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Join the mailing list: info/subscribe/unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] . ==================================================================================== Postmark Prague No.354, The Czech SocialDemocrats want war too --------------------------------------------- From: POSTMARK PRAGUE, Mon, 2 Dec 2002 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ==================================================================================== Dear comrades, The attached article by a senior Czech Communist Party adviser deals with the transformation of the Czech and other social democratic parties into parties of war. It is from the December issue of PP. Free sample copies of this issue are available to your readers. Comradely greetings from Prague, Ken Biggs ======================================================== POSTMARK PRAGUE No.354 Feature article (approx.950 words) SUNDAY 2 DECEMBER 2002 THE CZECH SOCIAL DEMOCRATS WANT WAR TOO by Radomir Silber, a senior adviser to the Czech Communist Party (KSCM)* Many European social democratic parties, the British Labour Party, the French Socialists, the German Social Democrats and also the Czech Social Democratic Party have undergone a wondrous transformation in recent years. They have become parties of war. They have broken with the old traditions of socialist pacifism. Like his colleagues Tony Blair, Lionel Jospin and Gerhard Schroeder, Czech prime minister Milos Zeman has developed a taste for gunpowder. A hundred years ago when the right ruled all Europe, the opposition social democrats championed peace. They refused to support wars. Then came their fatal failure at the start of WWI, when the European big powers wanted to redivide the colonised world. Apart from the Russian Bolsheviks, the Bulgarian »Tesnyaki" and a small group of German Marxists, the social democrats either supported the right-wing governments� war policy or did not oppose them when they unleashed the war. Until now social democrats have been able to say this was only a one-off aberration and that no social democrat government had ever launched or conducted a war of aggression. Today, however, the facade of the Socialist International�s »peaceloving parties" lies in ruins. NATO�s war on Yugoslavia 1999 was the turning point. Contrary to the UN Charter and without declaring war, the US-dominated NATO bombed the Yugoslav Federal Republic extensively for 75 days. The »socialist" governments of a number of NATO states gave unqualified approval to the attack on Yugoslavia, claiming that this was necessary to protect the Yugoslav province of Kosovo�s Albanian minority. The US, at first only covertly supporting Albanian terrorists linked to the drugs mafia, succeeded in involving their European allies in the struggle against the socialist Yugoslav President Milosevic -- the only one in the southern underbelly of Europe not to comply with their wishes. The result was excellent for the Americans. Not one of the ruling socialist parties in the NATO countries opposed the war. Nor did any of them use their right of veto to halt the deliberate and publicly admitted bombing of civilian targets or the use of weapons banned under international conventions. Blair and Clinton chose the targets. Contrary to the Geneva conventions and international law, the TV studio in Belgrade became a military target. The last time that Belgrade was bombed before the NATO attack was by Hitler�s luftwaffe. The French premier complained privately that no one had consulted France about the targets. But the German social democratic government had no such scruples. Inquisitive journalists discovered that it had deliberately misinformed its citizens from the very outset and lied to them about what was happening in the Balkans. Prague�s divine comedy The attitude of the Czech social democrats to the war in Yugoslavia was truly comic. On 12 March 1999 they announced amidst great pomp and ceremony that the Czech Republic had joined NATO. 14 days later, foreign minister Jan Kavan and premier Milos Zeman gave their approval by telephone (!) to the attack on Yugoslavia. At the Social Democrats� Congress in April, when the bombing of Yugoslav towns, hospitals, schools, churches and historical monuments was being widely reported in the press, most of the delegates tried to placate an alarmed public by signing a petition denouncing NATO�s barbaric war in the Balkans. But almost immediately most of them also expressed their full support for the government and its pro-war position! Even when the war was over and NATO troops had occupied Kosovo, the Czech prime minister was quick to dismiss all criticism. When Communist leader Miroslav Grebenicek MP accused his government of violating the Geneva conventions, Zeman replied: »Only legitimate targets were bombed." So the families of those who died when the Belgrade TV studio was bombed could have nothing to complain about. Afghanistan This year, when the world was shaken by the horrific terrorist attack on New York and Washington, the European social democrats agreed with Washington that war was »the best solution". Bearing in mind US interests, it is logical that, instead of seeking real justice as defined in international law, President George Bush opted for vengeance and went to war against Afghanistan. Apart from its defeat in Vietnam, the US is well-versed in how to maximise its political and economic gains through the use of war. Czech premier Zeman did not give the matter a second thought. He immediately offered the US campaign every military assistance. As a result of convivial US-British cooperation, bombs and rockets are raining down on unhappy, poverty-stricken and war-blighted Afghanistan � including cluster bombs which the international community has outlawed. By some statistically miraculous accident, these bombs have twice in succession hit Red Cross warehouses in the Afghan capital of Kabul. And they have also fallen, not at all by accident, on power stations and a dam. In the US hunt for Usama bin Laden, who is suspected of organising the attacks on New York and Washington, possibly »only" ten thousand, but more likely hundreds of thousands and, likelier still, millions of Afghans, will die. The Czech Communists The big powers have no compassion, only »interests". The innocent civilians, even those deliberately murdered in NATO�s war in Yugoslavia, who are dying and being terrorised are now called by a new name � »collateral damage". The social democrats long ago stopped thinking about them. Only one of the Czech parliamentary parties bucks the trend � the Communist Party. Communist MPs obstinately refuse to support the sending of Czech military units into action unless this has been officially approved by a resolution of the UN Security Council. They demand something which the Czech social democrats have jettisoned: respect for the basic principles of humanity and international law. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------- * This article is from the December issue of Postmark Prague. A free sample copy can be obtained from PP, PO Box 42, 182 21 Prague 8, Czech Republic ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) An annual subscription (11 issues) costs US$25, 16 Pounds sterling or the equivalent in a convertible currency. *End* ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
