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What really happened in Bosnia?
Historical and Investigative Research, revised 19 Aug 2005
by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija3.htm

1  |  2  |  3
________________________________________________________
. . .continued from part 2

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
( hyperlinked < )

< 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 Bosnian Serbs!

< 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.

What was Alija Izetbegovic's plan for Bosnia?
_______________________________________

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.

“Serbs represent approximately 31 percent of the population, Bosnian Muslims 45 percent, and Croats 16 percent.”[6]

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.

Alija Izetbegovic's 1992 referendum on Bosnian independence, and what it means
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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,

"Bosnia's Muslims, who make up about 40 per cent of its four million people, voted in force for their Party of Democratic Action. Likewise, Serbs and Croats voted almost exclusively for their own national parties."[13]

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.

"A political rival of Izetbegovic, Abdic is critical of the government in Sarajevo [led by Izetbegovic] for its failure to work out a peace agreement with its Serb and Croat enemies.

The Bosnian government has ejected Abdic from the 10-member presidency and Izetbegovic has accused him of treason.

Later today, about 2000 people rallied in support of Abdic in the hilltop village of Skokovi, on the edge of Abdic territory south of Velika Kladusa.

The demonstrators called for an end to the Bosnia war and the suffering of civilians.

In Bihac itself, about 200 people demonstrated in support of Izetbegovic and Muslim unity, witnesses told Reuters."[12b]

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 U.N. High Commission for Refugees said Tuesday that more than 134,400 mostly Muslim and Croatian refugees have been driven from their homes in what Western diplomats and government officials regard as 'ethnic cleansing' operations aimed at creating 'pure' Serbian areas."[12a]

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 press says the separatists are. . .
. . .the Bosnian Serbs!
___________________

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:

“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.”[24]

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 [Bosnian Serb] 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 [in Bosnia] 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.”[24]

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:

“Bosnian Serb separatist leader Radovan Karadzic” (The Washington Post)

“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 tragedy for defenders of an open society in Bosnia was that their foes, Serb separatists, were ready with force.” (The Economist)

“Nicola Koljevic, vice president of Bosnian Serb separatists” (USA TODAY)

“The U.S. aim was to persuade Milosevic to recognize Bosnian statehood and cut off the flow of supplies to the Serbian separatists.” (Newsweek)

“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)

“American pilots and their vast military support network have taken up the task of bombing Serb separatist military positions in Bosnia.” (ABC NEWS)

“Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds occupied by Serb separatists” (St. Petersburg Times)

“Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds occupied by Serb separatists” (The Houston Chronicle)

“...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)

“...fighting was underway between Serbian separatists and local police.” (Agence France Presse)

“Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds occupied by Serb separatists” (The Associated Press)

“When NATO intervened, it was at the request of the Bosnian government to save the country from being overrun by Serbian separatists.” (CBC TV)[25]

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’?

The Serbs were just defending themselves
______________________________________

You may recall from the above section that The Herald (Glasgow) wrote as follows:

“Serbs [are] a third of the population [in Bosnia] who claim two-thirds of Bosnia's territory belongs to them.”[27]

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:

“...Serbian separatists who have taken control of about two-thirds of the country.” (CNN)

“Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds occupied by Serb separatists” (St. Petersburg Times)

“Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds occupied by Serb separatists” (The Houston Chronicle)

“...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)

“Newly independent Bosnia, already two-thirds occupied by Serb separatists” (The Associated Press)

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:
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/bosniamap.htm

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:

“The Serbs control about 70 percent of Bosnia and have offered to relinquish some of their holdings to give the Bosnian Muslim state just under 30 percent of Bosnia. The Muslims now control just 10 percent of the country. Before the civil war, the Muslims were the largest group in Bosnia.”[29]

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:

“Before the civil war, the Muslims were the largest group in Bosnia. The Muslims now control just 10 percent of the country. The Serbs control about 70 percent of Bosnia and have offered to relinquish some of their holdings to give the Bosnian Muslim state just under 30 percent of Bosnia.”

All ambiguity can be removed from the implied argument by nudging it gently here and there:

“Before the civil war, the Muslims were the largest group in Bosnia, and yet the Muslims now control just 10 percent of the country. Why? Because the Serbs have taken control of about 70 percent of Bosnia. Although the Serbs have offered to relinquish some of their holdings, they will force the Bosnian Muslim state to exist within just under 30 percent of Bosnia.”

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"?

