Thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts at this solemn
occasion.
This weekend marks the 2nd anniversary of our government's murder
of innocent people in Yugoslavia.
As a Canadian citizen born and raised in
this country I and my family have been lucky enough to have never suffered
from a foreign military aggression. Consequently, I didn't have a personal
common history nor a personal common experience with many of you until two years
ago; now, we all live together in a country whose government has
broken our
laws and stolen our money to murder both the helpless and the honourable.
We all read the same lies here in our newspapers, listened to the same lies on radio. We still do.
We all waited for the same Russian cavalry which never arrived.
Who amongst you gathered here today didn't watch CNN ask, "What's wrong with
our society?" as children shot
each other at Columbine High School- while it
reported the justification of adults from the same country bombing
children
in high schools overseas?
I'm still waiting for an answer as to how directing a cluster bomb near a
World Heritage Site or a marketplace or a
bus station helps to save the
lives of innocent people hundreds of miles away who are running from those same
types of bombs- all dropped by the same so-called 'humanitarians'. I'm still
waiting for an answer as to how
yesterday's terrorists who killed the
innocent became Canadian allies, freedom fighters, and the police force
of
Kosovo all wrapped into one- while still killing the innocent even as you are
gathered here today.
I'm asking myself how a government that agrees to autonomy during meetings at
Rambouillet can be accused
of plotting something called "Operation
Horseshoe" at the same time. I'm wondering how Canadians could murder
the
children of a country that at the same place and at the same time just asked our
country if they could join
their NATO alliance. I'm wondering about why
anyone anywhere would believe accusations of this so-called
'ethnic
cleansing' coming from a country that not that long ago systematically deployed
racial segregation.
And I'm wondering how our country can allow 'language
laws'.
And it puzzles me how both the US and Canada can point the finger at anyone after forcing their own natives onto reservations. I also wonder how a 'dictatorship' using 'repressive' means can guarantee education, health, and employment in over twenty languages to those it is 'repressing'- or how a 'human rights violator' somehow allows the schools, hospitals, and churches of those it is 'ethnically cleansing' to remain intact; in fact, the 'violating' state even pays for most of it.
I wonder how so-called 'ethnic cleansing' involves riding an air-conditioned
bus to safety, escorted by none other
than what our government calls the
'Serb aggressors'.
I wonder how defending your country constitutes 'aggression'. I wonder how
those who paid for and perpetrated
the real aggression are known as
'peacekeepers'.
Since our beloved CBC found the time and resources to produce an
award-winning documentary of a KLA woman
whose sister was 'murdered by the
Serbs', I'm wondering two things: why this sister turned up alive and well and
unharmed- but the CBC still kept their award anyway; and secondly, why couldn't
this same CBC find the time and resources to interview and film some of the many
hundreds of thousands of Muslims who fled north from Kosovo-
to Belgrade,
which welcomed them with open arms- for safety during what we are still being
told was a
'humanitarian intervention' to save
them..........................from Belgrade.
I'm puzzled by the silence of the Globe and Mails and National Posts of
Canada who watch as Agim Ceku first
tries to murder Canadians in Croatia,
then is protected by Canadians in Kosovo as the new police chief.
I'm
puzzled as to why none of our mainstream media comment as to why the Germans
have to force back
to Kosovo so-called 'victims of the Serbs' long after
these 'Serb aggressors' have left.
There are also two other things we have in common now. We have many questions
that we ask of the
bombers, and we have no truthful answers from any of
them.
Try to get a truthful answer from Canadian child killers and their superiors by asking how someone who suffered tuberculosis and is sheltered, fed, and cared for by Serbs suddenly becomes 'a victim of Serb death camps' photographed by trickery to appear to be imprisoned behind barbed wire- followed shortly after by NATO bombings of innocent people. Try to get a truthful answer from the cripplers of ordinary hard-working, law-abiding people by asking how "a massacre of innocent civilians at Racak, forced to kneel in the mud and beg for their lives" really means gunpowder residue on the hands of armed insurrectionists shot while firing weapons at the police- after refusing to surrender.
Then ask how this "massacre" was attended by film crews invited to watch by
"the perpetrators of this massacre" before the "massacre" even took place -
followed shortly thereafter by yet another NATO bombing of innocent people.
