Old Gold


If you can keep your head when...

Doing some research on Milosevic cheerleaders and Srebrenica deniers Living Marxism, I happened upon this debate in the 8 July 1993 issue of the London Review of Books. If you’ve been following the discussion on my post on Mladic you might’ve heard the assertion that the only way to reverse the gains made by the ethnic cleansing that Bosnian Serbs mainly accomplished in two shorts weeks in the spring of 1992 would have been a total military defeat. This is true, but the time for this was, of course, in August 1995 and not the present. But the following quote from author Mark Thompson practically could’ve have come from these pages:

Nothing but nothing will ‘reverse ethnic cleansing’ (David Owen’s initial aim) except a military defeat inflicted upon Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina (and David Owen was employed, of course, exactly to try and forestall the necessity of Western military action by persuading the Serb forces to abandon their maximal aims). Without a Serb defeat there is no chance of stability for the entire region, no hope for Bosnia Herzegovina, and only black prospects for Serbia and Croatia.

Of course not all of this is true. Serbia and Croatia’s prospects are not ‘black’ at present; Croatia’s haven’t been for quite some time.  And David Owen might’ve indeed had the lofty aim of reversing the ethnic cleansing that went on in the first draft of his plan, but he and Cyrus Vance eventually had to own up to the reality on the ground, which was sharply slanted in the Serbs’ favor.  That reality was reflected in their second plan, which was enormously unpopular in that it would’ve only solidified Serb gains.  Of course it was rejected by Bosnian Serb leadership, who at that point must’ve been feeling pretty invulnerable.

It’s hard to reverse territorial gains (and the terror campaigns that inevitably go with them) without an army.  No one learned this lesson more bitterly than the Croats and Bosnians in this conflict.  The only “plan” that would have had any success was the Carrington-Cutileiro one — because it was designed to prevent, not stop, fighting.    But it was too little, too late.

NB: Those who read this letters column to the end will find a young Marko Hoare going the distance over wartime nationalism in the Nazi-occupied territory of Serbia and Croatia.

A picture of future as imagined by Rand Paul

“Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”

And so we have… the Tea Party in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

I do find MoveOn imminently annoying. But there’s no excuse for such thuggery. Not even Conway’s fairly low-blow striking ad. It doesn’t exactly bode well for free expression, especially when coupled with Rand Paul’s extremist beliefs in virtually every other area. Let’s help this will help ruin him. If he wins after this and the Maddow debacle, it will say something about Kentucky. A very negative something, along the lines of “what a bunch of hicks.”

Superheroes

To conclude all this southeastern Europe-focused posting on a positive note, I strongly urge all fans of energetic guitar-based music to check out Belgrade’s excellent Stuttgart Online and to buy their infectious album Radost Svakom Domaćinstvu. They definitely capture the dada-street art sound of late seventies Belgrade as immortalized on the anthology Paket Aranzman — particularly the bottom end-heavy sound of Sarlo Akrobat.

There’s not much in English, but here’s a note from Exit Festival 2010, Novi Sad’s annual music festival.   But who needs English?  It’s music.  Take a listen to “Superheroj” right here on YouTube.

Fans of energetic guitar-based music take note: this band has no guitarist.

Thanks to Igor for the recommendation.

Blog will return to south-central European-focused affairs momentarily.

Serbia, the EU and Muslims in the Balkans

Dutch Courage

The Dutch held out but Europe, as usual, wants to have its way so after a threat to ram Serbia’s EU ‘assessment’ through by majority vote, the Dutch folded.  However, there is a provision that every step of Serbia’s accession will have to be subject to a unanimous vote.  The Dutch, we can imagine, will watch that closely.

It’s hard to know what to say at this early hour, although I’d caution Westerners to pin all hopes on Serbia.  Much analysis has mentioned that Serbia, as the largest and most populous ex-YU state, is the linchpin of the Balkans.  Well, Greece seemed to be the most well-off until recently, and it has hardly assumed a leadership role in the region.  Tadic’s government has done much, esp. in defreezing the lock over Kosovo, but remember that there are blocs — substantial ones — of extremely regressive bodies politic in Serbia that could come to power.  Would Serbia continue to enjoy this prestige of leadership if so?  The lesson is not to conflate territory and population with leadership.

