“All the NewsrnUnfit to Print” isnsi of tl)e ^imt^rnVol. 2 No. 1 January 2000rnIn our fact-free news, concocted andrnpresented by the products of our fact-freerneducational system, the Ues have reachedrnthe point where only foreigners dare speakrntheir name. That’s certainly true of thernmost outrageous lie of the year, and perhapsrnof the decade: the “Kosovo genocide.”rnIt did not happen, period.rnThe cat m a y not be out of the bag inrnAmerica, but it is just about everywherernelse. A s early as September, Spain’s foremostrndaily, El Pais, pubhshed a report onrnthe findings of the Spanish police andrnforensic experts w h o had returned fromrnKosovo. The very first hne of Pablo Ordaz’srnarticle was clear: “Crimes of w a r —rnyes. Genocide—no”:rnThis was definitely shown yesterdayrnby the group of Spanishrnexperts formed by officialsrnfrom the Scientific Police andrnCivilian Forensics that hasrnjust returned from Istok, thernZone in the North of Kosovo underrnthe control of the [SpanishrnForeign] Legion. 187 cadaversrnfound and analyzed in 9 villagesrnwere buried in individualrngraves, oriented for thernmost part toward Mecca out ofrnrespect for the religious beliefsrnof the Albanian Kosovarsrnand without sign of torture.rn”There were no mass graves.rnFor the most part the Serbs arernnot as bad as they have beenrnpainted,” reflected the forensicrnofficial Emilio Perez Pujol.rnThat was not the onlyrnirony. Also questioned werernthe successive counts that arernbeing offered by the “allies”rnon the tragedy of Kosovo. “Irnhave been reading the data fromrnUN,” said Perez Pujol, Directorrnof the Forensic AnatomicalrnInstitute of Cartagena. “Andrnthey began with 44,000 deaths.rnThen they lowered it to 22,000.rnAnd now they’re going withrn11,000. I look forward to seeingrnwhat the final count willrnr e a l l y be.”rnThe Spanish mission left Madrid in earlyrnAugust. After prehminary NATO briefings,rnthey departed with the feeling thatrnthey were on a road to hell:rn”They told us that we were goingrnto the worst zone of Kosovornand should prepare ourselvesrnto perform more than 2000 autopsiesrnu n t i l l a t e November.rnThe r e s u l t is very different.rnWe only found 187 cadavers andrnnow we are back,” explained thernchief inspector, Juan LopezrnPalafox, responsible for thernOffice of Anthropology andrnScientific Police. The forensrni c people, as well as the polrni c e , applied their experiencernin Rwanda in order to determinernwhat occurred in Kosovo . . .rnand they were not able to findrnevidence of genocide. “In thernformer Yugoslavia,” said LopezrnPalafox, “crimes were committed,rnsome no doubt horrible,rnbut they derived from the war.”rnCloser to home, Richard Gwyn’s commentaryrnin the Toronto Star (November 3)rnhad a self-explanatory tide: “No genocide,rnno justification for war on Kosovo.”rnGwyn reminded his readers of repeatedrnU.S./NATO claims that the Serb forcesrnhad dumped some of the countless thousandsrnof slaughtered Albanian civilians intornthe Trepca mine:rnThe story was very big for arnwhile: “Trepca-the name willrnl i v e alongside those ofrnBelsen, Auschwitz and Treblinka,”rnv e r i l y chortled the DailyrnMirror . . . Giving the fib anrnaura of authenticity the NewrnYork Times claimed at the timernthat the residents on the edgernof the mine reported an “unusuarnl , pungent bittersweet smell,rnwhich they assumed to be burningrnbodies.” The corpses werernsupposedly thrown down thernshafts, or were disposed of entrni r e l y in the mine’s huge vatsrnof hydrochloric acid.rnOn October 12, however, KellyrnMoore—a spokeswoman for the Haguernwar crimes tribunal—was compelled tornadmit that the investigators had found “absolutelyrnnothing” at Trepca. Rather thanrn1,000 bodies down the mine shafts, therernwere none at all; and the vats had neverrnbeen used to dispose of human remains.rnShortly afterward, writes Gwyn, the tribunalrnreported on its work at the most infamousrnof all the mass graves of ethnic Albanians,rnat Ljubenic near the town of Pec.rnNATO officials had claimed that 350 victimsrnhad been hastily buried there by thernretreating Serbs; five bodies were actuallyrnfound. As Gwyn points out:rnSo far, not one mass grave hasrnbeen found in Kosovo, despiternfour months’ work by forensicrnteams, including experts fromrnthe FBI and the RCMP. [But onrnOctober 31] the New York Timesrnwas s t i l l using the “10,000rndeaths” figure.rnGwyn’s conclusions are terse and categorical:rnThere was no genocide of ethnicrnAlbanians by Serbs, no “human catastrophe,”rnand no “modern-day Holocaust.”rnThere was only:rna grotesque l i e concocted tornj u s t i f y a war that NATO o r i g i ­nallyrnassumed would be over inrna day or two. . . . No genocidernmeans no j u s t i f i c a t i o n for arnwar i n f l i c t e d by NATO on arnsovereign nation.rnIn a long and detailed article in thernSpectator of London (October 25), JohnrnLaughland declared the “mass graves” ofrnKosovo a myth. In Britain, at least, therernhas been some political fallout from thernrevelations. The defensive posture of thernestablishment was obvious in the feeblernclaim by the editorialist of the Times ofrn24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn