turbulence_blog

winter in bosnia

there are some things you can't do anywhere else, such as skiing thru mine-fields.

it all started when dino offered me to go to skiing on the indenpendence day on 1st of march. since this day is only a partial holiday in bosnia, there was not too many people around. and here was just enough snow...

if you want to come here...

you have to pay 5 km.

and the daily ski pas costs another 22 km for just two working ski lifts. but at least the ticket looks civilized...

but this is by all means not too much. ski shoes renting will cost you another 10 km. if you don't have ski suit, you can use a uniform...

btw this was a new uniform from misitry for indirect taxation. question: how i got this uniform?

there are some things you can't do anywhere else... like skiing thru mine fields.

however if you look close enough, you will see that at least oficialy this area has been cleaned.

skiing is sport, that means you can lose some weight. to prevent it go and have a coffee, outdoors:

or indoors..

or go eating...

best job for me

i found what seems to be a perfect job for me: when i grow up i want to be ayatollah. the job description for ayatollah is rather a short one, appart from sitting on the sofa, drinking tea, and critzicizing everything ranging from coke to american invasion of iraq, they are supposed to act like a university teachers (you know talking those nonsenses to students). for me irrecoverably fucked up by university, this is a good thing. however one thing i can't stand: i never succeded past day 10 in my beard growing efforts.that means i would be payed for my blogging, and the best thing is to come: someone cares for everything you say or do.

it could have been much worse

it looks that the whole thing about immigrant testing in germany is getting worse. the government of hessen came up with it's own idea how the test should look like. they compiled a list of questions, according to which 95% of germans would have to be expelled from germany because of their ignorance.

this just supports my previous thesis that germans can hardly forbid foreigners comming to their land, what they can do is at least make their stay here as difficult and unpleasant as possible, forcing huge number of foreigners to leave this land and pursue their happines (as americans woud say) somewhere else.

questions beyond doubt express conservative point of view, and have probably been well engineered from mr. adolf koch, hessens prime minister. you know with strikes in public sector just around the corner, the bigest problems are turks. maybe he is far sighted enought to see that most of garbage colectors are turks, so he is doing something to prevent those strikes?

there is no use crying over spilt milk. questions wil no doubt come into power (one more time showing german hypocrisy), they will get worse and worse, as individual german states start to adopt them. now it is mr. stoibers' turn to show that he is biggest nazi of them all, albeit with the lowest iq of all.

i stoped hoping that questions will serve as the initiation of dialogue, a necessary introduction to germany, informing foreigners on how they can ensure their rights. precisely this means questions about law and economic system, about legal protection, economic incentives would have been much better. since the authors didn't have this in their mind, they compiled list of prejudices, mixed it with obscure details from german culture and geography, as a result making all foreigners guilty needing to prove that they are law obiding citizens with no bad intentions.

to be honest, questions did not surprise me: i expeced far worse questions. i started watching them from their funnier side. it struck me by surprise that there are no questions bringing rudi dutschke in context with terrorism, no mentioning of raf, entbebe, no marxism-leninism as the great evil that screwed up east germany, no questions adressing famous turkish preference for barbeque, no questions mentioning when grilling why don't you eat sausages with sauerkraut.

today 135 years ago...

socialist government in paris took power in what is known as the paris commune

look what i found

the islamic declaration - a programme for the islamization of muslims and the muslim peoples, written by our late president alija izetbegovic or short alija (as we in bosnia call ourselves by names).

there are books and political pamphlets that look rather odd and funny these days. if you manage to find mein kampf and read it these days it would at best look unserious. you would ask yourself what the fuck state of mind of those people (masses) that decided to follow it's author must have been? who on earth would these days seriously buy such nonsense. the fact that this book, among other caused hitherto unknown death and misery to millions of people, that it's hollow simplicity may be deadly is the reason why nowadays such books are not for sale. at their best such books are sold with extensive intros, like the ones we see nowadays on cigarete packs.

neither huge warnings on cigarete packs nor extensive campaigns turn people away from smoking. the same is with fascism. if it is not to remain in exclusive circles which are always extreme, fascism needs historical surrounding that make this idea viable alternative to present state. these ideas seduce masses and turn them to cannon fodder. had it not been historical circumstances both books would have remained 3rd grade scrawls no one would ever read.

i decided to break the taboo and to compare islamic declaration to mein kampf. simmilarities are so evident, that only blind can't see them. contrary to popular opinion in bosnia the islamic declaration is not a philosophycal paper. it is merely a political pamphlet - a populist and a conservative one. obviously the author dislikes anything modern (see his attitude on women as litle more than birth machines), which may be attributed to that old bosniak anti-modern reflex stating that everything pre world war ii is good while anything succeding it is ultimately bad. just because pre ww ii is viewed as nostalgic; the times when bosnia was islamic, that is, at least formaly ruled by islamic ruler. this myth like any other is easy to demistify: neither alija, nor the oldest people in bosnia were old enough to remember bosnia before the anexation of 1908. he was simply unable to get along with his conservatism, conservatism of environment he grew up in, and he built the whole his work around this fact.

