"Western special forces were still training the guerrillas, as a result of decisions taken before the change of government in Yugoslavia." (BBC, Jan. 29, 2001) (1)

The 'guerrillas' in question are members of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA.

You remember the KLA, don't you?

They're the people NATO installed in power in Kosovo in June 1999 after which they dutifully drove out almost all Serbs, 'Gypsies', Jews and Slavic Muslims, or killed them. (9)

Bill Clinton and George W. are quite fond of the KLA. Senator Joseph Lieberman has said:

"[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." ('Washington Post' April 28, 1999)

The KLA, which goes under various names these days, has been dissolved more than once, yet continues to start new terrorist wars.

Aside from an invasion of southern Serbia, which it started a year ago, the KLA is also attacking Macedonia.

The KLA, or whatever they're called, has been fully disarmed but employs heavy weapons plus there are NATO combat helicopters providing air cover. (2)

MASS MEDIA PREPARES US FOR WAR

The way the mass media gets us ready for new terrorist wars is by marinating our heads in dreck.

Consider an article that appeared in the February 24th London 'Telegraph'. The body of the article concerns the KLA's latest terrorist attacks. But the headline reads:

"NATO FORCES FACE NEW THREAT IN BALKANS"

Huh? Is somebody threatening NATO? No, nobody is threatening NATO, although it richly deserves it.

The point of the title is to give readers the proper attitude prior to breaking the news that NATO's prize pet, the KLA, is again attacking Serbia and Macedonia.

Readers must be directed away from unacceptable if perfectly logical speculations such as that maybe the UN group in Kosovo, which made the KLA the official 'Kosovo Protection Corp', and NATO, which has been training the terrorists attacking Serbia and Macedonia, are behind these attacks. Oh no no no, says the title, these attacks threaten NATO, and gently nudges us away from treacherous waters.

Now for your consideration, here is the article's first sentence:


"The Kosovo war was fought to defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia'".
Amazing. This article is supposedly about the recent terrorist attacks. News reports are supposed to start by telling us who did it, what happened, where it happened, when and why.

Did Milosevic go out last night and launch terrorist attacks on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia plus southern Serbia?

By leading with this sentence, the 'Telegraph' dredges up all our memories of anti-Serb media stories past. It gives us the impression that whatever happens now stems from Milosevic. This is important for two reasons. First, Milosevic could not have done bad things, e.g., conducted a fight for a 'Greater Serbia', without mass support. Thus this sentence is actually attacking the entire Serbian resistance to NATO. Second, NATO and the pro-NATO leaders in Belgrade are trying to build public support for arresting Milosevic. They want to stage a show trial to convince the world that NATO is innocent and the Serbs are guilty for the breakup of Yugoslavia.

At the same time, this opening sentence tells readers that NATO is innocent of wrongdoing. If it had not bombed Yugoslavia and occupied Kosovo it would have failed to:

"defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia'"

Thus, like the headline, the first sentence puts us in the proper mental state for a constructive news experience: pro-NATO and on the lookout for Serbian dreams of expansion.

But wait a minute. Is the 'Telegraph' seriously saying NATO bombed Yugoslavia to stop a Milosevic dream?

Or did this dream take some earthly form? Was Milosevic trying to expand Serbia into Kosovo?

That must be the idea, but here we encounter a wee glitch. At the time NATO attacked, Kosovo was a province of Serbia. In fact Kosovo has been an internationally recognized province of Serbia since before World War I. The border between Kosovo (that is, Serbia) and the country now known as Albania is one of the oldest borders in Europe. Moreover, Kosovo is where Serbia started. Saying Serbia is expanding into Kosovo is similar to saying New York City is expanding into Manhattan.

This 'Greater Serbia' stuff was invented by the Austro-Hungarian Empire as war propaganda to justify its attack on little Serbia, an attack that became World War I.

You remember World War I.

The 'Greater Serbia' stuff was black humor back then - this elephant whining that it was threatened by the expansionism of a mouse.

And the 'Serbian expansionism' claim has not gained intellectual stature with time - but so what? It is not brains but money and might that count in the new American World Order; lucky thing.

