A TELLING INTERVIEW
HOW THE LIES OF WHAT IS HAPPENING IN YUGOSLAVIA WERE
SPREAD
(OR: HOW TO FIDLE ON PEOPLE'S EMOTIONS)
BOOK REVIEW:
Jacques Merlino: "Les verites Yougoslaves ne sont pas toutes bonnes a dire" ("Yugoslav
truths are not all good for telling")
Published by: Albin Michel, Paris, 1993, pp. 127-129 ISBN 2-226-06663-2
LANGUAGE: FRENCH
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mr. Jacques Merlino a leading journalist of the TV chain France
2
PREFACE
It is permitted to expel one people from the world community. To define it like a
pack of rapists and extremists having nothing to envy to Nazis. It is permitted to
raise the whole planet against this people, to prepare them tribunal recalling that of
Nuremberg, to elaborate plans for military intervention and strategies for target
bombardments. It is permitted to chase their state from the United Nations and to
submit Serbs to the total economic embargo. This is permitted because that's what
is done.
But, it is also permitted to think this fierceness lacks distinction. That one people
has never been guilty in its ensemble. That one nation has history and memory.
That media manipulations exist. And that the emotion, overcoming the reason, is
really a bad adviser.
This is permitted because it is the object of this text. It goes against everyone who
feeds international public opinion. It is exposed to the criticism of those who don't
want to change their decisions. It shows usual weaknesses of free and serene
reasoning in front of passion and madness.
To think counter-current is yet another tradition of French thought, Voltaire's gift
which is really precious. To doubt, isn't that the first condition for freedom?
But doubt is worthless if it remains only a mixture of suspicion and prudence. It has
to be overcome. And, that can be fulfilled only by looking over the received ideas
and by restarting the inquiry work from the facts and crude documents. The task is
tough and immense. It is truly indispensable and urgent, if one is convinced that the
actual outbreaks can provoke a cataclysm overtaking faraway the poor Balkans.
BACK COVER:
There was Timisoara. Then was Gulf war. And came Yugoslavia. With the same stereotypes, same
simplifications, same exaggerations. This time, we are concerned directly: European balance is in the
game.
If it is confirmed that Germany is pulling strings behind the scenes in order to increase its zone of
influence, if it is accurate that a coup is preparing in Moscow with fall of Yeltsin and arrival of
national-communists, if it is proved that the United States are pursuing goals other than humanitarian,
if it turns out that UN are victim of serious disfunction, that news agencies have lost their impartiality,
that free press is going to be darkened by militant blindness and, after all, if it is proved that Vatican is
more powerful than others and that its interference in Yugoslav crisis is considerable, then it is
important to know how and by whom we are manipulated. Jacques Merlino's inquiry explains why
we arrived here and forces us to admit one simple reality: the information is one arm of war, used like
that by those who are measuring its importance.
AN IMPORTANT EXCERPT (THE INTERVIEW):
The excerpt from the book is published in the following periodicals (as far as I know, maybe
elsewhere too):
1.A Monthly Jewish Review - Midstream, New York, April 1994 (Under title:
"Stopping the war in Yugoslavia", Author: Dr. Yohanan Ramati)
2.Intelligence Digest, Great Britain, February 4, 1994 (Under title: "Manipulating the
media")
3.Jewish Chronicle, Great Britain, December 10, 1993 (Under title: "The secret
weapon? PR", Author Nora Beloff)
The following introduction to the interview is taken from the reference #1 (Written by Dr.
Yohanan Ramati, Director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense):
[Quote] The civil war in Yugoslavia continues, with untold suffering on all sides. The media report the
suffering of the Muslims in gruesome detail. The suffering of Croats at Muslim hands gets little
attention. THE SUFFERING OF SERBS IS IGNORED. So it will surprise large
sections of the American public that some 600,000 refugees from Croatia and
Bosnia have saught refuge in beliguered Serbia deprived of food and fuel by UN
dictate during the deadly winter.
