Why U.S. wants Milosevic ousted
By Brian Becker
Demonstrations demanding the ouster of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic were organized in several cities inside Yugoslavia in the second week of July by opposition parties.
Some of these demonstrations received wide coverage in the U.S. media. In the city of Prokuplje, for instance, 3,000 people answered the call of the opposition. The July 9 New York Times carried a large photo of the demonstration. A picture of an even smaller demonstration from the city of Valjevo filled up a half page of the July 12 New York Times.
When 10,000 demonstrators marched on the Pentagon on June 5 to condemn the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia the New York Times didn't carry a large picture of the activity. They didn't write a big article about it either. In fact, they didn't write one word of the demonstration. It was totally ignored.
What accounts for the difference in the coverage between the anti-war demonstrations at home and the anti-Milosevic demonstrations in Yugoslavia? Both demonstrations were opposing their respective governments.
"People always were and always will be foolish victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of some class or other behind the moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises," wrote V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian revolution.
Lenin was succinctly presenting the Marxist starting point for an analysis of all social phenomenon. Whether it's an assessment of a tenant-landlord dispute, a strike of auto workers, a war in a far-off land, or the complexity of international diplomacy, Marxists seek to unearth the class interests that are being served by the contending forces.
What are the class interests being served by the U.S./NATO war against Yugoslavia, by the NATO occupation of Kosovo, and now by the concerted efforts of the CIA, the IMF and the major U.S. mass media to support the overthrow of the Milosevic government?
All the information about the recent war from the U.S. media directs the public to think that in the Balkans different nationalities, for a variety of reasons, have entered into a period of prolonged, agonizing conflict with each other. The propaganda from the Western media focuses its attack on the Serbian leadership and on "Serb nationalism."
But Yugoslavia and the Balkans today is not simply a collection of nationalities. Classes have not been abolished in Yugoslavia and in the region of the Balkans. Nor have they been abolished in the United States, Britain, Germany and the other NATO countries.
The Marxist criteria of putting "class interests" at the center of an analysis immediately brings clarity about the war and the current U.S. efforts to promote the counter-revolution against the Milosevic government.
President Bill Clinton said that the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was in response to the refusal of Yugoslavia to sign the Rambouillet "peace agreement." That agreement stipulated that "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free-market principles [and] ... there shall be no impediments to the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital to and from Kosovo."
That's technical treaty language. But Bill Clinton put it into popular terms when he explained the U.S. aims with the war: "If we are going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be the key; that's what this Kosovo thing is all about ... its globalism versus tribalism."
Milosevic and the Yugoslav government had put definite impediments on the free movement of capital in Kosovo and in all the other parts of Yugoslavia as well. It is the unfettered flow of capital and investment that Clinton refers to when he talks about "globalism." Although the socialist publicly-owned sector of the economy has been damaged over time from decentralization and economic sanctions, public ownership still exists in thousands of factories and enterprises in Yugoslavia.
While Clinton has to put Corporate America's agenda in the Balkans in popular terms, New York Times writer Thomas Friedman is able to put Wall Street's brutal class interests in the war in blunter language.
"For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is ... The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist--McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps," Freidman wrote in the March 28 New York Times.
While the Milosevic government is not pursuing a revolutionary communist policy, it drew the anger of the United States and other imperialist governments when it acted to slow down and resist the wholesale privatization of industry, banking, and trade as demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
This trend was widely noted in Western media accounts in 1996.
"Milosevic is harking back to the political control promised by that old Communist star on his presidency building ...[he] is revoking some privatization and free-market measures," stated an article in the June 6, 1996, Christian Science Monitor. A month later, the July 18, 1996, New York Times complained about Milosevic's determination to "keep state controls and his refusal to allow privatization."
The Aug. 4, 1996, Washington Post carried a piece against Milosevic that was even more explicit. "Milosevic failed to understand the political message of the fall of the Berlin Wall," the Post quotes Konstantin Obradovic, deputy director of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights. He is one of the "democratic opposition" seeking to oust the Yugoslav government.
