Stephen : I haven't a down on either the Serbs or the Kosovars.
I have a down on NATO. While purporting to be helping the Kosovars, they are simply playing war games and smashing up the infrastructure of a sovereign state in violation of the UN charter. This precipitated the violent reprisals of the Serbs against the Albanians. I am no lover of Milosevic, but I can certainly understand his feeling when arbitrary people choose to take his country away. In fact, that is the way most Serbs feel who did not previously support him. Now they are four square behind him. For your information, I am a radio ham and during the Croatian and Bosnian war I refused to talk to Serb stations because I was so annoyed with them. So, my attitute towards Serbs has changed diametrically because of the way NATO has treated them.
It is my belief that airstrikes are simply meddlesone interference which, clearly, cannot and did not solve the problem in the short term. And certainly they can't solve the problem in the long term. That is why Albright was in Moscow yesterday --- to seek help for the mess she created.
Re the bantu in SArica that is, indeed, a very good analogy. However, the whites and blacks solved the problem and continue to solve the problem by negotiation and good-will which has been reciprocated to an enormous extent. While we have racial problems in South Africa they are, today, probably less that exists in the US or in most western countries. The idea of a pogrom is preposterous --- unless it will be by the "extreme right wing" Afrikaner nationalists --- and even then, I very much doubt it. Of course, there will be racial incidents, as in the US or most other Western countries, but a racially disposed uprising, not in my lifetime! Unfortunately, the economy is bad and poverty and lack of education add to our problems.
In fact, it is South Africa which is coming to the aid of Britain and America. It is through Mandela that the court case of the Libyans, allegedly involved in the Lockerbie bomb incident, was started. Right now, Yasser Arafat is in Johannesburg getting SAf support for a new Palestinian state which Britain and US have steadfastly refused to do. South Africa is, in fact, the leader of the "non aligned" nations of the world and we have a lot to be proud about. |
