Odlazak u noć

Although Politika ran a headline on Friday announcing "the government is stable until Monday," in fact it gave up the ghost on Saturday. Today the government will request the president to schedule parliamentary elections for 11 May. And not a moment too soon: as an old graffito said about Communism, it was "not dead, it just smelled that way." To review the initiatives of prime minister Koštunica since the beginning of the year, he:

• failed in an attempt to undermine his coalition's candidate in the first round of presidential elections
• failed in an attempt to sabotage the second round of presidential elections through a silent boycott
• used the Kosovo conflict as cover to sell off large parts of the domestic energy industry to foreign companies for a fraction of their value in a non-competitive process
• engaged a media and parliamentary campaign to shift the country from near-candidate status for the EU to enemy of the EU
• revived the mobilisation techniques of the late 1980s to provoke large-scale violence which included looting, arson and at least one unnecessary death
  
• failed in an effort to preserve his rule indefinitely by forcing a state of emergency
• failed in an effort to coordinate a silent coup with his allies in the Serbian Radical Party

It was probably the failure of this last effort that provoked Mr Koštunica's abrupt resignation. In contrast with every other party in Serbian politics, SRS believes that it can win an election and does not need to make deals with Koštunica. Koštunica knows that his party has poor chances in any election, but knows that he is incapable of governing as well.

Is the resignation of the government a crisis? No, it has needed to go for a while already, and if Mr Koštunica had any sense he would have resigned immediately after the presidential election. The new elections, however, do mean some uncertainty. There are a couple of possible positive outcomes, which would include:

• the orientation of the majority of citizens as expressed in the presidential elections could be confirmed
• Koštunica could be marginalised from political life and a government formed without his party, which at this point will be lucky to make it into the parliament at all

These are, of course, not the only possible outcomes. It is also possible that:

• a populist wave brings SRS to power
• Koštunica could finally go the direction he has been hinting for years, from his grey-black coalition with SRS, and complete the restoration of the Milošević regime

This is probably the outcome on which Koštunica is gambling. In doing so, he is assuming that SRS needs his support, and this is probably a bad assumption.

In the long term, Koštunica and his allies have no political future. Serbia is not a political scene in which several options are competing but a polarised society, as it has been for two decades. There are only two political options. The effort of politicians like Koštunica to stake out a "middle ground" between the two is hopeless from the start. One of these options is going to have to win. I am not willing to predict just yet which one it is likely to be.

Dok traje obnova

Photo from Danas: Simon Simonović brings a new window to the Slovenian embassy yesterday, a gift from the students of Belgrade.

Anticlimax of the day

This the sort of story that makes you raise one eyebrow briefly and then start thinking about something else.

"the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use-value"

But can we really explain why the country is most likely worth more than a handful of chicharrones, while Velimir Ilić is worth considerably less?

Things that happen before and after a seminar on festivals

Dragan Klaić paid a visit home to Belgrade. He found there was a lot to see.

Samo Skvidži Slobodana spašava

There are all kinds of reasons (sanity among them) to ignore everything that happens at the inquest into the death of Princess Diana, which would have been a long-running media spectacle of conspiracy theories had the media themselves not lost interest. There is even more reason to dismiss what somebody who lacks the energy to go deeply into the alphabet to find a way of disguising his or her identity has to say. All the same, an unidentified "member of the British spy agency M16" who goes by the most nonintriguing name of "A" claimed that "there existed a plan" to murder an unnamed "radical individual" should this unnamed individual come to power in Serbia. As "A" explains the thinking of his alphabetic crew:

At that time there was concern that Milošević could be removed from power and that his place could be taken by a nationalist extremist, which would lead to even greater ethnic cleansing and a larger number of deaths, explained A.

Like you, I am not terribly impressed that there is a vague claim that a plan may have existed which was never approved or put into effect. But the foolish political calculation rings true, as a reminder that many political "thinkers" in Europe and elsewhere believed that their best hope lay with keeping Milošević in power as long as possible.

Assuming that there really was an "A" who was really a member of an intelligence agency and that something like this idea and its rationale were really discussed, it does, as does every other revelation about what gets discussed in intelligence agencies, puncture the mystical belief that spies are any smarter than your average mediocre political thinker or know anything worth knowing that anyone would be happy for them to tell.

Also, Đinđić shot himself

Where would we be without Press, relying only on Kurir for those pearls of investigative journalism?

Kao guske u ćuzi

We know a couple of things about the girls whose little looting adventure made them internet celebrities for one brief, greasy moment. We know that they hail from lovely Batajnica (but they already told the fellow with the camera that). We know that their names are Maja Trbojević and Jovana Petrović, and that they were arrested on Sunday. And we know that they are about to be charged with theft, a crime which carries a sentence of between one and eight years. This will give them the dubious distinction of being the only people to be charged with anything after a long night of vandalism, looting, physical attacks on police officers, arson and manslaughter. Congratulations to prosecutors on a job not done.

Police succeeded, after somebody else did their investigation for them, in finding evidence of their crime in their apartment three days later. And where were the forces of public order on the night when many more crimes than the pathetically small ones committed by these two girls were committed? Somewhere doing something other than their job, apparently.

And who is reponsible for the absence of the police? Formally they are under the command of the Interior ministry, the head of which, Dragan Jočić, has been in the hospital since 25 January after his Very Ministerial Automobile smacked into a doggie, severely injuring both His Ministricity and his driver (no word on the fate of the doggie, za razliku od njega ni kriv ni dužan). The deputy minister should be filling in but apparently is not. It seems rather that contrary to the law, on the night of 21 February the police were commanded directly by Aleksandar Nikitović -- not a public official at all, but rather chief of staff for prime minister Vojislav Koštunica, who was not authorised by the government to take over the role of the Interior minister in stead of the deputy minister.

Once you have finished holding your breaths waiting for charges to be filed related to the usurpation of power as a part of a conspiracy to undermine public order, please exhale deeply and go out for a nice drink.

Update: Before you head off to enjoy that drink, enjoy this commentary by Vedrana Rudan.

Update2: Here is another gaggle of heroes, no doubt defending the ancient monasteries and their lovely frescoes.

The lesser of two evils?

It seems that there is a tradition of unusual names in Meghalaya, and that they do not necessarily reflect any sort of ideological predispositions on the part of the families in which they are used. All the same, it might be difficult to choose between Adolf Lu Hitler-Marak and Frankenstein Momin.

Partition plus, I suppose. Or maybe minus.

There has been considerable discussion of partition as a possible resolution for the conflict over Kosovo, as well as speculation that this is the resolution that the present Serbian government (secretly) prefers. For my part, I do not care to express an opinion for or against -- let the politicians squabble over what real estate they want to claim until they exhaust themselves, I am interested in whether people will be permitted (ever) to live normally on any part of the planet to which any institution cares to give a name. But I will direct your attention to the most elaborately developed and argued advocacy of partition I have seen yet, offered (a bit to my surprise, I will admit) by Dejan Jović.

More nonsense about the template!

I am recreating the link list (look right) from the ground up. Please let me know if I have neglected a favourite blog, especially if it is yours!

Narodna kletva

Dabogda te hvalile Novosti posle besmislene smrti.

Nisi valjda luda da se stidiš

Today the world was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to hear Vojislav Koštunica say:

"The United States must annul its decision on the recognition of the fraudulent state on the territory of Serbia and allow the Security Council to affirm the force of Resolution 1244 which guarantees the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia. That is the proper way to once again establish the force of the foundations of international law and the Charter of the United Nations in the Balkans."

Koštunica is, of course, in a position to make demands of more powerful countries as a result of his wisdom and moderation which have gained him the respect of the world, as well as his broad popularity which led to the outstanding result of his candidate in the presidential elections and the impressive degree of support his party enjoys in parliamentary elections, and which is indicated by the spontaneous outpourings of affection that greet him everywhere he goes. The only thing that can prevent the rest of the world from hearing any demand he might make loudly and clearly is their delighted sighs of anticipation.

Degeneracija u jednoj pokretnoj slici

For the sake of completeness, here is the most hate-filled of all of Thursday's speeches, by the film director Emir Kusturica. Thanks to Andras for the video:



Much like another figure associated with literary history and pointless wars, he seems to have a thing about rodents.

Why nobody writes to the general

Anyone who has ever had a child of theirs serving in the Canadian military might well shudder to see this: the speaker in this clip was a general in that army. He wants to appear to be a friend of people he is calling savages underneath his breath, who probably do not recognise his implicit claim that it is unreasonable to expect such people to control themselves. At one time this person was responsible for the lives and safety of a small group of young people and a very large group of civilians. Worse still, he was responsible for assuring compliance with international humanitarian law.



With friends like these there is really no need for enemies.

Sve crnja hronika

Blic reports that according "an unnamed source close to the investigation," police believe that they may have identified the person who died in the violence that followed the calls to violence by high-ranking officials on Thursday night. They have run a name, but considering that the person has a family, I will not until the conclusion is certain. The speculation is attached to an article suggesting that the absence of police to control the violence was deliberate.

Update: It now seems more or less certain that the victim was Zoran Vujović, a 21-year old student resident in Novi Sad.

Dno...

...dna.

Narodni ples

I have new footage of the speech by Mr Koštunica yesterday.

Today in the world of malicious idiots

Next month it will have been five years since Zoran Đinđić was murdered. Some people may or may not be aware of this, as indicated by the fact that they are still murdering him.

"Ko smo mi Srbi? Kakvo nam je zapravo ime?" -- V. Koštunica

All that the medical examiners know about the person who was burned to death in the attack on the US embassy yesterday is that it was a male between 17 and 22 years old. It is also known that there was no reason for anybody to be killed, but that is not a finding of the medical examiners.

Adventures in shopping

Totalna rasprodaja, bre.



Thanks to Milena for the video.

Menwhile in the media

Unsurprisingly, the reborn Hadži-Politika has found comfort in returning to its role as official hagiographer. Their Friday edition features headlines on "Serbia's answer" and people who "Came to follow the call of their heart." Glas gadosti has an entry for this year's award for the most vulgar leading story. Novosti is acting like Politika used to act, hiding the news at the end of the story.

Discussion at the Serbian cabinet

The daily paper Blic has carried a transcript of an exchange among Serbian government ministers on the behaviour of hooligans after the declaration of independence of Kosovo. They do not give a date, so I am not certain whether this is from after Sunday night rather than after last night (the number of injured police would suggest last night, however). My translation.

Velimir Ilić (minister for infastructure): They have caused us much greater damage than broken windows. Those people at B92 and other media had better be careful how they talk about those young people.

Snežana Marković (minister for youth and sport): You are the last person who should tell people how to behave. Everyone knows what you have been advocating.

Ilić: Madam, you have been in sports for two months, and I have been for twenty years. Be careful, the sportspeople will come to you.

Dragan Šutanovac (minister of defence): What sportspeople, what are you talking about? I will stand in front of those wimps if somebody has to. Now, why was the police instructed to allow the hooligans to go wild on the one hand, and on the other hand to protect public order? That just endangers the police.

Ilić: You cannot call them hooligans just because they broke some windows and injured a few police officers.

Šutanovac: To be precise - 53 of them.

Vojislav Koštunica (prime minister): Those people, hooligans as you call them, were just reacting to the violation of international law.

Šutanovac: Oh please, if they had not been organised they would not have known what to do. What defence of international law are you talking about?

My fear was that perhaps a decision had been made to allow a public outrage that would provide a pretext for declaring a state of emergency. But clearly the government is not united, which I suppose could have been guessed beforehand.

Presented without comment

Vojislav Koštunica speaking at the state-organised DSS-SRS promotion yesterday



Thanks to Andras for the video.

Update: There is somebody who feels affirmed by Koštunica, gle čudo.

Another night of vandalism and violence

The countermeeting at Ušće was once again a tremendous success. Maybe I got the time and place wrong there. On the other hand, maybe I did not.

Update: Now that the flags in front of the US, Canadian, Croatian and Turkish embassies have been burned, please send any books you would like burned to Nekažnjeni huligani, c/o Vojislav Koštunica.

Update2: Police appear to have protected the embassies of Bulgaria, Italy and the UK, as well as the studios of Radio B92 (B92 has added one of those scrolling text update strips, and on the radio Tatomir Toroman is doing some very fine reporting). On Kneza Miloša where three embassies were attacked, they waited until the attacks were carried out and then sprayed everyone with tear gas. Which goes just great with open flame, in case you were wondering.

Update3: Apparently on Slavija several enemy hamburgers and fried potatoes were attacked.

Update4: The spokesperson of the urgent medical center notes that most of the injured people coming their way are also heavily intoxicated with alcohol. Could an event like this following the large DSS-SRS promotional meeting be coincidental? Anybody recall the DSS-SRS discussions of a state of emergency?

Update5: I will be out for the evening, but I can bet that my friends will be on the job with reports and possibly video.

Vole i oni vas

Check it out -- a day off work, closed schools, free buses, and a state-sponsored meeting to be addressed by superstar democrats like Grobar and Koštunjavi. Remind you of anything?

Alien fantasies

So the proposal is that if I want to become a citizen of the country where I am living, I should be required to prove my worth to it. And would the UK care to prove its worth to me?

Quote of the decade

"There is not a bit of difference between the statements by Koštunica and Tadić yesterday and the policy of SPS in the nineties"

--Ivica Dačić, president of SPS

Čega se pametan stidi time se budala ponosi

How to persuade the people in Kosovo that they really want a future with Serbia: break windows at one embassy, set fires at another, and sing folksongs that touch the heart like "Ubi, zakolji, da Šiptar ne postoji" (translation: "kill, slaughter, so the [insulting name for] Albanian will not exist). Ama baš ste neodoljivi.

Update: Viktor and Bganon suspect that the mildness of the police may not simply be a consequence of their čokolino-based diet.

