Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 17:39:46 +0000 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Paul Swann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Two very disturbing reports...and some hope for united action. Paul http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/The_Paper/Daily/Story/0,3604,47314,00.html Nuclear war, courtesy of Nato Kosovo, like Vietnam, has liberal support. But what of our weapons? By John Pilger The Guardian, London Tuesday May 4, 1999 The 'just and noble liberal war', in which Nato bombs have now incinerated people on a bus, having already killed passengers on a train, refugees on tractors, the elderly in a hostel, workers in factories and children in their homes, is not the first. Vietnam was a liberals' war, described as a 'righteous crusade' by Bill Clinton's hero, John Kennedy, and a 'noble cause' by Ronald Reagan, a conservative. The labels are important only as illusion, now that Clinton is Reagan and Blair is Thatcher. Nato's 'new vision' is to seek justification for American-led attacks all over the world. When communism retired from the cold war game, the 'war on drugs' was used to justify renewed American military intervention in Latin America. After that, the pursuit of demons took over. Demons are dictators of no further use to Washington. There was General Noriega in Panama, where the US invasion cost 2,000 lives, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq (200,000 lives) and various warlords in Somalia (7,000 lives). Now it is the turn of Milosevic, with whom Clinton and Blair share responsibility for emptying most of Kosovo. Demons as a justification for attacking countries have since been reinforced by Weapons of Mass Destruction, or WMD. These are chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, the possession of which, says Nato literature, 'may require pre-emptive retaliation'. The ferocity of the continuing military and economic assault on Iraq is justified in this way - when the real reason has to do with the policing of an expanded American protectorate from the Gulf to the Caspian Sea. The hypocrisy is on a grand scale. Only one nation on earth has used all three WMDs: the United States. Smallpox was used to ethnically cleanse Native Americans and to spread plague in Cuba. Chemicals were used in Vietnam: between 1961 and 1971, American planes dropped on South Vietnam a defoliant, Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, a poison that causes foetal death, congenital defects and cancer (this was code-named Operation Hades). When a Congressional inquiry revealed that the equivalent of six pounds of dioxin had been dumped on every man, woman and child in South Vietnam, Operation Hades was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand, and the spraying continued. A pattern of deformities began to emerge: babies born without eyes, with deformed hearts and small brains and stumps instead of legs. I glimpsed these children in contaminated villages in the Mekong Delta; and whenever I asked about them, people pointed to the sky; one man scratched in the dust a good likeness of a bulbous C-130 aircraft, spraying. In the towns and cities, it was not unusual to see deformed children begging. They were known as 'Agent Orange babies'. Recently, at the Tu Do hospital in Saigon, I was shown a group of newborn babies, all of whom had Agent Orange deformities. The war that officially ended in 1975 goes on; contaminated soil and water are poisoning a third generation. Unlike American and Australian veterans of the war, who have been finally compensated by the manufacturers of dioxin, the Vietnamese have received nothing. Now a five-year Canadian study has discovered that dioxin runs right through Vietnam's food chain and has called for international help in decontaminating agricultural land, forests and waterways. The cost of one F-16 bomber would pay for this. 'Can you imagine pilots from a democratic country doing such a thing deliberately?' said Jamie, the Nato spin doctor, following the craven killing of refugees by an F-16 pilot. Today, the same pilots are spreading over Serbia and Kosovo a poison potentially as cataclysmic as Agent Orange. It is carried in depleted uranium, which makes missiles and shells more destructive. This is how Rosalie Bertell, a Canadian specialist, describes the effects on humans: 'Depleted uranium comes from radioactive waste produced for nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry. It can pierce tanks and release a deadly radioactive aerosol of uranium, unlike anything seen before. This lies in the dust or is suspended in the air, or carried in the wind. It penetrates the lung tissue and enters the blood stream, storing in the liver, kidney and bone and irradiating all the delicate tissues. It can initiate cancer or promote cancer.' The truth is that the US and Britain are engaged in a form of nuclear warfare in the Balkans. In 1996, the United Nations Human Rights Tribunal called depleted uranium a WMD. Like the Agent Orange babies of Vietnam, the deformed and cancer-stricken children of southern Iraq, where depleted uranium was tested by British and American forces during the 1991 Gulf war, bear witness to the true nature of righteous Western crusades. Civilised people should speak out urgently before the latest noble cause claims more expendable victims and beckons a world war. No amount of specious moralising will conceal the scale of the crime. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 1999 _____________________________________________ Delivered-To: pswann From: "Janet M. Eaton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 12:52:25 +0000 Subject: Balkan Ecologists Sign Joint Declaration vs NATO Bombing & Pollu ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS) ECOLOGISTS ACROSS THE BALKANS SIGN JOINT DECLARATION MAY 5, 1999 http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may99/1999L-05-05-02.html Ecologists Across the Balkans Sign Joint Declaration By Natasa Dokovska SKOPJE, Macedonia, May 5, 1999 (ENS) - All the ecological groups of the warring Balkan countries have joined in signing a Declaration against NATO bombing and pollution in the region. At the initiative of the Macedonian environmental movement, the document was sent around for everyone to sign. It has now been signed by Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Declaration asks that NATO stop the bombing immediately for the safety of the world. If the bombing is not stopped, environmentalists from across the Balkans intend to organize a massive demonstration of solidarity that transcends the conflict. In the Declaration the environmental movements say that depleted uranium, which NATO forces are using in the attack on Yugoslavia, is being dispersed with intensive clouds of flame and scattering radioactive particles across the region. Depleted uranium is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process used for making atomic bombs and nuclear fuel. It is used in the creation of shell casings because its extreme density increases the shells' armor-piercing capability. Depleted uranium is categorized as a low-level radiation hazard. In a United States Defense Department briefing on May 3, Major General Wald confirmed that A-10 Warthog jets have been firing shells with casings made of depleted uranium. These low-flying slow planes can carry numerous armaments and are used against tanks. NATO admits it is using depleted uranium in shells, but says the amounts of radioactivity released are too low to affect human health. Major General Wald downplayed the risk from depleted uranium. "I know that I see the munitions handlers put these bullets in the aircraft, holding on to them for 20 years, so they've done a lot of scientific studies on these things, and there doesn't seem to be a problem," he said Monday. But many people across the Balkans do not believe these assertions. In their joint Declaration, the ecologists say depleted uranium has a serious effect on the health of military personnel, and on that of the ordinary people. The Balkan environmentalists have support in the United States for their campaign against depleted uranium (DU). Sara Flounders, a contributing author of the book "Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium" and co-director of the New York based International Action Center, said, "The use of Warthogs with DU shells threatens to make a nuclear wasteland of Kosovo. The Pentagon is laying waste to the very people, along with their children, they claim to be saving. This is another reason for fighting to end NATO's attack on Yugoslavia." Balkan ecologists believe that NATO has taken up arms against the Serbs without thought for the environment and the effects on human health. <remainder of article snipped> c Environment News Service (ENS) 1999. All Rights Reserved. ======================================== > > FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 130 W. 25th Street New > > York, NY 10001 Slanted Sources in NewsHour and Nightline Kosovo Coverage > > > > May 5, 1999 > > > > A FAIR analysis of sources on ABC's Nightline and PBS's NewsHour during > > the first two weeks of the bombing of Yugoslavia found an abundance of > > representatives of the U.S. government and NATO, along with many other > > supporters of the NATO bombing. Opponents of the airstrikes received > > scant attention, however; in almost all stories, debate focused on > > whether or not NATO should supplement bombing with ground troops, while > > questions about the basic ethics and rationales of the bombing went > > largely unasked. > > > > FAIR's survey was based on a search of the Nexis database for stories on > > the war between March 25 and April 8, identifying both guests who were > > interviewed live and sources who spoke on taped segments. Sources were > > classified according to the institutions or groups they represented, and > > by the opinions they voiced on NATO's military involvement in > > Yugoslavia. > > > > Of 291 sources that appeared on the two shows during the study period, > > only 24--or 8 percent--were critics of the NATO airstrikes. Critics were > > 10 percent of sources on the NewsHour, and only 5 percent on Nightline. > > Only four critics appeared live as interview guests on the shows, 6 > > percent of all discussion guests. Just one critic appeared as a guest on > > Nightline during > > the entire two-week time period. > > > > The largest single source group, 45 percent, was composed of current or > > former U.S. government and military officials, NATO representatives and > > NATO troops. > > > > On Nightline, this group accounted for a majority of sources (55 > > percent), while providing a substantial 39 percent on the NewsHour. It > > also provided the largest percentage of live interviewees: 50 percent on > > Nightline (six of 12) and 42 percent on the NewsHour (24 of 57). > > (Numerous U.S. aviators who appeared on Nightline's 3/29/99 edition were > > left out of the study, because their identities could not be > > distinguished.) > > > > Overall, the most commonly cited individuals from this group were > > President Bill Clinton (14 cites), State