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What
really happened in Bosnia? Historical and Investigative Research, revised 19
Aug 2005 1 | 2 | 3 3. Who started the war in Bosnia? And
who committed genocide? Was it the Bosnian Serbs, as NATO and the
mass media alleged, or the Bosnian Muslim followers of Alija
Izetbegovic? Table of Contents █ Introduction █ What was Alija
Izetbegovic's plan for Bosnia? █ Alija Izetbegovic's 1992 referendum on Bosnian
independence, and what it means █ The press says the
separatists are. . . █ The Serbs were just defending
themselves █ Were the Serbs incited to
commit war crimes? █ The Serbs are the last
population in the world that should have been suspected of genocidal behavior █ How were the accusations
of war crimes against the Serbs manufactured? █ The public relations campaign
against the Serbs by Ruder Finn, which recruited the leaders of prominent
Jewish organizations -- a betrayal of the Jewish people whom these leaders
claim to represent ________________________________________________________ Introduction The first piece in this series leaves no doubt that Alija
Izetbegovic considered it ideal for Bosnia to become an Islamist totalitarian
state. The evidence comes from his own book, “Islamic Declaration,” where he
shows himself to be the most extreme fascist, and where he expresses his
contempt for democracy. Izetbegovic re-released his book in 1990, using it
as a political platform in the Bosnian elections of the same year. These
elections he lost to Fikret Abdic,
a moderate Bosnian Muslim with a majority following among the Bosnian Muslims
who eventually allied militarily with the Bosnian Serbs. True to his writing,
Izetbegovic muscled Abdic
to the side and seized the Bosnian presidency from him.[2] Then, as was already shown in the
second piece in this series, Izetbegovic
recreated fascist symbols and terrorist forces from World War II, all of
which was described as “multicultural tolerance” by the mass media in the
Western countries that supported Izetbegovic. Following that, Izetbegovic
deliberately set Bosnia on the path to civil war. Here we will document how Izetbegovic did that, and
how the blame was put, with spectacular hoaxes, on the Bosnian Serbs.
Just as nobody had a right to be surprised by what
Adolf Hitler did once he took power, given that he had given a complete
outline of it in “Mein Kampf,” neither did anybody
who had read Alija Izetbegovic's “Islamic
Declaration” have any right to be surprised by what this Bosnian Muslim
leader did. In his book he explained: “...the
Islamic Order, which is to say the union of religion and
politics...has...consequences of a primordial practical importance, of which
the first is the impossibility of confusing the Islamic Order with the
non-Islamic systems. It is not in fact possible for there to be any peace or
coexistence between ‘the Islamic Religion’ and non-Islamic social and
political institutions…”[3] The all-important “union of religion and politics” -
what he calls the “Islamic Order” - carries a supremely important practical
consequence: that Muslims and non-Muslims cannot have “any peace or
coexistence.” This sounds as if Izetbegovic was calling for Muslims to make
war against so-called infidels. And indeed, as we saw in the first piece of
this series, under the heading “The Relations Of The Islamic Society With
Other Societies,” Izetbegovic provides, without comment of adornment, quotations from the Qur’an
calling for the indiscriminate slaughter of infidels, for no better reason
than that they are infidels.[4] That is chilling all by itself, but more so when
considering the local context. You see, elsewhere in his book, Izetbegovic says
that “One cannot establish the Islamic Order except in a country where
Muslims are the majority of the population.”[5] The
supposed 'country' that Izetbegovic had in mind was Bosnia. So it is
important therefore that Muslims, at under 50%, were
not a majority in Bosnia but a plurality, as the Christian Science Monitor
explained in 1992.
And that's what produces the special chill. In
Izetbegovic's ideology, establishing the “Islamic Order” required that, once
he had turned Bosnia into a country (secession), he should reduce non-Muslims
so that Muslims could become a majority. From his writings, loudly
republished during the 1990 Bosnian elections to serve as a political
platform, it is more than obvious that his intended method of reduction was
genocide. I emphasize, however, that Izetbegovic's ideology
did not require Muslims to be a majority when it comes to the mere question
of taking power by force. For that Muslims should be just numerous enough to
win: “... the Islamic movement may, or rather should, begin by
seizing power as soon as it possesses a good measure of moral and numerical
strength, allowing it not only to overthrow the non-Islamic power, but also
to establish the new Islamic power.”[7] If we put this all together this implies a clear
sequence of events: 1) An
undemocratic coup d’Etat so that radical Islamists
can impose themselves as the government in Bosnia. 2) Bosnian
secession from Yugoslavia, so that Bosnia can become an actual country. 3) A
campaign of ethnic cleansing to rid Bosnia of non-Muslims, so that Muslims
can be the majority, thence to establish the ‘Islamic Order.’ Funny thing is, that is
precisely what happened in Bosnia. Izetbegovic did the first when he illegally seized
the Bosnian presidency from Fikret Abdic, and later again when he didn't step down as the
Bosnian constitution required. And he did the second when he immediately took
steps towards secession from Yugoslavia. Finally, he also carried out the
third, with the help of thousands of imported mujahedin terrorists from
Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Africa, and other places. That will not sound like what you heard in the
Western mainstream media, because what was repeated there a million times was
that the Bosnian Serbs were supposedly the ones interested in ethnic
cleansing, and that Alija Izetbegovic was defending
a multiethnic Bosnia. A strange story, because the one whose ideology
called for ethnically cleansing Bosnia was Alija
Izetbegovic.[8] Not coincidentally, as I document below, it was
Izetbegovic who plunged Bosnia into a civil war in which he would commit
genocide. I will also document that the accusations of genocide made in the
mainstream media against the Bosnian Serbs were lies.
The Bosnian Serbs were naturally not excited about
living in a Muslim fundamentalist and totalitarian state, and they were even less
excited about the idea of being ethnically cleansed from the territory of
Bosnia so that Izetbegovic could have his Muslim majority. It is no surprise,
therefore, that the Bosnian Serbs had a strong interest in preventing Bosnian
secession -- that is, they had an interest in a unified and democratic
Yugoslavia. And that is why Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian
Serbs, expressed precisely this wish, not the wish to take anybody's land or
hurt anybody: “Mr. Radovan
Karadzic, the SDS head [i.e. leader of the party that represented the Bosnian
Serbs], yesterday kept repeating that his party wants ‘a federal, democratic,
and united Yugoslavia.’”[9] Consistent with this general picture, it was
Izetbegovic, not Karadzic, who moved to split Bosnia from Yugoslavia. In
1992, Izetbegovic held a referendum on this question and then claimed that
the results gave him a mandate to declare Bosnian independence: [Quote From
The Herald (Glasgow) starts here] Referendum
officials said results showed 63.4% of the 3.1 million
electorate voted and 99.43% of them supported Bosnian independence. Serbs, a third
of the population who claim two-thirds of Bosnia's territory belongs to them,
boycotted the poll. “The
referendum decided the question,” President Alija
Izetbegovic told a news conference. “Bosnia is independent and wants to be an
internationally recognized state.”[10] [Quote ends
here] Let us first reflect on the figure “99.43%.” Is it
even remotely plausible in an honest election that essentially 100% of those
who go to the polls vote the same way? Saddam Hussein always got 99.9% of the
vote because he ran unopposed and because he ran a totalitarian state. Nobody
ever believed that such figures reflected how Iraqis truly felt. Should we
reason differently about the figure 99.43% in Izetbegovic’s referendum on
Bosnian secession? The answer, of course, is no. But let us consider the question a bit more closely.
What was Izetbegovic’s real political support? Two years earlier, in the 1990
elections, Izetbegovic had actually lost to another Bosnian Muslim, Fikret Abdic. As explained by
the BBC immediately after the 1990 vote, “The future
presidency of the SR of Bosnia-Hercegovina will comprise of Fikret Abdic with 1,010,618
votes and Alija Izetbegovic with 847,386 - both
Muslim candidates of the Party of Democratic Action...”[11] And yet the one who took power was Izetbegovic, as
explained by The Economist: “Mr [Fikret] Abdic
got more votes in the 1990 Bosnian presidential election than Mr Izetbegovic but, under party political pressure, ceded
his place to him. He was pro-Yugoslavia and lukewarm about Bosnian
independence.”[12] So Izetbegovic’s secessionist faction muscled Fikret Abdic - who “got more
votes” and was “pro-Yugoslavia” (both points are crucial) - to the side after
the 1990 elections. This is quite interesting for the following reason.
In those elections of 1990,
If practically all Bosnian Muslims voted for the
Muslim-dominated Party of Democratic Action, to which both Fikret Abdic and Alija Izetbegovic belonged, then, since Abdic got more votes than Izetbegovic, a majority of
all Muslims in Bosnia (about 54%) voted for the “pro-Yugoslavia” candidate in
1990. Take note. And how “pro-Yugoslavia” was he? Just how “lukewarm
about Bosnian independence” was he? Very. When the civil war broke out, Fikret Abdic and his Bosnian
Muslim followers ended up fighting against Alija
Izetbegovic's terrorists, despite the fact that they were fellow Muslims.
