----- Original Message ----- From: F J BERNAL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2000 5:54 PM Subject: [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] (Fwd) Yugoslav elections & Abolish NATO Campaign STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Yugoslavia list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date sent: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 16:59:33 -0400 Subject: Yugoslav elections & Abolish NATO Campaign Send reply to: "Yugoslavia list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Priority: normal INTERNATIONAL CALL MADE FOR DEMONSTRATIONS TO 'ABOLISH NATO' October 20 - 28, 2000 The International Action Center on Sept. 22 denounced U.S. and West European interference in the Sept. 24 Yugoslav elections and announced it was calling for actions across the United States for the week of October 20 to 28 to demand an end to U.S. intervention and to demand that the NATO military alliance be abolished. The IAC, founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark in 1992, was a leading organizer of anti-war protests during the 78-day NATO war against Yugoslavia. It has also organized to stop sanctions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Cuba and other targets of Washington. THE U.S. IS TRYING TO STEAL THE YUGOSLAV ELECTIONS Sara Flounders, an IAC national coordinator, explained why her organization was protesting what she called "blatant interference in the Yugoslav elections. The U.S. is, in effect, trying to steal the Yugoslav elections." "The destabilization campaign has been in full swing through the election period," she said. "It's a no-holds-barred full court press that includes everything from covert operations involving assassinations; open funding for opposition parties; economic strangulation; media manipulation; and psychological warfare, including the threat of another NATO war should Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic be returned to office." "While the U.S. Navy schedules maneuvers in the Adriatic Sea off the Yugoslav coast during the election," she continued, "the European Union tries to bribe Yugoslav voters by promising to lift the murderous sanctions - but only if Milosevic loses the vote. It's an open attempt to manipulate the Yugoslav electorate and steal the election." "The New York Times (Sept. 20, 2000) ran an article saying that Milosevic was running his election campaign against NATO," the anti- war leader said. "This makes perfect sense since the U.S. and its NATO allies are the real power behind his opponent organizations and the ones who want to turn all of Yugoslavia back into a colony of the West. Both the New York Times (Sept. 20, 2000) and the Washington Post (Sept. 19, 2000) describe how Washington has been pumping millions of dollars into Milosevic's opposition." (see quotes from article below) Washington is using the same tactics against Yugoslavia that they have used countless times in the past to overthrow elected governments and establish dependent semi colonial regimes. Secret funding and military pressure were used in Nicaragua, Panama, Iran, Philippines and throughout Eastern Europe. Flounders said her group had called for coordinated international actions against NATO for next month. "The U.S.-led NATO alliance carried out a war of aggression against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. At hearings in 14 countries the IAC and many others showed that U.S. and NATO leaders were guilty of war crimes. Last June here in New York the people's tribunal we held concluded that NATO must be abolished, a demand raised by Ramsey Clark." "Now we are calling for demonstrations, meetings, rallies and other suitable actions in as many cities and countries as possible, especially in NATO countries, in the week from October 20-the anniversary of Belgrade's liberation from Nazi occupation-to October 28, when the OSCE is running municipal elections in Kosovo unauthorized by Serbia. The OSCE and NATO totally dominate every aspect of life in Kosovo. These October elections are an effort to put a fig leaf of democracy on complete colonial occupation. We will demand that NATO be abolished, that the sanctions be lifted against Yugoslavia, and that the U.S. and its allies leave the Balkans," she said. The IAC spokesperson said that anti-war groups in Italy, Austria, Germany had already called local or regional protests for that time, and that the Italian organizations were also organizing a solidarity shipment of medicine and other vital goods to Yugoslavia for the end of December. "Since the U.S. military is also threatening war against Iraq and intervention in Colombia, and U.S troops occupy Puerto Rico, the island of Vieques and South Korea, we expect to also raise these issues at the protests we organize in the United States," she concluded. (Quotes from article referred to in the above release) THE NEW YORK TIMES SEPTEMBER 20, 2000 Milosevic, Trailing in Polls, Rails Against NATO By Steven Erlanger BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 19 - In his race for re-election, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia is running against NATO and the United States, not against his democratic opposition. He is not entirely mistaken to do so. The United States and its European allies have made it clear that they want Mr. Milosevic ousted, and they have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get it done. Portraying himself as the defender of Yugoslavia's sovereignty against a hostile, hegemonic West led by Washington, Mr. Milosevic and his government argue that opposition leaders are merely the paid, traitorous tools of enemies who are continuing their war against