Re: Re: The storming of the parliament

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:26 10/10/00

> Burford:
> >It is just possible the key security policeman, at present anonymous, may
> >have been a direct CIA agent. But I would have thought that the CIA would
> >concentrate on gathering information, spreading false information and
> >facilitating alliances rather than master-minding the key action in a
> >revolution.

Proyect

> The CIA most certainly master-minded the counter-revolution in Yugoslavia.
> It has their modus operandi stamped all over it.


Cox

> CIA activity in the overthrow of states the U.S. dislikes is fairly well
> established. Whether or not they master-minded the Yugoslavia putsch the
> hypothesis they did is rational


Henwood [re Cops from Cacak play key role in Kostunica coup]

> Could you explain how this article supports your position?


Proyect

> 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.


It is an important and valuable debate, not least because people hold
strongly to very different positions.

But it would be more instructive to be clear what we are disagreeing about.
I was certainly surprised to see Proyect quote the same news item after I did.

I could live with the proposition that the CIA "masterminded" the
putsch/revolution/counterrevolution (depending on your standpoint) in
Yugoslavia. Certainly that they *tried* to mastermind it.

But the concrete detail about the storming of the Federal Parliament is
evidence that other people had minds too. In fact the news report suggests
not so much that cops from Cacak were responsible for the key battle of
last Thursday, but the cops at or near the head of the security forces in
the *capital* planned the opening of the gates to the shock troops of
Milosevic.

The difference between Burford (as he calls me) and Proyect, is that
Proyect seems deliberately to avoid the concrete analysis of the internal
causes that led to the fall of the Milsevic regime, in favour of repeating
only half correctly that the external cause was undoubtedly the
interference by the west.

The victory of the Cacak contingent really points to the fact that the
fortress was taken from within, and as in the former Soviet Union, the
ideological defection of the security police, the best informed section of
the society, from state centralised socialism, was the decisive switch. But
that was in a context in which there was widespread disillusion with the
bankruptcy of Milosevic's national chauvinism, bureacrat socialism, and
control of the news media.

As Cox argues, Proyect's proposition is indeed rational. That is why I
anticipated it in my post. It is rational to believe that there were CIA
contacts with leading military figures, and CIA agents within the army and
the police.  But the CIA is not all powerful, and is unlikely to gamble the
fate of a revolution on its own agent being in a strong enough position to
personally to lead it. Instead it is more rational to posit that the CIA
sought to be in a position to gather a great deal of information as well as
to influence perceptions and foster divisions. We shall see. Who
coordinated the storming of the television station?

But without fertile soil the CIA could not succeed.

The detail of the storming of the federal parliament by the Cacak
contingent has a wealth of concrete detail that cannot be reduced to a
simple abstraction about the machinations of the evil empire. (I mean US
imperialism of course.)

The task is not about how to make peace with imperialism. It is how to get
the better of imperialism. That requires the concrete analysis of concrete
conditions. And why the Milosevic formation did not ultimately help
that  resistance.


Chris Burford

London