Albright not welcome in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Brooklyn, N.Y. — “War criminal! You belong in jail! Mass murderer! Fascist!” and “Fascist Albright, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!”

Protesters addressed these words loud and clear to Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state in the Clinton administration, during a speech she gave in Brooklyn, N.Y., on April 10. Albright was interrupted six times by six different protesters speaking truth to power and holding banners reading “Albright is a war criminal!”

Albright is promoting her new book, “Fascism: A Warning.” The promotion tour started on April 9 in Manhattan at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, where she was also confronted with the same accusing words. After Brooklyn, her tour continues to other major cities in the U.S. Albright is using her well-advertised national speaking tour to oppose Trump — but how? By promoting new U.S. wars and threatening Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria and Iran.

Albright’s appearance in Brooklyn, organized by the Community Bookstore, took place at the Congregation Beth Elohim in the affluent neighborhood of Park Slope. The event’s moderator, Brooke Gladstone of WNYC radio, displayed an unusually hostile attitude toward the protesters, reflecting her so-called “public” station’s policy of suppressing anti-war voices.

The protest, called by the International Action Center on short notice, was attended by some two dozen activists — a lively, multigenerational and multinational group that included a number of City University students and professors. After picketing in front of the Community Bookstore, the group marched to the entrance of Beth Elohim, where they gave out flyers detailing Albright’s misdeeds. Many of the attendees — who paid $32 for the ticket and the book — did not know some basic facts about her.

As secretary of state, Albright, who now poses as an opponent of the criminal Trump administration, has publicly defended policies that caused countless deaths and suffering around the globe, including the continuation of genocidal sanctions on Iraq that killed more than half a million children. Albright helped orchestrate sanctions and 78 days of bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, as well as promoted sanctions and threats against Iran and Korea.

Barry Lituchy, an adjunct assistant professor of history at Medgar Evers College, called the synagogue’s honoring of Albright “a despicable disgrace.” Lituchy added: “Albright orchestrated the breakup and bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, employing fascist and terrorist forces who killed and tortured thousands of men, women and children. Albright supported Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, a well-known racist, and Alija Izetbegovic in Bosnia, a man who had been in the political wing of the Bosnian Muslim SS (Handjar) Division during World War II.”

Lituchy’s 2006 book, “Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia,” deals with the genocides committed by Germany and Croatia in World War II. Lituchy added: “It is also outrageous that Albright should be posing as an anti-fascist and defender of free speech when she not only brought fascists to power, but was responsible for the murder of 16 journalists and staff at Radio-Television Serbia in 1999 when they had the temerity to report on the bombing of their country by Albright. When she doesn’t like what you have to say, she has you murdered. That’s her idea of free speech — free only for fascists like her.”

In 1999, three Chinese journalists who reported on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia were killed when their room in the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was targeted by a U.S. missile.

The protests against war criminal Albright will continue, wherever she pops up, from Prague and Bratislava to cities across the U.S. Never forget! Stop the war!

For videos of the disruption, see tinyurl.com/ycrdcy9p.