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"...[T]hose who set up the War Crimes Tribunal on
[the] Yugoslavia conflict ... had a great interest in
the break-up of Yugoslavia, and played a big role in
the process. They knew the break-up would lead to war;
but they actively encouraged that historical course,
using the UN to legitimise its strategy of global
hegemony."

What a charge!!!  Presentation of some evidence, along
with reasoned discussion of such, to support this
belief would have been nice -- and very helpful, but
the author gave next to none.  While the West has its
faults and have played significant roles in conflicts
around the world, I don't believe it is guilty by
default.  So, give some evidence.  Please!!!

- Wilmot


--- Sam Jimba <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
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> 
> Join African Association of Madison, Inc. for $25
> per year
> 
> Mail check to; AAM, PO Box 1016, Madison, WI 53701,
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> www.AfricanAssociation.org
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> 
> 
> Imperialism's Prisoners of War
> By Edwin Madunagu, The Guardian (Nigeria), April 6,
> 2006 
> ON Saturday, March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milosevic,
> former President of the Federal Republic of
> Yugoslavia, was reportedly found dead in his cell in
> the United Nations Prison at The Hague, Netherland.
> He had been arrested in Belgrade, capital of
> Yugoslavia and Serbia, by the Serbian government in
> 2001 and then sent to the UN War Crimes Tribunal. It
> is important to remember that Milosevic was arrested
> under pressure from the rulers of America and the
> European Union who had threatened to cut off aid to
> Serbia if Milosevic was not delivered to the
> tribunal. 
> In the Milosevic case, and in several similar cases,
> before and after it, the United Nations was used as
> cover and undertaker. Afterall, what in reality,
> since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, has
> the United Nations been? What actual role has that
> organisation been playing as maintainer of "world
> peace" and "security"? More directly, who controls
> the United Nations? I answer: the rulers of America
> and the European Union. Russia and China, which, in
> addition to America, Britain and France, are the
> permanent members of the Security Council of the
> United Nations, are only interested in protecting
> themselves (and justifiably so) against the global
> hegemonist drive of the rulers of America, assisted
> by those of the European Union. It was the rulers of
> America and the European Union that decided the
> outcome of the war of Yugoslavia's disintegration. 
> Now, a caveat. And this caveat is my lead
> proposition here. Slobodan Milosevic, as President
> of Serbia and then of Yugoslavia, was a "War
> Criminal" in the true sense of the term. But I
> insist that those who set up the War Crimes Tribunal
> on Yugoslavia conflict are themselves "war
> criminals" in a more profound sense, and on a larger
> scale, historically. They had a great interest in
> the break-up of Yugoslavia, and played a big role in
> the process. They knew the break-up would lead to
> war; but they actively encouraged that historical
> course, using the UN to legitimise its strategy of
> global hegemony. 
> The critical question in the reform of the UN should
> be how to eliminate or, at least, radically reduce
> the power of the rulers of America to use the
> organisation to legitimise its hegemonist strategy.
> If this is impossible or unrealistic, then let the
> talk about the reform of the UN be terminated. The
> reality now is that big war criminals fuel the
> conditions and processes that create small war
> criminals (in relative sense). The former are
> setting up tribunals, and setting the rules for the
> trial of the latter. Check the rise and fall, and
> records of the currently designated villains and war
> criminals from Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, the
> Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cambodia,
> Rwanda, Liberia, Uganda and Sierra Leone. Check the
> rise, the careers and then the fall of Bin Laden,
> Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor and the leaders of
> Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. 
> It is also important not to forget that the same
> historical and political process which led to the
> break-up of Yugoslavia, and what may be called the
> Third Balkan war, also led to the break-up of the
> Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact
> that linked that country and the communist
> governments of Eastern Europe. All these took
> between the late 1980s and early 1990s. All the
> political and ethnic nationalist leaders of the
> Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, including
> Yugoslavia's Milosevic, were actively involved in
> this bloody process. The rulers of America and
> Western Europe were also in the forefront of that
> process. 
> For his role in this process Milosevic was given
> various titles by his enemies in America and Western
> Europe: "Butcher of the Balkans", "orchestrator of
> the Balkan War", etc. Perhaps Milosevic was a
> butcher. I think he was. But there were more
> ferocious butchers, and these included those who put
> him on trial and jubilated on his death. Milosevic
