<html> At 20:01 29/01/01 -0500, Seth wrote: <blockquote type=cite cite>Michael Pugliese wrote: > Boiling down Seth's points. > These aren't my points. These are the views of the U.S. State Department, as manifested in their European progaganda service. I'm not attributing them to anyone on this list, certainly not you, Michael. </blockquote> I actually thought that Seth's previous post did move the issues on and I am glad that Doug's warnings about tedium are being noticed by both sides. Perhaps at the very least we need a new thread title. (I notice that Yoshie is particularly good at changing thread titles.) What I accepted as interesting in Seth's contribution - <blockquote type=cite cite>As a valediction to this thread, I encourage anyone interested in U.S. Balkan policy to visit the website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the American news/propaganda service in Europe. RFE/RL's Southeast Europe service features the excellent Balkans Report, a twice-weekly series of reporting and commentary on the week's events on the Balkan peninsula. The report is at <a href="http://www.rferl.org/balkan-report/" eudora="autourl">http://www.rferl.org/balkan-report/</a>.</blockquote> - what I thought was interesting - was the way he used this critically as a secondary source on the smouldering tension between the imperialist blocks. RFE is under some pressure to produce at least a semi-coherent analysis but it is only useful if we are clear how to interpet and criticise it. I noted that its analysis on the leaked Racak post mortem report (still to be published) suggested more differences between the German sources (BZ and FAZ) commenting on the leak, than I had realised. I have not got an answer at this stage to Seth's main proposition that the inter-imperialist skirmishing contributed to the failure to contain the Bosnian conflict and the subsequent 2000,000 deaths. Although I do not think that inter-imperialist contradictions nowadays inevitably lead to open conflict in the way Lenin argued, I do think this aspect is often underrated in the criticism of imperialism. Fundamentally it is a reflection of the fact that imperialist powers will have their own material capitalist interests whatever ideals they profess. So criticism on this score too, helps to expose that their claim to these ideas is hypocritical and cannot be the basis for a solid progressive alliance that is genuinely in the interests of the working people of the world. I have no difficulty with that, and in fact I am in favour of it. Chris Burford, London </html>