PHOTOS The VP in Belgrade (May 20)

[Jackeens]

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden and Serbia's President Boris Tadic in Belgrade.


Meanwhile....wait til Clio gets her hands on these guys :-) :



Serb ultra-nationalist lawmakers hold up posters reading "Biden, you Nazi scum, go home," at the Serbian parliament in Belgrade on May 20, 2009.



Serbian nationalist holds a banner during a rally in Belgrade on May 19, 2009.

[Clio the Leo]

1. And Clio holds up a sign that reads.....

.... "Biden, you hottie, come to me!"

That man can work a smile like no other. Thanks Jackeens!

[Raine1967]

2. Thanks Jackeens!

I agree with Clio.

I am wondering if maybe we should call the republicans 'Nationalists' these days... Just thinking out loud. I missed you today.

[Cha]

3. Thanks Jackeens..interesting..

I had no idea there were those in Serbia who thought VP Biden was a nazi! Do they throw around the nazi word like limpbaugh's dittoheads?

President Boris Tadic certainly looks like a Boris.

And a "fascist"? Did they have the signs up for bush and or cheney if they bothered to go over there during their reign of terror?

[Muttocracy]

6. Biden lobbied hard for Clinton to intervene in the Balkans in the 1990s

with the NATO strikes to intervene in what Biden considered genocide.

And there was his "you're a god-damned war criminal" comment to Milosevic.

I'm glad our Pres and VP aren't afraid to meet with leaders who aren't crazy about them or the U.S.

article and more photos of protestors over here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8421287

[Cha]

27. Wow! Thanks

for the additional link.

[Muttocracy]

8. read somewhere that Biden was the highest ranking U.S. official to visit since Carter;

Biden's been there before, but was chair or ranking member of SFRC then.

[Thrill]

4. Wow Nazi and Facist? Where was he?

at the RNC?

[Uzybone]

7. Only thing missing is teabags

or whatever the Serb equivalent is.

[stillcool]

5. Must be that old bombing thing..

I guess they're still pissed.

Backing Up Globalization
with Military Might
by Karen Talbot
CovertAction Quarterly, Fall / Winter 1999
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World_Order/BackingUpGlobalization.html
The USA, World Hegemony
and Cold War II
The Double Triangle: USA/NATO/AMPO versus RUSSIA, CHINA and INDIA
by Johan Galtung, dr hc mult, Professor of Peace Studies Director, TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development Network, TFF Associate
Paper presented at the International Conference of NGOs,
October 11-13, 1999 in Seoul, Korea
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World_Order/US_Hegemony.html
The Kosovo/NATO Conflict
by Michael Albert and Stephen R. Shalom
Z magazine, May 1999
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Yugoslavia/Kosovo_NATO_Conflict.html

The NATO-Media Lie Machine
"Genocide" in Kosovo?
by Edward S. Herman & David Peterson
Z magazine, May 2000

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Yugoslavia/NATOMediaLieMachine.html

[grantcart]

9. that and the fact that they are being hunted down for war crimes

and the fact that they lost their dictatorship and monopoly of power and privledge.

[stillcool]

11. guess you didn't look at the links..

whatever. As long as the bombs drop, who cares?

[grantcart]

17. Actually Milosevic and Seselj both welcomed the bombs for the same reason that Ahmadinejad

would love to be bombed - dictators always see their popularity rise when bombs dropped - up to a point of course. Seselj was the only Serbian political leader to hold for maintaining the dictatorship in Kosovo and not stop the bombing.


Now it is strange to see links that actually apologize for Serbian excesses but my sources on what happened by the hands of the Serbian military is much more first hand, from colleagues in the UNHCR whom I talked with after they left the country.


Seselj's (the man on the tee shirts) crimes were so offensive (Šešelj famously boasted in June 1991, shortly before Serbia went to war against Slovenia and Croatia with the aim of suppressing their secession from Yugoslavia, that his paramilitary forces would not kill Croats with knives, but would gouge out their eyes with rusty spoons so that they would die of tetanus) that the Serbs surrendered him to the Hague for prosecution. Even Milosevic described Šešelj as “the personification of violence and primitivity".

Seselj's party was the only party to vote against the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo, the condition for stopping the bombing, meaning that they were willing to prolong the bombing of Serbia as along as they could continue to keep Kosovo under their murderous control.

