Dear RN list, As the following messages will show, the "party line" of our mass media is that NATO won this Kosovo war, and that this was good for the future of human rights prtoection. This means that we who know otherwise must be creative in finding ways to show what the real reasons for the war were and what the real consequences are. In one nearby city, Halifax, a teach-in will be held this Saturday. I'll post the notice on that event (below) in the hopes it may inspire others to organize similar events. And please continue to share information about ideas for countering the "party line" stuff; our work is never done! all the best, Jan ******************************************************************* Note from Jan: I particularly like this line, from the last paragraph of Frank Scott's article below: " democracy has little to do with our reality, but everything to do with changing it." Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 21:20:19 +0000 From: frank scott <•••@••.•••> COASTAL POST (415)868 1600 FAX (415) 868 0502 P.O. Box 31 Bolinas CA 94924 http://www.coastalpost.com email: •••@••.••• July,1999 Depressing Democracy The triumphalism over the Yugoslavian slaughter reached a low point when the serial killer Albright was treated like Mother Theresa by Kosovar Albanians. In their misery, the Albanians can be forgiven their gullibility. But how can the most affluent population in the world accept the fairy tale offered about Yugoslavia? Weapons of mass destruction and mass distraction are creating an America of mass mental depression. As the re-writing of history takes place before our eyes, future fiction is being attempted in the presentation of candidates for the year 2000 . Slobodan Milosevic may have represented more of his people than the two political ciphers shilling for accommodations in the public housing at Pennsylvania Avenue . Even with the massive mind assault , some might ask why these two are even candidates. Of course, one is the vice president, though his most memorable achievement seems to be that he has not sodomized any of his staff. The other is a governor, son of a former president, and as bland, boring and unknown as his opponent seems merely bland and boring. Those truly represented by this rich and pampered duo are those who have enjoyed the economic boom , really a stock market boom with some trickle down value to janitors, lawyers and other servants. Market fundamentalists crow that more people are holding jobs, and that poor people are working . They don't tell us that Americans are laboring longer hours, with less benefits, and falling deeper into debt. Nor do they mention that as more poor people work , more working people are poor. Low unemployment numbers leave out millions in the military. When that group is added to those in jails and prisons, the employment figures show that without government intervention in the market, however bloody it may be, we might have an employment depression. That would match the state of mind of citizens who cannot survive without taking drugs, both legal and illegal. So much for a rising tide that is supposedly lifting all boats. <snip> But can these two [Democrat Bill Bradley and Republican John McCain] strengthen democracy in a nation so dominated by minority wealth? Last year, CEOs at the top 350 corporations averaged compensation of more than $2.5 million. 90% of the gains in this stock market have gone to the wealthiest 10% of Americans. In the last congressional race , 81% of those who contributed more than $200 had incomes over $100,000 . In this horribly skewed economic environment, talk of a democratic electoral process is a form of whistling while walking through a cemetery . Now our young people can read the ten commandments before buying their handguns, remembering to disregard the one about not killing,when their government murders foreigners. And their parents can take lots of legal drugs , buy more needless products, incur more debt, and borrow, at usurious rates, from legalized loan sharks . Young and old need to understand that democracy has little to do with our reality, but everything to do with changing it. The Main Street majority needs to get smarter, and less depressed, to really contest the Wall Street minority. Neither legal drugs nor major media are likely to help. Copyright (c) 1999 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the author is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author . frank scott http://www.marin.cc.ca.us/~frank/columns email: •••@••.••• 225 laurel place, san rafael ca. 94901 (415)457 2415 fax(415)457 4791 ***************************************************************** Note from Jan: Janet Eaton has complied a 5th collection of articles on the ecological consequences of the Yugoslav war which I would be happy to send to you on request. ----------------------------------- From: "Janet M Eaton" <•••@••.•••> Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 23:58:02 +0000 Subject: Green Cross PRESS RELEASE- Envir. Consequences -Kosovo ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 17:32:34 +0200 From: Sophie Barbey <•••@••.