Jugoinfo
I telegiornali nei giorni scorsi ci informavano che le truppe italiane
hanno finalmente preso il controllo dell'aereoporto di Pristina.
Viva le truppe italiane!
Viva L'Italia!
Viva l'Albania italiana!
Eia eia alala'!
* ELENCO ATTI TERRORISTICI DAL 24 MAGGIO AL 26 GIUGNO SCORSI
* TRUPPE OCCUPATRICI ARRESTANO SERBO ORGANIZZATORE DELLE PROTESTE
* VERSO LA DISTRUZIONE DEL MONASTERO DI DECANI
* L'ANALISI DELL'ISTITUTO CATO (LINK)
* KOSOVO UN ANNO DOPO TRA MENZOGNE ED OMERTA'
* FLASHBACK: GLI EBREI KOSOVARI SCACCIATI DALL'UCKFOR
* IL PRESIDENTE DELLA GRANDE ALBANIA ONORA I MARTIRI DELL'UCK
---
CRIMINI COMMESSI DAL FANATISMO NAZIONALISTA PANALBANESE
IN KOSMET TRA IL 24 MAGGIO ED IL 26 GIUGNO 2000.
***DA NON RIPORTARE SUI GIORNALI***
(From: John Jay Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: [STOPNATO] [serbrights] [Fwd: sign and email/KOSOVO] STOP
NATO:
¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM )
_________
So far, we've only sent this out to the IHT. Of course, there are many
other
newspapers/TV channels, etc., ...
_________
Sir: - We challenge the International Herald Tribune to publish the
disgraceful diary of evil racial persecution set out below.
We dare the IHT to show its readers, all over the world, what
kind
of a job of "Humanitarian Protection" KFOR troops and UNMIK's so-called
"Peacekeepers" are doing to "keep the peace" in Kosovo today ?... This
is
real news... Why not publish it ?... Let's see how fair and open-minded
a
'great' "Democratic" newspaper can honestly be !
The Western media shows remarkably little interest in the
suffering
of Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo. Sure, we're told of an
occasional incident, here and there, but even then obscured in very
small
print, usually on the inside pages - where are the headlines !
Is
this what is really meant by "Free" Press - the "freedom" merely to pick
and
choose what you tell your readers, strictly according to how its telling
may
or may not suit the agendas of the incumbent political administrators in
Washington ? Do you believe that votes supposedly reflecting American
public
'opinion' formed in this way, on the basis of selective misinformation,
is
anything like an exercise in true 'democracy' ?
Your readers wouldn't ! - If they only knew that's how it
really is
- ! Happy 4th of July !...
All details and statistics below- (strictly according to
routine
nformation known to and monitored by members of the International Red
Cross)
- are matters of official UNMIK record.
All were in Kosovo, an autonomous province of the sovereign
Yugoslav constituent Republic of Serbia - currently occupied and
supposedly
"protected", under UN mandate, by KFOR troops.
This is just a one month catalogue of the racial crime and
brutal
persecution carried out against Serbs and other non-Albanians between 24
May
and 26 June of this year only !
__________________________________________
TERRORIST ACTS COMMITTED BY ALBANIANS,
FORMERLY OF THE (KLA) THE KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY,
BETWEEN 24 MAY - 26 JUNE 2000.
1. Murder of Vladimir Ilic, a Kosovo Serb, 50, on his doorstep at Vitina
on
24 May;
2. Attack on Kosovo Serbs in the village of Dobrotin, Municipality of
Lipljan, on 26 May, on which occasion 4 Serbian civilians were gravely
wounded;
3. Throwing of a hand grenade on a Serbian cafe at Bresje on 26 May, on
which occasion 5 Serbians were gravely wounded;
4. Setting a fire in the Trepca complex in southern Kosovska Mitrovica
on 6
May which caused enormous material damage;
5. Attack on a group of Serbs in front of a store in the village of
Cernica, on 28 May, in the Municipality of Gnjilane, on which occasion
Tihomir Trifunovic, Vojin Vasic and a 5-year old, Milos Petrovic, were
killed and two other Serbian civilians were gravely wounded;
6. Armed attacks on a local police patrol in the village of Konculj on
23
and 24 May and a mortar attack on the members of local Kosovo Serbian
police, on 30 May, in the village of Lucane ;
7. Attack on Serbian civilians in the village of Klokot, Municipality
of
Vitina, on 31 May, in which Lepterka Marinkovic, 67, was killed and
another
3 Serbs were gravely wounded;
8. Murder of Milutin Trajkovic, 33, a Serbian, in the village of Babin
Most,
on 31 May, in the Municipality of Obilic;
9. Murder of Iso Heta, 71, an elderly retired member of the Ministry of
the
Interior, on 31 May;
10. Throwing of a hand grenade on the house of Kosovo Serb, Djordje
Velickovic, on 1 June, at Obilic, on which occasion Misko Todorovic was
also gravely wounded;
11. Killing of two Serbs, Sinisa Dimic and Vlastimir Milic, and
wounding of
3 others on 2 June, two of them underage children, in an automobile
which
ran over an anti-tank mine planted by Albanian terrorists the night
before
on the road between the Serbian villages of Ugljari and Preoce near
Pristina;
12. Burning down of a number of Serbian houses in both Prizren and
Decani on
3 June;
13. Continued arbitrary arrests of Kosovo Serbian civilians by KFOR and
UNMIK, on 7 June, of which one of the most drastic examples was the
arrest
of Nebojsa Stojanovic, 30, at Gracanica, who was apprehended while in an
intensive care unit following a serious injury sustained after KFOR
opened
automatic fire on Serbs protesting about the terror of the so-called
Kosovo
Liberation Army, (of which this catalogue is one brief example);
14. Brutal attack and wounding of Jovan Cerovic, 55, a Serb, on 8 June,
by
10 terrorists with clubs in the district of Obilic;
15. Burning of a number of Serbian houses at Obilic on 9 June;
16. Anduction of Safet Pucurica, 37, a worker from Kosovska Mitrovica on
10
June, on the road Vucitrn-Kosovska Mitrovica;
17. Armed attack on an automobile driven by 4 Goranci (non-Albanian
Muslim)
on 9 June, near Orcus, Municipality of Gora, on which occasion one of
these
civilians was severely wounded;
18. Burning of Serbian houses at Obilic and the dynamiting of Roma
(Gypsy)
houses on 10 June, in the village of Novo Rujce, Municipality of
Lipljan;
19. Setting a fire in the Kosovo Serbian restaurant "Lotos" on 10 June;
20. Mortar attack on Serbian houses at Orahovac on 12 and 13 June;
21. Mortar attack on Serbian houses at Obilic on 14 June;
22. Abduction, rape and mutilation of a 14-year old Serbian girl in
Pristina
on 14 June;
23. Killing of Zlatibor Denic and Borko Filipovic and the wounding of
Dejan
Filipovic on 15 June, the latter losing both his arms and legs, in an
automobile which ran over an anti-tank mine planted by the terrorists of
the
Kosovo Liberation Army on the road between the villages of Preoce and
Lepina;
24. Attack on humanitarian convoys heading for Serbian Strpce on both 30
May
and on 16 June, in the villages of Radivojce and Pozarane;
25. Mortar attack on the Decani monastery near Pec, on the night of 21
and
22 June. Decani monastery was built in 1335. It is one of the treasures
of
Serbian cultural heritage, housing frescoes of great value and a large
number of priceless ancient manuscripts and icons;
26. Throwing of a hand grenade on the house of a Serb, Toma Ivkovic, in
Gnjilane on 21 June, on which occasion Mr. Ivkovic's mother was wounded;
27. Brutal abduction of 2 Serbs, Vlada, 80, and Persa Miletic, 50, on 21
June, in the village of Mali Trnovac, in the Municipality of Bujanovac.
Their fate is still unknown;
28. Abduction of Serb, Bozidar Markovic, 60, on 23 June, in the village
of
Susice, Municipality of Strpci ;
29. Abduction of 14-year Serbian boy Jovica Milic, while tending his
herd on
24 June, in the village of Susice, Municipality of Stprce. He managed to
escape, sustaining serious injuries and psychological stress;
30. Mortar attack on eleven Serbian houses in the village of Velika
Hoca, on
24 June in the Municipality of Orahovac ;
31. Abduction of Kosovo Serbian, Tomislav Markovic, on the
Podujevo-Pristina
road on 24 June;
32. Murder of Kica Milanovic, 50, a Kosovo Serbian, on his doorstep at
Kosovo Polje on 25 June;
33. Attempt to abduct Milorad Soric, a Kosovo Serb civilian, in front of
his
house on 26 June, in Orahovac, on which occasion he escaped but was
seriously injured."
The UN calls this - "Humanitarian Protection" ?.... What would
your
readers call it ???...They were shown more of a single child's boot
(blue -
remember it ?) than they will ever see of the continuing inhuman misery
inflicted, every day, on Serbian men, women and children in Kosovo.
John Jay
London
ppdscat@...
"Human rights are for ALL humans, including Serbs!"
---
ARRESTATO DALLE TRUPPE DI OCCUPAZIONE STATUNITENSI SERBO
ORGANIZZATORE DELLE PROTESTE CONTRO IL REGIME RAZZISTA DELLA KFOR
> > Danas, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
> > July 6, 2000
> >
> > Radojko Kecic arrested
> >
> > Strpce (Beta) - American KFOR soldiers arrested
> > photographer Radojko Kecic
> > of Strpce yesterday for organizing the demonstration
> > of the Serbs in this
> > town in the south of Kosovo. Kecic, the owner of a
> > photo shop, was taken to
> > the American military base Bondsteel near Urosevac.
> >
> > Approximately ten Polish and American special forces
> > soldiers arrested
> > Kecic while he was purchasing food at a nearby kiosk.
> > According to Serb
> > sources in Strpce, American KFOR soldiers have created
> > a list of 46 persons
> > of Serb nationality who participated in the
> > demonstrations and road blocks
> > in Strpce. Kecic, the same sources state, is the first
> > from that list to be
> > arrested.
> >
> > Translated by S. Lazovic (July 6, 2000)
---
VERSO LA DISTRUZIONE DEL MONASTERO MEDIOEVALE DI DECANI.
SILENZIO ASSOLUTO DEGLI "INTELLETTUALI" SERVILI D'EUROPA
SUL VANDALISMO CONTINUATO A SFONDO RAZZISTA AI DANNI DEI
MONUMENTI DELLA CULTURA ORTODOSSA IN KOSOVO-METOHIJA
> From: Kiehl <emilia@...>
> To: Undisclosed.Recipients@...
> Subject: Fw: DECANI IN PERIL - need assistance
> Date: Jueves 22 de Junio de 2000 12:00 PM
>
>
>
> Date: 22 June 2000 09:30
> Subject: Fw: DECANI IN PERIL - need assistance
>
>
> >Dear all, please see if you can help and/or forward to anyone who you
may
> >think can do something about this. Love Branka
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Bob Petrovich <bojanp@...>
> >To: Branka Perry <branka.jp@...>
> >Date: 22 June 2000 04:01
> >Subject: DECANI IN PERIL - need assistance
> >
> >
> >>
> >>Branka, I need help, someone who can write
> >>letter in precise legalese on subject explained below.
> >>
> >>I plan to press Finnish government for
> >>their role in destruction of Christian
> >> shrines in Kosovo !
> >>
> >>There is no time, we have to start Friday, to time delivery for
> >>Monday morning.
> >>
> >>20 people from 10 or so OSCE countries will do the trick.
> >>
> >>For success, we need several waves of 20 people spread in several days.
> >>
> >>I have already collected emails and phone numbers of
> >>people in Finnish Foreign ministry, Public prosecutor for international
> >>affairs and others in Ministry
> >>of justice and Government ombudsman. I will distibute that list to
anyone
> >>who
> >>agree to actively participate ( send e-mail and
> >>later follow up over the phone)
> >>
> >>
> >>Under Finnish law, anyone REGARDLESS OF NATIONALITY can file
> >>complaint for criminal conduct of Finnish public servant. They forgot
to
> >>change rules with advent of the Net.
> >>
> >>Please let me know what you think about it, can you help and if your
group
> >>want to participate.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Best,
> >>
> >>B.
> >>-------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>Dear xxxx
> >>
> >>Maybe you have already seen the urgent appeal of
> >>Fr. Sava regarding Decani Monastery.
> >>
> >>It is not only theft of private property and flagrant
> >>breach of the law, it is much worse.
> >>Monastery sits at the bottom of the mountain and water
> >>tower 150ft above it presents a real threat. Sabotage
> >>may cause water blast able of destroying monastery and
> >>killing everyone inside.
> >>
> >>The monks from the brotherhood are the last remaining
> >>Serbs in Decani area. All others minority Serbs are
> >>ethnically cleansed with silent approval of UNMIK and
> >>KFOR.
> >>
> >>Theft of Monastery land and plan to put Monastery in
> >>peril can not be seen but attempt to eradicate Serbs
> >>from the area.
> >>
> >>In Decani, local UNMIK administrator is Finnish.
> >>
> >>In another case, Finnish commander of KFOR approves of
> >>
> >>destruction of religious shrines.
> >>
> >>I want to stage blitz on Finnish institutions and ask
> >>the questions of Finnish Government involvement.
> >>Also, plan to ask for help Finnish Orthodox Church.
> >>
> >>Please could you help me and elaborate breaches of the
> >>law in both cases. I am lay person and can not do it.
> >>
> >>I will do the rest. Finland is "the most wired country
> >>in the world" and I intend to use it to the fullest
> >>extent.
> >>
> >>Every member of government and judicary
> >>is reachable by e-mail.
> >>
> >>If you agree with strategy, I will send you the list
> >>of all relevant e-mail addresses of all relevant
> >>institutions in Finland so you could start next wave
> >>
> >>Very truly yours,
> >>
> >>Bob Petrovich
> >>Willowdale, Canada
> >>mailto:bojanp@...
> >>
> >>-----------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>Name: Ms.Helina Kokarinnen, Finland,
> >>Function: municipal administrator for Decani, Kosovo,
> >>Yugoslavia
> >>
> >>Illegal acts commited:
> >>
> >>1. Violation of private property. Ms.Kokarinnen issued
> >>licence for ground preparation works for building
> >>of water tower on private property without approval of
> >>the land owner (Serbian Orthodox Church). Work has
> >>commneced, tresspassers cut the ancient wood and stole
> >>lumber.
> >>
> >>2. endangering cultural monument - medieval monastery.
> >>Planned Water tower 50 meters above Monastery
> >>represent threat to Monastery . Sabotage or structural
> >>failure will cause water tidal wave able to destroy
> >>monastery.
> >>
> >>3. putting human lives in peril.monastery is
> >>permanently inhabited by monk brotherhood.
> >>
> >>4. failure to prevent criminal act -theft of private
> >>property ( lumber)
> >>
> >>Evidence:
> >>
> >>Fr. Sava possess copies of UNMIK documents.
> >>
> >>Text of documents can be seen at:
> >>http://www.egroups.com/message/yugoslaviainfo/2064?&start=2038
> >>
> >>Fr. Sava can be reached at:
> >>
> >>Fr. Sava
> >>Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Kosovo and Metohija
> >>Gracanica Monastery, Pristina,Kosovo and Metohija
> >>http://www.decani.yunet.com
> >>http://www.kosovo.com
> >>Sat phone:: +870-762-146-565
> >>Mobile phone: +381-63-371-909
> >>Fax (voice mail) +44-207-681-2601
> >>------------------------------------------------------
> >>pattern:
> >>-------------------------------------------------------
> >>Name: Colonel Arto Raty, Finland
> >>Function: head of KFOR operations in Slovinje,
> >>Kosovo, Yugoslavia
> >>
> >>Illegal act:
> >>public incitement of ethnic cleansing
> >>public incitement of dectruction of religious shrine
> >>activity contrary to given duty (enforcing UNSC 1244)
> >>
> >>Evidence:
> >>
> >>"If a church has value as a historical place then
> >>clearly it should be guarded,but if it has no
> >>historical value and there is no chance of the
> >>Serbs returning anytime soon to the area, then
> >>it should be gently dismantled,"
> >>
> >>Finnish Colonel Arto Raty
> >>head of KFOR operations in Slovinje
> >>Source: REUTERS
> >>http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000613_699.html
> >>
> >>For importance of Churches for communities see the
> >>letter of World Council of Churches:
> >>
>
>>http://platon.ee.duth.gr/data/maillist-archives/orthodoxia/1999_12/msg0007
> 2
> >.
> >>html
> >>
> >>Church in Slovinje, where Col. Raty is head of KFOR
> >>was destroyed by Albanian externists.
> >>
> >>http://www.kosovo.com/crucified/default.htm#_catalog
> From: "Nancy A. Hey" <cattynancy@...> (by way of Herman de
> Tollenaere <hermantl@...>)
> To: office@...
> Subject: Decani old growth forest threatened in Kosovo [fwd]
> Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 18:27:32 +0200
>
> [small spelling corrections made]
>
> Subject: Decani Monastery Wood being Destroyed with UNMIK written
permission
>
> URGENT.....URGENT.....URGENT
>
> ALBANIANS DESTROYING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MONASTERY FOREST WITH UNMIK
WRITTEN
> PERMISSION
>
> I am taking this opportunity to inform you about very deplorable events
> which happened around Decani monastery in the last few days. According to
> the written permission of the municipal administrator for Decani, Ms.
> Helina Kokarinnen, local Albanian contractors were allowed to start
> cutting the monastery century old pine wood just 50 m above monastery of
> Decani. The cutting of wood was in fact a preparation for the building of
a
> water tower which is a part of a larger project of enlargement of the
water
> system for Decani. This project is undertaken by the Italian Company
COOPI.
> According to the information received
> yesterday from COOPI the plan was made in September 1999 and was approved
> by local UNMIK office.
>
> Neither the UNMIK administrator nor KFOR authorities or COOPI ever
> contacted the Monastery authorities about this undertaking, although the
> cutting of the wood and the clearing of the ground for a water tower is
> done on the property of Decani Monastery. The monks have reacted the very
> first day and requested from KFOR to stop the destruction of the monastery
> forest but KFOR answered with almost two days of delay granting the
> security to the monks to go to the location just 50 meters from the
> monastery. The monks had not dared go alone because of constant danger
from
> Kosovo Albanians who had even launched a mortar attacks three months ago
> against the monastery and make great pressures against the brotherhood.
>
> The consequences of this illegal operation are deplorable. More than 40
> cubic meters of pine wood have been cut and stolen by ethnic Albanians in
> their trucks ( 8 big trees). At least 20 more trees have been burned
> because the contractors wanted to be sure that the terrain is not mined
and
> conducted a mine-clearing operation destroying many other trees in the
> area. It is very important to know that this wood had been planted three
> centuries ago by Decani monks and majority of the cut pines, which were a
> landmark of Decani Monastery, are more than 150 years old. Therefore this
> is not only an issue of violation of the private property by UN
authorities
> and KFOR but also an environmental violation of one of the most beautiful
> and oldest pine forest in Kosovo.
>
> Decani Monastery and the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Kosovo and Metohija
> have condemned this illegal act in strongest terms. The Church will ask
> from the Special Representative of the Secretary General Dr. Bernard
> Kouchner to launch a full investigation on this issue and the
> recompensation for the done damage.
>
> Attachment:
> Copy of the letter by which the UN administrator Ms HELINA KOKARINNEN
> granted a written permission to Kosovo Albanian contractor to cut
> unspecified number of trees in the monastery forest. Ms. Kokarinnen in
> her conversation with the monks behaved as if she did not know exactly
> what it was all about. This morning she left to Finland without any
> explanation to the monastery which requested an urgent meeting for today.
>
> >------------------------------------
> To KFOR - Decan/Decani
>
> June 14, 2000
>
> I have discussed with Nue Mulaj who is working for the organization
> COOPI (ID card no 26) as an excavator driver. Nue Mulaj is ready to cut
the
> trees needed for water supply working. According to Mr. Mulaj he has
agreed
> about cutting and carrying the trees with COOPI, wood company Djeravica
and
> KFOR representative. Mr. Mulaj can take and carry the trees for free from
> the forest.
>
> Helina Kokarinen
> Municipal administrator Municipality of Decan/Decani
>
> >--------------------------------------------
> With this letter which was shown by KFOR to the Monastery Authorities
> (we have a copy) it is evident that UNMIK administrator knew all from
> the beginning and in fact issued a blank permission to Kosovo Albanians to
> cut as many trees as they like. From COOPI authorities the Monastery
> learned that the location for this water tower was chosen by Albanians and
> that from the technical point of view the tower may have been constructed
> on another location. The monastery authorities think that the local
> Albanians deliberately chose this location in order to make a pressure on
> the monastery, violate its property and steal the valuable pine trees
free.
> It is sad that UNMIK and KFOR played such a deplorable role in all this.
>
> Fr. Sava
>
>
> >--
> Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Kosovo and Metohija
> Gracanica Monastery, Pristina,
> Kosovo and Metohija
>
> http://www.decani.yunet.com
> http://www.kosovo.com
>
> decani@...
> Sat phone:: +870-762-146-565
> Mobile phone: +381-63-371-909
> Fax (voice mail) +44-207-681-2601
>
>
>
---
L'ANALISI DELLA SITUAZIONE SECONDO L'ISTITUTO CATO
Cato Policy Analysis No. 373
June 10, 2000
Dubious Anniversary: Kosovo One Year Later
by Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz
Christopher Layne is a visiting fellow in foreign policy studies at the
Cato Institute. Benjamin
Schwarz is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly
Executive Summary
One year after NATO ended its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the
Clinton
administration’s Kosovo policy is a conspicuous failure. Kosovo is now
the scene of a brutal ethnic
cleansing campaign carried out by NATO’s erstwhile de facto ally, the
Kosovo Liberation Army,
an organization profoundly inimical to America’s interests and professed
values. The KLA is also
currently fomenting an insurgency elsewhere in Serbia, which promises to
destabilize the Balkans
even further.
The Clinton administration has embarked on yet another
multi-billion-dollar nation-building
adventure, which many analysts suggest will entangle the U.S. military
for a decade or longer.
This situation could have been avoided. Because of its inept diplomacy
and strategic
miscalculation, the administration bears a large measure of
responsibility for both Kosovo’s
humanitarian crisis a year ago and the KLA’s postwar thuggery. It is now
clear that the
administration’s claims of "horrific slaughter" and attempts at
"genocide" by the Serbs were gross
exaggerations designed to whip up
support for intervention from a skeptical Congress and public.
Confronting Kosovo’s depressing prospects, the administration consoles
itself that, as President
Clinton says, it "did the right thing in the right way" when it
intervened. Even granting that
doubtful premise, this is not enough to exonerate policymakers from
their responsibility for the
situation the United States confronts today. In the real world,
policymakers are judged by the
consequences of their actions, not by their intentions. The Kosovo war
has not vindicated the
administration’s doctrine of "virtuous power." By waging an avoidable
war, the Clinton
administration has saddled
the United States with a host of intractable problems.
Full Text of Policy Analysis No. 373 (PDF, 19 pgs, 79 Kb)
---
KOSOVO UN ANNO DOPO: MENZOGNE ED OMERTA'
>Original message:
>From: "robert rodvik" <robrod@...>
>To: <Undisclosed Recipients>
>Subject: Fw: KOSOVO ONE YEAR ON - LIES AND DECEIT
>Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 13:13:43 -0700
>
>
>
>
>Date: Friday, June 23, 2000 1:07 PM
>Subject: KOSOVO ONE YEAR ON - LIES AND DECEIT
>
>
> In keeping with its propaganda role, CBC-TV continues the distortions
>and spin that characterized its coverage during NATO's bombing spree. The
>Ministry of Truth indicates that tonight, Friday June 23, 2000 that it is
>going to once again reprise the situation in Kosovo and surrounding
>environs. You can tune in to The National at 10p.m. and get all the latest
>spin on the National Magazine, which will most likely reiterate that the
>crimes of the Serbs were so evil that NATO had no other choice.
> The sad part of all this is that the Canadian taxpayer funds this
>propaganda operation.
>NIL ILLIGITIMUS CARBORUNDUM
>RR
>____________________________________________________________
>
>
>
>
>
>KOSOVO ONE YEAR LATER: FROM SERB REPRESSION TO
>NATO-SPONSORED ETHNIC CLEANSING
>Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
>
>Now a little more than one year after the ending of Nato's
>78- day bombing of Yugoslavia and the beginning of Nato
>control of Kosovo (June 10-12, 1999), the mainstream media
>have been exceedingly reticent in offering the public
>serious retrospectives on the war and its aftermath. One
>reason for this may be that Nato's bombing campaign and
>year-long occupation not only failed to realize most of
>Nato's proclaimed objectives, but the intervention also
>produced a far higher level of ethnic violence than had
>existed previously--first against ethnic Albanians, then
>later against all ethnic minorities. As the Norwegian
>foreign affairs analyst Jan Oberg notes, "the largest ethnic
>cleansing in the Balkans [in percentage that fled] has
>happened under the very eyes of 45,000 Nato troops" in
>occupied Kosovo.
>
>True, Nato did eventually succeed in getting Belgrade to
>withdraw the Serb army from Kosovo. But in the process,
>Nato's bombing campaign triggered a Serb military response
>against ethnic Albanians that Nato officials themselves had
>predicted would occur; a response that was based not on the
>unprovoked nastiness of Serbs but rather on rational
>military calculations. Expulsions were greatest where
>fighting was heaviest, mainly in territories controlled by
>the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Indeed, in the words of
>the OSCE, much of the refugee flow was designed "to keep
>main communications routes open to supply Serb forces with
>material, fuel, and food." Moreover, although Nato had
>denied any collaboration with rebel forces during the
>bombing, top Nato officials now admit that KLA guerrillas
>were "constantly on the phone to Nato," and that Nato had
>"instigated" a major KLA offensive (Paul Richter, LA Times,
>June 10, 2000). President Clinton may have announced that
>the main purpose of bombing was "to deter an even bloodier
>offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo" (March 24,
>1999), but as the bombing increased it exponentially (as
>well as adding Nato's contribution to Albanian pain), that
>aim was clearly not met.
>
>With the increase in violence following the bombing, Nato
>officials quickly announced that the Serb attacks and
>expulsions would have taken place anyway, under a
>pre-arranged plan the Serbs allegedly called "Operation
>Horseshoe." But no mention had ever been made of such a plan
>prior to the bombing, and a pre-war German Foreign Office
>report had even denied that Serb actions in Kosovo
>constituted "ethnic cleansing;" instead, the report found
>that the Serb military campaign was designed to quell an
>insurgency. UN Special Envoy Jiri Dienstbier says the same:
>"Before the bombing Albanians were not driven away on the
>basis of ethnic principle. [They were] victims of the brutal
>war between the Yugoslav army and the Kosovo Liberation
>Army" (CTK National News Wire, April 20, 2000). The fact
>that Belgrade was willing to allow 2,000 OSCE observers into
>Kosovo (although the OSCE contingent never exceeded 1,400),
>and that it objected strongly to their removal before Nato
>launched its bombing, is also inconsistent with a planned
>"Operation Horseshoe." As the retired German Brigadier
>General, and now a consultant with the OSCE, D. Heinz Loquai
>argues in his recent book, Der Kosovo-Konflikt Wege in einen
>Vermeidbaren Krieg ("The Kosovo Conflict: The Road to an
>Avoidable War"), the German Foreign Ministry's revelation
>two weeks into the war that it possessed intelligence
>confirming the existence of "Operation Horseshoe" was an
>outright fabrication culled from Bulgarian intelligence
>reports and the imagination of Nato military propagandists.
>None of this, however, has prevented apologists for Nato's
>war from repeating the lie that Operation Allied Force was
>justified by the imminent implementation of this mythical
>plan to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo of its Albanian
>population. (On June 11, 2000, the ineffable George
>Robertson asked Jonathan Dimbleby on Britain's ITV to
>"imagine if almost 2 million refugees had been expelled...if
>Milosevic had succeeded with that ethnic cleansing.")
>
>In the face of the Nato-induced surge in violence in March
>and April 1999, Nato officials changed course and proclaimed
>that their new main objective was returning the Kosovo
>Albanians to their homes quickly and safely; and with the
>help of the media Nato successfully portrayed the bombing as
>a response to the mass exodus rather than its cause. But
>even this new objective was met only in part--the Albanians
>who had fled Kosovo did return quickly, but their safety and
>welfare were compromised by several factors. One was that
>Nato bombs had killed and seriously injured many hundreds of
>fleeing Albanians. Nato also used both deadly cluster bombs
>and depleted uranium munitions in Kosovo, a choice of
>weapons not conducive to the long-run safety of the
>returnees. To date, an estimated 100 people have been killed
>and many hundreds injured by exploding fragmentation bombs.
