This morning, I encountered a dilemma. Someone to whom I attributed information in the blog entitled “Bosnia’s Elections Today” had posted a comment on the website. His comment read “you should not have used my name — that was unfair.” I also misattributed his place of employment, due to a mistake in my notes. Let’s call this person Mr. X.

Initially, I wasn’t sure how to respond. The content of the comment made me think that a different person with the same name, or someone posing as Mr. X, posted the comment. I ran a check on the IP address used to post the comment, and found that it led to Mr. X’s true place of employment. Based on this, I decided to take out some of the information in the post. I took out most of the information Mr. X found objectionable, but not all of it. And I left his name in there, in order to cite my source for the details regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina’s governmental structure.

I took this path because, in the research tradition I hail from, to not attribute a source is plagiarizing. Taking someone else’s idea and passing it off as your own is a bad thing. I had corrected the sin of misinformation, and had apologized to both my readers and Mr. X for it. I thought that I was well within ethical grounds for attributing details to Mr. X’s lecture. In the social sciences, we have to ask permission before using information given in interviews in a publishable paper. The rules regarding lectures, I thought, were clear. With a class lecture, you do not have to ask permission before attributing your source. Lectures in the social sciences are considered public knowledge, and the information contained within them — unless accompanied by a piece of paper stating “do not reproduce or quote without consent” — can be used in papers without consent. I thought about this carefully before using Mr. X’s real name in my initial post about Bosnia’s elections. I felt like I should attribute the information to him, as he was the one who educated our class about the structural and electoral barriers that perpetuate the ethnic divide in Bosnia. I felt like failing to attribute the information to him would be plagiarizing, and would not fairly acknowledge the source of these ideas. What I wrote in the post was not slander nor libel, nor did I feel it could be used to discredit Mr. X in any way.

The problem is that the citation rules for the social sciences break down in the blogosphere. Blogs aren’t really private, and yet they’re not quite public. A blog lies somewhere in-between a class paper and a journalistic article. Because of this, it’s not clear which rules apply. Should you ask someone if it’s okay to use his name before citing information given in a classroom lecture in a blog? Even if this person is a semi-public figure, like Mr. X? Or is it better to follow the established rules the social sciences have, and always, always, always cite your source by name? Where is the line between public and private in the blogosphere? According to a professor I spoke with today, courts are currently deciding these issues.

After having a number of conversations with professors and friends regarding this issue, I decided to remove Mr. X’s name from the initial post. I did this not because I thought that naming him in the versions of the post was wrong, but out of respect for Mr. X. In an age where employers check out prospective employees’ Myspace pages before hiring or firing (a practice which I find highly unethical, by the way), it’s best to take every precaution and try to limit what people can find out about you via a Google-search. As someone who has been Google-stalked myself, I understand and respect this. Mr. X is working for justice and human rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the last thing I would want is if someone misconstrued the information attributed him — thereby making it so he could not continue this work.

The rules for blogs are still being written. I stand by my initial decision to use Mr. X’s name in the post, and my decision to remove it. I feel like I followed the best set of citation rules I know, given the murkiness of blogs. I don’t think that using Mr. X’s name in the initial post was an issue of fairness, as he put it. This blog is, in part, a public forum for the marketplace of ideas. And in that forum, the right of response (which Mr. X exercised) makes what I did fair. My intent in attributing Mr. X in the post entitled “Bosnia’s Elections Today” was not malicious — it was simply to bring electoral and structural difficulties to light, to educate people, and to show my readers that I was using a credible source on the subject.

I apologize to Mr. X and to my readers for any misinformation in the post regarding Mr. X’s place of employment. The errors in the piece have been removed. May this process become easier as we write the rules for the blogosphere.
– Anna

In some circles, I am now Senator Batie from the Sociology Department. Ahem. Senator Batie. That has a nice ring to it. I will be representing the department on the Graduate and Professional Student Senate. I had no campaign platform, as, well, there were only two of us running for two positions.

If I had a campaign platform, or slogan, it would probably be this: Collaborate. I feel like my department is so insular. Even though sociologists are perfectly poised to be the bridge between the politics department and urban planners, we don’t reach out. I want to reach out, and bring my department out of the basement of Savery and into a vibrant intellectual community. I will be Senator Batie, the Great Collaborator.

