>Back to the differences, with Elias.
Yes, Chris. Back to our differences.
>
>Chris wrote:
>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.
I do not think anybody represented it as Tito's Yugoslavia. It is just that its name is Yugoslavia, this is how its citizens call their country and how it is recognized by some other countries. Now if you say "no, you do not have the right to call it Yugoslavia because NATO does not agree with you" then I am afraid we will never be able to have a common language to communicate. The name of a country is not what NATO decides it to be. I wish to add that I sense a strong dose of anti-Serbianism in your comment.
>>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.
Once more I do not agree with you. I do not share your view of conspiracy theory. I do not see wars of this type as conspiracies. It was a necessity for the Americans to smash any opposition to their plans for control of the area, for showing the Russians how important they are and for the effective abolition of the UN. One does not need a conspiracy theory for this.
>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?
Nicolas died a long time ago and Havel and Walesa did not have to be invented because they rushed to them. Why would they invent them? I do not know how closely you have followed the treatment of Kurds in the hands of NATO member of Turkey. Let me remind you of a couple of pictures that appeared in the "European" about 2-3 years ago. The heads of the Kurdish fighters had been cut off and the brave Turkish soldiers were happily posing with the heads. In fact, they were taking turns to be photographed. This kind of brutality usually gets a comment from the James Rubins of the "free" world that "we have no information about it". However, it does not result in any kind of action or ever suggestion about human rights abuse because Turkey and many countries like it are client states of the US. Havel is a perfect example. Go ask the Romas how Havel treats them.
>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.
Yes, because these countries rushed to join NATO. The Yugoslavs did not. Now you can blame the Yugoslavs for not recognizing the advantages of being a slave to the US but these guys were not members of any alliance during the cold war. Why should they become members of the Western alliance now? I have a suspicion that had they become members of NATO, their treatment of minorities would have been recommended to other countries as an example to be copied.Their failure to become members brought them the war and sent the country back a century.
>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.
Chris, the moment they decided to create the Kosovo state in the Rambouillet agreement, the EU was history as a rival. How can the EU agree to create more borders in the area while at the same time is trying hard to eliminate the existing ones? How can the EU ask " what if he (Milosevic) does not capitulate within a couple of days (Alema)?" ,get a response "we will keep bombing until he does" ,and does nothing about it knowing full well that continuous bombing is a recipe for disaster? What kind of rival is the EU when it is afraid to voice its opinion. And regarding the EU minister of defence, it is significant that the German candidate withdrew and the only one left was the former anti-NATO protester and now NATO preacher Solana.
>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.
Oh, come on now. You really think the Moslems are stupid. Go and tell them how wonderful the US and Britain are by helping their Moslem brothers establish a new state. Explain to them how this helps their cause while at the same time these two countries continue to slaughters thousands of Iraqi kids, moslem kids. Add to it the treatment of Libya and Sudan where the US bombs at will. Or the treatment of the Palestinians for the matter. Tell them how these actions help their cause. A little respect to Moslems will get you a long way in understanding the present situation in the Balkans. And as to the KLA, numbers have come out lately which show that the Yugos had 13 tanks destroyed and about 500 soldiers dead in Kosovo from the air raids. NATO killed more civilians than army personnel. I do not suppose that you really believe that these figures won the war for NATO after 78 days of bombing?
>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?
As far as I know, there was never any apartheid in Kosovo. I do not know what you are talking about. If you have different information on the subject please bring it forward and fast. If not, lets us say it was just a slip of the ...keyboard :--)
>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.
I suppose you have read about the latest massacre of Serbs in the hands of KLA. Bernard Kouchner, the UN administrator had this to say among other things about the latest massacre:"''The world did not intervene to make Kosovo safe for revenge and intolerance,'' he said. But he also said he was mindful of the recent suffering of the whole population." In other words, it is okay to kill Serbs because they used to kill you. But this is exactly what the paramilitaries in Kosovo were saying: it is okay to kill Albanians because they used to kill you". Why is Kouchner different than the paramilitairies?
Nato intervention has not just made the situation worse than before. The idea that you must have ethnically pure states in the Balkans is showing its fruits. Greece has decided to expel the illegal Albanian migrant workers living in the country since the early 1990's, despite the fact that these guys are doing the jobs the Greeks would not even think of doing,
getting paid a good 50% to 60% less than the legal wage rate, and have no social security coverage. A perfect pool of labour for the Greek bourgeoise. Although the official reason is that they are responsible for the crime wave that has hit Greece in the last 5 years, which is not true at all, I suspect that the real reason is that the Greeks are afraid that in a few years these guys will constitute a sizeable majority for which NATO can enter into a war on their behalf.They are afraid that in a few years time they will lose part of their territory to the new "NATO humanitarian bombing campaign". They now account for about 7% to 8% of the population. Before the war, there was not even a hint to expel them from all forces of the political spectrum. Now the Pandora's box is open and it is open season for minorities in the Balkans, thanks to NATO. Albania at the same time has theatened to expel its greek minority, who has been there from time imemmorial, if Greece goes ahead with its plans to expel the illegals. This is just the beginning. Stay tuned.
>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.
I read the speech you sent by the Bishop. I do not know anybody in the Balkans who would willingly give up part of its territory. Perhaps the situation in Britain is different . Tony Blair and Robert Fook may be willing to give up part of their territory like the colonies. But there are no colonies in the Balkans for them to give up. I would like to know how the Church of England would respond if tomorrrow it is decided that a part of England will be lost to another country.
>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.
I am sure you do not believe this. The muslim Kurdish population has been oppressed ten times worse than the Kosovo Albanians. The Kosovo Albanians had schools in their own language, newspapers in their own language, evern universities. Nobody cares about an oppressed minority in a NATO country, the organization that pretends to support freedom and democracy ala Salazar's Portugal and Papadopoulos's Greece. I am sure you know that the minister of defence in Turkey reports to the Chief of the Armed forces and not the other way around. NATO does not care about democracy, human right violations, and oppressed people because they help oppress the Kurds among others. And NATO would be glad to have "moderate" leftist support their aggression against sovereign states because it believes that this is the way to co-opt them into the system. I am sure Solana must have told them how to do it. His own conversion is a case in point. And to call the Albanians of kosovo as Muslims is, I think, far fetched.
I do not believe that people do not care about the Kurds because they are more moslems than the Albanians. I do not think that there is discrimination against the Kurds. I do however think that there is no reason to be worried about the Kurds because Turkey is a good lackey. And this is where Milosevic went wrong. He never followed the lackey's route. His regime is far from perfect, but had he been a lackey, he would have "saved" his country, the Kosovo Albanians, the Romas and all the minorities who used to live in Kosovo.
I do not know who are the ultra leftist anti-imperialist who do not have an answer to your question. I do know though that all the people from the Balkan region I know of, are of the same opinion: the sooner NATO leaves the area the better off we will all be. The longer NATO stays the worst off we are. The Balkans do not think of themselves as people of lesser quality as you think of them. And they resist when outsiders interfere in their affairs simply because they have the power to do so.
>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.
Let me close by copying a paragraph from the original article I sent, the one that started this exchange.
>As director of field services in an area close to Pristina, he travelled
>extensively. He describes a situation that was nasty but sustainable, in
>spite of constant destabilization attempts by the Kosovo Liberation
> Army (KLA) -- the classic technique of revolutionaries everywhere.
You chose not to respond to the substance of the article but to ask me to diassociate myself from from any anti-muslim racist bias. I understand the essence of your argument. You cannot provide any counter argument against the first hand experience of an OSCE observer and hundreds like him. So, you decided to accuse me of anti-moslem racist bias. I should tell you that I have seen this film a thousand times: attack the messenger to dilute his message. You refuse to recognise the reality and you prefer the one created by BBC and CNN. You cannot accept what the OSCE observers have to say because you know that your argument is based on what NATO has fed you, that it was a war among Islam and Orthodoxy among others. The more people like you deny the experience of the OSCE observers the more people like me ask them to speak out, to tell the world about their experiences. I know that in the end you are going to win because you have the resources of NATO behind you, you have brutal power with you. Our power is reason and humanity. And it is imperative that we do our best to let people judge on the basis of real, concrete stuff, not on fabricated histories.
Permit me to say that NATO would be glad if all leftists follow your logic. Maximizing the trivial ( the Kosovo case) and minimizing the serious (the Kurdish case) is what NATO has achieved. To you, it could be that a few thousand KLA-drug dealers fighting the Yugoslav police forces are representatives of the class struggle of the oppressed Albanians. To me, they are just that: drug dealers and I do not know if the left started to support the free movement of coce in Europe.
>Chris Burford
Elias