THINGS THE AMERICAN MEDIA
ARE NOT TELLING YOU
[More Lies And Deception
Concerning Kosovo]

[Much of the material that has gone into this report was researched by Boris Denisov in Moscow and Gary Clem in Washington D.C.]

INTRODUCTION

The Bible has a lot to say about lies and deceit. It says that those who practice it are "of their father the devil." Pretty heavy stuff! There's no equivocation here. No fudging on the condemnation. No assertion that "white lies" in the service of a greater good are ok. But that's what the American society is all about these days - lies and deceit. And this is especially true about American foreign policy. It's not the UN that we need to be afraid of. It's the United States. It's not the UN that is driving American policy in the Balkans, but America that is driving UN action there. Whether American evangelicals want to believe it or not, it's not the US that is the lackey of the United Nations, but the United Nations (and NATO) that is doing the bidding of the United States.

As a result, most American evangelicals have it all backwards: it's the US that is calling the shots in the world, not the UN - and if that's so, what does that say about the pretensions of American evangelicals - evangelicals like Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye - that America is "... the world's last great hope?" What does that say about America as "The New Israel of God?" And be clear here, by now the lying and deceit appears to be so deeply embedded in America's national character that it is probably all but impossible to excise it. The only thing that those who try will accomplish is to contaminate themselves. The Bible says:

"A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." (Gal. 5:9)

Of course, most American evangelicals seem to think that they are immune from such verses.

But for those who are concerned about such things, there are larger issues involved here - and this is what this journal is all about. The information presented in this journal goes a long way in revealing the depth of the takeover of our country by its ruling, corporate elites. The day is far gone that anything can be done about it. The takeover is all but complete - and it is revealed in the ease our government (and the corporate elites who control our government) can lie to the American people and get away with it. It's not that the lies are so clever (they're not) as it is that Americans are by now so permeated by them that they accept them if only because they have been repeated so often.

LIES AND DECEIT AS THE BASIS
OF U.S. POLICY IN THE BALKANS

And there certainly has been a lot of government deception and lying going on insofar as our involvement in Kosovo is concerned - and it's lying and deceit that is aimed at us. There is a purpose behind it! We are being manipulated in the interest of the elite's economic agenda. And the naked and "outfront" manner in which this manipulation is taking place is breath-taking. It reveals the contempt the elites have for average people and it indicates how far down the road we have gone towards the creation of what Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University calls a "mass society" - a society which possesses no will of its own except that which has been "spoon-fed" to it by an all-powerful elite. In the kind of mass society that Mills describes, people are prevented from seeing the "whole;" they cannot see the "top" or attain to it in any practical way; and they are prevented from understanding the issues that in fact determine the condition of the world in which they live. Mills writes:

" ... the man in the mass society does not gain a transcending view from (the mainline) media; instead he gets his experience stereotyped (to him by that very media), and then he gets sunk further by that experience. He cannot detach himself in order to observe, much less to evaluate, what he is experiencing ... he is accompanied through his life-experience with a sort of unconscious, echoing monologue ... he fulfills the routines (the elites give to him). He does not transcend ... (those routines) ... (he does not) ... transcend his daily milieu ... he drifts, he fulfills habits (the elites have infused into him), his behavior is a result of a ... (plan others have given to him) ... In the mass he loses the self-confidence of the human being - if indeed he has ever had it. Life in a society of masses implants ... impotence ... "

This is what George Orwell warned us about in his book, 1984! This is what the Bible alerts us to insofar as the "End of the Age" is concerned. This is the condition of things the Prophetic Word says will prevail in the "End of Days." God help us to wake up before it's too late!

WHAT WE ARE NOT BEING TOLD

As we reported in an earlier article on this website - "KOSOVO & AMERICA: WHAT'S GOING ON?" - "Big Oil" is behind our intervention there. It's relentlessly pushing the Clinton Administration to intervene in the Balkans on the side of the Muslims. "Big Oil" has to be able to show the Muslims that it can deliver for them. But there is evidently a lot of misgivings in other elite circles with regard to all this - not enough for these misgivings to leak out to any great degree to the American public (the American press, after all, has been slavishly following the main elite line in their reporting of the "goings on" in the Balkans); but it's, nonetheless, there - and it does occasionally surface.

Our reporter in Moscow, Boris Denisov, has happened on some of that dissension. It is revealed in a publication by The Defense & Foreign Affairs Group which he found being circulated over the net in Russia. Its publication, which emanates out of England and is known as The Defense & Foreign Affairs Journal, is considered a "must-read" in elite multinational corporate circles throughout the world - much like the British publication, The Economist. Unlike The Economist, however, The Defense & Foreign Affairs Journal is difficult to obtain in the United States, although it can be found in some university and college libraries, and in selected newstands; for the most part, it is available only on a subscription basis. The material below is from its April 1999 report [this is evidently a translation of a translation; first from English to Russian, and then from Russian back to English (please remember, this is a report generated essentially to a Western audience)]:

"NATO Losses and the Military Costs"

"It is clear from the amount and quality of intelligence received by this journal (i.e., The Defense & Foreign Affairs Journal) from a variety of highly-reputable sources that NATO forces have already suffered significant losses of men, women and materiel.

"Neither NATO, nor the US, UK or other member governments, have admitted to these losses, other than the single USAF F-117A Stealth fighter which was shown, crashed and burning inside Serbia. The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had denied, about a month into the bombing, that the US had suffered the additional losses reported to Defense & Foreign Affairs.

"By April 20, 1999, NATO losses stood at approximately the following: 38 fixed-wing combat aircraft; Six helicopters; Seven unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); Many=94 Cruise Missiles (lost to AAA or SAM fire). Several other NATO aircraft were reported down after that date, including at least one of which there was Serbian television coverage. The aircraft reportedly include three F 117A Stealth strike aircraft, including the one already known. One of the remaining two was shot down in an air-to-air engagement with a Yugoslav Air Force MiG-29 fighter; the other was lost to AAA (anti-aircraft artillery) or SAM (surface-to-air missile) fire.

"Given the recovery by the Yugoslavs of F-117A technology, and the fact that the type has proven less than invincible, the mystique of the aircraft - a valuable deterrent tool until now for the US - has been lost. At least one USAF F-15 Eagle fighter has been lost, with the pilot, reportedly an African-American major, alive and in custody as a POW.

"At least one German pilot (some sources say two men, implying perhaps a Luftwaffe crew from a Tornado) has been captured. There is also a report that at least one US female pilot has been killed.

