---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 02:49:11 +1000 From: ROAL <•••@••.•••> (by way of Lynette Dumble <•••@••.•••>) Subject: [GSN] Letters from Seville - Mireya WiB To: •••@••.••• Dear friends, FYI from Women in Black, Spain - a small window into the untold suffering inflicted by NATO's war in the name of "humanitarianism" - with warm regards, Lynette. ------------------------------ Dear friends, >From Spain, we send you two letters; the first one (written 12 days ago!) in English and the second one in Spanish (we will send you the translation in a few days). Here, in Spain, we will try to hand "An Appeal to governments members of NATO" to the Foreign Office personnaly the 7th May. We would like to know if there would be possible a coordinated action of this kind in some of the NATO countries. Please, answers before Tuesday. We plan additionaly to hand an statement asking to stop ethning cleasing to the Yugoslav Embassy, in order to keep the line of neither/nor. Best wishes, Yolanda R. Letter from Sevilla/Mireya Women in Black (18 04 99) traducción: Paula/W in B Sevilla (25 04 98) Dear Friends, More than a week has gone by with no news, lots of activity, trying to keep up with everyone by means of an ice-cold screen that can't transmit what we really need to know - direct news from our friends. So many people that we would love to have just a sign from, people we want to caress with the tenderness of our words, know how they are living through these endless days and nights. Friends from Kosova, Belgrade, Panchevo, Montenegro and others from the communities thrown together and separated, bridges that were destroyed years ago and again now, Vojvodina ... ---<snip>--- On Sunday the 9th of May, in Rota, Andalucía, there will be a march against the base, against NATO, against the war; a march of Iberian character as even some Portuguese will participate too. A multitude of associations are organizing it. We are among the participants and we will try to communicate messages from women, make a space for that ... On Thursday I particpated in a 'round table' talk at the Architecture Faculty. Imagine, three in favour of 'the inevitable necessity of the intervention' and three against ... there I spoke strongly about civilian networks and the effect of the bombs etc. I was surprised by a young journalist who has just come back from Macedonia, accusing us (Sebastian, another from an NGO and I) of being gullible because of our anti-intervention stance ... less strange was Manolo from APY who said he didn't want war but that sometimes armed intervention was necessary - of course he has his supreme chief in the high spheres of military power of this world. You see, Western patriotic discourse intoxicates the people, but just as well it doesn't create a totally hegemonic atmosphere ... it's easy enough to open up debate and shake the learned principles of violence against violence. On Saturday I was at the Pedagogy Faculty with a woman from a wonderful neighbourhood group called "New Illusions", they participate in our protests. There we were recounting our experiences. It was the 13th Social Pedagogical Conference, with more than 500 students listening to your messages ... my asking for networks to be created ... and they erected a mural for everyone to write messages which was then to be sent to Solana in solidarity with everyone in Belgrade, Pristina ... ---<snip>--- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "viviane lerner" <•••@••.•••> To: <•••@••.•••> Subject: Fw: ZNet Commentary, The Greeks, Kosovo and the US Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 20:30:55 -0700 -----Original Message----- From: Michael Albert <•••@••.•••> To: •••@••.••• <•••@••.•••> Date: Saturday, May 01, 1999 8:33 AM Subject: ZNet Commentary, May 2 - Nikos Raptis Here is today's ZNet Commentary Delivery from Nikos Raptis. The attached file is the same material in nicely formatted html so that you can read it in your browser if you wish. To pass this comment along to friends, relatives, etc. please note that the Commentaries are a premium sent to monthly donors to Z/ZNet and that to learn more about the project folks can consult ZNet (http://www.zmag.org) and specifically the Commentary Page (http://www.zmag.org/donorform.htm). ------------------------------------------ The Greeks, Kosovo and the US By Nikos Raptis Following the Chomskyan distinction, in the present text the word Greeks refers to the inhabitants of the geographic region of Greece as distinct from the political and economic elits that "govern" the country. (The use of the quotation marks is explained later on.) But, first, a report on the main events in Greece for the last 20 hours. (This is being written at Halandri, a suburb of Athens, on April 28, 1999 at 7 pm, Athens time.) - Yesterday, around midnight, a group of Greek citizens demonstrated against the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia at the gate of the fenced area of the railroad terminus of the port of Salonica. The aim of the demonstrators was to block the departure of a train that was about to move British troops and tanks (on flatcars) from Salonica to Macedonia. The demonstrators blocked the train as it moved out of the terminus, painted the swastika on the sides of all the tanks on the flatcars, wrote (in English) the slogan "Killers go home" and started shouting against the British soldiers that were