[Note: even if we don't agree with the conservative, anticommunist
standpoint of Antiwar.com, we think some articles - like the following
- are worth reading. CNJ]
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
December 19, 2002
More Dirty Lies
Courtesy of The Hague Inquisition
Just recently, this column examined the many facets of falsifying
history, noting in passing the role of the Hague Inquisition in
currently the largest such effort in the world. Indeed, the ICTY is an
endeavor more massive even than the current campaign to conjure a
reason for invading Iraq, and it seeks not merely to modify history,
but to rewrite it wholesale.
Lubyanka, not Nuremberg
Its main thesis, that Slobodan Milosevic and other Serb leaders
organized a vast conspiracy, a "joint criminal enterprise," to murder,
expel or conquer other Balkan peoples and "defy the West" in the
process, is a transparent attempt to recast Balkans actors as
modern-day Axis and Allies. In this production, Slobodan Milosevic is
starring as Hitler, his fellow Serbs as Nazis, and Albanians, Croats
and Bosnian Muslims as their innocent victims, while the ICTY invokes
the spirit of Nuremberg.
Apart from this being a deeply ironic role reversal from the original
production, which ran in blood from 1941 to 1945, the "Tribunal?s"
methods and practices reflect far more the Soviet show trials of the
Stalin era. It doesn't help that the accused are presumed guilty until
proven innocent, just like those in Lubyanka, or that its "holding
facilities" in Scheveningen were used by the Nazis to imprison Dutch
patriots.
For almost a year, however, Milosevic has been making a mockery of the
prosecutors' efforts to railroad him. He has successfully demolished
every witness and every argument brought out against him, while
refusing to recognize either the Inquisition's authority or its rules.
Milosevic's outspoken defense made a striking contrast to the
conquered Balkans, where the Empire had managed to silence virtually
all the voices of dissent and resistance.
Beria's Heirs
Having failed in a head-on confrontation, despite playing with heavily
loaded dice, the Inquisitors tried a different route. In September,
they managed to extort a confession from a former Bosnian Serb leader,
Biljana Plavsic, in which she not only admitted to participating in
the planning of atrocities, but also implicated Milosevic and other
Serb dignitaries.
Bits of Plavsic's plea cited by the media sound like they were written
by the prosecutors:
[She] acknowledged she covered up crimes, ignored widespread
allegations of criminal acts and "publicly rationalized and justified
the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs" in a document setting out facts
underpinning her guilty plea.
"Mrs. Plavsic embraced and supported the objective of ethnic
separation by force and contributed to achieving it," said the
document admitting her role in killings, expulsions and cruelty
inflicted by Bosnian Serbs on non-Serbs in 1992. (Reuters)
It's as if the Inquisitors took lessons in purging "traitors to the
Party" directly from Lavrenti Beria's NKVD. Such extorted confessions
are part and parcel of any show trial, but even the ICTY has not been
this blatant before.
Why Plavsic confessed is a mystery. She claims it was remorse, and
that Serbs committed crimes out of fear, but both explanations sound
more pathetic than reasonable. She does have a strong dislike for
Milosevic, and she enthusiastically collaborated with Bosnia's NATO
occupiers between 1996 and 1998. Plavsic's true motives may be an
enigma, but the Inquisition's are not. They have seized upon the
confession to re-launch allegations of Nazi-like conduct by the Serbs,
while "rewarding" Plavsic with a "lenient" sentence of life
imprisonment.
'Nazi' Slander Resurrected
The assault came this week, at Plavsic's sentencing hearings. One of
the Inquisitors' star witnesses was no other than Madeleine Albright.
The former U.S. Secretary of State has never tried to hide her
Serbophobia, nor has she ever expressed an ounce of remorse for
masterminding the criminal act of NATO aggression in 1999, which led
to the present occupation of Kosovo. In fact, she has been outright
proud of it, as well as of her support in establishing the
Inquisition.
Albright was supposed to testify to Plavsic's willingness to
collaborate with the NATO occupiers, but also to provide the
association between the alleged Serb crimes and the Holocaust. Events
in Bosnia were "reminiscent of pictures that reminded one of World War
II," she said, adding, "We saw pictures of people being taken into
what could only be labeled as concentration camps."
Reinforcing the Nazi analogy further was Holocaust celebrity Elie
Wiesel. Even during the war, Wiesel sided with the Bosnian Muslim
campaign to depict their side as the victim of "Serb Nazis," despite
the fact that many Muslims joined the actual Nazis sixty years ago.
Since he neither knew Plavsic or possessed intimate knowledge of the
alleged atrocities in Bosnia, Wiesel's testimony was intended purely
for emotional value in absence of real arguments.
