Author’s Note: “Nation Taking As Extreme Politics” is an essay examining the process by which nations are being stripped of their autonomy by various forms of geopolitical, military and economic weapons. Using primarily NATO’s effort to take total possession of Yugoslavia as an example, the reader will be shown the stark brutality of technobarbarism and the rise of global fascism as an economic world model.
I do not pretend to be an expert in foreign affairs nor do I have any great command of history of the region. I am, however, a talented observer of patterns and see in NATO’s illegal ransacking of Yugoslavia, like other destabilization strategies in foreign affairs, a predictable outcome based on a predictable goal. “Nation Taking As Extreme Politics” is a condemnation of N ATO’s brutal destruction of Yugoslavia, the hypocrisy of NATO’s members and their underwriters in the multinational fraternity of war racketeers.
This essay is dedicated to the men, women and children of Yugoslavia, who, despite their suffering and loss, still strive for a united nation built upon the foundation of representative law making. Ultimately, it is in this process, that liberty is inherited and freedom preserved anywhere on Earth. I invite every person who supported NATO’s bomb ing of Yugoslavia to see this undeclared war and “nation taking” from another point of view.—Zoh M. Hieronimus, January 13, 2000
The ruins of Kosovo are, for me, a sorry symbol on the lid of the 20th century. When the corporate state underwrites the destabilization of a nation through its government contractors, and then facilitates, through loans and hiring contracts, the rebuilding or takeover of the demolished territory and its economy, neither our laws nor our governments offer sanctuary. Yet, those subject to this megalithic global oppression have not identified the nature of this system that is attacking all nations simultaneously. As a member of the media, I believe if the media would shine a light on this insidious for-profit death economy, as evidenced in the U.S.’s drug war or NATO’s international wars, humanity would rise up and insist upon the creation of a life economy, or one that would value all life on Earth above all else.
NATOSLAVIA —THE NATION TAKEOVER
The occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO in 1999 is an example of modern day imperialism. It is a demonstration of “nation taking”, much like a corporate takeover. Nation taking, like some corporate buy-outs, is a f orm of brutish lawlessness, in this case militarized corporatism. It is a form of global seizure. Those in power have been selling off the nationstate; in some cases they sold out by privatizing state functions and infrastructures, and in others by militarizing the community in order to diminish sovereign liberties.
The occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO is also an example of “extreme politics” where there is no rule of law, only the rule of takeover. Gone were representative and written law, and in their place a political class take-over, an institutionalized oligarchy’s seizure. As Professor Thomas Dye of Florida State University observes, in America, for example, this core elite team is composed of no more than 7,000 people (both elected and unelected). They promote initiatives through bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Commission on Uniform Code Of Law, and expres sly limit the citizen’s role in representative law making, helping to facilitate a quasi-military dictatorship. From the murders at Waco, to the murders in Yugoslavia, the only rules are those of a monopoly of force plus a sales campaign to pitch the aggression as necessary and beneficial.
HOW TO JUSTIFY THE RANSACKING OF A NATION
In an effort to explain its own justification for bombing a sovereign nation without provocation and without jurisdiction to do so, NATO manufactured a bogus humanitarian crisis in Yugoslavia. But NATO’s explanations were unacceptable to any rational human being. It was hard to explain just how destroying entire cities, institutions, bridges, telecommunications systems and neighborhoods was a humanitarian mission. It was difficult to justify how displacing a million people in several weeks was a humanitarian mission. It was difficult to understand how displacing people without having already planned for their safe evacuation and temporary housing was a humanitarian mission. It was difficult to appreciate how bombing communities that were innocent of any crimes was a humanitarian mission. It was next to impossible to understand how a humanitarian mission could require so much devastation of homes, livelihoods, and in thousands of cases, people’s very lives. But in fact, this was the pitch job the western powers were making, and the picture the western media supported which in turn convinced the majority of Americans to support.
NATO’S DEMOLITION OF PLACE MEMORY
While claiming to be present to put an end to ethnic cleansing and displacement, it was, in fact, NATO that was displacing both the Albanian and Serbian populations from Yugoslavia’s Kosovo province. As significant as their destruction of buildings and bridges was their determined destruction of the personal memories that people had of places that now no longer exist. While the Serbian forces allegedly destroyed records of marriages, ownership and citizenship, NATO was eradicating the ancient mosques, churches and public buildings. Memories that bind people to a place were erased.
A brief list excerpted from William Blum’s “Killing Hope” shows that this is not America’s first campaign of foreign imperialism dressed up as humanitarian intervention. There have been numerous U.S. incursions against sovereign nations without just cause, commonly referred to as “exporting democracy”. Any rational person can see that neither democracy nor freedom are being exported. In my opinion, what is being “exported” is the exertion of foreign force through foreign and domestic mercenaries. Those who benefit most are the politicians and corporations in support of the military expeditions for these territorial takeovers.
MODERN IMPERIALISM
Most Americans do not realize that imperialistic is a term often associated with the USA and our leaders by other world citizens. Yet, unfortunately, it aptly describes who we are geopolitically and how our political and military agents view their own prerogatives. Irving Babbitt, a professor of French and comparative literature at Harvard University between 1894 and 1933, said, “Imperialism is the use of arbitrary assertiveness.” Aristotle pointed out that demo cracy, as a direct and unlimited forum, is the death of liberty because it has a “tyrannical temper.” What better description of the arbitrary assertiveness evidenced by NATO’s maniacal bombing of Yugoslavia than “democratic imperialism”? And this was just the latest example of the ruling credo of whatever imperialists want for others, others must accept. Even the Hague, at least to date, has ruled that NATO’s technobarbarism did not constitute any crime. But then again, the Hague is the imperialist’s globalist court, and they are unlikely to object to the rape of a nation that has no world power, i.e., no nuclear weapons.
Yes, democratic imperialism is definitely the American way—and not just among foreign nations, but it is also the defining ethic on the domestic front among individuals and groups as well. Just look at how the American Justice Department facilitated the killing of American civilians to save us from another enemy that the government had invented (named David Koresh in Waco, Texas).
THE TERMINATOR’S ENABLERS
Ultimately, the war in Yugoslavia was not about saving desperate Albanians or Serbians, it was about geopolitical conceit, controlling the geo-theater. Irving Babbitt noted that “the will to power is stronger than the will to brotherhood. What had begun as a humanitarian crusade ended in Napoleonic and imperialistic aggression.” When such lust towards dominance is girthed by a corporate militarism, as we see today among the so-called civilized western powers, there are no standards of ethical behavior for either persons or nations. The will to power seems to excuse the leveling of a foreign city or state when the conflict is pitched to the citizens as a humanitarian rescue. In this case NATO wanted Yugoslavians to embrace, as equal partners, the terminator’s enablers: America’s latest favorite terminator squad, the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) narcoterrorists.
THE RAMBOUILLET ACCORD OR DICTATE
I tried to better understand the reasons NATO claimed it had gone to undeclared war by reading the Rambouillet Accord (the agreement NATO demanded Yugoslavia sign to avoid being bombed). After I had read it, it was obvious that neither the members of Congress nor the press had read this document they so liberally supported. They would have been incredulous if they had. None of the 19 members of the NATO alliance would have agreed to such terms for their own countries, civil war or no civil war. What Bill Clinton, Eugene Schroeder and Tony Blair demanded was nothing less than total surrender of Yugoslavia, its assets, its infrastructure, its government and its territory. Adolph Hitler described his brand of economic and political socialized-fascism the same way as they did—the Third Way. Plain and simple, the agenda of the Third Way coalition was to enable corporate exploitation of Kosovo’s mineral and oil wealth. NATO had cut a dirty little deal, and Milosevic refused to cede Yugoslavia without a fight.
From international to local environments, we see imperialism over nations or citizens, packaged as humanitarian care, which later becomes unbridled aggression with a profit margin. One of Milosevic’s counter offers was to refuse a NATO occupation, calling instead for a U.N. force presence, something NATO refused to cede. NATO’s apparent reasoning was that if the enforcers don’t work for us, we will have trouble getting them to do what we want. It wasn’t anything short of a nation coup, using terrorists as a mercenary force. The Albanian terrorists’ need for some degree of auto nomy was passed off as a necessary part of the “accord”.
DIRTY DEALS FOR ALL
No member of NATO would have signed an accord like the Rambouillet Accord that Slobodan Milosevic refused to sign. It was obvious from public discussion that unless they liked dirty deals, neither Clinton, nor his media allies, nor any of the presidential contenders, nor even most in Congress had r ead the Rambouillet Accord. The NATO plan would have turned not just Kosovo, but all of Yugoslavia, into a colony of NATO. NATO could then have utilized all of Yugoslavia for its own agenda, including training the KLA and selecting political candidates and judges. Article 6 of the Accord guaranteed NATO, as the occupying force, total immunity from any civil, administrative or disciplinary offenses which might be committed by them while occupying Yugoslavia. Article 10 gave NATO cost-free access to all of Yugoslavia’s streets, airports and ports. Kosovo is legally a province of the Republic of Serbia which together with Montenegro, comprises the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Under NATO, a new Kosovo government would have overruled any federal laws, and the supreme court of Yugoslavia would have been required to enforce any legislation passed by the Kosovo parliament. In addition, the province would have been entitled to conduct foreign affairs. Of course, NATO reserved to itself the right to replace any bureaucrat or elected official they may disapprove of, even though the people of Yugoslavia had chosen them. Members of the KLA were to be disarmed, re-trained and then rearmed as the new police force, just as was done with the PLO in Israel. Yet neither the Kosovo police nor the Yugosla vian federal forces would be the state apparatus to enforce agreements; that would be NATO’s job. A NATO-directed civilian implementation mission would create binding directives, supported by its own TV and radio stations, with the power to shut down autonomous stations it did not like. This was something our President was insistent about. In short, Yugoslavia would become a colony of NATO whose 28,000 KFOR (Kosovo Force) could use any amount of force without legal accountability. Now how’s that for a deal? Not missing a beat, the U.N. contracted the U.S. State Department which hired Dyncorp Corporation, a regular contractor for many government occupations, to hire a mercenary police force. Dyncorp promoted a nationwide recruitment of American policemen for a tour of private duty in Yugoslavia. The corporate wheels were turning up the war machine’s forward roll, getting ready for the takeover.
