Because I cannot help myself

Vanessa Paradis performing "This will be our year"



What was I going to put up? LDP's new year TV spot?

Oh my, Francesco has a new year song as well.

Sretna nova godina

The remainder of the day, and hence the year, will be divided between grading papers (down to the deadline, again!) and cooking. Our menu for this evening:

Mushroom soup in the style of the Hungarians, if they were Japanese

Lentil salad (this is supposed to bring good luck)

Ruska salata

Stinco di vitello al vino

A bunch of fruit and cheese

The goal this new year, as it is every new year, is to cook so inefficiently and make a meal so engaging that midnight will come and go without any of the guests noticing.

However and whomever with you are celebrating, a happy new year to you and yours.

Srđan Vrcan (1922-2006)

Sad news to end the year. This text arrived last night from Christophe, friend of East Ethnia. The text of the obituary is by Srđan Dvornik:

Srđan Vrcan was professor of sociology at the University of Split, Croatia. Born in 1922, he was the head of the Chair of Sociology at the Law School of the Split University from 1961 to his retirement in 1990. In 2003 he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus. He also taught at graduate and post-graduate studies in Zadar, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Vienna, Rome, Pecs, Berkeley, Sacramento. For many years he was a co-leader, together with the German professor Rudolph Siebert, of the seminar "The Future of Religion" at the Inter-University Centre for post-graduate studies in Dubrovnik. He presented the results of his scientific researches at conferences and symposia in Rome, Florence, Bergen, Dresden, Moscow, Berlin, Paris etc.

He was the Chairman of the Croatian Sociological Society. Through three consecutive terms he served on the Executive Board of the International Conference for Sociology of Religion in Lille/Paris. For many years he was on the Editorial Board of the journal for sociology of religion Social Compass, first published by the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), later by the Sage Publications (London). He was among the founders of the journal for social issues Pogledi (Views), which was published in Split from 1969 to 1990. He was also on the Editorial Boards of journals Sociologija (Sociology, the journal of the Yugoslav Sociological Association) and Revija za sociologiju (Review of Sociology, the journal of the Croatian Sociological Society).

The main field of Vrcan's scholarly interest was sociology of religion. On that subject he published the books Raspeto kršćanstvo (Christianity Crucified, 1980, co-authored by Boris Vušković); Od krize religije do religije krize (From the Crisis of Religion to the Religion of Crisis, 1986); Faith in the Swirls of Transition (Vjera u vrtlozima tranzicije, 2001). He studied social inequality (Social Inequalities and the Modern Society – Društvene nejednakosti i moderno društvo – 1974); the relationship between sport and violence (Sport and Violence Here Today – Sport i nasilje danas u nas, 1990; Sport, Violence, and Politics – Sport, nasilje i politika – 2003); as a co-author, he participated in two studies of voting behaviour (A Raid on Voters – Pohod na glasače, 1995; Packaging Power – Pakiranje vlásti, 1999); he was also a co-author of a study of youth (Position, Awareness, and Behaviour of the Young Generation of Yugoslavia – Položaj, svest i ponašanje mlade generacije Jugoslavije, 1986). He also published hundreds of scientific and review articles, articles in newspapers and interviews, which makes him one of the most productive Croatian sociologists.

Vrcan's particular merit is establishing and development of the particular sociological disciplines such as sociology of religion, of sport, of politics, of the youth, and of elections and electoral systems.

Srđan Vrcan actively supported democratic civic initiatives; thus, he was among the founders of the Association for Yugoslav Democratic Initiative, the first political civic initiative in the communist Yugoslavia (established in early 1989). He participated in many civic education activities, such as summer schools for democracy and human rights, and spoke at many public panel hearings on relevant political issues.

The photo is from an interview with Rade Dragojević in Zarez, in which Vrcan discusses his research on football fans and politics.

Revenge served clammy

It is not necessary to have any sympathy for Saddam Hussein -- who was a revolting thug -- to see the futility of his rushed and widely publicized execution. Alive, the only people to whom he presented a danger were those who might be mentioned in the evidence he could give in trials that will now not be conducted. Dead, he is a monument to his failed trial and the fictional government that has now taken its useless revenge on him. Some people will now try to turn him in a martyr, which can only further increase the level of violence in the world. As far as deterrent effect, his killing ought to prevent the survival of the sort of political movement he developed about as much as the hanging of Mussolini did.

