New CNN Special on People who Spoke Out Against Genocide

Try to make time to watch this Christiane Amanpour CNN special:

Scream Bloody Murder

From the CNN website:

# Story Highlights
# December marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Genocide Convention
# A few strong voices have since tried to focus the world's attention on genocide
# Each time they were shunned, ignored or told it was someone else's problem
# CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the world's killing fields to understand why

I am very glad to see a major US news outlet tackling this issue head on.

Hopeful Signs

By now, most of you are already aware that indeed CNN appears to have used footage of a riot in Budapest in its 'coverage' of the evidently none-too-impressive protests over Karadzic's extradition.

No doubt the nationalists, the revisionists, and the apologists see this as yet more proof of a grand conspiracy against the Serbian people; while it no makes such people feel important to imagine that Serbia is the focus of so much effort and energy on the part of a monolithic Western cabal, the real question over here is whether this was an honest mistake by some CNN staffer who simply cannot distinguish one small Balkan and near-Balkan country from another, or whether this is another example of the mass media doctoring the news to make it "sexier".

At any rate, far from being "proof" of an ongoing anti-Serb movement, there is actually a very different, and much more hopeful, lesson to be drawn from this. From the Southest Europe Times come this collection of blog and forum posts from Serbia:
Karadzic's trial: a new chapter for Serbia?

It should be noted that some apologists and revisionists actually used those riots as proof of Serbian determination to resist cooperation with the tribunal, and of ongoing Serbian hostility to what is frequently portrayed as Western aggression. Yet, now those same people will no doubt be claiming that the CNN deception is proof that Serbs are being demonized. Meanwhile, the tempest in a teapot that the Radicals pathetically tried to stir up is another illustration that more and more Serbs are ready and eager to move on from the dead-end politics of the 1980s and 1990s.

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Sarah from the wonderful Cafe Turco has a comrade and frequent collaborator from Serbia, Jelena Markovic, whose blog Invisible Sights is absolutely worth your time. As my final parting thoughts before I really leave for vacation, I encourage all of you to check out her site as well. I will be adding it to my blogroll.