Zar je zločin citirati ludake?

Testifying for the defence of Milan Martić at ICTY, Smilja Avramov said .... actually, who cares what Smilja Avramov said?

Democratic values and procedures

Certainly no democratic party is ideal. Still, I am not quite sure what my distinguished colleague was thinking. Even if I am a little bit charmed by his relativisation of the instrumentality of epic poesy.

Musical interlude

I'm off today to Washington to attend a conference and distribute quarters to the unemployed Republicans thronging the sidewalks. In the meantime, enjoy Rambo Amadeus and Kal, "Dikh tu kava" (featuring the vocal of Dragan Ristić).

Clueless in the Balkans, fall 2006 edition

When I was an intern at the Open Society Institute in 1997-98, my boss, Arthur Helton, had me draft letters to Bob Gelbard, the Dayton czar of the Clinton administration. They often started, "Dear Ambassador Gelbard, Bosnia is at a crossroads." Today, Bosnia really is at a crossroads. The best indication for that is that even the EU has noticed.

Yesterday, EU defense ministers met to discuss troop reductions in peacekeeping missions (read: Congo and Bosnia, with customary good timing).

"A decision to reduce troop strength is under consideration," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told the meeting. "The situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina allows this."
Source: AP, Concern over Kosovo delays EU decision on cutting Bosnia force, International Herald Tribune, November 13, 2006

But then he went on to say that a decision should not be taken before next month, and actual withdrawal not begin before February.

If the situation in Bosnia "allows" troop reductions now, why wait till February? Because the UN has just postponed its imposition of a Kosovo status until after the Serbian elections, to be held at the end of January. Solana's people must have forgotten to brief the current EU presidency on these things, though:

Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, who chaired separate EU foreign ministers talks with Ahtisaari, said the U.N. envoy's decision to delay would not harm efforts to bring lasting stability to the Balkans.

"We are not afraid it will destabilize the situation," he told reporters.

In other, related news, Bosnia's High Representative Christian Schwarz-Schilling, a man who spent his entire period in office trying to undo as much as possible the legacy of robust international action in Bosnia, is now calling on his overseers in the "Peace Implementation Council" to think twice before confirming the decision, taken last June, to close down his office by June next year. (The PIC meets in February for that purpose; many observers thought it would just rubber stamp the closure without much debate.) The OHR is scared that its entire exit strategy of having an association deal with the EU signed soon is about to collapse since the Serb Republic is reneging on its part of and agreement on police reform. Next step: the EU will define down the "non-negotiable" principles of the reform (which had already been agreed last year) to make a "deal" possible. The first to suggest that option? None other than the High Representative, who -- with a straight face -- told a press conference last month that he had never heard of the idea that police regions should cross the entity boundaries except around Sarajevo.

Watch this space for more weaseling from the OHR and the EU.

Special fantastic thing for our friends in London

This comment came in, I think, to an earlier post about TF, though I don't know which one:

Turbo folk, in my opinion, has killed the real values of our region. One of those values is Sevdah music (in its original shape and form).

This is why I am putting my best efforts into resurrecting this and promoting it around London and the rest of the world as much as possible.

Let me know what you think of our project.

www.londonsevdah.com
londonsevdah.blogspot.com

Check out the sites! The first has general information about the group, its schedule, its performances and goals. The second reports on their nastupi in and around London. Next time I am in the city of night and fog, I hope to catch them. Are they visible from Gazette Tower?

Thank you, Mirza!

On the universality of declarations

The European Court of Human Rights will have to decide whether European military forces are bound to respect the human rights of people in places where they are involved in international operations. The British government says it is not. At issue is a case by brought by the family of two boys, Gadaf and Bekir Behrami, one of whom was injured and another killed when they happened upon cluster bombs left by NATO forces.

Apsolutna vlast apsolutno goji

Let history record that on this day, Vojislav Šešelj went on a diet.

Gish Jen in Beograd

This just in from a friend of East Ethnia, Gish Jen's experience at the Belgrade Book fair:

I have seen crowds before, but I was taken aback by the Belgrade book fair, where some 15,000 people attended my opening address. A few days later, too, at the airport lost and found, I watched an officious frown break suddenly into a smile. "You're a writer!" the woman behind the counter exclaimed and, as others watched enviously, produced my bag. The power of writing! During the fair, a reporter asked whether writers in the United States were like writers in Eastern Europe and, when I said I didn't know, volunteered, "Here, writers are gods." Well, that's a difference, I said...

The rest hides behind a registration screen at TNR, the patient are welcome to sample on.

Možeš i da gubiš snagu kao kada gubiš glavu

Now that the unindicted Donald Rumsfeld is being replaced the just barely unindicted Robert Gates, the next head to roll is that of John Bolton, who has been impersonating an ambassador to the United Nations.

Update: Did I say unindicted? Too soon.

Continuity

When there is trouble in the village, count on Josip Broz to help.

Slanina

Who knew that the first head to roll after the midterm elections would be one from a Francis Bacon painting?

(Image courtesy of WebMuseum)

A good day for democracy

Yesterday, George Bush's America died. Voters pushed members of his party out of state offices, pushed them out of the majority in the House of Representatives, and depending on the results of two very close races in Virginia and Montana, may also have pushed them out of the majority in the Senate. There are still two years left in his term, but the capacity he once had to operate as if he were in a one-party state is gone.

I would have to be a lot taller to get proper historic perspective, but let's hope that this administration is the bizarre aberration it appears to be, one horrifying detour from this society's path to democracy, an aggressive and ultimately failed effort at restoration by a residual clique of hardliners on its way out.

Nikolic's visions

Nikolic outlined the other day just on how he envisages his "Greater Serbia" to be in an interview (see also here) with the good old Kurir. In response to Agim Ceku's visit to Montenegro he argued that Serbia should impose sanctions (and visas...). When asked about how this would be for Serbs in Montenegro, he noted that they would come to Serbia, just like Serbs from Croatia and Kosovo...

I vi biste ostavili na cedilu Srbe u Crnoj Gori prekinuvši sve odnose a predstavljate se kao njihovi zaštitnici?
- Svi koji su Srbi, pobeći će u Srbiju. Svi treba da dođu ovde.

I to je vaše radikalno rešenje?
- Zašto da ne? Pobegli su i oni iz Hrvatske i sa Kosova i Metohije. Sve će to Srbija da izdrži. Majka mora da prihvati svoju decu. Oni neće da njima vladaju Albanci

Pixels, justice and mediascape

Gavin Simpson and Sameer Padania have a question:

GV Eastern Europe editor Veronica Khokhlova has pointed to debates about video footage of atrocities in the past. However, in the realm of Balkan blogs, many of which are cross-linked on sites like East Ethnia, there seems to be something of a dearth of examples of vlogging or other home-grown initiatives dedicated to reconciliation.

How might video be used in this or other situations? As training or education materials? As evidence? To promote reconciliation? What role can citizen journalism play?

I know there are a lot of people reading who are a lot more involved in the media and exchange scene than I am. What do you think? Video za pomirenje? Any interesting projects out there that you know of?

Chronicle of a death sentence foretold

I am guessing that I may not be the only person who is underwhelmed by the verdict against Saddam Hussein, which was timed to be announced just before the midterm elections in the United States.

Not to confuse the matter: he is undoubtedly guilty, not only of the crimes with which he was charged, but of a lot else as well. But the character of the process and the conditions under which it was carried out leave a lot to be desired. And the sentence of death by hanging calls up both bizarre images of ritual sadism and a despotic tradition of offing the people who occupied power previously – both images which do more to revive the character of Saddam Hussein’s rule than to point toward any sort of vision of a democratic or just future. This kind of a punishment is the act of an insecure regime.

