Kurdistan!

[imported_Sensei]

I have significantly better things to do then go around the internet to get links to shut up neo-nazis like yourself. I have used facts that you can find in any reliable history book, or in the records from the time about the subjects I talk about here.

In other words you have time to talk nonsense and you do not feel the necessity to prove what you say obviously because you cannot prove anything. It is all BS.

No it is not outdated, and the proof is the fact that you and people like you still exist.

Yes, it is outdated. Where have you been?

Some stories about good vs evil are worth reading about very often.

Stories is just what they are, but classify it as it is: FICTION

Add 200,000 Bosnians killed by Serb Scum to that.

My, my you are worse than the muslims/jews and USians when it comes to highly exaggerating and inflating figures, even they claim 7,000 only and FYI there NEVER was 100,000 albanians killed. After all was said and done, they found a total of 2,000 dead and MANY of them were Serbs. So there was NO GENOCIDE.

Everyone just read earlier in this thread, you will find the context of this scoundrel very easily.

Yes, your words convict you scoundrel.

Bombings that go after legitimate military targets where civilians are accidently killed qualify as collateral damage. However very few PKK bombings are against Military Targets. The Twin Towers where not a military target, and Al Queda contrary to what you believe is not a Nation, it is an organization, to fight a war you need a Nation behind you. As for Milosovich there is no doubt that had he lived he would have been found guilty, you sure have a nack for spin, too bad you don't use that energy to visit Srebrenica.

What do you work for the US State Dept. or something? As you have ignored what I told you previously, if you go to Srebrenica, you will find nothing but muslims and everywhere that nato set up its subservient states, you will find those areas ALL ethnically cleansed of Serbs and minorities. But continue to ignore that FACT.

So the person who does not see mass murder of Albanians and Bosnians, and who regularly posts defences for terrorists and denies there is a difference between accidently killing someone and doing it on purpose is calling me a terrorist, well I guess I am going to have to support Abdullah Occalan killing Turks now the way he does

No, no by all means I would never want someone like you on my side. I don't want liars and BSers of the worst sort on my side. You continue to hallucinate about "mass murders" that never happened and side with the garbage. That is where you belong. Please side with the turks.

Everything I have said is proven. The fact is even Israel recognizes the Bosnian Genocide.

By this statement, you really have shot yourself in the foot. We all are familiar with israel's great credibility when it comes to recognizing genocide since they do not recognize the Armenian Genocide. Thanks for that great gift to prove you are an idiot beyond belief. The racist apartheid state of israel commits genocide and ethnic cleansing on Palestinians. The bosnian muslims are their clients and the public relations firm that was hired to perpetrate all of these lies in their behalf was run and owned by the very jewish David Finn of Ruder Finn fame. Look it up.

Well the fact that you can't refrain from anti-semitic comments,, even as you try to deny what you are shows your character. Of course an anti-semite does not see Nazi Germany as bad.

Seems the ONLY thing you care about is jews. No one here is saying that Nazi Germany was NOT bad.

Nato prevented the annhialation of the Bosnians and Albanians, I understand that to rascists like yourself feel that is the worse thing that ever happened to the world.

Cram your "racist" BS, the truth does not equal racism. You have nothing but ad hominem personal attacks to support your LIES.

You are a waste of space.

Spoken like a true LOOOSER.

No I don't, I just don't consider ACCIDENTALLY killing people to be on par with PURPOSELY killing them. Every Legal System distinguishes between murder one and manslaughter one, as does every religion.

But what you say does not go along with the facts. You still ignore the fact of state sponsored terrorism which does not surprise me as the US, isreal and turkey are the worst when it comes to state sponsored terrorism. You are delierately denying it exists. You will bend over backwards and kiss your own butt to deny it exists as FACT.

Freedom Fighters fight battles with armies, they don't cowardly run after women and children the way the PKK does which makes the PKK terrorist, not freedom fighters.

You still have yet to prove anything you say.

No I am not, if you do not know the difference between an accident and doing something on purpose I suggest you justs top wasting everybody's time here. What you are is a total hypocrite who supports terrorists and terrorism, and you have not countered any of my points.

You're the one who has not countered one single point with anything but your own worthless "opinion."

Sensie I don't care if the Bosnians where marching with Swasticas and screaming Hiel Hitler, Genocide is never justified, so you wasted your time trying to Villify the Bosnians, who where infact the victims.

Victims they WERE NOT. I have a lot more proof for the thinking people here that I will soon post, but as we know truth is something you are not interested in.

[Gondorian]

Sensei it seems like you were dropped as a child.

Fortunately you do not represent mainstream Armenians, however it is highly disturbing that rascist scum like you exist in any form on this planet.

Did you know that Srebrenica was only one out of hundreds of examples where the Serbs mass murdered the Bonsians?

Even nations that Bosnia is openly an enemy of (Israel, Greece, Italy) recognize the genocide.

Besides Israel as a State and as a People is not Aparthied.

You claim anti-semitism is an outdated word, but the very existance of worthless bigoted jackass neo-nazis like yourself and joobian prove that it is not outdated.

You are a true Neo-Nazi, nothing more and I will not dignify another word you have to say with a response.

[imported_Sensei]

Sensei it seems like you were dropped as a child.

Your debating skills are truly impressive.

Fortunately you do not represent mainstream Armenians, however it is highly disturbing that rascist scum like you exist in any form on this planet.

You are NOT Armenian, so what would you know about it?

Did you know that Srebrenica was only one out of hundreds of examples where the Serbs mass murdered the Bonsians?

I have never seen anyone exaggerate like you, now there are "hundreds" of examples? You have failed to provide any. I guess you have a reading comprehension problem.

Even nations that Bosnia is openly an enemy of (Israel, Greece, Italy) recognize the genocide.

All part of the aggression on Yugoslavia, no surprise.

Besides Israel as a State and as a People is not Aparthied.

How do you know?

You claim anti-semitism is an outdated word, but the very existance of worthless bigoted jackass neo-nazis like yourself and joobian prove that it is not outdated.

The last resort of an idiot who has no argument.

You are a true Neo-Nazi, nothing more and I will not dignify another word you have to say with a response.

You use words you don't even know the meaning of. neo-nazi BAWK BAWK BAWK, yeah right.

If I respond to you further, it certainly is not for your benefit.

=============================

Israel branded 'racist' by rights forum

September 2, 2001 Posted: 11:16 AM EDT (1516 GMT)



DURBAN, South Africa -- A human rights forum running parallel to the U.N. World Conference on Racism ended rancorously on Sunday with a declaration that branded Israel a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing."

The declaration, adopted by a majority of the 3,000 delegates from 44 regions to the World Conference's Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) forum -- a broad-based summit of groups from around the world involved in human rights issues -- shocked Jewish participants, and many walked out of the meeting.

Some other international human rights groups who were part of the NGO forum, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, moved to distance themselves from the declaration.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres expressed his government's anger.

"It is an outburst of hate, of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism without any consideration," he told reporters in Tel Aviv.

Mary Robinson, the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights and general-secretary of the U.N. Conference, said that the NGO statement's equation of Zionism with racism was regrettable and would almost certainly not become a part of the main conference's final statement.

"I had urged the NGOs not to adopt it. But the process was democratic and they went ahead and adopted it," she said. "But I also have a democratic right to reject that declaration dealing with Israel."

"I think the NGO Forum, by including that text on Israel, have diminished the chances of it being adopted by the conference. I don't think it can be adopted," she added.

Reed Brody, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: "Israel has committed serious crimes against Palestinian people but it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide and to equate Zionism with racism ... it is now a matter of damage control."

Amnesty International also balked at the declaration.

"We are not ready to make the assertion that Israel is engaged in genocide," said Claudio Cordone, a spokesman for the London-based group.

The forum's document branded "Israel as a racist apartheid state," and called for the establishment of a U.N. committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes and the complete isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.
Jewish groups: Declaration incites hatred

The NGO declaration mirrored the struggles of the U.N. conference, where Robinson has worked to calm the brewing controversy over language condemning Israel.

The United States, Canada and Israel sent lower-level delegations to the U.N. conference in protest of what they see as anti-Israel sentiment at the summit. The United States has threatened to withdraw before the conference's September 7 end date if language it considers offensive is not removed.

The United States was "extremely unhappy" about the removal of clauses condemning anti-Semitism -- including the bombing of synagogues and armed attacks on Jews -- from the final draft of the NGO declaration, a U.S. official told Reuters news service.

But the Palestinians and other Arab groups were pleased with the NGO document.

"It's just the facts," said Shawqi Issa, spokesman for the Arab caucus at the forum. "This is what should be from the (non-governmental organizations). They are not like the governments. They are here to protect the victims of racism."

Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, called the conference "very successful" and said that "it broke the silence of conspiracy of governments."

Jewish groups, however, said the NGO forum deck was stacked against them from the start.

"They've invalidated themselves," said Stacy Burdett, an associate director with the Anti-Defamation League. "A conference against racism has turned into a conference promoting racism."

And Alan Baker, Israel's legal adviser to the World Conference, said that NGO delegates "have only succeeded in turning the conference into a circus for Israeli bashing.

"It's inciting hatred," he said.

Another spokesman for the Israeli delegation to the U.N. conference told The Associated Press that he hoped delegates to that meeting would take note and understand that what happened at the NGO forum "should not happen at the U.N. conference."

"Hate is taking over," said Noam Katz. "It totally contradicts the aims of the World Conference against Racism, to fight racism and promote tolerance."
More to come at main conference

The NGO document has been presented to the United Nations to be incorporated into the World Conference's document when those delegates close their meeting on September 7.

Observers say the harsh anti-Israeli language in the non-governmental summit's final declaration has increased tension at the U.N. conference, attended by representatives of more than 150 governments.

Resolutions at non-governmental forums have no binding authority but observers say they increasingly influence the final declarations adopted at the U.N. governmental meetings.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned delegates at the main meeting on Saturday that rows over the Middle East and controversy over how to handle the historical issue of slavery threatened the conference.

Reparations to Africans for centuries of slavery remain a stumbling block for the World Conference delegates. African and Caribbean states want a formal apology, and divisions have emerged over whether reparations should be paid to descendants of slavery.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/africa/09/02/durban.racism/index.html

[Kharpert]

Can I ask that some people here stop abusing the quote function and start writing paragraphs?

This

is

very

annoying

[Gondorian]

You are NOT Armenian, so what would you know about it?

Israel is Armenia's third biggest trade partner.

I have never seen anyone exaggerate like you, now there are "hundreds" of examples? You have failed to provide any. I guess you have a reading comprehension problem.

Well hundreds of thousands dead may be a better way to show you. You are a bigot nothing more, and it is embarrassing that people like you still exist.

All part of the aggression on Yugoslavia, no surprise.

Well the Serbs trying to eliminate all non Serbs could be considered agression against Yugoslavia, and the fact that you defend the Genocide against those Yugoslav groups can be considered insulting the Yugoslavs (Oh and the Macedonians and Albanians are not Slavs at all).

How do you know?

I do research, have many Israeli and Jewish Friends, and was there for a year as an exchange student.

The last resort of an idiot who has no argument.

The only Idiots here are you, Joobian, and Reincarnated AM

You use words you don't even know the meaning of. neo-nazi BAWK BAWK BAWK, yeah right.

Actually you fit the definition of a neo-nazi perfectly. You can't even acknowledge the Holocaust.

=============================

Israel branded 'racist' by rights forum

September 2, 2001 Posted: 11:16 AM EDT (1516 GMT)



DURBAN, South Africa -- A human rights forum running parallel to the U.N. World Conference on Racism ended rancorously on Sunday with a declaration that branded Israel a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing."

The declaration, adopted by a majority of the 3,000 delegates from 44 regions to the World Conference's Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) forum -- a broad-based summit of groups from around the world involved in human rights issues -- shocked Jewish participants, and many walked out of the meeting.

Some other international human rights groups who were part of the NGO forum, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, moved to distance themselves from the declaration.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres expressed his government's anger.

"It is an outburst of hate, of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism without any consideration," he told reporters in Tel Aviv.

Mary Robinson, the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights and general-secretary of the U.N. Conference, said that the NGO statement's equation of Zionism with racism was regrettable and would almost certainly not become a part of the main conference's final statement.

"I had urged the NGOs not to adopt it. But the process was democratic and they went ahead and adopted it," she said. "But I also have a democratic right to reject that declaration dealing with Israel."

"I think the NGO Forum, by including that text on Israel, have diminished the chances of it being adopted by the conference. I don't think it can be adopted," she added.

Reed Brody, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: "Israel has committed serious crimes against Palestinian people but it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide and to equate Zionism with racism ... it is now a matter of damage control."

Amnesty International also balked at the declaration.

"We are not ready to make the assertion that Israel is engaged in genocide," said Claudio Cordone, a spokesman for the London-based group.

The forum's document branded "Israel as a racist apartheid state," and called for the establishment of a U.N. committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes and the complete isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.
Jewish groups: Declaration incites hatred

The NGO declaration mirrored the struggles of the U.N. conference, where Robinson has worked to calm the brewing controversy over language condemning Israel.

The United States, Canada and Israel sent lower-level delegations to the U.N. conference in protest of what they see as anti-Israel sentiment at the summit. The United States has threatened to withdraw before the conference's September 7 end date if language it considers offensive is not removed.

The United States was "extremely unhappy" about the removal of clauses condemning anti-Semitism -- including the bombing of synagogues and armed attacks on Jews -- from the final draft of the NGO declaration, a U.S. official told Reuters news service.

But the Palestinians and other Arab groups were pleased with the NGO document.

"It's just the facts," said Shawqi Issa, spokesman for the Arab caucus at the forum. "This is what should be from the (non-governmental organizations). They are not like the governments. They are here to protect the victims of racism."

Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, called the conference "very successful" and said that "it broke the silence of conspiracy of governments."

Jewish groups, however, said the NGO forum deck was stacked against them from the start.

"They've invalidated themselves," said Stacy Burdett, an associate director with the Anti-Defamation League. "A conference against racism has turned into a conference promoting racism."

And Alan Baker, Israel's legal adviser to the World Conference, said that NGO delegates "have only succeeded in turning the conference into a circus for Israeli bashing.

"It's inciting hatred," he said.

Another spokesman for the Israeli delegation to the U.N. conference told The Associated Press that he hoped delegates to that meeting would take note and understand that what happened at the NGO forum "should not happen at the U.N. conference."

"Hate is taking over," said Noam Katz. "It totally contradicts the aims of the World Conference against Racism, to fight racism and promote tolerance."
More to come at main conference

The NGO document has been presented to the United Nations to be incorporated into the World Conference's document when those delegates close their meeting on September 7.

Observers say the harsh anti-Israeli language in the non-governmental summit's final declaration has increased tension at the U.N. conference, attended by representatives of more than 150 governments.

Resolutions at non-governmental forums have no binding authority but observers say they increasingly influence the final declarations adopted at the U.N. governmental meetings.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned delegates at the main meeting on Saturday that rows over the Middle East and controversy over how to handle the historical issue of slavery threatened the conference.

Reparations to Africans for centuries of slavery remain a stumbling block for the World Conference delegates. African and Caribbean states want a formal apology, and divisions have emerged over whether reparations should be paid to descendants of slavery.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/a...ism/index.html

[/QUOTE]

Yes another NGO Forum is anti-semitic, whats new? Anti-semitism is still around, and it hijacked the Durban Summit, and I am proud to say that Greece walked out of that with Israel, and the rest of the Western Countries, Japan and South Korea. Oh I forgot you think that the Jews rule the West.

You sir are an anti-semitic moron, and an Islamophobic one as well who is unwilling to accept the Bosnian Genocide for what it was, and you are a perfect example of how the term anti-semite is far from outdated because there are people like you still around.

[imported_Sensei]

Israel is Armenia's third biggest trade partner.


Well hundreds of thousands dead may be a better way to show you. You are a bigot nothing more, and it is embarrassing that people like you still exist.


Well the Serbs trying to eliminate all non Serbs could be considered agression against Yugoslavia, and the fact that you defend the Genocide against those Yugoslav groups can be considered insulting the Yugoslavs (Oh and the Macedonians and Albanians are not Slavs at all).


