Of Human Bondage

[Mir Harven]

The Sad Tale of Croatian Independence
by Christine Stone
British Helsinki Human Rights Group
Special to Antiwar.com
1/28/00

"An end to the era of fear, corruption and blood" declaimed
David Jessell, front-man of the BBC’s Europe Direct news magazine on
25th January. Such hyperbole might have lead viewers to think they
were going to be treated to a programme about the fall of Mobutu or
Pol Pot. Not so.

Jessell was referring the death of Croatia’s president Franjo
Tudjman last December and the election of a new Croat government in
January of this year.
After the second round of voting in the presidential election to be
held on 6th February the country’s turnaround will be complete. In
just two months Croatia
will have gone from being the ‘Africa’ of the Balkans to another lucky
aspirant for entry in to Euro-Atlantic structures.

Of course, many people will have agreed with Jessell. Ever
since it declared its independence in 1991 Croatia has been under
attack.
Both Serbia and Bosnia
have had their share of international patronage while Slovenia, after
sliding away from Yugoslavia relatively painlessly, has been accepted
without question as model of reform.

The bloody assault on Vukovar in 1991 and the economic
depravations visited on the country by the Balkan wars have been
conveniently forgotten.
Attention is permanently focused on Croatia’s perceived rampant
nationalism, its contribution to the misery in Bosnia, its expulsion
of Serbs from the Krajina in 1995 and failure to cooperate with the
ITCFY.
These are the issues that serve, according to the US and the EU, to
isolate Croatia from the political mainstream.

The debate is complicated by the fact that each Balkan faction
has an axe to grind. Serbs hate Croats and vice versa; Albanians hate
Serbs, Bosnians hate Serbs and Croats, and so on. To these people any
attempt to explain each and the others’ point of view is a hopeless
cause. However, such
provincialism is set to condemn them all. For, acting alone, they are
easily picked off, their independence threatened by powerful
foreigners with their stability pacts and other projects for
integration into this or that alliance be it the EU, NATO or the WTO.

Unlike Slovenia, Croatian independence was brought about by
dissidents and ex-Communists. They formed a party, the Croatian
Democratic Union, (HDZ) which governed uninterruptedly until last
December. The Croatian Communist Party, renamed the Social Democratic
Party (SDP), failed
to get into government during the 1990s. No doubt, its leaders
reformed or otherwise, felt cheated. They were meant to inherit the
levers of power after the collapse of the central Yugoslav state like
their colleagues had done in Ljubljiana.

However, the newly independent Croatia soon became an easy
target for these people and their supporters in the West. For one
thing, the country’s first president Franjo Tudjman was an unashamed
patriot who pranced around in military uniform. Tudjman a former
Partisan and general
in the JNA ha been imprisoned for his dissident activities in the
1970s.
Other members of the HDZ had also fallen foul of the former regime.

But the Communism was quickly forgotten and attention focused
on Croatia’s wartime fascist Ustashe regime. Any reference to the past
­ including the country’s checkerboard flag ­ was deemed to be a
‘fascist’ symbol, even though it had been in existence for hundreds of
years.

Croatia was also unacceptable to the modern elites in another
way: it is a deeply religious country whose population strongly
supports the Roman Catholic
church. Communist-era allegations soon resurfaced of the late Cardinal
Stepinac’s wartime collaboration with the Nazis.

RISE OF THE CROAT OPPOSITION

In the early days there were reasonable oppositionists in
Zagreb, including many Jewish intellectuals who objected, in
particular, to the demonization of Stepinac who had hidden many Jews
during the war. There were other moderates, including the present
presidential contender, Drazen Budisa. But the mood was against
moderation and as the nineties proceeded
the extremists took over.

Newspapers appeared that constantly attacked the HDZ, the most
extreme being the Split-based weekly Feral Tribune hailed by its
Western fans as another Private Eye or Canard Enchaîné. But the wit
and sophistication of both these publications was sadly lacking in the
paper’s diet of funny mockup pictures ­ a pregnant Franjo Tudjman,
Milosevic and Tudjman embracing in ‘leathers’ were typical examples.
Somewhat reminiscent
of the Weimar agitprop satirist John Heartfield, it was crude and
tasteless which, no doubt it was meant to be.

Several times, Tudjman and others sued Feral Tribune for libel
for which he was roundly condemned by various international outfits
promoting press freedom. However, such people remained silent when
Tudjman lost cases he had brought against the newspaper something, one
would think, they should have applauded for demonstrating the
independence of the
Croatian judicial system. But, as usual, these groups maintain a
selective approach to everything, including press freedom: President
Havel’s resort to the Czech libel laws has never caused them such
indignation.

The opposition press and a growing number of NGOs and human
rights groups in Croatia were united in one important way: they were
the exponents of ‘cool’ as against the old-fashioned, folksy
‘nationalists’ of the HDZ and Tudjman. Later, they were joined by
independent media, like
Radio 101,which pumped out a diet of rock music and counter-cultural
messages. The tyranny so hysterically proclaimed by the likes of David
Jessell allowed all this to go on. For the busybodies it was axiomatic
that there was no press freedom in Croatia.

Nevertheless, almost exponentially, as the ‘tyranny’ grew so
did the number of anti-government newspapers and magazines. A glossy
weekly, Tjednik, funded by USAID among others, appeared in time for
the presidential election in 1997, but soon folded. However, nothing
was to compare with the impact created by the daily Nacional which
started publication in 1995. A professional product that was obviously
well-financed, it also attracted high-profile columnists including, at
one time, the wife of the American ambassador to Croatia, William
Montgomery.
It is probably this paper’s ability to get its message across to the
Croat public that contributed largely to the fall of the HDZ.

A diet of tales detailing the rabid corruption of the elite
poured forth from Nacional’s printing presses. No doubt, there was
some truth in much of this, although a glance through typical
offerings reveals more hyperbole than fact. But newspapers the world
over have always gained readers by pandering to the envy
and distrust of elites. Britain’s Guardian newspaper did much to bring
down the last government by its revelations of sleaze in the
Conservative party.
Similarly, in Croatia, by the time elections came to be held in 1999
Nacional had built up a compelling case for driving the HDZ from
power.

The situation was very similar in newly-independent Slovakia.
After Vladimir Meciar’s party, the HZDS, came to power it, too, was
attacked for fascism and sneered at for its support for traditional
Slovak culture. A well-funded (frequently subsidised) ‘independent
media’ flourished that regularly attacked the government for
everything from corruption to murder while an ‘independent’ radio
station, Radio Twist, pumped out a diet of rock music and
antigovernment propaganda.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE HDZ

Nevertheless, none of this exempts the Croat government from
blame for the country’s woes. Far from it. But many of their
weaknesses resulted from desperate attempts to curry favour with the
international community rather
than to ‘isolate’ themselves, as the propaganda had it. Croatia’s
problems have resulted not only from war and instability in the region
but also from a slavish desire to follow (inappropriate) economic
prescriptions from the EU and IMF. The cult of macro-economic
"stability" with an overvalued
currency and high taxes have all too predictably led to stagnation and
high levels of unemployment.

It is still absurd to talk, as some critics have done, of the
country as ‘Africa in the Balkans’. That description might well be
applied to Romania where teachers are on strike for a pay rise ­ they
now receive $80 per month ­ whereas the Croats have been described as
"Third World" for having an average monthly salary of c.$400, low but
well above the levels in the favoured Partnership for Peace countries
of the region like Romania or Bulgaria whose impoverished ranks
Croatia may now hope to join.

While the European Union took the lead in criticizing Croatia’s
economic policies (for instance its open border with
Bosnia-Hercegovina instead of strict customs controls ­ something
hardly advocated elsewhere by Brussels), the United States battered
away on the human rights front.
However, this was a somewhat delicate issue as the Americans had often
spoken with forked tongues. At crucial moments, Clinton needed the
Croats to further his Balkan policy, most notably in 1995 when the
Serb population was driven from the Krajina
region. This enabled NATO to act by isolating the Bosnian Serbs and
bringing the parties to the Bosnian war to the negotiating table at
Dayton.
Similarly, in 1999 the US needed permission to overfly Croatia during
the Kosovo campaign. Ever willing to oblige, the Croats agreed with
enthusiasm.
No doubt, they relished the thought of the Serbs being given a bloody
nose. They also thought that ­ perhaps, at last ­ they really were
going to be loved by the Big White Chief in the West.

Again, they were rebuffed. Far from gratitude for the events in
the Krajina, the State Department and its protégées in The Hague
started to issue veiled threats about war crimes’ trials for those
involved in the chain of command. In many peoples’ minds, wars from
the past started to become entangled with present woes: how would the
ICTFY handle the case of General Agim Ceku, one of the commanders of
the Croat army during Operation Storm since reinvented as senior
general in the KLA and hero of Kosovo’s
liberation?

On a more trivial, yet symbolic, level the US snubbed the
Croats by refusing to send a high-level official to Tudjman’s funeral.
Nor were there the usual diplomatic expressions of sorrow: "the State
Department notes…." began the official US response to the president’s
death. Even leftist newspapers, like Britain’s Independent thought
this was a bit much. The US regularly danced attention at the graves
of dictators and tyrants with whom the rather pompous and outdated
figure of Tudjman failed to compare.

Bad taste ruled the day: many opponents of the late president
complained that he had deliberately timed his death to bring about an
election during the (unsuitable) holiday period ! They also predicted
that the HDZ would promote a Tudjman cult that would damage the
opposition’s chances in the forthcoming
parliamentary election. In fact, the president’s funeral was a rather
dingy, low-key affair. By early January there was no evidence of
Tudjman ­ no photographs or other memorabilia ­ anywhere in Zagreb’s
public places.

Since independence, the opposition parties had remained
resolutely divided and weak but by 1999 they seemed to have buried
their differences and formed workable coalitions. By the time of the
parliamentary elections the government’s fortunes were so low everyone
expected a change of regime.

The HDZ had only compounded all its other problems by
infighting. There were those, like the former Foreign Minister, Mate
Granic, who wanted a role in the whole package that was on offer:
Euro-Atlantic structures, NATO membership, the EU. They never said it
openly, but they were obviously prepared to compromise on all sorts of
issues, including Croat sovereignty, to belong to these organizations.
On the other hand, there were those (including Tudjman) who feared
that the country’s independence was under threat from meddling
foreigners. They were labelled ‘paranoid’ but much of the evidence
proves that they were right.

THE NGO MENACE

For example, there are the aforementioned NGOs which swarm
around the country. Some operate on the back of UN structures set up
to promote peace and reconciliation in the areas most affected by the
war.
Others promote the usual cocktail of gender and media freedom. The
level of hostility to Croatia has absorbed much time, attention ­ and
money. Even
the Open Society’s reputation for generosity has been stretched. On
one occasion, those in charge of the Zagreb branch asked for such a
high level of funding in such suspicious circumstances that monitors
were dispatched from headquarters in New York to investigate.

The Open Society in Croatia funds, (along with the British
government-subsidised Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the EU)
the Centre for Peace, Non-Violence and Human Rights, the Women’s Ad
Hoc Coalition as well as other women’s organizations like Zenska
Infoteka, ( also funded by the Dutch Embassy and Norwegian Peoples’
Aid) and BaBe ­ Be Active, Be Emanciapted ­ which, apart from Soros,
also gets money from the European Commission. These are just the tip
of the NGO iceberg.

As the election approached funding was also directed from these
and other sources like USAID to two other NGOs GONG and Vote 99.

GONG is an ‘independent’ group of domestic election observers
which had been set up in anticipation of the 1999 elections. Similar
groups have monitored elections mainly in the former Soviet Union
where polling practices, to say the least, have been somewhat dubious.
Why Croatia needed such blanket oversight is not obvious.
Organizations like the OSCE had criticized aspects of the Croat
elections in the past but had never alleged
cheating in the polling stations. With an international presence in
place it is hard to see why such people were necessary. Unless, of
course, they were there to make some kind of statement on the lines of
"Although we are, of course, ‘independent’ we are also young, wear
jeans, t-shirts and Western sneakers. Don’t you want to be like us
too?"

It is also probably true that the opposition were not
completely confident, despite its lead in the polls. Things have gone
wrong in other places on election day for Western-sponsored opposition
parties.
If that had happened in Croatia, the GONG observers would have been
there with a litany of complaint detailing all the infringements of
the poll that had taken place in front of their eyes. In the event it
was not necessary to revert to what we might call ‘Plan B’.

The other election-orientated NGO, Vote 99 was set up shortly
before the election to encourage people to vote, or, to be more exact,
to encourage young people to vote. A similar group Rock Volieb (Rock
the Vote) had operated in Slovakia prior to the 1998 poll and had been
judged a success. As well as putting on ghastly rock concerts, Vote 99
volunteers leafleted people and distributed flyers.

Presumably, the Group’s funding was based on its independent
credentials, which, on examination were not worth the paper they were
written on. In an article published in Nacional on 27th October 1999 a
spokesman for the Group boasted about its campaign to hold government
ministers to account by distributing their personal telephone numbers
to members of the public. Would this sort of thing be allowed in the
United States and Western Europe?

Further reading of the article confirms one’s suspicions that
groups like this are modeled on the old Soviet agitacni as well as
Fascist activisti in prewar Italy. They maintain that the public
should have access to all government buildings and deliberations at
all time of day adding, totally incorrectly, that this is the case in
Western Europe. As members of the public are neither allowed to
congregate within one mile of the Bundestag or the Chancellor’s
bungalow in Berlin nor to enter Downing Street which is closed to the
public behind iron gates, one wonders to what
country the Croat civic activists are referring when they claim that
such access is the norm.

But fact or fiction, that is not the point. The idea is to
demonstrate to the Croat public (most of whom have no direct
experience of the functioning of other Western democracies) that their
government is uniquely secretive, high-handed and unaccountable ­ and
should be got rid of if Croats are to hope to enter the Elysium of
true European or US style democracy and prosperity. It will be
interesting to see whether or not the likes of Vote 99 hold the new
government to account and continue to demand
free access to all government buildings.

CROATIA'S NEW RULERS

Accessibility, therefore, is all the rage. The new Prime
Minister, Ivica Racan, we are told, wears jeans and goes to rock
concerts, a gruesome thought for a 56-year-old, some might think. He
is also just like you and me, even smoking and inhaling pot in the
past. Presidential candidate Stipe Mesic is also ‘right on’. He has
adopted the slogan "Fancy a cup of coffee with the
president ­ lets go" for his presidential campaign. How unlike the
last lot who wore suits and listened to folk music.

