So I’m only in the second chapter, but does any of this sound familiar to you?
Unlike most nations, Yugoslavia was built on an idea, Ramsey Clark once noted. With a federation of their own, it was hoped that the southern Slavs would not remain weak and divided peoples, easy prey to imperial interests. The idea was that they would learn to live together, forming a substantial territory capable of economic development. Indeed, after World War II, socialist Yugoslavia became something of an economic success. Between 1960 and 1980 it had one of the most vigorous growth rates, along with free medical care and education, a guaranteed right to an income, one-month vacation with pay, a literacy rate of over 90 per cent, and a life expectancy of seventy- two years. Yugoslavia also offered its multi-ethnic citizenry afford- able public transportation, housing, and utilities, in a mostly publicly owned, market-socialist economy. As late as 1990, better than 60 per cent of the total labor force was in the public sector, much of it self-managed.’ Even Misha Glenny, who sees Stalinism lurking in every Communist system, was able to state: "Throughout forty years of Communist control in central and south-eastern Europe, Belgrade had always offered a ray of optimism. Together with its sister cities in the [Yugoslav] federation, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Sarajevo, it boasted a lively cultural life, [and] a relatively high standard of living.
This was not the kind of country that global capitalism would normally countenance. Still, the United States tolerated socialistic Yugoslavia’s existence for forty-five years because it was seen as a wedge to divide the Warsaw Pact nations. The continued existence of Yugoslavia as a nonaligned socialist country also had the grudging support of the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia was a founding member of the United Nations and of the Nonaligned Nations Conference, and a regular participant in UN peacekeeping missions. But by 2000 it had been reduced to a pariah, the only country ever expelled from the United Nations. After the overthrow of Communism throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) remained the only nation in that region that would not voluntarily discard what remained of its social- ism and install an unalloyed free-market system. It also proudly had no interest in joining NATO. The US goal has been to transform the FRY into a Third World region, a cluster of weak right-wing principalities with the following characteristics:
§ Incapable of charting an independent course of self- development.
§ Natural resources completely accessible to transnational corporate exploitation, including the enormous mineral wealth in Kosovo.
§ An impoverished but literate and skilled population work- ing at subsistence wages, a cheap labor pool that will help depress wages in Western Europe and elsewhere.
§ Dismantled petroleum, engineering, mining, fertilizer, phar- maceutical, construction, automotive, and agricultural industries, so they no longer offer competition against Western producers.
US policy makers wanted to abolish Yugoslavia’s public- sector services and social programs, using the same “shock therapy” imposed on the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The ultimate goal has been the complete privatization and Third Worldization of Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, and, for that matter, every other nation. It is to replace the social wage with a neoliberal global free market, a process that would deliver still greater wealth and power into the hands of those at the top. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, FRY leaders, not unlike Communist leaders in other Eastern European countries, com- mitted a disastrous error. They decided to borrow heavily from the West in order to simultaneously expand the country’s industrial base, its export production, and its output of domestic consumer goods. But when Western economies entered a reces- sion and blocked Yugoslav exports, thereby diminishing its export earnings, this created a huge debt for Belgrade. And the massive debt began to develop its own interest-fed momentum. In short order, as in so many other debtor nations, the creditors, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), demanded a “restructuring.”’ Restructuring consists of a draconian austerity program of neoliberal “reforms”: wage freezes, the abolition of state subsidized prices, increased unemployment, the elimination of most worker-managed enterprises, and massive cuts in social spending. The Yugoslavs were to consume less and produce more, so that a larger portion of the national wealth might be redirected toward meeting debt payments.
The propaganda campaign to demonize the Serbs began early in the decade. One of the Slovene government’s first acts after declaring independence in 1991 was to create a well-equipped media center that would distribute vivid reports about nonexistent battles, exaggerated casualty figures, and alleged Yugoslav army (Serbian) atrocities. By depicting the brief and limited conflict in the bloodiest terms imaginable, and portraying themselves as pro-West democrats struggling against Yugoslav Communist aggressors, the Slovenes hoped to marshal international support for their cause. Not long after, the Croats and Muslims did the same by conjuring up images of a dehumanized Communist Serbian threat to Europe.
