When They say "I hate America", what do you think They mean?

Relative wrote:

And interestingly
"stop the murderous mass deportation of 100,000s " is a contradiction: what is it - killing or deporting? Mass deportations are one thing, mass killings are another. What is "murderous mass deportation " I have no idea.

That would be deporting thousands of people in a way that included killing a whole bunch of 'em.

Sorry about my choice of words, I don't mean to sound flippant. When Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples to Central Asia, a great many of them died along the way. Was it Stalin's intention to kill them off, by deporting them in that way, or were the many casualties and murders along the way more of an added bonus? The answer is yes. It was somewhere in between deportation and mass murder.

Same here. Extermination was not the goal, but the death of some 8,000 Kosovars was hardly an accidental side-effect, either.

Relative wrote:

Just look up the facts - the prime minister Kostunica murdered, etc.

I dont like Kostunica much either, but I dont think it's, let's say, consensus opinion that he had Djindjic murdered.

Relative wrote:

Most of this was helped by the long-standing embargo which helped mafia develop (you know the effects of prohibition). And who helped Serbia after the bombing? Nobody, cause US was busy bombing somebody else.

On the mafia profiting from the embargo, I agree. (On saving people requiring ground troops rather than just bombs, I agree too, by the way, but I can also see that sometimes one needs to precede the other, in terms of military strategy). But on the "nobody helping" count, I do believe the US and EU already pumped a great amount of money into post-Milosevic Serbia. One of the main reasons they extradited Milosevic in the first place was to get the next tranche of financial aid they had been pledged. Whether it was enough, is another question, as is whether Djindjic and his political allies and rivals in government used it all well.

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Relative wrote:

If Serbia wanted it, the killings could go on, trust me. The war in Bosnia wasn't over in a month, and no foreign involvement with guns did make it any better.

The war in Bosnia went on for years partly because the foreign involvement came without guns, so to speak (the blue helmets).

When the US finally decided to force the issue by military prowess, the war was over quickly enough. (Even if it's been replaced with a cease-fire rather than peace).

Craven de Kere wrote:

The point isn't that it's fair. There is incredible inconsistency in US dealings. This doesn't mean that all US intervention is wrong.

In short, US inconsistency has no bearing on whether that was a correct decision or not.

Exactly.

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And arguments showing beaten, raped and murdered people on TV and saying 'look what they're doing' and saying 'we have to bomb them the bastards!' are just laughable.
Not because people aren't beaten and murdered, but because someone wants to be the judge of all that, and the executioner.

Everybody killed everybody for some time in ex-Yugoslavia. OK? If you don't understand that's because your perspective is one-sided.
I know Serbs, Croatians, Bosnians, Macedonians (and I knew some Albanians when in the army). They are NOT bad people in any way like some might think. As a matter of fact, we can get along pretty well, and literally can't live one without another. And why I don't know any Albanians currently? Not because of lack of them or my personal hate. Read on.
The killings that happened are the result of many circumstances, but all mentioned did the killing in the same manner. It was a bloody mess, people migrating, fleeing, deception,..
Of all people, Albanians seem to be the least likable around here, and to no surprise. Better not tell you the stories about guys eyeing Albanian girls.. because they are scarry. Scarry to death sometimes. Albanians seem to have problems 'fitting in' socially - they develop their own culture inside a host culture, and at one moment they take over. They have 10 kids or even more, live packed like sardines, their women have NO rights, and they take control over ice-cream business first. Then the vegetables business.
And nobody wants to talk about it, yet they all fear it. Germany, Switzerland, Italy ,..

Kosovo is a 'cradle of Serbia' as they call it, yet it was taken over by Albanians gradually. And when they start to take over, others move out, they have to.
Now imagine this going on for years, and imagine what a time-bomb! Everything soaked in gasolene! Illegal immigrants, enraged Serbs, enraged Albanians, a knife there, a gun there,.. Bloody hell, bloody mess! And all happening after a recent war!
Albanians, not having so many guns handy, because the country they want to make a mess in happens to be somebody else's contry, may appear like victims; but they killed just the same. You can't understand the temperament some of these people have - Serbians and Albanians and Bosnians - give them guns and they'll kill each other in a minute. Albanians cramping in Kosovo and Serbians treating it like 'Cradle of Serbia'.???