after this brief excursion to his backgrounds let me explain why his work is is populistic. for all misery and backwardness of muslims there are others to blame. be it the rulers of islamic countries, be it foreign powers, be it his personal enemy kemal atatürk, there are no ordinary people to blame. while contemporary law recognizes no collective responsibility, politics does: this is the reason why there was entnazifizierung (denazification) in post ww ii germany and to lesser extent sanctions and isolation in modern day serbia.

this bulshiting is irresponsible: he is inclined towards a society of people, and society of freedoms, yet without any control. probably the people will at the end be judged by the almighty god, yet on this world... forget it, real muslims are impeccable. alija's logic is twisted: when talking about modern day problems such as alcoholism and women's rights, alija states that the west was unable to find a right right answer to them: prohibition didn't work in sweden and usa, feminism is not the answer. so what is the answer alija: to convert all swedes to islam, along with women. alija talks the in terms of islamic world, hitler talks about german race. the analogy is obvious. this is what makes his writing so appealing to masses and so fatal in the real world.

the islamic declaration seems to me like a pale copy of marx philosopy, with a difference that alija's and hitler's works are not philosophy at all. marx offered the mankind a nice tool (dialectical materialism), that is used even nowadays for analisys of history and economy. what he failed to do is to give us a viable way ahead, beyond his let's make revolution appeal. on the other hand alija directed us to the muslim holy book in which everything is allegedly written, read it for us, chewed it, and gave us his observations. his observations are skin-deep, he chose the most obvious examples, islam is reduced to few symbols (jemaa, jihad, sharia). my impression is our late president does not know things he is writing about, yet he is writing it anyway.

he calls for revolution, yet like marx he is lazy to present us the way ahead: alija claims that the secular society is corrupt, and that according to islam it can't exist alnogside with a religious one. this makes him neither a philosopher nor a theologian. i would be sarcastic enough to say that he was neither a freedom fighter: given the historical and political context (to some extent) from which this work arose, he looks forward to replace one ideology with another one. only in one thing he was astonishingly ahead of his time: he was panislamist, at the time no one knew what that is. as late as on 11 of september we all became their hostages. even if alija was not terrorist, he played dirty games with them, in the extent that only history will tell.

with such ruler, we bosnians are lucky to be bibliophobes, whatever he wrote, no one will ever read, for reading, as it is widely believed in bosnia brings unhappiness, eye cancer and death.

if you dont believe what i wrote, read it and judge it for yourselves.

i watched grbavica

few weeks ago i wrote about "grbavica", bosnian movie that was awarded with the golden bear. i also wrote about lack of reactions to this movie. i spent past two weeks in bosnia during which i got a chance to watch this movie. and i imediately realised why there were no reactions. this is the most difficult movie to wach i have ever seen. most of my friends didn't want to watch it, fearing the strong graphic scenes. this film has no such scenes, yet the movie remains very difficult to watch.

let me make this straight: the movie is perfect. probably this is the reason why it got the award in the first place. everything is perfect, the screenplay, the acting, the use of city as a supporting actor, even the lack of a soundtrack. jasmila's style is an eclectic mix of influences: the storytelling reminds me a bit on tom tykver (straight and sharp), photography is pure iranian (abbas kiarostami used it, bahman ghobadi in "time for drunken horses" showed her the way to do it), with a bit of rebbelish rainer werner fassbinder's attitude. the atmosphere is reminiscent of that in krzysztof kieslowski's "a short movie about killling".

and this movie is not like any of those mentioned above. it is unique, it is feminine, motherly, it has important story to tell. a story that is specific and universal at the same time. a story that transcends national borders. therefore the main role could only had been played by the serbian actress mirjana karanovic. otherwise, whatever the qualities of actress it wouldn't have been as great as it is now.

grbavica is the story about a terrible society as seen through the eyes of mother. about the war and east european transition. the story about lifes that skid off it's tracks never to return on them again. every scene in grbavica is well thought and has it's meaning. when bosnian new-rich businessmen stand in front of new mosque in sarajevo is intentional, the mosque is a symbol of a new post-war time (strong symbolism she loaned from iranian cinematography). grbavica is in it's wholeness a story about good and evil, about love that is born out of greatest hatred, a love declaration to authors' homecity. and when it ends it ends with style: it is life that prevails, whatever the circumstances..

i dont' know how western movie watchers will react on this, but anyone decent enough to call himself a man will shed a tear or two watching it.

jasmila has the biggest balls in bosnia. first that she sent her movie "little red boots" (short story about a mother visiting exhumations of bosnian mass graves looking for her child that was wearing little red boots on the day of killing) on belgrade's film festival thinking there may be someone in serbia who knows where that kid may be burried, for he killed him. and now that she made such a movie.