"In one instance in the first week of the fighting, an aircraft was downed near Podgorica. A NATO helicopter then picked up the downed pilot, but the helicopter itself was then shot down, according to a number of reports. Losses of US and other NATO ground force personnel, inside Serbia, have also been extensive. A Yugoslav Army unit ambushed a squad climbing a ravine south of Pristina, killing 20 men. When the black tape was taken from their dog-tags it was found that 12 were US Green Berets; eight were British special forces (presumably Special Air Service/SAS). This incident apparently occurred within a week or so of the bombing campaign launch.

"It is known that other US and other NATO casualties have, on some occasions, been retrieved by NATO forces after being hit inside Yugoslavia. At least 30 bodies of US servicemen have been processed through Athens, after being transported from the combat zone. At least two of the helicopters downed by the Yugoslavs were carrying troops, and in these two a total of 50 men were believed to have been killed, most of them (but not all) of US origin.

"Certainly, the US has lost to ground fire and malfunction a number of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. At least some of these have been retrieved more or less intact, and the technology has been ... reviewed by Yugoslav engineers ... The war has cost Alliance members in other ways, too. There is enormous disaffection with the US Armed Forces.

"For a start, to prosecute even the smallest expansion of the war requires the call-up of Reserve and National Guard units. The personnel from these units have civilian jobs, and, as with the US involvement in S-FOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina, being called up for active duty in the Balkans seems to be an open-ended thing. This is not the type of national emergency for which most of them signed-on. On top of that, there are questions about the wisdom of the orders they are receiving, and a total lack of clear strategic (let alone military) objectives.

"One serving career mid-level military officer in the US told this writer: I am incredibly appalled at this war, or whatever it is, and the lack of strategic thought; the bungling, stumbling blind policies which have led to this [situation], and the murderous impact on not just the Serbs and Kosovars, but on the concepts of conflict resolution and sovereignty. The officer continued: I am very upset, and while I have been vocal in my small world, and many agree with me, I am part of a system that is stumbling as best it can to implement the failed brainwork of the NCA [National Command Authority; the President] and SecState [Secretary of State], and General [Wesley] Clark [Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, for NATO], too. Why haven't the military leadership stepped up and put their job on the line for common sense.

"The problem is not confined to the US forces. In Britain, a near mutiny was reported aboard the carrier HMS Invincible. And as news of very real NATO casualties emerge, morale will decline. Meanwhile, those who have any knowledge of the facts know that since 1948, Yugoslavia, particularly under Tito, has been preparing to fight, literally, World War III. NATO heavy armor may indeed roll easily across the Albanian border, or down across the fertile plains of Vojvodina from Hungary, right into Belgrade. But most of Yugoslavia is mountainous, and the mountains filled with underground fuel supplies, ammunition factories, probably oil refineries, buried hangars and roads which become airstrips. And those in the US Armed Forces believe that the Clinton White House, from the President an anti-Vietnam War protester and conscription dodger and First Lady down to the young Clintonite staffers, hate the US Armed Forces with a passion. It is clear that the determination of the Yugoslavs to defend their country has strengthened; after all, they have nowhere else to go. But already the morale of the NATO forces is declining."

This, of course, isn't what average Americans are being told. Indeed, the account given here in this rather elite publication is so different from the one that is being spoon-fed to the public by the mainline, corporate media that one would not be too unjustified in thinking that the above account is about a different war.

Many of the losses reported in the above report were aired first over Serbian television (pictures included). These reports (along with the relevant pictures) were then being picked up by Greek, Bulgarian, Italian and Hungarian television and re-broadcast to the world. All this, of course, tended to reveal the denials by NATO and the United States of such losses as a sham. It's for this reason, we suspect, and not because Serb TV was propagandizing its own population, that Serbian television was targeted by NATO and taken off the air. The pictures being generated by Serbian TV were interfering with the "elite corporate line" insofar as war losses in the war were concerned.

Nothing throws the elites into a panic more than war losses. The elites remember Vietnam (and the rioting in the streets that war losses caused in that conflict), and the distress the loss of two helicopters and several U.S. servicemen caused in Somalia. They don't want a repeat of that! Such rioting has a way of getting out of control - and when that happens, anything can occur.

This is the kind of "stuff" that caused the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Mexican Revolution of 1911. Once the people take to the streets, the aura of invincibility with which the elites like to cloth themselves can easily be shredded. Once that's gone, all bets are off and the elites can easily fall prey to the mob.

The elites are not quite as invulnerable as they like to pretend. After all, one of the most entrenched elites the world has ever known was recently dislodged by the Russian people - and losses the Soviet Union took in Afghanistan had a lot to do with it. True, the Communist elite that ruled in Moscow until quite recently did not entirely possess the sophistication of the American elite, but who could doubt the pervasive, all-seeing nature of the KGB, and the utter domination of the Soviet society at that time by the Communist Party, and if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere, as the elites in this country are well aware.

A RUSE IN THE TRADITION OF
THE GULF OF TONKIN PLOY

Still the elites trudge on insofar as their purposes are concerned in the Balkans. Now word has reached us here at Antipas Ministries that the American government is looking for ways to "manufacture" a reason to justify a ground offensive in Kosovo. If this is true, it certainly wouldn't be the first time the government has done something like this. This is precisely what it did to get us involved in the War in Vietnam in its Gulf of Tonkin ruse, a subterfuge in which the government made up a story about an attack by North Vietnam torpedo boats on an American destroyer, the USS Maddox, in the Gulf of Tonkin - an artifice meant to justify to the American people putting American ground combat forces ashore for the first time in South Vietnam.

The American government is being relentlessly pushed by "Big Oil" to save the Muslims in Kosovo, and it is increasingly looking like it will take the use of ground combat forces to dislodge the Serbs there. The cry by "Big Oil" is, "Do something!" - but whatever it is that the American government plans to come up with in order to justify such an offensive, it will have to be good. The Germans want nothing to do with a ground campaign in Kosovo: in very blunt and caustic remarks at a news conference on Wednesday, May 20th, Gerhard Schroeder, Chancellor of Germany, said that his government would block all efforts by NATO to launch a ground offensive. The fact is, the German government isn't even sure that if it wanted to, it could viably participate in a ground military campaign in the Balkans. There's a good deal of concern that its conscript (draft) army would bolt. [Please see our article, "Things The American (and Western) Media Are Not Telling You") which touches on the problem of desertions in the German army in Macedonia]. The Greeks and the Italians want nothing to do with it either. Neither do the French.