But it is probably too late for the tide to turn. Mesic faces
former dissident and Liberal Party head Drazen Budisa in the run-off
to the presidential election to be
held on Monday, 7th February. Budisa and Racan are joint heads of the
winning coalition and it was assumed a perfect symmetry would be
achieved when Budisa won the presidency, as anticipated. But something
has gone badly wrong.

In the weeks following the parliamentary poll Stipe Mesic, the
last representative of Croatia on the Yugoslav collective presidency
and former Tudjman associate, has to coin a phrase, ‘come from
nowhere’. His party, the Croatian People’s Party, barely overcame the
threshold for entry into parliament and, at 65, he is somewhat long in
the tooth. All of a sudden he is "witty" and "urbane" rather than a
mountebank with no known political principles. But to the world of
Albright and company he has several very attractive qualities.

Mesic has vowed to abandon the Herzogovinan Croats, a thorn in
the side of the international community’s efforts to properly pacify
Bosnia.
He has also personally provided evidence of Croat war crimes to the
ITCFY where he could, theoretically, be called as a witness. Other
candidates have been more circumspect, including Budisa. But Mesic, a
person of no known scruples, seems happy to give evidence against his
fellow citizens in a forum strongly criticized for its flawed
procedures and overtly political agenda. He has also made florid
charges and threats against former HDZ
officials: "I’m certain " he says "that many people will be brought
before the courts". This contrasts somewhat sharply with the Western
media’s presentation of Mesic as a tolerant forgiving figure. He has
also hinted that he will keep hold of the "reins of government" even
if he will get rid of some symbols like the fancy-dress guards outside
the presidential office and the presidential plane.

This could explain why his election campaign has taken off
and seems to be so lavish. Even the Nacional has hinted that he is
supported by American money. It seems he will win, but whether he goes
on taking the tram with his fellow citizens and joins them for cups of
coffee remains to be seen. These seem to be the only concrete
proposals to reduce the powers of
the presidency despite opposition hype that this would be one of its
first acts on taking power.

CONCLUSION

Before the post-Kosovan war Stability Pact for South-Eastern
Europe was set up there was much heart ­ searching about Croatia’s
participation in the scheme which could only happen if it became a
‘proper democracy’. However, there was confidence that the ‘Slovak
model’ would ensure that
changes occurred after the forthcoming election.

The Slovak model goes thus: if there is a government you
don’t like accuse it of fascist/communist leanings and human rights
abuse.
Inject large sums of money to pay local non-government organizations
and ‘independent media’. Pump out propaganda to the locals suggesting
that, unless they change
their government they will be poor and isolated. Hint that elections
will be manipulated and introduce all kinds of foreign and domestic
‘monitors’ to intimidate voters. Battered and bewildered, the evil
ones are seen off and the prize ­ entry into all kinds of
international clubs ­ is immediately on offer.

However, for ordinary Slovaks the benefits of voting the
‘right’ way may not now seem so obvious. The country has the highest
unemployment level in Europe ­ 23%. The governing coalition is
squabbling and battles for privatisation ­ which were supposed to be
so transparent ­continue.

Croatia can expect much of same. Entrance to Partnership for
Peace means ‘modernizing’ the army ­ in other words, seriously
reducing its size and potential to defend the country in the future.
Entrance to Europe (which the European House in Zagreb says should
take place at "any cost") means
letting foreign fishermen use its Adriatic waters and cutting back on
agriculture. Cooperation with the IMF and future WTO means opening up
the privatisation process to foreigners which could mean unsympathetic
development on the country’s beautiful Dalmatian coast.

Croatia is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe.
Its former government ­ and Franjo Tudjman ­ probably thought that the
West would welcome its independence. How wrong they were. In 1991 the
world of the British Foreign Office and the US State Department did
not want Yugoslavia to break up. It has taken them nearly 10 years to
be on the brink of putting it
back together again under the subterfuge of the Stability Pact.

Croatia was one of the last dominoes to fall. Only Serbia
remains. Already NATO states are funnelling $50 million a year to the
Serbian opposition, "independent media" and NGOs (according to open
sources). That wall of money is intended to buy the votes of the rock
and roll generation and the confused and alienated population while
drowning out important questions about the economic and social
consequences of entering Tony Blair’s Orwellian "zone of democracy and
prosperity." NATO is busy putting the Balkan Humpty-Dumpty back
together again. But, how long will its
plaster hold?

Christine Stone is director of the British Helsinki Human
Rights Group and observed the recent elections in Macedonia for the
BHHRG.
Other reports on the Balkans by BHHRG can be found on the Group's
web-site at http://www.bhhrg.org.

[Zvonimir Siljkovic]

Ok, this BHHRG and antiwar.com is highly suspicious. Have you read their
Serbia exerts. Here is just a few. I am surprised that such a big ?Croat?
like yourself seems to find little trouble dealing with some of the biggest
Serb apologists around. Its seems you would bend over backwards and use and
garbage to support your argument. Hell even tap into some of the vilest
propaganda sources in the world to support your claims. Well it just reveals
alot about you and your types. You would slash and burn modern Croatia down
because they do not support your minority view. Well if you ever have to ask
why you guys are in the minority, the mirror will answer all of your
questions! Its Croats like you that the voters see when they see HDZ on the
ballot and soundly reject your platform! Enough of croats pretending to be
for croatia while they plunder and steal and divert funds and then run like
hell when they loose!

On Slobo-
After serving two consecutive terms as president of Serbia Slobodan
Milosevic observed the Yugoslav Federation's constitution by not altering
(or ignoring) its provisions to seek a third term in office. He next stood
for election as president of Yugoslavia itself. Such respect for
constitutional propriety has not been observed by everyone in the region:
Slovenia's president, Milan Kucan, has served three terms in office in spite
of the country's constitutional requirement that the state president should
only be elected twice. In other post-communist countries (Georgia, for
example) the terms of the constitution have been strained to allow the
incumbent to continue holding office

On Serbian media-----------
Allegations have always been made that there is no media pluralism in
Serbia. Before the war there were several opposition newspapers as well as
radio and TV outlets. Numerous anti-Milosevic foreign-funded NGOs also
operated in the country. By May 1999 much of the opposition media had been
closed down. However, large numbers of people receive foreign television
programmes via cable and satellite and, contrary to the received wisdom, are
aware of the situation of the Kosovan Albanians.

Here is some posts from antiwar.com

The URL for this article is emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/balk.htm
Click here for a printable version

Deception and Self-deception
The Mixed Motives behind NATO's
War against Yugoslavia

by Diana Johnstone (7-09-00)
Diana Johnstone writes on Balkans affairs.

www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]

First my thanks to the Institute for kindly inviting me to take part in this
conference and thereby to express my personal solidarity with the people of
Yugoslavia who have been unjustly subjected to bombing, economic sanctions,
political isolation and slander by the governments and media of the NATO
countries. My presence here is above all in protest against the cruelty of
the self-styled humanitarians who wield enormous economic and technological
power without a trace of wisdom or compassion, whose wealth and military
might have brought them to the state of mind which the ancient Greeks called
hubris.

So, I have come here as a friend, to participate in the joint effort to
establish the truth, a truly daunting task. To speak to you here today is
particularly difficult for me. I fear I am in the uncomfortable and
altogether unusual position to speak to people who may largely agree with
me. If I say once more that Yugoslavia was bombed not to benefit the Kosovo
Albanians, but to benefit NATO, you may object that, well, everybody knows
this already. In the NATO countries, however, most people do not know this
already. They still believe, because that is what they have been told over
and over, that the war was undertaken for "humanitarian" reasons, to save
the Kosovo Albanians from "ethnic cleansing" and even "genocide". Today,
there is a growing awareness that something has gone wrong. However, public
criticism focuses on the way in which the NATO action was prepared, carried
out and followed up, without yet seriously challenging the humanitarian
pretense used to justify the criminal aggression.

The small minority of people who have followed events are perfectly aware
that the major reason for bombing Yugoslavia in March 1999 was to
demonstrate NATO's new mission in time for the organization's 50th
anniversary in April. NATO needed a new raison d'?tre following the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact.

"HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION"

Aggressive wars and imperial enterprises are usually carried under the
disguise of noble pretexts. The pretexts change, but each must seem
plausible in its own historical period. The notion of "humanitarian
intervention" grew out of a combination of contemporary factors: the drastic
decline of progressive political thinking at the end of the Cold War, the
decline of the protective role of the weaker national governments, the rise
of "non-governmental organizations", the multiplication of internal armed
conflicts often along ethnic lines. The idea was "in the air", a product of
the Zeitgeist. In the early nineties, it was theorized by one of the most
prestigious United States "think-tanks", the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. In 1992, the Carnegie Endowment published a book
entitled Self-Determination in the New World Order. Not terribly interesting
in itself, the book is quite interesting in retrospect because it
foreshadowed, prior to the election of Clinton, the policy of the Clinton
administration in Kosovo. Not only that, it was the product of a team of
policy-makers who went on to design that policy.

So, allow me to quote: "As of mid-1992, neither the United States nor the
world community has reached a point where humanitarian calamities resulting
from self-determination claims or internal repression automatically trigger
collective military intervention to accomplish strictly humanitarian
objectives. But humanitarian intervention will become increasingly
unavoidable".

In the post-Cold War world, the Carnegie Endowment study noted, "groups
within states are staking claims to independence, greater autonomy, or the
overthrow of an existing government, all in the name of self-determination".
In regard to these conflicts, "American interests and ideals compel a more
active role". The United States will have the final word as to when and how
to intervene. "The United States should seek to build a consensus within
regional and international organizations for its position, but should not
sacrifice its own judgment and principles if such a consensus fails to
materialize".

What is noteworthy here is that the United States policy-makers proposed
"collective military intervention", and not any sort of diplomatic or
political solution, as the inevitable outcome of "self-determination
claims", which could be expected to meet with "internal repression". And
already in 1992, this military action was labeled "humanitarian
intervention".

The statement that "humanitarian intervention will become increasingly
unavoidable" was a self-fulfilling prophecy in the unusually literal sense
that those who made it helped it come true. The 1992 book,
Self-Determination in the New World Order, was the product of a group of
foreign policy specialists brought together by the Carnegie Endowment
President to work out new policy options for the post-Cold War period. That
president was Morton Abramowitz, a former US ambassador to Thailand who has
specialized in intelligence matters, and who went on to be a champion of the
"U?K" and an advisor to the Kosovo Albanian delegation at Rambouillet;
Abramowitz has since become president of the influential Council on Foreign
Relations. He is also on the board of the International Crisis Group, the
Brussels-based think-tank that formulates policy options for the
"international community" in Bosnia and Kosovo, and is financed by both
Western governments and private foundations, notably the Soros foundation.
Abramowitz may be considered the ?minence grise behind the US policy of
support to the Albanian secessionists in Kosovo.

The Abramowitz group of specialists that pondered the theory of
"humanitarian intervention" in the early 1990s included Madeleine Albright,
Richard Holbrooke and Leon Feurth, who is the foreign policy advisor to
Albert Gore, now vice president and leading candidate for the presidency to
succeed Clinton. The authors of the book I have cited on Self-Determination
in the New World Order were Morton Halperin, head of State Department policy
planning under Madeleine Albright, and David Scheffer, who is Albright's
special envoy for war crimes issues.

So, here we have a team that first evolved the theory of "humanitarian
intervention" and then put it into practice. From what I know of American
policy-makers I would not, however, leap to the conclusion that this is a
conspiracy. Rather, I think it is closer to hubris: the arrogance of a small
elite group of people who take it upon themselves to decide how to use the
immense military power of the United States, and who never question their
own right to do so or their own righteousness. Madeleine Albright is widely
quoted as having asked rhetorically what good it was to have the world's
greatest military power if one didn't use it. Having found what they
consider a theoretical excuse to use that power, they eagerly seized what
looked like a perfect occasion to put it into practice. They probably
convinced themselves. They imagined that they were "present at the creation"
of a new era of unchallenged US power, that they were constructing something
grandiose... when in reality they embarked on a frightful course of
destruction.

THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

It was commonly said in Washington that "NATO must either go out of area, or
out of business". Such expenditure, and such a massive US military presence
in Western Europe were no longer credible in the defensive terms of the
North Atlantic Treaty. To survive, it was argued, NATO had to be expanded in
two ways: it needed to take in new members from the old Soviet bloc, and it
needed to extend its mission to the defense of vaguely defined "security
interests" of its members anywhere in the world.

Why was such expansion needed? Experts searching for new "strategic threats"
were unable to agree on anything convincing. But the think-tanks and
futurologists continued to search for plausible reasons because they were
handsomely paid to do so. The institutes that finance such theorizing in
search of enemies are funded by the industries and financial institutions
that profit from Pentagon contracts and related sales to US military allies.

The arms industry needs NATO. In the past half century, the
military-industrial complex has become a determining factor in US public
life, subsidizing advanced industrial research that gives the United States
its commercial advantage in high tech fields, financing political campaigns
and controlling major media. Expansion of NATO means new markets for US
military contractors. To join NATO, Central Eastern European countries will
be required to strain their budgets in order to procure the latest US
military equipment. Poland alone is expected to buy 100 to 150 new fighter
planes, meaning contracts worth some two to six billion dollars for Lockheed
or Boeing. Not surprisingly, then, the reluctance of many US congressmen to
endorse NATO expansion was overcome by a powerful lobby, the US Committee to
Expand NATO, presided by Lockheed's chief executive. It was US private
corporations and not Member State governments that provided the US$ 8
million to pay for NATO's birthday party last April.

This direct interest of the arms industry goes hand in hand with the more
general US interest in strengthening NATO as the primary instrument for
maintaining US supremacy over its main economic partner, the European Union.
In the race between the EU and NATO to take over the former communist
countries of Eastern Central Europe, NATO has been winning. The
militarization of the Yugoslav crisis has greatly contributed to this
militarization of European unification.

However, President Clinton could not tell the American people: "We are going
to expand NATO to help the arms industry earn more billions of dollars". Nor
could he even say: "We are going to bomb Yugoslavia in order to assert
NATO's predominance over the European Union as the instrument of European
integration". What he could say was "humanitarian intervention". And the
amazing thing is, the American people believed him.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

One last citation from the Halperin-Scheffer book: "The vision of a 'new
world order' since 1990 has been a world with one superpower - the United
States - in which the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle, disputes
are settled peacefully, aggression is firmly met by collective resistance,
and all people are justly treated". This is a remarkable statement since it
refers to a "rule of law" that has not yet been written and implicitly
rejects existing international law as "the rule of the jungle". To quote
further: "International law - as it always has done - will respond and
adjust to the behavior of nations and the actions of multilateral
institutions". The NATO war against Yugoslavia, in flagrant violation of
existing international law, announced the new dispensation.

A major feature of this "new world order" is the demolition of national
sovereignty, an essential principle of existing international law. A world
with a single superpower is a world where only that superpower has a sure
claim to "national sovereignty" - an outdated concept for the rest. Lesser
sovereign nations are to be broken down not only from the outside, by the
pressures of economic globalization, but also and more acceptably from the
inside. The reason is simple: weak governments of small states cannot
protect their resources or the welfare of their populations from the demands
of "the markets", that is, from the interests of transnational investment
capital.

The Carnegie Endowment in 1992 not only developed the theory of
"humanitarian intervention" but undertook a campaign to win over powerful
media figures and politicians to this new policy option. The Democratic
presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, with no experience or even notable
interest in international affairs, eventually turned over his foreign policy
to the Abramowitz "humanitarians". The liberal media adopted the themes with
enthusiasm.

Madeleine Albright saw the Kosovo crisis as a unique opportunity to impose
the new "strategic concept" of unlimited "out of area" engagement by a major
fait accompli justified as "humanitarian intervention".

The United States is a "free market democracy" with emphasis on the
"market", which includes a "free marketplace of ideas". The marketplace is
in fact largely monopolized by economic interests and mass media, but it is
free in the sense that there is no official ideology. There is, instead, a
sum total of best-selling ideas - which have actively been promoted by
opinion-making institutions. This shifting best-seller list of ideas makes
up the ideology, and the public opinion, of the moment.

Foreign policies also need to sell themselves on a very special, bifurcated
marketplace. There is the "up market" of the professional geostrategists,
the "foreign policy community" with its think-tanks, elite clubs and sober
publications. And there is the "down market" that goes all the way down to
the British tabloids. A successful policy will be one that can sell itself
both to the up market, as being in line with dominant interests, and to the
down market, as appealing to ready stereotypes and gratifying emotions.

"Humanitarian intervention" is essentially for the down market, even though
it may involve prominent intellectuals and famous show business celebrities.
For the "up market", there is Zbigniew Brzezinski and his Realpolitik
objective: "to perpetuate America's own dominant position for at least a
generation and preferably longer still". This involves creating a
"geopolitical framework" around NATO that will initially include Ukraine and
exclude Russia. This will establish the geostrategic basis for controlling
conflict in what Brzezinski calls "the Eurasian Balkans", the huge area
between the Eastern shore of the Black Sea to China, which includes the
Caspian Sea and its petroleum resources, a top priority for US foreign
policy.

The Brzezinski geostrategy may recall the quip about NATO and Europe: "to
keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". Can this be
exactly what the Germans want, now that Germany is back to being what its
leaders call a "normal" power? Brzezinski openly wants to prevent a juncture
between Germany and Russia that would lead to a European superpower out of
US control.

This and other considerations may suggest that the German-American strategic
partnership is not quite as solid as claimed. But for the moment it is
interesting to see how the divergent geopolitical aims and approaches of
Germany and the United States have combined to tear apart Yugoslavia in what
I would call a two-phase movement.

DESTRUCTION IN TWO PHASES

Transforming Yugoslavia from a medium-sized independent state, with a unique
reputation in the region for resistance to foreign empires, into a series of
ethnic statelets whose economic assets can be easily expropriated and whose
territory can be used for NATO bases on the way to Ukraine and the Caspian
certainly fits in generally to the Brzezinski scheme of things.

However, it seems that the initial support to secessionist movements in
Yugoslavia came from Germany, not from the United States. And again in
Kosovo, there are strong indications that Germany was the first to provide
support for the Albanian secessionist movement, including the "U?K". In both
cases, Germany was the first to intervene, but the United States, with agile
opportunism, managed to take control of the game and play it to American
advantage. The game is not over.

In this two-phase movement, Germany and its traditional v?lkisch - which
might be roughly translated as ethnic nationalist or separatist - approach
to Central Eastern Europe dominates the first phase of attack against the
targeted nation-state. In the second phase, the United States takes over
with a rhetorical "multiculturalism" justifying a takeover of political and
economic decision-making by the "international community".

In Germany, the v?lkisch approach was flagrant in the right-wing press
campaign of 1991 and 1992 championing the Croats as "real Europeans" in
contrast to the Serbs, stigmatized as Oriental barbarians with no place in
civilized Europe. This was a revival of the traditional German policy toward
the Balkans of divide and rule through emphasis on ethnic identities, and
manipulation of Croatian and Albanian nationalism in particular to weaken
Serbia. In addition, German policy toward Yugoslavia reflected the influence
and interests of the powerful associations of Vertriebene, representing over
twelve million Germans and their descendants who were expelled from Eastern
European countries after World War II. It has been in their quite conscious
interest to stigmatize "ethnic cleansing" as a peculiarly Serbian, that is,
Slavic practice, equivalent to genocide. This stigmatization strengthens the
hand of ethnic Germans in their efforts to regain their property and
positions in Poland, the Sudetenland and elsewhere. With the rise of the
right-wing leader J?rg Haider, Slovenia is under increasing pressure to
satisfy Austrian claims. It is clearly easier to bring such pressure on
small states eager above all to join the European Union than on a big
Yugoslavia with a tradition of independent non-alignment.

In the United States, the origins of the policy toward Yugoslavia are much
more confused. The influence of certain lobbies has pushed US policy in the
German direction, but the underlying ideology and interests are somewhat
different. Serbs who were not surprised to see Germany designate them as the
enemy have plunged into consternation by the anti-Serb turn of US policy.
Lobbies are a big part of the explanation. In American politics, ethnic
lobbies can decide elections, and politicians pay a lot of attention to
their demands. The extraordinary influence of the Cuban exile lobby in
Florida is the most striking example. But lobbies of anti-communist exiles
from Eastern Europe - often including Nazi collaborators - have also had a
very negative influence. In the case of Yugoslavia, the nationalist Croatian
lobby was extremely active. Together, the Croatian and Albanian separatist
lobbies reinforced each other's credibility by presenting themselves as
victims and stigmatizing Yugoslavia as a mistake of history, a prison of
peoples oppressed by Serbs.

These anti-Yugoslav, anti-Serb lobbies were able to extend their influence
without any serious contradiction. There were no comparable pro-Yugoslav or
pro-Serb lobbies, inasmuch as Serb ?migr? communities had no project for
getting US support to change Yugoslavia. Political divisions between Serbs
persist in emigration. Even today, when Serbian-Americans are suffering from
the demonization of the Serbian people, there is still no coherent,
effective Serbian lobby in the United States.

Using professional public relations techniques, the Croatian and Albanian
lobbies prepared congressmen and editors to interpret the Yugoslav conflicts
as an attack by Serbs on everybody else. By supporting the Albanians in
particular, the United States has adopted an ethnic policy parallel to that
of Germany. In Kosovo, the armed Albanian separatist rebels provided the
"self-determination claims" causing "humanitarian calamities" needed to
trigger "collective military intervention".

US support for the Bosnian Muslims was of a different nature. United States
support for the Bosnian Muslims apparently had less to do with Yugoslavia
than with the opportunity it offered to pursue a strategic alliance with
such important allied Muslim states as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan,
and to prove that despite its unswerving support to the State of Israel,
America really loved Muslims. And indeed, the United States has repeatedly
favored Islamic political currents as an effective counter balance to
nationalisms that risk endorsing protectionist economic policies. As an
added bonus, support for Muslim Bosnia could prove a thorn in the side of
Germany, which had moved so rapidly to assert its influence in Croatia.

The US sponsorship of a Muslim Bosnia was the first part of "phase two":
support for independent Bosnia-Herzegovina was definitely not v?lkisch but
was cast in terms of multiculturalism. In this respect, the sporadic Serbian
attempt to gain Western sympathy by recalling Serbia's historic role as
bulwark of Christian civilization against encroaching Islam misfired badly.
It appealed only to a small and isolated fringe on the far right. For the
most part, contemporary public opinion in the West is too ignorant about the
Balkan past to understand the historical basis for this argument and instead
projects its own past - the Crusades, colonialism, exploitation of Muslim
immigrant workers - onto the Serbs. Support for the Muslims was even a sort
of atonement for past Christian sins. Izetbegovic was celebrated as a
champion and martyr of tolerance and multiculturalism. The Serbs thus became
the scapegoat for the bad conscience of that part of the West - including
precisely the liberal currents traditionally allied with the Serbs - that is
more ashamed than proud of its "Christian heritage".

THE NEW CRUSADE

Despite the role of right-wing nationalist movements in the dismantling of
the old Yugoslavia, the NATO crusade against Belgrade has been pursued most
vigorously by center left political formations in the NATO countries in the
name of "humanitarian intervention". This represents the second phase, with
its American ideology and harmony with the goals of US-sponsored
globalization.

The political center left represented by this generation of American liberal
and European social democratic leaders, in the absence of effective economic
policies to promote the social justice they traditionally claim to serve,
have in the past decade found a successful role for themselves as
ideological apologists for globalization. These politicians are the ideal
salesmen for globalization with a human face, in the name of human rights
without borders as the virtuous cause they need in order to distinguish
themselves from "the right", presumed to be indifferent to human suffering.
Obliged to accept tax breaks for big investors, mass dismissals of factory
workers and cutbacks in social programs, in terms of domestic policy the
"third way" retains its position on the left primarily by championing
cultural diversity. The enemy can no longer be capitalism, accepted as the
best and only socio-economic system. The enemy now is nationalism, portrayed
as the source of all modern evil. For the "third way" of the left, we are
living in a world where dominant economic forces, known euphemistically as
"the markets" are neutral and innocent arbiters of all things, whose
influence can only be healthy and even benevolent. Like theologians of other
religions, since their god - the Market - is almighty and good, they are
left with the problem of evil in the world. This must come exclusively from
bad people who adopt wrong ideas, and foremost among these wrong ideas is "
nationalism". The erstwhile champions of working class internationalism thus
transform themselves into champions of international financial capital. This
ensures them much more favorable media coverage than their predecessors.

In the United States, an extremely nationalist country where schoolchildren
are required to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning,
anti-nationalism is today the dominant ideology - for the rest of the world.
The Yale-educated US Deputy Secretary of State, Nelson Strobridge ("Strobe")
Talbott the Third, perfectly reflects current American ruling class
attitudes when he writes: "I'll bet that within the next hundred years (...)
nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a
single, global authority". The origin of that authority is implicit in the
title of this essay, "America Abroad; The Birth of the Global Nation",
published in the July 20, 1992 edition of Time magazine. Making the matter
quite clear, he adds the observation that such multilateral financial
institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade "can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and
development for a united world".

The political editor of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, celebrated the
start of the bombing of Yugoslavia with a notorious article announcing
frankly that "the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden
fist" and that "for globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like
the almighty superpower that it is". Friedman illustrated his praise of
globalization as the ultimate guarantor of world peace by a detail that must
be particularly appreciated here in Belgrade: "It's true", he wrote, "that
no two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war since
they each got their McDonald's". He called this "the Golden Arches Theory of
Conflict Prevention". Except that it is not true. To be sure, with all its
McDonald's, Serbia did not attack the United States, but those McDonald's
did not prevent the United States from attacking Serbia.

In Europe, anti-nationalism has been indispensable in the promotion of
European unification. The more the European Union has been reduced to an
instrument of transnational business and finance, the more it has been
necessary, in public rhetoric, to stress its noble mission of putting an end
to the national antagonisms that led to major European wars. The
nation-state has been stigmatized as the cause of war, oppression and
violation of human rights. This interpretation overlooks both the
persistence of war in the absence of strong states and the historic function
of the nation state as the most effective existing framework for the social
pact enabling citizens to build structures of social protection and cultural
development, as well as to develop legal systems able to provide equality
before the law and to defend citizens' rights. Demonizing as "nationalism"
the only existing context for the functioning of institutionalized democracy
obviously facilitates the dictates of "the markets", which are innocent of
nationalist prejudice.

In this regard, we can see why, among the various "nationalisms" that have
accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia, the only "bad" nationalism in the
NATOland perspective has been Serbian nationalism. Various factors may be
mentioned, such as the strength of the Croatian nationalist and Albanian
lobbies, the traditional German-Austrian policy, the belief - whether true
or not - that Serbia was more attached to socialism than the other parts of
Yugoslavia, and even, allow me to say, certain bad mistakes or misdeeds made
by Serbian nationalists, who are human like everybody else. However, the
fundamental political fact is that Serbian nationalism is inextricably
linked to the Serbian view of their role as state-builders in the Balkans.
This was an asset to the Western allies at the start of the twentieth
century. But now is a time when the great powers are not trying to build
states, but to weaken them in favor of "the markets".

GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES

In the interplay of German and American propaganda against Yugoslavia, a
very particular role has been played by the German foreign minister, Joschka
Fischer. The traditional right-wing ethnic or v?lkisch German policy was
contrary to the anti-nationalist liberal ideological climate of post-Cold
War Europe. True, it was alarmingly successful in Germany in gaining support
for Croatian secession, but the Serbien mu? sterbien revival was not
translatable in the rest of the European Union (except, of course, Austria)
and was totally unsuitable for winning consensus for German military
intervention in the Balkans. In order to reverse Germany's post-World War II
policy of never sending military forces against another country, it was
necessary to come up with arguments that silence the peace movement whose
conspicuous blossoming in the 1980s had done so much to create the image of
a new, peaceful Germany the Russians could trust with reunification. For
this task, nobody could be better suited than the German Greens' chosen
leader - chosen, incidentally, above all by the German media, who for well
over a decade had "discovered" in Fischer a "realist" to celebrate, thus
strengthening his position within his own party. From the time the Greens
were first elected to the Bundestag in 1993, the German media featured
Fischer's clever speeches and contrasted favorably his "realism" with the
supposed "fundamentalism" of his more principled colleagues. Almost as much
as his friend in Frankfurt, Dany Cohn-Bendit, Joschka Fischer owed his
political success to having been selected by the media for star status. This
of course has much to do with talent in expressing ideas that suit the
economic interests controlling those media.

