Issue #09/64, May 6 - 20, 1999  

War Criminals
Westerners snickered when Yugoslav and Russian leaders suggested that NATO leaders should be tried as war criminals for intentionally bombing civilian targets. But on April 30th, that accusation was given full weight when UN Human

DON'T WORRY, HE'S ONLY A SERB. Two-year old Radosinovic Nenad lies injuried after a NATO attack on yet another bus this past Monday. The attack wounded 25 people, six seriously.

Rights Chief Mary Robinson, while speaking in Geneva, told the closing session of the UN Human Rights Commission that the international war crimes tribunal could investigate NATO. "In the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, large numbers of civilians have incontestably been killed, civilian installations targeted on the grounds that they are or could be of military application and NATO remains sole judge of what is or is not acceptable to bomb," Mrs Robinson, the former president of Ireland, said. "The actions of individuals belonging to Serb forces, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), or NATO may therefore come under scrutiny, if it appears that serious violations of international humanitarian law have occurred."

The Rambouillet Diktat
The Rambouillet Accord, the text of which is only now coming under scrutiny, contains clauses that amount to the equivalent of a complete surrender of national sovereignty. Appendix B reads:
"NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations." Article 6 guarantees the occupying forces absolute immunity: "NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties' jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY." While the Berliner Zeitung noted, "This passage sounds like a surrender treaty following a war that was lost...The fact that Yugoslavian President Milosevic did not want to sign such a paper is understandable," the English-language mainstream press unquestioningly portrayed it as a "peace agreement" and uniformly saw Milosevic's unwillingness to sign it as proof of his inflexibility and bellicosity. NATO initially bombed Yugoslavia to force it to accept the Rambouillet Accords. Today, NATO has backed down on Rambouillet's most offensive clauses. In fact, judging by the rhetoric, it appears that if peace comes soon, it will be under terms that the Yugoslavs had asked for all along at Rambouillet, but were denied.

The Racak Mis-sacre
The OSCE's own press release on its findings on the Racak Massacre, a report that had been mysteriously held up for weeks in secrecy, contains one shocking sentence that confirms many people's suspicions about the authenticity of the massacre. According to the head of the EU Forensic Team, Dr. Helena Ranta, "testing for gunshot residues on the victims has been negative." This casts serious doubts on the assertion that they were shot execution style at close range. That assertion was made by American diplomat William Walker upon arriving at the site of the mass grave--an assertion that is widely thought to have triggered NATO's decision to bomb Yugoslavia. Although the killings took place on January 15th, and Walker judged it a "massacre" perpetrated by Serb government forces on January 16th, the report was not released until March 17th, one week before NATO began bombing.

The English
No single NATO country has been more gleefully bellicose than Britain. And no country more shamelessly hypocritical. While America and Germany have parsimoniously agreed to allow 20,000 and 10,000 Kosovar refugees respectively to take shelter in their countries, the British have thus far offered shelter to a whopping 330 refugees. That's right, three hundred and thirty Albanians. Here's another example of just how seriously the Brits take this war: since the start, there has been a raging controversy over NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. Although a fellow Brit, Shea, who comes from a working-class Irish background, has been savaged in the English press for his untraditional taste in clothes (light-colored suits and flamboyant ties) and, worst of all, for his accent. According to a May 2nd article in the Knight-Ridder News Service, Shea even painfully fessed up to Liberation that British journalists mock him for talking like a "taxi driver." The same article noted that the British press repeatedly reports "how a wife of a British official complained that a NATO tour should not be conducted by someone with such an un-posh accent." While little can be done about that, the article ends by noting that "his beige suits and loud ties are now gone." These are the same people who are screaming hardest for an all-out war in Kosovo...a war whose burden would overwhelmingly be shouldered by America, the very country that once fought a war to free itself from this swinish culture.

Rave-ing Shite
Not to be outdone by their cold-hearted, feudal-minded parents, Brit kids are throwing the entire weight of their cheesy 90s techno culture into the war effort. On the weekend of April 23rd, techno clubs across England organized a Kosovo refugee fundraising event called "Disco Dancing Can Save Lives". This is the kind of thing that makes us at the eXile wonder: where are the Serb terrorists when you need 'em?

First Kosovo, Then...
We reported that a KLA commander in Albania said on BBC radio that after they've freed Kosovo, Macedonia will be next. While NATO may still be in denial, openly training and cooperating with the KLA ground forces, the Macedonians are scared shitless. On April 21st, Macedonia's Interior Minister Pavle Trajanov said, "Kosovo's Albanian separatists intend to spread their war to Macedonia once they have achieved independence for their presently Serbian province." Trajanov said that several arms caches belonging to the KLA had been found in Macedonia, "stored in advance of armed actions which the KLA wants to launch in Macedonia from September."

Fuck 'Em
According to a diplomatic insider quoted by the April 1st Chicago Tribune, when KLA officials were warned that NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia would trigger retaliatory violence by Serb forces in Kosovo, one KLA leader replied: "We don't care. 400,000 Kosovars can be sacrificed for our independence."

Toxic Avengers
While NATO jets unleashed a chemical and environmental disaster over Yugoslavia, in violation of the Geneva Convention, President Clinton and NATO officials issued bellicose warnings that the Yugoslavs were preparing to launch chemical-weapons attacks on Kosovar refugees and rebels, and threatened a massive response. This in spite of the fact that NATO has been intentionally bombing chemical and petrochemical plants throughout Yugoslavia, releasing chemical toxins into the environment, wreaking untold consequences upon the civilian population. On several occasions, citizens have reported eye and respiratory problems after NATO bombings of chemical plants. On April 21st, NATO also admitted publicly for the first time that they are using uranium-depleted ammunition in their airstrikes. Such munitions are widely believed to be the cause of so-called "Gulf War Syndrome", illnesses suffered by thousands of Allied troops, as well as the horrifying leap in deformities among southern Iraqi children born during or after the Gulf War.

Jesus Genocide
From the year 33 AD until March 24th of this year, the only person to be resurrected from the dead west of Mecca has been Jesus Christ. Since March 24th, 1999, tens of thousands declared dead by the American press have arisen. You'll recall that NATO first declared that the Serbs had executed the KLA's political leaders and intelligentsia in Pristina at the beginning of the air campaign, only to have them reappear, alive but looking a little dusty, a week or so later. On April 23rd, CNN, which had been reporting that the lack of fighting-age males among the Kosovar refugees meant that tens of thousands must have been massacred, quietly reported that entire columns of these very same men began pouring across the Albanian border. According to CNN's Ben Wedeman, the fighting-aged male refugees said that they were rounded up, forced to work, then booted out. Over the past weekend, NATO blamed the Serbs for allowing ONLY fighting-aged Serb males out of the country, while rounding up women and children. This, according to NATO, is evidence of Serb barbarity and their willingness to "target the most vulnerable."

The Old Deal
The bill for this war just keeps rising. World Bank President James Wolfensohn has said the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have determined that countries such as Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary affected by the Kosovo crisis will require between 600 million and two billion dollars in aid following the conflict. On April 22nd the IMF already agreed to loan Romania $500 million. Congressional sources have been quoted as saying that estimates for the reconstruction of Yugoslavia range from 35 to 45 billion dollars, assuming the war ends soon. Meanwhile, Clinton's request for an additional $6.1 billion to fund the war has been nearly doubled to 11 billion by Congress. Most people agree that the days of American defense spending cuts are not only over, but rather, due to be drastically reversed. Say goodbye to tax cuts and higher spending on education, welfare, and urban renewal, America.

Mein Krapp
On April 23rd, survivors of Auschwitz placed a full page ad in the Frankfurter Rundschau accusing German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping of perpetuating a new version of the "Auschwitz Lie" by falsely comparing the situation in Kosovo with the Holocaust.

Subsequent red-faced backtracking on the part of German officials might explain why the eXile contest's o/u of six official German statements comparing the Kosovo crisis to the Holocaust turned out to be far too high.

A Blown Job
Several reports, including from Time Magazine and the BBC, say that President Clinton missed the crucial meetings in January when, following the Racek "massacre," America's policy towards Kosovo was decided. He was tied up with the Monica Lewinsky impeachment hearings, leaving Madeleine Albright with a free hand.

Cleansing Catalyst
American leaders were warned by the CIA that unleashing an air war against Serbia would lead to massive ethnic cleansing. Western leaders have tried to play dumb and reverse the chronology of blame by claiming that the Serbs were going to cleanse the Albanians anyway, and that NATO bombing was intended to forestall it. In fact, Porter Goss, chairman of the US House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee, told BBC's program Panorama: "In February 1999, the head of the CIA, George Tenet, briefed congressional leaders after the order to prepare for war. He said that military action could include the chance of ethnic cleansing." NATO's top commander, Gen Wesley Clark, is reported to have agreed. "Instead of caving in, Milosevic struck back harder and more ruthlessly against the Kosovo Albanians. The intelligence community predictions were accurate," he said. Could it be that NATO intentionally prodded the Serbs in order to later demonize them and therefore justify a future occupation?

The Commander In Chief
"We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers," Clinton said, softly at first. "When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers." Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding his thigh, he leaned into Tony [Lake, then his national security adviser], as if it was his fault. "I believe in killing people who try to hurt you. And I can't believe we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks.'"

--Clinton ordering the bombing of civilian targets in Somalia, as quoted in All Too Human, George Stephanopoulos [Clinton's former Communications Director]

It helps to remember that after killing scores of Somali civilians, Clinton eventually pulled American troops out in humiliating defeat.