If the bridge is in Serbia
it must be bombed so that Serbians
feel exactly what they have been
doing to Croats, Bosnians and now
Kosovars (soon also in Montenegro).

I am surprised to hear that the people
in Serbia do have hearts --- regretfully
these hearts feel only for bridges .....
not for the abuse humans in Kosovo.

The hearts in Kosovo are also "out of order"
Serb bullits and knives arranged for that.

The Current Bombings:
Behind the Rhetoric

By Noam Chomsky

There have been many inquiries concerning NATO (meaning primarily US) bombing in connection with
Kosovo. A great deal has been written about the topic, including Znet commentaries. I'd like to make a
few general observations, keeping to facts that are not seriously contested.

There are two fundamental issues: (1) What are the accepted and applicable "rules of world order"? (2)
How do these or other considerations apply in the case of Kosovo?

(1) What are the accepted and applicable "rules of world order"?

There is a regime of international law and international order, binding on all states, based on the UN
Charter and subsequent resolutions and World Court decisions. In brief, the threat or use of force is
banned unless explicitly authorized by the Security Council after it has determined that peaceful means
have failed, or in self-defense against "armed attack" (a narrow concept) until the Security Council acts.

There is, of course, more to say. Thus there is at least a tension, if not an outright contradiction, between
the rules of world order laid down in the UN Charter and the rights articulated in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UD), a second pillar of the world order established under US initiative
after World War II. The Charter bans force violating state sovereignty; the UD guarantees the rights of
individuals against oppressive states. The issue of "humanitarian intervention" arises from this tension.
It is the right of "humanitarian intervention" that is claimed by the US/NATO in Kosovo, and that is
generally supported by editorial opinion and news reports (in the latter case, reflexively, even by the very
choice of terminology).

The question is addressed in a news report in the NY Times (March 27), headlined "Legal Scholars
Support Case for Using Force" in Kosovo (March 27). One example is offered: Allen Gerson, former
counsel to the US mission to the UN. Two other legal scholars are cited. One, Ted Galen Carpenter,
"scoffed at the Administration argument" and dismissed the alleged right of intervention. The third is
Jack Goldsmith, a specialist on international law at Chicago Law school. He says that critics of the NATO
bombing "have a pretty good legal argument," but "many people think [an exception for humanitarian
intervention] does exist as a matter of custom and practice." That summarizes the evidence offered to
justify the favored conclusion stated in the headline.

Goldsmith's observation is reasonable, at least if we agree that facts are relevant to the determination of
"custom and practice." We may also bear in mind a truism: the right of humanitarian intervention, if it
exists, is premised on the "good faith" of those intervening, and that assumption is based not on their
rhetoric but on their record, in particular their record of adherence to the principles of international law,
World Court decisions, and so on. That is indeed a truism, at least with regard to others. Consider, for
example, Iranian offers to intervene in Bosnia to prevent massacres at a time when the West would not
do so. These were dismissed with ridicule (in fact, ignored); if there was a reason beyond subordination
to power, it was because Iranian "good faith" could not be assumed. A rational person then asks
obvious questions: is the Iranian record of intervention and terror worse than that of the US? And other
questions, for example: How should we assess the "good faith" of the only country to have vetoed a
Security Council resolution calling on all states to obey international law? What about its historical
record? Unless such questions are prominent on the agenda of discourse, an honest person will
dismiss it as mere allegiance to doctrine. A useful exercise is to determine how much of the literature --
media or other -- survives such elementary conditions as these.

(2) How do these or other considerations apply in the case of Kosovo?

There has been a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in the past year, overwhelmingly attributable to
Yugoslav military forces. The main victims have been ethnic Albanian Kosovars, some 90% of the
population of this Yugoslav territory. The standard estimate is 2000 deaths and hundreds of thousands
of refugees.