Cordial if perhaps tepid welcome to new borned country

Not many people will have been surprised by Kosovo's declaration of independence today. Whatever futile and symbolic measures may be taken to appear as though it is being prevented, there has not been a chance since 1999 that there would be any other outcome (a few drunken ultrarightists on the street or press statements by tiny Bosnian groups will not change anything either). Some people will undoubtedly be celebrating the event, but it will take serious and committed work to assure that the new situation means something more than jobs for a new crowd of politicians. I am neither thrilled nor outraged, but rather think that what matters most is how the problems that have been left from the past and the new ones that are going to be generated are going to be addressed. Kosovo and Serbia are both now states, and each one has the opportunity now to show that it has the capacity to behave like a responsible one.

What the Kosovo government has to do is demonstrate its commitment to inclusion and the rule of law, assure freedom of movement and full legal protection for everybody living in the state, and build friendly and functional relationships with all of the states in the region. An independent state has obligations that are greater than the obligations of Unmikistan, which could always be transferred elsewhere.

The Serbian government has to begin to take seriously the desires of the Serb residents of Kosovo, not just to posture in their name. That means engaging with the new state as equals to build a regime of cooperation and protection. The need to make gestures of rejection is a need related to publicity, and it should be indulged for a while. But behind the scenes, somebody had better be generating ways to protect the interests of citizens.

For the last eighteen years, one state or parastate more or less in the Balkans has been par for the course. One that means something good for the people who live in and around it, that would be something.

Note: I know that at least some of you who read this will want to disagree with me vehemently in the comments (you are welcome to agree too, of course). Price of commenting -- give me advice on how to fix the comments visibility problem!

Your comments

I think I have succeeded in fixing the comments problem that a user pointed out. Please let me know if I have not fixed it.

While it would be pretentious to claim that this blog has a "comments policy," I can say this much: discussion is welcome, more often than not comments will get replies, and I delete comments very rarely, only if they are really useless or if the comments section is being used to insult or abuse people (which I do not equate with criticism or disagreement). Whether it is due to luck or some of other factor, this has only happened a couple of times. And while you certainly can comment anonymously, I have greater respect for people who do not.

Piće za mladiće

Way back in distant 1994, the ethnologist Ivan Čolović observed that whenever relations between Serbia and the "Republika Srpska" started to turn sour, the tabloids would increase the number of police chronicle stories about awful things happening to a "mladić" (young man). The implication being that some awful thing would happen to a Mladić (drunken murderer). So are we to draw any conclusions on the basis of this?

Museum of rokenrol

Rambo Amadeus has a modest proposal: a museum of rock n roll, because "today's children have no idea" what it was, and this is a problem that could be addressed by the wealth of available and underemployed "living exhibits."

In memory of Desimir Tošić

In an earlier post I reported the passing of Desimir Tošić and promised more. I asked my friend Dejan Đokić, who teaches history at Goldsmiths College, to prepare a text for the blog. Below is Dejan's text (and for those of you in and around London, SSEES invites you to the launch of his book on 19 February):


Desimir Tošić (1920-2008)

Desimir Tošić died on 7 February, in John Ratcliffe Hospital in Oxford, aged 88. He was a unique and somewhat unconventional figure in modern Serbian history. Tošić was a politician who placed ideas and ideals above personal and material gain. He was a contemporary of Yugoslavia’s turbulent life and its death(s), but wrote about Yugoslav history and politics with an honesty, balance, critical stance and deep knowledge rarely found among professional historians. Although formally a politician, he was more of an enlightened educator whose ideas often clashed with party line, despite his unquestioned overall loyalty to the Democratic Party (DS), of which he was a member since the late 1930s. He was a Christian believer who was among the loudest critics of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its role in politics. As an émigré he was equally critical of both the then communist regime and of backward-looking emigration; following his return to Serbia in 1990 his friends included many former communists. One of them was Draža Marković, a leading communist politician in pre-Milošević Serbia, with whom Tošić went to high school in the 1930s. Another former leading communist, and later the first important East European dissident, Milovan Djilas, was a figure Tošić admired and wrote about.

Born in 1920 in Bela Palanka, southern Serbia, in what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Tošić moved to Belgrade in the 1930s to complete his secondary education. The capital was politically highly polarized at the time, but Tošić joined the centrist Democratic Party. The Second World War and the German invasion interrupted his studies at Belgrade University’s Law Faculty. During the war, Tošić supported General Mihailović’s resistance movement, like many of his fellow Democrats, but already at the time and even more so in his postwar writings, he was critical of both Mihailović and Tito; he was also highly critical of the role of the monarchy in the interwar period, highlighting counterproductive policies of King Aleksandar and his ‘successor’ Prince Pavle. As a Mihailović supporter, Tošić was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and sent to work in Germany. He survived the war only to find himself as a refugee in France. There he met his future wife Coral, with whom he eventually settled in her native Britain in 1958.

As an émigré, Tošić was opposed to Tito’s communist regime, but he was not a staunch, vindictive anti-communist. Unlike most Yugoslav émigrés, he never advocated a return to some ancien régime in Yugoslavia, and he correctly argued that the communists had genuine support in the country. In the 1970s, he wrote that when changes eventually took place, they should be carried out, initially at least, together with reformed communists. This is indeed what happened across most of East-Central Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but not in Serbia, where Slobodan Milošević took control of the Party.

In emigration, first from Paris and then from London, Tošić gathered like-minded younger Serb refugees around a group that called itself Oslobodjenje – ‘Liberation’, meaning liberation from all forms of dictatorship. He edited the Naša Reč (‘Our Word’) monthly between 1948 and 1990, with contributions from, among others, dissidents Milovan Djilas and Mihajlo Mihajlov, and academics such as historian Stevan Pavlowitch and economist Ljubo Sirc. Milovan Djilas’s son Aleksa, himself a political refugee, was a regular contributor in the 1980s. The group also published books, including the first Serbo-Croat edition of Milovan Djilas’s Conversations with Stalin (1986). Tošić was the animator and driving force of the organization, which spread itself across Western Europe, North America and Australia. Its activities were self-funded, as western institutions were careful not to antagonize Tito’s régime.

Tošić was a believer in a democratic and federal Yugoslavia, as well as in a united Europe. Together with Vane Ivanović, he was an early member of Jean Monnet’s European Movement. Tošić, Ivanović and Božidar Vlajić (one of the prewar leaders of the Democratic Party) were among the founders of the Democratic Alternative in 1963 – a group of pro-Yugoslav Bosniak, Croat, Serb and Slovene émigrés that called for the democratization of Yugoslavia. Other members of the DA included Ilija Jukić, Branko Pešelj (both of the Croatian Peasant Party), Franjo Sekolec, Miha Krek, Nace Čretnik (Slovenes). Three surviving members are Adil Zulfikarpašić, Nenad Petrović and Bogoljub Kočović.

In 1990, at the end of communist rule, Tošić returned to Yugoslavia to help re-establish the Democratic Party, of which he was to become one of the best-known members as well as its vice-president for a while. Leader of the DS youth section in the late 1930s, Tošić provided a rare direct link with the original Democratic Party of Ljuba Davidović and Milan Grol. This might explain why he was tolerated by the new party leadership in spite of his strong and outspoken criticism of Serbian nationalism and of the influential Orthodox Church, and in spite of not being part of the late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjić’s inner circle. Elected to the federal Yugoslav parliament in 1992, Tošić joined Dragoljub Mićunović’s Democratic Centre – a breakaway group, which eventually returned to the party fold in 2004.

Throughout the 1990s Tošić remained in Serbia, refusing to move back to Britain, where his wife lived permanently. He emerged as one of the bravest and most distinguished voices against war and nationalism. Although already advanced in years, he regularly published books and articles, gave interviews and took parts in debates across the country. His numerous writings offered fresh, non-nationalist perspectives on Serb-Croat relations, on the Second World War and on Yugoslav communism. Tošić opposed Serb policies in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, but he also spoke out against the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia.

Desimir Tošić was a man of enormous energy which he devoted, until the final weeks of his life, to preaching democracy. He was surrounded by younger people – political activists, students and scholars who sought his advice and whose work-in-progress he read vigorously. He was modest, never claimed to know much – even though his knowledge was enormous – and always treated others with respect and as equals. He was particularly supportive of younger scholars, including three British-based academics: Jasna Dragović-Soso, Dejan Jović and the author of this obituary. As a historian of interwar Yugoslavia, I found in Tošić what Alexander von Humboldt must have found in parrots of the extinct Amazonian May-por-é tribe: the last surviving voice of a society long disappeared. I am both proud and sad that his last ever article, published only a week ago, was his review of my book on interwar Yugoslavia.

Tošić’s energy, critical thinking, deep knowledge, wisdom, moral integrity, sharp words and disarming, warm smile will be sorely missed – by his family and his many friends, but especially by Serbian society, still emerging from the traumas and upheavals of the past several decades.

He is survived by his wife Coral (née Rust) and two daughters, Ana and Nada.

Dejan Djokić, London 9 February 2008

Never have so many done so little for so few

Here's a cute little teaser from today's Blic on an item they promise to report tomorrow (my bad rush translation):

The Democratic Party (DS) and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) have agreed in principle that early parliamentary elections should be held in September, but have not included DSS (the Democratic Party of Serbia) in their agreements. Behind this stands the intention of dividing up the support of that part of the electorate that favours the party of Vojislav Koštunica, says a high-ranking source in the governing coalition.

Koštunica has prepared an answer: he has offered the Radicals that in case of a declaration of independence [by Kosovo, pretpostavljam --EG] to declare a state of emergency, if possible with the support of SRS. The Radicals have not yet stated a position on this, but our sources tell us that Nikolić has already refused an offer by Koštunica to support a minority government of DSS and NS.

The matter of the survival of the government or the calling of early elections will be clearer after discussions between Tadić and Nikolić, which are expected to take place during the weekend. The premier, aware that elections would not be in his interest at the moment, has no intention of resigning, and seeing as Nikolić has rejected the possibility of the Radicals supporting a minority government, this [I assume the state of emergency -- EG] is his last offer.

More in the edition of Saturday, 9 February 2008.

Also possibly of interest, Mark Tran writes in The Guardian today (in a news article, not an opinion piece!): "Koštunica has abandoned his pro-western Democratic party coalition allies in favour of an impromptu alliance with the extreme nationalist opposition, the Serbian Radical party."

Update: The next day's edition does not add much, just two quotations from anonymous sources.

Desimir Tošić, 1920-2008

He did a lot of things over the course of a long life, all of them worthy of respect. More to come.

Update: I hope to be able to have a text for East Ethnia from a friend who knew Tošić well. In the meantime, here is an interview from Danas from 2003.

Glupi telefoni

Now that Tadić has won an election (more or less) on his own, Koštunica no longer holds a dominant position in the government he heads. So he has decided to obstruct its functioning by refusing to allow it to meet to vote on an issue he knows he will lose. This is more or less as I observed in the short piece I wrote just after the election:

This significant development echoes another, little noticed one that happened in the week before the election. It was in itself a minor event, but something happened in the governing coalition for the first time since it was formed after an arduous four-month process in May 2007: the ministers from the DS and the G17+ outvoted, en bloc, the ministers from the DSS and the NS. Few people will be materially affected by the decision, but as an announcement of the intention by the DS to function as an autonomous political actor, its importance is unmistakable. The DS now has a president with a majority mandate, and it controls a majority of the seats in the cabinet.

An obvious consequence is that the government could easily fall. This was probably the more likely of the two scenarios I set out (the other was that Koštunica would brave marginality to keep the job he thinks is his by right).

But I did not have a sense when I offered the prediction that it would happen within a week. DSS-NS and its allies in SRS and SPS want a discussion in parliament on Serbia's kobajagi agreement with the EU without the government meeting beforehand to give its recommendation, as the law requires. So Koštunica has been ignoring demands by the majority of government ministers, the presiding officer of the parliament, and the president of the republic to schedule a meeting of the cabinet.

Some sort of compromise appears to have been reached, if you can call it that. The cabinet will meet by telephone. I do not know what sort of procedural rules apply to such a meeting, but there have been stranger meetings.

Koštunica put himself in the position of holding a vote in the cabinet, which he would lose, or causing new elections, which he would also lose. The second of these is what will most likely happen, sooner rather than later.

Correction: The ministers will chat over the telephone about the sale of the mining operation in Bor, but not about the agreement with the EU. Selling off the country's natural resources is important, its future is not.

Accelerating the forces of academic productivity

Another round of elections in Serbia, another article.

All tomorrow's promises

Thanks to friend of East Ethnia EK for this ..... great moments in political marketing from the star of Davitelj protiv davitelja.





Better moments, if I can put it that way. About this I would not be able to tell you much.

Državni ljubimci

Thanks to friend of East Ethnia AR for this: Over at Global Voices, Elia Varela Serra profiles a couple of new blogs in Bosnia-Hercegovina. One of them is by the president of the federal presidency Željko Komšić, who addresses his public in a pleasant conversational style. UK ambassador to BH Matthew Rycroft is a little more formal, but when he is not diplomatifying he is also a bass player.

Bol do ludila

East Ethnia takes a moment out of its busy day to inform its readers that just like you, it also has no idea what Marija Šerifović is thinking.

Killing me softly

Probably nobody will be so surprised that this song, "Tihi ubica" by Jelena Karleuša, is a pretty uninteresting reworking of pop motifs that are well known to everyone. Nor is anybody likely to be terribly surprised that a TF (yes, since the genre no longer contains "turbo" or "folk," we should drop all referents from its name like they did with KFC) video is modelled after a Martian's dream of what a lingerie catalog must look like. Some of you may recognise the building in which the spot was filmed -- I will confess that I did not until I read a news item about it -- as a place of some renown. It is in fact the oldest educational institution in Serbia, the secondary school in Sremski Karlovci. In all probability this is the first time the institution has been used as a backdrop for cheesecake with čvarci since the school opened its doors in 1792. The alumni are angry, and the director says he has no idea how permission was granted.

My opinion? I think the doggie in the video is very impressive.

Glasali ste....

There is undoubtedly a bunch of stuff to said about yesterday's election in Serbia. Some of what I had to say I said here.

Numbers, qv: strength in

Polls are still open Serbia's presidential election, and projected results will not come before they close later tonight, but already CeSiD is reporting an extraordinarily high turnout. Previous experience would suggest that this is a good sign.

