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tommygunns

From www.antiwar.com
Source: Serbian Unity Congress

September 21, 1999

WHEN JOURNALISTS ACT LIKE CRIMINALS, TOO!

By William Dorich

Los Angeles, September 21, 1999—Thomas Jefferson swore eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man. This article is about such tyranny. Yellow journalism that subverts the ignorance of American readers is criminal. Such work also undermines our political system by exploiting our most valuable freedom—the freedom of the press. This same political exploitation has muzzled Serbian views now for nearly a decade. In the more than 15,000 articles and opinion pieces published in every major U.S. newspaper on Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, Serbs can count on one hand the number that were written by Serbian journalists, authors, scholars or their political leaders.

Benjamin Wittes's article in the Washington Post on September 20, 1999, ‘For an Accused War Criminal’, a 50-Year Haven in America, was an ugly piece of such journalism. Wittes deceptively attacked Serbian priest, Fr. Momcilo Djujic who recently died. Djujic defrocked himself after WWII having personally killed Nazis, believing he could no longer do the work of the Lord. He did not need Benjamin Wittes, 55 years later, to tell him killing was wrong. Wittes’s article exposes the depth of the Washington Post's demonization of Serbia by resorting to mocking the dead. Criticizing this former priest for escaping Tito's communism which would have clearly put him to death is arrogant and self-serving.

Wittes and others of his ilk, cleverly ignore such creatures as Ambassador Kirkpatrick's husband Evron and his immoral deeds. According to Christopher Simpson's book Blowback (1989), Evron Kirkpatrick bragged that his most famous Nazi acquisition was Nikolai N. Poppe the head of Soviet intelligence who worked for the Germans in Berlin before striking a deal with Kirkpatrick and the CIA. Kirkpatrick worked for ''Bloodstone,'' the State Department's covert project under the aegis of the CIA to bring Nazi war criminals to this country who could benefit our defense and military capability. Poppe stayed in this country for decades, too, while Benjamin Wittes managed to look the other way. He ignored the hideous crimes Poppe was certainly guilty of committing. Wittes and the Washington Post knew Fr. Djujic was in the U.S. for 5 decades, yet they waited until his death to attack him. What sleazy cowards!

Wittes clearly lacks responsibility and integrity by omitting any mention of the six high-ranking Albanian emigres who were spirited to the U.S. after the war and who had backgrounds as leading Nazi collaborators. Midhat Frasheri was the head of the Albanian Nazi organization, Balli Kombetar. Marc Truitt, at Stanford University, did his doctoral thesis on the relationship of Albanians and the CIA. Some of these individuals include Xhafer Deva, minister of the interior of the Italian Fascist occupation regime in Albania, Hasen Dosti, minister of Justice in the pro-fascist government and Mustafa Merlika-Kruja, the Albanian prime minister from 1941-43. They lived in the U.S. free as a bird.

According to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as much at my disposal as that of Benjamin Wittes, the German diplomat Gustav Hilger is a classic example of Wittes’s slight-of-hand. Hilger had close friendships with the Americans from the old Moscow embassy. During the War, Hilger went directly from the German Embassy in Moscow to service in the personal secretariat of Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and became the chief political officer for the Eastern Front. In this capacity he was the liaison with the SS concerning the Nazi occupation of the USSR, a job which included the processing of SS reports on the mobile killing operations in the East. Hilger succeeded in obtaining sanctuary in Germany for several Hungarian army officers responsible for the murder of 6,000 Serbs and 4,000 Jews in Yugoslavia. In 1962, Nazi hunter Charles Allen located Hilger at his residence in Washington, D.C. Benjamin Wittes's selective outrage is devious.

Fr. Djujic saved the lives of thousands of innocent Serbian women and children destined for Croatia's most infamous concentration camp, Jasenovac, where tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were put to death. At Stara Gradiska, the children's wing of this hideous camp, Roman Catholic nuns who ran the prison poisoned over 90,000 Serbian children with caustic soda. At this very moment, Dinko Sakic is standing trial in Zagreb, Croatia as the last living commandant of Jasenovac, yet, the Washington Post has carried little to no coverage of his trial. They are apparently too busy demonizing a dead Serb.

Only those with warped minds or those with criminal intent hide the truth and fabricate the facts. Omission journalism has been made fashionable these days now that Roy Gutman received his Pulitzer for half-truths, fabrications and double hearsay. In the foreword to his piece of trash entitled, ''Witness to Genocide,'' Gutman tells us in his own words: ''Having set such lofty standards, I immediately made an exception and wrote about the Omarska camp, which I had not visited, based on secondhand witness accounts.'' (p. XII). In other words, the media is full of propagandists, fiction writers, soothsayers, and when necessary, embellishers of politically correct copy. SCREW THE TRUTH!

