A picure perfect example of Tanjug Newspeak


Another Yugoslav army unit ordered to pull out of Kosovo-Metohija May 18, 1999


BELGRADE, May 17 (Tanjug) - In line with the Yugoslav Supreme Command's decision to pull out some of the army and police effectives from Kosovo-Metohija, the Pristina Corps commander has ordered another unit to prepare and start withdrawing to its garrison outside that province of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia.


Serbian Radio and Television quoted Pristina Corps Commander Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic as saying on Monday that the operation against the ethnic Albanian terrorists ended in late April in a defeat for the terrorists, establishing stable security in the province.


This has made unnecessary the further presence of a part of the effectives of the Pristina Corps there, prompting the Supreme Command's decision of May 9 to pull some of them out, Lazarevic said.


"Since that day, the Pristina Corps has been engaged in a specific operation of returning part of its forces to barracks outside the province," he explained.


He added, however, that NATO is continuing its daily savage air strikes, now in their 55th day, targetting mainly civilians - towns and villages in Kosovo-Metohija.

Zoja

As usual my posts are comming from the US or UK
sources; this one (just to inform ignorant americans and others) is from the UK newspaper, which is
one of the leading one:

http://www.independent.co.uk/stories/B1905911.html

By David Usborne in New York

AMERICA IS not a nation of geographers. After the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit by missiles because intelligence stuff used out-of-date maps, we now learn that the US Postal Service cannot locate the Grand Canyon.

A new series of 60-cent stamps - 100 million of tham - have just left the presses. They show the world's largest and most famous hole in the
ground alongside three words, printed in the lower right hand corner,
"Grand Canyon, Colorado".

As almoust any (!?) American schoolchild will tell you, the Canyon, though carved by the Colorado river, is in Arizona.

In Colorado, at least? they are amused. The Governor of the state, Bill Owens, remarked through a spokesman: " Colorado already has so many national treasures that we would not want to steal the only one Arizona has to offer."

The cost of printing the stamps, now likely to be ditched, is put at $500,000(£310,000).

A more sinister precaution is the statement issued by NATO that it
cannot guarantee the security of Red Cross and UN aid workers who
are returning to Kosovo this week after being evacuated when the
bombing campaign began. Admitting that there had already been
“perhaps hundreds of innocent casualties” from the bombing, a NATO
spokesmen suggested that Red Cross and UN workers, too, could
become collateral damage.

Here is expressed both the real indifference of the imperialists to the
suffering of the Albanian population which remains in Kosovo, and their
concern that UN and Red Cross workers may report conditions far
different from those claimed in NATO propaganda and parroted, for the
most part, in the American media.

Should I post the whole article?

From the (American site)
http://www.wsws.org


Further doubt cast on US claims of
genocide in Kosovo

By Martin McLaughlin
18 May 1999

There are growing questions about the claims by US and NATO
officials, accepted uncritically in the media for more than a month, that
Yugoslav forces have carried out genocide against the Albanian
population of Kosovo.

These claims have been intensified in the wake of recent bombing
atrocities such as the destruction of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and
the killing of as many as 100 Albanian Kosovars by NATO bombs in the
village of Korisa.

In an effort to excuse their own crimes, US and British officials in
particular have repeatedly compared the actions of Serbian forces to the
Nazi Holocaust.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a speech in Aachen, German May
13, called the bombing campaign “a just war against the most evil form of
genocide since my father's generation defeated the Nazis."

Hillary Clinton, during a visit to Kosovar Albanian refugees in
Macedonia, said their suffering reminded her of Schindler's List and
Sophie's Choice, both of which concern the Nazi mass murder of the
Jews.

US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, speaking on a television
interview program Sunday, dismissed Yugoslav criticism of the bombing
of Korisa, in which 100 Kosovar Albanians were killed, declaring: “For
the Serbs to lament publicly about the deaths of these refugees is almost
tantamount to Adolf Eichmann complaining about allied forces bombing
the crematoriums.”

