Sept. 10, 1999

Special Truth in Media Reports on NATO's Kosovo War and "Peace" S99-146, KFOR "Peacefarce" 40

HEADLINES

Sofia                               1. A Letter to Serb Opposition from Disillusioned Bulgarian

                                  Democrat: "Shame on You!"

Toronto                           2. CBC Retracts a War Story: One Albanian Lie Debunked,

              Thousands to Go

Brussels                          3. EU Lifts Embargoes on Montenegro, Kosovo

Bratislava                       4. Slovak TiM Reader Baptized as Orthodox Christian

----------------

1. A Letter to Serb Opposition from Disillusioned Bulgarian Democrat: "Shame on You!"

SOFIA, Bulgaria - Even though the Boris Yeltsin protected Russian oligarchs have been plundering that vast country on behalf of their western partners ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a real media frenzy about it in the last month or so. What is not widely known, however, is that the principle of personal enrichment out of the public till has been the norm, rather than the exception, in most of the new "democracies" in Eastern Europe.

Here are, for example, some excerpts from a letter addressed to the Serbian democratic opposition by a disillusioned Bulgarian democrat. Blagovesta Doncheva's hindsight should be used as a prescient warning to the Serbs as to what lies ahead for that small and already impoverished country if the pro-western "democratic" opposition quislings replace Slobodan Milosevic in power:

"I was an activist in the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) until June 1993. UDF is the mirror image of the Serbian Alliance for Change (the United Democratic Opposition). The Bulgarian Union of Democratic Forces or UDF received a lot of money in 1990 - cars, computers, luxurious placards (transported from abroad in big trucks) for the 1990 elections and the next ones - until the consolidation of the UDF in power. We think that a certain amount of money continues to flow, but now it is directed only to the UDF officials presently in power.

You all know what the Bulgarian government of the UDF did during the US war against neighboring Yugoslavia. I will remind those who might happen not to know or who have forgotten. It provided FULL SUPPORT for the USA. It gave the US and NATO all the asked-for corridors - in the air and on the ground. (There is talk that Southern Serbia has been demolished by US planes flying over Bulgaria from a US Turkish base.) For the first time since the end of the 500 year Turkish Yoke last century Turkish ground force passed through Bulgaria.

Here's an easy question: "From whence does money for the UDF (and now for

UDF leaders) mainly come?" You get one guess.

So. We, here in Bulgaria, have had US-style democracy since 1989. For 10 years already.

MY TEN MOST AWFUL YEARS.

What happened during that most awful period of my life on Earth? Through the ardent UDF leaders in power, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are successfully devouring Bulgarian industry, destroying the social fabric and opening national boundaries. (Our national boundaries, mind you, never those of the US or Germany.)

Three ways they devour Bulgarian industry:

- privatizing the Bulgarian plants and factories and liquidating them afterwards;

- directly liquidating them;

- selling them for twopenny-halfpenny to powerful foreign corporations. For instance, the Copper Metallurgical plant near the town of Pirdop producing gold and platinum as well as electrolytic copper was sold in 1997 to Union Miniere, Belgium for next to nothing!

Conclusion: Bulgarian industry and infrastructure (the roads for instance) have been most successfully demolished - and this WITHOUT bombing! - in less than ten years. All this, just from doing what the Serbian opposition is saying the Serbs should do.

A popular joke here during the US war on Yugoslavia: two Turkish pilots, flying over Bulgaria, are looking down at the Bulgarian landscape. One of them says: "I wonder… Have we dropped bombs here?" "Don’t be silly," answers the other. "It is Bulgaria! They look like that without bombing."

Side results: - hordes of unemployed, as you can well imagine. Beggars in the streets. Children dying in the street from drugs and malnutrition. Old people digging in the rubbish containers for some rag or moldy piece of bread…

Yesterday my brother in law told me he had seen the former headmistress of his son’s school to dig in a rubbish container!

