• What
is Operation Matrix? A strategy to undermine
Milosevic
The program originated with a December 1998 White
House meeting at which Robert S. Gelbard, the president
and secretary of state's special adviser for Kosovo, was
put in charge of an umbrella strategy. That's what CIA
got money to do and - perhaps - it explains why NATO
didn't destroy Yugoslavia's mobile phone net? Read
William Arkin's Washington Post column of October
11, 1999.
• What
Makes Europe Look Increasingly Authoritarian?
Ralf Dahrendorf reflects on the future of the
"Third Way" and liberty in the recent issue of Foreign
Affairs.
• UN Secretary General
Kofi
Annnan visits Kosovo and expresses
dissatisfaction with the treatment of minorities there.
The S-G also turns down the Albanian request for observer
status at the Security Council.
• TFF
PressInfo 77 and 78
argued that the UN in Kosovo is not in line with Security
Council resolution 1244. Did you know that Richard
Holbrooke, the United States ambassador to the UN
and has encouraged the UN in Kosovo not to worry to much
about reactions in the UN?
• UNEP
says NATO's destruction in Yugoslavia had serious
environmental consequences. Balkans Task Force
Recommends Immediate Environmental Action as part of
Humanitarian Aid Four environmental hotspots found in
Serbia. This is the authoritative report from the Task
Force of the United Nations Environment Program, UNEP -
The The Kosovo Conflict: Consequences for the
Environment & Human Settlements. The document
is downloadable in Portable Document Format
(PDF).
• Africa
Has Refugees, Kosovo Gets Money
Mobilizing resources for any crisis in Africa is like
climbing a mountain," said Soren Jessen-Petersen, the
assistant U.N. refugee commissioner. The U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), charged with caring
for people displaced by conflict, has raised 90 percent
of the money it needs for refugees from the Kosovo war.
But it has raised just 60 percent of its budget for more
than 6 million refugees in Africa. Jessen-Petersen said
Africa programs, already pared from a year ago, will
almost certainly be cut again to prevent the agency from
going into the red. "At the end of the year we go back to
our donors and say, 'Please go back and look in your
drawers one more time,' " he said. "And this year they'll
be telling us there is nothing in those drawers, because
they gave it all to Kosovo" - writes Karl Vick in the
Washington Post Foreign Service, on Friday, October
8, 1999.
And this next one tells you about the priorities of
our world:
• Bill
for Kosovo War Goes Over £ 30 Billion
This is the mind-boggling figure used by BBC and Jane's
Defence Weekly in the most comprehensive analysis so far
of the military economic and human impact of the
conflict: Bombing: £2.63bn; Humanitarian aid:
£2.54bn; Peacekeeping: £6bn; Reconstructing
Serbia/Kosovo: £20.5bn; Total: £31.67bn. The
Guardian has the details.
• Kosovo
Defence Chief - a Major Partner of the International
Community - Accused of War Crimes?
Agim Ceku, the top commander of both the Kosovo
Liberation Army, KLA, and the new Kosovo Protection
Force, KPF, set up by the UN was also a leading commander
in massacres in Croatia and when some 200.000 Serb
citizens of Croatia were driven out in 1995. But it seems
he can't be indicted now - writes Tom Walker from
Pristina in Sunday Times.
• Hate
Speech in Pristina - Kosova's Media War Has
Started.
A KLA-linked news agency created a firestorm when it
launched a vicious attack on a leading independent
publisher and political personality, Veton Surroi - which
TFF
also featured. Political debate in Kosovo took a
potentially dangerous turn this week with a ferocious
denunciation of a leading independent publisher by the
press agency linked to the unofficial Kosovo Albanian
interim government and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Read the analysis by Anthony Borden, the executive
director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting,
IWPR.
• A
Brief History of Indonesia under (neo)-Colonial
Domination
"If there is a lesson in all of this it is that wrongs
cannot be righted until the facts are known and
understood. Peace and social justice cannot prevail until
the rich and powerful set an example for the weak and
impoverished," writes Enver Masud, founder of the
Wisdom Fund.
• How
We Ended the Cold War
"Peace Activists' Demand for an End to Nuclear Madness
Played a Decisive RoleIt is now ten years since the
Berlin wall crumbled, but the question of how and why the
cold war was concluded still lingers. As the apparent
winner, the West has tended to regard its triumph as a
vindication of cold war policies or, more modestly, as a
case of Soviet "exhaustion." Neither of those views is
satisfying because each discounts the role played by the
peace and antinuclear movements. Evidence is mounting
that their influence on events was more important than
most historical accounts admit--perhaps even decisive.,"
writes John Tirman in The Nation.
When you read the following report you may wonder
what it is KFOR, the UN and the OSCE lack since this goes
on week upon week. Perhaps the answer is: an idea about
what they eventually want to do with Kosovo?
• The
Ethnic Cleansing Attempts Goes On in Kosovo
Mitrovice again ignites in riots on a regular basis. An
ethnic Albanian march billed as being for "peace and
culture" in Mitrovice exploded into a full scale riot
yesterday, showing what an ethnic powderkeg this divided
town in northern Kosovo has become. Chris Bird of the
Guardian reports.
World socio-economic trends compel us to ask
whether it is not completely natural that there is
militant security policies, far too many nuclear and
other weapons, arms trade profiteers and military
"humanitarian" interventions. Why should people not fight
each other in direct violence when there is still so much
structural violence? Find the facts here:
• The
UNDP "State of the World Report" is Must Reading in an
Age of Globalization...
- in a summary comment by Stephen Shalom. And read
the full
text of the Human Development Report here.
- and not everybody suports the military-industrial
complex - which is a sign of hope:
• American
Business Men Want Military Cuts
Andrew Greenblatt lays out the craziest scenario he can
come up with on short notice: All America's ''enemies'' -
from North Korea, Libya and Iraq to China and Russia -
gang up on it, while at the same time all its allies
abandon it. Then: ''When it comes to military outlays,
we're spending twice as much as all these 'enemies' are
spending combined.'' Mr. Greenblatt, speaking for
Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, a
Manhattan-based group of about 500 business executives
and former military officials, is trying to drive home
the organization's central point. American military
spending is out of line with any imaginable threat, not
only distorting the national budget but also actually
weakening the nation. William Rasperry, The Washington
Post, reports.
• Did
NATO Bomb the Chinese Embassy
Deliberately?
Of course that would not be so easy to admit. So it
remains a mistake. Says Robin Cook, according to a BBC
report.
WIRE Editor
Jan Oberg with TFF
Associates
- and return now to the sitemap
to get to other TFF materials