In case anyone missed the point, the prosecutors then showed the
pictures of emaciated Muslims in Serb "death camps," recycling that
1992 canard long after its expiration date. The photo, actually
depicting a tuberculosis-ridden Muslim standing in front of a
chicken-wire fence with barbed-wire top, was debunked as a malicious
camera trick by 1997.
Trotting Albright to the stand, invoking Wiesel's fame and recycling
trashy propaganda photos only goes to show that, while the
Inquisition's vitriolic assault on Serbs as "genocidal Nazis" shows no
sign of slowdown, the actual case against Plavsic - or Milosevic, for
that matter - is pretty much nonexistent. The only "joint criminal
enterprise" is between them, NATO and the Empire.
Champions of Falsehood
But that is not all. Having long since collapsed into itself under the
burden of lies and fabrications, like a black hole, the ICTY attracts
ever more such material from all over the world. The following two
cases come from the UK, but there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around.
As the Plavsic hearings unfolded and the Milosevic trial continued,
the London Guardian published a tear-jerking piece by Jadranka Cigelj,
a "rape victim" of a "Serb death camp." Cigelj's passionate diatribe
is a masterpiece of propaganda. It blames Milosevic for horrendous
atrocities without a shred of evidence, while also damning the "West"
for its supposed inability to stop him then, or punish him now.
Though an author of a book about her alleged ordeal (for it was never
proven in court), and a prominently featured celebrity victim,
Jadranka Cigelj is also a high official of the Croatian Democratic
Union (HDZ), party of the late Croatian president, ardent Serbophobe
and Holocaust revisionist Franjo Tudjman. She also worked for the
Croatian Information Center, a propaganda arm of the HDZ aimed at
Western reporters, and single-handedly provided most of the "evidence"
for stories of mass rape and genocide in Bosnia, none of which have
ever been proven. In other words, Ms. Cigelj is a professional
propagandist and a committed Croatian national-socialist. Her story,
however tempting, ought to be taken with healthy skepticism.
Speaking of accomplished propagandists, one cannot ignore the real
champion in the category, the London-based Institute for War and Peace
Reporting. Their take on reporting about the Inquisition simply reeks
of falsehoods. They dare use such terms as "hate speech,"
"misconceptions" and "negative propaganda," even as their own
coverage is nothing but. One look at their Balkans report page is
enough: tabloid-style headlines heading columns of malicious drivel.
Lascivious services of media hacks have been a powerful factor in the
rise of the modern repressive State, but IWPR has taken shameless
prostitution of journalism to a whole new level.
Truth? You Can't Handle the Truth!
It is disturbing to see the ease with which outlandish concepts such
as the "Tribunal" itself and the outrageous lies it peddles are
accepted by the general public in the Empire and elsewhere. But the
sad fact of human nature is that violations of truth and justice are
seen as somehow less despicable the more they are committed.
The sheer gall of the violators seems to know no bounds. One of the
Inquisitors actually said, "It is only through the establishment of
the truth that the unhealthy shackles of revisionism that debilitate
the former Yugoslavia and that foster suspicion, ethnic hatred and
civil unrest can be broken."
Everything in this sentence is a lie. The Inquisition does not
establish truth, but rather forges those very shackles of revisionism,
making sure that the debilitating miseries of former Yugoslavia are
perpetuated!
Burden of Fiction
Since its illegal inception in 1993, the "International Criminal
Tribunal" has faithfully pursued its one and only purpose: to serve
the Empire's interests in the Balkans. It has done so in part by
usurping the authority of sovereign states and subverting
international treaties and accords, but its focus has been on
fabricating a recent history of the Balkans that would justify
Imperial intervention, occupation and war.
What makes the ICTY's lies and hypocrisy so hard to swallow is the
fact that many Balkans atrocities they claim to be prosecuting
actually happened - but not in the way they present them, and not to
the degree alleged by the combatants or the media. By manipulating
very real crimes into false history, the Hague Inquisition is
poisoning the well of collective memory for generations to come.
Driven by their demented obsession to falsify facts by casting Serbs
(and sometimes others, for the sake of "diversity" and political
expedience) as evil incarnate, the Inquisition and its patrons have
come to willfully ignore reality. And in reality, their actions have
disastrous consequences, perfectly exemplified in the recent terrorist
attack on Pristina's Bill Clinton Avenue, and the situation in Kosovo
in general.
Those who seek to control things that by nature cannot be controlled
are doomed to fail. When the truth finally emerges, and it has a nasty
habit of doing so when least expected, there will be Hell to pay.
