Anatomy of propaganda<\/p>\n
How Slobodan Milosevic was framed<\/p>\n
by Francisco J. Gil-White<\/p>\n
fjgil@psych.upenn.edu<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.psych.upenn.edu\/~fjgil\/<\/p>\n
Introduction\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In April 2001, a story broke making the following allegations: (1)the Yugoslav army had massacred Albanian civilians; (2) their bodies\u00a0were driven away in a refrigerator truck which was then supposedly\u00a0dumped into the Danube, deep inside Serbia. In short notice this\u00a0story became an enormous international “scandal,” and the allegations\u00a0evolved and multiplied until we were talking about whole convoys of\u00a0trucks, all of them supposedly full of massacred Albanian victims,\u00a0and supposedly spirited out of Kosovo and hidden in Serbia, out ofthe view of The Hague tribunal investigators.<\/p>\n The hysteria in the Western (and some of the Serbian) media\u00a0surrounding these allegations was responsible for building support\u00a0among the public for the illegal abduction of Slobodan Milosevic and\u00a0his subsequent shipping to The Hague. Given the important role it\u00a0played, it is remarkable that there is absolutely no substance to the\u00a0story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In this piece I promise to do the following:<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0 <\/span>Give you a synopsis of what the story became, and an analysis of\u00a0its surface plausibility, just on its own terms.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0 <\/span>Give you a blow-by-blow chronology of how the story evolved in\u00a0the media, and how it grew and grew in spite of the fact that no\u00a0evidence was ever added to the original “evidence,” which turns out\u00a0to be no evidence at all, as I will show.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0 <\/span>Demonstrate that, not only is there no substance to the\u00a0accusations against Slobodan Milosevic, but that these accusations\u00a0have been part of an organized plot to frame Milosevic for war crimes\u00a0in order to send him to The Hague in time to get a billion dollars\u00a0from the United States and also to neutralize the pro-Milosevic\u00a0opposition that has been a nuisance to the new government in\u00a0Belgrade, which government the United States helped install with\u00a0considerable effort and expenditure.<\/p>\n I will be happy to hear from anybody who does not find my refutations\u00a0sufficiently convincing.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n (1) The Story\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Before we begin the chronology of how the story was constructed with\u00a0zero evidence, let us briefly look at what this story ended up\u00a0becoming. Here is my synopsis, followed by a brief analysis of its\u00a0plausibility, taken in its own terms.<\/p>\n Story Synopsis. According to what the story became in the media,\u00a0Kosovar Albanian civilians were being slaughtered by the security\u00a0services of the Milosevic regime, with the help of the Yugoslav army.<\/p>\n After many a massacre, Albanian villagers would be buried in\u00a0individual graves, in local cemeteries, supposedly in order to hide\u00a0the fact that a crime of war had been committed. That is a very\u00a0strange explanation, of course, because on other occasions there was\u00a0no concern for hiding the crime and surviving Albanians were\u00a0supposedly left to bury the victims themselves. Some anxiety\u00a0apparently later developed over whether this was a good enough cover-up!\u00a0 <\/span>So at an alleged meeting which was said to include then Interior\u00a0Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, Milosevic supposedly gave the order\u00a0that evidence of the massacres against civilians should be covered\u00a0up. The story claims that the bodies were then dug up, put into\u00a0Mercedes Benz freezer trucks belonging to Kosovar company, and taken\u00a0hundreds of miles to the farthest corners of Serbia. These trucks\u00a0were then supposedly dumped, with their grisly contents, in rivers\u00a0and lakes. But this too turned out not to be a good enough solutionb(some bodies floated, some trucks were visible)! So the trucks were\u00a0fished out and destroyed, and the bodies were transported in other\u00a0trucks to different locations where they were finally buried out of\u00a0sight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Forget for a moment about the evidence (of which, as I will show,\u00a0there is none) the story is simply fantastic, and accepting it as\u00a0something that could, in principle, have occurred requires already\u00a0that you swallow whole a number of rather extraordinary claims.<\/p>\n The British daily The Independent wrote: [1]<\/p>\n [START INDEPENDENT QUOTE:]<\/p>\n Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies disappeared from Kosovo during\u00a0the Nato air strikes in 1999. In many cases, Albanians saw their\u00a0loved ones buried, or even dug the graves themselves. But when they\u00a0returned to show the graves to investigators from The Hague, they\u00a0were empty.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n . . .As the Nato bombs rained down, body-snatchers roamed Kosovo.<\/p>\n Mete Krasniqi saw them in action, after Serb forces machine-gunned\u00a0the inhabitants of his village, including his son. The villagers\u00a0buried them. A month later, hiding in the woods, they saw men in\u00a0orange overalls dig up the bodies and load them into two trucks.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE:]<\/p>\n So you are asked to believe that an astonishing number of bodies were\u00a0moved out of Kosovo even as NATO unleashed an overwhelming shower of\u00a0bombs. That is an extraordinary claim. It should require\u00a0extraordinary evidence. But what is the evidence that “hundreds,\u00a0maybe thousands” of bodies were moved out of Kosovo? Only that, when\u00a0the Albanians “returned to show the graves to investigators from The\u00a0Hague, they were empty!”<\/p>\n But the graves could be empty because they never contained any bodies\u00a0in the first place – say, for example, because no Albanian civilians\u00a0were ever massacred by the Yugoslav army!<\/p>\n Why doesn’t the Independent at least consider this possibility? After\u00a0all, by the time the Independent wrote the above article, it was\u00a0already publicly known that the excuse for starting the NATO bombing\u00a0(the so-called Racak `massacre’) had been a KLA hoax,[2] so it is\u00a0perfectly natural to suppose that the KLA could lie again – say, for\u00a0example, when they give a preposterous story about thousands of\u00a0massacred civilians being spirited away in refrigerator trucks during\u00a0a massive aerial bombardment.<\/p>\n “What KLA is lying again?” you say, “The Independent interviewed a\u00a0villager by the name Mete Krasniqi.” Uh-huh. But what the Independent\u00a0does not say is that the KLA is a Krasniqi operation. They probably\u00a0just forgot to explain that, as reported elsewhere, “the Krasniqi\u00a0family helped found [my emphasis] the Kosovo Liberation Army in\u00a01995,” and that “Although some Krasniqis have taken jobs outside the\u00a0village [of Vranoc], in nearby factories or overseas, they remain\u00a0intensely loyal to their families and land.”[3] The Independent isnot getting the views of an `innocent villager’ but of a member ofthe tightly-knit clan which forms the KLA core. Since it simply\u00a0repeats Mete Krasniqi’s statements with no context or explanation,\u00a0the Independent’s position must be that terrorists who have lied\u00a0before could not possibly lie again, and that knowing the details I\u00a0have provided here would be of no interest to readers trying to\u00a0determine the story’s plausibility. I was able to find another\u00a0alleged witness to `substantiate’ the `missing bodies’ story. You’ll\u00a0never guess who: Sheremet Krasniqi, as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.[4]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Thus, we see that accepting this story even on its own terms requiresthat we take zero notice of the following:<\/p>\n 1. The so-called `witnesses’ who explain the `missing bodies’ are\u00a0members of the clan that forms the KLA core.<\/p>\n 2. The KLA obviously has an interest in pushing this kind of story.<\/p>\n 3. The KLA had previously pushed precisely this kind of story and it\u00a0turned out to be a complete fabrication, now know as the\u00a0Racak `massacre’ hoax.<\/p>\n 4. The KLA is not the kind of organization that you turn to for\u00a0trustworthy witnesses. For starters, it was well known from the\u00a0beginning that it was terrorist, something that even the US (later to\u00a0become the KLA’s air force) admitted publicly.[5] Moreover, it is\u00a0well-known that they were getting funded by, and had fighters from\u00a0Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda,[6] and it got funds also from its\u00a0prominent role in international heroin trafficking.[7]<\/p>\n The Independent and the Chicago Sun-Times deprived its readers of the\u00a0foregoing analysis and simply reported the testimony of the\u00a0Krasniqi ‘witnesses’ with no comment.<\/p>\n These papers also failed to point out that this sort of story has\u00a0another obvious beneficiary: the new government in Belgrade, which\u00a0the US had helped install. By uncanny coincidence the story exploded\u00a0precisely at the moment when NATO was threatening the new government\u00a0in Belgrade that if Milosevic was not turned over to the Hague\u00a0Tribunal they would not get 1 billion dollars for reconstruction (in\u00a0addition to other vague threats). The story was exquisitely timed to\u00a0help build momentum for Milosevic’s illegal abduction and subsequent\u00a0shipping to The Hague.<\/p>\n A truly free press would have shared with its readers such details,\u00a0as they are obviously immensely relevant. Instead, the mainstream\u00a0Western media gave us the claim, completely stripped of any context or\u00a0documentation, that, according to alleged `witnesses,’ “hundreds and\u00a0maybe thousands” (!) of murdered victims were driven out of Kosovo.<\/p>\n And how?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Well, as the New York Times explained:[8]<\/p>\n “At least 10, but maybe dozens, of truckloads of bodies were shipped\u00a0from Kosovo to Serbia proper and dumped underwater or in mass\u00a0graves. ‘This whole operation was a crazy thing to do, a crime and\u00a0for us incomprehensible,’ Captain Karleusa said. ‘The goal was to\u00a0hide something.’ “\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It is incomprehensible? I agree.<\/p>\n What could possibly be the reason to attempt such a preposterous\u00a0operation? Karleusa explains it: “The goal was to hide something.”<\/p>\n Well, this is, certainly, the only plausible explanation. The only\u00a0conceivable reason to move the bodies of massacred Albanian civilians\u00a0out of Kosovo would be to avoid discovery by NATO troops, on the\u00a0assumption that NATO was likely to occupy Kosovo but not Serbia. But\u00a0this goal of avoiding discovery is precisely what makes the story “a\u00a0crazy thing to do” and for us incomprehensible?”<\/p>\n For starters, consider that with this many bodies, we are talking\u00a0about a very large scale operation. Those planning to carry it out\u00a0must naturally ask themselves: how easy will it be? How likely are\u00a0the trucks to get hit?<\/p>\n At the time that these freezer trucks are supposed to have been\u00a0leaving Kosovo for Serbia, NATO was unleashing a storm of bombs over\u00a0Kosovo and the rest of Serbia. Among other civilian targets, NATO was\u00a0bombing roads, bridges, and vehicles. And when it comes to vehicles,\u00a0NATO was hitting everything. Consider for example that, bombing from\u00a015,000 feet, NATO was either unable or unwilling to distinguish\u00a0between an open tractor full of refugees and a truck, let alone\u00a0between a civilian truck and a military vehicle (see APPENDIX). A\u00a0freezer truck would have looked like a target.<\/p>\n Try to imagine yourself as one of the drivers. You are navigating the\u00a0mountainous Kosovo territory, with a very heavy load, so you are\u00a0sluggish. As you chug painfully along you become a ripe ambush target\u00a0for the KLA which has men crawling all over the hills?and for the\u00a0NATO bombs that are falling all around you. Even if the KLA or the\u00a0NATO bombs don’t get you, you are bound to find parts of roads bombed\u00a0out and more than one bridge destroyed. What are the chances that you\u00a0can go cross-country through forests, deep canyons, and rivers in a\u00a0freezer truck? These are large trailers, already heavy when empty,\u00a0and one of them is alleged to have contained 86 bodies! And they are\u00a0not exactly maneuverable (even when empty). How can you make it out\u00a0of Kosovo? And if you are hit, which is really very likely, then at\u00a0best the `masterminds’ of this operation will have a new mess to\u00a0clean up, and at worst they will have handed a priceless propaganda\u00a0victory to the enemy. Now consider that you are just one of several\u00a0dozen, or many dozen, drivers, all of whom must succeed in\u00a0accomplishing this impossible feat in order for the massacres to\u00a0escape discovery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Are you laughing? To attempt this feat would have been to guarantee\u00a0discovery of the alleged massacres but avoiding discovery is supposedto be the point of attempting this ridiculous operation! Crazy and\u00a0incomprehensible. Yes.<\/p>\n But it gets better?<\/p>\n Contrary to NATO’s original propaganda immediately prior to the\u00a0bombing, the Yugoslav army was not attacking civilians. Former\u00a0Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, an ardent critic of\u00a0NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia, has said:[9]<\/p>\n “A number of credible OSCE observers have publicly stated that in\u00a0the weeks leading up to the bombing they witnessed no murders, no\u00a0deportations and nothing that could be described as systematic\u00a0persecution.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We don’t have to accept Bissett’s claims that his chosen observers\u00a0were really `credible.’ This is the sort of thing a propagandist\u00a0would do, and we have no way of checking his cheaply made claim that\u00a0his sources are trustworthy. However, it is now public knowledge that\u00a0the American OSCE mission was composed mostly of CIA operatives who\u00a0colluded with the KLA in setting up the hoax that the Yugoslav army\u00a0had massacred Albanian civilians at Racak.[10] If a hoax was\u00a0necessary to accuse the Yugoslav army of war crimes in order to\u00a0justify the bombing of Yugoslavia, then James Bissett must be telling\u00a0the truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And, as noted earlier, the freezer truck stories in the press are in\u00a0fact consistent with this, accusing that the massacres were going on\u00a0during the NATO bombing. Thus, we are asked to believe that the\u00a0considerable resources needed to massacre thousands of civilians and\u00a0take them out of Kosovo in freezer trucks were not expended when it\u00a0was relatively comfortable to do so. No. These genocidal masterminds\u00a0waited until they were also fighting the KLA and NATO simultaneously\u00a0because this way they could do everything at the same time. And they\u00a0must also have decided that they would give the enemy the propaganda\u00a0gift of turning their false accusations into a prophecy!<\/p>\n But it gets better.<\/p>\n Remember that, according to the Independent (see above) these\u00a0geniuses first buried the bodies in, of all things, individual graves\u00a0(and in cemeteries), and only then unearthed them and put them in\u00a0trucks. They were making this as expensive as possible! And while\u00a0they were unearthing the victims which they had earlier buried (or\u00a0else left for surviving villagers to dig even though these murderers\u00a0were supposedly very worried about discovery) they were wearing, get\u00a0this, orange overalls. Why? Because? because orange overalls are\u00a0good camouflage?