Of coarse everyone edits, but leaving out the prefacing remarks from the Serbian Unity Congress excerpts from the French book on Ruder Finn left out the best parts! The Muslim bashing, sourcing from Israeli and British "terrorism" experts. The conspiracy theory about the Vatican and the Germans. Yoshie, for someone familiar with much better writers like Sabrina Ramet, Julie Mertus and others, this is pretty weak. By all the reports I've been reading, in the "state run" newspapers and TV like the RTS that was bombed by NATO, journalists have been going out on strike is major numbers, stunning the mgmnt.
And btw, out of traditional anti-communist reasoning the SUC in an official statement, after last Sunday's elections, recognized the DOS/G18 Plus victory over SPS/JUL. Some truly bizarre political commercials, complete with dancing teenage female, from the JUL are on this Belgrade website. http://news.beograd.com/srpski/izbori_video.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/weblogindex/0,6799,364816,00.html For the latest news from Serbia see, http://www.freeb92.net/ and www.antiwar.com
Michael Pugliese
http://www.suc.org/~kosta/tar/knjige/book-yugoslav_truths_are_not_good_to_be _told.html PREFACE It is permitted to expel one people from the world community. To define it like a pack of rapists and extremists having nothing to envy to Nazis. It is permitted to raise the whole planet against this people, to prepare them tribunal recalling that of Nuremberg, to elaborate plans for military intervention and strategies for target bombardments. It is permitted to chase their state from the United Nations and to submit Serbs to the total economic embargo. This is permitted because that's what is done.
But, it is also permitted to think this fierceness lacks distinction. That one people has never been guilty in its ensemble. That one nation has history andmemory. That media manipulations exist. And that the emotion, overcoming the reason, is really a bad adviser.
This is permitted because it is the object of this text. It goes against everyone who feeds international public opinion. It is exposed to the criticism of those who don't want to change their decisions. It shows usual weaknesses of free and serene reasoning in front of passion and madness.
To think counter-current is yet another tradition of French thought, Voltaire's gift which is really precious. To doubt, isn't that the first condition for freedom?
But doubt is worthless if it remains only a mixture of suspicion and prudence. It has to be overcome. And, that can be fulfilled only by looking over the received ideas and by restarting the inquiry work from the facts and crude documents. The task is tough and immense. It is truly indispensable and urgent, if one is convinced that the actual outbreaks can provoke a cataclysm overtaking faraway the poor Balkans. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --BACK COVER There was Timisoara. Then was Gulf war. And came Yugoslavia. With the same stereotypes, same simplifications, same exaggerations. This time, we are concerned directly: European balance is in the game.
If it is confirmed that Germany is pulling strings behind the scenes in order to increase its zone of influence, if it is accurate that a coup is preparing in Moscow with fall of Yeltsin and arrival of national-communists, if it is proved that the United States are pursuing goals other than humanitarian, if it turns out that UN are victim of serious dysfunction, that news agencies have lost their impartiality, that free press is going to be darkened by militant blindness and, after all, if it is proved that Vatican is more powerful than others and that its interference in Yugoslav crisis is considerable, then it is important to know how and by whom we are manipulated. Jacques Merlino's inquiry explains why we arrived here and forces us to admit one simple reality: the information is one arm of war, used like that by those who are measuring its importance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --
AN IMPORTANT EXCERPT (THE INTERVIEW) The excerpt from the book is published in the following periodicals (as far as I know, maybe elsewhere too):
- A Monthly Jewish Review - Midstream, New York, April 1994 (Under title: "Stopping the war in Yugoslavia", Author: Dr. Yohanan Ramati) - Intelligence Digest, Great Britain, February 4, 1994 (Under title: "Manipulating the media")
- Jewish Chronicle, Great Britain, December 10, 1993 (Under title: "The secret weapon? PR", Author Nora Beloff) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- The following introduction to the interview is taken from the reference #1 (Written by Dr. Yohanan Ramati, Director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense):
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