Translated for SCF by Tatiana Obrenovic, based on the the video broadcast by a renowned Serbian journalist Nikola Vrzic for RT Balkan The Unbearable Lightness of (U.S.) Censorship.
We (the Serbs) might hope for better luck this time. Namely, last time when James Rubin minded the way the media reported in Serbia, the NATO bombs hit the RTS building in Aberdareva Street in Belgrade, Serbia and murdered sixteen of our colleagues. And nearly two weeks before that tragic night between the 22nd and the 23rd April in 1999, at the U.S. State Department briefing which kept in function a close associate and spokesperson Madeleine Albright, though we are not going to talk about her now and her (quote) ‘ horrible Serbs’ (unquote), she had this much to say about us in her fit of honest hatred, Rubin wished that his words broke through the ‘propaganda wall’ of the Serbian national TV. Never again after that has he ever expressed regret because his wish came true in this way. Though why would he have expressed any regret, when the Hague Tribunal, their favorite means of imposing a feeling of guilt onto the Serbs and absolving all the rest (except the Serbs) of the same guilt and in accordance with that, he passed his judgment without a legal trial that NATO attack on the RTS Serbian National TV was legally ‘acceptable’, whereas the number of murdered RTS TV employees, the way it was cynically counted by them, was woefully high, but not clearly disproportionate.
So on the basis of all that, it was officially recommended to the prosecutors of the Hague Tribunal not to instigate an investigation into the bombing of the Serbian RTS building, the command which they joyfully obeyed. In the document under the title ‘ the Final Report for the prosecutor of the Committee’ was presented so as to consider the matter of bombing of SR Yugoslavia, which reached the said conclusion that there was nothing disputable there, explicitly including the use of depleted uranium, and cluster bombs, although earlier on, that very same court charged Milan Martic and Republika Srpska Krajina for the same use of cluster bombs, and it contained two more interesting details in this case of achieving the media freedom.
One was: that the Western reporters prior to the attack were warned by their paymasters to steer clear away from the RTS TV building. But it did not occur to them to warn their colleagues who they had been cooperating with on a regular daily basis up to that day on the assignments of montaging and editing of the TV broadcasts for those paymasters of theirs. What moral monsters these people are !
And the second detail: This Hague document reminds us that on the 8th April in 1999, NATO issued an ultimatum with this content: ‘If President Milosevic concedes some time slot to the Western media with their programmes without censorship for three days every day in between the noon and 6 PM and three hours from 6 PM till midnight, in that case might ‘his TV’ be an acceptable instrument of public information’. Milosevic did not accept the ultimatum which has been unheard of in the history of media information, so that in the name of the public, the NATO bombing followed to break through Rubin’s ‘media wall’ of the Serbian national TV. Oh, how we seem to have forgotten all that only too easily!
That night, 23 April 1999, almost 24 hours after the bombing of RTS TV building, the time difference included, a celebratory dinner was held at the Association and Club of the Foreign Press Correspondents and at which Richard Holbrooke was the guest of honour and the main speaker. He gave his comments on the bombing of RTS Serbia. ‘ The building was still smouldering in smoke. The injured were still being pulled out from underneath the rubble. Holbrooke said: ‘That was enormously important and I believe it was a positive event.’ He also said that he had an opportunity to work with some of the best reporters from that region of the Balkans and he pointed out Christiane Amanpour, CNN, in the first place. They did a huge job to bring the truth to the world – Holbrooke praised them in front of their reporters’ club, who would present the award in a few days in line with Holbrooke’s recommendation to Christiane Amanpour exactly. The main sponsors of this event were the media companies: Reuters and Bloomberg. That is ‘that marriage of convenience’ of their government and their media who nobody talks about for some reason although it is obvious. Amanpour was, by the way at the time of Holbrooke’s recommendation already married to his associate, James Rubin. That marriage of theirs, which ended up in a divorce in the meantime, which is irrelevant now, had its paradigmatic dimension inasmuch as both sides: the media and the State Department delivered the truth to the world, the way Holbrooke pointed it out, in such a way that they informed him about half a million missing persons or perhaps murdered Kosovo Albanian men, and 100 000 men held in captivity at a football pitch in Pristina. Such was ‘their truth’. The fact that their truth turned out to be ‘untruth’ did not matter after it had conveniently served its purpose.
