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Friday, February 09, 2007

CENSORING HOLOCAUST DENIAL - WHERE GERMANY IS GOING

From the Telegraph
People who question the official history of recent conflicts in Africa and the Balkans could be jailed for up to three years for "genocide denial", under proposed EU legislation.

Germany, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, will table new legislation to outlaw "racism and xenophobia" this spring.

Included in the draft EU directive are plans to outlaw Holocaust denial, creating an offence that does not exist in British law.

But the proposals, seen by The Daily Telegraph, go much further and would criminalise those who question the extent of war crimes that have taken place in the past 20 years...........

The draft text states: "Each member state shall take the measures necessary to ensure that the following intentional conduct is punishable: 'publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in'... the Statute of the ICC."

General Lewis MacKenzie, the former commander of UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, courted controversy two years ago by questioning the numbers killed at Srebrenica in 1995.

He took issue with the official definition of the massacre as genocide and highlighted "serious doubt" over the estimate of 8,000 Bosnian fatalities. "The math just doesn't support the scale of 8,000 killed," he wrote.

Balkans human rights activists have branded Gen MacKenzie an "outspoken Srebrenica genocide denier" and, if approved, the EU legislation could see similar comments investigated by the police or prosecuted in the courts after complaints from war crimes investigators or campaigners.

A German government spokesman said: "Whether a specific historic crime falls within these definitions would be decided by a court in each case."....

Even without the threat of prosecution, there is concern that academics will try to avoid controversy by ignoring or even suppressing research that challenges genocide claims or numbers of those killed.

David Chandler, the professor of international relations at the University of Westminster's Centre for the Study of Democracy, fears that the draft law could inhibit his work.

"My work teaching and training researchers, and academic work more broadly, is focused upon encouraging critical thinking. Measures like this make academic debate and discussion more difficult," he said.

Prof Chandler also worries that the legislators will close down democratic debate on foreign policy. "Genocide claims and war crimes tribunals are highly political and are often linked to controversial Western military interventions. Should this be unquestioned? Is it right for judges to settle such arguments?" he asked.

This shows how far down this particular slippery slope to totalitarianism we are. In theory this could mean that if it could be made impossible for our own leaders to deny their responsibilty for such things as the Krajina & Dragodan massacres or to dispite that the prime genocide at Srebrenica was our ally Nasir Oric's (I would be opposed to that too - I want them to face a fair trial) but in practice I very much doubt if it would work that way. This shows, yet again, that whenever governments bring in laws to restrict freedom citing allegedly noble causes they very quickly descend to using the powers for more sordid purposes.

If I was not opposed to membership of the EU on economic grounds I would oppose it now on the grounds that it is clearly very suitable as an instrument to restrict human freedom. Unfortunately yet again Germany proves that Nazism was not a dictatorship imposed unwillingly on Germany but a manifestation of the evil endemic to German culture.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

CONTINUING DEBATE ON YUGOSLAVIA

This is the continuation of the comment I put down here on 31st January Though everybody else dropped out I got into an interesting debate with a Guardianista journalist which, while it doesn't say anything I haven't said before does perhaps concentrate it & to be frank I want to keep it available. The whole discussion is here, from Jan 31st 12.09 but I will only put up a precis of the other view here otherwise it would get really long but I invite you to check it out.
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American intervention in Bosnia prepeatedly persuaded Izetbegovic not to go for a compromise peace, it was them who advised him that all that was needed for heavy western intervention was announcement of the massacre of "5,000 people" in Srebrenica, it was them who repeatedly droke mandatory UN sanctions to fly in weapons & the al Quaeda forces that were the only combat worthy soldiers on the Moslem fundamentalist side.

American intervention in Croatia involved sending US officers help our openly genocidal Nazi friend Tudjman by organising the ethnic cleansing of the 250,000 Krajina Serbs (there had originally been 560,000 Serbs in land claimed by Croatia - 250,000 of them are still "missing".

Most Germans are not proud of Auschwitz - equally American "pride" in the death of half a million Yugoslavs is misplaced.
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Someone said "nobody is defending "Milosevic & Co" but...."
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I'm going to put my head above the parapet to defend Milosevic.

