by Deirdre Griswold , Apr 7, 1999

When 45 people -- almost all of them children and their mothers -- were massacred in Chiapas, Mexico, on Dec. 22, 1997, the reaction of the media here was restrained. Photos of the grisly scene were kept off the front pages and out of prime time.

Even when the Mexican attorney general's office issued a report in March 1998 admitting that some of the guns had been brought to the scene of this gruesome crime by state police in their official vehicles, and that the massacre had been two months in the planning, the U.S. media showed little interest.

Compare this to the media blitz that has surrounded the killing of 18 people on Sept. 26 in Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia. A civil war has been raging there in which Yugoslav government forces are pitted against a rebel separatist group financed and trained in the West.

Anyone in this country who reads the newspapers or watches television news knows about these deaths. The charge that government forces did it has been front-paged, along with gruesome photos. The word "Serb" -- the national origin of most of the people in what remains of Yugoslavia -- is almost always accompanied now by the words "ethnic cleansing," "war crimes," or "savagery."

Just as the name "Saddam" is supposed to automatically conjure up images of Hitler after almost a decade of anti-Iraq propaganda, the Serbs of Yugoslavia have now become demons in the U.S. media.

RECOGNIZING WAR PROPAGANDA

Why? Why was this story showcased while the ongoing massacres in Afghanistan, the slaughter of Kurds by the Turkish regime, the never-ending assaults on Palestinians by Israel, the death-squad killings of thousands in Colombia, and, of course, the suppression of the indigenous movement in Chiapas, are treated so differently?

In war, as Sen. Hiram Johnson said in 1917, the first casualty is truth. And the U.S. establishment is preparing the population here for a war in the Balkans. In that sense, the film "Wag the Dog" was right on target.

We don't hear much about massacres elsewhere because the U.S. military is not preparing for a military intervention in those countries -- at least, not to aid the people who are being massacred.

The U.S. has already intervened in Afghanistan -- not to help the poor peasants, or liberate women from virtual slavery, but to use reactionary fundamentalists in Washington's scheme to overthrow a progressive government. The U.S. works closely with the military in Turkey, Israel, Colombia and Mexico. The media here reflect that closeness by down-playing atrocities by these governments.

MYLAI WAS ON PAGE 38

Nor should the March 1968 Mylai massacre ever be forgotten. The "wasting" of Vietnamese villages was so commonplace by that point in the war that it took a year before this cold-blooded murder of over 100 civilians even got investigated. The first news item about the charges against Lt. William Calley was an Associated Press dispatch. The New York Times ran it on Sept. 8, 1969 -- on page 38.

Eventually, the story got into Time magazine on Dec. 5. One GI who witnessed the massacre said that after most of the villagers had been killed, "A really tiny kid -- he had only a shirt on -- nothing else -- came over to the people and held the hand of one of the dead. One of the GIs behind me dropped into a kneeling position thirty meters from this kid and killed him with a single shot."

That was the Vietnam War.

For years, however, the truth had been suppressed by the media -- until the tremendous Vietnamese resistance, plus a powerful anti-war movement at home, convinced a big section of the U.S. ruling class that they could never win. Then they were willing to let it all hang out.

But just three years earlier, right-wing generals aided by the CIA had overthrown the anti-colonial Sukarno government in Indonesia and massacred a million people. Military strongman General Suharto was an anti-communist who would play ball with U.S. plans for Asia. So these atrocities brought no strong reaction in the media.

This is part of the U.S. media track record on massacres. But Yugoslavia is a different story. Suddenly the media have found their voice of moral indignation, demanding that something be done.

PROVIDING AN EXCUSE FOR INTERVENTION

How nicely this coincides with threats of U.S./NATO intervention against the government in Belgrade. These mighty imperialists see Yugoslavia as a relic of the past, a government that traces its origins to a popular socialist revolution and still won't surrender control over the economy to imperialist banks and corporations.

The threats have been mounting in recent weeks. More troops are being sent to an area that is already bristling with U.S. bases and warships. Now the media are providing the generals with the excuse they need to corral public opinion.

The rising pressure for the Pentagon to intervene, show the flag and flex its muscles must also be seen against the backdrop of what is happening in Russia. The return of capitalism has led to catastrophe, and the working class is trying to rise to its feet to throw out the cutthroat bourgeoisie and restore a system of full employment, housing, food, health care and education for all.

Any Russian political figures who might be swayed by mass pressure must be given a dose of Pentagon terror. At a time when nuclear scientists are demonstrating in Moscow demanding back pay -- an incredible scenario showing the total humiliation of what was once a great power -- the ruling class that gave us the Cold War wants to remind everyone in Russia that, while capitalism may be coming apart at the seams all over the world, the military machine here is still very much intact.

Whatever the situation in Kosovo -- and it is wise to exercise a healthy skepticism about the "facts" being fed to us -- it cannot be made better by a NATO air strike or some other form of Western intervention. To think so is to totally mistake what U.S. interests really are in this region.

It's not concern about "human rights" or even peace and stability that causes the sharks to circle. If that were their motivation, then why provide weapons and training to those who massacre the people -- today in Mexico and Colombia, yesterday in Afghanistan, El Salvador and Guatemala?

It's crude material interest -- but taken to a sophisticated, geopolitical level. It doesn't matter if immediate profits are to be made in the rocky hills of Kosovo -- although, actually, there is a very rich mining complex there. But a move by NATO into Eastern Europe must be based on broad strategic considerations. And profit is the goal of their global strategy, whether the theater is the Balkans or the Middle East. Because that's what capitalism is all about.

As workers everywhere are finding out, capitalism is not about human rights, it's about the right of bosses to exploit labor and the right of workers to sell their labor -- when there's a buyer. That's the "freedom" the capitalist rulers want U.S. soldiers to defend in Yugoslavia. But you won't hear about it from the "free press."