Re: Re: Re: Milosevic out?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Please don't equate Milosevic, a total opportunist and rapid nationalist
>(though he and his wife mouth socialist rhetoric when it's convenient),
>with Allende, a socialist leader. It dirties the latter's memory.

Milosevic presided over state-owned enterprises. By all accounts, he was
determined to preserve these property relationships against the wishes of
Nato. Now, as we see from Chussodovsky-Israel, Kostunica is sitting down
with the IMF. Wake up, people. This is counter-revolution.

>BTW, Louis what was your position on the popular overthrow of Ceaucescu
>(sp??) of Romania? was his regime socialist, so that the overthrow was
>reactionary? or what?

It was reactionary because it prepared the way for the immiseration of the
Romanian people, just as the counter-revolution in Yugoslavia will do the
same for the Serbs.

The Houston Chronicle, December 22, 1999, Wednesday 3 STAR EDITION

Regular Romanians mired in post-Cold War failure

Special to the Chronicle

JONATHAN LEDGARD

HOTARELE, Romania - This is pig-killing season in Romania.

For anyone driving through the countryside, it is hard to miss the
spectacles of villagers slaying their fattened animals.

It is harder still, watching these killings, not to reflect on another
killing exactly 10 years ago, when Romanians took down Nicolae Ceaucescu,
whom many believed was the chief pig of the Orwellian variety. He was
executed on Christmas Day.

Ivanci Iamandi had just slaughtered his Christmas pig in his back yard when
a visitor arrived. The impoverished Gypsy in the village of Hotarele, 60
miles south of Bucharest, could not afford to buy propane for a fire so he
could singe the hair from the animal. He used straw instead.

The pig will be consumed gradually over the coming months by Iamandi's
family, he said. Pork chops for Christmas dinner, the remainder through the
winter.

While his friends cleaned the animal, Iamandi pushed back his filthy
Orlando Magic knitted cap and visited with the men and women in the crowd.

When reminded that the 10th anniversary of the revolution that ousted
Ceaucescu was near, Iamandi sighed.

"You'll think I'm crazy but it's true, life was better under Ceaucescu," he
said. "Money has no value now."

He explained: "When Ceaucescu was killed I remember there were only 12 lei
for one American dollar. Now there are 18,000. Back then a packet of
cigarettes cost me 2 lei. Now it is 10,000."

Romania had been one of Europe's poorest countries for centuries almost
from its start as a Roman province through years of Soviet occupation
following World War II.

Coming to power on the coattails of a hard-line Communist dictator,
Ceaucescu ruled for 24 years through nepotism and purges. Secret police at
first were able to put down demonstrations calling for his ouster in 1989.
But the protests spread, with citizens and regular army troops battling
police.

It was on a snowy day just like this - Dec. 22, 1989 - that Nicolae
Ceaucescu's rule instantly collapsed. He stepped out onto a balcony in
Bucharest and found himself booed by a huge crowd. That amazing action - he
had never heard jeering before - scared Ceaucescu so badly that he fled
with his wife, Elena. But both were captured, tried for genocide and
executed.

It seemed to be a fresh start for Romania, but the years since have not
been kind. Unlike other Eastern European countries such as Poland, which
accepted a painful course of economic shock therapy and are now beginning
to prosper, Romania installed neo-Communists as leaders, avoided hard
decisions and manifestly failed to make the great leap forward.

That life was better under Ceaucescu is debatable. What is not in doubt is
that most Romanians live in poverty now. Many Western financiers say the
only transition Romania has made has been to slide from the so-called
Communist "Second World" into the Third World.

The country's economy is certainly in bad shape. Inflation is running at
over 40 percent, and living standards are falling. The average monthly wage
is now less than $ 90, and gross domestic product, the measure of the
economy, has declined for two straight years. The national currency, the
lei, is among Europe's least loved.

While the capital of Bucharest is enlivened by cafes and fashion boutiques,
it is also a city where hundreds of abandoned children live in the sewers
and several hundred thousand street dogs, some infected with rabies,
skitter menacingly about.

In the countryside beyond Bucharest, the scale of Romania's post-Cold War
failure becomes evident. There are few signs of foreign investment or local
entrepreneurship. Most of the communist-era factories and state farms have
been left to rot. Nothing has taken their place.

Time and again villagers tell a visitor the same story. The government has
let us down, they say. Our politicians are corrupt, incompetent,
self-serving. We were given land, they say, but we do not have the means to
work it. We cannot afford tractors or fertilizers. Life is a humiliation,
they say.

Iamandi, like other Gypsy men, works as a day laborer for wealthier
Romanians in his village. When he is lucky enough to get hired he brings
home about $ 3 a day.

"I have five children. I can barely survive," he said. "The mayor has
tractors, a car, but us poor people have no land. Even if we did have land
we wouldn't be able to afford to work it."

Romania's 3 million Gypsies fare particularly poorly. Enslaved until the
late 19th century, they have always had it tough, living on the edge of
villages and earning a living entertaining, begging, or stealing. Iamandi
doesn't make a distinction for himself.

"Poor is poor. It doesn't matter if you're a Gypsy or a Romanian," he said.
"We all just want a better life and things like jobs and more social care
for the old and handicapped."

He will have to wait a few Christmases longer. Critics say that Romanian
politics still belongs to the theater of the absurd. Political office, they
say, is the safest and quickest way to enrich oneself and petty feuds hold
up long overdue reforms.

Although the European Union has decided to open membership negotiations
with Romania, it is unlikely the country will join before 2015.

For now, far too many Romanians like Iamandi are poor and without a stake.



Louis Proyect
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