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avgust 20, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Techniques used by Ruder Finn

This article shows how techniques used during the Bosnian civil war by PR firm Ruder Finn to fabricate stories reported by the western media are being used again in Kosovo. Substitute the images shown of refugees for the images shown of the disproved "death camp"

Disinformation and Serbia: U.S. Media Bias

By Peter Phillips



A major news story about Serbia, not covered in the American press, was published in Covert Action Quarterly (CAQ) last Fall. The story detailed how a famous photo from 1992 in Omarska, Bosnia showing an alleged Serbian death camp was in fact a phony. The original photo, taken by Independent Television (ITN) from Great Britain, showed an emaciated Muslim man with his shirt off behind barbwire with his imprisoned comrades behind him. This photo ran worldwide and was just used again June 14th by Time magazine. It was the first significant emotional presentation of the Serbian military as nazi-like thugs. Presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, making reference to the photo promised military action against the Serbs if elected.

According to CAQ this photo was a gross misrepresentation of the situation. The men in the picture were not behind barbwire, but rather were standing outside of a small fenced enclosure next to a farm house in an open field that had been serving as a refugee transit site. The photographers shot the photo from within the fenced enclosure looking out on a open field. The Hague Tribunal confirmed in 1994 that there was no barbwire surrounding the camp at Omarska in 1992.

So how has a phony photo of alleged Serbian death camp continued to be used to portray the Serbian government as an holocaust perpetrator in Kosovo?

One part of the answer is that the American public relations firm Ruder Finn was originally hired by the Croatian sessionists, Bosnian Muslins and the Kosovo Liberation Army( KLA) to foster negative images of the Serbs as nazi demons. Ruder Finn targeted American women and Jews with the promotion of often unconfirmed news stories of Serbian rape/death camps, and various human atrocities. News stories showing attacks and ethnic cleansing of Serbs were often repressed or undercovered.

The result was that the American public has been lead to believe that the Serbs are the vicious aggressors in the Balkans and the other parties innocent victims. Nothing could be further from the truth. The KLA alone was listed by the U.S. State department as a terrorist organization until just last year. They had been conducting bombings, assassinations, ambushes, (financed by heroin sales) on both Albanians moderates and Serbs in Kosovo for several years, increasing their attacks 1000% in 1998. Serbian police responses were often brutal especially in the villages from which the KLA was known to operate. Yet, last year only 2,000 deaths occurred on both sides in all of Kosovo. 2,000 deaths was not an ethnic cleansing campaign by Serbs to kill Albanians but rather part of a measured response to ongoing terrorist activities by a legitimate government.

American media has been so accepting of demonized-the-Serb stories that there was no questioning of the news story last January of the alleged Serbian massacre at Racak where some 40 Kosovo Albanians were said to have be gunned down by Serb police. Found by the "neutral" former Oliver North aide, William Walker, the bodies were a perfect photo opportunity to justify increased NATO demands for direct intervention and the bombings.

Yet, there was a complete failure of the American press to cover the European Union's forensic team's report in March 17th stating that they were unable to confirm that a massacre had occurred, and that it was possible that the bodies had been moved to that location after death.  For extra info read "Racak Massacre"

The American press has been filled with daily reports of mass graves and torture sites in Kosovo. Yet, a recent story of a KLA torture chamber found by German NATO troops received scant attention in the press.

Perhaps if the Serbs buried the 2,000 plus civilian victims of NATO's bombing campaign in a single mass grave the U.S. press might pay more attention to both sides of the story instead of serving as a NATO disinformation distribution service.

Peter Phillips Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Somona State
University and Director of Project Censored

 

Greg & Educ527 have a discussion

 

Greg <gdurka@monmouth.com> wrote in message news:379131B4.1AE2684@monmouth.com...
| You're a liar, Agent Educ527!


Educ527 wrote:

Convictions in the Hague for torture at I believe Omarska, such as by Dusan Tadic.


Some excerpts:

"The story of the barbed wire fence played a prominent part in the trial of the Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic, the first case heard before the War Crimes Tribunal. Tadic was accused by witness 'L', later revealed as Dragan Opacic, of committing atrocities at Trnopolje. On 15 August 1996, Opacic made a drawing in the courtroom to show how the barbed wire fenced-in the camp area. Questioned by the British defence attorney Stephen Kay, he insisted that the barbed wire fence had enclosed the entire camp.

"By the end of October 1996, however, the accusations against Tadic with regard to Trnopolje had been dropped; the prosecution's main witness Opacic had been exposed as a liar trained to make false statements by the Bosnian authorities. Opacic finally broke down and admitted his deceit when confronted by his father, whom he earlier claimed had been killed in the war. Tadic's Dutch defence advocate, Professor Wladimiroff, told me that he interviewed Dragan Opacic the day after he was exposed as a liar. Opacic said that the police in Sarajevo had schooled him for the witness box by repeatedly showing him videotapes of Dusko Tadic and of Trnopolje, which he scarcely knew. Prominent among these tapes were the pictures from ITN which were supposed to show Muslims imprisoned behind the barbed wire fence."

> >According to CAQ this photo was a gross misrepresentation of the situation. The men in the picture were not behind barbwire, but rather were standing outside of a small fenced enclosure next to a farm house in an open field that had been serving as a refugee transit site. The Hague Tribunal confirmed in 1994 that there was no barbwire surrounding the camp at Omarska in 1992.

A lie by Peter Phillips, Ph. D right off. And by the way, is Somona suppose to be Sonoma, or is this some double-play of words?

The name of the camp is changed to Omarska from Trnopolje. No one calls it the reportedly very savage Omarska camp.

Read Ed Vulliamy's account (Seasons in Hell) or Peter Maas' (Love Thy Neighbor) both have accounts of this. The movie "Welcome To Sarajevo" has film of this event shown the world over.


Read Thomas Deichmann's account:

"Ed Vulliamy's first article on Trnopolje was published in the Guardian on 7 August 1992, the morning after the ITN pictures had been broadcast for the first time. Vulliamy had probably not seen the edited ITN broadcast when he wrote it.

"This article did not mention the barbed wire fence, and stated that Trnopolje should not be called a concentration camp.

"Vulliamy presented quite a balanced view of the situation in the camp, quoting Muslim refugees who reported that no force had been used against them, that the place offered them a certain security, and that they would not know where to go otherwise.


"However, by the time Vulliamy came to describe his impressions of Trnopolje in his 1994 book Seasons in Hell, the Guardian reporter's tone had changed. The barbed wire which he had not considered worth mentioning in his first article had now become the focus of attention. In his book, Vulliamy described his first impressions of Trnopolje in these terms: 'More dirt tracks, more burned villages, and finally what was formerly a school in its own grounds, and another startling, calamitous sight: a teeming, multitudinous compound surrounded by barbed wire fencing.' (p106)

> The man in the photograph has a name from pg. 105 of Vulliamy's book. His name is Fikret Alic, who is speaking: Trnopolje is wretched confusion; here there is no pretence at 'A Category' and 'B Category', the camp is just a harvest of Muslim civilians from that area, rounded up on buses and trucks and incarcerated behind the wire. 'Some call it a refugee camp,' says Fikret, through the barbed stell knots in the fencing, 'but it's not; it's a prison camp, although not a PoW camp. No one here is a fighter. They are just people that have been captured.'

I admit, the part about a "wire" are in dispute, however other horrific events are not.
| >
| > >So how has a phony photo of alleged Serbian death camp continued to be used
| > >to portray the Serbian government as an holocaust perpetrator in Kosovo?
| >
| > The author doesn't talk about the other shots of prisoners taken as well.

|
|
| And neither do you.
|
| More excerpts from the same article by Thomas Deichmann:
|
| "When Marshall, Williams and Vulliamy entered the compound next to the
| camp, the barbed wire was already torn in several places. They did
| not use the open gate, but entered from the south through a gap in
| the fence. They approached the fence on the north side, where curious
| refugees quickly gathered inside the camp, but on the outside of the
| area fenced-in by barbed wire. It was through the barbed wire fence at
| this point that the famous shots of Fikret Alic were taken.
|
| "The unused footage shows how cameraman Irvin zoomed through the compound's
| barbed wire fence from various angles, apparently searching for the most
| dramatic shot. Most of the refugees in the camp were marked by their
| experience of the war, but few looked as emaciated as Fikret Alic. Yet
| he captured the camera's attention.
|
| "Yet an important element of that 'key image' had been produced by camera
| angles and editing. The other pictures, which were not broadcast, show
| clearly that the large area on which the refugees were standing was not
| fenced-in with barbed wire. You can see that the people are free to
| move on the road and on the open area, and have already erected a few
| protective tents. Within the compound next door that is surrounded with
| barbed wire, you can see about 15 people, including women and children,
| sitting under the shade of a tree. Penny Marshall's team were able to
| walk in and out of this compound to get their film, and the refugees
| could do the same as they searched for some shelter from the August sun.
|
| "Another unpublished sequence on the tape shows Fikret Alic and the other
| refugees who had just arrived from a different angle. The cameraman is
| no longer inside the barbed wire area, but about 20 metres to the west
| of it. From here it is obvious that the refugees are not caged behind
| barbed wire. While they wait to be registered and told where to go,
| they are standing behind an ordinary wire mesh fence which is little
| more than a metre high, adjacent to the barbed wire. But these pictures
| did not make it on to the world's TV screens and front pages."
|
|
|
The fascist propagandists, such as Educ527 and those at the American public
| relations firm Ruder Finn, should be charged with war crimes, and crimes
| against humanity, right along with the other NATO butchers who used this
| deliberate death-camp hoax to trick public opinion against the Serbs, and
| to attack and destroy Yugoslavia.

|
|
| Greg