A Viable Yugoslavia could not be permitted

The Soviet destabilizations were under America 's 1982 National Security Council Directive 54 (NSD-54). All East European countries except Yugoslavia were targeted. Yugoslavia was a special case that had prospered as the West attempted to wean it away from the Soviet bloc. The Yugoslavs lived in a country in which 90% of the land was privately owned, which had a respectable standard of living, education and medical care were free, and each citizen was guaranteed a job with 30 days paid vacation. This multi-ethnic melting pot organized under communal principals had secure jobs, cheap transportation, cheap housing, inexpensive utilities, and a relatively high average quality of life.

As they knew it would devastate their economy, Yugoslavia was not about to leave the well-being of its citizens to the vagaries of a fictitious "free market." As with Cuba , Nicaragua , Chile , and other nations which attempted to chart an independent course to control their own destiny, such independence was the one thing not tolerated by international capital. To understand the process, we need only look at the on-going destabilization (2001-2003) of the once relatively prosperous Yugoslavia .

IMF demands for currency devaluation and an increase in the Yugoslavian Central Bank's discount rate in 1980-84 were the opening guns of financial warfare for the destabilization of Yugoslavia. As their debt and interest rate increased from that currency devaluation, the Yugoslav economy slowed.

Then the 1984 U.S. National Security Council Directive 133 (NSD-133), labeled "SECRET SENSITIVE" and titled "United States Policy towards Yugoslavia," ordered the final fragmentation of that nation: A freeze was placed on transfer payments to the outlying provinces and the IMF denied Yugoslavia the right to credit (money creation) from its own central bank. They could no longer fund crucial economic and social programs such as industry and health care. (As you read on how Yugoslavia was destabilized, note the similarity to the "structural adjustments" imposed throughout the developing world by the IMF/World Bank.)

The results were planned and predictable: A 7.1% growth rate between 1966 and 1979 dropped to 2.8% in the 1980-87 period, zero in 1987-88, and in 1990 it reached an appalling minus 10.6%. This worked so well for the West they ordered another 30% currency devaluation which accelerated a 140% inflation rate to 937% in 1992 and 1,134% a year later, GDP dropped 50% in four years.[ss] The result was the destruction of Yugoslav buying power quite similar to what was done to the Soviet Union (as discussed above) under the pretext of establishing capitalism. Basic economics teaches a prosperous nation must have buying power. No Western nation would ever inflict such a wound on its own economy; destabilizing the Yugoslav economy, not development, was the goal.

Simultaneous with creating the extreme crisis in Yugoslavia, German foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, was promoting independence to his counterpart in the Yugoslav province of Croatia. In an annual event for funding destabilizations, U.S. 1990-91 legislation the "Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill" demanded separate elections for each Yugoslav province with the U.S. State Department approving their conduct and outcome. This aid was to go only to independent republics, none to the central government. Independence meant funding and trade for the provinces while federation meant continued embargoes and no funds.

All this, along with an eight-year embargo, assured the final breakup of Yugoslavia. Under the 1995 Dayton Accords, a constitution was written for the Bosnian Federation by the U.S. State Department stipulating that the negotiating coalition could appoint a High Representative (HR) with full executive powers to overrule the government. That façade of democracy (the Parliamentary Assembly) simply rubber-stamped the decisions of the HR and his expatriate advisors. Those accords stipulated that, "the first governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina is to be appointed by the IMF and 'shall not be a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina or a neighboring state.'" Because he objected to forcibly selling off banks, water, energy, telecommunications, transportation, and metal industries, at firesale prices, the elected president of the Serbian segment of Bosnia was forcibly removed by NATO.[136] All this was done under the flags of "freedom and democracy."

A peaceful relatively prosperous country, with 30% of marriages interethnic, erupted into civil war. Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina were torn away from the Yugoslav federation. Yugoslavia's Serbian population, who had forgiven the Western Christians for the slaughter of possibly one-third of the Eastern Orthodox Serbian men during Hitler's holocaust, was again facing second-class citizenship imposed by Western Christians.

Ethnic Albanians, 40% of Kosovo at the end of WWII, had increased to 80%. American and German intelligence armed and coached the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). These mercenaries surfaced in 1997, started assassinating Serbian police officers and ethnic Albanian collaborators (over 1,100 attacks on Serb police and Kosovar Albanian collaborationists, many fatal). The once relatively peaceful Kosovar rebellion had turned violent and the Yugoslav army was called in.[tt] Croatian General, Agim Ceku-who had been in command of artillery in the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia-took over command of the KLA in February 1998. This was a sure sign that America 's CIA, Germany 's BND, and the Military Professional Resources (MPRI, retired U.S. generals under Pentagon contract) were still orchestrating this destabilization.[137]

An assembly was convened in Rambouillet , France , a replay of the Dayton Accords, to essentially dictate the carving off of Kosovo. The accords called for 50,000 NATO troops to oversee that autonomous republic and they were to be granted the use of all airports, roads, rail, and ports free of any charges. Not only were they not to be subject to Yugoslav law they were to have supremacy over Yugoslav police and authorities and the right to inspect any part of not just Kosovo but Serbia itself. The Kosovo economy was to be structurally adjusted as per the Bosnia-Herzegovina economy and the Russian economy described above.

Yugoslavia had only two choices: sign the accords (dictates) or be bombed. Every diplomat of good conscience agreed that these were articles of surrender that no sovereign nation could sign. Those accords were essentially a disguised declaration of war.

