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 likethese. (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.
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.
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 Graveand 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.
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.
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 Rights–rejecting, Amero-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.
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.
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.”
It’s voting season. And this year in the US, it will be important to vote. But that’s not what I’m pushing here. You need to go here and vote for Igor Tosevski for Wooloo’s artist of the month.
The Piano Has Been Drinkin' (Not Him)
When I lived in Macedonia, I met one Igor Tosevski through a series of mutual acquaintances. After long periods in rustic and rural places, going for a coffee or a meal with Igor and his longtime parter, Tanya, was always a breath of life. Conversation was never limited. Their horizons seemed to be continually broadening at a time when mental space in Skopje was continually shrinking. No mean feat, that.
In addition, I got an education in situational art beyond the passing acquaintance I’d had with pompous and effete fops in the US. Sure, guerrilla art has been the provenance of a certain urban class of elites since its inception. But what does it mean to do this in the former Yugoslavia and in Macedonia, especially during the nineties, when it was prudent to keep one’s views to oneself? What does it mean to do this during times of nationalism and small-mindedness? The stakes are much higher than what they might be in Milan or New York.
In 2004, I had the good luck to see Process at a time when the Macedonian government’s inability to regulate or commodifiy any kind of production — much less art production — was making the lives of most people a bureaucratic hell. The use of a rubber stamp to create a giant self-portrait in a room festooned with the actual legal text stipulating that artists must register as ‘traders’ was a biting commentary on the attempts of post-socialist bureaucrats to privatize virtually everything.
In the same year, I had the even better luck to go with Igor on some of his missions to paint occupied Territories at various sites around the country. Macedonia had just narrowly avoided the kind of senseless violence and partition that still plagues places like Kosovo and Bosnia today, so the act of painting arbitrary (or, sometimes not-so-arbitrary) lines in the people’s common spaces, delimiting them for obscure motives, was even more trenchant. The looks on people’s faces ranged from apathy to disgust to — rarely — joy. It was a project that bound the absurd with the deadly serious in an active, physical, even fun way.
Igor’s art is compelling and actually makes one question what is going on in one’s surroundings. It accomplishes that very rare thing of succeeding where so many others have failed miserably. (In that way it reminds me of another artist from the same country that once upon a time, there was.) It is timely; never hectoring, always thoughtful, with a keen eye to the political but not overtly so. It’s good art. That’s uncommon.
And after two and half decades of work he’s finally getting some recognition, so go over to Wooloo and vote for him. With any luck, you may be seeing him somewhere familiar soon.
Beppe Grillo hilariously sums up the commonalities between Southern Europe’s most toxic nationalist-separatist groups. Wow, takes me back to the early nineties when deeply mistaken writers were comparing Serb separatists to those sane, cozy Northern Italian separatists.
Sorry kids, it’s in Italian — it’s been a long week.
FINAL UPDATE: I can’t really say it any better than the Guardian does here.
Belgrade’s Vreme ran this story today. There was a rather choice photo of masked Ivan Bogdanov burning an Albanian flag; it’s since been replaced so I leave you with this video that tells the story even better.
Clearly burning the Albanian flag has everything to do with winning a match against Italy. The message is hardly hidden, though — the t-shirt reads “Northern Chetniks” — which I’d wager refers more to the looting murderers of the 1990s wars than to the WW2-era Royalists. And this Ultra would probably be proud to tell you that, if he weren’t currently in jail in Genoa and pathetically blaming this ugly nationalism on his sick mother. Please.
To all those naive enough to say, “politics aside, what a cool Ultra!”, I say, you are deeply mistaken if you think you can de-politicize this. These “Ultras” hung up signs comparing Kosovo to Palestine, and Bogdanov is a member of a group named after the year that the Serbs lost the Battle of Kosovo — ushering in over 600 years of victimhood that opportunistic leaders in their recent past have used to fuel toxic nationalism that, guess what, led to the first wars on the European continent since the Second World War. If you want to be boneheaded enough to glamorize pointless violence and destruction, and forcing the cancellation of a normal sporting event, be my guest. But please don’t suggest that there is an apolitical dimension to this. There isn’t; suggesting otherwise is an unwelcome parade of ignorance.
Why is Genoa always a place for spectacular violence? There is much to be said about the violence of Serbian football fans in Genoa yesterday, but alas, I have to be away from the computer all day today. Mainly what I want to say is that Vuk Jeremic can apologize in the media all he wants, but his irrational policies about Kosovo stoke this kind of gangsterism, and I’ve no doubt — none whatsoever — that this violence and the violence at the gay pride parade were nurtured by politicians. You will hear lots of blame given to gangster overlords like Darko Saric, but the informed reader would do well to keep Jeremic’s clean-cut image, excellent English, and “Western” credentials in mind when trying to understand these extremely non-spontaneous events. It has a stench of the Milosevic years.
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. 