The infant death rate has increased. The birth death rate has increased. The reasons in most of the cases: mothers suffering of shock and malnutrition. The Death rate generally has increased. Young people refuse to marry and have children. […]

I wonder... How much does it pay to destroy one’s own people under the sweetened slogans of "democracy" (what democracy?) and joining the "Western civilization" (what civilization are we speaking of.) Does it pay really well?

Do you, the so-called opposition in Serbia REALLY think that the best road for you is joining THAT "civilization"? What will be the bitter fruit later of your efforts now? Cheap labor for the US and Western corporations and the humiliating agony of a slow torturous death through wretched poverty for your people!

Look back into your history - a history of tough people able to find solution of their OWN, to overcome obstacles with their OWN resources!

We saw what our contemporary "Western civilization" actually stands for during those awful 79 days when they bombed a sovereign EUROPEAN country they defined themselves. Since Yugoslavian capitulation we all are DAILY witnesses what Western civilization stands for in Kosovo. […]

The USA started bombing Yugoslavia officially because of the still unproven genocide on the poor Albanians by the Serbs, the Demons. Meanwhile they are carrying out invisible at first sight but very effective genocide on my people in Bulgaria. As in all the countries in the deadly grip of the US type of democracy and its envoys, the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND and THE WORLD BANK.

What are the Serbs thinking? I am truly amazed at some Serbian people’s reactions lately. I have never looked upon them as being a nation of suicides. What are they striving for? What do they want? The dismal, hopeless life of their Bulgarian neighbors?

Do they REALLY want to see their old people dig in the dung containers?

Do they REALLY want to stop their children from going to school because of lack of money for shoes and text-books?

Do they REALLY want to slave for the American or German corporations 12 hours per day for miserable pay? Because think: what is the greatest attraction for a foreign corporation in a devastated country like Yugoslavia? The cheap labor! That is it! The so called Sweatshops.

I cannot believe my eyes and ears! AFTER 78 or 79 DAYS OF AMERICAN BOMBS at that! Over the bodies of killed Serb children by the A M E R I C A N bombs! It is simply UNBELIEVABLE! […]

Don’t you, all the Serbs that are hanging at the lips of that US or German flunkey, [Alliance for Change leader] Djindjic, feel humiliated at having chosen to work for the US and West European interests against your own people? When the blood of the Serbian children is still fresh on the money they are giving you?!

SHAME, SHAME ON YOU! […]

The issue is not Milosevic. US and the 'Western civilizations' are reaching greedily for your country. Their geopolitical interests and their corporations demand it: they need the land and what resources you have."

Blagovesta Doncheva, Sofia, Bulgaria

For the full text of the letter, check out the "New Articles" section at: http://emperors-clothes.com/

-------------

2. CBC Retracts a War Story: One Albanian Lie Debunked, Thousands to Go

TORONTO, Sept. 8 - Right from the start of NATO's war on Serbia, we've labeled the various dubious and spurious claims and stories by the NWO media as the "Wag the Dog" productions created in the Lie and Deny Studios (see "Beware of 'Wag the Dog' Kosovo 'Atrocities' Charges" - S99-10, Day 5, Update 1, Item 3, Mar. 28).

The particular cause of the above commentary was the CNN's "Adona" broadcast - "a bogus e-mail exchange between an Albanian girl and a student at Berkeley," as we put it on Mar. 28. It resembled the similarly fraudulent "Zlata's Diary" manufactured by the NWO "Wag the Dog" productions during the Bosnian war. Neither lie was ever retracted by CNN or any other network which broadcast it.

Well, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was the first major network to admit publicly on Sept. 8 that it had been duped by another Kosovo Albanian lie about a Serb atrocity aired during NATO's war on Serbia.

"CBC correspondent Nancy Durham made a name for herself by venturing deep into Kosovo as a one-woman news team and bringing back moving stories about both the dead and the living," wrote the Toronto-based Globe and Mail in its Television reviews section on Sept. 8. "Now it turns out that one of her most touching reports -- about an 18-year-old girl who vowed to avenge her sister's death at Serb hands -- is based on a lie. The sister, as Durham discovered when she made a postwar visit to the girl's home, was alive and well."

