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Post by Novi Pazar on May 14, 2008 1:52:26 GMT -5
I hope Donnie gets to see this, btw its only one of a billion out there!.
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Post by vinjak on May 14, 2008 4:46:36 GMT -5
Nice find Novi I remember seeing Milosevic in the hague asking the prosecuters if these people in Racak where really killed there then where is the blood ? Cutting peoples throats and shooting them would have stained the ground red but there was no blood. And then the judges turned his microphone off.
Let the truth be known. The more time passes the more of the truth will be exposed. The more the KLA gets exposed for the criminals/terrorists they are.
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donnie
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Post by donnie on May 14, 2008 5:15:07 GMT -5
Clearly biased video. I don't have the time to respond properly, but I will do so a little later today or tonight. It is probably good that one refutes these claims of "conspiracy" once and for all.
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Post by Novus Dis on May 14, 2008 7:02:54 GMT -5
I have yet to see some credible evidence that the KLA didn't stage the Racak massacre. American propaganda relies on the ignorance of the people so when you start asking simple questions the whole propaganda effort comes undone.
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donnie
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Post by donnie on May 14, 2008 9:42:26 GMT -5
OK, back. The Racak massacre wasn't "staged". It was an outright massacre on civilians. For Novi; read following; www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/wuttke.htmI suggest you read it if you want to get an insight on what happened in the village 1999. Serbs seem to believe that citing numerous, or 'billions' in Novi's words, of non-Serbian sources is the same as providing objective and irrefutable proof of the massacre's "true" character. They neglect the fact that all these 'suspicions' about the authenticity of the Racak massacre arose from two sources; the suspicion/words of one single OSCE observer that the delegation was de facto a spy expedition sent on America's behalf; and on the conclusions made by the Serbian forensic team; I'll say it again, Serbian forensic team. To quote some key extracts; On the observer's suspicions; People like Diana Johnson, usually leftists who interpret all types of political/military interventionism from the US as pure acts of imperialism, often fall prey (willingly so) to the propaganda of anti-American & non-democratic regimes. In this case, Diana Johnson (just like others) is a most selective 'researcher' who cares little to take into consideration the statements made by professionals, such as the head and spokesperson of the Finnish forensic team, Helena Ranta, who's declarations in an official press release contradicted much of the bogus declarations of the Yugoslav forensics. Or to quote; In other words, Yugoslav forensics were using an outdated method of investigating the massacre and even had the audacity to criticize the more sophisticated method of the Finns as 'less efficiant'. Diana Johnson and other enthusiasts of sensational conspiracy theories have a tendency of (conveniently) leavng out key information. For instance, Johnson stated that the Yugoslav authorities welcomed an international investigation ... she leaves out the fact that this was the case after an initial reluctance, which was to save the Yugoslav forensic team some time; and ... By this time, fabrications could have easily been done. And this is probably also the case; this possibility has been duly noted which is why the massacre is still considered a massacre on civilians by those who count, such as the ICTY for instance. The very nature of the massacre speaks for itself; one of the victims was a decapitated older man ! I do not see a point in further analyzing the article on your behalf; the best way to receive the information is by reading it yourself; it deals further with the allegations on the alleged removal of bodies and gunpowder on their hands & fingers.
