Michael Parenti | FIRST YUGOSLAVIA now UKRAINE(and Libya)

0:02

“in 1919 a noted conservative Economist Joseph Schumpeter whose work I’ve read. Extensively, incidentally Schumpeter wrote this about ancient Rome: “Excuse me that policy which pretends to Aspire to peace but unerringly generates War. The policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism. There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interest were not Roman they were those of Rome’s allies and if Rome had no allies then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest why then it was the National Honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space the whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people”.

Does that sound familiar to you at all?

We hear today that we don’t have one enemy, we have many now. The world communism has been defeated but now we have many different enemies. They’re all around ready to pounce on us and unless we keep those extortionary military budgets going, unless we keep being everywhere in all the places of the world, our people will not be safe. They’re out there ready to pounce upon us. Why aren’t they ready to pounce upon Denmark? I mean why doesn’t Denmark have a world Empire? What about little weak helpless sweet Luxembourg? Wouldn’t they want to pounce on Luxembourg? Why would they want to pounce on us? Well I maintain that that’s just the mass line to cover the class line. I gave you what the class line was a little while ago. Yugoslavia ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters was built on an idea as Ramsey Clark said very few countries are actually built on. An idea,  was that the southern Slavs would not remain weak, divided people falling out among themselves or falling prey to some imperialist Outsider. That they would join together and they would have a territory that was large enough and strong enough to become a viable Nation with its own development and sure enough after World War II multi-ethnic socialist Yugoslavia was a post-war industrial power, a viable nation and an economic success. Between 1960 and 1980 it had one of the most vigorous growth rates: a decent standard of living, free medical care and education guaranteed right to a job, one month free vacation with pay. When was the last time I had a month-long vacation? Affordable public transportation, housing and utilities, literacy rate over 90 percent life expectancy was 72 years, most of the economy was in the public not-for-profit sector. Now such a country is a kind that global capitalism normally would not tolerate, still Yugoslavia was allowed to exist for some 45 years because it was seen as a buffer to the Soviet Bloc and the Warsaw Pact Nations. At the same time efforts were made to undermine the socialistic features of Yugoslavia’s economy. Yugoslavia opened up to Western Capital penetration as early as the late 60s and early 70s. I think they made the same mistake that the Polish Communist Party leaders made. They said well what we’re going to do is continual basic industry building up. The industrial base is heavy industry and we’re also going to increase and improve consumer production. Now how are we ever going to be able to do both of those things? You see very simply we got the answer, we’ll borrow from the West. Well once they started borrowing  from the West in came IMF penetration and an enormous debt and with debt came IMF demands for restructuring. Restructuring is a euphemism for a harsh austerity program. You cut back on public sector spending, you cut wages, you cut employment, you abolish worker Management Enterprises. In other words you force your people to work harder for less, producing more and consuming less and with that difference you pay off your debt schedule or at least the interest that’s accumulating on this wealth. Still much of the economy was public sector and not for-profit including the very rich reserves of minerals and other natural resources. In the province of Kosovo and elsewhere then came another blow. What I’m saying to you is that there was a conscious and deliberate plan to fragment and break up Yugoslavia. The other blow was in November 1990 when President George Bush went to the U.S Congress and pressured them to pass the foreign Appropriations law that called for the cutting off of all Aid and credits to Yugoslavia. Trading without credits can be a disaster especially for a country that doesn’t have a hard currency and this has a devastating effect on the country. The law also demanded that if any Republic in Yugoslavia wanted further U.S aid it would have to break away from Yugoslavia and declare its independence.

Okay? it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s not my speculation, it’s not my analysis, it’s a public law, it’s a public law November 1990 the 1991 foreign Appropriations act! It’s written right there, go look at it!

It required the U.S State Department approval of election procedures and results in every one of the republics. It required that the republics do not hold national elections but whole elections only in their own republics and that the aid would go individually to those republics and when the aid did go it went to those groups which the U.S defined as Democratic groups. Which meant small right-wing Ultra nationalists and Even fascistic parties. The ultimate goal was to break up Yugoslavia into a weak and helpless cluster of right-wing banana republics, privatized and de-industrialized. The U.S decided to destroy it along with the other Western Powers who decided to destroy Yugoslavia in 1989 when it became evident that it was the one country in Eastern Europe that would not voluntarily overthrow what remained of its socialist system. It was the one country that was still trying for some kind of economic independence outside of the world global free market, third worldization process. They wanted a Yugoslavia whose rich natural resources would be at the disposal of multinational corporations, whose populations would work at subsistence wages, whose economy offered no competition with existing capitalist producers, only new investment opportunities. They wanted a Yugoslavia whose petroleum, engineering, mining and automotive industries would be undone and de-industrialized and they wanted to abolish Yugoslavia’s public sector services and social programs. Now why would U.S policymakers, you really think U.S policymakers are motivated by some need to abolish the social programs, the public sector services in Yugoslavia? Why would they want to do that? Do you think they are such nefarious evil intended individuals that they would want to abolish their social programs?

Come on Parentii are you being paranoid? Well why would they want to abolish our social programs?”

I would like to show similarities about this Yugoslavia story to this Libya story presented in this video. Divide and conquer West is destroying countries because weak countries are easy to plunder and exploit. What was the standard of living in Yugoslavia before Western intervention, what was the standard of living in Libya before Western intervention? What happened after our interventions were not accidents or mistakes, it was intentional policies to destroy those countries.