For a dead parrot, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) continues to display a great deal of life; the bizarros gotta new front group: Manifesto Club. It joins:
1) Africa Direct — genocide? What genocide? (defunct);
*Association of British Drivers — just say no to speed limits;
2) Audacity.org — “Let’s build!” (awesome);
3) Campaign Against Militarism (defunct — begat the London International Research Exchange);
3) Campaign for Internet Freedom (defunct);
4) Channel Cyberia (defunct);
5) Families for Freedom (defunct);
6) Feminists for Justice — date rape? (defunct);
7) Freedom & Law (defunct);
EIGHT) Future Cities Project (awesome);
Genetic Interest Group
9) Global Futures (defunct);
10) Institute of Ideas (awesome);
11) Irish Freedom Movement (defunct);
12) Libero! — established by (Doctor) Carlton Brick* as a support group for libertarian football fans / a weird-arse attempt at cornering the football market (defunct);
13) Litigious Society (defunct);
14) London International Research Exchange (defunct);
15) Parents Against the Charter ? (defunct);
Progress Educational Trust GM is cool!
Science Media Centre GM is cool!
16) Sense about Science (awesome);
17) Sp!ked Online (awesome);
18) Transport Research Group — cars are good (defunct — begat the Future Cities Project);
19) WORLDwrite (awesome);
20) (East London) Workers Against Racism (defunct);
and
21) the magazine NOVO (Germany).
*Links with but not established by.
Established in 1978 as a split from the IS, the RCP — according to James Heartfield (James Hughes) — was disbanded over a fairly long period. Thus the last time the RCP stood in an election was 1992, while the last public campaign it was involved in was the Campaign Against Militarism (1992–1995); the RCP sold LM to Helene Guldberg at the end of 1996.
Living Marxism, the monthly magazine of the RCP, was launched in 1988. It later (1996) changed its title to LM — which met polite titters — but what got the Godless Communists into heap ’em big trouble was an article by Thomas Deichmann, published in LM #97 (February 1997), and titled ‘The picture that fooled the world’. “This image of an emaciated Muslim caged behind Serb barbed wire, filmed by a British news team, became a worldwide symbol of the war in Bosnia. But the picture is not quite what it seems”, wrote Doubting Thomas (LM issued a press release at the time to ensure maximum publicity for his startling claims). Accused of manufacturing lies, Ed Vuillamy, one of the journalists responsible for producing the story, denied Deichmann’s allegations. A few years later, in March 2000, ITN won a libel case against LM, and it was forced to close. See David Campbell, Atrocity, memory, photography: imaging the concentration camps of Bosnia – the case of ITN versus Living Marxism | Also Alexander Cockburn, Guardian Fabricates Chomsky Quotes in Bid to Smear World’s Number One Intellectual: Storm Over Brockes’ Fakery, Counterpunch, November 5/6, 2005 | David Pallister, John Vidal and Kevin Maguire, Life after Living Marxism: Fighting for freedom – to offend, outrage and question everything, The Guardian, July 8 2000 | Dave Walker, Libertarian Humanism or Critical Utopianism? The Demise of the Revolutionary Communist Party, New Interventions, Vol.8, No.3, 1998 | George Monbiot, Far Left or Far Right?: Living Marxism’s interesting allegiances, November 1, 1998
*Three speakers focused on David Beckham, among them Carlton Brick, from the university [of Paisley, Scotland], whose address was intriguingly titled “Father, why hast thou forsaken me? Postmodernism, desire and dissatisfaction: a case study of David Beckham’s meaning”. Explaining how Beckham’s career has been littered with Christian symbolism, Brick said redemption, resurrection, and salvation “are the narratives that tell his story”. The footballer’s perception of himself seems to concur: he has appeared in magazines adopting a Christ-like pose, has a crucifix tattoo and named one of his sons Cruz, Spanish for cross. But Brick’s paper said reading Beckham as postmodern religious icon, a new god of the global consumer culture, was insufficient. “Rather, Beckham’s celebrity speaks to the paradoxical desire to attribute meaning in a culture which is increasingly defined as meaningless …” ~ Beyonce, Becks and me me me, Sydney Morning Herald, September 17, 2005
Also awesome : Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) | Revolutionary Communist Party (USA) | Revolutionary Communist Party (Canada)
@ndy, trainspotting aside, there is no need to join in the lazy smearing of of LM/the RCP. I read Living Marxism during the Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian conflicts and my recollection is that they were concerned to highlight why they thought all ‘sides’ were guilty of atrocities, and that the mass media couldn’t be trusted to provide anything like a reasonable interpretation of what was happening. While they may have got a lot wrong, as is often the case with left-wing journalism, some people act like this made them Serb apologists. But they were actually right about the photograph not actually showing what it was taken to show, but being a key moment in the representation of the conflict nonetheless.
