T. Belman. I said the same thing, though not near as well, in my article Unifying Theory
Supporters of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia have no right to talk about law, sovereignty or borders
The remains of a building that was bombed by NATO in 1999 in Belgrade, Serbia. © Pierre Crom / Getty Images
Pretty much everyone who has spent the past month moralizing about the sanctity of borders, sovereignty of countries, and how unacceptable it was for great powers to “bully” smaller neighbors – thinking of Russia and Ukraine – paused on Thursday to sing praises to a woman that championed all of those things back in 1999. Except since it was NATO doing them to Yugoslavia, Madeleine Albright was a hero and an icon, obviously.
On March 24, 1999, NATO launched an air war against Serbia and Montenegro, then known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The publicly stated aim of Operation Allied Force was to compel Belgrade to accept the ultimatum given at the French chateau of Rambouillet the month before: Hand the province of Kosovo over to NATO “peacekeepers” and allow ethnic Albanian separatists to declare independence.
When the bombers failed to achieve that within a couple of weeks, the narrative changed to NATO acting to stop a “genocide” of Albanians its cheerleader press claimed was taking place. That narrative also credited the first-ever female US secretary of state for the “humanitarian” bombing, calling it “Madeleine’s War.”
In the end, it took 78 days and a negotiated armistice for NATO troops to enter Kosovo wearing the fig leaf of a UN peacekeeping mission. They promptly turned the province over to the “Kosovo Liberation Army” terrorists, who proceeded to burn, loot, murder and expel over 200,000 non-Albanians. A real campaign of terror, intimidation, ethnic cleansing and pogroms began – and the very same media that covered for NATO by making up atrocities during the bombing now turned a blind eye, for the same reason.
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Whatever its outcome, however, it was an evil little war, launched because the US felt it could. Because Washington wanted to get rid of the restraints posed by the UN to its new global hegemony, articulated just a few years earlier by Bill Kristol and Victoria Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan. Because the rising American Empire wanted to send a message to Eastern Europe that no dissent would be tolerated, and to Russia that it was no longer a great power worth respecting.
A legalistic mind might point out that the attack violated Articles 2, 53 and 103 of the UN Charter, NATO’s own charter – the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 (articles 1 and 7) – as well as the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (violating the territorial integrity of a signatory state) and the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, for using coercion to compel a state to sign a treaty.
Ah, but being a world empire means making its own “rules-based order” to supplant inconvenient laws. So an “independent commission” of cheerleaders was put together to declare the operation “illegal but legitimate,” arguing it was justified because it “liberated” the Kosovo Albanians from Serb “oppression.”
The actual oppression of non-Albanians as NATO troops stood idly by – including during the vicious pogrom of March 2004 – doesn’t count, obviously. The important thing is that Bill and Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and British PM Tony Blair got monuments, streets, and even children named after them.
The “independent” Kosovo – proclaimed in 2008, in a move about as legal as the 1999 war – can’t actually do anything without the permission of the US ambassador. A great triumph of human rights, law and order, and democracy, everyone!
NATO never cared about saving Albanian lives. If it did, it wouldn’t have partnered with the KLA, which made a point of murdering ethnic Albanians who wanted peace with the Serbs. It wouldn’t have repeatedly bombed refugee columns, then declaring it was really the Serbs’ fault somehow and that pilots dropped their bombs “in good faith” – literally something NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said on one occasion.
Twenty years on and nothing has changed. Having obliterated a family in Kabul by a drone strike last August, the US offered blood money, but refused to so much as reprimand anyone involved. Being an empire means never having to say you’re sorry. This mindset propelled the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Meanwhile, failure to overthrow the government in Belgrade through war led to a “color revolution” in Serbia instead. It was then exported to other places – including Ukraine, twice. That 2014 coup in Kiev literally started the conflict in eastern Ukraine, of which the current events are but the latest phase.
In March 1999, I was a student in the American Midwest, and had been (almost) successfully brainwashed into believing the platitudes about freedom, democracy, tolerance, objectivity, rules and laws, and how the US was a “force for good” in the world. Then, overnight, people I thought had been my friends called me a monster and believed every single bit of propaganda that came off the TV screens and newspaper pages.