Anyhow, that sounded the same as those ‘infamous’ weapons of mass destruction which never existed in Iraq but all those ‘truth fighters’ reported as if they did exist. James Rubin was informed about those events in Kosovo directly by Hashim Thaçi by a satellite phone. He himself talked about it in his briefings in the U.S. State Department. Rubin now for the U.S. owned Radio Free Europe says that he has no comment on that unpleasant circumstance that Thaçi and other members of the terrorist organization UÇK(‘Kosovo Liberation Army’) accused of war crimes. But that is why he commented on the same occasion that UÇK took the central place in that peacekeeping process and that Hashim Thaçi during the negotiations in Rambouillet made a brave decision to accept the agreement. That was a decision, Rubin adds, which enabled NATO to give their support for the Kosovo Albanians. In relation to that, during the preparation of their attack on us (Serbia) in February 1999, Rubin told this as follows: ‘ We believe that it is extremely important to pressure the Serbs so as to deploy a military action, it must be made clear that the Serbs are responsible for that. They are responsible in the way that they rejected the Rambouillet Accords.
Rubin certainly knows very well what he is talking about. He was present there. The same as Madeleine Albright, and Richard Holbrooke and Christopher Hill, the current U.S. Ambassador in Serbia. And Christiane Amanpour, who reported about it on the spot. And all the more so, she interviewed Richard Holbrooke live on board the plane they were flying in from Belgrade on the 23rd March 1999 (NB one day prior to the beginning of the bombing on 24th), after Slobodan Milosevic was ordered for the last time to accept the wording of the Rambouillet Accords. That text in its Annex B contained the points No 15 and No 16, by which the state media were placed in immediate service and controlled by NATO. Both contractual parties shall on the basis of unilateral demand approve all communication services determined by NATO, including the services for programme broadcasting. This involves the right to use these means and services in the whole ‘electromagnetic waves spectrum’ free of charge. Both sides will hand over all the public capacities free of charge, which NATO requires to carry out their operations.
The bombing started the day after and a month later the RTS building was on their target as well. ‘If the decision on the bombing of Serbia had not been made, I think we would not be sitting so happily and freely in the modern, European city here in Pristina – James Rubin is commenting these days, without having noticed that 40 000 Serbs were brutally expelled from that very same city of Pristina, Kosovo only ‘in that name’. That figure was reported by Radio Free Europe itself at the time. But that is the reason why in accord with that view of the world, Rubin managed to notice that we, RT Balkan, must not exist. When he was directly asked by the U.S. owned Radio Free Europe to make his comments on the setting up of Russia Today in Serbia by the end of the last year, he replied: ‘ We would not like to see Russia Today or any Russian media anywhere in the world. We want them closed down. James Rubin gave this statement in the capacity of the director of the Global Engagement Centre, which happens to be the U.S. State Department’s agency, which was formed with the goal of exposing and fighting against the propaganda and disinformation. The U.S. owned radio ‘Radio Free Europe‘, founded by the CIA, clarifies the purpose of Rubin’s job. So much about the propaganda and disinformation. ‘Nuff said’. Rubin goes on to say: ‘They have, namely the Russians and the Chinese, spent billions and billions on this project in the area of information’. The Secretary of State, Antony BIinken asked me to take over this job because he wants the USA to ramp up their game. That is why he supported the efforts we are making that much, over here in the Balkans, for me to try and solve the issue of the Russian disinformation so as not only to react but to try and stop them too – Rubin made the purpose of all that clearer. With that in mind, in this fiscal year, more than 41 million dollars have been allocated through the U.S. AID for Serbia, the activities of which are managed, by the way, by the National Security Council of the USA. The members of this body are the directors of the U.S. intelligence services. As it is stated on the State Department website, since 1998, the USA has provided 1,1 billion dollars in financial aid for Serbia to help Serbia develop as a ‘prosperous democracy’ integrated in the regional and Western institutions. We are not privy to all the details and whether they factored in the price of the bomb they threw at the RTS building in that financial aid of theirs so as to bring order into the media scene in Serbia. But it is evident that the very same thing they wanted to achieve way back free of charge such as in Rambouillet by way of blackmails and bombs, they now want to carry out censorship and bribery. Talking of which, this day today is convenient, the Great Friday before Easter 2023 (i.e. the day the original video report was released), to state with regret once again that there have never been enough Judas in the world but they have always been in the minority. So, as far as James Rubin is concerned, let him carry on doing his job, the Serbs will never believe him no matter how many bombs, threats or money he invests in it. And another reason is because everybody can see clearly who is sitting in the modern European city with no Serbs living there, and who came here because they know that Kosovo is Serbia.
Tatiana Obrenovic is an independent social researcher and political analyst based in Belgrade, Serbia.