Department spokesperson James > > Rubin (11) and NATO spokesperson David Wilby (10). Of course, these > > sources were uniformly supportive of NATO's actions. A quote from the > > NewsHour's Margaret Warner (3/31/99) reveals the homogeneity of a > > typical source pool: "We get four perspectives now on NATO's mission and > > options from four retired military leaders." > > > > Former government officials were seldom more critical of NATO's > > involvement in Yugoslavia. Cited less than one-third as often as current > > politicians, former government officials mainly confined their > > skepticism to NATO's reluctance to use ground troops. Bob Dole > > (Nightline, 3/31/99) voiced the prevailing attitude when he said, "I > > just want President Clinton=85not to get wobbly." > > > > Albanian refugees and KLA spokespeople made up 18 percent of sources (17 > > percent on the NewsHour, 19 percent on Nightline), while relief workers > > and members of the U.N. Commission for Refugees accounted for another 4 > > percent on NewsHour and 2 percent on Nightline. Sources from these > > groups also provided 4 percent of live interviewees on the NewsHour and > > 25 percent on Nightline. > > > > These sources stressed the Kosovar refugees' desperation, and expressed > > gratitude for NATO's airstrikes. Said one KLA member (Nightline, > > 4/1/99), "The NATO bombing has [helped and] has been accepted by the > > Albanian people." Although one refugee (Nightline, 4/1/99) suggested > > otherwise--"We run away because of NATO bombing, not because of Serbs" > > --all other sources in this group either defended or did not comment on > > NATO's military > > involvement in the conflict. > > > > Those most likely to criticize NATO--Yugoslavian government officials, > > Serbians and > > Serbian-Americans--accounted for only 6 percent of sources on the > > NewsHour and 9 percent on Nightline. Overall, only two of these sources > > appeared as live interviewees: Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesperson > > Nebojsa Vujovic (Nightline, 4/6/99) and Yugoslav Ambassador to the > > United Nations Vladislav Jovanovic (NewsHour, 4/1/99). This group's > > comments contrasted radically with statements made by members of other > > source groups, e.g., calling NATO's bombing "unjustified aggression" > > (Nightline, 4/6/99), and charging that NATO is "killing Serbian kids." > > (NewsHour, 4/2/99) > > > > On Nightline, no American sources other than Serbian-Americans > > criticized NATO's airstrikes. On the NewsHour, there were seven > > non-Serbian American critics (4 percent of all sources); these included > > schoolchildren, teachers and college newspaper editors, in addition to a > > few journalists. Three out of the seven American sources who criticized > > the NATO bombing appeared as live interviewees, while the rest spoke on > > taped segments. > > Officials from non-NATO national governments other than Yugoslavia, such > > as Russia's and Macedonia's, accounted for only 2 percent of total > > sources (3 percent on the NewsHour, 0 percent on Nightline) and added > > only four more critical voices overall. Only twice did a government > > official from these countries appear as a live interviewee (NewsHour, > > 3/30/99, 4/7/99). > > > > Eleven percent of sources came from American and European journalists: 7 > > percent on Nightline, 13 percent on the NewsHour. This group also > > claimed 17 percent of all live interviews on Nightline and 40 percent on > > the NewsHour. In discussions with these sources, which tended to focus > > on the U.S. government's success in justifying its mission to the > > public, independent political analysis was often replaced by suggestions > > for how the U.S. government could cultivate more public support for the > > bombing. > > > > Three independent Serbian journalists also appeared--two on the NewsHour > > and one on Nightline--but they did not add any voices to the > > anti-bombing camp. Instead, they spoke about the Serbian government's > > censorship of the independent media. Of a total of 34 journalists used > > as sources on both shows, only four opposed the NATO airstrikes. Three > > of these four appeared as live interviewees, and all four appeared on > > the NewsHour. > > > > Academic experts--mainly think tank scholars and professors--made up > > only 2 percent of sources on the NewsHour and 5 percent on Nightline. > > (Experts who are former government or military officials were counted in > > the former government or military categories; these accounted for five > > sources.) On the NewsHour, the only think tank spokesperson who appeared > > was from the military-oriented Rand Corporation, while Nightline's two > > were both from the centrist Brookings Institution. Just two experts > > appeared in live interviews on the NewsHour, and no expert source was > > interviewed live on Nightline. While these percentages reflect a dearth > > of scholarly opinion in > > both shows, even the experts who were consulted didn't add much > > diversity to the discussion; none spoke critically of NATO's actions. > > > > On a Nightline episode in early April that criticized Serbian media > > (4/1/99), Ted Koppel declared: "The truth is more easily suppressed in > > an authoritarian country and more likely to emerge in a free country > > like ours." But given the obvious under-representation of NATO critics > > on elite American news shows, independent reporting seems to also be a > > foreign concept to U.S. media. > > > > This report was researched and written by Margaret Farrand, a history > > student at Columbia University. >
