Comment by 082349872349872 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 082349872349872 | Hacker News Reader

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082349872349872

(a) I have former-Yugoslav colleagues who believe that "Information Wars" were already at work last century.

(b) in Maginot's defence, junior french planners may well have imagined a Blitzkrieg, and rightfully discarded it, assuming the germans wouldn't have an energy source. A coal-based army doesn't move quickly.

The french were to learn that a synfuel-based[1] army can blitz. The germans, on the other hand, had to blitz: after failing[2] to reach Grozny and Baku to replenish energy stocks they were put on the defensive.

Crude Rules Everything Around Me

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergius_process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Prelude

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls#/media/Fi...

https://books.google.ch/books?id=6_h3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA...

You've reminded me to add The Prize (Yergin) to lockdown reading. And that I miss theoildrum blog.

(I would also appreciate an ideological history of the Yugoslav war, how neighbors were persuaded to murder one another so readily and what should be learned from it..)

You might, as I do, prefer written sources, but I must recommend watching (even just the first part of) this BBC documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDADy9b2IBM

especially 8:00-9:20 and 12:00-13:15

also 31:40 "All the changes we made to the structure of Serbia were implemented using perfectly legal means. We followed the proper procedure."

(Milošević's projection game appears to have been strong. Everything was everyone else's fault.)

This was a BBC production, so we expect to see the NATO side, but given that Milošević's lawyer had a fool for a client, I am not feeling poorly at being inclined to their editorial.

see also https://books.google.ch/books?id=Bp4C3_YLk_UC&pg=PA72&dq=fed...

"Regime-controlled media helped create the conditions for war by attacking civic principles, fomenting fear of imminent ethnic assault and engineering consent."

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