March 30, 1999

Balkan numbers & untangling intervention logic

Some numbers on the Balkans that expose
the sick absurdity of the "humanitarian" 
cover story:

From Sam Smith:

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 

source of stats:

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