If anybody is responsible for the Kosovo crisis, it's the former Yugoslav regime which didn't want to admit it. Yugoslavia was so perfect that it wasn't possible. It was brewing for ovcer 50 years, and exploded just as the Balkan war was on decline...

Now only a fool can pretend to be able to blame somebody so easily, and bomb civilians because of it! Preposterous!!

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Relative wrote:

Now only a fool can pretend to be able to blame somebody so easily, and bomb civilians because of it! Preposterous!!

Yet you've done just that, blaming the United States for your problems. Face it, these problem are centuries older than the united states.

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Craven :

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I will have to flat out reject two notions you proposed above.

1) the appeal to authority by way of proximity.

and

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nimh's picture is a hell of a lot clearer than yours

! I must protest. Withdraw immediately or admit it's only an opinion. How else can you argument that?

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There is a hell of a difference between deep-seated societal issues and an ongoing humanitarian crisis in which pro-active ethnic cleansing and mass murder is being waged.

Yes, as you say - Kosovo is a deep-seated societal issue, and apartheid is just ongoing humanitarian crisis in which pro-active ethnic cleansing and mass murder.

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2) That the difference of opinion "about what was right" is a matter of being "mislead".

The above two notions are simply a way to avoid the uncomfortable notion that your position on a *subjective* matter is not absolute.

Thats EXACTLY why the bombing was wrong. You cannot bobm somebody over a subjective matter.

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The point isn't that it's fair. There is incredible inconsistency in US dealings. This doesn't mean that all US intervention is wrong.

US inconsistency is a matter of consistently idiotic foreign policy. I wasn't complaining about that, i don't give a damn. I was complaining about the US bombing people.

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Ceili:
"Yet you've done just that, blaming the United States for your problems. Face it, these problem are centuries older than the united states. "

When my problem is that US is pouring bombs over my head, the US is the one I will blame it for.

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Relative wrote:

Quote:
nimh's picture is a hell of a lot clearer than yours

! I must protest. Withdraw immediately or admit it's only an opinion. How else can you argument that?

You are completely correct. It is an opinion.

But why are you demanding that I preface this opinion with that disclaimer?

When you asserted the opinion that nimh's view was not clear and that he was "mislead" I understood that to mean that you were stating an opinion.

Were you asserting fact? Or are you demanding a disclaimer that you repeatedly did not bother with?

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Yes, as you say - Kosovo is a deep-seated societal issue, and apartheid is just ongoing humanitarian crisis in which pro-active ethnic cleansing and mass murder.

Incorrect. First of all they are not mutually exclusive.

Secondly apartheid was not an ongoing attempt at ethnic cleansing.

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You cannot bobm somebody over a subjective matter.

Please name a matter that is not subjective. Very Happy

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Ha! That's why I don't bomb people!

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Relative wrote:

Everybody killed everybody for some time in ex-Yugoslavia. OK? If you don't understand that's because your perspective is one-sided.

Every war ends up with everybody killing everybody. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to discern "who started it", or, to put it more sophisticatedly, who were responsible for the political and military escalation that led to the war.

Thats not necessarily (just) one country or people. I think Tudjman was as guilty as Milosevic. I do think that it is possible to distinguish between those who were more of a victim, and those who were more of a perpetrator, though - easily. And Milosevic and "his" Serbia (the Serbs who didnt protest or resist, the Serbs who voted him in, the Serbs who joined Seselj's Chetniks or Arkan's Tigers), bear a particular responsibility.

Relative wrote:

I know Serbs, Croatians, Bosnians, Macedonians (and I knew some Albanians when in the army). They are NOT bad people in any way like some might think.

I don't think anyone here has said they think the Serbs or any other people are collectively "bad people".

Well, you are basically saying Albanians are bad people - but otherwise noone is saying anything like that.

