Or maybe a 'class struggler' with the heart of a 'Wallstreet Robber Barron Capitalist' ;o{) God, I love it! T'gunn, you're cool man. Don't work too hard...and save some of the high BP pills for me. :o) phil

KLA makes a
farewell to arms - up
to a point

Kosovo: special report

Chris Bird in Srbica
Sunday September 19, 1999

By midnight tonight, the ragtag guerrillas
of the Kosovo Liberation Army will have
ceased to exist, only three months after
the triumphal entry of Nato-led
peacekeepers into Kosovo. Or so Nato's
spin-doctors would have us believe.

Nato generals gave the KLA 90 days to
disarm and demobilise in three stages, of
which today, the so-called 'K+90', is
supposed to see the completion. The KLA
says that the guerrillas have handed in all
their weapons - about 10,000 pieces.

But KLA commanders are paying only lip
service to the demilitarisation process,
while hurrying to transform their forces to
save them to fight another day. Mortars,
rocket-propelled grenades and other
weapons are still in the hands of ethnic
Albani ans, used on an almost daily basis
to terrify the dwindling Serb and Gypsy
population into leaving. The weapons
handed in are often ancient hunting rifles
and rusty shotguns.

In Srbica, General Sami Lushtaku, said
he had no intention of giving up his gun.
He is joining 'Kosovo Corps', the name for
a new force between 3,000 and
5,000-strong, which K-For says will be a
civil defence organisation but which
guerrilla commanders say will be the army
for their hoped-for independent Kosovo.

The main concern for international
administrators is to get armed men off the
streets, and trained as firefighters,
paramedics and policemen. A Nato
general said: 'There will be a serious
problem if we fail to transform the KLA.'

http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,83815,00.html

Phil,

>> Hmmmmmm. Closet capitalist, huh! ;o) phil )

Like I wrote to John-Australia, we are all here on this forum for different and maybe personal reasons. I like to write and I love words. I know I'm not ready for primetime, so I get a little practice writing these posts. Doesn't mean I don't believe what I write, there's just another motive behind it that is personal (maybe even selfish?).

Anyway, this is getting TOO confessional for my taste. Onward . . .

>> Or maybe a 'class struggler' with the heart of a 'Wallstreet Robber Barron Capitalist' ;o{)

More likely the latter! Kind of contradictory, eh? But, isn't life just like that? I suppose I'd find myself bored to tears even in a perfectly ordered, economically fair, and socially just system.

Keep in mind that I have never declared myself a "socialist" (maybe a small "s" socialist-libertarian????) and in one post I did point out that I have no problem with free-market economics, which is not the same thing as capitalism in our advanced capitalist corporate state. Maybe it's just the big guys vs the little guys thing, eh? If authority wants respect, it must be earned by proving it's knowledge, wisdom, and talent. Otherwise, it's just power. Fear of a bigger power has never motivated me. It took my mama a long time to learn that telling me I couldn't was the best insurance that I would!

God, I love it! T'gunn, you're cool man. Don't work too hard...and save some of the high BP pills for me. :o) phil

Thank you. That's the nicest thing you've said to me. So, you do have heart, eh?

tommygunns

As mentioned earlier, I "try" to write and have a love of words. Hence, I admire good writing and a well-turned phrase. A recent arrival at the Serbian Cafe, named Cassandra, is worth re-posting.

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

STERILITY...

Cassandra - Sep 19, 1999

The Monsanto corporation, with approval and funding from the US government, has developed a "terminator seed". So called because it knocks nature on its ass and produces a plant that cannot re-seed itself. The moral imperative behind this seed is that it will save humans from the horrors of "noxious weeds" and other unnamed plants "harmful to humans".

Even the most mummified intellect can dimly perceive what might be going on behind the curtain here. (PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN--THE GREAT OZ IS SPEAKING!!) The possibilities are endless. Monsanto has already admitted that they have no control over the genetically produced sterility. They declare, with all humility, that they can't control the wind!

I have often complained of the difficulty of writing satires on modern American life because it is so self satirizing. Now I find it difficult to find a metaphor to express my rage at the hubris, brutality, ignorance and hypocrisy of American foreign policy. The metaphor of the "terminator seed" and the actual goal of the New World Order seem to have merged.