In 4 1/2 years of "trial" on 60 counts no actual evidence was ever produced against him. We would all know this if the media, which initially & correctly, described this as the "trial of the century" had not decided to stop serious reporting as soon as it became clear that not only was the prosecution not making a case but Milosevic was proving that the true war criminals were in NATO.

Planning an aggressive war is the prime war crime & it seems difficult to dispute that NATO leaders not Milosevic engaged in it. Targeting civilians is also a war crime & if the fact that 80% of those killed by NATO bombs, mostly directed at urban areas in northern Yugoslavia, were civilians is not sufficient then the fact that Clinton & Blair boasted of deliberately targeting the Yugoslav TV station proves their guilt.

Participating in genocide is a crime against humanity & while there is no evidence for this against Milosevic there is against every MP who voted for this illegal war. 2 months before the start of the war Foreign Secretary Cook informed Parliament that the majority of killings were of Serb civilians murdered by the NATO armed & organised KLA. We now know that the KLA also killed a similar number of Albanians to enforce their terrorism but this does not strengthen the case against Milosevic.

And then he was poisoned with rifampcin.

If anybody has any actual evidence against Milosevic I would like to hear it, as would the ICTY. This does not include the sworn testimony of Mr Moore's then Leader Ashdown, who claimed, while standing on the Albanian border, to have seen named villages being ethnically cleansed. It was subsequently proven that they could not be seen due to mountains being in the way. It is such lies & such media silence that allowed us to engage in these illegal & genocidal wars.
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SCHUSTERIAN but I think it's wise to be as skeptical of a Milosevich's defenders as of his critics.....What I know for certain is that horrible things happened in Yugoslavia. I was there for four months in 1996. I was impartial, and talked to as many Serbs as Bosnians and Croats. I personally met no monsters. However, I heard many grizly stories. I did spend some time in Banja Luka, a town where tens of thousands of Muslims once lived with about a dozen mosques. Not more more Muslims, no more Mosques
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You ask if I would have accepted the "court's" verdict had it been of guilt & then say you accept that Milosevic was a "fall guy". The obvious answer is that the western funded "court", has betrayed its duty by not bringing charges against any NATO leader despite undeniable evidence of at least making an aggressive war.

This same court released Nasir Oric the perpetrator of the prime (& perhaps only but deliberately unreported) Srebrenics Massacre. What sort of obscene corrupt monsters release a man who shows journalists videos of him committing genocide merely because it is an inconvenient truth? The "court" is wholly corrupt & the fact that Milosevic was proven poisoned in their "care" merely reinforces the fact - if such people are to be allowed to pronounce on Milosevic then the victims in Stalin's "trial's" were equally guilty.

Chicagoboy you may not be aware that Simon Weisenthal went on record to say that the first ethnic cleansing & murders were those of 50,000 Serbs by our Croatian Nazi leaders. Obviously, due to his political unimportance, this got far less western media coverage than the visit of Bianca Jagger to Sarajevo. I note your opinion on the virtue of the rest of the world attacking the US to protect the right of secession of Utah (& presumably those areas of Southern California with a Mexican majority - a closer comparison to Kosovo).

I take it that there is no need for the atrocities you mention to actually have happened (as the rape camp story didn't & the Srbrenica massacre story certainly censored the initial genocide & may have been wholly fabricated) but merely to have been reported in enemy media. That is a fairly widespread call for bombing of the USA that you are making. Personally I would be satisfied with the hanging of the chief war criminals, Clinton, Wesley Clark, Albright & probably Clinton & Gore & the division of Yugoslavia on true ethnic grounds (those areas which have or had rthnic Serb populations being Sreb & the rest going to our Nazi mini-states & no bombing of New York hospitals.
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Since I have said the "court" is wholly corrupt & its decisions comparable to those of the courts enforcing Stalin's purges I would think it obvious I wouldn't accept them. I would accept an uncorrupt court - would you - I'm very sure Clinton & his racist henchcreatures wouldn't?

Your criticism of my wishing justice for Clinton & others on his side engaged in genocide would hold some weight if, even if you hadn't said Milosevic awas a "fall guy" you had also said that imprisoning him & others was wrong.

