All Yugoslavians Built Multi-Billion Dollar Mine Complex

The New World Order: 4th Reich Is Raising Fascism in Canada Today

The undeclared war in Yugoslavia by the Canadian-NATO-NAZI coalition is a war crime. It is my hope that senior staff at the so-called "intelligence" agencies, which funded the Kosovo Liberation Army, advised it on tactics to destabilize this independent social democracy, will be indicted to face direct charges at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. They have manipulated the media to purvey deceitful propaganda, creating & misrepresenting ethnic cleansing.

The manipulation of the media, and western democracies, by New York spin-doctors, hired by foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, operating within Canada, our departments of national defense, and elsewhere, must be investigated and charged by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. I call Madame Justice Louise Arbour to investigate, charge and bring to trial, the instigators who knowingly contrive, propagate excuses and profit from this war.

I specifically draw your attention to the multi-billion dollar coal and soft mineral reserves, high tech mining, refining, metallurgical treatment, value added products and research complex at Stari TRG in Yugoslavia’s Kosovo region. This is the economic engine, or prize, which motivates this war; just as control over narco-dollars and petro-dollars have motivated all previous US sponsored wars.

Follow the money from whom, through which banks, to whom, on both sides of this conflict, to see which vested interests are most involved. Western greed, like media and legal manipulation, knows no bounds. Certain extremely wealthy NATO based individuals have met and plotted this war, to break up the political and economic infrastructure of the Yugoslav region. They fund the KLA, use the media to deceive, promote internecine strife, to force the sale of this resource rich mining complex at fire sale post war prices.

The provocative NATO bombing of nearby countries, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, residential neighborhoods, refugee convoys, commuter busses, trains, infrastructure for water and winter fuel supplies, by this US/UK led NAZI operation is outrageous. These deceitful powers operating within NATO must not be allowed to profit from their manipulated criminal (c)overt war operation. The UN must not allow bombing nations to participate in peace process.

By Paul Latham May 16, 1999

US Air Piracy: Bomb until they Pay you to Rebuild them.

Citizens of a Democracy who (un)consciously accept the lies of their government (NATO intelligence and media) to justify international piracy are to blame for the war crimes committed by their country. Especially when they are clearly contrived, paid for by NATO intelligence, with Narco-tax dollars, for the purpose of criminal financial gain.

Treason does begin at home when federal officials, and others, commit financial warfare within our country and abroad, in collusion with foreign agents and states, to bankrupt provincial and regional economies, education and healthcare systems. Our Canadian troops, like the media and a large portion of our citizens, are just following orders, however the majority has a moral duty to remain conscious and resist the temptation to allow the hate and fear mongers at the core to control the agenda of our foreign affairs.

NAZI fascists were skilled manipulators of hatred and fear, to create divisions sufficient to justify bombings and invasions, to ‘save’ when ‘invited’ by the future puppet dictator. The WW-2 script is being replayed to the letter. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. The 33+ degree Masonic oligarchy which rules the western world seeks to seize control over Stari-trg at Trebka, the largest piece of state owned mineral wealth in the world.

The human rights violations their mercenaries in the KLA have committed are not correctly blamed upon the Serbs of Yugoslavia and Slobodan Milosevic. He is the elected President of a Sovereign state under siege from not only NATO, intelligence, and narcotic traffickers, but also western media, who willingly stigmatize and blame him for our countries war crimes and profiteering.

Greedy western rulers are orchestrating the Yugoslav breakup. This black bag revolution is funded with laundered intelligence narco-dollars. The US led embargo of the surrounding republics of Yugoslavia, Bosnia Serbia and Montenegro are engineered to bankrupt them and force the sale of the mining, refining and manufacturing complex. The World Bank and World Trade Organization will not loan any former socialist state any money to (re)build, unless they break up and sell their diamond, oil, coal and mineral wealth to the private ownership of western countries.

The US is funding the war crimes tribunal. Its covert intelligence apparatus is contriving, and feeding the tribunal, everything it needs know, to come to the ‘required’ conclusion, to justify the bombing, invasion, destabilization and piracy of the regions mineral wealth. The humanitarian concerns are real, and a smoke screen, to deceive media addicts who are unable to think for themselves. I suggest you watch the TV news a little less often. Pray, meditate and critically analyze the motives of key NATO players, raise your consciousness beyond bombs.

Yours truly, Paul Latham. June 6, 1999


Kosovo "Freedom Fighters" Financed by Organized Crime, by Michel Chossudovsky

Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and author of The Globalization of Poverty, Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World Network, Penang and Zed Books, London, 1997. Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, 1999. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms contact the author at chossudovsky@sprint.ca

Heralded by the global media as a humanitarian peace-keeping mission, NATO's ruthless bombing of Belgrade and Pristina goes far beyond the breach of international law. While Slobodan Milosevic is demonized, portrayed as a remorseless dictator, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is upheld as a self-respecting nationalist movement struggling for the rights of ethnic Albanians. The truth of the matter is that the KLA is sustained by organized crime with the tacit approval of the United States and its allies.

Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multi-billion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in "financing the conflict" in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged by numerous studies, the links of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the mid-1990s. "...The financing of the Kosovo guerilla war poses critical questions and it sorely test claims of an "ethical" foreign policy. Should the West back a guerilla army that appears to be partly financed by organized crime." 1 While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was "preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs."2 In the meantime, the rebel army has been skillfully heralded by the global media (in the months preceding the NATO bombings) as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

With KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year "freedom fighter") appointed as chief negotiator at Rambouillet, the KLA has become the de facto helmsman of the peace process on behalf of the ethnic Albanian majority and this despite its links to the drug trade. The West was relying on its KLA puppets to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under Western Administration.

Ironically Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, had described the KLA last year as "terrorists". Christopher Hill, America's chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement "has also been a strong critic of the KLA for its alleged dealings in drugs."3 Moreover, barely a few two months before Rambouillet, the US State Department had acknowledged (based on reports from the US Observer Mission) the role of the KLA in terrorising and uprooting ethnic Albanians: "...the KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police, ... KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA [a process which has continued since the NATO bombings]... [T]he KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in the Stimlje region are "ready to flee."

While backing a "freedom movement" with links to the drug trade, the West seems also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who has called for an end to the bombings and expressed his desire to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Yugoslav authorities.5 It is worth recalling that a few days before his March 31st Press Conference, Rugova had been reported by the KLA (alongside three other leaders including Fehmi Agani) to have been killed by the Serbs.

Covert Financing of "Freedom Fighters"

Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti, and Afghanistan, where "freedom fighters" were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in international banking system financed covert operations.