During the peace movement of the 1980s, Fischer defended NATO against
critics within his own movement by an anti-nationalist argument: the
"keeping Germany down" function. German nationalism, he argued, could best
be kept under control within the NATO framework. This was not very original,
and indeed largely echoed positions within the Social Democratic Party. Much
more original was his argument, as it emerged in the mid-1990s, in favor of
sending German military forces to Yugoslavia. The argument was simplicity
itself, and went like this: "There are two 'never again' principles in the
Green identity. One is 'never again war', and the other is 'never again
Auschwitz'... when they clash, as in Bosnia - or later Kosovo - one has to
be sacrificed to the other". Thus all that was needed was a massacre, real
or staged, labeled "Auschwitz" and the German Luftwaffe could take to the
skies and bomb Belgrade just as in 1941, this time alongside the Americans.

Fischer's line of argumentation and his attachment to "multiculturalism"
produced a rationale for aggression against Serbia far more acceptable to
his NATO allies than that of his conservative predecessors. Indeed, the
enthusiasm in Washington over the surprising rise of this self-educated,
one-time street-fighting "revolutionary" is so amazing as to suggest some
sort of prior meeting of minds. Before Fischer even took office, Richard
Holbrooke declared that he would make "a great foreign minister". Fischer
earned his place in the highest councils of power by his remarkable success
in changing the look and the official rationale of German policy toward
Yugoslavia from its original focus on ethnic identities to something quite
different but still peculiarly German - a sort of penance for Auschwitz.
This was a properly German excuse for "humanitarian intervention".

In this way, German and American elements have merged in the ideological
construction used to justify military aggression against the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia and occupation of Kosovo. The pretext had to be
extreme to justify violation of virtually every relevant treaty or
international convention.

The success of this "humanitarian" lie can be illustrated by a paradox. The
protests in Seattle last December against the World Trade Organization
showed that a huge new popular movement is developing to oppose
"globalization". The people who went into the streets to denounce the WTO
should have been demonstrating earlier against the NATO war in Yugoslavia.
The fact that most of them did not proves that they did not understand that
the NATO assault on Yugoslavia was precisely an integral part of that forced
globalization they oppose. The people who should be opposing NATO's war
policy have been temporarily confused and demobilized by the "humanitarian"
claims of the center left hypocrites in office in most of the NATO
countries.

This makes our task clear: we need to make our people understand that NATO
is the military arm of an unjust, undemocratic and destructive economic
globalization. The war against Yugoslavia was deliberately launched by
Madeleine Albright and her colleagues in order to initiate a new phase of
imperialist intervention, more dangerous and destructive than the
imperialism of the past. This is the truth that must be recognized for
justice to be done.
------------------

War, Journalism, and Propaganda: An Analysis of Media Coverage of the
Bosnian and Kosovo Conflicts
by Carl Kosta Savich

Introduction

Following the violent breakup and dismemberment in l99l of Yugoslavia ("the
impossible country","the land of demons"), the US government and media
launched a racist attack on the Serbian Orthodox people and nation in a
policy of vilification that demonized and satanized all Serbs. The US
government and media waged an unremitting campaign of racist stereotyping,
disinformation, propaganda, and vilification. Sanctions were imposed upon
the Serbian people as collective punishment for their collective guilt and a
massive propaganda war ("information warfare") was conducted as Serbs were
repeatedly bombed, attacked, and threatened with total annihilation and
extermination.

The Serbian people, men, women, and children, were accused of seeking
"Greater Serbia" and were described and labeled as"aggressors", "murderers"
"invaders", "thugs", "bullies", "rapists", "illiterates", "degenerates", "
butchers", "mountain Serbs", "uncivilized", "Serb bastards", "drunken Serbs"
, "fascists", "nationalists", "Stalinists", "Nazis", "Bolsheviks",
"Byzantine", "Eastern", and "Communist" .Serbia was described as "a regional
bully", "a menacing local power", and "a most undemocratic regime".

Senator William Cohen called for "robust bombing" of all areas inhabited by
Orthodox Serbs:

The response should be disproportionate to the transgression, and no area of
Serbia
ruled out of our bombsights.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich advocated an all-out bombing campaign:

We would reserve the right to take Serbs apart... to use air power against
every position you have, against every command-and-control center, against
every position everywhere... and we would do it in three to five days... And
I would do it all with air power.

The US government armed, trained, and supplied the Muslims and Croats to
kill and defeat Serbs in Bosnia and in Krajina. The US media dutifully
followed the official anti-Serbian policy by reporting with satisfaction and
approval as US "client states" killed Serbian civilians and soldiers, as the
following report by John Pomfret in The Washington Post, October 31, 1994,
illustrates:

When Emir Muslimanovic crept up a boulder-strewn knoll overlooking the town
of Kupres last week, pounced on the back of a Serb fighter old enough to be
his father and slit his throat, two thoughts powered him: going home and
getting even... A comrade killed another Serb by collapsing his skull with a
rifle butt jab to the face.

The slitting of the throats and the bashing in of skulls of Orthodox Serbs
by US trained, armed, and supplied Muslim soldiers was reported as if not
human beings were being killed and mutilated, but a species of vermin,
cattle, or subhumans (untermenschen or mistmenschen). In l994, with
diplomatic support from the US, Muslim troops violated a United Nations
exclusion zone around Sarajevo and slit the throats of 20 Bosnian Serbian
military personnel, including four female nurses, not only slitting their
throats, but mutilating and then burning the corpses.

The US government and media aided and abetted the Muslim offensive from the
so-called UN "safe haven" of Bihac, which functioned as a Muslim staging
area and military base of operations. The US media applauded and acted as
cheerleaders as the Muslim troops killed Serbian civilians and soldiers and
ethnically cleansed over l0,000 Serbian civilians. The Muslims burned down
every Serbian village and took Serbian civilians hostage. There was.
however, no condemnation.
.
The US-planned joint Muslim-Croat military operation which took the Serbian
majority district of Kupres forced 20,000-30,000 Serbs to flee their homes.
The US covertly and overtly armed,trained, and supplied, and planned
military operations for the Muslims and Croats - which included
constructing CIA air bases, downloading US spy satellite information that
was provided to the Muslims and Croats, arms shipments to Muslim and Croat
forces, to assist them in killing and ethnically cleansing Orthodox Serbs.
The US planned, organized, and oversaw the Croatian Army military attack,
Operation Lightning, that overran the UN Protected Area of Western
Slavonija, and Operation Storm, which overran the UN Protected Krajina Area
that resulted in over 300,000 Krajina Serbs being ethnically cleansed from
their ancestral homes and lands and that resulted in thousands of Serbian
dead.

The US government and media supported the genocide and ethnic cleansing of
the Krajina Serbs. In the September 11,1995 Chicago Tribune article,
"Elderly massacred in Krajina attack", Tom Hundley reported:

On August 25...Croatian troops entered Grubori and killed everyone they
found. These included:

Marija Grubor, 90, whose charred remains were found in her burned house...
Milos Grubor,80, an invalid... shot once in the head... Jovo Grubor, 65,
whose throat was slit and who had been stabbed repeatedly.

The US government and media continue to be the principal planners and
fomenters of a proposed Greater Albania, which would consist of the
annexation of Kosovo-Metohija region of Serbia by Albania, a US "client
state" Like the cleansing of Serbs from Krajina, the US supports the
cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo-Metohija and rationalizes the murders of
innocent Kosovo Serbs as "revenge killings", a term coined by the US State
Department and passed along to the journalistic pack. The US policy only
exacerbates the cycle of violence and killings in Kosovo for the US ignores
the fact that Kosovo Serbs were the first victims in the region when the
ottoman Turks invaded their lands and killed and enslaved them. If "revenge
killings" are ever justified, the Kosovo Serbs are the most entitled to
revenge killings of Albanian Muslims that killed their ancestors and drove
them from their ancestral lands.
.
How is this racist propaganda campaign and war against the Serbian people
and nation to be explained and comprehended? How is this propaganda campaign
of racism and bigoted satanization and demonization of an entire people and
religion to be explained by an avowedly "democratic" and "free and open
society", the United States, "the leader of the free world"? The techniques
and methods - information warfare (war propaganda - used to defeat the
Serbian people are those routinely used by ruthless and oppressive
totalitarian, authoritarian, and undemocratic states and governments. To
understand and to grasp why and how the US government and media waged a
propaganda campaign or war against Orthodox Serbs, the role of journalism
and war in US history must be examined and studied.

Journalism in America

The first newspaper in colonial America, Publick Occurrences both Foreign
and Domestic (1690), was immediately suppressed by the governor of
Massachusetts. The first regular newspaper in the colonies, the weekly
Boston News-Letter, appeared in 1704 and was published by authority of the
government, it was a government-run newspaper, published by John Campbell,
the postmaster. In 1719, it was replaced by the Boston Gazette, published by
postmaster James Franklin, who two years later started his own newspaper,
the New England Courant, which the the beginning of independent journalism
in America.

American newspapers became highly partisan after the Constitution of 1787.
Newspapers either adopted the positions of John Adams' Federalists or Thomas
Jefferson's Republicans. The US government immediately saw the value of
newspapers as a tool or instrumentality of the government. At one time,
President Andrew Jackson had 60 full-time journalists on the White House
payroll, the precursor of the White House press corps.

It was in reaction to such political partisanship in the press that James
Gordon Bennett in 1835 founded The New York Herald. In 1841, Horace Greeley
founded The New York Tribune. In 1850, there were 400 dailies; in l880, 850
dailies; and, in 1900, more than 1950.

In 1887, William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) ran the San Francisco Daily
Examiner newspaper and made it into a success by sensationalistic and
manipulative journalistic methods and techniques. In 1895, he purchased The
New York Morning Journal, copies of which sold for one cent and he began
making use of "yellow journalism", sensationalistic, manipulative
journalism.

Yellow journalism derived from the cartoon strip The Yellow Kid, drawn by
Richard Felton Outcault in Joseph Pulitzer's World Newspaper and which was
printed in yellow ink. Outcault would later join Heart's Journal newspaper.

In l897 and l898, during the Cuban crisis, Hearst made use of the techniques
of yellow journalism by editorially clamoring for US military intervention
against Spain. Through disinformation, yellow journalism, jingoism, and
media manipulation, Hearst was able to induce the US to wage a largely
needless war against Spain, the Spanish-American War. The techniques and
methodology used by the US media and government in manufacturing the war
against Spain in l898 are instructive and essential in understanding the
role of journalism in the coverage of the Bosnian Civil War of l992-l995.

A Comparison: The Cuban and Bosnian Crises

The Bosnian Civil War was characterized by sensationalistic, manipulative,
biased, and distorted media coverage. In l993, Peter Brock described
American media coverage of the Bosnian Civil War in "Dateline Yugoslavia:
The Partisan Press" (Foreign Policy, Winter 1993-94) as follows:

Readers and viewers received the most vivid reports of cruelty, tragedy, and
barbarism...
It was an unprecedented and unrelenting onslaught, combining modern media
techniques with advocacy journalism...The media became a movement,
co-belligerents no longer disguised as noncombatants and nonpartisan. News
was outfitted in its full battle dress of bold headlines, multiple spreads
of gory photographs, and gruesome... footage. The clear purpose was to force
governments to intervene militarily.

This description of the US media role in the Bosnian Civil War could exactly
describe what appeared in Heart's Journal and Pulitzer's World from l895 to
l898. Hearst and Pulitzer, almost a hundred years before their erstwhile
imitators, used the exact same media techniques and methods used in coverage
of the Bosnian conflict. So Brock is not entirely correct when he states
that this method of "news reporting" is unprecedented. In fact, this has
been the pattern of American journalism at least since the time of Hearst
and Pulitzer.

The sensationalistic, inflammatory, and propagandistic articles and
editorials in Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World newspapers did much to
incite war hysteria and in fact did much to cause an unnecessary war with
Spain. Hearst and Pulitzer, the deans of American journalism, vied with each
other to see who could produce the most sensationalistic, biased, and
one-sided news stories about the Cuban crisis.

Hearst himself best described this style of journalism when he castigated
Pulitzer who he stated was a journalist "who made his money by pandering to
the worst tastes of the prurient and horror-loving,by dealing in bogus
news...and by affecting a devotion to the interests of the people
while...sedulously looking out for his own." Their style of journalism
became known as "yellow journalism", which meant a style that made use of
cheaply sensational and unscrupulous methods in newspapers to attract or
influence the reader. Today, it would be termed "trash" or "tabloid
journalism".

Both Hearst and Pulitzer demanded that the US intervene and wage war against
Spain. They published sensationalistic stories about "Spanish atrocities"
and about the Spanish Governor General of Cuba, General Valeriano Weyler y
Nicolau, who was labeled "the butcher Weyler", a "rapist", and a "torturer".

The methodology is almost identical to that employed by the US media in
covering the Bosnian crisis.A major focus of US media coverage was so-called
"Serbian atrocities" against Muslims and Croats and mass rapes committed by
Serbian forces. Similar to the label, "the butcher Weyler", Serbian
President Slobodan Milosevic was labeled "the butcher of the Balkans" until
l995, when he became transformed by the media into a "guarantor of peace"
and "essential for maintaining peace and stability in the Balkans".

Hearst sent the artist Frederick Remington to Havana and other Journal
correspondents to report on the Cuban civil war. But Remington reported back
that there was virtually no fighting in Cuba at all and that a major
conflict could be avoided. Remington sent the following telegram to Hearst
in March,l898:

Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here.There will be no war. I wish
to return.---Remington.

Hearst sent the following famous telegram in reply:

Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the
war.---W.R.Hearst.

In virtually all media propaganda meant to lead to war or intervention,
atrocities are an essential element. During World War I, British, French,
and US propaganda relied on a single theme, German or "Hun atrocities".
German soldiers were accused of bayoneting Belgian infants and shooting
children and executing hostages and committing massacres. Before the German
invasion of Poland in l939, the regime exhibited through the media examples
of alleged Polish atrocities against the German minority. Indeed, the
Germans even manufactured and staged these and other alleged atrocities.
Before the US attack on Iraq in l99l, the US manufactured a bogus atrocity
to incite popular support for intervention. Iraqi soldiers were accused of
turning off incubators in hospitals and allowing Kuwaiti infants to die. A
Kuwaiti girl testified before a US Congressional Committee that she was an
eyewitness to this alleged atrocity. After the Persian Gulf War had ended,
it was exposed that the Kuwaiti girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti
ambassador to the US and that she could not have witnessed any of the events
because she had not been in Kuwait in years. Moreover, the US media ran
non-stop coverage of video footage of a gas attack by Iraqi forces against
Kurdish civilians accused of collaborating with Iran during the Iran-Iraq
War. Most recently, before the US invasion of Haiti in l994, President Bill
Clinton distributed and made available to news reporters and journalists
"atrocity photographs", which the US government alleged purported to show
atrocities committed by the Haitian regime which the US sought to overthrow.

Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World newspapers relied on biased,
one-sided, sensationalistic and propagandistic coverage of the Cuban crisis.
While the smaller New York newspapers, the Herald, the Post, Tribune, and
Times, were anti-war and presented analyses of the conflict which discussed
the complicated political issues involved and reported that crimes had been
committed by both sides, the World and Journal had the highest circulation
which only dramatically increased with the use of yellow journalism.
Pulitzer himself was at first opposed to the war with Spain, but later
changed his view when he realized that a pro-war stance led to higher
circulation.

Both Hearst and Pulitzer presented a hero-villain scenario for the Cuban
crisis, a good guys and bad guys role for the combatants which was simple to
understand and grasp by those who knew little about the conflict. Both
papers featured articles about the murder of Cuban infants and the rape of
Cuban women by the Spaniards.

The World sent Sylvester Scovel, a University of Michigan alumnus, to Cuba
to cover the conflict. Scovel was a strong advocate of the Cuban insurgents
and reported on Spanish "atrocities", vividly describing the bodies of
murdered and mutilated Cubans, stating that "the Spanish soldiers habitually
cut off the ears of the Cuban dead and retain them as trophies." Due to this
propagandistic reporting, the Spanish restricted American journalists. This
led to still more inaccurate coverage, based on innuendo, rumor, subterfuge
and deceit. Thus, neither the US government nor the US public was accurately
apprised of what the facts were in Cuba.The Spanish side of the conflict was
virtually unknown and unavailable in the US.US coverage focused on "Spanish
atrocities" which were based on biased and usually fictitious reports by
journalists and reporters who did not witness the reports but merely
repeated hearsay and innuendo.

The US government armed, trained, and supplied the Cuban rebels who were led
by rebel leaders based in New York City. Clearly, the US government allowed
journalists and newspapers to do its dirty work, to allow journalism to act
as a vanguard for the government, allowing the US government to act covertly
and invisibly, although the government was clearly pulling the strings. This
same pattern would be repeated with the Bosnian Civil War of l992-l995.

As can clearly be seen, American journalism and journalists and reporters to
this day are guided by the techniques and methods used by Hearst and
Pulitzer, changing very little since that time. During the Bosnian Civil
War, virtually all major US newspapers demanded US military intervention in
Bosnia against the Serbs. The Serbs were accused of committing atrocities
and mass rapes.

On February 15, l898, the US battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. The
cause of the explosion was never determined, but the immediate US media and
government reaction was to blame Spain. Pulitzer and Hearst clamored for
war, with the rallying cry, "Remember the Maine". Pulitzer's World had the
following headline: "Maine Explosion caused by Bomb or Torpedo? Washington
officials ready for vigorous action if Spanish responsibility can be shown."
The World sent its reporters to investigate the cause of the explosion.
Hearst's Journal ran the following headline: "How do you like the Journal's
War?" These incidents are reminiscent of the Sarajevo "breadline massacre"
and the "Markale Market massacre" which the US media and government blamed
on the Serbs but which UN investigators concluded were most likely staged by
the Muslims themselves. Hearts's Journal and Pulitzer's World whipped up war
frenzy and hysteria to a fever pitch using sensationalistic reporting,
jingoism, and yellow journalism to manipulate and distort the news. The
bloody war which resulted, the Spanish-American War, was called by Secretary
of State John Hay "a splendid little war", much like the later Persian Gulf
War, which was almost a bloodless video-game war using "smart bombs"

The most intense fighting of the Spanish-American War, the "splendid little
war", occurred in the Philippines, in which an estimated 20,000 Filipino
"insurgents" were killed and up to 200,000 died of hunger and disease caused
by the US invasion. US combat deaths were slightly over 4,000.

The US Secretary of War described the Philippine people as those who engage
in "base treachery, revolting cruelty." US military commanders described the
Filipinos as "gorillas...savages, habitually violating all the laws of war
as known to civilized nations." A second commander stated that it was
difficult to ascertain who was an enemy soldier from the general population
because "the problem here is more difficult on account of the inbred
treachery of these people, their great number, and the impossibility of
recognizing the actively bad from the only passively so." Theodore Roosevelt
described the US victory as a triumph of civilization over "the black chaos
of savagery and barbarism." In "The White Man's Burden", Rudyard Kipling in
l899 wrote about Filipos and other Asians as follows: "...Fluttered folk
and wild...sullen peoples, half devil and half child."

American troops referred to the Filipinos as "niggers" ,"treacherous
savages", and "treacherous gugus" or "goo-goos", which would re-emerge as
"gook" in World War II and the Vietnam War as derogatory terms for Asians.

The fighting in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War was called
"Injun warfare".One American soldier told a reporter that "the country won't
be pacified until the niggers are killed off like the Indians." Another
soldier stated that "the only good Filipino is a dead one. Take no
prisoners; lead is cheaper than rice." A US private told of the results of a
"goo goo hunt": "The old boys will say that no cruelty is too severe for
these brainless monkeys, who can appreciate no sense of honor, kindness or
justice....With an enemy like this to fight, it is not surprising that the
boys should soon adopt 'No quarter' as a motto, and fill the blacks full of
lead before finding out whether they are friends or enemies." General Arthur
MacArthur stated that "inferior races" succumb to wounds more easily than
Anglo-Saxons in explaining to a Congressional Committee why 15 Filipinos
were killed for every one wounded..

How is one to grasp and comprehend this pattern of new reporting? One has to
begin with an examination of the development and techniques of propaganda.
What is propaganda?

Propaganda

The term propaganda is derived from the Latin propagare, to propagate,to
reproduce, to spread, with the meaning, to transmit, to spread from person
to person .Propaganda is short for Congregatio de propaganda fide
(Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith), a committee of Roman
Catholic cardinals established by Pope Gregory XV in l622 organized as a
missionary group which proselytized for conversion to Roman Catholicism.

A modern definition is the systematic, widespread dissemination or promotion
of particular ideas, doctrines, or practices, meant to further a particular
cause or agenda and weaken that of another; it is a systematic effort to
manipulate attitudes, beliefs, or actions by the use of symbols. It is
commonly used to describe any deceptive or distorted accounts, usually as a
dismissive, disparaging, and pejorative term, which in its broadest sense,
can be and is applied to any account one does not agree with. In its purest
and essential form, propaganda consists in the manipulation of symbols -
words, pictures, signs, and images. At its most pure level, words and
language, and indeed, even thought can be dispensed with. Merely a stimulus
or image is all that is required to produce the desired response. Hearst
stated: "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." Hearst, like
his journalist successors of today, understood the methodology and essential
principles of propaganda perfectly.

The term 'propaganda' is unpopular as a description in American political
and social discourse and analysis. Instead, propaganda and propagandists are
known by different terms: public relations (PR), publicity, advertising,
information warfare, spin doctors, image brokers, public affairs, promotion,
marketing, media relations specialists, lobbyists. Moreover, the term
'propaganda' has been overused so that the term is practically meaningless
today. This is so because propaganda has been one of the most prevalent and
widespread phenomena of the twentieth century. The dangers of propaganda
were first perceived in its first widespread and systematic use during World
War I, the Great War.

There is a widespread misconception and myth that propaganda exists only in
totalitarian states and not in democracies. The German philosopher Georg
Hegel was one of the first to show that even in democracies, the public is
manipulated and persuaded by "hidden persuaders" and "hidden manipulators".
In his l821 The Philosophy of Right, Hegel explained how the public in a
democracy is manipulated by commercial interests which seek to make a
profit:

What the English call 'comfort' is something inexhaustible and illimitable.
[Others can discover to you that what you take to be] comfort at any stage
is discomfort, and these discoveries never come to an end. Hence the need
for greater comfort does not exactly arise within you directly; it is
suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation.

Even in democracies, the populace is manipulated and persuaded by unseen and
invisible persuaders and manipulators. Hegel was one of the first to see
this, before Alexis de Tocqueville, before William Randolph Hearst, before
Noam Chomsky.The French author Anatole France explained it this way:
"Democracy (and, indeed, all society) is run by an unseen engineer.",

Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, was a theatrical publicist and
propagandist during World War I, working for the Committee on Public
Information headed by George Creel, writing propaganda pamphlets. In l928,
he published the influential book, Propaganda, in which he argued that
propaganda could be a mechanism for engineering consent and popular
approval. Bernays virtually invented the public relations business,
establishing the theoretical groundwork in Crystallizing Public Opinion
(l923).

Bernays was a pioneer of public relations (PR) and his work did much to open
the door for today's PR giants such as Hill & Knowlton, Rudder Finn,
Burson-Marsteller, Ketchum PR, and Ogilvy & Mather.He was a public relations
counselor for the American Tobacco Company, the United Fruit Company, Venida
Hair Net Company, Cartier, and Proctor & Gamble. His greatest achievement in
commercial propaganda or PR was a brilliant campaign to convince American
women that to "emancipate" themselves, they should smoke Lucky Strike
cigarettes, the "torches of freedom".

By l996, US business would spend $l trillion on marketing. PR firms would
employ over 150,000 workers and who would influence 40% of everything
Americans read or see.

Bernays, the dean of the public relations profession, called "U.S. Publicist
No.1", defined public relations as "the attempt, by information, persuasion,
and adjustment to engineer public support for an activity, cause,
movement,or institution." In his book Propaganda, he described public
relations as follows: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the
organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible
government which is the true ruling power of our country." In The
Engineering of Consent, a 1947 article and 1955 book, he outlined how the
engineering of consent is accomplished by public relations.

First, one must set up "over-all themes for the campaign". The themes chosen
must coincide with the "fundamental motivations" of the interested publics.
Once the themes are chosen, "they are expressed over and over again, in ever
varied form."

Second, the theme is tied to a symbol.

Finally, to arouse interest, the PR activity must be newsworthy. Bernays
emphasized that newsworthy events are seldom spontaneous but are more-often
planned events, known as "propaganda of the deed":

Newsworthy events involving people usually do not happen by accident. They
are planned deliberately to accomplish a purpose, to influence ideas and
actions.

Bernays based his methodology for PR in part upon the works of Walter
Lippmann who wrote about controlling and managing public opinion or the
masses in Public Opinion (l922) and The Phantom Public (l925).During World
War I, Lippmann was a member of US Army Military Intelligence, engaged in
propaganda operations against Germany. Like Bernays, Lippmann believed most
people were irrational and acted chaotically and were unable to
independently make rational choices because they could not know all there
was to a topic. Lippmann argued that people could be guided by a
"specialized class of enlightened elites." People are simple-minded and
sheep-like who are incapable of formulating or organizing their desires and
wishes and interests. Both Bernays and Lippmann were convinced that
"enlightened elites" could lead and educate the masses. Bernays stated that
"the public must be regimented." Lippmann saw it as the "making of one
general will out of a multitude of general wishes." The American masses were
convinced that Coca-Cola was the soft-drink of freedom and that smoking
tobacco products was conducive to rugged individualism, as exemplified by
the Marlboro Man campaign. Moreover, Bernays was one of the first to use PR
to advance the political interests of nations and foreign governments when
he was retained to provide public relations services on behalf of Lithuania.

Both Bernays and Lippmann based their methodology on the researches in the
social sciences, particularly the work of French psychologist Gustav Le
Bon, in his important book The Psychology of the Crowd (l895) and Sigmund
Freud, particularly Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
(l922),which examined collective group behavior and the behavior of crowds.
The research of Russian experimental psychologist Ivan Pavlov published in
Conditioned Reflexes (l926) was also of influence on Bernays. Bernays had no
compunction about taking findings from the social sciences and applying them
to public relations.

War Propaganda

Propaganda emerged as an instrument of persuasion and manipulation during
World War I, a large-scale ideological conflict of unimagined dimensions.
World War I was the first truly global war; it introduced mankind to "total
war" and was the first truly technological war, making use of airplanes,
submarines, poison gas, tanks, and the aerial bombardment of cities. World
War I was "the war to make the world safe for democracy", "the war to end
wars", when "the fate of Western civilization is at stake" from the attack
by "the Hunnish barbarians".

In l927, Harold D. Lasswell, a political science professor at the University
of Chicago, in Propaganda Technique in the World War, analyzed the
techniques employed by the Allies, the French, British, and Americans,
against Germany and her allies during the war. Lasswell described propaganda
as follows:

A new and subtler instrument must weld thousands and even millions of human
beings
into one amalgamated mass of hate and will and hope...propaganda. It is the
new dynamic of society... The fact remains that propaganda is one of the
most powerful instrumentalities in the modern world. Propaganda is a reflex
to the immensity, the rationality and willfulness of the modern world.

War propaganda has four major objectives:

1) to mobilize hatred against the enemy;
2) to preserve the friendship of allies;
3) to preserve the friendship and, if possible, to procure the co-operation
of neutrals; and,
4) to demoralize the enemy.

Lasswell explained that "to mobilize the hatred of the people against the
enemy, represent the opposing nation as a menacing, murderous aggressor...
Represent the opposing nation as satanic; It violates all the moral
standards (mores) of the group, and insults its self-esteem." This Allied
propaganda was able to accomplish, portraying the Germans as the "satanic
enemy", as child killers and rapists, committing atrocities against the
Belgian civilians. Thus, primarily, the Allies succeeded in portraying the
Germans as "aggressors" and as a "satanic enemy". Lasswell explained that
French propaganda relied on "simple satanism":

The French propaganda was lucid and simple...her chief propaganda was that
of simple satanism...The Germans were never able to efface the initial
impression that they were aggressors... The Germans were never able to
popularize so striking an epithet as "Hun" or "Boche".

Invariably, the enemy is dehumanized and is portrayed as "barbaric",
"brutal", "cruel", "uncivilized" and as violators of international law and
the mores of mankind and humanity. German Kaiser Wilhelm II was labeled "the
Kaiser, the beast of Berlin". Germans were portrayed in subhuman
stereotypes, usually as apes or other animals. This was best expressed by
Rudyard Kipling in l9l5 in The Morning Post (London):

"There are only two divisions in the world today - human beings and
Germans."

There are three tactical objectives of propaganda:

1) to arouse the interest of specific groups;
2) to nullify inconvenient ideas;and,
3) to avoid untruth which is likely to be contradicted before the
achievement of the strategic purpose.

President Woodrow Wilson by Executive Order created the Committee on Public
Information during World War I headed by George Creel and was associated
with the Military Intelligence Bureau. This was the US propaganda office.

Harold Lasswell was not the only one who studied the techniques of war
propaganda during World War I. Adolf Hitler made a careful and diligent
study of Allied war propaganda which he discussed in Mein Kampf, the first
part published in 1924, wherein he analyzed Allied propaganda techniques:

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the
masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form ,the way to the
attention and thence to the heart of the masses... The purpose of propaganda
is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to
convince, and what I mean is to convince the masses... What our authorities
least of all understood was the very first axiom of all propagandistic
activity: to wit, the basically subjective and one-sided attitude it must
take toward every question it deals with... Its effect for the most part
must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the
so-called intellect.

Many people know the Nazi regime made use of propaganda. Few, however,
realize that Nazi propaganda was based and modeled upon Allied propaganda
against Germany. Hitler learned the lessons well. Joseph Goebbels was an
ardent student of American public relations pioneer Edward Bernays. The
"evil" and "satanic" Hun became the "eternal Jew" who in The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion sought to enslave mankind.Indeed,Hitler learned more from
Allied propaganda than the academicians did. Hitler assessed American and
British propaganda accurately:

The war propaganda of the English and the Americans was psychologically
sound. By representing the Germans to their own people as barbarians and
Huns they prepared the individual for the terrors of war... The function of
propaganda is...exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out
to argue for... Sober reasoning determines (the people's) thoughts and
actions far less than emotion and feeling... All effective propaganda must
be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the
last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by
your slogan... To be a leader means to be able to move the masses.

Like Bernays and Lippmann, Hitler was convinced the masses must be guided
and led and that to fully grasp an idea or issue it was to be repeated over
and over:

The intelligence of the masses is small. Their forgetfulness is great. They
must be told the same thing a thousand times.

Hitler explained that through repetition, the propaganda would ultimately
and eventually achieve success:

At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought
it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the end,it was
believed... The great masses of people will more easily fall victim to a big
lie than to a small one.

Like Bernays, Lippmann, and Hearst, Hitler fully grasped the psychological
mechanisms of propaganda. Repetition was important to ensure that the
"message" becomes internalized, that is, that it enter the subconscious,
where it becomes merely data and where rationality and conscious control is
not possible. This is the "secret" of propaganda. This is how it works on a
mass scale. Bernays used the analogy of a water bucket, that when rocks are
dropped in it, eventually overflows, a "critical mass" is achieved. This is
how indoctrination, brain-washing, and even education occurs. This is
similar to the popular saying, "If you throw enough mud, some of it will
stick."

The Nazi propaganda machine was also based upon the "machinery" of the Roman
Catholic Church and the Jesuit order, as Hermannn Rauschning explained in
l939:

Hitler has a deep respect for the Catholic church and the Jesuit order not
because of
their Christian doctrine, but because of the 'machinery' they have
elaborated and
controlled, their hierarchical system, their extremely clever tactics...

Joseph Goebbels, who was appointed Reich Minister for Propaganda and Public
Enlightenment (Reich Minister fur Volksaufklarung und Propaganda) in the
Nazi regime, defined propaganda as follows:

Propaganda has only one object ,to conquer the masses. Every means that
furthers that aim is good; every means that hinders it is bad...You can make
a man believe anything if you tell it to him in the right way...Nothing is
easier than leading the people on a leash. I just hold up a dazzling
campaign poster and they jump through it...

Goebbels made a distinction between passive and active propaganda. Like
Bernays and Lippmann, Goebbels enunciated the goal of propaganda is to
create a single will:

The people must begin to think as one unit,react as such, and put themselves
at the disposal of the government wholeheartedly... To belabor the people so
long until they succumb to us.

In Communist or Marxist-Leninist regimes and theory, there is a distinction
became propaganda and agitation ("agitatsyia"), or agitprop. In What is to
be Done? (l902), Vladimir Lenin defined propaganda as the reasoned use of
historical and scientific arguments to indoctrinate the educated and
enlightened, what a public relations specialist would call "attentive and
informed publics". Agitation is defined as the use of slogans, parables, and
half-truths to exploit the grievances of the uneducated and ignorant masses.
Every unit of the Communist Party had an "agitprop section" because under
Communist thought, propaganda is commendable and honest, the ends justify
the means.

The US government established two propaganda offices during World War II,
the Office of War Information (OWI), specializing in overt propaganda, and
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which specialized in covert
propaganda or "information warfare". With the defeat of Germany, the US
entered into another major ideological conflict, the Cold War, which
necessitated an unprecedented and immense propaganda or information campaign
against the USSR and global Communism. Several government agencies were
created specifically for the Cold War ideological struggle, such as the US
Information Agency (USIA) which co-ordinated propaganda broadcasts by the
Voice of America (VOA). The Central Intelligence Agency co-ordinated the
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty propaganda efforts. In the Cold War
battle between the "free world" and Western democracies and the Communist
bloc and satellites, propaganda was all-important and crucial. Thus, both
domestic and foreign policy became ideologically charged in the US. In the
last fifty years, we have witnessed the massive growth of propaganda,both
commercial and political in the US.

How is propaganda to be recognized and analyzed?

Propaganda Analysis

Because propaganda in its many guises - public relations (PR),advertising,
publicity, marketing - is ever-present and all encompassing in society,it is
rarely if ever seriously studied or even discussed. Noam Chomsky has stated
that "the whole topic [of propaganda in U.S. culture] is vastly
understudied, for pretty obvious reasons."One in every six dollars of G.D.P.
, $l trillion, however, is spent by US business on various forms of
marketing, i.e., commercial propaganda. As early as l930, John Dewey
remarked that "we are exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that
any people has yet experienced." First of all, propaganda in its broadest
sense, has always been a part of human social interaction and can be said to
fill a social need, informing the public. Furthermore, persuasion and
manipulation are a part of everyday life, as Voltaire noted in 1766: "Men
use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal
their thoughts." Nevertheless, propaganda can be recognized and it can be
analyzed and understood.

As we have seen, propaganda methods and techniques have not changed much in
the last century. Public relations and propaganda rely on an variation of
the same theme: How to manipulate and persuade the masses. Virtually all
propaganda campaigns rely on: l) Repetition; and, 2) Confusion.

To grasp the mechanisms of propaganda is to understand man as social animal.
As Harold Lasswell has put it, "to illuminate the mechanism of propaganda is
to reveal the secret springs of social action." That is, to understand how
and why propaganda works is to understand man's relationship to reality and
how he perceives it.The analysis must begin with a study of the origin of
language because we understand physical reality and can communicate this
understanding through language.

First of all, our understanding of the world is inextricably tied to our
language. Language cannot be dispensed with to arrive at a pure,
self-authenticating truth or method. As quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle of German quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg have
shown, physical reality is probabilistic, relative, and uncertain. That is,
there is no objective truth out there; there is no absolute truth,but only a
truth. Thus, there can in theory be no completely unbiased, objective truth.
To search for absolute truth is in theory an illusion.

In language we rely on signs or symbols to create meaning. But symbols are
never settled on an absolute meaning. Meaning is always to a certain extent
deferred and in constant development through metaphor. We understand reality
through metaphors.

Niels Bohr, for example, studied the atom, an unknown,( metaphrand).To grasp
the atom, he created a model based on something familiar, the solar system
(the metaphier). Bohr then related these two, the metaphrand with the
metaphier , which is a metaphorical process, as a model to assist in
understanding the atom. This is how we understand or perceive reality, by
creating models and applying them to phenomena. The models are helpful tools
only and do not reflect absolute truth, or an absolute representation or
perception of phenomena. Like the lenses in eyeglasses, they aid us in
perceiving phenomena,but they all distort and structure reality. Our
arbitrary and subjective structuring of reality results.

Propaganda has its basis in binary opposition, the structural division of
the indivisible into hierarchical oppositions. For example, we structure
reality into us/them, male/female, truth/fiction, literal/metaphoric,
mind/body, cause/effect, reason/emotion. But these binary oppositions, while
helpful in analyzing phenomena, delude us into believing that they are
absolute and objective dichotomies. In fact, these divisions are arbitrary
and rhetorical. That is, our language shapes and structures the manner in
which we see and perceive reality, language becoming a perceptual
strait-jacket.

Binary opposition assumes hierarchical opposition. The first term is
automatically given superiority or pre-eminence over the second term. This
structure creates a two-valued system, either "true" or "false", either
"right" or "wrong", "good" or "evil". A black and white, us and them
scenario results, for example, "Whoever is not for us is against us", "The
only good Indian is a dead Indian." This is the structural basis for all
propaganda. Hitler understood this when he wrote that propaganda "does not
have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate,
right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way, never
partially, or that kind of thing...The function of propaganda is, for
example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people...Its task
is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the
enemy."

Western language structures are conducive to propaganda because of its
nature as two-valued, based upon arbitrary binary oppositions, Propaganda
does not seek to expand thought, but to narrow it; in fact, propaganda seeks
to do away with thought altogether. The masses do not need to think at all,
thought is unnecessary and superfluous, but merely to react to symbols and
images, that is, to stimuli, not unlike Ivan Pavlov's dog, who salivates
merely when its master rings a bell, i.e., creating conditioned reflexes
(which led to the study known as behaviorism).

Propaganda can be analyzed and dissected by various methodologies and
approaches, from a linguistic approach relying on structuralism, based upon
the writings of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, in his Course in
General Linguistics (l9l5), to the deconstructionist approach, or the
General Semantics approach developed by Alfred Korzybski in Science and
Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics
(l933). The content analysis approach or symbol counting method of Harold
Lasswell can be employed or statistical systems theory approaches. Finally,
psychological approaches are also possible. In the l930s, the Institute for
Propaganda Analysis was established in New York for the analysis and
detection of propaganda. The Institute published a periodical entitled
Propaganda Analysis from l937 to l942 to counteract the pervasive and
invidious influence of propaganda in America, by such propagandists as
Detroit-based Father Charles Coughlin, and William Randolph Hearst. But with
the entry of the US into World War II necessitating a large-scale
ideological conflict, i.e., a propaganda war, the antipathy to propaganda
was much lessened. With the emergence of the Cold War following World War
II, propaganda became accepted as necessary in the ideological struggle
against world Communism. Propaganda was no longer seriously studied and its
analysis was disfavored by the mainstream intellectual elites.

The following propaganda techniques are found in all propaganda campaigns.

The Appeals Technique - this technique appeals to human emotions and desires
in order to promote or sell something else ,in the Bosnian case, the
something else was US military intervention on the side of the Muslims and
Croats. Thus, atrocity stories or Atrocity Appeal is an appeal to our
emotions to sell intervention. The objective is to convince us that
intervention is necessary to prevent future mass slaughter, to prevent
genocide, to prevent violations of human rights. This is how British
propaganda sold World War I to America: The US should intervene to prevent
Hun atrocities, to prevent human slaughter of innocents. The atrocity
stories are a means to an end, intervention. Once military intervention is
achieved, the atrocities are superfluous and no longer required and thus are
no longer reported.

Bandwagon Appeal consists in showing that one should support intervention to
get on the bandwagon because the whole world supports it, i.e., the UN, the
international community, the Western world, the free world, all mankind.

Testimonial Appeal relies on experts, celebrities, or authorities to promote
intervention. During the Bosnian civil war, diplomatic and intellectual
elites were called upon to give their "testimonials" for intervention, i.e.,
Susan Sontag, Anthony Lewis, Lawrence Eagleberger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Elie
Wiesel.

Plain Folks Appeal relies on the appeal that intervention is appropriate
because the victims are plain folks like us, relying on the us versus them
dichotomy. This technique was employed by novelist and free-lance writer
Susan Sontag who portrayed the Muslims as "secular", "urbanized",
"cosmopolitan", "tolerant", who are, "after all, just like us", that is,
just like the nation that is being persuaded to militarily intervene, the
US. Remarkably, to the Muslim world, Muslim propaganda portrayed itself just
like them,i.e., militant and radical Muslims seeking to establish a Muslim
fundamentalist state in the heart of the infidel Europe. In appealing to the
US to intervene, the propaganda sought to show that the Muslims are plain
folks, like you and me. The staging of the rock musical Hair and Samuel
Beckett's Waiting for Godot and the playing of the Mozart Requiem in
Sarajevo were meant to show that the Muslims are Western-oriented, part of
the Western tradition, plain folks ,just like us and unlike them. Absurdly,
Hair was a 1960s musical which was anti-government, anti-war,
anti-nationalism, and anti-racist. The Bosnian Muslims used Hair in the
service of war propaganda to advance their narrow, racist and nationalist
agenda of creating a Muslim Bosnia through war. Propaganda is rarely logical
or rational, but as Hitler correctly noted, is meant to appeal to the
emotions and only the emotions and not to the intellect.

Conversely, Orthodox Serbs were portrayed by racist stereotypes of the
enemy, the other, "them", as uncivilized, backward, "mountain Serbs",
mountainous, animal-like, vermin-like, in short, unlike us, not like us, not
plain folks like us, but "nationalists", "zealots", "uncivilized", "
fanatical", barbaric mountain dwellers not part of the Western enlightened
tradition, not part of the West, not part of "enlightened Latin
Christendom" (Roman Catholicism).

The Logical Fallacy Technique was rampant in the Yugoslav conflict. For
instance, all sides to the conflict committed atrocities and massacres, the
media reported, but only the Serbs were condemned and ostracized, only the
Serbs were "war criminals", only the Serbs were committing "crimes against
humanity", to kill an Orthodox Serb whether man, women, or child, soldier or
civilian, was tantamount to justified or excused homicide, to the US media,
to kill Serbs was like killing rats or vermin, a typical propaganda
stereotype. When atrocities were committed against Serbs, they were
rationalized as appropriate retaliation and just retribution even when
unprovoked. A Croat Roman Catholic nun was asked, "Do you find it difficult
not to hate the Serbs?" Even when lies were told by Muslims and Croats, the
media concluded that, nevertheless, that the stories were "generally true"
although specifically untrue, a reductio ad absurdum.

The Misleading Association Technique - US propaganda sought to associate the
Bosnian civil war to the Holocaust against European Jewry committed by
Germany and German allies during World War II. Bosnian Serb detention camps
were portrayed as Nazi-like concentration camps, like Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau, meant to appeal to Jewish groups in the US. War
crimes and war crimes trials were an attempt to associate the crimes to the
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. War refugees, which are a part of every war
and every conflict, in this case were deemed to rise to the level of
genocide and the term "ethnic cleansing", used in World War II to describe
the Croat-Muslim Ustasha genocide committed against Bosnian and Krajina
Serbs in the NDH, was manipulated and regurgitated and turned against the
Serbs. The siege of Sarajevo was associated with the siege of Leningrad
during World War II where over a million Russians died. In point of fact,
more people were killed in Washington, DC in l994 than died in Sarajevo that
year. In all about, l0,000 died in Sarajevo on all sides in nearly four
years of war. But such is the power of propaganda, of "images of war", that
it appeared that Sarajevo was Leningrad in World War II. Finally, the book
Zlata's Diary was published modeled on The Diary of Anne Frank, a
transparent and obvious propaganda technique difficult to miss even by the
naive and unsophisticated. Was the memory of Anne Frank being exploited by
Muslim propagandists? Was this use of war propaganda fair to the legacy of
Anne Frank? Propaganda is amoral and based on emotion. This is why it is so
invidious because it dehumanizes both the persuader and the persuaded. In
order to persuade others to kill, propaganda dehumanizes all concerned in
its propagation.

The Oversimplification Technique appears in the media analysis of the
conflict. The media perceived the Bosnian conflict not as a civil war, but
as an "aggression" by one state, Serbia, against another state, Bosnia. The
media did not perceive the conflict as one between three ethnic and
religious groups, similar to Lebanon. The media saw Bosnia conveniently as
another Kuwait. Why? Because the intervention paradigm for a Kuwait scenario
already existed: The US massively bombs the capital, Belgrade, and the
aggressors retreat. By contrast,a Lebanon scenario was difficult if not
impossible to manage or solve. Indeed, Anthony Lewis clamored for aerial
bombardment of Belgrade in l992. Overly simplified slogans emerged, "lift
and strike", "arm and train", "economic strangulation and information
warfare". Serbs were stereotyped as "rebels", "rapists", "cutthroats" in an
atavistic spasm of racism and bigotry by the US media and government; Serbs
were seen as "them" while Muslims and Croats were "us", a primary
orientation of all war propaganda.

The Selection Technique consists of selecting only a part of the story and
presenting it as the complete picture. The media focused on Sarajevo to
paint a picture of Bosnian Islam. But in the villages and rural districts,
Muslims were not secular, were not cosmopolitan, were not tolerant, but
were, militant, devout Muslims who sought to create a Muslim state which
they ruled. This is an example of False Emphasis. Alija Izetbegovic and his
Muslim party were committed to establishing a Muslim State for Muslims, but
the media never showed this by using the Card-Stacking Technique, selecting
only certain details of the Muslim leadership and not presenting the whole
picture, i.e., that the SDA ruling party was a Muslim party made up only of
Muslims, that Izetbegovic had visited Iran, that Iran was supplying weapons
and funds to the Muslim leadership.

The Word Techniques - used against an individual, cause, or idea - are the
most prevalent. Name calling - referring to the Serbs as "aggressors", "
rapists" ,"killers" - allows us to form a judgment before examining all of
the evidence or the complete record. For instance, Muslims are called
"secular", but the fact that the regime has ties to Iran is not revealed.
These words cause signal reactions, that is, prejudiced or predetermined
responses. Bosnian Serbs are labeled "war criminals", "murderers", "rebels"
without showing or demonstrating how this is so. By using such words, "
namecalling", the media wishes to tell us how to think about the events and
actors in the Yugoslav conflict, in fact, to preclude thought. In Nazi
Germany,for example, concentration camp guards told Jews and other inmates
to repeat, "We are swine!", so that they would begin to think they are
subhuman. Similarly, US reporters and editors referred to Krajina Serbs as
"Croatian Serbs", an oxymoron coined at the US State Department, but wishing
to tell readers that they should think of Serbs only as a minority in
Croatia, regardless of the reality on the ground. Conversely, with regard to
the Albanian minority in Serbia, the US media employ the opposite propaganda
strategy. The Albanian minority in Serbia is referred not as "Serbian
Albanians" but as "Kosovars" and citizens of the "Republic of Kosova". The
Muslim regime in Sarajevo, which lacks the support of the majority of its
constituents, is nevertheless referred to as the Bosnian Government in
capital letters, while the Serbian or Yugoslav government is merely the
"Milosevic regime" or the "Belgrade regime".

Glittering words are given to an actor to preclude an examination of the
evidence. Thus, Muslims and Croats are "pluralistic", "democratic", "
tolerant", "Western-oriented", "peace-loving", "innocent", "secular", "
multi-ethnic". But the governing SDA Party is a Muslim party made up only of
Muslims with extensive and wide-ranging ties to Iran, Afghanistan, and
Libya, and Algerian militants. Thus, the propaganda technique allows a
misleading, one-sided presentation which is inaccurate and false.

Likewise, Glittering Generalities preclude a debate or discussion of the
conclusions reached. We are informed that Muslims are in support of
"multi-ethnic state", "democracy", "pluralism", "tolerance", "the free
world", "the New World Order". But the ruling party is made up of only
Muslim leaders who seek to create a Muslim state for Muslims only as
exemplified in The Islamic Declaration (1970, republished 1990), described
as a "Mein Kampf for Balkan Muslims", by Alija Izetbegovic. The Islamic
Declaration and Franjo Tudjman's The Wasteland of Historical Reality were
ignored in the West, although these books clearly enunciated their positions
eloquently and forcefully. But like Glittering words, Glittering
Generalities seek to present a one-sided, subjective view of the Muslims and
Muslim leadership which is a hallmark of all propaganda.

Finally, the US media and government inconsistently applied the legal
doctrines of positivism and natural law, a clear sign that a propaganda war
is in effect.

Positivism stipulates that the law is to be obeyed regardless of whether one
regards it as just or not. The law is the final authority. The Nazi
Nuremberg laws were based on the positivist approach. The law was the law
and one had to follow it, even though it is racist, genocidal, and unjust. I
was just following the law, you honor. It was the law.

The natural law approach states that when one believes the law to be unjust
one does not have to obey it and can violate it by rejecting it.

The US government and media inconsistently applied these two approaches. The
Krajina and Bosnian Serbs must follow the law, i.e., international
recognition, even if they thought the law was unjust and against their
interests or even if doing so would lead to their genocide. The law was the
law But with regard to Kosovo, the law is immaterial and Albanians and NATO
are free to disregard the UN Charter, the Gevena Conventions, international
treaties, and all customs and agreements between nations..

But with regard to the Bosnian Muslims and Croatia, the US applies a natural
law approach. The US allowed Muslims and Croats to violate international
law, the UN Arms Embargo because US policymakers felt it was unjust.
Likewise, the US itself violated the embargo in l994 because it thought it
unjust,even though the US had voted for the embargo. When laws are unfair,
we should feel free in violating them, the US spokespersons explained. The
Muslims had a "natural right of self-defense" thus they need not heed the
law, civil, military, international, or even human rights. Similarly,
Muslims could use UN safe havens as military staging areas because the law
was unjust. The Croatian Army attack on the Krajina Serb UN Protected Areas
was justified by the US on the grounds that Croatia was "establishing
control of its international borders", i.e., a positivist approach. The law,
legal principles, and international law, were merely used as a tool of
propaganda in a cynical manner. With regard to Kosovo, the US acted as if it
were the law, violating Yugoslav sovereignty without the slighest
hesitation. Moreover, in the Bosnian Conflict, the US went out of its way to
castigate the Bosnian Serbs for allegedly using cluster bombs. Then in the
Kosovo Conflict, NATO used cluster bombs on Serbian civilians without any
compunction whatsoever. The hypocrisy and double-standard were apparent to
all. But no one cared. The propaganda had achieved its purpose.

War Crimes in Bosnia

Was the coverage of the Bosnian civil war and Yugoslav breakup by the US
media ethical, professional, and fair?

The American Society of Newspaper Editors has established a Code of Ethics
or Canons of Journalism which define the ethics of the profession.

Canon I , entitled Responsibility, defines the responsibility of the
journalist: A "journalist who uses his power for any selfish or otherwise
unworthy purpose is faithless to a high trust."

Under Canon II, Independence, a newspaper has to reveal when it receives
communications from outside or private sources.

Under Canon IV, Sincerity, Truthfulness, Accuracy, "by every consideration
of good faith a newspaper is constrained to be truthful."

Canon V on Impartiality states that "news reports should be free from
opinion or bias of any kind."

When newspapers make a mistake, Canon VI, Fair play, requires that a
newspaper make "a prompt and complete correction of its own serious mistakes
of fact or opinion." When character or moral reputation is affected, the
person so accused should be given an opportunity to respond.

Television news reporters are bound by the television Code of the national
Association of Broadcasters, which mandates that "news reporting should be
factual, fair and without bias." Pictorial material should be chosen with
care and not presented in a misleading manner." Commentary and analysis
should be clearly identified as such.

US media bias and partisanship was apparent in the coverage or lack thereof
of events in the Bosnian civil war, thus violating many of the canons and
codes of professional ethics and responsibility of journalism and television
news reporting.

The US media never reported on the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian and Krajina
Serbs or of Bosnian Serb villages around Konjic in May,l992, at the start of
the civil war. The media never reported on the Muslim-run detention camps at
Tarcin and Celebici.

Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat forces attacked the Serbian majority
villages around Konjic, expelled or ethnically cleansed the Serbs and held
them at collection or detention centers and camps, the most famous of which
was the Celebici camp. Serbian men, women, and children were killed,
tortured, and sexually assaulted, raped, beaten, and subjected to cruel and
inhuman treatment.

The Muslim-run Celebici camp consisted of a tunnel, a hangar, and an
administrative building. After being collected at Celebici, many of the Serb
detainees were moved to other Muslim-Croat detention camps, where they were
imprisoned for up to 28 months. The Celebicic camp was in existence from
May,l992 to December, l992.

The US media never covered or reported this camp or other Muslim and Croat
camps for Serbs. It was only on March 21,l996,that these facts came to
light, when the Military Tribunal for War Crimes at the Hague indicted the
following Muslims: Zejnil Delalic,who co-ordinated the activities of the
Muslims and Croat troops, he was the commander of the First Tactical Group
of the Bosnian Muslim Government Army; Zdravko Mucic, known as Pavo, was the
commander of the Celebicic camp from May to November, 1992; Hazim Delic,
who was deputy commander of the camp; and, Esad Landzo, known as Zenga, a
Muslim guard at the camp.

In June, l992, Hazim Delic and Esad Landzo selected the Serb Scepo
Gotovac,aged between 60 and 70, who was then beaten and an SDA (Muslim
Party, Party for Democratic Action, all Muslim members,ruling party) badge
was nailed to his forehead.He died soon after.

In July, l992, the Serb Zeljko Milosevic was beaten by guards and died soon
after. Simo Jovanovic was also beaten and died. Bosko Samoukovic, aged 60,
was beaten and died afterwards.

Esad Landzo selected a Serb inmate with the surname Miljanic, aged between
60 and 70, then used a baseball bat to beat him to death.

Near the end of July, Hazim Delic and Esad Landzo selected Slavko Susic, who
was beaten with a bat and a piece of cable and tortured with pliers,lit
fuses, and nails. He died from his injuries.

Milorad Kuljanin was shot by a Muslim guard who stated that "they wished a
sacrifice for the Muslim festival of Bairaim" (from page 6 of the War Crimes
indictment by the Hague). Zeljko Cecez,Slobodan Babic, Petko Gligorevic,
Gojko Miljanic, Zeljko Klimenta, Miroslav Vujicic, and Pero Mrkajic were
shot and beaten to death.

On May 25, Orthodox Serb Momir Kuljanin was tortured and beaten into
unconsciousness, the Muslims burned a cross on his hand, and was hit with a
shovel, was suffocated and had a corrosive powder applied to his body.

On May 27.l992, and continuing until August, Grozdana Cecez was repeatedly
raped,on one occasion by three different persons in one night. From June 15
to August, Muslim guards repeatedly raped and sodomized a Serbian detainee
known as Witness A.

On June 15, Spasoje Miljevic was tortured and a mask was placed over his
face, a heated knife was placed against his body,he was forced to eat grass,
he was severely beaten with fists, feet, a metal chain and a wooden
implement and a had a Fleur de Lis, symbol of the "secular" Muslim regime,
carved on his palm.

Mirko Babic and Mirko Dordic were tortured and beaten with a baseball bat.
Nedeljko Draganic was beaten with a baseball bat and was burned when Muslim
guards poured gasoline on his trousers.Mirko Kuljanin,and Dragan Kuljanin
were beaten and mistreated.Vukasin Mrkajic and Dusko Bendo had a burning
fuse cord placed around their genital areas.

The Muslim guards at the Celebici camp plundered money, watches, and other
valuables belonging to Serbs taken to the camp.

The US media neither reported nor covered these acts of ethnic cleansing,
genocide, and crimes against humanity. The US media was in breach of its own
ethical canons and codes of professional responsibility which it has
established for itself. All propaganda must be subjective and one-sided.

The US media never covered the massacres committed by Muslim troops against
Serbian civilians in the Serbian municipalities of Bratunac, Skelani,
Vlasenica, and Milici in eastern Bosnia. These Muslim forces were commanded
by Naser Oric, from Potocari, indicted by the Hague Tribunal for war crimes,
a policeman and former member of the Yugoslav special forces.

One of the worst massacres of the Bosnian Serb population occurred on
September 26,l992 in the Serbian villages of Rogosija and Nedeljista near
Milici.Muslim forces under Naser Oric, the commander of the Muslim troops in
Srebrenica, massacred 37 Serbs. The victims were shot in the legs and then
burned, while two were impaled. The wounded had their throats cut and their
heads cut off. Some victims had their heads smashed in with axes and
sledgehammers and their brains were extracted. The dead and wounded were
circumcised (Islamic religious practice) and many were castrated and there
was genital mutilation of the victims.

In Kamenica, seven mass graves were found containing the corpses of 38
Bosnian Serb POWs who were murdered and mutilated .

On December 14,l992,Serbian villages around Bratunac were attacked by Muslim
troops from Srebrenica. The Muslim forces killed 64 Serb civilians and
burned down the houses and the villages.