You Must Ask For Permission. This is the Alpha and the Omega of the NWO. In a few years all the farmers of the world will genuflect before a multinational seed corporation (and, of course, the man behind the curtain) at the beginning of each planting season. Waiting patiently for their ration of seeds. Waiting patiently for permission to plant. Waiting patiently to find out what they must plant. Just like an ancient fertility rite. Didn't KFOR explain the murders of the Gracko farmers by stating that these stupid men hadn't waited patiently until their "protectors" had time to escort them into their fields? But let's be honest, most citizens of the "West" and of the "East" have long ago given up dreaming of human liberation, in favor of the chimera of physical security.

A tiny class of bureaucratic managers, circling the globe like the Van Allen belt, will direct all human activities and with the help of their very own high priests, advertising professionals, they will circumscribe the dreams, the hopes, and the beliefs of humans. They'll protect us from noxious weeds.

A "noxious weed" is a plant that thrives in its native soil. No matter how bitter the winter, how harsh the drought, or how hungry the insects, this tough SOB is the first plant to fight it's way back in the spring. And it always gives humans, with all their weed killing chemicals and machines, a knock down, drag out battle. Of course, to the eye of a generation of people who think "Bambi" is a documentary, "noxious weeds" are ugly. I admire and respect them, never more so than when they're giving me a hard time.

I suppose a planet of perfectly even green lawns (weed free, of course), and perfectly organized, perfectly shaped tulip beds is a living planet. In the broadest sense a parking lot is a part of Nature.

And I admit I'm in an ever shrinking minority. Most Americans can hardly wait to become part of an efficiently run cabbage patch. A person who decides to become a cabbage has very little patience with humans who dare to balk at the idea of evolving into a clean, well cared for cabbage.

The casual, gleeful brutality of the NWO, the instant amnesia about the brutality--it's all justified because some people are weird--David Koresh; They think impure thoughts--Randy Weaver; They won't go along to get along--The Serbs. They insist upon remaining "noxious weeds" in our beautiful cabbage patch.

Can you believe that as recently as this century, there actually existed humans who thought they could DO something about IT? But, here I sit, typing away. Knowing full well that I am a "parlour propagandist"--as politically sterile and domesticated as Monsanto could ever hope.

I read posts arguing about something Winston Churchill once said. He would have insisted that the sun rises in the west if he thought it would benefit the British Empire. I read posts from people who are going to politely protest some Serb defamation on a corporate entertainment network--never mind that these networks defame intelligent human beings 24 hours a day. We post and post and post. And the Bad Guys win and win and win.

And while they're munching on our liver, plucking our eyes out, sucking our brain away, they pause to deliver little sermons about how we musn't speak hatefully. We musn't be rude. We musn't think bad thoughts.

Sterility. It's a beautiful thing....

Phil,

Finally found a source that mentions the mineral resources of the Balkans as a factor in the west's break-up of SFRY. I concede you were correct on that point.

tommygunns

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

Susan Bryce is an investigative journalist and researcher. Her interests include democracy and freedom, the technologies of political control, environmental health and global politics. She can be contacted at PO Box 66 Kenilworth Qld Australia 4574, or on +61 0754 723060. email: sbryce@squirrel.com.au

The Public Relations of Modern Warfare

A Long Range Plan?

[…}

In 1997, the establishment journal Foreign Affairs published an article by Zbigniew Brzezinski titled "The Geostrategy for Asia". In the article, the former National Security chief under Carter, outlined the way that NATO "entrenches American political influence and military power on the Eurasian mainland."

Brzezinski argued that a wider Europe and an enlarged NATO would serve the short-term and longer-term interests of US policy. A larger Europe would expand the range of American influence without simultaneously creating a Europe so politically integrated that it could challenge the United States on matters of geopolitical importance, particularly the Middle East.

NATO's actions in Yugoslavia may well be the first of many we will see in this area as the US gears up to implement its "geostrategy for Asia". The possibility of a struggle for access to the region and control over its raw materials, labor and markets could outstrip last centurys "scramble for Africa".

In the wash up of the Balkans crisis, the IMF and the World Bank will assist in the reconstruction of war torn Yugoslavia, which will repay its debt via abundant mineral resources, that include substantial deposits of lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold and an estimated 17 billion tons of coal reserves.