More to the point, they didn’t deny that there were massacres on an enormous scale in Rwanda, so your comment supposedly capturing the line of Africa Direct (“genocide? What genocide?”) is I think ill-judged, at least so far as I can tell.
Hey,
I was hoping you’d comment lumpnboy. As for lazy smearing: slackbastard is the name…
More seriously though, two things. One, the article by Deichmann; two, the article by Fiona Foster / Fiona Fox.
Inre the latter, the central claim by Fiona in the article is that the International Tribunal established by the UN (Resolution 955 of 8 November 1994) to investigate crimes of genocide in Rwanda was politically skewed against the interests of the Hutu majority. In truth, “Both sides [Hutu and Tutsi] were responsible for human rights abuses and massacres”; there was no ‘genocide’ of Tutsis as such.
Note that Fox also claims that “the UN Tribunal will only investigate killings which took place between April and July [1994]”; the Tribunal itself claims that it “was established for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994. It may also deal with the prosecution of Rwandan citizens responsible for genocide and other such violations of international law committed in the territory of neighbouring States during the same period.” In addition, while Fox maintains that the discourse surrounding the Rwandan ‘genocide’ criminalises an entire population, “The first trial at the ICTR started in January 1997, following the arrival of the first accused to Arusha in May 1996. As of April 2007, the tribunal has handed down twenty-seven judgments involving thirty-three accused.”
Estimates of the number of individuals killed during the 100 days from April 6, 1994 (the death of President Habyarimana) to July vary, from between 500,000 to 1,000,000. As a result, perhaps 3/4 of the Tutsi people were killed (Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, HRW, 1999).
Inre the case of Deichmann, there’s a few issues. One is the accuracy of the ITN report and Deichmann’s critique; another concerns the legitimacy of the subsequent court case and the closing of LM as a result of an unfavourable decision. My reading thus far suggests that Deichmann and LM were technically correct on some issues but that the thrust of their argument was false.
Leaving aside these two issues, I think the case of the RCP remains a fascinating one, especially as it concerns the transformation of a party of ostensibly ‘revolutionary communists’ into a network of intelekshual apologists for rampant capitalism.
Paul Anderson:
Fuck me — it sure does! Check it out now, the funk soul brother:
Don’t allow ad hominem (be it true or false) to detract from the reality that – whatever else may be said about Living Marxism – they did a great service to truth by exposing the “death camp” hoax, and a great disservice to truth by defending themselves so appallingly in their legal battle with ITN.
Unfortunately, the archive.org version of “The picture that fooled the world” only shows 1 picture of the “inmates” in the “death camp” and not the numerous other pictures on the page (archive.org really is quite ordinary, though I guess it’s better than nothing), but even that photo leaves us with questions.
Questions such as “How did ITN get to photograph pictures of a death camp up close while prisoners milled around?” or “Why do prisoners in a death camp look no more than mildly uncomfortable?” or perhaps “Why are prisoners in a death camp apparently imprisoned by no more than a small barbed wire/chicken wire fence?”
