Archive through October 8, 1999 - Kosovo War

suitboy — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 18:39:00 +0000

Suitboy lives to mock you!!

tommygunns — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 18:32:00 +0000

L'menexe,

OK, is this better?

You may disregard. It's just another gratuitous yank-bashing article with "zero intellectual input beyond (the article's submission)".

America's wars on civilians
By James Carroll, 10/05/99

When Americans read an Associated Press report last week of No Gun Ri, where hundreds of Korean civilians may have been massacred by GIs during the Korean War, first comparisons were drawn with My Lai, where GIs killed something like 500 Vietnamese civilians. But a difference quickly became evident.

The Americans at My Lai were regarded as berserk. However much their actions resulted from the inherent stresses of that war, their brutal targeting of noncombatants was said to be an exceptional deviation from orders. But according to documents found by the AP, the GIs at No Gun Ri may have been acting under orders. Shooting civilians was seen to be necessary because enemy soldiers used flows of refugees as cover, and it was thought the only way to kill the soldiers was to kill the civilians.

The rush with which the Pentagon announced an investigation into No Gun Ri last week implies a refusal to openly justify the direct targeting of civilians, even to get at enemy soldiers behind them. A humane military force simply does not massacre old people and children. That principle is promulgated as well by the spirit of remorse with which the by-now elderly American veterans acknowledged the ''wholesale slaughter,'' as one described it, of the refugees in Korea.

And yet the strategy of shooting through the innocent, as if babies were bits of foliage, is alive and well and at the heart of American foreign policy. Instead of using the bullets of machine guns, however, the United States uses economic sanctions.

A comprehensive strategy of punishing the elites of hostile states, and indirectly hampering their militaries, by directly choking their whole societies has evolved over the last decade into a central arc of the American sway. Since 1991, the administration and Congress have acted unilaterally to impose sanctions on various countries dozens of times. And the United States has been the enthusiastic sponsor of numerous programs of collective international sanctions imposed mainly by the UN Security Council.

The one undisputed success of an international sanctions strategy, in South Africa, seems to have licensed a broad denial of the more typical failure of sanctions elsewhere to dislodge repressive governments, much less to advance democracy. Meanwhile, according to disinterested agencies like the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians have died as a direct result of economic embargoes.

An epic sweep of malnourishment, starvation, disease, infant mortality, economic stagnation, and social collapse has crossed the globe from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Colombia to Iran, Iraq, and Syria; from Sudan, Angola, and Libya now to Yugoslavia. Sanctions imposed on such nations lead to the failure of industry and the growth of unemployment, to the lack of fertilizer and the destruction of farmland, to the decline of wages and a skyrocketing of living costs, to the breakdown of sewage treatment and the return of cholera, and to the radical demoralization of whole populations, which makes humane political change less likely, not more.

Sanctions are war in slow-motion but with this difference: Enemy armies are the least affected. Dictators and oligarchs wall themselves off from the worst effects of deprivation while the most vulnerable are thrown into its maw.

In some places, like Iraq, ''humanitarian exceptions'' have been made, supposedly to enable medicines and other necessities to get through - but to little effect. One UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, resigned in protest, declaring, ''No one wants to acknowledge the amount of nonmilitary damage, the destruction of cold food and medicine storage, the power supply.... I didn't realize our level of complicity in the suffering.''

Each month, according to the UN's own figures, more than 4,000 children die in Iraq because of sanctions. Protests from peace groups like one named Voices in the Wilderness have been ignored (See ''Peacework,'' a publication of the American Friends Service Committee). Questions about the morality of sanctions have been raised (See Larry Minear in ''Hard Choices,'' edited by Jonathan Moore). Deadly medical results have been documented (See Richard M. Garfield in ''War and Public Health,'' edited by Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel).

Nearly two years ago US Catholic bishops asked President Clinton to lift sanctions against Iraq ''because they deprive innocent people'' of ''food and medicine, basic elements for normal life.'' Not even the witness of an insider like Halliday, whose protest and resignation came more than a year ago, has led to a reconsideration of this inhumane strategy. Indeed, when President Clinton reconfirmed the international sanctions regime against Yugoslavia at the end of the NATO air war, hardly anyone seemed to think badly of the idea, even though it means shooting at Slobodan Milosevic through the bodies of those who will now die as a result of polluted water, scarce electricity, shortages of medicine and food, and, soon, a lack of heat in freezing weather.