US President Bill Clinton has already laid the groundwork for further intervention in the area. During a recent speech to newspaper editors, he noted the potential for ethnic conflict in the Ukraine, Moldova, southern Russia, the Caucasus nations of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and the new nations of Central Asia. Clinton discussed the fact that ethnic conflicts could pose a threat to what is "among our most critical interests: the transition of the former communist countries toward stability, prosperity and freedom."

[…]

Operation Joint Guardian will bring important rewards to the US and our new friends. Working in partnership with the IMF we will help achieve a fully monetised economy in the former Yugoslavia. We will create an environment in which private enterprise can flourish enabling access to natural resources and an enormous labour force which can produce goods. Our success in Yugoslavia will provide a springboard so that we can continue to spread capitalism and consumerism into all states of the former Soviet Union.

One more from Cassandra.

tommygunns

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

SO LONG CRAZY HORSE...

Cassandra - Sep 19, 1999 12:02 (208.141.*)

You can buy Crazy Horse belt buckles, Crazy Horse earrings, Crazy Horse baby booties, Crazy Horse wrist watches. The ruling elite pat themselves on the head and tell themselves how enlightened they are. Crazy Horse wasn't such a bad fellow. He was the victim of ignorance and prejudice.

If you read news reports contemporaneous with the hunt for Crazy Horse you might get the idea that Crazy Horse was, well, that Crazy Horse was a Serb!! But we moderns are much more tolerant and sophisticated as we gaze benignly back over 122 years. We're even carving a great big bas-relief Crazy Horse in the side of a mountain to go with the Presidential Heads on Mount Rushmore.

But, you see, Crazy Horse is dead. And more importantly, everything Crazy Horse believed is dead. There is no great resurgence of "Indian Spirituality", in spite of what eager Danish tourists might believe. Every moment of Indian life is part of a dusty file in a sub-sub-department of the Federal Government.

They provide a picturesque back-drop for Deep Theme Hollywood movies. Then the enlightened Hollywood Super Star donates enough money to build another gambling casino on the reservation. In the casino, latter day Indian maidens get in touch with their roots by wearing tight fitting suede minnie skirts (with fringe) while delivering drinks to depressed gamblers.

I wonder what Crazy Horse was thinking a few hours after the Battle of Little Big Horn? He must have known it was hopeless. What was he thinking a few months later when he and the remaining 1,000 starving fighters were captured? What was he thinking as they led him to the jail cell and a few minutes later he ended up dead? Cause of death--resisting the inevitable.

It appears that the great argument right now is between those Serb politicians who want to immediately drop to their knees and perform the Full Monica, and those who demand to be allowed to bend at the waist and perform a Half Monica while on their feet. Well, at least they're still arguing about the position. We don't even whisper about it in the US anymore.

Why do the humans who embrace the jail cell so vastly outnumber those who resist?

This is a piece i received in my email.
Please ladies and gentleman "NOTE' that for me to post this has nothing to do with my "SO CALLED' hate or dislike for Serbian"ORDANAIRY" people, but merely to show what's going on at the "top" at this moment. Which i personally think it's a bad attemped to raise nationalism. Instread of what should be done. And that in my opinion is give people like it is.Plain simple truth no propaganda bull especially not children for crying out loud. Children in any nation are the future. Im wandering after reading this what the future will hold for Serbia as a nation together with other nations or people if you wish?

---

SERBIA'S SCHOOLS TEACH NEW LESSONS IN WAR

Serbian schoolchildren have a bundle of new books for their libraries - a
gift from Serbia's self-styled 'Uncle Education Minister - but the lessons
they teach are all about war, hate and patriotic militarism.

By Vlado Mares in Belgrade

Usually the start of September's new school year in Serbia gets no more
than a passing mention in the media. This year however, it was the cue for
an outpouring of xenophobic delight at an initiative by the country's
education minister.

Education Minister Jovan Todorovic composed a message to primary and
secondary schools and ordered it to be read to every pupil aged seven to 18
across the country in the first class of the new school year.

The pupils have been off school for five months - due to what Todorovic
called "criminal NATO" attacks - instead of the normal summer eight-week
break, he reminded them. These attacks were, he said: "the anticipated
conflict between the existing and the New World Order, East and West, the
law of force and the force of law."

It was a war, he added, between "hypocrisy and truth, high technology and
classical weapons, cold-blooded mass murderers and dignified defenders of
the homeland, formalised manipulative religion and the true faith.
"Children, pupils, your peers, were killed in the war as well," he said.
"They are no longer sitting at their desks. They have received top grades
for behaviour and have moved up to eternity..."

He signed the message as "Yours, Uncle Education Minister". After the
reading, as requested, the schools had to play the national anthem and
stand in silence for a minute in memory of the dead.

The exercise delighted the national media, which celebrated it as proof
that ministers like Todorovic were putting Serbia back on the right path.
The independent media wondered if the message was really appropriate, and
whether it helped the children to be reminded of the trauma of this year's
conflict.

Todorovic's speech was another 'tune on the gusle' - a Serbian phrase for
'banging the war drums - in the near decade long tradition of Serbian
leader Slobodan Milosevic's calls to war with his neighbours.

But those poor empty-handed Serbs who follow the gusle player to war at
Milosevic's behest, even with tanks and artillery in their train, will
eventually return with the gusle "broken over their heads". For
falsification of Serbian myth and the fomenting of hatred in schools simply
follows a political tradition of never citing friends, only enemies.

'Uncle Education Minister' has ordered the schools to teach their pupils to
hate the Western countries. The habit of looking to Western Europe for
Serbia's future is being discouraged.

Teachers like 46 year old Dragan Popovic spent their own childhood growing
up in the shadow of war, and wearily decry the fact that history is still
repeating itself. Only the war is different.

"So many generations of schoolchildren, including mine, spent years
studying the smallest details of World War II, and the heroism of the
communist partisans," he said. Playtimes were dominated by pretend partisan
battles with the Evil Nazis. What now has changed?

"Tito, Bosko Buha, Pinki, heroes from the past, robbed us of our
childhood," he said. "I had hoped that one day children might be allowed to
have time for Peter Pan or Mary Poppins. But not yet, it seems. The baby
'partisans' are busy playing war with a new evil enemy, NATO.

"Will there ever be time for fairytales?"

Not yet. Culture Minister Zeljko Simic has joined Todorovic's battle by
announcing plans to ship copies of 100 carefully chosen books to every
library in Serbia.

All dwell on the war, the Serbian perspective and Western moral bankruptcy.
They include titles such as: 'F-117, The Downfall Of NATO's Strategy' by
Zoran Gluscevic, 'The Book of Defence' by Dragan Milenkovic and 'The
Twilight of the West' and 'Kosovo and the World War' by Mile Nedeljkovic.

Simic's own works and the some of the collected writings of Mira Markovic,
wife of Slobodan Milosevic top up the package.

Some might argue that the money spent on printing and distribution of these
books might have been better spent, perhaps on more conventional school
texts or even a few fairy stories.

But with the entire Serbian state sector starved of resources in the
post-conflict months - schools as much as anywhere else - Simic's
collection of nationalist thought and anti-western polemic may be all the
new works they may get for a while.

Vlado Mares is a journalist for the Belgrade independent news agency BETA.
(The Institute for War & Peace Reporting)

Emina
Ps i got myself an extra job so if answers to questions come late i had no time respond. But i wil do my best anyhow.

Just so everyone can get into the Christmas spirit I'm going to post this bit of western humor.

---

Twas the night before.......


'Twas the night before Y2K
and all through the nation
We awaited The Bug
the Millineum sensation.

The chips were replaced
in computers with care,
In hopes that 'old bugsy
wouldn't stop there.

While some folks could sleep
all snug in their beds,
Others had visions
of dread in their heads.

And Ma with her PC
and I with my Mac,
Had just logged on the net
and kicked back with a snack.

When over the server
there arose such a clatter,
I called Mr. Gates
to see what was the matter.

But he was away,
so I flew like a flash,
off to my e-bank
to withdraw all my cash.

When what with my wandering eyes
should I see?
My good old Mac
looked very sick to me.

The hack of all hackers
was looking so smug,
I knew that it was
the Y2K bug.

His image downloaded
In no time at all,
He whistled and shouted,
"Let all systems fall!

Go Intel, Go Gateway,
Now HP, Big Blue,
Everything, Compaq,
And Pentium too.

All processors big,
All processors small,
Crash away! Crash away!
Crash away all!"

All the controls
that planes need for their flights,
All microwaves, trains,
and all traffic lights.