NATION ASSET FORFEITURE
Just what profit was to be garnered by seizing Kosovo was seldom discussed, but when it was, most agreed there were valuable natural resources to be seized in Kosovo and surrounding areas. Placed against the backdrop of new world politics, it made the rule of law one of those details lost among the ruins of Kosovo and the Clinton Administration. The global corporatists realized that NATO could collapse a country and take receivership of its assets a lot sooner than waiting for the nation’s own economy to collapse under the weight of its own corruption or mismanagement. In an effort to redefine their jurisdiction in order to seize Kosovo, NATO had to redefine itself, which it did, in the quiet of the night. This was done to sidestep NATO’s having to go to the U.N. Security Council for permission to attack Yugoslavia, which would have been denied. Clinton and other internationalists at the World Bank, the IMF and other money lending institutions, as well as NATO, had no declared prerogative within their charters, no vote by the U.S. Senate to change our nation’s role in the NATO foreign alliance, and no U.N. General Assembly to approve or disapprove of its newly and vaguely defined purpose. NATO itself was in violation of numerous laws. Nonetheless, a new, but criminal NATO was taking shape.
THE NEW NATO
The new NATO was clarified. Its text, the Washington Declaration, was signed April 24, 1999 and issued by the heads of state. At the NATO summit, member nations agreed to some of the following: “our mutual commitment to defend our people, our territory and our liberty, founded on democracy , human rights and the rule of law.” It further stated that “our common values and interests remain the same.” The pact commits to advancing the goals of “collective defense… the core purpose of NATO… to building a stronger and broader Euro-Atlantic community of democracies—a community where human rights and fundamental freedoms are upheld; where borders are increasingly open to people, ideas and commerce; where war becomes unthinkable.”
America was presumably obligating itself to an alliance “committed to collective defense, capable of addressing current and future risks to our security, strengthened by and open to new members and working together with other institutions, partners and Mediterranean Dialogue countries in a mutually reinforcing way to enhance Euro-American security and stability…. reinforcing the transatlantic partnership… firm against those who violate human rights, wage war and conquer territory… improve our defense capabilities… build confidence and securit y through arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation measures… reiterate our condemnation of terrorism and our determination to protect ourselves against this scourge…. We declare as the fundamental objectives of this Alliance enduring peace, security and liberty for all people of Europe and North America.” Amazing, all of these new “rights” of invasion were articulated and instituted without a single vote from a single citizen of ours or any other NATO country. Now that’s democracy at work!
THE COMPANY SOLDIERS
The National Reserve was called to duty, not for America’s defense, but as back-ups for NATO’s illegal war against Yugoslavia. The private corporation called DynCorp was offering any American policeman $80,000 a year to serve the U.N. and NATO in Bosnia and the Balkans. NATO’s flagrant violations of international laws governing acts of war and the obvious use of coercion to force Yugoslavia to agree to a NATO plan was, according to Article 51 of the Vienna Convention of January 27, 1980, a treaty that “shall be without any legal effect.” But let’s be honest with ourselves, who cared? Bill Clinton and his morally lobotomized administration made it fashionable to use rhetorical threats followed up by barbaric and lawless actions. To war or not to war may no longer be the question, rather, how big a war and what will the conquerors get? What Clinton has failed to examine is how we can defend ourselves if attacked when our military has been scattered around the world in more than 100 locations. For of all the developed nations on earth, America is the only nation without an underground defense system to shelter and feed its civilian population if attacked. In this case, personal arrogance and military conceit could get us all killed.
THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY MAN: SAMUEL BERGER
While some claimed the Balkan war was Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s creation, Alexander Cockburn pointed out that, in fact, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger’s hand prints were all over this war. From Cornell to Harvard Law School, to speech writer and political advisor for George McGovern’s presidential campaign, to the staff of New York Mayor John Lindsay, to Carter’s State Department, Berger ultimately settled in with the firm of Hogan and Hartson as director of their international trade group. Much like the corporate welfare recipients on the death plane in Croatia with Ron Brown, where Brown’s foreign and domestic corporate DNC donors were given contract access in Bosnia through the Commerce Department, Berger’s clients were positioned through his National Security Council post, and given a place in the Kosovo contracts.
As Cockburn summarized, Berger had a plump roster of clients including British Petroleum, the Business Round Table, China External Trade Association, Daimler Benz, Enron, Genetech, GE, Glaxo, the government of Haiti, Monsanto, Toyota, U.S. Sugar and Vulcan Chemicals. Knowing of the lucrative Caspian Sea pipeline and other natural resource development deals originating from the mines of Kosovo, is it any surprise to find out that Secretary of State Albright’s pals Brzezinski and Anthony Lake, former National Security advisors, both work as advisors on the Balkan issue for oil companies? It will take an estimated minimum $136 billion dollars to rebuild Yugoslavia’s dams, bridges, power plants, TV and radio stations, railroads, neighborhoods, cities, and streets. As Cockburn laments, “No doubt Al Gore will soon announce that each ethnic Albanian child should get a lap top and be hooked up to the Internet upon returning to a rebuilt and fully wired Pristina, so that Bill Gates and Michael Dell can share in the coming frenzy.” No doubt the deal Milosevic struck is similar to his ally Russia’s deal with the IMF. The IMF takes the country, the politician can keep their title.
CORPORATE FASCISM
There were other beneficiaries to NATO’s war. During the war, the release of the Cox report and ongoing hearings, relative to espionage and trading with the enemy, were given minuscule press coverage. Claims of espionage and treason by the Commander in Chief, exposure of the illegal money laundering, weapons trading and theft of military secrets were effectively shut out from the attention they deserved. Clinton’s relationship with China, through the corporate structure in America, the Communist Dictatorship in China and the corrupt Indonesian and Russian governments demonstrated a form of political and economic engagement showing us that corporate fascism is the wave of the future. The future is central governments using military and policing might to enforce economic entanglements. Vested interests are controlling the weapons of destruction. And while no one in Congress wants to talk about these “other kind of terrorists”, the State sponsored corporate terrorists, they are quick to point their fingers at or train and arm terrorist groups like Hammas and the KLA.
NO CONFIDENCE VOTE
The Senate voted 78-22, preventing President Clinton from getting their support to wage a ground war in Yugoslavia or to carry out a war operation in order to fulfill an unspecified NATO agenda. The House split evenly 213-213 on the same provision. The Clinton media effectively de-emphasized this no confidence vote from Congress, despite its enormous significance. American troops went to war, deployed in a foreign operation, as a result of an illegal act of aggression by NATO (according to the conditions of the laws of war). 17 House members, 2 Democrats and 15 Republicans, were suing Clinton for his illegal deployment, itself an impeachable offense. Congress did not authorize the military action, nor did NATO represent the United States, nor did the Senate ratify any treaty expanding NATO’s charter to actions outside of self defense.
NATO’S WAR FOR PEACE
NATO’s misguided attacks on the country of Yugoslavia often killed civilians. An attempted strike on fuel depots and heavy industry ended up hitting a Yugoslavian passenger train 180 miles south of Belgrade, killing at least nine people and injuring 16. The train happened to be on the intended target. NATO foreign ministers continued their air attacks saying that the Kosovo crisis “represents a fundamental challenge to the values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Curious, coming from an alliance that was itself in violation of its own charter and international law. As for its defense of the democratic values they claimed, our own Congress didn’t declare war and a two-thirds majority of the Senate did not approve of the United States’ military deployment. As for human rights, evidently the victims of the allied bombing had no right to protection from unwarranted attacks. Perhaps NATO was talking about some other type of law, democracy and human rights.
ALL BECAUSE MILOSEVIC REFUSED TO SURRENDER
Since NATO’s incursion, Yugoslavia’s parliament has joined an alliance with Russia and Belarus incorporating Yugoslavia, whose membership, Russia said at the time, would not be instantaneous and military aid would not be automatically granted. All of this because Milosevic refused to surrender Kosovo to foreign governments. All of this because Milosevic refused to give up the largest mine in Europe and access to one of the world’s most strategically placed oil pipeline routes. So, not only were civilians subject to uranium contamination from the shells used for bombing, but they were also breathing in the effluents from the oil refineries’ release of tons of toxic fluorocarbons. We were learning the new way the New World Order does business; by force with a new world army, and a new world police paid for by you and me.
THE RENTACOPS AND THE CORPORATE POLICE
I have never thought of myself as old fashioned, but I am almost archaic when it comes to the rule of the law and our constitutional republic. I was very alarmed at the ads placed by the U.S. State Department, acting on behalf of the U.N., seeking active duty or soon-to-be-retired police officers, of any rank, eager to accept a “challenging and rigorous assignment to serve with the United Nations International Police Task Force as international police monitors for one year in the Federation of Bosnia, Eastern Slavonia and the Balkans.” The advertisement went on to explain that the private contractor, DynCorp, was executing this government project. Mercenary policemen were being recruited from America by the U.N.
OK, so I’m old fashioned. Want to know what’s wrong with this picture? The U.N. is an international forum and is not directly obligated to any citizenry’s representative lawmaking. Its officials are not elected by any member nation’s citizenry, and yet they are hiring companies to enforce their collective will, in some cases, over sovereign nations. A retired American cop can get paid $80,000 for this global policing beat, almost double what the men in blue usually receive for policing their own communities. As of September 1999, 1,750 police officers from 36 nations were policing Bosnia with a planned U.N. contingency of 200 Americans to be stationed throughout the country and in Sarajevo. It was reported that some of these U.N. cops would be unarmed and unprotected, yet expected to monitor, report on and train local police, but not to engage in law enforcement activities themselves. DynCorp asserted that it was the mission of the 6,000 foreign troops to ensure a safe environment. In other words, nationstates are being turned into corporate states. It’s just a question of time before we see our boys in uniforms showing the names of their sponsors like the McDonald’s brigade or Coca Cola’s tank division.
SETTING UP THE TAKEOVER
When a foreign mercenary policing force is able to seize and occupy a sovereign nation, all people of the Earth should be outraged, especially when the foreign mercenaries are trained by private corporations like PMRI (Professional Military Resources Incorporated) of Virginia. PMRI of Virginia is contracted by international company forums like the U.N., or our own State Department, to train foreign militaries and terrorists coalitions.
LET’S MAKE A DEAL
In Yugoslavia’s case, the 19 allied nations crafted a treaty document that was so ludicrous at face value that none of the 19 allies would have acceded to its conditions. It reminded me of a corporation’s first offer for a buy out, or one that is meant to be answered with a counter offer involving some compromise.
Slobodan Milosevic was giving signals by May 20, 1999 that he was ready to play “Let’s Make a Deal” with NATO, indicating that he wanted to preserve the integrity of what was left of Yugoslavia. Simply put, this meant that Kosovo would not be separated from the nation as an independent country. Everything else was still up for grabs. Would there be a NATO-led U.N. force or a U.N.-led NATO force to enforce whatever commitments the accord outlined?
Milosevic’s surrender to NATO was problematic for other reasons as well. The entire operation was in violation of NATO’s own charter which limits NATO’s engagement to self defense for its members. NATO’s operation also violated the rules of law established by U.N. treaty and convention law. Article 2 of the U.N. charter prohibits the use of force against a sovereign state where it has committed no aggression against other states. As we all know, Serbia did not attack another nation. Neither did the U.N. security council authorize any military action, which is why the Clinton, Blair, Schroeder team used NATO as a vehicle of attack, instead of the U.N. which would have defeated such a proposal.
Some people claim that acts of genocide legitimized NATO’s illegal actions. Not only has genocide never been proven, but the genocide convention does not authorize the use of force. Only the U.N. Security Council can authorize the use of force as applied to violations of these U.N. treaties. Even the Rambouillet Accord itself violated a guarantee of the territorial frontiers of the States of Europe as secured in the Helsinki Accords final act of 1975, according to Dr. Raju G.C. Thomas.
At some time in the future, when Belgrade is rebuilt, Milosevic or another of his countrymen will go to court to demonstrate that the agreement has no legal standing, no matter what was forced, coerced and instituted through bombing, burning and deportation. Articles 51 and 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties make clear that the use of coercion by either the threat or use of force is “a violation of the principles of international law, embodied in the Charter of the United Nations” and a treaty procured by coercion “shall be without any legal effect.” So what does this mean? NATO and Milosevic made a deal to which no Yugoslavians are legally bound?
NATO: AN ASYLUM FOR THE POLITICALLY INSANE
Imperialism dressed up as humanitarianism is only one of modern society’s many derangements. As I watched the increasing destruction of Yugoslavia and surrounding areas, it seemed to me that NATO’s leadership was mentally ill. Imagine you lived in a nation where your people have been fighting each other for centuries with a military and paramilitary made up of your fellow countrymen. You are part of a long, centuries old squabble over land, inheritance, entitlement, sovereignty and religion. It’s difficult for anyone to know whose side some people are on. Imagine that the civil war has spread across your country, and most citizens aren’t interested in carving up their nation, or being at war with each other, or being subject to the odious and corrupt mandates of politicians, regardless of religion, ethnicity or state. Most just want to live in peace.
Suddenly a much larger nation, in fact a whole group of nations says, we care so much about you that we are going to force you to end your war. The corporations who are driving this war also care a whole lot about your mines and oil wealth, but the impostors of aid never mention that. In fact, they never mention that the best part about getting your lands are your mines and your sea port. At minimum, a reported $5 billion worth of mines: gold, silver, lead, cadmium and lignite per annum, coal worth $15 billion dollars and oil worth trillions of dollars. Getting control of all of these natural resources was, in my opinion, NATO’s corporate goal for taking over Kosovo.
Imagine being told by a group of foreign impostors that “we want you to have peace.” They don’t ask you if you want their help, they just decide it is their right to obliterate your sovereignty. But there’s a price to pay for their help—that help you never requested. Most residents will be displaced from their homes, your streets will be bombed, your homes, cities, schools, hospitals, ancient memorials, stores, streets, bridges, train rails, refineries, and factories destroyed. How can anyone believe this was humanitarian aid? As I have said from the start, no one in their right mind should support this type of mass destruction and mass murder, a grotesque excuse for humanitarian aid. No one of ethical conscience should support nor remain silent in the face of this type of technological barbarism. For in fact, we had financed and trained both sides of the conflict, Serbians and KLA members. This, my fellow countrymen and women, is the sword which will cut across our own nation’s throat. A darkness is taking hold. We are in the grip of colossal madmen.
TAKING INDONESIA: IS THIS THE SAME PATTERN?
Such madness or malefic forethought was replicated several months later in Indonesia. After Indonesia’s violent takeover of East Timor in 1975, enforced by a quarter century of military occupation in large measure underwritten by the American Congress and American military, the acting President of Indonesia, B.J. Habibie, stated that should East Timor vote for in- dependence, as they did on August 30, 1999, the security of Indonesia’s republic was not threatened. The independence for East Timor was both U.S. and U.N. endorsed and facilitated. Habibie underestimated the strength of former president Suhuarto’s military, East Timor’s hired militias, and multinational interests, including America’s. When the referendum for independence was won, B.J. Habibie lost con trol of the Indonesian military overnight and the pro-Jakarta militias began an effective elimination campaign of Timor’s native Polynesian populations. They were following orders from Jakarta with reported plans to displace or murder up to 300,000 natives. Big time ethnic cleansing, but did it catch the attention of Clinton, Blair and others, who just months before showed outrage over the killings in Kosovo, killings which, by the way, equaled the number of homicides in Atlanta, Georgia that year? They found no reason to “save” these people of East Timor. As in so many other foreign financed sovereignty movements, banking dictatorships were using destabilization, not to free the oppressed, but rather to exploit more people.
SUHUARTO —AMERICA’S LATEST HIRED DICTATOR
In Indonesia, former dictator Suhuarto, his family and cronies, both military and industrial, laid waste to Indonesia’s economy, setting the stage for a nation takeover by central banks and their U.N. handmaidens. Much like NATO’s take over of Yugoslavia, the IMF, World Bank and their mercenary military planned to abort or partition East Timor to seize control of their oil, timber, coffee and untapped oil reserves at sea. The more important goal, however, was to create a reason for foreign occupation should Indonesia itself renege on the payout plan to the world banks; a payment plan that included its people’s labor for the coming decades.
THE SET-UP FOR FOREIGN OCCUPATION
May 5, 1999 the autonomy proposal for East Timor was signed, and three months later a U.N.-supervised “direct ballot” approved independence was gained for East Timor, preventing the territory from being turned back over to Portugal. Had Portugal taken the island back under its possession, the illegally begotten 40% of all holdings on the island that belonged to Suhuarto’s family and friends would have been seized. But now it appears that all of Indonesia, including East Timor, may be headed for the banking plantation instead. To determine what is behind the East Timor people’s desire for independence, one needs only look back at Suhuarto’s original, U.S. financed occupation of East Timor in 1975, and the support he garnered from both the United Nations and the American Government, the 200,000 or more people who perished in the concentration camps he established, the malaria infested areas the Timor people were forced to occupy, and their displacement from their subsistence farms elsewhere.
POPULATION CONTROL: AN IMPERIALIST TOOL
Back in 1975, at least 70% of the islanders were Atimists, a religion that posits that all life is animated by consciousness, a point of view not in harmony with the Christian church tradition being imposed there. Furthermore, the East Timor natives, most of Polynesian descent at that time, believed that having children was a spiritual obligation. But U.N. population control initiatives denied them that right. One can appreciate their desire to escape the tyranny of the western backed and trained Indonesian oppressors and their distrust of “humanitarian programs.” For instance, mandatory birth control programs were imposed on the Timorese women. Depo Provera, a drug that is known to cause uterine cancer and death, was forced upon the women if they refused some other U.N. approved birth control methods (which include abortion). The U.N. Secretary General even acknowledged Suhuarto with a reward for his successful compulsory population control program.
As in Tibet, where the Clinton Administration is financially supporting the forced relocation of native civilians, and their replacement with 200,000- 400,000 Chinese, population control and population displacement are both involved in the ongoing strategy of the superpowers’ banking systems to control all nation’s resources of corporate value. Abortion and sterilization, always presented as “care” for women’s future and autonomy, are not an emancipation of any sort, but a destruction of their very freedom. Control over a woman’s reproductive capacity is similar to control being placed over a whole nation’s abilities to design and take a part in their nation’s very life.
CONTROLLED CHAOS
Unchecked immigration by unskilled worker populations into our own country, and the Executive Order to approve census taking of foreign residents who are not citizens, are other gross examples of our own government’s intention to destabilize our own nation and the rule of law. If one can control the composition of the population, the corporate state benefits because it then has more control over the labor resources. Unskilled foreigners emigrating to America are more willing to take low paying jobs without benefits than are tax paying citizens who must turn over 50-60% of their earnings each year under the current ruse of taxation we follow in this country.
Seizing assets of foreign nations is one thing, but mines and oil fields require labor. The plan to place a country like Indonesia in debt (or Russia for that matter) is done in a calculated fashion. Allying with corrupt and greedy government leaders, any money lender can win the game of indenturement. Americans know this game all too well, with most of our people now in debt for life to credit card companies and their illusory, magical kingdom of “credit.” It would be more accurate if the acceptance instructions to each new credit card you filled out told you that the company is financing the rope to hang you with, or tie you down with, as was done to Gulliver in his own travels.
NATION TAKING FORMULA
Just as our own nation operates on a debtor economy, requiring future generations to pay the debt of today’s lifestyles, in the nation taking game the debt is eventually rectified after the nation is placed into receivership by the IMF, World Bank, Federal Reserve and its enforcers, NATO, the U.N. and other international organizations. Indonesia will soon be the third most populous nation in the world. What person there won’t be glad to have a job, almost any job at any price? The Indonesian people may not be enslaved to Indonesia’s central government, but they will be enslaved by multinational contractors benefiting, as did the DNC and Clinton’s election campaign, by Suhuarto’s quarter century reign and monetary recklessness.
INDONESIA: LAUNDROMAT PAR EXCELLENCE
It’s clear that the western and Chinese powers who have benefited by laundering money in Indonesia, have no real interest in the welfare of the citizens of East Timor. After all, the benefits of Indonesia’s banking even reached the President of the United States as revealed in the illegal campaign finance scandals the Justice Department has plea bargained away without real prosecution or revelation of facts. Friends of the Clintons, like Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas (whose Lippo Group reaped windfall profits from his connections with partners like Mochtar and James Riady of Indonesia), have escaped public attention and criminal prosecution. Additionally, it appears they teamed up with Chinese agents of the Communist Dictatorship to buy access and information from the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government, in exchange for millions of dollars in cash for Bill Clinton’s political exploitation. This quid pro quo racketeering is a criminal offense. Clinton’s participation in money laundering of foreign funds also resulted in the diminution of our military advantages. These alliances exemplify the fundamental nature of the corporate state. Imperialists need destabilization prior to being able to, in war terms, move in for the final kill and successful conquest—or in corporate terms, the take over. The lending institutions take part in precipitating violence in order to take over nations. Even the Counter Terrorism Bill of 1992 made the alliance between the U.S. military and the multinational corporations clear.
COUNTER TERRORISM OR CORPORATE DEFENSE SYSTEM
Our military was pledged to protect any American corporation doing business in unstable territories, like the oil companies in Russia, who are part of the effort to maintain control over the Chechnyan region of Russia. Specifically, the bill authorized military deployment on behalf of a private corporation’s assets in areas where nuclear trafficking was taking place. But among the weapons being traded on these black markets are missiles already hitting our own nation.
MISSILES FOR SALE! GET YOUR MISSILES HERE!
The downing of TWA Flight 800 was the 27th civilian plane to be shot down by terrorists and clearly established why the sale of weapons, like shoulder fired missiles, being traded out of Russia and elsewhere, are a risk to our welfare. When the CIA was given an opportunity to buy back some two dozen of these missiles, they refused. One has to ask why, if not to encourage the illicit trade of these U.S. manufactured weapons of war or to track the buyers?
Commander William Donaldson investigated the issue of TWA Flight 800 more thoroughly with his team than any teams the government assembled. Conclusions from Donaldson’s report to the Senate follow:
“The Administration was aware that, worldwide, MANPAD [shoulder-fired] missiles had already claimed 26 civil transport aircraft and it was only a matter of time before a U.S. flag carrier would be targeted and hit. They knew the Administration had dodged a bullet in 1994 when Maryland State Police found a fully armed French Mistral MANPADS missile, ready to fire, on its tripod directly under a busy northeastern air route” .
“In response to sanctions unilaterally levied against Iran by Mr. Clinton in 1995, Iranian surrogates car bombed U.S. troops in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and later smuggled MANPADS missiles into the U.S. from across the Canadian border. Iranian officials warned the Administration that they considered enactment of the Iran/Libya Sancti ons Act tantamount to an act of war!”
“When Mr. Clinton signed the Iran/Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, a decision was made by the Iranian Supreme Council to approve attacks on major American targets. Terrorist surrogate groups from nine countries were summoned to Teheran to meet with Iranian officials in June of 1996. Later that month, a huge truck bomb was deployed against the U.S. Air Force barracks complex at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Three weeks later, TWA Flight 800 was shot down only hours after an explicit warning of an attack was received in London and Washington that taunted the President. The White House, the CIA and the FBI were aware of the threat and they knew preventing that attack was their primary responsibility.”
Donaldson claimed to the Senate that he could show “the Administration anticipated incorrectly that, if the missiles were used, they would be targeted against Olympic air traffic landing or taking off in the Atlanta area…. We can provide testimony that immediately after Flight 800 was shot down, Mr. Clinton called an FBI command post supporting the Olympics and informed them Flight 800 was downed with shoulder-fired missiles. The White House, the CIA and the FBI political leadership have waged an unrelenting disinformation campaign from the onset. A White House spokesman stated, “Anyone in government that says this was a missile only has half a brain.” A CIA cartoon libeled hundreds of eyewitnesses. The day after Flight 800 was shot down, the Justice Department, helped by 1,000 FBI agents, began the process of converting hundreds of witnesses into the first American “untouchable caste”. The political leadership of the NTSB (National Transportation and Safety Board) aborted its mission in one surrender of its responsibilities after another. When the Justice Department illegally ordered the NTSB crash investigators to have no contact with witnesses or their statements, and the NTSB complied, the investigation was over, the cover-up and misprision of felony homicide had begun, and NBC fed the nation the first element of disinformation.
TWA FLIGHT 800 COVER UP AND CORPORATE STATE GAMING
This is just one more example of government-media collusion, showing that the media as a corporate asset, in general, assists the government in carrying out its agenda. Earlier examples were the Waco massacre and the false proclamation of Richard Jewell as the Atlanta Park Bomber. Protecting the lives of civilians from terrorism or drug trafficking is not the priority. Exploiting terrorism by training and arming terrorists so that they can later be the evil terrorists (or the friendly vote-getting terrorists as we saw in the clemency Clinton granted to twelve FALN members) justifies the most extreme of body politic.
TERRORISTS ARE BECOMING POLITICAL PARTNERS
It’s strange that Congress can see the danger of releasing terrorists into our own backyard, as “King” Clinton has done by giving amnesty to Puerto Rican FALN terrorists, yet Congress seems to have no problem in arming and training terrorists in other countries before reassigning them to new jobs with better weapons and badges. Clinton has engineered the release of PLO terrorists from Israeli jails. Now they’re being hired as the Palestinian police force. Terrorists who killed both Israelis and Palestinians doing business with Israelis, have been rehired to police Palestinians and Israelis, the same population they have murdered in the past. Consider this peculiar reality. The executive terrorists club has just gotten bigger. It’s like a frequent flier club, only this one’s for bombers and drug runners. There are members of the KLA, and members of the PLO, and now members of the FALN, and probably others we’ve never heard of from the land of initials doing the bidding of our own and other governments.
BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED
The KLA in Kosovo spent years assassinating Albanians and Serbians who resisted their autonomy actions. Trained by U.S. and German operatives, and even some mercenary instructors from Islamic terrorist cells, they are now being rearmed as policemen for the U.N.-occupied province. The pattern is similar worldwide. What is interesting is how easy it is for our politicians and law enforcement to appreciate the insanity of releasing people from prison who use terror and weapons that kill both civilian and government personnel at home, but when it comes to releasing or hiring hundreds of terrorists and arming them as police in other nations, somehow or other these same politicians and supporters argue its rationality. They also argue for our own government-operated militaries and police to traumatize civilians in the guise of public security.
Think of our world as a pond. Some politicians and their underwriters are the pond scum, and the military and terrorists are the fish. The rest of us are what they feed off of. Just as there are sushi bars where corporate types eat raw fish, I wonder if one day the fish will have humanshi bars where they eat corporate types.
CIA: EXTREME TEAM FOR TV
Osama Bin Laden, Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein were all at one time on the CIA payroll working for America. They were all also long-time recipients of Congressional appropriations and military training. In Saddam’s case he was being stockpiled with chemical and biological weapons up until a few weeks prior to the Gulf War by the actions of our U.S. Congress and Commerce Department. Playing the game of eradicating America’s friendly dictators, or covering terrorist bombings, provides sensational television footage that benefits corporate profits both for the multimillion dollar advertising slots and the TV program’s overall ratings and value.
NEW WORLD ORDER’S EXTREME TEAM LOVES THE WAR ON DRUGS
In my opinion, global anarchy is being orchestrated by an extreme team. Their goal is a homogenized world-state ruled by today’s nation’s leaders who are ripping at the sinews of their own nations’ rightful order. Benefiting more by multinationals and foreign aid in many instances, politicians, criminal syndicalism, and the militarization of all policing under the guise of eradicating the illicit drug trade, is all evidence of this global phenomena.
I’m convinced that in our own country, our government, policing forces both foreign and domestic, and our military are being used in the guise of public health to arrest, imprison and exploit prison labor. The intimidation of citizens by this mechanism also encourages the same kind of ideological uniformity as was fostered by the Weimar Republic regarding disarmament and imprisonment of non-conformists. This uniformity enforcement has gone from all citizens being equal, to the government determining what types of inequality should be preferred. A black man killing a black man is murder and is prosecuted by the state, while a white man killing a black man is a hate crime and the penalties are more severe and are prosecuted illegitimately by the federal government. Fomenting greater and greater civil strife has been one of Clinton’s contributions, with the media’s aid, to the nation-takers.
MENTAL HEALTH IS NOT THE ISSUE, CONTROLLING DRUG PROFIT IS
Imprisonment under the Clinton Administration has increased, as have more odious school policing apparatuses. Just as foreign nations are being occupied by mercenary armed guards, our federal schools are also being occupied in a similar fashion. The BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), FBI and other federal agency personnel are busting into private homes and executing raids that end in death and injury to innocent victims. This has become normal operating procedure.
GIVE US YOUR BODY
The “drug war” goes to policing rather than treatment? Also, while the use of marijuana for self-medication or recreation is illegal, the state itself is distributing more and more lethal mind altering substances to a younger and younger age group. The drugs they are giving our youth have never been studied for their long term impact, but what is known suggests that they are dangerous and destructive. With so much unknown about them, how can increasing the use of “behavior modification” drugs for children be for health care reasons?
INVENTING ILLNESS LABELS
Millions of children have minds that wander or get bored or can’t concentrate. They are given a fictitious label of “attention deficit disorder” which has no basis in science. The drugs they are given, like Ritalin and Luvox, do not improve the brain’s function, but rather exhaust the child’s brain. These drugs do not improve brain function, they assault its balance by over-stimulating its processes until it can only focus on one thing at time. It is not an enhancement of the brain that alters the children’s behavior, but diminishment of its capacity to absorb a lot of information at once. This behavior is good for some kinds of monotonous factory work, but not good for exploration. In addition, Ritalin, Zoloft, Prozac, Luvox and other antidepressants are known to create mania, psychosis, and violence against self and others: “side effects” that don’t receive much promotion. Other suppressed facts show that pharmaceutical drugs compete with the market for unlicensed substances, and that 70% of drug users hold down regular jobs. If the priority in determining which drugs are made illegal was protecting the public heath, then aspirin would no longer be available on the open market. The abuse of aspirin is responsible for the largest number of hospital admissions for drug overdoses in our adolescent population; that and overuse of Ritalin and other drugs our medical community is pushing.
JUST SAY NO TO “JUST SAY NO” CAMPAIGNS
Teen use of drugs is similar today to what it was in the 1960s. What has changed is the mortal danger they face in gaining access to the same products, from the simple herbs that grow in the field, to the laboratory forms of pharmaceutical heroin. And as for the brutal, yet failed, drug war, teens report greater interest in illegal drugs after being shown “just say no” drug films and literature.
CRIMES MANUFACTURED
Psychiatric drugs are part of the profile in most of the violent acts of gun-assisted mass shootings which have given politicians and law enforcement and their media cheerleaders grounds to call for greater gun confiscation. And often, based on crime stats, the most violent of street crimes are committed by those also affected by similar drug combinations found on the street. But the most perverse aspect of America’s “war on drugs” is the imprisonment of citizens who have committed no acts of violence to any other person or property. Our jails are overflowing with people who had sex for a price, or chose to use a certain drug, or in some cases for being homeless and resisting arrest. Our prisons are fast becoming the modern corporate concentration camp.
WHO BENEFITS BY THE DRUG WAR?
The most obvious beneficiaries of this American civil war are the federal government, the corporations, and state governments that construct and operate the prisons, and those contracting the prison labor at minimal costs. Other beneficiaries are the terrorists and drug trafficking cartels bringing the illegal drugs into the country, most of whom are deeply institutionalized in the governments of the world. Using the drug war, the government can continue to generate billions of dollars in profits by consolidating control over the drug production and distribution systems and choosing who to penalize, from user to carrier.
PRISON LABOR
Prison labor, like labor that comes from a recently ransacked nation, is cheap. Domestic prison labor is comparable to going offshore where wages and working conditions are irrelevant. In the American prison system today, multinational corporations are hiring slave labor created primarily as an outcome of the drug war being waged by the American government against the people. Eventually, I suspect there will be a public outcry against this form of military occupation of our states by federalized policing forces, the stealing of private property under asset forfeiture, and the murdering of innocents under the pretense of a drug bust. Eventually, Americans will remember that America was founded on the principles that it is wrong to kill groups of non-conformist civilians as they did at Waco. At Waco, the use of machine guns, grenades, warfare gas, tanks and helicopter gunfire by American soldiers against American citizens was excused by Congress and the Justice Department. Did they see it as another Belgrade or East Timor, that had to be destroyed in order to be saved?
HOW TO TAKE A NATION
If nation taking requires some form of mercenary or military occupation, what better way to do so than by requiring an all-out invasion by foreign forces? An independence movement helps, but the majority of power brokers in Indonesia and corrupt allies in East Timor oppose what was done in Yugoslavia by training and encouraging the KLA to move for independence in Kosovo. As in Yugoslavia, the U.N. becomes the partner with central banks and multinational corporations. The U.N. was used to both occupy and establish submission by all parties under a newly defined relationship. It’s the oldest game in town. Finance all sides in a calculated progression of conflict until it escalates into an interim of violence, massacres and barbarism. Traumatized civilians will gladly accept occupation after a civil war leaves so many of their loved ones dead, and their homes and businesses destroyed.
The same conditioning is taking place in America, though most citizens are unconscious of it. To be promised security from the “drug war”, Americans are willingly giving up their hard won rights to privacy and submitting to random drug tests at school and work, random searches of cars and persons, airport strip searches, electronic data bases of identifiers, centralization of medical care, arrest and imprisonment without due process, secret courts and court procedures, etc. If you still think America is not being indentured and traumatized in the same way the other nations are, then consider the growing support for the death penalty, euthanasia, later term abortion, the sale of whole babies and baby body parts at a profit, forced birth control, resettlement of foreign mercenaries into America’s cities, the use of prison labor, and the demand for conformity among our youth population. As I say, we don’t have brown shirts, we just require designer shirts.
JUST SAY NO TO (PHARMACEUTICAL) DRUGS
For over a decade, I have been examining the issue of teen violence and the attendant rise in psychiatric drugs being prescribed for children. Eric Harris, one of the shooters at Colorado’s Columbine High School, was taking Luvox, a drug known to cause mania. Oregon’s Kip Kinkel was taking both Ritalin and Prozac when he killed his parents and then other students. T.J. Solomon was on Ritalin when he shot at his classmates in Georgia. Psychiatric drugs are almost always part of the profile of these types of teen killers. Dr. Peter Breggin, author of Talking Back to Ritalin, claims that these drugs can cause “manic psychoses with very out-of-control, upset, violent, paranoid behavior.” But unfortunately these “side effects” are ignored in favor of focusing attention on the fact that guns were used in their psychotic rampages. These shooting tragedies easily lead to more gun owning restrictions being placed on the law abiding citizen, even though the 20,000 existing gun laws are not preventing either criminals or youths considering rampages from getting guns.
As Dr. Breggin points out, “We’ve had guns in this society for a long time, we’ve had angry children for a long time, but it’s only in recent years that we’re getting these really bizarre kinds of school shootings—seemingly almost indiscriminate outbursts of uncontrollable rage. I believe that very well could be the influence of the drugs.” It is unlikely that this issue will be examined carefully anytime soon, however, since psychiatric pharmaceuticals for kids is a multi-billion dollar business. Nor will it soon be common knowledge how many of the currently six million drugged youth go on from Ritalin, Prozac and Luvox to more dangerous narcotics, since the licensed psychiatric drug pushers refuse to publicize this dirty little secret. How many of the drugged youth realize they will be stigmatized by a psychiatric file for the rest of their lives, records that will prevent them from getting certain jobs since they will be considered a security risk and forever questioned about their mental health? When normal childhood activity is diagnosed as mental illness, and the accepted remedy is to play Russian roulette with their brains, I say that’s the real crime. I guess our government missed Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no to drugs” campaign.
BOMBING 101 —TEACH OUR CHILDREN WELL
Over the years I have reported on some of the most extreme stories of public education by psychopaths, where bizarre punishments are doled out to innocent students while teachers are excused for encouraging sociopathic behavior. A middle schooler was suspended from school and given a criminal record for sharing an inhalant with another student having an asthmatic seizure. She was punished for distributing drugs. A young elementary schoolgirl was suspended when she realized she had accidentally taken her mother’s lunch to school, and turned in the mother’s paring knife to the teacher. She was suspended for carrying a weapon. Another young student drew a picture of a gun and was suspended from school. Another told a friend that he’d kill anyone who stepped on his new tennis shoes and was suspended for threatening violence. Second graders reciting the Hail Mary were punished for their behavior, while others who wanted to offer a prayer of thanksgiving at graduation were threatened by a judge with arrest and imprisonment.
At the same time, we have the case of Pinellas County, Florida teacher Timothy Falls, who a day after the Columbine massacre, taught his social studies classes how to make a pipe bomb and where to place it in their school to cause the most damage and death. When parents complained, the school board agreed that next year they would decide if the teacher should be suspended from school and docked without pay for ten days. (Falls has since joined the teachers union.) The discussion was not how fast should this former Air Force enlistee be investigated for inciting violence, or be investigated for military mind control, nor was there any discussion about simply firing him for poor judgment. Instead the school board and the teachers union have limited the consequences to a possible suspension in the future which will be decided by an administrative judge. Are we in the Twilight Zone here? Or has the American institution of public education been turned over to psychopaths? I wonder what this teacher will do for an encore. Teach students how to make a truck bomb? Maybe then he’ll get promoted to principal at Palm Harbor University High, or be offered a job with NATO or the ATF.
SOFT TERRORISM IN THE SCHOOLS
After the killings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the schools took on a militarization of their own with metal detectors, police monitors, and limited entries to all facilities—posing a fire danger to its imprisoned school populations. At Columbine, social workers and psychologists were called in to help the school learn how to identify youth that might be subject to ridicule. As one can guess, those identified included kids who wore thick mascara or eye liner and black clothing, i.e., the kids who did not sport the latest designer jeans or a baseball cap. This type of harmonization is bent on eliminating individuality and is no protection from psychotic youths on strong pharmaceutical drugs. This is the next step towards militarizing a youth population. Conformity lends itself to tyrannical group identification, not a melting pot but a meltdown of civility. Conformity can be forced by nations, too, as we saw in NATO’s attack of the misfit in central Europe. Only in Yugoslavia they dropped bombs instead of designer jeans and baseball caps.
HUMANITARIAN BOMBS: THE SOFT WAR
I have often stated how grateful I am that my community has not called on NATO for help. When NATO came to the humanitarian aid of Belgrade, they dropped hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs responsible for amputating arms, legs, and heads of children and innocent civilians. Over a million people became refugees as a result of NATO’s humanitarian effort. During its plans to escalate the bombings, NATO suggested that they “may not bring Milosevic to heel, but it will stop the cleansing.” A lot of people were asking what was left to cleanse? The United States was sending in food to feed 30,000 refugees a day, 8,000 sleeping bags, 3,000 blankets and 1,500 cots. Too bad it wasn’t enough for the 200,000 people trapped at the borders. It’s a curious phenomena, the bombing of Belgrade to save Belgrade. Before NATO arrived, the death rate from the so-called “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo was the same as that in Atlanta, Georgia in 1998. The bombings in Belgrade were a campaign of unparalleled ferocity, followed by the deployment of 60,000 troops to Yugoslavia. Careful to portray this invading force as a humanitarian peacekeeping and aid service, the British Defense Ministry stated “the force would be able to handle terrorist activity and gun battles, but would not be configured to withstand full-scale fighting with shelling by artillery or tank warfare.” The 60,000 troops would make no effort to control the countryside, we were told, but instead secure communication links between some towns. I suppose they meant between the towns NATO bombed out of existence? Clinton implored us to “stand with all our NATO allies to see it through.” But most of us were wondering just what it is we were supposed to be standing with them for. While the Pentagon was sending in ground troops behind the scenes, NATO had already lost the battle, but taken the nation. Milosevic would no longer be required to sign a peace agreement, and Kosovo would no longer be assured independence. The peace-keeping team that was put in place before NATO’s bombing campaign was enlarged to return refugees to their bombed out neighborhoods and to a more dismal existence than they had before the NATO mission of destroying the village to save the village began.
HUMANE BOMBING AND CHAMPAGNE
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea claimed that there was deep concern within the alliance that the situation in Kosovo “looked extremely black”. Indeed, even armchair generals know that no offensive war is won by air power alone. That’s why the Balkan war was escalating. The Serbian forces’ mass ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars was the reason we were told NATO was bombing Kosovo itself. In three short days the NATO operation went from bombing facilities to targeting Serbian troops and tanks. The NATO leadership claimed Milosevic made them do it. Tony Blair said, “This man is a brutal dictator. It is our job in the name of humanity and stability in the region to carry on until we have stopped him.”
NATO had a good reputation, well, at least with the corporate state leaders they work for. Forty-three foreign countries and the United States were hosted in Washington by corporate sponsors for NATO’s 50th anniversary. General Motors, Ameritech and Boeing were three of the thirteen companies who paid a quarter million dollars in exchange for a place on the board of directors of the summit’s host committee. Host committee spokeswoman Dana Vickers Shelley put it succinctly, “It’s a great opportunity for these businesses…. The heads of government and the heads of state will be there, but included in their delegations will be foreign trade ministers and other officials.’’ Some companies showcased their goods. Daimler Chrysler’s Mercedes shuttled the delegates around Washington. Motorola’s cellular phones and Nextel’s communication network were supported by Microsoft’s software. Sure beats wheelbarrows with the near dead in them, tractors with the twisted fate of families aboard, or freshly dug graves for babies. NATO wines and dines while it bombs.
What kinds of people and foreign and domestic com panies took part in the “Natocide” mission in Yugoslavia, demolishing a country at a profit? People like the Former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, Alan John Blinken, a senior adviser to Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. Lower tier donors giving only $25,000 to the NATO celebrations included defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, The Washington Post Foundation and lobbying firms representing foreign clients. I’m sure the bombed out villages, forced deportation and butchery passed off as aid, were not the only things this trillion dollar club had on their minds. More likely they were discussing their latest golf scores, the stock prices, contracts for military arsenals and their plans to rebuild the territory being demolished by what I have dubbed“Natocide”. The butchers sipped their wine while their victims died.
NATO SKYWRITING: USING THE U.N. AS A MERCENARY CORPORATION
While NATO was busy bombing the civilian properties and foreign government embassies in Yugoslavia, developments were taking place in Israel that could make it one of the next targets of NATO’s or the U.N.’s illegal interventionism. On April 29, 1999 the Palestine National Council decided to postpone declaring Palestinian Statehood and use the time instead to arrange for a U.N. resolution requiring Israel to abide by Resolution 18 1 passed November 1947 and in 1948. Resolution 181 defines land and areas outlined in a proposed partitioned Israel, that the Balfour Declaration first demarcated, but which Arab negotiators refused to accept. With Ahud Baruk’s inauguration, the release of PLO terrorists and the recent surrender of more West Bank territory (vital to Israel’s national security), it is only a question of time before a greater terrorist-involved civil war escalates in Israel.
To understand how the stage is being set, and the role the U.N. is playing—just like the one it played in Yugoslavia and Indonesia—consider just a few facts. Yasser Arafat met with U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan on March 21, 1999. His goal was to secure support for a General Assembly session demanding Israel to explain why it was not abiding by the original U.N. resolution terms—terms no one agreed to accept. As the head of the European Union, Germany supported the PLO demand. So did the Vatican, who, I believe, has always had the intention of securing Jerusalem as an international city under U.N. control, which would ultimately lead to a Jewish uprising against a foreign occupation. Germany has voiced a goal of separating Jerusalem from Israel as a corpus seperatum. As Kosovo is to the Serbs, Jerusalem is to the Israelis. Former Premier Benjamin Netanyahu may have seen the NATO skywriting; he made a vocal case against the illegal operation of the Palestin ia n Orient House in Jerusalem. In an effort to protect his nation’s capitol and territorial integrity, Netanyahu demanded that Arafat shut down the Orient House, as required by treaty law, or Israeli forces would do it for him. I wondered how long before the U.N. would call that ethnic intolerance?
Arab alliances are boycotting Disney World’s Magical Kingdom exhibit scheduled to open in the year 2000 because it identifies Jerusalem as the undisputed capital of Israel. Bill Clinton has continued to flip-flop on this issue and Congress has failed to uphold its commitment to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This lends ammunition to the terrorists of the PLO for their vowed intention to make East Jerusalem the future capitol of its future nation state. Our government is helping them reach their publicly stated goal, which has remained unchanged for years: to destroy and eliminate the State of Israel.
RENEWING AN OLD IDEA
It was not too long ago that both the Albanian and Serbian Kosovars elected a manwho practiced the art of non-violent resistance to lead their State. When I interviewed American Ambassador Jack Strong and asked him about the absence of Ibrahim Rugova in the Rambouillet and NATO negotiations, he commented that I was right to remark on his absence. Some have surmised Rugova had been under house arrest since NATO’s air st rikes began on March 24, 1999 and a provisional government selected by Milosevic put in his place. So why then was Rugova allowed to fly with his family to Rome? To flee or to meet with the Italian Premier Massimo D’Alema and Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini?
Back in Washington, the State Department made note of this “positive development”, but also insisted it would have no impact on NATO’s continuous bombing rampage. But then again, nothing affected NATO’s preferred diplomatic tool, violence. Rugova’s meetings with Serbian officials, according to the U.S. State Department, may have been conducted under force. Perhaps, but it was Rugova who Serbia’s President Milan Milutinovic requested to help negotiate a settlement in order for NATO to cease its bombing, requesting wide self rule be granted Serbia and Kosovo with respect for Yugoslavia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Amazingly, that’s exactly what the Kosovars had been asking for. Unfortunately, that’s not what NATO wanted for them. NATO wanted to dictate what kind of government would be created. NATO wanted to control who would hold office, how the courts would be conducted, how the laws would be made and enforced. Perhaps Milosevic discovered that a Yugoslavian asking for what was once granted to Kosovo until he took it away, was a lot better tha n what NATO was insisting be ceded: his entire nationstate’s sovereignty and everything in it.
UNRECOGNIZED SACRIFICES
Just as with the war on drugs in America, the manipulation of images and the use of censorship were significant parts of NATO’s war against Yugoslavia. Those in control had to be sure our visceral responses were not jump-started by images that evoked either sympathy for the refugees, rage over our American losses, or an uncovering of the TV miniseries the government was perpetrating. No cogent discussion of the farce of an accord crafted in Rambouillet took place. As humanitarian aid was the rule rather than the exception, the fissures made in the economies of various nations directly impacted by the NATO blows were American footnotes, and certainly not images that motivated Americans to action.
SELECTIVE SHOWING OF CORPORATE STATE KILLINGS
We respond when our own nation’s sons and daughters are returned in body bags or coffins. Is that why our media failed to report what international intelligence was reporting at the time? The Strategic Policy Journal of the International Strategic Studies Association published accounts of war-related deaths which are worthy of our attention, even though I have been unable to confirm these figures elsewhere. Among other war fatalities as of April 20, 199 9, they listed the unreported death of an American female pilot and an American Major being held hostage, neither of which received coverage elsewhere. In fact the journal insisted that 30 American war dead were transported through Athens, en route to America for burial. We know now about the countless unreported deaths in Cambodia and Laos, where identities and fidelities were erased, and thus we must always question: did NATO cleanse the record of the truth?
Were 50 men, mostly of United States origin, killed in two helicopter crashes as rumored? Other troop losses were purported to have occurred on the ground, in some cases where we presumably had no troops. When asked how many ground troops it would take to seize Kosovo, Lawrence Eagleburger, former State Department official, was reported to have stated “What difference does it make? They’re all volunteers.” Who cares, in other words, if Americans die in Yugoslavia?
Claims made regarding NATO’s destruction of Serbian war vehicles were also grossly exaggerated, according to Col. David Hackworth and others. There were not hundreds of planes and tanks demolished by NATO, but only several of each. According to final Serbian reports, there were not thousands of Yugoslavian troops killed, but less than two hundred. Substituting a controlled image of some technobarbarism war where there were no dead Ameri can soldiers, no American children weeping graveside, no flags for the war dead, no public sympathy—it was a wash; sacrifices without commemoration. The press did its part, too, by failing to report the brutal reality of Yugoslavian civilians being bombed by the NATO humanitarians.
DO AMERICANS BELIEVE IN KILLING INNOCENTS?
The brutal truth is that had our own soldiers returned in body bags, citizens may have started thinking for themselves and wondered if our military’s unwarranted and barbaric destruction of another nation was really good for the people they claimed to be helping. But as we saw in Waco, Americans are quick to accept that eliminating people unlike themselves, or people the media paints as dangerous, is not only OK, but necessary. Most Americans applaud while their fellow citizens execute illegal assaults in both foreign and domestic “war theaters” and then are rewarded for their conduct and presented as brave, patriotic, the best of the best. Life is no longer sacrosanct, only profit is. Consider the casual attitude exhibited by our own citizens both during and after our barbarism in Yugoslavia.
AMERICANS BELIEVE WHAT THE NETWORKS TELL THEM TO BELIEVE —THE WAR POLLS
The polls taken after the NATO bombing stopped were almost as terrifying as the war itself, but for a different set of reasons. They proved how degenerate Americans have become, how conceited our people are to believe our government’s insane excuses for its own imperialism, calling it humanitarian assistance. But then again, these are the same majority of Americans who still believe our government’s justification for a “drug war” on the grounds of public health and safety, when what it is hiding is a civil war against our own fellow American citizens. Medicalize a military operation such as gun confiscation, convince people it is for their public health safety, and everyone might turn in their guns for a Teddy bear at their neighborhood hospitals.
Of the 1,053 people polled by Gallup after the supposed cease fire in Yugoslavia, 58% said that Bill Clinton was a winner of the war, 52% said that NATO was. When asked who were the losers, 65% said the Albanians, 73% said the Serbs, and 64% said that Milosevic had lost the war. When asked if they supported Bill Clinton’s Balkan bombing war, 56% said yes, 39% said no and 5% were undecided. To top it off, 63% said that military action should continue until Slobodan Milosevic was removed from power. Calling for the eviction of Milosevic as though he were simply being removed as Chairman of the Board or CEO of Yugoslavia, Inc. was tantamount to calling for a NATO assisted military coup by an international drug cartel with it s members in the KLA. “Narcoterrorists” had been recruited by NATO and the U.N. to help overthrow Yugoslavia’s national integrity. This set a dangerous precedent for global affairs, as Israel and China later pointed out. Milosevic was elected by a greater majority than our President Clinton, but most Americans, for whatever reasons, thought it their prerogative to bomb another nation until their freely elected President was removed from office. This is what we call exporting democracy? When asked about rebuilding Kosovo with federal funds, 58% were supportive, while only 37% supported rebuilding areas bombed elsewhere in Yugoslavia. Extreme politics indeed.
When these same polled individuals were asked if they supported sending ground troops in as peacekeepers, 52% approved while 45% didn’t. But most farcical of all was this question: from what you know or have heard, do you favor or oppose the terms of the peace agreement? 61% said they approve, 13% opposed while 23% percent admitted to being unfamiliar with the agreement. Do you think even one of those polled had read the actual agreement or read the Rambouillet Accord itself, the peace agreement it referred back to? Asked if Milosevic would violate the terms of the agreement, 73% said yes. I’ve looked for exactly what Clinton and others were telling us Milosevic agreed to in Kosovo, and then reneged on, but I couldn’t find a single example. It’s obvious many Americans can no longer think for themselves, nor possess anything resembling a conscience. They are good at repeating what the networks tell them to believe, though.
WHAT THE MAJOR NETWORKS DIDN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT THE KLA
The major TV networks failed to emphasize that the KLA is a narcoterrorist organization with established links to American and German intelligence operations. And I’m not talking about the type of simple street peddlers who the U.S.’s “war on drugs” is dedicated to imprisoning or killing in pursuit. The KLA are operatives in an international drug and weapons cartel who instigate bombings like the recent ones in Moscow. The KLA is part of the same network that is responsible for the current escalation of terrorism in Russia. Exemplifying once again the gross hypocrisy of our own Congress and Executive Branch, the U.S. State Department hired mercenaries to train these KLA terrorists. We hired groups like PMRI of Virginia which is staffed by Americans who served in the federal government at cabinet and Pentagon posts. And then, as if to keep the show on the road, they continue to wage a war against the users and pushers of drugs at home. What most Americans don’t realize is that at the same time, when these same leaders are away from home, they are arming, training and enabling portions of the enormous drug, weapons and m oney laundering cartels that bring these very drugs into our country in the first place!
Take for example, NATO’s KLA partner, Thaci, a 29 year old warlord known in the field as “Snake”. Before being promoted by NATO to political leadership he was a regional commander who joined the Kosovo Popular movement which had, incidentally, been financed by Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist Dictator of Albania, until his death in 1985. Before becoming Madeline Albright’s buddy, Thaci and his comrades were executing Albanians unreceptive to an armed revolution. That Thaci was convicted in absentia in the Albanian courts and sentenced to 22 years in prison went unmentioned.
Planning on forming a regular KLA army and manning the Kosovo police force, KLA members made clear the miscalculation of those who thought the KLA would be destroyed. At the beginning of NATO’s war, Saddam Hussein’s participation also became clear. This was highly significant, but was hardly noticed in the media at all. Mustafa Remi, known as the KLA Commander, said that the NATO agreement did not require the surrendering of the KLA’s weapons, only that they be store-housed for 90 days and only 1/3 of them. He was right. U.S. State Department spokesman James Ru bin and Secretary of State Madeline Albright declared that Thaci had earned their admiration for his “act of political courage.” I think they must have been referring to his helping replace the duly-elected moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova, because he refused to fuel the civil war that put Kosovo on the auction block for NATO-connected companies to bid on.
THE HAGUE, NATO’S COURT
It became apparent during this entire debacle that the Hague was not in the business of justice, but rather it sided with NATO and the business of “nationtaking”. On June 3, 1999 the U.N.’s highest judicial body dismissed Yugoslavia’s claim that NATO’s bombings were illegal, which they were, and that a cease-fire should have been ordered. The Hague, the current New World Order Court, instead agreed with NATO, stating that NATO was not committing genocide. The Court did, however, agree to examine whether or not NATO’s air campaign violated the U.N. charter. Their ruling was a disgrace to any literate human being. Any person who reads the international laws regarding war, violence against civilians, destruction of civilian targets, coercing treaties, knows just how guilty NATO was, and just how the Hague participated with them. It wasn’t dif ficult for the Hague to indict the belligerent head of state, Slobodan Milosevic , and four of his top aides for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. What surprised me was that they could find no cause to indict Bill Clinton of America, Tony Blair of England or Wilhelm Schroeder of Germany.
Ian Brownie, a British barrister and member of Yugoslavia’s legal team, claimed that NATO’s actions caused the civil conflict, that it was “deliberately incited by NATO planning.” I agree. In a disgusting media stunt, The Hague did say that the crisis, not the illegal war, “raises very serious issues of international law” calling on all sides to obey the rules governing humanitarian law. A unique idea. Well, doesn’t the court itself have to abide by the law? And how is it the United States can participate in the Hague, when our nation does not recognize their jurisdiction? How could the court claim that NATO has not attempted “to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part” of Yugoslavia and its people? Why then will it cost billions of dollars to rebuild their communities, hospitals, schools, factories, roads, ports, bridges, and airports? If it’s not destruction, does the Hague consider it renovation with an in-house wrecking crew? If so, NATO and the U.N. could use some renovating themselves.
NATO’S REAL MESSAGE: MY WAY OR ELSE
Like millions of other people worldwide, I grew so deeply agitated by every element of the Balkan war, that it was difficult not to be consumed by it and the destruction it was causing. Although the endless film footage of refugees and burning villages and successful computer game-like technoblitzes over Belgrade were perfect for the bomb loving America viewer, some stories that came out of Belgrade just made me feel that the whole kingdom of humankind was under siege. In our own country, our citizenry is becoming indentured to the global corporate mechanism by way of misapplied executive orders, presidential decision directives and other seized extra jurisdictional powers. America’s executive branch today doesn’t even remotely resemble its constitutionally defined prerogatives and limitations. Instead, we have a fiat executive dictatorship that neither the legislative nor judicial branches have attempted to constrain. The Executive Branch illegally made war, conducted war, and financed war without Congressional consent. In short order, the citizens who comprise the volunteer military were given no representation in the decision of their deployment. The courts have yet to adjudicate these acts of sedition by the Commander in Chief and his enablers.
EXTREME BANKING SCHEMES
There is a form of homogenizing a nation’s economy on the international level that lays the foundation for their political alignments as well. Banking schemes that include reckless lending to government leaders who line their own pockets and the bank accounts of their cronies, eventually end in the nation itself being handed over in receivership to the world bank or IMF. In our own nation’s case, the U.S. economy is already in the hands of a private central bank called the Federal Reserve, an outfit that benefits each time Congress increases our national debt. The recent wars in Yugoslavia and Indonesia are but two examples of what I have already outlined as having occurred as a result of their borrowing and investing practices. The people of the nation become the indebted ones, most often excusing the designers of their debt, and allowing them refuge in a foreign city or estate in some well secluded area.
OIL WARS
As occurred in Yugoslavia, when natural resources belonging to the country are put up as collateral for a cease fire, it indicates this foreign tour of duty is without limit. In my opinion, maintaining control of territory critical to a Caspian Sea pipeline, and stabilizing the Kosovo mines under NATO control, is what NATO’s takeover of Yugoslavia was primarily about after all. In September of 1997 The New York Times provided the missing puzzle piece. “The most concentrated mass of untapped wealth known to exist anywhere is in the oil and gas fields beneath the Caspian Sea and lands around it… The strategic implications of this bonanza hypnotize Western security planners as completely as finances transfix oil executives.”
One year later Ariel Sharon of the Heritage Foundation stated that the “huge oil reserves, estimated at over 25 billion barrels under the Caspian Sea and in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are similar to those in Kuwait and larger than those in Alaska’s Northern Slope and the North Sea combined.” Carl Limbacher of www.Newsmax.com put it simplest: “Almost all roads lead to Baku, Azerbaijan, the Caspian Seaport believed to be sitting on trillions of dollars of untapped crude.”
One route is from Baku northwest to Chechnya and on to the Black Sea. The alternative Mediterranean route running from Baku west, through Turkey, bypassing Iran offers NATO its allied strength, the Russian route less so. In addition the later route through Turkey, has been the business deal of the DNC contributor Roger Tamaaraz who got the backing of the Clinton Energy and State Departments. Yet the oil companies directly invested in the Azerbaijani International Operating Company using the Northwest route to Russia are opposed: Penzoil, Unicoal, McDermott and Exxon/Amoco/British Petroleum. It will be interesting to see just whose pipeline gains NATO’s militar y backing. Look for a humanitarian invasion of Azerbaijan next, now that the route through Kosovo has been established.
As part of the global oil and mineral asset taking, a primary reason for the Russian war actions in Chechnya, the U.N.’s war actions in East Timor, and NATO’s war actions in Yugoslavia are the major oil pipe lines and oil fields along with mineral wealth there to be exploited. How else can one explain the lack of intervention in some of the world’s 70 or so nations where civil wars are waging, like in Rwanda and Burundi where as many as a million people have lost their lives?
THE KOSOVO PORK WARS
While war was not declared, and Congress did not approve legally either the use of air or ground troops, they did authorize emergency spending, and managed to attach some interesting pork barrel bills to it. Emergency spending of $11.6 billion was approved, with over $6 billion of it going for the air assault on Yugoslavia. Congress also approved increasing defense spending.
Clinton asked for $6 billion to fight Milosevic to which House and Senate teams added $1.8 billion for a troop pay raise starting in January 2000; $2.5 billion towards military operations and equipment maintenance; $678 million for Kosovo’s refugees and the Balkan states, plus money to replace depleted bombs, purchase weapons and other military needs. But while debating emergency spending they were really debating more pressing political needs. Jordan was slated to get $100 million, farmers suffering from low commodities prices $566 million, areas hit by hurricanes in the coast $900 million—and the parade went on. Senator Hutchison of Texas won a moratorium until October of 1999 against new Energy Department rules that would require oil and gas producers using federal property to pay higher government royalties. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada got the Interior Department to delay stricter cleanup requirements for mining companies leasing federal lands. As Steve Dasbach of the Libertarian Party put it, “It’s difficult to decide which is more despicable: Bill Clinton’s military attack on innocent Yugoslavian civilians, or the U.S. Senate’s financial raid on innocent Americans taxpayers.” In fact, the latter makes the former possible. Dasbach concludes, “for Politicians, war is a four letter word spelled p-o-r-k.” House business was so out of control arguing over fishing in Alaska, $1 billion support for U.S. steel companies, and the same amount for hurricane victims in the South, Representative Bill Young of Florida, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said, “I’m practicing for my next career, and that is refereeing in the World Wrestling Federation.” Here’s an idea for a new TV show! They could call it “What’s My Racket?”
EIGHT WEEKS OF BOMBING
On May 6, 1999 the G-7 met in Bonn, Germany to draw up plans for a settlement with Slobodan Milosevic. The United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russian, Canada, Italy and Japan adopted the “general principles on the political solution to the Kosovo Crisis.” The terms were clear: 1) immediate and verifiable end of violence and repression in Kosovo; 2) the withdrawal from Kosovo of military, police and paramilitary forces; 3) the deployment in Kosovo of effective international civil and security presences, endorsed and adopted by the United Nations, capable of guaranteeing the achievement of the common objectives; 4) the establishment of an interim administration in Kosovo, to be decided by the security council of the United Nations to ensure conditions for a peaceful and normal life for all inhabitants in Kosovo; 5) the establishment of an interim political framework, for substantial self government for Kosovo, taking full account of the Rambouillet accords and the principals of sovereignty, and the demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation army; and 6) a comprehensive approach to the economic development and stabilization of the crisis region. Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin expressed cautious optimism, while declaring that the crisis is hardly over. It’s possible that the CIA briefings of the anticipated casualties, should the war expand into a ground war, may have made the settlement talks more attractive to NATO and the U.S. commanders. The U.S. would be expected to provide 85% of the ground troops, and out of 150,000 troops deployed, over 10,000 would be killed. And these were optimistic levels. Some military analysts predicted higher casualty rates.
If only war were as neat as the analysts make it seem. It was difficult to know just what NATO was after during the eight weeks of senseless and barbaric bombing of civilians. Usually called “collateral damage”, other times just ignored, the civilians killed in the bombing of a bus in Lazane, a hospital and market complex in Nis, refugee convoys both leaving and returning home, are not paper calculations. They are actual war dead.
MAKING WAR IN FOREIGN NATIONS IS PROFITABLE
To many of us who believed Clinton had made a foreign war that was clearly avoidable, the fact that it was a manufactured war intended to divert focus from the Clinton Administration’s many scandals was obvious. The extent to which our nation’s security had been comprised in exchange for campaign contributions from the communist Chinese continued to be revealed throughout NATO’s war on Yugoslavia, but the revelations took the back page to the more dramatic footage of refugees, bombings, and military men on parade. And when we were given any official explanations regarding the Chinese espionage, or the Indonesian and Russian roles in the administration’s banking schemes, they rarely reflected the severity of the nation’s true losses.
CLINTON’S WAR STYLE
The President of the United States told the world of his success. After 77 days of illegally bombing another country into smithereens, destroying their neighborhoods, their factories, their railways, their roads, schools, hospitals, airports and lives, Clinton claimed victory. Victory in an air bombardment that was never a war. He said “We have a real chance for Europe to be put right.’’ What was wrong with Europe in the first place? I must have missed that press briefing. “This has been a very happy day at the White House because of the peace agreement in Kosovo… It’s a good day for America,” he declared. So why didn’t I feel happy? “In the past four months”, Clinton stated “we have seen some of the worst inhumanity in our lifetime, but we’ve also seen the bravery of our troops, the resolve of our democracy, the decency of our people and the courage and determination of the people of Kosovo.’’
In his victory speech Clinton left out a few details. He failed to mention, of course, th at our own Army special forces and private companies were training the KLA terrorists in the art of killing. He failed to mention the gross acts of barbarism NATO committed by bombing civilian targets. He failed t o mention that NATO had instigated this undeclared war knowing it would result in Albanian displacement. In much the same way, the U.N. encouraged the autonomy movement in East Timor while the United States continued its support of the Indonesian military and pro-Jakarta East Timor-based terrorist militias. Just what can justify our government’s active participation in funding, backing and training mercenary terrorist organizations in central Europe with connections to the Turkish drug mafia and Osama Bin Laden?
The President’s statements on the issue of helping others really did me in. “We now have a moment of hope… and we have to finish the job and build the peace.” Maybe like other Clinton word games he means now we have to rebuild Kosovo piece by piece. What hedidn’t tell us directly, but said to us through his spokesman Joe Lockhart, referred to the $13 billion required to rebuild what we destroyed: “Yugoslavia won’t get any U.S. aid… as long as President Milosevic is President Milosevic.’’ Clinton’s way of building peace seems to be that of using economic blackmail and training drug running killers from Arkansas to Yugoslavia.
THE WAR PROFITS OF KOSOVO
I could not help but feel revolted by our nation’s pretense of morality, our pretending to be stewards of some moral barometer of what is acceptable and what is not. International services withdrew from Kosovo in a neat and orderly fashion, because it was about to get really dangerous. Hundreds of thousand of others, the average citizens and residents of the territory, were trekking across woods and mountains in the winter to escape being killed. While Clinton moralized, Congress dickered over who had authority to deploy our troops for reasons that were neither for our nation’s own defense nor for that of a NATO member. It was quite horrifying watching the masses of monitors and civilians fleeing Kosovo, a peculiar mix of war racket and death. It was a grotesque reality, a bizarre twist to the civil war game, victimizing average men, women and their children to the well financed war games carried out by despots in uniform and despots in the banking empire.
We were warned it would be hazardous, that Americans would get killed. We were told we must go and help the Albanians protect themselves. But the truth was, Milosevic’s Serbian army was partially American-financed and purchased. Henry Kissinger and his team created the banking apparatus for Slobodan Milosevic, engaged him in his “collateral for weapons” ga me, no doubt making quite a handsome profit for themselves. PMRI got the contract from the Dayton Accords to train the other side, the Croat Muslim Federation. Going into Kosovo was not about trying to stop a civil war, it was simply the next stage in destroy ing an infrastructure. In a well oiled closed loop used innumerable times before, first they finance both sides of the conflict, then force them into a new agreement, the eventual settlement after a war, and then secure the new contracts to rebuild what was destroyed. Soldiers and civilians are both mere pawns in the war racket.
RAVAGING THE KINGDOM
Collateral damage has become a fashionable term as our military designers refer to civilian deaths as “mere collateral damage”. We are told the politicians underwriting the wars consider civilian deaths “collateral damage” and an acceptable cost for attaining their agenda. It’s a term used in lieu of war dead, war maimed, destroyed, devastated, eviscerated, killed or obliterated. If you happen to be damaged, you would not consider that a fit term for being bombed, mined, machine gunned, shot or run over. Whether it’s damage to property or person, the term hides the reality of the brutality behind antiseptic words. If the network media would describe the human and tragic realities behind each and every incident of “collateral damage”, perhaps America citizens would have risen up in revolt and forced a cease fire.
For example, I want to share with you what the Zoo Director of the Belgrade Zoo reported as one of the many unreported instances of collateral damage. Vuk Bojovic recounted “one of the strangest and most disturbing concerts you can hear anywhere” was the noise the zoo animals began making starting a half hour before bombing planes arrived to drop their payload. “It builds up intensely as the planes approach—only they can hear them, we can’t—and when the bombs start falling it’s like a choir of the insane. Peacocks screaming, wolves howling, dogs barking, chimpanzees rattling their cages…” He went on to speak of the losses of animal life. “I had 1,000 eggs of rare and endangered species incubating, some of them ready to hatch in a couple of days. They were ruined. That’s 1,000 lives lost. Many animals aborted their young in late stages of pregnancy, including a snake that aborted 40 fetuses, on a night when NATO hit an army headquarters 600 miles away. The next day we found that some of the animals had killed their young. A female tiger killed two of her four, three-day-old cubs and the other two were so badly injured we couldn’t save them.” There are no images to compare it to. The network camera people were quick to show refugees (that NATO displaced), but found no reason to record other results of NATO’s ravaging of the Kingdom. But then again, the deaths of thousands of zoo animals is merely “collateral damage”, too, isn’t it?
WAR AS BUSINESS
Also suffering collateral damage has been our own military itself, in a decimation of its readiness, its fitness and its capacity. All armed forces are now experiencing shortages and early retirements when permitted. In essence, the question of “to war or not to war” has become little more than an economic and political decision, having precious little to do with military necessity or strategy or even more importantly, our common defense. In fact, if it weren’t for corporate state interests, there would have been no NATO destruction and occupation of Yugoslavia.
The events that took place in Kosovo this last year of the 1900s augur poorly for the future, especially in light of the quick follow up by Indonesia’s fold, and the continuing escalation of violence, slave labor and death from the drug war in America. Are these harbingers of the war years to come?
Postscript
In a poll of its world subscribers conducted by the Associated Press, the number one news story for 1999 was NATO’s bombing of Kosovo. While I would agree with the ranking, my reasons would differ from most in the media. One Greek news agency, how ever, summarized the essential point of the number one story just as I would have done: “NATO bombing Yugoslavia without authorization from the U.N. Security Council”. To me the situation in Kosovo was the low point for the rule of law and the diminishment of national sovereignty around the world. Instead we see more and more industrial, military, economic and geopolitical arrogance on the rise.
As this special issue of The Hieronimus & Co. Journal goes to print, the Serbian military is planning its recapture of Yugoslavia’s city of Kosovo and becoming more vocal about the eventual ouster of the KFOR occupying force. This, after months of U.S. haggling over whether assassination can legitimately be considered as a part of our foreign policy (as if to suggest that it has not always been so). The Hague is now reexamining the legality of NATO’s actions while still enabling the present illegal foreign occupation of Yugoslavia, which continues to perpetuate civil chaos.
Since the undeclared war against Yugoslavia by the member nations of NATO, Albanians have been allowed to kill Serbians at will without challenge. In fact, more Serbians have been killed by Albanians since NATO’s occupation of the country than Albanians killed prior to NATO, which was presumably the motivating reason for NATO’s peculiar type of humanitarian aid. As of January 2000 the Serbian military has declared itself prepared to return to Kosovo to protect its own people. As I predicted, it was just a question of time before the Yugoslavians themselves would find an imperialist occupation not only onerous, but in this case, counterproductive to safety and peace.
As Sun Tzu so ably taught, the art of war depends on sound judgment and proper timing. I might add that it also depends on the laws of nature and an observation of men. Nature seeks balance, for such a system is perpetual. War seeks to create imbalance, for all things are then in a state of potential radical change. To destabilization a region is to gain possible control of it. When we, as citizens, permit the powers that be to destabilize a nation, only to move in later to takeover the region under the guise of humanitarian aid, our planet is on the road to disaster. This increasingly repeated pattern is why the Kosovo conflict should be ranked the number one story of the year. The pattern of destabilization, then takeover, then fund the rebuilding shows disregard for humanity as a community of sovereign beings entitled to representative law making and keeping. Whether it is preserving our own liberty or that of citizens of other nations, matters little to the corporate state. But recognizing the patterns and acknowledging our failures is just the first step towards correcting our world conduct. Americans should be ashamed of what was done to Yugoslavia in our names as citizens of the various nations of NATO. The usurpation of the citizens’ rights was a violation of international law and the laws governing America.
I pray that we may we all live to see the day that these Extreme Politics will be directed by the laws of love, civility and humanity, instead of greed, brutishness and a lust for power. We do need more love in the world!—Zoh M. Hieronimus, January 13, 2000
Dictated by Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] in 1904, in advance of his death in 1910.
During his writing career, Samuel Clemens had criticized perhaps every type of person or institution either living or dead. But this piece was just a little too hot for his family to tolerate. Since they believed the short narrative would be regarded as sacrilege, they urged him not to publish it. However, Sam was to have the last word, and even the word after that. Having directed it to be published after his death, he said, “I have told the truth in that… and only dead men can tell the truth in this world.”
It remains to be seen whether you can learn the lessons by reading… without becoming as they are. —William H. Huff, in his preface to this piece as reprinted in a booklet prepared by Huff that also reprints “War Is A Racket” by Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, Retired. For ordering information call 410-374-4255 or send a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope to Lexrex, 12 Carroll St., #119, Westminster, MD 21157 or visit their website, www.lexrex.com.
The War Prayer by Mark Twain
It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war20was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast doubt upon its righteousness straight way got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came—next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams—visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the ru shing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!—then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:
“God the all-terrible! Thus who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning they sword!”
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encoura ge them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory—An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the min ister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside—which the startled minister did—and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the Throne—bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import—that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of—except he pause and think.
“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two—one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all this—keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer—the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it—that part which the pastor—and also you in your hearts—fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which hollow victory—must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle—be Thou near them! With them—in spirit—we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it—for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
[After a pause.] “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.” It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
ZMH