Yugoslavia - What Really Happened

[Joe]

Nato planned it in Washington few years prior to war. At least Serbs hold their ground and did not sellout to West.

That I can believe quite easily. It would certainly fit with their usual approach over many decades previously in many other parts of the world.

 

[youlik]

I read this entire thread with some interest, and since I am not particularly familiar with the details of both intra-Yugoslavic and current interstate affairs of the Balkan countries, it seems to make no sense for me to get involved in this conversation, but one of the participants made a serious factual mistake, to which I cannot help but react. I will write about this at the end, but first let me express my general impression.

After reading the entire thread, as I said, I conclude that it was possible to stop at this message. Indeed, what can an attempt to establish some kind of general balance by creating a kind of counter-bias lead to? Perhaps the desired overall balance will be achieved somewhere, but the one who creates the counterbalance himself will remain skewed.

Further. I was very "pleased" with the near-scientific arguments about the Illyrians, Pelasgians, Etruscans and other giants. All of them existed in some mythical or semi-mythical way, interacted and all this dragged on for literally thousands of years, until some aggressive "devils" came and destroyed them all at the moment. Aggressive "devils" came from the Russian plains, of course, well, there was nowhere else to take aggression in that idyllic world. Russian plains, I want to ask - what the f..k were the Russian plains like when there were no Russians as a whole? This says a lot about the scientific level of such research.

Now finally to the facts. The statement that the Soviet Union collapsed without clashes and without casualties is a specially propagated myth. Anyone who uses such myths as arguments signs ignorance of the factual material.

I will just list some of the conflicts that occurred and were directly related to the collapse of the USSR. The Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, the Georgian-South Ossetian war, the War in Transnistria, a whole series of armed conflicts between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and finally 2 Chechen wars in Russia, which happened a little later, but were also a direct consequence of the collapse of the USSR.

It should be added to this process of squeezing out "Russians" (quotation marks because it concerns not only Russians, but all representatives of a non-titular nation, among whom Russians are of course the majority) from the national republics of the former USSR. This process has been going on for many years and is still not over.

This process concerns literally all the republics of the former USSR, with one exception - Belarus. In different places, this process took place with varying degrees of intensity and in some places (Central Asian countries) it was in the form of mass pogroms with a large number of victims.

So in general, we can safely say that the number of victims (along with refugees and internally displaced persons) of the collapse of the USSR is quite consistent with the entire current population of all the republics of the former Yugoslavia.

Spoiler: Russian spelling

С некоторым интересом прочитал всю эту ветку и так как я не особо знаком с подробностями как внутриюгославских, так и нынешних межгосударственных дел стран балканского региона, то вроде бы мне и нет смысла встревать в эту беседу, но одним из участников допущена серьезная фактическая ошибка, на которую я не могу не отреагировать. Об этом я напишу в конце, а сначала позволю себе высказать общее впечатление.
Прочитав всю ветку, как я уже сказал, я делаю вывод, что можно было остановиться на этом сообщении. В самом деле, к чему может привести попытка установить некий общий баланс путем создания своеобразного контрперекоса? Возможно искомый общий баланс и будет где то достигнут, но тот кто создает контрперекос сам останется перекошенным.
Далее. Весьма "порадовали" меня околонаучные рассуждения об иллирийцах, пеласгах, этрусках и прочих великанах. Все они каким то мифическим или полумифическим образом существовали, взаимодействовали и все это тянулось буквально тысячелетиями, пока не пришли некие агрессивные "черти" и в момент всех не уничтожили. Агрессивные "черти" приперлись конечно же с русских равнин, ну больше неоткуда было взяться агрессии в том идиллическом мире. Я хочу спросить- какие, бл...ть, русские равнины, когда русских не было? Это многое говорит об уровне научности подобных изысканий.
Теперь наконец к фактам. Заявление о том, что Советский Союз распался без столкновений и без жертв это специально распространяемый миф. Тот, кто использует подобные мифы в качестве аргументов, расписывается в незнании фактического материала.
Я просто перечислю некоторые конфликты, которые произошли и были непосредственно связаны с распадом СССР. Армяно-Азербайджанская война в Нагорном Карабахе, Грузино-Абхазский конфликт, Грузино-ЮгоОсетинская война, Война в Приднестровье, целая серия вооруженных конфликтов между Узбекистаном, Таджикистаном и Киргизией и наконец 2 Чеченские войны в России, которые случились несколько позже, но так же были прямым следствием распада СССР. К этому необходимо добавить процесс по выдавливанию "русских" (кавычки потому что касается не только русских, а всех представителей не титульной нации, среди которых русские конечно же являются большинством) из национальных республик бывшего СССР. Этот процесс продолжается много лет и до сих пор не окончен. Касается этот процесс буквально всех республик бывшего СССР, за одним исключением- Белорусь. В разных местах этот процесс происходил с разной степенью интенсивности и в некоторых местах (Страны Средней Азии) это было в виде массовых погромов с большим количеством жертв.
Так что в общем смело можно сказать, что количество жертв (вместе с беженцами и вынужденными переселенцами) распада СССР вполне соотносится со всем нынешним населением всех республик бывшей Югославии.

 

[Revolucionar]

Because it is not true.
You are just regurgitating common catch phrases of the 90-ies separatism.

So the following is not true? Do you have a set of competing sources with dofferent numbers?

Percentages of Croats in state bodies​

In 1971, Yugoslavia had a little over 20 million inhabitants, of which the share of Croats was 21.6 percent (4,426,221 inhabitants), and Serbia, which included Vojvodina and Kosovo, had 8,446,591 inhabitants (41.2 how much).
According to some authors, there were only 20 percent Croats in the Croatian UDB, and about 30 percent in the police. According to estimates, the number of Serbs in these bodies was from 76 to almost 80 percent. For example, in Vinkovci, out of 46 employees of the Secretariat of Internal Affairs (SUP), only one was Croat, and that was in an administrative job, and in Zagreb, out of 13 chiefs of police stations, only three were Croats.

The JNA is a mirror of national inequality​

One of the most sensitive federal institutions in terms of its role, but also the importance of the national composition, was the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). However, any public expression of opinion about problems in the army could provoke a reaction and accusation of hostile intentions. Certainly the most sensitive issue related to the JNA was the national composition within the army.
Available data on the structure of officers confirm the most unfavorable structure for Croats. According to some historians, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Serbs and Montenegrins, who had a share of 43.8 percent of the total population, had more than 67 percent of generals and officers. The national composition of active officers shows a decrease in the percentage of Croats and Slovenes, and a large increase in the percentage of Serbs and Montenegrins since 1945.

Nevertheless, numerous data support earlier conclusions about the unbalanced national structure of officers at lower levels. Even where it would have been expected that there would be a larger proportion of Croats and Slovenes, especially in the Fifth Military District based in Zagreb, the situation was not like that.
Thus, in the Fifth Military District, there were 12 Serb chiefs of staff of regiments and brigades, and only five Croats. Also, there were 34 Serbs among battalion and division commanders, compared to nine Croats. The biggest difference was among company commanders, where there were as many as 228 Serbs and only 43 Croats.

Resurgence of Serb supremacy in Bosnia and Herzegovina​

Considering the significant presence of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is important to analyze data about that republic. In the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it also happened that the share of Serbs was much higher than would correspond to their share in the total population.
According to the population census, 39.57 percent of Muslims, 37.19 percent of Serbs, and 20.62 percent of Croats lived in BiH in 1971. However, according to data from the same year, in the Union of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the share of Croats was only 11.1 percent, while the share of Muslims was 28.3 percent, and Serbs 53.5 percent.
From 1945 to 1966, only 2.75 percent of the officers of the BiH Ministry of Internal Affairs were Croats, almost 10 percent were Muslims, and as many as 87.13 percent were Serbs. Likewise, according to data for the period from 1945 to 1991, 9.30 percent of Croats, 23.60 percent of Muslims and 66.60 percent of Serbs were in the State Security Service (SDS).

It is interesting that there were most Croats in the structures of suspicious persons and those who were considered enemies of the state. Thus, at the end of the 80s, Croats led the way with 73.19 percent, followed by Muslims with 16.83 percent, while Serbs were the least with 15.62 percent.

I don’t know what was happening in Belgrad but the thing is - it wasn't Serbs who changed Jelacic Plac name - it was Croatian communists.

That's my point. The communist regime was working to erase national history. It mostly happened with Croatian history, though.

As far as I know the names of Croatian dignitaries in Belgrade still remains
like Nazorova, Rudjera Boskovica etc

Vladimir Nazor was a prominent partisan and Ruđer Bošković is one of those Croatian great whom the Serbs hilariously claim is actually Serbian.

The chances are you were heavily exposed to Croatian propaganda at the time and it seems you still are largely influenced by it.

This is a very easy way for you to dismiss my arguments, but it's not a valid argument in itself.

I guess that explains a lot.

You're being needlessly cryptic here.

Indeed in 19th century during the organising of the national states on Balkan, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek churches use the opportunity to "snatch" any person they can. So, afterwards there were no Croats with serbian orthodox faith, or Albanians with Greek or Serb.

That's my point. Even the Macedonians fell under the Serbian church when they were clearly not Macedonian. Other churches wouldn't allow a Croatian Orthodox Church and Vatican also actively worked against it.

Of course, the Vatican's answer was even more harsh with open fight against the Ilirian (south slavic) movement (together with Austo-Hungarian empire). Which finally directed Croat nationalism against Serbian nationalism and Serbian principate and kingdom.

The point where Croat and Serbian nationalism came to a head was during the early years of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Serbian hegemony inside that state and the assassination of Stjepan Radić by Serbian extremists in the Parliament in Belgrade. Not much to do with the Vatican, I would say.

The result of that lasts even today, with new croatian narratives, from 1990s to today, which, I think we can clearly see in Revolucionar writings

You should give clear examples, because you seem to be implying that I'm spewing propaganda, but most of what I see being presented in opposition are unsubstantiated assertions and anecdotal evidence.

 

[Joe]

NATO does what NATO does. Although, NATO wasn't really involved until later on. There were UN peacekeepers around, though.

I find this hard to believe. I'm pretty sure, knowing the US and NATO as I know them, they were knee deep in the entire thing from early on. Have you ever watched the documentary "The Weight of Chains"? It shows pretty convincingly that the US had well-prepared plans for taking down Yugoslavia in the mid 1980s.

 

[Z...]

Well, speaking from a personal experience as a kid from the 80’s living in a small town in central Croatia. Percentage of Serbs was somewhere around 30%, but they held every single important position in town. My mother never joined the communist party, was seen once or twice going to church, and it was known she never denounced being a Croat, so she couldn’t be employed in our town, but finally managed to find a position 30km away. We also had to be christened in another town in secret, my parents weren’t able to get a loan as some other people could, and we were prohibited to ever express any kind of Croatian sentiment out loud, singing a song even remotely characterized as patriotic would most definitely land you in jail, and god forbid to let anyone know you celebrate Christmas, as religion was seen as equal to being patriotic.

Perhaps it was like this in smaller towns. I wouldn’t know. The smaller towns i had experience of had very little if any Serb population.

I grew up in a bigger city on the coast where most key positions were held by Herzegovinians (Croat or Serbs) and as far as I know it is still largely like that all over Croatia except that most of Herzegovinian Serbs in the meantime became the proudest and loudest Croats.
People from Herzegovina are known to gravitate to positions of power by hook or a crook and this is not a secret.

As for the freedom to adhere to religion or Croatian sentiments, most of my friends were practicing catholics while my parents were not into religion at all.
My grandparents were revolutionaries even during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and joined the resistance movement as soon as the WWII broke out. So religious upbringing was not on the agenda in my home and growing up I kind of felt ashamed that I don’t belong to church especially when i would be invited to all my friend’s religious ceremonies. These ceremonies were public and my friends openly spoke about attending catechism lessons. I still remember massive public gatherings at Christmas midnight masses and parties afterwards. We are talking about early eighties ergo long time before break up of Yugoslavia. So definitely not even a hint of suppression of any kind.
So it indeed seems like we experienced completely different life in socialist Croatia.

Even your words show how different our experience was - “Jumping on Jugoslaveni bandwagon” sounds a little derogatory in your post while many Croats especially in Dalmatia - including my mother’s family for several generations truly believed in “brotherhood and unity” ideals and raised their children in this Yugoslav spirit. It is in fact the only national identity I ever had in addition to the regional- Dalmatian one.