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n …and better?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once they succeeded in getting all of these trucks out and managed to\u00a0strand not one in Kosovo?they proceeded to dump them in rivers and\u00a0lakes! This makes perfect sense because they were trying to preventdiscovery. Right?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n After all, how do you prevent discovery of a widespread massacre? If\u00a0I am one of those drivers, my first thought is that I will put the\u00a0bodies in a truck and then dump it all in a river or a lake. Of\u00a0course, dead bodies do float. But since I made it out of Kosovo\u00a0unscathed even though I was sluggishly and improbably driving a large\u00a0and heavy freezer truck cross-country over bombed-out and mountainous\u00a0terrain, and yet managed to escape both the KLA and the NATO bombs,\u00a0it is obvious that I have just the silliest luck. I can count on it.<\/p>\n So…naturally, I will dump the truck in a river and just hope toluck that the bodies won’t float. But for good measure, just to\u00a0challenge my crazy good fortune (let’s see how far it goes!), I will\u00a0dump the truck in The Danube, a navigable river and a very important\u00a0trade artery, and trust that nothing will ever hit it (the Danube is\u00a0where the alleged first truck was supposedly found). And to add to\u00a0the suspense, I will neither puncture the tires nor make holes in thetruck, and see if the whole thing can escape detection as it floats\u00a0hither and yon.[11]<\/p>\n What fun!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And don’t forget that these were Mercedes Benz trucks. They were\u00a0dumping Mercedes. And the trucks belonged to some Kosovar company. Inother words, the agents of the genocidal state could not commandeer\u00a0some trucks of their own that they could trust for this crucial cover-up operation?<\/p>\n All of this would be bad enough by itself without the details of thestory emanating from what is supposedly a “free press.”<\/p>\n The entire western media establishment found itself incapable or\u00a0unwilling to examine the ludicrousness of the story. Instead, they treated it as a plausible story from the beginning. They expanded andgrew the story lyrically even though they were never presented with a\u00a0shred of evidence for it.<\/p>\n And this lack of supporting evidence is not something they ever\u00a0bothered to reflect on either.<\/p>\n Here now is the chronology of how this non-story became an elaborate\u00a0fictional narrative in the media. Following that, I show how this\u00a0cheap novel emerged out of a plot by the new government in Belgrade\u00a0in order to frame Milosevic and send him to The Hague in time to get\u00a0a billion dollars.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>(2) Origin and evolution of a vast media fabrication<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>I. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>THE STORY BREAKS<\/p>\n The first report in the Western media concerning the `refrigerator\u00a0truck’ incident was given by the Associated Press. We will be paying\u00a0close attention to the wording, to what is said, what is omitted,\u00a0etc., and to what is claimed as fact and what is reported as an\u00a0allegation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My goal is to demonstrate that the mainstream Western media\u00a0establishment is controlled, that it is emphatically not a “free\u00a0press.” Unfortunately, demonstrating this requires that we follow the\u00a0development of this media fabrication step by step, and that we look\u00a0at the claims made by a variety of media outlets. This is the only\u00a0way to do it, there is no shortcut, because for each individual caseone can always argue sloppiness. Only the pattern can establish\u00a0beyond reasonable doubt that we are dealing with propaganda. My\u00a0purpose here is therefore to follow the growth of the story in the\u00a0media, step by chronological step. I will demonstrate that the story\u00a0grew and grew even though no evidence was added to the original\u00a0allegations, which turn out to be entirely false (and this wasactually shown early on, as we will see, but the press chose toignore that completely).<\/p>\n The argument is not that every single journalist in the Western world\u00a0is in the pay of the intelligence services of NATO powers. The\u00a0argument is that many are, and that the top echelons of the media\u00a0hierarchies certainly are. Thus, even when honest journalists write\u00a0hard-hitting pieces which contain embarrassing information on issues\u00a0of critical importance to Western governments, the headlines will be\u00a0changed to contradict the body of the text, and the text itself will\u00a0be rearranged so as to place the embarrassing information at the end\u00a0(for a pithy demonstration of all this, click here). This iseffective because most people remember only the headline, and few of\u00a0them ever read an article all the way to the end.<\/p>\n We begin with the Associated Press wire dated April 30th that first\u00a0broke the story considered here. That wire ran the headline: “Rights\u00a0Activist Says Yugoslav Army, Police Destroyed Evidence Of Kosovo\u00a0Atrocities.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The headline blares that this “right’s activist”, one Natasa Kandic,\u00a0who works for an outfit calling itself the Humanitarian Law Center,\u00a0based in Yugoslavia, is the source for the allegations. But the\u00a0article below this headline in fact contradicts it.[12]<\/p>\n [START AP QUOTE]<\/p>\n Kandic cited a report in a local magazine in the eastern Serbian\u00a0Negotin region, describing how on the night of April 6, 1999, a\u00a0refrigerated trailer truck was lifted out of the Danube near Kladovo,\u00a0at the border with Romania.<\/p>\n The vehicle bore license plates from Pec, a western Kosovo city, and\u00a0allegedly contained 50 bodies. According to Kandic’s center, the\u00a0bodies were subsequently transferred to a truck with Belgrade plates\u00a0and driven away. Kandic claimed local authorities knew about this.<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Did you notice? The text contradicts the headline. The “right’s\u00a0activist” Natasa Kandic is not, in fact, the source for the\u00a0allegation. All that she did is send a fax to the Associated Press in\u00a0which she relays the claims of a local magazine. That magazine, notKandic, is who makes the allegation.<\/p>\n So why is the AP putting Kandic on the headline as the source? This\u00a0is like writing “The President’s Translator Tells The Russian Foreign\u00a0Minister That There Will Be No Deal.” The president’s translator\u00a0could never do such a thing as he is just the messenger, and so is\u00a0Kandic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The headline maneuver is repeated in the body of the wire, when the\u00a0AP says, “According to Kandic’s center?” Wrong. According to the\u00a0magazine, which Kandic read.<\/p>\n How to explain the AP’s headline? The suspicion that they are\u00a0dishonest NATO propagandists could make us say the following: since\u00a0most people read and remember only the headline, and since most\u00a0people think human rights activists are the good guys, the AP’s\u00a0intended and memorable effect on the reader is that a trustworthy\u00a0source claimed there had been an atrocity.<\/p>\n Less cynically, we might think this is nothing more than editorial\u00a0sloppiness. But keep your eye on the ball: either way that headline\u00a0is wrong and it raises suspicion. It demands that we pay attention so\u00a0that we can decide which hypothesis is more plausible.<\/p>\n Another detail worth remarking on is the placement of the\u00a0word “alleged.” The whole thing is an allegation, but the only thing\u00a0presented as an allegation is that the truck contained 50 bodies.<\/p>\n This implies that things not presented as allegations are fact – namely, that the truck existed, that it was fished from the Danube,\u00a0etc., and that it contained bodies (but perhaps not 50). The\u00a0word “alleged” thus appears to have been deployed to season this wire\u00a0lightly with the aroma of journalistic impartiality (which is evoked\u00a0by the use of equivocal words that demonstrate lack of commitment on\u00a0the part of the writer, such as “alleged”). However, the strategic\u00a0placement of this word in fact implies that everything except for the\u00a0exact number of bodies is an established fact. Again, this could\u00a0conceivably be sloppiness, but that hypothesis will become\u00a0increasingly strained if we find such things to be part of a pattern\u00a0that cumulatively builds increasingly complex disinformation, the\u00a0building of which requires, to boot, ignoring contrary evidence at\u00a0the Associated Press.<\/p>\n Later wires from the AP support the propaganda, not the sloppiness,\u00a0hypothesis. For example, three weeks later, on May 23, 2001, the AP\u00a0wrote a wire with the headline, “Human Rights Group Urges\u00a0Investigation About Suspected Mass Killing.”:[13]<\/p>\n [START AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n A respected [my emphasis] human rights group said Wednesday it has\u00a0discovered [my emphasis] a truckload of bodies dumped in a lake in\u00a0western Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo war when NATO bombed\u00a0Yugoslavia. Local authorities denied the claim.<\/p>\n The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Center, whose investigating teams\u00a0have made previous revelations [my emphasis] about atrocities\u00a0committed during recent wars in the region. [sic] It urged Serbian\u00a0and Yugoslav authorities to open an official investigation into what\u00a0it said was ”a truck with corpses brought to and dumped into a lake\u00a0near the town of Kokin Brod,” some 160 kilometers (100 miles)\u00a0southeast of capital Belgrade.<\/p>\n The case appeared related to similar allegations made last month\u00a0about a refrigerated trailer truck dumped into the Danube river in\u00a01999 with bodies of people from the southern Kosovo province,\u00a0possibly ethnic Albanian victims of the Kosovo war.<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Another story about a truck full of bodies being dumped in a body of\u00a0water. This is called “establishing a pattern.” If the first story\u00a0checks out, and so does the second, we have the basis for a vigorous\u00a0investigation. Unfortunately, the pattern that is really established\u00a0here is one that demonstrates Associated Press propaganda, not wrong-doing by the Yugoslav government.<\/p>\n First of all, how can you or I know whether the Belgrade-based\u00a0Humanitarian Law Center is really respected (and respected by whom)?<\/p>\n We can’t: it’s in Belgrade, and we’ve never heard of it. It is easy,\u00a0and cheap, to say that someone is credible, and no serious journalist\u00a0should ever do this. In telling us that the source is “respected,”\u00a0the Associated Press instructs us to believe, lest we exercise any\u00a0critical thought or even prudently hold our judgment.<\/p>\n Leaving nothing to chance, the AP adds careful wording, telling us\u00a0that this “respected” rights group “discovered a truckload of\u00a0bodies.” There is no way to read that sentence except as telling us\u00a0that the Humanitarian Law Center found the actual truck containing\u00a0the bodies. But just to be triple sure that we get it, we are told\u00a0that the center has “made previous revelations about atrocities.”<\/p>\n Since allegations cannot be revealed (only facts can), and since\u00a0there have been “previous revelations,” this truck is supposedly just\u00a0the latest in a string of fact-finding successes for the center. For\u00a0good measure, we are also told that the center employs “investigating\u00a0teams,” which obviously means fact-finding researchers.<\/p>\n Translation: Natasa Kandic’s Humanitarian Law Center’s fact-finding\u00a0researchers fished a truck full of bodies from a lake.<\/p>\n However, if we read all the way to the end of the wire, we find that\u00a0this is perfectly false:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n “But local authorities near Kokin Brod reacted Wednesday to the\u00a0latest allegations, saying there was no truck dumped in their lake.<\/p>\n The independent Beta news agency quoted a local police official,\u00a0Petar Micunovic, as saying that the lake was recently drained through\u00a0a dam during repair works on a nearby power plant and that no truck\u00a0was seen there.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n The authorities at Kokin Brod said the dam had recently been drained\u00a0and that no truck was seen there. What does this mean?<\/p>\n Well, first, that even if there really are fact-finding researchers\u00a0at the Humanitarian Law Center, they never fished any truck from any\u00a0lake.\u00a0Not only that: nobody else did either.<\/p>\n So what was the “respected” Humanitarian Law Center doing? It was\u00a0reporting a rumor, which, for all we know, emanates from the same\u00a0Center.<\/p>\n Why then does the first sentence of the AP wire claim that this\u00a0center discovered the truck? And why is this statement reinforced\u00a0with practically every turn of phrase?<\/p>\n The AP also says that “The case appeared related to similar\u00a0allegations made last month about a refrigerated trailer truck dumped\u00a0into the Danube river?”<\/p>\n Yes, the two cases are related because (1) in both cases the AP is\u00a0treating allegations that are entirely evidence-free as newsworthy; \u00a0(2) in both cases the AP uses language to suggest that theallegations are established fact; (3) in both cases the allegations\u00a0come courtesy of one Natasa Kandic; and (4) in both cases the AP\u00a0tries hard to make Kandic, and her center, to appear as credible\u00a0sources.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There is, however, one difference. The truck with Kandic’s center\u00a0alleged was dumped in the lake was never mentioned again (perhaps\u00a0because the authorities as Kokin Brod had no problem demonstrating\u00a0that the allegations were false), whereas the story about the truck\u00a0in the Danube grew and grew.<\/p>\n Now, one may here try to salvage a non-cynical belief in the good\u00a0intentions of the Western press by interjecting that, compelling as\u00a0the case may be against the Associated Press, the other news services\u00a0may not be so bad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Alas!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>A few days after the initial AP wire, The Independent, a Britishdaily, elaborated on the original Danube-truck story:[14]<\/p>\n [START INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n A Kosovo-Registered truck containing the bodies of 50 people\u00a0allegedly murdered by Serb security forces during the Nato air\u00a0campaign two years ago was fished out of the river Danube, Serbian\u00a0press reported for the first time yesterday.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n Notice again the use of the word “allegedly” to give a whiff of\u00a0journalistic impartiality. But notice again the strategic placement:\u00a0what is presented as an allegation? That a truck full of bodies was\u00a0fished from the Danube? No. Only that the bodies in the truck were\u00a0murdered by Serb security forces. The existence of the truck itself\u00a0is taken for granted.<\/p>\n Why? Who knows?