Nebojsa Malic
standpoint of Antiwar.com, we think some articles - like the following
- are worth reading. CNJ]
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
December 19, 2002
More Dirty Lies
Courtesy of The Hague Inquisition
Just recently, this column examined the many facets of falsifying
history, noting in passing the role of the Hague Inquisition in
currently the largest such effort in the world. Indeed, the ICTY is an
endeavor more massive even than the current campaign to conjure a
reason for invading Iraq, and it seeks not merely to modify history,
but to rewrite it wholesale.
Lubyanka, not Nuremberg
Its main thesis, that Slobodan Milosevic and other Serb leaders
organized a vast conspiracy, a "joint criminal enterprise," to murder,
expel or conquer other Balkan peoples and "defy the West" in the
process, is a transparent attempt to recast Balkans actors as
modern-day Axis and Allies. In this production, Slobodan Milosevic is
starring as Hitler, his fellow Serbs as Nazis, and Albanians, Croats
and Bosnian Muslims as their innocent victims, while the ICTY invokes
the spirit of Nuremberg.
Apart from this being a deeply ironic role reversal from the original
production, which ran in blood from 1941 to 1945, the "Tribunal?s"
methods and practices reflect far more the Soviet show trials of the
Stalin era. It doesn't help that the accused are presumed guilty until
proven innocent, just like those in Lubyanka, or that its "holding
facilities" in Scheveningen were used by the Nazis to imprison Dutch
patriots.
For almost a year, however, Milosevic has been making a mockery of the
prosecutors' efforts to railroad him. He has successfully demolished
every witness and every argument brought out against him, while
refusing to recognize either the Inquisition's authority or its rules.
Milosevic's outspoken defense made a striking contrast to the
conquered Balkans, where the Empire had managed to silence virtually
all the voices of dissent and resistance.
Beria's Heirs
Having failed in a head-on confrontation, despite playing with heavily
loaded dice, the Inquisitors tried a different route. In September,
they managed to extort a confession from a former Bosnian Serb leader,
Biljana Plavsic, in which she not only admitted to participating in
the planning of atrocities, but also implicated Milosevic and other
Serb dignitaries.
Bits of Plavsic's plea cited by the media sound like they were written
by the prosecutors:
[She] acknowledged she covered up crimes, ignored widespread
allegations of criminal acts and "publicly rationalized and justified
the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs" in a document setting out facts
underpinning her guilty plea.
"Mrs. Plavsic embraced and supported the objective of ethnic
separation by force and contributed to achieving it," said the
document admitting her role in killings, expulsions and cruelty
inflicted by Bosnian Serbs on non-Serbs in 1992. (Reuters)
It's as if the Inquisitors took lessons in purging "traitors to the
Party" directly from Lavrenti Beria's NKVD. Such extorted confessions
are part and parcel of any show trial, but even the ICTY has not been
this blatant before.
Why Plavsic confessed is a mystery. She claims it was remorse, and
that Serbs committed crimes out of fear, but both explanations sound
more pathetic than reasonable. She does have a strong dislike for
Milosevic, and she enthusiastically collaborated with Bosnia's NATO
occupiers between 1996 and 1998. Plavsic's true motives may be an
enigma, but the Inquisition's are not. They have seized upon the
confession to re-launch allegations of Nazi-like conduct by the Serbs,
while "rewarding" Plavsic with a "lenient" sentence of life
imprisonment.
'Nazi' Slander Resurrected
The assault came this week, at Plavsic's sentencing hearings. One of
the Inquisitors' star witnesses was no other than Madeleine Albright.
The former U.S. Secretary of State has never tried to hide her
Serbophobia, nor has she ever expressed an ounce of remorse for
masterminding the criminal act of NATO aggression in 1999, which led
to the present occupation of Kosovo. In fact, she has been outright
proud of it, as well as of her support in establishing the
Inquisition.
Albright was supposed to testify to Plavsic's willingness to
collaborate with the NATO occupiers, but also to provide the
association between the alleged Serb crimes and the Holocaust. Events
in Bosnia were "reminiscent of pictures that reminded one of World War
II," she said, adding, "We saw pictures of people being taken into
what could only be labeled as concentration camps."
Reinforcing the Nazi analogy further was Holocaust celebrity Elie
Wiesel. Even during the war, Wiesel sided with the Bosnian Muslim
campaign to depict their side as the victim of "Serb Nazis," despite
the fact that many Muslims joined the actual Nazis sixty years ago.
Since he neither knew Plavsic or possessed intimate knowledge of the
alleged atrocities in Bosnia, Wiesel's testimony was intended purely
for emotional value in absence of real arguments.
