Re: Re: Re: Cops from Cacak play key role in Kostunica coup

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>  >Could you explain how this article supports your position?
> > Doug
>
> I have long ago told you that I was not in the business of answering these
> kinds of questions, Doug. I have made my position clear in thousands of
> words posted to PEN-L. If they are not clear to you at this point, no
> further explanation could possibly help.

Ok, then, if you don't want to play, let me draw out the
contradictions. The LAT piece said:

To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [PEN-L:2943] Cops from Cacak play key role in Kostunica coup
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Louis Proyect quoted the LA Times:

> But the mayor of Cacak did what no one had managed to do during Milosevic's
> 13 years of Communist-style rule: bridge the opposition movement and a
> feared, combat-hardened police force whose ranks were growing steadily more
> uneasy with their role as political enforcers.

The cops did not like being the agents of political repression. That
implies both that there was popular discontent and state repression
in response to it.

> "In the final days, our job had been reduced to guarding the headquarters
> of Milosevic's party and chasing student demonstrators," said Dejan
> Gavrilovic, a 24-year-old police sergeant who abandoned his post here to
> join in the storming of Belgrade. "Everyone here supported the opposition.
> I just couldn't stand facing the people I know."

Ditto.

> Policemen knew Milosevic was tolerating massive corruption, "and a Serb can
> forgive anything but theft," said Ivan Lazaravic, 25, who recently quit the
> force.

Cops and citizens joined in seeing the regime as massively corrupt.
If this comports with socialism, maybe I'm not a socialist after all.

> Over the radios, Ilic said, his Belgrade police contacts kept telling him
> to keep up the attacks and eventually the parliament's defenders would
> dwindle, get tired and give up.

Evidently there was massive sympathy for the defeatist position among
other cops too.

> The mayor returned to Cacak a hero, cheered by crowds in the street and
> telling them he expects better things from the new government.

Further confirmation that there was deep popular support for
overthrowing Slobo.

> "I'm an ordinary citizen of Serbia," he said. "All this was caused not by
> me but by Slobodan Milosevic. An ordinary citizen of Serbia had had enough
> of hearing and seeing Slobodan Milosevic."

I hate to repeat myself, but this also suggests profound discontent
with Milosevic's regime.

> But if the new government doesn't do any better, he warned with a smile,
> "we'll be back in Belgrade within 60 days."

We'll see about this, but it suggests that the new regime doesn't
have a blank check.

I have to applaud your new openness in forwarding articles that
undermine your own position; it shows a Driscollian eagerness to
investigate what questions to ask your answers.

Doug