According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington's military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.6

The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. "The rising curve of cocaine imports to the US", wrote journalist John Dinges "followed almost exactly the flow of US arms and military advisers to Central America".7

The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. "Dirty money" recycled through thebanking system--often through an anonymous shell company-- became "covert money," used to finance various rebel groups and guerilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991 Time Magazine report: "Because the US wanted to supply the Mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan', said a US intelligence officer. 8 America and Germany join Hands

Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established as a joint endeavour between the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) (which previously played a key role in installing a right wing nationalist government under Franjo Tudjman in Croatia).9 The task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: "They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money".10 According to Whitley, the CIA was, subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania.11

The covert activities of Germany's BND were consistent with Bonn's intent to expand its "Lebensraum" into the Balkans. Prior to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it had "forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the US favoured (although not officially) the formation of a "Greater Albania" encompassing Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.12 According to Sean Gervasi, Germany was seeking a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa." 13 Islamic Fundamentalism in Support of the KLA.

Bonn and Washington's "hidden agenda" consisted in triggering nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the ultimate purpose of destabilising Yugoslavia. The latter objective was also carried out "by turning a blind eye" to the influx of mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist organisations. 14

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia. 15 And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics. 16

According to a Deutsche Press -Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede. 17 "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations." 18

The supply route for arming KLA "freedom fighters" are the rugged mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies Western Europe with grade four heroin. 75% of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey, having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe." 19 A recent intelligence report by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: "Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries." 20

The Laundering of Dirty Money

In order to thrive, the criminal syndicates involved in the Balkans narcotics trade, need friends in high places. Smuggling rings with alleged links to the Turkish State are said to control the trafficking of heroin through the Balkans "cooperating closely with other groups with which they have political or religious ties" including criminal groups in Albanian and Kosovo. 21 In this new global financial environment, powerful undercover political lobbies connected to organized crime cultivate links to prominent political figures and officials of the military and intelligence establishment.

The narcotics trade nonetheless uses respectable banks to launder large amounts of dirty money. While comfortably removed from the smuggling operations per se, powerful banking interests in Turkey but mainly those in financial centers in Western Europe discretely collect fat commissions in a multi-billion dollar money laundering operation. These interests have high stakes in ensuring a safe passage of drug shipments into Western European markets.

The Albanian Connection

Arms smuggling from Albania into Kosovo and Macedonia started at the beginning of 1992, when the Democratic Party came to power, headed by President Sali Berisha. An expansive underground economy and cross border trade had unfolded. A triangular trade in oil, arms and narcotics had developed largely as a result of the embargo imposed by the international community on Serbia and Montenegro and the blockade enforced by Greece against Macedonia.

Industry and agriculture in Kosovo were spearheaded into bankruptcy following the IMF's lethal "economic medicine" imposed on Belgrade in 1990. The embargo was imposed on Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs were driven into abysmal poverty. Economic collapse created an environment which fostered the progress of illicit trade. In Kosovo, the rate of unemployment increased to a staggering 70 percent (according to Western sources).

Poverty and economic collapse served to exacerbate simmering ethnic tensions. Thousands of unemployed youths "barely out of their Teens" from an impoverished population, were drafted into the ranks of the KLA...22

In neighbouring Albania, the free market reforms adopted since 1992 had created conditions which favoured the criminalization of State institutions. Drug money was also laundered in the Albanian pyramids (ponzi schemes) which mushroomed during the government of former President Sali Berisha (1992-1997). 23 These shady investment funds were an integral part of the economic reforms inflicted by Western creditors on Albania.

Drug barons in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia (with links to the Italian mafia) had become the new economic elites, often associated with Western business interests. In turn the financial proceeds of the trade in drugs and arms were recycled towards other illicit activities (and vice versa) including a vast prostitution racket between Albania and Italy. Albanian criminal groups operating in Milan, "have become so powerful running prostitution rackets that they have even taken over the Calabrians in strength and influence." 24

The application of "strong economic medicine" under the guidance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions had contributed to wrecking Albania's banking system and precipitating the collapse of the Albanian economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several Western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes rivetted on Albania's abundant and unexplored oil-deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum... The Adenauer Foundation had been lobbying in the background on behalf of German mining interests. 25

Berisha's Minister of Defence Safet Zoulali (alleged to have been involved in the illegal oil and narcotics trade) was the architect of the agreement with Germany's Preussag (handing over control over Albania's chrome mines) against the competing bid of the US led consortium of Macalloy Inc. in association with Rio Tinto Zimbabwe (RTZ). 26

Large amounts of narco-dollars had also been recycled into the privatization programs leading to the acquisition of State assets by the mafias. In Albania, the privatization program had led virtually overnight to the development of a property owning class firmly committed to the "free market". In Northern Albania, this class was associated with the Guegue "families" linked to the Democratic Party.

Controlled by the Democratic Party under the presidency of Sali Berisha (1992-97), Albania's largest financial "pyramid" VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue "families" of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests. VEFA was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money. 27

According to one press report (based on intelligence sources), senior members of the Albanian government during the Presidency of Sali Berisha including cabinet members and members of the secret police SHIK were alleged to be involved in drugs trafficking and illegal arms trading into Kosovo:

(...) The allegations are very serious. Drugs, arms, contraband cigarettes all are believed to have been handled by a company run openly by Albania's ruling Democratic Party, Shqiponja (...). In the course of 1996 Defence Minister, Safet Zhulali [was alleged] to had used his office to facilitate the transport of arms, oil and contraband cigarettes.(...) Drugs barons from Kosovo (...) operate in Albania with impunity, and much of the transportation of heroin and other drugs across Albania, from Macedonia and Greece en route to Italy, is believed to be organised by Shik, the state security police (...). Intelligence agents are convinced the chain of command in the rackets goes all the way to the top and have had no hesitation in naming ministers in their reports. 28

The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter): "Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek embargo [in 1993-4] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of kalachnikov rifles to Albanian `brothers' in Kosovo". 29

The Northern tribal clans or "fares" had also developed links with Italy's crime syndicates. 30 In turn, the latter played a key role in smuggling arms across the Adriatic into the Albanian ports of Dures and Valona. At the outset in 1992, the weapons channelled into Kosovo were largely small arms including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPK and PPK machine-guns, 12.7 calibre heavy machine-guns, etc.

The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti-aircraft and antiarmor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA "funnelled through a so-called "Government of Kosovo" based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn—notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government". 31

The KLA has also acquired electronic surveillance equipment which enables it to receive NATO satellite information concerning the movement of the Yugoslav Army. The KLA training camp in Albania is said to "concentrate on heavy weapons training - rocket propelled grenades, medium caliber cannons, tanks and transporter use, as well as on communications, and command and control". (According to Yugoslav government sources. 32

These extensive deliveries of weapons to the Kosovo rebel army were consistent with Western geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, there has been a "deafening silence" of the international media regarding the Kosovo arms-drugs trade. In the words of a 1994 Report of the Geopolitical Drug Watch: "the trafficking [of drugs and arms] is basically being judged on its geostrategic implications (...) In Kosovo, drugs and weapons trafficking is fuelling geopolitical hopes and fears"... 33

The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome "marriage of convenience" with the mafia. "Freedom fighters" were put in place, the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to "finance the Kosovo conflict" with the ultimate objective of destabilising the Belgrade government and fully recolonising the Balkans. The destruction of an entire country is the outcome. Western governments which participated in the NATO operation bear a heavy burden of responsibility in the deaths of civilians, the impoverishment of Both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and the plight of those who Were brutally uprooted from towns and villages in Kosovo as a result of the bombings.

