>area in his hometown.
>
>Two struggles, one enemy!
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <00c501c00321$392b0a60$0a00a8c0@home>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Yugoslavia: Youths see war's devatation and people's resistance
>Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 19:17:58 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="Windows-1252"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Aug. 17, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>YUGOSLAVIA:
>YOUTHS SEE WAR'S DEVASTATION AND
>PEOPLE'S RESISTANCE
>
>By Josina Dunkel
>Belgrade, Yugoslavia
>
>Youth delegations from over 20 countries around the world
>came together from July 15 to Aug. 1 for the first annual
>International Campus of Friendship in Yugoslavia. The
>gathering was sponsored by the Patriotic Union of
>Yugoslavia.
>
>During those weeks the delegates not only learned about
>Yugoslavia's complex history and society, but also
>strengthened international contacts to further the struggle
>against imperialism.
>
>The youth camp was located in the mountains in Sirogojna,
>the only "living museum" in Yugoslavia. From this center
>the delegates visited museums, monuments and other sites of
>political and cultural interest. Camp meetings heard and
>discussed the economic impact of sanctions on Yugoslavia,
>the real reasons behind the U.S. and NATO's 78-day bombing
>assault last year and other topics.
>
>In Belgrade and Novi Sad the delegates saw what U.S. bombs
>destroyed in the northern Serbia.
>
>They saw that many of NATO's targets were not military at
>all but hospitals, schools and electricity-generation
>plants. The U.S. generals running the bombing tried to
>destroy Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure.
>
>As political graffiti in Belgrade pointed out, last year's
>NATO bombs were not the first attempt by imperialists to
>destroy the spirit of the socialist revolution. Nazi
>Germany tried 60 years ago. But Yugoslavia didn't surrender
>to the fascists or to NATO.
>
>The young delegates visited Kragujevac, where Nazis
>executed 7,000 men in one afternoon during World War II.
>The town had only 30,000 people at the time. The Nazis
>chose this town because it was the heart of the partisan
>liberation movement.
>
>Last year a bomb that fell nearby damaged the museum
>dedicated to preserving this part of Yugoslav history. The
>youth delegation placed a wreath at the town's monument, a
>stylized bird with a broken wing. The monument was
>dedicated to the hundreds of students the Nazis marched
>from their classrooms to murder.
>
>IN KOSOVO MITROVICA
>
>Today an occupation force patrols and divides the city of
>Kosovo Mitrovica. A barbaric tangle of barbed wire and a
>resident force of KFOR soldiers from the United States,
>Germany, England, France and other countries maintains the
>separation of Albanians from the rest of this multiethnic
>city.
>
>Last year NATO propagandists falsely accused the Serbs of
>genocide. Today right-wing Albanians have expelled other
>ethnic groups from Kosovo. The Albanian section of Kosovo
>Mitrovica has ejected the ethnically and physically
>distinct Roma people.
>
>The so-called Kosovo Liberation Army burned out a Roma
>camp on the southern side of the city and forced its
>inhabitants into tents. The attacks have not ended. During
>the first week of August a twelve-year old Roma boy was
>struck by a grenade when the encampment was attacked.
>
>In Kosovo Mitrovica only one hospital admits Serbs. While
>the medical staff tries to perform regular operations,
>including complex procedures, their efforts are made very
>difficult by the lack of water, medicine and equipment.
>
>The water plant is located in the southern part of the
>city. The KLA-controlled government allows only a very
>limited amount to flow for a few hours a day. The same goes
>for electricity.
>
>In this hospital all signs are still in Albanian and
>Serbian, in that order. Where separatism exists now, there
>had been integration. Albanian doctors worked with Serbian
>patients, and vice versa. Now the KLA encourages Albanian
>patients to use only Albanian hospitals with Albanian
>doctors.
>
>While the bombs have stopped falling, the war is not over.
>Kosovo, considered by Serbs to be the cradle of their
>society, is being occupied by foreign troops who drive
>around in tanks and military vehicles carrying automatic
>weapons slung across their backs.
>
>On this visit to Kosovo, Belgrade law student Ivana Antic
>told how the local Serb residents sought more aid from the
>Belgrade government. "There are police and KFOR troops but
>no security. Albanians can make wild claims and Serbs will
>be imprisoned," she said.
>
>Last year U.S., German and other NATO officials justified
>the destructive bombardments of Kosovo by claming that
>Serbs were committing genocide against Muslim Albanians.
>
>To clarify the situation during a visit to the Zabucje
>Refugee Camp, Buba Morina, the Yugoslav minister for
>refugees, displaced persons and humanitarian relief, said,
>"NATO bombs fell mostly on Kosovo. That was a display of
>how much NATO loves the Albanian population."
