Part I

" Ah, shucks. Silly me! And I thought that long, convoluted lecture in your 8/9 post had something to do with finding "uncensored" information sources. Rereading it I looked carefully between the lines for references to my so-called "inflamatory messages" but only found white space"

T'man, your first post regarding your favorite Secretary of State was posted July 30th the second regarding you interpretation of US military action on July 31st. My first comment, which if I may say
so, was rather benign, was posted on August 9th.

Your initial request for url's was of no great consequence in fact I felt you were very sincere. However you desire for ""uncensored information and open forums" seemed, to say the least, to be
curiously at odds with your two subsequent posts on the 30th and 31st. These two posts led me to believe you were not really interested in "uncensored information and open fourms." Your
recommendation to take seriously the musing of the good folks at FreeRepublic in you post to Zoja of Monday, August 16, 1999 - 07:08 am: to Zoja comfirms that belief.

" If you object to the content of the posted article… re: the ASEAN conference, then write to the editor or reporter of the
newspaper. "

I have no objections to the posting what so ever. Your distortion of it is another matter altogether.

" If you object to Howard Zinn's list of U.S. interventions, well, too bad - that's the historical record, dude. "

Not quite. That's your and Zinn's interpretation of the historical record.

phil

Part II

--1. And so the Yougosovian regeim gave us vivid immages of living skeletons hanging onto wire fences back in the early '90s to help their cause. --

" If you're referring to the photo of the emaciated young man clinging to barbed wire that made the cover of Time magazine… No one questioned what this photo implied… "

They couldn't and I notice you don't refute the implications either.

" Remember the mortars launched by Serb forces into a crowded Sarajevo market? It turns out that those explosions were caused not by mortar shells, but by handmade and hand delivered bombs…
No, I'm not going to do the research for you! "

T'gunn, never site sources merely to "do the research for (someone else)." Do it to make yourself more believable, to arm your reader
regarding your bias, and out of respect for your reader's sensibilities. Give them the opportunity to read the material you're using so that they can make and "independent" judgement regarding your interpretation and accuracy.

*******************

-- 2. Exactly how was the economy weakened? I find this point of view fascinating. --

" The usual IMF way - huge loans, huge debt, inability to make payments followed by more loans with demands for wage controls, privatization, downsizing, shutdowns resulting in unemployment,
rising prices, etc., - a never ending cycle of debt and instability and economic colonization by western capital. "

Are you objecting to being required to make secured loans, to exercise fiscal and monetary discipline and to pay one's bills?

**************

--3. I'd say the "good guys" had a lot of help from the "bad guys" in that labeling process. They (the bad uns) were caught doing what they were want to do. --

" So the "good-guys" do to the "bad-guys" what they believe the "bad-guys" did to the other "good-guys", and now we've got "bad good- guys" in cahoots with even "badder bad-guys" cleansing the
"bad-guys" that originally….jeeeeez, "

I'm simply saying that no one made the Serbs act barbaricly. What the ethnic Albanians do has no bearing on what the Serb's chose to do or not do, and visa versa. Each side must accept responsibility for its own actions and not blame the other.

" It's about OIL, OIL, AND MORE OIL. "

Once again, it is NOT about oil. Kosovo and other nearby reigons have vast mining operations as well as minng and ore refining expertise. Its about stuff like Coal, lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and
silver. As you can see, I don't mind doing a little research for my reader.

***************

--4. They had a legal right to run the province. That right was taken away in the early '90s. "illegal emmigrants"??? Give a friggin break already. --

" Wrong. They dominated and ruled Kosovo as though it were an Albanian state, harassing and driving out other ethnic groups and squandered the aide and revenue payments from the Federal government on self-aggrandizing projects. When their wings were clipped, they got peeved and withdrew from all public activities, refused to vote (they were a clear majority and could still have major influence), and created a parallel system, eventually attacking and even murdering those Albanians who tried to work within the system. "

So you don't disagree with me that the ethnic Albanians had the legal right to rule Kosovo? That right was seriously cut back in the early '90s when they were their right were withdrawn and they
were removed from the vast majority of influential positions.

