Here's something for you ladies and gentelmen to chat about. Let's see if ONE has CAPACITY to UNDEERSTAND that:
__________________________________________________

Serb police break up protest

Police have broken up a demonstration in Belgrade for the second day running.
Our correspondent said the police fired tear gas into a crowd of several thousand who fled in panic in all directions.

The protesters were demonstrating against the government takeover of opposition television and radio stations.

Reporting from the scene Nick Thorpe said: "It's not quite clear yet what started the incident, but outside the building there are large numbers of riot police charging in all directions. It's not clear at this stage whether there are many injuries."

Earlier, one of the leaders of the Serbian opposition alliance, Zoran Djindjic, said resistance to the government's takeover of opposition television and radio stations will be stepped up.

He said the Alliance for Change would call daily protests from Thursday in the capital, Belgrade, and other major towns as part of a wave of civil disobedience against President Slobodan Milosevic.


Only a state which is terrified of the truth resorts to sending men in masks into television and radio studios

EU external affairs commissioner Chris Patten

Mr Djindjic was speaking after some 30,000 people marched in Belgrade on Wednesday to protest against the closure of Studio B television station.

The crackdown on the independent media has sparked international condemnation.

"Only a state which is terrified of the truth resorts to sending men in masks into television and radio studios," said European Union external affairs commissioner Chris Patten.


Wedensday'sclashes were violent


The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is to urge Russia, Serbia's traditional ally, to use its influence to try and rectify the situation.

An opposition radio station, Radio Pancevo, had one of its transmitters cut while broadcasting the rally.

The call to protest came within hours of Wednesday's dawn raid on Studio B in Belgrade.

Police also seized control of three other independent media outlets housed in the same building - radio broadcaster B2-92, Index Radio and the privately-owned daily paper, Blic.

Opposition protests were also reported in three other Serbian cities on Wednesday.


Studio B chief editor Dragan Kojadinovic called the raid an attack on the people

Some 15,000 people protested against the government in Kragujevac in central Serbia, while several hundred came out onto the streets in Novi Sad, and a few hundred in Mladenovac, south of Belgrade, where Studio B's local bureau was also seized by the authorities.

Studio B began broadcasting government-controlled news later on Wednesday. The associated independent radio channel, B2-92, said it was now concentrating on its internet service.

Wednesday's raid followed increasing harassment of opposition activists.

Members of the radical student movement Otpor were detained by police in several towns after the authorities denounced the group as a "terrorist" organisation.
__________________________________________________

We are good at
getting in, not so
good at getting out
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sierra/article/0,2763,222487,00.html
The real test will be to see if we
have the nerve to leave Sierra
Leone


Hugo Young
Thursday May 18, 2000

The Brits are good at getting into
other countries fast. Defence chiefs
are proud of how they moved 800 men
to Sierra Leone quicker, they think,
than any other country could have
done. It was an object lesson in the
rapid deployment that is intended to
be one of our 21st-century specialities
and requires, as a natural
precondition, the burial of any
parliamentary debate, let alone
national agonising, beforehand. Ten
days ago this British talent was
displayed to smooth effect. What
remains to be seen is whether we are
as good at getting out as getting in. It
is a critical test for the doctrine of
dutiful interventionism Tony Blair
enunciated during the Kosovo war.
The duty to stay could easily come to
seem as pressing as the duty to enter.
We can see where duty starts, but
where does it end?

As long as we get out clean, the
absence of debate doesn't matter
much. Unlike Americans, the British,
people as well as soldiers, are ready
for action. Acquiescence in its possibly
painful consequences is in the bones
of a military nation. Up to a point, we
probably don't mind about the absence
of perfect clarity either. The mission
that began as a rescue exercise for
Europeans (overwhelmingly British)
who wanted to leave is plainly being
stretched further, to bring aid and
comfort to the UN peacekeepers.
Ministers dodge around that, and
prevaricate when asked to be precise.
But people understand that war is
messy and, within limits, are probably
less fastidious than harrumphing
editorialists who complain about
mission creep.