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donnie
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Post by donnie on May 14, 2008 9:55:53 GMT -5
If you want further information, read Helena Ranta's own conclusions here; www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/RantaStatementToICTY.htmThis is, of course, in the case of you not wanting to settle with just reading the Serbian forensic team's biased conclusions ! Now here are some key quotes from her conclusion that was submitted to the Tribunal; In other words, the bodies were not removed as the Serbs claimed and claim by the KLA. There's also evidence that the victims were shot from a close distance (execution) rather than from a fighting distance. This is also important to note; A firefight requires two opposite sides shooting at each other. The fact that there was a concentration of bullets only in the site of the massacre, and not elsewhere, suggests the "firefight" was one sided. The victims were clearly executed. Now, I think we can all agree that the Finnish forensic team is more trustworthy, both from a political aspect (they can be seen as more objective than the Serbian forensic team or their colleagues from Belarus, a fellow Slav Orthodox country) and a professional one (they had access to more sophisticated technique than their Serbian counterpart). There is little suspicion that this was anything but another Serbian massacre against Kosovar Albanians. The KLA was merely used as an excuse by the Serbian army to cover its heinous deed. But it is understandably convenient for you Serbs to be selective in these cases when choosing the support material for your arguments. It is clearly disgusting and leaves the opportunity for little fascists such as Deucaon to have illusions about Serbian "innocence" even in the case of Srebrenica which he justified with the words "soon to be conscripts". Such an evil approach and attitude towards the tragedies that occured in the last decade is the key to your modern misfortunes; a continuous self victimization and endeavour to justify your fascist presence in non-Serbian territories; this disables you from admitting your mistakes and carry on after apologizing. Instead, you're left with a sense of having been mistreated and cheated and consequently a strong desire for revenge.
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Post by vinjak on May 14, 2008 17:52:13 GMT -5
By raising the Bias word in your post highlights that we all have bias when it comes to both our sides. If anyone seriosly thinks that tricks like these where not used in civil wars then really those people are deluded.
what is certain is that the KLA always had a goal of involving Nato in the fight, all forms of trickery where used to highlight the plight of the Albanians and to think otherwise is just plain ignorance.
Us Serbs have watched and read countless reports which where clearly biased it is clear that PR companies where used to blacken Serbias name it has been reported and admited to by even the very PR companies that where used.
Lets look at the incidents where the PR company used its ingenious methods,
One that imediatley comes to mind is the train holocaust method. We all have seen Jews loaded into cattlecars on the way to extermination camps so when Serb forces used a train to move civilains it was sold to the public that the Nazi extermination trains where back and operating in Kosovo. It did not matter that the trains where passenger trains and not cattlecars and it did not matter that the destinations where not concentration/extermination camps even the pictures on the news clearly showed that the refugees where getting of in Albania or Macedonia etc the pictures where intermixed with old footage of Nazi cattlecars and people took on the suggestion.
Now if that aint biased,propaganda etc I dont know what is.
Also to think that massacres where not perpitrated by our forces is to be deluded also....yes there was massacres,revenge,murder etc as most Serbs did and still do consider KAlbanians as sub human. But what does my head in is that the Albanians claim innocence you where not innocent in all this and murders and abductions massacres where perpitrated by your forces also to deny this is to be ignorant.
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Post by Novus Dis on May 14, 2008 17:53:54 GMT -5
Post evidence, not empty words. A firefight requires two opposite sides shooting at each other. The fact that there was a concentration of bullets only in the site of the massacre, and not elsewhere, suggests the "firefight" was one sided. The victims were clearly executed. Now, I think we can all agree that the Finnish forensic team is more trustworthy, both from a political aspect (they can be seen as more objective than the Serbian forensic team or their colleagues from Belarus, a fellow Slav Orthodox country) and a professional one (they had access to more sophisticated technique than their Serbian counterpart). So if a person is a Slavenski Pravoslav then they are automatically against Albanians? Talk about paranoia. I guess I cant expect anything else from a person such as yourself. There is little suspicion that this was anything but another Serbian massacre against Kosovar Albanians. The KLA was merely used as an excuse by the Serbian army to cover its heinous deed. But it is understandably convenient for you Serbs to be selective in these cases when choosing the support material for your arguments. It is clearly disgusting and leaves the opportunity for little fascists such as Deucaon to have illusions about Serbian "innocence" even in the case of Srebrenica which he justified with the words "soon to be conscripts". Such an evil approach and attitude towards the tragedies that occured in the last decade is the key to your modern misfortunes; a continuous self victimization and endeavour to justify your fascist presence in non-Serbian territories; this disables you from admitting your mistakes and carry on after apologizing. Instead, you're left with a sense of having been mistreated and cheated and consequently a strong desire for revenge. All I stated was that the Srebrenica massacre wasn't genocide. I never tried to justify anything. You're dismissal about the evils committed by parasites against native Serbs in Kosovo is appalling so think twice before you decide to be a hypocrite and judge me.
