.

“The prosecution has strong incentives to try to tell the story of the war, rather than focus narrowly on successful conviction. This is the international tribunal’s signature case — especially after the termination of the Milosevic prosecution — and it will be heavily institutionally invested in the outcome and the legacy it creates, the more so because this will be one of its last cases…Many passionate advocates for Bosnian justice expect the court not simply to produce legal outcomes concerning specific acts, but to contribute to a rich, deeply textured condemnation of the principal contributors to the war as a whole, and in a proper historical context.” – Timothy William Waters, Law Professor who helped prepare Milosevic indictment, commenting in the New York Times on the upcoming Karadzic trial at the ICTY and its explicit political and historical purpose [Source].

There is near universal delight about Karadzic’s arrest. People across the world are all happy he has been caught. As one friend wrote from the Isle of Man, “People talk about how great it is that Karadzic was arrested, which of course we all agree with, but they have no idea why. “

Here in Serbia the response is one of apathy, with some tiny outbursts of half-hearted protest and the press luridly focusing on Karadzic’s alter ego, Dr Dragan David Dabic.

It all seems so simple, everyone knows the story: Karadzic is a genocidal maniac who, together with his dog of War, Mladic, led a bloodthirsty nation of nationalist aggressors as they ethnic cleansed large swathes of Bosnia using genocide (Srebrenica), mass murder, mass rape and forced migration.

Its a pretty clear case of a bad guy (one newspapers went so far as describe Karadzic as “a devil in disguise“) being caught and now finally facing justice in a fair trial.

Or so it seems.

In recent days I have read three excellent articles that challenge the conventional wisdom about Karadzic (and Mladic).

The first is “Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed” by Srdja Trifkovic . Published in Chronicles Magazine, this essay is one of the most cogent defenses of Bosnian Serb position I have read so far. Here is an excerpt:

At the outset of the last Yugoslav crisis, the Serbs’ basic argument—even if seldom stated with simplicity and coherence—was clear when freed from rhetoric: they had lived in one state since 1918, when Yugoslavia came into being. They reluctantly accepted Tito’s arbitrarily determined internal boundaries between the six federal republics—which left one third of them outside Serbia-proper—on the grounds that the Yugoslav framework afforded them a measure of security from the repetition of the nightmare of 1941-1945; but they could not swallow an illegal ruse that aimed to turn them into minorities, overnight and by unconstitutional means, in their own land.

Even without the vividly remembered trauma of the Second World War, they reacted in 1991-1992 just as the Anglophone citizens of Texas or Arizona might do if they are outvoted, one day, in a referendum demanding those states’ incorporation into Mexico. They demanded the right that the territories, which the Serbs have inhabited as compact majorities long before the voyage of the Mayflower, not be subjected to the rule of their rivals. In the same vein the Protestant Ulstermen demanded – and were given – the right to stay apart from united Ireland when the nationalists in Dublin opted for secession in 1921. In the same vein the state of West Virginia was created in 1863, incorporating those counties of the Commonwealth of Virginia that refused to be forced into secession. The Loyalists of Ulster and the Unionists of West Virginia were just as guilty of a “Joint Criminal Enterprise” to break up Ireland, or the Old Dominion, as were the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina who did not want to be dragged into secession against their will.

Yugoslavia was admittedly a deeply flawed polity, and there could have been no rational objection to the striving of Croats, and even Bosnian Muslims, to create their own nation-states. But equally there could have been no justification for forcing over two million Serbs west of the Drina to be incorporated into those states against their will, and without any guarantees of their rights. Yugoslavia came together in 1918 as a union of South Slav peoples, and not of states, or territorial units. Its divorce should have been effected on the same basis; the boundaries of the republics should have been altered accordingly.

This is, and has been, the real foundation of the Yugoslav conflict ever since the first shots were fired in the summer of 1991. Even someone as unsympathetic to the Serb point of view as Lord David Owen conceded that Josip Broz Tito’s internal administrative boundaries between Yugoslavia’s republics were grossly arbitrary, and that their redrawing should have been countenanced at the time of Yugoslavia’s disintegration:

Incomprehensibly, the proposal to redraw the republics’ boundaries had been rejected by all eleven EC countries… [T]o rule out any discussion or opportunity for compromise in order to head off war was an extraordinary decision. My view has always been that to have stuck unyieldingly to the internal boundaries of the six republics within the former Yugoslavia… as being the boundaries for independent states, was a folly far greater than that of premature recognition itself.

[From: Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed by Srdja Trifkovic, Chronicles magazine, July 2008]

The second is by “The Plight of the Bosnian Serbs” by John Laughland (I am currently reading and thoroughly enjoying his book “Travesty“, about the Milosevic trial).

Laughland is a superb writer, scholar and essayist. His book travesty is brilliant and this article is a good introduction to some of his ideas.

He ends this article with a point about Srebrenica and the huge efforts to have the mass murder classified as “genocide”:

Unfortunately, there is a very clear political reason why it has been so categorised. The Muslim president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Haris Silaijdzic, said carefully on CNN the day Karadzic was captured that Karadzic’s trial was only the beginning of the process by which justice would be done in Bosnia. He said that there were hundreds of thousands of Muslims who had been ethnically cleansed by “Karadzic and Milosevic” and that their project therefore remained in force. The clear implication of what he was saying was this: if the very existence of the Bosnian Serb republic (the autonomous region within Bosnia carved out from the republic during the civil war) is found, in a court of law, to have been had as its president a man, Karadzic, who is convicted of genocide in the process of creating it, then its status would be illegitimate and it should be abolished. The Muslims continue to claim control over the whole of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while the Serbs merely want the preservation of their considerable autonomy within it.

In other words, far from bringing peace to the Balkans, it is quite possible that a conviction of Karadzic for genocide will reopen the Dayton settlement and egg the Muslims on to claim control over the Serb republic too. Under such circumstances, it is inevitable that the Bosnian Serbs would try to proclaim formal secession from Bosnia, just as the Kosovo Albanians did from Serbia.

In Travesty he notes of the grossly exaggerated claims of Serb atrocities putatively committed in Kosovo, that the West was desperate to also have these classified as “genocide”. What is so important about having a crime classified as “genocide” or not? Surely establishing the fact that unlawful mass murder took place is sufficient?

Not when you are not seeking justice at all, but rather pretexts for war and intervention:

These claims of genocide had a general and particular function. Their general function was to work as war propaganda. Their particular function was a legal one. Genocide is a specific crime under international humanitarian law, coming under “universal jurisdiction’, and the existing treaties on it require all states to prosecute those accused of it. NATO leaders pretend that this meant there exists a right to “humanitarian intervention” where genocide is occurring, while in fact there is not. [From pg.11, "Travesty" by John Laughland, Pluto Press (2007)]

So this is why one keeps hearing about genocide in Kosovo even though there was none.

Laughland’s book is a revelation. It is an utter demolition of the bogus justifications for the bombing of Yugoslavia, the idea that the ICTY is anything but an illegal political instrument for conducting show trials and that the Serbs are overwhelmingly to blame for what transpired in Yugoslavia.

I will explore Laughland’s arguments about the ICTY in a separate post, but suffice it to say that after reading only the first few chapters of the book, I am completely convinced – as a relative neutral – that the “rich, deeply textured condemnation of the principal contributors to the war as a whole” that the ICTY is expected to deliver will be a grossly biased distortion of history based on show trials. It is yet another example of how lies pass into history.

The third and final article is by the Mick Hume, on of the UK’s best skeptics and questioners of convention:

It seemed strangely fitting that Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was found in an elaborate disguise when he was finally arrested, accused of genocide. Many in the international community have spent more than a decade dressing up this unexceptional local nationalist leader as a Hitlerian monster.

…The moral crusade to turn the Serbs into the new Nazis, pursued after the Yugoslav civil war through the hunt for Karadzic on charges of genocide, has served as a strange sort of therapy for many in the West. By branding the Serbs as evil, they have found a way to make themselves feel righteous. In the process, they have distorted the realities of Yugoslavia’s civil wars, risked diminishing the history of the Nazi Holocaust, and paved the way for further disastrous Western interventions.

That last point makes the Western crusaders even more determined to hang on to their anti-Serb banners today. The Balkan wars of the 1990s marked the high tide of the liberal left’s new moral case for international intervention in the affairs of nation states. The Iraq debacle has since left the credibility of that cause in tatters. The notion that they were taking a stand against the new Nazis in Bosnia and Kosovo has become just about the only thing the pro-interventionists can hold on to as proof that they are on the side of right.

…Neither I nor anybody else at spiked supports Karadzic. During the war in Bosnia he acted as a self-important petty nationalist with a romantic dream and a ruthless streak. And he was far from alone in that. The campaign to demonise Karadzic and nail him for genocide before an international war crimes tribunal, however, has been a politically motivated circus that serves interests other than justice. The fact that he has been arrested as a diplomatic stunt to help the new Serb government gain entry to the European Union is in keeping with a campaign that has been politically loaded from the start.

Read the entire article over at Spiked.

If you give these three articles a fair read, I doubt you will be able to tolerate the simplistic accounts of events one reads in the media. You may even see Karadzic in an entirely new light, not of saint or even innocent but just one of the three wartime Bosnian leaders, the one who happens to be Serb – and therefore automatically on the wrong side.

One can, as I do, deplore Srebrenica (and the other crimes of that war) accept it was “genocide” but simultaneously see the ICTY as a sham designed in part to lend legitimacy to an account of history that is based on falsehoods that lay disproportionate blame on the Serbs to justify aggression against the Serbs after the fact.

I still maintain that we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to counter exactly the sort of politically motivated falsehoods currently being added to the record by the ICTY.

I think that Karadzic and Mladic should stand trial, but fair trial, in open court with exactly the dame rules of evidence and due processes respected in UK and US criminal courts. I also think the civilian leadership of the other warning parties should be indicted in the same way the Serbs were. Of the 17 civilian (non military, police or militias) indictees, 15 are Serb, 1 is Croatian and 1 is Albanian. The Albanian is indicted for contempt of tribunal for refusing to be a witness in a case.

This indicated that either (A) the Serbian politicians were considerably worse than their Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian counterparts or (B) the ICTY has an objective an attack on the ideological and political underpinnings of the Serb position, not just acts that were war crimes. The more I read on this subject the more I tend to believing B.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to attend one of the daily protests in support of Radovan Karadzic that are being organized by Serbian ultra-nationalists.

Here are a selection of pictures from the event, which was entirely peaceful, but in many ways utterly bizarre, especially when Mladic showed up…

A riot police staging position near Studenski Trg (Student's Square). These vans are parked about 300m away from Trg Republika (Republic Square) where the rally is taking place.

This was the scene playing out as I arrived, about 20 minutes before the rally started in earnest. The music is, to my ear at least, unmistakeably Turkish. I have always be surprised at just how Turkish so much of the radical nationalist music and culture seems to be, even though it is completely understandable after 500 years of Turkish occupation. The instrument you hear being played is a Gusle, the same one played by Karadzic in his favourite pub in Belgrade.

The children in the picture were dancing a traditional dance just before this photo was taken.

Here is another eulogy to Karadzic, also sung in a distinctively middle eastern / Turkish way:

A man wearing a Karadzic t-shirt looks on as marshals prepare for the rally.

Protesters line up and sing patriotic songs

A weeping woman gives a three fingered nationalist gesture to onlookers

Older people made up the majority of the protesters. There were also some tough looking young men and a few families, but the families looked like they had come up to Belgrade from the Republika Srpska.

The man on the left standard Serbian three fingered salute. The man on the right is making a strange new three fingered salute used by many protesters later.

The crowd was smaller than this picture suggests

The view from the podium

A riot policeman jokes with colleagues. The police outnumbered the protesters three to one.

A grinning man gestures to his poster of Radovan Karadzic.

A priest chats to a lady in the crowd. He later joined the protest leaders on the podium.

This man stood there for hours holding his newspaper above his head. The old and the poor seemed to make up the bulk of the people at the protest.

A severe looking young man from 1389.org.yu keeps an eye on the crowd. To his left a man wears a Putin t-shirt. Russia remains the great hope for these protesters.

Some onlookers wore clothes that matched their political eccentricities.

From this angle you can see the protest was tiny.

When the rally got under way in earnest, people gathered behind the speakers to sing patriotic songs then listen to the speeches. Notice the priest in the middle of teh picture in front of the man with the yellow shirt.

The rally appeared to end with some obligatory chants of “Ra-do-van Kara-dzic”

A phalanx of riot police, known locally as "Ninja Turtles", standing-by near the protest. The speech-makers specifically appealed to the crowd not to drink, not to commit any acts of aggression or crimes and to leave the police and journalists alone.

Another squad of riot police (aka "Ninja Turtles"), but they were hidden around a corner away from the rally. Notice that their shields are different from the unit near the rally, suggesting that these are a reserve riot squad (ordinary cops in riot kit) not the specialised Gendermes.

I am not sure if I am entirely signed up to this list. I think the medical point may be wrong.

Even with the human genome in hand, geneticists are split about how to deal with issues of race, genetics and medicine.

Some favor using genetic markers to sort humans into groups based on ancestral origin – groups that may show meaningful health differences. Others argue that genetic variations across the human species are too gradual to support such divisions and that any categorisation based on genetic differences is arbitrary.

These issues have been discussed in depth by a multidisciplinary group – ranging from geneticists and psychologists to historians and philosophers –…has released a set of 10 guiding principles for the scientific community, published as an open letter in this week’s Genome Biology.

1. All races are created equal

No genetic data has ever shown that one group of people is inherently superior to another. Equality is a moral value central to the idea of human rights; discrimination against any group should never be tolerated.

2. An Argentinian and an Australian are more likely to have differences in their DNA than two Argentinians

Groups of human beings have moved around throughout history. Those that share the same culture, language or location tend to have different genetic variations than other groups. This is becoming less true, though, as populations mix.

3. A person’s history isn’t written only in his or her genes

Everyone’s genetic material carries a useful, though incomplete, map of his or her ancestors’ travels. Studies looking for health disparities between individuals shouldn’t rely solely on this identity. They should also consider a person’s cultural background.

4: Members of the same race may have different underlying genetics

Social definitions of what it means to be “Hispanic” or “black” have changed over time. People who claim the same race may actually have very different genetic histories.

5. Both nature and nurture play important parts in our behaviors and abilities

Trying to use genetic differences between groups to show differences in intelligence, violent behaviors or the ability to throw a ball is an oversimplification of much more complicated interactions between genetics and environment.

6. Researchers should be careful about using racial groups when designing experiments

When scientists decide to divide their subjects into groups based on ethnicity, they need to be clear about why and how these divisions are made to avoid contributing to stereotypes.

7. Medicine should focus on the individual, not the race

Although some diseases are connected to genetic markers, these markers tend to be found in many different racial groups. Overemphasising genetics may promote racist views or focus attention on a group when it should be on the individual.

8. The study of genetics requires cooperation between experts in many different fields

Human disease is the product of a mishmash of factors: genetic, cultural, economic and behavioral. Interdisciplinary efforts that involve the social sciences are more likely to be successful.

9. Oversimplified science feeds popular misconceptions

Policy makers should be careful about simplifying and politicising scientific data. When presenting science to the public, the media should address the limitations of race-related research.

10. Genetics 101 should include a history of racism

Any high school or college student learning about genetics should also learn about misguided attempts in the past to use science to justify racism. New textbooks should be developed for this purpose.

The Stanford group didn’t always agree when coming up with these ideas. Predictably enough, the biomedical scientists tended to think of race in neutral, clinical terms; the social scientists and scholars of the humanities argued that concepts of race cannot be washed clean of their cultural and historical legacies.

But both groups, according to the letter, recognise the power of the gene in the public imagination and the historical dangers of its misrepresentation as deterministic and immutable.

