Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

However, when searching through the Das Kapital book this quote is nowhere to be found. Where did it come from? Nostradamus maybe? (It was Trzisno resenje to spot the oddity first.)

As a curiosity, this mystery did not stop Politika and Vecernje Novosti from publishing entire articles based on the alleged quotation without checking to see its credibility. Also, the Serbian version of the quote is even more popular on the internet than the English one! Which one was written first?

photo by Binary Ape

If you’ve read the entire Marx, than please help solve the mystery of the ghost Karl Marx quote!

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I did the dirty job of finding the best places to party like it’s 2009.

image by rudlavi bizon

This is what most clubs in Belgrade have to offer: entrance fee from 25-50 Euros, most drinks included in the price, and some snacks, with the danger of both drinks and the snacks running out somewhere in the middle of the night. A generic party band is playing cover songs from Balkans and possibly a foreign tune every now and then. At midnight – a brass band is coming in and playing so loud that nobody hears anything. Most clubs count on the fact that you will manage to get so drunk and snag somebody in the process that you won’t mind the party being generally turbo folk crap.
In case you don’t want to follow this line of entertainment, here are some more elegant ways to get wasted and possibly snug somebody:

Junior Jack in Belgrade Arena
Nicola Conte and other DJs at the Tube
Alex Gaudino in Expo XXI
Prometheus live [Benji Vaughan] in XLagoom
Drum n Bass and Reggae New Year’s Eve in Akademija
Indie-Go! and Marko Gangbanger in Francuska Sobarica club
Sol de Verao (dnb) in Cvijecara

Re-runs:
Reconstruction Retro Techno on January 1st at XLagoom
Darkwood Dub on January 1st in Dom Omladine
Disciplina Kitchme on January 2nd in Akademija
Young punk bands from January 1st at Tasmajdan

As always, the best thing to do is find a party at someone’s place and get wasted there.
If you know any other interesting places to recommend for the New Year’s eve, leave them in the comments.

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Wikipedia articles on Julian and Gregorian calendar will explain in depth the history, differences and everything you want to know about the reasons for this confusion.

Serbian version of a Christmas tree, photo by Stojan Ilic

Short version – the Julian calender is about 14 days behind the Gregorian calender, and Serbian Orthodox Church decided not to make the shift from the former to the latter. That’s why Serbian 25th of December happens on 7th of January, and Serbian January 1st occurs on January 14th.

There are some who oppose this time lag in Serbia and suggest that we should synchronize the Serbian Orthodox holidays with the mainstream holiday calendar.

But it’s only because they fail to see the advantages! Let me try to list the reasons why we should stick to the current situation:

It doubles your pleasure:
Two opportunities to celebrate something (and eat and drink and have fun in the process) are better than one. In this case four opportunities if you count the double New Year. Serbian denizens working for foreign companies appreciate this fact with a special passion.

It is much more relaxed than the Gregorian Christmas.
No boxing day, no shopping rush hour, no war on Christmas, none of those crap. Just relax and enjoy the slow life. Imagine if we were to celebrate on the same day when the rest of the Christian world is stressed out!

You don’t have to buy presents:
It’s not the part of the Serbian Christmas tradition, so nobody will mind if you don’t buy anything for them. On the other hand it’s not forbidden to buy presents, so you won’t be bound by religious dogma to return a present if someone buys something to you. Did I mention that there is no Christmas shopping rush hour?

You also get to have a special Christmas tree:
Badnjak looks like an old school version of the westernized Christmas tree – like before it was pimped with decorations, angels and other bling-bling. It’s cheaper, lighter, there are no Chinese plastic versions of it (yet), and it’s more eco-friendly. Badnjak comes when the green tree (which is bought because of the first New Year) is already becoming to annoy you.

It’s a great conversation starter as shown in the following example:
A great looking individual: “Hey, merry Christmas!”
You: “Thanks, but I celebrate it in two weeks”
A great looking individual: “Really, how come?”
You: “Well, [the version of the story that somehow makes you look cool]”
A great looking individual: “Wow, how cool! Let’s make out!”
You:

I believe there’s more, but these are the first to come to mind. You can expect another “Merry Christmas” from this blog in about two weeks.

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As B92 reported some time ago and as the Guardian reports now, Santa Claus is banned from Bosnian kindergartens. Reason for this – it goes against the religious Muslim beliefs and/or Bosniak tradition.

Beside the bizzare fact of introducing religious teaching in kindergartens in the first place, this affair brings many interesting questions.

Is Santa Clause a religious figure? He doesn’t wear anything religious (maybe only a funny hat like the Pope). He is dressed in red – probably a communist, in which case it’s safe to say he’s not that religious. He is fat and round just like Buddah, but I guess that’s probably the consequence of a reindeer meat diet and too much coke.

The real reason is probably that Santa represents something everybody can unite around, and it seems that this doesn’t go well with national-romantic tendencies of ultra-nationalists in Bosnia.

This Santa-ban reminds me of the same hostility towards Santa expressed three years ago by Amfilohije Radovic, a high ranking priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the first candidate for the next Serbian Patriarch:

“All European nations, both at the east and the west celebrate Saint Nicholaus. He is the one giving presents to children, like the wise man from the east. Only recently at the west, especially in America, Saint Nicholaus is being replaced by that lying Santa Claus, and they even started celebrating him here. It is an non-existing, lying creature which brings the European nations back to their paganic roots. Santa Claus has nothing to do with the church of Christ.”