The "Greater Serbia" nonsense was reissued in the early 1990s. Since then it has been foisted on us continuously by Western journalists, politicians and professors. It is the stock explanation for every conflict in Yugoslavia.

But despite all of Milosevic's expansionist dreaming, Serbia has never annexed any land. Not an acre. On the other hand, over a million Serbs and other Yugoslav loyalists have been driven from their lands and/or homes in other parts of Yugoslavia (e.g., the farmers who owned most of Bosnia's land because they farmed it). These refugees, mostly ethnic Serbs but also including many thousands of 'Gypsies,' ethnic Albanians, Bosnian Muslims and Croats, now live in Serbia.

"TO DEFEND THE UNION"

Yugoslavia, led by Serbia, fought defensively throughout the 1990s, resisting secessionists who launched armed attacks on Yugoslav forces and who depopulated vast areas of their Serbian inhabitants and other undesirables.

The two most extreme examples are the Krajina section of Yugoslavia, near Croatia (over 250,00 Serbs driven out by Croatian fascist troops under U.S. control in August 1995. If you add to this the Serbs, 'Gypsies' and others drive from Croatia itself, the total is probably over 500,00) and Kosovo (about 350,000 Serbs and others driven out following the NATO takeover in June 1999).

The goal of the secessionist attacks was to rip off parts of Yugoslavia and form mini-states under US and German domination. Serbs were the main target because they are the cement of Yugoslavia. The German Establishment has been fully aware of this fact for 100 years which is why Germany launched two world wars with attacks on the Serbs.

Thus throughout the 1990s Yugoslavia, led by Serbia, has in effect resisted Anglo-U.S. and German "dreams of expansion."

Serbia was in a position similar to that of the northern states during the U.S. Civil War. (7) The North fought to prevent the southern states from forming a slave nation under British domination and Serbia fought to prevent parts of Yugoslavia from forming racially 'pure' statelets under Western domination.

Western politicians and the mass media have accused Serbia of destabilizing the Balkans. What breathtaking cynicism. As anyone who has read European history knows, the existence of a state unifying the south Slavs ('Yugoslavia') is crucial to the stability of the Balkans and Russia and a factor for peace in Europe. Serbia's opposition to the splintering of Yugoslavia into weak Anglo-American and German neocolonies has nothing to do with "dreaming of a 'Greater Serbia'".

THE MEDIA Milosevic

To make the 'Greater Serbia' charge believable it has been linked to the accusation that Mr. Milosevic was and is motivated by hatred of non-Serbs.

The Western media has come up with a new, improved Milosevic to aid in digesting this idea. I encountered this Media Milosevic while watching a Fox News program during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Fox was interviewing a 'NY Times' reporter, an 'expert' on Yugoslavia. The reporter said:

"The ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, *as Milosevich would call it,* is a success."

So brief but so untrue.

If the reporter said, "Milosevic has popularized the term 'ethnic cleansing' and used it in Kosovo," it would have been a lie, but a straightforward lie. One could have asked: "Where's the proof?"

But the reporter presented his accusation as if he were mentioning a fact so well known it required no proof. Such casualness has great power for it makes the uninformed viewer (virtually all Americans) think: "So, Milosevic invented the idea of ethnic cleansing. One more reason to get that man behind bars."

The 'New York Times' has been replete with references to Milosevic as the author of 'ethnic cleansing.' For instance, on August 3, 1992, Anthony Lewis, the prolific Serb-baiter, wrote, in a 'Times' column syndicated in several other newspapers:

"President Bush compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler. I am against such analogies, because they cheapen the Holocaust. But if that one is to be used, it better fits the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, the inventor of 'ethnic cleansing.'" (Anthony Lewis, 'N.Y. Times,' August 3, 1992)

Emperor's Clothes uses a research tool called Lexis. With it we can scan the world press going back 20 years in a few seconds. If a statement has been published in the media, we'll find it.

I did an exhaustive search of 'N.Y. Times' articles. The 'N.Y. Times' has never quoted Milosevic saying one word in favor of 'ethnic cleansing'. Never.

How could Milosevic call for 'ethnic cleansing' without using the words?

The reporter interviewed by Fox (and Mr. Lewis, and a host of others) was simply lying - or to be more accurate, he was not only lying, he was presenting his lie in a manner calculated to make the viewer feel that everyone but himself or herself of course knew it was true.

