Proyect 12 Oct:
>Of course he belongs in prison
The robust, even revolutionary, tone of Proyect's prompt no-nonsense
comment smacks if I am correct of the concept of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. No doubt he will clarify if he wishes.
I am genuinely surprised that since Proyect listed Milosevic's Serbia as
pretty middling in the list of admirable to not so admirable states, he
does not see censorship of atrocities by one's own side as one of the
negative aspects of that state.
Proyect knows I have long been as wary of the elusiveness of his arguments
as he has, sometimes correctly, been critical of the elusiveness of my prose.
There are one or two slight problems about Proyect's robust argument.
> Filopovic (not Filopevic) wrote for the
>British Independent, a newspaper published in a country that had
>participated in war crimes against his own.
> The Independent is a filthy lying warmongering rag that, along
>with the rest of the British press, serves the interests of imperialism.
Among Proyect's ten posts to PEN-L yesterday (I wish Michael would put more
of a premium on thought than volume in a list with academic aspirations)
Proyect quoted in full a report from the Guardian (UK) website "What the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has planned".
I took the article I posted on the interview with Filipovic from exactly
the same website.
The Guardian is a "filthy lying warmongering rag" that serves the interests
of imperialism. In fact it and the Observer provided a decisive voice in
the UK urging intervention on the Labour Government, although it was far
from enthusiastic about the intervention that occurred.
So Proyect uses IMO quite rightly though rather incontinently, these
imperialist sources, but considers that someone who writes "for" them
should "of course" be in prison.
Proyect's robust, decisive and dismissive comment, typically of supporters
of the no-nonsense school of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
overlooks any issues of procedure under socialist legality.
Had he read rather than skimmed the report on the lying imperialist
web-site he would have read not that Filipovic had been imprisoned for
writing for an enemy publication:-
>The pieces which caused the military to put him in prison this summer
>appeared only on the internet.
The IWPR website which I quoted earlier, despite its no doubt imperialist
backers, said
>Miroslav Filipovic, a contributor to the Institute for War and Peace
>Reporting (IWPR) and Agence France-Presse, has been sentenced to seven
>years in jail for espionage and "spreading false information". Filipovic,
>who is also associated with the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in
>Serbia and writes for the Belgrade daily Danas, was investigated in
>connection with articles he wrote for IWPR training and reporting
>projects, including one on Kosovo quoting military sources on atrocities
>committed during the NATO campaign.
>
>
>Filipovic's only "crime" has been to undertake exactly the kind of
>truth-telling the international community has urged the people of Serbia
>to begin. He deserves support in his own right, and to help ensure that
>his case does not become a pattern.
OK, Proyect has revealed his brand of socialism further by stating that "of
course" Filipovic should be in prison.
The crime of publishing in an imperialist newspaper is greater than the
crime of violating the consitution of Yugoslavia by expelling citizens in
hundreds of thousands by means of exemplary atrocities and the crime of
concealing that crime.
Maybe Proyect will clarify his concept of the dictatorship of the
proletariat by starting a thread, subject to Michael's approval, on how
dialectics led to violations of socialist legality in the case of Andreas
Nin and the Moscow trials.
Meanwhile does Proyect see any positive side to the recent
(counter)revolution in Yugoslavia from the fact that Serb television for
the first time has carried reports about atrocities by its own side in
Kosovo. Or would these producers also belong in prison should Milosevic
stage a counter-counter-revolution?
And how would that serve the cause of the unity of working people in the
former territory of federal republic of Yugoslavia in resisting the
onslaughts of finance capitalism?
Chris Burford
London