I do research, have many Israeli and Jewish Friends, and was there for a year as an exchange student.


The only Idiots here are you, Joobian, and Reincarnated AM


Actually you fit the definition of a neo-nazi perfectly. You can't even acknowledge the Holocaust.

Yes another NGO Forum is anti-semitic, whats new? Anti-semitism is still around, and it hijacked the Durban Summit, and I am proud to say that Greece walked out of that with Israel, and the rest of the Western Countries, Japan and South Korea. Oh I forgot you think that the Jews rule the West.

You sir are an anti-semitic moron, and an Islamophobic one as well who is unwilling to accept the Bosnian Genocide for what it was, and you are a perfect example of how the term anti-semite is far from outdated because there are people like you still around.

I am NOT islamophobic you idiot just because I refuse to accept your LIES about Bosnia and who did what to whom. Islamic countries like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran gave refuge to Armenians during/after the Armenian Genocide. But proof and facts are not important to you as your only ammo is ad hominems. If you were a student, you didn't learn anything.

-------

The Media War

http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analy...the_media_.html

THE DOMINION, Sunday, March 19, 2006

The Media War

Part three in a five-part series on the former Yugoslavia

by Dru Oja Jay

James Harff, of public relations firm Ruder Finn, claimed credit for the
effective demonization of Serbs and the reduction of a historically complex
situation to "good guys and bad guys". "The emotive charge," said Harff,
"was so strong that no one could go against the dominant current, except on
pain of being accused of revisionism."

Extensive analysis and the public record has shown that during the series of
civil wars that beset the former Yugoslavia, the Western news media provided
coverage that was, by any objective standard, misleading and in many cases
completely false.

Recent media reports have simply stopped referring to mass graves and death
camps where hundreds of thousands of people were--according to breathless
TV, radio and newspaper reports during the war--systematically raped,
tortured, and killed.

Seven years later, little evidence supporting the conclusion that such vast
atrocities took place has surfaced, though casual references to genocide and
ethnic cleansing find themselves sharing a sentence with the name Milosevic.
Evidence does show that tens of thousands of combatants and civilians died
in the tragic decade-long conflict. Hundreds of thousands were displaced,
forced to live in refugee camps.

The silence of the same journalists that were scrambling to tell the world
about genocide on the scale of "Hitler or Stalin" both leaves readers the
impression that hundreds of thousands of innocents were in fact killed, and
undermines the credibility of future reports of genocide. The media's
collective credibility is further undermined by its ongoing silence about
conflicts where hundreds of thousands of people are being killed, with
western complicity or support: West Papua and the Congo, for example.

George Kenney, who resigned from the US State Department in 1992 to protest
the Bush administration's policies in the then-disintegrating Yugoslavia,
wrote in 1996 that "much of the early war was fought not on the battlefield
but through high-powered (and high-priced) lobbying firms."

"Since late 1992 there has also been a splendidly effective volunteer army
of journalists, think-tank analysts, Capitol Hill staff and administration
hawks pushing the Bosnian, and secondarily Croatian, causes," wrote Kenney.
The Yugoslavian civil war began when Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Macedonia
seceded from Yugoslavia with US and European funding and encouragement. In
the case of Croatia and Bosnia, significant Serb minorities insisted on
autonomy or rejoining Yugoslavia, which was not consistent with the
US-European plan. That in the case of Croatia, members of the Serb minority
had their rights systematically violated by the US- and German-backed
government also did not matter.

In America, Kenney wrote, "it is almost impossible to be too anti-Serb."

UN and NATO investigations have shown that military and paramilitary groups
on all sides--and NATO, which dropped 20,000 tonnes of bombs on
Serbia--committed atrocities. However, the record also shows that again and
again, news media reported made-up atrocities attributed to Serb forces,
while taking minimal interest in atrocities committed against Serbs.
Evidence of crimes committed by Serbs sometimes turned out to be crimes
perpetrated against Serbs, as was the case with BBC footage of a "Bosnian
prisoner of war in a concentration camp" who was later identified as a
Bosnian Serb in a Muslim detention camp. No evidence of Serbian
"concentration camps" ever surfaced, though conditions in detention camps on
all sides were predictably brutal.

In other cases, unidentified bodies were attributed to untold Serb
atrocities before being identified as belonging to a particular ethnic group
or even as noncombatants.

In a shocking number of cases, estimates of thousands of victims were
reported where later only a few dozen bodies were found.

The most striking example was State Department official David Scheffer's
estimate--in the middle of the NATO bombing campaign--that "as many as
225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59 remain unaccounted for."
The shocking estimate, reported widely in the media, was later reduced when
the British government circulated an estimate that 10,000 were missing. A
month later, NATO-led peacekeepers told the press that a total of 2,150
bodies had been found, of which 850 were civilians. It was evidence of war
crimes, but of a significantly smaller scale than had been initially
reported.

The radical revision of estimates after the shocking headlines were several
news cycles behind was exemplary of reporting during the war. In most cases,
horrifying headlines attributed to "government sources"--often ones with an
interest in a particular outcome--were followed up with obscure corrections.

According to many sources, Bosnian Muslim leaders like President Izetbegovic
were keenly aware of the impact of images of suffering on international
public opinion. In the case of several high-profile massacres in Sarajevo
that made headlines and rallied western support, for example, UN
investigations later revealed that Bosnian Muslim forces had slaughtered
their own people.

Atrocities against Serbs went unreported or underreported, including
villages burned to the ground, testimony (by victims, not unnamed government
sources) describing gang rape by Croatian militias, and murderous
attacks--killing hundreds of Serbian civilians--by Muslim forces stationed
at Srebrenica prior to the massacre of hundreds of Muslims there by Serb
forces.

In the case of Srebrenica, the number of "over 8,000" missing Muslims is
often cited, but the number of bodies found in a massive search of the area
is under 3,000, as of last October. Only a fraction have been identified,
and the bodies include soldiers and fighters on both sides killed in three
years of war. One can be relatively certain that Serbian troops executed at
least 153 prisoners of war in one case, which few will dispute is a horrific
war crime. Evidence on the public record after extensive searches, however,
does not support the much larger numbers or charges of genocide. This does
not necessarily mean that larger atrocities did not take place, but simply
that supporting evidence has not been found after a major investigation.

Public relations firms played a key role in the disinformation around the
war. Ruder Finn was one such firm, employed at various times by Croatia,
Muslim Bosnia and the Albanian parliamentary opposition in Kosovo.

In a notable exception to media orthodoxy, the National Post's Isabel
Vincent reported in 1998:

If the plight of Kosovo Albanians is today viewed around the world as an
issue of self-determination for an oppressed minority group, then it is
largely due to the efforts of former Ruder Finn executive James Harff, who
almost single-handedly reduced a historically complex conflict to a black
and white morality play, complete with oppressed good guys and bloodthirsty
bad guys.

In 1993, Harff told French journalist Jacques Morlino that he was "most
proud" of Ruder Finn's successful bid to mobilize major Jewish organizations
like the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and
the American Jewish Congress. According to Morlino's transcript, Harff said
that

There was every reason then for Jewish intellectuals and organizations
to be hostile to the Croats and Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this
state of things. And we succeeded in masterly fashion... The entry into the
fray of Jewish organizations on the side of the Bosnians was an
extraordinary move. All at once, we were able to make public opinion equate
Serbs and Nazis. The dossier was complex, nobody understood what was going
on in Bosnia... But in one stroke we were able to present a simple matter, a
story with good guys and bad guys. We knew that the business would be played
out on this terrain... All at once, there was a very clear change of
language in the press with the employment of terms with a very strong
emotive value, such as ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, etc., all
evoking Nazi Germany, the gas chambers and Auschwitz. The emotive charge was
so strong that no one could go against the dominant current, except on pain
of being accused of revisionism. We hit the bull's eye.

When Morlino pointed out that Harff didn't have any proof of claims
circulated to media by Ruder Finn, Harff responded that "Our business is not
to verify information. We're not equipped to do that. Our business... is to
accelerate the circulation of information that is favorable to us... That's
what we did. We didn't assert that there were death camps in Bosnia, we let
it be known that Newsday asserted it."

Pressed by Morlino, Harff insisted, "We're professionals. We had work to do
and we did it. We're not paid to practice morality."

Journalists, on the other hand, have taken great pains to point out that
they practice morality. In this regard, their continued silence on the
question of evidence--while repeating claims without any substantiation--is
confusing.


__________________

[imported_Sensei]

The Origins of the War in the Balkans

http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analy...the_origin.html

THE DOMINION, Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Origins of the War in the Balkans

Part II in a five part series on the former Yugoslavia

by Dru Oja Jay

The former Yugoslavia. The green areas are Serbia-Montenegro's autonomous
provinces: Vojvodina, Serbia, Montenegro (top to bottom).
Slobodan Milosevic isn't only charged with war crimes. The Globe's Doug
Saunders says that Milosevic is "considered responsible for 250,000 deaths
and the descent of the former Yugoslavia into terrible ethnic warfare."

Though Saunders does not say who "considers" Milosevic responsible, he is
certainly not the only commentator to repeat the claim.

The media's failure to examine facts on the ground (or at least, their
failure to tell their readers about them) extends beyond Milosevic himself
to the entire history of Yugoslavia's civil war.

Between 1960 and 1980, Yugoslavia--a federation consisting of multiple
ethnic groups, including Albanians, Hungarians, Slovenes, Egyptians,
Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats--was, by objective measures, a prosperous
country. Economic growth was vigorous, all citizens had a guaranteed right
to income, a month of paid vacation, and life expectancy was seventy-two
years. The federation's many national and linguistic groups coexisted
peacefully through a complex complex system of government spanning multiple
languages and semiautonomous regions.

As Michael Parenti writes in To Kill a Nation: The Attack on
Yugoslavia--which documents the history of US and European
intervention--Yugoslavian leaders committed a "disastrous error" in the
1970s: they borrowed money from the West. When western economies entered a
recession, free trade principles gave way to economic self-preservation, and
Yugoslavian exports were blocked, to devastating effect.

Earlier borrowing brought with it the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank, which demanded that the economy be "restructured". This
process, Parenti writes, included "wage freezes, the abolition of state
subsidized prices, increased unemployment, elimination of most
worker-managed enterprises, and massive cuts in social spending." According
to the World Bank's figures, restructuring produced six hundred thousand
layoffs in 1989-90 alone.

Taking control of monetary policy by 1991, the IMF effectively broke
Yugoslavia into pieces by preventing transfer payments to the republics
(such as Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia) from the federal government and
assigning debt to each of the member republics.

Serbia, Parenti notes, was the most hostile to IMF "reforms", with 650,000
workers (joined, in many cases, by workers of other ethnicities in Serbia
and other republics) engaging in "massive walkouts and protests".

For Parenti and others, all available evidence points to a long term,
deliberate campaign on the part of the US, Britain, and Germany (among
others) to destabilize and divide the last socialist holdout in eastern
Europe. Before the economic collapse, almost all observers agree that people
from many ethnic backgrounds coexisted peacefully. The economic destruction
of Yugoslavia, Parenti argues, caused different nationalities to "compete
more furiously than ever for a share" of rapidly declining economic wealth.
"Once the bloodletting starts, the cycle of vengeance and retribution takes
on a momentum of its own."

In 1990, the US threatened to cut off aid if Yugoslavia did not hold
elections, but insisted that elections be held only in the republics, not at
the federal level. In 1991, the European Community organized a conference on
Yugoslavia, which called for its division into "sovereign and independent
republics," at which point Yugoslavian representatives were barred from
attending any more of the conference meetings.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has most recently called
attention to itself by financing political groups that fomented military
coups against elected governments in Haiti and Venezuela, was also involved
in the Yugoslavian civil war and the ensuing conflict. Allan Weinstein, one
of the NED's founders, was candid about the mission of the NED, which is
funded directly by the US federal government. "A lot of what we do today was
done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," Weinstein said in 1991.

According to research conducted by William Blum, a scholar of US
interventions abroad, the NED described the mandate of its 1997-98 programs
as aiming to "identify barriers to private sector development at the local
and federal levels in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and to push for
legislative change...[and] to develop strategies for private sector growth."

Starting in 1988, the NED provided millions of dollars to "independent
media", "opposition political parties", and "pro-democracy nongovernmental
organizations", "student groups", "labour unions" and "think tanks"
throughout the former Yugoslavia. According to testimony in Senate hearings,
in the two years leading up to the Kosovo crisis, the US government provided
$16.5 million for democracy promotion in Serbia alone, mostly through the
NED. Proportional to population, and not accounting for lower pay scales,
the equivalent amount of funding for Canadian media and political groupings
would be roughly $46 million.

A Milosevic-headed Serbian government did eventually pass legislation that
decreed that media could face steep fines for circulating false information,
forcing US-sponsored newspapers and radio stations to move to Montenegro.
The US, however, has even less tolerance for outside funding of its
democracy. Senator John Kerry, for example, found himself the subject of a
firestorm of media criticism when his 2004 presidential campaign accepted a
$2,000 cheque from a private citizen of South Korea (not a government
group). Kerry sent the cheque back and vowed to do more thorough "background
checks" on campaign donors.

The Canada Elections Act prohibits any groups that receives money from a
foreign source from using it for "election advertising purposes". Canada
also maintains extensive regulations preventing foreign ownership of the
media.

Are critics like Parenti and Blum right? How does their evidence stack up to
that provided by Canadian media? This is difficult to say, because almost
all news media in Canada and the US have ignored the role of the West in the
demise of Yugoslavia and the United States' subsequent well-financed
political interventions.

"In the eyes of the global media," writes University of Ottawa economist
Michel Chossudovsky, "Western powers bear no responsibility for the
impoverishment and destruction of a nation of 24 million people." Instead,
the prevailing view continues to be that the US, Canada, and other NATO
powers acted benevolently to end the conflict.

Meanwhile, the breakup continues. NED-funded political parties, currently
governing in Serbia-Montenegro's autonomous province of Montenegro (and,
since 2000, Serbia itself) are currently in preparing for a referendum on
secession from the state of Serbia-Montenegro.

con't

[imported_Sensei]

Part four in a five-part series on the former Yugoslavia

http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analy...the_good_g.html

THE DOMINION, Monday, March 20, 2006

The Good Guys

Part four in a five-part series on the former Yugoslavia

by Dru Oja Jay

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic meeting with officials at NATO
headquarters in 1998. While demonizing Milosevic, media coverage has avoided
discussing the NATO-supported leaders of the breakaway republics. photo:
NATO

While a Milosevic-led Yugoslavia (consisting of Serbia, Montenegro and
Vojvodina) was under sanctions that rendered it unable to hire its own
western Public Relations firm, the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and
Bosnia and the Kosovo Liberation Army were receiving diplomatic, financial
and military backing from the US and European powers. While Milosevic
continues to receive thousands of column-inches of coverage that manage to
avoid engaging with publicly available facts, his counterparts have received
very little coverage, factual or otherwise.

Public Relations flak James Harff noted that mobilizing Jewish support for
someone like Croatian president Franjo Tudjman was an impressive feat (see
part 3). It also added a touch of irony to claims that Serbian forces were
perpetrating a "new Nazism".

While those accusations were made, providing justification for a massive
bombing campaign, Tudjman was busy perpetrating the old Nazism. In his 1989
book, Wasteland of Historical Truth, Tudjman wrote that "the establishment
of Hitler's new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the
Jews."

"Genocide is not only permitted," Tudjman wrote, "it is recommended, even
commanded by the word of the Almighty, whenever it is useful for the
survival or the restoration of the kingdom of the chosen nation, or for the
preservation and spreading of its one and only correct faith." Tudjman
counted Pope John Paul II among supporters of Croatian secession under his
party.

During WWII, Croatian forces slaughtered over 700,000 Serbs, 45,000 Jews and
at least 26,000 Roma at the Jasenovac death camp. With few exceptions,
Croatian war criminals were never brought to justice; thousands of Nazi
collaborators, including 500 members of the Roman Catholic clergy, fled to
Austria and Italy at the end of WWII. Tudjman hailed these as independence
fighters, and appointed several former Nazi collaborators to government
posts.