>
>SANCTIONS ATTACK DAILY LIFE
>
>Yugoslavia has been under attack for over 10 years. This
>Balkan country has a multitude of ethnically, religiously,
>and historically diverse peoples. The partisan movement and
>the revolution of 1945 welded these diverse groups into an
>independent country. But foreign multinationals and the
>Western regimes have exploited ethnic differences to gain a
>stronger position in the region.
>
>The Romans had a strategy of "divide and rule." U.S.
>imperialist strategists use this same policy. They
>encouraged and cheered the dissolving of the former Soviet
>Union. They also support separatist movements in China.
>
>When they funneled money to the KLA, neither the United
>States nor Germany was interested in defending minorities.
>They were interested in dividing up a country that resisted
>total foreign domination.
>
>Sanctions have been in place for a decade. Bosnia and
>Kosovo have been separated from Yugoslavia. Across the
>country there are shortages of food and gas. People can't
>get sugar or cooking oil, even on the underground market.
>
>Elementary schools and high schools have not recovered
>from the bombing. Most were disbanded during the bombing.
>With the sanctions keeping teachers' salaries fixed at 67
>German Marks a month (about $30 U.S.), strikes have closed
>the schools regularly.
>
>Rents vary from 20 to 30 German Marks a month. While
>salaries in general are very low, there is also a lack of
>work for those who are employed. Sanctions have eliminated
>most exports and imports. There are no markets for
>Yugoslavian goods so production is very low.
>
>The Yugoslav government has received no compensation for
>the destruction of buildings, bridges, and the lives of the
>thousands killed by U.S./NATO bombs. Belgrade can't get
>loans and must pay for reconstruction on its own.
>
>As one economist pointed out, every year there is a
>greater loss, which cannot be made up despite an expanding
>economy. Things are not stagnant in Yugoslavia, just
>disadvantaged.
>
>YOUTHS PLAN SOLIDARITY
>
>The delegates visited Yugoslavia to witness for themselves
>the situation a year after bombs were dropped. They were
>all moved by witnessing the Yugoslav people's spirit of
>resistance and the determination to survive the daily
>hardships.
>
>Delegates have already begun to plan solidarity
>demonstrations in many countries Oct. 20-22, a medical aid
>project, and student solidarity projects including a drive
>for scientific journals and law books restricted by
>sanctions.
>
>For updates, visit the International Action Center's Web
>site at www.iacenter.org.
>
>[Dunkel represented the IAC at the International Campus of
>Friendship in Yugoslavia.]
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <00cb01c00321$59a40760$0a00a8c0@home>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Is it 'practical' to vote for the Democrats? Marxism vs.
>pragmatism
>Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 19:18:53 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="Windows-1252"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Aug. 17, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>IS IT "PRACTICAL" TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS?
>MARIXISM VS. PRAGMATISM
>
>[In the 1984 election, the Democratic Party ran Walter
>Mondale for president and Geraldine Ferraro for vice
>president against Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Mondale
>had been Jimmy Carter's vice president from 1977 to 1981.
>Sam Marcy, the founder of Workers World Party, wrote a
>critique of those on the left who urged progressives to
>support the Mondale-Ferraro campaign. Below are excerpts
>from that article, which appeared in the Aug. 23, 1984,
>issue of Workers World.]
>
>
>
>By Sam Marcy
>
>Some in the progressive movement are urging the support of
>Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro on the grounds that
>this year's presidential election, unlike others in the
>past, requires a "pragmatic approach."
>
>We are told that it would be not only unwise but unreal to
>approach the national elections in any other way. A change
>is imperative, they say.
>
>Revolutionary Marxists have never hesitated to make
>radical tactical and strategic changes if they would
>promote the cause of the working class and oppressed people
>and advance social progress, while arresting unbridled
>political reaction.
>
>It's something else, however, to adopt a so-called
>pragmatic approach. Just what is pragmatism?
>
>In common parlance, to be pragmatic means to take a
>practical approach, avoiding an inflexible or dogmatic
>position. According to some of the leading early
>pragmatists of the [19th] century, like William James, the
>pragmatic method means to measure truth by its
>correspondence with experimental results and their
>practical outcome.
>
>Who among us would disagree, so far?
>
>C.S. Pierce, another early pragmatist, stressed the need
>to conduct investigations on the basis of constant
>empirical testing of hypotheses. Here, too, we are in
>agreement with the "pragmatists."
>
>It is worthwhile to pursue this matter and proceed to
>investigate by empirical verification the hypothesis that
>our adversaries advance.
>
>PUTTING FOREIGN POLICY TO THE TEST
>
>No issue is as critical as foreign policy. Indeed, it
>should be, for foreign policy has always been the
>concentrated expression and extension of domestic policy.
>It is therefore the experience of foreign policy that will
>help illuminate the hypothesis of our adversaries.
>
>The case of El Salvador has been regarded far and wide as
>the most sensitive foreign policy issue.
>
>The wanton and brutal mass murders by death squads are
>such a familiar aspect of the Reaganite foreign policy in
>El Salvador that they have become a universally hated
>symbol among oppressed people, the working class and
>progressives throughout the world.
>
>Yet on Aug. 11, [1984,] the two principal leaders and
>collaborators of Mondale in the House--Speaker Tip O'Neill
>and vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro--
>unashamedly turned their backs on this very issue. By their
>failure to appear in the House and demonstratively vote
>against a Reagan-sponsored appropriations bill for aid to
>the murderous puppet government of El Salvador, they
>disqualified their entire two-year verbal opposition to the
>military adventure in Central America.
>
>The deeper impact of the House vote is that the measure
>was passed by a Democratic-controlled House, with only 154
>of the more than 250 Democrats opposing the Reagan-
>sponsored military aid bill.
>
>Does this parliamentary development empirically verify the
>hypothesis of our adversaries, who ask us to be "practical"
>and demand we "shed old dogmas" and "rigid principles"?
>
>EXPERIENCE OF CARTER-MONDALE YEARS
>
>The year 1978 was a so-called peaceful year. The Vietnam
>War was already in the past. There were no great
>artificially built-up "threats" from the outside. There was
>no large-scale, overt U.S. foreign intervention. And the
>economic situation, according to bourgeois standards, was
>stable.
>
>What does that year tell us with regard to the basic
>tendencies inherent in the monopoly capitalist system, on
>which foreign policy is built?
>
>During its 1975-76 campaign, the Carter-Mondale team had
>pledged over and over again to reduce U.S. military
>expenditures between $5 billion and $7 billion "now that
>the Vietnam War is behind us."
>
>In addition, the Carter-Mondale administration had stated
>in 1977 that it would soon withdraw U.S. troops from south
>Korea.
>
>[But 1978] was a banner year for the military-industrial
>complex. It was a year of spectacular growth and
>development in which the aerospace industry, the keystone
>of U.S. military production, broke all previous records.
>
>Sales of the aerospace industry rose to a record level of
>$37.3 billion, almost all on orders to the Pentagon--$5
>billion more than the preceding year. By 1979, sales were
>over $50 billion, in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars.
>
>The military-industrial complex doesn't recklessly engage
>in research and development without a customer in mind,
>with whom it has previously negotiated and made agreements.
>
>It was in 1978, according to Colliers Year Book for 1980,
>that General Dynamics Corp. delivered without much fanfare
>its first operational F-16 lightweight fighter.
>
>That same year, the U.S. Air Force deployed its first
>operation squadron of close-support aircraft, the Fairchild
>A-10.
>
>The Air Force began development of the Lockheed TR-1
>tactical reconnaissance plane. It also completed
>development of the airborne warning and control system,
>popularly called AWACS--a giant spy plane and flying
>command post.
>
>Late in 1978 the Air Force introduced the F-18A Hornet
>strike-fighter, developed jointly by McDonnell-Douglas and
>the Northrop Corp.
>
>Let's not forget the Army. In 1978 it introduced the
>Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter. In light of the
>struggle in El Salvador and other areas in Central America,
>such as Honduras, this helicopter is most significant
>because it is designed to carry battle-equipped infantry
>squads for tactical assaults and other combat missions.
>
>[Editor's note: Black Hawk helicopters are now being sent
>to Colombia to be used against the national liberation
>movements there.]
>
>It should therefore be no surprise that the Carter-Mondale
>administration abandoned its promise to cut the defense
>budget.
>
>On Aug. 20, 1979, the Carter-Mondale administration called
>for a halt to the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops
>stationed in Korea.
>
>On Dec. 12, 1979, Carter made a speech to the notorious
>Business Council, which is made up of the chief executive
>officers of the 100 largest U.S. corporations. He outlined
>his five-year proposal to increase the military budget.
>
>In light of these developments, the Carter-Mondale
>administration had to concoct a threat to "national
>security" and "U.S. vital interests." This was done over
>Afghanistan. The issue was magnified a thousand-fold as an
>excuse for huge military appropriations. [Editor's note:
>The CIA funded and trained the so-called "mujahadeen" in a
>bloody war against the progressive Afghani government,
>which had instituted land reform and education for boys and
>girls. The end result was the military victory of the most
>reactionary, anti-woman forces in Afghan society.]