> was a prisoner of war of personages who ought to be
> in the dock with him. He was not the "orchestrator"
> of the Balkan War. The rulers of America and the
> European Union, and their allies, clients and
> stooges in the Balkans were the real
> "orchestrators." Milosevic and others like him, are
> prisoners of war in a conflict in which the victors
> ought to be in the dock. 
> A bit of historical background: Historically and
> politically, the Balkans refer to the states in the
> Balkan Peninsular, southeast Europe. The states
> included Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania,
> Greece and the European part of Turkey. The first
> Balkan War (1912-1913) was fought principally
> between Bulgaria, Serbia (before the creation of
> Yugoslavia), and Greece on one side, and Turkey on
> the other. The Second Balkan War (1913) was fought
> between Turkey and Montenegro (before the creation
> of Yugoslavia, of which it later became a part). The
> echoes of the two Balkan Wars could be heard at the
> start of World War 1 (1914-1918). Some historians,
> in fact, say that the Balkan Wars led "directly" to
> World War 1. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed
> during the war and Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic and
> multi-national state was born, or rather, was
> "patched together" from Serbia and the ruins of the
> Empire. That was in 1919. 
> The principal constituent units of Yugoslavia were
> Serbia which included Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia,
> Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia. Serbia
> was the hegemonic constituent republic, having
> absorbed parts of the old Austro-Hungarian lands of
> Slovenia and Croatia, as well as the ethnically
> Croatian and Serbian lands of Bosnia, Montenegro,
> Macedonia and Kosovo. Hitler's Germany invaded
> Yugoslavia in 1941 and, according to several
> historians, his troops were "welcomed in Croatia as
> liberators from the Serbs". This was to be expected,
> given the hostility between the nationalities that
> were "patched together". Even within the anti-Hitler
> resistance there were bloody hostilities. The
> resistance and internal hostilities cost Yugoslavia
> two million dead, and 3.5 million homeless. This was
> the time Slobodan Milosevic, a Serbian, was born.
> You can see how old the problem is. 
> Yugoslavia emerged from World War II with Josip Broz
> (known to the world as Marshall Tito) as President
> of the re-born Federal Peoples Republic of
> Yugoslavia. Leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party,
> Tito related on economic matters with both the West
> and the East. He managed to keep the country
> together until his death in 1980. After Tito's
> death, a collective presidency was instituted
> whereby the presidency of the country, as well as
> the Chair of the Presidium of the ruling Communist
> Party, rotated annually among the six constituent
> republics and the two autonomous regions. This
> post-Tito arrangement worked until violent ethnic
> waves hit the entire Central and Eastern Europe in
> 1988. Yugoslavia was on fire, and the fire was
> fuelled - with propaganda, money, arms, advisers,
> secret agents, etc - by the rulers of America and
> Western Europe who had, by then, inaugurated the
> "end of communism" as a primary strategic objective.
> All communists, present and past, must be demonised
> a nd destr
> oyed. To American imperialists any nationalism that
> stood up to them was as dangerous as communism, and
> must be destroyed. 
> Riots broke out in the Serbian provinces of Kosovo
> (with Albanian majority) and Vojvodina; and in 1991,
> Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. They
> were later joined by Bosnia-Herzegovina. Civil Wars
> broke out and Yugoslavia, as it had existed, ceased
> to exist. The ruling Communist Party had, in January
> 1990, renounced its leading role in society, almost
> at the same time as the Communist Party of the
> Soviet Union. Milosevic, an "ex-communist" Serbian
> nationalist, ought to have known at this point, or
> latest in 1991, that the life of Yugoslavia had come
> to an end. 
> Had Milosevic not corrupted, and then renounced, the
> ideology upon which post-war Yugoslavia was founded,
> he would have seen that the best course was to
> negotiate a peaceful dissolution of the Federation
> along the borders of its constituent units. He ought
> to have accepted the independence of Kosovo.
> Perhaps, the "ex-communist" did not know that
> Yugoslavia, just like the Soviet Union, was
> constituted in such a way that the country could be
> dissolved peacefully if the course of history made
> disintegration inevitable. Every constituent
> republic or autonomous province was deliberately
> made to share borders with at least one foreign
> country - to make secession, if it came to that, as
> peaceful as possible. Milosevic was no Tito or
> Lenin, for that matter. He forgot that Tito, the
> "father" of Yugoslavia was not a Serbian, but a
> Croatian. He was given the bait by his former
> imperialist inspirers. And he swallowed it. And was
> destroyed. 
> I wish to end this piece with two extracts from a
> recent opinion article on the death of Milosevic.
> For, together, they prove from an opposite angle, my
> main thesis here. Writing in The Guardian issue of
> March 
=== message truncated ===

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