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Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories June 24, 2004 Diane Johnstone Kerry and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"   June 23, 2004 Laura Carlsen Bush and Castro Face Off Dave Zirin Barry Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism" Kurt Nimmo From Saddam, With Love Patricia Wolff Foundation Wars Mahboob A. Khawaja "They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son" Patrick Cockburn The Pretense of an Independent Iraq Website of the Day The Road to Abu Ghraib June 22, 2004 Dave Lindorff The Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption Ron Jacobs Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq? Vanessa Jones Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings Mickey Z An Open Letter to the People of Iraq John L. Hess Clinton Exhales Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity Committee for Pacho Cortés An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés Bruce Jackson Saying No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify Website of the Day From Boot Camp to Boot Hill   June 21, 2004 Gary Leupp Putin's Helpful Remarks Lucson Pierre-Charles Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos Upon Chaos Cockburn / Khan Saddam May Face Death Penalty Uri Avnery Irreversible Mental Damage   June 19 / 20, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid and Isolated Bruce Anderson Frozen Gringos Diane Christian Morality and Death: a Meditation on Bush and Blake Walter A. Davis Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib Josh Frank How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature Col. Dan Smith Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan Brian Cloughley A Profound Disruption of the Senses Christopher Brauchli Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later Prudence Crowther Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me! Poets' Basement Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert Kathy Kelly Dying to See Their Kids     June 18, 2004 Chris Floyd Blood Victory Dave Zirin Danielle Green, Basketball Player & Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War Justin E.H. Smith The Christian Question in American Politics Gary Leupp The "Long-Established" Link?: Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi   June 17, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons     June 18, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons   June 16, 2004 Lenni Brenner A Question for Kerry Supporters Davey D Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan Daniel Wolff Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner Abuse? Bruce Jackson Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake Patrick Cockburn Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power Facilities Gary Handschumacher Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads JG Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop Mario Benedetti Obituary with Cheers Vicente Navarro Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who is Rodrigo Rato? Website of the Day Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch     June 15, 2004 Harry Browne Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe Neve Gordon The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited David Palmer Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI John Blair Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming Dave Lindorff God Wins in TKO Bill Quigley Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step In Patrick Cockburn Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast John Chuckman John Kerry, Political Placebo     June 14, 2004 John Stanton / Wayne Madsen Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins the Party Kathy Kelly Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies? Bruce Jackson Bush Gets Testy About Torture Lee Sustar Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs Kurt Nimmo The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit 9/11 Jim Davis Hard Right Nativism Eliot Katz Death and War Uri Avnery The Nightmare Comes True Website of the Day Instruments of Statecraft   June 12 / 13, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede Team CounterPunch CP's Favorite Albums Jeffrey St. Clair Troy, Now and Then Gary Leupp Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq? Brian Cloughley US Military in Crisis Antonio Ponvert, III Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection Ben Tripp The Polls Get Stupider Joe Bageant Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash" Ron Jacobs The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency Forrest Hylton Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés Christopher Brauchli Federal Bureau of Errors Kurt Nimmo Going After Qaddafi, Again Wayne Madsen Israel's Slap at Reagan Anthony Loewenstein Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World Michael Donnelly A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous Greg Moses Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah? Susan Davis Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban Joseph Ramsey Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground Niranjan Ramakrishnan The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century Wayne Saunders The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup Poets' Basement Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert Website of the Weekend Insurgent Music     June 11, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Reagan in Truth and Fiction Ron Jacobs Ray Charles' Legacy of Spirit Chris Floyd Funeral Games Steven Sherman How Reagan Destroyed the Democrats and Paved the Way for Clinton Mokhiber / Weissman Remembering Reagan Norman Solomon Media's Mourning in America Paul Alexander The Kerry Fantasies of Chalmers Johnson CounterPunch Wire The Terror Hour: Miami TV Station Invites Commandoes to Talk About Planned Attacks on Cuba       June 10, 2004 Noam Chomsky The Apotheosis of Reagan : Divinity Through Marketing Gary Leupp Bush, the Religious Scholar Patrick Cockburn The Iraqi Street Has Spoken: New Govt. Made Up of CIA Pawns Saul Landau Force-Feeding Lies About Free Trade Scott Evans Settling for the System: How Punkvoter.com Became Just Another Tool of the Democrats Jacob Levich John