-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- From http://home.pacbell.net/fakta/PBSlies.html {{<Begin>}} PBS Absurd Lies Prof. Raymond Kent TO: Jim Lehrer News Hour and PBS RE: Kosovo Update FROM: Raymond K. Kent Emeritus, History Department. University of California, Berkeley, CA. 94720 19.2.2000 Dear Producers of the "Kosovo Up-date." On three previous occasions, I have sent fairly detailed letters to the same Hour debunking in detail (a) The Bosnian mass-rape stories; {b}The romanticizing of the Kosovo Liberation Army; and {C) The utterly bogus account of the "smashing NATO success at Kosovo" promoted through an interview with an English parrot of Tony Blair. Independently of the News Hour I have sent to Bill Moyers and PBS an extensive critique of the "Srebrenica" presentation most recently. In case of (B) I predicted it to be a prelude to the U.S. support for the KLA, which it was. On two of the three occasions (B+C) I have received the same two-line letter from Jim Lehrer with the statement "I hear you." It has been, at best a joke, since no "retractions" or "amendments" ever followed. In writing you today, I am sure that the most I can hope to attain is an avuncular note from Jim Lehrer "I hear you," period. On the sham that passed for a "documentary" on Srebrenica, there has been no attempt to come to grips with the kind of celluloid journalism that does not deserve support. Thus, I am writing to you for the record. It will, sooner or later, expose a PBS/News Hour pattern. As Mr. Clinton likes to say "I am working on it." On Yugoslavia over the last decade, specifically, you have been and are willing partners in manipulating the American Peopleinto "buying" whatever deceit is being promoted by the Clinton Administration. With the radically changing nature of warfare, we the American people are footing the billions spent on egregious foreign policy stupidities around the world for which we will eventually come to pay in blood and destruction at home while many current foreign-policy "strategists" will retire in comfort, accountable to no one. The time is fast approaching when we will need to demand an approximation to honesty and integrity not only in the White House but in journalism as well, admittedly a much, much tougher task. The panel which you selected for the Kosovo up-date, consisting presumably of certified and hence impartial "experts," represents little more than promotion of propaganda and disingenuous asymmetry that has permeated the "air war" and its real consequences. The apparent assignment of the "Kosovo Update" was to so "level" {through a segment of Kosovo still containing a concentration of Serbs} any differences between the Serb and Albanian "extremists." In this way, the Serbs are not allowed to appear even remotely as victims" of anyone else's aggression. This "de-victimizing" formula has been used consistently in all the other parts of ex-Yugoslavia. Let us start first with Kosovska Mitrovica. and Northern Kosovo. At the end of the "air campaign" (an Orwellian term in its own right) there was a firm agreement between Sir Michael Jackson, NATO ground Commander at Kosovo, and the General commanding the Serb Third Army. One item in the agreement was that NATO would allow the return of limited Serb forces into Northern Kosovo. The reason for the accord? To protect the ancient Serb monasteries and the remaining concentration of Serbs in Kosovo against an Albanian attempt sure to come in order to attain a "pure" Albanian Kosovo. The attempt is now there to be seen but there are no Serb units around which would have been a real deterrent. No one on the panel mentioned the monasteries, preferring the "neo-Marxist " "economic explanation that "mineral resources" in the North are what it is more or less all about. For the Serbs, that slice of Kosovo is a combination of Jerusalem, the Alamo, and the thirteen statelets that sired the United States of America. No Serb government can "trade" this area off. Again, no mention of the "discounted" "feelings" of the Serbs as they are today, in the Civilized West, the "Untermenschen" of Nazi yore. Sub-humans can have no feelings, no right to self- determination, no right to self defense and no right to perceive their history in ways "unacceptable" as "atavistic" to the Enlightened West which is innocent of nationalisms and skeletons in multinational closets. Let us return to the astonishing asymmetry leaping out of the panel. There are about 9,000 Serbs on one bank of Ibar and 90,000 Albanians on the other. The first shots of the film part showed what appeared to be destitute and despondent Albanian women, portrayed presumably as the latest victims of Serb expulsion from their side of the Ibar River (EE-bar by the way not I-bar) (there is a moving song "Ibar Vodo" but I doubt that your well-paid experts would really understand the lyrics, with the possible exception of "Ivo"). Much of the panel commentary addressed itself to the recent expulsions or flights of the Albanian minority living on the Serb side of the Ibar Bridge. It somehow could not bring itself to give at least "equal time" to the fact that all the rest of Kosovo has been virtually "cleansed" of the Serbs, with only a few pockets remaining. To the Serbs should be added also the Roms. Greeks, Turks, Croats, Albanian Catholics and a few Jews. Some 180,000 Serbs have already gone to northern Kosovo and/or into Serbia proper from points south of Kosovska Mitrovica to avoid being exterminated in the presence of a massive NATO force "not trained" to keep order. While seeing the ubiquitous hand of "Milosevic" in the escalating violent stance of local Serbs, no one even mentioned the KLA. It is today a shadowy organization but it exists and its leaders are not only in real charge of great deal of Kosovo. They are orchestrating the last drive to expel all Serbs from Kosovo, their reasoning being that NATO will not allow the Serb Third Army to re-capture Kosovo, a view that is entirely correct in the short run. As for the argument that the "partition" of Kosovo would only insure a future conflict it could just as well be turned around. Failure to allow the Serbs and Albanians to divide Kosovo with the same overwhelming international support claimed for a non-existing "plural" and "Democratic" society is only a prelude to another war. To turn now to some of the Big Men at Kosovo. Bernard Kouchner, who is shedding crocodile tears for the West's failure to provide megadollars with which to create a civil society, just happens to have been France's most vocal and opinionated Serbophobe. This writer has personally listened to him on the French TV on a dozen occasions spewing his anti-Serb venom, totally brainwashed by the propaganda emanating from the media and governments in NATO since about the start of the 1990's. What this man has done and not done at Kosovo goes a long way to account for the extant mess. The military leader of the KLA, General Agim Ceku, is a major war criminal. He led the U.S.-trained Croat Army during August 1995 in the cleansing of over 200,000 Serbs from Krajina, the systematic looting and torching of Serb properties and the systematic execution of several thousand elderly Serbs who could not or would not leave their homes. The brother of the political head of KLA was just arrested with a large cachet of arms and some $800.000 in cash, the first such arrest by NATO. Many of the KLA leaders have been connected with drug trade, fact well known to NATO and intelligence agencies in the west. The point here is that while the panel "equalized" the Serb and Albanian "extremists" at Kosovska Mitrovica, it "forgot" the extremists in the larger picture. Also forgotten and abandoned by NATO and UN is Ibrahim Rugova, the poet who is the only true leader of Kosovo Albanians. It would appear, from the results, that Madeleine Albright had made a "deal" with Hakim Thaci. Against the Serbian refusal to sign, the KLA signature (initially refused) to a would-be Rambouillet Agreement in February 1998 provided her with the triggering mechanism to start the "air campaign." In return the KLA leadership was given the promise for gradual U.S. support toward independence in one form oranother. The dismal performance of NATO troops in preventing the de facto ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo is hardly an accident. Another omission by the panel is failure to present Kosovo after the return of the refugees for what it is - a land resembling the Wild West. It is a lawless society overwhelmed increasingly by the droves of Albanian mafiosi from Albania who no longer have to fear the Serb units guarding Kosovo's southern frontiers. They are ecstatic in "helping" the needy NATO troops by providing them with prostitutes from different Balkan countries and are behind an escalating intra-Albanian crime wave. In depicting "the Serbs" as an intolerant people, incapable of co-existing in the same landscape with other ethnicities, and not withstanding the lip service to "some moderate Serbs still remaining in Kosovo," the panel failed to mention that there are some 200,000 Kosovo Albanians living in Serbia proper as Yugoslav citizens, generally unmolested by the Serbs . About 80,000 of them live in the Greater Belgrade area alone. In fact, with 27 different ethnicities, Serbia is the only true plural society in the Balkans. There is one point on which it is possible to agree with the panel as a whole. A UN "rule" shored-up with large numbers of NATO or European troops outside of NATO cannot exit Kosovo soon. In the meantime, however, billions of dollars are being spent without a lasting, long-term resolution of the Kosovo Problem. No one has mentioned again that we have just built the largest US base in Europe in Kosovo. One could go on but I end on this point. Think about it in geo-political terms and think also of the law of unintended consequences. In conclusion, I have just learned that another PBS "up-date" is coming on Tuesday, 22nd February. It is called " What has the War in Europe Accomplished?" As the title's Freudian slip hints, it will be yet another (probably even more subtle) attempt to present the US/NATO intervention in Yugoslavia as a pioneering work of Humanitarian Ideology, some unfortunate by- products notwithstanding. It is obvious that we are in a year of Presidential Election. Mr. Gore, the heir apparent to the "Clinton Legacy," knows that he is vulnerable on the egregious mess of that intervention and its results. Hence, re-hash of the same unsubstantiated smears in the Srebrenica "documentary," the "Kosovo up-date," and the coming Tuesday presentation served to the American People. I shall watch it with care. It will be ripped to shreds if it assumes that we are all a bunch of uninformed imbeciles; and the deconstruction and demolition job will be spread all over the Internet and about a thousand E-mail recipients, most of whom will today be urged not to miss the Tuesday show and very many of whom will add their own appraisals. I will also send my own present and other relevant texts to all the running Presidential Candidates. Raymond K. Kent Copyright © 2000 by Raymond K. 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