Two more revealing photos are available at http://emperors-clothes.com/villainy.htm – the first one in black and white from a lie-ridden article by Ed Vulliamy in The Guardian, the second one a still from the documentary film Judgement. Even the black and white photo (done in B&W presumably to give a more sinister feel) reveals clearly that some of the prisoners have smiles on their faces – including the “emaciated man” (who was apparently afflicted with a deformity as a result of tuberculosis as a child. None of the other inmates look in any way emaciated.) The second (colour) photo depicts an almost relaxed atmosphere among the “prisoners” in the “death camp”. The above link also explains the situation being depicted. Anyone who has seen Judgement (as I have, though unfortunately it’s no longer available on Google Video) can only conclude that the “death camp” claims are an inversion of the truth. It actually shows Penny Marshall of ITN trying to get the Bosnian Muslim refugees to say they were being mistreated. She failed to elicit her desired response, but the hoax succeeded nonetheless. The doco was made from footage from a Serbian TV crew who were filming the ITN crew as they pulled off the hoax. The ITN crew were *invited* by the Bosnian Serb government after allegations of Serb death camps had been made in the Western media. The ITN crew are left largely unsupervised to talk to whoever they want. They also took footage from an actual Serb prison for Bosnian Muslim POWs (the photo of the “death camp” is actually a refugee centre) – footage which ITN never bothered showing – which depicts a strikingly relaxed atmosphere for a POW prison.
An overview of the LM vs ITN libel case is available at http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/of.htm
An overview of LM‘s seriously flawed courtroom strategy – possibly deliberately flawed – is available at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/missing.htm
A comparison of the media manipulation techniques employed against the Serbs and also against the 1999 Seattle WTO protestors is available at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/misleadi.htm
I will check out the other links you’ve provided sometime, @ndy. One thing I do know is that significant chunks of the “left” are – to put it mildly – severely compromised by the Establishment, so I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of the assertions and implications made are true.
@ndy, I’m not sure what you mean by LM being ‘technically’ correct – the photographers went inside the enclosure and shot the man through wire from there, and this became an image of a Serbian death camp in the extraordinary proliferation of the photo in the days after its appearance. The point that the image was thus made to serve interests and ideologies which were then hegemonic amongst a number of Western governments and throughout much of the corporate media doesn’t seem technical to me, but substantive. The question of whether the original journos intended to mislead – the basis of the LM loss of the lawsuit as I understand it – that seems secondary to me.
And in general the RCP/LM in that period evinced a concern to critique the deployment of ‘new’ ideologies as justification for intervention and/or the pursuit of particular interests. As I read it at the time, much of their critique of the use of the term ‘genocide’ was part of a critique of the ‘new ideologies of imperialism’ i.e. the ways in which humanitarian and moral considerations, even feminist and environmental considerations (eg. those Muslims are bad to their women, let’s invade Afghanistan), were being deployed to demonize the right villains in ways which are compatible with the right interests. Hence the famous LM cover, emblazoned with the words (very small) “If they told you” and then (very big) “SERBS HAVE NUKES” and then (very small) “would you believe them?”
I know so little about the Tribunal and the interests which animated it that I can’t really comment very usefully.
All this is not to say that LM was necessarily accurate in any given claim – I’d suggest though that it is more likely that, in their pursuit of critique along these lines, they would be lazy about facts, rather than having any actual interest per se in holocaust denial or pro-Serbian govt activism. This kind of indifference/incompetence is normal in the media, and certainly in the Left media, and only stands out in their case, and is portrayed as so sinister, because they contradict much of the thrust of ‘progressive’ opinion at the time on these matters, I suspect.
I’m just assuming we both think the anti-LM lawsuit was an abusive, repressive action.
The seeds of their ‘pro-science’ anti-environmentalism were there before any of them started being involved with corporate cash for saying it, by the way. There is a strange consistency even in their various post-RCP evolutions, which of course also partly undermines what I would say in relation to a…
Declaration of interest: I have a couple of friends who were involved in the RCP in the early/mid-’90s, who would probably defend certain aspects of RCP ideology even though they are very critical of where the leadership all ended up, and even though they were themselves part of losing tendencies opposed to the trajectory of the party. I don’t share these commitments, but I am aware that they now feel that they get abused for relatively valid or defensible, if iconoclastic/contrary, views and actions which get lumped in with some of the more horrible views and actions pursued by the leadership, particularly in the form of certain post-RCP networks.
Out of curiosity, @ndy, why were you hoping I’d comment?
Yo lumpnboy.
On the photo.
I think the analysis by David Campbell is fairly convincing — a lot more so than, say, Thomas Deichmann (or Jared Israel for that matter). Deichmann:
By ‘technical’ I mean that, based on my reading of Campbell’s essay, it appears to be the case that there was a fence surrounding the area in which the journalists filmed, but this did not constitute an ‘enclosure’ in the sense in which Deichmann claims. That is, that it was the journalists who were imprisoned, and the refugees who were free. Secondly, that it was the intention of the journalists to falsely convey this impression.
