Home office follies: They never end!

Hey, remember those documents and that letter the good folks in Sheffield wanted me to wait twelve weeks to receive back? Here I get this message from them that says:

Dear Applicant

Your letter and original documents have been returned to us undelivered.
We are having trouble sending these out to you as the package is so big.

Would it be possible for you to arrange a courier to collect these? We will hold them here until we receive a response from you.

Kind Regards
[name mercifully redacted by me]
HSMP Team

All right now, from the top: 1) my name is not "Applicant," 2) if you did not have a clue what to do with documents that you requested, such as the original certificates for my degrees, why did you ask for them?, 3) are you aware of the trust that is placed in you when people send valuable personal documents, and what is implied by your cavalier attitude toward that trust?, 4) is there special training a person can undergo to achieve a level of incompetence so monumental?

For your notational crudite, and not for your sheep

Okay, fine, I am all for government agencies doing what they can to communicate with the public. While the US State Department is not as shrouded in secrecy as some other agencies, including private companies that make US foreign policies with no disclosure or oversight at all, a start is a start. And a bad start is a bad one. Shall we begin with the name? Dipnote is presumably meant to convey something like "note about diplomacy." State Department, will you trust me if I tell you that it does not come off with that connotation? As for the content, well, they have only begun, but it does not say much and about what it says there is not much to be said.

Having said all that, offering information at all is probably a step in the right direction. Offering timely and useful information with a degree of interactivity and pointers to additional information would be a bigger step. Real dialogue and openness would be too much to hope for, and then the source providing it would be a different source altogether.

Of NATO-states and quasistates

My friends at Open Democracy asked me to comment on the froth around the Kosovo negotiations, so I wrote a little something.

Headline of the week

From Politika:

Како ће Срби прихватити ПМС

It's actually an article about the prospects of a new political party. Which might want to think about a different name. If not, let's hope they will accept it about as well as anyone else.

Quote of the week

Tomislav Nikolić, Serbian Radical Party, quoted by B92: "'Serbia has to be divided between democrats and radicals,' citizens have to decide between two large parties, and 'there is no room for the existence of some third, with an unknown profile which will in the end decide which of those two parties will be in power'."

This came in an article about how Novi Sad mayor Maja Gojković has distanced herself from the party since taking office, but it does sound like Mr Nikolić is speaking in the general sense. Is it time for people to ask, finally, which side they are on?

Vi me ne razumete mladi gospodine / ja strašno volim vaše životinje

It is a while since this blog has memed, but we have been caught with one by everybody's favourite coturnician blogger Bora. He is asking for experiences with animals, so there is no way I could not comply without the help of my daughter. Azra's answers go first, followed by Eric's:

An interesting animal I had

A: Lajos, my cute little Schipperke.
He is always up to something. He is a little naughty. A dog may not be so interesting by “type of animal” standards, but by doggie standards he is very interesting.
He is also about as well travelled as any other dog around. He has been trans-Atlantic 8 times so far, and he’ll be continuing to go trans-Atlantic for quite a while. He has been driven across the USA. He has been to many countries in Europe. Pretty much everywhere I go, he goes with me.

E: We used to have a horse named Amigo. Although his name meant friend, in fact Amigo had kind of a mean sense of humour. When we would take visitors for a ride on the beach, whoever was riding Amigo would get the surprise of breaking away suddenly from the group, running out into the water, and getting thrown in. This was the only kind of nestašluk in which he ever indulged.

An interesting animal I ate

A: Ostrich. I had it in a goulash, and it tasted great! Ostrich goulash was my favorite food for quite a while.

E: I love the Bambi paprikaš at Lovac, and also at the Čuburska lipa restaurant which is operated by Josip Broz, who shares a name with his famous grandfather.

An interesting animal in a museum

A: In the Harvard Museum, there is this enormous turtle/tortoise (I’m not sure which) shell from a prehistoric turtle/tortoise. It’s big enough for an average person to climb in and move around comfortably (though they wouldn’t be able to stand up). I always love seeing it.

E: The monkey house at the Belgrade zoo is always a treat. Partly for the monkeys, which are always up to something sort of humanesque. But it is best when there are a lot of people there, who try to get the attention of the monkeys from the other side of the glass. It is not always possible to tell which animal is on display for which.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal

A: I gave my dog a swimming lesson. We would go to the beach and drop him in the water. He would immediately doggie-paddle (ha-ha) towards the shore. We’d have to ambush him, and then he would go swimming around, sneezing in protest. Eventually, though, he learned to like it. I wish he’d known that from the beginning!

E: I don’t know why this question keeps giving me images of dissecting frogs and the like in high school biology. That job always disgusted me, everything from the implicit cruelty and pointlessness to the smell. Strangely, when I put herbed butter underneath the skin of a chicken, it doesn’t bother me a bit.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat

A: There’s a type of frog that lives in Australia that makes its nice cozy home in a toilet. I think that’s about as interesting a natural habitat as you can get! Before toilets were invented, they had to make do with murky swamps.

E: I don’t know how interesting they are, but they have a lot of charm and are nicely suited to the limits of their environment: prairie dogs!

The practice, I think, is to tag other bloggers with an instruction to respond. I think what I will do instead is just encourage people to respond if they feel so inspired.

Nenad Bogdanović, 1954-2007

Today the mayor of Belgrade, Nenad Bogdanović, died after a long illness. He was smart, modest, decent and energetic, and gave an idea of how political life might be different if every public official was engaged with their community and had the ambition to do the right thing. The first directly elected mayor of the city leaves it behind cleaner, better organised, and better connected with the world around it than it was before he started the job.

Credit where it is due

If anybody has been following my ongoing visa saga, note the difference here. The timeline of receiving entry clearance is as follows:

• Friday -- Receive HSMP visa approval letter; fill out online application for entry clearance, gather documents
• Saturday -- Ship off application, documents and passport to UK consulate in New York
• Monday -- Receive confirmation from Federal Express that materials have been delivered
• Tuesday -- Receive e-mail from consulate confirming that materials have been received and offering an estimate of how long the process takes
• Wednesday -- Receive e-mail from consulate notifying me that approval has been given, telling me that materials have been sent back to me, and giving a tracking number
• Thursday -- Receive passport with entry clearance and return of my documents

Reliable and swift information, no delays, no problems, no complaints. That is the way it is done. I'll bet they could learn to do that in Sheffield too.

Next up is to confirm travel plans and get those students in London taken care of.

Eats shoots and leaves

We have a ton of maslačak. If anyone has any tasty recipes for it to share, they will be ever so welcome in the comments. I already know that chopped up and mixed with tomato in a salad is just delightful.

Spoken but unmarched

The police in Novi Sad have decided, after all, not to permit the march that the local neo-Nazis had planned to mark, of all things, the birthday of Heinrich Himmler. But racist fools will still have a safe place to meet, regardless.

Addendum: Marko Jakšić is no relation to Duško Jakšić or Boža Jakšić, both of whom merit the highest admiration. And Goran Davidović does not want you to call him Führer, please.

Chlorine and anarchy

It would be a fun little tidbit for any cheeky chronicler of politics (for example, Wonkette) to note that the Kennebunkport Bushies are not adored by the fellow who maintains their swimming pool. Of East Ethnian interest may also be the fact that the same guy's brother made this fine documentary film about anarchists and other folks in Zagreb.

