by writing
>and from all religions I prefer the 12 gods of Olympus. They had one for
>each occasion, from war making to drinking to fucking. And Zeus, their CEO
>in modern parlance, was roaming around the plains of Greece looking for
>his next affair.
Surely. If we are to be religious we ought to be polytheistic. That way all the different facets of personal and solution life are represented in projected objects, can be acknowledged and negotiated. But then we have stars anyway. Diana, Bill, John-John, Saddam.
Back to the differences, with Elias.
>
>Chris wrote:
>
>>Elias has altered the title of the forwarded article, and that for a start
>>is significant.
>
>I do not think I have altered the title to indicate something different
>than the context.
Whether the injured party is represented as the multinational Yugoslav federation of Tito, or a reduced Serbian rump, is all part of the political warfare.
>
>>The war was conducted in an imperialist way and should not be repeated.
>The
>>argument over alternatives is important.
>
>>However the war was not against Yugoslavia but against Serbian bourgeois
>>nationalism in alliance with fascist groups relying on Christian Orthodox
>>racism against muslims, with a plan to impose an apartheid solution, if
>>necessary also in Montenegro and Macedonia.
>
>No, I do not agree with you Chris. As I have said before, If Milosevic did
>not exist the US and NATO would have to invent him.
Ultimately this is imperialism as conspiracy theory. Of course I am not saying there are no conspiracies. There always are. But the break-up of the state-centralised economies and the rise of neo-liberal free market economies is more than a conspiracy.
This phenomenon has gone throughout the whole of eastern Europe. Did they have to invent Ceauscescu? Pavel? Walesa? Is it really more anti-imperialist to see it as a conspiracy? How can we defeat capitalism with a fairy story of goodies and baddies?
>They have more or less
>admitted it by saying that they put the rod in Rambouillet so high knowing
>that it was impossible for Milosevic to accept it. They desperately needed
>a war to control the Balkans, tell the Russians how much they count and
>also inform the world that the UN is a spent force.
They did not need a war for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join NATO, which took place before the war in Kosovo started. I do not see the desperation. I do see a wider strategy of encircling, contending and colluding with Russia, strategies are best unfolded from a position of strength.
>The only one that
>counts from now on is NATO (read USA) and nothing else.
You are not analysing the subtext: the inter-imperialist rivalry. This is crucial for the defeat of global capitalism. This has to be concealed, but we will see how much the EU cooperates with an agenda that NATO=USA USA=NATO. They may not openly defy it, but Portillo did not get the job of EU defence minister. That is significant.
>Before the war the average Yugoslavian was as much of an Orthodox Christian
>as an average Englishman. The war however, made a lot of them turn to
>religion both in Yugoslavia and outside of it.
Your are ignoring 10 years of propaganda about Blackbird Field. Is there such a mystery that in many former socialist countries elements have turned to nationalism whether bourgeois or fascist, and drawn on mystical nonsense to give a sense of solidarity to resist the cannonade of neo-liberal commodities.
>Clinton tried to make it appear that he is trying to avoid a wider war
>between Orthodox and Moslem countries, particularly between Greece and
>Turkey. He refered to these countries three times until the greek president
>made the sarcastic comment that he did not know that one has to bomb
>Yugoslavia to avoid a war between Greece and Turkey, between Christian and
>Orthodox countries.
Surely: Divide, and control, while appearing to stand impartially above the fray. But as I have been pointing out for some time, there was a sub-text: how to get on side with the muslims without being beholden to muslim "terrorism". Hence the war was won when KLA troops engaged Yugoslav troops in sufficient numbers for them to be sitting targets for the air-power. BUT the US, and other NATO governments kept the KLA scenario off the top spots of every press briefing.
Part of the yield has already taken place: the first reconvened meeting of the joint NATO-Russia liaison body. Meanwhile the US can court the mildly nationalist muslim members of GUUAM to encircle Russia and dictate the agenda in Eurasia.
>I am not sure what you are refering to regarding an apartheid solution. I
>do know however, that right now Kosovo is the only ethnically pure region
>in the Balkans thanks to the effort of NATO.
Apartheid is separate development. Do you really not recognise the term? Like the separation of the "races" in Bosnia at a cost of 200,000 lives?
Yes NATO intervention made a bad situation worse, but apartheid has not been imposed in Macedonia and Montenegro. It could easily have been. It could still be.
>Again I do not know what is this Christian Orthodox racism against moslems.
Ideology is often subtle in its manifestations.
Louis Proyect copied a passionately polemical speech in New York about the martyrdom of the Serbs, under a title suggesting it was a description of the economic basis of the war. The subtitle of the article drew attention to the fact that it was published on "Vidovdan". This immediately links it to bourgeois mystical Serb nationalism.
The following piece, describing Kosovo as Serbia's Golgotha obviously gives the holiest of reasons to expel muslim women and children from their homes. It is utterly contemptuous of the needs and interests of the population of Kosovo as a whole. They are already exterminated in the minds of the devotees, whether the devotees are reactionary christian or pseudo-marxist. Louis Proyect however brashly claimed that this piece was utterly irrelevant and I would be expelled for copying anything like it again. What he copies with enthusiasm is always relevant.