I agree with everything else you said at the end of your post . Hence my reluctance to accept Revolucionar’s invitation to join this conversation.
I still think nothing constructive will ever come out of this discussion. I can only blame my lack of will power and constant presence on this thread since yesterday on extremely difficult full moon, but perhaps these emotions needed to come to the surface to in order to be properly dealt with.

 

[Aeneas]

Have you ever watched the documentary "The Weight of Chains"? It shows pretty convincingly that the US had well-prepared plans for taking down Yugoslavia in the mid 1980s.

Yes, that documentary is great. There is also this article on SOTT posted a few days ago with declassified papers exposing things pretty well and also that the KLA were similar to the ISIS, trained, funded and directed by NATO and the intel agencies.

Declassified: BBC and MI6 Kosovo War Propaganda Blitz

@Arlind

 

[Z...]

So the following is not true? Do you have a set of competing sources with dofferent numbers?

Really do not wish to go down this rabbit hole.

That's my point. The communist regime was working to erase national history. It mostly happened with Croatian history, though.

This is such a presumptuous statement indicating your bias.
I have lived in Serbia for a while after Croatia and it was enough for me to clearly realise that the biggest victim of communist regime of all Yugoslav nations was Serbian nation and its national interests.

Vladimir Nazor was a prominent partisan and Ruđer Bošković is one of those Croatian great whom the Serbs hilariously claim is actually Serbian.

There is always ‘but’ with ever factual argument presented to you. Do you see now why I didn’t want to participate in this discussion. Balkan people are doomed, well
the whole world is doomed none the less. However Balkan is a special kind of doomed.

Would you be open to hear a different point of view on those “hilarious” claims

Unfortunately there are no English subtitles , its basically a panel on Serbian TV where they also invited Croatian theologian and historian who basically confirmed Tesla along with some other “Croatian” dignitaries is actually a Serb.

Nothing as pathetic as one people being divided into two nations and then they keep misappropriating each other’s brilliant minds. Like i said eternally doomed

 

[Nević Nenad]

So the following is not true? Do you have a set of competing sources with dofferent numbers?



That's my point. The communist regime was working to erase national history. It mostly happened with Croatian history, though.

Vladimir Nazor was a prominent partisan and Ruđer Bošković is one of those Croatian great whom the Serbs hilariously claim is actually Serbian.

This is a very easy way for you to dismiss my arguments, but it's not a valid argument in itself.

You're being needlessly cryptic here.

That's my point. Even the Macedonians fell under the Serbian church when they were clearly not Macedonian. Other churches wouldn't allow a Croatian Orthodox Church and Vatican also actively worked against it.

The point where Croat and Serbian nationalism came to a head was during the early years of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Serbian hegemony inside that state and the assassination of Stjepan Radić by Serbian extremists in the Parliament in Belgrade. Not much to do with the Vatican, I would say.

You should give clear examples, because you seem to be implying that I'm spewing propaganda, but most of what I see being presented in opposition are unsubstantiated assertions and anecdotal evidence.

I'm not implying that you are spewing propaganda, I'm saying that you are affected by propaganda. I don't want to go further on that cause of two reasons: I'm not that interested, and in doing so, I myself would be affected by propaganda. Which I don't find to be good for me.

 

[Nević Nenad]

I read this entire thread with some interest, and since I am not particularly familiar with the details of both intra-Yugoslavic and current interstate affairs of the Balkan countries, it seems to make no sense for me to get involved in this conversation, but one of the participants made a serious factual mistake, to which I cannot help but react. I will write about this at the end, but first let me express my general impression.

After reading the entire thread, as I said, I conclude that it was possible to stop at this message. Indeed, what can an attempt to establish some kind of general balance by creating a kind of counter-bias lead to? Perhaps the desired overall balance will be achieved somewhere, but the one who creates the counterbalance himself will remain skewed.

Further. I was very "pleased" with the near-scientific arguments about the Illyrians, Pelasgians, Etruscans and other giants. All of them existed in some mythical or semi-mythical way, interacted and all this dragged on for literally thousands of years, until some aggressive "devils" came and destroyed them all at the moment. Aggressive "devils" came from the Russian plains, of course, well, there was nowhere else to take aggression in that idyllic world. Russian plains, I want to ask - what the f..k were the Russian plains like when there were no Russians as a whole? This says a lot about the scientific level of such research.

Now finally to the facts. The statement that the Soviet Union collapsed without clashes and without casualties is a specially propagated myth. Anyone who uses such myths as arguments signs ignorance of the factual material.

I will just list some of the conflicts that occurred and were directly related to the collapse of the USSR. The Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, the Georgian-South Ossetian war, the War in Transnistria, a whole series of armed conflicts between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and finally 2 Chechen wars in Russia, which happened a little later, but were also a direct consequence of the collapse of the USSR.

It should be added to this process of squeezing out "Russians" (quotation marks because it concerns not only Russians, but all representatives of a non-titular nation, among whom Russians are of course the majority) from the national republics of the former USSR. This process has been going on for many years and is still not over.

This process concerns literally all the republics of the former USSR, with one exception - Belarus. In different places, this process took place with varying degrees of intensity and in some places (Central Asian countries) it was in the form of mass pogroms with a large number of victims.

So in general, we can safely say that the number of victims (along with refugees and internally displaced persons) of the collapse of the USSR is quite consistent with the entire current population of all the republics of the former Yugoslavia.

Spoiler: Russian spelling

С некоторым интересом прочитал всю эту ветку и так как я не особо знаком с подробностями как внутриюгославских, так и нынешних межгосударственных дел стран балканского региона, то вроде бы мне и нет смысла встревать в эту беседу, но одним из участников допущена серьезная фактическая ошибка, на которую я не могу не отреагировать. Об этом я напишу в конце, а сначала позволю себе высказать общее впечатление.
Прочитав всю ветку, как я уже сказал, я делаю вывод, что можно было остановиться на этом сообщении. В самом деле, к чему может привести попытка установить некий общий баланс путем создания своеобразного контрперекоса? Возможно искомый общий баланс и будет где то достигнут, но тот кто создает контрперекос сам останется перекошенным.
Далее. Весьма "порадовали" меня околонаучные рассуждения об иллирийцах, пеласгах, этрусках и прочих великанах. Все они каким то мифическим или полумифическим образом существовали, взаимодействовали и все это тянулось буквально тысячелетиями, пока не пришли некие агрессивные "черти" и в момент всех не уничтожили. Агрессивные "черти" приперлись конечно же с русских равнин, ну больше неоткуда было взяться агрессии в том идиллическом мире. Я хочу спросить- какие, бл...ть, русские равнины, когда русских не было? Это многое говорит об уровне научности подобных изысканий.
Теперь наконец к фактам. Заявление о том, что Советский Союз распался без столкновений и без жертв это специально распространяемый миф. Тот, кто использует подобные мифы в качестве аргументов, расписывается в незнании фактического материала.
Я просто перечислю некоторые конфликты, которые произошли и были непосредственно связаны с распадом СССР. Армяно-Азербайджанская война в Нагорном Карабахе, Грузино-Абхазский конфликт, Грузино-ЮгоОсетинская война, Война в Приднестровье, целая серия вооруженных конфликтов между Узбекистаном, Таджикистаном и Киргизией и наконец 2 Чеченские войны в России, которые случились несколько позже, но так же были прямым следствием распада СССР. К этому необходимо добавить процесс по выдавливанию "русских" (кавычки потому что касается не только русских, а всех представителей не титульной нации, среди которых русские конечно же являются большинством) из национальных республик бывшего СССР. Этот процесс продолжается много лет и до сих пор не окончен. Касается этот процесс буквально всех республик бывшего СССР, за одним исключением- Белорусь. В разных местах этот процесс происходил с разной степенью интенсивности и в некоторых местах (Страны Средней Азии) это было в виде массовых погромов с большим количеством жертв.
Так что в общем смело можно сказать, что количество жертв (вместе с беженцами и вынужденными переселенцами) распада СССР вполне соотносится со всем нынешним населением всех республик бывшей Югославии.

Worth noticing that the mechanism used to instigate all that wars is exactly the same. That continues to this day through very "non-governmental" and alike organisations.

