Re: [Marxism] re: Christian Parenti, etc.

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

John Cox wrote:
> sorry for not reading every article on the Web
> site - but you still haven't tried to dispute the Lippmans' assertions
> about Milosevic's crimes.

Just to remind comrades of the article in question. It is an attack on
Christian Parenti, the son of Michael Parenti. Christian is now on George
Soros's payroll, of all things. I had my own beef with Christian a while
back, when he told Doug Henwood that Iraqis said, "Please take our oil. We
just want the electricity back on and the criminals off the street." You
can read Parenti's article at:

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/parenti-response.htm

It is titled "Kosovo: The Devil and the Details" and is filled with
specious logic, hyperbole, demagogic appeals and outright lies. It is
co-authored by Roger Lippman, Peter Lippman, and Dave Lippman, who I am cc'ing.

Their basic problem, as is so often the case with Kosovo, is that they
start the history in 1989. They write, "The Serbian assault on Kosovo in
1988-99 left the province with no government to speak of and precious
little infrastructure." What could have caused the dastardly Serbs to
invade Kosovo? A desire for lebensraum? In order to understand the
background on this, you have to go back before 1989. If you go to Fairness
and Accuracy in Media's (FAIR) website, you will learn that the first
instance of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia took place years earlier in
Kosovo, but it was directed against the Serbs. I understand that this fact
is inconvenient to some, but is crucial to understanding the historical
context. For FAIR's willingness to buck the humanitarian intervention
consensus, they have been labeled as "holocaust deniers" by Attila Hoare.

The Lippmans put a positive spin on the UN colonial administration of
Kosovo, telling us that they helped to get rid of pollution at the Trepca
mines. They somehow neglect to mention that this is in the context of
selling off the assets at Trepca to the highest multinational bidder, just
as is happening in Serbia to the north. That is why, by the way, people are
voting against the "democratic" reform parties there.

They also claim that NATO intervened in the Balkans because it had to stop
Milosevic from overrunning surrounding countries. Frankly, I find this
analysis nothing short of imperialist apologetics and am astonished that
radicals can take this seriously. It is a fabrication that is almost as
disingenuous as the claim that Saddam Hussein was an immanent threat to the
USA.

They liken Kosovo to Chiapas, as if Hashim "the snake" Thaci has anything
to do with Subcommandante Marcos. By all accounts, including the
Serb-hating press, Roma and Serbs are being hounded and killed throughout
the province by KLA veterans. It is hardly what I'd expect of a victorious
EZLN, especially considering Marcos's frequent appeals to universalism.

When they deal with economics, the result is almost as unrewarding as
reading Karadjis. They say, "a progressive would recognize as socialism
wasn't working that well in Yugoslavia" but add that Christian Parenti was
"naively concerned about Western dismantling of a 'socialism' that has been
gone for years." So what is it? A socialism that wasn't "working"? That's
kind of how the crew at New Politics describes Cuba, right? Or is it that
there was no socialism whatsoever, having "been gone for years". The one
thing you won't get from reading blather like this is a concrete
examination of the Yugoslav economy. However, one thing you can get from
reading today's Independent is an understanding of the current economy's
impact on ordinary working people:

>>The swift pace of reforms brought in by the Democratic Opposition of
Serbia (DOS) brought the privatisation of prosperous businesses. In
reality, it meant job cuts and work for the "new Yuppies", who speak
English or work with computers. People aged over 45 have no chance of
finding jobs, while workers kept at minimum salaries under Mr Milosevic's
regime have seen their factories close.<<

Get that, comrades? Workers kept at minimum salaries in factories--what a
waste of resources. Why not let the Open Society free-market take care of
all that. And if those middle-aged people are reluctant to give up their
sinecures, you can always get the boys from Otpor to sack the parliament on
behalf of the new revolutionary society.

For the Lippmans, a particular bright spot is the town of Orahovac, which
is now the site of a worker-owned winery. When I did a Lexis-Nexis search
on "Orahovac", I found some other interesting insights into life there and
nearby towns:

>>On Pristina's Mother Teresa Avenue, the capital's central thoroughfare,
an elderly Serb pensioner left his flat to buy bread. He was ambushed by a
gang of Kosovar children aged between five and 11. He was partially
crippled and left hospitalised.

These are just a few of the dozens of incidents that occur every week,
despite Nato claims that Kosovo is rapidly stabilising. In the town of Pec
last week, the attack on a convoy of 155 Serbs being escorted from their
ethnic enclave in the central town of Orahovac to Montenegro sparked a new
security clampdown.

One of the cars in the convoy broke down, and some 20 Serb vehicles headed
into the centre of Pec, stopping outside a police station manned by Italian
Carabinieri. The vehicles were then surrounded and attacked by a mob of
1,500 Kosovar Albanians, who torched 19 cars, a vehicle belonging to the UN
Refugee Agency, and a bus.

A three-year-old Serb child was thrown inside a blazing car by Kosovars,
but then rescued by other Albanians. Sixty Italian troops and police failed
to stop the arson, but managed to prevent any of the Serbs being killed.<<

(The Scotsman, October 31, 1999)

Somehow, I have trouble visualizing the EZLN torching cars like this, but
then again I haven't been keeping up with Chiapas as well as I should.



Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


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