in the train cars. Then, they started throwing stones thus breaking the glass windows of the cars and forcing the rather surprised British soldiers to put on their helmets. Finally, with the help of the railroad employees, who joined them, the demonstrators succeeded to force the train to move back into the terminus. (Source: Reported as seen by me on the news of the Greek TV stations.) Note: On April 1 similar scenes to the above took place again in the port of Salonica. Also, a couple of weeks ago a big group of demonstrators at the Greek-Macedonian border stopped a big convoy of trucks that were moving French troops from the port of Salonica to Macedonia. Finally, after many hours of negotiating with the police, the demonstrators forced the convoy to return to the port of Salonica! (Source; The same as above.) - Yesterday on the island of Corfu, at 10 pm (Athens time) there was a concert - demonstration against the NATO bombings attended by about 10,000 people. After the concert was over, around 12 midnight, the crowd walked to the airport of the island, overcame the police force that was guarding the airport and stormed into the buildings. Then they moved out towards the runway and there ensued clashes with the police that lasted up to 3 o'clock in the morning. Result: 6 or 8 policemen injured, one of them in serious condition, 8 civilians arrested. (Source: The same as above.) - Today, in the Greek papers there is a report that the day before yesterday in an an evening TV show George Katsanevakis, the prefect of the prefecture of Chania on the island of Crete, declared that Nicholas Burns, the US Ambassador in Greece, is "persona non grata" in Chania. Because, Burns protested to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs about a resolution made public by the General Assembly of the Local Governments of the Chania prefecture. The resolution: "We, the members of the Local Governments, being aware of the indignation felt by our fellow-countrymen, inform our government... that the American soldiers are undesirable in our country and we cannot guarantee for their physical safety or for anything else that might happen to them. We call the citizens to boycott the American multinational companies and not to deal with them." (Source: ELEFTHEROTYPIA, Apr. 28, '99, p.7) Notes: 1. Most Cretans, by tradition, own guns. Ownership of guns is illigal in Greece. Cretans fire their guns mostly to celebrate a marrige,or on other festive occasions, sometimes in the presence of governmant officials. Also, they fire their guns to kill one another in decades long vendettas. 2. The US military base at Souda Bay in Crete seems to be one of the most important (if not the most important) US bases in the world. - Yesterday at 11,36 pm, a time bomb had exploded infront of the Athens Intercontinental Hotel. There was a 39 years old woman dead and a man lightly wounded. The organization that put the bomb, the "Revolutionary Cells", had warned about the bomb 30 minutes before the explosion. The occasion for placing the bomb, as explained by the organization itsef with a letter to an Athens paper, was to protest for a conferene organized by the London "Economist" in the hotel. The general consensus of the Greek press is that this is a provocation by western secret services. Now to the main theme of this commentary: Why only the Greeks, among all the European peoples are opposing the NATO (that is US) bombing against Yugoslavia? The polls show that 98 % (!) of the Greeks are against the bombing. They express their opposition with massive demonstrations, almost every other day all over the country. In Athens the demonstrations end up infront of the US Embassy. This seems to not only annoy Mr. Burns, the US Ambassador, but according to the Greek press to also make him jittery, as indicated by his frequent visits to the Ministry of Public Order, a natural reaction when one observes a mass of humanity as far as the eye can see (to the tune of tens of thousands) and has protection of only a few hundred policemen. The Greeks are ANGRY against the US. They think that the war is morally wrong. They can see through the hypocrisy of Clinton and his puppets. They know who Milsevic is. They are not for Milosevic. They know the suffering of the refugees and the role of the bombing in this. Also, they know what is happening in Yugoslavia. There are dozens of Greek reporters in Yugoslavia and in Kosovo, who report honestly what is happening there, as much as is possible to do, They know that Greece has been under virtual US occupation since 1947. They know that any Greek government "governs" as a proxy of the US elites. They know that when Demirel of Turkey threatens Greece with war, in case Greece does not do the bidding of the US in Kosovo, as Demirel did threaten Greece immediately after the bombing started, he (Demirel) is doing the threatening as a proxy of the US. However, the main reason that the Greeks see through the lies that other peoples swallow is their history of the Resistance against the Nazis and the history of the Greek left, especially the Greek Communist Party. It is quite interesting to see today coservative Greeks to agree with the positions that the left had been holding, about the US, for almost half a century, namely that the "Americans are murderes of peoples!", which by the way is the slogan heard from one to the other end of the country. (Of course, the