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Fender
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Post by Fender on May 14, 2008 18:03:35 GMT -5
"RACAK MASSACRE" - Perfectly staged trigger The "trigger" was pulled on January 16, 1999, when William Walker, the [US] Ad-ministration official assigned to Kosovo with a team of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), announced that a "massacre" of more than 40 ethnic Albanian peasants by Serbian security personnel had taken place in the village of Raèak. The January 20 New York Times observed that the Ra è ak "massacre" followed "a well-established pattern: Albanian guerillas in the Kosovo Liberation Army kill a Serb policeman or two. Serb forces retaliate by flattening a village. This time they took the lives of more than 40 ethnic Albanians, including many elderly and one child."
However, as the French newspaper Le Fi-garo reported on the same day, there was ample reason to believe that Walker’s assessment of the situation was made in "undue haste". Walker, the US official who headed a 700- man OSCE "verification" team monitoring a ceasefire in Kosovo, accused Serbian police of conducting a massacre "in cold blood". According to Le Figaro’s account, Serb policemen, after notifying both the media and OSCE officials, conducted a raid on a KLA stronghold. After several hours of combat, Serbian police announced that they had killed 10 KLA personnel and seized a large cache of weapons. Journalists observed several OSCE officials talking with ethnic Albanian villagers in an attempt to determine the casualty count.
"The scene of Albanian corpses in civilian clothes lined up in a ditch which would shock the whole world was not discovered until the next morning, around 9am," reported the French newspaper. "At that time, the village was once again taken over by armed [KLA] soldiers who led the foreign visitors, as soon as they arrived, toward the supposed massacre site. Around noon, William Walker in person arrived and expressed his indignation." All of the Albanian witnesses interviewed by the media and OSCE observers on January 16 related the same version of events: namely, that Serbian police had forced their way into homes, separated the women from the men, and dragged the men to the hilltops to be unceremoniously executed.
The chief difficulty with this account, according to Le Figaro, is that television footage taken during the January 15 battle in Racak "radically contradict that version. It was in fact an empty village that the police entered in the morning ... The shooting was intense, as they were fired on from [KLA] trenches dug into the hillside. The fighting intensified sharply on the hilltops above the village." Rather than a pitiless attack on helpless villagers, the unedited film depicts a firefight between police and encircled KLA guerillas, with the latter group getting by far the worst of the engagement.
Further complicating things for the "official" account is the fact that "journalists found only very few cartridges around the ditch where the massacre supposedly took place".
"What really happened?" asks Le Figaro. "During the night, could the [KLA] have gathered the bodies, in fact killed by Serb bul-lets, to set up a scene of cold-blooded massacre?" Similar skepticism was expressed by Le Monde, a publication whose editorial slant is decidedly antagonistic to the Serbian side in any Balkan conflict.
"Isn`t the Racak massacre just too perfect?" wondered Le Monde correspondent Christophe Chatelot in a January 21 dispatch from Kosovo. Eyewitness accounts collected by Chatelot contradicted the now official version of the "massacre", describing instead a pitched battle between police and well-entrenched KLA fighters in a nearly abandoned village.
"How could the Serb police have gathered a group of men and led them calmly toward the execution site while they were constantly under fire from [KLA] fighters?" wrote Chatelot.
"How could the ditch located on the edge of Racak where the massacre victims were later found" have escaped notice by local inhabitants familiar with the surroundings who were present before night-fall? Or by the observers who were present for over two hours in this tiny village? Why so few cartridges around the corpses, so little blood in the hollow road where 23 people are supposed to have been shot at close range with several bullets in the head? Rather, weren’t the bodies of the Albanians killed in combat by the Serb police gathered into the ditch to create a horror scene which was sure to have an appalling effect on public opinion?"
