Re: FW: ZNet Commentary / Oct 10 / A Larger Consciousness / HowardZinn

[<Borba100@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howard Zimm, (LARGE) Moral Compass of a Nation, is in part the subject of the
following piece:

Out of the Looking Glass into a Brave New World
by Jared Israel

The other day I attended a protest teach-in on Kosovo, a sort of post mortem
held in Cambridge, Mass. I have a fondness for protest teach-ins because I am
old and remember the ones held during the Vietnam war; I even spoke at a few.

One of the speakers was Paula Gutlove, who described herself as having been a
"mediator in Macedonia." Apparently she is well-placed in some
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). NGO's, in case you haven't heard, are a
fairly recent development, part think tank part international social worker;
they make their money off grants and they intervene in other countries to
teach the locals how to get along, followed by civil war. (For a fuller
explanation of NGO's, see Note #1 at the end of this article)

Mediators and Other Mysteries

Paula Gutlove ran through a 600 year history of Serbian-Albanian relations
with dazzling speed; the theme of it all was that sometimes Serbs were "up"
and Albanians were "down" and sometimes it was quite the other way around.
Listening to her my mind drifted. I wondered: "Why do these Macedonians need
an American mediator who knows so little about the Balkans? Indeed, why do
they need any American mediator at all? Haven't Macedonians been around since
the Dawn of Time? Don't they have mediators of their own by now?" I recalled
the Macedonian-Americans I know. They are intelligent; they are up on all the
latest things; they have cellular phones; yet not one uses a mediator, of any
nationality. Does U.S citizenship curb the need?

Or is "mediator" a euphemism, as when Madeline Albright called the U.S. the
"indispensable nation" meaning of course the New Rome? Do American
"mediators" in places like Macedonia derive their influence not from their
skill or the Macedonians' need but from the very fact that they are citizens
of the new Rome? Is there an understanding that they represent American
power, just as Englishmen once represented the British Empire? And does this
power, which derives from U.S. economic and military domination, give
"mediators" a stake in that domination?

Milosevic's Speech, Rewritten

Getting back to Gutlove: commenting on the important speech which Yugoslav
Pres. Slobodan Milosevic delivered to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in
Kosovo Field in 1989, Gutlove was inventive. She said he whipped the
attending Serbs into a frenzy against Kosovo Albanians and swore that "never
again would the Serbs be ruled by Islam." Quite dramatic, except I had read
the speech (it is published at Emperors-clothes.com). It is not hysterical;
it is rather professorial in tone, reflective. And Milosevic never uses the
word "Albanian" or says a word about Islam. Gutlove's misrepresentation is
not unusual: the accepted approach to describing this speech is: let the
imagination soar. Thus do Milosevic's critics escape earthlyconstraints, such
as his words.

I, A Heckler

Because I admired the speech; because none of the speakers had said a word
about the vicious attacks being carried out by the KLA, under NATO
supervision, against Serbs and other ethnic groups in Kosovo; and because I
had been listening to an hour and a half of baloney, I yelled from the back
of the hall: "That's a lie. I have the speech." Gutlove was stunned - not, I
think, because she was being heckled for lying about the Serbs at an antiwar
gathering but because it was so unlikely that she would find herself being
heckled for lying about the Serbs at an antiwar gathering. Just so would the
Pope be stunned if heckled while celebrating Mass. The left has been
bombarded with Serbophobia till they're gaga. Anything said against Serbia is
accepted on faith.

Ms. Gutlove composed herself and defended her version, saying that a
"reliable source" had heard the speech and told her Milosveich said exactly
those things.

(If you would like to read the speech, see note #2 at the end)

Howard Zinn: The Uncritical Critic

Howard Zinn, an icon of the left, spoke that evening as well. Zinn began by
asserting that by now nobody disagrees with the media's contention that the
Serbs committed widespread anti-Albanian atrocities before the bombing began,
and that after the bombing began the atrocities got much worse. But contrary
to Zinn, much of the anti-war movement in this country, and for that matter
most of the people in the world (for instance most people in India, China,
Russia, Cuba, Bulgaria, Ukraise, Armenia, Lybia, Angola, the Congo, Vietnam,
many among both Arabs and Israelis, most of Italy, virtually all of Greece,
much of Austria, most of Latin America and Africa, etc., etc.) do disagree
with the media hype on Kosovo and do dispute the atrocity stories. That's
several billion people; the reason they disagree is that they are not exposed
to the avalanche of lies we get in the NATO mass media. They get to read a
lot of honest reporting which contradicts our mass media's baloney. (Even
Agence France Presse is better than the U.S. media.) And by the way, those
who challenge the atrocity stories include the German Courts and Foreign
Ministry, for which see Note #3 at end.

