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They
did.
But
why would the authorities want to help? Didn't they know
the West was hostile to the Yugoslav-loyalist Serbs? Weren't
the loyalists attacked every day in the British press? Wasn't
the Islamist secessionist leader, Izetbegovic, treated as
a hero? Knowing that ITN was probably pro-secessionist,
why would the authorities let an ITN crew film a "death
camp?"
Could
it be that the place ITN filmed was not a death camp?
That the authorities let Penny Marshall and her film crew
in precisely because they had nothing to hide?
A
lucky break...
Fortunately
we don't have to speculate. By luck, a Yugoslav film crew
from RTS, the Serbian TV network, accompanied Penny Marshall
and the ITN crew that day. The RTS people filmed the same
subjects that the ITN people filmed and sometimes they filmed
Marshall and the ITN crew as well. The Yugoslav production
company, EXP-Production, ILKE, used this RTS footage
to produce a film that shows the truth, that shows what
Penny Marshall really saw in Bosnia.
Emperors-clothes.com
has translated and edited the Serbian film to produce a
32 minute video called "JUDGMENT!" It is of excellent
quality. It is now available in English. Soon it will be
translated into other languages as well.
Viewing
"JUDGMENT!" is a unique opportunity. For we are
able to see how reality - what Marshall actually saw
- was edited to produce the nightmare images - the
pictures which ITN distributed around the world.
I
urge you to get this video. Show it to friends, to student,
labor, business, veterans and political groups. Get it shown
on TV. Give a copy to your Congressman or Senator. Give
it to news people. It is an eye-opener; no, it is a MIND
opener because it proves we have been lied to with a purpose.
The Establishment in the US and other Western countries
wanted to a) the break-up of Yugoslavia and b) destroy the
pro-unity forces in Yugoslavia. This meant and means demonizing
the Serbian people. For it is the Serbs who have always
been the biggest supporters of unity in that part of the
world. What better way to demonize and demoralize these
advocates of ethnic unity than by smearing them as Nazis?
(To order click here.)
The
ITN crew shot film on two locations that day. The first
was a detention center at Omarska. The second was a refugee
center at Trnopolje (pronounced Turnopolyay.) Here's what
they saw, as shown in "JUDGMENT!"
The
Omarska detention center: definitely not ready for prime
time...
The
Omarska detention center was a modern facility, pleasant,
unthreatening. Before the war it had been a mining company's
administrative center. Now it was used by the loyalist government
to hold Bosnian Islamist rebels, prisoners of war.
The
men were not shackled; they were not behind bars. Rather,
they lounged about. They ate in a relaxed atmosphere in
the regular cafeteria. They appeared well fed. The Serbian
guards were casual. Frankly, the whole thing looked a lot
more humane than a US jail.
A
loyalist administrator made a little speech. He explained
that the loyalist authorities viewed most of the prisoners
as good people who had been suckered into supporting the
secessionist revolt against Yugoslavia. He said only a small
group was hard core. The loyalists wanted to rehabilitate
the ones who had been misled so they could live together
once again, in peace.
So
here was a real, live Serbian detention center. Marshall's
crew interviewed prisoners and their wives. Why didn't ITN
use any of this film?
Could
it be because this footage proved the loyalist authorities
were humanitarian?
Feeding
refugees and other atrocities...
The
ITN crew (and the Yugoslav crew) moved on to the refugee
center at Trnopolje. After filming refugees who were wandering
around freely, Marshall took her crew into a small area
partially enclosed by a fence. The fence, mainly chicken
wire with a few strands of barbed wire, was falling apart.
It had been erected before the war to secure a storage shed,
some wheelbarrows and other equipment. The only
people inside the enclosure were the ITN and RTS crews.
A group of refugees gathered outside. They were curious
to find all these movie people crammed into an awkward space,
filming through a fence.
Penny
Marshall went out of her way to film in the storage area.
Why?
As
you will see when you watch "JUDGMENT!"
her crew and the RTS people had already shot interviews
with refugees, with a Muslim doctor and with Red Cross worker.Why
didn't they use this film?