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Fender
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Post by Fender on May 14, 2008 18:06:15 GMT -5
More Doubts on the So-Called Racak Massacre
Media Monitor | By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid | February 21, 2001
. . . Kostunica doesn’t want a foreign body interfering in Yugoslavia’s internal affairs.
A confrontation between Serbia and the U.N. criminal court for Yugoslavia gives the major media another opportunity to set the record straight about the hoax which started the war on Yugoslavia. The so-called Racak massacre, supposedly committed by Serbs against Kosovo Albanians, gave Bill Clinton and NATO the excuse to start the war. The U.N. court indicted then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, with Racak being one of them. But the new democratically-elected Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica is resisting cooperating with the tribunal and is refusing to turn over Milosevic for trial.
One reason is that Kostunica doesn't want a foreign body interfering in Yugoslavia's internal affairs. But another reason is that Kostunica doubts the evidence. He has publicly stated that the killings at Racak were staged to look like a massacre to embarrass Yugoslavia, and he has cited the work of Finnish pathologists who investigated the deaths.
The pathologists have now prepared an article about their findings. A Berlin paper says the Finnish investigators could not establish whether the victims were civilians, where they were from, or how they had been killed. BBC News in Britain, which says it has read the article, reports that the findings are inconclusive. "In fact," it says, "there is nothing in the article that would either implicate or exonerate Serbian forces in the Racak incident. Instead, its three authors...repeat the findings of their group's preliminary report, published in March 1999..."
But enough evidence now exists to prove that the so-called massacre was a hoax. People certainly died in Racak, after a confrontation between Serbian security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. An Associated Press camera crew was invited by the Serbs to videotape the assault on Racak, a KLA stronghold. This film showed no massacre and no bodies. But the KLA gathered up some bodies and laid them out for other journalists to see and photograph. Film of this spectacle was then shown to the world as evidence of a massacre. However, a close analysis of this film itself raised doubts. There's no indication that the men were even shot there; there's no significant amount of blood in the area, even though there were numerous head wounds and even a decapitation.
A French reporter who fell for the ruse later wrote a story admitting that he had been duped by the KLA. But here, in the United States, the myth persists. News organizations continue to refer to the "Racak massacre," as if it has been established beyond reasonable doubt. A recent Chicago Tribune report speculated on whether new fighting in Kosovo might provoke the Serbs into a "Racak-style retaliation."
The real story is who was behind the hoax, and who pushed the U.S. and NATO into this war. U.S. diplomat William Walker was on the scene at the time, claiming the Serbs were guilty of "a crime against humanity." The Sunday Times of London has published the claim that Walker was working with the CIA, which was reportedly assisting the KLA. This is yet another reason why President Bush should clean out this intelligence agency.
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Fender
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Post by Fender on May 14, 2008 18:20:42 GMT -5
Sorting Through the Lies of the Racak Massacre and other Myths of Kosovo by Stephen Gowans Remember why NATO spent 78-days bombing Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999?
There was the ethnic cleansing. The atrocities. The refugees chased out of Kosovo by the Serb army. The mass graves. The heaps of bodies tossed into vats of sulphuric acid at the Trepca mines.
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said there were 100,000 Kosovars unaccounted for.
Remember?
If you're like most people, you have at least a vague recollection of something that seemed to approach a modern-day Holocaust.
Problem is, none of it happened.
NATO's original estimate of 100,000 ethnic Albanians slaughtered, later revised downward to 10,000, turns out to be considerably exaggerated.
Dr. Peter Markesteyn, a Winnipeg forensic pathologist, was among the first war crimes investigators to arrive in Kosovo after NATO ended its bombing campaign.
"We were told there were 100,000 bodies everywhere," said Dr. Markesteyn. "We performed 1,800 autopsies -- that's it."
Fewer than 2,000 corpses. None found in the Trepca mines. No remains in the vats of sulphuric acid. Most found in isolated graves -- not in the mass graves NATO warned about. And no clue as to whether the bodies were those of KLA fighters, civilians, even whether they were Serbs or ethnic Albanians.
