-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de JKSCHW at aol.com Enviada em: domingo, 8 de outubro de 2000 00:23 Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Assunto: Re: Yugoslavia: what the media is hiding (The Guardian)
Is the following bizarre report from the Guardian of London, the Manchester Guardian--I get the MGW, the overseas edition? seems unlikely. The tone is all wrong. Anyway, the story is quite mad: Another, and more plausible, reading, is that the USP succeeded in stuffing the ballot boxes for Parliament, where attention was less focused, but was unable to do so credibly in the presidential race, given the deep and intense hatred for Slobo. I think it is fantasy toi suppose that the US or NATO was interested in invading Serbia to boot him, even if he's succeeded in fixing the elections: both Gore and the Shrub reacted to thsi suggestionw ith horror when it it was proposed in the debates, and quite understandably.
-But, if the parliament is more important than the presidential election -why did the opposition protested against one fraud and not against the -other??? Are the Serbian democrats so short sighted??? I think this -report raises a serious question. What will happen, since Milosevic´s -party has majority in the parliament and the parliament is more powerful -tan the president? Or isn´t the parliament so important?
I am frankly extremely disturbed to see leftists rallying around Milosovic and painting for themselves a picture of events so utteraly at variance with the view that almost everyone else shares with good reason: this that Milosovic was a nationalistic thug with no ideological commitments to anything that remained of thre once great tradition of Yugoslav socialism--his wife, in contrast, was a sort of ideologue, but her "socialism" was window dressing. It was M's nationalism that made him go.
-Here I agree with you. Mr. Milosevic has nothing to do with socialism, but -the "democratic opposition" can be even worse. Serbain chauvinism coupled -with neoliberal economics can have a devastating result...
But Milosovic personally destroyed the model of socialism that I myself substantially advocated--not as far as its politics went, but its economics and its multinationalism and cosmopolitican character. I thought that Yugoslav self-management and market socialism was our best hope--I still do--and so I have a personal grudge against Slobo as one of its killers. I find it ironic that those of you who most savagely railed against this conception of socialism are now praising its undertaker as its legitimate heir and champion, and calumniating some of who urged the socialsim you rejected as merely a capiatlsit charade because we supposed are now CIA mouthpieces and NATO propagandists! You have a lot of nerve.
-There is a difference between being against Milosevic (and I agree with -you in all you said about this) and agree with West policy towards Serbia. -Milosevic isn´t worse than KLA leaders (or freedom fighthers, according -to USA propaganda) or Franjo Trudjman (which was supported by NATO in -his ethnic cleansing operations). He could go untouched with his atrocities -if he was reliable from the Western point of view, but it was not the case. -Look at Turkey just to see how the USA behaves when its allies uses repression -against minorities, not to mention Israel, a racist state whose politics is -very similar to those from South Africa´s apartheid (isn´t Palestina a -bantustan now?). So the fact is that the human rigths question is only a -good excuse for west intervention in Yugoslavia, or do you think Clinton -and Blair are really worried with human rights?