Kerry's World of Hurt: Senator Supports Beam Weapons Zeynep Toufe Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures" Nico Pitney Reform at Wal-Mart? Dave Zirin Son of a Reagan: What a Sporty 6-Year Old Saw at the Revolution Jack McCarthy Where Were You When Reagan Croaked? Gary Corseri Nouns That Should be Acronyms David Price Reagan and the Black Budget Website of the Day Inequality by the Numbers   June 9, 2004 Mustafa Barghouthi Israel's Common Use of Torture Must be Exposed Mike Whitney Alan Dershowitz, Still Defending Torture John Chuckman Why the CIA will Always be a Costly Flop Jim Tarbell / Roger Burbach Bush's Democratic Charade in Iraq Dave Lindorff Put Reagan on the $3 Bill Miguel D'Escoto Reagan was the Butcher of My People Becky Burgwin The Betrayal of Smarty Jones: Flogging a Natural Born Hero Patrick Cockburn The Rich Have Been Warned to Leave Baghdad   June 8, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse? Dave Lindorff The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam? Phillip Cryan Torture, Bombings & the Press in Colombia Mark Zepezauer Getting Reagan Wrong Mickey Z. Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions John L. Hess Reagan and Bush in Normandy Alex Dawoody Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance Christopher Fons Reagan in a Word: Mean Niranjan Ramakrishnan Some Tenets are More Important Than Others Ahmed Bouzid Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun Michael Leon Bush the Narcissist   June 7, 2004 Jason Leopold New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes Patrick Cockburn The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing Dennis Hans From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy Tracy McLellan Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics Bill Blum The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War Ben Tripp What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter Susan Davis Reagan, In a Nutshell Phil Gasper Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance Website of the Day A Child's ABCs of Terrorism   June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations     June 4, 2004 Chris Floyd Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House Cornwell / Penketh Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy Wayne Madsen Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink Greg Moses Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq Yitzak Laor Before Rafah Ghali Hassan Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte? Jane Stillwater God, the Rapture and Vera Casey CounterPunch Wire D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage? John Borowski Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush Mike Griffin Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW Alexander Cockburn Has Bush Gone Over the Edge? Website of the Day Aquae Urbis Romae: Water and Empire     June 3, 2004 Ron Jacobs Iran's Nuclear Dilemma Dr. Susan Block America in tha Hood Michael Donnelly The Bully and the Brahmin John Chuckman Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged Christopher Brauchli The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month Samia Nassar Melki Caravaggio in Iraq Mike Whitney Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case Diane Rejman Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead Scott Morris "WMDs" in Cuba Paul de Rooij Palestinian Misery in Perspective     June 2, 2004 Brian Cloughley The Liars are Winning Ray McGovern How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence" Josh Frank The Anybody But Bush Offensive Mike Whitney The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots Jackie Corr Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana Robert Jensen The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too Alexander Cockburn "Bye, Bye Boonville!"   June 1, 2004 Gary Leupp Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him William A. Cook Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah Dave Lindorff Will the Times Clean House? Kevin Zeese Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed? Jacob Levich Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production Kathy Kelly Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government Website of the Day Remind Us     May 29 / 31, 2004 Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh The Origins of Memorial Day Janine Pommy Vega Memo for Memorial Day Mike Ferner On Their Way to Abu Ghraib Alfred W. McCoy The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research Douglas Valentine An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions Chris White First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto Bruce Anderson The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu David Vest Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire Saul Landau Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy? Kurt Nimmo Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA Elaine Cassel The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders Will Potter The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist" Ben Tripp They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches Dr. Susan Block Save Abu Ghraib! Kia Kojouri Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh Mickey Z D-Day: 60 Years is Enough! Jon Brown Correcting the Correction at the Times Patrick B. Barr Pre-emptive War Insurance Stephen Gowans Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel Tom Gorman Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New Dave Zirin Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad Gregory Weiher Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy" Erik Cummings Jung Meets Bush Poets' Basement Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert     May 28, 2004 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5 Greg Moses Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib Dave Lindorff Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work Norman Solomon Leaping for Lies at the Times Rep. Bill Delahunt Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba Paul McGeough Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves Niranjan Ramakrishnan India and Nehru: 40 Years After Alexander Cockburn NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"     May 27, 2004 Amy Goodman / David