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.
Nope yes, on refugee camps and cities in Yugoslavia. NATO was dropping clusterbombs on civilian targets and killed ethnic Albanians living in Yugoslavia in the process. My phone did an auto correct
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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.
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Nopeyes, on refugee camps and cities in Yugoslavia. NATO was dropping clusterbombs on civilian targets and killed ethnic Albanians living in Yugoslavia in the process. My phone did an auto correct