Re: Dark Fantasy, Aleksandar Hemon | James Bissett

Hemon arrived in the US just in time to avoid the bangbang in 1992. He claims he had only "tourists' English". Rubbish. I've listened to him in person (fly on the wall).  He wrote that he saw the May 1992 Bread Q massacre -- on US TV. He speaks of "my language, Bosnian". His easy access to the media and his receipt of a MacArthur "Genius Award" of hundr4eds of thousands of dollars should raise suspicions. He wrote in the New Yorker Magazine that Nikola Koljevic shot himself in the head -- twice. jpm   Why general public in Canada and USA is grossly misinformed about the Serbs etc. On August 6, 2008 full page  defamatory, slanderous article appeared in  the newspaper The National Post entitled "Dark Fantasy" by Aleksandar Hemon about Radovan Karadzic. Among many blatantly false and obviously slanderous accusations that Harmon throws at Karadzic is that Karadzic  planned to exterminate all the Muslims of Bosnia and that inspiration for this genocidal plan was gained from Petar Njegos's epic poem "The Mountain Wreath". On August 8, 2008 a short letter by James Bissett criticizing Hemon's article appeared in The National Post. What is noteworthy about this episode is that it practically describes and summarizes deceitful methods of our news media when reporting about the Serbs during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and which are still used today to defame and to demonize only one side in these Yugoslav conflicts, namely: the Serbs. For anyone who wants to avail himself/herself of the truth of my assertion above about western newsmedia's biased and deceitful reporting in regards to the Serbs,  I highly recommend Peter Brock's book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia and book Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice by John Laughland. Objective and truthful information about these Yugoslav conflicts indeed exists but it is virtually as hard to find as a needle in a haystack, as it is overwhelmed and buried in an avalanche of false, defamatory and demonizing anti-Serb articles and reports. How can any honest person who is interested in knowing the truth, who depends largely on this same  biased mainstream newsmedia  claim to be  fully informed and knowledgeable about  the Serbs, Radovan Karadzic,  or any other aspect  about the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s?  Most people in our general population probably didn't even know where Bosnia was located on the globe in the first place and had virtually no objective historical or current information about this region of the world in order to be able to recognize outright falsehood when it was constantly being pitched at them by majority of our shoddy, corrupt and biased anti-Serb western journalists. Most members of our general public are still unaware and blissfully ignorant that they were sold a "bill of goods" about the Serbs  and still hold negative and biased opinions about the Serbs as a result. * * * * The Serbs Were Also Victims National Post Published: Friday, August 08, 2008 Re: Dark Fantasy, Aleksandar Hemon, August 6. It is curious that the Post would print an article by the former Bosnian fiction writer Aleksander Hemon, suggesting that Radovan Karadzic was inspired to genocide by the epic Montenegro poet Vladika Danilo's poem The Mountain Wreath on the same day that Bosnian Serbs discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of Serbs killed by joint Muslim and Croat forces during the civil war. The Western media has never wanted to accept that Serbs were also victims, since the war has been interpreted as a morality play of „good vs. evil," rather than what it really was -- a vicious civil war with religious overtones. However, the Research and Documentation Centre in Sarajevo has found that roughly 100,000 people were killed during the fighting in Bosnia -- 60,000 Muslims, 31,000 Serbs and 12,000 Croats. The numbers represent approximately the percentage of the three religious groupings among the greater population. The total casualties after four years of war are terrible in themselves but hardly can be described as a genocide, especially one inspired by a poem written in 1847. James Bissett, Ottawa. * * * * Danas je u Torontskom National Postu objavljen clanak Aleksandra Hemona (toboznjeg Srbina po majci i pisca, poreklom iz Sarajeva koji živi u Cikagu) o tome kako su ratna zlodela Radovana Karadjica ispirisana tradicijom u srpskoj literaturi i umetnosti. Clanak je dobio prostor čitave jedne stranice sa slikom Petra Petrovica Njegosa (u boji)u sredini. Isti clanak je prethodno objavljen u New York Times-u. Pisac Aleksandar veoma prefinjenim jezikom (engleskim , naravno) objašnjava kanadskom citaocu kako je ekstremni nacionalizam ugraviran u dusu jednog tipicnog Srbina. Istorijski, već je Vladika Danilo imao fiks ideju o potrebi istrebljivanja Muslimana, pa tako prosecni Srbin , nazalost arhetipski nasledjuje ovu predrasudu. Samo je mali broj prosvecenih, kao sto je gospodin Homen recimo, izbegao ovu zamku i zadrzao je objektivnost u procenjivanju ko je dobar