Europe

"Something must be done" is the understandable feeling of workers watching the harrowing scenes on our TV screens every evening. The sight of thousands of people herded into giant camps, the pictures of the displaced, the dispossessed and the dead, the screaming children, the helpless pensioners, the hungry and the diseased cannot but stir our emotions.

NATO's bombing campaign enters into its third week having achieved none of its alleged "humanitarian aims" but on the contrary having worsened the situation. Thousands of Kosovo Albanians have been forced to flee, Milosevic is stronger than ever and innocent civilians are being bombed all over Yugoslavia while a massive propaganda campaign is launched by imperialism to try and justify its actions. Ted Grant gives a Socialist perspective.

A detailed analysis of the causes and perspectives for the conflict in the Balkans from a socialist internationalist point of view. This article deals with the real reasons for imperialist intervention, the role of imperialism in the berak-up of Yugoslavia, the danger of an all-out war in the Balkans and it advances the slogan of the Socialist Federation of the Balkans as the only solution.

For more than 100 years, the democratic and progressive forces on the Balkans have striven to overcome national divisions and hatreds, and to unite the peoples of the Balkans on the basis of a federation, based on genuine equality and fraternal relations. However, on a capitalist basis, the idea of a Balkan Federation remained a hopeless utopia. An outstanding analysis of the break-up of Yugoslavia written at the beginning of the conflict.

NATO war planes have rained down bombs on Yugoslavia killing men women and children. It is a bloody act of naked aggression by the big imperialist powers, who are using a "humanitarian" cover for their ruthless pursuits. Rather than bringing peace, the bombing has brought a trail of suffering, bloodshed and death and threatens to plunge the whole region into open war. Read an internationalist analysis.

On January 1999 the Romanian miners marched again on the capital Bucarest in opposition to plans to close the mines. As a result miners' leader Miron Cozma was sentenced to 18 years of jail and arrested during violent clashes between miners and riot police. The miners from the Jiu Valley have a long and proud history of struggle. Alan Woods examines the implications for the process of capitalist restoration in Romania.

The decision of NATO to send troops to Kosovo marks a decisive turning-point. British Defence Secretary George Robertson has announced in parliament that the 4th Armoured Brigade will be sent from Germany to the war-torn province of Yugoslavia. Officially, NATO has not yet approved the intervention. But NATO ministers have already agreed to dispatch up to 30,000 if a peace deal is brokered between the Yugoslav government and the rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). As usual, the imperialists present their actions as a "humanitarian peacekeeping operation". In fact, they are pursuing a dirty game of power politics in which the lives and rights of the peoples are just so much small

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Your marxist site has inspired me to write to You, in order to show appreciation of Your efforts and to appeal for action. I'm glad to see some understanding of situation in the Balkans in "outter world" in theese hard days for people of Yugoslavia. Seeing that marxism is still fighting its battle on the west gives me a bit of hope and comfort. Here it looks like marxism lost the battle; abused to create a totalitarian regime and then cursed as a bad religion and thrown away. But, the final word hasn't been said yet - the cruel process of initial capital accumulation that is taking place in last few years under the mask of transition from socialism to "democracy", and

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The high turn out rate of 70.7% in the election in Euskadi (Basque name for the Basque country), 11 points higher than the last regional elections of 1994, and only 0.8% less than the general election of 1996, reflects the enormous interest of the Basque population in finding a solution to their problems, starting with an end to the long nightmare of repression and terrorism with the change in the political situation since the ETA ceasefire.

As the crisis in Russia deepens, all sorts of workers' committees are emerging: strike committees, salvation committees, etc. Some of them are soviets in all but in name. Renfrey Clarke interviews the Anzhero-Sudzhensk Workers' committee and finds out how workers democracy functions in practice.

A historic defeat for chancellor Kohl and a clear victory for the left are the most outstanding features of the German election on September 27. After exactly 16 years of Kohl in office, German workers and youth said: enough is enough. German is now likely to be governed by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. Hans Gerd Ofinger analyses the implications from Germany.

Russia stands at the parting of the ways. The strategists of capital are facing a completely different situation from that which they had expected when the old Stalinist regime collapsed. They thought there would be a smooth transition to capitalism. That is not what they are getting. Ted Grant and Alan Woods provide a socialist analysis of why and what is the way forward.

The roar of hundreds of coal miners drumming their helmets on the pavement rolls like thunder up the glass and granite face of Russia's White House, the seat of government. Even more ominous is the repeated mass chant: "Resign! Resign!". Fred Weir reports from Moscow on the latest wave of militancy of Russian miners.