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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (10048)	5/27/1999 10:20:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Ron, Agreed! But allow me to rephrase your last words: That is why I believe the European people's hands are not clean in this. They live too close to the problem, not thousands of miles away. They meet those who have dealt with the cleansing, whether perpetrated by Serbs, Bosnians, or Croatians. It simply doesn't take a genius to realize that much of what has transpired in Europe has been the result of Milo's oppressive, rather than inclusive, policies. His have been the politics of fear and brutality, not those of a true leader deserving to govern Yugoslavia. Got the picture, Ron? As I told you in my previous posts, Milo's ethnic-minded politics is appealing to the European populace at large. Your American idealistic mindset fonded of equal opportunities and ethnic-blind rationale doesn't fit in smoothly with Europe's classist and stratum-aware social fabric... That's the underlying, unspoken culture clash at stake in the Kosovo crisis. And that's the stumbling block preventing the whole of NATO from engaging resolutely in a lethal blow against Serbia. Do you remember these scraps of Vlaams Blok politics I brought you a few weeks ago? So, you must be aware of Europe's nationalist breakaway. In the US, after one or two generations, immigrants from Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, whatever, end up all in the same cultural mould and, to a lesser extent, even colored people are offered some social outlets --depending on their respective ethnic background. For instance, Chinese-born Charles Wang (Computer Assoc. CEO) would have never made it in the US military (ie reaching a field officer level) but the high-tech/corporate avenue laid wide open for his self fulfillment. Such a multicultural melting pot doesn't work that way in Europe: people over here go on labelling you with your ethnic/class background regardless of your personal achievements. Although even in the US people talk of ''invisible ceilings and walls'' impeding individuals in their sociological endeavours, in Europe, everybody is somewhat a ''blocked ascendant'' in a class-conscious society. Obviously, the danger thickens ominously as these class biases coincide with ethnic biases... Here's a clear example: in the US, neoconservative folks will blame black people individually, claiming that this Black man or that Black woman didn't make it because he or she was lazy. Contrariwise, in Belgium, for instance, Flemings will blame Walloons in a general way, claiming that Wallonia at large is inapt and, in the end, they might tend to associate the Walloon ethnicity with laziness. Indeed, Europe's not out of the woods yet! Regards, Gustave.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (10048)	5/27/1999 10:34:00 AM
From: JBL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Look Ron, there is a good reason why the Geneva Convention does exist. It exists because Nations have recognized that some basic moral rules are necessary when countries are at war. When soldiers break those rules, this entitles me, and you, to make a moral judgment about those who are responsible for breaking these basic rules. That the Serbs are guilty of atrocities and ethnic cleansing, there can be no doubt about. But the fact that Serbs are guilty of those atrocities does not give NATO's commanders the right to disregard and break those rules. The bombing of RTS (especially when CNN was told by NATO to get out the night before) was not acceptable. Likewise, the policy of hurting civilians to pressure Milosevic, as admitted by Short, is not acceptable either. I am no pacifist Ron, but the continuation of this failure of a war has become an aberration :a moral and humanitarian war which produced a human disaster, being fought with morally dubious means, and led by a bunch of con artists who pretend to be statesmen by refusing to admit to their mistakes.