Goodman Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times Douglas Valentine Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs John L. Hess The Times Confesses...Kind Of Stew Albert Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist Dave Dellinger a 1993 Interview Christopher Brauchli Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids Rampton / Stauber Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony     May 26, 2004 Ron Jacobs Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours Robert Fisk The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech Zeynep Toufe New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation Conn Hallinan Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection Tom Stephens 2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes Derek Medley Protesting Gov. Bigot CounterPunch Wire FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art Andrew Cockburn The Trail to Tehran     May 25, 2004 Joe Bageant The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas Col. Dan Smith A Question of Human Dignity Gary Handschumacher Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home Toni Solo A Developing War in the Andes Marc Estrin September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11 Stephen Banko, III A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops" Website of the Day The Wizard of Whimsy May 24, 2004 Ron Jacobs Dan Senor is Safe! Kurt Nimmo Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages Sam Hamod Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" Mike Whitney The Wedding was a Bomb Stan Goff Open Season on MAMs Image of the Day A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs     May 22 / 23, 2004 Paul de Rooij Colin Powell, a Political Obituary Jeffrey St. Clair When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer Brian Cloughley America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq Saul Landau Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People Brandy Baker Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry Randall Robinson Bushwhacked in the Caribbean Uri Avnery The Rape of Rafah Ben Tripp Assume the Worst Bruce Anderson News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business Josh Ruebner Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers Peter Wolson, Ph. D. Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib Chloe Cockburn In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy Linda Burnham Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value Adrien Rain Burke War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse David Krieger Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy Ron Jacobs Turnaround Poets' Basement Ford, Albert & LaMorticella   May 21, 2004 Ray Close The Canards of the Apologists Christopher Brauchli "The Object of Torture is Torture" Amira Hass Darkness at Noon Jack McCarthy Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army? Bill Kauffman Nader v. Bush Omar Barghouti No More Tears for America Ghali Hassan Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza Christopher Reed How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture Website of the Day Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much   May 20, 2004 Andrew Cockburn The Truth About Chalabi Kathy Kelly A Visit from the FBI Niranjan Ramakrishnan Brown and Bored of Education in India Tom Stephens & John Philo The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co. Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan Genocide by Public Policy Robert Ovetz Ending the Race for the Last Turtle Billy Wilson The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year Website of the Day Rafah Today         Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

June 24, 2004 Clinton, Kerry and Kosovo The Lie of a "Good War" By DIANA JOHNSTONE For U.S. politicians, if all wars are good, some are better than others. Democrats prefer Clinton wars and Republicans prefer Bush wars. But in the end, they almost unanimously come together to support all wars. The differences concern the choice of official rationale.. To suggest subtle criticism of the Republican war against Iraq, while making it clear that they are by no means opposed to war as such, the 2004 Democratic election campaigners can be expected to glorify the Kosovo war. The prominence of General Wesley Clark in the Democratic camp makes that quite clear. John Kerry's foreign policy adviser Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, author of "Democratic Realism: the Third Way", points to the exemplary nature of the 1999 "<U.S.-led> intervention in Kosovo". It was "a policy consciously based on a mix of moral values and security interests with the parallel goals of halting a humanitarian tragedy and ensuring NATO's credibility as an effective force for regional stability". The "humanitarian" rationale sounds better than the "weapons of mass destruction" or the "links to Al Qaeda" which never existed. But then, the "genocide"from which the NATO war allegedly saved the Albanians of Kosovo never existed either. But while the WMD deception has been exposed, the founding lie behind the Kosovo war is still widely believed. It effectively distracts from the very existence of the what Marshall calls the "parallel goal"of strengthening NATO. Aside from the crippling material damage inflicted on the targeted country, the Kosovo lie has caused even more irreparable damage to relations between the Serb and Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo. The situation in that small province of multiethnic Serbia was the result of a long and complex history of conflict, frequently encouraged and exploited by outside powers, notably by the support to Albanian nationalism by the Axis powers in World War II. Each community accused the other of plotting "ethnic cleansing" and even "genocide". But there were reasonable people on both sides willing to work out a compromise solution. The constructive role of outsiders would have been to calm the paranoid tendencies in both communities and support constructive initiatives. Indeed, the Kosovo problem could have been easily managed, and eventually solved, had the Great Powers so desired. But as in the past, the Great Powers exploited and aggravated the ethnic conflicts for their own purposes. In total ignorance of the complex history of the