To begin with, the famous still was taken, by others, from film reports. Thus:
Further:
In general, I think that the question of whether or not the journalists in question intended to ‘fool the world’ is important insofar as it suggests that there was a deliberate attempt at constructing a ‘hoax’: “Living Marxism… did a great service to truth by exposing the “death camp” hoax” (Changeling). I agree with you that “the image was thus made to serve interests and ideologies which were then hegemonic amongst a number of Western governments and throughout much of the corporate media”; this is the function of images generally, but of this one in particular. That said, the image of Fikret Alić has been read as being both more and less than this, and I think these issues are also important. Certainly, Deichmann thought that these issues were important, which is why his original article devotes as much time to his analysis of this particular image as it does, invoking his expertise as a gardener, a tip-off from a defence lawyer, and his own trip to the site four years later. And the veracity of the photograph itself frames the article as a whole.
It’s not possible for me to reconstruct the trajectory of the RCP’s critique of the new(ish) ideologies of the 1990s, but I wouldn’t argue that ‘humanitarianism’ wasn’t then and isn’t now being used to justify military intervention the real purposes of which have less to do with ‘defending human rights’ than they do ‘defending Western interests’ (being a euphemism for a defence of the interests of Western elites). I also agree that the sin of inaccuracy is hardly one confined to LM.
With regards the RCP, on my reading, another remarkable aspect of its (d)evolution has been the apparent unanimity of opinion with which it did so. In other words, precisely the apparent absence of oppositional elements (including some of your friends).
PS. I was hoping you’d comment as I can recall reading articles from Living Marxism/LM some years ago in a certain student publication. Outside of references to Easterhouse in the music press (and a small number of other references the specific nature of which I can no longer recall), I think this was my only encounter with the RCP and that tendency. I may also have actually browsed some issues of the zine at the time. In other words: you are likely to be much better-informed than I on the ins-and-outs of the RCP.
The late Alija Izetbegovic, former illegitimate “president” of Bosnia Herzegovina, illegal ursuper of power in 1990 from the duly elected Bosnian muslim leader, Mr. Fikret Abdic, is the one behind the death camp fraud. Izetbegovic admitted it to former UNMIK head Bernard Kouchner on his death bed in 2003. He told Bernard Kouchner that he lied about Trnopolje and Omarska being “death camps” in the hope of provoking NATO bombing against the Bosnian Serbs.
The Goebbels style “Big Lie” was spread world-wide with the mainstream media-connected resources of a multi-million dollar funded American “public relations” & lobbying firm called Ruder Finn – which also worked as a lobbying group in Washington on behalf of the Islamist Nazi terrorist KLA and Tudjman’s HDZ Fascist neo-Ustasha Nazi racist government responsible – along with the US Clinton administration – for the ethnic cleansing of over 550,000 Krajina province Serbs from 1990 to 1995 and for the murder of at least 20,000 Serbs during the same period.
Izetbegovic, the man described by ITN, BBC, CNN, The Guardian et al, as a “secular muslim and moderate democrat committed to a multi-ethnic Western style liberal democracy” was in fact committed to genocide of all non-muslims (mainly Serbs).
Well before the outbreak of war in 1992, Izetbegovic PUBLICLY announced his commitment to genocide by having his Islamist version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, his 1970 manifesto, “The Islamic Declaration” – which was a call for Jihad and the extermination of non-Muslims – re-published in 1990 as part of his election campaign.
The following is from the ISSA Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy Special Report published soon after Izetbegovic’s death:
See: Who was Alija Izetbegovic: Moderate democrat or radical Islamist? and Alija Izetbegovic: A Retrospective Look at His Impact on Balkan Stability.
For photographs of Izetbegovic’s massacres (perpetrated by his Islamist Nazi “tough guy”, Naser Oric: given a “harsh” 2 year sentence by NATO’s Hague ICTY and RELEASED!) in the towns and villages of Srebrenica, Bratunac, Skelani, Milici, Kravica, Gorazde et al, see: The Real Srebrenica Genocide.
