Criticising Chomsky on the Balkans: Three activists speak out
Don’t ignore Noam Chomsky. Just read him as critically as he suggests reading The New York Times. His persistent misrepresentations of Balkan war crimes have forced three activists to reappraise his analysis.
By Daniel Simpson on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 - 2,898 words.
Shattering unnecessary illusions
When Truthdig interviewed Noam Chomsky in April, three activists who had respect for his work were disappointed. The article ignored how Chomsky persistently misrepresents Balkan war crimes, even though its author had risked his life to report them.
There are broader lessons for radicals here, about humanity, solidarity, and complexity. Western involvement in the wars of Yugoslav dissolution has confused many anti-imperialists, who still distort the facts to fit preconceptions. Though we’ve valued Chomsky’s insights on other subjects, from Israel and Palestine to propaganda, we’ve been forced to reappraise his analysis.
We’re not saying ignore Noam Chomsky. But from three different perspectives, we’re suggesting people read him as critically as he suggests reading The New York Times.
Roger Lippman
Daniel Simpson
Owen Beith
–
A PROGRESSIVE ACTIVIST’S VIEW
Deconstructing Chomsky
By Roger Lippman
I have great respect for the work of Chris Hedges, and there is much to appreciate in the sentiments he expresses in his recent profile of Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’. But I find his paean to Chomsky to be overdone.
Numbers of progressives, all of us having learned a lot from Chomsky before, have been awakened to his limitations by his non-supportiveness of the populations victimized by Serbia’s aggressive wars, and by Chomsky’s tributes to deniers of that victimization – people like Diana Johnstone, who is little more than a mouthpiece for Serbian propaganda, and has told the worst lies about those wars, systematically denying Serbian criminality. More than once Chomsky has tried to cast doubt on the well-established facts about Serbian war crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo. See my compilation of Chomsky’s misleading and false statements on the Balkan wars, along with refutations of each statement. I also recommend Professor David Campbell’s e-mail exchange with Chomsky, which links to Campbell’s detailed study of the concentration camps in Bosnia, “Atrocity, Memory, Photography.”
Gradually, and painfully, I have come to perceive a strong current of intellectual dishonesty on Chomsky’s part. He has a record of speaking off-handedly about things he doesn’t really know – he is no expert on ex-Yugoslavia – and then stubbornly refusing to concede when he is caught out, attacking as imperialist tools those who would dare to question him. Meanwhile, in a Serbian media production he reinforces murderous Serbian nationalism and war-crimes denial.
This has gone on enough that I’ve lost my respect for him as a political thinker and found myself compelled to re-examine what I previously admired about him. Dig a little deeper, and it turns out this is not only about Yugoslavia. Of course, he’s not always wrong, especially about Israel and Palestine, but he is often sophistic or dishonest.
Chomsky is far from the worst, but unfortunate numbers of leading Left intellectuals ended up as deniers of, apologists for, or even defenders of the Serbian genocidal project. (For those who haven’t noticed, please see Deniers of Serbia’s War Crimes.) Without losing our anti-imperialist politics and our humane values, we are compelled to re-evaluate what our erstwhile intellectual leaders have been telling us. I call this “Learning the Lessons of Kosovo.” This needs to happen on a scale equivalent to 1939, 1956, and 1980, the latter being the conflict between Vietnam and China over the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. In fact, it may be the same old battle – humane spirits vs. Stalinists, neo-Stalinists, and crypto-Stalinists (including plenty of Trotskyites, so don’t get me wrong). It’s a struggle with people who can’t hold two opposing ideas in their heads and find a way to reconcile the complications of reality.
I encourage Hedges to reconsider whether his unequivocal praise of Chomsky is justified. I suggest that there at least could have been the traditional second-to-last paragraph that acknowledges that the movie’s plot is a bit thin, or the flavor of the tofu burgers was somewhat lacking.
Roger Lippman
Seattle, Washington
The writer has been a progressive activist since the 1960s, and he was a defendant in the Vietnam-era Seattle 7 Conspiracy trial. He is the editor of Balkan Witness, a compilation of reporting and opinion on the wars in Kosovo and Bosnia. The site gives voice to the experiences of the victims of Serbia’s aggression, and it has no tolerance for those Leftists who, being confused by NATO intervention on the side of the besieged, have thus minimized or indeed endorsed Serbian war crimes.
–
A DISSENTING WRITER’S VIEW
Chomsky’s Fateful Flaw
By Daniel Simpson
Like Chris Hedges, I was once a New York Times correspondent in the Balkans. Having resigned in disgust at what he called “shameful cheerleading”, I share his views on the bankruptcy of corporate journalism, and I’ve echoed them.
I was less impressed, however, by his ode to Noam Chomsky. That isn’t to say that Chomsky hasn’t inspired me. His analysis of the media’s propaganda function is compelling, and I told an editor at the Times as much when I left, which didn’t endear me to him.
But he’s a far less convincing guide to foreign affairs, as I’ve learned from his pronouncements on the Balkans. To borrow Hedges’s words, Chomsky’s “moral and intellectual posturing” can “serve as a smoke screen” for belittling war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Though his work is influential, and prolific, it isn’t consistently defined by “rigorous scholarship”, or “a remarkable grasp of detail”.
In my experience, Chomsky doesn’t, as Hedges suggests, “defy the cant of the crowd to speak the truth.” When it suits him, he crowds out truth with cant of his own. He casually, and needlessly, minimizes, ignores or otherwise denies crimes that aren’t being “minimized or ignored in mass culture”, if doing so helps to sell arguments about American malevolence. This willfully misleads activists who don’t know better, because they think he’s telling them awkward truths.
Unlike his old co-author Ed Herman, Chomsky doesn’t pretend there wasn’t a Srebrenica “massacre”. But he resolutely defends Diana Johnstone for sticking the word in quotation marks, and asserting, as she maintains today, that “the figure of 8,000 [victims] is certainly exaggerated, since it includes men who died in ambush while trying to escape, or even men who actually did escape”.
Needless to say, she can’t prove anyone escaped, or that any of the 6,500-odd corpses identified to date weren’t killed at Srebrenica. She even boasts of not keeping abreast of this mounting evidence. Yet Chomsky claims that Johnstone “argues – and, in fact, clearly demonstrates – that a good deal of what has been charged has no basis in fact, and much of it is pure fabrication.” The fabrications are theirs; they selectively rely on discredited sources. Freedom of speech isn’t the issue here, unless they’re defending the freedom to falsify history. They’re free to do that, but if it’s what they’re doing, they should say so.
I wrote to Chomsky after he said that Johnstone’s work “may be wrong; but it is very careful and outstanding.” I asked if he’d been quoted accurately, whether “may be” meant “is”, and if so what was “careful and outstanding” about being wrong. I also asked if he thought he could have been clearer.
After 8,500 words of vituperative emails, which ducked my questions to ask if I was a dupe, a timewaster or just arrogant, Chomsky deigned to state plainly that he didn’t dispute any of the established facts about Srebrenica, and therefore that Johnstone was wrong. He withheld permission to publish the exchange.
This is just the background to a bigger picture. Chomsky says we should focus on crimes for which we ourselves are responsible, because our governments commit them. Yet by minimizing other crimes in the process, he undermines human rights activists elsewhere, for example in Serbia. He ignores the evidence they gather, and insinuates it’s bogus. And he sees no hypocrisy here, because he’s never claimed to write objective history, even if some read it as gospel.
But that means he does the same as the journalists he pillories: he fixes facts around a policy of propagandizing. Unless people realize this, they won’t be equipped to do as Chomsky encourages, and “think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” including the ones made by Hedges about Chomsky’s “example of intellectual and moral independence”, and his commitment to truth.
When challenged, Chomsky isn’t “relentlessly self-critical”, and he shows no interest in busting his own “self-indulgent myths and stereotypes”. Instead, he abuses his critics, assuming they’re ideological enemies. As he told a British professor, when asked to explain his peddling of untruths, “the Balkans are a Holy Issue in England, far more sensitive than Israel in the US”. He implies some victims are less victimized than others, torpedoing his own moral reasoning.
Again, Chomsky scorns this when others do it. He criticizes states for double standards, enforced by apologists in the media. So, the U.S. and its allies might admit to mistakes, he argues, but only their enemies commit atrocities worthy of outrage, which can be used to justify Western intervention. As Bill Weinberg puts it, Chomsky draws a mocking “distinction between ‘worthy victims’ (e.g. Bosnians and Kosovars) and ‘unworthy victims’ (e.g. Palestinians). Yet Chomsky and his followers have merely reversed this logic, rather than dispensing altogether with the hideous concept of ‘unworthy victims.’ The suffering of the Bosnian Muslims is as invisible to them as that of the Palestinians and Iraqis is to the dominant propaganda machine that Chomsky has dedicated his life to dissecting.”
This is a tragic irony, and sadly insidious.
When interviewing Chomsky, Hedges passed up a chance to ask serious and important questions. I’m frankly both surprised and disappointed.
There are pitfalls in defining journalism as a mission to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The world doesn’t always divide neatly into oppressors and the oppressed, and distortions neither speak truth to power, nor comfort the powerless. “Being adversarial sounds righteous,” warns Samuel Freedman, in his Letters to a Young Journalist, “except when it is a mere reflex, just one more way of imposing black-and-white absolutism on a world washed in grays.”
Of course, propagandists use nuance to conceal crimes. It “falls upon the facts like soft snow,” as George Orwell observed, “blurring their outlines and covering up all the details”. That doesn’t give dissidents license to do the same.
Most Chomsky fans aren’t aware that he does. It would probably take a Chomsky critique of Chomsky to change that, which seems improbable. I’ve just read a book called “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)”. Its conclusions on cognitive dissonance are insightful. We’re none of us immune from self-delusion.
Daniel Simpson
London, England
Since leaving The New York Times to run a music festival, the writer has been a multimedia activist. Last year he published a fake Financial Times, and Barack Obama’s spiked Nobel Prize speech. He maintains an occasional untitled blog.
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A SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGNER’S VIEW
Sticking to the Facts
By Owen Beith
I found Chris Hedges’s article uncomfortable reading. I was taken aback to find a conscientious journalist with first-hand knowledge so impressed by an academic who shows little more than instrumental concern for the facts in his criticism of the reporters who alerted the world to the horrors of “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia.
I’m not a journalist or academic. I first became aware of the controversy surrounding the reporting of Bosnian Serb internment/concentration camps at the time of a notorious libel case in the High Court in London. Living Marxism (LM) magazine was being sued for accusing Independent Television News (ITN) reporters of lying about conditions in the camp at Trnopolje. An LM supporter tried to convince me that what I thought I knew about the camps was wrong.
I read the original LM article, which claimed that ITN had deliberately misrepresented the situation in the camps to make them appear worse than they were, and shape public opinion. When I looked for more information on the subject, it became obvious to me that LM was misrepresenting the grim reality.
LM lost the case. The court heard the evidence of Dr Idriz Merdzanic, who had been responsible for treating brutalised prisoners at Trnopolje. It was as clear to the jury as it was to me that the camp had been part of a murderous strategy of ethnic cleansing, and the ITN reporters had simply reported what they had seen.
I was puzzled when I came across Professor Chomsky still arguing, long after the High Court judgment, that I had got it wrong. Trnopolje was just a refugee camp, he said, whose occupants were free to come and go. The images of emaciated prisoners behind barbed wire were intentionally misleading; the libel case result was an abuse of the law by a powerful media corporation anxious to suppress free speech and demonise Serbs for political reasons. Effectively, the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing were victims of media manipulation.
Hedges says that Chomsky “combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect” and quotes Norman Finkelstein’s view that Chomsky “cares about the lives of people and there the details count.” I don’t understand how this squares with Chomsky’s view of Trnopolje, which Hedges himself has referred to as one of the three main concentration camps around Prijedor. (Hedges knows the reality of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. He reported the horrors of the Ljubija mine, where the bodies of victims were passed through ore crushers before being limed and buried under tons of rock and debris.)
In 1995, six months before Srebrenica, Hedges observed that “a great many Serbs … desperately want to believe that the crimes committed in their name were somehow ordinary and therefore forgivable. Just as with the Germans after World War II, it will take determined efforts by outsiders to persuade them otherwise.”
Hedges’s failure to challenge Chomsky achieves the opposite. Denying victims’ experience and distorting the facts hurts survivors and comforts criminals. Perfunctory expressions of sympathy don’t change that. Chomsky rejects charges of inconsistency and partiality, claiming that we have a duty to speak out where we are in a position to take responsibility. He is a man of influence. He is responsible for the way he uses the influence that public respect gives him. It’s surprising to find Hedges so uncritical.
Chomsky has in fact allowed himself to become an apologist for aggressors. My lingering respect for his analysis was destroyed when I saw the interview he gave for RTS (Radio-Television Serbia) Online in 2006. In it, the relentless critic of Western media support for the U.S. power structure aligned himself with a broadcaster complicit in the war crimes perpetrated in Bosnia by Serbia’s corrupt and murderous power structure.
Watching the interview made me aware how careful Chomsky is before an audience. He is evasive as well as partial, sidestepping facts that hinder his argument. The effect is that he seems to mesmerize people, paralyzing their critical faculties. Intelligent listeners like Hedges seem to hear what they want to hear him say, not what he actually says. It’s only when you try to pin down his argument that you realize there’s a problem.
What struck me about the RTS interview was that for once Chomsky was quite unequivocal. He and his interviewer agreed that ITN’s image of the emaciated Fikret Alic behind barbed wire was “fraudulent”. Chomsky’s explanation was hard to follow but it reaffirmed his view that Trnopolje was an open camp. The only acknowledgment of the mistreatment the “refugees” there received was his dismissive references to Alic as the “thin man”. He made no mention of Omarska, the main focus of ITN’s broadcast.
