Month: May 2005

Among the lies and hypocrisies which characterize media reportage on NATO’s aggression against Serbia is the absurd notion that NATO is somehow "fighting fascism".  Ironically, the exact opposite turns out to be true.

Fascism wears many faces – not all of which involve stormtroopers and racial paranoia – and fascism wasn’t always in such disfavor as it is today.  Many in the US and Britain, especially among industrialists, openly welcomed the "order" brought by Hitler and Mussolini, and fascist governments have been supported by the US throughout the Third World in the postwar era.  The history of fascism – and its role in preserving capitalist domination – provides an omionous perspective on NATO’s actions in the Balkans. read more

The moment people in Central Europe have been waiting for has finally arrived. NATO jets are bombing the former Yugoslavia. Although it comes as no surprise, on all sides of the conflict people still shake their heads: Kosovo Albanians wonder why took so long for NATO to act; Serbs are reaffirmed in the belief that they have no friends and are victims of US neo-imperialism; meanwhile, neighboring countries nervously watch and pray that they won’t get sucked into the conflict.

Unlike previous bombing assignments undertaken by NATO to enforce the "peace" (e.g., Bosnia and Iraq), support for this one within the region is minimal. Many Bosnians are actually opposed to the bombing, fearing that if Kosovo gets autonomy, Republika Srpska will get it, too. In other words, old wounds are being reopened before they have had a chance to heal. read more

Opponents of the war against Serbia argue that much of what passes for news these days is really a kind of war propaganda, that NATO puts out misinformation and the media disseminates the stuff uncritically.

A case in point is the coverage of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. I download wire service reports from the AOL world news database accessible at aol://4344:30.WORLD.338815.464449182 if you are an AOL member.  This allows me to see exactly how wire services and newspapers change the news from hour to hour. Very instructive for studying how misinformation is disseminated. read more

Since the president is in the mood to confess and atone, here’s a suggestion: ‘fess up to the wrongdoing, hypocrisy. and misleading statements at the heart of US foreign policy. For starters, he could admit that the year-long campaign to scare the world about VX gas has gone drastically off-track. In August, for example, it provided the excuse to bomb a factory in the Sudan that was actually producing antibiotics and medicines for malaria, rheumatism, tuberculosis, and diabetes, all desperately needed by Africans. read more

When Elizabeth Carlson was a toddler in the mid-1950s, her parents nicknamed her Little Miss Fluff. Later on, she made up an imaginary playmate named Susarena, and when she was old enough for kindergarten, she befriended a classmate named Pamela Pink. "I thought her name was so cool," Carlson remembers.

Years later, however, all of these innocent childhood memories became part of a living nightmare for Carlson, who came to believe that she had unknowingly endured horrendous childhood sexual abuse – rape and torture in a satanic ritual cult. The abuse had been so awful that her conscious mind had been unable to cope with it, so she had "split off" alternate personalities in order to survive. One of them was Little Miss Fluff, a tearful infant alter who couldn’t speak. Pamela Pink was a footloose, carefree alter. Another was Susarena, a self-destructive personality who made repeated suicide attempts. And there were many, many more. read more

Midway through HBO’s recent series on the U.S. quest to reach the moon, an installment titled "1968" proposes that the six-day orbital flight by astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders in December was about all that rescued the year from disaster. At a distance of three decades, that time of rebellion and polarization was epitomized by stock footage of riots, assassinations, and war. But in celebrating the space program, this docu-drama missed the bigger picture.