Re: M-TH: definitions of genocide

[Rob Schaap]

Good to hear from you again, Andy.

>Mass assimilation is genocide.

Is it?

As one who has been individually and unvoluntarily assimilated (although
not completely - I have but to see a Dutch film and I can cry at the
frustration of having no-one with whom to converse in my first language -
the music of it and the attitude to the world one shares in it), I might
have some insight here.

I don't say for a second we can generalise (Aboriginal culture constructs
ways of seeing a million light years from those of the dominant culture -
whereas Dutch culture is but a few shrugs and raised eyebrows away; and, of
course, there is at least a Dutch world left out there, whereas there would
not be any Aboriginal ones left at all if our assimilationists of yore had
had their way), but I do insist on a distinction even here.

There were genocidal policies in place in various outlying parts of
Australia (and informal ones everywhere) - these involved poison
baits/water holes and mass shootings, and doubtlessly many Aboriginal
cultures were slaughtered out of existence.

That's still one or two steps down the ladder of infamy from a mass
assimilation policy, I think.  Firstly, one implicitly recognises the
humanity of those one seeks to assimilate (a vicious culturalism is at work
rather than a biological racism a la Goebbels).

Secondly, simply and decisively, no-one is getting killed.

I am contrasting hideous outrages here, but can not bring myself to compare
them.

Does this make sense, Thaxists?

Cheers,
Rob.





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Re: M-TH: Re: NATO's corporate friends

[Chris Burford]

At 09:50 15/04/99 -0400, you wrote:
>This article Doug posted is open and obvious evidence of the military
industrial complex, and direct support and connecton between the ruling
class for the institutions of war and militarism. A sort of smoking gun of
capitalist mass murder. It is some refutation of the arguments being made
that the U.S./NATO attack on Yugoslavia is without economic or business
motives. Would business people be doing this if the U.S. military and NATO
were carrying out any wars that the transnational monopoly  corps. and
banks consider against their interests ? I don't think so.  Would these
business people be this enthusiastic (even with the token or symbolic
amounts of money for them ) about NATO if there weren't big bucks for them
somewhere in the current war ? Give me a break. Clinton and the U.S.
government, Blair et al. are the executive. They serve at the pleasure of
the Board of Directors. The list of companies (in Doug's original post) are
a representative committee of  the Board of Di!
>rectors of Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.
>
>Of course, some might think the Bourgeoisie are concerned about humanity
in Yugoslavia and around the world. Yea, they are concerned that they
control mass human labor power. They can't kill everybody, just lots of
people.
>
>Charles Brown

Charles already knows that I have posted on LBO-talk the following passage
from Lenin under the thread title, The Economic Basis for the War.


Clinton's extensive strategic arguments yesterday in San Francisco at the
Association of Newspaper Editors, I submit is in conformity with this.

I think Hugh is correct about the literally reactionary nature of Serb
nationalism in the rump Yugoslav socialist federation. 


Only a critique that addresses this *more* seriously from a working class
point of view  can answer the apparently liberal counter strategy of
Blair/Clinton/Schroeder for an expansion of the multi-ethnic European
superstate.


Lenin: 

"Developing capitalism knows two historical tendencies in the national
question. The first is the awakening of national life and national
movements, the struggle against all national oppression, and the creation
of national states. The second is the development and growing frequency of
international intercourse in every form, the break-down of national
barriers, the creation of the international unity of capital, of economic
life in general, of politics, science, etc."

"Critical Remarks on the National Question" 1913



Chris Burford

London





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M-TH: Frankfurters on crisis

[Chris Burford]

At 02:22 16/04/99 +1000, Rob wrote:


>On my account (and that of all the Frankfurters),
>fascism can emanate only from capitalism-in-crisis.

Pretty rigid definition for a Frankfurter?


Partly true. Perhaps substantially true. 

But "only" true???



Certainly capitalism in crisis means wars. Certainly fascist attacks on
civil rights of domestic and foreign populations. 


An element  in my understanding of the question is that fascism in contrast
to bourgeois democracy is frequently a feature of the *more aggressive
wing* of capital in certain concrete situations, whether springing from
defensive or offensive motives. For this they are prepared openly to
sacrifice certain bourgeois democratic rights.


But surely we are not going to get anywhere with a definition of fascism
which is rigid and mechanical regardless of the line up of classes and
social formations.

Chris Burford

London



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Re: M-TH: definitions of genocide

[Chris Burford]

Can I urge people to go to the official website of the Yugoslav government
to understand their thinking on national identity. It follows that the
Albanians do not have a right to self-determination in Kosovo, because
nationhood is linked to historical occupation of land and spiritual home. 


The historical map of Kosovo they publish lists exclusively Christian
sites, mostly from the medieval period.

It follows that while many Serbs would deplore atrocities (and refugees are
apparently no longer reporting these) their sense of the right of nations
to self-determination is likely to be an idealist one. 

A pity because the geography of Kosovo would have required even militant
Albanian nationalists to come to some economic compromise with neighbouring
regions, since the land link to Albania is economically unviable.

Please check this site out

http://www.gov.yu/kosovo_facts/enter5.html


Chris Burford

London

 





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Re: M-TH: definitions of genocide

[Andrew Wayne Austin]

Rob,

One doesn't have to worry so much about diminishing the tragedy of the
matter if one only finds the right words. The term "forced migration" is
the appropriate term to describe what the Yugoslavs are accomplishing in
Kosovo. It is a tragedy -- one that NATO bombing triggered. But it isn't
genocide. What Europeans have attempted with the Native Americans is
genocide. Mass assimilation is genocide. "Ethnic cleansing" is a euphemism
for forced migration. I agree with you that we evacuate words of their
meaning when we overuse and overapply them.

Andy




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Re: M-TH: definitions of genocide

[Rob Schaap]

I too think Chris is right 'by international definition', Kim.  But I
disagree with this relatively recent definition.  Language has to
distinguish between the lot of the Aboriginal Australian of 1960 or the
Albanian Kosovar of 1998 and that of the Rwandan Tutsi of 1991 or the
Warsaw Jew of 1944.  After all, for the vast majority of those concerned,
the distinction we're talking about is one of life and death.

I think we are gradually doing this with the word 'rape', too (at least,
it's been happening in some US states).  We need a word to distinguish
violation by violence or terror from violation by deceit, infringing
age-of-consent, the plying of alcohol etc.

We get to make a big rhetorical splash when we apply such words, and
hopefully get people to think twice about what they do for a while.  But,
in the long term, we lose the ability to name the very ghastliest of human
outrages - and that seems a slippery slope to me.

Of course, I don't know how to make this point in public debate (as opposed
to our cozy little family circle here) without giving licence to
opportunists whose agenda it is to understate or deny what we have been
doing, say, to Aboriginal Australians - so I keep quiet.  But I feel this
is a position I've been put in by intemperate leftie rhetoric.

I find myself so often opposed to the middle-class political correctness of
the Australian left, yet can never speak up in a country where to do so
would be further to strengthen the new right (whose own carefully unnamed
political correctness *actually* dominates).

Cheers,
Rob.





