Recently during this incredibly busy summer I've been having, I came across the writings of a blogger who's been around for quite a while evidently, but who I'd never heard of before: Michael J. Totten. Totten mostly blogs on Middle-Eastern issues, and to a lesser extent Muslim ones, but he's also as of late devoted several blog postings to the matter of Kosova, defending Kosovar Albanians (and to a lesser degree Albanians in general) against the scurrolus charges leveled unceasingly against them by all the "Haters". In doing so, he's managed to stir up quite a furor, including a post by our ol' "buddy" La Julia on her blog slamming him (naturally), and a huge "comment war" over on Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs blog (Charles is one of the few hard-core conservatives who've come out on the side of Kosova and the Albanian people).
Totten is, if nothing else, an excellent writer; a man who is articulate, checks out his stories and sources pretty thouroughly from what I can see, and avoids the spin, rhetoric, and deception that so marks the "Haters" and all their propaganda. Here below I'm posting links to a couple of pieces of his that I consider "must reads". There are others, and I will post them in the near future (these are quite lengthy pieces, though they're also easy, engaging reads as well, so they should be enough for everyone to "chew" on until I get back to town in a couple of days....) But for now....
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/an-israeli-in-k.php
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/157/full
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
The other side of the Ottawa Greek Festival story....
Some of you readers might remember back last October when I did a post about a smear piece (aren't they all?) our "buddy" Julia Gorin did about an incident that took place at the Ottawa, CA Greek Festival a year ago this month, where alegedly some Albanians attended the event, bringing their flag with them to evidently provoke all the Greeks and Serbs in attendance, then supposedly one of the Albanians stabbed one of the Serbians there. Julia's point, as she made clear at the end of the piece, was to show just what a bunch of "beasts" the Albanian people as a people, as a "race", are, and how this is the kind of behavior that we can expect from any and all of them as a matter of course. Now of course, she didn't seem to mind that most of the information came from a source that was either anonymous, or who she chose not to reveal the identity of (not even a psuedonym!), or that it's not even clear from the e-mail he sent her whether he actually witnessed the events or just heard about them second hand; no, all that mattered to La Julia was that he was evidently a Serb (and we all know that all Serbs are by nature incapable of lying, right?), and that was good enough for her.
Well, recently I received a comment on that deconstruction and "retranslation" I did of Gorin's post on that whole matter. And like La Julia's informant, this person posted it anonymously. And I'm going to repost it here. Why, you may ask, am I doing so, esp. when the person is also "anonymous"? Simply this: Because this person is the first person so far I've seen anywhere who's offered up to anyone "the other side of the story", anonymous or no. Now, I can't speak for the veracity of the person who sent it to me, since I have no idea who they are/were. And I can't speak to the accuracy of what they've told me, since I wasn't there. But they seem to have details that scope with what the mainstream news sources that reported the incident had to say about it, details that La Julia's informant either left out or felt the "MSM" had neglected to report. And their being anonymous makes them, in my eyes, not one iota less credible than her source, since that one is also anonymous. So here, without further ado, in the words of that famous Faux News slogan, "I report; you decide"
Well, recently I received a comment on that deconstruction and "retranslation" I did of Gorin's post on that whole matter. And like La Julia's informant, this person posted it anonymously. And I'm going to repost it here. Why, you may ask, am I doing so, esp. when the person is also "anonymous"? Simply this: Because this person is the first person so far I've seen anywhere who's offered up to anyone "the other side of the story", anonymous or no. Now, I can't speak for the veracity of the person who sent it to me, since I have no idea who they are/were. And I can't speak to the accuracy of what they've told me, since I wasn't there. But they seem to have details that scope with what the mainstream news sources that reported the incident had to say about it, details that La Julia's informant either left out or felt the "MSM" had neglected to report. And their being anonymous makes them, in my eyes, not one iota less credible than her source, since that one is also anonymous. So here, without further ado, in the words of that famous Faux News slogan, "I report; you decide"
I was at that exact same festival in Ottawa Canada, when the incident occured. The Albanian flag was present on some guy;s shoulders but he did not wear to provoke Greeks because the guy had a Greek girlfirend and why would he possibly wear it to provoke Serbs at a GREEK festival?
The fact that Serbian people had a problem with an Albanian flag is in itself a problem. I have seen many different kinds f flags wheather on shirts, cars, stickers, etc.. at the Greek fest many times and no one attacked them. But as soon as someone wears an Albanian flag Serbians feel the need to come over and yell, yes yell "Ubi Shqiptari" which means "Kill Albanians" and expect them to remain silent while they are being brutually dehumanized just like they would be if they were in Serbia. So the stabbing might have not been necessary but what was less necessery is the fact that 100 Serbians would attack 5 Albanians at a community Greek Festival in Ottawa Canada.
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