Civilise (verb): to enlighten, educate, cultivate, improve, advance, develop, refine
Poor
old Dante Alighieri, were he around today, I am sure he would find it
difficult to find the words to describe the evils visited by so-called
civilised nations on the defenceless of the planet, assuming that is,
he was fully informed of what is going on.
I
know I shouldn’t be surprised but nevertheless I am. Surprised firstly
that I live in a barbaric culture that has been able to masquerade as
civilised and secondly, that it has been able to persuade the world
that it possesses civilised credentials in the first place. And
thirdly, that it has been able to carry off this illusion for well on
five hundred years.
Most
of us associate the idea of being civilised with learning and with
respect for culture, though the root of the word is that of the city
dweller.
“Missiles
struck storage tanks at the petrochemical plant [in Panchevo, northeast
of Belgrade], sending over 900 tons of highly carcinogenic vinyl
chloride monomer (VCM) surging into the air. By sunrise, clouds of VCM
poured through the town, registering as high as 10,600 times the
permissible limit for human safety, and billowing clouds from the plant
were so thick that residents were unable to see the sun. VCM is
dangerous enough on its own, but when it burns, it releases phosgene
gas as a by byproduct, a substance so toxic that it was used as a
poison gas in the First World War. Raging fires discharged chlorine
gas, another substance that was employed as a poison gas during World
War I, along with a host of other harmful chemicals, such as naptha,
ethylene dichloride and hydrochloric acid. More than 2,000 tons of
highly toxic PVC dichloroethane washed onto the ground, necessitating a
long-term ban on eating root vegetables grown in the town. A poison
rain spattered the region, and hundreds of tons of oil and chemicals
soaked into the soil and poured into the Danube River. After a missile
narrowly missed hitting a tank of liquid ammonia, workers panicked at
the fearsome consequences an explosion on the tank would have, and
dumped the liquid ammonia into the Danube.”[1]
As
if the use of high explosives during ‘ordinary’ bombing of men, women
and children which ‘merely’ tear one limb from limb were not bad
enough, what I call ecocidal warfare, is not as immediately visible in
its devastating effects not only on people but over the generations, on
entire ecologies, the long term effects of which we have only the
vaguest understanding except that it can only be disastrous for our
descendents.
The
range of ecological weapons used by so-called civilised nations is
devastating enough but because the targets themselves quite often
contain toxic and carcinogenic substances, ecological weapons’ effects
are multiplied through the chemicals released into the environment.
It
is inconceivable that the war planners are not aware of the
consequences of targetting modern industrial plants, the contents of
which when released render the environment effectively uninhabitable,
perhaps for generations. When accidents happen at equivalent plants in
Western countries, all hell breaks loose, contingency plans swing into
operation, entire communities are evacuated; exclusion zones are
established, clean-up crews move in utilising the latest techniques to
minimise the environmental damage.
Not
so for the unfortunate inhabitants of Yugoslavia, Iraq and the Lebanon,
where the targetting of electric and chemical manufacturing and storage
locations are part and parcel of a deliberate policy of terror, for not
only does it impact on the people who live and work in the location but
it also endangers the entire population through the destruction of
water treatment and distribution systems, the loss of electrical power
for hospitals, indeed the entire fabric of modern society grinds to a
halt as a result.
Just
as devastating is the almost total silence of the Western media which
has consistently and deliberately withheld information from the public
about the awful effects of these nightmare weapons on literally
millions of people. ‘Fire and forget’ takes on an entirely new meaning.
The
use of these weapons on industrial targets constitutes a war crime of
such absolutely devastating dimensions that it’s conceivable that our
domestic populations, were they truly aware of the scale and impact of
these WMD would react with horror and revulsion that such destruction
was being committed not only in their name but by societies which claim
to be civilised. No wonder the MSM have hidden the reality from us.
