Milosevic: First Victim Of U.S. Franchised Street Revolutions "Dies In Custody

"Those who control the present control the past." George Orwell in 1984

By K Gajendra Singh

03/25/06 "ICH" -- -- Western leaders and media , corporate controlled in US and government dominated in UK and Europe are having a field day after the death in the Hague tribunal jail of Serbian nationalist hero and former President of Serbia and of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic. Side by side another US created Kangaroo court , against all international norms and law ,is orchestrating the trial of Saddam Hussein , to titillate western audiences ,fed daily with gory violence and sex on their TV and film screens.

Western media describes Milosevic as the Butcher of the Balkans , but what about the well established butchers of Falluja , Baghdad , verily , Iraq ( and Afghanistan) under the so called 'Operation Iraqi Freedom ',inspired by God . Then they talk about Mullahs , Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism ,which in any case was seeded, nurtured , and blossomed under US led West and others in the nurseries of Afghanistan and given fillip since March 2003 by the invasion of Iraq.

What else would you expect when the Big Five, the global media conglomeration of Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, and News Corporation, which when combined now control approximately 90% of the world's headlines. Such control has undermined the foundations of democracy in USA. But for the rest of the world, the unidirectional war of words is as corrosive and deadly as the collateral damage of premeditated preventive wars.

Allan Little of BBC News , wrote from Belgrade that "Slobodan Milosevic is like a character written by Goethe. The arc of his life, his rise and fall, is Faustian. He made a pact with the twin demons of Balkan nationalism and war. The demons propelled him to power and, for a while, kept him there. But he lost control of them, and they destroyed him in the end." In spite of millions of UK citizens marching against US-UK led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the BBC gave only 2% time to antiwar views in its coverage .Nationalist leaders are not popular with Western governments and their media.

Ramsey Clark ,a former US Attorney General, after paying respects to Milosevic's body in Belgrade said that the war crimes trial of Milosevic and the legal process against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein were "flawed," "Both commanders were courageous enough to fight more powerful countries," said Clark "History will prove Milosevic was right. Charges are just that, charges. The trial did not have facts," he insisted. "Milosevic was demonised. I have seen too much demonisation of that man, especially by media," added Clark.

It is also a futile Western attempt to earn brownie points by trumpeting how Albanians , Kosovars , Croats and even Serbs suffered under Milosevic. Muslims and even Balkan Muslims are not fooled. An Albanian diplomat told me recently that it was only a cover to hide the hell like sufferings being inflicted daily on the Iraqi people by Western occupation forces and since decades Israel terror acts against Palestinians, so described even by Israeli 'ally' like Turkish Prime Minister Tayep Erdogan.

Milosevic Funeral ;

Citing an official of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) Xinhua reported that over 50 foreign delegations were to attend Milosevic's funeral in his hometown of Pozarevac, some 80 km east of Belgrade. The dignitaries would include Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Russian State Duma Vice-President Sergei Baburin, Ramsey Clark, and others . Nearly 100,000 people from Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnian Serb republic were reportedly present at the burial ceremony . According to unofficial estimates, some 80,000 people had paid their respects to Milosevic's coffin on display at the Revolution Museum in Belgrade.

The Serb Orthodox Church, which backed Milosevic and his nationalism, will hold a funeral ceremony in Pozarevac, something of a surprise for a man who was not thought to be religious.

Milosevic's widow and political companion, Mira Markovic, now in Moscow but with an arrest warrant for her in Belgrade and their son, Marko did not attend the funeral. Daughter Marija, who lives in the neighbouring republic of Montenegro, said that her father would not have wanted to be buried at the house in Pozarevac, belonging to Mira's family, and said that he should be buried at his ancestral village in Montenegro.

In the break up of a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi- linguistic and multi-cultural nation created by Marshal Tito of southern Slavs , US joined West European nations ,the former to destroy Yugoslavia , an Orthodox Slav nation in Europe ,friendly to Orthodox Slav Russia , the latter to get back its influence and control over the Balkans , first snatched away by Ottoman Turks , who twice knocked at the Gates of Vienna . That memory still clouds European judgment on secular Turkish republic's entry into EU.