Less time on the sidewalk

Starting January, it will become a little bit easier for people who are not in power or under indictment to travel to EU countries from Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Every little bit.

News that's fit to click

It has been about a year, and now the NY Times has decided to abandon its experiment of charging for access to some items. No surprises there: experience has shown that web users are often happy to buy goods and services online, generally willing to tolerate advertising that is not too intrusive, but mostly resist paying for content. Considering that most of the content for which the Times was charging was opinion articles by their columnists, they were faced with the fact that there is plenty of material of better quality available for free.

Do novih pobjeda radničke klase

I have just been informed that the Home Office has reversed its previous decision and decided to issue me an HSMP visa. Next steps: applying for entry clearance, making travel plans, and getting my butt over to my fab new job. After that, I must learn to say things like "flat" and "cor."

Saab story

Anyone care to buy our car?

Make thee mightier yet

I do believe that I may have said in a previous post on my deepening relationship with the UK Home Office that their refusal of my visa application and my grounds for appeal are "too boring for any of the readers here." But did I prove that? I can, you know. Below is the text of the appeal letter I sent to my friends in the HSMP office in Sheffield, which will arrive to them by express courier on Monday (and has already arrived to some of them by e-mail).

14 September 2007

Highly Skilled Migrant Programme
PO Box 3468
Sheffield S3 8WA
UK

Re: Request for review of application [right, I'm going to give you my case number]

To the members of the HSMP team:

I am in receipt of your letter of 28 August 2007 informing me of the decision on my application for an HSMP visa [secret magic number]. I believe that the HSMP team has reached an incorrect decision based on misinterpretation of the documents provided, and am therefore requesting reconsideration of the application for the reasons set out below.

The decision was based on an interpretation of the documentation I provided under the section “Previous earnings.” Allow me to address the contentions made in your letter of 28 August individually:

1. The letter claims that "the evidence does not corroborate the wage slips." It is difficult to follow the logic of this contention, since the wage slips are evidence, and their function is to corroborate, not to be corroborated. The wage slips do establish that the income claimed was earned, and the letter does not claim otherwise. It is unclear what is meant by corroboration in this context, since there exists no other evidence of what is contained in the wage slips aside from the wage slips themselves, which were provided to your office in accordance with the guidance notes for application. They clearly set out the amount of my salary for each fourteen-day period covered by each wage slip, the amount deducted for state and federal taxes, payments into federal and private pension schemes, medical insurance, and the amount deposited into my bank account.

2. The letter claims that I "have not provided an original tax return that corroborates individual earnings for the full period claimed." Here again it is not possible to discern from the letter what the HSMP team found to object to regarding my tax return. The only basis I can use for response is the half sentence offered in the letter. What follows is my detailed response based on what the HSMP team’s conclusion might have been, as derived through an exegesis of the half sentence in the letter:

a) Is the tax return original? Our tax return was filed electronically, which is done by an increasing number of people in the United States as it accelerates the process, simplifies the procedure of filling out the famously complicated forms, and reduces the potential for error. This practice is explicitly encouraged by the Internal Revenue Service as a matter of policy. Since the entire process takes place through electronic transactions, there is no "original" paper document. Rather, when the procedure is completed, the software produces a PDF file with the completed return, one copy of which is sent electronically to the Internal Revenue Service for processing, and one copy of which is downloaded to our computer. If we had filed our taxes using paper documents, we would still not have the original document as this would have been sent to the Internal Revenue Service, and we would have saved a copy for ourselves, as is the normal procedure. The copy which taxpayers save for their files is accepted as evidence of income and taxes paid by every existing relevant institution, including banks, mortgage brokers, and the Internal Revenue Service itself.

b) Is the document a tax return? The document that was provided is what is called a “tax return” as defined by the US Internal Revenue Code, and is referred to as such by taxpayers, accountants, banks, other financial institutions, and the Internal Revenue Service itself. There exists no other type of document which is referred to universally as a “tax return.” Under the definition in the Guidance Notes for the HSMP application, the document provided is also a tax return. The obvious and unavoidable conclusion is that the document is a tax return.

c) Is the tax return individual? There are three options available to taxpayers filing returns in the United States: they may file an “individual” return, file as “married filing jointly,” or they may file as “married filing separately.” The option of filing an “individual” return is not available to taxpayers who are married. My wife and I filed a joint tax return. This is what is done by the overwhelming majority of married couples, particularly if they want to take advantage of joint tax deductions for charitable contributions or child allowances, or if they own property in common. As the status of “married filing separately” involves twice the paperwork, it is generally used by people in less common circumstances, such as married partners who have widely differing individual property holdings or individually owned income-producing assets. Our tax return was prepared in accordance with the US Internal Revenue Code as the most complete and succinct statement of our family income. It may be the case that we could have filed separately when reporting our 2006 income, but 1) at the time, I did not know that I would be accepting employment in the UK, and 2) even if I had, I would not have known about the Byzantine interpretive strategies employed by the UK Home Office. I do not believe that the UK Home Office has the authority to penalise US taxpayers for complying with US tax law.

In any case, I corroborated my individual earnings with two pieces of additional evidence: 1) my wage slips covering an entire twelve-month period in 2006 and 2007, and 2) the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 "salary letters" which are sent to each member of the faculty by the president of Clark University (my employer since 1997) giving details of salary for the coming academic year.

d) Does the documentation cover the full period? I provided documentation of earnings over an academic year, which is how salaries are calculated by my employer. Income tax returns cover earnings over a calendar year. The guidance notes for the HSMP application do not specify that the periods covered by two types of documentation need to correspond exactly with one another. They request income documentation for 12 of the preceding 15 months, and they request the most recent available tax return. Since tax returns are filed in April of each year to declare income for the preceding calendar year, there is no possibility of providing that type of documentation for income earned during 2007. Since most of the period between January 2006 and December 2006 does not fall within the 15 months preceding the HSMP application, that evidence is not suitable for submission. Here the HSMP staff appears to have invented a rule which is not stated in the application instructions, and would contain fatal internal contradictions if it were. The contention in your letter of 28 August is arbitrary, and it contradicts the published guidance.

3. The letter claims that two of the supporting documents provided state "your expected salary and they do not state your actual salary for the period claimed." The two documents in question are letters from the President of Clark University, Dr John Bassett, informing me of my salary for the 2006-2007 and the 2007-2008 academic years. These letters are sent each year to each permanent member of the faculty at Clark University, as they are at nearly every other university in the United States. According to US employment law and the rules of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), these letters are legally binding documents with contractual status. As the president of the University, Dr Bassett is the highest ranking administrative officer of the institution, and under the university statute does not have the authority to discuss vague expectations in this type of communication (although he may do so in other contexts, such as addresses before a public audience).

For the reasons stated above, it is apparent to me that the HSMP team has misinterpreted the documentation which was submitted to them, has rejected documentation without valid reason, and consequently reached an incorrect conclusion in considering my case. I am therefore appealing the decision and requesting that the case be reconsidered.

Please permit me to remind you that my application was submitted with a request for urgent treatment, and that I request that my appeal also be treated urgently.


Thank you for considering my appeal.