NOTES

1. Roger Boyes and Eske Wright, Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels, The Times, London, Monday, March 24, 1999. 2. Ibid. 3. Philip Smucker and Tim Butcher, "Shifting stance over KLA has betrayed' Albanians", Daily Telegraph, London, 6 April 1999. 4. KDOM Daily Report, released by the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, Office of South Central European Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, December 21, 1998; Compiled by EUR/SCE (202-647-4850) from daily reports of the U.S. element of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, December 21, 1998. 5. "Rugova, sous protection serbe appelle a l'arret des raides", Le Devoir, Montreal, 1 April 1999. 6. See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Harper and Row, New York, 1972. 7. See John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega, Times Books, New York, 1991. 8. "The Dirtiest Bank of All," Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22. 9. Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999; see also Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997. 10. Quoted in Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999). 11. Ibid. 12. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4 13. Sean Gervasi, "Germany, US and the Yugoslav Crisis", Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93). 14. See Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1993. 15. For further details see Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997, p. 288. 16. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, 2 April 1999. 17. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 13, 1998. 18. Ibid. 19. Daily News, Ankara, 5 March 1997. 20. Quoted in Boyes and Wright, op cit. 21. ANA, Athens, 28 January 1997, see also Turkish Daily News, 29 January 1997. 22. Brian Murphy, KLA Volunteers Lack Experience, The Associated Press, 5 April 1999. 23. See Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3, see also Barry James, In Balkans, Arms for Drugs, The International Herald Tribune Paris, June 6, 1994. 24. The Guardian, 25 March 1997. 25. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, La crisi albanese, Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Torino, 1998. 26. Ibid. 27. Andrew Gumbel, The Gangster Regime We Fund, The Independent, February 14, 1997, p. 15. 28. Ibid. 29. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3. 30. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 66, p. 4. 31. Quoted in Workers' World, May 7, 1998. 32. See Government of Yugoslavia at: http://www.gov.yu/terrorism/terroristcamps.html http://www.gov.yu/terroris m/terroristcamps.html. 33. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4.

Michel Chossudovsky

Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5 Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415 Fax: 1-514-425-6224 E-Mail: chossudovsky@sprint.ca

Recent articles by Chossudovsky :

on Yugoslavia: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html on the Brazilian financial crisis: http://wwwdb.ix.de/tp/english/special/eco/6373/1.html on global poverty and the financial crisis: http://www.transnational.org/features/chossu_worldbank.html http://www.transnational.org/features/chossu_worldbank.html http://www.transnational.org/features/g7solution.html http://www.twnside.org.sg/souths/twn/title/scam-cn.htm http://www.twnside.org.sg/souths/twn/title/scam-cn.htm http://www.interlog.com/~cjazz/chossd.htm http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco http://heise.xlink.de/tp/english/special/eco/6099/1.html#anchor1

Subject: Chomsky on Kosovo, By Noam Chomsky

There have been many inquiries concerning NATO (meaning primarily US) bombing in 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 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 lsewhere.

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 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 unnoticed.

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 Leon 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."

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CANADA AT WAR, by David Orchard

Following the lead of the U.S., Canada is participating in a massive military assault against a sovereign nation in central Europe. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is a small country of approximately 12 million. Its crime is that it is fighting to preserve its territorial integrity against an armed secessionist movement. Every other nation would do the same.

When Abraham Lincoln went to war against the Confederate south "to preserve the union," as he put it, he was regarded as a national hero and Washington bore long and vindictive grudges against any countries including Canada and Britain that did not leap to support it. Has not Britain waged a decades long war against the Irish Republican Army? Was it not a Canadian government in Ottawa that invoked the War Measures Act and moved troops into Quebec when faced with "apprehended insurrection"?

We are told that Yugoslavia refused to sign a "peace agreement" with its armed separatists. There is no peace agreement. There is an 81 page document, drawn up by the U.S., which will in effect sever Kosovo, long regarded as the cradle of Serbian nationhood, from Yugoslavia. Belgrade was told to sign or be bombed. The majority of the population of the separatist region are of a different ethnic group than those in the rest of Yugoslavia, we are told. If this were justification for secession, most nations in the world, including Canada and the U.S., would disintegrate overnight.

A long political and media campaign to demonize the Serbs has culminated with Bill Clinton’s comparison of war-torn Yugoslavia to Hitler’s Germany. Equating a weak, already partially dismembered country, under economic sanctions for almost a decade, struggling to hang on to its heartland, surrounded and menaced by the world’s most powerful nations, armed to the teeth with the latest high tech weapons, to Nazi Germany, only goes to graphically illustrate that truth is the first casualty of war.

Lest anyone be confused, the attack on Yugoslavia is not a United Nations’ operation in any way, nor does it have U.N. sanction. Both Russia and China have condemned it unequivocally. It is a unilateral and unprecedented act of war by the worldÆs most powerful military alliance in violation of international law and of NATOÆs own charter, which provides for defence in the case of attack against a member nation. No member nation of NATO has been attacked or threatened by Yugoslavia.

Why is Canada, the famed peacemaker, involved in the illegal destruction of a founding member of the U.N. and our ally in both world wars? Today, Yugoslavia is virtually defenceless, yet with a long and proud history of fighting for its independence ù for almost five centuries the southern Slavs led by Serbia fought against the Ottoman Empire, for years Yugoslavia fought against Hitler’s Nazis and, under Tito, against control by the Soviet Union.

As in Iraq, many of the bombs and missiles raining on the people of Yugoslavia are coated with depleted uranium. The radioactive fallout will, as is happening today in Iraq, ensure an agonizing death for tens of thousands in the years ahead, long after the bombs stop falling.

After years of pious bleating by Canadian governments about war crimes (only those by small nations, mind you), we are committing one of vastly larger proportions as these words are being written. Who has given NATO the authority to attack Yugoslavia? What exactly is the Kosovo Liberation Army (regularly described as a terrorist organization less than a year ago) on whose side we are now entering this conflict? How, and with whose financial backing, did it emerge as a fully equipped army complete with anti-tank weapons, uniforms and grenade launchers? What is its connection to U.S. intelligence and, as recently reported in the London Times, to the heroin trade? If NATO has become an instrument of terror against the virtually defenseless population of our former ally, and it has, Canada should reconsider its membership in that organization. 24.3.1999

DAVID ORCHARD is the author of the recently updated and reissued bestseller The Fight for Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism. He farms at Borden, Saskatchewan (Canada). Recently he placed second in the Progressive Conservative Party leadership contest. He can be reached by telephone at (416) 466-0753 or (306) 244-5757, by fax (306) 244-3790, by e-mail: ccafttor@sympatico.ca.

