[L-I] Fw: SN793:An Open Letter To Diana Johnstone
- Original Message -
Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2000 4:17 PM
Subject: SN793:An Open Letter To Diana Johnstone
"The light shone by the media is not the regular sweep of the
lighthouse,
but a random searchlight directed at the whim of its controllers"
Douglas Hurd
An Open Letter To Diana Johnstone
By Bl. Doncheva,
Sofia, Bulgaria
Diana Johnstone, a well-known progressive US journalist , has let in the
public space three articles on the September-October events in
Yugoslavia,
more or less a shocking surprise for me.
I would have awarded her writings with the silence they deserve if my
mail-box has not been assaulted with them from all quarters of the
world.
You see what a harm can be done by a false assessment of events by a
justly
won popularity and authority of an honest journalist in the past. (The
question if it is only a "false assessment of events" or ordered "false
assessment of events" remains open.)
What is wrong with "In a Spin ", the last Diana Johnstone's article I
have
received by a Zmag.org readers both from Canada and Holland?
The wrong in her article can be roughly devided in three groups.
1/ She thinks the elections in Yugoslavia (September 24) have been
"democratic". She insists on it. She repeats that sham several times.
Free
expression of free will.
The truth is they have been BLATANTLY undemocratic.
a) Because of the great sums of money poured into Yugoslavia from the US
and
NATO countries
- see Emperors-clothes (or www.tenc.net): there you will find SEVERAL
well-grounded articles on that subject, incl. USA Senate Protocol on
some
of
the KNOWN enourmous sums of US money approved by the Senate;
- see "New York Times" article by STEVEN ERLANGER, September 20, page
A3,
http://www.nytimes.com/partners/screensaver/index.html?eta2
b) Because of the direct most ARROGANT interference in the internal
affairs
of a still sovereign country (before October 6 Yugoslavia WAS a
sovereign
country!) by way of the
- so-called "temporary US Embassy" set in Budapest and the feverish
activities of the US Ambassador there;
- aborriginal - colonial - comprador - etc., government of Bulgaria, a
country fully dependant on USA-NATO ("Bulgaria has lost a 100 % of its
sovereignty", B. Dimitrov, a Bulgarian historian and scientist, on one
of
the cable TV on Sunday, Oct. 22).
Read again Emperors-clothes
(www.tenc.net), and also http://www.indymedia.org (There is a SEARCH
window
there. You write Bulgaria and click.)
At Emperors-clothes you can find the Memorandum of the Yugoslavian
government concerning that flagrant interference and at both sites you
will
find some translatrions from the Bulgaria media announcing how CIA have
used
the Bulgarian territory and some of the Bulgarian US lackeys for their
dirty tricks.
I ask Ms. Diana Johnstone, Zmag site and D. Johnstone's fans how they
will
classify
- lecturing "Otpor" activists in Sofia by CIA trainees for a week just
before the elections, or
- announced attempt at a parallel counting in Bulgaria the votes of an
election in another STILL sovereign country?
IS IT INTERFERENCE OR NOT?
If there is such interference, could elections be democratic?
"That is the question." That is why I think there is something rotten in
D.
Johnstone's position re the tragic Yugoslavian September and October
2000.
2/ Ms. D. Johnstone thinks a lot about Mr. Kostunica.
He is great. A nationalist. A lover of his country. A justice fighter.
He
has saved Mr. Milosevic and his family from lynching. A valorous person.
A
paradigm of perfection.
I.e., Ms. D. Johnstone is diligently building a myth around Kostunica,
telling fairy-stories and obstinately going round the facts.
And the facts are both simple and sad.
a/ Kostunica is a leader of an obscure insignificant party.
I.e., he would have NEVER been pushed ahead as a presidential candidate
if
that had not been the decision of the newly founded DOS - and those
monitoring it.
Everybody of the reading public knows how DOS has appeared at the
political
scene in Yugoslavia and the Balkans.
Everybody knows that it has happened under the prescription and pressure
of
the USA-CIA and German agents cradling the so-called "opposition" in
Yugoslavia for months, not to say for years on a run.
Everybody from the region at least knows which party and which leader
has
the last say in that coalition of parties.
For Ms. Johnstone and the others who do not know, the answers are:
DJINDJIC'
s party. DJINDJIC.
She herself has given a characteristic of DJINDJIC.
Logical Conclusion:
Kostunica is a Nobody.
He is only a pitiable Puppet On a String.