Sincerely,

Dr Eric Gordy

Only hope (also, glory) stands between me and a positive decision. We shall see.

Make muster 'gainst the foreign hand that's raised to the Rose of England

The appeal of the Home Office's decision went off to them today. I will keep everyone posted on my long road to gastarbeiterlichkeit.

For the record, perhaps I should note that I am not a terrorist, have never committed a crime, and always clean up after my dog.

The triumph of bureaucracy over matter

Well, it took some doing, but I finally got from the Home office notification of the status of my visa application. It turns out I was refused (Jelenko, gdje si?), for reasons that I believe I will be able to contest. But let's get to the first step: how does one receive information about the disposition of his or her own case? It turns out that it can be done in several hairpulling steps:

1. Ask to be informed.
2. Fail to receive a reply.
3. Ask for intervention by the complaints unit.
4. Receive a bewildering variety of contradictory replies, some stating that the case has already been taken up, some stating that the case will be taken up in the future, and some stating that the case cannot be taken up.
5. Ask to be informed again.
6. Fail to receive a reply again (repeat two times).
7. Find the address of the head of the Border and Immigration Agency.
8. Ask her to intervene ("Hej ministre, jel mogu da dobijem jednu garažu za svoj bend?").
9. In the meantime, continue to receive correspondence telling you that it is impossible to be notified of the status of your case in less than twelve weeks "due to security reasons."
10. After a short interval, receive the document that they were obligated to supply in the first place, along with a note stating that informing applicants of the status of their cases in a timely manner "is not common practice and has been done on this occasion exceptionally."

The details of the matter and the grounds on which I will appeal are, I do not doubt, too boring for any of the readers here. But there is a nice little gem in the letter I finally did receive, which contains the passage:

You may request one reconsideration of your application. This will be carried out on the basis of exactly the same information provided in your original application. If you wish us to review our decision, you should clearly set out the reasons why you believe the decision is incorrect in a letter to the HSMP Team or complete the review request form available on our website: www.workingintheuk.gov.uk. This must be sent within 28 days of the date of the decision. Please note that any review requests received more than 28 days after the date of the decision will not normally be accepted and any verbal request for a review cannot be considered as valid.

Considering that I was able to be notified of the decision within 17 days only by virtue of the extraordinary intervention of a powerful individual, and that otherwise the Home Office seems to insist that twelve weeks is a reasonable amount of time in which to be notified of decisions, an interesting possibility arises. Since weeks, if they are calculated using base-10, generally last 7 days, and since 12 x 7 = 84, and since 84 - 28 = 56, it looks as though somebody has calculated a way to deprive every applicant of the right of appeal by design.

Quod erat zajebatum.

Your dreams made real

Everybody has a dream. Mine is to introduce the guy on the label of Jagodinsko pivo to the guy on the label of Birra Moretti. Vlade Divac aims a bit higher than me, and wants to use his new foundation to secure homes for people who are still living in refugee camps (might he have an object lesson for his younger colleagues?). And some other people's dreams may be better left alone.

Neither sleet nor snow

Bless their little hearts. The Home Office, after being informed by me that the claim that was made in their previous communication with me could not possibly be true, sent me this corrective note today:

Dear Applicant, Your documents and letter were actually sent back to you by airmail on the 28th of August. Please allow up to twelve weeks for delivery.
Regards,

Twelve weeks to receive a letter! What dread postal service dogpaddles off Albion's shores?

The sporting life

The NCAA proposes the following nine indicators of "good sportsmanship" (their definition is hardly free of solipsism, but is nice and concrete):

Good Sportsmanship Indicators:

1. Respect for officials - student-athletes raise hand or arm to signal a foul.
2. Student-athletes shake hands before and after the contest.
3. Unsportsmanlike behavior violations are addressed appropriately.
4. Inappropriate conduct by coaches has consequences.
5. Appropriate recognition when competitor gets injured and is forced to leave the competition.
6. Fans, coaches and student-athletes are held accountable for negative behavior.
7. Fans are enthusiastic supporters of their teams but respectful to opposing teams and their supporters.
8. There is a respect shown by all competitors for the opposing team.
9. Gamesmanship by coaches or players is frowned upon.

One of the images that appears frequently in the list is that of the "student-athlete." In that spirit, here Darko Miličić applies, in his explanation of his team's dismal performance, what he has learned in his courses on obstetrics:

Continuing to hold

More fun in communication with the Home Office. Although they did not respond to my request to confirm that they had received my application, they did inform me over the phone (no, they did not call me) that my application was refused. But they did not inform me of the reason, which would matter because it would determine whether I am able to appeal or have to submit a new application. Today they informed me, sort of, that an official notification was mailed to me over a week ago. In this message, they told me that the letter had been sent to me "in the envelope you provided" (I did not provide an envelope), and gave me a tracking number (which was the tracking number under which I had sent my materials to them). This leaves me in a dilemma as to whether it is worse that the Home Office 1) fails to provide information, 2) provides incomplete information, or 3) provides inaccurate information.

Holding pattern

I expect to be back with caustic comments about news stories written by other people fairly soon. In the meantime, I am out of my old job and office and not quite into the new one. Nothing will happen there until my friends at the amusingly named "Home Office" (do they eat chicken-fried steak there?) come through with a visa.

Why a complex visa application instead of a simple work permit application, you ask? I would happily answer that question, if I understood the reason. And just how complex? Well, that I can answer.

They want the originals of my undergraduate and graduate diplomas, which means pulling them out of their frames and devising a way of sending them to Sheffield. They want paycheck stubs covering an uninterrupted twelve-month period, with a calculation of the value of earnings over that period in colourful UK currency on the date of the last paycheck stub. They want a letter from my undergraduate institution certifying that courses were taught in English. This is a partial list. How secure do I feel sending this pile of documentation to a post office box in Sheffield? Let's just say that earlier this year they lost the passport of a dear friend of mine, and that even on request they will not acknowledge receipt of my documents. Perhaps it could be objected that a week is not sufficient time to acknowledge receipt of a package, or that two days is not sufficient time to respond to a simple e-mail inquiry. A number of other premises could be viable here. How often has it happened that people who appear to be inept are in fact merely bashful about their competence?

This may be something of a rush introduction the joys of UK bureaucracy. In any case, my Balkan friends seem to be delighted that "they do this to Americans too." They do!

I have meanwhile come to terms with the prospect that I will arrive at my new job late, and remain trusting that I will arrive at all. In that spirit, the office I never believed would be reasonably clean is now wholly empty, and today the car is getting its last bit of loving care from our mechanic, after which I will wash it and sell it.

And readers will forgive me, perhaps, if I seem a little distracted?

Letnji raspust

Observant readers will have already noticed that I have not been posting here much of late. The reasons for this are nothing unusual: I have been pretty busy here in Belgrade, and the preparation for my new job and our move is fairly intensive. So this has not left a lot of time or energy for posting.

This tells me that it may be time to give East Ethnia a well deserved rest. I'll be leaving the site alone until at least September or so, when I will be resurfacing in a new location. It is also possible that I may put some time into conceiving another type of web presence, after three years of this blog. Keep your eyes open, I will either reappear here in the same format or announce something else.

