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A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

spiegel.de

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Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#51

Post by ceilingcorner »

nisa wrote: post #47
ceilingcorner wrote: post #39

The viewpoint that this article is missing: much of this “reversion” to anti-democratic governments in Central Europe (Visegrad+ Balkans) is coming from Western EU members pushing their newfangled cultural ideologies a little too hard. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Ex-Yugoslavia want to be a part of the EU for economic reasons, not so they can participate in American-led cultural movements. If the EU doesn’t wise up and…

I call bullshit on this. It's a propaganda tale from the controlled media in these states to avoid having to talk about oligarchs, corruption and and real issues. At least it's pretty visible in Czechia, where Andrej Babiš and the media controlled by him to use this narration. Hungary probably the same.

Do you really think that every single country in the world has the same values as certain groups in the EU?

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#52

Post by elmo2you »

hef19898 wrote: post #37
dinoooo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nationalists version of Croatias flag It wasn't the nationalist version, any state flag is inherently a nationalist symbol, the problem is that the logo is from the NDH, a Nazi puppet state of Croatia, which created the Jasenovac concentration camp. It might be a mistake, but as a young adult, everyone around me (I live in Croatia) knows what the 'first white square' symbolizes.

Thanks for clarifying. Any idea how that flag ended up on the jerseys? That's kind of printing the Reichkriegsflagge on German jerseys, with the true equivalant, the Nazi fla, being outlawed.

I believe the official explanation was an "interpretation error" of the vector image used as the source. The printer has taken "full responsibility" for this mistake and apologized. How convenient. From a technical perspective not very plausible, if not borderline impossible.

More likely, a deliberate choice made by a powerful individual, for which anyone with any actual knowledge or proof knows all to well that it would be suicide to talk about it publicly. Whether that would be literal or figurative suicide, that is debatable. Either way though, while Croatia is part of the EU these days, the way in which things function are still very much similar to some other countries in the region .. where powerful individuals can make arbitrary decisions with absolute impunity.

There are plenty of powerful individuals in Croatia who harbor strong sympathies towards the country's dark fascist history. Plenty of those managed to get away with their role in war profiteering (or worse), during the last wars. Probably more than anything because they happened to be useful and on the side of powerful corrupt people in the USA and EU. Regretfully so, because Croatia is beautiful country and home to some incredibly whole/goodhearted people (very much like in other former Yugoslavian states).

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#53

Post by mishkovski »

ardit33 wrote: post #45
mishkovski wrote: post #36

The Slavic majority in Macedonia has a name, Walter Mayr. It is Macedonians. Western media’s ignorance of one small nation’s struggle for recognition really puzzles me. Yes we are Slavs but you don’t call Russians Slavic majority in Russia. After more than a century of neighbour's aggressive politics to stifle Macedonian’s national awakening the least I expect from the media is to call the majority of my home country…

Slavic Macedonians are Bulgarians though.... and Macedonia is a made up buffer state with two different ethnicities (Slavic and Albanian), and a name that borrowed it form completely different region and time, which most of it is connected with Greece anyway. Hence Greece was blocking NMKD to join Nato, because of the name and cultural appropriation, Bulgaria is currently blocking the ascenction to EU for similar rea…

What you wrote just proves my point about what Macedonia’s neighbours do.

I’m Macedonian and I don’t consider myself Bulgarian. I find it funny that others think that is ok to tell other people what they are. Makes no sense.

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#54

Post by hcho »

9front wrote: post #32

The conflict in what used to be Yugoslavia is not 30 something years old. It's about 14 centuries old. It is the clash of cultures between Christians and Islamist, with the later trying to impose their beliefs on the former. I stayed over there for about one year just before the fighting would start. Yugoslavia was a beautiful country indeed.

So the Catholic-Orthodox secterianism is due to Islamist expansion. Gotcha.

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#55

Post by ardit33 »

9front wrote: post #32

The conflict in what used to be Yugoslavia is not 30 something years old. It's about 14 centuries old. It is the clash of cultures between Christians and Islamist, with the later trying to impose their beliefs on the former. I stayed over there for about one year just before the fighting would start. Yugoslavia was a beautiful country indeed.

wut... are you smoking.

first of all the region was Illyrian, then it was conquered by the Roman empire, and it was the border between the West and East Roman (Byzantine Empire), which was Christian. Then the pagan slavs migrated/invaded it in the 650-700, and the Byzantine Empire fought them back (there are still villages in Greece that have Slavic toponyms).