In case anyone missed the point, the prosecutors then showed the
pictures of emaciated Muslims in Serb "death camps," recycling that
1992 canard long after its expiration date. The photo, actually
depicting a tuberculosis-ridden Muslim standing in front of a
chicken-wire fence with barbed-wire top, was debunked as a malicious
camera trick by 1997.
Trotting Albright to the stand, invoking Wiesel's fame and recycling
trashy propaganda photos only goes to show that, while the
Inquisition's vitriolic assault on Serbs as "genocidal Nazis" shows no
sign of slowdown, the actual case against Plavsic - or Milosevic, for
that matter - is pretty much nonexistent. The only "joint criminal
enterprise" is between them, NATO and the Empire.
Champions of Falsehood
But that is not all. Having long since collapsed into itself under the
burden of lies and fabrications, like a black hole, the ICTY attracts
ever more such material from all over the world. The following two
cases come from the UK, but there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around.
As the Plavsic hearings unfolded and the Milosevic trial continued,
the London Guardian published a tear-jerking piece by Jadranka Cigelj,
a "rape victim" of a "Serb death camp." Cigelj's passionate diatribe
is a masterpiece of propaganda. It blames Milosevic for horrendous
atrocities without a shred of evidence, while also damning the "West"
for its supposed inability to stop him then, or punish him now.
Though an author of a book about her alleged ordeal (for it was never
proven in court), and a prominently featured celebrity victim,
Jadranka Cigelj is also a high official of the Croatian Democratic
Union (HDZ), party of the late Croatian president, ardent Serbophobe
and Holocaust revisionist Franjo Tudjman. She also worked for the
Croatian Information Center, a propaganda arm of the HDZ aimed at
Western reporters, and single-handedly provided most of the "evidence"
for stories of mass rape and genocide in Bosnia, none of which have
ever been proven. In other words, Ms. Cigelj is a professional
propagandist and a committed Croatian national-socialist. Her story,
however tempting, ought to be taken with healthy skepticism.
Speaking of accomplished propagandists, one cannot ignore the real
champion in the category, the London-based Institute for War and Peace
Reporting. Their take on reporting about the Inquisition simply reeks
of falsehoods. They dare use such terms as "hate speech,"
"misconceptions" and "negative propaganda," even as their own
coverage is nothing but. One look at their Balkans report page is
enough: tabloid-style headlines heading columns of malicious drivel.
Lascivious services of media hacks have been a powerful factor in the
rise of the modern repressive State, but IWPR has taken shameless
prostitution of journalism to a whole new level.
Truth? You Can't Handle the Truth!
It is disturbing to see the ease with which outlandish concepts such
as the "Tribunal" itself and the outrageous lies it peddles are
accepted by the general public in the Empire and elsewhere. But the
sad fact of human nature is that violations of truth and justice are
seen as somehow less despicable the more they are committed.
The sheer gall of the violators seems to know no bounds. One of the
Inquisitors actually said, "It is only through the establishment of
the truth that the unhealthy shackles of revisionism that debilitate
the former Yugoslavia and that foster suspicion, ethnic hatred and
civil unrest can be broken."
Everything in this sentence is a lie. The Inquisition does not
establish truth, but rather forges those very shackles of revisionism,
making sure that the debilitating miseries of former Yugoslavia are
perpetuated!
Burden of Fiction
Since its illegal inception in 1993, the "International Criminal
Tribunal" has faithfully pursued its one and only purpose: to serve
the Empire's interests in the Balkans. It has done so in part by
usurping the authority of sovereign states and subverting
international treaties and accords, but its focus has been on
fabricating a recent history of the Balkans that would justify
Imperial intervention, occupation and war.
What makes the ICTY's lies and hypocrisy so hard to swallow is the
fact that many Balkans atrocities they claim to be prosecuting
actually happened - but not in the way they present them, and not to
the degree alleged by the combatants or the media. By manipulating
very real crimes into false history, the Hague Inquisition is
poisoning the well of collective memory for generations to come.
Driven by their demented obsession to falsify facts by casting Serbs
(and sometimes others, for the sake of "diversity" and political
expedience) as evil incarnate, the Inquisition and its patrons have
come to willfully ignore reality. And in reality, their actions have
disastrous consequences, perfectly exemplified in the recent terrorist
attack on Pristina's Bill Clinton Avenue, and the situation in Kosovo
in general.
Those who seek to control things that by nature cannot be controlled
are doomed to fail. When the truth finally emerges, and it has a nasty
habit of doing so when least expected, there will be Hell to pay.
Nebojsa Malic