Quando si sente parlare di ‘poteri forti’ molti non hanno un’idea chiara di cosa si tratti. Nonostante certe letture, anche io, annegato nel tram tram informativo dei giornali on-line e dei telegiornali delle notizie ‘pernacchie’, per usare una calzante definizione di Tiziano Terzani, perdo spesso il contatto con gli uomini che contano davvero, con i grandi manovratori che, mentre noi prendiamo il bus per andare al lavoro, ingannano la gente con solenni propagande e piegano il corso degli eventi in funzione dei loro interessi.

La seconda parte del resoconto storico di Andrew Gavin Marshall passa in rassegna i casi eclatanti di ‘rivoluzioni colorate’, termine con il quale si indicano rivolte popolari finanziate e sobillate da centri di potere che, ad un primo sguardo, non presentano alcun legame con i motivi alla base dei movimenti di piazza o con il paese nei quali questi hanno luogo. Ma è solo dopo una attenta analisi delle relazioni internazionali intessute dalle istituzioni del paese in rivolta è possibile interpretare gli eventi con la giusta chiave.

Ciò che segue offre una casistica importante di capovolgimenti al potere avvenuti nei primi anni 2000, che aiuta a capire come si cambia il corso della storia. Chi sono gli attori e qual’è il copione.

A chi ha seguito negli ultimi anni l’evolvere della cosiddetta ‘controinformazione’ che, perlopiù in internet, ha ispirato un crescente senso di insofferenza verso le istituzioni, non sarà sfuggito il nome ‘Freedom House’, un istituto di ricerca americano che stila classifiche sulla libertà di stampa nei paesi del mondo. Il mediocre posizionamento del nostro paese in questa classifica è stato per lungo tempo, e lo è ancora, un forte argomento contro il potere mediatico di Berlusconi in Italia. Che quest’ultimo esista è fuori di dubbio, ma la credibilità che riveste questa associazione è quantomeno discutibile, dal momento che, come emerge dal saggio di Marshall che segue, essa rappresenta uno dei principali erogatori di finanziamenti delle rivoluzioni nei paesi centro-asiatici, nonché una delle innumerevoli facce del potere corporativo di Washington.

Questo è molto preoccupante, poichè rafforza il potere e lo status quo rendendo vani e inefficaci gli sforzi per contrastarlo.

Per approfondire la conoscenza di Freedom House, la Casa della Libertà, quella vera, come Beppe Grillo si è più volte affannato a specificare, segnalo un interessante articolo di Paolo Barnard a questo link.

LE RIVOLUZIONI COLORATE E LE ORIGINI DELLA TERZA GUERRA MONDIALE  (Seconda Parte)

di Andrew Gavin Marshall

Introduzione

A seguito della geo-strategia degli Stati Uniti nella zona che Brzezinski ha definito i “Balcani mondiali”, il governo americano ha lavorato a stretto contatto con le principali ONG per ‘promuovere la democrazia’e ‘la libertà’ nelle ex-repubbliche sovietiche, muovendosi dietro le quinte per fomentare le cosiddette ‘rivoluzioni colorate’, con l’unico intento di condurre al potere leader fantocci dall’aspetto amichevole, addestrati a favorire unicamente gli interessi dell’Occidente, sia da un punto di vista strategico che economico.

La seconda parte di questo saggio presenta le rivoluzioni colorate come una strategia chiave nell’imporre la guida statunitense nel Nuovo Ordine Mondiale. La rivoluzione ‘colorata’o ‘dolce’ è una pratica politica segreta della NATO e degli Stati Uniti finalizzata ad espandere la loro influenza fino ai confini della Russia e persino della Cina, seguendo uno degli obiettivi primari della politica estera americana del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale: contenere Cina e Russia e impedire il sorgere di potenze in grado di sfidare gli USA.

Le ‘rivoluzioni colorate’ sono dipinte dai media occidentali come democratiche insurrezioni popolari nelle quali la gente chiede di avere un peso maggiore all’interno di vecchi sistemi politici governati da leader dispotici.

Ma la realtà è ben lontana da ciò che questa utopica immagine suggerisce. Le ONG e i media occidentali sono soliti erogare cospicui finanziamenti e organizzare gruppi di opposizione e movimenti di protesta nel corso degli scrutinii elettorali, con lo scopo di creare la percezione che siano in corso dei brogli aizzando così le masse popolari contro le autorità perchè cedano il potere ai ‘loro’ candidati. Per questo motivo avviene spesso che il ‘loro’ candidato sia sempre il preferito dall’Occidente e dagli USA, e che la sua campagna elettorale sia sempre finanziata da Washington e le proposte politiche ed economiche sempre in linea con le dottrine neoliberali degli USA. Alla fine è il popolo a perdere, con le sue legittime speranze di cambiamento e democrazia rese vane dall’influenza che gli USA esercitano sui loro leader politici.

Le rivoluzioni dolci hanno anche l’effetto di instaurare protettorati americani lungo i confini di Cina e Russia, laddove risiedono molti degli ex paesi del Patto di Varsavia alla ricerca di strette collaborazioni politiche, economiche e militari. Questo aggrava quindi la tensione tra l’Occidente e l’asse Cina-Russia, il che, in ultima analisi, porta il mondo più vicino ad un potenziale conflitto tra i due blocchi.

Serbia

La Serbia conobbe la sua ‘rivoluzione colorata’ nell’ottobre del 2000 quando ci fu il rovesciamento del leader serbo Slobodan Milosevic. Come riportato dal Washington Post nel dicembre del 2000, a partire dal 1999 gli Stati Uniti intrapresero un’importante ’strategia elettorale’ per cacciare Milosevic. “Consulenti pagati dagli Stati Uniti hanno svolto un ruolo importante dietro ogni attività anti-Milosevic, dal controllo dei sondaggi alla formazione di migliaia di attivisti dell’opposizione, fino all’organizzazione di un conteggio di voti parallelo che si rivelò cruciale. Gli studenti attivisti vuotarono 5000 barattoli di vernice spray sui muri delle città con graffiti contro Milosevic e attaccarono 2,5 milioni di adesivi con lo slogan ‘Sei Finito’, che poi divenne lo slogan della rivoluzione. E tutto a spese dei contribuenti americani”. Inoltre, secondo quanto scritto da Michael Dobbs sul Washington Post, alcuni tra i “20 leader dell’opposizione serba furono invitati nell’ottobre del 1999 ad un seminario tenutosi al Marriott Hotel a Budapest patrocinato dal National Democratic Institute (NDI) con sede a Washington”.

È interessante notare che “alcuni americani coinvolti nelle azioni anti-Milosevic rivelarono di essere a conoscenza del coinvolgimento della CIA nelle operazioni elettorali, ma non riuscivano a capire cosa volessero ottenere. Qualunque cosa fosse, comunque, conclusero che non avrebbero sortito alcun effetto. Il ruolo principale fu svolto dal Dipartimento di Stato americano e dalla Agenzia per lo Sviluppo Internazionale (USAID), ovvero l’agenzia del governo per l’assistenza straniera, due istituzioni che canalizzarono i finanziamenti attraverso i fornitori commerciali e associazioni no-profit, come l’NDI (National Democratic Institute), che rappresenta il partito democratico americano, e l’IRI (International Republican Institute), la sua controparte repubblicana. La NDI “ha lavorato a stretto contatto con i partiti di opposizione serba, l’IRI ha concentrato invece la sua attenzione su Otpor, che fungeva da spina dorsale ideologica e organizzativa della rivoluzione. Nel mese di marzo l’IRI pagò due dozzine di capi di Otpor perchè partecipassero ad un seminario sulla resistenza non violenta presso l’Hotel Hilton a Budapest”. Nel corso del seminario, “gli studenti serbi hanno ricevuto istruzioni su come organizzare uno sciopero, comunicare con i simboli , superare la paura e minare l’autorità di un regime dittatoriale”. [1]

Stando a quanto riportato dal New York Times, Otpor, il principale gruppo di opposizione studentesca, ricevette un flusso costante di denaro proveniente dal National Endowment for Democracy (NED), un’organizzazione finanziata dal Congresso per la ‘promozione della democrazia’. L’Agenzia americana per lo Sviluppo Internazionale (USAID) offrì denaro a Otpor, così come fece l’International Republican Institute, un’altra organizzazione non governativa di Washington finanziata in parte dall’USAID”. [2]

Georgia

La Georgia conobbe la sua ‘Rivoluzione Rosa’ nel 2003, con la caduta del presidente Eduard Shevardnadze e l’insediamento di Mikhail Saakashvili dopo le elezioni del 2004. In un articolo del novembre 2003 su The Globe and Mail, è stato segnalato che una fondazione con sede negli Stati Uniti “ha favorito la caduta di Shevardnadze” attingendo ai fondi della sua organizzazione no-profit con l’intente di “inviare un’attivista 31enne di Tbilisi di nome Giga Bokeria in Serbia e incontrare i membri del movimento studentesco Otpor (Resistenza) per apprendere come questi hanno provocato la caduta del dittatore Slobodan Milosevic servendosi di manifestazioni di piazza”. Nel corso dell’estate seguente, “la fondazione pagò il viaggio di ritorno agli attivisti di Otpor dopo che questi avevano tenuto corsi di tre giorni a più di 1.000 studenti in materia di simulazione di una rivoluzione pacifica”.

Questa fondazione con sede americana “ha anche finanziato una popolare stazione televisiva di opposizione che è stata fondamentale nel mobilitare le masse nella cosiddetta ‘rivoluzione di velluto’, e si riporta che ha offerto sostegno finanziario ad un gruppo di giovani che hanno trascinato la protesta in strada”. Il proprietario della fondazione “è in stretti rapporti di amicizia con l’avversario principale di Shevardnadze, Mikhail Saakashvili, un avvocato formatosi a New York che ci si aspetta vinca le elezioni presidenziali in programma per il prossimo 4 gennaio”.

Nel corso di una conferenza stampa, una settimana prima delle sue dimissioni, Shevardnadze affermò che la fondazione degli Stati Uniti “è schierata contro il Presidente della Georgia”. Inoltre, “Giga Bokeria, che tra le fila del Liberty Institute ricevette denaro sia dalla fondazione americana che dall’Istituto per l’Eurasia, sostiene che altre tre organizzazioni hanno svolto un ruolo chiave nella caduta di Shevardnadze: il Partito del Movimento Nazionale di Saakashvili, l’emittente televisiva Rustavi-2 e Kmara! (Basta! in georgiano), un gruppo di ragazzi che ha dichiarato guerra a Shevardnadze in aprile dando inizio ad una campagna denigratoria con manifesti e graffiti sui muri che denunciavano la corruzione nel governo”. [3]

Il giorno successivo alla pubblicazione dell’articolo precedentemente citato, l’autore ha pubblicato un altro articolo su The Globe and Mail, spiegando che la ‘rivoluzione senza spargimento di sangue’ in Georgia “odori maggiormente come un’altra vittoria degli Stati Uniti sulla Russia nella grande scenario internazionale del periodo post-Guerra Fredda”. L’autore, Mark MacKinnon, ha spiegato che dietro la caduta di Eduard Shevardnadze si trova “il petrolio sotto il Mar Caspio, una delle poche grandi risorse di petrolio al mondo relativamente ancora non sfruttate”, e quindi la “Georgia e la vicina Azerbaigian, che si affaccia sul Mar Caspio, presto cominceranno ad essere considerati non solo come paesi di recente indipendenza, ma come parte di un ‘corridoio energetico’ “. Sono stati infatti già definiti dei piani che porteranno alla costruzione di un imponente “oleodotto che attraverserà la Georgia verso la Turchia e il Mediterraneo”.

A questo proposito, vale la pena citare ancora MacKinnon:

“Quando questi piani furono definiti, Shevardnadze era visto favorevolmente sia dagli investitori occidentali e che dal governo degli Stati Uniti. La sua reputazione di uomo che ha contribuito a porre fine alla Guerra Fredda diede agli investitori un senso di fiducia nel paese, e la sua intenzione dichiarata di spostare la Georgia fuori dall’orbita della Russia e verso le istituzioni occidentali come la NATO e la UE non fece altro che aumentare il suo credito presso il Dipartimento di Stato USA.

Gli Stati Uniti si mossero velocemente per offrire sostegno alla Georgia aprendo una base militare nel paese (2001) con lo scopo di formare le milizie georgiane ‘anti-terrorismo’. Questa base divenne il primo insediamento militare americano in una ex repubblica sovietica.

Ad un certo punto, però, Shevardnadze invertì la rotta e decise di abbracciare ancora una volta la Russia. Questa estate, infatti, la Georgia ha firmato un accordo segreto per una fornitura di gas per 25 anni con il colosso energetico russo Gazprom, che diventa così suo unico fornitore. Inoltre, ha di fatto venduto la rete elettrica del paese ad un’altra azienda russa tagliando fuori AES, una società che l’amministrazione USA aveva appoggiato per vincere l’appalto. Shevardnadze attaccò i manager di AES definendoli ‘bugiardi e imbroglioni’. Entrambe le trattative hanno dunque drammaticamente avuto l’effetto di incrementare l’influenza russa a Tbilisi”.

A seguito delle elezioni in Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, formatosi negli States e spalleggiato dal governo americano, salì alla presidenza e “vinse la giornata”. [4] Ci troviamo di fronte ad un altro esempio di come la geopolitica del petrolio e la politica estera degli Stati Uniti siano intimamente connesse. La tattica della ‘rivoluzione colorata’ è di vitale importanza nell’ottica degli interessi USA-NATO nella regione: ottenere il controllo sulle riserve di gas dell’Asia centrale ed evitare che la Russia espanda la propria zona d’influenza. Tutto questo deriva direttamente dalla strategia imperiale messa in atto dall’asse USA-NATO per l’instaurazione del nuovo ordine mondiale a seguito del crollo dell’Unione Sovietica. (Questa strategia è stata descritta in dettaglio nella prima parte del presente saggio).

Ucraina

La sua ‘rivoluzione colorata’ l’Ucraina la vide nel 2004 con la ‘Rivoluzione Arancione’, in cui il leader d’opposizione filo-occidentale Viktor Yushchenko divenne presidente sconfiggendo Viktor Yanukovych. Come il Guardian rivelò nel 2004, dopo le elezioni contestate (come accade in ogni ‘rivoluzione colorata’), “i guerrieri della democrazia del movimento giovanile ‘Ukrainian Pora’ hanno già conquistato una importante vittoria – qualunque sia il risultato di questa pericolosa situazione a Kiev”, tuttavia, “tutto questo è opera degli Stati Uniti: un esercizio sofisticato e brillantemente ideato dai geni del marketing globale dell’Occidente, e che è stato utilizzato per nascondere elezioni truccate e rovesciare regimi non graditi in ben quattro paesi in quattro anni”.

L’autore, Ian Traynor, ha spiegato che, “la strategia adottata in Ucraina, finanziata e organizzata dal governo degli Stati Uniti mettendo a disposizione consulenti, sondaggisti, diplomatici, entrambi i grandi partiti americani e le ONG, era già stata utilizzata in Europa a Belgrado nel 2000 per far cadere il regime di Slobodan Milosevic”. Inoltre, “l’NDI del Partito Democratico, l’IRI del Partito Repubblicano, il Dipartimento di Stato degli Stati Uniti e l’USAID sono le principali organizzazioni coinvolte in queste iniziative a favore dei cittadini, così come la ONG Freedom House, oltre agli stessi finanzieri miliardari già coinvolti nella ‘Rivoluzione Rosa’ in Georgia. Nell’attuazione delle strategie di rovesciamento dei regimi, “le opposizioni spesso riottose devono compattarsi dietro un unico candidato, se si vuole avere possibilità di scalzare il regime. Quel leader viene scelto sulla base di criteri di opportunità e di obiettivo, anche se lui o lei è anti-americano”.

“Freedom House e l’NDI del Partito Democratico”, prosegue Traynor, “hanno finanziato e organizzato ‘la più grande operazione di monitoraggio elettorale’ in Ucraina, coinvolgendo più di 1.000 osservatori appositamente istruiti. Essi hanno inoltre eseguito gli exit poll. Nel corso della serata di domenica, quei sondaggi davano Yushchenko in vantaggio di 11 punti prevendendo di fatto quello che sarebbe successo di lì a poco”.

Gli exit poll sono fondamentali dal momento che, comparendo inevitabilmente per primi e ricevendo ampia copertura mediatica, rivestono un ruolo importante nella lotta propagandistica contro il regime e costringono le autorità a dare subito delle spiegazioni.

La fase finale della strategia americana delle ‘rivoluzioni colorate’ prende in considerazione le contromosse da usare quando il leader sconfitto non accetta l’esito delle elezioni  [...] A Belgrado, Tbilisi, e adesso Kiev, dove le autorità hanno inizialmente cercato di restare aggrappati al potere, il consiglio era di rimanere freddi ma determinati e di organizzare manifestazioni popolari di disobbedienza civile, che doveva rimanere comunque pacifica nonostante il rischio di provocare la violenta repressione da parte del regime. [5]

Come descritto in un articolo apparso sul Guardian a firma di Jonathan Steele, il leader dell’opposizione Viktor Yushchenko, che contestò i risultati delle elezioni, “era primo ministro nel governo del presidente uscente Leonid Kuchma e alcuni dei suoi sostenitori sono anche legati ai gruppi industriali senza scrupoli che hanno gestito a loro vantaggio la privatizzazione dell’Ucraina post-sovietica”. Egli ha inoltre spiegato che i brogli elettorali sono fondamentalmente irrilevanti, infatti “la decisione di protestare sembra dettata principalmente da ragioni di realpolitik o dalla natura più o meno ‘filoccidentali’ e a favore degli interessi economici dello sfidante. In altre parole, coloro i quali sosterranno un programma economico neoliberista avranno il sostegno dell’asse USA-NATO, dal momento che il neoliberismo rappresenta il dogma economico internazionale alla base delle loro mire nella regione.