The world, of course, heard only the prepared Mighty Wurlitzer press releases of an intransigent Yugoslavia as, with the support of the majority of their citizens who patriotically believed what they were told about Serbian atrocities, NATO proceeded to bomb the regional Orthodox Christians back to pre-1940 status.[138]

The CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer Turned Reality on its Head

The destabilization of Yugoslavia is a chance to study how propaganda works in what are called democracies with "freedom of the press." Previously, Yugoslavia had opposition radio stations, dissident publications, had several major political parties and each party had its own newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations. Milosevic had been elected three times, twice as president of Serbia and later as president of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav president had a cabinet to discuss and decide policy and an elected coalition parliament which included four major political parties and several smaller ones, more than any other country in Europe and they ranged fully from the left political spectrum to the right, which approved all decisions. This democratic governing process had even been shown occasionally on Western TV.

During the Western orchestrated coup that overthrew Milosevic, armed units seized all major TV, Radio, and newspaper outlets. When the dust settled, there remained essentially only one media. Just as in the West, all papers published the same stories and all were written with the same slant. Just as Americans can see the same news with the same slant on all TV channels, Serbs now found the same news with the same slant on all their TV channels. A nation which once had a wide choice of views suddenly had only one view, the Western neo-liberal view. (This should alert the motivated to investigate how, by who, and when neo-liberalism with its limited access to views was imposed on Western societies.)

On Western channels beamed into Yugoslavia and to the citizens of the West, Milosevic was labeled a dictator in almost every news report, while Croatian descendants of Hitler's Ustase-who ethnically cleansed Jews, Gypsies, and Serbs during WWII (the Three-Thirds Doctrine: one-third of the Serbs to be deported, one-third forced to become Catholics, and one-third to be executed), who had just imposed a one-party press, and who had just ethnically cleansed several hundred thousand Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia-were simultaneously labeled democratic.[uu] It is obvious that the Mighty Wurlitzer buzzwords which build our images of the world (those “frameworks of orientation” through which we view the world) are primarily for protection of wealth and power and have little relation to reality.

While Western puppets purged their territory of ethnic minorities even as the West was accusing Serbia of these atrocities, that besieged nation was the home to 26 ethnic groups, 1-million were refugees ethnically cleansed from former provinces of Yugoslavia (Croatia and Slovenia are now pure), including 350,000 Serbs (far greater now, 2004) and others ethnically cleansed from Kosovo after NATO's takeover of that province.[139]

The Reality the Mighty Wurlitzer was Hiding

As history is written by winners, it will remain largely unknown to most that the Kosovo rebellion was a civil war covertly organized and supported by the same governments militarily imposing the Rambouillet accords. According to the Workers World, some reality was expressed in a German documentary:

"Finally, long after the war, some of the truth began to break into the media. On Feb. 8, the major German television network ARD broadcast a special on the war entitled "It Began with a Lie." This showed that the charges of mass murder, genocide and organized "ethnic cleansing" made against Belgrade were inventions of the U.S. , German and other governments.[140]

The Serbs refused to sign away their sovereignty and may have reacted to the bombing by expelling the Albanian Kosovo population.[vv] The "free" press should be called to account for not alerting the public that it was NATO members acting and Yugoslavia doing the reacting. It was Yugoslavia and no one else under threat all the time. Yugoslavia was not threatening anyone outside its borders and was not threatening anyone within its borders until they were being covertly destabilized.

Homes were destroyed as the KLA were rooted out of the houses from which they were firing on Serb soldiers but no ethnic cleansing occurred until after NATO started bombing Yugoslavia.[ww] Nor was that ethnic cleansing as violent as we were told. The original propaganda figures of over 100 massacres with 100,000-to-500,000 Albanian men missing and thought to be slaughtered were reduced to a still sensationalized 10,000 expected to be found in mass graves when NATO first entered Kosovo. Inspection of the alleged 30 mass gravesites by an American FBI team turned up 200 bodies and dropped the Kosovar externally orchestrated civil war body count to 2,108 killed by all participants-the Serbs, the KLA, local grudge settlements, and NATO bombs. Emilio Perez Pujol, the head of the Spanish Forensic team conducting the investigation, said "not one mass grave was found."[141]

The propaganda principle is simple: Big headlines on the 100s of thousands expected to be found in mass graves and minimum or no coverage when nothing is found. Thus is propaganda spread right through the major media and the world's news services should be called to account for that. The problem is that any who did would be instantly ostracized by their audience and other media.

No mass graves and this very low body count, when an entire nation was being militarily fragmented by covertly funded and orchestrated opposition forces and under direct attack by those same foreign military forces as well as the 1-million refugees within Serbia from the destabilization and fragmentation of Yugoslavia, testifies to a successful NATO propaganda blitz (that Mighty Wurlitzer again) that has never been addressed in depth by the media of record. How could they, it is they who blazed the propaganda from their headlines.

When to the above disinformation we add the Pentagon wordsmiths' claim of the destruction of one-third of the Serbian military (122 tanks, 454 artillery pieces, and 222 armored personnel carriers) loudly proclaimed and the postwar investigation by General Wesley Clark, the West's commander of that war, that only 14 tanks, 20 artillery pieces, and 18 armored personnel carriers" were destroyed (this correction not covered by the media), that this was a planned propaganda campaign is obvious.[142]

The American/NATO assault on Serbia/Kosovo destroyed only about 50 of Serbia's major weapons of war and very few soldiers while killing more civilians than the accused nation, Serbia. However, that bombing blitz succeeded very well in creating massive destruction of the obvious real target, Serbia's civilian economic infrastructure.

Under the ultimate oxymoron of a "humanitarian war," which depicted the West as saviors as NATO bombed 15 essentially defenseless cities around the clock for 78 days, the successfully destroyed real targets of precision bombing were: heating plants for entire cities, 344 schools, 33 clinics and hospitals, power plants, food processing plants, pharmaceutical plants, bus and train depots, electrical grids, bridges, factories, power stations, trains, airports, water supply systems, warehouses, oil refineries, fuel storage, chemical factories, museums, and TV and radio stations. Among the commercial buildings destroyed were twin tower skyscrapers eerily reminiscent of the World Trade Center twin towers destroyed in the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on America.

