-Caveat Lector- The Morning Star (UK) YUGOSLAVIA >From [EMAIL PROTECTED], 28/03/01 03:53:08 BY BRIAN DENNY TWO years ago March 24 the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO powers began, a campaign that would leave over 1,000 civilians dead and hundreds of schools, hospitals, factories, TV stations, trains, buses and even refugees columns destroyed. To justify this genocide the western media unleashed a demonisation campaign against the Serbs unparalleled in modern history. It is difficult today to describe the relentless stream of lies and distortions dreamt up by the pundits, except to say that media claims that "Serbs" were responsible for the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando were taken very seriously. One of the media tricks was to claim that the war was against one man, the "dictator" Slobodan Milosevic - the three times elected president in the minority multi-ethnic coalition government - and not the Yugoslav people. A smokescreen to cover the actions of NATO in the Balkans, crimes far greater than any perpetrated by Belgrade. Western politicans joined in the hysteria with equal levels of bile and misinformation, denouncing the expansionist "Hitlerite" government in Belgrade, thereby sealing the fate of thousands during the west's multi-billion dollar reign of terror. The west declared that "something must be done" to crush Yugoslavia, a country that was not threatening any other country in the region but fighting an internal civil war against western-backed ethnic Albanian rebels. So, without any mandate from the United Nations, the "humanitarian" destruction of Yugoslavia began while sections of the left grimly repeated claim upon claim by the United States intelligence services that over 100,000 Albanians had been killed, without a shread of evidence to prove it. The NATO attacks were illegal in every sense, in fact it was a showcase to tell the world that international law no longer applied to the western military alliance. In the eyes of NATO, the UN charter protecting the right of nations to self-determination and sovereignty were to be subsumed to the political and economic needs of the west. As US senator Richard Lugar famously put it, once the Cold War had been won, NATO must be "either out of area or out of business." That was the reason Yugoslavia, which had not violated international law, was criminalised by an uneasy military alliance between the European Union and United States which chose to ignore international law. The decision to dismantle the multi-national, multi-ethnic Balkan state had been decided by the west 10 years before and the intervening years saw the relentless carve-up of the Balkans between Washington and the German-led EU. To destroy what was left of Yugoslavia, which by the mid 90's was made up of just Serbia and Montenegro, internal conflict had to be formented and encouraged by the west. So the Kosovo Liberation Army was born and by 1997 the KLA had launched dozens of attacks and assasinations against Serbs and Albanians in the Serb province loyal to Yugoslavia. In less than a year, the KLA had gone from obscurity to a force in possession of ground to air missiles and anti-tank weapons such as the Amburst, which can be only obtained through official German channels. During NATO attacks on Kosovo the KLA guided US bombs to their targets with sophisicated NATO equipment on the ground. The KLA umbrella, which included a number of warlords, demanded "independence" for an ethnically cleansed Kosovo before its final annexation to neighbouring Albania. To this end, the KLA played the western pawn at the farcical Rambouillet negotiatons in Febuary 1999, where the west drew up a document so outrageous that no government could have signed. These accords were really a collective agreement between the big western powers, Germany and the US, in a fight for strategic military positions in the Balkans. Belgrade's refusal to sign the document, which included the NATO occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia, delighted the west and NATO stepped in as the "KLA's air force." Three months later Yugoslavia was driven out of Kosovo by western forces along with over 350,000 Serbs, gypsies, Jews and others, ethnically cleansed by the KLA while NATO turned a blind eye. It was here that western claims as the "defender of human rights" was at its most sickeningly hypocritical. The western strategy for feigning concern for "human rights" was drawn up by US advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who dreamt up US support in Afghanistan for groups like the extreme Muslim fundamentalist Taliban in the 1970's. In his book The Grand Chessboard Mr Brzezinski lays out the need to use the emotive issue of human rights to justify anything the west does in order to defend and extend US strategic political and economic interests. "It was the best way to destabilise the Soviet Union and it worked," he says. The same alleged concern for the plight of certain groups in the Balkans was the pretext to implement western plans for military domination and spark war in the region. Western-backing for a Greater Albania, as well as for Muslim and Croatian forces in neighbouring Bosnia, has seen the military colonisation of the Balkans by NATO successfully implemented. Western colonial occupation forces in Bosnia and Kosovo now hold supreme power on the basis that the "protectorates must be protected." Today, the reasons why the west is so interested in occupying and subduing the Balkans are all too apparant. The mineral assets of Kosovo have been privatised, including the lucrative Trepca mine complex, taken over by NATO troops despite protests from local workers. And news that an oil pipeline is being constructed through Bulgaria, Macedonia, and on to Albania, tells us everything we need to know about the real origins of the Kosovo war. The new Trans-Balkan pipeline will run from the Bulgarian port of Burgas, bisect Macedonia, and go on through to Vlore, Albania's Adriatic port, in anticipation of the flow of oil and natural gas expected to come out of the Caspian region. It is here that the uses of a "Greater Albania" come into focus as the "Great Game" for Caspian oil riches is fought out by the huge oil corporations such as Texaco, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, BP Amoco, Agip, and TotalElFina. It will come as no surprise that Mr Brzezinski, advisor to US secretary of state Madeleine Albright during the war, is a consultant for Amoco. This brings us to Macedonia. Even before the bombing of Yugoslavia the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung applauded the "Kosovo-isation" of Macedonia where over 30 per cent of the population are Albanians. It claimed that the "fight for political rights of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia is no longer possible within the institutions of Macedonia." Today, a heavily-armed KLA offshoot in the Macedonian Albanian-dominated town of Tetovo are demanding the partition of the country into ethnically pure statelets. National Liberation Army commander Sadri Ameti warned that the KLA was capable of "setting all of Macedonia on fire" and the conflicts in Tetovo were only a "warning" to Skopje unless "Slav" forces withdraw. The KLA genie, like many other reactionary forces armed and trained by the west, is well and truly out of the bottle. Even UN special envoy for human rights Jiri Dienstbier blamed the growing crisis in Macedonia on NATO for refusing to disarm KLA and prevent the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanian population. "I hope that international forces will now understand what has always been the aim of Albanian extremists," he said. However, the current situation only helps NATO to justify intervening in it's usual way and impose western rule indefinitely with the help of the corporate media as a smokescreen. Another massive "humanitarian" intervention would complete the militarisation of the southeastern Balkans - and pave the way for NATO troops to act as the gendarmes of the big oil corporations. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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