In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the federation, followed by the Republics of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The large Serb minorities in Croatia and Bosnia demanded to stay in Yugoslavia based on the same right of self-determination claimed by their Croat and Muslim neighbours. The Serbs of Croatia started organizing their own autonomy as early as mid-1990, and they were supported in this by the Yugoslav government. The recognition of Slovenia and Croatia by European powers was the first spark in the fire which consumed Yugoslavia and led to the ensuing blood bath in the Balkans.

In 1995, Miloševic negotiated the Dayton Agreement in the name of the Bosnian Serbs. Armed actions by Albanian separatist groups and Serbian police and military counter-action in Serbia`s previously autonomous province of Kosovo culminated in escalating warfare in 1998, NATO air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between March and June 1999, and finally a full withdrawal of all Yugoslav security forces from the province, now ruled by a European Viceroy and a veritable tinderbox.

After the collapse of the USSR and the reunification of Germany in 1991, a resurgent German state saw its interests in the Balkans—historically a German sphere of influence—best served through the promotion of secession by Slovenia—the most prosperous Yugoslav region—and then Croatia.

Washington, which first opposed Germany's intervention and the breakup of Yugoslavia, got in the act itself in order to further its goal of hegemony over the former Eastern bloc countries and open them to globalisation. USA became the chief sponsor of Bosnian independence, and later backed Albanian nationalism and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army in the run-up to the 1999 US-NATO war. It even transported Muslim Jihadis from Afghanistan to fight the Serbs .Many have married locally and thus become sleepers , a possible menace to Europe itself .

Those with the knowledge of Yugoslav history and politics had warned that this piecemeal breakup of the Yugoslav federation would inevitably lead to civil war. The forging of new nation states based upon ethnic nationalism led inexorably to the practice called "ethnic cleansing."

Washington, having thrown its support to Yugoslavia's dissolution, targeted pro Russian Orthodox Slav Serbia, which defended the unitary state, as its enemy. The US opposed ethnic cleansing only when it was carried out by Serbs, while actively supporting it when Croatia, Bosnia and the Kosovo Albanians pursued identical aims through the same bloody methods.

The tribunal itself was established and financed by the very same powers that launched the illegal war against Yugoslavia and carried out what were clearly war crimes—the bombing of civilian targets—during that intervention. The victor's justice!

Milosevic was toppled on Oct. 5, 2000, through a US franchised street revolution He was arrested and transferred on June 28, 2001 to the Hague , by US installed Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic , against vehement opposition by President Kostunica, now Serbia's Prime Minister. Djindjic thus signed his death warrant by this ignoble act and was very soon assassinated. Belgrade was promised Western aid for this ignoble act , most of it was cornered by the mafia style new elite , with masses condition , with 60% unemployment, getting worse .



Indian diplomat Chinmay Gharekhan, who was adviser to two UN Secretary Generals during the Balkan wars of 1990s , in his book on United Nations ,the Hexagonal Table , observed that none of parties to the conflict were free from blame in intensifying the violence.



Western Crusade – a present day repeat ;



In a replay of historic Western Crusades vs Jihad , the current US led campaign has followed the old pattern. Western Christianity against Islam and even Eastern Orthodox Christianity and their lands ,except that unlike the first Crusades , when the Jews were mercilessly butchered by Crusaders , they are now with the Western Christians as the driving force .In the fourth Crusade called by Pope Innocent III in 1198, the Crusader army sacked Constantinople , the capital of Orthodox Byzantine Empire , dealing it a mortal blow and making it easier for the Muslim Turks to over run it . The 119 attacks were exploited to establish US bases around the Russian Federation and puppet rulers installed in former Russian strategic space beginning with Serbia . This was successfully implemented in Georgia and Ukraine , with Georgia being encouraged to let Muslim Chechen rebels use it territory against Russia. Recent Popes , some inveterate travelers around the world and the heads of the Russian Orthodox Church , Byzantine's successors, still remain un-reconciled .



