FILM PROVES DEATH CAMP PHOTOS WERE LIES
by Jared Israel
A grim miscarriage of justice has just occurred in Britain.
Living Marxism, the iconoclastic magazine edited by Mike Hume, was found guilty of
libel against ITN, the British news station.
Living Marxism has been ordered to pay $580,000 U.S. This punishment is an attempt
to crush the Living Marxism (LM) journalists for doing their job. In this article, I'll
discuss the background of the case and take a look at a truly amazing Reuters dispatch
about the verdict.
First, some background
In 1992, ITN, the British news station, sent a film team to Bosnia. It was led by Penny Marshall. (Note: she is not the Penny Marshall who starred in
the TV show Laverne and Shirley.)
The ITN people came back with what was supposedly film of a
Serbian concentration camp. A "death camp," if you will.
Or will you? A "death camp?" What is wrong with this story?
The picture above is from "JUDGMENT!", the new film from Emperors-clothes.
Interviewing from inside a fenced-in storage area, ITN reporter Penny Marshall
asked why the man in the black shirt (front left) was so thin. Embrassed, the man in black
stopped smiling and looked away. The man in overalls (front right) tried to tell Marshall:
"Everyone not the same." Then someone in the crowd pushed Fikret Allich forward
as if to say,"You want thin? We'll give you thin!" Hence Allich is smiling. This
scene was edited to create ITN's "death camp" images.
First off, how did Marshall and an entire film crew manage
to get into a Serbian "death camp" and shoot a film? Didn't somebody have to
transport them plus a mountain of equipment? Didn't somebody have to show them around?
Feed them? Didn't the crew need time to set up their cameras and other equipment? How did
they do this without getting caught? Did they parachute from the sky? Didn't they need the
cooperation of the administration of the so-called death camp?
They did.
But why would the authorities want to help? Didn't they know
the West was hostile to the Yugoslav-loyalist Serbs? Weren't the loyalists attacked every
day in the British press? Wasn't the Islamist secessionist leader, Izetbegovic, treated as
a hero? Knowing that ITN was probably pro-secessionist, why would the authorities let an
ITN crew film a "death camp?"
Could it be that the place ITN filmed was not a death camp?
That the authorities let Penny Marshall and her film crew in precisely because they had
nothing to hide?
A lucky break...
Fortunately we don't have to speculate. By luck, a Yugoslav film crew from RTS,
the Serbian TV network, accompanied Penny Marshall and the ITN crew that day. The RTS
people filmed the same subjects that the ITN people filmed and sometimes they filmed
Marshall and the ITN crew as well. The Yugoslav production company,
EXP-Production, ILKE, used this RTS footage to produce a film that shows the truth, that
shows what Penny Marshall really saw in Bosnia.
Viewing "JUDGMENT!" is a unique opportunity. For we are able to see how
reality - what Marshall actually saw - was edited to produce the nightmare images - the
pictures which ITN distributed around the world.
The Establishment in the US and other Western countries
wanted to a) the break-up of Yugoslavia and b) destroy the pro-unity forces in Yugoslavia.
This meant and means demonizing the Serbian people. For it is the Serbs who have
always been the biggest supporters of unity in that part of the world. What better way to
demonize and demoralize these advocates of ethnic unity than by smearing them as Nazis?
The ITN crew shot film on two locations that day. The first was a detention center
at Omarska. The second was a refugee center at Trnopolje (pronounced Turnopolyay.) Here's what they saw, as shown in "JUDGMENT!"
The Omarska detention center: definitely not ready for prime time...
The Omarska detention center was a modern facility, pleasant, unthreatening.
Before the war it had been a mining company's administrative center. Now it was used by
the loyalist government to hold Bosnian Islamist rebels, prisoners of war.
The men were not shackled; they were not behind bars. Rather, they lounged about.
They ate in a relaxed atmosphere in the regular cafeteria. They appeared well fed. The
Serbian guards were casual. Frankly, the whole thing looked a lot more humane than a US
jail.
A loyalist administrator made a little speech. He explained that the loyalist
authorities viewed most of the prisoners as good people who had been suckered into
supporting the secessionist revolt against Yugoslavia. He said only a small group was hard
core. The loyalists wanted to rehabilitate the ones who had been misled so they could live
together once again, in peace.
So here was a real, live Serbian detention center. Marshall's crew interviewed
prisoners and their wives. Why didn't ITN use any of this film?
Could it be because this footage proved the loyalist
authorities were humanitarian?
Feeding refugees and other atrocities...
The ITN crew (and the Yugoslav crew) moved on to the refugee center at Trnopolje.
After filming refugees who were wandering around freely, Marshall took her crew into a
small area partially enclosed by a fence. The fence, mainly chicken wire with a few
strands of barbed wire, was falling apart. It had been erected before the war to secure a
storage shed, some wheelbarrows and other equipment. The only people
inside the enclosure were the ITN and RTS crews. A group of
refugees gathered outside. They were curious to find all these movie people crammed into
an awkward space, filming through a fence.
Penny Marshall went out of her way to film in the
storage area.
Why?
Penny Marshall after her film crew has set up inside the fenced-in area at the Trnopolje
refugee center.
Is she hunting for the perfect subject? In any case,
she soon found him: Fikret Allich. Note that in the libel case against LM magazine, the
judge admitted that Marshall was the one behind barbed wire - but instructed the jury that
this did not absolve LM of charges of libel.
As you will see when you watch "JUDGMENT!" Marshall's crew and the RTS
people had already shot interviews with refugees and others. Why
didn't Marshall use this film?
The obvious answer: she wanted a fence. She wanted to film through barbed wire. When
you film refugees wandering freely in a refugee center it's hard to create pictures that
look like a death camp. But when you film through barbed wire
it's easy as pie.
Is there any other explanation for why an experienced film
worker would squeeze her crew into an inhospitable litter of wheelbarrows and overgrown
weeds? Why she would pick a spot where she had to talk to the refugees through a barrier?
Marshall tried to find someone who spoke English. She
settled on a refugee named Mekmed. She asked him, Do they treat you badly? No, said the
man; very kind, very kind. Marshall was clearly impatient. She pressed the man to
criticize the loyalist officials. The man insisted: everything is good; I think it is very
safe but just too hot. Very hot.
Marshall asked Mekmed about another refugee, a man in a
black tee shirt. That man is very thin, she said. Mekmed shrugged as one does when forced
to explain the obvious. Yes, he said, and shrugged. I think all people is not the same.
Apparently someone in the crowd translated Marshall's question about the thin man,
for soon afterwards someone pushed a very thin man forward, as if to say. "You want thin? We'll give you thin!" As the man, Fikret Allich,
stumbled toward Marshall, he laughed, then reached over the fence to shake her hand.
Allich had suffered from a childhood disease, probably TB, that produced a
scurvy-like effect. He was stripped to the waist from the heat. In "JUDGMENT!"
we see that his ribs were deformed. The appearance is shocking.
Editing to make a statement
Marshall never aired the conversation with Mekmed. Why not?
Was it because he refused to bash the loyalist authorities?
Instead, ITN produced film clips and stills that gave a
totally false impression. These pictures made it appear that Fikret Allich and the other
refugees were the ones behind barbed wire.
Everyone saw these pictures and because human beings tend to
believe what they see, millions of people were fooled. They thought they had seen proof
that the Serbs were the new Nazi's. Western public opinion thus came to favor Alija
Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Islamist whose model of tolerance was the Iran of Ayatollah
Khomeini. Amazing.
David takes on Goliath
LM, a brave little British magazine, exposed this fraud.
A link to that exposé is posted below. Amazingly, they were sued by ITN for slander. Consider: ITN, a news station, had itself visually lied about the Bosnian
Serbs; now it was suing a magazine for exposing the lies.
