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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (11093)	6/4/1999 4:53:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Neocon, c'mon! Don't get fooled by this deceitful MNI ! Here's all you need to know: learn.jtsa.edu Shalom and tot ziens, Gustave.

To: Neocon who wrote (11093)	6/7/1999 1:24:00 PM
From: MNI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Neocon, I put ash on my head, as I used information I cannot explicitly confirm with a pointer to the source. The source was volatile, a newspaper (this one is assumed to be quite serious and grave in my country) feature article on just this topic: sephardic immigration to Serbia as an example of the history of tolerance in the ottoman empire, published around two or three years ago. I cannot know on the neutrality of the author, so there is a second reason for me not to use this information. To show you that I am probably not TOTALLY wrong, I add a citation from the newest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, printed edition, p.641 in the "Se" volume of the "micropaedia" part. It shows, that not North, but South and East were the first directions to go. It seems that harbors in the mediterranean were better reachable or maybe better running at the time. The articles runs as follows: "Sephardi, pl. Sephardim, a member of the Jews, or their descendants, who lived in Spain or Portugal from the Middle Ages until their persecution and mass expulsion from those countries in the last decades of the 15th century. The Sephardim initially fled to NORTH AFRICA AND OTHER PARTS OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, and many of these eventually settled in such countries as France, Holland, England, Italy, AND THE BALKANS. SALONIKA (Thessaloniki) in Macedonia and the city of Amsterdam became major sites of Sephardic settlement. [...] They became noted for their cultural and intellectual achievements within the Mediterranean and northern Europe. ..." (CAPITALIZATION was done by me). After this article it seems that Salonika (in Greek Macedonia, but still on the Balkans) was a Sephardic center at least as much as Amsterdam. Also the sad story of the holocaust tells us there were around 60000 sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki before the Germans entered. The point that made me speak at all in this discussion can be exemplified in this case like this: How can it be that Sephardim seemed to go MAINLY to The Netherlands in your recollection of history? Is it because it was truely the case in history, or is it because some school historians write so? And if it is so, is it so because cultural links from Holland to the US are traditionally stronger than those from the Balkans? Or has it only a didactic reason (the pupil will recollect one of the facts better if it is linked to previous knowledge on another topic, namely the Spanish/Dutch conflicts?). The answers to questions like these can never be found if not in detail, but it can be exemplified that cultural bias is to be suspected everywhere. I think that a coherent history-based view of contemporary politics is impossible as long as the notion of Nations, the claim of a national recollections of previously done rights and wrongs by other Nations play an important role in discussion. We must base human rights discussions on proven wrongs against individuals, not nations. And anyway I think it is impossible to get some kind of "higher" justification for NATO bombing, we must base our actions on a will to preserve the individuals' rights. Some countries still think that this is not based on international law as stated in the UN charter. And although I am definitely no expert I still have the feeling that those are right from their formal point of view. I apologize again for my way of using information MNI