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1999-05-14 OPEN LETTER TO THE ECONOMIST (UK) by Mario Profaca Independent journalist, Zagreb, Croatia. I was really surprised reading your tricky well balanced pro-Serb Review "War on the web" suggested to The Economist readers as "A guide to following the war in Yugoslavia on the Internet". (Net Time) http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/bk9204.html Reading: "As NATO planes bomb the former Yugoslavia, American government websites display what is destroyed. The Yugoslav government repostes with numbers of planes shot down, targets missed and civilians killed. Albanian websites chronicle the flood of Kosovar refugees," while the "Serb ones list atrocities by Kosovar terrorists" . One (The Economist readers included) should learn how Kosovar "terrorists" (your name for the Kosova Liberation Army recognized by all NATO countries including Great Britain) and their "atrocities" provoked the flood of Kosovar refugees. And then, of course, NATO started bombing Yugoslavia, missing targets and killing civilians while Yugoslavs were shooting down NATO planes. There is not a single word about the atrocities by the Yugoslav Army, police and paramilitary gangs. But, finding my website "Mario's Cyberspace Station" with hundreds of links to international sources and resources related to war crimes against Kosovars, Croats and Bosniaks, your smart author could not resist trying to "punish" me for that by his baseless unsigned insults writing that (quote) "A Croat journalist, Mario Profaca, runs a nasty and tasteless anti-Serb site http://mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html , a helpful and timely reminder that chauvinism is not an exclusively Serbian vice."(unquote). Isn't it significant that your author found worth prizing Yugoslav official web sites for "fighting back in earnest" and being "surprisingly slick" (SIC!). Amazed by that, The Economist unsigned author even describes how they did it, so "the Serbia's Ministry of Information fills you in on setbacks that NATO may be reluctant to own up to, as well as palpable fabrications. It reads well, the site is well organised and the English is almost impeccable. Borba, an English-language daily published by the Yugoslav government, offers a similarly slanted view. But it does so less successfully because it reads more like an official mouthpiece." "The central government's website explains the Serbian view of the history of Kosovo and includes detailed maps of the province. It 'exposes' a campaign by the western media against Serbia and accuses the West of historical 'revisionism'. And it chronicles Albanian terrorism against Serbs in Kosovo, complete with gruesome pictures of alleged atrocities." It was indeed the same way as The Economist, publishing his "Review", completed the gruesome picture of its "well organised" but unsigned author. Refering to the blatant accusations for my alleged "chauvinism" let it be at least mentioned that I was one of the organisers of the well-known "Round table of Serb and Croat intellectuals" in Mimara (Zagreb, Croatia) during the war, as well as, also during the war, (representing the Croatian Journalists' Association) I personaly hosted for three days a group of independent (Serb) journalists from Beograd and Novi Sad. At their websites in Serbia and Montenegro one could find links to Mario's Cyberspace Station and that is worth more than a thousand words published against me in The Economist. Online since 1995 my website has more than a million and 600 thousand visits registered by internet Link Exchange so far. I receive more than a hundred e-mail messages daily, but never so sick comments as these published in The Economist. Anyway, The New York Times (on the web) published in its Review - "Yes, the world is a sick place, and Mario Profaca is its webmaster", so, you see, even The Economist "Review" could not surprise me.   Mario Profaca Independent journalist |