The byzantine empire started declining, and the slavs created the first Bulgarian empire (the Bullgars were Turkic nomadic tribes who mixed with the local Slavs, but they were not Islamisiced then and eventually converted to Christian Orthodox). The different slavic tribes started fighting with each other and created the many petty kindoms which formed the today's south slav ethnicities. And eventually the Ottomans conquered the whole place in 1400s until the 1900s, including the Albanians and eventually the Romanians in north East, and parts of Hungary in the north.

So.... there is 500 years of conflict against the ottomans, but really there is another 1000 years of medieval conflicts that you are completely ignoring.

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#56

Post by mishkovski »

mlang23 wrote: post #48
mishkovski wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was/is important for young nations and you don’t have to associate it with negative things only.

Ui, "young nations", that sounds like a wonderful excuse. Of course, since these nations are young, almost infants actually, they need protection, right? Like small children sitting in a school bus? The first thing that came to mind when I read "young nations" was israel. A wonderful young state mostly occupied with killing off the people who were living on that land prior before the british decided to give it away.…

In the recent history Macedonians were rarely in the business of killing or bothering other people.

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#57

Post by reader_mode »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #39

The viewpoint that this article is missing: much of this “reversion” to anti-democratic governments in Central Europe (Visegrad+ Balkans) is coming from Western EU members pushing their newfangled cultural ideologies a little too hard. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Ex-Yugoslavia want to be a part of the EU for economic reasons, not so they can participate in American-led cultural movements. If the EU doesn’t wise up and…

Having to constantly go through American left ideology pushed so far to balance the heritage of slavery and their social issues is tiring. Racism isn't really a thing in that sense (there's gypsies but that has a very different dynamic). Gender stuff feels way too forced.

These cultures are not comparable, these are not the burning issues in our society and yet they are pushed to the forefront of attention.

Meanwhile we have the most systemically corrupt governments (these guys don't even do the overt things like industry engagement and speeches after their term, our former PM is in jail for straight out taking bribes in a privatisation scandal, mayor of the capital was collecting bribes for standard city functions for 20 years, the only reason this got to public attention was he died before getting re-elected, and this is endemic in all levels of society)

Pushing on social agendas gives ammo to corrupt politicians to spin the story away from the important stuff and fight a strawman.

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#58

Post by hef19898 »

elmo2you wrote: post #52
hef19898 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for clarifying. Any idea how that flag ended up on the jerseys? That's kind of printing the Reichkriegsflagge on German jerseys, with the true equivalant, the Nazi fla, being outlawed.

I believe the official explanation was an "interpretation error" of the vector image used as the source. The printer has taken "full responsibility" for this mistake and apologized. How convenient. From a technical perspective not very plausible, if not borderline impossible. More likely, a deliberate choice made by a powerful individual, for which anyone with any actual knowledge or proof knows all to well that it w…

Thanks for the background. Fully confirm what you say about the people. It's just sad to see how much damage a couple of ruthless, self-service people can do. But blaming the printer, really? That's like blaming an intern...

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#59

Post by CalChris »

9front wrote: post #32

The conflict in what used to be Yugoslavia is not 30 something years old. It's about 14 centuries old. It is the clash of cultures between Christians and Islamist, with the later trying to impose their beliefs on the former. I stayed over there for about one year just before the fighting would start. Yugoslavia was a beautiful country indeed.

At the start of the civil war, I was obliviously bicycling from Milan to Trieste to Ljubljana to Zagreb and was planning on going South to Greece. I was in Ljubljana when Slovenia broke off and could tell something was afoot. I bicycled to Zagreb (best single day ever) and I could tell, obvious even to me, that something was definitely was going on, if not exactly there then somewhere near. I then bicycled to the Hungarian border as fast as I could peddle. I paid something like $50 at the border for not having a visa, $50 well spent.

Re: A journey through the troubled former Yugoslavia

#60

Post by mishkovski »

creamytaco wrote: post #46
mishkovski wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody mentioned Ancient Macedonians.

The ancient kingdom of Macedon is geographically located in Greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_(ancient_kingdom)#/m... That region is still called Macedon and the modern inhabitants of that region are themselves called Macedonians. As opposed to the slavic macedonians, they do have strong historical, linguistic and ethnic connections to the term. Do you see the problem here?

As you can see from the map Macedon was partially occupying territory of the modern country Macedonia. But what is more important than arguing about Ancient Times is respecting the national identity of the people that live today. The history of the name is complicated and we don’t share the same views with the Greeks but that is not the reason to fight over a name. Everyone in the world knows Greece. And nobody thinks they can’t use or consider the name Macedonia part of their history. What is interesting is why majority of Greeks feel threatened of their neighbour’s self identity.
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