As I drew in my breath
and was turning around,
Out through the modem
He came with a bound.

He was covered with fur
and slung on his back,
Was a sackful of virii
all set for the attack.

His eyes - how they twinkled
His dimples - how merry,
As midnight approached, though,
Things soon became scary.

He had a broad little face
and a round little belly,
And his sackful of virii
quivered like jelly.

He was chubby and plump,
perpetually grinning,
And I laughed when I saw him
Though my hard drive stopped spinning.

A wink of his eye
and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know
a new feeling of dread.

He spoke not a word,
but went straight to his work,
He changed all the clocks,
then turned with a jerk.

With a twitch of his nose,
and a quick little wink,
All things electronic,
soon went on the blink.

He zoomed from my system
to the folks next in line,
He caused such a disruption,
Could this be a sign?

Then I heard him exclaim,
with a loud, hearty shout,
"Good Y2K to all!
This is a helluva night!"

--author unknown--

Even if the text is a true one - not just the usual albanian style lie - there`s a huge difference between what is in it and all the conclusions made out of it.
All this still doesn`t justify taking one`s sovereign territory, fighting on the side of the terrorists and killing innocent civilians by bombing them for three months...

DANIELA

If you mean my text i've got it from a serbian friend living in Beograd.
And yes as i said on the top of this post its about leaders here who use the innocentChildren to be exact and thats what i found disturbing.

This is not about bombs, but about what the future holds? And to tell you the gods honest truth it frightens me to death and not only me also my friend

Emina
Ps My friend has children of his own , so it was and is very easy to verify what his children are though in school

It just goes on, and on, and on, and on . . . . . . . .Thaci's having a snit-fit, KLA extends KFOR's (?) deadline, the U.S. trained the Indonesian militias now destroying East Timor, and is now giving $3.5 billion (THAT'S BILLION!!!!) to Colombia. Is there no end to this madness, mendacity, and hipocracy?

tommygunns

from www.UnitedStates.com

KFOR: NO SIGN OF SERB PARAMILITARIES

MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Sept. 18 (UPI) - A spokesman for Kosovo's international peacekeepers said Saturday there was no sign of paramilitary activity among Serbs in northern Kosovo.

Responding to rumors that Yugoslav soldiers plan to come back in civilian clothes after the Kosovo Liberation Army is demilitarized, Commandant M. Declercq of KFOR's Mitrovica contingent said there is no indication this is actually happening.

Declercq said Serbs in northern Kosovo are using walkie-talkies not because they are paramilitaries, but because they are afraid.

He said anything could happen, and if there is violence, "we will intervene."

The KLA's demilitarization is scheduled to be completed by midnight on Sunday.

NATO waged an 11-week war against Yugoslavia this spring to stop Serb-led ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians.

Many Serbs abandoned the province after the war, and some of those left behind have been targeted in apparent revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians.

Serbian Resistance Movement leader Momcilo Trajkovic says Yugoslav soldiers are allowed to come back under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which permits the army to watch over historical sites and to mark mine fields.

No date for their return is specified in the resolution.

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

from www.lineone.net

The Express Online News (UK)

KOSOVO AID SCANDAL

By John Laughland

Scandal of aid crates left on the dockside Kosova refugees were denied vital supplies of food, medicine and blankets as a result of theft, inefficiency and mafia corruption.

In April, readers of The Express joined donors from around Europe in a wave of sympathy for the refugees from the Kosovo war. Food, clothes, medicines and other goods were sent. But now, in a scandal which is rocking Italian politics, some of that aid appears to have been sucked into the morass of criminality from which the Kosovo Liberation Army and its mafia allies in Albania emerged to fight Yugoslav rule in the first place.

I have recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Italy with the British Helsinki Human Rights group. We found that for months now, more than 900 shipping containers full of aid have been lying on the docks in Bari, Italy's major port on the Adriatic coast opposite Albania. They contain medicine, food, blankets and other items donated by British, Italian and other organisations. There are a further 1,000 containers lying in Vlore, the Albanian port some 50 miles away.