**************

--5. There is no objective evidence that the KLA is at the core of any durg smuggling. Nor is there any believable evidence that Thaqi is a gangster or has personally or indirectly eliminated anyone. --

" There is plenty of "objective evidence" of the Albanian control of the heroin trade through the Balkans, and Kosovo itself as the major staging and transshipment point. Here's a few places you can find plenty of evidence: Interpol, German court documents, U.S. State Dept. reports.
***
Well, Phil, you tell me. Who/what is Thaci? "

*Ad hominem attack deleted*

Care to share a url or two with us?

**************

--6. A) I think you mean mining as in Trepcr, C) Your pont? c) in other words, rational change, D) your slobbering and have a glazed look in you eyes. That is one of the tiredest arguments ever put forward. It didn't make sense when it was first put forward and it still dosen't today. But the faithful still cling to it to help them get through the day. --

*Ad hominem attack deleted*

" A) No, I meant OIL. Just what I said "

*Ad hominem attack deleted*
***
B) *Ad hominem attack deleted* - capital and markets, what capitalism is all about, not to be confused with free market economics (hmmmmm. I can already envision you twisting on this one!
[:>') C) He, he - sure, from a bully's perspective it's perfectly rational to beat the other guy up if he doesn't play the game your way; D) Take a course in geopolitics, maybe you'll understand -
e.g., Panama 1989, test case "can we get away with breaking all treaties and international laws and invade a country and kidnap their leader?" Iraq 1990, another test case "can we trick our big
weapons and chemical customer/ally into believing it's ok with the U.S. to retake what was originally stolen from it by the Brits, then convince the "international community" to support a war to save the ass of a decadent petty dictator, and proceeding to destroy the total infrastructure of the only nation in the Arab
world that was strong, industrialized, wealthy, with a large and growing educated middle class and didn't dance to the tune of London bankers. The examples are too numerous to continue. DO
RESEARCH! ASK QUESTIONS! Best word in the English language is WHY. Use it often. "

A) you want to share with us the location of oil reserves in greater Yugoslavia and nearby regions. D) " the usurpation of power by a western elite towards the establishment of global dominance "
is, plain and simple, gibberish. I'll try to untangle B) and C) later.

*************

--7. I take it your not a Capatalist? ;o) I heard taht the only difference between capatalists and socialists is that capatialists work for their riches, socialist use laws. --

" No, and neither are you. You have neither the $$, nor the power to be in the club. However, I do believe in free market economics. (Twist 'n spin, dude - he, he.) "
***
Last I heard one doesn't need to be rich or powerful to appreciate or accept the legitimacy of modern capitalism.

phil

Part III

--Another tired saw. The US did not act alone. Seventeen other countries with their own 'deals' had to be brought on board. Clark and Jackon's task was much like hearding cats. Of course obvious details like that do no affect the thinking of "true believers." --

" NATO policy is made in closed, secret sessions of the North Atlantic Council. No votes are taken. Those members who object to a particular policy or undertaking have only the option of not participating (e.g., Greece's refusal to join the attack on Yugoslavia). It is NOT a democratic process. It is primarily a bully club run by the U.S., Britain, Germany, and (sometimes) France and Italy.

Without U.S. weapons and technology NATO could not have undertaken this criminal act of aggression. Clark took his orders directly from Washington and could give a rats ass what the Europeans wanted. The only honorable act of the "generals" was
Jackson's refusal to attack the Russians at the airport and risk a real war. "

Once again I see you do not disagree with me. Everyone who participated in the NATO had to be brought on board. They were kept on board too.

" Yes, I do pay attention to the details. Methinks a hell of a lot more than you do. "

Me thinkist not and what details you do notice are colored by your need to believe.

" Do you have access to sources other than television in your area? Like alternative newspapers, listener sponsored radio, public
libraries, political organizations other than republicrats. "

Care to swap bookmarks?

" Fallwell, indeed!! The one that believes little purple stuffed creatures are secret messengers of the "homosexual lifestyle". What a joke, Phil. There's a big difference between understanding
history, geopolitics, and imperialist strategies and the whacked out hallucinations and fantasies of an idiot who's consumed way too much biblical opium.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, dude! "
***
I'm still bemused by your recommendation to Zoja to take in the FreeRepublic web site.

phil

T'man

My source for 3. above is:
http://www.alb-net.com/kcc/041599e.htm

phil

Zoja:

" I wrote earlier the best thing anyone can do who wants to know more about a subject like this is look at every side in the matter. And what's even more important, get you info from people within, not from outside. "

I'm pretty much in agreement with you so far.

