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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

ITN SHOWS THEIR FILM AGAIN & CLAIMS IT WAS A CONCENTRATION CAMP


Reporting on the arrest of Karadzic last night the ITN news showed their notorious concentration camp film again. They said that it was genuine & proved that Karadzic had been running concentration camps & even wheeled on Penny Marshall to say how good it was.

The only problem is that ITN know & indeed have accepted that it was a lie albeit an allegedly "accidental" one. In the ITN-LM trial ITN, in the names of its reporters, sued LM magazine for reprinting an article, previously published in Germany, saying that the film had been faked. What appears above to be people being held behind barbed wire, as would be necessary in a concentration camp, were actually on the outside of an electric transformer compound ITN's crew had entered to "accidentaly" film them thus.

ITN essentially relied for their defence not on saying that people really were behind the barbed wire but that they had not noticed what they were doing. The judge was helpful:
But isn't it clear, after examining the unedited pictures and the bundle of photographs from Mr. Deichmann, that before the [Bosnian] Civil War the area surrounding the garage…and the electrical transformer was fenced in? This fence was made up of tall metal posts on the top of which was fastened barbed wire and below ordinary wire mesh. It had a gate to the east bound street. Ian Williams, Penny Marshall, and her camera crew openly contradict themselves if they say they did not realize they were surrounded by the old barbed wire fence....' Judge Morland then said: 'But does this matter at all to the case?' He reminded the members of the jury what this Libel case was about. The central question which the jury had to decide on was: In the eyes of the court did LM lie when it said that the ITN reporters deliberately published a misleading photo?"

By telling the jurors that, based on the unusual British libel law, they should decide for ITN unless they were convinced that ITN had deliberately misled the public, the judge set an impossibly high standard for LM.

However ITN have now disowned the accident defence. If, knowing the facts of the court case, ITN are repeating the lie that it was a concentration camp this casts doubt on whether it ever wasn't a deliberate lie.

The judge disallowed evidence that ITN had told her to find concentration camps or not to bother coming back so they could not use this in deciding whether she was or was not perjuring herself when saying that it was an accident. The claim last night, that the film showed a concentration camp clearly shows perjury credible.

The linked article expresses surprise that LM did not appeal. I am merely speculating & have not talked to anybody from LM or its successor Spiked but it is reasonable to assume that what happened was that ITN offered a non-disclosure deal whereby LM were not forced to pay costs so long as they didn't appeal or continue campaigning on Yugoslavia. I couldn't blame them for accepting. If there was a combined legal & damages bill for £675,000 that is a pretty horrible millstone to lay on anybody & if ITN ended up picking up that bill this was a victory of sorts. Certainly nobody in LM seems to have declared bankruptcy, as was widely predicted at the time & Spiked, while producing a large number of intelligent & well thought out politically incorrect articles have noticeably declined to mention Yugoslavia since then, even today.

Fortunately for me the European Human Rights Convention has been incorporated into British law since then, as it was in Germany when the original article was published & ITN didn't sue. This convention guarantees in Sect 10
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference
which means so long as something is information ie factual it can be said. It is a condemnation of British alleged liberties that it required a European convention to allow freedom of speech in this country.

Hopefully the police will show as much interest in the accuracy of Ms Marshall & her compatriot's testimony about accident, in light of their & ITN's repetition of their claims, as they have in Mr Sheriden's infinitely less important activities.

UPDATE - 6.00pm Spiked have put up an article. It is tame by my standards & more importantly by theirs on other subjects. It makes a point of saying "Neither I nor anybody else at spiked supports Karadzic". It also says the reason Spiked have barely mentioned the Yugoslav wars since is because they aren't interested.

Comments:
Penny Marshall??? Laverne??

Spare me.
 
Neil

You are right about this group. They are a middle class group who are not in the slightest revolutionary and so in my opinion NOT progressive because only socialist revolution will answer the problems of the age.

You are exactly right because they list their interests as

obesity
smoking
Iraq war

and so on. but no mention of Yugoslavia

Exactly right in that that is deliberate because how could they omit that accidentally when it led to the very formation of "Spiked"

What you have sugggested here in relation to the sell out of this group in the ITN trial raises a whjole number of vital issues that need to be explored further.

Does Hume still write for The Times? The fact that just following the Trial he secured a post in The Times was another strange happening.

It is interesting also that Kamm has also lately secured a position with the Times as a Leader Writer.
 
Felix I like Spiked. They seem to me to be far & away more intelligent than the rest of the media. If they are not revolutionary they have no particular duty to be so. Few of us are the stuff of martyrs & indeed a world where everybody was would be unendurable. If, having fought the good fight over Yugoslavia when almost nobody else did (least of all many "leftist revolutioaries") they have got on with their lives I make no complaint.

On the other hand you will like my post about Kamm today.
 
(Hume)'makes a point of saying "Neither I nor anybody else at spiked supports Karadzic".

Translation: "Well you know I did take that job at 'The Times' back then - you know the Murdoch rag that Oliver Kamm works for - so what else would you expect me to say as an honorable English gentleman? That I think Karadzic,like Milosevic, is innocent until proven guilty?!"

It also says the reason Spiked have barely mentioned the Yugoslav wars since is because they aren't interested.'

Translation: "you know I just totally lost interest for some inexplicable reason after covering the Yugoslav wars for many years. There were rumours about that deal I struck with ITN and its connections with the Murdoch press which got me that cushy job at The Times.It's absolutely untrue....not"
 
Karadzic fears for life because of deal with U.S.

Released : Thursday, July 31, 2008 12:41 PM

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, Jul 31, 2008 (Xinhua via COMTEX News Network) --

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said at the United Nations war crimes court Thursday that he is gravely concerned about his life because the United States might be seeking to "liquidate" him.

Karadzic, who appeared for the first time before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday, told the judge that he had a deal with the United States before withdrawing from the public life in 1996.

He said Richard Holbrooke, the then U.S. assistant secretary of state, presented him with a deal, requesting him withdrawing entirely from the public life in return for a drop of efforts to prosecute him at the ICTY.

Holbrooke was the chief broker of a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995.

Karadzic said he fulfilled his commitment and withdrew from the public life and did not do anything to endanger the implementation of the Dayton accord.

Karadzic said that it was because of the secret deal with Washington that he had not come to the court in The Hague any time earlier.

The 63-year-old former president of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb Republic said he is concerned that if Holbrooke's arm is long enough to reach the court, he might be "liquidated."

"I must say it is a matter of life and death," he said.


On Thursday, presiding judge Alphons Orie read out a summary of the indictment of Karadzic. Karadzic is accused of 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes of humanity during Bosnia's 1992- 1995 war.

Karadzic refused to enter a plea on each of the 11 charges against him. He said he would like to first study the new indictment which is being prepared by the prosecution before entering any plea.

Karadzic said he would like to defend himself throughout the trial. "I would like to defend myself before the institution just as I would like to defend myself before any national catastrophe," he said.


http://calibre.mworld.com/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=315938311
 
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