Journal reference: Genome Biology (DOI: 10.1186/gb-2007-9-7-404)

‘Ten Commandments’ of race and genetics issued – opinion – 17 July 2008 – New Scientist

“Who the hell is Miladin Kovacevic,” you might ask, “A war criminal?”

Not quite, he is a Serb college basketball player involved in the horrific beating of a fellow student in a New York State town who was then helped to escape the USA and return to Serbia by a Serbian diplomat.

The US government is justifiably outraged at this gross abuse of privilege and obstruction of justice.

Serbs everywhere should be outraged that that their own government have not just obstructed justice (bad enough) but tarnished the Serbian diplomatic corp as corrupt criminals who abuse diplomatic privileges to help known fugitives escape justice and they have helped reinforce the Serbs-as-violent-thugs stereotype by making sure this dreadful story of alleged Serb thuggery is front page news becuase of the Serbian state’s involvement, albeit just one corrupt individual.

Thew whole sorry affair revolves around a violent bar fight on the night of May 5th 2008 in the University town of Binghamton in upstate New York.

Here is one account of what happened:

It was the wee hours of Sunday morning at the Rathskeller, a popular hangout for Binghamton college kids, and pretty Melissa Cartagena felt an unwelcome hand on her body.

It was just a grope – but it was late, the guys were drunk and soon things got out of hand.

The scene was a birthday party with a Studio 54 theme, the dance floor was full, graduation was two weeks off.

Among the many revelers was Bryan Steinhauer, a senior honors student with a slight build and a bright future.

Miladin Kovacevic was there, too. The sophomore basketball player, a burly 6-foot-9 and 260 pounds, towered above Steinhauer and the rest of the crowd. The jock and the aspiring accountant traveled in different campus circles – but they found themselves in an uncomfortably small space inside the bar on State St.

Ann Pesahovitz and Lauren Levy, standing just off the dance floor, noticed the mismatched duo. A baby blue shirt covered Steinhauer’s 135-pound physique. He stood a full foot shorter than Kovacevic, who was dressed in black.

It was about 1:20 a.m. on May 4. There was a commotion and “a lot of yelling,” Levy recalled, apparently after someone groped Cartagena – a pretty Binghamton University sophomore with Kovacevic’s group.

The dark-haired beauty wasn’t there with the ballplayer; she was with boyfriend, Sanel Softic, a 21-year-old wanna-be state trooper who claims he never laid a hand on the victim.

Kovacevic took it upon himself to defend her honor – though it was not clear who groped Cartagena. Seconds later, Steinhauer wasn’t standing; then he wasn’t getting up. The bespectacled senior was battered to the dance floor. Witnesses recalled the big man’s foot thudding into the smaller student’s torso. And then his head.

Over and over.

Steinhauer – his cheeks shattered, his skull fractured, his brain swelling – was defenseless, his body motionless.

Pesahovitz said the violence ended as abruptly as it began. “He just stopped kicking the victim,” she told police, “and left.”

[From Binghamton University student at heart of Miladin Kovacevic's attack ]

Kovacevic was arrested a few hours later and spent several weeks behind bars. This is where the sad and brutal story of a violent bar fight becomes a cause celebre and yet another PR disaster for Serbs and Serbia.

Kovacevic was still behind bars when June arrived, although his parents – doctors in their homeland – were working with Serb diplomats to get his bail posted.

At a June 6 hearing, Serbian diplomat Igor Milosevic and the suspect’s mother arrived in Broome County Court with $20,000 cash and an $80,000 money order.

“Standard diplomatic practice,” Serbian Consulate General Slobodan Nenadovic said later.

Kovacevic surrendered his passport, and the local judge instructed him to stay in Broome County pending trial on a felony assault charge.

Just before 6 p.m., the hulking hoopster left the courthouse. Within 72 hours, Kovacevic had left the country – with a new, hastily-issued replacement passport. A high-ranking Serbian government official said Kovacevic’s mother, Branka, wept and begged until Milosevic provided the get-out-of-jail-free card – an emergency document.

Kovacevic flashed the paperwork to board a Lufthansa flight out of Newark. His mother was on the flight with him.

His deception was discovered only when county officials became concerned that he might jump bail. They notified customs officials at the Canadian border that Kovacevic could try to enter the country without a passport.

A check of his status showed Kovacevic was gone. So was Milosevic; officials at the Serbian consulate in Manhattan said he was on vacation as the beating exploded into an international cause celébrè.

Milosevic, his career in tatters, slipped back into Serbia Friday to receive a likely pink slip and possible criminal trial.

Kovacevic was hiding out in his homeland.

[From Binghamton University student at heart of Miladin Kovacevic's attack ]

The Serbian government (wait, Serbia does not have a government yet!) now have an opportunity to show their maturity and International standing by swiftly correcting the “mistakes” by their Consulate in New York.

Despite what his parents say about the tabloid media bias against him (which does appear to be true), Miladin Kovacevic must return to the USA to face justice. The US courts will take full account of the media circus and careful jury selection by a competent lawyer will ensure a fair trial. Anything less than this and he becomes just another excuse to smear Serbs. And anyway, it is the right thing to do.

Igor Milosevic, the diplomat who “was swayed by a mother’s tears” needs to face the consequences of his stupidity. In a sense he is even more responsible that Kovacevic because he knowingly helped an accused man escape custody and violate the terms of his parole. This is a crime. Diplomats do have immunity in their territories they are stationed, but they are not above national law. At the very least Mr Milosevic should be fired (if it can be proved he was merely stupid). If there is any suggestion of bribe or mens rea, he should face criminal charges here in Serbia.

He completely violated diplomatic accords and brought shame and disrepute upon his country – the very opposite of a diplomat’s mission. An example to any other diplomats “swayed by a mother’s tears” might be well advised.

See also:

Bar fight in upstate New York turns into international incident as Serbian suspect flees – Associated Press
Thug Life: Finding Miladin Kovacevic – NY Post
Serbian diplomat Igor Milosevic punished for aiding Miladin Kovacevic – NY Daily News

“Lippmann…argued in his best-selling book called Public Opinion that democracy was fundamentally flawed. People, he said, mostly know the world only indirectly, through “pictures they make up in their heads.” And they receive these mental pictures largely through the media. The problem, Lippmann argued, is that the pictures people have in their heads are hopelessly distorted and incomplete, marred by the irredeemable weaknesses of the press. Just as bad, the public’s ability to comprehend the truth, even if it happened to come across it, was undermined by human bias, stereotype, inattentiveness, and ignorance. In the end, Lippmann though citizens are like theatregoers who “arrive in the middle of the third act and leave before the last curtain, staying just long enough to decide who is the hero and who is the villain“. – “The Elements of Journalism” by Bill Kovac and Tom Rosensteil (2001)

In day-to-day life, as in science, we all resist fundamental paradigm change. Social scientist Jay Stuart Snelson calls this resistance an ideological immune system: “educated, intelligent, and successful adults rarely change their most fundamental presuppositions” (1993, p. 54). According to Snelson, the more knowledge individuals have accumulated, and the more well-founded their theories have become (and remember, we all tend to look for and remember confirmatory evidence, not counterevidence), the greater the confidence in their ideologies. The consequence of this, however, is that we build up an “immunity” against new ideas that do not corroborate previous ones. Historians of science call this the Planck Problem, after physicist Max Planck, who made this observation on what must happen for innovation to occur in science: “An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning” (1936, p. 97). -  “How Thinking Goes Wrong: Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us to Believe Weird Things” by Michael Shermer

Michael Totten has posted the latest in his series on the Balkans, this time covering Serbia (outside of Belgrade), Republika Srpska and Bosnia & Hertizigova, Croatia and Montenegro.

After massive battles in the first two parts (1 & 2), I was pleased to see this one was much more balanced and fair.

The report is only mildly anti-Serb in the sense that all the nasty characters and places are Serb, all the decent folks are non-Serbs. That said, he did plug “Old” Belgrade nicely.

What follows is my response to Michael. It will make no sense unless you read the original article.