" My method usually is to start looking at the side the establishment and government is picking on, the real and true underdog so to speak. If I look at Bosnia, it would be Dani magazine. It took and is still taking a lot of flack from the government, a sign of independence to me. "

I also believe that we must never loose site of the tendency for each side to present their side in the most favorable light and the other side in the most negative. I found the web site for Dani. Also, I've redone my bookmarks. Remove "bookmark.htm" from the address. Each section now has its own page.

" For the rest I think you guys have a funny way of making arguments. AND you forget one thing! After Tito died some guys smelt power. One of them was Milosevic. On top of that many conflicts, dating back at least to the second world war, and even earlier than that, were swept under the rug when Tito came to power. So, Milosevic and his cronies decided to brush up and even kindle these old conflicts. Divide and Rule was their credo. "

I'm beginning to appreciate why Tito ruled with such an iron hand.

" I do not believe in this 'oil point of view'. Had there been oil in Bosnia for instance,
the world would not have stood idly by as thousands of innocent people got slaughtered. Nonono! The US army would have been all over the place in days, just like when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Bosnia at that time costed too much money for to little prophit (Like true Ferenghys!) "

My grandfather came from the region near Yugoslavia in 1914 at age 14. The province was called Gallicia and the town was called Prebush. Of course I've anglosized the spelling from my memorise of how he pronounced the words. He was brought here by Bethlem Mines to work in their coal mines as were many others. Most notable thousands were brought here because of their knowledge of mining, ore refining and metallurgy skills. These people came from as far south as northern Albania.

phil

For the record:

(is the NYT an acceptable source, even though it came by way of FreeRepublic.com?)

New York Times
August 16, 1999
NATO Peacekeepers Plan a System of Controls for the News Media in Kosovo
By STEVEN ERLANGER

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- The United States and its allies charged with peacekeeping in Kosovo are establishing a system to control the news media in the province that would write a code of conduct for journalists, monitor their compliance with it and establish enforcement mechanisms to punish those who violate its rules.

A draft plan of operation for Kosovo's Department of Media Affairs, which already has been established, was drawn up earlier this month by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, calling for a staff of 50 people.

It has been circulating on a restricted basis to member countries, who have been asked to nominate suitable personnel. A copy was provided to The New York Times by someone disturbed by the contents. International news media groups also have heard about it and already have expressed criticism.

A senior Western official involved with the plan, who spoke on the telephone from Kosovo, said it was based on a similar program in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The proposed "Media Regulatory Commission" and "Media Monitoring Division" are not intended to intimidate or to censor the local news media but to support and tutor them in the ways of a Western free press, he said, until they can operate on their own.

"The idea is not to censor anyone," he said. "The idea is to bring people up to Western standards, so you need to present Western standards to observe. And it will all be done in consultation."
On the other hand, he said, the department is charged with preventing "the abuse of the media, especially radio and television, so it can't be used to urge people to go out in the streets and create riots."

But in Montenegro and Serbia, which together make up Yugoslavia, Clinton administration officials are actively engaged in supporting politicians and news media outlets opposed to the continued rule of the elected Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic. In Serbia they are helping the opposition to organize large street demonstrations intended to press Milosevic to resign.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is charged by the United Nations, which is in overall control of Kosovo, with the "democratization" of the province, including running free and fair elections. News media development is a crucial part of the organization's task, the officials say.

The Kosovo Media Affairs Department, situated in Pristina, the province's capital, is most urgently charged with allocating frequencies and issuing broadcasting licenses for Kosovo. Various businessmen, publishers and potential politicians are already drawing up plans for new television and radio ventures for the province.

The department proposes to create a Media Regulatory Commission, in part based on America's Federal Regulatory Commission, which governs the airwaves. But the commission would also write (in vague consultation with Kosovo journalists) and administer a "broadcasting code of practice" and "a temporary press code" for print journalists, and then "monitor compliance and establish enforcement mechanisms," the plan says.

As in Bosnia, the commission would have the right to censor material, to fine stations or to order certain journalists or stations off the air.

A "media monitoring division" would follow the content of local journalism, report on compliance with the codes of conduct and "track the treatment of journalists to insure freedom of expression and movement as well as responsible behavior by journalists."

The plan calls for the appointment by the United Nations of an "international appellate body," to which local news media could appeal decisions or rulings by the commission.