And while I’m at it I’d like to point out the folly of articles like these. (The latter being far more reputable than the former.) Saudi and Iranian money in Bosnia and other Muslim parts of the Balkans (like Macedonia, which the Greek author of the International Analyst Network piece desperately tries to avoid mentioning) is nothing new and dates back to the arms embargo in the 1990s in Bosnia.  Every few years, a journalist sees a pre-fab concrete mega-mosque and wonders if the often-propagated tale that Osama is using these Muslims to try and get ‘into’ Europe is true.  It’s not.  In the mid-1990s, there was an attempt to radicalize Bosnian Muslims.  They rejected Wahhabism and its severe tenants.  A 40% unemployment rate, or even an 80% one, won’t change that.  To pretend otherwise is to toe a chauvinist line.

More on Bosnia

It’s turning out to be a Bosnia-focused weekend here.

Marko Hoare has an excellent and sober assessment of Angelina Jolie’s Bosnia “imbroglio” up here.

For those who don’t know, the British left often has an odd — to say the least — way of viewing the Balkan Wars.  Mainly it consists of lionizing Milosevic as some kind of “anti-imperialist” simply because he was able to get his country bombed by NATO.  This is an old article from Indymedia Ireland that explores some of the myths and flat-out denying that go on amongst some British leftists when they discuss the Balkans.  It should serve as a useful warning for a treacherous path to “sinister idiocy” that sadly continues to influence thinking on the region.

Finally, it seems that Greek nationalists have managed to clean the internet of any photos of their paramilitary unit, the Greek Volunteer Guards, with Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb leadership.  But fear not, Takis Mikas’ intriguing book Unholy Alliance is up on Google Books.   The above photo is from it.  It’s worth pointing out he’s being sued for for stating that the Greeks were in Srebrenica, and it’s further worth pointing out what the name of the organization that’s suing him is. And here’s Hoare on the same issue.

Soft on Mladic?


'Never again,' right Europe?

Thursday I was excited to see the photo of none other than Ratko Mladic on the cover of the IHT at the newsstand; “he’s been caught,” I thought, “just like Karadzic a few years ago.”  Of course, he hasn’t, and the article spends far too much time on summarizing the case against the general, although there are a few intriguing (and I mean that very literally) details, such as how his men communicated:

As the former protector described the process as it worked in 2006, they discarded mobile telephones and SIM cards 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles, from their gatherings in crowded places where they could easily blend in. Meeting face to face, they hardly spoke, discussing protection logistics by exchanging written messages that they burned.

But the meat of the matter is up in the lede:

But a softening by several European countries on whether his arrest should be a prerequisite for Serbia’s admission to the European Union is raising questions about whether he will ever face justice.

The idea that Europe would soften their stance on Serbia is repugnant not only to any idea of human rights, but also to the survivors of Srebrenica (and Sarajevo, Visegrad and any other campaign in the Bosnian War). If you don’t believe me, go watch the excellent BBC documentary A Cry from the Grave and its follow-up, Srebrenica: Never Again? I challenge anyone who feels like Mladic is “yesterday’s news” to sit through the whole documentary — particularly the segments in which former UN interpreter Hasan Nuhanovic describes being separated from his family by the Dutch with a quiet, incandescent anger —  and then argue that relenting on the search for Mladic is justifiable under any circumstances.

If that fails to convince, let me allow the Bosnian Serbs to sum up their own position in their own words, through a remarkable interview that Croatian-American New York Times reporter Chuck Sudetic relates in his book Blood Vengeance. The New York Review of Books review is archived on reviewer Mark Danner’s website.

It merits a full quote here.  The narration is Danner’s; the interview Sudetic’s.

Those Serbs that survived, now homeless, penniless, unable even to bury their mutilated dead, made their way to Bratunac. It was there, in 1996, that Sudetic interviewed Mihailo Eric, a remarkable Serb from Kravica:

“After the Christmas attack, when the people from Kravica were refugees in Bratunac, the menfolk were bitter, weren’t they?”

“They were angry…”

“What did they say?”

“Revenge…. They said, ‘Kad tad. Kad tad, sooner or later our five minutes will come.'”