Basically the Serbs are being portrayed by Parenti as poor innocent victims of NATO, but even by just looking at the massive civilian casualty rate it’s pretty obvious that’s not going to hold. Combine that with NATO actually favoring the Serbs by blocking weapons when only the Serbs had them, and the pro-Serb resolution of the genocide, and it turns out NATO didn’t actually favor the Croats or Bosnians as like Parenti claims.
BE basically addresses that at the beginning of the video.
Between 1960 and 1980 it had one of the most vigorous growth rates
Yugoslavia was a very successful nation until the 1980’s, but after the death of Tito the economy started stagnating and then it was ripe for ethnic tensions from the populations which had existed before to resurface. The Serbs with the majority voting in favor for pro-Serbs legislation didn’t help.
Some people argue that nationalism, not class, has been the real motor force behind the Yugoslav conflict. This pre- sumes that class and ethnicity are mutually exclusive. In fact, ethnic enmity can be enlisted to serve class interests, as the CIA tried to do with indigenous peoples in Indochina and Nicaragua—and more recently in Bosnia and Kosovo. One of the great deceptions of Western policy, remarks Joan Phillips, is that “those who are mainly responsible for the bloodshed in Yugoslavia—not the Serbs, Croats or Muslims, but the Western powers—are depicted as saviors.”
While pretending to work for harmony, US leaders have supported “self-determination” in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Vojvodina. “Self-determination” has meant the end of ethnic multiculturalism, the forced monopolization of territory by one or another national group, and the subverting of Yugoslav sovereignty. Legitimate measures of self-preservation taken by the FRY were now stigmatized as criminal actions. The Yugoslav army was no longer a legal instrument of national defense but an aggressor, a threat to the independence of “new nations.”
When different national groups are living together with some measure of social and material security, they tend to get along. There is intermingling and even intermarriage. Misha Glenny, who ascribes the Yugoslav crisis almost entirely to ethnic enmi- ties, nonetheless admits that before May 1991, Croats and Serbs lived together in relative contentment, experiencing everyday friendships throughout regions that were subsequently “so dreadfully ravaged.” While aware that Yugoslavia was entering troubled seas, nobody in their wildest fantasies predicted that towns would be leveled, and Croats and Serbs killing each other. In Bosnia, too, there were "a large number of Muslims, particu- larly intellectuals in Sarajevo, who refused to give up the Yugoslav idea. They believed genuinely and reasonably that the chaotic mix of Slays and non-Slays on the territory of what was Yugoslavia forced everybody to live together.`2
But as the economy gets caught in the ever-tightening downward debt spiral, with cutbacks and growing unemploy- ment, it becomes easier to induce internecine conflicts, as the different nationalities begin to compete more furiously than ever for a share of the shrinking pie. And once the bloodletting starts, the cycle of vengeance and retribution takes on a momentum of its own. In order to hasten the discombobulation of Yugoslavia, the Western powers provided the most retrograde, violent, separatist elements with every advantage in money, organization, propaganda, arms, hired thugs, and the full might of the US national security state at their backs. Once more the Balkans were to be balkanized.
Supposedly it was Serbian mass atrocities during 1991-95 that necessitated Western intervention. In fact the Western powers were deeply involved in inciting civil war and secession in the FRY before that time. One of the earliest and most active sponsor of secession was Germany, which first openly championed Yugoslavia’s dismemberment in 1991, but was giving Slovenia and Croatia every encouragement long before then. Washing- ton’s declared policy was to support Yugoslav unity while imposing privatization, IMF shock therapy, and debt payment, in effect, supporting Yugoslavia with words while undermining it with deeds. Concern was expressed by the Bush administration that Bonn “was getting out ahead of the US” with its support of Croatian secession, but the United States did little to deter Germany’s efforts.3And by January 1992, the United States had become an active player in the breakup of Yugoslavia.