And finally President Clinton himself, in a speech May 13 to an audience
of veterans in Washington DC. Clinton admitted that the whole premise
of the NATO propaganda campaign against the Milosevic regime was
false, that “ethnic cleansing is not the same as the ethnic extermination of
the Holocaust.” But then he reiterated the claim that “There are
thousands of people that have been killed, systematically, by the Serb
forces. There are a hundred thousand people who are still missing."

None of these sweeping assertions was accompanied by any evidence,
such as aerial photographs and other documentation which could be
provided by the massive electronic and satellite surveillance which the US
intelligence services maintain over Kosovo.

Instead, the US-NATO claims were undermined by a dispatch published
May 17 from an eyewitness on the ground, Canadian journalist Paul
Watson, the correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Kosovo.

While the Clinton administration claims that 100,000 Albanian men have
disappeared and are likely dead, murdered by the Yugoslav military and
Serbian nationalists, Watson found many young Albanian men, displaced
but otherwise unmolested, at the village of Svetjle in northern Kosovo.

Svetjle is one of the Kosovo Albanian villages that, according to NATO,
has been depopulated by Serb forces who committed genocide. While
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said that Serbian killings of
Albanians had been so widespread that “you don't see males in their 30s
to 60s,” Watson had no difficulty seeing them.

When he arrived at Svetjle for a second visit in a week, “hundreds of
young men are everywhere, strolling along the dirt roads or lying on grass
on a spring day.

“So many fighting-age men in a region where the Kosovo Liberation
Army fought some of its fiercest battles against Serbian forces are a
challenge to the black-and-white versions of what is happening here.

“By their own accounts, the men are not living in a concentration camp,
nor being forced to labor for the police or army, nor serving as human
shields for Serbs.

“Instead, they are waiting with their families for permission to follow
thousands who have risked going back home to nearby villages because
they do not want to give up and leave Kosovo.”

Watson visited the village without a police or military escort or any
official Serbian monitor, and he spoke to Albanian refugees who
themselves said they had not had any conflicts with the police since they
were allowed to return to the area around their village.

“For the month that we've been here, the police have come only to sell
cigarettes,” one Albanian said, “but there hasn't been any harassment.”

While the American media continues to give publicity to increasingly
unbelievable estimates that more than 90 percent of the Kosovo Albanian
population has been driven from their homes, Watson describes a
population that went into hiding during the first two weeks of the NATO
bombing, but is now emerging..

He writes: “Thousands of other ethnic Albanians are coming out of hiding
in forests and in the mountains, hungry and frightened and either going
back home or waiting for police permission to do so.

“While Serbian police seize the identity documents of Kosovo Albanians
crossing the border into Albania or Macedonia, government officials in
Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, issue new identity cards to ethnic
Albanians still here.”

Watson interviewed an Albanian political activist, Fatmir Seholi of the
Kosovo Democratic Initiative, who denied the allegations of genocide
against Albanians which have been the principal pretext for the NATO
bombing.

“As an Albanian, I am convinced that the Serbian government and
security forces are not committing any kind of genocide,” he said.

“In a war, even innocent people die,” he explained. “In every war, there
are those who want to profit. Here there is a minority of people who
wanted to steal, but that's not genocide. These are only crimes.”

Seholi is a political opponent of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army,
which killed his father in 1997 and publicly justified it on the grounds of
cooperation with the Yugoslav authorities. But it is significant that Watson
himself, who has been in Kosovo throughout the war, gives the same
description of the attacks by Serb nationalists on the Albanian
population, and their eventual end.

“After waves of looting, arson, killings and other attacks turned many of
Kosovo's cities into virtual ghost towns, the government took steps to
restore order, and ethnic Albanians began to move back, often under
police protection,” he writes.

“Of an estimated 100,000 people living in Pristina, roughly 80,000 are
ethnic Albanians and a quarter of these are displaced people from the
Podujevo area living with relatives...”