•••> Subject: PRESS RELEASE ________________________________ Press Release Green Cross International continues its action to mobilize the international community on the environmental consequences of the Kosovo conflict. On 17 June, 1999, during a session of the Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, held in Strasbourg, a motion was taken for a resolution on the environmental consequences of the Kosovo conflict. "Taking into consideration the different evidences of the environmental impact of the Kosovo conflict, they decided that they should: 1) (S.) assist the municipalities to avoid an environmental catastrophe 2) co-operate with Green Cross International to collect and analyze information on environmental impacts and damage to human settlements in the region 3) support the joint UNEP/UNCHS Balkans Task Force in its efforts to create strategic partnerships for future reconstruction (S..)" Green Cross International, through its president Mikhail Gorbachev, was one of the first environmental organization to insist on the possible environmental catastrophe contained in this conflict and on the necessity for action. Already a full member of the UNEP/UNCHS Balkans Task Force, Green Cross International has now been confirmed as a partner in the strategy of the Council of Europe. For additional information, contact Sophie Barbey, Green Cross International, e-mail: •••@••.•••, tel +41.22.789.16.62, fax +41.22.789.16.95 The Council of Europe < http://www.coe.fr > is an international organization based in Strasbourg (France). Its main role is to strengthen democracy, human rights and the rule of law throughout its 41 member states. The Council of Europe has two organs, the committee of Ministers with the minister of foreign affairs of the state member and the Consultative Assembly made of elected parliamentarians of the state members. In attached documents, Mikhail Gorbachev's last article on the concerns about the environment in the aftermath of the Kosovo crisis and the free translation in French. ===================== CONCERNS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE KOSOVO CRISIS By Mikhail Gorbachev Now that the air strikes against Yugoslavia have been stopped, the world community will have to assess the damage and draw lessons from the events of these past months. We should not allow this misguided and unwarranted action to be followed by the wrong conclusions. Faced with the plight of the Kosovars, the destruction of much of the essential infrastructure in the rest of Yugoslavia and the tremendous damage to international relations, triumphalist statements sound hollow. Claims of victory are being made by those, on either side, who must be troubled by the thought of being held accountable for the tragedy. What is really needed now is responsible analysis. <snip> Prevention must be foremost in our thinking and our actions. But, if hostilities break out despite all our efforts, they must be constrained by certain legal limits. Such constraints have been laid down by the Geneva conventions and their protocols. It is now clear that they should be supplemented by provisions to limit the environmental damage caused by warfare. [Note from Jan: The press release is also available in French from me or the Green Cross itself.] *********************************************************** Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 09:56:30 -0600 From: Delongs <•••@••.•••> Subject: Yugo: Robert Fisk: Was it rescue, or revenge? 1999.06.21 Independent (UK) Was it rescue or revenge? by Robert Fisk Bestialisation is an unpleasant sport. The Serbs bestialised the Albanians for years. Terrorists, mafia, communists, Marxists, murderers. Officially directed at the Kosovo Liberation Army, these epithets came to be applied to the entire Kosovo Albanian community. And when General Nabojsa Pavkovic warned that "settling scores... is what we'll do if our country is attacked from the air or the ground," the Albanians knew what to expect. The moment Nato commenced its blitz against Yugoslavia, the harassment of the Kosovo Albanians turned into persecution, and the atrocities into mass murder. But now it is we who are doing the bestialising. Nazis, Gestapo, blood-stained thugs, genocidal. The Serbs. In just a few short sound- bites, we are now bestialising a whole people. Serbs Out, Nato In, Refugees Back. That was how George Robertson -- with appalling simplicity and even more awful results -- summed up the west's ambitions in Kosovo earlier this month. And sure enough, the Serbs are moving out. At least 50,000 Serb civilians -- half the remaining Serb population of the province -- have already fled the homes that Messrs Clinton and Blair promised to protect. Perhaps half the gypsy population of Kosovo have fled with them on their wooden carts and ponies. Serbian Kosovo is turning into Albanian Kosovo. True, it was Serb forces -- not the KLA -- which dispossessed the Albanians of Kosovo. Serb forces executed the Albanian men of countless villages across the province. The KLA have committed atrocities, but not on this scale. Yet it remains a sad and devastating fact that the vast majority of war crimes -- almost the entire mass dispossession and "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians -- occurred after Nato had begun its war. Had we been prepared to intervene on land at the beginning -- at the cost, no doubt, of Nato soldiers' lives -- countless murdered Albanians would still be alive. And had we attempted to sort out the whole Kosovo crisis when the Albanians first appealed for our help at Dayton in 1995 -- when Richard Holbrooke and his chums told them to get lost -- the last three months' bloodbath might never have occurred, and hundreds of thousands of dispossessed Albanians would still be in their homes. Moral outrage is a very powerful emotion. I felt it a year ago when I saw the Serb police looting houses in the village of Comerane. I felt it a few days' later when a Serb police officer threatened to rape an Albanian woman who was travelling with me. I felt it when The Independent's own Albanian interpreter emerged from the heart of darkness just over a week ago with a frightful story of her two months' persecution in Kosovo. I knew what to expect when British KFOR troops entered the MUP police headquarters in Pristina and found their collection of baseball bats, strapped bed, knuckledusters. Because I have visited another identical police station with a torture basement. Indeed, I have been interrogated on the first floor, surrounded by policemen holding identical baseball bats. And that police force was engaged in the persecution, dispossession and -- with the help of that nation's armed forces -- the burning of villages and the murder of their ethnic inhabitants. But readers who fear another Nato bombing campaign can relax. This police station happened to be in a city called Diyarbakir, and the country whose police forces are involved in torture and murder is called Turkey. And Turkey is a member of Nato, supporting -- albeit without enormous enthusiasm -- our righteous war against Serbia. And Turkey is not (quite) in Europe. Hence the need for our masters to say that we are discovering war crimes unknown "in Europe" since the Second World War. But back to Kosovo, where our moral outrage is at its loudest. In our reporting of Kosovo's "liberation", there is no longer any mention of the bombing campaign that preceded it. The hundreds of Serb and Albanian civilians killed by Nato bombs have been expunged from the record. The train at Grdelica, the two hospitals, the Chinese embassy, the bridge at Varvarin -- with its beheaded priest and its female high- school student with her stomach torn out -- the housing estates in Nis, Surdelica and Cuprija, and the Albanian refugee convoy destroyed in April -- all must now be forgotten. The evil we now uncover makes such matters irrelevant, even if most of that evil had not yet been committed when we began our blitz against Yugoslavia. Having witnessed much of the war -- far too much of the war -- I am convinced it was unnecessary; that there must have been some way of avoiding Nato's brutal bombardment and the wickedness that Serb forces unleashed against the Albanians once that bombardment began. True, their "cleansing" of Kosovo had already started, but on an infinitely smaller scale. And Nato General Wesley Clark's assertion that the post-attack onslaught against the Albanians was "entirely predictable" still seems to be the height of cynicism. <snip> Nato unleashed a war that produced a refugee exodus on a Biblical scale. It went on to slaughter hundreds of civilians in order to return the refugees, most of whom were in their homes when the blitz began. And then it watched the exodus of half of Kosovo's other population -- the Serbs -- whom it was also meant to protect. And it then proclaimed a victory. This may go down well in the United States, but I don't think Europe should suffer this kind of treatment. I don't believe that American generals should be in charge of the destruction of a European nation, however barbaric its ruler. I don't think think the European Union should tolerate any repeat performances. <snip> There was a moment back in April, early in the bombing campaign, when Nato's lie became obvious. "Had we not acted," said President Clinton, "the Serb offensive would have been carried out with impunity." And there we have it. Ours was a punishment campaign, not a preventive action. It was intended to avenge the Albanians, not to save them -- and to revenge ourselves on the Serbs, I have no doubt, for the humiliation we suffered at their hands in Bosnia. The Albanian refugees will now return to their "predictably" burned homes and the "predictable" mass graves of their loved ones. The Serbs will continue to flood out of the province that Nato had sworn to preserve. And the Americans will continue to make the decisions. Europe deserves better. So do the Kosovo Albanians. So do the Serbs. * * * >> ********************************************************** Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 13:12:24 -0700 From: Sid Shniad <•••@••.•••> Subject: NATO's Victory - A few more victories like this and.... (Stratfor) STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update Weekly Analysis June 21, 1999 NATO's Victory A few more victories like this and.... Summary: NATO's victory was due to a brilliant diplomatic tour d'force. Having blundered into the war with insufficient preparation or planning and having prosecuted it amateurishly, NATO's political leaders ended the war by giving a clinic in diplomatic cunning. Of course, the prize NATO has won is control over Kosovo, a dubious trophy at best. We wonder what was second prize? In addition, the war has opened a deep rift inside of NATO and intensified the anti-reform process in Russia. Along the way, it also drove U.S.