>The toll from depleted uranium-- radiation-induced
>illness--will come later, as it has in Iraq.
>
>Nato's bombing also contributed heavily to infrastructure
>damage, and reconstruction has been slow. Nato's generosity
>was largely exhausted in providing resources to destroy and
>kill--the estimated cost of the military operations against
>Yugoslavia has run in excess of $10 billion, whereas the
>resources spent for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in
>Kosovo have been well under $1 billion. Thus, hundreds of
>thousands remain homeless, jobless, and lacking in basic
>facilities.
>
>Nato's occupation also failed to bring law and order to
>Kosovo. This was partly a consequence of the destruction,
>poverty, and exacerbated hatred produced by the war. But it
>was also a result of the fact that, in direct violation of
>UN Resolution 1244 which called for the "demilitarization"
>of the KLA, under Nato authority the KLA has been
>incorporated into a "Kosovo Protection Corps," thereby
>legalizing and legitimating what until then had been an
>armed rebel force. This, plus the Nato bias in favor of the
>KLA and against the Serbs, has helped institutionalize a
>system of violence and pervasive fear, mainly damaging to
>the minority Serbs, Roma and Turks, but also adversely
>affecting most Kosovo Albanians. On top of this, organized
>crime has soared throughout the region. The British-based
>Jane's Intelligence Review reports that "large numbers of
>international criminals are now seeking refuge in Kosovo"
>(Paul Harris, June 1, 2000). According to a study by the
>International Crisis Group, the areas of southwest Serbia
>(both Kosovo and parts of Serbia proper) where the KLA's
>influence remains greatest have become the preferred "Balkan
>route" for the "heroin trail" between Turkey and Western
>Europe ("What Happened to the KLA," March 3, 2000).
>
>It must be admitted, however, that Nato did succeed in
>"teaching the Serbs a lesson." But what exactly was that
>lesson? Certainly not that ethnic cleansing is unacceptable
>to the Western conscience. Although Nato allegedly waged war
>to terminate ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and although an
>agreement of June 9, 1999, stipulated that Nato would
>"establish and maintain a secure environment for all
>citizens of Kosovo," under Nato's occupation somewhere
>between 60 and 90 percent of Serbs and Roma have left
>Kosovo, mainly because of KLA harassment, home burnings, and
>killing, and a large fraction of Kosovo's Jews and Turks
>have also fled. Thus the biggest story of Nato's 12-month
>occupation is that under Nato's watch, Kosovo's ethnic
>minorities have been subjected to a truly massive
>multi-ethnic cleansing. For the media, however, Nato is
>trying to do its best under difficult circumstances, and
>Milosevic remains the only villain in sight. And they fail
>to see that the only lesson taught the Serbs by Nato has
>been "Don't mess with us"--a lesson devoid of moral content.
>
>Now one year later, Nato's policies have not brought peace
>and stability to Kosovo and the Balkans. Kosovo is still
>legally a part of Yugoslavia, but while a Nato protectorate
>it has been turned over to the Albanians and KLA. This has
>allowed them to do a fine job of ethnic cleansing, but has
>made Kosovo a cauldron of hatred and violence and a likely
>base for further instability and warfare. Unwilling to
>provide large resources for rebuilding, Nato has no
>solutions and no evident "exit strategy." This was not
>"humanitarian intervention," it has been an irresponsible
>misuse of power that made a bad situation worse, gilded over
>with lofty rhetoric.
>
>Edward Herman is co-editor, with Philip Hammond, of Degraded
>Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto, 2000);
>David Peterson is a Chicago-based researcher and journalist.
>
---
DISCORSO DI CEDOMIR PRLINCEVIC, LEADER DELLA COMUNITA' EBRAICA
IN KOSMET, SCACCIATO DALL'UCKFOR, AD AMSTERDAM NELL'OTTOBRE SCORSO
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
SOLDIERS FOR THE TRUTH
"DEFENDING AMERICA NEWSLETTER"
14 June 2000 - FLAG DAY
"When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen."
General George Washington, New York Legislature, 1775
Soldiers For The Truth Foundation, PO Box 63840, Colorado Springs, CO
80962-3840
HTTP://WWW.SFTT.ORG
*****************************************************************
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Terror in Kosovo"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ed.: The truth about Kosovo is still elusive. Was there a War? Did we
really win it? Are we supporting the right people? The following piece
offers a different perspective and questions our current understanding.
Introduced by Ben Works, Balkan scholar and one of our SFTT Trustees,
BenWorks@....
Last October, Colleagues of mine tracked down the head of the small
Jewish
community in Pristina, Kosovo for an interview. Mr Cedemir Prlincevic
confirmed that the Jewish community had been ethnically cleansed by the
KLA
and associated gangsters from Albania who overwhelmed Kosovo as they
flooded
into the province in tandem with NATO's occupation troops.
Today, our troops are surrounded by hostile KLA gunmen determined to
wrest
Kosovo from its native communities, and by sullen Serbs who have about
reached their limit of patience. It is an out-of-control situation.
A longer interview with Mr. Prlincevic is accessible at Mr. Israel's
website
"The Emperors Clothes":
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/ceda.htm,
or www.tenc.net
**********************************************************************
By Cedomir Prlincevic
Archivist & head of the Jewish community of Pristina and Jared Israel 24
October 1999
I appreciate very much the invitations from Global Reflexion to address
the
meeting held last night in Amsterdam, and the invitation from
"Association
Dialogue" to address the Conference tomorrow in Paris...
For months people in the West, and also, through satellite transmission,
those of us in Yugoslavia, have been bombarded with Western media claims
that NATO, that is the US and Germany, want to create, in Kosovo, a
multiethnic, democratic society.
We tend to believe that other people mean what they say. And therefore
I
and others in Pristina, believed that when KFOR, that is NATO, marched
into
Kosovo, they would protect the rights of Serbs and other non-Albanians.
The KFOR troops and the UCK crossed the border into Kosovo together;
they
entered Pristina together. Immediately the UCK and gangster elements
under
their leadership took over government institutions and fanned out, going
after the homes of non-Albanians and pro-Yugoslav Albanians.
I lived in a large complex of nice apartments inhabited by doctors,
lawyers,
university professors, managers of various institutions, the
intellectual
core of Pristina society. Right after KFOR arrived, the gangster
elements
attacked this section, called Milana. They moved up and down through
the
buildings, banging on doors, breaking down doors, throwing tear gas into
people's apartments, forcing them out on pain of death.
The Western media claims that KFOR has been "unable" to control the
action
of "mysterious gangs" who unfortunately have targeted Serbs, nor have
they
the manpower needed to prevent ethnic Albanians from Kosovo from
exacting
revenge. This is simply untrue.
When the Albanians attacked, one of my neighbors (a doctor) called
KFOR. An
English Major arrived with his squad. But the Albanians did not flee.
I
spoke to this Major. I asked him why he didn't do anything. He said
"This
is a job for the Civil Authorities." But you see, by then there were no
civil authorities other than the UCK. He said KFOR was only interested
in
cases of murder.
I showed him documents, confirming that I was the President of the
Jewish
community in Pristina. He replied: "Later." He didn't have time to
examine these papers. While the Major and his squad were there - before
their eyes - the gangsters continued their work. In some cases, when
residents
appealed to these British KFOR troops, the KFOR people took the part of
modern day Solomons. The Albanians explained their plight: "We have no
place to stay tonight." So the KFOR people said, "Why don't you share
this
apartment amongst yourselves!" - in other words, the gangsters were to
move
in with the prey.
KFOR left, the Albanians moved in, and then the Albanians said, "Now
leave
or we will slaughter you."
Under these circumstances, who would stay? We lost everything, years of
our
lives - our lives, and our community, the only place we can ever be at
home - gone. Stolen. About 30,000 people were driven from this huge
complex
in Milana in a matter of days. I have had to flee to tiny quarters in
Belgrade, I and my family, including my 81 year old mother.
The behavior of a large part of the Albanian population was terrible.
They
lied to support the NATO campaign of lies, inventing tales of harassment
and
mass executions. Secretly, and then openly, they supported the UCK.
These
people would never have done such terrible things were it not for years
of
encouragement from two centers - the United States and Germany.
Albanian culture unfortunately includes a strong strain of intolerance;
it
also has a powerful Clan structure which puts Clan leaders in a
dictatorial
position. These two cultural traits have been utilized by NATO to
provide
foot soldiers for modern-day fascism, complete with a liberal rhetorical
cover.
Recently I have tried to communicate to interviewers why the Albanians
left
for Macedonia and Albania during the war. I told them they didn't
understand the significance of certain features of modern Albanian
culture.
It is very closed off, very self-oriented, and very much under the
control
of the leaders of Clans. The word 'clans' is not used here simply to
describe a formal structural feature of Albanian society. Quite the
contrary, clans are the actual, functioning social unit of vast numbers
of
Albanians.
During the bombing, my neighbor, an ethnic Albanian, left. I asked him
why
are you leaving? We're not getting killed in this housing development,
we're all helping each other, and we're all together in the air raid
shelter - why are you leaving? And he just looked at me, and he
said, "I have to. I've been told to leave now. Everyone will be
leaving
now."
And that was that. This man and his wife, who were sophisticated
intellectuals, whose children played with the Serbian children, whom I
had
considered to be friends - they were leaving.
Many opponents of the war thought the UCK was making a big mistake by
terrorizing Albanians. But it wasn't making a mistake. It was making a
point to the clan leaders: we have the backing of NATO and we will kill
Albanians who buck us. Given the existence of anti-Serb racism among
Albanians, this we're-the-winning-team argument brought the leaders into
line.
Huge numbers of Albanians left Kosovo during the bombing. They did not
leave because Serbs were slaughtering them, which was a made-up story.
They
did not leave because they were getting bombed; though they were getting
bombed. They left because they were told to leave by their clan
leaders.
Vast numbers of people from all over the world have protested the
bombing of
Yugoslavia. In doing so they have created a movement out of the
political
shambles of our world.
And yet it is now, after the cessation of bombing, that we have entered
the
worst hell. This terrible fascist-like invasion has created far worse
suffering than the bombing. Some are driven out, some disappear, some
are
murdered and their murders attributed to forces beyond NATO's control.
Some, like the Serbs and Roma of Orahovac, have been imprisoned in a new
Warsaw Ghetto.
I urge those who care about Justice not to remain silent.
---
IL PRESIDENTE DELLA GRANDE ALBANIA ONORA I MARTIRI DELL'UCK
http://www.albaniannews.com
Albanian Daily News
June 14, 2000
President Honours Albanian KLA Volunteers Killed in Kosovo
TIRANA - Albanian President Rexhep Meidani has honoured two Albanians
killed while fighting for the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
against Serbian forces last year, the presidency said on Tuesday.
Meidani, marking the first anniversary of the entry of NATO troops into
Kosovo, acknowledged for the first time the role played by Albanian
volunteers by awarding Indrit Cara and Astrit Suli the Golden Eagle
medal.
Albania has already honoured former NATO commander Wesley Clark with its
highest award for foreigners. The alliance's former Secretary-General,
Javier Solana, will also receive the Skenderbeg Award.
Cara, originally from Kavaja in western Albania, joined Kosovo Albanian
friends who had been living as immigrants in Britain in signing up for
the KLA.
Many Albanian volunteers, most of them former soldiers, joined the ranks
of the KLA, moved by the atrocities Serbian forces had committed and
were committing in Kosovo, some 90 percent of whose population were
ethnic Albanian, or by the prospect of better pay in the irregular army.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
hanno finalmente preso il controllo dell'aereoporto di Pristina.
Viva le truppe italiane!
Viva L'Italia!
Viva l'Albania italiana!
Eia eia alala'!
* ELENCO ATTI TERRORISTICI DAL 24 MAGGIO AL 26 GIUGNO SCORSI
* TRUPPE OCCUPATRICI ARRESTANO SERBO ORGANIZZATORE DELLE PROTESTE
* VERSO LA DISTRUZIONE DEL MONASTERO DI DECANI
* L'ANALISI DELL'ISTITUTO CATO (LINK)
* KOSOVO UN ANNO DOPO TRA MENZOGNE ED OMERTA'
* FLASHBACK: GLI EBREI KOSOVARI SCACCIATI DALL'UCKFOR
* IL PRESIDENTE DELLA GRANDE ALBANIA ONORA I MARTIRI DELL'UCK
---
CRIMINI COMMESSI DAL FANATISMO NAZIONALISTA PANALBANESE
IN KOSMET TRA IL 24 MAGGIO ED IL 26 GIUGNO 2000.
***DA NON RIPORTARE SUI GIORNALI***
(From: John Jay Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: [STOPNATO] [serbrights] [Fwd: sign and email/KOSOVO] STOP
NATO:
¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM )
_________
So far, we've only sent this out to the IHT. Of course, there are many
other
newspapers/TV channels, etc., ...
_________
Sir: - We challenge the International Herald Tribune to publish the
disgraceful diary of evil racial persecution set out below.
We dare the IHT to show its readers, all over the world, what
kind
of a job of "Humanitarian Protection" KFOR troops and UNMIK's so-called
"Peacekeepers" are doing to "keep the peace" in Kosovo today ?... This
is
real news... Why not publish it ?... Let's see how fair and open-minded
a
'great' "Democratic" newspaper can honestly be !
The Western media shows remarkably little interest in the
suffering
of Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo. Sure, we're told of an
occasional incident, here and there, but even then obscured in very
small
print, usually on the inside pages - where are the headlines !
Is
this what is really meant by "Free" Press - the "freedom" merely to pick
and
choose what you tell your readers, strictly according to how its telling
may
or may not suit the agendas of the incumbent political administrators in
Washington ? Do you believe that votes supposedly reflecting American
public
'opinion' formed in this way, on the basis of selective misinformation,
is
anything like an exercise in true 'democracy' ?
Your readers wouldn't ! - If they only knew that's how it
really is
- ! Happy 4th of July !...
All details and statistics below- (strictly according to
routine
nformation known to and monitored by members of the International Red
Cross)
- are matters of official UNMIK record.
All were in Kosovo, an autonomous province of the sovereign
Yugoslav constituent Republic of Serbia - currently occupied and
supposedly
"protected", under UN mandate, by KFOR troops.
This is just a one month catalogue of the racial crime and
brutal
persecution carried out against Serbs and other non-Albanians between 24
May
and 26 June of this year only !
__________________________________________
TERRORIST ACTS COMMITTED BY ALBANIANS,
FORMERLY OF THE (KLA) THE KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY,
BETWEEN 24 MAY - 26 JUNE 2000.
1. Murder of Vladimir Ilic, a Kosovo Serb, 50, on his doorstep at Vitina
on
24 May;
2. Attack on Kosovo Serbs in the village of Dobrotin, Municipality of
Lipljan, on 26 May, on which occasion 4 Serbian civilians were gravely
wounded;
3. Throwing of a hand grenade on a Serbian cafe at Bresje on 26 May, on
which occasion 5 Serbians were gravely wounded;
4. Setting a fire in the Trepca complex in southern Kosovska Mitrovica
on 6
May which caused enormous material damage;
5. Attack on a group of Serbs in front of a store in the village of
Cernica, on 28 May, in the Municipality of Gnjilane, on which occasion
Tihomir Trifunovic, Vojin Vasic and a 5-year old, Milos Petrovic, were
killed and two other Serbian civilians were gravely wounded;
6. Armed attacks on a local police patrol in the village of Konculj on
23
and 24 May and a mortar attack on the members of local Kosovo Serbian
police, on 30 May, in the village of Lucane ;
7. Attack on Serbian civilians in the village of Klokot, Municipality
of
Vitina, on 31 May, in which Lepterka Marinkovic, 67, was killed and
another
3 Serbs were gravely wounded;
8. Murder of Milutin Trajkovic, 33, a Serbian, in the village of Babin
Most,
on 31 May, in the Municipality of Obilic;
9. Murder of Iso Heta, 71, an elderly retired member of the Ministry of
the
Interior, on 31 May;
10. Throwing of a hand grenade on the house of Kosovo Serb, Djordje
Velickovic, on 1 June, at Obilic, on which occasion Misko Todorovic was
also gravely wounded;
11. Killing of two Serbs, Sinisa Dimic and Vlastimir Milic, and
wounding of
3 others on 2 June, two of them underage children, in an automobile
which
ran over an anti-tank mine planted by Albanian terrorists the night
before
on the road between the Serbian villages of Ugljari and Preoce near
Pristina;
12. Burning down of a number of Serbian houses in both Prizren and
Decani on
3 June;
13. Continued arbitrary arrests of Kosovo Serbian civilians by KFOR and
UNMIK, on 7 June, of which one of the most drastic examples was the
arrest
of Nebojsa Stojanovic, 30, at Gracanica, who was apprehended while in an
intensive care unit following a serious injury sustained after KFOR
opened
automatic fire on Serbs protesting about the terror of the so-called
Kosovo
Liberation Army, (of which this catalogue is one brief example);
14. Brutal attack and wounding of Jovan Cerovic, 55, a Serb, on 8 June,
by
10 terrorists with clubs in the district of Obilic;
15. Burning of a number of Serbian houses at Obilic on 9 June;
16. Anduction of Safet Pucurica, 37, a worker from Kosovska Mitrovica on
10
June, on the road Vucitrn-Kosovska Mitrovica;
17. Armed attack on an automobile driven by 4 Goranci (non-Albanian
Muslim)
on 9 June, near Orcus, Municipality of Gora, on which occasion one of
these
civilians was severely wounded;
18. Burning of Serbian houses at Obilic and the dynamiting of Roma
(Gypsy)
houses on 10 June, in the village of Novo Rujce, Municipality of
Lipljan;
19. Setting a fire in the Kosovo Serbian restaurant "Lotos" on 10 June;
20. Mortar attack on Serbian houses at Orahovac on 12 and 13 June;
21. Mortar attack on Serbian houses at Obilic on 14 June;
22. Abduction, rape and mutilation of a 14-year old Serbian girl in
Pristina
on 14 June;
23. Killing of Zlatibor Denic and Borko Filipovic and the wounding of
Dejan
Filipovic on 15 June, the latter losing both his arms and legs, in an
automobile which ran over an anti-tank mine planted by the terrorists of
the
Kosovo Liberation Army on the road between the villages of Preoce and
Lepina;
24. Attack on humanitarian convoys heading for Serbian Strpce on both 30
May
and on 16 June, in the villages of Radivojce and Pozarane;
25. Mortar attack on the Decani monastery near Pec, on the night of 21
and
22 June. Decani monastery was built in 1335. It is one of the treasures
of
Serbian cultural heritage, housing frescoes of great value and a large
number of priceless ancient manuscripts and icons;
26. Throwing of a hand grenade on the house of a Serb, Toma Ivkovic, in
Gnjilane on 21 June, on which occasion Mr. Ivkovic's mother was wounded;
27. Brutal abduction of 2 Serbs, Vlada, 80, and Persa Miletic, 50, on 21
June, in the village of Mali Trnovac, in the Municipality of Bujanovac.
Their fate is still unknown;
28. Abduction of Serb, Bozidar Markovic, 60, on 23 June, in the village
of
Susice, Municipality of Strpci ;
29. Abduction of 14-year Serbian boy Jovica Milic, while tending his
herd on
24 June, in the village of Susice, Municipality of Stprce. He managed to
escape, sustaining serious injuries and psychological stress;
30. Mortar attack on eleven Serbian houses in the village of Velika
Hoca, on
24 June in the Municipality of Orahovac ;
31. Abduction of Kosovo Serbian, Tomislav Markovic, on the
Podujevo-Pristina
road on 24 June;
32. Murder of Kica Milanovic, 50, a Kosovo Serbian, on his doorstep at
Kosovo Polje on 25 June;
33. Attempt to abduct Milorad Soric, a Kosovo Serb civilian, in front of
his
house on 26 June, in Orahovac, on which occasion he escaped but was
seriously injured."
The UN calls this - "Humanitarian Protection" ?.... What would
your
readers call it ???...They were shown more of a single child's boot
(blue -
remember it ?) than they will ever see of the continuing inhuman misery
inflicted, every day, on Serbian men, women and children in Kosovo.
John Jay
London
ppdscat@...
"Human rights are for ALL humans, including Serbs!"
---
ARRESTATO DALLE TRUPPE DI OCCUPAZIONE STATUNITENSI SERBO
ORGANIZZATORE DELLE PROTESTE CONTRO IL REGIME RAZZISTA DELLA KFOR
> > Danas, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
> > July 6, 2000
> >
> > Radojko Kecic arrested
> >
> > Strpce (Beta) - American KFOR soldiers arrested
> > photographer Radojko Kecic
> > of Strpce yesterday for organizing the demonstration
> > of the Serbs in this
> > town in the south of Kosovo. Kecic, the owner of a
> > photo shop, was taken to
> > the American military base Bondsteel near Urosevac.
> >
> > Approximately ten Polish and American special forces
> > soldiers arrested
> > Kecic while he was purchasing food at a nearby kiosk.
> > According to Serb
> > sources in Strpce, American KFOR soldiers have created
> > a list of 46 persons
> > of Serb nationality who participated in the
> > demonstrations and road blocks
> > in Strpce. Kecic, the same sources state, is the first
> > from that list to be
> > arrested.
> >
> > Translated by S. Lazovic (July 6, 2000)
---
VERSO LA DISTRUZIONE DEL MONASTERO MEDIOEVALE DI DECANI.
SILENZIO ASSOLUTO DEGLI "INTELLETTUALI" SERVILI D'EUROPA
SUL VANDALISMO CONTINUATO A SFONDO RAZZISTA AI DANNI DEI
MONUMENTI DELLA CULTURA ORTODOSSA IN KOSOVO-METOHIJA
> From: Kiehl <emilia@...>
> To: Undisclosed.Recipients@...
> Subject: Fw: DECANI IN PERIL - need assistance
> Date: Jueves 22 de Junio de 2000 12:00 PM
>
>
>
> Date: 22 June 2000 09:30
> Subject: Fw: DECANI IN PERIL - need assistance
>
>
> >Dear all, please see if you can help and/or forward to anyone who you
may
> >think can do something about this. Love Branka
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Bob Petrovich <bojanp@...>
> >To: Branka Perry <branka.jp@...>
> >Date: 22 June 2000 04:01
> >Subject: DECANI IN PERIL - need assistance
> >
> >
> >>
> >>Branka, I need help, someone who can write
> >>letter in precise legalese on subject explained below.
> >>
> >>I plan to press Finnish government for
> >>their role in destruction of Christian
> >> shrines in Kosovo !
> >>
> >>There is no time, we have to start Friday, to time delivery for
> >>Monday morning.
> >>
> >>20 people from 10 or so OSCE countries will do the trick.
> >>
> >>For success, we need several waves of 20 people spread in several days.
> >>
> >>I have already collected emails and phone numbers of
> >>people in Finnish Foreign ministry, Public prosecutor for international
> >>affairs and others in Ministry
> >>of justice and Government ombudsman. I will distibute that list to
anyone
> >>who
> >>agree to actively participate ( send e-mail and
> >>later follow up over the phone)
> >>
> >>
> >>Under Finnish law, anyone REGARDLESS OF NATIONALITY can file
> >>complaint for criminal conduct of Finnish public servant. They forgot
to
> >>change rules with advent of the Net.
> >>
> >>Please let me know what you think about it, can you help and if your
group
> >>want to participate.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Best,
> >>
> >>B.
> >>-------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>Dear xxxx
> >>
> >>Maybe you have already seen the urgent appeal of
> >>Fr. Sava regarding Decani Monastery.
> >>
> >>It is not only theft of private property and flagrant
> >>breach of the law, it is much worse.
> >>Monastery sits at the bottom of the mountain and water
> >>tower 150ft above it presents a real threat. Sabotage
> >>may cause water blast able of destroying monastery and
> >>killing everyone inside.
> >>
> >>The monks from the brotherhood are the last remaining
> >>Serbs in Decani area. All others minority Serbs are
> >>ethnically cleansed with silent approval of UNMIK and
> >>KFOR.
> >>
> >>Theft of Monastery land and plan to put Monastery in
> >>peril can not be seen but attempt to eradicate Serbs
> >>from the area.
> >>
> >>In Decani, local UNMIK administrator is Finnish.
> >>
> >>In another case, Finnish commander of KFOR approves of
> >>
> >>destruction of religious shrines.
> >>
> >>I want to stage blitz on Finnish institutions and ask
> >>the questions of Finnish Government involvement.
> >>Also, plan to ask for help Finnish Orthodox Church.
> >>
> >>Please could you help me and elaborate breaches of the
> >>law in both cases. I am lay person and can not do it.
> >>
> >>I will do the rest. Finland is "the most wired country
> >>in the world" and I intend to use it to the fullest
> >>extent.
> >>
> >>Every member of government and judicary
> >>is reachable by e-mail.
> >>
> >>If you agree with strategy, I will send you the list
> >>of all relevant e-mail addresses of all relevant
> >>institutions in Finland so you could start next wave
> >>
> >>Very truly yours,
> >>
> >>Bob Petrovich
> >>Willowdale, Canada
> >>mailto:bojanp@...
> >>
> >>-----------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>Name: Ms.Helina Kokarinnen, Finland,
> >>Function: municipal administrator for Decani, Kosovo,
> >>Yugoslavia
> >>
> >>Illegal acts commited:
> >>
> >>1. Violation of private property. Ms.Kokarinnen issued
> >>licence for ground preparation works for building
> >>of water tower on private property without approval of
> >>the land owner (Serbian Orthodox Church). Work has
> >>commneced, tresspassers cut the ancient wood and stole
> >>lumber.
> >>
> >>2. endangering cultural monument - medieval monastery.
> >>Planned Water tower 50 meters above Monastery
> >>represent threat to Monastery . Sabotage or structural
> >>failure will cause water tidal wave able to destroy
> >>monastery.
> >>
> >>3. putting human lives in peril.monastery is
> >>permanently inhabited by monk brotherhood.
> >>
> >>4. failure to prevent criminal act -theft of private
> >>property ( lumber)
> >>
> >>Evidence:
> >>
> >>Fr. Sava possess copies of UNMIK documents.
> >>
> >>Text of documents can be seen at:
> >>http://www.egroups.com/message/yugoslaviainfo/2064?&start=2038
> >>
> >>Fr. Sava can be reached at:
> >>
> >>Fr. Sava
> >>Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Kosovo and Metohija
> >>Gracanica Monastery, Pristina,Kosovo and Metohija
> >>http://www.decani.yunet.com
> >>http://www.kosovo.com
> >>Sat phone:: +870-762-146-565
> >>Mobile phone: +381-63-371-909
> >>Fax (voice mail) +44-207-681-2601
> >>------------------------------------------------------
> >>pattern:
> >>-------------------------------------------------------
> >>Name: Colonel Arto Raty, Finland
> >>Function: head of KFOR operations in Slovinje,
> >>Kosovo, Yugoslavia
> >>
> >>Illegal act:
> >>public incitement of ethnic cleansing
> >>public incitement of dectruction of religious shrine
> >>activity contrary to given duty (enforcing UNSC 1244)
> >>
> >>Evidence:
> >>
> >>"If a church has value as a historical place then
> >>clearly it should be guarded,but if it has no
> >>historical value and there is no chance of the
> >>Serbs returning anytime soon to the area, then
> >>it should be gently dismantled,"
> >>
> >>Finnish Colonel Arto Raty
> >>head of KFOR operations in Slovinje
> >>Source: REUTERS
> >>http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000613_699.html
> >>
> >>For importance of Churches for communities see the
> >>letter of World Council of Churches:
> >>
>
>>http://platon.ee.duth.gr/data/maillist-archives/orthodoxia/1999_12/msg0007
> 2
> >.
> >>html
> >>
> >>Church in Slovinje, where Col. Raty is head of KFOR
> >>was destroyed by Albanian externists.
> >>
> >>http://www.kosovo.com/crucified/default.htm#_catalog
> From: "Nancy A. Hey" <cattynancy@...> (by way of Herman de
> Tollenaere <hermantl@...>)
> To: office@...
> Subject: Decani old growth forest threatened in Kosovo [fwd]
> Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 18:27:32 +0200
>
> [small spelling corrections made]
>
> Subject: Decani Monastery Wood being Destroyed with UNMIK written
permission
>
> URGENT.....URGENT.....URGENT
>
> ALBANIANS DESTROYING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MONASTERY FOREST WITH UNMIK
WRITTEN
> PERMISSION
>
> I am taking this opportunity to inform you about very deplorable events
> which happened around Decani monastery in the last few days. According to
> the written permission of the municipal administrator for Decani, Ms.
