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68a31db
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Grief produces an abundant energy that must find a way to burn itself up. And that is the fundamental problem, one that can take a lifetime to exhaust.
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fools-rush-in
schaffner-press
bosnia
sarajevo
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Bill Carter |
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6efbbea
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During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other's candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town's few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?' It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke.
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humour
religion
city-councils
croats
david-rieff
islamic-extremism
serbs
sontag
zenica
extremism
bosnia
bosnian-war
muslims
intellectuals
jews
religious-extremism
zealotry
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Christopher Hitchens |
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dedc406
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The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and ethnic dictatorship in the Balkans took precedence. This, by the way, was partly a battle to save Muslims from Catholic and Christian Orthodox killers. That impressed me. The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of ism when most people were half-asleep. And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not 'perception.' I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility. (I mean, have you their sub-Brechtian stuff on Halliburton....?) And revolution from above, in some states and cases, is--as I wrote in my book --often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.
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war
christianity
politics
religion
balkans
bertolt-brecht
halliburton
persecution-of-muslims
the-weekly-standard
trent-lott
bosnia
bosnian-war
kosovo
kosovo-war
slobodan-milosevic
bill-clinton
jihad
saddam-hussein
ethnicity
neoconservatism
dictatorship
catholicism
liberalism
islam
revolution
leftism
persecution
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Christopher Hitchens |
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059fa50
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In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part .) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least.
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war
death
bosnia
bosnian-war
bullets
causes
john-burns
martyrdom
mortars
near-death-experience
sarajevo
siege-of-sarajevo
churchill
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Christopher Hitchens |
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a9316f4
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Bana hic acimayin... Biz, siradan insanlar, yalniz bir sefer oluruz. Ama buyuk adamlar iki sefer olurler. Birinci sefer bu dunyayi birakip goctukleri, ikinci sefer de biraktiklari eserler, yikilip kayboldugu zaman.
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drina
ivo-andric
ottoman-empire
bosnia
historical
quotes
novel
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Ivo Andrić |
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1517cee
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"Finche l'uomo vive nel suo ambiente e in condizioni normali, gli elementi del curriculum vitae rappresentano per lui periodi importanti e svolte significative della sua vita. Ma appena il caso o il lavoro o le malattie lo separano dagli altri e lo isolano, questi elementi di colpo cominciano a scolorirsi, si inaridiscono e si decompongono con incredibile rapidita, come una maschera di cartone o di lacca senza vita, usata una volta sola. Sotto questa maschera comincia a intravedersi un'altra vita, conosciuta solo a noi, ossia la "vera" storia del nostro spirito e del nostro corpo, che non e scritta da nessuna parte, di cui nessuno suppone l'esistenza, una storia che ha molto poco a che fare con i nostri successi in societa, ma che e, per noi, per la nostra felicita o infelicita, l'unica valida e la sola davvero importante. Sperduto in quel luogo selvaggio, durante le lunghe notti, quando tutti i rumori erano cessati, Daville pensava alla sua vita passata come a una lunga serie di progetti audaci e di scoraggiamenti noti a lui solo, di lotte, di atti eroici, di fortune, di successi e di crolli, di disgrazie, di contraddizioni, di sacrifici inutili e di vani compromessi. Nelle tenebre e nel silenzio di quella citta che ancora non aveva visto ma in cui lo attendevano, senza dubbio, preoccupazioni o difficolta, sembrava che nulla al mondo si potesse risolvere ne conciliare. In certi momenti gli pareva che per vivere fossero necessari sforzi enormi e per ogni sforzo una sproporzionata dose di coraggio. E, visto nel buio di quelle notti, ogni sforzo gli sembrava infinito. Per non fermarsi e rinunciare, l'uomo inganna se stesso, sostituendo gli obiettivi che non e riuscito a raggiungere con altri, che ugualmente non raggiungera; ma le nuove imprese e i nuovi tentativi lo obbligheranno a cercare dentro di se altre energie e maggiore coraggio. Cosi l'uomo si autoinganna e col passare del tempo diviene sempre piu e senza speranza debitore verso se stesso e verso tutto quello che lo circonda."
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bih
la-cronaca-di-travnik
bosnia-and-herzegovina
balkans
bosnia
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Ivo Andrić |