Syndicate: EZLN - Marcos on Kosovo, Jun 5

[Diana McCarty <diana@mrf.hu>]

(Hi this is an excerpt from a nettime post about the current Zapatista
situation.
Viva La Paz! )
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Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 09:54:36 -0400
From: ricardo dominguez <rdom@thing.net>
To: "nettime-l@Desk.nl" <nettime-l@desk.nl>
Subject: EZLN - Marcos on Kosovo, Jun 5

Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Mexico

June of 1999


To the peoples in struggle against the war:
To Social Europe:
To the men and women who are saying "No!":

Brothers and Sisters:

Greetings to all from the zapatistas of Mexico.
All over the world different mobilizations and
activities are being carried out at this time
against the war that money has sown in the
heart of Europe:  the war in Kosovo.

In this war, the great Power has set itself to
making all of us take part:  either we support
Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing" war or we
support NATO's "humanitarian" war.

This is the great alchemy of money, to offer
us the option of choosing between two wars,
not between peace and war.

On the shelves of the globalized market, the
Powers are offering humanity only different
versions of the same war:  they come in all
colors, flavors, sizes and shapes.  They are
for all tastes and all pocket books.  There is
only one thing that makes them the same, the
results.  Always destruction, always anguish,
always death.  And death, anguish and destruction are
always for the other, for the different, for that
which is unnecessary, for that which is in the
way, for that which is below.

And, even within the mercantile logic of the
merchants of death, neo-liberalism wants to
offer us a fraud:  the war that is supposedly going
to avoid more deaths, has done nothing but
multiply them;  the war that should be holding
back the possibility of the conflict expanding
to other regions, has assured that the conflagration
will now spread beyond its original geographical
limit; , the "intelligent" war has done nothing but
demonstrate the great destructive capacity of
stupidity;  the war of "good faith" has re-defined
human life:  its loss is now counted as "collateral
damage."

It is a lie.

It is not true that we have to take part in this
lethal market.

It is not true that there are only options between
different kinds of war.

It is not true that we must take part on the side
of one or another stupidity.

It is not true that we must renounce
intelligence and humanity.

Nothing can legitimize Milosevic's ethnic war.
Nothing can legitimize NATO's "humanitarian" war.

The trap is there, but there are more and more who
are refusing to fall into it and who are saying
"No!" to the war in the Balkans.

In Kosovo, it is not just the existence and
resistance of Social Europe that is at stake
in the face of the Europe of Money;  at stake
is not just accepting or not the de facto power
of the new global police, the new
clothing with which the Pentagon is
dressing their troops.

Also at stake is the possibility of recognizing the
other, the different, in a way that he is not dead,
imprisoned, humiliated, subjugated,
persecuted, forgotten.

We will not fall into the trap, we will not allow
the loss of humanity to pass into history in the
category of "collateral damages," and to allow
cynicism and conformity to be the triumphant
generals of the European war.

Despite all the power of money, despite all the arms,
despite all the arbitrary acts, despite all the attempts
at hegemony and homogenization,
despite all the traps, we still have the right to say
"NO!"

And that is what we raise today.  A world-wide
"NO!" to the lie that feigns truths in the skies and
the grounds of Kosovo.  NO to the destruction of
the different.

NO to the death of intelligence.  NO to cynicism.
NO to indifference.  NO to having to choose
between criminals who are more or less bloodthirsty,
more or less perverse, more or less powerful.

If we do not say "NO!" to Kosovo today, tomorrow
we will be saying "YES!" to the horrors that money
is now concocting all over the world.

Another, different world is possible than this
violent supermarket that neo-liberalism is selling us.
Another world is possible, where the option
is between war and peace, between memory and
forgetting, between hope and resignation, between
the gray and the rainbow.  A world where many worlds
fit is possible.  It is possible for an imperfect "Yes!',
unfinished and incomplete, to be born from a "NO!",
a "Yes!" that gives humanity back the hope of rebuilding,
every day, the complex bridge that joins thought and
feeling.

This is what we zapatistas are saying:  "NO!"

Viva life!  Death to death!

>From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante insurgente Marcos.

Mexico, June of 1999.

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