[stillcool]

20. When the United States intervenes..

in other countries it is not on the behalf of the people in those countries. Horrible things happen all over the world, but the United States chooses when to act militarily quite discriminately, and for good reason. The articles I linked were only a few of the many that can be found at Third World Traveler. There are many, many authors whose articles can be found there. Please..don't let those few, jade your opinion of all that is available at the site.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/

[grantcart]

21. I am against bombing but I am also against concentration camps

The bombing Yugoslavia ended the most barbarious genocide in Europe since Hitler.


The real problem of bombing of Yugoslavia is that it actually encouraged the allusion that air bombardment was an effective solution ni all cases, it contributed to the over confidence that Rumsfield had in his invasion plans in Iraq.

[Jennicut]

24. I agree. It needed to end. And Rumsfeld was an idiot to think

it would work in the entire region of Iraq. We never should have been there. Totally different situations. He was such a failure.

[Muttocracy]

13. can you tell me more about the authors of the 3rd and 4th articles?

I couldn't tell much from their bios.

[stillcool]

15. If you do a search on the site..

with any of their names it will bring up oodles of articles/books they've written.
Here's the authors page:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Authors/Authors_page.html
Here's Edward Hermans page.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Edward_Herman.html
I think of any author other than maybe Norman Soloman, I've read more articles by him than anyone else.


Stephen R. Shalom wrote Imperial Alibis..here's a little something else on him
http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/polisci/faculty/shalom/shalom.htm

Michael Albert's wrote Parecon/Life after Captialism, and Trajectory of Change

http://www.amazon.com/Parecon-After-Capitalism-Michael-Albert/dp/184467505X

Here's a youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ar6QN7jcNM&feature=PlayList&p=537AAD20722F8C3C&index=0

[Muttocracy]

16. thanks I ended up on some other Zmag site. Will look at those links. nt

[grantcart]

18. You may be interested in these more objective sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vojislav_Seselj#cite_note-5

[grantcart]

10. Its good to see the hardline Serbian nationalists give it a half assed try

Even the hard core communist doesn't really seem into it.

[Muttocracy]

12. grantcart, do you know who's on their shirts? nt

[grantcart]

14. It is Vojislav Šešelj, currently sitting in the Intern. Criminal Tribune for crimes against humanity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vojislav_Seselj

In late February 2003 Šešelj surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on the indictment of "eight counts of crimes against humanity and six counts of violations of the laws or customs of war for his alleged participation in a joint criminal enterprise".<2> In 2005 Šešelj made headlines when he was asked to read a letter which he earlier sent to the ICTY that stated his contempt for the court. The letter was read in front of cameras by Šešelj and contained copious amounts of insults and expletives aimed at the top Tribunal officials and judges. In his letter, Šešelj said that the presiding judge can only perform oral sex on him, and he referred to Carla Del Ponte as "the prostitute". Recordings of his statement have been aired many times in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Hercegovina.<8>

[Muttocracy]

19. alrighty then. Yeesh. nt

[Jennicut]

23. Lovely. I do think that all 3 sides in that war did some awful things

The problem is some Serbs act like they did nothing wrong. Of course, this is only the hardliners. Many Serbs want to go forward and be accepted by the rest of Europe. War crimes are war crimes, and Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic contributed to the worst of the crimes and set out to deliberately ethnically cleanse a whole population of Bosnians.

The reason the hardliner Serbs refer to Biden as a "Nazi" is that way back during the days of WWII Serbs were killed by Albanians who were allied with Italy. The Serbs stood up to the fascists and were tortured and murdered. So then when the Serbs decided to do the same thing against the Albanians (and others) years later but got punished for it that made the angry. But to me two wrongs do not make a right. And the Albanians from WWII have died or or very old. I feel like I have nothing to do with Vietnam at the age of 33 so why would young Albanians have anything to do with what happened in the 1940's? But this region has been fighting for hundreds of years. Biden ended up siding with Bosnia and the Albanians (especially in Kosovo)after the Serbs attacked them and hence the hardliner Serbs call him a Nazi. Makes no sense to me either.

[Norrin Radd]

22. Yikes! Those protesters sure are fugly.

[Bucky]

25. Thank you

for your unremitting positivity. You rock Jackeens.

[SoxFan]

26. Steve Martin is a Serb nationalist?

[AspenRose]

28. At the risk of sounding like a total fangirl

Biden is old enough to be my dad, but that megawatt smile slays me every. single. time. :loveya:

Protesters? What protesters? :dunce: