Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti
From my book The Corridor, chapter 6, Adulterated history. This article contains part of my articles published on Il Manifesto and liMes between 1994 - 2001.
With the fall of the Berlin wall, the Western Countries, USA particularly, lost their "great enemy" the Eastern Block, on which to concentrate all the fears of western public opinion. It was necessary to create other enemies to justify the coming war events and to cover the reason - far from idealism - of the new conflicts based mainly on economic - geopolitical interest: military bases, territorial - commercial leadership, petrol, pipelines.
The extraordinary development of telecommunications in the latest years, has created an information system so fast and immediate as to present live on the screen any event, thousand miles away from where it is taking place. The control and use of image is of major importance.
Our modern way of living, centred on work and competition, has transformed the largest part of western population TV dependent. People come home from work, immediately turn on their TV set and let images flow without thinking. This life system has formed a basin of consumers particularly fertile and receptive to communication.
In his essay, "The necessary illusion", the US linguist, Noam Chomsky, explains that in democratic regimes it is indispensable to make the public believe that all actions are right and justified. Therefore, in order to create the "illusion", a shrewd use of image and communication is extremely important.
This is undoubtedly the key lecture of many media events produced since 1989, after the fall of the Berlin wall and the disruption of URSS which left to USA the leadership of the world.
The geopolitical resettling of the world, under US principles, has caused the intensification of the most refined systems to create in the international public opinion the simplified images of what should be perceived as reality, in order to support political decisions, that could appear unpopular or against ethics and international laws, if they were realistically presented. The Anglo-Saxon mentality of those who always held the political power in the US, imposes that any action should be accomplished respecting morality. If it is not the case, it should be invented.
Not by chance, a British diplomat, Lord Arthur Ponsonby (1871 - 1946) formulated the main principles of war propaganda based on four topics: 1. Who wants the war is always the opponent. 2. Making known all the serious faults of the enemy in the person of their chief or their governing body. 3.Our motives for a war action are always humanitarian or idealistic 4. Wide spreading full details on the usual atrocity of the opposing army.1
All these rules have been successfully applied during the Gulf War, in Bosnia and against Yugoslavia. As a consequence actions of the protected country are exalted and those of the nations, that had the misfortune to be on the wrong strategic route, are execrated. It must be proved that whatever is going on, it is in the total respect of morality, moreover, for the safeguard of those presented as victims.
The media position in 1996 on the final victory in Afghanistan of the Talibans, protected by USA, is a classic example. In this case the horrifying execution of the opposing chief - Najibullah was beaten to death and his brother was hung, both exposed for days to the mob - has been reported in aseptic commentary. No indignant screams raised on the barbarian way employed by the Talibans in applying their Koranic law or on the revolting state of slavery in which women were constricted. But, suddenly anything can change. Since the US are fighting in Afghanistan: the Talibans are described as ferocious fanatics and oppressors.
The landing of the Marines in Mogadishu under the lights of TV cameras and with the blessing of the leaving president Bush for the "Restore hope" operation, bound to fail, is another indication of the media setting and a confirmation of the importance of visual communication to exalt actions otherwise unjustified. The hunger of the African Horn people was the same tormenting Sudan. But, there, they did not have a CNN close-up on their children's suffering faces. Therefore their hunger did not exist. The geopolitical interests did not include that area, so no human intervention was needed. Practically, hunger and epidemic only exist if they are shown on the TV screen. And they are shown on TV only, if behind the humanitarian operation, there exists the interest of some multinational enterprise. In the Somalia operation case, it was four oil companies, that had bought the drilling rights of a wide area.2
As a consequence a new way of making war was born: cynical, amoral, excellent in involving and persuading millions of people. It is called media war. The lords of this new war are the communication and image experts closely tied to the political power. They produce a sophisticated kind of communication in comparison with the classic state propaganda. They use the same witty psychology, supported by great financial means, employed by advertisement groups to successfully launch a product on the market.
They operate from aseptic offices thousands of miles away from the battlefields. Their weapons are: a computer, a fax, an up to date address programme, excellent acquaintances in the major TV networks, in the press groups and among politicians and government lobbies. This new methodology operators are the "Agencies", their main clients are those nations, governments, political party it has been decided they should play a precise game on the international chessboard. The operating technique consists in establishing and protecting the client's image with various strategies, among them the exploitation of any news against the opponent - suggesting the scandal? - even not verified, but of a sure media impact, to spread around the press agencies. When the sensation, produced by tons of written paper and by obsessive TV shootings, begins to fade away, they propose another story to solicit again pity or indignation in the public opinion. The consequences are catastrophic. The real drama is altered by the invented drama, without worry for the civil population involved in this sophisticated game. It is an example of the different evaluations of cruelty among the three parties in Bosnia and their internal conflicts, as shown in the fights between Muslims and Croats at Mostar and between Muslims and Muslims in Bihac. The Kosovo Affair is even more complex, but winning. It was based on opponents already condemned by the political choice of the Western powers and by previous image investments against them.
TV and press media enthusiastically respond to the solicitation of these image operators, often forgetting their professional rigour in favour of a scoop and of the rich advertisement budgeted by the investors who want to be sure of the complicity of the media.
During the bombing of Yugoslavia, General Pierre Marie Gallois showed me all the publicity of big American companies on the main French newspapers and magazines. This sudden presence of US labels on media was unusual - the same thing was happening in the more involved Western countries - and could be associated to the necessity of obtaining an auto censure from the press publishers imposing on their journalists a "politically correct" behaviour.
At the time of the Gulf War, Kuwait had hired a big PR agency in Washington, Ruder &Finn Global Affairs, which had cleverly moulded the client 's image as a victim and underlined Saddam Hussein's cruelty. The Iraqi leader never dared to send one soldier in Kuwait without asking an unofficial consent to the USA. A useful consent to release the needed justification for the Gulf War.
The UN, on the wave of international indignation provoked by TV and press news, had imposed heavy sanctions and a technological war with devastating effects. Half a million people are dead and the children - almost a million today - keep on dying for lack of medications and food and also for the consequence of the war use of depleted uranium and other biological - chemical elements.
The same agency employed by Kuwait had been hired, at the beginning of the Yugoslav conflict, by Croatia, the Muslim Party of Bosnia, the Kosovo Opposition. James Harff - who at that time was Ruder & Finn Global Affairs director, he is now President of a similar agency of his own - gave an interview to the French journalist, Jacques Merlino, reported in his book.3 Talking of his clients in the ex Yugoslavia, of his strategy and his consequent success, he said:
"Between the 2nd and the 5th August 1992, the New York Newsday came out with the news of the camps. We caught the news and have immediately contacted three big Jewish organisations: B'nai B'rith Anti Defamation League, American Committee and American Jewish Congress (...) the intervention of the Jewish organisations at the side of Bosnian Muslims was an extraordinary winning poker hand. We could make coincide in the public opinion Serbs with nazi, at the same time (...) Our job is not to verify information (...) Our job is to spread around news, to make them circulate the fastest possible in order to obtain, that the favourable thesis to our cause might be the first to come out (...) Once an information is good for us, we must immediately anchor it in the public opinion. Because we know very well that the first news is the only one that matters. It is useless to retract, there is no result (...) We are professionals. (...) We are not paid to be moral, And even if morality would be in discussion, we shall have an easy conscience. If you intend to prove that Serbs are poor victims, go ahead, you will be by yourself."
The New York Times of the 22nd of August 1992 reported: "The US services have doubled their effort, but they did not find any evidence of a systematic massacre of Croats and Muslims in the Serb prisoner camps."
This article came out a little after the shooting of a British TV troupe in Tiernopolje, where they filmed a group of Muslims behind the wire. From this film exploded news about the new extermination camps.
The image of the skinny Muslim turned the world and, it still institutionally represents the end of the 20th century new nazi and their concentration camps. In reality, it was a refugees camp, where people were free to move about. The troupe of the British TV, ITN, had placed their camera inside an enclosure which protected farming tools. Filming through the wire, it gave the impression the men were prisoners.4 Anyway the fake scoop had reached the purpose.
Nobody thought that the TV troupe never had any problem with the Serb authorities in visiting the camps, while no reporter could ever see or photograph Croat or Muslim detention camps, as Lora near Spalato, Tarcin, others around Sarajevo and moreover Capljna, where Croats imprisoned Muslims.
The tight collaboration between the PR Agency and the government - client has produced an operative technique, often deadly, aiming to obtain more vantages at the starting of an International Conference or support in the case of a military offensive which could run into a condemnation of the UN Security Council and into the consequent loss of image in front of the public opinion, if their justification was not proved valid.
The schemes are repetitive. A discrediting campaign is put into practice, pressing the media with horrible revelations on the opponent's behaviour, in order to create a negative prejudice which will deeply anchor in the collective conscience of the public. News is often made up or interpreted to favour the customer. Once they are launched, any rectification or denial is ignored. The subtle work of persuasion provokes in the public a deep hatered for the object of the agency communication. People ideally identify in the offered "enemy" the cause of all their daily frustration and they bless military intervention, bombing, without rationally thinking about the problem objective cause. Nor do they consider the involved population: men, women, children, families like their own.
The siege of the city of Gorazde in Bosnia is an example. It was presented as an open, defenceless town, but Muslims had transformed it in to a stronghold with weapon and chemical factories. The so defined Serbian treacherous attacks were just a response to the Muslim provoking shelling. The Muslim shooting was taking place under the absent eyes of the Unprofor.
Sometimes, passed episodes are stored, waiting for the appropriate occasion. It is the case of Srebrenica's famous mass graves, supposed to contain thousands of bodies, in reality, the medical experts never found them. But the mass graves idea has often been employed a little before an important International Meeting.
In Bosnia, the image bombing technique was successfully applied since the war's prologue. In 1992, at beginning of the conflict, a little before the London Peace Conference in the month of August, it was necessary that Serbs, winning along all front lines, should have a small opportunity to be heard. All attempt to regain the International sympathy should be avoided.
Through obsessive images and tons of articles the international public assisted in the shell explosion of the Miskina Street bread line in Sarajevo, which caused the UN Security Council's decision to apply hard sanctions to the Serbs.
As it concerns the bombs at the Markallé Street market in Sarajevo in February 1994 and in August 1995 respectively, they provoked media storms: the one in '94 hit before the international meeting in Geneva, the last one justified the Clinton administration for launching air raids and bombing all over the Republika Srpska, even a long away from Sarajevo. Later we came to acknowledge that the Muslims were responsible for the organisation of the three tragic scenarios.5
In order to cover the evident violations that would have taken place during the bombing of Yugoslavia, as the real purpose was the control of Kosovo to place a Military base and better watch the area where pipelines from the Caucasian republics are planned to pass through, NATO and USA have adopted film scenarios too.
The OSCE controllers in Kosovo imposed the Yugoslav milicija to account for any police operation against the UCK. Therefore the macabre scenario of Racak came at the right moment.. The discovery of the Albanian bodies had to be the starter of the Kosovo operation. Although the Finnish, Bielorussian and Yugoslav pathologists established that all deadly wounds had been caused by bullets, shot from a distance, and the amputations made after the death, the OSCE officers did not publicise their report in order to let the media case explode accelerating the NATO intervention.
The Rambouillet meeting failed thanks to the special clause added to the agreement, which implied the practical occupation of Serbia, and Nato declared their "humanitarian war". The population ran away from Kosovo to Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Motenegro. But media showed mainly the refugees in Albania and Macedonia. It was the triumph of absurd: the consequence of the bombing was presented by media as the cause and justification of Nato intervention.
When the air raids and their "collateral damages" started having a dangerous psychological impact on public opinion, in order to balance the situation, it was decided to declare the chief of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, a war criminal. And the media presented the public another public enemy. It was a way to confirm the legality of bombing and to remove the impression that with its resistance the Serb government was morally winning the game.
Not long ago we were assisted live from New York the tragedy of the Twin Towers. A horrible act of terrorism. USA declared the culpability of Usama Ben Laden, Al Qaida and the Talibans. And they attacked Afghanistan. But why did they not publicise the evidence of their guilt? Since 1978, George Bush - at the time CIA director and afterwards the US President who started the Gulf War against Iraq - was associated with various members of the Ben Laden family in oil and air companies: Arbuste Energy, Harken, Houston Gulf Airport. Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti.6 We must remember that Ben laden was in Bosnia since 1992, where he organised more than three "Afghan" camps. He received the Bosnian citizenship for merit of his war. He was in Kosovo in 1998. The CIA knew it. Does all this hide something else? Other military bases, oil, pipelines, Central Asia hegemony? Other war games? One thing is sure, we have been given another public enemy, the third in a little more than ten years.
Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti
Footnotes
1. Anne Morelli in Monopoly by Michel Collon