“…And the opportunity finally came.”

“Yes.”

“Vengeance?”

“Yes, blood vengeance.”

“Did they come for you?” [He nodded.] “They were excited?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“What did they say?”

“They said, ‘Grab your gun and come down to the soccer field.'”

The soccer field at Bratunac, that is, whence the Dutch hostages heard “a great deal of shooting.” Much of that firing was done by men like Mihailo Eric. As it happens, though, Mihailo himself, a war hero, a man who had been gravely wounded, shot through the forehead earlier in the fighting, refused to take part in the massacre. As he tells Sudetic,

“It’s one thing to kill someone in battle, and it’s something else to kill prisoners, men who’ve surrendered and have no guns.”

“And have their hands tied?”

“Yes.”

Mihailo’s attitude, of course, was unusual; had it not been, the war would have been fought very differently. During Sudetic’s interview he and Mihailo were interrupted:

The door behind me swung open. A man with a construction worker’s beer belly stumbled in. He had a ruddy complexion, light eyes, and light hair. It was Mihailo’s father, Zoran; he had been a member of an “obligatory work brigade” called to Bratunac on the day the killings began. We stood up… The father sat down in Mihailo’s chair, and Mihailo stood behind him leaning against a wall.

“Was it honorable to kill them all?” I asked the father.

“Absolutely,” he said. “It was a fair fight.”

Mihailo stared at me from behind him with a forlorn look in his eye.

“Absolutely,” the older man said again, and he turned to the woman: “Get some more brandy.”

In Bratunac, in Kravica, one suspects that the father’s view would be the accepted one. For him, Mladic’s victory over Srebrenica offered an opportunity, a chance to end the cycle of attack and retribution. Having finally conquered the enclave, would one then hand back to the Muslim leaders seven thousand men of military age (who, even if they weren’t soldiers, could easily take up arms) so they could then, or at some point in the future, rejoin the fight—the fight, that is, to regain the homes they had just lost? What, after all, had losing his home done to Zoran Eric and the other survivors of the Muslim attack on Kravica?

No, the moment must be seized, for future survival’s sake; and even Mihailo, though he stood aloof from the killing, freely admits he understands the feelings that lay behind it.

“And they killed all of them [Sudetic asks him], everyone they could?”

“Yes.”

“And the Muslims in the column who escaped across the road? They held them up…as long as they could so that they could get some men together and have one more crack at them, didn’t they?”

“They came around looking for volunteers.”

“Did guys from Kravica go?”

“They wanted to kill as many of them as they could.”

“So they could never come back? So there would not be enough military-age men left to fight their way back?”

“Never,” Mihailo said.

The raw motives for ethnic cleansing laid bare: never come back.  Never.  Going ‘soft’ on the hunt for Mladic is letting Zoran Eric’s idea of justice to permeate 21st-century Europe. For many policymakers, the morass of the Balkans sows confusion and there’s always a tendency to do the easy thing, which is so rarely the right thing. Serbia will never be able to rehabilitate properly if Mladic’s capture doesn’t remain a priority, and throwing EU euros at it won’t change that. In fact, I’ll argue that it will enrich and empower the substantial portion of the population who think like Zoran Eric. Many of these young men were on display last week in Genoa and Belgrade. What is their vision of a future Serbia, and does the EU want to condone it?

If France, Germany, Belgium, and Greece cave in on considering EU membership for Serbia in Luxembourg on Monday, they will continue to make a shameful mockery of the lives lost in the Balkans from 1990 to 1999, and do a modern democratic Serbia no favors — Tadic himself says that Serbia (or at least the Serbia that his Democratic party represents) will continue to hunt for Mladic.  Will the EU insist on a lower standard than the present leadership of Serbia?  One hopes not.  Stand up for something, Europe.  At least Srebrenica succeeded in shaming the Dutch into not being pusillanimous.

Greece, of course, would like nothing better for Mladic and Srebrenica to be swept under the rug.  But perhaps this is because Greeks themselves participated in the taking of Srebrenica.  Takis Michas, a Greek journalist with outstanding credentials, has written about that and is now being sued for speaking the truth, by none other than the same reactionary core who wish to rob Macedonia of a name.  Keep reading for more about that.

If it had been in Italy…

But it wasn't; it was in Chile. Grazie dio.

A student passed me this joke on the Chilean mine disaster, which also plays on a lot of other recent Italian news (Sarah Scazzi, Giancarlo Tulliani‘s house, the Naples trash crisis, the electoral crisis).  Mainly it’s funny, if you get it all.  Deep Italian current events, knowledge, sure, but enjoy:

If it had happened in an Italian mine, things would have gone like this.

Day 1: everyone’s together in an effort to save the miners. Live TV 24/7, Bertolaso on the scene.

Day 2: on Bruno Vespa’s show, a model of the mine, with Barbara Palombelli, Belen and Lele Mora co-hosting.

Day 3:  at the first signs of difficulty, the hunt for guilty and responsible parties begins.

BERLUSCONI: It’s the communists’ fault!

DI PIETRO: It’s because of conflicts of interest!

BERSANI: Uh… what happened?

BOSSI: they’re all hicks; leave them there!

CAPEZZONE: It’s not a tragedy, is a great opportunity, and deserving of this government and this prime minister!

FINI: My brother-in-law has nothing to do with this.

Day 4: TOTTI: I’ll dedicate a goal to the miners.

Day 5: THE POPE: Let us pray for zee miners who are in deez day wery close to the devil!

Day 6: With ratings falling, Chi l’ha Visto (Italy’s version of Unsolved Mysteries) does an episode.  Hostess Barbara D’Urso interviews the children of the miners: “Tell me, do you miss your daddy?”

Day 7-Day 30: All attempts fail.  Bertolaso is named worldwide head of civil protection. After a month, the miners get out by digging with their hands.

A year later, the 33 miners, fired long before,  are prosecuted for damage to the mine site.

Original, albeit slightly different, here.

Rand Paul in the Corriere

This time I’m not writing to encourage you to vote for an artist. This is for real.  Or as real as it gets with opposing the Civil RightsrejectingAmero-believing regressive lunacy that will become our state’s cross to bear.  Yes.  A man only an alien could love…

Kentuckians, get out there and vote. I realize that outside of Louisville and Lexington things don’t look too good, but we have to defeat this fool Rand Paul.  Or at least try. The race is not only being closely watched outside of KY, but outside of the US. Here’s an observation from the Corriere — an aside in an article about Joe Miller that caught a bit interest in the country of Berlusconismo.

The headline reads, “Fights, insults, handcuffs, threats.  The U.S. and the ‘politics of rage.'”

It is the latest in a series of examples of the “politics of rage”as it’s called by the influential U.S. website Politico.com: the anger of the electorate (or more correctly the extreme frustration according to some polls) that is finding more expression than ever in a bad attitude and is ready to be used in the struggles of both Republican and Democrat politicians, as is clearly visible from the red faces and eyes bulging in clashes performed on television and in relationships with journalists.

Other examples: last Sunday in Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul was so offended when his Democratic opponent accused him of being “a member of a group that insulted Christianity and Christ” that he declared: “Have you lost your sense of decency?” He may refuse to appear at the next televised debate.

Do your part to crash the tea party/teabag the teabaggers/piss in the teapot/your insult of choice here.  I for one am filling out my absentee ballot tonight.

Quick Roundup

ENEL is getting pretty interesting.  Check out their Green Power.  Back when in 2008 I was impressed by their solar generation, tracked by the minute, at their headquarters near Largo Cairoli in Milan.

As was predicted in the Italian press years ago — and in these pages a few weeks back when people were naive enough to think that Fini could bring down the PM — Bossi’s Lega Nord stands to win big from the continued political incoherency. Hit the north?

Hilary in that place where maybe she was shot at, once… not terribly impressive.  But good words on the hate and hooliganism, probably by Tim Judah, I’m guessing.

Yes, these are all from one source.  But one ignores that source at a very deep peril, although it can be mocked humorously.

And last but not least, here’s a fine one from Gotham’s rag on rising income inequality, the reality of which we really all have to confront.  It’s something my Italian students complain about a lot, but the numbers show that Europe has less to worry about than the US in this regard.  As Leonardo DiCaprio mock-quotes Hawthorn in The Departed, “Families are always rising or falling in America.”