At the reliably interesting online magazine Open democracy, Dominic Hilton has a reflection on anti-Americanism in Europe. Mostly he is trying to dismiss the phenomenon as a shallow fad, claiming that "most America-thumping is pathetically hypocritical, embarrassingly imbecilic, perilously ruinous and, worst of all, as derisorily fashionable as those ludicrous woolly boots everyone’s presently sporting." I don't think I completely buy the argument (it's not improved by the name-calling or the marginal sources), though he is probably right to see a good measure of scapegoating and posturing at work.
I'm ludicrously unqualified to address the question of how Americans are treated from personal experience, since at home my students ask me what country I am from and compliment my English, while in other countries natives stop me to ask for directions. This is probably some vague effect of personal appearance, go figure. So other people have to write those essays about how waiters reacted to them instinctively and how their hastily poured water stands for the disorder in the world. But I can say that I have never experienced the hatred of America and Americans that it has become so popular to claim. That is not to say that there is anything like universal receptivity. From a purely informal perspective, I offer a typology of critiques (not anywhere near exhaustive, of course):
Objection to US politics: No need to list the reasons people object to policies practiced by the US government, especially the current administration. To the degree that the critique is centered on specific current acts, it seems more like an invitation to conversation than an expression of hatred. People who are neither dishonest nor paid representatives of the government should be able to accept the invitation.
Resentment of economic domination: Sometimes the US is taken to stand for the general frustration with the new globalised economy, which is not surprising for either empirical or symbolic reasons. Depending on where the critique is coming from, it can be perfectly valid. Since I am not the head of a large well-connected corporation, I regard this one too as an invitation to conversation.
Assertions of cultural superiority: There are people who will claim to be more civilised, have an older and fancier culture, and so on. That's nice, we have bigots at home too. Ours aren't interesting to listen to either.
Avoidance of the overmarketed product: So much of the zasićenost with America seems to revolve around popular culture, with the oversupply of music, television and film products from this country. Language and production budgets probably have a lot to do with this (it is much cheaper to buy an hour of TV out of syndication than produce it), and a lot of what the US exports is genuine lowest-common-denominator material. But too much America is like too much of anything else. I doubt very much that anything other than good competition will reduce the influence of this very successful export. But there are a lot of reasons it would be good to see reciprocity here, and US media markets open to more than just reruns of British series on PBS.
There is no right to be loved by everyone. Some level of rejection is justified, and some level is bound to exist whether it is justified or not. My inclination is to consider the rapid putrefaction of America's image in the world as a call to make America a better place. But that is probably just idiosyncratic.
2005-02-11
Who is at Topčider?
A few months ago, two young soldiers were killed at the Topčider military base in Belgrade under circumstances that have not been explained to anybody's satisfaction. The media speculation that surrounded the incident included revelation of a secret underground complex that had been built at the site during the Tito period. Today B92 reports that Ratko Mladić's chief bodyguard, one captain Branislav Puhalo, commands the Guard Brigade at Topčider, a fact which military people seem to be denying but would seem to be normally a part of public record. Nobody seriously doubts that the military is protecting Mr Mladić. So is he the secret that is being guarded at Topčider?
2005-02-10
Linguistic fun for journalists
I'm peeking through the daily papers from Serbia and Montenegro, and it seems that every one of them has an item about the planned marriage of Britain's Prince Charles. This is probably not because of any great enthusiasm for the royals, but because the orthographic rules in those places convert foreign names to their phonetic equivalents. This lets them run the story under the headline "Princ Čarls se ženi Kamilom," which can easily be read as "Prince Charles is marrying a camel."
Cultural heroes of our time
Among them has to be counted Klaudio Šturman, a butcher from Rovinjsko Selo, who has invented a ćevapčići making device that can produce 300 kilograms of ćevapčići in an hour.
Klaudio Šturman and his fabulous invention
Mr Šturman expects his new device to considerably lighten the work burden of his colleagues, who up until now have had to make their ćevapčići one at a time.
Klaudio Šturman and his fabulous invention
Mr Šturman expects his new device to considerably lighten the work burden of his colleagues, who up until now have had to make their ćevapčići one at a time.
Cheap flights?
There may be nothing to this, and all the stories are vague, but there seems to be talk of the low, low-fare airline Ryan Air setting up a hub in either Belgrade or Niš. That would be convenient.
2005-02-09
In praise of Ludost
It would seem that Ludost has decided to discontinue and remove her excellent blog. She has posted a farewell essay, but it will only be available for a little bit longer.
Dragi Erazmo has been a favorite site since I first had the good luck to stumble across it, so that daily pleasure will be missed. But of course there are plenty of ways to write and no obligation to do it in this format. What is surprising is that there are so many people, some of them quite good, who are willing to write for an indeterminate public every day, for which they receive nothing in return.
It will be cause to celebrate if Ludost returns to this format in some incarnation, and in the meantime we can hope for articles and books (remember those?).
Dragi Erazmo has been a favorite site since I first had the good luck to stumble across it, so that daily pleasure will be missed. But of course there are plenty of ways to write and no obligation to do it in this format. What is surprising is that there are so many people, some of them quite good, who are willing to write for an indeterminate public every day, for which they receive nothing in return.
It will be cause to celebrate if Ludost returns to this format in some incarnation, and in the meantime we can hope for articles and books (remember those?).
Wearing the popular culture threat, snugly
For your headless and armless fundie friends, the ultraright magazine National Review is offering these lovely t-shirts for sale. They feature a provocative slogan and a picture of some guy. And they cost $19.95? Filthy!
Wonkette has additional commentary.
Wonkette has additional commentary.
Tracking the journalistic threat
News is already pretty widespread in the US about the Bush administration paying journalists to offer opinions, and in one case, it seems, even hiring a dubious character to come to press conferences disguised as a journalist in order to ask Mr Bush planted questions. The cocktail of political conspiracy and gossip is lots of fun, really.
But there is no reason for the EU candidate countries to lag behind! That must be why Croatia's Protuobaveštajna agencija (POA) has put so much work into following the tracks of Globus editor Igor Alborghetti.
.
Apparently their original purpose was to show that Mr Alborghetti was a French spy. It turns out he was not, but did you know that with a bit of rearrangement and altering only one letter SZUP can be changed to SPUŽ? Suspicious! They did, however, find that he had a conviction for a very minor drug offence in 1986. Surely this knowledge contributed greatly to the maintenance of public order.
But there is no reason for the EU candidate countries to lag behind! That must be why Croatia's Protuobaveštajna agencija (POA) has put so much work into following the tracks of Globus editor Igor Alborghetti.
.
Apparently their original purpose was to show that Mr Alborghetti was a French spy. It turns out he was not, but did you know that with a bit of rearrangement and altering only one letter SZUP can be changed to SPUŽ? Suspicious! They did, however, find that he had a conviction for a very minor drug offence in 1986. Surely this knowledge contributed greatly to the maintenance of public order.
Četnik memorabilia
The previous post about another proposed law declaring Četnici to have been antifascists (next up: a law declaring cats to be giraffes) inspired loyal reader AR to send me a collection of photos from the galleries of the Ravnogorski četnički pokret of Brčko. I think they are too large to display here, but they do provide, as AR says, «evidence of the deadly intersection of the RCP's cherished voelkisch pageantry with religious fanaticism and genocidal ideology.» The Ravnogorci share their unique vision with us here.
The past is another reality, increasingly
Nasty comments have already been made by East Ethnia about the law in Serbia declaring the Četnici, collaborationists from the second world war, to have been antifascists. Now, Asaf Bećirović reports in Oslobođenje, Dušan Sladojević, president of something called the «Ravna Gora movement of the fatherland of Srpska,» wants the parliament of Republika Srpska to pass a similar law. Young rightie politician Goran Sikima has an original idea: «We can just copy the law that was passed in Serbia.»
Mr Sladojević defends his interpretation of who was on what side in that war with the unassailable argument, «they have documents about that at Harvard's institute.» Note: The link to the article is above, if somebody made this quotation up, it is not me.
This initiative is likely to go only so far—there is not much chance that even if the RS parliament were to pass it that it would be approved by the federal parliament. Also it is likely to have only very limited material consequence on its own. But the ripple effect could be greater, since the existence of groups that might have a reason to seek redefinition of their role in processes of violence is not limited to the second world war era.
Mr Sladojević defends his interpretation of who was on what side in that war with the unassailable argument, «they have documents about that at Harvard's institute.» Note: The link to the article is above, if somebody made this quotation up, it is not me.
This initiative is likely to go only so far—there is not much chance that even if the RS parliament were to pass it that it would be approved by the federal parliament. Also it is likely to have only very limited material consequence on its own. But the ripple effect could be greater, since the existence of groups that might have a reason to seek redefinition of their role in processes of violence is not limited to the second world war era.
2005-02-08
Culinary report of great importance
Well, we finally got around to trying the place I coyly suggested we might get to last month. My loving wife and daughter decided that a good place for a birthday dinner (39! But my sister called and told me that to her I am always 12.) would be Boston's only Albanian restaurant, Cafe Apollonia at (yes) 146 Belgrade Avenue in Roslindale, beyond even Jamaica Pond.
Our best expectations were confirmed, and we are delighted to say that the Hysi family operates a wonderful little place. Francesco, they have byrek! The menu looks traditional, but chef Marlon Hysi makes them with the innovation you might expect of a Cordon Bleu graduate, which he is. Ivana's Trofte Tave was baked in wine and tomatoes over carmelised onions, Azra's Qebaptore were excellent čevapi, but served over a bed of seared eggplant and peppers, with a thick yoghurt sauce and rosemary mixed in with the meat. I would describe the lamb stew with polenta that I had, but then you would ask me for a bite and I would have to disappoint you. The wine list includes Frankovka from Croatia (good stuff) and also Birra Tirana from Albania (which we didn't try).
The place was not at all crowded, maybe not surprising for a Monday. But they are far out of the center of the city and worth knowing about. We will certainly pay them a visit again!
Our best expectations were confirmed, and we are delighted to say that the Hysi family operates a wonderful little place. Francesco, they have byrek! The menu looks traditional, but chef Marlon Hysi makes them with the innovation you might expect of a Cordon Bleu graduate, which he is. Ivana's Trofte Tave was baked in wine and tomatoes over carmelised onions, Azra's Qebaptore were excellent čevapi, but served over a bed of seared eggplant and peppers, with a thick yoghurt sauce and rosemary mixed in with the meat. I would describe the lamb stew with polenta that I had, but then you would ask me for a bite and I would have to disappoint you. The wine list includes Frankovka from Croatia (good stuff) and also Birra Tirana from Albania (which we didn't try).
The place was not at all crowded, maybe not surprising for a Monday. But they are far out of the center of the city and worth knowing about. We will certainly pay them a visit again!
The Beba saga continues
I've yet to see the whole interview, but Tuesday's Blic has Vladimir Popović agreeing that the military has been protecting genocide indictee Ratko Mladić for years, that this was far from secret in the government, and suggesting that the fugitive may well be in that mysterious and fatal object at Topčider.
So people will probably continue talking about Mr Popović for a bit longer.
So people will probably continue talking about Mr Popović for a bit longer.
2005-02-07
Balkan carnival #1 on its way
I am just going to take my doggie for a walk, then the first edition of the Carnival of the Balkans should be up for your reading pleasure by midafternoon EST. I'll announce it here.
New! Improved! Deadlier sins.
It's hard to know how to sin properly in these values-oriented times, and Richard Jinman reports in The Guardian that it is also important to keep up to date. A BBC survey shows that of the seven deadly sins originally set forth by St Thomas Aquinas (at least he is still current, considering that the tune "St Thomas" first popularised by Sonny Rollins is in the repertoire of Joshua Redman and Cubismo!), only greed still holds any currency. Sloth, gluttony and lust are strictly venal. Our friends at The Guardian offer a handy comparative reference guide comparing the original list of pale gases to the survey results:
Seven deadly sins
1 Pride
2 Envy
3 Anger
4 Sloth
5 Greed
6 Gluttony
7 Lust
New sins
1 Cruelty
2 Adultery
3 Bigotry
4 Dishonesty
5 Hypocrisy
6 Greed
7 Selfishness
BBC presenter Ross Kelly tries to put the changed sin hierarchy in context, explaining that "We're less concerned with the seven deadly sins and more concerned with actions that hurt others. For instance, we're less bothered about anger than we are about cruelty; and, while many of us actually enjoy lust, we still frown on adultery." Meanwhile, the Reverend Tim Silk, a C of E minister, adopts a more straightforward marketing perspective, recognising that "whether we could ever find seven we all agree on is anyone's guess."
Seven deadly sins
1 Pride
2 Envy
3 Anger
4 Sloth
5 Greed
6 Gluttony
7 Lust
New sins
1 Cruelty
2 Adultery
3 Bigotry
4 Dishonesty
5 Hypocrisy
6 Greed
7 Selfishness
BBC presenter Ross Kelly tries to put the changed sin hierarchy in context, explaining that "We're less concerned with the seven deadly sins and more concerned with actions that hurt others. For instance, we're less bothered about anger than we are about cruelty; and, while many of us actually enjoy lust, we still frown on adultery." Meanwhile, the Reverend Tim Silk, a C of E minister, adopts a more straightforward marketing perspective, recognising that "whether we could ever find seven we all agree on is anyone's guess."
