<nettime> Americans that oppose NATO action

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------

Here is the American Left's impression of the goings-on.

The IAC is the group that's been breaking the news about the depleted
uranium bullets used in Iraq and now in the Balkans, according to some
reports of increased radioactivity in the region.


Charles
-----
I've detected a vast, multi-wing conspiracy to provide me with Slack. They can't fool me!!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 08:58:39 -0400
From: Alan J Campbell <coffeecritic@juno.com>
To: cDaig-Kastura@bigfoot.com, jedsey@webtv.net, docpjd@aol.com,
    geronimo_69@hotmail.com, fernando@tiac.net, bluwater@inch.com,
    xod@bway.net, drake00@erols.net, John@Klos.com, cplalor@indigo.ie,
    EAMON.LALOR@village.uunet.BE, MLIEGEY@OPTONLINE.NET,
    pritchard@ycvax.york.cuny.edu, papagayo1@juno.com, xt17@hotmail.com,
    Tlshroba@aol.com, allyana@cc.gatech.edu
Subject: Fw: some alternative info



-------->


	Unfortunately, among other shortcomings, this report  leaves out ANY
mention of Serb abuses in Kosovo;  but it still makes for interesting
reading.  Apparently the IACENTER was created by Ramsey Clark.  I know
nothing more about it.   Tony Equale.
___________________________________________________

International Action Center
39 W. 14th St., #206
New York, NY  10011
(212) 633-6646   fax:  (212) 633-2889
http://www.iacenter.org    email:  iacenter@iacenter.org

REVISED--April 14, 1999

8 Myths
The US/NATO War in Yugoslavia: 8 Myths and Facts

Myth #1. U.S./NATO had to attack "the Serbs" because the Yugoslav
government and President Slobodan Milosevic refused to negotiate on
Kosovo, a region of Yugoslavia where ethnic Albanians are the
majority.
Reality: U.S./NATO bombs are falling on all Yugoslavs:  Serbs,
Montenegrins, Albanians, Hungarians, Romanis (called Gypsies) and
other peoples who make up the multiethnic Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia. There were no "negotiations." U.S. officials like
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went out of their way to make
this point when "peace talks" were held in France in February.
Instead, the U.S. government presented an ultimatum to the Yugoslav
government that had three points: 1) Kosovo must be granted autonomy;
2) NATO must be allowed to station 30,000 ground troops in Yugoslavia
to ensure this autonomy; and 3) A NATO-conducted referendum for
Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia would take place within three
years.
The Yugoslav government agreed to the first condition, and rejected
the second and third, saying they were a gross violation of their
sovereignty and the independence of their country. The one breaking
point that Yugoslavia refused to negotiate is that they will not allow
a foreign occupying army. The only constant U.S. demand was that NATO
troops must be based in Yugoslav territory.  The U.S. refused to allow
the Yugoslav delegation to meet with the Albanian delegation, or even
to see 56 pages of the 80-page agreement.

Myth #2. Yugoslavia is the aggressor in this conflict and Milosevic is
a "new Hitler."
Reality: No Yugoslav soldiers, planes or ships are attacking another
country. The conflict in Kosovo is an internal issue. Yugoslavia is a
small developing country of 11 million people, being attacked by 19
countries, including the biggest military powers in the world, which
have a combined population of more than half a billion people.
Milosevic has been demonized much like Saddam Hussein was during the
war against Iraq. A State Department official admitted:  "The
demonization of Milosevic is necessary to maintain the air attacks."
(San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 1999)

Myth #3. Clinton, Albright and the Pentagon generals were moved to
action by their concerns about "ethnic cleansing" and human
suffering.
Reality: The U.S., Germany and other NATO powers played a key role in
breaking up Yugoslavia in 1991-92, arming and supporting secessionist
movements. It was the International Monetary Fund that demanded an end
to "special privileges" for Kosovo in the 1980s. For 45 years after
World War II, the many nationalities that made up Yugoslavia lived
together in peace. In the civil wars, which followed the break-up of
Yugoslavia, there was much bloodshed and human-rights violations on
all sides. The biggest single act of "ethnic cleansing" was the forced
removal of 600,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of the former
Yugoslav Republic Croatia by the U.S.-trained and armed Croatian
military in 1995. More than 55,000 of these Serbs, who were resettled
in Kosovo, are among the hundreds of thousands of people made refugees
by NATO bombing and the conflict in Kosovo. (Julia Taft, Asst.
Secretary of State on C-SPAN, March 29, 1999)  The U.S. "concern"
about removal of people from their homeland is very selective. This is
not surprising: Virtually the entire continent of North America was
"ethnically cleansed" of Native people to make way for the U.S. and
Canada, two NATO powers. U.S. policy has supported, with arms and
money, the removal of Kurdish people in Turkey and of Palestinians,
East Timorese, Guatemalan indigenous people -- the list goes on.