After the destruction of Yugoslavia was carried out under the false flag of oppression and genocide in Kosovo, 350,000 Serbs, Gypsies, Slavic Muslims, Croatians, Jews, Turks and anti-fascist Ethnic Albanians were driven out of Kosovo in a continuation of the Albanian's ethnic cleansing that had been in progress since WWII (40% ethnic Albanian in 1945 increased to 80% by 1980 and is now over 90%).

At Milosevic's trial (on-going at this time) it was testified that the KLA assassinations orchestrated by Western intelligence were brought under control by Serbia in six months. The KLA assassins (of postmen, foresters, and other civil servants) jailed by Serbia were freed by the NATO occupation as "political prisoners." After defeating the defending Serbian army, the NATO occupation army then claims not to have been able to prevent a renewed ethnic cleansing of Serbs out of Kosovo by the very forces they financed, armed, and coached for eight years.

The Wealth moves to the Powerful West

We will quote from our previous work:

Powerbrokers within NATO are concerned with Yugoslavia only as a small battle within one or more of four centuries-long struggles: (1) The splitting of the Roman Empire into Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western Christianity starting in the fourth century. This created the Christian East and Christian West that are fighting over territory on the boundaries between those religions yet today, and it is obvious that, without the support of Western Christian nations, Yugoslavia 's Western Christians would not have had the political strength to shatter that once peaceful federation. (2) The 1,300-year struggle between both Eastern and Western Christians and Muslims, a battle between the Muslim East and the same Christian West. (The current alliance of the West with Balkan Muslims is only a strategic decision of managers-of-state.) (3) The seventy-year battle between communism and capitalism, the Cold War. Most, but not all, communists are currently Eastern Orthodox and most, but not all, capitalists are currently Western Christian. This is the historic in-step march of religion and governments as empires expand and contract. (4) And then, the centuries of battles over who will control the wealth-producing-process and thus who will lay claim to the wealth produced, the primary subject of this book. This battle over the world's wealth is between the fragmented periphery of empire and the same allied, coordinated, and powerful imperial-centers-of-capital.

That last struggle, managers-of-state utilizing religious and political loyalties to control the wealth-producing-process, is the one that counts. At any one moment, what is motivating any one person or one's vision of these historic events depends upon that person's position and loyalties within those four struggles. For those deeply committed to religion, or moderately religious and not interested in politics, which covers most of the masses, religious loyalties will determine their opinions. Those committed politically will be on one side or the other of the battle between capitalism and any form of cooperative society. If one is a corporate strategist, a Manager-of-State, or aware that one's livelihood is deeply affected-either positively or negatively-by the inequalities of trade, then some subdivision of the battle over world trade will be primary in their considerations.[143]

Clinton's Energy Secretary Bill Richardson spelled out America's Balkan policy a few months prior to the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia:

"This is about America 's energy security… It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the West… We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."[144]

Again we will quote from our previous work:

The breakup of Yugoslavia is little more than Western Christianity's continuation of pushing of the line between Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity (or capitalism and communism if politics is one's motivation) further East to build a coalition of friendly nations between Europe and the world's last great pool of oil in the Caspian Basin. The policies-of-state here are obvious, isolating Russia politically, reducing its control over the oil and gas deposits in the Caspian basin, and piping those hydrocarbons to Europe . Germany reached an agreement with Croatia (announced in the UN) for a pipeline through its territory and-even as the bombs were falling on Yugoslavia-officials of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova were in Washington, DC, signing a regional alliance (GUUAM) that included discussions of oil pipeline export routes to the West. There was also high interest in the rich minerals of Kosovo (the Trepca mining/ manufacturing complex, which was too valuable to bomb and now arbitrarily turned over to Albanian Kosovars), the suspected oil and gas deposits within the Dinarides Thrust, and other mineral wealth of Yugoslavia (coal, bauxite) towards Europe, which-through the breakup of Yugoslavia-will deprive Eastern Orthodox Christians of that wealth, will weaken that tiny enclave of socialism, and all while simultaneously increasing the wealth of Western Europe. Thus we see that the foundation of all property rights is military power.[145]

While the Trepca mines rich in lead, zinc, cadmium, gold, silver, and coal were considered the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, through Yugoslavia is the shortest route to Europe for oil from the Caspian Sea region. More important take note of how the whole of Eastern and Central Europe, now a formal part of NATO and a united Europe, will, so long as control of the Caspian oil region be maintained, have access to cheap Caspian oil.

Both Iraq and Yugoslavia were working hard to maintain their independence and control their destiny. But both nations reputations and economies were destroyed by propaganda, embargoes, and bombing, (Very similar to the massive propaganda deployed almost 200 years ago to destroy the reputation of Napoleon in the attempt to reclaim the excessive rights of aristocracy, a system which the Napoleonic Codes-established as the fundamental law in over 30 countries-eventually destroyed.) For its selfish acceptance in being America 's puppet to destabilize Iran , its subsequent invasion of Kuwait , and violence against their own citizens there is justification for demonizing Iraq . But there is virtually no justification for destabilizing Yugoslavia except to pave the way for expanding an allied imperial-center-of-capital all the way to Russia 's borders.

The natural wealth, the industrial wealth, and the future wealth of Yugoslavia have been delivered to predatory Western finance capital. Though the human cost is greater today (1.5-million Iraqi deaths from the war and embargoes, 500 Yugoslavian civilians killed by NATO bombs and, like Iraq, many thousands more to die due to the destruction of their economy), this is a replay of the Middle Ages when the raiding parties from the cities of Europe destroyed the industrial capital of the countryside to maintain its dependency upon that city.

