The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
On 23 April 1999, a NATO missile attack on Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) headquarters killed 16 employees of the state broadcaster. The forgotten war crime occurred during the Kosovo War (March 1998-June 1999), and was part of NATO’s aerial campaign alongside the US-backed Kosovo Liberation army, in opposition to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In the aftermath of the attack there were no great public campaigns launched for the 16 murdered journalists and employees, no outpouring of emotion for those killed, no calls for solidarity and togetherness in the face of aggression. On the contrary the West justified this grievous blow against freedom of expression, praised it even.
Tony Blair, Britain’s then Prime Minister, welcomed the killings when speaking at NATO’s 50th anniversary summit in Washington. Blair said the missile attack was “entirely justified… in damaging and attacking all these targets”, and that those murdered were part of the “apparatus of dictatorship and power of [Slobodan] Milosevic”.
Blair felt that, “the responsibility for every single part of this action lies with the man [Milosevic] who has engaged in this policy of ethnic cleansing and must be stopped”. Apparently Milosevic “must be stopped” by wiping out state journalists or what Blair describes as an “apparatus of dictatorship”.
According to one of the main leaders of the Western world, Milosevic must bear full responsibility for a NATO fighter plane firing a US-made missile on a state broadcasting service’s headquarters. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by Blair’s visions of justice, particularly when examining his key role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the following decade.
Blair was not alone in praising this violation of international law. His Secretary of State for International development, Clare Short, said afterwards that, “the propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it’s a legitimate target”. Short is a Labour Party member and her official title today is The Right Honourable Clare Short. Defending these killings was neither right nor honourable one can assume.
NATO themselves commended the deliberate attack afterwards. NATO’s military spokesperson Air Commodore David Wilby declared RTS, “a legitimate target which filled the airways with hate and with lies over the years”. This followed on from a number of other NATO attacks on radio and television outlets in the country.
In the build up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, Cardiff University revealed that the BBC adopted the most pro-war stance of any British network. The official reasons for invading Iraq were based entirely on lies and misinformation. In this case was the BBC “the propaganda machine”, had it become “a legitimate target” too?
Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth Bacon also legitimised the war crime saying that, “Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic’s murder machine as his military is”. Not to be outdone, the respected US diplomat and magazine editor Richard Holbrooke described the bombing of RTS as, “an enormously important and, I think, positive development”.
In the build up to the Iraq invasion American networks like Fox News were styling the illegal intervention as “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, with its correspondents and news anchors compelled to repeat that phrase. In addition a permanent American flag was fluttering in the top corner of the screen, and during the invasion itself the banner “war on terrorism” was unfurled.
Did this make Fox News and others like it, “a legitimate target which filled the airways with hate and lies”? Judging by the standards of Western elites, one would have to suggest so.
Meanwhile, a single person was charged for the attack on RTS: Dragoljub Milanovic, the Serbian network’s general manager, who received a 10-year jail term for failing to evacuate the building in time. Yet the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia concluded that NATO’s bombing of RTS was not a crime, noting that deaths were “unfortunately high, they do not appear to be clearly disproportionate”. Clearly disproportionate to the overall number of civilian deaths inflicted by NATO perhaps.
However, in January 2015 the Western reaction was somewhat different when 12 journalists from the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper were murdered by Islamic extremists – along with four Jewish men killed at a kosher supermarket shortly afterwards.
The British Prime Minister on this occasion, David Cameron, did not justify the killing of journalists and said, “We stand absolutely united with the French people against terrorism and against this threat to our values – free speech, the rule of law, democracy”. Cameron went on, “we should never give up the values we believe in… a free press, in freedom of expression, in the right of people to write and say what they believe”.
About two weeks later Blair, now a Middle East peace envoy, said of the thinking behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks, “this extremism is not natural, it’s taught and it’s learned and you have to un-teach it in the school systems”. Blair seems further unaware of his own role in creating “this extremism” by playing the junior partner role in invading Iraq, a crucial factor in the rise of ISIS.
In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, millions marched to honour the dead with the slogan “I am Charlie” becoming famous. When the Serbian journalists and employees were killed just over 15 years before, there was no international motto of “I am RTS”.
New York civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams described the Charlie Hebdo shootings as, “the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory”. The perception of “living memory” appears to be a remarkably short one.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Western governments, and all those who support them, have long ago abandoned all civilised standards of honesty, legality, morality or even plain decency. They lie and lie and lie – blatantly and unblushingly, in accordance with the principle of the Big Lie (which Goebbels and Hitler learned from Edward Bernays and his chums on Madison Avenue).
The Western hypocrisy is sickening. Blair should be behind bars.
…with Bush and Obama.
……Clinton…..
……all on trial for capital murder…
Unlikly … some say he has Rottenchild blood (not pure)
And he converted into a Roman Catholic. To be in time for his protection by pope, Jesuits and The Banksters.
That is why Mr. Tony the Phoney is still a “free man” and untouchable.
Hi Vtran, long time, nothing heard. Are you OK?
DE … thank you for the information
have some issues … banned as you know on FR (will return under a new ID …. but sits behind a number of other computer related tasks) … and health … damn immune system has collapsed, so picking up any “bug” doing the rounds ,,, need some time to “recharge” …
DE thank you for asking
You’r welcome. If you live in a state where medical cannibis is allowed to be used may be that might be of benefit for your health?
About the issues … yes I suspected it would be something like that.
Keep save, take care and become healthy asap, you hear.
going for a specialized type of acupuncture very soon ….. have great hopes
Thank you …. you take care too
NATO was actually too soft! NATO had prevented genocide of serbian terrorists over armless Albanian people with the help of the JNA, which which was usurped by the great-serbian genocidal criminals and dictator Milosevic.
Yeah… and Your Ustashas preemptively massacred a million Serbs during World War II. And for the same reason, the Serbian people was decimated during the First one – the so-called The Great War. The Turks preventively killed, assimilated or displaced Serbs (especially from today’s Kosovo) for five centuries. But, what else to say about ‘unarmed Albanians’ ?! You could not have met such a thing for centuries. Ah, did you hear that? And what else to say about ‘unarmed Albanians’ ?! You could not have met such a thing for centuries. And did You hear about the weapons stolen from… Read more »
Tony Blair unfortunately walks the earth a free man, how can this be ?
Now he is a middle east envoy, makes it even more insulting.
Thank you Russia for stopping this criminality continuing on into Syria, the neoconservative lunatics thought this destruction of Yugoslavia was the template for countries like Syria.
How can Tony Blair even show his war criminal face in public, he is a shameful blight on world history, a criminal who should be hung.
The British SAS were shooting Serbian policemen in the back during 1998 before the war to elicit a response by the state, which would inevitably be labelled “excessive” and cause for internationalization, as it was, a prelude to NATO’s war of aggression after General William Walkers false-flag.
The Bombing of RTS was the work of a British pilot.
Milosevic was fully exonerated of any wrongdoing..however this occurred posthumously to protect the reputations of his accusers.
Don’t follow that logic….
Milosevic died in jail before being found innocent. He was denied medical treatment that most people would get in a maximum security jail. The findings of Milosevic’s trial found him INNOCENT. But those finding were buried on about page 1900 of a 2500 page report. A Spanish forensics team sent to Serbia to ‘exhume mass graves’ spent two years looking but said they ‘couldn’t find anything’ and then their statements were buried on 11pm nightly news and not follow up the next day. It was a whitewash. It was the first case that the International Criminal Court was supposed to… Read more »
Holy cow….I’m responding to Terry Ross comment which is daft and now get a lecture…like I dont know…oh well
Hi there, long time no hear (I’m well by the way).
