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Kosovo Fascism, Albanian’s Shame The systematic intimidation of Kosovo’s Serbs brings shame on the province’s Albanians and will have far-reaching and long-term consequences By Veton Surroi in Pristina In the past month an old woman has been beaten to death in her bath; a two-year-old boy has been wounded and his mother shot dead; two youths have been killed with a grenade launcher; and a woman dares not speak her name in public for fear that those who attempted to rape her will return. All these victims were Serbs. Sadly, these are not isolated incidents. Many more of Kosovo’s remaining Serbs have locked themselves in their homes, terrified by an atmosphere in which every sound seems threatening and every vehicle that stops might take you away to your death. Then there is the case of the elderly couple with nothing to eat who are afraid to venture out to buy...

Collected by International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, IALANA 1. Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, March 11, 1999 (Az: 13A 3894/94.A): “Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed to regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” 2. Opinion of the Bavarian Administrative Court, October 29, 1998 (Az: 22 BA 94.34252): “The Foreign Office’s status reports of May 6, June 8 and July 13, 1998, given to the plaintiffs in the summons to a verbal deliberation, do not allow the conclusion that there is group persecution of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Not even regional group persecution, applied to all ethnic Albanians from a specific part of Kosovo, can be observed with sufficient certainty. The violent actions of the Yugoslav military and police since February 1998 were aimed at separatist activities and are no proof of a persecution of the...

Reporting Kosovo: Journalism vs. Propaganda By Philip Hammond* From Transitions Online http://www.transitions-online.org Throughout Nato’s war against Yugoslavia, no opportunity was missed to contrast the propaganda emanating from Yugoslavia’s state-controlled media with the truthful, reliable free press of the West. The contrast was used by Nato as a reason to kill civilians, when it bombed the Belgrade RTS television building in April; and by journalists as a way to brush aside criticism of British media coverage and Nato news-management. As a demonstration of the vibrant diversity of Britain’s unshackled media, take the stories written as reporters entered Kosovo alongside British paratroopers on 12 June, carried in the following day’s Sunday editions. This is what James Dalrymple wrote in the Independent on Sunday, describing the town of Kacanik: ‘It looked peaceful and intact – except for the silence .There were no curtains, no ornaments, no door handles, no light fittings. Every item...

Godt nytår! Nåh, hvad skal DU egentlig lave nytårsaften? Det ER jo ikke noget der sker sådan lige med det samme igen, vel! Vé den der ikke har svar på rede hånd. Som jeg. Overalt hører man at "nu hvor vi er på vej mod et nyt århundrede, så må vi lige have ordnet…" eller at "her ved indgangen til et nyt årtusind" bør vi sætte os for at..og "af begivenhederne i det her århundrede bør vi lære…". På vej ind i "den nye tid" hvad tror man så at vore efterkommere vil sige, når de ser tilbage om et årti, århundrede, årtusind på 1900-tallet? Vil de fremhæve det som teknikens, krigenes, vækstens, den kolde krigs, eller globaliseringens århundrede? Kendetegnes "vor tid" af liberalismens sejr over fascismen og kommunismen? Eller lidt af hvert? Fascinerende, ikke! Nogle planlægger at befinde sig på bestemte, mere eller mindre mærkelige, steder, nytårsaften, f.eks. på en...

Gott nytt år! Nå, hur ska DU egentligen fira nyårsafton? Det ÄR ju inget som händer med det första igen! Gud nåde den som inte har svar på den frågan. Som jag. Överallt hör man att “nu när vi är på väg mot ett nytt sekel, så måste vi..” eller att “här vid ingången till ett nytt milennium bör vi sträva efter” och “av det 20:e seklet bör vi lära att…” På väg in i “den nya tiden” – vad tror man just nu att framtidens människor kommer att tänka om 1900-talet när de om ett decennium, ett sekel eller milennium ser tillbaka? Kommer de att beteckna det som teknikens, krigens, tillväxtens, det kalla krigets, demokratins eller globaliseringens sekel? Handlar “vår tid” om liberalismens seger över fascism och kommunism? Eller lite av varje? Fascinerande, eller hur?! Många planerar att befinna sig på bestämda, mer eller mindre märkvärdiga, platser den 31...

United States leads charge to discredit U.N. By Phyllis Bennis* IT WAS EMINENTLY predictable. Just weeks after the end of NATO’s bombing campaign, U.S. officials are blaming the United Nations for NATO’s failure to restore peace in Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia. It wasn’t until the bombing failed to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that Washington and its NATO allies grudgingly allowed a role for the once-excluded U.N. The bombing devastated Yugoslavia and shored up support for Slobodan Milosevic. So, it turned out that the United States and its allies needed the U.N. to orchestrate the deal for ending the air war, withdrawing Yugoslav troops and creating an international protectorate in Kosovo. But it was clear from the beginning that part of the U.S. strategy was to set up the U.N. (already denied adequate resources, personnel and authority) as the fall guy for the not-so-peaceful conclusion of the...