"While other Communist politicians accepted the Western model, and moved in the direction of the rest of Europe, Milosevic went the other way. That is why we are where we are today."
After the collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc governments in Eastern Europe, the United States has aggressively moved into the region to create a patchwork of new military and economic arrangements, organizations and treaties to insure U.S. domination over the entire area of southern and eastern Europe.
The expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic puts these countries under a Pentagon-dominated military chain of command. Tens of thousands of U.S. and other NATO troops now occupy the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Macedonia, as well as Kosovo and Albania.
The U.S. also dominates the Southeastern Europe Cooperative Initiative (SECI) which is planning for the reorganization of the newly-privatized sectors in energy, oil and petroleum, telecommunications, scientific research and banking.
The SECI is planning for the integration of the region's economic infrastructure into the arteries of U.S.-dominated finance and banking. Nine of the eleven member states of the SECI were formerly part of the socialist bloc countries. Greece and Turkey are the exceptions.
Yugoslavia, under Milosevic, is the only country in the region that has refused to participate in the SECI and its program for the outright imperialist takeover of the region.
This is why the U.S. calls Milosevic "intransigent." This is why the opposition "economists" in Belgrade known as Group 17 have denounced the Milosevic government as "illegitimate."
These darlings of Western bankers have proposed an alternative to the IMF to Yugoslavia's public ownership sector once Milosevic could be removed. Who are they?
"The Group 17 gathers 20 most-distinguished Yugoslav economists employed at the universities, banks, consulting agencies and international financial instutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund," reads the mission statement of the group.
Why are they opposed to Milosevic? Because he has acted as a brake to the full-scale capitalist restoration in Yugoslavia.
One of the latest statements of the Group 17 says it all: "A new phase in the process of transition to a market economy throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is beginning." However, "it is extremely well known that this transition in Yugoslavia is practically stopped," the statement complains.
http://www.geocities.com/cpa_blacktown_02/19990718ww.htmInternational Fact-finding Team Visits DPRK to Accuse U.S. of Its Wartime Atrocities in Korea The international fact-finding team, headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, visited the DPRK between May 15 and 19 to investigate the cases of massacre committed by U.S. troops during the 1950-53 Korean War.
During its five-day visit, “the international group to probe the truth behind GI’s atrocities” inspected scenes of massacres committed by U.S. troops, heard testimonies of survivors and discuss matters concerned with DPRK officials concerned in preparation for “the Korea International War Crimes Tribunal on U.S. Troop Massacres of Civilians during the Korean War” to be held from Jun. 23 to 25 in New York.
The investigation team visited Sinchon County in South Hwanghae Province to conduct an inquiry in “the Sinchon Massacre,” while visiting the Sinchon War Museum, collecting documents and materials on the massacre and hearing testimonies of victims. (The U.S. troops, after occupying Sinchon County, killed 35,383 innocent people in the county or a quarter of the total population of the county from October 17 to December 17, 1950. In the DPRK, the Sinchon massacre is a symbol of the U.S. troops’ wartime massacre.)
Mr. Clark said that as an American citizen he felt guilty about GI’s atrocities during the Korean War. Noting that the U.S. government, afraid of the disclosure of its wartime atrocities to the world, has tried to cover up the truth, he stressed that victims’ testimonies were of great importance as they exposed part of the U.S.’s history of aggression against Korea and would be widely used to let many people know about the sufferings imposed by the U.S. on the Korean people.
The fact-finding team also held talks in Pyongyang with survivors of the Korean War and collected their testimonies about U.S. troops’ mass killings of civilians, indiscriminate bombing by the U.S. Air Force and its use of germ bombs.
The former U.S. attorney general said that facts probed and testimonies made by victims would be made public at the upcoming international war crimes tribunal to be held in New York.
In a press conference held on May 18 in Pyongyang, Ramsey Clark said that he had “the urgent task to let people know about the misfortunes and sufferings the Korean people have undergone since the U.S. forces occupied south Korea in 1945.”
