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Trust me on this one, it is worth your time.
Please watch and leave your comments, I'll follow up with some thoughts tomorrow.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Sarajevo: A Street Under Siege (MUST WATCH VIDEO)
This is one of the best videos I've seen in a long time. Full of gems of knowledge.
Trust me on this one, it is worth your time.
Please watch and leave your comments, I'll follow up with some thoughts tomorrow.
Trust me on this one, it is worth your time.
Please watch and leave your comments, I'll follow up with some thoughts tomorrow.
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4 comments:
Fer, thanks for posting this video. It's a stark reminder of how easy things can go down hill and how the basic things we take for granted become a luxury in hard times.
In the US we are blessed with so much land. Every backyard should have a garden and couple of chickens.
1) I have sympathy for the people of Serajevo but the message of this film is undermined by the filmmakers' obvious staging:
a) People are clean, as if they just bathed. Men are clean-shaven. Women have their hair done up. Clothes --even those of blue collar ditch diggers -- are as clean as if freshly laundered.
This makes a story of true distress look like misleading propaganda.
b) Most people look reasonably well fed even though many of them probably went hungry. There are no signs of major starvation. Even Pets and chickens are being fed.
c) You see some wounded people in hospitals but not walking the streets.
d) No signs of emergency crews at scenes of recent shelling. No fires burning up city blocks.
2) All in all the Serbs appeared to have been rather mediocre at laying siege and cutting supply lines.
If you can't blockade a city and starve it into submission then it is stupid to attack it in the first place -- cities are notoriously difficult and costly to take with conventional fighting
unless you can drop
Thermobaric bombs --fuel air explosions.
1) One thing that did come across is the tremendous
psychological stress people endured --which leads to depression and weak apathy. The stress came from several sources:
a) Memories of friends/acquaintances killed or badly wounded
b) Constant shelling or sniper fire with no way to predict
when either would strike
c) Inadequate weapons /ammo for defense due to NATO arms embargo
d) Feeling Europe/USA has abandoned them
e) Fear of another holocaust/massacre similar to what hit Jews in World War II
f) Fear of becoming a helpless and abandoned invalid --one
person cited it was worst than dying
g) Fear Europe will grow weary of providing charity (food, medical
supplies,etc.)
h) Sight of pets being abandoned to die by owners --turned out
on the street
i) School house shelled --children killed
2) The stress was amplified because the people were helpless to address the above threats --to do anything about them.
3) One thing that was unclear was whether people had the opinion
of leaving Serajevo --as one of the men did by bus --and refused to do so. If they refused to leave and endured the siege by choice --and because NATO was supplying them with food and some security -- then their complaints against the US and Europe seem false.
4) The USA might have a moral obligation to halt outright massacres but we are under no obligation to sacrifice our soldiers to defend the property of people too lazy or incompetent to defend it themselves.
The NATO arms embargo was a bad idea -- best to let people fight it out until the territorial lines are established.
5) Massacres can occur in civil wars when two different groups are fighting over the same land but they are more rare once two separate countries are formed -- after a certain point the costs to an aggressor of seizing more land far outweigh the value of the land.
1) Two things the film did NOT mention:
a) A view of the ethnic map for Yugoslavia shows that when Croatia and Bosnia CHOSE secession from Yugoslavia it left a large mass of Serbs in western Bosnia separated from the greater mass of Serbs in eastern Yugoslavia --now Serbia.
http://www.euro-webonline.com/world_cultures/images/yugoslav_ethnic_map.jpg
b) What happened to those isolated Serbs afterwards? What happened to the economy of Serbia once it was landlocked and lost its connection to the Mediterranean Sea?
2) The last thing a survivalist should do is let himself get isolated in such a stew of warring factions. Liberals carp that segregation is racist but sometimes it is a defensive reaction. I prefer that everyone sing Kumbaya and get alone but that is hard when the economy collapses. Sometimes peace is easier to maintain if everyone knows what is his territory --and what is not.
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