The reality was that Fikret Alic had arrived at Trnopolje from Keraterm, where brutal treatment, starvation and disease-ridden conditions of imprisonment permanently damaged his health. The broadcast footage of gaunt, intimidated prisoners at Omarska gave a glimpse of terrible conditions there. Dr Merdzanic’s testimony confirmed that at Trnopolje inmates were under constant threat of brutalisation, torture, murder and rape by the camp’s armed guards. But all that counted for Chomsky was his thesis of a photograph concocted by untrustworthy reporters.
Hedges hasn’t confronted Chomsky over his attack on the honesty of fellow journalists, nor has he held him to account for the message of support that Chomsky’s judgment sends out to war crimes apologists, not least defence teams in The Hague. Chomsky may dismiss criticism as “utter hysteria” but as Hedges knows, this is a deadly serious matter.
Owen Beith
London, England
The writer works as a translator, and campaigns for truth and justice in Bosnia.
THE EVIDENCE:
For a detailed study of the camp system, and a dissection of discredited claims see David Campbell’s two-part study: Atrocity, memory, photography: imaging the concentration camps of Bosnia – the case of ITN versus Living Marxism.
The raw footage filmed by ITN at Omarska and Trnopolje is available on YouTube. There are eight further clips in the series (Srpski logori smrti – Prijedor)
For a description of the impact of Dr Merdzanic’s evidence at the libel trial, see two reports for the Guardian by Julia Hartley-Brewer.
Dr Merdzanic appears in “A Town called Kozarac” (Ed Harriman’s 1993 film for Channel 4′s Dispatches program), available in five separate parts on YouTube. His interview spans the end of Part 3 / start of Part 4.
It is worth comparing this with another interview of his in “Judgment”, an RTS joint production, which purports to debunk the evidence for the camps while showing emaciated prisoners, the reality of enclosure and the unspoken message of Merdzanic’s body language.
All the ICTY Prijedor camp judgments (in particular those relating to Milomir Stakic and Dusko Tadic), are available online with transcripts of the evidence.
Finally, “the thin man” Fikret Alic describes the reality of his imprisonment and survival, in an interview for Bosnian Television (with English subtitles).
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Daniel Simpson
Daniel Simpson has worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters and The New York Times. He lives in London, where he's writing a book about the love-in on Big War Island
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Chomsky is an ignorant "(human)being"! It doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to know that he is well paid by Russia and Serbia for their propaganda.
Do you have any evidence to support your accusation? If so please list any evidence or references so this readership can cross reference your charge.
Owen Beith and Daniel Simpson are my heroes. Chomsky never acknowledged the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Chomsky throws a smokescreen, claims he doesnt deny the massacre, but refuses to use the word genocide. What does that tell you about Chomsky's credibility? He is heavily associate with the worst of the worst genocide deniers, like Ed Herman.
This has got to be the worst piece of Serbian hate rhetoric I have read in years.
The three writers completely dismiss the horrors that were waged against the Serbian population in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Worse yet, there is a subjective tone of "they had it coming", which is disgusting. Ethnic Serbians have been completely ethnically cleansed from 90% of Kosovo, Croatia, Sarajevo, Mostar and scores of other locations.
While these writers are 1) a translator 2) a "multimedia activist" and 3) a "progressive activist" there are those of us who have been working on the front lines in the Balkans with international organizations for over a decade and have seen the suffering of all sides every single day. Not from our comfy computer screens in London and Seattle.
The tragedy of the former Yugoslavia is that it was a civil war between which pitted brother against brother, Godfathers & best men at weddings, father against son. Civil war is the worst kind of war that there is and the hardest to overcome.
None of you non-Yugoslavs will really understand the devastation the wars caused and the damage you continue to cause with articles like the ones you write. It goes beyond the body count. It has opened doors to ongoing sicknesses from the NATO bombs, rocketing cancer rates, trafficking in women, drug addiction, poverty, illiteracy, hatred, infertility, a massive suicide rate and the reality that things in the region will never be as good as it once was. This is the result for EVERYONE in the region (except the Slovenians of course, who are now in the EU). Let the people in the Balkans resolve the disputes on their own. Worry about the Genocide your own countries are committing in the middle East and to the countries you've colonized.
Shame on the comment factory for giving you a soapbox to stand on, when you obviously don't have a clue what you're writing about.
@John Hawthorne-Thank you John. There is nothing more to say to these serb haters.
Thank you!
UPDATE: According to the latest report on the results of the OTP investigation, the number of identified Srebrenica victims has reached 6557.
"The latest report containing information on the newly discovered graves and exhumations was completed in April 2010. The purpose of the report was to give the Trial Chamber an accurate number of victims from Srebrenica, the number of graves where their remains were exhumed and other forensic evidence establishing connection between the findings and the events described in the indictment…. DNA analysis of remains helped establish the identity of the victims. However, body parts belonging to a single victim were found in two, three, and in one case in four mass graves."
http://www.sense-agency.com/en/stream.php?sta=3&a…
John Hawthorne, there was no organized state-sponspored ‘ethnic cleansing’ of ethnic Serbs from Sarajevo. They left voluntarily because Radovan Karadzic’s government ordered them to do so. During the war, your Serbs whom younsympathise so much participated in the slaughter of 10,000 Sarajevp residens, many of them Muslim children. You have no authority to criticize above human rights activists, so please shut up. If you wish to defend Serbs, you may do so at the Hague.
John Hawthorne, there was no organized state-sponspored ‘ethnic cleansing’ of ethnic Serbs from Sarajevo. They left voluntarily because Radovan Karadzic’s government ordered them to do so. During the war, your Serbs whom you sympathise so much participated in the slaughter of 10,000 Sarajevo residens, many of them Muslim children. You have no authority to criticize the abpve signed human rights activists, so please shut up. If you wish to defend Serbs, you may do so at the Hague.
@ John Hawthorne! Based on your comment you are a Serb hiding behind a "Western name" ,be a man and take off your "mask" or are you ashamed to write under your real serbian name? One must be blind or totally ignorant to believe what mr. Chomsky;s propaganda say. Did Chomsky ever talked to ppl on the ground (Kosovo refugees) and asking them: Who is expelling them from their homes? The answer would be / IS: From Serbian state terrorism,the very regime Chomsky is protecting…NOT from NATO bombing.
Illyrian, you are either completely naive or deliberately trying to hide the truth. Who's expelling whom? Too many folks don't know that Albanians (from Albania) have crossed into Serbia via Kosovo for decade after decade. Now, the border is non-existent. Albania and Kosovo are operating as one, and the only ones continuously expelled from Kosovo are the Christian Serbs. You should know very well that the population of Serbs in Kosovo is now down to 5%. You and your ilk will not be satisfied until Kosovo is fully a Muslim state. You now have a Muslim beachhead in Europe. You can thank NATO for that. But, then, NATO/USA have a huge military base (Camp Bondsteel), and are at your service. What a tangled web was woven in 1999 when NATO/USA chose to deceive.
@"Truth"??? One thing i like to assure you,you can visit Kosovo at anytime as an Serbian tourist and enjoy everything Kosovo has to offer,but, make no mistake to think that serbia will ever rule over Kosovo again! I believe there will be good neighborship with mutual respect between Kosovo and Serbia as 2 Independent sovereign States,sooner rather then later…Serbian rule over Kosovo is over,CASE CLOSED.
thats what the Turks said too, oh and thats what the Austrian/Hungarians said, and oh wait Hitler said the same thing, and guess what they all lost. Serbs will wait 10,000 years, no matter how long, we will win over oppression and injustice again. Why don't you muslims give back the 500 years of rape and slavery you had over Christian Serbs, it's ok the Lord sees everything and He has seen the muslim rape over Serbia during the Turkish slavery…Serbs will be back the churches there are a promise of that.
Shut up you moron!
Noam Chomsky like Mrs. Diana Johnstone had an objective approach to the war in Croatia, in Bosnia and most recently in Kosovo, while the others react in a different way just because they are paid to do so.
It is most funny that "illyrian" asks John Hawthorne to present himself under the "full Serbian name". But, what is "illyrians" , Albanian or Muslim name? All those to whom were given those "ready made states",
and who pay for anti Serb propaganda should not criticize Mr. Chomsky and even less Mrs. Johnstone.
Thank you for clarification.
The shovel being broken across the back of Serbia is the same one being used to slowly bury the United States and any notion of national independence left in the world. Since 1990 the former Yugoslavia has been the globalist's lab rat for destruction of the independent nation state. As and where the successive republics could not simply be bought off they have been subjected to every form of subversion and aggression; military, economic, political, academic and cultural. In both the US as well as Serbia the minions and muppets of George Soros and his sick fraternity have found that the perversion of civic and personal virtues with the aid of cheap traitors can succeed in destroying a nation where no number of bombs or sanctions could in years past. In spite of a comprehensive and punitive disadvantaged status imposed on the Nation's advancement, Serbia had, up to now no less managed enrich the world the unique vision of her prolific cinematic culture that has above all else, defended and illuminated the humanity of the Serbian people in a hypocritical world that would still dismiss an entire people as sadistic monsters.
This is the most bigoted piece of garbage I have read on the Balkans in 10 years. Obviously none of these three have ever spent any signisifcant time in the region aside from a guided tour, that is of course if their entire knowledge on the subject does not come from Jerry Bruckheim films.
The truth of the matter is that the USA is late to the struggle against jihadist terror and supported the wrong side in the Balkan wars. We back stabbed an ally nation whom for all their faults would probably shown more gratitude fro US acting on it's behald than the muslim world did with the 'Thank You' they delivered on 9-11-2001.
Executing prisoners of war who're guilty of war crimes is genocide? In whose deluded mind? As a reference, here's what those "men and boys" did to civilians before Serb soldiers captured Srebrenica: http://www.serbianna.com/features/srebrenica/
Executing prisoners of war is murder. In this instance it was also an element of genocide, but the raw fact is that it was murder, and the people who carried out those executions knew they were committing mass murder, so they buried the bodies in concealed mass graves and then when there was a risk those graves might be found and investigated, they dug up the remains and reburied them in more remote locations. It was planned and organised on an industrial scale, and the object was to complete the removal of the Bosnian Muslim / Bosniak population of the Drina valley that had been so bloodily and calculatedly initiated in 1992. That's the real world context..
@Truth Squad! Speaking of crossing the borders! Serbs crossed the border from Russia to the Balkans in the late VIII (8) Century,Albanians were long before serbs in Kosovo,Albania etc.
@ Daniel Cane! Google my name "Illyrians"…you will find out who i am and stop mixing things here with religion? My name is my identity,i'm not pretending to be an American , British or German…like some ppl here. P.S. Daniel,if you didn't know who Illyrians are. How in the World should your opinion be taken seriously?
Illyrian LOL- Oh do please tell us about that wonderful Illyrian culture of yours that is 2000+ years old or any Illyrian scholar that will bet on their career by claiming that ALbanians are direct descendents of the Illyrians. If you guys are really Illyrian why is it that could never create your own state and why is ALbania such a shambles? Why did you consider the Ottoman empire your state until you realized it was dying? Why did you convert to Islam en-mass? If you had already been on the Balkan peninsula for so many years you would have been the first people to be CHristianized and remained Christian like the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgars have and not selling your souls just so you could rape and pillage your neighbors who were continuing the struggle? WHy are there no records of an ALbanian state in the middle ages and why did you need to have a state created for you by AUstria and Italy in the last century? DO you know why? Because you’re servants brought over from the Caucusas to use as rabble rousers.
BTW- Get your facts straight- Just because the ALbanians were brought over from Chechnya and DAgestan in the 10th century -Serbs along with other Slavs migrated from the Carpathian mountain and basin to the Balkan peninsula and not from RUssia. In fact the Albanians roots are closer to Vladivostok than the Serbs.
Very interesting URL on Albanian origin: http://my.opera.com/macedonianneighbourhood/blog/… http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.p…
How, from where and when did Albanians come to old Serbia (what is now Albania)? From Caucasus to Sicily with the Arabs and then in 1043, as a part of the large army under Duke of Sicily- George Maniacos, they arrived to the peninsula. Fascinating and factual, many old books dating back over 10 centuries show what is available to us about Albanian origin and yet – we learn differently….
Some interesting quotes from the internet:
"The Albanians call themselves "Shqip-tari". This name is not Indo-European in origin and contains in it the Ural-Altaic suffix "ar" or "tar". Much like: "Khaz-AR", "Av-AR", "Magy-AR", "Bulg-AR", "Hung-AR", "Ta-TAR" – "Ship-TAR".
Taken together with the Shqiptar-Albanian toponyms on the territory of the former Caucasian Albania, the etymology of "Shqipatr" becomes more plausable."
"…..For example Albanians are the only nation in South-East Europe which celebrates traditional Iranian fest Nowruz. Albanian language is also very different from other local languages. It is in generally Indo-European, but with great difference to Greek, Slavic and Latin. Of course in Albanian language are present some words from ancient local Illyrian language. "
Three shills with moral and intellectual dwarfism think that by standing on each others shoulders they might gain enough height to attack Chomsky. A bit Monty Python really. . .
For a scholarly insight into how the western corporate media reported in the former Yugoslavia a must read is Peter Brocks (Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia).
@ Micheal Attaliota! We Albanians don't call ourself "Albanians" in our language,the name Albanian is used by foreigners (like Germans=Deutsche…)! We call ourself Shqipetar, Shqipe means Eagle, Shqipetar/ Albanian, means Sons of the Eagle,Shqiperia/ Albania, means Land of the Eagle,for this matter stop that BS with -ar,tar, kar etc. Albanians didn't come to serbia,serbs came to the Balkans from present russia/siberia in the late VIII (8) century and they were called "AVARS" later "SERVS" ,Albanians wre there long before Slavs arrived in Balkans (Google Balkan Slavs…)? albanian spoken language is older then ancient Greek lang. Modern Greek language has very little to do with old greek language,in fact old Greek language can be translated better (over 30%) in todays Albanian language…!