These articles and their subsequent discussions highlight the Serb predicament.  The double standards, the denial of Serb victimhood, the libels against the Serbs (as though they did not have enough real crimes to be guilty for) and a distinct lack of empathy, it is all there, mostly in the comments. They highlight the fact that what was true of Lippmann’s 1920′s America is doubly true of the Balkans today (and the ongoing debates about its past, present and future).

The Serbs are permanently established as villains, the rest – Croats, Albanians and Bosnian Muslims – are all designated victims or heroic resistors of Serbian aggression. The very word “Serb” is a loaded word. One finds that even on websites like Michael Totten’s, commentators are welcome to post openly hateful libels against Serb whilst merely pointing out that the libels are based on half-truths, cherry picking, hasty generalization or lies,  will get your banned or warned.

As H. L. Mencken noted “For every complicated problem there is a simple and wrong solution”. In the Balkans it is blame the Serbs. In the Middle East, blame the Israelis, elsewhere it is typically blame the Americans.

As I noted in my Pajama’s Media article I believe that most Serbophobia is based on what British journalist Nick Davies calls “flat earth news”, a story – in this case Serb villainy – that appears to be true and is widely accepted as true, such that eventually it becomes a heresy to suggest that it is not true — even if it is riddled with falsehood, distortion, and propaganda.

People are deeply ignorant about the Balkans and its recent history (not to mention medieval or pre-history). All they know is what they picked up in that third act, namely that the villains are Serbs. This exploited by  anti-Serb bigots whose favourite tactic is to point out Serbs wrong-doings, but out of context and without comparison. This is, of course, the fallacy of Selective Observation.  When  one addresses this fallacy by noting the wider picture or pointing out that Serbs comparatively blameless/innocent/not guilty, one risks being accused of being a bigot attacking the groups one is comparing the Serbs against.

A good example of this is the Serbs-as-WW2-collaborators-and-Jew-killers libel. One an Albanian-American commentator kept trying to claim that “Serbs” were anti-Semites becuase – oh the irony – a Croatian documentary about Serb collaborators in WW2 claimed as much.

As I noted in the comments:

Lets say that it is true that 11,000 Jews were killed by Serb collaborators in WW2, how does that crime stack up against the crimes in context of the time and region?

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum states that:

“The Croat authorities murdered between 330,000 and 390,000 ethnic Serb residents of Croatia and Bosnia during the period of Ustaša rule; more than 30,000 Croatian Jews were killed either in Croatia or at Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

At the same site we read that Romania killed 270,000 Jews and Hungary killed 500,000 Jews.

The People of Albania, to their credit, were heroic in hiding and protecting Jews in Albania. To their discredit, though, they had an Albanian SS Division and they too had collaborators who handed over Jews. The number of Jews handed over was tiny, but this is because there were only 2-300 Jews in the entire country.

The picture was different outside of Albania proper.

“Between 1941 and 1944, nearly 600 Jews from Greater Albania were sent to their deaths in various concentration camps around Europe. It is for this reason that many historians disagree over the role of Albanians in the Holocaust. While Albanians may have attempted to rescue the Jews in Albania proper, the government was aware of the round-up and deportation of Jews from the Kosovo region.” [Jewish Virtual Library]

She kept trying to libel the Serbs as anti-Semites based on their putative historical crimes and I was forced to post Jewish and Israeli holocaust sources to expose her blood libel, but in doing so I was forced to point out Albanian and Croatian wrongs.

She was doing to Serbs what was done to Jews for centuries, making up lurid and patently false charges of brutality and evil that the ignorant and bigoted public accept as true. And this is just one example of many. The anti-Serb comments on the Totten articles are a veritable example sheet of fallacies: Proof by Anecdote, hasty Generalizations, Straw Man, Guilt By Association, Biased Sample…the list goes on.

Oddly enough I am not that worried about the more active and open bigots. Their one-sidedness and extremism tend to serve as warning to the more intelligent readers (the ones who matter) . Self-advertising hater-mongers are not the danger, it is the soft bias that causes the most trouble.This is where people like Michael enter the story. Despite his protests to the contrary, I detected a clear, lack of sympathy towards the Serbs (so far anyway).

This conforms with what I have observed about biases in general, even in their mildest forms, they strangle empathy. On example is Michael driving around with a Belgrade registered car getting paranoid about being mistaken for a Serb, but yet completely failing to imagine what it must be like for a real Serb to face that constant aggression and hostility.

Who cares if some independent US journalist “does” the Balkans and comes out against the Serbs based on his few hours in country?

Well I care.

Michael certainly seems to have left with a negative impression of Serbia (and Serbs) that is completely at odds with experiences reported by most visitors I have spoken to. I think this is becuase he arrived with that “impression” and he saw only what reinforced it, not what is really here at all.

His visit was way too brief for him to really experience the country and he spoke to only the ultra-liberal wing of the political spectrum (imagine getting your US “facts” from Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, John Berger and Naomi Klein). No wonder he left with the same impression he arrived with.

The problem, as I note below, is that this is an influential independent journalist who is also, I believe,  a completely honourable and well intentioned person.  His voice carries weight and it is precisely people like him that need to be engaged or otherwise, lies pass into history.

The basis of so much Serbophobia and anti-Serb reporting is that so many lies have already passed into history about this country, its people and its recent history.

One of the gravest problems is that the urgent requirement for Serbs to own up to and repudiate what was done in their name is scuttled by gross exaggerations, lies and being blamed for things they did not do. It is further aggravated by negative characterizations of the Serbs growing like mushroom on the back of previous negative characterizations.

Serbs will not be able to grant justice to those they wronged until the wrongs against them are at least recognised, if not redressed. It is for this reason that I take the fight to the comment sections of blogs and spend my precious time countering the bigotry I find there.

Here are my commerts posted on Michael Totten’s blog post.

Hi Michael, I see you have started banning. Sheesh. Pro-Serbs really do make you mad! Oh well

I am going to avoid getting bogged down by the snidery of some of our resident sock-puppets and shills, and respect you wishes about commenting on the content of your post (although enforcing this policy on those cooking off on myself and other would be appreciated).

Karadic Poster

Regarding the Karadic poster, can I ask where you saw this? I travel that highway regularly and I am am frequently in New Belgrade but I have never seen it. There is nothing on Flickr, the local news, any of the Belgrade photography sites or other blogs. Are you sure it was not someone else? An advert perhaps? If I can locate it I can have it removed. Seriously, that sort of idiot gesture lets down the whole city and is almost certainly illegal. The worst I hve ever seen is illegal hawkers selling small posters.

Nice words about Belgrade

Thanks for the kind(er) words about Belgrade. It was good to see you praising the city this time.

Currency in the Balkans

You are right about Dinars. Whilst it is possible to convert them in some places outside Serbia, generally it is best to carry Euros. Even in Serbia many people use Euros which are pretty much accepted everywhere.

Primitive anti-Americanism

Regarding Serbia’s “primitive anti-Americanism” which I would say is no more primitive than any other variety of prejudice, I think you will find that even in the countryside people will treat all foreigners extremely well. There are exceptions, sure, but as a rule of thumb we foreigners find rural Serbia to be as welcoming and kind as Belgrade, which is bend-over-backwards nice to us. I have personally seen much worse anti-Americanism in rural Ireland than Serbia, with much less justification. It was nice to hear about the Albanian woman who comes to Belgrade regularly. It says to me that an Albanian woman from Kosovo can be welcomed amongst Serbs and have a great time in Belgrade. I know of similar tales from the thousands of Croats and Slovenians that also come to party in Belgrade. They generally feel welcome and safe and love the place. It seem that the Albanian woman was the only one with a problem, the one never forgetting she was in the company of Serbs. Even her choice of words was suspect. Describing someone as a “Chetnick guy” is ethnic slur around he. It is like a Serb calling an Albanian a “Shiptar” or using the N-word to describe an African-American. The Wikipedia article you link to confirms this. That said, very occasionally one can come across a look, an under the breath comment, some “atmosphere” but it is very rare and Serbs will not tolerate it. I cannot go on enough about how good it is to be a foreigner in Serbia, even an American.