So it was but natural for Slobodan Milosevic's family and brother to find shelter in Moscow. Ironically it was former Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin , sent to negotiate between Milosevic and US led Nato forces and about whose massive bank balances in Western Banks , Financial Times had made allegations , but threats to sue the paper amounted to nothing , who sold out Milosevic . Curiously Chernomyrdin was the Russian Ambassador in Kiev, when pro West Victor Yushchenko , married to a former US State department employee was installed through the so called 'Orange Revolution' in place of pro-Russian Victor Yukanovic.

Milosevic Trial ;

"I consider this tribunal (a) false tribunal and (the) indictments false indictments. It is illegal, being not appointed by U.N. General Assembly. So I have no need to appoint counsel to (an) illegal organ." Milosevic said at the beginning of his trial in July, 2001:

When Milosevic's trial began , BBC, CNN and other western channels gave full coverage to the charges being arraigned against him , but censored and stopped the telecast when Milosevic refuted them and started his countercharge .Similarly , the telecast of Saddam Hussein's trial is openly censored and even mutilated to suit western propaganda aims , many times his voice being removed all together .So much for western media's honesty and integrity.



An objective assessment ;



One of the few sane voices in the West, John Laughland of "the Guardian" , who met with Slobodan Milosevic in his cell in the Hague January last year ,and like others found him polite and intelligent. "We will win," Milosevic told him. "Freedom is a universal value. They have no evidence against me."

Such statements would shock those in whose eyes Milosevic has been demonised as "a nationalist dictator bent on establishing a racially pure Greater Serbia. But civilised societies ought to be reluctant to condone criminal convictions based on hate campaigns.

"The fact is that Milosevic's enemies have never been able to produce a single rabid nationalist, let alone racist, quotation from his mouth, while in the four years of his trial at The Hague not a single witness has testified that he ordered war crimes.

"Instead, witnesses have been trooping into The Hague for nearly two years now, testifying that there was neither genocide in Kosovo nor any plan to drive out the civilian ethnic Albanian population, and that Milosevic could not be held responsible either for the break-up of Yugoslavia or the subsequent civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina."

Establishing criminal responsibility is an exact science. Milosevic was not even in charge of Yugoslavia when it started unravelling. Ante Markovic, a western darling ordered the (multi-ethnic) Yugoslavian army in 1991 to fight against the secessionist states, Croatia and Slovenia and who will not . Then the Western interventions only made the situation worse.

The Hague prosecutor issued the original indictment against Milosevic for Kosovo in May 1999, at the height of Nato's attack on Yugoslavia , to justify the invasion. A year and a half later and almost a decade after the events, the indictments for Bosnia and Croatia were added because Nato's allegations of genocide in Kosovo could not stand up in a court. "But the Bosnia and Croatia indictments were problematic too. Milosevic has always denied moral or legal responsibility for the atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serbs, for instance in 1995 at Srebrenica, because, as president of neighbouring Serbia, he was not in charge of Bosnia or the Bosnian Serbs. Even if he had influence over the Bosnian Serbs, that is a long way from criminal responsibility

"If the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY ) were a proper court of law, the charges against him would have been dismissed long ago. Unfortunately, it is a highly politicised organ, created at the initiative of the very states which had attacked Yugoslavia in 1999, and whose judges have disgraced themselves by bending the rules to facilitate the prosecution's task. In 2004, the judges imposed defence counsel on Milosevic, even though the ICTY's charter states that defendants have the right to defend themselves, and even though they knew he was too sick to stand trial. On February 24 ,2006, at the prosecution's insistence, they rejected Milosevic's request to be transferred to a heart clinic: he died a fortnight later."

"It is corrosive of the core values of western civilisation for the chief Hague prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, now to say that Milosevic escaped justice by dying, for this assumes that "justice" means not due process but a guilty verdict. The day we start to believe that , we will have abandoned the rule of law completely," concludes Laughland. West has come very close to that point .

Carla Del Ponte, the chief UN war crimes prosecutor, had said she was convinced he would have been convicted. 'I also regret it for the victims, the thousands of victims who have been waiting for justice,' adding that enough evidence had been presented against Milosevic in his war crimes trial for him to be found guilty. The EU has now made clear that unless Serbia cooperates in arresting Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the alleged Bosnian Serb war criminals, Serbia's EU membership talks will be put on ice. Open blackmail! And will EU accept Albania and Kosovo?



Long-term Tribunal observers say that Milosevic was not the only game in town. "The success or failure of the tribunal does not hang on one case," said Judith Armatta, former trial observer for the Coalition for International Justice. "No matter how responsible he was for the massive decade of crimes across Yugoslavia, just as one man could not have done all that damage on his own," she said.

Historian Marko Attila Hoare, who worked as a researcher in the Office of the Prosecutor, has written that the decision not to pursue all the members of the joint criminal enterprise wasn't a matter of lack of evidence, but rather a decision by Del Ponte herself.

At the end of February, Milosevic had asked the tribunal to issue a subpoena ordering former US President Bill Clinton to testify, apparently with the aim of showing that Washington itself was responsible for crimes against humanity in waging an illegal war against Yugoslavia and conducting a sustained bombing campaign against civilian targets.

In April 1999 Robert Fisk, wrote in London's Independent about a U.S.-led NATO bombing raid on a civilian target in Yugoslavia: "Deep inside the tangle of cement and plastic and iron, in what had once been the make-up room next to the broadcasting studio of Serb Television, was all that was left of a young woman, burnt alive when NATO's missile exploded in the radio control room. Within six hours, the [British] Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, declared the place a 'legitimate target.' --by dusk last night, 10 crushed bodies -- two of them women -- had been tugged from beneath the concrete, another man had died in hospital and 15 other technicians and secretaries still lay buried."

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, had crowed a day earlier: "It should be lights out in Belgrade: Every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted." Times splashed on its front page that same week: "NATO began its second month of bombing against Yugoslavia today with new strikes against military targets that disrupted civilian electrical and water supplies..."

Reaction to Milosevic 'death';

Serbian Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic said he was "shaken as a person," and claimed the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague did not provide proper medical care to the former leader, who suffered from high blood pressure and heart troubles.

"He got killed. He didn't die. He got killed. There's a murder," Marko Milosevic told AP Television News on reaching Netherlands.

Milosevic had told his aide Milorad Vucelic, 'Don't you worry: They will not destroy me or break me; I shall defeat them all,'" "But it was obvious he was very ill." But this was not a man to think of suicide or take Rifampicin with a 24 hour surveillance .

The Tribunal's President Fausto Pocar said in The Hague that provisional results have shown that Milosevic was not poisoned but died of heart attack.

Miloevic's blood pressure was a problem since the start of his trial and had became increasingly difficult to control . Prison doctors long suspected him of not taking his medicine, said Donald Uges, one of two Dutch toxicologists consulted on the case. It was suggested that he had ingested the antibiotic Rifampicin, to blunt the effect of his blood pressure medicine. Uges, and tribunal officials leaked that the antibiotic was taken intentionally, smuggled in by visitors.



But another doctor Barriot dismissed the charge, saying that Milosevic had called him several times recently, "very anxious about his blood pressure" and whether detention-center guards were giving him the right medicine - a worry he brought up in court as well. "He had no confidence in the drugs or the treatments that were given him in jail," Barriot added.

"His medical condition was not good, so we asked for additional tests to evaluate his cardiac situation," said Dr. Florence Leclercq, a French cardiologist who examined Milosevic last November. "But these investigations were never performed, and now that's a problem." Although long-term high blood pressure strains the heart and increases the risk of heart attack, Milosevic did not have any classic symptoms of heart disease, like chest pain, Dr. Leclercq added. When she heard of the autopsy verdict, she said she was surprised. "What was shocking was that in four years lots of tests and exams on his heart had never been done," said Dr. Vukasin Andric, a Serb who also examined Mr. Milosevic on Nov. 4 last year.