2005-02-05
The Ombudsperson ombuds himself
Marek Antoni Nowicki, the Ombudsperson of the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), has a very interesting essay in Transitions Online (a translation of his regular column in Koha Ditore) articulating some of the limitations of his position. In particular he notes the paradoxical role of the UN, which is obligated to protect to protect human rights but subject to no authority which assures that it does. As a result, Mr Nowicki writes:
"The people of Kosovo exist in an almost Kafkaesque paradox: the presence of the UN in the province (UNMIK) is very much based on humanitarian and human rights grounds. However, precisely owing to the UN presence, Kosovo is a black hole, so to speak -- a place exempt from any international human rights protection."
Strip off the shiny UN rhetoric (Mr Nowicki is honest enough not to shine it up too much anyway) and there is a deeper problem: nobody assures that the UN regulates the behavior of what he calls the "surrogate state" in Kosovo, which is very much based on ethnic exclusivity.
"The people of Kosovo exist in an almost Kafkaesque paradox: the presence of the UN in the province (UNMIK) is very much based on humanitarian and human rights grounds. However, precisely owing to the UN presence, Kosovo is a black hole, so to speak -- a place exempt from any international human rights protection."
Strip off the shiny UN rhetoric (Mr Nowicki is honest enough not to shine it up too much anyway) and there is a deeper problem: nobody assures that the UN regulates the behavior of what he calls the "surrogate state" in Kosovo, which is very much based on ethnic exclusivity.
Osservatorio's dossier on the far right
The fine Osservatorio sui Balcani has placed all of its features on far right movements in the region on a single page, which also includes features on Bosnia-Hercegovina, Romania, Kosovo and Turkey, as well as an overview by Andrea Rossini.
2005-02-04
Off for the day
I'll be gone at a meeting all day today, so there will not be any updates before the evening at the earliest. Anyone looking for good reading material in the meantime might enjoy this week's commentary by Svetlana Lukić.
So they know where to find him?
I'm guessing this is a planted story. Friday's Večernje novosti has a very short item claiming that the Republika Srpska police "contacts the family of Radovan Karadžić every seven days" at which point they "recommend that he should surrender." They quote police official Radovan Pejić as saying that "we try to let them know about the privileges and benefits that a voluntary surrender would bring them." Are we to conclude that they are in touch? The evocative character of the piece and its lack of detail would lead a person to think that something is in the works. Which might mean that nothing is.
Kinkier than thou
East Ethnia is happy to add its voice to the ever-growing chorus supporting Kinky Friedman's candidacy for governor of the once-great state of Texas.
If there must be celebrity governors, why not the one who promises a campaign of "de-wussification"? Says Kinky, "I am determined to get back to a time when the cowboys all sang and their horses were smart."
If there must be celebrity governors, why not the one who promises a campaign of "de-wussification"? Says Kinky, "I am determined to get back to a time when the cowboys all sang and their horses were smart."
2005-02-03
For and against torture
The 36 members of the US Senate who voted against the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general are:
Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), Evan Bayh (Indiana), Joseph Biden (Delaware), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), Barbara Boxer (California), Robert Byrd (West Virginia), Maria Cantwell (Washington), Thomas Carper (Delaware), Hillary Clinton (New York), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jon Corzine (New Jersey), Mark Dayton (Minnesota), Christopher Dodd (Connecticut), Byron Dorgan (North Dakota), Richard Durbin (Illinois), Russell Feingold (Wisconsin), Dianne Feinstein (California), Tom Harkin (Iowa), James Jeffords (Vermont), Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Edward Kennedy (Massachusetts), John Kerry (Massachusetts), Herb Kohl (Wisconsin), Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey), Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Carl Levin (Michigan), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Barbara Mikulski (Maryland), Barack Obama (Illinois), Jack Reed (Rhode Island), Harry Reid (Nevada), John Rockefeller (West Virginia), Paul Sarbanes (Maryland), Charles Schumer (New York), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Ron Wyden (Oregon)
Max Baucus (Montana), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) and Patty Murray (Washington) abstained.
The rest of the members of the US Senate favor torture. If you are a US citizen, vote against them in the next election. That includes every Republican member, without exception.
It also includes the following pro-torture Democrats: Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Bill Nelson (Florida), David Pryor (Arkansas), Ken Salazar (Colorado). Vote for their opponents in the primaries.
Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), Evan Bayh (Indiana), Joseph Biden (Delaware), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), Barbara Boxer (California), Robert Byrd (West Virginia), Maria Cantwell (Washington), Thomas Carper (Delaware), Hillary Clinton (New York), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jon Corzine (New Jersey), Mark Dayton (Minnesota), Christopher Dodd (Connecticut), Byron Dorgan (North Dakota), Richard Durbin (Illinois), Russell Feingold (Wisconsin), Dianne Feinstein (California), Tom Harkin (Iowa), James Jeffords (Vermont), Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Edward Kennedy (Massachusetts), John Kerry (Massachusetts), Herb Kohl (Wisconsin), Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey), Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Carl Levin (Michigan), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Barbara Mikulski (Maryland), Barack Obama (Illinois), Jack Reed (Rhode Island), Harry Reid (Nevada), John Rockefeller (West Virginia), Paul Sarbanes (Maryland), Charles Schumer (New York), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Ron Wyden (Oregon)
Max Baucus (Montana), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) and Patty Murray (Washington) abstained.
The rest of the members of the US Senate favor torture. If you are a US citizen, vote against them in the next election. That includes every Republican member, without exception.
It also includes the following pro-torture Democrats: Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Bill Nelson (Florida), David Pryor (Arkansas), Ken Salazar (Colorado). Vote for their opponents in the primaries.
Balkan carnival: Deadline approaching!!!
Please get your nominations to me by tomorrow for the first Carnival of the Balkans!!! The theme is Balkan music and arts, and the first edition will feature interesting, insightful, revealing and amusing posts on the theme. One hopes.
Actually, you don't decide
At Marquette University in pleasant Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they are celebrating Mission Week, this year with the theme "Constructing Peace." So the College Republicans had the idea of setting up a table in the student union to promote a program called "Adopt a Sniper." According to Amanda Sheaffer in the Marquette Tribune it is not a program to promote random shootings, but to compensate for the failure of the US government to provide body armor to soldiers in Iraq. On the other hand, people who make a donation of 5 USD or more get a metal wristband and a tag with the slogan "One Shot, One Kill, No Remorse, I Decide" engraved on it. University spokesperson Brigid O'Brien says that the university decided not to permit the manifestation because adopting snipers was found to be "not consistent with the university's mission." Which led College Republicans president Brandon Henak, a senior at Marquette, to show how well he had been educated by declaring "It's obvious that they have liberal leanings — that's a Jesuit trait."
A denier in denial
Prosecutors say that they will begin to investigate the charges that Vladimir Popović, leading one to wonder what they have been doing so far. Meanwhile, another unpersuasive denial has been made, this one by the former head of military security, Aco Tomić. (Note: These quotations are from the same article , though B92 cites Novosti, which is in the habit of posting articles in illegible format).
Aco Tomić's statements are like a blast from the not so distant past. He accuses Mr Popović of making accusations that are "untrue and part of a foreign scenario," and goes on to enhance his credibility by calling the accusations "a new Račak and Markale," which brings back an old official line that those massacres were the product of clever stage directors rather than the people who committed them.
Aco Tomić
Then come Mr Tomić's strongest arguments. He says, "I affirm that the military had nothing to do with the murder. Also that nobody in the government talked about plans to murder Đinđić because if they had, we would have known about it." And he invents two new national institutions, saying that Popović "directs his charges at everything that is national, from the Army and Church to the Academy, to prime minister Koštunica and his party."
Perhaps partly as a result of this ongoing scandal, the most recent public opinion survey shows Koštunica's DSS continuing to lose popularity, now rating a fourth place with 10.7% support. However, DS is not the beneficiary. They remain on top, barely, ahead of the Radicals by less than 1%. meanwhile, "Snaga Srbije," the populist paraparty led by dubious rich guy Bogoljub Karić, is rated third at 11.7%. I think this result says very little about the appeal of SRS and "Snaga Srbije," and very much about the declining legitimacy of institutions. One is reminded of Hannah Arendt's description of a previous intellectual elite that came to believe that "history, which was a forgery anyway, might as well be the playground of crackpots."
Aco Tomić's statements are like a blast from the not so distant past. He accuses Mr Popović of making accusations that are "untrue and part of a foreign scenario," and goes on to enhance his credibility by calling the accusations "a new Račak and Markale," which brings back an old official line that those massacres were the product of clever stage directors rather than the people who committed them.
Aco Tomić
Then come Mr Tomić's strongest arguments. He says, "I affirm that the military had nothing to do with the murder. Also that nobody in the government talked about plans to murder Đinđić because if they had, we would have known about it." And he invents two new national institutions, saying that Popović "directs his charges at everything that is national, from the Army and Church to the Academy, to prime minister Koštunica and his party."
Perhaps partly as a result of this ongoing scandal, the most recent public opinion survey shows Koštunica's DSS continuing to lose popularity, now rating a fourth place with 10.7% support. However, DS is not the beneficiary. They remain on top, barely, ahead of the Radicals by less than 1%. meanwhile, "Snaga Srbije," the populist paraparty led by dubious rich guy Bogoljub Karić, is rated third at 11.7%. I think this result says very little about the appeal of SRS and "Snaga Srbije," and very much about the declining legitimacy of institutions. One is reminded of Hannah Arendt's description of a previous intellectual elite that came to believe that "history, which was a forgery anyway, might as well be the playground of crackpots."
2005-02-02
Virtual Rijeka carnival
On 6 February (that's Sunday), Sarajevo-X reports that the whole world will have a chance to enjoy the Rijeka Carnival via webcast. If you go to the Carnival site, you can check out the schedule of events, see photos from past carnivals, and read news about what is planned and what the weather has prevented. Enjoy!
Osservatorio's series on the far right
The series on the extreme right in the Balkans is continuing at Osservatorio sui Balcani. Earlier there was a piece on Serbia by Danijela Nenadić. It has now been joined by a piece on Albania by Indrit Maraku, one on Croatia by Drago Hedl, on Montenegro by Jadranka Gilić, and on Macedonia by Risto Karajkov.
Pokraj mene više nisi, zato plovim sam na Tisi
People are continuing to respond to the statements by Vladimir Popović in his two interviews broadcast on B92. Today's round of responses comes from the military intelligence side. Former military security director Aleksandar Vasiljević denies knowing anything about a secret meeting between Vojislav Koštunica and Slobodan Milošević, saying "I do not know whether that meeting was held for the simple reason that I went fishing and was on the Tisa [river], in a dinghy, cut off from media, newspapers, and all that, so I know nothing about the whole business."
Ljubodrag Stojadinović, Politika's commentator on military affairs, has more to say about the role of military intelligence, which is not subject to civilian control. He says, "There is no longer an environment in which the military, along with other agencies, can set up their own [intelligence] agencies as a means of exercising their power. They can do it outside of institutions, which makes it more dangerous. So they are able to produce chaos which nobody can control, not even they are able to control it themselves, and we have seen that chaos in the form of the criminalisation of society and several killings and other acts, which are on the border between crime and state security. In that sense the military security service is not so different from other services, especially the services that are essentially political police." Mr Stojadinović is being a little enigmatic, but it seems as though he is confirming Mr Popović's charges, in a roundabout way.
Ljubodrag Stojadinović, Politika's commentator on military affairs, has more to say about the role of military intelligence, which is not subject to civilian control. He says, "There is no longer an environment in which the military, along with other agencies, can set up their own [intelligence] agencies as a means of exercising their power. They can do it outside of institutions, which makes it more dangerous. So they are able to produce chaos which nobody can control, not even they are able to control it themselves, and we have seen that chaos in the form of the criminalisation of society and several killings and other acts, which are on the border between crime and state security. In that sense the military security service is not so different from other services, especially the services that are essentially political police." Mr Stojadinović is being a little enigmatic, but it seems as though he is confirming Mr Popović's charges, in a roundabout way.
Just plain bizarre military news
What's good is that Serbia has introduced the option for conscientous objectors to fulfill their military service obligation with a civil service alternative. What is bad is that the decision as to whether conscientious objectors fulfill the conditions for an exception from armed service is left to a local commission, which is guided by no law regulating what those conditions are.
The violent Mr Djokić, photo courtesy of Glas javnosti.
So the application of Dragoslav Djokić of Niš was rejected because of his police record, which the Defence ministry determined to contain "an offence with elements of violence." What terrible thing did Mr Djokić do? Apparently one night in 2002, he walked his dog without a muzzle, for which he received a ticket and a penalty of 400 dinars for "improperly equipping his dog."
Any comparison with retired high-ranking officers charged with gross violations of international humanitarian law who recive full pensions and the concerned attention of prime ministers and Patriarchs is, of course, wholly inappropriate.
The violent Mr Djokić, photo courtesy of Glas javnosti.
So the application of Dragoslav Djokić of Niš was rejected because of his police record, which the Defence ministry determined to contain "an offence with elements of violence." What terrible thing did Mr Djokić do? Apparently one night in 2002, he walked his dog without a muzzle, for which he received a ticket and a penalty of 400 dinars for "improperly equipping his dog."
Any comparison with retired high-ranking officers charged with gross violations of international humanitarian law who recive full pensions and the concerned attention of prime ministers and Patriarchs is, of course, wholly inappropriate.
2005-02-01
Congratulations to Histologion, Pestiside and Carniola!