There would also be an "independent media council" of local journalists and civic leaders, also appointed by the United Nations, to "advise" the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The department also plans to name new management for Radio Television Pristina, the former Yugoslav state television and radio outlet in Kosovo, and to turn it into "a public-service broadcaster," with programming in Albanian and Serbo-Croatian. When it was run from Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, it also used to broadcast in Turkish.

"This arrangement," the draft plan says, "will also assist" the U.N. mission in Kosovo "in its urgent need to communicate directly with the population on matters vital to civil administration." Eventually, the station, along with the Media Regulatory Commission and all its powers, would be handed over "to duly constituted Kosovar authorities."

According to the plan, the Media Department will also take responsibility for coordinating international donors to the news media, including private or nongovernmental agencies, while making recommendations of media outlets worth sponsoring. It would also work to develop a nonpartisan news agency for the province and to establish a journalism school.

Media watchdog groups are critical of the plan. Marilyn Greene, the executive director of the World Press Freedom Committee, a group largely financed by American publishers and the Newspaper Guild, said: "The infringement of press freedom is obvious. Unfortunately, the lessons of Bosnia -- how not to operate a reconstruction program -- were apparently not learned."

Bosnia was an extremely difficult case, said the Committee's European representative, Ronald Koven. "But hard cases make bad laws," and journalists are bound to feel pressure "to adopt certain kinds of codes."

"There is a kind of colonialist mentality," Koven said. "Foreigners are going to impose their standards and codes of conduct on independent media journalists in Kosovo in a situation where before the war there was a perfectly adequate independent Albanian-language press that knew what it was all about."

He cited a forthcoming study of foreign media management in Bosnia by professor Monroe Price of Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, who wrote, "The time to intervene or control propaganda is when brutality is imminent," not to protect the political environment afterward.

"The line between information intervention and censorship becomes blurred," Price wrote. "One of the great dangers of international action to restrict free speech is that it provides apparent democratic justification for any nation to use its police power to close down media outlets."

Phil,

Re: link to article on freerepublic.com in message to Zoja

Well, what can I say? You obviously don't get the connection. Apparently, you have a fragmented view of the world, sort of like "sh-- just happens".

BTW - I'm still interested in Thaci's credentials. Know anywhere I can get the info?

tommygunns

Think Kosovo in the year 2004. In place of the used car market in Stolac, imagine the AutoMart in Durres where Kosovars can take a day trip to buy back their vehicles stolen from Pristina. . . oooooops, that's already happening. Is there a Son of Thaci ready to emulate young Bakir?

New York Times (via freerepublic.com)
August 17, 1999
By CHRIS HEDGES

Leaders in Bosnia Said to Steal Up to $1 Billion

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- As much as a billion dollars has disappeared from public funds or been stolen from international aid projects through fraud carried out by the Muslim, Croatian and Serbian nationalist leaders who keep Bosnia rigidly partitioned into three ethnic enclaves, according to an exhaustive investigation by an American-led antifraud unit.

The antifraud unit, set up by the Office of the High Representative, the international agency responsible for carrying out the civilian aspects of the Dayton peace agreement, has exposed so much corruption that relief agencies and embassies are reluctant to publicize the thefts for fear of frightening away international donors.

The report names several officials linked to the governing nationalist parties that it says profited from the fraud. Even though the Office of the High Representative has dismissed 15 officials or prevented them from holding office, most retain authority.

In one incident cited in the report, 10 foreign embassies and international aid agencies lost over $20 million deposited in a Bosnian bank, but only the Swiss embassy has publicly acknowledged its losses.

The antifraud unit, which requires special security measures and does not make public who is working for the organization in Bosnia, is now investigating 220 cases of fraud and corruption. It documents the current cases in a 4,000-page report that has not been released to the public. Its contents were made available to The New York Times.

Organizations as diverse at the Office of the High Representative, the United Nations and the United States Agency for International Development, all dedicated to rebuilding the country, have lost tens of millions of dollars, the report says.

The widespread corruption is viewed by many here as a severe blow in the long, frustrating struggle to build a democratic Bosnia, a country that has received $5.1 billion in international aid since the end of the war in 1995. The corruption has also played a pivotal role in driving away foreign investment, seen as the only way to free Bosnia from dependence on foreign assistance.

