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By Jonathan Granoff ETHICAL AND MORAL FRAMEWORK FOR ADDRESSING THE ISSUE: In his concurrence with the historic opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued July 8, 1996, addressing the legal status of the threat or use of nuclear weapons,1 Judge Ranjeva stated, “On the great issues of mankind the requirements of positive law and of ethics make common cause, and nuclear weapons, because of their destructive effects, are one such issue.”2 Human society has ethical and moral norms based on wisdom, conscience and practicality. Many norms are universal and have withstood the test of human experience over long periods of time. One such principle is that of reciprocity. It is often called the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” It is an ethical and moral foundation for all the world’s major religions.3 Several modern states sincerely believe that this principle can be abrogated and...

Outside Natoland, the situation about the war is extremely serious. The Ukraine was the only country in the world to renounce nuclear weapons and unilaterally disarm. A few weeks ago its parliament voted unanimously to revert to its former nuclear status. The deputies claimed that they had foolishly believed the United States when it had promised a new norm-based and inclusive security system. Nato’s war on Yugoslavia had destroyed all their illusions. If Kiev is angry, Moscow is incandescent. The military-industrial complex is one of the best-preserved institutions in the country. Its leaders have been arguing with the politicians for nearly two years, pleading that they be allowed to upgrade Russia’s nuclear armoury. Until March 24 this year they had not made too much headway. On April 30, a meeting of the National Security Council in Moscow approved the modernisation of all strategic and tactical nuclear warheads. It gave the...

Aid Workers are struck by contrasts in food, shelter and health care.They cite culture, race as reasons By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, ANN M. SIMMONS, Times Staff Writers SKOPJE, Macedonia- When veteran refugee worker Lynne Miller arrived here from Africa earlier this month, she stepped into a different world. Miller had just spent three years monitoring food supplies at a remote refugee camp in Somalia, and one of her first crises in Macedonia was anurgent request from a medical team. A diabetic refugee had crossed the border. Could she provide a special diet? She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, much less that she was able to fulfill the request. “In Africa, we don’t have special food or diets. There are no diabetics in the camps,” she said. “They just die.” The outpouring of aid in recent weeks for ethnic Albanians ripped from their homes in Kosovo has stunned humanitarian groups, which...

From Z Magazinehttp://www.zmag.org/murder.htm The room is filled with the bodies of children killed by Nato in Surdulica in Serbia. Several are recognisable only by their sneakers. A dead infant is cradled in the arms of his father. These pictures and many others have not been shown in Britain; it will be said they are too horrific. But minimising the culpability of the British state when it is engaged in criminal action is normal; censorship is by omission and misuse of language. The media impression of a series of Nato ‘blunders’ is false. Anyone scrutinising the unpublished list of targets hit by Nato is left in little doubt that a deliberate terror campaign is being waged against the civilian population of Yugoslavia. Eighteen hospitals and clinics and at least 200 nurseries, schools, colleges and students’ dormitories have been destroyed or damaged, together with housing estates, hotels, libraries, youth centres, theatres, museums,...

Here follow some facts from United Nations Development Report/UNICEF 1997 and WHO 1998 selected by Manufacturing Dissent. $40 BILLION A YEAR $ 40 billion a year is estimated to be the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health carefor all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all, and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly $40 billion a year–or less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world. SOME STATISTICS -1.3 billion people in the world today (1,300 million, or 1,300,000,000people) struggle to survive on $1/day.-3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on $2/day.-2 billion have no access to power (electrical).-The net worth of 10 billionaires, ten human beings, is greater than the combined national income of the forty-eight poorest countries combined.-Globally, one in five people do not expect...

Appeal for Peace 1999 Join the Citizens Peace Conference in the Hague, the NetherlandsMay 1999 While the specific details of our conference will continue to evolve over the coming months, the overall theme is one of Delegitimizing War – Leaving War Behind. The following text invites your organization’s support and active involvement. At the Hague you will be able to hold your own meetings, join a central congress, attend a concert, maybe even a peace film festival. Won’t you please fax or mail us your response today? Help us end this century on a note of non-violence and launch a new century with commitment to peace!Sincerely Maj-Britt TheorinPresident, International Peace Bureau Sir Peter UstinovPresident, World Federalist Movement Josepf RotblatProfessor, Nobel Peace laureate Why Organize a Peace Conference? After a decade of world corganized along sectoral and geographic lines: on peace and religion, peace and art, peace and sustainable development, peace and women,...

