Marcos Kosovo Statement Criticized Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Dave Silver OPEN LETTER TO MARXISTS, ANTI-IMPERIALISTS AND PROGRESSIVES REGARDING COMMANDANTE MARCOS' STATEMENT ON YUGOSLAVIA June 6, 1999 Commandante Marcos, a leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Mexico stated in June 1999 that he rejects both "ethnic cleansing" by the Belgrade government of Milosevic as well as the NATO bombing. In spite of forged photos of alleged massacres by Serbs, in spite of a civil war in which the so called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is being funded and supported by the CIA and Pentagon, in spite of a German Foreign Ministry spokesman saying that there is no sign of genocide or that ethnic cleansing is a part of Serb policy, in spite of the crippling U.S. imperialist sanctions against Yugoslavia since 1992, in spite of hundreds of Serbs slaughtered near Serbenica, in spite of the false blaming of the Serbs for the infamous Sarajevo massacre in which Muslim ultra nationalists bombed Bosnian civilians in order to induce NATO involvement and in spite of the historical record of US imperialist use of death squads, state terrorism from Vietnam to Cuba to Grenada, Libya, Sudan, Iraq and the murdering of over a million Indonesian Communists, just to mention some of imperialism's atrocities. In spite of the inter imperialist rivalry for a client state in the Balkans which led to Yugoslavia's dismemberment and in spite of Washington's Indigenous Holocaust of Native Peoples-yes in spite of all of this Marcos tells us that we are dealing with two co-evils. How can one account for such a dangerous revisionist and opportunistic position? Marcos, like former Revolutionary leaders of the Sandinista (FSLN) in Nicaragua and the Farbundo Marti Liberation Movement in El Salvador (FMLN), have bought into the counter revolutionary "new thinking" that substitutes "universal human values" for class struggle and who today totally reject Socialism as a goal or option and instead are looking for some hybrid-neither capitalist nor socialist perhaps a kind of Libertarian or Glasnost Environmental Collective. "Traditional" or "Orthodox" Marxism is not just revised by these leaders for this era of a Transnational ruling class, they reject its fundamental principles often under the guise of innovating or enrching Marxism. Didn't we witness a few years ago Humberto Ortega, as Defense Minister in the Chamorro government plead for financial aid and told the Pentagon that they were no longer anti-imperialist. Or Arnaldo Ramos representative in New York of the FDR/FMLN, writes that "with the changes in eastern Europe (the counter revolution in the former USSR) and the changes in FMLN strategy (note it is strategy not tactics) we (the Salvadoreans) can construct a political and economic model acceptable to Washington." When confronted by this writer as to whether any model satisfying US imperialism could possibly be good for any country he blurted out that "WE ARE NOT CUBA." Indeed not. Left Anti-Communism is alive and well. We can see a few clues to the political and ideological shift of Marcos' to the right; In 1997 when another guerrilla liberation force, the EPR operated in the Mexican province of Guerrero and whose avowed goal is the overthrow of the Zedillo regime and the establishment of a Socialist State, Marcos stated that he rejects any solidarity with them and the Zapatista goal was only land reform in Chiapas and "democratization." Marcos conciliates imperialism when he omits even the mention of imperialism's version of the contras in Kosovo, the KLA. A neo-marxist or Social Democrat rarely asks the pertinent question of who benefits. Lacking a class analysis and substituting a bourgeois democratic concept of freedom for historical materialism they are unable to understand the flow of Kosovars over the border or why it is that Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived together by and large amicably in Bosnia for centuries. Like Bosnia, Kosovo which has been part of Yugoslavia for most of this century, contains great mineral wealth. In addition Belgrade was the only country in Europe to deny the stationing of a U.S. military presence there. Therefore the nationalist Milosevic (former Communist) had to be demonised because he would be an obstacle to a pipeline running through the Balkans to the oil rich Caspian Sea. The ultimate prize that U.S. Transnationals and Banks covet of course are the vast riches of Russia. The supreme irony is that Yugoslavia was allowed to exist for over 45 years because as a nonaligned country, imperialism sought to use it as a buffer to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. As Michael Parenti observed, the U.S. wanted a Third Worldization of Yugoslavia which tenaciously held on to what was left of a socialist infrastructure that included public sector services and social programs; anathema to the I.M.F and World Bank. A specter of Revolutionary Marxism haunts not only the imperialists, exploiters and oppressors but segments of the Left and former Liberation Movements. The late scholar and Revolutionary Ken Cameron had Marx' dictum in mind that the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. In his Marxism -A Living Science- Cameron's concluding statement is that "it is time to set our sights on the future, to perceive through the mist of capitalist obfuscation that the world revolutionary thrust that Marx and Engels projected and Lenin witnessed is still operating, inexorably, like the giant forces of nature-with which it is increasingly blended. Indeed it is. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-06.09.99-22:21:25-32318