Ford passing on the right

How surprising to see Gerald Ford dominating the news. He lived a long time, and during his brief, accidental presidency, he showed himself to be not an especially capable politician. His pardon of Richard Nixon set a precedent for impunity that has been called upon several times, and won him the undying gratitude of the handful of people who circulate between high positions in Washington. He plucked Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney out of obscurity and set their bizarre mix of sadism and ressentiment on the world. It is a wonder that he is remembered at all.

He did, however, have a sense of humor.

Some preelection music

Discipline kičme, "Političari virusi"

Povratnik

I'm back from my brief Balkan sojourn, partly unpacked with gifts properly distributed to their intended recipients. While there are many good things about being back at home, one that stands out is the ability to shower for longer than five minutes, without being confronted by the dilemma of whether to shower or shave today. Regular blogging to resume as soon as the inspiration strikes me.

Photo: Eric takes a moment for discussion with the youth of Niš.

Great moments in tailoring

Hrvoje Petrač led the search for innovative uses of religion at the moment of his sentencing for kidnapping. Despite repeated instant messages, God could not be reached for comment.

Update: Loyal reader AR drops a note to point out that the text which Mr Petrač cited a bit selectively does not promise so many good things for him.

Election slogans

A few of the election slogans I have seen around (not all parties have begun media campaigns yet), with cheeky commentary:

DSS-NSS-Palma -- Živela Srbija ("Long live Serbia!," or alternatively, "Serbia lived!")
Jes da je živela određeno vreme, a vi se možda time ponosite, a?

G17+ -- Stručnost ispred politike (Expertise before politics)
It is not clear to me why any party would want to highlight its inability to do politics. The slogan might seem to call to mind some other things that G17 has put ahead of politics, which would not be so beneficial for the party.

DS -- Život ne može da čeka (Life cannot wait)
Is this a slogan for a political party or for a cosmetic product?

LDP i ostali -- Od nas zavisi (It depends on us)
Who thought that it would be a good idea to bring up the image of dependency in a slogan?

The phantom PSS -- Srbija ima snage (Serbia has energy)
I always thought that this slogan, the same one they used in the last election before the party leader hightailed it to Russia to avoid prosecution, should be "Srbija ima snaje." True and appealing, at the same time.

Noted at the bus station while waiting for my luxurious ride to Niš: the buses that claim to go to Sarajevo but in fact go to Lukavica no longer have a little sign in front saying "S. Sarajevo" ("Srpsko Sarajevo"). Now the sign says "I. Sarajevo" ("Istočno Sarajevo").

Pozdrav iz Beograda

(written Friday; posted when I found an internet connection)

I arrived on Thursday, after a more or less okay trip. Belgrade looks much the same, at least what can be seen of it through the fog. It looks like posting will be intermittent for a while -- we thought that we had resolved the question of internet connection in our palatial vračarska garsonjera, but in the meantime the building changed cable providers, which means we are back to step one. There are promises that this can be quickly and easily resolved.

From the first moment I began to encounter the things I like about Belgrade, which include:

Friends and family: Here they are. As it turns out, though, some of them have jobs for me to do.
Burek: This week about 93% of the people in Serbia will celebrate sv. Nikole, which is a "posna" slava (not a good thing), but as a side effect the bakeries have burek with mushrooms (a fantastically good thing).
Beogradski rokenrol: over the next two days at SKC, we have Partibrejkersi, Disciplina kičme, Obojeni program and much much more.
Beogradski radio: Every station, including the ones I don't like, has its individual character. Here is an idea for a društvena igra: look at the face of a taxi driver and try to guess what station is playing in the cab. Your guess is certain to be wrong.
People on the streets: There they are.

Of course, in addition to the things that I like, there are also other things. The first major success of the special prosecutor for war crimes, last year's Ovčara conviction, has been reversed by the Constitutional court. Last summer, when it seemed as though the far right might be returning to power, this sort of thing looked like a strategy of stretching out the cases until everybody could be pardoned; now that it seems like the upcoming elections will probably just bring a reshuffle of the balance of power between DSS and DS, it is less clear what the judges are trying to do (or prevent from happening). Maybe they would like the trials to last forever?

