Best Of: Serbia

State Terrorism: NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia. NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia was a war waged against civilians, not the military. 10/2010, 2300 words.

Chronicling the standoff between Serbs of Northern Kosovo and NATO in 2011:

• Values Clash. Kosovo Serbs resist NATO occupation. Belgrade sides with NATO. 7/2011, 800.
• Tightening the Noose – With Belgrade's Blessing. Belgrade "negotiates" with NATO. Says NATO's blockade fine, but not the counter-blockade of NATO control points. Kosovo Serbs reject the deal done in their name. 8/2011, 400 words.
• Criminalizing Sit-ins NATO declares Serb protesters facing it criminals. 8/2011, 300 words.
• Government Only Good for Surrendering. Belgrade uses all its leverage to half-surrender Kosovo Serbs to NATO.  8/2011, 300 words.
• Drawing Blood. NATO renegs on the deal, the counter-blockade goes back up. NATO lashes out, six protesters shot, medical workers and ambulances fired upon. 9/2011, 3100 words.
• Erhard after Erhard, Pinocchio after Pinocchio. NATO's Orwellianism continues. 10/2011, 700 words.
• No Surrender by Government. Northern Kosovo Serbs break off from Belgrade lest it again surrenders in their name. 11/2011, 800 words.
• Stateless Serbia. Today it's really the occupied, but stateless and unbowed Serbs of northern Kosovo that know freedom. 11/2011, 400 words.
• State Serbia. Serbia proper meanwhile is just another province of the Empire. 11/2011, 900 words.
• One Chain. Serbia's PM complains being a Quisling is no picnic. 12/2011, 150 words.

What Worth Kosovo. Belgrade didn't lose Kosovo in the war. It lost it when it failed to defend the deal that ended the war in peace. 11/2011, 1200 words.

Kosovo: No New Demarcations. Who is pushing talk of Kosovo "partition" and why? 2/2012, 950 words.

Kosovo: Farce and Justice. Albanians are 90% of the population of Kosovo, but do they own 90% of the land? 3/2012, 2000 words.

Best of: Croatia

Guilty Unless Empire's Client in Good Graces. Though the US facilitated Croatia's 1995 Operation Storm the ICTY was free to prosecute Croatian officials seeing the country later on fell out of favor with Washington, but what does it say about US righteousness when even a court that is an instrument of Western interventionism in the region finds fault with the US-backed offensive? 4/2011, 850 words.

Croatia: Popular Sanction EU Style. The bogus democracy behind Croatia's EU referendum. 1/2012, 600 words. 

Croatia Did Not Vote. Just 29% of the electorate said yes to Croatia's EU membership. 1/2012, 500 words.

Tim Judah out-Nonsenses Himself. Tim Judah is taken to task for patronizing ex-Yugoslavs and using them to try guilting Union Europeans into backing the EU. 10/2012, 1900 words.

Best of: Culture

Over the years I have tried to bring attention to the peculiar and unflattering way in which the West insists on viewing Eastern Europe and the Balkans and its peoples. This is more a matter of culture rather than policy, but it unfortunately ends up influencing the foreign policy of Western states in the region to make it more bellicose and entitled. The most important of such efforts of mine:

Slavs – The Devil's Instrument of Intolerance on Earth. The West's obsession with imagining the Eastern Europe as a barbarian and retrograde version of itself. 8/2012, 2800 words.

Albright's Hate Crime. Madeline Albright outs herself as an anti-Serbian bigot. 11/2012, 650 words.

The Chauvinists at it Again. The lack of self-consciousness in Western condemnation of Russia culture wars. 8/2013, 1800 words.

Best of: Russia, Ukraine

The best or most important of my posts dealing with the East Slav world:

Ukraine: Back to Normal. Ukraine which is anti-Russian is Ukraine which is at odds with itself. 2/2010, 1300 words.

Western Press: A False Friend to Russia's People Power. A recount of the Western coverage of the Russian 1993 constitutional crisis when its press favored the president and the military involved in a violent power grab against popular anger. 2/2012, 1100 words.

Thoughts on Ukraine. Overview of the situation in Ukraine as regards the orientation of the public and the government. 12/2013, 1150 words.

EU to Ukraine: I Want You to Want Me. The EU wants Ukraine to want the EU, but does not particularly want the Ukraine itself. 1/2014, 1300 words.

Ukrainians Are Right to Suspect EU Deal Would Be Harmful. The association agreement the EU is offering to Ukraine brings with it as many downsides as benefits. 1/2014, 500 words.

Ukraine: Pro-Government Civilians Killed, West Blames All Violence on Yanukovich. Western officials insist Yanukovich is ultimately responsible for the violence of both Ukrainian police and pro-Maidan extremists. 2/2014, 450 words.