I’ve made justice and remembrance something of my life mission since then, seeking to explain that rather than a good, noble and humanitarian war, Kosovo represented everything wrong about the modern world: “A monument to the power of lies, the successful murder of law, and the triumph of might over justice,” as I wrote in 2005, and repeated every year since.
The twist this year is that the people shrieking about human rights, international law and the sanctity of borders – when it comes to their client regime in Ukraine, that is – were all cheering for NATO back in 1999. Even now, they won’t apologize for it, much less disavow. So it seems it’s not really about what is being done, only who is doing it to whom. While I understand their anger as the world their lies propped up comes crashing down, they hardly have standing to complain.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT.
Reader
Of course they will fight if there is leadership
This is an historical people.
Reposting:
Reader
April 13, 2022 at 4:42 pm
@FelixQuigley
“A Trotskyist Party in Israel is badly needed now.”
It is impossible because Irael has been purposely americanized by the likes of Bibi, and in the US the terms you use (“socialism”, etc.) are anathema and swear words.
“… the system we are destined to live in.”
We are destined to live in it but not forever unless the PTB end up ending life on Earth because of their fear of letting go of their power, and the desire to take over the world.
“Pay attention we deal with mad capitalists…
A vision. Then mass parties. How hard is that concept.”
You are right about the “mad” part. The mass parties cannot happen these days because they need strong leaders, and anyone who is capable of being a strong leader and creating a party in opposition will be eliminated by the PTB in the very beginning, or, actually, by the masses themselves because they are (reread what Caitlin Johnstone wrote) slaves who are convinced that they are free and that those potential leaders want to take that freedom away from them.
The flow of history will resolve everything , the question is how many of us will be sacrificed by the PTB in the process.
On Caitlin
Good woman but no thoughts on mass parties
Putin risked nuclear war cannot do that in these times
Why must find a different way. Pay attention we deal with mad capitalists.
A vision. Then mass parties. How hard is that concept.
Twitter can be of use here
A Trotskyist Party in Israel is badly needed now
All for the Jews etc
But also nobody can let our earth be destroyed through fxxxing about with science
A Trotskyist Party will fight…
Clear that Israel set up an elite over the people from the get go. Did they consult them? Doubt it.
Under this system everyone except Karl had an angle
There are many things that are wrong with capitalism. I and many see them but often don’t trace them to the system we are destined to live in.
In all ways it is mind control based on misinformation by innumerable agencies from parents schools right up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Guru,_No_Method,_No_Teacher
@FelixQuigley
This is scary, I am afraid she is right.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/09/26/people-dont-understand-how-unfree-we-already-are/
Yes contains this from Trotsky which is the definition of Fascism which needs to be studied
“Fascism,” Trotsky explained, “is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force, and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist vanguard but in holding the entire class in a state of forced disunity. To this end the physical annihilation of the most revolutionary section of the workers does not suffice. It is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organizations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat, and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three-quarters of a century by the Social Democracy and the trade unions. For, in the last analysis, the Communist Party also bases itself on these achievements.”[5]
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/05/holo-m12.html
Especially in Scotland where peasants were forced from the land and into terrible conditions in cities and towns with nothing left except to work in mills and factories.This is a general pattern.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/
Then the long struggle of peasants turned landless workers to gain these rights. That is what he refers to above.
Of course Fascism is often misunderstood.
But also I read articles from wsws critically.
But it all takes time…you should be on twitter
@FelixQuigley
You might like this article:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/05/adde-m15.html
Sebastien,
I don’t see much value in trying to explain recent (post-1867) history in terms of Trotsky and Lenin (who got their stuff from Hobson); but because Felix has apparently devoted his life to the study of those two, it is important to God — who cares for all of us, even Felix.
One of your quotes stood out to m, concerning Hobson’s work:
Lenin and Engels et al were only “prescient”, in that they “foresaw” the rise of modern Imperialism when it was already at the peak of its rise. They were a “merely” 1800 years later than John the Revelator. I suppose I should say, “better late than never!”