The voting has ended for the Satin Pajama awards for best European weblogs over at A Fistful of Euros. Although East Ethnia was not declared the best weblog, it was not declared the worst either. The winner in the category of Best European Weblog is The Glory of Carniola, and the category of Best Southeast European Weblog was won by Histologion. The best New Weblog is Pestiside. Every one of them worth a frequent visit!
On the importance of institutions
The second part of the interview that Brankica Stanković did with former Đinđić advisor Vladimir Popović has been broadcast on B92, and it is no less controversial than the first half (from which I gave some quotations in an earlier post). In this one he accuses active politicians, especially prime minister Vojislav Koštunica and his party DSS, of involvement in the conspiracy to murder Mr Đinđić. Other politicians are not spared, nor is the Serbian Orthodox Church. It is not surprising that there should be furious responses.
Nor is it surprising that one of the most furious is the press release from DSS. They call Mr Popović a "false witness," and accuse him of "pathological hatred" toward them. Then they indulge in a little rhetorical fancy:
"Aside from the judicial organs which have the obligation to verify the public accusations Popović makes, we consider that there exist in this society specialised institutions which could perhaps, on the basis of what we have seen, give some help to Vladimir Popović."
Let's say it is a given that DSS is angry, justifiably angry if Mr Popović's charges are not true. All the same, considering that earlier this week their justice minister threatened that he could produce criminal charges at will, it might be that threatening to put politically inconvenient individuals in mental institutions will not really help them with their growing reputation for abuse of power.
Nor is it surprising that one of the most furious is the press release from DSS. They call Mr Popović a "false witness," and accuse him of "pathological hatred" toward them. Then they indulge in a little rhetorical fancy:
"Aside from the judicial organs which have the obligation to verify the public accusations Popović makes, we consider that there exist in this society specialised institutions which could perhaps, on the basis of what we have seen, give some help to Vladimir Popović."
Let's say it is a given that DSS is angry, justifiably angry if Mr Popović's charges are not true. All the same, considering that earlier this week their justice minister threatened that he could produce criminal charges at will, it might be that threatening to put politically inconvenient individuals in mental institutions will not really help them with their growing reputation for abuse of power.
Patriarchy in action
Vladimir Lazarević has decided to go and face trial, and although it has taken him since October 2003 to do it -- a luxury afforded to the rare indictee in the world -- he is receiving warm words of congratulation. There is probably nothing wrong with a verbal pat on the back for fulfilling basic obligations, if it makes the indictee feel better. One of my favorite quotations from Harry Truman is the one in which he describes the president as:
"...a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering,
kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway."
But Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church has gone a bit further. He says that Lazarević is going to "represent the interests of the people and defend the truth." What interest does the Patriarch have in mind?
"...a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering,
kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway."
But Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church has gone a bit further. He says that Lazarević is going to "represent the interests of the people and defend the truth." What interest does the Patriarch have in mind?
2005-01-31
Call for submissions: Carnival of the Balkans #1
The first edition of Carnival of the Balkans will be coming on 7 February. The Carnival's purpose is to showcase good writing from around the web about the Balkans. The theme for the February 2005 edition is:
BALKAN MUSIC AND ARTS
Submissions should be in the form of blog or forum posts from anywhere on the internet, published at any time. Please send your favorite posts (your own or another person's) on the topic to Eric Gordy [eastethnia at gmail dot com] by Friday, 4 February. Posts may be in any language, but if they are in a language I do not know I will ask someone else for help.
What constitutes a post about "Balkan music and arts"? The fact that the person who submits it thinks it ought to be considered in that category.
Let the submissions arrive!
Update: You may ask, What is a blog carnival? This might help. Keep the submissions coming!
BALKAN MUSIC AND ARTS
Submissions should be in the form of blog or forum posts from anywhere on the internet, published at any time. Please send your favorite posts (your own or another person's) on the topic to Eric Gordy [eastethnia at gmail dot com] by Friday, 4 February. Posts may be in any language, but if they are in a language I do not know I will ask someone else for help.
What constitutes a post about "Balkan music and arts"? The fact that the person who submits it thinks it ought to be considered in that category.
Let the submissions arrive!
Update: You may ask, What is a blog carnival? This might help. Keep the submissions coming!
Where the bridges lead
When I first read about the initiative to link the Mostar and Zagreb universities by an internet video connection at OneWorld, I put a celebratory post here. Ero Hercegovina also pointed to it with pride. My enthusiasm comes from two sources. First, I am a committed lover of connections between universities, and particularly international connections. The reasons for this are probably too obvious to mention. Second, one of the best things about the internet is that it makes it possible for the information that people have available to depend less on their geographic location or institutional affiliation. In the original news article from Pincom there was mention of plans for the Zagrepčani to make their databases available to the Mostarci.
What I did not take into account was the exclusive nature of the Zagreb-Mostar link and the ugly prehistory of Mostar's bureaucratic inclusion in the Croatian university network. As AR (who is a globally recognised authority on cultural history and its destruction in the region) wrote in the comments to the original post:
"...the links between the "Sveuciliste u Mostaru" and Zagreb actually go back a dozen years -- to 1993, to be precise, when Croat nationalist militants took control of the facilities of Mostar's long-established Univerzitet "Dzemal Bijedic" on the west bank of the Neretva, kicked out the non-Croat faculty members, students and staff, and renamed the cleansed institution "Hrvatsko Sveuciliste u Mostaru." The "Hrvatsko" has since been dropped from the official name, but the institution continues to be basically mono-ethnic and continues to function as if it were an institution in Croatia, rather than in Bosnia. "
Ludost also pointed out reasons to be suspicious on her site, asking (my translation):
"Wouldn't it be logical for the first link of that sort in Bosnia and Hercegovina to be between the universities in Mostar and Sarajevo or Banja Luka? Or maybe a series of joint lectures, if a video link were to be too expensive? But excuse me for being naive, for something like that there would have to exist a linguistic-educational consensus, not to mention a political consensus, right? In fact, a stable integrative state would have to exist, woudn't it?"
A commentator provided additional suspicion, saying "Now let's see whether the Croatian government is so generous toward the University and other cultural institutions in Croatia itself. I'd say not."
What the critiques cluster around is pointing out that the value of connecting institutions with one another is eclipsed by the obvious ill intentions of the agencies doing the connecting: it is subordinated to a project of "national unification" across borders, and it may well be designed so that one connection preempts another. Nobody was persuaded by my defense (which I posted in a discussion on Ludost's site) that "good things can come from bad intentions ... if the HDZ-ovci on both sides of the border established a way of connecting universities, probably other people can use it for other ends."
Ludost responded with a subtle satire in which the Croatian government sponsored a video link between classrooms in the segregated town of Stolac. And she wrote to me:
"In my opinion, the connecting of Mostar and Zagreb universities is not a positive step and cannot bring anything positive while so many other institutional mechanisms in Bosnia remain disconnected. in Bosnia we are witnessing a terrible death of all state institutions -- perhaps you are familiar with the current drama of Zemaljski muzej and six other institutions -- that are not ethnically devised. On that death of non-ethnic institutions, the ethnically and nationalistically set up institutions thrive, such as the Mostar university. this is a process of slow death of all Bosnian non-ethnic functions that's been going on since the end of the war, and with the blessing of the Dayton agreement. In that slow death of Bosnia, in that creeping ethnic tumor through all institutions and social mechanisms, I see this link between Mostar and Zagreb like yet another metastasis."
I can confirm a lot of this from casual observation. On my first postwar trip to Sarajevo, if I had looked more closely at my bus ticket I would have seen "S. Sarajevo" written on it, and known that I was being taken to a remote bus station in Lukavica, miles from any city. In Konjic, I had the pleasure of renting a room from a woman whose architect husband was held during the war in a camp that he had designed himself (as a factory): he has left his native town for Croatia permanently, and she can hardly wait to retire and join him. Last summer on our little vacation excursion from Makarska to Ston (oysters! they're silent and have no ideology!), there was no indication anywhere in Neum that would indicate to a casual observer that they were not in Croatia.
At the ground level, the potential of the inter-university link fades, because its purpose is to demolish other links.
What I did not take into account was the exclusive nature of the Zagreb-Mostar link and the ugly prehistory of Mostar's bureaucratic inclusion in the Croatian university network. As AR (who is a globally recognised authority on cultural history and its destruction in the region) wrote in the comments to the original post:
"...the links between the "Sveuciliste u Mostaru" and Zagreb actually go back a dozen years -- to 1993, to be precise, when Croat nationalist militants took control of the facilities of Mostar's long-established Univerzitet "Dzemal Bijedic" on the west bank of the Neretva, kicked out the non-Croat faculty members, students and staff, and renamed the cleansed institution "Hrvatsko Sveuciliste u Mostaru." The "Hrvatsko" has since been dropped from the official name, but the institution continues to be basically mono-ethnic and continues to function as if it were an institution in Croatia, rather than in Bosnia. "
Ludost also pointed out reasons to be suspicious on her site, asking (my translation):
"Wouldn't it be logical for the first link of that sort in Bosnia and Hercegovina to be between the universities in Mostar and Sarajevo or Banja Luka? Or maybe a series of joint lectures, if a video link were to be too expensive? But excuse me for being naive, for something like that there would have to exist a linguistic-educational consensus, not to mention a political consensus, right? In fact, a stable integrative state would have to exist, woudn't it?"
A commentator provided additional suspicion, saying "Now let's see whether the Croatian government is so generous toward the University and other cultural institutions in Croatia itself. I'd say not."
What the critiques cluster around is pointing out that the value of connecting institutions with one another is eclipsed by the obvious ill intentions of the agencies doing the connecting: it is subordinated to a project of "national unification" across borders, and it may well be designed so that one connection preempts another. Nobody was persuaded by my defense (which I posted in a discussion on Ludost's site) that "good things can come from bad intentions ... if the HDZ-ovci on both sides of the border established a way of connecting universities, probably other people can use it for other ends."
Ludost responded with a subtle satire in which the Croatian government sponsored a video link between classrooms in the segregated town of Stolac. And she wrote to me:
"In my opinion, the connecting of Mostar and Zagreb universities is not a positive step and cannot bring anything positive while so many other institutional mechanisms in Bosnia remain disconnected. in Bosnia we are witnessing a terrible death of all state institutions -- perhaps you are familiar with the current drama of Zemaljski muzej and six other institutions -- that are not ethnically devised. On that death of non-ethnic institutions, the ethnically and nationalistically set up institutions thrive, such as the Mostar university. this is a process of slow death of all Bosnian non-ethnic functions that's been going on since the end of the war, and with the blessing of the Dayton agreement. In that slow death of Bosnia, in that creeping ethnic tumor through all institutions and social mechanisms, I see this link between Mostar and Zagreb like yet another metastasis."
I can confirm a lot of this from casual observation. On my first postwar trip to Sarajevo, if I had looked more closely at my bus ticket I would have seen "S. Sarajevo" written on it, and known that I was being taken to a remote bus station in Lukavica, miles from any city. In Konjic, I had the pleasure of renting a room from a woman whose architect husband was held during the war in a camp that he had designed himself (as a factory): he has left his native town for Croatia permanently, and she can hardly wait to retire and join him. Last summer on our little vacation excursion from Makarska to Ston (oysters! they're silent and have no ideology!), there was no indication anywhere in Neum that would indicate to a casual observer that they were not in Croatia.
At the ground level, the potential of the inter-university link fades, because its purpose is to demolish other links.
2005-01-30
One more general, maybe?
Monday's Danas reports that ICTY indictee Nebojša Pavković (who had previously declared that he would not be going to the Hague alive) may be preparing to join his former subordinate Vladimir Lazarević at the Hague. They quote his lawyer Ljubiša Živadinović to the effect that he is preparing a defense.
Should the Lazarević surrender come through and Pavković go to face the charges against him, that would leave Sreten Lukić, who many speculated would be the first to go voluntarily, and Vlastimir Đorđević, who is widely believed to be hiding in Russia or threreabouts, from the four generals indicted by ICTY in October 2003.
Should the Lazarević surrender come through and Pavković go to face the charges against him, that would leave Sreten Lukić, who many speculated would be the first to go voluntarily, and Vlastimir Đorđević, who is widely believed to be hiding in Russia or threreabouts, from the four generals indicted by ICTY in October 2003.
New! Balkan blog carnival!
This is an idea that was inspired by the awards competition over at A Fistful of Euros (Plug: Feel free to go and vote for East Ethnia if you want to). Basically several people thought that there are enough Balkan blogs, and that there is enough variety in them, that they could be showcased independently rather than as a small subcategory of Europe. As much fun as an awards competition could be, the suggestion won out to begin a Balkan blog carnival. What is a blog carnival? See Science and Politics for a presentation of several of them.
In short: a page has been set up for the Carnival of the Balkans. The first edition will be on 7 February, on the topic of Balkan arts and music. If you want to be an editor of the carnival, send me a note at eastethnia at gmail dot com, and if you want to submit a post for the carnival (yours or someone else's) write to me at the same address.
In short: a page has been set up for the Carnival of the Balkans. The first edition will be on 7 February, on the topic of Balkan arts and music. If you want to be an editor of the carnival, send me a note at eastethnia at gmail dot com, and if you want to submit a post for the carnival (yours or someone else's) write to me at the same address.
Republican sexual fantasies
By now probably everybody has read about the newest torture revelations from the illegal prison at Guantanamo. Today there are mainstream media condemnations from Maureen Dowd in the New York Times and even from token right-winger Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe. There is of course nothing new about the revelation of obscene and hidden details of political life. What makes this one different is that is that the obscene details are being played out on a large scale, using public resources, and in the name of every citizen.
None of this can be covered over with ritual condemnations or, as with the torture in Iraq, with show trials of a few low-ranking military personnel. The decision to use public institutions for the sexual humiliation of political opponents and people who are imagined to be political opponents can only be a political decision taken at the highest levels.
None of this can be covered over with ritual condemnations or, as with the torture in Iraq, with show trials of a few low-ranking military personnel. The decision to use public institutions for the sexual humiliation of political opponents and people who are imagined to be political opponents can only be a political decision taken at the highest levels.
Who's afraid of the inquisitor wannabe?
The Serbian justice minister Zoran Stojković, whose legal reputation is built on prosecuting "political offenders" in the 1980s, has a few old tricks up his sleeve. Today he is quoted as telling a reporter that officials of the previous government are afraid of him, because they know that there are criminal complaints against them in the drawer.
So, how does he know whether people are afraid of him or not? Is this drawer that he is talking about his drawer? If there are criminal complaints, why have they not been acted upon? Or does he gather stuff to keep in his drawer to be pulled out at some opportune moment, along the way vaguely hinting at their existence but not specifying what they are?
This minister who continues to believe that the law is his private property should resign. Or be hounded out. And should certainly be prosecuted. No doubt a criminal complaint against him could be found in a drawer somewhere.
Update: Oh look, DS is going to try to recall Stojković and interior minister Dragan Jočić in the parliament.
So, how does he know whether people are afraid of him or not? Is this drawer that he is talking about his drawer? If there are criminal complaints, why have they not been acted upon? Or does he gather stuff to keep in his drawer to be pulled out at some opportune moment, along the way vaguely hinting at their existence but not specifying what they are?
This minister who continues to believe that the law is his private property should resign. Or be hounded out. And should certainly be prosecuted. No doubt a criminal complaint against him could be found in a drawer somewhere.
Update: Oh look, DS is going to try to recall Stojković and interior minister Dragan Jočić in the parliament.
2005-01-29
Đinđić: The movie
A group of young people in Serbia has been distributing, by any way they can (CD, P2P servers, handing it out at sidewalks, giving it as a gift in bookstores...), a documentary assembled from various public speeches and statements of the murdered prime minister Zoran Đinđić, in the belief that his words do have a message for people who have forgotten him or never heard him when he was alive. I have just downloaded and watched it, but will hold myself back from offering an opinion until you have watched it.
You can get it in AVI or Real Player format (AVI is higher up on the "CD" page, Real Player is a bit lower) at the site of the group Kapiraj i kopiraj. The film is about 30 minutes.
You can get it in AVI or Real Player format (AVI is higher up on the "CD" page, Real Player is a bit lower) at the site of the group Kapiraj i kopiraj. The film is about 30 minutes.
New on East Ethnia: All the news I've linked so far
Have a peek to the right of the screen and downward, and you will see that I have finally done what I have been meaning to do for some time: added links to the Balkan news sources I read regularly. Now East Ethnia is your one-stop buvljak for commentary, debate, sour humor and the events of the day.
In the plan for some fine day: links to research institutes.
In the plan for some fine day: links to research institutes.
Academic titles we all want
The older generation of endowed professorial chairs were named in honor of inspiring individuals or in the last instance in honor of individual donors who established the chair. More recent endowed chairs have been given corporate names: I vaguely recall seeing an advertisement for a "BMW professor of German studies" at a US university. This sparked me to think what I could aspire to as a Balkan boy. The Naxi-Taxi professor of mobility? The Čokolino professor of development? The Šipad professor of stability?
But Dillard University in Louisiana is asking for applications for what may just be the best job title on the planet: the Ray Charles professor of African American material culture. Take a moment to kick yourself for having chosen a different field. Then think: my new ambition is to be the Disciplina Kičme professor of multiplicity.
But Dillard University in Louisiana is asking for applications for what may just be the best job title on the planet: the Ray Charles professor of African American material culture. Take a moment to kick yourself for having chosen a different field. Then think: my new ambition is to be the Disciplina Kičme professor of multiplicity.
2005-01-28
Cold is cold, but this is cold
Have people seen how US vice president Dick Cheney dressed for the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz?
Did the corrupt old cretin think he was going skiing?
Did the corrupt old cretin think he was going skiing?
Universities of all lands, linkajte se
It is now possible for students at the University of Mostar to receive lectures from the University of Zagreb through an internet video link. This opens up the possibility for many more connections throughout the region and beyond. I'm for it.
balkania <--This is the "Balkania" tag, follow the link and see how easy it is to use!
balkania <--This is the "Balkania" tag, follow the link and see how easy it is to use!
People, this is a fantastic thing!
Peter Patnaik's Honey where you been so long is offering a song a day (mp3 format) of prewar blues, as well as some surprises. He also hosts a radio program on WUAG 103.1 FM in Greensboro, North Carolina, which does indeed have a live feed. Thanks to Bifurcated Rivets for the link.
Koštunica produces a surrender
Looks like I was wrong in predicting that the news this week would be the surrender of Sreten Lukić. Turns out it's Vladimir Lazarević. We will see whether this surrender encourages others.
This is not likely to put the controversy to bed. For one thing, judge Schomburg's critique (quoted in the previous post) applies to this indictment, which is based entirely on command responsibility. It is possible to win a conviction on command responsibility, but not automatic, and the ICTY prosecutors would need to show a level of skill they do not always show. For another, the big fish remains Ratko Mladić.
This is not likely to put the controversy to bed. For one thing, judge Schomburg's critique (quoted in the previous post) applies to this indictment, which is based entirely on command responsibility. It is possible to win a conviction on command responsibility, but not automatic, and the ICTY prosecutors would need to show a level of skill they do not always show. For another, the big fish remains Ratko Mladić.
2005-01-27
Tomorrow's Danas today...
Friday's edition of Danas has an interview (translated from Der Spiegel) with ICTY judge Wolfgang Schomburg. He has criticisms of ICTY's work, complaining, for example, about "...shaky indictments. One gets the impression that first they issue an arrest warrant, and only then start the real investigation." He also has reservations about uneven sentencing, about the control of information by the prosecutors, and about the public engagement of the ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
This is my summary, with a little translation into English of their translation from the German. The Danas article can be found at their web site (click "Dijalog" on the menu). Or if you read German (sorry to say that I do not), you can find the entire interview in Spiegel.
This is my summary, with a little translation into English of their translation from the German. The Danas article can be found at their web site (click "Dijalog" on the menu). Or if you read German (sorry to say that I do not), you can find the entire interview in Spiegel.
Football and politics
Serbian finance minister Mladjan Dinkić has a sports metaphor for the state of relations between Serbia and the EU:
"Right now, we have a clear penalty shot and there is no goalie. All we have to do is decide whether we will kick it into the goal or off the field. I think that anyone who is reasonable would choose to score the goal and to keep playing in the EU tournament, and not to switch to some tenth-class Balkan league."
Here's a photo of Roberto Baggio. Although maybe Mr Dinkić was thinking of a great old film.
"Right now, we have a clear penalty shot and there is no goalie. All we have to do is decide whether we will kick it into the goal or off the field. I think that anyone who is reasonable would choose to score the goal and to keep playing in the EU tournament, and not to switch to some tenth-class Balkan league."
Here's a photo of Roberto Baggio. Although maybe Mr Dinkić was thinking of a great old film.
The export market for democracy
Down Histologion way, Talos has a great quotation from Eric Hobsbawm about the difficulties associated with "exporting democracy," as so many people like to call it. The core of Professor Hobsbawm's critique seems to be that powerful states do not take major decisions in a democratic manner themselves, plus that what is sent abroad as democracy is often just attractive packaging for states advancing their self-interest in the context of power politics.
The war in Iraq could be used as an example, although it would be easy to challenge the notion that that the US or UK derives any benefit from that fiasco. Outside of a few small groups which have derived financial benefit -- but that is not just conspiracy theory, it is the problem with contemporary democracy generally. Look at surveys in any democratic state, or the Eurobarometer, and you will find high levels of discomfort in established democratic states. Most of it is derived from alienation from institutions, which are seen as dominated by powerful interests and nonrepresentative.
In the EU candidate countries or the countries that would like to be candidates, the problem is magnified by weak credibility of the new elites, and also by the feeling that "democracy" is being imposed as a set of demands from above. Europeans and Americans might be surprised that not everyone is so sure that their empire is necessarily more attractive than the Soviet one. What keeps the "transition" process going is that there is also very little nostalgia for the old authoritarianism or aspiration toward a new one in most places. This is a precarious foundation, and marginality, poverty and unemployment whack their hammers at it every day.
balkania
The war in Iraq could be used as an example, although it would be easy to challenge the notion that that the US or UK derives any benefit from that fiasco. Outside of a few small groups which have derived financial benefit -- but that is not just conspiracy theory, it is the problem with contemporary democracy generally. Look at surveys in any democratic state, or the Eurobarometer, and you will find high levels of discomfort in established democratic states. Most of it is derived from alienation from institutions, which are seen as dominated by powerful interests and nonrepresentative.
In the EU candidate countries or the countries that would like to be candidates, the problem is magnified by weak credibility of the new elites, and also by the feeling that "democracy" is being imposed as a set of demands from above. Europeans and Americans might be surprised that not everyone is so sure that their empire is necessarily more attractive than the Soviet one. What keeps the "transition" process going is that there is also very little nostalgia for the old authoritarianism or aspiration toward a new one in most places. This is a precarious foundation, and marginality, poverty and unemployment whack their hammers at it every day.
balkania
Academic reality show
When I read this fine satire piece on the site of Bitch, Ph.D., I laughed heartily. You might, too.
Out of the mouth of Beba
None of the people who said that they were going to sue Vladimir Popović-Beba have done it yet. Yesterday I offered a translation of some bits of his very provocative interview. On the other hand, it looks as though prosecutors are starting to look into his charge that Milorad Vučelić embezzled "donations" to State Security. It is not clear whether anything will happen with his claim that he has video of Radical party deputies accepting envelopes with bribes from a Socialist party official on the floor of the Parliament.
Today's Vreme has a cartoon by Predrag Koraksić that nicely summarizes the situation. The nickname "Beba" translates to, of course, "Baby."
balkania
Today's Vreme has a cartoon by Predrag Koraksić that nicely summarizes the situation. The nickname "Beba" translates to, of course, "Baby."
balkania
The courage of their convictions (and acquittals)
The uproar over television host Petar Vlahov interviewing widow and has-been krimobarbie Ceca Ražnatović has already been nicely reported by Drax. Now it seems that Nova TV is responding to public pressure from people who love her songs but hate her web of associations and cancelling the broadcast of the interview.
Because, you know, if a heavily made up singer who is associated with fascists can be shown on television, the next thing you know you could have figures from the far right all over the public sphere. Wouldn't want that, right.
balkania
Because, you know, if a heavily made up singer who is associated with fascists can be shown on television, the next thing you know you could have figures from the far right all over the public sphere. Wouldn't want that, right.
balkania
Housekeeping: The list continues to grow
Time for that periodic post to draw attention to the new links that have been added. If you look to your right, you will see that the Balkan link list is growing, and these are all good ones, I think:
Balkan-scissors: News, comments and lovely historical photos from Seesaw
Chapati mystery: Where the empire is resisted
Džabalebaroš: Good things from Belgrade, and sav taj rokenrol
Kakanien: Mostly Balkan-related academic news
Kushtrim Xhakli: The secret connections between Sweden and Kosovo
Novalas: Soda with your Citroen?
Sylvie la dilettante: Direct from Bruxelles, to places further east
As always, please let me know if I have forgotten yours or have neglected to find out about something good.
Balkan-scissors: News, comments and lovely historical photos from Seesaw
Chapati mystery: Where the empire is resisted
Džabalebaroš: Good things from Belgrade, and sav taj rokenrol
Kakanien: Mostly Balkan-related academic news
Kushtrim Xhakli: The secret connections between Sweden and Kosovo
Novalas: Soda with your Citroen?
Sylvie la dilettante: Direct from Bruxelles, to places further east
As always, please let me know if I have forgotten yours or have neglected to find out about something good.
Edo Maajka's North American tour
According to his official biography, Edin Osmić "embodies the good spirit of the Bosnian people and the area he comes from."
Now the North American audience can experience the good local qualities that made Edo Maajka Iskon's "person of the year" at the following clubs:
11 February: Toronto, The Opera House (735 Queen Street East)
12 February: Atlanta (CBS Ctr Platinum Room, 4001 Presidential Parkway)
18 February: Detroit (no location announced)
19 February: St Louis (Europe Nightclub, 1521 Washington Avenue)
20 February: New York (Club Casino, 26-44 Borough Place, Woodside-Astoria)
Unfortunately, it looks like he will not be coming to Boston. If he is not coming to your town either, at least you can enjoy the video for "No Sikiriki" (.ram file, requires Real Player), not only sort of hippie-dreamy, but also the only rap tune of which I am aware that contains a mention of burek.
balkania <--This is the "Balkania" tag, follow the link and see how easy it is to use!
Now the North American audience can experience the good local qualities that made Edo Maajka Iskon's "person of the year" at the following clubs:
11 February: Toronto, The Opera House (735 Queen Street East)
12 February: Atlanta (CBS Ctr Platinum Room, 4001 Presidential Parkway)
18 February: Detroit (no location announced)
19 February: St Louis (Europe Nightclub, 1521 Washington Avenue)
20 February: New York (Club Casino, 26-44 Borough Place, Woodside-Astoria)
Unfortunately, it looks like he will not be coming to Boston. If he is not coming to your town either, at least you can enjoy the video for "No Sikiriki" (.ram file, requires Real Player), not only sort of hippie-dreamy, but also the only rap tune of which I am aware that contains a mention of burek.
balkania <--This is the "Balkania" tag, follow the link and see how easy it is to use!
2005-01-26
Proven by science!
I don't know whether you think that waiters and bank clerks are politer in some regions of the world than others. But now data are available on how polite they are in Croatia, writes Ljiljana Hlača in Glas Slavonije. The "Heraklee" agency sent "mystery shoppers" (apparently this is a term of art) in October and November of last year to banks, shops and restaurants around Croatia, and found:
13% of bank clerks did not "politely greet" their customers, and only 7% gave "clear and understandable" answers to questions.
In 17.5% of shops, prices were not "properly displayed," but 64.2% of shop clerks greeted their customers, while only 39% did not thank customers for purchases.
71.87% of waiters offered their customers additional drinks, but only 41.94% offered dessert.
Did I say science? I meant "information-gathering."
Update: Just to note that I have generally found that things like restaurant service in all of the countries of the region are far better than here in the US. When I told this to my dear wife, she said "yeah, but that's not saying much."
13% of bank clerks did not "politely greet" their customers, and only 7% gave "clear and understandable" answers to questions.
In 17.5% of shops, prices were not "properly displayed," but 64.2% of shop clerks greeted their customers, while only 39% did not thank customers for purchases.
71.87% of waiters offered their customers additional drinks, but only 41.94% offered dessert.
Did I say science? I meant "information-gathering."
Update: Just to note that I have generally found that things like restaurant service in all of the countries of the region are far better than here in the US. When I told this to my dear wife, she said "yeah, but that's not saying much."
Will there be news this evening?
Serbian deputy premier Miroljub Labus is promising that it will be known by this evening what will happen with the four generals who have been charged by ICTY and whom the governments expects to "voluntarily surrender." However, nobody else seems to have the same information or to be willing to corroborate his statement. His discussion with journalists included this exchange:
Labus: The courts should act on [the issue of ICTY indictments].
B92: The court sent a warrant to the police.
Labus: Then the police has to carry out that warrant.
B92: But the minister of police says they will not.
Labus: That is now the question, do we have a state or do we not. That is what our discussion is about. The catalyst is the question of cooperation with the Hague tribunal, but the theme is whether we respect our own laws and whether our institutions exist as state institutions. That is a much more serious question than whether some general will give himself up or not.
The question remains open as to whether Labus's party G17+, which favors sending indictees to ICTY, would leave the governing coalition if its immobility were to continue. It is a high risk calculation for Labus, who is probably aware that if elections were to be called, his party could probably not hope to do as well as it did the last time around.
Update: It's evening, and looks like no news. Probably the "surprise" will be the surrender of Sreten Lukić sometime in the next week.
Balkania
Labus: The courts should act on [the issue of ICTY indictments].
B92: The court sent a warrant to the police.
Labus: Then the police has to carry out that warrant.
B92: But the minister of police says they will not.
Labus: That is now the question, do we have a state or do we not. That is what our discussion is about. The catalyst is the question of cooperation with the Hague tribunal, but the theme is whether we respect our own laws and whether our institutions exist as state institutions. That is a much more serious question than whether some general will give himself up or not.
The question remains open as to whether Labus's party G17+, which favors sending indictees to ICTY, would leave the governing coalition if its immobility were to continue. It is a high risk calculation for Labus, who is probably aware that if elections were to be called, his party could probably not hope to do as well as it did the last time around.
Update: It's evening, and looks like no news. Probably the "surprise" will be the surrender of Sreten Lukić sometime in the next week.
Balkania
Corruption: Let the charges fly!
A bitter and public back and forth of accusations has been set off by a rare interview which the late Zoran Đinđić's confidant Vladimir Popović-Beba granted to Brankica Stanković for Radio B92's program "Insajder." Beba Popović is widely regarded, rightly or not, as having been a grey eminence of the Đinđić government, and hardly ever speaks to the press. In this interview he comes out with some revelations that, if true, are bound to spark controversy.
Mr Popović describes the contacts between Mr Đinđić, former interior minister Dušan Mihajlović, and criminals from the Unit for Special Operations (JSO or "red berets") and the Surčin criminal clan, the difficulty that police had in controlling well-connected criminal groups, and the difficulty that the government had in controlling the police. I will offer a few longish quotations--the conversation was informal, so please excuse the heavy use of ellipses and brackets (also the translation is a little free, check the original before quoting it):
"The key events around 5 October [2000, the day the Milošević regime fell] were a secret meeting of all the leaders of DOS [the Democratic Opposition of Serbia], and a meeting between [then incoming federal president Vojislav] Koštunica, [Slobodan] Milošević, [Russian foreign minister Igor] Ivanov, [head of military general staff Nebojša] Pavković, and now we hear that [head of military security] Aca Tomić and a journalist from the Beta agency were also present. [...] I don't know when the text of that discussion with Milošević from 6 October will be released, but I know that Nebojša Pavković secretly organized the taping of that meeting. [...] There was a fight between Koštunica and Slobodan Milošević. Milošević charged that he had formed Koštunica's party and helped him, which Koštunica denied, but [Milošević] insisted that he gave him publicity, that he allowed the people who financed him to get some contracts which made it possible for his party to receive money, that he allowed him to become popular by giving him access to state television. Koštunica assented at one point, and Ivanov managed to insist to Koštunica that he owed Milošević after all."
[....]
"I think it is not fair to mention only [director of State Security] Radomir Marković when talking about politicians who were protected after 5 October. Maybe he was justifiably a symbol of the most repressive side of the rule of Slobodan Milošević, but Koštunica and the people around him did not only protect Marković. If we want to be truthful about it, then we have to say that after 5 October Koštunica protected all of Milošević's apparatus, that means the army, Milošević's media, Milošević's institutions, the members of Milošević's family, and everything else. Koštunica protected them all."
[....]
"What none of us knew was that after 5 October there there would be a property fight between State Security, Milošević's politicians and Milošević's tycoons who had for ten years under the mantle of war and patriotism been doing business over the territory of the former Yugoslavia. I mean, we all knew that more or less, but we did not think that relations were the way they were.
"We fell into that and did not know and we needed a lot of time to figure out what was going on. It became clearer to us about a month after Zoran [Đinđić] became prime minister, when Jovica [Stanišić, former head of State Security] at one of our meetings told Zoran, I was present, that Zoran should do something about getting money from [former Milošević confidant] Milorad Vučelić, who had stolen some 40 million marks from State Security. He took out a folded piece of paper from his wallet, it was there with the photos of his kids, and on it were written the numbers of ten bank accounts and the exact amount of how much money was where and he said that that was the money that State Security had got from various business operations and from the donations they had got from individuals who in the war years had given them money to buy equipment, helicopters, and so forth. And Vučelić was some kind of connection between State Security and those people, he was supposed to take half and give the rest, but in the end he took it all and did not give any."
[....]
"If you ask me whether [the organized crime figure from Surčin] Ljubiša Buha had some connections by which he got contracts [for paving highways], I will tell you -- yes, he had a connection, but that connection was not anybody from the government but [Milošević confidant] Milutin Mrkonjić, who worked in his firm for a year. A person who for five or however many years was involved with paving jobs in Serbia. Who did Zoran Đinđić know in the paving business in Serbia? Or any of us from the leadership of DOS? Nobody, and still the story goes around that Zoran said to him, okay, that capital you got from crime, fine, I have no problem with that capital, as long as you stop doing crime I will give you the permits to invest that capital in legal businesses. Now, why would he ask the prime minister? Who asked anybody anything, do you think that Ljubiša Buha is the only person who made millions on the black market under Miloševic? From crime, smuggling, kidnapping, whatever. Look at [the luxurious Belgrade neighborhood] Dedinje, in Dedinje there are 500 houses, every one worth 4-5 million euros. How many people do you know about who got there with dubious capital? The Karićes and who else? You don't know about any others. Well, whose are those 400 houses? Who are those people? Are those people who had 5000 euros or marks as a monthly salary under Milošević and earned it? No, those are people who made that money in a suspicious way. Nobody talks about them, and none of them needed permission from Zoran Đinđić to buy into anything."
The story has its incredible moments, and there are times when it is hard to be credulous about Mr Popović's professed naivete. At one point even the reporter tells him, "now you are really talking like you are from Sweden or something." It is also clear that Mr Popović has reason both to argue against the portrayal of himself and Mr Đinđić as being close to criminals, and also to discredit Mr Koštunica.
But the detective-novel elements should not be dismissed out of hand. Less likely stories have proven to be true. Judging from the initial reactions (also in Blic) of people named in the interview, there are a lot of heated denials but no formal charges of slander.
Balkania
Mr Popović describes the contacts between Mr Đinđić, former interior minister Dušan Mihajlović, and criminals from the Unit for Special Operations (JSO or "red berets") and the Surčin criminal clan, the difficulty that police had in controlling well-connected criminal groups, and the difficulty that the government had in controlling the police. I will offer a few longish quotations--the conversation was informal, so please excuse the heavy use of ellipses and brackets (also the translation is a little free, check the original before quoting it):
"The key events around 5 October [2000, the day the Milošević regime fell] were a secret meeting of all the leaders of DOS [the Democratic Opposition of Serbia], and a meeting between [then incoming federal president Vojislav] Koštunica, [Slobodan] Milošević, [Russian foreign minister Igor] Ivanov, [head of military general staff Nebojša] Pavković, and now we hear that [head of military security] Aca Tomić and a journalist from the Beta agency were also present. [...] I don't know when the text of that discussion with Milošević from 6 October will be released, but I know that Nebojša Pavković secretly organized the taping of that meeting. [...] There was a fight between Koštunica and Slobodan Milošević. Milošević charged that he had formed Koštunica's party and helped him, which Koštunica denied, but [Milošević] insisted that he gave him publicity, that he allowed the people who financed him to get some contracts which made it possible for his party to receive money, that he allowed him to become popular by giving him access to state television. Koštunica assented at one point, and Ivanov managed to insist to Koštunica that he owed Milošević after all."
[....]
"I think it is not fair to mention only [director of State Security] Radomir Marković when talking about politicians who were protected after 5 October. Maybe he was justifiably a symbol of the most repressive side of the rule of Slobodan Milošević, but Koštunica and the people around him did not only protect Marković. If we want to be truthful about it, then we have to say that after 5 October Koštunica protected all of Milošević's apparatus, that means the army, Milošević's media, Milošević's institutions, the members of Milošević's family, and everything else. Koštunica protected them all."
[....]
"What none of us knew was that after 5 October there there would be a property fight between State Security, Milošević's politicians and Milošević's tycoons who had for ten years under the mantle of war and patriotism been doing business over the territory of the former Yugoslavia. I mean, we all knew that more or less, but we did not think that relations were the way they were.
"We fell into that and did not know and we needed a lot of time to figure out what was going on. It became clearer to us about a month after Zoran [Đinđić] became prime minister, when Jovica [Stanišić, former head of State Security] at one of our meetings told Zoran, I was present, that Zoran should do something about getting money from [former Milošević confidant] Milorad Vučelić, who had stolen some 40 million marks from State Security. He took out a folded piece of paper from his wallet, it was there with the photos of his kids, and on it were written the numbers of ten bank accounts and the exact amount of how much money was where and he said that that was the money that State Security had got from various business operations and from the donations they had got from individuals who in the war years had given them money to buy equipment, helicopters, and so forth. And Vučelić was some kind of connection between State Security and those people, he was supposed to take half and give the rest, but in the end he took it all and did not give any."
[....]
"If you ask me whether [the organized crime figure from Surčin] Ljubiša Buha had some connections by which he got contracts [for paving highways], I will tell you -- yes, he had a connection, but that connection was not anybody from the government but [Milošević confidant] Milutin Mrkonjić, who worked in his firm for a year. A person who for five or however many years was involved with paving jobs in Serbia. Who did Zoran Đinđić know in the paving business in Serbia? Or any of us from the leadership of DOS? Nobody, and still the story goes around that Zoran said to him, okay, that capital you got from crime, fine, I have no problem with that capital, as long as you stop doing crime I will give you the permits to invest that capital in legal businesses. Now, why would he ask the prime minister? Who asked anybody anything, do you think that Ljubiša Buha is the only person who made millions on the black market under Miloševic? From crime, smuggling, kidnapping, whatever. Look at [the luxurious Belgrade neighborhood] Dedinje, in Dedinje there are 500 houses, every one worth 4-5 million euros. How many people do you know about who got there with dubious capital? The Karićes and who else? You don't know about any others. Well, whose are those 400 houses? Who are those people? Are those people who had 5000 euros or marks as a monthly salary under Milošević and earned it? No, those are people who made that money in a suspicious way. Nobody talks about them, and none of them needed permission from Zoran Đinđić to buy into anything."
The story has its incredible moments, and there are times when it is hard to be credulous about Mr Popović's professed naivete. At one point even the reporter tells him, "now you are really talking like you are from Sweden or something." It is also clear that Mr Popović has reason both to argue against the portrayal of himself and Mr Đinđić as being close to criminals, and also to discredit Mr Koštunica.
But the detective-novel elements should not be dismissed out of hand. Less likely stories have proven to be true. Judging from the initial reactions (also in Blic) of people named in the interview, there are a lot of heated denials but no formal charges of slander.
Balkania
2005-01-25
Patriotism in action
This morning I already shared news of one youth political organization's action to pressure the Serbian government into action on the Hague question. Now there is another. The youth organization of the Civic Alliance of Serbia (GSS) showed the indictees how to give themselves up voluntarily, knocking on the door of the Government offices with passports and suitcases in hand. Spokesperson Jovana Tavčar explained, "we demand that the government arrest the indictees and begin to deal with the country's other problems."
GSS has redesigned their web presentation, and the party's former president Goran Svilanović, also the former foreign minister, gave an interesting and revealing interview to Ivana Stevanović of B92.
Balkania
GSS has redesigned their web presentation, and the party's former president Goran Svilanović, also the former foreign minister, gave an interesting and revealing interview to Ivana Stevanović of B92.
Balkania
Multiple intelligence shell game
Fascination has been developing about The Washington Post's report on Sunday that US Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld had established secret intelligence units ("strategic support teams") independent of the CIA, charged with carrying out clandestine operations. After denying the story, the Defense Department confirmed the existence of these units today.
What seems to be at stake here is not that new things are being done, but that they are being done by a different agency. There are probably two main reasons for the Defense department to want to take over this type of job from the CIA: first to avoid oversight, and second because Bush administration officials have been unhappy with the CIA failing to tell them the things they want to hear.
Another motivation seems to be for the Defense department to exercise greater control over "human intelligence," which would include interrogations. Considering the growing evidence about the way Defense has been conducting interrogations at such places as Iraq and Guantánamo, the desire to avoid oversight is understandable. Destructive and doomed to failure, but understandable.
Update: Thanks to TK for this interesting detail. Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio reports that "This has not been reported, but already these special teams have been on assignment in Bosnia working closely with the CIA and with special operations forces. In Bosnia, the mission has been to go after Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two Serb leaders who have been at large for such a long time. And this is one of the countries where these teams are already operating." The audio of the report is available from NPR.
Current Affairs
What seems to be at stake here is not that new things are being done, but that they are being done by a different agency. There are probably two main reasons for the Defense department to want to take over this type of job from the CIA: first to avoid oversight, and second because Bush administration officials have been unhappy with the CIA failing to tell them the things they want to hear.
Another motivation seems to be for the Defense department to exercise greater control over "human intelligence," which would include interrogations. Considering the growing evidence about the way Defense has been conducting interrogations at such places as Iraq and Guantánamo, the desire to avoid oversight is understandable. Destructive and doomed to failure, but understandable.
Update: Thanks to TK for this interesting detail. Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio reports that "This has not been reported, but already these special teams have been on assignment in Bosnia working closely with the CIA and with special operations forces. In Bosnia, the mission has been to go after Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two Serb leaders who have been at large for such a long time. And this is one of the countries where these teams are already operating." The audio of the report is available from NPR.
Current Affairs
Who's who on the far right
Over at Osservatorio sui Balcani, Danijela Nenadić has a useful overview of extreme right groups in Serbia, who their main actors are, and what they are up to. It's worth a peek. Članak je na talijanskom.
Balkania
Balkania
Wakeup call
Today's Danas leads with a photo of the action "Waking up from the nightmare" by the Democratic Party (DS) youth organization. They delivered alarm clocks to prime minister Koštunica and charged him with "setting a record in returning Serbia to darkness."
Konstantin Samofalov, president of the Belgrade DS youth group, says that they brought Mr Koštunica alarm clocks to help him wake up, transistor radios to hear the news, and (toy) mobile telelphones to communicate with the people. I think that the sign the fellow with the hat is holding reads "Ko to tamo zeva?" ["Who's that yawning there?"], a reference to Slobodan Šijan's much-loved 1980 film about petty competition between people oblivious to their fate.
Balkania
Konstantin Samofalov, president of the Belgrade DS youth group, says that they brought Mr Koštunica alarm clocks to help him wake up, transistor radios to hear the news, and (toy) mobile telelphones to communicate with the people. I think that the sign the fellow with the hat is holding reads "Ko to tamo zeva?" ["Who's that yawning there?"], a reference to Slobodan Šijan's much-loved 1980 film about petty competition between people oblivious to their fate.
Balkania
Back from the blue mountains
Just a quick post to let everyone know that the blizzard has ended, and we have come back from our lovely stay in the very cold Berkshire mountains, where the local populace was duly fascinated with the Balkan cabbage-centered creations. Posting to resume once I get the daughter, delighted by school being cancelled two days in a row due to snow, to bed. This might be a while, as nobody has to wake up early and her father is inspired for a long bedtime story.
Photo by David Ryan, Boston Globe.
Photo by David Ryan, Boston Globe.
2005-01-24
Turns out there are a lot of good weblogs!
You can vote for your favorites over at the site of A Fistful of Euros, which is hosting the First European Weblog Awards. Should you feel inclined, this site is nominated in a couple of categories, but there are also tons of other favorites. In fact it was through the first call for nominations that I found some of my favorites.
Introducing the "Balkania" tag
The Technorati service has introduced a neat little feature that might make it possible to follow new posts on a subject on any weblog. The feature is described on the Technorati tags page. This looks like a pretty decent way, with a small bit of human memory and the finger effort involved in cutting and pasting, to see what people are saying on a particular day.
I have opened the "Balkania" tag as a way of marking and getting listed posts related to, broadly speaking, the Balkans. There is probably no need for a debate over what Balkans are, let the definition develop through usage of the tag. For now, if you go to the "Balkania" page, you will only find listings for this site. But there are are also astonishingly simple instructions for getting your own posts listed under this category if you want.
Have a look and see whether it interests you.
Balkania
I have opened the "Balkania" tag as a way of marking and getting listed posts related to, broadly speaking, the Balkans. There is probably no need for a debate over what Balkans are, let the definition develop through usage of the tag. For now, if you go to the "Balkania" page, you will only find listings for this site. But there are are also astonishingly simple instructions for getting your own posts listed under this category if you want.
Have a look and see whether it interests you.
Balkania
2005-01-23
Our delay will continue for another day
But the snowy landscape is very lovely indeed! Not so great for travel, however. Good thing that even this side of the Appalaichian Trail has wi-fi.
Photo courtesy of Glas javnosti, which also provides a very amusing accompanying article.
Balkania
Photo courtesy of Glas javnosti, which also provides a very amusing accompanying article.
Balkania
2005-01-22
Those who deny cabbage to others deserve it not for themselves
There will probably not be new posts here over the weekend, because we are on a mission. Our Belgrade friend from the halcyon days of gradskool is off teaching at a very fine college very far from the nearest object. She dreaded the prospect of the bucolic life, but I think that over the years she has come to enjoy it, and her children are especially delighted. But being so far from the Balkans has a major drawback: no regular supply of kiseli kupus. This has never been easy for us in this large but kupus-deficient country either. In California we used to be supplied by our friend's mother who made it in the basement. Our rural friend used to get shipments from Vancouver.
But we have found a source: the Euro Market in Lynn, out past the airport, features a variety of Balkan specialties, including kiseli kupus from Travnik, courteously vacuum packed by Poljorad-Travnik! They used to have a Macedonian version in jars, somewhat thinner and more suited to sarme, but heaven knows we are willing to trim some stems in pursuit of perfection. Our mission: to deliver three heads of it to our friend, roll them up, and enlighten the countryside.
Too bad they are predicting a huge blizzard, but we are driven by a higher purpose. Back to you Monday.
Update: Thanks to AR, what we will not be drinking with our sarmice:
ZAGREB, Jan 21 (dpa) -- A wine in Croatia has been named after fugitive Croatian Ante Gotovina, whom the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has charged with war crimes. The daily Jutarnji list reported Friday that a wine called "Gotovina" was presented in his hometown of Zadar earlier this week. Former general Gotovina has been in hiding since the ICTY indicted him for war crimes related to the deaths of 150 Serbs during the Balkans war in 1995.
Graševina could be nice, though. Okay, now we really have to get going.
Balkania
But we have found a source: the Euro Market in Lynn, out past the airport, features a variety of Balkan specialties, including kiseli kupus from Travnik, courteously vacuum packed by Poljorad-Travnik! They used to have a Macedonian version in jars, somewhat thinner and more suited to sarme, but heaven knows we are willing to trim some stems in pursuit of perfection. Our mission: to deliver three heads of it to our friend, roll them up, and enlighten the countryside.
Too bad they are predicting a huge blizzard, but we are driven by a higher purpose. Back to you Monday.
Update: Thanks to AR, what we will not be drinking with our sarmice:
ZAGREB, Jan 21 (dpa) -- A wine in Croatia has been named after fugitive Croatian Ante Gotovina, whom the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has charged with war crimes. The daily Jutarnji list reported Friday that a wine called "Gotovina" was presented in his hometown of Zadar earlier this week. Former general Gotovina has been in hiding since the ICTY indicted him for war crimes related to the deaths of 150 Serbs during the Balkans war in 1995.
Graševina could be nice, though. Okay, now we really have to get going.
Balkania
The glamor of Pirot
With apologies to The Glory of Carniola for the near-identity theft in the title, I offer you, courtesy of my Ohioan friend, a story of near-identity theft. It goes like this: a confidence artist by the name of Goran Marković looks, I guess, a lot like the actor Bruce Willis. He was able for a time to take advantage of the resemblance to get a lot of unpaid privileges for himself, deflect the attention of authorities, you name it. He even got himself a set of forged documents in the name of Bruce Willis, but there he made a crucial mistake: according to news.com.au, he "he linked the name Bruce with Australia's invasion of Hollywood," and got himself a fake Australian passport in the actor's name instead of a fake American one. So when the police in Pirot pulled him over and he gave them the Hollywood treatment, they:
"...immediately arrested him when they saw the passport was Australian. A further check revealed the car he was driving was stolen and an ensuing investigation linked him to other car thefts. 'When we pointed out the mistake he had to admit he wasn't the real thing,' a police spokesman said. 'He said he thought that Willis, like Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman, was Australian. He did look like him, but it was the Australian accent that gave it away'."
It seems that there is a message for crooks here, that they need to keep up to date on their show business trivia.
Balkania
"...immediately arrested him when they saw the passport was Australian. A further check revealed the car he was driving was stolen and an ensuing investigation linked him to other car thefts. 'When we pointed out the mistake he had to admit he wasn't the real thing,' a police spokesman said. 'He said he thought that Willis, like Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman, was Australian. He did look like him, but it was the Australian accent that gave it away'."
It seems that there is a message for crooks here, that they need to keep up to date on their show business trivia.
Balkania
2005-01-21
This week's commentary by Svetlana Lukić
Svetlana Lukić is not sparing any rhetorical ammunition. In this week's commentary she turns her attention to the Serbian government, which has brought negotiations with the EU to a standstill because of its equivocal approach to the question of treatment of accused war criminals. She turns up the heat on Mr Koštunica:
"There is no longer any point in mentioning the prime minister, unless somebody initiates a disciplinary hearing or a criminal complaint against him. That man should be fired, since he has been absent from his job for months, and should be made to answer criminal charges, because his government is violating the law of the country in the most heavyhanded way, beginning with the fact that it cooperates with people who have been charged with crimes and protects them from the law. In a word, Koštunica should be fired, and the same day he should be brought in for interrogation and held. Let history judge him for treason."
Well, now! Her editorial has sparked a debate in the readers' comments section, where responses range from "Bravo!" to charges that Ms Lukić wants to establish a dictatorship and has the "typical profile of an ideological journalist born for a single-party system." One thing that the heated exchange shows is that in the wake of the decision by the US and the EU to make the point that continued inaction on war crimes has a price, political discourse is not remaining untouched.
A word of caution is due: the comments section of B92 is not a representative sample of the Serbian population, so a wider range of responses will probably not be available to people who follow events virtually until Saturday or Sunday. And I'll be away for the weekend, so you're on your own.
Balkania
"There is no longer any point in mentioning the prime minister, unless somebody initiates a disciplinary hearing or a criminal complaint against him. That man should be fired, since he has been absent from his job for months, and should be made to answer criminal charges, because his government is violating the law of the country in the most heavyhanded way, beginning with the fact that it cooperates with people who have been charged with crimes and protects them from the law. In a word, Koštunica should be fired, and the same day he should be brought in for interrogation and held. Let history judge him for treason."
Well, now! Her editorial has sparked a debate in the readers' comments section, where responses range from "Bravo!" to charges that Ms Lukić wants to establish a dictatorship and has the "typical profile of an ideological journalist born for a single-party system." One thing that the heated exchange shows is that in the wake of the decision by the US and the EU to make the point that continued inaction on war crimes has a price, political discourse is not remaining untouched.
A word of caution is due: the comments section of B92 is not a representative sample of the Serbian population, so a wider range of responses will probably not be available to people who follow events virtually until Saturday or Sunday. And I'll be away for the weekend, so you're on your own.
Balkania
Hit of the day (policy wonk category)
For those of you looking for a stimulating and short read, have a gander at the essay by David Held on globalisation. Ostensibly a response to Martin Wolf's book Why Globalisation Works, Professor Held's essay gives a brief balance sheet on the question and advocates a turn to social democracy. Thanks to Arts and Letters Daily for the heads-up.
The mystery of the Croatian blogs
I don't know what is up with the host at blog.hr, but you may have noticed that their blogs have been unreachable since yesterday. Ludost is offering temporary refuge for posts, so you may be able to find the new work of your favorite writers at this spot.
Update: Saturday evening: they're back!
Balkania
Update: Saturday evening: they're back!
Balkania
Update from Vranjske on the Mačkatica case
The local Vranjske novine is running an article that provides a little more detail on the story that first emerged in an article by Nataša Kandić in the 24 December issue of Danas, where she gave details of the burning of corpses from Kosovo in the "Mačkatica" factory in Surdulica. In the article, Ms Kandić charged that:
"...the burning of corpses in the Mačkatica factory took place in two phases, on the 16th and 24th of May 1999, after midnight, with security provided by the Red Berets, who at the time had a base in the village Bele near Vranje. Milorad Luković Legija, who was then the commander of the Red Berets, according to our information personally accompanied one delivery of corpses and was present during the burning. The bodies were burned in incinerators 4 and 5. The deliveries of the corpses and their burning were carried out by Zoran Stošić, who was then head of State Security for the district of Pčinj, Bratislav Milenković, the head of the Security Intelligence agency (BIA) for Vladičin Han and Surdulica, Dragan Stanković, head of the local police in Surdulica from 1993, Miroslav Antić, head of the BIA in Vranje, Dragan Lakićević, the director of the Mačkatica factory, and his assistant, Aca Đorđević."
Perhaps the charge that received the most attention was that the project of destroying evidence of crimes against humanity was coordinated by Dragomir Tomić, president of the "Simpo" furniture factory and minister for all purposes during the Milošević period. Mr Tomić immediately responded with a statement denying all charges: "Dragomir Tomić was never acquainted with with any facts connected to the events mentioned or any similar ones, if they happened, nor did he ever have any information about them." Dragan Lakićević issued a similar denial.
Official responses have been slow. The special prosecutor for war crimes, Vladimir Vukčević, has promised an investigation, while justice minister Zoran Stojković gave only evasive responses.
Ms Kandić notes that the public has been more responsive than institutions have on the matter: "I would say that in comparison to institutions, the public is less silent. It seems to me that there is a part of the public that is shocked, which considers that this is just one of the horrific things that testifies to the dark pogrom that the former regime carried out here. With regard to the institutions, there are still people there who want to cover it all up, who want the past not to be mentioned, that there should only be mention of Serbian victims, and that crimes, burnings and the destruction of evidence of crimes against others should never be mentioned. I would say that there is a serious blockade which makes it difficult to gather information, and that it is difficult to encourage ordinary people to speak about it, because they are still under threat, because they are afraid and they see that the same people who were in power then are still in power now."
One indication might be suggested by the statement of district prosecutor Milan Božinović on the investigation that his office carried out: "We requested a detailed report from State Security and from Public Security, and we got a report that said that in our area there was neither evidence nor any trace of graves or of any possible burning. After we got two such reports, completely independent of one another, there was no longer any basis to develop an indictment, and the information was given to the state prosecutor."
Vranjske novine's reporter Saša Stojković observes one detail that may be telling: "It is suggestive for the whole story that so far nobody has taken any action against Ms Kandić herself. Because if she were lying, the machinery of the 'patriotic judiciary' would have to come into action and move against her. There has been no such reaction, and Nataša Kandić herself does not expect any charges to be filed against her, 'for the simple reason that I am speaking the truth'."
Time will tell whether the special prosecutor for war crimes files charges. There are similar potential cases, of which the best known is the recovery of a freezer truck with corpses from the Danube river near Tekija.
Balkania
"...the burning of corpses in the Mačkatica factory took place in two phases, on the 16th and 24th of May 1999, after midnight, with security provided by the Red Berets, who at the time had a base in the village Bele near Vranje. Milorad Luković Legija, who was then the commander of the Red Berets, according to our information personally accompanied one delivery of corpses and was present during the burning. The bodies were burned in incinerators 4 and 5. The deliveries of the corpses and their burning were carried out by Zoran Stošić, who was then head of State Security for the district of Pčinj, Bratislav Milenković, the head of the Security Intelligence agency (BIA) for Vladičin Han and Surdulica, Dragan Stanković, head of the local police in Surdulica from 1993, Miroslav Antić, head of the BIA in Vranje, Dragan Lakićević, the director of the Mačkatica factory, and his assistant, Aca Đorđević."
Perhaps the charge that received the most attention was that the project of destroying evidence of crimes against humanity was coordinated by Dragomir Tomić, president of the "Simpo" furniture factory and minister for all purposes during the Milošević period. Mr Tomić immediately responded with a statement denying all charges: "Dragomir Tomić was never acquainted with with any facts connected to the events mentioned or any similar ones, if they happened, nor did he ever have any information about them." Dragan Lakićević issued a similar denial.
Official responses have been slow. The special prosecutor for war crimes, Vladimir Vukčević, has promised an investigation, while justice minister Zoran Stojković gave only evasive responses.
Ms Kandić notes that the public has been more responsive than institutions have on the matter: "I would say that in comparison to institutions, the public is less silent. It seems to me that there is a part of the public that is shocked, which considers that this is just one of the horrific things that testifies to the dark pogrom that the former regime carried out here. With regard to the institutions, there are still people there who want to cover it all up, who want the past not to be mentioned, that there should only be mention of Serbian victims, and that crimes, burnings and the destruction of evidence of crimes against others should never be mentioned. I would say that there is a serious blockade which makes it difficult to gather information, and that it is difficult to encourage ordinary people to speak about it, because they are still under threat, because they are afraid and they see that the same people who were in power then are still in power now."
One indication might be suggested by the statement of district prosecutor Milan Božinović on the investigation that his office carried out: "We requested a detailed report from State Security and from Public Security, and we got a report that said that in our area there was neither evidence nor any trace of graves or of any possible burning. After we got two such reports, completely independent of one another, there was no longer any basis to develop an indictment, and the information was given to the state prosecutor."
Vranjske novine's reporter Saša Stojković observes one detail that may be telling: "It is suggestive for the whole story that so far nobody has taken any action against Ms Kandić herself. Because if she were lying, the machinery of the 'patriotic judiciary' would have to come into action and move against her. There has been no such reaction, and Nataša Kandić herself does not expect any charges to be filed against her, 'for the simple reason that I am speaking the truth'."
Time will tell whether the special prosecutor for war crimes files charges. There are similar potential cases, of which the best known is the recovery of a freezer truck with corpses from the Danube river near Tekija.
Balkania
2005-01-20
What price security?
I had kind of promised myself I would not have posts related to the presidential inauguration, but...
Americablog found this photo accompanying an Washington Post article on the challenges that the Marriott hotel chain has in providing comfort and security for all of the guests who are coming to Washington for the event. Susan Biddle's photo shows US Secret Service officer Richard Burfield and an unidentified companion checking the buffet.
I honestly did not know this was how such things were checked.
Americablog found this photo accompanying an Washington Post article on the challenges that the Marriott hotel chain has in providing comfort and security for all of the guests who are coming to Washington for the event. Susan Biddle's photo shows US Secret Service officer Richard Burfield and an unidentified companion checking the buffet.
I honestly did not know this was how such things were checked.
Revenge of the mad doctor
Not only the fear that somebody might ask me for emergency medical assistance, but also the appearance of all those titled zlikovci in politics (not to mention evangelicals!), have pretty much dissuaded me from using the title "Dr" for any but official purposes. But this does not prevent me from taking a voyeuristic interest in the description, now up to eight installments in Nezavisne novine, of Dr Karadžić by Dr Plavšić. She has a reason to characterise her own role as minimal, since her defence at ICTY relied on arguing that she never had any proper authority. But the bits here are really pretty fascinating: Dr K never informed Dr P about meetings; Dr K falsified minutes of meetings, Dr K has been sending incriminating forged transcripts to ICTY from his place in hiding. But apparently Dr P got to exercise some authority over Arkan, who was not even a doctor. Nurse your desire for further installments, the paper is publishing a new excerpt every day.
Update: An article by BBC gives a few quotations in English translation, s'il vous plait. There's a little bit more in Reuters.
Update2: Thanks to AR for the tip. In today's Danas there is an article on the presentation of the book in Banja Luka (go to the "Hronika" page). The first interesting detail is that the manuscript was brought out of Sweden by Milorad Dodik. But there is also a long quotation from the book about Karadžić's adoration of Milošević. As I am reading more from the book, though, it becomes increasingly clear why she is trying to put everything on Karadžić and present herself as, what her defence lawyer once called her, an "ikebana."
Balkania
Update: An article by BBC gives a few quotations in English translation, s'il vous plait. There's a little bit more in Reuters.
Update2: Thanks to AR for the tip. In today's Danas there is an article on the presentation of the book in Banja Luka (go to the "Hronika" page). The first interesting detail is that the manuscript was brought out of Sweden by Milorad Dodik. But there is also a long quotation from the book about Karadžić's adoration of Milošević. As I am reading more from the book, though, it becomes increasingly clear why she is trying to put everything on Karadžić and present herself as, what her defence lawyer once called her, an "ikebana."
Balkania
A protest idea I am not certain about
Actually I am not certain whether this is a protest or something else. But it seems that since the war in Iraq began, in the German city of Bayreuth, somebody has been has been decorating the doggie droppings ("puppy poop," in the report by Deutsche Welle) that visitors leave with little American flags. I imagine the sort that get stuck into the top of ice cream concoctions, but I really do not want to spoil anybody's dessert. Parks administrator Josef Öttl is also not sure, and guesses "Maybe someone is protesting the war in Iraq or just trying to let people know that there are too many dog droppings in the park." A police spokesperson points out that placing flags in puppy poop is not a criminal offence.
If indeed the gesture is meant as a protest, its effectiveness is probably open to question. Another question remains: are war supporters less likely to clean up after their dogs?
If indeed the gesture is meant as a protest, its effectiveness is probably open to question. Another question remains: are war supporters less likely to clean up after their dogs?
Serbian tradition
The new issue of Vreme has an interview with the historian Branka Prpa, director of the Belgrade Historical Archive and chief editor of a new book, Hronologija: Moderna srpska država 1804–2004 [Chronology of the modern Serbian state, 1804-2004]. Dr Prpa argues that from the 19th century onward, there is a strong modernising current that runs through Serbian history, and that this can be regarded as among the most distinguished traditions of the country. In doing so she argues against those critics on the political right who use "tradition" as an argument for undoing modernising reforms. A quote:
"Those people who call so much on tradition ought to know that aside from the Cyrillic alphabet, there is something else that can be called a Serbian tradition, except they are not familiar with it, and that is shameful for any traditionalist who claims to respect their own tradition. They should first familiarise themselves with their tradition, rather than before that, on the basis of their own ignorance, coming out with positions and decisions by which they define the idea of tradition."
One popular definition of tradition is that it is that set of practices that people engage in without knowing why. And imagine knowing why!
Balkania
"Those people who call so much on tradition ought to know that aside from the Cyrillic alphabet, there is something else that can be called a Serbian tradition, except they are not familiar with it, and that is shameful for any traditionalist who claims to respect their own tradition. They should first familiarise themselves with their tradition, rather than before that, on the basis of their own ignorance, coming out with positions and decisions by which they define the idea of tradition."
One popular definition of tradition is that it is that set of practices that people engage in without knowing why. And imagine knowing why!
Balkania
2005-01-19
For the record
2004 Presidential election returns in the town where I live:
Kerry (D): 21,065 79%
Bush (R): 5,202 20%
Cobb (G): 137 1%
Badnarik (L): 129 0%
So Bush has about as much support in Brookline as Mesić has in Hercegovina.
Kerry (D): 21,065 79%
Bush (R): 5,202 20%
Cobb (G): 137 1%
Badnarik (L): 129 0%
So Bush has about as much support in Brookline as Mesić has in Hercegovina.
Today's recommended interview
Aleksandar Popov, director of the Center for Regionalism in Novi Sad, discussing the Igman Intiative with Veliborka Staletović at One World.
Balkania
Balkania
Thank you for agreeing to be arrested
Today B92 is reporting that the Serbian government appears to be succeeding in its negotiations with ICTY indictee Sreten Lukić, and that he will agree to surrender for trial on charges laid by the Hague prosecutors.
What an interesting country, where high ranking officials go to great pains, after long political debate, to entice people charged with crimes to agree that it would be nice if they were to face trial. To clarify: the statute of the ICTY is a part of domestic law. Of course, this luxurious treatment only applies to people charged with major violations of international law. Minor offenders get arrested.
Balkania
What an interesting country, where high ranking officials go to great pains, after long political debate, to entice people charged with crimes to agree that it would be nice if they were to face trial. To clarify: the statute of the ICTY is a part of domestic law. Of course, this luxurious treatment only applies to people charged with major violations of international law. Minor offenders get arrested.
Balkania
2005-01-18
Are twits in power for genetic reasons?
This fellow is the president of Harvard University, which is an educational and research institution, where research is carried out that sometimes makes it possible for people to know what they are talking about. Unless, of course, the people in question are blissfully unacquainted with that research. That might be why Lawrence Summers decided to tell a conference on diversity in science and engineering that the reasons for the low representation of women in the area have to do with them being unwilling to work hard enough and not being biologically disposed to understand mathematics. No transcript is available, since Dr Summers apparently decided to blither off the cuff.
According to the New York Times, Dr Summers has two explanations for his concerted campaign to demolish the prestige of the institution which employs him. One is that "I wanted to add some provocation to what I understand to be basically a social science discussion," which he certainly did, demonstrating that provocation attracts a good deal more media attention than social science.
His other other explanation is "I'm sorry for any misunderstanding but believe that raising questions, discussing multiple factors that may explain a difficult problem, and seeking to understand how they interrelate is vitally important." But there is no misunderstanding: the conference participants may well have been raising questions, discussing factors and seeking to understand, but Dr Summers was not.
Also: Do take a peek at the responses by Prof. PZ Myers, by the pseudonymous Professor B, and by Matt Yglesias.
According to the New York Times, Dr Summers has two explanations for his concerted campaign to demolish the prestige of the institution which employs him. One is that "I wanted to add some provocation to what I understand to be basically a social science discussion," which he certainly did, demonstrating that provocation attracts a good deal more media attention than social science.
His other other explanation is "I'm sorry for any misunderstanding but believe that raising questions, discussing multiple factors that may explain a difficult problem, and seeking to understand how they interrelate is vitally important." But there is no misunderstanding: the conference participants may well have been raising questions, discussing factors and seeking to understand, but Dr Summers was not.
Also: Do take a peek at the responses by Prof. PZ Myers, by the pseudonymous Professor B, and by Matt Yglesias.
Albanian cuisine in Boston!
I ran across this completely by chance, but it seems that there is an Albanian restaurant in Boston! We have yet to try it, but Café Apollonia offers a full Albanian menu prepared by chef Marlon Hysi. It has positive reviews by the Boston Phoenix, the Boston Globe and CitySearch. I hope to be able to report back full agreement with the reviews in the very near future.
Sad update: After assiduous persuasion my family agreed to try Apollonia tonight. It was hard to get there because there was a terrible fire at a church in Jamaica Plain along the way. Any curious readers thinking of trekking to Roslindale to try what I am sure is an excellent place may want to know that they work every day except Tuesdays. I do promise a culinary report.
Balkania
Sad update: After assiduous persuasion my family agreed to try Apollonia tonight. It was hard to get there because there was a terrible fire at a church in Jamaica Plain along the way. Any curious readers thinking of trekking to Roslindale to try what I am sure is an excellent place may want to know that they work every day except Tuesdays. I do promise a culinary report.
Balkania
2005-01-17
Prediction: Trouble for Koštunica, or not
If you have been following the news the past few days, you probably know that the United States is suspending economic aid to Serbia and Montenegro because of failure to apprehend and deliver indictees for the violation of international humanitarian law to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague. The main political actors opposed to stepping up cooperation, aside from SRS and SPS which are directly complicit in the crimes for which charges have been filed, are: Prime minister Vojislav Koštunica, interior minister Dragan Jočić, and justice minister Zoran Stojković, all from DSS. The opposition DS of president Boris Tadić supports accelerated cooperation, as does federal president Svetozar Marović. Other supporters of accelerated cooperation include deputy premier Miroljub Labus (G17+) and foreign minister Vuk Drašković (SPO).
B92 quotes Mr Drašković today: "Slobodan Milošević, his generals, commanders and followers are a disgrace to our history and tradition. The transfer of indictees to the Hague is our moral and national obligation. The future of the people cannot be held hostage to a handful of indictees." Even people who disagree about the "disgrace" part are probably finding more reasons to agree about the "hostage" part.
Never mind the opposition parties. If the parties which are now in the government but oppose Mr Koštunica's approach were to withdraw from the governing coalition, it would force new elections to be called, and DSS would not win. Mr Tadić has invited the parties to do just that. What remains to be seen is how serious this invitation is, and how ready the people in power are to take the risk of losing it.
Update: Time to see whether G17+ is serious about anything. Blic is reporting that G17+ vice president Dušan Petrović is inviting his own party, SPO and Nova Srbija to withdraw from the governing coalition if DSS does not come forward with a policy in ten days. "Let them decide whether they accept that Serbia return to isolation or whether they will take measures to prevent it," the paper quotes Mr Petrović as saying. Correction: Mr Petrović is a vice president of DS. Makes more sense. Nova Srbija has already declared that they have no intention of withdrawing from Mr Koštunica's coalition, while SPO declares that their preferred resolution is not that they leave the government, but that DS enter it. So clearly a lot of options are in play, and much of it seems to depend on how receptive G17+ and SPO are likely to be to coordinating their activity with their sometime opponents in DS. The worst case scenario? All the centrist parties leave, and DSS stays in power with the support of SRS. Too disgusting to conceive of, you say? They already made a similar deal with SPS, which is how Mr Koštunica was able to form a government in the first place.
Update2: Have a look at Gordana Suša's commentary in Nezavisne novine.
Update3: Tomorrow's news today -- Danas is reporting from "circles close to the Serbian government" that the government has agreed with the State Department to arrest three generals indicted by ICTY if they do not appear voluntarily by 27 January. This is not the whole enchilada, but it is at least a bean. Either the coalition parties succeeded in pressuring DSS, or the whole conflict was a media spectacle. Or the "circles" are rolling out false information.
Balkania
B92 quotes Mr Drašković today: "Slobodan Milošević, his generals, commanders and followers are a disgrace to our history and tradition. The transfer of indictees to the Hague is our moral and national obligation. The future of the people cannot be held hostage to a handful of indictees." Even people who disagree about the "disgrace" part are probably finding more reasons to agree about the "hostage" part.
Never mind the opposition parties. If the parties which are now in the government but oppose Mr Koštunica's approach were to withdraw from the governing coalition, it would force new elections to be called, and DSS would not win. Mr Tadić has invited the parties to do just that. What remains to be seen is how serious this invitation is, and how ready the people in power are to take the risk of losing it.
Update: Time to see whether G17+ is serious about anything. Blic is reporting that G17+ vice president Dušan Petrović is inviting his own party, SPO and Nova Srbija to withdraw from the governing coalition if DSS does not come forward with a policy in ten days. "Let them decide whether they accept that Serbia return to isolation or whether they will take measures to prevent it," the paper quotes Mr Petrović as saying. Correction: Mr Petrović is a vice president of DS. Makes more sense. Nova Srbija has already declared that they have no intention of withdrawing from Mr Koštunica's coalition, while SPO declares that their preferred resolution is not that they leave the government, but that DS enter it. So clearly a lot of options are in play, and much of it seems to depend on how receptive G17+ and SPO are likely to be to coordinating their activity with their sometime opponents in DS. The worst case scenario? All the centrist parties leave, and DSS stays in power with the support of SRS. Too disgusting to conceive of, you say? They already made a similar deal with SPS, which is how Mr Koštunica was able to form a government in the first place.
Update2: Have a look at Gordana Suša's commentary in Nezavisne novine.
Update3: Tomorrow's news today -- Danas is reporting from "circles close to the Serbian government" that the government has agreed with the State Department to arrest three generals indicted by ICTY if they do not appear voluntarily by 27 January. This is not the whole enchilada, but it is at least a bean. Either the coalition parties succeeded in pressuring DSS, or the whole conflict was a media spectacle. Or the "circles" are rolling out false information.
Balkania
That periodic "housekeeping" post
Some new sites were added to the link list in the past week or so:
Canada foreign policy: Stan Markotich's analyses of world politics
Christopher Lydon: The works of America's best radio interviewer
David McCandless: Journalism and satire from the Guardian contributor
Heart of Europe: Nicholas Whyte on European politics and culture
Pastoralni kupus: Živciranje zbog glupih političara (35,89%)
Skelly Wright: Tribulations and trials of a public defender
A couple of others were removed from the list, not because I do not like them, but because now that the US elections are far behind, those sites which are primarily concerned with the Democratic party and its future are not so interesting, and probably will not be unless by some huge surprise the Democrats begin to show some signs of life. Basically the only sites that are remaining in the "US politics" section are ones that I actually read every day.
The "Balkan blogs" list continues to grow, but it remains thin in blogs from Serbia, Albania and Macedonia.
Canada foreign policy: Stan Markotich's analyses of world politics
Christopher Lydon: The works of America's best radio interviewer
David McCandless: Journalism and satire from the Guardian contributor
Heart of Europe: Nicholas Whyte on European politics and culture
Pastoralni kupus: Živciranje zbog glupih političara (35,89%)
Skelly Wright: Tribulations and trials of a public defender
A couple of others were removed from the list, not because I do not like them, but because now that the US elections are far behind, those sites which are primarily concerned with the Democratic party and its future are not so interesting, and probably will not be unless by some huge surprise the Democrats begin to show some signs of life. Basically the only sites that are remaining in the "US politics" section are ones that I actually read every day.
The "Balkan blogs" list continues to grow, but it remains thin in blogs from Serbia, Albania and Macedonia.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today is, of course, the holiday on which Americans are supposed to remember and commemorate the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. The establishment of the holiday might have had the paradoxical consequence of neutralising Dr King, making him into a noncontroversial and consensual voštana figura. So it would not be a bad idea to become reacquainted with some of the things he actually had to say. His thoughts on the war in Vietnam, for example, have become timely once again.
2005-01-16
First projections from Index
The first two exit polls show Stjepan Mesić with a commanding lead. Puls has Mesić at 70.85% and Kosor at 29.15%, while GfK has Mesić at 71% and Kosor at 25.5%. This is more variation between sources than I would need to consider either reliable. Also, the surveys were conducted only on RH territory, not BiH.
Update: Nobody wants to cast doubt on any results, of course. But B92 is reporting a result of 70.75% for Mesić, 39.15% for Kosor. Which adds to 109.9%, an incredible turnout by any measure!
Update2: GONG's first unofficial projection: Mesić 65.62%, Kosor 32.78%. The official results will have to be announced sometime in the next few hours, but this seems beyond the capacity of fraudulent results from Hercegovina to alter. Ratko Maček, campaign director for Kosor, says they would be happy with 35%.
Update3: Final result according to the Electoral commission, as reported by Index: Mesić 65.98%, Kosor 34.02%. On the territory of Croatia, Mesić won in all districts except Ličko-senjska, 47,24% to 52,76% and Šibensko-kninska, 49,70% to 50,30%. The vote was close in Splitsko-dalmatinska, 50,85% to 49,15%, but he won by large margins everywhere else in the country. The "diaspora" vote was hugely lopsided in the other direction, though, as Quod observes in the comments: 17,47% for Mesić, 82,53% for Kosor. There are clearly major differences between voters who live in Croatia and voters who do not over where the country's interest lies.
Update4: I do believe that I agree with the people who are saying that it would be good for both Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina to do away with the "diaspora vote." It came into being as a manifestation of Mr Tudjman's territorial ambitions and as a way of assuring a permanent reserve of votes for HDZ, and it is now a bastion of irresponsible influence and fraud.
Update5: It looks like Mr Mesić agrees with me, imagine that. Ordinarily he might not get far in wanting to eliminate the "diaspora vote," especially with HDZ in government, but there is the added factor that the EU wants uniform electoral laws.
Update: Nobody wants to cast doubt on any results, of course. But B92 is reporting a result of 70.75% for Mesić, 39.15% for Kosor. Which adds to 109.9%, an incredible turnout by any measure!
Update2: GONG's first unofficial projection: Mesić 65.62%, Kosor 32.78%. The official results will have to be announced sometime in the next few hours, but this seems beyond the capacity of fraudulent results from Hercegovina to alter. Ratko Maček, campaign director for Kosor, says they would be happy with 35%.
Update3: Final result according to the Electoral commission, as reported by Index: Mesić 65.98%, Kosor 34.02%. On the territory of Croatia, Mesić won in all districts except Ličko-senjska, 47,24% to 52,76% and Šibensko-kninska, 49,70% to 50,30%. The vote was close in Splitsko-dalmatinska, 50,85% to 49,15%, but he won by large margins everywhere else in the country. The "diaspora" vote was hugely lopsided in the other direction, though, as Quod observes in the comments: 17,47% for Mesić, 82,53% for Kosor. There are clearly major differences between voters who live in Croatia and voters who do not over where the country's interest lies.
Update4: I do believe that I agree with the people who are saying that it would be good for both Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina to do away with the "diaspora vote." It came into being as a manifestation of Mr Tudjman's territorial ambitions and as a way of assuring a permanent reserve of votes for HDZ, and it is now a bastion of irresponsible influence and fraud.
Update5: It looks like Mr Mesić agrees with me, imagine that. Ordinarily he might not get far in wanting to eliminate the "diaspora vote," especially with HDZ in government, but there is the added factor that the EU wants uniform electoral laws.
Croatian presidential election
The first projections are promised any minute now by Index. In the meantime, turnout projections suggest that fewer people are voting than in the first round in Croatia, but more than in the first round in the "diaspora." Add to this the support that HDZ receives from its solid constituency among the deceased, and the results might have some surprises.
By the way, I keep citing Index, but there should also be results available from my dog's favorite television outlet, HRT.
By the way, I keep citing Index, but there should also be results available from my dog's favorite television outlet, HRT.
Croatian journal of media research
Thanks to Piskarije for linking to this. Medijska istraživanja features articles on media, journalism, technology and rhetoric of media, with abstracts available for all and full text, even English translations, available for some. Their archive contains issues going back to 1995, and it is searchable.
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