remembering belgrade…..

Thursday marks the 23rd anniversary of the start of the 1999 NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia. In 78 days, NATO jets conducted 2,300 sorties, dropping 420,000 missiles and bombs, including cluster munitions and depleted uranium rounds. Up to 5,700 people were killed, with tens of thousands more diagnosed with cancers in the years that followed.

Before entering the Oval Office as Barack Obama’s vice president and then as president himself, Joe Biden served as a United States senator for over 30 years. Ahead of, during and after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Biden was consistently one of the top hawks in Washington pushing for the conflict to be expanded into a full-on ground invasion.

“Look, you have probably the only three people in Washington here who think we should go straight to Belgrade and arrest [Yugoslav president Slobodan] Milosevich,” Biden said in a May 1999 appearance on Meet the Press alongside the now late Republican senator John McCain.

“But let’s not kid each other. We’re the only three people. The rest of this is malarkey. The Republican Congress won’t even vote for the bombing. The NATO forces won’t even go along with the idea of ground troops. And whether or not the president will or will not is not relevant. The question to me is: What is the definition of victory?” Biden complained.

“The definition of victory was all the troops out of Kosovo, the Albanians back in Kosovo and a NATO-led force in Kosovo. That’s not total victory. That’s not the victory I want, that’s not the victory John wants. I’ve been saying we should go in on the ground, we should announce there’s gonna be American casualties. We should go to Belgrade and we should have a Japanese/German-style occupation of that country and we should have public trials in order to strike away this mask of Serbian victimization,” Biden said.

(watch the videos)

In a second video, dated 1998, before the NATO air campaign began, Biden sparred with Republican lawmaker Joe DioGuardi about the Kosovo crisis, boasting that he had called for Belgrade to be bombed and for US pilots to destroy all bridges on the Drina River during the NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995, which killed over 150 Bosnian Serbs, destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, and irradiated the region with DU munitions.

In a third video, from an April 2002 gala dinner of the Albanian American Civic League in New York City, an apparently inebriated Biden vowed to continue to support having US troops “on the ground with loaded rifles and drawn bayonets” in the Balkans until US objectives were accomplished.

“I will continue with every fiber in my being to keep America involved with troops that can shoot and kill to protect the rights of the Albanians wherever they reside in the Balkans,” Biden assured. US forces would stay until the “job is finished,” the senator stressed, defining that “job” as putting Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania on the road to NATO and EU membership.

“Why some of you ask have I been so relentless on Serbia and [post-Milosevich President Vojislav] Kostunica who I do not trust? Why have I been so reluctant, so persistent in not providing aid to the people of Serbia who are many good people – why? Because until they look in their hearts they can never cure themselves of the disease that they are the oppressed. And as long as they operate on that standard, this cycle will continue and continue and continue. So that’s why, not for vengeance, but for release - that it’s necessary for them to look the devil in the eye,” Biden said.

Grim Anniversary

NATO began a campaign of air and cruise missile strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 23 March 1999. The operation, cynically dubbed ‘Operation Noble Anvil’, continued until 10 June 1999, with a total of about 22,000 metric tonnes of bombs dropped on the country. The use of cluster bombs (37,000 of them) and depleted uranium constituted a violation of the laws of war, and Serbian doctors have reported a dramatic spike in oncological diseases, including juvenile cancers, in the wake of the conflict. In 2017, Serbian scientist Ljubisa Rakic calculated that the amount of DU dropped on Yugoslavia was equivalent to about 170 Hiroshima bombs.

The bombing is estimated to have caused up to $100 billion in economic losses, destroying or damaging some 25,000 residential buildings, 470 km of roads, 595 km of railway infrastructure, 14 airports, 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 69 schools, 18 kindergartens, 176 cultural monuments and 38 bridges. This included a raid on Radio Television of Serbia, which claimed 16 lives, and the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, during which three Chinese nationals were killed. All told, Serbian officials estimate that over a third of NATO’s targets were civilian.

https://sputniknews.com/20220324/we-should-go-in-on-the-ground-watch-biden-complain-nato-bombing-of-yugoslavia-not-ruthless-enough-1094148230.html

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By Gus Leonisky at 25 Mar 2022 - 11:24am
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her life was worth 500,000 dead kids...

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The NATO expansion policy the late Madeleine Albright pursued as the Clinton administration’s top diplomat fueled Russian security concerns to a level that forced Moscow to take defensive measures, which helped lead to the crisis in Ukraine, former Macedonian diplomat Risto Nikovski told Sputnik.

Albright, the first female US Secretary of State, died from cancer at the age of 84 on Wednesday. Albright was one of the key architects of NATO's 78-day bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, which was launched on March 24, 1999 - exactly 23 years ago.