The term 'ethnic cleansing' has an interesting history. It was first used in Kosovo in the early 1980s. Albanian secessionists were waging a terrorist campaign, driving tens of thousands of Serbs from Kosovo. (4) The 'N.Y. Times' covered this nightmare in a news story in 1982. The 'Times' reporter interviewed a Yugoslav official in Kosovo, a man of Albanian ancestry, who said:

"'The [Albanian] nationalists have a two-point platform...first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania." ("N.Y. Times', July 12, 1982)

For a bit more on the history of the use of 'ethnic cleansing' to smear the victims of 'ethnic cleansing' see footnote (6) at the end.

EVERYBODY'S DOING IT

The accusations against Mr. Milosevic (i.e., against Bad Serbs) have come from all sides. Liberal and even leftist writers have taken part in - and even led - these attacks. For example, there is the Spanish author, Juan Goytisolo, who views himself an icon of broad-mindedness. During the bombing of Yugoslavia, Mr. Goytisolo wrote a piece for the London 'Independent' attacking a phenomenon which in his title he broadmindedly called "THE VIRUS THAT HAS INVADED THE LEFT." (His emphasis) This virus consisted of writers who opposed NATO's bombing of the Serbs.

Establishing his credentials in the first line, Mr. Goytisolo assures us that: "NO ONE detests aerial bombardments more than I do". (His emphasis.) This is encouraging, and once said, Mr. Goytisolo gets down to business, which is to explain why he does not detest the aerial bombing of Serbia:

"Since 1992, it has been apparent to anyone familiar with the Serbian ultra-nationalist ideology embraced by Milosevic that the Kosovo ethnocide was inevitable...Full of hatred and scorn for the Bosnian Muslim and the Kosovar Albanian, [Milosevich's views] did not differ greatly from the anti-Semitic diatribes of the Nazis." (4-21-1999, London 'Independent')

Please note that Mr. Goytisolo does not provide evidence for his charge that anti-Albanian ethnocide has taken place in Kosovo. Rather he acts as if the existence of this supposed ethnocide is an established fact and concerns himself only with the question why it has happened. The answer, he says, is Mr. Milosevic and his supposed ideology of hate.

The problem is, at the time Mr. Goytisolo wrote these words many people said the ethnocide charge was a lie. And clearly, were the ethnocide charge a lie, the hunt for Serbian motivations for carrying it out would carry less weight.

Since NATO took over Kosovo in June, 1999, it has employed an army of forensic experts in Kosovo. These folks have dug up half the province, accompanied by frequent press conferences in which various NATO and War Crimes Tribunal types promised to find mass graves with tens of thousands of victims of Serbian brutality. In fact, they have produced none - no mass graves, no Serbian atrocities. Digging up individual graves all over Kosovo, they found fewer than 3000 bodies. NATO has said 2000 people died before the bombing of Yugoslavia, that is, before the supposed 'ethnocide' took place. That leaves 1000. We know that hundreds of people died in NATO bombing and hundreds more in fighting on the ground between the KLA and Yugoslav troops.

After the most exhaustive hunt in history, NATO has produced exactly no evidence that Serbian troops massacred ethnic Albanians.

The accusation of ethnocide was a fabrication. (5)

Why were Goytisolo and others able to get away with writing articles that assumed the truth of this lie? Because the mass media barraged us with sound bites, voiceovers, gruesome film footage, interviews with 'victims.' Constantly repeated, these established the ethnocide lie as an emotional truth; then people like Goytisolo could embellish without fear of repercussions. The Serbs were fair game.

Mr. Goytisolo says he knew the (nonexistent) ethnocide would happen because he was familiar with Milosevic's "ultra-nationalist ideology" involving "hatred and scorn for the Bosnian Muslim and the Kosovar Albanian" not unlike the "anti-Semitic diatribes of the Nazis."

Was this ideology, like the nonexistent drive for 'Greater Serbia', also limited to Mr. Milosevic's dreams? Or was Milosevic's ideology written down somewhere?

If it was not written down, then how did Goytisolo become familiar with it?

If it was written down, where? In a book? In the text of a speech? Is Slobodan Milosevic at least quoted in one single news report actually saying hateful things about Muslims and ethnic Albanian 'Kosovars'?

Goytisolo is silent. That is really too bad because in all the interviews and speeches I have read Mr. Milosevic attacks Nazi-type ideologies and calls for national brotherhood.

Could it be that Mr. Goytisolo is reading stuff written by that Media Milosevic mentioned above? The one who doesn't exist?

To be fair, in the 'Independent' article Mr. Goytisolo does offer some monstrous quotes to support his charge. The first is from Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the Fascist dictator of Spain. Another is from Adolph Hitler. Then we get more Franco, and finally...another from Hitler. And then Mr. Goytisolo lays down his trump card: Milosevic, he declares, is just like them!

Alas, it doesn't sit right. If only Goytisolo could provide some word, some deed, some sort of indication of "hatred and scorn" for the Muslim or the 'Kosovar'.

Goytisolo provides: nothing. Could it be he was really thinking about Franco and Hitler all that time, and it just came out 'Milosevic'?

THE INFAMOUS SPEECH

For years we have been told Milosevic launched the drive for 'Greater Serbia'" at a speech he gave in Kosovo in 1989.

The only thing that nobody who attacks the speech ever does is quote it. We have posted the speech on Emperor's Clothes. (3) Below are two excerpts.

First, here is what Milosevic said about non-Serbian citizens of Serbia, including of course ethnic Albanians and Muslims of varying ethnicity:

"Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage...Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect. The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people. Therefore, all people in Serbia who live from their own work, honestly, respecting other people and other nations, are in their own republic."

It has been estimated that the audience for Milosevic's 1989 speech was as high as one million people. If Milosevic was going to whip the throngs into a frenzy over his ''dream of a 'Greater Serbia''', this was the time to do it.

"For as long as multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been the relations between different nations. The threat is that the question of one nation being endangered by the others can be posed one day -- and this can then start a wave of suspicions, accusations, and intolerance, a wave that invariably grows and is difficult to stop. This threat has been hanging like a sword over our heads all the time. * Internal and external enemies of multi-national communities are aware of this and therefore they organize their activity against multinational societies mostly by fomenting national conflicts.* At this moment, we in Yugoslavia are behaving as if we have never had such an experience and as if in our recent and distant past we have never experienced the worst tragedy of national conflicts that a society can experience and still survive."

Smear campaigns are often successful because most people are reasonably honest and make the understandable if mistaken assumption that everyone is like them. Thus when a well-known and supposedly broad-minded writer (like Goytisolo) says Milosevich has an ideology similar to the Nazis, people are inclined to think, "Where there's smoke, there's fire," i.e., there must be some truth to the charge. But the truth is it is a bare-faced lie.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN SOUTHERN SERBIA

France, one of the lesser "external enemies of multi-national communities," has squealed on two of the greater enemies, the U.S. and Britain, informing newsmen that:

"NATO countries were discussing whether to send troops into a tense southern Serbia buffer zone, but the alliance flatly denied such a move was being considered.

"'The question of whether it is necessary to deploy an international military force in this region is now being discussed among the allies,' French Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said...

"French diplomatic sources said discussion of a force was prompted by concern over the safety of EU [European Union] monitors." ('Reuters', 3-1-2001)

You remember Southern Serbia, don't you? That's one of the places which the KLA, under one of its names, is invading. It is the violence resulting from this KLA invasion which, if the French happen to be telling the truth, is to serve as NATO's excuse to invade southern Serbia as well.

Do you remember the KLA? That's that terrorist group which the BBC said "Western special forces were still training." But don't worry, it's OK for the West to be training these terrorists because Senator Lieberman says they're fighting for ''American values'' and anyway it's being done "as a result of decisions taken before the change of government in Yugoslavia", in other words, while Milosevic was still running things and I'm sure you remember Milosevic.

Don't you?

Come on how many times do I have to explain he's the guy who hates everyone and is always dreaming about attacking other people's countries remember? No no not Bill Clinton. Not Tony Blair for Pete's sake. Not Junior Bush --- Milosevic. He's behind that violence in southern Serbia which is threatening our boys. We need to send more troops in there and kick some serious butt and then put that guy somewhere he can't do any more harm against our Way of Life and - and - and - and...

So many lies. So little time.

-- Jared Israel 3-2-2001

Further reading

1) The BBC tells all. Anyway, it tells a lot. See: 'Diplomats Admit NATO Backs KLA Invasion of Inner Serbia' at  http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/admi.htm.

2) On NATO helicopters providing air cover for the KLA invasion of southern Serbia, see 'Pentagon Dogs'; at  http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/tika/dogs.htm

3) Milosevic's 1989 Kosovo speech can be read at  http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/milosaid.html

4) In the interview "Kosovo: Nightmare with the Best Intentions" two Serbian-Americans tell what it was like in Kosovo during the 1970s and 1980s. Most informative.  http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/tika.htm

5) The following are useful articles on the myth of Albanian genocide in Kosovo:

* Gen. Mac Kenzie commanded the UN forces in Bosnia. He examines the Kosovo mass graves baloney in 'Where have all the bodies gone?' by General (retired) Lewis MacKenzie at  http://emperors-clothes.com/news/mack.htm

* This is the report of the press conference held by Spanish Forensic experts who walked off the job in Kosovo and criticized NATO. 'Spanish experts see no Serbian genocide in Kosovo'
by Pablo Ordaz  http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/spanish.htm

* On the significance of the Spanish forensic experts: 'Spanish Forensic Experts' Report - A Commentary' by Jared Israel at  http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/sp-comment.htm

CLICK TO RETURN TO WHERE YOU WERE READING

6) Much could be written about the macabre history of 'ethnic cleansing'. The term derives from the racism of those ethnic Albanian secessionists, schooled by Hitler during World War II, who looked (and still look) upon Serbs, 'Gypsies' and Jews as filth - hence the desire to create that curiously phrased entity, the "ethnically clean Albanian republic." (N.Y. Times, July 12, 1982; to read this article in full, go to  http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/benworks/1980news.html#BM9)

The term was picked up by psychological warfare experts advising neo-Fascist Croatian secessionists in 1991-1992. In a truly Orwellian touch, spokesmen for the Fascist Croatians claimed 'ethnic cleansing' was the program of the very Serbs they were at that time driving from ancestral lands in and near Croatia.

But the term was little known in the West until Bush, Sr. used it in a press conference, August 6, 1992. There he declared a major escalation in the U.S. anti-Serbian policy, supposedly in reaction to a TV program which had been shown some 20 minutes before the Conference. The TV program broadcast what were supposed to be pictures of a (nonexistent) Serb death camp.

(Emperor's Clothes has produced JUDGMENT, a movie which proves that these infamous pictures of what appeared to be emaciated victims of a death camp were actually doctored from staged footage of a humanitarian refugee center. If you have not seen this movie and you want to know the truth, I urge you to buy a copy. If the standard price of $20 plus shipping is too much please tell us. You may pay whatever you can afford. See  http://emperors-clothes.com/Film/judge.htm )

At the August 6th, 1992, Press Conference President Bush declared:

"The [Serb] aggressors and extremists pursue a policy - a vile policy - of ethnic cleansing".

Thus President Bush planted in the public mind the notion that Serb leaders had invented a concept which was actually rooted in 'a vile policy' of eliminating the Serbs, the 'black people of the Balkans.' During the following year, this blaming-the-victim refrain was promoted in literally thousands of newspaper articles and television programs until it became nearly impossible for ordinary people to recall when they first 'learned' that ethnic cleansing was a concept enthusiastically endorsed by the Serbs, its primary victims. - CLICK TO RETURN TO ARTICLE

7) See 'Abe Lincoln and Slobodan Milosevic' by economist Jude Wanniski  http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/abe.htm

8) For Emperor's Clothes articles on Macedonia go to  http://emperors-clothes.com/mac/listm.htm

9) Regarding the charge that the UN and NATO have been and are still sponsoring a terrorist war against Macedonia, see "SORRY VIRGINIA BUT THEY ARE NATO TROOPS, NOT 'REBELS'", by Jared Israel at
 http://emperors-clothes.com/mac/times.htm

10) 'Driven from Kosovo, Jewish leader charges NATO complicity,'
at  http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/ceda.htm