In such cases, outsiders have three choices:

(I) try to escalate the catastrophe

(II) do nothing

(III) try to mitigate the catastrophe

The choices are illustrated by other contemporary cases. Let's keep to a few of approximately the same
scale, and ask where Kosovo fits into the pattern.

(A) Colombia. In Colombia, according to State Department estimates, the annual level of political killing
by the government and its paramilitary associates is about at the level of Kosovo, and refugee flight
primarily from their atrocities is well over a million. Colombia has been the leading Western hemisphere
recipient of US arms and training as violence increased through the '90s, and that assistance is now
increasing, under a "drug war" pretext dismissed by almost all serious observers. The Clinton
administration was particularly enthusiastic in its praise for President Gaviria, whose tenure in office
was responsible for "appalling levels of violence," according to human rights organizations, even
surpassing his predecessors. Details are readily available.

In this case, the US reaction is (I): escalate the atrocities.

(B) Turkey. By very conservative estimate, Turkish repression of Kurds in the '90s falls in the category of
Kosovo. It peaked in the early '90s; one index is the flight of over a million Kurds from the countryside to
the unofficial Kurdish capital Diyarbakir from 1990 to 1994, as the Turkish army was devastating the
countryside. 1994 marked two records: it was "the year of the worst repression in the Kurdish provinces"
of Turkey, Jonathan Randal reported from the scene, and the year when Turkey became "the biggest
single importer of American military hardware and thus the world's largest arms purchaser." When
human rights groups exposed Turkey's use of US jets to bomb villages, the Clinton Administration found
ways to evade laws requiring suspension of arms deliveries, much as it was doing in Indonesia and
elsewhere.

Colombia and Turkey explain their (US-supported) atrocities on grounds that they are defending their
countries from the threat of terrorist guerrillas. As does the government of Yugoslavia.

Again, the example illustrates (I): try to escalate the atrocities.

(C) Laos. Every year thousands of people, mostly children and poor farmers, are killed in the Plain of
Jars in Northern Laos, the scene of the heaviest bombing of civilian targets in history it appears, and
arguably the most cruel: Washington's furious assault on a poor peasant society had little to do with its
wars in the region. The worst period was from 1968, when Washington was compelled to undertake
negotiations (under popular and business pressure), ending the regular bombardment of North
Vietnam. Kissinger-Nixon then decided to shift the planes to bombardment of Laos and Cambodia.

The deaths are from "bombies," tiny anti-personnel weapons, far worse than land-mines: they are
designed specifically to kill and maim, and have no effect on trucks, buildings, etc. The Plain was
saturated with hundreds of millions of these criminal devices, which have a failure-to-explode rate of
20%-30% according to the manufacturer, Honeywell. The numbers suggest either remarkably poor
quality control or a rational policy of murdering civilians by delayed action. These were only a fraction of
the technology deployed, including advanced missiles to penetrate caves where families sought shelter.
Current annual casualties from "bombies" are estimated from hundreds a year to "an annual nationwide
casualty rate of 20,000," more than half of them deaths, according to the veteran Asia reporter Barry Wain
of the Wall Street Journal -- in its Asia edition. A conservative estimate, then, is that the crisis this year is
approximately comparable to Kosovo, though deaths are far more highly concentrated among children --
over half, according to analyses reported by the Mennonite Central Committee, which has been working
there since 1977 to alleviate the continuing atrocities.

There have been efforts to publicize and deal with the humanitarian catastrophe. A British-based Mine
Advisory Group (MAG) is trying to remove the lethal objects, but the US is "conspicuously missing from
the handful of Western organisations that have followed MAG," the British press reports, though it has
finally agreed to train some Laotian civilians. The British press also reports, with some anger, the
allegation of MAG specialists that the US refuses to provide them with "render harmless procedures"
that would make their work "a lot quicker and a lot safer." These remain a state secret, as does the
whole affair in the United States. The Bangkok press reports a very similar situation in Cambodia,
particularly the Eastern region where US bombardment from early 1969 was most intense.