>Chris B in his original post said that it was genocide "by international
>definitions".  In this he is correct.
>
>Genocide does not just mean the murder of people in death camps, rape etc.
>It is also defined as the forcible removal of people from thier
>homeland, as well as the stopping a particular ethnic group from using
>thier own language etc. (these are just two of the definitions, there are
>more which off hand I can not recall accurately at the moment).
>
>While there has been no "official" evidence of death camps etc, there has
>been evidence of genocidal behaviour, for example in 1990 the only
>Albanian language daily newspaper in Kosova was banned, as were all tv
>and radio broadcasts in the Albanian language.  In the following months,
>some 115 000 ethnic Albanians were fired from their jobs, including 800
>Kosovar lecturers at the university of Pristina.  Their sacking ended
>teaching in the Albanian language and forced all but about 500 students
>(out of about 23 000) to end their studies.
>
>While the use of Albanian language was not forcible banned, these action
>have been used to suppress the Albanian language.  The suppression of one
>language, is used to increase the use of another so that eventually the
>other language is rarely or no longer used.  By suppressing a language you
>succeed in suppressing a cultural identity.
>
>In Australia, the same argument is used when speaking against the genocide
>of the Indigenous Aboriginal population (ie that genocide only occures
>used in the sense it is used to describe the holocust).
>
>The Bringing them home report on the Stolen generations (ie children who
>were forciblely removed from their families and put into hostels or sent
>to work for white families) uses the above definitions of genocide.
>Aboriginal people were forced to speak English and were forcibly removed
>from traditional lands onto reserves or to work in the cities.
>
>While genocide may not be occuring in the sense that it did during the
>Holocaust, there is still evidence that it is occuring.
>
>regards,
>Kim Bullimore
>
>
>
>
> --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---





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Re: M-TH: definitions of genocide

[Andrew Wayne Austin]

Kim,

Does the suppression of the Spanish language in some US schools, however
deplorable this is, constitute "genocide" in the United States? Suppose
that the US was successful in eliminating Spanish in the United States.
Wouldn't they still speak Spanish in Mexico? Just to make this clear: I
oppose the suppression of Spanish in the United States. Suppose in South
Africa, the black population drove out all of the whites. Genocide?
Suppose they suppressed the language of the colonizers. Genocide? Now
suppose the goal of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, or at least the KLA,
is to drive all other Yugoslavians out of Kosovo, break Kosovo off from
Yugoslavia and join the territory to the Albanian state, thus producing an
ethnically-circumscribed Albanian state clean of Serbs. Genocide?

What puzzles me in all the hype over the conflict is how it is
consistently missed that the Yugoslavian government seeks to keep as part
of their state a territory with a majority Albanian population. Here is
Yugoslavia, trying to preserve a multiethnic state, and the Albanians,
like the Croats, etc., before them, seeking to break territories off from
Yugoslavia and draw ethnically narrow political-juridical boundaries.
Doesn't the KLA desire to control an ethnically pure territory? I think
they do.

One other thing I find interesting in all this is how the US propagandists
so easily swing the ethnicity talk, but when it comes to our country they
pretend racism doesn't exist.

Andy



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M-TH: definitions of genocide

[Bullimore / Kim Maree (COM)]

Chris B in his original post said that it was genocide "by international
definitions".  In this he is correct.

Genocide does not just mean the murder of people in death camps, rape etc.
It is also defined as the forcible removal of people from thier
homeland, as well as the stopping a particular ethnic group from using
thier own language etc. (these are just two of the definitions, there are
more which off hand I can not recall accurately at the moment). 

While there has been no "official" evidence of death camps etc, there has
been evidence of genocidal behaviour, for example in 1990 the only
Albanian language daily newspaper in Kosova was banned, as were all tv
and radio broadcasts in the Albanian language.  In the following months,
some 115 000 ethnic Albanians were fired from their jobs, including 800
Kosovar lecturers at the university of Pristina.  Their sacking ended
teaching in the Albanian language and forced all but about 500 students
(out of about 23 000) to end their studies.

While the use of Albanian language was not forcible banned, these action
have been used to suppress the Albanian language.  The suppression of one
language, is used to increase the use of another so that eventually the
other language is rarely or no longer used.  By suppressing a language you
succeed in suppressing a cultural identity.

In Australia, the same argument is used when speaking against the genocide
of the Indigenous Aboriginal population (ie that genocide only occures
used in the sense it is used to describe the holocust). 

The Bringing them home report on the Stolen generations (ie children who
were forciblely removed from their families and put into hostels or sent
to work for white families) uses the above definitions of genocide.
Aboriginal people were forced to speak English and were forcibly removed
from traditional lands onto reserves or to work in the cities. 

While genocide may not be occuring in the sense that it did during the
Holocaust, there is still evidence that it is occuring.

regards,
Kim Bullimore




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M-TH: the imperialist "united nations"

[neil]

Chris Burford;

True,  Malecki's  spart  politics have him shooting himself
in the foot much of the time. 

But your  religionist style bible  quotes from Lenin make
a mockery of the historical /materialist method of understanding
social class struggles and tactics and goals ..

Lenin wrote "Left-wing communism"  (LWC) during a period of the
2nd  year of the new communist international and where 
though  Russia had staved off  the internal counterrevolution,
the Russian revolution was now isolated after Western  soviet defeats
in Germany, italy, Finland , hungary, etc,  by mid 1920.  The  Russian 
bolsheviks had lost millions of soviet workers and farmers
in the civil strife and the population was on very short rations-- and
tempers--
famine raged, &  this came out at  this peroid , preceeding Kronstadt ,
etc.

For you to quote totally out of historical context ,  a Lenin  book on the
1920
 tactics when the class battles were red hot and wins were fleeting whlist
 huge defeats for workers  via white guard reaction in Europe  began to
pile up --
reduces your 'argument'  against Malecki's partial  exposure of the true
nature of
the UN to absurdity.

Why not use the more honest  actual look at the track record of looking
 at how the big  UN  governing powers bully and bribe their proxies in the
 peripheral countries  and then veto all that displeases them in the UN .
The UN has
been used by the capitalists in many countries to confuse and
deceive and defeat  workers in many lands, setting them up for huge
slaughters.
I am not saying we  promote attacks on doctors from the WHO or
assaults on FAO scientists but  we cannot avoid the class institutional
analysis of the UN and seriously  discuss workers tactics and goals.

Also might not Lenin have changed his tactical  views possibly ahd he lived
5 years to 10 years longer? Especially since much of LWC was a RETREAT
from Lenin's own "ultra-left' views of 1914-19. Dialectics is understanding
the world 
and acting on this all as  conscious matter--IN MOTION and CONSTANT
CHANGE, IN FLUX !

The fact  that this silly  argument over  having NATO or UN bombing support
would go 
on in 'left/radical" debate circles shows how exposure of the capitalists
use of their UN 'den of imperialist thieves" needs to be spread wider and
 farther! It can be a dividing line between internationalist marxist groups
and imperialist-pacifist outfits.

Chris B, allow me then if you can also the freedom to use an analogy 
admittedly a bit away from total accuarcy . Lenin, we  could have pointed
out --
also warned against 'faith' in the bosses  "League of nations"  a 
'den of thieves" , "a robbers league " of  parasites, etc .So  Then what
would 
he say of the UN , of which the  "Robbers League" was but a forrunner ?
To ask the question is almost  to answer it.
Russia was hostile to the League under the Revoultionary
bolsheviks, internationalists . The Russian  class collaborationist and
nationalist Stalin  led victorious (over workers) state cap  ruling class
joined 
in with  the  League in 1933.

neil
http://www.ibrp.org




 


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SV: M-TH: Re: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Bob Malecki]

Hugh replies...
>
>We're not going to win the workers and poor peasants/rural workers of
>Kosova or Serbia to our side if we don't convince them that national and
>ethnic (ie democratic) rights are fundamental to our programme, and that we
>have the best prospects of any leadership for bringing home the bacon. That
>is, that we can do it better than NATO, the rotten chauvinist Milosevic
>regime or the KLA. This is what the leadership of the Yugoslav revolution
>succeeded in doing (however inadequately for the longer term) during the
>struggle for liberation, democratic rights and workers rights leading up to
>and during the second world war. They turned the masses against the Ustasha
>fascists, the Chetnik fascists, the Italian fascists and the German Nazis.
>They also turned them against the treacherous overtures of the British
>imperialists and the Stalinist Soviet chauvinists.