Politika announced today that it has placed on the web site of the Narodna biblioteka its issues from 1903 to 1941. Just 65 more years of digitizing, and it will be possible to read recent articles from the paper online as well, which every other major paper in the country offers.

On Sunday it is off to Niš. The fog, I might add, is gorgeous. I woke up this morning and looked out the window, and thought maybe someone had come in and closed the shades while I was sleeping.

Svuda prođi

I'm travelling today, back at you from the sunny Balkans, if I find an internet connection.

Demokratski blok

Does anyone remember the parliamentary speeches by Dragan Marković - Palma, parliamentary candidate on the DSS list, when he was a member of parliament on the list of the Stranka srpskog jedinstva? That must be because they have not been well documented.

Stipe u raljama života

Follow Index and Neretva River for the developing brouhaha over stupid remarks Stipe Mesić may or may not have made in 1991, and a set of responses ranging from the inadequate to the self-incriminating, none of which makes any of the people involved look too good at all.

Update: All the same, Catherine has found grounds for pomirenje. Between Mesić and the ubiquitous Mr Thompson.

A gdje bješe taj CK?

Nikola Kavaja could have been a pioneer in terrorism in 1979, if he had known where the building he wanted to smack a plane into was located (hint: it is the only building in a huge expanse of grass). Or so he claims. He claims a lot of other stuff too, in a fascinating interview with Christopher Stewart. Some of the stuff he claims might even be true, however it sounds. But the old fellow can tell a story, he can.

Two criminal cases

Vojislav Šešelj began his diet on 11 November, and ended it today. So he stuck with it just under a month, longer than I usually manage such things. Of course, he and I have in common that hunger is a choice for us, which distinguishes us both from the people who were forced into poverty when Šešelj was in power.

In other news, a mere seven years after his murder, prosecutors seem ready to bring to an investigative judge the case of the killing of Slavko Ćuruvija. Says the special prosecutor, "all indications are that it was a political killing."

Photo: Vojislav Šešelj is welcomed back to the ranks of the gluttonous by the members of Midnight Oil and ZZ Top.

Some survey results

Here is one from Danas, on the basis of a survey of 1700 potential voters by the "Scan" agency, as reported by the funnysurnamed director of the agency, Milka Puzigaća:

DS: 20%
SRS: 18%
DSS-NS: 17%
LDP-GSS-SDU-LSV: 9%
G17+: 5%
SPS: 4%
SPO: 3%

Matters change when the results are calculated on the basis of respondents who say that they are certain that they will actually vote in the election. Then it looks like this:

SRS: 28%
DS: 25%
DSS-NS: 17%
LDP-GSS-SDU-LSV: 9%
G17+: 5%
SPS: 4%
SPO: 3%

So the main difference in comparing all respondents with likely voters applies to the results for DS and SRS. This is because the highest percentage of SRS supporters (75%) declare an intention to vote, fewer supporters of DS and the LDP-based coalition say so (60%), while only half (50%) of SPS and SPO supporters declare they will vote. The reporter for Danas, R.B., did not give figures for DSS supporters -- R.B., are you reading this?

I say 1) it's too early to make predictions, and 2) the track record of preelection surveys in Serbia does not give much reason to treat results of this type as anything other than a curiosity, good for half a beer's worth of conversation. At the same time, it hardly offers a reason for headlines like the one accompanying the article by Radovan Borović (hey, wait a minute--R.B:?) in RFE-RL, "Šešeljev štrajk povećao popularnost Radikala." No it hasn't, and the higher of the potential results is still lower than their most recent result.

International cooperation

Did the "Zemun clan" plan to assassinate former Croatian PM Ivica Račan as a way of returning the favor of assistance from Croatian criminal groups in the assassination of Serbian PM Zoran Đinđić? Novi list reports that they did, and Račan says that he received similar information.

Background on the news item of the day

For anybody who is interested, here is the report of the tzv. "Iraq study group" which was released today. And the cartoon version is here.