region, sheeplike politicians and media echoed and amplified the most extreme nationalist Albanian propaganda. This provided NATO with its pretext to demonstrate "credibility". The Great Powers have in effect told the Albanians that all their worst accusations against the Serbs were true. Even Albanians know who know better (such as Veton Surroi) are intimidated and silenced by the racist nationalists backed by the United States. The result is disastrous. Empowered by their official status as unique victims of Serb iniquity, the Albanians of Kosovo -- and especially the youth, raised on a decade of nationalist myth -- can give free rein to their cultivated hatred of the Serbs. Armed Albanian nationalists proceeded to drive the Serbian and gypsy populations out of the province. Those remaining do not dare venture out of their ghettos. Albanians willing to live with the Serbs risk being murdered. Ever since the NATO-led force (KFOR) marched into Kosovo in June 1999, violent persecution of Serbs and Roma has been regularly described as "revenge" -- which in the Albanian tradition is considered the summit of virtuous conduct. Describing the murder of elderly women in their homes or children at play as acts of "revenge" is a way of excusing or even approving the violence. Last March 17, following the false accusation that Serbs were responsible for the accidental drowning of three Albanian children, organized mobs of Albanians, including many teenagers, rampaged through Kosovo destroying 35 Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries, some of them artistic gems dating from the fourteenth century. Well over a hundred churches had already been attacked with fire and explosives in the past five years. The objective is quite clearly to erase all historic trace of centuries of Serb presence, the better to assert their claim to an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo. The self-satisfaction of the "international community" was severely shaken by the March violence. The occasional KFOR units that tried to protect Serb sites found themselves in armed clashes with Albanian mobs. In the wake of the rampages, Finnish politician Harri Holkeri resigned two months before expiration of his one-year renewable mandate as head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) supposed to administer the province. He was the fourth to get out of the job as fast as he could. Apparently on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Holkeri lamented to a press conference that UNMIK has no intelligence service of its own, and had received no prior hint of the March pogroms. In short, the mass of international administrators, military occupation forces and non-governmental agencies have no idea what is going on in the province they are theoretically running. Indicating his awareness that the only role left for UNMIK was that of scapegoat, Holkeri warned of "difficult days ahead". That is a safe prediction. Trouble ahead On June 11, the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci, the protege of Madeleine Albright and her press officer James Rubin, denounced UNMIK as a "complete failure" and announced that, if he wins Kosovo's forthcoming elections in October, he will implement his "vision of Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state". The circumstances suggest that not only Thaci, but any newly elected Kosovo may do the same. Proclamation of Kosovo's independence on the eve of U.S. presidential elections could be shrewd timing. With Iraq exploding, American leaders need to maintain the myth of the "success" in Kosovo. Getting into open conflict with the Albanians could be politically disastrous. At the same time, many Europeans saw the anti-Serb pogroms in March as evidence that Kosovo has a long way to go to reach the "standards" of democratic human rights and ethnic harmony which UNMIK is mandated to achieve before any final decision on the province's status. There are serious reasons not to give in to the Albanian demand for an "independent and sovereign Kosovo". 1. Legality. First of all, there is the minor question of legality: minor, inasmuch as the NATO powers have ignored it from the start. The war itself was totally devoid of any legitimate basis in international law. It was officially concluded in June 1999 by a peace accord incorporated into U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which, among other things, obliged the occupying powers to : -- "ensure conditions for a peaceful and normal life for all inhabitants of Kosovo" -- which logically should mean "all", and not solely the Albanians; -- "ensure the safe and free return of all refugees and displaced persons" -- by which the U.S. negotiators probably meant the Albanians who had fled during the bombing, but since they promptly returned on their own, without difficulty, this stipulation in reality refers to Serbs, Rom and other non-Albanians forced to flee; -- establish an interim political framework "taking full account of [...]the principles of sovereignty and integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" -- which amounts to recognition that Kosovo remains part of a larger political entity made up of Serbia and Montenegro; -- permit the return of an agreed number of Yugoslav and Serbian personnel, including border control police and customs agents; -- effect the maintenance of civil law and order and the protection of human rights. In reality, once the United States got its big military foot in the door, Resolution 1244 was scarcely worth the paper it was written on. The United States had other priorities: -- First, in record time, the Pentagon built an enormous military base, "Camp Bondsteel", on a thousand areas of illegally expropriated farmland strategically located near trans-Balkan transit routes, on the approaches to the Middle East and Caspian Sea oil transport. -- The other obvious U.S. priority was to preserve the clandestine wartime alliance with the "Kosovo Liberation Army", not only against the Serbs, but also, implicitly, against any European allies which might seek influence in post-conquest Kosovo. After a sham "disarmament" disposing of a few obsolete light arms, the KLA was renamed the "Kosovo Protection Force" and put on the U.N. payroll. Certain of its officers proceeded to mount armed actions to extend "greater Albania" to neighboring