One way of thinking about transitional justice is as a performance: a new regime demonstrates its capacity, in contrast with its predecessor, to apply the rule of law and settle the controversies surrounding its arrival to power in the process. By providing a fair trial, they embody the distinction between an old despotism which exercised summary justice and a new legal state which does not fear its opponents’ evidence and arguments. By providing a public trial, they create the opportunity for a forum on the legacy of the past in the process which Mark Osiel calls “making public memory, publicly.” To the degree that they (in the words of Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson) “stay the hand of vengeance,” they demonstrate their commitment to be constrained by legal rules.

The Saddam Hussein trial failed on all these points. The charges were selective, standing in the way of producing a comprehensive account of the character and actions of the old regime (not all of which would have reflected well on the occupying power or the current paragovernment). The court and government manifestly failed to control the proceedings, maintaining neither the loyalty nor the security even of the officers of the court. The fear of what might come out in the course of the proceedings was such that the trial was broadcast – but with a twenty minute delay, to allow for the editing out of inconvenient moments.

As for the rule of law, there is no such thing in Iraq to be represented in a trial, a fact of which the occupying powers who are obligated by international law to maintain public services and public order are no doubt aware, regardless of what their representatives say to the press.

There are probably not many people in the world more deserving of severe punishment than Saddam Hussein. It is only in the context of a misbegotten fiasco like the occupation of Iraq that his conviction on charges of which he is guilty could be made to appear like another desperate and empty act of revenge.

Šetnja da divljoj strani

I have been fairly quiet, I know, since trying to follow the returns on the constitutional referendum in Serbia this past weekend. Of course, here in the United States we are having elections as well, and they are the first ones I have been optimistic about for a long time. Here in Massachusetts, it looks certain that we will reverse the curse that has given us a series of Republican governors (three out of four of them embarrassing disasters) since 1990, electing instead the first really inspiring figure to emerge from outside of the machine in ages. The House of Representatives is pretty well certainly moving out of the hands of Bush's party, and it looks like there is at least a fighting chance of getting a majority in the Senate as well. These are midterm elections, which means that the same malicious dolt will occupy the presidency for another two years, but he will be considerably weakened in his ability to take revenge on the country that despises him and is about to hand him a large-scale repudiation.

As a part the anticipatory celebration, and thanks to Jane at the blog Jezero vatrenog kera (or is that Jezero kera koji je dobio otkaz?), Lou Reed has a gift for us: the anti-Iraq war remix of Walk on the wild side.

Smrt

Today Clifford Geertz, a great thinker and researcher, passed away. Coincidentally, some nasty racist also died on the same day. East Ethnia cares about one of them.

Constimatution

Both RIK and CeSID are projecting that the final result will show that the referendum has succeeded, based on their random samples of returns. Meanwhile, RIK claims that there were no major irregularities. CeSID claims otherwise, and the pro-boycott party LDP has been collecting evidence of irregularities, one piece of which was posted by Viktor Marković. More detail at Bojkot.

50%, ipak

CeSID is now estimating that turnout was 50% one hour before the official poll closing time. If the competing figures follow the pattern set so far, RIK's numbers will be higher. For the referendum to pass, a majority of registered voters must have voted yes, which means that the overwhelming majority of votes will have to be in favor.

Image: Turnout at 7 PM, according to CeSID.

Update: B92 is reporting (only by audio now, no text to link) that CeSID's estimate is that the referendum has succeeded, based an analysis of a random sample of polling places.

Marginally related to referendum; more important news

One of the nice things about following ongoing news is the possibility of a surprise. Today I have had B92 running all day, and since today is Sunday that means listening to one of my favorite music programs on the planet, Žikica Simić's Dole na uglu. Today he is featuring the work of an artist I have never heard of before, Howe Gelb. This is wonderful stuff! Apparently he is playing a concert in Belgrade next week, at Dom omladine. Lucky Belgrade.

Referendifying

As the second day of the referendum on the constitution continues, CeSID is reporting turnout at 33.1% at 2 PM. The comparative figures may be more interesting, since they show the highest turnout in Kosovo (unsurprisingly, since the huge gap between the number of residents and the number of registered voters generally produces distorted election results) and in Belgrade (also unsurprisingly, since the proposed text continues the centralization of resources and political power in Belgrade). Unless there is unusually high turnout in the last hours of the afternoon and early evening, this makes it look likely that turnout will not reach the 50% + 1 threshold. If this turns out to be the case, it might be understood as supporting the following theses:

1. Serbia does indeed new a new constitution, but citizens are not so excited about about approving one that was prepared in a hurry and without a wide-ranging process of consultation.
2. There is resistance to proposals which do not involve some decentralization of power.
3. The effort to cast a political question as a question of patriotism (with the famous clause on Kosovo) has not succeeded, and it is possible that the currency of patriotism has been overdrawn.
4. Types of consultation matter; some of the anti-referendum sentiment may derive from the fact that the text was designed to satisfy the leaders of the major political parties, not the citizens.

What happens in the event that the referendum does fail? First, this probably means that the government fails as well, which would force the calling of new elections. But this only changes the situation marginally, since the plan was for elections to be called anyway, probably in December. Second, the process of generating a new constitution has to continue. Law professor and former high judge Zoran Ivošević sees two ways in which this can be done: either renewed voting on the same text, or the calling of a constitutional convention. The second option is probably more promising than the first.

Views: Estavisti favors the referendum, read his reasons why. Serbian Mess does not, and also has reasons.

Image: Turnout by region at 5 PM on Sunday, according to CeSID.

Update: The Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) has bigger numbers than CeSID. They estimate that turnout at 6 PM is over 47%, and also announced that they have decided (suddenly?) that rather than closing polling places at 8 PM as planned, they would keep them open as long there are people near them. Meanwhile, CeSID is beginning to give information about irregularities in voting. Could a last-minute change in the rules turn out to be one of them?

Reconstitution

It is true I have had nothing so far to say about Serbia's new constitution, on which a referendum is being held today and tomorrow. The text itself has been discussed elsewhere, and I agree with the people who point out that 1) it has some good elements and a lot more bad elements, and 2) the procedure by which it was adopted leaves a great deal to be desired. All in all, it is a fairly amateurish legal document, produced in a hurry and very much influenced by the parties of the Milošević regime, SPS and SRS, without whose support it could not pass.

The procedure adopted for the conduct of the referendum is also a bit odd, and there has been ongoing controversy both over the lists of voters and over the fact that voting has been scheduled over two days. A few oddities in the voting have been reported, but if there are to be any huge objections they are more likely to come tomorrow, as the two-day time frame opens a lot of space for various types of manipulation. If there is to be any stuffing of ballot boxes, this will probably happen overnight.

Right now it looks like the referendum will more likely pass than not, but we can be certain about the result probably sometime tomorrow night. Although there have been some high passions both for and against the draft, I have not taken a strong position. The letter of the law matters only when situations encourage somebody to insist on it, and the practice in the country has often been either to ignore laws or to use and interpret them very creatively. A lot more will depend on the habits and orientation of the government that will be elected after the referendum, probably in December, than on legal constraints which will bind the members of the government only formally.

Update: That prediction at the beginning of the last paragraph may well be wrong. Not only Milić, but also Milić reports turnout at 19:00 at 17%. This would make it unlikely that more than 20% would have turned out on the first day, though who knows what will happen on the second day (if something similar happens, the referendum fails). Their report also lists irregularities reported by LDP, as does Index. Surely LDP is not the only available source?

Update2: CeSiD is reporting the first day's turnout as 17.5%. This is the lead story on the Bojkot site, and it is followed by cautions from both Marko Blagojević and Srba Branković to keep in mind the obvious point that there is no precedent for the two-day voting schedule, and that what happens tomorrow may be different from what happens today.

Darko Rundek, "Ruke"

With thanks to whoever put this on JuTube.

Professional courtesy

Thanks to friend of East Ethnia AR for sending along this item. Much has been made of the failure of US forces to participate in apprehending fugitives indicted for war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Could that be because those forces have been violating international humanitarian law in Bosnia-Hercegovina themselves, at the Eagle base in Tuzla?

