J. Pilger -Focus on Kosovo Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ............................................................... source - jclancy@peg.apc.org The Guardian, Melbourne June 17 1999 Focus On Kosovo Moral sightseeing by the West/ OPINION John Pilger Walter Rockler, the American lawyer who prosecuted the Nazis at Nuremberg, recently referred to the crimes of Slobodan Milosevic. "The notion that these can be redressed," he wrote, "with random destruction and killing by advanced technological means is mere pretext for our arrogant assertion of dominance and power [and] constitutes a continuing war crime." He quoted the playwright Henrik lbsen: "Don't use that foreign word 'ideals'. We have that excellent native word 'lies'." The "humanitarian victory" in the Balkans is false, because it is based on lies. The biggest lie was Nato's declared objective. "It is clear cut," said George Robertson on March 25. "It is to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe." The opposite was true. "Bombing will imperil the lives of tens of thousands of refugees," pleaded the Catholic Relief Services from Kosovo. Nato provoked a wave of Serbian atrocities and expulsions, giving Milosevic the catastrophe he wanted, all of which was "entirely predictable", remarked General Clark, forgetting the script. What kind of humanitarian victory leaves 10,000 innocent civilians dead or maimed, their country and region poisoned, and Kosovo in ruins, littered with explosives and atomic dust from depleted uranium? What kind of just cause undermines the very democratic forces capable of removing a vicious tyrant? For all Tony Blair's moralising and media stunts in refugee camps, he saw to it that Britain took a miserly 2,000 Kosovar refugees. Even far-away Australia took double that figure. Another big lie was spun by those echoing Queen Victoria's description of the Crimean war as "popular beyond belief". At least a third of the British people were against it, a remarkable figure when you consider the barrage of pro-war propaganda. The Washington Post said a majority of Americans rejected the notion that Nato "did the right thing".It was the opponents of the bombing who exposed the hypocrisy of Western leaders and their long appeasement of the blood- soaked Milosevic as "the man we can do business with, who understands the realities of Yugoslavia". As recently as last October the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, and other European Union ministers were arguing Milosevic's case -- that his actions in Kosovo were in response to the Kosovo Liberation Army's "terrorism" and its violations of United Nations Security Council resolution 1199. A senior United States official described Milosevic as "Nato's indispensable partner in the effort to stabilise Kosovo". The author David Edwards describes "a kind of moral sightseeing whereby we observe the 'terrible tragedy' of human rights abuses, but do not even discuss, let alone deal with their true causes". An almost wilful refusal to trace the contours and true motives of great power, simply because it is "ours", transforms those paid to keep the record straight to mere moral sightseers of the Princess Diana school. Will they dare look into the shadows now forming? Last year the Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele wrote of an American strategy to launch a nuclear bomb at "rogue" states. That is quite possible now. In the meantime Serbia and forgotten Iraq provide the enforcer's blueprint. Destroy the country, terrorise the people, keep the tyrant. In Iraq, 4,000 infants die every month as a direct result of Anglo-American-led sanctions. The US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was asked about this. "This is a very hard choice," she replied, "but we think the price is worth it. ================================================================= 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: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nyteeu-06.23.99-10:59:29-10709