Citando ancora l’articolo di Steel, “in Ucraina, Yushchenko ricevette l’avallo dell’Occidente, oltre ai fiumi di denaro versato dai gruppi che lo sostengono, che vanno dalla organizzazione giovanile, Pora, a vari siti web di opposizione. In pratica, gli Stati Uniti e le altre ambasciate occidentali pagarono per avere quegli exit poll”. Questo chiarisce bene le idee circa l’importanza strategica dell’Ucraina per gli Stati Uniti, ‘che rifiuta di abbandonare la sua politica di guerra fredda per il contenimento della Russia cercando di attirare dalla sua parte tutte le repubbliche ex-sovietiche”. [6]

Un commentatore del Guardian descrive così l’ipocrisia dei media occidentali: “Due milioni di manifestanti anti-guerra che invadono le strade di Londra vengono politicamente ignorati, mentre poche decine di migliaia di persone nel centro di Kiev diventano ‘il popolo’ e la polizia ucraina, i tribunali e le istituzioni governative gli strumenti di oppressione”. Inoltre si rivela che, “enormi manifestazioni sono state organizzate a Kiev a sostegno del primo ministro, Viktor Yanukovich, ma in tv questo non è mai stato mostrato: se si parla dei sostenitori di Yanukovich è solo per ridicolizzarli, ad esempio per essere giunti in autobus. Le manifestazioni a favore di Viktor Yushchenko hanno invece luci laser, schermi al plasma, sofisticati sistemi audio, concerti rock, tende da campo ed enormi quantità di indumenti arancioni; ma nonostante questo continuiamo ad illuderci che si tratta di semplici manifestazioni spontanee.[7]

Nel 2004, la Associated Press riportò che, “l’amministrazione Bush negli ultimi due anni ha speso più di 65 milioni dollari in aiuti alle organizzazioni politiche in Ucraina, denaro che è servito a portare il leader dell’opposizione Viktor Yushchenko ad incontrare i leader degli Stati Uniti e organizzare exit poll che indicassero Yushchenko come vincitore delle elezioni”. Il denaro, affermano, “è stato incanalato attraverso organizzazioni come la Fondazione Eurasia o attraverso gruppi allineati con i Repubblicani e i Democratici del Congresso, i quali hanno organizzato le sessioni di training per gli elettori insieme alle associazioni per i diritti umani e le testate di informazione indipendente”. Tuttavia , anche i funzionari dil governo “riconoscono che parte del denaro è servito ad aiutare i gruppi e i singoli individui che si opponevano al candidato di governo spalleggiato dalla Russia”. 

Il rapporto afferma che alcune grandi fondazioni internazionali finanziarono gli exit poll, che secondo il presidente in carica furono ‘asimmetrici’. Tra queste fondazioni ci sono “la NDI (National Endowment for Democracy), che riceve i soldi direttamente dal Congresso, la Fondazione Eurasia, finanziata dal Dipartimento di Stato, e la Fondazione Rinascimento”, che riceve denaro dagli stessi facoltosi finanzieri, oltre che dal Dipartimento di Stato americano. Il coinvolgimento del Dipartimento di Stato americano dimostra che questi finanziamenti rientrano nei piani di politica estera degli Stati Uniti. “Altri paesi offrirono la loro collaborazione in queste operazioni. Tra questi troviamo Gran Bretagna, Paesi Bassi, Svizzera, Canada, Norvegia, Svezia e Danimarca”. In alcuni gruppi di finanziamento e attività in Ucraina furono coinvolti anche l’International Republican Institute e il National Democratic Institute, quest’ultimo presieduto in quel momento dall’ex Segretario di Stato degli Stati Uniti Madeline Albright. [8]

Nel 2004, Mark Almond scrisse per il Guardian dell’avvento del ‘Potere del Popolo’, descrivendolo in funzione di ciò che stava accadendo in Ucraina. In particolare Almond scrisse che “i disordini in Ucraina sono presentati dai media come una lotta tra il popolo e le vecchie strutture di potere sovietiche. Il ruolo delle organizzazioni dell’Europa occidentale risalenti al periodo della Guerra Fredda è invece tabù. Se provi ad interessarti dei finanziamenti piovuti sulla sensazionale messa in scena di Kiev, le grida di rabbia che sentirai ti dimostreranno che hai toccato un punto nevralgico del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale”.

Continua Almond: “Attraverso tutti gli anni ‘80, nella organizzazione delle rivoluzioni di velluto fino al 1989, un piccolo esercito di volontari – e, per dirla con franchezza, spie – ha collaborato alla promozione di quello che divenne il Potere del Popolo. Una galassia di fondazioni interconnesse tra loro e associazioni di beneficenza che spuntavano come funghi per trasferire milioni di dollari ai dissidenti. Il denaro proveniva prevalentemente dai paesi NATO e da finti alleati come la ‘neutrale’ Svezia. [...] La sbornia del Potere del Popolo è una terapia d’urto. Ogni aggregazione civile viene descritta dalle testate giornalistiche ‘indipendenti’ occidentali come una rappresentazione della prosperità della regione euro-atlantica, purché la gente scenda in strada a manifestare. Nessuno si sofferma sulla disoccupazione di massa, il crescente abuso di informazioni riservate, l’aumento della criminalità organizzata, la prostituzione e l’impennata dei tassi di mortalità tra la popolazione degli stati dove vige il Potere del Popolo.

Usando una certa eleganza, Almond spiega: “Il Potere del Popolo si rivela essere più favorevole ad una società chiusa che aperta. Si chiudono le fabbriche, ma, peggio ancora, le menti. I suoi sostenitori richiedono libero mercato su tutto, ma non sulle opinioni. L’ideologia corrente tra i pensatori del New World Order, molti dei quali sono ex comunisti, è il Leninismo di Mercato – cioè la combinazione tra un modello dogmatico economico e metodi machiavellici di afferrare le leve del potere”. [9]

Come riportato da Mark MacKinnon su The Globe and Mail, anche il Canada sostenne il gruppo di giovani attivisti ucraini denominato Pora, finanziando il movimento per ‘il potere democratico del popolo’. MacKinnon osserva che: “L’amministrazione Bush era particolarmente ansiosa di vedere un presidente filo-occidentale con l’obiettivo di assicurarsi il controllo su un importante oleodotto che va da Odessa, sul Mar Nero, a Brody, sul confine polacco”. Tuttavia, “il presidente uscente, Leonid Kuchma, aveva da poco invertito il flusso in modo che l’oleodotto trasportasse il greggio russo verso sud, invece di aiutare i produttori degli Stati Uniti nella regione del Mar Caspio trasportando i loro prodotti verso l’Europa”. Dall’analisi di MacKinnon emerge che i primi finanziamenti occidentali provennero dal Canada, anche se successivamente furono di gran lunga superati dagli stanziamenti statunitensi.

Andrew Robinson, ambasciatore del Canada in Ucraina in quel periodo, cioè nel 2004, “organizzava incontri mensili segreti con gli ambasciatori occidentali, dirigendo quello che lui chiamò ‘il coordinamento dei donatori’, costituito dai 28 paesi interessati a vedere Yushchenko presidente dell’Ucraina. Ma, alla fine, Robinson agì come semplice portavoce del gruppo diventando uno dei principali critici del governo Kuchma”. Il Canada inoltre, “finanziò dei discussi exit poll, realizzati il giorno stesso delle elezioni dal Razumkov Centre dell’Ucraina e altri gruppi, che mettevano in dubbio i risultati ufficiali mostrando la vittoria di Yanukovich”. Non appena il nuovo governo filo-occidentale si insediò, “fu annunciata l’intenzione di invertire il flusso dell’oleodotto Odessa-Brody”. [10]

Analogamente a quanto accaduto in Georgia, questo dimostra ancora una volta quali sono i reali interessi che gli USA e i paesi della NATO proteggono attraverso le cosiddette ‘rivoluzioni colorate’: contenere l’espansione russa aumentando la propria influenza sulla regione, nonché imporre il controllo da parte degli Stati Uniti e della NATO sulle maggiori risorse e i corridoi di trasporto della regione.

Daniel Wolf scrisse sul Guardian che: “Per la maggior parte delle persone che si sono radunate nella piazza dell’Indipendenza di Kiev, la manifestazione era sentita come spontanea. Essi avevano tutte le ragioni per impedire al candidato Viktor Yanukovich di arrivare al potere e non fecero altro che cogliere l’occasione che è stato offerta loro. Ma attraversando a piedi gli accampamenti nel dicembre scorso, era difficile non notare la precisione con cui erano state preparate le cucine, le tende per i dimostranti e i concerti, la professionalità delle cronache televisive e la capillare diffusione dei loghi arancioni che si potevano ammirare ovunque”. Wolf sostiene che, “gli eventi di piazza furono il risultato di un’attenta e segreta pianificazione resa possibile da una cerchia ristretta di uomini di Yushchenko nel corso di anni. La vera storia della rivoluzione arancione è molto più interessante della favola comunemente accettata“.

Roman Bessmertny, responsabile della campagna elettorale di Yushchenko, due anni prima delle elezioni del 2004, “organizzò corsi di formazione, seminari, lezioni pratiche condotte da esperti di legge e comunicazione per circa 150 mila persone”.

La “Rivoluzione del Tulipano” in Kirghizistan

Nel 2005, il Kirghizistan ebbe la sua “Rivoluzione del Tulipano”, in cui il presidente in carica venne sostituito dal candidato filo-occidentale attraverso un’altra ‘rivoluzione popolare’. Come riportava il New York Times nel marzo del 2005, poco prima della elezioni, “un giornale di opposizione ha pubblicato alcune foto che ritraevano un palazzo residenziale destinato al presidente della nazione Askar Akayev, in quel momento fortemente impopolare, suscitando una profonda indignazione e una rivolta popolare”. Tuttavia, va segnalato che “questo giornale ha ricevuto notevoli sovvenzioni dal governo degli Stati Uniti ed era stampato da una tipografia finanziata dal governo americano e gestita da Freedom House, un’organizzazione statunitense che si presenta come ‘una voce chiara in favore della democrazia e della libertà in tutto il mondo”.

Gli altri paesi che hanno “contribuito a sottoscrivere programmi per lo sviluppo della democrazia e della società civile” in Kirghizistan sono stati la Gran Bretagna, i Paesi Bassi e la Norvegia. Questi paesi “hanno svolto un ruolo fondamentale nel preparare il terreno per l’insurrezione popolare che ha portato al potere i politici dell’opposizione”. La maggior parte del denaro proveniva dagli Stati Uniti, in particolare attraverso il National Endowment for Democracy (NED), nonché “la Freedom House o le traduzioni per il Kirghizistan di Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, un’emittente filo-democratica”. Il National Democratic Institute ha anche svolto un ruolo di primo piano nell’erogazione di finanziamenti, per i quali uno dei principali beneficiari disse, “sarebbe stato assolutamente impossibile avere successo senza aiuti esterni”.

Il Times riporta ancora che: “Il denaro americano contribuisce a finanziare in tutto il paese i centri della società civile, in cui gli attivisti e i cittadini possono incontrarsi, ricevere una formazione, leggere giornali indipendenti e persino guardare la CNN o navigare in Internet. La sola  NDI (National Democratic Institute) gestisce 20 centri che offrono flash giornalistici in russo, kirghizo e uzbeko. Gli Stati Uniti sponsorizzano l’American University in Kirghizistan, la cui missione dichiarata è, in parte, promuovere lo sviluppo della società civile, e finanzia programmi di scambio culturale attraverso i quali studenti e leader di organizzazioni governative vengono mandati negli Stati Uniti. Il nuovo ministro del Kirghizistan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, è stato uno di loro. Tutto questo denaro e le risorse umane impiegate hanno favorito la crescita delle forze di opposizione in Kirghizistan offrendo loro sostegno morale nel corso degli ultimi anni, oltre ad aver messo a disposizione le infrastrutture necessarie a comunicare le proprie idee al popolo kirghizo”.
Per coloro “che non conoscevano il russo o non avevano la possibilità di leggere il giornale potevano ascoltare una sintesi dei principali articoli pubblicati in lingua kirghiza su Radio Azattyk, un’emittente locale che fa capo al franchise di Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, broadcast finanziato dal governo USA”. Ma anche altri media cosiddetti ‘indipendenti’ sono stati sostenuti finanziariamenti per gentile concessione del Dipartimento di Stato USA. [12] Come il Wall Street Journal rivelò prima delle elezioni, i gruppi di opposizione, le ONG e i media ‘indipendenti’ del Kirghizistan ricevevano ingenti contributi finanziari americani da Freedom House, oltre che dalla Agenzia americana per lo Sviluppo Internazionale (USAID). Il Journal riportò che, “per evitare di provocare la Russia e violare le norme diplomatiche, gli Stati Uniti non possono sostenere direttamente i partiti d’opposizione. Possono però organizzare una influente rete di ONG schierate a favore della libertà di stampa, lo stato di diritto e elezioni pulite, quasi sempre in contrasto con gli interessi consolidati dei vecchi regimi autocratici”.

Riprendendo ancora le parole del Wall Street Journal, il Kirghizistan “occupa una posizione strategica. Sia gli Stati Uniti che la Russia hanno infatti basi militari nella regione. I cinque milioni di cittadini, in gran parte mussulmani, che popolano il paese, si trovano costretti in una zona molto calda compresa tra il Kazakistan, ricco di petrolio e governato da un regime che tollera poco il dissenso politico, il dittatoriale Uzbekistan, che ha posto un freno agli aiuti esteri e il povero Tagikistan”.

Una delle principali ONG di opposizione è la Coalizione per la Democrazia e i Diritti Civili, che riceve denaro “dall’Istituto Nazionale Democratico per gli Affari Esteri, una fondazione no-profit con sede a Washington finanziata dal governo degli Stati Uniti, e dall’USAID”. Altre fondazioni che risultano coinvolte, sia attraverso il finanziamento che la promozione tecnico-ideologica (vedi: propaganda), sono il National Endowment for Democracy (NED), l’Albert Einstein Institute, Freedom House, e il Dipartimento di Stato USA [13].

Il Presidente del Kirghizistan Askar Akayev aveva infatti parlato di una ‘terza forza’ che stava conquistando il potere nel suo paese. Il termine è stato preso in prestito da uno dei più importanti think tank statunitensi, per il quale la ‘terza forza’ è definita come “… quella forza che fa in modo che le organizzazioni non governative sostenute dall’Occidente (ONG) favoriscano i regimi e cambino la politica in tutto il mondo. La ripetizione regolare di una terza rivoluzione del ‘potere del popolo’ nell’ex Unione Sovietica in poco più di un anno – dopo gli eventi analoghi avvenuti in Georgia nel novembre 2003 e in Ucraina nel Natale scorso – significa che oggi la zona ex sovietica somiglia all’America Centrale negli anni ‘70 e ‘80, quando una serie di colpi di stato guidati dagli Stati Uniti consolidarono il controllo americano  sull’emisfero occidentale”.

Come il Guardian infatti riporta: “Molti operatori di governo americani degli Stati Uniti, che avevano lavorato in America Latina, hanno effettuato scambi commerciali nell’Europa orientale durante l’amministrazione di George Bush. In particolare Michael Kozak, ex ambasciatore americano in Bielorussia, che su queste pagine nel 2001 si vantava di star facendo in Bielorussia quello che già aveva fatto in Nicaragua: ’sostenere la democrazia’ “.

Ancora dal Guardian: “Il caso di Freedom House è particolarmente clamoroso. Presieduta dall’ex direttore della CIA James Woolsey, Freedom House è stata uno degli sponsor principali della rivoluzione arancione in Ucraina. Nel novembre 2003 aprì a Bishkek una tipografia che stampava 60 riviste di opposizione. Anche se viene dipinta come stampa ‘indipendente’, l’ente che la possiede è presieduto dal bellicoso senatore repubblicano John McCain, mentre l’ex consigliere alla Sicurezza nazionale Anthony Lake fa parte del consiglio di amministrazione. Gli Stati Uniti sostengono inoltre le radio e le TV di opposizione locali”. [14]

E così che, ancora una volta, la stessa formula è stata riproposta nelle repubbliche centro-asiatiche dell’ex Unione Sovietica. Questa politica estera americana di promozione delle ‘rivoluzioni dolci’ è gestita da un network di ONG statunitensi e internazionali, nonché think tanks (letteralmente ’serbatoi di pensiero’). Essa persegue in quella regione gli interessi della NATO, ma soprattutto degli Stati Uniti.

Conclusione

Le rivoluzioni dolci o ‘rivoluzioni colorate’ rappresentano una strategia chiave del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale, che mette in atto, attraverso manipolazioni e inganni, l’obiettivo cruciale di contenere la potenza russa e mantenere il controllo delle risorse chiave. Questa strategia è fondamentale per comprendere la natura imperialistica del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale, soprattutto quando si tratta di riconoscere quando essa viene utilizzata, come ad esempio nelle ultime elezioni iraniane del 2009. La prima parte di questo saggio illustrava la strategia imperiale messa in atto dall’asse USA-NATO per costruire un Nuovo Ordine Mondiale, in seguito allo smembramento dell’Unione Sovietica nel 1991. Si è detto che l’obiettivo primario era circondare la Russia e la Cina per prevenire il sorgere di una nuova superpotenza. In tutto questo il compito degli Stati Uniti era quello di agire come potenza egemone imperiale con lo scopo di servire gli interessi finanziari internazionali nell’imporre il Nuovo Ordine Mondiale. La seconda parte del saggio si è invece occupata della pratica imperiale americana delle ‘rivoluzioni colorate’, organizzate per promuovere gli interessi degli USA nell’Asia centrale e orientale, seguendo le linee politiche generali, già discusse nella prima parte, di prevenire che la Russia e la Cina espandano la loro zona di influenza e accedere alle principali risorse naturali.

La terza e ultima parte di questo saggio si occuperà della natura della strategia imperiale di costruire un Nuovo Ordine Mondiale, focalizzando l’attenzione sui conflitti crescenti in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, America Latina, Europa Orientale e Africa, e le possibilità che questi conflitti possano porre le basi per una nuova guerra mondiale contro la Cina e la Russia. In particolare, essa analizzerà quanto accaduto negli ultimi anni, ponendo l’accento sulla natura crescente dei conflitti in corso e il rischio che si verifichi una ‘Nuova Guerra Mondiale per un Nuovo Ordine Mondiale’.

Riferimenti

[1] Michael Dobbs, U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition. The Washington Post: December 11, 2000: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18395-2000Dec3?language=printer

[2] Roger Cohen, Who Really Brought Down Milosevic? The New York Times: November 26, 2000: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/magazine/who-really-brought-down-milosevic.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

[3] Mark MacKinnon, Georgia revolt carried mark of Soros. The Globe and Mail: November 23, 2003: http://www.markmackinnon.ca/dispatches_georgia3.html

[4] Mark MacKinnon, Politics, pipelines converge in Georgia. The Globe and Mail: November 24, 2003: http://www.markmackinnon.ca/dispatches_georgia2.html

[5] Ian Traynor, US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev. The Guardian: November 26, 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa

[6] Jonathan Steele, Ukraine’s postmodern coup d’etat. The Guardian: November 26, 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.comment

[7] John Laughland, The revolution televised. The Guardian: November 27, 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/nov/27/pressandpublishing.comment

[8] Matt Kelley, U.S. money has helped opposition in Ukraine. Associated Press: December 11, 2004: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041211/news_1n11usaid.html

[9] Mark Almond, The price of People Power. The Guardian: December 7, 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/dec/07/ukraine.comment

[10] Mark MacKinnon, Agent orange: Our secret role in Ukraine. The Globe and Mail: April 14, 2007: http://www.markmackinnon.ca/dispatches_ukraine4.html

[11] Daniel Wolf, A 21st century revolt. The Guardian: May 13, 2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/13/ukraine.features11

[12] Craig S. Smith, U.S. Helped to Prepare the Way for Kyrgyzstan’s Uprising. The New York Times: March 30, 2005: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E4D9123FF933A05750C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

[13] Philip Shishkin, In Putin’s Backyard, Democracy Stirs — With U.S. Help. The Wall Street Journal: February 25, 2005: http://www.iri.org/newsarchive/2005/2005-02-25-News-WSJ.asp

[14] John Laughland, The mythology of people power. The Guardian: April 1, 2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/01/usa.russia

Andrew Gavin Marshall è un Ricercatore Associato del Centro di Ricerca sulla Globalizzazione (CRG). Attualmente si occupa dello studio di Politica Economica e Storia presso la Simon Fraser University.

L’articolo originale potete trovarlo qui:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15767

The Balkans are only a step away from normalisation, but it may be a step too far for Western policy-makers.

Normalisation for the Balkans would mean the region’s definite establishment as a set of functioning, democratic nation-states on the model of Western Europe; undivided by serious conflicts or live territorial disputes. The region’s national questions would be resolved, to the point that they would be as unlikely to spill over into large-scale bloodshed as the national questions of Belgium, Scotland or Catalonia. The Balkan states would all be integrated into the EU, and ideally NATO as well.

This is not an ambitious ideal, yet it is far from being realised. Regional progress is still being derailed by a series of conflicts of varying severity between the Balkan states. The Slovenian-Croatian border dispute for a while threatened to derail the entire region’s EU integration, though this appears to have been averted. Greek-Turkish rivalry over Cyprus, the Aegean Sea and other areas remains latent, something for which the anti-Turkish rhetoric on the part of candidates in the recent Greek parliamentary elections has served as a reminder. Both Turkey and Greece are problematic: the first is, under the leadership of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)  in the process of developing a new regional role for itself, one that appears to be taking it closer to authoritarian and radical states like Russia, Iran and Syria; the second is pursuing a damaging regional policy, involving hostility to the fragile states of Macedonia and Kosovo. With its campaign against Macedonia, in particular, Greece is threatening the stability of a neighbouring state where relations between the majority Macedonians and minority Albanians are already dangerously unstable.

Meanwhile, the policies of Serbia and Serb nationalism remain the single greatest source of Balkan instability. Serbia is still failing to arrest war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, thereby obstructing its own EU integration. But more dangerously, it is pursuing a d0g-in-the-manger policy vis-a-vis Kosovo, preventing the newly independent state from consolidating itself and integrating itself properly into the international community. The Serbia-Kosovo dispute poisons regional relations; Belgrade recently rebuked Skopje for the latter’s agreement with Pristina to resolve the Macedonia-Kosovo border dispute.

The most intractable regional problem of all, however, remains Bosnia-Hercegovina. The state is saddled with the unworkable constitutional order imposed upon it by the Dayton Accords of 1995, ensuring that the state cannot function and must remain in a state of permanent political crisis. Bosnia’s recent exclusion, along with Albania, from the EU’s grant of visa liberalisation to the western Balkans, that was applied to Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, has further entrenched divisions in the country and the wider region. Milorad Dodik, prime minister of Bosnia’s Serb entity, the Republika Srpska, is openly pursuing Bosnia’s full dismemberment; the aggressive and provocative nature of his policy was recently highlighted by the warm welcome he extended to the convicted war-criminal Biljana Plavsic, following her early release from prison in Sweden.

These home-grown Balkan problems are being exacerbated by the policies of outside powers. The revanchist, neo-Soviet regime in Russia is aggressively backing Serbia over Kosovo, preventing the dispute from being resolved. By doing so, Moscow is not merely undermining Kosovo, but is undermining also Serbia’s own complete transition into a post-nationalist liberal democratic state. Moscow aims to keep the Balkans divided to prevent their full integration into the Euro-Atlantic framework. Hence, Dodik was looking to Moscow when he unilaterally withdrew Bosnian Serb soldiers from participation in NATO exercises in Georgia.

The second major external source of Balkan instability is the weak and vacillating policy of the EU, dominated as the latter is by the Franco-German axis. Germany is pursuing a pro-Russian policy that is making the new East Central European members of NATO and the EU very uncomfortable, while France continues to seek a dissident role in the Western alliance vis-a-vis the Anglo-Saxon powers. Hence, the EU’s muted reaction to the Georgian war; the crushing of Washington’s Georgian ally was not allowed to get in the way of growing EU-Russian collaboration. The Georgian war was facilitated by the Franco-German blocking of the grant of NATO Membership Action Plans to Georgia, along with Ukraine, in the spring of 2008. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, pursuing his Gaullist policy of Mediterranean union, sees fit also to support Greece against Macedonia.

Such an attitude on the part of the EU also involves toleration of Serbian trouble-making vis-a-vis Kosovo and Bosnia. The Netherlands is essentially isolated in its continued insistence that Serbia’s progress on EU accession be linked to its arrest of war criminals. The EU, for its part, would like to see the Office of the High Representative (OHR) for Bosnia closed. Yet the OHR has been the principal integrating force in Bosnia since 1995. Take away the OHR, and Bosnia moves another step toward full partition.

The EU’s resolve over the Balkans is further weakened by the activities of dissident members. No unified EU policy exists over Kosovo on account of the refusal of five EU members to recognise the new state – all for nationalistic reasons. Romania and Slovakia perceive a ’separatist’ parallel between the Kosovo Albanians and their own maltreated Hungarian minorities. Likewise, Spain is obsessed with ’separatist’ parallels of its own vis-a-vis Catalonia and the Basque Country. Greece and Cyprus are traditional allies of Serbia; Cyprus also equates Kosovo with Turkish-occupied Cyprus. None of these states’ reasons for opposing Kosovo’s independence are very noble, yet the EU has no means of compelling them to keep ranks with the majority; the EU therefore pursues the policy of the lowest common denominator.

Although the EU has been as an instrument for bringing nations together, its recent policies in the Balkans are having the opposite effect. The veto that EU members enjoy in relation to membership bids by aspiring members places a weapon in the hands of trouble-makers lucky enough to already be in the club. The Slovenian-Croatian border dispute was exacerbated by Ljubljana’s use of its veto against Croatia. Although Ljubljana threatened to use its veto to keep Croatia out of NATO as well, Washington quickly put a stop to this mischief. Unfortunately, the EU states are much less ready than the US to put pressure on their partners to cease misbehaviour, and though Ljubljana did eventually lift its veto, this was not before it had won concessions over the border dispute at Zagreb’s expense.

Still more destructive has been the EU’s exacerbation of the Greek-Macedonian dispute. Despite the thoroughly pre-democratic and chauvinistic nature of Greece’s campaign against Macedonia, EU members have been wholly unwilling to put pressure on Athens to change it. So, rather than the whole club forcing a badly behaved member to behave better, the policy of the trouble-maker is imposed on the whole. The bad apple poisons the whole basket; the tail wags the dog.

The structural factors underlying the EU’s damaging policies vis-a-vis the Balkans are likely to become worse in the years to come. The accession of new members will give more states vetoes to use against aspiring members. After joining the EU, Croatia may use its veto against Serbia. If Macedonia does back down to Athens, Albania might be encouraged to use its veto to keep Macedonia out of NATO, to extract concessions regarding the Albanian minority in Macedonia. For while both Croatia and Albania have pursued responsible regional policies over the past ten years, the EU is sending out to them the wrong signals: that bad behaviour brings dividends.

Meanwhile, the EU’s growing energy dependency on Russia is likely further to dampen the EU’s resolve to resist the mischief of Moscow and Belgrade in the Balkans. Russian plans to build the ‘North Stream’ gas pipeline direct to Germany, bypassing the former-Communist states of East Central Europe, will allow it to exert leverage over its neighbours without simultaneously punishing its German ally.

As the EU moves increasingly to accommodate a dangerous and hostile power, so it is alienating an important power that has long assisted Balkan stability. Paris and Berlin have made it very clear they do not wish to allow Turkey to join the EU. This has had the predictable result that Turkey is losing is faith in the possibility of a European future, and is turning increasingly toward Russia, Iran, Syria and other radical and anti-Western states.  Turkey has made huge strides this decade in improving its human rights record, as required by its bid for EU membership. For the same reason, it has facilitated a resolution of the Cyprus dispute through its support for the 2004 Annan Plan. As the prize of EU membership moves further from its grasp, Ankara may backslide over both human rights and Cyprus as well. There are worrying signs that the pace of democratisation in Turkey is indeed slowing -such as the record fine recently imposed on Dogan Yayin Holding AS – Turkey’s largest media group and critical of the AKP government.

A hardening of Turkey’s stance on Cyprus could lead to the collapse of the Greek-Turkish rapprochement, further damaging the prospects for the Balkans’ normalisation. For all its human rights abuses, Turkey has been playing a constructive role in the region, as the ally of the weak and vulnerable states of Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. We do not know what the full consequences would be if Turkey fully abandons its European moorings and goes off in a new direction.  But at the very least, an authoritarian Turkey headed by an Islamic-populist regime on the border of the Balkans will not have a positive effect on the region.

Unfortunately, alongside Russia and the EU, there is a third external factor whose contribution to Balkan stability currently raises concerns: the Obama Administration in the US. The latter’s abandonment of the Bush Administration’s plans to base a missile-defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic, in order to appease Moscow in the hope of obtaining Russian support vis-a-vis Iran, is a worrying indication of US passivity vis-a-vis Europe and Russia. The capitulation amounts to a betrayal of the security of allies in order to appease a hostile power, with echoes of Cold-War-style sphere-of-influence politics. While it is too soon to press the panic button over Obama’s policy toward Eastern and South Eastern Europe, we should be very concerned if Obama goes any further down this path.

For all these internal and external problems facing the Balkans, the success stories and models for future success are close at hand. Romania and Bulgaria are far from model democracies, and have serious problems with corruption and organised crime. Yet neither has engaged in military aggression or seriously attempted territorial expansionism since joining the free world in 1989; both are members of the EU and NATO. Turkey and Greece, following their heavy military defeats in World War I and the Greco-Turkish War respectively, pursued an enlightened policy of rapprochement vis-a-vis one another, eschewing territorial expansionism. This rapprochement was only derailed by the outbreak of the Cyprus conflict from the 1950s, and later resumed: Greece today is a vocal champion of Turkey’s EU membership. Croatia, too, following its unsuccessful expansionist adventure in Bosnia in the first half of the 1990s has, since the death of Franjo Tudjman in 1999, abandoned expansionism to pursue a responsible regional policy and EU membership.

The key to turning aggressive, expansionist Balkan states into responsible members of the European family, therefore, is for the international community to shut off all avenues for their expansionism and keep them firmly confined within their own borders. With all due qualifications, this is the way it has been for Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Croatia. Where these states have been less than responsible – as, for example, in the case of Turkey vis-a-vis Cyprus or Greece vis-a-vis Macedonia – this has occurred when there have been insufficient limits placed on their ability to coerce neighbours.

The biggest source of instability in the Balkans remains the fact that, thanks to the weakness and vacillation of Western and above all EU policy, Serbia has not been firmly confined within its borders, despite its defeat in the wars of the 1990s. Instead, Belgrade continues to destabilise the neighbouring states of Kosovo and Bosnia. Its ability to do so means that Serbia – unlike Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Greece and to an extent Turkey – is unable to develop a post-expansionist state identity; one that does not revolve around territorial aspirations towards neighbouring states. This is bad above all for Serbia itself – the reason why it is still a long way from EU membership, despite being before the 1990s more prosperous, developed and liberal than either Romania or Bulgaria.

The problem is not, however, ultimately with Serbia itself. In parliamentary elections following Kosovo’s independence last year, the Serbian electorate handed victory to the pro-European rather than the hardline nationalist parties, revealing what little stomach it has for renewed confrontation over Kosovo. Belgrade has also played its trump card with its case against Kosovo’s independence before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and there is every reason to believe that the Court will not rule in its favour, even leaving aside the strength of Kosovo’s case. The ICJ’s judges come from different countries and their verdict will likely represent some form of compromise rather than award outright victory to one side or the other. Anything less than a full victory for Belgrade will effectively be a defeat, ambiguity leaving the door open for more states to recognise Kosovo’s independence while plausibly claiming to do so legally. In other words, both in terms of its range of available strategies and in terms of the popular support it enjoys, Serbian expansionism vis-a-vis Kosovo is a broken reed. With the Kosovo Albanians enjoying a comfortable majority in their country, their ultimate ability to consolidate their state is assured.

The principal problem for the region is the Bosnian question, and the policy of the Western alliance toward it. Unlike for all the other Balkan regional problems, for Bosnia, stability will not come through persuading or coercing the states involved to accept reality or to reach a compromise. For Bosnia, it is the very legal status quo and ‘compromise’, born at Dayton in 1995, that is generating instability for the state and the region. The Dayton order provides a framework that is gradually enabling the Bosnian Serb separatists, currently headed by Dodik, to establish the Bosnian Serb entity as a de facto independent state while preparing the ground for formal secession. The Bosniaks will, however, go to war to prevent this happening. It is a moot point what the outcome of such a military confrontation would be, but it is not something to which we should look forward.

Bosnia remains, therefore, the weak foundation-stone of Balkan stability. Only the transformation of Bosnia into a functioning state, through the transfer of most state powers from the entities to the central government, will guarantee against the outbreak of a new Bosnian war, and provide a final and definite check to Serbia’s expansionism, forcing that state wholly onto the post-expansionist path and removing the principal obstacle to the region’s progress.

Unfortunately, with Western and particular EU policy being what it is at present, such a decisive step seems unlikely. The problems facing the Balkans are neither huge nor insurmountable, yet Western passivity and vacillation seem set to allow these small problems to turn into larger ones. The Balkans look set for a rocky road ahead.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society. A longer version was given as a presentation to the Sussex European Institute on 3 November, entitled ‘How far are the Balkans from normalisation ?’

Open letter to Amnesty International from Ed Vulliamy, 30 October 2009

To whom it may concern:

I have been contacted by a number of people regarding Amnesty International’s invitation to Professor Noam Chomsky to lecture in Northern Ireland.

The communications I have received regard Prof. Chomsky’s role in revisionism in the story of the concentration camps in northwestern Bosnia in 1992, which it was my accursed honour to discover.

As everyone interested knows, a campaign was mounted to try and de-bunk the story of these murderous camps as a fake – ergo, to deny and/or justify them – the dichotomy between these position still puzzles me.

The horror of what happened at Omarska and Trnopolje has been borne out by painful history, innumerable trials at the Hague, and – most importantly by far – searing testimony from the survivors and the bereaved. These were places of extermination, torture, killing, rape and, literally “concentration” prior to enforced deportation, of people purely on grounds of ethnicity.

Prof. Chomsky was not among those (“Novo” of Germany and “Living Marxism” in the UK) who first proposed the idea that these camps were a fake. He was not among those who tried unsuccessfully (they were beaten back in the High Court in London, by a libel case taken by ITN) to put up grotesque arguments about fences around the camps, which were rather like Fred Leuchter’s questioning whether the thermal capacity of bricks was enough to contain the heat needed to burn Jews at Auschwitz.  But Professor Chomsky said many things, from his ivory tower at MIT, to spur them on and give them the credibility and energy they required to spread their poisonous perversion and denials of these sufferings. Chomsky comes with academic pretensions, doing it all from a distance, and giving the revisionists his blessing. And the revisionists have revelled in his endorsement.

In an interview with the Guardian, Professor Chomsky paid me the kind compliment of calling me a good journalist, but added that on this occasion (the camps) I had “got it wrong”. Got what wrong?!?! Got wrong what we saw that day, August 5th 1992 (I didn’t see him there)? Got wrong the hundreds of thousands of families left bereaved, deported and scattered asunder? Got wrong the hundreds of testimonies I have gathered on murderous brutality? Got wrong the thousands whom I meet when I return to the commemorations? If I am making all this up, what are all the human remains found in mass graves around the camps and so painstakingly re-assembled by the International Commission for Missing Persons?

