Links to Facts & Views,

You want to find interesting analyses, reports, articles and papers on peace and conflict issues from around the world?

Now we do the job for you. This page provides links to a selection of the best critical and constructive materials – the essential stuff we benefit from ourselves and want to share.

Just click below at what catches your interest – read, download or send on to a friend.

Kosovo and the Second Cold War

Europe was extremely close to a major war. Did the allies know? Who would have made the decision? What would we, the citizens of NATO countries, have been told? Was Europe’s security and the existence of NATO put at risk because of the sufferings of Kosovo-Albanians? Because of a genocide that did not take place? Or because we are heading for a new Cold War?• NATO moved very close to invasion in Kosovo
The United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Finland and Yugoslavia — the United States came much closer to a ground war in Europe than is commonly understood. Read Steven Erlanger’s absolutely shocking analysis in New York Times.

And what shall we do with the trophy? The American press is beginning to see that Kosovo was not all that simple and easy…• Kosovo in limbo
This word picture is painted by the U.N. officials—including Secretary General Kofi Annan—who have taken on Kosovo as an international protectorate. Annan makes no apologies for requiring the ethnic Albanian majority of Kosovo to formally remain part of Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia while living in virtual independence. Contradictions abound…

Did you notice this in your local media?• Russia’s saberrattling because of US intrusion and ballistic missile plan
The real issue behind the display was that the United States is discounting Russia in its foreign policy decisions. U.S. meddling in Russia’s sphere of influence, the former Soviet Union, is posing real problems for the Russians. Moscow is trying to remind the Americans of the risks it will run if it places Russia in an untenable position.

Kosovo and cyberwar

So, why did they bomb that Chinese embassy in Belgrade?• The embassy bombing continue to smolder
Bill Arkin challenges most hypotheses and brings new materials, in Washington Post. “Through interviews with officers in the air staff, at U.S. headquarters in Europe and in Washington, I have been able to reconstruct the attack. There was no plan to hit the Chinese Embassy. But to some, high-level denials are themselves proof, and the bombing is becoming another cover-up milestone for Internet conspiracy junkies.”

Is Kosovo indicative of the cyber-warfare that we may see in the future• Pentagon refrained from all-out cyberwar against Yugoslavia
The Pentagon’s computer hackers had the theoretical capacity to plunder Mr Milosevic’s bank accounts or bring Serbia’s financial systems to a halt. But US defence officials said the plans were shelved for fear of committing war crimes – says the Guardian.

• Wesley Clark suddenly thinks we might do without aerial bombardment!
His testimony last month was the highest level of endorsement so far given to the use of forms of “cyberwar” which, their supporters argue, could have stopped Serb ethnic cleansing faster and with far less bloodshed. Such a war would have used “offensive hacking” against Belgrade’s computers and Mr Milosevic’s bank account, and jammed or subverted his communications and propaganda.

We are really learning the lessons from the 20th century! The brave new war world is here…• Non-lethal or not so lethal warfareSound generators, which cause disorientation, vomiting and defecation; “human capture nets” laced with chemical irritant or electrified; foam guns; blinding lasers; and “thermal guns”, which incapacitate through a wall by raising body temperatures to 42C.

Nonviolence and peace

Here is a British labour MP with civil courage. An inspiration for other European MPs?• “Sanctions against Iraq is a crime”
The Labour MP George Galloway has described the UN sanctions against Iraq as “one of the great crimes of the 20th century.” Mr Galloway, who has arrived in Baghdad at the end of a 9,300 mile (15,000 km) trip by double-decker bus from London, said he had come because the UK was deeply implicated in the action – as reported by BBC.

May we recommend that you consider the peace manifesto for the 21st century drafted by Nobel Peace laureates?• Manifesto 2000 For a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence
– sign it and help the UN – UNESCO – to reach 100 million signatures.  

Human rights – and wrongs

Is this the reason for U.S. peace-making and humanitarian interventions?• America’s need for (other people’s) oil
Do the dirty job elsewhere that you don’t want done at home. Al Gore supports this ‘ecological’ principle. Americans do have a choice, but do they see it?

TFF recently featured Chris Black’s devastating critique of the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. Here is another, earlier, one• Law enforcement threatened if transferred to unaccountable bureaucrats 
There is a long dispute about Operation Storm in Croatia in 1995. The chief prosecutor seems to believe in the powers the Tribunal has awarded itself – wrote John Laughland some time ago in Sunday Times.

And there is more about this new world order power instrument• War crimes apply to the United States itself
– says Walter Rockler, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

The most recent Hague Tribunal figures on the killings in Kosovo – and on the killing that continues in spite of NATO’s presence.• The bodies found, so far, in KosovoThis Guardian article from Nov 11 also offers insight on how the killing and criminality continues – as much as during the war. If the UN had been responsible for security and peacekeeping with these results, world media would have called it a failure. Now, it’s NATO and they are not calling it anything at all.

• Tyranny of human rights
The Swiss attorney-general Carla Del Ponte, new chief prosecutor of the Yugoslavia and Rwanda war crimes tribunals, assumes the role of high priestess of human rights, the secular religion for the millennium. She will be responsible both for putting Milosevic and the rest behind the bars and for healing the wounds of a troubled world. Her job is to see that good vanquishes evil. That’s the theory, anyway. The reality is more complicated – writes Kirsten Sellars.

As you know from an earlier Transnational WIRE, the US is expanding its military expenditures to be three times higher than the combined expenditures of Russia, China and al the rogue states it can find. But there are ever more• People living in poverty in the United States
More people than 35 years ago, now 17 per cent or 46 million live in poverty in the richest country on earth….