Product Description

For seventy-eight days, in 1999, US and NATO forces launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing upwards of three thousand people in the name of humanitarianism. Among those who could not help noticing the gap between action and words was Michael Parenti. Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, he challenges mainstream media coverage of the war and uncovers hidden agendas behind the Western talk of "genocide", "ethnic cleansing", and "democracy" To Kill a Nation reveals a decade-long disinformation campaign waged by Western leaders and NATO officials in their pursuit of free-market reforms. This continues, Parenti shows, as industrial and ecological destruction wrought by the war last year helps the West to destabilize Montenegro and Vojvodina today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1112689 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Publishers Weekly
For 78 days in 1999, the United States and NATO forces responded to the violence in Kosovo by conducting aerial attacks against Yugoslavia. Parenti gives an unabashedly critical assessment of this intervention, based on a solid and passionate rejection of Western leaders' "lies" about events in the Balkans and Western interests in that part of the world. Readers not familiar with his leftist analysis may find Parenti's dismissal of NATO's justification for its 1999 bombing campaign shocking or silly; others may find it thought-provoking. He argues that Western intervention in Yugoslavia was driven not by a humanitarian desire to stop ethnic cleansing, but rather by a self-interested determination to subjugate formerly Communist countries to the forces of free-market globalization. The government-controlled media in the U.S., he claims, was unfairly prejudiced against Slobodan Milosevic, once he was no longer of use to the West. Parenti makes compelling points about biased media coverage of Serbia, but he seems to misunderstand the huge role that the Serbian government played in creating the conditions for violence in Yugoslavia. While other Balkan political and military leaders may also deserve blame, Milosevic does not deserve a defense. Sometimes Parenti's assessments seem paranoid, as in his claim that an elementary school was bombed because it bore the name of a Socialist leader. And his economic and political arguments, as well as his accounts of U.S. involvements in other parts of the world not covered by mainstream media, though they may give one pause, will appeal mostly to readers who share his leftist perspective. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Publishers Weekly
Thought-provoking...Parenti makes compelling points about biased media coverage of Serbia.

About the Author
Michael Parenti is the author of fourteen books including Democracy for the Few, Inventing Reality, Make-Believe Media, Land of Idols, Against Empire, Dirty Truths, Blackshirts and Reds, America Besieged, and History as Mystery. His work has been translated into ten languages.

Customer Reviews

Another side of a story
I was a bit skeptical when I saw the book but after reviewing the reviews I bought it.
I guess I was trying to avoid the anger and pain that never went away since we have left our home in Bosnia, and ended up in the States. Well the book makes plenty of valid points. The US and the UN have created this distorted view of a nation that did not want to surrender, and even today, they are working hard to take away Serbian pride ,Kosovo, and give it away to a nation that does not have the right to own Serbian land. I will never understand how anyone can take a land where Serbian heroes have died and give it away.
Yes the book upset me but I already new most of those things, and I am glad that the truth is coming out and people start asking questions.
Even though we are all trying to move on we will never be able to forget.

A cry in the emptyness
This is a splendid book, it attracts attention on clear truths concealed deliberately by the western means and reports authentic crimes committed by NATO and USA. All those who know a civil war know that atrocities are committed on all the parts, do not exist good and clearly definite villains, since he claims the western press blaming to them the Serbian ones of everything.
If we observe with detail the history and the events observe that the Serbian ones are heroes and victims more than villains. And the Albanians emerge as the villains of the movie, which does not surprise us those that we know to the Muslims.
But unfortunately the public relations are more important that the true, as happens in every day life, and the Serbs did it very bad.
The guilt of Germany also is clear. What would happen if the state of New Mexico was declaring itself independent and Mexico was recognizing it as independent country? If the army of the United States was invading it to support the unit of the homeland, would it be an invasion of a country on other? This exactly is what happened with Eslovania and Yugoeslavia and Germany as accomplice of Slovenia.
Certainly there are some aspects that I do not share, for example the life in the communist Yugoeslavia previous to the war does not believe that it was so idyllic as mister Parenti says. The life in any communist country has never been enviable, can be more or less poor, but always poorly, but so many yugoeslavos would not emigrate abroad.
The hysteric rección of some readership demonstrates that mister Parenti is right. There is a phrase of Don Quijote who says " the dogs bark then we ride ".
I think that this book have to be completed with " Fool's crusade" that give a lot of more dates and confirm the principal lines of Mr Parenti, may be a few more boring to read but I think that " Fool's crusade" is a solid book.
After read both books my opinion about the politics and the performance of NATO and USA , is considerably worst that before and the serbs have all my simpathy in their suffering.
But the story isn't finished.

To Kill A Nation is EXCEPTIONAL!
This work uses wetern sources to expose the gross misconseptions about the Serbs so widespread in the West.

The book outlines why the Serbs were not responsible for the break up of Yugoslavia nor for the conflict in Kosovo, and demonstrates that the Serbs were the real victims of these wars.

A breath of fresh air in an otherwise biased western literary community.