Spodobe na okupu

A ponovo i na vlasti.

Service

Since the London transportation network is filled with people who are angry about the inadequate service they receive, its directors have found a solution: posters requesting that people that people not be angry about the inadequate service they receive.

Meanwhile, my local council in Haringey publishes a monthly magazine called Haringey People. In it one can see photos of the councillors wearing large shiny medals around their necks. The magazine must certainly provide hours of pleasure to that audience -- it must be out there -- that enjoys looking at photos of corpulent middle aged men in garish jewelry. It also appears to exhaust the council's reserves of competence.

A new, unstable, short-lived government

So it looks like they have done it after all. In a move many hail as some kind of victory, DS and SPS have agreed to alienate both their supporters and form a government together. Word is that the prime minister will be the current finance minster Mirko Cvetković, a compromise figure in every respect. As a "nonparty" person, he is more or less acceptable to everyone. As a nonentity, everyone believes they can control him. He may surprise people on that second count.

The new government is set to have 28 ministries, affirming the place of Serbia near the top of the world demographically in ministers per capita.

The good news about the government is that neither Vojislav Koštunica nor Velimir Ilić will be part of it. The bad news is that SPS will be, and once again a party with minor support will excercise inordinate power. What is uncertain is whether SPS will use the opportunity to demonstrate that it has the capacity the become a political party, and also whether DS will use the opportunity to demonstrate that it has the capacity the become a political party.

PS: Backstory? -- Here are journalists speculating in Politika that Tadić was compelled to choose Cvetković by party leaders and that his preference would have been .... Vuk Jeremić????? But how little does one have to respect (even) Tadić to imagine anyone, even him, seeing Vuk Jeremić in any position where something might depend on him?

War criminals: What are they good for?

Mr Župljanin has had a tough decade of it, if anyone is to judge by his lament. He says "we have never had any support in Serbia from the democratic authorities," if you can imagine that. And as for the democratic authorities? They couldn't liquidate him, they couldn't arrest him, they couldn't get past their amusement at Mr Lovre's personal ads, they just couldn't do much. Where would we be without Mr Župljanin, without his "enormous suffering and superhuman efforts," and without his self-pity? In a much less bemused world, that's where.

Bozza: "Response to a silly and hostile suggestion"

If you do not like living in London while it has a buffoon as its mayor, you may wish to look for a new home in the Caribbean. If you say the preceding, you may be encouraged to return to a former home in Australia, or at least to vacate a present place of employment. And if you like living in the United States either while it has a buffoon as its president or in anticipation of its having a nonbuffoon, you could be expected to pass something that looks like this test.

ZimbabPROFOR

With reference to the previously posted item, Morgan Tsvangirai is clearly not a reader of this blog, or he would know that he is looking for protection from the wrong source.

While you were away

Well, while I was away, actually. While I was moving to what I hope will become a reasonably permanent new home amongst the sushi bars of Muswell Hill, Owen (who will be known to readers of this site as a regular commenter) was keeping the world informed of the progress of the lawsuit by Hasan Nuhanović and members of the Mustafić family before a district court in the Netherlands.

The plaintiffs are suing the Dutch state for the failure of its military forces, which were present in the area as members of UNPROFOR, to protect their relatives during the Srebrenica genocide in 1995. Rizo Mustafić, Ibro Nuhanović, Nasiha Nuhanović and Muhamed Nuhanović sought protection at the UN military base in Potočari, but were soon afterward delivered to the Bosnian Serb forces by the members of the Dutch military who were bound to protect them. The lawsuit seeks to establish that the military forces are guilty of gross negligence of their duty to protect civilians, and that this was a result of state policy which placed emphasis on the safety of soldiers at the expense of the obligation to protect civilians.

If you care for 198 pages of pleading, you can dowload the writ of summons (translated into English) at the plaintiff's firm's web site. It is a PDF, and since they are lawyers they have a little shrinkwrap agreement for you to click before you can get to it. Or you can listen to an interview with the lead lawyer by CBC, followed by Ramush Thakur's comments on the responsibility to protect.

Paul Vallely sets out several of the issues in the case for The Independent. Plaintiff Nuhanović and his lawyer set out their case to Reuters in an interview. Attorney Liesbeth Zegveld (bio) gives the theory of the case with admirable succinctness to the BBC. Some unexpected uncertainty came about just as hearings were about to begin when the judge who had been overseeing the case since 2005 was removed from the case without explanation.

A decision is expected in September.

Errata: See the comments for an important correction.

Holidays in the sun

If you decide to take your sun and fun in lovely Priština, then Sophie Middlemiss suggests, helpfully, in the Guardian that "the most authentic sleeping experience you'll have is at the family home of a former university professor." The suggestion box is still open for people who prefer an inauthentic sleeping experience.

Of kings and, well

Among the remembrances of Šaban Bajramović, add this obituary by John Lusk in the Independent. But better still: a long remembrance by Ljubomir Živkov, with additions by Zoran Živković and Dragan Kremer, in Vreme. And at Global Voices, Elia Varela Serra has posted a memorial video.

With one great person having left Niš, a more dubious one says he has forgiven the people he robbed, is an intellectual looking forward, and is ready to return. But we are not aware that anybody wants him back.

Your intelligence agencies at work

They are apparently leaving top secret folders on the seats of trains. While this is being done by daffy senior officials, the government is desperately trying to give itself the authority to hold people for 42 days until they can figure out whether they have done anything illegal or not. You feel ever so safe, don't you?

1 down, 3 to go

With the arrest of Stojan Župljanin announced today, that leaves three more people indicted for war crimes on the list to be arrested: Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić, and Goran Hadžić. That will take care of one of the principal conditions for ratification of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between the EU and Serbia. If the country succeeded in improving its wine and becoming a global tennis superpower, surely it can make that extra step. Samo napred!