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, the above sentence should, of course, begin: “The Serbian\u00a0press reported?” That is how normal people speak and write. By\u00a0placing the attribution at the end, we get a prominent initial\u00a0impression that everything is established fact, which impression may\u00a0linger. And using the verb “reported” rather than “reported\u00a0allegations” reinforces the sense that we are talking aboutestablished facts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Independent then goes on to underline that impression with\u00a0careful wording:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [BACK TO INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n The refrigerator truck could contribute to missing evidence of how\u00a0the bodies of thousands of Kosovo Albanians, allegedly murdered by\u00a0Serbian security forces and paramilitaries in 1999, disappeared. The\u00a0truck, with registration plates from the town of Pec in western\u00a0Kosovo, was pulled out of the Danube 250km east of Belgrade on 6\u00a0April 1999. The 50 bodies included children, women and elderly\u00a0people, according to Zivadin Djordjevic, a diver who told his story\u00a0to Timocka Krimi Revija, a little-known Serbian crime magazine. Mr\u00a0Djordjevic took part in the operation to salvage the truck in 1999.<\/p>\n He said: “Bodies started to fall out … Some women were dressed in\u00a0traditional Muslim clothes … Some children and elderly people were\u00a0naked. It was a horrifying scene.”<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE:]<\/p>\n We are told that “The refrigerator truck could contribute to missing\u00a0evidence?” That implies that the truck exists, because a non-existent\u00a0truck can never be evidence of any sort.<\/p>\n The same implicit message is communicated by the sentence: “The\u00a0truck, with registration plates from the town of Pec in western\u00a0Kosovo, was pulled out of the Danube 250km east of Belgrade on 6\u00a0April 1999.” Anybody reading that sentence will understand that, in\u00a0fact, a truck, with registration plates from the town of Pec in\u00a0western Kosovo, was pulled out of the Danube on 6 April 1999.<\/p>\n The only thing that is properly reported as an allegation is the specific identity of the bodies: “The 50 bodies included children,\u00a0women and elderly people, according [my emphasis] to Zivadin\u00a0Djordjevic.” But stating loudly that the specific identity of the bodies is a claim?while omitting this observation for the other\u00a0statements (that there was a truck, that there were bodies, that the\u00a0whole thing was fished from the Danube, etc.) distracts the mind and\u00a0unconsciously telegraphs the implication: a truck with bodies in it\u00a0was definitely fished from the Danube.<\/p>\n Sadly, the two media companies considered so far are entirely typical\u00a0of the mainstream Western press, which routinely treats allegations\u00a0as fact if they are made against NATO’s enemies. Notice: the story\u00a0had just broken, and nobody had yet produced a shred of evidence for\u00a0it. But no matter, the press had already decided it was all true.\u00a0If it looks like propaganda, talks like propaganda, walks likepropaganda?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For good measure, here is another example from The Times of London,\u00a0writing three days later:[15]<\/p>\n [START TIMES QUOTE]<\/p>\n The alleged atrocity was revealed when one of a team of police divers\u00a0who helped to remove the lorry was quoted in the Timocka review of\u00a0criminology, remarks that were reported yesterday in the leading\u00a0Belgrade daily, Vecernje Novosti. The lorry was said to have been\u00a0recovered from the Danube near the town of Tekija, close to the\u00a0Serbian border with Romania, on April 6, 1999.<\/p>\n [END TIMES QUOTE]<\/p>\n Here is that word again: revealed. How can an “alleged atrocity”be “revealed”? Only facts can be “revealed.” And here again we see\u00a0the strategic placement of the word “alleged.” Once again it istactically deployed to supply the veneer of journalistic\u00a0impartiality, but the trust it buys is then immediately used to\u00a0deceive by employing a phrasing “revealed” which is appropriate only\u00a0for established facts, never for allegations.<\/p>\n Moreover, the fact that a big Belgrade newspaper reported what the\u00a0tiny Timocka magazine said (this is the magazine where all of the\u00a0allegations come from) is presented as newsworthy, as if therepetition of an allegation by a big newspaper makes it less of an\u00a0allegation. This is a hoary propaganda tactic: repeat the lie until\u00a0it seems true by sheer dint of repetition.<\/p>\n The same article said the following:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE TIMES:]<\/p>\n During the crackdown on ethnic Albanians by Serb forces in Kosovo\u00a0between 1998 and 1999 and the subsequent Western bombing campaign,\u00a0there were repeated rumours of mysterious refrigerated trucks with\u00a0Belgrade registration plates being used by authorities to dispose of\u00a0people who had been murdered. At one point, international\u00a0investigators checked reports that such bodies might have been dumped\u00a0in mineshafts in the mine complex of Trepca, but no traces were found.<\/p>\n [END TIMES QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We are told that there had been “repeated rumours of mysterious\u00a0refrigerated trucks with Belgrade registration plates being used by\u00a0authorities to dispose of people who had been murdered,” and that\u00a0these rumors started as early as 1998.<\/p>\n These two writers evidently didn’t stop to think long enough to\u00a0reflect on the fact that any such massive activity happening prior to\u00a0March 24th, 1999 when the bombing of Yugoslavia began would have been\u00a0going on under the noses of a swarm of OSCE observers. But these\u00a0observers reported that “they witnessed no murders, no deportations\u00a0and nothing that could be described as systematic persecution.”[16]<\/p>\n Except, of course, for the American `observers,’ but these turned out\u00a0to be CIA operatives, and the one `massacre’ accusation they launched\u00a0against the Yugoslav government turned out to be a KLA hoax.<\/p>\n It seems we have found a creative mistake.<\/p>\n Omissions can be plausible evidence of sloppiness, but creative\u00a0mistakes signal dishonesty. This is why police officers interrogate\u00a0suspects over and over again: to see if any important details\u00a0change. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And there is another creative mistake in the quoted passage above:\u00a0the rumors that the London Times alleges were circulating supposedly\u00a0talked about trucks with Belgrade license plates.<\/p>\n Why is this a creative mistake? Well, consider first that a rumor\u00a0about the biggest crime possible, a crime against humanity, will\u00a0include a reference to where the truck’s license plates were\u00a0registered only if this terribly specific and minor detail were\u00a0highly informative as to the identity of the perpetrators.<\/p>\n The Times appears to be saying the following: the rumors emanated\u00a0from Albanians in Kosovo, and so if these rumors said that the\u00a0license plates were from Belgrade, then this is a detail pointing to\u00a0the identity of the perpetrators: from Belgrade = Serbs. The reader\u00a0is practically instructed to reach this conclusion.<\/p>\n The first problem with this is logical. Any rumors about massacred\u00a0Albanians being shipped in refrigerator trucks from Kosovo to mass\u00a0graves in Serbia will automatically allege that the Serbs are the\u00a0perpetrators. What is the alternative rumor? That immigrant Thais did\u00a0it? The license plate registration adds absolutely no information.<\/p>\n The second problem is an inconsistency with the original AP wire,\u00a0which in fact claimed that the trucks “bore license plates from Pec,\u00a0a western Kosovo city [my emphasis]” (see above).<\/p>\n The story can be kept consistent only if they claim the last truck,\u00a0the one that supposedly took the bodies to their final destination\u00a0after fishing them out of the first truck, which had supposedly been\u00a0dumped in the Danube, was the one with the Belgrade license plates.<\/p>\n This truck begins and ends its journey in Serbia proper, rather than\u00a0in the Serbian province of Kosovo.<\/p>\n Alas! This will not work either, for this would mean that the rumors\u00a0then originate with Serbs, as this is not a truck that any Albanianrumor-mongers would have seen. Why would Serbs in the proximity of\u00a0Belgrade notice that a truck had Belgrade license plates? That is\u00a0entirely unremarkable.<\/p>\n For a novelist, the purpose of detail is to tickle our brains into\u00a0producing mental images, helping us suspend disbelief. The Timeswriters appear to strive for verisimilitude here by relying on this\u00a0novelistic strategy, in order to convince us that the Serbs are\u00a0guilty. However, they have clumsily added details that no real rumor\u00a0about massacred Albanians would have included. Such obviously\u00a0purposeful creative mistakes are evidence of dishonesty.<\/p>\n One final point about the Times is that it includes a reference toanother rumor: that bodies were dumped in the Trepca mine. But notice\u00a0that the Times tells us that these rumors turned out to be utterly\u00a0false. Why then doesn’t the Times do a skeptical investigation into\u00a0these new rumors instead of reporting them as though they support theallegations about the truck in the Danube?<\/p>\n ——————<\/p>\n So far we have a story that is based on a number of allegations. It\u00a0has been just one week since the original AP wire, but already we see\u00a0considerable growth in the story, and considerable confidence that it\u00a0is all true and deserving of much attention in the media even though\u00a0not a shred of evidence has been presented. To compensate for this\u00a0absolute lack of evidence, we hear about rumors that don’t even look\u00a0like they could be real rumors (let alone rumors about plausible\u00a0things), and also about rumors that turned out to be utterly false.<\/p>\n This must be the only way for the propaganda press to go, because theonly source for the freezer truck story, Zivadin Djordjevic (thebvdiver who supposedly found the truck in the Danube) very soonbvdisputed the attributions made to him in the `Timocka’ magazine that\u00a0is the source for all these allegations.<\/p>\n Let me state this again: only a few days after the story broke, the\u00a0man on which the Timocka magazine had based all of its allegations,\u00a0disputed the story.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n II. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>THE ONLY SOURCE FOR THE STORY…DISPUTES IT!<\/p>\n The next day, May 8th, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported the following:<\/p>\n [17]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [START DPA QUOTE]<\/p>\n Serbia’s Interior Ministry said Tuesday it had begun investigating\u00a0reports about a truck and a trailer with some 50 bodies of Kosovo\u00a0Albanian women, children and elderly, recovered from the Danube in \u00a0Serbia in April 1999.<\/p>\n “A special task force has been set up to determine all relevant facts\u00a0regarding the unidentified corpses in the refrigerated trailer,” the\u00a0ministry said in a statement.<\/p>\n It pledged that the “public will be informed” about the results.<\/p>\n Belgrade newspapers last week quoted a diver, Zivadin Djordjevic, as\u00a0saying he took part in the recovery of the truck and that the former\u00a0authorities declared the find a state secret. Djordjevic, who has\u00a0meanwhile denied some parts of the interview [my emphasis], said many\u00a0of the bodies were in traditional Albanian clothes.<\/p>\n [END DPA QUOTE]<\/p>\n Wait! Djordjevic, the only source for this story?said he was\u00a0misquoted. Which statements were misquoted? What does he disclaim?<\/p>\n STOP THE PRESSES!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Stop the presses? Why? Just because we have a story based, not on an\u00a0allegation, but on the allegation of an allegation – and one disputed\u00a0by the only source. Only if we were doing journalism would it be\u00a0necessary to stop and reexamine on such grounds. The mainstream\u00a0Western press is in a different game entirely.<\/p>\n I have been unable to find one, repeat not one report of any\u00a0journalist going to talk to Djordjevic to find out why he said he was\u00a0misquoted. Not in any wire, not in any newspaper article, not in any\u00a0magazine article. And I was not able to find one, repeat not one\u00a0article where Djordjevic’s dissatisfaction was even repeated. Not in\u00a0any wire, not in any newspaper article, not in any magazine article.<\/p>\n We are talking about the most serious accusation that could possibly\u00a0be made: war crimes, crimes against humanity. There is only one sourcefor the accusation. And that source denies the story!<\/p>\n And nobody looks into it?<\/p>\n The case against the Western press is gathering steam…(In the section ahead where I explain how this was all a plot to\u00a0frame Milosevic it becomes clear precisely what Djordjevic was\u00a0complaining about)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n III.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>NON-EVIDENCE IS ADDED TO SUPPORT THE NON-STORY<\/p>\n The next day, Agence France Presse wrote the following wire:[18]<\/p>\n [START AFP QUOTE]<\/p>\n Two Serbian police chiefs were sacked for their alleged role in the\u00a0cover-up of a Kosovo truck full of corpses fished from the river\u00a0Danube during NATO’s 1999 air war on Belgrade, the daily Politika\u00a0said Wednesday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n General Vlastimir Djordjevic, head of public security at the time,\u00a0was pensioned off while the former commander of the special police,\u00a0General Obrad Stevanovic, was demoted after their forces reportedly\u00a0failed to look into the discovery [my emphasis] of 50 bodies in a\u00a0sunken refrigerator truck.<\/p>\n [END AFP QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once again, the tried and true tactic: the truck is presented asvdefinitely having been fished from the Danube, and the subsequentvcover-up, as definitely having taken place. The word “alleged” is\u00a0employed, but placed in such a way that the only thing presented as\u00a0an allegation is the role of the two police chiefs, and the\u00a0word “discovery” is likewise attached to a truck that nobody has\u00a0discovered.<\/p>\n So let’s see…: The day after DPA reported that diver Zivadin\u00a0Djordjevic, the only source for any of this, denied parts of the story,\u00a0two Serbian police chiefs were sacked.<\/p>\n Come again?<\/p>\n And why were they sacked? Because an interview which the interviewee\u00a0partly contests, published in a tiny magazine that nobody has heard\u00a0of, said that there had been a truck in the Danube with bodies, which\u00a0bodies have never been seen, and neither has the truck!? They were\u00a0sacked because the same questionable “interview” reported that this\u00a0thing had been hushed up and declared a “secret”!<\/p>\n Who decided that this flimsy account was solid enough to justify the \u00a0removal of two police chiefs? On what grounds? Shouldn’t somebody at\u00a0least try to find out which parts of the story are disputed by its\u00a0only source before firing two police chiefs?<\/p>\n This…beggars…belief<\/p>\n By this standard, police chiefs should be fired for failing to look\u00a0into stories of alien abductions, which the tabloids publish every\u00a0day.<\/p>\n The same day, a wire from United Press International[19] elaborated\u00a0on the issue of how the whole thing was supposedly hushed up:<\/p>\n [START UPI QUOTE:]<\/p>\n The district public prosecutor Miroslav Srzentic in Negotin with\u00a0jurisdiction over the Kladovo area told the media Tuesday he had\u00a0notified the Serbian prosecutor’s office of the case and was waiting\u00a0for instructions.<\/p>\n Srzentic, who was deputy prosecutor in 1999, told the crime magazine\u00a0he had been prevented from investigating the case at the time by his\u00a0immediate superior Krsta Majstorovic who declared it a state secret\u00a0and said there would be no autopsy and no investigation, most likely\u00a0on orders from higher authorities.