Open statement from Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic - Irish section
18 Feb., 2005
Supporting the International Conference “ The Hague Proceedings against Slobodan Milosevic: Emerging Issues in International Law” –
Details below -
We live in strange times. When fun is equated with destruction and murder.
Consider if you will this comment summarising a personal military ethos and directed to us by former latrine orderly US Marine officer Lieutenant General James Mattis...
“It's fun to shoot some people. You go into Afghanistan , you've got guys who slap women around for five years because they don't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood anyway, so it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”
It was this same Lieutenant General Mattis who dismissed photographic evidence of the slaughter by US-led forces of dozens of people at an Iraqi wedding party last year.
Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony.
11 of the dead were women. 14 were children.
In November last year Operation Phantom obliterated the historic and beautiful city of Falluja in Iraq the home of over 300,000 people before the merciless onslaught by US forces.
Hundreds of thousands of children and an equal number of the sick and the elderly have died in Iraq as a direct result of sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations.
There were no weapons of mass destruction so Iraq constituted no threat to countries in the West. Clearly the specific purpose to invading Iraq was to reduce the country to third world status and lessen its influence in the Middle East on behalf of Israel and corporate interests across the globe.
World populations conditioned through the media principally to accepting the basic concept of the “enemy” and the “alien” respond in Pavlovian fashion to such words as “evil” and “dictator” and are correspondingly evoked into a war like mode and disposition and as often as not this leads to a manufactured desire for revenge.
The unrelenting remorseless media demonisation of the Serbian people and President Slobodan Milosevic serves as exemplar without parallel of this Orwellian consciousness controlling process.
War is an immensely profitable enterprise for a relatively small number of people for whom it is an absolute necessity to control the consciousness or to put it another way annihilate the consciousness of millions of people across the globe.
The most effective way to do this is through sensationalism which is basically a disguised form of sadomasochism. In short you create a desire for and addiction to all that is sensational….
Public crucifixions were certainly sensational as were public beheadings and hangings and gladiatorial contests . Unquestionably all this blood letting paved the way for an acceptance of slaughter unlimited in mass warfare.
Desensitisation is the purpose of this exercise. In this blood soaked age the capacity to desensitise the great mass of people everywhere is truly phenomenal.
Drugs and excessive use of alcohol and an addiction to loveless and mechanistic style pornography obliterating any concept of affection or consideration for others is projected as “normal” and all that is debased and meretricious and gratuitously violent is daily fare on television screens across the world . No longer are we afforded time to reflect as we are ceaselessly besought by the deceivers and would be manipulators of the collective consciousness to “move forward” as we are bade quite sternly to “come to terms with” grief and loss and the leave taking of loved ones and matters over which we may have little or no control but nevertheless require reflection.
Perhaps we should resist this cold blooded imperative to live precisely in the moment as we might perhaps challenge the martial call to “move forward” perceiving it to be in no way concerned with our personal or collective welfare but rather to be a directive to conform to an ethos of a militaristic even imperialistic ethos.
In the struggle for truth, justice and peace over imperialism and warfare join the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic in its support of President Slobodan Milosevic and other Yugoslav political prisoners who are currently on trial at the US/NATO sponsored “tribunal” in The Hague .
John Kelly
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (Irish Section)
For further information please do not hesitate to contact us at:
cdsmireland@eircom.net Tel: +044 45787 or +086 1963134
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (ICDSM Ireland)
STATEMENT FROM COMMITTEE TO DEFEND SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC – UK Section
As we write this piece Slobodan Milosevic and other Yugoslav political prisoners are on trial at the US sponsored Hague ‘tribunal' for no other reason than they had the courage to defy Nato and the New World Order and attempted to protect the independence of their country and the interests of its citizens.
Slobodan Milosevic is currently conducting his own defence, a fundamental right for any accused, but a right that he and his supporters have had to fight tooth and nail to protect, as anyone following the ‘trial' process will be aware.
Although suffering from life threatening health problems his defence presentation is being hampered by artificial time restrictions imposed by the ‘tribunal', restrictions that were not imposed on the prosecution, resulting in both insufficient rest periods and preparation time.
Followers of the ‘trial' will also know that Mr Milosevic is not using his defence to defend himself but is using it to defend his country and its people and to accuse the Western powers of deliberately financing, aiding and abetting the destruction of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is in that sense that this ‘trial' is of immense importance.
The bogus charges against him have not stood up to close examination but on the contrary, they have revealed the political nature of these proceedings.
To understand events in the world today, the occupation of Iraq, the interference in elections in Georgia, Belarus and the Ukraine, the fictitious ‘war on terror' and the butchering of international law, it is essential to understand what was done to the sovereign state of Yugoslavia.
What this means in other words is that to support the defence of Slobodan Milosevic is not only supporting the President, is not only supporting the slandered citizens of Yugoslavia, but is supporting all those who cherish true freedom and democracy, who cherish truth and justice, and it is supporting those who oppose the idea that the world should be organised and run for the benefit of a tiny financial elite at the expense of the vast majority of the world's population.
It is for these reasons that we ask you to support this struggle, to support the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) and its national sections.
Please make every effort to support the forthcoming public meetings in Britain , details of which will be announced shortly.
And please permit us to leave you with the following quote:
"First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me."
Pastor Niemoeller (victim of the Nazis).
For further information please visit the web sites: www.free-slobo-uk.org and www.icdsm.org
18th February 2005 .
*********************************************************************
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Sloboda/Freedom association)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.free-slobo.de/ (German section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (US section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (ICDSM Ireland)
http://www.pasti.org/milodif.htm (ICDSM Italy )
http://www.free-slobo-uk.org (ICDSM UK )
http://www.wpc-in.org/ (world peace council)
http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Balkan antiNATO center)