Louis,
Sorry, but this does not prove doodley-squat.
Did those people see the planes that were doing the
bombing? How do they/Fisk know it wasn't the Serbs?
And, please, let's not get into how they would not
be so devious as to do this. Why not? Don't we
have people on these lists accusing the UCK/KLA
of staging the Racak massacre?
My own guess is 75/25 that it was NATO and not
the Serbs. But the fact that the second number is
greater than the boundary of statistical insignificance
of 5% is a measure of how low in mind the credibility
of the Serbs is in K-M. Again, let's protest that which
we are a lot more certain about. There's plenty of that.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, April 09, 1999 3:46 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:5060] Who bombed Pristina's downtown?
>> Let's stick to protesting the bombing that we do know NATO
>>is doing, like on Belgrade and Novi Sad. There is quite enough to protest
>>about in those environs without becoming suckers for
>>half-baked Serbian propaganda.
>>Barkley Rosser
>
>The Independent (London)
>
>April 9, 1999, Friday
>
>WAR IN THE BALKANS: TRUTH IS DYING IN THE RUINS OF SILENT CAPITAL
>
>Robert Fisk In Pristina
>
> IF THERE are lies, damned lies and statistics, the Kosovo war has now
>moved into damned lies. Just a week ago, we had the Serbs claiming that the
>Albanians - far from being "ethnically cleansed" - were setting fire to
>their own homes. Now we have Nato claiming that the Serbs of Pristina - far
>from being bombed by Nato - were blowing up their own homes. In the centre
>of this empty, silent city, you might be forgiven for thinking that the
>world had gone mad.
>
>The Serbs are spending much of their time insisting that the tens of
>thousands of Albanians who have palpably disappeared from the capital of
>Kosovo are merely hiding from Nato bombs. In which case, why is every house
>empty, every Albanian street deserted, every Albanian shop smashed and
>plundered and daubed with Serb graffiti?
>
>Why did the fearful group of non-Serb refugees we saw at the disused
>railway tracks shamble in exhaustion and fear through the city, a mass of
>filthy clothes and old sacks and haggard faces, a live re-enactment of
>Schindler's List? Why did lights still burn in broken homes and front doors
>bang in the wind and why were the contents of the Albanian chemist's shop
>strewn over the pavement on the edge of town?
>
>Then we have Nato's brutal air raid on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
>It killed at least 10 civilians, it destroyed the post office, the largest
>bank in town and a whole row of civilian homes. One bomb crater had totally
>erased a single-storey house. At least two craters were 30 feet deep and
>the bomb that hit the post office had brought part of the building crashing
>to the ground. When I talked to Serbs who live in the centre of Pristina -
>alone and in many cases almost too angry to speak to a citizen of a Nato
>country - they all gave detailed descriptions of the night of air raids.
>
>When Valentina Jovanovic came to the door of her house in the capital, she
>was still in a state of shock, drawing heavily on a cigarette, her fingers
>shaking, as frightened of her own voice as she was angry to find an
>Englishman outside her home. "They bombed first at 11 o'clock. Then they
>came back at 1 o'clock. Then again at three this morning. They bombed and
>bombed and bombed. Why?"
>
>A few hours later, Air Commodore David Wilby told a Nato briefing that in
>Pristina "Nato has certainly not caused the widespread and random damage,
>which we believe has been caused by Serb forces".
>
>But while it is true that - at the start of its air bombardment - Nato
>attacked exclusively military targets, the American-European alliance is
>now hitting civilians. And I believe that Valentina Jovanovic was telling
>me the truth in Pristina. I do not believe Air Commodore Wilby was telling
>us the truth in Brussels.
>
>Only aerial bombing could have pulverised the centre of the city in so
>shocking a way. Only missiles or air-fired ordnance could have gouged such
>craters into the ruins. No Serb - however devious - could have created this
>disgraceful scene in just a few hours, priming the entire Serb population
>of the area to tell every journalist an identical story.
>
>Either Nato made a terrible mistake in Pristina or, egged on perhaps by its
>Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla allies, it committed a terrible
>deed. No wonder the Serbs - who brought journalists to Kosovo to see the
>ruins but allowed them to walk unaccompanied through this part of the town
>- were so willing to have this shameful scene filmed.
>
>
>Louis Proyect
>
>(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
>
>