The incident in the sticks

Regarding your experience in noname town, I am not sure why you devoted so much time to the strange inciden. How did you know the man was a Serb? How did you know he was asking for money? How did you know he insulted you in Serbian, or later yelled something awful? This looks like just another “dramatic” incident that tells me plenty about the village loon but nothing about anything else, except perhaps to underscore that Serbia is full of nasty aggressive money obsessed people. Was that your point?

Roadsigns in Republika Srpska

I completely understand your frustration with road signs in Serbia and RS. They are very bad generally and the policy of Cyrillic only signs in RS is monumentally idiotic. Signs are for people who do not know where they need to go, almost by definition people not from that locality. Interestingly, you note that you saw no road sign anywhere in Republika Srpska that pointed toward Sarajevo. If you ever try and get to Belgrade from Croatia you will find the same thing. Belgrade and Serbia do not exist. The first signs for Belgrade on the Zagreb – Belgrade highway start about 40km from the border. Serbs to their credit, have signs to every major town in the region even in the center of Belgrade.

Coldly sized up by brutes

It seems you luck with Serbs really is very bad. Even the nice guy who helps you navigate is cancelled out by Mr Cold Sizeup who is plotting to steal your watch. I am struggling to understand how I, and every other foreigner I know who lives here, seems to have just about the opposite impression.

Bosnian scars

I saw war scars everywhere in Bosnia, so again I am surprised to see you did not spot any damage in Serb towns. Maybe they use the money from stolen American watches to pay for teams of repairmen to patch up their bullet holes?

Encounter with Mr Frown-at-Serbs

Your encounter with the kind Bosnian in the village was weird. He displays the casual anti-Serb prejudice Serbs have come to expect almost everywhere in the region and then all is well when he discovers you are not those bastard Serbs the ones who “shot up [their] houses” that you are “from a country that kinda sorta helped [them] a little during the war”. Imagine for a minute you were not an American, but you were a Serb, would you approve of his reaction? Perhaps you might not, but simply file it as “understandable”? If that is so, then how can you be alarmed and seemingly upset by the “primitive” anti-Americanism of people whose houses you DID “shoot up” and sorta bombed for 79 days? I am not sure why the Bosnian’s wariness and negativity is OK, but the Serb’s is not?

Rebecca, our mutal love

Thanks for quoting Rebacca West. I was oddly honoured that you saw fit to use the quote from our last discussion.

Bosnian Muslim forgiveness

The Muslims undoubtedly were the biggest victims by far of the horrors of the Yugoslav wars. That is partly why I am so stunned by their forgiveness and general lack of animosity. Just this weekend I had a guest from Visoko stay with me. I am humbled by the lack of ethnic hatred sensible analysis that so many of my Bosnian friends seem to exhibit. This chat was Ethnic Cleansed by Croats when he was 6. Despite years in a German refugee camp and eventual resettlement in New York State, he is back in Bosnia fighting bigotry and nationalism on all sides. As I noted elsewhere, the Bosnian’s are model of what a secular Muslim-majority state can be. I genuinely wish them all the best.

Danger on the road for accidental “Serbs”

Driving a BG plate car was brave, If you leave your BG plate car unattended in Croatia you risk it being keyed (scraped). Mere hostile looks are a comparative luxury for Serbs. I am not sure about Sarajevo and the Federation but a Serb plate car in Kosovo is considered extremely risky outside of the Serb north. I hope you were OK. By the way, how did it feel being a “Serb”? Not nice huh. Plenty of hostility? Well now you know how Serbs feel.

Mosque with its minaret blown off

Your comments about the Mosque and the Minaret deserve a comment. You note that “Two blocks away from the decapitated mosque was an intact Serbian Orthodox church.” That surprised me, because you were in the middle of Herzegovina – Bosnian Croat territory – are you sure it was not a Catholic Church? Incidentally, some of the people of Herzegovina are restive and there is sabre rattling about a Kosovo style secession from the federation.

Mostar’s benignity

Mostar is stunning, but sadly it is also deeply troubled. Behind the gorgeous façade is an ethnically divided city with simmering tensions. It is not nearly as benign s it looks. After last week’s Turkey – Croatia football match (the one Croatia lost to penalties despite playing magnificently), massive riots broke out in Mostar after the match with Turkey supporting Bosnian Muslims versus Croatia supporting Bosnian Croats.

Flag lines streets

Did you not think it strange that Croats have their had flags draped everywhere? Did you see that in Serbia?

Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik is gorgeous, but after spending 2 weeks there in 2006 I was a bit fed up. It has been ruined in exactly the same was Venice has. It has become a purely tourist based city. Beautiful to be sure, but a Disneyfied space. The shelling of Dubrovnik it was an enormity but oddly when I was there local rudeness was reserved for more for tourists that theri supposed ethnic enemies the Serbs. Serbs in our party had the effect of making waiters and others friendlier not nastier. Cab drivers asked after the White City (Belgrade) and waiters aked how things were back in Serbia. Not a hint of the anti-Serb incidents one hears so much about around Split. Dubrovnik, like much of Croatia, does feel markedly more “Western” that other parts of the Balkans. The city, like many of the towns and islands of that coastline, is genuinely fascinating.

Kotor and Shkodra

I think in Kotor you may have seen the best of Montenegro, had you stopped. It rivals Dubrovnik for beauty. I also think you missed out not spending time in Shkodra. It is also very pretty and I know several people from there and they are lovely people. It much safer there too now. Just last year an Irish friend from the UN spent a long weekend around there and said that it was a fantastic experience – friendly people, lovely beaches and no bandits in sight.

Final thoughts (for now)

Thanks for these reports. I enjoy them very much even if I disagree with you sometimes. I know you are not an Ethnographer, and these dispatches are very much fleeting impressions of the places you visit, but please keep in mind that as a respected independent voice your opinion, however it came to be formed, carries weight.

Even a slight bias can end up being magnified and stereotypes reinforced. In this age of media cynicism, people like you are now increasingly becoming the writers of the the first draft of history. That is why talking to you is so important. If you write about places like the Balkans, with its raw wounds and muddled lie-polluted past, you can expect to draw fire and fury.

Sure they can be ugly and fierce and contentious, but by having these discussions we ensure, to paraphrase Orwell, that lies do NOT pass into history. Banning those you disagree with is not a good solution. The very point of blogs is not to lecture but to converse. It is in these conversations that errors are corrected, biases exposed and unfairness challenged.

It is the lifeblood of serious journalism.

It would be real pity for you to become just another victim of the Balkans, and have this great site reduced to an echo chamber that merely reinforces groupthink and insulates you against cognitive dissonance. Clearly this is not the case now, but banning is where this rot starts. Don’t let it happen, please.

Michael responded to me in very civilised manner (as usual). The in response to a post where he wrote:

The difference between the two sides are as irreconcilable as those between Israel and Hamas. Hamas wants to conquer Israel, Israel says no, so they fight. Serbia wants to conquer Kosovo (again), Kosovars say no, so they either fight or have an external solution imposed upon them.

…Anyway, the Bush Administration will not rescind its recognition of Kosovo, nor will a McCain or Obama Administration. None of our opinions will change that.

I responded with this…

Hi Michael,

I personally do not think the Serbs want to really “reconquer” Kosovo.

Despite what Serbian politicians say publicly, it is an open secret that many of them are glad to be rid of the place. As they see it, Kosovo was a financial, military and political burden which is now the UN’s problem.

My personal suspicion, and this is backed by discussions with diplomats and locals, is that they are paying lip service to an unyielding position on Kosovo whilst they hold out for partitioning and perhaps better “inducements” from the EU.

Everyone knows it would be utterly impossible to reintegrate 1.5 million unwilling Kosovar Albanians into Serbia after what happened in 1999 (and years of abuse at the hands of the Milosevic regime).

Even the Radical Party supporters are stumped when I point out to them that id miraculously Kosovar Albanians decided all was forgiven and that they would love to be back in the folds of mother Serbia’s skirts, the Radicals would never get anywhere near power. Those ethnic Albanian voters would provide just the swing voted needed to keep the Liberal and Democratic parties in power without so much as a nod at the Socialists or Radicals.

So what now?

It may very well be true that neither this nor any (near) future US administration will rescind its recognition of Kosovo, but as long as the EU is stuck in its impasse over Kosovo, and the Russia/China axis is against set against it, we have a frozen conflict.

I am starting to think that partition is the fairest and most pragmatic solution. If it happens, and its looking increasingly likely, it should be followed by speedy EU membership for Kosovo, Serbia, Albania and the rest of former Yugoslav states not yet in the EU.

This should help boost regional economies and the Irish model has shown us that this goes a long way to helping solve seemingly intractable ethnic conflict.

The discussion after that is just me objecting to yet more Anti-Serb bigotry and name-calling which unsurprisingly led to yet more Anti-Serb bigotry and name calling. Like so many of the Balkan diaspora, I think this postcard applies to them beautifully…

Michael J. Totten: The Road to Kosovo, Part I

This post is a about Michael Totten’s report “A Dark Corner of Europe” Part 1. You need to read this article for this post to make sense. Michael Totten’s article is mostly very good article, and I, perhaps unfairly, am focussing only on the negatives here.

Michael Totten is a great independent journalist who I have followed avidly over the last few years, especially as he reported from Lebanon.

He is supposedly the master of independent journalism and canny travelogues but my respect for him has been slightly tarnished after he visited Belgrade – my adopted home town - and filed a hatchet job about it that completely contradicts what every other visitor is reports. He suggests, in essence, that Belgrade is a “dark corner of Europe”, a squalid xenophobic and anti-Semitic hell hole full of “Communist architecture”.

Well OK, that may be a bit of a stretch, but the article is negative, at times snide (especially the photo captions), misleading about Belgrade (and Serbia) and very one sided in that is only presents an ultra-Liberal view of the situation here from the perspective of a local film-maker (Filip David).

The Belgrade of Michael’s report is nearly unrecognisable to me, a resident of three years. It says nothing about the real Belgrade that I have lived and worked in for three years, the booming vibrant cosmopolitan party town that rapidly growing numbers of appreciative visitors are flocking to in greater and greater numbers. Unfortunately I think it tells us plenty about Michael’s lack of research, poor planning, paucity of diverse contacts on the ground and his previously revealed touch of Serbophobia .

Perhaps an analysis of his post is in order to help illuminate some of the unfair points?

Michael and the Taxi Driver

The post starts off with Michael and Sean being berated by a taxi driver, who rips them off.

Even cursory research about Belgrade would have revealed the many warnings about the Taxi Mafia who operate from Belgrade airport.They have pretty much cleared out of the airport now, but for many years they have been a pest that both rip off visitors and ruin people’s first impressions of the city.

Well informed visitors simply call one of the many legitimate taxi companies or go to the taxi desk at arrivals and order a legal taxi. A ride into to any part of the city would normally not cost more than 1000 dinars (or on a Sunday, maximum 1500).

The Taxi Mafia are criminal scum, and as you would expect they represent the worst of the country. It comes as no surprise that the cab driver took his opportunity to berate Michael and Sean.

Michael writes that he was afraid to reveal he was a journalist, some 9 years after the bombing, and was worried for his safety because of then recent embassy attacks. It was an unfounded fear, because even in 1999 – at the hight of the bombing -  foreign journalists and citizens were treated (as they are now) with kindness, respect and hospitality. Take for example Marko Hoare, a British journalist and Balkan expert:

During the Kosovo War of 1999, I lived for more than a month in an ordinary Belgrade suburb, solely in the company of the native people of Belgrade and without any contact with other foreigners. Several times, during and immediately after this war, I crossed the Serbian international border. During this period, on not one single occasion did I, as a Briton, experience so much as a curse or a rude word from any Serbian citizen or border guard, despite the fact that my country’s airforce was bombing their country. One border guard even said to his colleague, in front of me, that what NATO was doing had nothing to do with me, but was the fault of higher powers. The Serbian people, for the most part, are not hooligans and do not engage in random acts of mob violence and destruction. Why should yesterday’s demonstrators have attacked McDonald’s restaurants, when during the Kosovo War the local management of these restaurants patriotically (as they saw it) supported the Serbian defence against NATO ? McDonald’s posters in 1999 Belgrade displayed the colours of the Serbian flag and promised a share of their profits to a fund for military invalids. Those who view themselves as engaged in a righteous act of national self-defence (as most Serbian people, however misguidedly, genuinely did in 1999), do not degrade themselves with acts of rioting and looting. One rioter was burned to death in the attack on the US embassy; this wave of violence, which has already produced dozens of injuries in recent days, is already violent in comparison with the revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000. [Emphasis mine Source]

Michael and the Hotels

Michael complains about the horrible Hotel Royal and denounces Belgrade’s hotels. He writes:

Most of the city’s hotels are in so-called New Belgrade. They are overpriced, far from the city center, and surrounded by communist-era monstrosity architecture.

No, they are not Michael. The two biggest ones are (Hyatt and Intercontinental), but most hotels are in the Old Town (Stari Grad). Many ARE overpriced, but that was because until now most visitors were businessmen – a captured market – and there was no competition.

Things have changed radically. A whole new generation of excellent and affordable hotels have opened in and around the Old Town. Had you done your research you would have found out that the Hotel Royal is one of the worst hotels in the city. Why did you not try Le Petit Piaf or Hotel City Code or any one of the brilliant hotels nearby?

Michael Looks for A Party

Michael and Sean set off in search of some fun, but only found a Ethno-Karaoke bar and a Turkish themed dive.

Michael you walked UP Kralja Petra, you should have walked DOWN to Strahinjica Bana (aka Silicone Valley) one of Belgrade’s famous “strips” where you would have found hundreds of glitterati partying on the many bars and restaurants. I have no idea what Karaoke Bar you found, but you were 100m away from Bar Central, a world class cocktail bar with brilliant music and crowd (it is out of shot to the left in the photo captioned “Belgrade after midnight”).

Had you asked anyone, they would have directed you to one of the clubbing areas (like the river party boats).

If only you had made contact with any of the expatriates in Belgrade we could have guided you away from the crap bars and shown you Belgrade’s incredible nightlife.

Belgrade is deservedly famous for being a fantastic party town. It is a real pity you did not have someone to show you around. Even people like Tom Merchant, founder of award winning travel company Black Tomato, have praised Belgrade lavishly , as have The Times of London , the New York Times and dozens more.

Michael and the Writer

Michael interviews a local writer who speaks for the ultra-liberals of Serbia.

I support the Liberal Democratic Party so the early part of Mr Filip David’s interview with Michael Totten  pretty much sums up what I think about much of the politics here.

That said, I am a foreigner and I have my own biases. But Mr David is unrepresentative of Serbs in general, and presents a deeply negative view of Serbia that even I would dispute.

Imagine I went to America and interviewed Michael Moore then reported back that his was the authentic voice of the USA? Well that is kind of how many Serbs will feel about Michael’s encounter with Filip David.

At times Michael and Mr David veer into speculation, generalization and stereotypes. They try and pass off Serbian anti-Americanism as the product mere propaganda and conspiracy theories.

It is true that the lunatic fringe and the Radical Party peddle absurd anti-Semitic and anti-American conspiracy theories but do not let that obscure the fact that Serbian anti-Americanism is firmly rooted in rightful outrage over the Clinton administration’s illegal and murderous bombing of the country in 1999. That bombing campaign is now widely seen to have been the result of being duped by the KLA, an attack on a sovreign state in supported Muslim separatist ethnic nationalists who went on to Ethnically Cleanse Serbs, Gorani and Roma from Kosovo and then turn the province into a corrupt and violent mafia state.

Had you Michael diversified his interview subjects, he may very well have come to understand that even those who support Kosovo independence here are outraged at the bombing and the general bullying manner in which post-Milosevic democratic Serbia has been treated by the US, EU and UN.

