Feedback: Amazing Lies, Distortions And Omissions

Tuesday, 14 March 2000, 9:30 am
Opinion: Alastair Thompson

EXPLANATORY NOTE: The following rather trenchant criticism of Scoop was written in response to a series of editorials by Alastair Thompson and carried on Scoop before, during and after the conflict in Kosovo last year. Robert Rodvik is an internet activist and the Author of "The Balkans: US Covert Activity and American Media Complicity" (1995). Scoop recently carried an article by Mr Rodvik Scoop Opinion: Wheelbarrows Of Hypocrisy. Scoop has included links to the offending articles to provide the criticism with context.

Amazing Lies, Distortions And Omissions

There Is Always An Alternative To Bombing - http://www.scoop.co.nz/archive/scoop/stories/68/f6/199810121533.214347.html

A great banner, too bad that initial view wasn't maintained throughout your rantings, but formed only the opening, or initial viewpoint, that you have expressed. Continuing along this initial path you state, "It is said that NATO has to bomb because it has no alternative...However the argument in favour of air strikes against Serbia has not yet been made sufficiently well." Having said that, you then add: "Something has to be done about Kosova - there is no question about that." Written using the Muslim Albanian expression instead of the Serbian term for the province, and begging the question: Why?

Next you say: "The international community has an obligation to protect the rights of innocent people facing slaughter," adding the disclaimer that the international community has had a poor record in the past - mentioning Rwanda as one example. I could add another in the long line of arenas that the international community has ignored, and I speak of Acteal, Mexico, where 45 Mayan Indians were slaughtered on December 27, 1997 - the mexican government's death squad mutilating their victims over a period of 12 hours, babies cut out of the wombs of pregnant women (cited in NACLA, Report On The Americas; Richard Stahler-Sholk, "The Lessons of Acteal," p. 11).

Should the international community have bombed Mexico City? to prevent the ongoing tortures and slaughters that take place on a daily basis in Mexico, which number into the thousands and which continue with impunity, and which the trainers of the Mexican death squads - the US - ignores without fail? Did Alastair Thompson rally to the defense of the Highland Maya of Mexico who are being killed every day in order to remove them from the oil-bearing land of Chiapas? And if not, why not?

Did Alastair Thompson suggest that the international community bomb Ankara and Istanbul for the over 30,000 Kurds that have been killed, with over 3,000 kurdish villages destroyed, tens of thousands of Kurds living in refugee camps? and if not, why not? Does AT care that it is the US, Britain and Canada - the "humanitarians" - that are arming and assisting Turkey via training, to help in the killing and destruction of the Turkish Kurds, in a campaign far worse than anything Saddam has done to the Kurds of Iraq, which is certainly no record to be proud of.

Did AT demand that the international community bomb Algiers for the ongoing massacres of civilians that makes anything that ever took place in Kosovo a mere pinprick by comparison? Where defectors from the government's death squads have detailed the manner in which the government created and uses the killers, and where, as Maclean's magazine reports: "Women have had their throats slit; children have been decapitated, sometimes with chainsaws. By foreign estimates more than 60,000 people have died." (Stefan Lovgren, Killing 'the power', Maclean's, June 23, 1997, p.33)

In Kosovo, by comparison, there were some 2,000 deaths on both sides - between an armed band of neo-Nazi killers with AK-47s that were shooting-up police stations, kidnapping and killing civilians and generally running a terror campaign in the province with the goal - as always stated - of creating a 'Greater Albania'. Given that Kosovo is way down the list of internal killing grounds around the world, why did AT apply such a frenzied commentary only to this "problem?" What about East Timor? Sri Lanka? Columbia? and on and on around the world?

Is there an implied racism in the statement: "Bosnia...[was]...the United Nation's greatest dishonour, when impotent unarmed UN peacekeepers were shuffled aside to enable massive ethnic cleansing operations to be undertaken by President Milosevic's Serbian troops?" Once again we see that AT makes blanket statements without a shred of evidence to support this ranting being offered. As I clearly demonstrated in my book, The Balkans: US Covert Activity And American Media Complicity (I should have added NZ complicity), these lies and distortions have framed the entire Balkans scenario as a fabricated history rather than the reality of the situation.