>
>Is it any wonder that the Carter-Mondale team thereafter
>brought back registration for military service?
>
>Carter also began what Reagan has continued and
>intensified--cutting off the transfer and sale of high-
>technology equipment to the USSR and the grain embargo. The
>USSR had become the largest customer for U.S. grain. The
>large-scale purchases by the USSR which began in the early
>1970s were considered the one significant material factor
>that could lay the basis for peaceful relations between the
>U.S. and the USSR.
>
>Trade, the liberals said, was the way to lay the
>foundation for peaceful relations with the USSR and other
>socialist countries.
>
>But it was the Carter-Mondale partnership that broke it
>up. Their strategic conception was based on an attempt to
>starve the Soviet people into submission. Starvation would
>bring mass unrest in the USSR; long lines at the food
>stores would make the Soviet leadership crumble.
>
>It was a way to solicit surrender from the leadership by
>attacking the people with starvation. Was it not Mondale
>who stumped the farming states in an effort to put down the
>widespread discontent in the farming areas that followed
>the implementation of this economic warfare?
>
>How did Carter and Mondale react to the hundreds of
>thousands of bankruptcies of small farmers that followed?
>By getting the government to make compensatory payments to
>the very big farmers--the grain monopolists--and letting
>the little ones survive on their own with "aid" that would
>not enable them to sell their grain but only indebted them
>further to the government and the banks.
>
>CUTBACKS IN SOCIAL SERVICES
>
>Mondale agreed with the Carter budget to begin on Oct. 1,
>1979, that involved deep cuts in social services, health
>care, aid to cities, energy assistance as well as
>environmental projects. The Congres sional Black Caucus
>called it "immoral and unjust" and wondered how Carter
>could reconcile the huge defense budget with his cuts in
>vital social services.
>
>Reagan has profoundly deepened what the Carter-Mondale
>team started.
>
>The Carter-Mondale administration laid the organizational
>and administrative legal basis that enabled Reagan to break
>the PATCO strike of air traffic controllers. It was worked
>out during the Carter administration.
>
>Against strong unions, like the Mine Workers, the Carter
>administration didn't hesitate to invoke the Taft-Hartley
>law with the deadly weapon of a federal injunction and
>threats to take contempt measures against the union leaders
>and the rank and file.
>
>Mondale vigorously supported the Carter administration
>during the days of the so-called oil shortage. He engaged
>in the most vitriolic attacks on the OPEC countries, while
>the administration's policies had the fundamental objective
>of raising gas and oil prices to the public.
>
>This all brought on the wild, uncontrolled frenzy of
>capitalist overproduction in oil, which eventually had to
>collapse, laying the basis for the capitalist economic
>crisis.
>
>These are some of the compelling and irresistible facts
>that do not support the hypothesis of our pragmatic
>adversaries, who ask us to look at reality and face facts.
>
>Unfounded hopes, not facts
>
>They are supporting Mondale solely on the basis of
>unfounded hopes and his vague bourgeois liberal rhetoric.
>They are applying a totally subjective approach to the
>campaign: relying on the supposed individual qualities of
>the candidates, rather than looking at which class they
>represent.
>
>Their effort at a pragmatic approach is tantamount to an
>abandonment of objective analysis of the nature of the
>capitalist government and the rule of monopoly capital. In
>effect, it means to discard all objective criteria and
>substitute wholly subjective ones.
>
>Intellectual adherents of pragmatism have long been
>fulminating against "immutable laws," "fixed principles"
>and "closed systems." They declare abhorrence for
>"abstractions," "final truths" and "absolutes" in society
>and nature.
>
>Nevertheless, the pragmatists make one definite exception-
>-they regard the capitalist system as fixed, as the final
>truth. They regard private property in the means of
>production as an immutable law of nature. This is the
>essence of pragmatism as a world philosophical outlook.
>
>It explains among other reasons why Marxism in theory as
>well as in practice is an implacable foe of pragmatism.
>
>Marxism is the most profound philosophy of constant,
>uninterrupted change, of gradual quantitative changes that
>result in leaps forward, making a qualitative
>transformation. Marxism is the theory of social development
>from lower to higher forms.
>
>Marxism is a theory of evolution that teaches that
>capitalism, rather than being an eternal system, is a
>transitory stage in the development of humanity, and will
>of historical necessity be overthrown by the struggle of
>the working class and oppressed people.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
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