The weakness of the anti-war movement

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed May 19 23:52:24 PDT 1999


At 19:22 19/05/99 +0100, you wrote:
>In message <3.0.2.32.19990519083159.007591a0 at pop.gn.apc.org>, Chris
>Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes
>
>>Reports are starting to come out in the western media of Yugoslavs trying
>>to avoid the call up
>
>Get away! I would never have believed that the Western media would say
>such terrible things about Yugoslavia's military...
>
>>Yesterday a report came out through Montenegro of demonstrations against
>>the war in Serbia
>
>Given that there have been umpteen, demonstrations against Nato's war in
>Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece, I'm not sure that this counts as a scoop.

Jim is too intelligent to expect his urbane responses automatically to be taken at face value. He knows the evidence that there is censorship in Serbia. Of course there have been numerous demonstrations against NATO in Serbia. That is why it is news if there is a report of Serbian troops refusing to fight, or a mayor being lynched.

It is typical of how far Jim H and LM are conditioned by a journalistic approach to these questions that he gets embroiled (wrongly) in whether it is a scoop or not. Actually *if corroborated* - and it will be difficult to corroborate - of course it would be a scoop. What is important is if it is true.

To some extent now that the need for negotiations is accepted by all sides, there is a race between the anti-war movement in the west and the anti-war movement in the former Yugoslavia.

For all people's extensive unhappiness about the NATO war against Serbia in the west, the anti-war movement in the west is weak in its ability to influence the agenda. It may prove to be weaker than the anti-war movement in Serbia.

Chris Burford

London



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list