-----Original Message----- From: (ACF) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 30 March 1999 08:29 Subject: org: (long) ANTI-FASCIST ACTION ALERT #67: PROTEST U.S. BOMBING OF YUGOSLAVIA This post is about Yugoslavia and discusses in detail the use of terms "fascism" and "ethnic cleansing" in the conflict, so hopefully other list members will find this of interest. I am also about to add links to the B92 banned Belgrade radio station web-site from the top of ACF web-site - it's not anarchist or even left wing, but it's updated regularly (last one I saw was at 16.00 CET, March 29, 1999). You might want to cut and paste the HTML for this, for other sites: <HR> <CENTER> <B>NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR! OPPOSE NATO BOMBINGS!<BR>SUPPORT ANTI-WAR ACTIONS IN YUGOSLAVIA AND WORLDWIDE!</B><BR> News out of Belgrade from banned B92 Radio Station: <A HREF="http://b92eng.opennet.org/">B92 Home Site (slow)</A>,<BR> Lastest News (fast) via Mirror Sites in <A HREF="http://mmc.et.tudelft.nl/~sii/odrazb/latest.html">Holland</A>, Others: <A HREF="http://moumee.calstatela.edu/~sii/odrazb/latest.html">1</A> <A HREF="http://brazil.tcimet.net/~sii/odrazb/latest.html">2</A> <A HREF="http://sii.yurope.com/odrazb/latest.html">3</A> <A HREF="http://www.yusearch.com/mirror/odrazb/latest.html">4 </A> </CENTER> <HR> Mike ---- NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR! FOR A WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS --- Anarchist Communist Federation, ACF c/o 84 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX, England UK [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://burn.ucsd.edu/~acf/ ------------------------------------------------- The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 23 March 99 Vol. 3, Number 24 (#240) ______________________________________________________________________ ANTI-FASCIST ACTION ALERT #67: PROTEST U.S. BOMBING OF YUGOSLAVIA SATURDAY, MARCH 27,12 NOON, GRAND CENTRAL STATION IN NEW YORK CITY COORDINATED PROTESTS WILL BE HELD IN CITIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY: <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/afaa/afaa67.txt> - - - - - SOCIAL AMNESIA IN THE BALKANS by tallpaul "The history of philosophy is the history of forgetting; so T.W. Adorno has remarked. Problems and ideas once examined fall out of sight and out of mind only to resurface later as novel and new. If anything the process seems to be intensifying; society remembers less and less faster and faster. The sign of the times is thought that has succumbed to fashion; it scorns the past as antiquated while touting the present as the best." -- Russell Jacoby Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology From Adler to Laing Clinton's speech to the nation showed that it is no longer necessary to extensively rewrite history; sound bites and advertising jingles now suffice. Even Social Amnesia has been forgotten; one no longer scorns the past; one incorporates a created memory of a never-existing history into the eternal present. Clinton's speech presented several arguments ostensibly based on experiences from World Wars One and Two on the dangers of "waiting too long" to deal with aggression. He then used these otherwise-undescribed "lessons" to justify bombing human beings in Serbia. Have we so soon forgotten the real history of these past events? Clinton, his speechwriters, and his cabinet believe so. WORLD WAR ONE The President warned us of the dangers we experienced from WW I in waiting too long to intervene against injustice. Too long! Let's examine this history, as written in the Encyclopedia Britannica: "... a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 ...." "On July 25 Serbia accepted all the Austro-Hungarian conditions save those two that directly compromised its sovereignty. Two days later Berchtold persuaded Francis Joseph to initiate war. At the same moment the Kaiser, returning from a yachting expedition, tried belatedly to restrain Vienna. On July 28 Austria declared war and bombarded Belgrade; on the same day the Tsar approved the mobilization of the Russian army against Austria, and alarms went off all over Europe. Sir Edward Grey, Kaiser William, and the Italian government all proposed negotiations, with the Austrians to occupy Belgrade as a pledge of Serbian compliance. The German ambassador in St. Petersburg assured the Russians that Austria meant to annex no Serbian territory. But it was too little and far too late. In St. Petersburg the generals protested that partial mobilization would disrupt their contingency plans: How could Russia prepare to fight Austria-Hungary while leaving naked her border with Austria's ally Germany? The weak and vacillating Tsar Nicholas II was persuaded, and on the afternoon of July 30 he authorized general mobilization of the Russian army. "The previous day, Poincaré and Viviani had finally arrived back in Paris, where they were met with patriotic crowds and generals anxious for military precautions. In Berlin, anti-Russian demonstrations and equally anxious generals called for immediate action. On the 31st, when all the other powers had begun preparations of some sort, and even the British had put the fleet to sea (thanks to Winston Churchill's foresight), Germany delivered ultimatums to Russia, demanding an end to mobilization, and to France, demanding neutrality in case of war in the east. But Russia and France could scarcely accede without abandoning the Balkans, each other, and their own security. When the ultimatums expired, the Schlieffen Plan was put into effect. Germany declared war against Russia on August 1 and against France on August 3 and demanded safe passage for its troops through Belgium. Refused again, Germany invaded Belgium in force. "On August 3, Italy took refuge in the fact that this was not a defensive war on Austria-Hungary's part and declared its neutrality. That left only Britain, faced with the choice of joining its entente partners in war or standing aloof and risking German domination of the Continent. Britain had little interest in the Serbian affair, and the kingdom was torn by the Irish question. The Cabinet was in doubt as late as August 2. But the prospect of the German fleet in the English Channel and German armies on the Belgian littoral settled the issue. On the 3rd Britain demanded that Germany evacuate Belgium, and Grey won over Parliament with appeals to British interests and international law. On August 4, Britain declared war on Germany." What lessons have historians drawn from this bloody seven-week rush to judgement that killed millions of people? The Clinton Government tells us that it shows we must not wait so long, as if the War would not have started if only Austria invaded Serbia sooner. It is also a conclusion that would cause a freshman history student to fail the course but it is policy of the world's largest military superpower. DEMONIZATION DURING WORLD WAR ONE There's another lesson from the War as well. Tales of the "demonic Hun" were widely circulated in the United States. They created a social climate demanding U.S. entry into the war, nor for profits for the House of Morgan, but simply for "humanitarian" reasons against the German Army busy raping nuns and spitting babies on bayonets. Has history not taught us to avoid getting caught up in such hysterias. If we believe Clinton, history instructs us to wait a even shorter period of time than we did during the first World War. WORLD WAR TWO Which side would Clinton place us during events leading to the Second World War? He tells us to learn the lessons and to not wait. But on whom should be not wait? Whose propaganda machine should give us the information on which we base our lessons? Clinton does not say but a rational examination of events then and now indicates his affinity for Nazi propaganda minister J. Goebbels. The Nazi military moved into the Rhineland upon claims that the perfidious French were mistreating innocent German civilians. They seized the Sudentanland on claims that the Czechs attacked other German civilians. They preached an ethnic pan-Germanism seeking to innocently unite all Germanic peoples when they invaded Austria. They prepared their invasion of Poland by publishing reports of how the horrible Poles were attacking German women and children. What then are the Clintonesque lessons? Are they the need to act immediately in support of groups claiming victimization? Or are they to disbelieve such claims on the surface, investigating the totality of the situation around which such assertions develop? Clinton proposes the former -- but historically comes down on the side of Prof. Goebbels. WORLD WAR TWO IN THE BALKANS: WHO ARE THE FASCISTS? "At the end of March, 1941, I was appointed Ic (Staff Officer Intelligence) to the second Army, then assembling in southern Austria [for the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia]. ... "The military weakness of Yugoslavia was accentuated by political, religious, and racial divisions. Apart from the two main groups, the Serbs and Croats, there were millions of Solvenes, Germans, and Italians, each with separate national aspirations. Only the Serbs were really hostile to us, and our propaganda took the line of offering liberation to the other races, particularly the Croats. ... "46th Panzer Corps of 2nd Army swept down on Belgrade from the northwest, and made rapid progress against negligible resistance. This corps was opposed mainly by Croats, who had been so influenced by our propaganda that some units mutinied and greeted us as 'liberators'." -- Major General F.W. von Mellenthin "Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War," Trans. H. Betzler, Ed. L.C.F. Turner (U. of Oklahoma Press, 1956), pp. 34-35 The U.S. State Department repeatedly presents Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic as the "Balkan Hitler." History, as even Nazis agreed, showed the Serbians to be essentially anti-fascist while the Croat majority supported the Nazi efforts. We've had Croatian fascists pass out leaflets in New York City bragging how past Croatian actions in Yugoslavia represented "the first National Socialist armor offensive in Eastern Europe since 1945." We saw Croatian-dominated Nazi death camps like Jasenovac as we today see that the Croatian government releases those accused of war crimes during that period. The Milosevic government can be deeply criticized for past actions on refugees and informal military combatants. But we must not allow social amnesia to deprive us of the memory of similar -- often worse -- actions by others in the region. No, the "Balkan Hitler" analogy is no more valid than others by the Clinton government. But the "national liberation" character of past U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans bears an uncanny resemblance to Goebell's propaganda described by von Mellenthin. TERRORISTS: FRIEND OR FOE? The concrete policies of the "Kosovo Liberation Army" have disappeared from most news coverage; more social amnesia develops as the bombs fall making memory one of the first casualties. The U.S. State Department has long embarked on a policy of bashing followers of Islam under the cover of "fighting terrorism." The original "terrorist" demons were created by writers from Reader's Digest and the Moon-financed arch-conservative Washington Times. The theory doesn't pack the same punch any more and writers for the Washington Times have even had a nice word for the old Yugoslavian Communist Party. The course of social amnesia is not a smooth one for it demands that the repressed return, only to again demand that it be forgotten. The "terrorist menace" stamp was placed on Libya, Iran, and Iraq while other Islamic fundamentalists were hailed as "freedom fighters" for they fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Pity -- or don't -- the Afghani forces who took this seriously for they were bombed, as "terrorists," by the same U.S. who earlier armed them. The Soviet Union collapsed and U.S. cruise missiles hit "terrorist bases" in Somalia and Afghanistan. But certain Islamic fundamentalists, organized in the KLA, are again "freedom fighters." DRUG DEALERS: FRIEND OR FOE? According to the Victorian Capitalization of U.S. domestic policy, drug dealers are: the Scum Of The Earth; Poisoners Of Our Children; the forces Against Whom We Must Give Up A Few (inconsequential) Civil Liberties. We must all support The War On Drugs. U.S. foreign policy is different, unless you're one-time Panamanian leader Noriega. The U.S. supported heroin dealers in South East Asia as part of its anti-communist foreign policy. Chinese warlords in the Golden Triangle were part of Chiang Kai-Shek's "brave, freedom-loving, democratic Chinese." Their allies in the French mob were "brave businessmen willing to stand up to the communists to defend free markets." The CIA worked with the same French heroin dealers after WW II in southern France to defeat labor union organizing on the ground that it was organized by the French Communist Party. Nor should we forget the "contra cocaine connection" so attacked by the mainstream press as paranoid fantasy. Perhaps we should simply forget it around the vigorous U.S. denials that the CIA "never supported drug dealer but just looked the other way when the people they supported dealt drugs." But especially forget, as more prisons are built in the U.S., that the KLA has any connection to drugs. SOCIAL AMNESIA AND HISTORY U.S. policies come increasingly to resemble advertising jingles. Neither truth or analysis is needed; indeed they often hinder. Rather truth comes to resemble the suburban shopping