forwarded by Eva
It's helpful to understand the history Europe and the Balkans: (double
click these website URLs to get there)
http://www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/
and for current info:
http://www.lbbs.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html
http://www.iacenter.org
http://www.keepfaith.com/
http://www.webcinema.org/war_diaries/
http://www.greens.org/kosovo.html
Also, here's a perspective on our violent society from Michael Moore,
of the TV show "The Awful Truth" http://www.theawfultruth.com
TO BE DEAD IN DENVER & DOWNTOWN PRISTINA
Michael Moore, April 22, 1999
Dear Friends,
There he was, The Great Consoler, standing
at the podium, biting his lip, and speaking to
a nation in shock.
"We must teach our children to settle their
differences through words and not weapons."
Meanwhile, this same President, continues
a daily slaughter of human beings. He says
it's because the people he is bombing are
doing their own slaughter. He has chosen to
respond to their actions not with "words" but
with death.
Is it any wonder some of our children -- especially
those in most pain, the "outcasts," the "uncool" --
decide to turn to murder and strike out against
what they perceive to be a world against them?
We live in a culture in America where violence is
The Way We Get Things Done. If it works for their
elders, why shouldn't the kids give it a try?
As the kids at the high school near Denver
huddled in locked classrooms in the hopes
that they would not be the next one with a
bullet in the face, they turned on the classroom
TVs to watch the carnage and their own
potential execution on CNN. One student,
"Bob," got on his cell phone and called the
local Channel 9 to give the on-air anchors a
live play-by-play of events inside the school.
"Bob," the anchors said after getting their
precious, Emmy-winning sound bytes, "maybe
you should hang up now and call 911."
"Uh, oh, yeah," responded Bob, sounding a bit
disappointed. His connection to the virtual world
of television and cellular communication was
more a part of his instinct to survive than his
need to call the cops. Or maybe he trusted the
people on TV more to get him out of there than
the full-time armed officer who patrolled the halls
of the high school. Not one gun of a well-armed
force of police that showed up was able to
prevent one death.
A world away, kids just a few years older than
Bob are dropping bombs that are killing kids
just a few years younger than Bob. We know
this because we watch it on TV. We learn why
we're dropping these bombs also on TV. A
man from the Pentagon shows us cool video
game images of point-and-click targets that
go "BOOM!" Cool.
Another man in an important uniform shows
us photographs from one of the Mother-of-All-
Cameras, those satellites that sit thousands
of miles up in space and have, I guess,
REALLY long lenses.
He shows us Photo #1. Here, he says, is
"unbroken, untouched ground" from a week ago.
Then he shows us Photo #2 where he points to
the ground being "freshly turned-over, dug up,
and replaced." This, he says, is evidence of
"a mass grave."
The reporters sit there like anxious pet dogs,
lapping up the "revelations" and eagerly
reporting them to us as "truth."
But these journalists failed to ask the man in
the important uniform one very important and
obvious question: "Where's the middle photo?"
If our satellite camera is always up there and
running, capturing the before and after of a
300 foot piece of dirt, where's the "during"
photo? The satellite cameras were snapping
pictures the whole time, so where's the photos
of the massacre itself? Where are the photos
of the Serbs transporting the bodies to the
"mass grave?" Where are the photos of the
bodies being placed in the "mass grave" and covered
with dirt? Where's just ONE photo of any of this?
Was the satellite camera on the blink during all
this activity? Was it only working before the
ground was dug and then only after it was
covered back up?
Where are those photos, Mr. Clinton and
Mr. Blair?
Members of our so-called free press: Where
is your courage to ask the obvious questions?
Why won't you? Why are we being lied to?
On the night of the Denver shootings, NATO (us)
bombed the building containing the three
Serbian TV entertainment networks. They
didn't bomb the news station putting out
the nightly propaganda until two nights later.
They chose to bomb the entertainment
networks first, one of which was showing
"Wag the Dog" with its fake Albanian
atrocity scenes, on a continuous loop.
Yes! Bomb the entertainment networks,
'cause it's all just one big show for a
violence-deprived public forced to sit through
a year of mostly-unconsummated oral sex in
oval offices. We'd much prefer the gore to
Gore and Bill. "The Matrix," a film about a
young hero in a trenchcoat who is able to
blows away everything in sight, is the
number one film this week in the country.
And as the children of Denver ran from the
trenchcoated killers, they were not met outside
by nurturing adults who might take them into their
arms to console and soothe them.
No, the students were ordered to run out with
their hands above their heads into the gun
sights of the local S.W.A.T team who herded
them up against a wall -- "KEEP YOUR
HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!" --
and frisked them with their other hand, the one
not holding a gun to their backs.
You see, the killer or killers might have been
amongst them, so all the children were
suspects, all potential murders in the eyes
of the state. Yes, it's our children who are
at fault, we are told -- They watch violent
movies! They listen to violent misogynist
music! They play violent video games!
Soon, they may be asked to die a violent
death on the fresh-but-recently-disturbed
soil of the Balkans.
They will be well prepared.
Yours,
Michael Moore
P.S. Charlton Heston and the N.R.A. have
stated that they intend to go ahead with their
national convention next week in Denver.
This deserves nothing less than a massive,
direct response from all sane yet thoroughly
disgusted Americans. What do you propose
that we do to stop these gun loving nuts in
Denver, once and for all?
----- End of forwarded message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----
