> So let's see if I get this right: you and others like you can glibly call
> the United States a racist society, and that's OK, but if I comment
> unfavorably about a people that's spent the last 10 years
> slaughtering their
> neighbors, and is from all evidence unrepentant about it, I'm  a racist.

THere is, actually, a difference of type here.  You mention the contention
that the US is a "racist society."  The US, as a society, if you look at its
economic and other institutional power structures, its criminal justice
system, its long history of oppression, could be fairly characterized as
racist.  THat is very different than saying that Americans are, as a people,
racist lickspittle.  Many Americans are working very hard to change things
that matter in the fight against the institutional racism of the US.  You
could also quite fairly express concern over the nationalism of the
Milosevic regime (whether Slobo is a heartfelt or merely politically
expedient nationalist). However, with all of the US media barrage about the
inbred hatred of the Serbs, their deserving of destruction and punishment by
the global enforcer, etc., I think you need to be more careful about playing
into the useful apparatchik propaganda line in defence of a bombing that, as
all observers agree, directly killed many innocent people and coincided
exactly with a dramatic increase of atrocities that allied commander called
"entirely predictable." Focusing on the violent consequences of our own
government's behavior should be first and foremost in the mind of someone
who cared about human beings.  Condemning official enemies, comparing them
to Nazis, and making broad, racist statements about their "people" should be
left to those commissars who are paid well for their service.

Soren