The Pentagon investigation into the massacre at No Gun Ri may well turn up an order-issuing culprit on whom to hang the larger blame, and the United States may even make reparations to the families of the Korean victims. But such actions in the name of the high idea that this nation does not target the unarmed and the weak will ring hollow as long as our child-killing strategy of sanctions remains in place.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

emina — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 17:31:00 +0000

L'emenexe

Thats axactly my point and axactly the reason why i don't bother posting things from Bosnia here, cause this is the reaction i expected from suit boy TG.

And how unpleasant he feels knowing were carring on off board....hehe
Maybe TG was the subject in the trepanation email :-))))) hihi

Emina

L'menexe — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 14:29:00 +0000

for he who carries the name of the prohibition
era's weapon of choice:
i DIDNT say "without intellectual merit".
i said "zero intellectual input beyond (the
article's submission)".
you might benefit from making the appropriate
distinction, especially when the objective is
mockingly throwing one's words back at them.
capice, suit-boy?
hoo hah!

kissie — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 13:50:00 +0000

"Let me begin by thanking Chancellor Schroeder, the representatives of his government who are here and all the people of Germany for their
strong, strong leadership in NATO, in defense of the people of Kosovo and for making this place of refuge and shelter for people in need."
Better for them to thank each other, together. Two bastards succeded in one thing only, but that's enough for them. The second part, that bull...t about "people of Kosovo", is, well, BS. Strong German leadership now virtually controls the economies of Groatia
and Slovenia, thanks IMF. Under the protectionist Serbian privatization law (1991) western capital could only get 10%. But the Serbian copper industry's a wet dream for the German electronics
concerns, - laughable transportation costs and Serb "slave" labour. Why did NATO/US bomb tobacco factories? Out of enforcing the Surgeon-General's warning? He-he! Yugo tobacco competed successfully in Europe and especially in the Mediterraneans. That competitor's dead. Now that the auotomobile plants are dead, the US auto lobby can be happy as well. Now that weapons industry is dead and not because of the US "humanitarian", he-he, concerns, beacuse the customers were
Iraq, Lybia, Iran, Sudan, Ethiopia, Algiers, Somali, Uganda, North Korea, but for economic reasons as well - complex technology weapons were of the just excellent quality and cheap. Chiefs with red
noses don't simply go around bombing sovereign states, so there was a need for a fairy-tale about the "fascist Milo". Now "opposition, opposition ... ". Bullsh..! That "opposition" was paid for and is now
cra..ing its a.. off for it's share of the $15 mln. pizza served by the Red-Nosed Santa. KLA may have another agenda, that's different. Maybe, prospects of "joint" industrial strength "pharmaceuticals";-)
production "ventures" with Kosovo KLAnians open for tax-free investments?

philtr — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 02:18:00 +0000

Here's the latest from your favorite Original Sources analyst, Mary Mostert.

T'gunn, personally, I like her. We had a very pleasant e-mail exchange a while back. We didn't completely agree, but I think I understand her a bit better now. phil

tommygunns — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 01:22:00 +0000

Phil,

Here's the latest from your favorite Original Sources analyst, Mary Mostert.

L'menexe,

FYI - you may disregard. It's just another gratuitous yank-bashing article without intellectual merit

=================================================

Do We Now Have a "Peaceful, United, Democratic Europe" In the Balkans?
African Delegates at UN Challenge Clinton’s "humanitarianism" claim
By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources, (www.originalsources.com)

September 22, 1999

On March 27th President Clinton explained why we were bombing Yugoslavia in the following words: "The time to put out a fire is before it spreads and burns down the neighborhood. By acting now, we're taking a strong step toward a goal that has always been in our national interest -- a peaceful, united, democratic Europe. For America there is no greater calling than being a peacemaker. But sometimes you have to fight in order to end the fighting."

So, now NATO is in control in Kosovo, and has been since the Yugoslav army withdrew in mid-June. How are we doing in creating a "peaceful, united, democratic" state in Kosovo?

In three months over 90% of the Serbs, most of the Gypsies, Jews, Turk, Egyptians and even about 100,000 ethnic Albanians who lived in Kosovo are now refugees having fled to the "undemocratic" Serbia because they feared they would be killed in KFOR controlled Kosovo.