Maybe I should go out and make myself a campaign video on Youtube. According to NPR’s All Things Considered, Internet advertisements are not yet regulated. This is causing local races to become nationalized, and basically gives free advertising to candidates whose ads make it on the site.

I doubt this will really turn the tide of any elections in the U.S. These ads reach consituencies better via television, not the Internet. Still, it’s a fascinating issue. Should the U.S. government regulate political ads on the Internet? What role could this play in distancing red states from blue states? What role could these ads play in a national election?

Here are some samples:
1. Absolutely ridiculous (and quite funny) attack ad targeting Senator Ben Nelson, D- Nebraska http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm7Z3RU7YNA
2. Don Sherwood’s response to allegations that he choked his mistress, complete with subtitles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpMvl3PmUB0

For a country where sex is even more of a taboo subject than it is in America, Egyptians have an incredible array of condoms available for them.

P., the editor, walking by: Peter’s going to help us with the condom pictures.
Me: Um, I am? Ok… What do I need to…
P: Go see Mme. M. She’ll get you everything you need.
Mme. M enters stage left, crosses down stage right, hands 50LE note to hapless intern Peter.
P: We need you to go get 72 condoms for the sex story.
Me: Really? 72?
P: Well, 20 or 30. Whatever you can get with what Mme. M gave you. Ask K what kind he wants.
Me, projecting while walking towards K: Hey K, what kind of condoms do you want? All the same or a variety?
K, slightly scandalized: A variety, and keep it down.

Stop. Hammer Time. The backstory here is that the Egyptian men in the office can’t buy condoms because it’s Ramadan still, it’s really not appropriate for women to buy condoms and editor P didn’t want to do it because the pharmacist knows him and his wife. That left me. Male foreigner, already an infidel and quite possibly a pimp.

Peter exits, walks down the block to pharmacy, where there are two employees inside doing nothing. The guy outside sweeping the steps came in, too.

Me: Um, hi. I need some condoms.
Lady: Which kind? We have all these…

Check out that display case. First off, no Costco-size 48-packs here. It’s all three-packs except for the tropical flavor multipacks, which come in mango, papaya and, yes, banana flavors. But those were 45 LE and we needed more than 12 condoms, so I started pointing at everything else in the case. Extra long and extra smooth, sure. Gossamer, a step up from tube sock, why not. Lychee nut with soft purple color, definitely. I went on a citrus kick too, getting orange and lime. Total damage was 49 LE (pat on back) for 18 condoms. That works out to about $8, which is a bit cheaper than you’d pay in the States. One of our Egypt books says domestic condoms are notorious for breaking, so I guess you get what you pay for. And on a slightly more profound note, the selection was all about flavors, and not so much other features. If you want ribbed, knobbed, heated, climax control or whatever, no such luck.

But you can have a tropical smoothie in your mouth.

I thought I could hold out longer under the guise of rising above the novelty of cultural differences. But I just can’t do it.

Every day I walk by Miriam Market, a fine grocery store a couple blocks from the newsroom in Maadi. The outside is unmistakable, for it is cluttered with what must be hundreds of cases of bottled water and shrink-wrapped flats of Coke products. Walking inside is where the fun really begins. Keeping in mind that this store is located in one of the nicest parts of Maadi, which is already a very nice suburb, the products on offer appeal mainly to those with plenty of money and (I imagine) Americans who have been relocated to Egypt but are still getting paid equivalent American salaries.

Living in Egypt, one comes to expect labels written in Arabic and some amount of guessing to get whatever you need. Getting the afforementioned “drain unclogger” a couple days ago took both of us, a friend on the phone, and three store employees producing things by trial and error. Above all the shouting at Abu Shady I was handed a plastic bag which one has to take on faith is a whole chicken and not someone else’s kofta wrapped in fat. Yes, that’s an option too.

But not at Miriam. The store just put up bright new signs to spruce up the bottled-water facade. Written in perfect English, they are anonymous customer testimonials about how great the store is, how friendly the staff are, and how many wonderful imported products they stock.

Things like every Kraft product under the sun, a wall of Charmin and Quilted Northern toilet paper, Nestle chocolate chip cookie mix (yes, I bought some), Quaker Chewy granola bars, Skippy, Windex, Cherry Coke, Rock Star energy drinks, fruit roll-ups, Crystal salad dressing…

One could get geographically confused in there, because there are plenty of other products (notably all the dairy and frozen foods) that are locally produced and with bi-lingual labels. But if you wanted to, you could eat pretty decently while in Egypt, and not have any uniquely native cuisine or junk food. The catch is that all that will cost more than it would in the States.

How to unclog a drain in Egypt? We haven’t figured it out yet. This magical powder was supposed to do it, but instead it created a cesspool in the sink that took a day and a half to drain away.

Egypt is about adversity. That’s a little harsh, but in essence it’s true. Living anywhere far away from home has its own challenges, and that has never been more true for me than here.

Per our weekend regimen, we did a little touristing this weekend, checking out Coptic Cairo, or Mar Girgis. It was a refreshing change from the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum, since there were far fewer people and nobody aggressively hawking wares. Then the really exciting part.

Coptic Cairo is physically very closed-off, with massive police roadblocks at either end of the street bordering it on the west (only tour buses can pass) and Roman walls on the other sides. But walk a few blocks farther north along said road, and be amazed by a sight that one of our tour books dubbed a “smoldering heap of rubbish.” But this is no ordinary trash pile. No, the enclave of Fustat is a very old village filled with people “covered in mud” who make earthenware pottery. I imagined messy Hobbits. I also imagined carrying a four-foot-tall urn through Customs. No, officer, nothing to declare.

We find the entrance, marked only by the wall of a huge mosque on one side and open space (sort of) on the other side of a narrow, rutted road. We start following the road, noting what looks like a decaying cemetary on the left, with piles of apartments beyond. And we note shouting behind us. The shouting comes closer, then passes us and turns an about-face. It’s an Egyptian cop in a fine white shirt and trousers with an AK-47 across his chest, finger (thankfully) not on trigger.

The cop’s English was bad and our Arabic was worse, so I’m still not sure what went on. As best we could piece together later, the village is being rebuilt in a massive project to make it an artisan community (Stripping out all the history and character in the process? Quite possibly.), and the part we had wandered into was not yet finished. But fear not for the future, our Egyptian friend m. told us there are at least 3 other ways to get into Fustat, and he’d take us back. The four-foot urn is still a possibility.

The view from our window. Both cars and the biker were moving, and somehow not one touched either of the others. I don’t get it either. The bread, incidentally, is delicious here.

If I were a really hardcore blogger, this would actually be three posts, all within seven minutes of each other. But that’s just silly, so you’ll have to take me at my word (such that it is) that despite all literary devices employed in the following, these three topics are not actually related.

I’m launching a major new offensive. Roaches take notice. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions will not distract me, nor will the most spectacular political scandal in recent years. Our apartment has a minor infestation of dead roaches. They are appearing upside-down on the bathroom floor, in the bathtub, in the kitchen and (most curiously) in the second living room. One was alive until I smothered it in Beygon and watched it die a remarkably slow death by neurotoxin. Thanks to some intrepid research by Danica, we are mounting a multipronged containment plan to curb the threat of Monolithic Roachism. First on the list (besides more rampant spraying of all dodgy corners of the house) was fixing the balcony door so it actually latches. Weatherstripping may be in its future. Next up, hiring someone to do some harcore cleaning of the festering scuz in Bathrooms One and Two.

Gregor Samsa turned into a roach. Thankfully, we did not when we entered the building proclaimed as a monument to Kafka in every Egypt tourist book we have. The Mugamma, a rather imposing beast rising from the southwest side of Midan Tahrir in downtown, is home to 18,000 bureaucrats. But you really don’t realize what you’re getting into until you near the lone x-ray machine at the front and note that the gently curving facade of the mammoth building is slowly enveloping you in its grasp, shutting out the roasty Egyptian sun as it does. The metal detector beeps only occassionally. It was unimpressed by my cell phone, keys, belt buckle and steel-shanked shoes. Step inside, and you are greeted with a remarkably small round entry area. Four hallways branch off. To the left, a bank of four elevators that might not work. To the right, opposite the elevators, a flight of stairs and on either side of those, two small ragged photo booths. And Room 93, where we were supposed to meet an immigration lawyer who would shepherd us through getting visa extensions? Not a clue. No building directory. No underpaid-but-friendly security guard sitting behind a desk with a list of offices. We tried hallway, uh, 2. It could have been any of them. There was a dusty pall across everything. The floor blended with the walls, which dissolved into the ceiling. Unmarked doors opened into small, identical rooms. Two or three people clumped around a desk, surrounded by metal shelves to the ceiling sagging slightly under the weight of hundreds of grey banker’s boxes overflowing with dusty curled-over files. You think I’m making this up. When I get up the nerve to go in there again, I’ll take a picture. Needless to say, after some aimless wandering, we found the lawyer, who only spoke Egyptian. The friendly bureaucrat in the office removed from the hordes of Europeans, Africans, Asians and Americans (yup, everybody) vying for the same stickers we were tantilizingly close to receiving translated for us. And with refreshingly minimal effort, the Mugamma spit us out again into the afternoon Egyptian sun, six-month tourist visas in hand.

