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.

When people roll out maps, you know you are in trouble... here is a perfect example not only of that but also of the intellectual brilliance of such an idea. A recent article of the Armed Forces Journal called "Blood borders. How a better Middle East would look" proposed a new map for the Middle East (no, I am not a regular reader o fthe Armed Forces Journal, I came accross it thanks to Carl Bildt's Blog).
This map (the article discloses the mind-set of the author: 'Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works'.).
has such great ideas such as Greater Lebanon (in fact todays Lebanon is already Greater Lebanon), Greater Jordan (making a functional state even more functional), Saudi Homelands Independent Territories (the term homeland is particularly well chosen).
There is really only one map in recent years which has proposed some decent borders, and is based on more serious research than the above:

Things I will not miss from Belgrade

Mostly Belgrade is a perfectly pleasant place to live in and the down-sides are made up by the up-sides. Here is one of the down-sides to most other places: Indicted war criminals. It just does not really make my day, as just a few days ago, when I parked the car and had to see Nikola Sajnovic going to church (my fault for parking next to Sveti Save one could argue). Good news, he had to go back to the Hague the next day. A few years ago I had my lunch at the otherwise wonderful Grmec ruined by the company of Aleksandar Pavkovic. Unfortunately, I have not yet seen any of the war criminals for which I could get 5 mio. $ and retire.

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.