These people pretend neutrality over Bosnia, but are actually apologists for the  Milosevic/Karadzic/Mladic plan, only too pathetic to admit it.  And the one thing they never consider from their armchairs is the ghastly, searing, devastating impact of their game on the survivors and the bereaved. The pain they cause is immeasurable. This, along with the historical record, is my main concern.  It is one thing to survive the camps, to lose one’s family and friends – quite another to be told by a bunch of academics with a didactic agenda in support of the pogrom that those camps never existed. The LM/Novo/Chomsky argument that the story of the camps was somehow fake has been used in countless (unsuccessful) attempts to defend mass murderers in The Hague.

For decades I have lived under the impression that Amnesty International was opposed to everything these people stand for, and existed to defend exactly the kind of people who lost their lives, family and friends in the camps and at Srebrenica three years later, a massacre on which Chomsky has also cast doubt. I have clearly been deluded about Amnesty. For Amnesty International, of all people, to honour this man is to tear up whatever credibility they have estimably and admirably won over the decades, and to reduce all they say hitherto to didactic nonsense.

Why Amnesty wants to identify with and endorse this revisionist obscenity, I do not know. It is baffling and grotesque. By inviting Chomsky to give this lecture, Amnesty condemns itself to ridicule at best, hurtful malice at worst – Amnesty joins the revisionists in spitting on the graves of the dead.  Which was not what the organisation was, as I understand, set up for.  I have received a letter from an Amnesty official in Northern Ireland which reads rather like a letter from Tony Blair’s office after it has been caught out cosying up to British Aerospace or lying over the war in Iraq – it is a piece of corporate gobbledygook, distancing Amnesty from Chomsky’s views on Bosnia, or mealy-mouthedly conceding that they are disagreed with.

There is no concern at all with the victims, which is, I suppose, what one would expect from a bureaucrat. In any event, the letter goes nowhere towards addressing the revisionism, dispelling what will no doubt be a fawning, self-satisfied introduction in Belfast and rapturous applause for

the man who gives such comfort to Messrs Karadzic and Mladic, and their death squads.  How far would Amnesty go in inviting and honouring speakers whose views it does not necessarily share, in the miserable logic of this AI official in Belfast?  A lecture by David Irving on Joseph Goebbels?

Alistair Campbell on how Saddam really did have those WMD? The Chilean Secret Police or Colonel Oliver North on the communist threat in Latin America during the 70s and 80s?  What about Karadzic himself on the “Jihadi” threat in Bosnia, and the succulence of 14-year-old girls kept in rape camps?

I think I am still a member of AI – if so, I resign. If not, thank God for that. And to think: I recently came close to taking a full time job as media director for AI. That was a close shave – what would I be writing now, in the press release: “Come and hear the great Professor Chomsky inform you all that the stories about the camps in Bosnia were a lie – that I was hallucinating that day, that the skeletons of the dead so meticulously re-assembled by the International Commission for Missing Persons are all plastic? That the dear friends I have in Bosnia, the USA, the UK and elsewhere who struggle to put back together lives that were broken by Omarska and Trnopolje are making it all up?

Some press release that would have been. Along with the owner of the site of the Omarska camp, the mighty Mittal Steel Corporation, Amnesty International would have crushed it pretty quick.  How fitting that Chomsky and Mittal Steel find common cause. Yet how logical, and to me, obvious.  After all, during the Bosnian war, it was the British Foreign Office, the CIA, the UN and great powers who, like the revisionists Chomsky champions, most eagerly opposed any attempt to stop the genocide that lasted, as it was encouraged by them and their allies in high politics to last, for three bloody years from 1992 until the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.

Yours, in disgust and despair,

Ed Vulliamy,
The Observer

Open letter to Amnesty International from the Society for Threatened Peoples International (STPI), 30 October 2009

You are a genocide denier, Professor Chomsky !

Dear Professor Chomsky,

Dear Friends of Amnesty International,

Once again you find yourself invited to appear in a public forum, this time in Belfast. In the past, Belfast was a city with a long-standing reputation for discrimination against the Catholic population, but today those of us who are familiar with the city’s past history of conflict, crime and disorder are pleased and relieved that the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland have finally emerged from a long dark tunnel.

The focus of our human rights organisation’s work is the support that we give to minority groups who have been the victims of genocide and dispossession. The two guiding principles inspiring us are that firstly we work with the people “Von denen keiner spricht” – the people no-one talks about, and secondly we are “Auf keinem Auge blind” – never turning a blind eye.  We believe that “persecution, extermination and expulsion, the establishment of concentration camps and rape camps are always and everywhere crimes, now just as they were in the past.  Irrespective of which government is responsible and on which continent and in which country those crimes are being perpetrated. The legacy bequeathed to us by all the victims of yesterday is an obligation to come to the assistance of the victims of today”.

You, Professor Chomsky, choose to ignore those precepts.  You call genocide genocide when it suits your ideological purposes.  Who could condone the murkier aspects of American foreign policy or fail to condemn the way that policy has supported and encouraged crimes against humanity? But you express your criticism of the crimes of the recent past in a perverse way, that makes genocide the almost exclusive prerogative of organisations with close links to the US. It is only then that you consider it to be genocide.  And it is only your political/ideological friends who are apparently incapable of committing genocide.

That was the situation in Cambodia.  While the international press was reporting how the genocide of the Khmer Rouge had eliminated one in every three or four of that country‘s inhabitants, you were laying the blame for those crimes at the door of the US.  That was shameful and in any reasonable person stirred memories of Holocaust denial elsewhere in the world.

In the same way you have denied the genocide perpetrated in Bosnia-Herzegovina by Serb forces who killed not only Bosnian Muslims but along with them Bosnian Serbs and Croats as well who had chosen to remain alongside them, in the besieged city of Sarajevo for example.

To deny the fact of genocide in Bosnia is absurd, particularly when both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague, have had no hesitation in confirming that that genocide was perpetrated in Bosnia, above all at Srebrenica.

For the benefit of the apparently unpolitical and ideologically uncommitted Friends of Amnesty International we are prepared once again to provide a summary of the facts of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. And we should like to remind you of them, too, Professor Chomsky, in your denial of genocide:

1. 200,000 civilians interned in over one hundred concentration, detention and rape camps.

2. Many thousands of internees murdered in concentration camps including Omarska, Manjača, Keraterm, Trnopolje, Luka Brčko, Sušica and Foča.

3. Members of the non-Serb political and intellectual elites systematically arrested and eliminated.

4. Approximately 2.2 million Bosnians displaced, exiled and scattered to the four corners of the globe.

5. Many thousands of unrecorded deaths still missing from the official statistics, including children, the elderly and sick and wounded refugees.

6. 500,000 Bosnians in five UN so-called “safe areas” (Tuzla, Goražde, Srebrenica, Žepa, and Bihać) and other, fallen, enclaves such as Cerska besieged, starved, sniped at, shelled and many of them killed over a period of as long as four years in some cases.

7. A four year-long artillery bombardment of the sixth UN safe area, the city of Sarajevo, killing approximately 11,000, including 1500 children.

8. Massacres and mass executions in many towns and municipalities in northern, western and eastern Bosnia (the Posavina, the Prijedor area and the Podrinje).

9. Hundreds of villages and urban areas systematically destroyed.

10. The entire heritage of Islamic religious and cultural monuments, including 1189 mosques and madrassas, destroyed, and extensive destruction of Catholic religious monuments including as many as 500 churches and religious houses.

11. Remains of approximately 15,000 missing victims still to be found, exhumed and identified.

12. 284 UN soldiers taken hostage and used as human shields.

13. Over 20 thousand Bosnian Muslim women raped, in rape camps and elsewhere.

14. 8376 men and boys from the town of Srebrenica murdered and their bodies concealed in mass graves.

The history of Kosovo is familiar to people who know Southeastern Europe: After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Kosovo was annexed to the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes (1918). Following the original occupation and then again in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s Yugoslavian and Serbian governments expelled the Albanians to Turkey where well over one million people of Albanian origin live today. After the gradual dismantling of Kosovo’s autonomy, proclaimed too late by Tito, Slobodan Milosevic’s army and militia killed some 10,000 Albanians and forced half the population – roughly one million people – to flee.  The NATO military intervention, some specific aspects of which must certainly be condemned, halted the killing and expulsions. 

Someone like yourself, Professor Chomsky, who on various occasions has shown himself unwilling to acknowledge genocide and goes so far as to deny it forfeits all credibility.  That is why we question your moral integrity and call on you to stand up before the public in Belfast and apologise for those hurtful comments of yours concerning the Cambodian, Bosnian and Kosovar victims of genocide.

Yours sincerely,

Tilman Zülch

President of the Society for Threatened Peoples International (STPI)

Ex-Bosnian Serb Leader, Facing War-Crimes Charges, Appears to Steal a Page From Milosevic’s Courtroom Playbook

BRUSSELS — The trial of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on war-crimes charges begins Monday, and lawyers say his courtroom strategy is already emerging. Like the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic

Den gångna veckan frigavs krigsförbrytaren Biljana Plavsic av den svenska regeringen efter att hon avtjänat 2/3 av sitt straff på 11 år, vilket blev lite över 7 år. Utrikesministern Carl Bildt blev KU-anmäld av Thomas Bodström för lögnaktig förklaring avfrigivningsprocessen när Bildt sa att det inte var regeringens utan krigstribunalens beslut att frige henne. Folkrättjuristen Mark Klamberg höll med Thomas Bodström och menade att dömda för allvarliga brott mot mänskligheten, som Plavsic var, kunde prövas individuellt och av regeringen.

Idag kommer nyheter om att en annan av de ledande figurerna i etniska rensningen, kanske den allra störste efter Slobodan Milosevic som dog i sin cell innan rättegång 2006, Radovan Karadzic, har sagt sig vara missnöjd med tiden av rättegången och känner sig inte förberedd och tänker därför bojkotta rättegången imorgon. Karadzic hade tidigare sagt att han vidhöll Carl Bildts, som var tidigare fredsförhandlare i Bosnien, stöd och att Bildt hade skrivit avtal om åtalsimmunitet mot honom. Carl Bildt svarar med en förnekelse och säger att han inte känner till något sådant avtal.

En av de som drabbades av försöket till etnisk rensning, Nail Ramic, berättar själv om vad som pågick med honom och hans familj och att han blivit misshandlat ständigt av sina närmaste grannar i Visegrad, en stad som idag till 95% består av serber. Historien är hjärtslitande och ändå är det en av hundratusentals personer som fått genomlida det hemska.

Frågan är nu hur det blir om Karadzic vägrar att närvara vid rättegången som har sagts komma att äga rum ändå. Det kommer att uppstå ett dödläge och ytterligare förhalande av processen. Han hade lyckats med sitt identitetsbyte under så många år för  att påträffas under sommaren 2008 i Belgrad. Jag hoppas han får sin dom och sitt straff såsom han förtjänar men först gäller det att få honom närvara eller ha ombud där.

Nonviolence can be a major force for democratic social change, but not when it becomes a tool for covert intervention.

A close-cropped, no-nonsense infantry officer, Col. Robert Helvey was studying at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs on an Army fellowship. One day in 1987, he happened upon a seminar led by Gene Sharp, a draft resister imprisoned for refusing to serve in Korea and a systematic scholar of the kind of strategic non-violence that activists of my generation had helped to develop in the free speech, civil rights, and anti-war movements of the 1960s.

“I had an image of nonviolence as being a bunch of long-haired hippies,” Col. Helvey recalled. But Dr. Sharp had come a long way from his Gandhism roots, and Helvey quickly realized that the older man’s approach had “nothing to do with pacifism.” Sharp was talking “about seizing political power or denying it to others,” and doing it without having to break things or kill people.

The idea fascinated Col. Helvey. He invited Sharp to lunch, spent time at the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), which Sharp had created in Cambridge in 1983, and came to see his new mentor as “the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement.” An energetic disciple, Col. Helvey would in time become president of AEI and a forceful champion of nonviolent conflict as a weapon of American intervention in other countries.

Were these interventions good or bad? In my opinion, they had elements of both, at least at the start. But they have become a major danger to democracy, not least our own, and an increasing threat to the lives of those that the United States and its allies encourage to make nonviolent revolutions.
The art of political defiance

Col. Helvey’s first intervention was in Burma, where he had served as military attaché, reporting to the Defense Intelligence Agency. In December 1987, while still a serving officer, he invited two Burmese expatriates to spend several days talking with Gene Sharp about how best to overthrow their country’s brutal military rulers. According to Helvey, the activists went back and explained Sharp’s thinking to other of the regime’s opponents.

Retiring in 1991 from thirty years of active duty, Col. Helvey took up a new career, traveling to the Burmese jungle village of Mannerplaw to run the first of a long series of intensive training sessions in nonviolence for the Democratic Alliance of Burma. Gene Sharp helped design the courses, which Helvey renamed political defiance. With armed struggle, he taught, you attack the generals where they are strongest. With political defiance, you look to hit them where they are weak.

”He used his military skills in strategic planning for nonviolent protest methods,” one of Helvey’s trainees later told Reuters. “Everybody was fascinated by Bob, because he was a military man and was applying that to non-violence.”

Training the Burmese opposition was a small-scale operation, and Washington paid for it largely through its National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, which the Reagan administration had created in 1983 to take over the funding of foreign interventions formerly handled by the Central Intelligence Agency. Washington’s interest in Burma was obvious, given its proximity to China and its enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.

Bringing down a dictator

In March 2000, Col. Helvey scored his biggest coup, running a 4-day training session at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest for more than 20 militants from a Serbian student group called “Otpor!“. Helvey’s purpose was to teach the militants how to undermine the authority of Slobodan Milošević, “the Butcher of the Balkans.”

“His presentation was something that I had never seen in my life, and I have seen maybe 200 trainings and maybe performed 200 or 300,” recalled one of Otpor’s founders, Srdja Popovic. “I am really experienced. But he is a miracle!” Returning to Serbia, Helvey’s students became the backbone and creative masterminds of a multi-million dollar nonviolent revolution financed and stage-managed by Washington, its European allies, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

The overthrow of Milošević in the former Yugoslavia led Washington and its allies to finance and organize similar efforts all around the periphery of the former Soviet Union. These included the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and 2005, and the Pink or Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. In these interventions, Otpor veterans taught what they had learned to militants in the other countries, while hundreds of thousands of ordinary people risked beatings, jail, torture, and even death. But, once the nonviolent protestors brought new governments to power, Washington and the Western Europeans used their influence to extend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization eastward, push for economic privatization and strengthen Western sway over the oil, natural gas, and pipelines from the Caspian Sea, Caucuses, and Central Asia.

Less publicly, Washington and its allies made Optor a permanent part of their arsenal, as described by Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (STRATFOR), a private intelligence newsletter available by subscription. “Otpor strengthened its connections with Western governments and nongovernmental organizations, which provided the group with funding and limited amounts of intelligence about potential weaknesses in regimes they were already targeting,” STRATFOR explained.

“The tactics used in the crucible in Belgrade were ‘marketed’ in documentaries and training manuals. Otpor became more than ‘just’ a student group and transformed itself into the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). Among the group’s strongest allies are Freedom House and the Albert Einstein Institute and, through them, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Department of State.”

CANVAS itself has been anything but transparent about its funding and intelligence ties to Western governments. But the group proudly put the STRATFOR analysis on its website, while Freedom House confirmed in its annual report for 2001 that it received funding from NED, USAID, and the State Department and, in turn, continued to fund the Otpor students. In 2005, the U.S. Institute of Peace provided a grant to CANVAS to publish Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points by Srdja Popovic and two other Otpor veterans. All of which put the lie to the group’s oft-repeated claim that “CANVAS does not accept any governmental funding.”

When a military coup fails

In April 2003, Reuters reporter Pascal Fletcher went to a university campus in east Caracas. On a closed classroom door, he found a sign that read, “Seminar on strategic marketing.” Inside he found “representatives of Venezuela’s broad-based but fragmented opposition, who are struggling to regroup after failing to force Hugo Chávez from office in an anti-government strike.” According to Reuters, they were meeting with Col. Robert Helvey, “a consultant with the private US Albert Einstein Institution.” Another AEI staff member, Chris Miller, also participated.

Opponents of Chávez had previously met with Gene Sharp in Cambridge after the failure of the U.S.-backed military coup against Chávez in 2002. These contacts continued after Col. Helvey’s visit to Caracas and included a privately funded workshop in March 2005 in Boston, in which two Otpor veterans took part. The Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade then trained five student leaders from Venezuela in October 2005, and another four in October 2007. CANVAS also set up an office in Venezuela in latter part of 2007.

“Another color revolution may be forming — in Latin America,” wrote the sympathetic STRATFOR. “When you see students at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training is over and the real work has begun.”

Signs of this “Marigold Revolution” became visible in May 2007, after Chávez refused to renew the broadcasting license for the privately owned Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), which had openly backed the military coup in 2002. The newly created Venezuelan Student Resistance took to the streets in their thousands, proclaiming their nonviolence and dedication to free speech. The student resistors then staged dozens of marches throughout the country to oppose Chávez in a constitutional referendum in which he tried to remove term limits so that he could run for president as many times as he wanted.

Mostly middle-class and leaning to the right, but including some on the left who found Chávez autocratic, the protestors openly acknowledged their debt to Otpor and the thinking of Gene Sharp. They painted their hands white to show their innocent intentions. They put flowers into the rifle barrels of the security forces. And, they staged street theater to mock Chávez and the constitutional rewrite he was promoting. The students made a significant impact on the December 2007 referendum, which Chávez lost 51% to 49%, one of his only electoral defeats.

Chávez put much of the blame on Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Foundation for attempting to overthrow him with “a soft coup.” In a personal reply to Chávez, Sharp offered his usual disavowal. “Our work,” he insisted, “has not been backed by powerful political or economic interests in the United States or internationally.”

