<nettime> ivogram 042399

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Ivo Skoric <ivo@reporters.net>
          Good diagnostics, bad medicine
          The Appeal from Novi Sad: Leave The Bridge Alone
          Re: no title

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 14:11:17 +0000
Subject: Good diagnostics, bad medicine

 I like Marcos's analysis. I am trying to understand why European 
powers follow the U.S. so sheepishly. And he is right about the stock 
market: I follow it blindly to get the clues about how many bridges 
will NATO bomb the next night - there is alawys more intense bombing 
after the indexes go up and if they continue to go up, the CNN 
continue to report the most intense bombing nights so far - every 
consequtive night, and if the indexes turn down, then the bad weather 
comes in justifying a night of lukewarm bombing. Also the Dollar can 
buy ever more Euros since the air raids started....

One just would not expect from Zapatistas to react like  that - they 
are perhaps pissed that the US won't bomb Mexican government that 
oppresses them like Yugoslav Government oppresses Kosovo Albanians, 
huhuhu.

And the medicine he offers at the end was tried and did not work.

ivo
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------

March 20, 1999
 
DECLARATION OF THE ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT AGAINST THE WAR IN
YUGOSLAVIA
 
STOP NATO'S AGGRESSION AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF SERBIA AND KOSOVO!
 
The bombardment decided on by the new lords of war and money and led by
the forces of NATO is not aimed at protecting the rights of the Kosovar
people, denied by the chauvinist Great Serbia policy of the Milosevic
government, but to further advance the goal of putting an end to the
borders that previously existed, in the terrain of national states as in
the international community.

With this action, the North American financial oligarchy, very sensitive
to the investment of capital in the military industry, brings to knees not
simply the people and governments of the Balkans, but all the governments
of Western Europe. There exists an inexorable relation between the
emergence of the euro and the European Union and the North American action
to place the various European governments in the position of pawns.

The Clinton government, but above all the financial oligarchy, dictates a
message to the world: there is no problem, large or small, that is not
under the aegis of the United States. At the same time a warning to
Europe: any process of transnational unity must be subordinate to North
American foreign policy. In this sense, the principal losers in this war
are France and Germany; placing in crisis, before its birth, the
possibility of an economic bloc that can compete with the United States.

The pain and oppression of the Kosovar people represents no more than an
excuse for the lords of money and war. The hypocritical stance is evident
in the manner in which the Kosovar peopleOs desires for independence were
denied at the Rambouillet conference, violating their elemental right of
self-determination guaranteed by the charter of the United Nations.

The bombing has not signified an improvement in the lives of the
inhabitants of Kosovo or a curtailment of the ideology of Great Serbia; on
the contrary, there are now hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees, and
the sentiments of ethnic purity in the rest of Yugoslavia have been
inflamed as never before.

The idea expressed by this cynicism disguised as humanitarianism--which
can be rendered: "Sometimes you have to make war to prevent war"--has been
proven completely false in the Balkans. Actually, it is necessary to make
war because it is great business; it is simply necessary to watch the
recent reactions of the various stock markets. The suffering of the
Kosovar people is worth several more points in the speculative indices.

The Zapatista National Liberation Front utterly repudiates the war of
Clinton and his European peons, Jospin, Blair, Shroeder, Aznar, etc., who
permit themselves to be used to consolidate United States world hegemony,
who have demonstrated the profound contempt they feel for the
international community and the national states of the world. Bombardment
of a civil population has never served a noble end.

At the same time we demand that the self-determination rights of the
people of Kosovo be guaranteed. The Kosovars of Albanian origin represent
80 percent of the population. After the death of Marshall Tito, the
Milosevic regime revived the ultra-nationalist ideology that oppresses
ethnic minorities, eliminated Kosovo's autonomy statute, impeded the use
of the Albanian tongue and repressed the traditions, culture and form of
social organization of the majority of the people of Kosovo. The criminal
bombardment cannot make us blind. Milosevic is a dictator. We can and
should oppose the bombardments as well as the tyrannical and oppressive
politics of Milosevic.

Under the same logic of defending the the right to autonomy and respect
between majorities and minorities that share the same territory, the FZLN
denounces the actions of terrorist groups supported by the international
oligarchies intent on crushing the rights of the Serb minority in Kosovo,
and supporting the war and the NATO bombardment.

The only exit that the FZLN proposes as ethically and humanly correct is
the nonintervention of external powers in the conflict. The ethnicities
which share the same territory in Kosovo are the only ones who, by means
of dialogue, can and should protect their rights of self-determination and
forms of coexistence.
 
No to the bombardment of Serbia!
Yes to self-determination for the Kosovar people!
 
No to NATO! No to Milosevic!
 
 
Zapatista National Liberation Front

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 14:11:46 +0000
Subject: The Appeal from Novi Sad: Leave The Bridge Alone

Novi Sad had three important bridges across the Danube river. The 
bridges connected East and West of the divided Europe. Two of those 
bridges were destroyed by smart bombs. NATO gave the justification 
that those bridges were considered military targets since, military 
vehicles, among others, were being using it. The third bridge - 
Zezelj's bridge - the oldest among the three was left alone in the 
Phase I, but NATO decided to "re-visit" it recently. Despite the 
three hits, the bridge is still standing, proving that the odd old 
rules from Bosnia and Croatia work in Yugoslavia, too: the older the 
bridge is, the more solid it is and nothing that communists build can 
withstand the rigors of war. 