Watson's report is thus in stark contrast with the statements of Clinton,
Blair & Co., alleging systematic, ongoing mass murder by the Yugoslav
government. It follows a similar series of reports published earlier this
month in the New York Times.

These reports suggest that the claims of genocide in Kosovo, which have
provided the essential pretext for the NATO bombing, are a deliberate
and enormous hoax. This attempt to delude and stampede public opinion
will be exposed with devastating political consequences for its authors
once it becomes possible for outside observers to make a more
systematic assessment of the conditions in Kosovo.

The Clinton administration is already making preparations to counter such
exposures. The White House announced that it has hired a public
relations coordinator for the Kosovo refugee campaign, veteran political
operative Leslie Dach, to work on a 30-day contract. One White House
official told the press, "There's a feeling that the next month is critical in
terms of American public opinion."

A more sinister precaution is the statement issued by NATO that it
cannot guarantee the security of Red Cross and UN aid workers who
are returning to Kosovo this week after being evacuated when the
bombing campaign began. Admitting that there had already been
“perhaps hundreds of innocent casualties” from the bombing, a NATO
spokesmen suggested that Red Cross and UN workers, too, could
become collateral damage.

Here is expressed both the real indifference of the imperialists to the
suffering of the Albanian population which remains in Kosovo, and their
concern that UN and Red Cross workers may report conditions far
different from those claimed in NATO propaganda and parroted, for the
most part, in the American media.

See Also:
After Korisa bomb atrocity
The evolution of a NATO lie
[17 May 1999]
An interview with Professor Robert Hayden
NATO's claim of 100,000 murdered in Kosovo--a rebuttal
[17 May 1999]
What really has happened in Kosovo
[14 May 1999]
War in the Balkans
[WSWS Full Coverage]

Top of page

Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-mail.

To Ciuldo:

"All other opinions except Guido's, Emina's, Jack's, Zoja's, DS's, Pete's and Rosies' are null and void due to the fact that their authors lack the necessary insight and intelligence required to discern reality from propaganda."

So why do you participate in that messageboard? If you don`t care about other`s opinions -use e-mail to communicate with your "comrades". And, BTW, I lived in USSR, and I know, how we treated our propaganda. We at least knew, that was propaganda. And made no trust to it. And if we were so brainwashed, how could we even think to change anything, eh? Too many west people seem to be unable to recognize their own propaganda - too sad...


"P.S. NATO is kicking butt and not losing. There have been no bombs dropped on my city. Nothing in my country has been damaged"
Well, it doesn`t matter. Vietnam War was lost not due high losses. It was, militarily, hopeless - hostile population, rough terrain, jungle... Just like Serbia (except jungle). So, NATO isn`t losing - but isn`t winning. Morally, NATO allready lost that war, becouse it`s poinless. For many reasons. Actually, NATO can fall apart after the war.

"America and the world

Every day the American government is murdering people in one country
or another. On Wednesday, US warplanes bombed a Bedouin
encampment in northern Iraq, killing 12 people, two of them children.
The nomadic herdsmen were hit by laser-guided bombs which also killed
200 head of cattle. The US command at Incirlik, Turkey claimed that US
jets had bombed seven missile sites after they were targeted by Iraqi
radar.

The increasingly aggressive and reckless use of military power is
contributing to a radical change in how the United States is seen around
the world. The most spectacular expression has come in the mass
anti-American protests in China. But there are more and more
expressions of concern, even from sources long friendly to the American
political establishment, about the direction of American foreign policy.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group frequently allied with
the US State Department, sent a letter May 13 to NATO
Secretary-General Javier Solana, raising "serious concerns about whether
NATO is targeting civilian objects," including hospitals, power plants,
media facilities and factories unrelated to military production.

A columnist in the Los Angeles Times--a professor of international law
in that city--warned that NATO officials, military officers and even
ordinary soldiers could be prosecuted by a UN war crimes tribunal
which has jurisdiction over crimes such as "wanton destruction of cities,
towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity."