Washington and its nonviolent allies are already preparing similar, if smaller, interventions against populist governments in Ecuador and Bolivia and will likely use the same tactics against post-Castro Cuba.

Iran’s Green Revolution

Nowhere has Washington’s encouragement of nonviolent revolution caused greater grief than in Iran. While President Obama publicly appeared above the fray, his State Department used its Persian language radio services and its considerable influence with Twitter and Facebook to back the election campaign of the tainted reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi and to spur on the popular protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the hard-line ayatollahs that back him. I have previously written at length about the intervention itself. Here I want to consider what it means, especially to those of us who support the aspirations of so many Iranians for a freer and more democratic country.

Many friends hated that I raised the issue of American intervention. Few denied the facts I presented. They simply preferred to turn a blind eye. All they wanted to consider were inconclusive arguments that Mousavi had won the election, which many reputable scholars still dispute, and the need to stand in solidarity with the protestors, with which I agree. But, unless we explicitly acknowledge and condemn the American intervention, our solidarity will end up pouring more money into the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA, and the State Department’s propaganda radios. Do we really want to do that?

Other friends have argued that most of the money for training Iranians in nonviolent protest came not from Washington but from private sources, primarily Wall Street financier Peter Ackerman and his International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. This could be true, though the funding of much of the training remains secret. But what difference? Once Washington unleashed its propaganda radio and Internet resources, it made little difference who trained the non-violent protestors.

Finally, and most important to me, the undeniable evidence of Western intervention, both private and governmental, has made it far too easy for Ahmadinejad to crack down on the Iranian protestors. We should clearly condemn the crackdown and attempt to defend the activists. But our greatest show of solidarity would be to stop Washington’s continuing intervention.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France. For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, including those about Iran's "Green Revolution," go here.]

Proglas razočaranog demonstranta

Preuzeto: Miloševicu opraštam ti sve

Postoji hiljadu razloga zbog kojih me razocarala vlast koja je dosla posle petog oktobra.

Desete mojih razocarenja:

1. Demokratska vlast nije demokratska, Srbija je i dalje partijska drzava, a politicku elitu ne cine najpametniji predstavnici drustva vec najlojalniji clanovi partija

2. Danas je u Srbiji 1.500.000 nezaposlenih a 500.000 gladnih

3. Gotovo svaka privatizacija je bila dirigovana od strane mocnih ljudi koji su trange frange metodama uvecavali svoju kriminalno stecenu imovinu. Za to niko nije odgovarao, ti mocnici su danas VIP clanovi drustva, neki od njih umesto diplome kupuju fakultet

4. Vise nema podele na vlast i opoziciju, svi su vlast kad zatreba i kad se isplati dogovoreni kes, Cedi ne smeta Dacic u Beogradu, demokratama ne smetaju radikali u Kosovskoj Mitrovici

5. Nekad je bio Seseljev zakon o informisanju danas ce se novine zatvarati zbog Dinkiceve potrebe da zatvori Kurir

6. Koaliciju na vlasti cine oni koji su krali izbore sa onima koji su demonstrirali protiv kradje a za izbornu kradju jos uvek niko nije odgovarao, Mile Ilic je postao predsednik opstine Nis

7. Dok se broj narkomana visestruko uvecava, sudije u Srbiji dilerima droge izricu uslovne kazne u 80% slucajeva

8. Obecavali su 500.000 novih radnih mesta, 1000 evra po akciji, a u Srbiji danima nezaposleni i gladni protestvuju ulicama Beograda

9. Za Krista, Sonju i ostale ima milion dinara za honorare a za Filharmoniju nema za redovne plate

10. Nekad su zabranjivali Otpor, danas otporasi zabranjuju Obraz. Toliko o slobodi posle petog oktobra

Razocarani Demonstrant, buduci apstinent na izborima i potencijalni glasac iz Inata

In his memoirs of the Bosnian war, Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden – which took over the EU presidency on 1 July – has this to say about the Srebrenica massacre:

‘In five days of massacres, Mladic had arranged for the methodical execution of more than three thousand men who had stayed behind and become prisoners of war. And probably more than four thousand people had lost their lives in a week of brutal ambushes and fighting in the forests, by the roadside and in the valleys between Srebrenica and the Tuzla district, as the column was trying to reach safety.’ (Carl Bildt, Peace Journey: The struggle for peace in Bosnia, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1998, p. 66 – all subsequent page references are to Bildt’s book).

The Srebrenica massacre, an act of genocide against the civilian population of Srebrenica that claimed the lives of approximately eight thousand victims, including at least five hundred children under the age of eighteen, has therefore been reduced by Bildt to ‘more than three thousand’, all of them ‘prisoners of war’, while four thousand of the victims are portrayed as battlefield deaths. This would be equivalent to claiming that only two and a quarter million Jewish ‘prisoners of war’ had perished in the Holocaust, while the rest of the six million had been killed in battle.

This was not a casual slip on Bildt’s part. At the time of the Srebrenica massacre, Bildt was the EU’s special envoy to the former Yugoslavia. His massive downplaying of the Serb genocide reflects the EU policy of the time, which was to collaborate with Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia and with Radovan Karadzic’s Bosnian Serb extremists, and to appease their expansionism. Unlike the US, the EU states staunchly supported the international arms embargo against Bosnia, which prevented the country from defending itself from Serb aggression.

In his memoirs, Bildt’s chapter on July 1995, the month when the Srebrenica massacre occurred, is entitled ‘Success and failure: July 1995′. He believes that when describing his record as EU peace mediator in Bosnia for the period of the Srebrenica massacre, the word ’success’ should appropriately be put before the word ‘failure’. Some might feel that using the word ’success’ in relation to EU policy that presided over a genocidal massacre of eight thousand people was just a wee bit inappropriate. But not Bildt, who seems quite proud of his record.

Following the Serb conquest of Srebrenica, Bildt records how he attempted in London on 21 July 1995 to dissuade the Western states from intervening militarily to defend a second Bosnian enclave that was being threatened with a similar fate:

‘[British foreign secretary Malcolm] Rifkind was a little taken aback when I started his day by saying that Gorazde was scarcely threatened, and even if this was the case, I did not believe it could be defended by air strikes. We had to focus on getting the political process going. If we left London with a bombing strategy but without a political strategy, we would almost certainly be faced with even more acts of war and suffering. But sooner or later, we would be forced to return to the political track in any case. Bombing strategies were all very well, but we should not bomb our political opportunities to smithereens.’ (p. 67).

When Serb forces based in Serb-occupied Croatia (so-called ‘Krajina’) attacked the Bihac enclave in north-western Bosnia that same month, threatening to overrun it and enact another massacre on the model of Srebrenica, Croatia – which had signed a military agreement with Bosnia on the 22nd for the defence of Bihac – responded in August with a full-scale military offensive (‘Operation Storm’) against the Krajina area. According to his memoirs, Bildt made no effort whatsoever to deter the Serb attack on Bihac – which he barely acknowledges even occurred – but instead attempted to halt the Croatian counter-offensive. As Bildt records,

‘My public statement was clear: The Croatian offensive against areas inhabited by Serbs must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. This attack is occurring after negotiations have commenced, and when the Serbs are clearly willing to make substantial concessions on both economic and political matters. This will cast a long shadow over Croatia for many years to come. The shelling of the civilian population which is now being reported is particularly serious. It should be recalled that Martic, the ‘president of Krajina’, was charged with war crimes after the Serb rocket attack on Zagreb in May. It is difficult to see any difference between this and the bombardment of Knin, for which President Tudjman must be held responsible.‘ (p. 75).

In other words, the same Bildt who had made no such threat against the leaders of Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs when they were attacking Srebrenica, nor when they attacked Bihac, was now threatening the Croatian president with a war-crimes indictment for launching a counter-offensive against the Serb forces; a counter-offensive made, moreover, on the basis of an agreement with Bosnia-Hercegovina’s legitimate government for the purposes of defending part of its population from conquest and genocide. Bildt described the Serb-occupied areas of Croatia – defined as ’occupied’ by the UN General Assembly – as ‘areas inhabited by Serbs’, forgetting that these areas had had a substantial Croat population before being ethnically cleansed by the Serb forces in 1991. He found it ‘difficult to see any difference’ between the Krajina Serb extremists’ wholly gratuitous act of civilian terrorism against Zagreb’s civilians in May 1995 and the legitimate Croatian government’s bombardment of Knin, made in the course of a military offensive against the same Serb extremists who were using Croatia’s territory to attack the territory of a neighbouring state, with the likely aim of perpetrating an act of genocide.

We can compare the way in which Bildt attempted to halt the Croatian offensive against Krajina with the way he had responded to the previous month’s Serb offensive against Srebrenica:

‘I had no way of knowing who was responsible for what was happening around Srebrenica, but it was hard to imagine that Milosevic, at any rate, was unable to influence the course of events. Before going to Geneva that afternoon, I therefore sent a clear letter of warning to Milosevic. There was a clear risk, I wrote, that our talks would be completely overshadowed by what was happening around Srebrenica. The entire situation could take a turn for the worse. If the enclave were attacked and overrun, this would be a very serious provocation which might well lead to an escalation of hostilities throughout much of Bosnia. I thus urged him to do everything in his power to prevent this.’ (p. 56).

So whereas Bildt threatened Tudjman with a war-crimes indictment – a threat he was wholly unauthorised to make – he threatened Milosevic with the possibility that ‘our talks would be completely overshadowed’ !

Bildt goes on to describe how, at the time of Operation Storm, he told the press:

‘I said it was regrettable that the attack meant that Croatia had chosen war, not peace, and said that I assumed that The Hague Tribunal would examine the question of the shellfire against Knin sooner or later, in the same way that it had considered the question of responsibility for the missile attacks on Zagreb.’ (p. 77).

Bildt did not accuse the Serb leaders who had just conquered Srebrenica and Zepa, and who were now trying to conquer Bihac, of ‘choosing war, not peace’; nor did he threaten them with indictment for war crimes. Rather, his threats were directed solely against Croatia. He ends his chapter on the Croatian offensive against Krajina with the following complaint:

‘For me, the conclusion from Srebrenica was not that we should blind ourselves to atrocities committed by others, but that we had to react strongly and clearly against all atrocities. In November 1995, The Hague Tribunal indicted Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for war crimes committed in and around Srebrenica. However, as this book goes to print, the Tribunal has so far not considered anyone responsible for the massive and brutal ethnic cleansing of the Krajinas in August 1995.’ (p. 80)

Bildt, in pointing out that the Hague Tribunal indicted Karadzic and Mladic over Srebrenica, omits to mention that he did not call for such indictments at the time, in contrast to his call for an indictment against Tudjman over Operation Storm – and this despite his claim that his ’conclusion from Srebrenica’ was that ‘we had to react strongly and clearly against all atrocities’. He does not complain that ‘as this book goes to print’, neither Milosevic or anyone else from Serbia’s leadership had been indicted for conquering and ethnically cleansing the Krajina region of Croatia in the first place.

Bildt was, in other words, an arch-appeaser, who actively opposed every attempt to resist the Serb forces militarily, whether by the international community or by Croatia. He denies over half the Srebrenica massacre, and describes its child and other civilian victims as having been ‘prisoners of war’. He describes the month in which the Srebrenica massacre occurred as a month of ’success and failure’. Following the fall of Srebrenica, he attempted to block NATO air-strikes to defend Gorazde. He tried to deter the Croatian offensive against Krajina by threatening Tudjman, but made no equivalent threat to deter the Serb assault on Srebrenica. He called for Tudjman to be indicted for war-crimes, but not for Karadzic, Mladic or Milosevic to be indicted. He complained in 1998 that Tudjman had not been indicted, but he did not complain that Milosevic had not been indicted.

Some things never change. On behalf of Sweden’s EU presidency, Bildt has claimed that ‘Serbia is fully cooperating with the Hague Tribunal’. He pledged that ‘Sweden would take a pragmatic stand on the Kosovo issue, taking into account the fact that several EU member-states had not recognized the independence of Kosovo.’ Also: ‘We want to liberalize the visa regime with Serbia, but not Kosovo, as a dialogue on visa liberalization is being conducted with Serbia, not Kosovo’.

In other words, Bildt is saying that the policy of Sweden’s EU presidency will be: ‘Stuff Mladic’s Bosniak victims. Stuff the relatives of the people killed by him at Srebrenica, who still want him brought to justice. Stuff Kosovo and its people. I’m going to go on appeasing Belgrade, just as I did in 1995.’

No doubt, with Sweden at the helm of the EU, we can look forward to another glorious episode in the illustrious history of this heroic institution.

Update: Owen Beith has pointed out to me that Bildt’s Srebrenica revisionism is actually worse than I originally indicated: not only has he reduced the number of Srebrenica massacre victims to ‘more than three thousand’, but he describes them all as having been ‘prisoners of war’; i.e. captured soldiers. In fact, the Srebrenica massacre was perpetrated against the Bosniak civilian population in general, not simply against captured soldiers, and those killed included at least five hundred children underU the age of eighteen. This post has been updated accordingly.

Update no 2.: Daniel of the Srebrenica Genocide Blog has posted a refutation of Bildt’s Srebrenica revisionism in full, which I strongly recommend reading.

Internationaal Cartoonfestival Knokke-Heist.
Slobodan Milošević.

Bon, j’étais absent quand s’est amorcée cette crise à propos de ses deux groupes invités au spectacle de l’Autre St-Jean, deux groupes anglophones. Néanmoins, j’ai le goût d’en parler un peu à une semaine – même pas – de la St-Jean-Baptiste.

Première réaction primaire en lisant la nouvelle: oh cal***** ! C’est rendu que pour rendre ça appréciable, on invite des groupes anglophones pour suivre la mode de ces petits chanteurs et petites chanteuses qui chantent dans la langue de Shakespeare.

Deuxième réaction plus posée: Mouin, en même temps, j’ai déjà entendu du monde chanter en espagnol ou même en italien pendant la St-Jean et pas un organisme se choquait de cette décision. Ni moi, d’ailleurs.

Troisième réaction, la plus rationnelle: dans le fond, ce qui me choque, c’est peut-être plus les réactions des anglos à cette première décision qu’autre chose.

Car effectivement, si on permet à des gens de chanter en arabe, en créole, en hindi pour la fête des Québécois, pourquoi pas de l’anglais ? Parce que c’est la “langue de l’oppresseur” ? Ça ne fait pas un peu “colonisé” ? Ça ne fait pas un peu “deux poids, deux mesures” ? Quelque part, même, ça ne serait pas un signe de grandeur d’esprit et d’ouverture ? Après tout, 40 minutes sur un spectacle de 6 heures… Même placé en milieu de spectacle, on oubliera rapidement leur performance. Évidemment, ça ne serait pas la même chose si c’était 1 heure, 2 heures ou 3 sur 6 heures… Ça serait un trop gros pourcentage du spectacle. Mais là, 40 minutes… c’est à peine 11%.

En fait, j’ai trouvé sur le blogue du Prof Solitaire (blogueur très souverainiste, en passant), une position qui ressemble à ce que je ressens face à cette affaire:

On veut une fête inclusive ou non? Ce n’est pas parce que quelques tounes seront chantées en anglais le 23 juin que le glas sonnera pour la civilisation française d’Amérique quand même! Moi, c’est en partie pour ça que je souhaite la souveraineté: pour que cesse la terreur de l’extinction et le complexe d’infériorité, pour qu’on acquière une confiance dans l’avenir et qu’on ne se sente plus menacés par nos concitoyens anglophones ou allophones. Seule la souveraineté peut accomplir cela.

Mais cela étant dit, les anglos qui se font aller la gueule depuis quelques jours pour nous donner de grandes leçons d’ouverture et d’inclusivité seraient mieux de se regarder sérieusement dans le miroir. Aucun de leurs maudits postes de radio anglo-montréalais ne diffuse de musique franco et ce, 365 jours par année! Les seuls mots français qui y sont prononcés sont les noms des rues et des ponts pendant les rapports sur la circulation!

Il n’a pas tort. Et c’est là-dessus que ça me choque. Car ce ne sont que des controverses du genre qui encouragent les médias anglos à nous traiter de xénophobes, de racistes, de peuple désirant faire un nettoyage racial au Québec…

Nettoyage racial… Mouhahahahahaha ! Faites-moi rire ! Dites-moi, journalistes anglos, vous devriez peut-être cesser de chercher des “bébittes” aux Quebecers et regarder dans l’histoire mondiale. Parce que si on voulait faire un vrai nettoyage racial, un digne de M. Net alias Slobodan Milošević, on ne serait pas en train de se crêper le chignon à savoir si on doit accepter deux groupes anglophones montréalais (dont, d’ailleurs, j’ai vu un reportage et un des groupes semblait parler français en plus… pourquoi ne pas les inviter aussi à chanter des chansons françaises en plus de leurs chansons ?). Non, on serait tous dehors à vous chasser à coup de fusil et de bombes. On kidnapperait vos rejetons et vos femmes pour les mettre dans des camps de concentration où on finirait par les tuer. C’est ça un VRAI nettoyage racial. Mais vous êtes chanceux: vous vivez avec des Québécois francophones paisibles et qui n’aiment pas la violence plus qu’il faut. Par contre, je me demande si on devrait pas s’organiser pour battre le prochain anglo qui osera prononcer les deux mots ethnic cleansing…

En fait, en termes d’ouverture, ce sont bien davantage les anglos qui ont du chemin à faire. À ce qu’on sache, sur leurs terriblement plates radios anglophones, avez-vous déjà entendu une chanson francophone ? À ce que je sache, dans ce beau Canada “supposément” bilingue, on ne peut toujours pas être servi en français coast-to-coast dans les édifices gouvernementaux… Il me semble bien avoir lu que mise à part à Montréal, ça fait dur sur le bilinguisme dans les aéroports canadians.