Following the third hit of Zezelj's bridge a group of citizens of 
Novi Sad issued appeal (enclosed here) that this bridge should be 
spared destruction. I want to outline the list of reasons why I 
subscribe to their appeal:
1) dropping the third bridge to the sandy, shallow Danube bottom can 
create an unwelcome obstacle for the large river; the water levels 
can rise over the city dikes, and Novi Sad may be flooded creating 
yet another humanitarian disaster.
2) the rubble of two previously destroyed bridges obstructed the 
river traffic sufficiently, and Zezelj's bridge is damaged enough to 
prevent traffic over it - therefore, the NATO military objectives are 
achieved and no further bombing is necessary.
3) Novi Sad is a multi-ethnic city (Serbs, Hungarians, Croats and 
Germans) with a democratically elected anti-Milosevic city government 
whose youth has a long tradition of draft resistance and dessertion 
from Milosevic's army during wars in Bosnia and Croatia. It is not 
fair to further punish Novi Sad citizens by destruction of mixed 
(civilian & military) use objects. NATO wants to portray itself as 
fair, yet it behaves sometimes like Serbs in Bosnia (Serbs in Bosnia 
destroyed nearly all bridges, except the old one in Mostar, which was 
destroyed by Croats: http://balkansnet.org/mostar.html).

Ivo
ps - my mother-side family is German from Novi Sad; my mother still
has a house in Petrovaradin, where now Serb refugees from Croatia
live; my grandfather was marched to Bleiburg after the WWII and kept 5
years in prison by communists for being in Wehrmacht, and my mom was
never allowed on college in Belgrade; still she graduated medical
school in Zagreb and moved to Germany where she lives in works now;
she still has a lot of friends in Novi Sad - her best friend is a wife
of an architect of one of the destroyed bridges... - although she has
no reasons to feel any sympathy for the Serbs, she is devastated by
the destruction of Novi Sad, the city she loves very much - that just
proves that urbanized people feel more attachment to their city than
to their nation.


Translated letter:
This is a short message from Novi Sad, which was today around 15:30 
again a target of the attack.
Several missiles hit the Zezelj's bridge, which is still standing - 
so, it is not destroyed.
It is good that it did not fall into Danube. We wish to point out 
several facts and we appeal on you to forward this further:
- the bottom of Danube river at the place of Zezelj's bridge is 
particularly sandy, and in the case of destruction and bridge's fall 
in the river, it would be impossible to dig the rubble out.
- due to a combination of unfortunate circumstances, the fallen 
bridge would create a dam and the water level would rise
- the bridge was after this afternoon damged enough to prevent any 
traffic; any further attacks would therefore be aimed solely against 
the civilian population 

We are very concerned about that. Please, help our efforts to inform 
the international community about that. Zezelj's bridge was attacked 
today for the third time and it is still standing.
...
The original letter follows:

Novi Sad, 22.04.1999.
18:57

Ovo je kratko javljanje iz Novog Sada, koji je danas oko 15:30 ponovo bio
meta napada.
Sa nekoliko projektila raketiran je Zezeljev most, koji se jos uvek drzi -
dakle nije srusen.

Dobro je da nije pao u Dunav. Upozoravamo na nekoliko cinjenica i molim da
informaciju
prosledite dalje:

- korito Dunava je na okuci kod Zezeljevog mosta izuzetno peskovito i u
slucaju rusenja mosta on bi verovatno utonuo u pesak iz kojeg bi ga skoro
nemoguce bilo izvuci
- obaranje mosta moglo bi sticajem nesretnih okolnosti dovesti do stvaranja
prirodne brane koja bi podigla nivo vode, koji je ionako dosta visok.
- most je nakon popodnevnog napada potpuno onesposobljen za bilo kakav
saobracaj i svako dalje atakovanje bilo bi usmereno iskljucivo protiv
civilnog stanovnistva

Veoma smo zabrinuti zbog svega ovoga i molimo da nas podrzite u naporu da
svetsku javnost obavestimo o ovome. Zezeljev most je danas po treci put
napadnut. Jos odoleva.

Give a chance to bridge.
Give a chance to Novi Sad.

Fatal target.

Pozdrav svima,
Sassa

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 14:12:12 +0000
Subject: Re: no title

The problem is that Yugoslavia has to request presence of the 
International Red Cross on its territory, and so far Yugoslavia 
excplicitly ordered all foreigners (except for the IRC) out. The IRC 
cannot go to Kosovo unless it is invited by Yugoslav authorities to 
do so. Now, this is an interesting proposition: should the Red Cross 
be allowed in Kosovo, they might be able to help starving and sick 
Albanian and Serb displaced persons. Also, their presence on the 
ground would put NATO in the situation to have to ease off the 
bombing of the area. However, they'd also be in position to 
first-handedly observe the ugly consequences of the ethnic cleansing 
policy. In other words neither NATO nor Serbian government are in a 
rush to put the Red Cross there, which just suggests that their 
synchronous wailing about the suffering refugees is just political 
posturing with no real will to actually help the suffering.

ivo

Date:          Thu, 22 Apr 1999 23:32:11 +0200

But the international red cross demands the "filling of a file" to open
(maybe) an action towards yugoslav people who survive under the bombs. Had the
refugees in Albany and Macedony to "fill a file" for becoming help of
humanitarian organisations?

Romain Kroes, not proud to be french, now.

Leo Lanzalone a écrit:

> Leo Lanzalone@TRANSALTA
> 22/04/99 02:56 PM
>
> The International Red Cross should be allowed into Kosovo to aid the dying
> and the sick of either side.  The refugees should be allowed the right to
> medical attention.

---
#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl