----- Original Message ----- From: John Jay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: STOP NATO: XNO PASARAN! <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 11:47 AM Subject: FW: A lone voice in Cambridge - Spoiling George Robertson's [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] "party"! STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A magnificent example of what should be done every time we get an opportunity to confront NATO's ringleaders, political apologists or members of their media-manipulation machine. Sara is an inspiration to us all...! (And brave too - I know what it's like to stand-up and shout against 'the stream'... surrounded by a pack of British sheep - who almost always "agree with you" quietly, afterwards, having frozen you to death with their silence and never offering a squeak of support when it really counted !) I too, am deeply, ashamed to have been born in this wretched land. John Jay ---------- From: Branka Josilo-Perry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Marbles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: FW: Spoiling George Robertson's "party"! Date: Sat, Mar 24, 2001, 12:23 am Bravo Sara, great stuff!! ---------- From: "Sara Payne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 23:04:41 -0000 To: "Janet Ganguli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Branka Josilo-Perry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Richard Keeble" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Spoiling George Robertson's "party"! Dear Friendsl, When George Robertson, Secretary-General of NATO delivered the Cambridge European Trust Lecture entitled "NATO: Promoting Peace through Partnership" at the Goldsmiths Hall, London today, I think he was banking on a sycophantic, subdued, composed audience of dignified, mostly middle aged Cambridge graduates to hear his platitudes and propaganda.about "bringing security and prosperity to SE Europe and to keep open the prospect of NATO membership to whoever wants to join". He started off by acknowledging the sumptuous surroundings of the Goldsmiths Hall. Yes, plenty of gold. "You could buy a cruise missile and a half with these" he said tastlessly waving his arm at mountains of gold plates and treasure stashed on the wall. Then he alluded to "demonstrations in Cambridge today". Did he mean our CamPeace meeting tomorrow, I wondered. Anyway then he was off, reminding us that today was the second anniversary of NATO's assault on Milosevic's military targets in Kosovo. No mention of the bombing of Serbia. And then followed the boring set speech about the glories of the Transatlantic Alliance, and how NATO now had established "a spider's web of profound security relations throughout the continent". And stuff about how one day he was sitting with President Putin in the Kremlin, and the next having talks in Washington with President Bush. "Can this really be happening to me, he said that he said to himself, in a parody of a Mark Steele spoof! "Mummy look at me, I am in a tank!" Then question time, two or three polite, anodyne questions on policy, then I managed to catch the eye of the chairman, John Eatwell, President of Queens' College, Cambridge (formerly economic adviser to Neil Kinnock) and it was my turn to have my say, a moment I have waited for these past two years. It was better than winning the Lottery, but a bit nerve wracking. "Secretary General", I said, "You started your speech by referring to the second anniversary of NATO's attack on military targets in Kosovo. Can I point that in fact you only hit 13 tanks, and when the Yugoslav Army withdrew from Kosovo they only left 4 damaged tanks behind." "No", I continued, "What you did was bomb and kill and injure hundreds, thousand of innocent civilians in Yugoslavia. You bombed hospitals, schools, historic buildings, you destroyed factories, the country's infrastructure and you used depleted uranium weapons which have destroyed the environment for ever. What's more you have overseen the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovan Serbs and other groups from Kosovo. And what about the destruction of the Orthodox churches? We talk about the destruction of monuments by the Taliban in Afghanistan, but what about the destruction of 100 Orthodox churches in Kosovo.?" I asked him whether he felt any sorrow for what he had done to the people of Yugoslavia, and I told him that I felt ashamed to be British because of NATO's attack, and that I would feel like that until I died. Well, then he got going, called me "Madam", and said that NATO had never targeted hospitals and schools, that where civilian targets had been hit, it was an accident. (Cluster bombs in Nis, I should have said). He spoke of some 500 deaths from NATO bombs, which he said was nothing compared to "the thousands killed by Milosevic forces, who had killed, raped and pillaged, etc." In fact he just went into Robertson rant mode as he had during the bombing saying that NATO had saved hundreds of thousands from death and ethnic cleansing. He told me I should go to Pristina and see the precision bombing of the Army Barracks, so I told him he should go to Pancevo where the daughter of a friend of mine was traumatised by the bombing of petrochemical plants, a fertiliser factory, the oil refinery, how she had fled the black rain pouring down. "This is what you did" I said and then went on to tell him that you can't say one party is all bad and we are all good. Well anyway as you can tell, I had my say,lthough I wish I had questioned the legality of it all. But I think I rattled him and perhaps the CIA stooges in the audience. One more benign question and then that was it, and do you know what, some of the people who had sat silent and embarrassed and so British throughout my interventions, came up to me and said "Well done, I agree with you, that was brave" and shook my hand. Why didn't they have the guts to support me publicly or challenge him themselves? I could not let him have it all his own way, painting his picture of how it was with all those self-serving NATO lies. Anyway I did stay for their vol au vents and mineral water, but didn't have another go at George! Incidentally a lady sitting in front of me, told me sotto voce at the beginning that her brother, who was a Major General in MI4 who had planned the Falklands invasion, had said two years ago that the NATO bombing escapade was wrong, and he had told Sir Charles Guthrie so. Well fat lot of good that did Postscript - as you know the Albanian extremists are now the baddies, no longer NATO's brave freedom fighters of two years ago! Ah well, as James Laughland says in today's Spectator it doesn't pay to have the British as your friend, because they will always sell you. If you are their enemy they will try to buy you. See you all tomorrow Saturday at the vigil from 12- 1.30 and the anniversary meeting at 2.30, McCrum Lecture Theatre, Benet St, by the Eagle PH. By the way, I gatecrashed that Goldsmiths Hall "do". I am not a member of Cambridge University! It gave me great pleasure to spoil their party! Sara ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