Your criticsm of me for suggesting that Yugoslavia could have been divided, not perfectly but with much more fairness than we aimed at, would have some validity if you had been more strenous, or indeed at all strenuous in denouncing the way the western powers carved it up on lines which don't even pretend to be ethnic ones. We are talking here not about the difference between a good & bad solution but between a bad & a genocidal solution. The good solution would have been to "take no action against the territorial integrity or unity" of Yugoslavia, as we were & indeed still are solemnly committed under the Helsinki Treaty & international law. Save your abuse for the corrupt pro-Nazis who broke & are breaking that treaty.

As regards the poisoning it is a matter of fact that a blood test on Milosevic prior to his death showed the presence of rifampcin, a prescription drug used in the treatment of leprosy & also able to induce heart attacks. There is absolutely no dispute over this result or that he was in the care of the court at the time - court's current defence is that he must have obtained it & done it to himself, despite being under 24 hour video surveillance, in the desire to give himself a painful death, save the ICTY judges from looking corrupt when they find him guilty on zero evidence & using a difficult to trace poison in the desire to save the ICTY from any suspicion they murdered him.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NOR20060601&articleId=2542
gives an extensive, very extensive, breakdown of the certainty of the evidence & the numerous contradictory stories the ICTY gave to "prove" their innocence. Is this "putting up"?
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Worse than that - the plan is not to divide Kosovo from Serbia on ethnic grounds but to give all of Kosovo to our genocidal KLA friends irrespective of its ethnic make up. With solemn guarantees that they won't commit genocide any more - or at least until its convenient again
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SCHUSTERIAN Where there's smoke, there's usually fire, and yes there's incriminating smoke around Milosevic's demise. Would another court convict the ICTYers of murdering Milosevic? We will never know, but probably not
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Schusterian
your evidence against Milosevic seems to be based entirely on your "no smoke without fire" that because the western media said he was "another Hitler" & Izetbegovic a "moderate Moslem committed to a multicultural state". On this basis Trotsky was a German agent because the Soviet media unanimously said so. The alternative view is that the media involved lied continuosly & deliberately in both cases.

In Milosevic's case we have the fact that in 4 1/2 years the most expensive & thorough legal team NATO could assemble could find no actual evidence against him which, I submit, is as strong evidence of his innocence as could, even in theory, be produced.

As regards his poisoning you said "Besides, where's the motive? From everything I've read, the trial was all but over and a conviction was likely". I would go further & say that a conviction was certain & had been since before the "trial" started. The problem is that, as even you seem to agree, there was no evidence on which any judiciary which was not wholly corrupt could convict & since all the "evidence" is on record all such a conviction would prove is the corruption, racism & guilt of the NATO politicians & their judges, displayed forever for humanity to judge. I suggest that getting them off this hook is a strong motive for a conventient murder.

There is "no dispute" over the evidence that the blood test proved the presence of rifampicin which could not have occurred accidentally. The effect of this drug is to weaken the heart (& also cure leprosy but we can be certain that was not the problem) & to pass out of the body quickly. There is therefore nothing surprising in that when his heart failed it had passed out of his body. This is clearly a very sophisticated piece of poisoning designed to commit a "perfect murder" which would have worked except for the blood test. Such murder would presumably be within the capabilities of the CIA or other NATO assassins but not of one or two ordinary guards.

That Clinton, Blair & co repeatedly engaged in mass murder on a racial basis is a legitimate basis for calling him a racist war criminal. Indeed by your own definition that there is no smoke without fire the very fact that he hasc been accused of participating in genocide precludes you from fdefending him. You say that Milosevic who certainly ran a very fine case against the best lawyers & judges money can buy was a "brute" - if you have any actual evidence of his brutishness apart from his skill in court you should present it or apologise.

If you wish to continue critcising me for saying that in the circumstances the least bad option for Yugoslavia would be division on ethnic lines it behooves you to say on what basis, if any, it should be divided,

You may be right, though I am not certain, that Clinton, Blair etc will not be brought to justice some day but this is in no way a justification for us pretending that they should not be. Not only by the standards you use against Milosevic but by standards which involve the existence of evidence there is clearly a case that these people have been guilty of war crimes & genocide that if you believe the death penalty is in any circumstances justified (I do) would warrent them being hung by the neck. Justice is not served by saying they have got away with it so far so we ought to pretend it is all the victims fault.

"Why has no one pointed out that the Kosovars are as resistant to joining a "Greater Albania" as they are to remaining part of Serbia?" - I simply do not believe you are that niave - when NATO took over they removed all border controls from Kosovo, allowing unlimited immigration by Albanians interested in obtaining a house without the inconvenience of having to pay for it. An "independent" Kosovo would merely be a stepping stone to Greater Albania
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SCHUSTERIAN In realpolitik terms, I see the situation as rather simple. The Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovars were smart enough to allign with a strong West. The Serbs made the error of alligning with a weak Russia (undoubtedly beause of the link between Belgrade and Moscow). The rest is history. Serbia was demonized though they may have been morally no worse than the Croats or the Kosovars
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Schusterian
I see what you mean about descending to abuse - "absolutist anti-West apologist" & "stupid" seem to be the height of debate to which you can reach & the former at least is proveably quite untrue. On the other hand since I have never insulted you the fact that you have insulted me is a strange justification for you running away.

What your position comes down to is that you will not & presumably cannot produce any evidence whatsoever to support any of your allegations against Milosevic, cannot dispute that he was obviously murdered, cannot dispute that he & the Serbs were the victims here (& to be fair in your last post barely try to) & yet object to me calling Clinton, Blair etc war criminals in terms much more reasoned & evidentially supported than anything you have claimed. It seems your position is that anybody who applies the same, or even similar, standards to western leaders as to others is "anti-western" because the West cannot survive such a comparison - in fact I have a much more faith in the West than you.

Something which has become apparent from your remarks abot visiting Yugoslavia & interviewing people "including Serbs". Is that you personally appear to be one of the journalists employed by the western media to deliberately lie & censor (censoring for example any reporting of the Nazi antecedents of our allies & their public commitment to racial genocide) over the last 17 years for the deliberate purpose of assiting that genocide, ethnic cleansing & child sex slavery. This is something which could only be done by an obscene corrupt racist lying murdering child raping genocidal Nazi war criminal & your fellow journalists at the BBC, ITN etc are individually a thousandfold more guilty of war crimes than Milosevic & I assume than anybody you can name. You will note I am sticking purely to proven facts & not descending, like you, to unjustified abuse. Had your kin not lied to us deliberately over 17 years it is impossible that the British people, who are inherently decent, would have gone along with our government going to war to support Nazis in the practice of genocide
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SCHUSTERIAN Our disagreement is: A) over your thinking that American policy was a force of evil whereas I think it was a well-intentioned but flawed policy with limited (and overstated) effectiveness. And B) You think Milosevic was a hero martyred by assasination, whereas I think he was a corrupt politician complicit in if not directly responsible for war crimes, who *may* have been assasinated, but with such ambiguity around it that the assertion is meaningless.
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My call for Clinton Blair & co to be hung depends not merely on their breaches of international law, which you acknowlrdge, but that those breaches formed part of a joint criminal conspiracy (a term widely used by the ICTY) to assist individuals & organisations with clear antecedents as Nazis in the service of Hitler, in the deliberate genocide of hundreds of thousands of human beings. I do not consider that a mere technical infraction & if you do it is difficult to think of any crime whatsoever which you can think should be punished. This is the standard we imposed at Nuremburg. That they have participated in genocide, with open Nazis, for the purpose of imposing something similar to the racial programme of Adolf Hitler, in my opinion, justifies the description Nazi - if not there is no such animal. Godwin's "law" was produced to prevent attacks on people as Nazis as a form of OTT hyperbole - it does not prevent the accurate use of the term.

I stand by my statement that the British people are inherently decent. Despite your misreading I would say the same about the Americans. The problem is not peoples but their governments & the media which lie to help governments commit atrocities.

On that basis I note that you do not dispute my guess that you are a reporter who "informed" the British people about the Yugoslav wars. I obviously do not know how much you were paid for that & it is inane of you to ask me how much it was. However you do not & I think cannot, dispute that you, along with virtually all the MSM reporters deliberately censored the Nazi antecedents of our allies & worse, their public commitments to genocide as well as promoting very many racist lies about the Serbs (if I am wrong you may be able to link to a contemporary report of yours). As a journalist you will probably be aware that some journalists in Rwanda have been convicted of crimes against humanity for spreading lies & hate speech - clearly, unless we are again going to have your line that international law should only apply to the lesser breeds there is a very strong case to answer, certainly far stronger than anything against Milosevic, that almost every UK journalist involved is a corrupt racist guilty of assisting in war crimes & genocide.

