Belgrade, Oktober 10th 2010
1990-2000-2010
Ten Years after, Twenty Years after
by Klaus Hartmann
The change in Yugoslavia about a decade ago cannot be understood without considering the preceding decade; In the last two decades the world has changed fundamentally It all started about 1989/90 with the crisis of the socialist states in Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact Organization.
It was a defeat not only for the ruling parties in those countries, their leaders and members, as well as for all who shared their political views, attitudes and goals.
As from 1990 Imperialism regained an almost unchallenged power with the emergence of a situation similar to that at the start of WW I with the most powerful imperialist states engaging in a new scramble for dividing and sharing the world among themselves.
US-President Bush sen. called the new era, the “New World Order”. It seemed as if capitalism was to celebrate its final victory, and heralds like Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the “End of History”.
Immediately Germany and their allies – mainly Austria and the Vatican – started dismantling Yugoslavia, while the USA waged their first war against Iraq. At the end of the decade the USA had taken over the leading role from Germany in the final destruction of Yugoslavia.
As 1989/90 marked a fundamental change in world affairs, the years 1999/2000 marked a new step: With the NATO’s Aggression against Yugoslavia and 78 days of bombings.
In those days the New NATO strategy was designed in order to wage wars out of area in violation of even their own NATO Charta.
In those days some interesting labels became in vogue: The ‘New Hitlers’, the ‘rogue states’ or ‘rogue regimes’, meant to stigmatize not only one country or leader, but all against which Imperialism planned to wage wars. The Serbs and especially their leader Slobodan Milosevic were demonized as the embodiment of evil.
The aggression didn’t end in June 1999, but was continued with other means. The western states began to differentiate between bad Serbs and good Serbs. Their program “Electricity for Democracy” was just one design which, under the cover of allegedly humanitarian motives in actual fact aimed at creating a split within in the people.
Other interesting words emerged like ‘failed states’ and – as a New World Order solution to the problem – ‘nation building’ or ‘state building’ with a foregone conclusion of ‘regime change’.
The agenda of undermining sovereign states and overthrowing their elected governments applies to all so-called ‘post-soviet states’.
The coup d’état in Belgrade in October 2000 served as the model for the so called colored revolutions – meaning counter-revolutions – in Ukraine, Georgia and in Lebanon as well as for other coup attempts in Venezuela, Iran, Honduras …
In former times attacks against disobedient states and politicians were launched by the enemy states themselves, by their official institutions like armed forces or secret services.
What has changed nowadays? Let us have a look at George Soros for example. His fortune amounts to about 7 billion dollars. He has been active in many changes of governments and has been labeled a CIA cover. His Think Tank, the Open Society Institute (OSI), prepared the blueprints of many counter-revolutions. He created a so called humanitarian organization like Human Rights Watch (HRW), which submitted most of the ‘evidences’ and documents on the crimes attributed to Slobodan Milosevic, thus justifying NATO intervention in Serbia. And they prepared the blueprint of the indictments before the infamous International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia.
Another Think Tank, the International Crisis Group (ICG) was created in 1994 as a non-governmental (NGO) diplomatic organization. It is currently presided over by Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland who pretended to be negotiating with Milosevic.
His Administrative Council gathers the elite of NATO personalities. By his side stand former national security advisors like Richard Allen and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Kuwaiti Prince Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, Louise Arbour, and former NATO Supreme Commander during the Yugoslavian War, General Wesley Clark, and journalist Christine Ockrent, wife of former Kosovo governor, Bernard Kouchner.
The Soros network includes even the sponsorship and training of fascist pressure groups like Otpor.
About his motivation, George Soros stated in 2002:
«In ancient Rome, only the Romans could vote. Under world modern capitalism, only the Americans can vote. Brazilians, they do not vote».
Now, you can see, this is the future program, things are going to be even better…
(Public statement by George Soros at Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil)
And this describes exactly what happened in the Elections 2000 in Serbia:
I was invited by the government as an official observer of the Elections, but I arrived in the country three weeks earlier. I had many discussions with quite ‘normal people’.