Citizens Concerned About Free Trade/Campaign For Canada P.O.Box 1983, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 3S5 Saskatoon: (306) 244-5757 Fax: (306) 244-3790 Toronto: (416) 922-7867 Fax: (416) 922-7883 Vancouver: (604) 683-3733 Fax: (604) 683-3749 e-mail: ab217@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca website: http://www.davidorchard.com ******************************************************************

Letter to Editor from Paul Latham

April 12, 1999, re: War in Yugoslavia.

The undeclared sectarian wars in the Balkans of Yugoslavia at Kosovo are criminal. Media tales wag the dogs of war. Watching the blatant manipulation of public opinion by the state and media, trying to justify the latest foreign war, is sad. This repetitive one-sided reporting depresses consciousness and forces wars upon the innocent. These wars are for the control of democratic votes, make-work for the unemployed and military industries. Balanced information sharing can raise consciousness to avoid, prevent and stop wars.

Recent polls in Ottawa, the headquarters of the Department of National Defense, and the Canadian Civil Service, allow the media to falsely report that the majority of Canadians (whose families depend upon government salaries) appear to support the War in Yugoslavia. In fact most Canadian are not convinced by the lies they have seen repeated on the news lately. Canadians do not support undeclared wars, anywhere. They do not believe in projecting hate mongering onto anyone.

The only difference between an International Terrorist and a Freedom Fighter (or Patriot), is that one has more effective propaganda in your theatre. Both have causes rooted deep in their histories. Both believe their suffering must be avenged by another act of war. The United Nations must end NATO’s increasing dependence on high-tech weaponry and poorly managed intelligence interpretation. A lack of human values in US analysis of current strife builds distrust and dependence on the ultimate control measure: war.

During the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait the US State department actively sought to manipulate public opinion to favour the entry of US ground troops to over-throw Saddam Hussein. They hired a diplomat’s daughter to lie to Congress, alleging atrocities in the Hospitals of Kuwait. These lies were repeated by the media for the American public to buy into the lies sanctioning the Persian Gulf war. Once started there was no going back, even after the lies were proven. This war is for control of oil money.

Colonel Oliver North repeatedly lied to Congress regarding exchanges of weapons for hostages in Iran. CIA involvement in drug trafficking by Colonel Manuel Noriega, under hire by then CIA director and Ex-president Bush, is clear. His convictions do not negate US involvement in manipulating numerous regional wars, drug trafficking and coups around the world. Hate mongering, like creeping fascism, is good for the business of war, but not for the life of human values. These wars are for the controls of drug money, oil money, votes, employment, access to resources, people, religious faiths and economic markets.

Many US presidents have played Russian Roulette with Fidel Castro and the people of Bosnia, Cuba, Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Vietnam and Korea. These wars have drained our brightest and most creative people into learning the arts and science of war. We’ve forgotten to learn the love of human nature and natural laws.


NATO Intelligence Chiefs Guilty of War Crimes!

Bombing Yugoslavia is NATO Air Piracy

The merging of control over international intelligence operations of NATO under one (US) chief fails to respect national integrity of member nations. 33+ degree Masons at the core of conspiracy.

Canada, like a mother, must balance the malicious egos of intelligence agents run awry, trying to prove preconceived notions. During peace time intelligence is over 75% contrived and less than 25% valid in the best of times. The first casualty in war is always the truth. We have sero-converted NATO intelligence into a truly evil superpower, capable, willing and demonstrably able of painting murder and mayhem for profit, into liberation and relief for "Kosovars". We now receive a daily pablum of 100% dis-information and propaganda at brainwashingly frequent 15 minute intervals on all mainstream "news" channels.

US intelligence treats us like a father who fails to respect Human Rights, ordering lower agents to secure proof of preconceived prejudice against the Yugoslav government, disregarding over 50 years of peoples choices, forcing the failure of their socialized economy. Fabrication of war at all costs, includes hiring mercenaries, laundering narco-dollars, with this black bag revolution to install a narco-puppet dictator in Kosovo. All for a few billion dollars in coal, oil, precious and soft metal reserves.

I charge the current and recent past intelligence chiefs of NATO with hiring and conspiring with the Narco terrorist KLA, knowingly and deliberately fabricating and contriving false images of ethnic cleansing, feeding this dis-information to the media, with taxpayer funded joint NATO intelligence agencies, in order to deceive NATO populace into (il)legitimacy of current war.

The war crimes tribunal in the Hague must not be majority funded and controlled by the USA. The NATO intelligence agencies must not be majority funded and controlled by the USA. The consequence will be the destruction of international peace and justice for all. Balkan wide third world war is imminent. It brings all neighboring factions into fray. Cease and desist this illegal and contrived war of piracy upon these sovereign states.


NATO Using Weapons of Mass Destruction!

Nuclear war, courtesy of Nato

Kosovo, like Vietnam, has liberal support. But what of our weapons?

The 'just and noble liberal war', in which Nato bombs have now incinerated people on a bus, having already killed passengers on a train, refugees on tractors, the elderly in a hostel, workers in factories and children in their homes, is not the first. Vietnam was a liberals' war, described as a 'righteous crusade' by Bill Clinton's hero, John Kennedy, and a 'noble cause' by Ronald Reagan, a conservative. The labels are important only as illusion, now that Clinton is Reagan and Blair is Thatcher.

Nato's 'new vision' is to seek justification for American-led attacks all over the world. When communism retired from the cold war game, the 'war on drugs' was used to justify renewed American military intervention in Latin America. After that, the pursuit of demons took over. Demons are dictators of no further use to Washington. There was General Noriega in Panama, where the US invasion cost 2,000 lives, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq (200,000 lives) and various warlords in Somalia (7,000 lives). Now it is the turn of Milosevic, with whom Clinton and Blair share responsibility for emptying most of Kosovo.

Demons as a justification for attacking countries have since been reinforced by Weapons of Mass Destruction, or WMD. These are chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, the possession of which, says Nato literature, 'may require pre-emptive retaliation'. The ferocity of the continuing military and economic assault on Iraq is justified in this way - when the real reason has to do with the policing of an expanded American protectorate from the Gulf to the Caspian Sea.

The hypocrisy is on a grand scale. Only one nation on earth has used all three WMDs: the United States. Smallpox was used to ethnically cleanse Native Americans and to spread plague in Cuba. Chemicals were used in Vietnam: between 1961 and 1971, American planes dropped on South Vietnam a defoliant, Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, a poison that causes foetal death, congenital defects and cancer (this was code-named Operation Hades).