It's really not about who did what in the 10th century… it's about who's still using their hands to wipe their butts in the 21st.
The Albanians call themselves "Shqip-tari". This name is not Indo-European in origin and contains in it the Ural-Altaic suffix "ar" or "tar". Much like: "Khaz-AR", "Av-AR", "Magy-AR", "Bulg-AR", "Hung-AR", "Ta-TAR" – "Ship-TAR".
One of many sources:
Evliya Celebi was a 17th century Turkish traveller during the Ottoman period who wrote about his experiences in the empire. His recorded travels still provide a useful source for Ottoman society, and, the Albanians, whom he refers to as the 'Arnavud'. Celebi had developed a great respect for the Albanians after spending much time with them in their dwellings, learning of their people, history, customs and language. Given his attention to detail to this particular group as opposed to others in the Balkans, he can consequently be regarded as one of the first chroniclers of the modern Albanians. The information he provides, be it fact or myth, largely derives from what was told to him by the Albanians themselves.
Celebi states that the first ancestors of the Albanians were Arabs who arrived in Epirus during the 7th century. After the rise of Islam the Quraysh spread out into the Caucasus regions and Celebi states that these migrant Quraysh tribes formed the ancestral lineage of the Circassian, Lazkha and Abkhaz peoples. A segment of this group broke away and is said to have sought refuge with the king of Spain. On page 191, Celebi states the following:
Quote:
"When the blessed Omar conquered Jerusalem, Jabal could not remain any longer in that place, so they boarded ships and took refuge with the king of Spain. Jabal-i Alhama was given the mountains of Dukat, Progonat and Frengis in the Albanian regions of Avlona and Delvina to live in, which were then under Spanish rule. These lands were previously uninhabited and, within a short period of time, he settled them and, mingling with the Franks, they created the Albanian language from a mixture of Frankish and Arabic. The place they originally inhabited, and where they still reside after many generations, is now called the mountain of Quryelesh, since they are descended from the Quraysh tribe of Arabs. Accordingly, the Albanian people boast that they are descended from the Quraysh, the companions of the Prophet. Although Jabal-i Alhama died as a Muslim and was buried at this site according to his last will and testament, his descendants intermarried with the treacherous Franks and became Frankish and bookless themselves……….The Albanians claim that their ancestor Jabal-i Alhama was a companion of the Prophet and died a Muslim. In short, Jabal-i Alhama of the Quraysh tribe is the ancestor of the Albanian………."
The movie 'Judgement' Exposes the Phony 'Death Camp' Pictures that …
16 Jul 2003 … This is proved in the Emperor's Clothes movie, 'JUDGMENT!' To start with, the barbed wire was staged. The ITN film crew went inside a … http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/313.html
SMEARING CHOMSKY – THE GUARDIAN IN THE GUTTER
4 Nov 2005 … SMEARING CHOMSKY – THE GUARDIAN IN THE GUTTER. Introduction. On October 31, the Guardian published an interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma … http://www.medialens.org/…/051104_smearing_chomsky_the...
21 Nov 2005 … On November 4, we published a Media Alert, 'Smearing Chomsky', detailing the Guardian' s October 31 interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma … http://www.medialens.org/…/051121_smearing_chomsky_the...
CHECK THIS ON ITN and LM trial and Omarska camp: http://www.srpska-mreza.com/LM/LM102_ITN/LM102_IT…
@ M.Attaliota! You are a JOKE.
bravo for Noam, a true hero who is not afraid to speak the truth. The Serbs suffered just as much and in some cases even more than others in all the conflicts of the 90s. It is amazing to me that some so called "intellects" keep talking about "serbian genocide" when the International Criminal Court found Serbia innocent of the genocide accusation in Feb of 2007 (see Bosnian Genocide case). Bosnia had a civil war in which 100k people died, one third of the victims were Serbs.
Albanians are NOT illyrian. that is a lie invented by albanians in the 19th century after they saw the croats and serbs start the "Illyrian movement"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrian_movement
I DARE ANY ALBANIAN HERE TO SHOW ME 1 ALBANIAN SOURCE FROM PRIOR TO THE 19th CENTURY WHO CLAIMED THEY WERE ILLYRIAN, YOU WILL NEVER FIND ONE BECAUSE THEY DO NOT EXIST;
"Albanian intellectuals were looking for a national myth of origin, preferably one establishing an national identity traced to a people of remote antiquity. At first, Albanian nationalist writers opted for the Pelasgians as the forefathers of the Albanians. But then the Pelasgians were ousted by the Illyrian theory of Albanian origins (one day they are ancient Egyptians the next Babylonians, Sumerians, Romans etc. depends on the day)..albanians claimed Alexander the great was Albanian, that the Hellenistic civilization was spread by Albanians and that ancient Greek gods were Albanian
(these are all direct quotes you can find on this link and this is actually what the Albanians think they can lie and get away with); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_National_Aw…
Main article: Origin of Albanians
A number of scholars consider that the Albanians are direct descendants of an Illyrian tribe that was named "Albanoi" that was located in present day Albania. Many other scholars dispute this. See Origin of Albanians. Many other scholars have rightfully claimed that the Albanians and the Illyrians are the descendants of the ancient Pelasgians, and thus their history goes back at least 4000 years before Christ.
Those who support the Illyrian-Albanian continuity theory maintain that all the Illyrian tribes except the Albanians disappeared during the Early Middle Ages under the waves of migrating barbarians. A forbidding mountain homeland and resilient tribal society enabled the Albanians to survive into modern times with their identity and their Indo-European language intact.
Related Topics:
Early Middle Ages – Indo-European language
The name Albania is said by these scholars to be derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Arber, or Arbereshë, and later Albanoi, that lived near Durrës.
bishop
Read it carefully,it sees 4000 (Four Thousand years before Christ or 6000 years ago!)
Your ancestors were in SIBERIA at that time,NOT IN THE BALKANS.
By the way,the name for serbs in the VIII century when they came to the Balkans first was "AVARS" later "SERVS" (which means SERVER …) later to manipulate the name "SERVS" they changed "V" for "B",making it sound less embarrassing.
also the Serbs did not "come from russia" or anywhere. they are indigenous to the Balkans made up of various tribes that lived in the region; Triballians, Illyrians, Dacians, Vlachs;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triballi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Serbs
groups of Slav conquerors and warriors came to the Balkans who imposed their language and absorbed the tribes under their control;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs#Genetics
Genetic studies conclude that Serbs are of predominantly Balkan genetics (indigenous to the region and have very small amount of generally considered "Slavic" (Predominant in West Slavic nations; R-M458, ranging from 0-12% in the Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians, Greeks and Bulgarians[52]) genes showing that Slavs (White Serbs according to national myth/historical sources mixed with the Romanized Paleo-Balkan peoples of the conquered region (Serbian lands) and made the Slavic culture and language dominant in the ethnogenesis of the people. Thus, Serbs are mainly descendants of Slavs, Latin-speaking (Romanized) and Paleo-Balkan peoples (Dacians, Illyrians and Thracians).
the name means to "rule, watch over"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs#Name_and_etymo…
dont listen to the albanian propaganda as anyone who even reads about them for a second can see that their "origin" is vague and the first time the word ALBANIAN was ever used was in the 12 century (800 years after the word Serb); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Albani…
and you can also see that while the illyrians existed in the Balkans a country already existed in what is todays Azerbaijan called, guess what? – ALBANIA and a city called Albanopolis existed in Armenia, this is where they come from; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Albania
ALL OF THE LINKS ARE BACKED UP WITH SOURCES, LOOK IT UP AND PROVE ME WRONG.