Now, onto one Mark Foley, who has successfully completely sheltered himself from the media scrutiny that I would have expected. From my vantage over here, this scandal is taking on something approaching the level of farce. The daily stories I read spend more time rehashing the previous day’s story than giving me anything new. Most troubling is that Mr. Hastert (R-Ill.) has said that his office will take responsibility. But when? It is already clear that even if he did not fully know what was going on in 2005 or 2003, his aides certainly did. And if his cadre of aides were so inept as to completely overlook the rather blunt warning signs coming their way from other offices, then someone needs to get canned. Believe you me, I would be saying the same thing if this involved Democrats. If I had the political mind in 1983, at the age of one, that I have now, I would have objected to then-Rep. Gerry Studds’ (D-Mass.) affairs with pages. But alas, don’t hold that against me. I was pretty low on the Kolberg Scale at that point. Incidentally, I just found a rather dated but still incredibly informative rundown of past congressional scandals on the Washington Post Web site. It’s leftover from the Lewinsky days, but it has a precient reminder for us: Congress has a horrid record of holding itself accountable for sex scandals, whether homosexual or heterosexual.

Well, as most of us in the U.S. know by now, Congressman Mark Foley, R-Florida, has resigned over some sexual e-mails and instant messages he sent to a 16-year-old congressional page. Foley, who sadly enough chaired the House Committee for Missing and Exploited Children, acknowledged both alcoholism and homosexuality in a statement through his lawyer. Foley may have done the right thing by resigning, but he should not have made excuses for his behavior.

Some Republicans are trying to paint this as a “gay” issue. On NPR’s “All Things Considered” last Friday, the head of the conservative Free Congress Foundation said something along the lines of, “Foley is a known homosexual. And as we all know, homosexuals are obsessed with sex.” This implies that Foley did what he did because he’s gay. When challenged by Michele Norris to back this up, the guy replied, “Well, many well-known psychiatrists and psychologists who have to deal with these people agree with me.” But he didn’t name any names.

Hello?!? There are probably more heterosexuals obsessed with sex than homosexuals. There’s no link between one’s sexuality and sexual addiction, according to Dr. Pepper Schwartz, University of Washington sociologist.

Making this a “gay” issue just hurts gays, particularly gay Republicans. I’ve heard a couple of commentators make the link between homosexuality and pedophilia. There’s no link between the two. Many (if not most) pedophiles are heterosexual.

Oh, and in case we were confused, Fox News (that bastion of fair and balanced reporting) labeled Foley as a Democrat for half of their news broadcasts this week. And no, Fox News (to my knowledge) never corrected this, nor apologized for the misinformation. Typical. Gotta love how Sean Hannity blamed CLINTON for Foley’s conduct, too. What does Clinton have anything to do with this?

Back to Foley. On KUOW’s “Weekday” last Friday, columnist Susan Painter posited what would have happened had the page been female. Painter pointed out that we probably wouldn’t still be talking about it days after the story broke. Sadly, opposite sex sexual harassment is nothing new. She said that the real issue was that Foley was engaging in same sex sexual harassment, which (in her eyes) is an anathema to the Republican party.

Painter also pointed out that the real losers in all of this are the congressional pages themselves. Contrary to what House Speaker Dennis Hastert believes, the problem is not with the congressional page program. The program should not be abolished. The problem is that power corrupts, and that some people in power view themselves as above both the law and ethical standards. I know that technically the 16-year-old boy was old enough (under DC law) to consent. However, he was still a minor a long way from home, whose parents agreed to send him to DC so he could learn about, and participate in, American government. Really, those who failed to ensure his safety, and the safety of all other congressional pages, ought to be punished. We need wide-eyed, idealistic youngsters with a desire to learn about government. It helps those of us who are jaded by the American government re-awaken tendrils of belief in our once-beloved institution.

