* 24 MAGGIO: FIRENZE DICE NO AL SUMMIT DELLA NATO
* LA NATO AL DI SOPRA DI OGNI LEGGE? (D. Pavlovic)
---
FLORENCE SAYS NO TO THE NATO SUMMIT!
On the 24 and 25 May, NATO will hold a summit meeting in Florence, a
city declared to be an "Operator for Peace," with a gold medal for its
Resistance against the Nazi/Facists in WW II.
In this highest-level meeting, the NATO Alliance intends to further
define its strategies with regards to various areas of the world (the
Balkans and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa), the
reorganization in a more explicitly offensive way of its military
apparatus, and its expansion to the East.
The NATO military alliance which, as in the past, continues to be an
instrument of aggression against national sovereignty and of
interference in the internal political affairs of member states, as well
as a constant threat to peace, is today in a process of transformation
of its role and its military apparatus to adapt itself to the growing
requirements of capitalist dominion in its contemporary form: "the free
market."
It is in this sense that the Treaty of Washington of April 1999, also
signed by the Italian government, must be understood, in which NATO
formally arrogates to itself the right to intervene everywhere and
anywhere in support of the new world order, as demonstrated in the war
against Yugoslavia.
War is thus established and increasingly reconfirmed as a concrete
possibility, practicable and in fact practiced, as a major and decisive
instrument for the imposition of the "free market."
For this reason there is an evident connection between the struggles
against wars of aggression, against the presence of NATO's military
bases, against militarism, and against the embargoes, with the struggles
in the North and South of the world which are rising up against the
sanctuaries of capitalism (WTO, IMF, World Bank), against temporary
labor and "flexibility", against exploitation and poverty, for social
and citizenship rights, for the right to a decent life and future, for
the liberation of peoples.
The forces organizing this mobilization express their opposition to the
holding of the NATO summit in Florence and call on the entire population
to boycott and mobilize against this unacceptable provocation.
WEDNESDAY 24 MAY
DAY OF MOBILIZATION AGAINST NATO
concluding with a
DEMONSTRATION
meeting point: PIAZZA SAN MARCO
5:30 p.m.
Endorsers: Women in Black, Tuscan Antagonistic Movement, Casa for
Social Rights, Association for Renewal of the Left, CPA Occupied Social
Center, Communist Refoundation Party, Young Communists, Liberazione
newspaper, Forum of the Women of Communist Refoundation, Peace Charter,
Coordinamento of Leftist Students, Political Science Collective,
Programmatic Area of Communists in CGIL trade union, RDB Healthworkers
union (Tuscany), Camera del Lavoro Sociale labor council, Fuori
Binario
newspaper, Peace Tent, Ass. Senza Confine, Missing Links Ass., Ass.
for Defense of Minorities, Movement for the Confederation of Communists,
Cobas school union, Sincobas union, Slai Cobas union (Florence), Cobas
Union Confederation (Florence), Gulf Committee, National Coordinamento
of RSU workplace union councils, National Coord. of Committees Against
the War, Guerre e Pace magazine, Coord. of World March of Women, Coord.
Rete Lilliput (Florence), CSOA il Mulino Occupied Social Center,
National, Ass. AZAD - Freedom for the Kurdish People, Val di Sieve Peace
Committee, ASSOPACE, PMLI, Nuova Unita' newspaper, North Americans
Against War, Coord. University Language Teachers (Florence), 1968
Archives, Forum of Associations Against the Free Market (Milan), Ass.
Village of Peoples, Economy Group "E. Balducci", RACS, Ass. "Friendship"
Rom (Florence), Florence Committee for the Liberation of Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Valdarno Committee Against the War, Ernesto de Martino
Institute, Ass. Chiama Africa, Cultural Ass. Punto Rosso (Massa
Carrara), RSU union council of University of Florence. Mani Tese
(Florence).
---
Above or Beyond the Law
Dragan Pavlovic
Editor in chief, "Dialogue", Paris
____________________________________________________________________
The First World War Has Not Happened Yet
We seem to be dreaming. We look at the world as if it were not much
older
than we can remember. We do not doubt that we have made progress through
history as human beings, and we are proud of it. As children we may not
even have had a bicycle or ridden the train; and now we can have
breakfast
in one part of the world and dinner on the opposite side of our planet
Earth. Basic essential human rights are not an issue any more in this,
our
part of the world; we struggle for even more rights - extra rights are
the
order of the day: homosexual rights, even animal rights, and so on. War?
That is the business of fools, of lower people, they can have wars if
they
wish, but here war is forgotten. If we hear about such things from the
other
side of the world, it all sounds as remote as tales from an old history
book. We have moved beyond ... The new era is on its way; the world has
profoundly changed forever.
But is it so?
If we would shake our heads, open wide our eyes, and look back through
history, we could clearly see how profound an illusion this is. The
reality
is cruel. Conflicts between states have been constant and have all too
often
escalated into bloody wars. This has been an infallible pattern now for
not
only hundreds but many thousands of years. History looks rather like
conflict - war periods randomly distributed over the planet, with
uninhabited areas proportionally less exposed. When it has happened that
some large region remained relatively spared for a fairly long period of
time, then people always, without exception, started to believe that the
time of war was past and gone. However, those exceptional periods always
came to an end and the hopes for lasting peace proved to be in vain.
Today we have no serious reasons to believe that the future will not
resemble the past. The present period of peace in the Western world is
negligibly short, if compared to the sweep of history, and the cycle of
war
and peace periods following endlessly one upon another -- much too short
to
enable us to conclude that the miracle has occurred. Hence, there are
more
wars to come in the future.
The same applies to the frontiers between states. They have been
changing
over the centuries, and the long history of changes only offers the
promise
that there will be more changes to come, the Europe of the future is not
going to resemble the one we know now, and that this is going to happen,
unfortunately, through conflicts and wars.
In the past, the slowness of communications and the restricted range of
deadly weapons resulted in more or less local wars. With the advance of
technology, communications and the world population, people have been
able
to travel faster and attack at greater distance, and wars have been
becoming
more universal. Yet so far, the real World War has not quite been
possible, even though very major wars, particularly in the past century,
were possible. Some of you may still remember what they looked like.
Today at last, thanks to technological progress, truly universal war is
practically at hand. So this is the sort of war we can expect to see
next.
All major wars in the past were fought for a "universal" cause, for
freedom,
for world order, for a prosperous and peaceful future, for improved
humanity, for "high" human ideals. We know today that all without
exception
were ruthless lies and the result of ignoble motives, immoral purposes
and
self-deception. Significantly, it was always the leaders of the most
powerful states, the ones most advanced in military technology, who took
it
for granted that eternal wisdom and utmost humanity went hand in hand
with
power. They believed that their concept of a better world then had to be
imposed - indeed even that failing to impose it would had been highly
immoral and unjust. Thinkers who opposed those attitudes were
marginalised
since the reigning power had their own thinkers, their own philosophers,
own
writers, own wise men, own elite. And so it went on. In short, there
were
many common features to distinguish aggressive states that probably
could be
recognised should they appear again today.
Yet absurd as it may be, in the past, they were seldom identified in
time by
large sections of the populations. Why, I do not know. Perhaps it was
because they were never exactly the same, born in different times and
different places, in different cultural environments; and in spite of
this,
they all displayed these similar features.
Above or Beyond the Law
There is in particular one feature, so systematically present, so well
represented, that always followed sometimes long periods of maturation
of
those so characteristic and yet atypical and unrecognisable ideological
traits that I mention, which is so strong that its appearance should by
itself be able to wake up the most somnolent from their deadly dreams:
THEY
(the states i.e., their leaders) always put themselves above the law,
violating their own laws, the laws of other countries, agreements
between
states, treaties, international conventions. Always. In the earlier
times
those were not the laws in narrow sense but rather customs or frequently
unwritten agreements. In the twentieth century the laws par excellence,
just
borne to assure everlasting peace, were violated. To do this, very
strong
reasons were given, always, without exception. The essence of all
reasons
was that fulfilment of essential human duties had to overcome humanly
made,
imperfect laws. THEY would promote first an untenable thesis that
violence
could be combated by equal or even greater violence. To achieve their
ultimate goals, THEY had to turn upside down the famous Greek argument
of
the justice beyond the law, justice emanating out of human categorical
imperatives, a priory knowledge of right and wrong, our ideal of
justice.
(Antigones' refusal not to bury the body of her brother and to let it be
torn apart by animals; she was convinced that the universal law is
higher
than human made laws and that such a vicious act could not be let
happen).
The ancient Greeks knew that laws couldn't entail the entire human moral
intuition. They knew that we may, in the rare cases, in order to fulfil
that
ideal of justice - the laws steam to and just fall short of - and go
beyond
the law, but only to forgive and to pardon. What a tyrants would do is
that
they would either virtually apply the law but exceeding what it
prescribes,
or go above it and violate it (for the "higher" cause!) punishing more,
oppressing more, destroying and killing, and this makes the "fine"
difference of the moral and immoral.
Here is the famous passage form Sophocles" "Antigone".
CREON. And thou didst indeed dare to transgress that law?
ANTIGONE. Yes; for it was not Zeus that had published me that edict; not
such are the laws set among men by the justice who dwells with the gods
below; nor deemed I that thy decrees were of such force, that a mortal
could
override the unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven. For their life
is
not of today or yesterday, but from all time, and no man knows when they
were first put forth.
Not through dread of any human pride could I answer to the gods for
breaking
these. Die I must,-I knew that well (how should I not?)-even without thy
edicts. But if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain: for when
any
one lives, as I do, compassed about with evils, can such an one find
aught
but gain in death?
So for me to meet this doom is trifling grief; but if I had suffered my
mother's son to lie in death an unburied corpse, that would have grieved
me;
for this, I am not grieved. And if my present deeds are foolish in thy
sight, it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly.
In the other words, Sophocles was saying that we can break the law only
if
in doing this we commit a less violent act, and then we certainly do not
increase the punishment, we diminish it or pardon altogether. Only then
we
may, in some special circumstances, break the human-made and imperfect
human
laws. But what THEY (the states mentioned above i.e., their actual
leaders)
would so systematically do, and we should so easily see it if we just
open
our eyes, is that, contrary to Sophocles - who would break the law only
to
pardon - those states would introduce more cruel, more violent measures,
not
only to impose by force the "utmost human values", but to punish,
repress
and even exterminate. They would do all of this in a simple and clear
way -
with sword and fire. This, and at least this - we must always be able to
recognise at its very beginning. Before the announced (first) world war,
before it is too late.
Morals about Imperatives
I will let the reader discover examples of that pattern in history.
Ancient
Macedonia, the Romans, the Ottomans, Napoleonic France, our colonial
predecessors, Nazi Germany, are some of the most obvious cases. And
there
were others as well. Today, we must be very well aware that quite
recently,
the UN Charter and more then 50 treaties and international conventions,
as
well as a few national Constitutions, were violated.
In politics, not declared desires, promises and bare words, but acts and
results of those acts show what was really wanted. 78 days of bombing of
Yugoslavia, led to NATO occupation of Kosovo and installation of second
huge
military NATO basis in the Balkans (against small Serbia!?), ethnic
cleansing of the totality of Serbs from Kosovo (those who still rest
there
are in the "reserves"), having as a result reinforcement of Belgrade
government, subtotal destruction of the country's industry, death of
couple
of thousands of civilians, pushing the entire population deep in misery.
Those who did it all recognise now (secretly though) their failure and
plan
further (again military) actions to correct it. This will further help
"revive" the history, some were so anxious that was dying.
Again, we should not confuse entire nations with states, actual
governments,
and some political leaders. At the very end of the 20th century, we are
witnessing a dangerous, perhaps deadly, turn, taken by some of our
leaders
of the Western world, with the NATO Alliance at the summit. The pattern
is
easy to recognise, although, some of us have missed to spot it.
Fortunately,
we are the creatures able to learn, and this could be learned. Only
knowledge, under condition that we use it, and this being an imperative
today, could help us, probably, make that future does not resemble the
past.
Yes, not an easy task, but possible.
_____________________________________
Dragan Pavlovic
dragan@...
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* LA NATO AL DI SOPRA DI OGNI LEGGE? (D. Pavlovic)
---
FLORENCE SAYS NO TO THE NATO SUMMIT!
On the 24 and 25 May, NATO will hold a summit meeting in Florence, a
city declared to be an "Operator for Peace," with a gold medal for its
Resistance against the Nazi/Facists in WW II.
In this highest-level meeting, the NATO Alliance intends to further
define its strategies with regards to various areas of the world (the
Balkans and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa), the
reorganization in a more explicitly offensive way of its military
apparatus, and its expansion to the East.
The NATO military alliance which, as in the past, continues to be an
instrument of aggression against national sovereignty and of
interference in the internal political affairs of member states, as well
as a constant threat to peace, is today in a process of transformation
of its role and its military apparatus to adapt itself to the growing
requirements of capitalist dominion in its contemporary form: "the free
market."
It is in this sense that the Treaty of Washington of April 1999, also
signed by the Italian government, must be understood, in which NATO
formally arrogates to itself the right to intervene everywhere and
anywhere in support of the new world order, as demonstrated in the war
against Yugoslavia.
War is thus established and increasingly reconfirmed as a concrete
possibility, practicable and in fact practiced, as a major and decisive
instrument for the imposition of the "free market."
For this reason there is an evident connection between the struggles
against wars of aggression, against the presence of NATO's military
bases, against militarism, and against the embargoes, with the struggles
in the North and South of the world which are rising up against the
sanctuaries of capitalism (WTO, IMF, World Bank), against temporary
labor and "flexibility", against exploitation and poverty, for social
and citizenship rights, for the right to a decent life and future, for
the liberation of peoples.
The forces organizing this mobilization express their opposition to the
holding of the NATO summit in Florence and call on the entire population
to boycott and mobilize against this unacceptable provocation.
WEDNESDAY 24 MAY
DAY OF MOBILIZATION AGAINST NATO
concluding with a
DEMONSTRATION
meeting point: PIAZZA SAN MARCO
5:30 p.m.
Endorsers: Women in Black, Tuscan Antagonistic Movement, Casa for
Social Rights, Association for Renewal of the Left, CPA Occupied Social
Center, Communist Refoundation Party, Young Communists, Liberazione
newspaper, Forum of the Women of Communist Refoundation, Peace Charter,
Coordinamento of Leftist Students, Political Science Collective,
Programmatic Area of Communists in CGIL trade union, RDB Healthworkers
union (Tuscany), Camera del Lavoro Sociale labor council, Fuori
Binario
newspaper, Peace Tent, Ass. Senza Confine, Missing Links Ass., Ass.
for Defense of Minorities, Movement for the Confederation of Communists,
Cobas school union, Sincobas union, Slai Cobas union (Florence), Cobas
Union Confederation (Florence), Gulf Committee, National Coordinamento
of RSU workplace union councils, National Coord. of Committees Against
the War, Guerre e Pace magazine, Coord. of World March of Women, Coord.
Rete Lilliput (Florence), CSOA il Mulino Occupied Social Center,
National, Ass. AZAD - Freedom for the Kurdish People, Val di Sieve Peace
Committee, ASSOPACE, PMLI, Nuova Unita' newspaper, North Americans
Against War, Coord. University Language Teachers (Florence), 1968
Archives, Forum of Associations Against the Free Market (Milan), Ass.
Village of Peoples, Economy Group "E. Balducci", RACS, Ass. "Friendship"
Rom (Florence), Florence Committee for the Liberation of Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Valdarno Committee Against the War, Ernesto de Martino
Institute, Ass. Chiama Africa, Cultural Ass. Punto Rosso (Massa
Carrara), RSU union council of University of Florence. Mani Tese
(Florence).
---
Above or Beyond the Law
Dragan Pavlovic
Editor in chief, "Dialogue", Paris
____________________________________________________________________
The First World War Has Not Happened Yet
We seem to be dreaming. We look at the world as if it were not much
older
than we can remember. We do not doubt that we have made progress through
history as human beings, and we are proud of it. As children we may not
even have had a bicycle or ridden the train; and now we can have
breakfast
in one part of the world and dinner on the opposite side of our planet
Earth. Basic essential human rights are not an issue any more in this,
our
part of the world; we struggle for even more rights - extra rights are
the
order of the day: homosexual rights, even animal rights, and so on. War?
That is the business of fools, of lower people, they can have wars if
they
wish, but here war is forgotten. If we hear about such things from the
other
side of the world, it all sounds as remote as tales from an old history
book. We have moved beyond ... The new era is on its way; the world has
profoundly changed forever.
But is it so?
If we would shake our heads, open wide our eyes, and look back through
history, we could clearly see how profound an illusion this is. The
reality
is cruel. Conflicts between states have been constant and have all too
often
escalated into bloody wars. This has been an infallible pattern now for
not
only hundreds but many thousands of years. History looks rather like
conflict - war periods randomly distributed over the planet, with
uninhabited areas proportionally less exposed. When it has happened that
some large region remained relatively spared for a fairly long period of
time, then people always, without exception, started to believe that the
time of war was past and gone. However, those exceptional periods always
came to an end and the hopes for lasting peace proved to be in vain.
Today we have no serious reasons to believe that the future will not
resemble the past. The present period of peace in the Western world is
negligibly short, if compared to the sweep of history, and the cycle of
war
and peace periods following endlessly one upon another -- much too short
to
enable us to conclude that the miracle has occurred. Hence, there are
more
wars to come in the future.
The same applies to the frontiers between states. They have been
changing
over the centuries, and the long history of changes only offers the
promise
that there will be more changes to come, the Europe of the future is not
going to resemble the one we know now, and that this is going to happen,
unfortunately, through conflicts and wars.
In the past, the slowness of communications and the restricted range of
deadly weapons resulted in more or less local wars. With the advance of
technology, communications and the world population, people have been
able
to travel faster and attack at greater distance, and wars have been
becoming
more universal. Yet so far, the real World War has not quite been
possible, even though very major wars, particularly in the past century,
were possible. Some of you may still remember what they looked like.
Today at last, thanks to technological progress, truly universal war is
practically at hand. So this is the sort of war we can expect to see
next.
All major wars in the past were fought for a "universal" cause, for
freedom,
for world order, for a prosperous and peaceful future, for improved
humanity, for "high" human ideals. We know today that all without
exception
were ruthless lies and the result of ignoble motives, immoral purposes
and
self-deception. Significantly, it was always the leaders of the most
powerful states, the ones most advanced in military technology, who took
it
for granted that eternal wisdom and utmost humanity went hand in hand
with
power. They believed that their concept of a better world then had to be
imposed - indeed even that failing to impose it would had been highly
immoral and unjust. Thinkers who opposed those attitudes were
marginalised
since the reigning power had their own thinkers, their own philosophers,
own
writers, own wise men, own elite. And so it went on. In short, there
were
many common features to distinguish aggressive states that probably
could be
recognised should they appear again today.
Yet absurd as it may be, in the past, they were seldom identified in
time by
large sections of the populations. Why, I do not know. Perhaps it was
because they were never exactly the same, born in different times and
different places, in different cultural environments; and in spite of
this,
they all displayed these similar features.
Above or Beyond the Law
There is in particular one feature, so systematically present, so well
represented, that always followed sometimes long periods of maturation
of
those so characteristic and yet atypical and unrecognisable ideological
traits that I mention, which is so strong that its appearance should by
itself be able to wake up the most somnolent from their deadly dreams:
THEY
(the states i.e., their leaders) always put themselves above the law,
violating their own laws, the laws of other countries, agreements
between
states, treaties, international conventions. Always. In the earlier
times
those were not the laws in narrow sense but rather customs or frequently
unwritten agreements. In the twentieth century the laws par excellence,
just
borne to assure everlasting peace, were violated. To do this, very
strong
reasons were given, always, without exception. The essence of all
reasons
was that fulfilment of essential human duties had to overcome humanly
made,
imperfect laws. THEY would promote first an untenable thesis that
violence
could be combated by equal or even greater violence. To achieve their
ultimate goals, THEY had to turn upside down the famous Greek argument
of
the justice beyond the law, justice emanating out of human categorical
imperatives, a priory knowledge of right and wrong, our ideal of
justice.