More on the Dutchbat medal

The award of medals to the Dutchbat 3 soldiers who abandoned the civilians they were obligated to protect has certainly got a response! Participation in the “Aferim!” campaign (linked in the previous post) promoted by the student radio station of Sarajevo has been worldwide in scale, and there have also been press responses. This modest site has not been immune from it, either, since I posted an item on the issue yesterday. Usually East Ethnia gets somewhere between 100 and 150 visits a day. So far today there have been over 1500 visitors (and it is not yet noon here!), nearly all of them from the Netherlands, with a wide variety of responses being left in the comments. Some people are expressing agreement, some offer a different perspective, and some disagree quite vehemently. Of the ones who disagree, there seem to be a few who are under the mistaken impression that the whole issue involves somebody’s mother – I am not quite sure where this association comes from. Leaving those remarks aside, the comments offered in defence of the soldiers of Dutchbat would seem to call for me to define a position more precise than simply outrage at the awarding of medals for abject failure.

First of all, in what does the responsibility of Dutchbat consist? At bottom, in dereliction of duty. Their job was to protect the civilian population, and when the moment of decision came, they decided to protect their own personnel instead. Some of the arguments in defence of Dutchbat come down to pointing out that an effort to protect civilians would have put the soldiers at risk. This can only be persuasive if one fails to distinguish between soldiers, who take on risk as a condition of their employment, and civilians, who do not.

This is of course not the whole story, and a whole variety of other failures (as well as factors contributing to those failures) are detailed in the NIOD report, as well as in other places. In addition to political and military failures and misunderstandings, there were cultural ones, many of them detailed by Guido Snel in a very interesting reflection.

A more persuasive objection has to do with the unenviable situation in which the Dutchbat forces found themselves. The elements of this are summarized in the announcement of the NIOD report. In essence, the unit had poor instruction, poor information and communication, and inadequate support. Some of this was the result of vagueness in the conception of the UN “peacekeeping” mission in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and some of it was the result of decisions made by military commanders from Dutchbat and from forces commanded by the military of other countries.

Some of the problems have to do with problems endemic in the activity of “peacekeeping” itself. In situations in which there is no peace to keep, the activity can – and does – easily devolve into auxiliary support for the warring parties, and peacekeeping forces can easily be used as a secondary strategic resource. Many of the problems have to do with a lack of political will on the part of the UN and the most influential international political actors to take any action that went beyond giving the appearance of concern. That is to say, some of the responsibility for Dutchbat’s dereliction of duty can plausibly be transferred to other actors. This does not diminish the obligation of the commanders to act in accordance with international law and in the interest of the people they are bound to protect. How well this obligation was carried out is illustrated in the photo in the post below, showing colonel Kerremans raising a glass with Ratko Maldić. Živeli, a potom više nisu.

Probably it is the case that minister Kamp saw the distribution of medals as a gesture of reintegration of the soldiers, some of whom must have been traumatized by the obvious failure of their mission, and some of whom were deterred by their commanders from doing what a soldier is obligated to do. This sort of situation may call for therapy, certainly calls for action against the commanders and review of procedures. But a medal on the chest of an accomplice is a slap in the face to the people who trusted and depended on the forces that failed them.

Valour

While the troops commanded by Ratko Mladić (price: 600 million Euros) carried out the massive killings in Srebrenica, the Dutch peacekeeping troops who were there to protect the victims did nothing. Today the members of that infamous Dutch battalion were presented with medals by their defence minister. Minister Henk Kamp says that in trading thousands of civilians under their protection, for summary execution in exchange for fourteen Dutch officers, Colonel Thom Kerremans and the rest of Dutchbat III "did their utmost." As Mr Kamp is doing, no doubt. Here is a site at which you can send a postcard of congratulations to the Government of The Netherlands, the Embassy of the Netherlands in Sarajevo, the brave soldiers of Dutchbat 3, and the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. Bravery is as bravery does, after all.

Sevdah on my mind

A friend of a friend of East Ethnia is a friend of a friend of mine, and Damir Imamović is a friend of music as well. The page linked in the last sentence is nicely designed but still awaiting its content. However, there is another page at Myspace where you can see who the musicians are, find out about upcoming performances, and download three examples of "fusion sevdah." About those upcoming performances, one of them is 12 December at the Terazijsko kazalište (two days before I arrive in town, na svoju veliku žalost). There is hope for all those people unfortunate enough not to be in Belgrade that day: they can buy the group's album for a mere nine and one half Euros, less than the price of your average published work in the social sciences.