 

[thorbiorn]

The countries of Europe
Related to this topic, I did a search on SOTT for Yugoslavia, and found, in title, in summary, and in text respectively,

Yugoslavia

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Example: NATO's illegal 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia 'a huge tragedy' - Putin which has links to other articles on SOTT

Note: how to do searches on any country on SOTT, some lines of code:

https://www.sott.net/?search=intitle%3A%20[NAME]&page=1
https://www.sott.net/?search=insummary%3A%20[NAME]&page=1
https://www.sott.net/?search=intext%3A%20[NAME]&page=1

For more than one word and also the exact phrase: in the code language, quote marks (") are %22 and space ( ) is %20
As an example Bosnia and Herzegovina, becomes %22Bosnia%20and%20Herzegovina%22 to be inserted for [NAME]

Yugoslavia was subject to Balkanization (

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Example: The spread of Balkanization: US Empire's strategy of barbaric dismemberment of sovereign states began in Yugoslavia
Another word is Balkanized

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Yugoslavia was broken up into smaller countries and areas:
Below are search links for the fragments of the former Yugoslavia. For places like Bosnia and Herzegovina, much of what is reported is about weather and earth changes. That is probably because of the choice of priorities, but does some of the residual tension occasionally express itself in the weather?

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Croatia

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Kosovo

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

North Macedonia

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Montenegro

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Serbia

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Slovenia

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Albania was not a part of Yugoslavia, but it was close,
Albania

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Sott.net

Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

www.sott.net

Example: How Albania's mafia took control of Europe's trafficking network

Of the 45,000 migrants who crossed illegally into England last year, 12,000 were Albanians. Of that number, 10,000 were males aged between 20 to 40. In 2020, the number of Albanians who came on a small boat to England was 50. 'The rise has been exponential and we think that is in the main due to the fact that Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the north of France,' said clandestine Channel threat commander Dan O'Mahoney in October.

Perhaps supported by: Soros errand-boy Antony Blinken's horrific stain on Albania.
About Albania, I watched: What is the origin of the Albanians? Evidence from Albanian Paternal Haplogroups (Y-DNA) There are similarities with the surrounding areas. Another video was The ancient roots of the Albanian language which according to some have old beginnings


A comment on differences of opinion about nations and national identities.
It is understandable that politics, religion, language, and history, can lead to disagreements when people from the same country or the same city can argue seriously on a fan club soccer forum, or violently during or after a match. What about Ukraine and Palestine? Whether a point is real or not is for some politicians less important than whether a claim can serve as a provisionary justification for the implementation of a desired course of action.

 

[Revolucionar]

I find this hard to believe. I'm pretty sure, knowing the US and NATO as I know them, they were knee deep in the entire thing from early on.

Western intelligence and backdoor diplomacy was certainly involved, but NATO as such wasn't until later in the war. Matter of fact, there was a weapons embargo in place and Croatia had to smuggle weapons in using all kinds of criminal channels.

Have you ever watched the documentary "The Weight of Chains"? It shows pretty convincingly that the US had well-prepared plans for taking down Yugoslavia in the mid 1980s.

That documentary was financed by Serbian organizations and has an extremely pro Serbian slant. See list of sponsors here The Weight Of Chains
I watched some of it long ago and remember that it had a slew of falsities as its central tentets so I stopped watching. Didn't seem worth my time. Does anyone have a somewhat detailed synopsis of it or a list of the main points it makes?

 

[Mari]

@ava I find your account quite astonishing and thank you for sharing. It´s like we lived in 2 different countries.
My experience is like @Z... s - I come from a small town in north Croatia, and no one ever hid the fact that they were either Croatian or Christian. Masses and Christmases were openly celebrated, you could by a Christmas tree on a city square, I went to church along with bunch of friends 1x week for lessons in religion, etc.

Serbs were a minority, and most of them were in a mixed marriage. It occurred me to find and ask someone how they experiences that time period and how they felt in our (very) small town. They may very well feel like you, I don´t know.
But I know for a fact that Serbs did hold positions in my town, along with Croats (so not that they were doing just a simple labour work).
For a town so small, we also had Albanians, Bosnians, etc.

Albanians in fact held small bakeries and ice-cream shops - the best ice-cream was in those 2 shops, each held by one Albanian family in town, and that is the case still today. They created their own business, and profited and prospered. One bakery shop is 2 houses from my home house and they are also very prosperous and extended their business over the years. Very friendly, open, bright and hard working people. My dad often fix stuff for them for free and in turn they bake meat for us for free when we have a celebration and order a lamb or something and they have these huge ovens to bake.