DJINDJIC's man - i.e., USA-Germany-NATO's man.
He has been intensely used to lure the Yugoslavians into the deadly trap
of
MacDeath AllDark and Company. The Globalisers.
b/ Ms.
[L-I] request for support;for anti-fascist demonstrators in ireland
ANTI-FASCIST ACTION - IRELAND PO Box 3355 Dublin 7, Ireland Web: http://www.geocities.com/irishafa - Friday, 24 November 2000 - - FIGHTING RACISM IS NOT A CRIME... On 28th March 2000 a group of eleven anti-racists occupied the Taoiseach's [Prime Minister's] constituency office, in protest at proposed draconian measures against asylum seekers. The government was planning to introduce prison ships (so-called 'flotels'), forcible fingerprinting and the introduction of police from abroad to catch people fleeing injustice in their own countries. Bertie Ahern had praised the Australian system of dealing with asylum seekers, where people are held in detention centres. Although the protest was entirely peaceful, the eleven were arrested and two women were stripsearched in Fitzgibbon St. Police Station. The eleven have since been charged under the Public Order Act and face the possibility of prison sentences. The use of such laws to clamp down on legitimate political protest in Ireland is a disturbing attack on civil liberties. Previously, trade unionists and other protestors have been threatened with similar sanctions. Occupations have been used by other groups as a form of protest many times in the past. For example, when members of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) occupied the offices of the EU Commission for 10 days in July, the Taoiseach met with the IFA leadership on several occasions during the occupation and gave a 'compensation package' costing £60m. It is clear that the Public Order Act is selectively applied. The accused anti-racists are guilty of no crime. The real crime is the racism of the state. In recent years the government has deported many people who have come to Ireland to escape political and economic persecution. Refugees have faced racist harassment from police and other state officials. Politicians have repeatedly tried to scapegoat refugees for social problems in an attempt to hide their own responsibility for the lack of investment in housing and social services. Racism is the real crime: fighting against it is not a crime. We ask people to support the anti-racists, who are guilty of nothing but standing up to that crime. "I support the eleven anti-racists charged in connection with the occupation of the Taoiseach's constituency office. I call for the charges against them to be dropped." Name: _ Address: Return to: Residents Against Racism, c/o Comhlamh, 10 Upper Camden St., Dublin 2 E-mail messages of support to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Appeal issued by: Anti-Racism Campaign, Anti-Fascist Action, Residents Against Racism, Ogra Shinn Fein * . ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] football hooligans
Neo-Nazi hooligans target black football stars === Special report: race issues in the UK Denis Campbell, Sports News Correspondent Sunday November 26, 2000 The Observer A gang of neo-Nazi football hooligans linked to the killers of Stephen Lawrence is targeting black soccer stars amid a sharp upsurge in racism throughout the game. Police are investigating the English Volunteer Force (EVF), which organises racial harassment at matches involving England and the south London club, Charlton Athletic. The group has attacked rival fans near The Valley, Charlton's ground, and is active on the fringe of racist England fans who cause trouble abroad. Its literature bears a swastika and boasts that they are 'fucking racists'. Charlton is one of several clubs where black players suffered racist abuse last weekend. Fans who made monkey noises at Chelsea's Marcel Desailly are thought to be EVF members. Norwich City fan Peter Bloomfield was fined £250 and banned from domestic football for three years after he hurled racist jibes at Bolton Wanderers' Michael Ricketts when he scored. At the FA Cup tie between Ilkeston Town and Swindon Town, several hundred home supporters subjected visiting black players to similar taunts. In some incidents this season several thousand fans have taken part in racist chanting, systematically bar racked black players and sung xenophobic songs. Campaigners claim such incidents disprove claims - voiced by Emile Heskey, the black Liverpool and England striker, among others - that black players now only suffer abuse abroad. Piara Power, co-ordinator of the Premier League-backed Kick Racism Out of Football campaign, said: 'Racism is a huge problem in parts of Europe... But we shouldn't think that racist abuse and violence within stadiums has been eradicated from the British game. It hasn't.' The police, the stewards and the clubs needed to take tougher action against racist fans, he said. Offensive chanting is now a criminal offence, but stewards and police are often reluctant to act against offenders in case they provoke other fans. Closed-circuit television is rarely used to identify racists. Only 32 people were convicted of racist abuse at English grounds last season. Lord Bassam, the Home Office Minister responsible for football hooliganism, said he was 'disturbed' by the rise in racist incidents this season. He urged police to follow the lead set by Millwall where police and club officials ensure that fans involved in racist chanting are arrested, ejected and prosecuted. Since 1997 the club has banned 29 fans for such behaviour. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000 ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Who Really Brought Down Milosevic?