While there is no doubt that large quantities of aid did get through, there is some that never reached the refugees who have now returned home anyway. British donors, who sent aid in the spring, were promised that it would be in Albania within days. The Italian military had said it would ensure an air bridge from a military base near Milan straight to the Albanian camps. Arcobaleno, the organisation responsible for shipping the aid, is theoretically a non-governmental body but in reality it operates out of the Italian prime minister's office in Rome. As a result, the prime minister, Massimo D'Alema, has been severely embarrassed by the scandal and has had to write entire articles in the Italian press excusing himself.

Mr. D'Alema has now promised that the aid will be sent to help earthquake victims in Turkey instead. But a date has still not been fixed for its transport. Questions are being asked in Italy by the public prosecutor about the nearly £50 million which Italians donated in cash and which remains unspent. Meanwhile, the Italian social security department is paying thousands of pounds every day in rental for the containers which are lying idle on the dockside.

It is possible that the aid was left at the port simply through negligence. Certainly, so much flooded into Albania during the Kosovan war that there was simply not enough space for any more of it in Vlore.

But there is also evidence that organised crime may have been responsible for diverting some of the aid that did leave Italy. Many of the clothes and medicines were stolen by the Albanian mafia and can now be purchased - at market prices -in ordinary shops in Albania. Indeed, according to Sokol Kociu, a prosecutor in Albania, the millions of pounds worth of aid became part of an ugly deal between the Albanian and Italian mafias, in which the Italian mafia paid off the Albanian mafia for various favours, including the supply of prostitutes.

The scandal demonstrates two things. The first is that the war against Yugoslavia continues to generate severe fall-out, affecting innocent people. Because Western governments needed to maintain public support at fever pitch for their attacks on Yugoslavia, they used the media to dramatise the humanitarian situation to the fullest possible degree. This meant that the amounts of cash and goods donated turned out to be vastly in excess of requirements.

By the same token, western governments - especially our own - systematically played down the fact that the KLA was in fact controlling the refugee camps we saw on our television screens every night. Away from the cameras, during the war, pimps kidnapped girls from the camps to sell into prostitution in Italy; and once the war was over, refugees had to pay the KLA a fee to be allowed to leave the camps and go home. It is inconceivable, under such circumstances, that aid could have got to the refugees without the KLA stealing it.

The second point highlighted by the scandal is the stranglehold the Albanian and Kosovo mafia wields over the Adriatic region. The Strait of Otranto and the east coast of Italy are its springboards into Europe. Every evening you can see the motor boats on the beach in Albania waiting to make the short night hop across the Adriatic into Italy. The strength of the extended family structure in Albanian society - it is divided into elaborate "clans" - makes it well suited to mafia activities. In recent years the Albanian and Kosovan mafias have made great strides in displacing even the biggest Italian mafia organisations.

The Albanian and Kosovan mafias now control the traffic of migrants, prostitutes, cigarette smuggling and drugs into Europe. Interpol confirms that 80 per cent of the heroin market in central Europe has been in the hands of Kosovo Albanians for years: control of the brothels in Brussels (where NATO and the EU are based) has also fallen into their hands.

The power of these mafia gangs will be boosted further by the Albanian victory in the Kosovan war because Kosovo has long been a central transition point for the heroin and cocaine trades.

As the chief Italian prosecutor with responsibility for the Albanian mafia in Italy told me, "Europe is being submerged by a tidal wave of organised crime from Albania" - a sentiment confirmed by the British National Criminal Intelligence Service, which warned that Albanian mafia gangs were preparing to move over here too.

The power of the Albanian mafia is also relevant to the current influx of asylum seekers into Britain - more than 200 people a day are now coming here as refugees. Those who cross the Adriatic have all paid the mafia smugglers between £300 and £500 for the short trip. I have visited a number of these "asylum seekers" in Dover, Calais and in southern Italy in recent weeks: not one of the Kosovo Albanians I met said he or she was a victim of political persecution; they all wanted to come to Britain to work.

A massive 80 per cent of those who make an initial application for asylum in Italy never see it through because they travel on immediately to Germany and Britain instead. Because the European Union has abolished border controls on the Continent they can be in Calais within 24 hours. The only significant group suffering real persecution are the Kosovar gypsy refugees, chased out of their homes by Albanians on the rampage. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to go to a richer country like Britain to seek your fortune, it is certainly wrong for the present mass influx to be occurring thanks to an abuse of an asylum process which was set up to help genuine victims of persecution.