Myth #4. The U.S./NATO goal is to protect the rights of the
predominantly Muslim Albanians in Kosovo.
Reality: U.S. officials pretend to care about the rights of Muslim
people  in Yugoslavia, while their policy of sanctions and war kills
300  mostly Muslim Iraqis every day -- half children under 5 years
old.
The Pentagon is not a humanitarian relief agency and the
corporate-owned politicians don't really care about any
people--Albanians, Serbs, Kurds, Iraqis, or the poor and working
people of this country. This war is killing people of all
nationalities in Yugoslavia, and poisoning their land with radioactive
depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, U.S.
veterans and their families are suffering from Gulf War Syndrome as a
result of depleted-uranium poisoning. The Clinton administration and
the Pentagon talk about "supporting our troops" before they go into
battle, but then deny medical benefits to veterans who suffer from the
after-effects of Agent Orange from Vietnam or DU from Iraq.
This war will cost many billions of dollars, money stolen from
housing, health care, education and other social programs. Each cruise
missile costs $1 million. The only ones who will benefit from this war
will be the military-industrial complex and big business.
The real U.S./NATO goal is to break Yugoslavia into ever-smaller
pieces and bomb its people into submission. The Balkans is a strategic
region, a crossroads between Western Europe and the oil-rich Middle
East and Caspian Basin. The U.S. has established, in only five years,
military domination of the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia,
Bosnia and Macedonia, as well as Hungary and Albania. The only
hold-out has been what is today the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
This is the real reason why Yugoslavia has become the target in the
Balkans, just as it is the real reason that Iraq has become the target
in the Persian/Arabian Gulf region.

Myth #5. U.S. news reports are balanced and impartial, giving us the
true story.
Reality: What we see today is a gross distortion of the facts. The
media is dominated by big business interests, and functions as a
Pentagon propaganda machine. For political purposes, the suffering of
only one group, the refugees leaving Kosovo, is shown, while the other
Yugoslav victims of the NATO bombing are virtually ignored. The New
York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Chronicle Examiner, and others
have given a very slanted view of events in Yugoslavia, to justify the
massive bombing. General Electric, one of the country's largest
military contractors which supplies engines for NATO jet fighters,
owns NBC and co-owns MS/NBC.

Myth #6: The U.S. is trying to defend the rights of the people of
Kosovo because they have no rights.
Reality: All minorities in Yugoslavia have much greater rights than
national minorities have in the United States or in Europe. While
bilingual education is under attack from California to New York,
Albanians in Kosovo have schools and tuition-free universities in the
Albanian language. Medical care is free for all citizens in
Yugoslavia. Albanian separatists boycotted the government school
system and health care system. To refuse to use what exists is very
different from being denied these rights.
The population information commonly given out is also misleading.  For
example saying that 90 percent of the population is Albanian is not
accurate. This figure actually includes all non-Serbs in
Kosovo--Romanis, Turks, Egyptians, Goramacs (Serb Muslims from Kosovo)
and others. At the Rambouillet talks, the Yugoslav delegation
represented not only Serbs, but all of the nationalities in Kosovo,
including two Albanians, while the Albanian separatist delegation
consisted only of Albanians. The religious differences are also
exaggerated. While many Albanians are Muslim, 10 percent of the Serb
population is also Muslim. In addition, 25 percent of the Albanian
population is Roman Catholic such as Mother Teresa, who was a Kosovo
Albanian.

Myth #7: The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) is a genuine liberation
army.
Reality: The KLA is a terrorist force similar to CIA-funded Contras
used by the U.S. in Nicaragua in an effort to overthrow the
government.  NATO uses the KLA to justify sending U.S. troops to
occupy and further break up Yugoslavia. The KLA did not exist one year
ago. Suddenly, it has the latest high tech weapons.
What kind of liberation struggle calls for the bombing of its own
people and for a foreign army of occupation on its soil? This is the
KLA demand. The Society of Albanian American Students released a call
for a demonstration on Wednesday, March 31 "organized with the
invitation of the U.S. State Department to support NATO strikes, and
above all, will focus to pressure for Ground Troops in Kosova and Arms
for KLA." Al Gore addressed the crowd. The signs of KLA supporters at
rallies organized by the U.S. State Department--"NATO Bombing, Just Do
It," "KLA is NATO"--express the real relationship between the KLA and
the U.S. government.

Myth #8: The NATO bombing is not the cause of the refugee crisis.
Reality:  There were no waves of refugees until the beginning of the
NATO bombing on March 24. The U.S. government used similar scripts of
defending civilians and stopping massacres to justify massive bombing
campaigns in both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Again and again it was
the massive bombing that created refugee crises. The London Sunday
Times interviewed refugees and found: "Nor was there much fodder for
NATO propagandists among the 200 or so refugees waiting to register at
a Skopje district police station early on Friday [March 26]. Mirvei, a
tall Albanian woman clutching her four-month-old baby, looked
bewildered when asked if Serbian troops had driven her out. `There
were no Serbs,' she said. `We were frightened of the bombs.'"






*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
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Willis, VA 24380
(540) 789-7098


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