i ko je los. Pa i sire. Odavno ne pišem u novine. Odavno sam shvatio da su ovdasnje novine sredstvo. Sredstvo da se stekne prednost u sticanju imovine, sredstvo da se plasiraju laži i poluistine da bi se dobilo ono što se hoće. Danas sam osetio bes i zelju da ipak napisem, da se pobunim, da objasnim da je Radovan Karadjic možda kriv za nešto ali da se krivice moraju posmatrati u kontekstu gradjanskog rata, da je Haski tuzilac placen za pristrasnost i da su Srbi u dusi, iako ne prefinjeni, onda veoma, veoma tolerantni ljudi. Da to mogu, iz licnog iskustva da potvrdim jer sam, kao stranac, niz godina u Srbiji živeo. Onda sam se otreznio. Moje pismo, naravno ne bi bilo objavljeno. Imam nekoliko drugova u Srbiji koji misle isto kao Aleksandar Hemon. Veoma ih postujem i cenim. Oni ništa, sem prepirke sa drustvom za svoje mišljenje ne dobijaju. Ne sticu privilegiju da budu publikovani, objavljivani i da o njima piše The New Yorker. Prema profinjenosti jezika da se zakljuciti da je gospodin Aleksandar pametan covek. Zato moja poruka glasi : Sram vas bio, Aleksandre ! P.S : Aleksandar Hemon predstavljen je u casopisu „ Mi Magazin" koji je u Torontu distribuisan kao casopis Srpske diaspore kao jedan od raseljenih Srba koji su svojim talentom i zalaganjem uspeli da postanu cenjeni i objavljivani pisci u Americi. http://www.bhraja.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2350 Aleksandar Hemon : Genocide's Epic Hero Ponedjeljak, 28 Juli 2008 ON Oct. 14, 1991, Radovan Karadzic spoke at a session of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Parliament, which had been debating a referendum on independence from the rump Yugoslavia. Mr. Karadzic was there to warn the Parliament members against following the Slovenes and Croats, who had broken away earlier that year, down "the highway of hell and suffering." Autor: Aleksandar Hemon za The New York Times. He thundered, "Do not think you will not lead Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell and the Muslim people into possible annihilation, as the Muslim people cannot defend themselves in case of war here." Throughout his tirade, he clutched the lectern edges, as though about to hurl it at his audience, but then let go of it to stab the air with his forefinger at the word "annihilation." The Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, was visibly distressed. It was a spectacular, if blood-curdling, performance. Mr. Karadzic, who was arrested last week after 13 years in hiding, was then president of the hard-line nationalist Serbian Democratic Party, which already controlled the parts of Bosnia that had a Serbian majority, but he was not a member of the Parliament, nor did he hold any elective office. His very presence rendered the Parliament weak and unimportant; backed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People's Army, he spoke from the position of unimpeachable power over the life and death of the people the Parliament represented. Watching the news broadcast covering the session, neither my parents nor I could initially comprehend what he meant by "annihilation." For a moment or two we groped for a milder, less terrifying interpretation — perhaps he meant "historical irrelevance"? For what he was saying was well outside the scope of our middling imagination, well beyond the habits of normalcy we desperately clung to as war loomed over our irrelevant lives. Then I understood that he was wagging the stick of genocide at the Bosnian Muslims, while the unappetizing carrot was their bare survival. "Don't make me do it," he was essentially saying. "I will be at home in the hell I create for you." The Parliament eventually decided a referendum was the way to go. It took place in February 1992; the Serbs boycotted it while the majority of Bosnians voted for independence. In March, there were barricades on the streets of Sarajevo and shooting in the mountains surrounding it. In April, Mr. Karadzic's snipers aimed at a peaceful antiwar demonstration in front of the Parliament building, and two women were killed. On May 2, Sarajevo was cut off from the world and the longest siege in modern history began. By the end of the summer, nearly every front page in the world had published a picture from a Serbian death camp. And so it would go for far too long. There is little doubt, of course, that Mr. Karadzic would have happily sped down the hell-and-suffering highway regardless of the outcome of the parliamentary session. The annihilation machine was already revving, everything had already been put in place for genocide, whose purpose was not only the destruction and displacement of Bosnian Muslims but also the irreversible unification of the Serbs and their ethnically pure lands into a Greater Serbia. I wondered later why he staged that performance before the Parliament, since peace and coexistence were never a possibility for him. Why did he bother? The point of that performance, I eventually concluded, was the performance itself. Unbeknownst to most of us interested in peaceful coexistence, the war in Bosnia had already started and Mr. Karadzic was already cast in the