To first address the article:
To you "wonderful" three "intellects" who were once respectful of Chomsky… have you ever read Johnstone? Have you ever been to the Balkans? Do you know anything about all the sh!t that happened in the Balkans side from what the media shovels into your mouths? I'm reading Johnstone right now actually, partially due to the mixed review of her information. I'm an American that moved to Serbia. I've talked to many people here in Serbia, both Serb and non-Serb. So far, Johnstone has nailed it. She puts massacre in quotations because the number of 8000 is falsified. She gives references which support her findings, too. And not some 6000+ unidentified bodies have been found. How about you remove a zero. It's been about 600 roughly that have been found. 600 isn't a massacre or a genocide. That's just called war, which if I'm not mistaken the oh-so-wonderful US is marvelously conducting throughout the Middle East to fight off exactly what it helped build here in the Balkans. So before you try discrediting Chomsky, make sure YOU know what you're talking about.
As for all the comments… wow. I had almost more fun reading those than I did the article. Albanians are not Illyrians. Serbs did not come from Rusija either. For the one accusing John to stop hiding behind an English name while being pro-Serb. Well, I'm pro-Serb, but not Serb with a multi-ethnic name… Christina/Kristina. Oldest found origin yet is Greek. So what does that make me? There are many things that the tourist doesn't know or see about the Balkans. I prefer the country of Srbija over my own birth country, USA, which is why I moved here. I'm not saying Serbs were/are 100% innocent, but they are definitely more innocent than Western media want anyone to believe. And since Kosovo of course was brought up, Albanians need to stop thinking that this "Greater Albania" will ever happen. Do realize that when NATO and everyone else leave Kosovo (which has already started) that things will be much different for you in KnM. You won't have anyone to hide behind. And then we will see how truly "great" a people you are. And Serbs will regain control of KnM.
Kiki
Who cares if you are serbian or not,no one gives a damn who you are , what you are or what the hell your name is . You have no idea what you are talking about.
You said:
"For the one accusing John to stop hiding behind an English name while being pro-Serb. Well, I'm pro-Serb, but not Serb with a multi-ethnic name… Christina/Kristina. Oldest found origin yet is Greek. So what does that make me?"
My answer to you is: It makes you ignorant with a running mouth.
As for great Albania and NATO leaving Kosovo and serbs regain it again,i say there is no need for great Albania,in the EU there are no borders! When NATO leaves Kosovo,we'll be NATO member by then! Serbia regaining Kosovo that's a wishful thinking…keep dreaming,don't wake up ever!
Chomsky got his facts wrong. He won't acknowledge that he made a mistake. He is unable to challenge the evidence about the reality of Trnopolje and doesn't try, he simply repeats what he has already said. It's simply a question of intellectual integrity. The rest is froth.
So called ‘John Hawthorne’ is actually Srebrenica genocide denier James Luko. He commented on my blog under same nickname, but his registered email pointed to James Luko identity.
Aaron Hebrew, your statement is 100% untruth and inaccurate fact. You write it is a fact but it is a complete untruth and gross slander and libel.
Response to Dejo:
Serbianna site is liars reference.
Srebrenica 1992-95, how it all started?
http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2009/10/slaughter-of-muslim-children-around.html
From 1992-1995 Serbs from heavily militarized villages around Srebrenica had forced approximately 40,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees to live in the Srebrenica ghetto with little or no means of survival. By Winter 1992/93, the number of Bosniak refugees increased to 80,000.
Serb Army stationed around Srebrenica never demilitarized, even though they were required to do so under the 1993 demilitarization agreements. Furthermore, Serbs around Srebrenica constantly attacked neighbouring Bosnian Muslim villages, frequently bombarding them from air and with Serbian airplanes; they also kept Srebrenica under siege and blocked humanitarian convoys with food and medical supplies from entering the enclave. Hundreds of Bosnian Muslim villages were destroyed around Srebrenica in 1992 with at least 11,000 Bosniaks killed in Podrinje (the Drina Valley region encompassing Srebrenica).
In July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army – with logistical and military support from Serbia – staged a brutal takeover of Srebrenica and its surrounding area, where they proceeded to perpetrate genocide. Bosnian Serb soldiers and paramilitary groups separated Bosniak families, forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosniaks, and summarily executed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys.
Response to Kiki: You dont knpw what you are talking about. Johnstone’s info is outdated. Victims get identified every day. So far 6,500+ victims of the Srebrenica genocide have been DNA identified.
Of 8,372 victims, more than 6,000 have been identified through DNA forensic technology. The latest OTP [Office of the Prosecutor] report containing information on the newly discovered graves and exhumations was completed in April 2010 and puts the number of DNA identified Srebrenica victims to 6,557. DNA results of the International Commission on Missing Persons support an estimate of 8,100 Srebrenica genocide victims. The most recent ICMP press release puts the figure of DNA identified victims to 6,414 and is valid up until March 2010, so the OTP figures are most likely ICMPs most recent figures for April 2010. The ICMP blood-samples support an estimate of 8,100 victims killed in July 1995.
http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2007/12/srebrenica-numbers-quick-facts.html
I have noticed that every time people criticise Noam Chomsky, he immediately sends Edward Herman and David Peterson to defend him. Isn’t Chomsky capable of defending himself? Why does he always need to send these two discredited Srebrenica genocide deniers to fight his own battles for him? Chomsky has no courage to respond to legitimate critics. Therefore, the “three activists” win.
As for Prof. Ed Herman and David Peterson, they have no academic degrees in history or international justice and they are not competent to make conclusions about genocide.
lets get some facts straight first;
1. Naser Oric and his thugs killed thousands of serbs around srebrenica for years before this massacre
icty.org/x/cases/oric/acjug/en/080703_Oric_summary_en.pdf
2. Forensic investigators had only exhumed 2,028 bodies when the judgment was handed down for "genocide".
3. how is Srebrenica a "genocide" and Jasenovac, where 700,000 Serbs were killed by Croats is not? 5,000 Serbs were killed just in Sarajevo during the 90s, why is this not a "genocide"?
4. it was also not determined how the majority of the people died and when. Mirsad Tokaca the head of the Bosnian muslim Research and documentation center found recently that 500 "victims names" were found to be alive.
5. no doubt a serious massacre occurred similar to what what the US did here;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasht-i-Leili_massacre
people need to be held accountable, but tell me what kind of genocide allows women and children to leave? for a real genocide google; JASENOVAC
@ bishop,serbs and Chomsky's lovers
We all know who you ( serbs) are and where you came from to the Balkans,in the VII-VIII centuries!
