>I am seriously uninterested in who did what to whom first in Kosovo
>or elsewhere. That always leads to the argument that it is OK for
>the first victim to do the same thing back, a notion that I,
>geneally unsuccessfully, continually try to disabuse my kids of.
>
>Kosovars are not innocent helpful victims. Serbs are not monsters of
>quasi-Nazi brutality. I grant you. That is a very primitive level of
>discussion. None of it affects the character of the Milosovic
>regime, which cannot evade the judgment of hsitory for its crimes
>against human rights and the working class merely because many of
>its enemies are no less contemptible and awful.
>
>--jks
Surely historical facts are not unimportant, when one discusses the
"judgment of history," no? In any case, what FAIR is trying to do,
of course, is not to fuel disputes over "who did what to whom first"
but to recommend skepticism over the mass media's framing of Yugoslav
issues, given the fact that the framing changed from "Albanian Bad,
Serb Good" to "Serb Bad, Albanian Good" just because the ruling
elite's Yugoslav strategy changed.
The saddest irony is that, in the process of the fragmentation of
Yugoslavia (which started _long_ before the revocation of autonomy
for Kosovo), nationalists in the poorer regions, for instance
Macedonians & Kosovo Albanians, ended up advocating the very
political program that would only benefit the rich in the richer
republics like Slovenia *at the expense* of the poor in the poor
regions: "The expected alignment on economic grounds, however, did
not materialize. Slovenian and Croatian liberals were able to
exploit fears of Greater Serbian chauvinism and woo southern
liberals, who were partial to devolution and greater reliance on
market mechanisms in the economy. Thus, although economic interest
had traditionally linked the Macedonians to Serbia's centralist
program, at least in the postwar period, the Macedonians were, for
primarily political reasons, drawn to Croatia's side....The Croats
and Slovenes transformed economic issues -- decentralization of
economic decision making, dismantling of central planning, and
curtailment of aid to unprofitable enterprises in the south -- into
political issues -- opposition to Serbian hegemony and support of
'liberalization'" (Sabrina P. Ramet, _Nationalism and Federalism in
Yugoslavia, 1962-1991_, 2nd ed., Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana
UP, 1992, , p. 17).
I strongly recommend to you Sabrina Ramet's book cited above. This
book shouldn't be difficult to find, but should you be unable to
obtain it, write me offlist, and I'll make a copy to you. It's a
sober & scholarly book -- full of detailed information on politics
and economy of Yugoslavia.
Yoshie
