-Caveat Lector- from alt.conspiracy ----- As always, Caveat Lector. Om K ----- <A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.conspiracy:524109">5-18-99 Anti-War Bulletin from the Intl Action Center </A> ---- Subject: 5-18-99 Anti-War Bulletin from the Intl Action Center From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, May 18, 1999 7:37 PM Message-id: <89b83ca0&[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5-18-99 Anti-War Bulletin from the Intl Action Center Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue May 18 20:42:59 1999 International Action Center 39 West 14 Street, #206 New York, NY 10011 (212) 633-6646 fax: (212) 633-2889 http://www.iacenter.org email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] May 18, 1999 Anti-War Bulletin from the International Action Center By Brian Becker, Co-Director, International Action Center Is the U.S./NATO leadership planning a ground war? Is the United States administration and the Pentagon now preparing for a ground war; that is, an occupation and invasion of Yugoslavia? There are conflicting signals and deep divisions within the U.S. political establishment about the direction of the war. But the anti-war movement needs to be made urgently aware of the very real prospect of a dramatic escalation. On its face, the ground war scenario may seem unlikely. Clinton could not even muster a majority in Congress to support the bombing campaign, which is designed to make sure that all the bleeding is done by Yugoslavs. Public opinion polls indicate deep skepticism and widespread opposition to the war effort. There are daily "hints" about a possible diplomatic resolution in the big business-dominated media like the New York Times and Washington Post. In a report released on May 17, Agence France Press reports that Germany will not back moves to send NATO ground troops into Kosovo without the consent of the Yugoslav government. The AFP story quotes German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher as stating "There will be no majority in the Bundestag for sending ground troops." A photo of Fisher being splattered with red paint by angry members of the pacifist wing of the Green Party appeared on the front page of the New York Times and other dailies around the world on May 14. The massive demonstrations that almost turned into rebellions against U.S. government facilities throughout China, following the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, were a powerful signal of the opposition that exists in China against a further escalation. And anti-war protests continue to gather steam around the world. These are certainly deterrents to an escalation of the war into a ground war. But there are other indications that the maniacs in the Pentagon want all-out victory. On Sunday, May 16 the BBC radio reported that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had sent a letter to Defense Secretary William Cohen urging the preparation for a ground war. Newsweek magazine, on May 16, confirms the letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Newsweek quotes the Pentagon leaders as "saying that only ground troops would guarantee fulfillment of the administration's political objectives." Is the U.S. preparing a new Gulf of Tonkin "incident?" "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," is what newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst told his frustrated photographer Fredric Remington, who had wired him from Cuba in 1898 that he could not find the war that he had been sent to cover. Hearst was an advocate of U.S. expansionism. He had wanted the war against Spain in 1898 so that the U.S. could grab Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines from the then failing Spanish empire. The purpose of sending a photographer was to publish heart-rending pictures of Cubans suffering under the boot of Spanish domination. Hearst was not a friend of Cuban freedom. He was an advocate of U.S. colonial expansion. The William Randolph Hearst story is not news. We all learn about it in grade school. It's safe to talk about such brazen manipulation of an event that is a century old. But it's important to remember how the wars of the past evolved, especially as we ponder the endless video footage of the horrific scenes of refugees fleeing Kosovo in recent weeks. And we should be on guard for new levels of manipulation if the Pentagon planners opt for a an expansion of the war with ground troops. It would be naive to believe that public opinion could not be momentarily manipulated in order to win at least temporary approval for an invasion. At such moments the corporate-owned media normally fall in line, inundating the public with war propaganda. The war makers have always been able to create or utilize a major incident or "outrage" as a pretext to win a temporary support or acquiescence for a war. Often times, these "incidents" are complete fabrications created by the war makers themselves. The mysterious explosion of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 was turned into the war slogan "Remember the Maine" and the anti-war sentiment that existed then was drowned out. The "outrage" over the