Last week we learned that ITN won their libel suit. Apparently,
instead of focusing on the real evidence - the uncut footage of the film - the trial was
dominated by the testimony of a witness, a Bosnian doctor, who claimed Serbian guards had
beaten people at this "concentration camp." The doctor's testimony
created an anti-Serb atomosphere at the trial and I believe it was this atmosphere which
lost the case for LM.
But why, now that the movie "JUDGMENT!" proves ITN
had no scruples about lying, that ITN betrayed its trust by deliberately misrepresenting
what the film crew had seen in Bosnia - why should we believe the testimony of an ITN
witness? False testimony is a commodity in the free marketplace of our brave new world,
especially when one has the monetary resources of a big player like ITN. Money can buy
lies.
During his summation, the Judge admitted that ITN was
"mistaken" when it argued that the refugees were imprisoned behind barbed wire.
"Mistaken?" How is that possible? Were Penny marshall and
her people sleep walking?
The judge insisted that the ITN "mistake" did not justify LM's article.
In other words, even though ITN was wrong about who was behind the barbed wire, LM could
be convicted of libel. LM had to prove that Marshall and Ian Williams and their associates
edited the film with the conscious intention of fooling people?
Well, all I can say is, get a copy of "JUDGMENT!" and see for yourself
exactly what the ITN people had to do to get from the raw film to the "death
camp" pictures.
They had to be acting with a clear goal in mind. Period.
Compounding a lie
Reuters story covering this verdict (Reuters,
3/124/00). Reuters never mentions what was said in the Living
Marxism exposé. It never mentions that ITN shot pictures from inside a barbed wire
enclosure and then claimed the people in the film were "behind barbed wire."
Instead it simply asserts that Trnopolje was a concentration camp as
if that assertion were a proven fact.
So then, ITN sues to silence freedom of speech - freedom of
speech which was here used in the most honorable way, to challenge the lies of the mighty.
ITN wins. LM is crushed for telling the truth.
And what does Reuters do? It uses the occasion to once again
broadcast the very lie that Living Marxism got sued for disproving! Truly beyond belief.
Playing for effect
One final point. In the new journalism, emotions are shamelessly exploited for
political effect. Consider this from the Reuters story:
"Marshall, wiping tears from her eyes, said the
judgment was 'important for the people who were in the camp.'" (Reuters,
3/124/00) This is a crass emotional lie. Consider: Marshall, in reality the representative of great power,
is presented as frail, in need of protection (the weeping woman). By focusing our
attention on her tears (vulnerability) Reuters engages our emotions and suspends our
disbelief. Penny Marshall has been made real to us precisely the way a fictional character
is made real - we identify with her emotions. Having identified with her, having suspended
disbelief, we tend to receive with scant skepticism her comment that:
" the judgment was 'important for the people who were in the camp." How clever! A fiction within a fiction. Reuters has made up a weak,
defenseless Penny Marshall that we can believe in - the real P. Marshall is backed by the
most powerful forces in Britain - and likewise Marshall has her own little fictional
characters. For she has invented the Bosnian victims in that
non-existent 'death camp' where refugees came for food and where the only complaint was
'the weather is too hot.' Now she weeps for her own
creations.
No similar emotional pitch is made for the LM people. Marshall comes alive whereas
they lie obediently flat. And LM, which dared defend the victims of Ms. Marshall's lies -
LM that has been crushed under an impossible financial burden - LM comes off as - the
bully!
Unbelievable.
Let's stop beating around the bush, shall we?
Why didn't Britain just launch a missile attack on the LM
offices like the one where they blew apart those dangerous reporters and 23 year old
makeup girls at Serbian TV, and get it over with? Hmmm? Afterwards, the media could
endlesly repeat, like a mantra, that the LM people were lying propagandists who had
accidentally died as collateral damage in a revenge attack for which the finger of
responsibility must in the end ultimately and totally point to... Slobodan Milosevich.
What, Ms. Marshall is still weeping? Well of course Ms.
Marshall is still weeping. She's weeping all right, she's weeping all the way to the bank.
Let's hope there's a Hell.