"Trust and confidence are fundamental to the mission of CBC News," the Globe said, "and when The National (main CBC nightly news program) has been used to advance the Kosovo Liberation Army's cause so successfully, the network's entire credibility is at stake. That's why CBC is pulling out all the stops today to admit what went wrong and explain how it happened."

At the center of the public broadcaster's mea culpa is Durham's latest report from Kosovo, titled 'The Truth About Rajmonda: A KLA Soldier Lies for the Cause.' Just to make sure that the point gets across, this "intimate and revealing story" aired three times…"

"Truth may be a casualty of war, but cynicism is a great survivor," the Globe concludes.

You can check out the story at the CBC Web site: http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national . When you open the site, look for "The Truth About Rajmonda".

TiM Ed.: Guess it would be too much to hope for CNN's Christiana Amanpour to follow in CBC's footsteps and fess up to all the lies and distortions she has pawned off over the years as "news?" Not only because it might embarrass her new "hubby," the State Department spokesman James Rubin. But because, unlike the CBC, Ms. Amanpour and CNN don't have to worry about "the network's entire credibility." They don't have any.

--------------

3. EU Lifts Embargoes on Montenegro, Kosovo

BRUSSELS, Sept 6 - The European Union announced on Sept. 6 that it would lift oil and flight embargoes on Kosovo and Montenegro to ease the hardship these were causing for people living there, the Agence France Presse (AFP) has reported.

EU foreign ministers took the decision at an informal meeting in Saariselka, Finland, over the weekend.

The foreign ministers also discussed ways to lift the burden on the Serbian population, without benefiting the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The ministers said they want to provide oil for Serbian schools, hospitals, orphanages and municipalities opposed to the regime in Belgrade.

The oil embargo was imposed a month after the start of the 11-week NATO bombing campaign on Yugoslavia aimed at forcing a halt to ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. Most oil destined for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia transits through Montenegran ports, the AFP said.

-------------

BRATISLAVA, Sept. 9 - We've just received the following announcement from Slovakia which needs no further comment:

"Your reader from Slovakia, Martin Lipocky, is proud to announce you that he was baptized in Orthodox (Christian) church last Sunday" (Sept. 5).

Martin Lipocky

Bratislava, Slovakia

Also, check out... Truth in Media Statement on the Kosovo War, "Wither Dayton, Sprout New War?", "On the Brink of Madness", "Tragic Deja Vu's," "Seven U.S. Senators Suggest Ouster of Milosevic", "Biting the Hand That Feeds You", "A Balkan Affairs Potpourri", "Put the U.N. Justice on Trial", "International Justice 'Progresses' from Kidnapping to Murder", "Milosevic: 'A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery'...", "Kosovo Lie Allowed to Stand", "New World Order's Inquisition in Bosnia", "Kosovo Heating Up", "Decani Monastery Under Siege?", "Murder on Wall Street",  "Kosovo: 'Bosnia II', Serbia's Aztlan",  "What If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot?", "Serb WW II General Exhonerated by British Archives," "Green Interstate - Not Worth American Lives", "An American Hero or Actor of the Year?" (A June '95 TiM story) and/or "Clinton arme secrètement les musulmans bosniaques", "Kocevje: Tito's Greatest Crime?", "Perfidious Albion Strikes Again, Aided by Uncle Sam", "Lift the Sanctions, Now!" (1993)

Or Djurdjevic's WASHINGTON TIMES columns: "Chinese Dragon Wagging Macedonian Tail,"  "An Ugly Double Standard in Kosovo Conflict?", "NATO's Bullyboys", "Kosovo: Why Are We Involved?", and "Ginning Up Another Crisis"

Or Djurdjevic's NEW DAWN magazine columns: "Washington's Crisis Factory,"  and "A New Iron Curtain Over Europe"