-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Der Fuhrer Invades Yugoslavia Angry Skies Over Serbia Huge Toxic Cloud Unleashed by NATO Bombs ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Angry Skies Over Serbia A TOWN IN SERBIA, Apr. 18 - "What is the whether like where you are?", a young doctor asked a friend located in a town some 100 miles away. "Unfortunately, it's clear and sunny today." "Oh, shucks!" In most places around the globe, people cheer the "nice, sunny" days. In Serbia, they dread them. Because the deadly payloads which the NATO has been dropping on the country for 26 days now are likely to intensify in clear weather. Last night was clear night. And it was one of the most devastating in the northern part of Serbia. The town in which this writer spent the night was in the thick of things. The NATO "concert" started at about 8:40PM on April 17. At least that's when the air raid sirens went off. As the night progressed, the sounds of war symphony coupled with human agony grew louder until the final crescendo in the early morning hours. All the while, your editor stayed on-line, writing the Day 25 Bulletin, and occasionally answering the reports which we have been receiving daily from TiM's eyes and ears all over Serbia, and from around the world. Here's an excerpt from one such exchange with a journalist friend in New York, which took place "live" last night at 9:30PM GMT: JOURNALIST: "I do understand why you are so upbeat to be in Belgrade very much! I'm quite jealous myself. I so admire the Serbs and their defiance - God Bless them each and every one." [TiM Ed.: "Thanks for your support� Right now, we are under another air attack. The anti-aircraft artillery is drowning out the sound of the airplanes' jet engines. Loud explosions all around. It's hard to see what is being hit. The only thing visible are the AAA tracer rounds. Yet here I am writing and hopefully sending this e-mail to you. Life goes on, as it will well after NATO's dogs of war are locked up in a kennel."] Before that, however, they continue to bite everything in sight. Ten minutes after the above message was sent, a huge explosion shook the neighborhood. For a few seconds, the sky lit up as if it were the Fourth of July fireworks. Instead, another million dollar NATO/Pentagon missiles was blown to smithereens before reaching its designated target. Which appeared to be a nearby bridge (also see a photo of AAA fire over Belgrade - at our Web site). At about the same time, TiM's correspondents from Novi Sad reported that the second largest city in Serbia was once again under heavy attack. And again, the Novi Sad refinery, which has not been active for eight years (!), was among the NATO targets. The refinery ceased its production when the oil pipeline which runs through Croatia was cut off in 1991, when the civil war in the former Yugoslavia broke out. A few minutes later, a deep thud shook the ground in our neighborhood. In the morning, we found out that some empty barracks, a couple of miles away, which had been hit before, were hit again last night. Both that and the Novi Sad example, illustrate the pointlessness and ineffectiveness of NATO's bombings. They scare the local civilians out of their wits, night after night (and sometimes in broad daylight, too), without achieving any military objectives whatsoever. (continued in the next story�) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Huge Toxic Cloud Unleashed by NATO Bombs PANCEVO, Apr. 18 - Last night's attack against a Pancevo chemical factory was a case in point (see above). The NATO bombs caused huge fires which released toxic fumes into the atmosphere. This afternoon, as your editor returned to Belgrade, a plume of black smoke was visible from 50 miles away. And even now, at about 3PM GMT, the black toxic cloud is clearly visible over the northeastern Belgrade suburbs from this writer's hotel. For your information, Pancevo is about as close to downtown Belgrade as Central Park is to the World Trade Towers in New York. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail which we've just received from two professors of the Belgrade University: "We are faced with serious ecological catastrophe. Heavy bombing of the factories of the Petrochemical Complex in Pancevo has been repeated* last night (18th April, about 01:00 local time). Ammonia plant ("Azotara") and Vinyle Chloride Monomere (VCM) plant ("Petrohemija") have been destroyed completely. Huge dark cloud appeared over the city of Pancevo (northern suburb of Belgrade). The cloud is expanding in northwest direction. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica vinyl chloride, also called chloroethylene, a colourless, flammable, toxic gas belonging to the family of organic halogen compounds, is used principally in making polyvinyl chloride, an important synthetic resin. Prolonged exposure of humans and laboratory animals to vinyl chloride vapor has been linked to several forms of cancer. Huge dark cloud is now spreading over the territory of Southeastern Europe. VCM is over our heads. Who has the right to do that?" M. Sci. Dmitar Lakusic, President, Ass. Prof. Dr. Radoje Lausevic, Secretary, Serbian Ecological Society, Univ. Belgrade, Faculty of Biology. [TiM Ed.: - The Pancevo chemical factory was first hit on Apr. 15, the day your editor arrived in Belgrade. "Unfortunately but unavoidably a large number of people were injured and intoxicated," said Dr. Slobodan Tresac, Director General of HIP PETROHEMIJA, in a press release. "At this moment we do not know the exact number of intoxicated and injured civilians who were evacuated."] Due to the power failure and utilities and auxiliary fluids interruption a large quantity of combustible, explosive and toxic matters remained trapped in the equipment, installations and tanks. "It will take a lot of time to drain and evacuate all those matters from the plants before the plants could be considered safe for a wide surrounding area," Dr. Tresac said. "According to all the terms and rules of warfare accepted and followed so far, the plants of chemical process industries of this type have never been military targets or objects of air strikes. The range of products of "HIP Petrohemija" d.p. Pancevo is of extremely civilian nature, and bombardment of these plants represents the worst war crime, and it reveals genocidal intentions of the aggressor," said Dr. Tresac. "Therefore, we call upon the petrochemical producers, licensors and engineering houses all over the world to raise their voice and warn those who give orders for bombing of the danger and catastrophic consequences which might be caused by bombing of these kinds of plants." [TiM Ed.: And the people who committed this crime, not only against humanity, but against nature - Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Madeleine Albright, Sam Berger, William Cohen, Wesley Clark, and other NATO leaders, have the nerve to talk about "genocide?"] As if echoing our condemnation, a powerful thunderstorm is rolling right now over Belgrade. Fortunately, the wind is from the southwest, thus driving the toxic cloud away from the city. What NATO has attempted to do, God is undoing. Thank you, Lord. Truth in Media, April 18, 1999 Der Fuhrer Invades Yugoslavia Credibility and Nonsense in Kosovo by Benjamin C. Works Iraq is back in the business of harassing US aircraft in both no fly zones. In the middle of Operation "Allied Force" --"Allied Farce" as critics increasingly call it-- NATO commander General Wesley Clark --"The Supreme Being" as sarcastic NATO staffers now call him-- had to revive patrols over northern Iraq, transferring combat planes back to Incirlik from Italy. He had pulled those Incirlik aircraft to Italy on March 20. But something must be up in the air and on the ground in northern Iraq. And in the wake of the assassination of Lieutenant-General Ali Sayyad-Shirazi. Sayyad- Shirazi, Iran's Deputy Chief of General Staff and advisor to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on April 10, there appear to be troops massing along the common Iraq-Iran border on both sides. NATO & Credibility: Many have taken up the position that "once your are in it; you must win it." The credibility of NATO and the United States are at stake, many argue, including Al Haig, Henry Kissinger, and of course, John McCain. David Hackworth and I, along with other more sensible minds, reject the argument as specious, given that it was misbegotten from the beginning. "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em," and never reinforce failure. NATO is betting the ranch on a pair of deuces. NATO cannot lose its credibility as a defensive treaty, and has no credibility as an aggressor. If any credibility is at stake, it is the intellectual credibility of the current members of NATO's committees of ambassadors, Foreign ministers and Defense ministers. As to the United States, its credibility would not be at stake if it accepted a realistic way out of the bombing campaign, but its honor hangs in the balance of history if we were to launch a punitive ground war against Yugoslavia, based on a badly skewed view of the facts, as the SIRIUS archives and other unbiased observers continue to demonstrate. Albanian Society --No Centers of Gravity in Never-Never land I received two reports on April 14 of banditry in Northern Albania. These are now included in a new archive (Albania-KLA-Crime.html as #15 and #16). In one from the BBC, three TV newspeople near Kukes were robbed of everything but the news videotape they had shot of refugees coming over the border. Thus, the KLA's refugee parade was allowed by patriotic bandits, to air in Britain and throughout the world that night. The other report, by the Boston Globe's Ann Kornblutt, confirmed refugees, relief workers and OSCE observers were getting car-jacked and robbed. She further confirms that local gun dealers are playing king --warlords is the classic term. Of course, Sali Berisha is the high warlord and KLA godfather in this Never-Never land -never go there, never expect much to come from there (same new archive #,1 and in KLA-Ideology-Leaders.html archive). Albanians have no real modern civic sense yet; they remain largely immersed in their tribal-village culture, which includes the ritual violence of vendetta murder under the 15th century "Kanun of Lek Dukagjin." A reporter in the New York Post this week described Albania's capital, Tirana, as "dysfunctional. There is no well-developed sense of "civitas," no abiding centers of gravity for to support a larger society. The deeper that NATO digs itself into the Kosovo