Of course, The Guardian and BBC knew that Izetbegovic was a Nazi as early as 1983 when he was jailed for his Islamist attempted terrorist activities, but deliberately censored the truth about his WW2 Nazi background and genocidal Nazi beliefs which he reiterated publicly in a shuttle tour of fundamentalist Islamist terrorist states in the Middle East during 1991 (especially his visit to Tehran where he agreed with the Ayatollah Khomeini that Salman Rushdie deserved the death sentence for writing The Satanic Verses).
ITN reporters went to Bosnia in 1992 in search of “concentration camps held by the Serbs” after American reporter, Roy Gutman, of New York’s Newsday paper made a sensational claim – with no independent proof whatsoever – (other than Izetbegvic SDA government press releases) that the Bosnian Serbs were running “death camps”.
Pity ITN didn’t do so in 1991 when there were already real death camps set up at the Borovo footware factory and the “Rowing Club” in Vukovar, Croatia: at least 1,000 Serbian civilians – including women,children & the elderly – were beheaded and dismembered in a two month period in late 1991 by Tudjman’s neo-Ustasha Nazi “Black Legion” troops (Croat version of the SS) with many more thousands of Serbs being murdered and half a million expelled from late 1991 to late 1995. See Hiding Genocide: Croatia has resumed its “liquidation” of Serbs, while arguing that “ethnic cleansing” is a Serbian creation…
As far as The Guardian is concerned they were an integral part of the ITN “accidental” deception and fakery regarding the refugee collection centre known as Trnopolje.
That is to say, their practice of “accidentally” placing their reporters INSIDE an enclosed agricultural compound surrounded by a less than 5 foot tall broken down CHICKEN WIRE fence – with two rusted out old strands of barbed wire on top – and then proceeding to “accidentally” film from within this enclosed area – surrounded by this chicken wire fence – a single very thin looking Bosnian muslim, known as Fikret Alic – whom instead of being sullen as one would normally expect from someone who was starving, was smiling and laughing. Mr. Alic was surrounded by men also doing the same – smiling and joking – the only difference being that these men were all normal looking and some even had pot bellies.
Even the judge in the LM vs ITN case had to admit that the ITN/Guardian people were “mistaken” in their belief (a nice way of saying that they were lying) that they were not filming from within an enclosed area (pretty hard to “believe” any such thing, since Penny Marshall & her team of ITN cameramen & The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy had to crawl through a broken down part of the chicken wire fence in order to gain entry!)
Thus, ITN lied as did The Guardian not for what they explicitly said and wrote, but what they implied when they failed to tell the world that Trnopolje was NOT a WW2 style Nazi “concentration camp” with all that such a camp implies: 30 foot high guard towers in each corner containing machine gun nests and surrounded by 10 foot high electrified fences and/or razor sharp barbed wire. They also failed to broadcast the uncensored video footage showing the Bosnian muslim refugees ridiculing the notion put forth by Penny Marshall, that they were in a prison or that they were not being fed.
See the photo fakery The Guardian perpetrated again 12 years later in September 2004, where they tried to pass off a photograph of Fikret Alic at Trnopolje refugee camp as “inmates of the Serbian concentration camp of Omarska”.
The description of the photo stayed up as “concentration camp of Omarska” on their website for nearly 2 years until it was exposed as a fraud.
See Lies the London Guardian told me… or, The Return of Villainy
ITN/Guardian reporters Ed Vulliamy and Ian Williams claim they were unable to film freely at Trnopolje and also claim that the POWs at Omarska were “poorly treated and in a state of fear”. How strange indeed that both ITN and The Guardian decided NOT to broadcast any of their video/film footage of these POWs at Omarska, but instead labelled the photograph of Trnopolje as… Omarska!
ITN and The Guardian journalists were invited by the Bosnian Serbs to visit both Trnopolje and Omarska to see for themselves that the “death camp” allegation was a monstrous lie. Not only that, but they were provided with a Bosnian Serb military escort to Trnopolje and Omarska which is why the ITN/Guardian team did not need to fly in via parachute behind enemy lines to get the “scoop of the century”.