At one point Michael shocked me with this throw-away comment, writing:

Kosovo’s current prime minister Hashim Thaci, who really is a bit sketchy, was recently and absurdly accused of harvesting and selling Serb body parts. When you throw The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the mix, it’s a good idea to fact-check what you hear – which is frankly good advice in the Balkans in general, not just in Serbia.

Well Michael here is what you do not know: Those allegations came from noted UN prosecutor Carla Del Ponte in her book “The Hunt”. The do sound like rubbish, but as Human Rights Watch have noted, the underlying fact is that hundreds of Serbs have been “disappeared” since 1999 and the KLA are directly implicated. HRW have called for an investigation:

NEW YORK — A senior Human Rights Watch (HRW) official has called on Priština to investigate the fate of more than 400 missing non-Albanians in Kosovo.

In this way, Fred Abrahams argues in a commentary carried by BIRN, “it would prove it cared for all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity”.

Carla Del Ponte’s book, Abrahams says, with allegations concerning the possible trafficking of prisoners’ organs from a mysterious yellow house near the Albanian town of Burrel, “has led to Serbian officials exaggerating the claims, while officials in Priština and Tirana called them a slanderous lie”.

So he is not “a bit sketchy”, he oversees a government that allows the ongoing sectarian violence against Serbs, a government which is the inheritor of power from the KLA – a state department listed terrorist organisation and mafia enterprise that is directly implicated in the mass murder of both non-Albanians and Albanians in Kosovo.

For more on the Albanian organ harvesting case and Albanian mass murderers being freed by the Hague after killing all witnesses, see:

http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/harvesting-kidneys-from-abducted-civilians-in-organ-farms/
http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/hague-won’t-investigate-war-crimes-against-serb

You might notice that the point is not about whether the Organ Harvesting is true or not, but the blanket refusal of UN and other bodies to investigate alleged crimes against Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo.

It is the double standard that irks Serbs. Every ridiculous claim but its enemies are reprinted as gospel truth whilst acknowledged war crimes like the abduction of 400 Serbian civilians remains investigated (and unreported) to this today.

Snide Remarks

Michaels photo captions are very snide at times. For example in one photo he captions a picture of Belgrade’s military museum and writes:

Well no, Michael, it is a museum. Do American’s like to show off their military hardware in public too? I mean what the hell is the Intrepid doing moored at New York?

Serbia had not been bombed

During a walking tour Michael “saw virtually no evidence that Belgrade had ever been bombed.” A walk down Kralja Milena would have provided you with all the evidence required. There are multiple shattered building right across the road from the US Embassy.

Later he sees,

“[The] bombed-out Belgrade TV station building…[which]…stood out as one of the few remaining demolished buildings from the air campaign. It seems to be left as a show-piece. It’s hard to say, though, if this building was left in its condition to wave the bloody shirt against Americans or against the Milosevic regime.”

This is an interesting point because I have wondered why so many ruins have been left in place. Serb opinion is split. Some say it is, as Michael says “to wave a bloody shirt”. Other people have told me there are unexploded bombs, that it is massively expensive to clear the sites and that there are fears of Depleted Uranium. I am not sure if any of that is true.

Michael reveals his ignorance about what really happened in Kosovo

Michael writes that

“[Milosevic's] ethnic-cleansing campaign turned 90 percent of Kosovar Albanians into refugees”.

This is a half-truth, and as such is one of the enduring anti-Serb myths of the war.

The typical story starts with genocidal Serbs picking on poor defenceless Albanians and ends with trains of Albanian civilians pouring out of Kosovo terrified for their lives, the survivors of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

CUT!

That is the KLA/Western Media version and has no bearing on reality. It was all media warfare.  The story should have started back in 1981 with the Pristina riots. It should have charted the KLA insurgency and, murderous campaign against Albanian rivals. It should include the ethnic warfare against Serbs that culminated in the Serbian Army being deployed to fight the KLA insurgency.

And of course the the story did not end with the Kosovar civilians leaving in droves. We later discovered that the massacres and ethnic cleansing claimed by NATO and the KLA did not happen. The civilians fled because they were warned to by the KLA and because they were terrified by the news reports from the duped Western media. They all returned home within a few months. And then they set about hounding, persecuting and ethnically slaughtering non-Albanians so that 90% of non-Albanians have been permanently Ethnically Cleansed from Kosovo since the NATO bombing.

So please shut up about the temporary, propaganda-driven KLA-orchestrated media stunt and pay some attention to the real outrage of Kosovo: The hundreds of thousands of deracinated Serbs, Gorani and Roma (not to mention the hundreds of missing, probably dead abductees), the illegal bombing of Serbian civilians, the human slave trafficking, the drug smuggling, the ongoing oppression of minorities in Kosovo. That is the real outrage in this story. You may very well see it first hand.

Since you are going to Kosovo. Make sure you visit the embattled Serb communities living in razor wire surrounded ghettos, guarded by foreign soldiers and under daily attack from Albanian sectarian violence.

Head to the south of the province, try and visit the village of Velika Hoca and the town of Orahovac. What you find will shock you.

Safe in Belgrade

Towards the end of the first instalment Michael asked Filip David “I feel like we’re safe here, is that true?”. Mr David replies “Yes, generally. But sometimes you will have somebody say they don’t like you if they hear you speak English.”

Michael notes that no-one had been rude to he or Sean. I think it is worth noting that Belgrade is one of the safest cities in the world. There is virtually no street crime and xenophobia is so are as to be almost unheard of. An American is in more danger in London than Belgrade where the overwhelming majority of encounters will be hospitable and helpful – more so than any Western European capital.

Final thoughts

Michael, if you read this, please get in touch with me next time you are in Belgrade. I am a fellow writer on Pajama’s Media [here and here ], a fan and an ideological fellow traveler.

I will introduce you to ideas that you have not explored, for example how it was the KLA who mastered Hizbollah-style media warfare and used it to dupe the West into unnecessary and illegal aggression against Serbia. I will give you Western conservative’s account of what happened here. I guarantee that there is a vast and nuanced complexity to the situation here that you are missing right now, a complexity that I can help explain.

And I will take you out and show you a proper Belgrade good time, I will make sure you are put up somewhere decent and I will get you to the airport for free.

Do we have a deal?

The ever superb Theodore Dalrymple expounds on “Why Britain struggles to assimilate immigrants”. He controversially argues that despite the recent riots, France has done a better job of integration:

Living in two countries, France and Britain, I have found it instructive to compare how each has gone about welcoming (if that is the word I seek) these immigrants. Each has gotten one thing right and one thing wrong: but the French situation, for all the urban violence that broke out in 2005 among the Muslim “youth,” is easier, at least in theory, to put right.

France has the easier task, perhaps, because it is an ideological, or at least a philosophical, state, while Britain is an organic one. The French state, unlike the ancient country it rules, is a new, reborn state. It has a foundation myth, that of the French Revolution, which ushered in the age of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. It doesn’t matter whether France has ever achieved any of those desiderata in practice (what political ideal ever has been achieved, at least unequivocally?), or that the storming of the Bastille was in reality more sordid than glorious. The terms “republican equality” and “republican elitism” (the second, the achievement of status by means of effort and talent, an outgrowth of the first) do in fact mean something, and they exert a magnetic pull on almost every mind with which they come into contact. And the exaltation of this myth, which supposed that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were every man’s birthright andthat France was a beacon shining the light of reason to the whole world, has meant that (in theory) everyone who makes France his home becomes a Frenchman tout court—not an Armenian Frenchman or a Malian one, but just a Frenchman.

This myth has actually guided French cultural policy. That France, as a result of the Revolution, has for a long time been a secular state de jure, rather than merely de facto, as is Britain (where religious tolerance is an outgrowth of custom, not law), enabled it to abolish headscarves in the public schools without incurring the odium of anti-Muslim bigotry. The ban simply accorded with the state’s secular founding philosophy. Multiculturalism, that is, is not compatible with the founding Enlightenment mythology of France; assimilation, not integration, is the goal. Everyone learns the same history in France; and nos ancêtres les gaulois comes to express not a biological but a cultural truth—and an easy-to-understand one, at that.

he goes on to address that scourge, the Race Lobby:

In Britain, multiculturalism became a career opportunity and a source of political patronage. So-called experts on cultural sensitivity and equal opportunity—generally people whose ambitions far exceeded their talent, except for bureaucratic intrigue—built little empires, whose continued existence depended on the permanence of racial and other divisions in society.

