© 2000 by Deborah Lagarde. Comments? E-mail:"
mailto:dlagarde@suite101.com"
Today, March 29, 2000, I received in my e-mail a letter from the editor of LM Magazine, a British Pop Culture zine. The zine LM, which by the way stands for "Living Marxism" (imagine! a "right winger" like me reading a Marxist pop culture journal!), recently lost its case against the British Establishment tabloid ITN, which sued LM for telling the world that a photo supposedly of a "Serb-run extermination camp" (according to ITN) was a hoax; that the photo was actually a Serb-run refuge camp where the refugees, not prisoners, were allowed to move freely--and that ITN's intention was to make the photo look like a Serb atrocity to reinforce British Prime Minister Tony Blair's desire to keep Britian involved in the NATO war against Serbia in support of the KLA (a terrorist organization which is tied to the Albanian mafia, not to mention Albanian fascists who fought with the Germans during WW2). It is further claimed by a very reliable British source, "Emmanuel Goldstein", a former Labor Member of Parliament and crony to Blair, that the Brit Establishment was out to get LM Magazine (and has been for years) because of its refusal to back Blair's brand of British socialism (though Marxist, LM is not seen by the Brit powers-that-be as politically correct, and thus is a target of a Prime Minister every bit as willing to go after its perceived enemies as our own Bill Clinton!). "Goldstein"--not his real name, of course (he calls himself "Emmanuel Goldstein" after George Orwell's 'enemy of the state' in the classic, "1984")--writes every week for "
http://www.antiwar.com" and his most recent column, "Why They Oppress Us" can be read at that site for a better explanation of the LM vs. ITN case.
Now, LM is essentially "out of business" because they are going to have to pay ITN and two of its reporters a huge sum of money, and both the editor and the co-publisher may be forced into personal bankruptcy. Part of the letter I received follows:
"THE END OF LM MAGAZINE
Statement by Mick Hume, editor
On Tuesday 14 March, the High Court ordered the connections of LM magazine to pay ITN and two
of its journalists a total of £375 000 in libel damages. The next day, we received a letter
from ITN's lawyers, Biddle, demanding the money. Within a week they had sent another demand,
with court order attached.
As a consequence of this, Informinc (LM) Ltd, the company which publishes the magazine, is now