– Anna

To find transcripts of the radio programs “All Things Considered” and “Weekday,” go to npr.org or kuow.org.

So I was nearly hit by a car on the way home from campus today. This is the fourth time I’ve been nearly hit in the past year. I was following all the rules good pedestrians should follow — crossing with the light, being aware of my surroundings, and wearing light(ish) colors. The driver of the car that nearly hit me saw me, and was waiting until I was all the way through the intersection before turning, but the car behind him did not see me. The driver of the silver Lexus, seeing only a long line of cars, and not the pedestrian in the crosswalk, proceeded to wail on his horn in an obnoxious manner. While doing this, he crept up on the bumper of the blue car that nearly hit me. Said blue car turned while I was still in the crosswalk, missing my backpack by…oh…six inches or so.

I got pissed, and flipped off the silver Lexus. Since I am now getting quite tired of avoiding large moving hunks of metal on wheels, I committed the license plate number of Mr. Lexus to memory. Being a good citizen, I called the Seattle Police Department’s non-emergency line and proceeded to report the jerk. The officer suggested I call the City of Seattle’s Pedestrian Safety line, so I did, getting their answering machine.

“This is an outrage,” I thought, “really, if Mayor Nickels and the City Council want to get people to walk or ride their bikes to work, they have to make it safer for pedestrians.” So, I called the Seattle City Council’s receptionist, thinking that I’d request a meeting with my council member to discuss ways to improve pedestrian safety in Wallingford and the University District. She transferred me to the Citizen Bureau. The person who answered the phone transferred me to someone else within the Citizen Bureau. That person suggested that I — guess what — call the City of Seattle’s Pedestrian Safety Line and speak with someone there. And does a real, live person actually answer that phone line? The answer is no.

The funny thing is that I wasn’t surprised. This problem-shuffling is typical of bureaucracies. I doubt anyone will actually get back to me about this. I am not planning on giving up, however. I’m going to e-mail both the Seattle City Council and the mayor’s office. I’m going to call the University District Neighborhood Service Center (or stop by on the way to school) to complain about how unsafe it is to walk to campus. Something has to happen here. I’m fed up.

Wish me luck.

– Anna

Moving into a new apartment is always exciting. Especially the first time you ever get an apartment, and realize after moving in that there is no shower, the doors are hung crooked, the floors are raked and the sidings are actually old printing plates. But we learn and move on.

Until, of course, we move to Egypt, when all that goes out the window.

We had help, in the form of A. and M., to translate for us and warn of pitfalls. Among the big ones, if the future tenant doesn’t point out any problems before signing the contract, then the landlord has no obligation to do anything about them. Oh, and lack of hot water is not a “problem” by Egyptian standards. So we dutifuly made sure the toilets flushed, checked the phones and the satellite TV, turned on the oven burners and made sure the deadbolt locked. Following in a now-rich tradition of apartment hunting, we noted that there was no shower curtain (or rod for that matter), though there is a showerhead. We signed the contract on Tuesday night, and finally moved in on Sunday afternoon.

Before even unpacking our bags, we set to rearranging the place. It was severely over-furnished. Our two-bedroom place has three beds, two couches, eight chairs, four end tables, three stools and four small column things that would go great in, oh, a production of Big Love. We hauled out all the columns and stools, a couple of the end tables and two chairs to really open the place up. Not quite feng shui, as Danica observed at the time, but it was an improvement.

As we got to unpacking, we realized our gross oversight. While we checked to see if the toilets (there are 2) flushed, we didn’t check if they had seats; only one did. And the partition closing off the seat-equipped toilet has massive rectangles punched in it, giving the user only the most abstract form of privacy. At least we knew what we were up against. A. assured us that buying a new toilet seat would be easy and cheap. And we were buoyed by getting a set of Egyptian Cotton towels for LE250, something like $45.