The Rich Get Richer By Ibrahim Fathi Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt, 3 – 9 June 1999 In 1994, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimated that 59 million people in Latin America are victims of chronic hunger. In its 1998 Human Development Report, the UNDP says that 840 million people in the Third World suffer from malnutrition, and that the average household in Africa consumes 25 per cent less than it did in the early ’70s. The industrialised nations cannot be exonerated from the plight of the Third World. Prices of primary materials, which account for the bulk of the Third World’s exports, are steadily dropping against the rising costs of exports from the industrialised nations, including primary material exports. These discrepancies are not the product of the "free market forces of supply and demand", but of the dynamics of unequal power relationships. There is a steady and permanent drain...

By Ibrahim Fathi In 1994, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimated that 59 million people in Latin America are victims of chronic hunger. In its 1998 Human Development Report, the UNDP says that 840 million people in the Third World suffer from malnutrition, and that the average household in Africa consumes 25 per cent less than it did in the early ’70s. The industrialised nations cannot be exonerated from the plight of the Third World. Prices of primary materials, which account for the bulk of the Third World’s exports, are steadily dropping against the rising costs of exports from the industrialised nations, including primary material exports. These discrepancies are not the product of the “free market forces of supply and demand”, but of the dynamics of unequal power relationships. There is a steady and permanent drain of wealth from the Third World into the first. According to the...

The New York Review of Books Volume XLVI, Number 13 By Richard Ullman* August 12, 1999 The following interview with George Kennan took place in Princeton in June, during the days following the end of the war in Kosovo. Richard Ullman: Are you surprised at the role that Russia has played in the bargaining over Kosovo? George Kennan: Not really. It is, for them, largely a matter of prestige. Precisely because they now have no great military power they fear that the rest of the world will forget that they are a great people, which of course they are in many respects, and by no means only the military ones. To be able to play a useful part in the resolution of the Kosovo crisis is, for many of them, a much-needed source of reassurance about themselves; and I see no reason why we should not, on principle, welcome it....

What I Learned in the War By Dennis J. Kucinich From THE PROGRESSIVE August 1999 IN MY CONGRESSIONAL OFFICE, I read the latest reports concerning a recent Executive Order that hands the CIA a black bag in the Balkans for engineering a military coup in Serbia, for interrupting communications, for tampering with bank accounts, freezing assets abroad, and training the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in terrorist tactics, such as how to blow up buildings. How this is intended to help establish a democracy in Serbia or Kosovo hasn’t yet been explained. Nor has the failure to substantially disarm and demilitarize the KLA been explained. Nor has the reverse ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo by the KLA while NATO rules the provinces been explained. But the extracurricular activity is consistent with NATO’s policy of the ends justifying the means, of might makes right, of collective guilt, of retribution upon a...

Welcome to the New World Order By Richard K Moore Cyberjournal, A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance George Bush’s comment in 1990, that the Gulf War heralded a ‘new world order’, was the trigger that got me started on the path of analyzing and writing about political power relationships. Bush was suggesting that the Gulf War was more than a special case, that it was establishing some kind of new pattern for international order. He didn’t tell us much about the details, and I found myself drawn in to figuring out what he could have meant. The starting point for the investigation was the Gulf War itself. What was unique about it? In some ways it wasn’t anything new – it looked quite a bit like yet-another case of American gunboat diplomacy, one which expanded on the tactics used earlier in Panama and Grenada. All three events...

AN APPEAL FROM FATHER SAVA, DECANI, KOSOVO Dear Friends, After the month and a half of the NATO and UN sponsored peace in Kosovo we have the following results: 130.000 – Serbian refugees from Kosovo (2/3 of the population) 150 – killed Serbs 200 – kidnapped Serbs 40 – damaged or destroyed churches Serbs are persecuted, killed in flats, expelled from their homes, women are raped, farmers are slaughtered, Serbian and all Non-Albanian homes are systematically torched, AND all this in the presence of the most powerful force in the World. We have just prepared an extensive photo material on destruction of the Serbian Orthodox Churches in Kosovo. These destructions are systematically effected by the Kosovo Albanian Extremists who have launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing and the cultural genocide against everything Christian in the province. All these churches are destroyed NOT IN WAR but during the peace established by...