gar posted:.
>>From Salon magazine:(for those who think NATO is
>the lesser evil, the "bleeding heart"
>alternative.)
.
here's my nutcase slogans for the day: open the borders - no camps; stop the bombs - desert.
open the borders, I've already spoken about.
refugee camps are increasingly, not only in this situation, but have been for about a decade now, the means by which refugees are contained, imprisoned, and through which richer countries pretend a humanitarianism, but one, since it does not transgress one's own nationalism, amplifies the internal limits of humanism to the point where the humanitarian response is indistinguishable from that to which it is presumably responding: the maintenance of nationalist borders.
stop the bombs, also implies opposition to NATO intervention on the ground. the reasons are numerous, and have been stated often on the list. this slogan for me is not however sufficient on its own. thinking only of our response to NATO (and perhaps it is because I am not in the US) seems to me to attach us (whether for or against) to an event and its structures which, however implicitly, echo a time already passed: the cold war.
the call for desertion might strike many here as the most odd. but, first, it is a recognition of what is happening and has happened in the ex-yu countries over the last ten years: of units mutinying, of people trying desperately to evade the call ups, and of the increasingly routine way in which the various govts have forced 'their own refugees' to return to their homes as soldiers. second, it is a recognition of the class composition of the US and NATO armies. yes, the US does not have conscription; but some NATO countries do; and in any case, the composition of the US army (as evidenced by the soldiers who are now held by the Belgrade govt) is not the result of voluntary enlistment so much as economic compulsion. (countries which do have universal conscription rely less on economic compulsion that the US does for gathering together cannon fodder.)
a brief note to Jim h on the election of governments from the wildcat article:
"The first "free" (I.e. multi-party) elections held in the Republics of Yugoslavia, in 1990, were a veritable referendum on war. In all the major protagonist Republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, ethnic nationalist parties won clear victories over Yugoslavist representatives of the old Communist League and non-ethnic liberal parties. [...] Effectively, the citizens of Yugoslavia were asked: "Are you in favour of ethnic slaughter? Yes/No"." http://www.webcom.com/wildcat/Yugoslavia.html
angela