> Helina Kokarinnen, local Albanian contractors were allowed to start
> cutting the monastery century old pine wood just 50 m above monastery of
> Decani. The cutting of wood was in fact a preparation for the building of
a
> water tower which is a part of a larger project of enlargement of the
water
> system for Decani. This project is undertaken by the Italian Company
COOPI.
> According to the information received
> yesterday from COOPI the plan was made in September 1999 and was approved
> by local UNMIK office.
>
> Neither the UNMIK administrator nor KFOR authorities or COOPI ever
> contacted the Monastery authorities about this undertaking, although the
> cutting of the wood and the clearing of the ground for a water tower is
> done on the property of Decani Monastery. The monks have reacted the very
> first day and requested from KFOR to stop the destruction of the monastery
> forest but KFOR answered with almost two days of delay granting the
> security to the monks to go to the location just 50 meters from the
> monastery. The monks had not dared go alone because of constant danger
from
> Kosovo Albanians who had even launched a mortar attacks three months ago
> against the monastery and make great pressures against the brotherhood.
>
> The consequences of this illegal operation are deplorable. More than 40
> cubic meters of pine wood have been cut and stolen by ethnic Albanians in
> their trucks ( 8 big trees). At least 20 more trees have been burned
> because the contractors wanted to be sure that the terrain is not mined
and
> conducted a mine-clearing operation destroying many other trees in the
> area. It is very important to know that this wood had been planted three
> centuries ago by Decani monks and majority of the cut pines, which were a
> landmark of Decani Monastery, are more than 150 years old. Therefore this
> is not only an issue of violation of the private property by UN
authorities
> and KFOR but also an environmental violation of one of the most beautiful
> and oldest pine forest in Kosovo.
>
> Decani Monastery and the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Kosovo and Metohija
> have condemned this illegal act in strongest terms. The Church will ask
> from the Special Representative of the Secretary General Dr. Bernard
> Kouchner to launch a full investigation on this issue and the
> recompensation for the done damage.
>
> Attachment:
> Copy of the letter by which the UN administrator Ms HELINA KOKARINNEN
> granted a written permission to Kosovo Albanian contractor to cut
> unspecified number of trees in the monastery forest. Ms. Kokarinnen in
> her conversation with the monks behaved as if she did not know exactly
> what it was all about. This morning she left to Finland without any
> explanation to the monastery which requested an urgent meeting for today.
>
> >------------------------------------
> To KFOR - Decan/Decani
>
> June 14, 2000
>
> I have discussed with Nue Mulaj who is working for the organization
> COOPI (ID card no 26) as an excavator driver. Nue Mulaj is ready to cut
the
> trees needed for water supply working. According to Mr. Mulaj he has
agreed
> about cutting and carrying the trees with COOPI, wood company Djeravica
and
> KFOR representative. Mr. Mulaj can take and carry the trees for free from
> the forest.
>
> Helina Kokarinen
> Municipal administrator Municipality of Decan/Decani
>
> >--------------------------------------------
> With this letter which was shown by KFOR to the Monastery Authorities
> (we have a copy) it is evident that UNMIK administrator knew all from
> the beginning and in fact issued a blank permission to Kosovo Albanians to
> cut as many trees as they like. From COOPI authorities the Monastery
> learned that the location for this water tower was chosen by Albanians and
> that from the technical point of view the tower may have been constructed
> on another location. The monastery authorities think that the local
> Albanians deliberately chose this location in order to make a pressure on
> the monastery, violate its property and steal the valuable pine trees
free.
> It is sad that UNMIK and KFOR played such a deplorable role in all this.
>
> Fr. Sava
>
>
> >--
> Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Kosovo and Metohija
> Gracanica Monastery, Pristina,
> Kosovo and Metohija
>
> http://www.decani.yunet.com
> http://www.kosovo.com
>
> decani@...
> Sat phone:: +870-762-146-565
> Mobile phone: +381-63-371-909
> Fax (voice mail) +44-207-681-2601
>
>
>
---
L'ANALISI DELLA SITUAZIONE SECONDO L'ISTITUTO CATO
Cato Policy Analysis No. 373
June 10, 2000
Dubious Anniversary: Kosovo One Year Later
by Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz
Christopher Layne is a visiting fellow in foreign policy studies at the
Cato Institute. Benjamin
Schwarz is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly
Executive Summary
One year after NATO ended its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the
Clinton
administration’s Kosovo policy is a conspicuous failure. Kosovo is now
the scene of a brutal ethnic
cleansing campaign carried out by NATO’s erstwhile de facto ally, the
Kosovo Liberation Army,
an organization profoundly inimical to America’s interests and professed
values. The KLA is also
currently fomenting an insurgency elsewhere in Serbia, which promises to
destabilize the Balkans
even further.
The Clinton administration has embarked on yet another
multi-billion-dollar nation-building
adventure, which many analysts suggest will entangle the U.S. military
for a decade or longer.
This situation could have been avoided. Because of its inept diplomacy
and strategic
miscalculation, the administration bears a large measure of
responsibility for both Kosovo’s
humanitarian crisis a year ago and the KLA’s postwar thuggery. It is now
clear that the
administration’s claims of "horrific slaughter" and attempts at
"genocide" by the Serbs were gross
exaggerations designed to whip up
support for intervention from a skeptical Congress and public.
Confronting Kosovo’s depressing prospects, the administration consoles
itself that, as President
Clinton says, it "did the right thing in the right way" when it
intervened. Even granting that
doubtful premise, this is not enough to exonerate policymakers from
their responsibility for the
situation the United States confronts today. In the real world,
policymakers are judged by the
consequences of their actions, not by their intentions. The Kosovo war
has not vindicated the
administration’s doctrine of "virtuous power." By waging an avoidable
war, the Clinton
administration has saddled
the United States with a host of intractable problems.
Full Text of Policy Analysis No. 373 (PDF, 19 pgs, 79 Kb)
---
KOSOVO UN ANNO DOPO: MENZOGNE ED OMERTA'
>Original message:
>From: "robert rodvik" <robrod@...>
>To: <Undisclosed Recipients>
>Subject: Fw: KOSOVO ONE YEAR ON - LIES AND DECEIT
>Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 13:13:43 -0700
>
>
>
>
>Date: Friday, June 23, 2000 1:07 PM
>Subject: KOSOVO ONE YEAR ON - LIES AND DECEIT
>
>
> In keeping with its propaganda role, CBC-TV continues the distortions
>and spin that characterized its coverage during NATO's bombing spree. The
>Ministry of Truth indicates that tonight, Friday June 23, 2000 that it is
>going to once again reprise the situation in Kosovo and surrounding
>environs. You can tune in to The National at 10p.m. and get all the latest
>spin on the National Magazine, which will most likely reiterate that the
>crimes of the Serbs were so evil that NATO had no other choice.
> The sad part of all this is that the Canadian taxpayer funds this
>propaganda operation.
>NIL ILLIGITIMUS CARBORUNDUM
>RR
>____________________________________________________________
>
>
>
>
>
>KOSOVO ONE YEAR LATER: FROM SERB REPRESSION TO
>NATO-SPONSORED ETHNIC CLEANSING
>Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
>
>Now a little more than one year after the ending of Nato's
>78- day bombing of Yugoslavia and the beginning of Nato
>control of Kosovo (June 10-12, 1999), the mainstream media
>have been exceedingly reticent in offering the public
>serious retrospectives on the war and its aftermath. One
>reason for this may be that Nato's bombing campaign and
>year-long occupation not only failed to realize most of
>Nato's proclaimed objectives, but the intervention also
>produced a far higher level of ethnic violence than had
>existed previously--first against ethnic Albanians, then
>later against all ethnic minorities. As the Norwegian
>foreign affairs analyst Jan Oberg notes, "the largest ethnic
>cleansing in the Balkans [in percentage that fled] has
>happened under the very eyes of 45,000 Nato troops" in
>occupied Kosovo.
>
>True, Nato did eventually succeed in getting Belgrade to
>withdraw the Serb army from Kosovo. But in the process,
>Nato's bombing campaign triggered a Serb military response
>against ethnic Albanians that Nato officials themselves had
>predicted would occur; a response that was based not on the
>unprovoked nastiness of Serbs but rather on rational
>military calculations. Expulsions were greatest where
>fighting was heaviest, mainly in territories controlled by
>the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Indeed, in the words of
>the OSCE, much of the refugee flow was designed "to keep
>main communications routes open to supply Serb forces with
>material, fuel, and food." Moreover, although Nato had
>denied any collaboration with rebel forces during the
>bombing, top Nato officials now admit that KLA guerrillas
>were "constantly on the phone to Nato," and that Nato had
>"instigated" a major KLA offensive (Paul Richter, LA Times,
>June 10, 2000). President Clinton may have announced that
>the main purpose of bombing was "to deter an even bloodier
>offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo" (March 24,
>1999), but as the bombing increased it exponentially (as
>well as adding Nato's contribution to Albanian pain), that
>aim was clearly not met.
>
>With the increase in violence following the bombing, Nato
>officials quickly announced that the Serb attacks and
>expulsions would have taken place anyway, under a
>pre-arranged plan the Serbs allegedly called "Operation
>Horseshoe." But no mention had ever been made of such a plan
>prior to the bombing, and a pre-war German Foreign Office
>report had even denied that Serb actions in Kosovo
>constituted "ethnic cleansing;" instead, the report found
>that the Serb military campaign was designed to quell an
>insurgency. UN Special Envoy Jiri Dienstbier says the same:
>"Before the bombing Albanians were not driven away on the
>basis of ethnic principle. [They were] victims of the brutal
>war between the Yugoslav army and the Kosovo Liberation
>Army" (CTK National News Wire, April 20, 2000). The fact
>that Belgrade was willing to allow 2,000 OSCE observers into
>Kosovo (although the OSCE contingent never exceeded 1,400),
>and that it objected strongly to their removal before Nato
>launched its bombing, is also inconsistent with a planned
>"Operation Horseshoe." As the retired German Brigadier
>General, and now a consultant with the OSCE, D. Heinz Loquai
>argues in his recent book, Der Kosovo-Konflikt Wege in einen
>Vermeidbaren Krieg ("The Kosovo Conflict: The Road to an
>Avoidable War"), the German Foreign Ministry's revelation
>two weeks into the war that it possessed intelligence
>confirming the existence of "Operation Horseshoe" was an
>outright fabrication culled from Bulgarian intelligence
>reports and the imagination of Nato military propagandists.
>None of this, however, has prevented apologists for Nato's
>war from repeating the lie that Operation Allied Force was
>justified by the imminent implementation of this mythical
>plan to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo of its Albanian
>population. (On June 11, 2000, the ineffable George
>Robertson asked Jonathan Dimbleby on Britain's ITV to
>"imagine if almost 2 million refugees had been expelled...if
>Milosevic had succeeded with that ethnic cleansing.")
>
>In the face of the Nato-induced surge in violence in March
>and April 1999, Nato officials changed course and proclaimed
>that their new main objective was returning the Kosovo
>Albanians to their homes quickly and safely; and with the
>help of the media Nato successfully portrayed the bombing as
>a response to the mass exodus rather than its cause. But
>even this new objective was met only in part--the Albanians
>who had fled Kosovo did return quickly, but their safety and
>welfare were compromised by several factors. One was that
>Nato bombs had killed and seriously injured many hundreds of
>fleeing Albanians. Nato also used both deadly cluster bombs
>and depleted uranium munitions in Kosovo, a choice of
>weapons not conducive to the long-run safety of the
>returnees. To date, an estimated 100 people have been killed
>and many hundreds injured by exploding fragmentation bombs.
>The toll from depleted uranium-- radiation-induced
>illness--will come later, as it has in Iraq.
>
>Nato's bombing also contributed heavily to infrastructure
>damage, and reconstruction has been slow. Nato's generosity
>was largely exhausted in providing resources to destroy and
>kill--the estimated cost of the military operations against
>Yugoslavia has run in excess of $10 billion, whereas the
>resources spent for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in
>Kosovo have been well under $1 billion. Thus, hundreds of
>thousands remain homeless, jobless, and lacking in basic
>facilities.
>
>Nato's occupation also failed to bring law and order to
>Kosovo. This was partly a consequence of the destruction,
>poverty, and exacerbated hatred produced by the war. But it
>was also a result of the fact that, in direct violation of
>UN Resolution 1244 which called for the "demilitarization"
>of the KLA, under Nato authority the KLA has been
>incorporated into a "Kosovo Protection Corps," thereby
>legalizing and legitimating what until then had been an
>armed rebel force. This, plus the Nato bias in favor of the
>KLA and against the Serbs, has helped institutionalize a
>system of violence and pervasive fear, mainly damaging to
>the minority Serbs, Roma and Turks, but also adversely
>affecting most Kosovo Albanians. On top of this, organized
>crime has soared throughout the region. The British-based
>Jane's Intelligence Review reports that "large numbers of
>international criminals are now seeking refuge in Kosovo"
>(Paul Harris, June 1, 2000). According to a study by the
>International Crisis Group, the areas of southwest Serbia
>(both Kosovo and parts of Serbia proper) where the KLA's
>influence remains greatest have become the preferred "Balkan
>route" for the "heroin trail" between Turkey and Western
>Europe ("What Happened to the KLA," March 3, 2000).
>
>It must be admitted, however, that Nato did succeed in
>"teaching the Serbs a lesson." But what exactly was that
>lesson? Certainly not that ethnic cleansing is unacceptable
>to the Western conscience. Although Nato allegedly waged war
>to terminate ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and although an
>agreement of June 9, 1999, stipulated that Nato would
>"establish and maintain a secure environment for all
>citizens of Kosovo," under Nato's occupation somewhere
>between 60 and 90 percent of Serbs and Roma have left
>Kosovo, mainly because of KLA harassment, home burnings, and
>killing, and a large fraction of Kosovo's Jews and Turks
>have also fled. Thus the biggest story of Nato's 12-month
>occupation is that under Nato's watch, Kosovo's ethnic
>minorities have been subjected to a truly massive
>multi-ethnic cleansing. For the media, however, Nato is
>trying to do its best under difficult circumstances, and
>Milosevic remains the only villain in sight. And they fail
>to see that the only lesson taught the Serbs by Nato has
>been "Don't mess with us"--a lesson devoid of moral content.
>
>Now one year later, Nato's policies have not brought peace
>and stability to Kosovo and the Balkans. Kosovo is still
>legally a part of Yugoslavia, but while a Nato protectorate
>it has been turned over to the Albanians and KLA. This has
>allowed them to do a fine job of ethnic cleansing, but has
>made Kosovo a cauldron of hatred and violence and a likely
>base for further instability and warfare. Unwilling to
>provide large resources for rebuilding, Nato has no
>solutions and no evident "exit strategy." This was not
>"humanitarian intervention," it has been an irresponsible
>misuse of power that made a bad situation worse, gilded over
>with lofty rhetoric.
>
>Edward Herman is co-editor, with Philip Hammond, of Degraded
>Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto, 2000);
>David Peterson is a Chicago-based researcher and journalist.
>
---
DISCORSO DI CEDOMIR PRLINCEVIC, LEADER DELLA COMUNITA' EBRAICA
IN KOSMET, SCACCIATO DALL'UCKFOR, AD AMSTERDAM NELL'OTTOBRE SCORSO
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
SOLDIERS FOR THE TRUTH
"DEFENDING AMERICA NEWSLETTER"
14 June 2000 - FLAG DAY
"When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen."
General George Washington, New York Legislature, 1775
Soldiers For The Truth Foundation, PO Box 63840, Colorado Springs, CO
80962-3840
HTTP://WWW.SFTT.ORG
*****************************************************************
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Terror in Kosovo"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ed.: The truth about Kosovo is still elusive. Was there a War? Did we
really win it? Are we supporting the right people? The following piece
offers a different perspective and questions our current understanding.
Introduced by Ben Works, Balkan scholar and one of our SFTT Trustees,
BenWorks@....
Last October, Colleagues of mine tracked down the head of the small
Jewish
community in Pristina, Kosovo for an interview. Mr Cedemir Prlincevic
confirmed that the Jewish community had been ethnically cleansed by the
KLA
and associated gangsters from Albania who overwhelmed Kosovo as they
flooded
into the province in tandem with NATO's occupation troops.
Today, our troops are surrounded by hostile KLA gunmen determined to
wrest
Kosovo from its native communities, and by sullen Serbs who have about
reached their limit of patience. It is an out-of-control situation.
A longer interview with Mr. Prlincevic is accessible at Mr. Israel's
website
"The Emperors Clothes":
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/ceda.htm,
or www.tenc.net
**********************************************************************
By Cedomir Prlincevic
Archivist & head of the Jewish community of Pristina and Jared Israel 24
October 1999
I appreciate very much the invitations from Global Reflexion to address
the
meeting held last night in Amsterdam, and the invitation from
"Association
Dialogue" to address the Conference tomorrow in Paris...
For months people in the West, and also, through satellite transmission,
those of us in Yugoslavia, have been bombarded with Western media claims
that NATO, that is the US and Germany, want to create, in Kosovo, a
multiethnic, democratic society.
We tend to believe that other people mean what they say. And therefore
I
and others in Pristina, believed that when KFOR, that is NATO, marched
into
Kosovo, they would protect the rights of Serbs and other non-Albanians.
The KFOR troops and the UCK crossed the border into Kosovo together;
they
entered Pristina together. Immediately the UCK and gangster elements
under
their leadership took over government institutions and fanned out, going
after the homes of non-Albanians and pro-Yugoslav Albanians.
I lived in a large complex of nice apartments inhabited by doctors,
lawyers,
university professors, managers of various institutions, the
intellectual
core of Pristina society. Right after KFOR arrived, the gangster
elements
attacked this section, called Milana. They moved up and down through
the
buildings, banging on doors, breaking down doors, throwing tear gas into
people's apartments, forcing them out on pain of death.
The Western media claims that KFOR has been "unable" to control the
action
of "mysterious gangs" who unfortunately have targeted Serbs, nor have
they
the manpower needed to prevent ethnic Albanians from Kosovo from
exacting
revenge. This is simply untrue.
When the Albanians attacked, one of my neighbors (a doctor) called
KFOR. An
English Major arrived with his squad. But the Albanians did not flee.
I
spoke to this Major. I asked him why he didn't do anything. He said
"This
is a job for the Civil Authorities." But you see, by then there were no
civil authorities other than the UCK. He said KFOR was only interested
in
cases of murder.
I showed him documents, confirming that I was the President of the
Jewish
community in Pristina. He replied: "Later." He didn't have time to
examine these papers. While the Major and his squad were there - before
their eyes - the gangsters continued their work. In some cases, when
residents
appealed to these British KFOR troops, the KFOR people took the part of
modern day Solomons. The Albanians explained their plight: "We have no
place to stay tonight." So the KFOR people said, "Why don't you share
this
apartment amongst yourselves!" - in other words, the gangsters were to
move
in with the prey.
KFOR left, the Albanians moved in, and then the Albanians said, "Now
leave
or we will slaughter you."
Under these circumstances, who would stay? We lost everything, years of
our
lives - our lives, and our community, the only place we can ever be at
home - gone. Stolen. About 30,000 people were driven from this huge
complex
in Milana in a matter of days. I have had to flee to tiny quarters in
Belgrade, I and my family, including my 81 year old mother.
The behavior of a large part of the Albanian population was terrible.
They
lied to support the NATO campaign of lies, inventing tales of harassment
and
mass executions. Secretly, and then openly, they supported the UCK.
These
people would never have done such terrible things were it not for years
of
encouragement from two centers - the United States and Germany.
Albanian culture unfortunately includes a strong strain of intolerance;
it
also has a powerful Clan structure which puts Clan leaders in a
dictatorial
position. These two cultural traits have been utilized by NATO to
provide
foot soldiers for modern-day fascism, complete with a liberal rhetorical
cover.
Recently I have tried to communicate to interviewers why the Albanians
left
for Macedonia and Albania during the war. I told them they didn't
understand the significance of certain features of modern Albanian
culture.
It is very closed off, very self-oriented, and very much under the
control
of the leaders of Clans. The word 'clans' is not used here simply to
describe a formal structural feature of Albanian society. Quite the
contrary, clans are the actual, functioning social unit of vast numbers
of
Albanians.
During the bombing, my neighbor, an ethnic Albanian, left. I asked him
why
are you leaving? We're not getting killed in this housing development,
we're all helping each other, and we're all together in the air raid
shelter - why are you leaving? And he just looked at me, and he
said, "I have to. I've been told to leave now. Everyone will be
leaving
now."
And that was that. This man and his wife, who were sophisticated
intellectuals, whose children played with the Serbian children, whom I
had
considered to be friends - they were leaving.
Many opponents of the war thought the UCK was making a big mistake by
terrorizing Albanians. But it wasn't making a mistake. It was making a
point to the clan leaders: we have the backing of NATO and we will kill
Albanians who buck us. Given the existence of anti-Serb racism among
Albanians, this we're-the-winning-team argument brought the leaders into
line.
Huge numbers of Albanians left Kosovo during the bombing. They did not
leave because Serbs were slaughtering them, which was a made-up story.
They
did not leave because they were getting bombed; though they were getting
bombed. They left because they were told to leave by their clan
leaders.
Vast numbers of people from all over the world have protested the
bombing of
Yugoslavia. In doing so they have created a movement out of the
political
shambles of our world.
And yet it is now, after the cessation of bombing, that we have entered
the
worst hell. This terrible fascist-like invasion has created far worse
suffering than the bombing. Some are driven out, some disappear, some
are
murdered and their murders attributed to forces beyond NATO's control.
Some, like the Serbs and Roma of Orahovac, have been imprisoned in a new
Warsaw Ghetto.
I urge those who care about Justice not to remain silent.
---
IL PRESIDENTE DELLA GRANDE ALBANIA ONORA I MARTIRI DELL'UCK
http://www.albaniannews.com
Albanian Daily News
June 14, 2000
President Honours Albanian KLA Volunteers Killed in Kosovo
TIRANA - Albanian President Rexhep Meidani has honoured two Albanians
killed while fighting for the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
against Serbian forces last year, the presidency said on Tuesday.
Meidani, marking the first anniversary of the entry of NATO troops into
Kosovo, acknowledged for the first time the role played by Albanian
volunteers by awarding Indrit Cara and Astrit Suli the Golden Eagle
medal.
Albania has already honoured former NATO commander Wesley Clark with its
highest award for foreigners. The alliance's former Secretary-General,
Javier Solana, will also receive the Skenderbeg Award.
Cara, originally from Kavaja in western Albania, joined Kosovo Albanian
friends who had been living as immigrants in Britain in signing up for
the KLA.
Many Albanian volunteers, most of them former soldiers, joined the ranks
of the KLA, moved by the atrocities Serbian forces had committed and
were committing in Kosovo, some 90 percent of whose population were
ethnic Albanian, or by the prospect of better pay in the irregular army.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* BOLOGNA 10 LUGLIO 2000: ZASTAVA !
* CAMPEGGIO DELLA UNIONE PATRIOTTICA JUGOSLAVA
* MOVIMENTO AUSTRIACO DI SOLIDARIETA' ALLA JUGOSLAVIA
* NUOVE IMPORTANTI ADESIONI AL CAMPEGGIO DI ASSISI
* UN LIBRO CONTRO LA NATO DEL COMANDANTE FRANCESE "FILOSERBO" BUNEL
* FIGHT TO WIN: UN CD PER MUMIA
===
BOLOGNA 10 LUGLIO 2000: ZASTAVA !
Art.11: L'Italia ripudia la guerra come mezzo di risoluzione delle
controversie internazionali. Non funziona. In nessuna parte del mondo
bombardamenti ed embargo hanno mai rafforzato la democrazia, e intanto
la
popolazione jugoslava, senza potere come noi, soffre per la distruzione
dei
mezzi di sussistenza e per le malattie, derivate dall'uranio impoverito
e
dall'inquinamento chimico causato dalle bombe, che l'embargo impedisce
di
curare.Non si può criminalizzare un intero popolo.
Lunedì 10 Luglio ore 21 nella sala del palazzo dei Notai,via de'
Pignattari
n°1
su iniziativa dell'Arcipelago delle associazioni per la Pace, Un ponte
per
..Belgrado, il coordinamento RSU Emilia Romagna
saranno presenti due delegati della Zastava di Kragujevac, la più grande
fabbrica di automobili della Jugoslavia, distrutta dai bombardamenti
della
NATO :
Ruzita Milostavljevic, presidente del Sindacato Unitario del gruppo
Zastava, e
Rajka Veljovic, responsabile del comitato di solidarietà della Zastava
per:
- testimoniare della situazione nella Jugoslavia distrutta dai
bombardamenti della NATO e strangolata dall'embargo;
- trarre un primo bilancio dell'iniziativa di "adozioni a distanza" dei
bambini di Kragujevac;
- discutere insieme con tutti i cittadini e i lavoratori che si sono
opposti alla guerra della NATO il modo in cui promuovere e organizzare
iniziative di solidarietà con la popolazione jugoslava;- partecipare ad
iniziative di critica della guerra e contro l'embargo.
Perchè la Zastava ?
Perchè è un miracolo di capacità e di volontà di ricostruzione pur in
condizioni proibitive, di democrazia diretta, autogestione e solidarietà
multietnica in un contesto in cui una donna su due ha il tumore alla
mammella, dove l'asma (stress da bombardamenti) e le leucemie (uranio
impoverito) sono in netto aumento,dove i bambini non possono uscire di
casa
in quanto non devono esporsi al sole più di dieci minuti per l'alto
tasso
di radioattività riscontrato in una Kragujevac che, dopo i
bombardamenti,
condivide con Pancevo il triste primato di essere la città più inquinata
del mondo.
Perchè questo miracolo, che ha portato alla ricostruzione quasi totale
di
una fabbrica fondamentale per l'economia della Jugoslavia, non potrà
tornare a dare alcun beneficio alla popolazione se l'embargo impedirà di
vendere all'estero il frutto di tanto lavoro.
Cosa possiamo fare ?
-E' necessaria in primo luogo la nostra concreta solidarietà per aiutare
almeno i ragazzi selezionati fra "i più bisognosi tra i bisognosi" dal
comitato di solidarietà degli operai della Zastava.
-E' necessario il nostro impegno per far cessare l'embargo: non si può
condannare un intero popolo, affamarlo a morte, avvelenarlo con il suo
stesso suolo, la sua acqua e la sua aria, togliergli in più la
possibilità
di curarsi, persino per le malattie più banali, rinchiuderlo in un
territorio che solo le dimensioni differenziano da un campo di
concentramento, fino all'estinzione: l'embargo è un modo silenzioso di
cancellare l'esistenza di un popolo: una nazione civile non può
macchiarsi
di un simile delitto, non può far pagare a chi è senza potere le scelte
dei
governi.
Noi non ci stiamo !
Paola e Leo tel. 051/955069 fax. 051/987202.
email.fiosan@...
===
L'Unione Patriottica di Jugoslavia, con l'appoggio di varie
organizzazioni di solidarieta' alla Jugoslavia in Occidente, ha
organizzato per il periodo
16 luglio - 4 agosto 2000 in Jugoslavia
un campeggio internazionale di amicizia. Sono invitati i giovani e le
persone impegnate in attivita' giovanili, purche' non
superinopossibilmente i 35 anni di eta'. Per i partecipanti c'e' una
possibilita' di trasporto con un autobus del Servizio nazionale belga
per la Gioventu'.
I costi per i 20 giorni compresi vitto e alloggio ammontano a circa 8000
scellini austriaci.
Dopo tre giorni di permanenza a Belgrado sono previsti 15 giorni a
Sirogoyno, il "vecchio borgo", una specie di museo storico all'aperto
nelle montagne dello Zlatibor. Insieme a seminari politici nel programma
sono previsti colloqui con organizzazioni di solidarieta', incontri con
artisti, proiezioni ed escursioni. Insieme ad una conoscenza intensiva
della Jugoslavia e dei suoi abitanti l'esperienza collettiva delle e dei
partecipanti da 13 paesi diversi portera' al rafforzamento della
solidarieta' internazionale e del movimento internazionale per la pace.
Gli interessati sono pregati di rivolgersi a noi (JOESB) per contattare
gli organizzatori.
Jugoslawien-Camp
Die Patriotische Union Jugoslawiens, wesentlich unterstützt von den
verschiedenen Organisationen der Jugoslawien-Solidarität im Westen,
veranstaltet in der Zeit vom 16. Juli bis
zum 4. August 2000 in Jugoslawien ein internationales
Freundschaftscamp. Für Teilnehmer - eingeladen sind
Jugendliche oder in der Jugendarbeit Aktive, die möglichst nicht älter
als 35 Jahre sein sollten - besteht eine Mitfahrgelegenheit in einem
vom belgischen nationalen Jugenddienst organisierten Bus.