Alors, avant de nous donner des leçons de tolérance linguistique, some should do their homework and give us a good French service coast-to-coast. Ah, évidemment, là, ce n’est pas la même chose… Là, ça branle dans le manche et on ne voit pas l’utilité du français. Dans ce cas, la prochaine fois qu’ils crient au meurtre et à l’intolérance linguistique, la seule réponse qu’il conviendra de leur répondre sera: Shut the fuck  up !

Dennis Ross gets a bump up in the Obama Administration to manufacture consent for war with Iran; Obama to grant more power to the Federal [sic] Reserve; the ACLU releases a report analyzing the effects of racist anti-terror [sic] laws on private charities; Democrats unite to fund more war out of ‘loyalty to the president’; Russia, China, India, and Brazil begin talks to end dollar hegemony.

U.S. Iran envoy and Israel lobbyist, Dennis Ross, will now have a “more active role in shaping Iran policy at the White House”, according to a U.S. official. Mr. Ross suggests talks with Iran are for the purpose of ‘easier selling’ war with Iran in his new book, Myths, Illusions & Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East, co-authored by David Makovsky: “Tougher policies — either militarily or meaningful containment — will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran… Such an approach may build pressures within Iran not to forgo the opportunity that has been presented, while also ensuring that the onus is put on Iran for creating a crisis and also for making conflict more likely.”

Iran having nukes would “get that recognition to power and prestige and… an insurance policy against what they heard in the past about regime change, axis of evil,” says IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei to BBC. “[Iran] wants to send a message to its neighbors, it wants to send a message to the rest of the world: yes, don’t mess with us, we can have nuclear weapons if we want it.” This is exactly what Iraq did. Intimidation is a self-fulfilling prophecy from superpowers. Nowhere has Mr. ElBaradei ever said that Iran does have these capabilities after 14 snap inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities over the last six years. Iran’s nuclear program has always been within the guidelines of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which all signatories allow for the purposes Iran has shown — peaceful energy purposes. That said, posturing breeds posturing. Iran’s well aware that it would be obliterated the moment it began a nuclear weapons program, making the actions self-defeating and contrary to the motives of any “message” sent: to preserve and empower itself as a State, which can’t be done if it’s obliterated. For more, read Gordon Prather any day of the week.

“Power tends to consolidate. It tends to want to defend itself, and that’s a really insidious tendency and that’s, I think, what we’re seeing  [with the Obama Administration],” Chris Hayes, editor of The Nation, told Keith Olbermann regarding the continuity of secrecy after promising transparency. “I don’t even know what motive there is, other than this basic raw institutional prerogative of, you know, protecting oneself and accruing the maximal amount of power and latitude.” (video) Maybe, Mr. Hayes will stop being a fascist and become a libertarian now…. Probably not.

The Federal [sic] Reserve will receive more unchecked powers to “regulate” the financial industry in a proposal Pres. Obama will present Wednesday: “[C]urrent and former Fed officials worry that the central bank is setting itself up for failure.”

“Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity,” is the “first comprehensive report that documents the serious effects of Bush administration terrorism finance laws on Muslim communities across the nation”, says the ACLU in a press release. The report can be viewed on the web or downloaded in a .pdf format. Ali Gharib wrote a good analysis on the report at IPS.

$106bn war bill narrowly passes in the U.S. House with only five Republican votes (226-202). The GOP was holding out because of the $5bn to the IMF slipped into the bill. Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) statement here. Jeremy Scahill wrote a scathing piece at AlterNet today slamming the so-called “Anti-War Democrats” saying, “What once Democrats could argue was “Bush’s war,” they now officially own.” Glenn Greenwald commented as well on Democrats’ blind “loyalty” to the president. This is the War Party in full effect. They’re all a bunch of terrorists.

42 million people were displaced by war in 2008, according to a U.N. study. Marina Litvinsky’s article for IPS goes more in-depth.

Iran has banned media coverage of the protests following its election. Iran’s Guardian Council will be conducting a recount (video). No matter what the result, Pres. Obama will engage in “tough diplomacy… with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States”. Government-backed militiamen have reportedly fired hundreds of live rounds in the air and at crowds of protesters. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets again today. Thursday a rally will be held in memoriam of those who’ve died in the protests — BBC reporting eight dead, the LAT reporting “at least twelve” dead by midday Wednesday in the U.S.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri says that “no one in their right mind can believe” the results of Iran’s presidential election, adding that “a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy”.

A gutwrenching story from another brave blogger in Iran who Yossi Melman keeps anonymous for the blogger’s safety at Ha’aretz today.

TIME Magazine correspondent Nahid Siamdoust was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! from Tehran. (video)

“The ‘Bomb Iran’ Contingent’s Newfound Concern for The Iranian People” by Glenn Greenwald (Salon)

American filmmaker James Longley is making a documentary on the 2009 Iran presidential election. Gaza Strip (2002) and Iraq in Fragments (2006) are highly recommended. Mr. Longley’s been live-blogging from Tehran. (h/t: Karina Longworth)

Side note: Iran’s “Twitter Revolution” is getting ridiculous. There’s a lot of bad info out there. Be careful and please read things before you re-tweet. The truth is that we can’t really follow these protests with the media blockade. The Gaza Massacre was difficult and we did the best we could combing through hundreds of sources a day and battling between Newspeak, bad rumors, and facts were difficult. Just attempting to learn about rallies in Iran has been damn-near impossible. For example, yesterday’s largest rally in Tehran was by Mousavi supporters and not covered by any media due to the blockade. That said, Ari Berman links to some good sources on The Nation blog and more great pictures from today’s “silent protest” from the brave, young Amir Sadeghi.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for a “fairer global economic order” and an end to dollar hegemony. See The Blog for more on the economic summit held by Russia with Brazil, India, and China. The U.S. dollar dropped again with this news.

“The American Empire Is Bankrupt” by Chris Hedges on TruthDig displays the significance of a dollar crash. (h/t: Scott Horton) Usually, you see socialists stay from this topic. Who knows? Maybe, Mr. Hedges’ll become a Rothbardian, someday.

“Russia’s laws and practices regulating nongovernmental organizations are stifling independent civic activism and need extensive reform,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in their report: “An Uncivil Approach to Civil Society: Continuing State Curbs on Independent Civil Society Activism” [.pdf]. “Reform” pisses me off. You’re advocates, not politicians. Call for abolition. I plan on reading this study either way before next week. HRW compiles great reports. (Little Alex)

“I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wreaked against your people,” said Fmr. Pres. Jimmy Carter during his visit to the Gaza Strip acknowledging Palestinians are treated “like animals”. Mr. Carter’s repeatedly called for Hamas to be removed from the U.S. terror list, in order for the group to be involved in negotiations. Gazans spoke to BBC about how the blockade has terrorized them.

A total settlement freeze is possible, Akiva Eldar reports. Documents contradict the U.S.-Israel claim that freezing all settlements would be “impossible”. No shit.

“Netanyahu wants Palestinians to become committed Zionists,” Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah comment at ei today.

“The [EU]… is to put most of the blame for the conflict on Georgian President Saakashvili,” reports RT. “The commission headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini has established that the Georgian attack on South Ossetia was pre-planned and was not a response to ‘Russian aggression’, as Saakashvili has been claiming ever since… The final report of the commission is to be delivered in late July. Der Spiegel expects Tagliavini to avoid harsh judgments and probably leave the door open for Georgia as a potential NATO member. The newspaper also says the report will not mention the U.S. and their military support of Tbilisi, despite some members arguing that it may have “inadvertently promoted Georgia’s collision course.” Listen to “The U.S., Russia, Georgia, and the Five-Day War” for more of the Five-Day War between Russia and Georgia last August. It should not be forgotten.

“North Korea has abandoned its own commitments and violated international law,” said Pres. Obama. “Its nuclear and ballistic missile programs pose a grave threat to (the) peace and security of Asia and to the world.” Talk about the Black man pejoratively calling the Asian, a “minority.”… North Korea has pledged that were the U.S. to “infringe upon [the state's] sovereignty even a bit… [it] will launch a one hundred or one thousand fold retaliation with [a] merciless military strike”.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee confessed to “committing hostile acts… out of political motives”, North Korea’s (DPRK) government news agency reports. “During their trial, they admitted that what they did was a criminal act inspired by political motives of isolating and stifling our republic by defiling our human rights situation through fabricated video footage,” the news agency reported. You don’t think the evidence was twisted and the confessions coerced, do you?

Peru’s Congress has launched a probe into a “massacre” which killed 34 this month in a clash between police and indigenous civilians. Why the hell do activists call for sanctions from the U.S. against the civilians with whom these activists claim to be in solidarity?

Former Gitmo detainees are making attempts to enjoy life after being freed. The CSM covers the recently released Uighurs. The men blame the Chinese, not the U.S. for their seven year detention.

Withheld evidence from the case of death row inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was published in a very detailed San Francisco Bay News article Tuesday. The article is reposted on InfoShop News today. See Amy Goodman’s interview with Mr. Abu-Jamal here.

Journalist Florence Hartman went on trial in front of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Monday for using classified material in her 2007 book, Peace and Punishment, used to prosecute former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. Read more from Alecia McKenzie here at IPS.

Qais Azimy and Hameedullah Shah, were released from Afghan custody. The two al Jazeera producers were detained a couple of days ago after airing a report of Mr. Azimy meeting with Taliban leaders. A good guess is that Afghan intel was leaning on the men to reveal details, but they couldn’t go too far with the imprisonments of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee and they don’t want to come off as worse than Iran in treating media people worse than Iran treated Roxana Saberi…. Not so soon, at least.

Most of us can probably remember, at least once in our lives, asking some apparatchik something along the lines of ‘Couldn’t you please, please make an exception, just this once ?’ and getting the reply: ‘I can’t do that ! If I made an exception for you, I’d have to make an exception for everybody. It’d be more than my job’s worth.’ You and the apparatchik both know that he could perfectly well make an exception for you if he wanted to. But you also both know that he is right in saying that there is nothing special about you, and that you are not uniquely worthy of being treated as an exception. The question is: does he like you or doesn’t he ?

Similarly, trying to pretend that recognising Kosova’s unilateral secession from Serbia is legitimate on the grounds that it is wholly unique and without precedent in international relations is unconvincing, firstly because it isn’t true, and secondly because it begs the question: if it can happen once, can it not happen twice or multiple times ? To which the only reasonable answer is: yes. There may very well be occasions in the future when the Western alliance will be forced to recognise an act of unilateral secession by a subject people and territory from the state that rules them. Everybody knows this is entirely possible, and pretending it isn’t simply destroys the credibility of those who do.

Of course, the reason our officials and statesmen are pretending that Kosova is a unique case is in order to avoid scaring away other countries from recognising Kosova’s independence; countries they fear might otherwise worry a precedent were being established that could be applied to a secessionist region or nationality of their own. But this calculation, too, is misguided, because a) it rests upon a fallacy, and b) it represents a bad geopolitical tactic. We shall briefly explain the fallacy, before focusing on the bigger question of why the tactic is a bad one.

a) It is fallacy to point to Kosova as a precedent, because if a precedent has been established, it was established long before Kosova’s independence was recognised. It was certainly established by the early 1990s, when all the members of the former multinational federations of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia who wanted independence were granted it – except Kosova. This was despite the fact that in the case of Yugoslavia, the federal members that declared independence had done so unilaterally, without the consent of either the federal centre, or of all other members of the federation. There is absolutely no reason why the recognition of Kosova’s independence should not be treated as essentially the same as that of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia. In contrast to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, for example, which were not members of the Soviet Union but simply autonomous entities within Georgia, Kosova was a full member of the Yugoslav federation in its own right, independently of the fact that it was also an entity within Serbia. As a member of the defunct Yugoslav federation, Kosova was entitled to self-determination after the dissolution of that federation had been internationally recognised, and after other members of the federation had been accorded that right.

More generally, the former Yugoslav states are far from the first unilaterally seceding entities to be accorded international recognition – think of France’s recognition of the US in 1778 and Britain’s recognition of Bangladesh in 1972.

b) There is no need to pretend that Kosova is a unique case to avoid scaring other states away from recognising its independence, for the simple reason that, when all is said and done, other states’ policies on whether or not to recognise Kosova are really not determined by fear of Kosova becoming a precedent – even if these states are faced with separatist threats of their own. Turkey, faced with a very real Kurdish separatist insurgency and bitterly opposed to the secession of Nagorno Karabakh from its traditional ally, Azerbaijan, was nevertheless one of the first states to recognise Kosova’s independence. Turkey has also promoted the break-up of Cyprus, via the unilateral secession of the self-proclaimed ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’. Russia, which vocally opposes the independence of Kosova, which is faced with secessionist movements within its own borders and which brutally crushed Chechnya’s bid for independence, has nevertheless simultaneously promoted the unilateral secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. India, which likewise opposes Kosova’s independence and likewise faces secessionist movements within its own borders, was instrumental in achieving Bangladesh’s unilateral secession from Pakistan. In other words, states which might be seen as having as much reason as most to fear a ‘Kosovo precedent’ being established are quite ready to support unilateral acts of secession when they feel it is in their interests to do so.

It might be objected that the states in question are all powerful enough to feel confident that they can crush any secessionist movement they face. Yet fragile Macedonia, which fought an armed conflict with Albanian separatists earlier this decade, and which might have more reason than almost any state to fear a ‘Kosovo precedent’, has recognised Kosova. Fear of the ‘Kosovo precedent’ is not, therefore, a decisive factor in a state’s decision on whether or not to recognise Kosova’s independence (we can make an exception here for states such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova that are currently in a state of  territorial dismemberment, and that, were they to recognise Kosova, might conceivably suffer retaliation in kind from Belgrade or Moscow)

It may be that, all things being equal, a state faced with a secessionist movement of its own is more likely to sympathise with Belgrade than with Pristina. In one or two cases, such as Spain’s, this sympathy may be electorally significant enough to sway the course of its foreign policy. But so far as almost all non-recognisers are concerned, other factors count for more: a state is likely to oppose Kosova’s independence if it is hostile to the West (Russia, Iran, Venezuela); if it has traditionally enjoyed good relations with Belgrade (Greece, Egypt, Indonesia); or if it simply sees no particular interest in recognising it. All these factors are reasons why it is not only pointless, but actually counter-productive to pander to the opponents of recognition by reassuring them that Kosova is a unique case and will not become a precedent.

As things stand, rogue states have no reason to fear that the international community will ever grant independence to secessionist territories. They therefore enjoy a virtual carte blanche to suppress secessionist movements or other rebellions as brutally as they wish. None of the forms of deterrent threatened against or exerted on the Sudanese regime, from sanctions to international war-crimes indictments, appears to have cooled its bloodlust with regard to Darfur. But were Khartoum to fear that its genocidal actions might potentially result in the loss of territory, it might be less inclined to pursue them. The Western alliance would enjoy that much more leeway in exerting pressure over a rogue state such as Sudan.

Conversely, a close ally such as Turkey, which faces a genuine secessionist insurgency, knows very well that the Western states will never make it the victim of such a precedent: everyone knows that Turkish Kurdistan is not going to be liberated by NATO, as Kosova was; a ’Kosovo precedent’ will not frighten states like Turkey. But this does not mean that such states can get away with indiscriminate brutality with impunity. Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish population has dramatically improved over the last ten years, as Ankara’s goal of EU membership has required it to improve its human rights record. Just as NATO acted as the bad cop over Serbia and Kosova, so the EU has acted as the good cop over Turkey and the Kurds. Western allies can be guided toward ending repression and discrimination against national minorities, reducing the appeal of violent separatist movements. Rogue states, on the other hand, should have reason to fear that their brutality may potentially result in a loss of territory. For all states that abuse the human rights of their national minorities, this is a healthy choice to be faced with.

This does not, of course, mean that the Western alliance should indiscriminately threaten states that abuse human rights with territorial penalties. Rather, the ‘Kosovo precedent’ could function rather like the nuclear deterrent, i.e. deter more by its potential than by its actual application, and by its occasional application against only the worst offenders: as was Milosevic’s Serbia; as is Bashir’s Sudan. Nor would a ‘Kosovo precedent’ mean a free-for-all for all secessionist movements. There is a lot of space between the untenable pretense that Kosova is ‘unique’ and the rather comic nightmare-scenario threatened by Kosova’s enemies: of innumerable separatist territories all over the world responding to Kosova’s independence by trying to become Kosovas themselves. Kosova itself, after all, was scarcely given red-carpet treatment by the Western alliance in its move to independence: a decade elapsed between Milosevic’s brutal suppression of its autonomy and its liberation by NATO; almost another decade elapsed between liberation and the recognition of its independence, during which time it was forced to endure international administration and engage in exhaustive negotiations with its former oppressor. Even now, Kosova  is still faced with a very real threat of permanent territorial partition, as the Serbs maintain their hold on the north of the country. The Kosova model may not prove as straightforwardly attractive for other potential secessionists as the Cassandras claim.

Kosova’s independence was recognised as the result of a confluence of multiple factors: its existence as an entity in its own right within the Yugoslav federation; its overwhelmingly non-Serb, ethnic-Albanian population; the brutality of Belgrade’s treatment of this population; the unwillingness of the Milosevic regime to reach an accommodation with the Western alliance over the issue, following on from its years of trouble-making in Croatia and Bosnia; the unwillingness or inability of post-Milosevic Serbia in the 2000s to reach agreement with the Kosovars; and the simple lack of any workable alternative to independence. These were an exceptional set of circumstances. The truth is, that it is possible to envisage a similar set of circumstances leading the Western alliance to recognise the independence of another secessionist territory in the future. Sometimes it is better to tell the truth.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

The raped mothers of the Balkan Wars break their silence and start demanding justice.

They were raped over and over again, night and day, until their captors got tired of it. Their husbands, children and brothers were killed in front of their very eyes. It took place during the declared war in Bosnia (1992-1995) by the recently deceased Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, when the old Yugoslavian Republic opted for independence. Today, 10 years after political leaders signed the peace treaty in the Dayton Agreement, these women are still the living image of the conflict itself. While the fallen men in the war are shaheed, heroes, nobody wants to hear about them; the word rape is too ugly to be present. These women are the forgotten victims, who have needed a movie, Grbavica, winner of the latest Berlin Festival for their country and the world to remember their existence. Over 20,000 Muslim Bosnians were raped systematically by the Serbian forces in the ethnic cleansing campaign organized by Milosevic. Some of them say that it takes too much to live, and that if they don’t kill themselves it is for their children’s sake, many of them the result of the rapes which destroyed their lives.

For them, war and the savagery in concentration camps has not ended yet. They live trapped in the horror images that appear daily in their heads, without a warning and needlessly.  The moment in which the smelly soldier says “You are going to have a Serb son” and they are gang-raped, when the uniformed man takes the knife and cuts their son’s throat, or the minute they start cutting their breasts. But they can’t even afford thinking in all of that, for they still have to bring up whatever is left from their families. Their children are already teenagers and want to know the truth.

It is unknown how many children are the offspring of those rapists, but organizations talk about thousands of them. Many were given for adoption in Europe, others live in Bosnian orphanages and many others have grown up with their mothers, believing that their father was a shaheed, a Muslim who died in the war defending his land. Jasmila Zbanic, director of Grbavica, who carried out an intensive field research in order to prepare the movie, says that women, when they came out of the camps, were in a state of shock and didn’t want to know anything about their children. Many ended up in Northern Europe. Nobody has tracked them and it is not known how many there are. Nowadays, those mothers who gave up their children live in torment. In the International Council for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims of Sarajevo they say that Serb soldiers did not hand the captive women back to the enemy until they were seven months pregnant, when there was no way out and knew for sure that they were not going to have an abortion. They wanted them to have Serbian children, in order to stigmatise the entire family, says Dubraka Salvia, the association’s director.

Without state sponsorship, these women have to scrape a living in the slums of Bosnian cities. In spite of the huge psychological problems they have, they lack social insurance and their incomes are limited to a widow pension, whenever they are lucky. Dayton and the Bosnian Government insist on the fact that they should go back to the areas they were expelled from, but they are terrified of the idea of going back, for they fear coming across face to face with their rapists, the majority of them still on the loose. And the Bosnian authorities defend themselves in the lack of agreement between the two entities which are part of the country –the Serb Republic and the Croatian-Muslim Federation- so as to avoid having to hunt the criminals down. Many women have been silent all these years and they start talking only now, little by little. They know their testimonies could imprison their aggressors, although they barely have faith in justice. Experts insist on the fact that exposing their pain is the first step towards cure, but many are incapable of verbalizing so many atrocities. Not even their husbands –the ones who are still alive- know about it, very few of their children do, for they fear being abandoned.

A Subject that Is Never Brought Up

Hasija Brankovic lives in one of the five hills surrounding Sarajevo, the city that was sieged for about 43 months during the war. At 35, she rarely ever talks about what the soldiers did to her during the month she spent in a concentration camp in Rogatica, in Bosnia’s Serb Republic. Both her older sister and her mother, who has almost gone insane totally, also went through the camps, but the subject is never brought up, despite the three of them living in the same shabby house and sleeping in the only bedroom, together with two other younger brothers.

They arrived to that house by chance after they had been evicted from nine previous houses for not paying the rent. Hazira talks about the tribulations she goes through to rear up her family, being unemployed and without any other help apart from her father’s pension, killed in the war. A mere €170, to which rent -€100- has to be subtracted. Hasija jumps from one subject to the other, later on explaining that the pills for the nerves don’t let her focus on one subject. Sitting on the floor of a living-room-come-kitchen and storing room, she starts talking about her imprisonment in the concentration camp. Her mother, wearing a headscarf and with very few teeth left, quickly tells her to shut up. The woman still fears retaliation.

We agree to meet another day, away from her mother’s presence. She says that the soldiers took them to Rogatica’s school. They arrived there every day and night, with a stocking covering their heads and they asked them whether they wanted to be raped or whether they preferred to watch. Sometimes it was only one man, some other times a whole group. It went on for a month. Hasija cries, inhales and thinks. They killed her father, and her three year-old sister could not make it out of the camp. If it wasn’t because she has to pull her family through, she would do something to herself, states this woman, who keeps to herself more horrors than what she lets out. Hasija doesn’t know yet whether she will testify in front of the judges one day; so far she does not feel up for it.

In the tribunal organized in Bosnia a year ago to prosecute war criminals, and which will replace the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a team of psychologists attends to the women who have decided to testify against their rapists. Jasmina Pusina, one of the therapists, explains that many women do not speak up because they hope to forget. They try to forget without knowing that they will never be able to do so. They live with their secrets until they one day they break down. It happens sooner or later, it is only a question of time, she states, who also explains that the therapy tries to put together the pieces of such a horrifying jigsaw. The smells, the sounds, the images of the torture days; they try to make the women aware of their own trauma so that they can learn to live with it. These therapies are directed by NGOs, which work intermittently, depending on the international aid.

Marijana –fictitious name- decided to talk some time ago, and to re-construct her hair-rising story. She has spoken about it in The Hague. Nevertheless, having testified has not inoculated her against the unavoidable breakdowns every time she re-lives her stay in a Visegrad’s concentration camp, east of the country. They raped her several times. So many that she couldn’t count them. Her 16 year-old son saw everything. They reeked, of onions, of alcohol. They were very dirty. They showed her several knives and asked her which one she thought was the sharpest. She bursts in tears. She saw how they put the knives to her son’s throat, and she asked them to kill her instead. She can’t understand what they have done in order to be so hated. The starts crying again, she sobs, but she wants to keep on. The men had everything thorught through, had everything planned to humiliate them and destroy their community. She realizes that them, the women, are useless now, and the Government turns a deaf ear to the whole issue. But she also knows that if they stay quiet they will never get anywhere, states this woman who lives in Sarajevo, who says she can tell the Bosnian winter’s arrival from the pain in her body’s scars. While in the concentration camp, Marijana recognised Milan Lukic, handed in by Argentina to the ICTY last February, after having spent seven years on the loose. Lukic was under orders of the fugitives Radovan Karazdic and his military boss, Ratko Mladic, accused of genocide for Srebrenica’s massacre, in which they exterminated 8,000 Muslim Bosnians back in 1995.

Maida Cupina also testified in Holland. It was against Milosevic. She doesn’t have a job either and lives in a flat lent to her by the tribunal. At 50 she is tall and properly dressed. Her hair looks well dyed, she wears blusher and lip-liner. She says that she has to be courageous and keep on going for her children’s sake. She was locked up in her father’s house, where she was available for soldiers 24/7. Serbians shouted at her that she was a useless Muslim, staging orgies that lasted for entire days, she tells us, chain-smoking in her apartment, where she lives with her daughter, who is an anorexic and does not have access to medical treatment. Cupina, 1,72 tall, saw her weight drop to 42 kilos. It was only then when the fanatic nationalists decided she was no longer useful for their needs and they exchanged her for Serbian female prisoners. She says that nowadays she lives condemned to a life sentence with those images, with the alcohol and sweat smell of those men, tattooed in her brain.

While Cupina speaks, the television shows the images of Milosevic’s burial in Pozarevac, birth place of the ultra-nationalist Serbian dictator. The soldiers who went to Nevesinje were Serbian, not Bosnian. It was not a civil war but a genocide orchestrated by Milosevic. He has diesd after taking up most of The Hague’s Tribunal’s time and money. What now, this woman who does not trust justice any longer, asks herself.

Suspects Still At Large

Together with Milosevic and the rest of the big names of the ICTY, official sources estimates talk about around 10,000 suspects still on the lose (the majority of them coming from the ranks of Serb fanatics, but some of them Bosnian too). Most of them live in the Serb Republic of Bosnia, one of the country’s two entities, and which, after the expulsion of thousands of Muslims during the war, has become an ethnically clean zone, with barely no Muslim presence. In spite of Dayton having recognized the right to the return of the displaced and the authorities meekly encouraging their return, the victims insist on the fact that going back is not an option until the aggressors are apprehended.

Nusreta Sivac is one of the few women who decided to return and now she has to face the possibility of bumping into her torturers in the three concentration camps she was put into in 1992: Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm, widely known through the images which went around the world, where starving men behind barb wire could be seen. She was there for almost two months. Talking about what took place there is extremely hard, says Sivac, who says that the torture and the rapes were generalized. Before the war she was a judge in Prijedor, a multi-ethnic city back then, 20 kilometres away from the border with Croatia, and where nowadays Muslims make up a tiny community settled in Kozarac. The houses are new there and have been built on the ashes to which Bosnian’s homes were reduced to, burnt by Serb soldiers and militians.

Sivac says that she was always sure of the fact that she wanted to go back. It is her city. The first day she arrived to her house there was a sign saying that that was Omarska’s door. Now she comes across men who tortured her on the street, and some who have been released after serving two thirds of their sentence. Her reaction is to look at them in the eye, it is the only thing that she can do, for with such people one cannot talk. This woman, who has testified in the ICTY against several concentration camps rulers, believes that for women like her, the best way to fight is through the truth.

Sivac, who belongs to a victims of war association, states that many of them do not want to testify because they are scared. The aggressors still have important positions within the Serb Republic of Bosnia. Some of them are military heroes, she says, while we sit in a Turkish air cafeteria in Kozarac. Proof of that is what is left of the Trnopolje’s concentration camp, nowadays re-converted into a school and neighbours’ association. In its entrance there is a large eagle sculpted in stone, paying homage to the soldiers who have lost their lives to help make the foundations of the Srpska Republic. Bouquets of fresh flowers lay on the snow, at the feet of the monument. In that camp, soldiers chose a few girls every day, and took them away to rape them. Some of them returned scarred by the tortures. Some others didn’t even return.

Sivac does not have a current occupation, and it is difficult that she find one in a community in which Muslims are not welcome. At 55, she will not be eligible for a pension either. In the Serb Republic of Bosnia women who were in concentration camps are not even considered victims of the conflict. Everywhere else in Bosnia, women who were systematically raped during the war are officially considered victims since last year, and in theory they are entitled to a pension, similar to the one any man who lost a leg by a grenade. The problem, the Tribunal therapists point out, is being able to prove psychological damage. For that reason, some associations ask the Government to pass a specific law that deals with these women, much in the same way to the one passed for the people who disappeared during the war.

No Specific Rights

The Bosnian Minister for Human Rights and Refugees, Misrad Kebo, admits that there is not a clear definition of who are the women war victims. They have no specific rights. He defends that raped women should not have any special right, and blames the Serb authorities for rapists still being on the streets and that in the Srpska Republic the recognition of women as being war victims does not even exist. He sustains that it is a regional issue, not only an internal one. It is about Mladic and Karadzic, about people who are safe in neighbouring countries. They ask Serb authorities to cooperate, states Kebo in the Government headquarters in Sarajevo.

Kebo also shifts the blame. He blames women for not wanting to speak. According to him, the State cannot do anything as long as they do not go public about what happened to them. He also assures that his Government does not have the necessary resources to help these women. Nevertheless, it is surprising to see Sarajevo a completely rebuilt city nowadays, where there is barely a trace left in any building of the mortars and grenades, but where th0se economic means have not been extended to re-construct the lives of the ones who were damaged for life by the barbarities.

In view of the lack of State initiatives, Grbavica, the recently awarded Bosnian movie in Berlin, could be the catalyst of the long-awaited collective catharsis which encourages women to speak and to remind the Bosnian Government its pending obligation with the forgotten victims.

Like the Spanish The Secret Life of Words, by Isabel Coixet, Grbavica tells the story of a woman raped during the war. The film talks about the economic difficulties with which women like Esma, the main character, have to survive. It also talks about the children who were begotten in rapes, who are now teenagers and who start asking about their fathers’ identities.

War lies

Many of the mothers who decided to keep their children have raised them in refugee camps, sheltered by the lies of the war. But these boys and girls are nowadays 14 and want to find out about their paternal grandparents and aunties…and there is no answer to those questions. Their mothers were raped so many times that, even if they dared telling their children that their fathers were not heroes, they would be unable to find them. They are extremely insecure and dependent children. They live with the fear that their mothers, traumatized and barely able to pull the family through, abandon them. A generational transmission of the trauma has taken place, Salvia believes.

Grbavica, which has been banned in the Serb Republic, and which during its première in Belgrade counted with the presence of Mladic’s and Karadzic’s followers who tried to abort its projection, is currently breaking record ticket sales in Croatian and Muslim Bosnia. The movie has been able to take the systematic rapes form the private to the public sphere, something never seen before in Bosnia. Not to let it be forgotten is an obsession for its young director. In her words, they were acts designed to humiliate. They destroyed so much: religious beliefs, self-esteem, lives. She is still incapable of understanding how men can use rape as a weapon, how they can have an erection as a result of hatred, says Zbanic in Tuzla, in Bosnia’s North-West, where the movie was recently shown.

That night in Tuzla spectators –mainly women- come out of the showing room shaken. Some of them, still with tears in their eyes, are speechless. A little later, Eilla Vickovic, wearing a hiyab, is able to speak again. She says that this movie can offer Bosnians a better future, especially to the ones who are scared that society will not understand them if they talk about being raped. But everybody knows the facts for some time now. She asks herself how it is possible that there needs to be a movie to understand it.

Translated from “Hijos de la limpieza étnica”, by Ana Carbajosa, published in “El País Semanal” on 9^th April 2009 (available in

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/Hijos/limpieza/etnica/elpdompor/20060409elpdmgpor_1/Tes)

President Obama spoke the truth today.He said that “waterboarding was torture” & that he believes “the Bush administration sanctioned torture.”

Guess what,Mr. President? So do I!Even though the president & I agree on what torture is,we don’t share the same opinion about what should be done about it!

It’s  too bad that the Bush administration will get away with running this country as if it were a dictatorship. Instead of a democracy. Here’s two opposing views on whether the U.S. should prosecute Bush officials for torture from ajc.com:

“Yes: The standards we hold others to also apply to us.

By Mark J. McKeon

On Sept. 11, 2001, when the twin towers were hit, I was sitting in a meeting in The Hague discussing what should be included in an indictment against Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes in Bosnia. I was an American lawyer serving as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and there was no doubt that Milosevic should be indicted for his responsibility for the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners. As the head of state at the time those crimes were committed, Milosevic bore ultimate responsibility for what happened under his watch…”(End of First Excerpt)

“No: Terrorists declared open-ended war against America.

By Thomas Sowell

It used to be said that self-preservation is the first law of nature. But much of what has been happening in recent times in the United States, and in Western civilization in general, suggests that survival is taking a back seat to the shibboleths of political correctness.

We have already turned loose dozens of captured terrorists, who have resumed their terrorism. Why? Because they have been given “rights” that exist neither in our laws nor under international law.

These are not criminals in our society, entitled to the protection of the U.S. Constitution. They are not prisoners of war entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.

There was a time when people who violated the rules of war were not entitled to turn around and claim the protection of those rules. German soldiers who put on U.S. military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge, were simply lined up against a wall and shot.”(End of second excerpt) Read the full opinions here.

And here’s more on what the Bush memos reveal from an article written by a former State Department lawyer & taken from the L.A Times:

have my own reasons to own up to a bit of schadenfreude at the release of these memos. In the year following 9/11, I handled Geneva Convention issues for the State Department; I was a principal drafter of memos arguing that the international law of war applied in Afghanistan and thus to the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The same OLC, White House and Pentagon lawyers we sparred with early in 2002 went on to write, solicit or approve the torture memos later that year. They excluded experienced lawyers from the State Department and elsewhere from the process of interpreting U.S. obligations under Geneva and the United Nations Convention Against Torture, among other treaties.

We saw the coming train wreck and advised the administration of the harsh political, legal and security consequences of failing to abide by U.S. and international law. Early in January 2002, my boss at the State Department, William H. Taft IV, advised the OLC’s John Yoo that “only the utmost confidence in our legal arguments could, it seems to me, justify deviating from the United States’ unbroken record of compliance with the Geneva Convention in our conduct of military operations over the past 50 years.” Taft was right, Yoo was wrong, and now we see the consequences.

That said, as much as the OLC memos demonstrate professional misconduct, bad lawyering and possible culpability in the torture regime that followed, I fear that they obscure from public view this basic reality: The most senior policymakers in the Bush administration decided to employ torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against terrorism detainees.

We know this from the dozens of memos, reports and journalistic accounts in the five years since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. The bipartisan report on military interrogation from the Senate Armed Services Committee (pdf) and the timeline on the CIA’s program from the Senate Intelligence Committee (pdf), both released this month, make senior-level responsibility crystal clear.

Thus, as clarifying as the OLC memos are, there’s much we still don’t know, including the point at which President Bush and his staff explicitly ordered or approved the interrogation program. And despite recent suggestions from Dick Cheney that the program “worked,” we don’t know what benchmarks, if any, the administration set for itself to judge the effectiveness of torture and cruel treatment.

The aforementioned Senate report concluded that the Bush interrogation program of torture and cruel treatment “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.” If this is true, we must uncover the entirety of the interrogation programs to ensure that they do no recur.

The Obama administration did the right thing in releasing the OLC memos, for even if those responsible are not held to account (a subject we’ll take up later in the week), subjecting the Bush policies to the full light of day is crucial to repairing the damage they’ve already done.”(End of Excerpt) Read the full article here.

Os argumentos cínicos, a retórica estridente, a empáfia e o descaramento audaz com que alguns profissionais se entregam apaixonadamente à defesa de criminosos confessos e, às vezes, à justificação de seus atos atrozes, sempre calou fundo nas pessoas de espírito mais elevado. Aos olhos indignados desse público, a advocacia criminal parece condenada à eterna sina de flutuar no horizonte de uma meditativa ausência de senso moral e à dilacerante e invencível atração por tudo aquilo que degrade a condição humana. Uma impenitente simpatia pelo mal.

É nessa sutil e diabólica linha divisória entre amoralidade e tecnicismo jurídico que habilmente se equilibra Jacques Vergès, figura excêntrica e controversa da advocacia francesa, cuja atuação destemida lhe rendeu  fama, fortuna e imenso destaque nos corredores dos foros europeus. Filho de pai francês e mãe vietnamita, nascido em 1925 na Tailândia, em plena opressão colonial, esse esquerdista de insuspeitos hábitos burgueses de senhor parisiense ecoa com orgulho pelas paredes o apelido de advogado do diabo, granjeado ao longo de décadas de atuação profissional em defesa de terroristas, psicopatas, ex-ditadores de países do 3º Mundo e celebridades desviadas. Da extrema esquerda à extrema direita, com rápido trânsito pelos delinquentes apolíticos, a clientela de Vergès compõe um invejável circo dos horrores.

O Advogado do Terror

Em 2007, o diretor alemão Barbet Schröder “ousou” uma cineobiografia sobre a tortuosa trajetória de Vergès. Entremeando minuciosa pesquisa histórica, depoimentos variados e uma longa, tensa e estilosa entrevista com o próprio Vergès – que não se furtou a posar para a irônica foto de “capa” do filme -, o resultado é mais do que arrebatador.  A começar pela cena de abertura: à sinistra pilha de crânios e ossos humanos, ilustrada por um bucólico silêncio pleno de significação, segue-se a negativa enfática de Vergès à constatação universal do genocídio patrocinado pelo Khmer Vermelho no Camboja: a carnificina seria atribuível não apenas e principalmente às execuções, às torturas e à brutalidade do governo comunista, mas às duras sanções econômicas impostas pelos países ocidentais.

É certo que o documentário não arrisca uma resposta à ambiguidade que seu personagem principal encerra: afinal, o que move um homem que, a pretexto de lutar pela Justiça, se torna amigo da pior espécie de escória? Dinheiro, paixão, ódio ao colonialismo em todas as suas versões, vingança pela desgostosa origem mestiça, desejo recalcado de tornar-se terrorista? Mas dá algumas dicas, pela voz dos entrevistados.

Das recensões que encontrei sobre o filme, a mais expressiva e contundente é a da jornalista de VEJA, Isabela Boscov. Numa visão leiga, e não menos lúcida e equilibrada, Boscov produziu um sólido libelo contra o tipo de retórica empregado por Vergès.

O advogado de monstros

A trajetória de Jacques Vergès, que virou defensor de alguns dos piores criminosos da história moderna, com a desculpa do que sofreu sob o colonialismo

Isabela Boscov

Em 1957, dois anos depois de se formar, o advogado Jacques Vergès começou a carreira de maneira instigante: defendendo argelinos que o governo francês acusava de assassinato. Na dramática batalha pela independência da Argélia (a qual viria a se concretizar em 3 de julho de 1962), guerrilheiros da Frente de Libertação Nacional plantavam bombas em lugares públicos freqüentados por civis franceses. A tática, terrível e sangrenta, era uma resposta à maneira brutal com que a França colonialista havia tirado a Argélia dos argelinos. Durante o longo processo, Vergès se valeu de um tipo de defesa até hoje em voga entre réus de tribunais internacionais, como o ditador iraquiano Saddam Hussein: recusar-se a reconhecer o mérito dos procedimentos e a autoridade do juiz e do júri, devolvendo contra eles as acusações de abuso e assassinato. Conseguiu, assim, mobilizar a opinião pública em todo o mundo e, por fim, obter a anistia para seus clientes – entre os quais a bela Djamila Bouhired, símbolo do movimento argelino, com quem se casou. Em alguns anos, porém, Vergès se transformou em uma criatura assustadora: um ideólogo do terrorismo e do genocídio, que voluntariamente procura seus clientes entre figuras cruéis e se associa, em amizade ou interesse, a alguns dos nomes mais infames do século XX. Como Pol Pot, que à frente do Khmer Vermelho ordenou o assassinato de milhões no Camboja. Ou o palestino Wadi Haddad, um dos inventores do terrorismo internacionalizado.

Essa trajetória sinistra é o tema do documentário O Advogado do Terror (L’Avocat de la Terreur, França, 2007), que estréia nesta sexta-feira em São Paulo e no Rio de Janeiro. Dirigido pelo cineasta de origem alemã Barbet Schroeder, que em 1974 fez trabalho de calibre semelhante sobre o ditador ugandense Idi Amin Dada, o filme colhe testemunhos de dezenas de participantes dessa história. Mas o astro, claro, é o próprio Jacques Vergès, que expõe seus feitos, canta suas glórias e delineia seu “pensamento” em falas de vaidade triunfante. O retrato que emerge desse mosaico é enregelante. Vergès sintetiza em sua própria pessoa um desdobramento nefasto da segunda metade do século XX – a metamorfose da luta anticolonialista no terrorismo indefensável.

Filho de um francês e de uma vietnamita, Vergès diz guardar lembranças amargas de desprezo e discriminação. Que esse seja, então, o ovo; já a serpente que ele produziu é um homem que promoveu ativamente ligações entre palestinos e nazistas em torno do anti-semitismo. Seus clientes mais célebres incluem o francês Roger Garaudy, negacionista do holocausto, e o alemão Klaus Barbie, oficial nazista que atuou com sadismo incomum na França ocupada. Em nome do antiimperialismo e do anticapitalismo, além disso, Vergès corteja abertamente genocidas. Defendeu um punhado de ditadores africanos da pior estirpe e ofereceu-se para amparar legalmente Saddam Hussein e o sérvio Slobodan Milosevic. Hoje octogenário, defende Khieu Samphan, que foi braço-direito de Pol Pot.

Não menos tenebrosa é a maneira como Vergès desfigura um dos esteios da democracia – o direito de todo réu, por mais abominável que seja, à melhor defesa possível. Vergès não seleciona seus clientes entre nomes que a maioria dos defensores considera indefensáveis por lealdade a esse princípio, cujas origens remontam à Antiguidade clássica. Sua meta é exatamente ridicularizá-lo. Em vez de buscar a condenação mais justa ou ganhar tempo para obter a prescrição da pena, ele justifica e acolhe tanto o crime como o criminoso. No julgamento de Klaus Barbie, por exemplo, pontificou que a França não podia julgá-lo, já que seus crimes colonialistas seriam piores que os do réu. Essas relativizações destrutivas são o efeito que Vergès procura, conforme demonstrado em uma de suas declarações no documentário: “Se eu defenderia Hitler? Ora, eu defenderia até George W. Bush, com a condição de que ele se declarasse culpado”. O estilo gongórico e a argumentação tresloucadamente ideológica nada têm a ver com a prática do direito, diz o jurista Saulo Ramos, mas consistem apenas em “montar pândegas forenses, em que Vergès se projeta sob a fama de seus clientes para escandalizar os meios de comunicação”. Vergès, enfim, é a acepção literal de um “advogado do diabo” – aquele que se candidataria a defender o próprio, por gosto e convicção.

A estratégia de Vergès encontra paralelo e correspondência parcial com a caricata e retorcida versão de garantismo que tanta força vem ganhando em nossa tropicália – o famigerado garantismo à brasileira. Com efeito, cada vez mais defensores de criminosos ilustres substituem a argumentação jurídica pelo discurso com viés político, no esforço de deslocar o debate do campo da verdade para o da legitimidade material do poder punitivo confiado ao Estado. Não se põe em dúvida a veracidade das acusações, mas a isenção de quem as formula; não se questiona o acerto da condenação, mas a não-observância de minúsculas formalidades procedimentais. A argumentação ideologizada tende a mudar o foco e fazer recuar a questão da culpa para o segundo plano: fundamental passa a ser o meticuloso e obsessivo cumprimento da liturgia processual – em seus pormenores mais microscópicos-, que perde a condição subalterna de ferramenta para a busca da verdade (material) para tornar-se a verdade em si mesma – uma verdade (formal ou ficcional). Também há diferenças. Vergès gesticula e ataca, mas , em sua franqueza acachapante, não nega os crimes de seus clientes, nem se apresenta como bastião das liberdades individuais. Seus discípulos tupiniquins não compartilham a sinceridade do mestre. Além disso, na França a retórica de Vergè tem alcance limitado: não limpa os pés no tapete dos Tribunais.

***

O Blog assistiu ao filme e recomenda a seus leitores que o vejam.

Trailler legendado em português

Entrevista de Vergès à tv francesa

Para saber mais:

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La Comunidad Internacional se arrepentirá más pronto que tarde de los errores cometidos desde 1991 en los Balcanes. La desmembración de la antigua Yugoslavia es un cúmulo de equivocaciones, contradicciones y errores sin cuento. El mayor de todos la independencia camuflada incoherente e ilógica del Kosovo. El más triste, sin duda, el genocidio padecido por los ciudadanos bosnios que profesaban el Islam, dicho esto como genérico, porque no todos los bosnios musulmanes eran, en el instante de la destrucción de Yugoslavia, practicantes. Digamos, para entendernos, que eran musulmanes laicos, rara, pero esencial “avis” si deseamos caminar por la senda de la paz. Los despropósitos de la Comunidad Internacional han tenido su culminación con la segregación del Kosovo de Serbia. Es el último error, el más grave y peligroso para todos. Sin embargo no es el único.

  En el inicio: junio de 1991, cuando dos sucesores de Tito jugaban a ser más sabios que nadie: Slobodan Milosevic (1941-2006) (oficialmente el malo) y Franjo Tudjman (1922-1999) (oficialmente el feo o como diría Lindon B. Johnson, presidente que fue de Estados Unidos, al referirse a Anastasio Somoza “es un hijo de puta, pero es nuestro hijo de puta“). Estos dos individuos son los principales culpables, ni duda, también la Comunidad Europea, que andaba discutiendo el Tratado de Maastricht y se vio, en Luxemburgo en plena cumbre, sorprendida por los acontecimiento en Yugoslavia. Decidió, la cumbre, que la troika comunitaria acudiera rauda a apagar un fuego sobre el que los doce -sólo doce en 1991- no tenían una postura común, ni clara, si es que en realidad tenían alguna. Por no tener no tenían ni avión para ir. Hubo que acudir al oficial de Italia, ese con el que habían acudido a la cumbre el entonces primer ministro Giulio Andreotti (1919) y su ministro de Asuntos Exteriores, todo un personaje, Gianni de Michelis (1940). Así que de forma precipitada, sin citas previas, ni nada, partieron el presidente de la C.E. en ejercicio Jacques Poss (1937), luxemburgués, Hans van den Broek (1936), quien se haría cargo de la presidencia poco después y el citado de Michelis, quien era el tercer miembro, porque Italia, el único país grande entre los viajantes, había ocupado la presidencia el semestre anterior, es decir de julio a diciembre de 1990. Para que la troika estuviera al completo faltaba el cuarto componente, el comisario encargado de la relaciones internacionales, sin ninguna competencia todo hay que decirlo según los Tratados, pero aquel gran presidente de la Comisión que fue Jacques Delors (1925) iba siempre por delante y tenía dos encargados de semejante tarea, un holandés oscuro llamado Frans Andriessen, con quien acudía a las cumbres y el español Abel Matutes (1941). Tenía que haber sido él quien acompañara a la troika en su viaja a una Yugoslavia que se deshacía, pero, ajeno al conflicto -como casi todos- estaba navegando y no hubo manera de localizarlo, con gran irritación de Jacques Delors, quien siempre quiso que lo comunitario prevaleciera sobre lo intergubernamental. El improvisado viajecito de nada sirvió. La troika fue o mal recibida como en Croacia o se la hizo esperar antes de ser recibida.

  Pocos días después de tan fallido viaje y antes de que Hans van den Broek, ya presidente el ejercicio de las Comunidades empezara a convocar, una semana si y otra también, conferencias sobre Yugoslavia en La Haya, apareció Hans-Dietricht Gensher (1927) el muy poderoso Ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de la ya unificada República Federal de Alemania. Gensher, alemán nacido en el este, dato que no es bueno dejar en el olvido a la hora de analizar los errores cometidos, se marchó, en solitario y casi en secreto, a Croacia y a Eslovenia. Olvidando a sus compañeros en el Consejo de Ministros de la C.E. a la O.N.U. y a aquello no escrito en Yalta, pero hasta entonces válido, de no modificar las fronteras establecidas después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial sin previo consenso, anunció la buena nueva del reconocimiento internacional a las dos incipientes naciones. Primera equivocación. Las divisiones en el seno comunitario fueron tantas, la actuación de Alemania en el conflicto tan a su aire y sin consultar, al fin Alemania pagaba casi todo, hasta evitó la caída del franco francés en la crisis de 1992, que en los pasillos de la sede del ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Holanda todavía resuenan las voces del ministro británico para Europa quien recriminaba a Gensher delante de los periodistas, que a estos dijera una cosa y en la mesa de reunión otra distinta. Francisco Fernández-Ordóñez (1930-1992) Ministro de España ya gravemente enfermo, solía decir que los insultos de los otros once a Gensher eran grandes, pero que claro al traducir bajaban mucho. Además el ministro alemán se dormía mientras sus compañeros hablaban para dar muestra de lo poco que le interesaba. Fernández-Ordóñez, cuando llegaba su turno, mecía a Gensher.

  A las conferencias de La Haya, en aquel segundo semestre de 1991, sobre Yugoslavia, que, como bien se sabe, de nada sirvieron, a las que acudían Milosevic y Tudjman, llegaban autocares con matrículas de Alemania abarrotados de croatas, que jaleaban la llegada del coche blindado de Hans-Dietricht Gensher y que Tudjman aprovechaba para darse un baño de multitudes. Después llegaron las matanzas, la guerra civil donde Slobodan Milosevic siempre tuvo la contra de la Comunidad Internacional y de los medios de comunicación, claro que nada hizo él por mejorar su imagen. Cuando el Estados Unidos de Bill Clinton decidió meterse en el barullo balcánico se procedió a un referéndum sobre Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nuevo error. La población bosnia tiene aún tres componentes claros, casi a tercios iguales ciudadanos de origen serbio cristiano-ortodoxos, de origen croata católico y aquellos serbios, croatas, albanos, kosovares o turcos que aceptaron como religión, durante el largo imperio otomano, el Islam, seguramente para no pagar impuestos o porque era la manera de devenir la clase dirigente. Es evidente que sólo la presión de la diplomacia de Estados Unidos sobre Croacia hizo que Tudjman – que quería el territorio para él- diera orden a los croatas de Bosnia para que votaran la independencia. Los serbios perdieron y a partir de ahí llegó el espanto, el horror, la muerte las violaciones, la consternación en fin. Más errores sumados y entre ellos la presencia permitida de “afganos”, aquellos musulmanes que lucharon contra la URSS en Afganistán y que en buena medida son el germen de Al-Qaeda, aunque ante los horrores ese asunto ha pasado más inadvertido.

 El bombardeo de Belgrado, donde Javier Solana (1942) tuvo algo que ver como secretario general de la OTAN tanto que ver que posiblemente ese hecho le haya impedido encontrar un lugar en la política española, como le habría gustado, trajo el fin de la historia, hasta que llegó el Kosovo. Primero: allí se encuentra el emplazamiento digamos que sagrado de los serbios, porque en el territorio kosovar se encuentra el lugar donde en 1389 los turcos derrotaron a los caballeros serbios. Segundo: de la cercana Albania y del Kosovo salían hacia el Imperio Otomano los eunucos que cuidaba harenes y dirigían política. Tercero: en el Kosovo se habla una lengua que sólo y únicamente hablan 2,2 millones de personas en sus casi once mil kilómetros cuadrados. Cuarto: Su unilateral declaración de independencia, en febrero del pasado año, divide profundamente la Unión Europea, pero los cuerpos de seguridad de sus estados miembros y de Estados Unidos admiten sin pudor que es un error mayúsculo e imperdonable reconocer esa independencia. La razón es sencilla: las mafias albano-kosovares son las más peligrosas, las más difíciles de perseguir, porque es imposible infiltrarse en ellas. Quinto: queda por resolver el problemas humano de los serbios que viven en el Kosovo. Sexto: En Bosnia los musulmanes son escasamente practicantes, pero no así en el Kosovo, aunque en Pristina, la capital, haya bajado mucho el poder de las mezquitas en los últimos tres años. Séptimo: España no reconoce, por causas estrictamente internas, la independencia del Kosovo. La razón es muy simple: si poco más de dos millones de kosovares son independientes ¿por qué algo más de seis millones de catalanes no lo van a ser?.

Total: había que irse del Kosovo. Había que haberse ido antes, en todo caso. Irritarse porque la ministra de Defensa se lo comunicara primero a la tropa, que se ha dejado la piel allí, parece un poco extravagante. Criticar la soberanía de España frente a la OTAN cuyo secretario general tiene los días contados porque es el postrero residuo de la teoría Dick Cheney (1941) sobre el mundo y eso, afortunadamente, ya no está de moda, es más grotesco aún. Todo lo sucedido tras el anuncio de la salida de nuestra tropas del Kosovo habría hecho las delicias de Ramón Maria del Valle-Inclán. Las variopintas y contradictorias opiniones vertidas por diversos portavoces del Partido Popular, donde cada vez se deja en peor lugar al muy sensato y coherente Gustavo de Arístegui. La consigna de cuanto peor mejor usada hasta el cansancio por ese hombre en campaña electoral permanente llamado Mariano Rajoy. Los viajes secretos del apaga fuegos y come marrones oficial del gobierno Bernardino León para arreglar el supuesto entuerto, cual nuevo Quijote, todo ha sido como una bola de nieve que se forma y cae sin mucho sentido. Marcharse del Kosovo, como muy bien ha dicho Gaspar Llamazares, está un acierto. En serio