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The Media has Second Thoughts on Kosovo

On October 27, a group of civilians was attacked by a mob whilst being transported by NATO and the United Nations. This is by no means the worst case of violence that has occurred in Kosovo since its occupation by the forces of the New World Order - numerous Serbs, Albanians, Gypsies and even a UN worker who spoke Serbian (or another Slavic language - but this is a mere detail to the Albanian racists whom NATO has installed in power) - have been killed. But the media reaction to this atrocity is particularly telling. Here is a quote from one government propaganda department:

"At least 18 Serbs were slightly injured in Wednesday's huge melee in the middle of Pec that lasted from afternoon until late in the evening. Nineteen vehicles were burned, including one belonging to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) which organized the movement of the refugees.

"The incident played into the hands of Serbs who maintain the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo is not up to the task of protecting them from reprisals by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority."

There are three obvious points in this statement which distinguish it as propaganda. The phrase "played into the hands of" is a way of saying that someone is telling the truth without actually saying so. The FBI were accused of "playing into the hands of" David Koresh's paranoia at Waco by confirming it. Secondly, if "Serbs" really are saying that KFOR is "not up to the task" of protecting minorities in Kosovo, they are mild-mannered critics indeed. We would put it a little more strongly. NATO and the United Nations are actively assisting a campaign of ethnic terror more wide-reaching than anything carried out by the Yugoslav forces before, and even during, NATO's attack earlier this year. Finally, the word "reprisals" is slipped in to describe violence by the KLA and its supporters. Killing Serbian and other civilians is not reprisals, it is murder. Serbian civilians did not start the violence in Kosovo, it was the KLA. But attacks on Albanian civilians by Serbian police, soldiers and nationalists was not revenge either. If A assaults B, and C murders D, C is not engaged in a reprisal.

As we said at the time, rumors of the genocide of Albanians were greatly exagerated. Now, six months too late, the fearless bloodhounds of the media are catching up with us: Cook accused of misleading public, The Times, Oct 31.

The number of bodies found in "mass graves" is either 187 or 505, depending on which branch of the world government police you choose to believe. The Spanish pathologist leading one of the teams desperately trying to find evidence to justify NATO's massacre admitted "This includes lots of strange deaths that can't be blamed on anyone in particular". In other words, there is no evidence for the allegations of NATO and its puppets in the International Tribunal.

It should not be thought that the New World Order is inherently pro- or anti- any particular race or ethnic group in Yugoslavia. During the mid-eighties, the United Nations covered up the murders of civilians by Serbian irregulars by destroying evidence, and provided Serbian war criminals like Karadzic with protection. It enforced an arms embargo against Yugoslavia which greatly favored the Serbian armed forces, enabling them to massacre defenseless Bosnians and Croatians. A recent headline apologetically claimed UN Unwittingly Aided Genocide of Bosnians by Serbs at Srebrenica. Woops! The right-wing argument, defended in Antiwar.com and elsewhere, that the New World Order is against nationalism is misguided. Though our rulers are internationalist, they promote nationalism for us, because it keeps us divided. If this can't be achieved by propaganda, they will commit massacres to promote ethnic tension. Which group they murder, and which group they support, depends on circumstances, as long as the result turns one group against another.

Some parts of the liberal elite seem to be having second thoughts. Alice Mahon, MP, is quoted in the above article as saying "When you consider that 1,500 civilians or more were killed during Nato bombing, you have to ask whether the intervention was justified". This is a utilitarian argument. Alice Mahon's argument is not against utilitarianism per se, but against its misapplication. She implies that if you could prevent the murder of a number of civilians by killing a smaller number of equally innocent civilians, you would be justified in doing so. More concretely, many people believe that the Allied bombing of Germany was justified by the Nazi concentration camps. The reaction to recent expressions of mildly revisionist views like Pat Buchanan's shows how widely and deeply held is the belief in world war two as a crusade for humanity. The massacres of Germans in 1944-45 did not help end the Nazi holocaust, and were not intended to. If anything, they strengthened German support for the government. Even if the charges of genocide against the Serbian army were true, this would not justify dropping cluster bombs on Novi Sad market. The NATO attack on Yugoslavia provoked expulsions of Albanians, not prevented them, and again, were not intended to prevent them. But even if they were, this is no justification whatever. Utilitarianism treats people as a means to an end, as exchangeable, equivalent units, and should be rejected whether it is being applied correctly or not.

In summary, our analysis of the Kosovo crisis has been proven correct. There is no evidence of Serb atrocities. Most of the violence was caused by NATO. The best sources of accurate information on the situation was, and still is, dissident websites like Emperors-clothes.com. For a class analysis which explains how the Yugoslav disaster emerged from the need of capitalism to crush the class struggle, our own article has not been bettered: /yugoslavia.html.