sinking of the Lusitania by German submarines was used to overcome opposition to the U.S. entrance into World War I. It was the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor that the U.S. used as a reason to enter World War II and it was the Gulf of Tonkin "attack" in 1964 by the north Vietnamese against U.S. naval vessels that was used to escalate the Vietnam War into a major war. In each case, including the ones that were entirely faked, these incidents provided the basis for a war hysteria that momentarily silenced the opposition to escalation. Demonization and War in Yugoslavia The United States has specialized in manipulating or even creating "incidents and allegations" against the Yugoslav government during the recent civil wars as a means and justification to expand the U.S. military intervention in the region. If we go back three-and-a-half years we can remember that the NATO bombing of Serb positions on Bosnia was preceded by a war hysteria created around a "Serb atrocity." The world was horrified to learn of a major bomb explosion on August 28, 1995 at a small, enclosed market place in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. This event was seized on by the U.S. and NATO to start bombing Serb positions. What happened? Thirty-seven people waiting in line to buy food were blown to bits by what was said to be a Bosnian Serb artillery round. It appeared to be a genocidal-type bombing aimed at civilians and was used to indicate the absolute depravity of the Serb side. In that political climate, 4,000 U.S./NATO air sorties were carried out. But was it a Serb artillery shell that blew up the marketplace or was it a cold-blooded provocation by the right wing Bosnian government forces who were backed by the United States? New York Times correspondent David Binder reported in the October 2, 1995 issue of The Nation magazine that the bombing came the day after the Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke had threatened more active NATO air strikes. Only a pretext or excuse was needed. Binder quoted several different military sources who challenged the assertion that the Bosnian Serb artillery could have been responsible. A Canadian specialist with long service in Bosnia had told Binder that the fuse of the mortar shell recovered from the marketplace crater "had not come from a mortar tube at all." Two U.S. administration officials in Sarajevo, who spoke to Binder on the condition of anonymity, told him that based on the trajectory, the depth of the crater, and other concrete evidence, that the shell was either fired from a very close range or dropped from a nearby roof into the crowd. A Russian artillery officer went on TV to announce that the probability of hitting a street less than 30 feet wide from Serb military positions one or two miles away was "one in a million." Regardless of the veracity of the story about the Serb artillery shelling of the Sarajevo marketplace in August 1995, it became the immediate rallying flag for NATO intervention and the subsequent massive bombing campaign of Serb positions in Bosnia. An examination of the Balkans Wars since 1991 demonstrates that the demonization campaign against the Yugoslav government, the Serbian peoples, and all those who stood for the retention of a unified Yugoslavia was central to the military, economic, and political effort to subvert and destroy Yugoslavia. The ultra-right wing Croatian and Bosnian Muslim separatist movements not only received the financial and military support of United States, German, and other Western governments. They actually employed a U.S. public relations firm Ruder Finn that openly admits that it pursued a public relations campaign likening Serbs to Nazis. This demonization campaign was excellently described by Diana Johnstone, in her article "Seeing Yugoslavia Through a Dark Glass: Politics, Media, and the Ideology of Globalization." Johnstone was the European editor of the newspaper "In These Times" from 1979 to 1990, and press officer of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. The demonization campaign has always preceded the next escalation of the imperialist effort to destroy and dismember Yugoslavia. The Role of the Racak "Massacre" A similar "atrocity" was used as a pretext for the new bombing war that started March 24, 1999. On January 15, 1999, in the Kosovo village of Racak, Yugoslav and Serbian police forces were accused of carrying out a horrible massacre of civilians. William Walker, a U.S. diplomat in charge of the international monitoring force in Kosovo, went to the site with Western reporters and proclaimed that 45 people had been "killed in the massacre." Pictures of 40 bodies laid out in a village Mosque were put on the front page of all the major Western newspapers. Walker called it a "crime against humanity" by the Yugoslav government led by Slobodon Milosevic. The clamor for U.S. military intervention took on a new momentum. Waves of condemnation of the Yugoslav government swept the U.S., British, and Canadian media, replete with interviews of the sorrowful survivors. No questioning of the official U.S. story was heard. When the Yugoslav government attempted to give a contrary