I would comment on the item, but anything I could say seems sort of beside the point. Which is perfectly clear.

Old wine in new bottles

Are you one of the millions of readers who has been desperately searching for the Belgrade blog but not finding it? That is because it has a spiffy new location.

Welcoming a new Balkan blog

I once tried swimming in the Neretva River. My goodness, it was cold.

Trendsetter Montenegro

By abandoning the tricolore two years ago, Montenegro might have become a trendsetter. Replacing the boring red, blue and white with some more inspiring creatures has apparanetly given some in my home country of Luxembourg an idea. Rather than an eagle, an MP in Luxembourg has suggested to change the flag and introduce the historical lion to the flag.
I would suggest that all countries should get rid of the tricolore and replace it with nice pre-French revolution flags. My requirement would be one animal per flag minimum (Montenegro again outdid it, two!)

My constitution is bigger than yours

At the well-known beacon of wisdom, the Belgrade law faculty, Kostunica proved that he knows where the word count button is in Microsoft Word.
The result: the new constitution is twice as long as the old one: 206 articles and 101.450 characters. Milosevic's constitution has only 135 articles and 50.503 characters. But we all know who really had the biggest one: Tito. His constitution has 254,894 characters (in the Slovenian version--could find the Serbocroatian version online) and 406 articles.

blogcott

According to the latest survey by CeSID the referendum on the new constitution in Serbia might actually succeed--some 57% of voters said they'll surely go to vote for the constitution and another 24 % probably will. The primary motivation for voters appears to be a sense of civic duty (I guess the voters in France and the Netherlands last year are much worse at understanding their civic duties when they voted against the EU constititution). Considering the content of the next Serbian constitution, this is better news than the motivation being enthusiasum for substance. And, only one in ten supporters in the survey do so because of Kosovo.
For a good blog calling for a boycott see http://www.bojkot.info/

Things to do with construction leftovers

And why, indeed, should Slovenia not have its own island?

Hodzic & Zelja vs. the Vegitarian threat

Some might have been following Richard Gere's adventures in the Balkans recently, trying to caputre Mladic etc. Now he has been the victim of the most foul kind:
As Fonet reports, "Gere becomes ill from the smell of cevapi" so what is done? The cevabdzinicas of Bascarsija had to be close for Richard Gere. Let's hope this is not a precedent and after smoking bans, there will be cevapi grilling bans haunting the Balkans.

Now that torture is legal

Excuse me, the rule is now to call it "harsh interrogation." In any case, there may now be people wanting to join the U.S. Torture Corps.

Possibly of interest to anybody who regards the use of violence against suspects in an interrogation as necessary: I have recently been rereading an old favorite, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, by Fred E. Inbau, John E. Reid and Joseph P. Buckley (3rd ed, Williams and Wilkins, 1986). This book is more or less the standard one used in the training of police detectives, and interesting in its own right mostly for its semi-hard boiled style (a little Nathaniel West, a little Erving Goffman, some Quentin Tarantino, simmer without stirring...). Inbau, Reid and Buckley are openly in favor of all kinds of deception and psychological tricks, and ofer a wide variety of suggestions for achieving them effectively -- peruse a file with nothing in it, pay attention to the distance between chairs, that sort of thing. They draw the line at two places, though. First, at the use of techniques that "would cause an innocent person to confess" (how well they achieve this is a matter of intense debate, and there is some good evidence that the techniques they suggest are more likely to produce coerced-internalized false confessions than they think). Second, they absolutely draw the line at the use of force or the "third degree," including threats and promises, both on the practical grounds that these techniques are likely to produce false information and on the legal grounds that confessions which are not voluntary are more likely than not to be rejected by courts.

Volver con la frente marchita

Juan Perón had a hard time with landings. When he returned from exile in 1973, his reception at the airport had to be held up while the different factions of his supporters continued their gunfights. His reburial in a new place has not gone well either. In the street battles that accompanied the event, in addition to dozens of people being injured (there is dispute over how many by bullets, how many by other means), the general's stylish old Fiat also bit the dust (photo). Why was the old fellow being buried again anyway, after a rest of 32 years with only three interruptions? It was to meet the demands of a woman who claims to be his daughter. Although el primer trabajador had no children with his two wives, he was involved with many people, some of whom were of childbearing age, so who knows.

This is just messed up

I don't know what to make of this. But my first response is: whacked out racist fantasy heavily influenced by the original Willie Wonka film (the one with Gene Wilder, not the one with Johnny Depp doing Michael Jackson-as-Wonka).

Borat se vraća kući

I'll admit that as much as I enjoy an occasional dose of the character, I have not rushed off to see the film, since I figure one joke can only be stretched out for so long (case in point: the Bush administration). But now I may be changing my mind, since it seems to offer the opportunity to celebrate the return of Kazakhstan to its glorious Balkan kolijevka. Catherine explains how....

PS: Curious to hear some Kazakh music? Imagine finding it in a gulag.

ČČČ

With all of the trouble in the world, it is reassuring to see the football fans of Čačak taking resolute action to address the global shortage of idiocy.

U-turn in Iraq?

Ever since it became clear that no WMDs would be found in Iraq, building democracy in Iraq has been the declared goal of the occupation, and its post facto justification. Is this about to change?

A bipartisan working group under former Secretary of State James Baker has been looking at the options. (Big surprise: none of them are good.) Baker has dropped hints, some less subtle than others, that this whole idea of democracy is just a distraction from stability in Iraq. According to a piece in today's Sun, the commission -- or at least Baker -- buys the canard that Iraq is essentially a sectarian conflict, a product of multi-ethnicity, which is of course the most popular "explanation" of what's happening there. The implications are clear: dictators are alright as long as they hail from majority groups (Bashar, move over).

On PBS's "Charlie Rose Show," Mr. Baker was careful to say he believed the jury was still out on whether Iraq was a success or a failure. But he also hastened to distinguish between a Middle East that was "democratic" and one that was merely "representative."

"If we are able to promote representative, representative government, not necessarily democracy, in a number of nations in the Middle East and bring more freedom to the people of that part of the world, it will have been a success," he said.

That distinction is crucial, according to one member of the expert working groups. "Baker wants to believe that Sunni dictators in Sunni majority states are representative," the group member, who requested anonymity, said.

100% Pamuk

Congratulations to the brilliant Orhan Pamuk, who has been awarded the Nobel prize for lterature.

Vic dana iz Danas-a

Gost u restoranu naručuje doručak:
- Želim dva kuvana jaja, jedno gotovo sirovo, a drugo tako tvrdo kuvano da se jedva može jesti, dve kriške tosta, jednu jedva malo pečenu, drugu prepečenu, jedan komadić maslaca da bude otopljen, a drugi ravno iz zamrzivača, šoljica kafe neka bude slaba i mlaka, a sok od narandže podgrejan.
- Ali, gospodine, to je vrlo komplikovana narudžba. Biće je teško ispuniti.
- Ne bi trebalo da vam bude teško, to ste mi juče servirali.

Maznuto od Danas-a, 12. oktobar 2006

A dal se to pita na slavi?

Repeatedly asked by reporters to clarify the status of the ministers from the G17+ party who have resigned their positions but continue to occupy them, prime minister Vojislav Koštunica replied:

"All these questions you are asking, I will gladly answer them some other time. Allow me, the question we are discussing today at the Academy is much, much more meaningful, regardless of any type of journalistic curiosity, than the questions you are asking. That question is absolutely secondary both in its essence and formally, compared to the fact that Serbia has finally received a new, democratic Europan constitution and that afterward democratic elections will be called. That is the only thing that matters."

"Four legs good," continued the prime minister, "two legs bad."