Others pointed out that his death came less than a week after the suicide in the same prison of Milan Babic, the wartime leader of the Krajina Serbs in Croatia.

"We have the right not to believe and not to trust those who are conducting this autopsy," the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said as he announced that four Russian pathologists would fly to The Hague. Less than a week earlier Milosevic had written to the Russian foreign ministry that he was being poisoned. In a letter on March 8, he wrote of attempts to "destroy my health" after doctors found high doses of drugs to treat leprosy and TB. "Those who foist on me a drug against leprosy surely can't treat my illness," he complained.

The four Russian medical experts who reached the Netherlands to examine the results, said that they distrusted the findings and the care Milosevic received from authorities.

In any other place and time the Hague Tribunal and those controlling it would be squarely held responsible for the death of Milosevic. This is another nail in the nauseating litany of western acts of aggression , demonisation and criminal acts. No amount of lies spewed by western propaganda can hide that.

Poisoning of Yasser Araft ;



Writing in 'Gush Salom' ,last September ,Uri Avnery said ," For decades , the Israeli and western media conducted, with government inspiration, a concentrated campaign of hatred and demonization against Yasser Arafat .After his death in a Paris clinic ,the media including 'Haaretz' screamed 'Doctors ;Arafat died of Aids or poisoning . [ Allegations of Aids was only a red herring –anti Aids medicines was used to camouflage poisons]



"The key word is, of course, "Aids". Throughout the long article there is no trace of proof for this allegation. The reporters quote "sources in the Israeli security establishment". They also quote Israeli doctors "who heard from French doctors" - an original method for medical diagnosis. A respected Israeli professor even found conclusive proof: it was not published that Arafat had undergone an Aids test. True, a Tunisian medical team did test him in Ramallah and the result was negative, but who would believe Arabs?



"Of course the writers themselves would be compelled to admit that Arafat's symptoms are completely incompatible with the picture of Aids. "



In sheer disgust Uri writes ;" But, since now all dikes have been breached, I am prepared to say what is on my mind: from the first moment, I was sure that Arafat had been poisoned.

"Most of the doctors interviewed by Haaretz testified that the symptoms point towards poisoning, and, in fact, are incompatible with any other cause. The report of the French doctors, who treated Arafat during the last two weeks of his life, states that no known cause for his death was discovered. True, the tests did not find any traces of poison in his body - but the tests were conducted only for the usual poisons. It is no secret that many intelligence services in the world have developed poisons that cannot be detected at all, or whose traces disappear in a very short time. "



Uri then gives an example of how when Mossad agents were caught in Amman having poisoned the Hamas chief Khaled Mash'al with a slight prick in a main street of Amman ,his life was saved only because King Hussein demanded that Israel immediately provide the antidote.

"The Mash'al affair proves that the Israeli intelligence services have the means to poison people without leaving any trace. The poisoning was discovered only because the perpetrators were caught in flagrante. However, a probability, high as it may be, is not proof. At the moment, there is no proof that Arafat was indeed poisoned by the Israeli services. " Others too have sophisticated poisons.

Regime Changes, a US Franchise;


