On this day in 1999, the first NATO airstrikes of Yugoslavia began, initiating a wave of violence that killed 1,500 people, damaging hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, and private businesses alongside military targets. The bombings lasted until June 10th of that year.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) bombing campaign was its first military action taken without the endorsement of the U.N. Security Council. James Byron Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, called the campaign a "war crime", and Noam Chomsky referred to it as an act of "terrorism".

Supporters for the campaign claimed the bombing was necessary to stop a genocide of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and to remove Slobodan Milošević from power, although claims made by the Clinton administration along these lines were later found to be highly exaggerated.

Approximately 500 of the people killed were civilians, and the bombs damaged many civilian structures alongside legitimate military targets. Chomsky has argued that the main objective of the NATO intervention was to integrate Yugoslavia into the Western neoliberal social and economic system.

In 2000, Michael Parenti authored "To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia", which argues that the bombing was predicated on capitalist rather than humanitarian interests.

A Review of NATO’s War over Kosovo - Noam Chomsky :chompsky:

Michael Parenti - To Kill A Nation :parenti-hands:

The Srebrenica Precedent :amerikkka:

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

reminders:

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

  • TheCaconym [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This website needs a wiki I think. Ideally something like reddit, where a wiki can be attached to any com and you can allow edit permissions to specific users without giving them (modding, etc.) larger permissions, with relaxed rapid exchanges between com mods and potential candidates for validation (less stringent than a mods'). As for the feature, I have no idea if it's either implemented or in the roadmap of the original lemmy implementation, or in hexbear's one.

    It could be useful, for example:

    • To list theory sources (hyperlinks, book references, etc.) - there are tons of megathreads about this I've saved and occasionally go back to (when the hosting conditions allows one to); a wiki makes it centralized, and always available.
    • To make a list of leftist-inclined books (I'm thinking fiction here), games, tv shows, etc. either centrally or in dedicated coms.
    • To establish a unified list of online (be it commenting or hacktivism) or offline (protests and direct action) OPSEC best practices. Behaviour and equipment during protests, how to react to LE during the same, depending on the country; good VPN providers, browser addons, OS / software to use and how to configure it.
    • To explain how to donate anonymously to comrades on !mutual_aid@hexbear.net ; to reassure users some of the ways provided (grubhub, etc.) are indeed entirely anonymous.
    • To describe various methods of production of psychedelics, with appropriate description and warnings, in a dedicated com.

    All of the above is regularly discussed on hexbear, yet in threads we all save (well, at least I do) that sometimes end up deleted or unreachable. A wiki or something similar could help there (and also be an easily backupable concentrated source of good info in case the website itself was ever to disappear).