欧宝娱乐

“Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always鈥攁nd this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject鈥攚hat about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews?

I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming鈥擨 want to say 'unsettling'鈥攑recedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then鈥攂elatedly you may say鈥攖o guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and ethnic dictatorship in the Balkans took precedence. This, by the way, was partly a battle to save Muslims from Catholic and Christian Orthodox killers. That impressed me. The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of jihadism when most people were half-asleep.

And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the Weekly Standard and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not 'perception.' I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility. (I mean, have you read their sub-Brechtian stuff on Halliburton....?) And revolution from above, in some states and cases, is鈥攁s I wrote in my book A Long Short War鈥攐ften preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“Se膰am se da sam jedno jutro video ispred samoposluge nekog popa kako lju拧ti kikiriki, odmah mi je bilo jasno da ne膰e biti mira na Balkanu.”
― Slobodan Ti拧ma, Starost

“Yet it is also a tonic and an antidote to dullness to be with the Serbs. They possess the irresponsible gaiety that we traditionally connect with the Irish, with whom they have often been compared. Other less convenient sides of the Irish character are also typical in the Serbs, such as a cheerful contempt for punctuality in daily life and a ready willingness, arising clearly from politeness and good nature, to make promises that are not always fulfilled. But perhaps the most pronounced of these similarities is to be found in the songs of Serbia and Ireland. With both peoples the historic songs about the past are songs of sorrow, or noble struggles against overwhelming odds, of failure redeemed by unconquerable resolve. There is nothing strange in this combination of laughing gaiety and profound melancholy. It is often only those who are truly capable of the one emotion who also have the faculty for the other.”
― R.G.D. Laffan

“Tamo, u prizemlju, Balkanci: soba puna Grka, protivnika Venizelosa; Makedonaca 拧to samo 啪ele da budu svoji i da ih ne svrstavaju u Grke, Srbe ili Bugare; izbeglice i komite, godinama su izdr啪avali u planinama uprkos svim okolnostima.”
― Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power

“All is one. Don't let me forget this, don't let the bastards divide me again. Our tragedy is fragmentation. It begins as a state of mind and ends up as destiny. It is the tragedy of our family of nations who hobble across this great peninsula, this exquisitely set Earth, like an army of blind soldiers a thousand years old looking for a place to rest. Let them rest. Forgive them, forgive me, forgive us. Our fear drove us insane and melancholy.”
― Kapka Kassabova, To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace

“Ali svatko od nas je zaslu啪io komadi膰 sre膰e. Ipak ne mo啪e拧 imati sve, odnosno mo啪da i mo啪e拧, ali ne mo啪e拧 imati sve cijelo vrijeme.”
― Bekim Sejranovi膰, Dnevnik jednog nomada

“D毛shtimi i shtetit Osman edhe sot 毛sht毛 nj毛 barr毛 e r毛nd毛 n毛 rajonet e Ballkanit t毛 br毛ndsh毛m”
― Oliver Jens Schmitt

“The prohibition of wine is a very wise maxism and meant for the common people, being the source of disorders amongst them, but that the prophet never designed to confine those that knew how to use it with moderation.”
― A Turkish effendi

“Until the war had broken out, there had been some sort of order in the strange and complex mixture of the four disparate peoples crowded into the little valley, all calling themselves Bosnians. They celebrated separate holidays, ate different foods, feasted and fasted on different days, yet all depended on one another, but never admitted it. They had lived amidst an ever present, if dormant, mixture of hatred and love for each other. The Muslims with their Ramadan, the Jews with Passover, the Catholics with Christmas, and the Serbs with their Slavas- each of them tacitly tolerated and recognised the customs and existence of others. With suckling pigs turned on spits in Serbian houses, giving off a mouth-watering fragrance, kosher food would be eaten in Jewish homes, and in Muslim households, meals were cooked in suet. There was a certain harmony in all this, even if there was no actual mixing. The aromas had long ago adjusted to one another and had given the city its distinctive flavor. Everything was "as God willed it." But it was necessary to remove only one piece of that carefully balanced mosaic and that whole picture would fall into its component parts which would then, rejoined in an unthinkable manner, create hostile and incompatible entities. 鈥廘ike a hammer, the war had knocked out one piece, disrupting the equilibrium.”
― Gordana Kui膰, Miris ki拧e na Balkanu

“There鈥檚 no denying the horror of the atrocities they inflicted, but they think they had just cause. That鈥檚 rubbish, of course. All you get from an eye for an eye is a lot of people stumbling around in the dark.”
― McDermid Val

“You know, I'll tell you honestly: if you like food and you haven't come here to eat, you're really missing the fucking boat. This is world-class food; this is world-class wine; this is world-class cheese. The next big thing is Croatia. If you haven't been here, you're a fucking idiot. I'm an idiot.”
― Anthony Bourdain, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide

“Ali nisam mogao a da se 啪iv ne pojedem danima razmi拧ljaju膰i o tome kako znati 拧to je za tebe dobro ili lo拧e, koja je odluka ispravna ili pogre拧na. Kako na bezbrojnim 啪ivotnim raskri啪jima znati koji put vodi u propast, a koji ka sre膰i koja ipak samo zakratko odgodi taj na拧 posljednji pad koji 膰e jednog, mo啪da ba拧 poput dana拧njeg vedrog i lijepog jesenjeg dana do膰i, ma 拧to god mi u me膽uvremenu 膷inili ili propu拧tali da u膷inimo.”
― Bekim Sejranovi膰, Dnevnik jednog nomada

“Yugoslavia was a terrible place. Everybody lied. They still lie of course, but now each lie is divided in five, one per country.”
― Dubravka Ugre拧i膰, The Ministry of Pain

“That there could be death camps and a siege and civilians slaughtered by the thousands and thrown into mass graves on European soil fifty years after the end of the Second World War gave the war in Bosnia and the Serb campaign of killing in Kosovo their special, anachronistic interest. But one of the main ways of understanding the war crimes committed in southeastern Europe in the 1990s has been to say that the Balkans, after all, were never really part of Europe.”
― Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

“Finch茅 l鈥檜omo vive nel suo ambiente e in condizioni normali, gli elementi del curriculum vitae rappresentano per lui periodi importanti e svolte significative della sua vita. Ma appena il caso o il lavoro o le malattie lo separano dagli altri e lo isolano, questi elementi di colpo cominciano a scolorirsi, si inaridiscono e si decompongono con incredibile rapidit脿, come una maschera di cartone o di lacca senza vita, usata una volta sola. Sotto questa maschera comincia a intravedersi un鈥檃ltra vita, conosciuta solo a noi, ossia la 鈥渧era鈥� storia del nostro spirito e del nostro corpo, che non 猫 scritta da nessuna parte, di cui nessuno suppone l鈥檈sistenza, una storia che ha molto poco a che fare con i nostri successi in societ脿, ma che 猫, per noi, per la nostra felicit脿 o infelicit脿, l鈥檜nica valida e la sola davvero importante.
Sperduto in quel luogo selvaggio, durante le lunghe notti, quando tutti i rumori erano cessati, Daville pensava alla sua vita passata come a una lunga serie di progetti audaci e di scoraggiamenti noti a lui solo, di lotte, di atti eroici, di fortune, di successi e di crolli, di disgrazie, di contraddizioni, di sacrifici inutili e di vani compromessi. Nelle tenebre e nel silenzio di quella citt脿 che ancora non aveva visto ma in cui lo attendevano, senza dubbio, preoccupazioni o difficolt脿, sembrava che nulla al mondo si potesse risolvere n茅 conciliare. In certi momenti gli pareva che per vivere fossero necessari sforzi enormi e per ogni sforzo una sproporzionata dose di coraggio. E, visto nel buio di quelle notti, ogni sforzo gli sembrava infinito. Per non fermarsi e rinunciare, l鈥檜omo inganna se stesso, sostituendo gli obiettivi che non 猫 riuscito a raggiungere con altri, che ugualmente non raggiunger脿; ma le nuove imprese e i nuovi tentativi lo obbligheranno a cercare dentro di s茅 altre energie e maggiore coraggio. Cos矛 l鈥檜omo si autoinganna e col passare del tempo diviene sempre pi霉 e senza speranza debitore verso se stesso e verso tutto quello che lo circonda.”
― Ivo Andri膰, Travni膷ka Kronika

“Seen from the angle of someone about to plunge headlong into it, the turbulent stream of Balkan history had a new fascination. The details were as confusing as ever, but certain basic characteristics, certain constantly recurring themes, seemed to run right through the bewildering succession of war and rebellion, heroism, treachery and intrigue. In these might lie the key to much that was now happening.”
― Fitzroy MacLean, Eastern Approaches

“English persons, therefore, of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer.”
― Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

“Izbjegavam one ekipe s Balkana koje se u inozemstvu okupljaju po nacionalnoj osnovi; oni prije nego 拧to u膽u u crkvu ostave u predvorju pi拧tolje i no啪eve, koje nakon mise ponovno zataknu za pojas, tako ih nekako u bijelom svijetu do啪ivljavam.”
― Damir Karaka拧, Sjajno mjesto za nesre膰u