Upon Croatia's separation in 1991, the Serbian minority in the Croatian
region of Krajina itself declared independence from Croatia. In a
referendum, 99.7 per cent of the 500,000 Krajina Serbs voted to re-join
Yugoslavia. During four years of fighting, tens of thousands of Muslims and
Croats either left or were driven out of Serbian majority areas by Serbian
paramilitary groups. (A chief accusation of Milosevic's Serbia is that they
supported these expulsions and the attendant atrocities, including murder
and torture.) In 1995, a revitalized, US-backed Croatian army went on the
counterattack. "Operation Storm," carried out with US, German and French
support and training, took over all of Serbian Krajina, displacing almost
the entire Serbian population, and sending over 200,000 Serbian refugees
fleeing into Bosnia. It was the largest such displacement of the conflict.

Meanwhile, non-Croats in Croatia--especially Serbs--were subject to a range
of punitive measures and systematic discrimination. In To Kill a Nation,
Michael Parenti provides an overview of the Croatian situation, including
restrictions on media and "confiscatory property taxes," denial "of
employment" and "any effective police protection." After the conflict,
Croatian Serbs were denied aid to rebuild their homes and businesses.
Discrimination against Croatia's Serbian minority continues today, and only
a third of Croatia's estimated 300,000 Serbs have returned.

Another lesser-known recipient of western backing was Alija Izetbegovic, who
spent part of his youth as a member of the Young Muslims, a fundamentalist
group that recruited Muslim units for the Nazi SS during WWII. In his book,
Muslim Declaration, he wrote:

There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and
non-Islamic faith and institutions. The Islamic movement must and can take
power as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough, not only to
destroy the non-Islamic power, but to build up a new Islamic one.

Izetbegovic placed second in Bosnia's 1990 Presidential election, but took
power through political maneuvering. Though Bosnia's constitution stipulates
a rotating presidency, Izetbegovic refused to step down. Fikret Abdic, who
had the most votes in the election and remained quite popular in Bosnia, was
ousted from government by Izetbegovic and demonized in the state-run media.

In his book on the Dayton peace negotiations, American diplomat Richard
Holbrooke expressed his dubious opinion of Izetbegovic. "Even if Milosevic
makes more concessions," Holbrooke wrote, "the Bosnians will simply raise
the ante." Nonetheless, the US continued to support Izetbegovic. George
Kenney wrote that Izetbegovic's "intention seemed to be to pretend to go
along with negotiations while continuing the war." During the war,
Izetbegovic invaded areas of Bosnia inhabited primarily by Serbs, creating,
Holbrooke admitted, over one hundred thousand refugees. Nonetheless,
Izetbegovic remains outside the scope of media coverage of war crimes during
the war.


__________________

[imported_Sensei]

The Famous and LIED About Milosevic Speech

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC’S 1989 ST. VITUS DAY SPEECH
Gazimestan - June 28, 1989

Speech by Slobodan Milosevic, delivered to 1 million people at the central celebration marking the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, held at Gazimestan on 28 June, 1989. Compiled by the National Technical Information Service of the Department of Commerce of the U.S.

By the force of social circumstances this great 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo is taking place in a year in which Serbia, after many years, after many decades, has regained its state, national, and spiritual integrity. Therefore, it is not difficult for us to answer today the old question: how are we going to face Milos [Milos Obilic, legendary hero of the Battle of Kosovo]. Through the play of history and life, it seems as if Serbia has, precisely in this year, in 1989, regained its state and its dignity and thus has celebrated an event of the distant past which has a great historical and symbolic significance for its future.

Serbian Character -- Liberational

Today, it is difficult to say what is the historical truth about the Battle of Kosovo and what is legend. Today this is no longer important. Oppressed by pain and filled with hope, the people used to remember and to forget, as, after all, all people in the world do, and it was ashamed of treachery and glorified heroism. Therefore it is difficult to say today whether the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people, whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or we survived in this slavery. The answers to those questions will be constantly sought by science and the people. What has been certain through all the centuries until our time today is that disharmony struck Kosovo 600 years ago. If we lost the battle, then this was not only the result of social superiority and the armed advantage of the Ottoman Empire but also of the tragic disunity in the leadership of the Serbian state at that time. In that distant 1389, the Ottoman Empire was not only stronger than that of the Serbs but it was also more fortunate than the Serbian kingdom.

The lack of unity and betrayal in Kosovo will continue to follow the Serbian people like an evil fate through the whole of its history. Even in the last war, this lack of unity and betrayal led the Serbian people and Serbia into agony, the consequences of which in the historical and moral sense exceeded fascist aggression.

Even later, when a socialist Yugoslavia was set up, in this new state the Serbian leadership remained divided, prone to compromise to the detriment of its own people. The concessions that many Serbian leaders made at the expense of their people could not be accepted historically and ethically by any nation in the world, especially because the Serbs have never in the whole of their history conquered and exploited others.

Their national and historical being has been liberational throughout the whole of history and through two world wars, as it is today. They liberated themselves and when they could they also helped others to liberate themselves. The fact that in this region they are a major nation is not a Serbian sin or shame; this is an advantage which they have not used against others, but I must say that here, in this big, legendary field of Kosovo, the Serbs have not used the advantage of being great for their own benefit either.

Thanks to their leaders and politicians and their vassal mentality they felt guilty before themselves and others. This situation lasted for decades, it lasted for years and here we are now at the field of Kosovo to say that this is no longer the case.