The missing funds were supposed to have been used to rebuild Bosnia's roads, buildings and schools, as well as to provide municipal services in towns throughout Bosnia.

Alija Izetbegovic, the Bosnian President, along with other senior nationalist leaders, has dismissed the allegations of official corruption made by the international investigators. While conceding that corruption takes place, the President disputes the scale of the charges, denying that as much as a billion dollars has been misappropriated as stated in the long and detailed report.

Izetbegovic has repeatedly denied these charges, most recently in a local press interview. "It would be nonsense to claim that there is no corruption, or that it is irrelevant, in a country that has just come out of the war," he said, adding that Bosnia is a country "which does not have established borders, where joint institutions are still not functioning, and which has at least two armies and two police forces."

The Dayton agreement, which was signed by Muslim, Croatian and Serbian warring factions in 1995, called for the creation of a single state and the return of two million refugees and displaced people to their homes. But Bosnia remains partitioned into three antagonistic ethnic enclaves. Serb-held Bosnia continues to operate as a separate entity.

The internationally created Muslim-Croat Federation has no authority and has been unable to raise revenues. The two million refugees and displaced people have not gone back to their homes. And the Office of the High Representative has been reduced to promising money and aid projects to towns and cities that say they will allow some refugees to return, promises that are usually never kept.

"Dayton stopped the violence, but it did not end the war," said Jacques P. Klein, the chief United Nations representative here, "and the war is still being fought bureaucratically through obfuscation, delay and avoidance by a group of leaders who do not want to lose power. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a patient on life support assistance -- political, military and economic."

International donors say the endemic fraud is making it harder to justify continued aid levels. Without the huge infusions of money, it is unlikely that the Muslim, Croatian and Serbian enclaves will be able to continue to pay pensions and salaries and reconstruct the country. The Sarajevo Government, for instance, has asked the World Bank for loans to make pension payments.

"Time is running out," said James Lyon, the director of the international Crisis Group, an independent research organization. "The international community has no enforcement mechanism. The international administrators beg, plead, cajole and in some case engage in what looks like bribery, promising cities infrastructure projects if they allow some refugees to return. This tactic might work if we continue the present aid levels, about a billion dollars a year, over the next 20 years. But as aid declines, what will make these people even promise to comply?"

Tuzla, a Muslim city. is one case study of widespread corruption that infects many local governments, the report says. The investigators' report charges that $200 million was missing from this year's budget, in addition to $300 million missing over the last two years.

Tuzla's schools were painted four times last year alone by the city government, although they were rebuilt and painted by international aid organizations as well. Tuzla officials paid two or three times the normal price for such work and sold many of the cans of paint on the local market, the auditors found. Many of the schools, meanwhile, still lack heat, and students must wear their coats to class in the winter.

In the town of Sanski Most, heavily damaged during the war, municipal funds are being used to build a horse racing track, much to the consternation of aid agencies, the report said.

The report charges the town's Mayor, Mehmed Alagic, with 358 counts of corruption. The charges include the theft of $450,000 in relief aid from Saudi Arabia. That money was supposed to be used to provide feed and farm equipment, but the report alleges that the Mayor gave the money instead to his brother to start a bank. The Mayor has denied the charges and accused the Office of the High Representative of mounting a campaign against him.

The most sensitive case under investigation by the antifraud unit concerns the Bosnia and Herzegovina Bank, or BiH, in Sarajevo. The bank took in tens of millions of dollars from international agencies and 10 foreign embassies. The money, the investigators say, was lent to fictional businesses or given as personal loans to friends by the two owners.

The bank has now collapsed. The collapse underscores a near-total failure to establish a viable banking industry. Of the some 50 banks in Bosnia, Western diplomats say, only six are solvent.

The Agency for International Development, which has not made its losses public, had at least $4 million in the BiH bank, according to Western diplomats. At least half of the $20 million lost by international organizations deposited in the bank was to have been used for reconstruction projects, the investigators said.

"Our fear is that once the extent of the theft is known, international donors will get disgusted and walk away," said an official at the Office of the High Representative, who asked not to be identified.

AID has also filed suit in Bosnian courts against 19 Bosnian companies, which have failed to repay loans worth more than $10 million. The loans, ranging from $100,000 to $1 million, are part of a $278 million revolving credit established in 1996 by AID to help kick-start the economy. The agency, unable to collect $1 million in loans from Hidrogradnja, one of Bosnia's largest companies, is trying to seize its assets.

