Sorry about misinterpreting you. Feeling a bit heated and more upset than usual today with the whole damned business.
As you well know, I have often been a defender of the old Yugoslavia on this and other lists, although it certainly had its faults. Its decline and breakup was a tragedy we are still dealing with. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Monday, April 19, 1999 5:23 PM Subject: Re: more from Fisk
>J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
>
>>If census figures suggest 50,000 Serbs were expelled
>>from Kosmet, then why believe some Serb official who
>>claims that 250,000 were? Please. A lot of his other
>>numbers are off. And, frankly, I have no sympathy
>>whatsoever for this "heart of Serbia" argument, which
>>is just an excuse for all kinds of atrocities. Shall we excuse
>>Israeli atrocities against Palestinians because Jerusalem
>>is the "heart of the Jews"?
>
>Not at all. Once again you're assuming that because I forward something I
>approve of it. My personal position is that no side has a monopoly on
>either vice or virtue in the Balkans. Robert Fisk is an excellent reporter
>who's done a lot of fine work over the years, including documenting Israeli
>and American abuse of Arabs. It's always worth reading and taking seriously
>what he's got to say. I have little sympathy for nationalism of any kind,
>and one of the many tragedies of the Yugoslav disaster has been the embrace
>of a particularly virulent nationalism - *all around* - and the death of
>any internationalist ideal. For all its many faults, there was something
>positive to the idea of a multinational Yugoslavia, no?
>
>Doug
>