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Dispatch from the Darkness

OR: The Planet Titanic in front of the Balkans Iceberg

by Dragana Vicanovic

Special to the G21

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Belgrade - I'm not sure how or when this war will end, but I'm sure that there will be no standard "winner-loser" relationship. There will be something much worse than I could [have] imagined - only the losers and the profiteers.

And, while I'm writing this, the NATO-Yugoslav "peace talks" are going on in Macedonia. At the same time, NATO is continuing with the air strikes and murders [of the] civilians in my country. The new massacres occured in the citz of Varvarin, Novi Pazar and once again in Surdulica. Even the [re-inspired] KLA terrorists started a new operation -4,000 terrorists of [the] KLA supported by NATO aircraft, including B-52 strategic bombers, sought to break through from Albania into Yugoslav territory near [the] Gorozup area in Kosovo. [They] were repulsed by [the] Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Army border guards after losing more than 500 fighters on May 6.

Also, during the [same] attack, with [the] full [blessing of] NATO 3 grenades [were fired] on Yugoslav teritory near village Planeja. [They] hit... [an] ambulance. [Five people] from [the] Medical centre in Prizren were killed while they were going to help the wounded Albanian civilians in the village...

Do I believe that ... peace will ever enter the Kosovo? No! When NATO finally occup[ies] Kosovo --- and that will happened according to the newest "peace plan" --- the exodus of the Serbswill start once again.

The KLA announced that disarming is out of the question and inadmissible for them. To prove their intentions, the KLA attacked a passenger bus on the road [connecting] Pristina [and] Belgrade on May 5. Five persons - Serbs and Albanians - were heavily wounded. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said that Kosovo is not going to be a haven ... for Serbs. Pentagon officials predict massive Serbian migration from Kosovo once the peacekeeping troops enter the area.

Therefore, the Serbs are losers once again. The Albanians, Montenegrins, Turks, Gypsies and Egyptian refugees are losers, too - maybe they will come back [to] Kosovo maybe not. Their homes are destroyed by NATO "rescuers", the industrial facilities which feed a lot of them are devastated, the land is poisoned by depleted uranium and chemical toxins. For those Albanians who never supported the KLA, life will be impossible. They will probably become refugees ... along with the Serbs from Kosovo, try to run away afore the new round of slaughter under the NATO "peacekepers" protection and their KLA friends who will enter Kosovo along with NATO.

The Yugoslav people enter the new millennium by candle light.

[But the real] losers are [the] Yugoslav people in general - millions of them, survivors and invalids - are out of job[s], out of any incomes, out of their right to live and hope as normal human beings at the beginning of the new millennium. If they want to read or write in the evening, they have to light a candle instead [a] computer. What a fantastic future!

The [other] losers are [the] USA and the NATO.

Anti-American feelings in Europe were never stronger than today. The credibility of NATO as a defence organisation is overturned. The masks fall down. The international law, the UN Charter, the truth and right of each country to [exist] as a sovereign state are [now understood to be] disallowed. The "bully's rights" become the [operative law] of the world, announcing some new wind which will blow out the powerless. Yugoslavia became only the first step towards NATO world domination, [the] creation of the new colonial relation[ship] and that [result] makes NATO [little more than] warmongers [and] profiteers. Now they [say that they] must continue bombing Serbia or "NATO will lose credibility"-- because the "Alliance itself is at stake".

Slobodan Milosevic is another profiteer. He will survive again, thanks to the [allegedly] hidden trump [he holds] for the negotiations - the lives of the captured NATO pilots. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Nothing has been reported in the mainstream press about MORE captured NATO pilots, but it should be noted that with this dispatch was included photographs of down NATO fighter-bombers which G21 chose not to include with this story. RA] The opinion is very [wide]spread here, thanks to the fact that captured pilots (and according [to] some military sources there are a lot of them) were never show[n] in public. [ EDITOR'S NOTE: G21 could not confirm this assertion at "press" time.]

The military industry also profits because the war is, most of all a good business. Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Norththrop, Grumman, United Technologies, Textron, Litton Industries and other top military contractors [are the biggest winners of this war.] I've heard the theorem that the Balkans is the latest example of an evil, genocidal, parasitic, Machiavellian military-industrial-financial complex enriching itself on the backs of other fellow-humans' pain and suffering. I have to agree.

NATO's "graphite" or "soft" bombs, which have taken me and my neighbors back to the Stone Age.

The French media have stated two weeks ago, that the NATO air strikes ... perfectly match the period of Pentagon's testing of [a new generation of weapons,] and [so] Yugoslavia became the experimental field. The B-2 bombers armed with the satellite guided missiles of 500-1000 kg weight, the so-called "graphite bombs" or "soft-bombs" which left more than 90% of Yugoslavia without power supply are only a small part of the new military arsenal of the unconventional weapons used in this war.

Russian Colonel-General Stanislaw Petrow said on May 6, that the NATO use [of] soft-bombs [will] provoke prolonged ecological consequences in the Balkan countries. The NATO explanation that the new weapon disturbs the functioning of the military connections, the command[-and-control] points and the AAA systems is --- according to General Petrow --- only an excuse. Power supply cuts [by soft bombs, for example,] stopped 280 health institutions in Serbia, disabling work in surgery, gynaecology, neonatal, orthopaedic surgery, etc. The originally developed "soft-bombs" were used in the Gulf War, but [the] sort [of] missiles [now used which deploy the] graphite-electromagnetic material is quite new, [sophisticated,] and highly toxic.

