jpv. After attending the international conference “Never to Forget – Peace and Prosperity instead of War and Poverty” (Belgrade, March 2019), Fulvio Grimaldi* published a comprehensive article on this subject. He gives an overview of the background of the wars of EU and NATO against Yugoslavia and Serbia. He also describes the media propaganda campaign in the run-up to the bombing as a model for all the other wars that the American empire has waged since 1990. We document some thoughts from the last third of this detailed analysis by the author.
[…] Terrorism began with the betrayal of Račak, the catalyst of the NATO attack, when William Walker, head of the OSCE, an allegedly mediating organisation, attributed a few dozen mutilated civilian bodies to a massacre committed by the Serbs. Finnish coroners examining this find were able to show that the bodies were KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] militias who had been killed in battle and mutilated after their deaths. Then came Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, Osama bin Laden, 9-11 2001, Gaddafi and Assad, who bombed their people … In short, the False-flag operations as the mother of all crimes against humanity.
Deceptions can be revealed, blame assigned, bridges, buildings, railroads, hospitals, homes, schools, factories can be rebuilt. However, when an identity is violated and mutilated, it never stops bleeding – until death. This is the strategic goal of the gravediggers who are equipped with the scythe of globalisation. Identity is wiped out or imprisoned by war and suffocated in the cage of political and economic structures, such as NATO or the EU. Martial terrorism aims at destroying the habits and structures of coexistence, culture, testimonies, roots, works that express a community and its history. Its purpose is to destroy the soul, erase the names. The effect of war through annihilating what a people needs to recognise itself as such, what unites it with its history and territory, is terribly underestimated. [Apart from Pyotr Olegovich Tolstoy, Vice-President of the Duma of the Russian Federation,] nobody else spoke about it at the Belgrade conference, but the subsequent approval and support for this issue proved that it was present among various participants.
The first thing the Americans did in Iraq (I was present myself) was to have the National Library and the Museum – the two of which contained 4,000 years of a civilisation that had spread from there to the rest of humanity (not the whole, to be honest) – destroyed by workers imported from Kuwait. In Ur, Abraham’s homeland, they demolished the first manmade asphalt with the chains of their tanks. They wrecked Babylon, Nineveh, Hatra, Nimrud, Mosul with their bombs, and handed them over to their Islamist mercenaries. As in Syria with Palmyra, Aleppo, Raqqa. As in Libya with Cyrene, Leptis Magna, Ghadames …
In terms of Serbia, we know about 150 orthodox monasteries which were destroyed in Kosovo and another 100 under the eyes of the KFOR troops. Deliberately and precisely, Pancevo’s refineries and chemical tanks were destroyed to release dangerous fumes. But we know nothing about the destruction or damage of museums, cathedrals, the Belgrade Fortress, old cemeteries, Byzantine and medieval monuments, churches, mosques and synagogues, the Memorial Park in Kragujevac, the National Park Fruska Gora, where trees and monasteries burst before our eyes , the old city centres and thus important forms of coexistence. All this to eliminate, level and standardise roots, identities, souls. Without identity, there is no sovereignty – or only that of the globalisers, levelers, de-owners, hate-filled enemies of culture. Where from can one still take the strength, the sense of community, to fight?
The work of globalisers does not end with war and bombs. Proof of this can be found in the worldwide campaign with migrants, a new edition of slave trade and colonialist racism of past centuries. This is covered up with the hypocrisy of the good souls who advocate an unconditional welcome for all while aiming at depriving countries of their young generation in order to rob their resources more easily. This leads to a destruction of the awareness for identity among those who leave their countries and, at the same time, among those who host them. The universalisation of gentrification1 in the metropolises is evidence of this. That means the arrival of rich families and business leaders and tourist groups standardised by uniform scenarios between Tokyo, Chicago, London, Lisbon and Milan. At the same time, there is the displacement of the vital, simple population to the outskirts of the city and its replacement by shopping centres, B&Bs, hotel chains, restaurants and franchise shops, after the small shops, cafés, small restaurants and squares with their walls, dance events and fountains for Saturday evening communion have been snatched away forever from the community of yesterday and today. […]
In Belgrade, the Zara & Co shopping centre in place of the Central Committee building is a bad sign. The same applies to the new quarter of the very rich, the “Waterfront” (in the English style) on the banks of the river. The city centre seems to have been preserved so far.
The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals was a conference of remembrance, and it had to be so given the ignorant oblivion of the leaders and their scribes. But from Živadin Jovanović to the last delegate on we were aware that memory alone is useless if consisting only of a gallery of ancestors and landscapes – an atmosphere in which too many people become sleepy. The memory of the Serbs accuses and warns without interruption; for the gravediggers, Serbia must have become the model of humanity: either we resist the sirens of USA, NATO and EU, or we all are going to die. If memory brings charges, it becomes resistance. It is about the fight against those who now return to bring the streets into a state of turmoil. Illegitimate demonstrations are being organised to bring down a president who may not be following a very clear line, however, in a trend-setting way he said no to NATO. This Nato – pursuing the project of bringing all Albanians together in a single state under the control of international and local crime – wants to push forward the unfinished destabilisation of the Balkans and finally put an end to the Serbian resistance that once defeated the Nazis and now refuses to play the role of bridgehead for the war against Russia.
The conclusions of Živadin Jovanović underline the commitment to keep alive and spread internationally the memory of the crimes and their perpetrators in order to strengthen the opposition to NATO and EU in the name of international law and national sovereignty to be restored. It is also necessary to develop increasingly close relationship with the traditional Russian ally and, with the power of experience and suffering, to work for self-determination of peoples in an international alliance. We have in mind the motto of the conference: “Peace and prosperity instead of wars and poverty”.
I finished my contribution in Belgrade with the promise that all of us 500 delegates will gather here again for the 30th anniversary and even for the 60th. Since we are committed to a just, good and important cause, we will never die. We are immortal. From time to time one must also be able to smile a bit … •
* Fulvio Grimaldi was born in Florence in 1934. He is an Italian journalist, war correspondent for the Italian radio station RAI from 1986 to 1999, publicist, blogger and documentary filmmaker.
Source: Le Grand Soir from 6 April. <link http: www.legrandsoir.info oublier-pardonner-jamais.html>www.legrandsoir.info/oublier-pardonner-jamais.html
Extracts from the article to the international conference “20 ans après l’agression contre la Yougoslavie” – “Oublier? Pardonner? Jamais.” by Fulvio Grimaldi
1 Gentrification (gentry) means the process of displacing residents from urban neighbourhoods because they are rebuilt or rehabilitated for the benefit of more affluent residents.
(Translation Current Concerns)
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