That an empire manufactures excuses for war whenever it wishes to gain the support of the people to destroy a potential rival is documented history.[146]Obviously the death of 2,108 people (both Albanian and Serb Kosovars, killed by the Serb military, the Kosovo Liberation Army, and by Western bombs) in Kosovo's NATO designed and supported civil war was not the reason for NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia . (Note how that statement answers its own question.) Over 1,000,000 people, largely children and weaker old people, perished in Iraq due to the American-led sanctions. One-third of the East Timorese (200,000) died in that Indonesian suppression of rights ( America supplied the weapons and gave the green light). The ethnic cleansing in Rwanda killed 500,000 over a period of five years. The 20-year conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea (a province of Ethiopia , the independence of which was covertly supported by America during the Cold War) caused the deaths of 50-thousand. The 16-year struggle in Sudan extinguished the lives of 2-million. Eighty thousand were killed up to this point in time in Russia 's Chechnya suppression. And, in the early stages of the Yugoslav destabilization, tens of thousands were killed when Croatia -with the backing of the United States and Germany -"ethnically-cleansed" her territory of over 500,000 Serbs.[147]

Eastern Europe could not be totally restructured along Western political and economic lines so long as Yugoslavia remained intact with her citizens well cared for and her industry underselling Western products throughout Eastern Europe . An opposing ideology with an intact military could not be permitted west of the planned new line of NATO defense, Romania , Bulgaria , and Greece . Thus the Western Christian nations of Romania , Bulgaria , Hungary , Slovenia and Croatia surrounding the Eastern Orthodox Serbia are now within NATO (or soon will be). Serbia is expected to become one of the poorest nations in Europe , which cannot maintain a powerful military, and which cannot arise as an example for other dependent countries. Such was the Grand Strategy behind the destabilization of Yugoslavia .

The Huge Gains to Imperial-Centers-of-Capital

NATO countries were after quicker and larger financial returns than described above. The Yugoslav economy was a socialist market economy with industries managed by labor.[148]The destruction of Serbia 's Yugo automobile factory and other industries, and the destruction of Yugoslavia 's basic economic infrastructure, along with the embargo, opens the entire Eastern European market to western European cars and other products and services (construction, et al.) that the well-educated, well-organized, hard-working, and knowledgeable Yugoslavs could have produced.

As products and services produced under the management of labor and direct financing of industry by the central bank could be sold or contracted much cheaper than Western products (there was not the massive unearned monopoly profits as in a subtly-monopolized capitalist economy), without the fragmentation and embargo of Yugoslavia it is the Yugoslavs which would have dominated those markets. It is they who would have become wealthy, and, the most dangerous of all, the rest of Eastern Europe had a similar industry/labor/property rights history and they and the entire world would have observed the Yugoslav success under their alternative form of government and labor/management relations.

Even though Yugoslavia had been under embargo and financial and diplomatic assault for eight years, this embattled nation was still providing for its citizens better than East European nations dutifully following the structural adjustment advice of the West. Workers from Romania , Bulgaria , and other Eastern European nations were coming to Yugoslavia to find work.

Thus, in final analysis, the managers-of-state in the West understood well that protection of the markets of Eastern Europe for Western industry and emerging Eastern European industry structured in their image, and the very survival of Western neo-liberal economic philosophy (the West’s “framework of orientation” protecting wealth and power) required the destabilization of Yugoslavia, severe crippling of their industrial infrastructure, and that of any other nations that dared maintain their independence.

So long as those targeted for destabilization cannot or dare not respond, wars are still profitable. (Of course this is the reason for the current effort to make sure no unallied nation obtains major weapons systems.) A full accounting of the profits from those Eastern markets as well as the multiplier factor (as the money from locally employed labor circulates within the economies of Western nations) will show that, to the winners, the breakup of Yugoslavia was one of the most profitable combinations of economic, financial, covert, and overt warfare in history. Only by the full destruction of the cooperative societies to the East could Eastern Europe be rebuilt in Western Europe 's subtle-monopoly image. Of course, industry and commerce of the losers of these battles for resources and markets collapse and those societies become impoverished.

Control of those Eastern and Central European resources and markets have been Germany 's goal for 100 years and the dream of lebensraum (living space) for Hitler's thousand-year-Reich. Western imperial nations have given up on battling between themselves over the world's resources and markets and have allied together for the huge gains possible from controlling the resources and the wealth-producing-process of their neighbors to the East.

Financial and Economic Warfare

In September, 2000-the very month the first edition of Economic Democracy came out with the above revelations-that American money was covertly financing elections in both Serbia and Montenegro became common knowledge. The U.S. Congress openly authorized over $10-million to Serbs and Montenegrins economically and politically breaking ranks with their government. Those funded became prime prospects as puppets to run that part of the world.

This standard covert policy of the Cold War was unknown to most citizens of the Western imperial nations. Previously funding of elections in other countries was covert. But ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and, with the exception of China and a few others, the U.S. has been both covertly and overtly financing elections of emerging nations throughout the world. All of which is illegal under both American law and the laws of the countries being compromised.

All who follow how overthrows of governments were accomplished all over the world by the imperial nations during the Cold War knew the leaders of the mob which burned the Yugoslav parliament and other centers of power of the Milosevic government were coached, financed, and even armed by German and American intelligence. The final destabilization of Yugoslavia provides a textbook example of the use of the Mighty Wurlitzer for destabilizing functional democratic governments worldwide throughout the Cold War that were not accepting control from the imperial center:

·         A ring of radio stations was established around Serbia beaming in propaganda.

·         Suitcases full of American and German cash were given to opposing newspapers, news agencies, broadcasters, political parties, think-tanks, student groups, "human rights" organizations, and trade unions.

·         The media loyal to the Serbian government was denied access to satellite communications while the opposition media was given access.[xx]

·         And in the final push mobs were armed, coached, and financed to take over the media. The Serbs no longer controlled a media within their own country.

In any of the nations allied against Yugoslavia , any opposition political group would be arrested if they were funded by outside powers trying to overthrow the government. Yet, even as they were being labeled as dictators, the Yugoslav government was not even arresting those that were openly funded by the very outside powers overthrowing them even though how this money was pouring in and funding the opposition was, until the takeover of the media by Western puppets, discussed on Serbian news.

Even as Western media parroted Western intelligence service wordsmiths as Yugoslavia being a "dictatorship," Canadian observers reported the election as open as any election in Canada , with no police visible, and opposition literature widely distributed. But those observations were not what the world heard. The only "news" that reached the masses of the "free" world, and what was recorded in the media of record for historians, was that of dictators and genocidal murderers.

When a nation is targeted for destabilization, or there is need to suppress a tendency for independence in countries already under control, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) the George Soros destabilization foundations, and others fund opposition groups (such as: The Center for International Private Enterprise, Humanitarian Law Center, Center for Democracy Foundation, Belgrade Center for Human Rights, European Movement of Serbia, G-17 economists, Center for Anti-War Action and Media, think-tanks, student groups, and many others), all claiming to be private groups but actually funded by the American congress through the NED and other means, provides the crucial service of funding puppet media and politicians.[yy] This covert funding of opposition forces through NED is standard practice worldwide. In short, Western powers were practicing total dictatorial control of governments and media and military suppression of dissent, the very things of which they accuse every country not safely under their imperial umbrella.

Before they had even taken office, Serbian opposition leaders met in Bulgaria with the IMF, the World Bank, and the leaders of NATO countries to finalize the fine points on the takeover of Yugoslavia[149] which included all the structural adjustment and abandonment of protection of citizens imposed upon most nations on the periphery of empire which would eventually mean the takeover of their economy by the German mark and eventually the European Euro.

Once the various former Yugoslav provinces use the German mark or the Euro as their currency (as all but Serbia now do including Kosovo and Montenegro), Serbians can no longer create their own money and their funding of essential industries and services will be severely curbed. The Balkans will have become the "countryside" for the West European economy; an expanded version of the vision of Germany for the past 100 years.

With the Western-imposed new leaders of Croatia , Slovenia , and other regions being direct descendents of Hitler's Ustase death squads with every intention of making second-class citizens of their Eastern Orthodox neighbors, the new leaders of Serbia have no illusions as to the hard future the West will be imposing upon them. After all, poverty is many times higher in virtually every country of the collapsed Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union than it was under Communism (East Germany is the exception).[zz] Even the Ukraine, the breadbasket and industrial heartland of the East-which dutifully followed all the prescriptions of the IMF, the World Bank, and NATO-is prostrate and essentially begging the West for food. Of course, these leaders are aware that Western promoted structural adjustment prescriptions created that poverty but they are equally aware that they have been left with no other choices.

President Milosevic is being tried in The Hague , as a war criminal. The winners write history and the current International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) was designed specifically to write history with the former leaders of Yugoslavia as the war criminals even though it was international capital, through their control of the policies of America and the nations of Western Europe , which directly orchestrated the destabilization of the once peaceful and prosperous Yugoslavia . When Milosevic's trial started this was his first defense. His continued defense outlined the entire process of the West's destabilization of Yugoslavia more thorough than we have outlined it here. A lady spectator who came for the purpose of seeing Milosevic convicted said, "We have been deceived." As that deception will not leak out through the media or into the history books for the reasons outlined in Chapter 7, sincere researchers will have to study Milosevic's defense to write honest history. As in all wars, many were killed and brutalized so the West will have no problem finding something somewhere to convict Milosevic. But surely the original destabilizers are the one's responsible for all the death and destruction.[150]

Imagine the surprise of this author when reading the names of key NATO witnesses at Milosevic's trial. The alert will feel many of these should have been on trial. One name stood out starkly. As there is always the possibility of there being two different people with the same name I will not name him. But those who study U.S. worldwide destabilizations will quickly recognize that person (the initials of this General are V.W). Early in my studies I came across an article which said that wherever a major American destabilization was taking place this party would be present. If this is not a different party with the same name and it is doubtful that it is, here was an American testifying against Milosevic who has to be one of the greatest war criminals of all time, many tens of thousands have died under his destabilizations. Former President Milosevic pointing out that this is the person who designed the fictitious Racak massacre which was the cover story under which Yugoslavia was forced to the bargaining table at Rambouillet. Later this same person was to lead the "observers" (primarily intelligence operatives working under the cover of DynCorp) which NATO was to place in Kosovo. Almost certainly this is the same person. Each of these positions is one which a major intelligence figure would work from if he was there to oversee a destabilization.[aaa]

Key to any destabilization is the writing of history. Personal friends of Milosevic were being assassinated while his opposition leaders were untouched. These opposition leaders, even Ibrahim Rugova the Albanian secessionist leader, had their own media and were openly campaigning against the government. Yet Milosevic was being portrayed as a killer of his democratic opponents. The truth was that a lot of money was being spent to finance assassination of key members of the Yugoslav government and those positions were being taken over by the Western-backed opposition.

At his trial Milosevic had already brilliantly turned the testimony to prove it was NATO that was the war criminal. NATO's prime witness, Rade Markovic former head of the Serbian secret service, took the stand. Prosecutor Jeffrey Nice was shocked when his prime witness described how in the Belgrade jail his torture had been overseen by two US/West European agents ( Mihailovic and Petrovic) and he was finally offered a good life with a new identity if he would testify against Milosevic. Even realizing he was in mortal danger, Markovic testified that, far from being guilty of causing the exodus from Kosovo, Milosevic had ordered the flow of refugees to be stopped. As the prosecution desperately tried to stop their own witness, he went on to testify that Milosevic "came down hard on hate crimes and more than 200 such charges were filed against police and a like number against the army."

