http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2005/11/recycled-lies.html
Gray Falcon
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Recycled Lies
Here is the current mandatory propaganda meme in stories by Reuters,
tracked across several articles:
Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO
bombing forced then-President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his
forces. Some 10,000 civilians were killed during his two-year
crackdown on an Albanian guerrilla insurgency.
Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority has been clamoring for
independence ever since. There are at least four things here that,
mildly put, do not correspond with reality. First, the phrase "his
forces," referring to Slobodan Milosevic, as if the Serbian police and
the Yugoslav Army were his private institutions. Nobody calls the U.S.
troops in Iraq "George Bush's forces," especially not Reuters.
Second, the "factoid" that "10,000 civilians were killed" in Kosovo is
an absolute, unvarnished lie. Not only has the number of dead
associated in any manner with the terrorist campaign of the KLA and
the NATO bombing never exceeded 3,000, a substantial portion of that
were KLA bandits. Are they to be counted as "civilians"? What about
the actual civilians, Serb and Albanian, murdered by the KLA, or
killed by NATO? Reuters here clearly misrepresents both the number of
dead and their identity.
As for the last sentence, which often stands as a paragraph of its
own, it is both inaccurate and deceptive. Kosovo only became 90%
Albanian through the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and birth rates far
exceeding those in Albania or Macedonia, and only in the latter part
of the 20th century, specifically during the period when the province
was under control of ethnic Albanians (whether of the Communist or
fascist variety). It is specious to posit Albanian numerical
superiority as the basis of their claim for independence, without
noting how it came into being.
Finally, the Albanians of Kosovo have not been "clamoring for
independence" since 1999, but since 1981, or even earlier. This claim
is completely fabricated.
Now look at the meme in its entirety: It is geared to insinuate (and
none too subtly) that Milosevic personally oppressed and mass-murdered
the Albanians of Kosovo, the majority in the region, until NATO and
the UN came to their rescue in 1999. On that basis, the Albanians are
asking for independence. Presented with such an argument, who wouldn't
be sympathetic to their claim? And that is precisely the purpose of
this confabulation.
posted by Gray Falcon at 11:14
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