Macedonia and parts of Southern Serbia next to Kosovo. These operations were launched from the American sector, next to Camp Bondsteel. -- As for the internal organization of Kosovo itself, the U.S. priority is, as usual, privatization of the economy. Privatization in practice starts with dismantling whatever government services existed, on the theory that without government interference, private initiative will flourish. In a very special sense, this has indeed proved to be the case. Kosovo, already a transit area for the largest amount of heroin smuggled from Turkey to Western Europe, has rapidly become the center of a new trade in women sex slaves. The Albanian mafia is by far the biggest operator in these trades. The "internationals" who have come to "civilize" the province provide a thriving local market for prostitutes. If they ever go home, the Albanian mafia can count on the networks it has developed throughout Western Europe to keep business going 2. The economy. In socialist Yugoslavia, Kosovo was by far the poorest area in Yugoslavia, with the highest rate of chronic unemployment. It still is. But then, it benefited from injection of the largest amount of development funds from the rest of the country. Although the sentiment that their poverty was a result of exploitation contributed to the rise of Kosovo Albanian nationalism, the fact is that Kosovo was always heavily subsidized by the rest of Yugoslavia, and as a result was considerably more developed than neighboring Albania. Since the NATO occupation, Kosovo lives off other sources of income, mainly the flourishing drugs and sex trades. The "international community" has contributed a patchwork of social services (from UNMIK police to NGO counselos) that provide a temporary substitute for the expulsion of the local branches of the Serbian government. Camp Bondsteel provides the largest number of legitimate jobs to Albanians, and may continue to do so even after the demand for chauffeurs and interpreters dries up as the NGOs go home. Saudi Arabia can be counted on to finance mosque construction. But with a per capita income of about $30 per month, it is hard to see where an "independent Kosovo" could scrape up the tax base to pay for a government, especially since so much of the real income is illicit, outside the reach of tax collectors. Kosovo is only an extreme case of the "transition" from socialism to the free market, as imposed on Eastern Europe by the "international community". The State and its services were removed by NATO military force, whereas elsewhere the demolition process has been more gradual and less dramatic, the result of pressures from the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union. The mass of unemployed young men have little prospect of earning a living other than by getting in on the crime business. It is hard to see what can prevent "independent Kosovo" from being an uncontrollable crime center. At the end of World War II, in order to defeat the Fascists and combat the Communists, U.S. intelligence services cynically brought the Mafia back to Sicily. The parallel with Kosovo does not go beyond that. For unlike Kosovo, Sicily is an essentially rich island, with a diversified economy and numerous centuries-old sophisticated urban centers where large sectors of a highly educated population have courageously resisted the corruption and violence of the mafia. This aspect of Sicilian society is insufficiently appreciated abroad, where it is more "romantic" to glorify the gangsters. In comparison, Kosovo Albanian society simply does not possess such material or cultural resources for resisting the power of the new mafias that, while feeding on certain clan traditions, are above all a product of neoliberal globalism. 3. Human rights. The protection of "human rights" was the pretext for the 1999 war. In terms of everyday human relations, the situation is far worse than before. This is not widely recognized for two reasons. One, since the "international community" rather than Milosevic is in charge, media interest in Kosovo has virtually evaporated. Second, the victims of persecution and harassment, the children whose school buses are stoned, the old people who are beaten and whose houses are set on fire, the farmers who do not dare go out to cultivate their fields, the hundreds of thousands of refugees from "ethnic cleansing" ... are Serbs. Or sometimes gypsies. Western media early on identified "the Serbs" as the enemies of "multi-ethnic society" and the perpetrators of "ethnic cleansing". The curious result seems to be that the absence of Serbs is understood as the best guarantee of a multi-ethnic society. This, at any rate, is the logic of the attitude taken by the international community in regard to the Ibar valley region of Kosovo north of Mitrovica. That area, which forms a sort of point reaching into central Serbia, is the largest remaining part of Kosovo where Serbs retain a traditional majority sufficient to defend themselves from Albanian intimidation. When, as happens from time to time, Albanian militants from the ethnically purified region south of the Ibar attempt to cross the river, they are stopped by Serb guards. In this situation, "international community" spokesmen almost invariably take the line that Serb extremists are standing in the way of "multi-ethnic" Kosovo. The fact is deliberately overlooked that, while a certain number of Albanians are still living in Serb-controlled northern Mitrovica, all Serbs and Rom have been driven out of southern Mitrovica, and that if the Albanian activists were granted free access to the north, the probable result would be further ethnic cleansing of what remains of the Serb population. For some in the "international community", that would be an ideal solution. Once all non-Albanians have been driven out, the professional humanitarians can declare that Kosovo is "multi-ethnic", and there will be nobody left there to dispute this triumphant assertion. The overriding concern of the West now is to get out of the Kosovo mess in a way that will allow it to continue to celebrate the Kosovo war as a great humanitarian success. Having left the Balkans in a shambles, the human rights warriors can go on to other victories. The only thing to stop them might be a belated recognition of the truth. 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