Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
Posted on 04/30/2003 11:57:13 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Some European leaders are denouncing communist groups linked to the anti-war movement, claiming their opposition to war and oppression is selective and motivated by opportunistic politics rather than a pacifist morality.
In Rome, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi evoked the murderous reigns of Communist leaders like Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao when he commented on the red flags displayed at anti-war rallies: "Those flags are red because they are stained by the blood of 100 million innocent victims," he said. "I think that putting them together with the flags of peace is a real blasphemy against peace."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi |
In comments made to Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper, he also criticized the anti-American sentiment that prevailed at the rallies, but allowed that "many demonstrate with belief and sincere feelings."
Media watchers blamed the prime minister's influence for the fact that the Feb. 15 anti-war march in Rome, which drew more than a million protestors, was not covered live as is usually the case for rallies of such size.
In addition to serving as prime minister, Berlusconi is also a billionaire media tycoon, and as such represents an unusual combination of media ownership and political power. Berlusconi owns three of the largest television networks in Italy. His other assets include Mondadori publishing and Il Giornale, his Milan-based newspaper. As prime minister, he also effectively heads the state-run Rai television network.
After he took office, European media warned that Berlusconi was preparing to purge left-wing journalists and executives from Italy's state television to consolidate his government's dominance of the media. The Ministry of Information's revocation of Radio Onda Rossa's (Red Wave Radio) right to transmit on their allotted frequency also raised hackles on the left.
Referring to communist influence in general, Berlusconi maintains his sincerity: "I really consider the communists a risk to my country, liberty and well-being."
The minister of justice, Piero Fassino, commented: "Yesterday, he denounced the judicial system as the red cavalry. Today he claims that the constitutional court is under the control of the left. One can only hope that he won't declare tomorrow that the Parliament is too dangerous."
Fassino, who heads Italy's Left Democrats, supported the war on Iraq.
Tuesday, Cesare Previti, 68, defense chief in Berlusconi's 1994 government and his former personal lawyer, was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge to rule in favor Berlusconi's Fininvest holding company. He faces 11 years in prison on corruption charges.
Convicted four times on charges of perjury, falsifying financial records, tax offenses and bribery, Berlusconi himself has several criminal indictments still pending.
'Chaining themselves to the communists'
Meanwhile in Santiago de Compostela, the president of the Spanish government, Jose María Aznar, echoed a similar theme, stating that communists represented a "danger and a risk" for Spain. He accused the Spanish Socialist Labor Party and its leader, Rodríguez Zapatero, of "chaining themselves to the communists" in the war issue, and throwing away the key.
 President Jose María Aznar |
According to Aznar, the Spanish Socialist Labor Party has become indistinguishable from the Communist Party and has armed itself with an "extremist radicalism" and "irresponsibility."
By contrast, he praised Poland, Hungary the Czech Republic and Romania, which, he said, "have been under the communist boot and are in the international coalition because they know what is to fight for the liberty."
Aznar's jab at the left comes as Spain is gearing up for municipal elections on May 25.
Selective indignation?
The Catholic news-agency Fides also has accused pacifists of taking a biased stand with the complicity of the mass media.
In its recently published report, "The 100 Silenced Wars," Fides asks, "Why does this 'movement for peace' come out so intermittently" as "it is NOT true that the Iraqi conflict is the only one on the face of the earth that is supposedly upsetting an idyllic atmosphere of world peace."
The report adds, "There are at least 100 official and unofficial wars" with "millions of victims, including women and children, and millions of wounded and crippled." Those innocent victims, however, Fides complained, "do not make it to the headlines, do not impress the media, do not stir any rally, do not even deserve a few lines on the newspapers nor on any news agency."
The agency suggested that the only difference between violent conflicts that are protested against and those that are ignored was one of "latitude," and whether or not the conflict in question could be manipulated by "communist-pacifists" as part of a "veiled political maneuver."
"The media often give brave service to truth," Fides stated, "but sometimes they work like agents of propaganda and disinformation, serving limited special interests of national, ethnic, racial, religious prejudices, material gain and empty ideologies." The religious agency was quick to add that "such mistakes" and "blunders" come not only from the media, but from the "Church" and "other responsible groups" as well.
Some traditional Christian groups in Europe have voiced concern that protest networks' promotion of "gender transversality" and their recruitment among "gay," lesbian and "transgendered" people will contribute to the formation of a new social order where Christians adhering to orthodox theology become the "repressed outsiders" of a system that abrogates some of their own rights.
Cuban voice in exile: 'Where's Susan Sarandon?'
Criticism of the anti-war movement was also voiced by the acclaimed Cuban writer and journalist Zoé Valdés, currently living in exile in Paris.
In a recent essay, Valdés passionately derided what he sees as a complicity of the insincere: "When they began the trials in Cuba of writers, poets and independent journalists, I ask you where are the anti-war demonstrators? Where are the justice-loving Spanish celebrities who should be shouting 'no' to Castro's abuses? Shouldn't we expect this from militant leftists? Why don't newspapers get scandalized? Where are the defenders of the humble and the representatives of global victims? Where are Ignacio Ramonet and Bernard Cassen (directors of "Le Monde Diplomatique")? Why don't they come out to the streets to demand freedom for all Cuban political prisoners? That's the least they could do on behalf of peace and human rights."
 Zoé Valdés |
Valdés continued, "When the district attorney's office of Santiago of Cuba asks for the death penalty for José Daniel Ferrer, member of the Christian Movement of Liberation ... when the work of the foreign correspondents is repressed ... where is Javier Bardem whose interpretation of the imprisoned and executed writer Reinaldo Arenas was worth an Oscar nomination? Where you are Susan Sarandon? Where are Sean Penn and Catherine Deneuve, both who stand against the death penalty?
"Where were you when Saddam Hussein gassed [the Kurds]?" Valdés continued. "If the whole world had come out in the streets against Saddam Hussein, today we wouldn't be experiencing this horrible war.
"If the Russians, the Chinese and the French had not built the indestructible bunker of the dictator [Saddam Hussein], the war would have been shorter and the dictator would not exist."
She also asked why protesters never insisted that Saddam Hussein flee Iraq to deliver the country from war "once and for all."
Valdés added, "It is very easy to protest against United States," but suggested that such protests were often shallow and "opportunistic."
The award-winning novelist denounced the trials being held against independent writers, poets and journalists in Communist Cuba, and added that these were occurring with what she termed the almost "unanimous connivance" of Latin American governments.
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