Extracts from my article of 2 December, 2004 from Asia Times


A lot of planning, work and money has gone into efforts to design a US model for promoting democracy around the world. The model's first success was notched in Serbia. Funded and organized by the US government, which deployed US consultancies, pollsters,
diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organizations (NGOs), the campaign defeated Slobodan Milosevich at the ballot box in Belgrade in 2000. Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role in the campaign to oust Milosevich. In November last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, Miles reapplied the same method successfully. Thanks to his coaching, US-educated Saakashvili brought down Eduard Shevardnadze. When the US ambassador in Belarus, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in Central America, notably in Nicaragua, organized a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus strongman, Alexander Lukashenko, he failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the United States' Belgrade success 10 months earlier.
But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable to the US in planning the operation in Kiev. It is thus easy to understand such slickly organized spontaneity. The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience, which would be the envy of even a Gandhian - is now so smooth that methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections. Located in the center of Belgrade, the Center for Non-violent Resistance, staffed by computer-literate youngsters, is ready for hire and will carry out
operations to beat even a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations. The Belgrade group had on-the-job training in the anti-Milosevich student movement, Otpor. Catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora. Otpor also had a potent, simple slogan that appeared everywhere in Serbia in 2000 - the two words
gotov je, meaning "he's finished", a reference to Milosevich. A logo of a black-and-white clenched fist completed the masterful marketing. In Ukraine, the equivalent is a ticking clock, also signaling that the Kuchma regime's days are numbered. Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists' weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful. If only the Tiananmen Square activists could have had this kind of support in 1989.


Iran
now;

The franchise game continues .Asia Times of 14 March, 2006 reported that an Iranian national Nilofar , working for an international organization in Tehran was invited to attend a human rights
workshop in Dubai, UAE. The course organizers turned out to be a mix of Los Angeles-based exiled Iranians, Americans who appeared to supervise the course and whose affiliation remained unclear throughout, and three Serbs who said they belonged to the Otpor democratic movement that overthrew the late Serbian
president Milosevic in 2000.


The highly secretive workshops were misleadingly advertised in the lobby of the Holiday Inn hotel as a conference by the "Griffin Hospital", in which the organizers, instructors and students were identified through aliases and were instructed to communicate with one another later through hack-proof encrypted Hushmail email service . Serbian instructors organized role playing games to ridicule political elite ie Shia' clerics to demythologize them in the eyes of the people.



"They taught us what methods they used in Serbia to bring down Milosevic," Nilofar said. " -- so we could choose the best one to bring down the regime, but they didn't mention directly bringing down the regime (in Iran) - they just taught us what they had done in their own country."



"The Iranians kept on drinking and drinking and drinking," Nilofar concluded. "And they made endless phone calls, thinking that the Americans would pay for them. But in the end, they didn't." Quite obviously the idea was that agents provocateurs
like the Otpor movement in Serbia would utilize techniques, like anti-government graffiti , cooked up exit polls etc, to embolden the student movement to provoke a general government crackdown, which could then be used as a pretext to 'spark' a mass uprising in Iran that appeared to be spontaneous and indigenous."



Such cadres composed of poor , deprived and unemployed youth from Serbia onwards are only disposable human mass in corporate games of extending their stranglehold across the Globe. There is no shortage of local mafia style leaders to act as front men.
The pattern of regime change by street power have been documented by the Guardian, Global search and others .I have also written extensively on all these events.


According to New Statesman Yushchenko was supported covertly by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Freedom House and George Soros' Open Society Institute, the very entities, which had helped oust Shevardnadze last year. The NED has four affiliate
institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). They" provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide."

Writing in International Herald Tribune December 2004 , Tinatin Khidasheli, Chairwoman of the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association, a human rights group, and now a fellow at the Yale University and who was an enthusiastic participant in the "Rose revolution" wrote that Saakashvili had used the year to consolidate his power, initiating constitutional amendments which will reduce the Parliament's powers, and grant him more powers than any elected president in any democratic state.

As for freedom of speech now in Georgia," dozens of media outlets were shut down, including three television stations. Even popular political talk shows were discontinued and replaced" and others labeled as traitors. The editor of an independent newspaper, with no history of drug use, was arrested in the street for drug possession after criticizing a Saakashvili appointed regional governor. The home of a member of parliament was raided without warrant, "where police claimed to find a stockpile of arms in his children's wardrobe." So much for freedoms in new Georgia.