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, on a
visit to Yugoslavia, publicly criticized the conduct of the NATO bombing
campaign, calling the civilian casualties "extremely high." NATO
warplanes dropped anti-personnel cluster bombs on Nis while Robinson
was riding through the city. Two schools were hit and at least a dozen
people were wounded."


wsws.org

The Orwellian language of war

"In times of war,
truth is the
first casualty"


By Norman Solomon
SPECIAL TO MSNBC




When terrorists attack us, they’re villains. When
we attack them, we’re retaliating. That’s an easy
example of the doublespeak heard from
government and the media when a nation goes to
war. In this excerpt from “The Habits of Highly
Deceptive Media,” Norman Solomon, takes a
lesson from George Orwell to explain the logic of
war reporting.


When people decry civilian deaths caused by the U.S.
government, they’re aiding propaganda efforts. In sharp
contrast, when civilian deaths are caused by bombers who
hate America, the perpetrators are evil and those deaths are
tragedies.
When they put bombs in cars and kill people, they’re
uncivilized killers. When we put bombs on missiles and kill
people, we’re upholding civilized values.
When they kill, they’re terrorists. When we kill, we’re
striking against terror.


KEEPING HATREDS STRAIGHT
At all times, Americans must be kept fully informed
about who to hate and fear. When the United States found
Osama bin Laden useful during the 1980s because of his
tenacious violence against the Soviet occupiers in
Afghanistan, he was good, or at least not bad-but now he’s
really bad.
No matter how many times they’ve lied in the past,
U.S. officials are credible in the present. When they vaguely
cite evidence that the bombed pharmaceutical factory in
Khartoum was making ingredients for nerve gas, that should
be good enough for us.
Advertisement


The Habits of Highly
Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and
Lies in Mainstream
by Norman Solomon

Other books by
Norman Solomon


Might doesn’t make right-except in the real world,
when it’s American might. Only someone of dubious
political orientation would split hairs about international law.
When the mass media in some foreign countries serve
as megaphones for the rhetoric of their government, the
result is ludicrous propaganda. When the mass media in our
country serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of the U.S.
government, the result is responsible journalism.
Unlike the TV anchors spouting the government line in
places like Sudan and Afghanistan, ours don’t have to be
told what to say. They have the freedom to report as they
choose. BUT:

LESSONS FROM ORWELL
“Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip,”
George Orwell observed, “but the really well-trained dog is
the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.”
Orwell noted that language “becomes ugly and
inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the
slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have
foolish thoughts.” And his novel 1984 explained that “the
special function of certain Newspeak words ... was not so
much to express meanings as to destroy them.”
National security. Western values. The world
community. War against terrorism. Collateral damage.
American interests.
What’s so wondrous about Orwellian processes is that
they tend to be very well camouflaged — part of the normal
scenery. Day in and day out, we take them for granted. And
we’re apt to stay away from uncharted mental paths.
************************ In 1984, Orwell wrote about the conditioned reflex of
“stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any
dangerous thought ... and of being bored or repelled by any
train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical
direction.”********

DOUBLETHINK DEFINED


Orwell described “doublethink” as the willingness “to
forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then,
when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from
oblivion for just so long as it is needed.”
In his afterword to 1984, Erich Fromm emphasized
“the point which is essential for the understanding of
Orwell’s book, namely that ‘doublethink’ is already with us,
and not merely something which will happen in the future,
and in dictatorships.”
Fifty-three years ago, Orwell wrote an essay titled
“Politics and the English Language.” Today, his words
remain as relevant as ever: “In our time, political speech and
writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”
Repression and atrocities “can indeed be defended,”
Orwell added, “but only by arguments which are too brutal
for most people to face, and which do not square with the
professed aims of political parties. Thus political language
has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and
sheer cloudy vagueness.”
National security. Western values. The world
community. War against terrorism. Collateral damage.
American interests.



Media critic Norman Solomon is an author of books,
including “The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News” and “The
Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the
Last Laugh,” both published by Common Courage Press.
He is a contributor to MSNBC.

May 17, 1999
WHAT IS A CLUSTER BOMB?





WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has acknowledged using cluster
bombs in the air war against Yugoslavia. Some researchers are
condemning the use of this weapon. Among those available for interviews
are:

KEVIN KAVANAUGH, kpk@fas.org, www.fas.org
A research scientist specializing in defense affairs at the Federation of
American Scientists, Kavanaugh said: "Cluster bomb units -- CBU-87/B,
combined effects munitions, are 1,000-pound deadly munitions that
break into 202 bomblets, and each bomblet fractures into 300 fragments
of steel. It covers a football field, it can turn an apple orchard into apple
sauce -- or people into hamburger. It's used against 'soft targets,'
meaning troops and [other] people, though it can go through light armor
to a certain point... Unexploded munitions are also a concern, the
bomblets are yellow, with a little white umbrella, they're very attractive to
children. That's one more reason to oppose their use."

MICHAEL KLARE, mklare@hampshire.edu
Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in
Massachusetts and author of Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, Klare
said: "Demonstrating the poverty of the NATO strategy in the Balkans is
the use of Vietnam-era cluster bomb weapons which are sure to produce
high levels of civilian casualties because of their inherent nature -- that is,
as anti-personnel weapons. So much for a surgical air war."

STEVE GOOSE, @hrw.org">gooses@hrw.org, www.hrw.org
Program director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, Goose
said: "The submunitions inside cluster bombs have a high failure rate and
can leave unexploded ordnance across wide areas, ready to detonate on
contact, in effect becoming landmines and killing civilians even years after
the conflict has ended. Because of the submunitions' appearance-- some
are orange-yellow soda-can sized objects -- children are particularly
drawn to the volatile live remnants. On April 24, five children playing with
colorful unexploded submunitions were reported killed, and two injured,
near Doganovic in southern Kosovo. We condemn their use. NATO
should stop using them immediately."


For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam
Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_347000/347304.stm

http://www.peaceinbalkans.freeserve.co.uk/


As NATO splits deepen parliament is again
denied a vote
News release Wednesday 19 May 1999



The Committee for Peace in the Balkans pointed out today that, despite growing political and public unease over NATO's bombing
of Yugoslavia, the House of Commons was yesterday once again denied the right to vote and express its view on the military action.

When asked by Tony Benn MP if parliament was to be allowed to vote, the Leader of the Commons, Margaret Beckett, replied that
this was not possible because the result 'might cast doubt on our support for our troops in the field.'

Tony Benn MP said: 'Britain is increasingly isolated in demanding ground troops and refusing to go to the United Nations. This came
out clearly in yesterday's debate in parliament where once again the House of Commons was denied a vote. With German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroder stating that a land invasion is unthinkable and only 15 per cent of people in the United States in favour
of sending ground troops in now, the need to start negotiations to find a political solution is greater than ever. It is essential that
parliament is allowed to express its view on behalf of the people it represents by voting on the course being pursued towards
Yugoslavia. It appears from yesterday's debate that the government wishes to avoid a vote for fear that the result may not be to their
liking.'

Alice Mahon MP said: 'The widespread and cross-bench disquiet over NATO's military action in Yugoslavia expressed in
yesterday's debate underlines the growing international calls for bombing to cease and opposition to a ground invasion. A ground
invasion was dismissed as an option by a new and broad range of MPs. It is unthinkable that the Prime Minister could commit
Britain to sending ground troops into Yugoslavia without a vote in the House.'

Thursday 20 May, 6.30pm: Call for Truth from the Ministry of Lies. Protest for media accuracy, at the Ministry of Defence, Whitehall.
Journalists and media workers will protest against NATO's pressure on media to report its claims uncritically and will express opposition to
NATO bombing media outlets in Yugoslavia.
Sunday 23 May: Bring Peace to Yugoslavia. A benefit concert for the Committee for Peace in the Balkans. With Jeremy Hardy, John
Hegley, Linda Smith, Germaine Greer, Maggie Steed, Junior Simpson, Seddik Sebiri, Tony Benn MP, Diane Abbott MP and others.
Hackney Empire, Mare St, London E8. Doors 6.30pm; starts 7.30pm. Box office 0181-985 2424.

