I know this is the Pit but surely we need to have some standards.
Maybe you need to broaden your information sources on the Bosnian conflict and nail down those pesky little distinctions like ‘Bosnian’ and ‘Albanian’.
[/QUOTE]
So I guess the folks at Fairness and Accuracy in Media are kooks and liars, too? Face it. You’re so obsessed with hatred for the Serbs that you don’t really care what the truth is.
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
You’re so obsessed with hatred for the Serbs that you don’t really care what the truth is.
[/QUOTE]
Versus yourself, who is so truthy that that little pesky Bosnian versus Albanian thing doesn’t really matter.
Not to mention the irony in excoriating them for supposedly suing. As opposed to, say, carrying out attacks or massacres? Yeah, suing would make them a right hypocritical genocider :dubious:
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
Not to mention the irony in excoriating them for supposedly suing. As opposed to, say, carrying out attacks or massacres? Yeah, suing would make them a right hypocritical genocider :dubious:
[/QUOTE]
I merely note that, when people with a lot of money take people with very little money to court, it’s usually the people with a lot of money who win.
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
Versus yourself, who is so truthy that that little pesky Bosnian versus Albanian thing doesn’t really matter.
[/QUOTE]
It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s just that we’re talking about literally centuries of animosity here. Trying to put all the blame entirely on the Serbs is patently absurd.
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
So I guess the folks at Fairness and Accuracy in Media are kooks and liars, too? Face it. You’re so obsessed with hatred for the Serbs that you don’t really care what the truth is.
[/QUOTE]
Yes whatever, dude, whatever. :rolleyes:
Note to self: LonesomePolecat believes the Revolutionary Communist Party and 9/11 conspiracy theorists are reliable sources of information.
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s just that we’re talking about literally centuries of animosity here. Trying to put all the blame entirely on the Serbs is patently absurd.
[/QUOTE]
I know. It isn’t enough that those pesky Albanianians pretend to be Bosnians. They’re all like, ‘Dude, stop shelling our city and don’t make us dig ditches beforen putting bullets in the back our heads,’ as if it’s not really at least half their fault.
And the Serbs are going. ‘Don’t have a cow, man’ but the Albino-Bosnians keep having cows and it’s still like somehow it’s not their fault. I mean – dude, will no-one think of the ethnic-cleansing fascists?
And don’t get me started on those bloody cry-baby Rwandans. And hey – Darfurian dudes – keep it down at the back. People trying to have a proletarian revolution here.
This argument was bought to you by The Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain in association with Fellow Travellers and Useful Idiots Inc.
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s just that we’re talking about literally centuries of animosity here. Trying to put all the blame entirely on the Serbs is patently absurd.
[/QUOTE]
Absolutely not patently absurd. If I’ve mutually hated someone for my entire life, and occasionally deface their property or steal lawn ornaments, and then the burn down my house and kill me, I’m as equally to blame as they are?
Or should some crime that happened 1-200 years ago be paid collectively by present day people who have no direct link to the actions?
So if a bunch of native americans went on a rampage and killed everyone in, say, Asheville, NC, they wouldn’t be entirely to blame? We could put just as much blame on Americans for the Trail of Tears 200 years ago?
I certainly don’t want to defend the actions of Karadic et al. but I think it’s a little simplistic to assume there were any “good guys” in that conflict, and the causes are more recent than 1-200 years ago.
A lot of what happened was the result of unresolved WWII issues. The Serb minorities in Croatia and Bosnia were the subject of large scale genocide at the hands of Croats and Bosniaks (collaborating with Nazis) in WWII. Tito (a Croat) basically brushed all that under the rug in the interest of national unity, leaving a lot of Serbs disposessed and resentful, and maybe fearful of what would happen to them if Croats and Bosniaks gained independence from Yugoslavia.
As regards Kosovo, the situation’s a little different, but still stems to a large degree from Tito’s policies to diminish Serbian influence in Yugoslavia.
I still don’t really understand why the media gave such one-sided coverage, I guess it’s because the whole situation seemed like a continuation of the ‘wind of freedom’/ collapse of the Soviet block narrative. Maybe it also seemed politically expedient to see Central Europe fragmented - as appears to be the current US position.
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Then I guess it can’t hurt too much to throw a Zionist into the mix. Still haven’t got anything to say about that article by FAIR?
[/QUOTE]
Can you read? The FAIR article is about Kosovo not the much earlier civil war - which is when the Dutch let the Serbs massacre the Bosnians. Why should I need to comment?
I know it’s pedantic of me to insist the Bosnians and the Kosovar Albanians are two different peoples and the civil war provoked by the Greater Serbian ambitions of Milosevic is different from the later NATO intervention over Kosovo but that’s just the academic in me I guess.
[QUOTE=Themenin]
I still don’t really understand why the media gave such one-sided coverage, I guess it’s because the whole situation seemed like a continuation of the ‘wind of freedom’/ collapse of the Soviet block narrative.
[/QUOTE]
I think the media gave relatively one-sided coverage for the same reason they cover serial killers and abductions by strangers more than single murders and domestic abductions: they’re not only slightly more important, they’re more interesting, so they sell.
Actual ethnic displacement: somewhat interesting.
Massacres and atrocities: sells media.
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
I think the media gave relatively one-sided coverage for the same reason they cover serial killers and abductions by strangers more than single murders and domestic abductions: they’re not only slightly more important, they’re more interesting, so they sell.
Actual ethnic displacement: somewhat interesting.
Massacres and atrocities: sells media.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t dispute the media taste for the massacre and atrocity angles, I just question the partisan one-sidedness. There were massacres and atrocities on all sides on a large scale, including ethnic cleansing by all parties. The tens of thousands of Serb civilians who were killed and the millions of Serb refugees seem to have been almost entirely left out of the standard narrative. There aren’t a whole lot of Serbs left in Croatia or Kosovo today, and in Bosnia they are only in Republika Srpska.
There was a war between Croatia and Yugoslavia, a war between Croatia and Bosnia, a 3-way (or more) ‘civil war’ in Bosnia between Bosnian ethnic Serbs (orthodox), Bosnian ethnic Croats (catholic) and Bosniaks (muslim) with various alliances at different times and places, splinter para-militaries, semi-‘official’ governing bodies, out-and-out crooks etc.
Maybe it’s just easier to portray the situation as a “good guys vs bad guys” story. I guess it also saves us from having to wonder why so many people on all sides turned into animals in such a short time.