The
obvious answer: she wanted a fence. She wanted to film through
a fence, through barbed wire. When you film refugees wandering
freely in a refugee center it's hard to create pictures
that look like a death camp. But when you film through barbed
wire it's easy.
Is
there any other explanation for why an experienced film
worker would squeeze her crew into an inhospitable litter
of wheelbarrows and overgrown weeds? Why she would pick
a spot where she had to talk to the refugees through a fence?
Marshall
tried to find someone who spoke English. She settled on
a refugee named Mekmed. She asked him, Do they treat you
badly? No, said the man; very kind, very kind. Marshall
was clearly impatient. She pressed the man to criticize
the loyalist officials. The man insisted: everything is
good; I think it is very safe but just too hot. Very hot.
Marshall
asked Mekmed about another refugee. That man is very thin,
she said. Mekmed shrugged as one does when forced to explain
an obvious truth. Yes, he said. I think all people is not
the same.
Apparently
someone in the crowd translated Marshall's question about
the thin man, for soon after that someone pushed a very
thin man forward, as if to say. "Here's a REALLY skinny
one for you!" As the man, Fikret Allich, stumbled toward
Marshall, he laughed, then reached over the fence to shake
her hand.
Allich
had suffered from a childhood disease, probably Tuberculosis,
that produced a scurvy-like effect. He was stripped to the
waist because it was so hot. In "JUDGMENT!" we
can see that besides being quite thin, his ribs were deformed.
The appearance is shocking.
Editing
to make a statement
Marshall
never aired the conversation with Mekmed. Why not? Was it
because he refused to bash the loyalist authorities?
Instead,
ITN produced film clips and stills that gave a totally false
impression. These pictures made it appear that Fikret Allich
and the other refugees were the ones behind barbed wire.
Everyone
saw these pictures and because human beings tend to believe
what they see, millions of people were fooled. They thought
they had seen proof that the Serbs were the new Nazi's.
Western public opinion thus came to favor Alija Izetbegovic,
the Bosnian Islamist whose model of tolerance was the Iran
of Ayatollah Khomeini. Amazing.
David
takes on Goliath
LM,
a brave little British magazine, exposed this fraud.
A link to that exposé is posted below. Amazingly, they were
sued by ITN for slander. Consider: ITN, a news station,
had itself visually lied about the Bosnian Serbs; now it
was suing a magazine for exposing the lies.
Last
week we learned that ITN won their libel suit. Apparently,
instead of focusing on the real evidence - the uncut footage
of the film - the trial was dominated by the testimony of
a witness, a Bosnian doctor, who claimed Serbian guards
had beaten people at this "concentration camp."
The doctor's testimony created an anti-Serb atomosphere
at the trial and I believe it was this atmosphere which
lost the case for LM.
But
why, now that the movie "JUDGMENT!" proves ITN
had no scruples about lying, that ITN betrayed its trust
by deliberately misrepresenting what the film crew had seen
in Bosnia - why should we believe the testimony of an ITN
witness? False testimony is a commodity in the free marketplace
of our brave new world, especially when one has the monetary
resources of a big player like ITN. Money can buy lies.
During
his summation, the Judge admitted that ITN was "mistaken"
when it argued that the refugees were imprisoned behind
barbed wire. "Mistaken?" How is that possible?
Were Penny marshall and her people sleep walking?
The
judge insisted that the ITN "mistake" did not
justify LM's article. In other words, even though
ITN was wrong about who was behind the barbed wire, LM
could be convicted of libel. LM had to prove that
Marshall and Ian Williams and their associates edited the
film with the conscious intention of fooling people?
Well,
all I can say is, get a copy of "JUDGMENT!" and
see for yourself exactly what the ITN people had to do to
get from the raw film to the "death camp" pictures.
They
had to be acting with a clear goal in mind. Period.
Compounding
a lie
Below
I've posted a link to the Reuters story covering
this verdict. You will notice that Reuters never
mentions what was said in the Living Marxism exposé.
It never mentions that ITN shot pictures from inside a barbed
wire enclosure and then claimed the people in the film were
"behind barbed wire." Instead it simply asserts
that Trnopolje was a concentration camp as if that assertion
were a proven fact.
