Chechnya - a far off country

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed Nov 10 22:36:27 PST 1999


At 09:36 10/11/99 +0200, you wrote:


>>I too really wonder which planet you are on. Not only have your failed to
>>say what could be done about Chechnya, despite the example of East Timor,
>>but on your own continent you have failed to comment on whether the UN
>>peace keeping force in Sierra Leone is progressive
>
>It is not.

I think we can say we have clarified differences to quite a degree. You are opposed to UN intervention in a country like Sierra Leone.

You are opposed to thinking of Chechnya as anything other than a far off country. You assume that the only form of intervention is one which is indistinguishable from waving the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes.

You have no idea what global civil society is, without being aware you are participating in it now. You are like the bourgeois gentilhomme who does not know he is speaking prose.

In short terms, I am coming from a Gramscian perspective. You appear to be coming from some sort of unreconstructed Trotskyist perspective.

Nevertheless we cannot always be responsible for accidents of our birth or our trajectory. I look forward to your producing the Trotsky quotes about why sanctions were allegedly wrong against Italy, although he sympathised with the Ethiopians.

Chris Burford

London



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