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Listed below are comments made by EastTwo between Sunday, 27th July 2008 and Tuesday, 3rd November 2009.

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Chomsky on religion and the ethics of war 7:46pm on 03 Nov 2009 Interestingly your interview with Chomsky is unavailable at iPlayer. Is that because of the iPlayer time limit or should I read anything else into this?
Chomsky on religion and the ethics of war 7:10pm on 03 Nov 2009 Mr Crawley, have you actually checked that reference of Chomsky's? His references aren't always as accurate as they might be, though of course he includes the word "almost" as his usual insurance policy.

Like his "probably" when he describes Ed Vulliamy's reporting of the Bosnian war death camps as inaccurate.

Interesting to see that the Catholic Church in the US has now joined the ranks of the people says aren't reported. Have you checked out the accuracy of that? I'm a little surprised to learn that the Church has such incapable press relations.

Chomsky seems to know of a lot of things that aren't reported that somehow manage to get into the public domain. I sometimes wonder whether he reads the newspapers.

He obviously missed the findings of the LM libel trial which is presumably what enables him to deny the truth of what was done to people at Trnopolje (and the other Prijedor camps he ignores).

He may disclaim the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in heaven - he seems to have no such qualms about dismissing the pretensions of Bosnian Muslims to death, rape and torture.

Can I suggest you go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapFe-C6tB4&NR=1 and listent to an extract from an interview Chomsky gave to Serbian Television Online.

Listen to Chomsky talking about Trnopolje as a refugee camp, where people were free to come and go, and dismissing Fikret Alic as "the thin man", right near to whom there was a fat man. Remember that Alic said that Penny Marshall, the ITN journalist Chomsky is dissing, saved his life.

Chomsky is too busy to linger on the reality or otherwise of Alic, he has more important fish to fry - the libel action by which ITN crushed the plucky individuals of LM. Chomsky has a rather idiosyncratic analysis of the outcome of the libel trial.

The great intellectual gets away with his manipulative discourses because overawed journalists and international humanitarian organisations don't do their homework.

Before you interview Chomsky next time Amnesty invite him, I suggest you listen to the whole of Chomsky's interview with RTS. Try to follow the substance of his arguments and deployment of evidence as he speaks to an audience whose media he knows can rely on to have provided him with an accurate context for his assertions. The whole edifying sequence starts at http://www.youtube.com/user/otporash#p/u/7/EEhgwdJldeU

(As a short cut to the substance of what Chomsky denies, can I refer you to David Cambell's essay on the ITN/LM/Trnopolje controversy at http://www.david-campbell.org/photography/atrocity-and-memory )
General Sir Richard Dannatt. 5:51pm on 07 Oct 2009 Lord Foulkes turns up like the proverbial dud penny whenever a government hitman is needed to carry out a bit of sly character assassination. This time it's Dannatt, I remember similar snide viciousness about Clare Short among others. I've often been critical of Eddie's interviewing style but this time he was excellent, not letting the sleazy prevaricator get away with his evasive nastiness. I've never heard anyone else on the BBC even try to pin Foulkes down like this, it was well overdue. Well done.
Rule change bears fruit 10:32pm on 12 Nov 2008 Well done. One of the rare attempts to avoid trivialising the subject and indicating that rules may have a function. Somehow the media find it impossible difficult to resist an easy laugh or a ride round the room on a hobby-horse. A mission to confuse. And I don't exempt this evening's tongue-in-cheek Ten O'Clock News.
End of an era 10:46pm on 07 Oct 2008 Over those twenty-two years some people did very nicely, but much of the social fabric was damaged beyond repair. That was the great disappointment of the Blair-Brown era. When they had the chance to build a more cohesive society they chose business as usual instead, and here we are.
Karadzic in the dock 09:40am on 17 Sep 2008 85% of civilians killed in the Bosnian war were Bosniaks, indicative of the pattern of violence.

The figure of 100,000 deaths was the outcome of painstaking and rigorous investigation conducted by Mirsad Tokaca at the Research and Documentation Centre in Sarajevo.

The number of confirmed deaths at Srebrenica has risen gradually towards the figure of the reported dead and missing. The disinterment of mass graves with mixing of the remains and secondary burials followed even by tertiary reburials was clearly planned to confuse and destroy evidence of the crimes.

The continued existence of the enclave of Srebrenica within Bosnian Serb territory had to be ended in order to complete the ethnic cleansing of the Drina valley. Karadzic clearly indicated that the national border between Bosnia and Serbia that followed the course of the Drina had to be removed.

The effective unification of Serbia with the arc of land running up the Drina valley, through the Posavina and Eastern Slavonia on to the Bosnian and Croatian Krajina was the strategic goal of the campaign conducted through Serbia's Bosnian Serb proxies. This was not a civil war, it was essentially a war of aggression conducted under the guise of inter-communal conflict.
Karadzic in the dock 09:23am on 17 Sep 2008 billy_carryduff, the figure of 100,000 dead in the Bosnian war was arrived at as the result of painstaking research by Mirsad Tokaca of the Research and Documentation Centre in Sarajevo. He estimates that the figure might eventually rise to about 110,000.
Still no sign of Radovan Karadzic 09:18am on 17 Sep 2008 Mark, why do you believe that it's impossible for experienced judges to distance themselves from their point of view and weigh the arguments and the evidence? You seem to be saying that no-one can ever manage to overcome their own preconceptions. Surely that's a dangerous stance for a correspondent to adopt?

And whatever mcd-1975 may say about your and the BBC's reporting, 85% of civilian victims of the war in Bosnia were Bosniaks. Of course Serbs, Croats and others were killed, but that gives an indication of where the substance of the violence lay.

It's sad for Serbia that these cynical efforts to offload responsibility for what happened never end.
A one-shot strategy 3:33pm on 08 Sep 2008 I don't know whether you're keen to risk another round of discussions about capital cities, but I hope you or at least one of your colleagues will be back in The Hague for Wednesday morning when the District Court (Landgericht) will be giving its judgment in the civil action being brought by Srebrenica survivors against the Ducth state. The failure of the international community stands alongside - if not overshadowing - the atrocities of Karadzic and Mladic.
Layers of make-believe 10:32pm on 27 Jul 2008 Will you be in The Hague on September 10?

That's the date for the Hague District Court to hand down its judgment in the civil actions being brought by Hasan Nuhanovic and the Mustafic family against the Dutch state over its failure to protect their relatives, Hasan's mother, father and brother and the Mustafics' husband/father.

It was Karadzic and Mladic who had them killed, but it was the DutchbatIII soldiers who forced them to leave the protection of the Potocari compound and handed them over to Mladic in the knowledge of what was going to befall them.

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