Were the Serbs incited to commit war crimes?
________________________________________

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):

"...Baker and Eagleburger have discovered that Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic is a ruthless man who observes no rules. They  ... [will] risk American lives to stop this new Hitler, the newspaper accounts say." (Washington Post)

"Tina Hadzija of Staten Island called Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic 'the new Hitler.' She said she has not heard from her relatives in Gjakovica in weeks and fears 'they were wiped out.'" (Daily News [New York])

"...Clinton's rhetoric about the need to stand up to a new Hitler; ...his solemn warning that Milosevic will be held responsible for the lives of captured Americans..." (New York Times)

"Those who supported NATO's air campaign [did so] in the belief [that] Slobodan Milosevic was a new Hitler who threatened both European and world peace..." (Toronto Sun)

"Propaganda as a form of free information is not new. Hitler and Stalin used it effectively in the 1930s. Slobodan Milosevic's control of television was crucial to his power in Serbia." (Foreign Affairs)

"So, the two Spielberg movies ['Saving Private Ryan' and 'Schindler's List'] encouraged our foreign policy experts to see the Balkans not as a snake pit best avoided, but as a black and white struggle between Good and Evil. Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic was the new Hitler to be destroyed and the Kosovo Albanians were the new Jews to be saved." (United Press International)

"Russians also have a vastly different view of President Milosevic. While in the West the Yugoslav leader is demonized as Europe's new Hitler, Russia's Communist Party has used that description only for NATO, saying the military alliance is carrying out a fascist campaign." (National Public Radio)[29a]

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.
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/milosaid.html

If you wish to compare that to the BBC translation of the same speech, I have scanned the microfilm of the BBC translation:
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/milosevic1.pdf http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/milosevic2.pdf
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/milosevic3.pdf

For an easy-to-read text version of the BBC translation:
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/bbc_milosevic.htm

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.
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/milospeech.htm

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 Serbs are the last population in the world that should have been suspected of genocidal behavior
______________________________________

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:

1) most people in the West had zero knowledge of the brave history of the Serbs (I was in this position); and

2) they were told about the supposed death camps, which in fact never existed, over and over and...over again.

How did the media come to blare so insistently that the Bosnian Serbs were running death camps if such camps did not exist?

How were the accusations of war crimes against the Serbs manufactured?
___________________

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.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/film/judgment.htm

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.

"In America, full accounts of ITN's harrowing footage were splashed across Newsday, headlined 'Bosnia horror', and The New York Times, under the headline 'Bush urges UN to back force to get aid to Bosnia'. Arnot Walker, a spokesman for ABC television, said: 'The pictures had a huge impact. There was increased pressure on the government to intercede. To see adults starving was like a throwback to the death camps of wartime Germany.'"[34b]

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!".
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/film/judgment.htm

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.

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 they claim to represent
_____________________

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:

KARADZIC: We wanted to show the truth. We had no PR-agency working for us. When we tried to hire one, the agencies would not cooperate because their governments did not allow them to work with and for the Serbs. I ask [Penny] Marshall to admit openly that she was there on our invitation, that she visited Trnopolje, and that she filmed barbed wire which was not part of the camp but of a small piece of adjacent land.[37a]

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
like to see why it was a total fraud

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!"
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/film/judgment.htm

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:
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/kosovo.htm#APPENDIX

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.

HARFF: “…In Bosnia the situation was no better: President Izetbegovic strongly supported the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state in his book, ‘The Islamic Declaration.’ Besides, the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by real and cruel anti-Semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps, so there was every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile toward the Croats and the Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude and we succeeded masterfully.”

So how did James Harff solve his problem, which was that he needed to make these fascists look like victims?

[Back to Merlino's Interview with James Harff]

HARFF: “At the beginning of July 1992, New York Newsday came out with the article on Serb camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations - the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League, The American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress. In August, we suggested that they publish an advertisement in the New York Times and organize demonstrations outside the United Nations.

“That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia. The great majority of Americans were probably asking themselves in which African country Bosnia was situated.

“By a single move, we were able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys which would hereafter play itself. We won by targeting the Jewish audience. Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with use of words with high emotional content such as ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, etc., which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. No one could go against it without being accused of [Holocaust] revisionism. We really batted a thousand in full.”

[Quote ends here]

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:

“Our work is not to verify information. We are not equipped for that. Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to aim at judiciously chosen targets. We did not confirm the existence of death camps in Bosnia, we just made it widely known that Newsday affirmed it. … We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not paid to moralize.”

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: