1992

As USSR collapse began there was a cutback in military procurement in the US  “Many economists consider the major factor in the Bush recession” was this cutback.

Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow coalition accepted a subordinate role in the Democratic convention.
During the presidential campaign Clinton had criticised Bush for not intervening in Bosnia, not denouncing ethnic cleansing and not promising to “use air power against the Serbs to try to restore the basic conditions of humanity.” Clinton advocated a “lift and strike” policy to stop “Serb aggression” – lift the embargo on arms to the Muslims and Croats and order air strikes against Serb strongholds.

Cabinet Changes
Lawrence S Eagleburger becomes Sec of State; William P Barr became Attorney General; Barbara H Franklin became Sec of Commerce; Andrew Card became Sec of Transport.

Turkish Kurds
In March the PKK in Turkey announced a cease-fire after discussions with the Turgut Ozal government, which regarded the offer as a “genuine peace move”. Cease-fire renewed in April with demands that Kurds “should be given our cultural freedoms and the right to broadcast in Kurdish” and the lifting of repressive “emergency legislation” and abolition of the “village guard system”.
However, President Ozal died and the US was able to rush sophisticated equipment to the Turkish military so it could escalate the ethnic cleansing and terror operations in the south. Turkish officers educated in the USA were familiar with the methods of Vietnam, Guatemala, etc: The doctrines of terror and oppression, borrowed directly from the nazis, refined for application in the US, had been used in counter-insurgency operations world-wide. The terror resumed.

Afghanistan
Communists collapsed on 25th April.
A foreign policy success came to fruition in Afghanistan as the Mujahidin overthrew the pro Soviet Najibullah government and the country fragmented. Fighting broke out among warring fundamentalist groups for territorial control, and thereby creating the Afghanistan we know and love today.
Massive artillery attacks killed and wounded thousands of civilians. Women’s rights were violated with impunity as Mujahideen groups seized power in Kabul.
Trials were arbitrary and punishments were barbaric. Amnesty International report April 1992 – Feb 1995 lists horrendous crimes against women.

Hekmatyar – a warlord – agreed to stop attacking Kabul on condition he was made prime minister. He was. Pilger in 2003.

Iraq
August 2nd No Fly Zone established over southern Iraq to stop air attacks on shi’ite muslim rebels, enforced by US and Allied air patrols.
Another source stated that the NFZ was established on the 26th of August.

Balkan Crisis
EVENTS
“5,000 Serb refugees would pour into Knin by Janauary 1992 – from Dalmatian coast, region of Lika and towns like Zadar where Croatia’s innocent Serbs were subject to some of the most irrational and unpleasant retribution which traumatised Croats began handing out after the war began in June 1991.”

1992 Macedonia declared independence in January and Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence in April. “Yugoslavia erupted into civil war; thousands were killed and millions were displaced in ethnic cleansing operations”. - The Milosevic Era according to PBS
Jan. 15: The European Community (EC) extends formal recognition to Croatia and Slovenia.
Feb.29–Mar. 1: Bosnia held a referendum on independence; 99.4 percent vote for independence (but Bosnian Serbs boycott the referendum).
Mar. 2: Bosnian Serbs erect roadblocks throughout Bosnia.
Mar. 3: Bosnian government declares independence. Mar. 18:Cutileiro Plan signed (dividing Bosnia into three ethnic cantons); rejected by Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic on Mar.25.
Mar. 27:Bosnian Serbs declare autonomous Republika Srpska in Bosnia
The Siege of Sarajevo begins on April 5, 1992, when thousands of peace demonstrators are attacked by gunmen; for the next three years, the city is relentlessly bombarded by the Bosnian Serb Army.
April – Bosnian War started.
Apr. 6–7:The United States and the EC recognize the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina; United States formally recognizes Croatia and Slovenia; United States ends financial sanctions against Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia.
Serbia and Montenegro now form the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with Milosevic as its leader. This new government, however, was not recognised by the United States as the successor state to the former Yugoslavia. Why not?
Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most ethnically diverse of the Yugoslav republics, Bosnia 43% muslim, 31% Serbian, and 17% Croatian (according to the 1991 Yugoslavian census). Ethnic tensions strain to the breaking point, and Bosnia erupts into war. Thousands die and more than a million are displaced. By the time a tenuous peace is achieved in 1995, the country has been partitioned into three areas, with each region governed by one of the three ethnic groups. Each enclave is now made up of roughly 90% of its own ethnic group.” Infoplease.com.
May - In defiance of Serbian authorities, ethnic Albanians elect (non-violent) writer Ibrahim Rugova as president of the self-proclaimed republic and set up a provincial assembly. Serbia declares the election to be illegal.  - Dr S D Stein, Stuart.Stein@uwe.ac.uk, ©S D Stein, http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/Kosovo/Kosovo-chronology3.htm
August – Thin man behind the barbed wire photo appeared on front paper of virtually every newspaper. But in reality the man was not behind barbed – the wire went round a small unused compound from which Britain’s ITN took their pictures. He was not in a prison camp – let alone a deathcamp, but in transit through a refugee centre – on his way to Scandinavia. The man Fikrit Alic was unusually thin and unrepresentative of the others.

FIND PICTURE

Sept. 3: UN and EC peace negotiations begin,with Cyrus Vance as UN representative and Dr David Owen as EC representative. Sept. 14: UN Security Council expands UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) mandate to conduct humanitarian aid throughout Bosnia (UNSCR 776).
Albania was the first former Warsaw Pact country to request NATO membership.
Oct. 9: UN Security Council established no-fly zone over Bosnia (UNSCR 781).
October - First attempts at peace talks between Serb and Albanian Kosovar leaders.

Based on Diana Johnstone’s “Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions” (monthly Review Press, 2002). It rejects story put out by David Rieff; and Roy Rohde – reporters who got the Pullitzer prize for keeping to Nato’s party line. – the “humanitarian bombing” bandwagon.

Oil in the Balkans?
The crisis in Yugoslavia continued, with some in Europe working towards peace, NATO and Washington seemed to be milking the situation for whatever foothold they could gain in the Balkans. Civil war began around spring 1992 – Bosnian Serbs seizing 70% of Bosnian territory and the alleged “ethnic cleansing” driving Muslims and Croats from their homes, followed by bombardment of Sarajevo.

Bosnia Secede from Yugoslavia
NATO, biased against the Serbs, encouraged national groups opposed to the Serbs, making the Serbs suspicious and risking the outbreak of conflict. Other groups were encouraged to resist a negotiated settlement, provoking the Serbs into action, & allowing NATO intervention on their behalf.
In Bosnia, the European powers arranged for an independence vote in 1992, despite the fact that the Bosnia-Herzegovina constitution required that such a vote be taken only with agreement of the republic’s three “constituent peoples” - Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The Bosnian Serbs boycotted the election. The creation of this artificial and badly divided state assured war and ethnic cleansing. This catastrophic decision was made by the NATO powers, the US and Europe, not Milosevic.

Lisbon Accord
With U.S. aid and encouragement Izetbegovic fought any settlement that would result in autonomy for the major national groups. The United States supported him both diplomatically and, increasingly, by military means. Milosevic, and to a lesser extent the Bosnian Serbs, were repeatedly willing to sign compromise agreements, but Izetbegovic repeatedly refused, with U.S. support. Most importantly, in the case of the Lisbon Accord of March 1992, which was signed by all three parties, but the US persuaded Izetbegovic to withdraw.

Owen Vance Plan
Once in office Clinton went all diplomatic and backed the Vance-Owen plan to divide Bosnia into three enclaves, with each group controlling three enclaves apiece and only Sarajevo open to all. Serbs rejected this? – that’s what the official history says.
Milosevic also supported the Owen-Vance plan of 1992, vetoed by the Bosnian Serbs, to Milosevic’s disgust. This diplomatic history is well documented in Lord David Owen’s memoir, Balkan Odyssey.

History and outside forces
The genocidal behaviour of the Croats toward the Serbs in World War II; the long-standing backing of the nationalist movement in Croatia by Germany, Austria, and the Vatican; the importance of the Croatian lobby in the United States and elsewhere in mobilising support for their breakaway from Yugoslavia; and Croatia’s skilled propaganda efforts, helped along by their employment of public relations firm Ruder Finn. “News” about Croatia and its victimisation by Serbia flowed from Zagreb and Ruder Finn.

Lies over Greater Croatia
Quite independently of Milosevic the Croatian nationalists, led by Franjo Tudjman from 1990, were clearly aiming at a “Greater Croatia” that would include a part of Bosnia, as well as the Serb-inhabited Krajina area. According to Johnstone, it was a masterpiece of effective propaganda that Croatia’s war in Bosnia and expulsion of a quarter million Serbs from Krajina (with active U.S. assistance) was portrayed in the West not as part of a quest for a Greater Croatia, but as a resistance to Milosevic’s striving for a Greater Serbia.
According to Clinton and mainstream commentary, Milosevic’s drive for a Greater Serbia and nationalism was demonstrated by his inflammatory nationalistic speeches of 1987 and 1989. This is a perfect illustration of the profound role of disinformation in the demonisation process. The two famous speeches denounce nationalism: Milosevic actually said, “Yugoslavia is a multinational community, and it can survive only on condition of full equality of all nations that live in it.” Nothing in the two speeches contradicts this sentiment.

Milosevic
Milosevic was an opportunistic politician, “whose ‘ambiguity’ allowed him to win elections, but not to unite the Serbs.” Milosevic gained popularity by condemning both Serbian nationalism and communist bureaucracy and by promising economic reforms in line with the demands of the Western financial community. In Johnstone’s view, Milosevic can be regarded as a criminal “if using criminals to do dirty tasks makes him a criminal,” but on this count he was “no more [guilty] (or rather less) than the late President Tudjman of Croatia or President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, widely regarded as a saint.” He was less a nationalist than Tudjman and Izetbegovic, and claims that he had “dehumanising beliefs” and an “eliminationist project” are taken out of the whole cloth.

The Myth of Greater Serbia policy
Milosevic’s alleged pursuit of a Greater Serbia was a misreading of his actual policies, which were, first, to prevent the disintegration of Yugoslavia and, second, as that disintegration occurred, to protect the Serb minorities in the new states and allow them either to remain in Yugoslavia or obtain autonomy in the new rump states. He was considered by the Bosnian Serbs and Krajina victims of Operation Storm to be a sell-out, eager to bargain away their interests in exchange for a possible lifting of sanctions on Yugoslavia. He did support the Bosnian Serbs, sporadically, but it is rarely mentioned that the NATO powers and Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda were supporting the Bosnian Muslims (and Croatia was supporting its allies in Bosnia).
So Milosevic was guilty of pursuing a Greater Serbia by trying to prevent the dissolution of Yugoslavia and feebly seeking to give stranded and threatened Serb populations protection. His “war” against Slovenia—one of those “terrible conflicts” Tim Judah attributes to Milosevic—was a half-hearted ten-day effort to prevent an illegal secession of that Republic, quickly terminated with minimal (and mainly Yugoslav army) casualties. Meanwhile, Tudjman, quite openly seeking a Greater Croatia, and Izetbegovic, trying to leverage U.S. and other NATO hostility to Yugoslavia into a means of compelling unwanted Greater Muslim rule in Bosnia, were just victims of the bad man.

Albanians
The same is true of the Kosovo struggle. There is no question but that Milosevic’s crackdown in 1989 was brutal and that police and army actions against the KLA in later years were sometimes ruthless, but the phalanx has ignored a number of key facts. One is that Kosovo was largely run by Albanians before 1989 and the first target of the 1989 crackdown was the old bureaucracy run by Albanian communists. Second, under their rule it was Serbs who were discriminated against and driven out of Kosovo. In the 1980s and earlier, Kosovo Albanian nationalists were openly engaging in “ethnic cleansing” in the interests of a homogenous Albanian state. In the 1990s the movement aimed not for reform, but for an exit from Yugoslavia. The movement’s leaders were also more openly interested in a “Greater Albania.” As in the case of the Izetbegovic faction of the Bosnian Muslims, the KLA soon saw that by provocation and effective propaganda it would be possible to get NATO to serve as its military arm.

War
Johnstone describes the Yugoslav efforts to compromise and give the Albanians greater autonomy and she notes the complete failure of the NATO powers to seek any kind of mediated solution (including a division of the Kosovo territory). The war engineered by the KLA and United States then ensued, with disastrous results. In Kosovo it produced great destruction, an immense flight of refugees, with thousands of casualties and a fresh injection of hatred on all sides that contradicted the alleged NATO aim of producing a genuine multi-ethnic community. This was followed by a massive ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Roma, Turks, and Jews by the NATO-supported KLA, and Kosovo was left “without a legal system, ruled by illegal structures of the Kosovo Liberation Army and very often by competing mafias” (quoting Jiri Dienstbier, UN human rights rapporteur in Kosovo). Under NATO auspices, and helped along by leaders of Albania, a new advance was made in the aim of a “Greater Albania” in Macedonia and possibly elsewhere. Finally, Serbia was very badly damaged by the war, reduced to penury and dependency, conflict ridden, and with a sham democracy in place.

Between May 1992 and January 1994 Nasir Oric – a Vosnian Muslim officer – operating out of Srebrenica, ventured out of his “safe haven” to attack nearby Serb villages, burning homes and killing over 1,000 Serbs. He showed his ‘war trophies’ to journalists – video cassettes showing cut-off Serb heads, burnt out homes, and piles of corpses. NATO’s story was that Srebrenica was a safe haven for civilians and not UN cover for Bosnian Muslim military operations. – Johnstone.

Former USSR explodes into Violence
Abkhazia, near the Black Sea, began pressing for independence from Georgia. In January 1992, Georgian tanks were sent to repress the demands. Bombing and guerrilla warfare around the Abkhazian capital of Sukhumi caused thousands of refugees to flee. Georgia accused Russian troop units deployed in the area of being pro-Abkhazian and called for UN peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, there were clashes in nearby South Ossetia when Georgia abolished that area’s autonomy.

The Czechs and Slovaks split. Food riots and mob rule in Albania.

Brazil
The economic crisis in Brazil deepens still further. The Earth Summit is held in Rio, and as this is going on, Collar, the president of Brazil, resigns after accusations of corruption. Collar was about to be tried by the Brazilian Senate on charges that he had pocketed millions in a corruption scheme. He is later cleared. He was replaced by vice President Itamar Franco. a populist and a nationalist. Inflation was also a major problem, and this might have contributed towards his decision to go..
Franco was slow to move ahead with Collar’s economic modernisation plans thus delaying foreign debt talks and temporarily suspending the program to privatise state companies.

Nicaragua
“A tidal wave wiped out fishing villages leaving hundreds dead and missing in September 1992. The New York Times headline read ’US sends Nicaragua aid as sea toll rises to 116’. Washington announced that it was making $5m available immediately as a result of the disaster.”  “Such nobility. Only in the small print do we discover that the $5m is being diverted from scheduled aid that had been withheld – but not, congress was assured, from the over $100m aid package that the administration had suspended because the Nicraguan government is not yet sufficiently subservient to its wishes. The humanitarian donation amounts to an impressive $25,000” – Chomsky “501” page 147.

Mexico
12 year civil war cost 75,000 lives. 1970s and 1980s – lots of violence by US backed government. The war ended January 1992. ARENA.  ??

Bob Packwood, R-One, refused to discuss unwelcome sexual advances he’d mad eto 10 women over the years other than issuing an apology – November 21st or 26th. HR Haldeman died aged 67. Frank Sturgis, Watergate

Rwanda
Covergae of the gorillas continued – the war as covered only as it affected the gorillas.

Election
George Bush campaigned for re-election against the Democrat candidate, Bill Clinton.
What happened at the 1992 Republican convention?
 “Bush was at pains to distance himself from both Republican Party’s more extreme statements [party platform agreed at conventions] and from fringe elements at Republican convention in 1992.
Were the electorate just too keen to distance themselves from the Evangelism at the root of Bush’s policies?

In the end – the recession did George Bush no favours. By June of 1992 ten million Americans were unemployed – up three million since Bush took office. Real income had declined 1.9%. The 1990 turndown was felt most strongly in New England and California – areas that had boomed in 1980s.