Bosnia was the scene of the largest "ethnic cleansing" indeed, but it was of Serbs, by Croats - as you can see if you managed to download the photo I sent you. And while some Serbs had taken UN "peacekeepers" and tied them to strategic positions, hoping to prevent a bombing by the NATO "humanitarians," the Croats on the other hand, actually killed UN peacekeepers, and during Operation Storm (good Nazi name), marched UN peacekeepers in front of their tanks as they advanced. Did AT report those facts? Did AT report that hundreds of civilians were bombed, mortared, or summarily executed by the advancing neo-Nazi troops of Franjo Tudjman? Or that these same troops were being trained and directed by the US government through its private mercenary arm?

Kosovo: A Solution, Finally, or a Final Solution? - http://www.scoop.co.nz/archive/scoop/stories/0f/26/199902201131.a4d26f.html

Nato Must Act In Kosovo - http://www.scoop.co.nz/archive/scoop/stories/5c/0b/199903181350.9ee381.html

Just four days after AT wrote that "Nato [sic] Must Act In Kosovo," the International Herald Tribune ran a piece titled: "War Crimes Investigators Recommend Trial for 3 Croatian Generals." This article by noted writer Raymond Bonner was run the same day in the New York Times and copied a day later in the Boston Globe, but seems to have evaded Alastair Thompson entirely. Since it is fundamental to the equation, its absence from the picture leaves only a partially painted canvas. To elaborate further:

a.. Investigators at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague have concluded that the Croatian Army carried out summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and "ethnic cleansing" during a 1995 assault that was a turning point in the Balkan wars, according to tribunal documents. The investigators have recommended that three Croatian generals be indicted.

b.. Any indictment of Croatian generals could prove politically troublesome for the Clinton administration...[since]...[t]he August 1995 Croatian offensive...was carried out with the tacit blessing of the United States by a Croatian Army that had been schooled in part by a group of retired U.S. military officers. Questions remain about the full extent of U.S. involvement.

c.. In the course of the three-year investigation into the assault, the United States has failed to provide crucial evidence requested by the tribunal, according to the tribunal documents and officials, adding to suspicion among some that Washington is uneasy about the investigation.

d.. The tribunal has begun an internal investigation to determine who provided The New York Times with a copy of the report on Operation Storm, two former tribunal officials said last week. [In yet another case of get the messenger and forget the message].

e.. But there was a darker side to Operation Storm, one largely overlooked in the West [and surely in NZ]...In terms of sheer numbers, it was the largest "ethnic cleansing" of the war...A section of the tribunal's 150-page report is headed: "The Indictment, Operation Storm, a Prima Facie Case."

f.. "During and in the 100 days following the military offensive, at lest 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed [including many from an old age home], and many hundreds disappeared." The crimes also included looting and burning, the report says. (emphasis added)

g.. "In a widespread and systemic manner, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts upon and against Croatian Serbs," the investigators say at another point in the report.

h.. Two senior Canadian military officers, General Alain Forand and Colonel Andrew Leslie, who were with the UN peacekeeping forces in Knin at the time, were unequivocal in their testimony to the tribunal that the shelling had been indiscriminate and did not serve a legitimate military function. "Why they shelled Knin is still hard to believe," General Forand told the investigators. "There is no doubt in my mind that the Croats knew they were shelling civilian targets."

Given the fact that the neo-Nazi Croatian troops of Franjo Tudjman had massacred hundreds of Serb civilians, and that the information was widely available, the question to be asked next is: Did AT know of this material and cover it up or sit on it? or was it a case of sloppy journalism whereby AT had already accepted the massive propaganda regarding the West's criminal aggression in Bosnia that was to be a prelude to its criminal aggression undertaken in Kosovo some years later? These are important questions to be answered - in light of the hysteric posturings that would follow among AT's diatribes.