I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that you & indeed Cohen "know something about the Balkans". You are therefore all the more to be blamed that you say "So it's not "truth and justice" I seek, but narratives" when you know such narratives to be lies.

As regards your examples

1) It is a fact that in 4 1/2 years of "trial" no actual evidence against Milosevic could be produced. It may be that you are on record as calling Mother Theresa & the Pope thugs for their participation in Auschwitz, despite the lack of evidence that they did, but the normal human reaction is that not only a total lack of evidence but all the evidence being to the contrary leads to a presumption of innocence. If you know of any current legal system which officially ignores evidene I would be interested to hear of it.

2) It is a fact that Milosevic was poisoned. How & by whom is a legitimate matter from speculation. I regard the theory that he sought to avoid the crescendo of a trial where he was magnificently proving his enemies guilt by killing himself, in a painful way. using a drug which would be likely to save his persectors from suspicion, & to which anyway he had no access, as being less probable than the only apparent alternative - that he was murdered by a corrupt NATO controlled court.

3) It is a fact that Clinton & co are war criminals, if only in a technical sense, because they engaged in aggressive war contrary to international law. Bearing in mind that this was knowingly done, according to Robin Cook, then UK Foreign Secretary, to assist in genocide makes it very much more than technical mass murder.
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SCHUSTERIAN %G:

Returning to respond to your numbered points. I've reread all your posts on this thread and was impressed with your grasp of the details, though naturally you only tell one side of a many-sided story. I had already begun to acknowledge that your heart is basically in the right place. Anyway, as we cut away the invective and speciousness from our debate and settle into mutually respectable, if differing positions
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It shouldm't matter whether I am Serbian or not if my arguments are true - in fact I am Scots, which may give me either a bias or a reasonable appreciation of small nations, according to taste. This is my blog http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/ . If you look at my "kin" remark you will see it was it was in relation to your fellow journalists involved in informing us about Yugoslavia - granted not a blood relationship but pretty tribal.

The service of Hitler refers ro Tudjman (who is on record as saying that "genocide is commanded by the word of the Almighty") & to Izetbegovic who was a leader of the Young Moslems who served as auxiliaries to the Handzar division of the SS, not one of the nicer SS units (he is on record as saying "there can be neither peace nor co-existence with non-Moslems" which leave genocide as the only alternative) & some leaders of the KLA, former members of the Skanderbeg division of the SS of similar repute (who have publicised their first action in their fight for "freedom" as the deliberate racial murder of a group of Serbian refugees - this was clearly genocide). In all 3 cases the western media who repeatedly called Milosevic "another Hitler" quite deliberately censored any mention of the Nazi antecedents of these people & more importantly of their public commitments to genocide. To my mind reporting that omits this cannot be honest or even instructive about these wars. I'm sorry if you think it wrong of me to hold you personally responsible for your role in not reporting this but a wall of silence is built one brick at a time.

Incidentally the Wikipedia Tudjman article is taken almost verbatim from a Croatian Nazi government hagiography & maintained by people with Croatian sounding names - this demonstrates the weakness of Wiki ae a primary source.

"For the record, you (and 9%G) see Clinton et al.'s formal violation of international law as a defining feature of their personal characters and time in office. I do not. As for Milosevic, you two grant him the benefit of the reasonable doubt, while I impose the burden of the reasonable suspicion. These points seem to be the heart of our disagreement. Is bias involved? I guess we all suspect it."

Indeed. This does seem to be the heart of it. I think you demonstrate the bias here well yourself. The balance of doubt or assumption of guilt should apply to all parties equally. To treat one party in the opposite way to the other IS by definition bias. You acknowledge giving this balance to Clinton et al (in fact much more than a balance since you have acknowledged that in law they are war criminals) while counting it against Milosevic. In fact I would say that a benefit of the doubt, or something close thereunto since at the time even I assumed the existence of some fire under the smoke, should have applied before the "trial" started. 4 1/2 years of the most thorough & hostile examination removes the doubt.

