L'opposizione in Serbia (6) - Radio B2-92

["glr" <glr_y at iol.it>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Mon, 05 Jun 2000 11:44:00 +0200
From:           	Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia <crj at sigmasrl.it>
To:             	crj <crj at sigmasrl.it>
Subject:        	Della miseria della opposizione di destra in Serbia (6)

Della miseria della opposizione di destra in Serbia
Sesta parte:  RADIO B(OMBE)-92, "LA VOCE DI SOROS"

(Per altre informazioni sul legame tra Radio B-92 e gli USA si
veda: 
http://www.egroups.com/message/crj-mailinglist/217?&start=188 )


1) --- New B92: Voice of Soros    
2) --- The B2-92 website paid for by KPN Telecom;    
--- IPI deplores the seizure of Studio B and B2-92: But who is 
the IPI?
3) --- Milosevic Follows Clinton’s Example in Shutting Down 
Radio B2-92 


---

Date: Sun, 08 Aug 99 10:45AM MET DST 
From: P.Treanor at zap.a2000.nl
To: Multiple recipients of list THRACE
<thrace at demokritos.cc.duth.gr> 
Subject: New B92: Voice of Soros

A new radio station using the name of the former B92 radio has
started broadcasting in Beograd (Belgrade) under the name 
B2-92.
They also have a new website, taking over where the much-
visited Help B92 website left off.

Like the the Help B92 website, the new website of Free B92
http://www.freeb92.net/
is owned by KPN Telecom, (a middle-rank European telecom 
company), through its subsidiary XS4ALL Nederland BV. 
Koninklijke KPN NV (Royal Dutch Telecom) is the privatised 
former telecom organisation of the Netherlands PTT, originally 
the ministry for Post and Telegraphy.

For info on XS4ALL (a "nerds-get-rich" ISP in Amsterdam) see
XS4ALL cyber-liberals get rich 
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/geldwolf.html

Legal control of both the Help B92 website, and the Free B92
website were, and are, ultimately exercised by the board of 
KPN Telecom. The CEO at KPN Telecom is Wim Dik, a former 
Netherlands Secretary of State for Foreign Trade.

More realistically, daily control of the content of the websites
probably rests with Maurice Wesseling, director of XS4ALL
Nederland BV, whose name is under the press release /e-mail
announcing the new site.

As you can imagine from this information, B92 is *not* a radical
left-wing revolutionary progressive radio station, although an
extraordinary number of people do believe this myth. B92 was 
the Serbian radio of the Soros Foundation, which through its 
Open Society Funds and Foundations controls a surprisingly 
large sector of the media in some eastern European countries. 
(The Soros Foundation got in first, and had the most money).

B92 was therefore never an "independent" radio. Its function 
was to promote the values of a liberal-democratic free-market 
society in Serbia and Montenegro, and specifically the classic-
liberalism of George Soros. It continued to do this even during 
the air war on Serbia, when for a time it broadcast from aircraft 
on the Serbian border (obviously with at least the military 
approval of the NATO which controlled the airspace), and also 
from Austria on Austrian government transmitters. Both of these 
projects were apparently abandoned: perhaps because they 
were making the station an easy target for pro-Milosevic 
propagandists. In any case, in the present uncertain climate, the 
station and its financiers are ready to try again.

For those in any doubt about the ideology of the new station, its
website includes a speech by George Soros
http://www.freeb92.net/media/statement/soros.shtml

This is a commencement speech delivered at the Paul H. Nitze
School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins
University on May 27, 1999: here is the original at the university
website http://www.sais-jhu.edu/events/sorospeech.html

In this speech Soros sets out his view that a world sovereign
authority is necessary, to authorise intervention in states. He
defends the NATO intervention in Kosovo, as you would 
expect...

"Nor do I have any doubts that the situation required outside
intervention. The case for intervention is clearer in Kosovo than
in most other situations of ethnic conflict because Milosevic
unilaterally deprived the inhabitants of Kosovo of the autonomy
that they had already enjoyed. He also broke an international
agreement into which he entered in October of last year."

Soros goes a lot further, though, in proposing that a new alliance
of open societies should be set up, to militarily impose an open
society on the rest of the world:

"A political alliance dedicated to the promotion of open society
might even be able to change the way the UN functions, 
especially if it had a much broader membership than NATO. 
NATO could still serve as its military arm."

Remember that B2-92 operates in a society where hundreds of
civilians died in NATO bombing a few months ago: it clearly 
feels that it can now go further than during the war. At the same 
time, the new version is much more explicitly a Soros/NATO 
radio than the pre-war version. (I would guess that they have 
dumped any journalists who had doubts about the tougher pro-
NATO line, but I have no confirmation of that).

Paul Treanor

---

STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - 
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM

The B2-92 website (paid for by KPN Telecom) Is again 
showing how you can tell a lie, by hiding the truth. At the site

http://www.freeb92.net/index.phtml

it says "Radio B2-92 began satellite broadcasts of its news
programs within hours of it being struck from the airwaves for 
the fourth time." And it has details of the 'B2-92 SATELLITE
BROADCAST' on this transponder

HOT BIRD 5, vertical polarisation, video 11114, audio 7.74

But who is broadcasting here? Who put B2-92 back on air?

This satellite channel is the BBC World Service: see 

http://www.lyngsat.com/hb5.shtml

B92 ( in the new name B2-92) is not an independent radio 
station, it was (and is) a western-financed propaganda station. 
It was never independent: it was the radio of the Soros 
Foundation / Open Society Institute in Serbia.

