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"Was the American public duped about Bosnia? We should be asking what kind of justice
is this at The Hague that cases against Serbs are not over tuned when Muslim
witnesses have admitted that they were coached by Bosnian authorities to lie on
the witness stand? What kind of justice is Carla dela Ponte promoting by keeping Serbs imprisoned for
killing numerous
Bosnian Muslims who turned up alive and well in
Sarajevo?"
Date: 17 March 2006
Where: National Press
Club, Washington, D.C.
Panelists: Peter Brock,
William Dorich, David Binder
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National Press Club Introduction
Good afternoon, my name is William Dorich, I am the publisher
of GMBooks, established in Los Angeles in 1985. I am also the author of 5 books on
Balkan history and religion including my 1992 book Kosovo.
When Peter Brock came to me to publish Media Cleansing: Dirty
Reporting, I was
thrilled but I was fully aware that this manuscript was submitted and rejected
by every major publisher in the United States, revealing an ugly truth that
dissenting views are not always welcome in the media or in the American
publishing industry.
In the entire decade of the 1990s during the dismemberment wars
of Yugoslavia not one
single article was printed in the New York Times that was written by a Serbian
journalist, author, scholar or political leader. The same can be said of numerous major
newspapers across the nation including the Los Angeles Times in my city. Serbs were simply muzzled
into silence. Thanks to Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrook Serbs were also
made Persona non
grata here on The
Hill and denied the right to appear before any House and Senate hearings on
Bosnia including the Foreign Relations Committee.
The result, the word Serb has become synonymous with
evil.
I should know as I was
the victim of two hate crimes and received numerous death threats for daring to
defend, write and publish Serbian views.
Dr. Alex Dragnich, a Serb, is the recipient of the Thomas
Jefferson Award for Outstanding Scholarship at Vanderbilt University where he taught for
several decades.
Dr. Dragnich is the
author of ten books on Balkan history and politics and was a member of the
diplomatic corp in Belgrade after the Holocaust. At the height of the Bosnian Civil War Dr. Dragnich
submitted 42 OpEd
articles to the New York Times... not one was reproduced yet lie after lie was
published by the Times from instant Balkan experts. Few of whom had credentials on the
Balkan region.
David Binder who graces our book with a profound foreword was a
member of the
Washington bureau of The New York Times from June 1973 to his retirement in 1996. He continued reporting until 2004,
producing numerous
articles on Central and Eastern European affairs with
outstanding reports
that afforded unique insights into foreign policy and the Yugoslav
breakup. His
assignments for The Times, included posts in Germany, Belgrade (as East European
correspondent) and in Washington as diplomatic Page 2
correspondent. He reported on the building and fall of the
Berlin wall and the collapse of Communist systems in East Germany, Romania,
Albania and Yugoslavia.
The admiration and respect for Mr. Binders reporting and
reputation as a journalist of our times almost five decades is without equal
during what is fast
becoming an era in which most journalist seem to strive to be
mediocre at their
craft, too many are simply recklessly irresponsible.
Who can forget Binders opening line to the essay he wrote for
The South Slav Journal in late 1995.
Quote: A widely noted oxymoron for the last four years has
been the phrase United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia. End
quote.
Mr. Binder graduated from Harvard University and was a
Fulbright scholar at
the University of Cologne. He has lectured and published articles mainly
in Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Finland, Japan,
Canada and throughout the United States.
He is the author of Berlin East and West (1962) and The Other German The Life and Times
of Willy Brandt
(1976); and co-author of New York Times books on Project Apollo, the Fall of Communism and Scientists at
Work.
He lives in suburban Maryland and he speaks fluent
Serbo-Croatian.
Can you imagine that
when the war broke out in former Yugoslavia his editors sent John Burns to cover
the story, a journalist who relied on Muslim translators?