The rampant corruption has discouraged foreign investment. Most foreign companies, including McDonald's, have refused to set up operations after demands by officials to pay bribes and do business exclusively with local party officials. Other companies -- like the Italian construction company Aluveneto and Gluck Norm, Germany's largest maker of door and window frames -- have pulled out with heavy losses, complaining of interference from the state, an inability to collect debts and demands by officials for kickbacks and bribes to stay in business.

Volkswagen is also considering pulling out of Bosnia, according to European diplomats. Volkswagen officials would not comment. The German Government pushed hard to get the company to reopen its heavily damaged plant in the Sarajevo suburb of Vogosca. Volkswagen did so on condition that the Bosnian Government buy official cars from the plant. Not only has the Government reneged on its promise, forcing Volkswagen to go to court, but the state company in partnership has refused to pay the $1 million it promised to invest.

The money-losing Volkswagen plant does only final assembly on car bodies shipped from the Skoda auto works in the Czech Republic. Sixty workers assemble about six cars a day from the kits. Few sell, in part because of the thousands of stolen cars brought into the country from Europe by local gangsters.

The used car market in Stolac, which convenes every Sunday in the Croat-controlled part of Bosnia, has one of the largest collections of stolen vehicles in Europe, according to the international police.

On one recent Sunday, some 400 cars, most with forged registration papers and German, Swiss and Italian license plates, were being sold for large wads of German marks. The gangs that bring the cars into Bosnia oversee the sales.

The Office of the High Representative has outlawed the market. It pressed in January to have the market's organizer, Jozo Peric, arrested. But the local Croatian court released him a few days later and dismissed the charges. Now Peric is in hiding. When federal tax officials showed up last year to try carry out an audit, they were beaten so badly they were hospitalized.

Officials of the Office of the High Representative and Western diplomats say one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Bosnia is Bakir Izetbegovic, the son of President Izetbegovic. He controls The City Development Institute, in charge of determining the occupancy rights of 80,000 publicly owned apartments in Sarajevo. The apartments, many of which belonged to Serbs or Croats before the war, have been given to members of the governing Muslim-led Social Democratic Party. Others who want occupancy rights must pay Izetbegovic $2,000, said several Bosnians who have paid the fee.

Izetbegovic owns 15 percent of Bosnia Air, the state airline, and takes a cut of the extortion money paid out by local shopkeepers to Sarajevo gangsters, these diplomats said. Izetbegovic has consistently denied any involvement in such activities.

When foreign aid agencies or even the Office of the High Representative try to turn to Bosnian courts for redress, they run up against an overwhelmed and corrupt system.

The Agency for International Development is moving against several large state-owned companies. But creditors are rarely able to collect. The Tuzla courts, for instance, have a backlog of more than 30,000 cases of organized and violent crime. There were 1,050 convictions last year, and in most of the cases, those convicted were released on parole.

Even when laws are passed to try to contain the fraud, politicians have blocked or ignored them. For instance, last year the Bosnian Assembly passed a law to allow the Government to tax the oil and gas trucked in from Croatia. The revenue was expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But when the law appeared in the official gazette, the articles stipulating the taxation were inexplicably missing. The Croatian mafia that brings in the oil and gas continues to pay no taxes. Although the case is in a Sarajevo court, diplomats say the judges, fearing retribution, are afraid to try it.

Phil,

RE: http://www.alb-net.com/kcc/041599e.htm

Oh Boy!! a truely objective and independant source. Kind of like if I sent you here:

http://www.gov.yu/presscvj/index.htm

or here:

http://www.serbia-info.com/news/


but I'd rather you went here:

http://www.antiwar.com/

http://www.stratfor.com/crisis/kosovo/default2.htm

http://defence.janes.com/

http://emperors-clothes.com/index.htm

http://www.inet.co.yu/

http://www.iwpr.net/balkans/mainpage.htm

http://www.covertaction.org/

http://www.polyconomics.com/

http://www.transnational.org/sitemap.html

http://www.wsws.org/index.shtml

http://www.gridlockmag.com/

http://www.exile.ru/feature/feature65.html

http://www.centraleurope.com/

http://www.praguepost.cz/index.html

Everything from left to right to the totally whacked-out. Have a go at a few. Should keep you busy for awhile.