CBC correspondent Nancy Durham is the tip of the journalistic iceberg. Her sensationalized articles about a female KLA soldier and her avenging of her sister's death at the hands of the Serbs turned out to be another Muslim hoax. Journalists eager to use lies and deception with a total disregard for the facts gave us the fictitious 50,000 rapes, the alleged destruction of Dubrovnik, the hoax by our government that the Serbs killed 100,000 Albanians, and that NATO destroyed 62% of Milosevic's army. They were a pack of lies. Ms. Dunham's proclivities for demonizing Serbs with collective guilt are the very same proclivities we see in Benjamin Wittes. Are we really expected to take pity on such journalists for their own ignorance and incompetence?

Wittes is a historical revisionist and is evil on a par with the best of Bolshevism and Communism. His ugly crime is re-murdering the dead. This comes from the same kind of Washington mind that bombed dozens of Serbian cemeteries during 78 days of bombing. Re-killing the dead by destroying graveyards is the single most successful way of erasing an ethnic identity and historic claims to a territory, it was used in Kosovo and Serbia with great NATO laser-guided expertise. It was racist to the core.

Wittes totally ignores, or deliberately hides the thousands of pro-Axis émigrés brought to this country under the guise of scholarship to support our weapons and rocket programs. Those war criminals lived in this country for 50 years, too. Individuals like Wernher Von Braun, a so-called ''lesser Nazi,'' or worse, Kurt Waldheim who headed the United Nations and who personally oversaw the liquidation of thousands of Serbs in Yugoslavia while a Nazi officer. He is currently receiving a $200,000 per year UN pension that escapes Benjamin Wittes's attention.

Fr. Djujic participated in the rescue of over 500 American airmen downed over occupied Yugoslavia in WWII. Thank you for the show of gratitude Mr. Wittes. The mention of this heroic deed was given just 7 words in his article, an outrageous example of the depths to which Benjamin Wittes and his ilk stoop. In the past 50 years not one single article has been published in a major American newspaper about this rescue, the largest rescue of American troops from behind enemy lines in our nation’s history. Just 7 words, how repugnant!

The Legion of Merit Award, this nation's highest honor to a foreign national, was given to the Chetnik leader, General Draza Mihailovic. It was approved by an act of Congress in 1942 by a recommendation from General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The State Department kept that award secret for 22 years. What immoral bastards we have in our government. Hundreds of Serbians gave their lives to save those American airmen. Benjamin Wittes should speak with Major Richard Felman, USAF (Ret.), a Jew from Arizona who tells the story of how the Germans burned down an entire village of 200 Serbian women and children because they refused to reveal Felman’s hiding place. Benjamin Wittes's smear tactics against those heroic Serbs is abhorrent.

Wittes's article, like most written about the Serbs today lacked any real research. How shameful that Wittes resorted to propaganda. Two years ago, on June 28, 1997, the British government released to the press the secret documents about General Mahialovic which corroborate his innocence against the charges of ''Nazi collaboration.'' Those secret files also revealed that Tito and Stalin concocted these lies with the same craftiness we see in Benjamin Wittes's talents to deceive.

It appears that Wittes never read a single word from, ‘The Rape of Serbia’ by Michael Lees (1990), a British officer sent to assist Mihailovic forces during the war and whose book was based on the inadvertent release of secret British archive in 1989 that exposed the duplicity of the British Secret Service and the worm in their Cairo headquarters, Kim Philby, a communist spy who fled to the USSR after the war.

Apparently, Mr. Wittes has never read the ‘Web of Disinformation’ by his respected colleague, David Martin (1990), who had firsthand experience in the Balkans of WWII. Required reading for Wittes should be Unholy Trinity by Aarons and Loftus (1992), especially the chapters on the Vatican Ratline which issued 34,000 false passports to Nazi war criminals who escape justice by fleeing to Argentina. That number includes 733 Roman Catholic priests who murdered thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, as well as one of the most famous war criminals, Clause Barbe. Obviously Mr. Wittes does little reading these days, he is too busy concocting tabloid trash.

According to the Holocaust Center in Los Angeles, the Nuremberg Tribunal archives, and many major scholarly works on Balkan history, 1.7 million Serbs were victims of WWII, as were 87,000 Croats and 31,000 Bosnian Muslims. It is rather obvious to most historical observers who was the most successful at genocide in Yugoslavia during the Holocaust. In Wittes's attack on Milosevic he omits any reference to the 1.2 million Serbian refugees prevented from returning to their homes in Croatia and Bosnia now for 4 years. Wittes's wrath in defending human rights seems to have missed Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic who, like Wittes, get away with re-murdering the dead.

The Washington Post preached the loudest about the immorality of ethnic cleansing. How immoral that they now pretend not to notice the 200,000 Serbs and the 150,000 Gypsies cleansed from Kosovo in 4 weeks. Not a single picture has been reproduced on their pages of the 59 Serbian churches razed in the past month. Like the Serbian Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Djakovica rebuilt on the site of the original Cathedral destroyed by Albanian Nazis in WWII. The Cathedral was destroyed by explosives on July 24, 1999. The Albanians in Djakovica celebrated through the night for having twice destroyed this Serbian religious landmark. It appears that the double standards and the morons at the Washington Post are no different than the moron we have in the White House.

Mr. Wittes and the Washington Post have wasted no ink in telling their readers about the Bosnian Muslims whose 20,000-strong Waffen-SS Hanjar Division in WWII killed thousands of Americans of the 5th U.S. army division in Italy. After the Americans broke through their lines, these Bosnian Muslims returned to Yugoslavia. Their new despicable task was to maintain the railway link between the Balkans and Auschwitz. The Washington Post has defended these Bosnian Muslims and their creation of an ethnically pure government. They support the war criminals who escaped justice after the Holocaust and are once again escaping justice because of the spin given to them by the Post's editorial staff. Or does Benjamin Wittes believe those 40,000 dead Bosnian Serbs had it coming?

The writer is the author of numerous books on the Balkans including his 1991 book, Serbian Genocide 1941-45 and his 1992 book, Kosovo.]]> Kosovo War tommygunns https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6239 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6238 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 21:36:00 +0000 Your losing me .If you just state what you mean maybe im even willing to answer in a normal way.

Emina
Ps DANIELA
Keep your saracasm to yourself!

NOW IM DEFENSIVE TOMMY SEE THE DIFFERENCE???]]> Kosovo War emina https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6238 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6237 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 20:44:00 +0000 that rubbish + nonsense]]> Kosovo War daniela https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6237 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6236 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 20:37:00 +0000 Zoja & Emina
Smells Amanpourish ... or Rubin ...]]> Kosovo War kissie https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6236 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6235 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 20:25:00 +0000 time to gripe at dms again, i reckon
""]]> Kosovo War L'menexe https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/3/#post-6235 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6234 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 17:23:00 +0000
Why are the Spanish late, you ask. Well, Methinks you can answer that for yourself. Mass graves were detected already during and after the war. I remember the story of, I believe it was a teacher, who stayed behind in Pristina serving as a grave digger. In the mean time the man kept a list. Many others like him were active in Kosova. As we speak day by day, people are being found and identified. The same Finnish research team ,who is still working to identify people form mass graves in Bosnia (one of whom they discovered my brother in law, so that Bosnia story was pretty much old news), is working hard for months now identifying everyone. Same story will count for Kosova. Years afterwards graves will still be discovered and missing people identified. My brother in law was in a mass grave for five years, I am sure many families in Kosova from eiter side in the conflict will have the same fate.

The Spanish therefore are lagging far, far behind. For the rest I can tell you I have the greatest respect for the people in the monastery at Raska and Prizren, working their butts off to document everything. And who btw i]]> Kosovo War zoja https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6234 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6233 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 16:45:00 +0000 Defensive you don't know what defensive is. You talk from studybooks, newspapers and websites.
Go life under a regime for awhile then see who's the one who's defensive.
Afterall YOU my friend were the one to point out it was NOT good to blame"only" one party, and i told you that i didn't, and you call me defensive?????
Very judgemental for a studybook,website eater.

Emina
PS look around you for a change and see who's most judgemental. You'll be surprised. Oh and BTW HATE its not in my capacity to hate it was merely to make statement!]]> Kosovo War emina https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6233 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6232 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 11:00:00 +0000
What you state is exactly the difference between someone having an opinion based on research and someone having lived it. The latter makes your point of view quite a lot different.

As for the defensive part, I can understand that very well. Research the old archives.

As for propaganda, is a group of people living in the whole of the former Yugoslavia, from all ages, all religions and all the nationalty groups so untrustworthy that it spreads only propaganda??? Because these are the very people Emina gets her info from (take it from me, hon
:-))), not the usual senseless press babble.

Ask before you judge, Tommy. It would make you look a lot less naive!

Zoja]]> Kosovo War zoja https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6232 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6231 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 08:50:00 +0000 not that it matter particularly]]> Kosovo War daniela https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6231 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6230 Mon, 27 Sep 1999 06:39:00 +0000
Don't be so defensive! I've never said you hate Serbian people. However, you do parrot the usual propaganda. If your hatred is reserved for butchers and rapists, then you must share that hatred with all parties in the Balkans, for it seems from my research that these kinds of crimes have been committed by all sides - but that's not unusual in a war. Therefore, you'll find butchers, rapists, murders, whatever in every nation that has ever gone to war.

BTW - HATE is a VERY strong word. It should be used sparingly. One must be careful with hatred and fear, two powerful passions that have a tendancy to turn around and bite back. There's an old saying that "one becomes the thing one hates or fears the most".

As for the Spanish forensics team. Why are they late? Forensic investigations are often carried out years after a crime. There's really no time limit. They are still investigating crime scenes in Bosnia.

tommygunns]]> Kosovo War tommygunns https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-september-27-1999/paged/2/#post-6230