Die Kosten für die 20tägige Reise inklusive Unterkunft, Verpflegung
und Programm betragen etwa 8000 öS.
Geplant sind nach einem dreitägigen Aufenthalt in Belgrad 15 Tage in
Sirogoyno, dem »Alten Dorf«, einer Art historischem Freilichtmuseum im
Zlatibor-Gebirge. Neben politischen Workshops stehen Gespräche mit
Hilfsorganisationen, Begegnungen mit Künstlern, Dokumentarfilme und
Exkursionen auf dem Programm. Neben intensivem Kennenlernen
Jugoslawiens und seiner Menschen soll das gemeinsame Erleben der
Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer aus 13 Ländern zur Stärkung
internationaler Solidarität und der internationalen Friedensbewegung
beitragen.
Interessenten bringen wir mit den Veranstaltern in Kontakt.
---
AGGIORNATO IL SITO DEL MOVIMENTO AUSTRIACO
DI SOLIDARIETA' CON LA JUGOSLAVIA
Nun hat es auch die Jugoslawisch-Österreichische Solidaritätsbewegung
(JÖSB) endlich geschafft. Wir sind mit einer professionellen Homepage im
Netz:
www.vorstadtzentrum.net/joesb
Visit our complete new web site, which includes also English documents:
www.vorstadtzentrum.net/joesb
Yugoslav Austrian Solidarity Movement
Jugoslawisch-Österreichische Solidaritätsbewegung (JÖSB)
PF 217, A-1040 Wien, Österreich
Tel/Fax +43 1 924 31 61
joesb@...
Kto-Nr. 9282, RB Schwechat, BLZ 32823
===
CAMPO ANTIMPERIALISTA
ASSISI 30 LUGLIO 6 AGOSTO
29 giugno
ATRE IMPORTANTI ADESIONI
Comunichiamo ai compagni e gli amici interessati che alle adesioni già
note si sono aggiunte
le seguenti:
- Turchia: Fronte Rivoluzionario di Liberazione del Popolo (D.H.K.C-P)
- Mauritania: Forze Africane di Liberazione della Mauritania (A.L.F.M)
- Argentina: Coordinamento Contro la Repressione Poliziesca e
Istituzionale (CORREPI)
Siamo poi riusciti a risolvere, con l'aiuto di altri organismi, il
problema del rimborso
del biglietto a Nicky Hager, neozelandese, il più noto esperto
internazionale del
sistema Echelon. Nicky relazionerà dunque sul tema: "Echelon:
sorveglianza
informatica e contromisure democratiche".
Infine ha assicurato la sua presenza (come relatrice delle sessione
plenaria su
"Inquinamento, transegenica e bio-tech: nuovi terreni della lotta
anticapitalista")
Grazia Francescato, portavoce nazionale dei Verdi.
Cogliamo l'occasione per segnalare un cambiamento nel programma del
Campo: La
plenaria sulla Lotta di liberazione in Colombia ci sarà Venerdì 4
agosto (non martedì
I. agosto). Lo spostamento è stato richiesto dai compagni delle FARC
a cui è affidata
l'introduzione.
In molti ci hanno chiesto chi fosse Elias Letelier: si tratta di un
poeta cileno ex Ufficiale
dell'Esercito Sandinista di Liberazione Nazionale.
Appello ai compagni che possono fare gli interpreti
Ci rivogliamo a tutti i compagni e gli amici che parlano fluentemente
qualche lingua (ma debbono
avere dimestichezza con linguaggio politico), che sono interessati al
Campo e disposti a far parte
della squadra degli interpreti, a contattarci. Per loro è previsto un
sostanzioso sconto.
Le traduzione non avvengono in simultanea ma con degli stopo dei
relatori. Il nostro punto debole
è l'interpretariato dall'inglese all'italiano e viceversa. Mentre sugli
altri fronti (spagnolo, tedesco,
arabo, serbocroato) non siamo messi così male.
Dettagli tecnico-organizzativi
La prenotazione è la sola garanzia per assicurarsi la possibilità di
partecipare. Se chi viene con la
tenda può arrivare anche all'ultimo momento, per coloro che hanno
bisogno di posti letto in
albergo o in bungalow è tassativa la prenotazione entro il 20 luglio. I
bambini fino ad 8 anni
pagano la metà dell'importo.
Ricordiamo a tutti coloro che fossero interessati che il costo a persona
per una settimana intera in
tenda (compresi due pasti giornalieri) è di L. 310mila. In Bungalow è di
L. 400mila, in camera
d'albergo è di L. 500mila. Si può venire in roulotte.
Ovviamente è possibile soggiornare anche per alcuni giorni, un paio o
uno solo.
Tuttavia è importante prenotare (versando il 30% della somma) per
evitare di non trovare posto.
Ripetiamo: entro e non oltre il 20 luglio.
La prenotazione avviene versando sul C/C postale n.12134623, intestato
al centro Studi P.
Tresso, c.p. 43 - 06034 Foligno (PG) specificando nella causale le
ragioni del versamento, il
periodo di soggiorno e il tipo di servizio che si chiede. (Per maggiore
sicurezza inviare via
fax allo 075.42686 copia della ricevuta di versamento, onde evitare
disguidi dovuti alla
lentezza con cui le Poste ci accreditano gli importi)
Per ulteriori informazioni telefonare all'ufficio del Campo: tel/fax:
075.42686 (martedì, mercoledì
e venerdì dalle ore 17 alle 19)
o al cellulare 0333.3543251.
Oppure riferirsi ai nostri indirizzi di posta elettronica:
Comitato Internazionalusta Arco Iris: ale.ramon@...
Comitato Organizzativo del Campo: campo2000@...
Programma
del Campo antimperialista 2000
Assisi, 30 luglio-6agosto
Domenica 30 luglio, arrivi
ore 21,00
Presentazione del programma e delle delegazioni ospiti. Lettura saluti e
messaggi.
Ore 22,30 Concerto.
Durante tutto il Campo
Laboratorio Informatico di Comunicazione Alternativa
a cura di Elías Letelier
(fondatore della Rete dei Familiari ed Amici dei Prigionieri Politici
del
Cile)
Lunedì, 31 luglio
Ore 9,30
Forum n.1: Incontro con la delegazione iugoslava
Forum n.2: Incontro con le delegazioni polaccha e ceca
Forum n.3: Incontro con la delegazione russa
Ore 15,30
1. Sessione plenaria: I crimini NATO nei Balcani
Introduzione a cura del Tribunale R. Clark
Ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Sopravivere alle armi delle guerre umanitarie. Introduce:
M. Saba
Forum n.2: Dall'emarginazione alla resistenza, percorsi di dignità nel
Brasile d'oggi . Introduce il Professor J. (Coordinamento
Latinoamericano
di Giuristi, Ricercatori Sociali e Gruppi Emarginati per una
Alternativa
Democratica e Popolare) .
Forum n.3: Questione nazionale e socialismo: tavola rotonda coi
movimenti di liberazione.
Martedì, 1 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: Incontro con le delegazioni messicane
Forum n.2: Incontro con la delegazione paraguayana
Forum n.3: Incontro con la delegazione brasiliana
Ore 15,30
2. Sessione plenaria: Amnistia! Repressione, prigionia politica,
violazione dei diritti umani e
civili nel tempo della globalizzazione.
Tavola rotonda coi compagni turchi e curdi del DHKC-P, gli irlandesi
dello IRSP, gli
spagnoli dell'AFAPP, i comunisti baschi e altri...
Ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Violenza o non-violenza? Forme di lotta contro la
globalizzazione
Forum n.2: Le nuove strategie NATO per la supremazia planetaria
Forum n.3: La Solidarietà Internazionalista, da percorsi diversi per un
obiettivo comune. Tavola rotonda tra esponenti della Chiesa di base,
organizzazioni non governative e associazionismo.
Mercoledì, 2 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: "Teoria e pratica dell'autonomia per il potere popolare",
introduce il Prof. J.
Forum n.2: incontro con la delegazione irlandese
Forum n.3: incontro con le delegazioni basche, catalane e sarde
Ore 15,30
3. Sessione plenaria: Echelon: sorveglianza informatica mondiale e
contromisure
democratiche. Tavola rotonda con alcuni esperti: Nicky hager, Elias
Letelier, e altri.
ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Immigrazione e lotta contro il razzismo nell¹Europa di
Shengen
Forum n.2: Le lotte operaie nella russia di Putin. Incontro con Oleg
Shein, deputato
comunista alla Duma
Forum n.3: Nuova destra e antifascismo: relatore W. Fisher della
Germania Est
Giovedì, 3 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: incontro con le delegazioni palestinese e libanese
Forum n.2: incontro con la C.L.I.
Forum n.3: incontro con la delegazione dello Sri lanka
Ore 15,30
4. Sessione plenaria: Islam e nuovo ordine mondiale
ore 21,30
Forum n.1: La resistenza libanese contro il sionismo. Incontro con
Hezbollah
Forum n.2: La prassi dei comunisti nel mondo che cambia. Tavola rotonda
Forum n.3: I cristiani e la lotta per la giustizia sociale: in contro
con Don Vitaliano della
Sala
Venerdì, 4 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: incontro con le delegazioni degli U.S.A.
Forum n.2: incontro con la delegazione filippina
Forum n.3: Incontro con la delegazione venezuelana
Ore 15,30
5. Sessione plenaria: La lotta di liberazione in Colombia
Introduzione delle FARC
ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Reddito di cittadinanza o lavoro come diritto inalienabile?
Forum n.2: La prassi dei comunisti nel mondo che cambia. Tavola rotonda
Forum n.3: Il Messico alle soglie di storiche elezioni: via parlamentare
e via rivoluzionaria
sabato, 5 agosto
ore 9,30
6. Sessione plenaria: Inquinamento, transgenica e bio-tech: un nuovo
terreno della lotta
anticapitalista. Tavola rotonda con Grazia Francescato e altri...
Ore 15,30
7. Sessione plenaria: Seattle : valore e limiti della rivolta contro il
WTO
Introduce lo International Action Center degli U.S.A.
ore 21,30
Concerto e festa di chiusura
Domenica 6 agosto, partenze
International Antiimperialist Summercamp
No to Globalisation!
>From Seattle to San Vicente Caguán —
The Revolt against the Dominion of Injustice is Advancing!
Assisi, Italy, 30th Juli-6th August
http://summercamp.cjb.net
Latest news about the Summercamp
The following organisations have just announced their participation in
the
Camp:
Hizbollah, Libanon
African Liberation force of Mauretania (FLAM)
Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKC, Turkey/Kurdistan-European
Representation)
For further information and inscription:
International Leninist Current (ILC)
Corriente Leninista Internacional (CLI)
PF 23, A-1040 Wien, Austria
Tel & Fax +43 1 504 00 10
ilc@...
www.comports.com/ilc
http://summercamp.cjb.net
===
>
> CRIMES DE GUERRE A L’OTAN
>
> Pierre Henri BUNEL
>
> Le commandant Bunel a été accusé du « crime » de trahison à l’OTAN,
ce
> qu’il, récuse. Lâché par sa hiérarchie, il décide aujourd’hui de
révéler
> les « crimes » de ses accusateurs.
> TEMOIGNAGE CHOC :
>
> « Je n'ai jamais été un traître, foi de Saint-Cyrien. Je n'ai jamais
été
> pro-Serbe et encore moins pro-Milosevic. Je n'ai jamais été, non
plus,
> pro-Musulman et jamais sympathisant nazi comme ont pu le prétendre
mes
> détracteurs qui m'ont jugé, sans m'entendre, sur de simples propos
> rapportés par une presse désinformée.
> J’étais tout simplement un officier des services de renseignements
> français depuis quinze ans, fonctionnaire au service de mon pays
> n’obéissant à aucun alignement politique autre que celui qu’on
> m’ordonnait. L’OTAN avait pour mission de faire plier les Serbes au
> besoin en les intoxicant.
> Pour cela on utilise notamment des méthodes qui consiste à accrocher
> l’agent d’en face avec des éléments faux, ou authentiques mais sans
> réelles conséquences. On a une certaine latitude. Le tout étant de
> parvenir à ses fins sans aller trop loin , et surtout sans se faire
> prendre.
> En 1998 en tentant d’infiltrer les Serbes, je suis allé trop loin et
je
> me suis fais prendre. Ce sont les risques du métier et je les assume.
> Mais là, j'ai été lâché par ma hiérarchie, accusé par mon ministre de
> tutelle, et enfoncé par certains responsables de l’OTAN. C’est ce qui
> m’a décidé à écrire ce livre. Puisqu'on m'accuse de trahison, « crime
»
> que je n'ai pas commis, je n’hésite pas à révéler certains de mes
> accusateurs.
>
> ·J’ai vu des dirigeants des pays de l’OTAN accepter des compromis qui
> ont largement accru les difficultés de leurs militaires et des
peuples
> qu’ils étaient sensé venir aider.
> ·J’ai vu la CIA tenter par tous les moyens, d’empêcher les unités de
> renseignements européennes de remplir leurs missions, par
l’intoxication
> et en mettant les soldats de l’OTAN en danger de mort.
> ·J’ai vu des Européens accepter des compromis qui permettront à
> Washington d’armer des excités alors que l’Union Européenne tente de
> réduire la présence des armements sur notre continent.
> ·J’ai vu nos dirigeants nationaux revenir sur des engagements
> médiatiques qu’ils ont pris pour le Kosovo, ceci pour de sordides
> intérêts corporatistes ou partisans.
> ·J’ai vu des milliers de personnes partir en exode dans l’hiver
> glacial, à causes de montages lamentables concoctés par des utopistes
en
> col blanc, bien au chaud à des milliers de kilomètres de là.
> ·J’ai vu des hauts fonctionnaires français remettre en cause les
> directives du Président de la République, chef des armées.
> ·Et j’ai même vu – sommet de l’écœurement – des représentants
nationaux
> choisir délibérément des cibles civiles – oui civiles ! – et accepter
> d’utiliser, pour des raisons économiques, des armes surpuissantes et
> inadaptées aux missions.
>
> J’ai vu tant de choses en ces années au service du renseignement,
entre
> autres pendant la guerre du Golfe où j’étais chef de Cabinet du
Général
> Roquejeoffre, et décoré par le général Schwarzkopf… tant de choses
qui
> peuvent bouleverser la conscience de militaires qui n’en sont pas
moins
> des hommes.
> C’est tout cela que je me suis décidé à raconter ici, afin que ces
> choses là soient dites et que chacun puisse en faire sa réflexion.
> La France participe à hauteur de 16% au budget de fonctionnement de
> l’Alliance Atlantique, organisme dont les fonctions ont bien changé
> depuis sa création en 1949… Il faut cesser de participer à ces CRIMES
DE
> GUERRE À L’OTAN ».
>
> Parution : 8 juin 2000 // Prix : 110 francs // Format : 153 x 240 mm
> Contact presse : Johanna Rodrigue
> Tél. : 01 43 92 35 88 / Fax : 01 43 92 35 85 / e-mail :
> jrodrigue@...
>
> 43, quai de Grenelle 75905 Paris Cedex – Tél. 01 43 92 35 87 – Fax 01
43
> 92 35 85
> Edition°1 – SNC au capital de 100 000F – RC Paris B 312 285 745
>
======================================
Mumia Abu-Jamal News 04.07.2000
Info * Comunicati * Articoli * Iniziative * Dibattito
"Fight to Win", la Millions 4 Mumia di Philly '99 su Cd-Rom
www.jericho-italia.com/mumia-cd.zip
======================================
"Fight to Win", cd-rom sulla Millions 4 Mumia del '99 a Philadelphia
[da il Bollettino "Mumia Abu-Jamal News" n. 44 del 04.07.2000]
Un nuovo materiale e' stato messo in vendita per raccogliere fondi per
la
Campagna internazionale contro l'esecuzione di Mumia Abu-Jamal e per il
sostentamento dei progetti di difesa medico-legale a sostegno dei
prigionieri politici e prigionieri di guerra segregati negli Stati Uniti
portati avanti dalla Sezione Italiana del Jericho Movement.
Si tratta di un video in Cd-Rom della Millions 4 Mumia, la marcia per
Mumia
Abu-Jamal che ha portato lo scorso Aprile '99 8/10mila persone nella
citta'
di Philadelphia. La produzione e' francese e raccoglie gli interventi
dal
palco di Zack de la Rocha (cantante dei Rage Against the Machine),
December
12th Movement, Ramona Africa e Seeds of Wisdom (MOVE), Sonia Sanchez
(poetessa), Leonard Weinglass (principale avvocato di Mumia Abu-Jamal),
Latinos For Mumia, Bobby Castillo (portavoce di Leonard Peltier),
Geronimo
Pratt (ex Prigioniero di Guerra New Afrikan) e della Delegazione
francese
composta da Jeunesse Communiste, Julia Wright (scrittrice e
coordinatrice
dell'dell'International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
-
France), A. Paillé e A. Page; e le interviste a Orie (Friend of MOVE -
New
York), Ed Wolkenstein (PDC) e Leonard Weinglass.
Per ricevere il Cd-Rom e' sufficiente inviare 12mila lire in busta
chiusa
(oppure tramite vaglia postale) a:
Sezione Italiana del Jericho Movement
Casella Postale n.11
45032 Bergantino (Ro)
Le spese di spedizione sono incluse.
Ovviamente, tranne che per i libri (le cui edizioni sono a cura di Case
Editrici) non esiste nessun copyright sul materiale qui presentato (e/o
sui
materiali fin qui prodotti) . Tuttavia ribadiamo che a fianco della
duplicazione e della diffuzione del Cd-Rom in questione (che confidiamo
sia
selvaggia) e' necessario riuscire a raccogliere fondi per il
mantenimento
della Campagna (o della campagne che di volta in volta affiancano quella
di
Mumia) e per le spese necessarie ai prigionieri politici e ai
prigionieri di
guerra rinchiusi negli Usa. Contribuite, gente, contribuite...
Ricordiamo che sulla pagine dei materiali curata dalla Sezione Italiana
del
Jericho Movement e' possibile visionare i titoli a disposizione e
inviare
form d'acquisto. Info: www.jericho-italia.com/order.htm oppure
0347-2390183
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* CAMPEGGIO DELLA UNIONE PATRIOTTICA JUGOSLAVA
* MOVIMENTO AUSTRIACO DI SOLIDARIETA' ALLA JUGOSLAVIA
* NUOVE IMPORTANTI ADESIONI AL CAMPEGGIO DI ASSISI
* UN LIBRO CONTRO LA NATO DEL COMANDANTE FRANCESE "FILOSERBO" BUNEL
* FIGHT TO WIN: UN CD PER MUMIA
===
BOLOGNA 10 LUGLIO 2000: ZASTAVA !
Art.11: L'Italia ripudia la guerra come mezzo di risoluzione delle
controversie internazionali. Non funziona. In nessuna parte del mondo
bombardamenti ed embargo hanno mai rafforzato la democrazia, e intanto
la
popolazione jugoslava, senza potere come noi, soffre per la distruzione
dei
mezzi di sussistenza e per le malattie, derivate dall'uranio impoverito
e
dall'inquinamento chimico causato dalle bombe, che l'embargo impedisce
di
curare.Non si può criminalizzare un intero popolo.
Lunedì 10 Luglio ore 21 nella sala del palazzo dei Notai,via de'
Pignattari
n°1
su iniziativa dell'Arcipelago delle associazioni per la Pace, Un ponte
per
..Belgrado, il coordinamento RSU Emilia Romagna
saranno presenti due delegati della Zastava di Kragujevac, la più grande
fabbrica di automobili della Jugoslavia, distrutta dai bombardamenti
della
NATO :
Ruzita Milostavljevic, presidente del Sindacato Unitario del gruppo
Zastava, e
Rajka Veljovic, responsabile del comitato di solidarietà della Zastava
per:
- testimoniare della situazione nella Jugoslavia distrutta dai
bombardamenti della NATO e strangolata dall'embargo;
- trarre un primo bilancio dell'iniziativa di "adozioni a distanza" dei
bambini di Kragujevac;
- discutere insieme con tutti i cittadini e i lavoratori che si sono
opposti alla guerra della NATO il modo in cui promuovere e organizzare
iniziative di solidarietà con la popolazione jugoslava;- partecipare ad
iniziative di critica della guerra e contro l'embargo.
Perchè la Zastava ?
Perchè è un miracolo di capacità e di volontà di ricostruzione pur in
condizioni proibitive, di democrazia diretta, autogestione e solidarietà
multietnica in un contesto in cui una donna su due ha il tumore alla
mammella, dove l'asma (stress da bombardamenti) e le leucemie (uranio
impoverito) sono in netto aumento,dove i bambini non possono uscire di
casa
in quanto non devono esporsi al sole più di dieci minuti per l'alto
tasso
di radioattività riscontrato in una Kragujevac che, dopo i
bombardamenti,
condivide con Pancevo il triste primato di essere la città più inquinata
del mondo.
Perchè questo miracolo, che ha portato alla ricostruzione quasi totale
di
una fabbrica fondamentale per l'economia della Jugoslavia, non potrà
tornare a dare alcun beneficio alla popolazione se l'embargo impedirà di
vendere all'estero il frutto di tanto lavoro.
Cosa possiamo fare ?
-E' necessaria in primo luogo la nostra concreta solidarietà per aiutare
almeno i ragazzi selezionati fra "i più bisognosi tra i bisognosi" dal
comitato di solidarietà degli operai della Zastava.
-E' necessario il nostro impegno per far cessare l'embargo: non si può
condannare un intero popolo, affamarlo a morte, avvelenarlo con il suo
stesso suolo, la sua acqua e la sua aria, togliergli in più la
possibilità
di curarsi, persino per le malattie più banali, rinchiuderlo in un
territorio che solo le dimensioni differenziano da un campo di
concentramento, fino all'estinzione: l'embargo è un modo silenzioso di
cancellare l'esistenza di un popolo: una nazione civile non può
macchiarsi
di un simile delitto, non può far pagare a chi è senza potere le scelte
dei
governi.
Noi non ci stiamo !
Paola e Leo tel. 051/955069 fax. 051/987202.
email.fiosan@...
===
L'Unione Patriottica di Jugoslavia, con l'appoggio di varie
organizzazioni di solidarieta' alla Jugoslavia in Occidente, ha
organizzato per il periodo
16 luglio - 4 agosto 2000 in Jugoslavia
un campeggio internazionale di amicizia. Sono invitati i giovani e le
persone impegnate in attivita' giovanili, purche' non
superinopossibilmente i 35 anni di eta'. Per i partecipanti c'e' una
possibilita' di trasporto con un autobus del Servizio nazionale belga
per la Gioventu'.
I costi per i 20 giorni compresi vitto e alloggio ammontano a circa 8000
scellini austriaci.
Dopo tre giorni di permanenza a Belgrado sono previsti 15 giorni a
Sirogoyno, il "vecchio borgo", una specie di museo storico all'aperto
nelle montagne dello Zlatibor. Insieme a seminari politici nel programma
sono previsti colloqui con organizzazioni di solidarieta', incontri con
artisti, proiezioni ed escursioni. Insieme ad una conoscenza intensiva
della Jugoslavia e dei suoi abitanti l'esperienza collettiva delle e dei
partecipanti da 13 paesi diversi portera' al rafforzamento della
solidarieta' internazionale e del movimento internazionale per la pace.
Gli interessati sono pregati di rivolgersi a noi (JOESB) per contattare
gli organizzatori.
Jugoslawien-Camp
Die Patriotische Union Jugoslawiens, wesentlich unterstützt von den
verschiedenen Organisationen der Jugoslawien-Solidarität im Westen,
veranstaltet in der Zeit vom 16. Juli bis
zum 4. August 2000 in Jugoslawien ein internationales
Freundschaftscamp. Für Teilnehmer - eingeladen sind
Jugendliche oder in der Jugendarbeit Aktive, die möglichst nicht älter
als 35 Jahre sein sollten - besteht eine Mitfahrgelegenheit in einem
vom belgischen nationalen Jugenddienst organisierten Bus.
Die Kosten für die 20tägige Reise inklusive Unterkunft, Verpflegung
und Programm betragen etwa 8000 öS.
Geplant sind nach einem dreitägigen Aufenthalt in Belgrad 15 Tage in
Sirogoyno, dem »Alten Dorf«, einer Art historischem Freilichtmuseum im
Zlatibor-Gebirge. Neben politischen Workshops stehen Gespräche mit
Hilfsorganisationen, Begegnungen mit Künstlern, Dokumentarfilme und
Exkursionen auf dem Programm. Neben intensivem Kennenlernen
Jugoslawiens und seiner Menschen soll das gemeinsame Erleben der
Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer aus 13 Ländern zur Stärkung
internationaler Solidarität und der internationalen Friedensbewegung
beitragen.
Interessenten bringen wir mit den Veranstaltern in Kontakt.
---
AGGIORNATO IL SITO DEL MOVIMENTO AUSTRIACO
DI SOLIDARIETA' CON LA JUGOSLAVIA
Nun hat es auch die Jugoslawisch-Österreichische Solidaritätsbewegung
(JÖSB) endlich geschafft. Wir sind mit einer professionellen Homepage im
Netz:
www.vorstadtzentrum.net/joesb
Visit our complete new web site, which includes also English documents:
www.vorstadtzentrum.net/joesb
Yugoslav Austrian Solidarity Movement
Jugoslawisch-Österreichische Solidaritätsbewegung (JÖSB)
PF 217, A-1040 Wien, Österreich
Tel/Fax +43 1 924 31 61
joesb@...
Kto-Nr. 9282, RB Schwechat, BLZ 32823
===
CAMPO ANTIMPERIALISTA
ASSISI 30 LUGLIO 6 AGOSTO
29 giugno
ATRE IMPORTANTI ADESIONI
Comunichiamo ai compagni e gli amici interessati che alle adesioni già
note si sono aggiunte
le seguenti:
- Turchia: Fronte Rivoluzionario di Liberazione del Popolo (D.H.K.C-P)
- Mauritania: Forze Africane di Liberazione della Mauritania (A.L.F.M)
- Argentina: Coordinamento Contro la Repressione Poliziesca e
Istituzionale (CORREPI)
Siamo poi riusciti a risolvere, con l'aiuto di altri organismi, il
problema del rimborso
del biglietto a Nicky Hager, neozelandese, il più noto esperto
internazionale del
sistema Echelon. Nicky relazionerà dunque sul tema: "Echelon:
sorveglianza
informatica e contromisure democratiche".
Infine ha assicurato la sua presenza (come relatrice delle sessione
plenaria su
"Inquinamento, transegenica e bio-tech: nuovi terreni della lotta
anticapitalista")
Grazia Francescato, portavoce nazionale dei Verdi.
Cogliamo l'occasione per segnalare un cambiamento nel programma del
Campo: La
plenaria sulla Lotta di liberazione in Colombia ci sarà Venerdì 4
agosto (non martedì
I. agosto). Lo spostamento è stato richiesto dai compagni delle FARC
a cui è affidata
l'introduzione.
In molti ci hanno chiesto chi fosse Elias Letelier: si tratta di un
poeta cileno ex Ufficiale
dell'Esercito Sandinista di Liberazione Nazionale.
Appello ai compagni che possono fare gli interpreti
Ci rivogliamo a tutti i compagni e gli amici che parlano fluentemente
qualche lingua (ma debbono
avere dimestichezza con linguaggio politico), che sono interessati al
Campo e disposti a far parte
della squadra degli interpreti, a contattarci. Per loro è previsto un
sostanzioso sconto.
Le traduzione non avvengono in simultanea ma con degli stopo dei
relatori. Il nostro punto debole
è l'interpretariato dall'inglese all'italiano e viceversa. Mentre sugli
altri fronti (spagnolo, tedesco,
arabo, serbocroato) non siamo messi così male.
Dettagli tecnico-organizzativi
La prenotazione è la sola garanzia per assicurarsi la possibilità di
partecipare. Se chi viene con la
tenda può arrivare anche all'ultimo momento, per coloro che hanno
bisogno di posti letto in
albergo o in bungalow è tassativa la prenotazione entro il 20 luglio. I
bambini fino ad 8 anni
pagano la metà dell'importo.
Ricordiamo a tutti coloro che fossero interessati che il costo a persona
per una settimana intera in
tenda (compresi due pasti giornalieri) è di L. 310mila. In Bungalow è di
L. 400mila, in camera
d'albergo è di L. 500mila. Si può venire in roulotte.
Ovviamente è possibile soggiornare anche per alcuni giorni, un paio o
uno solo.
Tuttavia è importante prenotare (versando il 30% della somma) per
evitare di non trovare posto.
Ripetiamo: entro e non oltre il 20 luglio.
La prenotazione avviene versando sul C/C postale n.12134623, intestato
al centro Studi P.
Tresso, c.p. 43 - 06034 Foligno (PG) specificando nella causale le
ragioni del versamento, il
periodo di soggiorno e il tipo di servizio che si chiede. (Per maggiore
sicurezza inviare via
fax allo 075.42686 copia della ricevuta di versamento, onde evitare
disguidi dovuti alla
lentezza con cui le Poste ci accreditano gli importi)
Per ulteriori informazioni telefonare all'ufficio del Campo: tel/fax:
075.42686 (martedì, mercoledì
e venerdì dalle ore 17 alle 19)
o al cellulare 0333.3543251.
Oppure riferirsi ai nostri indirizzi di posta elettronica:
Comitato Internazionalusta Arco Iris: ale.ramon@...
Comitato Organizzativo del Campo: campo2000@...
Programma
del Campo antimperialista 2000
Assisi, 30 luglio-6agosto
Domenica 30 luglio, arrivi
ore 21,00
Presentazione del programma e delle delegazioni ospiti. Lettura saluti e
messaggi.
Ore 22,30 Concerto.
Durante tutto il Campo
Laboratorio Informatico di Comunicazione Alternativa
a cura di Elías Letelier
(fondatore della Rete dei Familiari ed Amici dei Prigionieri Politici
del
Cile)
Lunedì, 31 luglio
Ore 9,30
Forum n.1: Incontro con la delegazione iugoslava
Forum n.2: Incontro con le delegazioni polaccha e ceca
Forum n.3: Incontro con la delegazione russa
Ore 15,30
1. Sessione plenaria: I crimini NATO nei Balcani
Introduzione a cura del Tribunale R. Clark
Ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Sopravivere alle armi delle guerre umanitarie. Introduce:
M. Saba
Forum n.2: Dall'emarginazione alla resistenza, percorsi di dignità nel
Brasile d'oggi . Introduce il Professor J. (Coordinamento
Latinoamericano
di Giuristi, Ricercatori Sociali e Gruppi Emarginati per una
Alternativa
Democratica e Popolare) .
Forum n.3: Questione nazionale e socialismo: tavola rotonda coi
movimenti di liberazione.
Martedì, 1 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: Incontro con le delegazioni messicane
Forum n.2: Incontro con la delegazione paraguayana
Forum n.3: Incontro con la delegazione brasiliana
Ore 15,30
2. Sessione plenaria: Amnistia! Repressione, prigionia politica,
violazione dei diritti umani e
civili nel tempo della globalizzazione.
Tavola rotonda coi compagni turchi e curdi del DHKC-P, gli irlandesi
dello IRSP, gli
spagnoli dell'AFAPP, i comunisti baschi e altri...
Ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Violenza o non-violenza? Forme di lotta contro la
globalizzazione
Forum n.2: Le nuove strategie NATO per la supremazia planetaria
Forum n.3: La Solidarietà Internazionalista, da percorsi diversi per un
obiettivo comune. Tavola rotonda tra esponenti della Chiesa di base,
organizzazioni non governative e associazionismo.
Mercoledì, 2 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: "Teoria e pratica dell'autonomia per il potere popolare",
introduce il Prof. J.
Forum n.2: incontro con la delegazione irlandese
Forum n.3: incontro con le delegazioni basche, catalane e sarde
Ore 15,30
3. Sessione plenaria: Echelon: sorveglianza informatica mondiale e
contromisure
democratiche. Tavola rotonda con alcuni esperti: Nicky hager, Elias
Letelier, e altri.
ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Immigrazione e lotta contro il razzismo nell¹Europa di
Shengen
Forum n.2: Le lotte operaie nella russia di Putin. Incontro con Oleg
Shein, deputato
comunista alla Duma
Forum n.3: Nuova destra e antifascismo: relatore W. Fisher della
Germania Est
Giovedì, 3 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: incontro con le delegazioni palestinese e libanese
Forum n.2: incontro con la C.L.I.
Forum n.3: incontro con la delegazione dello Sri lanka
Ore 15,30
4. Sessione plenaria: Islam e nuovo ordine mondiale
ore 21,30
Forum n.1: La resistenza libanese contro il sionismo. Incontro con
Hezbollah
Forum n.2: La prassi dei comunisti nel mondo che cambia. Tavola rotonda
Forum n.3: I cristiani e la lotta per la giustizia sociale: in contro
con Don Vitaliano della
Sala
Venerdì, 4 agosto
ore 9,30
Forum n.1: incontro con le delegazioni degli U.S.A.
Forum n.2: incontro con la delegazione filippina
Forum n.3: Incontro con la delegazione venezuelana
Ore 15,30
5. Sessione plenaria: La lotta di liberazione in Colombia
Introduzione delle FARC
ore 21,30
Forum n.1: Reddito di cittadinanza o lavoro come diritto inalienabile?
Forum n.2: La prassi dei comunisti nel mondo che cambia. Tavola rotonda
Forum n.3: Il Messico alle soglie di storiche elezioni: via parlamentare
e via rivoluzionaria
sabato, 5 agosto
ore 9,30
6. Sessione plenaria: Inquinamento, transgenica e bio-tech: un nuovo
terreno della lotta
anticapitalista. Tavola rotonda con Grazia Francescato e altri...
Ore 15,30
7. Sessione plenaria: Seattle : valore e limiti della rivolta contro il
WTO
Introduce lo International Action Center degli U.S.A.
ore 21,30
Concerto e festa di chiusura
Domenica 6 agosto, partenze
International Antiimperialist Summercamp
No to Globalisation!
>From Seattle to San Vicente Caguán —
The Revolt against the Dominion of Injustice is Advancing!
Assisi, Italy, 30th Juli-6th August
http://summercamp.cjb.net
Latest news about the Summercamp
The following organisations have just announced their participation in
the
Camp:
Hizbollah, Libanon
African Liberation force of Mauretania (FLAM)
Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKC, Turkey/Kurdistan-European
Representation)
For further information and inscription:
International Leninist Current (ILC)
Corriente Leninista Internacional (CLI)
PF 23, A-1040 Wien, Austria
Tel & Fax +43 1 504 00 10
ilc@...
www.comports.com/ilc
http://summercamp.cjb.net
===
>
> CRIMES DE GUERRE A L’OTAN
>
> Pierre Henri BUNEL
>
> Le commandant Bunel a été accusé du « crime » de trahison à l’OTAN,
ce
> qu’il, récuse. Lâché par sa hiérarchie, il décide aujourd’hui de
révéler
> les « crimes » de ses accusateurs.
> TEMOIGNAGE CHOC :
>
> « Je n'ai jamais été un traître, foi de Saint-Cyrien. Je n'ai jamais
été
> pro-Serbe et encore moins pro-Milosevic. Je n'ai jamais été, non
plus,
> pro-Musulman et jamais sympathisant nazi comme ont pu le prétendre
mes
> détracteurs qui m'ont jugé, sans m'entendre, sur de simples propos
> rapportés par une presse désinformée.
> J’étais tout simplement un officier des services de renseignements
> français depuis quinze ans, fonctionnaire au service de mon pays
> n’obéissant à aucun alignement politique autre que celui qu’on
> m’ordonnait. L’OTAN avait pour mission de faire plier les Serbes au
> besoin en les intoxicant.
> Pour cela on utilise notamment des méthodes qui consiste à accrocher
> l’agent d’en face avec des éléments faux, ou authentiques mais sans
> réelles conséquences. On a une certaine latitude. Le tout étant de
> parvenir à ses fins sans aller trop loin , et surtout sans se faire
> prendre.
> En 1998 en tentant d’infiltrer les Serbes, je suis allé trop loin et
je
> me suis fais prendre. Ce sont les risques du métier et je les assume.
> Mais là, j'ai été lâché par ma hiérarchie, accusé par mon ministre de
> tutelle, et enfoncé par certains responsables de l’OTAN. C’est ce qui
> m’a décidé à écrire ce livre. Puisqu'on m'accuse de trahison, « crime
»
> que je n'ai pas commis, je n’hésite pas à révéler certains de mes
> accusateurs.
>
> ·J’ai vu des dirigeants des pays de l’OTAN accepter des compromis qui
> ont largement accru les difficultés de leurs militaires et des
peuples
> qu’ils étaient sensé venir aider.
> ·J’ai vu la CIA tenter par tous les moyens, d’empêcher les unités de
> renseignements européennes de remplir leurs missions, par
l’intoxication
> et en mettant les soldats de l’OTAN en danger de mort.
> ·J’ai vu des Européens accepter des compromis qui permettront à
> Washington d’armer des excités alors que l’Union Européenne tente de
> réduire la présence des armements sur notre continent.
> ·J’ai vu nos dirigeants nationaux revenir sur des engagements
> médiatiques qu’ils ont pris pour le Kosovo, ceci pour de sordides
> intérêts corporatistes ou partisans.
> ·J’ai vu des milliers de personnes partir en exode dans l’hiver
> glacial, à causes de montages lamentables concoctés par des utopistes
en
> col blanc, bien au chaud à des milliers de kilomètres de là.
> ·J’ai vu des hauts fonctionnaires français remettre en cause les
> directives du Président de la République, chef des armées.
> ·Et j’ai même vu – sommet de l’écœurement – des représentants
nationaux
> choisir délibérément des cibles civiles – oui civiles ! – et accepter
> d’utiliser, pour des raisons économiques, des armes surpuissantes et
> inadaptées aux missions.
>
> J’ai vu tant de choses en ces années au service du renseignement,
entre
> autres pendant la guerre du Golfe où j’étais chef de Cabinet du
Général
> Roquejeoffre, et décoré par le général Schwarzkopf… tant de choses
qui
> peuvent bouleverser la conscience de militaires qui n’en sont pas
moins
> des hommes.
> C’est tout cela que je me suis décidé à raconter ici, afin que ces
> choses là soient dites et que chacun puisse en faire sa réflexion.
> La France participe à hauteur de 16% au budget de fonctionnement de
> l’Alliance Atlantique, organisme dont les fonctions ont bien changé
> depuis sa création en 1949… Il faut cesser de participer à ces CRIMES
DE
> GUERRE À L’OTAN ».
>
> Parution : 8 juin 2000 // Prix : 110 francs // Format : 153 x 240 mm
> Contact presse : Johanna Rodrigue
> Tél. : 01 43 92 35 88 / Fax : 01 43 92 35 85 / e-mail :
> jrodrigue@...
>
> 43, quai de Grenelle 75905 Paris Cedex – Tél. 01 43 92 35 87 – Fax 01
43
> 92 35 85
> Edition°1 – SNC au capital de 100 000F – RC Paris B 312 285 745
>
======================================
Mumia Abu-Jamal News 04.07.2000
Info * Comunicati * Articoli * Iniziative * Dibattito
"Fight to Win", la Millions 4 Mumia di Philly '99 su Cd-Rom
www.jericho-italia.com/mumia-cd.zip
======================================
"Fight to Win", cd-rom sulla Millions 4 Mumia del '99 a Philadelphia
[da il Bollettino "Mumia Abu-Jamal News" n. 44 del 04.07.2000]
Un nuovo materiale e' stato messo in vendita per raccogliere fondi per
la
Campagna internazionale contro l'esecuzione di Mumia Abu-Jamal e per il
sostentamento dei progetti di difesa medico-legale a sostegno dei
prigionieri politici e prigionieri di guerra segregati negli Stati Uniti
portati avanti dalla Sezione Italiana del Jericho Movement.
Si tratta di un video in Cd-Rom della Millions 4 Mumia, la marcia per
Mumia
Abu-Jamal che ha portato lo scorso Aprile '99 8/10mila persone nella
citta'
di Philadelphia. La produzione e' francese e raccoglie gli interventi
dal
palco di Zack de la Rocha (cantante dei Rage Against the Machine),
December
12th Movement, Ramona Africa e Seeds of Wisdom (MOVE), Sonia Sanchez
(poetessa), Leonard Weinglass (principale avvocato di Mumia Abu-Jamal),
Latinos For Mumia, Bobby Castillo (portavoce di Leonard Peltier),
Geronimo
Pratt (ex Prigioniero di Guerra New Afrikan) e della Delegazione
francese
composta da Jeunesse Communiste, Julia Wright (scrittrice e
coordinatrice
dell'dell'International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
-
France), A. Paillé e A. Page; e le interviste a Orie (Friend of MOVE -
New
York), Ed Wolkenstein (PDC) e Leonard Weinglass.
Per ricevere il Cd-Rom e' sufficiente inviare 12mila lire in busta
chiusa
(oppure tramite vaglia postale) a:
Sezione Italiana del Jericho Movement
Casella Postale n.11
45032 Bergantino (Ro)
Le spese di spedizione sono incluse.
Ovviamente, tranne che per i libri (le cui edizioni sono a cura di Case
Editrici) non esiste nessun copyright sul materiale qui presentato (e/o
sui
materiali fin qui prodotti) . Tuttavia ribadiamo che a fianco della
duplicazione e della diffuzione del Cd-Rom in questione (che confidiamo
sia
selvaggia) e' necessario riuscire a raccogliere fondi per il
mantenimento
della Campagna (o della campagne che di volta in volta affiancano quella
di
Mumia) e per le spese necessarie ai prigionieri politici e ai
prigionieri di
guerra rinchiusi negli Usa. Contribuite, gente, contribuite...
Ricordiamo che sulla pagine dei materiali curata dalla Sezione Italiana
del
Jericho Movement e' possibile visionare i titoli a disposizione e
inviare
form d'acquisto. Info: www.jericho-italia.com/order.htm oppure
0347-2390183
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
June 30, 2000
THE ROCKFORD INSTITUTE
La censura nelle democrazie liberali post-moderne:
il caso dell'immagine che ha preso in giro il mondo
Perche' Living Marxism ha perso la causa contro l'ITN
di THOMAS DEICHMANN
(per una introduzione sull'argomento si veda anche:
IL CASO LM / ITN
http://www.egroups.com/message/crj-mailinglist/142?&start=115 )
CENSORSHIP IN POST-MODERN “LIBERAL DEMOCRACY”:
THE CASE OF “THE PICTURE THAT FOOLED THE WORLD”D
WHY LM LOST THE LIBEL CASE
Il video "Judgement", con tutta la documentazione usata da Thomas
Deichmann per svelare la truffa mediatica di Trnopolje, si puo' ordinare
attraverso il sito internet http://www.emperors-clothes.com
You can order the video "Judgement' at http://www.emperors-clothes.com
with all the documentation Deichmann used to prove the accepted frauds.
Na http://www.emperors-clothes.com moze da se naruci kaseta Judgement
koja dokumentuje sve sto Deichmann kaze.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A stunning new film -
"JUDGMENT!"
http://www.emperors-clothes.com
At last we have visual proof that the media lied about Yugoslavia...
To order now, click here
We just finished production work on the English version of a stunning
new
film - "JUDGMENT!" It exposes the tricks used to concoct phony pictures
of a
nonexistent Serbian 'death camp' in 1992. These doctored images --
especially the famous emaciated man behind barbed wire -- were broadcast
worldwide to dehumanize the Serbs. They led to the deaths of thousands
and
great suffering for millions of human beings.
"JUDGMENT!" PROVES THOSE PICTURES WERE CYNICAL FABRICATIONS.
We urge you: Buy this film today Give a copy to a friend who doesn't
want to
believe the mass media would fabricate phony atrocity pictures. Show
this
film on TV stations, show it to local organizations, get it reviewed in
local papers. It will change people's minds. It will change your mind.
TELLING THE TRUTH, AND OTHER CRIMES
Last week the British alternative magazine, LM, was fined over $500,000
US
for libel. LM had printed a story that that charged British news station
ITN
and reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams with fraud. LM said ITN
had
faked the "death camp" pictures to demonize the Serbs.
The Judge in the libel case admitted that ITN might have made some
mistakes.
But he argued: the LM people weren't in Bosnia that day. So how could LM
be
sure what was really happening there?
IN FACT another film crew was present the entire time. They filmed the
footage used in "JUDGMENT!"
"JUDGMENT!" proves LM was simply telling the truth. "JUDGMENT!" proves
Penny
Marshall lied. "JUDGMENT!" shows how Marshall produced the picture that
fooled the world and justified a war.
The ITN crew visited a POW center and a refugee camp. By sheer luck they
were accompanied by a crew from Serbian television (RTS). The RTS crew
filmed the ITN crew at work. Using this RTS footage, a small Yugoslav
film
studio has recreated the events of that day. Emperors-Clothes edited the
Yugoslav movie to produce the English language film, "JUDGMENT!"
RTS is the TV station that NATO bombed in April, 1999, killing 20
people.
The film is dedicated to those dead, whose murders began with the ITN
pictures. We say this because the images that Penny Marshall fabricated
in
1992 began the dehumanization of the Serbian people. ITN and Penny
Marshall
laid the political basis for the bombing of the Bosnian loyalist
government
and of Serbia itself a year ago.
WHAT THIS FILM PROVES
1) The Loyalist ("Serbian") Authorities were humane.
>From the pictures that ITN produced one would think that Marshall and
her
crew had sneaked into a death camp and shot their film when nobody was
watching. Not so. The ITN crew visited two surprisingly casual and
humane
locations. They were protected but not controlled by the loyalist
authorities whom they later compared to Nazi's.
2) Marshall KNEW the loyalists were humane.
She and the crew from RTS interviewed POWs', their wives, non-POW
refugees,
a doctor, at least one red cross worker, the commander of the POW
Center.
The film shows these interviews. Marshall simply suppressed this
evidence of
humane treatment. Instead she staged some pictures. These were then
doctored
to produce Nazi-like images for mass consumption. The height of cynicism
and
dishonesty.
3) The refugees SAID they were treated decently.
Marshall is shown arguing with one refugee. She tries to coerce the man
to
say something anti-Yugoslav. He refuses. "No, no," he protests
vehemently.
"Not a prison. No, no. REFUGEE center. They treat us very kind. No, no,
very
kind." Undeterred, Marshall used this very location to stage her phony
death
camp shots.
4) Marshall staged the death camp sequence seen around the world.
She went out of her way to film from inside an awkward storage area.
Why?
Because one side had what she wanted: a fence, mainly chicken wire but
with
a few strands of barbed wire at the top. Shooting through the barbed
wire,
Marshall talked to refugees OUTSIDE the fence. She then doctored the raw
footage to produce false images of prisoners behind barbed wire.
5) Marshall and Ian Williams were filmed in the act of lying.
The amazing thing is -- the RTS people were filming a few feet away.
They
caught the same shots from a slightly different angle. They got pictures
of
Marshall, Ian Williams, a cameraman, a man holding a mike. You will see,
step by step, just how Marshall doctored her pictures to produce the
look of
a Nazi death camp. That is, the film takes footage shot by RTS and then
proceeds to alter it, as you watch, producing the phony ITN photos of
Nazi-like atrocities.
This film will change people's minds.
It documents that Marshall and ITN have committed the worst crime
against
humanity: they lied to millions of people in order to justify a war.
1. Order now by Phone, Mail or secure Server
VHS TAPES NOW AVAILABLE (Prices on PAL and SECAM tapes, often used
outside
US, as soon as possible)
Base price, $19.95 * Add $1 tax ONLY in Massachusetts
TOTAL PRICE including shipping and handling:
In US - $25.00 (2-3 days)
In Massachusetts - $26.00 (1 day)
With NEXT DAY SHIPPING in US but outside Massachusetts - $36.00
Total cost in Europe - $26.50 (about 5 days)
Total cost in New Zealand, Australia and Japan - $30.00 (about 6 days)
Total cost in rest of Asia, Africa, former Soviet Union, etc. - $22.00
(6-10
days)
Total cost in Canada - $26.00 (2-4 days)
(For Special and Quantity Shipping - please email to
emperors1000@... or
call shipper at 617-916-1705)
2. HOW TO ORDER
BY MAIL - Send check and instructions to EMPERORS CLOTHES, PO Box
610-321,
Newton, MA 02461-0321 Please state how you heard about the film.
BY PHONE - all 617-916-1705 from 8:30 am to 4:30 PM Eastern Standard
Time
BY SECURE SERVER - Go to http://emperors-clothes.com/howyour.html#donate
Pay
the appropriate amount AS A DONATION. Then PLEASE email us stating the
amount donated and the number of films desired and shipping
instructions.
Send that email to emperors1000@... This MUST be done so we'll know
your
donation is to pay for the film! Please also tell us how you heard about
the
film. Please tell us any ideas for increasing distribution. Thanks!
WE PRESENTLY HAVE FILMS IN STOCK. WE CAN REPLENISH STOCK WITHIN ONE DAY.
VIEW "JUDGMENT!" SHOW it to friends. MAIL IT to friends and relatives.
SHOW
it to organizations, churches, unions, at schools. GET it on TV.
NOTE TO WEBSITES, MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS AND TV STATIONS: IF YOU
ADVERTISE
THIS FILM YOUR ORGANIZATION CAN RECEIVE A COMMISSION FOR EVERY FILM YOU
HELP
TO SELL. Drop us an email for details. Emperors1000@... . So far the
film is being distributed by www.emperors-clothes.com and
www.antiwar.com .
Would you care to join us?
=======================================================================
June 30, 2000
THE ROCKFORD INSTITUTE
Thomas Deichmann:CENSORSHIP IN POST-MODERN “LIBERAL DEMOCRACY”:
THE CASE OF “THE PICTURE THAT FOOLED THE WORLD”
Our regular readers will recall that just over two months ago we
published a commentary by the
British historian Michael Stenton on the use of libel laws in the UK as
a means of silencing
views at odds with the received wisdom of the ruling mainstream (Libel
and the truth: Bosnia
and “holocaust denial” – April 20). One of three cases invoked by Dr.
Stenton to illustrate the
use of libel laws as a means of muzzling free speech, and censoring
politically incorrect ideas,
concerned the lawsuit by one of Britain’s most powerful media
conglomerates – “Independent
Television News” (ITN) against the LM Magazine (formerly known as
“Living Marxism”). The
defendants had pointed out some inaccuracies in a TV report about the
Trnopolje POW camp in
Bosnia in summer 1992. LM had gone on to complain that misleading TV
pictures had helped
mislead the world about what was happening in Bosnia at the time.
Needless to say the side
with most money, once again, won the action.
While the outcome of the trial was dealt with briefly and only provided
a peg for Dr. Stenton’s general point about the threat to
the freedom of thought and expression in our time, some of our readers
have expressed an interest in the details of the case
itself. It seemed incredible that Great Britain, the world’s oldest
democracy, could allow such miscarriages of justice to get
legal sanctification. In the meantime we have received a more
comprehensive account of the now infamous LM trial from a key
figure in this complex case, German journalist Thomas Deichmann. His
1997 article “The picture that fooled the world,” in
which he exposed the ITN manipulations with images from Bosnia, caused
the controversy in the first place.--S.T.
WHY LM LOST THE LIBEL CASE
by Thomas Deichmann
The High Court in London delivered its harsh verdict on March 14th 2000.
The editor of the British magazine LM (previously
Living Marxism), its publisher Helene Guldberg and her publishing house
Informinc were found liable in defamation
proceedings after eleven days of court room proceedings. They were
ordered to pay the British news channel Independent
Television News (ITN) and two of its reporters, Penny Marshall and Ian
Williams massive damages. This comprised 75,000
pounds sterling payable to ITN and an additional 150,000 pounds payable
to each of the two reporters. The defendants were
also ordered to pay the legal fees of the claimants – an additional
300,000 pounds. The total is calculated as more than one
million dollars.
After the verdict Informinc went into liquidation, and Mick Hume and
Helene Guldberg prepared for personal bankruptcy.
Another immediate consequence was that most of LM’s Website
(www.informinc.co.uk) had to be shut down on the same
day. A few hours after the conclusion of the legal battle LM received a
letter from ITN asking when payment of the money
could be expected.
Censorship for Hire
A tragic chapter in modern media history was thus brought to an end. It
may usher in a
threatening new era. London, the Mecca of the Libel Suit, was used for
the first time by a mighty
media corporation to censor an important debate and to knock an unloved
and weaker opponent
out of the running. The arrogant behavior of ITN, represented during the
hearing by its Chief
Editor Richard Tait, and the two ITN reporters Penny Marshall and Ian
Williams, represents a
blow to every journalist. It is a warning especially to investigative
reporters whose job it is to
go against the mainstream and to help bring to light inconvenient
truths.
The publication of my article ‘The Picture that fooled the World’ in the
February 1997 edition
of LM was the catalyst which began the saga. This article had already
been printed in highly
regarded European publications and later been copied many times over. In
the article I showed
in great detail that the famous ITN-pictures of an emaciated Bosnian
Muslim behind a barbed
wire fence taken at the Bosnian Serb camp of Trnopolje in August 1992
were misleading and
fooled the world.
ITN won the case at the High Court but the victory left a foul
aftertaste – so openly did the
media giant attempt to manipulate the debate from the start. Immediately
after the verdict, ITN
set its PR-apparatus in motion in order to mislead the public anew.
Statements by both reporters
and the news channel tried to leave the uninformed viewer with the
impression that the trial jury
found that the central allegation against the ITN reporters in my LM
article of February 1997
was incorrect. The opposite is true.
ITN Reporter Behind Barbed Wire
In my 1997 article, I showed in great detail, first, that there was no
barbed wire fence
surrounding Trnopolje and the Muslims filmed there in August 1992.
Secondly, that the barbed
wire on the (in)famous ITN pictures belonged to a small agricultural
compound neighbouring the
Trnopolje camp grounds. I further explained that the British reporters
stood inside this
compound surrounded by the barbed wire fence and that from inside there
they filmed the
(in)famous pictures. Thirdly, I explained that nowhere else in Trnopolje
did any barbed wire
fence exist; and fourthly, that the conclusions drawn by politicians and
the media worldwide that
Trnopolje was a concentration camp similar to Auschwitz and
Bergen-Belsen, were wrong and
based on a very misleading image.
The first three aspects of my story were proved during the court
proceedings of the Case. In
particular, the uncut ITN tapes, the so-called ‘rushes’, were important.
This was more or less
the same material I used during my research beginning in late 1996. The
fourth point was not
dealt with during the proceedings. However, by this stage, nobody
questioned that Trnopolje
was not a Nazi-style concentration camp.
Judge Morland gave his summary the day before the end of the case and
stressed with his own
words to the jury that the reporters were surrounded by a barbed wire
fence in August 1992:
‘It is a matter for you but, having seen the rushes and the bundles of
Mr. Deichmann’s
photographs, is it not clear that before the civil war there was fencing
surrounding the area
containing the barn, the garage and the electricity transformer? That
fence was made of tall
metal posts with barbed wire strands on top, and below chicken wire,
with a gate on the east
road. Clearly Ian Williams and Penny Marshall and their TV teams were
mistaken in thinking
they were not enclosed by the old barbed wire fence.’
Facts Don’t Matter
Judge Morland elaborated at this point of his summary: ‘But does it
matter?’ By raising this
question he wished to remind the members of the jury what this libel
case was about. The
central question which the jury had to decide on was this: did the ITN
reporters in 1992
deliberately publish a misleading image. The case therefore did not
mainly consider if this
happened or not, instead it dealt first of all with the question if the
reporters publicized their
barbed wire shots with clear intent to fool the world. The Judge
formulated at the beginning of
his summation some sympathy for my investigative reporting. However, he
then defined what
this libel case was about:
‘Members of the jury, you may well think that in a democratic society it
is vital that journalists
are fearless, investigative reporters. It is, you may well think, of the
utmost importance that they
are accurate and fair reporters. It is right that one journalist, if he
considers that another
journalist has been inaccurate, unfair and misleading, should say so.
But this case, you may
think, is not about whether Penny Marshall and Ian Williams have been
inaccurate, unfair or
misleading; the nub of this case is whether the defendants have
established that Penny Marshall
and Ian Williams have deliberately – I emphasize that word
‚deliberately’ – compiled
misleading television footage.’ Nick Higham, media correspondent of the
BBC, recapitulated
these explanations of the Judge in a news commentary on the day of the
verdict in the following
manner: ‘Mr. Justice Morland told the jury LM’s facts might have been
right, but he asked, did
that matter?’
The judge’s summary finally brought to the surface the scale of dirty
tricks ITN and its reporters
had used with their libel suit against LM. They did not merely hid for
three years (that is how
long it took to come to trial) behind the repressive English libel laws
that are considered so
frightening inside media circles. ITN argued that the central libelous
connotation of my article,
an accompanying leader by Mick Hume, and a LM press release circulated
in January 1997,
was that LM made the ordinary reader believe that ITN and its reporters
with full and complete
knowledge deliberately lied to the world. Actually, I am of the opinion
that the reporters must
have known exactly what they were doing at the time. However, I did not
state this in my article.
Instead I wrote, ‘Whatever the British news team’s intentions may have
been, their pictures
were seen around the world as the first hard evidence of concentration
camps in Bosnia.’
But ITN put this point at center stage of the libel suit because their
lawyers from Biddle & Co.
knew that in this manner they could not lose the case. Their task was
made easier by the fact that
in English libel law the burden of proof lies with the defendant (a
further indication of the
absurdity of this law). LM had to prove the bad intent of the ITN
reporters in order to win the
case. Therefore the verdict did not come as a surprise to the LM-team.
Editor Mick Hume
commented: ‘We had to prove the unprovable.’
Memory Gaps
Gavin Millar, LM’s barrister, despite all this did a great job and first
worked to convince the
jury of the correctness of my explanation of where the barbed wire fence
was located. He
further exerted himself to establish that the two ITN reporters must
have known that at the time
they took the famous pictures that they were standing in the small
compound surrounded by
barbed wire.
But none of the ITN witnesses, with the exception of Penny Marshall’s
cameraman, remembered
that this was the case. Ian Williams was the first witness giving
evidence. He, for example, was
asked by Millar how he was able to reach from the fenced-in compound the
open field just to the
west of it. Williams answered he simply walked around the corner. When
he then was
confronted with the ITN rushes which clearly showed a barbed wire fence
there at the corner
and all along the Western side of the compound he then could not
remember the exact details of
his movements any more. In any event, at the end of his testimony, on
the fourth day of the
courtroom proceedings he again stated that it was a ‘lie’ that the
reporters were surrounded by
barbed wire.
But during the testimony of the next witness, only a few hours later,
Judge Morland intervened
and gave his opinion that after viewing the ITN tapes various times now,
he was convinced that
this was precisely the situation. He asked the ITN lawyer not to waste
any more time disputing
this point. The next day, Ian William’s sound man indicated a new
version of the story:
William’s team reached the open field through the barbed wire fence
somewhere further south,
possibly through a hole in the fence. This again did not show up on the
ITN tapes.
Penny Marshall also had memory gaps specifically regarding the fenced in
compound, even
though it was uncontested that she had entered it through a gap in the
barbed wire fence from the
southern side next to a small electricity transformer building and that
she had passed the barn
situated in the middle of this compound. But she could not remember that
she was surrounded by
barbed wire. Nor could she remember how she exited the fenced in
compound.
Gavin Millar, LM’s barrister, further questioned the statements of the
ITN reporters that it never
had crossed their minds in August 1992 that the (in)famous pictures of
the emaciated Muslim
taken behind barbed wire could trigger comparisons with the Holocaust.
He also raised doubts
concerning ITN’s explanation that the news reporters were not under any
pressure to come up
with a camp scoop given the widely disseminated speculative reports of
possible
‘Concentration Camps’ and ‘Death Camps’ in Northern Bosnia. Millar
succeeded numerous
times in entangling the ITN employees in contradictions – but he was
unable to establish ITN’s
deliberate manipulation – what was in their minds at the time.
Disappearing Videotapes and Witnesses
Besides memory gaps there were other obstacles with which LM had to
contend. One of these was that an important video
tape of the ITN rushes had been lost in the ITN archives. This tape
could have shown Penny Marshall continuously moving on
the compound surrounded by the barbed wire fence, and perhaps her
commenting on the situation, and exiting from there.
Only a short sequence of this tape could be seen in the courtroom having
been taken from an ITN news broadcast in August
1992. The first time the subject of the disappearing videotape came up,
ripples of surprise and speculation ran through the
courtroom. The video tape of a Bosnian-Serbian cameraman in military
uniform, which was shot on the same day in Trnopolje
as Penny Marshall filmed, could not make up for the loss of this part of
the ITN rushes. However, it did show that Marshall
interviewed at least two other men before she shook hands with the
emaciated man and talked to him through the barbed wire.
This contradicted the way the matter was presented in the ITN news and
in later interviews she gave. One of these interviewed
men, wearing a blue overall, introduced himself as Mehmet. He repeatedly
stressed when questioned by the British reporters,
that Trnopolje was not a prison but a refugee camp and he felt safe
there. This did not feature in the report.
Finally the ITN lawyers were able to make use of the repressive nature
of English libel laws in
a way, that all further witnesses for the Defense were struck out of the
case before they could
give evidence. The most prominent was John Simpson, BBC World Affairs
Editor, one of the
world’s most highly regarded reporters. Also denied the opportunity to
take the witness stand
for LM was the well known and highly respected former war correspondent
Phillip Knightley,
author of the book ‘The First Casualty’. In addition, the London Queen’s
Counsel barrister
Steven Kay was prevented from testifying. Only LM editor Mick Hume and
myself were
allowed to give evidence for the defence. For good measure, even my own
testimony was
severely reduced.
Smear Campaign
But that wasn’t all. In 1997, at the outset, ITN had charged LM with
malice on top of libel after
the publication of my article. ITN tried to prevent the distribution of
LM and demanded the
destruction of all copies of the edition. This happened one day after LM
circulated a press
release announcing my article and even before ITN even had read my
piece. Despite this ITN
claimed that my article was outrageous and untrue.
In ITN’s subsequent ‘malice’ claim LM and I were described as intending
to spread
pro-Serbian propaganda and that this intent was the real reason for the
publication of my article
in LM. As supposed proof of this charge, ITN provided an odd list of
articles appearing in LM
dealing with the Balkan War and related topics. For example it included
an excerpt from an
interview I had done with the famous Austrian novelist Peter Handke in
the Spring of 1996. I
had offered to let LM along with other publications in Europe publish
the interview.
However the malice charge invited the wildest denunciations against LM
and myself.
Impertinent lies and gossip quickly made the rounds. For example, that I
was an agent of the
Serbs and received payment from them. Even one week before the start of
the court hearings, I
received for the n-th time a telephone call from a reporter (this time
from the British paper ‘The
Guardian’) who wished to know if I was married to a Serb. Despite
repeated explanations that I
was not, and that I had no connections to the Serb authorities, and that
I supported none of the
parties involved in the Bosnian civil war, there were many such rumors –
all thanks to ITN’s
malice suit. Ed Vulliamy, the Guardian reporter who had also visited the
North Bosnian camps
along with the ITN teams in August 1992, contributed to the mood with
repeated hysterical
defamations, while ITN, Marshall and Williams kept quiet and let their
lawyers act.
Interesting enough, the malice charge was dropped when the case came to
court. ITN’s lawyer
Tom Shields let it go without a murmur because there was not the
slightest evidence for such
conspiracy theories. This made clear to me that the malice charge was
only added to the libel
suit in the first place in order to support a smear campaign against
myself and LM.
Historical Revisionism
ITN’s QC barrister Tom Shields stressed during the trial the miserable
conditions in Trnopolje
in summer 1992. To prove this the Plaintiffs brought as a witness a
Muslim doctor who under
the guard of Bosnian Serb authorities cared for the camp’s inmates and
locals in 1992. At the
time he was also interviewed by Penny Marshall and gave her a camera
with an undeveloped
film. The photos on it where published in August 1992 in some British
papers. They showed
Bosnian Muslims who had been beaten by Serbian guards. The doctor
described on the witness
stand how he met the ITN teams in summer 1992, and confirmed the stories
of the rape and
assault of defenseless civilians in Trnopolje – stories which I and LM
have never disputed, and
in fact reported in my article. His very short testimony was of cause
moving, but my impression
was that he was only invited to give evidence for ITN to score moral
points for the Plaintiffs.
LM barrister Millar declined to cross examine the doctor.
Tom Shields for ITN used the testimony of the doctor to give the utterly
false impression that I
wished to excuse those who were guilty of evil acts in Trnopolje and
elsewhere. The ITN
lawyer further exerted himself to question my description of Trnopolje
as a refugee and transit
camp in which many Muslims sought safety from the bloody civil war going
on around them.
During my testimony it became clear that Shields, despite his hectoring
me with morally laden
catch-phrases, didn’t have the slightest idea what had happened during
the Bosnian civil war.
Trnopolje was surely a chaotic and awful place, but it was also surely
not a detention camp or
prison and most surely it was not a concentration camp comparable with
Auschwitz or
Bergen-Belsen as suggested by the famous ITN shots with the barbed wire.
The single positive feature of the proceedings in the High Court in
London was that they finally
proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither Trnopolje camp nor the
filmed Bosnian
Muslims were surrounded by a barbed wire fence as suggested by ITN’s
shots. Rather, it was
the journalists who were surrounded by barbed wire as my article ‘The
picture that fooled the
world’ had shown.
But on the other hand, the verdict spelled the end of LM and now hangs
like a sword of
Damocles over every English journalist. LM, an opinionated magazine with
intelligent articles
contrary to the Zeitgeist, was brought to ruin. One can only hope that
other media organizations
and journalists will not follow ITN’s example but instead follow the
example of publications
like LM and its creators.
Thomas Deichmann, 37, is a freelance journalist and author and editor of
the bimonthly German magazine Novo.
Further information on the libel case including the original article in
German language is available on
http://www.novo-magazin.de/itn-vs-lm Deichmann’s article ‘The picture
that fooled the world’ was reprinted in the
U.S. in Ramsey Clark et al: ‘NATO in the Balkans. Voices of Opposition’,
International Action Centre, New York
1998. An analytical piece on the same story with the title
‘Misinformation: TV Coverage of a Bosnian Camp’
appeared in CovertAction Quarterly, Fall 1998. Deichmann’s study of Roy
Gutman’s war reporting recently appeared
in the US under the title ‘The Pulitzer Price and Croatian Propaganda’
in ‘War Lies & Videotape. How Media
Monopoly stifles truth’, International Action Centre, New York 2000. You
may call Thomas Deichmann in Frankfurt
at +49 69 722271; send him a fax at 720913; or send him an e-mail at
Thomas.Deichmann@...
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
THE ROCKFORD INSTITUTE
La censura nelle democrazie liberali post-moderne:
il caso dell'immagine che ha preso in giro il mondo
Perche' Living Marxism ha perso la causa contro l'ITN
di THOMAS DEICHMANN
(per una introduzione sull'argomento si veda anche:
IL CASO LM / ITN
http://www.egroups.com/message/crj-mailinglist/142?&start=115 )
CENSORSHIP IN POST-MODERN “LIBERAL DEMOCRACY”:
THE CASE OF “THE PICTURE THAT FOOLED THE WORLD”D
WHY LM LOST THE LIBEL CASE
Il video "Judgement", con tutta la documentazione usata da Thomas
Deichmann per svelare la truffa mediatica di Trnopolje, si puo' ordinare
attraverso il sito internet http://www.emperors-clothes.com
You can order the video "Judgement' at http://www.emperors-clothes.com
with all the documentation Deichmann used to prove the accepted frauds.
Na http://www.emperors-clothes.com moze da se naruci kaseta Judgement
koja dokumentuje sve sto Deichmann kaze.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A stunning new film -
"JUDGMENT!"
http://www.emperors-clothes.com
At last we have visual proof that the media lied about Yugoslavia...
To order now, click here
We just finished production work on the English version of a stunning
new
film - "JUDGMENT!" It exposes the tricks used to concoct phony pictures
of a
nonexistent Serbian 'death camp' in 1992. These doctored images --
especially the famous emaciated man behind barbed wire -- were broadcast
worldwide to dehumanize the Serbs. They led to the deaths of thousands
and
great suffering for millions of human beings.
"JUDGMENT!" PROVES THOSE PICTURES WERE CYNICAL FABRICATIONS.
We urge you: Buy this film today Give a copy to a friend who doesn't
want to
believe the mass media would fabricate phony atrocity pictures. Show
this
film on TV stations, show it to local organizations, get it reviewed in
local papers. It will change people's minds. It will change your mind.
TELLING THE TRUTH, AND OTHER CRIMES
Last week the British alternative magazine, LM, was fined over $500,000
US
for libel. LM had printed a story that that charged British news station
ITN
and reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams with fraud. LM said ITN
had
faked the "death camp" pictures to demonize the Serbs.
The Judge in the libel case admitted that ITN might have made some
mistakes.
But he argued: the LM people weren't in Bosnia that day. So how could LM
be
sure what was really happening there?
IN FACT another film crew was present the entire time. They filmed the
footage used in "JUDGMENT!"
"JUDGMENT!" proves LM was simply telling the truth. "JUDGMENT!" proves
Penny
Marshall lied. "JUDGMENT!" shows how Marshall produced the picture that
fooled the world and justified a war.
The ITN crew visited a POW center and a refugee camp. By sheer luck they
were accompanied by a crew from Serbian television (RTS). The RTS crew
filmed the ITN crew at work. Using this RTS footage, a small Yugoslav
film
studio has recreated the events of that day. Emperors-Clothes edited the
Yugoslav movie to produce the English language film, "JUDGMENT!"
RTS is the TV station that NATO bombed in April, 1999, killing 20
people.
The film is dedicated to those dead, whose murders began with the ITN
pictures. We say this because the images that Penny Marshall fabricated
in
1992 began the dehumanization of the Serbian people. ITN and Penny
Marshall
laid the political basis for the bombing of the Bosnian loyalist
government
and of Serbia itself a year ago.
WHAT THIS FILM PROVES
1) The Loyalist ("Serbian") Authorities were humane.
>From the pictures that ITN produced one would think that Marshall and
her
crew had sneaked into a death camp and shot their film when nobody was
watching. Not so. The ITN crew visited two surprisingly casual and
humane
locations. They were protected but not controlled by the loyalist
authorities whom they later compared to Nazi's.
2) Marshall KNEW the loyalists were humane.
She and the crew from RTS interviewed POWs', their wives, non-POW
refugees,
a doctor, at least one red cross worker, the commander of the POW
Center.
The film shows these interviews. Marshall simply suppressed this
evidence of
humane treatment. Instead she staged some pictures. These were then
doctored
to produce Nazi-like images for mass consumption. The height of cynicism
and
dishonesty.
3) The refugees SAID they were treated decently.
Marshall is shown arguing with one refugee. She tries to coerce the man
to
say something anti-Yugoslav. He refuses. "No, no," he protests
vehemently.
"Not a prison. No, no. REFUGEE center. They treat us very kind. No, no,
very
kind." Undeterred, Marshall used this very location to stage her phony
death
camp shots.
4) Marshall staged the death camp sequence seen around the world.
She went out of her way to film from inside an awkward storage area.
Why?
Because one side had what she wanted: a fence, mainly chicken wire but
with
a few strands of barbed wire at the top. Shooting through the barbed
wire,
Marshall talked to refugees OUTSIDE the fence. She then doctored the raw
footage to produce false images of prisoners behind barbed wire.
5) Marshall and Ian Williams were filmed in the act of lying.
The amazing thing is -- the RTS people were filming a few feet away.
They
caught the same shots from a slightly different angle. They got pictures
of
Marshall, Ian Williams, a cameraman, a man holding a mike. You will see,
step by step, just how Marshall doctored her pictures to produce the
look of
a Nazi death camp. That is, the film takes footage shot by RTS and then
proceeds to alter it, as you watch, producing the phony ITN photos of
Nazi-like atrocities.
This film will change people's minds.
It documents that Marshall and ITN have committed the worst crime
against
humanity: they lied to millions of people in order to justify a war.
1. Order now by Phone, Mail or secure Server
VHS TAPES NOW AVAILABLE (Prices on PAL and SECAM tapes, often used
outside
US, as soon as possible)
Base price, $19.95 * Add $1 tax ONLY in Massachusetts
TOTAL PRICE including shipping and handling:
In US - $25.00 (2-3 days)
In Massachusetts - $26.00 (1 day)
With NEXT DAY SHIPPING in US but outside Massachusetts - $36.00
Total cost in Europe - $26.50 (about 5 days)
Total cost in New Zealand, Australia and Japan - $30.00 (about 6 days)
Total cost in rest of Asia, Africa, former Soviet Union, etc. - $22.00
(6-10
days)
Total cost in Canada - $26.00 (2-4 days)
(For Special and Quantity Shipping - please email to
emperors1000@... or
call shipper at 617-916-1705)
2. HOW TO ORDER
BY MAIL - Send check and instructions to EMPERORS CLOTHES, PO Box
610-321,
Newton, MA 02461-0321 Please state how you heard about the film.
BY PHONE - all 617-916-1705 from 8:30 am to 4:30 PM Eastern Standard
Time
BY SECURE SERVER - Go to http://emperors-clothes.com/howyour.html#donate
Pay
the appropriate amount AS A DONATION. Then PLEASE email us stating the
amount donated and the number of films desired and shipping
instructions.
Send that email to emperors1000@... This MUST be done so we'll know
your
donation is to pay for the film! Please also tell us how you heard about
the
film. Please tell us any ideas for increasing distribution. Thanks!
WE PRESENTLY HAVE FILMS IN STOCK. WE CAN REPLENISH STOCK WITHIN ONE DAY.
VIEW "JUDGMENT!" SHOW it to friends. MAIL IT to friends and relatives.
SHOW
it to organizations, churches, unions, at schools. GET it on TV.
NOTE TO WEBSITES, MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS AND TV STATIONS: IF YOU
ADVERTISE
THIS FILM YOUR ORGANIZATION CAN RECEIVE A COMMISSION FOR EVERY FILM YOU
HELP
TO SELL. Drop us an email for details. Emperors1000@... . So far the
film is being distributed by www.emperors-clothes.com and
www.antiwar.com .
Would you care to join us?
=======================================================================
June 30, 2000
THE ROCKFORD INSTITUTE
Thomas Deichmann:CENSORSHIP IN POST-MODERN “LIBERAL DEMOCRACY”:
THE CASE OF “THE PICTURE THAT FOOLED THE WORLD”
Our regular readers will recall that just over two months ago we
published a commentary by the
British historian Michael Stenton on the use of libel laws in the UK as
a means of silencing
views at odds with the received wisdom of the ruling mainstream (Libel
and the truth: Bosnia
and “holocaust denial” – April 20). One of three cases invoked by Dr.
Stenton to illustrate the
use of libel laws as a means of muzzling free speech, and censoring
politically incorrect ideas,
concerned the lawsuit by one of Britain’s most powerful media
conglomerates – “Independent
Television News” (ITN) against the LM Magazine (formerly known as
“Living Marxism”). The
defendants had pointed out some inaccuracies in a TV report about the
Trnopolje POW camp in
Bosnia in summer 1992. LM had gone on to complain that misleading TV
pictures had helped
mislead the world about what was happening in Bosnia at the time.
Needless to say the side
with most money, once again, won the action.
While the outcome of the trial was dealt with briefly and only provided
a peg for Dr. Stenton’s general point about the threat to
the freedom of thought and expression in our time, some of our readers
have expressed an interest in the details of the case
itself. It seemed incredible that Great Britain, the world’s oldest
democracy, could allow such miscarriages of justice to get
legal sanctification. In the meantime we have received a more
comprehensive account of the now infamous LM trial from a key
figure in this complex case, German journalist Thomas Deichmann. His
1997 article “The picture that fooled the world,” in
which he exposed the ITN manipulations with images from Bosnia, caused
the controversy in the first place.--S.T.
WHY LM LOST THE LIBEL CASE
by Thomas Deichmann
The High Court in London delivered its harsh verdict on March 14th 2000.
The editor of the British magazine LM (previously
Living Marxism), its publisher Helene Guldberg and her publishing house
Informinc were found liable in defamation
proceedings after eleven days of court room proceedings. They were
ordered to pay the British news channel Independent
Television News (ITN) and two of its reporters, Penny Marshall and Ian
Williams massive damages. This comprised 75,000
pounds sterling payable to ITN and an additional 150,000 pounds payable
to each of the two reporters. The defendants were
also ordered to pay the legal fees of the claimants – an additional
300,000 pounds. The total is calculated as more than one
million dollars.
After the verdict Informinc went into liquidation, and Mick Hume and
Helene Guldberg prepared for personal bankruptcy.
Another immediate consequence was that most of LM’s Website
(www.informinc.co.uk) had to be shut down on the same
day. A few hours after the conclusion of the legal battle LM received a
letter from ITN asking when payment of the money
could be expected.
Censorship for Hire
A tragic chapter in modern media history was thus brought to an end. It
may usher in a
threatening new era. London, the Mecca of the Libel Suit, was used for
the first time by a mighty
media corporation to censor an important debate and to knock an unloved
and weaker opponent
out of the running. The arrogant behavior of ITN, represented during the
hearing by its Chief
Editor Richard Tait, and the two ITN reporters Penny Marshall and Ian
Williams, represents a
blow to every journalist. It is a warning especially to investigative
reporters whose job it is to
go against the mainstream and to help bring to light inconvenient
truths.
The publication of my article ‘The Picture that fooled the World’ in the
February 1997 edition
of LM was the catalyst which began the saga. This article had already
been printed in highly
regarded European publications and later been copied many times over. In
the article I showed
in great detail that the famous ITN-pictures of an emaciated Bosnian
Muslim behind a barbed
wire fence taken at the Bosnian Serb camp of Trnopolje in August 1992
were misleading and
fooled the world.
ITN won the case at the High Court but the victory left a foul
aftertaste – so openly did the
media giant attempt to manipulate the debate from the start. Immediately
after the verdict, ITN
set its PR-apparatus in motion in order to mislead the public anew.
Statements by both reporters
and the news channel tried to leave the uninformed viewer with the
impression that the trial jury
found that the central allegation against the ITN reporters in my LM
article of February 1997
was incorrect. The opposite is true.
ITN Reporter Behind Barbed Wire
In my 1997 article, I showed in great detail, first, that there was no
barbed wire fence
surrounding Trnopolje and the Muslims filmed there in August 1992.
Secondly, that the barbed
wire on the (in)famous ITN pictures belonged to a small agricultural
compound neighbouring the
Trnopolje camp grounds. I further explained that the British reporters
stood inside this
compound surrounded by the barbed wire fence and that from inside there
they filmed the
(in)famous pictures. Thirdly, I explained that nowhere else in Trnopolje
did any barbed wire
fence exist; and fourthly, that the conclusions drawn by politicians and
the media worldwide that
Trnopolje was a concentration camp similar to Auschwitz and
Bergen-Belsen, were wrong and
based on a very misleading image.
The first three aspects of my story were proved during the court
proceedings of the Case. In
particular, the uncut ITN tapes, the so-called ‘rushes’, were important.
This was more or less
the same material I used during my research beginning in late 1996. The
fourth point was not
dealt with during the proceedings. However, by this stage, nobody
questioned that Trnopolje
was not a Nazi-style concentration camp.
Judge Morland gave his summary the day before the end of the case and
stressed with his own
words to the jury that the reporters were surrounded by a barbed wire
fence in August 1992:
‘It is a matter for you but, having seen the rushes and the bundles of
Mr. Deichmann’s
photographs, is it not clear that before the civil war there was fencing
surrounding the area
containing the barn, the garage and the electricity transformer? That
fence was made of tall
metal posts with barbed wire strands on top, and below chicken wire,
with a gate on the east
road. Clearly Ian Williams and Penny Marshall and their TV teams were
mistaken in thinking
they were not enclosed by the old barbed wire fence.’
Facts Don’t Matter
Judge Morland elaborated at this point of his summary: ‘But does it
matter?’ By raising this
question he wished to remind the members of the jury what this libel
case was about. The
central question which the jury had to decide on was this: did the ITN
reporters in 1992
deliberately publish a misleading image. The case therefore did not
mainly consider if this
happened or not, instead it dealt first of all with the question if the
reporters publicized their
barbed wire shots with clear intent to fool the world. The Judge
formulated at the beginning of
his summation some sympathy for my investigative reporting. However, he
then defined what
this libel case was about:
‘Members of the jury, you may well think that in a democratic society it
is vital that journalists
are fearless, investigative reporters. It is, you may well think, of the
utmost importance that they
are accurate and fair reporters. It is right that one journalist, if he
considers that another
journalist has been inaccurate, unfair and misleading, should say so.
But this case, you may
think, is not about whether Penny Marshall and Ian Williams have been
inaccurate, unfair or
misleading; the nub of this case is whether the defendants have
established that Penny Marshall
and Ian Williams have deliberately – I emphasize that word
‚deliberately’ – compiled
misleading television footage.’ Nick Higham, media correspondent of the
BBC, recapitulated
these explanations of the Judge in a news commentary on the day of the
verdict in the following
manner: ‘Mr. Justice Morland told the jury LM’s facts might have been
right, but he asked, did
that matter?’
The judge’s summary finally brought to the surface the scale of dirty
tricks ITN and its reporters
had used with their libel suit against LM. They did not merely hid for
three years (that is how
long it took to come to trial) behind the repressive English libel laws
that are considered so
frightening inside media circles. ITN argued that the central libelous
connotation of my article,
an accompanying leader by Mick Hume, and a LM press release circulated
in January 1997,
was that LM made the ordinary reader believe that ITN and its reporters
with full and complete
knowledge deliberately lied to the world. Actually, I am of the opinion
that the reporters must
have known exactly what they were doing at the time. However, I did not
state this in my article.
Instead I wrote, ‘Whatever the British news team’s intentions may have
been, their pictures
were seen around the world as the first hard evidence of concentration
camps in Bosnia.’
But ITN put this point at center stage of the libel suit because their
lawyers from Biddle & Co.
knew that in this manner they could not lose the case. Their task was
made easier by the fact that
in English libel law the burden of proof lies with the defendant (a
further indication of the
absurdity of this law). LM had to prove the bad intent of the ITN
reporters in order to win the
case. Therefore the verdict did not come as a surprise to the LM-team.
Editor Mick Hume
commented: ‘We had to prove the unprovable.’
Memory Gaps
Gavin Millar, LM’s barrister, despite all this did a great job and first
worked to convince the
jury of the correctness of my explanation of where the barbed wire fence
was located. He
further exerted himself to establish that the two ITN reporters must
have known that at the time
they took the famous pictures that they were standing in the small
compound surrounded by
barbed wire.
But none of the ITN witnesses, with the exception of Penny Marshall’s
cameraman, remembered
that this was the case. Ian Williams was the first witness giving
evidence. He, for example, was
asked by Millar how he was able to reach from the fenced-in compound the
open field just to the
west of it. Williams answered he simply walked around the corner. When
he then was
confronted with the ITN rushes which clearly showed a barbed wire fence
there at the corner
and all along the Western side of the compound he then could not
remember the exact details of
his movements any more. In any event, at the end of his testimony, on
the fourth day of the
courtroom proceedings he again stated that it was a ‘lie’ that the
reporters were surrounded by
barbed wire.
But during the testimony of the next witness, only a few hours later,
Judge Morland intervened
and gave his opinion that after viewing the ITN tapes various times now,
he was convinced that
this was precisely the situation. He asked the ITN lawyer not to waste
any more time disputing
this point. The next day, Ian William’s sound man indicated a new
version of the story:
William’s team reached the open field through the barbed wire fence
somewhere further south,
possibly through a hole in the fence. This again did not show up on the
ITN tapes.
Penny Marshall also had memory gaps specifically regarding the fenced in
compound, even
though it was uncontested that she had entered it through a gap in the
barbed wire fence from the
southern side next to a small electricity transformer building and that
she had passed the barn
situated in the middle of this compound. But she could not remember that
she was surrounded by
barbed wire. Nor could she remember how she exited the fenced in
compound.
Gavin Millar, LM’s barrister, further questioned the statements of the
ITN reporters that it never
had crossed their minds in August 1992 that the (in)famous pictures of
the emaciated Muslim
taken behind barbed wire could trigger comparisons with the Holocaust.
He also raised doubts
concerning ITN’s explanation that the news reporters were not under any
pressure to come up
with a camp scoop given the widely disseminated speculative reports of
possible
‘Concentration Camps’ and ‘Death Camps’ in Northern Bosnia. Millar
succeeded numerous
times in entangling the ITN employees in contradictions – but he was
unable to establish ITN’s
deliberate manipulation – what was in their minds at the time.
Disappearing Videotapes and Witnesses
Besides memory gaps there were other obstacles with which LM had to
contend. One of these was that an important video
tape of the ITN rushes had been lost in the ITN archives. This tape
could have shown Penny Marshall continuously moving on
the compound surrounded by the barbed wire fence, and perhaps her
commenting on the situation, and exiting from there.
Only a short sequence of this tape could be seen in the courtroom having
been taken from an ITN news broadcast in August
1992. The first time the subject of the disappearing videotape came up,
ripples of surprise and speculation ran through the
courtroom. The video tape of a Bosnian-Serbian cameraman in military
uniform, which was shot on the same day in Trnopolje
as Penny Marshall filmed, could not make up for the loss of this part of
the ITN rushes. However, it did show that Marshall
interviewed at least two other men before she shook hands with the
emaciated man and talked to him through the barbed wire.