explanation, it was cavalierly dismissed. The United States and its NATO allies immediately moved significant military forces into the area in January 1999. More than 400 aircraft were readied for action. An aircraft carrier entered the Adriatic Sea and NATO officials announced that they would be ready to intervene in Yugoslavia within 48 hours. The stage had been set for a war. The massacre story was used to fully demonize the Yugoslav and Serb government. The U.S. chose to delay the war for another two months because it wanted to present itself as seeking a "diplomatic solution" before the resort to arms. It organized the completely fraudulent Rambouillet peace process in early March, presenting the Yugoslav government with a so-called peace accord that it knew no sovereign government would sign. The Rambouillet Accord would have allowed NATO troops to occupy Kosovo, and enjoy unfettered control over the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It insisted that no NATO personnel could be arrested, put on trial or held liable for any crime or offense committed during the occupation of the country. The Role of William Walker William Walker was presented as the consummate neutral peace keeper. Why question his word? In fact, no major U.S. media outlet did question his account. William Walker, however, is not a neutral peace keeper. He is a war criminal and a professional liar.. As a special assistant to Lt. Col. Oliver North and Assistant Secretary of State Eliot Abrams, Walker was a key operator in Reagan's White House operation to overthrow the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s. According to charges filed in U.S. district court by independent council Lawrence Walsh, Walker was responsible for setting up a phony humanitarian operation at an airbase in Ilopango, El Salvador. That "humanitarian" air base was used to run guns, ammunitions, and supplies to the fascist Contra mercenaries attacking the Nicaraguan Revolution. Walker was also the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador from 1988 to 1992 when military death squads murdered thousands of progressive workers, peasants, and young people. Many of the Salvadoran death squad leaders were trained at the U.S. military's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, in Georgia. While the U.S. media accepted Walker's massacre story and used it to create the war hysteria that permitted the current NATO bombing war, many of the European press challenged Walker's and the KLA's account. The French newspapers Le Monde, Le Figario, and Liberation all ran stories pointing out major inconsistencies in the "massacre" report. There was considerable evidence, in fact, that the corpses were not civilians at all, but KLA soldiers who, after having been killed in a battle, had been dressed in civilian garb and placed in the mosque. Is a New "Massacre" in the Works? The question now for anti-war forces is this: Are the United States military and CIA actively preparing for a new "massacre," a new "horror story" of Serb atrocities to serve as a pretext for an expansion of the war? Why would they do this? Because the air war, while it has been successful in inflicting great suffering on the people of Yugoslavia, has not broken the resistance of the people or of the government. Do they need to create a new momentum of demonization? Yes. As things stand now, the announcement for an escalation into a ground war would be met by considerable opposition. There is no reason to be overly speculative, but there is every reason to be on guard. At the minimum, we want to share information with anti-war activists as we learn of it here at the International Action Center. There are reports from Croatian sources of another planned massacre. They report that American and German pilots have been training with Yugoslav-made planes left for the Croatian Air Force after Croatia seceded from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. These planes will reportedly be painted so that they appear to be part of the Yugoslav Air Force and then used to bomb refugees in Albania. We, of course, have no way to verify that this scenario would actually be enacted. But if there is to be a ground war, we will most certainly be treated to the initiation of a war hysteria around some similar type "atrocity" that can be laid at the doorstep of the Yugoslav government. Is an expansion of the war into a ground war imminent? Certainly the Clinton Administration is conducting its own internal debate on this subject just as the Kennedy Administration was holding a similar debate about Vietnam in the months before Kennedy's murder. The Consequences of a Ground War The stakes in a U.S./NATO expansion are high. The people in Yugoslavia have a long and proud tradition of resistance to foreign occupation. More than one million Serbs, along with many of their Croatian, Slovenian, Montenegrin, Albanian, and Macedonian comrades in the Partisan struggle, gave their lives while defeating the Nazi occupation forces. The people of Yugoslavia defeated Hitler's divisions. Unlike the other countries of central and eastern Europe, this remarkable achievement took place without the