Any testimony in which the prime witness had been tortured to testify for the prosecution should have shut down the trial and placed the witness under protection. Instead the testimony was ignored and Markovic was returned to the Belgrade prison. Where Markovic's earth-shaking testimony at the trial of the century was totally ignored by the wire services, the very day I type this in ( September 6, 2002 ) some news about Markovic favorable to the prosecution is reported: "According to Markovic's signed statement from a Belgrade jail Milosevic ordered him to remove bodies of civilians killed in Kosovo."

Obviously their witness was tortured some more and this time the prosecution was not going to take a chance on his live testimony. No legal body can justify returning a prisoner to torturers and an honest court would have thrown the case out of court as soon as such dictatorship tactics were exposed. But this is not an honest tribunal. It was established by NATO, paid for by NATO, and staffed with prosecutors and judges who knew what they were there for. They were there to write history as NATO wanted it written. As the designers of the destruction of Yugoslavia write their own history, Milosevic will be found guilty. America has the same plans ready for Saddam Hussein which, even though he was a U.S. ally for years, has at least some relevance to reality. It has no reality in Yugoslavia .

The war against the Taliban in Afghanistan is instructive. It seems the policy was primarily to take no prisoners (openly stated on TV by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) and relatively few were taken. Those essentially executed rather than taken as prisoners are enemies of the countries financing the current War Crimes Tribunal.[bbb] Although this is against the rules of both decency and war, one can be sure there will be no War Crimes Tribunal against those responsible. An International Criminal Court not under the control of the imperial centers was established in 2002 and the U.S. is, under threat of sanctions, pressuring countries to sign that they will not prosecute Americans for War crimes in that court.

The new Serb government had no choice. The shattered Serbian economy was to receive no financial support or access to markets until the Serbs turned Milosevic over to the War Crimes Tribunal. Such is the unacknowledged power of subtle-monopoly capital which exercises enormous financial and economic control in virtually every nation in the world except China and even that powerful country must be very careful.

The managers-of-state of the now allied imperial-centers-of-capital know well their power, use it ruthlessly, and leave weak countries no alternative. Key countries targeted for destabilization and takeover by the West who try to maintain independence and who have no powerful nation to protect them risk the same devastation by Western military power as was visited on the once independent and relatively prosperous Yugoslavia . Once the powerful Soviet Union was destabilized, virtually every country in the world was at the mercy of the well-organized allied imperial-centers-of-capital.

Getting Indigestion assimilating New Allies

Under the Grand Strategy of the organized and allied NATO countries, all Eastern European countries up to the border of the old Soviet Union , with the possible exception of Serbia , are to become allies. But they will not be allotted equal economic rights. The guarantees of all Yugoslav workers for jobs, free health care and education, pensions, paid maternity leaves and vacations, low cost recreation, and cheap food and rent has been replaced in all the breakaway provinces now allied with the west with 20% unemployment, high prices, and radically lowered average living standards.

What will happen to these Eastern Orthodox cultures, whose citizens have historically been second class citizens within territories controlled by Western Christians? A clue is provided by remembering that the opposing Eastern and Western cultures enslaved each other's citizens for centuries. The very word "slave" is derived from what are now the Eastern Orthodox "Slavic" people of Eastern Europe .

Another clue can be ascertained by viewing what is happening to the laboring classes in former Eastern European counties who are religiously and culturally tied to the West and who will surely be treated better than Eastern Orthodox Christians. Analyzing the still low living standards of the dozen Eastern and Central European countries religiously and culturally tied to the West and slated to be allies, provides a clue to the bleak future of cultures not viewed as natural allies.

When Eastern and Central Europe collapsed under the pressure and coaching of the West as outlined above, the economically efficient Czechoslovakia disintegrated into two inefficient countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia . The fate of the highly efficient VSZ steel complex in Slovakia (a Western Christian nation) provides a glimpse of their future. With the breakup of Czechoslovakia , the collapse of all Eastern European countries, and the imposition of IMF/World Bank structural adjustments, the local markets for VSZ steel disappeared. Markets in the West were protected from VSZ's low priced-high quality-steel, the once-booming steel complex ran out of money, and under IMF/World Bank rules they could not be financed by the Slovakian central bank.

This prostrate industrial jewel was picked up by America 's U.S. Steel for the bargain basement price of $450-million and it now provides 25% of their steel making capacity. Slovak steelworkers are paid roughly $2 an hour against U.S. Steel workers pay in America of $35 to $45 an hour.[151] High quality Slovakian steel will be sold on the world steel market, those mills will operate at full capacity, any over-capacity will be alleviated through lowered production in America , Western Europe , or Japan and the huge profits generated in the Slovakian mills will disappear into the accounting books and profit distributions of U.S. Steel. In short, the labor of America and Europe will take a loss, the labor of Slovakia will hold at a low pay level, and all gains will go to the owners of U.S. Steel. This same scenario will play out in other industries.

Like the underpaid developing world, Eastern Europe will gain only a little because their pay is too low to provide adequate buying power. Labor in the developed world will eventually lose buying power as their jobs are taken by equally-productive, low-paid Eastern European workers. Germans, Japanese and other steel producers will have to lower steel and labor prices or lose market share. This will be the well-understood cyclical crisis of over production of capitalism compounded by the abandonment of economies once seen as crucial to protect against fast expanding socialism ( Japan and the Asian tigers) and further compounded by the melding of high-paid capitalist economies of Western Europe with equally-productive but low-paid former socialist economies of Eastern and Central Europe .

Economic statistics showing a steadily advancing world economy can only be through ignoring the severe shrinking of 40% of the world economy. The collapse of the currencies, buying power, and industries of Mexico , Southeast Asia , Latin America , Eastern Europe , and the former Soviet Union meant their citizens were impoverished as their resources and production of their labor were purchased by the imperial centers far below the previous norm.

Just like low-priced oil contributes to maintaining healthy economies for the imperial centers (the reason for the current Iraq war), a rapid lowering of the price of any resources or production of labor from the periphery of empire will, so long as the markets of the imperial center can be protected, be a boon to those economies of the center of empire even though the periphery may be devastated.

Though they are now a part of NATO, integrating Eastern Europe will take at least two generations. There will be no rapid development such as the Asian Tigers and China . This can be best understood when reading about the yet-unsuccessful integration of East Germany into a unified Germany even with the expenditure of $1.5-trillion. There is no sense of brotherhood to trigger generosity as in Germany and no such funds will be allotted to the much larger, much more diverse, and much poorer Eastern Europe .

Unless they can gain access to cheap resources, access to technology, access to finance capital, and access to markets, those nations will be poor for decades. A minority may become wealthy but one simply cannot avoid the reality that Western Europe can produce everything needed by Eastern Europe and they are not going to give up their monopoly on technology nor will they willingly give up their jobs. They know well that to do so would lower their standard of living.

Allied Imperial-Centers-of-Capital Gaining Wealth

Protecting the markets of the imperial centers may be relatively easy in the short run as the periphery collapses but will be tough in the long run. Underpaid labor on the periphery will not be able to buy their own production while the products produced with that equally-productive low-paid labor and lower-valued capital will be able to offer consumer products to the imperial center at a price lower than producers in the well-paid world.

This will be tempered by capital of the imperial center purchasing much of the industrial capital of the periphery at bargain prices but, as outlined with the Slovakian VSZ steel mill above, this melding of cheap-cost industries with high-cost industries only means it takes a little longer for the cycle of lost buying power and collapsing values to work its way through the economy. And even that extended time span will collapse if stock market and land values in the imperial centers collapse and destroy buying power and consumer confidence. Lets us look at the world economy today:

·         Instead of a world economy expanding from investment in basic production, we now have a collapsing periphery while the imperial centers expand from wealth pouring into America and Europe through massive inequality of pay for equally-productive labor (as per the wealth appropriation formula in Chapter 6).

·         Forty years ago 30% of the American economy was services; today it is 70%.

·         The price of wages and commodities on the periphery of empire keeps dropping lower and lower. Thus the price of commodities imported dropped 60% in the 30 years preceding 1996. With the currency collapses on the periphery in 1997 and in the 21st Century, commodity prices have possibly dropped another 50%.

That loss on the periphery has been the gains that the imperial centers have admired as they measured their increase in wealth. The world cannot, and will not, tolerate a wealth appropriation rate that high. The extreme difference in wealth between the imperial centers and the periphery must collapse of its own weight. After all, those lower commodity prices represent loss in buying power on the periphery.

One-third of the world's productive capacity is now idle (Professor Lester Thurow) and the substantial amount of that industry on the periphery of empire is a change from past economic crises. Those industries on the periphery will be pouring products into the imperial center just trying to survive. That was America 's great gain in wealth between 1992 and 2000; the steadily rising stock market based on selling cheap imports at a relatively high price was creating wealthy people, thus creating buying power. The imperial centers were receiving value (wealth) via those low import prices. Some of that wealth went to traders who bought low and sold high and the final consumers gained wealth whenever radically lowered prices gave them a share of those low import prices.

Market value has a relationship to use-value. Those cheap resource imports are manufactured into valuable consumer products and cheaply manufactured, high-quality, imports have value. If imported product costs drop by half (those low wages on the periphery for equally-productive work), either the trader banks more value or the consumer gains more value or both. If better materials and technology doubles the useable life or productive use of a product, the value to the consumer doubles. (Note: The productivity of computers doubles every few years while their price has dropped over 50% the past five years while cars which seldom ran over 70,000 miles 40 years ago now are in use 200,000-to-300,000 miles.)

As I write this, a friend shows me a sale ad for a power tool for $250. He said, "I just bought an identical tool at Harbor Freight for $75, saving $175." Obviously the tool at Harbor Freight was manufactured in a low-wage country (undoubtedly China ) and had only a modest price markup. This permitted the final buyer to gain wealth. Assuming the $250 tool was manufactured by the same company for the same low import price but the traders lowered the retail price only a little, it is the trader who would have gained the $175, not the final consumer. But in both instances $175 in wealth was gained by America . If all products could be bought overseas at that 80% discount the imperial centers would gain enormous wealth.

Primarily traders will drop prices only enough to gain market share. It seems Harbor freight is the exception. Another friend paid $130 for a rotary drill press from them that he knew should cost $800. In the December issue of Economic Reform William Krehm points out that due to low wage costs in China Television prices have dropped 9% a year for the past three years, tool prices dropped 1% per year, and sports equipment dropped 3% a year. Either Harbor Freight's low tool pricing was before 1998 or the drop in tool prices is far understated.

Through rapid expansion of graduate engineers, China is rapidly expanding production and sales of high technology items (increasing over 50% a year on their low base). It is not unreasonable to assume that competition between China and the Asian Tigers could lower product prices in the imperial centers 5% a year. Assuming protective measures are not put in place, and to do so will be both ideologically and actually difficult, eventually the excess profits of traders will disappear. The loss of those profits normally means a collapse of stock prices.

But if the military/legal lock on the rest of the world can be maintained, the economies of the imperial centers may not collapse. It will take the sale of only a few products and services at a high price to pay for those massive products imported at low prices. If that were to happen, we would be observing what has previously only been analyzed in economic theory, the import of products at almost no cost (the theory is the production of all products at almost no labor thus almost no cost) and all that is necessary for a healthy economy is for citizens to provide each other with services. The imperial centers are approaching that utopian stage. Forty years ago, American labor was 70% industrial and 30% services. Today it is 30% industrial and 70% services. Surely before that utopian state is reached the periphery will become aware their resources and labors will be providing most the consumer products of the imperial centers while workers in those imperial centers only provide each other services.