That Washington consciously intended to undermine the socialist government of Yugoslavia one way or another is not a matter of speculation but of public record. As early as 1984, the Reagan administration issued US National Security Decision Directive 133: “United States Policy towards Yugoslavia,” labeled “secret sensitive.” A censored version of this document was released years later. It followed closely the objectives laid out in an earlier directive aimed at Eastern Europe, one that called for a “quiet revolution” to overthrow Communist governments while "reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into the orbit of the World [capitalist] market."4The economic “reforms” adopted in Yugoslavia under pressure from the IMF and other foreign creditors required that all socially owned firms and all worker-managed production units be transformed into private capitalist enterprises.
Washington threatened to cut off aid if Yugoslavia did not hold elections in 1990, further stipulating that these elections were to be conducted only within the various republics and not at the federal level. US leaders—using the National Endowment for Democracy, various CIA fronts, and other agencies—fun- neled campaign money and advice to conservative separatist political groups, described in the US media as “pro-West” and the “democratic opposition.” Greatly outspending their opponents, these parties gained an electoral edge in every republic save Serbia and Montenegro.
As economic conditions in the PRY went from bad to worse, the government of the Slovene Republic opted for “disassocia- tion” and a looser confederation. In 1989, Slovenia dosed its borders and prohibited demonstrations by any of its citizens who opposed the drift toward secession.’
Other US moves to fragment Yugoslavia came when the Bush administration pressured Congress into passing the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. This law provided aid only to the separate republics, not to the Yugoslav govern- ment, further weakening federal ties. Arms shipments and military advisers poured into the secessionist republics of Slo- venia and Croatia, particularly from Germany and Austria.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, FRY leaders, not unlike Communist leaders in other Eastern European countries, com- mitted a disastrous error. They decided to borrow heavily from the West in order to simultaneously expand the country’s industrial base, its export production, and its output of domestic consumer goods. But when Western economies entered a reces- sion and blocked Yugoslav exports, thereby diminishing its export earnings, this created a huge debt for Belgrade. And the massive debt began to develop its own interest-fed momentum. In short order, as in so many other debtor nations, the creditors, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), demanded a “restructuring.”’ Restructuring consists of a draconian austerity program of neoliberal “reforms”: wage freezes, the abolition of state subsidized prices, increased unemployment, the elimination of most worker-managed enterprises, and massive cuts in social spending. The Yugoslavs were to consume less and produce more, so that a larger portion of the national wealth might be redirected toward meeting debt payments.
I’ll read on because I rather trust Parenti’s analyses over YT trust me bros that are having monetized and treated to with with s fascist regime tand inform on the liberal by painting him as commie,because the insult wars hurt his feelings.
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:To_kill_a_nation
So I’m only in the second chapter, but does any of this sound familiar to you?
I think for the book it’s moreso chapter 10: “demonizing the Serbs” https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:To_kill_a_nation/Demonizing_the_Serbs
Basically the Serbs are being portrayed by Parenti as poor innocent victims of NATO, but even by just looking at the massive civilian casualty rate it’s pretty obvious that’s not going to hold. Combine that with NATO actually favoring the Serbs by blocking weapons when only the Serbs had them, and the pro-Serb resolution of the genocide, and it turns out NATO didn’t actually favor the Croats or Bosnians as like Parenti claims.
BE basically addresses that at the beginning of the video.
Yugoslavia was a very successful nation until the 1980’s, but after the death of Tito the economy started stagnating and then it was ripe for ethnic tensions from the populations which had existed before to resurface. The Serbs with the majority voting in favor for pro-Serbs legislation didn’t help.
The book is freely available, for the rest
Well would ya lookit that. Chapter 3 really gets into it.
Why did the economy start stagnating?
I’ll read on because I rather trust Parenti’s analyses over YT trust me bros that are having monetized and treated to with with s fascist regime tand inform on the liberal by painting him as commie,because the insult wars hurt his feelings.