Rising up and falling down

A lot of attention is going to acting SRS leader Tomislav Nikolić today for his comments last night in an interview on RTS. In his remarks he restated his position (one shared by most parties in Serbia) that independence for Kosovo would not be acceptable, but also went a step further: he declared his advocacy of "armed defense" (of what?) to prevent independence, and promised to bring SRS followers out in opposition to the president and prime minister following any agreement to independence.

In fact, there is nothing new in the statement by Mr Nikolić. Both the invitations to new wars and the threats against elected governments are longtime SRS rhetorical standbys. Sometimes, usually around election time, they are brought out among smaller circles and a little more quietly. At rally-the-supporters times, or when SRS has the security of a partner in power, they are louder and frequenter. During a couple of periods over the last couple of years, there were quiet moments, and these led to all sorts of speculation: is SRS adapting to democratic politics? are there fundamental differences between Mr Nikolić and his more bombastic predecessor? is SRS reorienting itself to become, eventually, an attractive coalition partner to some ideologically similar party which is less discredited than its previous coalition partners? Then SRS returns to its established bag of tricks and confirms what was known all along, that the answer to all those questions is no.

It might be the case that by turning up the heat, SRS is putting down the blinds. Last month, a survey by the Medium agency for Gallup raised fears when it showed SRS as the most popular political party in Serbia at 36%, potentially able to form a government, perhaps in coalition and perhaps on its own. This month's survey by the same agency shows SRS falling to 30%, and SPS from 6.3% to 4.6%, with gains by DS, DSS, NS, and G17+ (and also, interestingly, by the populist party out of Jagodina, Jedinstvena Srbija). This would leave SRS as the most popular single party, but probably out of reach of power -- but at the same time, it would show once again that there is no possibility of a government by the "democratic bloc" without one more very broad and probably fragile coalition. The question keeps coming up as to whether DSS wants to be a part of the "democratic bloc" or not.

Medium agency director Srbobran Branković (as quoted in Blic) might or might not be right in attributing the weakened position of SRS to their "return to the old image and the noticable rebellion which has occurred in democratic public opinion because of this." Or it may be that both the June and July results are blips, considering the continuing instability of the political scene, the high rate of abstention, and the fact that it is not an election season. In either case, the results would seem to confirm again that while support for SRS is certainly not rising and may be falling, the power and influence of this party continues to depend most of all on high rates of abstention and the lack of faith in "democratic" leadership. In the meantime, the statements of the acting president of the party, while they may not help SRS, are probably doing some damage to the country over which it once exercised power.

Bad Metaphor of the Day: Serbia has it's own Dalai Lama!

Well, in fact it is the 'Serb Republic of Krajina', as Politika's article on the Dalai Lama in Zemun so aptly calls the government in exile of the state which never really was. However, don't expect spirutal enlightment for the prime minister Miloran Buha of the 'government in exile' the RSK, incidentally also an MP for the Serb Radical Party.

Serbia: Ideally Bad

The timing of Ceca has been impeccable in her more than 18 year long career as the star of the Serbian pop scene. From gangster bride to heroic widow and Serbian J-Lo, she demonstrated a better sense of where Serbia is going than some political analyst. Only in 2003, as she was arrest during the state of emergency following the assassination of prime minister Zoran Djindjić, her star seemed to wane as few stations wanted to play her music. However, this time, the timing was too good to be true.

Within a few days of Ceca releasing her new album “Ideally Bad” (Idealno loša) and singing its tunes to the biggest crowd ever gathered for a concert in the Balkans, more than 100,000 people saw her live at Ušće, the confluence of the Sava and Danube in Belgrade, on June 17 (the same place one of the biggest demonstrations took place to praise another idol, Slobodan Milošević in 1988), prime minister Vojislav Koštunica harshly criticized the EU for its treatment of Serbia and called it “deeply wrong” in his “ideally bad” interview for the news agency Fonet.

With both Ceca and Koštunica being ideally bad, one might ask is this just a coincidence. The text below suggests that the popular folk-star, cum widow of indicted war criminal Arkan, cum self-styled icon of Serbia, and the less popular prime minister Kostunica apparently have the same ghost-writer. In fact, the similarity between notes to Kostunica for recent talks with EU-Enlargement Commission Oli Rehn and Ceca’s tunes suggests nothing less.