The fall of the Berlin Wall led to a 5% cut in defence spending – defence jobs lost led to greater than 15% of total jobs lost. The US was heavily dependent on its arms industry.

1947 – 1973 Median family income doubled. 1973 onwards it failed to increase. In the late 70s it dropped. 1982 onwards it declined further due to recession. 1987 reached 1973 levels again. 1990 fell again. 1992 – stood at slightly below 1973 figure. Hence why both partners need to work, debt etc.

The Election
Clinton wins. Bush suffers a major setback, allowing Democrats back in power for first time in 12 years. 3rd November. But noone needed to worry – no danger of Clinton actually doing anything that he’d promised. He was thoroughly controlled by his Corporate masters.

Clinton – 43.0 –  370
Bush    – 38.0 –  168
Perot     – 19.0 –    0

Iran Contra Scandal
Bush went out under a very large black cloud. The Iran-Contra scandal may well have cost him the presidency. But he did escape without becoming personally implicated. After losing to Clinton, Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra defendants, but as he waved goodbye to the White House the Iran-Contra special prosecutor, Laurence Walsh released documents that exposed Bush’s far deeper role – documents included a diary log by Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger.
A congressional enquiry discovered that Bush and his top advisors had ordered a cover-up to conceal their secret support for Saddam Hussein and illegal arms shipments being sent to him via third world countries. Missile technology was shipped to South Africa and Chile and then ‘on sold’ to Iraq while commerce Department records were altered and deleted. PILGER p.67.

Bush pardoned Elliot Abrams for his Iran-Contra crimes. Otherwise he’d have gone to prison.

notes
Philippines
Aquino’s military chief of staff succeeded her – faced with coup-plotting, bomb throwing and revolt by ex-military rebels – a secessionist armed struggle in Muslim South.

CIA
After all the years of the cold war, the illegal drugs experiments, “non-lethal” torture methods & assassination attempts, the CIA is now being used increasingly for economic espionage. This involves stealing the technological secrets of competing foreign companies and giving them to American ones. The CIA does have a corporate origin, deriving from what was the secret police of the Rockefeller organisation, and later virtually the personal property of the Bush-clan. The CIA’s reputation of law-breaking and serious abuses of power lead one to suspect plenty of naughty things going on to obtain these corporate secrets. Source?

Global Poverty
A 1992 UN Development report estimates that protectionist and financial measures of the rich countries deprived the south of $US ½trillion a year about 12 times total ‘aid’ – most of it publicly subsidised export promotion – Erskin E. Childers ?

El Salvador
UN sponsored peace accords ended the 12 year conflict in El Salvador with rebels forming a formal political party, the FMLN.

East Timor
The US officially suspended its military assistance programme to Indonesia, allegedly because of the East Timor holocaust.

Spy Satelites
At one time, the very "fact of" satellite reconnaissance was classified. Despite the acknowledgment of a satellite reconnaissance effort in 1978 and the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office in 1992, it was not until 1995 that the U.S. first released imagery obtained by the CORONA satellites that operated during the 1960-1972 period as well as images obtained by the ARGON and LANYARD systems that operated in the early 1960s.

Corporate Censorship of the WHO
“ILSI was able to send delegates to the preparatory stages for the first international conference on nutrition in 1992. Among them were senior executives of Mars and Coca-Cola, two of the world’s largest industrial users of sugar. The first ‘Plan of action’ on nutrition that came from the WHO in 1990 failed even to mention sugar.” NI 363.

Gay Rights
Gay rights make more small steps forward. Canada permitted military service by gays. Clinton struggles with the issue in the USA.
Massachusett’s Governor William Weld created the government’s commission on gay and lesbian youth. The first of its kind in America, dealing with alarming number of suicides among gay youth and problems of homeless and victimisation.

You Scratch My Back?
British journo Jonathan Moyle – investigating Arms deals involving Mark Thatcher – Maggies baby boy – was found dead in a Chilean hotel having received a lethal injection.
GB embassy refused to help local police and even tried to make out that Moyle had died of masturbation – “Have I Got News For You?” book.