Re: Kosova



Fresh ideas from a friend but will they work?


>i have been thinking about kosovo and all the hard

>questions it raises for people like us who are opposed to imperialism
and

>fascist nationalism and fundamentalism. many people on the left are

>sickened by the fascist genocide being carried out against ethnic
albanian

>in kosovo and want to take some kind of action to help stop it. this
is a

>healthy response, however the left is so weak in the us and
internationally

>that it actually has few practical options. this is our dilemma we have
no

>organized forces to put into play and therefore all practical options
are

>discussions of what we want other forces; NATO, the UN, the KLA ,
etc

>to do. we're trying to play with other people's money and game pieces.
this

>leads to bad politics and inevitable opportunism.

>

>we have to start from our real situation, we are disorganized and cannot
be

>a force for good changes in the world until we reorganize and we
cannot

>reorganize until we understand the causes of our world historical defeat

>the defeat of socialism has changed everything for us tactically and

>strategically. the left still thinks and acts as if we had a mass
socialist

>movement and a socialist camp. this is one of the things that
disorients

>leftists today, the left has been a world historical player for over a

>hundred years since the rise of the german socialdemocracy in germany
in

>the 1880's, but is no longer. today the oppressed are almost totally

>defenseless, organizationally and ideologically. so when struggles and

>crises break out now the political options are always terrible for
us..

>choosing the lesser evil does not help matters and often makes them
worse.

>but until the oppressed build new organizations and a new vision of

>liberation there will be more kosovos and more rwandas. so for me the
most

>important thing in kosovo is to support and encourage all those
actions

>that build political autonomy and self-reliance of the most oppressed
:

>primarily poor women, children and youths , those that have the least

>privilege and power under patriarchy, and always suffer the most in war
and

>under fascism. we have to struggle to build relationships and
encourage

>political dialogue with poor women and anti-war youths in kosovo and

>serbia and montenegro and raise the question of overturning patriarchy
in

>all its forms, fascist, "democratic" capitalist and "socialist" .

>

> i believe that only an oppressed, third world women-led
anti-patriarchal

>revolution will stop fascism and genocide. kosovo is a power struggle

>between competing gangs of patriarchal fascist men, NATO being the

>biggest and most dangerous of these gangs. until women and their male

>allies, mostly the children and youths organize independently tney will
be

>at the mercy of all the countless male mafias that are infesting the
world

>today. to call for resistance to male fascism today means asking
ourselves

>and our friends to challenge very powerful, brutal armed groups of men,
and

>this scares everyone. real resistance means sacrifices and possible
death,

>but non-resistance and remaining political beggars at the table of
history

>means sure death and continued defeat for oppressed women everywhere.
would

>the ethnic albanian women who are being evicted from their homes, raped
and

>murdered, their families broken up, be any worse off if they organized

>armed women's militias to defend themselves, i don't think so, the KLA
has

>shown that it cant defend them, NATO ? hah, thats a joke, the left?
not

>hardly. armed women fighting patriarchy in kosovo would take heavy

>casualties you say. but women in kosovo are aleady taking heavy
casualties,

>without any thing to show for it. this way at least their losses would

>become meaningful as the first steps toward building a future free of

>genocide and wars , and capitalism and fascism

>

>this at least is where our thinking needs to go, toward new autonomous

>,self-reliant, anti-patriarchal organizatios of the oppressed, not in

>choosing between the equally suicidal options patriarchal politics

>offers us today. the emergence of independent anti-patriarchal
women's

>resistance groups would revolutionize world politics and offer us a
way

>forward out of our present hopelessness and powerlessness.

>

>

<bold> u can forward this to anyone you think will listen,

*************************

</bold>>

>>>I believe the United Nations have opposed the NATO campaign. What is

>>>interesting is that NATO has deployed human rights as a vehicle for
war.

>>>This is not to ignore the serious human rights breaches by the
Serbian

>>>regime. Didn't the US also deploy human rights as a reason for their

>>>continued intervention in Iraq. I must say, though, I do not
understand the

>>>continued existence of NATO which was intially set up as a defensive
pact

>>>against the Soviet Union and its east European satellites.

>>>

>>>At 14:26 15/04/99 EDT, you wrote:

>>>>The Nation, April 26, 1999

>>>>

>>>> The Case Against Inaction

>>>>

>>>> Sadly, some on the left are angrier about NATO's bombing

>>>> than they are about the Serbian forces' atrocities, even though

>>>> Milosevic's men have killed more in one Kosovan village than

>>>> have all the airstrikes. Those who want an immediate NATO

>>>> cease-fire owe the world an explanation of how they propose

>>>> to stop and reverse the massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, in

>>>> light of Milosevic's history as a serial ethnic cleanser and

>>>> promise-breaker. Arguments that the NATO action diminishes

>>>> the stature of the United Nations are, to say the least, highly

>>>> questionable. What could diminish the UN's stature more than

>>>> Milosevic's successful defiance of more than fifty Security

>>>> Council resolutions? Only last September, Resolution 1199,

>>>> invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter, ordered Belgrade to

>>>> "cease all action by the security forces affecting the civilian

>>>> population and order the withdrawal of security units used for

>>>> civilian repression" in Kosovo. Only last October, Milosevic

>>>> promised to reduce troop numbers in Kosovo, and his pledge

>>>> was endorsed and given the force of international law by

>>>> Security Council Resolution 1203. By the time the

>>>> Rambouillet negotiations had started, he had more troops in

>>>> Kosovo than ever before, and they had already begun their

>>>> well-prepared campaign of ethnic cleansing.

>>>>

>>>> Real internationalists can hardly use the dubious rights of

>>>> "national sovereignty" to oppose action to stop massacres.

>>>> Opposition to US military intervention is an understandable

>>>> rule of thumb, but it shouldn't become obsessive dogma. After

>>>> all, most Europeans were happy with US intervention in

>>>> World War II. The British court decisions on Gen. Augusto

>>>> Pinochet show that, at last, politicians who murder cannot

>>>> expect amnesty afterwards. Why should Slobodan Milosevic

>>>> expect impunity as he carries out crimes against humanity?

>>>>

>>>> Ideally, there should have been a UN Security Council vote

>>>> endorsing military action, but China and Russia had made it

>>>> plain that no matter what barbarities Milosevic committed

>>>> they would veto any such resolution. Happily, most of the

>>>> Council agreed that ethnic cleansing was not something that

>>>> could be shielded behind a dubious claim of national

>>>> sovereignty and soundly defeated, 12 votes to 3, a Russian

>>>> draft resolution condemning the bombing. Only Namibia

>>>> joined Beijing and Moscow. NATO, most of whose

>>>> governments are members of the Socialist International,

>>>> agreed on a military response.

>>>>

>>>> In short, the court of international public opinion has

>>>> implicitly, resoundingly, endorsed military action. Milosevic

>>>> is clearly counting on past experience that the international

>>>> community will compromise, accept the results of ethnic

>>>> cleansing and leave him in power. We hope that this time he

>>>> has miscalculated. Three of the major European

>>>> players--Britain, France and Germany--under like-minded

>>>> left-of-center governments have united in their determination

>>>> to stop him, and they have popular majorities for doing so.

>>>>

>>>> Soon NATO will be faced with two alternatives: stop the

>>>> bombing and "negotiate," or commit ground troops. The

>>>> bombing should stop only when Belgrade agrees to pull out or

>>>> is pushed out of Kosovo, if necessary by ground troops. For

>>>> most of this decade Milosevic has used negotiations as a cover

>>>> to consolidate the gains of ethnic cleansing.

>>>>

>>>> The precondition for a cease-fire must be the withdrawal of

>>>> Serbian troops and police from Kosovo and their replacement

>>>> by an international force, mostly NATO but including

>>>> Russians if they want to become involved--and can afford to.

>>>> (No one who saw the UN in inaction in Bosnia could wish UN

>>>> forces on the long-suffering Kosovars.) Of course, the present

>>>> campaign carries risks. To exorcise its frustration and put off

>>>> the inevitable involvement on the ground, the White House

>>>> will be increasingly tempted to escalate attacks on civilian
and

>>>> economic targets. The sooner ground troops are committed to

>>>> clear Kosovo of Serbian forces and allow the refugees to

>>>> return, the less temptation there will be, and the more likely

>>>> that Milosevic will withdraw. Successful military action

>>>> would also strengthen the prospects for democracy in Serbia.

>>>> Much of the Serbian opposition argues that airstrikes weaken

>>>> their position. In fact, it would be impossible to weaken their

>>>> position on Kosovo: Even fewer of them explicitly oppose the

>>>> repression there than resisted the war in Bosnia. In reality,

>>>> Serbia cannot have democracy and Kosovo.

>>>>

>>>> There will be casualties, but the Serbian army and police,

>>>> although fearsome against unarmed civilians, will be far from

>>>> home, in hostile territory without air cover. The alternative
is

>>>> a terminal weakening of all the precarious advances in

>>>> international humanitarian law that have been achieved over

>>>> the past decade--not to mention the deaths and exile of

>>>> hundreds of thousands of Kosovars.

>>>>

>>>> Bogdan Denitch and Ian Williams

>>>>

>>>> Bogdan Denitch, director of the Institute for Transitions to

>>>> Democracy, which operates in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, is

>>>> the author of Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of

>>>> Yugoslavia (Minnesota). Ian Williams is The Nation's

>>>> United Nations correspondent.

>>>>

>>>>

>>>>

>>>

>>The foucaldien ethos has already reached his/her eternal utopia in
the

>>"present". No need for further move!

>

>"Solidarity is running the same risks."

> - Che Guevara

>("La solidarieta' significa correre gli stessi rischi.")

>

>

>

<bold><italic>The foucaldien ethos has already reached his/her eternal
utopia in the "present". No need for further move!

</italic></bold>



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