Seven years later? George Kenney on the US state Department's Yugoslav desk said that these very pictures were the reason that President Clinton ordered air-strikes against Bosnian Serbs. This was propaganda that led directly to war.
>As for Jim Heartfield's comments (and I agree the gag order restraining him
>is abominable):
>>LM never held that Omarska was anything but a detention camp, and indeed
>> that the refugees in Trnopolje were plainly in a dangerous situation.
>
>In fact, LM in the original article plainly rejected the idea that Trnopolje
>was a prison of any kind. To repeat the key sentence of the original LM
>article:
>
>"There was no barbed wire fence
>surrounding Trnopolje camp. It was not a prison, and certainly not a
>'concentration camp', but a collection centre for refugees, many of whom
>went there seeking safety and could leave again if they wished."
>What could be plainer?
But the article supported just those points about *Trnopolje* (Omarska thrown in here to muddy the waters):
"Inar Gnoric, a Bosnian Muslim, told Vulliamy that she had come to Trnopolje of her own will, seeking safety. In the Guardian article of August 1992, Vulliamy quoted her as saying that 'The conditions are very hard here, but there was terrible fighting and we had no food at all. It is safer here, but we don't know what kind of status we have. We are refugees, but there are guards and the wire fence'.
Penny Marshall : 'I showed guards - Bosnian Serb guards - feeding the prisoners. I showed a small Muslim child who had come of his own volition. I didn't call them death camps. I was incredibly careful, but again and again we see that image being used.' (Independent, 5 August 1993) "
(Marshall of course neglected to add that her own film crew had concocted just these images.)
>the original LM
>article was an appalling lie, not just according to this jury, but according
>to the UN Hague tribunal and every other journalistic report.
All bow down before the Hague tribunal! This tribunal is plainly an instrument of war, not of justice. As to 'other journalistic reports', given that Nathan's own government blew up the Yugoslav Television Station these would presumably have similar difficulty finding the light of day. As it was, more balanced reports were common in Greece and the Balkans, and even in some Western sources, censorship apart.
>
>Jim has railed here against bad science and conspiracy fears about GM foods,
>but then he expects people to respect LM for promoting a false, malicious
>Serb apologist piece, and then continuing to defend it long after its been
>documented to be a complete lie.
Nathan adopts the tone of the ITN barrister, but as I have shown, the article is supported by testimony from eye-witnesses and from the journalists themselves. Nathan says "complete lie" "false" "malicious" "apologist" - rhetoric provides him with the certainty that facts will not supply.
>In the end, I see little difference between David Irving's holocaust denials
>and LM's denial that Trnopolje was a horrific prison for its prisoners.
This comment says more about Nathan than it does about LM. -- Jim heartfield