So we settled in to sleep, only to be awakened at the ripe hour of 2:45 a.m. by the sounds of someone kicking down our door and throwing blunt objects into walls. We waited. Another crash and thud. I reflected on my Arabic. It did not include how to fend off intruders or how to describe the situation to a 123 operator. I couldn’t find my pocket Arabic book either, and our laptops were brazenly in the open on a coffee table. So I slipped out of our room with cell phone in hand and slunk about the pitch-black apartment, turning on every single light as I went. Not a soul. Deadbolt and chain still set. Then I heard the assorted clattering noises again, more clearly. It was the people upstairs, evidently rearranging their furniture and shoveling large chunks of glass.

We went back to bed, only slightly reassured, since the noises persisted and sounded for all their worth like they were coming from inside our own apartment. But they subsided, and by 3:15 a.m. the trundling had been replaced by the crowing of an anemic rooster on the garbage pile behind our building.

On the plus side, the bathroom has a floor squeegee, so we can dry the floor after showering. A nice touch.

The polls have closed, and 31% of eligible voters turned out for Bosnia’s elections. One news story I found called that a high turnout.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20509922-1702,00.html

As some of you know, I recently returned from a month of traveling in Eastern Europe. With seventeen others from the University of Washington, I spent a week in Sarajevo, learning about what life is like in Bosnia-Hercegovina ten years after the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. I found a country divided along ethnic lines, where young people are increasingly becoming disillusioned about the future. Many young people, like Ajdin, a waiter in Sarajevo who introduced us to nightlife there, want to get out of the country. Unemployment is high, and many young Bosnians see better economic opportunities in the European Union and the United States.

It doesn’t help matters much that Bosnia-Hercegovina is politically divided along ethnic lines. To me, that institutionalizes the ethnic divisions that some argue led to war in the 1990s. Bosnia has three presidents — one Bosnian Muslim, one Bosnian Croat, and one Bosnian Serb. (I use the terms “Bosnian Croat” and “Bosnian Serb” to distinguish from Serbs and Croats living in Serbia and Croatia, respectively.) These three presidents rotate, each serving six-month terms. Within the country itself are two entities– Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. According to a lecture by a Sarajevo lawyer, only those of “pure” ethnicity can run for the rotating presidency. Only three seats out of an 87 person Parliament are reserved for “Others” — the term used for those who are of mixed race. Nationalist parties usually win, even though there is not widespread nationalist sentiment in the country — as members of each ethnic group fear their interests will be left out if they don’t have a strong nationalist in the rotating presidency. In protest, many people do not vote.

Confused yet? It gets worse. Overseeing all of this (and I forgot to mention that each entity has its own president and Parliament) is the Office of the High Representative. The OHR is basically an international president, making decisions for the country when (as happens frequently), the representatives of the various governing bodies can’t agree on a course of action. According to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5397020.stm), High Representative Christian Scwartz-Schilling wants to hand over most of his responsibilities to Bosnians next year.

This would help pave the way for Bosnia’s eventual ascenscion to the European Union, something many in the country see as crucial for the economy. Is the country truly ready for this? I’m not so sure. While in Bosnia-Hercegovina, I got the sense from many of our speakers that, were the international community to pull out, war would break out again. The Dayton Peace Accords set up Bosnia’s constitution, and while they were instrumental in ending the brutal conflict there, they left the country with just that — a cease fire. In my opinion, in order for there to be lasting peace in Bosnia, and in order for the country to join the EU, the government must be overhauled. Instead of three presidents, Bosnia should have one. The ethnic entitites must be abolished, leaving only one country. Nationalist parties need to go, too. In order to ensure that elected representatives actually rule in the best interests of all of Bosnia’s citizens, I propose a unique bicameral legislature. The lower chamber would be set up like our House of Representatives, along geographic districts. All voters from all parts of the country would be assigned a random upper chamber seat for which to vote. This would combat the geographical separation of Bosnia’s ethnic groups. Since politicians would be receiving votes from all ethnic groups within the country, they could not promote the interests of their ethnic group alone.

I think these are good ideas. Unfortunately, though, I’m just a grad student in sociology. I don’t have access to UN and EU movers and shakers, unless they happen to be reading this. I will be following the results of Bosnia-Hercegovina’s elections with great interest, in the hopes that maybe this time, citizens won’t elect nationalists. Maybe they’ve come to their senses, and realized that overcoming ethnic divisions is the only way for Bosnia to move forward, really the only way to join the EU. I will be following the election results with interest, hope, and also fear. I came to love Sarajevo and Bosnia while I was there. I do not want the country to fall apart again.

– Anna