Unity Will Make Prosperity Possible

Disunity among Serb officials made Serbia lag behind and their inferiority humiliated Serbia. Therefore, no place in Serbia is better suited for saying this than the field of Kosovo and no place in Serbia is better suited than the field of Kosovo for saying that unity in Serbia will bring prosperity to the Serbian people in Serbia and each one of its citizens, irrespective of his national or religious affiliation.

Serbia of today is united and equal to other republics and prepared to do everything to improve its financial and social position and that of all its citizens. If there is unity, cooperation, and seriousness, it will succeed in doing so. This is why the optimism that is now present in Serbia to a considerable extent regarding the future days is realistic, also because it is based on freedom, which makes it possible for all people to express their positive, creative and humane abilities aimed at furthering social and personal life.


Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. National composition of almost all countries in the world today, particularly developed ones, has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully.

Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect. The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people. Therefore, all people in Serbia who live from their own work, honestly, respecting other people and other nations, are in their own republic.

Dramatic National Divisions

After all, our entire country should be set up on the basis of such principles. Yugoslavia is a multinational community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it.

The crisis that hit Yugoslavia has brought about national divisions, but also social, cultural, religious and many other less important ones. Among all these divisions, nationalist ones have shown themselves to be the most dramatic. Resolving them will make it easier to remove other divisions and mitigate the consequences they have created.

For as long as multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been the relations between different nations. The threat is that the question of one nation being endangered by the others can be posed one day -- and this can then start a wave of suspicions, accusations, and intolerance, a wave that invariably grows and is difficult to stop. This threat has been hanging like a sword over our heads all the time. Internal and external enemies of multi-national communities are aware of this and therefore they organize their activity against multinational societies mostly by fomenting national conflicts.

At this moment, we in Yugoslavia are behaving as if we have never had such an experience and as if in our recent and distant past we have never experienced the worst tragedy of national conflicts that a society can experience and still survive.

Equal and harmonious relations among Yugoslav peoples are a necessary condition for the existence of Yugoslavia and for it to find its way out of the crisis and, in particular, they are a necessary condition for its economic and social prosperity. In this respect Yugoslavia does not stand out from the social milieu of the contemporary, particularly the developed, world. This world is more and more marked by national tolerance, national cooperation, and even national equality. The modern economic and technological, as well as political and cultural development, has guided various peoples toward each other, has made them interdependent and increasingly has made them equal as well [medjusobno ravnopravni]. Equal and united people can above all become a part of the civilization toward which mankind is moving. If we cannot be at the head of the column leading to such a civilization, there is certainly no need for us to be at is tail.

At the time when this famous historical battle was fought in Kosovo, the people were looking at the stars, expecting aid from them. Now, 6 centuries later, they are looking at the stars again, waiting to conquer them. On the first occasion, they could allow themselves to be disunited and to have hatred and treason because they lived in smaller, weakly interlinked worlds. Now, as people on this planet, they cannot conquer even their own planet if they are not united, let alone other planets, unless they live in mutual harmony and solidarity.

Therefore, words devoted to unity, solidarity, and cooperation among people have no greater significance anywhere on the soil of our motherland than they have here in the field of Kosovo, which is a symbol of disunity and treason.

In the memory of the Serbian people, this disunity was decisive in causing the loss of the battle and in bringing about the fate which Serbia suffered for a full 6 centuries.

Even if it were not so, from a historical point of view, it remains certain that the people regarded disunity as its greatest disaster. Therefore it is the obligation of the people to remove disunity, so that they may protect themselves from defeats, failures, and stagnation in the future.

Unity brings Back Dignity

This year, the Serbian people became aware of the necessity of their mutual harmony as the indispensable condition for their present life and further development.

I am convinced that this awareness of harmony and unity will make it possible for Serbia not only to function as a state but to function as a successful state. Therefore I think that it makes sense to say this here in Kosovo, where that disunity once upon a time tragically pushed back Serbia for centuries and endangered it, and where renewed unity may advance it and may return dignity to it. Such an awareness about mutual relations constitutes an elementary necessity for Yugoslavia, too, for its fate is in the joined hands of all its peoples. The Kosovo heroism has been inspiring our creativity for 6 centuries, and has been feeding our pride and does not allow us to forget that at one time we were an army great, brave, and proud, one of the few that remained undefeated when losing.

Six centuries later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are facing battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot be excluded yet. However, regardless of what kind of battles they are, they cannot be won without resolve, bravery, and sacrifice, without the noble qualities that were present here in the field of Kosovo in the days past. Our chief battle now concerns implementing the economic, political, cultural, and general social prosperity, finding a quicker and more successful approach to a civilization in which people will live in the 21st century. For this battle, we certainly need heroism, of course of a somewhat different kind, but that courage without which nothing serious and great can be achieved remains unchanged and remains urgently necessary.

Six centuries ago, Serbia heroically defended itself in the field of Kosovo, but it also defended Europe. Serbia was at that time the bastion that defended the European culture, religion, and European society in general. Therefore today it appears not only unjust but even unhistorical and completely absurd to talk about Serbia's belonging to Europe. Serbia has been a part of Europe incessantly, now just as much as it was in the past, of course, in its own way, but in a way that in the historical sense never deprived it of dignity. In this spirit we now endeavor to build a society, rich and democratic, and thus to contribute to the prosperity of this beautiful country, this unjustly suffering country, but also to contribute to the efforts of all the progressive people of our age that they make for a better and happier world.

Let the memory of Kosovo heroism live forever!
Long live Serbia!
Long live Yugoslavia!
Long live peace and brotherhood among peoples!

[Gondorian]

Is anyone else getting tired of links to hate articles that the authors have become embarrassed by enough to take down?