MIM Notes No. 197	 December 1, 1999

Embassy bombing, genocide reports: Amerikan media trumpets the 
imperialist message

by MC12

When the U.$. military bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the 
war against Yugoslavia last spring, they immediately announced it was an 
accident. Still, MIM wrote: "The bombing of the Chinese embassy may be 
Amerika's subtle way of telling the Chinese to shut up and play 
ball."(1)

But the imperialist media was not so skeptical. Within hours Amerikan 
newspapers hit the streets with stories taking for granted that the 
bombing was an accident. New evidence reported in Europe points to a 
deliberate attack. But the Amerikan media are sticking to their story.

When the imperialists declared that the Serbian military was committing 
genocide in Kosovo, MIM said that although Yugoslavia was perpetrating 
crimes against the Kosovar Albanians, it is not fascist or imperialist, 
and we did not put it in the same league as Nazi Germany's genocide.(2) 
But many imperialist media outlets picked up the genocide angle, 
parroting the line by Defense Secretary William Cohen and others that 
100,000 Kosovars may have been killed by the Serbs.(3)

These two stories together illustrate the role of the Amerikan media as 
a mouthpiece for the imperialist agenda, the broadcaster of government 
propaganda, and the manufacturer of Amerikan consent for U.$. policies 
of aggression.

The Chinese Embassy

On October 17, the Observer newspaper in London broke a story on their 
investigation into the embassy bombing.(4) Based on interviews with 
"senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the U.S.," the 
newspaper concluded that the embassy was bombed because the U.$. 
discovered that the Chinese were using it as a transmitter site for 
Yugoslav army communications. They report that three NATO officers 
confirmed the story: "a flight controller operating in Naples, an 
intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia 
and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels." The newspaper offered 
further evidence that the Chinese embassy was correctly identified on 
military maps.

As the U.$. was wearing down Yugoslav military targets, the Yugoslav 
army was hurting for communications infrastructure, and the Chinese 
government offered to help, the newspaper reported. The presumed motive 
for the Chinese government to help was their desire to retain Yugoslavia 
as an arms customer, and possibly in order to get access to the U.$. 
Stealth bomber wreckage the Yugoslav army shot down.

The Amerikan media never seriously questioned the government story that 
the bombing was an accident. (Even now, as of mid-November, the Observer 
story has only been mentioned in a few wire stories in smaller 
newspapers, with the Pentagon denial leading over the Observer news.) 
Any pretense of investigation was over what caused the supposed 
accident, not whether it was an accident.

The phrase "accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy" has become part 
of the media lexicon, appearing in 246 articles in major U.$. newspapers 
prior to November 1.(5) The bombing occurred the night of May 7-8. The 
New York Times first used the unquestioning phrase "accidental bombing 
of the Chinese embassy" on May 9, just five paragraphs after reporting 
that the Pentagon claimed, without evidence, that it was an accident. 
The phrase occurred in 24 more New York Times stories through the end of 
October. It also occurred in 16 Washington Post stories (starting May 
10), nine Boston Globe articles, nine Los Angeles Times articles 
(including the headline May 9, before they even knew what kind of planes 
were involved), ten USA Today articles, five Houston Chronicle articles 
(starting May 10), and on and on.

The Pentagon announced their line on the story, it was immediately 
picked up by all the major bourgeois newspapers in the country, and even 
now that there is evidence it's not true, the story remains unchanged.

"Genocide" in Kosovo

The atrocities committed by Serbs in Kosovo were the justification for 
the war against Yugoslavia. And this provides another example of the 
power of bourgeois media to repeat lies until they are accepted as 
truth. 

Lars-Erik Nelson writes that "Kosovar Albanian sources reported that 
100,000 people had been rounded up in a sports stadium and were never 
heard from again. A column of 35,000 refugees vanished. Defense 
Secretary William Cohen said in May that 100,000 Kosovars may have been 
slaughtered."(3)

The U.$. wanted a war in Yugoslavia to gain control of important 
resources, impose friendly governments in a tumultuous region, increase 
its influence in the region with respect to other imperialist powers, 
and of course create business for arms dealers and manufacturers. To 
justify this, the U.$. State Department played the genocide card as 
early as March 30, when spokesperson James Rubin said, "There are 
indicators that genocide is unfolding in Kosovo."(6) The numbers of dead 
at the hands of the Serbs turned out to be grossly inflated. Working 
with a much smaller number, some still use the genocide charge to 
support the war propaganda, including militarist diplomat Thomas Patrick 
Melady, who wrote: "Well over 12,000 were killed, many after being 
tortured. Homes were destroyed. It was all part of a plan targeting 
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. It was genocide."(7)

However, Dr. Vince Iacopino, of Physicians for Human Rights, which did 
an investigation into war in Kosovo, reports that "there was no plan for 
systematic extermination of the entire population. By no means." His 
estimate is about 9,000 killed, most of them after the NATO bombing 
started.(3)

Alexander Cockburn, in an October 29 column, pointed out that the 
genocide charge is "an important issue because the NATO powers, 
fortified by a chorus from the liberal intelligentsia, flourished the 
charge of genocide as justification for bombing that destroyed much of 
Serbia's economy and killed about 2,000 civilians."(8)

He believes the Serb army was "behaving with the brutality typical of 
security forces," but not committing a calculated extermination of the 
population. Forensic experts are digging in Kosovo now. Of course some 
evidence of murder was destroyed, but taking that into account, the U.N. 
investigators have revised down their estimate from 44,000, to 22,000, 
and now down to 11,000. Cockburn describes a series of specific stories 
of mass murder that have not been substantiated by subsequent 
investigation.

While things could change, Cockburn concludes that "As matters stand ... 
the number of bodies turned up by the tribunal's teams is in the 
hundreds, not thousands, which tends to confirm the view of those who 
hold that NATO bombing provoked a wave of Serbian killings and 
expulsions, but that there was and is no hard evidence of a genocidal 
program." He calls it "another victory for the Big Lie."

Sure enough, propagandist Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, 
said lack of evidence for genocide is actually evidence, because the 
Serbs could be counted on to destroy evidence to avoid war crimes 
prosecution.(9) Still, there are records for people who used to be alive 
and are now dead in Kosovo, and estimates from those sources are closer 
to 10,000.

Independent media

Whether or not the Chinese embassy was bombed on purpose, or there were 
10,000 or 100,000 Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbs, the imperialist 
media was going to find a way to support the official story and fulfill 
their role in the building of pro-war public opinion. 

In contrast, in response to the situation in Chechnya, where the Russian 
army has killed thousands of civilians in the last two months, U.$. 
rulers are not yet interested in sparking a confrontation with 
Russia.(10) The time and place are not right for a U.$. move. The word 
has come down to that effect, and so stories about the war are 
appropriately published on page 10 (Los Angeles Times), page 22 
(Washington Post, Nov. 1), and so on.

One of MIM's most important tasks is the development of independent\ 
institutions of the oppressed, and foremost among these is our 
independent media: our print publications, Internet posts and web site, 
and affiliated radio programming and other newsletters. If you think 
these institutions are too small to go up against the likes of the New 
York Times and the Washington Post, get involved, contribute to and 
support the people's media and help us grow. 

Notes:

1. "Uncle Sam bombs Chinese embassy," posted May 12, 1999. 
http://www.etext.org/Politics/ MIM/mn/kosovo/

2. "Analysis of fascism & current imperialist war in Yugoslavia," posted 
May 1, 1999. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/kosovo/fascism.txt

3. Lars-Erik Nelson, "That Kosovo 'Genocide' -- the Numbers Don't Add 
Up." New York Daily News, October 24, 1999. p. 49.

4. "Nato bombed Chinese deliberately; Nato hit embassy on purpose." The

Observer (London), October 17, 1999.

5. This and other coverage statistics are from searches of the Lexis-
Nexis

"General News" database of major newspapers.

6. New York Times, March 30, 1999. p. A1.

7. Thomas Patrick Melady, "The Wrong Policy in Kosovo," Washington Post, 
August 31, 1999, p. A13.

8. Alexander Cockburn, "Where's the Evidence of Genocide of Kosovar 
Albanians?" Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1999, p. B9.

9. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, July 2, 1999.

10. Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1999. p. A 10.