Where is your pride? Why your nation try to fake or steal History from others (Slavic-FYROM is trying the same thing claiming to be real Macedonians.)
Serbian writer,so called " father of the nation ",Dobrica Cosic once said: "Serbia releases 100 lies / propaganda ,if only one becomes believable then serbia wins"!!!
This tells everything about serbian people or politics.
Here are some of Dobrica Cosic's famous quote
Quote from the musings of a controversial lead character of the novel trilogy "Deobe"(Divisions) 1961. Volume I, page 135: "A lie, trait of our patriotism" “We lie to deceive ourselves, to console others, we lie for mercy, we lie to fight fear, to encourage ourselves, to hide our and somebody else's misery. We lie for love and honesty. We lie because of freedom. Lying is a trait of our patriotism and the proof of our innate intelligence. We lie creatively, imaginatively and inventively."
Ćosić and Chomsky
In 2006, Ćosić received support in the press for his proposal for a partition of Kosovo from American dissident Noam Chomsky. In a [1] Serbian television interview, Chomsky was asked what the best solution for Kosovo's final status is. He responded:
My feeling has been for a long time that the only realistic solution is one that in fact was offered by the President of Serbia [i.e. Dobrica Cosic, then President of Yugoslavia] I think back round 1993, namely some kind of partition, with the Serbian, by now very few Serbs left but the, what were the Serbian areas being part of Serbia and the rest be what they called "independent" which means it'll join Albania. I just don't see…I didn't see any other feasible solution ten years ago.
This interview sparked a correspondence between the two dissident intellectuals, parts of which were published in the Belgrade magazine NIN.
There is big difference between being an nationalist and being a blind Hater!
Cosic is like most serbs nationalist and blind hater,Chomsky on the other hand is only a blind hater and both are LIERS
Bishop, your so called "facts" are compilation of already discredited Serbian lies and distortions about Srebrenica. You will find factual answers to all your questions in more credible sources like http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com and http://www.icty.org.
mr. bishop, as an American whose government helped save Yugoslavia and the Serbs from the bloodthirsty Croatian roman-catholic fascists of WW2, and helped free the sovereign republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and blessed Kosovo from an ethnic cleansed Republika Srpska during the last decade, I would just like to remind you that two wrongs do not make a right.
And thank you for the opportunity to make America the object of endless admiration and affections from the wonderful peace & party loving Albanians.
Allah bless America, Albania (*and some Serbians also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMJJPvX2W2Q ).
This just in: according to the Hague, singling out thousands of defenseless bosnian muslims in a refugee camp and butchering them is a crime (with a name: ‘genocide’).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/jun/10/hague-b…
Separating the men and boys from girls and women and massacring them out in the open, broad daylight – with UN observers around – is both inhuman and incredibly stupid.
They weren't massacred in the broad open daylight. They were bussed to remote execution sites like Branjevo Farm and the Petkovci dam. After they were killed the bodies were dug into mass graves. When it became clear that the international community was looking for the evidence those mass graves were dug up and the remains were mixed up and transported to other even more remote sites for reburial in secondary and then tertiary graves. Why so much trouble? To conceal the evidence.
Contrary to the claims of mr. bishop, the existence of the Illyrian people is not in dispute – and has not been disputed by any serious, western educated person since the Hellinist era of ancient grece. Whether or not the Albanian people descended from them, I have no idea and probably neither do the Albanians or anyone else since what little remains of the Illyrian language and written record has not been deciphered (at least, not as of 1968 when my ‘Ancient, Medieval and World History’ book by Stewart Easton was published). The Albanian language, however, derives from the tongues of tribes that established the republics of ancient-greece (i.e. an dialect of the indo-euros) and thus, the Albanians constitute an ethnicity that is distinct (unlike the South-Slavs who share Serbo-Croatian tongue). By the way, interestingly, it turns out that the Serbs and the Croats belong to exactly the same ethnicity and race; one prostrates to the East and the other prays to the West, that's really the only real difference. I wonder why they often hate and hurt each other so much? (that's now how we do things in America.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9OyiLch40c
@"illyrian"
you are clearly an amateur that has gotten his information from door men and waiters in new york. the "quote" you posted by Cosic is from a work of FICTION!!!!! hahahaha what a fool you are. if you ever read a book you would know the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Cosic's book was a work of fiction that addressed the partisan vs. chetnik conflict in serbia during ww2. hahahaha, it is pathetic that albanians always use the same lines; cosic's quote and the nonsense lies about them being "illiyrian", again, show me just 1 Albanian source from prior to the 19th century that made this claim. YOU WILL NEVER FIND ONE!
@bush
you seem to have as much knowledge on the balkan region as an American 2nd grader. the US did nothing at all for the Serbs in ww2 unlike the heroic Serbs who saved 500 american pilots; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5CXope9ncI
this is the greatest untold story from ww2; http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-500-Untold-Greate…
as for your "cleansed" comment you should again do some research before you attempt to debate me;
1. 250,000 serbs were cleansed from croatia in 95'; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm
2. Republika Srpska;
In 1996 there were some 435,346 Serbian refugees from the Federation in Republika Srpska while another 197,925 had gone to Serbia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republika_Srpska#Imp…
3. Kosovo http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/1999/08/01/abuses-a…
more than 164,000 Serbs have been expelled since NATO took over
these are all people who are still refuges (the lucky ones went to live with family). your homework now is to go add up the numbers and get back to me and tell me who has suffered the most from "ethnic cleansing" in the balkans. so far you have gotten an F in Balkanology. pathetic.
@biden
where did i say that the "existence of the Illyrian people" was in dispute? what i am telling you is simply that the albanians in the balkans are not their descendants. that is a lie invented in the 19th century after you saw the croats and serbs start the "Illyrian movement"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrian_movement
I DARE YOU TO SHOW ME 1 ALBANIAN SOURCE FROM PRIOR TO THE 19th CENTURY WHO CLAIMED YOU WERE ILLYRIAN, YOU WILL NEVER FIND ONE BECAUSE THEY DO NOT EXIST;
"Albanian intellectuals were looking for a national myth of origin, preferably one establishing an national identity traced to a people of remote antiquity. At first, Albanian nationalist writers opted for the Pelasgians as the forefathers of the Albanians. But then the Pelasgians were ousted by the Illyrian theory of Albanian origins (one day they are ancient Egyptians the next Babylonians, Sumerians, Romans etc. depends on the day)..albanians claimed Alexander the great was Albanian, that the Hellenistic civilization was spread by Albanians and that ancient Greek gods were Albanian
(these are all direct quotes you can find on this link and this is actually what the Albanians think they can lie and get away with); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_National_Aw…
read all of my posts above and also read what michael wrote as he makes excellent points about the albanians being the only people in europe to celebrate a holiday that the people in the Caucasus celebrate; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz
this is just one of many things that proves that the Albanians come from the region of what is today Azerbaijan; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Albania
@Joey
one last thing i forgot to mention is something that we actually agree on; you are totally right, Serbs and Albanians do things very differently in the USA and in the West. Here are some examples;
Betim Kaziu, an Albanian U.S. citizen, traveled abroad to try to join several terrorist groups http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/09/24/Man-accused-in-ov...