They were stressed and exhausted by the war, the sanctions, a ten years campaign against their country.
These Presidential elections in 2000 were no free elections.
NATO military exercises around the country were taking place adding a military threat to the political blackmailing from the West in case people would dare to vote disobediently.
In September 2000, the well-plotted scene played out in Belgrade, when Slobodan Milosevic was toppled after losing the one-sided Kosovo war with NATO the previous year.
Vojislav Kostunica was installed as President of Serbia, formally appointed by the DOS, but actually elected by Madeleine Albright and Joseph Fischer during their meeting with DOS in the Berlin Hotel Intercontinental.
Being well-informed about this event, Slobodan Milosevic spoke the truth when he stressed, that this political movement “is representing the armies and governments which recently waged war against Yugoslavia”.
When the coup had succeeded and the West had scored a victory the narrative in western media changed. All of a sudden western politicians told the truth. Hitherto the Serbs were portrayed as nationalists, chauvinists, racists, cruel murderers. Now Joseph Fischer proclaimed: “The last remaining socialist state in Europe collapsed. “
The last country which opposed the dictatorship of WB and WTO had to disappear. They called it a “socialist” system because the economic system included some sectors with state or social property.
The capitalist New World Order was supposed to be the one and only possible way, alternatives were not acceptable, they could set a bad example for other nations.
“Another world is possible” had been the argument of the World Social Forum, for which Yugoslavia was an example, and that was, why it had to be destroyed.
On 2 October 2000 in his first televised address since the Kosovo war Slobodan Milosevic said: “The events that have been organised for our elections are also part of this orchestrated campaign against a country and people, because our country and people are an obstacle to the establishment of complete domination in the Balkans”.
He had also foreseen, what would be the national fate of the country:
With the establishment of an administration supported or installed by a community of countries ganging up within NATO, Yugoslavia would inevitably become a country the territory of which would soon be dismembered.
Within this policy framework of dismembering Yugoslavia, Kosovo would be the first victim. Its present status would be proclaimed as legal and final. It would be the first part of its territory to which Serbia would have to bid farewell, without even voicing hope that that part of its land could once be returned to it.
The territory that would remain bearing the name of Serbia would be occupied by an international, US or other foreign military force, which would treat this territory as their military training ground and as their property to be controlled according to the interests of the power the army of which is present there.
As for Montenegro, its fate would be left in the hands of the mafia making the rules of the game which would be made well-known to the citizens: any breach of discipline and even more any opposition to mafia interests would be punishable by death without any right to appeal.
With regard to the social development he stated:
They do not want peace or prosperity in the Balkans. They want this to be a zone of permanent conflicts and wars which would provide them with an alibi for a lasting presence.
Moreover, all countries finding themselves reduced to a status of limited sovereignty and with governments under the influence of foreign powers, have speedily become impoverished in a manner destroying all hope for more just and humane social conditions.
A greatly increased social division into a poor majority and a rich minority, this has been for some years now the picture of Eastern Europe that we can all see.
That picture would also apply to us. We, too, under the command and control of the owners of our country would rapidly have a tremendous majority of the very poor, whose prospects of getting out of poverty would be very, very uncertain and far away.
One of the essential tasks assigned to a puppet government in any country, including ours, where we would have such a government, is loss of identity.
Countries under foreign command relatively quickly forget their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their way of living, often their own literary language.
Invisible at first, but very efficient and merciless a selective national identity would be reduced to a few local dishes, a few songs and folk dances, the names of national heroes used as brand names for food products or cosmetics.
Public and social property would quickly be transformed into private property, but as a rule its owners, as demonstrated by the experience of our neighbors, would be foreigners. There would be few exceptions including almost only those who would pay for their right to ownership by their loyalty and submission, equivalent to the elimination of fundamental national rights and human dignity.
The greatest national assets in such circumstances become the property of foreigners, and the people who used to manage them would continue to do so, but as employees of foreign companies in their own country.
