Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 23:57:35 -0700
From: Joshua Houk <jlhouk-AT-mindspring.com>
Subject: FWD: Eco-war in Kosovo [NATO poisons civilians]



Fowarded by request from Nico, again sans editorial comment.

Joshua H

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

## News 24.04.99
## by artactivism-AT-gn.apc.org

>From: "George Monbiot" <g.monbiot-AT-zetnet.co.uk> (by way of genetics
><genetics-AT-gn.apc.org>)
>Subject: Eco-war in Kosovo [NATO poisons civillians]
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mail.gn.apc.org id
>VAA11807
>
>Here's this week's article from George Monbiot:
>
>The Nato commanders trying to explain what happened to the refugee convoy they
>bombed sounded rather like the police at the Stephen Lawrence enquiry. They
>did their utmost to appear contrite, without actually apologising. Sorry, for
>the guardians of law and order, always seems to be the hardest word.-AT-
>
>But even as the alliance tied itself in circumlocutory knots, it continued to
>engage in the slaughter of non-combatants. Slowly, largely silently, it is
>killing thousands of civilians. They are being neither bombed nor shot: the
>people of the former Yugoslavia are being poisoned.-AT-
>
>Nato's immediate war aim is to destroy the Serb economy, in order to restrict
>Milosevic's capacity either to attack the Kosovo Albanians or to retaliate
>against Nato troops. This may or may not be working. But whatever its impact
>on the Yugoslav Republic's economy might be, Nato is succeeding in wiping out
>its ecology.-AT-
>
>The Nato press office claims that it has "no idea" how many chemical plants
>and oil installations its bombers have hit. But it concedes that there have
>been multiple raids on a vast oil refinery and chemicals complex in the
>suburbs of Belgrade, on another chemicals facility close to the capital and on
>an oil refinery at Novi Sad, in the north of the country.-AT-
>
>Britain's Ministry of Defence told me yesterday that the bombers are "keeping
>the risks of pollution to a minimum", but it was unable to explain how, while
>blowing chemicals plants to pieces, they have achieved this commendable feat.
>Nato informed me that "the smoke from these fires is barely comparable to the
>smoke caused by the Yugoslav attacks on several hundred villages". It's clear
>that neither agency has the faintest idea what it's talking about.-AT-
>
>The chemical tanks ruptured by Nato bombers on the outskirts of Belgrade last
>week contained a number of lethal pollutants. Some held a complex mixture of
>hydrocarbons called "naphtha", others housed phosgene and chlorine (both of
>which were used as chemical weapons in the First World War), and hydrochloric
>acid. As the factories burnt, a poisoned rain, containing hundreds of toxic
>combustion products, splattered Belgrade, its suburbs and the surrounding
>countryside. Broken tanks and burst pipes poured naphtha, chlorine, ethylene
>dichloride and transformer oil, all deadly poisons, into the Danube. Oil
>slicks up to twelve miles long wound their way towards Romania.-AT-
>
>It could, it seems, have been worse. Scientists at the plant claimed that one
>of the bombs "grazed" a vast vat of liquid ammonia. If that had gone up, it
>would have poisoned most of the people of Belgrade.-AT-
>
>These toxins are unlikely to kill people immediately. But they will have
>soaked the soil across hundreds of square miles and percolated into the
>aquifers. The people of the former Yugoslavia, as a result, will be repeatedly
>exposed to them. Many of the compounds released cause cancers, miscarriages
>and birth defects. Others are associated with fatal nerve and liver diseases.
>The effects of the bombing of Serbia's economy equate, in other words, to
>low-intensity chemical warfare.-AT-
>
>Nato might also be waging an undeclared, invisible nuclear war. During the
>Gulf War, the Allies deployed a new kind of munition: bullets and bombs tipped
>with depleted uranium, or DU. DU, being heavier than lead or steel, penetrates
>armour more effectively. In lump form it is only moderately harmful, but when
>the munitions explode they scatter thousands of particles, small enough to be
>inhaled. The Atomic Energy Authority predicted that if 50 tonnes of DU dust
>were released in Iraq, 500,000 people would die of cancer. In the event,
>according to the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium in Manchester, some 700-900
>tonnes of DU were deployed. The result, the investigator Felicity Arbuthnot
>found, is a seven-fold increase in leukaemia and a massive rise in the
>incidence of certain rare cancers in Iraq. Thousands of Iraqi children have
>been born without eyes, limbs, brains and genitalia. DU has also been
>associated by some scientists with Gulf War Syndrome.-AT-
>
>I asked the MoD whether DU is being deployed in the former Yugoslavia.
>"Certainly not", the press office replied. I asked Nato. "It's used in some
>American munitions", I was told.-AT-
>
>This, in environmental terms at least, is perhaps the dirtiest war the West
>has ever fought. Nato's scorched earth policy, which seeks to destroy
>Milosevic's armed capacity by destroying everything else, places the Alliance
>firmly on the wrong side of the Geneva Convention. For a war which targets
>chemical factories and oil installations, which deploys radioactive weapons in
>towns and cities, is a war against everyone: civilians as well as combatants,
>the unborn as well as the living. As such, it can never be a just one.-AT-

Greek experts registered an increase level of toxic substances in the at-  
mosphere of Greek as a result of NATO bombing of Serbia. Greek experts  
like Prof. Christos Zerefos discovered in the atmosphere dioxin and par-  
ticles of the group of furanes, which pose a high risk for human health of  
the entire region.

There have been a accident with DU-bullets at Remscheid, Germany, last year.
Now there are a few *civilians* with all symptoms of 'Gulf War Syndrom';  
they all have thousands of small radioactive particles in their bodies, in- 
haled during the accident.

The US-army know very well how dangerous DU-bullets and bombs are; there  
exist a video by the US-army who should teach soldiers to be carefully  
with DU-bullets and bombs and don't eat their meals outside after a fight  
with DU-bullets or bombs. This video had been shown soldiers before the  
first War at the Gulf, the german TV-magazin "Monitor" reported.

The expert opinion by Prof. Doug Rocce, who work for the US-army, came to  
the same conclusion: DU-bullets are high dangerous; many patients of 'Gulf  
War Syndrom' have after the war thousends of small radioactive particles  
in their bodies, which they didn't had in medical examinations before the  
war -- the only scientific hypothesis is that those soldiers inhaled this  
particles during the fights with DU-bullets at the Gulf War.

Nico

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