| Nebojsa Vilic on Wed, 7 Apr 1999 03:02:49 +0200 (CEST) |
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| <nettime> two letters |
dear all, sorry for cross-posting, but a colleague of mine asked me to spread these two letters of her further. ============================== March 30, 1999 To Mr. Bill Clinton DEMOCRACY CAN NOT BE LEARNED BY FORCE, MR. CLINTON! After the disintegration of the Socialist block, most of the member countries have chosen the democracy of the so-called western type. Among them, Macedonia, the only Yugoslav Republic that has used its right to separate in a peaceful way. This has earned Macedonia a belated recognition under a absurd and illogic name: Former (meaning non-existent) Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, from the western European democracies led by Greece, the cradle of the European democracy, inspite of the report of the Baddinter Commission, which confirmed all necessary precondition existed for Macedonia's recognition. Such was the first lesson in democracy as given by the western European democracy and the USA. Today we witness the second lesson in democracy by these countries of most democratic governments. The essence of the lesson is: you either accept my opinion or else I will attack you. I am not implying that the approach that the democratic NATO allies want to impose on Yugoslavia is bad, least that Miloshevich is a democrat. The point is that, as far as I know, democracy is not implemented nor learned by force. Nade Proeva, Ph.D. Professor of Ancient History SS. Cyril and Methodius University Skopje Macedonia ================================= March 30, 1999 To Mr. Xavier Solana and Wesley Clark WHO WILL LEARN THE LESSON? The fact that the American president, Mr. Clinton, thinks democracy can be learned by force does not surprise me at all, considering the roots and the beginnings of the American state and culture. Yet, I am surprised and disappointed by the attitude of the western democracies' leaders. Namely, being "successors" of the Roman culture, they should know that the Romans have received the fiercest resistance from tribes at a lower social and economic level than the Romans themselves. The freedom-love of "savage" tribes is proportional to their stage of development (the lower the development the greater freedom-love). The Romans had to apply brutal measures to crack the resistance of the "savages". I shall mention an example that occurred on the same territory that is now being plown into by super sophisticated weapons of western democracies: in order to crack the anti-Roman resistance in 29. B.C., the warrior Marcus Licinius Crassus ordered that all captured Moeses be cut off their arms up to their shoulders and then be released as a warning to all. Dion Cassius has chronicled this in 2/3 cent. B.C. (Dio.Cass.LI,25,5). Naturally, the Romans have conquered not only the Moeses but also all Balkan tribes. It is not difficult to conquer the weaker. Yet, how the Roman Empire ended everybody knows, leaders of the western democracies, too, I hope. I also hope that they remember the freedom-love of the Balkan peoples, that was demonstrated during the Second World War. Today, while the Balkan peoples are being given lessons in democracy by the NATO democracies, the Balkan peoples strike back with lessons on freedom. "Disobedience is the first step of freedom," writes Erich Fromm. I wonder who will learn the lesson this time? Nade Proeva, Ph.D. Professor of Ancient History SS. Cyril and Methodius University Skopje Macedonia ============================ Nebojsa Vilic, Ph.D. Faculty of Drama Arts University 'SS. Cyril and Methodius' Ruger Boskovic b.b. / P.O.Box 134 MK-91000 Skopje, Macedonia tel. 389 91 37 05 96 e-mail: [email protected] --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: [email protected]