Damn right he has nothing to do with the Church of Christ, Islam, Buddhism or any religion whatsoever – that’s why he’s so popular in the first place!
Funny thing is that Amfilohije looks a lot like Santa himself:

Here are some other Santa lookalikes copying his trademark image:

Serbian current prime minister Mirko Cvetkovic – actually, since he was pretty unknown before becoming prime minister, not a lot of people know his name, most people in Serbia really refer to him as Deda Mraz (Santa Claus). In the picture he is seen holding something that looks a lot like a list of Christmas wishes.

Radovan Karadzic’s alter ego, David Dabic. If there ever was a person to seriously ruin Santa Clauses’ otherwise spotless image this is it – a genocidal maniac running around with the real, long white beard and gray hair. Luckily, he was caught and shaved.

By banning the Santa, people from the Bosnian education authorities who did this proved that ultra-nationalists from all three sides in Bosnia – Croatian, Serbian and Bosniak, have two things in common – 1. they all really, really hate Santa, and 2. they are all really, really stupid. This ban would probably not last thanks to the outrage it caused among normal people in Bosnia and the decision will probably be reversed, just like after that Darwin ban situation in Serbia some time ago.

Last, but not least, if I were to find a one good thing about this whole charade – this fear of Deda Mraz is quite possibly one of the best proofs that he really does exist! Yay! In that spirit, happy holidays to all of you out there, regardless if you’re religious or not.

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It’s not the first time that something with local or “ethno” features like this receives lukewarm reception at home, but success abroad – think Goran Bregovic, or Kusturica’s No Smoking Orchestra. Could it be that this type of ethno-pop mish-mash sounds great if you are a foreigner, but if you are Serbian than it’s just “meh… ok… i guess”?

What do you think? How does this sound to you?

(story via popkitchen and city magazine)


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However, there wasn’t so much talk about kids using the social media to promote nationalism, hate and fascism.

Some time later, there’s been a new facebook incident when a group celebrating Srebrenica massacre grew to over six thousand members. This also recieved some media attention, but again, there was no serious analysis of other hate groups on facebook.

What struck me as interesting is that the vast majority of members were not even born when the Yugoslavia breakup wars started and were still in pre-school when it all ended. So where do they get their ‘knowledge’ and information about the past from? Who makes the biggest influence on how they see the past – their parents, media, their friends, the whole society?

Recently a number of groups started popping up, this time instead of bashing other nationalities, members decided it’s time to target gay individuals, by posting their pictures, addresses and encouraging other members to suggest best ways to kill a gay person. Interesting thing is that these group had most members of all, reaching sometimes almost 20.ooo members, bringing together gay-bashers of all nationalities together – Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, anybody that understood b/h/s for that matter. Well, I use the term ‘gay-basher’ broadly because most of the children over there heard of the term ‘gay’ only yesterday and are probably not even sure what it means – it’s just some ‘knowledge’ they picked up from the society they live in – “it’s a disease and should be cured” is what most of them believe.

There are no similar hate groups in English, presumably because the facebook admins can react swiftly if they can understand what some group is all about without waiting for numerous people to hit the ‘report’ button and translate ‘Ubij [insert nationality here]’ for them. I know also some would like to blame facebook and other social media for making hate speech so available, but remember – it’s not guns that kill people.

I guess that facebook is still not considered to be so influential or important by mainstream media, at least not in the Balkans. All this despite the fact that both Serbia and Croatia have around 170.ooo members on facebook each, a respectable number which is only going to grow in the future, with Bosnia lagging behind with about 50.000 members. Despite the fact that it’s mostly teenagers. Despite the fact that members post things under their full names with their photos attached – without having any fear or feeling no responsibility that the things they are posting could be dangerous and are wrong.

After all, after observing Serbian media and society for some time now, should I be surprised things like this happen?

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I’m not sure how this will stop the organized illegal movie and music market on the streets. It’s probably a way to put extra pressure on the government to fight black DVD market by creating a story media will pick up (like I did just now).

Pirated movies and music are big business in Serbia as well as in all (Eastern?) European countries where copyright infringement and authorship rights are not being respected at all. Not one single Serbian band is making money from the CD sales, nor is any movie producer or director making any money from cinema ticket sales. If there are any making money, that’s all thanks to deals, sponsorships and connections with various political parties, state officials and other shady characters. Which obviously affects their creativity and image afterwards.

Piracy has always been strong here since the nineties but now thanks to the internet it became virtually unstoppable. The big question is – how to use the power of file sharing to boost up the sales of an album or a movie? Some studies show that the sales of CDs and DVDs are growing in the US despite the file sharing, or maybe even thanks to file sharing. This is surely not the case in Serbia, because the market size is to small compared to the US. It would be interesting to see if a local band can do what Radiohead did some time ago – to offer it’s music for free download and let fans choose if and how much they want to pay for the music.

By the way, the movie from the title of this post is one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year, and I’ve seen many movies this year. Don’t see it, don’t even download it.

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