Here’s what John said,
Revelation 17
[12] And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
[13] These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.
The “ten horns” should not be anything difficult, for the brilliant Jews assembled here to understand (for they were first mentioned in the Book of Daniel): They are the Great Powers, the Imperialists, whom Felix repeatedly refers to as “The Empire”. I can even list them, with some degree of accuracy:
1. The British Empire
2. The French Empire
3. The Russian Empire
4. The Austrian Empire
5. The German Empire
6. The Dutch Empire
7. The Spanish Empire
8. The Italian Empire
9. The Portugese Empire
10. The Japanese Empire
Those were the great powers of the world in the latter half of the 1800s, when Marx and Engels were passing the baton to the likes of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. During the 1800s, they coordinated in alliances such as the Eight-Nation Alliance and Congress Europe. Then they re-coordinated in the League of Nations; and today they comprise what many here refer to as “The West”, “NATO”, “the EU”, etc. One “horn” rises and another wanes; but they continue as Felix’s “Empire”.
Whatever one wishes to call this “empire”, I see them as the most dangerous enemy of our times, after their Master Himself, the Devil. I suppose that would mar my name as being a “Russophile” in the current conflict.
Reader I have read the one on Opinions so helpful I plan to tweet on some of his leads and will look further
Sebastien
Sorry I’m in the same boat
I obviously never read the whole article by Geras
It was the first part that struck me and it’s most probably that I cut off at that point.
I’m opposed to Mandel.
It’s like this. I defend the Jewish state unconditionally.
That means I do not put forward any conditions at all. None.
The problem is that I am
of the opinion that capitalism is fucked and Jews and Israel cannot escape that fucked up system.
Trotsky wrote about Jews needing a place under the sun to call their own.
I think that but also consider other things that go with that.
To keep the Jews safe.
Like living alone only with guests who love the Jews
Put it like this. Jabonitski sensed what was coming. Trotsky knew what was coming because of all that study
Study especially on Germany 1933 and very much Spain, very great analysis on Spain a good book here for Peloni is by Felix Morrow
PS it is very hard to write with my big finger
@Felix I can’t access more than the beginning of the New Left Review article even though I created an account. Could you copy and paste it, please? The beginning says he warned about the impending Holocaust but doesn’t mention Zionism. If Ted doesn’t allow such a big post, then please quote the relevant passage(s). I do know that, to his credit, Trotsky had called for the Allies to reinvade Germany in 1933 when Hitler took power and declared his intention to violate the arms control provisions of the Versaille Treaty, but Zionism is a separate issue.
@Felix
Thank you for the many sources and you personal input. I do appreciate it.
I hesitate. Everyone has an angle because it is so tied in with our present travails
I have always had a soft spot for this
https://newleftreview.org/issues/i224/articles/norman-geras-marxists-before-the-holocaust
Just a flash of brilliance from Norman.
@Felix Thank you for your gracious reply. On another note, you said that capitalism turning into imperialism came from Marx. Actually, Engels hinted at it after Marx’s death but the theory came from John Hobson’s book, which I have read, and Wikipedia says another, as well, which Lenin adopted and used as the basis for his pamphlet, “Imperialism the Highest state of Capitalism” . (To be fair to Lenin, I read his precis of all the books he read and summarized for his outline of “imperialism…” in his collected works and it’s a thick volume. It’s really a model of academic research for any graduate student.)
@FelixQuigley
I wasn’t attacking you.
You quoted the stuff so extensively that I thought you agreed with it.
BTW, thanks for that link about Trotsky’s assassination and Sylvia Ageloff – a fascinating read.
There is an extremely interesting piece of info in part 2 [a note is mine]:
Of course Reader. I agree with that but the question is why are you directing this at me?
Of course Leon Trotsky WAS the alternative to Stalin and Stalinism
And when Trotsky was assassinated he was relatively young by todays standards.