Sorry Hugh but we called for the right of national self-determination for the 
Albanians 
of Kosovo--who make up 90 percent of its population--long before their cause became
fashionable among western liberals and leftists.

"Marxists should, of course, recognize the rights of the Albanian people of Kosovo and
western Macedonia to fuse with Albania. The border in this region was established by 
military conquests of the Serb bourgeoisie in 1913 and in no way reflects the national 
borders of Albania. Such a fusion would disrupt nirther the geographical nor economic 
unity
of Yugoslavia."

--"The Nation Question in Yugoslavia, Part 2 WV.No.110,21 May 1976.

A democratic and progressive solution to these national questions would have required 
proletarian political revolutions to overthrow the then-ruling Stalinist bureaucracies 
in 
Yugoslavia,Albania and Bulgaria, leading to a socialist federation of the Balkans. 
Today 
we fight for socialist revolution to overthrow all the bourgeois-nationalist regimes 
in the
region from Tudjman's Croatia to Milosevic's Serbia.

But in present conditions of capitalist counter-revolution and imperialist 
intervention, 
national conflicts in the Balkans have a reactionary character on all sides.Thus the 
Albanian seperatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), adhering to the murderous
logic of bourgeois nationalism, have carried out indiscriminate attacks on Serbian
villages. Moreover, with direct U.S/NATO intervention on the side of the Kosovo 
Albanians in recent months, the question of national-self determination has become 
subordinated to the defense of Serbia against imperialist attack.

In fact the left with all its talk around the "national question" is in reality the 
left capitulating
to bourgeois public opinion and the massive "human rights" propaganda machine being 
tuned up for mass consumption and the possibility of a military occupation of Kosovo by
imperialist troops. So rather then telling the truth to workers we are seeing the 
heart  wripping
arguements by leftists to try and play two sides of the fence at the same time.

>
>To sweep the national question off the agenda as Bob does is crazy. It must
>be tackled and solved, not ignored. To turn your back on the Kosova
>question because Serbia is being bombed by NATO is totally inadequate as a
>revolutionary response. NATO has no business in Serbia or any other part of
>the Balkans where it's getting dug in -- like Macedonia, Albania, Dalmatia,
>Bosnia or Kosova itself. Nor does Serbia have any business in Kosova, even
>though the Serbian minority there should have every right to their own
>culture and social identity and full protection against majority abuse.
>(Even the whites in South Africa or the Jews in Palestine must have solid
>minority rights!)

No one is sweeping them off the agenda. The point is that they are at present not on 
the agenda.
What is on the agenda is the fact that NATO has started a barbaric attack on a country 
with a 
population of the size of new york city and which could very quickly lead towards a 
third
imperialist war. But we are not their yet.
>
>The Kosovar masses need more than anything else to feel that they are in
>charge of their own destinies, and getting self-determination is the first
>step in this. 

Should we bleed crocodile tears now? THe biggest threat to Kosovo Albanians and all
of the peoples in the region is hardly Serbian nationalism. It is predatory 
imperialism and
its drive towards WW3.

It is no joke when I shortly in my first letter commented;

>
>Another interesting thing is the recent German iniative to create and all
>European occupation force of Kosovo. So the united facade of imperialism
>is beginning to split at the seams..

Because Germany and Japan are rearming apace and have thrown off their post ww-2 bans 
against engaging in military actions abroad. German imperialism, under a Social 
Democratic/Green coalition government, is gloating that its fighter jets are taking 
part in the air war against Serbia, its first combat role since WW2. Meanwhile, 
Japanese warsh

M-TH: "The Politics of War": Socialist Scholars Conference Talk by Carl Lesnor:

[James Lawler]

The following is the most recent draft of Carl Lesnor's, "The Politics of
War," presented last Saturday (April 10th) at the Socialist Scholars
Conference in New York City as part of the RPA panel, "The Crisis in
Kosovo."
--
From: Betsy Bowman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RPA Talk
Date: Thu, Apr 15, 1999, 4:34 PM


>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 14:35:15 EDT
>Subject: RPA Talk
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>(somewhat)REVISED VERSION
>A talk I gave April 10 at a session sponsored by the Radical Philosophy
>Association at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York. It was
hastily
>written the day before, a spot on the program having opened up at the last
>moment. We thought something should be said inasmuch as the sponsor of the
>conference actually favors the war. Comments and editorial suggestions
>welcomed.
>
> Hegel taught that the meaning of historical events becomes clear only
in
>retrospect, but that didn’t stop him from trying to understand the meaning
of
>the battle of Jena.  The owl of Minerva is at present huddling in a bomb
>shelter with a target attached to her breast; she has not yet taken wing.
But
>she has already made a number of flights over this territory and brought
back
>enough reconnaissance photos to enable us to get our bearings.
>We don’t  need  much philosophy to oppose this war.  People justify wars in
>two ways: It’s good for us and it’s good for them. Only if there is a
>conflict between the two does a moral problem arise. Since this war is
>clearly  bad for us, the only question is whether it is good for the
Kossovo
>Albanians, as the President claims. Since it is obvious that it has made
>their lot incalculably worse, and  moreover that  he  was told  to
anticipate
>this result before he launched his missiles,  (New York Times, April 1,
>p.1:"Pentagon planners, for example, said they warned the Administration
>publicly and privately that Mr. Milosovic was likely to strike out
viciously
>against the Kosovo Albanians as soon as the possibility of military action
>was raised...")we have more than sufficient reason for trying to end it.
>
>In trying to figure out how to be most effective in doing this we have to
>take into consideration the fact that now pro-war forces are drawing their
>principal support from liberals and social-democrats whose humanitarian
>feelings are being cynically exploited.  There's nothing new in playing on
>the public’s feelings with atrocity stories. The Kuwaiti babies thrown from
>their incubators by the diabolical Iraqis helped tip the balance in favor
of
>going to war. Later on it turned out that the story was invented in the
>offices of  an American public relations firm working for the Emir of
Kuwait,
>but by then, of course it was too late.
>
>I have begun with the moral question because we are being asked to believe
>that humanitarian considerations are not only the justification for the
war,
>but its explanation as well. Anyone who still thinks that humanity matters
to
>the war makers need only consider Madeleine Albright’s reply to Leslie
Stahl
>on 60 Minutes   May 11, 1996:Leslie Stahl: "We have heard that a half
million
>children have died as a result of sanctions. That’s more than died in
>Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?" Albright: "I think this is a very hard
>choice, but we think the price is worth it." or listen to the real voice of
>Bill Clinton, (talking about Somalia) as quoted by George Stephanopoulos:
>'We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers,' said Clinton, softly at
first.
>'When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.' Then, with
>his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding his thigh, he
>leaned into Tony [Lake, then his national security advisor], as if it was
his
>fault. 'I believe in killing people who try to hurt you. And I can't
believe
>we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks."
>Which leaves us with the question, why is this happening? Since NATO was
set
>up to counter a purported Soviet threat, and since the Soviet Union
collapsed
>a decade ago, one would have thought that American troops might finally
come
>home from Europe where they have been based for over a half century.
Instead
>our government fought to expand it, and then  launched it on an offensive
war
>against a sovereign state that had neither attacked it nor threatened to do
>so. We were led to believe we would be receiving a peace dividend.  It was
>canceled when new threats were hastily discovered. Old allies and CIA
assets,
>such as Manuel Noriega and then Sadam Hussein, were suddenly converted into
>dangerous foes.1
>This shouldn't have come as any surprise to anyone who had watched  Uncle
>Joe, our gallant Soviet ally in the people’s  fight against Hitler,
>metamorphose into a virtual reincarnation of the defunct Nazi leader.
Anyone
>trying to distinguish the good guys from the bad has his work cut out.
>The Germa

