Perhaps you could refresh my memory about my writings re Bosnia and Kosova. You will have to reference my Rwanda posts. I dont recall any. I dont recall writing about Bosnia exept perhaps to point out that Milosevic the now war criminal was then applauded for his diplomatic skills as i recall. On Kosova I cant recall justifiying the ethnic cleansing. I did point out that knowing the proclivities of Milosevic by removing inspectors and by bombing NATO contributed to although it was not the direct agent of cleansing. Do you disagree with that? WHy
Surely, you do not sympathise with or justify Kosovan terrorism and surely you should feel solidarity with the Serbs as with the Soviets problems with Chechyna.
God Bless America ..
Cheers. Ken Hanley (sic)
----- Original Message -----
From: LeoCasey at aol.com
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 2:33 PM
Subject: (no subject)
<< Are you, Leo, pleading for something like a moment of silence, or a period
of grief, before we try to make sense of this? >>
First we need to realize that a lot of us do not even know for whom we have
to grieve yet. Max's story about his friend could be told by many of us, I
fear. My immediate family is safe, and so too, a close friend who worked in
WTC but happened to be away yesterday, but there are still others from whom I
have not heard -- offices of a number of major education reform and teacher
activists groups are very close to the WTC, and from what I can gather on the
TV, the buildings which house them are severely damaged. One of my daughter's
teachers broke into tears when she heard the news yesterday, as her husband
was a firefighter. Is he one of the 300 missing firefighter, apparently
killed trying to rescue people when the towers collapsed? I could go on: but
the point is that we don't even know whom we have to grieve for yet, much
less had the chance to begin grieving. If ever there was a need for some
simple human compassion, and a virtual moment of silence, this would seem to
be it.
But what has deeply disturbed me about some of the discourse here -- and
about the incredible comments I have received off-list -- is not about the
desire to explain, to intellectualize, what happened; that is, in itself, a
way of trying to cope and of trying to tame, the insanity of these deeds. Nor
can I disagree with those who have rushed to talk about the need to defend
civil liberties or to prevent vigilante attacks on Arab-Americans -- although
neither has happened, and it seems strange that one should focus first on
what might happen, as opposed to what has actually happened, although it
seems so disproportionate to be concerned with a potential wrong against so
great and grievous an actual wrong -- I still know that civil liberties must
be protected, and that Arab-Americans must not be scapegoated for what
appears, at this point, to be the work of bin Laden. Perhaps if those who
wrote those e-mails thought a little, they would have given a moment until
those who were still searching for lost friends had a moment of relief, or
the start of a grieving process.
But what is real offensive, so offensive I have difficulty finding the words
for my rage about it, is the series of posts from the Heartfields, the
Hanleys and the like which offer the intellectual equivalents of the
celebrations of joy in the streets of Nablus. It is obscene beyond belief
that they should foist upon us these justifications and explanations for mass
murder as a blow against American imperialism at a time like this. It was bad
enough that one has had to read from their keyboards the justifications for
genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosova, but at least
they did not visit them upon the Tutsis of Rwanda and the Muslims and
Albanians of Bosnia and Kosova while they were in the midst of those crimes.
And that they should do it in the name of human emancipation just shows how
little they understand of emancipation, and the struggle for it. I share
NOTHING with them.
Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --
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