"The foreign policy that Albright pursued together with Bill Clinton led to the encircling of Russia from all sides by new NATO members," Nikovski said. "That encirclement is de facto the reason for all the problems that started in Ukraine and will continue in Europe in the future as well as in the world."

In December, Russia sent the Biden administration security guarantee proposals in an effort to prevent NATO’s further enlargement. However, Moscow said the US largely ignored its most critical demands including a guarantee to never allow Ukraine into NATO.

Moscow, Nikovski added, was forced to undertake the special operation in Ukraine because the legitimate government was toppled with the help of the United States and others.

"New politicians were installed [in Kiev] to lead anti-Russian policies, which led to what we are seeing today," Nikovski said.

Albright’s role in US domestic politics was positive, he added, but the world, and particularly the Balkan region, will remember her for her aggressive and "anti-civilizational" policies. The role Albright played in the breaking away of Kosovo from Serbia showed the world that US foreign policy is unscrupulous, Nikovski said.

Years afterward, he added, Albright admitted that the bombing campaign was illegal, but also claimed it was useful.

The former diplomat said Albright’s role as US Secretary of State in expanding NATO deserves wholehearted and deep condemnation given that her predecessor, James Baker, told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand an inch eastward after the reunification of Germany.

Nikovski served as Undersecretary in the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Ambassador to Russia, Albania, and the United Kingdom before resigning over criticisms of the United States for allegedly interfering in the country’s internal affairs.

Albright moved from Czechoslovakia to the United States in 1948, where she would work as a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and found the Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley College in addition to her public service.

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depleted uranium rained on Belgrade…..

The Western alliance spent 78 days bombing Yugoslavia in 1999, contaminating the Balkan nation with at least 15 tonnes of highly toxic depleted uranium (DU) munitions. Serbian attorneys have filed multiple lawsuits against NATO, but have yet to receive any formal admission of wrongdoing by the alliance for its actions.

NATO has formally responded to lawsuits filed by Serbs with the Belgrade High Court over the bloc’s DU munitions use during the 1999 bombing campaign, claiming immunity from prosecution, Srdan Aleksic, a lawyer representing victims, has told Sputnik Serbia.

“In its statement to the court, NATO’s liaison office in Serbia indicated that the alliance has full immunity under Serbian jurisdiction on the basis of the 2005 agreement between the alliance and the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro ‘On the transit participation and support of peacekeeping operations,’ and the 2006 agreement under which the liaison office in Belgrade was created,” Aleksic said.

The attorney dismissed the ‘immunity’ claims, insisting that “none of these agreements gives immunity to NATO as an organization, and immunity cannot be applied retroactively. Therefore, NATO cannot receive immunity for war crimes against civilians and for its illegal aggression under the 2005 agreement."

"In our case about DU bombings resulting in casualties among the civilian population, soldiers and policemen, NATO carries responsibility for the violation of the right to life and for damages caused,” Aleksic stressed.

The attorney expects the Belgrade High Court to proceed with hearings on the matter in October.

Aleksic and Italian attorney Angelo Fiore Tartaglia filed a lawsuit against NATO over its use of depleted uranium in the 1999 attack on Yugoslavia in January 2021. Two additional lawsuits were filed earlier this year. Tartaglia had previously successfully represented nearly 200 Italian troops who died of cancer or became seriously ill after being exposed to DU while serving in Kosovo during NATO's 'peacekeeping' mission in that Serbian region.

The Belgrade District Court found US General Wesley Clark and NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana guilty of war crimes in September 2000 for the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. However, the colour revolution that overthrew Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000 led to a review of the verdict, and in late 2001, Serbia’s Supreme Court overturned the ruling.

Serbia suffers one of the highest cancer rates in Europe, with nearly 60,000 oncology patients diagnosed each year and the cancer rate among children up to 2.5 times above the European average. Serbian doctors are convinced that the high oncology rate is directly connected to the liberal use of DU munitions during the NATO bombing. Along with cancers, scientists have reported an alarming spike in infertility, autoimmune diseases and mental disorders over the past two decades, including post-traumatic stress and other psychological problems associated with the bombings.

Earlier this year, Serbian Institute of Radiology and Oncology director Dr. Danica Grujicic told Sputnik that the 1999 bombings had a devastating impact on the region's ecology and that the use of DU, combined with deliberate attacks on chemical plants and hazardous industrial facilities, created an environmental disaster affecting countries far beyond the borders of the former Yugoslavia.

https://sputniknews.com/20220525/nato-claims-immunity-to-serbian-lawsuit-on-use-of-depleted-uranium-in-1999-bombings-1095778023.html

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By Gus Leonisky at 26 May 2022 - 12:52pm
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