Re: More Delightful Insight from Jared

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Owen Jones:
>The Albanians didn't think: "oh, let's really get at those Serbs we
>hate so much and disrupt their state, hee hee hee aren't we evil." It was a
>natural response to oppression. "Beatings"??? The only beatings I have
>knowledge of are those by the forces of the Yugoslav State. Evidence please,
>and make sure it hasn't been doctored.

I don't know whether to be more depressed or more angry over this kind of
howling ignorance. Whatever you think of Jared Israel, there is no question
about his willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to document his
arguments. I suspect that his phone bills are over $250 a month, much of it
in interviews with Serbs. On the other hand, I doubt if Owen has even taken
the slightest bit of trouble to read some of the more important background
material on Kosovo, let alone interview Albanian nationalists.

One of the seminal texts on the Kosovo conflict was written by Miranda
Vickers. Titled "Between Serb and Albanian", it is a defense of the right
of Kosovo to secede. This does not prevent her from reporting accurately.
She states that on the occasion of the initial student protests at the
University of Pristina in the EARLY 1980s, Serbs and Montenegrins were
attacked at random on the streets and beaten senseless.

Take the fucking book out of a library and check it out for yourself, Owen.
If it is "doctored", then you have to ask yourself how bad the Albanian
nationalist movement really was if its friends reported such goings on.

Reporting on this racist and reactionary stew is not a sign that you are a
Milosevic apologist, although people in the general ideological orbit of
the Fourth International (all 57 varieties) would have you believe it so.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is the most respected
left-liberal watchdog in the United States. This is what they said on
Kosovo, which agrees substantially with the version of events reported by
Kosovo secessionist supporter Miranda Vickers:

>>New York Times correspondent David Binder filed a report in 1982
(11/28/82): "In violence growing out of the Pristina University riots of
March 1981, a score of people have been killed and hundreds injured. There
have been almost weekly incidents of rape, arson, pillage and industrial
sabotage, most seemingly designed to drive Kosovo's remaining indigenous
Slavs--Serbs and Montenegrins--out of the province."

Describing an attempt to set fire to a 12-year-old Serbian boy, Binder
reported (11/9/82): "Such incidents have prompted many of Kosovo's Slavic
inhabitants to flee the province, thereby helping to fulfill a nationalist
demand for an ethnically 'pure' Albanian Kosovo. The latest Belgrade
estimate is that 20,000 Serbs and Montenegrins have left Kosovo for good
since the 1981 riots."

"Ethnically pure," of course, is another way to translate the phrase
"ethnically clean"--as in "ethnic cleansing." The first use of this concept
to appear in Nexis was in relation to the Albanian nationalists' program
for Kosovo: "The nationalists have a two-point platform," the Times'
Marvine Howe quotes a Communist (and ethnically Albanian) official in
Kosovo (7/12/82), "first to establish what they call an ethnically clean
Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater
Albania." All of the half-dozen references in Nexis to "ethnically clean"
or "ethnic cleansing" over the next seven years attribute the phrase to
Albanian nationalists.

The New York Times returned to the Kosovo issue in 1986, when the paper's
Henry Kamm (4/28/86) reported that Slavic Yugoslavians "blame ethnic
Albanians?for continuing assaults, rape and vandalism. They believe their
aim is to drive non-Albanians out of the province." He reported suspicions
by Slavs that the autonomous Communist authorities in Kosovo were covering
up anti-Slavic crimes, including arson at a nunnery and the brutal
mutilation of a Serbian farmer. Kamm quoted a prescient "Western diplomat"
who described Kosovo as "Yugoslavia's single greatest problem."<<

Yes, I know. Henry Kamm, Marvine Howe and David Binder are all part of a
vast conspiracy of Milosevic apologists. Me and Jared Israel organized
them. We have secret handshakes and everything.




Louis Proyect
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