Few people from the 20th century can really claim to have changed history. One of them was General Vo Nguyen Giap, who led the Vietnamese people to defeat the French and American empires.
Giap died on October 4, aged 102.
Mainly remembered as a military leader, Giap was also one of Vietnam’s most significant political leaders. He was a revolutionary intellectual, an environmentalist and a campaigner for progressive change within Vietnam.
Michael Karadjis
The sensational outcome of the Greek elections on May 6 in which SYRIZA, a coalition of left-reformist and radical left groups, came second to right-wing New Democracy (ND) with nearly 17% of the vote, came on the back of the catastrophe being imposed on the Greek working class.
It is being forced to pay for the crisis of Greek and European capital.
This catastrophe has resulted in Greek workers and pensioners, already on some of the lowest wages and social security entitlements in Europe, having their incomes directly cut by as much as 40% over the past few years.
Even though the US war on Vietnam ended nearly 40 years ago, the US’s saturation chemical bombing during that war is still wreaking havoc on the lives of at least 3 million people in Vietnam — including the newly born, making them third generation victims.
Nobody knows when the congenital deformities, one of many horrific health consequences of the toxic chemicals, will end.
The Serbian government last month cornered Radovan Karadzic, the former leader of the Bosnian Serb Republic during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Since Kosova declared independence on February 17, it has been recognised by only 33 countries, while most are “waiting and watching”.
Kosova declared independence on February 17, greeted by massive celebrations involving thousands of people.
The Kosova peoples eight-year wait for the same right to independence allowed to other peoples of the former Yugoslavia some 15 years ago has finally reached
anti-climax.
For years, the role of the United States in conniving with Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in the destruction of the Bosnian Muslim town of Srebrenica has been shrouded in mystery.
In early March the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) aided the Macedonian army's crackdown on the Albanian insurgents of the National Liberation Army (NLA). This followed the agreement between NATO and the Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica to allow Yugoslav troops into the Serbia-Kosova buffer zone to crush autonomy-seeking Albanian rebels.
The US-sponsored negotiations between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, resulting in the September 12 interim accord, began before Greece lifted its embargo on the neighbouring state.
In 1912, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia attacked the Turkish Ottoman Empire to carve up its last possession in Europe, Macedonia. The victors immediately fell out, and Greece, Serbia, Romania and Turkey went to war against Bulgaria. In 1922, the