Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie: Still a Liar

If you can resist the urge to punch your PC monitor while listening to this pompous pimp for Serbian nationalism, I suggest you check out this recent interview with well-known Serb-nationalist apologist, Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie, courtesy of East Ethnia:

Lewis MacKenzie Pollutes the Canadian Airwaves

It is the height of journalistic irresponsibility that this Mike Duffy allowed MacKenzie to regurgitate such easily refutable nonsense like the "staging" of the Racak massacre without challenge. And if there were still any lingering doubts that MacKenzie is little more than a compliant mouthpiece for Serbian fascism, his reiteration of the "Serb Jerusalem" argument should put them to rest.

Absolutely disgraceful that this man represented both the UN and the Canadian armed forces; equally disgraceful that he is active in Canadian politics today, and that he is given a public platform from which to spread his poisonous disinformation.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [11]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

RACAK: CASUS BELLI FOR NATO [continued]

In my review of this section--Johnstone's revisionist history of the Racak Massacre, I was completely remiss in not including this link from Balkan Witness:

Raçak - Mutation of a Massacre

It's a review by Peter Wuttke, translated from German by Mitchell Cohen, of an article by Johnstone entitled "The Raçak Massacre as the Trigger of the War" which she published in 1999. Johnstone worked out the themes and arguments that she regurgitated three years later in "Fools' Crusade". Interestingly, this rather thorough rebuttal was pubished in 1999 as well, yet in the intervening period between the article and the book, Johnstone seems not to have altered her views or have added to the slender "evidence" she relies on. Since 1999, much more information has become available; yet she merely repeats her fanciful claims of conspiracies, planted evidence, espionage by unwitting OSCE obeservers, and so forth.

I have no doubt that Diana Johnstone was aware of this article, any more than I doubt that she is unaware of the growing body of evidence refuting or undermining every point of her argument. She not only remains loyal to her clearly biased and flawed point of view, she does not even engage contrary evidence or arguments. Like any conspiracy theorist, she lives in a closed world where only decontextualized fragments of information which conform to the accepted narrative are allowed to pass through the mental filter.

Please take the time to read this very excellent article, which does a much more thorough job of first documenting, and then refuting, Johnstone's distortion of the factual record.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [10]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

RACAK: CASUS BELLI FOR NATO

Johnstone spends three pages claiming that the Racak "massacre" (the quote marks are hers) was a phony pretext for NATO intervention. In her words:

"Police the world over tend to be particularly angry when their colleagues are murdered. One my reasonably assume that Serbian police, cornering a group of men they assumed had done the killing, did not go out of their way to give them a chance to surrender but gunned them down mercilessly. If so, it might be called a "massacre." But the pertinent question is: was it or was it not a cold-blodded "massacre of civilians", killed only because of their ethnic identity, as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing? That, after all, was the interpretation used to justify NATO bombing."

Think that's over the top? Here's more, from the final paragraph:

"The material evidence my be compatible with a pitiless assault by angry Serb police on men they considered to be--rightly or wrongly--"terrorists" who had murdered their colleagues. Cases of such police "overkill" occur in many countries, including, notably, the United States."

Remember, we are talking about the massacre of 45 civilians, including three children. Bodies spread over a sizable area. And this, I add, is her defense of the massacre.

Like any conspiracy theorist, Johnstone does a masterful job of selectively choosing evidence which might support her altered version of events. She makes much of Finnish forensic scientist Helena Ranta's reserved and cautious approach, hinting that she knew the reports were weak and did not make the case that NATO wanted. Here is a link to an interview with Ranta (from 2001--prior to the publication of Fools' Crusade):

http://racak.homestead.com/files/ranta.htm

Ranta has since gone on to testify at Milosevic's trial at The Hague, where her testimony helped refute his charge that the Racak massacre was actually a legitimate military operation against KLA troops.

Johnstone is far from the only Balkan revisionist to jump on the Racak Massacre Denier bandwagon. The cautious, inclusive tone of the original Finnish report was an attempt to remain neutral and draw no conclusions about possible scenarios; Johnstone and others falsely portray this approach as somehow validating Serb propaganda (bolstered by reports in the French media, unfortunately). Johnstone claims that the French newpapers Le Figaro and Le Monde had raised "disturbing questions, which have never been answered." That, of course, is nonsense. Some relevant material can be found on this page from the Balkan Witness website:

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/racak.htm

There is more to this section--the accusation that this KLA-fabricated massacre and the biased Western response were primarily responsible for the Rambouillet talks is predictable (and somewhat true, as far as that goes--outrage over Racak did play an important role in driving events), but this section is mainly Johnstone in full conspiracy-theorist mode. She baldly states that:

"There was no "execution at close range" in Racak. Almost all the victims were killed by multiple shots, fired from different directions and at a distance. Only one victim showed signs of possibly having been shot at close range."

Statements like these simply don't hold up to the well-documented available evidence, or to the testimony of Ms. Ranta, whom Johnstone bizarrely seems to believe was less than convinced of the truthfulness of the reports she helped create and the summary she helped draft. People who cannot be bothered to acknowledge facts which are inconvenient are going to believe what they want to believe. Diana Johnstone is a "true believer," and she is only dangerous if other people choose to make the same, hateful and nihilistic leap of faith.