No wonder then that of all the incidents on which Slobodan Milosevic has been indicted for war crimes, the total body count is not 100,000, not 10,000, not even 1,800 -- but 391!
That's 109 lives fewer than the 500 Yugoslav civilians Human Rights Watch estimates were killed by NATO bombs -- and far fewer than what the death toll will eventually be once those who have yet to die from cancers induced by the terrible environmental devastation of the war are finally carried off as late -- and unaccounted for -- casualties.
And it's equal to the number of Palestinians who have been killed so far by the IDF -- the Israeli army -- in the latest Palestinian uprising. The difference is that the IDF, under the direction of Ehud Barak and now Ariel Sharon, is an occupying army, while the Yugoslav security forces, under Slobodan Milosevic, were conducting an counterinsurgency operation within their own borders.
But Barak, mistakenly portrayed as a peace-nik, and Sharon, the architect of a long string of atrocities, including the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacres, aren't under indictment for war crimes. Nor are they ever likely to be -- not as long as the United States wields a veto at the UN.
What's more, there's some question as to whether at least one of the war crimes Milosevic is accused of ever happened. And then there's the revealing issue of when they happened.
It seems that all of Milosevic's war crimes, but one, happened after the bombing -- highly curious, since the bombing was said to be necessary to stop a genocide, that, it seems now, NATO had no evidence of. (If they did, why haven't they brought it forward?)
Moreover, the one pre-bombing incident, the Racak massacre -- which the United States cited as a major reason for the bombing campaign -- is more likely to have been faked by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the guerilla army the Serbs were ensnared in a bloody civil war with, than to have represented the cold-blooded killing of ethnic Albanian non-combatants, as the KLA, and Washington's man in Kosovo at the time, William Walker, alleged.
It was Walker, at the time head of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) who, on the morning of January 16, 1999, led the press to the Kosovar village of Racak, a KLA stronghold. There some 20 bodies were found in a shallow trench, and 20 more were found scattered throughout the village. The KLA, and Walker, alleged that masked Serb policemen had entered the village the previous day, and killed men, women and children at close range, after torturing and mutilating them. Chillingly, the Serb police were said to have whistled merrily as they went about their work of slaughtering the villagers.
It was a horrible tableau, sure to whip up the indignation of the world -- and it did.
Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as eager to scratch her ever itchy trigger finger as her boss was to scratch his illimitable sexual itches, demanded that Yugoslavia be bombed immediately. Albright, like a kid agonizingly counting down the hours to Christmas, would have to wait until after Milosevic's rejection of NATO's ultimata at Rambouillet to get her wish.
Bill Clinton, not to be surpassed in expressing indignation, said, "We should remember what happened in the village of Racak...Innocent men, women, and children were taken from their homes to a gully, forced to kneel in the dirt, sprayed with gunfire -- not because of anything they had done, but because of who they were."
But not everyone was so sure that Walker's story was to be believed. The French newspaper La Monde had some trouble swallowing the story. It reported on Jan. 21, 1999, a few days after the incident, that an Associated Press TV crew had filmed a gun battle at Racak between Serb police and KLA guerillas. Indeed, the crew was present because the Serbs had tipped them off that they were going to enter the village to arrest a man accused of shooting a police officer. Also present were two teams of KVM monitors.
It seems unlikely that if you're about to carry out a massacre that you would invite the press -- and international observers -- to watch.
The film showed that as soon as the Serbs entered Racak they came under heavy fire from KLA guerillas positioned in the surrounding hills. The idea that the police could dig a trench and then kill villagers at close range while under attack troubled La Monde. So too did the fact that, entering the village after the fire fight to assess the damage and interview the villagers, the KVM observers saw no sign of a massacre. What's more, the villagers said nothing about a massacre either.
Yet, when Walker returned the next day with the press -- at the KLA's invitation -- there was the trench with the bodies.
Could the police have returned later on and carried out the massacre under cover of darkness?
