by Hesperado
Deconstructing the Myth of Milosevic and the Serbs
Digging around in my ongoing excavation project of hundreds of dusty, old artifacts buried in my files from my years of autodidactic pedagogy about the horrors of Islam, I found this excellent critical analysis of the demonization of Milosevic — and by extension, of the Serbs.
Written crisply, clearly, sharply and with copious documentation by Francisco Gil-White, and published back in March of 2006, it should be required reading.
How to lie with (or without) statistics: An examination of Patrick Ball’s indictment of Milosevic
Just to tantalize the reader with one quote from Gil-White:
“As this piece will show, Patrick Ball’s own data directly contradict the hypothesis that Milosevic’s government carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign against Albanian civilians in Kosovo. In other words, when Mr. Ball concludes that there was such an ethnic cleansing campaign, he is doing so in defiance of his own analysis. This does not inspire confidence in the various ongoing efforts to assign blame around the world (listed above), and which feature Mr. Ball’s work rather prominently.”
Previous installments of my H-Files series:
Episode 1: The Al Aqsa Mosque: Architectural Supremacism and Insult Against Christianity
Episode 2: Algeria in the 90s — a premonition of the “Arab Spring”
Episode 3: 60s sexpot actress Brigitte Bardot grew up, condemns Muslims in France
Episode 4: Paul Berman: Another “expert” who thinks “Islamism” is the problem, not Islam
Episode 5: Black Widows and Basayev: Some random notes on the Jihad in Russia
Postscript:
The Serbian-American film critic, John Simon, tells me that Ivo Andric’s famous book title (which I used for my essay pic up top) should be more accurately translated, On the Drina, a Bridge.
As I wrote back to him:
That more accurate title (“On the Drina, a Bridge”) is much better. The other one (“The Bridge on the Drina”) has the feel of a fixture, historical furniture, a museum piece; while this one, aside from implying hope as you suggest, also implies accident, suddenness, and/or the felicitous or tragic concurrence of humans doing what they have to do under adventitious or adverse — or both — circumstance.
But I have grown to dislike the word “bridge” in its hopeful connotation — what with all the “bridge-building” going on these days among Western Amnesiacs of History with a people who throughout history have only used bridges to invade, plunder, slaughter and, if anyone’s left, subjugate (all, of course, after an initial “invitation” to take the Shahada…)
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From the mid Nineties onwards , I began to realise that the narrative about Yugoslavia in the Western MSM was not quite right. I wrote an article which appeared in “The Quarterly Review” (UK). It is now available on http://www.freenations.freeuk.com under the title “The Balkans Today, The West Tomorrow” . It is amongst the articles which scroll up on the right hand side of the title page. It was arrived at entirely independently and largely confirms this article. Perhaps some of the additional angles it covers may be of interest to readers.
European nations are today enjoying the fruits of the “Kosovars” they “saved”, but they are shockingly ungrateful and arresting them like Serbs did:
Police in France smash ‘huge Albanian heroin ring’
16 October 2012
Prosecutors in France say police have smashed a “huge” Albanian heroin-trafficking network, making 42 arrests in eastern France and Germany.
Some 200 officers were involved in the raids, in which 39 people were arrested in the town of Mulhouse and a further three across the border in Germany.
About 50kg (110lb) of heroin cutting agents were seized, said Remi Coutin, a prosecutor in the region.
The ring had handled “hundreds of kilos of heroin”, he added.
“Investigators found that there was a huge heroin-trafficking network in Albanian and Kosovar [Kosovo Albanian] circles in the Mulhouse area and also in Switzerland and Germany,” the prosecutor said.
Tuesday’s early-morning raids followed an investigation launched in 2010 by frontier police over suspicions that ethnic Albanians were involved in a human-trafficking ring.
While the raids were led by France’s agency for fighting illegal immigration, riot police and police commandos also took part “because of the extreme threat posed by certain suspects”, France’s Le Figaro newspaper reports.
In an unusual step, the alleged drug-smugglers trafficked a substantial part of the heroin into rural parts of the region, the paper adds.
It says the ring originated in Switzerland and Germany before setting up in eastern France.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19964240
Edward Spalton, thanks for the link to your article, which I read with interest. It and the article I featured go a little way to enlightening me about an exceedingly complex situation and history, which I still have a difficult time grasping adequately (beyond my instinct to support any people and polity anywhere in the world who are attacked by Muslims).
Incidentally, my eye was attracted to the name “Bob Dylan” at my left, and I read the Julia Gorin column on how Dylan compared Croats with “Nazis”, angering some Croats.
However, as heartened as I was to hear that Dylan would make such a comparison, he botched it by diluting it with a promiscuous magnanimity:
“The legendary US singer and songwriter has ruffled feathers in Croatia by comparing Croats to American Whites…”
Gee thanks, Bob. So “American Whites” are now a bête noire, useful for the nastiest of comparisons? Call me unimpressed. By the way, in that same Rolling Stone interview, Dylan said America had been “ruined” by slavery. Utter hogwash. And indicative of the toxin of PC MC in his bloodstream and brain — the same PC MC that continues to hinder our recovery of our former rationality with regard to the most important issue of the day: the deadly danger of Muslims following their Islam.
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