him by other means. In March 1999, NATO began a 78-day bombing campaign to drive Serbian forces out of Kosovo. The Yugoslav elections are on Sunday, but there has hardly been a day since the bombing began that state television news has not railed against "NATO aggressors.". The money from the West is going to most of the institutions that the government attacks for receiving it - sometimes in direct aid, sometimes in indirect aid like computers and broadcasting equipment, and sometimes in suitcases of cash carried across the border between Yugoslavia and Hungary or Serbia and Montenegro.. Even before the Kosovo war, the United States was spending up to $10 million a year to back opposition parties, independent news media and other institutions opposed to Mr. Milosevic. The war itself cost billions of dollars. This fiscal year, through September, the administration is spending $25 million to support Serbian "democratization," with an unknown amount of money spent covertly to help the failed rallies of last year, which did not bring down Mr. Milosevic, or to influence the current election. For next year, the administration is requesting $41.5 million in open aid to Serbian democratization, though Congress is likely to cut that request. Independent journalists and broadcasters here have been told by American aid officials "not to worry about how much they're spending now," that plenty more is in the pipeline, said one knowledgeable aid worker. Others in the opposition complain that the Americans are clumsy, sending e-mails from "state.gov" - the State Department's address - summoning people to impolitic meetings with American officials in Budapest, Montenegro or Dubrovnik, Croatia. But there is little effort to disguise the fact that Western money pays for much of the polling, advertising, printing and other costs of the opposition political campaign . THE WASHINGTON POST, SEPTEMBER 19, 2000 (Final Edition) U.S. Funds Help Milosevic's Foes in Election Fight By John Lancaster, Washington Post Staff Writer Charges of Chinese influence-buying in the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign caused a political storm in Washington that has yet to fully abate. By some measures, however, that episode pales by comparison to American political interference in Serbia, locus of a $ 77 million U.S. effort to do with ballots what NATO bombs could not--get rid of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In the run-up to national elections on Sept. 24, U.S. aid officials and contractors are working to strengthen Serbia's famously fractured democratic opposition. They have helped train its organizers, equipped their offices with computers and fax machines and provided opposition parties with sophisticated voter surveys compiled by the same New York firm that conducts polls for President Clinton. More generally, they have sought to foster what one aid consultant calls "democracy with a small 'd'," funneling support to student groups, labor unions, independent media outlets, even Serbian heavy metal bands that stage street concerts as part of a voter registration drive called "Rock the Vote.". Underscoring worries about Serbia and Montenegro, the Pentagon yesterday began a global shift of forces to bolster the U.S. military presence in the Balkans. A carrier battle group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln left Thai waters ahead of schedule and headed toward the Persian Gulf, which will free up another carrier group, led by the USS George Washington, for movement to the Adriatic Sea, Defense Department officials said. THE NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH 31, 1997 (Late Edition - Final) Political Meddling by Outsiders: Not New for U.S. By JOHN M. BRODER Members of both political parties express horror at accusations that the Chinese may have tried to use covert campaign donations to influence American policy, but the United States has long meddled in other nations' internal affairs. Congress routinely appropriates tens of millions of dollars in covert and overt money to use in influencing domestic politics abroad. The National Endowment for Democracy, created 15 years ago to do in the open what the Central Intelligence Agency has done surreptitiously for decades, spends $30 million a year to support things like political parties, labor unions, dissident movements and the news media in dozens of countries, including China. The endowment has financed unions in France, Paraguay, the Philippines and Panama. In the mid-1980's, it provided $5 million to Polish emigres to keep the Solidarity movement alive. It has underwritten moderate political parties in Portugal, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Northern Ireland. It provided a $400,000 grant for political groups in Czechoslovakia that backed the election of Vaclav Havel as president in 1990. For the Nicaraguan election of 1990, it provided more than $3 million in "technical" assistance, some of which was used to bolster Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the presidential candidate favored by the United States. International Action Center 39 West 14th Street, Room 206 New York, NY 10011 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: www.iacenter.org CHECK OUT THE NEW SITE www.mumia2000.org phone: 212 633-6646 fax: 212 633-2889 ------- End of forwarded message ------- ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------- Advertisement: New Customers at Vitamins.com get a FREE bottle of St. John's Wort and take $10 off your first order of $10.01 or more! Just enter the discount code SAINTJ at checkout to get your free gift. Shop Now! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/HealthCentral
