Magical History Tour

Well, “fought themselves” means they each hit themselves rather than fighting each other… You know what, never mind, it’s just a stupid grammar joke that fell flat.

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You know, that article is remarkably vague on just who is doing the undermining of Dayton… other than “ethnic” groups… I know that jingoist nationalism is running pretty high right now in Croatia and in parts of Serbia (especially along the Kosovan border). I don’t know about ethnic bigotry among Bosniaks, but given that they and mixed ethnicity/religious families in Sarajevo were the primary target of militias backed by Belgrade and Zagreb during the war. :woman_shrugging:

The former Yugoslav states need a reconciliation movement.

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Key phrase for me in the article was

Additionally, citizens are reportedly predominantly concerned with devastating financial realities of extremely low standards of living and public services.

A little economic security goes a long way towards burying divisions until they can get forgotten.

It has been 18 years since I was there, but I heard a lot of fatigue and disgust among the young people with the conflict. They saw the artificially generated, “Tutsi vs Hutu” type, ethnic nationalism for what it was. That said, it seems that “Croat” vs. “Serb” as a distinction that is more important to ex-Yugoslav Canadians than to younger people I knew who had stayed in Europe and seen the conflict.

Ex-pat friends of mine here in Canada have lamented Tito’s Yugoslavia as having at least had a stable society, decent and interesting jobs, and more economic security.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the seeds of resolution appear to be there, as is the memory of better times socially, so there’s hope.

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Yes, but people hell bent on wrecking any sense of reconciliation, which must happen to actual move forward, are still in the mix. Many of the young in the Balkans might be sick of reliving the war and be aware of the artificiality of these constructs (as are, in fact, many from the war generation, too), but there are some that are not. And it’s still the war generation, nursing their grudges, that are running these countries by and large. The best of the war generation that could have changed directions for one of these countries was Albin Kurti in Kosovo, who was unceremoniously sabotaged by others in the government (possibly with the help of Trump administration officials) and replaced with more centrist and compliant figures while their leadership is going to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes.

So, there might be some hope, but it’s also should not be on the youth to fix the problems of their elders. Nor are all youth uniformly progressive. We should have learned that lesson here with the alt-right wing of the Trump party, which are generally speaking younger (millennials and Gen Z).

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I didn’t read it as suggesting anyone was undermining Dayton, intentionally or not, as much as there’s no movement forward beyond Dayton to something more sustainable, and that old tensions are being allowed to quietly fester. I wonder though whether it’s possible to address the tensions in Sarajevo though without addressing the broader context of post-Yugoslavia, which is why I agree with this:

…but I really struggle to be optimistic about it. It either needs leadership from the governments of Croatia and Serbia or it needs a strong social/political push towards reconciliation from across the ex-Yugoslav states to drag governments along, but I don’t know that there’s enough evidence of either.

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To be fair, though, Dayton wasn’t great to begin with, as it did take the ethnic divisions at face value rather than figure out a way to get past them or at the very least to re-integrate them. For whatever very real failures of Tito’s Yugoslavia, one of the major achievements of his time running Yugoslavia was to give most Yugoslavs an identity that both acknowledged ethnicity, but made unity of those differences into a strength (brotherhood and unity, etc). Many Yugoslavs were quite proud of their country, and the destruction of the war years was tragic precisely because of the damage it did to that sense of shared identity. Dayton (and the UNs intervention more generally) merely gave into the hardliners who sought to use ethnic identity as a hammer against others.

I don’t think you can. It’s why here in the states, racism is still a problem, because too many white Americans refuse to see our shared history for what it was, violent, racist, genocidal.

Me too.

That’s more likely of the two scenarios, but the Croat and Serb governments are continually trying to tamp down any alternative to the current simmering resentment that benefits them both. As long as tensions between ethnic groups are high, they can keep a hold on power. Again, we saw what happened recently with Albin Kurti’s government in Kosovo.

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Don’t think this is too much of a spoiler, but just in case… This season of The Crown has an episode that includes the break in.

