Whitewashing History in Yugoslavia

I'm reading another book on the Balkans and, as usual, something is bothering me about it. The book is The Fracture Zone: A Return to the Balkans by Simon Winchester.

My disquiet comes from the book's second chapter where Winchester describes the history of the Balkans and specifically how the Muslim Ottomans happened to be in Europe in the first place. Here's the quote:

And given that the story of the Balkans is, in essence, the story of the ebbing and flowing of the two great empires, Hapsburg and Ottoman, that vied for sovereignty over the lands between them, so it seemed to me at the start of this journey that our tour of Balkan history, as well as our venture into the Balkan landscape, should most properly begin in the Hapsburg's once great capital city, Vienna. 

'Ebbing and flowing?' How benign. Doesn't that imply that the two empires are morally equivalent and that their goals were essentially the same? Doesn't that imply that Hapsburg armies besieged the Ottoman capital just as Ottoman armies besieged the Hapsburg capital?

Let's, first, take a look at the map. The Hapsburg empire never even reached Greece, much less Asia Minor. If you go back to the Holy Roman Empire, the borders are even more restricted. The real ruler of the Balkans was the Byzantine Empire which existed for more than a thousand years, from the 4th century to 1453. Wikipedia explains what happened next:

Successive civil wars in the 14th century further sapped the Empire's strength, and most of its remaining territories were lost in the Byzantine-Ottoman Wars, which culminated in the Fall of Constantinople and the conquest of remaining territories by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.

So really the so-called "ebbing and flowing" wasn't between the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans, it was between the Byzantines and the Ottomans and far from going both ways it went one way from Byzantine control to Ottoman control. In short, the expansion of Islam by the sword succeeded right up to the old border between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern.

What happened next was an assault on the neighbouring Hapsburg empire by the advancing Turks, much like the assault on Belgium by Germany in WWI and on the Soviet Union in WWII.

The Siege of Vienna in 1529 was the first attempt by the Ottoman Empire, led by Suleiman the Magnificent, to capture the city of Vienna, Austria. The siege signaled the pinnacle of the Ottoman Empire's power, the maximum extent of Ottoman expansion in central Europe, and was the result of a long-lasting rivalry with Europe. 

'Rivalry?' Since when is descending on someone else's country and raping and killing the inhabitants a 'rivalry?' This was war, brutal and aggressive, waged by Islam against Christendom. Let's call a spade a spade. Wikipedia tries to get it right but still misses the point.

Thereafter, 150 years of bitter military tension and reciprocal attacks ensued, culminating in the Battle of Vienna in 1683, which marked the start of the Great Turkish War by European powers to remove the Ottoman presence.

So to put all this into context, Islam attempted to conquer Eastern Europe (it made a previous attempt in Western Europe through Spain to France) starting in the 14 Century and was only finally evicted in 1828 when a combined western fleet destroyed an Ottoman-Egyptian fleet and the Greeks drove the Turks out of  the Peloponnese.

Five centuries of occupation; five centuries of killing, murdering, population transfers, subjugation, indoctrination and religious propaganda. That's a lot.

And now Islam is at it again through immigration, 'refugee claims,' monster families and refusal to assimilate.

Here we go again and Winchester somehow manages to miss the Elephant in the room. The reason the Balkans are a mess is because Islam made it a mess.

We need to do a better job explaining what happened in Europe and what is happening again. Because after Europe comes America and after America, Canada.

If Islam keeps advancing at its current rate the point of the sword is eventually going to be in you, your wife, and your daughter.

The Lessons from Andrew Breitbart

(h/t hotair)

Stop Apologizing to Muslims

Diana West has a brilliant article this week on Muslim rage. She says, "apology is always an act of dhimmitude." 

Muslim rage boy

We're now apologizing for a mistake in Afghanistan in a way that makes us look ridiculous. And, of course, it's not enough; it's never enough.

Today, the pattern intensifies. Muslim violence is more brazen with the murders of American troops, and Western apologies are more exaggerated. The United States hasn't even quashed Afghan demands for a trial of those who last month disposed of several Korans.

Meanwhile, the chorus for punishment grows. "After the first step of a profound apology, there must be a second step ... of disciplinary action," Jan Kubis, the United Nations representative in Afghanistan, said this week. "Only after this, after such a disciplinary action, can the international forces say, 'Yes, we're sincere in our apology.'"

Or, rather, yes, we're sincere in our dhimmitude.

Given whose leading the United States at the moment, I can see where this dhimmitude comes from. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to demean ourselves. As Ms West points out, the more seriously we take it, the more we get drawn in to acting like Muslims themselves:

The fact is, this whole affair, like those that preceded it, is a power play. Feigned victimhood becomes a trap for the "perpetrator" -- in this case, the U.S. military. Falling for the trap means submitting to violent Islamic dictates for exactly the same reason a co-dependent family member submits to dictates of a mentally ill relative -- to stop the outburst, to make it all "better," even if "better" is only a lull before the next power play.

Just as such actions bring a co-dependent family member more closely into the behavioral orbit of the sick family member, they bring the United States more closely into the behavioral orbit regulated by Islamic law. They force the "perpetrator" into accepting the sacredness of an inanimate object; they force the "perpetrator" into accepting the Islamic position that a Christian or Jew is unfit (unclean) to dispose of the sacred thing without desecrating it. They force the "perpetrator" to accept the Islamic belief that such "desecration" constitutes a crime of literally capital proportions.

They force the "perpetrator" to act Islamic. This is the pattern of dhimmitude. We must break it.

Pat Condell has some ideas on that worth listening to.



These are alarm bells ringing. A civilization is under attack; your civilization.

China's Financial Attack on America

I wrote back in 2008 the dollar was under attack from China. Specifically I said "I may be misunderstanding something here, but it seems likely to me the purpose of buying U.S. government securities is to attack the dollar later and use the resulting Monopoly money to buy distressed assets."

 where's this all going?

What I didn't say, or understand, is how they could do that if the attack on the dollar (selling Treasury Bills) had the effect of reducing its value. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot by destroying the value of their own assets.

But what if there were a way of taking the monopoly money and buying something of real value?  Then when the dollar collapses the asset would be retained (and increased). It would be like jumping out of a sinking boat into one that was rising.

Now Porter Stansberry, Founder and Chairman of Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, is saying China is actually doing this and the asset it's chosen is gold. It's not just buying gold but buying gold producers around the world.

The Chinese know that nearly every country around the globe is in massive debt... and nearly every country in debt is printing money (and thus, going deeper into debt), and debasing its currency.

So the Chinese have come to the logical conclusion that gold is the one thing that can help them protect their current reserves, and perhaps even establish a true world currency, while almost every other currency gets printed to the point of worthlessness.

That is why China is on a secret mission to corner as much of the world's gold market as possible.

Once it does that it can play the American game of printing money on the basis of other countries' investments in yuan treasury bills. Free money! Whoo Hoo!

Stansberry has some pretty stark ideas on what all this will mean for American (and to a lesser extent, Canadian) consumers.

This is what should be the big issue in the current U.S. election campaign, but isn't.

OxyContin and Natives: The Old Problem Again

The reason the North West Mounted Police was formed was to end the practice of American rum runners selling alcohol to Canada's natives.

 the new booze

Booze seemed to have a dramatic effect on them, so much so that one distribution point near Lethbridge was called Fort Whoop-up.

Flash forward 140 years and we have another drug causing untold grief with another native community.

Deputy Grand Chief Mike Metatawabin of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), which represents 49 First Nations in an area covering two-thirds of Ontario, says up to 70 percent of people in some Ontario First Nations communities are addicted to OxyContin and face a health crisis when the drug is pulled.

“We have a public health catastrophe on our hands, and no one is stepping up to take responsibility to help our people,” says Metatawabin.

 When I first heard this quote, my jaw dropped. How on earth did three quarters of a native group get addicted to a prescription drug? Shouldn't some DOCTOR be censured or better yet, fired, for having so massively over prescribed? Shouldn't some drug store pharmacist have his or her licence pulled?

Indeed, tell me how a drug paid for by a medical plan can cause such a widespread problem?  This is truly beyond belief.

What is believable is that Canada's native Indians need to consider themselves at-risk for ANY and ALL types of drugs that affect neurotransmitters, including alcohol. A case can be made that no native should be allowed, or should allow himself or herself, to indulge in these substances.

•  Some substances imitate natural neuromediators and take their place on their receptors. Morphine, for example, binds to the receptors for endorphin (a natural "morphine" produced by the brain), while nicotine binds to the receptors for acetylcholine.
• Other substances increase the secretion of natural neuromediators. Cocaine, for example, mainly increases the amount of dopamine in the synapses, while ecstasy mainly increases the amount of serotonin.
• Still other substances block a natural neuromediator. Alcohol, for example, blocks the NMDA receptors.

Some native communities in Alaska and Canada have responded to this issue by instituting total bans on alcohol. Clearly the same should have been true for OxyContin. 


It's not the drug that's the problem, it's the native community, and always has been.