ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Independent?

Hi,

I love your paper but...

You printed an article by Alexander Cockburn putting down Bernie Sanders and this week when you discuss independent political victories, you left Bernie out.

I think that if you agree with someone 90% of the time that person is an ally. One reason for the failure of the american left is the focus on the 10% of difference. you can always say "Bernie, you really have your head up your ass on this nuclear waste thing."

Who in Congress is better on labor than Bernie?

Do you expect more from Jesse Ventura?

--Robert Desmond, via e-mail

Jeffrey St. Clair--the column's co-author--replies:

Bernie Sanders claims to be the only independent socialist in the Congress. But when you scrutinize his record it's clear Sanders is neither independent nor a socialist. He votes with the Democratic Party nearly 98 percent of the time, a higher percentage, in fact, than other members of the so-called progressive caucus. Sanders' position on the Sierra Blanca nuclear waste dump should be more than enough to cause any progressive or environmentalist to demand his ouster from the Congress. It's the equivalent of standing silent as George Wallace blocked the steps of the University of Alabama, flanked by his contigent of goons. This is an issue of environment, race, and class. And Bernie stood on the side of the rich, the racists and the corporate thugs. His reputation as a "socialist" was used to greenwash the issue and sell it to liberals who have bought his rap. Indeed, that seems to be Bernie's real function in the Congress: he can't pass any legislation or stop any legislation, but he can be used as a vehicle to make bad policies law.

Invest In Bullion

ETS!,

Your discussion of how big money runs around the world to find lowest cost labor and how paper money banking has put the world economy on the skids was very interesting. Shades of Johnny Law!

You echo what many folks are feeling in a fresh, up front way.

Re paper money: Perhaps our Founding Fathers really knew something when they said, "No State shall...; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;..." [Article I, Section 10, U.S. Constitution].

Enjoy your site.

--das1, via e-mail

We Get Love Notes

ETS!,

Have more and more children. Eventually you will be the majority. Then you can really stick it to the white trash. Just keep having children.

--Alan O. Stanley, via e-mail

The War in Kosovo

ETS!,

It's no surprise that the U.S. has failed to do anything significant in the Kosovo region of Serbia. Especially since the people of Serbia and Slobodan Milosovic are white and its strict U.S. policy since the end of world war II that all U.S. military enemies must be yellow or Brown skinned.

The news broadcasts in Europe for the past few weeks have shown nightly reports of ethnic Albanians that have been displaced due to Serb police force attacks and are living in tents near the border with Albania. NATO countries are trying to drum up support for air strikes EU leadership sees air strikes as a way of not rescuing the tan skinned Moslems that live in Kosovo from genocide but as a way from keeping tan skinned Moslem refugees from flooding into Munich, Rome, London, and Paris. Winters in Kosovo are brutal with daily wind storms and rain making up November and December and sub-zero weather making up the winter. Once the winter is over and Serbia wages attacks against Moslems again the EU will not say a word (until next September-October.). The most disturbing aspect of this crisis though is the left in this country, and their attitude that the Serbians are somehow the victims in all this strictly because the U.S. military may be conducting strategic air strikes on Belgrade. Basically an "enemy of my enemy is my friend attitude". I went to a rally against U.S. bombing in Sudan and Afghanistan, and a gentleman stood up and read a memorandum that was printed from the Yugoslavian embassy stating that the Kosovan Albanians and the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) were the villains they were wearing German Camouflage uniforms and paying for weapons with German Deutchmarks. And that the people of Kosovo are terrorists who kill children and women. The Serbian government is trying to drum up support in the American left community and recent press releases and recent pro-Serb articles in The Nation, Covert Action Quarterly and In these Times are evidence. The Serbs also know of Americans' irrational fears of Moslems.

Furthermore, anyone who has studied Serbian history since WWII knows that the Serbs hate the Germans due to the Nazi atrocities committed during The War. Germans would hang ten Serbs for every one German soldier killed. In the town of Sombor the Nazis bled to death half the inhabitants to get blood for German soldiers on the Eastern front. So with that still in the back of their minds Serbians have been blaming every insurrection as a German Conspiracy.

Taking Solidarity with Milosevic is not the answer. He is a Stalinist throwback who is intent on creating a greater Serbia. Milosovic's plan for the people in Kosovo is either they move back to Albania where he feels they belong or they are killed, such is the definition of ethnic cleansing. The Serbs see the area as a part of Serbia and the ethnic Albanians would like to reunify with Albania. One must really look at the history of the region before taking sides in the matter and what is worrisome is that the left in this country are not reviewing Yugoslavia's history. Milosevic is intent on cleansing the country not only of its Muslims, but its ethnic Hungarians and anyone else who is a non Serb as well. The resentment over a battle that took place in Kosovo on 28 June 1389 in which Serbia's medieval kingdom was defeated and the Serbs thrust into servitude by the Ottoman empire still runs deep. The Serbs celebrate this day as a national holiday (as to why they celebrate a massive and humiliating defeat is a definitely one of the greatest mysteries of mankind.) But they celebrate it; it's a mindset that we here in the U.S. cannot understand.

The answer is not to bomb Belgrade or any other part of Serbia. We will be killing a civilian population that is probably just as opposed to genocide as we are. We need to arm the KLA and the people of Kosovo and support either their reunification with Albania or their independence. If the Serbs come up against an enemy armed just as well or better than them, history has shown they turn and run (I say all this knowing all well that I'm writing to a paper dedicated to Non-Violent action.). Sanctions simply do not work and they will not hurt Milosevic and his Cronies they will hurt the people of Serbia. It is our responsibility as the most powerful country in the world to give Milosevic a proverbial slap upside the head. We can do that by urging our leaders to arm the KLA and the people of Kosovo. There is a moral obligation to end genocide because it's evil--not because it's economically feasible, or because the public needs a distraction from scandal. It has happened far too much in this century: Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chile. We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to it. And by taking solidarity with a genocidal sociopath we are letting it happen.

--Justin M. Hanlon, Seattle