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Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 18:07:20 -0700
To: TiM GW Bulletins <•••@••.•••>
Delivered-To: moderator for •••@••.•••
From: Bob Djurdjevic <•••@••.•••>
Subject: S99-84, Day 58 (May 20 9:00PM EDT) - A Special TiM GW Bulletin
on NATO's war on Serbia
FROM PHOENIX, ARIZONA
The Special Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins on NATO's war on Serbia,
such as the one enclosed below, can also be accessed at our Web site:
www.truthinmedia.org which is being updated throughout the day.
Issue S99-84, Day 58
---------------------------
May 20, 1999; 8:00PM EDT
HEADLINES
Belgrade 1. Three People Killed, Many Injured, in NATO's
Attack on Belgrade Hospital
London 2. NATO Commits Murder; Up to 38 Aircraft Lost
Brussels 3. NATO Rift Now Out in the Open As Germany
Publicly Breaks Ranks
Athens 4. Top Greek Judges Condemn NATO
Buenos Aires 5. Argentineans Oppose NATO's Bombing;
Rebuff Their President
Washington 6. Clinton Calls in PR Reinforcements Instead of
Calling Off War
--------------------
1. Three Dead, Many Injured, in NATO's Attack on Belgrade Hospital
PHOENIX, May 19 - Three people were killed and many more wounded in NATO's
overnight attack on a Belgrade hospital. Two women giving birth and a new
born baby were among the injured. The deaths occurred in the
cardiovascular section of the "Dragisa Misovic" hospital in the posh
Belgrade suburb of Dedinje.
Dedinje is the suburb where Slobodan Milosevic used to live before the war,
and where most of ambassadors to Yugoslavia have their official residences.
One of them, the residence of the Swedish ambassador, was also reportedly
slightly damaged in a blast which blew out almost all of the hospital's
windows.
Swedish Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, said today (May 20) that NATO
bombings in Belgrade were "unacceptable," and that she would seek an
explanation from the alliance.
"It is unacceptable that right in the center of a large city these kinds of
large explosives are used causing this kind of damages and injuries,''
Lindh told the Swedish news agency TT. "The strike on the hospital
underscores the need for a political solution."
The U.S. embassy telephoned the Swedish foreign ministry to apologize for
the damage to the ambassador's residence, a spokesperson for Lindh said today.
---
TiM Ed.: The U.S. government apologizes to Sweden for a few broken windows,
yet unapologetically continues to kill and maim scores of Serb civilians
every day, including babies. What sort of monsters have taken over our
government?
---
The supposedly errant strike, at least according to the NATO spokesperson,
was a part of the first aerial attack on central Belgrade since the May 7
bombing of the Chinese embassy. The strikes against the Dedinje hospital
and other targets in and around Belgrade followed seven hours of talks
between Viktor Chernomyrdin and the Yugoslav president Milosevic.
As a Belgrade resident remarked indignantly after last night's bombing,
"every time a Russian comes calling, some NATO shit follows."
---
TiM Ed.: In other words, the NATO attack on Dedinje was most likely
intended to be the punch line to a "tough" message which the New World
Order lapdog, Chernomyrdin, was asked to deliver to Belgrade. Instead, the
bombs merely punched a few more tickets for a war crimes trial of the NATO
murderers and baby killers.
See some photos of the strike against the hospital, and listen to the sound
of the bomb which hit it at our Web site:
http://www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/photos.html
---
2. NATO Commits Murder; Up to 38 Aircraft Lost
LONDON, May 18 - Even before the latest NATO crime against humanity, some
voices were being heard in the western media which tried to call attention
to the murders being committed by the alliance. One of them was the voice
of John Pilger, a London Guardian reporter. Here are some excerpts from
his May 18 piece, "Acts of Murder," with a cynical sub-title: "Up to 38
aircraft have been shot down or crashed. This is suppressed, of course."
"The room is filled with the bodies of children killed by Nato in Surdulica
in Serbia. Several are recognisable only by their sneakers. A dead infant
is cradled in the arms of his father. These pictures and many others have
not been shown in Britain; it will be said they are too horrific. But
minimising the culpability of the British state when it is engaged in
criminal action is normal; censorship is by omission and misuse of
language. The media impression of a series of Nato 'blunders' is false.
Anyone scrutinising the unpublished list of targets hit by Nato is left in
little doubt that a deliberate terror campaign is being waged against the
civilian population of Yugoslavia.
Eighteen hospitals and clinics and at least 200 nurseries, schools,
colleges and students' dormitories have been destroyed or damaged, together
with housing estates, hotels, libraries, youth centres, theatres, museums,
churches and 14th-century monasteries on the World Heritage list. Farms
have been bombed, their crops set on fire. As Friday's bombing of the
Kosovo town of Korisa shows, there is no discrimination between Serbs and
those being 'saved'. Every day, three times more civilians are killed by
Nato than the daily estimate of deaths of Kosovans in the months prior to
the bombing.
The British people are not being told about a policy designed largely by
their government to cause such criminal carnage. The dissembling of
politicians and the lies of 'spokesmen' set much of the news agenda. There
is no sense of the revulsion felt throughout most of the world for this
wholly illegal action, for the punishment of Milosevic's crime with a
greater crime and for the bellicose antics of Blair, Cook and Robertson,
who have made themselves into international caricatures. [...]
Nato is suffering significant losses. Reliable alternative sources in
Washington have counted up to 38 aircraft crashed or shot down, and an
undisclosed number of American and British special forces killed. This is
suppressed, of course.
Anti-bombing protests reverberate around the world: 100,000 people in the
streets of Rome (including 182 members of the Italian parliament),
thousands in Greece and Germany, protests taking place every night in
colleges and town halls across Britain. Almost none of it is reported. Is
it not extraordinary that no national opinion poll on the war has been
published since April 30?[...]
This week, the unthinkable will again be normalised when Nato triples the
bombing raids to 700 a day. This includes blanket bombing by B-52s. Blair
and Clinton and the opaque-eyed General Clark, apologist for the My Lai
massacre in Vietnam, are killing and maiming hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of innocent people in the Balkans. No contortion of intellect and morality,
nor silence, will diminish the truth that these are acts of murder. And
until there is a revolt by journalists and broadcasters, they will continue
to get away with it. That is the news."
For the full Pilger column, check out the Guardian Web site, and do a
search by the author's name at: http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/
---------------
3. NATO Rift Now Out in the Open As Germany Publicly Breaks Ranks
BRUSSELS, May 19 - We've been saying for weeks that deep fissures were
developing beneath the surface of apparent unity, painted by the NATO
public leaders (see S99-66, Day 43, Update 1, Item 1, May 5, S99-77, Day
51, Update 2, Item 1, May 13, and Day 30 Update 1, Item 4, Apr. 22). Well,
now the rift is out in the open as the German chancellor, Gerhard
Schroeder, publicly declared in Brussels yesterday (May 19) that his
country has no intention of participating in any ground attack on Yugoslavia.
"Sending in ground troops is unthinkable," Schroeder said. "That is our
position and it won't change in the future."
The Italian prime minister, Massimo D'Alema, after meeting with Schroeder
in Bari called for a 48-hour pause in NATO's bombing "to give the diplomacy
a chance" to work (meaning the Russian and Finnish initiative).
---
TiM Ed.: Actually, to the extent that the will of Congress and the U.S.
laws still apply to the run-amok Clinton administration, the legal deadline
for the U.S. participation in an illegal and undeclared NATO war on
Yugoslavia is only two days away.
On Apr. 28, the House of Representatives has refused to endorse Clinton's
air war with a 213-213 tie vote, and has soundly defeated the proposed
declaration of war on Yugoslavia by a 427-2 vote (see S99-62, Day 40,
Update 1, Item 4, May 2). Which means that Clinton has until May 24, 60
days after the start of hostilities, either to get a new authority from
Congress, end the bombing, or continue it while breaking the law and
defying Congress. Which could cause the courts to order him to stop the
war, especially as 17 Congressmen have already filed a law suit against the
Clinton administration (see (see S99-62, Day 40, Update 1, Item 3,May 2)
---------------
4. Top Greek Judges Condemn NATO
ATHENS, May 19 - Twenty members of the Council of State (Greece's supreme
administrative court) have issued a statement deploring the international
crimes against Yugoslavia, which inaugurate a "period of lawlessness" and
bring us back to the "eras of the Holy Alliance and the Axis".
NATO was found guilty of an unprecedented and barbaric attack against
Yugoslavia in a statement signed by 20 high-ranking judges of the Greek
Council of State, headed by its most senior vice-president Michalis Dekleris.
In their statement, the Greek judges condemn the NATO bombardments,
denounce the international crimes being committed by the NATO countries
through this armed attack, and warn that any law passed deciding to involve
Greece in this war will constitute a gross violation of the Constitution.
In addition to Mr. Dekleris, this statement was signed by the following
Council of State members: St. Sarivalasis, Ioanna Mari, Dim. Kostopoulos,
Evdoxia Galanou, Sot. Rizos, Pan. Pikrammenos, Nik. Sakellariou, Th.
Papaevangellou, Nik. Rozos, Dion. Marinakis, St. Haralambos and associate
judges Maria Karamanov, Ekaterini Christoforidou, I. Kapelousos, Dim.
Alexandris, Eleni Anagnostopoulou, Euth. Antonopoulos, Varvara Kapitsi,
Theo. Aravanis.
You can see the full statement issued by the judges at:
http://www.zmag.org/judges.htm
---------------
5. Argentineans Oppose NATO's Bombing; Rebuff Their President
BUENOS AIRES, May 18 - "It's thousands of miles from Belgrade, and there's
not a Serb in sight. But Gonzalo Etcheberry is passing a wall on a busy
street here spray-painted with the words, "Yankee, out of the Balkans." He
didn't write the slogan, but he couldn't agree more," the Washington Post
reported on May 18 from Argentina's capital.
"Your bombs in Yugoslavia are from the side of America that I can't stand,"
said Etcheberry, a 21-year-old medical student wearing a black Pearl Jam
T-shirt. "I hate it when the U.S. plays judge and God."
Such feelings are common in Argentina., the Post notes. And in many other
parts of the world far from the conflict over Kosovo.
Here in Argentina, one of Washington's closest Latin American allies, a
poll last week showed that 64 percent of the public opposed the NATO air
campaign against Yugoslavia. More respondents had a negative opinion of
NATO than of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
---
TiM Ed.: Which only goes to show us why the NWO birds of feather flock
together. None of them represent the will of the people whose money and
lives they are wasting. Only two days ago, we reported about the call by
Argentina's president, an NWO lapdog, for NATO to launch a ground attack on
Yugoslavia (see S99-82, Day 56, Item 2, May 18). The Post's article puts
his call in perspective - an anti-Argentinean perspective.
For the full Post article, check out:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-05/18/059r-051899-idx.html
---------------
6. Clinton Calls in PR Reinforcements Instead of Calling Off War
WASHINGTON, May 18 - The Cato Institute, one of Washington's foreign policy
think tanks, held a conference on Tuesday (May 18) about "NATO's Balkan
War: Finding an Honorable Exit." One of the conference attendees told TiM
that it was an excellent event. But our source lamented that the session
received no coverage in the major Washington media.
Well, one of the speakers at the conference was Doug Bandow, a senior
fellow at the Cato Institute, who also happens to be a nationally
syndicated columnist. The message in Bandow's latest (May 19) column, that
Bill Clinton is calling in PR reinforcements instead of calling off an
illegal war, is basically what he had also told the Cato conference, our
source said. Here are some excerpts:
"Bill Clinton's war has proved to be one of America's greatest foreign
policy debacles. What does the president do? Hire Leslie Dash, vice
chairman of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, to advise the
administration on Kosovo. President Clinton should end the war instead. [...]
The president launched an unprovoked war of aggression against a small,
distant state. He cynically wrapped his campaign in humanitarianism while
ignoring worse slaughters elsewhere. [...] Once it became clear the
administration intended to effectively strip Yugoslavia of Kosovo, however,
Belgrade unsurprisingly lashed out. Indeed, allied bombing turned all
Kosovars - whose leaders publicly lobbied for NATO intervention - into
enemies of the Serbs.
Yugoslavia wasn't gentle before being bombed. It certainly wasn't going to
be gentle afterward. The number of refugees in Albania and Macedonia jumped
from 45,000 to 640,000.
At the same time, the allied war quickly turned into a war on Serb
civilians, with strikes on everything from bridges to electrical plants to
television stations. The only way NATO can continually intensify the
bombing is to widen its target list. And that means more dead civilians.
Accidents may be unavoidable, but they are least justifiable in a
supposedly humanitarian war. How many Yugoslavs deserve to die to enable
Kosovar refugees to go home? Ethnic cleansing is ugly; premeditated murder
is worse. [...]
The United States should stop bombing. Today. [...]
It should be tragically obvious by now that Washington cannot impose peace.
The president does have a PR problem with his war. But the problem is the
war. The solution is not to hire another media flack. It is to end the war."
---------------
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----
Bob Djurdjevic
TRUTH IN MEDIA
Phoenix, Arizona
e-mail: •••@••.•••
Visit the Truth in Media Web site http://www.truthinmedia.org/ for more
articles on geopolitical affairs.
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