Chris Bertram, a British academic writing at the Big Apple of academic blogs, Crooked Timber, offers up an interesting post about the role of education in social mobility, and recieves a number of interesting comments in reply. I suspect that I’ll ha…

Belle Waring at Crooked Timber says what needs to be said about the handling of Hurrican Katrina (does this remind anyone far too much of the handling of the War on Terror?):
Here are some people who have to lose their jobs, and maybe also get sued for wr

A splendid description of what happens in NO.

DSW

full: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050926/robin

Like what?

Oppose any possible attempt? Hardly. I would oppose attempts to administer it EXCLUSIVELY through the UN because the UN is so ridiculously corrupt. I would not oppose all sorts of other methods to give it teeth. What do you think of saying that an ongoing genocide provides a justification to invade similar to “self-defense”. In crimminal law it would qualify as “defense of others”—which in many jurisdictions (though not all) allows for the use of force. I strongly suspect I know what your answer will be, but just for the sake of argument…

The New York Times, March 11, 1998
Serbs Force a Crude Burial For 51 Left Dead in Kosovo

BYLINE: By CHRIS HEDGES

DATELINE: SRBICA, Serbia, March 10

The Serbian police today seized the bodies of 51 ethnic Albanians killed in a sweep of separatists in Kosovo province, loaded them onto trucks, dumped them into graves and bulldozed the earth, witnesses said.

The forced burials today denied families a chance to have autopsies performed and to hold funerals, something the Serbs have sought to avoid in a province now seething with frustration and anger.

“About 300 police arrived at the garage where the bodies were being held tonight and loaded them on a truck,” said one witness in Srbica, 25 miles west of Pristina, who insisted on not being identified. “There were 12 Albanians and a Muslim cleric allowed to go with the police to Prekaz. The bodies were put in the graves. The graves, dug this afternoon, were filled in by a bulldozer.”

===

I guess one is a “Serb apologist” if one doesn’t agree 100 percent with Attila Hoare, Norm Geras, Paul Berman, David Rieff, Michael Ignatieff and Christopher Hitchens.

“Highly respected” – not by everyone.
“universally acclaimed” – not.

A short session with google came up with a good deal of negative commentary on Hedges including this:

http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0112&L=justwatch-l&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=376

bq.Hedges is a master
apologist for the Serbs, and makes it a point to demonize both Croats and
Albanians. For previous discussions on Hedges pro-Serb bias, please refer to
my post on JWATCH from 28 March 1999, or Michael Sells’ more thorough
dismantling of Hedges, posted to JWATCH on 30 June 1999. I have no proof of
this, but I suspect that Chris Hedges is closely aligned with a more
notorious New York Times Serb apologist, David Binder. It is probably
Hedges/Binder that pushed Harper’s into the 600,000 figure.

Hedges linked to Binder eh? Small world.

Incidentally it is highly debatable whether ‘The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia’ was illegal. The Vietnamese claimed that the Khmer Rouge were engaging in border skirmishes against Vietnam (and they may well have been right). In other words they were acting in self-defence: perfectly legal.

What WAS illegal and immoral was for the Vietnamese to hang around for the better part of a decade and impose a Cambodian government that suited them.

We are all agreed upon that, yeah? That when an invading force refuses to leave but instead puts pressure on the new government to have a domestic/foreign policy that suits the invaders that is wrong? Yeah?

The Guardian (London), November 13, 1997

Sarajevo savagery exposed;
The hidden atrocities of Muslim militias defending the city are revealed in secret court papers, writes Chris Hedges

BYLINE: CHRIS HEDGES

IN THE chaotic first days of the Bosnian war, when hastily organised Muslim militias scrambled to defend Sarajevo against heavily armed Serbs, men like Musan Topalovic rose from the shadows to become warlords and folk heroes.

Topalovic, nicknamed Caco, was one of the most admired and, so the legend goes, most capable. The ragtag troops of his 10th Mountain Brigade held the front line repulsing repeated assaults.

Two years after the war, it is increasingly clear that he and other paramilitary leaders played a far darker role in the war, murdering scores of Bosnian Serb civilians who remained in Sarajevo…

Interviewed Muslim militiamen, the former commander and deputy commander of the Bosnian army, and families of the victims described the killings and abductions. Some of the killings are also detailed in the secret court documents.

Behireta Sljivic, aged 47, whose ethnic Serb husband Boeidar fought with the Bosnian government forces, was burned alive by Caco’s unit and tossed into no man’s land, said: “Caco was a butcher. My husband was fighting against these criminals who were shelling Sarajevo, and Caco murdered him simply because he was not a Muslim. When we asked Caco what happened to Boeidar, he told us he had killed him. In those days he and his soldiers terrified the city, kidnapping, beating and killing who they liked with total impunity.”

===

The New York Times, September 2, 1996

Bosnian Leader Hails Islam at Election Rallies

BYLINE: By CHRIS HEDGES

DATELINE: GREBAK, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sept. 1

Campaign rallies by Bosnia’s President, Alijia Izetbegovic, are not intended to alleviate the fears of those who believe he wants to set up a Muslim state.

Before a rally on Saturday at this remote mountain pass about 40 miles south of Sarajevo, a crowd of some 10,000 people was treated to lilting religious music filled with Koranic verses. The event opened with prayers by an Imam. The white-clad soldiers of the Bosnian Army’s 7th Brigade, many wearing green headbands with Koranic slogans that signaled their readiness to die for their faith, chanted “God is Great!”—drowning out the speeches by military commanders.

And Mr. Izetbegovic himself issued a call to arms filled with promises never to forget the sacrifice of the “martyrs” who died here or to forgive “the criminals who tried to wipe our country off the map.”

“Many of our homes are still in the hands of the enemy,” the President, dressed in a green military jacket, told the crowd at the event, held on a patch of scrub land that was fiercely fought over during the war…

Mr. Izetbegovic’s governing Party of Democratic Action, or S.D.A., has exhibited little tolerance toward dissenters during the campaign. Bosnia’s former Prime Minister, Haris Silajdzic, says the party has threatened, harassed and beaten his supporters, making it impossible for him to compete. A few weeks ago, Mr. Silajdzic was assaulted by a mob of Democratic Action supporters who he believes “wanted to kill me.”

When asked if he thought the attacks were sanctioned by the 71-year-old President, for whom he once worked, Mr. Silajdzic paused.

“These attacks are known to him,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “These are his party members who are carrying these attacks out.”

Critics say Mr. Izetbegovic’s Serbian and Croatian opponents can expect even less cordial treatment.