| There is a curious
tendency among those critical of
the US government to accept at face value the way that
government (and the mass media) characterize Serbia. Thus
Milosevic is pure evil and by extension the Serbian
opposition, and Serbian opposition media is good; kind of
an intellectually oriented, freedom-loving,
"bohemian" bunch, oppressed by the heavy handed
communistic (or fascistic -- take your pick) government
of Serbia. Likewise when the media says Serbian government forces committed mass atrocities in Kosovo - it must be true despite the obvious extreme interest the NATO regimes have in convincing people the Serbian government is evil. For if it is not, what justification is left for the war crimes of, first, attacking a non-aggressive state and, second, bombing its infrastructure (these are after all text-book cases to illustrate the legal definitions of war crimes) for 78 days? And yet here we have employees of the war criminal (NATO) investigating alleged war crimes of the victim, Serbia, as if there is no chance that NATO s employees would fabricate or misrepresent or - shudder! - lie - , and nobody seems to notice... Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice. One of the most romanticized opposition
institutions is the "independent" radio station
B92. The following casts a new light on B92's
"independence": B92 Who Are You? A new radio station using the name of the former B92 radio has started broadcasting in Beograd (Belgrade) under the name B2-92. They also have a new website, taking over where the much-visited Help B92 website left off. Like the Help B92 website, the new website of
Free B92 http://www.freeb92.net/
is owned by KPN Telecom, (a middle-rank European telecom
company), through its subsidiary XS4ALL Nederland BV. For info on XS4ALL (a "nerds-get-rich" ISP in Amsterdam) see XS4ALL cyber-liberals get rich http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/geldwolf.html Legal control of both the Help B92 website, and the Free B92 website were, and are, ultimately exercised by the board of KPN Telecom. The CEO at KPN Telecom is Wim Dik, a former Netherlands Secretary of State for Foreign Trade. More realistically, daily control of the
content of the websites probably rests with Maurice
Wesseling, director of XS4ALL Nederland BV, whose name is
under the press release /e-mail announcing the new site. B92 was therefore never an
"independent" radio. Its function was to
promote the values of a liberal-democratic free-market
society in Serbia and Montenegro, and specifically the
classic-liberalism of George Soros. It continued to do
this even during the air war on Serbia, when for a time
it broadcast from aircraft on the Serbian border
(obviously with at least the military approval of the
NATO which controlled the airspace), and also from
Austria on Austrian government transmitters. Both of
these projects were apparently abandoned: perhaps because
they were making the station an easy target for
pro-Milosevic propagandists. In any case, in the present
uncertain climate, the station and its financiers are
ready to try again. "Nor do I have any doubts that the
situation required outside intervention. The case for
intervention is clearer in Kosovo than in most other
situations of ethnic conflict because Milosevic
unilaterally deprived the inhabitants of Kosovo of the
autonomy that they had already enjoyed. He also broke an
international agreement into which he entered in October
of last year." "A political alliance dedicated to the
promotion of open society might even be able to change
the way the UN functions, especially if it had a much
broader membership than NATO.NATO could still serve as
its military arm." |