National humiliation, state fragmentation and social misery would necessarily lead to many forms of social pathology, of which crime would be the first. This is not just a supposition, this is the experience of all countries which have taken the path that we are trying to avoid at any cost.
Concerning the national Dignity and sovereignty he added:
The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can suffer, which is inevitable in the contemporary form of colonization.
Besides, that new form of colonization by its very nature rules out any possibility of free speech or free will, and especially rules out any kind of creativity.
Countries that are not free would deny the people who live in them their right to free speech, as it would necessarily be in opposition to the lack of freedom.
This is why thought control is a kind of mental torture and a most persistent and indispensable form of torture in a country that has lost its freedom. Exerting your free will is, of course, out of the question. It is admitted only as a farce. It is granted only to the lackeys of foreign masters, whose simulation of their freedom of the will would only be used as a justification for the democracy in the name of which the occupiers have taken possession of another people´s country.
I would like to stress notably for the sake of young people, intellectuals, scientists, that countries deprived of sovereignty are normally deprived of the right to engage in creative work, and especially creative work in the field of science.
Large-scale centers in powerful countries finance scientific work, control its attainment and decide about the application of its results. In dependent states, if they have any scientific laboratories and institutes, they are not independent but operate as branches controlled by a foreign center. Their attainments would be kept within bounds so that they should not sow the seeds of rebellion and emancipation in occupied countries and among occupied nations.
“It is my duty to warn you publicly and in time …”
But October 2 was not “in due time”, it was definitively too late.
A lengthy, continuous campaign of information and education of and discussion and dialogue with the people would have been required.
As we said in 1999, the aggression against Yugoslavia must be called a door opener war for the wars to follow.
They created 9-11 in order to attack Afghanistan as a start of war against “terrorism”. The U.S. invaded Iraq in search of “weapons of mass destruction,” which, as they knew full well, Baghdad didn’t have.
Let’s remember Israel’s bombing campaign against Lebanon with the aim of weakening the Lebanese resistance and Syria, the continuous aggression against the Palestinian People especially in Gaza, the lies about Iran’s nuclear program and the threats and sanctions against that country.
But the imperialistic dreams from 20 or 10 years ago didn’t come true.
The unilateral World order with the USA as the one and only Superpower turned out to be an illusion.
They could destroy Iraq, but they couldn’t win. They are losing the Afghanistan war.
Russia and China became economically powerful players.
Cuba and Venezuela and other countries in Latin America are defending their right of political and social self determination.
The actual economic crisis proves not only the instability of a system based on private profit maximization, ignoring common interest and humanity. It shows the functioning of imperialist structures like the EU.
The Serbian government is dreaming to become a member in this imperialist alliance, which in these days is showing its true face.
Under the dictatorship of Germany as export-champignon Brussels is urging other countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland Portugal and even France to maintain dumping wages, demolish the entire system of social security and to give up their budget sovereignty.
You can imagine what Serbia has to expect from this side, after in the last ten years nearly all social property has been privatized or unlawfully liquidated, while the government is still selling out the last state assets.
In this situation we must unite again in the struggle against this dictatorship of the New World Order, the new totalitarianism.
We must fight for the values for which Slobodan Milosevic stood up and gave his life.
We defend national sovereignty and social justice as basic principles of human civilization. We support the right of all peoples to determine their social and political systems without foreign interference.
We promote the struggles for liberation and independence, for social justice and progress
We promote the resistance to US/NATO/EU aggression and New World Order
We demand the abolition of NATO as an aggressive, criminal and terrorist organization
We demand an end to the occupation of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans
These are some of the principles and demands we have just discuss in founding anew our International committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic. We want to change the name of this Committee to International committee to Defend National Sovereignty and Social Justice and we want to honor the Committee with the name of Slobodan Milosevic.
Са међународне конференције „5. октобар – десет година касније“, одржане у Сава центру у Београду 5. октобра 2010. у организацији Покрета за Србију.