<\/p>\n Majtorovic, now retired, at his home in Negotin refused to say\u00a0anything about the case except that “I have no truck with it any\u00a0longer and all relevant documents, including an indictment, are in\u00a0the local prosecutor’s office.” He declined to disclose who the\u00a0indictment had been raised against.<\/p>\n [END UPI QUOTE]<\/p>\n The wire begins by telling us how Srzentic supposedly “told the media\u00a0[on] Tuesday,” which makes it sound as though this is new\u00a0information. But immediately thereafter we learn that “the media” is\u00a0none other than the crime magazine which is still the only source for\u00a0any of this. Everything is still coming from the Timocka magazine,\u00a0which looks less than credible, since its star informer disputes the\u00a0content of statements attributed to him.<\/p>\n Krsta Majstorovic (or is it Majtorovic?), who is presented as\u00a0Srzentic’s immediate superior, however, does appear to have been\u00a0reached for comment in the flesh “at his home in Negotin,” andapparently after the story broke in the mainstream press. But a\u00a0little further research reveals that we cannot believe a word of\u00a0this, because Majstorovic does not exist.<\/p>\n We have found another creative mistake.<\/p>\n Here is the evidence: a few days earlier, on May 4th, the same wire\u00a0service. United Press International had reported the following:[20]<\/p>\n [START UPI QUOTE:]<\/p>\n The current district prosecutor in Negotin, Miroslav Srzentic, told\u00a0Belgrade radio B92 he was aware of the incident at the time and was\u00a0initiating an investigation but was told the next day by his\u00a0predecessor Nestorovic, now retired, “there will be no autopsy, no\u00a0such case has taken place and it is a secret.”<\/p>\n [END UPI QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Did you notice? In this wire, the person who told Srzentic not to\u00a0investigate and declared the whole case a secret was not his\u00a0supervisor but his predecessor, and his name was not Majstorovic butNestorovic.<\/p>\n Hmmm…\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And on May 14th the Inter-Press Service reported the following:[21]<\/p>\n [START IPS QUOTE]<\/p>\n A deputy prosecutor in the nearby town of Negotin, Miroslav Srzentic,\u00a0was informed of what had been found in the truck. He started for\u00a0Kladovo on the morning on April 7, but was stopped by his superior.<\/p>\n “The prosecutor, Mr. Krsta Manojlovic, told me that there was not\u00a0going to be an investigation,” Srzentic recalls. Manojlovic, who is\u00a0now retired, would not talk to the press.<\/p>\n [END IPS QUOTE]<\/p>\n Now we are back to the whole thing being hushed up by Srzentic’s\u00a0superior. But his name this time is not Krsta Majstorovic (or \u00a0Majtorovic) but Krsta Manojlovic.<\/p>\n Uh-huh.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Which is it? Who stopped Srzentic from investigating? His superior or\u00a0his predecessor? Who told Srzentic that a case which had not taken\u00a0place (!) was a secret? And what was his name? Majstorovic\u00a0(Majtorovic?), Manojlovic, or Nestorovic? Some kind of “ovic,” to besure. Does it make a difference? I would think so!<\/p>\n Did Srzentic really say anything? Does he exist?<\/p>\n Apparently not, and this would explain why all future mention of \u00a0Srzentic was dropped. But then all mention of the `evidence’\u00a0supposedly coming from Srzentic should have been dropped as well.<\/p>\n What? Never. Till the very end we are still hearing how this whole\u00a0thing was supposedly “hushed up” and made a “state secret,” even\u00a0though the source for this is one alleged Srzentic who allegedly\u00a0spoke in the interview published in the tiny magazine Timocka Krimi\u00a0Revija, or else to Radio B92 (which is controlled by NATO), and who\u00a0does not seem to exist.<\/p>\n Other tidbits on the same level of substance as the phantom Srzentic\u00a0and his even more phantasmagoric and multinomial\u00a0supervisor\/predecessor were also added. Agence France Presse supplied\u00a0these details on May 11th:[22]<\/p>\n [START AFP QUOTE]<\/p>\n Workers from a funeral home in Serbia have told how they unloaded the\u00a0corpses of men, women and children from a Kosovo-registered truck\u00a0pulled from the river Danube during NATO’s 1999 air war on Belgrade,\u00a0the daily Blic reported Friday.<\/p>\n The workers from Kladovo in eastern Serbia, who all demanded they not\u00a0be named, said they had reloaded the bodies into another truck on the\u00a0orders of local cemetery manager Sreten Savovic, the daily said.<\/p>\n [END AFP QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So now we add to the list of `witnesses’ a few alleged grave-diggers\u00a0who will not identify themselves. Uh-huh. Still nothing.<\/p>\n You or I could have written this story ourselves in the privacy of\u00a0our homes. It is a novel. The new details are presented as if they\u00a0were the result of fresh reporting, but nothing prevents us fromsuspecting that it all still comes from the Timocka article (or else\u00a0is made up). I searched everywhere for a follow-up with the alleged\u00a0human by the name Savovic, but he was apparently never again reached\u00a0for comment.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n We can hazard a guess: Savovic, like\u00a0Majstorivic\/Majtorovic\/Manojlovic\/Nestorovic, and Srzentic, does not\u00a0exist. Surely, if anybody wanted to find the bodies, they would\u00a0interview Savovic?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And notice how the story is designed to prevent the production of any\u00a0evidence that one might examine. This is from Agence France Press,\u00a0dated May 9th: [18]<\/p>\n [START AFP QUOTE]<\/p>\n A magazine last week reported that a diver had found the Kosovo-registered refrigerator truck in the river some 250 kilometres (150\u00a0miles) east of Belgrade.<\/p>\n The magazine said the truck was later dynamited in a nearby training\u00a0centre for special police.<\/p>\n An investigation has been opened into the incident following the\u00a0revelations [my emphasis], police said Tuesday.<\/p>\n [END AFP QUOTE]<\/p>\n And this is from an Inter-Press Service wire dated May 14th:[23]<\/p>\n [START IPS QUOTE:]<\/p>\n In Kladovo, on the evening of April 6, the bodies were placed into\u00a0another truck that went to an unknown destination. Four undertakers\u00a0were summoned to dig the graves. During the night, the police blew\u00a0the green Mercedes truck into pieces with 30 kilograms of explosives.<\/p>\n [END IPS QUOTE:]\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The four anonymous undertakers again. A truck which no longer exists\u00a0because it was exploded. Bodies that cannot be found because theywere taken to an “unknown destination.”<\/p>\n All we really have is an article in Timocka Krimi Revija, which\u00a0claims to get its information from an interview with the diver\u00a0Zivadin Djordjevic.<\/p>\n But Djordjevic “has meanwhile denied some parts of the interview.”<\/p>\n Amazing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n IV. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>STOP THE SHODDY REPORTING, GIVE US SOME REAL PROPAGANDA!<\/p>\n On 25 May, almost a month after it broke the story with its original\u00a0wire, the Associated Press outdid itself in the following report. It\u00a0bears a close analysis because it could not be dripping with more\u00a0Orwellian propaganda if Carla del Ponte (the chief prosecutor at The\u00a0Hague) had drafted it herself in order to generate the right\u00a0atmosphere in the public’s opinion, both Serbian and international, forthe illegal abduction of Milosevic to The Hague. They wrote:[24]<\/p>\n [START AP QUOTE]<\/p>\n BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) – Police linked former President Slobodan\u00a0Milosevic on Friday to a cover-up of atrocities in Kosovo, includingthe dumping of bodies in the Danube River – a revelation that couldhelp the U.N. war crimes tribunal.<\/p>\n The accusations, the first time Yugoslav authorities have tied\u00a0Milosevic to war crimes, could pave the way for sending him to the\u00a0U.N. tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic has been jailed since April 1\u00a0on charges of corruption and abuse of power.<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE]<\/p>\n Notice the Associated Press’s choice of words: “Police linked [my\u00a0emphasis] former President Slobodan Milosevic on Friday to a cover-up\u00a0of atrocities?” This, they tell us, is of course “a revelation.” And\u00a0then: “The accusations [constitute] the first time Yugoslav\u00a0authorities have tied [my emphasis] Milosevic to war crimes?”<\/p>\n But for the police “to link” or “to tie” Milosevic to a cover-up is a\u00a0colloquialism that refers to their success in proffering evidence:<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0 <\/span>that there was a crime in the first place;<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0 <\/span>that it was covered up; and<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0 <\/span>given the first two points, that Milosevic had something to do\u00a0with it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Anything short of that, if it is to be reported at all, should be\u00a0called what it is: an allegation. But here we have that Milosevic\u00a0was “linked” and “tied” to a cover-up of an alleged and unproven\u00a0crime with what? Allegations of allegations that the crime took\u00a0place, and unsupported “accusations” that Milosevic had something to\u00a0do with the alleged cover-up of the unproven crime. It should be\u00a0obvious that he is not “linked” or “tied” to the allegation of analleged crime that may not have happened with accusations that he had\u00a0something to do with this vaporous non-event! No accusation, by\u00a0itself, establishes any kind of link.<\/p>\n Sadly, equating police accusations to the establishment of “a link”\u00a0or “a tie” between Milosevic and the allegation of the alleged crimes\u00a0for which there is no evidence, and which the only source disputes, has\u00a0been commonplace in the media. Here is an example from the St.\u00a0Petersburg Times:[25]<\/p>\n [START SPT QUOTE:]<\/p>\n In a move that could help the U.N. war crimes tribunal, police Friday\u00a0linked former President Slobodan Milosevic to a coverup of atrocities\u00a0in Kosovo, including the dumping of bodies into the Danube River.<\/p>\n The accusations, the first time Yugoslav authorities have tied\u00a0Milosevic to war crimes, could pave the way for sending him to the\u00a0U.N. tribunal in The Hague.<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n The same AP report of 25 May whose language the St. Petersburg Times\u00a0parrots almost verbatim went on to say:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n The government is now drafting a law on the extradition of war crimes\u00a0suspects to the Netherlands-based tribunal that would permit handing\u00a0over suspects like Milosevic only if local courts found a basis for\u00a0war crimes accusations. The new allegations came after police\u00a0investigated reports that a truck containing 50 bodies, reportedly\u00a0those of ethnic Albanians, was found in the Danube River outside\u00a0Kosovo near the Romanian border in 1999.<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n Notice what we are being told: the new allegations (which were piled\u00a0on previous allegations of allegations, and still no proof?) happen\u00a0to coincide with activity by the new Yugoslav government to draft a\u00a0law for the extradition of war crimes suspects to The Hague.<\/p>\n Interesting coincidence.<\/p>\n The US was pressuring the new Yugoslav government in Belgrade which\u00a0they spent millions helping to install with the threat that, unlessMilosevic was sent to The Hague, they would withhold economic aid for\u00a0the rebuilding of the civilian infrastructure that NATO had illegally\u00a0bombed (and which bombing constitutes a crime of war). [This sounds\u00a0like the kind of talk one might hear from a mafia boss: “Please,\u00a0don’t make me hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you again?You think Ienjoy your screams? I am going to ask, politely, once again? (sigh!).\u00a0Vinnie, give his tourniquet another twist?”]<\/p>\n It seems that we have found a powerful incentive for the new\u00a0government in Belgrade “to link” Milosevic to something. Faced with\u00a0repeated failures to make the KLA hoaxes of civilian massacres in\u00a0Kosovo stick (because international forensic experts were not\u00a0cooperating with the fabrication of evidence), there seems to have\u00a0been a very natural desperation “to tie” Milosevic to an alleged crime with no physical evidence of the sort that nit-picking\u00a0international forensic scientists might take issue with. In this way,\u00a0a rationale, admittedly, an Orwellian rationale, for sending Milosevic\u00a0to The Hague was generated in order to get the American money.<\/p>\n At least that would be the interpretation of the opposite camp, as\u00a0reported in the same AP report:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n Milosevic’s Socialist Party said in a statement that the police were\u00a0distributing “hideous misinformation launched deliberately before theexpected parliamentary debate about the law on cooperation with the\u00a0Hague tribunal.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The party said the accusations were aimed at “trying to justify the\u00a0totally unacceptable act of opening the way for possible extraditions.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n One could be forgiven for thinking that the other side would never be\u00a0reached for comment. But here, finally, after nearly a month of\u00a0allegations of allegations with no proof, we hear Milosevic’s party\u00a0accuse “hideous misinformation” for political purposes. How are they\u00a0exaggerating?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>And what exactly were the new allegations? The same AP report says:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n Police Capt. Dragan Karleusa said that in a March 1999 meeting,\u00a0Milosevic ordered top police commanders “to remove all evidence” of\u00a0civilian casualties in the crackdown in Kosovo and to remove corpses\u00a0that could be subject to “possible investigation by The Hague\u00a0tribunal.” Those present at the meeting included former Interior\u00a0Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who is also wanted by the U.N.tribunal.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 <\/span>[END AP QUOTE:]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “Police Capt. Dragan Karleusa said?” Apparently, in order to “link”\u00a0or “tie” Milosevic to a crime that nobody seems even remotely able to\u00a0show happened you need nothing more than an unsupported accusation by\u00a0Police Capt. Dragan Karleusa that Milosevic said something at a\u00a0meeting.<\/p>\n An Orwellian tactic is employed here to great advantage. We are told\u00a0that, “Those present at the meeting included former Interior Minister\u00a0Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who is also wanted by the U.N. tribunal.” A\u00a0meeting that did not take place cannot have been attended by Vlajko\u00a0Stojiljkovic. Thus, Stojiljkovic plays a double role in this\u00a0narrative:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 1) \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>By saying that he was at the meeting the police imply\u00a0that they were flies on the wall and know everything that happened atthis meeting?which must mean, therefore, that the meeting happened.<\/p>\n 2) \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>And by saying that Stojiljkovic is wanted by The Hague\u00a0they also imply that Stojiljkovic must be a bad guy, and thus his\u00a0presence at the meeting suggests that Milosevic must have given\u00a0sinister orders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, notice that “The new allegations came after police\u00a0investigated [my emphasis] reports that a truck containing 50 bodies,\u00a0etc. etc.” In other words, the new allegations did not come after the\u00a0police succeeded in providing any evidence for the original\u00a0statements attributed to Djordjevic (and partially disputed by him)\u00a0concerning Albanians found in a truck in the Danube?merely after\u00a0these reports were “investigated.”