Lazy person's guide: How to walk your dog in Belgrade

1. Go down stairs to the kafić that somebody very thoughtfully put in the space between your building and the one next.
2. Release dog.
3. Order coffee, chat with neighbours.
4. Order another coffee, chat some more.
5. Repeat as necessary.

Za stan spreman!

Last week it was a prominent ex-legalist who was inviting folks to a fancy new Serbian-American war in Kosovo, if you recall. And who is willing to come with him on his wild ride? According to a survey by CeSiD (press release downloadable here, item as reported by B92), "around 70 percent of respondents are not willing to enter any kind of armed conflict over Kosovo, while 12 percent, most of them housewives and pensioners, consider it necessary to enter into war with the Albanians or with the international community." This core of support should not be underestimated.

Toothbrushes with celebrity

Prokleto dobro znam that I have not been updating much in the past several days, apologies to those resilient readers who keep dropping by here nonetheless. I cannot claim to have as good a reason for closing up shop as the ones offered by a fine Greek deli which offers outstanding toast in Minneapolis.

Most of the time here has been spent in gentle work. A little bit of preparation for my fabulous new arbajt, a bit of hanging out with the very beguiling Palestinian-Israeli conflict transformation group that has begun its visit to the region, a bit of writing, and a lot of the intense warm-weather research activity that goes by the name "sitting around drinking beer with friends."

Last night I made an arduous trek by wild Ikarbus to visit a dear friend in distant Žarkovo, beyond the mountaintops of Banovo brdo. Among his guests was a charming young fellow who knew every lyric, every incident, and every detail of the life of Bob Dylan, which put me in a position to try to dream up answers to questions like "who is Mr Jones?" Surprisingly I found that I had reserves of knowledge of which I had not been aware, or else a good capacity to make stuff up.

As far as I can remember, I have never felt that kind of relation to celebrity. But it may be time to pick it up.

U boj! U boj!

Atta boj, Koštunjavi.

Return?

Perhaps we will know on Thursday, and perhaps we will not. Either way, RFE/RL is carrying the rumour that Feral Tribune could be returning through the good graces of, of all corporations, the prodigal monopolist WAZ. That would be half-good news, I suppose.

Update: Turns out the rumour is half true -- same story, different sponsor.

Shorter version: Responses to Tadić's apology

More responses here, here, here and here. Also check out Viktor's response.

DS: Isn't our boy well mannered?
DSS: President of the Republic, who's that?
Center politicians in Croatia: That was sweet.
Right politicians in Croatia: Maybe, but he's still from Serbia, isn't he?
Serbian NGOs: He's starting to get good at this.
LDP: More, more.
SRS: If that stuff was so bad, why were we so well compensated for it?
SPS: If only we had known about this guy earlier.

A week without Feral

Amidst all the responses to the demise of Feral Tribune at the hands of selective application of tax policy, Boris Dežulović corrects a few errors (as we know, the last number was not the first to fail to reach the kiosks), and offers a short history of the paper and its rotating cast of enemies. And he concludes:

"If tomorrow for the fifth time Feral does not make it to the newsstands, and if there is no Feral next week either, or ever, Croatia will not be the same -- that could be a pathetic obituary for Feral. But we all know that is colossal foolishness: Croatia will be exactly the same, only there will be nobody to tell it."

Report from the pijaca

Fresh ginger root: yes! Coriander: yes, but you have to ask Milanka a day ahead, or perhaps come on a Saturday. Everything else: in scads. Even the fish situation appears to be in a state of constant improvement. I do love me some Kalenić pijaca.

Strawberry field

There are few things as pleasant as a good coincidence. Much to my gratitude, the daily reading in the tazbina includes Novosti and Press (one day I will find out just how they knew to switch from Kurir at the opportune moment), and perhaps my campaign to get them to include Pravda (the domestic edition) may one day succeed. So today's lunchtime discussion included an overview of the lik i delo of Dragan Marković Palma, including an account of this revealing interview in which we find out why Chopin never came to visit him. Then a bit later in the day a friend sends in a fine defense of the honour of Svetozarevo in the form of this notable Discipline kičme cover by Jagodina's own Crni lilihip. Better than the original? I don't know, but not bad at all.

Department of foregone conclusions

If you want to know who murdered Slavko Ćuruvija, spend the next couple of days keeping an eye on the airports, train stations, bus stations, and cash payments for rented apartments in Novi Beograd. An unnamed informer in the office of the special prosecutor decided, by way of Novosti, to tell those of the killers who have neither left the country already nor are protected by occupying a high position when their arrests are supposed to take place.

Večnost

All right, there may no longer be a Manjež, but there will always be a Nick Lowe. Courtesy of Szalonna magazine, here is a piece of his new nosilac zvuka. Call me an umoran starac if you must.

Obituary

Eighty eight years after it first became possible, Kurt Waldheim has died. His legacy will be an inspiration to liars, necrophiles, knaves, twits, hohštapleri, whelps of underachieving cattle and Nazis everywhere.

A short detour into tragedy

No big drama. Last evening I drop by to see a friend, we sit a while, at some point we think we might get something to eat. And where to go? He suggests Manjež. I say, oh, is Manjež working again? He says yes, I say well, you can always go to Manjež.

Historically this last statement was true. You could always go to Manjež. It was the sort of place where you would go if you didn't know where to go. If you were walking in the area you would swing by, because the probability that some group of your friends would be sitting at the tables on the sidewalk in front was reliably high. The place was always dirty, its WC like a scene out of Trainspotting, and their food would always just barely cling to this side of average. The beer was BIP (a local acronym, BIP = Bedna Imitacija Piva). But it was cheap, the crowd of people mixed and welcoming, and before you sat down konobar Draško already knew what you wanted. Manjež was a rare reassurance that whatever else was going on, something was always right with the world.

Last year the place was closed down for remodelling, and the people who did the job could have done a lot worse. They did not fill it with neon and chrome, or turn it into a casino, or stick fountains everywhere. It seems like there was a serious effort to recapture the atmosphere of what Manjež may well have been at some time, a beokafana period piece of the kind in which the characters in an Alfred Hitchcock film might dine while waiting to shuffle onto a train full of hidden murder weapons and a vaguely menacing border guard. They did not raise the prices much, and the food was just fine.

All the same, Manjež is no more. It has never happened before that on a pleasant summer evening, I sit with a friend at a sidewalk table and we are the only people there. Nor that opera arias waft gently though the windows. Nor that we are not repeatedly approached by the local stray cats (what did they do to them?). Konobar Draško is nowhere to be seen. People: Manjež is not Manjež without konobar Draško. More than this: Belgrade is not Belgrade without konobar Draško.

There is one more unremarkable spot in the city, and the world is just a little bit poorer.

Advice you can't really argue with

Ah, so pleased to back in my palatial beogradska garsonjera. Everything is just as we left it except for one thing.

There is a colorful new sticker in the lift advising children on how to behave while sampling that high and frequently operational technology. Next to the useful instructions on how a child should, in case of emergency, phone the gradsko stambeno preduzeće using only an oversized teddy bear, comes this piece of indisputable advice:

A boxing match in the lift?
The lift will be a severe referee!

It's true, I think.