role he would perform throughout the war, up until his 1996 ouster from the Serbian political leadership and his subsequent new life on the run. His performance was far less for the beleaguered Bosnian Parliament than for the patriotic Serbs watching the broadcast, ready to embark upon an epic project that would require sacrifice, murder and ethnic cleansing. Mr. Karadzic was showing to his people that he was a tough and determined leader, yet neither unwise nor unreasonable. He was indicating that war would not be a rash decision on his part, while he was capable of recognizing the inevitable necessity of genocide. If there was a job to be done, he was going to do it unflinchingly and ruthlessly. He was the leader who was going to lead them through the hell of murder to the land where honor and salvation awaited. The model for Mr. Karadzic's role as leader was provided by Petar Petrovic Njegos's epic poem "The Mountain Wreath" ("Gorski vijenac"). Published in 1847, it is deeply embedded in the tradition of Serbian epic poetry and is a foundational text of Serbian cultural nationalism. Set at the end of the 17th century, its central character is Vladika Danilo, the bishop and the sovereign of Montenegro, the only Serbian territory unconquered at the time by the powerful and all-encroaching Ottoman Empire. Vladika Danilo has a problem: some Montenegrin Serbs have converted to Islam. For him, they are the fifth column of the Turks, a people who could never be trusted, a permanent threat to the freedom and sovereignty of the Serbs. He summons a council to help him determine the solution. He listens to the advice of his bloodthirsty warriors: "Without suffering no song is sung," one of them says. "Without suffering no saber is forged." He listens to a delegation of Muslims pleading for peace and coexistence, who are instead offered the chance to save their heads by converting back to "the faith of their forefathers." He speaks of freedom and the difficult decisions it requires: "The wolf is entitled to a sheep/Much like a tyrant to a feeble man./But to stomp the neck of tyranny/To lead it to the righteous knowledge/ That is man's most sacred duty." In the lines familiar to nearly every Serbian child and adult, Vladika Danilo recognizes that the total, ruthless extermination of the Muslims is the only way: "Let there be endless struggle," he says. "Let there be what cannot be." He will lead his people through the hell of murder and onward to honor and salvation: "On the grave flowers will grow/ For a distant future generation." Mr. Karadzic was intimately familiar with Serbian epic poetry. A skillful player of the gusle, a single-string fiddle traditionally accompanying the oral performance of epic poems, he clearly understood his role in the light cast by Vladika Danilo. He recognized himself in the martyrdom of leadership; he believed that he was the one to finish the job that Vladika Danilo started; he saw himself as the hero in an epic poem that would be sung by a distant future generation. Indeed, while in hiding in Belgrade in recent years, Mr. Karadzic frequented a bar where there were weekly gusle-accompanied performances of Serbian epic poetry, where wartime pictures of him and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serbs' military leader, proudly hung on the wall. A Belgrade newspaper claimed that on at least one occasion Mr. Karadzic, undercover as a New Age charlatan, recited an epic poem in which he himself featured as the main hero, performing epic feats of extermination. The tragic, heartbreaking irony of it all is that Mr. Karadzic played out his historical role in less than 10 years. In the flash of his infernal pan hundreds of thousands died, millions were displaced, untold numbers paid in unspeakable pain for his induction into the pantheon of Serbian epic poetry. Before he became the leader of Bosnian Serbs and after he was forced out by his supporter and fellow nationalist, President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, in the wake of the Dayton peace accord, Mr. Karadzic was a prosaic nobody. A mediocre psychiatrist, a minor poet and a petty embezzler before the war, at the time of his arrest he was a grotesque mountebank. It was only during the war, on a blood-soaked stage, that he could fully develop his inhuman potential. His true and only home was the hell he created for others. Which is why, after the initial exhilaration, many Bosnians find Mr. Karadzic's arrest less satisfying than one would expect. Though he might spend the rest of his life in the comfortable dungeons of the Western European prison system, he will live eternally in the verses of decasyllabic meter written by those for whom the demolition of Bosnia was but material for the grand epic poetry of Serbhood. Bosnians know he should have been booed and run off the stage at the peak of his performance. He should have been seen for what he really was: a thuggish puppet whose head was bloated with delusions of grandeur. He should have let us live outside his epic fantasies. Justice is good, but a peaceful life would have been much better.