<\/p>\n Does it matter if the “investigations” come out empty-handed?<\/p>\n Apparently not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n Police made it clear Friday that they considered the evidence about\u00a0the bodies in the Danube one link in Milosevic’s alleged large-scale\u00a0attempt to remove traces of thousands of civilians killed by histroops in Kosovo.<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n What evidence? The statements of one individual, Djordjevic, who\u00a0disagrees that he was properly quoted? It is truly spectacular how\u00a0quickly the allegation of an allegation has become “evidence.”<\/p>\n Apparently all it takes is a little bit of repetition. And the\u00a0allegation has become “evidence” not only for itself, notice, but for a\u00a0whole multitude of similar non-events, all of them “linked” to\u00a0Milosevic.<\/p>\n And notice again the strategic placement of the word “alleged.” The\u00a0only thing reported as an allegation here is whether Milosevic\u00a0engaged in a large-scale attempt to cover-up evidence. That the\u00a0killings took place, the AP’s language implies, is established fact!<\/p>\n (As if one attempt after another to prove such crimes had not beenshown to be a hoax by international forensic experts; click here foran example).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n “When we finish the investigation, we will file criminal charges,”\u00a0said Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic. “For now it’s clear\u00a0that this was a case of removing evidence of criminal acts.”<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n The Interior Minister says that “When we finish the investigation, we\u00a0will file criminal charges.” In other words, regardless of whether\u00a0they find any actual evidence. And he feels that “it’s clear that\u00a0this was a case of removing evidence of criminal acts.” Why is itclear? Isn’t he still investigating? Nobody so far has provided one\u00a0iota of material evidence that any bodies or truck even existed.<\/p>\n There is one alleged `witness,’ but this man disputes parts of the\u00a0interview attributed to him. Again, why is the Interior Minister so\u00a0sure…?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If the body and trucks existed in the first place, this could\u00a0certainly be evidence of a criminal cover-up, but we need to\u00a0establish that they exist in the first place. If and when we do, we\u00a0need to establish something else: that this was not a Mafia killing,\u00a0or illegal immigrants being smuggled from Romania to Europe thru\u00a0Yugoslavia, or something else (crimes of war are not the only\u00a0possible crimes that may need to be covered up). If and when we\u00a0decide it was a crime of war, there is still the question of\u00a0establishing the link to Milosevic.<\/p>\n But investigation involves much tiresome work. Better to find a\u00a0Police Captain to make an unsupported accusation about orderssupposedly given by Milosevic for a general cover-up. Then you can\u00a0declare that this unsupported accusation “ties” Milosevic to the\u00a0specific bodies that nobody has seen.\u00a0Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n Police said that the bodies found in the dumped truck were reloaded\u00a0in April 1999 and taken to another, still undisclosed location. The\u00a0whole operation had been officially declared secret by Milosevic’s\u00a0authorities, and those who had witnessed the operation were ordered\u00a0to remain quiet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The police quoted witnesses who spoke of an “unpleasant smell,” when\u00a0the truck was pulled out of the Danube.<\/p>\n Zivadin Djordjevic, a diver employed in the operation to raise the\u00a0truck, recently spoke of “a terrible mixture of congealed blood,\u00a0stench, and decomposing twisted bodies” when the truck was lifted. Hesaid the bodies included women and children.<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n There is nothing new here, but this old wine comes in new bottles:<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>We are told that the “police said.” But everything in\u00a0that first paragraph just repeats what was said in the tiny crime\u00a0magazine that did not quote the lonely “witness” Djordjevic to his\u00a0own satisfaction. By putting these words in the police’s mouth the AP\u00a0makes it seem as though the police uncovered this information in\u00a0their investigations.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>The same alleged Djordjevic “interview” not any evidence\u00a0turned up by a police investigation is also the source for the claim\u00a0that the authorities had hushed this up. But as you may recall there\u00a0is a very big problem with this claim because it comes from one\u00a0Srzentic who does not seem to exist, but who in any case appears\u00a0completely unable to keep straight even the name of the person who\u00a0told him that, or whether this person was his immediate superior or\u00a0immediate predecessor.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>The “witnesses” who spoke of the unpleasant smell are too\u00a0many for no name has been attached to any of this except for\u00a0Djordjevic, in the same interview, some parts of which he denies.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Finally, the one statement attributed to Djordjevic in\u00a0this report (concerning the “congealed blood, stench, and decomposing\u00a0twisted bodies”) is made to seem as though he has spoken out\u00a0elsewhere and recently (which would then appear somewhat in\u00a0contradiction to his dissatisfaction with how he was quoted, which\u00a0Deutsch Press Agentur reported). But although the report sayshe “recently spoke” it does not say where or to whom. And since the\u00a0AP does not say, then `recently’ probably means that this, too, comes\u00a0from the original magazine `interview,’ since that had been brought\u00a0to light less than a month before this wire was written (`recently’is more appropriate for a month’s time than it is for the last few\u00a0days).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I was unable to find any indication of where or to whom Djordjevic\u00a0had made these supposedly additional and recent statements. I looked\u00a0for it, but the only wire service that ever attributed this statement\u00a0to Djordjevic is the AP, and the few newspapers that repeated thisquotation either directly attributed it to the AP, or listed nosource. Certainly the first mention of there having been women and\u00a0children in the truck came from the alleged magazine interview with\u00a0Djordjevic in Timocka Krimi Revija (see above), and this is paired\u00a0here with the statements about the congealed blood. So it seems quite\u00a0likely that the AP’s claim that Djordjevic “recently spoke” is\u00a0nothing more than a repetition of something Djordjevic said in themagazine interview. If so, the AP liberally chooses not to say that\u00a0it is lifting such statements from the magazine (unless it made them\u00a0up entirely).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [BACK TO THE AP:]<\/p>\n At The Hague, Jean Jacques Joris, a top adviser to chief war crimes\u00a0court prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, said the police accusations\u00a0make “clear that Milosevic was directly involved in the crimes\u00a0committed in Kosovo.”<\/p>\n Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt told AP that “if this is new\u00a0evidence this would be very valuable to us, because this is somebody\u00a0standing up, saying, ‘Milosevic ordered to cover up evidence.”‘<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here we see that if a tiny magazine claims that one Djordjevic said a\u00a0number of things in an interview, even though Djordjevic denies some\u00a0parts of the interview, then this makes it “clear” to “a top adviser\u00a0to chief war crimes court prosecutor Carla Del Ponte” that “Milosevic\u00a0was directly involved in the crimes committed in Kosovo.” Which\u00a0crimes? Who knows?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This says quite a lot about the nature of the Hague Tribunal: its\u00a0purpose is to convict, not to try Milosevic . That crimes\u00a0were committed in Kosovo is, to this “chief advisor” to the\u00a0prosecutor, a foregone conclusion, despite the repeated\u00a0embarrassments his own court has suffered as it fails again and again\u00a0to find any evidence of such crimes. And the flimsiest non-evidence\u00a0imaginable clearly ‘establishes’ to his satisfaction that Milosevic\u00a0is responsible for these non-crimes.<\/p>\n Moreover, the “Deputy Prosecutor” considers it “very valuable”\u00a0that “this is somebody standing up, saying, `Milosevic ordered to\u00a0cover up evidence.'” That “somebody” of course is the same police\u00a0captain charged with the investigation, who so far has not told us\u00a0why or how he knows this. Well, in that case it will be equally\u00a0valuable that “somebody” stands up to say that Milosevic didn’t, andMilosevic’s lawyer has already said that. This opposing “somebody”\u00a0therefore neutralizes the first “somebody” and we can drop the whole\u00a0thing. No?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Alas!, no. This is the LA Times writing the next day:[26]<\/p>\n [START LA TIMES QUOTE:]<\/p>\n Yugoslav authorities Friday for the first time accused former\u00a0President Slobodan Milosevic of covering up war crimes committed in\u00a0Kosovo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “Milosevic ordered former Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic to\u00a0take measures to eliminate all the traces which could lead to any\u00a0evidence of crimes committed” in Kosovo, Dragan Karleusa, a Serbian\u00a0official in charge of efforts against organized crime, told a\u00a0televised news conference in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian\u00a0capital.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The announcement, linked to the discovery in 1999 of a corpse-filled\u00a0truck in the Danube River, marked the first time that the new\u00a0democratic authorities in Belgrade have accused Milosevic of\u00a0involvement in war crimes. The statement could pave the way for his\u00a0trial in Yugoslavia or in The Hague. Police suspect that the truckincident was part of an effort, code-named “Depth 2,” to dispose of\u00a0slain Kosovo civilians, Karleusa said.<\/p>\n The truck was pulled from the Danube in 1999 with more than 50\u00a0bodies inside, but Milosevic associates declared the incident a state\u00a0secret and ordered a halt to any investigation, Karleusa said. The\u00a0bodies were taken to a still-unknown location, he said.<\/p>\n [END LA TIMES QUOTE]<\/p>\n The LA Times is careful to say that these are accusations, and they\u00a0do not say that this establishes “a link” to Milosevic in any cover-up. However, they commit a different sin: they say the announcement\u00a0of these accusations is “linked to the discovery in 1999 of a corpse-\u00a0filled truck in the Danube River.” But of course, there hasn’t beenany such “discovery.” How could there be? The truck was supposedly\u00a0destroyed! And even that story has no more than one possible source:\u00a0Zivadin Djordjevic, but he disputes the magazine article that madeattributions to him.<\/p>\n An allegation is an allegation. A discovery is a discovery. And the allegation of an allegation of a discovery is not a “discovery”, it is\u00a0an allegation (of an allegation).<\/p>\n Notice that by this date the allegation that Milosevic had givenorders for these supposed cover-ups of these supposed crimes has now\u00a0been given a catchy name: “Depth 2.” We are still not told howKarleusa knows that Milosevic gave such orders, or how he knows that\u00a0the operation was named “Depth 2”. But adding these novelistic\u00a0details creates the impression that they know what they are talking\u00a0about. It also creates the implication that there was a “Depth 1,”\u00a0which may come in handy later if other non-crimes need to be pinnedon Milosevic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, for Karleusa to say that the location of the bodies\u00a0is “still unknown” implies that we know the bodies themselves exist – a\u00a0nice and very convenient rhetorical tactic, because in fact thepolice have so far produced no evidence that the bodies ever existed.<\/p>\n And the statement about the “unknown location” to which the bodies\u00a0were supposedly taken is lifted, again (yes), from the alleged\u00a0Djordjevic interview, parts of which he denies!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n V.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>DON’T JUST GIVE US PROPAGANDA, SPOON-FEED IT!<\/p>\n On the same day that the LA Times piece above was published, TheIndependent, not to be outdone, came out with the following front\u00a0page headline: “SERB POLICE REVEAL PROOF OF MILOSEVIC WAR CRIME LINKSIN KOSOVO.”[27]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As we saw earlier, it took just a little less than a month to turn an\u00a0allegation (of an allegation!) into “evidence.” But practice makes\u00a0perfect because the transition from “evidence” to “proof” has beeneven faster, one day.<\/p>\n Ship him to The Hague!<\/p>\n There is no point in quoting this front page piece as it contains\u00a0nothing new. All we get is a repetition of Karleusa’s allegation that\u00a0Milosevic gave orders, which is, as always, unaccompanied by anexplanation of how Karleusa knows this. Proof of the allegation that\u00a0Djordjevic alleged anything (let alone that the alleged allegations\u00a0have any substance) is, of course, not provided either.<\/p>\n More interesting, however, is a second article on page 13 of the same\u00a0issue of The Independent, which goes into greater detail and is\u00a0entitled “HOW MILOSEVIC HID THE EVIDENCE OF HIS ATROCITIES.” [28]<\/p>\n Sounds like a triple conclusion, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Atrocities were committed;<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Milosevic is responsible; and<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>they were covered up.<\/p>\n And they are going to tell you how.<\/p>\n Not bad for a short headline. I reproduce and analyze the full text:<\/p>\n [START INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n IN MARCH 1999, as the Nato bombs rained on Serbia, a meeting was heldin secret at Slobodan Milosevic’s office in Belgrade. The former\u00a0Yugoslav leader had summoned Vlajko Stojiljkovic, a close friend who\u00a0was then Serbian Interior Minister and who, like his master, has been\u00a0indicted for war crimes in Kosovo.<\/p>\n At that meeting, it seems Mr Milosevic had already acknowledged he\u00a0might one day face charges of war crimes committed in Kosovo. He had\u00a0learnt his lesson from the unearthed mass graves from the earlier\u00a0wars in Croatia and Bosnia. He ordered Mr Stojiljkovic to get rid of\u00a0the evidence, the bodies of his victims. As many as 10,000 Albanians\u00a0are thought to have been murdered by Mr Milosevic’s security forcesin Kosovo during the 1999 Nato air campaign. But more than half of\u00a0their bodies have never been found. Only 4,000 corpses have beendiscovered – nobody has ever found traces of the others.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n Notice the novelistic style: “as the Nato bombs rained on Serbia, a\u00a0meeting was held in secret at Slobodan Milosevic’s office in\u00a0Belgrade\u201d. Suspend disbelief, suspend disbelief.<\/p>\n No mention that the existence of this meeting is so far only an\u00a0unsupported allegation by Karleusa. We are being told that this\u00a0definitely happened.