On January 7,l993, Serbian Orthodox Christmas, Muslim troops from Srebrenica
attacked the Serbian village of Kravica near Bratunac and brutally massacred
50 Orthodox Serbs and then burned down the village.

The US media did not cover these events. Moreover, US military transport
aircraft stationed in Germany dropped food packages meant for the Muslim
troops while they were committing horrendous atrocities and engaged in a
genocide against Orthodox Serbs. Unfortunately, Bosnian Serb military forces
usually advanced so rapidly that these "humanitarian packages" fell into the
hands of the Serb forces.

Because the victims were Serbs, the media did not cover these events. As
Misha Glenny explained in The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Bosnian Government
troops "moved swiftly through the Serbian villages, slaughtering large
number of civilians on the way. Because the atrocities were being
perpetrated by the Muslims, they received relatively little attention in the
world media."

The US media claimed and reported that the Muslim Government and its Army
were secular and multi-ethnic, but when the Bosnian Government Army
massacred Orthodox Serbs and burned down entire Serbian villages, they wrote
"Islam shall win" on burned down Serbian homes, which is incompatible with a
multi-ethnic and secular Army and Government. There were also thousands of
mujahedeen volunteers from Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia in these
Government forces, along with the Mosque Doves, Muslim Green Berets, and
Black Swans, Muslim para-military formations.

The US media did not report on the Croat-Muslim massacre of at least 181
Bosnian Serbs murdered in Mrkonjic Grad in western Bosnia when NATO aircraft
bombed the Serbs during a massive offensive launched by the Croatian Army
which invaded Bosnia from Croatia (also not reported) with support from
Bosnian Croat and Muslim forces, which ethnically cleansed thousands of
Serbs.

On February 3,l996, 18l bodies were exhumed from the mass graves in the
Serbian Orthodox cemetery in Mrkonjic Grad.The victims were between the ages
of 22-89. Among the bodies were those of ll elderly women and wounds were on
most of the bodies indicating torture. Many of the skulls were smashed in
with dull objects. Four corpses were beheaded. When the bodies were exhumed,
not a single foreign journalist appeared at the scene to report or cover it.
Ten days later, when a press conference was held, there were no journalists
or reporters present. Moreover, no international organizations or human
rights groups were present. The genocide and ethnic cleansing of Orthodox
Serbs was not news.

No journalists attended the exhumations and press conference. Instead, US
journalists went where the US government told them to go.

Lessons

What are the lessons of the Bosnian Civil War and the Kosovo Crisis? Can we
learn anything from the tragedy that occurred with the breakup and
dismemberment of Yugoslavia?

First of all, was the propaganda campaign successful, did it persuade the
reactors (the audience) it was targeted to? The US government and media
propaganda effort, one of the most massive and technologically sophisticated
of the twentieth century, was an abject and total failure. The public
relations and propaganda campaign failed to persuade or to convince the US
public. As James Petras and Steve Vieux explained: "No matter how much the
mass media turned up the atrocity laden decibels, no matter how much the
Muslim refugees dominated the war photos, the US public refused to be drawn
in." Virtually all opinion polls and surveys showed that a vast majority of
the American public opposed US financial and military involvement. The
massive propaganda campaign never altered this fact. How is this to be
explained?

UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali called the Bosnian Civil War a
"rich man's war". The conflict was also an "educated man's war". That is,
the propaganda campaign was launched and fostered by educated, intellectual
elites, the best and brightest. There was never much enthusiasm for the
conflict among grass roots Americans, working and middle-class citizens. The
propaganda effort was almost exclusively a product of the intellectual
elites, working in conjunction with the US Government, particularly the
State Department, and the US media. Ironically, as Petras and Vieux noted,
the only ones "persuaded" or "manipulated" by the propaganda campaign were
the propagandists themselves, i.e., the educated, intellectual elites:

US intellectuals...fell for a propaganda campaign so crude that on occasion
Serbian detainees in camps or dead Serbian children were simply identified
as Muslims. Editors passed over stories about Serbs in Muslim-Croat camps.
The razing of 100 of the 156 Orthodox churches in Croatia alleged by the
patriarchate in Belgrade was ignored. Reports of the rapes of Serbian women
went univestigated by the media. All of this culminated in the media
indifference to the ethnic cleansing in the Krajina in l995...A spasm of
media propaganda was taken at face value.

The intellectual elites underestimated the intelligence and common sense of
the US public. The US public refused to be duped or tricked (persuaded or
convinced) because of past experiences with the media and the cadre of
intellectual and enlightened elites. Perhaps the greatest sin in politics is
to lose the confidence of the public. The public is unforgiving and has an
elephant's memory. The 16th US President, Abraham Lincoln, best understood
this when he stated as follows:

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never
regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people
some of the time; you may even fool some of the people all the time; but you
can't fool all of the people all the time... Public opinion in this country
is everything.

Democracy has limitations. Political representation is an imperfect vehicle
in ensuring that the will of the public is heard. Those who would speak for
us and who would work for our interests usually only end up working for
themselves and their own self-interest. As Hegel stated in The Philosophy of
History (l832):

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers
of
the Many.

As Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman noted in Manufacturing Consent, a
government and interests which are able to fix the premises of discourse,
are able to decide what the public is to hear, see, and think about, and to
"manage" public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns is incompatible with
the democratic ideals of an independent media committed to discovering and
reporting the truth.

The intellectual elites - Susan Sontag, Georgie Ann Geyer, Anthony Lewis,
Cokie Roberts, Madeleine Albright, Warren Zimmermann, Jamie Shea, James
Rubin - regard the American public as an ignorant and impotent rabble, a mob
that has to be guided and led. Only the best and brightest, the intellectual
elites, and those intellectual wannabees,journalists, know what is right and
what is the truth. We are stupid cattle that has to be led and guided by
these enlightened intellectual elites. Alas, behold, man the puppet, man the
robot, the automaton, a dehumanized cipher.All we have to do is sit back and
let them guide and inform and lead us. They know better than us. They are
better than us.

Finally, who actually pulled the strings of the marionettes, who was the
puppet master? Without any question, the US Government planned and
orchestrated the massive propaganda campaign against the Serbian people.
Warren Zimmermann, the "last US ambassador to Yugoslavia", even admitted
it.David Gompert, a former member of the National Security Council, advised
that "sustained economic and information warfare against Serbia" should be
able to defeat Serbia and called for a "patient cold war against Serbia."
Gompert admits that "the power of information technology is growing",
conceding the tremendous power of US propaganda. But what about the media,
what about the journalists, reporters, and newspapers? The pack journalism
and hand-out journalists were told what to report by the US Government,
i.e., the media received hand-outs for the press, thus, hand-out journalism.
American journalists were beguiled and corrupted by the arrogance of power
and privilege that they enjoyed as the "spokespersons" for the "free world"
and as the elite vanguard of the New World Order led by the United States,
the remaining Superpower. Power and privilege corrupts. The US media were no
exceptions. This was apparent in their intellectual arrogance, conceit, and
profound ignorance. They were not content to merely report the news; US
journalists and media wanted to make news, to manufacture or engineer the
news. This is anathema in a democracy where freedom of thought and
independence of will are deeply ingrained shibboleths. Not surprisingly,
most public opinion polls and surveys indicate that the US public has lost
all confidence in the mass media and distrusts and abhors it. This is
obvious when we recall that the US government can turn the propaganda on or
off when and if it wishes, just like a water faucet. To be sure, reporters
were guided by ratings and newspapers by circulation, but the Government set
the policy which the media dutifully followed. This should trouble all of us
concerned with an independent press in a democracy. For how is what the US
media did in the former Yugoslavia any different from what
government-controlled media did in Nazi Germany or totalitarian
dictatorships?

The twentieth century began with so much promise with the advent of the
technological revolution. But as the century progressed, we witness the
worst horrors in the history of mankind, gas attacks, bombing of cities,
genocide, two world wars, total war, nuclear holocaust. As the twenty-first
century begins, has the human condition improved for the better? If the
events in the former Yugoslavia are a guide, we must conclude that nothing
much has changed in one hundred years. We have greater comforts and longer
life spans, but bought at what cost? Are we any better off at the end of the
twentieth century than we were at the beginning? We each have to decide for
ourselves.

[Mir Harven]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2000 13:23:39 -0500, "Zvonimir Siljkovic"
<hus...@email.msn.com> wrote:

>Ok, this BHHRG and antiwar.com is highly suspicious. Have you read their
>Serbia exerts. Here is just a few. I am surprised that such a big ?Croat?
>like yourself seems to find little trouble dealing with some of the biggest
>Serb apologists around. Its seems you would bend over backwards and use and
>garbage to support your argument.

Balderdash. This site contains both shitty propaganda &
valuable analyses of various situations. Christine Stone's
pasted articles belong to the 2nd group.
And, more- this is an inane argument. If Milosevic or Goebbels
says that 1+1=2, it's true, irrespective of the moral stature
of the speaker.

>Hell even tap into some of the vilest
>propaganda sources in the world to support your claims.

I've seen some dumb articles on Serb "plight" & realistic
parts on the Cuban war & American agitprop.

> Well it just reveals
>alot about you and your types.

Yeah. I prefer brunettes.

>You would slash and burn modern Croatia down
>because they do not support your minority view.

Nope. I'll leave it to the democratically elected Gv't.
This is Gv't by the people & for the people.
Morons for morons.

> Well if you ever have to ask
>why you guys are in the minority, the mirror will answer all of your
>questions!

Why do you think IQ 150+s are in the minority ?
Why do you think that being in a minority is "wrong" ?
The majority opinion less than a few hundred years
ago was that the sun revolved around the earth.
So much for the popular wisdom.

> Its Croats like you that the voters see when they see HDZ on the
>ballot and soundly reject your platform!

Croat voters have sunk into temporary insanity phase.
I just hope it's temporary.

> Enough of croats pretending to be
>for croatia while they plunder and steal and divert funds and then run like
>hell when they loose!

Your idiotic & boring mantras on purported HDZ orchestrated
plunder is just another example of your complete lack of logical
capabilities.
For goodbye, I'll paste a part of a post ( hopefully, you'll
understand the English part. For a comparative analysis,
visit the mentioned site which refutes any plunder-blabber. )

>> Source: http://www.eerg.com/economics/front_page.htm
>>
>> Gross Foreign Debt ( $bn )
>>
>> Croatia 8.9
>> Czech Republic 23.0
>> Hungary 25.0
>>
>> Average Monthly Wages ($) ( gross salary, crackpots )
>>
>> Croatia 633.0
>> Czech Republic 365.0
>> Hungary 320.0
>>
>> Er... I forgot unemployment rate & a few ( circa 20 ) other insignificant factors.
>
>Convenient picture no doubt. Cak ni ovo nije pokazatelj stvarnog stanja stvari, jer
>bi prvi set
>brojki morao ukljucivati ne samo GFD po glavi stanovnika (koji je jednak za sve
>tri zemlje), nego
>prije svega i trend povecanja duga od 1990 do danas, a pogotovo u zadnjih 4-5
>godina koji je za
>Hrvatsku porazan jer eksponencijalno zaduzivanje prati stagnacija prihoda.

Ili gospodarski rast ( u postocima ) u zadnjih godinu dana. Ili
stupanj korupcije koji je istrazen od tih istih institucija, a po
kojem je Hrvatska najmanje korumpirana od navedenih zemalja
( iako sam skeptican prema realnoj vrijednosti takvih procjena,
pogotovo sto je u zadnjim mudrovanjima Hrvatska korumpiranija
od Rumunjske, Kazahstana i Rusije..neka i ova upadne u bubanj ),
ili...sto god covjek zeli od 20+ cimbenika. Ako se Hrvatska
eksponencijalno zaduzivala u zadnjih
5 godina ( sto nije, za onoga tko zna sto to znaci, osim hiperbole ),
imala je i razloga. Nekih 30 milijardi $ US stete, plus povratak, plus
otrcana poduzeca, plus
...

>Nadalje, drugi set brojki sam za sebe ne znaci puno jer ne ukljucuje potrosacki
>indeks skupoce
>zivota, koji bi nam pomogao odrediti realnu kupovnu moc jednog Hrvata sa tih
>$633 (bruto, dakle prije poreza!) u odnosu na Ceha ili Madjara. Porezi nisu uopce spomenuti, pa je
>nejasno koliko zapravo ide u ciji dzep nakon sto caru ode carevo. I konacno, ni ovdje nemamo
>prilike vidjeti trend
>povecanja/smanjenja realnih prihoda, pa je iz ovih suhoparnih brojki nemoguce
>izvuci zakljucak o
>kvaliteti zivota i zadovoljstvu prosjecnog stanovnika.

Porezi su nuzni da se pokrije steta i doslovno fizicki zbrine
desetine ( pa i stotine ) tisuca ljudi. Nesto o cemu neki Pemci
ili Huni uopce ne trebaju brinuti. Usput: realna placa im je niza nego
u Hrvatskoj, ali je kupovna moc veca zbog nizih cijena.
Koje su posljedica koliko-toliko tegleceg gospodarstva koje ne
bi moglo prezivjeti ni udar jedne granate 122 mm, a kamoli
natezanja od ratovanja koje je pocelo s potpuno praznom
drzavnom blagajnom, a zavrsava stetama od kosovske NATO
igrarije. Sve su to kilava gospodarstva na klimavim nogama
, sto se vec vidi i sada. I dosta je gluposti o trendovima zaduzivanja
i slicnih amaterskih naklapanja. Neka se uzme kolika je zaduzenost po
glavi stanovnika.
Neka se uzme koliki je porast novca u
drzavnoj riznici u odnosu na zateceno stanje kod pada komunizma. O
tome da ti jadnici ne bi mogli ni disati da dodju u situaciju
da im je u jednom momentu 15-20% stanovnistva izbjeglicka
populacija, sto iz zemlje, sto iz inozemstva. I dosta je naklapanja da
to ne moze sluziti kao izgovor. Kad se desi takva ratna katastrofa,
zemlja se oporavlja bar dva desetljeca.
A o zadovoljstvu- ankete "nezavisnih" ( pljuc ) medija pokazuju da su
Madjari i Cesi medju najnezadovoljnijim narodima u Europi i da Cesi
zude za komunizmom reznjevljevog perioda. Ne samo neka manjina
bivsih aparatcika, nego prakticki "ceo narod". Aferim i narodnoj
pameti i pamcenju.