I remember that everyone had a job and my (really small) town had at least 3 mayor factories that employed people from the town and surrounding areas. That was the case all around - every bigger city (one might say) had at least some industry and employment rate was very high.

Here is just a fraction of what I´m talking about; below is a (incomplete) picture of companies in ex-Yu:


People bought local/national products as the country produced everything - from needle to washing machine.

Today, some of those companies still exist, but most of them either barely survive or do not exist or are sold to foreign companies:
- the biggest Croatian pharmaceutical company is soled to Israel
- one of the biggest Croatian diary processing company is soled to French
- the biggest Croatian ice-cream and frozen product company is soled to Anglo-Americans
- ...and the list goes on and on.

The psychopaths in power even soled the oil company (!!!!) to Hungarians!!!!
Who in it´s right mind does that!? Like, have you ever played any strategic game and first thing you need to build your city is woods, stone, ore, etc. But no! They sold our nation resources and companies to foreigners!

And people still vote for the same old thieves and criminals. And they get their votes partly on everlasting nationalists, partly on cheating (dead people voting is one of the popular ones) and partly on brain-washed indoctrinated people who live abroad, who still think that HDZ is Croatia´s God-given party that ever appeared on face of the earth and that Thompson is "only a patriotic singer" and who shed crocodile tears about their ancestor´s land.

 

[Z...]

…that Thompson is "only a patriotic singer" and who shed crocodile tears about their ancestor´s land.

lol - did you know Thompson’s mother is a Serb.
Typical example of Croatian ultranationalist thirsty for Serbian blood- either half Serb or complete Serb converted within the last few generations,

 

[Joe]

I found this excerpt from a wiki article on Bosniaks very instructive in that it shows how the ideas of "national identity" at least for "Bosniaks" was entirely practical rather than ideological or based in any *actual* historical identity or geographic-ethnic grouping.

I think we can be fairly sure that the "reasons of foreign policy" were directly related to US involvement.

Even in the early 1990s, a vast majority of Bosnian Muslims considered themselves to be ethnic Muslims, rather than Bosniaks. According to a poll from 1990, only 1.8% of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina supported the idea of Bosniak national identity, while 17% considered that the name encompasses all of the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their main political party, the Party of Democratic Action, rejected the idea of Bosniak identity and managed to expel those that promoted it. The supporters of the Bosniak nationhood established their own political party, the Muslim Bosniak Organisation, and received only 1.1% of the votes during the 1990 general election.

On 27 September 1993, however, after the leading political, cultural, and religious representatives of Bosnian Muslims held an assembly and at the same time when they rejected the Owen–Stoltenberg peace plan adopted the Bosniak name deciding to "return to our people their historical and national name of Bosniaks, to tie ourselves in this way for our country of Bosnia and its state-legal tradition, for our Bosnian language and all spiritual tradition of our history".

The main reasons for the SDA to adopt the Bosniak identity, only three years after expelling the supporters of the idea from their party ranks, however, was due to reasons of foreign policy. One of the leading SDA figures Džemaludin Latić, the editor of the official gazette of the party, commented the decision stating that: "In Europe, he who doesn't have a national name, doesn't have a country" and that "we must be Bosniaks, that what we are, in order to survive in our country".

The decision to adopt the Bosniak identity was largely influenced by the change of opinion of the former communist intellectuals such as Atif Purivatra, Alija Isaković and those who were a part of the pan-Islamists such as Rusmir Mahmutćehajić (who was a staunch opponent of Bosniak identity), all of whom saw the changing of the name to Bosniak as a way to connect the Bosnian Muslims to the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

[Joe]

Western intelligence and backdoor diplomacy was certainly involved, but NATO as such wasn't until later in the war.

When I say "NATO" in this context, I primarily mean "Western intelligence and backdoor diplomacy".

I think anyone invested in this topic would do well to first and foremost understand the Yugoslav war(s) in the 1990s in the context of Western involvement. A person should find it much more difficult to engage in divisive "us and them" argumentation and finger-pointing on the matter when they fully and clearly understand that that was, and still is, the primary goal of the USA for the entire region.

I think some commenters here, you in particular @Revolucionar don't really understand this.