“Until the war had broken out, there had been some sort of order in the strange and complex mixture of the four disparate peoples crowded into the little valley, all calling themselves Bosnians. They celebrated separate holidays, ate different foods, feasted and fasted on different days, yet all depended on one another, but never admitted it. They had lived amidst an ever present, if dormant, mixture of hatred and love for each other. The Muslims with their Ramadan, the Jews with Passover, the Catholics with Christmas, and the Serbs with their Slavas- each of them tacitly tolerated and recognised the customs and existence of others. With suckling pigs turned on spits in Serbian houses, giving off a mouth-watering fragrance, kosher food would be eaten in Jewish homes, and in Muslim households, meals were cooked in suet. There was a certain harmony in all this, even if there was no actual mixing. The aromas had long ago adjusted to one another and had given the city its distinctive flavor. Everything was "as God willed it." But it was necessary to remove only one piece of that carefully balanced mosaic and that whole picture would fall into its component parts which would then, rejoined in an unthinkable manner, create hostile and incompatible entities. 鈥廘ike a hammer, the war had knocked out one piece, disrupting the equilibrium. Wartime turned differences into outright hatred and instead of blaming the foreign enemy for all their hardships, people blamed their nearest neighbours, which, in turn, represented an invaluable favour to the true enemy of all.”
― Gordana Kui膰, Miris ki拧e na Balkanu

“Our history is unpredictable.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“What amounted to civil war began. Greek 'bands' adopted the methods of the Bulgarian 'bands'. Greek-speaking villages which had adopted the Bulgarian Church were obliged to renounce their religion and become Greeks proper, or have their houses burnt, or worse. The villagers, who would like to be left in peace, yielded, and instead of Bulgarians became Greeks. When the Greek 'band' withdrew, down came the Bulgarian 'band' to reconvert the village and make the inhabitants Bulgarian again. Thereupon the Greek 'band' cut a few throats and fired a few houses just to remind the peasants they must be Greeks or be killed... The bishops and priests of the Greek Church in particular not only countenanced but urged crime as a means of compelling Bulgarian Macedonians to proclaim themselves Greeks.”
― John Foster Fraser, Pictures from the Balkans

“Jedini lijek protiv straha je 膷initi upravo one stvari kojih se najvi拧e boji拧.”
― Bekim Sejranovi膰, Dnevnik jednog nomada

“Uvi膽am kako mi fali dom, neka baza, krov i 膷etiri zida me膽u kojima 膰u 啪ivjeti i raditi pa onda od tamo putovati. Imati se kamo vratiti. Kad nekamo odem, znati 拧to 膰u raditi tamo kamo sam oti拧ao. I znati 拧to 膰u raditi kad se vratim doma, ma gdje taj dom bio.”
― Bekim Sejranovi膰, Dnevnik jednog nomada

“Our history is unpredictable. Who knows what will we be in some future past tense?!”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“Macedonia has been receiving positive recommendations for entry into the European Union for 12 years now. It is three circles ahead of Dante's Inferno.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“The road to the European Union is paved with good intentions. .”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“The Dark Cloud
Is the homelessness you see that makes you question the setup
Is the annoying manner of those who don鈥檛 have an opinion and always say 鈥淵up鈥�
Is the refugee agency that only cares about stealing money
Is the Balkan mentality of shedding blood and mixing it with honey”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud

“What sort of a life, what sort of a world was this in which I did evil when I intended only the best!
And I did evil even when I did nothing, leaving both good and evil in peace. I did evil even in speaking, because I never said what I should have said. I did evil even when I was silent, for it meant that I was living as though I didn鈥檛 exist. I did evil because I was alive and didn鈥檛 know how to live.
I was present in life by chance, and nothing I did was mine.”
― Me拧a Selimovi膰, The Fortress

“A Mall and Bullet Holes"
While walking in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
a country devastated and drained
by the wars of the global elite,
exactly like mine,
I arrived at an intersection and noticed a huge mall on the right side鈥�
On the left side, there was
an old residential building filled with bullet holes
that looked like eyewitnesses
to all the free death that took place here
in a war that has since ended,
yet its real causes and the criminals behind it
are still lurking in every corner,
like infected pus ready to burst
at any moment of awareness鈥�
I wondered bitterly:
When will the world understand
that violence never erupts inadvertently,
that all violence in our times is premeditated and agreed upon
by a small elite that decides in advance
that any nation that rejects malls, consumption, and superficiality,
must be disciplined with free death for those who resist!
It is also agreed upon 鈥� and it all costs 鈥� that
the minds and souls of all survivors
must permanently be pierced with bullet holes!
In the same intersection, I observed a redhaired elderly woman
with sorrowful eyes deep as bullet holes鈥�
I then saw a group of youth wearing modern clothes,
like those we see in malls鈥�
The elderly woman looked at them as if
wishing to tell them about all that happened here,
but they didn鈥檛 notice her existence
for their eyes were fixated on their phones鈥�
I painfully wondered then:
Has anyone told them about what happened here?
Can they distinguish the sounds of bombs from those of fireworks?
Has this elderly woman, who looked broken and brokenhearted,
told them about the real price she鈥檇 paid
with all the holes left in her heart and her history
for the sake of these malls and cheap consumer goods?


[Original poem published in Arabic on July 4, 2024 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako