For any oneinterested there are some interesting and detailed
discussions happening onthe anarchy and auto-sy lists. Bothof which are
run by the spoon collective. - below is an example...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 22:27:48 EDT
From: Montyneill@xxxxxxx
Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: AUT: FW: The Balkan crisis
A few thoughts:
1) Chris forwarded a piece on the role of the banks -- I had read similar
material during the height (depth?) of the Bosnian story. To add to it, as
background, was calculated political actions by Italian fascists looking to
exacerbate tensions, esp. between Croats and Serbs, thus fueling the overall
tension and the breakup. That is, facing economic collapse, the fascists
spread kill the other ethnic group (rather than class unity) -- manipulations
that unfortunately had substantial success. Not a direct cause of the Kosovo
story as far as I know, but surely a factor.
2) If the point of the background on France-US rapprochement perhaps at the
expense of Germany is to try to place "inter-imperialist rivalry" at the
center of the Kosovo story, I find it thoroughly unconvincing. Chomsky has
this line, as have others, and it echoes the same claims about when the US
attacked Iraq ("Gulf War"). While re: Iraq the Europeans and Japanese funded
the US, now the various European powers actively participate in the bombing.
This "rivalry" is non-existent in this period of transnational capital, is
contradicted by the most salient facts, and seems to be rooted in some
leftover Leninist ideology.
3) That said, I for one do not have a satisfactory explanation of the events.
Maybe they are rather what they seem -- US arrogance and short-sighted
militarism, for example. But if there is something deeper at work, as perhaps
there is, then we need to be thinking in a different context, weighing such
factors as: profitability problems in most locales of capital, including West
Europe; inability to really expand into Russia, which would be useful among
other things for undermining the West European working class that has thus
far blocked relatively well neoliberal moves to cut wages and intensify work;
spreading (still) world financial crisis, of which Russia is a big part. All
of this suggests that if anything is a target, it is Russia. But, then, why
Kosovo now? And what would the connections be as played out in real actions
leading to possible changes in Russia useful to transnational capital? This
is of course speculation on my part (arising from some Midnight Note
discussions recently held). The point is that a lot of thinking needs to be
done, especially if there is indeed something more fundamental going on in
Kosovo.
I hope, therefore, I've spurrred some further thinking.
Monty Neill
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