Your daughter has probably heard a lot of Western propaganda. My neighbors are from Yugoslavia and so are many of their friends (I know most of them). There were hardline Muslim terrorists who indiscriminately killed women, children and elderly people. That set the the war machine in motion as I told my co-workers.
Say “Hi” to your daughter :-))
Hi YOU….Good to hear you’re ok!! :-)) Yes, she has. When she visited the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. She sat about 2 feet away from Milosevic…separated by Plexyglass wall. It was a very small room. She observed Milosovic so intensely that she expected him any time to give her “the evil eye” She found him to be extremely intelligent, far more so that the prosecutor and the judges combined. He had a wicked sense of humor and according to her would not be found guilty. She said that with a rather impish face as if to apologize for such a… Read more »
Hi G! My apologies for not replying to you any sooner. It has been a hectic year so far. Still a couple of months to go. Yes, our neighbors and friends are highly educated people and none of them is bloodthirsty (Slavic people!).I was working at the time as an IT-specialist at “the bank” in Diemen when the war broke out. All my co-workers were scolding on the people of Yugoslavia, but I set them straight. I told them about the Albanian people who were tolerated, but decided to have it their way and eat the cake too. That’s when… Read more »
Hi my friend, Don’t you worry about a thing. As long as you’re ok. How many more “events” are scheduled? The whole situation was created by the U.S. to break up Yugoslavia. They paid these Muslims. The so-called Srebrenica massacre involving Dutchbat never took place. Dutchbat was sent by the U.N./and the Dutch Government as peace keepers, armed with small weapons…Instead it was a war zone. Dutchbat, as you know were taken hostage. They were accused of the massacre of 8000 Muslims. I was in Nederland during the hearings….2 members of Dutchbat committed suicide. So far no apologies to these… Read more »
3 events and counting down :-))
I will e-mail you this week.
Got to go :-))
Cool. Look forward to it????
Blair was just meeting (kissing each other on the cheek) with Juncker: like all war criminals, whether from the UK, US or Israel, there will always be people who will defend them and find a few reasons to clear all wrongs. It all depends on which side the propaganda machine is working overtime. When Ben Gurion was asked if he was satisfied to have brought terrorism to the Middle East, he smiled and said:”…to the whole world”. Whole families were shot to smithereens in Operation Cast Lead in Israel and the people were cheering on the mountain to enjoy the… Read more »
I thought it was Menachem Begin. Ben Gurion just waved his hands.
Perhaps, US-made missile, but Jew sent missile.
NATO is a terrorist war criminal organization.
Note the NATO – OTAN displays.
NATO unconsciously shows its duplicity.
After the end of WWII, the United States was one of the first states to sign the Geneva Convention on the rules of war, which prohibited the deliberate or indiscriminate attack of civilians and civilian objects, EVEN if the area contained military objectives. Failure to do so would cause a higher civilian death toll resulting from bombardment by the attacking force and the defenders would be held responsible, criminally liable for those deaths. The US sits its big a$$ on international law and spits on its own signature, when it fits it, but cry to heaven when it suits its… Read more »
NATO is wheeeeere ?
So then after doing the deed. If Serbia was to announce that their secret service had now executed Blair for war crimes against the Serbian people. That would then be seen as totally acceptable in the West? Now to be honest,yes,it would be for me. He should have been brought to that justice years ago. But in this case I’m just trying to mimic the West’s thinking on what is correct or not. I think I have it down now.
Blair is a frontman, he amongst others must be tried to expose his owners. The only ones who would benefit from his death are the UK deep state.
He can never be tried in a World Court. He and his supporters have far too much power for that to ever happen. Thinking about trying him,which I hear all the time,is purely “feel good” propaganda. It just allows him to escape justice while people daydream that he will be punished.
True, most courts, commissions exist to bury the truth. I was hoping for something more impartial, but it’s unlikely. Nevertheless, I’m certain the little weasel would spill the beans with just a few whacks across the chin – his owners are the ones that need to be hunted.