Thus far, they have been justified. Only
a doctrinaire non-interventionist could
complain about the rescue operation.
History, in fact, supports something
rather bigger. The place is, after all,
our legacy. In certain circumstances,
as France periodically shows in Chad
and Britain in Zimbabwe, special post-
imperial duties attach themselves to
the former European power. It
therefore fell to a British contingent,
supported by a British flotilla
accidentally in the vicinity, to help out
in a Sierra Leone crisis we had
botched once before and now have a
chance to make more sense of. Still no
worries. A job needed doing, and our
boys could be swiftly on hand for
professional work.

Politics now begins to intrude a little. In
Whitehall, people talk less about the
politics of disaster if a British cohort
gets cornered by drug-crazed rebel
gunmen, than about the politics of
weakness, with an election looming.
The need for Labour Britain not to
appear wet and wimpish plays a part
in the discussion about how and when
to come home. This could yet deform
the government's answer to the
question Sir Charles Guthrie, chief of
the defence staff, immediately put to it
on return from his African
reconnaissance: what next?

After the first rescue, the British
contingent has been helpful in
Freetown. It calmed things down. The
presence of crack British paras
intimidates all and sundry. We've now
seen that if the rebel militias attack
them they will shoot to kill, ranging
beyond the airport whose security is
supposed to be their limiting
preoccupation. Still OK, surely. And still
in line with the Blair Kosovo doctrine of
intervention for a moral cause as long
as there is a realistic chance of doing
permanent good. Under a proactive
chief, Brigadier Richards, and wearing
its own badges, the regiment seems to
have taken over unofficial command,
instructing, training, cajoling,
helicoptering the UN blue berets
towards being a more effective peace
force.

Now comes the real political test,
which is, quite simply, will we have the
nerve to leave? The pressure not to
will be great. For Sierra Leone
confronts the UN with the greatest
crisis in its recent history. Intended to
be 11,000-strong, the force there is
the largest UN peacekeeping army in
the world. Yet it is pathetically failing. It
has become hostage - 350 are
literally hostages - to the armed
gangs of rebel forces who are
destabilising the regime it should be
defending. Its mandate was clear
enough, and extraneous security
council complications, such as China
and Russia applied in Kosovo, are
absent. If this massive UN presence is
incapable of sustaining a peace,
against a disorderly and largely
untrained rabble, one must ask what
future there can ever be for the entire
principle of humanitarian
peacekeeping intervention by the UN.

Some people argue that peacekeeping
should stop anyway. Michael Ignatieff,
a passionate upholder of international
morality, wrote this week in the New
York Times that the UN system has
reached the end of the road. The
neutrality on which it rests is no longer
valid, he says. In the post-cold war
era, the major disputes, Sierra Leone
among them, are between plain good
and evil, a dichotomy the UN declines
adequately to recognise even as its
troops watch Rwandan civilians being
hacked to death (1994), or permit the
massacre of thousands of civilians by
Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica (1995). A
new kind of world order hoves into
view, in which the security council
authorises combat warriors to deploy
against obvious regional barbarians,
such as the Revolutionary United Front
who are maiming and slaughtering the
innocent in Sierra Leone.

This counsel of despair is unlikely to
find favour. It begs too many awkward
questions about where the lines of evil
are drawn, and what sort of warriors
might be recruited to fight a foreign
war. To stave it off, UN voices will ask
the British to stay in Sierra Leone and
help the force there turn itself round.
The Brits could no doubt achieve a lot,
with their superior training and
experience. It will be tempting to listen
to the case. The moral force of this,
after all, will remain. A government that
has forsworn the normal rules of
national self-interest in judging when
to make its forces internationally
available - as Blairite Britain, unlike
the US, has done - is vulnerable to
persuasion that its duty isn't finished.
The horrors will go on. The case for
an ongoing presence as part of the
UN force itself for however long it
takes can be powerfully made.

