Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins

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May 26, 1999

Special Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins on NATO's War on Serbia

Issue S99-90, Day 64

FROM PHOENIX, ARIZONA explosion.gif (16495 bytes)  Topic: BALKAN AFFAIRS

May 26, 1999; 5:00PM EDT - DAY 64

HEADLINES

Washington             1. Second Russian Spy Ship Sails to Ionian Sea

Washington             2. German Foreign Minister: Russia Might

                                   Abandon Serbia; Next Two Weeks Crucial

London                    3. Radioactivity in Macedonia Eight Times Above Normal

Vlore                       4. Albanian Gangs Abduct Kosovo Refugee Girls for

                                   Prostitution; Some Are Killed If They Resist

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1. Second Russian Spy Ship Sails to Ionian Sea

WASHINGTON, May 24 - The second Russian spy ship, the Kilden, which left the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on May21, arrived in the Ionian Sea over the weekend to begin electronic eavesdropping and other surveillance of NATO's war against Yugoslavia, the Pentagon sources told the Washington Times on May 24. The Kilden joins the Limen, which has been monitoring the NATO electronic traffic in the Adriatic since early April (see Day 8, Update 2, Item 4, Mar. 31).

"The Kilden's presence there will mark the first time since 1991 that two Russian intelligence ships have operated in the same area," one Pentagon intelligence official told the Washington Times.

The Limen is expected to sail to the Syrian port of Tartas in the next few days for refueling and resupply and probably will return to the Ionian, the officials said.

Serbia's military also provided wreckage of a crashed U.S. F-117 stealth fighter to Moscow, the Times said.. A classified report by the National Counterintelligence Center, an interagency group within CIA headquarters, stated in March that Russia was recruiting spies, collecting technology and sabotaging international peacekeeping activities in the Balkans. The report, made available to the Times, said current and former Russian intelligence officials were cooperating with the Serbs.

The increase in Russian spying on NATO follows an earlier intelligence report from Moscow indicating the Russian government has ordered all military officers to sever ties to U.S. and Western defense attaches.

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2. German Foreign Minister: Russia Might Abandon Serbia; Next Two Weeks Crucial

WASHINGTON, May 25 - Despite the reports about the alleged intelligence sharing between the Serbs and the Russians, such as that implied in the previous story, the German foreign minister thinks that when the push comes to shove, Russia will abandon Serbia.

Speaking in a joint news conference with Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, during his official visit to Washington, Germany's Joschka Fischer (yes, the one who got red paint in his ear from his Greens - see S99-77, Day 51, Update 2, Item 1, May 13), said the Russian government "might abandon Milosevic and side with the West." The Russians, Fischer said, "did not have a lasting interest in having their relationship with the West sidelined by the Kosovo war."

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TiM Ed.: Well, the NWO quisling-Russians of the Boris Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin ilk may feel that way, as we've pointed out in our earlier reports (see S99-69, Day 45, Item 1, May 7 and S99-73, Day 49, Update 1, Item 3, May 11). But a vast majority of Russians are outraged by NATO's unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia (see S99-70, Day 46, Update 1, Item 3, May 8). And many of them are doing something about it, such as the Russian volunteers in Serbia (see S99-88, Day 62, Item 5, May 24).

With Yeltsin being as frail and apparently out of it mentally, it is far from certain as to how things may shake themselves out in Moscow in the end.

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Meanwhile, "we are in a very decisive situation in the conflict, because within the next two weeks, we will see whether we get a political solution or not," Fischer told reporters at a breakfast meeting at the Germany embassy in Washington, according to the New York Times (May 26).

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3. Radioactivity in Macedonia Eight Times Above Normal

LONDON, May 25 - TiM's sources in Britain say that Channel 4, a major TV network in the U.K., reported during its May 15 prime time newscast radioactivity in Macedonia, a neighboring country to Serbia, has been measured to be eight times higher than normal, due to NATO's bombing of Serbia. The lab tests were carried out in Bulgaria, the Channel 4 said, also citing opinions by scientists, such as Dr. Klaus Dodds of the London University.

The Channel 4 reported linked the increased radioactivity to NATO's use of the depleted uranium bombs. It also said that the air in many Balkan states around Serbia has been contaminated with carcinogenic toxins released into the atmosphere following NATO's bombing of chemical plants in Serbia.

The British TV report also said that much of the fish stock in the Danube is now poisoned.

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TiM Ed.: TiM's sources in London say that this was the first time a major British TV program has recognized the environmental consequences of NATO's war on Serbia. Amid the commendable concern for the ecological impact of the bombing on neighboring countries, and even the fish in the Danube, notably absent was the sense of outrage about the people living in the target country - the main victims of the environmental disaster unleashed by NATO. Maybe that's what Channel 4 is saving up for the sequel to this program?

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4. Albanian Gangs Abduct Kosovo Refugee Girls for Prostitution; Some Are Killed If They Resist

VLORE, May 25 - While the Washington and Brussels Kosovo "Wag the Dog" producers keep spinning tales, real or imagined, about alleged rapes of Kosovo Albanian women by the Serb soldiers, heinous crimes are taking place right under the western reporters noses in Albania. The victims are the same - Kosovo Albanian girls. But the perpetrators of the are the Albanian gangsters. They abduct female refugees, often at gun point, and sell them off to prostitution, mainly in Italy.

Sometimes, however, they also kill them. Such as was the fate of the 16-year old Jola Spasolli. Albanian gangsters killed a Kosovo refugee teenager and wounded her father after he tried to prevent them kidnapping her for a prostitution ring, police said on Tuesday (May 25), according to a Reuters news wire report.

Five armed men broke into a house rented by ethnic Albanian refugees on the outskirts of this crime-ridden southern city in search of the 16-year-old girl. "They were looking for a girl called Jola. Her father, Agim Spasolli, 36, tried to drive them back," the Vlore police spokesman Ali Hajdini said.

"The gangsters shot both the girl and her father after they failed to separate them,'' Hajdini said. The girl died later in hospital. Her father was in a critical condition.

Police said they had the five suspects in custody. Relief agencies in Albania have warned that gangs are trying to kidnap young Kosovo girls to set them up as prostitutes in Italy or Greece.

In an earlier (May 22) report, the Knight Ridder correspondent, Lori Montgomery, also reported from Vlore about 10 speedboat rafts leaving this port city in southern Albania every night, headed for Italy, and ferrying to the Italian bordellos their daily catch of Kosovo girls.

Sometimes, the women are lured on board by promises of safe passage to Italy, for which families pay up to $800 per head. But much of the time they abducted and forced into prostitution against their will. Such as the 27-year Pristina woman whom the Italian police rescued from a whore house in Rome, where she had been forced to work as a prostitute by her Albanian captors, the Knight Ridder said.

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Also, check out... Truth in Media Statement on Kosovo Crisis, "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?", "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"

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"