When a Congressional inquiry revealed that the equivalent of six pounds of dioxin had been dumped on every man, woman and child in South Vietnam, Operation Hades was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand, and the spraying continued. A pattern of deformities began to emerge: babies born without eyes, with deformed hearts and small brains and stumps instead of legs. I glimpsed these children in contaminated villages in the Mekong Delta; and whenever I asked about them, people pointed to the sky; one man scratched in the dust a good likeness of a bulbous C-130 aircraft, spraying. In the towns and cities, it was not unusual to see deformed children begging. They were known as 'Agent Orange babies'.

Recently, at the Tu Do hospital in Saigon, I was shown a group of newborn babies, all of whom had Agent Orange deformities. The war that officially ended in 1975 goes on; contaminated soil and water are poisoning a third generation. Unlike American and Australian veterans of the war, who have been finally compensated by the manufacturers of dioxin, the Vietnamese have received nothing. Now a five-year Canadian study has discovered that dioxin runs right through Vietnam's food chain and has called for international help in decontaminating agricultural land, forests and waterways. The cost of one F-16 bomber would pay for this.

'Can you imagine pilots from a democratic country doing such a thing deliberately?' said Jamie, the Nato spin doctor, following the craven killing of refugees by an F-16 pilot. Today, the same pilots are spreading over Serbia and Kosovo a poison potentially as cataclysmic as Agent Orange. It is carried in depleted uranium, which makes missiles and shells more destructive. This is how Rosalie Bertell, a Canadian specialist, describes the effects on humans: 'Depleted uranium comes from radioactive waste produced for nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry. It can pierce tanks and release a deadly radioactive aerosol of uranium, unlike anything seen before. This lies in the dust or is suspended in the air, or carried in the wind. It penetrates the lung tissue and enters the blood stream, storing in the liver, kidney and bone and irradiating all the delicate tissues. It can initiate cancer or promote cancer.'

The truth is that the US and Britain are engaged in a form of nuclear warfare in the Balkans. In 1996, the United Nations Human Rights Tribunal called depleted uranium a WMD. Like the Agent Orange babies of Vietnam, the deformed and cancer-stricken children of southern Iraq, where depleted uranium was tested by British and American forces during the 1991 Gulf war, bear witness to the true nature of righteous Western crusades. Civilised people should speak out urgently before the latest noble cause claims more expendable victims and beckons a world war. No amount of specious moralising will conceal the scale of the crime.

NATO Causing Environmental Damage and Ignores Human Rights in Kosovo.

Vladan Joksimovic, Coordinator of the Belgrade Committee on Human Rights has published the most authoritative book (in 1998) on human rights in Yugoslavia, Montenegro and Kosovo. This book documents the plethora of diverse Human Rights legislation, respecting minority rights, within the Republic of Yugoslavia and its ethnically diverse provinces, since 1900.

His committee has documented 18 fundamental human rights, like the right to life and freedom of the media, and followed them through practice in all of the respective provinces. They expose the differences between the law, practice and peoples personal beliefs. This authoritative text acknowledges legitimate restrictions on the media in times of declared war. They cited five key areas requiring improvement. None required NATO bombing.

Dusan Vasiljevic, President of the Green Table, an environmental activists NGO, headquartered in Pancevo, Yugoslavia documents the war crimes of NATO upon the environment and peoples of Iraq, Bosnia, Yugoslavia and all across Europe.

79 days in 1999, NATO flew over 36,000 bombing sorties at an altitude of 10 to 15 kilometers, over Yugoslavia. They burned a complete hole in the Ozone layer, currently over Yugoslavia, now heading for northern Italy and then across all the rest of Europe.

10 to 12 kilotons of depleted Uranium 248 nuclear waste was dispersed all across Yugoslavia, within the 12,000 bombs NATO dropped. Small bombs contained 700 grams of nuclear waste, larger bombs contained up to 2 and 1/2 tons, each with a high temperature explosive core to vaporize the contaminants into a highly volatile aspirant, spreading across a 10 kilometer radius from each blast site. Way more than dropped on Japan in WW-2.

Life expectancy has been reduced to less than 30 years for all the people of Iraq, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, as a direct result of these contaminants. Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation, resulting from these vaporized nuclear waste, will cause many diseases including cancers now, and birth defects in coming generations. Strangely, the short lived alpha radiation, 90% of the vaporized product, which is 20 times more lethal to all life, is not measured. Only the longer lived gamma, or x-ray radiation is measured.

These same weapons have polluted the air, land, waters, human and all life in Iraq and Bosnia, as result of similar recent bombings. The US has violated its own rules, not to be the first party to use nuclear weapons. These are Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction, according to the United Nations.

US led NATO intelligence targeted Ammonia factories, transformer stations on the power grid (using PCB- pyrolene based coolants), petro-chemical plants and a nuclear power plant. All of these targets resulted in catastrophic environmental leaks and damage to the soils, waters, air, and all life.

Carcinogenic soft bombs, containing long filament cartridges of 11 to 15 micron thin aluminum coated silicon fiber spools were used to short our the power stations. An aluminum silicate fog akin, to fiberglass or asbestos, permeates the areas surrounding the power transformer stations. Black lung cancer will be the direct result of breathing this toxic substance.

The director of medicine at the Belgrade clinic points out that over five years of sanctions against Milosovic and the NATO air strikes have reduced his medical practice to a MASH like simplicity. He can no longer provide care for chronically ill cancer patients, or those requiring dialysis, due to the destruction of Yugoslavia's power grid.

He has over 5000 Yugoslav casualties of war in his care. He does what he can with what limited medicines the US blockade will allow through. He advises his patients to avoid the black market in drugs of uncontrolled quality.

What have you done lately to defend your brothers, sisters and the earth from such abuse?

Yours truly, Paul Latham


Research Kosova Trebka/Stari/TRG Mineral Wealth

TRUTH behind KOSOVO war LIES, by Paul Latham

I have been gathering background information and recent editorials on the REAL reasons behind the undeclared war in KOSOVO. It has more to do with mineral resources and military-industry control, than consequential human rights violations. It demonstrates clearly how the MAI will work, signed or not. NATO and the US media machine would have us believe it is a just humanitarian war, with white hats, and Communist black hats. Questions we ask and try to answer are: Is the cold war being started up again to deal with foreign and domestic unemployment and economic stagnation?

Are certain wealthy families able to manipulate world opinion, through the media, and consequently enforce their geopolitical views, and NATO military solutions? Is the big prize in Yugoslavia the Stari Trg (or Trepca) mining complex, worth at least $5 billion with 17 billion tons of coal reserves? Or is the US recycling date sensitive weapons and testing new ones. Similarities between Kosovo and Vancouver based DiamondWerks $10 million funding of the Coup in Sierra Leone, to score control over $200 million in diamond mine reserves are sad. Civilian casualties and refugees are accepted by MAI member states, as part of the cost of doing "business" in off shore havens. Is this now the standard of practice in Foreign Affairs, Labour-Management and State to State relations?

Perhaps we repatriated too many "former" NAZI’s to run up the cold war, after WW 2. Does NATO intend to punish all of Europe for pulling out of the US sponsored MAI? Articles below detail some of the historical and economic attributes of this conflict.

Kosovo: 'The War is about the Mines', by Sara Flounders Reprinted from the July 30, 1998 issue of Workers World newspaper

Wars are at root about economics, and the rapidly expanding war in Kosovo is no different. So why have millions of dollars in high-tech weapons suddenly become available to the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army by way of the U.S. and Germany?

A July 11 report by New York Times Balkans bureau chief Chris Hedges describes the KLA's new arsenal the latest anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft weapons. These weapons are shifting the balance of power toward the KLA, which is funded fully by outside sources, mostly from the U.S. and Germany. The KLA is "fed by recruits, money and arms from outside Serbia," Hedges confirms. It has an "inexhaustible supply line," he reports.

"Rebel soldiers, in full uniform with the red and black patch of the Kosovo Liberation Army, pull thick wads of German marks from their pockets. There are also signs that the arrival of dozens of former professional soldiers, as well as some mercenaries, are turning the ragtag band into a viable military force of several thousand fighters." In fact, the KLA is primarily a mercenary army funded by the kind of shadowy sources that have long been associated with U.S. and German intelligence services. It is a contra army.

Kosovo is often portrayed in the media as an isolated mountainous region that's poor and without resources. It might seem, from these accounts, to be an area of interest only to those who live there. The New York Times, for example, has carried dozens of such articles by Chris Hedges in the last six months. Only once, on July 8, did Hedges write about the real wealth of Kosovo the Stari Trg mining complex. It was a tip-off that something more was at stake in this war.

Hedges' visit to the Stari Trg mining complex is an eye opener. He describes the glittering veins of lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver in Stari Trg. According to Hedges, "The sprawling state-owned Trepca mining complex, the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, is worth at least $5 billion." According to the mine's director, Novak Bjelic, "The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait the heart of Kosovo.

... In addition to all this, Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves." The whole world knows, and observed firsthand in the war against Iraq, to what horrendous extent the Pentagon was willing to go in order to guarantee control of the oil wealth of Kuwait. But the enormous mineral wealth of Kosovo is never publicly discussed by U.S. United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton, or the Pentagon generals. They speak only of "self-determination" of the Albanian population of Kosovo. Of course, they never mention what U.S.-imposed "self-determination" means. It means colonization under the guise of "liberation," like what the U.S. did to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines over the past hundred years.

An Internet search for reports on the mines of Kosovo the Trepca mining complex or Stari Trg turned up only the one article by Hedges and a small piece in the June 22 Wall Street Journal. All other mentions are in metallurgical journals. How could this vital fact be omitted from all discussion of what is at stake in Kosovo? It is comparable to describing Kuwait and the oil-rich Gulf states as barren deserts. The wealth of Kosovo is greater than the rich veins of ore in the mines. Hedges describes the mining complex: "The Stari Trg mine, with its warehouses, is ringed with smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, freight yards, railroad lines, a power plant and the country's largest battery plant."

The labor power of millions of workers throughout socialist Yugoslavia built this mining complex into the powerhouse it is today. It was their wealth that was invested in developing the complex. It belongs not just to those who live in Kosovo, but to the workers of all Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav web site www.yugo slavia.com describes Trepca as the "richest lead and zinc mines in Europe." Lignite deposits in the Kosovo mines are, according to experts, sufficient for the next 13 centuries. The capacity of the lead and zinc refineries ranks third in the world.

Miners work round the clock, day and night, in six-hour shifts. According to the mine director, "In the last three years we have mined 2,538,124 tons of lead and zinc crude ore and produced 286,502 tons of lead and zinc and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold." Although the average person watching the news in the evening has never heard of Stari Trg, it has been a prize changing hands for two thousand years. The wealth of Stari Trg is legendary. Precious metals were mined there more than 2,000 years ago, first by the Greeks, then by the Romans.

These mines were the grand prize in the Nazi occupation of the Balkans after Germany grabbed control from the British. The mines have great industrial and military importance. The Nazis used batteries produced there to power their U-boats. Today submarine batteries are still made there. Profits from these mines are helping to keep the Yugoslav Federation afloat.

U.S. and UN sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro, the two remaining republics of Yugoslavia, have taken an enormous toll. Without investment credits, loans for financing industry, imports and exports, the economy has been stifled. Inflation has weakened the currency. The mines, which once were the largest employer in the province, have also been affected. The most important words in Hedges' article are the description of the complex as "state owned." Throughout this decade, as the capitalist market has swept over the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, socialist Yugoslavia has attempted to resist privatization of its industry and natural resources. To break this resistance, the Western imperialist countries played a major role in the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia.

This huge complex of mines, refining, power and transportation in Kosovo may well be the largest uncontested piece of wealth not yet in the hands of the big capitalists of the U.S. or Europe. The industry, natural resources and transportation of all the former Soviet republics, the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and the secessionist republics of Yugoslavia are now being rapidly privatized. No one within the region has the wealth or connections to finance capital to buy controlling shares of these vast state-owned industries. The major Western corporations are gobbling these industries up.

While the fate of some industries is still in negotiation, the lending and credit conditions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank require the breakup of all state-owned industries. This is true for the oil and natural gas wealth in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, as well as the diamond mines of Siberia. The decision on who will own or have controlling interest in the 22 mines and the many processing plants of the Trepca complex will be made by whoever wins the armed struggle raging in Kosovo. NATO domination on the ground would put U.S. corporations in the best ownership position. Nationalist strife advances their position. Although being forced to privatize in order to survive in today's global market, Yugoslavia has tried to control the process and to propose Balkan regional development. Is this how MAI will work?

According to the June 22 Wall Street Journal, the Yugoslav Federation is in negotiations to sell shares in the Trepca mining complex. Forced by the economic crisis, they have been negotiating with a Greek investor Mytilineos Holdings SA for partial ownership. The former manager of the mines, Byrhan Kavaja who is now allied with the opposition to the Yugoslav government has written to all corporations dealing in soft metals to tell them not to make agreements with the Yugoslav government. Kavaja says that once a new government is in power, all past decisions on ownership will be invalidated. The opposition will make "new agreements." Who is likely to be the beneficiary of these agreements? I wonder if the war is just a negotiating ploy by the US and Germans.

