I am someone who opposes the US actions in Kosovo and who (unfortunately accurately) forecast that the bombing would bring about the very humanitarian catastrophe that it was allegedly implemented to prevent. I also agree with much of your analysis of the reasons for the disintegration of Yugoslavia and exaggerated reporting of atrocities in various cases.
But, are you going to suggest that the reports we are now getting of mass emigration from Kosovo are inaccurate? Does the bombing actually justify the horrific actions that Milosevic is now carrying out, even if the reporting of them might be somewhat exaggerated?
It is one thing to forecast a catastrophe. It is quite another to applaud it or to attempt to justify it. I do not applaud any of the parties in this particular tragedy, and I certainly don't view Milosevic as some sort of hero. Barkley Rossre -----Original Message----- From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu <pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu> Cc: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Sunday, March 28, 1999 6:45 PM Subject: War & 'Public Relations,' or, 'Kuwaiti Babies Torn fromIncubators'
>The break-up of Yugoslavia and the subsequent civil war are in part the
>results of one of the most successful cases of propaganda in service of
>creating the New Enemy. Americans are not to remember that there are people
>in Serbia and Iraq besides Slobodan Milosevic & Saddam Husein. Never mind,
>all of them are inherently evil and rapists to boot, according to
>Washington and their paid and unpaid lackeys. Forget the fact that we don't
>hear at all the voices of Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians in Kosovo,
>etc. who have not supported the break-up of Yugoslavia.
>
>The supporters of the US/NATO bombings do not question at all the media
>images of Serbs as mass rapists and ethnic cleansers, as those who
>supported the Gulf War did not question the story of a Kuwaiti woman who
>claimed to have witnessed Iraqui soldiers tearing Kuwaiti babies from
>hospital incubators. (The story was later revealed to be a fraud, and the
>woman turned out to be the daughter of Kuwaiti's ambassador to the US. Too
>late.)
>
>The supporters of the US/NATO expansion into the Balkans conveniently
>forget that it is the United States' encouragement and overt/covert
>funding--see the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513--to
>small, right-wing, nationalist parties that first helped to break up
>Yugoslavia. A section of the same law cut off all aid, credit, and loan
>from the US to Yugoslavia as well. Also, the law demanded separate
>elections in each of the six republics and further stipulated that the
>State Dept. approve of election procedures and results before aid would be
>resumed. The above sanctions, of course, helped to create an economic
>disaster, which could only further Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian separatist
>groups that the US had already been building up.
>
>In the subsequent civil war, atrocities were committed by all sides, but
>the Western media insistently gave us a radically one-sided picture, the
>picture meant to portray only Serbs as the aggressors who deserve to be
>bombed by the US/NATO. The supporters of the KLA today continue to endorse
>the agenda of the US/NATO by repeating the same propaganda. For the
>critique of such media images, I refer you to, among others, _NATO in the
>Balkans_, published by the International Action Center.
>
>In an article included in _NATO in the Balkans_, Barry Lituchy writes:
>
>*** Many of the stories on the Bosnian conflict that we read about and see
>on TV are actually fed to the media by public relations firms. Jim Harff,
>President of Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs, the public relations firm
>that handles the accounts of Bosnia, Croatia, and the Albanian opposition
>in Kosovo, argues that modern wars cannot be fought and won today without
>good public relations work. "In terms of persuading and convincing the UN
>to take proper measures," says Harff, "it's even more important." According
>to U.S. Justice Department records, Bosnia and Croatia pay Ruder Finn more
>than $10,000 a month plus expenses "to present a positive image to members
>of Congress, administration officials, and news media."
> The amount of covered "expenses" is many times greater than the
>disclosed fee. Because of international economic sanctions imposed on the
>Serbs by the UN--largely due to false stories in the media [e.g. using
>photos of dead Serbs and labeling them "Muslim victims," as was the case
>with the Jan. 4, 1993 issue of Newsweek and the story of a "concentration
>camp" that was later debunked by Thomas Deichman to be utterly false]--the
>Serbs, ironically, are barred from hiring a public relations firm. ***
>
>Here it is important the role that the public relations firm Hill and
>Knowlton played in the Gulf War, feeding America and the world with the
>aforementioned young woman falsely testifying before a congressional
>committee about an 'atrocity' that never occurred--the story of the Iraqui
>soldiers tearing Kuwaiti babies out of hospital incubators.
>
>We need to work on building our media literacy. The first principle is,
>doubt everything that they tell you when they are trying to build support
>for the US government's war efforts.
>
>Yoshie
>