mall where disconnected commodities are available, each having no connection to the next, each composed of genuine fact-like substances. At such times rewriting history is as dangerous as remembering it accurately. For even a rewritten history has a unitary character to it. Write that an event existed or never happened and you lock yourself into a solid view of reality. Advertising jingles can tolerate no such solidity, for the "history" true today is "negatively useful" tomorrow. So remember to fight the War On Drugs while forgetting any KLA involvement in this area. Forget the seven-week rush to mass death during WW I in order to construct a short-term pseudo-memory that we waited too long to punish Evil. Forget the Goebbels propaganda line that justified every Nazi aggression as a defensive humanitarian effort to correct unjust attacks on civilians. Forget also the same Nazi propaganda effort about "national liberation" in the Balkans. Above all forget Tito and the Yugoslavian Communist Party. Forget that the current Balkan situation is a direct result of earlier U.S. policy against the YCP, to ostensibly restore freedom and democracy to the area. Forget that there was no genocide under Tito, no forced transfer of civilians, and that no ethnic hated was tolerated. Then, after you've forgotten all of these things ... forget that you've forgotten. Such is the character of Clinton's foreign policy. It would be worthy of Alice In Wonderland. But U.S. bombs are falling in the Balkans. And our fellow human beings are dying. - - - - - [Dealing With Pro-war Arguments] edited by Jared Israel 24 Mar 99 In launching massive bombing raids against Serbia, the U.S. government has OPENLY taken the side of the Albanian terrorists, called the KLA. The KLA was coached and courted by Dole, Albright, and a host of U.S. special advisers. They didn't want to sign the first so-called peace agreement that the U.S. came up with, so it was rewritten. Every day for a month we heard "they're going to sign, they're going to sign." Then the next day "it's about to happen." And the U.S. kept rewriting the "peace" agreement. They are the spoiled child of U.S. diplomacy. "Please, eat this, dear. Please, mommy made it just the way you like! Lots of nice Serbs and Gypsies too and all the land you want - some of Serbia and some of Macedonia, and soon why we'll get you Bulgarian and Greece for your birthday! So be good!" But the kids says: "No! I want MORE!" So finally the 50th rewrite of the "peace" agreement produced an dish that was acceptable for the Albanian terrorists, and they signed. Then the Serbs were told "Sign!" And when they were so unreasonable as not to sign the U.S. and Britain said they were sabotaging a "peace" agreement and that they would simply have to be bombed in a humanitarian fashion, no other alterantives existed! Aside from sounding utterly insane, this completely violates the Geneva Convention, article 52. VIENNA CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF TREATIES SIGNED AT VIENNA 23 May 1969 ENTRY INTO FORCE: 27 January 1980 SECTION 2. INVALIDITY OF TREATIES Article 51 COERCION OF A REPRESENTATIVE OF A STATE The expression of a State's consent to be bound by a treaty which has been procured by the coercion of its representative through acts or threats directed against him shall be without any legal effect. Article 52 COERCION OF A STATE BY THE THREAT OR USE OF FORCE A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations. * * * * * NATO's air assault on Serbia completely violates NATO's own constitution. This constitution defines NATO as a defensive force only. It cannot attack a nation unless that nation first commits aggression against one of its members. What nation has Serbia attacked? On the contrary, it is NATO which has landed 25,000 troops in nearby Macedonia, NATO which built up an armada of 400 planes and many war ships and held the threat of bombing over Serbia's head for the past 6 months. And what has Serbia done? NATO says it has committed genocide against the Albanians living in Kosovo. But in the past 13 months, according to the figures given by the very anti-Serbian mass media, 2000 people have died there. 