Reuters wants you to think that support for Izetbegovic
is support for "Muslim unity", but this is absurd. Muslims were
fighting Muslims, and therefore support for one side against the other should
be described simply as "taking sides", not as support for
"Muslim unity." What Reuters says that Abdic's
followers -- Izetbegovic's opponents -- were
for, however, is not an absurdity, so there is no reason to doubt it. And it
is this: Abdic's followers "called for an end
to the Bosnia war and the suffering of civilians." Supporters of
Izetbegovic, then, who accused Abdic of treason,
must have been calling for the opposite: a continuation of the Bosnian civil
war and the murder of civilians. And that makes perfect sense, because
Izetbegovic was a fundamentalist terrorist. Understandably, most Bosnian Muslims didn't want to
be ruled by a madman such as Alija Izetbegovic, and
so in 1990 most of them voted for Fikret Abdic, who allied with the Bosnian Serbs.[12c] But that is quite a contradiction for the official
story, repeated endlessly by the mainstream Western media, the NATO powers,
the European Union, and the UN. This story says that the Bosnian Serbs were
the ones supposedly carrying out an "ethnic cleansing" campaign
against the Bosnian Muslims and Croats. Here, for example, is the earliest
accusation of supposed "ethnic cleansing" by Bosnian Serbs that I
could find:
The quotation is from a United Press International
wire dated April 14th, 1992. The date itself captures the entire
contradiction. Here's why. Genocides don't just happen. The people who commit
them have to be incited, and this requires propaganda, which means speeches,
newspaper articles, radio addresses, leaflets, books, rallies, etc. You
cannot make any of that happen in a week. If you want to have a genocide by early 1992, you have to start preparing for
it well before that. Adolf Hitler did not begin exterminating the Jews in
1933, when he took power, but several years later, when the preparatory
propaganda work had been done, the political opposition had been destroyed,
and the troops that would do the dirty work had been recruited, trained, and
indoctrinated. So anybody who wants to believe that the Bosnian Serbs really
were carrying out an "ethnic cleansing" campaign against their
Muslim and Croat neighbors in early 1992 is practically forced to assert that
in 1990 there already had to be at least some Bosnian Serb propaganda about
ethnic cleansing against the Muslims and Croats, and probably a lot. And this
is naturally the sort of thing that Bosnian Muslims and Croats would have
heard about. And there's your contradiction, because in 1990 a
majority of Muslims in Bosnia voted for Fikret Abdic, the most pro-Serbian Muslim leader in Bosnia. One way to resolve the contradiction is to posit
that the mainstream Western media, en masse, lied about the Serbs carrying
out a campaign of "ethnic cleansing." If that seems too far-fetched
then we can go with the alternative, which is that a majority of Bosnian
Muslims are insane, and so despite the fact that the Bosnian Serbs were
making noises in 1990 about exterminating them, these Muslims nevertheless
wanted to live with their would-be exterminators. Those are our two choices, unless we can think of a
third hypothesis that will account for the data. Let us now return to Alija
Izetbegovic's referendum on Bosnian independence, held in 1992. Above, the
Herald told us that “Referendum officials said results showed 63.4% of the 3.1 million electorate [had] voted.” This means that
the remaining 36.6% of the electorate did not vote in this referendum. How
many of these were Serbs? Almost all of them, because we also learned above
that “Serbs, a third of the population..., boycotted the poll,” and a third
equals 33%. Something else that we learn by this is that almost
every single Croat and Muslim in Bosnia, according to referendum officials,
did vote. The following is inescapable: if “Referendum officials
said...99.43% of them supported Bosnian independence,” what they said is that
practically every single Muslim and Croat who was eligible to vote in fact
cast a vote to separate Bosnia from Yugoslavia in 1992. But in order for 99% of practically all eligible
Croats and Muslims to vote for Bosnian independence in 1992, what would have
to be true? Well, it would have to be true that the 54% of Muslims who had
voted in 1990 for Fikret Abdic
-- and therefore against Bosnian independence -- had all changed their
minds. How likely is that? It is impossible because, as we saw, Fikret Abdic and thousands of
his followers ended up fighting against the secessionist Izetbegovic and
alongside the pro-Yugoslavia Bosnian Serbs after Izetbegovic's phony
referendum of 1992.[14] (When the
Economist called Abdic “lukewarm about Bosnian
independence” it was understating; Abdic was
literally and violently opposed to Bosnian independence.) So the question is this: How did Alija
Izetbegovic get away with saying that all Croats and Muslims in Bosnia had
voted for independence in 1992? Answer: with terror. As we saw in the second article
in this series, in 1993 the Daily Telegraph reported
on Izetbegovic’s Handzar Division, made up mostly
of imported (i.e. non-Bosnian) Muslim fighters from Kosovo, Albania,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Africa and other places.[15]
This force was modeled after the original Nazi SS Handzar
Division, which had been composed of thousands of Bosnian Muslims who
volunteered for the Nazis in WWII to go hunt for Serbs, Jews, and Roma in
Yugoslavia, and either slaughter them in their homes or send them to the
Croatian concentration camp system known as Jasenovac.[15a] Members of Izetbegovic’s spanking new Handzar Division explained that “We do everything with
the knife,” leaving no doubt that this was indeed Izetbegovic’s instrument of
terror, closely modeled on the original. The Daily Telegraph’s article of 1993 was reporting
on a fully operational Handzar, “up to 6000
strong,” but they did not say when exactly the new Handzar
had been formed. Anything this big, however, cannot be put together that
easily, so it practically follows that the Handzar
recruits were already in Bosnia just one year earlier, in 1992, when
Izetbegovic held his referendum on Bosnian secession. Supporting that is an article in the Los Angeles
Times titled, “Bosnia Seen As Hospitable Base And Sanctuary For Terrorists,”
which reported that, “Beginning in
1992, as many as 4,000 volunteers from throughout North Africa, the Middle
East and Europe came to Bosnia to fight Serbian and Croatian nationalists on
behalf of fellow Muslims. They are known as the moujahedeen.
A military analyst called them ‘pretty good fighters and certainly
ruthless.’”[16] The mujahideen - also
spelled mujahedin - are ‘holy warriors’: international Islamist terrorists
who got their start fighting a CIA-created terrorist war against the Soviets
in Afghanistan, in 1979, and who now hire themselves out to fight in various
parts of the world.[17] The
media presented the importation of these terrorist mercenaries into Bosnia as
an effort by Muslims “on behalf of fellow Muslims,” but this of course is
false. The mujahedin are in the business of terrorizing their fellow Muslims,
something that the media somehow always forgets to tell its readers. It later became known, as a result of a Dutch
investigation, that it was the Pentagon itself that had coordinated and
overseen the importation of these foreign mujahedin terrorists into Bosnia.[18] US
Senator Larry Craig produced an angry report that summarized much of this illegal covert US
activity.[19] (In
order to keep appearances, the US publicly criticized Iran for smuggling
weapons to Izetbegovic - the same weapons that the US Pentagon was covertly
helping the same Iranians send to the same Izetbegovic.[19a]) Thus, it appears that Izetbegovic had already at his
disposal many imported terrorists -- brought there courtesy of the United
States -- prior to the referendum on Bosnian independence held in March 1992.
And given that he did import these terrorists, we do not have to guess what
his own local followers were like: terrorist thugs. With that context in the background, recall that in
his book “Islamic Declaration,” in a section titled “The Relations Of The
Islamic Society With Other Societies,” Izetbegovic quoted approvingly a
Quranic text that says “association [with infidels] is a graver sin than
murder.”[20] Is this
sort of thing relevant to Bosnian politics in the early 1990s? It is, because
quite a few Muslims - a majority, in 1990 - favored a united Yugoslavia, so
they favored peaceful “association” with their non-Muslim compatriots, which
means they became targets for Izetbegovic's Islamist mercenaries. And now we
can explain a ridiculous figure such as 99.43% apparent support for Bosnian
independence in Izetbegovic’s referendum, which was held at the point of a
terrorist gun. We can also explain something else. Unlike the Western public, which kept reading in the
New York Times and other such publications that Izetbegovic was supposedly a
“moderate,” the Bosnian Serbs knew about this man's violent tract, “Islamic
Declaration” (or “Islamic Manifesto”). Izetbegovic had famously been
imprisoned for such inflammatory writings,[20a]
and he re-released his book in time to use it as his platform for the 1990
Bosnian presidential elections. So the Bosnian Serbs could see what was in
store for them if they allowed this lunatic to separate Bosnia from
Yugoslavia. Consequently, the Serbs boycotted the referendum on Bosnian
independence. The ground on which the Bosnian Serbs stood was
solid because the referendum was illegal. Former Assistant Publisher for
Defense & Foreign Affairs Publications (London), T.W. Carr, explained it
as follows: [Start Quote
From T.W. Carr] In the
multi-party elections held in Bosnia-Herzegovina on November 18, 1990, the
population voted almost exclusively along communal lines. The Muslim
Democratic Action Party secured 86 seats, the Serbian Democratic Party 72,
and the Croatian Democratic Union (i.e. union with Croatia) Party 44 seats.
As the leader of the largest political party, Mr. Izetbegovic, became the first
President of Bosnia- Herzegovina, albeit for just one year, for under the new
constitution of B-H, the presidency was to revolve each year between the
three parties, each of which represented one ethnic community. Under
constitutional law, in January 1992, Mr. Izetbegovic should have handed over
the Presidency to Mr. Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian Democratic leader. He
failed to honor the constitution and being true to his writings, he seized
power, acting undemocratically and illegally. Therefore, at no time since
January 1992 should Mr. Izetbegovic have been acknowledged by the
international community as the legal President of B-H.[21] [End Quote
From T.W. Carr] Carr is actually too soft because Izetbegovic had
already seized the Bosnian presidency from Fikret Abdic, the winner at the polls in 1990, so Izetbegovic’s
presidency never should have been recognized in the first place. But even
applying Carr’s standard, since “at no time since January 1992 should Mr.
Izetbegovic have been acknowledged by the international community as the
legal President of B-H,” it follows that neither should the international
community have recognized as legal a referendum on Bosnian independence held
in March 1992, and presided by Izetbegovic. And yet the European Union, and then the United
States, rushed to endorse Izetbegovic’s referendum, and recognized breakaway
'Bosnia.' But why? Alija
Izetbegovic’s claim that “The referendum decided the question,” was
ludicrous: (1) his government was illegal, (2) his referendum was illegal,
(3) the landslide result was obviously produced by terrorist intimidation,
and moreover it is easily shown that Izetbegovic did not have the support of
even a majority of Bosnian Muslims, who themselves were not a majority of
Bosnians, (4) the referendum had been boycotted en masse by the second
largest ethnic community in Bosnia, and (5) this ethnic community, the Serbs,
as we shall see below, happened to own and till the land in over 60% of
Bosnian territory! Under such conditions, recognizing independent Bosnia was
an absurdity guaranteed to produce a civil war. But since it was the US itself that helped supply
Izetbegovic with mujahedin terrorists at least as early as 1992, and since
there is no question but that Izetbegovic was a terrorist from the start, it
follows that producing a civil war in Yugoslavia was precisely the US's --
and NATO's -- goal.
The absurdity of recognizing breakaway Bosnia pales
compared to another one: the mainstream Western media explained to the world
that the “separatists” were supposedly...the Bosnian Serbs! For example, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote the following in an official editorial: “For as long
as the [Yugoslav] army is aiding and abetting separatist Bosnian Serbs, the
integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina is threatened.”[22] Now, how exactly were the Bosnian Serbs the
“separatists” when their leader, “Radovan Karadzic…kept repeating that his
party wants ‘a federal, democratic, and united Yugoslavia’”?[23] Aren't those making calls for a “united Yugoslavia”
the opposite of “separatists”? They are in my dictionary. Mind you, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote its
absurd editorial on May 2, 1992, which was only 5 months since Izetbegovic
had illegally seized power for the second time, and only three months since
he had used that power to stage an illegal referendum at the point of a
terrorist gun in order illegally to declare independence and separate Bosnia
from Yugoslavia. So the St. Louis Post-Dispatch cannot possibly have been
confused about who were the real separatists. But there is a careful logic here. The complaint, as
you can see above, is that the Serbs were supposedly a threat to the
“integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina.” What does this tell the mind of the
reader? That the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina is actually a legitimate
country from which the Bosnian Serbs were illegally trying to separate. The
truth is very different. The Bosnian Serbs merely wanted to remain in the
legitimate country that they were already citizens of: Yugoslavia,
internationally recognized since 1918. The Serbs were expressing their
opposition to separatism and their desire not to be stranded in an illegal
and racist breakaway pseudo-state. So when Alija
Izetbegovic pretended his pseudo-state had become a fact, the Bosnian Serbs
naturally sought to make clear that they were not part of that (and, of
course, they weren't, because the pseudo-state had been declared illegally). And the most important issue here is this: the
Bosnian Serbs never sought to establish a political division between themselves
and the Bosnian Muslims and Croats until after and in response to
the fact that Izetbegovic had illegally seized power to force secession from
Yugoslavia, as is made clear by the following item in the BBC:
I interrupt the BBC to point out the crucial point.
As T.W. Carr explained (see above), “Under [Bosnian] constitutional law, in
January 1992, Mr. Izetbegovic should have handed over the Presidency to Mr.
Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian Democratic leader.” But Izetbegovic did not. So
when the Serbs made the above declaration on “9th January,” 1992, they were
doing so a few days after Alija Izetbegovic
illegally seized the presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was a reaction to
Izetbegovic's coup d'État. Back to the BBC:
The Serbs made clear that they were acting “as a
result of ‘illegitimate and illegal decisions of the Muslim-Croatian
coalition.’” Their action was “a response to Muslim and Croatian demands for
international recognition of an independent Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina.”
If the Croats and Izetbegovic's minority Muslim faction tried to secede
illegally, the Serbs at least wanted to follow the law and remain citizens of
the country that they were already citizens of: Yugoslavia. This is evident
from their statement that the “Republic of the Serbian People of
Bosnia-Hercegovina, with its administrative centre
in Sarajevo... would be ‘a federal unit in the federal state of Yugoslavia.’” What does this demonstrate? That under these
circumstances it is simply impossible to say that the Bosnian Serbs were the
“separatists” and make any English sense whatever. But take a look at
this sampling:
So the Bosnian Serbs, who were trying to prevent the
disintegration of a state recognized internationally since 1918, were accused
of “separatism,” and meanwhile the Bosnian Muslim followers of Alija Izetbegovic, who shattered Yugoslavia with racist
terror, were praised for “struggling for democracy, human rights, and a
multiethnic country.”[26] That is, they
were praised for fighting the Serbs, supposedly to preserve the “integrity”
of 'Bosnia' - a pseudo-state, illegally declared at the point of a mujahedin
gun. If “separatism” is really “integrity,” and
vice-versa, then what language are we speaking? In George Orwell’s book, “1984,” he described a
society where the language spoken was Newspeak, with the peculiarity that the
important political terms always meant the opposite of what they literally
said, begetting slogans such as “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” etc.
Newspeak clearly is the language that the media employed when covering the
civil wars in Yugoslavia. But it worked, and for an infuriating reason: when
everybody repeats the same thing, people tend to believe it. Is it any
wonder, then, that hapless Western news consumers learned to think of
Izetbegovic and Co. as ‘the good guys’ and of the Bosnian Serbs as ‘the
(separatist) bad guys’?
You may recall from the above section that The
Herald (Glasgow) wrote as follows:
The implication is that, if the Serbs are only one
third of the Bosnian population, it cannot be right for them to own
two-thirds of Bosnia, or else The Herald would neither point out the ratio
one-third/two-thirds as if it expressed an injustice, nor would it represent
the Bosnian Serbs as staking a “claim.” But is the Herald's implication reasonable? It depends on the context. If, for example, the
Bosnian Serbs happened to be mostly peasant farmers, whereas the Bosnian
Muslims were mostly city dwellers, and if the Serbs all had title to their
lands because they had bought or inherited them, there would be absolutely
nothing wrong with the Bosnian Serbs owning two-thirds of Bosnia. The only
situation where it can be objected that the Bosnian Serbs own two-thirds of
Bosnia is in the case where this land was taken by force from other people.
This is precisely what the mainstream Western press unanimously alleged that
the Serbs had done. To demonstrate that the media did this, allow me now
to reproduce for you the most common phrase in the set of quotations from the
media provided at the end of the previous section:
The press was unanimous. The Bosnian Serbs had
“taken control,” “occupied,” and “staked out” a whole two-thirds of Bosnia.
In other words, the media accused the Serbs of taking other people's land
away from them by force. The only problem with this representation is that
the Serbs never conquered other people’s land in Bosnia. They were not
'claiming' anything. It is a simple and easily verified historical fact that
the Bosnian Serbs actually owned two thirds of Bosnia to begin with. A year after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published
an official editorial which incoherently characterized the Bosnian Serbs as
aggressors and “separatists” (quoted in the previous section), Gordon Bardos, a Balkans’ scholar, penned a personal editorial
in the same paper that corrected this nonsense: [Start Quote
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch] “The Muslim
leadership of Bosnia-Herzegovina...bears considerable responsibility for what
has happened, but is seldom blamed for provoking the war... ...this is
patently not a war of Serbian 'aggression'... ...The Serbs
fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, moreover, are not invaders from Serbia
proper; they are indigenous to Bosnia and one of the three recognized
constituent nations of the state. The Serbs (who prior to the war made up
approximately 33 percent of Bosnia's population) now control approximately
60-70 percent of Bosnia. For a variety of historical reasons, the Muslims
(about 44 percent of the pre-war population) are the most urbanized ethnic
group in Bosnian society, with most of their population concentrated in
cities and towns. The Serbs, on the other hand, are mostly farmers, and
literally own 60 percent of the land in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thus, the
land they 'occupy' is literally their own.”[28] [End Quote
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch] To read Gordon Bardos’
article in full, and to see a National Geographic ethnic map of Bosnia drawn
with information from the 1991 census, which confirms what Bardos says about the territorial distribution of the
ethnic communities, go here: So the media presented the fact that Serbs were
sitting on 2/3 of Bosnia as an illegal ‘conquest,’ when the simple and easily
verified truth was that every one of those peasant Serbs had title to the
land that he was farming. The disinformation on this point was often subtle
and clever. For example, in 1993, after there had been some fighting, the
Boston Globe wrote:
Notice what happens when you invert the order of the
claims, as the brain of any ordinary reader of course will, in an effort to
make them mutually relevant:
All ambiguity can be removed from the implied
argument by nudging it gently here and there:
I would contend that whoever reads the original
passage as it appeared in the Boston Globe would end up interpreting it
precisely as it appears in my final rendition. If this is accepted, then it
practically follows that the above is the intended message. And this message
screams the following: that the Muslims were spread out over the majority of
Bosnian territory before the war, and that the Serbs changed this by force,
resorting to the supposed genocide that they are accused of carrying out. Now, whether or not you believe that the Bosnian
Serbs carried out a genocide, this is what you
cannot believe: that before the civil war the Bosnian Muslims lived on a
majority of Bosnian territory, because “The Serbs...are mostly farmers, and
literally own 60 percent of the land in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (see above).
Therefore, if the Serbs ended up controlling 70 percent of Bosnia at one
point, the only possible interpretation is that they were mostly just
defending their own homes, but had managed to make a few gains on the
battlefield after Izetbegovic's terrorist forces attacked them. So the Boston Globe has cleverly constructed an
implication for something that is completely false: that it was the Bosnian
Muslims who, before the civil war, owned and lived on most of the land in
Bosnia. Why imply that, if it is not true? An obvious hypothesis is that the
Boston Globe much prefers to appear as though it is making sense, as opposed
to giving the impression that it is run by incoherent madmen. Therefore, when
this newspaper accuses the Serbs of carrying out a genocide,
as it did along with the entire Western mainstream media, it is practically
forced to imply (if not to say outright) that the Bosnian Muslims originally
owned most of the land but were then driven out by the Serbs. Why? Because
that is precisely the sort of thing that would have happened if the
Serbs had carried out a genocide. But, of course, what is implied by the Boston Globe
did not happen: the Serbs were not chasing others from their homes. So the
question is this: If supporting an accusation of "ethnic cleansing"
requires implying something that is demonstrably false, and about which the
media had to know better, shouldn't you become skeptical that the Bosnian
Serbs really were doing any "ethnic cleansing"?
Despite everything I have shown, it will be tempting
to fall back on the following position: “Well, but everybody is to blame in
Bosnia. The Serbs certainly did carry out some horrific crimes of war, even
if we can agree that they didn’t start the conflict.” It is natural to
gravitate towards this position because this is the sort of belief that will
salvage at least some confidence in the mainstream Western press. It would
mean that the press did not lie to us absolutely about everything. This
fallback position will be comforting to most people because the idea that the
media made up every little detail of this war plunges them into an
existential crisis. Sadly, however, I must report that the mainstream
media did lie - and about everything that mattered. No, the Serbs did not
commit the war crimes that they were accused of committing. In the first piece in
this series, we already spent some time looking
at the public statements of Alija Izetbegovic, the
leader of the Bosnian Muslims. We saw that Izetbegovic was a straightforward
fascist and Islamist, who proudly published his views for all to see. In
the second piece in this series, we saw that
the mainstream Western media went out of its way to pretend that Izetbegovic
was a moderate democrat, though of course it knew better. The flipside of this is how the same media portrayed
Serbian leaders, and so it pays to compare the case of Alija
Izetbegovic to that of the most internationally visible Serbian leader,
Slobodan Milosevic. Consider the following sampling (you'll notice a
consistent slant):
It is clear that National Public Radio got it just
right when it said that "in the West the Yugoslav leader [Milosevic] is
demonized as Europe's new Hitler." But this Western representation is embarrassed by
the simple facts. At this link you will find the US government translation of
the speech that Milosevic delivered at the 600th anniversary of the Battle of
Kosovo, in 1989. If you wish to compare that to the BBC translation
of the same speech, I have scanned the microfilm of the BBC translation: For an easy-to-read text version of the BBC
translation: As you will see, Milosevic’s speech is an ode to
ethnic tolerance. And from my near-exhaustive documentation of how this
speech was covered, you will see that every major Western media outlet
(including the BBC, which translated the speech) slandered Milosevic’s 1989
oration, claiming that he had incited Serbs to hatred when in fact he had
done precisely the opposite. It is quite significant that this beautiful speech
was falsely demonized all over the Western media as hate speech. How
could such an aberration take place? One hypothesis says that the mainstream Western
media meant to paint Milosevic as a hate-monger, regardless of the facts, in
the same way that they defied the facts in order to paint Izetbegovic as a
compassionate and democratic dove. The alternative hypothesis says that,
although Milosevic really was a hate-monger, the entire mainstream Western
media, rather than quote speeches where Milosevic had espoused racism,
somehow instead decided to make its case by lying about a consummately
tolerant speech. Unless we can come up with a third hypothesis that
will explain the data, those are our choices. Which hypothesis is better? Well, consider this question:
Who resorts to spectacular lies when the truth achieves the same result? An
imbecile. So although the first hypothesis requires us to believe that the
entire mainstream Western media is run by liars, and that may appeared
far-fetched, the alternative is that the entire mainstream Western media is
run by imbeciles. I think the people who run the mainstream Western
media are smart. It is clear that they wanted to tar Milosevic with the label
"new Hitler," and thus if an interview, speech, radio address,
published letter, newspaper article, public statement, off-hand remark,
marginal scrawl, etc. -- if anything by Milosevic existed that sounded
remotely intolerant, the Western media would have used it. But, obviously, they could find nothing, or else why
did they lie about a consummately tolerant speech in order to allege that
Milosevic was a hate-monger? What follows? If the media could find nothing by Milosevic
that sounded remotely hateful, we have demonstrated something else: nobody
can argue that Slobodan Milosevic was inciting the Serbs to hatred and
murder. Why? Because incitement is a public behavior: symbols have to be
manipulated, fears exploited, etc. One does not incite a people
telepathically. A good example of this is Alija
Izetbegovic, who used rather explicit quotes from the Qur’an to instruct his
followers in the subject of doing violence to non-Muslims, and then made a
big show of publishing his views to coincide with the 1990 elections in
Bosnia (for which see part 1
and part 2 of
this series). Now, but given that the Serbs were not being incited
from on high, why then should we believe that the Serbs really carried out
orgies of violence against non-Serbs? Why? Are they supposed to be
spontaneously genocidal? In the absence of incitement from above, that would
have to be the hypothesis. But how good is that hypothesis?
The history of the Serbs is a history of moral
courage. No other people can lay claim to a more dramatic record of fighting
racists and protecting minorities. In World War II, nobody in Europe defended
their Jewish compatriots more bravely than the Serbs, treating them as their
own flesh, and dying along with their Jewish compatriots in concentration
camps by the hundreds of thousands. Why? Because, as they chanted in the
streets of Belgrade, they preferred death to slavery; they would not
collaborate with Hitler’s Final Solution. Mind you, ordinary Serbs chose to defy Hitler even
when their government tried to seek an accommodation with him. That
government then fell to a coup-d'Etat that was
supported by the Serbs, and which amounted to a declaration of war on Nazi
Germany.[29b] The most
amazing thing here is that when the Serbs did this, they were already
completely surrounded by Hitler and his allies, whose armies had swept all
over Europe with little difficulty. The Croat, Bosnian Muslim, and Albanian populations
of WWII, by contrast, for the most part behaved quite differently. As the
German armies invaded, they allied en masse with the Nazis, and cooperated
enthusiastically in the persecution of Serbs, Jews, and Roma. But the Nazis
and their allies were defeated in Yugoslavia by the explicitly tolerant
multiethnic movement of the Yugoslav Partisans, which was composed
overwhelmingly of Serbs. And it was precisely the Bosnian Serbs - take
note - who launched the multi-ethnic Partisan movement. After the war, the
Serbs recreated Yugoslavia rather than launch vengeful persecutions - despite
the fact that they had just suffered a genocide.[30] This exemplary moral courage needs to be placed in
the context of the especially brutal policies of the Nazis in Yugoslavia. As
the eminent Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg
explains in his massive work on the subject, Nazi forces in Serbia instituted
a policy of killing 100 hostages for every German whom the Serbian Partisans
killed. Sometimes the hostages were Jews, and that speaks volumes. “In a private
letter written by Staatsrat Turner [the chief of
civil administration under Bohme] to the Higher SS and Police leader in Danzing, Gruppenfuhrer
Hildebrandt, on October 17, 1941, he wrote: ‘...for murdered Germans, on
whose account the ratio 1:100 should really be borne by Serbs, 100 Jews are
shot instead; but the Jews we had in the camps - after all, they too are Serb
nationals...’”[31] In other words, the German Nazis wanted to murder
100 Serbian hostages for every German soldier killed by the Yugoslav
Partisans (who were overwhelmingly Serbs). Sometimes what they had were
Jewish hostages, but the Nazis concluded that murdering these Jews was an
equally effective terror strategy against the Partisans, because it quickly
became obvious to them that the Serbs would make no distinction between
Orthodox Serbs and Serbian Jews. In fact, the Nazis found it impossible even
to enforce their anti-Jewish laws in occupied Belgrade because of massive
resistance from the Serbs (please read the documentation in the footnote).[31b] What happened in Croatia was just the opposite:
massive collaboration with the fascist Ustashe regime.
The Jews there and in Bosnia were quickly rounded up and killed by their
Croat neighbors, and also by large numbers of Bosnian Muslims allied with the
Ustashe regime.[31a]
All those Jews who were able to flee into the (mostly-Serbian) Partisan
orbit, however, were saved. This all makes it quite unlikely, on first
inspection, that the Serbs, of all people, could have become spontaneously
genocidal, especially without prodding from their leaders. This is such an
unlikely hypothesis, in fact, that it cannot be accepted unless there is
overwhelming evidence. But there was no such evidence. Dispatches from
Yugoslavia always talked about supposed ‘Serbian atrocities’ that nobody had
witnessed. As Ramsay Steele explained in Liberty, for the case of Kosovo: “The New York
Times for May 7 carries a front-page report of the NATO bombing of the town
of Prizren. Like so many of these on-the-spot
reports it is a mixture of NATO atrocities, which the reporter has witnessed,
Serbian-Albanian co-operation and sympathy, which the reporter has witnessed,
the return of Albanians to their homes, which the reporter has witnessed, and
allusions to Serb atrocities against Albanians, which the reporter has not
witnessed, but evidently believes because of what NATO and its media have
told him.”[32] Yes, but a reporter working for the New York Times
is not duped by NATO’s media, he is NATO’s media. And I point out that if accusations of Serbian
atrocities in Kosovo were made without being witnessed to, this is in perfect
harmony with the fact that no evidence ever turned up for the supposed
Serbian atrocities.[32a] But that was Kosovo. In the case of Bosnia, the
crucial allegation of ‘Serbian atrocities’ was the accusation that the
Bosnian Serbs had built death camps where they were supposedly murdering
Bosnian Muslims. Almost everybody believed this (at the time, I am ashamed to
admit, so did I). Why did everybody believe this? For two reasons:
How did the media come to blare so insistently that
the Bosnian Serbs were running death camps if such camps did not exist?
This is how: In August 1992, ITN journalist Penny
Marshall published photographs which were reproduced everywhere and which
were described as showing death camps for non-Serbs, followed by immediate
comparisons of the Bosnian Serbs to the German Nazis. So the traditional
enemies of the Nazis were absurdly painted as “the new Nazis,” and the
traditional allies of the Nazis were painted as their victims. This should be
compared to the situation in Israel, where the Israeli Jews, the overwhelming
majority of which live there because of the massacres and persecutions of the
German Nazi Final Solution, or else the expulsions from Arab countries in
North Africa and the Middle East that immediately followed, are portrayed as
oppressors, while international support is mobilized for the PLO, whose
controlling core (Al-Fatah) was created by a leader of Adolf Hitler's Final
Solution.[32b] Now, the photos that were used against the Bosnian
Serbs were from the towns of Trnopolje and Omarska. These photos were represented as the opposite of
what they were. We shall come back to this, as it is crucial, but first I
would like to point out how unbelievable the accusations attached to these
photographs were in the first place. As Jared Israel pointed out: [Start Quote
From Jared Israel] In 1992, ITN,
the British news station, sent a film team to Bosnia. It was led by Penny
Marshall. The ITN people came back with what was supposedly a film of a
Serbian concentration camp. A death camp, if you will. Or will you? A
death camp? What is wrong with this story? First off, how did Penny Marshall
and an entire film crew get into a Serbian death camp and shoot a film?
Didn't somebody have to transport the crew members plus a mountain of
equipment? Didn't somebody have to show them around, feed them? The crew
needed time to set up their cameras and so on. How did they do all this
without getting caught? Did they parachute out of the sky? I mean seriously,
didn't they need the cooperation of the administration of the so-called death
camp? They did. But why would
the Serbian authorities want to help? Were they morons? Didn't they know the
West was hostile to the Bosnian Serbs? Weren't they attacked every day in the
British press? Wasn't the Islamist leader, Izetbegovic, treated as a hero?
Knowing ITN was probably anti-Serb, why would the Serbs let an ITN crew in to
film - a death camp? Could it be
that the place they filmed was not a death camp? That the Bosnian
Serbs let in Penny Marshall and her film crew precisely because they had
nothing ugly to hide? Fortunately we don’t have to speculate. By
coincidence, a group of Serbian filmmakers accompanied the ITN crew that day.
The Serbs shot a movie - that's right, they literally shot a movie - of Penny
Marshall and company shooting their movie.[33] [End Quote
From Jared Israel] If you visit this link you can read about and also
purchase the Emperor’s Clothes movie "Judgment!",
which includes the RTS footage showing ITN’s Penny Marshall shooting at Omarska and Trnopolje. This is the
footage shot by Serbian filmmakers that Jared Israel refers to above. The film shows very clearly that the places in
question were not in the least death camps. One was a camp for prisoners of
war where the people who had been trying to murder innocent Serbs were by
contrast treated quite humanely by the Serbs who had disarmed them. And the
other was a refugee camp for civilians displaced by the war, where
unfortunate people were getting food, shelter, and medical attention from the
Bosnian Serbs. On the day that the stills from Penny Marshall's
staged footage were unleashed to the world, something rather interesting
happened. Without waiting for an investigation, just 20 minutes after the
pictures were released (that’s right: 20 minutes, folks), president Bush Sr.
changed his policy towards the Balkans and urged a UN Security-Council
resolution authorizing use of force (against the Serbs) there. Wait. Twenty minutes? Bush decided to call for killing people in
Yugoslavia (an extreme decision) on the basis of photos which nobody -- let
alone him -- could have examined for more than twenty minutes, let alone
examine the claims behind them. What? Wait again. Twenty minutes!? I cannot get dressed in
twenty minutes. Can you? It is quite hard even to get the president on the
phone in twenty minutes, because he is a busy man, what with running the most
powerful country in the world and such. But should you succeed in contacting
the president within those twenty minutes, you would still have to explain
what your call was about, and that would be sure to consume all of your
remaining twenty. So that leaves no remaining minutes for looking at the photographs,
meeting with advisors, sounding out Congress, and finally concluding to
change the US government’s policy on a major issue such as this. In fact, any
of the above listed activities would, by itself, certainly consume more than
twenty minutes. And yet the London Sunday Times reports that this is actually
more time than was needed for all that: “less than 20 minutes after [ITN’s]
report was broadcast on American television,
President Bush changed his policy towards Serbia.”[34] Few things scream ‘pre-planned’ more loudly than
this. So of course Bush was waiting for the photographs. He knew they were on
their way and acted immediately as soon as he got them. The demonization of the Serbs moved quickly.
Only two days after the pictures were published,
this is what the Europeans, in lock-step with the United States, said, as
reported in The Times of London: “The Foreign
Office, acting on behalf of the presidency of the European Community,
yesterday condemned the detention camps as ‘repulsive and despicable.’ It
said that anyone ordering or committing breaches of the Geneva conventions
would be held personally responsible. The strongly worded statement was
issued as the ITN reporter Penny Marshall described a camp she had visited in
a disused mine at Omarska. She described
shaven-headed emaciated prisoners, too terrified to talk, and interviewed
former inmates who described prisoners being beaten to death.”[35] Of course, some people smelled a rat, and
accused the ITN crew of having lied. This is when Ed Vulliamy,
who had gone to Bosnia with Penny Marshall and the ITN film crew, and who
initially wrote a story depicting the supposed horror for The Guardian, wrote
an article for The Observer titled "I Stand by My Story," and
'clarified' as follows: “Omarska, Kereterm and Trnopolje were not industrial extermination camps or
death camps, which are proper descriptions of Nazi camps alone. They were
camps in which civilians were concentrated prior to deportation, meanwhile
tortured, beaten, raped, mutilated or murdered.”[35a] The nonexistent hair that Vulliamy
pretends to split, above, communicates that his detractors were supposedly
upset about some narrowly technical definition of "death camp" that
Vulliamy had abused. But of course that was not the
issue. The issue was that Vulliamy was alleging
that people “were concentrated prior to deportation, meanwhile tortured,
beaten, raped, mutilated or murdered” by the Bosnian Serbs, and that
allegation was a total lie. Later, ITN used a libel suit to bludgeon a tiny
magazine called Living Marxism into bankruptcy for exposing ITN’s lies about
the so-called death camps.[36]
After this gross miscarriage of justice, in which Living Marxism was ordered to
pay an exorbitant sum for the crime of telling the truth, Reuters reported
that: “[Penny] Marshall, wiping tears from her eyes, said the judgment was
‘important for the people who were in the camp.’”[37] Crocodile tears for nonexistent victims. The alleged Bosnian Serb ‘death camp’ was in fact a refugee
camp, and the bewildered refugees said this over and over again to Penny
Marshall, correcting her repeatedly even though she kept trying to make them
say it was a concentration camp. “No, no. Refugee camp, refugee camp!” they
kept saying. Was she deaf? They forcefully denied that they were being
mistreated even though Marshall kept trying to make them say that this was
the case. “They are very nice. Very nice,” is what they kept replying. They
were smiling, at ease, joking with each other... They were obviously well
fed. They were not enclosed. They were not guarded by soldiers. In short,
they were not even prisoners. All of this, including Penny Marshall's repeated
pleas with the refugees to give her a quote she could use against the Serbs,
is evident in the RTS footage, which filmed Penny Marshall shooting her own
footage, and which can be seen in the Emperor's Clothes' film
"Judgment!". ITN never showed its running footage to the world
because -- well, because it just wouldn’t do to have the so-called victims
deny the premise on camera. And here's the whopper: The refugees flocking to
this center were in fact Bosnian Muslim civilians running away from
the Islamist terrorists whom Alija Izetbegovic had
imported into Bosnia with the help of Iran and the US Pentagon. These Muslim
civilians were naturally terrified of Izetbegovic, and so they took refuge
where they knew they would be treated humanely and protected: with the
Bosnian Serbs! Just as it does not make sense to think that
Milosevic ever said anything racist, given that the mainstream Western media
had to lie about an explicitly tolerant speech in order to accuse him of
being a hate-monger, it does not make sense to think that the Serbs were
really conducting an "ethnic-cleansing" campaign if, in order to
accuse them of the same, spectacular lies were resorted to.
What ultimately guaranteed the success of the
demonization of the Bosnian Serbs was a well-organized public relations
campaign by professionals of the disinformation business. This campaign was
conducted by Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs, a Washington, D.C.-based
public relations firm that took as clients Tudjman’s fascist Republic of
Croatia, Izetbegovic’s Islamist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the
parliamentary opposition in Kosovo, which was in cahoots with the terrorist
KLA. If you were an enemy of the Serbs, if you were a fascist, if you were
bent on the destruction of the state of Yugoslavia, then, by Jove, you were
Ruder Finn’s client! By contrast, the Bosnian Serbs could not get any PR
firm to take them as clients. The leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic,
explained this in an interview:
Two points about this. First, what
Karadzic is referring to is a very small piece of chicken-wire fence that had
only two or three strands of barbed wire at the top, and that a child could
kick through.
Click on the photograph if you would Originally, the puny fence you can see in the photo
had been there to protect a tool shed in land adjacent to the refugee camp.
It was just a few feet long, and it was mostly falling down. What Penny
Marshall did was set her camera crew inside this tiny partial
enclosure, and then called the refugees who were milling about, smiling and
chatting among themselves in the summer sun, to come talk to her across a
small but still standing section of that one time 'fence.' This made it look
as though the refugees were inside an enclosure, when they were in fact
outside of what could not even be called an enclosure, anymore. In this way,
Penny Marshall did her best to create an image of a death camp. Everybody looked well fed which was an obvious
problem for Penny Marshall. But then she spotted a man who was voluntarily
shirtless (as he was holding his shirt in his hand) and whose torso was
abnormally -- even freakishly -- thin. She asked that he be brought forth and
his friends teased him as they pushed him towards the camera (he smiled
bashfully). He was not a starving man in the midst of a well-fed multitude, he was a man with a deformed torso who got
teased for it when it proved attractive to the well-heeled Western journalist
over yonder with the cameras, lights, and microphones. Penny Marshall had
this man front and center for a while, and the camera took a good look at
him. Later, this man's picture became the 'evidence' that the Bosnian Serbs
were running death camps, hence the phrase quoted above from the Sunday Times
that, "To see adults starving was like a throwback to the death camps of
wartime Germany.'" One adult. And he wasn't starving. If you would like to see the RTS footage that shows
Penny Marshall doing all this in real time, purchase Emperor's Clothes movie
"Judgment!" Something else that matters here is that, as
Karadzic says, "we had no PR-agency working for us ... their governments
did not allow them to work with and for the Serbs." This means the
battle of perceptions was not an even playing field to begin with. The NATO
powers made sure that the PR-agency hired by the enemies of the Serbs, Ruder
Finn, would have the greatest advantage possible, as it would not have to do
battle with a competing public relations firm. This was quite important,
because if any public relations firm had taken the Serbs as clients, they
would have made mince-meat of Ruder Finn. Let us get acquainted with Ruder Finn. James Harff, Ruder Finn's
director, with ultimate responsibility for the demonization campaign against
the Serbs, proudly explained to Jacques Merlino,
associate director of French TV 2, that “Speed is vital ... it is the first
assertion that really counts. All denials are entirely ineffective.” Interesting. In other words, suppose you make an assertion about
G (a person). Since the only thing that matters is the first assertion, and
subsequent denials by G will not change the impression created, then one can
go ahead and assert a lie. Facts don’t matter in public relations. Take
it from Harff - he is the expert. But of course, it
helps that the Western governments attacking the Serbs made it impossible for
the Serbs to get a public relations firm to compete with Harff;
he shouldn't be so smug. Jacques Merlino conducted
his remarkable interview with Harff in April 1993,
and it appears in Merlino’s book titled “Some
Truths About Yugoslavia Cannot Be Said,” which, not coincidentally, is very
hard to find.[38] Merlino
began by describing how Harff employs a file of
several hundred journalists, politicians, representatives of humanitarian
associations, and academics to create public opinion, and then had Harff explain the stuff above about how denials are
entirely ineffective once he has chosen to demonize somebody. Following that,
Merlino asked Harff what
his proudest public relations accomplishment was in the war on Yugoslavia.
Without hesitating, Harff replied: “To have
managed to put Jewish opinion on our side. This was a sensitive matter, as
the dossier was dangerous looked at from this angle. [Croatian] President
Tudjman was very careless in his book, ‘Wastelands of Historical Reality.’
Reading his writings one could accuse him of anti-Semitism….” One “could accuse him of anti-Semitism”? Yes, I
suppose one could, in the same way that one “could accuse” Hitler of the
same. I suppose Harff thinks that Hitler was also
“very careless” (he does seem to have misplaced between 5 and 6 million Jews).
The late Franjo Tudjman
and his followers are adherents to the same clerical (Catholic)-fascist Ustashe ideology which was rampant in Croatia during
World War II, and which carried out crimes of genocide against Croatian
democrats, and with special ferocity against Serbs, Jews, and Roma, whatever
their politics. To get a sense of what Ustashe
ideology is like, consider what happened in WWII, as explained by a study
done by the US military: “…from the
beginning the Ustashe adopted an anti-Serb policy of
massacres, expulsions, and forced conversions to Catholicism. Concentration
camps were established for Serbs, Jews, and Croatian democrats.” (p.30) “…The Ustashe were vehemently Catholic, anti-Semitic, and
anti-Serbian; their avowed policy was to convert one-third of the Serbs,
deport another third, and ‘eliminate’ the rest. The regime closed all Serbian
Orthodox Primary Schools, outlawed the Cyrillic alphabet, and ordered Serbs
to wear colored arm bands.” (p.69) “Serbs were
major participants in the Partisan liberation movement; their suffering at
the hands of the Croatian fascists appalled even the Nazis.”(p.68)[39] It was this very Ustashe
ideology that Franjo Tudjman and Co. had revived,
even repatriating from the Croatian diaspora Ustashe
criminals and their families who had fled to other countries in 1945 (with
the help of the Vatican and the US Army [39a]), and
who spent their years in exile plotting and carrying out various terrorist
attacks against Yugoslavia. In 1989-90 many of these criminals and their
children returned to Croatia and Bosnia where they provided crucial
leadership for the new fascist movements. Croatian President Tudjman put
some of them in the highest posts of his administration. To read more about Franjo Tujman’s neo-Ustashe regime, go
here: Concerning Franjo
Tudjman’s proud antisemitism, consider that he was a Holocaust denier who
wrote “that estimates of the number of Jewish victims in the Holocaust were
vastly inflated and that the main characteristics of Jews were ‘selfishness,
craftiness, unreliability, miserliness, underhandedness and secrecy.’”[40] He
also wrote that the butchery committed against Jews and Serbs in WWII fascist
Croatia had supposedly been wildly exaggerated. He oversaw a new genocide of
the Serbs in our time and also a renewed persecution of Jews in Croatia.[41] So this is the man whose image James Harff, director of the public relations firm Ruder Finn,
was trying to clean up. As James Harff concedes,
this represented a challenge. It was likewise a challenge to clean up the
image of Alija Izetbegovic, a problem that Harff also conceded.
So how did James Harff
solve his problem, which was that he needed to make these fascists look like
victims?
Clearly, Harff was just
bursting with pride at what he had achieved. Merlino
then asked what he may have thought would be an uncomfortable question: “But
between 2 and 5 Aug. 1992 when you did this you had no proof that what you
said was true. All you had were two Newsday articles.” (Notice that Merlino seems to think - like most people - that proof
did eventually surface; this is false.) The question did not faze Harff.
He replied:
So Harff, the non-moralist
public relations mercenary who spread unverified claims all over the world,
with lightning speed, and against which denials would be futile, had nary a
qualm as to whether the claims were actually true or false, nary a qualm as
to whether his clients were fascists, fundamentalists, or terrorists. In
fact, he hadn’t even looked into the photographs. He just went ahead and
demonized an entire people because he is a professional. The traditional enemies of fascism were painted as
fascists, whereas the erstwhile allies of the fascists, who were once again
spreading fascism with murder and genocide, were depicted as victims. The world was turned upside down. The Jews are considered the moral authority on
genocide, not coincidentally because they were the target of the most
spectacular genocide in recent memory: the WWII Shoah. Thus, if the major
American Jewish organizations accused the Serbs of running death camps, the
Serbs would be finished in the court of world opinion. Armed with nothing
more than the claim, in Newsday, that photographs of
Bosnian Serb death camps supposedly existed, what did Ruder Finn do?
James Harff explains, “We outwitted three big
Jewish organizations...” “We won by targeting the Jewish audience...” “we were able to present a simple story of good guys and
bad guys which would hereafter play itself.” In other words, Harff is
saying that his job was to fool the Jewish community with lies into
supporting antisemites, thereby to create a picture of 'good guys vs. bad
guys' where Izetbegovic and Tudjman would be the 'good guys' and Radovan
Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic would be the 'bad guys.' James Harff does not say
that his job was to fool the people who run the media. And he doesn't say
that his job was to fool NATO governments. In this he is once again candid,
because Bush’s twenty minute reaction necessarily moves faster than Ruder
Finn’s demonization campaign. In fact, there is no real distinction between
Ruder Finn, NATO governments, and the propaganda Western media. So, as Harff's statements make clear, Ruder Finn’s job was to
achieve the following two goals:
But Harff was not fooling
the leadership of these Jewish organizations, because this leadership understands
perfectly well what the history of Yugoslavia was like in World War II. It is
their job to know this sort of thing. Moreover, as HIR has shown, the corrupt
leadership of these major Jewish organizations in fact specializes in
attacking the Jews:
Naturally, corrupt Jewish leaders who attack the
Jews had no qualms about attacking the Serbs. What emerges from all this is that the imperial
strategy used against the Bosnian Serbs is thoroughly political - it
relies on the manipulation of information to construct pseudo-realities that
will tug at the heartstrings of honest and well-intentioned ordinary people. Once honest and well-intentioned ordinary people
were taught to believe that the Bosnian Serbs were carrying out a genocide, the Bosnian Serbs were finished. The same strategy is used to mobilize ordinary
people on issues all over the world. What passes for ‘the political Left’
these days is nothing of the sort, given that people
who describe themselves as leftists are easily found to be agitating for
fascist organizations such as the PLO, and attacking the traditional victims
of fascism: the Jews. This is done through disinformation
that whitewashes the PLO and unfairly demonizes their Jewish opponents.[41b] It
is also done by almost never mentioning the appalling crimes of the PLO
against the Palestinian Arabs - the very people whom they supposedly represent
but whom they in fact routinely and savagely oppress. The result is a
compromised and corrupted Left which cannot therefore offer any real
resistance to the ongoing sponsorship of racism as a tool of imperialism. For
these reasons, it is crucial for Serbs to understand that most ordinary
American Jews really don’t know what happened in Yugoslavia. They didn't lie
about anything, and they didn't attack the Serbs. It was the leaders
of American Jewish organizations that did that, and these leaders, even if they
are Jewish themselves, are not 'the Jews.' One of the continuing tragedies here is that most
ordinary American Jews still don’t know how the forces of the US-led empire
used their name to provide cover for a revived fascism in Europe. The war on
Yugoslavia was in part an attack on the Jews, not only because the US and its
allies sponsored violent antisemitic fascists, but because it drove a wedge
between the Serbs and the Jews. It is also worth pointing out, however, that the
leadership in Israel did take notice of what was going on, and did
support the Serbs -- that is, until the United States forced them to back
down. Richard J. Aldrich, Professor of Politics at the University of
Nottingham, in an article for The Guardian titled “America Used Islamists To
Arm The Bosnian Muslims: The Srebrenica Report Reveals The Pentagon's Role In
A Dirty War,” wrote the following: [Quote from
the Guardian starts here] “Now we have
the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist
groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims...[Meaning
the Muslim faction led by Alija Izetbegovic, which
attacked the Bosnian Serbs, unlike the faction led by the more popular Fikret Abdic, which allied with
the Bosnian Serbs - HIR] ...Meanwhile,
the secret services of Ukraine, Greece and Israel were busy arming the
Bosnian Serbs. Mossad was especially active and concluded a deal with the
Bosnian Serbs at Pale...[42] [Quote ends
here] (Notice that it was also the government in Ukraine
that supported the Serbs. This would be the same government that the United
States is now trying to oust from that country.[42a]) Recently, the leading Zionist news service, Israel
National News (Arutz Sheva) published an article by a Serb, Petar Makara, who is one of the best-known defenders of
the Serbs, worldwide. In this article Makara explained what was done to the
Serbs, and also the similarities between the attack on Yugoslavia by the
US-led empire and the current attack on the Israeli Jews. He expressed great
sympathy for the suffering of the Jews at the hands of Yasser Arafat.[42b] This is a
hopeful sign that the imperial strategy of trying to divide Serbs and Jews
with lies will fail. It is also a hopeful sign that Israeli Jews will wake up
and realize that the United States ruling elite is not their ally, something
that in fact is quite easy to document.[42c] Resistance to the US-led empire requires a restored
unity between Jews and Serbs, the traditional enemies and victims of fascism.
The forces of empire would prefer Serbs to be antisemites and for the Jews to
be serbophobic. If the Serbs become antisemites,
they will have handed their NATO attackers their most resounding victory.
Ruder Finn’s public relations campaign on behalf of the serbophobic
and also antisemitic fascists, which relied on using the leadership of the
American Jewish organizations to give these fascists moral cover, was
designed to hit the Serbs where it hurt the most -- to make them feel
betrayed by those whose lives they had bravely and honorably died protecting
in World War II. But there has been no such betrayal. Agents of the US-led
empire at the top of US Jewish organizations are not ‘the Jews,’ just as the
current NATO-installed government in Serbia is not ‘the Serbs.’ Neither does
one prominent French Jewish philosopher such as Bernard Henry-Lévi, whom we encountered making an absurd
defense of Alija Izetbegovic in part 2 of this
series, represent ‘the Jews.’ Most ordinary Jews, in fact, don’t know the history
of Yugoslavia, quite sadly, and this owes much to the fact that the story of
WWII Serbian bravery was suppressed by Marshall Tito, the Croatian national
who ruled post-war Yugoslavia until he died in 1980. And ordinary Jews are as
misinformed about the recent wars in Yugoslavia as the rest of the world,
because they read the same media as everybody else. HIR is proud simultaneously to defend both Jews and
Serbs. It is quite common for Serbs who know us and respect us for our
quality research on NATO’s assault against Yugoslavia to change their minds
about the situation in Israel when our reputation compels them to read our
research about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The argument is not difficult,
since the forces attacking the Jews are the same fascist and Islamist forces
that played a big part in the destruction of Yugoslavia. To give just one
example, the original Nazi SS Handzar Division that
slaughtered so many Serbs in WWII, and which Izetbegovic resuscitated, was
put together by the Palestinian Arab Hajj Amin al Husseini, who led, with Adolf
Eichmann, the German Nazi Final Solution, and who was also the father of the
Palestinian movement, and Yasser Arafat’s mentor.[43] Similarly, Jews who know us and respect us for our
work refuting the lies said about Israel, and about the Jews more generally,
are discovering our articles about Yugoslavia and changing their minds. May the future bring increasing understanding and
restored unity between the Jewish and Serbian people, both of them very
necessary to the furthering of world peace! And may the Bosnian Serbs hold fast and continue to
resist courageously, drawing at least some strength from knowing that they
have inspired some of us to fight for them. My life has been changed by their
example, and I am not alone.
Footnotes and Further Reading [1] Izetbegovic, Alija. 1999
[1980]. Le manifeste Islamique
(original title: Islamska deklaracija).
Beyrouth-Liban: Éditions
Al-Bouraq. (p.132) [2] “Mr [Fikret]
Abdic got more votes in the 1990 Bosnian
presidential election than Mr Izetbegovic but,
under party political pressure, ceded his place to him. He was pro-Yugoslavia
and lukewarm about Bosnian independence.” -- The Economist, June 26, 1993,
World politics and current affairs; EUROPE; Pg. 54 (U.K. Edition Pg. 39), 751
words, Direr and emptier, FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN BELGRADE AND COPENHAGEN [3] Izetbegovic, Alija. 1999
[1980]. Le manifeste Islamique
(original title: Islamska deklaracija).
Beyrouth-Liban: Éditions
Al-Bouraq. (p. 81-82) [5] Ibid. (p.117) [6] The Christian Science Monitor, March 5, 1992,
Thursday, THE WORLD; Pg. 4, 847 words, Bosnia Independence
Vote Intensifies Ethnic Tensions In Yugoslav Republic, Louise Branson,
Special to The Christian Science Monitor, BELGRADE [7] Izetbegovic, Alija. 1999
[1980]. Le manifeste Islamique
(original title: Islamska deklaracija).
