugoslav socialism. NATO bombed Yugoslavia, NATO kidnapped and incarcerated its leaders. Why? Because these leaders fought the IMF and the neoliberal policies that have now brought the world to economic ruin and war.

NATO was to be the military arm of the New World Order, enforcing the destruction of socialism, enabling de-industrialization and the "collapse of living standards for the majority, transform[ing] the Balkans into one large military colony," as my late husband Sean Gervasi wrote in the 1996 Prague Declaration.

U.S. policies in Eastern Europe have been, according to Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz, "a total disaster." NATO-friendly economies in Eastern Europe are in free-fall. The only available jobs are in the military, but their youth don't want to be cannon fodder" for NATO adventures.

The big capitalists in NATO counties want the resources of Eurasia. NATO membership has been granted to nine formerly Warsaw Pact countries. Throughout ex- Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, hundreds of millions have lost free education, health care and jobs. They face higher death rates, unemployment, inflation, homelessness, while NATO puppets encourage ethnic rivalries.

Eastern and Western Europe are bankrupt. Meanwhile, NATO represents 70 percent of world military spending, beggaring all its member nations.

NATO is overextended. In NATO's colony Kosovo where unemployment is 70 percent NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan, the fourth poorest country in the world! This conference and this week of struggle represent the growing resistance to NATO wars and occupations. The protests last weekend in Washington, this week in Belgrade, on Wall Street and in Strasbourg in early April show the strength of the solidarity with the resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Philippines, and Korea, as well as with people in the Balkans.

Capital's attacks on the workers threaten to throw more millions into poverty, making a workers' rebellion inevitable. Those of us who want to join that struggle against world imperialism are inspired by the heroic Yugoslav partisans who drove the Nazis out of the Balkans .We're inspired by the thousands who stood in their "target" T-shirts on the bridges of Belgrade in 1999. You were the first people to say "no!" to NATO.

Latin Americans taught our movement: "El Pueblo Unido jamás Sera Vencido!" The people united will never be defeated!" And here we will also say: Long live Yugoslavia!