That seems unlikely. Racak is a KLA stronghold. Serb police had already discovered that if they were going to enter the village they would have to deal with the guerillas. How could they torture, mutilate and cold-bloodedly kill villagers at close range while harassed by KLA gunfire?
And why, wondered La Monde, were there few signs of spent cartridges and blood at the trench?
And now there's a report that the Finnish forensic pathologists who investigated the incident on behalf of the European Union, say there was no evidence of a massacre. In an article to be published in Forensic Science International at the end of February, the Finnish team writes that none of the bodies were mutilated, there was no evidence of torture, and only one was shot at close range.
Thirty-seven of the corpses had gunpowder residue on their hands, suggesting that they had been using firearms, and only one of the corpses was a woman, and only one was under 15 years of age. Not the picture Clinton painted of innocent men, women and children, dragged from their homes, and sprayed with gunfire.
The pathologists say Walker was quick to come to the conclusion that there was a massacre, even though the evidence was weak.
And they point out that there is no evidence that the deceased were from Racak.
The KLA, the Serbs charge, faked the massacre by laying out their fallen comrades in the trench they, themselves, prepared, and the United States used the staged massacre as a pretext for the bombing.
The Washington Post said, "Racak transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular events seldom do. The atrocity...convinced the administration and then its NATO allies that a six year effort to bottle up the ethnic conflict in Kosovo was doomed."
We'll never know for sure what really happened at Racak, but the evidence linking Milosevic to a brutal massacre is pretty slim.
"The first casualty of war is the truth," says Paul Buteux, a political scientist at the University of Manitoba, echoing a cliché that is sententiously uttered after every war, but never learned from.
"It gets very murky. I have no doubt that whoever was putting those intelligence reports together prior to the NATO air campaign would be under pressure to put things in the worst possible light. There was a point when the spin doctors came in."
Putting things in the worst possible light? There's a big difference between putting things in the worst possible light and turning 1,800 corpses into 100,000, between arguing that a genocide had to be stopped by a bombing campaign, and being able to adduce only one incident of a war crime -- and a doubtful one at that -- occurring before the bombing.
That's not putting things in the worst possible light. It's doing what the leaders of NATO countries do repeatedly -- lie.
And yet, the press, uncritically conveying official lies, acts as if it trusts politicians not to lie about war. It behaves as if the latest war, unlike every other, is free of propaganda, distortion, manipulation and lies.
Is it the media's patriotic duty to turn off its bullshit detectors whenever a king's ransom of high-tech military equipment is pressed into service to beat the tar out of yet another weakling country?
There's a belief that in times of war patriotism demands that we rally around our leaders.
But as the American historian Howard Zinn points out, the most patriotic act in times of war is to ask questions, not to blindly follow leaders we know to be skilled and inveterate liars.
Since the media can't be depended on to ask questions, it's up to the rest of us.
And the first question patriots should ask themselves is why our leaders lied about Kosovo -- and why they continue to lie about it today?
Mr. Steve Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
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Fender
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Post by Fender on May 14, 2008 18:21:10 GMT -5
Clearly biased video. I don't have the time to respond properly, but I will do so a little later today or tonight. It is probably good that one refutes these claims of "conspiracy" once and for all. Liar.
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Post by SKORIC on May 15, 2008 6:12:37 GMT -5
Good video.
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Post by kasso on May 15, 2008 7:47:52 GMT -5
Alert! Serbian denial!
Kasso, please tell us why its Serbian denial, all of us would like to know.
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donnie
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Post by donnie on May 15, 2008 12:22:17 GMT -5
Clearly biased video. I don't have the time to respond properly, but I will do so a little later today or tonight. It is probably good that one refutes these claims of "conspiracy" once and for all. Liar. Me? Or Helena Ranta? You can post 'billions' of politically colored articles written by pseudo-experts; it will not matter unless they are of substance and the work of qualified experts who were present in Racak at some point. Ranta was/is a neutral observer, and her word carries more weight than all your articles together.
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Post by Novus Dis on May 15, 2008 18:50:11 GMT -5
Someone has yet to prove to me that the Racak massacre took place.
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