Relative wrote:

Of all people, Albanians seem to be the least likable around here, and to no surprise. Better not tell you the stories about guys eyeing Albanian girls.. because they are scarry. Scarry to death sometimes. Albanians seem to have problems 'fitting in' socially - they develop their own culture inside a host culture, and at one moment they take over. They have 10 kids or even more, live packed like sardines, their women have NO rights, and they take control over ice-cream business first. Then the vegetables business. And nobody wants to talk about it, yet they all fear it.

Variations of this story, of course, can be found in history's archives: it's the way white Americans used to talk of Negroes, the way Europeans talk of Gypsies (Roma), the way Europeans used to talk about Jews ...

I acquainted a few Albanians, and I was glad to. They included some people who did not fit your description, in any way.

Relative wrote:

Now imagine this going on for years, and imagine what a time-bomb! Everything soaked in gasolene! Illegal immigrants, enraged Serbs, enraged Albanians, a knife there, a gun there,.. Bloody hell, bloody mess!

Apologies for picking up on a detail here, but "illegal immigrants"? From where? Under Communist dictator Hoxha, Albania proper was the most tightly guarded prison in the world, barring North-Korea perhaps. Perhaps you should stick to the "10 kids or more" line, instead ... ;-)

As for all the talk of, give them a gun and they start killing, I think the story of how the Kosovar Albanians for almost ten years followed the lead of Ibrahim Rugova and his mission of non-violent resistance should give any peddler of Balkanist stereotypes pause for thought.

For ten years, the Kosovars reacted to the increasing violence of the Serb soldiers and para-military thugs (many of whom came from Serbia proper for the occasion), by building their own underground society, setting up underground schools, instead of taking up arms.

The many years it took before the guerrilla KLA became a serious player disproves any cliche of trigger-happy Albanians (or Balkanese, in general).

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Craven de Kere wrote:

I consider it an illegal war. Many do.

But the US would veto any resolution trying to find it illegitimate . Because of the subjectivity of threat it's subject to interpretation.

The US is in a position to block anything in the UN that would criticize it.

Ultimately its legality is on murky ground, as is all legality when it comes to international law.

In a way, saying that it's illegal is nothing more than rhetoric. On the international scale there's no rule of law and nations with power do everything they can to keep it that way.

At last Craven has arrived at a correct description of international law.

The enactments of the UN General Assembly and Security Council are what they are - the enactments of organs of a voluntary organization which are binding on their members to the extent that they are accepted by them. They have no effect whatever on nations that are not members, and since membership is neither compulsory nor irrevocable they cannot, of themselves, be applied without the implied or explicit consent of the sovereign nation involved.

Nevertheless some people prever to describe as legal or illegal matters which comply or do not comply with UN enactments. That is their right, but their opinions do not constitute enforcable international law. Others go farther and assert that if the UN does not explicitly affirm the propriety of some action, then it must necessarily be "ilegal". This is hardly defensible even as a matter of opinion. There are many real questions and conflicts in the world that the UN does not even attempt to either mediate or regulate.

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George, you already said that 5 hours ago.

See the top of the page. ^^^^

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nimh:

I understand the need to find the guilty one for the war.
The Yugoslavian official army, of which I was an active member of at the time, attacked first Slovenia and then Croatia. The Slovenian war was quickly over in a matter of days. Croatian war lasted far longer and with far more dead. Partly because Serbia was eager to hold onto Croatian territory, partly because the fighting became local - fights starting up all over the place, the 'paramilitary forces' (read neighbour to neighbor) kicking in, then the flames engulfed Bosnia, divided religiously between Karadzic's serbs, croatians and muslims.
At this point the thing was so complicated and got so far out of hand that nobody was able to immediately stop the war anymore. The killing was so fractal there even wasn't a front, nor were there two sides - there were many sides.
And the war lacked one significant thing: there was no political or land interest anymore. The war went on hatred and religious fuel.

Who is responsible?
The Yugoslavian army under Serbian control started it - there is no doubt about it.
Hatred fueled it - there is also no doubt about it.
And the Homo Vulgaris Lupus did the killings. Nobody else.