New (to me) in the blogosfera

Obviously I will have to be updating the link list. I haven't done it in ages and hope to do it soon. In the meantime, you will probably enjoy the culinary and musical explorations at Dumneazu.

In other news that will force me to deal with my aging link list fairly soon, the Serbian Mess blog has a new name and location, or so one hears anegdotally.

Being of sound mind and body

The Serbian Radical Party gave a public presentation of the political testament of Vojislav Šešelj. The fact that he is not dead only presents a problem to those for whom the distinction between the living and the dead is meaningful. Dakle, not for SRS.

Spectres and their terrorist aspirations

In a dramatic warning reported by the BBC, "The US government has warned of an al-Qaeda call to attack US online stock market and banking services." The warning "was said to be in revenge for the continued detention of suspects at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay." But wait: said by whom? And why would al-Qaeda take revenge for detention of suspects when if there were any evidence that these suspects had anything to do with al-Qaeda, charges would have been filed against them?

It turns out that the guilt of the suspects is not the only thing for which there is a lack of evidence: "A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, Russ Knocke, said there was no evidence to corroborate the threat."

Now, I thought I had heard one of the most foolish phrases of my life at a recent conference I attended where somebody proposed something he called "spectral terrorism," which he defined as the consequence of terrorism in an environment where there is no terrorism. Yes, you read that correctly -- it is a fancy way of admitting that you are giving an entire presentation about something which does not exist at all, while at the same time demonstrating no shame for wasting everybody's time by talking about nothing. But here is a new one from the same Department of Homeland Security spokesman: "aspirational threat." Now, you all know what an aspirational threat is: it is a bichon frise growling at a lion, a threat that is not a threat at all, in fact, it is nothing.

Says the Department of Homeland Security spokesman, the warning was issued out of "an abundance of caution." Or possibly, an abundance of something else.

Academia goes to the movies

This just came in the old e-mail. I doubt that I will get myself organised in time to respond, but maybe one of you will, yes?

From Slavic Review: Call for Papers: Borat: Eurasia, American Culture, and Slavic Studies

Few recent works of literature or film have made Eurasia as central and, perhaps, as flagrantly irrelevant to the American experience as Sacha Baron Cohen's hit film, Borat. In many respects this movie touches on key aspects of our discipline and expertise, and it also marks the distance that "Eurasia" has traveled in the American mentality since the appearance of other epoch-defining films (From Russia With Love, Doctor Zhivago, The Manchurian Candidate). Slavic Review invites its readers to submit contributions for a cluster of scholarly essays on Borat. Contributions may use the methodologies of any discipline so long as they relate in some substantial way to Borat and to interaction between Eurasia and the West.
Length should not exceed 5000 words. Contributions will be peer reviewed and must be received by the end of March 2007. If you have questions, please contact the editor, Mark Steinberg, at slavrev@uiuc.edu.

Partnership for what?

The wire services are reporting from the NATO summit in Riga that Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina have been invited to the Partnership for Peace, a sort of ante-chamber for eventual full membership. The NATO statement pointed to the "importance of long-term stability in the Western Balkans" and acknowledged the progress made so far by Bosnia and Heregovina, Montenegro and Serbia." It called on Bosnia and Serbia to honor their commitment towards the Hague war crimes court and announced it would monitor progress on the matter.

After turning a blind eye to Karadžić and Mladić for over a decade, NATO didn't have much credibility left to lose in the Balkans -- but it has somehow, inexplicably, managed to gamble away even that little bit.

Delić istine

Just follow the links .... From today's report from AFP (no link, sorry) on the response of the Serbian Radical Party to the opening of their leader's trial in the Hague comes this sentence:

"While Vojislav Seselj is practically dying in The Hague, the trial was opened as if nothing is happening," said Bozidar Delic of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS).

Božidar Delić, now, that is a name known to TV fans everywhere as the retired general who found a hobby in his golden years of appearing repeatedly as a defence witness for Slobodan Milošević. Is he representing SRS now? I am not certain, but came across this account of a meeting in March, which was attended both by representatives of SRS and by the former TV personality Mr Delić. The sponsors are listed as the "International anti-NATO Movement," together with something called the "Serbian neo-Gaullists."

But follow the links, and one gets to the "National-European Communitarian Party." Their newsletter features a portrait of Ernesto Guevara, no neo-Gaullist himself, on the masthead. But perhaps El Che was a part of their "National-Bolshevik current." The party also has a link to "the situation in Serbia," which leads to a placeholder noting that the page no longer exists. Then this page autotransports the browser to a site listing a variety of activities of the group, including a heartwarming essay finally telling us the truth about Stalin. Oh, and also to the Serbian intifada. From Vladivostok to Reykjavik, preko Milvokija, bre.

But where is Waldo? I mean, Boža.

Not so much

Later than most, we finally watched the Borat film over the weekend. Our expectations were mixed, no doubt. On the one hand, we expected a lot of puerile humor and exploitation of naive subjects (but were mostly unworried about any possible sullying of the reputation of Kazakhstan). On the other hand, we were primed by a variety of media accounts presenting the oft-disguised Mr Cohen as a guerrilla comic who exposes the dark side of American life by appearing to be foolish enough to share the prejudices of his interlocutors. At the same time, saddled by disappointing experience, we arrived with the awareness that efforts to inflate characters developed for sketch comedy to the scale of the large screen usually fail.

The end result, comparing the actual viewing experience to our expectations, is that the film has a little of all that and not enough of any of it. What is disgusting is often amusing, if you like that sort of thing, but not overwhelmingly or hilariously so. What is exploitative is apparent, but not mean enough that anybody seeing it would actually care. As for the biting political satire, well, Borat unearths the surprising fact that racism exists, but there is nothing there that anybody did not already know. He has a couple of interviews with minor ex-politicians, but uses only a few seconds of footage from each; these interviews must not have gone well. In sum, what comes across on film is a bit smarter than, say, Candid Camera, but neither as revealing nor as feeling as Tito po drugi put među Srbima. There are a few moments that stand out from the howling pack of moments: most of these involve people indulging Borat for reasons unknown, but the rapidly shifting response of a rodeo audience to his rants is truly scary, and a group of drunken fratboys is distressingly recognizable.

We left the screening thinking of ways in which somebody with a similar idea might produce a truly impressive film. It would probably not be a popular hit, then. If the producers made a "making-of" documentary parallel with the film, though, that might be really fascinating. As it turned out, I walked into the theatre thinking I would disagree with Darko, but walked out agreeing.

Montenegro as it... might be?

Real trains...

For those who have not been to Montenegro, but have watched the latest James Bond, this might be a bit of a dissapointment. The high-speed train from Switzerland to somewhere in Montenegro bears little resemblence to the Montenegrin railways today and would lose its attraction somewhere along the line of the 30 hours long journey. And the hotel is also not quite the Hotel Crna Gora... But it seems that Montenegrin tourism will profit and Casino Royal is already invoked in Montenegro's advertisment . Sorry, just no evil lair there (except maybe Radovan Karadzic's).


Fake Hotels...




...and real ones

Dont fear the reaper

The trial of Vojislav Šešelj began today, with the accused represented by David Hooper as his own remaining energy, constrained by a melodramatic attempt to demonstrate that hunger strikes are available even to the morbidly obese, is being spent in the effort to think up evocative names for the tribunal judges and prosecutors which he has not already used. The way things are going, he remains well behind his colleague Branimir Glavaš in the effort to transform the putrefaction of the flesh into publicity.

Meanwhile, the preelection season has been marked by one protected witness offering selective testimony against a few of the people with whom he communicated when he was a conspirator, and by the police demonstrating that on instruction, they can produce a limited number of fugitives.

Sad farewells of the week

Ferenc Puskas and Robert Altman.