And one of the effects of that assassination of this genuine heroic and principled person was the perversion on the general left of Palestinians and their thuggery
which has left socialists like me in a difficult position today.
Even as I write this I realize now you will attack me. It takes general empathy to understand
Have a nice life to you all.
Sebastien I’ve learned from you but cool down. I discussed this with you perhaps five years ago. I defend right of Jews to their Homeland without any conditions. That is all.
Why would I promote Service? I do not. Service hates Trotsky, Lenin and Marx
What I said was Service with his hatreds is a joke.
By the by no-one has interpreted Trotsky correctly.
I should not have got involved
@Felix Trotsky says it at length here. He doesn’t rule out some form of Jewish autonomy, necessarily, but his necessary precondition is a ” world federation of socialist states.” https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/trotsky-zionism.pdf
@Felix You specifically cited his plan from 1937. That’s why I posted what you called his throwaway remark from that year. You say there have been many posted errors in his writings, though you don’t specify which if any would apply. Fine, let’s say he was misquoted down the line, Where do you get your information then and what did Robert Service write about Trotsky’s position on Zionism that you are basing your argument on? Somebody’s recollection of a speech he heard? What exactly did Service write? Moreover, what are the critics of his oublished writings basing themselves on if there is no reluable source.
@Felix Everything in that compilation supports the view that Trotsky, like Marx and Lenin, considered Zionism, Bundism, Borobidjan, in short any form of Jewish self-determination as reactionary utopias. If you think differently, quote a passage to support your argument. Just mentionining the name of a historian proves nothing. First of all, the works of historians are secondary sources. He would have had to quote passages from Trotsky’s writings -primary sources-to be taken seriously as an academic.
@FELIX
I am going to remove your enormous post because I do not allow long posts like that.. So get a link and posts that instead with your comment.
@FelixQuigley
@FelixQuigley
I wouldn’t trust anything that anyone British/Anglo wrote about anything Russian.
Maybe there are rare exceptions but I don’t think Robert Service is one of them.
There’s some clues from the past to our present Ukraine here
https://ukrainianjewishencounter.org/en/beneficiaries-of-the-holocaust-the-role-of-neighbors-in-the-plunder-of-jewish-property-in-volyn-during-the-nazi-occupation/
You know I think I’m tired of losing and I want us good semi intelligent beings to start winning is that too much to ask
https://youtu.be/ImqAsN5YVf0
But honestly Peloni this is really very valuable. Note I’m not wsws
Note there are four parts
Strikes me there’s many ways to get into this subject
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/02/06/sylv-f06.html
As far as capitalism or whatever in Israel.
A country under siege cannot be “democratic’.
It has to have defense-centered economy and politics, regardless of what you may call them.
Hi, Peloni. You said,
Perhaps this will address your question:
“It may be presumed that a socialist democracy will not resort to compulsory assimilation. It may very well be that within two or three generations the boundaries of an independent Jewish republic, as of many other national regions, will be erased. I have neither time nor desire to meditate on this. Our descendants will know better than we what to do. I have in mind a transitional historical period when the Jewish “question” as such, is still acute and demands adequate measures from a world federation of workers’ states.
“The very same methods of solving the Jewish question which under decaying capitalism will have a utopian and reactionary character (Zionism) will, under the regime of a socialist federation take on real and salutary meaning. This is what I want to point out. How could any Marxist or even any consistent democrat object to this?”
— Leon Trotsky, 1937
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm
Hi, Peloni. You said,
Perhaps this will address your question:
@FelixQuigley
If Mearsheimer referred to Marx, I bet it would ruin his career.
Besides, as a former military man, he probably hates him like poison.
As far as capitalism or imperialism and how bad they are – Marxism says that you cannot jump over the stages of development, they have to follow one another in a certain order.
However, humans tried doing it anyway which didn’t work.
They have also tried to slow down or stop this development which in the capitalist stage countries when they decide that they reached “the end of history” and want to stay in this “optimal” stage of development resulted in fascism.
I didn’t know Trotsky was interested in the Jewish issues that much.
He was obviously aware of antisemitism but he was more into changing the world for the better (or so he thought).