-Chinese relations to the lowest level since Nixon first met Mao. That is a large price to pay for assuming responsibility for the Balkans. In fact, responsibility for the Balkans is not something most sane people would want. But this much must be said: even if NATO won a booby prize, the concluding diplomacy was a wonder to behold. <snip> The shift in the strategic environment was, obviously, the fall of Primakov and the increasing unreliability of Russia as Serbia's patron. The diplomatic solution was the G-8 compromise, which was understood to differ fundamentally from the Rambouillet accord. As the G-8 was written, Milosevic's acceptance of it did not mean a capitulation to NATO, but the acceptance of an international peacekeeping force under UN control, enabled by a UN Security Council resolution. Since Serbia had accepted the principle of a foreign presence in Kosovo, but objected to a purely NATO presence, the G-8 accords seemed to achieve Milosevic's primary objectives. NATO, mainly the U.S. and U.K., went into action the minute Milosevic accepted the compromise. First, NATO created a public atmosphere in which it successfully portrayed Milosevic's acceptance of G-8 as its own victory. What began as a public relations campaign designed for domestic consumption, was rapidly transformed into the accepted reality. In a brilliant, global public relations campaign, the U.S. and U.K. convinced even the Serb public that Milosevic had surrendered. Milosevic found himself trapped in a reality created by NATO. <snip> And therein lies the tale. Everything has a cost. The first price that NATO must pay is the victory itself. It now controls Kosovo. That is a booby prize if there ever was one. Second, NATO is now responsible for the stability of the whole of the Balkan peninsula. What the Austro-Hungarians and the Turks found undigestible NATO will now try to digest. The Balkans is a region whose very geography breeds insecure states without room for viable compromises. It can be done, but the mission is, in the long run, always exhausting. On the bright side, NATO now has a full-time mission to keep it occupied. NATO's greatest price will be paid in NATO itself. Gerhard Schroeder has tried to put a good face on it, but the Germans were and remain appalled by the risks the Anglo-Americans forced Germany to accept in relation to the Russians. Schroeder insisted on Friday that Russia should be treated with "respect," a code word for avoiding another such confrontation. Germany cannot afford another episode of Anglo-American diplomatic brilliance. Thus, when Schroeder said last week that: "Human rights are and should be inviolable," but that "we have to look at issues very closely and in fact differentiate between different situations," he was announcing that it would be a long time before Germany tried this again. He went on to say that NATO action should be "confined to its own territory and that should continue to be its way." After Kosovo, a compliant Germany within NATO simply should not be taken for granted any longer. The Kosovo affair carries with it another price: it has intensified the process in which reformers are losing out to communists and nationalists. Kosovo was beyond Russia's reach. There are areas that are very much within its reach, such as the Baltics, Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. NATO has established a precedent: it can intervene in other countries so long as human rights issues justify it. Human rights violations abound in the former Soviet Union. As hard liners inexorably increase their power in the Kremlin, NATO will have provided them with full justification for intervention in areas where they have the upper hand and NATO is without options. If suffering humanity is a justification for war, NATO just gave Russia the moral basis for reclaiming its empire. And it should be remembered that Russia may not be able to take on NATO, but Lithuania or Uzbekistan have a different correlation of forces, to say the least. NATO has clearly won a victory and the diplomats have been instrumental. However, it is a victory in which the price will be, we think, higher than anyone anticipated or would have been willing to pay at the beginning of the war. NATO came out of the war internally weaker than it went in. Russia and China came out of the war more, rather than less, hostile. The stability of the Balkans is now a permanent and impossible responsibility for the West. It was a victory. A few more victories like this and.... ************************************************************ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 12:30:33 -0300 From: Jessica Squires <•••@••.•••> Subject: Teach-In: The Rhetoric of victory: Yugoslavia After the Bombs PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY Teach-In: The Rhetoric of Victory: Yugoslavia After the Bombs Panel: Marina Dragosevic, Daniel Haran, Jessica Squires, Bruce Wark Saturday, June 26 1999 2015 Gottingen Street 7:00 pm Recent developments: Rambouillet vs. the Peace Accord Iraq and Serbia: the effects of economic sanctions Kosovo and Bosnia: will Kosovo be partitioned? The real NATO/US/International Monetary Fund agenda Building the anti-war movement For more information call (902) 454-8781 or 496-0049.