Further along in the article, There Is Always An Alternative To Bombing, AT writes about Milosevic: "Removing such a dictator by military means requires occupation." (emphasis added). The fact is that Milosevic was elected by 48% of the population in a free and fair process (Canada's Chretien, by comparison, was elected with 39% of the vote and is a true dictator), with his clsoest rival, Vuk Draskovic, garnering but 16% of the vote. Just because the US propaganda machine calls Milosevic a dictator, does it mean that AT is incapable of correcting the lies? Nor does now or ever did Milosevic rule by dictatorial fiat; the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is governed by a parliamentary democracy, and there are many more rabid hardliners within the parliament than Milosevic. So esentially, what AT is guilty of yet again is simply distorting reality in a true Gobbels-like manner, without a shred of shame for his role in perpetrating the lies that the bomber gang uses time and again prio to each and every bombing to be administered to those not bending on all fours - posterior raised.

Keeping to his initial schizo-view, AT continues with such statements as: "The West will be happy to have their Cruise Missiles do their dirty work for them" and "The immediate problem is the protection of innocent civilians in Kosova." (emphasis added) And the best example of the reasoning used in the initial schizo-view is the statement: "But in the end the decision does not have to be so hard. Ghandi, Jesus and Buddha all taught that there is an alternative to violence." A correct statement to be sure, but which is then followed by the second track of the schizo-view: "NATO should keep its aircraft and missiles on standby, and stand up to Milosevic with the courage of its convictions."

Which is it Alastair? Are you advocating the peaceful route as enunciated by Jesus, Ghandi and Buddha, or is it missiles and bombs that you advocate? AT then further complicates the decision by declaring hypothetically (an amazing assumption is used here) that: "once attacked on the ground in Kosova, the Western Allies would then have the moral authority of self-defence to proceed with their air strikes."

What a bunch of self-serving histrionic clap-trap. Under what international law or authority would NATO be able to justify its invasion of a sovereign state? Invaders justifying their missiles and bombs because they are confronted with return fire from the aggrieved? who are now to be reconstucted into the aggressors by some strange manner of "deductive" reasoning? An amazing formula that couldn't bear the weight of its own false premises nor worth the ink wasted. Perhaps someone should bomb Washington for the hundreds of racially-motivated murders that take place in the US every year and which number far more than the deaths that occurred in Kosovo between two warring parties. Native Indians in the United States have written extensively on the false analogies of Kosovo - compared to the truly genocidal elimination of Native Indians, that still goes on today.

Then, returning again to the first of the schizo-views, AT goes on to say: "...proceeding with air strikes as planned, runs a risk of precipitating a far greater humanitarian disaster than that which they [NATO] have been organized to counter."

A very prescient statement indeed. Too bad that AT did not stick with this reasoned argument, but turned instead to being a rabid war-hawk, calling for the killing of innocent human beings, which comes out in his next article, titled: "Nato [sic] Must Act In Kosovo [sic]" Suddenly we no longer have the province delineated as Kosova, but rather Kosovo - just another of the schizo-views that prevails in AT's entire conjecturings.

As AT declares with great pomposity: "Nato [sic] must stop dithering on Kosovo. Genocide is a crime against humanity." (emphasis added) I will return to this point again later on, but it should be quite clear by now that no genocide occurred in Kosovo. NATO Secretary General, Javier Solana, along with many others of the bomber gang, declared that "at least 100,000 Kosovars" have been murdered by the bestial, rampaging Serb killers and destroyers - in language that AT was quick to grasp and to give countenance to. But what is the role of the journalist? Is it to accept unquestioningly the statements that come from the aggressors? in this case the US and its puppet allies. Or is the journalist duty bound to seek the truth and rage against falsehoods and propaganda. In the cacse of AT's writings, we know which path he chose.

Then comes yet another regurgitation of the distortive claims of the bombers: "Then Rajcak [sic], another appalling massacre." (emphasis added). Without going into lengthy detail here, since I dissect Racak in my newest book in progress, suffice it to say that KLA leader Hashim Thaci recently (March 6 or thereabouts) confessed on air to the radio reporter, Petr Iskenderov, of the Voice of Russia. I do not understand Russian nor Serbo-Croat so cannot comment on the on-air interview. However I will tell you what Voice of Russia reported in print, in less than perfect English, on their web page:

a.. A few days ago, the Albanian separatist leader Hashim Thaqi unveiled some secret details of KLA operations in the period immediately preceding last year's allied military operation. The then KLA leader [still is] said that his organization was working flat out using hit and run tactics against Serbian police officers and the Yugoslav military with an eye to provoking retaliation from Belgrade. This, he said, would give the separatists a chaance to bring repression charges against Yugoslavia and appeal for Western interference to end alleged human rights abuses by Begrade.

b.. Apparently carried away, Mr Thaqi also mentioned the tragedy in the Serbian village of Racak where dozens of dead bodies have recently been unearthed by OSCE experts who identified them as KLA fighters apparently killed in action. And still, people at the NATO headquarters in Brussels put the blame for the killings of peaaceful Albanian peasants squarely on Belgrade.

c.. Making a clean breast on what really had happened, Mr. Thaqi admitted that his militants had intentionally killed four Serb police officers at Racak knowing that the Serbs would not take long in retaliating for the attack...Albanian paramilitaries...had turned the village into a major stronghold. It was exactly their dead bodies, which were later found, something that is now admitted even by the then KLA supremo who has absolutely no reason to lie.

d.. To err is human, of course, but when an ill-intentioned provocation results in 78 days and nights of all out war then the whole thing is just a perfect case for a military tribunal to mete out equal justice for Hasim Thaqi, Bill Clinton,Tony Blair, Xavier Solana and other "scriptwriters".

Should he have added the name Alastair Thompson to that list? As I demonstrated clearly in my book, The Bakans: US Covert Activity And American Media Complicity, at least two of the so-called breadline marketplace massacres in Bosnia, along with the killing of civilians by sniper fire, was done by Bosnian Muslims themselves - in order to provoke Western intervention. The only question I could not answer in that book was whether this inventiveness was Muslim-inspired, or whether it had had a US hand behind the dirty deeds. It is a question still up in the air as regards Kosovo.

To return to AT's "Nato [sic] Must Act In Kosovo" article, once again we find that this "journalist" has turned to the hysterical to make his fatally-flawed and wholly false analogies. "Nato [sic] is being made to look an ass," he declares via his remarkable constructs, adding that "Nato [sic] is rapidly becoming a co-conspirator with Milosevic through allowing him to continue his policy of genocide while standing idly by."

AT, apparently, hasn't even bothered to use his dictionary to discover the definition of the word genocide, described by Webster's as: genocide: n. "The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group." Which means that if one were to correctly apply the term to Kosovo and the civil war being fought there, that the Serbs would have had to have had a similar policy in place as did the Third Reich with their "final solution" of the Jews as enunciated at Wannasee. Nothing even close to "genocide" transpired in or near Kosovo - not that the reader of AT's distortions would know.

Then our venturesome writer turns to the hysteric, as he attempts to bring further justification for the killing about to come. He likens what is happening in Kosovo - and he actually knows not a single thing of what is happening there - he likens what is happeing in Kosovo to "an abused woman." This fantasized subject of our pity, along with her children, "have been battered for a decade," says AT, further distorting the situation by adding that "her deranged partner [Serbia] starts killing the children."

A war crimes trial of the propagandists would ask if AT was on the Muslim Kosovars' payroll? This entirely false analogy, but highly inflamatory analogy, can only be meant to stir up hatred and lust for killing against the Serbs. Even in the mainstream propaganda press one rarely encounters such concerted effort to rally against the Serbs. AT concludes his article by announcing that: "History will damn Nato [sic] unless they act now to stop the systematic murder of the people of Kosovo."

Apparently AT believes that the only people in Kosovo are Albanians; who are being raped and abused by demented Serbs that appear by magic to pillage and plunder. Obviously he knows not, or at least comments not, on the dozens of Serbs that have been kidnapped and killed by KLA extremists, nor does he comment on the dozens of moderate Kosovar Muslims that have been killed by the same KLA. Does he know of these occurrences and simply omit them in order to frame the rabid accounting of the situation? or does he not know of these events, which would mean just sloppy, ill-informed journalism. A war crimes trial of the propagandists would want to have answers to these questions. As to the statement itself, AT is demanding that NATO act against its own mandate, against the United Nations Charter, and against international law. Does the rule of law mean nothing to this "journalist"? Is he an agent of NATO standing for the revocation of the rule of law?

What Is Slobodan Milosevic's Plan? - http://www.scoop.co.nz/archive/scoop/stories/e1/84/199903251003.b4f70a.html

In the article, "What Is Slobodan Milosevic's Plan?" our Antipodean "analyst" returns to the abstract delivery to attempt his false analogies. He begins by telling us that "there are, by most reports, at least 30,000 new refugees on the run as a result of the current Yugoslav offensive...These civilian refugees are completely vulnerable - unable to defend themselves." As a brief point on the use of language, the use of "civilian refugees" is redundant, military refugees do not apply; and if they are "completely vulnerable" then it automatically arises that they are equally "unable to defend themselves" which is but another redundancy - for effect.

But if the amount of refugees is the point that is meant to stir our emotions, what about the more than one million refugees in Columbia? or the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Kurdistan (the Kurdistan of desire that the Turks won't allow)? or even closer to the scene the hundreds of thousands of Serb refugees that have taken refuge in Serbia proper? What is it about the Muslim Kosovars that AT has such peculiar affinity with? Is he on the PR payroll? Why such grieving for them rather than the equally afflicted others?

Our intrepid "analyst" then purports to give us a "history" lesson, in which he claims that Billy-Bob Clinton, fresh from killing innocent civilians in Iraq and still maintaining the genocidal sanctions that have taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children - a true mass-murderer - should have leaned on "history" in order to "commit to ending conflict" in Kosovo. History in the hands of non-historians is somewhat akin to chemicals in the hands of kindergarten kids, they both have a habit of recreating the undesired.

AT returns to his initial schizo view with the statement: "On its face the US has been flouting international law for some time in Iraq to Russia's intense displeasure [not to mention to the angst of the Iraqis being daily killed]. Now, it could be said, the US is just keen to use its military might to demonstrate its supremacy again."

If indeed this is the case, as AT has just painted it in the example above, then why was he calling for the US to break every international law in his preceeding statement? Sometimes it is hard to understand what it is exactly that Mr. Thompson would wish us to believe, or accept. But he then caps his argument by writing: "From Milosevic's point of view this is an opportunity to exploit."

I hadn't realized up till reading that sentence that our intrepid "journalist" was also clairvoyant. That he was able, all the way from New Zealand mind you, to enter into the Republic president's mind and to make pronunciations of future activity. It's a handy talent. So handy, in fact, that towards the end of this article, AT states about Milosevic that "he has shown one abiding inclination - a desire to commit evil."

For a clairvoyant that should come as no surprise. Milosevic, who presides over a population in Serbia itself that is the most ethnically diverse in all of Europe, with tens of thousands of Albanian Muslims living alongside Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Hungarians etc. that in their entirety have been against the US-sponsored killings, apparently only has "desire to commit evil" against Muslims in Kosovo. You would almost think that AT was a paid agent of the huge US PR firm, Rudder Finn, hired to justify the US war and propagandize the situation in Kosovo to the benefit of the Muslim Albanians who have been pushing for their "Greater Albania" for a century or more.

AT closes off by telling us that Milosevic is "an indicted war criminal" but he doesn't tell us that every reputable scholar has commented on the fact that the ICTY is a patently political creation of the US and its puppet allies, nor does he mention that while the world asks for a truly independent world court, the US refuses to accept its creation, knowing that it will be in the dock on a virtual permanent basis, for the many wars it conducts around the world that break international law. If anyone should be indicted for war crimes, it is Clinton and the puppets.