<\/p>\n We are also told that Milosevic had good reason to worry, as “He had\u00a0learnt his lesson from the unearthed mass graves from the earlier\u00a0wars in Croatia and Bosnia.” This is not the place to refute theaccusations that the Bosnian Serb leadership was guilty of atrocities\u00a0against civilians in Bosnia. Such accusations are false. (click here,and here). But that does not even matter here. The Bosnian Serbleadership was independent of Milosevic. The accusation that\u00a0Milosevic was responsible for alleged massacres that have been blamed\u00a0on the Bosnian Serbs, whom he did not even control, has no feet tostand on, not even in principle. But remember: in the demonology of\u00a0the Western propaganda, if anything bad happens anywhere, it isalways Milosevic’s fault, even – or perhaps especially- if the bad thing\u00a0did not happen in the first place.<\/p>\n The Independent tells us that “as many as 10,000 Albanians arethought to have been murdered by Mr. Milosevic’s security forces inKosovo during the 1999 Nato air campaign.” That sounds like a lot,but it is much less than 100,000, which is the figure given at onepoint, in 1999, by United States Secretary of Defense William Cohenin order to justify the NATO aggression to the American public and to\u00a0the world.[29] With little shame, The Hague has recently offered an\u00a0interesting prevarication for that figure on Cohen’s behalf. I quote\u00a0from The Boston Globe: [30]<\/p>\n [START BOSTON GLOBE QUOTE:]<\/p>\n [Graham T.] Blewitt [the deputy chief prosecutor for the\u00a0International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia], said that\u00a0the 100,000 figure of missing Kosovars was accurate when given, but\u00a0that the vast majority of that number had fled Kosovo when Serb\u00a0forces began a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing after the NATO\u00a0bombing began. He said tens of thousands of Kosovars had crossed over\u00a0into Macedonia to stay with relatives or friends, but that there was\u00a0no reliable system to account for refugees.<\/p>\n [END BOSTON GLOBE QUOTE]<\/p>\n Two sleights of hand here. First “Kosovo Albanians” have\u00a0become “Kosovars.” Did you notice? Sounds like an endorsement of the\u00a0view that Kosovo Albanians were in their own countrywhich is\u00a0something other than Serbia but not the Kosovo Serbs, (who must have\u00a0been foreigners!).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Second, he says “the 100,000 figure of missing [my emphasis] Kosovars\u00a0was accurate when given?” The problem with this explanation is that,\u00a0even if it was the accurate number of missing Albanians (and I doubt\u00a0it), it was not given as a figure of unaccounted-for Albanians, but\u00a0as a figure of murdered Albanians. That is hardly the same thing, and\u00a0it makes the figure inaccurate when given.<\/p>\n But of course, coming back to The Independent, we are never told why\u00a0anybody believes that “as many as 10,000 Albanians” were murdered by\u00a0security forces. Should we take it on faith? Should we believe it\u00a0with the same ferocity that we were expected to believe the 100,000\u00a0figure? This is important because only if we do is the failure to\u00a0find 10,000 bodies a problem. If 10,000 people were not, in fact,\u00a0murdered, then finding only 4000 bodies presents absolutely no\u00a0mystery. But The Independent, even here, appears to be grossly\u00a0overstating things. In 1999, by one account, UN sources were already\u00a0saying privately that less than 2000 bodies would be found, in all.\u00a0[31] And this is a figure not of Kosovar Albanians “murdered by thesecurity forces,” but of all the dead, which includes both Kosovar\u00a0Serb and Albanians. And it is not the figure for Kosovo residents who\u00a0died during the NATO bombing but for the entire period when theYugoslav forces were fighting the KLA which extended from February\u00a01998 until June 1999. Of course, this figure includes those who diedfrom NATO’s bombs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The amazing, shrinking body count?<\/p>\n We started with 100,000 genocidally murdered Albanians and we ended\u00a0up with perhaps less than 3000 dead[32]both Serbs and Albanians. Andquite a few of these had to die from NATO’s bombs, most of which werefalling on civilian targets! (see APPENDIX).<\/p>\n The recently murdered Daniel Pearl and his co-author Robert Block\u00a0wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal that somehow got\u00a0published, and which, as early as 1999, was already piercing through<\/p>\n the NATO propaganda about the body count:[33]<\/p>\n [START WALL STREET JOURNAL QUOTE:]<\/p>\n British and American officials still maintain that 10,000 or more<\/p>\n ethnic-Albanian civilians died at Serb hands during the fighting in<\/p>\n Kosovo. The U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former<\/p>\n Yugoslavia has accused Serbs of covering up war crimes by moving<\/p>\n bodies. It has begun its own military analysis of the Serb offensive.<\/p>\n But the number of bodies discovered so far is much lower – 2,108 as<\/p>\n of November, and not all of them necessarily war-crimes victims.<\/p>\n While more than 300 reported grave sites remain to be investigated,<\/p>\n the tribunal has checked the largest reported sites first, and found<\/p>\n most to contain no more than five bodies, suggesting intimate acts of<\/p>\n barbarity rather than mass murder.[34] The KLA helped form the West’s<\/p>\n wartime image of Kosovo.\u00a0 <\/span>International human-rights groups say\u00a0officials of the guerrilla force served on the Kosovo-based Council\u00a0for the Defence of Human Rights and\u00a0 <\/span>Freedoms, whose activists wereoften the first to interview refugees arriving in Macedonia.<\/p>\n Journalists later cited the council’s missing-persons list to support\u00a0theories about how many people died in Kosovo, and the State\u00a0Department this month echoed the council’s recent estimate of 10,000\u00a0missing. But the number has to be taken on faith: Western\u00a0investigators say the council won’t share its list of missing persons.<\/p>\n [END WALL STREET JOURNAL QUOTE]<\/p>\n The key point above is this: “The KLA?served on the Kosovo-based\u00a0Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms [and] the\u00a0council’s missing-persons list [was used] to support theories about\u00a0how many people died in Kosovo?”<\/p>\n So now we know where the 10,000 missing-person figure comes from: the\u00a0KLA. Ah?! \u00a0But perhaps this makes sense, after all, since it was KLA\u00a0agents who were interviewing the refugees fleeing Kosovo, as\u00a0explained above. If we can trust the KLA, an organization acknowledged\u00a0by the US State Department to be terrorist[35], to interview the\u00a0refugees and report their statements accurately (from which reports\u00a0the entire world got its impression of what was happening in Kosovo),\u00a0then surely we can trust them to estimate the number of dead! And\u00a0trust we must, because the list of missing persons is not something\u00a0they have released. As Pearl and Block say, “the number has to be\u00a0taken on faith.” This applies to many other things. There is a whole\u00a0system dedicated to keeping so-called journalists from doing any\u00a0actual investigations,[36] and therefore we are asked to take most ofthe things they say on faith.<\/p>\n The Independent is strong in the faith, because in 2001 it was still\u00a0reporting the “10,000 dead” figure. Let us continue with The\u00a0Independent’s `expos\u00e9’ on how Milosevic supposedly hid his supposed\u00a0war crimes:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE INDEPENDENT]<\/p>\n The bodies are the evidence the international war crimes tribunal in\u00a0The Hague needs to prove its charge of crimes against humanity\u00a0against Mr Milosevic. Yesterday, for the first time, the story of how\u00a0they disappeared began to be officially revealed.\u00a0<\/span>Dragan Karleusa, a Serbian Interior Ministry official, said\u00a0<\/span>yesterday: “Slobodan Milosevic ordered Vlajko Stojiljkovic to take\u00a0measures to remove all the traces that could lead to the evidence on\u00a0crimes that have been committed.”<\/p>\n Mr Stojiljkovic then issued orders to two police generals, Vlastimir\u00a0Djordjevic and Dragan Ilic, to begin the operation of “removing\u00a0civilian victims, who could become the subject of the eventual\u00a0investigation by The Hague tribunal”, Mr Karleusa said.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n Notice that again we hear Karleusa’s accusation, and again we are not\u00a0told what it is based on. It is true that now the accusation adds\u00a0more details. But if the addition of detail were the same thing as\u00a0corroborating an accusation every novel would be a history.\u00a0And we have seen this propaganda maneuver before: the statement “the\u00a0story of how they disappeared began to be officially revealed”\u00a0employs phrasing which suggests that the bodies definitely existed,\u00a0for they cannot have disappeared unless they existed, and only if\u00a0they first existed and then disappeared can “the story of how they\u00a0disappeared be officially revealed [my emphasis].” But there is no\u00a0reason for believing the supposedly missing bodies ever existed\u00a0except for the following arithmetic: 10,000 killed – 4000 (allegedly)found bodies = missing bodies.<\/p>\n This arithmetic the Hague prosecutors have explained as follows, as\u00a0reported in the Boston Globe: [37]<\/p>\n [START BOSTON GLOBE QUOTE:]<\/p>\n “We will issue a report in November with exact numbers, but I\u00a0anticipate that we will have identified between 4,000 and 5,000\u00a0bodies,” Blewitt said. “The discrepancy between the final figure and\u00a0the 10,000 figure that was initially used can be accounted for by\u00a0bodies being destroyed or transported into Serbia, and by the fact\u00a0that some people feared dead had managed to flee Kosovo.”<\/p>\n [END BOSTON GLOBE QUOTE]<\/p>\n Notice that two different hypotheses for “the discrepancy between the\u00a0[estimated] final figure and the 10,000 figure” are presented as one.<\/p>\n Some of the missing bodies were “destroyed or transported into\u00a0Serbia,” and others were mistakenly presumed dead. But it is of\u00a0course admissible that all of the missing bodies were mistakenly\u00a0presumed dead and that none were “destroyed or transported into\u00a0Serbia.” It is also possible that the 10,000 figure was made up by\u00a0the KLA – in fact, likely, as they have quite a record as blatant\u00a0liars. But the Hague tribunal would have you believe that, eventhough their previous figure ‘100,000 dead Albanians’ was completely\u00a0and utterly off the mark, there is no basis for expecting them to\u00a0make enormous mistakes when estimating numbers of dead, especially\u00a0when the KLA helps elaborate the estimates based on a list of names\u00a0that nobody has been allowed to see.<\/p>\n It doesn’t matter what the facts are, apparently. Serbs will be\u00a0guilty. Some interpretation to this effect will be found. And\u00a0Milosevic, invariably, will turn out to be the mastermind. Of\u00a0everything and especially for events that did not take place.<\/p>\n We return to The Independent’s “expos\u00e9” of the “cover-up”:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE\u00a0 <\/span>INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n The Independent first reported the crucial evidence which led Serbian\u00a0police to discover Mr Milosevic’s cover-up three weeks ago, on 4 May.<\/p>\n Then, it emerged for the first time that a refrigerator truck full of\u00a0bodies had been dredged from the river Danube. It is believed the 50\u00a0bodies inside, many of them women and children, were of people\u00a0murdered by Mr Milosevic’s security forces in Kosovo.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n The Independent proudly reminds its readers that they had reported\u00a0the “crucial evidence” on May 4th. You can go back and examine it\u00a0above. It is nothing more than the interview with Djordjevic, parts of\u00a0which Djordjevic denies (which parts? who knows?) in a tiny and\u00a0obscure crime magazine. That is the crucial evidence. This is still,\u00a0at this late date, all that we have!<\/p>\n Still just the allegation of an allegation! But the story grows and\u00a0grows and grows.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And this “crucial evidence” supposedly “led Serbian police to\u00a0discover Mr Milosevic’s cover up.” Discover? What did they discover?<\/p>\n They have yet to produce one shred of evidence.<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE\u00a0 <\/span>INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n Back in March 1999 as Mr Milosevic and Mr Stojiljkovic plotted rid of the bodies, witnesses saw 130 people being killed security forces in the village of Izbice in Kosovo. Their bodies were\u00a0<\/span>seen being buried in the local cemetery. Yet at the end of the Kosovo\u00a0war, no bodies were found.\u00a0Natasa Kandic, Serbia’s foremost human rights investigator, knows\u00a0why. She travelled to Kosovo during the air strikes and interviewed\u00a0witnesses who saw Serbian police return to the Izbice cemetery a few\u00a0days after the murders took place, dig the bodies back up and takethem away.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n This is now a full-blown novel. “Back in March 1999 as Mr Milosevic\u00a0and Mr Stojiljkovic plotted to get rid of the bodies?” It is as if\u00a0The Independent were reporting on, say, the French Revolution as \u00a0understood by modern historians. The fact that these are all\u00a0unsupported allegations added to the allegations of allegations that\u00a0the crimes themselves took place is nowhere mentioned.<\/p>\n Natasa Kandic is no longer merely in the employ of “a respected human\u00a0rights group,” as the Associated Press earlier said (see above), and\u00a0neither is she working for “one of the most respected rights groups\u00a0in Serbia” as the IPS informed us on May 14th,[38] she has now,herself, on May 26th, become “Serbia’s foremost human rights\u00a0investigator.” But the dizzying speed with which her career rockets\u00a0to the heavens should surprise nobody. Her rise to these exalted\u00a0heights must occur on a time-scale proportional to the rapidity with\u00a0which the dubious allegations of allegations that she feeds to the\u00a0press become “evidence” and then “proof.” After all, she was the one\u00a0who pointed out the less-than-credible Djordjevic interview by faxing\u00a0a press release to the Associated Press, and also the one who told\u00a0the press about a truck that had supposedly been dumped in a lake even\u00a0though the lake had been drained and nobody saw it!<\/p>\n Given Kandic’s track record as a rigorous investigator, nobody should\u00a0bat an eye when she finds unnamed `witnesses’ to say that 130 people\u00a0were killed by security forces somewhere in Kosovo and then buried in\u00a0the local cemetery, but the bodies are nowhere to be found. This is\u00a0fine because Kandic “knows” what happened. To wit: she can explain\u00a0the absence of the alleged corpses by interviewing some other\u00a0unnamed `witnesses’ who say they saw Serbian police return to the\u00a0cemetery in order to dig up the corpses and spirit them away. No need\u00a0to consider the hypothesis that the alleged witnesses, or Kandic, or\u00a0both, are lying, because clearly Kandic is someone we can trust (and,\u00a0given that, no need for material evidence!).