Vilken roll spelade t ex International Crisis Group i sammanhanget? Av Lena Carlsson & Edvard Sundby* En kombination av skickliga politiska manipulationer och okritiska massmedia kan ha bidragit till att bombkriget mot Jugoslavien sattes igång. Manipulationerna gäller bland annat informationen om Rambouilletavtalet. Det mäktiga informationsorganet International Crisis Group, ICG, kan vara en av förklaringarna till medias Natovänliga inställning. ICG tog ensidigt tagit ställning för västsidan under Kosovokonflikten. När den tyska tidskriften Taz den 6 april publicerade utdrag ur Rambouilletavtalets appendix väckte det stort uppseende. Appendix reglerar vilken status de allierades soldater skulle få i Jugoslavien. I Taz den 12 april skildras hur tre medlemmar i ledningen för det tyska utrikesdepartementet bragtes ur fattningen när de fick läsa utdragen. Det var första gången dessa tre fick veta att avtalet inte bara handlade om en stationering av natotrupper i Kosovo, vilket dittills hade varit förbundsregeringens officiella beskrivning. Istället var det fråga om...

The essence of tragedy is blindness. The tragic figure believes that he is free. He thinks that his motives are unimpeachable, that his actions spontaneous, and that he can foresee the results of his behavior. But on all counts he is deceived. His activities really conform to a preordained pattern. His motives are hidden even from himself. And the consequences of this failure to perceive are not only bloody and chaotic, they embody the exact sort of bloody chaos that he was certain, in his hubris, he could avoid. Oedipus Rex, meet Bill Clinton. By taking sides in the violent struggle between Serbian unionists and Kosovar secessionists, the United States and its NATO allies have blinded themselves to patterns as old as fate, but far more avoidable. The Westerners claim to act purely out of humanitarian motives, in order to rescue the Albanian Kosovars from Serbian brutality. But they do...

Belgrade popular movements seek reconciliation with Albanians Belgrade, April 30, 1999  Dear friends, We are writing to you in these difficult moments of our shared suffering. Convoys of Albanians and other citizens of Kosovo, among whom many of you, were forced to leave their homes.  The killings and expulsions, homes destroyed and burnt, bridges, roads and industrial buildings demolished – paint a somber and painful picture of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, as in indicating that life together is no longer possible. We, however, believe that it is necessary and possible.  The better future of citizens of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, of Serbs and Albanians, as citizens of one state or closest neighbors, will not arrive by itself, or over night. But it is something we can and must work on together, as we have many times in the past, not so long ago. We know that it will now be...

Documents show that NATO ignored risks Delivered-To: tff@transnational.live From: “stevan babic” <batabab@ntscan.com> Subject: Translation to Serbian of PI # 634 Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 18:25:43 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.71.1712.3 X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: tff@transnational.live X-Return-Path: batabab@ntscan.com Dear Jan,    with a small delay, please find bellow the translation to Serbian of your PI # 64.   Best regards   Stevan   ******************************************************************   Ukoliko postoji plan o etnickom ciscenju onda je Zapad u moralnoj krizi, – a pogotovo ako ne postoji    Dokumenti pokazuju da se NATO nije obazirao na upozorenja   TFF Press Info # 64   “Rekli su nam kako je predsednik Milosevic jos prosle jeseni imao razradjen plan da etnicki ocisti pokrajinu Kosovo od Albanaca. Medjutim dok je neosporna cinjenica da su jugoslovenske snage zloupotrebile NATO-ovu kampanju bombardovanja za proterivanje Albanaca na takav nacin i u tako velikom broju da...

New York Times April 21, 1999 By ROBERT S. MCNAMARA WASHINGTON — Will the war in Kosovo become another Vietnam? After barely a month of bombing Yugoslavia, it is far too soon to make such analogies. Nevertheless, there is a widespread fear that the two sides will be caught in a cycle of escalation, as occurred in Vietnam. As awful as Kosovo is now, the odds of a long-term tragedy will be far greater if we don’t apply the lessons the Vietnam conflict taught us.  In fact, my great concern is that we and our adversaries may have already made mistakes that might have been avoided had we learned from experience. Studying the lessons of Vietnam may allow us to end this war earlier; ignoring them may result in catastrophe.  Over the past four years, a number of us from the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, and some of America’s top scholars,...

Journal of Commerce Guest Opinion: Reflections beneath the bombs BY SVETOZAR STOJANOVIC BELGRADE – Since the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union, an ideology has been dominating the West, primarily in the United States. It combines a triumphalist self-evaluation about the end of history with a vulgarized pragmatism toward the rest of the world.It is a pragmatism that is characterized by basically changing the approach from case to case. In cases that are virtually identical, different or even contrary principles are employed that are tacitly or even explicitly justified by the interests of the state or group of states using them. For example: Depending on whether the existence of a state suits dominant circles in the West or not, the West supports within that state either the civic principle of “one citizen, one vote” or the demand of ethnic groups for political-territorial autonomy, special status and even full secession. Many...