US/NATO Newspeak Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ............................................................... source - Kim Scipes Folks-- I have sent this to the Chicago Tribune. I doubt they will publish it, so I send it out to you of my broader list so you can see it. It looks to me that the mass media is focusing on the terrible atrocities committed by Serbian police and paramilitaries and ignoring those committed by the KLA and US/NATO. It is no different than during the war--and it is just as wrong. But it is now being used, not only to "justify" the war but to also undermine any critical examination of US/NATO. We can't let the media try to run its game without protesting it. Best wishes-- Kim Scipes US Marine Corps, 1969-1973 ---------------------------------------------------------- Letter to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune Dear Editor: While searching the Tribune's web site on June 16th , I found Ron Grossman's review of the novel 1984. And then I went to the editorial page, where I found your editorial mocking the possibility that NATO had committed war crimes in Yugoslavia. The irony--I'm sure--was unintended; but you provided one of the best examples of "Newspeak" I've seen, at least since the last NATO press briefing. NATO's war on Yugoslavia--despite the atrocities committed by Serbian police and paramilitary forces--was illegal: it violated the charter of the United Nations, of which the US was a founder, which says that no nation can attack another. (Yugoslavia had not attacked any other country.) It took a low-grade internal conflict between the Yugoslav authorities and ethnic Albanian nationalists seeking independence (and a "Greater Albania")--as tragic as some of the killings were by both sides of the conflict--and turned it into an international tragedy described by a British journalist in Kosovo as being "of biblical proportions." (For comparison: 2,000 people were killed in Yugoslavia in 1998, and this was used to "justify" the war--and yet, 18,200 people had been murdered in the US in 1997!) And while nothing can take away the responsibility from Serbian perpetrators for the murders, rapes and destruction they committed, the fact is that most of these took place AFTER the onslaught of NATO bombing--as NATO was warned would happen beforehand--so NATO bears at least some responsibility for the deaths, rapes, destruction and other attacks. To state otherwise returns us to the "Soviet school" of falsification, which just "whitewashed" out inconvenient factsor shall we refer to it as "Newspeak"? Additionally, there is no question that NATO's attacks on Serbian infrastructure was criminal. Branding everything as being "of potential military use," NATO directly attacked media outlets, electrical grids, water pumping stations, and not only in Kosovo, but across Serbia. Only the most abject apologists of NATO would rationalize these as having military value. If NATO bombed sites in the US that were responsible for continuing the war--to put the shoe on the other foot--then certainly EVERY major media outlet in this country, specifically including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, would have been bombed. Atrocities carried out by the Serbs were terrible--of that, there is no doubt. However, atrocities carried out by the KLA were also terrible, as were those by NATO. The person killed by a Serbian paramilitary is no more dead than a civilian killed by a NATO bomb. There are not and have not been any "good guys" in this conflict. My hope is that Slobadan Milosevik gets tried for his war crimes. But I also hope that Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair and other NATO "leaders" are placed in the dock alongside him. To put it plainly, I support the efforts to investigate NATO war crimes. Kim Scipes 3739 W. Palmer St. Chicago, IL 60647 US Marine Corps, 1969-1973 Tel: 773/227-8974 E-mail: sscipe1@icarus.cc.uic.edu ================================================================= 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-06.23.99-11:54:02-198