<\/p>\n A short digression is pertinent here to get a sense of just how much\u00a0Kandic may be trusted by taking a closer look at her publicly stated\u00a0standards of evidence. When Kandic originally directed the press to\u00a0the Djordjevic story (reported for the first time in the AP on April\u00a030th after they got a fax straight from Ms Kandic), she also alleged\u00a0other things, and displayed an interesting reasoning style:\u00a0allegations of atrocities are fact if she thinks they are. Consider\u00a0this:[39]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [START AP QUOTE:]<\/p>\n In a statement issued Monday, Kandic’s group demanded that the new,\u00a0pro-democracy Yugoslav government urgently reveal the truth about\u00a0what could be one of the best-kept secrets of the former president’s\u00a0rule”: the destruction of evidence pertaining to crimes committed\u00a0against Kosovo Albanians during NATO’s air war. According to data\u00a0assembled by Kandic’s Center, Serbian security forces and the\u00a0Yugoslav army allegedly took part in removing and destroying evidence\u00a0of these atrocities.<\/p>\n ”Certainly, the removal of evidence on such a large scale cannot\u00a0take place without the knowledge of authorities,” Kandic\u00a0maintained. ”We have many witness accounts, many terrible\u00a0stories … but the orders for these actions could only have come\u00a0from high up, such as from Serbian police.”<\/p>\n [END AP QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The wire tells us that Kandic’s Center has “evidence.” This is an\u00a0altogether gratuitous characterization, for Kandic herself explains\u00a0what the “evidence” consists of: “many witness accounts; many\u00a0terrible stories.” By this standard, Ms. Kandic should also be\u00a0demanding that the Yugoslav government do more to solve the problem\u00a0of alien abductions.<\/p>\n Notice also that Ms. Kandic considers that her “terrible stories”\u00a0have already established the fact. The trouble and toil required by\u00a0the tiresome investigations that would determine whether there is any\u00a0truth to an allegation of a war crime can thus be dispensed with.<\/p>\n This has many benefits over and above the obvious one of saving much\u00a0time and energy. Most importantly, she can move directly to consider\u00a0the question of just how highly placed were those who gave the\u00a0orders. But in fact Ms. Kandic does not really offer a hypothesis\u00a0here. She is quite sure: “?the orders for these actions could only\u00a0[my emphasis] have come from high up, such as from the Serbian\u00a0police.” Thus, anybody discomfited by the idea that there might have\u00a0been a tiresome investigation to determine who was culpable for\u00a0atrocities that may not have happened can sit back down on his couch.<\/p>\n These could certainly have turned out to be endless investigations\u00a0(especially if the atrocities did not take place). But Kandic informs\u00a0us that it is in the nature of unproven atrocities which may not have\u00a0occurred that the orders for them “can only [my emphasis] have come\u00a0from high up, such as the Serbian police.” Unlike real atrocities,\u00a0unproven atrocities apparently require special planning at the\u00a0highest level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, notice that Kandic can say that evidence has been removed\u00a0only because she takes the allegations of massacres as fact. We have\u00a0already seen this tactic: if you assert that 10,000 died and you find\u00a0only 4000, then you get to say that the evidence for the other 6000\u00a0has been removed. By this standard the inability of a prosecutor to\u00a0produce any evidence that murders were committed on Milosevic’s\u00a0orders is evidence not of his innocence, but of how well he covered\u00a0it all up. The less investigators and prosecutors come up with, the\u00a0more astute and conniving Milosevic must have been. And all the more\u00a0guilty for that!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The principle that alleged and unproven atrocities must be ordered\u00a0from high up is very useful given that nobody is “higher up” than\u00a0Milosevic, and there are quite a lot of unproven allegations of\u00a0atrocities flying around.\u00a0Case closed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And especially useful given that in order to get a billion dollars,\u00a0the government in Belgrade had to send Milosevic to The Hague.<\/p>\n But let us now return to The Independent’s “expos\u00e9,” which still has\u00a0some juicy details for us on how Milosevic supposedly hid the0evidence of his supposed war crimes.<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE\u00a0 <\/span>INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n Natasa Kandic, Serbia’s foremost human rights investigator, knowswhy. She travelled to Kosovo during the air strikes and interviewed\u00a0witnesses who saw Serbian police return to the Izbice cemetery a few\u00a0days after the murders took place, dig the bodies back up and take\u00a0them away.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The same thing happened two months later, in May 1999, in theDjakovica neighbourhood of Cabrat. Then, 87 men were murdered. Again,\u00a0witnesses told Ms Kandic that they saw police return to the scene,\u00a0dig up the bodies and disappear with them.<\/p>\n Although this is the first time that the Serbian police have directly\u00a0linked Slobodan Milosevic with hiding the evidence of atrocities, it\u00a0is clear that Kosovo was not the testing ground for such operations.\u00a0They were organised during the Bosnian war too, specially after the\u00a01995 Srebrenica massacre.\u00a0One of those believed to be involved in that operation was Dragan\u00a0Obrenovic of the Bosnian Serb Army, who was arrested in the eastern\u00a0Bosnian town of Zvornik on 15 April, 2001. He is in The Hague now.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n Another propaganda tactic: the statement that “The same thing\u00a0happened two months later” implies that the first thing definitely\u00a0happened, for it is hardly possible for the same thing to happen\u00a0again if the first never did. Can it matter that all the evidence we\u00a0have is allegations of allegations? Certainly not. And who can doubt\u00a0that this one is also true when it is the trustworthy and rigorous\u00a0Ms. Kandic who again brings us the new story?<\/p>\n The nice thing about having unproven allegations taken as fact is\u00a0that the precedent then allows Kandic to expand lyrically by making\u00a0multitudes of new unproven allegations of the same kind. Since we canconfidently say, with no evidence, that the “hiding of atrocities”\u00a0supposedly committed against Kosovar Albanians was going on, it is\u00a0equally valid to say, again without any evidence, that such things were\u00a0probably going on in Bosnia!<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE\u00a0 <\/span>INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n Lt-Col Obrenovic was responsible for the removal or “relocation” of\u00a0bodies of Muslim men killed in Srebrenica. The green Mercedes\u00a0refrigerator truck was discovered on 5 April, 1999 – yet until this\u00a0month it remained an astonishingly well-kept secret. It was only when\u00a0Zivadin Djordjevic, a Serbian diver who helped recover the truck,\u00a0told a little-known Serbian magazine about the discovery that the\u00a0truth emerged.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n This makes perfect sense. The non-existent evidence for one non-event\u00a0can be used to substantiate another non-event. It is economical. So\u00a0now we have that the same truck which was full of Albanians, and\u00a0whose alleged discovery on 5th April 1999 nobody can prove, was\u00a0apparently also full of bodies from men killed in Srebrenica!<\/p>\n This is the freezer truck that could – it was doing double duty (on the\u00a0other hand, it was, after all, a quality Mercedes).<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE\u00a0 <\/span>INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n “There were bodies of women, children and elderly people,” Mr\u00a0Djordjevic said. “Some children and elderly people were naked.” The\u00a0police report made public yesterday says that investigation at the\u00a0time was prevented from “the top”. Vlastimir Djordjevic, one of the\u00a0police generals entrusted by Mr Stojiljkovic with disposing of the\u00a0bodies, ordered the discovery to be kept secret.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n What happened here requires a bit of explanation. Keep your eye on\u00a0the names Vlastimir Djordjevic and Vlajko Stojiljkovic, and notice\u00a0that Stojiljkovic is the guy at the top supposedly giving orders to\u00a0cover things up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How did we get here? Well, recall the infamous Srzentic…The original alleged interview with diver Zivadin Djordjevic (no\u00a0relation to Vlastimir), published in Timocka Krimi Revija, had said\u00a0that it was Srzentic’s superior (or was it his predecessor?), a man\u00a0with a veritable multitude of names, who had prevented the\u00a0investigation and declared it was a “state secret.” Srzentic seems to\u00a0be somebody’s fabrication, given that, depending who you read, the\u00a0hapless Srzentic gives three or four different names for his\u00a0immediate superior (who is sometimes his immediate predecessor). But\u00a0even if Srzentic is not a fabrication his boss definitely is. In one\u00a0of his incarnations, Srzentic gave the name Majstorovic (or\u00a0Majtorovic) for his “immediate superior” who stopped him from\u00a0investigating. In that same wire (from UPI) it was reported that:[40]<\/p>\n [START UPI QUOTE:]<\/p>\n Gen. Vlastimir Djordjevic, most recently head of police, was put on\u00a0pension and Gen. Obrad Stevanovic, former head of the interior\u00a0ministry’s police department, was transferred to the staff of the\u00a0police academy, the Politika reported. The newspaper said, “The two\u00a0of them are the first to pay the price for covering up the crime the\u00a0traces of which were found at the bottom of the Danube on April 6,\u00a01999,” two weeks after NATO launched its air attacks on Yugoslavia to\u00a0stop police repression against Kosovo Albanians.<\/p>\n [END UPI QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There he is again: Gen. Vlastimir Djordjevic. You may recall this. He\u00a0is one of the two police chiefs who were sacked for not investigating\u00a0the freezer truck incident. What UPI tells us is that Vlastimir\u00a0Djordjevic was sacked because he was supposedly responsible in the\u00a0chain of command for getting Srzentic’s immediate superior to tell\u00a0Srzentic, the local prosecutor, that there would be no investigation\u00a0into the truck and that the whole thing was a “state secret.”<\/p>\n So let us analyze…<\/p>\n Obviously, Srzentic’s boss (or predecessor) cannot be sacked if he\u00a0does not exist. And he doesn’t. But somebody has to take the fall – and\u00a0in any case Karleusa and company need somebody higher up because they\u00a0have to get the chain of command all the way up to Milosevic. So it\u00a0must be that Vlastimir Djordjevic and Obrad Stevanovic had to be the\u00a0ones who told a non-existent ghost by the name Majstorovic,\u00a0Majtorovic, Manojlovic, or Nestorovic (who cares?), who was either\u00a0Srzentic’s immediate superior or his immediate predecessor (who\u00a0cares?), that he should stop Srzentic from investigating. This, then,\u00a0is how we link Vlastimir Djorjevic to the “cover-up”: we just assert\u00a0that Djordjevic ordered people who don’t exist to cover-up a crime\u00a0for which there is zero evidence.<\/p>\n Done deal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now we can go back to the penultimate quotation. Vlastimir\u00a0Djordjevic, we are told there, was under orders from somebody even\u00a0higher up: Vlajko Stojiljkovic. Not even a non-existent ghost is\u00a0produced to accuse Stojiljkovic. If you are high enough, apparently,\u00a0that is unnecessary. We have already seen this principle at work. It\u00a0was explained by Natasa Kandic: alleged cover-ups of alleged\u00a0atrocities for which there is zero evidence can only be ordered from\u00a0high up. Stojiljkovic is pretty high up, so we can dispense with the\u00a0evidence and move directly to the accusation.<\/p>\n Finally, it is a good thing that they can pin this on Stojiljkovic\u00a0because Karleusa has already made the unsupported accusation that\u00a0Stojiljkovic was supposedly present at a meeting that he alleges,<\/p>\n without any evidence, took place, and at which Milosevic supposedly\u00a0gave the orders for the supposed clean ups. So in this way\u00a0they `establish’ a series of `links’ in a `chain of command’ all the\u00a0way up to Milosevic!<\/p>\n To summarize, it goes like this. Srzentic, who does not appear to\u00a0exist, got told by his boss\/predecessor, who definitely does not exist,not to investigate. This ghost was working for general Vlastimir\u00a0Djordjevic (because, in Serbia, even people who don’t exist must need\u00a0a boss), so this means we’ve got a chain of command all the way to\u00a0Vlastimir Djordjevic. Karleusa has made an accusation supported by\u00a0zero evidence that Stojiljkovic was at a meeting when Milosevic gave\u00a0an order for a cover-up, and so this must mean that Stojiljkovic\u00a0(another guy that The Hague wants to get, and this is just\u00a0wonderfully convenient!) is deeply involved in this and must have\u00a0been the one to order Vlastimir Djordjevic to tell his ghost to tellthe other ghost Srezentic to back off. And now we have a chain that\u00a0goes from Srzentic all the way up to Milosevic.<\/p>\n Amazing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Let’s continue with the Independent’s “expos\u00e9”:<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n Nikola Dajic, a grave-digger who helped reload the bodies into two\u00a0new trucks, said: “When we arrived at the bank of the Danube, we sawna horrifying scene… The bodies were piled up. Some were in pieces,\u00a0some were intact.”<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n At last, something new! This is the first we hear of Nikola Dajic,\u00a0grave-digger. It is a little surprising that, given the fervor “to\u00a0link” Milosevic to this vaporous stuff it has taken this long to find\u00a0another person who will give his name to this. But should I\u00a0say “another”? After all, Djordjevic denied parts of the interview,\u00a0and we still don’t know which parts. And it is not clear that Nikola\u00a0Dajic’s statements, whoever he is or isn’t, are not lifted from that\u00a0same magazine article.<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE INDEPENDENT:]<\/p>\n One of the two trucks can be tracked as far as the main road north of\u00a0Belgrade, where people who identified themselves as “official\u00a0persons” took control of it. There the trail disappears. Nothing is\u00a0known of where the second truck went.\u00a0The Serbian Interior Ministry said yesterday it had evidence ofsimilar cases. The skeletons are beginning to come out of the closet.<\/p>\n [END INDEPENDENT QUOTE]<\/p>\n One of the trucks can be tracked as far as Belgrade?(tracked how?).\u00a0Then the trail disappears. The other truck is simply gone forever. No\u00a0material evidence. Even though no bodies are coming out of any\u00a0refrigerator trucks, The Independent tells us that the skeletons are\u00a0coming out of the closet.<\/p>\n Make way for the skeletons! Don’t get crushed!<\/p>\n On the same day, The Financial Times reported:[41]<\/p>\n [START FINANCIAL TIMES QUOTE:]<\/p>\n Captain Dragan Karleusa, the deputy head of the police’s organised\u00a0crime section, told a Belgrade news conference that Mr Milosevic\u00a0ordered his senior officials to “clean up”, and to remove all traces\u00a0that could be linked to war crimes. Mr Karleusa said Mr Milosevic\u00a0told top officials in a meeting to clear up “civilian victims, who\u00a0could become the topic of possible investigation by The Hague\u00a0tribunal”. Those present included his interior minister Vlajko\u00a0Stojiljkovic, who is also wanted by The Hague.\u00a0Police say they believe this meeting was only part of a large-scale\u00a0operation to remove traces of thousands of civilian deaths.<\/p>\n Dusan Mihajlovic, Serbia’s interior minister, told the same news\u00a0conference the meeting had “most probably” been after March 24, 1999,\u00a0when Nato began a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia to end its\u00a0repression of Kosovo Albanians.<\/p>\n [END FINANCIAL TIMES QUOTE]<\/p>\n This is becoming comical. They know that Vlajko Stojiljkovic was\u00a0present at the meeting where the cover-up was ordered by Milosevic,\u00a0but they don’t even know whether this meeting was held before or\u00a0after the bombing. \u00a0How exactly do they know this meeting took place?\u00a0They still haven’t told us. It must be sheer clairvoyance, as with\u00a0the alleged truck containing the alleged bodies, neither of which\u00a0anybody has ever seen, and for which they appear to have only one\u00a0source (which denies the story!).<\/p>\n This is the sort of thing that the Financial Times can say only if it\u00a0omits that all allegations of atrocities against Albanian civilianshave turned out to be hoaxes. The OSCE observers reported no such\u00a0atrocities when they were on the ground in Kosovo, prior to the\u00a0bombing. The lone exception was the American OSCE\u00a0mission, which was crawling with CIA operatives, and whose claims\u00a0turned out to be a hoax that they were perpetrating themselves. The fact that a hoax was necessary to make the case when the\u00a0KLA controlled about 40% of Kosovo territory speaks volumes that the\u00a0Yugoslav army was guilty of nothing. Had there been any real massacre\u00a0to showcase, the KLA could have done just that: showcase it. But they\u00a0needed a hoax…<\/p>\n The Financial Times does not tell you any of this, so it must want\u00a0you to believe that there really is evidence that massacres against\u00a0Albanian civilians were going on. With that in the background, it\u00a0tells you that, according to Interior Minister Mihajlovic, “the\u00a0meeting had ‘most probably’ been after [my emphasis] March 24, 1999,\u00a0when Nato began a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia to end its\u00a0repression of Kosovo Albanians.” Do you see the problem? If up to\u00a0March 24, 1999, when the bombing started, there had been no\u00a0atrocities against Albanian civilians, then what atrocities can\u00a0Milosevic be ordering his subordinates to ‘clean up’? Because,\u00a0recall, the Interior Ministry earlier told us that this supposed\u00a0meeting was held in March, 1999. \u00a0Putting the statements\u00a0of Mihajlovic and Karleusa together means that there was barely a\u00a0week for the Milosevic regime to murder thousands of Albanian\u00a0civilians (which they had up to then not done), and then have a\u00a0meeting in which they decide that the whole mess must be cleaned up —\u00a0and all of this after the bombs started falling on Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n Now, is this even remotely plausible?<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES:]<\/p>\n Capt Karleusa said police had reached their conclusions while\u00a0investigating the discovery of a truck containing 50 corpses dumped\u00a0in the River Danube during the air war. A diver who helped salvage\u00a0the truck said the bodies – believed to be those of Kosovo Albanian\u00a0civilians – included women, children and elderly men.<\/p>\n [END FINANCIAL TIMES QUOTE]<\/p>\n Again, more of the same. Except that now we are told the\u00a0police “reached their conclusions while investigating.” Apparently\u00a0reading a little known crime magazine, whose interview with a certain\u00a0Djordjevic is disputed by the same Djordjevic, is tantamount to “an\u00a0investigation.” These `investigators’ are entirely worthy of Kandic.<\/p>\n [BACK TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES]<\/p>\n Capt Karleusa said investigators had established that the freezer\u00a0truck was pulled from the river on April 6 1999, and that police\u00a0declared the case a state secret. The story broke in local media onlythis month.<\/p>\n [END FINANCIAL TIMES QUOTE]<\/p>\n “Established” how? By fiat? Who are these ‘journalists’? They cannot\u00a0ask obvious questions?<\/p>\n We are still being told that they have no bodies and no truck. And\u00a0all of these details come from the Timocka magazine anyway. Some\u00a0investigation!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [BACK TO THE\u00a0 <\/span>FINANCIAL TIMES:]<\/p>\n Mr Milosevic is awaiting trial in Belgrade for corruption and theft,\u00a0and the Yugoslav government has indicated he should first face trial\u00a0in Serbia, rather than be extradited to The Hague tribunal. But the\u00a0US has said that future financial aid to Belgrade should be linked to\u00a0co-operation with tribunal.<\/p>\n Belgrade is seeking US support at a World Bank-sponsored donors’\u00a0conference, scheduled in Brussels for June 29, where it hopes to\u00a0raise Dollars 1bn (Pounds 700m).<\/p>\n The Belgrade government is also preparing a law which could clear the\u00a0way for Mr Milosevic to be handed over eventually to The Hague\u00a0tribunal.<\/p>\n [END FINANCIAL TIMES QUOTE]<\/p>\n Well, with so much money to be made, one can see how standards of\u00a0evidence might suffer. It is clear that “cooperation with The Hague”\u00a0does not imply the conduct of a proper investigation, but rather the\u00a0fabrication of stories that might help justify the extradition of\u00a0Milosevic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What is the liberty and life of one man, after all, when on the other\u00a0hand 1 billion dollars dangle?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n VI.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>THE NEW YORK TIMES JOINS THE FRAY<\/p>\n On June 1st the New York Times decided it was finally their turn. Andthis is a happy occasion all around, because even though the New York\u00a0Times does not employ any fact-finding journalists, it certainly has\u00a0some reasonably gifted and imaginative fiction writers whose skills\u00a0are entirely appropriate for the “children’s story” genre. We can\u00a0thus now have some workmanlike prose, at least at the level\u00a0of “Creative Writing 101”, with our propaganda. I analyze the text in\u00a0full:[42]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [First, set the scene]<\/p>\n It was April 6, 1999, and Yugoslavia was at war with NATO, which was\u00a0bombing the country to stop Mr. Milosevic, who was then president of\u00a0Yugoslavia, and his security forces from killing, torturing and\u00a0expelling the Albanians of Kosovo.<\/p>\n [END QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Never mind that there is no “evidence” of “killing, torturing, and\u00a0expelling” of Albanian civilians in Kosovo that does not come\u00a0directly or indirectly from the KLA. And never mind that so far every\u00a0allegation of a massacre has turned out to be a hoax when\u00a0international forensic experts investigate (click here for an\u00a0example). On with the story.<\/p>\n [Introduce the main character]<\/p>\n The police asked Zivadin Djordjevic, 56, a professional diver with\u00a0the local power station, to check on a truck submerged in the Danube.<\/p>\n He thought it was just another traffic accident.[Enter the big surprise; establish a conflict; generate suspense]\u00a0Nothing prepared him for the shock when they hoisted the truck ashore\u00a0with a winch, and he and a police technician opened the rear doors to\u00a0find dozens of bodies tumbling out on top of them.<\/p>\n [Climax: Supply emotion, elicit horror]<\/p>\n “We barely opened the doors, maybe a foot or two, so it’s hard to\u00a0describe,” he said. “Arms and legs almost fell out, because they were\u00a0leaning against the door. In that split second, I noticed a half-naked woman, a child of 7 or 8 years old behind, and an old man. It\u00a0was a mess of mangled bodies, clothing, mud and water.”<\/p>\n [Move to resolve: begin explaining]<\/p>\n The police took the bodies away, blew up the truck and told Mr.\u00a0Djordjevic and others to keep quiet. Though word had already spread\u00a0around town wartime constraints caused the subject to become taboo\u00a0rapidly. Anti-NATO propaganda was at a height and a draconian\u00a0information law was in force so that journalists lived in fear of\u00a0their livelihoods and even their lives if they reported something\u00a0deemed even remotely unpatriotic.<\/p>\n [Find the villain]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “I knew about it and the public knew about it, but no one dared to\u00a0talk,” said Mica Aleksic, a journalist and political activist in\u00a0Kladovo for what was then the opposition to Mr. Milosevic. Residents\u00a0suspected the bodies were those of civilians killed in Kosovo but a\u00a0veil of secrecy fell over the case, he said. “We talked about it in\u00a0private, but no one could say anything publicly because everyone was\u00a0afraid of the Milosevic regime.”<\/p>\n With Mr. Milosevic in jail in Belgrade since April 1, the story\u00a0finally came out in the Serbian newspapers this month. It has quickly\u00a0acquired enormous significance here because it has provided both the\u00a0Serbian people and the authorities with the most convincing evidence\u00a0to date of war crimes committed in Kosovo, and of Mr. Milosevic’s\u00a0involvement in covering them up.<\/p>\n [END QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “Everyone was afraid of the Milosevic regime?” Everyone was afraid of\u00a0a twice-popularly-elected politician, who lost the third time by a\u00a0narrow margin, and only because the US spent millions of dollars to\u00a0ensure his defeat (in addition to lots of ambiguous and not-so-ambiguous threats about what would happen if he won).<\/p>\n If this is “the most convincing evidence to date of war crimes\u00a0committed in Kosovo,” just imagine the evidence for the other alleged\u00a0crimes! And what was the “evidence,” again, of Milosevic’s\u00a0involvement? I didn’t hear you? Excuse me! What was the evidence of\u00a0the crime?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [Get the villain]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Police officials directing the investigation said last week that they\u00a0were bringing charges against Mr. Milosevic for ordering officials\u00a0to “clean up” in Kosovo and remove evidence of civilian casualties\u00a0that might be of interest to the international war crimes tribunal in\u00a0The Hague.<\/p>\n This is the first time that the authorities in Serbia, who arrested\u00a0Mr. Milosevic on charges of embezzlement and abuse of power, have\u00a0linked him to war crimes. The Hague tribunal indicted the former\u00a0Yugoslav leader during the Kosovo war, in May 1999, for atrocities in\u00a0Kosovo; an indictment for crimes allegedly committed during the\u00a0earlier wars in Croatia and Bosnia has yet to materialize.<\/p>\n [END QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Notice that “police officials?were bringing charges against Mr.\u00a0Milosevic for ordering officials to `clean up’ in Kosovo and remove\u00a0evidence of civilian casualties that might be of interest to theinternational war crimes tribunal in The Hague.”<\/p>\n First, as you may recall, no evidence was ever reported of the\u00a0alleged `order,’ this is still just an unsupported accusation by\u00a0Captain Karleusa and interior minister Dusan Mihajlovic. And we haveseen above just how plausible this allegation is in principle\u00a0(disregarding for the moment that not a shred of evidence has been\u00a0produced to substantiate the allegations that the meeting took\u00a0place).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Second, the phrasing suggests that Milosevic is being punished for\u00a0The Hague’s inability to find any evidence of war crimes — after all,\u00a0the argument that Milosevic covered up evidence of war crimes reliesentirely on one fact: that the The Hague has been utterly unable to\u00a0document any war crimes! The NYT’s choice of words is probably\u00a0unwitting, but this is, ironically, the closest we have gotten to an\u00a0accurate reporting of the reasons for taking Milosevic to The Hague.<\/p>\n [Post-mortem: Explain the crime]<\/p>\n Police officials and Serbia’s new interior minister, Dusan\u00a0Mihajlovic, told a news conference last week that in a meeting in\u00a0late March 1999 Mr. Milosevic ordered his interior minister, Vlajko\u00a0Stojiljkovic (who was also later indicted by The Hague tribunal) to\u00a0remove civilian casualties in Kosovo that could be the source for\u00a0investigations by the tribunal.<\/p>\n Toma Fila, Mr. Milosevic’s lawyer, has called the allegations\u00a0ridiculous. Mr. Stojiljkovic has denied the incident but the\u00a0information appears to have come from Vlastimir Djordjevic, the\u00a0former head of Police Public Security, who was at the meeting. Also\u00a0present was Rade Markovic, the former head of State Security, who is\u00a0now in jail under investigation for murder and attempted murder of\u00a0Mr. Milosevic’s opponents.<\/p>\n [END QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Stojiljkovic, supposedly at the meeting, denies the incident. But the information, the NYT says, “appears to have come from Vlastimir\u00a0Djordjevic, the former head of Police Public Security, who was at the\u00a0meeting.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Cannot the NYT expend a few of its vast resources to find out exactly\u00a0where the information originates? But let us pause, for we have foundanother creative mistake…<\/p>\n Suppose we are generous and disregard for a minute that there was\u00a0obviously never any such meeting. Just imagine there was. Could it\u00a0then be possible for the information about this meeting to come\u00a0from “Vlastimir Djordjevic, the former head of Police Public\u00a0Security, who was at the meeting”?<\/p>\n We know this is impossible, because we started at the beginning, and\u00a0we know that Vlastimir Djordjevic is one of the two police chiefs who\u00a0were sacked for not looking into the non-event of the alleged truck\u00a0for which nobody can produce any evidence (see above), a story about\u00a0which the only witness denies that he has been properly quoted. And\u00a0why exactly was he sacked? Because Srzentic, who appears not to\u00a0exist, said that his immediate superior (or predecessor), who\u00a0definitely does not exist, stopped him from investigating, and\u00a0apparently Vlastimir Djordjevic was the boss of this ghost! How\u00a0likely is it that Vlastimir Djordjevic, fired because a ghost said\u00a0that he had ordered the cover-up of this vaporous truck, would then\u00a0contribute to incriminate himself in this frame-up by saying that he\u00a0was present at the alleged meeting in which Milosevic supposedly gave\u00a0the orders for this alleged cover-up?<\/p>\n Not very likely, to say the least.<\/p>\n The NYT seems to be fabricating a new (and uncertainly stated)\u00a0fiction in order to give these accusations substance. We started with\u00a0an accusation put forth by Karleusa, nearly a month ago, that there\u00a0had been a meeting at which Milosevic gave an order, and still nobody\u00a0can find out what the substance of this accusation is. Well, if\u00a0nobody has that, then the NYT will just take the liberty of\u00a0speculating that it came from one Vlastimir Djordjevic, former head\u00a0of Public Police Security. That makes it sound legit, doesn’t it? NYT\u00a0readers probably never heard the name, and one can be sure that they\u00a0will not spend their precious time rummaging thru the wire reports,\u00a0as I did. So they will never realize that it is preposterous to\u00a0suggest that this information ever came from Vlastimir Djordjevic.<\/p>\n [Next, provide a little context]<\/p>\n The information has emerged just as the government is debating a law\u00a0on cooperation with The Hague tribunal that would establish the\u00a0procedure for Yugoslavia to transfer war-crimes suspects to the\u00a0court. The bill is encountering opposition in the federal Parliament\u00a0from former allies of Mr. Milosevic whose support is crucial to its\u00a0passage, but the government needs to pass the law before an aid\u00a0conference on June 29 if it wants to ensure American participation in\u00a0the conference and raise its goal of $1 billion.<\/p>\n [END QUOTE]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n