International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic www.icdsm.org The URL for this article is: http://www.icdsm.org/more/1feb.htm Subscribe to the ICDSM email list at http://www.icdsm.org/maillist.htm Receive no more than one article per day. Click here to send the link to this article to a friend. ======================================= I am writing this two weeks before the start of the 'trial' of Yugoslav Ex-President Slobodan Milosevic at NATO's 'Tribunal' in The Hague. Writing about the 'trial,' one is forced into an excess of quotation marks because this NATO 'court' is entirely discredited. Just read 'Illegal Tribunal - Illegal Indictment' by Dr. Hans Koechler, the highly respected UN consultant. (He also wrote the official UN report on the Lockerbie trial.) (1) During the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright openly demanded that 'Tribunal' 'Prosecutor' Louise Arbour indict Milosevic. The purpose: to criminalize the Yugoslav leader, thus heading off any possibility that wavering NATO governments would meet with him. (2) During the NATO bombing, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea boasted that the 'Tribunal' would never indict NATO leaders because NATO controls it financially. (3) Although the Milosevic 'trial' is slated to start on 12 February, in fact Milosevic has been on trial continuously in the Western media for fourteen years. Undoubtedly many of our readers have been persuaded by this media campaign and the supporting chorus - including some left wing intellectuals - that Milosevic is guilty. The only thing wrong with this trial-by-media is that the defense never got to speak and the prosecution lies. Perhaps you are wondering how come the editors of Emperor's Clothes, who meticulously document everything we write about Afghanistan and 9/11, are unanimous in saying: the media has convicted Milosevic based on lies. It's because we've carefully studied the sources and - as with Afghanistan and 9/11 - have found the media has not told the true story about Yugoslavia. And unlike Afghanistan and 9/11, in the case of Yugoslavia for years few people challenged the lies; so they sank in. Worse respected critics of U.S. foreign policy uncritically accepted the basic premises of Western policy. It is unfortunate, but it is true. Starting in 1987, when Milosevic led the campaign to throw pro-NATO elements out of the Yugoslav League of Communists, Washington pegged him as a "bad Indian." Politicians and the media attacked relentlessly, accusing him of fomenting Fascist deeds by spouting racist demagoguery. This race-hate charge is the key. Because if Milosevic had in fact organized the Serbs the way Hitler organized the Germans, he would have had to do it publicly. You can't promote hatred without promoting hatred. Therefore we can check the accuracy of the anti-Serb, anti-Milosevic campaign by reading what Milosevic wrote. That is, by first reading what he wrote and then, to check the accuracy, reading what politicians and the media say he wrote. I want to ask you to try a little experiment. Below is an excerpt from Milosevic's most famous speech, delivered in 1989 at Kosovo Field. Now before you go and read it, please make a few predictions. He's going to talk about nationalism and about the relations between Serbs and other groups in Serbia. Kosovo was/is legally a province of Serbia, so that includes ethnic Albanians. What is he going to say? Here's Milosevic:
These words of Milosevic are never quoted. Would you like to test the accuracy of that assertion? Go to www.google.com and enter the phrase: "allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people." Make sure to keep the "quotation marks." You will get two citations. One of them is Emperor's Clothes. The other is the Orlando Sentinel, which took it from the text we had posted through email. Western politicians and the media have either a) lied about Milosevic or b) parroted those lies through naiveté, servility or corruption. Here is Robin Cooke, 'commenting' on (supposedly) that speech. I cannot say whether Cooke is a liar or a parrot.
Isn't that amazing? The man simply, brazenly lies. But it works - it works because nobody - nobody! - reading his words had ever seen the speech. It's not in books. We searched Lexis and found - a BBC translation from 1989 and the Orlando Sentinel. When we first hunted for it, we didn't have Lexis, so it took days to find it on microfilm in the library. If you had read Cooke without reading Milosevic, wouldn't you have thought, "Maybe Cooke is exaggerating but there must be some truth to it." But in fact it was just a lie told to justify the destruction of Yugoslavia. There are now a million refugees living in Serbia, victims of that lie. Or consider the following excerpt. Here Milosevic talks about the famous Kosovo battle of 1389 which marked the onset of the long Ottoman occupation of his nation. We have been told that Milosevic and the Serbs treat this battle with a Hitlerian folk-mystique. You know, super-macho, worship blood and gore. Or else with brooding self-pity, hatred and a lust for ethnic revenge. You can just picture Hitler all pumped up and spouting "We are the master race! We always win!" or "VENGEANCE!" And so on. Here is Milosevic:
Not only is this not fascistic, it is downright thoughtful. No; more; it is lyrical. It has, for want of a better word, soul. It has that depth of feeling you sometimes find among people who have suffered greatly. The Irish in Ireland have it. My grandparents, who were East European Jews, had it. Black people in the U.S. have it. The Hutus in Africa have it. And sometimes, just sometimes, even the leaders of oppressed people have it. Lumumba had it. Martin Luther King had it. By the end of the U.S. Civil War, Abe Lincoln had it. But can you imagine George Bush saying anything as moving as,
"As after all, all people in the world do." There is even a certain generosity of spirit here. And this is the man whom crude liars like Bush and Clinton have caricatured; perhaps they were just looking in the mirror and casting him in their own true image. ========================== 1) 'Illegal Tribunal - Illegal Indictment,' by Dr. Hans Koechler at 2) How
Madeline Albright Ordered The Hague 'Tribunal' To
'Indict' Milosevic at 3) Official Statements Prove Hague 'Tribunal'
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