Re: M-TH: Re: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Jim heartfield]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Charles Brown
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>I agree with Rob that NATO and the U.S. are the fascist danger in this war. The 
>U.S. neo-colonial empire is built in part of many fascist governments that are 
>fully fascist because of their connection to the reactionary sector or military 
>industrial complex of transnational finance capital.

The spirit of Charles' post is certainly an improvement on Chris's. But
the problem with bandying around words like 'fascist', to indicate 'I
disapprove of this' is not just one that applies to calling Milosevic a
fascist. 

Nato is not fascist. It is imperialist. The United States is not a
fascist dictatorship. Its foreign policy is repressive, as is much of
its domestic policy. 

But you really trivialise the experience of fascism, of the
organisational liquidation of the working class organisations and the
mobilisation of a MASS petit-bourgeois reaction, when you toss the word
around like it was an epithet. 

There are not extermination camps operating in the US (any more than
there are in Yugoslavia). The working class is not forbidden from
organising. Are you really saying that the Clinton administration's
support for positive discrimination is 'fascistic'? US military policy
is vicious and hostile to the independence of small nations. But the US
is not at war with other imperialist powers, though that was the outcome
of Germany's renewed imperialism under the Hitler regime.

Of course you can use the word poetically and figuratively if you want
to. But then it doesn't have much more meaning that the teenager who
calls his parents 'fascists' because they want him to clean up his room.
You can seize hold of merely superficial similarities, like a penchant
for wearing uniforms, or moustaches, and then, hey presto Saddam
Hussein's a fascist. But that is just a false analogy.

Fascism was a specific experience, which, however barbaric the current
events, overshadows all of these in the extent of its reaction. It is
not pedantry to insist on the proper use of terminology, when these
terms are the categories of real historical experiences.

One of the great tragedies on the left (one that Burford is repeating)
was the way that the Communist International denounced its enemies ON
THE LEFT as 'social fascists'. On top of that they slurred over and
minimised the distinction between bourgeois democracy and fascism, to
the point that they were indifferent to the seizure of power by the
Nazis - even though they were its first victims. Slack thinking leads to
bad judgements. Bombastic phrases just evacuate the real force of your
arguments.

Nothing personal, Charles. I like what you have to say about the War.
But words matter, and it is important to get the argument right.

-- 
Jim heartfield


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Re: M-TH: The understandable war against civilians

[Chris Burford]

At 13:02 15/04/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
 Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/14/99 08:16PM >>>
>And it is genocide, by international definitions. It is a holocaust. 
>
>Did the holocaust only emerge fully formed at Wannsee in January 1942?
>
>(((
>
>The US is committing genocide right now in Iraq.
>
>
>Charles Brown


Charles, I would be interested in how US action in Iraq fits modern
international definitions of genocide. I am open to persuasion on this. One
of the reasons why the US will not support an International Court of Human
Rights in Rome, is that it fears its troops or commanders might be hauled
up in front of it on charges of war crimes. Indeed with the British Home
Secretary ruling today that Pinchet can still be detained for probable
extradition to Spain, who knows where Clinton will be able to travel after
his retirement.

But you do not comment on my previous point, which is rather central to the
argument that the term fascism is totally inappropriate to what the Serb
nationalists are doing. People seem to have put the holocaust and fascism
in a special historical compartment now.

Did the holocaust only emerge fully formed at the Wannsee Nazi conference
of January 1942?

Chris Burford





 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

M-TH: Re: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Hugh Rodwell]

>Charlie wrote..
>
>
>>I agree with Rob that NATO and the U.S. are the fascist danger in this
>>war. The U.S. neo-colonial empire is built in part of many fascist
>>governments that are fully fascist because of their connection to the
>>reactionary sector or military industrial complex of transnational
>>finance capital. The U.S. military has established or fostered numerous
>>brutal regimes or terrorist gangs around the world for decades -  in
>>Korea, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Chile, Panama, Iraq,, just to name
>>a few. One of its neo-colonial modus operandi is to work through
>>comprador fascisms. The U.S. in the Balkans is Big Daddy of fascisms
>>about to lay another one on them.
>
>
>Me too.. And to talk about a "national question" under present
>circumstances is just ridiculous. The national question in this case
>becomes subordinate to the whole war and agression by NATO imperialism..
>
>Another interesting thing is the recent German iniative to create and all
>European occupation force of Kosovo. So the united facade of imperialism
>is beginning to split at the seams..
>
>Warm regards
>Bob Malecki



Just pointing out the obvious fact that the terrorism of the imperialists
is more fundamental and more serious than the terrorism of Greater Serbian
chauvinism is about as useful as pointing out that the sun is bigger than
the earth. It's a shocking fact that the ignorance within capitalist
society about the way things are is so great that many people still don't
realize this -- just as many people in the middle ages still thought the
earth was bigger and more important than the sun. But it is also the case
that real understanding of what's going on only *starts* with this
realization. it doesn't stop there the way Bob, Rob and Charlie appear to
want it to (Dave is standing firmly on both sides of the fence on this one).

As a Trotskyist I give due weight to the power of unsolved democratic
questions (such as the national question and the question of the land) in
mobilizing the masses for a liberation struggle against their social
oppressors. This is what the theory of Permanent Revolution is all about.
It is also about the leadership of this massive social revolution by the
most conscious and advanced sectors of society -- the organized, Marxist
revolutionary workers. And the leadership can only be DESERVED and WON if
it speaks to the NEEDS OF THE MASSES IN STRUGGLE. That means it must have a
solution to the problems of the masses and be seen to be fighting and
winning on this basis. This is why the Bolshevik slogans in 1917 were,
narrowly, ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS, even though the Bolsheviks for ages
were in a minority there, and more broadly, BREAD, PEACE, LAND.

We're not going to win the workers and poor peasants/rural workers of
Kosova or Serbia to our side if we don't convince them that national and
ethnic (ie democratic) rights are fundamental to our programme, and that we
have the best prospects of any leadership for bringing home the bacon. That
is, that we can do it better than NATO, the rotten chauvinist Milosevic
regime or the KLA. This is what the leadership of the Yugoslav revolution
succeeded in doing (however inadequately for the longer term) during the
struggle for liberation, democratic rights and workers rights leading up to
and during the second world war. They turned the masses against the Ustasha
fascists, the Chetnik fascists, the Italian fascists and the German Nazis.
They also turned them against the treacherous overtures of the British
imperialists and the Stalinist Soviet chauvinists.

