Who is for war and who is for peace? The following Editorial was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, March 29th, 1999. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian Subscription rates on request. ****************************** As more and more bombs rain down on the cities and towns of Yugoslavia, protests and demonstrations have erupted around the world. Most go unreported in the Australian media. But apart from the stories of the bombs dropping, the killings and the refugees inevitably caused by war, a clear political divide is to be seen. Almost without exception the conservative political parties are for war. They always have been. The ruling circles in the United States are today's warmongers and would-be masters of the world. Wherever there is conflict and strife the hand of the US is not far away -- Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Bosnia, the Congo and now Yugoslavia. There is little difference between Clinton and Reagan in this respect. It would come as no surprise to anyone that the Howard Government and its "nice" Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, wasted no time in jumping on the bandwagon of the NATO war against Yugoslavia. Kim Beazley also wasted no time in saying "Me too!", thereby lining up Australia's social democrats with this illegal war. In Australia it was the Communist Party of Australia which was the first to denounce the NATO aggression even before the bombs started to drop. A similar political alignment emerges around the world. In 1995, the then NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes who called himself a "socialist", ordered the bombing of Serb targets in Bosnia. Today it is the Spanish "socialist", Solana of the Spanish Socialist Party who unleashed the bombing of Yugoslavia. It is the Unification Communist Party of Spain that has denounced the bombing. The social democratic governments of Britain (Blair), France (Jospin), Germany (Schroeder), Italy (D'Alema -- a former "communist") and other "socialist" European governments are in the forefront of the NATO aggression. Contrasting with their betrayal of peace and principles are the denunciations made by communist parties around the world. In France a 10,000-strong protest march included the French Communist Party, French trade unions, the peace movement, Yugoslavs from the Paris community and other smaller parties. In Britain, the Communist Party of Britain and the New Communist Party of Britain have both condemned the war. Tony Benn and four other members of the British Labour Party have tabled a motion in the British Parliament that "this House recognises that NATO military action against Yugoslavia has not been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, does not have the support of the Contact Group on Kosovo, contravenes the sovereign status of a recognised state, is likely to cause further civilian casualties and could lead to an escalation of conflict with consequent loss of life on all sides." Their resolution called for a negotiated settlement "in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter", showing that some Labour Party members have a conscience and principle. The Hungarian Government led by people who, when Hungary was a socialist state, declared that they merely wanted to build a "better socialism" has since joined NATO and now supports the illegal aggression. The Hungarian Workers' Party in condemning the bombing declared that "NATO under the leadership of the imperialist circles of the US wants to liquidate Yugoslavia. We demand that the aggression stop immediately." A demonstration was held in Budapest last Saturday. Belgium is another NATO member with a "socialist" government which supports the aggression, but the Workers' Party of Belgium and the Anti-imperialist League have condemned the bombing. Their statement makes the point: "It is certainly not NATO, but the existence of a strong socialist bloc that guaranteed peace in Europe for so long. Since the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe, the peoples of these countries have been submitted to crisis, insecurity, outrageous nationalism and threats of war." Their statement goes on: "Social Democracy carries a high degree of responsibility for the war in Yugoslavia." Others to join the protests are the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom International Secretariat, the Green Party of Canada and the Communist Party of Canada, the War Resisters International (a network of more than 70 pacifist groups in over 30 countries), the South African Communist Party, the Portuguese Communist Party and many others. They are united in demanding: STOP THE BOMBING! -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