As regards my claim that in 4 1/2 years no evidence could be produced against him I may have exagerated. If you want an overview you should look at http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/ which has day to day archives. It is obviously pro-Milosevic but the fact that nobody on the other side in willing to do it speaks volumes. The sole piece of evidence directly linking Milosevic to any war crime was the testimony of Wesley Clark who said on oath that Milosevic had approached him at an international conference & for no discernable reason, informed him that he had known of the "Srebrenica massacre" in advance. A few minutes later Clark said, still on oath, that there was no connection between NATO & the KLA which was clearly perjury. Milosevic strenuously denied it & the only witness Clark cliam had inconveniently died. That is it. I think I am morally right, though legally wrong in considering Clark's sworn word as unworthy of the name "evidence". If that is the best NATO can produce & clearly it is, Milosevic is innocent & they are guilty.
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SCHUSTERIAN Generally, I think our respective agendae put us at odds philosophically. You have relatively near-term, concrete goals, i.e. clearing Milosevic and exposing the illegitimacy of the ICTY and Western hegenomy generally. I don't argue the righteousness of this. However, my stated interest is in narratives. Yours is persuasive if not yet perfectly convincing. Keep up the good work.
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Journalists are tribal? That's "news" to me! As a journalist, I've seen so much backstabbing and infighting that if it is a tribe, it's highly dysfuctional"

I never said they were the Waltons. My opinion of journalists generally must be clear & there are families like that. I think it undeniable that journalists do tend to work & indeed socialise together & do tend to share the view that they are something special in the world & indeed play the same games of employment musical chairs (often amending their political orientation for new employers).

That Greeks & Hungarians (Catholics) were the NATO countries which refused to contribute to the war may be a sign of bias depending on how you view it. It may also be a sign that, being local, they knew the background & could see the lies. By comparison I think, prior to the BBC starting off the evening news almost nightly with another KLA proaganda story, 99 out of a hundred British people were unbiased about Kosovo because they had never heard of it. They were biased to the extent that they had been told for 9 years nyn the MSM that Milosevic & the Serbs were "another Hitler" & "Nazis" but on Kosovo itself their innocence was total. Knowing the neighbourhood, like the Greeks is arguably better.

"Innocent until proven guilty (Clinton) though, right counselor?

"while counting it against Milosevic."

Yep, I think he's a terrible person! Guess it's my fascist bias, eh?"

Well yes I think Clinton innocent until proven guilty & Milosevic guilty until proven innocent cannot be claimed as impartial. Worse actually since it is impossible, even in theory, to disprove a non-specific allegation & as our reader will have seen you have declined to be more specific than calling him a "thug". Such non-specific allegations could be made against absolutely anybody - I will not be so impolite as to give an example but it requires no imagination.

In fact I would wish to see Clinton brought to a fair trial & on that I think there can be no doubt that there is at the very least a case to answer that he participated in aggressive war & genocide, which any remotely honest body committed to prosecuting war crimes in Yugoslavia would have been bound to try.

You are right about my short term goal, at least as regards Milosevic. In the long term I think it vital, for the literal survival of the human race, that we have something closely approaching a rule of international law. So long as relations between states depend entirely on who has the weapons & treaties are worthless pieces of paper the only defence for any nation is the possesion of WMDs. A world in which everybody has is clearly doomed. The alternative would be a US or possible Chinese global Empire which I think would be desadening to the human spirit & is not an aspect of the "west" I would support. Survival during the cold war may have been because both sides stuck rigidly to the letter of international law (the spirit is questionable but we do not live in a perfect world). The wars against Yugoslavia were enormously destructive of legality (legally Iraq is merely an addendum) & the judicial perversion of the ICTY added to it & the trial of Clinton, Blair, Kohl et al would, while not bringing the dead back, make the world a much safer place because it would make our countries somewhat trustworthy.

Another goal would be to have British media which showed significant concern for the truth. Democracy without it is of very limited meaning. In this I think the existence of the internet in which the lies of the MSM are regularly exposed & by which peoples across the the world comminicate without the intervention of government & MSM is the most hopeful development in human history since printing. And yes I do recognise the hubris in such an aim but you can change the course of a supertanker if you keep at it long enough.