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Every war ends up with everybody killing everybody

Certainly not. That is the case only when wars have religious, or otherwise hatred-based character. In territorial wars, soldiers are killing opponents. There are always war crimes, buit that's another story.

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Well, you are basically saying Albanians are bad people - but otherwise noone is saying anything like that.

Or is it you putting words in my mouth? You must admit I only described them, I stated the facts. Then you said that it looks like bad people to you.
Certainly enough room for hatred, don't you think?

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As for all the talk of, give them a gun and they start killing, I think the story of how the Kosovar Albanians for almost ten years followed the lead of Ibrahim Rugova and his mission of non-violent resistance should give any peddler of Balkanist stereotypes pause for thought.

Hah! If the resistance was armed, it would be killed off. There could be no armed resistance! This is the main problem in the Balkan: once there's a shooting, everybody goes to get their gun. These nations lived through the Turks, for Christ's sake! Kosovo was the stage for most famous of battles between Serbia and the Otoman empire.
Albanians are very quiet and social people, keeping to themselves. They have 'family heads' that decide everything for a family as large as 50 or more people. All the money they make goes in the same budget, the chief having the only authority over it. They are extremely disciplined. They work very hard. All well and good. But they don't fit in the society - they tend to convert it.

And by the way, Kosovo is going for independence now .. I don't know if they will join Albaina or not. But certainly 100 years ago there were almost 100% Serbs living there. If this is a 'peaceful evolution' or a 'takeover' is not for me to decide, but just goes to show how unsubstantiated territorial claims are in the long run.

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Relative wrote:

Quote:
Well, you are basically saying Albanians are bad people - but otherwise noone is saying anything like that.

Or is it you putting words in my mouth? You must admit I only described them, I stated the facts.

Lookit, no offence, but this quote of yours below - what you wrote about the Albanians - emphatically cannot be said to represent "the facts". It is a highly personal - and highly negative - opinion about an entire people.

"Of all people, Albanians seem to be the least likable around here, and to no surprise. Better not tell you the stories about guys eyeing Albanian girls.. because they are scarry. Scarry to death sometimes. Albanians seem to have problems 'fitting in' socially - they develop their own culture inside a host culture, and at one moment they take over. They have 10 kids or even more, live packed like sardines, their women have NO rights, and they take control over ice-cream business first. Then the vegetables business. And nobody wants to talk about it, yet they all fear it."

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And by the way, Kosovo is going for independence now .. I don't know if they will join Albaina or not. But certainly 100 years ago there were almost 100% Serbs living there.

I think they'll become independent, over time, too ... and that joining Albania is not in the cards until perhaps the next era.

But your claim on 100% Serbs having lived there 100 years ago (and before?) is patently false. Kosovo has always been a mix of peoples, religions and cultures, "cradle" or not. E.g., according to the Austrian statistics of 1903, Orthodox Serbs only made up some 25% of the population of the sancaks of Prishtina, Pec and Prizren; according to the Ottoman statistics of 1912, they made up 21% of the population.

People have come and gone in Kosovo all the time, as often by force as voluntarily. For example, according to Noel Malcolm, some 60,000 Serbs had left Kosovo in the 40 years before that - but if they were crowded out, it wasnt by "illegal immigrants" or "10-children Albanian families", but rather by the 50,000 Muslims who fled to Kosovo when they were chased out of Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria in 1877-78.

Noel Malcolm's book, Kosovo, a Short History (mind you, "short" - it's still 492 pp.), is pretty good actually, chock full of details. I can also recommend the anthropologist Ger Duijzing's Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo. He calls Kosovo "an ethnic shatter zone".

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Craven de Kere wrote:

George, you already said that 5 hours ago.

See the top of the page. ^^^^

You're right, I did! Damned if I know how it happened.

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Americans our best friends, Canadians say
But U.S. citizens prefer the Brits

The Canadian Press
Monday, March 15, 2004

MONTREAL - The best-friend relationship that Canada and the United States once enjoyed might have become more of a one-way affair.

While 50 per cent of Canadians in a recent Leger Marketing poll said the U.S. was Canada's "best friend," only 20 per cent of American respondents in the same survey felt likewise about their northern neighbour. Britain topped the best-friend list for 62 per cent of Americans.

Twenty-five per cent of Canadians chose Britain as their country's best buddy.

The poll also suggested that 68 per cent of Canadians thought the two countries were very different, while 29 per cent believed they were very much alike.

Among Americans, the numbers were reversed -- 61 per cent said the countries were very much alike, compared with 31 per cent who said they were very different.

The poll of 1,501 Canadians and 1,035 Americans was conducted Feb. 17-22.

Harold Waller, chairman of McGill University's North American Studies Program, said he wasn't surprised at the findings because Canada is not on the radar screen of the average American.

"Americans know almost nothing about Canada and Canadians."

Christopher Sands, senior associate with the Canada Project for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there is no surprise that Britain was way out in the lead. "The American public has accepted that, post-Sept. 11, allies have to be looked at by what they do, not what they say."

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Are you surprised?

I find statements such as "Americans know almost nothing about Canada" made by Canadians who implicitly assume they know a great deal about the United States, both patronizing and profoundly hypoctitical. Just what one might expect from an aspiring academic heading something like "The North American Studies Program".

The survey results themselves suggest that the survey sample of Americans was indeed well aware of the situation and the reality of our relationships. As Mr. Sands indicated, allies are properly evaluated based on what they do, and not what they say.

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Ceili

Your right most average Americans know almost nothing about Canada and Canadians. Neither do we know too much anyone else in the world either. The knowledge and opinions expressed here by Americans are the exception rather than the rule. Actually I am more of a typical know nothing American than anyone else here. I suspect the reason that if asked who we think are friends are we say Britian is because most of us think our ancestors came from "somewhere over there." All most of us know about other countries is what little we remember from our history books in school and the things we hear in the news. Most of us live ordinary lives with our families concerned with issues that affect our families. In other words, I don't think it's personal. We don't know too much about Mexico either.

(I am talking about the American public, not our government or politicians or whatever.)

At least that is my sense with everyone that I know. It may different in the big cities or states that are closer to the borders with a lot of immigrants from Canada and Mexico. As just a curious question, are there a lot of immigrants from Canada in America? All I usually hear about is Mexican immigrants.

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As a Briton, I'd rather have the EU as my country's 'best-friend' than the US. Maybe the Commonwealth creates some ties with Canada, Australia & New Zealand, but we still have more to gain by siding with our chums across the Channel.

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revel wrote:

As just a curious question, are there a lot of immigrants from Canada in America? All I usually hear about is Mexican immigrants.

You usually hear about "illegal" Mexican immigrants. Those that are here legally aren't discussed much. There are a lot of Canadians living here in the greater Boston area and if you trace the genealogy of many long term New England families (as well as those all along the northern tier states at least as far west as the Dakotas..) you'll find that most have ancestral ties to Canada. My own family is from Quebec and 90% of my relatives still live there.

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nimh : My quote about Albanians is not very positively colored, and I apologize for it's bad taste. I am not a racist and I don't judge people based on preset opinions or ideology.
It is very sad to judge an entire nation and I am sorry for how my posting sounded. I said I even knew some Albanians when the situations brought us together.

But we must be cautious here because past racism has made our position almost a deadlock : you cannot dislike people anymore. But disliking people is not racism, it is the way we function as humans. Racism is about people's rights not about their reputation.

About Kosovo statistics : I rushed the stats from my head and I agree this territory has always been mixed population. The numbers you have I cannot verify, but official Yugoslavian stats show more than 26% of Serbs in 1971. I remember stats like 60% of Serbs and other non-Albanian nations in the 19th century.

I will not go into this anymore, since this is a 'can of worms'. I will only repeat the three statements:

1. It is wrong to kill.
2. It is wrong to attack nations because of unclear reasons.
3. It is wrong to pour bombs on somebody other's head, and then say they deserved it.

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When They say "I hate America", what do you think They mean?

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