The progressive movement in the U.S. and throughout Western Europe must be at the forefront in explaining that the billions of dollars spent on the U.S./NATO occupation of the region is not in the interests of any of the people of the Balkans. Nor is it in the interests of poor and working people in the U.S. or Europe. The war is destroying all that was built through collective ownership and collaboration in the Balkans. This war will mean higher taxes and even more cuts in social programs in the U.S and Europe. But the billions of dollars in profit will go to a few wealthy stockholders in the U.S. or in Western Europe.

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The Big Lie About Kosovo, by Richard Poe

"Save the Albanian Kosovars!" Clinton cries. "Save the Sudeten Germans!" Hitler trumpeted in 1938. The names have changed, but the strategy remains the same. For more than 50 years, we Americans have looked down our noses at the Germans, for having followed Hitler so blindly. But now it's our turn. We are proving no more resistant to propaganda than those cheering crowds in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.

Back in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler needed an excuse to seize Czechoslovakia. So he invented one. Three and a quarter million ethnic Germans lived in the Sudetenland, under Czech rule. As William L. Shirer recounts in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Hitler secretly funded an extremist group called the Sudeten German Party and ordered it to provoke an uprising against the Czechs.

Kosovo, too, appears to have been destabilized by outside forces. For years, Kosovars protested Milosevic peacefully. But in 1997, a group called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) suddenly started shooting. Who were these people? The Times of London (March 24, 1999) described the KLA as "a Marxist-led force funded by dubious sources, including drug money." European police suspect the KLA of connections to Albanian gangsters. At least two of the group's backers appear to have been the CIA and the German spy agency BND, according to intelligence analyst John Whitley, quoted in the Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletin (April 2, 1999).

The purpose of staging a provocation is to create a backlash. This strategy certainly worked for Hitler in 1938. As unrest spread in the Sudetenland, the Czechs cracked down. Czech President Eduard Benes ordered troops into the region and declared martial law. Right on cue, the German press went wild. "Women and Children Mowed Down by Armored Cars," ran a typical Berlin newspaper headline in September 1938. "Poison Gas Attack on Aussig" cried another.

Hitler accused Benes of waging a "war of extermination" against Sudeten Germans. "The Germans he now drives out!" cried Hitler, in a September 16, 1938 speech. "We see the appalling figures: on one day 10,000 fugitives, on the next 20,000... and today 214,000. Whole stretches of country were depopulated, villages are burned down, attempts are made to smoke out the Germans with hand-grenades and gas." Sound familiar? Hitler's rhetoric bears an eerie resemblance to the CNN news blitz on Kosovo. Of course, Hitler was exaggerating. Many of the atrocities he alleged later turned out to be fabrications. But the same is true of our newscasts on Kosovo.

Take the alleged massacre of 45 Albanian civilians at Racak, for instance, reported in January 1999. Forensic and other evidence now suggests that the bodies were those of KLA guerrillas killed in combat. The hoax has been widely discussed in the European press (including Le Monde, Die Welt, Le Figaro and the BBC). But U.S. news outlets have been as silent on the controversy as if they were taking orders from Goebbels himself.

In the Sudeten crisis, Hitler claimed to be inspired by internationalist ideals. "Among the fourteen points which President Wilson promised ..." the Fuhrer proclaimed, "was the fundamental principle of the self-determination of all peoples ..." By freeing the Sudeten Germans, Hitler argued, he was fulfilling Wilson's vision.

Clinton too claims he is fighting for human rights. But ethnic cleansing does not bother Clinton when his friends are the ones doing the cleansing. He ordered no bombing when the Croatians drove 300,000 Serbs from Krajina, burning their homes and killing many. Nor did he intervene when our NATO ally Turkey slaughtered over 35,000 Kurds.

Every schoolchild today knows that Hitler's real goal, in seizing Czechoslovakia, was to use it as a stepping stone for his planned invasion of Russia. But what is Clinton's real interest in Kosovo? Nobody knows. Many theories have been floated. Some point to the Trepca mines of northern Kosovo, rich in gold, zinc, silver and lead. The New York Times called them the "Kosovo war's glittering prize" (July 8, 1998).

Others see a more far-reaching strategy. The Russians claim that NATO, like Hitler, wants to use the Balkans as a stepping stone for extending its power eastward -- eventually meddling in the affairs of Russia itself. But this is all speculation. Only time will reveal Clinton's true intentions, as it ultimately did Hitler's.

In his memoir Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer recalled the anxious mood of Berliners, in September 1939, as they digested the news that England and France had declared war. "The atmosphere was noticeably depressed," he recalls. "The people were full of fear about the future. None of the regiments marched off to war decorated with flowers, as they had done at the beginning of the First World War. The streets remained empty. There was no crowd on Wilhelmsplatz shouting for Hitler."

A wise man once said that those who fail to study history are condemned to repeat it. Should Clinton actually succeed in sparking a world war, Americans will no doubt react with the same shock and fear as Berliners did in 1939. But we will have only ourselves to blame.

Richard Poe is a freelance journalist and a New York Times-bestselling author. He writes frequently on historical themes. Poe's latest book, "Black Spark, White Fire", explores the Afro-centric controversy concerning ancient Egypt.

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The following New World Order Intelligence Update was written May 16, 1998 and refers to the 1996 and 1998 Bilderberg Meetings on Economic interests in Kosovo.

"The Coming Kosovo War, Greece, Turkey, And Cyprus...

"In our June, 1996, Special Report on the Bilderbergers, the New World Order Intelligence Update warned that the globalist elite had planned a Balkans war which would become the "Vietnam of the '90's"; and that, if they could not get such a war going by inflaming the Serbs through the use of NATO "snatch squads" to seize suspected war criminals for trial at the Hague, their plan was to use Kosovo as the flash-point to ignite a regional conflict which would ultimately embroil the Yugoslav federation, Bosnia, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Albania, Macedonia, the Western European military powers, the United States, and by extension - as allies of Turkey and Greece - Israel and Syria. Now, from virtually nowhere, the well-financed Kosovan Liberation Army has sprung into the limelight and the scene is being set for a Balkan war of unbelievable carnage and merciless hostility.

"We further warned that, if the war in Kosovo took too long to engineer or eluded the elite altogether, then their fall-back plan was to create a vicious conflict between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus, and to push the war back into the Balkans area from there."

1998 BILDERBERG MEETING ENDS

WAR PLANNED ON CYPRUS IF KOSOVO CRISIS STALLED

EUROPEAN-ATLANTIC UNION EYED AS NEXT STEP IN GLOBALISM

TRUCULENT JAPAN CAUSING CONCERN REGARDING PLANNED ASIAN UNION [Copyright (c) 1998, New World Order Intelligence Update. )

CONTACT: John Whitley E-mail: jwhitley@inforamp.net Phone 416-481 4868 Fax: 416-322 3686

TORONTO, 16th May, 1998

The 1998 meeting of the secretive and immensely-powerful Bilderberg Group closes tomorrow at the luxurious Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire, Scotland. The 120 or so Bilderbergers, who normally converge at their pre-selected venue with as much secrecy as possible, had hoped that their selection for the May 14th - 17th conference this year, 15 miles south of Ayr and a quarter of a mile away from the A77 trunk road to Glasgow, would - together with armed and black-clad police at the property entrance and around the perimeter - guarantee their previously-inviolate privacy.