She stayed with me until she moved to Notting Hill

Actually, my guess it that whatever it is, it wont be Notting Hill. Too expensive, and we prefer to mix with a lower class of people. Also, it seems clear to me that if there is any benefit to living in London, it is the opportunity to be in a neighbourhood with a funny sounding name, and "notting" is in the 49th percentile, considerably below "shoreditch" and "tufnell." But if anybody has a suggested location (postal codes, please -- the search engines ask for them) for places where residence is not too obscenely expensive, schools are good enough for our brilliant daughter, and the atmosphere caters both to doggies and gourmands, then we will grateful for suggestions.

This is, by the way, the "news" I have cryptically mentioned a couple of times. Our little family is pulling up its carefully cultivated Massachusetts roots and will be adding its own little brdašce to the London Balkanscape. The Ethniette will acquire one of those accents you hear on late night radio saying "oh seven hours, Greenwich mean time" (I intend to keep my Northwest monotone, thank you very much), Sig.ra Ethnia will ply her trade in that foreign land, and I will be Senior Lecturer in Southeast European Politics at UCL's dear old SSEES. As for Lajoš, the vet has stuck one of those horrifying chips into him, so now he will have the added marginal utility of being able to store phone numbers or recipes or something.

Of course I am absolutely thrilled to join up with the outstanding existing faculty there and with the hugely talented people who will be coming in at the same time as me. Add to this the incredible crew of people at other universities in London and elsewhere in the UK (you know who you are), and it is not hard to see where the new Balkanological paradise is coming together. As much as it is the džob of my dreams, I will do my best never to become one of those things they call an "expat." More of a gastarbajter, I should think.

The coming year will be tough. The family will be separated for some portion of it, and we will have to learn to like jellied eels. But mostly I am stunned by my good fortune, and constantly remembering the pop song line, "when you come from a background of bargain bins, you're bound to fear it ends where it begins." It still seems improbable to me, sitting as I am here in Budapest with three weeks worth of stinky t-shirts and socks from the student trip drying to the eclectic sounds of Radio Petöfi.

My colleagues in the Clark University sociology department, who I hope will come to visit us in London, have been informed. I still have to resolve with the administration under what conditions I will be departing. And I told the students who were travelling with me, who were very sweet in offering me their congratulations and a parting gift of 250 grammes of espresso.

The Yugoslavia pavilion at Auschwitz

The way that the Auschwitz museum is set up, just about all of the exhibits are at the first camp, Auschwitz I (and not at the very much larger Auschwitz II - Birkenau, which is where the large-scale killing for which the place is known was committed). At Auschwitz I is the main exhibit hall with artifacts trucked over from Birkenau for display, some barracks restored as exhibit halls, and a row of the "national" exhibits in former barracks. The "national" exhibits are prepared by specialists from the country represented in the space, and in many it is clear that a good deal of thought went into the selection of display materials, thematic emphasis, the distribution of emotional and historical clues, and many other factors. It is also clear that all of these exhibits are regularly updated and revised. All except one, which has obviously not been changed for a good twenty years, and is not likely to be changed any time in the foreseeable future.

The Yugoslavia exhibit is on the top floor of a barrack that is shared with the very razzle-dazzle Austrian exhibit (which centers on the dangers of nationalism). The first room presents general information on the period, with many photos repeated from the main exhibit hall a few buildings away. There is a very little bit of information about the 24,000 people from Yugoslavia who were put in the camp. Some of them were in a resistance organisation, if you want to know more about that or how resistance organisations functioned, or how the Yugoslavian ones related with the others, you will not find out from the exhibit.

The second room gives a general presentation, very NOB-centric, of the occupation and war in Yugoslavia. Some crimes, some collaborators, and a whole lot of Partisan heroics. The passage of time makes this emphasis more interesting, since this is now the only site at the museum where the myth of massive resistance is preserved. The visitor is able to follow the growth of Partisan divisions, peek in at AVNOJ, trace the expansion of liberated territory. The exhibit ends with a big photo of Tito signing the new constitution of FNRJ.

Since the country that designed the exhibit no longer exists, and since the museum site does not have extra barracks for the countries that have come about in the meantime, the Yugoslav pavilion will probably remain a fascinating relic of Communist historiography for some time. I left the hall torn between the feeling that some good historians could probably (without the sponsorship of any government) do much better on the one hand, and the urge to sing Partisan songs on the other.

Soon to be back and ethnier than ever

Greetings to East Ethnians the world round from the charming Krakow airport. The last students were seen off this morning, and now your humble correspondent is off to a (dare I say well deserved?) three days of vacation in lovely Budapest, from whence posting shall recommence. I believe that in the last post I said something cryptic about the possibility of there being news. Hold fast, it will come.

The blog silence to come

Gave my last lecture to the student group this morning, and we are preparing to leave on our study tour Tuesday. Much of the time I will be out of the range of electronic communication, so the next couple of weeks should be a good time to sample the lovely blogs on the list to the right. I expect to resurface, thoroughly exhausted, in Budapest on 8 June, at which time I may or may not have news to share.

Department of excessive reactions

We all get frustrated when trains are late, but it seems some people get really angry.

And no, they never did run on time. That is just a myth.

Danas ti je divan dan

A happy 18th birthday to Radio B92! Let's say you had an impressive childhood as a precocious, brilliant and defiant youngster. And let's chalk up all that Ballantine and "Big Brother" stuff to some adolescent wandering. And let's hope for a stellar and productive maturity.

Marija Šerifović and the "new Serbia"

In the comments to the previous post on Marija Šerifović and her Eurovisionary song "Molitva," I linked to another blog that labelled the song a "turbo-folkić," and Bganon argued that "any association is wide of the mark." It seems Vesna Perić Zimonjić agrees. Writing in the Independent, she puts Marija Šerifović in the context of social and political conflicts in Serbia, describing the celebration of her award:

"Belgrade exploded with joy the moment her victory was proclaimed, with thousands taking to the streets, honking car horns and waving the Serbian flag in the capital's central Republic Square until dawn.

Such outpourings are typical when the country's basketball or water polo teams are victorious. But this was different, for it was the first time the proverbially macho Serbs had done the same honours for a young female singer - let alone one with Serifovic's unusual fashion sense."

I am not sure I can say how much importance ought to be attributed to her "fashion sense," which seems to range from K.D. Lang to Bryan Ferry. But it's all good if it supports the characterization of her victory gesture, "Her clenched fist victory salute was widely seen as a show of defiance by the forces in Serbia that stand in direct opposition to the ultranationalists and their policy of isolation and hostility to all minorities."

Maybe that offers a sort of background for the silly argument between the Unija Roma Srbije (in whose campaign Šerifović participated, and in which her mother is a member and her uncle an officer) and the Srpska Radikalna Stranka (of which, they claim, her grandfather is a member) over which political party can claim credit for her singing. She says she is not a member of any party, but that did not seem to distract the party leaders much.

Catherine also has a roundup of press coverage.

Update: It ain't Balkanology without essentialism, right? Here is Frank Tiggelaar's English translation of an article from the Dutch NRC Handelsblad about macho countries and ideal women. Or is it macho women and ideal countries?

Yet another update: Uh oh, bilo bi dobro i meni da pogledate the comments to the previous post, where Paul points us to charges that "Molitva" is lifted from the Albanian hit "Ndarja" by Soni Malaj. And did the unfortunate Scooch pinch a tune from DaRiva?