We can do better than them, because we have a better programme, but until
we start fighting with the people for the things the people want -- like
basic democratic rights -- we'll get nowhere. So Bob can lecture about the
need for a vanguard, democratic centralist party as much as he wants, until
he can actually show people that it's a useful weapon against their
oppressors, both foreign and local, he'll be crying in the wilderness.

The national question is becoming *more and more infected and significant*
throughout the world today as the process of imperialist recolonization
gathers pace with the collaboration of capitulationist bourgeois national
governments. As the Balkanization of the former workers states proceeds
apace, the national question is further complicated by explosive minority
issues.

To sweep the national question off the agenda as Bob does is crazy. It must
be tackled and solved, not ignored. To turn your back on the Kosova
question because Serbia is being bombed by NATO is totally inadequate as a
revolutionary response. NATO has no business in Serbia or any other part of
the Balkans where it's getting dug in -- like Macedonia, Albania, Dalmatia,
Bosnia or Kosova itself. Nor does Serbia have any business in Kosova, even
though the Serbian minority there should have every right to their own
culture and social identity and full protection against majority abuse.
(Even t

SV: M-TH: Re: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Bob Malecki]

Charlie wrote..


>I agree with Rob that NATO and the U.S. are the fascist danger in this war. The U.S. 
>neo-colonial empire is built in part of many fascist governments that are fully 
>fascist because of their connection to the reactionary sector or military industrial 
>complex of transnational finance capital. The U.S. military has established or 
>fostered numerous brutal regimes or terrorist gangs around the world for decades -  
>in Korea, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Chile, Panama, Iraq,, just to name a few. 
>One of its neo-colonial modus operandi is to work through comprador fascisms. The 
>U.S. in the Balkans is Big Daddy of fascisms about to lay another one on them. 


Me too.. And to talk about a "national question" under present circumstances is just 
ridiculous. The national question in this case becomes subordinate to the whole war 
and agression by NATO imperialism..

Another interesting thing is the recent German iniative to create and all European 
occupation force of Kosovo. So the united facade of imperialism is beginning to split 
at the seams..

Warm regards
Bob Malecki




 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

M-TH: Sign up

[Charles Brown]

Hey, all you warriors, here's your chance to leave the keyboard for the front!



Americans Volunteer To Join KLA

By VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press Writer

YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) -- Hundreds of Americans in store-bought camouflage
uniforms stood in the parking lot of a suburban New York hotel on Sunday,
volunteering to fight the Serbs.

The men and women were ready for guerrilla war: They pulled shiny new
combat boots and army-green sacks from their Volvos, Chevys and
Mercedes-Benzes.

``Albanians are willing to die for freedom!'' yelled Joseph DioGuardi, head
of the Albanian-American Civic League, to the more than 400 recruits in
military formation.

``Yeah!'' responded 4-year-old Laura Muriqi, whose father, a Manhattan
doorman, stood at attention in his camouflage uniform.

``It's dangerous, but it's the last chance to be free or die,'' said
Remziga Gjonbalaj, tears in her eyes. About 500 family members and friends
watched, weeping and cheering, in the lot outside the Albanian-run Royal
Regency Hotel.
Her brother, a waiter in a New York restaurant, was among the would-be
soldiers leaving this week on charter flights from New York to Tirana,
Albania.

They are to be trained there before attempting to cross the mountainous
border sprinkled with land mines to join the Kosovo Liberation Army.

``I'm very happy I'm sending my son, I'm very proud,'' said Elfet Kodra, a
mother clutching her youngest son's camouflage jacket.

Born in Brooklyn, 19-year-old Isa Kodra is a National Guard platoon
sergeant who was helping with the training. On Sunday, he stood facing the
makeshift battalion, an American flag gracing the sleeve of his camouflage
shirt above an Albanian one. He's taking a leave of absence from the Guard
to fight.

The families were told to say their last good-byes on this raw spring day
at a swearing-in ceremony.

``Bye, daddy!'' said Laura, waving from her aunt's arms to her 34-year-old
father, Feriz Muriqi, who joined up with his 31-year-old brother, Besim.
Wearing her best leather shoes and snow white tights, she held up her tiny
hand and shaped two fingers into a ``V.''

As the recruits placed their hands on their hearts, a soprano with an
Albanian accent sang ``The Star-Spangled Banner,'' followed by the Albanian
anthem.
Then the crowd chanted ``U.S.A.!''

``Are you proud to be American?'' one speaker yelled from a platform
bearing the red-and-black Albanian flag and an American flag. ``Yes!'' they
answered, then broke into roars of ``Kosovo Liberation Army! Free Kosovo!''

That's the mission of Timmy Zherka, 31, who left his wife and three
children, and a job as manager of a Manhattan restaurant, to fight. ``I'm
anxious, but I'm not afraid. I'm going to fight for what we talk about here
-- freedom, liberty, democracy.''

Some recruits spent time in the U.S. military or in the Yugoslav army, but
most are untrained. Their uniforms from Army-Navy surplus stores were
brand-new.
They planned to join the Kosovo rebel force in a last-ditch effort to save
hundreds of thousands of Albanians who have fled their decimated towns and
villages. Most in the Yonkers parking lot had relatives there who are
either dead or missing.

Sanije Bruncaj, 19, was toughened up for combat by her stint as a wide
receiver -- and the only female player -- on her Yonkers high school
football team. About 30 women were among the recruits.

A light rain began to fall as the military formation dissolved into
tear-drenched hugs.

The Kuka family took snapshots.
``I'm happy to go, because they're raping women and killing children
there,'' said Ymer Kuka, 56, who left his job at a Bronx pizzeria.

``If she were there,'' he said, squeezing his 1-year-old granddaughter Nora
in his arms, ``they would kill her too.''

AP-NY-04-11-99 1946EDT

Copyright © Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

M-TH: Forward on U.S./NATO lying propaganda

[Charles Brown]

A forward

Charles Brown

This coveted honor goes to Gen. Wesley K. Clark.  From today's NY Times:

"Earlier Wednesday the NATO Commander, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, said he had
evidence the Serbs had shot up the refugees [traveling in a convoy]
after allied pilots attacked military vehicles near Djakovica, in
southwest Kosovo.  But he did not produce the evidence, and later in
Washington, the Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth H. Bacon, said General Clark
no longer believed that was true and did not have supporting evidence."

And from today's LA Times:

"Last week, NATO initially blamed Yugoslavia for the bombing of a row of
houses in Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina, that killed 10 Serbian
and ethnic Turkish civilians. Later, the alliance acknowledged that its
own bombs were to blame.
 
"On Monday, an allied strike on a railroad bridge left a passenger train
in flames, taking 14 civilian lives, according to Yugoslavia. The train
appeared on the bridge just after the attacking plane released its bomb,
according to film taken from the nose of the plane. With smoke obscuring
much of the scene, the plane circled back and bombed the other end of
the bridge just as the train slid across.*
 
"On Tuesday, NATO bombers struck targets in Pristina that apparently had
no military use: a graveyard, a bus station and a playground."

*Cf today's NY Times: "The single-mindedness of that strike, pursued
even after the pilot knew he had mistakenly hit the train with his first
missile, reflects a ruthlessness that seems inconsistent with antiseptic
notions of an air war."

Carl Remick



 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

Re: M-TH: The understandable war against civilians

[Charles Brown]

>>> Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/14/99 08:16PM >>>
And it is genocide, by international definitions. It is a holocaust. 

Did the holocaust only emerge fully formed at Wannsee in January 1942?

(((

The US is committing genocide right now in Iraq.


Charles Brown



 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

M-TH: Re: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Charles Brown]

I agree with Rob that NATO and the U.S. are the fascist danger in this war. The U.S. 
neo-colonial empire is built in part of many fascist governments that are fully 
fascist because of their connection to the reactionary sector or military industrial 
complex of transnational finance capital. The U.S. military has established or 
fostered numerous brutal regimes or terrorist gangs around the world for decades -  in 
Korea, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Chile, Panama, Iraq,, just to name a few. One of 
its neo-colonial modus operandi is to work through comprador fascisms. The U.S. in the 
Balkans is Big Daddy of fascisms about to lay another one on them. 


Charles Brown

>>> Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/15/99 12:22PM >>>
G'day Thaxists,

>>> He then magnifies ethnic
>>> cleasing and calls it genocide and fascism. This is to demean real
>>> genocide and fascism, both of which are the product of imperialism,
>>> not tiny isolated and beleaguered states like Yugoslavia.

I agree with Dave here.  Where finance capital can not hold sway via the
formal rhetoric of liberal democracy (itself a notion inextricably tied to
that of the sovereign state), it must rearrange and redeploy the political
mechanism so it more directly and nakedly disciplines labour and markets on
finance capital's behalf.  That's from when I learned my stock definitions
during my short dalliance with the Resistance mob back in the late
seventies, anyway.

On that account, NATO is acting much more the fascist than is Milosovic,
whom I read more as an opportunist looking to fan some pre-modern cleavages
to replace the identities dissolved by the fall of the wall.  I see a
pre-emptive strike at Russia's buffer zone, a warning against the less
tractable Russian elements in times of political economic crisis (remember,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were similar warnings - a couple of hundred thousand
dead was, as Albright has since established as US doctrine, 'a price worth
paying'), and - most importantly - a destruction of a potentially
destabilising rogue state such that it'll need to accept any conditions the
IMF cares to exact if it is to survive.  Yugoslavia is being rudely yanked
into the province of international finance capital.  By violence, and
without any pretension of democratic process.  That's pretty close to
fascism, eh?

And genocide isn't the word.  80 000 ethnic Albanians in Belgrade would
attest to that.  This is a civil war marked, as civil wars so often are, by
guerilla tactics and counter-insurgency excesses.  There are, no doubt, a
few genocidal racists involved, but they're everywhere.  We can not explain
phenomena of this scale with recourse to a few nutters, I think.  It is more
in our tradition to assume we're looking at a systemic explanation for why
such irrational obscenities can come about through people acting rationally,
surely?

>>Are you really suggesting that genocide and fascism can not take place
>>within "tiny isolated and beleaguered states"?

I reckon Rwanda was a genocidal situation, and you can't get much more tiny,
isolated and beleaguered than Rwanda.  It wasn't fascist though.  My
impression is that capitalist relations did not predominate throught Rwanda
(beyond Kigali anyway).  On my account (and that of all the Frankfurters),
fascism can emanate only from capitalism-in-crisis.

>>(this might be important for how we interpret the possibility of change in
>>some former parts of the USSR which are now "tiny" and "isolated" ...).

There, I think fascism is a leading contender.  Capitalism-in-crisis with
knobs on.

>Yes, I think Dave needs to specify how Bonapartism -- the apparent solution
>of intolerable tensions between the main classes by a "strongman"/military
>regime that seems to float above the classes -- is somehow excluded from
>states by reason of size.

That could be the go in Russia, too.  Sad, innit.

Hugh writes:

>Our task is to build a working
>class alternative nationally and internationally to challenge this
>inadequate and certainly murderous leadership so that once
>self-determination is achieved we are able to provide real solutions
>instead of letting these bastards fuck us over.

'Once self-determination is achieved'?  The best they can hope for as far as
I can see is the status of minute client state - and even that only
formally, as they'll be constitutionally bound, 'for their protection', to
NATO 'oversight' - like Bosnia is.

>Self-determination, that is the solution of the national question (at least
>as a real possibility, as a political and programmatic goal) is absolutely
>necessary before the majority of Kosovars will be able to see that their
>problems are more than just ethnic and national. And self-determination is
>concrete, we're dealing with real fighters for self-determination, not our
>own wishful dreams of what such fighters should be like. Check out what
>Trotsky had to say about this in relation to the Spanish revolution.

Self-determination for Kosovo is n

M-TH: Re: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Rob Schaap]

G'day Thaxists,

>>> He then magnifies ethnic
>>> cleasing and calls it genocide and fascism. This is to demean real
>>> genocide and fascism, both of which are the product of imperialism,
>>> not tiny isolated and beleaguered states like Yugoslavia.

I agree with Dave here.  Where finance capital can not hold sway via the
formal rhetoric of liberal democracy (itself a notion inextricably tied to
that of the sovereign state), it must rearrange and redeploy the political
mechanism so it more directly and nakedly disciplines labour and markets on
finance capital's behalf.  That's from when I learned my stock definitions
during my short dalliance with the Resistance mob back in the late
seventies, anyway.

On that account, NATO is acting much more the fascist than is Milosovic,
whom I read more as an opportunist looking to fan some pre-modern cleavages
to replace the identities dissolved by the fall of the wall.  I see a
pre-emptive strike at Russia's buffer zone, a warning against the less
tractable Russian elements in times of political economic crisis (remember,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were similar warnings - a couple of hundred thousand
dead was, as Albright has since established as US doctrine, 'a price worth
paying'), and - most importantly - a destruction of a potentially
destabilising rogue state such that it'll need to accept any conditions the
IMF cares to exact if it is to survive.  Yugoslavia is being rudely yanked
into the province of international finance capital.  By violence, and
without any pretension of democratic process.  That's pretty close to
fascism, eh?

And genocide isn't the word.  80 000 ethnic Albanians in Belgrade would
attest to that.  This is a civil war marked, as civil wars so often are, by
guerilla tactics and counter-insurgency excesses.  There are, no doubt, a
few genocidal racists involved, but they're everywhere.  We can not explain
phenomena of this scale with recourse to a few nutters, I think.  It is more
in our tradition to assume we're looking at a systemic explanation for why
such irrational obscenities can come about through people acting rationally,
surely?

>>Are you really suggesting that genocide and fascism can not take place
>>within "tiny isolated and beleaguered states"?

I reckon Rwanda was a genocidal situation, and you can't get much more tiny,
isolated and beleaguered than Rwanda.  It wasn't fascist though.  My
impression is that capitalist relations did not predominate throught Rwanda
(beyond Kigali anyway).  On my account (and that of all the Frankfurters),
fascism can emanate only from capitalism-in-crisis.

>>(this might be important for how we interpret the possibility of change in
>>some former parts of the USSR which are now "tiny" and "isolated" ...).

There, I think fascism is a leading contender.  Capitalism-in-crisis with
knobs on.

>Yes, I think Dave needs to specify how Bonapartism -- the apparent solution
>of intolerable tensions between the main classes by a "strongman"/military
>regime that seems to float above the classes -- is somehow excluded from
>states by reason of size.

That could be the go in Russia, too.  Sad, innit.

Hugh writes:

>Our task is to build a working
>class alternative nationally and internationally to challenge this
>inadequate and certainly murderous leadership so that once
>self-determination is achieved we are able to provide real solutions
>instead of letting these bastards fuck us over.

'Once self-determination is achieved'?  The best they can hope for as far as
I can see is the status of minute client state - and even that only
formally, as they'll be constitutionally bound, 'for their protection', to
NATO 'oversight' - like Bosnia is.