Balkans Editorial: Teach Your Children Well - http://www.scoop.co.nz/archive/scoop/stories/94/dd/199908011600.0497f1ca.html

At the conclusion of 78 days and nights of bombing by the neo-Nazi forces of NATO (whose very beginning structure was formed by all the head Nazis that the US and UK had rescued from war crimes trials - in order that they could destroy Russian socialism, the permanent aim of the aristocrats that run the US and the UK to their own benefit - putting these rescued Nazis in charge of NATO's function), our "journalist" pens an article titled: "Teach Your Children Well" (I won't let him teach mine a thing).

Again AT starts off with his initial schizo-view, mentioning the daily bombings of Iraq by the US, and tells us that the US responds to threats it encounters over Iraq by bombing. He does not tell us, however, that the US and chief puppet in crime the UK are bombing a defenseless country even though there is absolutely no UN mandate to do so; merely the US military's continued aggression to use its chief production - bombs - before they rot on the shelves. Since taxpayers finance the "Defense" (WAR) Department's every expenditure, the owners of the shares of the merchants of death reap a virtual bonanza that comes from the killing of people in faraway places. It is one of the methods whereby the poor transfer the wealth to the rich.

AT then makes the correct observation that the US bombs "Sudan. Afghanistan. Iraq. Yugoslavia." and that, "A clear pattern has emerged." That, apparently, is as far as AT is going to take this reality. No need to mention that each of these activities is criminal. That each of these activities has resulted in mass murder. One brief line of information without explanation is all that we get. But it gets worse.

Next we read: "The war in Kosovo was not a victory - for anyone. Rather it was too little too late...in economic terms probably cost thousands of jobs in the West. (emphasis added).

If indeed the killing of hundreds of civilians and the destruction of Yugosalvia's infrastructure was "too little too late," we must ask if AT is hereby asking that these war crimes be increased? Something like the Russians did to Grozny perhaps. Simply flattening Belgrade and killing as many people as possible? Is that what Mr. Thompson actually called for? AT justifys this call to a killing field by saying that "when one considers the level of genocide" - but it has been shown since (and honest scholars always noted that the hyperbole was as hysteric as the claims) that "genocide" never entered the equation and was used by the propagandists to justify their mass-murder in Yugoslavia; so again I ask, is this merely a matter of sloppy journalism, or an intended fabrication to hijack the honest discussion of what truly was occuring in the region? Was AT a dupe who created bloodlust among his readers? or a paid propagandist who should be charged, as was the Goebbles Ministry of Propaganda and the propagandists, with crimes against the peace and against humanity? (emphasis added)

How about the statement that "in economic terms [the one-sided cowardly bombing from three miles high] probably cost thousands of jobs in the West as money is diverted away from productive use to the futility of war." Such an amazing statement. Almost the entire productive capacity ofYugoslavia was destroyed by the killers, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and AT comments about "jobs in the West." This is crassness at its most crudely cynical. It follows also, that AT did not pay any attention to the business pages of the West's establishment press, where one finds such headlines as: "Kosovo a showcase for defence firms," and "Kosovo Crisis Boosts Stocks Of U.S. Defense Contractors."

The first story, from Canada's Globe and Mail, tells us that the merchants of death are thrilled with the opportunity that Kosovo has brought to their travelling roadshow - as they always are upon US killings abroad. "In the defence business, there is no better showcase than a war," declares the G&M, in the piece that originated from Big Business's prime soothsayer, The Wall Street Journal. "And major U.S. defense companies are rapidly incorporating the war in Kosovo into sales pitches...Boeing, Northrup Grumman Corp., Raytheon Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. are touting the war to sales prospects as a triumph of U.S.-made planes and munitions."

Or take the USA Today report along the same track: "Raytheon--which makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles being used against the Serb forces [against civilian targets, more accurately]--has been the industry's biggest gainer. It's stock is up 17% the past two weeks. Stocks of military equipment manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Boeing are up 8% and 12%, respectively. 'Some of the performance is driven by excitement in Kosovo.'"

Excitement indeed. The rich were lapping up all that killing in Kosovo because they were getting richer by the day. And all the destruction offered the "victors" the opportunity to get those rebuilding contracts, a second equation in the US-led wars abroad, as the vanquished are always required to use "Allied" firms in the rebuilding of their destroyed societies. But AT mentions not a single one of these realities. Is it ignorance? or has he been paid not to inform us of these uncomfortable truths?

AT again compounds his hysteric and distortive pronunciations by declaring: "Milosevic was never planning on stopping killing Muslims - he was, and is, a psychopathic racist..." About this time I have to wonder if our intrepid "journalist" is as incompetent as he portrays himself in his rabid rantings, or if he is a willing executioner who has an agenda that coincides with the baby killers of the Balkans; the ones that bombed hospitals and schools and old-age homes and every kind of depraved killing one gets from the true racists that the US produces throughout its history, a compendium of thousands of volumes dedicated to delineating US slavery, lynchings, beatings and killings of blacks that goes on to this day, and which Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have recently focused entire reports on the entrenched factors of US racism. So, again we have the distortions that AT applies = to the situation, taking the non-racism (as is seen in the variety of peoples living side-by-side in Belgrade) versus the ongoing systemic racism of the US - and turns the scenario 180o. Is this done purposely? To create hatred against the Serbian people?

Once again AT returns to his initial schizo-view with the statement: "For the West...[t]here was only ever one way out. Bombing. And that was always going to bring more genocide, and then escalation until capitulation." As for the "bring more genocide" fantasy, I have already dealt with that. As to reality, the truth is that the bomber gang had a number of objectives in play that called for the bombing of Yugoslavia, not a single one of which had anything to do with "humanitarianism." The list is too long to elaborate further here, but constitute an entire chapter in my forthcoming book.

In his closing lines, AT makes the most amazing statements I have yet to encounter in print. A particularly ugly distortion reads: "The closest anyone comes to any honour in the struggle for the freedom of Kosovo is KLA - UCK" which is an amazing endorsement of a group of killers, assassins and terrorists who have paid their terrorist way by becoming the leading drug-dealing mafiosi in Europe. My files contain a mountain of material on the KLA and their terrorist drug-dealing tactics, including by the US DEA and State Department, but to AT they are of "honour." Calling neo-Nazis honourable takes an inordinate amount of chutzpah, something that our indefatigable propagandist excels at.

AT issues this following whopper towards the end of the article: "Their country [he ascribes Kosovo as belonging to the killers of the KLA] is a killing field to rival Cambodia." Now that takes a lot of engineering to craft a statement as immorally inept as that. In the case of Kosovo, some 2,000 people on all sides died from the internal and external war. In Cambodia, anywhere from 300,000 to one million people were extinguished - the actual number being conflicted among the many reports. No matter, the pathetic attempt to align the two in terms of a death count is balderdash writ large.

At the end of the day one is left with two possibilities. Either Alastair Thompson is a paid and bought propagandist for the killers of the West and the Muslims of the Balkans, or he is an amazingly inept "journalist" - either case being truly sad.

Since AT did open his eyes to the point of running my piece of sarcasm, "Wheelbarrows of Hypocrisy," I suspect that he is not a paid agent as described. The sad fact is, however, that I'm sure his pathetically researched and plainly false writings caused many a New Zealander to obtain an incorrect understanding of what the truth of Balkans realities are. They likely inflamed many a New Zealander to hate and regard Serbian people as barbarians. These writings can in no way be construed as "journalism" but rather as histrionic degredations of truth, always further distorted by the many ommisions that serve the purpose of the propagandist.

If AT wants to see real justice done, he will publish this paper in the New Zealand Scoop and apologise to the people of a commonwealth country for the terrible killings that the real murderers inflicted on a defenseless people.

Robert Rodvik

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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