Dostižna li beše?

Today Milorad Ulemek and a number of his other friends from the prime minister-killing, kidnapping, massacring, smack-dealing, office-bombing, Nokia-gifting and pinochle club known to admirers and detractors alike as the "Zemun clan" were sentenced to a total of 465 years in prison. If those years were laid end to end, they would stretch from the battle of Kosovo in 1389 to the opening of the first horse-drawn protorailway on the Lisava–Oravica–Bazijas line in 1854. Or if you prefer, to the birth of the fair to middling historical figure Milan Obrenović in the same year.

They called him Bobby

Today we learned of the passing of the former chess champion Bobby Fischer. He became a bit of a cause celebre in (what was then) the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for taking a bunch of money to stage a rematch against Boris Spassky in 1992. This earned him the wrath of the US government, which wanted to prosecute for violating sanctions, and in 1995 he was granted residence in Iceland, where he had fabulously made his fame in 1972.

At the time it seemed like a big deal that the chess match violated sanctions, but none of that seems so terribly important given everything that has been learned about the sanctions, the way they were used ideologically in Serbia, and the extremely lucrative way in which they were regularly violated in the meantime. It was dumb of the US government to want to prosecute people for playing chess. But Mr Fischer did not make matters any easier with his extreme public statements and unique way of handling correspondence. So the US government was petty, and Mr Fischer got a widely publicised and well deserved reputation as a nutter. An ugly situation all around.

Maybe there will be an opportunity now to remember him for what he achieved, less so than for what he became.

Tata kupi mi auto

Okay, so you probably already know about the super-inexpensive car manufactured by Tata Motors. It is marginally less likely that you have heard of the ultraslick all-electric, no-emission sportmobile manufactured by Tesla Motors.

Big Radical brother?

I was just listening to Radio B92 and heard (svim srcem, a o ušima da ne pričamo) something I thought I would never be likely to hear: a paid political advertisement from the campaign of Tomislav Nikolić! This either indicates something about the SRS (which would be nice, but improbable), or something about Serbia (which would be interesting, but nebulous), or something about B92 (which would be lucrative, but a crying shame -- however predictable).

CeSiD: Result depends on second choices

Based on their survey of voter preferences, CeSid is predicting that SRS candidate Tomislav Nikolić will have a slight edge in the first round of voting for the Serbian presidency, but that the shift of voters from the other candidates would mean reelection for DS candidate Boris Tadić in the second round.

Another interesting finding from the survey is that a large number of voters from the smaller parties are not intending to support their party's candidates: 73% of LDP voters say they will vote for Tadić instead of Čedomir Jovanović, 43%of DSS-NS voters prefer Tadić over their candidate Velimir Ilić, while some proportion of SPS voters and 2% of DSS voters say they will vote for Nikolić.

Increasingly (as Nikolić himself predicted), there are two political blocs in Serbia: one represented most strongly by DS, and the other represented most strongly by SRS. There are two main consequences of smaller parties putting forward candidates with no hope of winning in the first round: 1) to make SRS appear to be more popular than it really is, and 2) to give Koštunica power as a broker that is out of proportion with the support that his party enjoys and inconsistent with the preferences of most of his party's members. But there is another dimension here as well: DS also relies on the support of other parties because it cannot turn out its own supporters. While 74% of SRS voters say they will vote for Nikolić, only 60% of DS voters say they will vote for Tadić.

Free radicals?

Novi Sad mayor Maja Gojković has made at least the first step to breaking from and competing with the Serbian Radical Party. She has founded a "citizens group" called "for our Novi Sad." Presumably the plan is to allow her to continue to put herself up as a candidate for mayor without having to be the candidate of the party which still considers her a member (whether she agrees or not). Should her group develop into a political party, it might not have much potential to draw support outside of Novi Sad, but this would be enough to weaken the position of SRS in Vojvodina generally.

PS: According to Edo Maajka, this means that she is no longer among the only ones who have held to their principles. But he means that in a bad way.

PPS: The article linked above has now been updated -- Ms Gojković denies the report. Does this mean that Edo Maajka can continue to kobajagi respect her?

PPPS: Interestingly, it seems that the Novi Sad SRS organisation continues to believe that Ms Gojković is a member, while SRS (acting) leader Tomislav Nikolić thinks otherwise.

Mašala! BT comes through

And another bureaucratic saga comes to an end (we hope). BT has come through with the internet service, credit where credit is due. And have offered me eight months free broadband as a token of something or another.

In related bureaucratic news, the Home Office has now publicly declared its intention not to pursue students who overstay their visas with an eye toward deportation. This bothers me not much at all -- let a thousand students bloom -- but there is something interesting about the explanation offered by the director of the BIA (which is neither the Bureau of Indian Affairs nor the Bezbednosno-informativna agencija, but the Borders and Immigration Agency). She says she wants immiration officers to use "common sense" and remain "focussed on those people that are causing harm." Now, how is that supposed to make a boy feel? Or is it, in the words of an immigration officers' union functionary, a matter that "Home Office priorities depend on what the media are paying attention to at any particular time."?

Ellowen deeowen

I'm packed and ready to return to London today. It turned out there was space in the suitcase for the Lajoš hat. Back at you soon from the other side of the pond.

Calculation: Plus ça change

The decision by DSS to offer its support to Velimir Ilić rather than Boris Tadić in the first round of Serbia's presidential elections means the following:

1. DSS has decided to continue its long-term campaign to discredit itself.
2. Ilić will get between 10 and 12 percent in the first round, which will indicate the number of people who support DSS plus the half percent or so who support him.
3. This will lead to a panic at the end of January, with international media splashing around headlines claiming that Toma Grobar "won" the first round with his 30-35%.
4. Koštunjavi will demand major concessions from Tadić for support in the second round, and since Tadić is a fool, he will provide them.
5. Tadić will be reelected against the same opponent he faced the last time around, by a larger margin than before.
6. Koštunjavi will continue to exercise power well out of proportion to the popular support his party enjoys, and Tadić will continue to fail to exercise even the power he has.

If these predictions are wrong, you will know in just over two weeks.

A reservation: Look at the comments to the story linked above, and you will find an interesting alternative theory -- that by pumping the Ilić candidacy, DSS is engaged in a fiendishly clever effort to split the potential vote for Nikolić into three camps, with some going to Ilić and some going to SPS candidate Milutin Mrkonjić. This presumably leaves a clearer path for Tadić, who has only LDP as serious competition for votes from the liberal camp. It is plausible, except that it requires attributing cleverness to DSS, and assuming that their leadership has less affinity for SRS than the evidence suggests. Another alternative theory suggested in the comments is that DSS has now made it easier for Tadić's supporters to vote for him, but that might just be some cheap rhetorical point-scoring.

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

The state flower of Arkansas is Pyrus coronaria, known to you and me as the apple blossom. It is known as "The natural state," and its state songs are "Arkansas" and "Oh Arkansas." It is home to the Razorbacks, was once home to the Glaciercats, whose place was taken by the also defunct RiverBlades and is still home to the (what else?) Arkansas Travellers. At one time it was home to the Arkansaurus fridayi, but now the state mammal is the white-tailed deer, while as far as I know there is no state reptile.

The official state siledžija, although he was armed and financed by another state entirely, is the late Željko Ražnatovic, known to many as Arkan. About this last one, my friend Chris Stewart has just published a biography. I saw an earlier version of the text, and found it to be one heck of a story. Maybe you will enjoy it too.

Please allow him to introduce himself

With what sense of awe I saw his head
towering above me! For it had three faces;
one was in front, and it was fiery red;

the other two, as weirdly wonderful,
merged with it from the middle of each shoulder
to the point where all converged at the top of the skull

with apologies to the great John Ciardi

Mixing it up

Larisa Ranković, known to us all as author of La Lara and Yahti, has a new blog on media, Media Mix. Add it to your bookmarks and enjoy.

Department of electoral antipromises

Hey, Tomislav Nikolić has a great idea! Wouldn't everyone love a Russian military base?

Where I come from they call it "cioppino," and not "halaszle"

Is it really the case that Riblja čorba is skupina non grata in Banja Luka? Is there a bizarre parallel with the case of another person who, back in the days of early frost, was in another group with Mr Čorba?

Primavera di bellezza

The image here is from the promotional material on the flap of a book. Unless you either a) follow political satire regularly, or b) are a confirmed member of the far-right establishment, you have not heard of the book. The title of the book is Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. If you have a passing knowledge of history, then you already know that Mussolini was not an American leftist, and that this can be taken as a sign of the cluelessness of the book's author. And who is this author? Chances are you have not heard of him either: one Jonah Goldberg, target of a variety of comically insulting nicknames, son of a minor literary agent who became the not so secret inside source in former president Bill Clinton's sex scandal, and recipient of a series of sinecures in the system fondly known as "wingnut welfare," whereby extremists are guaranteed an income and institutional support regardless of the (stunning) modesty of their talents or their (catastrophic) records of failure (e.g., Doug Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush).

I have not read the book and do not expect to read it. Life is too short for tasteless meals, bad books and ill-fitting shoes. Some other folks have been reading it with much of the expected hilarity that comes from the wide gap separating the author's sense of his own intellectual scope from the evidence available on the page.

Still, the line from the flap copy struck me: "The quintessential liberal fascist isn't an SS stormtrooper; it is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore." You will probably neither know nor care why the author thinks he knows so much about (at least female) grade-school teachers. But he certainly knows nothing about education. At Swarthmore College, and I suspect also at Brown as at every other institution in the region, a student cannot get an education degree. They can major in a recognised discipline with an accompanying concentration in education, after which, if they want to teach in a public school, they will take another programme to get an education certificate. The reason for this is state policy: education boards do not want to hire teachers with education degrees, but teachers who have demonstrated mastery of an empirical field in addition to receiving a separate education qualification (private schools will take teachers without the education certificate, but require them to have a masters' degree). This fact is pretty much known to everyone who has worked in higher education or passed through one of its institutions, if they were paying attention.

Ordinarily it would not be a big deal for a person not to know about the undergraduate programme at a small college in Pennsylvania. And ordinarily posh institutions would be fair game (when I was an undergraduate at Swarthmore, people still remembered Spiro Agnew having called the place "the Kremlin on the Crum" -- but then at least Mr Agnew was not wholly ignorant, he knew the name of the creek that passes by the campus). But there are exceptions when: 1) a person is claiming omniscient knowledge he obviously does not have, 2) a person is building a whole theory on an insulting image that has no basis in fact, and 3) a person is making a sweeping characterisation of a group of people about whom he knows nothing.

New frontiers in advertising

Practitioner of the world's second-oldest profession Aleksandar Vučić must retain some influence of the days when he was in charge of censoring media. Here he coquettishly demurs to read the title of the book he is promoting to the hostess of the TV program which has, for some reason, invited him.

The book in question is by an author who has 214 entries in the catalog of Narodna Biblioteka Srbije. This means that: 1) he is rather more productive (fecund? logorrhaeic?) than your humble correspondent, and 2) a perusal of the list is bound to offer a couple of opportunities to give a bitterly ironic smile.

Shallow reflection on the passing of Ike Turner

Ike Turner was undoubtedly a bad person. But he was also a great musician.

So go figure.

Nostalgija za danas

Here is a nice view from Kališ, if you like it. Courtesy of the lads at Belgrade 2.0. There is good fish soup to be had in the direction the people in the photo are looking.

Њезин живот у иноземству

Could this correspondent's heartwarming satisfaction be related to the fact that she has found a home in London's midl-klas?

Update: In a freakier take on immigration today, what is with stories about swan theft? This is a new one.

Update II: Informed sources tell me that the legend about immigrants roasting the delectable swans of London's parks can be traced to another time and place -- Vienna in the 1950s, when it was launched against Roma from Romania. Apparently it makes its way to be used against people from Slovakia and Poland in London in the 1970s and 1980s, but these days it is a stereotype against Kosovo Albanians. As far as anyone knows, there is no evidence that anybody has ever actually nabbed and cooked a swan, regardless of the nationality of the person or birdie.

Scholarly insight of the day

A friend directs me to this gem. This is from the (English language) comments section of B92 news, povodom the testimony of the legendary political sociologist Anthony Oberschall in the trial of Vojislav Šešelj before ICTY:

A sociologist is a worthless job. You can find communist-leaning sociologists. Fascist ones. Feminist ones. Chauvinist ones, and so on, and the libraries have whole sections on their theories on society, and so many of them differ in their views. This is the first time I ever heard a sociologist giving evidence in so-called trial. The prosecutors are scraping the bottom of the barrel here because where else can evidence of someones opinion be used to convict someone? What a joke.

Professor Oberschall was engaged as a witness along with Yves Tomić (not a sociologist, but a good fellow all the same), who was identified by the court as "Ives Tomić" and by the accused as "Yves Thomas." Mr Šešelj has his own thoughts on the length of expert reports.

Nice guys finish

I do believe that this is the first time that Geoffrey Nice has spoken to the press at length about the Milošević trial on which he was lead prosecutor, his disappointments, what may have been harmful decisions in the construction of the indictment and presentation of evidence, and još mnogo štošta. The interview was carried out by Augustin Palokaj. Thanks to Lara and Andras.

Reinkarnacija

Dušan Veličković is now the editor of Evropa magazine, and they have a stylish little online edition, with contributions by many of your favourite writers.

Q and A with East Ethnia

So, did you finally get your phone service?

Amazingly enough, I was ready to give up, to send a note to my friends at BT saying thanks for your effort but they were not sufficient to overcome your compulsion to constant repeated failure and let's drop it, I don't want to be your customer after all. Then I got back from my weekend away, and lo and behold, there was a working phone line in my flat! On a Sunday night, which means somebody worked after 5 on a Friday! Not a drop of the promised internet, but a working phone line, yes.

A weekend away? You did not simply stew in your misery?

Stew in my misery indeed. Friends from Leicester came to London where we watched a thoroughly mediocre theatre performance with friends from Canada, followed by a fine Turkish dinner. Then I made my first trip out of London to spend the weekend with them. Many gastropubs were sampled. The castle of Lady Jane was visited. There were places Azra would have enjoyed and places Lajoš would have enjoyed. Wine was drunk. Conversations were dragged out. It was delightful. A boy cannot do battle with bureaucracy day in and day out, you know. Harumph.

Gastropubs, you say?

It's some sort of English cultural thing. They're pubs, but they are operated by gastroenterologists. The effect on the customer is strangely reassuring.

You are getting a reputation as a battler with bureaucracy. Is this deserved?

It is undesired. What can I say, normal people get smacked with a hammer in the head, they fall unconscious. In me it awakens this nagon of persistence that must always be lurking behind my usual sybaritic laziness. This is probably a personality defect. Pure laziness would doubtless make me a more attractive human being. But then, without it, I would not have spent ages trying to figure out turbofolk, or three days making cassoulet, or most of the other things that are in the end sources of pleasure.

Dismissive of so many victories?

As my grandmother would say, victories schmictories, maybe it would kill them to do their job right.

So, is this it? Are your bureaucratic sagas done with, and can we hope that at some point you will give us something interesting to read?

This bureaucratic saga is not done with yet , sadly. I have a phone but no broadband. Then there is the whole matter of my seething dissatisfaction with Barclays bank. But I do sense an end to it, indeed. And this may do it for a while, but there will be additional bureaucratic treats for faithful viewers of Eastethnienders in the near future, including:

• Getting visas and entry clearance for the rest of the family, and a nice British job for one distinctly non-British worker
• Bringing a doggie onto this island which proudly claims (on the Defra web site, no less) to have been "rabies-free for a thousand years" (q.v. Miroslav Krleža)
• Enrolling one brilliant girl into one excellent secondary school

But yes, indeed, I will promise you more material on Balkan politics. Heaven knows it is more fun to be known for writing about that than for whining about feckless agencies and corporations.

So, all this complaining, do you even like the UK?

Like it? The pubs have "guest ales." There is fresh salmon on every corner. The halal butchers have delicious lamb (shanks! get shanks!) and the posh ones have tasty critters every day. The comical radio broadcasts leave me delighted on a regular basis. There are dramatic radio broadcasts based on the Russian revolution in which the proletarian characters are given Northern accents ("Ere come the effin Mensheviks, blimey!"). There are fascinating things to read over people's shoulders on the Tube. How could I possibly fail to like the UK?

Well, all right then. Hope you will do.

Appy to do. Cheers, mate.

More BT: Reasonable people might ask, WTF?

Today was spent in constant contact with BT, which does not imply that contact with anybody else has been made possible. The story: on Tuesday, I am promised that service will certainly begin on Wednesday, a mere four weeks from the time when the order was placed. On Wednesday, the service does not begin. On Thursday, your humble correspondent sends an angry note to his friend at BT requesting a joint effort to prevent intervention by Ofcom (the question of why regulatory agencies in this country have all borrowed their names from cheesy Margaret Atwood novels may be addressed at some other time). Later in the day a promise is offered that the situation will be addressed sometime before your humble correspondent bids farewell to a drooling senility. On Friday morning, your humble correspondent is told that service may already have begun -- it has not. He is then told that engineers have located a fault somewhere in the distribution network and that the problem will be repaired without an engineer having to be let into his home. He decides that there is no point in waiting at home, and so heads off to the office. On the way out the door, there is an engineer having to be let into his home. He does his mumbo jumbo, leaves, comes back again, does some more mumbo jumbo, and assures your humble correspondent that although his number has been changed, he should have service now. The existence of a dial tone appears to confirm these claims. Your now enthusiastic correspondent tries to call his wife and daughter -- no such luck. He tries to call his own office to see whether the line is working -- no such luck. He tries to call his own number from the mobile to see whether it rings -- no such luck. He calls his friend at BT again, we will see.

Working hypothesis: belatedly picking up the spirit of rebranding that once led a previous government to try to remove from the landscape every single pretty thing, BT has decided to repackage itself as the one-act play that Franz Kafka never wrote.

BT phone home

So it seems that BT is now promising, but firmly and sweetly promising, that I will have phone and internet service tomorrow. With the proviso of course that sve što su u stanju da brkaju najverovatnije i hoće, majke im kraljevske. But when that milestone is reached it is entirely possible that this blog may receive regular updates once more.

In the meantime, how does a poor boy remain in touch with the world? It is not easy, but one way is by sitting in my office, where today I received a quick lesson in the comparative culinary thrills of London and New York from a well-versed student. Another is by leaving to get a sandwich from the student takeout place, where another student introduced me to the works of his very charming heavy metal band.

Hazmat, kompromat, agitprop and other names for short-lived dance music outfits

It has been a while since there was any point in commenting on anything in Glas javnosti, but here I just wanted to point out that although the author of this brilliant expose of the Hazar threat to the non-Hazar threatened gives his name as Vlada Sinđelić, this is clearly an invented name made by combining a mysterious word from a sign in front of a building in Kneza Miloša and the name of a bakery not far from the legendary Gvozden. This is probably confirmed by the initials of the author "Vlada Sinđelić" being given at the bottom of the text as "E.G." That could be Eoseph Goebbels perhaps, but it ain't me.

Is Veliki mokri lug the new Mali mokri lug?

You might as well ask whether Prague is Prague.

Games people play

For your daily dose of cultural anthropology of sport by Özgür Dirim Özkan, don't miss his new Bosnian Football Culture blog. Also available in Turkish.

What a silly Dzugashvili

The theme of next year's convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (yes, the acronym is what you think, but no, it is not pronounced that way) is "The Gender Question." This harks back to the legendary Eighteenth Congress of 1936 when they solved "The Woman Question" and made a great leap forward toward solving "The Nationalities Question." On each occasion, they received $64,000.

BT: WTF?

We apologise for the inconvenience .....

BT's promise that telephone and internet service would begin yesterday was of course not met.

Apparently similar issues have been faced by Cory Doctorow, Brian Turner, someone named Matt, and Bob Jones, along with, I am sure, countless others.

An explanation

As much as I would like to say that the reason there has not been any posting here is that I have been working so hard. While there has certainly been some work going on, this is not the reason. Rather it is that I am waiting for my friends at BT to bring the magic of telephone and internet to my gracious new home. This should be resolved within the next couple of days, and we should back with running commentary on the delights of the Balkans and the west Balkans very soon.

Livin' large with Eric

Eric is preparing to move into his small but stylish new flat tomorrow. Soon things will be finally out of suitcases, and sheets and towels will be purchased!

Oh yes, IFCCS

The site of the new Institute for Comparative Conflict Studies has now launched. I have worked with these fine people a little in some earlier programmes they did in the Balkans, and now they are setting out, ambitiously, with their own organisation. It's worth a look.

Prohujalo sa veprom

Wild boar is delicious. But it might be said that wild boar taken with automatic weapons is not really in the sporting spirit. Nor are many other elements of this story.

Golden bear and crno jagnje

Hurrah for ETF and my alma mater. It would be delightful to see more universities from all over the region doing this.