Burns won half a Pulitzer for writing about the confession of
an alleged Serbian
rapist and killer. This Serb was found guilty by his own
confession without a
single victim of rape or a body of an alleged murder victim presented as
evidence at his trial. It was later proven his confession was tortured out of
him.
John Burns claimed
there was not a mark on his body.
However, John Burns and the NYT never published an article
about Dr. Ljubica Toholj, gynecology professor at Belgrade University who did the physical exams of
thousands of Serbian
prisoners of war in which sexual
Page 3
torture techniques did irreparable damage to internal organs or
electrical shock used
on the male genitals of
these prisoners which also leave no marks on the body.
Was the American public duped about Bosnia? We should be asking what kind of justice
is this at The Hague that cases against Serbs are not over tuned when Muslim
witnesses have admitted that they were coached by Bosnian authorities to lie on
the witness stand? What kind of justice is Carla dela Ponte promoting by keeping Serbs imprisoned for
killing numerous
Bosnian Muslims who turned up alive and well in Sarajevo?
The U.S. blackout of court coverage of the Hague Tribunal
conveniently hides what has turned out to be lynch mob style tactics of judicial
abuse yet we are told that this tribunal is the lunch pin of future
international court cases involving war and genocide.
Ambassador Bissett of Canada said it best in his attack of the
media and I quote: It is not the media responsibility to influence governments
to make unwise policy decisions affecting the very course of
history.
end quote. But that is
exactly what the media did in Yugoslavia.
If Osama bin Laden and Muslim terrorism is this nations number
one enemy, then the
invasion of Bosnia by thousands of bin Laden trained terrorists was surely
Serbias enemies and they had every right to defend themselves. Hundreds of
those Muslim terrorists remain in Bosnia and Kosovo today.
Since the end of the war in 1999 and the arrival of KFOR troops
in Kosovo over 150 ancient Serbian churches have been destroyed. For the most
part the press has remained silent. The same press that demanded human rights and religious
tolerance for Bosnian Muslims continue to deny the Serbs equal justice as Serbs
have been made nearly extinct in Kosovo where they were a majority of the
population in 1939 the year in which I was born.
The media tells us that Albanians are a majority of Kosovo but
never publish the fact
that 40% are illegal aliens who cross the border into Serbia as easily as
Mexicans cross our borders each night in San Diego.
Page 4
In the preface to his book A Witness to Genocide which is
truly an oxymoron. Roy Gutman wrote, and I quote: Having set such lofty
standards, I
immediately make an exception and wrote about the Omarska camp which I had not
visited, based on secondhand witness accounts. end quote.
Gutman wrote to my author refusing permission for Peter to
quote from A Witness to Genocide, so we paraphrased his quotes. Meanwhile his publisher, Simon and
Schuster said we could quote from their book then charged us $450.00 for the
privilege.
Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting documents how many journalists
covering the Balkan
Civil Wars also made exceptions to their lofty standards they, lied, fabricated, and distorted
the truth. They repeated the propaganda of other journalists ad
nasuam.
Like Gutman they
trampled on
journalistic ethics, integrity and morality for their bylines.
The recent SkyNews release of Bosnian Muslim video footage of
Serbs being rounded up,
tortured and shot at point blank range has not gotten the attention of the media
nor Carla Dela Ponte who dismisses all the crimes committed against Serbs
guaranteeing that Muslim war criminals will all go free. Just like the 20,000 Nazi Hanjar troops
did in Bosnia in WWII after they liquidated tens of thousands of Sebs, Jews and
Gypsies. Have we not learned any lessons?
On March 15th, 1993 French journalist Jerome Bony, reporting
from the Muslim
stronghold of Tuzla said: and I quote: When I was at 50
kilometers from Tuzla,
I was told go to the Tuzla gymnasium, there you will find 4,000 raped women. At 20 kilometers, this figure dropped
to 400.
At 10
kilometers, only 40
were left.
Once at the sight, I
found only four women to testify. End Quote.