So to recap: ITN and The Guardian reporters were INVITED by the Bosnian Serb authorities – in the middle of a war zone known as Bosnia-Herzgovina on August 5, 1992 – to provide them with safe passage via a Bosnian Serb military escort which enabled the Guardian/ITN team to visit these alleged “death camps” and then said Bosnian Serb authorities ALLOWED The Guardian/ITN team to film/photograph this Omarska alleged “death camp” and “atrocities at Omarska” which said footage of “atrocities” was then subsequently ***NEVER USED EVEN ONCE*** in any broadcasts by ITN and which said photographs of Omarska were ***NEVER PUBLISHED EVEN ONCE*** by The Guardian in its so-called “reporting” on this supposed “death camp”.
Instead, we have the faked ITN footage of the supposed “death camp” Trnopolje being labelled by The Guardian’s Ed Vulliamy as Omarska instead in order to cover up the fact that Omarska was far more humane than your regular US or British prison.
Then a certain David Campbell of the University of Newcastle, UK comes along after this fraud was exposed and uses ITN and The Guardian as his “impartial” sources! Here is what David Campbell writes:
Unfortunately for David Campbell I have the Emperor’s Clothes’ film Judgement in my possession:
There are NO Serbian “military film crews” present. A Serbian RTS [“Radio Television Serbia” TV] cameraman dressed in a khaki green camouflage shirt does not equal “a military film crew”. This is a deliberate twisting of the facts by David Campbell in order to support the racist anti-Serbian lying of ITN & its ally: the Islamist terrorist employment agency otherwise known as the Guardian newspaper (one of their former journalists was exposed as having been connected to a major Islamofascist terrorist group with links to al Qaeda; after which he was fired).
In the Emperor’s Clothes film Judgement Penny Marshall can clearly be seen wearing a bulky military flak jacket.
Hmmmm… I wonder why Ms. Marshall is wearing a military flak jacket?
Did Ms. Marshall join the British army without telling us?
Hold on a minute, it’s August 5, 1992, in Bosnia Herzegovina, and a brutal inter-religious/ethnic war is raging all around between four ethnic/religious and political factions – with bullets and shells flying all over the place – maybe that has something to do with it.
Does that now make Penny Marshall a member of a “military film crew”? According to Dr. Campbell’s “logic”, it most certainly does.
There is NOBODY from the Bosnian Serb authorities – dressed in civilian or military clothing – intimidating or “standing over” ANYBODY in the film – whether they be Bosnian muslim refugees or ITN/Guardian journalists or camera-crew members – NOT at the 25:20 minute mark – as David Campbell claims – or ANYWHERE ELSE in the entire film!
There are no “armed guards” tagging along with Ms. Marshall and her ITN film crew or The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy.
NOWHERE does ANY Bosnian muslim refugee show visible signs of fear at the Trnopolje refugee collection center (described by the British media as a supposed ‘death camp’ that “…started life as a transit camp..” and this alleged ‘death camp’ according to the British media DOUBLED as a “refugee transit camp” which “…housed the refugees.”
NOWHERE does even ONE Bosnian muslim refugee at Trnopolje show even the slightest visible hint of fear, anxiety or tension.
In fact, most of the refugees are smiling and laughing: even casually joking with Ms. Marshall.
The above is hardly surprising, since as pointed out earlier, the Bosnian Serbs themselves invited Ms. Marshall, ITN and The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy – providing all of them full protection via military escort in the middle of a war zone – to visit both the Trnopolje refugee center and the Omarska POW camp to show how ludicrous Roy Gutman’s stories of “death camps” (stories based primarily on Izetbegovic’s SDA party – the illegitimate Sarajevo- based “Bosnian government” – sources & their handsomely paid American PR firm Ruder Finn – really were).
EVERYONE in the film is quite calm and relaxed (except the arrogant Ms. Penny Marshall, who was agitating for a “death camp scoop” because of immense pressure brought to bear on her by ITN’s management, due to Mr.Roy Gutman’s previous phony “death camp” reports in New York’s Newsday newspaper back in July, 1992).
All of the refugees appear quite calm – with many of them, as noted above, smiling, joking and laughing amongst themselves – including most notably, Fikret Alic himself (that’s right, the real skinny looking one whom supposedly was “beaten”, “pistol whipped” and had “four of his teeth knocked out” while showing ZERO physical evidence of any such mistreatment) – while other refugees were so calm that they almost appeared bored and nonchalant with the attention they were getting from Ms. Marshall, ITN’s camera crew and The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy.
David Campbell is so eager to defend the ITN/Guardian version of events that he displays the same capacity for dishonesty and Orwellian “doublethink” as his sources: The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy, Ian Williams and ITN’s Penny Marshall.
For example, David Campbell informs us that the man in the overalls, a muslim refugee named “Mekhmet”, whom – on camera – said to Ms. Penny Marshall regarding Trnopolje that “it’s a refugee camp, NOT a prison!” (Mekhmet is to the right of Fikret Alic, and is the guy holding the [?]
[continued from the previous post] less than 5 foot tall broken down CHICKEN WIRE fence enclosing Ms. Marshall and the ITN/Guardian team) was according to Mr. Campbell’s claims, supposedly “imprisoned” by the Bosnian Serbs at Trnopolje, but that he also came to Trnopolje “VOLUNTARILY”!
So according to Mr. Campbell’s “logic” – or rather the lack of it – in support of the ITN/Guardian & Izetbegovic government’s racist-Islamist version of events – Mekhmet is now a “voluntarily” imprisoned refugee!!! (Since according to the British tabloid press, Trnopolje, whilst supposedly being a “death camp” where “people were murdered and raped on a daily basis” – also DOUBLED as a refugee collection center – since Trnopolje, according to the British media “…ALSO HOUSED THE REFUGEES”!)
We are also informed by Mr. Campbell that the Bosnian muslim medic, a certain Dr. Merdzianic, who was supposedly “forced” to look after the refugees’ health at Trnopolje, was able to “secretly” hand over a camera to Ms. Marshall containing film – supposedly of beaten and tortured Bosnian muslim “inmates”.
How could this have been done in “secret” if there were Bosnian Serb “guards” watching the good muslim doctor’s every move? Why would the Bosnian Serbs even ALLOW Ms. Marshall to go anywhere near Dr. Merdzianic, let alone interview him if they were indeed guilty of such horrendous atrocities as claimed by Dr. Merdzianic?
Hardly surprisingly, Mr. Campbell doesn’t bother to tell us.
Mr. Campbell also doesn’t explain to us why the Bosnian Serbs INVITED Ms. Marshall and her film crew to Trnopolje and Omarska, whilst as pointed out by the International Committee of the Red Cross at the time of Ms. Marshall’s visit, both the Bosnian muslim Izetbegovic SDA authorities AND the Bosnian Croat HDZ authorities under Messrs. Mate Boban & Franjo Tudjman, outright REFUSED to allow Western journalists and Red Cross/UN personnel access to THEIR prisoner of war camps where they were holding Bosnian Serbs as well as Bosnian muslims loyal to the legitimate ELECTED muslim leader of Bosnia, Mr. Fikret Abdic.
Keep in mind that at the ITN vs LM libel trial, ITN claimed, incredibly, to have actually “LOST” (?!?) the uncut raw film footage (i.e. its so-called “rushes”) of the “pictures that SHOCKED THE WORLD”!
As Deichmann recounts, this caused a great uproar and commotion in the courtroom at the time.
The above comment was made by Philip Hammond soon after the ITn vs LM libel trial verdict.
Mr. Philip Hammond of the UK, co-editor with US Professor Edward Herman, of the University of Pennsylvania,
analyzed media coverage of wartime events in Kosovo in ex-Yugoslavia in their book Degraded Capability: the Media and the Kosovo Crisis.
It is hardly surprising that ITN suddenly claimed to have “lost” the raw unedited footage, since it would have clearly shown how Ms. Marshall, her ITN film crew and The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy all ended up getting inside the CHICKEN WIRE fence-enclosed barn and transformer station – from which Ms. Marshall and her crew filmed in order to make it look like the Trnopolje refugees were the ones enclosed by barbed wire, and thus give the image of a supposed “death camp”.
Here is what Jared Israel had to say about the ITN vs LM trial:
The article about Trnopolje from Wikipedia in early 2007 contains some obvious absurdities and self-contradictory claims. It states that Trnopolje was a “detention camp” – in other words, a prison complex which implies that the “inmates” are imprisoned behind tall and strong wire fences and NOT free to come and go as they please. Then in the very same sentence, it states that: “Trnopolje was a relatively minimal-security staging area…” thus certainly implying that it was most definitely NOT a “prison”.
In other words by using the phrase “relatively minimal-security staging area”,the author is clearly implying that people could very easily escape at any time; thus according to this statement, Trnopolje was absolutely NOTHING like a WW2 Nazi style “concentration camp” as The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy claims (perhaps Mr. Vulliamy has never seen what a real “concentration camp” looks like: 30 foot high guard towers in each corner containing machine gun nests and surrounded by 10 foot high electrified fences and/or razor sharp barbed wire).
The implication that people could not only escape with relative ease but that in fact that they could come and go as they pleased is confirmed again in the very same sentence! It states that “detainees…were allowed to forage for food outside the detention area’s perimeter”!
First it’s a “concentration camp”, then it’s a “detention camp”, then it’s a “minimal-security staging area” where “detainees” are even allowed to go outside in search of food!
And this sentence is somehow supposed to explain away how everyone except Fikret Alic was emaciated looking (whilst smiling and laughing)whilst many of the other so-called “detainees” had pot bellies: “…detainees were fed only sporadically,but were allowed to forage for food outside the detention area’s perimeter”.
Clearly implying that Fikret Alic must have been fed so “sporadically” that he ended up so thin, that whilst being allowed to leave the “minimal-security staging area” of Trnopolje where he was “allowed to forage for food outside the detention area’s perimeter”, Mr. Alic was somehow so incompetent (or unlucky)that he was incapable of finding food and feeding himself, whilst all the other “detainees” were clearly able to do so, since, we are told: “this explains the widely varying nourishment condition of the inmates.”
SO we have a “concentration camp” which isn’t, but rather a “detention camp” which really isn’t, but rather a “minimal-security staging area” which is so minimally secure that “detainees” are even allowed to go outside the “perimeter” – since it did not have the luxury of “concentration camp” style security benefits like 10 foot high electrified and/or razor wire fences – in order to “forage for food”.
Incidentally, if we want to know why Wikipedia can engage in such preposterous absurdities as above, one only need look at its track record on the subject of the Balkans conflict in ex-Yugoslavia.
Wikipedia is fast becoming a totally discredited source of information on the Balkans conflicts specifically, as it has been exposed on numerous occasions as having deliberately censored exculpatory evidence in support of Croatian Ustasha Nazis’ and Bosnian Islamist Fascists’ war crimes along with the suppression of their pro-Nazi, pro-genocidal views expressed prior to the outbreak of war – as well as during the war.
One notorious example is the almost WORD for WORD copying of the Croatian HDZ ruling party’s propaganda information ministry hagiography of the late Croatian pro-Ustasha Nazi Hitler loving president, Franjo Tudjman – who wrote in his 1989 Croatian version of Mein Kampf “Wastelands of Historical Truth” the following:
The Guardian‘s censorship of the truth of the genocide of thousands of Serbian civilians and the ethnic cleansing of over a million and a half more, perpetrated against the Serbs by the racist Tudjman HDZ neo-Fascist Ustasha Croats, the KLA Islamist Nazi terrorist leaders: Ceku, Haradinaj, Thaci, Demaci and the Bosnian Izetbegovic SDA Islamofascists who glorify the Nazi Waffen SS Handzar division from World War 2 speaks volumes.
In kindergarten, we all learn a very basic rule, which I like to call “The Boy Who Cried Wolf Principle.”
How does this rule work? Suppose that you know this person, whom we will call Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian, and suppose that Ed Vulliamy, in the past has lied to you repeatedly, dramatically, and shamelessly about topic A over many years.
The next time that Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian makes an assertion about topic A with the same slant as assertions on topic A that have repeatedly been huge lies, you have to make one of two choices:
1) Make the provisional assumption that Ed Vulliamy is lying again (until proven otherwise); or
2) Make the provisional assumption that Ed Vulliamy is, for the first time, telling the truth (until proven otherwise).
If you choose the second option you demonstrate that you are an imbecile who cannot reason. This is what Wikipedia, this guy Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian and Penny Marshall of ITN would have us do.
More amazing than the tactics employed, or the reasons for doing so, has been the wholesale adoption of these tactics by the PR power elite. Apparently, these tactics get results. I see a lot of really strange examples here in Brazil, especially of the nebulous multiple identity kind.