Take the protester quiz — Find out what sort of protester you are!
Ever find yourself in your favorite Starbucks, pretending to write the next great American novel, your beret brashly askance your unkempt swath of dirty blonde hair, slowly sipping an Italian breakfast drink at 9 o’clock at night, when you see a kindred soul saunter in to the local beatnik constabulary? She is beautiful, her dreadlocks hang down to her faux-leather belt holding her knee-less dirty jeans precariously but securely around a waste fueled by tofu and bean-sprouts, the tie-dye shirt she is sporting must be at least 20 years old, its multi-colored swirl a kaleidoscope of communism that draws you in and doesn’t let go – this is the babe for you!
But how to talk to her? You could try and brag about the novel you are working on, but let’s face it, everyone is writing a book in here, and some of them may actually be getting somewhere. You could offer to buy her a drink, but that might backfire – possibly she could lash out in FemiNazi rage and dash any hopes of running your manicured fingers through her tousled and bug-infested hair.
Try this on for size Neil, talk to her about protesting. Its sure to attract a modicum of attention, for she surely is as much a protester as you have ever been. But there is the rub, what kind of protester are you? Well, take this quick quiz and you will have all the ammunition you need to pierce the heart of the exotic you find yourself in the company of. Go ahead, give it a try.
A. I hate America!
- No way! America is the greatest country on earth!
- Sometimes, when I don’t get my way.
- Hell yeah! America is the worst country on earth!
B. I like to throw things and get violent when I don’t get my way!
- Uhh, maybe when I was three.
- Sometimes, when I don’t get my way.
- Hell yeah! Especially when my college team wins an important game.
C. I like to burn the American flag.
- Hell no!
- Sometimes, when I don’t have an Oakland City flag to burn.
- Hell yeah! America is a war-zone, and this is the only way to cleanse the flag.
D. I like to defecate in public.
- Uhh, maybe when I was three months old.
- Sometimes, when you gotta go you gotta go.
- Hell yeah! Taking a dump in full view of my friends is the height of enlightenment.
E. Littering is next to Godliness.
- Uhh, I think you have that phrase a little backwards.
- Sometimes, who can be bothered with finding a trashcan?
- Hell yeah! Trash is a part of life, its all about a circle, with nature, and the Lion King, umm…look, a ukulele!!!
F. I enjoy breaking into private businesses and destroying things.
- Uhh, not really, no.
- Sometimes, like this one time, at band camp.
- Hell yeah! Private ownership of property is bourgeios and must be eliminated at all costs!
G. I enjoy raping women.
- Uhh, what the hell kind of quiz is this?
- Sometimes. Everyone knows “no” means “yes.”
- Hell yeah! Women are just tools to have your way with.
That’s it, you are done! Seven simple questions to determine what kind of protester you are. Now comes the hard part, freaking math. All you gotta do is add all your answers up then reference the chart below, and you will have your answer. If you answered 1. you get -10 points, 2. gets you 5 points, and 3. gets you 100 points.
-70 to -30 – Hmm, you are probably one of those racist, homophobic Islam-hating Tea Partiers, get out of the Starbucks before the tie-dyed girl firebombs your car!
-29 – 0 – Depending on which way you answered, there might be some hope for you, but first you need some training. Go out and pee on a cop-car and maybe rape a few chicks then you might be ready for the big time.
0 – 35 – You’re not really a protester, just a lazy bastard who doesn’t like to work. You might have a shot at this hippy-chick, but you are gonna need to lie better than you did on this quiz.
35- 300 – Way to go! You are in the little big league’s now. You are most likely a WTO protester. This might impress the dreadlocked dream queen depending on her protesting propensities, give it a shot broseph!
300-600 – Now you are big time. Most likely, you are an Arab Spring protester, which makes me wonder what the hell you are doing in a Starbucks in Seattle?
700 – You are the most noble protester in history, an Occupier. Way to go, I bow to your superior wisdom and protesting work ethic. With the backing of such big name gurus like George Soros and Russel Simmons, there is no way this mangy-haired bombshell won’t succumb to your superior name-dropping skills. Of course, if she proves overly-resistant to your superior protesting abilities, just knock her on the head and drag her back to your tent, its okay, laws don’t matter anymore anyway, not to mention, Obama has your back.