-

After the seizure of the B2-92 and Studio B stations, there have
been international protests by organisations of journalists. One
is the International Press Institute (IPI).

Here is its protest letter, from the B2-92 web site
http://www.freeb92.net/intere.phtml

---------
IPI DEPLORES THE SEIZURE OF STUDIO B AND B2-92

His Excellency Milan Milutinovic President
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of
editors and journalists, deplores the Serbian government's 
seizure of the Belgrade municipal broadcaster, Studio B and 
the closing down of the independent radio station, Radio 
B292...... ---------


But who is the IPI? It was founded in the USA in 1950 - at the
height of Cold War hysteria. Its general political position is
resolutely pro-western. Speakers at its Boston conference 2000
included Henry Kissinger; Emma Bonino; Christopher Patten 
and the editor of 'Foreign Affairs'.

It has already supported B92 (the original name) with an award 
in 1998:

---
Radio B-92, the principal independent radio station in Serbia, 
hes been named by the Executive Board of the International 
Press Institute as the Free Media Pioneer of 1998. The station 
received the award on May 27, 1998 at IPI World Congress in 
Moscow. ---

http://www.freemedia.at/pioneer.htm#The IPI Free Media 
Pioneer 1998


These awards are sponsored by The Freedom Forum. 
The Freedom Forum is the successor of the Gannett 
Foundation, established in 1935 by the Gannett family 
(newspaper tycoons). It is very rich ($1 billion in assets).

http://www.freedomforum.org/

The IPI report is financed by the conservative Knight 
Foundation, see

http://web.missouri.edu/~news/releases/octnov99/ipi.html

----
IPI Report defends everyone's right to freedom of expression 
and access to information in a thought-provoking fashion," said 
Johann P. Fritz, International Press Institute director. "The Knight
Foundation's continued generous support for this project will
greatly assist us in bringing the international media news and
debates to journalists all over the world...."The Knight
Foundation's relationship with both the Missouri School of
Journalism and the International Press Institute have been long
and productive ones," said Del Brinkman, director of journalism
programs for the Knight Foundation -----

The other sponsors are: The Times Mirror Foundation, The 
Hearst Foundation, The Newhouse Foundation. The "Founding 
Sponsor" is the Freedom Forum.

The IPI also runs a campaign for "Media And Free Journalism in
Serbia". 

http://www.freemedia.at/Serbia%20Campaign.htm

This campaign is directly funded by George Soros' Open 
Society Institute and the Amsterdam group Press Now, which 
coordinates support to western-funded media in SE Europe.

Paul Treanor
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/nato.html

---


http://www.originalsources.com/OS5-00MQC/5-19-2000.1.html

Milosevic Follows Clinton’s Example in Shutting Down Radio 
B2-92 
Clinton Bombed Serbia TV, Milosevic Just Closed Radio B2-92

By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources
(www.originalsources.com) May 19, 2000 

---

STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - 
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM

Want to send this story to another AOL member? Click on the 
heart at the top of this window. Radio banned in Belgrade goes 
on air in Budapest By Michael Roddy BUDAPEST, May 31 
(Reuters) - Belgrade's

Independent Radio B2-92, shut by Serb security forces in mid-
May, was on the air again in Hungary on Wednesday night, but 
only to a limited audience. 

At exactly 10 p.m. (2000 GMT), Budapest's alternative station
Radio Tilos kicked off its broadcasting with a half-hour 
programme of news in Serbian piped to Hungary by satellite 
from B2-92, which is still off the air in Belgrade. 

The lead item was a story about the arrest at the Belgrade 
airport of four members of a security squad protecting Serbian 
opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, who was flying home from 
Moscow. 

Radio Tilos's FM band transmissions are so faint they cannot 
be heard everywhere in Budapest, let alone across the border in
Serbia. 

But workers at the station said the half-hour of B2-92 news, 
which will be aired most nights of the week, is a gesture of 
solidarity for the banned station. 

``We have a relationship with B-92 (the previous name of B2-
92) for five years,'' said Zoltan Rozgonyi, director of Radio Tilos,
which shares a frequency with two other stations and begins its
12-hour broadcasting day at 10 p.m. 

``They are the same type of radio station that we are, they are a
member of the association of community radio stations and we 
have a personal relationship with them,'' Rozgonyi said, 
explaining why Radio Tilos was devoting a precious half-hour to 
programming few Hungarians can understand. 

However, Budapest has a substantial Serbian expatriate 
community, estimated at about 50,000. 

Rozgonyi said Radio Tilos received no funds from anyone to air 
the broadcasts. But the decision to give airtime to B2-92 fits in 
with a strategy of the European Union and the United States to 
boost independent channels of information for Yugoslavia. 

Radio B2-92's broadcasts also are being transmitted just over 
the border from Serbia in the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and 
the station can be received on the Internet and on satellite 
channels.


Officials close to the European-backed efforts to promote 
media opposing the government of Yugoslav President 
Slobodan Milosevic say that a lot is being done behind the 
scenes. 

``We don't want big publicity for the individual measures 
because Milosevic uses that in order to discriminate against 
precisely those media because he says: 'Well, you're financed 
by foreigners','' said one official, who asked to remain 
anonymous. 

Ironically, Radio Tilos itself is in imminent danger of being
forced off the air because it failed to win a licence for fulltime
programming on its present frequency from Hungary's media
supervisor, the ORTT, which awarded it to someone else. 

Rozgonyi said he was still hopeful of winning a licence to
broadcast on a different frequency. 

17:49 05-31-00

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 ---- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----
                 RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU 
    e-mail: crj at sigmasrl.it - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
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