Serbian conflict due to media-perpetuated myths oversights

Srdan Filipovic

dm staff columnist

After days of murderous bombing campaigns, NATO planes have run out of military targets. Bombs are now falling on schools and hospitals. Hundreds of civilians have already been killed, and thousands are wounded. Infrastructure supporting the civilized society of Yugoslavia is collapsing. According to NATO Secretary Solana, whose catch-all words are repeated a hundred times on CNN, "NATO is acting to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe."

Against the rising tide of protests worldwide, NATO leaders have to continue to fabricate Serb atrocities at an increasingly faster rate to maintain the "public support" that they never really had. Always faithful, and without a doubt intensely patriotic, the U.S. media is coming to the rescue. Let me point out the major fallacies. Once you understand them, it will be clear to you what kind of garbage passes as journalism in the U.S.

"Genocide" -- the favorite word of U.S. politicians describing Serbian action. Let's see. They report 2,000 dead in a year of fighting, victims of the 10-15,000 Kosovo Liberation Army terrorists (pardon - freedom fighters), with a solid stock of infantry weapons, courtesy of the Albanian drug Mafia and U.S. covert operations. The U.S. media adds all dead Albanians killed by Serbs, all Albanians killed by KLA for showing loyalty to Yugoslavia and add to that all Serbs killed by KLA. Then, they multiply it with an "upper threshold believability" factor, considering the number of actual dead bodies, to come up with a desired number. If you do the math, it is less then six per day. A genocide??!! No wonder that an increasing number of people in the U.S. now believe that the Holocaust never happened, if Kosovo is an example of genocide.

Another favorite myth of the Western media is the lack of Albanian autonomy. Here's the truth: autonomy was not taken away. As explained in my previous column, only the constitutional absurdity that Serbia did not have legal jurisdiction over Kosovo for almost 20 years (1971-89) has been removed. Autonomy of Kosovo is otherwise intact. The university has a full curriculum taught in Albanian. There is the Albanian Academy of Science and Arts, Albanian theaters, movies and newspapers. Schools K-12 are taught in Albanian, as well. Folks, there is no minority in the world with more autonomy than what Albanians have even today in Kosovo. Show me that they have this in any other country where they are a minority, and I'll eat my own column. For about 30 years, Albanians ruled the province, and Serbs and others were second-class citizens in their own country.

Atrocities -- to "justify" the true barbarian air bombardment of the sovereign country of Yugoslavia, the U.S. needs more and more "atrocities" committed by Serbs. Western media in Kosovo and Yugoslavia were supplying that by false reports, lies, exaggerations and fake "testimonies" by every present U.N. aid or other workers with a story of killed babies. But the obvious lies still had some credibility because they were there. Yugoslavia decided to expel them all. What they should have done from the first days of war in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, and especially now in Kosovo, is to arrest them and try them under martial law. The "journalists" of the type of Peter Jennings and Christiana Amanpour are the ones who should be before the U.N. War Crime Tribunal for hate crimes committed against the Serbs, by proven false reporting, the true war mongering, giving the NATO beast a first chance to lash out of its "defensive alliance" roll. Nevertheless, by expelling them, Yugoslavia has removed the last remnants of their credibility. Surely, they "bravely" continue their coverage of Serbian "atrocities", increasing its intensity at the same time as NATO is losing the support it initially claimed. But, at the end of their "reports," they have to say (oh, how they regret that!) that they do not have "independent" confirmation. Reality is, they don't have even the first report, much less any confirmation, even if non-independent. NISTA! ZERO! NADA! ZILCH!

If you ever heard the report by Finnish forensic experts that Serbs were invited to examine the famous case of 45 Albanians slaughtered execution-style at a close range, it is because it does not support the "truth". That Serbs are obviously "guilty" in this heinous crime was known to W. Walker, chief U.N. observer in Kosovo, seconds after he heard of it. Incidentaly, or perhaps not, he is a U.S. delegate. But, to the question if the U.S. media could sink any lower, or be more morally bankrupt than they are now after Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia (O.J., Monica) and Kosovo, I have only one answer. They always manage to surprise me.

Srdan Filipovic is a doctoral student in telecommunications from Belgrade, Yugoslavia.