Great post-election moments, RS edition

Milorad Dodik, who runs the one-party statelet inside Bosnia known as Republika Srpska and who is the only Bosnian politician to have both a vision for the country and the mandate to implement it, was asked on the BHTV show Javna tajna Thursday whether he would wish to become Bosnian prime minister. He replied, according to BBC Monitoring,

Sarajevo, well, what you still have there is an unconsolidated political climate, which absolutely does not leave much room for creative people--and I believe I am one of those--to show [their potential]. I want to tidy up and organize the Serb Republic in order to make it the incontestably more developed part of Bosnia-Hercegovina in the future.

Creative people would be wasted on Bosnia's central institutions, in other words. Is that why he said in the same interview that he might send Nikola Spiric there?

Great moments in devotional orthography

Not to pile on Politika (which I increasingly enjoy reading, especially on Sunday) or anything, but friend of East Ethnia Mirko sends in this tidbit I had never noticed from the bottom of the web page. As near as I can tell, aside from the occasional ad and the symbol for Swiss francs (which would look silly as цхф), the only Latin script that appears on the page is in part of the daily religious calendar. The Lord prints in mysterious ways.

Great moments in translation

One of the interesting phenomena I was able to observe on my visit involves the long march of Politika back to respectability and its historic position as the premier newspaper in the area. Last Monday, they initiated a strategy of reputation-by-association, running a special additional section (in English) of articles selected from Sunday's New York Times. It's a nice section, and undoubtedly useful both to people who want a glimpse at international media and to people wanting to keep their English language skills in shape. In the interest of achieving that second goal, the section contains a box at the bottom of the second page, prepared by the Institut za strane jezike, with translations of some rare or new English expressions. A very nice idea altogether. The first item in their little glossary was:

butt brushes -- sudaranje kupaca u suviše uskom prostoru

I never knew this! Nor did my students. But I like it.

He's baaack

Why no posts for a week, you may or may not ask? Your humble correspondent was globetrotting to glamorous destinations. Beograd, Niš ....

The trip to Belgrade was for a conference (sponsored by the Association for the Study of Nationalities and the Forum za etničke odnose) organized by distinguished Ethnian (and according to Slobodna Evropa, "britanski ekspert") Florian Bieber. Simply fantastic stuff, and many perfectly charming people. In the meantime, there were the interesting elections in BH on which TK has been leading debate here (imagine! politics in an election!), and Serbia got a constitution written overnight and approved by a Parliament whose members had not had the time to read it, to be followed at the end of this month by a referendum which could easily go either way. In response, the courageous leaders of G17 resigned their positions but did not leave them.

It is always a pleasure to go to Niš, to which the buses get more luxurious each time I go. This was a short visit, but I think our project (about which more when there is concrete news) is really moving forward. It is surprising that more people do not go to Niš. I am not saying that everybody needs to visit, just everybody who loves peppers.

So now I am back, and between home and work I will be resuming my normal syncopated rhythm of posting. Thanks for your patience. It looks like the United States was a complete disaster while I was gone. Lunatics shooting schoolchildren? Congressmen schtupping teenage boys? What on earth?

All for democracy, as long as I get elected

Voters in Bosnia's general election yesterday (October 1st) pushed the system to its absurd--but logical--extreme: it looks increasingly likely that Željko Komšić from the non-nationalist SDP might be elected Croat member of Bosnia's three-member presidency, with a substantial chunk of his vote coming from ethnic Bosniaks. The reason is simple: while the three co-presidents are representatives of Bosnia's three constituent peoples (Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks), voting is organized by entity. Residents of RS vote for the Serb member while residents of the Croat-Bosniak Federation vote for the Croat and Bosniak members. The SDP recognized that it stood no chance of winning against either incumbent Sulejman Tihić nor indeed Haris Silajdžić, whose victory last night was unexpectedly convincing, so they presented a candidate for the Croat member. Incumbent Ivo Miro Jović, who made a scene at the TV studio and insulted journalists there, announced that "Ivo Miro Jović will be the Croat member of the B-H Presidency or the Presidency will cease to exist," in a remarkable display of his understanding of how democracy works.

Expect preliminary results for the parliamentary elections (both at entity and central level)sometime tonight local time (press conference announced for 9pm).

Montengrans and other ans

If Serbia is RS, then the inhabitants of Montenegro are "Montenegrans". Well, at least this is to whom Rumsfeld talked to: Rumsfeld holds talks with Montenegrans after that trip, he is going to talk to Serbans, Croatans and Bosans. Luckily, he is not visiting the Republic of Sata.

It's RS after all

ISO has reconsidered and accepted the initial proposal of the Serbian government, which is a lot better than the earlier compromise solution of SS.

Kandidat za Oskar

This year's entry from Serbia into the Oscars competition will be Sutra ujutru, directed by Oleg Novković from a screenplay by Milena Marković. The original songs for the film were written and composed by Miroslav Mitrašinović, the optimistic miner from the documentary Rudarska opera, produced by the same couple. The film tells the story of a returnee from Canada who comes home, and meets his old friends and problems in a big way. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the more distinguished pieces of contemporary dramatic film from the area (Full disclosure: I had a very tiny role in the production of the film -- revising the translation -- and Ivana and I have translated a couple of other projects for Milena and Oleg, who are our pals. But we do not have any influence over film juries.).

A ko vas traži?

Is EU accession going to lead to a huge migration of labor from Romania and Bulgaria to the UK? The UK Home Office seems to be planning for the eventuality, and probably has plans to try to limit what they (may) anticipate to be an inflow of 60K to 140K workers. Gallup's survey in Bulgaria suggest otherwise: they find about 46K people saying that they intend to seek employment abroad, and Britain is not their first choice. Most would prefer to go to Spain, Germany, Italy or Greece. Alan Travis is listing for The Guardian a number of research studies showing that, for a variety of reasons, the UK is not all that attractive a destination for employment migration from SEE. A government that is declaring its hostility in advance is probably not enhancing the attraction. If there is unfounded anticipation in Britain, it may be because people are expecting the influx of workers from Poland to be repeated. If so, there is a crucial difference being overlooked: there was already an established Polish community and network in the UK, and there is nothing approaching that level of ready-to-use connections from Romania or Bulgaria.

In a similar pattern, there are some signs that the direction of the India-UK "brain drain" might be starting to move in reverse, as people become attracted to an environment that is dynamic and where they are less likely to encounter growing forms of "profiling." These are probably not the same reasons why a large number of people already in Britain express a desire to leave.

Defending Magyarity

For the electronic world, there is a new Hungarian cuisine blog. For Worcesterians (but also worth a trip from such distant spots as Boston), there is the recently sampled and very fine indeed Anna's Kitchen.

Immodest revision of obscene proposal

This is truly appalling. It is a "compromise" that codifies violations of the Geneva Conventions and gives them the appearance of law. Read the analysis by Marty Lederman, who also provides the proposed text. Then vote against any member of the US Senate who favors this monstrosity, and if you have any cash to spare, donate it to their opponents. Did you ever believe that you would see the day on which torture was legalized?

Identity

The lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz has filed over 40 cases against writers who have considered the Armenian genocide in their work, accusing them under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code of insulting "Turkishness" ("Turkianity"? "Turkitude"?). Today he lost one more case, against the novelist Elif Shafak. The value of Article 301 aside, the frequent repetition of cases like this would seem to raise the question of why Mr Kerincsiz believes that he is defending a culture by incessantly attacking the people who contribute to it.

The last plane to Moskva

Today's arrest of Marko Lugonja, one of the people accused in the conspiracy to harbor Ratko Mladić (a "jatak," which is of course different from a "hohštapler"), took place at the Belgrade airport, on a plane which was getting ready to depart for Moscow. This might be interpreted as a sign of desperation on the side of the fugitive wannabe, who wanted to get out any way he could. Or it might be interpreted as a sign of supreme confidence, taking a regular flight with a ticket and all.

Detaillessness

Okay, so Gyurcsány Ferenc is a liar. But he does not seem to be too upset about this. And nobody seems to be bothered by his Hugh Grant penchant. But people are angry, or at least desirous of television equipment. As may be expected, Erik D'Amato is ready with a constitutional solution.

Zlatko Brzina

In other film-related news, Richard Gere is in Sarajevo, where he seems not to have impressed folks much.

Fate-less-ness

Imre Kertész’s novel Fatelessness is a unique piece of work, and it impressed me. In contrast with his other works like Kaddish for an unborn child, which is self-reflective to the point of claustrophobia, this one is told in the voice of a teenage boy who is, sometimes shockingly, not reflective at all. And in contrast to the overwhelming majority of works in (what I guess has to be called) “Holocaust literature,” it proudly and aggressively refuses both melodrama and moralism. In that respect the work is paralleled by the work of only a couple of other writers who treat the period – Tadeusz Borowski, and perhaps to a lesser extent Primo Levi.

Kertész explained some of the motivations for this approach in his Nobel lecture in 2002. He was confronted both by his own ambivalent memory and by the demonstrative nature of much of the existing literature:

“The experience was about solitude, a more difficult life, and the things I have already mentioned - the need to step out of the mesmerizing crowd, out of History, which renders you faceless and fateless. To my horror, I realized that ten years after I had returned from the Nazi concentration camps, and halfway still under the awful spell of Stalinist terror, all that remained of the whole experience were a few muddled impressions, a few anecdotes. Like it didn't even happen to me, as people are wont to say.”

[....]

“In the free marketplace of books and ideas, I, too, might have wanted to produce a showier fiction. For example, I might have tried to break up time in my novel, and narrate only the most powerful scenes. But the hero of my novel does not live his own time in the concentration camps, for neither his time nor his language, not even his own person, is really his. He doesn't remember; he exists. So he has to languish, poor boy, in the dreary trap of linearity, and cannot shake off the painful details. Instead of a spectacular series of great and tragic moments, he has to live through everything, which is oppressive and offers little variety, like life itself.”

One of the elements in the book that makes the strongest impression is the way in which the main character, before his deportation a detached and ironic lad, but in all instances a model of orderliness and obedience, accepts so many of his experiences as reasonable and tries to adapt. A good deal of the book’s tension comes from the contast between what the lead character does not know and the reader does. This acceptance weakens as he weakens in the camps, but does not really collapse until he returns home to Budapest. There the varieties of misunderstanding he encounters leads him to realize (as Kertész put it to the Swedish Academy in 2001) that he has been “in exile from a homeland that has never existed”.

This leads to the conclusion, as shocking as it is gentle, in which the narrator expresses what sounds like nostalgia for the horror he has experienced: “Yes, the next time I am asked, I ought to speak about that, the happiness of the concentration camps. If indeed I am asked. And provided I myself don't forget.” If the image of "happiness" in such circumstances still shocks, that was the author's intention. "I took the word out of its everyday context and made it seem scandalous," says Kertész. "It was an act of rebellion against the role of victim which society had assigned me. It was a way of assuming responsibility, of defining my own fate."

I am not certain that all of those factors which made the novel so unique and impressive come through in Lajos Koltai’s film of the novel, its title shortened to Fateless. The film is shot (very much in the style of István Szabó, with whom Koltai collaborated as a cinematographer before this directorial debut) in nostalgic sepia tones, the story told slowly and aestheticized. Some scenes which I interpreted as crucially important are left out or shortened – for example, the conclusion of the main character’s conversation with a well-meaning liberal journalist on his return to Budapest. One sequence is added, though it is not clear what it adds – after the liberation of the camps, an American sergeant tries to persuade the main character not to return home. All this is additionally puzzling, since nobody can accuse the screenwriter of messing with a badly understood text: Kertész wrote his own adaptation. But there is something odd about seeing the work of an author who defined Spielberg’s Schindler’s list as “kitsch” presented in a style that seems just the littlest bit Spielbergesque.

This is not to say that I don’t recommend the film. It is interesting on in own level, and has some well considered beauty. I would recommend it (like a lot of adaptations) more as a supplement to the book than as a substitute for it.

Cinema 320 is showing the film at Clark University this week. After the last projection (3:40 PM on Sunday in the Jefferson Academic Center, room 320), I will be leading a discussion for anyone who is interested. If you are around, come on down.

Kurta

Picking up where the Serbian Radical Party left off, Kurir is running a defamation campaign against deputy prime minister Ivana Dulić-Marković. On Monday it was with a story claiming that her father (Kurir says his name is or was Antun, she says they got the name wrong, I don't have any information) had hid Ustaše on his farm, and that her mother had been a founder of the (fabulously succesful!) HDZ in Vojvodina. The hiding business is supposed to have taken place between 1948 and 1951, for which the only source (and who are you, reporter R.K.?) is an individual who the article says was put to death in 1957. For the curious, Ivana Dulić-Marković was born in 1961.

Today the campaign continues with a story that Dulić-Marković has "sold Vojvodina to the Croats" (a heck of an accomplishment if she could do it). The story relies on the claims by -- of all people -- Milan Paroški, the marginal paramilitarist from the Sloba era who survived and is only noticed as a marginal politician by the folks who write for Kurir. Actually he claims that the sale in question is of "nearly 30" businesses. Trouble is, he made the same claim to the same paper, clearly the only one that talks to him, in October of last year, at which time it was "28 businesses." She was not deputy PM at the time.

This is, of course, not the first time that people have attacked Ivana Dulić-Marković by trying to draw associations between her family and freaky movements from a long time ago. The last two times it was done by SRS. Which must have something in common with Kurir, no?

No details yet

I still do not know anything about the murder of a candidate for the local council in Novi Pazar, except that it happened at the polling place.

Update: Two attackers have been arrested, police are seeking a third. The two main regional political parties are accusing one another.

Symbolism

So, obviously it is time to retire the old YU symbol, since it no longer refers to anything that exists. SCG (fine for graphic resolutions, not so easy to pronounce in a pleasant way) is also gone. So it's off to the International Standards Organisation. For a three-letter symbol, Serbia had the choice of SER or SRB -- no big deal there, the choice seems to have been SRB, fine. But then, there was the choice of a two-letter symbol. ISO rejected the proposal that the new symbol be RS ("Republika Srbija," but their rules do not allow the form of government to be a part of the symbol, they say, which ought to call CH and UK into question, no?). They proposed as alternatives SP, SQ, SS, SW i SX. Not any one of these is especially appealing, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose from among the options the symbol SS.

Is there any point at all in even beginning to set out the reasons why this was a bad decision?

Transcendence

Stable democratic orders depend, above all, on a perceived community of interest. For example: the Serbian Radical Party could not survive without financing from the state budget and the opportuity to provide its leading figures with parliamentary immunity. And the Serbian government could not survive without the not especially well hidden support of the Serbian Radical Party. Which is why when Dragan Todorović, who resigned a seat in the current parliament from which the law prevents him from returning, wanted to return, his wish was granted. If he were not a member of parliament, he may have to face prosecution for massive expropriation of funds from the state budget during the time (bet you can't guess the period) when he was minister of transport and telecommunications. Explaining this instance of creative violation of the law in defence of prior violations of the law, SRS leader Tomislav Nikolić pointed out that Radicals are "above the organs of the state." The evidence would appear to suggest that Mr Nikolić is right.

Seal

Thanks to Darko, I have found this timewaster called the Official seal generator. Which I used to make the above.

But really the reason to make this post was to try out this new (for me) blog posting program thingie called Qumana. It seems clever. There are still some bits of it I need to figure out.

Epic poetry

A poem in honor of the recent congress of the Srpska radikalna stranka in Sava centar:

In Karlobag
the gentle breeze
stoked megalomaniacal
fantasies
Perchance to march
our souls in tune
with rhythm kept by
rusty spoons
The further away
the louder the din
all the way to Ogulin

Or backward, it seems
with no stops for pizza
The last stop was
in Batajnica

Komparativne studije

Thanks to the Belgrade blog for the link. Down Virginia way, a local Yugo takes up the task of comparing his experience to the famous list of stereotypes "You know you're a Serb when ..." Down Niš way, I once heard a political scientist use this list as a framework for a lecture on politics of identity. If I remember well, though, the list was originally prepared for the amusement of the Austalian diaspora (this version seems to come from LA, all the same).

A wedding in Balkanblogland

Auguri!

Impression of the week

Following up on the preceding unclear story, another unclear story. The activist Nataša Kandić was waiting for a taxi after appearing as a guest on the popular TV program Utisak nedelje, on the sidewalk outside the B92 studio. Three explosions were heard. The chief of B92, Veran Matić, claims that the explosions are part of an effort to intimidate some public figures. The police say that some fireworks went off in the area, and it is no big deal. The police version seems to be supported by the host of the show, Olja Bećković, who was seeing off Kandić and another guest, the former philosopher and full-time unusual person Svetozar Stojanović. Bećković says that Kandić had already got into the taxi when the explosions were heard, and that she and Stojanović more or less paid them no mind. So, maybe a tempest in a teapot, and maybe not.

What adds (or maybe does not add) another dimension to the story is an item in the provocative tabloid Kurir (which I have not found -- feel free to have some fun in their archive), in which the blaster from the past Siniša Vučinić claims that there is a plan to murder three prominent human rights activists. As much as this sort of thing leads to all types of responses, there are few conclusions to be drawn. Although Kurir hardly falls in the "reliable source" category, it is a popular place to plant stories. And although Vučinić is known for his tendency to threaten violence, he is also known for being something less than sincere in his statements. So there are a lot of reasons to raise suggestions about last night's incident, if there was one, but not a lot of reasons to draw conclusions.

Except for one conclusion: there is a genuine atmosphere of intimidation, which makes all sorts of interpretations, even ones that might turn out not to be warranted, seem plausible. Most interesting of all may be the statement by police that they station plainclothes officers around the studios where programs are filmed that involve "exceptional risk," a category into which publicly discussing issues of general concern would seem to fall.

A midsummer night's skinhead attack

A friend of East Ethnia sent along this little item about a recent violent attack by skinheads in Belgrade. I won’t go into the details here, you can read about them if you care to. While the violence and racism are predictable enough, it might be most interesting to note the complete failure of the police to prevent the attack or respond in any way. This is perhaps not so surprising either, considering a number of recent incidents that are well known. These would include the utter failure of prosecutors to respond to invitations to ethnic hatred on the part of a large political party which is only formally in the opposition, and would also include the participation of police in the same spirit as rioters in violent clashes at sporting events.

Some of the details of these incident might seem baffling to normal people: chanting “Auschwitz” at Jewish people, repeatedly addressing people of Croatian ethnicity as “Ustaše,” maybe bizarrest of all, throwing matches between police and sport hooligans involving urine-filled condoms. Some of these seem too vulgarly stupid to be true, like snippets of a compulsive belcher’s works of science fiction.

There is certainly something to be observed in the atmosphere of Belgrade which might be thought of as contributing to these sorts of incidents. Anybody could reply well, there are violent racist idiots everywhere, which would of course be true. There may be something telling about the most recent crop of global racist idiocy: when planes can be diverted and escorted by fighter plane because somebody on there thinks that another person is “acting strange,” or is dressed wrong, or is of a certain regional origin, then it looks like a certain licence is being renewed. All those people who were compelled by politeness or the fear of social isolation to keep their racist thoughts quiet can suddenly express them all they like, and fighter pilots will be ordered to supply the punctuation. This is observable over the course of a couple of weeks, when panic takes hold, order breaks down, and “security” types crawl out of their moleholes.

I doubt very much that people in Belgrade are any stupider or more filled with hate than anybody else on the planet. What makes the situation there unique is the degree to which the society and its values have been destroyed, leaving it with precious little to position against the skinheads. Watch any of the television talk shows and listen to the shouting and cheering. The only thing they have got that the skinheads do not is hair.

It is easy to dismiss the occasional outbursts of violence by violent racists as coming from the margins, the lumpish lumping of lumpen youth. Like the image of terrorists coming from the ranks of the most oppressed, this is not generally the case. The Boston youth who received a comically handwringing sentence for beating two young women is the son of the director of one of the city’s major arts centers; the “9/11” hijackers were educated sons of prominent families; the intellectual leaders of the Serbian skinheads are writers, artists, critics.

Like every other political fact, racism is about power – especially, about the fear of losing power. That is why groups of young violent people will be most active when they believe that what they are doing is supported, even if silently, by the more respectable members of their community. That is why seemingly unrelated parts of the atmosphere, like the media presence of extremists, the use of the Parliament for invitations to violence, the support of war criminals, and the general worthlessness of the police, contribute to the frequency of this type of event. If people in positions of authority begin to speak out, who will believe them?

Update: Two attackers have been arrested, after voluntarily going to police. One of them is "Predrag M," whose lawyer appears to have been told to acknowledge the facts of the case but not the motivation of the attackers. The other is an unnamed US citizen, who is for some reason being protected by the US Embassy. The police, who failed to respond, have spent the day denying that they failed to respond.

Update: Friend of East Ethnia AR points us to an article in today's Blic (no direct link to the article until it gets into the archive, majke im) from which we learn: 1) how the attackers identified their victims (by asking them), 2) the names and major fields of study of the attackers, and 3) the tonsorial similarities linking skinheads and their victims.

The judge and the general

AP is reporting comments made by Wolfgang Schomburg, a judge at the ICTY, in which he suggested that the EU's linkage between Serbia's association talks and the war-crimes question could be counterproductive. "It can certainly become counterproductive if a country perceives itself taken hostage because of one or two wanted people," he said in an interview. He also said that the Tribunal was there to judge individuals, not states.

These comments are so wrong at so many levels it's tough to decide where to start. At the most basic level, of course, it's entirely up to the EU to make this linkage (which is a tried and tested approach, not something new they just came up with) and frankly none of the ICTY's business. It's also highly tendentious to imply, as his reported statements seem to do, that the linkage somehow means that the ICTY is now running the risk of judging states not persons. (I'm open to the suggestion that this apparent implication is an artifact of the way the interview, which was made by Austria Press Agency, was reported by AP.) And if Serbia "perceives itself" taken hostage, that's, frankly, Serbia's problem -- perhaps it then shouldn't have applied for association with the EU, or indeed signed up at Dayton to the obligation of catching war criminals (sorry, "persons indicted for war crimes").

But perhaps the judge wasn't just airing his personal views? Perhaps his comments have to be seen in the context of recent statements by unnamed "sources close to EU diplomats" (whatever those may be -- waiters? Cleaning ladies?) reported by Politika to the effect that it was "not unrealistic" to expect a stabilization agreement to be concluded even with Mladic at large? Wouldn't be the first time that the EU went wobbly on Serbia. We shall know more in September.

Vuk slova menja

Line from a news item on B92 regarding the decision by Apple computers to recall the Sony batteries on its iBook and PowerBook computers:

"Baterije su povučene iz Eplovih računara Ajbuk G4 i Pauer buk G4."

Now, with all respect to Vuk and the formulation everybody knows, which commands "Пиши као што говориш и читај како је написано" (apparently, it is not original to him), I still say: "Epl?" "Ajbuk?"

Music and Society

The Ups! festival in Zadar might have been a pretty good event. The program included The Beat Fleet, Let 3, Damir Urban... But then all three of them cancelled their appearances after discovering that among the sponsors of the festival was the "Society for truth about the Homeland war" (Zaklada za istinu o domovinskom ratu), which was planning to use the festival to continue their marketing of Ante Gotovina t-shirts.

Saša Antić of The Beat Fleet explained the band's decision: "The Society for truth abouth the Homeland war accepts the ideology of hatred and of racial, religious and national discrimination. That is not the way to achieve world peace, which we as a band try to advance."

The question arises as to what the Society thought they were doing in the festival in the first place. Among the mystified is Davor Fadić from the Zadar youth organization ZVUK – Zadarska vizija urbane kulture: "On the one hand, if you look at the texts and messages of the bands, and on the other hand the work and vision of the Society it is clear that these are two completely different things. The bands confirmed this with their boycott." At the request of the organizers, the Society has withdrawn its sponsorship. The damage is done all the same.

Šeki is on the road again

If it were not for Vojislav Šešelj, we may never know how easy it is to make the move from left-wing Stalinism to right-wing Stalinism. No wait, that would be obvious without him too. In any case, he has now had counsel imposed on him. Hard not believe that he wanted that all along, considering his colorful correspondence with the trial chamber.

Update: Oh, but necronostalgia is all over the place today. Mirjana Marković gave an interview to the dependable Večernje novosti. Upon which I will not comment.

Update2: It would be interesting to see what would happen if anybody tried to engage children involuntarily in these festivals of necrophilia. Oh, but that is already happening.

Musical notes from both sides of the wall

In Blic, Simonida Stanković offers a lyrical chronicle of the high-decadent period of turbo folk, with biseri from Aca Lukas, Tina Ivanović, Seka Aleksić, Keba and a pleiad of TF idols. Prize for couplet of the year goes no contest to Goga Sekulić: "devojka za jedno veče, misli, briga me, al’ kod tebe su još uvek moje gaćice." Right up there with "Zar nije lepše vekovat' u te, Santa Maria della Salute?"

In better news, Igor Burić has an interview in Dnevnik with Mr Nebojša Čonkić of Toronto, known to his millions of fans around the world as Čonta of the fondly recalled group Pekinška Patka. The group has just released a CD with remastered versions of pretty much everything the group ever put out, back in the day. It will be my first purchase when I return to Belgrade next time.

Back to unhappy musical news: police in Split decided that a public concert by the French group "Imperial Kikiristan" -- I have never heard of them, but if Jurica Pavičić's desription is any good, they must be hugely entertaining -- amounted to an "offence against order and peace" (the people nearby seemed to disagree, and so intervention units were called in). So the musicians spent the following night and morning in prison.

Good work if you can get it

A Croatian company has put out an advertisement seeking 400 translators from Serbian to Montenegrin.

If we crawl at two

Anybody who may have believed that my hope of arriving as scheduled back in Boston on Friday was sorely misplaced is undoubtedly right. Probably if I had not thought that there was a chance of arriving in time for my meeting (it was paid work ...) I would have simply changed the ticket to avoid going through London, although JAT was maintaining the level of responsiveness which continues to make it wholly dependent on its monopoly.

On Friday morning, JAT is pretending to operate as normal: they take luggage, print boarding cards, check passports. Departures are announced as on time. Then the “on time” time passes, and the departure is announced as delayed thirty minutes. After sixty minutes, they add another thirty minutes to the announced departure time. No reliable information is available, no indication of whether the flight is taking off or not, and it becomes clear that the staff of JAT and Belgrade airport have, in fact, no idea what is happening. Three hours after the originally announced departure time, a gate number is posted. Thirty minutes after this, the gate is opened. But wait: JAT has taken on the duty of applying the Heathrow security regulations, no carry-on baggage, no liquid, no electronics. Except their staff is not clear either as to what these regulations are or how to apply them. Ninety minutes after the gate is opened, all of the resilient passengers are on the plane.

Arriving in mid-evening at Heathrow, it is clear that every person on the plane who had hoped to make a connection in London has missed their flight. Not to worry: a good half or more of flights have been cancelled anyway, and those that do fly do so without many of their passengers, because the airport operator BAA has not figured out a way to enforce their security regulations and get passengers to the terminal in less than two and a half hours in any case. No problem: JAT will certainly schedule another flight and provide a hotel, no doubt. The first challenge is to find the JAT service desk, which is off in a corner autonomous from the service desks of the other airlines. The JAT service desk is lovely: a spacious segment of clean formica, computers and telephones on the counter, a little room behind where the light is on, and coats are hung. The only thing it lacks is a person staffing the desk. It is clear that at some point one or more (there are two coats hanging in the back room) persons must have shown up to do their job behind that desk. But there is no direct sign of this for ten minutes, fifteen, thirty. There is, however, a solution: Alitalia remains the international agent for JAT. Alitalia does everything JAT does not: they swiftly provide a taxi, a hotel room, meal vouchers, and a reservation (standby, unfortunately) for the following day. Little do I know that this is the best service I will receive on the journey.

A quick jaunt to a shop where I buy toothpaste, a toothbrush and deodorant, and a quick visit to the hotel reception desk, and I am set to rest up for the next day's challenge. Nothing special here, the hotel is identical to every airport hotel on the planet. There is one distinction – it is in Hounslow, the neighborhood made famous to the world as the home of the Hounslow Harriers in Gurinder Chadha's delightful film Bend it like Beckham. Strolling about, I believe that I recognize the row of houses where Parminder Nagra's character lives. It is one of my daughter's favorite films, and I recall the excellent performances: Keira Knightley's sly pro aspirant, Anupam Kher's honest and tormented father, the casual comic turns by Ameet Chana and Frank Harper. But there is not much time for cinematic tourism. The toiletries get left in the hotel room (they cannot be taken to the airport anyhow) and it is off to see whether my standby reservation will get me to Boston.

One would imagine that Virgin Atlantic, with its public face constructed by the mildly interesting exhibitionist Richard Branson on the one hand, and by its sister record label's oh-so-safe catalog on the other, would have the situation in hand. In fact, what distinguishes Virgin from JAT is primarily the stylishness of its graphic resolutions. There is a standby desk, where after a while it becomes clear that there is no line. One reaches the desk by maneuvering through the crowd of people seated at a depth of ten meters in front. Then one quickly realizes that there was no point in reaching the desk, because the person who stands behind knows nothing and will do nothing, other than to instruct you to come back at another time, at which point the person will still know nothing. There is always the option of trying to find a certain reservation at Virgin's ticket desk, where the unfriendly agent will tell you that the fact that you have purchased a ticket confers no obligation on the airline to assure that you reach your destination. By way of explanation, an agent who has not purchased a ticket and who has slept the previous night in her own home, and who knows with assurance at what time she is coming to the airport and at what time she is leaving, declares “we are all in the same situation.”

Four hours after reporting to the standby desk, and one half hour after the plane is scheduled to leave, the standby agent begins to distribute tickets. Announcements on the loudspeaker instruct people not to get into the line for security inspections until one hour before the departure of their flight. Since it is already after the only announced departure for my flight, I get into the security line. The line snakes through the entire upper floor of the terminal, blocking all of the takeout counters, bookshops and gift outlets. This is just as well, since anything that a person purchases at one of the shops would have to be handed over to the security inspectors. They are taking books away! Getting to the front of the security line takes two and one half hours. The inspectors have been ordered to hand search 100% of passengers, a task for which they do not have the staff, space or time. The strict 100% search regime continues for five days, and must have been tremendously effective: while treating every passenger as a terrorist, they did not turn up a single one (they did, however, let through a passenger carrying a banned cell phone, which caused a flight to turn back, and a minor who had no ticket or passport. No offending books, though).

Passengers are instructed that they can buy books to read on the plane once they have passed into the area after the security inspection (by the end of the day, everybody has learned that airport operators call this section, for reasons that must not be aesthetic, “airside”). It turns out that this information is false, and as I am relieved of my half-read copy of A history of tractors in Ukrainian – nothing special as a novel, but a bother to have interrupted all the same – everybody begins to wonder what kind of mayhem the security services expect people to wreak with their mass market paperbacks. Nonetheless, the weary and irritated Boston-bound travellers breathe a sigh of relief when, around 9:00, their 2:30 flight is called. For the lucky ones at the front of the line, this means that they get to experience the pleasure of one more 100% hand search, for people who have just gone through a 100% hand search. The ones at the end of the line have to pass on the pleasure, because before the plane fills up the flight is cancelled.