It's not so much that the elites in these countries don't want to participate (by throwing the sons and daughters of their societies' working-class families into the breach), it's that their people don't want anything to do with it. Of course, this is what Clinton faces in this country as well. On the one hand, he is being pushed by the elites to intervene, on the other hand, the American people - despite the best efforts of the elite press to demonize the Serbs and whip Americans up to a frenzy over the refugee problem in Kosovo - are reluctant to go along with a ground war.

Nonetheless, the government presses forward. Word has reached us that American pilots (probably American or British mercenaries not directly in the employ of either government) have been practicing flying planes which have been painted with Serbian markings (FRY) in Croatia and Macedonia. The planes are "Galeb" and "Jastreb" jets which both countries inherited from Yugoslavia after its breakup. Serbia has the same kind of planes in its arsenal. Evidently, the aim of the operation is to bomb Kosovar refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia and blame the Serbian side for the atrocity.

Although it is seeking to do so, Antipas has no way of confirming these reports at this time. Nonetheless, it is a tactic that the CIA has used with great effect in the past - specifically in Central America. For example, in an operation directed against the popularly elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, the CIA, acting at the behest of Adolf Berle and his cohorts in the CFR and the United Fruit Company, used such tactics. They did it again in Nicaragua in the 1980s. It's an old and well-used tactic in the CIA's inventory of deceit and deception (please see our article "The American Empire: The Corporate / Pentagon / CIA / Missionary Archipelago"). The problem with such an attack - if indeed it does occur - is, in the end, it would probably be pretty hard to disguise if only because by now U.S. control of the sky over Kosovo is so complete that any Serbian combat aircraft that tries to get airborne would probably be destroyed seconds after it took off. This would lead any neutral observer of the facts to conclude that if air strikes occur at a Kosovar refugee camp, they would have to be "sanctioned" by the U.S.

A RELUCTANCE TO BELIEVE

No doubt, there are many who are reluctant to believe that their government (i.e., the American government) could be up to such things. Despite the fact that the Bible says that unbelievers - any unbeliever (and not a few believers as well) - are capable of such things ["The heart (of man) is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9)], most American evangelicals somehow or other believe that America is immune to all this. Perhaps the elites, but certainly not the "American public." Well, maybe so (though I doubt it).

This leads us to a very fundamental question - one that is pregnant with meaning insofar as evangelicals are concerned - and that is, is there such a thing anymore? - i.e., is there an "American public" in the classic sense any longer? How we answer this question will in large part determine for us how deeply we are sunk in the "end of days" and how gravely we view the potential danger - spiritual as well as physical - we face. If we have become in fact nothing more than a cog in a machine the elites have built for us, if our reality of family, work, political ideology, and even religion has become only that which the elites feed us, then we are truly in danger of our souls. Why? - because the kind of realties that the elites would deign to spoon-feed us are certainly not realities that would have anything to do with the Kingdom of God; but just the opposite - snares meant to entrap us in the kingdom of their (this) world. If the elites have gained such mastery over the realities that govern our daily lives, then we really have become nothing more than a cog in their machine.

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC

In the classic sense - the sense which we were taught in high school and in our colleges and universities - the "American public" was conceived of as innumerable neighborhood discussion groups all engaged in an informed discussion of current issues. Out of these little circles of people talking with one another, informed opinions develop; the opinions that result from these individual neighborhood discussions are then knit together with the results from other discussion groups, and eventually formulated into public action by the legislature.

All this, of course, is predicated on the possibility of a "give and take" debate on the issues of the day where people are able to answer back. This kind of "give and take" discussion lies at the root of the democratic process - a process which can be conceived as follows: (1) the people are presented with problems; (2) they discuss these problems; (3) they decide on them individually; (4) they then formulate group viewpoints; (5) these viewpoints are organized on a larger basis, and they compete; (6) one viewpoint wins out; (7) this viewpoint is legislated into law. At each step of the process, there is a "give and take" discussion of viewpoints where people can answer back.

Of course, the media says that democracy based on an informed public still exists; and our public schools continue to trumpet its (i.e., an "informed public") existence and hold it out as the standard of American democracy and the seat of all legitimate power. Indeed, in the popular folklore handed down to us by media and school alike, it (i.e., the "American public") is thought of as the very balance wheel of the republic where all the decisions of the government must ultimately be justified. But whether or not this is true is predicated on the ability of each member of the "public" to participate equally in discussing the issues of the day and sharing equivalently [directly or through their representatives (representatives who have not been "bought and sold" by America's corporate elites)] in the formulation of public policy. This is how classic American democracy is supposed to work.

AN IMAGE OUT OF A FAIRY TALE

But today this view of American democracy is nothing more than an image out of a fairy tale. To a large extent, America has, at the end of the Second Millennium, developed into nothing more than a plutocracy (a society ruled by the rich and by corporate power) which - while it still possesses the form of democracy - lacks altogether its substance. It has become a place where no "answering back" in any meaningful way is possible and where people are told by the elite-controlled, corporate media what to believe. Indeed, so far has all this progressed in the United States today that many very well educated people now believe that democracy in this country has become nothing more than a farce; for example, take Michael Parenti. He alleges that one -

"... might better think of ours as a dual political system. First, there is the symbolic political system centered around electoral and representative activities including party conflicts, voter turnout, political personalities, public pronouncements, official role-playing and certain ambiguous presentations of some of the public issues which bestir presidents, governors, mayors and their respective legislatures. Then there is the substantive political system, involving multi-billion dollar contracts, tax write-offs, protections, rebates, grants, loss compensations, subsidies, leases, giveaways and the whole vast process of budgeting, legislating, advising, regulating, protecting and servicing major producer interests - now bending or ignoring the law on behalf of the powerful, now applying it with full punitive vigor against heretics and 'troublemakers'. The symbolic system is highly visible, taught in schools, discussed by academicians, gossiped about by newsmen. The substantive system is seldom heard of or accounted for."

And Perenti is right here; as shocking as it might be to many of our readers, the fact is, we have developed into a kind of corporately-controlled mass society [again, a plutocracy (rule by the rich and controlled by corporate power)] where (1) far fewer people express opinions than receive them; (2) the elite-controlled communications that prevail in our society which - all things being equal - could make democracy work are now so organized by the elites as to make the opposite true, rendering it difficult or impossible for the individual to answer the elites back; (3) the legislative realization of opinion in action is controlled by corporate elites who organize and manipulate to their advantage the channels of such action; (4) the individual members of the mass public have no autonomous institutions (autonomous insofar as the elite is concerned) through which they can express their opinions. Mills explains:

"What is happening might again be stated in terms of the historical parallel between the economic market and the public ... In brief, there is a movement from widely scattered little powers to concentrated powers and the attempt at monopoly control from powerful centers, which, being partially hidden, are centers of manipulation as well as of authority. The small shop serving the neighborhood is replaced by the anonymity of the national corporation: mass advertisement replaces the personal influence of opinion between merchant and customer. The political leader hooks up his speech to a national network and speaks, with appropriate personal touches, to a million people he never saw and never will see. Entire brackets of professions and industries are in the 'opinion business', impersonally manipulating the public for hire."

As we have said before, the truth of the matter is, the protestations of those involved in the militia movement and other similar populist movements (of both the right and the left) against elite power are not all that "off the mark." Their effort to identify the elite may not be that accurate (because the new elite is anything but a Jewish cabal); nonetheless, their contention that the mass of the American public has been rendered impotent by an all-powerful elite which has seized command of the country and is now moving to seize control of the world is fairly accurate. And the key to all this: the elite's command of the mass media (please see our article on the mass media).

A QUICK REVIEW OF THE REAL REASONS
BEHIND OUR INTERVENTION IN KOSOVO

As we indicated in our report on the media in the United States, the control by the elite of public opinion in America is already very far advanced, rendering most people today nothing more than puppets in the hands of their elite masters. Take, for example, how the elite has molded public opinion in the United States with regard to the fighting that's going on in the Balkans. In our article, "KOSOVO & AMERICA: WHAT'S GOING ON?" we wrote"

"The war in the south Balkans is by now already far-advanced. Despite the presence of NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia, it has now spread to Kosovo where it is threatening to draw into the conflagration Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and Turkey - and ultimately the entire Islamic and Orthodox worlds. The American media, dominated as it is by a multicultural elite, refuses to see the war in its religious dimension - as a clash of civilizations. But this is exactly how the war is perceived on the ground by those who are involved - a war which is pitting "Christian Civilization" (specifically, the Orthodox world) against "Islamic Civilization," and the world's global elites (which the Orthodox world sees, ironically, as being allied with the Muslims).

"One would think, of course, that if given the choice, most average Americans (the great majority of whom consider themselves to be Christian) would support the Serbs [who - while they are not NATO members - they are, nonetheless, Christian (Orthodox)] over and against the Muslims. That, of course, isn't what's happening - largely because the American elites have done everything they can to obfuscate the "Christian vs. Muslim" aspect of the conflict and - in connection with this - to demonize the Serbs (i.e., the Orthodox Christians) by "playing up" their atrocities while at the same time "playing down" the atrocities the Muslims have been involved in.

"And why is this so? - the immediate reason is the elite establishment's strategic "tilt" towards Turkey [which historically has infuriated the Greeks (who are Orthodox Christians)]; the United States has an extremely close military and intelligence relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally, that lets U.S. pilots fly missions against Iraq from a NATO base at Incirlik. That military post also serves as an electronic-eavesdropping station for the U.S. intelligence community in the Middle East - a post that the CIA considers more vital to U.S. hegemony over the area than even Israel.

"And then, of course, there's the matter of oil - and not just Middle Eastern oil, (where American and British multinationals (Exxon, Shell, Mobil, etc.) have billions and billions of dollars invested), but also Caspian Sea oil (where the same multinationals are preparing to spend billions more in pipelines which they plan to build across Turkey and / or in countries close to Turkey - and all this to say nothing of the additional billions these same multinationals are spending in drilling rights and pumping operations in Azerbaijan, a country contiguous to Turkey which is populated by "Turkik Muslims." The multinationals could very well see all these billions go up in smoke if Turkey were destabilized as a result of being drawn into the conflict in the Balkans; hence America's "tilt" towards the Muslims and Turkey - a "tilt" which, again, necessarily demands that the elite "play down" the religious aspect of the war while at the same time "demonizing" the Serbs (i.e., the Orthodox Christians).

"Naturally, the State Department doesn't want its real reasons known - after all, it's pretty hard to justify sending American soldiers into battle for the sake of Mobil's, Exxon's, Shell's, BP's, and Standard Oil's "bottom line." Other reasons have to be given: hence America's sudden "humanitarian concerns" for the Kosovar Muslims - a concern which, strangely enough, hasn't manifested itself insofar as Africa (Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, Ethiopia, etc.) is concerned where many more human beings have been killed over the past few years than have ever been killed in the former Yugoslavia - and this is to say nothing about what's been occurring in East Timor, certain parts of Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. [And one shouldn't make the mistake that just because Africans are "black" and Asians are "yellow" that "race" has had anything to do with the elites' unconcern with regard to the humanitarian debacles going on in Africa and Asia; if money were involved there, the elite would be very concerned. But there is no money involved: hence the lack of concern. To the elites, it's not race that matters, it's money!"

REAL-LIFE, PROVABLE EXAMPLES OF THE DECEIT THE ELITES HAVE BEEN PUSHING ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC

And the plethora of events that the elites have manipulated in order to achieve their ends in the Balkans (and, ipso facto, placate their Muslim clients) is truly mind-boggling! Take the August, 1995 "mortar attack" in the Trznica marketplace in Sarajevo which was used by the United States as the pretext for the creation of a wider war against the Bosnian Serbs; a war which British journalist Gregory R. Copley says in Defense & Foreign Affairs' Strategic Policy was designed to enshrine total control over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the hands of a Muslim minority government - a result which "Big Oil" thinks cannot help but have the effect of ingratiating the Americans (and, pso facto, Shell, Standard, Mobil, etc.) to the Muslims of the Middle East and the Caspian Sea areas. Again, what it says to the Muslims insofar as "Big Oil" is concerned is: "WE DELIVER FOR OUR FRIENDS."

To this end, Copley says that the U.S. deliberately misrepresented the facts of the 1995 marketplace shelling in Sarajevo in favor of the Muslims in order to justify its intervention in the Bosnian War. Copley's contention was borne out by evidence which suggested that the attack could not have been the work of the Bosnian Serbs, but had been undertaken by the Muslim government of Bosnia against their own people with the active acquiescence of the U.S. government.

Hugh McManners, writing in the London Sunday Times, agrees. He writes that -

"British ammunition experts serving with the United Nations in Sarajevo have challenged key "evidence" of the Serbian atrocity that triggered the devastating NATO bombing campaign which turned the tide of the ... (Bosnian) war (in favor of the Muslims).