I agree this discussion has gone as far as it can.
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SCHUSTERIAN 9%G:

Regarding your statements on journalists, the same description can be made of any profession: teachers, doctors, lawyers, bankers. Within this larger group, journalists are rather non-conformist. And by comparison to all -- by virtue of being non-professional -- bloggers are truly an anarchical and unruly bunch, like artists. However, when a blogger makes it into the big leagues (i.e. becomes a "journalist"), he/she will tend to conform. Don't hate the player, as they say, hate the game.
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Thanks Schusterian I wasn't intending to post more but you deserve a response - I have no doubt that we shall meet on the Guardian site in future anyway. We are not going to agree on Milosevic because there is no evidence on which we can agree. I don't think distance & possible ignorance on Clinton's part is a defence - if anything the fact that there were genuine issues of national wellbeing on the Serb side & none on the NATO side should be a mitigating circumstance, if needed, to the Serbs. Morally it is the difference between killing somebody in a barroom fight & using a snipers rifle on somebody unknown.

I do respect that you have indeed spent much more thought on this than almost any other MSM journalist has done & I hope you will continue to check out the Milosevic site & others on both sides.

You are not the first to have said "so long as you remain uncompromising and openly hostile, few will listen to you and your purpose is defeated" & it is a deliberate decision not to. I would undoubtedly be much more socially acceptable if I were to compromise on this & other subjects. Were I to say Milsoevic was a war criminal as much as Clinton we would quickly reach something close to agreement. However I don't believe it, I wouldn't feel clean doing so & from a strategic point of view, I am sure I would not be able to defend such an intellectually less coherent position so well. I would certainly be vulnerable to arguments along the lines "you accept that you don't need as serious evidence to convict Milosevic so here is some....." & am not convinced that even then I wouldn't have people saying if only I was more moderate they would agree with me - the path of compromise is a slippery one. In real life compromise is desireable but I think one should always do so only after being clear, to others & oneself, what you really want.

"Since I'm both enjoying and benefitting from the debate despite our disagreements" - because of our disagreements, after all without them it would be like Blair & Cameron debating tax cuts. I also enjoy a serious debate & anarchical & unruly suits me nicely.
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SCHUSTERIAN Good post.

"Anachical and unruly" was a compliment!

Good point: it *is* interesting because of our disagreements
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Thanks - I didn't take it otherwise.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

WINDMILLS PROVIDE CHEAP ELECTRICITY - BBC INSIST

This morning I woke up to BBC Radio Scotland's morning show to a feature on the project to put massive pylons across the Scottish Highlands so as to get us access to subsidised windmills. Naturally the BBC was, in their impartial way, in favour & Gary stated, as fact, that these pylons would allow us to get "cheap renewable energy".

I know the BBC are a state funded propaganda organisation strongly committed to the eco-fascist agenda but you can spin without being totally dishonest. The fact is that onshore wind cost 5.4p a unit, including back up & coal is half that (& French nuclear half again).

Being a bit of a bore about honesty I phoned them (twice) to mention the untruth & say they should, even in passing, mention the possibilty they had misled.

They didn't. I can accept that Gary, through ignorance or whatever made a foolish claim on air. What is quite improper is for the BBC to deliberately maintain this highly political lie when they know it to be such.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

NICK COHEN - GUARDIAN COLUMNIST

Said aprops of nothing much
Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic, they went for the professors and technicians who could make a democratic Iraq work
Which got a mention on Neil Clark's blog So I sent
If like me, you are curious as to which 'professors and technicians' Slobodan Milosevic 'went for', Cohen can be contacted at nick@nickcohen.net.

Indeed I am. Clearly nobody with the most minute shred of personal integrity, & indeed who was not an out & out obscene Nazi trying to justify genocide, ethnic cleansing & child sex slavey would make such a remark without having some evidence to back it up.
He replied
Dear Neil,
It's in chapter 5 if you've got the book taken from Roy Gutman's account
of the decaptiation of Mulsim civil society in Prejidor -- going for the
judges, teachers etc The Hague hearings backed him up.
All the best,Nick
& I said
A ) Prejodor is in Republika Srpska not Serbia

B ) Gutman has been proven a liar, not having been to the sites such as Omarska where he said he saw atrocities.

So where is your real evidence?

& he
Bye now
So take of that as you will. Perhaps i annoyed him with my reference to obscene Nazis but, since Gutman has acknowledged that he never saw atrocities he said he saw, not having visited Republika Srpska at the time he wrote of seeing atrocities there I submit that his testimony is worthless. If so has Cohen any actual evidence or was my initial assessment spot on? There is no 3rd choice.

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