It needs to be firmly resisted. The
pocket generals at the Foreign Office
and the fervent moralist in Downing
Street need alike to restrain
themselves. There is a clear limit to
what Britain can or should do. Rather
effectively, edging beyond the first
stated purpose, we are doing it. This
could yet become a modest
case-study in focused interventionism,
provided it acknowledges that a
deeply imperfect situation has to be
left behind. The struggle must be
resumed at a political level to make the
UN, especially the security council,
more honest: not making promises it
cannot keep, not committing to
operations its members decline to
man, not watching its moral authority
drain away. The paras can't be a
proxy for that kind of desperately
needed renovation. I can't believe their
political bosses will contemplate
anything other than orderly
withdrawal, mission sort-of
accomplished.

This is a Kosovo Board, not Siera Leone's

Regarding demonstrations in Belgrade - have you not seen the brutality
of the Washington or Seattle police in dealings with the absolutely peaceful demonstrations?
I can help you with some posts, photos where one can see what was going on

B2-92, or whatever is the name, and the similar outlets are as 'independent'
as 'radio free europe',
sponsored for the "democracy" by the "democratic"
dictatorship of the USA
which doesn't mean that Milosevic's government shouldn't have an opposition,
but it should have a true one, a sligthly more dignified if possible

"This is a kosovo board..."

So, you are not interested in the bigger picture?
You can't see any comparitive problems?
Tell me what does a Cuban schoolboy have to do with Kosovo?

Regarding the Belgrade demonstrations, that was someone else's post. But I would say that by using violence, Milosevic played into the demonstrators hands- more coverage. Same as the police in Seattle. Isn't that the point of a demonstration, to provoke a response and get media attention?

Ahh, the opposition should be more dignified.
Daniela says so.

Why not put your effort into answering the questions, Daniela.
On the abuse front, if I have survived this long on the Russia board, I can do so here.
Kim

NATO Media In Serbia
Closed
by Andrej Tisma
Writing from Serbia (5-18-00)

www.tenc.net [emporers-clothes]

I don't understand how can anybody have an illusion that
media paid by NATO (U. S. A. State Department) can be
"independent" and "free". Those media are just
instruments in the proven NATO hegemonism,
interventionism and fabrication of conflicts. One of the
first things NATO did for "democratization" of media in
Yugoslavia was the bombing of state TV and radio
stations and transmitters, while the Western media were
all visible in "totalitarian" Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslav "independent" and "free" media are openly
sponsored by NATO and just transmitted the NATO
propaganda before and during the bombing of
Yugoslavia. They broadcasted uncritically the Jamie Shea
type of lies, disinformation and propaganda, the same lies
we could see in CNN, BBC, Sky News, Free Europe etc.
They shamelessly broadcast NATO threats before the
bombing aiming to induce panic in our people and Army.
Also during the bombing they gave false numbers of
casualties and effects of bombing. Do you still remember
the "free", "independent" and "truthful" information
about 100,000 killed Albanian civilians, about "Racak
massacre", about 200 destroyed Serb tanks, etc.? By
repeating this stuff, the "free" Yugoslav media took part
in the NATO aggression. But they were still left in
existence by the Yugoslav "authoritarian" regime till now.

Now when those media started to call on Yugoslav people
for an "uprising", "armed resistance", killing of
democratically elected state leaders and violent change of
political system, they had to be shut down. Everything is
clear if we know that Studio B was led by the Serbian
Renewal Movement and its leader Vuk Draskovic, who
after the criminal and disastrous bombing of Yugoslavia
kissed the bloody hands of Madeleine Albright. NATO
couldn't conquer Serbia militarily, and it wants now to
destroy it from inside, through such instrumental
mercenaries. It is obvious that the call for uprising by
Draskovic and Studio B is the continuation of NATO
aggression on Serbia and its system, and that Studio B
and other likely "free" media were just NATO's
instruments to provoke inner conflicts and civil war in
Serbia. That is why they had to be shut down. They were
shut down according to Yugoslav Constitution, where
nobody has right to call publicly for violence and civil
war, and no media can transmit such a call uncritically
and repeatedly from day to day, as Studio B did. AT

***
http://emperors-clothes.com/indexe.htm

Kim, are you Kim or Unicef or both or...