The Grating Over The Memory Hole: The Toppling of Viktor Yanukovich. The crucial points to remember about the overthrow of the Ukrainian president. The Kremlin Stooge, 3/2014, 2400 words.

Ethnicity in Donbass. War in Ukraine is inter-regional, not inter-ethnic. 8/2014, 1200 words.

Best of: Western Interventionism

The best or most important commentary on Western military adventurism and its culture outside the regions that I write the most about (the former Soviet Union and the Serbo-Croatian speaking space):

The Liberators. Aggressive and criminal "rules of engagement" of troops occupying Iraq breed a culture of depravity. 10/2009, 1350 words.

Enduring Callousness. The criminal "rules of engagement" reveal the true nature of the occupation of Afghanistan. 5/2010, 900 words.
 
Seeing Through the ‘Humanitarians’. Opinion piece arguing counter ostensibly humanitarian Western military intervention in Libya. Antiwar.com, 3/2011, 1100 words.

Is Humanitarian War the Exception? A general case against ostensibly humanitarian military interventionism. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 4/2011, 1100 words.

A Choice of Scenery. Examining the reasons why the United States opted for military intervention in Somalia in 1992. 7/2011, 1100 words.

Going Home at Last: Say Farewell to Ramadi, Nasiriya and Balad. Debunking the claim of the empire to be withdrawing from Iraq after having won the war and accomplished its war goals. 12/2011, 1200 words.

Massacre in Kandahar or: How Did 'Our Bobby' Become a Serb. Commentary on the Kandahar Massacre. 6/2012, 700 words.

Obama's Delusions. It is precisely the vaunted rejection of realpolitik that makes American and Western military intervention so damaging. 3/2014, 700 words.

Best Of: Libertarianism

The best of my libertarianism-themed writings:

Least, Sufficient Force: Libertarian Theory of Defense. Presenting a libertarian theory of defense, specifically rejecting proportionalism in favor of the least force necessary for a successful defense. The Voluntaryist Reader. 1/2013, 3100 words.

Jeffrey Tucker’s War against Sin. A polemical piece against Tucker's false dichotomy between libertarian "brutalists" and "humanitarians" and the non sequitur critique of the former. The Libertarian Liquidationist, 4/2014, 1100 words.

Best Of: History

Sticking with the retrospective occasioned by the five year anniversary of my writing efforts I am making a selection of my best, or most valuable, articles and posts in this period. I am starting with a selection of my history-themed pieces, with selections from other categories of posts to follow in the coming days:

The Germans and The Bolsheviks. A review of The Germans and The Bolsheviks: A History of a Collaboration by Silvin and Maidi Eiletz. 2/2010, 2200 words.

National Defense in the Great Patriotic War. Examining the reasons for the Soviet military debacle in 1941 and therefore the subsequent immense military and civilian loss of life to the Axis invasion. 7/2011, 1100 words.

Paper Money Famine. A review of Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee. 11/2011, 1700 words.

The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact. A review of The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact, from the pen of the Russian diplomatic historian Boris Slavinsky. 9/2012, 1300 words.

Axis or Allied? Underscoring the need for nuance in designating countries as having been Axis or Allied by examining the contributions of Denmark and Bulgaria to both camps of the Second World War. 5/2013, 3300 words.

WWII: Breeding Ground for Collectivism. Western Allies are responsible for more non-combatant deaths 1941-45 than the Stalin's USSR. The Libertarian Liquidationist, 5/2014, 1250 words.

Breaking Down Soviet WWII Losses. A paper giving an overview of the sizes of the victim categories making up the roughly 25 million human losses of the Soviet Union during the Soviet-German War of 1941-45 based on the current specialist historiography. 8/2014, 12000 words.

Bill Maher Has Been a Bigot for a Long Time

Recently the American TV show host, Bill Maher, has finally and deservedly caught substantial flak for the intolerant collectivist attitude he display on his show. I have found a critique and analysis by Murtaza Hussain in this vein particularly enjoyable and useful to read.

It is only now, with his most recent collective condemnation of Muslims that Maher has caused a scandal, but Hussain points out that Maher has been displaying similar bigotry for "several years" now. That is actually an underestimate, however. Long before Maher, who styles himself a "politically incorrect liberal" got into the habit of launching indignant tirades about Muslims, he in 1999 partook in the liberal pleasure of demonizing the Serbs along collectivist lines.

