From: finlay_j@spcvxb.spc.edu
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: y
Summary: Bosnian civil war
Date: 13 Aug 92 10:49:19 GMT
Followup-To: Bosnian civil war
Organization: St. Peter's College, US

It's distressing to see an absence of comments or reflections
on the war in Bosnia. I've read pretty well every newsgroup
which should be dwelling on the issues, and apart from
soc.culture.yugoslavia I really haven't seen much. Apart
from three fine articles extracted from the Progressive
Jewish Mailing List in Activ-l, there's been a real dearth 
perspective and information.

For a variety of reasons, the war in Bosnia needs
to be discussed by activists. First, the situation is not
as it has been presented in the media. If one went by
the TV stories, you'd say Milosevich was another Saddam,
and the Yugoslav Army was on its way towards being the
Republican Guard. The real situation is much more
complicated. There's a civil war going on--a bloody,
brutal civil war; certainly there have been atrocities,
but not on the systematic basis that the networks have
been claiming. To hear the stories, one would think
Serbia's blood-lust was insatiable. No-one seems to
understand that there are three parties in this war,
the Serbs (an ethnic minority in Bosnia), the Muslims
and the Croats. The Serbs see themselves as defending
their rights in a new state whose leader is an Islamic
fundamentalist. Naturally, the Serbs in Serbia are
sympathetic to their fellow-Serbs through the rest of
the Yugoslav federation. 

The media has made much of the camps. First they were
calling them death camps. Now, for some reason they are
calling the Serbian camps "detention centers" and the
Croatian camps "prisoner of war camps." I'd hazard as
guess that most of the camps are POW camps. If they
were death camps, I doubt whoever was running them
would be eager to show them off. So far, looking
at the pictures, I've seen some very badly fed,
badly looked after people, but these are not like
the Nazi death camps. Each of the three sides has
camps, some worse than others; some I'm sure have
been witness to atrocities. Each of the three
sides has carried on "ethnic cleansing." There's
a lot that's not being reported in the news.

Second, if you're concerned with the next gear-shift
in the New World Order, Serbia seems like a place to watch.
I know Serbians, and they are bewildered by the way
their country is being portrayed in the western
media. They feel their country has a long tradition of
ethnic tolerance, and they cannot understand how,
having fought with the Allies in WWII and suffered
appalling genocide themselves, they are now seen
in such malevolent terms. Could it be that they are
about to be sold down the river? Germany is expanding
again, looking for new territories and markets. The
main reasons Denmark voted "no" to the Maastricht treaty
were, as one anti-Maastricht activist put it, "Germany,
Germany and Germany." The Danes voted AGAINST guaranteeing
their own economic security as a member-state in a unified
Europe because they feared being swallowed up, incorporated
into a "Greater Germany." Does this make Germany's support
for Croatian independence any more meaningful? Is the United
States obliged to go along with the Satanization of the
Serbs because the American economy is shot and
basically inferior or unable to compete with the much more
powerful German-led European economy? If the Serbs are
presented in such a way that there is no reason in the world 
to love them, then crushing them with an Iraq-style air
war and hemming in little Serbia (which, like Iraq, is
nearly landlocked) would pave the way for neocolonialism
on the Adriatic coast.

Third, there's the question of racism, which is very strong
in the Bosnian situation. The media subtext seems to be
that "civilization" must somehow be protected from
thye depradations of savages. There is a very strong
sense being given off of "the Huns at the Gate," don't
you think? One has the feeling that it is up to "the
forces of good" (whoever has the bombs) to defend the
West (the developed and prosperous countries) against
the Infidels (countries unfortunate enough to be involved
in wars that encroach upon Western interests).

I'd like to hear from other activists their views
about Yugoslavia

Jeff Finlay
St. Peter's College
Jersey City, USA
Xref: sparky alt.activism:15108 talk.politics.misc:40694 soc.culture.latin-america:3156