So
then, ITN sues to silence freedom of speech - freedom of
speech which was here used in the most honorable way, to
challenge the lies of the mighty. ITN wins. LM is
crushed for telling the truth.
And
what does Reuters do? It uses the occasion to once
again broadcast the very lie that Living Marxism
got sued for disproving! Truly beyond belief.
Playing
for effect
One
final point. In the new journalism, emotions are shamelessly
exploited for political effect. Consider this from the Reuters
story:
- "Marshall,
wiping tears from her eyes, said the judgment was 'important
for the people who were in the camp.'" (Reuters,
3/14/00)
This
is a crass emotional lie. Consider: Marshall, in reality
the representative of great power, is presented as frail,
in need of protection (the weeping woman). By focusing our
attention on her tears (vulnerability) Reuters engages
our emotions and suspends our disbelief. Penny Marshall
has been made real to us precisely the way a fictional character
is made real - we identify with her emotions. Having identified
with her, having suspended disbelief, we tend to receive
with scant skepticism her comment that: "
the judgment was 'important for the people who were in the
camp."
How
clever! A fiction within a fiction. Reuters has made
up a weak, defenseless Penny Marshall that we can believe
in - the real P. Marshall is backed by the most powerful
forces in Britain - and likewise Marshall has her own little
fictional characters. For she has invented the Bosnian victims
in that non-existent 'death camp' where refugees came for
food and where the only complaint was 'the weather is too
hot.' Now she weeps for her own creations.
No
similar emotional pitch is made for the LM people.
Marshall comes alive whereas they lie obediently flat. And
LM, which dared defend the victims of Ms. Marshall's
lies - LM that has been crushed under an impossible
financial burden - LM comes off as - the bully!
Unbelievable.
Let's
stop beating around the bush, shall we?
Why
didn't Britain just launch a missile attack on the LM
offices like the one where they blew apart those dangerous
reporters and 23 year old makeup girls at Serbian TV, and
get it over with? Hmmm? Afterwards, the media could endlesly
repeat, like a mantra, that the LM people were lying
propagandists who had accidentally died as collateral damage
in a revenge attack for which the finger of responsibility
must in the end ultimately and totally point to... Slobodan
Milosevich.
Lady's
and gentlemen, this is Jared Israel signing off, and that's
show business.
What,
Ms. Marshall is still weeping? Well of course Ms. Marshall
is still weeping. She's weeping all right, she's weeping
all the way to the bank.
Let's
hope there's a Hell.
The
film is available now for $19/.95 plus shipping and handling.
To order, either:
Send
a check to Antiwar.com, 520 S. Murphy Ave. #202, Sunnyvale,
CA 94086 or go
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Cost
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PAL
Version Now Available – Please indicate if you want
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Like the best Emperors-clothes articles,
"Judgment!" relies on evidence
and thoughtful analysis. It proves that the British news
station, ITN, fabricated images of a non-existent Serbian
death camp in Bosnia in 1992. These images were enthusiastically
spread by press and politicians. They created public opinion
to justify NATO bombing of the Bosnian Serbs. Every Westerner
should see this film. We urge you to buy one, show it to
friends, get it on local TV stations, get it shown to unions,
business groups, veterans groups, student groups (!), everywhere
possible. It will challenge people, change their minds.
(It is written so that it speaks for itself; no explanation
or introduction is needed.)
Further reading on the
Libel case...
* 'English Libel law, a Disgrace to Democracy' by
Mike Hume, editor of LM magazine. Mr. Hume remains defiant,
and is looking for a job. Also, for those near London, details
of an after-the-trial party, March 18th. http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/hume/english.htm
"The Truth vs. ITN - And
Reuters" Includes
the original LM article, over which ITN sued, and
the Reuters article on the trial. If you look at
the pictures shown on this page, pictures that were produced
by ITN and that are reproduced here from the front pages
of newspapers - if you look carefully at these pictures
and you are at all familiar with barbed wire, you will be
able to tell that the men are on the outside of the enclosure.
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/images/bosnia/camp.htm
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