East of Ethnia Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Today we are doing a little bit of propaganda analysis, from Večernje novosti, the paper that is the Miles Davis of sycophancy (that’s right Kurir, Informer, and the rest of you, you’re the Kenny G. And Politika, you’re Paul Whiteman).

For the masochistic or the curious, here is the article we will be looking at: https://www.novosti.rs/c/planeta/svet/1438855/tramp-svirao-kraj-lazne-ekologe-ova-vest-sve-promeniti-cuta-kokanovic-uskoro-morati-shvate

We know about the faulty construction in Novi Sad that caused 15 fatalities. Here are two more news stories just from today:

The directors promise that there is nothing wrong with the roof of the Belgrade Arena — https://n1info.rs/biznis/otkrivamo-institut-godinama-upozorava-arenu-na-krov-direktor-hale-kaze-da-je-nebezbedno-odmah-bismo-zatvorili/

In Zaječar, “the burst pipes bear witness to the quality of this regime” — https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/rekonstrukcija-zajecar-popucale-cevi-rezim/

A few articles on events that are mentioned in the video:

* The children’s clinic cancels their donated cable service: https://n1info.rs/vesti/nije-to-vasa-bolnica-i-privatna-prcija-brojne-negativne-reakcije-na-odluku-tirsove-da-otkaze-donaciju-sbb/

* On the use of the “Telekom” company to consolidate media control: https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2021/03/09/serbian-government-weaponized-state-owned-telekom-to-curb-media-freedom/

* The ongiong campaign by “Telekom” to squeeze out “SBB”: https://www.intellinews.com/rival-operators-announce-lawsuits-in-serbia-s-cable-war-203167/

* Background on the fight to dominate the telecoms media market: https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/srbija-telekomunikacije-sbb-telekom/32115411.html

* Rio Tinto is on the road again, unnoticed: https://n1info.rs/region/dok-smo-gledali-zasedanje-un-o-srebrenici-odobreno-iskopavanje-litijuma-aktivisti-pokrenuli-buru-na-mrezama/

The Genocide Convention created a crime that was well near impossible to prove before a court, which is why there were no convictions for genocide until 1998 and there have not been many afterward. The record of ICTY shows just how high the barrier has been set: they found that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, but did not find that it occurred anywhere else or that the VRS’s war aims (which explicitly included altering the population to suit their political goals) were genocidal. Pretty much every ICJ decision on genocide can be summarised as the judges saying “we don’t want to get a lot of genocide cases.”

Things started changing with Russia’s large scale targeting of civilian objects in Ukraine, and changed more with the forced removal of children from Ukraine to Russia. They changed even more when Israel started creating an artificially produced in Gaza. The distinction between war crimes and genocide is going to be breaking down in future court decisions.

And that is a good thing. The implicit hierarchy where one crime appears to be less meaningful than another has always been in the interest of abusers, and has never been in the interest of civilian victims.

There is a technical problem with the video, for a minute or so it freezes, sorry about that. But the audio is all there. Am I re-recording? Heavens no, here we do cinema verité.

The text of the resolution is available from B92 here and from Koha Ditore here. And here is the analysis I did of the RS revisionism exercise way back when.