In 1993, Viktor Yushchenko as the head of the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine enforced the IMF's usual shock therapy medicine which only impoverished the economy ,resulting in a dramatic plunge in real wages, with bread, electricity and transportation prices increasing by three, six and nine times respectively. The standard of living tumbled . He was appointed Prime Minister in 1999 , because IMF promised loans .He closed down part of the country's manufacturing base and also tried to undermine bilateral trade in oil and natural gas with Russia, demanding that this trade be conducted in US dollars than as commodity barter. He was dismissed in 2001, following a non-confidence vote in the parliament-"Viktor Yushchenko has fulfilled obligations to the IMF better and more accurately than his duties to citizens of his our country, Olena Markosyan, a Kharkiv-based analyst, opined in Ukrainian centrist daily Den" (BBC Monitoring, 16 Nov 2004)

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who is widely expected to win with 70% of the vote in this week end elections threatened stringent action against 'Orange Revolution' style street revolution . Foreign election monitors were turned away at the airport, and the KGB - which retains its Soviet name - claimed that Georgian embassies in Lithuania and Ukraine were plotting to destabilise the vote.

The Bush administration , which calls Belarus an "outpost of tyranny" released a dossier detailing Lukashenko's personal finances and Belarus's arms deals. The EU and the US have accused Lukashenko of denying free speech and controlling the media, warning that "targeted sanctions" may follow if, as expected, observers declare the election fraudulent. The EU is funding an "independent radio station" based in Poland .

If anything US led efforts have obstructed natural evolution towards more freedom and democracy , two words most abused by US and British leaders. In fact after 9/11 and 7/7 citizens in the richest and oldest democracy are losing their freedoms and rights .

Less freedom in USA;



Boston Globe reported last week that 4 Republican senators introduced a bill to institutionalise President Bush's surveillance program , considered illegal.

One of the bill's chief sponsors, Sen. Mike DeWine said that "It does not ... give the president a blank check," while authorizing "a limited, but necessary, program."

The proposal was blasted among others , by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , which said that the bill would allow "Americans' phone calls and e-mails to be monitored for 45 days without any court oversight and makes court review after that period optional" -- in violation of the Fourth Amendment's guarantees against unreasonable searches.

"Congress cannot approve an illegal program when so many questions remain unanswered," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office. "When the rule of law has been broken by anyone, especially a president, the proper response is a full and independent investigation."

New York Times knew for a whole year about the illegal wire taps authorized by George Bush but kept quiet.

Now Blair says God inspired him to invade Iraq;

British Columnist Mary Riddell notes, "Blair is finally realizing his catastrophic error." This is thanks in part, to "the mothers, wives and partners who have never stopped pointing out the folly of this conflict...." "The [United Nations] said no, but God said yes," Riddell notes, referring to the lead-up to the U.S.-led attack and to Tony Blair's remarks that God inspired him. Suggesting that the prime minister will not have to wait for a day in the far-off future to be judged on his actions by his deity. Riddell puts it plainly, "Don't wait for God. We will judge you." Reg Keys, whose son was killed in Iraq, said Mr Blair was "using God as a get-out for total strategic failure" and his comments were "abhorrent".



Alex Salmond, of the Scottish National Party, said that Blair "did not look divinely inspired but [rather] 'troubled, confused and with a great deal on his conscience.'" Salmond observed, "God was not the co-author of the war in Iraq - George W. Bush was the co-author. It comes just a few months after his political ally," President Bush, "claimed...his decision to go to war in Iraq was 'a mission from God.'"



But would these leaders be ever tried for invasion of Iraq against UN charter which has resulted into deaths of two hundred thousand Iraqis , destruction of Iraq's economy, apart from the death of over 2311 US soldiers in an immoral venture , which has now morphed into a nightmare . What about the crimes at Abu Ghraib , Guantanamo , Bagram and others sent for rendition in unmarked prisons in Europe and friendly nations elsewhere by CIA operatives .

Trial of US Leaders ;

In its annual report last year on "The State of the World's Human Rights," Amnesty International (AI) described the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, " the gulag of our times" and accused U.S. officials of flouting international law in their treatment of detainees.

AI also called on foreign governments to use international law to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other alleged American "architects of torture" at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and other prisons where detainees suspected of ties to terrorist groups have been interrogated for violations of the Geneva and torture conventions.

"If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them," said William Shulz, executive director of the U.S. branch of the international human rights agency.

If the United States "continues to shirk its responsibility" of investigating allegations of abuse to the top of the chain of command, Shulz said, foreign governments should uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved. In addition to Rumsfeld and Gonzales, the list covered former CIA Director George Tenet; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq; Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo; and Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.

Shulz said the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment legally bind the countries that have signed them to exercise "universal jurisdiction" on people suspected of violations. Certain crimes, including torture, amount to offenses against all of humanity so all countries have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute people responsible for such crimes, he said.

AI report Absurd says George Bush ;

As expected , Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, called the charges "unsupported by the facts."

President Bush said at a White House press conference,"I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," he said, and added that Washington had "investigated every single complaint against [sic] the detainees." "It seemed like [Amnesty] based some of their decisions on the word and allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people [who] had been trained in some instances to disassemble [sic] - that means not tell the truth," Bush went on. "And so it was an absurd report. It just is." [Except that few in the world believe Bush]

Earlier Vice President Dick Cheney responding to the Amnesty's report. an interview with CNN, said "For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously."

"There's been a real drumbeat since Amnesty published the report. It seems like there's an attempt to silence critics," said AI. While the corporate media like Washington Post, normally a defender of independent human-rights groups, objected to the characterization as counter-productive, the Wall Street Journal's neo-conservative editorial staff jumped on it as "one more sign of the moral degradation of Amnesty International"," whose latest accusations "amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda".

But then Cheney maintained that there were WMDs in Iraq, Baghdad was allied with Al Qaeda and it was trying to get Uranium form Niger . All these claims have been proved e wrong, by USA's own Weapons inspectors. His own office leaked the name of a CIA operative to revenge on her spouse , former US ambassador Wilson, who had exposed the Niger claim as false. Cheney's chief aide Scooter Libby has been charged with perjury in that case and would be tried.

Amnesty stands firm;

But the Amnesty stood its ground. "At Guantanamo, the US has operated an isolated prison camp in which people are confined arbitrarily, held virtually incommunicado, without charge, trial or access to due process. Not a single Guantanamo detainee has had the legality of their detention reviewed by a court," despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that provided grounds to do so.

"It is also worth noting," stressed Schulz, "that this administration never finds it 'absurd' when we criticize Cuba or China, or when we condemned the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

Bush's and Cheney's insistence that the detainees themselves concocted the reported abuses also drew criticism.

A glimpse into Guantanamo;

In New York, on March 15, 2006, attorneys representing Guantánamo detainees at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) reacted to the first detainee suicide letter ever declassified by the U.S. Government, blasting the Bush Administration for driving detainees to suicide through indefinite detentions, mistreatment and torture at the base. The shocking letter by Jumah Al Dossari, a Bahraini national whose attorney found him hanging by his neck in a suicide attempt at Guantánamo in October 2005, describes how the horrific conditions of Jumah's confinement and indefinite detention drove him to try to take his own life. In his letter, Jumah seeks to make his "voice heard by the world from the depths of the detention centers" and implores the "fair people of America to look again at the situation and try to have a moment of truth…"

"This disturbing new letter reveals a man brought to the brink of self-destruction because of the government's inhumane policies of indefinite detention and mistreatment - affecting hundreds of people who have not been accused of a crime or even afforded the most basic due process in court," said CCR Deputy Legal Director Barbara Olshansky.

US totally isolated on new UN body on Human Rights;

US leaders always keep on harping to speak on behalf of the international community ( usually USA and UK and a few others ) , but last week against strong Washington opposition ,the United Nations overwhelmingly voted to establish a new body to promote human rights around the world. While 170 countries supported the new body USA, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau voted against it.

K Gajendra Singh, served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in1992 -96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the1990 - 91Gulf war), Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. The views expressed here are his own.- Email-Gajendrak@hotmail.com