In this case, the US reaction is (II): do nothing. And the reaction of the media and commentators is to
keep silent, following the norms under which the war against Laos was designated a "secret war" --
meaning well-known, but suppressed, as also in the case of Cambodia from March 1969. The level of
self-censorship was extraordinary then, as is the current phase. The relevance of this shocking example
should be obvious without further comment.

I will skip other examples of (I) and (II), which abound, and also much more serious contemporary
atrocities, such as the huge slaughter of Iraqi civilians by means of a particularly vicious form of
biological warfare -- "a very hard choice," Madeleine Albright commented on national TV in 1996 when
asked for her reaction to the killing of half a million Iraqi children in 5 years, but "we think the price is
worth it." Current estimates remain about 5000 children killed a month, and the price is still "worth it."
These and other examples might also be kept in mind when we read awed rhetoric about how the
"moral compass" of the Clinton Administration is at last functioning properly, as the Kosovo example
illustrates.

Just what does the example illustrate? The threat of NATO bombing, predictably, led to a sharp
escalation of atrocities by the Serbian Army and paramilitaries, and to the departure of international
observers, which of course had the same effect. Commanding General Wesley Clark declared that it
was "entirely predictable" that Serbian terror and violence would intensify after the NATO bombing,
exactly as happened. The terror for the first time reached the capital city of Pristina, and there are credible
reports of large-scale destruction of villages, assassinations, generation of an enormous refugee flow,
perhaps an effort to expel a good part of the Albanian population -- all an "entirely predictable"
consequence of the threat and then the use of force, as General Clark rightly observes.

Kosovo is therefore another illustration of (I): try to escalate the violence, with exactly that expectation.

To find examples illustrating (III) is all too easy, at least if we keep to official rhetoric. The major recent
academic study of "humanitarian intervention," by Sean Murphy, reviews the record after the
Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 which outlawed war, and then since the UN Charter, which strengthened
and articulated these provisions. In the first phase, he writes, the most prominent examples of
"humanitarian intervention" were Japan's attack on Manchuria, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and
Hitler's occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia. All were accompanied by highly uplifting humanitarian
rhetoric, and factual justifications as well. Japan was going to establish an "earthly paradise" as it
defended Manchurians from "Chinese bandits," with the support of a leading Chinese nationalist, a far
more credible figure than anyone the US was able to conjure up during its attack on South Vietnam.
Mussolini was liberating thousands of slaves as he carried forth the Western "civilizing mission." Hitler
announced Germany's intention to end ethnic tensions and violence, and "safeguard the national
individuality of the German and Czech peoples," in an operation "filled with earnest desire to serve the
true interests of the peoples dwelling in the area," in accordance with their will; the Slovakian President
asked Hitler to declare Slovakia a protectorate.

Another useful intellectual exercise is to compare those obscene justifications with those offered for
interventions, including "humanitarian interventions," in the post-UN Charter period.

In that period, perhaps the most compelling example of (III) is the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in
December 1978, terminating Pol Pot's atrocities, which were then peaking. Vietnam pleaded the right of
self-defense against armed attack, one of the few post-Charter examples when the plea is plausible: the
Khmer Rouge regime (Democratic Kampuchea, DK) was carrying out murderous attacks against
Vietnam in border areas. The US reaction is instructive. The press condemned the "Prussians" of Asia
for their outrageous violation of international law. They were harshly punished for the crime of having
terminated Pol Pot's slaughters, first by a (US-backed) Chinese invasion, then by US imposition of
extremely harsh sanctions. The US recognized the expelled DK as the official government of Cambodia,
because of its "continuity" with the Pol Pot regime, the State Department explained. Not too subtly, the US
supported the Khmer Rouge in its continuing attacks in Cambodia.

The example tells us more about the "custom and practice" that underlies "the emerging legal norms of
humanitarian intervention."