"The experts, who examined the scene of the market massacre in Sarajevo in August, say they found no evidence that Bosnian Serbs had fired the lethal mortar round. They suspected the Bosnian government army might have been responsible.

"They say French analysts who also examined the scene agreed with them. But they were overruled by the senior American officer, and the UN (which in this instance was functioning as nothing more than a lackey for the American government) issued a statement saying it was beyond any doubt that the Bosnian Serbs were responsible for the blast, in which 37 people were killed and 90 wounded.

"The carnage was used as a pretext for NATO's huge air campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, which was followed by extensive battlefield losses and forced the Serbs to the negotiating table.

"The British experts were in a UN crater-analysis team that reached the Trznica (Markale) market in Sarajevo 40 minutes after the mortar attack on the morning of August 28. They began their inspection amid a bloody scene of smashed fruit stalls and screaming people.

"Five mortars had been fired. The size of craters and metal splinters indicated that they were all of 120mm caliber, probably from towed mortars which are regularly fired into the city...

"They suspected that the perpetrators might easily have been not the Bosnian Serbs but the Bosnian (Muslim) government army, which has been implicated in other incidents such as rocket attack on Sarajevo's television station on June 29, in which five people died and 30 others were injured.

"The observations and findings were confirmed by the French, and they returned to base to make their report.

"A senior American officer at the United Nations Protection Force (Unprofor) headquarters in Sarajevo dismissed their findings, however, citing a small groove known as a fuse furrow made in the ground by the bomb head.

"... Neither British nor French analysis notice such a groove.

"By nightfall, the UN announced that the Bosnian Serbs were to blame. Fewer than 48 hours later, the NATO air strikes and artillery campaign began ...

COL. DAVID HACKWORTH

Col. David H. Hackworth, America's most decorated war hero, writing in the Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), says that the bogus report of a Serb mortar attack in the Sarajevo market had the look of a replay of the Gulf of Tonkin incident (exactly what we have said insofar as what the U.S. may be up to with regard to its planned phony attack on the Kosovar refugee camps) in which President Johnson manufactured a naval incident to persuade the American public of the necessity of a U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Hackworth writes:

"Last August, American pilots became the desperate Bosnian government's surrogate air force. What triggered the NATO bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs was a U.S. Army officer's (the same officer cited above in McManners's London Times article) bogus report that a Serb mortar attack had killed 38 people. The objective of the air campaign was to bomb the combatants to Dayton, where Richard Holbrooke would try to do the improbable: make peace with those not ready for peace.

"Recently, another American, Robert McNamara, made wise from the pain of a war that often bears his name, was searching for the truth in the graveyards of a terrible American mistake: Vietnam.

"McNamara asked Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. Giap said the American-reported Vietnamese torpedo boat attack which led to the U.S. bombing of his country never happened, confirming what a Medal of Honor winner, retired Adm. Jim Stockdale - who was flying above the nonevent - said long ago.

"Giap insisted LBJ and his brass hats made up the incident to suck the U.S. into the war - and it worked. Within hours, the bombs started falling.

"The rest is history: Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; by 1968, one-half million Americans were in Vietnam; and by 1973, almost 400,000 Purple Hearts had been awarded.

"What a shame it took McNamara 30 years to dig up the truth. Had he only demanded absolute proof at the time, had Congress only not blindly accepted LBJ's staged account, had what lawyers call "due diligence" only been applied by Congress, perhaps a great tragedy would have been avoided.

"Tonkin Gulf-type ruses are as old as war, and too often the follow-on jingoistic juggernaut is impossible to stop.

Hackworth agrees with both Copley and McManners insofar as the mortar attack in the market place in Sarajevo is concerned. He continues:

"The chant "Remember the Maine" triggered our war with Spain (1898) even though there was no proof Spain had sunk our battleship (ITAL) Maine in Havana harbor. Many historians say Cuban guerrillas did it so we would come to their aid, and, just by the way, scarf up a few of Spain's crown jewels as war trophies.

"Have the American people been tricked again? CIA spooks and several NATO officers plus a squad of U.N. ammo experts say so. All report that the mortar round that kicked off the NATO bombing was fired not by the Serbs, but by Bosnian Muslims.

"British and French ammunition experts arrived at Sarajevo's Trznica market 40 minutes after the attack to do a shell report, a technique used by grunts almost since the first mortar round slid down a tube.

"A good shell report or crater analysis will tell the size of the round and the exact degree from which the shell came. We're not talking rocket science stuff here, but plain old infantryman- putting-a-compass-in-the-still-hot-crater stuff.

"The experts agreed the crater was made by a 120mm mortar shell fired from a bearing of 170 degrees. This meant the shell came from the same Bosnian government positions which had been involved in other attacks, such as a rocket that hit Sarajevo's television station in June, causing 35 Bosnian Muslim casualties.

"Returning to U.N. headquarters, the "shell rep" team walked into a Tonkin Gulf-like ambush when a senior American officer - who hadn't even set a boot down near the market - overruled their scene-of-the-crime findings.

"The brass hat ordered that the report say the mortar shell was fired by the Serbs. It was the old military senior to subordinate drill: "You're wrong. I'm right. You're out of here." Those who have worn a soldier suit with a boss who's into cover-up or deceptions know the exercise well.

"As with Spain and Vietnam, just hours after the officer submitted his "official report," the bombs fell.

"There was no shouting "Remember the Maine" or "Remember the Maddox" (the U.S. destroyer that was the Tonkin Gulf ploy) this time. Bosnian Muslim Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic did all the protesting: "I want air raids, air raids immediately to punish those who are killing innocent people."

"Air raids he got. And now, as with Cuba and Vietnam, we're about to send in another generation of America "Rough Riders" to follow-up on the raids.

"Unless, this time, Congress practices due diligence.

Now these are lies, plain and simple. And they are known as such in knowledgeable circles throughout the West. Certainly, the "big wigs" at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, etc. know this. It's not a secret to them. Nevertheless, they not only have not corrected the record of their erroneous coverage of the Markale massacre (and other matters), they continue brazenly pumping the lie out to the American public while all the while knowing that it is false. What's that say, then, about ABC, NBC, et al? It says quite simply that they have become nothing more than mouthpieces for the corporate elite. What other explanation could there be? The American media is no longer interested in the truth. The master they serve is no longer the "American Public," but the corporate elite, and if - in pursuing the elite's interest - the media has to fudge the truth, so be it. Put another way, the real business of today's corporate elite is to "manage" the American population in the service of Corporate America. And that's exactly what they were doing with regard to the shelling of the Sarajevo (Markale) marketplace in 1995. And that's what they are doing today in Kosovo. Nothing has changed!

MARTINS BRANCO AND THE DIARIO DE NOTICIAS

But that's not the end of it. Take another example: Martins Branco. Martins Branco, an officer of the Portuguese Army and a former UN Military Observer in Bosnia, has nothing but contempt for the way the press has been "manipulating the news" insofar as the Balkans are concerned. Writing in Diario de Noticias, in Lisbon, Branco lists innumerable incidents in which the media [meaning the mainline, elite-controlled American media (i.e., CNN, CBS, NBC, AP, ABC, etc.)] has purposefully manipulated public opinion in favor of the Muslims.

February 6, 1994; an Earlier Attack of the Sarajevo Market

Branco recounts:

"On 6 February 1994, television broadcast the destructive effect of two shells which killed 68 persons at a market in Sarajevo. The public opinion was stunned, the Serbs were proclaimed responsible and their international isolation worsened. It was subsequently unveiled that the Serbs had not been the authors of these explosions. The authors were the Muslims who did not hesitate to shell their own population in order to attract international attention and have the Serbs accused and justify in that way the imposition of punitive measures against them. The mass media, so quick in accusing the Serbs, kept silent when they were called upon to change lies with truth. Surprisingly, UNPROFOR behaved in the identical way, unwilling to inform the public objectively."

June 28, 1995; the Attack on the Sarajevo TV Building

Branco recounts a second incident:

"On 28 June 1995, television broadcast on numberless occasions the pictures of the wounded in the explosion of a shell fired on the Sarajevo TV building. By a fluke, a UN observer located the place from which the shell had been fired: about 1,800 meters from the line of conflict in the territory under Muslim control. The Muslim authorities prevented any investigation in the location. UN officers intended to unveil this incident but they were proclaimed "persona non grate" in Sarajevo by the responsible people in the Muslim Army. Subsequently, the UNMO version was substantiated by statements of other witnesses. For the public opinion this was yet another savagery committed by the Serbs. The event was misrepresented and the truth was not unveiled."

Branco continues:

"In Sarajevo, the Muslims often violated cease-fire agreements. They shelled Serbian positions to force them to retreat, accusing them immediately thereafter of attacking unprotected and innocent civilians. This was how the hoax was spread that the Serbs were violating peace agreements. The weapons used to be positioned in the immediate vicinity of the locations of the representatives of the United Nations, international organizations, hospitals etc. in order to achieve a greater effect for the mass media with respect to Serbian counter-attacks. On countless occasions the Serbs fell for the trap and almost always answered the deftly thought up provocations of the Muslims who used them as propaganda very cunningly. Once again were the media silent accomplices of the Bosnian Muslims by systematically refusing to name the real culprit in their reports."

August 28, 1995; the Attack on the Markale Market

Branco gives the following account of the Sarajevo shelling which Hackworth, Copley and McManners described earlier - the same account the American government used as a pretext to intervene in Bosnia in favor of the Muslims:

"On 28 August 1995 at about 11 a.m. the scene similar to the one from February 1994 was repeated. A 120 mm mortar shell exploded at the Sarajevo Markale market. According to the official data, 38 persons were killed and 88 wounded. 45 minutes later a UNMO team and am engineer team of the French battalion came to the place of the accident. The reports of both teams went without a conclusion as to who was responsible for the act. It was technically possible for the shell to have been fired from Muslim positions. English ammunition experts who had also analyzed the crater, went even further in their conclusions: even though they too did not specify who was responsible they did state that there existed a great probability that the shell had been fired by the Muslims. Not only did the media not carry the reports of these teams but they never doubted who the culprit was. The investigation of the accusations lasted several days. Yasushi Akashi found it difficult to blame anybody on the basis of two unfinished reports. Those were the days of great tension. The decisive evidence of the unmistakable Serbian guilt on which his decision was based was the result of radar observations which provided no precise data (guaranteed no credibility). The Serbs were accused once again, now in the full meaning of the word. As a consequence of the events, the UN mission was to use NATO air force which caused essential changes in the relation of forces and led to the defeat of the Serbs, compelling them to Dayton negotiations. There is every indication that the decision on Serbian guilt for the firing of the damned shell was conditioned by the reasons of political nature extraneous to the philosophy of peace maintenance. The decision was not based on special technical reports on the analysis of the crater. It caused embarrassment and some public reactions, beginning with the UNPROFOR Commander for the Sarajevo sector. Surprisingly, the industrial infrastructure around Sarajevo which according to Dayton should be transferred to the control of the Bosnian Government was not destroyed. However, this did not happen to the territories which according to Dayton have been returned to the Serbs.

"More radical analysts confirmed that the truth of the events at the Sarajevo market had been deliberately hidden from the public in order to justify the aggression against the Serbs."

September 13, 1995; More Attacks in Bihac (Northern Bosnia)

Branco continues by relating another incident at Bihac:

"On 13 September 1995, having noted that the time of the flight of shells had been unusually short, an UNMO team in a village a few kilometers away from Bihac came quickly to the place from which they were being fired and found an artillery crew well equipped which was quite evidently responsible for the firing. UNPROFOR high officials were informed, but facts were kept silent about once again and the Muslims were not unmasked. In order to convince the public opinion and fabricate truth, the Bosnian Muslims did not hesitate to enlist a US public relations firm. The concern about the seriousness of the approach can be inferred from the words of its director, James Harff, who confirms that he is not paid to watch over public morals, that his work is not based on checking information but on speeding up its circulation, it being once included into targets selected beforehand. Sufficient for that purpose is, in his words, just a good database containing several hundreds of names of journalists, politicians, academicians and humanitarian organizations, a computer and a telefax.

"In distorting history, the mass media have been active accomplices; a good broth justifies almost everything even if it represents distortion of facts and does not present truth. All the peoples of that region suffered the same and were the victims of an absurd conflict. However, only the suffering of one side in the conflict deserved to be pointed out in the mass media. In this way the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was transformed in a media revenge because of the way in which the media were treated in the Gulf War. Unlike in the Gulf War, the journalists have become interventionists, not limiting themselves to a neutral information role. They begin to interfere into events in an attempt to provoke political events and military actions: they set conditions, directed and exerted pressure on politicians' decisions. Media reporting from the former Yugoslavia made no contribution to the objectivity of information. Leaning towards one side alone, distorting events, engaging in propaganda and hiding the blows below the belt, they departed from their basic mission - to inform truthfully and objectively. As they have been the co-authors of, and accomplices in machinations, they served the society bad and undermined the right of citizens to objective information."

Now, in this particular incident, it is interesting to note that Branco refers to the participation of an American public relations firm which was evidently following the Muslims around and advising them on how to "manufacture" incidents which would elicit the support of the West insofar as their cause was concerned. Branco refers specifically to a certain James Harff; we will get back to you at a later date with regard to Harff - suffice it to say for now that the kind of PR firms that Harff represents don't come cheaply. The work they engage in is not something the Muslims of Bosnia - acting alone - could afford. Other money was behind the work of Harff and his colleagues in Bosnia, and it isn't difficult to make a pretty educated guess as to whose money - "Big Oil's." After all, PR firms are a "marker," so to speak, of the elite, not the masses, and most certainly not poor Muslims. And it's important to bear in mind what PR work is all about - it's purpose is to skewer the truth in favor of one's client. Isn't this what Harff all but admitted he was doing when he told Branco that "... he was not being paid to watch over public morals (i.e., to tell the truth); that his work was not based on checking information ..." And be clear here: Harff is just the tip of the iceberg of what "Big Oil" is up to in the Balkans.

COLONEL ANDREI DEMURENKO

The Russians concur with Branco. In an account which was carried by Reuters, Agence France Presse, and Tass, Colonel Andrei Demurenko said that the report put out by the Americans and the UN regarding the shelling of the marketplace in Sarajevo was absolutely and patently false - a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.

Agence France Presse on Demurenko

The report by Agence France Presse read in part:

"SARAJEVO, Sept 2, 1995

"A Russian UN officer in Sarajevo disputed Saturday the findings of a UN investigation into Monday's mortar blast that killed 38 people and led to this week's unprecedented NATO action against the Bosnian Serbs.

"Colonel Andrei Demurenko, the chief of staff for UN peacekeepers in the Bosnian capital, said the findings of the UN investigation "was absolutely unacceptable for me and my military friends in this area."

"A UN investigation into Monday's attack concluded 'beyond all reasonable doubt' that the Bosnian Serbs fired the weapon that devastated the downtown marketplace.

"Demurenko gave an extensive television interview broadcast on a Bosnian Serb evening news programme in which he drew maps and showed technical data that he said proved the mortar could not have been fired from the Bosnian Serb side.

"The Russian officer said he had visited various sites from which the mortar could have been fired and concluded that the place the UN investigators said the weapon was launched from was an 'unacceptable place to fire this shell'.

"UN spokesman Chris Vernon refused to comment on the Russian's claims but said the 'detailed and extensive' UN investigation showed 'that beyond reasonable doubt' the mortar came from the Bosnian Serbs.

"The blast prompted the United Nations and NATO to launch a major campaign lasting three days in which Bosnian Serb military installations were attacked and more than 30 heavy guns around the city were shelled by the rapid reaction force...

"A UN official who requested anonymity said Demurenko would probably 'be sacked' for his remarks..."

Sack Demurenko? - The idiots who made these comments at the UN (at the behest of the U.S. State Department) must have not known much about the man. He is one of the most decorated soldiers in the world today - a man whom even the American military admires as a man of integrity! - and so much so that retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Timothy L. Thomas, in an article which appeared in Military Review (Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS), felt duty-bound to defend Demurenko. Thomas, wrote that Demurenko is a living legend in the U.S. Armor Corps! - a man that no man of principle could doubt! He writes that Demurenko is "... the only Russian military officer who actually participated in two attacks against American forces with a full complement of tanks and armored personnel carriers, and won both battles..." The willingness of the U.S. State Department to besmirch the honor of this man by sacking him for lying (which, of course, he did not do) shows the length to which the American elite is willing to go in order to push "Big Oil's" agenda in the Balkans and ipso facto ingratiate themselves to the Muslims of the Middle East.

Reuters on Demurenko

The Reuters account read as follows:

"SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

"A senior Russian U.N. officer has publicly contradicted the U.N. inquiry into Monday's mortar massacre in Sarajevo, which found "beyond a reasonable doubt" that Serb forces were to blame, U.N. sources said Saturday.

"The officer, Col. Andrei Demurenko ... is chief of staff for the Sarajevo sector of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.

"His report, which one U.N. official called a "unilateral effort" went as far as U.N. headquarters in New York.

"Demurenko says his own technical analysis shows that a 120 mm mortar bomb which killed 37 people and wounded 85 Monday could NOT have come from Bosnian Serb Army positions...

"...(Lt.-Col. Chris Vernon) said Demurenko was not the only person to make a report questioning the official judgment: "Several reports critical of our findings have made their way to U.N. headquarters in New York including one from an officer here in Sarajevo and two which originated in the United States."

"Bosnian Serb television and media in neighboring Serbia made much of the challenge to the U.N. verdict, showing Demurenko using charts and maps to explain his analysis and saying it was "impossible" that Serbs could have fired the mortar.

"Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug carried a report from Moscow saying the official report had falsified the facts of the mortar attack and quoting Demurenko as saying he feared he would be hounded for his conclusions.

"'Photographs of these locations and calculations are in my hands. The most important part of them is at a safe location so that nothing can change in the event of my arrest', Tanjug quoted Demurenko as saying."

Needless to say, Demurenko was never arrested. Demurenko's friends (including many in the U.S. military) would have gone ballistic. Besides, he was right! - and he had the proof!

Strange, though - none of this was ever really reported in the U.S. press. Average Americans know little if anything about these events. Americans continue to think exactly what the elite, mainstream press wants them to think - that the Serbs are the aggressors and the Muslims are the victims!

ETHNIC CLEANSING BY THE CROATIANS
AND THE AMERICANS IN THE KRAJINA

As a result, the American elite got what it wanted in 1995: an excuse to intervene in the Bosnian crisis in favor of the Muslims - and it wasn't just an air campaign that the Americans unleashed against the Serbs, but a campaign involving Croatian land forces (which the Americans had been secretly arming and training for over eighteen months) which was designed to end the stalemate on the ground in Bosnia.

And the price the Americans paid to the Croatians for this intervention? - a free hand for the Croatians to ethnically cleanse a huge swath of Croatian territory of Serbs, Serbs which had been living in this area (the Krajina) for over 500 years - longer by 450 years the amount of time the Albanians have been in Kosovo. It seems, according to "Big Oil's" calculations (and, ipso facto, the State Department's) that it's ok to ethnically cleanse those populations that stand in the way of "Big Oil," but it's not ok to do it to "Big Oil's" friends.

With regard to the Krajina and America's sordid and hypocritical involvement in this affair, Walter Russell Mead, writing in the Los Angeles Times, reports:

"Ever since it took office, the Clinton Administration has been dogged by a contradiction in Bosnia: its goals cannot be achieved without the ground troops it is unwilling to send.

"Last week's (September 1995) Croatian attack was the Administration's boldest effort yet to resolve this dilemma. Instead of Marines, it sent in the Croats.

"Make no mistake about it. The Croatian attack on rebel Serbs had Washington's fingerprints all over it. U.S. generals helped train the Croatian attackers. The United States orchestrated the arms shipments--in violation of the U.N. arms embargo--that helped give the Croatian army its victory, and the United States gave Croatia a diplomatic go-ahead for the attack.

"... The after effects of the Croatian attack are going to be messy and complicated, and Washington won't be able to escape the responsibility of dealing with them ... The first problem is moral. The basis of U.S. policy in Yugoslavia has, all along, been that ethnic cleansing is such a terrible crime that the civilized world must oppose it. Fair enough, but the United States never had the muscle to back up its high principles. Now the United States has muscle--Croatian muscle--but where are the principles?

"As hundreds of thousands of Serbian refugees flee threatened reprisals, and as Croatian forces shoot fleeing civilians in the back, where is morality? THE UNITED STATES HAS JUST HELPED FACILITATE THE LARGEST SINGLE ACT OF ETHNIC CLEANSING IN THIS WHOLE WRETCHED WAR."

General Charles G. Boyd, former Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command, has been truly amazed at the lengths to which the U.S. elite press has manipulated the coverage of the war. Boyd writes:

The linchpin of the ... (elite's approach to the Balkan question) ... has been the ... notion that this is a war of good versus evil, of aggressor against aggrieved. From that premise the United States has supported U.N. and NATO resolutions couched in seemingly neutral terms-for example, to protect peacekeepers-and then has turned them around to punish one side (i.e., the Serbs) and attempt to affect the course of the war. It has supported the creation of safe areas (i.e., Srebrenica, Zepa, etc.) and demanded their protection even when they have been used by one warring faction (i.e., the Muslims) to mount attacks against another (i.e., the Serbs). It has called for a negotiated resolution of the conflict even as it has labeled as war criminals those with whom it would negotiate. It has pushed for more humanitarian aid even as it became clear that this was subsidizing conflict and protecting the warring factions from the natural consequences of continuing the fighting. It has supported the legitimacy of a leadership [the Muslim leadership of Bosnia (and now the KLA in Kosovo)] that has become increasingly ethnocentric in its makeup, single-party in its rule, and manipulative in its diplomacy."

THE QUESTION BEFORE US

This brings us back to the question that we asked ourselves at the beginning of this article, a question which transcends - at least to a certain degree - the plight of the Serbian people in what now appears their all but hopeless struggle against elite Western power (a struggle which is bound to repeat itself in other areas of the world and in other cultures in the years to come); and that is:

"... have we become in fact nothing more than a cog in a machine the elites have built for us? Is our reality of family, work, political ideology, and even religion become only that which the elites feed us?"

If so, as we said at the beginning of this article, we are truly in danger of our souls. Why? - because the kind of realties that the elites would deign to spoon-feed us are certainly not realities that would have anything to do with the Kingdom of God; but just the opposite - snares meant to entrap us in the kingdom of their (this) world. If the elites have gained such mastery over the realities that govern our daily lives, then we really have become nothing more than a cog in their machine - a machine which may ultimately take us all to hell (or at least dishonor) with it.

One of the most relevant and appropriate thoughts that Mills made in The Power Elite which impacts what's going on in the world today (and, ipso facto, our place in it) concerns the "... movement of widely scattered little powers to concentrated powers ..." - from small to big; from dispersed to consolidated, not only in the secular world but in the religious world as well. This is what's happening when Ford buys up Jaguar, when Chrysler merges with Mercedez, when Time/Warner megers with CNN. This is what the European Community (EC) in Europe is all about. This is what the World Trade Organization (WTO) is all about. This is what NAFTA is all about.

But this is also what Joel Aldrich's "one city one church" movement is all about too (Joel Aldrich is President of Multnomah School of the Bible - a fundamentalist, Baptist school in Portland, Oregon). This is what the "mega-church" movement is all about. This is what the Promise Keepers is all about. This is what Rick Joyner, Francis Frangipane, and the "Apostles and Prophets" are all about.

As things are going now, soon everything well be subsumed in the "whole" the elites are creating; a world which will determine for us the reality of our daily lives, our political ideology, even our religion - and one which can lie to us without having to fear that we will ever be able to discover that they are doing so. And we are closer to that condition of things than most people would like to admit, especially as we consider the "reality" the elites have been able to construct insofar as what's going on in the Balkans. What's happened there is instructive of what's going on everywhere! - in our domestic politics, in the business world, even - as we have already indicated - in our churches.

WE ARE NOW AT THE END OF THE AGE

We are now at the "End of the Age." The world is heading inexorably towards a single conclusion - the creation, as it were, of one giant entity ("REALITY") in which all of mankind, all of his organizations, all of his corporations, all the nations of the earth, all the cultures of this world, etc. will be incorporated into one vast tightly-controlled system in which all of us will be subsumed and contained. This is what a fair reading of current events tells us, and it's also what the Bible says:

"And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

"And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

"And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

"And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

"And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Rev. 13:11-17)

Now in this connection, it's important to understand that the "image of the Beast" is not some giant statue, as some Christians naively believe: it's us! We are that image. As we are inexorably drawn into and subsumed into the world structure the elites are constructing for us, we come ever more to mirror the character of the elites; we become the mirror image of those elites. And if their character is that of a wild, ravenous beast, so will ours be also. This is what the Bible calls, "the image of the Beast." And one of the "markers" of this image is lies and deceit. Again, the Bible says:

"You are of {your} father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and {he} does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own {nature;} for he is a liar, and the father of lies." (John 8:44)

Again, how close are we? - well, you answer that question. As for us in Antipas, the lies and deceit that have marked our involvement in the Balkans makes the answer to that question pretty obvious.

God help us all to wake up to what's happening to us before it's too late.

God bless you all!

S.R. Shearer
Antipas Ministries