As NATO was attacking targets in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in a three-month-long bombing campaign that expended 22.000 tons of ammunition, targeted civilian infrastructure and killed 2,000 civilians according to Yugoslav sources (500 according to American estimates), Maher ridiculed Serb suffering and addressed the Serbs as "yuppie fascists", who were angry that the bombing was keeping them from "getting to their Tae-Bo class". Maher characterized the Serbs as supporting an "evil dictator hell-bent on eliminating an entire people" and advised the Serbs to do like the yuppies and "get some therapy":

So let me be the first to say I am so sorry that supporting a genocidal regime has turned into such a hassle for you. I'm sorry if our bombing has delayed the delivery of your J. Crew catalog or screwed [laughter] or screwed up your commute. And, by the way, if I were you, I would write a strongly worded letter to the transit authority, because I've seen your bridges, and frankly, they're a mess. [laughter and applause] Believe me, we would never have started bombing them if we realized it was keeping you from getting to Tae-Bo class. So maybe what you yuppie fascists need to do is stop supporting an evil dictator who is hellbent on eliminating an entire people just because their ancestors kicked your ancestors' asses 600 years ago. Let it go. You're yuppies, get some therapy. [laughter] Get your moral clock working. Let me give you a hint. If in your language you have ever used the phrase, "can I get to the mall if I make a left at the death camp" [laughter] you might be a redneck.

Maher's recipe of passing chauvinism for edginess was in full display already in 1999. The difference was that the target of his 2-minute bigotry were the Serbs rather than the Muslim world, and that back then this caused no scandal as only voices from the alternative media called him out for getting a laugh from Serbian civilian hardship.

It is the case the Western world has a problem with both, anti-Muslim as well as, anti-Serbian/anti-Eastern European bigotry. While the former is felt more pointedly it is also the case it comes more from the margins of the society and is more likely to be combated by the establishment and the liberals. The latter prejudice, against the daily savage from Eastern Europe, however, tends to emanate precisely from these circles and as a result will not even be detected as bigotry, much less confronted. The truth is that if Maher had stuck to just bashing Serbia, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Latvia and so on he may have still been universally recognized as a liberal.

All the Links

As per my promise I am showing the way to everything I've had published so far that appears on outlets other than Crappy Town (whether I have linked to it before or not):

• Seeing Through the ‘Humanitarians’, Antiwar.com, March 2011.
• The Coverage and the Lack of Thereof, Poskok.info, March 2011.
• Is Humanitarian War the Exception?, Ludwig von Mises Institute, April 2011.
• Viet Cong’s Libertarian Appeal, The Voluntaryist Reader, November 2012.
• The War in Vietnam: John Wayne Was Wrong, The Voluntaryist Reader, December 2012.
• Least, Sufficient Force: Libertarian Theory of Defense, The Voluntaryist Reader, January 2013.
• Commentating on Stone’s Untold History of the States, The Voluntaryist Reader, January 2013.
• Anarchists for the Euro (Yeah Baby!), The Voluntaryist Reader, February 2013.
• Shock TV: Pavlik Morozov Redux, The Voluntaryist Reader, February 2013.
• Raico on Klaus and the Czechs, The Voluntaryist Reader, March 2013.
• Wenzel on (some other) Soviet Union, The Voluntaryist Reader, April 2013 .
• An Arms Race as Long as Life: DPR Korea in Context, The Voluntaryist Reader, June 2013.
• How Mainstream is Your Media?, The Voluntaryist Reader, June 2013.
• A Hand to Mosquito, The Voluntaryist Reader, February 2014.
• Away with Suvorov, The Voluntaryist Reader, February 2014.
• The Grating Over The Memory Hole: The Toppling of Viktor Yanukovich, The Kremlin Stooge, March 2014
• Libertarians, Crimea, The Libertarian Liquidationist, March 2014
• Libertarian “Humanitarianism” is a Dangerous Deviation, The Libertarian Liquidationist, April 2014
• Jeffrey Tucker’s War against Sin, The Libertarian Liquidationist, April 2014
• Are There Any Bleeding Hearts Here?, The Libertarian Liquidationist, April 2014
• WWII: Breeding Ground for Collectivism, The Libertarian Liquidationist, May 2014
• As Usual, Reason Magazine Doesn’t Know What It’s Talking about, The Libertarian Liquidationist, August 2014 

Blog Policy

The plan for the future is that I will write content with the view to have it published on outlets other than Crappy Town. It is a simple issue of math. Writing for your own reasons is fine, but it is doubly nice if someone actually reads and benefits from what you write, and it is the case Crappy Town simply does not have a very extensive reach.

Any exclusive pieces that this blog will publish, will be only in the case that I find something either very intriguing, or feel that something absolutely must be said, but that I can not find a different, bigger outlet for them that would A.) run it and B.) have a readership of the appropriate profile that would actually benefit from them.

In fact, this has more or less been policy for a while now – albeit it was left unstated – which is part of the reason why Crappy Town has been receiving fewer updates in recent times than during its heyday. What is new is that I am going to make an effort to always link to everything that I have published elsewhere.

I figure that while this blog has only a small following it is the case everyone keeping an eye on it is almost assured to be interested in the same things I am, and generally finds my arguments worthy of being read. Audiences at other places may be larger, but the one here is strictly mine and is possibly interested in my stuff even when it is not tailor-made for Crappy Town, but a different outlet instead.