Beyrouth-Liban: Éditions
Al-Bouraq. (p.132) [8] “Moderate Democrat or Radical Islamist?: Who is Alija Izetbegovic, the man the US sponsored in Bosnia?”;
Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White [9] Financial Times (London). July 13, 1991, Saturday,
SECTION I; Overseas News; pg. 2, 800 words, Moslems prepare to resist Greater
Serbia, Judy Dempsey. [10] The Herald (Glasgow), March 4, 1992, Pg.
4, 522 words, Armed Muslims take to streets of Sarajevo,
Timothy Heritage [11] “The national parties have won a resounding victory
over the parties of the so-called ''left-wing bloc'' on all the lists. The
future presidency of the SR of Bosnia-Hercegovina will comprise of Fikret Abdic with 1,010,618
votes and Alija Izetbegovic with 847,386 - both
Muslim candidates of the Party of Democratic Action. This party will also
have another member in the presidency, Ejup Ganic (680,783 votes), who was nominated in the elections
as a Yugoslav, and will therefore represent the other nations and
nationalities in this republic. Biljana Plavsic (557,218 votes) and Nikola Koljevic
(541,212 votes) will join the presidency as candidates of the Serbian
Democratic Party. Stjepan Kljuic
(464,174 votes) and Franjo Boras (408,750 votes)
will join the new presidency as candidates of the Croatian Democratic
Community (Tanjug in Serbo-Croat 1333 gmt 23 Nov 90).” -- BBC Summary of World Broadcasts,
November 29, 1990, Thursday, Part 2 Eastern Europe; B. INTERNAL AFFAIRS;
YUGOSLAVIA; EE/0934/B/ 1; , 1209 words, ELECTION RESULTS IN
BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA, Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat
1800 gmt 18 Nov 90 Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat 1927 gmt 19 Nov 90
Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat 1703 gmt 19 Nov 90 Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat
1437 gmt 19 Nov 90 Zagreb 1400 gmt
22 Nov 90 Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat 1523 gmt 22 Nov 90 Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat
1333 gmt 23 Nov 90 Belgrade home service 2100 gmt 25 Nov 90 Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat
1304 gmt 27 Nov 90 [12] The Economist, June 26, 1993, World politics and
current affairs; EUROPE; Pg. 54 (U.K. Edition Pg. 39), 751 words, Direr and
emptier, FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN BELGRADE AND COPENHAGEN [12a] The Associated Press, May 25,
1992, Monday, AM cycle, International News, 712 words, Fighting, Expulsions Continue
Despite Sanction Threats, By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer,
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia [12b] The Herald (Glasgow), October
4, 1993, Pg. 4, 422 words, Muslim fighting threatens to prolong Bosnian war,
Giles Elgood [Reuters] [12c] The Atlanta Journal and
Constitution, October 22, 1993, Friday, 960 words, WORLD IN BRIEF Bosnia
factions, rebel Muslim meet
Notice that Abdic is
called a "rebel". Why? Abdic was opposing
Izetbegovic, who illegally seized power, illegally declared Bosnian
independence, and plunged everybody into a civil war. But it was important to
call Abdic a rebel if the purpose was to defend
Izetbegovic. And, of course, that was the purpose. [13] The Guardian (London), November 20, 1990, 219 words,
Overwhelming victory in sight for Bosnia's nationalists, By JIM FISH in
Sarajevo
[14] The Herald (Glasgow), October 4, 1993, Pg. 4, 422
words, Muslim fighting threatens to prolong Bosnian war, Giles Elgood.
Associated Press Worldstream,
October 03, 1993, Sunday, International news, 479 words, Croats and Muslims
Sign New Accord; Bihac Dispute Worsens, SNJEZANA VUKIC , ZAGREB, Croatia.
[15] “Painting Fascists as Victims, and Their Victims as
Fascists: The mainstream media turned Bosnia upside down”; Investigative and
Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White [15a] "Witness to Jasenovac Hell", by Ilija Ivanovic. [16] Los Angeles Times October 7, 2001; Section: Part A;
Part 1; Page 1; National Desk Headline: Response To Terror; Bosnia Seen As
Hospitable Base And Sanctuary For Terrorists; Byline: Craig Pyes, Josh Meyer, William C. Rempel, Times Staff Writers;
Dateline: Zenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina [17] “The Muslim Terrorist Apparatus was Created by US
Intelligence as a Geopolitical Weapon”; Emperor’s Clothes; January 1998; by
Jared Israel. [18] “U.S. & Iran: Enemies in Public, but Secret Allies
in Terror: The US and Iran have long cooperated to sponsor Islamist
terrorism.” by by Jared Israel, Francisco
Gil-White, Peter Makara, and Nico Varkevisser [19] “Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn
Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base” -- Congressional Press Releases, January
16, 1997, Thursday, PRESS RELEASE, 8665 words, MILITANT ISLAMIC BASE, LARRY
CRAIG , SENATOR , SENATE , CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN
BOSNIA INTO [19a] "The State Department
earlier criticized Iran for allegedly attempting to smuggle arms to its
Muslim allies in Bosnia in violation of the U.N. economic embargo. Iran
denied the allegation." -- The Associated Press, September 12, 1992,
Saturday, PM cycle, Washington Dateline, 441 words, U.S. Calls Chinese
Nuclear Deal with Iran 'Highly Imprudent', By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press
Writer, WASHINGTON [20] “Moderate Democrat or Radical Islamist?: Who is Alija Izetbegovic, the man the US sponsored in Bosnia?”;
Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White [20a] "...The court found the accused guilty because it
held that their activity had been directed against brotherhood and unity, and
the equality of our nations and nationalities with a view to destroying
Bosnia-Hercegovina as a Socialist Republic and thus of undermining the social
order of the SFRY. For the criminal act of association for the purpose of enemy activity
and counter-revolutionary threatening of the social order Alija
(Mustafa) Izetbegovic was sentenced to 14 years'..."
[21] from “A Careful Coincidence Of National Policies?” by T.W.
Carr (Ass. Publisher, Defense & Foreign Affairs Publicatisons.
London); Presented at the Symposium on the Balkan War; Yugoslavia: Past and
Present, Chicago, August 31-September 1, 1995 [22] St. Louis Post-Dispatch. May 2, 1992, SATURDAY, FIVE
STAR Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. 2B, 355 words, NEW YUGOSLAVIA, OLD TRICKS. [23] Financial Times (London). July 13, 1991, Saturday,
SECTION I; Overseas News; pg. 2, 800 words, Moslems prepare to resist Greater
Serbia, Judy Dempsey. [24] “A Republic of the Serbian People of
Bosnia-Hercegovina, with its administrative centre
in Sarajevo, and which would be ''a federal unit in the federal state of
Yugoslavia'', was declared by the Assembly of the Serbian People of
Bosnia-Hercegovina on 9th January, Radio Sarajevo reported*. The Assembly on
the 9th also sent telegrams to the chairman of the peace conference on
Yugoslavia, Lord Carrington, and to UN Secretary-General Butrus
Ghali, informing them of its decision that
Bosnia-Hercegovina Presidency President Alija
Izetbegovic and Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic no longer represented the interests of
Bosnia-Hercegovina's Serbian people in international fora, Radio Sarajevo and
Tanjug reported. Serbian Assembly deputies were reported by Tanjug on the 9th
to have said that the declaration of the Serbian republic was a result of
''illegitimate and illegal decisions of the Muslim-Croatian coalition'', and
a response to Muslim and Croatian demands for international recognition of an
independent Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina.* For details see Sections. Izetbegovic said on his arrival in Sarajevo from
Brussels on the 9th that he had been elected to his post and that no-one
could remove that mandate from him, Croatian Radio reported. He described the
decision to set up a Serbian republic in Bosnia-Hercegovina as ''one
unilateral act in a series of acts'' by the Serbian Democratic Party, and
added that it would not be allowed.* For details see Sections” -- BBC Summary
of World Broadcasts/The Monitoring Report, January 11, 1992,
Saturday, Part 2 Eastern Europe; 2. EASTERN EUROPE; EE/1275/ i;,
249 words, Bosnia-Hercegovina President rejects unilateral Republic of
Serbian People [25] “Bosnian Serb separatist leader Radovan Karadzic” --
The Washington Post, September 17, 1992, Thursday, Final Edition, FIRST
SECTION; PAGE A36, 679 words, Missile Hit Aid Plane, Initial Report Shows;
Aircraft Crashed Near Sarajevo Sept. 3, Blaine Harden, Washington Post
Foreign Service, SARAJEVO, Bosnia, Sept. 16, 1992 “Bosnia's leadership had hoped for more in their
fight against Serbian separatists who have taken control of about two-thirds
of the country.”-- CNN, The Week in Review, August 16, 1992, Transcript # 21
- 3, Package, News, 1312 words, The Besieged, SUSAN ROOK; BOB CAIN. “The tragedy for defenders of an open society in
Bosnia was that their foes, Serb separatists, were ready with force.” -- The
Economist, June 25, 1994, Arts, Books And Sport; Pg. 91, 788 words, Trouble
in Balkans; Turning old friends into new foes; BOSNIA: A SHORT HISTORY. By
Noel Malcolm. MacMillanl 340 pages; £9.99. To be
published by New York University Press in August; $ 26.95 EUROPE'S BACKYARD
WAR. By Mark Almond. Heinemann; 432 pages; £20 “Nicola Koljevic, vice
president of Bosnian Serb separatists” -- USA TODAY, February 25, 1994,
Friday, FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. 6A, 976 words, Ethnic groups begin process
of making peace / Separatists' Sarajevo: 'Groups can mix', Tom Squitieri, PALE, Bosnia-Herzegovina “The U.S. aim was to persuade Milosevic to recognize
Bosnian statehood and cut off the flow of supplies to the Serbian
separatists.” -- Newsweek, June 12, 1995 , UNITED
STATES EDITION, SPECIAL REPORT; Bosnia; Pg. 18, 1424 words, A No -- Win War,
BY RUSELL WATSON, With JOHN BARRY, KAREN BRESLAU and BOB COHN in Washington,
ROD NORDLAND in Vitez, MARCUS MABRY in Belgrade,
GREGORY BEALS at the United Nations and bureau reports. “Fears of a link-up between army commanders and
Serbian separatists have led to tolerance over the past six months of a
Croatian paramilitary build-up.” -- The Times, March 3, 1992, Tuesday,
Overseas news, 535 words, Gun influx triggers fears
of bloodbath, By Roger Boyes, East Europe
Correspondent. “American pilots and their vast military support
network have taken up the task of bombing Serb separatist military positions
in Bosnia.”-- ABC NEWS, Nightline (ABC 11:30 pm ET), September 12, 1995,
Transcript # 3732, News; Domestic, 3683 words “Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds
occupied by Serb separatists” -- St. Petersburg Times (Florida), July 7,
1992, Tuesday, City Edition, NATIONAL; Pg. 3A, 771 words, Enclave further
fractures Bosnia, SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina. “Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds
occupied by Serb separatists” -- The Houston Chronicle, July 7, 1992,
Tuesday, 2 STAR Edition, A; Pg. 12, 549 words, Yugoslav nominee asks for
100-day delay in reprisals, CHUCK SUDETIC; New York Times, BELGRADE,
Yugoslavia “...in the capital of the self-proclaimed
independent state that militant Serb separatists have staked out in the 70
percent of Bosnia they now control.” -- The Washington Post, December 7,
1992, Monday, Final Edition, FIRST SECTION; PAGE A25, 1051 words, Serbs
Stymie U.N., Step Up 'Cleansing'; Bosnian Muslims Come Under Renewed Attack,
Mary Battiata, Washington Post Foreign Service,
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia, Dec. 6 “...fighting was underway between Serbian
separatists and local police.” -- Agence France Presse, April 15, 1992, News, 734 words, Army enters
Sarajevo; stern U.S. warning to Bosnia, VICTORIA STEGIC, SARAJEVO “Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds
occupied by Serb separatists” -- The Associated Press, July 6, 1992, Monday,
AM cycle, International News, 734 words, Declaration of Croatian Enclave
Further Fractures Bosnia, By TERRY LEONARD, Associated Press Writer,
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina. “When NATO intervened, it was at the request of the
Bosnian government to save the country from being overrun by Serbian
separatists.” -- CBC TV, THE NATIONAL ( 10:00 PM ET
), March 25, 1999, Thursday, 556 words, Serbia and Bosnia, JOE SCHLESINGER,
CBC Reporter; HELMUT SONNENFELDT,, PETER MANSBRIDGE. [26] Bosnia suffers genocide as the world - and America -
remains silent. (Originated from Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service) Jennifer
Scarlott; Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service Dec
21, 1993 p1221K5689 (696 words) [27] The Herald (Glasgow), March 4, 1992, Pg.