>Self-determination, that is the solution of the national question (at least
>as a real possibility, as a political and programmatic goal) is absolutely
>necessary before the majority of Kosovars will be able to see that their
>problems are more than just ethnic and national. And self-determination is
>concrete, we're dealing with real fighters for self-determination, not our
>own wishful dreams of what such fighters should be like. Check out what
>Trotsky had to say about this in relation to the Spanish revolution.

Self-determination for Kosovo is not concrete though.  Just mebbe the
Yanks'll be mad enough to arm the KLA to the teeth and promise them the
world, so that they can do the necessary ground-war bit on their own -
they've created many such a rod for their own backs before - but I can't see
it this time.  

The NATO plan is built on subjugation of a big lump of strategically
important  ground and labour, I reckon.  Huge economic stakes, but - and
here's the interesting bit - huge political stakes, too.  This is gonna be
sorted by political elites sooner, or by grumbling electorates later - NATO
(and those who've been posing as Social Democrats) might be buried by voters
yet.  As I keep saying, we do have some modest relevance under liberal
democracy - we should ge

Re: M-TH: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Russ]

>Dave B wrote:
>
>> He then magnifies ethnic
>> cleasing and calls it genocide and fascism. This is to demean real
>> genocide and fascism, both of which are the product of imperialism,
>> not tiny isolated and beleaguered states like Yugoslavia.
>
>Are you really suggesting that genocide and fascism can not take place
>within "tiny isolated and beleaguered states"?

Is Serbia fascist and is it conducting genocidal policies- i.e. the
systemetic policy to exterminate a race?
I'm under no illusions about Serbia and as in any civil war I'm certain
that all sorts of atrocities are being committed, but has any hard evidence
ever been produced that Serbia was running death camps, or rape camps for
that matter?

>
>(this might be important for how we interpret the possibility of change in
>some former parts of the USSR which are now "tiny" and "isolated" ...).
>
>btw, in what sense is Yugoslavia "tiny" and "isolated"?

Isolated in the senses that Nato can bomb the hell out of it and no other
nation can/will come to its aid. Tiny in the sense that its population is
10 mill- a little bit larger than London's but a damn sight poorer.

Russ




 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

Re: M-TH: the "imperialist" United Nations

[David Welch]

I personally find it hard to see any daylight between the UN and the
'allies', in any case isn't Chris Burford overlooking the far more serious
rift between the Yugoslavian bourgeoisie and the imperialists. It will be
far more valuable for the British working class to gain an ally in the
struggle against imperialism than an ally who wants a more 'humanitarian'
sort of aggression. 

On Thu, Apr 15, 1999 at 06:55:42AM +0100, Chris Burford wrote:
> 
> This childish comment by Bob Malecki deserves a word from Lenin, since Bob
> is trying to foster the birth of a world centre of Leninist leadership:
> 
> "The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost
> effort, and *without fail* most thoroughly, carefully, attentively and
> skilfully using every, even the smallest, 'rift' among the enemies, of
> every antagonism of interest among the bourgeoisie of the various countries
> and among the various groups of types of bourgeoisie within the various
> countries, and also by taking advantge of every, even the smallest,
> opportunity of gaining a mass ally, even though this ally be temporary,
> vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. 
> 
> Those who fail to understand this, fail to understand even a particle of
> Marxism, or of scientific, modern Socialism *in general*."
> 
> 'Left-Wing' Communism, an infantile disorder. Section 8.
> 
> 
> Chris Burford
> 
> London
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

-- 


 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

Re: M-TH: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Russ]

>I am not convinced that you have firmly hit the nail on the
>ehad here.
>
>Jerry
>


Egrald, you're a pendant.

Russ




 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

Re: M-TH: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Hugh Rodwell]

>Dave B wrote:
>
>> He then magnifies ethnic
>> cleasing and calls it genocide and fascism. This is to demean real
>> genocide and fascism, both of which are the product of imperialism,
>> not tiny isolated and beleaguered states like Yugoslavia.
>
>Are you really suggesting that genocide and fascism can not take place
>within "tiny isolated and beleaguered states"?
>
>(this might be important for how we interpret the possibility of change in
>some former parts of the USSR which are now "tiny" and "isolated" ...).
>
>btw, in what sense is Yugoslavia "tiny" and "isolated"?
>
>I am not convinced that you have firmly hit the nail on the
>ehad here.
>
>Jerry


Yes, I think Dave needs to specify how Bonapartism -- the apparent solution
of intolerable tensions between the main classes by a "strongman"/military
regime that seems to float above the classes -- is somehow excluded from
states by reason of size.

Also he needs to sharpen up on how the national rights of the Albanians are
being fought for empirically right now by any other force than the KLA.
Anything else is abstract. It's like the Shiny Shit, Saddam Hussein, the
IRA and the ETA. Unpalatable politically for sure, but concrete fighters
against the oppressor nation right now. Our task is to build a working
class alternative nationally and internationally to challenge this
inadequate and certainly murderous leadership so that once
self-determination is achieved we are able to provide real solutions
instead of letting these bastards fuck us over.

Self-determination, that is the solution of the national question (at least
as a real possibility, as a political and programmatic goal) is absolutely
necessary before the majority of Kosovars will be able to see that their
problems are more than just ethnic and national. And self-determination is
concrete, we're dealing with real fighters for self-determination, not our
own wishful dreams of what such fighters should be like. Check out what
Trotsky had to say about this in relation to the Spanish revolution.

And lastly, what is going on in Kosova is pretty obviously genocide, and
Dave misses the symbiosis between the Milosevic regime and imperialism.
First off, imperialism's role as an instigator of genocide is blatantly
obvious given the uprooting of the entire Kosovar population since the NATO
bombs started. Secondly, it should be obvious that the Milosevic regime is
a counter-revolutionary product of the complete perversion of the old
Titoist bureaucracy in Yugoslavia, which in its turn is the result of the
original bureaucratic counter-revolution under Stalin in the USSR, the
capitulation of this counter-revolution to restorationist capitalism in
89-90, and the effects of all this (all caused by pressure from world
imperialism that the  political and social forces of the young and isolated
Soviet workers' state couldn't withstand adequately) on the Balkanized
states with their petty-bourgeois nationalist regimes in ex-Yugoslavia.

As for the relationship of rump Yugoslavia to the workers state created by
the Yugoslav revolution, it is clear that the two main forces making that
revolution possible -- on the one hand, national self-determination at
republic and regional level within a pan-Yugoslav national state federation
with far-reaching guarantees for ethnic minorities ("unity") and on the
other, social justice with workers' power and confiscation of bourgeois
productive forces ("brotherhood") -- have been utterly perverted by the
Milosevic regime.

NATO OUT OF SERBIA! STOP THE BOMBING!

SERBIA OUT OF KOSOVA! STOP THE GENOCIDE!

NATO AND IMPERIALISM OUT OF THE BALKANS!

FOR A SOCIALIST FEDERATION OF FREE BALKAN STATES!

Cheers,

Hugh





 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

M-TH: hitting the nail on the ehad?

[Gerald Levy]

Dave B wrote:
 
> He then magnifies ethnic 
> cleasing and calls it genocide and fascism. This is to demean real 
> genocide and fascism, both of which are the product of imperialism, 
> not tiny isolated and beleaguered states like Yugoslavia.

Are you really suggesting that genocide and fascism can not take place
within "tiny isolated and beleaguered states"?

