“…. O, it presses to my memory,
Like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ minds.”

(Romeo and Juliet, act 3, sc. 2)

Fifteen years is a long time for the collective memory of people. Collective drunkenness is not indispensable for collective forgetfulness. But Lady Macbeth’s words still apply,

“… memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A empty vase ^a”

Different causes, same effect. Drunkenness from drink in one case, drunkenness from power in the other.  Still, for some, fifteen years are not enough to forget the crime committed by the empire and its buttock-licking lackeys against the people of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

It was an unjustified and criminal act of aggression that left indelible marks in the memory of Serbia. As well as a profound resentment against the masterminds of the massacre.

It should be remembered that in 1999 Serbia was bombed uninterruptedly for 78 days. 4000 people died, of which 89 were children. 10,000 people were wounded. Destroyed too were hospitals, schools, churches, factories, archeological sites, museums, livestock, farms, electric grids and communication networks. Without including the long-term effects on health and the environment – the toxic chemicals spilled from the bombed-out factories and the cancer-inducing residues from depleted uranium bombs. The US launched and exploded 25,000 missiles as a gift to the Serbian people.

On the other hand, the imperialist, criminal and colonial aggression against Yugoslavia, was but the last act of a plan aimed at the economic destruction, and at the international isolation of the Republic. Same treatment was meted out, since, against those Nations that wanted to follow an independent path in their cultural, civil and economic development. Just like Yugoslavia they saw the destruction of their Country’s environment, industry and health.

The regime media of the now hated and so-called European Union massively conspired to hide the motives behind the Yugoslavian crime against humanity, and of so many following aggressions.  They were and are but a plan to control the markets, the wealth, the wage-earning population and the venues through which energy resources, minerals and goods flow towards the empire and its colonies.

In Belgrade, in front of the Serbian Radio TV building, destroyed by a NATO attack during the night of April 23, 1999, the relatives of the 16 victims gathered recently to remember and to lay flowers on the stone that commemorates the slaughter. The victims were preparing the programs for the next day.

In the mind of all that participated in the memorial still rings for them an unanswered question, “Why?”

An elderly gentleman spoke for all. “They bombed us for two reasons. First, we did not want to gift our land, our resources and our economy to western imperialism. The US of A and its lackeys cannot tolerate someone else’s independence. Second, we did not want to abandon Kosovo. Serbs lived in Kosovo for centuries. Kosovo is the cradle of our people and of our culture. But the US did not like it as Kosovo could not be exploited and used as a venue for the smuggling of arms and drugs. Therefore they funded and supported the terrorists of the UCK. Fine gang. Not only they removed the Serbs, but also Slavs nominally belonging to the new subdivided Republics. Talk about ethnic cleansing!”

“The large majority of Serbian people do not want to join the European Union.  The current government tells us that we will live better, but we know it isn’t so. Just look at the impoverishment of Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria. And they even talk about joining NATO. After what they did! What people would want to be part of the largest international terrorist organization on earth?”

More soberly, it is unlikely that that egregious war crime and act of genocide against Serbia will press on the memory of its perpetrators “like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ mind.” Pimps, goons and concubines of the so-called NATO alliance, are refractory to any remorse and inured to any shame. Drugged with the opium of neo-liberal and Thatcherite economics, they can only see the validation of their worth in mutual flattery and in the pain inflicted upon others.

Nor it should be forgotten that the slaughter in Serbia was conducted under the presidentdom of the “lyingest knave in Christendom ^b”  (“I never had sex with that woman”) – whom history will number among the heroes of debauchery.

— (a) Macbeth
— (b) King Henry VI, part 2

In the play. The word pressing on Juliet’s memory is ‘banished’. It refers to Romeo’s banishment from Verona after he killed Tybalt in a duel. Tybalt was a member of the Capulet family.

Image Location. http://www.contropiano.org/media/k2/items/cache/6a0a2d8ae624cc61624ca9e3e55834fb_L.jpg

Source for data and information: Contropiano