Read on: A Confusion of Tongues by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Spring 2008

e’Lollipop [IMDB], one of South Africa’s most famous and successful films,  has been re-released on DVD in advance of a sequel, e’Lollipop 2: Tsepo’s Story .

From the film website:

“First released in 1976, this extraordinary motion picture story of two South African children and their dog, Sugarball, touched the hearts of audiences around the world.

Despite the fear, hatred and brutality that plagued South Africa in the mid-1970′s, e’Lollipop told a story of friendship and commitment that transcended racial boundaries.

After nearly being banned in South Africa under Apartheid, it went on to become a cult classic. Shot in Southern Africa, Lesotho and New York, e’Lollipop was seen in over 40 countries and starred local and international talent including the late Ken Gampu, Oscar and Golden Globe Award Winner José Ferrer, and Golden Globe Nominee Karen Valentine.”

It really is a beautiful story. Also from the site:

e’Lollipop is the extraordinary tale of two inseparable South African children – Tsepo (Muntu Ndebele) and his orphaned friend Jannie (Norman Knox). They meet when Jannie’s parents die tragically in a car crash in the Lesotho mountains. Jannie is sent to a missionary station in Tsepo’s village where they become best friends. Together with their dog Sugarball, life is full of childhood fun and antics until tragedy strikes again: Jannie, aged 13, is seriously injured when one of their games goes horribly wrong. Tsepo and his community pull together so that Jannie can receive emergency medical treatment. A daunting challenge lies ahead – and at what cost will Jannie survive?

Tsepo and Jannie’s inspirational story unfolds against the breathtaking backdrops of a dramatic African landscape and New York City in the mid-1970s.

e’Lollipop is a life-changing story that reminds us of the true value of friendship, family, community and sacrifice – despite colour or creed. e’Lollipop is a true
South African classic of international stature that transcended the Apartheid boundaries of its day.

The film is not just a superb drama, it is also hilarious in parts. I can still vividly remember parts of the film even though I have not seen it in nearly 30 years. Who could forget the scene where the two of them dip their recently smacked backsides in to the river, and then go off to the witchdoctor for ointments. And the part where the vendor in New York asks Tshepo “Are you speaking Sotho boy?”, even the toughest cynics had tears in their eyes.

e’Lollipop – Return of the Classic

The central tenet of those who support unrestricted mass immigration has long been its putative economic benefits.

When the social costs of mass immigration were pointed out, the Homo Economicus argument would be deployed.

I have long seen through the sham of this argument and I am on record slamming it regularly.

See or example:

• Immigration sophistry debunked…again
• The Guardian group sinks further into insanity…
• On hearing Simon Hughes is calling for increased immigration…

Today I read of a vindication of sorts. It turns out that people like Robert Henderson and I were absolutely right all along.

From the BBC:

Record levels of immigration have had “little or no impact” on the economic well-being of Britons, an influential House of Lords committee has said.

It says competition from immigrants has had a negative impact on the low paid and training for young UK workers, and has contributed to high house prices.

The peers, including two ex-chancellors and other Cabinet members, say there should be a cap on immigration levels.

…In their report, “The Economic Impact of Immigration”, the peers said the government “should have an explicit target range” for immigration and set rules to keep within that limit.

…And they rejected claims by ministers that a high level of immigration was needed to prevent labour shortages as “fundamentally flawed”.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Immigration ‘small benefit’ to UK

Dr Mega (left) and Stephen Schwartz (right), paid shills or merely educated bigots?

Have agents of Serbia’s Radical Party or perhaps renegade elements of the Serbian Intelligence Service successfully penetrated the US right-wing media establishment to conduct False Flag Operations against legitimate critics of Serbia?

Sometimes it seems that way.

It appears that someone is successfully seeding trolls, shills, stooges and others agents into various media outlets, apparently with instructions to publish anti-Serb diatribes that are so obviously riddled with lies and exaggerations that they undermine legitimate efforts to address Serbian chauvinism.

The first of these (apparent) stooges that I came across was one Stephen (Suleiman) Schwartz, ostensibly a middle aged “scholar” and convert to Islam (from Judaism).

I discovered one of his an anti-Serb hate pieces in Pajamas Media which prompted me to write a comprehensive response on my blog which eventually led to my being offered an opportunity to debunk him in Pajamas Media itself.

“Three fingers in your ass”

Today I found another Serbophobe stooge, this time operating under the name Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis (no joke, but henceforth I will call him Dr Mega).

Dr Mega is apparently an “Orientalist, Historian, Political Scientist and author of 12 books”. Like Schwartz, Dr Mega is a middle aged convert to Islam and self-described “scholar”. Someone forwarded me one of his recent articles – “The Unrepented Serb: Epitome of Chauvinist Danger” – which turns out to one of the most risible Serb-baiting pieces of racist hate wrtiting that I have read since, well, since Stephen Schwartz’s cartoonish attack on Serbs in Pajamas Media.

I was going to debunk Dr Mega’s diatribe too, but there is no need. It is self-advertising rubbish that is riddled with obvious absurdities, contradictions and lies. But that is not my only reason for not wasting any time debunking him. There is no point. I don’t believe Dr Mega is really waging Jihad against Serbs and I don’t think he even believes his own articles. I suspect that Dr Mega is nothing but a paid provocateur, for hire race-baiter in the employ of advertising networks or possibly an intelligence service somewhere.

Now I do not actually know anything about Dr Mega apart from what he has said about himself, so this is just speculation, but his behavior fits the profile.

A paid provocateur writes deliberately offensive material, usually disguised as journalism or commentary, which is designed to bait and infuriate a target community for the purpose of driving traffic – outraged members of the target community – to advert laden websites where their page impressions and occasional click-throughs make big bucks for the operators.

A hint to this being Dr Mega’s motive and possibly his real profession lies in the publisher of his hate piece, America Chronicle, which is ostensibly a low-rent news magazine but in fact it is just a front for Ultio LLC, a commercial affiliate and advertising network. Other sites in the network include California Chronicle and several pseudo-brands, all of them either reposting syndicated content or hosting bait articles like Dr Mega’s piece.

Sites like that have a simple business model: post outrageous and controversial content to drive traffic to your adverts. Their modus operandus? You simply select a target community (often an embattled ethnic group), pay people like Dr Mega to slander them, then wait for the outraged visitors come surging in as news of the slander travels through ethnic communities.

One example from an Ultio LLC site is a bogus field poll posted on a high traffic republican forum claiming that a political candidate was a right-wing extremist. In another example Ethiopian history was falsified to bait the Ethiopian community into visiting the site (and its adverts).

This baiting is a disgusting and cynical practice.

The best policy regarding trolls in general is to ignore them. It is doubly true of paid shills and provocateurs working for marketing and advertising companies.

If you believe that the publisher is in any way a decent operation, then make sure you send a short note to the editor or managing board to register your protest. You might remind them that hate speech is illegal and warn them that you will flag their site to authorities and their advertisers.

In the case of American Chronicle and its sister sites, simply report them to Google Adsense for gross violations of policy. Google Adsense prohibits sites that have content that contains “racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization”.

To anonymously submit your notification of a Google Adsense terms of use violation (e.g. racism against Serbs) simply click on the “Ads by Google” on any of the sites’ adverts, then click “Report a violation” and if the reason is hate speech, select “Website” and “Other”. Put a link to the article in the comment field and note that it constitutes hate speech. If the offending site’s Adsense account is suspended, they are out of business.

If you or your community are baited, go over to the site. Read the diatribe if you must. Then hit back smartly by hitting the baiters where it hurts, in their pockets.