“We will strive to let people of the world have a correct understanding of Korea and war crimes committed by the GIs,” he added.
The investigation team also said, in a press conference in Seoul after wrapping up its five-day visit to north Korea, that it witnessed the severity of the U.S. wartime crimes committed in north Korea during the Korean War and that their crimes were much severer than those committed in south Korea in the scale of damage and degree of cruelty.
Referring to the facts that the U.S. still stations its armed forces in south Korea and creates the condition of the division of Korea, Ramsey Clark pointed out that the U.S. still persistently makes vicious propaganda against the DPRK to cover up the truth about its war crimes.
Stressing that the biggest scar left by the Korean War was the division of Korea, he said that the U.S.’s policy of maintaining the division of Korea should be punished as “a crime against peace” in the New York war crimes tribunal.
Brian Becker, a joint chairman of the International Action Center, said he would make every effort for the withdrawal of the U.S. troops from south Korea and for a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.
In September 1999, Associated Press began publishing a series of articles based on an investigation of the massacre that took place in the south Korean village of Rogun-ri in July 1950.
Faced with the increasing demand at home and abroad for a thorough inquiry into the truth about the incident, the U.S. and south Korea formed a joint investigation body to probe the Rogun-ri massacre. But their 15-month-long joint investigation of the massacre produced a joint investigation report which evaded liabilities of the government and the armed forces of the U.S. for their active commitment in the massacre. Lame duck President Clinton supported this U.S. no-fault conclusion, issuing a statement of “regret,” which the survivors denounced as a total whitewash.
The historic people’s war crimes tribunal is scheduled to be convened on Jun. 23 in New York, co-sponsored by the Korea Truth Commission on U.S. Military Massacres of Civilians, the International Action Center, a U.S. national progressive organization, and Veterans for Peace, a veterans’ group in the U.S.
The tribunal will judge cases of massacre committed by the U.S. armed forces from 1945 to 1953 and crimes committed by the USFK against south Korean people after the truce of the Korean War.
Kitandra Shandra, former justice of the Indian Supreme Court, will serve as presiding judge. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former justice of the south Korean Constitutional Court Pyon Jong Su and a north Korean lawyer will form a joint prosecution panel.
Mr. Clark said that one of the main purposes of the New York war crimes tribunal is to expose the U.S. war of aggression against Korea to “raise international public opinion that the U.S. should not interfere in the matters of the Korean nation and prepare a favorable situation for Korea’s reunification” as well as to thoroughly probe the truth behind war crimes.
In the war crimes tribunal, victims in north and south Korea and in foreign countries will make testimonies on war crimes committed by U.S. troops. A joint judging panel will be formed by lawyers from 16 nations which participated in the Korean War as members of the U.S.-led U.N. Forces.
The Korea Truth Commission, a pan-national coalition of civic groups, was organized in June 2000, participated in by civic organizations of north, south and overseas Koreans, after the political parties and organizations of north Korea issued a joint appeal to their south Korean counterparts and overseas Koreans to unfold a more active nationwide struggle to disclose and condemn the U.S. wartime massacre of Korean civilians.
While activities for investigation in the U.S. wartime massacres of civilians had been severely restricted in south Korea for a long time, the DPRK established a national fact-finding committee in July 1950, the month following the breakout of the Korean War, to probe U.S. war crimes. Ever since the cease-fire of the war, the committee has conducted a systematic investigation up to now, widening its scope of activity to crimes committed by the USFK in south Korea.
Jong Gi Ryol, secretary-general of the joint secretariat of the Korea Truth Commission, announced that north and south Korean lawyers would meet in Beijing on Jun. 17 to draw up a joint indictment to be presented to the upcoming Korea international war crimes tribunal. He also informed that Ramsey Clark, lawyer Michael Choe and other lawyers plan to file a suit in a U.S. court against the U.S. government for the war crimes committed by its armed forces during the Korean War.
http://www.korea-np.co.jp/pk/161st_issue/2001052703.htm.