Notice how brilliant posts from Maja and Daniela are. And then you have got Zoja's. They all start with "US say" or "NATO say", that is why she expects everyone to believe their contents.

Since we all agree by now that NATO = USA, that UN = 0.00, Albania + NATO media = Serbs are Monsters, how can anyone trust anything starting with "NATO say" or equivalent ?

Serbian propaganda ? I don't know about some of you, but I log on to some of their sites every day and they always report damage and casualties, first denied and then acknowledged by NATO under the pressure of television (which is why they bomb it daily).

If this is all Serb propaganda, then what are UK, USA, Italian, French, Swiss, Germany, Spain, Russia and Greece media doing reporting information accusing NATO of leading a pointless war, including killing civilians (Serbs and Albanians), ruining a country's infrastructure, destroying the ecological system, driving hundreds of thousands away from home, dropping unused bombs off the Italian coast ?

You tell me because most of these countries are part of NATO, I think.

You tell me.

Tell me EXACTLY WHY the Independent, The Guardian, The Observer, The Express, The Washington Post and Times, The New York Post, MSNBC news, LM Marxism, WSWS, RaiUno, Antenne 2, TV5, Il Giornale, La Vanguardia, TV3, Canal Plus, Telecinco, BBC, Itar-Tass, Athens Antenna, Athinaiki, TruthInMedia, and many others ALL REPORT REGULARLY INFORMATION DIRECTLY IMPLICATING NATO LYING, IMPLYING ILLEGAL ACTIONS TAKEN BY THEM IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE, NO MATTER WHAT, THEIR FINAL GOAL: CONQUER KOSOVO.

The above media are located in countries contained in the list mentioned further up.

To Nick.

All sounds briliantly high levelled, BUT..... you failed the test!

Zoja

ps Didn't you see the other sources than the ones you mentoined. Guess not. Buy some specs!

The mighty Russian Army defending Yugoslavia. Let them do it, then see in September what happens!!

RUSSIAN COMPUTERS NOT READY FOR MILLENIUM. Acting Deputy
Prime Minister Bulgak told government officials on 18 May
that some essential Russian computer networks may begin to
experience failures as early as 9 September unless resolute
measures are taken to prepare for the so-called millennium
computer bug problem, "RIA-Novosti" reported. According to
the agency, Bulgak accused the Economics Ministry of the
worst performance among all government agencies in this
regard. He pointed to the ministry's inadequate efforts to
prepare industrial enterprises. Other agencies singled out
for censure were the Federal Energy Commission and the
State Committees for Cartography and Environmental
Protection.

Sergey, Basil, go look for an American provider!

Zoja

Hey, Nickyboy, here's something your beloved Tanjug did not tell you....

FIRST BIG ANTI-WAR PROTESTS IN SERBIA. At least 3,000 people
in Krusevac and a similar number in Aleksandrovac
demonstrated on 17 May for the return of Yugoslav soldiers
from Kosova, RFE/RL's South Slavic Service reported. Many of
the protesters were relatives of soldiers and carried signs
with slogans such as "We want our boys and not their
coffins." The following day in London, British Defense
Secretary George Robertson said that, "Yesterday there was a
crack that appeared in the facade of the Yugoslav regime." In
Krusevac, the Yugoslav army issued a statement saying that
the protests there took place on 17 and 18 May. The statement
charged that unnamed persons took advantage of soldiers'
parents' feelings in order to promote "treason, undermine the
defense of the country, and [promote] direct collaboration
with the enemy." The statement added that the organizers will
be prosecuted. Observers noted that the demonstrations were
the first large ones against Belgrade's policies in Kosova to
be reported since the NATO air strikes began in March.

Zoja

Zoja, you did not answer my question:

You tell me why these media are talking AGAINST NATO.

You tell me.

There is no test.

Buy a brain.