An investigating military team has determined at the site of the Korisa massacre wh[ere] over 100 Albanian refugees were killed that the refugee convoy was attacked by 8 thermovisual bombs. Their basic characteristic is that after striking ground they develop a temperature of up to two thousand degrees that even melts stone. The bombs do not make large craters but are highly incendiary and cause huge fires. That is why the consequences of the NATO attack were so tragic and this is undoubtedly the largest loss of lives in a single attack since the beginning of the aggression.

A cluster bomb explosion in a Yugoslav city.

In the period between 25 March and 15 May, 1999, over 60 containers each with 240 forbidden cluster bombs (i.e. over 15,000 bombs), [were] dropped over the territory of Yugoslavia. About 40 cluster bomb containers have been dropped over Kosovo, killing about 200 and wounding over 450 people.

The A-10s jets were the anti-tank weapon of choice in the 1991 war against Iraq. It carries a GAU-8/A Avenger 30 millimeter seven-barrel cannon capable of firing 4,200 rounds per minute. During that war it fired 30 mm rounds reinforced with depleted uranium, a radioactive weapon. Many US veterans' groups also say that DU residues contributed to the condition called "Gulf War Syndrome" that has affected close to 100,000 service people in the US and Britain with chronic sickness.

The same ammunition but [more a more sophisticated version was] used in this war.

The Institute of Nuclear Studies at Vinca, Belgrade, has surveyed the remnants of exploded bombs and positively established the presence of uranium in the ammunition. The inhumane and banned ammunition is most often used in Kosovo which has been confirmed also by NATO representatives themselves. They said in their statements that A-10 planes are used in the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, whose payloads contained also depleted uranium ammunition.

Depleted uranium is radio-active nuclear waste, the combustion of which releases products which are radio-active and poisonous. High temperature is created at the impact of the missile and at least 70 per cent of the total mass of the depleted uranium and its oxides is released in the form of aerosol (particles below 5). These particles are inhaled into organisms, they contaminate the environment and are spread creating a contamination of broader proportions. According to international standards, uranium 238 belongs to the second group of radio-nuclides of very high radio-activity and toxicity and as such is very dangerous for the population. That was confirmed by the wide analyses in Iraq and Kuwait where, after the Gulf War, tens of thousands people died, a great number of babies were born defective, and hundreds of thousands persons got sick, mostly from tumours. The DU ammunition was used in Bosnia as well, where [the] number of the people suffering from leukaemia has suddenly increased since the bombing. Its use is highly inhumane both for its instantaneous and for its subsequent radio-active effect.

The only means of transportation over the Danube in Novi Sad, barges. Welcome to the new century!

The effects of its use against troops and the civilian population are fatal since they cause wounds followed by contamination which makes the use of this ammunition a crime against humanity and international law. John Catalinotto of the International Action Center in New York, set up by former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark and others to oppose US military involvement around the world, said: "As the shell hits its target, it burns and releases uranium oxide into the air. The poisonous and radioactive uranium is most dangerous when inhaled into the body, where it will release radiation during the life of the person who inhaled it."

Unusual and so far unseen weather anomalies in this part of the world occurred at the same time. Storms, the 5 earthquakes in the row, the strong wind and egg-sized ice from the sky - each time in different and isolated agricultural regions - have destroyed almost 90 percent of this year's crop.

You can call me paranoiac, but I'll start to believe that NATO is, beside chemical and nuclear war, conducting against Yugoslavia the electromagnetic and meteorology war, as well. This was the perfect opportunity for the ground experiment of the new electromagnetic weapons for high impact, low cost, low intensity military actions.

Why not? Weather control and artificial earthquakes are proven to be truth - [a] former USSR scientist published the explanation of such successfully conducted experiments.

According to Prof. Belojevic, ecocide means an introduction into genocide, because by pre-emption of life conditions and a manifold increase of health risks in one people's environment, the people itself is being destroyed. Ecocide is a heavy war crime. This crime was committed with impunity in Vietnam. It is up to the conscience of mankind, that is, the United Nations Organisation, to decide upon whether to let the same thing happen to the ecocide in Yugoslavia. I doubt that the UN or the International Community give a damn.

I can only remember the year 1996, when the reporter Leslie Stahl asked US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright on the CBS-TV show "60 Minutes":

"It is said that as a result of the sanctions [on Iraq,] more than half a million Iraqi children have died. That's more than were killed in Hiroshima. Is it worth the price?''

Albright answered, "It's a hard choice for us --- but yes, it's worth it.''

Unfortunately, what Lao-Tse never mentioned is that the victor is never to be judged and the times of heroic and noble victories are passed.


DRAGANA VICANOVIC was born in 1964 (Zajecar, Yugoslavia.) She is married and has been living in Belgrade since 1995. Dragana is a writer, journalist and documentary film director. She has written two books. Among her recent documentary film credits are HISTORY OF SERBIAN MEDICINE(Centar Film, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1998); the screenplay KING PETER I, THE LIBERATOR (Centar Film, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1998); wrote and directed series of documentaries TRAILS (22 documentaries 30-120 min) (TV STUDIO B, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1996 - 1997); creator and story editor of the documentary CIRCUS. Ms. Vicanovic graduated from University of Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, 1987, with a degrees in Yugoslavian, General Literature and Philosophy. Other articles by Ms. Vicanovic have appeared in SVETI DUNAV,IQ,OKO,VE^ERNJE NOVOSTI,TAJNE,STAV, and DNEVNIK.

This is Dragana's seventh article for the G21.