The Yugoslav war was fought on the basis that the Serbs were diabolical beasts and that the Albanians were passive victims. Both visions were exaggerated for the purposes of propaganda. During the war, this led to civilian deaths on both sides and to the impoverishment and disruption of the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. But now it has also led to the swindling of thousands of well-meaning Britons as well.

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

ITALIAN INCOMPETENCE UNDER INVESTIGATION

From Philip Willan In Rome

ITALIAN opposition politicians have called for a parliamentary inquiry into the scandal. In the Sicilian town of Ragusa and in Bari, magistrates have opened investigations into possible corruption and incompetence in Italy's aid programme for Kosovo.

In Ragusa, officials are investigating allegations that out-of-date medicines were distributed to refugees and that Kosovar women were exploited as prostitutes at a camp set up in the former US air base of Comiso.

In Bari, a magistrate is attempting to discover why 920 containers of aid were left to rot in the hot August sun.

Significant quantities of aid went astray in the lawless conditions of Albania. "I saw huge quantities of supplies being sold in the markets of Vlore and Durres," said Italian senator Fiorello Provera.

Attempts to avoid pilfering led the Italian authorities to stock containers end to end so that they couldn't be opened - even by the authorised relief agencies.

But despite these difficulties, the Italian people responded rapidly to the plight of the Kosovar refugees who flooded across the border into Albania. Not only did the goods they supplied go to those in refugee camps but more than 3,000 homes in Kosovo have been rebuilt as a result of Italian financial aid.

The government decided to hold back containers because Kosovo's roads were blocked by military traffic and there were no aid organisations in place to distribute the supplies, according to Italian officials.

Staffan De Mistura, the UN representative in Italy, said: "In the implementation of this mission there were no mortal sins committed, only venial sins," he said. "Italy's only mistake is not to have admitted that." © Express Newspapers Ltd.

Daniella,

<< Even if the text is a true one - not just the usual albanian style lie - there`s a huge difference between what is in it and all the conclusions made out of it. <<

Good point. It's the (implied) conclusions that people interpret that are the seeds of lies and distortions.

Are school children incapable of understanding they just had the s***t bombed out of them. Now they should be protected from the truth and drugged with fantasies?

Really, I think children are a hell of a lot smarter than most adults and can handle the truth much better.

Here in the USA we have an entire artificial class of people called "adolescents" that are completely disenfranchised and virtually imprisoned by the state and at the mercy of their parents (who also live in fear of the state). Then adults wonder why some of them go on a shooting rampage killing other students and teachers. To paraphrase Dostoevsky, "If you keep a man locked in a rat hole for 40 years, what do you expect?"

Adults claim that young people are not emotionally mature to handle the problems of life, but it's the adults who keep them in an artificial, suspended state of immaturity in the first place?

Oh yes, there's something terribly rotten in the state.

tommygunns

Daniela writes: "Even if the text is a true one - not just the usual albanian style lie - there`s a huge difference between what is in it and all the conclusions made out of it.
All this still doesn`t justify taking one`s sovereign territory, fighting on the side of the terrorists and killing innocent civilians by bombing them for three months... "


Bur do you have to let children fall victim of the hate of the adults?
Nothing justifies bombing, but nothing justifies murdering babies and anciently old people either. And certainly nothing justifies letting our children grow up with fear, hate and ignorance, not in Serbia, not in Albania, not in the US, not anywhere. If we as the human race want to make a future for ourselves that is worth living, the first two things we must let go of is prejudice and hate.

It's very easy to practice an eye for an eye and dog eat dog, it is ten times harder to let go, but neccesary for our survival.

Zoja

You`ve lost your marbles woman.

Do you realise that your comment has nothing to do with mine; you are in a totally delusional state...

m'sieu gunns
i wonder which of us is more recently removed from
our american adolescence, however protracted we've
managed to make it (grin).
but a quick perusal of any happenin' mall on a
weekday after school wouldnt turn up too many
adolescents who felt they were "imprisoned by the
state and at the mercy of their parents".
and this wouldnt seem to have been the case in
littleton either.
dostoevsky's 'rat hole' is exceptionally furnished
these days; someone better go tell those
contemporarily well-equipped kids they're
prisoners of the state.
not to mention the kids out there who wish their
parents were around and available enough to so
much as try to put them at their mercy.

oh indeed there's something terribly rotten in the
state...just surprised at where you went w/that
post.