Strange to see how the "system" works... Take, for instance, nuclear waste. It's full of uranium. It's deadly. We do not know how to store it but the nuclear power industry is proliferating and we keep mining uranium -- did you know that we are still mining uranium? Well, read Michael Stowell's report, A Hot Rain's A Gonna Fall, and you'll start to seriously question the meme that we are a thinking species.
In the line of lies and deception however, the "system" does wonders day in and day out. This rendition is focusing on the fabrications, largely unchallenged, of so-called crimes against humanity, accusations of genocide, all allegedly performed under the strict orders of some Balkan blood-thirsty dictator who, we've been told as many times as there are nuclear warheads in the world, has led his countrymen through a decade of rage, rapes, rapines, murders and destruction. Actually, it's the only version of the story that is being told. So one could for once tell some of the other side, provide a different version of the alleged events (which for the most part are not even alleged anymore -- they are taken at face value). Ironically, when the story does not follow the script, our monarchs and their faithful disseminators, a.k.a. Officialdom, become deafeningly quiet as Sanjay Basu (who contributed an essay on Winning the Propaganda War in August 1999) shows in The Other War Criminals.
The few people -- and they are indeed very few -- who dare challenge the official line are mostly disregarded, often discredited and accused of being in denial. So be it. But read Stephen Gowans' analysis in Genocide or Veracicide: Will NATO's Lying Ever Stop?, check his documentation and ponder his conclusions. You are not sure? Then keep reading about the Human Rights crowd in the three sequential pieces by Gilles d'Aymery. They are filled with solid information and food for thought. Since the ICTY has finally abducted its coveted prize we are reposting Michael Stowell's essay on this victor's court, Beneath the Cloaking Device, as it is a fine representation of our collective thoughts.
We are also publishing the fourth part of Milo Clark's series, Please Be Patient IV. In addition, Clark, often a contrarian, writes with his usual erudition about the need to move on....of "joining history in process if not progress," in How Much is Enough?
Enjoy! As always, please form your own opinion and do not forget to read Sandy Lulay's poem.
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Michael W. Stowell: A Hot Rain's A Gonna Fall
I wonder if Bob Dylan ever thought about radioactive waste when he sang that song "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall." Indeed, the fallout from almost six decades of nuclear folly is about to settle upon the Earth and the umbrella has yet to be built that will protect anyone from its tragic consequences. More...
Michael W. Stowell is chairperson of the City of Arcata Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Commission, Humboldt County, CA.
Sanjay Basu: The Other War Criminals
To the lay American observer, the indictment and transfer of Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague may have appeared to be a grand display of positive American politicking--a well-intentioned use of American pressure to bring a war criminal to justice. More...
Sanjay Basu is a scientist and the acting director of United Trauma Relief, a human rights and humanitarian aid organization based in Cambridge, MA.
Stephen Gowans: Genocide or Veracicide: Will NATO's Lying Ever Stop?
Now that Slobodan Milosevic has been dragged to The Hague to face charges of deportation, persecution, and murder, we might ask, "Should he be there at all?"
Certainly, the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte thinks so, as does NATO and its leaders. More...
Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
Gilles d'Aymery: Not Only Are They Demons, Serbs Are Imbeciles
"Not only are we demons but we are imbeciles," said a Serbian acquaintance to me in a recent phone conversation. He was referring to the story of the infamous refrigerated truck that showed up in the main media last May after the arrest of Slobodan Milosevich on April 30, 2001, and the discovery of a mass grave earlier this month in Petrovo Selo, about 120 miles East of Belgrade - just after (certainly a mere coincidence again!) the abduction and shipment of the same Milosevich to The Hague on June 28, 2001. In that grave were the bodies of three Americans of Kosovo-Albanian origin, the Bytyqi brothers, who were found blindfolded, their hands tied with wire, and with official papers that provided their identity. More...
Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Gilles d'Aymery: The Circle of Deception: Mapping the Human Rights Crowd in the Balkans
Following a conversation with a Serbian acquaintance we investigated a report on the Destruction of Evidence on Crimes against Kosovo Albanians that was posted on balkanhr, the Balkan Human Rights List, that he had found through the Balkan Academic News.
From there, one thing leading to another and following Ariadne's thread, an unambiguous picture developed. Some people and some organizations are at the center of a vast circle of deception. More...
Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Gilles d'Aymery: The Fabrication and Dissemination of Deception
Many news reports of atrocities and "genocide" allegedly committed by the Serbs and widely disseminated in the Western main media have originated with a little known NGO in Belgrade, Serbia, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC). The story of the refrigerated truck filled with corpses that was purportedly dumped in the [river] Danube in April 1999 is a good example. More...
Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
Michael W. Stowell: Beneath the Cloaking Device
The International War Crimes Tribunal (IWCT) was founded in 1993 by the United Nations Security Council on the insistence of permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations, Madeline Albright (President of the Tribunal Gabriella Kirk McDonald often refers to Albright as the "mother of the Tribunal"). The normal channel for creating such a court, as the United Nations' Secretary General pointed out at the time, would have been "via an International Treaty established and approved by the Member States permitting them full exercise of their sovereignty." The U.S. undermined the democratic process and imposed an arbitrary interpretation of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, that permits the Security Council to take "special measures" to restore international peace. More...
Michael W. Stowell is chairperson of the City of Arcata Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Commission, Humboldt County, CA.
Milo Clark: How Much is Enough?
Gandhi asked, now many earth-sun cycles past, "How much is enough?"
Few, if any, will say, "I have enough, if not more than enough." Fewer still live with their enough or less unless forced to do so. More...
Milo Clark is a Swans' founding member, advisor and columnist.
Milo Clark: Please Be Patient IV
"We are here to embrace rather than conquer."
When a system operates parallel, bottom-up and distributed those within or affected by system operation behave differently, radically differentially from those who believe themselves operating within linear, top-down, sequential processes. More...
Milo Clark is a Swans' founding member, advisor and columnist.
Sandy Lulay: BACK OF THE BUS (in 1956)
White lips, turned down,
Whisper...
"Who she think she is?
Not one of us...
Sure not one of us."
And I'm thinking
What a funny bus this is.
Looks like part of
A Zebra's hide from
Where I stand, inside.
More...
An "Original Woodstock Girl," Sandy Lulay is also a "Swans kind of girl" who's been writing poetry since age 10.