The Hi -Tech Barbarians
 by Jared Israel, JaredI@aol.com

 In 1995 the Croatian Army, trained, led and given air support by
 the Pentagon, launched a blitzkrieg against the Krajina section of
 Croatia, driving out in a matter of days approximately 250,000 Serbian
 men, women and children whose ancestors had lived in that
 mountainous region since medieval times. Thousands were
 strafed by U.S. planes or slaughtered by Croatian troops as
 they fled. Afterwards, Croatian President Tudjman went on a tour
 of celebration. Croatian radio reported that he boasted to cheering crowds:

      "There can be no return to the past, to the times when Serbs
      were spreading cancer in the heart of Croatia, a cancer that
      was destroying the Croatian national being...So it is as if they
      have never lived here...They didn't even have time to take
      with them their filthy money or their filthy underwear!" (See:
   "The Invasion of Serbian Krajina," by Gregory Elich)

 If this mass expulsion and Tudjman's comments seem barbaric, it is
 perhaps fitting. Krajina means 'military frontier,' in this case the boundary
 between civilization and barbarism, from the Serbian word 'kra' or
 'end.' The Serbs were settled in the Krajina hundreds of years ago
 to keep the Ottoman armies from overrunning Europe and now they
 had born the brunt of a new barbarism, this one centered in the U.S.,
 as well as Germany, England and France.

 Endless murder numbs the sensitivity; so after a while the images
 of civilians torn apart by these new barbarians, who strike from 15,000
 feet, slip out of focus, thus granting some relief until a new twist jars
 one into terrible awareness. For a friend of mine, it was the picture
 of a little girl in Nis who had lost her leg to a cluster bomb; she had
 been in the wrong place at the wrong time but what wouldn't leave
 my friend alone was -- she looked like his own child. Now this
 American who had never protested anything before has written
 two compelling essays, one on how it torments a U.S. patriot to
 see his country's leaders guilty of war crimes and another from
 the perspective of a Jew, rejecting Clinton's use of the Holocaust
 to sell this war. If you'd like to see these essays, email me at
 jaredi@aol.com

 What got to me yesterday was the news that bombs exploding near
 the Belgrade Zoo had driven a rhinoceros mad ; he banged his head
 against a wall until he died. This was somehow more terrible to me
 then the ordinary routine of blown up bridges, homes, factories, markets,
 cemeteries, airports, electrical plants, water treatment facilities, day
 care centers, and other military targets. Today they blew up another
 market and an old folks home. The staff had painted a red cross on
 the roof of the home. Perhaps, seeing the red cross, the pilots
 mistook the building for a hospital or clinic; perhaps such facilities
 are on the approved targets list.

 Approved targets. Do they think this is Nintendo? Is that what the
 pilots think? Do the pilots think?

 The following is an excerpt from an article by Scott McConnell
 which appeared in the Conformist. It describes atrocities but don't worry,
 he's talking about buildings, not people. Or maybe you should worry.
 Maybe it will affect you the way the rhino effected me or the way the
 missing leg affected my tormented Jewish friend, in Ohio.


 Jared Israel is a writer and small businessman in the Boston area.
 A former leader of the student movement against the war in Vietnam,
 he has become active again researching, writing and organizing against
 the war against Serbia.