They have still not recovered from the acute discomfort which they experienced when the TORONTO STAR and local Toronto media, acting on detailed Press Releases from the NEW WORLD ORDER INTELLIGENCE UPDATE http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley ran several major articles revealing their existence and querying, for the first time in their then 43-year history, the nature and purpose of their secretive conclave at a $66-million luxury resort property at King City, just north of Toronto

Conrad Black, the most closely-watched media magnate in Canadian history, was the convener of that 1996 meeting, during which - exhibiting a new and disarming policy of openness - the Bilderbergers released a list of attendees and a highly-generalized and non-specific agenda. They tried the same proactive approach at their 1997 meeting in Georgia; but now, apparently, find the comfort of dark anonymity and of non-existent Press Releases to be more congenial to their purposes again.

Well, unfortunately, much of their security effort has been wasted. For here once again, following the tradition of free publicity for the Bilderbergers which we first established at their 1996 meeting, are the substantive issues which they discussed at their secretive 1998 Conference. Since the Bilderbergers make a point of never confirming or denying the substance of their discussions, we invite our readers to take note of the following items and to compare them with the contents of their newspapers over the forthcoming months.

Our sources have shown an extraordinarily high degree of accuracy over the past several years, as those who have purchased our detailed Bilderberg Report can attest [see our Report web page at http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/bild.htm].

During and following the 1996 Bilderberg Conference, we asserted that Bilderberger Bill Clinton would be re-elected as U.S. president; that he would promptly break his promise to bring American troops home from Bosnia, but that he would re-position them in Hungary and the surrounding countries instead and pass command of the Bosnian operation to a German general and 3,000 German combat troops from Heidelberg [this later occurred, in October, 1996]; and that the Bilderbergers had thereafter arranged to inflame the Serbs by pursuing the war criminals in their midst for trial before a new International Court [the Serbs, a proud but experienced people, side-stepped this provocation by persuading the lower- and middle-level suspects to voluntarily surrender]. If that failed to incite a Balkan war, then we pointed out that they were prepared to utilize Kosovo to bring one about:

"When war comes, as expected, Kosovo, at the southern tip of the Serbian Republic, may be the flash-point that ignites a wider war involving Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Russia, and Turkey - in addition to the hapless U.S. and NATO troops caught in the middle. Kosovo, "the Jerusalem of the Balkans", is a self-proclaimed nominally independent "republic", presided over by "President" Ibrahim Rugova. It is, in fact, a province of Serbia, though its population is largely of Albanian descent. The United States, though on record as recommending more "autonomy" for Kosovo, treats the province to all intents and purposes as a de facto independent state, a fact which infuriates the Serbians.

Twice - once in 1992 and again in 1993 - Presidents of the United States have threatened Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic with military retribution "in the event of a conflict in Kosovo caused by Serbian action." To add insult to injury, the U.S. now plans to establish an "official presence" in "the capital of Kosovo." Aggrieved by this, and rightly sensing the intent of the United States to encircle and contain them, the Serbians are likely to appeal to an increasingly-nationalistic Russia, their traditional protectors, for help and military assistance.

As reported by Germany's DIE ZEIT, "Serbia is every place where there are Serbian trenches or Serbian graves", according to Serbian opposition leader Val Draskovic. That means that Serbia will fight to retain Kosovo, in spite of the fact that its population is 90% Albanian. The Albanian Kosovans, determined to be independent, will fight back. That will likely draw into the conflict the 3.4 million inhabitants of Albania proper, together with the Albanians of Montenegro and Macedonia. Albania also has openly-expressed designs on Macedonia's western provinces, largely populated by Albanians: at least one armed insurrection directed by Albania has been foiled by the Macedonian authorities, and the Albanians continue to openly support and encourage Macedonian Albanian separatist groups.

Bulgaria, which considers Macedonians to be "western Bulgarians", may then go to war for the fourth time this century to seize the opportunity to finally settle its territorial claim there. Greece, already incensed by Macedonia's use of the Greek "Vergina Sun" symbol on its flag and suspicious of the Macedonian Republic's supposed intention to form a "Greater Macedonia" by inciting insurrection and separation in the Greek province of Macedonia, may well then take advantage of events to settle the issue once and for all. Turkey, acting in defense of its Muslim brethren in Bosnia, and infuriated by the actions of its traditional rival Greece against the Macedonian Republic, could then scarcely be refrained from joining the fray.

The "Albanian issue", centered in Kosovo and overshadowed by the larger Serb-Bosnian tensions, is a powder-keg waiting to explode. And when it does, the whole region will explode with it." - from our 1996 BILDERBERGER REPORT [almost three years later, these things are now happening!]

The Serbs, scenting the trap, thus laid for them, have confined themselves to short, repressive police actions against the Kosovan Albanian population, none of which have been sufficient in duration, extent or intensity to provide the pretext necessary for the Bilderberger elite to rally Western European and American public support for a full-fledged military engagement of the Serbs. So their methodical preparation, financing and arming of the newly-revealed Kosovan Liberation Army has so far provided the Bilderbergers with no dividends at all...and the clock is running on their schedule. They need this war, and they need it soon.

WELL NOW IT APPEARS THEY GOT WHAT THEY PLANNED FOR.

TO READ MORE GO AT: http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/bild.htm

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Websites of interest:

Radio B92, Belgrade (banned) http://www.b92.net and http://helpb92.xs4all.nl Central Europe Online http://www.centraleurope.com/ceo/special/kosovow/intro.html Balkans - with selected links http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/potomac/balkans.html News from Montenegro, Yugoslavia http://www.montenegro.com Assn of Independent Electronic Media, Serbia http://www.anem.opennet.org RADIO 21 From Pristina, Internet Radio http://www.radio21.net/english/headlines.htm Alternative Information Network http://www.aimpress.org

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I hope this helps you place the recent foreign wars of the US and NATO in context.

I don’t claim to be an expert on Kosovo, but I do understand the fundamental greed of the economic power brokers driving the US military and industry into wars for control over this regions energy wealth and mineral resources. These are the principles of the MAI.

Most people know when they are being lied to by the media and state. Few have the strength of consciousness to assert that they know this is an unjust and illegal war. They simply wish the war would go away, and let us get on with our relatively wealthy lives.

People are dying for control of minerals and coal mines, covered with contrived issues.

Please raise awareness of these issues and drive peace and the recall of our NATO troops.

Paul Latham, from Abbotsford. Phone: (604) 852-8930, E-mail: lathamp@dowco.com