What goes for a Christmas pageant nowadays
About a month late on this one, but hey, its still relevant.
On December 17th of last year, I was treated to my 11 year old daughter’s school hosting a Christmas musical, errr, Holiday Play, damn, ummm, Winter Wonderland? Ahh, whatever its called I was in for a treat!
I knew something was up when I was handed the program for the night’s festivities. Emblazoned across the bi-folded bright blue piece of copy-paper thrust into my hand by the surprisingly insistent hooligan forced to hand out the syllabus for tonight’s lecture was “Project Peace: How kids can teach us to be more tolerant in the world.” Oh boy! This is gonna be a blast!
I hate to admit, I did not save this precious article in my daughter’s baby book, I am such a bad parent, so I have nothing to reference when remembering what passes for a Christmas play in our day and age, but let’s just say it was a bunch of horribly acted skits, interspersed with horribly sung and poorly danced numbers with the occasional condescending lecture from an eleven-year-old who apparently knows more about the world than I do.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking the performers, I am decrying the nature of the performance. WTF! Project Peace? How kids can teach us to be more tolerant in the world? Whatever happened to Rudolph, or Santa Clause, or Frosty? I went to this damn school, and I was always doing plays. Of the two I can remember, one was Shakespeare and the other was Ovid. Maybe it wasn’t Broadway quality, but at least we tried. And it had to be entertaining to see your kid wearing a real costume, remembering actual lines of literature, and lettin it rip on stage. But the crap I saw that sad winter night was complete drivel.
I understand schools are limited in their choices of plays because everyone has to participate. It wouldn’t be right for Little Double-Left Foot Larry to have to prove his worth to a true theatrical production, nah, just shove his goofy ass in the back row and let him phone it in. But even so, what’s with the Project Peace crap?
So what my child basically learns is that her parents are a bunch of bigots and only she and her friends are smart enough to show us the error of our ways. We need to be tolerant of other people, its mucho importante, and to show us neanderthals the way home, let’s put on a Moronity Play, because are parental units are too dumb to follow anything more cerebral.
And then it dawned on me…as I slowly looked around the cafeteria/auditorium, there was not a single finger-painted poster having anything to do with Christmas. For sure there was a plethora of hand-made wall-hangings, but it was all typical progressive lefty bullcrap.
And I finally figured it out. The true definition of tolerance. Tolerance is the ability of the majority to tolerate the intolerance of the minority.
76% of America is Christian, but we can’t have the word Christmas in our schools? Ergo, we have to tolerate that intolerance by the other 14%.
So here I am sitting learning from an 11-year-old future fascist (not my kid, the ugly girl talking to me about gun-control…I’m not kidding) about how to be tolerant of others, while the school’s walls are teaching me the true message, “Bite into this progressive s**t-burger and like it, cause we run education baby.”
Time to start writing again
Well folks, its been a while since I have written anything, but it appears my hiatus is over. I have learned a couple of things over the last few months away from Fleeceme, the main one being, I love to write.
And that has been the problem. I was trying to make my blog something other than what it was supposed to be, which is a creative outlet and a voice for the thoughts that would otherwise be unspoken. In hindsight, I was trying to tackle too much with what I was doing – the links lists, the multiple daily posts, etc. – what I should have been doing was just writing.
Quantity was trumping quality. That is bad for a writer.
So now, I will write for myself. My posts will still be politically focused, but they will be as frequent or infrequent as the urge to write them hits me. If anyone reads them, God bless you, more so if anyone responds. No more link lists, no more links to articles just to put a post on the blog. If I link an article or another blog, it is because I truly love what I am linking, not just “trying to return the favor” or any other reason.
Look for my next post, which should be up in a few days.
Cheers. =)
Intransigence only applies to the right =(
Damn GOP, they aren’t going into these debt talks with the heartwarming feelgood puppy-dogs and popsicles approach of regular normal non-extremist folks who desire, nay DEMAND, compromise. How dare they say “No tax increases”? Don’t they understand how the system works? The left says what they want, the right caves, and everyone is happy!
So completely ignore when President Obama says he will flat-out veto a Balanced Budget Amendment that comes across his desk. He is not being intransigent, he is doing what is good for the country. A balanced budget!?! Are you freaking kidding me? How can the government feed the unions, GE, GM, the global warming industrial complex and every other necessity of western civilization if we can’t spend more than we take in? I mean, if we don’t pass this debt-ceiling deal, the Social Security checks won’t go out! Nevermind that there is trillions in Al Gore’s lockbox, if we run out of credit, that money disappears faster than Jane Fonda at an Independence Parade.
Ignore the global warming folks who won’t even consider that their “settled science” possibly could be a tad bit bogus, or at least founded on unethical and greed motivated studies. They aren’t being intransigent, they are doing what is good for the world.
Ignore Obama when he won’t even ponder the thought of consulting Congress or the American people when he unilaterally decided to NOT attack Libya with missiles and bombs. That’s not intransigence, that is what is good for the country. We need the oil. I can’t think of a better reason to take out a dictator than for oil, can you?
Speaking of Muslims, ignore the Administration when they will not even consider that the majority of terrorist acts in the world are being performed by that religion. That’s not intransigence, that is what is good for the country, because if we can’t be multi-cultural and pro-Islam, we don’t deserve to exist.
Ignore the President and his assault on “Corporate Jet Owners” and “best-selling authors” by his refusal to back away from demands that “revenue spending” be curbed. That’s not intransigence, that is what is good for the country, because only idiots think we have a spending problem in America.
Yep, the only people who are being intransigent are the GOP, those uncompromising bastards. If what they wanted to do was even remotely good for the country, more people would get behind them, but its obvious what they are doing – paying off their buddies at GE, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, GM, Chrysler and….wait, I might have gotten a little confused. Umm, Republicans are racists!!!
Last night’s links 7/18/2011
The best from my blogroll, perused, collated and disseminated so you don’t have to.
Post of the Day. If you read only one, read this one!
Adrienne’s Corner – Wandering in the wasteland called the Huffington Post…
The Best of the Rest:
AlinskyDefeater’s Blog – Even More – You Might be a Liberal if…
Always on Watch – The Astounding Hypocrisy of Barack Obama (With Addendum)
American and Proud – California debating Death Penalty
America’s Watchtower – The man who assassinated Kazai’s brother was a CIA informant
Answering Muslims – Egyptian Sheikh on Killing Muhammad’s Critics
Be Sure You’re Right, then Go Ahead – Hanoi Jane Rides Again
Blog de Kingshamus – In Honor Of President Barry O’CriesALot
Bread Upon the Waters – Just a Closer Walk with Thee – Ken Middleton and Kimo Hussey
Bunkerville – EU Court Says Finland Cannot Make ‘Cognac’
Capitol Commentary – A Moment Between Two Oblivions
Common Cents – OBAMACARE WAIVERS: List is up to 1471!
Conservative Hideout – Right Haven Spanked by Court
Conservative Outpost – The Republicans’ D-Day… Live Free…
Conservatives on Fire – Guest Saturday with The Free Market Project
conservativetickler – What exactly happens during debt default?
Creeping Sharia – UK Muslims: We Will Conquer the White House, Obama Will Be on Knees, Queen Will Wear Niqab
Disrupt the Narrative – Obama Curse Strikes Again
Frankenstein Government – Four Years Ago This Week- 2007
Mind-numbed Robot – President Svengali?
Phoebe’s Detention Room – Pic of infamous Florida car trunk sign
Political Clown Parade – You Only Lie When You’re Afraid
Republican Redefined – Senator Bob Corker: A Voice of Reason in a Town of Ridiculousness
rjjrdq’s America II – Obama Hands Libya to al-Qaeda
Robbing America – Debt Ceiling Negotiations Are Unlawful.
Edge of the Sandbox – The Ruins of California Education
Spellchek – Shhh Mr. President, don’t give away the dirty little secret about social security
Teresamerica – Debt Limit Talks, Cut Cap & Balance, and What is the Principled Thing To Do?
ThatMrgGuy’s Blog – The Welfare State Explained In Pictures
The Bard of Murdock – Eight of Ten
The Daley Gator – The Left has never respected freedom of speech
The People’s Cube – OMGOMGOMG – Um, I mean PRAISE LENIN!!!
The Spread Eagle Patriot – Are We All Out Of Our Minds?
Zilla of the Resistance – Today is my Birthday
Last night’s links 7/16/2011
The best from my blogroll, perused, collated and disseminated so you don’t have to.
Post of the Day. If you read only one, read this one!