question, the deeper it gets into an extended and expensive effort at "nation-building" in Albania Lies, Damned Lies and Photographs Operation Allied Force has descended to silly face-saving while remaining homicidal in its ability to kill innocent civilians much faster than it can damage the Yugoslav army. Dissembling and disinformation continues to mix in with propaganda and naked lying by KLA supporters among the refugees. Friday morning at the NATO briefing, Jamie Shea again waxed eloquent, this time regarding the KLA, which is rising from the ashes like the Phoenix, he avowed. Mr. Shea's macho assertions are very entertaining. But there is a new KLA, which is trying to train up thousands in a compressed time. They are no real threat but I am informed that European jails are being combed for Albanian criminals to deport home to flesh out the KLA's ranks, while others volunteer, and some refugees are combed out of convoys and dragooned into the ranks. Twice rumors have swirled that "Arkan" (Zelko Raznjatovic) was emptying jail cells in Serbia for recruits for his "White Eagles" paramilitary, but it seems that Europe's court systems are more than ready to rid themselves of violent-minded refugees in the name of the KLA cause and to the purpose of saving NATO's reputation. The German CIA equivalent has been behind the KLA for some time now, and other "black operations" groups may also be involved. We already know that the British Special Air Service commandos are attempting to operate as target-spotters inside Kosovo, from reports in last weekend's London Telegraph newspaper. These men are getting two weeks' training, one hears. Grossly inadequate. "Shake and bakes soldiers" will not be effective against the Yugoslav Army even with Apaches and A-10s flying cover. Many may have prior reservist training, and could improve their skills in a compressed course, but the world's armed forces know it takes 6 months to properly prepare soldiers for combat: this is a matter of law in the United States. If NATO could get thousands of KLA guerrillas back inside Kosovo, they would try to force Serb troops out in the open --a mini-set-piece battle stratagem-- where the Yugoslav forces could be strafed, bombed and rocketed by NATO air forces while the fairest flower of Serbian and Geg manhood is butchered. This is beyond cruel. Indeed, any encouragement of the KLA, which can no longer be entirely defined by its original hodgepodge of bizarre authoritarian ideologies and its heroin connections, is a mistake in that it perpetuates the warlord-dominated chaos of Albania and its armed survivors would dominate Albania and Kosovo in the aftermath of a hypothesized NATO success. Congress should think through the consequences of creating a large guerrilla army out of this culture. On the other hand, survivors of the battles this winter and spring, now have some field-craft skills. Armed with cellular phones these teams are trying to operate inside Kosovo, to provide target information for ground attack aircraft. The BBC showed one such team inside Kosovo on Friday night. "Mass Graves:" Mr. David Scheffer, US Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues is making the rounds with photos of a second new burial ground, this time at Izbica. Indeed, it appears that there have been about 150 individual graves dug and filled there since mid-March. As with the group burial at Pusto Selo, shown in Monday's New York Times, there is no attempt by Yugoslav authorities to hide the burials and one expects the circumstances are well documented. Other such sites will be found, and deaths are certainly in the hundreds in the near-four weeks of fighting underneath NATO airstrikes . Again I note that the buildings around the burial appear to be intact, rather than burned out, despite NATO allegations that 400 villages have been torched. These group b urials are not mass graves; Babi Yar and Auschwitz had mass graves. It appears that the new graves are oriented towards Mecca, as Muslim custom is to bury the head toward that Holy city. This would indicate the presence of Muslim clergy at the interments. The police established this practice last March at Srbica. Mr. Scheffer, in an interview with Tony Snow on Fox News Sunday, recycled a lot of allegations that have never panned out; particularly about a hundred thousand missing men; who are visibly in all the refugee camps, or reportedly dragooned into the KLA if they have not been jailed as war prisoners. Strobe Talbot continued the US government spin on NBC's Meet the Press in a conversation with Tim Russert. In this case Talbot put an Orwellian counter-spin on prior remarks made by Yugoslav UN-Ambassador Jovanovic. Talbot characterized the Serb's inexpert defense as a combination of little lies and a big lie, continuing the Clinton Administration's own big-lie allegations that Yugoslavia is practicing genocide on a massive scale, without presenting any graphic evidence that there is anything other than retail death caused by a nasty little civil war. Though the graves will turn out to have been dug by back-hoe, as with most graves in Kosovo and New York City's cemeteries, NATO came up with some lurid tales of Muslim labor gangs being forced to dig the graves. A novelist could not make this stuff up and sell it, but Jamie Shea's