Ask anyone of our 'independant' news media or anyone of our country's
political leaders from any of our political parties
in the House of Commons
how a regularly-scheduled passenger train is bombed twice within minutes by
"accident"- the first time to cripple the machine, the second time to kill the
defenceless people trapped inside- when this "accident" involves manually using
a joystick to divert missiles AWAY from the unoccupied part of a bridge and
TOWARDS the target.
We all know this particular event was also filmed- and shown to us at three times normal speed, also by "accident" according to our government's real spokesmen: Jamie Shea, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Madeleine Albright (herself saved by Serbs, the very same people whose friends and relatives she orders murdered years later) and the other savages in NATO.
The questions are innumerable but all of them have only one answer. The same
answer. This answer can be found
at a press conference given by this same
Jamie Shea in April/99, in which he congratulates his fellow NATO
personnel
for "...another very effective day of operations..."
Less than 24 hours earlier, NATO had just murdered hundreds of ordinary people in and around Korisa- ordinary people moving in different groups and in different directions. Ordinary people in Yugoslavia who were moving to begin with because hours earlier NATO had bombed them out of their homes in what everyone tells us was an example of "protection" from the Serbs who had defended them while they were still in their homes.
That answers any of my questions, and any of yours I'm sure. For me, it answers how 19 countries can share the technology to sit on the edge of outer space and read a license plate miles below, and yet tell us that they can't read the correct address of an embassy listed in a phone book an inch away from their faces. It answers how a TV station can be bombed because they tell us it's reporters are a propaganda machine of Milosevic, while the same types of bombers sit together with the reporters at CNN and invite an elected Yugoslav Member of Parliament to an interview in that same TV station- at the exact time the station is scheduled to be bombed- by those who are sitting at those same desks at CNN.
We all know what has happened here. We all know that there is no shame
amongst the plotters of murder, theft, and deception. We all know that I'm
speaking of the highest elected officials of this country. We all know who
elected
them and we all know most of those don't bear any shame either.
The best thing we can do is to keep asking the questions for which we already know the answers to; only by embarassing the electors can we hope to unsettle the elected. Ask your police chiefs and your police officers why those who fought cold-blooded murderers and drug traffickers are considered 'criminals' by those whom the same police chiefs and their officers are sworn to protect. Ask the representatives of all religious denominations in this country why their leaders have not come out with ongoing, direct statements condemning the targeting of innocents. Ask your school boards why they can't find the will to author a joint statement condemning the theft of taxpayer dollars that should have been used for education here, rather than being stolen and then used for the destruction of buildings of learning in Yugoslavia. Ask your medical boards and the federal Health Ministry why money could not be found by the Canadian federal government to keep hospitals open in this country, while at the same time revenue was stolen to finance the bombing of hospitals overseas.
Put them all on the spot. Ask your elected Members of Parliament why they have always been silent on these issues except to patronize us and insult our intelligence with propaganda. Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis may prove to be an exception if approached with written questions in this regard- he's the only one I've found who (once, and I believe it was in the House of Commons, May 10/99) decried this government's targeting of civilians during those 78 days of murder.
Commemoration of the dead means remembering the honourable, the innocent, and
the perpetrators.
Let's remember-and remind- the guilty with our questions.
Ask these same federal MPs what their definition of a 'two-tier' health
system means in practice. Ask them why their
'two-tier' actions have
supported one level of health safety here, and one level of health destruction
elsewhere.
Ask your Globe and Mails and your National Posts and your local papers how
they can call something 'collateral
damage' when it is planned many years
ahead of time, and how this 'collateral damage' is caused by repeatedly
and
deliberately circling over a target before firing.
Call your CBC office and inquire as to when they plan to do an 'exclusive interview' with the Spanish Air Force pilot who told us early on in these Canadian-sponsored atrocities in Yugoslavia that the ordinary people were the target from Day One.
And ask all of these people this: if our government embarked on such a noble
cause, then why is it that they still
have to keep lying to us?
Thank you again for your time today.
I hope to meet some of you one
day and shake the hands of those with such spirit and determination.
Sincerely, Chris Soda
June 2001
