2007-04-18

Another reminder -- get the guidelines and submit, submit, submit!

REMINDER - The Muabet Project at the Watson Institute at Brown University is accepting submissions for the essay competition entitled "Evaluating Intervention: Local perspectives on democracy-building in the Post-Yugoslav countries and territories." Students, scholars, professionals, activists and practitioners in the region are invited to submit essays which analyze the social, cultural, political or economic dimensions of international involvement in transition. Essays can be in English, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian or Macedonian, and the deadline for online submission is MAY 18.

Further details, as well as downloadable versions of the call for papers in languages of the region, are available at http://watsoninstitute.org/muabet/contest.html

Does anybody regret the demise of SPO?

Interesting remarks today by a person who will not be minister of culture for very long, if by "interesting" you mean "utterly foolish and morally leprous." Dragan Kojadinović comments on the recent attempt to assassinate Dejan Anastasijević by pointing out that if he would just fail to do his job, live like a hermit, and have absolutely no expectation of anything as exotic as law enforcement, he would be just fine. Says Mr Kojadinović:
"Anastasijević is an exceptionally good professional, he does something which is unfortunately rare in this country, and that is analytic journalism. His themes are dangerous themes. If I were in his place, I would not permit my child to come home at 3:00 AM, I would not live in that apartment in Vračar, no matter how big it is. He could exchange that apartment for one that is not so nice, but more secure. This has affected me so much that I have considered all aspects of Anastasijević's security. If I were in his place, as a journalist, I would never let myself do this. We can blame the state, we can demand protection from the police, but first we should do everything to protect ourselves."
So for heaven's sake everyone -- do not do your job well, speak the truth, live a normal life, or in any way make anything inconvenient public, particularly if you live somewhere. We still do not know whether Mr Kojadinović has any comment on the housing situation of Dinko Gruhonjić. No doubt he knows where he lives, since the gentlefolk at Stormfront do.

On the off chance that you have not read it already, here is what Dejan Anastasijević has to say about the situation himself.

Update: Students get it, politicians do not. Surprise.

2007-04-17

And Plan Nine?

The interview was certainly done before the first of many resignations from the negotiating team was announced this morning, but here is what sometime East Ethnian Florian Bieber had to tell Slobodna Evropa about the future of Kosovo and "Plan B."

For the record, na engleskom

Here is the letter that Geoffrey Nice sent to several newspapers, and here is the response by OTP.

And here is my take: whatever may have happened with regard to documents being made available (or, as it turned out, not being made available) to the parties before ICJ, the very narrow interpretation of the law by the court's majority would probably have produced the same verdict. That may be as far as it goes for the lawyers behind the bench and at either table facing. But of course, it goes a lot further for researchers -- make the documents public, and we will interpret them without the constraints that ICTY and ICJ have.

Horrifying, wretched story from Virginia Tech

You already know about it. Now tell me, since firearms are banned from every place where privileged people in positions of power and influence congregate -- and where ordinary humans who never carry weapons are subject to various forms of humiliation in order to enforce this ban -- why are they not banned from every other place as well? Get moving, irresponsible politicians.

2007-04-16

Beasts of burden

Call it a big event, it would be better if wild horses were to drag them away.

Update: Elvis Burazerović has a fine name and a good point. He says, "Surely our big city has enough open spaces where even 150,000 people can fit in. We think the Hippodrome should be left to horses."

Essay competition: "Evaluating intervention"

Just a reminder to everyone that the deadline for submissions for the essay competition "Evaluating Intervention: Local perspectives on democracy-building in the Post-Yugoslav countries and territories," is coming quickly on 18 May. We are hoping for a whole lot of really outstanding articles.

Back from NY

We just got back from lovely New York City, were planning on spending a longer weekend but Sunday's rainstorm with high wind persuaded us to just pack up and begin the trek back to Boston more or less persuaded that it would be slow. Highlights of the ASN conference were mostly seeing friends, but there was a fine panel "fieldwork after fire" in which Orli Fridman, Chip Gagnon and Saša Milićević stepped down, in different ways, from the academic pose of objectivity to discuss ways in which the real experience of real contact with real people, good and bad, transformed their perceptions of what they were doing and why. There was also a screening of the very fine film on Vukovar by Janko Baljak and Drago Hedl -- great documentary work, with amazing footage of various bad guys (particularly Brana Crnčević and Tomislav Merčep) continuing to lie about what they did. Surprisingly, there was not much said in the film about various good guys, including Josip Reihl-Kir.

It was also nice to find out what you get when you type "hrpa bezveznjaka" into Google.