I’ve always thought that if he went with Jabotinsky instead of Lenin, we could have had a state before the war.
As usual, “what is permissible to Jupiter is not allowed to a bull”.
Today, no country is capitalist and, save for North Korea, no country is communist i.e, no private property. Even Cuba passed reforms three years ago allowing for property rights.
All countries have a mix of both. They also have socialist programs that the state is responsible for, even the most capitalist.
.
The war brought down on Serbia in 1999 was a cruel unprecedented act of offensive warfare that was conducted by a organization that was founded upon completely defensive principles. This act of wanton military adventurism had no legal basis upon which to base their offensive actions at the time the war began, even if it was not contrary to the basis upon which NATO had previously been employed, operated and founded. It was only later that a post-conceived premise was devised to act as an excuse for the unprovoked massive devastation that was carried out against the Serbian people. The post factum premise that was concluded in defense of NATO’s Serbian adventure was deemed to be due to a claim of anticipatory collective self-defense based solely upon an apparent threat to the stability of the region(https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1274&context=faculty_scholarship)
What makes this post factum pretext even more sinister is that it extends a legal basis of defense to any supra-nationalist entity, eg NATO, while expressly limiting it from every nation state, eg Serbia. This renders the defensive nature of a sovereign state to be subordinate to that of any supranational entity. The resulting axisymmetric advantage surrounding supranational entities, therefore, becomes overwhelming to any nation state targeted by such supranational entities. This stark reality stands in spite of the obvious contradiction that is presented by the fact that any nation state must directly answer to the state’s public while a supranational entity only answer to the power establishments within its member nations and thereby eliminates any direct consent by the governed to the actions or governance of such elitist authoritarians as presented in these supranational entities, eg NATO. The obvious implications are quite concerning to contemplate.
The more isolated a nation-state becomes, the greater the opportunity presents for such international organizations to manipulate a pretext of devastation and destruction as has been seen with the model presented in Serbia.
I have to admit that, as with Ukraine, I had no interest in the conflict that arose in Serbia, but the changes it brought about to the international covenant and objectives of NATO presented a significant concern to me. The presumption of an apparent threat to the stability of the region seems almost to suggest the concept of pre-crime, as any national disorder could be construed to potentially lead to such threats to regional stability. Furthermore, it placed international bodies making judgements based on national disputes which have never before been the subject of international enforcement. Unfortunately, over the years, my concerns were proven to be fully warranted, even more so than I had originally presumed at the time of the Serbian War.
@Felix
Do you have a good source to suggest for Trotsky’s interest in the Zionist effort. I have often been curious of a greater clarity on this topic, but routinely fail to inquire from you any suggestion, given your strong interest and obvious familiarity with the sources on the topic.
Sebastien
This was four different items collected into one and much visited
He is talking on the fly to reporters thinking as he goes.
It’s similar to the 1916 Rebellion Trotsky and Lenin both wrote on it.
They were with them unconditionally.
Still they knew it was not the deeper solution but were nevertheless VERY sensitive in their words.
Very similar.
@Felix
Leon Trotsky
On the Jewish Problem
Written: 1937-1940
First Published: Various publications, but collected and sources for this edition here: Vol. 6 No. 12, December 1945, Volume 6, No. 12, pages 377-379
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2008. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons License [You can freely copy, distribute, and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm
So Israel does not have to be communist
But Israel does have to understand what is capitalism?
And has to dig these basic concepts of knowledge. SUCH AS WHAT IS IMPERIALISM?
And in practice has to do what Trotsky pretty well insisted in 1937
Which was create a SECURE HOMELAND FOR THE JEWS
It is not strictly speaking what’s wrong with “the modern world” but with the system we live within.
That is the capitalist system. It’s what Meirsheimer talks about all the time in so many hours but to his shame does not pin it to capitalism.
Nor does the name of Marx enter. Even though he DESCRIBED IT PRECISELY
What is “IT”
Capitalism inevitably growing into Imperialism.
Simple concepts. Truth bombs. But hidden by so many agencies.