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July 20, 2002
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
July 17, 2002
Philip Farruggio
The
New Role Model:
Remember Jesus, George?
Zara Gelsey
Who's
Reading Over
Your Shoulder?
Behzad Yaghmaian
9/11 and
Fotress Europe:
the Drama of the New
Moslem Diaspora
Mike Ferner
War, Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush, Burqas
and the Oppression of Afghan Women
July 16, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Faith-based
Capitalism in
the Ruins of the Market
Kurt Nimmo
How My
35mm Camera Almost Became a Tool of Treason
Robert Fisk
The Kashmir
Distraction
Salam al-Marayati
When
is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti-Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
July 12, 2002
Sean Donahue
The Other
Harken Energy Scandal: Oil, Death Squads
and Colombia
Walt Brasch
Sin Tax
Scam
"Psst. Cigarettes. A Buck Each."
Steve Perry
A Tale
of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?
July 11, 2002
Lloyd Marbet
Arrested
by the Chamber
of Commerce
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
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Weekend
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July 20, 2002
"I
Won't Tell No Lies"
INSIDE
KOSOVO:
The Human Rubble of War
by James T. Phillips
"There's a Natural Mystic
blowing through the air. If you listen carefully
now you will hear. This could be the first trumpet,
might as well be the last. Many more will have to suffer,
many more will have to die. Don't ask me why,
things are not the way
they used to be. I won't tell no lies."
Natural Mystic, Bob Marley & the Wailers
Bob Marley is dead, but the lyrics he once sang
with the Wailers live on, reverberating in my head every time
I click the shutter of my camera while standing amidst the ruins
of war. When I sit down and start typing on my ancient laptop
keyboard, writing stories of suffering and dying, Bob Marley's
ghost sits by my side and reminds me to tell no lies. I listen
very carefully.
Truth, the oft-mentioned first casualty
of war, doesn't always die on the battlefields--or in the newsrooms--of
the world. Information about what really happens to the victims
of war, unfiltered by baneful politicians and biased propagandists,
is easy to obtain and report when covering a conflict from the
field. After being confronted by the reality of war, it isn't
a difficult task to search out and destroy the lies offered up
by public relations firms, desk-bound scribes or the natural
mystics currently at work in the White House.
* *
*
The rubble has been removed from Kosovo,
carted away and buried in the same earth as the human victims
of war.
Three years after the bombs stopped dropping
from the sky, the destroyed homes and shops owned by Albanians
have been replaced by thousands of new structures. Kosovo's re-building
program has been very successful, providing Albanians with housing
that would satisfy wealthy arms merchants and retired generals.
As targets of both sides during the 1999 war between Yugoslavia
and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Albanians
suffered and lost throughout a conflict that lasted 78 days.
Construction of the new multi-story buildings has been an integral
part of the international community's efforts to restore dignity
and respect, as well as shelter, to the Albanian population of
the Serbian province of Kosovo.
The only evidence of that terrible conflict
visible in 2002 are the remnants of the Serb and Roma communities
and, unlike the 78 day plight and flight of Albanian refugees
in 1999, their conflict has lasted for more than one thousand
days. Only a small fraction of the pre-war ethnic minorities
remain in Kosovo, living in semi-protected enclaves where shelter
is a luxury and freedom is a fading memory. The Serbs and Roma
live in small houses, crowded apartments, sagging tents, bug-infested
shacks and pre-fabricated boxes. They also live in unrelieved
fear of their Albanian neighbors, protected by an international
cadre of soldiers and police officers more often interested,
with a few heroic exceptions, in earning money than in providing
a safe and secure environment for Kosovo's ethnic minorities.
The Serbs and Roma are the human rubble
of war.
* *
*
A journalist writing for the Guardian
(UK) newspaper recently visited Kosovo. His report from Mitrovica
was informative, included quotes from officials and citizens,
and didn't pull any punches when assessing the situation in the
volatile city located along the banks of the Ibar River.
"Almost three years after the end
of the war in Kosovo, the United Nations is being accused of
failing in the province and effectively allowing it to be split
into separate Serb and Albanian entities," wrote the journalist.
"A report by the International Crisis Group, a respected
political think tank, says the UN has let the Serb government
extend its grip on Serbian-speaking areas of Kosovo, leading
to its partition."
