-- begin forwarded message: -- Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:04:38 +0900 From: Hendrik To: Multiple recipients of NETSOURCE-L <netsource-l@mail.think.service> Subject: [NS] The Duping of America The Duping of America By John David Powell The United States of America is a young and incredible country. We are a land of great people who are passionate in our beliefs. Americans are moved to tears and action by scenes of suffering and despair. And, we are a country easily duped by those who prey on the naivete of the young and the trusting. Our country is like a big kid who commands respect because of his size, but who lacks the maturity that comes with age and experience. As a terrible consequence, our people put our trust in a government that uses deceit as its policy of choice, and in media who have become smug and lazy and who have forgotten their role as watchdogs that question and probe. Truth, though, is like an animal that crawls under your porch to die; it may be hidden for a time, but you eventually have to deal with it. Last week, the stench of truth became too great for the American media to ignore and still maintain credibility. Until a few days ago, NATO had been given a free ride regarding its murder of civilians who were too old or too young or too slow to avoid missiles and shrapnel. Then cluster bombs destroyed a bus full of children, women and old people of all nationalities, according to Yugoslavia's state-controlled Tanjug news agency. Reports said 20 civilians died and at least 43 were wounded in the May 3 attack near Savine Vode on the Pec-Kula-Rozaje road. A few days later, NATO cluster bombs devastated a shopping district and a hospital in Nic. National Public Radio described the bodies of a woman who was selling eggs and of her two customers, and of a man who lay dead in the garden he was tending until he was cut to shreds by shrapnel. Such tales of wanton carnage among civilians may be new to Americans, but such reporting is daily fare for media from Canada to Australia. I know because I receive and distribute via e-mail as many as 10 to 20 such stories a day. Most cover the destruction of Yugoslavia's economy, the suffering of "collateral" population, the crimes of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and NATO attacks on Christian churches and monasteries. When people talk to me about hunger in America, I tell them to look around. There is hunger, but it is not caused by a food shortage. Public schools throw away hundreds of tons of untouched food every day; supermarkets set out snacks for customers to sample as they shop. There is not a food shortage, only a distribution breakdown. The food doesn't get to the people who are starving. The same is true for information. There is not an information shortage in America, only a distribution breakdown. To borrow from the television series The X-Files: the truth is out there. The International Strategic Studies Association is out of Alexandria, Virginia. The non-governmental organization for senior national security officials from 165 countries issued a news release May 4 that has been ignored by the mainstream American media. According to ISSA ( http://www.strategicstudies.org/issa.htm ), NATO and US forces have "suffered significant loss of life" among ground troops. ISSA's monthly journal "Strategic Policy" reports that as of April 20, "as many as 50 NATO ground troops - officially not acknowledged even to be in the conflict." It also reports NATO may have lost as many as 38 fixed-wing aircraft and six helicopters. The recently released POWs may not have been the only prisoners. ISSA reports an African-American air force major is being held after his F-15 Eagle fighter was shot down. "At least one German pilot (some sources say two men, implying perhaps a Luftwaffe crew from a Tornado) has been captured," the report also says. ISSA adds it has information a female US pilot has been killed. In addition, ISSA reports 12 American and eight British special forces were killed in an ambush south of Pristina within days of the start of the bombing campaign. "At least 30 bodies of US servicemen have been processed through Athens, after being transported from the combat zone," according to the report. "At least two of the helicopters downed by the Yugoslavs were carrying troops, and in these two a total of 50 men were believed to have been killed, most of them (but not all) of US origin." ISSA organized a fact-finding mission to Yugoslavia on April 18 - 21. On the team was Congressman Jim Saxton (R-NJ), a life member of the organization and Chairman of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The team determined as many as one-third of the refugees out of Kosovo "appear, in fact, to be fleeing further into Serbia," to avoid the KLA. These refugees of various ethnicities are joining the nearly one million refugees displaced since 1992 from Bosnian and Croatian Serb areas and Croatians and Muslims from what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. Team members report seeing extensive destruction by NATO of civilian targets, which has resulted in the loss of income for nearly 20 percent of the entire Yugoslavian population. NATO says relatives of President Slobodan Milosevic owned some civilian targets. The ISSA team learned, however, that "the vast majority of these factories were either State-owned, privately owned by non-Milosevic family members or, for the greater part, owned jointly by the State and by the workforces of the various factories. As a result, this has directly contributed to an attack on the average Yugoslav family." "Insight Magazine" ( http://www.insightmag.com ) reports in its upcoming issue that as many as 15,000 US troops will be killed in a ground war. That figure came from a CIA report to the House Armed Services Committee on the eve of last month's NATO summit. The CIA estimate is based on a 10-percent casualty rate. The Washington Times, on May 4, reported that KLA troops are training with terrorists. According to the report, some members of the KLA, which is financing the war through the sale of heroin, were trained in camps run by Osama bin Laden who is wanted for the 1998 bombing of two US embassies that resulted in the deaths of 224 persons, including 12 Americans. Last year, State Department officials called the KLA a terrorist organization and charged it was using terrorist tactics against Serbian and ethnic Albanian citizens, according to the paper. And France's Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs said the KLA helped transport $2 billion in drugs a year into Western Europe. To borrow from a saying: You can lead the American public to information, but you can't make it think. -- Source: The Morrock News Service Correspondent Web: http://www.morrock.com May 11, 1999 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Subscription information, appended by the listserver: * if you want to leave this list please send an empty message to <leave-netsource-list@hiz.bc.ca> * if you know someone who wants to join this list, please tell them to send an empty message to <join-netsource-list@hiz.bc.ca> ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- end forwarded message --