The world was told, many times, that President Clinton’s concern in Kosovo were humanitarian in nature. On May 6th, speaking to a group of refugees from Kosovo at a Refugee Reception Center in Ingelheim, Germany, Clinton said: "Let me begin by thanking Chancellor Schroeder, the representatives of his government who are here and all the people of Germany for their strong, strong leadership in NATO, in defense of the people of Kosovo and for making this place of refuge and shelter for people in need. "

Hmm-m. How many Serb, Montenegrin, Jewish, Goran, Gypsy, Turk and Egyptian refugees from Kosovo, something like 90% of the Kosovo minorities, are being cared for in German camps today? I haven’t found any signs that ANY of the fleeing minoritiy Kosovars are fleeing to Germany - or other nations. They all seem to be fleeing to Slobadon Milosevic’s un-democratic Serbis.

"It is very important that every freedom-loving person in the entire world know the story of Kosovo." Clinton told the refugees. "It is important that people not forget that what is called ethnic cleansing is not some abstract idea; it is real people with real families and real dreams being uprooted from their homes, their schools, their work, their children, their parents, their husbands and wives. NATO has acted in Kosovo because we believe ethnic cleansing must be opposed, resisted, reversed. We are doing all we can to bring aid to the victims of the violence."

Freedom loving persons? How about the freedom of all of Kosovo’s minority groups? It’s just amazing to me how selective Clinton and his ilk are about the rights of minorities. His concern for them seems to depend entirely on the color of their skin. If they are black, we hear a whole lot about minority rights. If they are Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Gorans, or Montenegrin in Kosovo - it’s like neither the minorities nor the rights even exist.

The Raska-Prizren Diocese of Serbian Orthodox Church has documented the murder of 350 Serbs, by name, since NATO and the KLA took control of Kosovo, between June and August 1999. That would represent something like .15% of the approximately 200,000 Serbs in Kosovo when the bombing began. This figure does not include the hundreds who have been kidnapped by the KLA and who have never been heard from again. This only includes those the Church has buried. About 90% of the Serbs have fled the province, compared with about 30% of the ethnic Albanians who were refugees between March 24th and June 11th.

An equivalent figure, .15% of the 1,800,000 ethnic Albanians were in Kosovo when the bombing began would be 2700. And, although we have been told that many thousands were killed by the Serbs - up to 100,000 during the bombing, nothing like that many bodies have been discovered. The actual figures mentioned by forensic experts who were rushed to Kosovo the document the "Serb killings" are only a few hundred. So far proof that thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serbs simply has not materialized. Since NATO occupation, not only have most of the minorities fled the KLA-NATO occupation, but KLA opposition among ethnic Albanians claim up to 150,000 ethnic Albanians who oppose the KLA also have fled because their lives are in danger from the KLA terrorists.

According to Fred Abrahams of the Human Rights Watch, in 1998 1200 people died in Kosovo. Of that number 140 were Serbs. That would indicate, if only 10% of the population was Serb, and 90% were Albanian, which were the figures given consistently by the United Nations, that a higher percentage of Serbs were killed in 1998 than Albanians. Others put the number of Serbs killed at 300 - most of them police and other government officials. The 1200 people killed in Kosovo in 1998, which supposedly was so horrendous that America bombed Yugoslavia for 79 days to solve the problem, compares as follows with the numbers of people killed in other ethnic conflicts around the world: Sudan - 2 million, Tibet - 1 million in the last 7 years, Rwanda - 500,000, Chechnya - 80,000, Turkey - 31,000, Ethiopia - 15,000, KOSOVO - 2,000 (source NBC News) The Human Rights Watch claims the dead in Kosovo was only 1200. NBC used a nice round figure of 2,000. We do not yet have the number of people killed in East Timor in the last couple of weeks while the United Nations sat on its hands waiting for permission from the invaders, Clinton’s friends in Indonesia, to "intervene."

Increasingly around the world this situation is being discussed. ` Ghana’s Foreign Minister, James VictorGbeho said yesterday at the United Nations: `We have seen in the past few months the kind of resources that the world has been willing and able to mobilize in the Balkans at short notice,'' Ghana's foreign minister, James Victor Gbeho, said Tuesday. ``We do not see the same response to the tragedies of Africa,'' he said.

Clinton responded to that rising concern of US hypocrisy in "humanitarian" matters saying, ""I know that some are troubled that the United States and others cannot respond to every humanitarian catastrophe in the world," Clinton said. "We cannot do everything everywhere. But simply because we have different interests in different parts of the world does not mean we can be indifferent to the destruction of innocents in any part of the world." Clinton defended NATO's decision to begin an air war against Serbia, saying that it followed a consensus in the Security Council that Serbian atrocities against Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were unacceptable, the New York Times observes in today’s paper.

What is troubling is the willingness to literally make up "atrocities" supposedly committed by Serbs in Kosovo, which have since been proven false, to justify spending billions of dollars to bomb Yugoslavia for 79 days, , while the Clinton administration simply ignored really the death of literally millions of non-whites around the world.

Why? Has the situation in Europe now been stabilized with the withdrawal of an intact Yugoslav army from Kosovo and the occupation by KFOR and its obvious ally, the KLA? Don’t count on it. Sources inside Yugoslavia are predicting the KLA will now turn its weapons against KFOR forces since all minorities have been effectively cleansed..

What seems to be occurring is an increasingly jaundiced look at the so-called "Western Democracy" which NATO intends to force on the Balkans. It is becoming increasingly clear that the so-called "democratic forces" in Serbia are losing, not gaining ground against Milosevic. Efforts to bomb out, freeze out and destroy civilian electrical and industrial plants have not driven the Serbs into the arms of NATO. Anti-Milosevic forces which were able to bring 2 million Serbs into the streets of Belgrade two years ago are able to muster only a few thousand protesters today. The protesters are not blocked by Serb police. The public is simply not supporting the confused and splintered parties who are promised money from America for their opposition to Milosevic. Their anti-Milosevic campaigns are increasingly viewed in Serbia as part of NATO’s aggression.

All of this could very well herald the start of a much wider war than we’ve seen so far. If the KLA turns its weapons on KFOR forces, it is not clear what the NATO response would be. At least one Yugoslav source tells me that it would only take a "few days" for the KLA to totally dismantle the KFOR forces based on the weapons it has kept. Then what would happen? Would Clinton send in more troops? Would they ask for the Yugoslav troops to come back in? Would Milosevic just stand back and wait until the KLA and KFOR killed each other off? From what I’m hearing, this could begin as early as this fall. Stay tuned. Contrary to a lot of Western wishful thinking, the Yugoslav army is still intact, and still well-trained and knowledgeable. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that the Serbs waited until their enemies weakened each other, and then moved in to regain their land.

tommygunns — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 01:11:00 +0000

By PhilTR on Thursday, October 7, 1999 - 12:05 pm:

>> "The Spanish experts say they were told they'd be performing 2000 autopsies; in fact they were shown only 187 bodies, less than 10%. About half these people had died when NATO bombed the Dubrava prison in Istok, in Kosovo. (Based on autopsies, the Spaniards concluded that most of the people who died at the prison were killed by shrapnel; some were shot trying to escape after the bombing.) "

OK, now lets just pause here a moment and reflect. Their claimes aside, the Spanish forensic scientists examined 187 bodies at the Dubrava prison and Jared Israel wants his reader to conclude that no genocide took place anywhere in Kosovo.

JI DOES NOT say that.

>>I don't think I need to further analyze this article to be able to appropriately label it as drivel. phil

Neat little seque out of having to do any REAL analysis, Phil. Cheap, really really cheap.

tommygunns

tommygunns — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 01:01:00 +0000

PROUD DANIELA GROUPIE

l'l che, jr.

":0|

tommygunns — Fri, 08 Oct 1999 00:56:00 +0000

Phil,

Did you miss this part? Do you agree? Is this what your govenment should be doing?

From your NYT article. Did you miss this part? Do you think these kinds of activities are acceptable for the US government? Along with interference with electronic communications systems, jamming local radio and television broadcasting, and hacking international banking and wire transfer operations?

>> For the Americans, the war against Milosevic continues. The Clinton administration has said it is creating a "ring around Serbia" of sponsored media, much of it radio or television, from
Bosnia and Montenegro, with more Serbian-language programs from Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.

It is helping the Vreme-like weekly magazine Reporter, published in Bosnia, to enter the Serbian market at a discount price. <<

tommygunns