Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
It really is a politic for dummies that you try to present here. If it is about contrition and forgiveness we all would have an easy job. But it's much more prosaic and materialistic  then that...and dirty as politic always is.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
by vbo on Tue Feb 19th, 2008 at 08:14:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
"a politic for dummies" -- we begin with forgetting genocide, and now we've moved on to personal attacks.  So be it.  Yes, I know all too well it's just about money.  Just because all those people died cruel, pointless deaths doesn't mean we shouldn't get on with commerce.  This nasty business of people getting out from under the thumb of a domineering and small minded nation is just so bothersome to the business of making money.
If Germany was intent on denying the holocaust, would you trust them to not do it again?  Serbia could learn a lesson there, but they won't.  Don't worry, I'm not such an idealist that I'm going to hold my breath until then.  But I don't need their money either.
How about a politic for Republicans, a politic for corporatists, or a politic just for money?
"The only thing more dangerous then getting between a mama grizzly and her cub, is getting between a businessman and a dollar bill."
by Andhakari on Tue Feb 19th, 2008 at 10:07:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
To understand where vbo is coming from, I recommend this rather long article:

Monthly Review

The breakup of Yugoslavia provided the fodder for what may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years. The journalistic and historical narratives that were imposed upon these wars have systematically distorted their nature, and were deeply prejudicial, downplaying the external factors that drove Yugoslavia's breakup while selectively exaggerating and misrepresenting the internal factors. Perhaps no civil wars--and Yugoslavia suffered multiple civil wars across several theaters, at least two of which remain unresolved--have ever been harvested as cynically by foreign powers to establish legal precedents and new categories of international duties and norms. Nor have any other civil wars been turned into such a proving ground for the related notions of "humanitarian intervention" and the "right [or responsibility] to protect." Yugoslavia's conflicts were not so much mediated by foreign powers as they were inflamed and exploited by them to advance policy goals. The result was a tsunami of lies and misrepresentations in whose wake the world is still reeling.

The short version is that the media version of genocidal Serbs does not hold up on closer inspection. There where atrocities and massacers, but the size of those are often exaggerated and only one sides crimes are reported.

Monthly Review

16,000 Serb civilians killed in Bosnia 1992-95 are effectively disappeared, while the 31,000 Muslim civilians killed in the latter years are elevated to world class status as victims of genocide.

Most important there was no genocidal campaign against croats or muslems in Serbia, where you could expect it to be worst would the Serbs really be genocidal. Actually, I think lots of people of different ethnicity fled to Serbia from the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Have no link for it right now though.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Feb 19th, 2008 at 10:54:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Hmmm.  I'll read the article, but it is worth noting that the Monthly Review hasn't prided itself as a friend of NATO over the years.
The International Court of Justice didn't find Serbia guilty of genocide, only that it didn't do anything to prevent the genocide or to facilitate the punishment of war criminals.  I think they were giving Serbia a break.  And it appears that there is a move amongst some Europeans to forget it ever happened, or to fog the issue with contentions of equivalent wrong-doing.
Frankly, the whole region has more than its share of murder, revenge, and massacre, and there is plenty of blame to spread.  But let me get back to my point: Serbia has not been a responsible power.  It does not seem to accept responsibility for the crimes the ICJ found it guilty of.  Kosovo is not seeking to rule Serbia, it is seeking to be separate from a country which has not been a good steward.  If Serbia wants peace, all it has to do is nothing at all.
by Andhakari on Tue Feb 19th, 2008 at 11:44:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I think they were giving Serbia a break.

  1. Based on what?

  2. Why do you focus only on the crimes of Serbia? All sides committed ethnic cleanisng, chauvinist escapades, practiced no contrition, no forgiveness, and what you call immature posturing. It may be that you didn't read of those from the other sides and never have been there to experience it yourself, but that's just what UpstateNY's article is about -- media presentation.

To stress one point: Iraq was NOT the first war of the West where the MSM went on a spin overdrive, it was only the first where wide percentages of the population saw through it. Even blatant propaganda lies like in the case of WMDs weren't unprecedented -- upthread, UpstateNY mentions the Curveball story of the Kosovo War, which involved not Britain but Germany.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Tue Feb 19th, 2008 at 12:09:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
that's just what UpstateNY's article is about

askod, not UpstateNY.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Tue Feb 19th, 2008 at 12:18:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series