'Wars, conflict- it's all business', sighs Monsieur Verdoux, the cynical anti-hero of Charlie Chaplin's classic film. Well, he certainly wasn't proved wrong when it came to Kosovo. And he certainly wasn't contradicted by events in Iraq either, as Naomi Klein's brilliant new book The Shock Doctrine details.
Both the illegal aggression against Yugoslavia and the equally unlawful attack on Iraq were wars of plunder: wars that were waged for economic, not humanitarian reasons.
And the next war that the neo-cons have planned, against Iran, is a war for corporate profits too. Forget the claptrap about Iran attempting to develop nuclear weapons- which is a neo-con fiction as false as the non-existent 'genocide' in Kosovo and the mythical WMD in Iraq: the real reason why 'regime change' is so important in Tehran is that Iran still operates a predominantly state-owned economy. It is a little known fact that around 75-80% of the Iranian economy is in some form of public ownership: meaning that there's some very rich pickings in store for western capital, should a privatising, puppet government be imposed.
The countries the neo-cons have targeted have in many ways been very different. Yugoslavia, under President Milosevic, was a European multi-party democracy. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a secular dictatorship. And today's Iran is a Islamic republic, whose head of state is an Ayatollah.
But Yugoslavia, Iraq and Iran, for all their differences, had one thing in common. A large state-owned economy, which was not fully 'open' to western capital.
It really is no coincidence.
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I agree. With Iran the jewel in the crown is the National Iran Oil Company. What the western multis would do to get their mits on that!
The Serbs are not innocents?
They did massacre Muslims in Kosovo.
They attacked them before and during the Nato attacks...
Nato attacks didn't protect Muslims in a way, I agree, but to say massacre didn't take place is very far away from the truth
Forget the claptrap about Iran attempting to develop nuclear weapons- which is a neo-con fiction as false as the non-existent 'genocide' in Kosovo and the mythical WMD in Iraq:
You have absolutely conclusive and clinching proof of this, do you? Or do you just believe literally anything you read that's suitably anti-American?
A rhetorical question, naturally, as I suspect your loyal readers already know the answer.
Dan, There was no Massacre at Racak in Kosovo its a Hoax, the real number of dead in Kosovo is somewhere around 3,000(Serbs and Albanians), not the 10,000 the MSM keeps touting. (Just as they touted that 200,000 Muslims alone were killed in Bosnia where it has just recently been revealed that there were in total roughly 250,000 deaths amongst the three Warring ethnic groups)
So no it wasn't a Massacre the Albanians were just losing the fight they were going down, 2 Albanians to every one Serbian.
And the Refugee Catastrophe was created by the Albanians themselves, check out this link
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38d93ba60b40.htm
And here is that Report that disproves the 10,000 dead in Kosovo Bull spit
http://slobodan-milosevic.org/news/dfasa082407.htm
You have absolutely conclusive and clinching proof of this, do you? asks 'yeehaw'. I think the onus should be the other way round- on those who make claims of genocide, WMD and Iranian nuclear programmes to prove THEIR case. Which they have clearly failed to do. We know that there was no genocide in Kosovo, (what there was there was a western backed terrorist campaign by the KLA aimed at destabilising the socialist regime in Belgrade, which was pursuant with the west's aim of breaking up Yugoslavia). We know too that Iraq did not possess WMD. And there is not a single scrap of evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons either.
As to the anti-American jibe, I think this blogs 'loyal readers' (and around 30% of them are based in America),will acknowledge that its author is not anti-american, ('anti-Americans' don't usually post, on a regular basis, pieces praising New York and US music and television series), but merely anti-current US foreign policy.
Yeehaw! boy! didn't we have conclusive and clinching proof of WMD in Iraq!?!?! Does this mean that you still believe in the tooth fairy too?
I was never one of those who believed the Bush administration was getting ready to attack Iran in 2006 or early 2007. But it is now clear that at least Vice President Dick Cheney is conspiring to push through a specific plan for war with Iran. And Senator Joe Lieberman is an active part of that conspiracy.
We have known for a long time that Cheney wants a major air attack on Iranian nuclear sites and other military and economic targets. But an August 9 story published by McClatchy newspapers reveals that, instead of waiting for a decision to go ahead with such a strategic attack against Iran, Cheney now hopes to get Bush to approve an attack on camps in Iran where Iraqi Shiite militiamen have allegedly been trained in recent years. The McClatchy story says Cheney proposed such a strike within the administration "several weeks ago," citing "two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy." The official sources say Cheney "argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq." An example of such "hard new evidence," according to one of the official sources of the report, would be "catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran."
The story also indicates that the same officials say Condoleezza Rice "opposes this idea" and suggest that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates agrees with her position.
The Cheney proposal for an airstrike against three bases in Iran can have only one purpose -- to provoke an Iranian retaliation that would then make it possible to unleash a full-fledged strategic air attack against Iran. The provocation strategy would be an obvious way around the political obstacles in the way of an unprovoked attack.see my blog.k
http://kudeed.tblog.com/
The increasing number of child victims is primarily explained by the higher proportion of civilian deaths in recent conflicts. In the wars of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, only about half the victims were civilians. In the later decades of this century the proportion of civilian victims has been rising steadily: in World War II it was two thirds, and by the end of the 1980s it was almost 90 per cent.
Families and children are not just getting caught in the crossfire, they are also likely to be specific targets. This is because many contemporary struggles are between different ethnic groups in the same country or in former States. When ethnic loyalties prevail, a perilous logic clicks in. The escalation from ethnic superiority to ethnic cleansing to genocide, as we have seen, can become an irresistible process. Killing adults is then not enough; future generations of the enemy—their children—must also be eliminated. As one political commentator ex-pressed it in a 1994 radio broadcast before violence erupted in Rwanda, "To kill the big rats, you have to kill the little rats."
The increasing number of child victims is primarily explained by the higher proportion of civilian deaths in recent conflicts. In the wars of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, only about half the victims were civilians. In the later decades of this century the proportion of civilian victims has been rising steadily: in World War II it was two thirds, and by the end of the 1980s it was almost 90 per cent.
Families and children are not just getting caught in the crossfire, they are also likely to be specific targets. This is because many contemporary struggles are between different ethnic groups in the same country or in former States. When ethnic loyalties prevail, a perilous logic clicks in. The escalation from ethnic superiority to ethnic cleansing to genocide, as we have seen, can become an irresistible process. Killing adults is then not enough; future generations of the enemy—their children—must also be eliminated. As one political commentator ex-pressed it in a 1994 radio broadcast before violence erupted in Rwanda, "To kill the big rats, you have to kill the little rats."
Neil, you said, "western backed terrorist campaign by the KLA aimed at destabilising the socialist regime in Belgrade".
I'm surprosed you have adabted an American language, this is what they say about Lebanon and Hizbullah.
ANONEMOUS, what defines massacre? what is the number of deaths required for an attack to be described as massacre?
Also, did the Serbs attacked Muslims in Kosovo, before or during the Nabo bombing?
I hope you won't deny a massacre in Bosnia as well?
Neil;
Did the Racak massacre of 45 civilians took place or not?
I didn't use the word genocide. that is your word.
If killing 45 civilians doesn't mount to be called a massacre, I don't know what is.
Racak = Hoax
The articles in this link tends to throw serious doubt on the Authenticity of Racakhttp://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/racakhoax.htm
and just for fun lets toss in an article on Haradinaj's trial in the Hague, but the Albanians are all innocent victims yousay?http://www.sense-agency.com/en/stream.php?sta=3&pid=10218&kat=3
Anonemous:
Your link, gave the following verison of the Racak massacre:
"During the night, could the UCK have gathered the bodies, in fact killed by Serb bullets, to set up a scene of cold-blooded massacre?"
Grow up please, will you
The serbs killers of women and children in Bosnia, Serebrincha, Kosovo, have something to say about their crimes...
I'm one of theose ready to sign my name on every bullet the serbs deserdevly received. and feel sorry the Nato didn't wipe out Serbia for what they did in Bosnia....
Dan,
you are a bigot and a racist. I hope no one signs any bullets intended for you. That would be a waste of perfectly good ammunition.
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