(this might be important for how we interpret the possibility of change in
some former parts of the USSR which are now "tiny" and "isolated" ...).

btw, in what sense is Yugoslavia "tiny" and "isolated"?

I am not convinced that you have firmly hit the nail on the
ehad here.

Jerry



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M-TH: Re: NATO's corporate friends

[Charles Brown]

This article Doug posted is open and obvious evidence of the military industrial 
complex, and direct support and connecton between the ruling class for the 
institutions of war and militarism. A sort of smoking gun of capitalist mass murder. 
It is some refutation of the arguments being made that the U.S./NATO attack on 
Yugoslavia is without economic or business motives. Would business people be doing 
this if the U.S. military and NATO were carrying out any wars that the transnational 
monopoly  corps. and banks consider against their interests ? I don't think so.  Would 
these business people be this enthusiastic (even with the token or symbolic amounts of 
money for them ) about NATO if there weren't big bucks for them somewhere in the 
current war ? Give me a break. Clinton and the U.S. government, Blair et al. are the 
executive. They serve at the pleasure of the Board of Directors. The list of companies 
(in Doug's original post) are a representative committee of  the Board of Di!
!
rectors of Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.

Of course, some might think the Bourgeoisie are concerned about humanity in Yugoslavia 
and around the world. Yea, they are concerned that they control mass human labor 
power. They can't kill everybody, just lots of people.

Charles Brown

>>> Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/14/99 12:58PM >>>
The Washington Post - April 13, 1999

COUNT CORPORATE AMERICA AMONG NATO'S STAUNCHEST ALLIES

By Tim Smart

For many Washingtonians, the NATO military alliance's upcoming
50th-anniversary bash may end up being notable only for nightmare
traffic tie-ups. For a few companies, though, the summit could be the
ultimate marketing opportunity.
A handful of top-drawer U.S. companies -- including heavyweights
such as Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. as well as upstarts
such as Nextel Communications Inc., a McLean-based wireless
communications firm -- will be the gathering's hosts and as such will
get to showcase their wares and schmooze with top military and
political leaders from 44 nations at events taking place throughout the
District.
A dozen companies have paid $250,000 apiece in cash or "in-kind"
contributions for the privilege of having their chief executives serve as
directors of the NATO summit's host committee. The group is a
private-sector support system raising $8 million to finance the April 23-
25 event.

-clip-



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M-TH: True Anti-fascism

[Charles Brown]

_

 The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 5 March 99
   Vol. 3, Number 18 (#227)
__

 ANTI-FASCIST ACTION ALERT: #57 -- CIVIL RIGHTS IN NEW ZEALAND
  N.Z. Government Moves To Enact Repressive Intel Legislation

The New Zealand Government is proposing an imminent law change which
would extend the powers of the New Zealand Security Intelligence
Service (NZSIS) to break and enter into "any place" in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Bill 1998 is being
rushed through Parliament after the December 1998 NZ Court of Appeal
ruling which found that NZSIS interception warrants do not confer the
right to enter private property.

 This arose from a civil court action (Choudry v Attorney-General)
taken against the NZSIS after two NZSIS agents were caught breaking
into the home of GATT Watchdog organiser and anti-APEC activist Aziz
Choudry.  The break-in took place during an alternative conference on
APEC and free trade which Aziz was involved with organising, just
prior to the 1996 APEC Trade Ministers Meeting in Christchurch. see:

   - - - - -

  ANTI-FASCIST ACTION ALERT: #58 -- STOP THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ
National Day of Coordinated Protests  -- March 11, 1999

The International Action Center urges all anti-war activists and anti-
sanctions groups to take to the streets on Thursday, March 11 as part
of a coordinated protest against the criminal bombing of Iraq, which
has become a daily event.

More bombs and missiles have dropped on Iraq since the conclusion of
the so-called Operation Desert Fox bombing between Dec. 16 and 19.
Hundreds of civilians have died.  Scores of targets vital to Iraq's
civilian infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed.

The bombing is designed to strengthen the impact of sanctions.  It is a
pre-meditated plan to increase the suffering of the Iraqi people.  The
bombing violates U.S. law.  It is an undeclared but real war. see:






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Re: M-TH: Fascism?

[Charles Brown]

>>> Russ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/15/99 09:50AM >>>

Yes, dave hits the nail firmly on the ehad here. Democratic Imperialism indeed!

I too am troubled by Chris's bandying around of terms such as 'fascism',
'ethnic cleansing' and when he adds to this the claim that what is
happening in Kosovo is on par with the Holocaust he positions himself
firmly in the middle of the bourgeoisie's attempts to normalise the Final
Solution. It's interesting to note  that denuded of the Red Threat, the
bourgois thinkers continually hark back to the the thirties and WW2. When
the imperialist powers hold temporarily themselves back from bombing a
small state back into the middle ages, it's called 'appeasement', ie the
argument being that Iraq, Serbia, Libya ,Panama, Somalia etc etc are the New
Third Reich and they too must not be appeased, or they'll have invaded
Poland be in Paris before we know it! And 'fascist' too- this word has been
so misused as to be debased, a near worthless coin that buys cheap
damnation of any  party deemed worthy of a western missile. Chris claims he
likes precision, so precisely how are the Serbs fascists?
And so as to the Holocaust- in what way can the systematic mechanised
attempt by the Nazis to kill every single Jew on the face of the earth be
equated with a civil war? No matter how bloody, such wars pale into
comparison when put against the factories of death. No Chris, this ain't
genocide, this is not the Holocaust returning- but if return it does, it
will be at the hands of those firing the cruise missiles.

(((

Ditto.


Charles Brown

Get the goddamn U.S. out of everywhere !




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M-TH: Fascism?

[Russ]

Dave B writes:

>So Burford smears  all Serbs with ultrapatriotism and holds them
>all accountable for ethnic cleansing. He then magnifies ethnic
>cleasing and calls it genocide and fascism. This is to demean real
>genocide and fascism, both of which are the product of imperialism,
>not tiny isolated and beleaguered states like Yugoslavia. And its
>purpose is to say that democratic imperialism is the only progressive
>way out in Kosovo.
>

Yes, dave hits the nail firmly on the ehad here. Democratic Imperialism indeed!

I too am troubled by Chris's bandying around of terms such as 'fascism',
'ethnic cleansing' and when he adds to this the claim that what is
happening in Kosovo is on par with the Holocaust he positions himself
firmly in the middle of the bourgeoisie's attempts to normalise the Final
Solution. It's interesting to note  that denuded of the Red Threat, the
bourgois thinkers continually hark back to the the thirties and WW2. When
the imperialist powers hold temporarily themselves back from bombing a
small state back into the middle ages, it's called 'appeasement', ie the
argument being that Iraq, Serbia, Lybia Panama, Somalia etc etc are the New
Third Reich and they too must not be appeased, or they'll have invaded
Poland be in Paris before we know it! And 'fascist' too- this word has been
so misused as to be debased, a near worthless coin that buys cheap
damnation of any  party deemed worthy of a western missile. Chris claims he
likes precision, so precisely how are the Serbs fascists?
And so as to the Holocaust- in what way can the systematic mechanised
attempt by the Nazis to kill every single Jew on the face of the earth be
equated with a civil war? No matter how bloody, such wars pale into
comparison when put against the factories of death. No Chris, this ain't
genocide, this is not the Holocaust returning- but if return it does, it
will be at the hands of those firing the cruise missiles.



Russ




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