"In his article "Cooking the books - NATO's claims of
ethnic cleansing challenged", Michel Chossudovsky points
out that according to official Western figures, relatively
more Serbs than Albanians fled Kosovo during the
bombing.

Doesn't that utterly contradict the official ethnic-cleansing
theory?"

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

Do your remember how un-refugee-like those TV 'refugees'
looked? The designer clothes, the expensive running shoes,
nice hair-dos, cellular phones? And as for malnutrition:

"This time last year, I was cooking spaghetti for 300
new arrivals at a camp for Kosovar refugees in
Albania. The camp itself, on the Adriatic coast, was
like any overcrowded European campsite: rows of
tents, car parks, vendors' stalls and ice-cream vans. [!]
I looked at the people I was about to feed, and saw
groups of plump-cheeked children, heavy men and
heavier women. They did not look like the refugees I
was used to, the victims of African crises whose
skeletal limbs and emaciated figures haunt television
viewers the world over....

"By July 1999, it became clear that the main
nutritional problem among Kosovars was not
under-nutrition, but obesity." (Susanne Jaspars, 'New
Statesman,' 5/15/00)

The URL for this article is http://emperors-clothes.com/news/spain.htm

KLA-Linked Gangs Commit
2000 Robberies in Spain
by Luis Gomez in Madrid.
Translated by Herb Foerstel
El Pais May 7, 2000



"The group's organization, like its tactical operation,
is military, and one suspects that they have financed
the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)."

Two thousand holdups are a lot of attacks; too many
crimes, according to the accounting of the security forces
who helplessly observe the seemingly unstoppable activity
of the Balkan Gangs who spearhead the robberies of
Spanish companies.

With respect to the perpetrators, it is known that none has
spent more than a couple of days in jail. Strictly speaking,
this is not a gang or a typical criminal organization. In the
opinion of the police and the Civil Guard, the nucleus of
this group is made up of Kosovo Albanians from the
police and military of the former Yugoslavia, the majority
coming from the province of Kosovo.

The group's organization, like its tactical operation, is
military, and one suspects that they have financed the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

"They act with the effectiveness of commandos,"
acknowledges a spokesman for a private security company.
They assault business establishments across the
countryside. They carefully plan the strike; they act at
night; they take the money from the safe ;they depart
without leaving tracks and with virtually no witnesses.
What is more, they leave their signature: a hole in the
ceiling and the implements of robbery left behind, because
they do not intend to use the same tools more than once.
While there were ten holdups in 1995 and 25 in 1996, there
were 160 in 1997, 626 in 1998 and no less than 918 the past
year. So far this year they have already surpassed 2000
robberies.

An Authentic Epidemic

Hardly two weeks ago, the Government representative in
Valencia convened a meeting of community business
leaders to request their assistance. "We did not want to
sound an alarm. We were going to send a letter to the
businessmen, but we had the feeling that something more
was required," recalls Carlos Gonzalez Cepeda, "because
we had observed a significant increase in assaults on
business establishments as of last summer. It was a very
significant number that began initially in Valencia and
soon spread to Alicante. All of them were robberies that
shared similar characteristics: they were done at night, they
entered through the tile roof, and they robbed the safes,
very professional actions. It was necessary for the
businessmen to take the situation seriously, and they
adopted some minimal security practices in collaboration
with the security forces."

One sees this emergency reflected in an instruction from
the assistant representative of the Government in
Castellano directed to those companies that complain of
"frequent robberies" and speak of the need to raise a
"comprehensive strategy" to prevent them. It was the
unmistakable trademark of the Balkan gangs, made up of
barely 500 men and women from the former Yugoslavia.