Despite the desperate efforts of ideologues to prove that circles are square, there is no serious doubt
that the NATO bombings further undermine what remains of the fragile structure of international law. The
US made that entirely clear in the discussions leading to the NATO decision. Apart from the UK (by now,
about as much of an independent actor as the Ukraine was in the pre-Gorbachev years), NATO countries
were skeptical of US policy, and were particularly annoyed by Secretary of State Albright's "saber-rattling"
(Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, Feb. 22). Today, the more closely one approaches the conflicted region,
the greater the opposition to Washington's insistence on force, even within NATO (Greece and Italy).
France had called for a UN Security Council resolution to authorize deployment of NATO peacekeepers.
The US flatly refused, insisting on "its stand that NATO should be able to act independently of the United
Nations," State Department officials explained. The US refused to permit the "neuralgic word `authorize'"
to appear in the final NATO statement, unwilling to concede any authority to the UN Charter and
international law; only the word "endorse" was permitted (Jane Perlez, NYT, Feb. 11). Similarly the
bombing of Iraq was a brazen expression of contempt for the UN, even the specific timing, and was so
understood. And of course the same is true of the destruction of half the pharmaceutical production of a
small African country a few months earlier, an event that also does not indicate that the "moral compass"
is straying from righteousness -- not to speak of a record that would be prominently reviewed right now if
facts were considered relevant to determining "custom and practice."

It could be argued, rather plausibly, that further demolition of the rules of world order is irrelevant, just as
it had lost its meaning by the late 1930s. The contempt of the world's leading power for the framework of
world order has become so extreme that there is nothing left to discuss. A review of the internal
documentary record demonstrates that the stance traces back to the earliest days, even to the first
memorandum of the newly-formed National Security Council in 1947. During the Kennedy years, the
stance began to gain overt expression. The main innovation of the Reagan-Clinton years is that defiance
of international law and the Charter has become entirely open. It has also been backed with interesting
explanations, which would be on the front pages, and prominent in the school and university curriculum,
if truth and honesty were considered significant values. The highest authorities explained with brutal
clarity that the World Court, the UN, and other agencies had become irrelevant because they no longer
follow US orders, as they did in the early postwar years.

One might then adopt the official position. That would be an honest stand, at least if it were
accompanied by refusal to play the cynical game of self-righteous posturing and wielding of the
despised principles of international law as a highly selective weapon against shifting enemies.

While the Reaganites broke new ground, under Clinton the defiance of world order has become so
extreme as to be of concern even to hawkish policy analysts. In the current issue of the leading
establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington warns that Washington is treading a
dangerous course. In the eyes of much of the world -- probably most of the world, he suggests -- the US
is "becoming the rogue superpower," considered "the single greatest external threat to their societies."
Realist "international relations theory," he argues, predicts that coalitions may arise to counterbalance
the rogue superpower. On pragmatic grounds, then, the stance should be reconsidered. Americans who
prefer a different image of their society might call for a reconsideration on other than pragmatic grounds.

Where does that leave the question of what to do in Kosovo? It leaves it unanswered. The US has
chosen a course of action which, as it explicitly recognizes, escalates atrocities and violence --
"predictably"; a course of action that also strikes yet another blow against the regime of international
order, which does offer the weak at least some limited protection from predatory states. As for the longer
term, consequences are unpredictable. One plausible observation is that "every bomb that falls on
Serbia and every ethnic killing in Kosovo suggests that it will scarcely be possible for Serbs and
Albanians to live beside each other in some sort of peace" (Financial Times, March 27). Some of the
longer-term possible outcomes are extremely ugly, as has not gone without notice.

A standard argument is that we had to do something: we could not simply stand by as atrocities
continue. That is never true. One choice, always, is to follow the Hippocratic principle: "First, do no harm."
If you can think of no way to adhere to that elementary principle, then do nothing. There are always ways
that can be considered. Diplomacy and negotiations are never at an end.

