[CTRL] Fw: [sn-vesti 809] Spectator: Marko the Magnificent!

[Mrs. Jela Jovanovic, Secretary General]

-Caveat Lector-   <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-

-----Original Message-----
Date: Saturday, January 29, 2000 10:25 PM
Subject: [sn-vesti 809] Spectator: Marko the Magnificent!


>Comment: a real humdinger from Marko Gasic which in a refreshingly witty
>way takes apart the odious Marcus Tanner who will have to reply or else
>give up his "Balkan expert badge"!
>
>Also this seems an opportune moment to repost an earlier piece regarding
>Tanner which follows Marko's excellent epistle...
>
>Balkan war of words
>
>>From Mr Marko Gasic
>
>Sir: Walking into my local newsagent's, I noticed a commotion in a corner.
>Something was cooking inside The Spectator. What an altercation! Poor old
>John Laughland, it appeared, was being crucified for implying that those
>beastly Serbs were real human beings, with feelings and churches. A
>desperate-looking Dr Noel Malcolm was trying to pull the wool over
>everybody's eyes with his denial that US Defence Secretary Cohen had been
>trying exactly the same tactic himself in raising the possibility that the
>Serbians, presumably for relaxation while being bombarded by Nato, might
>have simultaneously been bumping off 100,000 Albanians.
>
>The desperate doctor had been joined by a self-proclaimed 'Balkan expert',
>the Independent's Marcus Tanner (Letters, 8 January), who was equally
>busily serving up the British journalist's equivalent of fast food: lots of
>quantity, but a complete lack of substance.
>
>There was, for example, that usual nutty concoction: the
>employment-in-Kosovo appetiser. This contained some very old chestnuts,
>like the one about Albanian professionals losing their jobs for not signing
>'loyalty oaths'. Wrong country, Mr T. In Tudjman's prewar Croatia, Serbs
>had lost their jobs for refusing to pledge loyalty to that then
>non-existent state. In Kosovo, Albanians didn't so much lose their jobs as
>leave them, ordered to leave en masse, not by their employers, but as part
>of the systematic boycott of state institutions organised by the ethnic
>Albanian leaders.
>
>For their part, employers will take a dim view of employees who leave work
>and never come back, whether that be in Kosovo or Kent. Employees can
>certainly expect the sack for such behaviour; or for arbitrarily writing
>out new job descriptions for themselves. Tanner's 'loyalty oaths' don't
>come into it. And, incidentally, could he quote these to us? Verbatim,
>please, with source, so we can see what on earth the man is referring to.
>
>Mr Tanner also refers movingly to poor conditions inside 'schools that the
>Albanians had to set up'. What does he mean? The Albanians didn't have to
>set anything up. Why didn't they just carry on studying like everybody
>else? Serbia's dozens of national groups (including Albanians) all have the
>right to study their common curriculum in their own language (and,
>additionally, to learn about their own national culture). Was it so bad
>that the Albanians were also expected to keep to the multi-ethnic state
>curriculum just like everyone else in the multi-ethnic republic? Was the
>state's insistence on that multi-ethnic curriculum really sufficient reason
>for educational ethnic apartheid to be declared by extremist Albanian
>nationalist leaders? Schools they had to set up. What bilge!
>
>And there was more: 'the police invariably set upon children carrying
>books'. Not even once, but invariably? Only in Christmas pantos, Mr T. Then
>came the most offensive fruit of Mr Tanner's febrile imagination, a real
>Big Whopper: namely, his claim that he 'would turn on the news and hear the
>Kosovo Albanians described night after night as vermin'. Now, I hate to rat
>on Mr Tanner but I have to say that he is serving up codswallop. The idea
>that any postwar European broadcaster, still less one in a multinational
>state, would ever so describe a significant group of its own viewers!
>Surely people can't swallow this.
>
>However, certain people nowadays are predisposed to do just that: nothing
>like a liberal dose of anti-Serbian arsenic to whet their now perverted
>appetites, I suppose. Sadly, I looked at some equally thin Tanner gruel.
>What was being cooked up here? 'Thousands of men and women killed or
>tortured over the last 20 years for having the wrong name and religion'.
>Since for half that period Kosovo's Albanians completely controlled
>Kosovo's legislature, executive, judiciary and police personnel from top to
>bottom, I would like to think that Mr T. is obliquely referring to the
>consequent suffering of the Serbians of this Serbian province under
>Albanian oppression - before 1989 and from June 1999. Somehow, given his
>previous partiality, I doubt it.
>
>Marko Gasic
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>_________________________________________
>
>Blast from the past:
>
>The Independent Tuesday 11th May 1999 page 4
>
>THE BALKAN QUESTION
>
>KEY ISSUES BEHIND THE WAR EXPLAINED
>
>Do Albanians look like Serbs?
>
>No. Of course the differences are only approximate but it is often very
>easy to tell a Serb from an Albanian in Kosovo long before he or she utters
>a word.
>
>The Serbs often have black or dark brown hair and are generally darker and
>more heavily built than Albanians. Their appearance is fairly typical of
>southern Slavs. By contrast, the Kosovars look Celtic to a British eye.
>They have curly hair, which is often blond or rust coloured, and their skin
>tends to be very pale and covered in freckles. Their eyes are often green
>or blue and their build is much more slender than that of the Serbs. They
>have longer heads. It is not surprising that they look so different as they
>belong to different races that have very rarely intermarried.
>
>MARCUS TANNER
>
>My comments (thanks to JG)
>
>                 Having seen Marcus Tanner's handy guide to ethnic
>identification in the Balkans I
>                 dusted off my Observer's Book of Bosnian War Reporters and
>found this fascinating
>                 entry:
>
>   Species:
>                   Tarcus Manner
>   Appearance:
>                   Open sandals (with socks)
>                   Baggy acrylic shorts with words "Scotch" on rump,
>"soda" on side
>                   Thinning nondescript hair
>                   Impressively protuberant "port" belly, created by
>enthusiastic feeding and drinking
>                 bouts at the Writer's club connected to suffusion of red
>on face and nose
>                   T-shirts of St Michael, extra large, used to cover body
>    Diet:
>                   Mainly liquid and alcoholic with special preference for
>Port;
>                   Solids taken in large quantities over extended periods
>    Where to see:
>                   Not a member of the dawn chorus; Semi-nocturnal;
>earliest sightings are likely
>                 to be around
>                   11-00 am with other media vultures where dead
>information is available, at what
>                 is technically     known as Press Conference
>                   Between 1-00pm to 4-00pm ingestion of liquid and
>solids in a variety of feeding
>                 stations
>                   During resting periods collects agency reports from
>internet and skillfully weaves
>                 them into elaborate   constructions (technical term
"copy")
>                   Hours of darkness found in bars
>    Habitat:
>                   Luxuriously feathered downtown Belgrade flat, cleaned
>by local Serbian woman
>                 paid a pittance and doubles as   language teacher
>                   Juveniles tend to be found posing as librarians
>    Sexual habits:
>                   Greatly restricted due to lack of suitable partners in
>Serbia where men are men
>                 The Tarcus Manner appears on the verge of extinction!
>
>
>

<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing!  These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Om