4, 522 words, Armed Muslims take to streets of Sarajevo,
Timothy Heritage [28] St. Louis Post-Dispatch March 18, 1993, THURSDAY, FIVE
STAR Edition SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 3C; 1163 words; HEADLINE: NO INNOCENTS
IN BOSNIA OR SERBIA; BYLINE: Gordon N. Bardos [29] The Boston
Globe, August 15, 1993, Sunday, City Edition, NATIONAL/FOREIGN;
Pg. 1, 666 words, Serbs pull back near Sarajevo; Material from
wires services was used in this report., By Jonathan Kaufman, Globe
Staff, LONDON [29a] The Washington Post, May 26,
1992, Tuesday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; PAGE A17, 877 words, Blowing Smoke,
Jim Hoagland Daily News (New York), April 01, 1999, Thursday,
News; Pg. 34, 336 words, ALBANIAN PROTESTERS REACH EAR OF THE PREZ, By
KENNETH R. BAZINET and KEVIN PENTON Daily News Writers The New York Times, April 5, 1999, Monday, Late
Edition - Final, Section A; Page 21; Column 5; Editorial Desk , 703 words,
Essay; The Quiet Noisemaker, By WILLIAM SAFIRE , WASHINGTON The Toronto Sun, May 25, 1999, Tuesday,, Final
EDITION, EDITORIAL/OPINION,, Pg. 14,, 392 words, MIRED IN YUGOSLAVIA Foreign Affairs (1998), ESSAYS; Pg. 81, 5266 words,
Power and Interdependence in the Information Age, Robert O. Keobane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr.; ROBERT O. KEOHANE is
James B. Duke Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Program
on Democracy, Institutions, and Political Economy at Duke University. JOSEPH
S. NYE, JR., is Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University. United Press International, March 22, 2001,
Thursday, GENERAL NEWS, 1282 words, Analysis: Movies that impact life, By
STEVE SAILER, UPI National Correspondent, LOS ANGELES, March 22 National Public Radio (NPR), ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
(9:00 PM ET) , April 7, 1999, Wednesday, 534 words, RUSSIA MAINTAINS
OPPOSITION TO NATO BOMBING OF YUGOSLAVIA; HOLDS NEWS BRIEFINGS TO COUNTER
WHAT IT CALLS NATO PROPAGANDA, LINDA WERTHEIMER, MICHELLE KELEMEN [29b]
"In the beginning of World War II, Yugoslavia was pressured by Germany
and Italy to join the Axis powers. Italy was mired in an inconclusive war
with Greece, and before Germany committed its forces to the Greek campaign,
it wanted to secure Yugoslavia's support. [30] The piece below contains a historical analysis of
conditions in Kosovo that also delves into the story of Serbian moral courage
and suffering during World War II in that area:
[31] Hilberg, Raul. 1961. The destruction of the European
Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. (p.688) [31a] "Himmler was their
Defender!: The SS Handzar
Division Lives on in Bosnia"; Emperor's Clothes; 9 January 2003; by Dan Chukurov, Petar Makara and
Jared Israel. [31b] The following is from the book
"Serbs Chose War" (by Ruth Mitchell, Garden City Publishers, New
York, 1943, pp. 260-264.) "Source: Letter written by a Jewish physician,
a professor in the Department of Medicine in the University of Belgrade, to a
friend in London on his escape from Yugoslavia in 1942. As the writer is a
Jew, for the sake of relatives who remain in Yugoslavia his name cannot be
used.
[32] How Muderous Are the Serbs?
It is time to exhume the first casualty in the NATO War; by David Ramsay
Steele; Inquiry, July 1999; [32a] "The Freezer Truck Hoax: How NATO Framed Slobodan
Milosevic" Historical and Investigative Research; 2 December 2005; by
Francisco J. Gil-White. [32b] You will find the most complete documentation on this
here:
Some of this material was originally published here:
[33] “Film Proves Death-Camp Photos Were Lies”; Emperor’s
Clothes; April 4, 2000; by Jared Israel. [34] Sunday Times, August 9, 1992, Sunday, Overseas news,
1013 words, Death-camp scoop made the world sit up, by Jonathan Miller [34b] Sunday Times, August 9, 1992, Sunday, Overseas news,
1013 words, Death-camp scoop made the world sit up, by Jonathan Miller [35] The Times, August 7, 1992, Friday, Home
news, 1257 words, Evidence mounts of executions and beatings in
Serb-run camps, By Michael Binyon. [35a] The Observer, February 2,
1997, Sunday, THE OBSERVER NEWS PAGE; Pg. 25, 2334 words, I STAND BY MY
STORY, Ed Vulliamy. [36] "The Tears of the Mighty: A Grim Miscarriage of
Justice Has Just Occurred in Britain"; Emperor's Clothes; 16 March 2000;
by Jared Israel. [37] Reuters, 3/14/00 [37a] Interview with Radovan
Karadzic. [38] Merlino, Jacques (1984). “Les Verites Yougoslaves Ne Sont Pas Toutes Bonnes En Dire” (Albin Michel, Paris) [39] Nyrop, Richard F. 1982. Yugoslavia: A country study. Headquarters,
Department of the Army, DA Pam 550-99: American University. [39a] The Catholic Church was always
closely allied with the Croatian fascists, and with
the fascists more broadly. To read about that, visit: "The Pictures Tell the Tale: The Vatican and
Nazism in Germany and Croatia"; Emperor's Clothes; 22 April 2005; by
Jared Israel To read about the involvement of the US military in
absorbing thousands of Nazi war criminals to create US Intelligence, visit: "The US Recreated the Nazi War Crimes Machine:
Six decades of cover-up and still going strong.The
Nazi war crimes apparatus was recruited lock, stock and barrel and secretly
redeployed worldwide. It became US Intelligence"; Emperor's Clothes; 4
January 2004; by Jared Israel. [40] The New York Times, October 8, 1995, Sunday, Late
Edition - Final, Section 4; Page 1; Column 2; Week in Review
Desk, 1227 words, Trading Villains' Horns for Halos, By
Elaine Sciolino, Washington [41] Read more about Tudjman’s Croatia here: [41a] Rick Grant, who has “been on
both sides of the fence” and has advised “aid groups on how to handle the
media and…managed information campaigns directed at foreign correspondents”
says the following about modern journalism:
[41b] "Anti-Semitism,
Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership";
Israel National News; Jun 17, '03 / 17 Sivan 5763; by Francisco J. Gil-White. [42] To read the Guardian article, go to “Dutch Report: Us
Sponsored Foreign Islamists In Bosnia,” at [42a] The following article is from
the British daily The Guardian. It explains that what the NATO powers are
doing to the Ukraine is the very same thing they did to Yugoslavia. The
Guardian makes it sound as if this is a good thing. In order to do that, they
omit any mention of the fact that the NATO powers in fact backed fascists,
Muslim fundamentalists, and terrorists against the Serbs, the most tolerant
people in the world. But readers of this series on Bosnia will be able to
give this article the proper interpretation: Ukraine is being destroyed in
the same manner that Yugoslavia was, by promoting fascism and pretending that
this is democracy. U.S. Campaign Behind the Turmoil in
Kiev With their websites and stickers, their pranks and
slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy
guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement
have already notched up a famous victory - whatever the outcome of the
dangerous stand-off in Kiev.
That one failed. "There will be no Kostunica in
Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in
Belgrade.
In Ukraine, the equivalent is a ticking clock, also
signaling that the Kuchma regime's days are numbered.
US pollsters and professional consultants are hired
to organize focus groups and use psephological
[psychological?] data to plot strategy. [HIR NOTE - To find out who Djindjic and Kostunica
really are, consult the following: http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/spie.htm http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/djindjic.htm http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/wilmer.htm In Belarus, US officials ordered opposition parties
to unite behind the dour, elderly trade unionist, Vladimir Goncharik, because he appealed to
much of the Lukashenko constituency.
Officially, the US government spent $41m (£21.7m)
organizing and funding the year-long operation to get rid of Milosevic from
October 1999. In Ukraine, the figure is said to be around $14m.
Freedom House and the Democratic party's NDI helped
fund and organize the "largest civil regional election monitoring effort"
in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also organized
exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr. Yushchenko
an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed.
The places to watch are Moldova and the
authoritarian countries of central Asia. [42b] "Serbian Condolences [to
the Jews] for the Life of Arafat"; Opinion; Arutz
Sheva (Israel National News); 19 November 2004 [6
Kislev 5765]; by Petar Makara. On the website that Makara created to defend the
Serbs with the truth, Srpska-Mreza, he wrote the
following:
[42c] “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?
A chronological look at the evidence”; Historical
and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White [43] You will find the most complete
documentation on this here:
Some of this material was originally published here:
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