Notes to Koštunica (unknown origin, crumbled up piece of paper, found in trash can near government building):

You might say to yourself:

“This world is for smarter ones,

this is the path for more courageous ones…

my heart is a chick, rained on, yellow and small”.

You might get cold feet before the meeting and say to yourself:

“Already I am panicking a little,

still nobody has invited me anywhere.

I will go by myself, what else. …

Everything annoys me here.”

But find your courage and tell Oli Rehn:

“Once the ground cracked beneath our feet…

You were the one I could call when the whole world forgot about

me.”

“But now, it is only will you leave or stay,

now everything between us is, do you want to or don’t you.”

“I offered myself to you, I offered but you rejected me.“

“Never, never, with you never again”

“In my room there, everything is crap and broken,

just as everywhere else in my city.

If you don’t know with whom you want to be, where you want to be, and why,

then for you this

is ideally bad.”

After you have told him, you might think to yourself:

“You don’t know anybody, but know them all,

that’s how it is when you’re alone,

as if it all happened to you before.”

(The text is taken from songs: “Čulo bola”, “Koža pamti”, “Ponuđen ko počašćen”, “Viski”, “Lepi grome moj”, “Idealno loša” and “Pile” on the new Album of Ceca Svetlana Ražnatović, Idealna loša)

Another connection

Was there a connection between the Serbian government and the self-declared military forces and paramilitary formations that operated in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina? The Supreme Court of Serbia says yes. It has confirmed an earlier decision ordering the state to pay damages to seven (out of an estimated 10.000) refugees who were arrested by the military in 1995, then delivered under military security for "training" at a camp of the "Serbian Volunteer Guard" (Srpska dobrovoljačka garda) in Erdut, after which they were forcibly mobilised into units of the "VRSK" in Croatia and the "VRS" in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Worrying developments in Bosnia

[Updated version with links]

Last week I edited the draft of a report in which the author had written of "deteriorating political trends" in Bosnia. The donor wanted to have this changed to "worrying political trends." Whichever it is, it's for real. Until recently, for example, I'd have been inclined to dismiss calls for a referendum on independence for RS -- the miserable statelet ("entity") the Serbs carved out of Bosnia by killing, raping, looting, and shelling -- as mere campaigning. (Bosnians will vote for central and entity parliaments on 1 October.) The SNSD, a nominally moderate party with good links to the RS business community and a history of antagonism towards the RS' "natural" government party, the SDS of Dr. Radovan Karadzic, wanted to prop up its nationalist credentials, on this reading, and that's certainly part of the story -- but not all of it. RS prime minister and SNSD leader Milorad Dodik is very close to certain circles in Belgrade -- the very same circles that pay a lot of money to Washington lobbying firms to place well-written and superficially reasonable op-ed pieces in U.S. papers, pieces that nonetheless are full of threats if one reads between the lines -- and it's obvious to assume that he's not doing this for purely opportunistic, or indeed domestic, reasons (unless one has a rather big house). Indeed, after spending years denying that what happens in Kosovo would resonate in Bosnia, Western diplomats are getting *really* worried at the precedents they're setting in Kosovo.

But it's not just the Kosovo repercussions. Police reform -- a key prerequisite to conclude the first association steps with the EU -- is stalled, with the Serbs very openly obstructing talks. The international proconsul has announced he'd close shop by end of June 2007, so all they need to do is sit him out. The Serbs are now also second-guessing the distribution key for fiscal revenue and are being difficult on a number of other fronts.

Perhaps there's really no point in trying to keep them inside Bosnia if they really don't want to be there, as folks like David Chandler and Robert Hayden have long argued? Aren't they just a millstone around the necks of those who want to build a *real* state in Bosnia, and not just a conglomerate of self-ruling ethnic territories?

What dread hand? & What dread feet?

What mysterious force persuaded the basketball player and would-be businessguy Vlade Divac, once the court had cleared the way, to suddenly abandon his plan to become the first private operator of the resiliently state-controlled Večernje novosti?

Akcija planiranja

According to the indictment issued by prosecutors against some of the (less highly placed) people who aided in harboring the fugitive Ratko Mladić, he shifted hiding places several times between 2002 and the end of 2005, but was hanging out principally in a series of rented apartments in Novi Beograd. This was, naturally, entirely unknown to DB, the police, landlords, neighbours, and to the mother of one of the conspirators who was dragged over to cook for the genocide indictee, who no doubt had quite an appetite.

All this should change utterly now that the government has adopted something called an "Action Plan." Nobody seems to know quite what this is, but the most vocal members of the government appear to be quite happy about it. Apparently it amounts to an effort to reproduce the success that the Croatian government had not too long ago in overcoming political barriers to continuing negotiations with the EU without actually arresting Ante Gotovina. Except that there are a couple of key differences. One is that eventually, Gotovina was in fact arrested: there was a shift from "action plans" to action. By contrast, responsible figures like interior minister Dragan Jočić continue to deny that planning to engage in action involves any obligation to act at all. Another is that, at least according to some reports, one of the preconditions for "action" is restructuring the state security services, which provided the base for Mladić's power at one point, and which (despite the existence any indictments of people with no rank or official position) facilitated his flitting about thereafter. People who have tried to touch these structures of power since the regime that operated through them appeared to have left power in 2000 have found themselves the targets of aggression and violence.

But not to worry: anybody who stands in the way will have to face prosecution by the special prosecutors for organised crime. Except there will be a couple of difficulties here, as the court to which this prosecution office brings cases is about to be abolished, and the prosecutor seems to be getting rid of prosecutors who actually want to bring cases at impressive speed.

Update: Politika continues its series. How did Mladić come to be under the protection of the real estate traders of Novi Beograd? Delivered by an agent of the military security service in 2002, apparently. Politika's journalist Milorad Vesić stops just short of saying that the agent in question, who is not charged in the indictment, is Radomir Ćosić.

Competition

So the story appears to be: the folk-pop figure personality Severina Vučković makes a guest appearance on a television station in Kragujevac, in the course of which she receives as a gift one of the legendary "Yugo" cars from the Zastava factory. This leads her commercial sponsor, the Croatian representative of Mercedes Benz (or Daimler Chrysler, I presume?) to announce a lawsuit against her. No doubt the competitive pressure is difficult for MBZ to bear. Leaving aside whatever differences in quality, comfort or reliabilty that may exist between the product from Stuttgart and the product from Kragujevac, there does not seem to be much question which company's directors have a better sense of what makes for good publicity.

Update: TV 9 in Kragujevac says it ain't so, that Severina did not ask for a car, the station did not contact the factory, and the factory did not provide one. They do, however, invite people to support a campaign to raise funds to buy a car for the use of the safe house for women and the center for children who are victims of violence in Kragujevac.

An update on dining in Belgrade

Just some quick notes on places we have tried in the last couple of months:

Restoran Oskar: This was the discovery of the season for us, traditional dishes perfectly prepared, and a good selection of domestic wines. They made best sarme we have tasted, with Montenegrin hard cabbage. In Dorćol, ul. Braća Baruh below Dušanova.

Restoran Čubura: I came here one day with my student and we were thrilled by the fanstasticity of it. A few days later Mrs Ethnia went with some friends and was disappointed. Go figure. On Vračar, gradić Pejton.

Restoran Porto: Good fresh fish, fine service. However, be warned that it is obscenely expensive. Go only if somebody else (preferably, somebody against whom you bear a grudge) is paying. ul. Francuska, way off in the industrial zone.

Kafana ?: Amazingly enough, this year is the first time that we tried the food at this landmark spot. They offer up good classic roštilj, and they have renovated the toilets probably for the first time since opening. ul. 7. jula, between the bankers and the theologians.

Čobanov odmor: It's a takeout place, but you can get sandwiches in a freshly baked lepinja, goatsies, sheepsies or piggies with kajmak. Darn good, even with the folk styling. At Crveni krst, ul. Žarka Zrenjanina.

Kafana Proleće: Hardly a discovery, but we have noted again that this low-priced standby is still pretty darn good. It may well be the only remaining normal place in the central part of town. Preko puta Instituta za sociološko i kriminalističko istraživanje.

Pietro dell'oro: Italian šminka, owned by some sports figure or another. The design is excellent, the food is okay, and the service is on the level of "you should be happy just to be here." Admire from afar. Vračar, ul. Save Kovačevića.

The classics have remained classic, and we have at least not encountered any places that used to be good which have turned bad. Though we have no doubt that they exist.

Moderate progress, within the limits of the law

Recognition where it is due: there was a time, for eleven or twelve years there, when the only reason to read the once-mighty daily Politika was for a bit of ethnographic voyeurism, to see what parts of their fantasies the bizarre characters of the old regime imagined were respectable enough to put out into public. It was kind of like the early-nineties work of Madonna, only inclining more to the horrifying than to the entertaining. Since late 2000 it has changed a bit. Now reading Politika is a little bit like shopping at Filene's Basement -- it's not that there is nothing worthwhile to be found, but there is a lot of other stuff to plow through before you find it. More recently the paper has also massively improved its graphic design, I am told through the services of the mighty Mirko Ilić. Now Politika has introduced a new web site. It is an improvement on the old one, but the old one was a disaster. Before they offered fewer than ten articles a day and took them all down after three days, with no archive. Now they offer many more articles, giving at least an impressionistic overview of the major sections of the paper. The selection is a bit odd: today they lead off with a long-range weather prediction, for example. They still do not provide an archive; every other major Belgrade paper provides a complete online archive.

The new Politika web site is a bit like the new Politika. It is better than it was, but considering what it was, it would have been hard for it to be worse. Bit of a synecdoche, really.

Understatement of the day from EU pillar in Kosovo ('Invest in Kosovo'). I am glad that in the section they did not dwell too much on the stabile political system part.

A new resource for language learners

Many years ago when I took a course in the language called Serbo-Croatian, the text we used was mostly oriented toward literary translation, in the spirit of most of the language courses, which were for the most part designed to meet the needs of Russian literature majors who were required to take a year of some other Slavic language. As a supplementary text we used one of the versions of the classic by the great Celia Hawkesworth, which was a bit more oriented toward everyday culture. Coming out these days is a new set by Ellen Elias Bursać and Ronelle Alexander. I saw some of the early versions of the lessons when one of my brilliant students took a language course at Harvard, and it looked good: there is a contemporary tone, and several prominent contemporary writers contributed study texts. The lesson book by both authors is accompanied by a "grammar with sociolinguistic commentary" by Ronelle Alexander. The web presentation includes sample chapters, links, a glossary, and many more goodies. The name used for the language in this set of texts (if I am not mistaken, the first to use this name) is "Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian," after the autochtonous language of of one of the tribes native to Scheveningen.

Ethnic Ambiance on East Ethnia

I thought that there is no better way to start my contributions to East Ethnia with the first of (hopefully) many nice examples on the topic of ethnic advertisement.
Here's one from Strasbourg: Zen tendencies equal an ethnic ambiance (in case the complex French was not obvious in English). I think SDA/HDZ/SDS are contemplating using this for their joint electoral slogan in the Fall elections in Bosnia.

In every dream home a heartache

So I see in Danas that Roxy Music is set to play concerts in Ohrid and Belgrade. People of my generation may remember them as the group that began its career by putting out three albums, every one a transcendent beauty fully worthy of the Nobel Prize for Pop Music, and then spent several years putting out heaven knows how many albums which were for the most part just this side of mediocre. My first response on seeing the announcement was hey, that's pretty cool. My second response was wow, are they still alive?

There are a number of pop figures who remain a mystery to me. When I was in Argentina, I encountered the belief that the personification of pop was (not Fito Páez but) some American musician named Johnny Rivers. My friends were shocked that I had never heard of Johnny Rivers, so I asked my mother. She told me he had been a one-hit sensation sometime in the mid-sixties, and I guess he went on to become the personification of pop in the Southern Cone, something like a Patagonian Dean Reed. The other one is a guy I saw in an old Russian documentary, but never learned his name (he looked a lot like Glen Cambpell). He went around the CCCP singing a little bit of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis covers, doing the occasional performance in solidarity with the people of Chile--I'm guessing this must have been the early seventies. The high point of the documentary was him on a hilltop belting out the Ode to Joy in Spanish. Wish I knew who the fellow was.

High points of our vacation

1. The Croatian border guard whose manner changed drastically when I pretended not to understand the language he was insulting me in (NB: I think that this a characteristic of bucolic constables, not of Croatians)
2. Hum (pop. 19), the "smallest city in the world," with abundant tartufi and wild asparagus
3. Explaining to my daughter that when I tell her to use her head, I do not have Mr Zidane in mind
4. Cheese with truffles, pasta with truffles, oil with truffles, the wonders achievable by well trained pigs (see #1)
5. Arugula grows by the roadside, as a common weed
6. The most unfortunately named restaurant in the world, the Fakin Buffet in Motovun (supply your own joke)
   

Onda su došle devedesete...

Thanks to our maniacal friend (and proud young father) Mirko, for those of you who are looking for it -- and you know you are -- here is a gallery of photos from the rockin' 80s in Belgrade, from the archives of the incomparable Miladin Jeličić.

For those few of you who have really missed me terribly, here is the interview I gave to a local Conde-Nastish-type glossy. My remarks are neither here nor there, but the introductory note by Marija Šajkaš is priceless.

Ground control to Major Tom

I've been following the proceedings this morning outside Srebrenica, where over 500 bodies will be buried today, on the annniversary of the fall of the town to Serb forces in 1995. I couldn't help but think of this wonderful example of irresponsible gibberish, written by a pomo obfuscator named Tomislav ("Major Tom") Z. Longinovic in a thoroughly forgettable volume ("Balkan as Metaphor"):

The war crimes were committed by the nomadic clones of post-communist territoriality, regardless of ethnic and religious origin; "the serbs" [sic] were both the fiercest perpetrators and the most numerous victims of these anti-Yugoslav forces.

I'm too dumb to understand the whole piece but what I do understand I sure don't like.

Disturbingly quiet on the Ethnian front

Greetings to the infinitely patient readers of East Ethnia from sunny Ljubljana, where we are on a brief vacation spell after enjoying the marvellous wedding of our dear friends and colleagues. My computer remains dead, much like the more valued machine which celebrates the Glories of Carniola. However, Mrs Ethnia has arrived with her sprava, we have set up (after considerable waiting) a fine cable connection in our gracious Belgrade chateau, so regular updates from this side ought to begin when we get back later in the week. In the meantime, gratitude goes out to T K for keeping us informed on the activities of various "humanitarians" during my long silence. I am aware of all of the things I have failed to comment on in the meantime, but don't go thinking that I do not have something snide to say about every one of them.

Expect updates as well from Florian Bieber, the newest East Ethnian grey eminence.

Understatement of the week

There are flaws in this book.

Jonathan Freedland in his review of Chomsky's Failed States, New York Times, June 25, 2006

"I didn't mean it that way"

I will spare the readers of East Ethnia the details of the tedious controversy -- interestingly enough, a mostly German debate that seems to have very little resonance in Serbia itself -- surrounding Peter Handke's statements about Serbia, the genocide in Bosnia (and especially Srebrenica), and the role of late President Milosevic. An excellent resource for the whole thing is Caroline Fetscher's blog, which is required reading anyway. (Should you still thirst for yet more and read German, today's Neue Zürcher Zeitung carries a long interview with Handke.) I will equally refrain from commenting on Noam Chomsky's recent interview with the New Statesman.

[I cannot bring myself, however, to refrain from quoting the interview's highlight: "The worst crime was Srebrenica but, unfortunately for the International Tribunal, there was an intensive investigation by the Dutch government, which was primarily responsible - their troops were there - and what they concluded was that not only did Milosevic not order it, but he had no knowledge of it. And he was horrified when he heard about it." If anyone can figure out what he's talking about, please let me know.]

Rather, the point I'd like to make is this: how come two people who have been professionally working with words for several decades and who have received numerous awards for that work don't seem to be able of any unambiguous statement when it comes to the question of war crimes and genocide in former Yugoslavia? Of course, Chomsky is equally obfuscating on a range of other issues, and his extreme negligence -- some might say, willful manipulation -- when handling sources and quotes is legendary. Indeed, the fallout from Chomsky's infamous interview with the Guardian's Emma Brockes (centering on the use of quotation marks and similar), and Handke's current troubles after he spoke at Milosevic's funeral all seem to stem from the same spectacular inability to simply and clearly state what they are trying to say. Pretty remarkable for two guys who make a living dealing with words, don't you think?