Greeks make the necessary Chomskyan distinction and by "Americans" they mean the Trumans, the Clintons, et al.). Two days ago, in Syntagma Square, the historic square of Athens, there was a concert - demonstration with Mikis Theodorakis, the composer, as the central figure of the event.. There were more than one hundred thousand people, of all ages, present at the event. The Greeks were proud and moved to tears about the maturity, the seriousness and the MORALITY of those present, especially the young people. This, I think, was a real life test of the truth of the claims made about the Greeks in the preceding paragraph. The main slogan, repeated continuously, was: "Americans murderes of peoples!" At this point a short parenthesis for those that do not know who Mikis Theodorakis is. Mikis was borne in 1936. At the age of 14 he joined the anti Nazi resistance. He was arrested and tortured. He joined the Greek left and spent years and years in prisons and concentration camps. Since the age of ten he had been composing. Now he is considred, worldwide, as a composer who belongs in the company of the best composers of the world. He still belongs to the left. Three days from now, on Saturday the First of May, the Greek workers for the first time in the history of the Greek labor movement will celebrate the sacrifice of the heroes of Haymarket of Chicago infront of the US Embassy in Athens, protesting the bombing. They will be joined by another mass of Greeks who would start their First of May celebration in Syntagma Square, and who are the "descendents" of the Greeks that were killed in that very square in December 1944, essentially by British troops, a few weeks after the Nazis left Greece, as they (the Greeks) demonstrated for freedom and social justice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 08:01:20 -0500 To: •••@••.••• From: Mark Douglas Whitaker <•••@••.•••> Subject: MSNBC: Support waning in Europe (fwd) Message includes interesting European demographics for support/oppostion to Kosovan war, and perspectives from many European nation-states. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 10:00:43 -0400 From: Stevan Vidich <•••@••.•••> Reply-To: •••@••.••• To: SRPSKA KULTURA <•••@••.•••> Subject: MSNBC: Support waning in Europe Resent-Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 09:25:49 -0700 (PDT) Resent-From: •••@••.••• -- ____ CP||CKA KY/TYPA ____ No. 880 Poruka od: Stevan Vidich <•••@••.•••> Support for NATO waning in Europe Europeans have doubts about war in Balkans A masked demonstrator stands next to anti-riot police during a protest against NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia outside the Bagnoli NATO base in suburban Naples Saturday. By Jonathan Miller MSNBC LONDON, April 24 - The first step for a democracy in mounting any successful war is persuading voters that it is a good idea. The strike on Yugoslavia got off to a good start - as the pitiful flood of refugees emerged from Kosovo, public opinion solidified behind the air campaign. But one month later, the first cracks are starting to appear. BRITISH BARONESS Margaret Thatcher is hardly a shrinking violet. The former British Prime Minister became known as the Iron Lady for her uncompromising positions. After the Argentines invaded the Falkland Islands, she single-handedly galvanized British public opinion to support a military operation to seize them back. She even famously told former President George Bush not to "wobble" in facing down Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait. Yet last week, it was Europe's Iron lady who was wobbling, joining a small but growing chorus of skeptics who have begun questioning the timing, tactics and objectives of NATO's military operation against Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic, Thatcher warned, was "not some minor thug ... but a truly monstrous evil." Nevertheless, she declared, the war against him was being waged "eight years too late ... and with war aims that some find unclear and unpersuasive." To be sure, the statement was a footnote of dissent in a country in which popular opinion remains solidly behind the NATO action. Britain's tabloids, reliable barometers of public sentiment, are continuing to maintain a robust tone. The Sun, which launched the war with a massive headline exhorting NATO to "Clobba Slobba," has maintained steady support for the campaign. But amongst the opinion formers, the doubts are growing, even if the doubters are split between those who advocate taking firmer action and those who believe that even the air strikes were a mistake. BRITISH DOUBTS ON THE RISE An article in London's Times on Wednesday offered a third view. In a forensic and highly critical deconstruction of NATO's war so far, it concluded that NATO was fighting a war it simply could not win. Authored by Simon Jenkins, a former editor of the paper and one of Britain's most respected journalists, the article systematically shredded the logic behind the campaign against Serbia and starkly concluded that NATO's hubris has delivered the alliance to the brink of humiliation. "NATO pledged to draw the line against Mr. Milosevic in Kosovo and did not do so. It sent in monitors, then withdrew them. NATO sent reinforcements to Macedonia but left them setting up camps for victims of a war NATO half threatened but would not fight," argued Jenkins. The first evidence that these arguments are