Kosovo: [n5m3-debates] some BALKAN STATS

tony@irational.org
03 April 1999 05:30


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from the Progressive Review -- the Princeton University Student's
newspaper (through ZNet Update)
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BALKAN STATS I

FROM A COLUMN BY TONY SNOW: Key members of the United States Senate sat
slack-jawed through a confidential briefing last Thursday from the Clinton
administration foreign-policy team. ~~ After the foreign-policy wise men
asserted that the United States has a moral imperative to stop the
murderous Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, one senator asked: How
many Albanians have Milosevic's troops massacred this year? The
president's emissaries turned ashen. They glanced at each other. They
rifled through their papers. One hazarded a guess: "Two thousand?" No, the
senator replied, that was the number for all of last year. He wanted
figures for the last month - or even the year to date, since the president
had painted such a grisly picture of genocide in his March 24 address to
the nation. ~~ The senator pressed on. How often have such slaughters
occurred? Nobody knew. As it turns out, Kosovo has been about as bloody
this year as, say, Atlanta. You can measure the deaths not in the
hundreds, but dozens. (I'm not trying to deny Milosevic's brutality here;
only to provide some comparisons.) More people died last week in Borneo
than have expired this year in Kosovar bloodshed - more died in a single
Russian bomb blast; in a single outburst of violence in East Timor; in a
single day in Rwanda. China has been bloodier this year.

BALKAN STATS II

--Estimated number of persons killed in Iraq due to American-led
sanctions: over 1,000,000 --Estimated number of persons killed in the
Sudan over the past 15 years: 1,500,000 --Estimated number of persons
killed in Rwanda over the last five years: 500,000 --Estimated number of
persons killed in Chechnya: 80,000 --Estimated number of people dying each
day around the world because of lack of water, clothing, shelter, food or
medicine: 100,000 --Estimated number of people in the world who go to bed
hungry: 800,000,000 --Estimated number of persons killed in Kosovo last
year: 2,000

BALKAN STATS III

--Estimate of new households watching CNN thanks to its war coverage:
472,000

BALKAN STATS IV

--Cost of America's 21 B-2 bombers: $42 billion --Value of Yugoslavian
GDP: $43 billion --UN budget as a percentage of the Pentagon budget: 5%

PROSIRITE LISTU U JUGOSLAVIJI I SVETU.
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