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It’s 25 years since Jean-Marc Bosman changed European football, and other sports played in the EU.

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It’s interesting that they don’t include the fact that the protesters were cross dressed.

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It notes they’re considered one of the first organized labor groups… the linked article in that piece does not mention the Lowell Mill girls, who struck and organized in the 1830s and 1840s…

They weren’t the first either, but one of the earliest, too. Fucking history channel…

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It’s interesting that they don’t include the fact that the protesters were cross dressed.

Now, Irish-descended bush ranger Ned Kelly, born 166 years ago this month, is portrayed in the film The True History of the Kelly Gang as cross-dressing. The Sydney Morning Herald says the evidence is thin for this… still… the movie makes it out to be a historical tactic to instill fear in your enemy and (after a bit of digging the metaphor does seem to have sparked some discussion.)

After seeing that I realized why my Aussie relatives did a double take at the phrase “forest ranger”, which in Eastern Ontario :canada: has a far more wholesome meaning.

(… and to be clear, the film dramatizes a novel, is not un-controversial, and is rather more of a riff on the story than an attempt at a documentary…)

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Very interesting, but the writing bugged me…
(emphasis mine)

Deposits of quartz and zeolite—neither local to the reservoir—indicate the Mayans used these minerals to purify their drinking water supply. These two minerals are an important component of modern filtration, suggesting the Mayans were many centuries ahead of their time.

I do wish that writers discussing ways members of ancient civilizations used science and technology would stop using language like this. The belief that groups whose achievements weren’t noted or lauded in their history texts must’ve been mired in ignorance is a prejudice that needs to be eradicated. Learning that engineers from a civilization that emerged long before Ancient Rome and Greece had figured out a few things before the other two shouldn’t be surprising.

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It’s really very teleological thinking, with Europe as the pinnacle of social development, and everyone else just placed in comparison to them. Maybe the whole concept of “development” as deployed in this manner is hopelessly flawed as a means of understanding the historical trajectory of science? Yes, they can and do build on each other, but also such things are also historically contingent? How does a society deal with its problems through technology and some kind logical thinking through of problems that need to be solved. Plus, how many times have stories like this come up, where a new discovery is made about an older civilization, that shows they weren’t just a bunch of primitives or whatever. And of course, how often do we figure out some older way of dealing with an issue is still perfectly serviceable in the modern world, such as with remedies that come from plants or some such?

I don’t know if I’m making sense here…

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This is the approach I wish we’d see more. So much “lost” or undocumented knowledge could be of benefit to everyone. The Eurocentric perspective and focus on superiority could lead to those discoveries being overlooked completely or dismissed as unimportant.

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[ETA] Welp Annelee Newitz’s most recently newsletter is on-topic!

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I’ve been reading up on this and that over the past 10 or 15 years or so, just for fun and pretty random. Some areas sort of came into focus more than others: Neanderthals, the Hanse, civil engineering/architecture in historic and pre-historic times, the 3rd Reich and the Cold War. Oh, and a bit of local history. And obviously there are intersections.

So, very few and very random data points, but I do feel confident to postulate that:

Everything those guys in their study rooms came up with in the 19th century, and for the better part of the 20th century, shows two clear trends.
1 . Everything not invented, discovered, achieved, etc by nominally Christian European men (or their descendants) is by definition inferior, third rate at best, and only interesting if it had any impact on colonialization, trade or industrialization. Or maybe as an entertaining novelty to chuckle at.
2 . Women are ignored at best, and where they are not ignored they are intentionally marginalised, more often than not written out completely. Unless they are impossible to ignore like heads of state, but then any acknowledgement is deeply patronizing.

(At one point I realised that practically everything I “knew” about the Middle Ages had been made up by 18th & 19th century Romantics. What do you mean, that medevial castle overlooking the Rhine was commissioned in the 1850ies by an industrialist who was a fan of Ivanhoe? And so on. The curse of realization. Once you know what to look for it’s all so bloody obvious.)

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