The right of "humanitarian intervention" is likely to be more frequently invoked in coming years -- maybe
with justification, maybe not -- now that Cold War pretexts have lost their efficacy. In such an era, it may
be worthwhile to pay attention to the views of highly respected commentators -- not to speak of the World
Court, which explicitly ruled on this matter in a decision rejected by the United States, its essentials not
even reported.

In the scholarly disciplines of international affairs and international law it would be hard to find more
respected voices than Hedley Bull or Louis Henkin. Bull warned 15 years ago that "Particular states or
groups of states that set themselves up as the authoritative judges of the world common good, in
disregard of the views of others, are in fact a menace to international order, and thus to effective action in
this field." Henkin, in a standard work on world order, writes that the "pressures eroding the prohibition
on the use of force are deplorable, and the arguments to legitimize the use of force in those
circumstances are unpersuasive and dangerous... Violations of human rights are indeed all too
common, and if it were permissible to remedy them by external use of force, there would be no law to
forbid the use of force by almost any state against almost any other. Human rights, I believe, will have to
be vindicated, and other injustices remedied, by other, peaceful means, not by opening the door to
aggression and destroying the principle advance in international law, the outlawing of war and the
prohibition of force."

Recognized principles of international law and world order, solemn treaty obligations, decisions by the
World Court, considered pronouncements by the most respected commentators -- these do not
automatically solve particular problems. Each issue has to be considered on its merits. For those who
do not adopt the standards of Saddam Hussein, there is a heavy burden of proof to meet in undertaking
the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international order. Perhaps the burden can be
met, but that has to be shown, not merely proclaimed with passionate rhetoric. The consequences of
such violations have to be assessed carefully -- in particular, what we understand to be "predictable."
And for those who are minimally serious, the reasons for the actions also have to be assessed -- again,
not simply by adulation of our leaders and their "moral compass." _

I would like to know what the serbs would feel like,if someone came to your door and gave you and your children 5 minutes to leave or die? Having no choice but to leave your home and identity with nothing but the clothes on your back. Seeing your neighbors and their children being shot down and men setting houses on fire as they celebrate their victory.All this because of your ethnicity. How would you feel or have you lost your empathy for people? If you can show feelings for a bridge, i'm sure you could be sensitive to the pain and injustice being afflicted on to the people of Kosovo.

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

I really hope that NATO wakes up and smells the coffee. Air raids are not going to do a bit of good in respect to defeating the Serbian Army. It might knock out radar towers, bridges, military facilities and manufacturing plants, but this allows the Serbs to move their equipment and still continue with the killing. Western military needs to send in a massive amount of ground troops and open up, "a bottle of whoop ass." Yes there will be death of soldiers, but this is part of the battle. These soldiers have/are trained for exactly this. Let them do their job. I believe is the only way to remove/stop the killing machine.

I believe that really sensable people realize that the Serbian people, as a whole, are not fierce killing machines. Every society has its "crazys" and groups of radicals. It is up to those of us who know the difference to remove this element from society.

Just a few thoughts from Houston, Texas.

kderstine USA

Among others, there are two reasons for this offensive. First, in several weeks there will be NATO'S 50th Anniversary. It was felt that NATO
needed to do something important together or go out of existence. US/NATO decided it was a good time to solve the Balkan ethnic problem with a big bang. Tonight I saw the big bang on US TV. Anyone in Belgrade now knows about "birthday candles" for NATO's cake.

Second, US/NATO has a lot of newer missle/aircraft
technology that needed testing. One never knows how they will work without a real lab to test in.
Serbia and Kosovo have become the new "lab". I am sorry to put it in such human, satirical terms, but I feel that is what is taking place.

These are just two reasons. More later. I hope that those of us in USA with voices of objection
to the madness of these attacks will be heard.

The Progressive Review
> 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC 20009
> 202-232-5544 Fax: 202- 234-6222
> [email protected]
> http://prorev.com
>
> BALKAN STATS I
>
> FROM A COLUMN BY TONY SNOW: Key members of the United States Senate
sat
> slack-jawed through a confidential briefing last Thursday from the
Clinton
> administration foreign-policy team. ~~ After the foreign-policy wise
men
> asserted that the United States has a moral imperative to stop the
murderous
> Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, one senator asked: How many
Albanians
> have Milosevic's troops massacred this year? The president's
emissaries
> turned ashen. They glanced at each other. They rifled through their
papers.
> One hazarded a guess: "Two thousand?" No, the senator replied, that
was the
> number for all of last year. He wanted figures for the last month -
or even
> the year to date, since the president had painted such a grisly
picture of
> genocide in his March 24 address to the nation. ~~ The senator
pressed on.
> How often have such slaughters occurred? Nobody knew. As it turns
out,
> Kosovo has been about as bloody this year as, say, Atlanta. You can
measure
> the deaths not in the hundreds, but dozens. (I'm not trying to deny
> Milosevic's brutality here; only to provide some comparisons.) More
people
> died last week in Borneo than have expired this year in Kosovar
bloodshed -
> more died in a single Russian bomb blast; in a single outburst of
violence
> in East Timor; in a single day in Rwanda. China has been bloodier
this year.
>
> BALKAN STATS II
>
> --Estimated number of persons killed in Iraq due to American-led
sanctions:
> over 1,000,000
> --Estimated number of persons killed in the Sudan over the past 15
years:
> 1,500,000
> --Estimated number of persons killed in Rwanda over the last five
years:
> 500,000
> --Estimated number of persons killed in Chechnya: 80,000
> --Estimated number of people dying each day around the world because
of lack
> of water, clothing, shelter, food or medicine: 100,000
> --Estimated number of people in the world who go to bed hungry:
800,000,000
> --Estimated number of persons killed in Kosovo last year: 2,000
>
> BALKAN STATS III
>
> --Estimate of new households watching CNN thanks to its war coverage:
472,000
>
> BALKAN STATS IV
>
> --Cost of America's 21 B-2 bombers: $42 billion
> --Value of Yugoslavian GDP: $43 billion
> --UN budget as a percentage of the Pentagon budget: 5%
> THE NATION'S BUSINESS
>
> --Number of House and Senate witnesses in the Clinton scandals who
have
> taken the Fifth Amendment: 80
> --Number of witnesses who left country rather than testify: 18
> --Number of foreign witnesses who refused to be interviewed by
investigating
> bodies: 23
> --Total: 121
> [House Committee on Government Reform]
>
> IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
>
> --Increase in the size of federal government spending during the last
four
> budgets controlled by congressional Democrats: 14.4%
> --Increase in the size of federal government spending during the four
> budgets controlled by congressional Republicans: 13.9%
> [Harry Browne, Libertarian Party]
>
> THE REVIEW LIST
> International laws
> being violated by the US
> in its Balkan bombing
>
> -- Article 2 of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force against a
> sovereign state where it has not committed aggression on other
states.
>
> --NATO's own charter claims it to be a defensive organizations and is
only
> committed to force if one of its members is attacked. No member of
NATO was
> attacked.
>
> --The so-called Rambouillet "Agreement" is a violation of the 1980
Vienna
> Convention on the Law of Treaties which forbids coercion and force to
compel
> any state to sign a treaty or agreement. Serbia is being "asked" to
sign
> through NATO bombs and missiles.
>
> --The Helsinki Accords Final Act of 1975 guarantees the territorial
> frontiers of the states of Europe.
>
> [G.C. Thomas, Department of Political Science, Marquette University]
>
> BANKS STILL SPYING ON CUSTOMERS
>
> Declan McCullagh of Wired News reports that despite the cancellation
of the
> odious FDIC "Know Your Customer" scheme," over 88 percent of US banks
had
> similar policies in place as of January, according to an American
Bankers
> Association survey. In response, the ACLU has launched a campaign
called
> "Know Your Banker." "We are trying to put the banks out of the
business of
> spying on their customers," says ACLU legislative counsel Gregory
Nojeim.
> "We are asking customers to ask their bankers two questions: First,
has the
> bank already adopted a Know Your Customer program, and how many times
in the
> last year did it report its customers as suspects to the government?"
>
> Writes McCullagh: "Under current rules, banks and credit unions --
about
> 19,000 in all -- must inform [the government] of all transactions
$5,000 and
> above that have no 'apparent lawful purpose or are not the sort in
which the
> particular customer would normally be expected to engage.' ~~ If
banks and
> credit unions don't comply, they can be investigated and fined. But
there's
> a bigger incentive for them not to protest: When they submit the
forms,
> they're immune from liability. They're also not permitted to tell
customers
> their transactions have been reported as suspicious."


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To Smout:

Hi. I don't think the length or "unforgettability" of the name of the peace talker is relevant in the case. Though I'd rather prefer it was someone from Finland or Switzerland for obvious reasons. Primakov himself is very good at calming people down and solving problems of the kind. Though you can't possibly be aware of that.

I don't think that making Milo stand down is your business or mine, it's not our country. Then you have to realise that it's not the first thing to be done. It's one of the roots of the problem, but pulling, digging this root out may (and will) cause multiple deaths. Are you for it? Aim justifies means again?
I'd also like to have Clinto executed (for your sake) for brainwashing a whole nation and for corrupting you with false values. Don't agree with me? Just read attentively what americans on this board write: "bomb the Serbs to the stone age again", "make a hole in place of Beograde", "f, f, f***," . Are these human words or what? I'm not blaming you personally for the words, but it's the result of work of Clint The Hot D*ck and CNN, whose motto is "Heize Neuigkeit Uber Alles".

Hey Sergey!
Not quite all Americans back Klintoon or NATO. Most follow CNN. or Fox or the Network talking heads. We know very little about the reality of Serbia. So I post more factual stuff than what the media whitewashes. I mainly post cannabis articles around the globe. All struggling countries could benifit from cannabis' Food,Fuel,Fiber and FARMaceuticals. Since Romania and Hungery are already growing and processing hemp. I thought I'd drop off a few ideas for what to do with it, and how to do it. Nice to meet ya. I didn't mean to interupt the war. Please continue! LOL! only kidding comrad!
Peace not WoD (war on drugs)
FFFF
DdC

Someone said there were a lot of Russian ships going to the Mediterranean with nukes. I'm tired of saying how badly informed you are over in US, probably suck the news from your finger. Remember, Monica is not the best example of newsmaker.

OK, here's the news: The "Liman" , the only ship that went on a mission in mediterranean, is a reconnaisanse vessel, lacking heavy armament whatever. In fact, the ship looks odd, it's old and not impressive-looking, but equipped with best recon. equip. possible. The aim is obvious - scouting. More ships are believed to depart soon to protect this vessel in case trigger - happy English submarines try to test the "Liman's" board thickness.

Hope it helps!
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Hi, EVERYONE!
If people here REALLY speak their minds (and I believe some of them have been given a good portion of propaganda and, therefore, won't be objective), I begin to grow desperate in hopes that we're still sensible enough to come to our senses and stop what is threatening THE GLOBE.
It's high time we put the question of 'who is to blame' aside and arrange a peace conference or something of the sort until it's too late and Russian navy attacks the NATO forces. As time flies and things grow graver in Serbia this event becomes more and more unavoidable. I just wonder if the rejection of several Russian impeacement initiatives means NATO's strong resolution to face the coming WORLD war and, finally, die in it? It really is scaring, isn't it?

Have you seen pictures of the Russian ships going to the region ? I hope they can make it there on their own force before falling apart! Next thing you know it will be the Turkish, Greek and Italian Coast-guards pulling the Russians out of the water.

"... Russian navy attacks the NATO forces" Where have you been?

There is not going to be a world war over this. Forget it.