2005-02-22

How to alienate people

Thanks to AR for this dispatch. The rushed decision to sell the Maršalka at a bargain-bin price to the US government for its new embassy sparked a protest by students, to whom the site had been promised earlier for a new university campus. As a part of the protest the students burned an American flag, hardly an unknown gesture in the world but not so frequent in BH. Agence France-Presse reports:

"La caserne du maréchal n'est pas à vendre" et "Les étudiants
ont été pillés", pouvait-on lire sur des pancartes portées par
les protestataires rassemblés devant le siège du parlement.

En marge de cette manifestation, des étudiants ont mis le feu à
un drapeau américain.

Another successful "hearts and minds" program?
Posted by at

2 comments:

T K Vogel said...

I understand the details of this deal and how it came about are rather complex. It might not be as black and white as it appears.

Speaking of alienating people, the students certainly didn't win over my heart and mind when they displayed posters with the US flag superimposed over a Swastika. What this might suggest is that we don't need to listen to these folks because they're just kids who don't know what they're doing -- which would be the wrong conclusion, because they do of course have a point.

23/2/05 18:27
Eric Gordy said...

Toby, can you share some of these details? Because the initial impression sure has a black and white effect.
I didn't know about the swastika business, alienating for sure. It might also suggest that this is the sort of deal that is bound to bring forward latent anti-American sentiment, which gets expressed in all sorts of ways.

23/2/05 23:20

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)