(Antigones' refusal not to bury the body of her brother and to let it be
torn apart by animals; she was convinced that the universal law is
higher
than human made laws and that such a vicious act could not be let
happen).
The ancient Greeks knew that laws couldn't entail the entire human moral
intuition. They knew that we may, in the rare cases, in order to fulfil
that
ideal of justice - the laws steam to and just fall short of - and go
beyond
the law, but only to forgive and to pardon. What a tyrants would do is
that
they would either virtually apply the law but exceeding what it
prescribes,
or go above it and violate it (for the "higher" cause!) punishing more,
oppressing more, destroying and killing, and this makes the "fine"
difference of the moral and immoral.
Here is the famous passage form Sophocles" "Antigone".
CREON. And thou didst indeed dare to transgress that law?
ANTIGONE. Yes; for it was not Zeus that had published me that edict; not
such are the laws set among men by the justice who dwells with the gods
below; nor deemed I that thy decrees were of such force, that a mortal
could
override the unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven. For their life
is
not of today or yesterday, but from all time, and no man knows when they
were first put forth.
Not through dread of any human pride could I answer to the gods for
breaking
these. Die I must,-I knew that well (how should I not?)-even without thy
edicts. But if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain: for when
any
one lives, as I do, compassed about with evils, can such an one find
aught
but gain in death?
So for me to meet this doom is trifling grief; but if I had suffered my
mother's son to lie in death an unburied corpse, that would have grieved
me;
for this, I am not grieved. And if my present deeds are foolish in thy
sight, it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly.
In the other words, Sophocles was saying that we can break the law only
if
in doing this we commit a less violent act, and then we certainly do not
increase the punishment, we diminish it or pardon altogether. Only then
we
may, in some special circumstances, break the human-made and imperfect
human
laws. But what THEY (the states mentioned above i.e., their actual
leaders)
would so systematically do, and we should so easily see it if we just
open
our eyes, is that, contrary to Sophocles - who would break the law only
to
pardon - those states would introduce more cruel, more violent measures,
not
only to impose by force the "utmost human values", but to punish,
repress
and even exterminate. They would do all of this in a simple and clear
way -
with sword and fire. This, and at least this - we must always be able to
recognise at its very beginning. Before the announced (first) world war,
before it is too late.
Morals about Imperatives
I will let the reader discover examples of that pattern in history.
Ancient
Macedonia, the Romans, the Ottomans, Napoleonic France, our colonial
predecessors, Nazi Germany, are some of the most obvious cases. And
there
were others as well. Today, we must be very well aware that quite
recently,
the UN Charter and more then 50 treaties and international conventions,
as
well as a few national Constitutions, were violated.
In politics, not declared desires, promises and bare words, but acts and
results of those acts show what was really wanted. 78 days of bombing of
Yugoslavia, led to NATO occupation of Kosovo and installation of second
huge
military NATO basis in the Balkans (against small Serbia!?), ethnic
cleansing of the totality of Serbs from Kosovo (those who still rest
there
are in the "reserves"), having as a result reinforcement of Belgrade
government, subtotal destruction of the country's industry, death of
couple
of thousands of civilians, pushing the entire population deep in misery.
Those who did it all recognise now (secretly though) their failure and
plan
further (again military) actions to correct it. This will further help
"revive" the history, some were so anxious that was dying.
Again, we should not confuse entire nations with states, actual
governments,
and some political leaders. At the very end of the 20th century, we are
witnessing a dangerous, perhaps deadly, turn, taken by some of our
leaders
of the Western world, with the NATO Alliance at the summit. The pattern
is
easy to recognise, although, some of us have missed to spot it.
Fortunately,
we are the creatures able to learn, and this could be learned. Only
knowledge, under condition that we use it, and this being an imperative
today, could help us, probably, make that future does not resemble the
past.
Yes, not an easy task, but possible.
_____________________________________
Dragan Pavlovic
dragan@...
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------