“The
half-life of depleted uranium is 4.5 billion years, essentially
ensuring the permanent contamination of affected areas. To grasp just
what this means in terms of time, consider that the age of the Solar
System is only slightly longer … DU weapons have the added side benefit
of being an effective means of disposing of nuclear waste. By the time
of the NATO war [on Yugoslavia], the U.S. had stockpiled over a billion
pounds of waste from the production of nuclear weapons, and the
Pentagon provided the material cost-free to weapons manufacturers … [A]
single particle of DU lodged in the lung [is] equivalent to an hourly
chest x-ray for life.”[2]
The
Western media, using false NATO claims that DU did not result in
increased radiation, claims based on the use of geiger counters which
in fact do not measure the alpha radiation given off by DU, has been
able to shrug off the acusations that DU is dangerous to life.
Much
play has been made of the use of cluster bombs but an even more deadly
variation is the graphite bomb used against electrical transformer
stations, designed to knock out a nation‘s electricity supply.
“[These
are] small containers filled with small coils, wrapped with silicon
threads. The silicon threads were covered with aluminum, to be
[electrically] conductive … When this cluster bomb explodes over a
transformer plant, a kind of web is made and that web falls over the
plant. It’s a kind of solid water. The effect is the same as if you
would throw huge amounts of water over these distribution plants. They
would cause short circuits, etc., and all these plants go out of
operation. But much more of this material was spread into a fog of tiny
particles of silicon. As you know, glass is made of silicon. Glass wool
is also made of silicon. Glass wool was forbidden twenty years ago.
It’s very carcinogenic. I’m talking about people living in the areas
where those bombs have been dropped. A thick fog had been hanging over
there for hours. People have been inhaling these particles of
silicon.”[3]
Aren’t
humans ingenious when it comes to devising methods of killing us off.
That millions of highly skilled people are engaged in inventing these
horrific means of murder should have us in open revolt against our
governments for committing such unmitigated acts of evil against our
fellow humans and all in the pursuit of private profit.
Such
is the degree of alienation brought about not only because scientists
and engineers in far-off offices are totally disconnected from the
effects of their ingenuity but because we all inhabit a culture that
has been mis-educated for generations into accepting the idea that we
occupy some higher niche in the ‘evolutionary tree’, so poisonous is
our conception of ‘civilisation’.
How
much longer can we go on avoiding our tacit complicity in mass murder
by virtue of thinking that we have some kind of clearance from
‘on-high’, from a God that can talk of mercy and compassion in the same
breath as it condones the use of terror as a means of spreading
‘civilisation’, Western-style?
Ultimately,
the real reasons, hidden from public view, are economic. Yugoslavia,
the last bastion of social ownership in Eastern Europe, had to have its
domestic economy reduced to rubble, thus under the guise of destroying
‘military’ targets, every factory and warehouse of any significance,
all infrastructure, electrical, water, sewage treatment, communications
and transport was bombed, often over and over again, regardless of the
consequences. And make no mistake, NATO plans made it clear that the
Yugoslav economy was to be sold off to Western capital.
“The
Western-sponsored Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe called for
widespread privatisation and Western investment …. The New Serbia
Forum, funded by the British Foreign Office … brought Serbian
professionals and academics to Hungary on a regular basis for
discussions with British and Central European “experts.” …. The Forum
advocated the “reintegration” of Yugoslavia in the European family,” a
euphemistic phrase that meant the dismantlement of the
socialist-oriented economy and implementation of a privatization
campaign for the benefit of Western corporations.”[4]
In
reality, ‘civilisation’ is actually a code-word for capitalism,
Western-style, that justifies the use of mass extermination and terror
on any country which resists its demands.
Notes
1. George Monbiot, “Consigning Their Future to Death,” The Guardian (London), April 22, 1999.
Tom Walker, “Poison Cloud Engulfs Belgrade,” The Times (London), April 19, 1999.
Mark Fineman, “Yugoslav City Battling Toxic Enemies”, Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1999.
2. Scott Peterson, “Depleted Uranium Bullets Leave Trail in Serbia”, Nando Media, October 5, 1999.
“Use of Depleted Uranium (DU) Weapons by NATO Forces in Yugoslavia,” Coghill Research Laboratories (UK), April 1999.
3. Interview with Dushan Vasiljevich by delegation, Belgrade, August 7, 1999.
4. “Britain Trains New Elite for Post-Milosevic Era,” The Independent (London), May 3, 2000.
All quotes and references taken from Strange Liberators – Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit by Gregory Elich. Llumina Press, 2006. (amazon.co.uk, amazon.com)
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