Expand that concept theoretically to all consumer products and the imperial centers will be rapidly accumulating wealth even as the periphery loses wealth. Only a few high priced products and services exported to pay for those enormous imports accounts for the great wealth accumulated by the imperial centers during the decade of the 1990s. To my knowledge this simple mechanism for transferring wealth from the equally-productive low-paid to the high-paid is not addressed in this manner in economic literature.

Previously rising stock market values in the imperial centers maintained buying power. When stock market values start dropping and import values to the imperial centers (the periphery's export values) keep dropping, the periphery of empire is losing value and buying power in both cases. So long as other values in the imperial centers (primarily real-estate) hold or increase, the values to borrow against, and thus the buying power, will hold. But if real estate and stock values drop the values to borrow against will not be there, consumer confidence will collapse, and purchases in those once-wealthy nations will start falling. The buying power to keep the world economy afloat will have shrunk drastically, prices will drop, and more of the world's productive capacity will have to close down.

But if wealth continues to pour into the imperial centers through rapidly falling consumer prices, as just discussed, in the short run those home values may rise rather than fall. The share of monthly earnings once budgeted for discretionary spending is now available for investment. If stock prices continue to fall and land and homes continue to rise in price the logical investment for that left-over monthly income will be in homes. That, of course, will force home prices higher yet.

As industrial labor shrinks due to imports of consumer products, the imperial centers can still protect those values through printing money to provide buying power. (Remember, wealth is pouring in and that wealth has monetary value.) If commodity import prices to the imperial centers continue to shrink, values will continue to be imported or produced in those imperial centers (high values added) even as values continue to drop on the periphery.

The balance between wealth in the imperial centers and wealth on the periphery can, within reason and depending upon the military power of the imperial centers, be held at either a high or low differential. Today it is being held at a high, and growing, differential. Poverty on the periphery is growing while wealth in the imperial centers is, or at least was, still growing.

Siphoning from the periphery of empire to the imperial center at the rate of 25-to-1 through being paid 20% for equally-productive labor, as discussed in Chapter 6, will increase exponentially if currency values widen. If that wealth differential continues to grow as the wealth of the periphery pours into the imperial center, or if the citizens on the periphery of empire figure out why it is that they are so poor while it is their resources and labor that are producing the wealth for the imperial centers, a flashpoint will have been reached.

We will repeat, "This process of laying claim to the wealth of the periphery through inequality in pay for equally-productive labor enforced by imposed structural adjustments is not discussed in this manner in economic literature." If the periphery is to gain their freedom developing world professors and intellectuals must study and understand this process.

At this time the imperial centers are holding, and though this reality is not acknowledged, the periphery has collapsed to the extent that the average standard of living worldwide can only have dropped substantially. With the exception of East Germany , the standard of living in virtually every East European country is lower than in 1985 to 1999, most far lower. Russia and the former provinces of the Soviet Union have seen their standard of living drop in the range of 50%. Argentina 's per-capita annual income dropped 60%. The economies of Brazil and Uruguay threaten to mimic Argentina . Other Latin American economies have seen their average living standards drop and they may also collapse. Most of Africa has seen their living standards erode for decades. Japan 's economy is shrinking (their wealth is down $18-trillion). And, although their balance of payments have stabilized, the former Asian Tigers have not regained their pre-1997 per-capita living standard

Such economic crisis in previous history has created wars. (The many destabilizations we address affirms that history) It will take an enormous military to maintain such an immense rate of transfer of wealth from the periphery to the imperial centers.[ccc] The current power-structure understands this well. America 's roughly $280-billion military budget climbed to $400-billion and appears headed to over $450-billion by 2007. That is more money spent on the military than the next 15 richest nations and most of those are allied with, or at least friends of, America .[152]

From their viewpoint, Western imperialists may need that firepower. Much of Southeast Asia is highly industrialized and, in 2002, China alone graduated over 400,000 PhDs in the hard sciences. We must remember Germany graduating 8-to-10-times more engineers (3,000 against England 's 350) made the German economy much more efficient than the British economy and it was Germany 's efficient economy taking over British markets that led to World Wars I and II. Only a philosophy of sharing resources, sharing productive capacity, and sharing in the wealth produced can avoid Fascist military control of world resources which could easily turn into World War III.

America's and NATO's rapid reaction forces snuffing out resistance all over the world is only control of resources and control of the wealth-producing-process hiding under other excuses. If those economies on the periphery continue collapsing, and especially if the imperial centers implode, the world will soon figure that out.

If we are so militarily secure, why does America have such a violent foreign policy? It is because students of foreign policy are not taught peace. Instead they are taught that no other nation can be trusted so give no quarter and take all they can get.[ddd]

Every sober citizen wants an end to wars. Only when faced with power have imperial nations ever abandoned their claims upon the wealth of the periphery. Those imperial centers cannot control billions of people if they band together. The periphery must ally together to peacefully reclaim their share of the world's wealth produced by the world's resources and the wealth-producing-process. After all, most those natural resources are within their borders.

The enormous wealth flowing into the imperial centers from the periphery is consumed in part by the huge expenditure on arms necessary to control the resources on the periphery and thus control the wealth-producing-process. The economic multiplier from these wasteful expenditures creates the good life for citizens in those imperial centers. The system of theft is then hidden from the social mind by massive propaganda portraying the suppressed as dangerous enemies and the suppressors as a benevolent people attempting to bring peace, freedom, justice, rights, and majority rule to the world.

We now address how the legal framework for siphoning the wealth of the world to imperial-centers-of-capital is established through the economic and financial philosophies of the imperial centers.