The US tried the same strategy in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The US will keep trying until it succeeds. The time to be vigilant in China is now. Henry C.K. Liu Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: * New York Times Magazine 26 November 2000 Who Really Brought Down Milosevic? ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Who Really Brought Down Milosevic?
* New York Times Magazine 26 November 2000 [The full story is available at http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001126mag-serbia.html.] Who Really Brought Down Milosevic? By the time of the October revolution [!] the most important battle -- for the hearts and minds of average Serbs -- had already been won by student activists operating in the countryside. By ROGER COHEN ...American assistance to Otpor and the 18 parties that ultimately ousted Milosevic is still a highly sensitive subject. But Paul B. McCarthy, an official with the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, is ready to divulge some details. McCarthy sits in Belgrade's central Moskva Hotel, enjoying the satisfaction of being in a country that had long been off limits to him under Milosevic. When he and his colleagues first heard of Otpor, he says, "the Fascistic look of that flag with the fist scared some of us." But these feelings quickly changed. For those Americans intent on bringing democracy to Serbia, the student movement offered several attractions. Its flat organization would frustrate the regime's attempts to pick a target to hit or compromise; its commitment to enduring arrests and even police violence tended to shame the long-squabbling Serbian opposition parties into uniting; it looked more effective in breaking fear than any other group; it had a clear agenda of ousting Milosevic and making Serbia a "normal" European state; and it had the means to sway parents while getting out the critical vote of young people. "And so," McCarthy says, "from August 1999 the dollars started to flow to Otpor pretty significantly." Of the almost $3 million spent by his group in Serbia since September 1998, he says, "Otpor was certainly the largest recipient." The money went into Otpor accounts outside Serbia. At the same time, McCarthy held a series of meetings with the movement's leaders in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, and in Szeged and Budapest in Hungary. Homen, at 28 one of Otpor's senior members, was one of McCarthy's interlocutors. "We had a lot of financial help from Western nongovernmental organizations," Homen says. "And also some Western governmental organizations." At a June meeting in Berlin, Homen heard Albright say, "We want to see Milosevic out of power, out of Serbia and in The Hague," the site of the international war crimes tribunal. The Otpor leader would also meet with William D. Montgomery, the former American ambassador to Croatia, in the American Embassy in Budapest. (Washington had by then severed diplomatic relations with Belgrade.) "Milosevic was personal for Madeleine Albright, a very high priority," says Montgomery, who was yanked out of Croatia in June to head a group of officials monitoring Serbia. "She wanted him gone, and Otpor was ready to stand up to the regime with a vigor and in a way that others were not. Seldom has so much fire, energy, enthusiasm, money -- everything -- gone into anything as into Serbia in the months before Milosevic went." Just how much money backed this objective is not clear. The United States Agency for International Development says that $25 million was appropriated just this year. Several hundred thousand dollars were given directly to Otpor for "demonstration-support material, like T-shirts and stickers," says Donald L. Pressley, the assistant administrator. Otpor leaders intimate they also received a lot of covert aid -- a subject on which there is no comment in Washington. At the International Republican Institute, another nongovernmental Washington group financed partly by A.I.D., an official named Daniel Calingaert says he met Otpor leaders "7 to 10 times" in Hungary and Montenegro, beginning in October 1999. Some of the $1.8 million the institute spent in Serbia in the last year was "provided direct to Otpor," he says. By this fall, Otpor was no ramshackle students' group; it was a well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States. But other American help was as important as money. Calingaert's organization arranged for a seminar at the luxurious Budapest Hilton from March 31 to April 3. There a retired United States Army colonel, Robert Helvey, instructed more than 20 Otpor leaders in techniques of nonviolent resistance. This session appears to have been significant. It also suggests a link between the American-influenced opposition base in Budapest and the events in Vladicin Han. It was Aca Radic, one of the students tortured in Vladicin Han, who founded the Otpor branch there. His motives were similar to Davorin Popovic's. "I just felt, enough of tolerance," he says. "Enough of patience." So this good-looking young man -- like Davorin, a student of physical education -- made his way up to Belgrade in December 1999. At the Otpor office there, he was closely questioned and then given flyers, leaflets, sprays, posters, Otpor T-shirts and