Rentacops gone wild

This video was taken by a student at the UCLA library. It shows campus police repeatedly using tasers against a student. An officer threatened to use the weapon against another student who requested a name and badge number. What is a taser? The name is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle, and it is designed to stun a person by discharging an electric current into the body. Its intended use is to allow law enforcement officers to stop a highly violent individual without a high risk of causing death. It is on these grounds that such taser advocates as the company that makes them (duh) and several police agencies that use them (the RCMP, for example) defend their use. Controversies over their use have to do with their ability to cause death when they are used against people with certain medical conditions, such as heart conditions, and with incidents like this one at UCLA, in which they are used solely for intimidation against people who clearly and obviously present no danger at all. That is why organizations like Amnesty International highlight concerns about abuse of this weapon, and advocate that their use be suspended.

UCLA has done pretty much nothing to address the incident, other than repeatedly administering electric shocks to acting chancellor Norman Abrams until he issued a weaselly statement blaming the student for being attacked.

I am a graduate of the University of California, having got two degrees at the Berkeley campus. During my years there I provided them with a lot of free and below-market labor. It is a system with a good deal to be proud of, a fantastic faculty, outstanding library collections, an often okay record in dealing with a hostile state government. The administration when I was there did not generally contribute to the quality or reputation of the institution, and now that condition seems to have reached metastasis. As much as I believe in public education, this system is not getting one penny from me, ever.

Update: Was it enough for Norman Abrams to demonstrate that he is not capable of carrying out the job he holds? Apparently not, assistant UCLA police chief Jeff Young also had to show his complete lack of familiarity with the appropriate use of force. Does the Taser Corporation recommend using their device as a "pain compliance technique"? What kind of compliance is expected from a person who has been immobilised by pain? Here is the LA Times showing why the officers involved, their commanders, and Norman Abrams, who have already disgraced themselves and the institution that they represent for no apparent reason, should be fired and prosecuted:

Several local police agencies — including the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department — allow officers to use Tasers only if a suspect poses a physical threat or is acting combatively.

The sheriff's policies expressly say deputies can't use Tasers simply to move someone.

"We look for assaultive conduct," said Bill McSweeney, chief of the sheriff's leadership and training division "We generally don't use the Taser on passive resisters except when an individual indicates explosive action to follow, such as a verbal threat."

But UCLA police are allowed to use Tasers on passive resisters as "a pain compliance technique," Assistant Chief Jeff Young said in an interview Friday.

See the comments to this post on the highly charged atmosphere in Houston and Slovenia.

Another update: Does the UCLA police force screen its employees at all? Then perhaps they might have known why officer Terrence Duren was fired from the Long Beach Police Department. Or they could have used the evidence that was immediately available to them based on incidents at UCLA when he choked a student with his nightstick, and when he shot a homeless man. Or is a long history of complaints considered a positive recommendation?

Low-end imperial tourism

I do believe that this video is the most tasteless thing to which I have yet linked from this blog, at least in the video category. Not that I haven't tried. "Sonne, strand and šljivovic," apparently.

History in the Making

In case you did not already have the urge to spend your holidays in Kosovo, the Department of Tourism of the Ministry of Trade and Industry launched a nice website. Better than "Discover Wild Beauty" or "The Mediterrenean as it once was", the slogan is "History in the Making"... Not that wrong, but usually tourists are just not very enthusiastic to witness history in the making. Other suggestion might be "Where status really matters" or "Travel to Kosovo: Standards and Status" or "When you want to leave your holidays from a different country you go to: Kosovo"

Zar je zločin citirati ludake?

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

Democratic values and procedures

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

Musical interlude

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

Clueless in the Balkans, fall 2006 edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Special fantastic thing for our friends in London

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

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

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

Let me know what you think of our project.

www.londonsevdah.com
londonsevdah.blogspot.com

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

Thank you, Mirza!

On the universality of declarations

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

Apsolutna vlast apsolutno goji

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

Gish Jen in Beograd

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

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

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

Možeš i da gubiš snagu kao kada gubiš glavu

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

Update: Did I say unindicted? Too soon.

Continuity

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

Slanina

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

(Image courtesy of WebMuseum)

A good day for democracy

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

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

Nikolic's visions

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

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

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

Pixels, justice and mediascape

Gavin Simpson and Sameer Padania have a question:

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

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

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

Chronicle of a death sentence foretold

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

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

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

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

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

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

Šetnja da divljoj strani

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

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