There were some Serbian paramilitary groups that were somewhat out of the control of the Yugoslavian government that did bad shit. That was kinda the rule during the wars though. Most of the NATO backed groups had very open ties to the SS and frequently tagged Serb, Jew, and Roma homes with Nazi symbols.
While Yugoslavia remained very diverse (even the military was diverse), the NATO forces formed ethno-states and massacred or expelled Roma and Serbs from their homes (KLA burned 14,000 Roma homes out of 30,000). Serbia took in hundred of thousands of refugees and attempted to build them permanent housing and integrate them into the cities.
Sadly, the NATO bombings of 1999 leveled a lot of those refugee housing complexes as well as 164 state owned factories and all communication, water, and power infrastructure under state control. somewhere between 1500-2500 people were killed by NATO directly in 2 months, with the number of people found in mass graves amounting to about 2000-5000 total in all 4 wars. Mass graves are 2 or more people in a hole and a lot of them were clearly victims of mortar attacks or victims of battle. Lots with indiscernible ethnicity.
He doesnt,. He basically has the same position on the subject as Chomsky family enough. That A. It was exaggerated by NATO for justification of invasion and B. That it was completely disconnected to any reason Clinton an NATO actually had for invasion and that C. That despite Milosevic being a piece of shit he most likely had little to do with that massacre . (something that I think was backed by international courts later on)
I mean that sounds more like talking about it being purposefuly exaggerated by the press and Nato, not denial and the second part about the totally one sided coverage of attrocities in a multi-sided ethnic conflict to suit the wests goal and imperialist meddling, not trying to justify it cause "muslims did it too". Again i do remember the same approach from Chomsky and he already got "burned" once for questioning numbers and scale of attrocities, so they both probably thought strongly that the exageration and lack of both sides coverage was integral in the building of the imperialist narrrative that would justify intervention in Yugoslavia so they had to highlight it
This approach if questioning of the scale of an attrocity (that happened ) can be both dog whistle and disgusting and legit and historicaly correct based on the specific . I dont think "questioning the scale/number of bodies reported" at any or all instances is paramount to soft denial of the entire thing and shouldnt be used. Especially if its done against what is presented by the western media machina that promotes specific goals of nato and the US state and you have reasonable (non general "thats the way the US always lies") reasons ,at that point in time, to think that there was indeed fuckery (conflicted reports even by western investigation, timelines not matching, corruption and weird coverage of the subject etc).
I do think Parenti in the entirety of "To kill a Nation" makes these points clearcut and concise, complete with focus on the actualy proven serb massacres and ways Milosevic was most certenly not some leftist or good guy. I dont know exaclty the context of the paragraph or chapter that quote we are talking about is from and i agree that making these points back to back feels dog whistly tho if the massacres of the one side were used on the ground as justification for the massacres of the other side, bringing up (even if you are correct) both the zero of coverage for the former and the reasonable doupt you might have for the scale of the later will have you look like you are justifying the latter , even if these are point that should be made when trying to analyse the media machine's tactics and manufacturing of concent biases and tactic on the road to a wastern intervention in the erea
A lot of the time, and especially closer to such historical instances, writters like Parenti and even Chomsky who is much less inclined to support a side, will go overboard with their assumptions and doupts against what the dominant imperialist narrative is leading to actualy downplaying or ignoring parts of the massacres/problems the west uses as excuses to meddle, destroy and intervene to these countries . 95% of their analysis and approach regarding the situation remains correct and valuable but its very likely that they, as many leftist, reached a point of subconsious contrarianism on every topic , that even if it turns out correct in the vast majority of times it might lead to somewhat uncomfortable postions . I have to reread the book to know how much or how little Parenti's anaylisis of the massacres and milosevic falls into that
Wanna jump in here and say that yes. Parenti in no way heaps any praises on Milosevic in this book beyond some mentions of his good negotiating at the Dayton accords and a section where he points out that there were active opposition parties and active opposition newspapers in the country.
His main claim is that even if there was a legitimate very large scale (the 500,000 the media was occasionally claiming) organized ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbs, it still would have nothing to do with why NATO got involved.
NATO was backing literal Nazis in Croatia, they downplayed and ignored the ethnic cleansing carried out by them while exaggerating or parroting the claims from their generals about the Serbs. This wasn't because of some moral crusade or actual humanitarianism (his can bombs be humanitarian), it was because they wanted a cassius belli on Yugoslavia. They wanted a justification for razing their infrastructure and productive base to the ground because they resisted IMF and World Bank privatization.
They scattered depleted uranium in fields and aquifers not to stop a genocide, but to start one. To create starvation and mass death because the drugs needed for treating the Ill were kept away by sanction and the state factories that could produce them were leveled.
They didn't drop clusterbombs in cities that contained 26 nationalities living pretty harmoniously (for the region at least) to stop those people from killing Albanians, hell a lot of them were Albanian. They did it to terrorize and try to force them to comply to privatization.
You don't target 164 factories and just happen to only the state owned ones. You don't level the agricultural base and power and water infrastructure of an entire nation just because you needed to to prevent a genocide that you didn't even have hard evidence for until after the bombing.
NATO didn't even file with the ICC until after the bombing had started and most of their evidence was that "hundreds of thousands are fleeing Yugoslavia" conveniently ignoring the fact that they'd dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs on them and destroyed power and water systems.
Wasn't there still ethnic cleansing going on there?
