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The View from Paris (Ronald Hilton, USA, 04/05/99 2:48 am)

From Paris, David Pike sends this theater of the absurd:

"The French Communist Party called for a respite in the bombing out of respect for Easter. Observation of Christian holidays and respect for Christian tradition has always been a hallmark of the Party.

Tatiana Dovgalenko, Cultural Attache of the Russian Embassy, was among our guests at a reception last week at The American University [where David teaches]. She explained to me why the Serbs needed to go into Kosovo: " The inhabitants are all bandits." "All of them?, I asked. "Nine tenths of them," she replied. Nine tenths. "And now they're fleeing the bombs."

When Serbs in Belgrade talk of Kosovars fleeing the bombs, they don't know any better, but it comes as a surprise when the noisy Serb colony in Paris is interviewed in the bistrots and they scream the same thing.

TV Channel 4 here presents the news of the week in satire on Sunday. I have been on their program, so I know how the audience is trained for one hour before the show to clap, cheer and roar to a volume that satisfies the producer. Monica L. was this week's special guest, and the three questions were: "If President Clinton asked your advice as to what to do in Kosovo, what would you tell him?" "What message do you have for the three captured Americans?" "If Hilary Clinton runs for the Senate, will you vote for her?" You will be glad to know that Monica could recognize this as a program that reduces everything to derision, and answered simply: "I hope you have some other questions for me." But they didn't, so " let's hear it for Monica." She certainly showed more dignity than her host.

Meanwhile, nobody seems to have noticed that these last weeks are the 60th anniversary exactly of an exodus from Catalonia in which the suffering of half a million children, women and men shocked the world, precisely because no one in government had made the smallest provision for their arrival and they too found themselves under the stars, on the beach without water or food until finally the bread arrived and it was thrown to them,"as to the chickens."

David is the only person I know who has recalled the 1939 end of the Spanish civil war. Mankind, or rather personkind, is forgetful. The Serbs everywhere have been screaming just like in Paris. My country, right or wrong......

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