May 1, 2010
Elsewhere we have written that the breakup of Yugoslavia "may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years." But the far bloodier and more destructive invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars that have ravaged several countries in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa over the same years may have been subjected to even greater misrepresentation. To a remarkable degree, all major sectors of the Western establishment swallowed a propaganda line on Rwanda that turned perpetrator and victim upside-down.
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September 1, 2008
Beginning in March 2008 and extending through the last Democratic primaries of early June, the United States witnessed the most brazen demonization in its history of a person based on his race, his creed, and his ties to a presidential candidate. One major purpose behind these attacks was to use the demonized figure to discredit the politician. But participation in the attacks also fed the voracious, twenty-four-hour-aday media appetite, and quickly took on a life of its own. When we look back at the ugly spectacle then taking place, the evidence suggests that, despite much optimism about narrowing racial divides and an emerging "post-racial" consciousness, something much closer to the opposite had gripped America.
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October 1, 2007
The breakup of Yugoslavia provided the fodder for what may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years. The journalistic and historical narratives that were imposed upon these wars have systematically distorted their nature, and were deeply prejudicial, downplaying the external factors that drove Yugoslavia's breakup while selectively exaggerating and misrepresenting the internal factors. Perhaps no civil wars—and Yugoslavia suffered multiple civil wars across several theaters, at least two of which remain unresolved—have ever been harvested as cynically by foreign powers to establish legal precedents and new categories of international duties and norms. Nor have any other civil wars been turned into such a proving ground for the related notions of "humanitarian intervention" and the "right [or responsibility] to protect." Yugoslavia's conflicts were not so much mediated by foreign powers as they were inflamed and exploited by them to advance policy goals. The result was a tsunami of lies and misrepresentations in whose wake the world is still reeling.
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October 1, 2007
Jump to Part: I, III, IV | Glossary | Timeline 3. The UN in NATO’s Service A striking feature of U.S. policy since the collapse of the Soviet deterrent is...
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October 1, 2007
Jump to Part: I, II, IV | Glossary | Timeline 7. The Milosevic Trial The four-year trial of Slobodan Milosevic was the culmination of ICTY service to the NATO program...
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October 1, 2007
Jump to Part: I, II, III | Glossary | Timeline 10. The Role of the Media and Intellectuals in the Dismantlement Media coverage of the Yugoslav wars ranks among the...
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October 1, 2007
Glossary and Timeline for "The Dismantling of Yugoslavia".
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