MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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[EDITOR'S NOTE: Dragana Vicanovich, our Special Correspondent in Belgrade, and I have stayed in touch since the war in the former Yugoslavia. While we have discussed much of the aftermath, we have been aware of a certain --- and characteristically American --- "fatigue" with the situation in Kosovo. Nonetheless, her most recent dispatch --- on the ecological aftermath of this war --- is too important to ignore. None of the Mainstream Media are covering this aspect of the story, much to their shame, I think. Herewith her dispatch, dated 7 November, 1999. ---RA.]
Indeed the fact that toxic substances from the bombings of petrochemical plants and the use of DU weapons are the greatest concerns and the ones that have led to the outcry of "Ecological Catastrophe" can be inferred by noting the extensive number of references to both in the "Ecological Catastrophe" compilations. Further confirmation can be found in the words of Michael Gorbachev, President of Green Cross International recorded in a Guardian news release: " I believe that strikes against certain industries and infrastructure, such as ... chemical and petrochemical plants, must be prohibited. ... In my view, weapons containing depleted uranium should be among the first to be banned."
Other Environmental Concerns
Other lesser concerns are the damage of the land from bomb craters, and the fires that spread from the bombing sites destroying habitats and reducing bio-diversity. In addition widespread destruction from bombing within several national heritage sites has been recorded. Further environmental hazards to both human health and the land itself are the landmines throughout Kosovo and Serbia. In a similar manner cluster bombs, also weapons of mass destruction have littered the environment with numerous unexploded mini- bombs released upon detonation from their parent cluster bombs raining down upon a hapless environment and populace. Fishermen in the Adriatic have also had to face the presence of these unexploded mini-bombs in their fishing nets because NATO war planes discharge their unused cluster bombs in various approved locations.
BELGRADE - Last week there was an International symposium dedicated to the recent NATO aggression, held in Novi Sad. I managed to go there, but I now wish I couldn't. After all, when you hear so many frightening facts, you start to wonder if there is any future at all or are we already dead but unaware of it.
The participants were independent researchers from Yugoslavia, the rest of Europe and the USA. The subject, the ecological catastrophe which is still hidden by official levels of the Yugoslav government, the European Union and the UN. Without any logical explanation, our government is trying to minimise this catastrophe and to hide the results of investigations or - even worse - not to talk in public about it at all. On the other hand, the independent researchers from our non-profit ecological organisations and from NGOs from other parts of the world gathered at that symposium have mentioned horrible findings. The analyst from USA John Pike and another one (I forgot his name but he is from San Diego), estimate that over 10,000 projectiles filled with the Depleted Uranium (DU) were fired on Kosovo alone and over 150 cruise missiles (Tomahawks,) most likely also with radioactive uranium, were dropped on targets in Belgrade.
The British scientists said that they expect at least 100,000 more people will die in Yugoslavia as victims of aftermath effect of radioactivity. This number does not include the KFOR soldiers In Kosovo, who are also exposed to the debris of DU projectiles.
Yet, NATO headquarters still refuses to disclose sites where DU bombs were dropped!
According to the independent group of Russian, Greek, Austrian and Swedish scientists, we can very soon (beginning next year) expect a conflagration of leukemia, cancer, genetic disorders, unexplainable diseases which will be present in the next 90 generations.
The ozone layer over Yugoslavia is totally destroyed.
The samples of earth from the region show the presence of toxic materials at a depth of 80 centimetres --- these are visible in the satellite pictures also --- which should be removed immediately. The catastrophe is estimated to be the first ecogenocide in the history of mankind. Worst than those in Bhopal (India), Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Hiroshima.
As I heard this, you cannot convince me that the NATO officials did not know what they were doing. Thanks to the standard operating procedure of estimating the effect of the action on the environment before proceding with bombardment, they had to know.
The river Danube is becoming a dead river - over 15 tons of ammonia, 1500 tons of oil, over 100 tons of mercury and over 50 tons of other cancenogenic materials were infused into it during the bombardment.
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You remember that after the end of the war, the experts from the FBI, Scotland Yard, Hague Tribunal, UN and who knows where else, were the first who come on Kosovo to investigate alleged mass-graves. According to the Rome daily L'Unita, investigations by international medical and specialised teams clearly show that no mass executions have been conducted in Kosovo. This was said on October 20 by a spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague. The paper said that the investigations to date, which it said had been thorough, by medical teams from 15 countries including the United States, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, France, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland and Great Britain, had only led to the discovery of 187 bodies in different locations.
In most of the places claimed to be the sites of mass execution like those at Trepca mine, Djakovica and Izbica, not a single body has been found, and the reports on mass graves launched by the international community during NATO's aggression on Yugoslavia, were, consequently, totally untrue. The international teams' investigations have shown that NATO's claim that it must bomb Yugoslavia to stop genocide in Kosovo was nothing but a pretext to do so because there was no genocide in the province in the first place, the daily said.
There is another article from La Liberazione issued on November 3 which reads: "Today, five months after the end of the NATO aggression, during which 500 experts of 15 countries investigated the legitimacy of the previous reports about mass graves, it can be said that these were simply lies".
The paper also quotes the head of a medical-investigative commission, Spanish doctor Emilio Perez Pujola as saying that the Spanish team was told to prepare for the worst, as it was going into Kosovo's real killing fields. It was told to prepare for over 2000 autopsies.
But the team's findings fell far short of those expectations. It found no mass graves and only 187 bodies, all buried in individual graves. The Spanish team's chief inspector compared Kosovo to Rwanda. "In the former Yugoslavia crimes were committed, some no doubt horrible, but they derived from the war," Juan Lopez Palafox is quoted. "In Rwanda we saw 450 corpses at one site of women and children, one on top of another, all with their heads broken open."
Now, when the entire region is contaminated with bombs filled with depleted uranium, when navigation on the Danube is blocked, when bridges are destroyed and no-one is reconstructing them, it will be difficult to find anyone who will believe new lies, La Liberazione said.
A friend of mine, 94 years old lady who was a personal friend of our last royal dynasty and is descendant of an old and respectable diplomatic family (her father was a royal ambassador before WWII), said to me last month: "My child, I can't recognise or understand this world. There is no honour, honesty and justice anymore. This is a world of lies and maybe it is time for me to die. But the soul is too deep and the Heaven is too high."
Indeed. And now what? Who's to blame for the fact that entire country is poisoned and doomed to die slowly? Not only Serbia and Montenegro, but Kosovo too.
Meanwhile, the KLA becomes stronger and stronger. Serbia and Montenegro are full of refugees. In Belgrade there are over 3000 Albanian refugees (not to mention other nationalities) and the new ones are coming every day. Kosovo Albanians are more and more the official targets of KLA murderers. What I wrote you last time is only a particle of a terrifying picture which paints a new Kosovo, almost ethnically clean with the blessing of UN.
You are probably already sick of my writing about this subject. Forgive me, but unfortunately this is my everyday reality. No matter how much I would like to neglect it....Another reason for the serious ecological alarm and warning of potential health hazard was the stark realisation that dreaded depleted uranium (DU) weapons used in the Gulf War with such devastating health consequences were being used by NATO against Yugoslavia. Dr. Rosalie Bertell, renowned Canadian humanitarian scientist and expert on low level radiation speaking in Toronto midway through the War explained the consequences of exposure to DU radiation:
"Canada has been an international leader against land mines but this depleted uranium is worse than land mines and ...will stay around for thousands of years after the war is over. It is incorporated into the farm land; it can be picked up by the vegetables; the shrapnel can be handled by children ; it stays around ; it doesn't disappear; and because it's an aerosol it can travel as much as 50 - 60 km from the point of release. This is chemical and radiological warfare - its outrageous - It's a very serious violation of human rights."
--- from "ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE -- NATO BOMBINGS in the BALKANS" dated August 01, 1999, by Dr. Janet M. Eaton
In 4 or 5 years the number of sick people will come to the 1 million. The most endangered cities are Novi Sad (refinery complex destroyed), Pancevo (petrochemical), Bor (huge amount of pyralen from the destroyed transformer stations), Kragujevac (auto-industry, chemical industry, transformer-station filled with pyralen), Kostolac (power plant), Lazarevac (transformer-station, power plant), Nis (entire industry complex including chemical plants), Belgrade (a little bit of everything) and Smederevo (petrol tanks).
In the city of Pancevo, doctors already have advised pregnant women to make an abortion and to avoid pregnancy at least in the next two years. The number of miscarriages and unexpectedly elicited abortions is already 4 times above last year's levels.
Yet there is another matter about which I'd like to write to you. Have you read Dostoievski? He wrote: "...God is dead. Man becomes God. Now, everything is possible". Also, Mark Twain wrote: "Human is a being created at the end of a week when God was tired". Luckily, I don't believe in God and I've stopped believe in justice. But sooner or latter (in our case too late), the truth must emerge.
The World's Magazine: generator21.net
Event # 192: Give for What You Take
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In an article from the Sunday Timesfrom November 1st it is reported that the British Foreign Minister Robin Cook has been accused in Parliament of making untrue statements about the situation in Kosovo during the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia. The British Parliament's all-party Balkans Committee has accused Cook of speaking untruths about the number of victims of alleged Serbian repression and deceiving the public in order to justify the March 24-June 10 aggression. The Sunday Timesnewspaper quotes findings by international experts in Kosovo. According to these findings, the number of ethnic Albanian victims of alleged Serbian repression in the course of NATO aggression was far lower than the western leaders had said while invariably accusing Serbia of "genocide." The Sunday Timesquotes Spanish expert Emilio Perez Pujol and the the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to the effect that the number of victims in Kosovo is not calculated in thousands, as was publicly insisted during the war, but rather in hundreds.
© 1999, GENERATOR 21.
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