After the second cancellation in two days, all of the travellers have questions. Will there be another flight to take us to Boston? Will we get our luggage back? Will the airline provide a place to sleep? Nobody, however, has answers to these questions. In fact, it turns out that Virgin has no staff in positions of responsibility at all, at least ones that would be visible to their passengers. Quickly it begins to appear that the entire corporation is run by uninformed teenagers, who are sent out from time to time to give contradictory information (no, there are no hotels; yes, there are; no, it is not possible to get luggage; yes, hurry to get your luggage right away; yes, there will be another flight; no, fend for yourselves). It becomes increasingly clear that not only are none of the people whose faces appear endowed with the authority to make a decision, but also that none of them are of sufficient rank to be told what is happening. In the end, we head to the luggage area to get our bags (one more security inspection), are deposited at 3 AM a subprime downtown hotel, and are given a printed sheet with a phone number to call in the morning to try to get onto some other flight.

By this point, I am not about to spend another 24 hours at Heathrow, where all systems have broken down and post-Fordist rationality is exposing its translucent center, trying to get onto a flight which will in all likelihood be cancelled. I call the Virgin reservations line, accept a seat for Tuesday, and set about to ask my friends in London whether they would like a surprise visit. By Tuesday, the either the level of chaos will have been reduced or the people responsible for managing it (the government security agencies, the airport operator BAA,and the airlines) will have figured out how to cope.

Not likely. Police are close-lipped about their investigation into what they have publicly stated is a massive terror conspiracy. At one point, they declare that in their sweep of the country, they have turned up one rifle and one handgun. Tony Blair remains on vacation: unselfconscious, he frolics in flowered swimming trunks and hangs his own laundry out to dry. The Home Secretary makes use of the general mood of panic, fantasizing publicly about the security inspections regime becoming permanent and the government having another go at lengthening the period of time that people can be held in custody without charges being filed against them. Meanwhile I enjoy an unplanned London vacation: visiting friends, sampling the fantastic Indian cuisine that is available everywhere, wondering who got the idea of deep-frying skate wings in batter. By Monday night, hopeful announcements are being made that perhaps fewer than a third of flights will be cancelled at Heathrow the next day, and that security agents may stop taking people's books away. And broadcast media faithfully relay the message that passengers should plan to come to the airport early.

In fact, coming to the airport early is an entirely useless gesture. The technique that is being used to relieve crowding inside the airport is to create it outside. Thousand of people are assembled on the sidewalks with their luggage, straining to hear the airline employees who occasionally emerge to announce for which flights passengers may have the privilege of entering the building and waiting two hours to reach a check-in desk. Nonetheless, somebody has been thoughtful: tents have been put up on the sidewalk in case of rain, and there are tables with (free!) coffee, sandwiches and mineral water. And today it looks like flights are likely to leave. At the security checkpoints, they are only handsearching 50% of passengers, and there is no line to speak of at all.

The new semifunctionality of Heathrow is illusory, of course. Once past security, it seems as though there are only a few minutes to peruse newspaper headlines about the collapse of the transport system turning into a national embarrassment, or about how the sudden evaporation of revenue from duty free sales (apparently all those last-minute perfume and whiskey purchases amount to 24% of Heathrow's income, which is used principally to subsidize airlines, who mysteriously do not translate their windfall into improved service) will force the air transport industry to restructure. Immediately, they claim that the plane is boarding, and on time at that! But of course it is not. Instead people are being asked (but not informed of this) to leave the kobajagi comfort of the waiting lounges in order to be crowd the hallways and wait for one more 100% search, a special pleasure reserved for people foolhardy enough to want to fly to the United States. Just ninety minutes after the announced departure time, which is never changed, we have a plane full of tired, angry, humiliated people ready to take off, in the event that a takeoff is cleared.

In my case, the whole experience was not so bad. I got home four days later than planned, spent some money on hotels and meals that I certainly would not have spent otherwise and lost some income from missing a meeting that I certainly would not have missed otherwise. But I am fortunate to be in a position that allows me to absorb a small loss of money, and very fortunate to have friends in London, a city I have always been happy to visit up until now (and may still be happy to visit, if I can come by boat, train, Vespa, or mule). At the same time, I understand completely people like Catherine Mayo, for whom the sustained mistreatment by airport and airline staff triggered a nervous reaction inflight. The fact that instead of getting assistance, she got an F-15 escort, a long delay, and criminal charges is symptomatic – not of her condition, though, but of someone else's.

Update: We did not meet, but it seems this person was on the same flight. Interesting detail -- the flight that we were removed from on Saturday went off after all, empty (!), to Boston to pick up passengers bound for London.

This summer's atrocity film festival

In these last few days of my stay in Belgrade, I haven't had the time or energy to post what I have been thinking about the latest atrocity videos, showing crimes against the civilian population during the course of the "Oluja" operation in 1995. But I did have a chat on the subject today with Dragan Štavljanin of RFE/RL.

This will be my last post for a few days. I am supposed to return to Boston (through London, thanks to my brilliant planning) tomorrow, and then I'll be off for a few days, after which I hope to be back with a shiny new computer.

Summer reading: The East Ethnia mini book review

At the end of the week it is goodbye to Belgrade once again, and back to work. I will have a brief period of computerlessness, and so no posting (ha! see if you notice the difference!). But my charming employer has agreed to replace my rahmetli laptop, so this should be just a matter of time, the shorter the better.

In the meantime, a selection of a few of the more interesting books I have acquired and read during my glamorous summer vacation.

• Slobodan Antonić, Nacija u strujama prošlosti -- This is a fellow who gets a lot of publicity, partly because at one point he did some interesting research, and partly because local media need an intellectual who is sympathetic to the right wing of DSS for the sake of "balance." But sorry, this book is just a compilation of polemical magazine columns.
• Jovan Bajford, Teorija zavere -- The author marks the spring of 1999 as the time when all sorts of otherworldly discourses from the margins of the church, the military, and the hangers-on from the distant past became respectable enough to get wide play in big-circulation media. Foteljaši say the darnedest things.
• Aleksandar Bošković, Etnologija skakodnevnog života -- Not really an ethnology of everyday life, more a series of essays written over a period of several years for magazines and newspapers. Some of them are interesting.
• Boris Dežulović, Jebo sad hiljadu dinara -- Quickly reached the top of my list of favorite antiwar comic novels. A Muslim unit disguised as a Croatian unit for a "special mission" reaches a standoff with a Croatian unit disguised as a Muslim unit for a "special mission."
• Jens/Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt, Anatomija mržnje -- A couple of Danish journalists take a trip and do several interviews. Some of them are good. They also do some analysis, some of which is good.
• Todor Kuljić, Kultura sećanja -- A good theoretical and historical overview of problems associated with the politics of public memory. If the book were as strong on empirical detail as it is on quotations from Nietzsche, it would be a great study.
• Nebojša Popović and Kosta Nikolić. Vojislav Koštunica, jedna karijera -- This is a bit of a hatchet job by two historians who have taken the effort to dig up every compromising thing Mr Koštunica has ever done or said. Maybe good as a primary reference source, for someone who wants to sift the wheat from the chaff. Highlight: The essay by Danica Drašković on how Voja is not a proper ravnogorac.
• Marko Vidojković, Kandže -- This novel about the student protests of 1996-1997 came highly recommended to me by several people. After reading it, I cannot figure out why. A random mixture of objectless cynicism and adolescent male fantasy.
• Helena Zdravković, Politika žrtve na Kosovu -- Go straight to the empirical material, which begins about two thirds of the way into the book, and you will find some interesting interviews and discourse analysis on ways in which Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo perceive one another.

There are a few other titles in my bag that I have not got to reading yet. Of the ones I have, some are good and some are not so good. For the most part, I am surprised at the thin selection of new titles in bookshops. Maybe publishing is weaker than it used to be, or maybe distribution is as weak as ever.