There were some Serbian paramilitary groups that were somewhat out of the control of the Yugoslavian government that did bad shit. That was kinda the rule during the wars though. Most of the NATO backed groups had very open ties to the SS and frequently tagged Serb, Jew, and Roma homes with Nazi symbols.
While Yugoslavia remained very diverse (even the military was diverse), the NATO forces formed ethno-states and massacred or expelled Roma and Serbs from their homes (KLA burned 14,000 Roma homes out of 30,000). Serbia took in hundred of thousands of refugees and attempted to build them permanent housing and integrate them into the cities.
Sadly, the NATO bombings of 1999 leveled a lot of those refugee housing complexes as well as 164 state owned factories and all communication, water, and power infrastructure under state control. somewhere between 1500-2500 people were killed by NATO directly in 2 months, with the number of people found in mass graves amounting to about 2000-5000 total in all 4 wars. Mass graves are 2 or more people in a hole and a lot of them were clearly victims of mortar attacks or victims of battle. Lots with indiscernible ethnicity.
deleted by creator
He doesnt,. He basically has the same position on the subject as Chomsky family enough. That A. It was exaggerated by NATO for justification of invasion and B. That it was completely disconnected to any reason Clinton an NATO actually had for invasion and that C. That despite Milosevic being a piece of shit he most likely had little to do with that massacre . (something that I think was backed by international courts later on)
deleted by creator
I mean that sounds more like talking about it being purposefuly exaggerated by the press and Nato, not denial and the second part about the totally one sided coverage of attrocities in a multi-sided ethnic conflict to suit the wests goal and imperialist meddling, not trying to justify it cause "muslims did it too". Again i do remember the same approach from Chomsky and he already got "burned" once for questioning numbers and scale of attrocities, so they both probably thought strongly that the exageration and lack of both sides coverage was integral in the building of the imperialist narrrative that would justify intervention in Yugoslavia so they had to highlight it
The nationality thing is a bit sus tho
deleted by creator
This approach if questioning of the scale of an attrocity (that happened ) can be both dog whistle and disgusting and legit and historicaly correct based on the specific . I dont think "questioning the scale/number of bodies reported" at any or all instances is paramount to soft denial of the entire thing and shouldnt be used. Especially if its done against what is presented by the western media machina that promotes specific goals of nato and the US state and you have reasonable (non general "thats the way the US always lies") reasons ,at that point in time, to think that there was indeed fuckery (conflicted reports even by western investigation, timelines not matching, corruption and weird coverage of the subject etc).
I do think Parenti in the entirety of "To kill a Nation" makes these points clearcut and concise, complete with focus on the actualy proven serb massacres and ways Milosevic was most certenly not some leftist or good guy. I dont know exaclty the context of the paragraph or chapter that quote we are talking about is from and i agree that making these points back to back feels dog whistly tho if the massacres of the one side were used on the ground as justification for the massacres of the other side, bringing up (even if you are correct) both the zero of coverage for the former and the reasonable doupt you might have for the scale of the later will have you look like you are justifying the latter , even if these are point that should be made when trying to analyse the media machine's tactics and manufacturing of concent biases and tactic on the road to a wastern intervention in the erea
A lot of the time, and especially closer to such historical instances, writters like Parenti and even Chomsky who is much less inclined to support a side, will go overboard with their assumptions and doupts against what the dominant imperialist narrative is leading to actualy downplaying or ignoring parts of the massacres/problems the west uses as excuses to meddle, destroy and intervene to these countries . 95% of their analysis and approach regarding the situation remains correct and valuable but its very likely that they, as many leftist, reached a point of subconsious contrarianism on every topic , that even if it turns out correct in the vast majority of times it might lead to somewhat uncomfortable postions . I have to reread the book to know how much or how little Parenti's anaylisis of the massacres and milosevic falls into that
Wanna jump in here and say that yes. Parenti in no way heaps any praises on Milosevic in this book beyond some mentions of his good negotiating at the Dayton accords and a section where he points out that there were active opposition parties and active opposition newspapers in the country.
His main claim is that even if there was a legitimate very large scale (the 500,000 the media was occasionally claiming) organized ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbs, it still would have nothing to do with why NATO got involved.
NATO was backing literal Nazis in Croatia, they downplayed and ignored the ethnic cleansing carried out by them while exaggerating or parroting the claims from their generals about the Serbs. This wasn't because of some moral crusade or actual humanitarianism (his can bombs be humanitarian), it was because they wanted a cassius belli on Yugoslavia. They wanted a justification for razing their infrastructure and productive base to the ground because they resisted IMF and World Bank privatization.
They scattered depleted uranium in fields and aquifers not to stop a genocide, but to start one. To create starvation and mass death because the drugs needed for treating the Ill were kept away by sanction and the state factories that could produce them were leveled.
They didn't drop clusterbombs in cities that contained 26 nationalities living pretty harmoniously (for the region at least) to stop those people from killing Albanians, hell a lot of them were Albanian. They did it to terrorize and try to force them to comply to privatization.
You don't target 164 factories and just happen to only the state owned ones. You don't level the agricultural base and power and water infrastructure of an entire nation just because you needed to to prevent a genocide that you didn't even have hard evidence for until after the bombing.
NATO didn't even file with the ICC until after the bombing had started and most of their evidence was that "hundreds of thousands are fleeing Yugoslavia" conveniently ignoring the fact that they'd dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs on them and destroyed power and water systems.