immediate intervention of the Soviet Red Army. Judged by the unity that has been demonstrated in Yugoslavia during the past seven weeks, there is every reason to believe that a U.S./NATO occupying army would meet with fierce resistance, including guerrilla war. U.S. and other NATO troops will certainly suffer many casualties. Even though a ground war will lead to immense suffering, even greater than that inflicted by the air war, that is no reason to believe that the Pentagon establishment will not select the ground war invasion option as a way to overcome the steadfastness demonstrated so far in Yugoslavia. The Times of London on May 16 ran a story quoting an anonymous British Defense official who stated that NATO troops could be ready to go into Kosovo by July or August. To meet this deadline would require prepartion to send the troops would have to begin very soon. Jane's Defense Weekly, in a very significant story in the May 10 issue, reports that the current leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army is a Croatian general, Agim Ceku. He was in charge of Operation `Storm,' the bloodiest and most brutal military campaign -until the current NATO bombing--carried out in the Balkans since the invasion of the Nazis during World War II. In August 1995, the Operation `Storm' offensive against the Serbian population in the Krajina region in Croatio that drove hundreds of thousands of Serbs from the region that they have inhabited for centuries. Ceku is a U.S.-trained military officer who is closely tied to the Pentagon's Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI). The MPRI is a semi-official Pentagon contractor, headed by retired U.S. military officers. It specializes in sending mercenary armies under Pentagon contract into unofficial wars. The MPRI was contracted by the Pentagon to organize and train the Croatian Army for its Operation Storm against Serbs in Krajina. This massive ground offensive against hundreds of thousands of civilians was seen as the decisive military event that forced the Milosevic government in Yugoslavia to sign the U.S.-brokered Dayton Accord for Bosnia. Many see the public identification of Ceku as the leader of the KLA as an ominous sign that a ground war is being prepared. June 5th Demonstration & the Key Role of the Anti-War Movement The anti-war movement finds itself in a pivotal position. The ruling classes in the various imperialist NATO countries are divided about the war effort. Of course, they are all equally culpable for the criminal bombing. But some are clearly fearful that this war drive will backfire. Moreover, the imperialist allies in NATO are also rivals. Each wants to dominate its own sphere. Germany and the U.S., the two most powerful imperialists in NATO, have deeper antagonisms over the domination of Europe generally. The same inter-imperialist rivalries that led earlier to World War I and World War II are re-emerging in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. Classically, it is in the environment of deep divisions within the ruling class(es) that a popular movement can achieve a decisive influence. The broad mobilization of a conscious and angry mass anti-war movement can become a major factor in the outcome of this struggle. Our analysis of the war situation is not academic. We assess the possible variant directions in the war situation to chart a course of action. The U.S. and NATO may try to achieve an early settlement of the war. They want the Yugoslav people and the government to surrender to the demands of creating an imperialist protectorate in Kosovo. They are as yet unsure about the viability of a ground invasion to accomplish this objective. But unless a settlement is arrived at soon there will be greater and greater pressure by the extreme militarists to expand and widen the war. We urge all those who oppose the war and who oppose the expansion of U.S./NATO imperialism to join the growing ranks of organizers to make the June 5 March on the Pentagon a truly massive event. The demonstration is organized around very clear demands: "Stop the Bombing of Yugoslavia" and "Money for Jobs and Education Not War." The mobilization of a peoples movement in every city, on every campus, every high school, in the neighborhoods, office buildings and factories can assume a great and historic role. The power is in the people. We must all energetically work to make this latent power become the decisive factor in this struggle. Sources: 1) NATO and the Balkans, by Ramsey Clark and others, published by the International Action Center 2) Croation General Heads KLA, by Gary Wilson, Workers World, May 27, 1999 3) Kosovo massacre was faked, by G. Dunkel, Workers World News Service, Feb. 4, 1999 4) Seeing Yugoslavia Through a Dark Glass, by Diana Johnstone 5) Agence France Press dispatch, May 17, 1999 6) The Rambouillet Accord, Declaration of War Disguised as a Peace Agreement, by Richard Becker, published by International Action Center ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================================= nytcov-05.19.99-03:35:59-5645 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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