Today we are doing a little bit of propaganda analysis, from Večernje novosti, the paper that is the Miles Davis of sycophancy (that’s right Kurir, Informer, and the rest of you, you’re the Kenny G. And Politika, you’re Paul Whiteman).

For the masochistic or the curious, here is the article we will be looking at: https://www.novosti.rs/c/planeta/svet/1438855/tramp-svirao-kraj-lazne-ekologe-ova-vest-sve-promeniti-cuta-kokanovic-uskoro-morati-shvate

We know about the faulty construction in Novi Sad that caused 15 fatalities. Here are two more news stories just from today:

The directors promise that there is nothing wrong with the roof of the Belgrade Arena — https://n1info.rs/biznis/otkrivamo-institut-godinama-upozorava-arenu-na-krov-direktor-hale-kaze-da-je-nebezbedno-odmah-bismo-zatvorili/

In Zaječar, “the burst pipes bear witness to the quality of this regime” — https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/rekonstrukcija-zajecar-popucale-cevi-rezim/

A few articles on events that are mentioned in the video:

* The children’s clinic cancels their donated cable service: https://n1info.rs/vesti/nije-to-vasa-bolnica-i-privatna-prcija-brojne-negativne-reakcije-na-odluku-tirsove-da-otkaze-donaciju-sbb/

* On the use of the “Telekom” company to consolidate media control: https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2021/03/09/serbian-government-weaponized-state-owned-telekom-to-curb-media-freedom/

* The ongiong campaign by “Telekom” to squeeze out “SBB”: https://www.intellinews.com/rival-operators-announce-lawsuits-in-serbia-s-cable-war-203167/

* Background on the fight to dominate the telecoms media market: https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/srbija-telekomunikacije-sbb-telekom/32115411.html

* Rio Tinto is on the road again, unnoticed: https://n1info.rs/region/dok-smo-gledali-zasedanje-un-o-srebrenici-odobreno-iskopavanje-litijuma-aktivisti-pokrenuli-buru-na-mrezama/

The Genocide Convention created a crime that was well near impossible to prove before a court, which is why there were no convictions for genocide until 1998 and there have not been many afterward. The record of ICTY shows just how high the barrier has been set: they found that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, but did not find that it occurred anywhere else or that the VRS’s war aims (which explicitly included altering the population to suit their political goals) were genocidal. Pretty much every ICJ decision on genocide can be summarised as the judges saying “we don’t want to get a lot of genocide cases.”

Things started changing with Russia’s large scale targeting of civilian objects in Ukraine, and changed more with the forced removal of children from Ukraine to Russia. They changed even more when Israel started creating an artificially produced in Gaza. The distinction between war crimes and genocide is going to be breaking down in future court decisions.

And that is a good thing. The implicit hierarchy where one crime appears to be less meaningful than another has always been in the interest of abusers, and has never been in the interest of civilian victims.

There is a technical problem with the video, for a minute or so it freezes, sorry about that. But the audio is all there. Am I re-recording? Heavens no, here we do cinema verité.

The text of the resolution is available from B92 here and from Koha Ditore here. And here is the analysis I did of the RS revisionism exercise way back when.

Sorry about my hoarse voice, I was following election returns all night. Not that it was a satisfying experience.

Are you as mystified as everyone else as to why a group masked thugs was sent to beat and throw explosives at a group of protesting students in Novi Sad? Most authoritarian regimes can tolerate losing some small prizes, like the student parliament at a university. The fact that the Serbian regime can’t tells us something about the character of the system of rule: it relies on informal networks of trust and exchange, and on people depending on these networks. This kind of system can’t afford to have too many holes in it.

Here is video taken by a student in which she encounters the thugs, who attack: https://www.021.rs/story/Novi-Sad/Vesti/388324/VIDEO-Novi-Sad-2024-godina-huligani-bacaju-topovski-udar-zbog-izbora-za-Studentski-parlament.html

And a news report of the incident: https://n1info.rs/vesti/napadnuti-student-oko-30-u-crno-obucenih-mladica-udarali-nas-i-policajca-bacili-sok-bombu-kolegama-pod-noge/

Long story short, if you look at when a regime decides to use violence and what kind of violence it uses, this tells you something about what kind of regime it is.

Yesterday I posted a short essay outlining what the notorious “Project 2025” document has to say about international policy. And I promised a video describing who the authors of the sections I used are, so here is that video.

And here are links to items mentioned in the video.

About Kiron Skinner:

Her online bio at the Hoover Institution: https://www.hoover.org/profiles/kiron-k-skinner

She was briefly at US Department of State, in the Office of Policy Planning, then moved to Carnegie Mellon University. The CMU student newspaper discusses the conditions under which she left both places: https://thetartan.org/2021/3/8/news/skinner

About Dustin Carmack:

He used to be at the Heritage Foundation, was chief of staff to Richard Grenell who was briefly acting director of the CIA, worked for the de Santis campaign, now works for Meta. His bio at Legistorm: https://www.legistorm.com/person/bio/148744/Dustin_J_Carmack.html

About Mora Namdar:

She is a lawyer and was a middle rank official at Department of State and US Agency for Global Media and VOA during Trump admin, before that worked for Occidental Petroleum. This article sets out the whistleblower complaints from her time at US Agency for Global Media, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/whistleblowers-allege-misconduct-agency-for-global-media-423758

About Max Primorac:

He is an interesting fellow, as suggested by his Heritage Foundation bio: https://www.heritage.org/staff/max-primorac. And he is frequently present in the media in Croatia. Here he is discussing mnogo štošta na HRT-u, https://vijesti.hrt.hr/svijet/istrazivac-zaklade-heritage-za-vrijeme-trumpa-svijet-je-bio-stabilniji-11636190, and here is an article about the popularity of Heritage and Project 2025 among the far right in Croatia: https://www.portalnovosti.com/projekt-srednji-vijek

His father Miško is remembered as a political activist in the diaspora, and he is especially credited with the idea that the legendary Feral Tribune labelled as “kosti u mikseru.” It’s all there in his obituary: https://www.vecernji.ba/vijesti/misko-primorac-je-prvi-pozvao-na-pomirbu-djece-ustasa-i-partizana-1065629. The “Kosti u mikseru” idea travels from Stepinac, to Luburić, by way of the Church to USA where it is gifted to HDZ: https://www.nacional.hr/nemiri-nesanice-alojzije-stepinac-je-puno-prije-franje-tudmana-iznio-cini-se-ideju-pomirbe-ustasa-i-partizana/

Finally, here is Max Primorac’s op-ed saying that a “German regime” ran Jasenovac: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4837527-balkans-powder-keg/

Errata: at one point I got tongue tied, the movement I wanted to name was the “Hrvatski oslobodilački pokret” (HOP).

Here are links to items mentioned in the video:

The initiative to protect the unique Sarajevo ćevap — https://n1info.rs/region/sarajevski-cevap-zasticen-kao-brend-uskoro-zastita-somuna/

The legal fight over who has the rights to Sultanahmet köfte continues — https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/legal-fight-continues-over-ownership-of-sultanahmet-kofte-despite-ruling-105613

Branislav Nušić’s (probably not entirely accurate) memories of kafane past — https://www.lektire.me/prepricano/branislav-nusic-beogradske-kafane_814

Jurica Pavičić’s review of Brotherhood and unity at the kitchen table, including a summary of the Bronzas’ intensive ćevap research — https://www.jutarnji.hr/dobrahrana/price/pise-jurica-pavicic-cevapi-nemaju-veze-s-bosnom-i-jos-nekoliko-razotkrivajucih-istina-o-socijalistickoj-gastronomiji-10091302

The Italian chef who invented banjalučki ćevap (the famous Mujo was his assistant) — https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/bhs/zone/Bosna-i-Hercegovina/Cevap-majstor-iz-Trentina-207581

Don’t mess with Kirk Douglas (NB: I’ll bet “Mate” doesn’t exist) — http://www.yugopapir.com/2018/02/najveca-bruka-olimpijskih-igara-u.html?utm_source=Klix.ba&utm_medium=Clanak

Bonus link: a terrible German song about ćevapčići. It is really intolerably awful, don’t say I didn’t warn you —

I’m predicting that Kamala Harris will probably be elected the next president of the United States (like any prediction this could be right or wrong, so in November please feel free to congratulate me for being right or ridicule me for being wrong).

What can we expect from her foreign policy? We do not have a lot of signs to go by, but we can be guided by a few main ideas: 1) US foreign policy does not change a lot with changes of administration, 2) Biden has been mostly all right but has been held back by basic understandings that belong to an earlier time, 3) Harris’s ideas on crime and social welfare suggest that she could be open to ideas around human security to a greater degree than presidents have been so far, 4) Harris’s international background gives her an understanding of embeddedness in the world that many other politicians lack, while her path to power gives her a strong motivation to be committed to democracy. But, 5) she has generally been cautious and averse to risk.

On balance, there is room to be hopeful for some good changes. But if it happens, it will happen slowly.

The leaders of the regime in Serbia see the state's future in lithium mining, and the EU is in a hurry to make them commit to that vision before they think about it. We already know about the environmental damage that lithium mining causes — so does the regime, because protests forced them to back down on this plan once. What about social consequences? Think about every resource extraction state you know of, whether the resource we are talking about is legal (petroleum, palm oil) or illegal (coca leaves, opium poppies). Some of the characteristics of these states: 1) a cartel tends to form around control of the resource, 2) the state behaves in authoritarian ways to enforce this cartel’s monopoly, and 3) contestation in these states tends to be violent and centred around control of the resource.

Even if the project “succeeds,” the future does not look good.

When historical truth becomes a commodity and the people interested in using facts as a basis for dialogue and mutual recognition are pushed to the side, the space of memory is dominated by ethnic entrepreneurs. And they all want the same thing: a monopolised story, or competing cartels, in which there are no human victims, just nations.

A party registered as an ethnic minority party (this means they get seats in the assembly without having to meet a vote threshold) holds the balance of power in the city of Niš. The “Russian Party” has leadership that is not Russian and no Russian members. Okay, two Russian members if you want to be a picajzla about it. What does this strange set of facts mean?