(was Re: kooky brit journos on holiday)
> >one wonders why they even bother.
>
> I suppose t's "copy, paste, copy paste..." refers to the activities of t's
> brain chemicals recycling all the stories hitherto published in order to
> make liberals welcome the recolonization of Yugoslavia and accept the
> deaths of Serbs, Roma, anti-KLA Albanians, etc. with equanimity.
nope. if our correspondent would like to write about that, fine, but warming up his audience with low-rent journalistic antics and then appending stock recitations is hardly a way to sensitize them to the complexities of the situation. 'a nonsmoker like hit- ler' indeed... what's particularly loathesome is that he found a potentially fascinating moment absolutely oozing ambiguities but glossed over it in order to get to the 'meat' of the story: and, boy oh boy, was it a fifty-cent hot dog. if you wonder how it is that people--even 'nonliberals'--accept what's going on with equa- nimity, look no further than that kind of sausage stuffing.
a couple of remarks:
'liberals': political predisposition isn't a prerequisite for un- derstanding what's going on in former YU. what 'liberals' think is neither more nore less interesting than what 'conservatives' think. the notion that the primary thrust of my remarks was to make these events more palatable to 'liberals' is silly, and i'm tempted to say--in fact i will--that your remark says a good deal about the political ramifications of your own brain chemistry than of mine.
'the recolonization of yugoslavia': as though YU were a solid, homogeneous, and abiding entity that merely and passively was sub- ject to the wills and wiles of great powers. 'yugoslavia' is the name for what seems to have been the very transient period during which the great powers exerted less direct influence over the re- gion; but it was formulated through the very aggressive suppres- sion of its component cultures--basically, *tito* colonized it. as you may have noticed, he died, but the mechanisms and balances he established lived on--and are, in large part, responsible for the fiascos of the last decade. when yugoslavia was still extant, all kinds of things 'liberals' find unbearable happened. then when it began to fall apart, in many ways the great powers avoided like the plague getting involved, and all kinds of things 'liberals' find unbearable happened; then they got involved, and all kinds of things 'liberals' find unbearable happened. from which i conclude that, when all is said and done, 'liberals' would be much happier if the region and its peoples simply didn't exist. very complicated, very messy stuff, and just about everyone is wrong when held up to the limpid light of 'liberal' ideals.
'accept the deaths of Serbs, Roma, anti-KLA Albanians, etc. with equanimity': this kind of abstract political discourse which feigns to care about specifics is very heart-warming, but it's not very convincing. at the moment, i don't think there's a lot to be gained from striking valorous postures and rhetorically jousting with the rump KLA. there are other things to be done, and i've been doing them for several months.
cheers, t