Readers write!

One writes in with a happy story -- Marija Šerifović, representing Serbia with the song "Molitva," has won at Evrovizija. Apparently that means that Serbia will host the competition next year. That should be fun.

And one writes in with a bizarre story about leech smuggling. The estimated value of 8849 leeches is 722,000 Euros? Apparently leeches are a profitable business. Who knew?

Welcoming the Peace Caravan

The police in Niš are compiling a pretty poor record of protecting people. They are much better at aiding and abetting skinheads.

From CNN's mouth....

Thanks to MediaBistro.

A government, after all

So the deal is: Grobar is out as parliament speaker, Koštunjavi gets to keep the police, and DS gets the military. So it looks as though the DSS coalition with SRS scared the others enough to make them back down.

The government will be weak and ineffective, and DSS will not stop flirting with the far right.

Meat and memory

A friend writes in, with news and photos!

i just saw your blog entry on the canned beef monument. back in my refugee camp days, i myself had to endure twice weekly "suha vecera" consisting of some white bread and cans of "beef in its own juice" which we lovingly referred to by its french name, also on the side of the can next to the picture of the cow head, "boef du son juis" or somesuch because i cannot write french. anyway, that was a convenient time to be a vegetarian.

the discussion on spam sort of misses the point - sending pork to a mostly muslim population under siege would be an insult even beyond the grasp of the international community. or maybe not...? with the beef, they got to feel all culturally sensitive even while sending this sranje.

but my real comment here is that when i visited this monument 3 weeks ago, someone had already altered its meaning. see attached. there is another curious piece of stone nearby, near the entrance to the istorijski muzej, formerly known as the muzej revolucije, which presents another subversive use of the monument genre. that is also attached with english and bosnian versions visible. the other sides say the same thing in french and german.

And now the photos, of the altered monument and the other monument.

Tactics

Early analysis sought to minimize the distress brought on by Tomislav Nikolić's election as presiding officer of the Serbian parliament, stressing that in the likely event that a government is not formed, the parliament would be dissolved on 14 May anyway, and new elections would be called. But today Nikolić proposed an answer to that problem: if a state of emergency could be declared, then no elections would be held. Of course there are many facts that could be interpreted as emergencies: Nikolić proposes the passage of a UN resolution on the independence of Kosovo, and others might suggest that Nikolić himself presents an emergency. Or maybe somebody might burn down the Reichstag.

The gang that couldn't shoot?

Maybe I can be forgiven for failing to get excited about the government's announcement that they have foiled a terrorist attack on the soldiers at Ft. Dix. Partly this comes from the poor credibility of the folks making these types of announcements: the facts tend not to add up to the proposed sum, the prosecutions tend to fizzle, and it is often hard to avoid the perception that somebody is creating panic for panic's sake.

In this case, if there was a planned attack, it seems to have been exceedingly badly planned. A bunch of kids failed comically to maintain secrecy, trained by playing some silly "extreme sport" in their back garden, and planned to go shoot people at a place where they would be massively outnumbered by people who are better armed and trained than they are. Keystone terrorists?

Monument to the international community

In recognition of the effective and unstinting assistance provided during the war, on Friday a group of artists in Sarajevo raised their "Monument to the international community": a metre high golden can of beef. Says Dunja Blažević of the Centre for Contemporary Art, "The message is clear. The Ikar canned beef is remembered by the people of Sarajevo with disgust. Cats and dogs did not want to eat it and people had to. Everybody agreed that we should do the project in this way. It's witty, ironic and artistic."

The person who kindly sent the news along wrote, "With the inscription, 'from the grateful citizens of Sarajevo,' the spam monument is dripping with sarcasm (and a sarcasm that those who are familiar with the region will be sure to recognize!). Besides the obvious chuckle factor, what really struck me about this new monument is that it uses the medium of the monument precisely to subvert its usual message. I think we're likely all familiar with James Young's concept of the counter-memorial, but something like the spam monument seems to be a whole new level of 'counter'."

To protect and to serve

Police will not confirm this, but they appear to be favoring the conclusion that Dejan Anastasijević bombed his own apartment. This was the same police that concluded that Dejan Milenković Bagzi should be sent home with a warning for committing a traffic violation.

Where are the strong and who are the trusted

East Ethnia has has taken the liberty of designing a government for SRS, SPS, NS and DSS now that they are on the verge of making public their coalition.

Prime Minister: Tomislav Nikolić (vršilac dužnosti Vojislava Šešelja)

Deputy Prime Minister and kafe-kuhar: Vojislav Koštunica

Minister of Foreign Affairs: Aleksandar Vučić

Minister of the Interior: Svetlana Ražnatović - Ceca

Minister of Justice: Kosta Čavoški

Minister for State Management and Local Self-Government: Dobrivoje Budimirović - Bidža

Minister of Economy: Borka Vučić

Minister of Agriculture: Petar Panić - Pana Banana

Minister of Mines and Energy: Dragan Jugopetrol Tomić

Minister for Capital Investments and Popular Entertainment: Velimir Ilić

Minister of Trade, Tourism and Services: Nemanja Kusturica

Minister for International Economic Relations: Giovanni di Stefano

Minister of Finance: Željko mali Simić

Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Policy: Bratislava Buba Morina

Minister of Health: Borislav Đorđević - Bora Čorba

Minister of Science and Environmental Protection: Aleksandar Popović (nek "oštro krikuje")

Minister of Education and Sport: Radmilo Marojević

Minister of Culture: Goga Sekulić

Minister of Religion: Tomislav Gačić

Minister for the Diaspora: Brana Crnčević

Minister of Transportation: Dejan Mikavica

Minister for Human Rights and Minorities: Goran Davidović

Director of BIA: Ilija Čvorović

Governor of the National Bank: Dafina Milanović

Without a doubt, this government should remind people of the good old days that the members of the coalition want never to end.

Plus ça change, plus c'est Murta

The parliamentary coalition of SRS, SPS, NS and junior partner DSS has agreed to elect Tomislav Nikolić, an entrepreneurial graveyard director from Kragujevac, as president of the Serbian parliament. According to Nikolić, this is not "yet" a new governing coalition. According to DSS spokesperson Miloš Aligrudić, what motivated DSS to finally abandon any pretence of discontinuity with the old regime was the desire to prevent any changes at the interior ministry and the intelligence agencies.

Disappointment

Went to see The Namesake. It was good until about halfway through, then it turned into The Joy Luck Club. Ah well.

What would Escoffier do?

Now that Zveki Zmija has been given the chance to publicly lament his fate, Serbia will soon face crisis-level shortages of people threatening people. Stepping in: a bunch of people from Kruševac who call themselves the "Car Lazar Brigade." They promise unspecified action in Kosovo, but also to become "the foundation of a new Christian militia."

Leaving aside the fact that private armed forces are illegal (and why not leave it aside, since everybody else seems to), I endorse the nascent practice of naming vigilante groups after brands of cheap red wine. Sadly, there is no wine marketed under the name "dvorska budala" or "topovsko meso." The closest they could come would be one with unfortunate implications of animal abuse.