In other, more precise words, the journalist
reported that the Serbs, after being terrorized by the Kosovo
Liberation Army in the years prior to the 78 day long bombing
by NATO--and after having their lives and homes destroyed in
revenge attacks during the succeeding three years--are now being
accused of creating the enclaves where they are forced to live.
Simply put, the Serbs are responsible for building their own
prisons.
This is Kosovo today. A land where murders,
rapes, assaults, thefts and contradictory opinions abound.
According to the Guardian journalist,
the International Crisis Group blames the Serb government for
partitioning "Serb-speaking areas" of Kosovo. I can
confirm that representatives of the ICG are out and about, driving
their sparkling clean sports utility vehicles through Albanian-speaking
areas of Kosovo. But, as to their assertion concerning the "grip"
held by the Serb government, I can only report that the various
nationalities that make up the police and military forces in
Kosovo do not include any Serbians. Except for a few token Serb
policemen--who would need to be protected if assigned to walk
a beat in Albanian neighborhoods--security in Kosovo is provided
by Albanians, Americans and other non Serb-speaking peoples.
During my visits to Kosovo, the only
stranglehold that I have noticed is that of the Albanians on
the throats of the ethnic minority populations. And, the ultimate
partitioning of Kosovo is being accomplished, not by Serbs, but
by Albanian leaders who are proclaiming independence from the
weak and isolated Serb government. The ICG report was, undoubtedly,
researched and written by well-meaning people who want to see
an end to the injustice and violence in Kosovo. They just forgot
to get out of their vehicles and wade through the human rubble.
The Albanians in Kosovo are no longer an oppressed minority.
They dominate the police and government, control the press and,
unbeknownst to the folks at the ICG, oppress the Serbs and Roma.
The Albanians are not in the grip of anything other than a frenzy
to gather money, dominion and friends.
* *
*
Obilic is a dusty town west of Pristina.
The towering chimneys of a power station are the tallest structures
in the valley where Obilic is located, visible from miles away,
dominating the landscape just as the Albanians now dominate the
power structure of Kosovo. A few Serbs--and one abandoned Orthodox
Christian Church--remain in the town, as yet unmolested, protected
by KFOR soldiers and UNMIK policemen. The only large concentrations
of ethnic minorities in Obilic live in refugee enclaves situated
in the shadow of the power station, and the smells emanating
from the chimneys compete with the odors of rotting garbage,
dirty children and smoky fires.
The residents of the refugee enclaves
include Roma men, women and children who were cleansed from their
homes during the war in Kosovo. The Roma live in structures that
could be described as shacks if they were constructed to house
humans. The shelters are pieced together from scraps of wood,
cardboard boxes and thin sheets of tin. The leaky roofs are held
in place by old automobile tires. Inside, the soot from wood-burning
stoves stains walls, ceilings and people. The floors are made
of dirt in the dry areas, and mud where water seeps in from the
outside. The furniture consists of wood boxes and, for those
who can afford the luxury, filthy carpets.
Scott Taylor, a well-respected Canadian
military affairs correspondent, recently visited the refugee
enclave near the Obilic power station. His report from the field
presented the current situation in Kosovo in a different light
than did the trumpeting of the International Crisis Group.
"The housing program also illustrates
the vast discrepancy between the allocation of funds to Albanian
Kosovars and other ethnic minorities," stated Taylor in
an article published in the Ottawa Citizen. "Throughout
the Albanian sectors 'monster' homes--many larger than 7,000
square feet--are being built. Along the main roads are dozens
of new hotels and service centres, complete with car washes,
supermarkets and cafes. By contrast, inside the isolated minority
enclaves there has been little reconstruction..."
Scott Taylor walked through the squalor,
and he talked with the people who live in misery and despair.
He got out of his vehicle and waded through the human rubble.
Taylor told no lies.
There is a natural mystic blowing in
the air and, in Kosovo, it stinks worse than the pollution spewed
out from the belching chimneys at the Obilic power station. It
is a mystery to me as to why the International Crisis Group could
spend so much time and money on a report that completely reverses
the true situation in Kosovo but, as Bob Marley wailed, "things
are not the way they used to be."
James T. Phillips is a freelance reporter and photographer. He
has covered wars in Iraq, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
He can be reached at: james@unet.com.mk
Today's Features
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Coming of Age in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stockmarket Hogwallow
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
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