or
Two Albanian jihadis charged in North Carolina with plotting terrorist attacks overseas also planned to attack the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia; http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE58N6YT20090924
or
2007 Fort Dix attack plot involved a group of radical Albanian Islamist men who conspired to stage an attack against US Military personnel stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Fort_Dix_attack_pl...
or
the top three wanted people by the FBI are Albanians; http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/alert/dervishaj_p.htm
or
lets see how you do it in the UK where another muslim albanian Al Qaeda terrorist is busted; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236301/Bank-bla...
or
LETS SEE HOW ALBANIANS TREAT THIER WOMEN IN AMERICA AND THE WEST;
well they pimp out over 100,000 of their own daughters and sisters all over the West; http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/dying-to-leav...
or see how you masqueraded as victims of the Kosovo crisis to gain entry to Britain to pimp; http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-359385…
this chap pimped his own wife out; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/albani…
or this great clip where an Albanian traffickers sell sex slave for £3k on Oxford Street http://www.whatsonxiamen.com/news8938.html
or in the Bronx;
More than two dozen arrested by joint FBI-NYPD in Albanian drug gang probe; http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/06/09/…
more bronx; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudaj_Organization
or lets see how you smuggle arms; http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id…
or why don't we follow an Albanian drug and arms smuggler around the US as he buys millions of $ worth of weapons in the US to ship off illegally to Albanians in Kosovo so they can shot at Serb police, which is what this Dutch documentary filmmaker did here (hmm did it ever cross his mind that the serb police would shoot back?); http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=655781354…
or
here is a fantastic German documentary showing how the Albanians fabricated the lies in 99' (ironic, its called); IT BEGAN WITH A LIE
video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8189279425194493481
okay….. if you say so mr. bishop. I don't quite understand what your fixation is with this nation of peoples whose highly advanced civilization apparently vanished sometime before the rise of the other great city-states and republics of athens-era ancient grèce, but if you claim to know who is the ancestor from which indo-european tribe of long deceased peoples—based on DNA—or something, then, what can I say, except: that's really amazing. Give this man a Nobel for his world renown work in pulp science-fiction. Good job you crazy ‘croat from constantinople’.
btw, can I call you ”slavy” ?
United States of America & U.S. of Albania forever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqEUDeZJSCE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrKP-Xj4bgs
Fascists who fuck with the U.S. of A. get fucked up like the genocide gangsters of baghdad and belgrade.
@ nazis
typical response – NOTHING! hahaha you do not have the intellect or balls to debate me! you have addressed nothing that i posted and all you have is childish rhetoric.
dont worry, NATO will leave and then its the army right back to where it belongs; on its border.
and you were the Arabs foot soliders while you were slaves in Caucus Russia (YOUR ARAB BROTHERS BROUGHT YOU TO EUROPE AND THIS IS WHY YOU ARE SO INSECURE ABOUT YOUR REAL HISTORY. THIS IS THE REASON YOU LIE ABOUT YOUR PAST); http://my.opera.com/macedonianneighbourhood/blog/…
Arabs in the 9th century brought with them Old Albanians from the Caucasus. To this day, their descendants live in Sicily.
Then in 1042, the Byzantine Empire attacked the young Serbian state after having defeated the Arabs in Sicily and having brought the Sicilian Albanians under their command and christianizing them. The leader of the Byzantines who led the Albanians was named Georgius Maniakos.
Maniakos brought Albanian mercenaries from Sicily to fight the “Serbs” and they settled in two waves in modern day Albania, first the mercanaries came, and then came the women and children. After the defeat of Maniakos, the Byzantines did not let the Albanians return, thus the Albanians requested that the Serbs let them stay on the land.
They settled under mount Raban and the city of Berat (BELGRAD) and from this, the “Serbs” and other, called them "Rabanasi" or "Arbanasi". The city of Berat was known as Belgrad also, before the Albanians came to settle there. They mostly tended sheep and cattle and lent themselves out to Macedonian and “Serbian” nobles as brave soldiers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Albania
Berat
The current name of the town in Albanian is Berat or Berati, which is derived via the Ottoman Turkish from the older Bel(i)grad (meaning "white city" in Slavic, cf. Belgrade), under which name it was known in Greek, Latin and Slavic documents during the High and Late Middle Ages. That name was rendered as Bellegrada (Βελλέγραδα) in Greek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berat
hahahaha pathetic. I dare you to even attempt to debate me. i dare you to show me just 1 Albanian source from prior to the 19th century who claims this "Illyiran" past!!!!! if you ever post something here again it will be some vague or nasty sentance or two and then you will go back to your cab so you can drive me to the restaurant where your brother will bring me lunch and then I will go home where your father will open the front door of my buliding when i get home tonight. enjoy!
bishop, the ‘illyrians’ are gone man. They're not coming back. They are not out to get you, and they could care less who you think they are. They don't even know you exist man…. So please bro: take a deep breathe—count to ten—and take yer pillz my slavic brotha (srsly dude…..you're starting to scare me a little.)
*here, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BthOmqIOcY4
@bill
are those the albanian ho's you are pimping currently??? are you doing any 2 for 1 deals for the holiday? you proved me wrong; you actually wrote 3 useless sentences. you dare not take me on in a debate. happy pimping. which ones are your relatives?
official map of europe in 814 where most of the Balkans was Serbian and Albania was by the Caspian sea; http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/europe_…
814 A.D. ??
You are so livin' in the past man (seriously. that map doesn't even have the U.S. of A on it).
We've come along way since then slav-man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment http://www.policy.hu/pavlovic/Bibliografija/MA_Ro…
yes 814! when Albanians claim they are "ancient people" from the Balkans and the evidence proves them wrong are you not supposed to bring it up?? what do your links (written by a Serb) have to do with Albanian lies? what a joke. again the Albanians have shown many times that they were foot soliders or dogs of war for just about any invading army they were around;
Hitler (they had an SS division that fought for Hitler that was named after their most famous "hero" who was Serbian BTW
))) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Waffen_Mountain…
Turks (the Albanians did most of the dirty work for Turkey as their willing soliders during Ottoman times, they even took the occupiers religion! It would be the same as if the Iraqis all converted to Christianity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dorylaeum_…
more work by Albanian cab drivers; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/nyregion/03mont…
Bishop, your comments are as usually full of crap! Grow up body?
Serbia has "Heroes"? That's news to me! You guys have killers,war criminals and state organized terrorism,this is what you are famous for, around the World.
history channel on serbia in ww2; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuqSUIvwd4I&fe…
german documentary on bosnian and albanian SS divisions in ww2; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfLvP2jTVq8&fe…
serbian heros who saved 500 american pilots in ww2; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5CXope9ncI
as usual you are crushed, you can not debate me.
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