The "Trial" of Slobodan Milosevic:
"We've been lied to once again"
by Jared Israel* The so-called "trial" of Slobodan Milosevic is supposed to open in The Hague on Tuesday, February 12. This NATO "court" has already been thoroughly discredited and is illegal. Just read "Illegal Tribunal — illegal indictment" by Dr Hans Koechler, the highly respected UN consultant.(1) During the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright openly demanded that "Tribunal" "Prosecutor" Louise Arbour indict Milosevic. The purpose: to criminalise the Yugoslav leader, thus heading off any possibility that wavering NATO governments would meet with him.(2) During the NATO bombing [of Yugoslavia] NATO spokesman Jamie Shea boasted that the "Tribunal" would never indict NATO leaders because NATO controls it financially.(3) In fact Milosevic has been on trial continuously in the Western media for 14 years. Undoubtedly many have been persuaded by this media campaign and the supporting chorus — including some left-wing intellectuals — that Milosevic is guilty. The only thing wrong with this trial-by-media is that the defence never got to speak and the prosecution lies. Unlike Afghanistan and September 11, few people challenged the lies in the case of Yugoslavia; so they sank in. Worse, respected critics of US foreign policy uncritically accepted the basic premises of Western policy. It is unfortunate, but it is true. Starting in 1987, when Milosevic led the campaign to throw pro-NATO elements out of the Yugoslav League of Communists, Washington pegged him as a "bad Indian". Politicians and the media attacked relentlessly, accusing him of fomenting fascist deeds by spouting racist demagoguery. This race-hate charge is the key because if Milosevic had in fact organised the Serbs the way Hitler organised the Germans, he would have had to do it publicly. You can't promote hatred without promoting hatred. Therefore we can check the accuracy of the anti-Serb, anti-Milosevic campaign by reading what Milosevic wrote. That is, by first reading what he wrote and then, to check the accuracy, reading what politicians and the media say he wrote. I want to ask you to try a little experiment. Below is an excerpt from Milosevic's most famous speech, delivered in 1989 at Kosovo Field. Now before you go and read it, please make a few predictions. He's going to talk about nationalism and about the relations between Serbs and other groups in Serbia. Kosovo was/is legally a province of Serbia, so that includes ethnic Albanians. What is he going to say? Here's Milosevic: "Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. "National composition of almost all countries in the world today, particularly developed ones, has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully. "Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect. "The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people. Therefore, all people in Serbia who live from their own work, honestly, respecting other people and other nations, are in their own republic." "Dramatic national divisions" "After all, our entire country should be set up on the basis of such principles. Yugoslavia is a multinational community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality for all nations that live in it. "The crisis that hit Yugoslavia has brought about national divisions, but also social, cultural, religious and many other less important ones. Among all these divisions, nationalist ones have shown themselves to be the most dramatic. Resolving them will make it easier to remove other divisions and mitigate the consequences they have created. "For as long as multinational communities have existed, their weak point has always been the relations between different nations. The threat is that the question of one nation being endangered by the others can be posed one day and this can then start a wave of suspicions, accusations, and intolerance, a wave that invariably grows and is difficult to stop. "This threat has been hanging like a sword over our heads all the time. Internal and external enemies of multi-national communities are aware of this and therefore they organise their activity against multinational societies mostly by fomenting national conflicts. "At this moment, we in Yugoslavia are behaving as if we have never had such an experience and as if in our recent and distant past we have never experienced the worst tragedy of national conflicts that a society can experience and still survive." [From Milosevic's Speech at Kosovo Field, June 28, 1989. Emperor's Clothes has posted two Western translations. This is the one made by the US Government. The other was made by the BBC.] These words of Milosevic are never quoted. Western politicians and the media have either a) lied about Milosevic or b) parroted those lies through naivete, servility or corruption. Here is Robin Cooke, [British Foreign Minister] "commenting" on (supposedly) that speech. I cannot say whether Cooke is a liar or a parrot. "Milosevic used this important anniversary not to give a message of hope and reform. Instead, he threatened force to deal with Yugoslavia's internal political difficulties. "Doing so thereby launched his personal agenda of power and ethnic hatred under the cloak of nationalism. All the peoples of the region have suffered grievously ever since." (Cooke can be read in full at http://www.fco.gov.uk/news/newstext.asp?2597— until they take it down...) Isn't that amazing? The man simply, brazenly lies. But it works — it works because nobody — nobody! — reading Cooke's words had ever seen the Milosevic speech. It's not in books. We searched Lexis and found a BBC translation from 1989 and the Orlando Sentinel. When we first hunted for it, we didn't have Lexis, so it took days to find it on microfilm in the library. If you had read Cooke without reading Milosevic, wouldn't you have thought, "Maybe Cooke is exaggerating but there must be some truth to it." But in fact it was just a lie told to justify the destruction of Yugoslavia. There are now a million refugees living in Serbia, victims of that lie. Legend and truth Or consider the following excerpt. Here Milosevic talks about the famous Kosovo battle of 1389 which marked the onset of the long Ottoman occupation of his nation. We have been told that Milosevic and the Serbs treat this battle with a Hitlerian folk-mystique. You know, super-macho, worship blood and gore. Or else with brooding self-pity, hatred and a lust for ethnic revenge. Here is Milosevic: "Today, it is difficult to say what is the historical truth about the Battle of Kosovo and what is legend. Today this is no longer important. Oppressed by pain and filled with hope, the people used to remember and to forget, as, after all, all people in the world do, and it was ashamed of treachery and glorified heroism. "Therefore it is difficult to say today whether the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people, whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or [whether thanks to it] we survived in this slavery. "The answers to those questions will be constantly sought by science and the people. What has been certain through all the centuries until our time today is that disharmony struck Kosovo 600 years ago. "If we lost the battle, then this was not only the result of social superiority and the armed advantage of the Ottoman Empire but also of the tragic disunity in the leadership of the Serbian state at that time. In that distant 1389, the Ottoman Empire was not only stronger than that of the Serbs but it was also more fortunate than the Serbian kingdom. "The lack of unity and betrayal in Kosovo will continue to follow the Serbian people like an evil fate through the whole of its history. Even in the last war, this lack of unity and betrayal led the Serbian people and Serbia into agony, the consequences of which in the historical and moral sense exceeded fascist aggression." Not only is this not fascist, it is downright thoughtful. No; more; it is lyrical. It has, for want of a better word, soul. It has that depth of feeling you sometimes find among people who have suffered greatly. The Irish in Ireland have it. My grandparents, who were East European Jews, had it. Black people in the US have it. The Hutus in Africa have it. And sometimes, just sometimes, even the leaders of oppressed people have it. Lumumba had it. Martin Luther King had it. By the end of the US Civil War, Abe Lincoln had it. But can you imagine George Bush saying anything as moving. as this: "Oppressed by pain and filled with hope, the people used to remember and to forget, as, after all, all people in the world do, and it was ashamed of treachery and glorified heroism. Therefore it is difficult to say today whether the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people, whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or [whether thanks to it] we survived in this slavery." "As after all, all people in the world do." There is even a certain generosity of spirit here. And this is the man whom crude liars like Bush and Clinton have caricatured; perhaps they were just looking in the mirror and casting him in their own true image. Milosevic and the Serbian people have been ruthlessly — and once you know the truth — outrageously lied about.* * * Further reading: 1) Illegal Tribunal — Illegal Indictment, by Dr. Hans Koechler at http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/prog2.htm 2) How Madeline Albright ordered The Hague "Tribunal" to "Indict" Milosevic at http://www.icdsm.org/more/lovie.htm 3) Official Statements Prove Hague "Tribunal" Belongs to NATO by Jared Israel at http://www.icdsm.org/more/belongs.htm Join Emperor's Clothes email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm and receive about one article per day. *Jared Israel is the editor of Emperor's Clothes.