Political Realities – Operation Castaway – The ATF In Florida
The Best of the Rest:
Adrienne’s Corner – It’s Friday…
AlinskyDefeater’s Blog – Obama’s Top Adviser Valerie Jarrett Admits She Courted the Communist Van Jones for Obama Administration
Always on Watch – Democrats Commit Bloopers
American and Proud – Obama is BLACK so Stop debating….
America’s Watchtower – Allen West to Obama: Fear-mongering is not a solution, it is time to admit your economic policies failed
Be Sure You’re Right, then Go Ahead – Barack Obama Meets The Press (Again)
Bread Upon the Waters – Obama Takes it to the American People, 80% of Whom Want to Pay More Taxes. Snort.
Bunkerville – Ethanol Now Consumes More Corn Than For Animal Feed for First Time, Corn Prices Reach Record High
Capitol Commentary – Giving Alms or Straining Reality: Pastafarianism?
Catholibertarian – Immigration Hypocrisy Alert!: Selective Law Enforcement at the Expense of Israeli Jews
Common Cents – Cable TV Ratings:
Conservative Hideout – Great Moments in Civil Discourse: Union Members Shout Down Governors Speech
Conservative Outpost – Obama and the tantrum in a high chair
Conservatives on Fire – Conspiracy Theorist or Snake Oil Salesmen Trying To Discredit the Conservative Cause
Creeping Sharia – Virginia planning commission recommends mosque proposal against citizens wishes
Disrupt the Narrative – Know why Republicans are resisting additional debt and taxes?
Frankenstein Government – Precision Speech
Manhattan Infidel – An Important Message from the Zombie Anti-Defamation League
Phoebe’s Detention Room – California mandates teaching gay history to Kindergartener’s
Planet Moron – Consider it “The 1456th Rail” of American Politics
Questioning with Boldness –Video: Keith Olbermann:The Lost Months
Republican Redefined – Dennis Miller on Debt Ceiling Debate
rjjrdq’s America II – California to Kill My Side Business
Robbing America – Debt Ceiling Negotiations Are Unlawful.
Sentry Journal – They’ve Won
Edge of the Sandbox – Mila Kunis: A Nice Girl from Chernivtsi?
Teresamerica – Horror and Tragedy in Brooklyn: 7 Blocks to Walk; A Boy Ends Up Brutally Murdered
ThatMrgGuy’s Blog – Sean Hannity completely pwned Juan Williams Oops!!! (via Phoebe’s Detention Room)
The Bard of Murdock – The San Francisco Exegete
The Daley Gator – Sorry Democrats, but raising taxes cannot fix stupid!
The People’s Cube – LMAObama.com – Worth a Visit
The Spread Eagle Patriot – Are We All Out Of Our Minds?
Zilla of the Resistance – Weekend Open Thread – Birthday, Rock, and Rebellion Edition
Srebrenica – the massacre no one has ever heard of
Of the many reasons I hate the United Nations the Srebrenica Massacre is the strongest. In this 16 year anniversary of the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II, I will give a little history lesson for you folks who are not aware of this travesty of United Nations “Protection”.
Srebrenica is middle right of the highlighted territory.
- Total population – 37,000
- Muslim – 27,572 (75.19%)
- Serbian – 8,315 (22.67%)
- Yugoslavs (Slavic Muslims) – 380 (1.03%)
- Others – 400 (1.10%)
As you can see, the predominant population leading up to the massacre was Muslim. This is important to understand, as the “Bosnia War” (the name of the conflict between Bosnia and Serbia prior to US Involvement 1992-1995) was primarily a program of ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbians against Bosnian Muslims ostensibly under the guise of a war for Serbian independence.
Bosnia didn’t have much going for it in this war. The Yugoslav National Army (a Warsaw Pact equipped fighting force) was primarily officered by Serbian nationals and subsequently sided with Serbia when hostilities broke out inside the Republic of Bosnia as the minority Serbian population sought to create its own state. The politics or the “rightness” of the Serbian desire for “self-determination” are not germane to this history, since the method by which they sought their goal undermine any moral high ground upon which they assume to stand.
Typical characterization of the fighting in this war are rather horrendous acts, most of which appear to have no strategic goal besides the decimation of the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) population. Indiscriminate shelling of towns, indiscriminate sniping, mass rape and genocide were the tactics of the Serbs in this war, culminating in the mass murder of the male population of Srebrenica.
