Cheers, Ken Hanly
Nathan Newman wrote:
> All of this, going back to past debates on free speech, is why I go for
> absolutist positions on free speech, defending Nazis et al, since one of the
> hardest fought victories in US politics has been the elimination of most
> criminal and civil threats to unpopular speech. "Free speech" may not be
> the ideal when broadcasting it costs so much, but it is far better than the
> libel and other laws in Europe that do little to suppress rightwing
> attitudes (see Haider in Austria), but is used quite regularly to suppress
> left dissent as in this case. And I say that not agreeing with LM's
> political position on the former Yugoslavia.
>
> Despite the general rightwing swing of the US courts, broad free speech
> protections, including limits on libel and other civil attacks on free
> speech and press, have largely survived in the courts. There are few areas
> where US law is far superior to other countries, but our press laws are one
> of them.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
> On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
> >
> > THE TEARS OF THE MIGHTY
> > by Jared Israel (3-15-00)
> >
> > A grim miscarriage of justice has just occurred in Britain.
> >
> > Living Marxism, the iconoclastic magazine edited by Mike Hume, was found
> > guilty of libel against ITN, the British news station.
> >
> > Living Marxism has been ordered to pay $580,000 U.S. This punishment is
> > an
> > attempt to crush the Living Marxism (LM) journalists for doing their
> > job. In
> > this article, I'll discuss the background of the case and take a look at
> > a
> > truly amazing Reuters dispatch about the verdict.
> >
> > FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND
> >
> > In 1992, ITN, the British news station, sent a film team to Bosnia. It
> > was
> > led by Penny Marshall. The ITN people came back with what was supposedly
> > a
> > film of a Serbian concentration camp. A death camp, if you will.
> >
> > Or will you? A death camp? What is wrong with this story? First off, how
> > did
> > Penny Marshall and an entire film crew get into a Serbian death camp and
> > shoot a film? Didn't somebody have to transport the crew members plus a
> > mountain of equipment? Didn't somebody have to show them around, feed
> > them?
> > The crew needed time to set up their cameras and so on. How did they do
> > all
> > this without getting caught? Did they parachute out of the sky? I mean
> > seriously, didn't they need the cooperation of the administration of the
> > so-called death camp?
> >
> > They did.
> >
> > But why would the Serbian authorities want to help? Were they morons?
> > Didn't
> > they know the West was hostile to the Bosnian Serbs? Weren't they
> > attacked
> > every day in the British press? Wasn't the Islamist leader, Izetbegovic,
> > treated as a hero? Knowing ITN was probably anti-Serb, why would the
> > Serbs
> > let an ITN crew in to film - a death camp?
> >
> > Could it be that the place they filmed was not a death camp? That the
> > Bosnian
> > Serbs let in Penny Marshall and her film crew precisely because they had
> > nothing ugly to hide.
> >
> > A LUCKY BREAK...
> >
> > Fortunately we don't have to speculate. By coincidence, a group of
> > Serbian
> > filmmakers accompanied the ITN crew that day. The Serbs shot a movie -
> > that's
> > right, they literally shot a movie - of Penny Marshall and company
> > shooting
> > their movie. The Serbian film can be viewed on a standard VCR. I have
> > watched
> > it several times. In other words, I have seen a movie that shows every
> > move
> > Penny Marshall made that day.
> >
> > I know that the ITN crew shot at two locations. I know that the first
> > was a
> > detention center at Omarsk; the second was a refugee center at
> > Trnopolje.
> >
> > The Omarsk detention center: not ready for prime time...
> >
> > The Omarsk detention center was a modern facility, pleasant, not at all
> > like
> > a jail. Before the war it had been a mining company's administrative
> > center.
> > There, prisoners of war, captured from the Bosnian Islamist army, were
> > held.
> > The men were not shackled; they were not behind bars. Rather, they
> > lounged in
> > a cafeteria area. They looked well fed. The Serbian guards were casual.
> > A
> > Serbian administrator (later shot dead by NATO troops while fishing with
> > his
> > son) made a little speech. He explained that the Serbs viewed most of
> > the
> > prisoners as good people who had been suckered into supporting 'the
> > rebellion', the secessionist revolt against Yugoslavia. He said only a
> > small
> > group was hard core. The Serbs wanted to keep the hard core in jail but
> > let
> > the others go.
> >
> > So here wa a real, live Serbian detention center. But Penny Marshall
> > didn't
> > use any of this footage.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Because it didn't have the look she was looking for.
> >
> > FEEDING REFUGEES AND OTHER ATROCITIES...
> >
> > The ITN crew moved on to the refugee center at Trnopolje. They set up
> > their
> > camera equipment inside a small barbed wire enclosure. The barbed wire
> > was
> > old, falling apart in places. It surrounded a storage shed, a
> > wheelbarrow and
> > other construction equipment. Outside the enclosure, refugees milled
> > about,
> > curious.
> >
> > Filming from inside the barbed wire, Marshall asked if anyone spoke
> > English.
> > One man replied, Yes. Marshall spoke to him. Are you a prisoner? No,
> > said the
> > man; we're refugees. Marshall was clearly impatient. She pressed the man
> > to
> > criticize the Serbian officials. The man insisted: the Serbs treat us
> > well;
> > they give us food; the only problem is the weather is too hot. Much too
> > hot.
> >
> > Then Marshall spotted a tall, emaciated man. What is wrong with that
> > man, she
> > asked. The Bosnian refugee shrugged, said something about it being
> > personal.
> > (In fact the emaciated man was suffering from TB.)
> >
> > EDITING TO MAKE A STATEMENT
> >
> > None of this conversation was used by ITN. Why not? Was it because it
> > showed
> > the Bosnian Serbs in a humane light?
> >
> > Instead, ITN produced film clips and stills that made it look like the
> > emaciated man and the other refugees were being held behind barbed wire
> > -
> > inside an enclosure. These pictures were sent around the world. Many
> > newspapers ran them in montage with old Nazi concentration camp photos,
> > using
> > captions like:"Serb Death Camps!"
> >
> > Millions were fooled. They believed they had been shown pictorial
> > evidence of
> > a new Nazism in Europe. This helped swing Western public opinion behind
> > Alija
> > Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Islamist extremist whose model of tolerance was
> > the
> > Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini.
> >
> > DAVID TAKES ON GOLIATH
> >
> > LM, a brave little British magazine, exposed this fraud. A link to that
> > exposé is posted below. Amazingly, they were sued by ITN for slander. A
> > news
> > station slanders the Bosnian Serbs and then sues a muckraking magazine
> > for
> > slander? I thought news stations were supposed to protect us from
> > establishment lies? I thought they were supposed to get sued for libel -
> > that
> > they opposed such law suits on principle
> >
> > Not in this brave new world.
> >
> > Today we learned that ITN has won. Apparently, instead of focusing on
> > the
> > real evidence - the uncut footage of the film - the trial was dominated
> > by
> > the testimony of a witness who claimed the Serbs beat people at this
> > "concentration camp." Alas, false witness is a commodity in the free
> > marketplace of our brave new world, especially when one has the
> > resources of
> > the giant corporations that control the media in the NATO countries.
> > Money
> > buys lies. Moreover, LM was prevented from presenting expert witnesses.
> > And
> > in his final comments, the judge apparently sided with ITN.
> >
> > COMPOUNDING A LIE
> >
> > Below I've posted a link to the Reuters story covering this verdict. You
> > will
> > notice that Reuters never mentions what was said in the Living Marxism
> > exposé. It never mentions that ITN shot pictures from inside a barbed
> > wire
> > enclosure and then claimed the people in the film were "behind barbed
> > wire."
> > Instead it simply asserts that Trnopolje was a concentration camp as if
> > that
> > assertion were a proven fact.
> >
> > So then, ITN sues to silence freedom of speech - freedom of speech which
> > was
> > here used in the most honorable way, to challenge the lies of the
> > mighty. ITN
> > wins. LM is crushed for telling the truth.
> >
> > And what does Reuters do? It uses the occasion to once again broadcast
> > the
> > very lie that Living Marxism got sued for disproving! Truly beyond
> > belief.
> >
> > Playing for effect
> >
> > One final point. In the new journalism, emotions are shamelessly
> > exploited
> > for political effect. Consider this from the Reuters story:
> >
> > "Marshall, wiping tears from her eyes, said the judgment was 'important
> > for
> > the people who were in the camp.'" (Reuters, 3/124/00)
> > This is a crass emotional lie. Consider: Marshall, in reality the
> > representative of great power, is presented as frail, in need of
> > protection
> > (the weeping woman). By focusing our attention on her tears
> > (vulnerability)
> > Reuters engages our emotions and suspends our disbelief. Penny Marshall
> > has
> > been made real to us precisely the way a fictional character is made
> > real -
> > we identify with her emotions. Having identified with her, having
> > suspended
> > disbelief, we tend to receive with scant skepticism her comment that:
> >
> > " the judgment was 'important for the people who were in the camp."
> > How clever! A fiction within a fiction. Reuters has made up a weak,
> > defenseless Penny Marshall that we can believe in - the real P. Marshall
> > is
> > backed by the most powerful forces in Britain - and likewise Marshall
> > has her
> > own little fiction. For she has invented the Bosnian victims in that
> > non-existent 'death camp' where refugees came for food and where the
> > only
> > complaint was 'the weather is too hot.'
> >
> > No similar emotional pitch is made for the LM people. Marshall comes
> > alive
> > but they lie flat. And LM, which dared defend the victims of Ms.
> > Marshall's
> > lies - LM that has been crushed under an impossible financial burden -
> > LM
> > comes off as - a bully!
> >
> > Unbelievable.
> >
> > LET'S STOP BEATING AROUND THE BUSH, SHALL WE?
> >
> > Why didn't Britain just launch a missile attack on the LM offices like
> > the
> > one where they killed those dangerous reporters and makeup girls at
> > Serbian
> > TV, and get it over with? Hmmm? Afterwards, the media could endlesly
> > repeat,
> > like a mantra, that the LM people were lying propagandists who had
> > accidentally died as collateral damage in a revenge attack for which the
> > finger of responsibility must in the end ultimately and totally point
> > to...
> > Slobodan Milosevich.
> >
> > Lady's and gentlemmn, this is Jared Israel signing off, and that's show
> > business.
> >
> > Ms. Marshall is still weeping? Of course Ms. Marshall is weeping. She's
> > weeping all right, she's weeping all the way to the bank.
> >
> > Let's hope there's a Hell.
> >
> > ***
> >
> > Further reading on the Libel case...
> >
> > * 'English Libel law, a Disgrace to Democracy' by Mike Hume, editor of
> > LM
> > magazine. Mr. Hume remains defiant, and is looking for a job. Also, for
> > those
> > near London, details of an after-the-trial party, March 18th.
> > http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/hume/english.htm
> >
> > "The Truth vs. ITN - And Reuters" Includes the original LM article, over
> > which ITN sued, and the Reuters article on the trial.
> > http://www.emperors-clothes.com/images/bosnia/camp.htm
> >
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