The media in the Western world, the Muslim world and Israel treats us to a regular
dose of tearjacking hate propaganda. We see women and children in Sarajevo - the Muslim
quaters of Sarajevo - with terrible wounds seeping blood and shattered limbs, to the accompaniment
of shells and small arms fire. We do not see the killing and maiming of Serb women and children by
Muslim fire in Bosnia or by Croat fire in Croatia. And when Croat women and children are brutally
murdered by Muslims, or vice versa, the media response is sporadic and no conclusions are drawn.
THIS ORGANIZED ANTI-SERB AND PRO-MUSLIM PROPAGANDA
SHOULD CAUSE ANYONE BELIEVING IN DEMOCRACY AND FREE
SPEECH SERIOUS CONCERN. It recalls Hitler's propaganda against Allies in World War
II. Facts are twisted and, when convenient, disregarded. The selectivity in reporting and comment is
far too blatant to be accidental. The Western governments do not control their media sufficiently to
be responsible for it. So who is? Who is bankrolling and masterminding the vast effort to destroy a
people the United States, England and France have no reason to hate in order to establish a second
Muslim state in a Balkan province where Muslims are MINORITY?
Part of the answer is provided by a REVEALING INTERVIEW by Mr. James Harff
(director of Ruder & Finn Global Public Affairs) given to Mr. Jacques
Merlino in Paris in October 1993. Ruder & Finn are public relations
company, currently registered as foreign agents. Here are Harff's statements,
slightly abbridged. [End of quote from the periodical and beginning of the quote from the
book:]
Harrf: For 18 months, we have been working for the Republics of Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as for the opposition in Kosovo. Throughout this
period, we had many successes, giving us a formidable international image. We
intend to make advantage of this and develop commercial agreements with these
countries. Speed is vital, because items favourable to us must be settled in public
opinion. THE FIRST STATEMENT COUNTS. The retractions have no effect.
Question: What are your methods of operation?
Harff: The essential tools in our work are a card file, a computer, and a fax. The
card file contains a few hundred names of journalists, politicians, academicians, and
representatives of humanitarian organizations. The computer goes through the card
files according to correlated subjects, coming up with very effective targets.
The computer is tied into a fax. In this way, we can disseminate information in a
few minutes to those we think will react (positively). Our job is to assure that the
arguments for our side will be the first to be expressed.
Question: How often do you intervene?
Harff: Quantity is not important. You have to intervene at the right time with the
right person... ...
Question: What achievement were you most proud of?
Harff: To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side. This was a sensitive
matter, as the dossier was dangerous looked from this angle. President Tidjman was
very careless in his book "Wastelands of Historical Reality". Reading this writtings,
one could accuse him of of anti- semitism.
In Bosnia, the situation was no better: President Izetbegovic strongly supported the
creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state in his book "The Islamic Declaration".
Besides, the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by a real and cruel
anti-semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps. So there was
every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the
Croats and Bosnians. Our chalenge was to reverse this attitude. And we succeded
masterfully.
At the beginning of August 1992, the New York Newsday came out with the affair
of (Serb) concentration camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We
outwitted three big Jewish organizations - B'Nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, the
Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them to
publish an advertisement in the New York Times and to organize demonstrations
outside the U.N.
This was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on
the side of the (Muslim) Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the
Nazis in the public mind.
Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia. The great majority of
Americans were probably asking themselves in which African country Bosnia was
situated. But, by a single move, we were able to present a simple story of good guys
and bad guys, which would hereafter play itself.
We won by targeting Jewish audience. Almost immediately there was a clear change
of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content, such as
"ethnic cleansing", "concentration camps", etc. which evoked images of Nazi
Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The emotional charge was so
powerful that nobody could go against it.
Question: But when you did all of this, you had no proof that what you said was
true. You only had the article in Newsday!
Harff: Our work is not to verify information. We are not equipped for that. Our
work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to aim at
judiciously chosen targets. We did not confirm the existence of death camps in
Bosnia, we just made it known that Newsday affirmed it.
Question: Are you aware that you took on a grave responsibility?
Harff: We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. WE ARE NOT
PAID TO BE MORAL.
Related but not from the book (Epilogue of a sort):
New York Times ad published on Sunday, March 20, 1994, section E: "WHAT BEING JEWISH
MEANS TO ME" Featuring... ...Mr. David Finn. CEO (Chief Executive Officer),
Rudder - Finn, International Public Relations, photographer, writer, painter.
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