For three years prior to the Massacre in 1995, the villages surrounding the fated town were systematically decimated by Serbian forces as this report by the UK Bosnian Institute attests:
More than three years before the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, Bosnian Serb nationalists – with the logistical, moral and financial support of Serbia and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) – destroyed 296 predominantly Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) villages in the region around Srebrenica, forcibly uprooting some 70,000 Bosniaks from their homes and systematically massacring at least 3,166 Bosniaks (documented deaths) including many women, children and the elderly.
There was a strategic goal to this ethnic cleansing, the isolation of Srebrenica from any outside support. The Bosnians were not helpless, they did what they could to defend themselves as well as running succesful offensives to extend the control of Srebrenica and linking to other cities to the north and south. Unfortunately, due to its proximity to the “country” of Serbia, it was for all practical purposes surrounded and never fully linked up with other Bosnian forces to the West. In essence, it was an isolated Bosnian town under siege by a stronger and larger Serbian force.
Siege is an apropos term, the town had no running water (water supply was destroyed by Serbia), barely any electricity (what could be supplied by makeshift generators), food was running out and overpopulation was only adding to the problems. The Bosnian fate was looking rather dire.
The United Nations to the Rescue!
In April 1993, the United Nations issued Resolution 819, declaring Srebrenica a “safe area”. As history has taught us, UN declarations rarely carry much weight. The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) commander assigned to Srebrenica had an alternative option to enforcing the “safe area” – demilitarize it.
His plan was fairly simple, the Bosnians would give up their weapons in return for direct protection from UN forces in the town. Good deal huh? I give up my 30-year-old hunting rifle for the big toys of the “boys in blue”. The only problem is, you only disarm one side of the conflict, and I might add, the weaker, besieged, outnumbered side. The Serbs were untouched in this agreement, even to the point that neither side apparently agreed on how large an area was “demilitarized”.
The plan was an utter failure, mostly due to the smallish force of 170 Canadians sent to defend the town.
Here are some quotes from UN delegates sent to oversee the goings on of the combatants around and in Srebrenica “safe area”, remember, this is before the Massacre. (from the UN report)
“a slow-motion process of genocide.”
“Serb forces must withdraw to points from which they cannot attack, harass or terrorise the town. UNPROFOR should be in a position to determine the related parameters. The mission believes, as does UNPROFOR, that the actual 4.5 km by 0.5 km decided as a safe area should be greatly expanded.”
The UN, understanding the first resolution wasn’t working like it was supposed to, decided to drop another one, Resolution 824 (1993). This one added more cities to the list of “safe areas” and reiterated how a safe area was supposed to work, apparently the Serbs weren’t getting the message. And why would they? None of these resolutions granted the UNPROFOR authorization to engage nor use force to enforce the declaration.
In response to concerns from the UNPROFOR commander, the UN sent him an additional 50 unarmed military observers, that should do the trick. The UN also decided to spell-out the UNPROFOR commander the idiocy of unilaterally disarming one side of the conflict. No crap.
You can see I am getting more cynical of this retelling as I relay it to you, I apologize, but the events leading up to the Massacre really piss me off.
Yet another resolution. This time, amazingly, the French saw the idiocy of enforcing a safe area if only one side of the conflict agrees with the resolution. The French understood you need to have teeth if you are going to “force” both sides to concede to the resolution. This French viewpoint resulted in UN Resolution 836 (1993), authorizing the UNPROFOR to use force for self-defence.
Nevertheless, the Serbs were not deterred. They continually harassed humanitarian workers and even UNPROFOR themselves, setting up roadblocks obstructing free movement into and out of the “safe area”. They continued the indiscriminate shelling of the safe cities, Sarajevo for example (declared a safe area in Resolution 824) received an average of 1000 shells a day, a number that was not lowered by any UN resolution.
The point is, the Serbs did not give a crap about any stupid UN resolution. And why should they? Around Srebrenica, they had 2000 men with tanks, in the town were 170 Canadians with their cute white trucks. They continued to snipe Muslims, drop mortar shells in town, obstruct movement of the UN themselves, and no one did crap about it. Why should they care what the toothless bastards in New York were “suggesting” they should refrain from doing?
All this history is very convoluted, and to relay it would take many pages so I am going to jump ahead. To quickly cover the year 1994, numbers of UNPROFOR in the safe areas was increased, up to almost 1000 in Srebrenica, but they still could not enforce the Resolutions adequately. Freedom of movement was still restricted, shelling continues, etc. etc. For a very detailed report, read the rest of the UN document linked above.
The Massacre
The months leading up to the Massacre were a hell for the civilians in the town. Due to the UN’s inability to allow free movement of supplies from humanitarian agencies, starvation was setting in on the town, leading to death from lack of food. Imagine, a UN “protected” city having people die of starvation.
To describe how the town of Srebrenica was taken by the Serbs, I will quote the excellent wikipedia article:
The Serb offensive on Srebrenica began in earnest on 6 July 1995. In the following days, the five UNPROFOR observation posts, in the southern part of the enclave, fell one by one in the face of the Serb forces advance. Some of the Dutch soldiers retreated into the enclave after their posts were attacked, but the crews of the other observation posts surrendered into Serb custody. Simultaneously, the defending Bosnian forces came under heavy fire and were pushed back towards the town. Once the southern perimeter began to collapse, about 4,000 Bosniak residents, who had been living in a Swedish housing complex for refugees nearby, fled north into Srebrenica town. Dutch soldiers reported that the advancing Serbs were “cleansing” the houses in the southern part of the enclave.
On 8 July, a Dutch YPR-765 armoured vehicle took fire from the Serbs and withdrew. A group of Bosniaks demanded that the armoured vehicle stay to defend them. As the armoured vehicle continued to withdraw, a Bosniak man threw a hand grenade on the vehicle, killing soldier Raviv van Renssen.[50]
Late on 9 July 1995, emboldened by early successes and little resistance from largely demilitarised Bosniaks, as well as the absence of any significant reaction from the international community, President Karadžić issued a new order authorising the VRS Drina Corps to capture the town of Srebrenica.[51]
On the morning of 10 July 1995, the situation in Srebrenica was tense. Residents crowded the streets. The Dutch UNPROFOR troops fired warning shots over the attacking Serbs’ heads and their mortars fired flares but they never fired directly on any Serb units. Lieutenant-Colonel Karremans sent many urgent requests for NATO air support to defend the town, but no assistance was forthcoming until around 2:30 pm on 11 July 1995, when 2 Dutch F-16’s guided by British SAS bombed VRS tanks advancing towards the town. NATO planes also attempted to bomb VRS artillery positions overlooking the town, but had to abort the operation due to poor visibility. NATO plans to continue the air strikes were abandoned following the Serb Army’s threats to kill Dutch troops and the French hostages (pilots in the custody of the VRS), as well as shell the UN Potočari compound on the outside of the town, and surrounding areas where 20,000 to 30,000 civilians had fled.
Potocari compound is where the true Massacre actually happened, all the while Dutch troops were supposedly “protecting” the 30,000 civilians crowded into this United Nations base.
Again I will quote wikipedia here from the same article, please remember, this was a Dutch Compound defended by Dutch troops who were present while the following atrocities were taking place:
The UN compound of Potocari, where the Massacre happened
On 12 July 1995, as the day wore on, the refugees in the compound could see VRS soldiers setting houses and haystacks on fire. Throughout the afternoon, Serb soldiers mingled in the crowd and summary executions of men occurred.[43] In the late morning of 12 July 1995 a witness saw a pile of 20 to 30 bodies heaped up behind the Transport Building in Potočari, alongside a tractor-like machine. Another testified that he saw a soldier slay a child with a knife in the middle of a crowd of expellees. He also said that he saw Serb soldiers execute more than a hundred Bosnian Muslim men in the area behind the Zinc Factory and then load their bodies onto a truck, although the number and nature of the murders stand in contrast to other evidence on the Trial Record that indicates that the killings in Potočari were sporadic in nature. Soldiers were picking people out of the crowd and taking them away. A witness recounted how three brothers – one merely a child and the others in their teens – were taken out in the night. When the boys’ mother went looking for them, she found them with their throats slit.[43][51]
That night, a Dutchbat medical orderly witnessed two Serb soldiers raping a young woman.[54]
One survivor described the murder of a baby and the rape of women occurring in the close vicinity of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers who did nothing to prevent it. According to the survivor, a Serb told a mother to make her child stop crying, and when it continued to cry he took it and slit its throat, after which he laughed.[55] Stories about rapes and killings spread through the crowd and the terror in the camp escalated.[43] Several individuals were so terrified that they committed suicide by hanging themselves.[51]
One of the survivors, Zarfa Turkovic,[56] described the horrors of rapes as follows: “Two [Serb soldiers] took her legs and raised them up in the air, while the third began raping her. Four of them were taking turns on her. People were silent, no one moved. She was screaming and yelling and begging them to stop. They put a rag into her mouth and then we just heard silent sobs….
This describes how the male population was removed and executed:
From the morning of 12 July, Serb forces began gathering men and boys from the refugee population in Potočari and holding them in separate locations, and as the refugees began boarding the buses headed north towards Bosniak-held territory, Serb soldiers separated out men of military age who were trying to clamber aboard. Occasionally, younger and older men were stopped as well (some as young as 14 or 15).[58][59][60] These men were taken to a building in Potočari referred to as the “White House”. As early as the evening of 12 July 1995, Major Franken of the Dutchbat heard that no men were arriving with the women and children at their destination in Kladanj.[43]
On 13 July 1995, Dutchbat troops witnessed definite signs that the Serb soldiers were murdering some of the Bosniak men who had been separated. For example, Corporal Vaasen saw two soldiers take a man behind the “White House”, heard a shot and saw the two soldiers reappear alone. Another Dutchbat officer saw Serb soldiers murder an unarmed man with a single gunshot to the head and heard gunshots 20–40 times an hour throughout the afternoon. When the Dutchbat soldiers told Colonel Joseph Kingori, a United Nations Military Observer (UNMO) in the Srebrenica area, that men were being taken behind the “White House” and not coming back, Colonel Kingori went to investigate. He heard gunshots as he approached, but was stopped by Serb soldiers before he could find out what was going on.[43]
Some of the executions were carried out at night under arc lights, and industrial bulldozers then pushed the bodies into mass graves.[61] According to evidence collected from Bosniaks by French policeman Jean-René Ruez, some were buried alive; he also heard testimony describing Serb forces killing and torturing refugees at will, streets littered with corpses, people committing suicide to avoid having their noses, lips and ears chopped off, and adults being forced to watch the soldiers kill their children.
There is a lot more to this story, but I don’t have the time or patience to write about it. If you do have the time, read more about it at wikipedia, or the UN report, it is an amazing story of the worthlessness of the United Nations.
And that is the true horror of this story. These people were murdered, raped and mutilated under the auspices of the most powerful organization in the world. The Bosnian civilian trust in the protection of the United Nations led them to their own demise. Many of these people never would have fled to Potocari had they not assumed the blue-helmeted troops would actually stop Serbs from raping and murdering people right in front of their faces.
The only good that can come out of a tragedy such as this, is that it finally woke up America to the worthlessness of the UN in preventing atrocities like this happening in Bosnia. The United States led a NATO mission in late 1995 to do what the UN never had the courage to do, bare some teeth at the Serbs.
Amazingly, the fighting stopped almost immediately. This mission eventually evolved into Operation Joint Endeavour, which I was a part of as an US Army Infantrymen. I personally guarded civilian humanitarian missions to inter exhume mass-grave sites that were a result of this massacre and others. The mass graves were called “secondary”, the “primary” ones were actually at the sites of the massacres, but the Serbs moved them to hide the evidence.
I find it hard to believe how little coverage this massacre received in the press, then and now. The cynical side of me attributes it to the media wanting to cover up one of the grandest “cluster-f**ks” in United Nations history – a goal to protect the darling of the progressives. Or maybe it is the strong second amendment implications this story has – when reliance on the government to defend your life goes wrong. Whatever the reason, this tale needs more telling, and by better writers than myself.
Pretty interesting piece here. I don’t have much to say about it, but here is the lede and you guys can read the rest:
As I studied the Vietnam war over the last 14 months, I began to think that John F. Kennedy probably was the worst American president of the previous century.
In retrospect, he spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco. He came into office and okayed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Then he went to a Vienna summit conference and got his clock cleaned by Khrushchev. That led to, among other things, the Cuban missile crisis and a whiff of nuclear apocalypse.
Make sure to check out the comments, some very informative posts made by readers of that blog.
Check out the rest here.
Last night’s links 7/15/2011
The best from my blogroll, perused, collated and disseminated so you don’t have to.
Post of the Day. If you read only one, read this one!
Conservatives on Fire – Teens __ Victims of the Minimum Wage?
The Best of the Rest:
Adrienne’s Corner – Governor Moonbat 2.0, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, has given up…
Always on Watch – Later Than We Think
American and Proud – Note to the GOP
America’s Watchtower – Gunrunner: Allen West calls for Eric Holder to resign
Answering Muslims – Approval of U.S. among Arabs Lower under Obama Than under Bush
Blog de KingShamus – The Debt Ceiling Fight Can Be Won
Bunkerville – Reid says ‘visitors are smelly’ and ‘Cantor is Childish’
Capitol Commentary – Our Two Uncles
Conservative Hideout – Redefining Success
Conservative Outpost – Republicans Have This One Last Chance.
Creeping Sharia – Ground Zero: Mosque yes, memorial that actually memorializes 9/11 – hell no
Disrupt the Narrative – While Republicans are Battling to Save the Country from Financial Disaster…
Manhattan Infidel – Big Boobies! (Manhattan Infidel’s Got ‘Em)
Motorcity Times – Video: World’s only actual turbine powered Batmobile
Phoebe’s Detention Room – The Knockout Game: Racial Violence and the Conspicuous Silence of the Media
Political Realities – Why John Boehner Backed Off Debt Ceiling Deal
Questioning with Boldness –Video: Ron Paul Ad – Conviction
rjjrdq’s America II – SB 1070 Architect Faces Recall
Sentry Journal – Video: Change Direction 2
Edge of the Sandbox – It’s San Francisco: What Are We Banning Now?
Teresamerica – Ron Paul Confronts Ben Bernanke: Is Gold Money?
ThatMrgGuy’s Blog – Advanced Blog Whoring
The Bard of Murdock – The Styrofoam Siege
The Daley Gator – *VIDEO* It’s Andrew Klavan Thursday Again!
The People’s Cube – Desperate-for-Sales Newsweek Stoops to Palin Puffery
Zilla of the Resistance – Once Upon a Time in Afghanistan…
Over a fifth of Navy ships aren’t ready to fight
Over a Fifth of Navy Ships Aren’t Ready to Fight | Danger Room | Wired.com.
This is a very interesting article. It details systemic problems within our Navy’s maintenance infrastructure that are only destined to get worse as the budgets of our forces have been cut over the next decade:
According to statistics released by Rep. Randy Forbes, the Virginia Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee, 22 percent of Navy ships didn’t pass their inspections in 2011. In 2007, just 8 percent of ships were rated as carrying junk equipment or insufficient spare parts. And more than half the Navy’s deployed aircraft — the F/A-18 Hornets, the jamming EA-18G Growlers, the P-3C Orion surveillance plane — aren’t ready for combat.
Having served in the Army as a crew member of Bradley M2A2 IFV, I can tell you these aren’t little problems that are making these ships fail their inspections. You can get by with quite a bit of components not working on a piece of machinery and still be considered “operationally ready” – these are serious problems these ships are facing.
Now, lets look at the results of this study in two lights, first from the sailor’s perspective. They are serving on ships that can’t do their job, some of the deficiencies include:
…anti-air defenses, radar, satellite communications, or engines.
Our men and women are put in harm’s way because of this.
The second perspective is from the fleet level, or Carrier Group if you will. If 1/5 of the ships in a Carrier Group are having issues with air-defense, radar, communications or engines, this puts EVERY ship in the Group at risk, even our most expensive ships in the fleet, the Carriers themselves! Carrier Groups work together for mutual defense – as the saying goes, “you are only as strong as your weakest link.”
This is bad news folks. I am the first to say there is room in the defense budget for cuts. But they need to be based off commonsense, not some political motivation to “hit a number”. Let’s stop wasting money on “Military Leadership Diversity Councils” and alternate engines for the F-35. I even support bringing our boys and girls home from Europe, and after reading this NRO article, Ingratitude, bringing them home from South Korea. But it makes no sense to spend billions (trillions in the case of a carrier) on ships and then to undercut their abilities and readiness by cutting the maintenance infrastructure that keeps them operating.
Fleece Me 