getting through to the public came with a poll in the center-left Guardian this week showing support for the NATO campaign has dropped from 65 percent to 57 percent, while support for sending in ground troops has gone from 58 percent to 50 percent. GERMANS HAVE SECOND THOUGHTS In Germany, where the war began with Luftwaffe pilots flying into action for the first time since 1945, popular newspapers took an initially robust line. It has not proved durable. "NATO now finds itself in a nightmare situation," said Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung this week. "On the one hand it is hitting Yugoslavia with increasingly severe attacks. On the other, the alliance's political aims are becoming increasingly remote. If you extend this into the future the only reaction can be one of horror." Although Germany has played a secondary military role in the campaign so far, with just 14 aircraft, a single frigate and 3,000 support troops in Macedonia, the war is threatening to destabilize Europe's biggest democracy. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's SDP-Green coalition may not survive a May 13 special conference of the Greens, which is likely to declare NATO's campaign incompatible with both international law and the governing coalition's election manifesto. STRAINS IN ITALY In Italy, too, the war is introducing strains in a coalition government that has offered a platform for NATO air strikes against Serbia, despite deep ambivalence. Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema's center-left coalition includes anti-war communists and public opinion is increasingly hostile to the NATO campaign. There are also deep-seated fears that Italy will end up taking in many Albanian refugees. La Repubblica, the country's leading daily newspaper, summed up the Italian attitude in an editorial declaring that public opinion must "face reality" that "this probably won't be a war of weeks and will produce more suffering. If we are not prepared to accept the weight of this suffering then we might as well pull the white flag out of our rucksack immediately." FRENCH PRESS GROWS CRITICAL In Paris, most of the media has stood solidly behind the cohabitation government of rightist President Jacques Chirac and socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Polls show wide public support for NATO - 70 percent back airstrikes, while 64 percent say they would back ground intervention. But some are expressing doubts. Le Canard Enchaîné, a weekly that often differs with the mainstream media, said that the allied intervention has up to now "revealed only its weakness." In Le Monde this week, commentator Edgar Morin declared the war to be "Madness ! Folie ! Folie !" It was, he said, a folly not only of the nationalism of the Serbs and its ravages, but of NATO's "war of computers, of killing machines." Adding a further strain, the right-wing daily Le Figaro has started to question the Clinton-Blair axis at the center of the alliance. "If the bombing raids on Yugoslavia are not enough to put an end to Mr. Milosevic's excesses a ground war is probably necessary. But it is not right that Mr. Clinton and his pilot fish, Mr. Blair, should take this decision. The involvement of European troops on the ground could be inevitable but it would be shocking for them to be commanded by an American general." GREEKS FIRMLY OPPOSE ATTACKS The most robust dissent from the NATO consensus has come from Greece where polls show between 92 to 97 percent oppose NATO bombings. Greek unions have been openly raising money to send relief supplies to Yugoslavia. The Greek Radio and Television employees' union has expressed "disgust" for what it called the "inhuman and cowardly attack of NATO forces" on the RTS radio and television building of Belgrade. Across Europe this weekend, many journalists agreed that the attack on RTS has set a terrible precedent, turning the media into legitimate targets of war. In Geneva, the European Broadcasting Union condemned the attack; in London, the Defense Correspondents Association, which represents many journalists who are reporting on the conflict and who are vulnerable to reprisals, expressed "considerable disquiet." Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for the Guardian, is among a number of commentators who think that Clinton and Blair are rapidly swimming out of their depth. "These two master campaigners are fighting Slobodan Milosevic the way they beat George Bush and John Major: with heat-seeking spin and laser-guided polls. Those methods worked wonders then but they're playing havoc now." Jonathan Miller is a correspondent for MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.com/news/262426.asp __ ______________________________CP||CKA KY/TYPA_______________________________ SERBIAN CULTURE CULTURA SERBIA SERBISCHE KULTUR LA CULTURE SERBE CEPbCKAYA KY/TYPA CULTURA SERBA SRPSKA KULTURA Poruke na listu CP||CKA KY/TYPA posaljite na •••@••.••• ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================================== •••@••.••• a political discussion forum. crafted in Ireland by rkm (Richard K. Moore) To subscribe, send any message to •••@••.••• A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (mailto:•••@••.••• http://cyberjournal.org) Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. Copyrighted materials are posted under "fair-use". 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