_______________________________--
>From the Serbian Orthodox Bishop of Canada:
In Niagara Falls, 1998
Bishop of Canada, Georgije
VIDOVDAN - FROM KOSOVO TO KOSOVO
Fate has dea[l]t the Serbian nation a day which is called Vidovdan. This is not just a date on a calendar but is rather a continuing day, from that fateful year, 1389, up to the present. It is the longest, most significant, most holy, most tragic and brightest day of the Serbian nation. It contains all the ideas of the Christian comprehension of life and living.
Prof. Bigovic has said: "Vidovdan has been up to recently, and, for some is even today, Good Friday, and yet at he same time, Easter. Those two events - Good Friday and Easter - merged into one indivisible whole and further understanding of Vidovdan."
Kosovo is Serbian Golgotha. It is the Cros through which one nation entered into eternity and uncovered the eternal and divine dimensions of its existence. For this reason the Kosovo oath, by which Tsar Lazar chose a heavenly kingdom, is our only choice and path, at the same time both a victory and defeat. Defeat is transformed into victory. fate was endured in the hope of resurrection, and the crosing from the earthly to the heavenly Serbia was made easier. It was known, that following voluntary suffering comes the resurrection, even then when it was hard to hope that it would be so. Following two trusts, that of the Nemanjic founders and that of the Kosovo revival, Serbia was resurrected in its full glory as a Kingdom. We were left with splendid remembrances, "the remembrance of glory and heroism" until it became the time of "discord and betrayal", until the stranger came to take our soul, to take the holines from our ideals and to humiliate Serbia. In this way the Serbian nation foreswore the oath of Kosovo, it broke off its historical memory, it accepted the most brutal and lowest ideologies of the modern world. It destroyed the bridges joining it to the heavens, it lost the longing for a holy, honorable and clean life. It was left desolate, alone and empty.
That is why today, for some, Kosovo is illusion, a distant and cruel past, a myth, a battle for the preservation of an empty cradle. And we, who are today gathered together because of Vidovdan, not for prayer or communion, but in order to celebrate ourselves on this day, to have a good time, music, roast meat, a dance, do not celebrate Vidovdan, but rather ourselves. We do not help Kosovo and its holy places in this way notwithstanding all our bombastic speeches, with a well oiled throats. We will help it only when we turn to God for salvation. And God is he who once before gave Kosovo to the Serbs, and He will again if we pray to Him and ask Him for Help, particularly now, on Vidovdan.
Indeed, what else and what better could we do? To shout "we refuse to give Kosovo"? To whom and for whom? Those who have rejected Christ, who do not accept the oath of Kosovo, for whom "the Kingdom of Heaven" does not exist, these lead us and mislead us. If we speak out, we give them support. On the other hand, if we remain silent, again we give support to our enemies, those who by taking Kosovo from us want to destroy the esence of Serbianism, as well as to those among us for whom Kosovo means nothing more than a territorial region. Therefore there is nothing left for us to do but to celebrate Vidovdan in the way that our "honorable Prince" declared and then confirmed with his life: "The earthly is a kingdom for but a time". What does it mean? It means that we believe that Kosovo should be led by holy men, Christians, through whose veins runs that determination of Kosovo, who in their daily life confes the Truth of Kosovo, the truth of Jasenovac, Jadovno, Glina, Ravna Gore and many Serbian places of execution where history asigned us ever newer and newer Kosovos. The truth must, if necesary, be protected with one's life. At least for us, in the Church, that is clear - and a Serb is not a Serb if he is not in the Church - for it is said: "Blessed is God who rests above the holy martyrs".
Let us measure ourselves and show what we are capable of in Vidovdan. For in Vidovdan in the temporal sense the past, present and future of the Serbian nation are combined as in space two worlds, the visible, which becomes numerically smaller through victims, and the invisible, which rests on victims and sacrifice and increases. And let us treat this Vidovdan, as if God has put us in temptation, under examination. Will we "shorten our days for the sake of the chosen" depends mostly of ourselves. Therefore, all you who are in the Church, let us pray to God, that God grant us strength, shorten our suffering, open our hearts and minds to eternal ideals and send us true leaders who will lead us as our honorable prince led the Serbian nation through illusion of defeat to glory.
O Lord above all, our Savior, grant us the vision on this Vidovdan that we may understand Your will, that we may follow Your path, that we may save both Kosovo and our own souls. Amen.
__________________________________________________________
As a confident and unself-critical internationalist living in Ottawa, you may feel sure that no Serbs you know could possibly be affected by such primitive self-righteous dangerous nonsense being propagated from Niagara Falls, but there is a theory that everyone in the world is only six handshakes away from the US president. All the Serbs you have every met in north America are, for material reasons independent of their wills, only 3 handshakes away from Bishop Georgije. And the ones who are not self-critical are the most vulnerable.
That is why Zizek was correct to criticise all theories about Yugoslavia that puts Serb nationalism as the oppressor nationalism on an equal par with the other nationalisms.
People can and should polemicise against NATO as much as they can, but that will not alter the impact of the fact that NATO analysed the muslim, Albanian people of Kosovo as oppressed, and the ultra-leftist anti-imperialists had no answer for this.
NATO will not be hurt by simplistic ultra-left propaganda. That is why such ultra-leftism is harmful, and is a form of opportunism at this time of reconstituting marxism as dangerous as right opportunism.
Chris Burford
London