Ponovo su oduševljeni građani dočekali oduševljenog političara s oduševljenjem

Politika really needs to be congratulated for the rapidity with which it has settled right back into the role of a proper regime paper, not too loud and scandalous, but not too reliable either, at least as a source of factual information (by the same measure, of course, this makes it fantastic as a source of other types of information). The lead headline is increasingly a summary of what position good citizens are expected to advocate for the day, and occasionally one will run across gems like today's lead photo. It is captioned "applause for Milorad Dodik at the basketball game between Partizan and Barcelona in Belgrade." I see Dodik with his arm up and his pancetta out, but close as I look, I cannot see anybody applauding. Or is it visible only to the editors of Poltika, Tinkerbelle, and folks who really wish it?

Romantic story of the day

I went last night to a lecture, which was really pretty good. At the reception afterward, I met a young couple, both of whom are former students at my present institution. They said that they had met, and their understanding for one another deepened, when they were given the job of preparing a joint presentation on Stjepan Radić.

Glas gadosti

Since nobody reads Glas javnosti (what, no market for the respectable sister of Kurir?) I may as well point this out. Every few days they come out with a new installation of what the murderer and drug dealer Milorad Luković - Legija said. Or what their anonymous writers wish he said. In any case, the link invites online readers to buy a printed copy of the paper if they want to follow along.

No, I didn't think so either.

U kandžama druge zime or whatever

Although I am not an admirer of the prose of Marko Vidojković, this taste comes from a lack of delight with his aesthetic. I have not reached the conclusion that, apparently, much sillier people have, that his narratives and his commercial success are the result of a massive conspiracy to, erm, well, I can't be sure here, maybe to compel young people to enjoy novels that I enjoy much less than they do? To deflate the natural popularity of agitprop (never did an ersatz art form have a better name)? Better to let Ivan Čolović explain it, I'm sure.

Avoid cretinous people: Lessons of a life in decontextualised science

Say what, Dr Watson? The fellow who, together with Francis Crick, received a Nobel prize for writing up the research of Rosalind Franklin, wants to stay in the public eye until it notices him, then wants to run away. He has had several rounds of controversy over the years for such things as going around the world suggesting to people which pregnancies, in his opinion, ought to be terminated. This time he has really put his mitochondria in it too. Here is the passage behind the latest inflammation, from Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe's profile of Watson in last Sunday's Times:

He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody but Watson himself, the remarks resulted in charges of racism. Institutions in England, where he was on a speaking tour to promote his book Avoid Boring People: And Other Lessons from a Life in Science, have cancelled his appearances. Then he got booted from his job, and has now fled England with his vestigial tail between his legs.

So as my dear friend would say in response to this sort of situation (actually: almost any situation), WTF? These are ideas that have been abandoned by everyone except a few professional provocateurs. Even if they were viable ideas, the relationship between "intelligence" and almost anything else -- such as skill, judgment, charm, decency -- is sadly pretty much nonexistent. And to see an eminent scientist going around promoting them, apparently not having dedicated a second's thought to their sources or implications? Has the world turned into the sort of place where people put fruit on pizza?

There are a couple of things going on here. The first of them is the constipated belief that a willingness to put forward ill-informed, foolish, extreme or merely offensive hypotheses can somehow be confused with "openmindedness." This belief is certainly widely held, especially among people who have never been compelled to confront the consequences of what they say or submit it to review (or who, like Watson and perhaps Marlon Brando, have been exempt from review for years because of their celebrity). The second is an approach more confined to intellectuals working in narrow fields -- I would be happy to say that this is a syndrome only among physical and natural scientists but of course it is not -- in which the criteria of that field are taken as the only ones that matter, even with regard to topics that have nothing to do with the field. In my research area, maybe this is best represented by lawyers' views on history and morality (sorry lawyers, but think about it, you wouldn't want these things constructed according to legal principles either). And for Watson, of course, it is treating highly dubious and very much predetermined findings about "intelligence" as though they were falsifiable lab results.

To offer a concrete example: can we attribute Watson's casual and ignorant racism to his DNA? It would be hard to think of any way that this could be achieved. In Watson's own words, "I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said." Rather, it is a result of his warped values and intellectual laziness, encouraged by a scientific community that subjects some of its members to peer review while treating others as if they were peerless.

It is certainly true, for reasons having not only to do with genetics, that nobody can control how they are born. Those people who are very fortunate can influence, if not how they die, at least how they might be remembered when they do. This might be elementary, even if not to Watson.

Greatness

Prepare to have greatness thrust on you, by Kal and Rambo Amadeus:

East Ethnian greetings from Northwest London

Yes, your humble correspondent has not been with you for a while as he begins to get himself settled in [do they really call it The Big Smoke? Why, when smoking is forbidden in most places?]. I have still not found a home, but expect this issue to be resolved soon. Fortunately, the friend at whose place I am staying does not seem inclined to tell me to leave just yet. Work, however, has begun, and I have a lovely office with a panoramic view of the chemistry labs. There is a lot to do, but for the first time, all of it is in my field, so it is hard to be anything other than delighted. And although my experience of the city has been mostly confined to my office and the local pub, this in no way prevents me from making the following observations:

1. All those people who say the food is bad here are gravely mistaken. In particular, the Phoenicia Market on Kentish Town Road is about as close as we mortals come to paradise. There is also the place with the fine looking fishies, but it always seems to be closed.
2. This idea that Americans have that other countries have cheap and efficient rail service has been thoroughly debunked, at least if we take England and Serbia as our test cases.
3. Everybody has the most adorable accent.
4. I must acquire the middle class male uniform, which would seem to consist of a) striped suit, b) blue shirt, c) no tie, and d) one of those mobile phone contraptions that people strap to their heads.
5. The pub is the living room of the neighbourhood. This is a good thing.
   

I think that would be it. Exoticism is a fine cultural practice, and I hope that none of my UK-ish friends will be offended by it.

Proeski killed in car crash

Those of you who follow Balkan pop as avidly as Balkan politics (of which there was a lot at yesterday's meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg) will be saddened to hear that Tose Proeski -- sorry, no diacritics where I write -- was killed in an accident on the Zagreb-Belgrade highway. He was just 26 years old.

For what it's worth: One Balkan blog fewer

In response to a campaign by net users, news reports say that Google has closed down the blog run by the remarkably atypical Novosadjanin Goran Davidović (although if you ask me, it was right there three minutes ago when I checked). Fans of the jovial little fuhrer can still, if they do not find his blog, visit his personal site or read this little profile bz Milan Laketić in Politika. So no worries, there should always be plenty of Goxy to go around.

My own feelings on the campaign to take the guy off the net are a bit mixed. I don't care for Nazis even a little, and my position on censorship is that it should be reserved for that small category of things that can be proven to be dangerous. Legal standards are vague (for an interesting application to an obscenity case see the exchange between the minority and the majority of the US Supreme Court in Miller v California from 1973). On balance I would have to argue that the "redeeming social importance" of sites by Mr Davidović and people from groups like his is that they provide a source of information about these groups. Of course Google (which runs Blogger, where both this blog and Mr Davidović's blog are hosted) is not a government institution, and is legally free to publish or refuse to publish anything it chooses.