Zinn Says Don't Question Media Attacks on Serbs

I challenged Zinn from the floor. I said the purpose of the anti-Serbian
atrocity stories in the press was to blind people in this country to the
genocide that's going on right now, aimed at creating an ethnically pure
Kosovo. I said I was frankly shocked that he accepted the media hype so
uncritically. Though he opposed NATO intervention, though he said the media
had an interest in lying to build support for intervention, he never
questioned the validity of the anti-Serbian atrocity stories which were
obviously the key to building support for intervention. Why not?

Zinn answered that if one got too nit-picky about such details (e.g., whether
the Serbs are mass murderers) the public wouldn't take one seriously. Those
were his words: he didn't aruge that I was wrong on the merits of the case,
but that delving too deeply would be counter-productive. To which I said: If
we do not challenge this campaign of lies, how can we build a movement
against a U.S. policy that attempts to derive justification from the
accusations made against the Serbs? Case in point: I had asked my doctor if
he opposed the bombing. He said, "Frankly, no. The Serbs had it coming." The
only way to answer this is to show the atrocity stories are lies. Of course
it's hard to take on the mass media. But it has to be done.

An Ugly Fact about Kosovo Albanians

If Zinn was distressing, Gutlove was remarkable. Her history of
Serbian-Albanian relations consisted of a string of misrepresentations, as
when she rewrote World War II. It is a shameful fact that during the
Anti-Fascist War many ethnic Albanians helped the Fascists. Not just some
leaders. The Fascists had a big base in the Kosovo Albania community,
especially in Drenica, which is now the stronghold of the KLA. Describing the
difficulty anti-Fascists had winning Kosovo Albanians to the anti-Fascist
movement, Svetozar Vukmanovich-Tempo, a leader of Tito's Partisans, reported
in 1943 that:

"?conditions for [starting] armed resistance in Kosovo and Metohija were
worse than in any other region of the country... The [Fascist] occupiers have
succeeded in winning the Kosovo Albanians to their side?the local government
is in the hands of the Albanians, the Albanian language is obligatory... The
Albanian population is suspicious of all those who struggle for
[multi-ethnic] Yugoslavia, whether old or new; in their eyes it is always
less than what they have got from the occupier..." (quoted in "The Saga of
Kosovo", by Alex Dragnich and Slavko Todorovich)

World War II, Revised

Gutlove avoided this World War II unpleasantness with a verbal maneuver. She
said: "During the period from 1941 to 1945 the Albanians were 'up' and the
Serbs were 'down.'" That was it. Albanians up, Serbs down and poof! - the
slaughter of tens of thousands of Serbs, Roma ("Gypsies"), Jews and others by
Fascist Albanians vanishes. History is thereby improved.

Gutlove is a proponent of the Humpty Dumpty school of liberal revisionism, so
called because Mr. Dumpty, who appears in the works of Louis Carroll, teaches
that outer reality should conform to (his) inner desires. Thus his famous
statement: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean? neither
more nor less." And so, with the liberal followers of Mr. D., if something
ugly has been done by people who are currently allies of the U.S. and
therefore humanitarians, and if that something was done yesterday or earlier:
just lie, sucker. I mean, what's the problem? Americans don't know what
happened yesterday, they barely know what happened today. Nobody will care.

"Well said, Mr. Israel,"

commented Mr. Dumpty. "Precisely my point. We may make a Mediator of you yet,
or at least a Reliable Source. Of course you'll never be a match for Mr. Zinn
or Ms. Gutlove not to mention the editors of the New York Times;
nevertheless, if you would like to profit from my teachings, form an NGO of
your very own and remember Dumpty's Diktat: The Bigger the Lie the Fatter the
Grant!"

When my Yiddisha grandfather staggered off the boat and for the first time
gazed at the shores of this Brave New World, he shook his head and remarked:
"Ooombelievable."

Indeed.

***

NOTES

Note# 1 - Diana Johnstone's elegant piece, Yugoslavia Seen Through a Dark
Glass not only explains NGO's, she explains why and how they played such an
awful role in Yugoslavia. Click here or go to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/Yugo1.html

Note # 2 - Nobody actually reads what Milosevich said at Kosovo Field in
1989. Nevertheless the speech is cited by Western politicians, media and
academic Serbophobes as the rallying cry that launched a campaign for Greater
Serbia. Cllick here or go to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/milosaid.html

Note # 3 - In order to rule on applications by Kosovo ethnic Albanians for
refugee status, the German Courts and Foreign Ministry investigated charges
that the Serbian government engaged in ethnic persecution. The results
totally contradict NATO claims. They can be read by clicking on German
Documents or going to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/german/Germany.html

The equally eye-opening report of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group on
the BHHRG's trip to Serbia during the bombing can be found at
http://www.bhhrg.org/serbia/serbia1999/serbia1999.htm

If you're reading this article in a site other than Emperors-Clothes.com and
would like to see other articles please click here or go to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com

-- jared israel