tommygunns

T'gunn, for my bk'mks goto:
http://www.pipeline.com/~rabne
You choose the url you want to have a look at. There are plenty of them from "far left to far right" News an Reference will be most helpful. Have fun. phil

T'gunn, I find it ironic that we are using the same author, Chris Hedges, to make opposing arguments. It speaks volumes regarding the excellent quality of his objectivity and evenhandedness when forums as dissimilar as FreeRepublic and Kosovo Crisis Center site him.
phil

Phil,

I'm tired of the pissing match. I write about bananas, you show me oranges, I come back with apples. Is this a fruit salad, or what? I seem to irritate you, and you annoy me and I don't think either of us is going to change our points of view. It's become pointless and way too time consuming. I have other things to do that are, for me, more important, more interesting, and more productive.

I started to respond to your Parts I, II, and III. After the first couple of paragraphs I thought to myself, "This is crazy! I'm saying one thing, he's hearing something else, we're both adding interpretations to each others words, and now I'm sitting here chopping the hell out of these paragraphs trying to explain what I've already said." And then I remembered a good friend of mine telling the story of his "interrogation" (his word) when he went up before the committee for his Ph.D. orals.

"After a very long explanation of my dissertation in response to a question from one of the committee members,...this particularly annoying gentleman in the back row rose and said to me,..."

'Professor Jones, would you explain what you meant by your answer to Professor Smith's inquiry?'.

"There was a long silence, all eyes on me while I pondered how to explain what I had just spent a great deal of time explaining! I turned to him and, in my most professorial voice, replied,..."

'Sir, with all due respect, if my explanation needs to be explained, then you've obviously missed the point'.

"There was another brief silence and then the other committee members rose and came up to shake my hand and offer their congratulations. I passed my orals and got my Ph.D."

==================================================

In that moment, I was reminded of something I knew, but had briefly forgotten. So, the moral of this story is this: - that I don't need to explain or justify myself. My words speak for themselves. I do my best to use words to formulate sentences that express ideas and say what I mean. How others interpret or misinterpret those words is beyond my control. I can only heed the hookah-smoking caterpillar and 'say what I mean, and mean what I say'.

This doesn't mean I won't be around. I'll let the articles and links that I may, from time to time, post on this site speak for me. Perhaps, I'll add a brief comment or two, but I won't get bogged down into quibbling over every little point.

Besides, I know I'm right! |:') smiley, smiley.

I checked your bookmarks at pipeline.com. Is this your site? or a site you use as a gateway? Of course, I haven't looked through all the links, but saw a few of interest, as well as a few I have already bookmarked. I have a couple of "gateways" I use, but for the most part I maintain a list on my PC that is clean, lean, and mean....Ooooops! did I reveal something about myself? Oh, well. I won't deny it. I am drawn to the simple, yet elegant. |:') smiley, smiley again.

and BTW - I do have a well-honed sense of humor. I'm even laughing at this idiotic message I'm about to post!!

tommygunns

i love it!


he asks me not to leave as he leaves


reminds me of certain relationships i no longer have...


peace in the valley!!

" I checked your bookmarks at pipeline.com. Is this your site? or a site you use as a gateway? Of course, I haven't looked through all the links, but saw a few of interest, as well as a few I have already bookmarked. I have a couple of "gateways" I use, but for the most part I maintain a list on my PC that is clean, lean, and mean....Ooooops! did I reveal something about myself? Oh, well. I won't deny it. I am drawn to the simple, yet elegant. |:') smiley, smiley again "

As you probably know Pipeline is my ISP. I have 5 megs there and keep a site there for friends who are looking to augment their own bookmarks, but who do not want to keep the extensive list I keep. It also lets me work on my site building skills. If you go to the SMILE tools main page and ( in Navigator) choose 'view, page source', you'll see that I worked on all the pages for that site. The site is real simple because the agency has many counselors with low or no vision (who use readers) and who are not able to separate graphics from text very well.

Well I enjoyed the dialog for sure. For the most part I "got your drift" but as you pointed out I interpreted you words. Of course it was real easy to do as you gave me great latitude with your choice of words to express yourself and your occasional use of the 'assertion (of fact)' to hide what was really an opinion. How could I pass up such opportunities. "Big Smile"

Phil