2000 people. That's in 13 months of intense fighting between Serbian troops and 15,000 terrorists, armed with the latest weapons and equipment. Doesn't the small number of casualties show the Serbian forces have acted with concern for human life? IF the New York police fought 15,000 terrorists for a year, the city would be leveled, plus half of New Jersey. * * * * * Madeline Albright calls the U.S. the "indispensable power." And it is true, the U.S. is a big country with lots of weapons. Does that justify the campaign of vilification and threats which the U.S. has carried out against little Serbia? What right does the U.S. have to tell Serbia not to suppress a force of terrorists in its southern province? The same mass media that attacks the Serbs admits that the so-called KLA is linked to drug gangs and Islamic Fundamentalists. That they routinely kidnap and kill gypsies, Serbs and uncooperative Albanians. This sounds a lot like the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S. Just listen to this KLA supporter interviewed at a KLA fund raiser in New York: "We raise money here," Florin Krasniqi, 34, says. "They fight over there. That's how we get rid of the Serbs." (AFP, 2/20/99) as saying "we're fighting to get rid of the Serbs." Get rid of the Serbs. Get rid of the Jews. What's the difference? Anyway they say it its the same thing: fascism. * * * * * The following was posted by a Vietnam Veteran on AOL bulletin board: "I remember a time when if one party said "give me a piece of your business or else i'll hurt you" it was called EXTORTION. We put guys like Vito Genevese,Al Capone an others in jail for that. Doesn't "let us occupy your country or wer'e gonna bomb you" mean the same thing?" So now that the store keeper has not given in, the extortionist is bombing the store. And the big problem is, the bomber and the International Cop of the World are one and the same.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT'S WORTH CHECKING stories via <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/story3/> Yuri Kageyama (Associated Press), "Tokyo Will Not Track War Criminals," 24 Feb 99 <story826> Mari Yamaguchi (Associated Press), "Translation of Bestseller Delayed," 19 Feb 99 <story827.txt> Mari Yamaguchi (Associated Press), "Release of Book in Japan Doubtful," 24 Feb 99 <story828.txt> Agence France Presse (no author), "Thousands arrested in Turkey since capture of Ocalan: rights group," 20 Feb 99 <story829.txt> Dave Silver, "Letter to the New York Times [On Diallo Demonstration], 23 Feb 99 <story830.txt> Norman Solomon, "More 'Culture War' Bombast On the Way," 26 Feb 99 <story831.txt> Americans United (press release), "Statement Of Barry W. Lynn On Resignation of Donald Hodel As President Of Christian Coalition," 9 Feb 99 <story832.txt> Daniel Gatti (InterPress Service), "Neo-Nazis Active in Latin America," 23 Feb 99 <story833.txt> Luck Kosimar (The Observer [London]), "Kissinger covered up Chile torture," 28 Feb 99 <story834.txt> Guardian [Australia] (no author), "Black Deaths in Australian Police Custody," 28 Feb 99 <story835.txt> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Internet Anti-Fascist: Wednesday, 24 March 99 FTP Supplement #107 (#239): Events in Former Yugoslavia Part 2: Background material to help anti-militarists 0) Past ftp supplements on this topic 10) European Roma Rights Center (no author), "ROMA RIGHTS: snapshots from around Europe -- Roma from Kosovo victimized in the Serb-Albanian ethnic conflict," Dec 98 11) Reuters (no author), "Croatia Slammed for 'Political' Release of Guard," 2 Feb 99 12) The Jasenovac Research Institute (press release), "The Release of Nada Sakic by Croatia Demonstrates the Unrepentant Pro-Fascist Character of the Current Tudjman Regime in Croatia ," 4 Feb 99 13) Diana Johnstone, "Truth Can Wait ... NATO Is In A Hurry," 9 Mar 99 14) Claudius Technau and Roland Heine (Berliner Zeitung), "Release of Racak Report Stopped," 9 Mar 99 15) Diana Johnstone, "[More On the Berliner Zeitung Story]," 9 Mar 99 16) BBC (no author), "NATO anniversary gathering in London," 8 Mar 99 17) Sonja Hodak (Vecernji List [Zagreb]), "Some 300 Former HV Members Fighting in Kosovo ," 9 Mar 99 18) Reuters (no author), "Greek Protesters Try to Block Skopje-Bound Tanks," 9 Mar 99 19) Associated Press (no author), "Croats to Restore WWII Memorial," 11 Mar 99 20) Diana Johnstone, "Racak 'Massacre' Faked Say Euro's," 13 Mar 99 21) Amnesty International (letter), "To all parties involved in the Kosovo conflict," 23 Mar 99 <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/tinaf/tinaf239.txt> * * * * * In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. ___________________________________________________________________ FASCISM: We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget. (No permission required for noncommercial reproduction) - - - - - --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
