Of course conscientious citizens will want to know what their taxes have bought after said taxes were filched from their pockets. In the case of Kosovo, we have been told ad nauseam that what was bought was "Peace" or, more fuzzily, "The Peace Process"- a phrase which Truth in Media's editor, Bob Djurdjevic, irreverently calls "the piss process" as it is contemptuously pronounced in the Balkans and elsewhere.
Bob DJ., as I explained in a previous ZGram, is a fervent anti-Communist Serb who protested against the Marxists in the streets of Belgrade in his youth and who is deeply disappointed by the cold-hearted, power politicking ruthlessness of the Clinton policies against the Serbs during the Kosovo War.
Here are excerpted items from today's Truth in Media e-zine, along with its editor's cynical comments:
AP release:
1. Fourteen Serb Farmers Gunned Down by Albanians While Harvesting Wheat
GRACKO, July 24 - A North Atlantic Treaty Organization patrol found the bodies of 14 Serb men shot dead in central Kosovo in the worst single act of violence since peacekeepers entered the province in mid-June, officials said Saturday (July 24).
The victims were found Friday evening by a British NATO patrol after automatic weapons fire was heard in a field near Gracko, 10 miles south of Pristina. Thirteen Serb farm workers were lying in a circle next to their combine harvester; another man was slumped over his tractor 150 yards away, said Maj. Ian Seraph, the British contingent spokesman.
Surviving villagers blamed ethnic Albanians for the attack. They said the killing field was close to an ethnic Albanian village, Bujance, a KLA stronghold. The residents accused peacekeepers of failing to heed their pleas for protection in the fields when the harvest began seven days ago.
British Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson, head of peacekeeping forces, called it "a cowardly act of brutal and cold murder," according to an Associated Press report. NATO and United Nations officials swiftly condemned the violence and appealed for calm.
---
TiM Ed.:
Appealed for calm? After the same British general (Jackson) turned a blind eye this week to the fact that the KLA had not disarmed by July 21, as provided in its June 21 agreement with NATO. And after the same British general meekly extended the deadline so as not to upset these Albanian terrorists, while turning down the Serbsí plea for protection? (see S99-126, "Peace" 20, Item 1, July 23). ---
AP release:
In The Hague, Netherlands, the chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal ordered an immediate investigation. "The scale of this massacre is very alarming and suggests that the strongest deterrent message must be sent to those who are inclined to perpetuate the cycle of violence that has shattered Kosovo in the last year," the prosecutor, Louise Arbour, said in a statement.
TiM Ed.:
So the main thing which is of concern to this kangaroo court is the "scale of this massacre?" Had these 14 Serbs been murdered one at a time, as hundreds already have been by the marauding Albanians across Kosovo, then Madam Kangaroo would not be as alarmed? Because it would be easier to look the other way?
AP release:
Most pathetically, in Belgrade, Yugoslaviaís president, Slobodan Milosevic, blamed the massacre on NATO and the U.N., and demanded the return of some Yugoslav soldiers and Serbian police to Kosovo.
TiMEd:
"Demanded?" From whom? From the U.N.? Or from NATO, which has just obliterated his country? Whose permission does an elected president of a sovereign nation need to send the police or the troops in protect its citizens, who are being shot like rabbits while KFOR and the U.N. "appeal for calm?"
Even if Milosevic somehow manages to dodge the war crimes charges by war criminals worse than himself (Bill Clinton and the other NATO leaders), this modern day Serb Vuk Brankovic (a traitor) should be tried by the Serbian people not only for treason, but for dereliction of his duties as the countryís president.
AP release:
More than 100,000 Serbs are believed to have fled the province after NATO entered, and fewer than 50,000 remain, the U.N. refugee officials told the Associated Press.
Second Item:
Chemical Warfare: NATO Missiles Leave Permanent Legacy in Serb Town
PANCEVO, July 23 - In one of the reports this writer filed from his late-April trip to Serbia, at the height of NATOís bombing, we told you about an ecologically devastating hit which the Serb town of Pancevo took (just northeast of Belgrade, across the Danube - see "A Huge Toxic Cloud Unleashed by NATO Bombs" S99-45, Day 26, Item 1, Apr. 18).
Now, three months later, the aftermath of that, and other NATO attacks on the Serb chemical factories, is slowly starting to trickle out. Here's an excerpt from a July 23 Associated Press report from Pancevo:
"The grass is bleached to a scary pale gray, and little Ana has trouble breathing when she plays in the park, weeks after NATO wreaked environmental havoc by bombing key industrial sites.
Pancevo, an industrial town five miles northeast of Belgrade, was the town worst hit during the air raids, and doctors and environmental experts say the aftereffects of the bombing will be felt for years -- and maybe generations -- to come.
Huge amounts of chemicals and poisonous fumes have polluted the air, the ground and the water in and around Pancevo.
The damage dates back to April when NATO missiles struck Pancevo's three major industrial sites -- an oil refinery, a nitrogen fertilizer factory and a chemical plant, releasing hundreds of tons of toxic materials which spread over the entire region.
Weeks after the bombing ended, a visit to the fertilizer factory still produced a stinging sensation in the nose and throat. A sticky, yellowish fluid, apparently a leaked chemical, stank and slowly solidified under the blazing summer sun near the front gate.
"I am afraid to even think what we breathed in, what chemicals got into our bodies," said Tamara Radjenovic, a 32-year-old teacher, as she watched her five-year old daughter Ana play in a park. Every few minutes the girl came to her mother to rest, gasping for air.
"She gets tired so easily, she has dark circles around her eyes. ... It wasn't like that before the bombs. She is not the child she used to be," Mrs. Radjenovic said of her daughter with a deep, sorrowful sigh.
Local doctors who examined the girl said the symptoms were caused by the chemicals and that there was nothing they could do now.
Pancevo's municipal authorities have compiled a day-by-day list of dangerous leaks, fires and explosions since March 24 when the air raids began. The town of 70,000 was targeted from the beginning. At least 25,000 tons of fuel, mostly from the bombed refinery, burned into the atmosphere, blanketing a wide area with a layer of tar.
More than 1,400 tons of poisonous vinyl chloride burned and spread noxious fumes when NATO bombs hit a storage tank at Pancevo's Petrohemija factory. The substance, normally used to produce plastics, is carcinogenic, and 2 percent of it turns into even more dangerous phosgene when burned.
A hundred tons of mercury, almost as much sodium hydroxide and tons of other chemicals, including nitric acid, burned up or leaked into the Danube River. Those substances almost invariably cause respiratory problems, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, skin rashes and blisters when inhaled in even the smallest quantities.
In one of the worst nights of bombing, instruments measuring pollution in Pancevo showed a vinyl chloride concentration of 0.43 milligrams per cubic meter, or 8,600 times more than recommended maximum levels.
Doctors in Pancevo said there were about a hundred cases of acute intoxication, mostly among nightshift workers, security and firemen who were at the sites during the nighttime raids. Three of them have died.
"I had a patient who was treated for infertility last year. She wanted a baby so much, she was two months pregnant when the bombing began," said a local gynecologist, insisting on anonymity. "She got so terrified of possible birth defects that she had an abortion last month." The woman made her decision after a surge of miscarriages in the town in late April, he said.
Milan Borna, head of the environmental protection department in Pancevo, said, "The full extent of the damage will show in coming years.... We fear that the worst effects may be degenerative changes in future generations."
Thought for the Day:
"Somewhere, Harry Truman is snorting. After World War II, the residents of Hiroshima and Dresden were left to get in touch with their feelings without American assistance."
(Sobran's)