This contradicted the way the matter was presented in the ITN news and
in later interviews she gave. One of these interviewed
men, wearing a blue overall, introduced himself as Mehmet. He repeatedly
stressed when questioned by the British reporters,
that Trnopolje was not a prison but a refugee camp and he felt safe
there. This did not feature in the report.
Finally the ITN lawyers were able to make use of the repressive nature
of English libel laws in
a way, that all further witnesses for the Defense were struck out of the
case before they could
give evidence. The most prominent was John Simpson, BBC World Affairs
Editor, one of the
world’s most highly regarded reporters. Also denied the opportunity to
take the witness stand
for LM was the well known and highly respected former war correspondent
Phillip Knightley,
author of the book ‘The First Casualty’. In addition, the London Queen’s
Counsel barrister
Steven Kay was prevented from testifying. Only LM editor Mick Hume and
myself were
allowed to give evidence for the defence. For good measure, even my own
testimony was
severely reduced.
Smear Campaign
But that wasn’t all. In 1997, at the outset, ITN had charged LM with
malice on top of libel after
the publication of my article. ITN tried to prevent the distribution of
LM and demanded the
destruction of all copies of the edition. This happened one day after LM
circulated a press
release announcing my article and even before ITN even had read my
piece. Despite this ITN
claimed that my article was outrageous and untrue.
In ITN’s subsequent ‘malice’ claim LM and I were described as intending
to spread
pro-Serbian propaganda and that this intent was the real reason for the
publication of my article
in LM. As supposed proof of this charge, ITN provided an odd list of
articles appearing in LM
dealing with the Balkan War and related topics. For example it included
an excerpt from an
interview I had done with the famous Austrian novelist Peter Handke in
the Spring of 1996. I
had offered to let LM along with other publications in Europe publish
the interview.
However the malice charge invited the wildest denunciations against LM
and myself.
Impertinent lies and gossip quickly made the rounds. For example, that I
was an agent of the
Serbs and received payment from them. Even one week before the start of
the court hearings, I
received for the n-th time a telephone call from a reporter (this time
from the British paper ‘The
Guardian’) who wished to know if I was married to a Serb. Despite
repeated explanations that I
was not, and that I had no connections to the Serb authorities, and that
I supported none of the
parties involved in the Bosnian civil war, there were many such rumors –
all thanks to ITN’s
malice suit. Ed Vulliamy, the Guardian reporter who had also visited the
North Bosnian camps
along with the ITN teams in August 1992, contributed to the mood with
repeated hysterical
defamations, while ITN, Marshall and Williams kept quiet and let their
lawyers act.
Interesting enough, the malice charge was dropped when the case came to
court. ITN’s lawyer
Tom Shields let it go without a murmur because there was not the
slightest evidence for such
conspiracy theories. This made clear to me that the malice charge was
only added to the libel
suit in the first place in order to support a smear campaign against
myself and LM.
Historical Revisionism
ITN’s QC barrister Tom Shields stressed during the trial the miserable
conditions in Trnopolje
in summer 1992. To prove this the Plaintiffs brought as a witness a
Muslim doctor who under
the guard of Bosnian Serb authorities cared for the camp’s inmates and
locals in 1992. At the
time he was also interviewed by Penny Marshall and gave her a camera
with an undeveloped
film. The photos on it where published in August 1992 in some British
papers. They showed
Bosnian Muslims who had been beaten by Serbian guards. The doctor
described on the witness
stand how he met the ITN teams in summer 1992, and confirmed the stories
of the rape and
assault of defenseless civilians in Trnopolje – stories which I and LM
have never disputed, and
in fact reported in my article. His very short testimony was of cause
moving, but my impression
was that he was only invited to give evidence for ITN to score moral
points for the Plaintiffs.
LM barrister Millar declined to cross examine the doctor.
Tom Shields for ITN used the testimony of the doctor to give the utterly
false impression that I
wished to excuse those who were guilty of evil acts in Trnopolje and
elsewhere. The ITN
lawyer further exerted himself to question my description of Trnopolje
as a refugee and transit
camp in which many Muslims sought safety from the bloody civil war going
on around them.
During my testimony it became clear that Shields, despite his hectoring
me with morally laden
catch-phrases, didn’t have the slightest idea what had happened during
the Bosnian civil war.
Trnopolje was surely a chaotic and awful place, but it was also surely
not a detention camp or
prison and most surely it was not a concentration camp comparable with
Auschwitz or
Bergen-Belsen as suggested by the famous ITN shots with the barbed wire.
The single positive feature of the proceedings in the High Court in
London was that they finally
proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither Trnopolje camp nor the
filmed Bosnian
Muslims were surrounded by a barbed wire fence as suggested by ITN’s
shots. Rather, it was
the journalists who were surrounded by barbed wire as my article ‘The
picture that fooled the
world’ had shown.
But on the other hand, the verdict spelled the end of LM and now hangs
like a sword of
Damocles over every English journalist. LM, an opinionated magazine with
intelligent articles
contrary to the Zeitgeist, was brought to ruin. One can only hope that
other media organizations
and journalists will not follow ITN’s example but instead follow the
example of publications
like LM and its creators.
Thomas Deichmann, 37, is a freelance journalist and author and editor of
the bimonthly German magazine Novo.
Further information on the libel case including the original article in
German language is available on
http://www.novo-magazin.de/itn-vs-lm Deichmann’s article ‘The picture
that fooled the world’ was reprinted in the
U.S. in Ramsey Clark et al: ‘NATO in the Balkans. Voices of Opposition’,
International Action Centre, New York
1998. An analytical piece on the same story with the title
‘Misinformation: TV Coverage of a Bosnian Camp’
appeared in CovertAction Quarterly, Fall 1998. Deichmann’s study of Roy
Gutman’s war reporting recently appeared
in the US under the title ‘The Pulitzer Price and Croatian Propaganda’
in ‘War Lies & Videotape. How Media
Monopoly stifles truth’, International Action Centre, New York 2000. You
may call Thomas Deichmann in Frankfurt
at +49 69 722271; send him a fax at 720913; or send him an e-mail at
Thomas.Deichmann@...
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
Sul lavoro effettuato dai criminali della agenzia di lobbying
"Ruder&Finn" per fomentare la guerra nei Balcani si veda:
http://www.marx2001.org/crj/DOCS/ruderfinn.html
http://www.marx2001.org/crj/DOCS/desinf.html
---
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
RUDER FINN - Boycott ALL of their clients!!!
Ruder Finn has repeatedly distributed false accusations against the
Yugoslav
nation and the Serbian people, with both the intention AND THE RESULT of
inciting other governments to engage in armed attacks, sanctions, and
other
unprovoked acts of destruction against the Yugoslav nation and the
Serbian
people.
"Direct and public incitement to commit genocide" is punishable,
according
to Article 3 of the U.N. General Assembly resolution 260 A (III),
"Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."
(See
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm).
>The following acts shall be punishable:
>(a) Genocide;
>(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
>(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
>(d ) Attempt to commit genocide;
>(e) Complicity in genocide.
Therefore, Ruder Finn and its owners and employees are war criminals in
the
tradition of Josef Goebbels and Julius Streicher.
What to do about it? The best way to shut down this, or any other,
public
relations firm once and for all is to boycott ALL of their clients.
DON'T buy ANYTHING from ANY of their clients. And tell those clients why
you
aren't buying from them!
DON'T subscribe to any periodical that carries an ad for Ruder-Finn's
public
relations services. And write to that periodical explaining what is
wrong
with Ruder Finn!
DON'T travel to any country or locality that uses their services, unless
you
are traveling to Kosovo to assist beleaguered Serbs or Roma.
PASS THIS MESSAGE ALONG!!!
Alida Weber
"NEXT YEAR IN KOSOVO!"
=====================================================
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2000 9:10 AM
Subject: [STOPNATO] Ruder Finn
http://www.plannedtelevisionarts.com/intl/index.html
RUDER FINN STILL AT IT
travel & tourism clients | international relations clients | economic
development clients
Travel & Tourism clients
American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA)
Association of Croatian Travel Agencies
ATLAS Travel Agency of Dubrovnik
Australian Tourist Commission
Barbados Tourism Authority
Canadian Airlines
Cathay Pacific Airways
City of Cannes and Convention Center
Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Public Library; Regional Transportation
Authority
Croatia National Tourist Board
Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau
Finnair
Hilton Hotels Corporation
Howard Johnson
Hyatt Hotel Corporation
New Orleans
Qantas Airways
South African Airways
St. James Club/Los Angeles
The Tudor Hotel (New York)
Toronto, Canada: Toronto International Festival; Toronto Transit
Commission
Universal Studios, Florida
Vail / Beaver Creek, Colorado
Westin Hotels
travel & tourism clients | international relations clients | economic
development clients
International Relations Clients
American Society of Travel Agents
Atlas Travel of Dubrovnik
Axa-Medi Assurances
Croatian National Tourism Office
European Council of American Chambers of Commerce
Fyffes Bananas
Plastico Limited
Republic of Albania
Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Republic of Croatia
Republic of El Salvador
Republic of Estonia
Republic of Kosova
The Rebuild Dubrovnik Fund
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
World Alpine Ski Championships
This is truly am interesting post.
Reminds me of my days in college in American Government class listening
to
all the Second Amendment arguments and wondering what it was all about!
(?)
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2000 9:10 AM
Subject: [STOPNATO] Ruder Finn
>> STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
>>
>> I suggest everyone check out Ruder Finns website. A
>> list of Ruder Finns
>> clients can be found at
>>
>(http://www.plannedtelevisionarts.com/intl/index.html).
>> They include such
>> non-existent states as the Republic of Kosova and
>> the Turkish Republic of
>> Northern Cyprus. Other Balkan clients include,
>> Bosnia, Albania,
>> Croatia...hmmm, does this firm have a political
>> agenda or what?
>>
>"We have the best congress money can buy!"
>This could very well be the slogan of this PR firm and
>the others working for the forses of genocide and
>anti-Serb racism on Capitol Hill.
>As a American I am ashamed to say that these firms
>have bought access to our corupt and criminal national
>government which is now involved in the slaughter and
>genocide of the Serbian people.
>I would like to add that these firms have also locked
>us out of congress so that common sense and humanity
>cannot get through.
>As an American I am UPSET that these governments can
>come here to my country and have more access to MY
>government that I do. They use this access to spread
>hate.
>congress is committing genocide because the price is
>right.
>We may soon have to take that original rights of self
>defense and clear house on capital hill.
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
http://swans.com
Swans
The Media and their Atrocities
by Michael Parenti
May 22, 2000
For the better part of a decade the U.S. public has been bombarded with
a media campaign to demonize the Serbian people and their elected
leaders. During that time, the U.S. government has pursued a goal of
breaking up Yugoslavia into a cluster of small, weak, dependent,
free-market principalities. Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern
Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector
economy. It was the only one that did not beg for entry into NATO. It
was--and what's left of it, still is--charting an independent course not
in keeping with the New World Order.
Targeting the Serbs
Of the various Yugoslav peoples, the Serbs were targeted for
demonization because they were the largest nationality and the one most
opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia. But what of the atrocities they
committed? All sides committed atrocities in the fighting that has been
encouraged by the western powers over the last decade, but the reporting
has been consistently one-sided. Grisly incidents of Croat and Muslim
atrocities against the Serbs rarely made it into the U.S. press, and
when they did they were accorded only passing mention.1 Meanwhile Serb
atrocities were played up and sometimes even fabricated, as we shall
see. Recently, three Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War
Crimes Tribunal for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and
elsewhere. Where were the U.S. television crews when these war crimes
were being committed? John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald
Concentration Camp, USA, asks: Where were the TV cameras when hundreds
of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?2 The official
line, faithfully parroted in the U.S. media, is that Bosnian Serb forces
committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica.
Are we to trust U.S. leaders and the corporate-owned news media when
they dish out atrocity stories? Recall the five hundred premature babies
whom Iraqi soldiers laughingly ripped from incubators in Kuwait? A story
repeated and believed until exposed as a total fabrication years later.
During the Bosnian war in 1993, the Serbs were accused of pursuing an
official policy of rape. "Go forth and rape" a Bosnian Serb commander
supposedly publicly instructed his troops. The source of that story
never could be traced. The commander's name was never produced. As far
as we know, no such utterance was ever made. Even the New York Times
belatedly ran a tiny retraction, coyly allowing that "the existence of
'a systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."3
Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000
Muslim women, the stories varied. The Bosnian Serb army numbered not
more than 30,000 or so, many of whom were engaged in desperate military
engagements. A representative from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of
massive Serbian rapes originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian
governments and had no credible supporting evidence. Common sense would
dictate that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism--and
not be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against
Yugoslavia.
The "mass rape" propaganda theme was resuscitated in 1999 to justify the
continued NATO slaughter of Yugoslavia. A headline in the San Francisco
Examiner (April 26, 1999) tells us: "SERB TACTIC IS ORGANIZED RAPE,
KOSOVO REFUGEES SAY." No evidence or testimony is given to support the
charge of organized rape. Only at the bottom of the story, in the
nineteenth paragraph, do we read that reports gathered by the Kosovo
mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found
no such organized rape policy. The actual number of rapes were in the
dozens "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson. This
same story did note in passing that the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal
sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison for
failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993--an atrocity
we heard little about when it was happening.
A few dozen rapes is a few dozen too many. But can it serve as one of
the justifications for a massive war? If Mr. Clinton wanted to stop
rapes, he could have begun a little closer to home in Washington D.C.,
where dozens of rapes occur every month. Indeed, he might be able to
alert us to how women are sexually mistreated on Capitol Hill and in the
White House itself.
The Serbs were blamed for the infamous Sarajevo market massacre. But
according to the report leaked out on French TV, Western intelligence
knew that it was Muslim operatives who had bombed Bosnian civilians in
the marketplace in order to induce NATO involvement. Even international
negotiator David Owen, who worked with Cyrus Vance, admitted in his
memoir that the NATO powers knew all along that it was a Muslim bomb.4
On one occasion, notes Barry Lituchy, the New York Times ran a photo
purporting to be of Croats grieving over Serbian atrocities when in fact
the murders had been committed by Bosnian Muslims. The Times printed an
obscure retraction the following week.5
The propaganda campaign against Belgrade has been so relentless that
even prominent personages on the Left--who oppose the NATO policy
against Yugoslavia--have felt compelled to genuflect before this
demonization orthodoxy, referring to unspecified and unverified Serbian
"brutality" and "the monstrous Milosevic."6 Thus they reveal themselves
as having been influenced by the very media propaganda machine they
criticize on so many other issues. To reject the demonized image of
Milosevic and of the Serbian people is not to idealize them or claim
that Serb forces are faultless or free of crimes. It is merely to
challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for NATO's
aggression against Yugoslavia.
The Ethnic Cleansing Hype
Up until the NATO bombings began in March 1999, the conflict in Kosovo
had taken 2000 lives altogether from both sides, according to Kosovo
Albanian sources. Yugoslavian sources put the figure at 800. Such
casualties reveal a civil war, not genocide. Belgrade is condemned for
the forced expulsion policy of Albanians from Kosovo. But such
expulsions began in substantial numbers only after the NATO bombings,
with thousands being uprooted by Serb forces especially from areas where
KLA mercenaries were operating
We should keep in mind that tens of thousands also fled Kosovo because
it was being mercilessly bombed by NATO, or because it was the scene of
sustained ground fighting between Yugoslav forces and the KLA, or
because they were just afraid and hungry. An Albanian woman crossing
into Macedonia was eagerly asked by a news crew if she had been forced
out by Serb police. She responded: "There were no Serbs. We were
frightened of the [NATO] bombs."7 I had to read this in the San
Francisco Guardian, an alternative weekly, not in the New York Times or
Washington Post.
During the bombings, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Serbian residents of
Kosovo took flight (mostly north but some to the south), as did
thousands of Roma and others.8 Were the Serbs ethnically cleansing
themselves? Or were these people not fleeing the bombing and the ground
war? Yet, the refugee tide caused by the bombing was repeatedly used by
U.S. war makers as justification for the bombing, a pressure put on
Milosevic to allow "the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees."9
While Kosovo Albanians were leaving in great numbers--usually
well-clothed and in good health, some riding their tractors, trucks, or
cars, many of them young men of recruitment age--they were described as
being "slaughtered." It was repeatedly reported that "Serb
atrocities"--not the extensive ground war with the KLA and certainly not
the massive NATO bombing--"drove more than one million Albanians from
their homes."10 More recently, there have been hints that Albanian
Kosovar refugees numbered nowhere near that number.
Serbian attacks on KLA strongholds or the forced expulsion of Albanian
villagers were described as "genocide." But experts in surveillance
photography and wartime propaganda charged NATO with running a
"propaganda campaign" on Kosovo that lacked any supporting evidence.
State Department reports of mass graves and of 100,000 to 500,000
missing Albanian men "are just ludicrous," according to these
independent critics.11 Their findings were ignored by the major networks
and other national media.
Early in the war, Newsday reported that Britain and France were
seriously considering "commando assaults into Kosovo to break the
pattern of Serbian massacres of ethnic Albanians."12 What discernible
pattern of massacres? Of course, no commando assaults were put into
operation, but the story served its purpose of hyping an image of mass
killings.
An ABC "Nightline" show made dramatic and repeated references to the
"Serbian atrocities in Kosovo" while offering no specifics. Ted Kopple
asked a group of angry Albanian refugees, what specifically had they
witnessed. They pointed to an old man in their group who wore a wool
hat. One of them reenacted what the Serbs had done to him, throwing the
man's hat to the ground and stepping on it-"because the Serbs knew that
his hat was the most important thing to him." Kopple was appropriately
horrified about this "war crime," the only example offered in an
hour-long program.
A widely circulated story in the New York Times, headlined "U.S. REPORT
OUTLINES SERB ATTACKS IN KOSOVO," tells us that the State Department
issued "the most comprehensive documentary record to date on
atrocities." The report concluded that there had been organized rapes
and systematic executions. But as one reads further and more closely
into the article, one finds that State Department reports of such crimes
"depend almost entirely on information from refugee accounts. There was
no suggestion that American intelligence agencies had been able to
verify, most, or even many, of the accounts . . . and the word
'reportedly' and 'allegedly' appear throughout the document."13
British journalist Audrey Gillan interviewed Kosovo refugees about
atrocities and found an impressive lack of evidence or credible
specifics. One woman caught him glancing at the watch on her wrist,
while her husband told him how all the women had been robbed of their
jewelry and other possessions. A spokesman for the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees talked of mass rapes and what sounded like
hundreds of killings in three villages, but when Gillan pressed him for
more precise information, he reduced it drastically to five or six
teenage rape victims. But he had not spoken to any witnesses, and
admitted that "we have no way of verifying these reports."14
Gillan notes that some refugees had seen killings and other atrocities,
but there was little to suggest that they had seen it on the scale that
was being reported. One afternoon, officials in charge said there were
refugees arriving who talked of sixty or more being killed in one
village and fifty in another, but Gillan "could not find one eye-witness
who actually saw these things happening." Yet every day western
journalists reported "hundreds" of rapes and murders. Sometimes they
noted in passing that the reports had yet to be substantiated, but then
why were such unverified stories being so eagerly reported in the first
place?
The Disappearing "Mass Graves"
After NATO forces occupied Kosovo, the stories about mass atrocities
continued fortissimo. The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic
Albanians "might be buried in mass graves" around a mountain village in
western Kosovo. They "might be" or they might not be. These estimates
were based on sources that NATO officials refused to identify. Getting
down to specifics, the article mentions "four decomposing bodies"
discovered near a large ash heap.15
It was repeatedly announced in the first days of the NATO occupation
that 10,000 Albanians had been killed (down from the 100,000 and even
500,000 Albanian men supposedly executed during the war). No evidence
was ever offered to support the 10,000 figure, nor even to explain how
it was arrived at so swiftly and surely while NATO troops were still
moving into place and did not occupy but small portions of the province.
Likewise, repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass graves," each
purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of Albanian victims
also failed to materialize. Through the summer of 1999, the media hype
about mass graves devolved into an occasional unspecified reference. The
few sites actually unearthed offered up as many as a dozen bodies or
sometimes twice that number, but with no certain evidence regarding
causes of death or even the nationality of victims. In some cases there
was reason to believe the victims were Serbs.16
On April 19, 1999, while the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia were going on,
the State Department announced that up to 500,000 Kosovo Albanians were
missing and feared dead. On May 16, U.S. Secretary of Defense William
Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine now serving in President
Clinton's Democratic Administration, stated that 100,000 military-aged
ethnic Albanian men had vanished and might have been killed by the
Serbs.17 Such widely varying but horrendous figures from official
sources went unchallenged by the media and by the many liberals who
supported NATO's "humanitarian rescue operation." Among these latter
were some supposedly progressive members of Congress who seemed to
believe they were witnessing another Nazi Holocaust.
On June 17, just before the end of the war, British Foreign Office
Minister Geoff Hoon said that "in more than 100 massacres" some 10,000
ethnic Albanians had been killed (down from the 500,000 and 100,000
bandied about by U.S. officials)."18 A day or two after the bombings
stopped, the Associate Press and other news agency, echoing Hoon,
reported that 10,000 Albanians had been killed by the Serbs.19 No
explanation was given as to how this figure was arrived at, especially
since not a single war site had yet been investigated and NATO forces
had barely begun to move into Kosovo. On August 2, Bernard Kouchner, the
United Nations' chief administrator in Kosovo (and organizer of Doctors
Without Borders), asserted that about 11,000 bodies had been found in
common graves throughout Kosovo. He cited as his source the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Republic of Yugoslavia
(ICTY). But the ICTY denied providing any such information. To this day,
it is not clear how Kouchner came up with his estimate.20
As with the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts, the image of mass killings
was hyped once again. Repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass
graves," each purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of
Albanian victims were publicized in daily media reports. In September
1999, Jared Israel did an internet search for newspaper articles,
appearing over the previous three months including the words "Kosovo"
and "mass grave." The report came back: "More than 1000-- too many to
list." Limiting his search to articles in the New York Times , he came
up with eighty, nearly one a day. Yet when it came down to hard
evidence, the mass graves seemed to disappear.
Thus, in mid-June, the FBI sent a team to investigate two of the sites
listed in the war-crimes indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, one
purportedly containing six victims and the other twenty. The team lugged
107,000 pounds of equipment into Kosovo to handle what was called the
"largest crime scene in the FBI's forensic history," but it came up with
no reports about mass graves. Not long after, on July 1, the FBI team
returned home, oddly with not a word to say about their investigation.21
Forensic experts from other NATO countries had similar experiences. A
Spanish forensic team, for instance, was told to prepare for at least
2,000 autopsies, but found only 187 bodies, usually buried in individual
graves, and showing no signs of massacre or torture. Most seemed to have
been killed by mortar shells and firearms. One Spanish forensic expert,
Emilio Perez Puhola, acknowledged that his team did not find one mass
grave. He dismissed the widely publicized references about mass graves
as being part of the "machinery of war propaganda."22
The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic Albanians "might be buried
in mass graves" around a mountain village in western Kosovo. Or they
might not. Such speculations were based on sources that NATO officials
refused to identify. Getting down to specifics, the article mentions
"four decomposing bodies" discovered near a large ash heap, with no
details as to who they might be or how they died.23
In late August 1999, the Los Angeles Times tried to salvage the genocide
theme with a story about how the wells of Kosovo might be "mass graves
in their own right." The Times claimed that "many corpses have been
dumped into wells in Kosovo . . . Serbian forces apparently
stuffed...many bodies of ethnic Albanians into wells during their
campaign of terror."24 Apparently? Whenever the story got down to
specifics, it dwelled on only one village and only one well--in which
one body of a 39-year-old male was found, along with three dead cows and
a dog. Neither his nationality nor cause of death was given. Nor was it
clear who owned the well. "No other human remains were discovered," the
Times lamely concluded. As far as I know, neither the Los Angeles Times
nor any other media outlet ran any more stories of wells stuffed with
victims.
In one grave site after another, bodies were failing to materialize in
any substantial numbers-or any numbers at all. In July 1999, a mass
grave in Ljubenic, near Pec (an area of concerted fighting), believed to
be holding some 350 corpses, produced only seven after the exhumation.
In Djacovica, town officials claimed that one hundred ethnic Albanians
had been murdered, but there were no bodies because the Serbs had
returned in the middle of the night, dug them up, and carted them away,
the officials seemed to believe. In Pusto Selo, villagers claimed that
106 men were captured and killed by Serbs at the end of March, but again
no remains were discovered. Villagers once more suggested that Serb
forces must have come back and removed them. How they accomplished this
without being detected was not explained. In Izbica, refugees reported
that 150 ethnic Albanians were executed in March. But their bodies were
nowhere to be found. In Kraljan, 82 men were supposedly killed, but
investigators found not a single cadaver.25
The worst incident of mass atrocities ascribed to Yugoslavian leader
Slobodan Milosevic allegedly occurred at the Trepca mine. As reported by
U.S. and NATO officials, the Serbs threw a thousand or more bodies down
the shafts or disposed of them in the mine's vats of hydrochloric acid.
In October 1999, the ICTY released the findings of Western forensic
teams investigating Trepca. Not one body was found in the mine shafts,
nor was there any evidence that the vats had ever been used in an
attempt to dissolve human remains.26
By late autumn of 1999, the media hype about mass graves had fizzled
noticeably. The many sites unearthed, considered to be the most
notorious, offered up a few hundred bodies altogether, not the thousands
or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands previously trumpeted, and
with no evidence of torture or mass execution. In many cases, there was
no certain evidence regarding the nationality of victims.27 No mass
killings means that the Hague War Crimes Tribunal indictment of
Milosevic "becomes highly questionable," notes Richard Gwyn. "Even more
questionable is the West's continued punishment of the Serbs."28
No doubt there were graves in Kosovo that contained two or more persons
(which is NATO's definition of a "mass grave"). People were killed by
bombs and by the extensive land war that went on between Yugoslav and
KLA forces. Some of the dead, as even the New York Times allowed, "are
fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army or may have died ordinary
deaths"-- as would happen in any large population over time.29 And no
doubt there were grudge killings and summary executions as in any war,
but not on a scale that would warrant the label of genocide and justify
the massive death and destruction and the continuing misery inflicted
upon Yugoslavia by the western powers.
We should remember that the propaganda campaign waged by NATO officials
and the major media never claimed merely that atrocities (murders and
rapes) occurred. Such crimes occur in every war, indeed, in many
communities during peacetime. What the media propaganda campaign against
Yugoslavia charged was that mass atrocities and mass rapes and mass
murders had been perpetrated, that is, genocide, as evidenced by mass
graves.
In contrast to its public assertions, the German Foreign Office
privately denied there was any evidence that genocide or ethnic
cleansing was ever a component of Yugoslav policy: "Even in Kosovo, an
explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not
verifiable. . . . The actions of the [Yugoslav] security forces [were]
not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined
group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged
supporters."30
Still, Milosevic was indicted as a war criminal, charged with the forced
expulsion of Kosovar Albanians, and with summary executions of a hundred
or so individuals, again, alleged crimes that occurred after the NATO
bombing had started, yet were used as justification for the bombing. The
biggest war criminal of all is NATO and the political leaders who
orchestrated the aerial campaign of death and destruction. But here is
how the White House and the U.S. media reasoned at the time: Since the
aerial attacks do not intend to kill civilians, then presumably there is
no liability and no accountability, only an occasional apology for the
regrettable mistakes-as if only the intent of an action counted and not
its ineluctable effects. In fact, a perpetrator can be judged guilty of
willful murder without explicitly intending the death of a particular
victim--as when the death results from an unlawful act that the
perpetrator knew would likely cause death. George Kenney, a former State
Department official under the Bush Administration, put it well:
"Dropping cluster bombs on highly populated urban areas doesn't result
in accidental fatalities. It is purposeful terror bombing."31
In sum, through a process of monopoly control and distribution,
repetition and image escalation, the media achieve self-confirmation,
that is, they find confirmation for the images they fabricate in the
images they have already fabricated. Hyperbolic labeling takes the place
of evidence: "genocide," "mass atrocities," "systematic rapes" and even
"rape camps"--camps which no one has ever located. Through this process,
evidence is not only absent, it becomes irrelevant.
So the U.S. major media (and much of the minor media) are not free and
independent, as they claim, they are not the watchdog of democracy but
the lapdog of the national security state. They help reverse the roles
of victims and victimizers, warmongers and peacekeepers, reactionaries
and reformers. The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any
war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.
--------------
Michael Parenti is the author of Against Empire and America Besieged.
His most recent book is History as Mystery (City Lights Books).
Notes:
1. For instance, Raymond Bonner, "War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops
'Cleansed' the Serbs," New York Times, March 21, 1999, a revealing
report that has been ignored in the relentless propaganda campaign
against the Serbs.
2. John Ranz in his paid advertisement in the New York Times, April 29,
1993.
3. "Correction: Report on Rape in Bosnia," New York Times, October 23,
1993.
4. David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, p. 262.
5. Barry Lituchy, "Media Deception and the Yugoslav Civil War," in NATO
in the Balkans, p. 205; see also New York Times, August 7, 1993.
6. Both Noam Chomsky in his comments on Pacifica Radio, April 7, 1999,
and Alexander Cockburn in the Nation, May 10, 1999, describe Milosevic
as "monstrous" without offering any specifics.
7. Brooke Shelby Biggs, "Failure to Inform," San Francisco Bay Guardian,
May 5, 1999, p. 25.
8 Washington Post, June 6, 1999.
9. See for instance, Robert Burns, Associated Press report, April 22,
1999.
10. For example, New York Times, June 15, 1998.
11. Charles Radin and Louise Palmer, "Experts Voice Doubts on Claims of
Genocide: Little Evidence for NATO Assertions," San Francisco Chronicle,
April 22, 1999.
12. Newsday, March 31, 1999.
13. New York Times, May 11, 1999.
14. Audrey Gillan "What's the Story?" London Review of Books, May 27,
1999.
15. Washington Post, July 10, 1999.
16. See for instance, Carlotta Gall, "Belgrade Sees Grave Site as Proof
NATO Fails to Protect Serbs," New York Times, August 27, 1999.
17. Both the State Department and Cohen's figures are reported in the
New York Times, November 11, 1999.
18. New York Times, November 11, 1999.
19. Associate Press release, June 18, 1999. Reuters (July 12, 1999)
reported that NATO forces had catalogued more than one hundred sites
containing the bodies of massacred ethnic Albanians.
20. Stratfor.com, Global Intelligence Update, "Where Are Kosovo's
Killing Fields?" Weekly Analysis, October 18, 1999.
21. Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid, "Playing the Numbers Game"
(www.aim.org/mm/1999/08/03.htm).
22. London Sunday Times, October 31, 1999.
23. Washington Post, July 10, 1999.
24. Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1999.
25. Stratfor.com, Global Intelligence Update, "Where Are Kosovo's
Killing Fields?" Weekly Analysis, October 18, 1999.
26. Richard Gwyn in the Toronto Star, November 3, 1999.
27. See for instance, Carlotta Gall, "Belgrade Sees Grave Site as Proof
NATO Fails to Protect Serbs," New York Times, August 27, 1999.
28. Richard Gwyn in the Toronto Star, November 3, 1999.
29. New York Times, November 11, 1999.
30. Intelligence reports from the German Foreign Office, January 12,
1999 and October 29, 1998 to the German Administrative Courts,
translated by Eric Canepa, Brecht Forum, New York, April 20, 1999.
31. Teach-in, Leo Baeck Temple, Los Angeles, May 23, 1999.
http://www.swans.com
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
"Ruder&Finn" per fomentare la guerra nei Balcani si veda:
http://www.marx2001.org/crj/DOCS/ruderfinn.html
http://www.marx2001.org/crj/DOCS/desinf.html
---
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
RUDER FINN - Boycott ALL of their clients!!!
Ruder Finn has repeatedly distributed false accusations against the
Yugoslav
nation and the Serbian people, with both the intention AND THE RESULT of
inciting other governments to engage in armed attacks, sanctions, and
other
unprovoked acts of destruction against the Yugoslav nation and the
Serbian
people.
"Direct and public incitement to commit genocide" is punishable,
according
to Article 3 of the U.N. General Assembly resolution 260 A (III),
"Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."
(See
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm).
>The following acts shall be punishable:
>(a) Genocide;
>(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
>(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
>(d ) Attempt to commit genocide;
>(e) Complicity in genocide.
Therefore, Ruder Finn and its owners and employees are war criminals in
the
tradition of Josef Goebbels and Julius Streicher.
What to do about it? The best way to shut down this, or any other,
public
relations firm once and for all is to boycott ALL of their clients.
DON'T buy ANYTHING from ANY of their clients. And tell those clients why
you
aren't buying from them!
DON'T subscribe to any periodical that carries an ad for Ruder-Finn's
public
relations services. And write to that periodical explaining what is
wrong
with Ruder Finn!
DON'T travel to any country or locality that uses their services, unless
you
are traveling to Kosovo to assist beleaguered Serbs or Roma.
PASS THIS MESSAGE ALONG!!!
Alida Weber
"NEXT YEAR IN KOSOVO!"
=====================================================
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2000 9:10 AM
Subject: [STOPNATO] Ruder Finn
http://www.plannedtelevisionarts.com/intl/index.html
RUDER FINN STILL AT IT
travel & tourism clients | international relations clients | economic
development clients
Travel & Tourism clients
American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA)
Association of Croatian Travel Agencies
ATLAS Travel Agency of Dubrovnik
Australian Tourist Commission
Barbados Tourism Authority
Canadian Airlines
Cathay Pacific Airways
City of Cannes and Convention Center
Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Public Library; Regional Transportation
Authority
Croatia National Tourist Board
Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau
Finnair
Hilton Hotels Corporation
Howard Johnson
Hyatt Hotel Corporation
New Orleans
Qantas Airways
South African Airways
St. James Club/Los Angeles
The Tudor Hotel (New York)
Toronto, Canada: Toronto International Festival; Toronto Transit
Commission
Universal Studios, Florida
Vail / Beaver Creek, Colorado
Westin Hotels
travel & tourism clients | international relations clients | economic
development clients
International Relations Clients
American Society of Travel Agents
Atlas Travel of Dubrovnik
Axa-Medi Assurances
Croatian National Tourism Office
European Council of American Chambers of Commerce
Fyffes Bananas
Plastico Limited
Republic of Albania
Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Republic of Croatia
Republic of El Salvador
Republic of Estonia
Republic of Kosova
The Rebuild Dubrovnik Fund
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
World Alpine Ski Championships
This is truly am interesting post.
Reminds me of my days in college in American Government class listening
to
all the Second Amendment arguments and wondering what it was all about!
(?)
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2000 9:10 AM
Subject: [STOPNATO] Ruder Finn
>> STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
>>
>> I suggest everyone check out Ruder Finns website. A
>> list of Ruder Finns
>> clients can be found at
>>
>(http://www.plannedtelevisionarts.com/intl/index.html).
>> They include such
>> non-existent states as the Republic of Kosova and
>> the Turkish Republic of
>> Northern Cyprus. Other Balkan clients include,
>> Bosnia, Albania,
>> Croatia...hmmm, does this firm have a political
>> agenda or what?
>>
>"We have the best congress money can buy!"
>This could very well be the slogan of this PR firm and
>the others working for the forses of genocide and
>anti-Serb racism on Capitol Hill.
>As a American I am ashamed to say that these firms
>have bought access to our corupt and criminal national
>government which is now involved in the slaughter and
>genocide of the Serbian people.
>I would like to add that these firms have also locked
>us out of congress so that common sense and humanity
>cannot get through.
>As an American I am UPSET that these governments can
>come here to my country and have more access to MY
>government that I do. They use this access to spread
>hate.
>congress is committing genocide because the price is
>right.
>We may soon have to take that original rights of self
>defense and clear house on capital hill.
---
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
http://swans.com
Swans
The Media and their Atrocities
by Michael Parenti
May 22, 2000
For the better part of a decade the U.S. public has been bombarded with
a media campaign to demonize the Serbian people and their elected
leaders. During that time, the U.S. government has pursued a goal of
breaking up Yugoslavia into a cluster of small, weak, dependent,
free-market principalities. Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern
Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector
economy. It was the only one that did not beg for entry into NATO. It
was--and what's left of it, still is--charting an independent course not
in keeping with the New World Order.
Targeting the Serbs
Of the various Yugoslav peoples, the Serbs were targeted for
demonization because they were the largest nationality and the one most
opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia. But what of the atrocities they
committed? All sides committed atrocities in the fighting that has been
encouraged by the western powers over the last decade, but the reporting
has been consistently one-sided. Grisly incidents of Croat and Muslim
atrocities against the Serbs rarely made it into the U.S. press, and
when they did they were accorded only passing mention.1 Meanwhile Serb
atrocities were played up and sometimes even fabricated, as we shall
see. Recently, three Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War
Crimes Tribunal for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and
elsewhere. Where were the U.S. television crews when these war crimes
were being committed? John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald
Concentration Camp, USA, asks: Where were the TV cameras when hundreds
of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?2 The official
line, faithfully parroted in the U.S. media, is that Bosnian Serb forces
committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica.
Are we to trust U.S. leaders and the corporate-owned news media when
they dish out atrocity stories? Recall the five hundred premature babies
whom Iraqi soldiers laughingly ripped from incubators in Kuwait? A story
repeated and believed until exposed as a total fabrication years later.
During the Bosnian war in 1993, the Serbs were accused of pursuing an
official policy of rape. "Go forth and rape" a Bosnian Serb commander
supposedly publicly instructed his troops. The source of that story
never could be traced. The commander's name was never produced. As far
as we know, no such utterance was ever made. Even the New York Times
belatedly ran a tiny retraction, coyly allowing that "the existence of
'a systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."3
Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000
Muslim women, the stories varied. The Bosnian Serb army numbered not
more than 30,000 or so, many of whom were engaged in desperate military
engagements. A representative from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of
massive Serbian rapes originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian
governments and had no credible supporting evidence. Common sense would
dictate that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism--and
not be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against
Yugoslavia.
The "mass rape" propaganda theme was resuscitated in 1999 to justify the
continued NATO slaughter of Yugoslavia. A headline in the San Francisco
Examiner (April 26, 1999) tells us: "SERB TACTIC IS ORGANIZED RAPE,
KOSOVO REFUGEES SAY." No evidence or testimony is given to support the
charge of organized rape. Only at the bottom of the story, in the
nineteenth paragraph, do we read that reports gathered by the Kosovo
mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found
no such organized rape policy. The actual number of rapes were in the
dozens "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson. This
same story did note in passing that the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal
sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison for
failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993--an atrocity
we heard little about when it was happening.
A few dozen rapes is a few dozen too many. But can it serve as one of
the justifications for a massive war? If Mr. Clinton wanted to stop
rapes, he could have begun a little closer to home in Washington D.C.,
where dozens of rapes occur every month. Indeed, he might be able to
alert us to how women are sexually mistreated on Capitol Hill and in the
White House itself.
The Serbs were blamed for the infamous Sarajevo market massacre. But
according to the report leaked out on French TV, Western intelligence
knew that it was Muslim operatives who had bombed Bosnian civilians in
the marketplace in order to induce NATO involvement. Even international
negotiator David Owen, who worked with Cyrus Vance, admitted in his
memoir that the NATO powers knew all along that it was a Muslim bomb.4
On one occasion, notes Barry Lituchy, the New York Times ran a photo
purporting to be of Croats grieving over Serbian atrocities when in fact
the murders had been committed by Bosnian Muslims. The Times printed an
obscure retraction the following week.5
The propaganda campaign against Belgrade has been so relentless that
even prominent personages on the Left--who oppose the NATO policy
against Yugoslavia--have felt compelled to genuflect before this
demonization orthodoxy, referring to unspecified and unverified Serbian
"brutality" and "the monstrous Milosevic."6 Thus they reveal themselves
as having been influenced by the very media propaganda machine they
criticize on so many other issues. To reject the demonized image of
Milosevic and of the Serbian people is not to idealize them or claim
that Serb forces are faultless or free of crimes. It is merely to
challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for NATO's
aggression against Yugoslavia.
The Ethnic Cleansing Hype
Up until the NATO bombings began in March 1999, the conflict in Kosovo
had taken 2000 lives altogether from both sides, according to Kosovo
Albanian sources. Yugoslavian sources put the figure at 800. Such
casualties reveal a civil war, not genocide. Belgrade is condemned for
the forced expulsion policy of Albanians from Kosovo. But such
expulsions began in substantial numbers only after the NATO bombings,
with thousands being uprooted by Serb forces especially from areas where
KLA mercenaries were operating
We should keep in mind that tens of thousands also fled Kosovo because
it was being mercilessly bombed by NATO, or because it was the scene of
sustained ground fighting between Yugoslav forces and the KLA, or
because they were just afraid and hungry. An Albanian woman crossing
into Macedonia was eagerly asked by a news crew if she had been forced
out by Serb police. She responded: "There were no Serbs. We were
frightened of the [NATO] bombs."7 I had to read this in the San
Francisco Guardian, an alternative weekly, not in the New York Times or
Washington Post.
During the bombings, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Serbian residents of
Kosovo took flight (mostly north but some to the south), as did
thousands of Roma and others.8 Were the Serbs ethnically cleansing
themselves? Or were these people not fleeing the bombing and the ground
war? Yet, the refugee tide caused by the bombing was repeatedly used by
U.S. war makers as justification for the bombing, a pressure put on
Milosevic to allow "the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees."9
While Kosovo Albanians were leaving in great numbers--usually
well-clothed and in good health, some riding their tractors, trucks, or
cars, many of them young men of recruitment age--they were described as
being "slaughtered." It was repeatedly reported that "Serb
atrocities"--not the extensive ground war with the KLA and certainly not
the massive NATO bombing--"drove more than one million Albanians from
their homes."10 More recently, there have been hints that Albanian
Kosovar refugees numbered nowhere near that number.
Serbian attacks on KLA strongholds or the forced expulsion of Albanian
villagers were described as "genocide." But experts in surveillance
photography and wartime propaganda charged NATO with running a
"propaganda campaign" on Kosovo that lacked any supporting evidence.
State Department reports of mass graves and of 100,000 to 500,000
missing Albanian men "are just ludicrous," according to these
independent critics.11 Their findings were ignored by the major networks
and other national media.
Early in the war, Newsday reported that Britain and France were
seriously considering "commando assaults into Kosovo to break the
pattern of Serbian massacres of ethnic Albanians."12 What discernible
pattern of massacres? Of course, no commando assaults were put into
operation, but the story served its purpose of hyping an image of mass
killings.
An ABC "Nightline" show made dramatic and repeated references to the
"Serbian atrocities in Kosovo" while offering no specifics. Ted Kopple
asked a group of angry Albanian refugees, what specifically had they
witnessed. They pointed to an old man in their group who wore a wool
hat. One of them reenacted what the Serbs had done to him, throwing the
man's hat to the ground and stepping on it-"because the Serbs knew that
his hat was the most important thing to him." Kopple was appropriately
horrified about this "war crime," the only example offered in an
hour-long program.
A widely circulated story in the New York Times, headlined "U.S. REPORT
OUTLINES SERB ATTACKS IN KOSOVO," tells us that the State Department
issued "the most comprehensive documentary record to date on
atrocities." The report concluded that there had been organized rapes
and systematic executions. But as one reads further and more closely
into the article, one finds that State Department reports of such crimes
"depend almost entirely on information from refugee accounts. There was
no suggestion that American intelligence agencies had been able to
verify, most, or even many, of the accounts . . . and the word
'reportedly' and 'allegedly' appear throughout the document."13
British journalist Audrey Gillan interviewed Kosovo refugees about
atrocities and found an impressive lack of evidence or credible
specifics. One woman caught him glancing at the watch on her wrist,
while her husband told him how all the women had been robbed of their
jewelry and other possessions. A spokesman for the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees talked of mass rapes and what sounded like
hundreds of killings in three villages, but when Gillan pressed him for
more precise information, he reduced it drastically to five or six
teenage rape victims. But he had not spoken to any witnesses, and
admitted that "we have no way of verifying these reports."14
Gillan notes that some refugees had seen killings and other atrocities,
but there was little to suggest that they had seen it on the scale that
was being reported. One afternoon, officials in charge said there were
refugees arriving who talked of sixty or more being killed in one
village and fifty in another, but Gillan "could not find one eye-witness
who actually saw these things happening." Yet every day western
journalists reported "hundreds" of rapes and murders. Sometimes they
noted in passing that the reports had yet to be substantiated, but then
why were such unverified stories being so eagerly reported in the first
place?
The Disappearing "Mass Graves"
After NATO forces occupied Kosovo, the stories about mass atrocities
continued fortissimo. The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic
Albanians "might be buried in mass graves" around a mountain village in
western Kosovo. They "might be" or they might not be. These estimates
were based on sources that NATO officials refused to identify. Getting
down to specifics, the article mentions "four decomposing bodies"
discovered near a large ash heap.15
It was repeatedly announced in the first days of the NATO occupation
that 10,000 Albanians had been killed (down from the 100,000 and even
500,000 Albanian men supposedly executed during the war). No evidence
was ever offered to support the 10,000 figure, nor even to explain how
it was arrived at so swiftly and surely while NATO troops were still
moving into place and did not occupy but small portions of the province.
Likewise, repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass graves," each
purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of Albanian victims
also failed to materialize. Through the summer of 1999, the media hype
about mass graves devolved into an occasional unspecified reference. The
few sites actually unearthed offered up as many as a dozen bodies or
sometimes twice that number, but with no certain evidence regarding
causes of death or even the nationality of victims. In some cases there
was reason to believe the victims were Serbs.16
On April 19, 1999, while the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia were going on,
the State Department announced that up to 500,000 Kosovo Albanians were
missing and feared dead. On May 16, U.S. Secretary of Defense William
Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine now serving in President
Clinton's Democratic Administration, stated that 100,000 military-aged
ethnic Albanian men had vanished and might have been killed by the
Serbs.17 Such widely varying but horrendous figures from official
sources went unchallenged by the media and by the many liberals who
supported NATO's "humanitarian rescue operation." Among these latter
were some supposedly progressive members of Congress who seemed to
believe they were witnessing another Nazi Holocaust.
On June 17, just before the end of the war, British Foreign Office
Minister Geoff Hoon said that "in more than 100 massacres" some 10,000
ethnic Albanians had been killed (down from the 500,000 and 100,000
bandied about by U.S. officials)."18 A day or two after the bombings
stopped, the Associate Press and other news agency, echoing Hoon,
reported that 10,000 Albanians had been killed by the Serbs.19 No
explanation was given as to how this figure was arrived at, especially
since not a single war site had yet been investigated and NATO forces
had barely begun to move into Kosovo. On August 2, Bernard Kouchner, the
United Nations' chief administrator in Kosovo (and organizer of Doctors
Without Borders), asserted that about 11,000 bodies had been found in
common graves throughout Kosovo. He cited as his source the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Republic of Yugoslavia
(ICTY). But the ICTY denied providing any such information. To this day,
it is not clear how Kouchner came up with his estimate.20
As with the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts, the image of mass killings
was hyped once again. Repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass
graves," each purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of
Albanian victims were publicized in daily media reports. In September
1999, Jared Israel did an internet search for newspaper articles,
appearing over the previous three months including the words "Kosovo"
and "mass grave." The report came back: "More than 1000-- too many to
list." Limiting his search to articles in the New York Times , he came
up with eighty, nearly one a day. Yet when it came down to hard
evidence, the mass graves seemed to disappear.
Thus, in mid-June, the FBI sent a team to investigate two of the sites
listed in the war-crimes indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, one
purportedly containing six victims and the other twenty. The team lugged
107,000 pounds of equipment into Kosovo to handle what was called the
"largest crime scene in the FBI's forensic history," but it came up with
no reports about mass graves. Not long after, on July 1, the FBI team
returned home, oddly with not a word to say about their investigation.21
Forensic experts from other NATO countries had similar experiences. A
Spanish forensic team, for instance, was told to prepare for at least
2,000 autopsies, but found only 187 bodies, usually buried in individual
graves, and showing no signs of massacre or torture. Most seemed to have
been killed by mortar shells and firearms. One Spanish forensic expert,
Emilio Perez Puhola, acknowledged that his team did not find one mass
grave. He dismissed the widely publicized references about mass graves
as being part of the "machinery of war propaganda."22
The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic Albanians "might be buried
in mass graves" around a mountain village in western Kosovo. Or they
might not. Such speculations were based on sources that NATO officials
refused to identify. Getting down to specifics, the article mentions
"four decomposing bodies" discovered near a large ash heap, with no
details as to who they might be or how they died.23
In late August 1999, the Los Angeles Times tried to salvage the genocide
theme with a story about how the wells of Kosovo might be "mass graves
in their own right." The Times claimed that "many corpses have been
dumped into wells in Kosovo . . . Serbian forces apparently
stuffed...many bodies of ethnic Albanians into wells during their
campaign of terror."24 Apparently? Whenever the story got down to
specifics, it dwelled on only one village and only one well--in which
one body of a 39-year-old male was found, along with three dead cows and
a dog. Neither his nationality nor cause of death was given. Nor was it
clear who owned the well. "No other human remains were discovered," the
Times lamely concluded. As far as I know, neither the Los Angeles Times
nor any other media outlet ran any more stories of wells stuffed with
victims.
In one grave site after another, bodies were failing to materialize in
any substantial numbers-or any numbers at all. In July 1999, a mass
grave in Ljubenic, near Pec (an area of concerted fighting), believed to
be holding some 350 corpses, produced only seven after the exhumation.
In Djacovica, town officials claimed that one hundred ethnic Albanians
had been murdered, but there were no bodies because the Serbs had
returned in the middle of the night, dug them up, and carted them away,
the officials seemed to believe. In Pusto Selo, villagers claimed that
106 men were captured and killed by Serbs at the end of March, but again
no remains were discovered. Villagers once more suggested that Serb
forces must have come back and removed them. How they accomplished this
without being detected was not explained. In Izbica, refugees reported
that 150 ethnic Albanians were executed in March. But their bodies were
nowhere to be found. In Kraljan, 82 men were supposedly killed, but
investigators found not a single cadaver.25
The worst incident of mass atrocities ascribed to Yugoslavian leader
Slobodan Milosevic allegedly occurred at the Trepca mine. As reported by
U.S. and NATO officials, the Serbs threw a thousand or more bodies down
the shafts or disposed of them in the mine's vats of hydrochloric acid.
In October 1999, the ICTY released the findings of Western forensic
teams investigating Trepca. Not one body was found in the mine shafts,
nor was there any evidence that the vats had ever been used in an
attempt to dissolve human remains.26
By late autumn of 1999, the media hype about mass graves had fizzled
noticeably. The many sites unearthed, considered to be the most
notorious, offered up a few hundred bodies altogether, not the thousands
or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands previously trumpeted, and
with no evidence of torture or mass execution. In many cases, there was
no certain evidence regarding the nationality of victims.27 No mass
killings means that the Hague War Crimes Tribunal indictment of
Milosevic "becomes highly questionable," notes Richard Gwyn. "Even more
questionable is the West's continued punishment of the Serbs."28
No doubt there were graves in Kosovo that contained two or more persons
(which is NATO's definition of a "mass grave"). People were killed by
bombs and by the extensive land war that went on between Yugoslav and
KLA forces. Some of the dead, as even the New York Times allowed, "are
fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army or may have died ordinary
deaths"-- as would happen in any large population over time.29 And no
doubt there were grudge killings and summary executions as in any war,
but not on a scale that would warrant the label of genocide and justify
the massive death and destruction and the continuing misery inflicted
upon Yugoslavia by the western powers.
We should remember that the propaganda campaign waged by NATO officials
and the major media never claimed merely that atrocities (murders and
rapes) occurred. Such crimes occur in every war, indeed, in many
communities during peacetime. What the media propaganda campaign against
Yugoslavia charged was that mass atrocities and mass rapes and mass
murders had been perpetrated, that is, genocide, as evidenced by mass
graves.
In contrast to its public assertions, the German Foreign Office
privately denied there was any evidence that genocide or ethnic
cleansing was ever a component of Yugoslav policy: "Even in Kosovo, an
explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not
verifiable. . . . The actions of the [Yugoslav] security forces [were]
not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined
group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged
supporters."30
Still, Milosevic was indicted as a war criminal, charged with the forced
expulsion of Kosovar Albanians, and with summary executions of a hundred
or so individuals, again, alleged crimes that occurred after the NATO
bombing had started, yet were used as justification for the bombing. The
biggest war criminal of all is NATO and the political leaders who
orchestrated the aerial campaign of death and destruction. But here is
how the White House and the U.S. media reasoned at the time: Since the
aerial attacks do not intend to kill civilians, then presumably there is
no liability and no accountability, only an occasional apology for the
regrettable mistakes-as if only the intent of an action counted and not
its ineluctable effects. In fact, a perpetrator can be judged guilty of
willful murder without explicitly intending the death of a particular
victim--as when the death results from an unlawful act that the
perpetrator knew would likely cause death. George Kenney, a former State
Department official under the Bush Administration, put it well:
"Dropping cluster bombs on highly populated urban areas doesn't result
in accidental fatalities. It is purposeful terror bombing."31
In sum, through a process of monopoly control and distribution,
repetition and image escalation, the media achieve self-confirmation,
that is, they find confirmation for the images they fabricate in the
images they have already fabricated. Hyperbolic labeling takes the place
of evidence: "genocide," "mass atrocities," "systematic rapes" and even
"rape camps"--camps which no one has ever located. Through this process,
evidence is not only absent, it becomes irrelevant.
So the U.S. major media (and much of the minor media) are not free and
independent, as they claim, they are not the watchdog of democracy but
the lapdog of the national security state. They help reverse the roles
of victims and victimizers, warmongers and peacekeepers, reactionaries
and reformers. The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any
war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.
--------------
Michael Parenti is the author of Against Empire and America Besieged.
His most recent book is History as Mystery (City Lights Books).
Notes:
1. For instance, Raymond Bonner, "War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops
'Cleansed' the Serbs," New York Times, March 21, 1999, a revealing
report that has been ignored in the relentless propaganda campaign
against the Serbs.
2. John Ranz in his paid advertisement in the New York Times, April 29,
1993.
3. "Correction: Report on Rape in Bosnia," New York Times, October 23,
1993.
4. David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, p. 262.
5. Barry Lituchy, "Media Deception and the Yugoslav Civil War," in NATO
in the Balkans, p. 205; see also New York Times, August 7, 1993.
6. Both Noam Chomsky in his comments on Pacifica Radio, April 7, 1999,
and Alexander Cockburn in the Nation, May 10, 1999, describe Milosevic
as "monstrous" without offering any specifics.
7. Brooke Shelby Biggs, "Failure to Inform," San Francisco Bay Guardian,
May 5, 1999, p. 25.
8 Washington Post, June 6, 1999.
9. See for instance, Robert Burns, Associated Press report, April 22,
1999.
10. For example, New York Times, June 15, 1998.
11. Charles Radin and Louise Palmer, "Experts Voice Doubts on Claims of
Genocide: Little Evidence for NATO Assertions," San Francisco Chronicle,
April 22, 1999.
12. Newsday, March 31, 1999.
13. New York Times, May 11, 1999.
14. Audrey Gillan "What's the Story?" London Review of Books, May 27,
1999.
15. Washington Post, July 10, 1999.
16. See for instance, Carlotta Gall, "Belgrade Sees Grave Site as Proof
NATO Fails to Protect Serbs," New York Times, August 27, 1999.
17. Both the State Department and Cohen's figures are reported in the
New York Times, November 11, 1999.
18. New York Times, November 11, 1999.
19. Associate Press release, June 18, 1999. Reuters (July 12, 1999)
reported that NATO forces had catalogued more than one hundred sites
containing the bodies of massacred ethnic Albanians.
20. Stratfor.com, Global Intelligence Update, "Where Are Kosovo's
Killing Fields?" Weekly Analysis, October 18, 1999.
21. Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid, "Playing the Numbers Game"
(www.aim.org/mm/1999/08/03.htm).
22. London Sunday Times, October 31, 1999.
23. Washington Post, July 10, 1999.
24. Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1999.
25. Stratfor.com, Global Intelligence Update, "Where Are Kosovo's
Killing Fields?" Weekly Analysis, October 18, 1999.
26. Richard Gwyn in the Toronto Star, November 3, 1999.
27. See for instance, Carlotta Gall, "Belgrade Sees Grave Site as Proof
NATO Fails to Protect Serbs," New York Times, August 27, 1999.
28. Richard Gwyn in the Toronto Star, November 3, 1999.
29. New York Times, November 11, 1999.
30. Intelligence reports from the German Foreign Office, January 12,
1999 and October 29, 1998 to the German Administrative Courts,
translated by Eric Canepa, Brecht Forum, New York, April 20, 1999.
31. Teach-in, Leo Baeck Temple, Los Angeles, May 23, 1999.
http://www.swans.com
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
