Happy Day — Radovan Karadzic Captured Monday, Jul 21 2008 

Politics , , pointnine 8:58 pm

I have no words.

Karadzic: Genocide suspect had long evaded justice

Top war crimes fugitive Karadzic arrested: Serbia

What I wouldn’t give to see that footage from Sarajevo!

 

Bosnia’s Nadrealisti Sunday, Jun 15 2008 

Humor and Politics , pointnine 11:34 pm

Nadrealisti I guess means “surrealists,” but basically it’s kind of a joke. There’s a line from a song by Dino Merlin I like, “Burek,” from the album of the same name (what is burek?), that says (please check it out!):

Fundamentalisti no! [Fudamentalists, no!]

Unitaristi, no-no-no-no-no! [Unitarians, no…!]

Neokomunisti, no! [Neocommunists, no!]

Nadrealisti, eto to je to! [Nadrealisti/Surrealists, there, that’s it!]

I’m no expert on nadrealism/surrealism, nor on the Bosnian Top Lista Nadrealista comedy sketch group I was thinking of today. Perhaps my all-time favorite comedy skit, “Šest jezika” [Six Languages], comes from this group. If you understand any Slavic language you will get this, especially if I add that “potpuno drugačije” means “totally different.” The gag is that “Serbo-Croatian” is clearly six distinct languages (my favorite is the division of “crnogorski/Montenegrin” into “crnski and gorski/Montean and Negrin”) and we get to hear how “potpuno drugačije” the phrase “ja čitam/I read” sounds in all six. It continues from there on the same theme, speakers of Hercegovinian needing translators for basic interactions with speakers of Gorski, etc. This kills me!

And then, shockingly, while poking around for more Nadrealisti videos I can understand (on many of them the sound quality’s not so good, and my Gorski 😉 isn’t good enough to understand through that), I found some that have been subtitled! Cool! I’ll share a couple below.

This one isn’t subtitled, but here’s it’s almost more important to know something about the war in Bosnia than to know the language. They’re talking about the American Plan, and who’s going to go where, etc. Having just finished reading Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation, this one really struck a chord with me. The visual is enough. I almost cried.

 

More Fallout from “Tusla” Visit Friday, Apr 11 2008 

Politics , , pointnine 9:34 pm

Can you just imagine how badly Hillary must wish this would go away? And then Bill steps in to help…

BTW, the name of the city is “Tuzla,” not “Tusla” as the ABC News article spells it.

 

Bosnian Reaction to Hillary’s Sniper-Dodging Visit Tuesday, Apr 1 2008 

Politics , pointnine 2:09 am

This is too funny. Really, this whole situation blows my mind. I’m not one to jump on a politician’s back for a misspeak. Truly. If you followed me around with cameras and microphones all day and asked me difficult questions and made me travel every day and give two, three, ten speeches a day and the occasional debate too…yeah, there’d be a lot of misspeaks in there. Embarrassing ones.

But honestly, how does one get confused and “misspeak” about dodging sniper fire? I have never dodged sniper fire. I’m 100% certain, no doubts at all, that I’ve never dodged sniper fire. If I had dodged sniper fire, I’m pretty sure I’d remember that equally clearly. So, while I tend to be nonpartisanly forgiving of the misspeaks, in this case, honestly, aren’t we talking (a) delusions or (b) a straight up lie?

I had beef…oh, no, I forgot, you’re right, I had the chicken. I wore the black dress that night…oh, sorry, honey, you’re right it was the green one. We were running for our lives diving for cover because bullets were flying all around us…oh, that’s right, actually we hung out on the runway and listened to a little girl reading poetry…

Clearly the author of this article has not seen the real video of the now-famous Tuzla visit.

 

The Real Footage from Hillary’s Trip to Bosnia Saturday, Mar 29 2008 

Uncategorized , pointnine 2:46 am

Came across this as a total fluke.

[Warning: one shot is a wee bit graphic. But not fake. Not in the slightest.]