flack shop can and does. And they have the temerity to accuse Belgrade of Orwellian spin. Friday night on The Crier Report, David Hackworth and I discussed the absence of satellite images to document the allegations of large concentration camps in soccer stadiums, of 400 burned-out villages, of a pattern of butchery of tens of thousands. "Show me the pictures," we demanded. As to Liddy Dole, she made a high-profile visit to the refugees on the Macedonian border. Just before she went on air with a FoxNews reporter and an innocent little victim girl --yep, another Berisha-- Fox had to shift the camera angle so as not to show a group of young Albanian men playing basketball just behind her left shoulder --those men have been sorted out to an unknown destinations and fate after all, we are repeatedly told. Attacking John Simpson: In this Orwellian swirl of NATO-US-British propaganda "spin cycle," it is appropriate to note that the Blair Government has even gone so far as to attack integrity and veracity of senior BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, now reporting from Belgrade, of swallowing Serbian propaganda and failing "to show skepticism." This is interesting as the BBC was the model for the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984, but somebody in the BBC is being objective and is under attack by the government which is propagating lies upon exaggeration, upon dissimulation. It is interesting that one might call this "The Arnett Strategy," as when the Bush Administration and loyal Americans attacked Peter Arnett for his 1991 Baghdad reports during "Desert Storm." Only this time, the BBC stands behind its man. The propaganda barrage is all too incredible; and disingenuous. It is dispensed by most leaders in the major NATO nations. This goes beyond Mr. Clinton's personal corruption, it stems from the contempt our governing classes hold their peoples. Many Americans and others may wish, for self-esteem reasons, to believe that "fruits of the poisonous tree" are yummy, but I choose to believe that good policy does not come from a bad subset of "facts" and that good leadership and policy does not come from corrupted and self-deluding leaders. Strategic Issues Today, SIT 4-18, April 18, 1999 Der Fuhrer Invades Yugoslavia Is Clinton Worth Dying For? by James Henry What is the US really doing in the Balkans? This is a question that millions of Americans are now beginning to ask in earnest. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be arriving at the wrong conclusion. Continually fed stories of Serbian atrocities, supported by hours of television footage of thousands of Kosovars forced to abandon their homes, it has been all too easy for Americans to assume that their government is engaged on a humanitarian mission. What has not sunk in as yet is the fact that America is at war � and it is a war � not merely to save Clinton's political skin by driving his scandals of the front pages but to supply him with the kind of legacy for which he desperately craves. A legacy that in his own mind would portray him as a great leader if not actually a hero. None of this is based on Clinton-hating paranoia (I don't hate the man at all � I just despise him) but on observation. The manner in which he has climbed to the top, his betrayal of friends and his country's national interests, his corruption and compulsive lying, his contempt for the rights and interests of others, his vindictiveness and spite all indicate a personality that literally cannot empathasise with others, who merely sees people as pawns. Such a personality would have no moral qualms about endangering the lives thousands of US troops if it thought it would promote its ambitions. And what is Bill Clinton's chief ambition? In his book Agenda Bob Woodward relates the tale of Clinton telling his aides how he would have liked to have been president during WW II. This is a chilling and revealing insight into Clinton's state of mind. No sensible and humane man really wants to lead his country into war. He does so out of perceived necessity and nothing else. War means that leaders have to make awful decisions that involve the loss of thousands of lives. Churchill, for example, knew that Coventry was going to be bombed and yet he took no measures to prevent it. Why? Because that would have told Berlin that the British had cracked their codes. Does anyone think he enjoyed making this decision? What kind of man wants to put himself in a position where he has to make life and death decisions for thousands because he thinks it will make him look good? A man like Clinton, that's who. What does he crave? The kind of legacy that the Churchills of history bequeath their countries. Clinton believed that Kosova offered him such a legacy on the cheap. The none-too-bright Albright assured him that Milosevic would quickly surrender to an aerial assault and thus allow NATO, meaning Clinton, to dictate terms to Milosevic. In this fantasy, Clinton emerges smelling like roses, a genuine leader who humbles his critics, despatches his scandals and establishes a legacy worthy of a national hero. Who knows, maybe even Mount Rushmore figures in his dream. However, Clinton's dream is in very real danger of turning into a military and political nightmare for the nation. Elsewhere I wrote that Clinton's actions risked "triggering uncontrollable forces" and that "any Serbian leader who gave up Kosovo might as well commit suicide."* I also pointed out that Milosevic would sit tight while accelerating the drive against Kosovo Albanians. This is precisely what he did. How did I know? Because Clinton gave him no choice, unless you consider suicide a choice. Milosevic knew that the aerial attack would be spearheaded by cruise missiles. He also knew, as would anybody who read an American paper or watched CNN, how many cruise missiles the US had in stock. Well, it is now believed that the cruise inventory may have dropped below 100 because, thanks to Clinton's gutting of the military, there are no cruise missile production lines in operation. This means that low flying aircraft will eventually have to replace them. Something else I pointed out. To make it worse, the risible 'strategy' of using bombing to 'degrade' Serbia's military facilities and logistics have been a dismal failure. After more than 4000 sorties intelligence believes these facilities still largely remain unscathed. Why? Because the important fixed positions are underground, where they have been for 50 years, while mobile units, including hundreds of tanks and ground-to-air missile batteries, remain intact. So Serbian forces still have anti-aircraft missile batteries, thousands of anti-aircraft guns, not to mention several hundred shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. Does General Wesley Clark know this? Of course he does and this is why, in my opinion, the pentagon is not releasing battle damage assessments. Clark knew from the beginning of the campaign it would fail to severely damage the Serb military because it had prepared itself decades ago for a massive assault. Only then, the expected enemy was Moscow. Very sensibly, the Serbs have pursued the wait-until-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes military strategy. Meanwhile, Serbian forces carry on with the expulsion of Kosovar Albanians. Clinton and his kindergarten circle of advisers cobbled the thing together in the belief that Milosevic would fold after a week or so. Why shouldn't he? After all, they would. No wonder there is so much discontent in the Pentagon. No general would ever dream of committing forces in this manner. But the commander-in-chief (the man who loathes the military) has done just that. Now our left-wing dominated media is beginning to talk of a "lengthy campaign" and the "necessity for ground troops", constantly relating stories of atrocities and acts of genocide to justify extending the war. Now let me make this clear: This war is being pursued by Clinton serve his own ambitions while the liberal (left-wing) media see it as a means to punish Milosevic for his politics, not for his crimes. Humanitarianism has nothing to do with it. Many of those calling for war are the same people who cheered Pinochet's illegal arrest but just cheered and cheered Castro. The same people who scream for Milosevic's head are cheering Zhu, whose government is guilty of crimes that greatly exceed anything Milosevic has done. So Milosevic the thug, whose wife is a dedicated Marxist-Leninist, has been selected as the means to provide our sociopathic president with his legacy. That is what it is really all about and that is why a lot of gallant young Americans are in grave danger of going home in body bags. But Milosevic is not going to be a patsy for Clinton and probably intends to give Clinton the kind of legacy he would dearly love to avoid. Clinton gutted the military, squandered the country's moral authority, aggravated conditions in Kosovo and made the world a more dangerous place, provoking Russian nationalism, isolating Macedonia and Montenegro and maybe even destabilising Greece in to the bargain. Some legacy. Perhaps now Americans will come to realise that the presidency involves more than policies on school uniforms, meddling in medical affairs, making high-sounding commitments about education, etc. Maybe now they will realise that character does matter and genuine moral authority does not spring from poll ratings nor is it a matter of numbers. What of the Kosovar refugees? Like it or not, Kosovo is part of Serbia. If Serbia expels part of its population this leaves Western nations with only two choices: a) absorb the refugees or (b) invade kosovar and occupy it on a permanent basis, expelling those Serbs who resist. It would have been cheaper and more humane to have implemented a Marshall Plan for Albania than attack Serbia. Last week** I wrote that the former course of action would have weakened, perhaps fatally, Milosevic's grip by stripping him of his nationalist pretensions and removing from Serbians any feeling of victimhood. This would have strengthened the hand of democratic forces who might have toppled Milosevic and come to a civilised arrangement over Kosovian autonomy. All of that is out of the question now, thanks to Clinton's selfish actions. I also believe that proposition (b) is also out of the question. Where or how it will end is now anybody's guess. But the real question still remains: Is Clinton worth dying for? The New Australian, April 19-25, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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