They live in several locations in Spain, primarily in
Madrid, Tarragona, Valldolid, Galicia and Levante. They
move all over the country to carry out their attacks. They
are apparently integrated into the community, wearing
designer clothes, enjoying a luxurious life style, living in
good apartments, riding around in good cars and, in some
cases, married to Spaniards. They demonstrate the
physical capacity to perform military activities. They speak
fluent Castilian and they do not have known criminal
backgrounds.

They dedicate themselves to thievery; they have know-how
and above all avoid all risk: usually they don't carry
weapons and do not offer resistance to the authorities if
caught in the act of robbery. They are advised by a bevy of
lawyers and they know how to test the limits of the law. If
they are arrested, they will be charged with attempted
robbery and granted provisional release.

Photos of some 300 members of these groups are in police
files. The police have initiated two operations against
them: "Balkans I" on November 12, 1996 resulting in 46
arrests, and "Balkans II" in 1997, with about 90 arrests in
Madrid, Barcelona and Germany. There is currently a
"Balkans III" operation under way.

But the arrests have not brought any significant results,
nor have they decreased the high criminal activity of the
gangs, if one can judge by the statistics. It has amounted
to little more than harassment. Their modus operandi
leaves little doubt. They use rented cars for their criminal
activities, preferably of the Citroen manufacturer (Xantia
or Xsara) or Seat Cordova and a great variety of pre-paid
mobile phones. For short stays they lodge in hotels or inns;
if the work is of longer duration, they rent apartments.
They buy the tools of their trade (maces, "goats legs,"
axes, saws, flashlights...), usually on the day prior to the
operation. They will subsequently abandon them at the
scene of the crime, so that one attack cannot be related to
another by evidence at the scene. They wear dark glasses,
knitted caps, gloves and sports footwear. Sometimes they
protect their footwear with surgical footcovers. They enter
through the ceiling, because they know it is the weakest
part of a structure. They use ropes. They do not force the
doors; they make holes until they break through to their
objective.

The work is perfectly structured. One crew rents a nearby
site, another gathers information about the target, and a
third carries out the strike. They prefer to use Italian
identity cards, easily obtained because they have a support
network in Italy. "Others have obtained political refugee
status in Spain, and even some of those have been
falsified," say the Civil Guard.

Alarm systems at the targeted establishments do not seem
to be an obstacle to the robbers, because they demonstrate
prior knowledge of the facility. They know the general
location of the terminals that connect the alarms with the
electrical network. The use of radio-controlled alarms has
had some success, but it is known that the robbers are
beginning to use alarm deactivators, night viewfinders and
other more sophisticated equipment, further evidence of
their technical competence.

Organizational Chart

Each member usually carries several mobile cellular
phones; they communicate frequently among themselves,
but never repeat a call between the same cell phones. On
the basis of the listings of their calls, it has been impossible
until now to establish their organizational chart. And that
is one of the genuine problems: the police do not know
which individuals are in charge. "It is clear that they will
designate a chief of a zone and a head of a given group in
Spain, France, Italy or Germany, so we are dealing with
problems on a European scale," explains a Captain of the
Civil Guard, "but we do not know the identity of those in
control." Indeed, the lack of identification of a head
makes it difficult to treat this group like an organized
band so that the case could be referred to the authority of
the National Court and allow the use of more substantial
methods to fight them.

A police source places importance on the group's military
character:

"We think that with the passage of time and the new
facilities that they have encountered, they are
beginning to act more independently and without as
much structure. They know simply that it is easy to
rob. Many of them are young people and they do not
think about anything else. An it serves them very
well.

A director of a security company comments:

"We know that they have done some ATM robberies.
As they discover a simple method of opening them,
we will need to prepare ourselves to deal with this.
Because they will know when there is more money
and will have trained conscientiously for the
operation...They have already attacked some mail
trucks on the highways. In spite of our
recommendations that businesses not use this method
of delivering money, they do it, and the robbers show
that they know it by carrying out successful attacks."

They are vigilant. But they are not in hiding. In Madrid, it
is easy to identify them...They let themselves be seen; they
display themselves as extroverts, both at the bar La Pareda
or when they throw expensive parties in a nearby square.
From time to time, one is able to see them there.

"One day I observed some of them gather. And they lined
up in front of one of them. They stood at attention!
Clearly, that would have been a chief," recalled a member
of the Civil Guard. Or better said, he would likely have
been an officer. Because, no, they are not a band at all.

Booty of 4,000 Million

One estimate of the Civil Guard sets the amount of money
obtained by these bands at almost 4,000 million pesetas,
acquired primarily during the last two years. This money
allows them to finance their high life style and the means
of executing their robberies. Nevertheless, this is not the
only use for the money. A good portion of it is sent
outside the country, mainly to Germany, France and
Switzerland, by means of legal companies, even though
Post Office money orders that do not exceed a million
pesetas. "At times, the money transfers were accomplished
by sympathetic Spanish friends of the members of the
organization, who use their authentic DNA," said one
knowledgeable official. There is some conjecture about the
destination of the illegal funds. One hears much about the
financing of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), but, as
with other details, the information is still inadequate.

What is the future of the group's activities? The
possibilities are not very encouraging. As of the moment,
these groups have not been connected to other types of
crime, be it drug trafficking, money laundering or the
business of extortion, but it appears that they tried it in
France not long ago. However, there is evidence indicating
a tendency to diversify their criminal activities in
anticipation of encountering more difficulty with their
current targets within the business community.

"It has been observed that after the robbers have been
frustrated in some actions, upon finding no money in the
safe because the businessman had been warned, these
gangs have extended their activity to banks and vaults,"
warned one informant from the Civil Guard. They are
beginning to invest in prostitution establishments "that
provide them with cover," adds a police spokesman. And
lately they have contracted Spanish citizens for their
intelligence work or for the rental of cars and apartments.

Further reading...

Six months ago, El Pais was the first major publication to
report the press conference of Spanish forensic experts
who disputed NATO's claims after being sent to Kosovo to
find proof of genocide against Albanians. The El Pais
article was translated and sent out on the Internet by
www.emperors-clothes.com . From the web the story was
picked up by major newspapers.

Click here for the text of the Spanish experts' historic
press conference.

Click here for an analysis of the implications of what
the Spanish experts discovered.

Daniela,

Whatever, dear......

Kim

Oh, all right then
I shouldn't know whom I'm talking to ?

SIT 5-7: May 7, 2000 --Corrected



Green Politics and Defense: Tungsten and Depleted Uranium



A number of my readers in the US and Yugoslavia will find the following as absurd --or even more so-- than I do. The US
Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines use "depleted uranium" ammunition to kill tanks, due to its ability, as a dense metal, to
penetrate tank armor and some bunkers. The armed forces of all nations use lead (encased in copper "full metal" jackets)
for rifle ammunition. As part of the Clinton-Gore "greening" of the US military, the Army's weapons labs have, purportedly
on their own initiative (there is no visible audit trail back to a Green Peace initiative or other "smoking gun"), decided that
lead is an environmental threat and have designed a tungsten-tin replacement bullet. But the same experts have not decided
that the DU anti-tank ammunition is a threat --DU replaced tungsten "penetrators" in anti-tank ammunition in the early
1980s.



This paradox, of course, suggests hypocrisy --the military is dedicated to the effectiveness of DU as a tank killer (and --oh,
yes-- ex-Soviet armies have DU ammunition, too). But inside the Pentagon, our civilian experts have decided to violate the
principle "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" for small arms ammunition. This is how sycophants curry favor with their masters. It
also seems that the ammunition makers will make more money off the new design. The generals have yet to be heard
from.
...

http://www.siri-us.com/issues.html