And this is the sort of evidence that gave us headlines
screaming
60,000 rape victims in Bosnia, an absurd claim
that to this day has never been exposed as a fraud by the American media.
I attended a panel discussion at Long Beach State in California
on April 15th that year in which Jacques Merlino, Deputy Chief Editor on
Antenna 2 in Paris told
his audience: And I quote:
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All journalists in Bosnia are required to submit their articles to Bosnian
censors in
Sarajevo.
Notice that any
reference to conflicts between Croatians and Muslim forces are heavily edited, visual images of these conflicts are
forbidden.
Any journalist breaking
these rules is expelled from Bosnia. End Quote.
In other words John Burns accepted half a Pulitzer and never
told his readers that he abided by this kind of censorship. It also makes me wonder what kind of
Bosnian democracy did Madeleine Albright built on such
deceptions.
In his December 1993 editorial in Strategic Policy Gregory
Copley wrote:
I quote: The big lie
technique is alive and well. Croatia has used the media and skillful image manipulation to
hide its renewed genocide against the Serbs while at the same time ensuring that
Serbs are themselves wrongly accused of the same type of crime, and
more.
Pictures of dead,
wounded (or raped) Serbs often fill the screens of the worlds television and
print media, only to be
re-labelled as dead, wounded or raped Croats or Muslims. Serbsnot only suffer the indignity of defeat in death; they
also are used in death as models in the macabre image manipulation operations of
the Croatians and Muslim Bosnians. End quote.
Mr. Brocks career as a newspaper journalist for more than 30
years is highlighted by 17 professional awards including being named a
finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize competition for Public
Service.
Recognized as a political and environmental writer and
investigative reporter,
Mr. Brock holds the
Southern Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting (Duke University), the Thomas L. Stokes
Award for Environmental Reporting of the Washington Journalism Center, and 15 other
distinctions.
He has widely traveled the Balkans, Western Central Europe, the
former Soviet Union, the Middle East and other regions since
1976.
A specialist in the role of the Western media in the Balkan
wars, Mr. Brocks controversial articles and reports were reprinted in major
newspapers worldwide. He appeared on nationally-televised panel discussions that
focused on the Yugoslav wars, and he was interviewed by numerous domestic and
international newspapers, television and radio.
Page 6
During his career, he has covered organized crime,
drug-trafficking, and the unique politics along the U.S.-Mexican border as well
as critical water issues in that desert climate.
His Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press, published 13
years ago in the journal Foreign Policy set off shock waves in Washington and
the media that are still rippling. The publisher was regaled into organizing a
virtual accountability session at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. Brock appeared with David Binder, facing a roomful of media pit bulls,
and restated his
findings about the co-belligerent Western pack journalism maneuvering and manipulating for NATO
intervention, incouraging NATO to violate it own defensive
treaty.
But, that wasnt enough for his critics who harangued Brock as
a holocaust denier until they ran out of breath.
In preparation of Media Cleansing
, Peter confronted his
colleagues about their
professional lapses and collusion with the secessionist Yugoslav
governments and our
own State Department.
He did what any good investigative reporter does. He searched
for information and waited patiently as the story developed, talking with scores
of professionals and eventually tracking down the offending correspondents
one-by-one, some of whom refused to answer questions.
They complained to his superiors at his newspaper, and even
threatened him with
lawsuits. He caught up with one Pulitzer Prize winner at an
international Balkan
conference in Sweden
and unrelentingly questioned him from the audience.
One of the best lines in his book is from the editor of a top
supermarket tabloid who, when asked about the shrill and surreal war-coverage by
the American media flagships, answered: and I quote: Theyre doing a better job of it than
we could! end quote.
Peter Brock began his newspaper career at The Philadelphia
Inquirer, served for 20 years with The El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post, and
wrote/reported/edited for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado and Washington,
D.C.
Ladies and gentlemen, I
am proud to introduce a true professional, an expert at his craft and my friend,
Peter Brock. |