Two nonstarters

To start your day, two failed initiatives. Political parties failed to agree on forming a government in Serbia, leading the president to announce that he will intervene. And on the burning issue of legalising weed, a bunch of irrelevant people cancelled their march after receiving threats from a bunch of twits.

So this is freedom

After the first of May, the third, which is World Press Freedom Day. To mark the occasion, Freedom House has issued its 2007 press freedom survey, and its press releases today include a number of regional reports on press freedom this year. The report categorizes the press in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia as "partly free," noting the types of pressure and attacks that have been discussed here and on other Balkan blogs, as well as a lot of other places.

Among the failed regional events scheduled to celebrate the day, the Union of Journalists of Serbia (UNS -- not to be confused with the Independent Union of Journalists of Serbia, NUNS) was to deliver an award to Denis Latin, editor and host of the popular TV program Latinica. Latin refused the award, telling Index:

"my moral principles and human conscience will not allow me to accept this award from the hands of the leadership of the Union of Journalists of Serbia who not so long ago showed themselves to be celebrators of crime, destruction, and the occupation of Vukovar. They may have had good intentions, and the award may have some some point. However, the problem is with the leading figures of that Union which played a quite infamous role at the time of the destruction and occupation of Vukovar. I am simply not comfortable accepting the award."

The same article from Index quoted above has some interesting explanation and self-justification from UNS president Nino Brajović about his own role at the time (it is cited to Slobodna Evropa, but I have not found the original). None of which prevented him from writing a letter to Latin in which he laments:

"Sadly, the situation is such that that it is still impossible to carry on a strictly professional discussion, without politicizing and malicious pressures."

But in that regard, he is probably speaking for himself (despite writing as the head of a professional association).

Živio 1. maj!

I neglected to post anything for International Workers' Day (in the Stati Uniti, Loyalty Day), but Seesaw most certainly did not.

The US is of course the only country in which I have lived where 1 May is not celebrated, which is odd, considering the events that led to its becoming an international holiday.

Concrete-eating dogs?

I can confirm that there are dogs who will eat anything, and also that it is vitally important to get a diet with sufficient minerals. This does not mean, however, that I find the story of the psi betonožderi of Piva wholly credible.

Update: Silly me. Rats. That resemble dogs. If you met my dog, you would understand how easy it was for me to become confused.

Ivica Račan

He was ill for a while, and it was expected, but this morning Ivica Račan passed away. He may have done less than what could have been hoped, but his influence was generally positive and hopeful, and in contrast with many of his contemporaries on the political scene, he seemed to be a decent person. The competition to take over leadership of his party has already begun, and if it produces a new generation of leaders who are oriented toward the future, that will be a unique legacy.

Adventures on the employment front

A happily anonymous friend writes of her recent job interview at an institution which will also remain happily anonymous:

The [adjective applying name of university] were not exactly a love at first sight. They are more like a former polytechnic with an excellent business school, 5 sociology people total so far, no research funds of their own, they were even asking how much money exactly I will be able to bring per semester if [name of a perfectly innocent friend whose project we work on]'s project continues, and can I guarantee that the article that I have under revision is going to be published by December 2008 (RAE cut-off deadline). Plus (or minus) large teaching load with students who take sociology for instrumental reasons mostly. Ooh, I should also mention one puffin-guy with a "am I not an aristocrat bohemian" look, who asked if for my research on antinationalism and women's groups I would not use Žižek's work on hegemony? My reply: I could not possibly rely on my concepts of hegemony vs. nationalism taken from a person whose empirical knowledge ends with the view of his kitchen (if that). There was also a [name of an academic discipline which is not ours] professor with the look "I should be at a better university" who asked how I would object to some Weberian criticism that what I am doing is too political. My reply: I don't think that Weber suggested that we abandon politics.

Hideous poor library they have for social sciences, old books, no money for JSTOR database even. But business school is thriving.

On the top of all, they staged the interviews like it was recruitment for a professorship, asking candidates to make two different presentations to two different audiences. I should say that there were some quite friendly faculty people who also looked like they would be trying to get jobs elsewhere.

Thank you, my comrades-musketeers, for writing the letters, let's hope that if you would be pestered to write them again it would be for a more research oriented interesting place. The proximity to [toponyms for locations more appealing than the unnamed one] was the primary reason for me applying. Apart from that, I, of course, do have some torments of conscience for criticizing [unnamed university], because such universities have 2, 3 times larger presence of students children of newer immigrants than, say, Uni [deleted toponym which appears frequently in the work of Billy Bragg]. And now you know everything you always did not need to know about [unnamed university].

One bonus detail I just remembered from yesterday:
Professor Dr. Herr [surname of a person] also asked (cautiously half-smiling like he feared I may jump and bite if he moves too swiftly) if I had instances when people were strongly objecting to what I am saying in class (I think he meant if some Serbs and Albanians were attempting to murder me or each other in my classes). The question really is why one SHOULD be AFRAID of that while doing research, and since when it is ordered that we should try not to disturb feelings of hatred or ignorance. Long live intellectuals' courage Made in the West (sadly it WAS made in the West)!

I am happy to say that she is happily employed at a happier place than this one.

Technocracy

As the weeks drag on from January's elections in Serbia, there is still no governing coalition in sight. SRS got more seats than any other party, but no party will enter into a coalition with it. DSS took a distant third, but cannot countenance the possibility of losing complete control over both the premiership and the "power" ministries. DS leads the pack among the Loose Grouping of Parties That Are Not SRS, but is demanding more than DSS is willing to give. G-17+ is happy just to be there, and LDP is not on anybody's list of coalition partners nor does it want to be.

Today the junior partner of DSS, Velimir Ilić, floated the possibility that everyone has been muttering under their breath since the elections: that DSS and whatever the heck his party is called would try to form a minority government with the support of SRS, which would be handed control over the parliament. It is not as implausible as it sounds, since DSS has experience with governing as a minority with distasteful backbench support, and DSS has more in common with SRS than with its other potential coalition partners. A government of this type would be short-lived, chaotic, and phenomenally unsuccessful, and at the cost of doing lasting damage to the country would have the beneficial side effect of demolishing DSS. A victory worthy of Pyrrhus of Epirus, in the eyes of some.

Naturally, it is not to be. SRS quickly declared that they were not disposed to carry the weight of another party's failure, and Mr Ilić's effort to scare his coalition partners into submission backfired. So now it is back to pretending to carry out negotiations with people he fully intends to stab in the back, and to treating the electorate as though its principal duty is to assure that anybody who once controlled a ministry will always have large quantities of public property at their disposal.

Jao, baš je super!

Kryptonite mining comes to Serbia.

Troljetka

The Let 3 blog has launched.

Another reminder -- get the guidelines and submit, submit, submit!

REMINDER - The Muabet Project at the Watson Institute at Brown University is accepting submissions for the essay competition entitled "Evaluating Intervention: Local perspectives on democracy-building in the Post-Yugoslav countries and territories." Students, scholars, professionals, activists and practitioners in the region are invited to submit essays which analyze the social, cultural, political or economic dimensions of international involvement in transition. Essays can be in English, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian or Macedonian, and the deadline for online submission is MAY 18.

Further details, as well as downloadable versions of the call for papers in languages of the region, are available at http://watsoninstitute.org/muabet/contest.html

Does anybody regret the demise of SPO?

Interesting remarks today by a person who will not be minister of culture for very long, if by "interesting" you mean "utterly foolish and morally leprous." Dragan Kojadinović comments on the recent attempt to assassinate Dejan Anastasijević by pointing out that if he would just fail to do his job, live like a hermit, and have absolutely no expectation of anything as exotic as law enforcement, he would be just fine. Says Mr Kojadinović:

"Anastasijević is an exceptionally good professional, he does something which is unfortunately rare in this country, and that is analytic journalism. His themes are dangerous themes. If I were in his place, I would not permit my child to come home at 3:00 AM, I would not live in that apartment in Vračar, no matter how big it is. He could exchange that apartment for one that is not so nice, but more secure. This has affected me so much that I have considered all aspects of Anastasijević's security. If I were in his place, as a journalist, I would never let myself do this. We can blame the state, we can demand protection from the police, but first we should do everything to protect ourselves."

So for heaven's sake everyone -- do not do your job well, speak the truth, live a normal life, or in any way make anything inconvenient public, particularly if you live somewhere. We still do not know whether Mr Kojadinović has any comment on the housing situation of Dinko Gruhonjić. No doubt he knows where he lives, since the gentlefolk at Stormfront do.

On the off chance that you have not read it already, here is what Dejan Anastasijević has to say about the situation himself.

Update: Students get it, politicians do not. Surprise.

And Plan Nine?

The interview was certainly done before the first of many resignations from the negotiating team was announced this morning, but here is what sometime East Ethnian Florian Bieber had to tell Slobodna Evropa about the future of Kosovo and "Plan B."

For the record, na engleskom

Here is the letter that Geoffrey Nice sent to several newspapers, and here is the response by OTP.

And here is my take: whatever may have happened with regard to documents being made available (or, as it turned out, not being made available) to the parties before ICJ, the very narrow interpretation of the law by the court's majority would probably have produced the same verdict. That may be as far as it goes for the lawyers behind the bench and at either table facing. But of course, it goes a lot further for researchers -- make the documents public, and we will interpret them without the constraints that ICTY and ICJ have.

Horrifying, wretched story from Virginia Tech

You already know about it. Now tell me, since firearms are banned from every place where privileged people in positions of power and influence congregate -- and where ordinary humans who never carry weapons are subject to various forms of humiliation in order to enforce this ban -- why are they not banned from every other place as well? Get moving, irresponsible politicians.

Beasts of burden

Call it a big event, it would be better if wild horses were to drag them away.

Update: Elvis Burazerović has a fine name and a good point. He says, "Surely our big city has enough open spaces where even 150,000 people can fit in. We think the Hippodrome should be left to horses."

Essay competition: "Evaluating intervention"

Just a reminder to everyone that the deadline for submissions for the essay competition "Evaluating Intervention: Local perspectives on democracy-building in the Post-Yugoslav countries and territories," is coming quickly on 18 May. We are hoping for a whole lot of really outstanding articles.

Back from NY

We just got back from lovely New York City, were planning on spending a longer weekend but Sunday's rainstorm with high wind persuaded us to just pack up and begin the trek back to Boston more or less persuaded that it would be slow. Highlights of the ASN conference were mostly seeing friends, but there was a fine panel "fieldwork after fire" in which Orli Fridman, Chip Gagnon and Saša Milićević stepped down, in different ways, from the academic pose of objectivity to discuss ways in which the real experience of real contact with real people, good and bad, transformed their perceptions of what they were doing and why. There was also a screening of the very fine film on Vukovar by Janko Baljak and Drago Hedl -- great documentary work, with amazing footage of various bad guys (particularly Brana Crnčević and Tomislav Merčep) continuing to lie about what they did. Surprisingly, there was not much said in the film about various good guys, including Josip Reihl-Kir.

It was also nice to find out what you get when you type "hrpa bezveznjaka" into Google.

Ivica Račan

I have just been informed by a friend, but have not yet seen in the news, that Ivica Račan died this morning.

Update: I will have to guess, since nobody is confirming the news, that either there is a conspiracy or there is a false alarm. I'm going with false alarm.

East Ethnia: Back with you as if it had never been gone

After ten days of confusion, rushing about, and bricolage, my dear pet computer is back from the majstori. Apparently it needed a new hard disc, so Apple sent one, but it was a bad one, and Apple had to send another. Srpska posla s tim jabukama! This comeback post jets your way from some random hotel lobby, where I am waiting for the bus that will take me to bucolic New York, where every April the world's finest Balkanologists attend the ASN conference.

I know that I have missed major events which could have made for some fine blogging. Will be right on it.

An explanation for blog silence

Nothing dramatic. It's the usual end of the semester work crunch, plus my computer is at the vet. Posting will be fairly intermittent for a while. East Ethnia, as always, thanks its readers for their patience.

Guidance

If you are looking for sensible commentary, you can always rely on Richard Falk. And if you are looking for guidance on the difference between right and wrong, Anegdote has that.

Raštafarijanizam

One of our happier surprises last summer was going to dinner with some friends at a place they chose, Restoran Oskar in Dorćol. This was in fact a place we had passed hundreds of times but never noticed, its appearance is not remarkable from the outside and not much more remarkable inside (when we arrived, we were the only customers save for a couple of cops who were watching a football match). The food was traditional and perfectly prepared, and nicely set off by good rakija and some outstanding Slovenian wine.

Like in so many good places, the best approach at Oskar is to ignore the menu and ask the waiter what is good today. On that day they were featuring sarme (lamb sarme!) with raštan kupus, and the waiter more or less insisted that we have this Montenegrin specialty. Everyone at the dinner will support me in saying these were the best sarme we had eaten in our lives. And naturally we became addicted to raštan, got it and made some sarme of our own, and began to lament the fate the fate that awaited us on our return to a forlornly raštan-free Massachusetts. Apparently other lovers of that little slice of leafy heaven have confronted the same problem.

But now a friend of East Ethnia writes in to tell us that, after exhaustive and delicious research, he has determined that raštan is nothing more or less than that humble and hearty (and monumentally healthy) Southern staple, the collard green. I love them, children hate them, and the bitterness can be turned into a fine sweetness by sauteeing them with a bit of vinegar. Anyone who is intimidated by their healthiness should be reassured by the fact that they go best with some nice, greasy, salty smoked meat.

This also solves an old East Ethnian mystery. Way back in 2006, we posted a photo of a proud farmer with what had to be the biggest kupus anyone had seen. A canny philologist noted that it looked a lot like blitva. Well, there you have it.

Izadjite na terasu....

If you are not happy with your dictionary, that may be because of the way it subjects the nice Morava-Vardar race to the spendthrifty Dinarians. So say a bunch of deep thinkers, who will no doubt say it again.

Up jumped the US representative, he's the one with the tired eyes

I know I haven't been posting much lately -- it's been a busy period at work, and with Mrs Ethnia off on a trip, this has given me the heavy but delightful obligation of single-fathering it these past couple of weeks. Expect the pace to pick up over the weekend.

In the meantime, a faithful reader, who is just fine but prefers to remain anonymous, writes in to ask for your recommendations for the most fabulous new Balkan films. Recommend them in the comments!