TARGET YUGOSLAVIA: NATO's WAR OF AGGRESSION / Monday, 19 April 1999 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit CUBANEWS FROM RADIO HAVANA CUBA E-mail: rhc@radiohc.org http://www.radiohc.org TARGET YUGOSLAVIA: NATO's WAR OF AGGRESSION Monday, 19 April 1999 Radio Havana Cuba presents its coverage of the ongoing U.S.- led NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. RADIO HAVANA CUBA / HEADLINERS REPORT 19 April 1999 Last week's TV images of slaughtered Albanian Kosovar civilian refugees south of the town of Djakovica, firmly put NATO and the US on the defensive who, after initially accepting responsibility for the attack on a refugee caravan, promptly shifted gears and moved into damage control over the weekend. On Monday morning, NATO called a press conference to present to the world an exhaustive investigation of the attack. A US clean-cut, nice looking, well-spoken general spent 35 minutes on prime time TV to explain, with slides of graphs, photos and diagrams how "unlikely" it was, after all, that NATO could have been responsible for the massacre. He maintained that the caravan in question was in fact a Serbian military convoy and for the remainder of the presentation the word "caravan" disappeared from the screen -- replaced by the word "convoy." Using the usual doublespeak of "collateral damage" for civilian casualties, the general presented the attack in lecture form with frequent calls of "next slide, please." He spoke reasonably of What we Know and What we Don't Know and What we Think and was terribly self- analytical admitting that indeed, it was possible that a tractor had been hit but that the Serbs had mixed military and civilian vehicles to avoid being attacked. He questioned the Serbian TV images of the attack, saying that the civilian casualties looked as though they had been machine gunned and mortared and not bombed. Relying on "witnesses" who were never named or presented, he said that the Serbs had attacked the refugee column themselves. Those barbarians! He presented a smoke-screen of detail for us, speaking of the cockpit environment of an F16 fighter aircraft, of the exact chronology of events and the different aircraft involved. Of burning buildings and Serb reports, of moving trucks and the physical difficulties imposed on NATO's pilots. We were shown images of NATO missiles striking trucks. "Next slide, please." He ended by indicating that once the target ID was questioned all attacks were terminated. In other words, his aircraft had been guilty -- at the very least -- of shooting before they knew the identity of the victim. The usual US shoot-from-the- hip policy when dealing with barbarians. What this all amounts to is a very clever public relations campaign to show terrible concern for these poor civilians drawing everyone away from the bigger picture of the continuing attack on Yugoslavia. The international press complied, asking detailed questions pertaining to this attack -- seeking anecdotal material to this conflict that will satisfy their public -- never bothering to question the legality and continued rationale of the bombing. British Prime Minister Anthony Blair announced that his government was taking steps to provide funds and assistance for the rebuilding of the region even as his planes were continuing to eradicate its infrastructure and damage the environment with the bombing of a petro-chemical complex in the Yugoslav town of Panchevo over the weekend. Aside from the loss of life of plant workers, extremely high emissions of dangerous and harmful substances were reported. Cancerogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic substances were released into the atmosphere from the destroyed synthetic Azotara fertilizer plant as well as the Petrohemija oil refinery plant. The entire population of 120,000 inhabitants of Pancevo have been endangered by the emissions and evacuations have taken place. The BBC has been strongly criticized by The Times newspaper in London for carrying reports by its World Affairs editor John Simpson, who is one of the few Western journalists still reporting out of Belgrade. Mr. Simpson, it appears, has failed to show skepticism and is biased towards the Serbs, according to the Times. It says that unnamed English government officials were accusing the journalist of swallowing Serb propaganda in suggesting that NATO's assaults were uniting the Serbs behind President Slobodan Milosovic. Simpson went to the site of last week's attack on a refugee column and reported it to be true. NATO itself accepted responsibility for the bombing. However, the Blair government was furious with the BBC journalist for interviewing Serb civilians in which they said the bombing had strengthened their resolve, saying that with Serb monitoring of course they would say such things. However, the BBC pointed out, Simpson's own cameraman had been expelled by the Serbian authorities which was hardly an action that supported Westminster's allegations. It is worth mentioning that the BBC's coverage of last year's bombing of Iraq was also criticized by the Blair government. It appears that the old axiom of "all the news that's fit to print" doesn't include the truth as far as 10 Downing Street is concerned. Eight years ago after the end of the Gulf War, Western news media reported on the remarkable low loss of life of civilians in the conflict. It was revealed afterwards, however, that some quarter of a million people died in the bombing and the aftermath of the war. Depleted uranium missiles were used in Iraq as they are being used in Yugoslavia. In Southern Iraq, the level of leukemia among children has risen very sharply and is directly attributed to the low but deadly radioactive levels in the region. There is great concern that the radioactivity currently being released will do similar harm to the Yugoslav Federation's future generations. RHC's colleague at Radio Yugoslavia, Slawka Sunaico, has informed us that NATO is also dropping GDU27 ordinance, which explode with such force that they literally rock the ground like an earthquake for kilometers around. It has been revealed that last week's bombing of a car factory in Zastava took place in spite of warnings to NATO that there were 10,000 workers in the plant. It is not known how many were killed and injured. And finally, even neutral or non-aligned nations have been bribed or cajoled into joining NATO's so-called Partnership for Peace, with Albania, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Macedonia and Slovenia all joining the party. There is little doubt that NATO and the US, in the face of a military stalemate, are doing their best to undermine the morale of the civilian population of the Yugoslav Federation. Which really makes a lot of sense if they send in ground troops. They'll meet a people that will fight them tooth and nail and the war will drag on for years with the war network CNN showing pictures of tearful US, German and English mothers mourning their dead sons killed by those Serb barbarians. But who are the real barbarians, currently pounding at the gates of Belgrade and determined to put the world at risk of a global conflict? Russia has already said it will provide arms to the Federation if NATO invades. The true barbarians are those who provide us with clean, living room-accessible CNN images of what appears to be no more than a game. "Next slide, please." -30- [c] 1999, Radio Habana Cuba All rights reserved Articles cannot be reproduced, reprinted or published in any system without the consent of RHC. This prohibition includes the distribution of this material via Usenet News, "bulletin board" services, e-mail lists, print media, radio and television. For the complete RADIO HAVANA CUBA NEWSCAST and other features, please write for our daily broadcast schedule. We welcome your comments and suggestions. For further information, contact us at: Postal Address: Radio Havana Cuba P.O.Box 6240 Havana, Cuba Telephone: (53) (7) 791053 Fax: (53) (7) 795007 E-mail: rhc@radiohc.org WWW: http://www.radiohc.org rhc-eng-16831 1999-Apr-19 20:14:55