Farewell, Šaban Bajramović

Šaban Bajramović: He deserted the army for love and formed his first band on Goli Otok. His music was gorgeous. In his life both his failures and successes were tremendous. The last few years saw him successfully reinventing his sound with the assistance of Cubismo, and more recently facing both health and material problems. He may have seemed indestructible to many. But today we have to say goodbye to the king of Roma music.

Link: This recent album review by Erika Borsos captures his quality nicely. And Toma Todorović has a fine remembrance in Politika.

Random observations from a visit to Belgrade

There will certainly be talk of nasty things (read:politics)from Belgrade in this blog. But just having returned today from a visit, some talk of less nasty things.

• A top graffito of the trip: The long-closed store by where the Cinema Odeon used to be, which for years has had the sign "Objekat u renoviranju" in the window. This time passing by, I noticed that somebody had crossed out "renoviranju" and written "raspadanju."
• Most tempting graffito: Somebody must have been well paid to paint "Sloboda za Caneta" on many prominent walls, because really, who cares? It took a tiny bit of effort and a good deal of laziness not to add "i Antona."
• A question for my culinarily savvy Belgrade friends: Is the restaurant in the Ruski dom any good? Will they serve me the stuff my grandmother used to make?
• Still the best thing about Belgrade (and every other city in the Balkans): Sitting in the outdoor cafes, which are everywhere.
• Smallest surprise: JAT (now called "Jat airways" or if you prefer "ejrvejz")? Still atrocious.
• Blogocentric moment: A fine evening spent drinking beer with Viktor (Belgrade 2.0) and Dejan (Anegdote), followed by pljeskavice in a wind tunnel.
• Most zaslužan građanin: Radovanović, the person behind the wines. Also, whoever is behind Greenet. Sidney Greenstreet, one supposes.
• Person and party inspiring the best and stupidest jokes: Krkobabić and PUPS.
• Biggest disappointment: Leaving at such a moment that it required missing the concert by Nick Cave.
• Greatest discovery: You'll hear about it. We have to get some grant applications together.
• Imperial moment: Across from where we live there used to be a perfectly okay bakery and a samoposluga about which the most you could say was that it was conveniently located. First the bakery was taken over by a fancy (and not at all bad) pizzeria called "Piazza Artigiani del gusto." Now they have taken over the samoposluga too. Is the name meant to imply that they will expand all the way to the pijaca?
• Nicest surprise: Seeing my high school friend, in town with her husband to do research.
• Greatest reassurance: Bukovače (always excellent) at kafana Proleće.

....or are you just happy to see me?

Photo: A gentleman named Perković performed at a big concert yesterday, during the course of which he did not try desperately to compensate for anything.

Znalac. Intelektualac. Sam je sebi stranac. Kao vanzemaljac.

Two intellectuals in the news today. Slobodan Antonić confronts the mysterious fact that intellectuals have a hard time liking the folks who hate them. And Kosta Čavoški remembers wistfully when his pals were powerful enough to keep his furniture untouched.

Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides

A few people may have been surprised about the gesture yesterday on the part of SRS, DSS and SPS to declare that they have reached an agreement to form a city government for Belgrade. Obviously the symbolic importance of controlling the local government in a city where these parties have never won an election (not this time either) would be hard to overstate.

When symbols are in question, respond with symbols. DS strategist Dragoljub Mićunović rushed to remind people that mayors can be removed by the city assembly, which people in his party have known since 1997. And the head of the assembly hurried to choose a late date for constituting the new assembly: 14 July. The date should be meaningful to the SRS candidate for mayor Aleksandar Vučić (try his delicious squid recipe!), who as information secretary in the Milošević regime controlled the media outlet known to everyone at the time as "TV Bastille."

Udobnost fotelja

It is a fairly hot day in Belgrade, but this will not bother the heads of the DB parties, who will sit in the pleasant shade overlooking the fragrant animals of the Belgrade Zoo and sign an agreement to hand over the city government to SRS. If I had to guess, I would say that it will be a short-lived agreement and will fall apart as soon as the negotiations among the same parties to form a republican government fall apart. The whole business looks as though it was conceived by SPS to increase their blackmail capacity.

But it is entirely possible that SPS is overreaching. Their coalition partners are openly balking at joining forces with parties that want to quash the stabilisation agreement with the EU. And Milutin "pre roka" Mrkonjić has remembered what was no nice about having executive power in an illegal government: the opportunity to interfere with judicial power. So he wants amnesty for the criminals of the old regime as a condition for negotiating at all. A few more conditions like that, and it might be reasonable to expect no government to be formed and new elections to be called in the fall instead.

If new elections were to be called, there is a possibility that somebody might get a majority. There is less patience than ever for parties with a few seats behaving as though they are the majority. Another possibility is that SPS will finally have its long-awaited split, along the lines of the fractures that have become more than apparent in the last two weeks. DSS too.

Eurovision

I did not succeed in becoming interested in any of the songs, sorry. But a bunch of tourists came, they all seemed to enjoy themselves, and nobody was attacked by skinheads. So that has to count as a success.

Update: It seems some people were attacked after all.

What becomes of the brokenhearted?

Adieu, Vojislav Koštunica and Terry Wogan.

If Sv. Voja Neobavešteni actually does shuffle off, it will be a fight for control of DSS between people who want to preserve it as a centre-right party (like Aleksandar Popović, probably) and people who would always have been Radicals if only Radicals dressed better, like Slobodan Samardžić.

Whereas Terry Wogan would have to be replaced by Barry Gibb.

Krkowhat?

It was a fine film, and I have seen this clip used for many things, including the Dallas Cowboys and Senator Clinton. But thanks to Nedim for sending along the latest subtitling.