(1) "According to her it cannot be a matter of genocide when women and children are spared. But to me it is obvious that genocide and crimes against humanity have been committed in Srebrenica…"

Reference is apparently to Johnstone's statement (p. 117) refuting the claim that the charge of "genocide" is demonstrated by the fact that the Serbs who conquered Srebrenica offered safe passage to women and children. In response to this absurd claim, she writes: "However, one thing should be obvious: one does not commit `genocide' by sparing women and children.

I do not see how her entirely appropriate comment justifies the charge in (1)

(2) Johnstone "claims that the circa 40 persons who were killed in the village of Racak were not civilians but Albanian guerilla fighters which had been killed in fighting with Serbian police."

I do not know van Reis, and hope that the quotation is incorrect. However, if it is correct, it is quite remarkable.

Let us first consider the "slander-convicted magazine `Living Marxism'." The case is important. LM was indeed convicted, and put out of business, thanks to Britain's outrageous libel laws, denounced as scandalous worldwide by everyone concerned with the right of freedom of expression. In this case, a huge corporation was able to put a small marginal journal out of business by demanding the impossible, as Britain's miserable libel laws require, and in the certain knowledge that the journal would be unable to mount a defense given the ludicrous imbalance of resources.

Van Reis is, of course, entitled to hold, and express, his strong opposition to freedom of speech: specifically, his doctrine, clearly expressed here, that the rich and powerful should be able to use the power of the state to silence opinion and reporting they do not like.

But putting that aside, let's now consider his reasoning. Johnstone argues -- and, in fact, clearly demonstrates -- that a good deal of what has been charged has no basis in fact, and much of it is pure fabrication. For van Reis, this is outrageous. Van Reis therefore is telling us, loud and clear, that he not only is a dedicated opponent of freedom of speech, but he believes with equal passion that it is critically important to safeguard the right to lie -- not in the interests of freedom of expression, which he strongly opposes, as just demonstrated -- but rather in one special case: to lie in service of power and privilege.

Consider finally his interesting logic. Johnstone's actual statements (the accuracy of which he rightly does not challenge) are also made by Milosevic. Therefore, she and Ordfront are supporters of Milosevic's crimes. And, by precisely the same argument, van Reis is a strong defender of the Holocaust. The proof is elementary. His charges against Stalinist crimes were also made by Goebbels, Himmler, and their apologists until today. QED.

It is astonishing that anything like this should appear in print, in a reputable journal.

A final comment on "genocide." People are free to use the term "genocide" as they please, and to condemn Racak and Srebrenica, say, as genocidal if they like. But then they have a simple responsibility: Inform us of their bitter denunciations of the incomparably worse "genocide" carried out with the strong backing of the US and UK at the very same moment as Racak. Say, the massacre at Liquica, with perhaps up to 200 civilians murdered, one of many (unlike Racak), in a country under military occupation and hence a grave war crime (unlike Racak), and in this case simply a massacre of civilians, without even a pretext of resistance (again unlike Racak). Furthermore, unless the British government, the State Department, NATO, the OSCE, and other impeccable Western sources are lying outright, the Racak massacre was committed at a time when the KLA guerrillas were carrying out terrorist attacks from their Albanian bases against Serbian civilians and police, and were responsible for the majority of atrocities (see, e.g., Lord Robertson and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, or the very few serious scholarly studies, such as Nicholas Wheeler's -- who strongly supports the NATO bombing but is so unfashionable as to report the results of the massive Western documentation). And to continue, Swedes who display their outrage over these examples of Serbian genocide clearly have the duty of informing us of their far more bitter condemnations of the massacres (again with decisive US-UK backing) through 1999, leaving maybe 5-6000 civilian corpses, according to the Church in East Timor and the leading Western historian of Timor, the British scholar John Taylor --- all BEFORE the paroxysm of terror in late August 1999, after which the US and UK (and for all I know, Sweden) continued to support the Indonesian murderers who were already responsible for the death of about 1/3 of the population in pure aggression decisively supported by the US and UK (and when it came time to make some profit from it, Sweden). Perhaps they have issued bitter condemnations of their Western allies (and Sweden). If so, they have a right to use the term "genocide" in the case of the terrible but much lesser crimes of Racak and Srebrenica. And, needless to say, this is only one trivial example of Western crimes in the same years.

I don't read Swedish journals of course, but it would be interesting to learn how the Swedish press explains the fact that their interpretation of Johnstone's book differs so radically from that of Britain's leading scholarly foreign affairs journal, International Affairs. I mentioned the very respectful review by Robert Caplan, of the University of Reading and Oxford. It is obligatory, surely, for those who condemn Johnstone's book in the terms just reviewed to issue still harsher condemnation of International Affairs, as well as of the universities of Reading and Oxford, for allowing such a review to appear, and for allowing the author to escape censure.

That seems pretty straightforward