This is the syndication feed for Lithchat. http://www.lithchat.com/joomla/ Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:48:41 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./georgia-reach.html In my earlier post (culture-etc./why-support-georgia.html) on the conflict over South Ossetia, Darius wrote back with a comment (culture-etc./why-support-georgia.html#jc_allComments), the response to which will be this post. My initial question was regarding the specifically “Lithuanian” interest in supporting Georgia, but Darius responded that the pro-Georgian position is hardly surprising—in fact, it is the default, Western, mainstream position (especially now, as leaders like Merkel are coming around). That it is mainstream does not make it right, however. It is interesting to wonder about, in fact, the sources of its being a mainstream response. Is it Saakashvili’s western attitude and chumminess, which makes him seem like “one of us” and not the other? Is it the excited glee of a crew member’s seeing his home shore after almost twenty years of being adrift (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5595/) with the end of the Cold War? Or is it, as I suspected in my previous post, a borderline racist reaction to what is seen as the “authoritarian” and “imperialist” Russian character?Are those necessarily (still) good reasons? How much of a threat, actually, is Russia, especially in comparison to, I don’t know, MFNNTR China? Why is the US so willing to publicly make the pro-Georgian case (as Joe Biden did last night, in a part of his speech that fell completely flat)?But like I said, the interest local to this page is the Lithuanian interest. Darius, in his comment, makes a comment similar to what I saw in the Lithuanian press while I was still there: Because Georgia is a former SSR, as is Lithuania, the threats faced by Georgia are comparable/similar/equivalent to potential threats to Lithuania.How true is that, however? As I wrote before, Lithuania, unlike Georgia, is in NATO. An attack on Lithuania is an attack on France, the UK, and, most importantly, the US. The attack on Georgia was not. Similarly, in much of what I’ve read, an iron hand in Ukraine and the Caucasus for Putin was the concession for letting the Baltic States join NATO, which points towards the actions of this conflict as being an overreach not only by Saakashvili, but also by NATO states (which recognized Kosovo, in another snub of Putin).Furthermore, Georgia was a CIS state, which Lithuania never was. As such, Georgia entered into the Collective Security Treaty. And though they left the treaty after its first period expired, the point remains that the relationship between the two former SSRs and Russia (and the West!) are pretty dissimilar, from a defense/foreign policy standpoint.Finally, Lithuania is a healthy democracy, which has managed to even impeach a head of state (a sign of the health there of the rule of law). Georgia, on the other hand, has a far sketchier democratic pedigree, and this includes Saakashvili, who campaigned on a hard nationalist promise of reintegrating the lost territories into greater Georgia. I assume there are Lithuanian politicians who salivate at the prospect of the return of Hrodno to Lithuania, but I do not suspect there are many serious presidential candidates who do so.This last point, then, guts the possibility of Russia’s using the same excuse to attack Lithuania as it used on Georgia; the ethnic conflict simply is not there. And even if it were, then the issue becomes one of trying to move above/past ethnic divisions and understand foreign policy instead as one based on state interest. (Russia, of course, could gin up a different reason, perhaps starting with “K,” ending with “grad,” and with “alinin” in the middle...)Pawns of the Russians or not (I’m mostly sure they are...), the people of South Ossetia have been making an ethnic claim to their right of independence, whereas Georgia is making a historical claim to deny it. Our world is one in which ethnic claims of self-determination still carry a lot of weight. If the LR were to dial down its ethnocentrism, then it would dilute the potential of ethnic minorities within Lithuania (with Russian backing) to make their own secessionist claims.Dariaus claims (http://www.alfa.lt/straipsnis/c85098) of the potential for a Russian blunder in Georgia are similar (using even the same Clausewitz chestnut) to those in a piece by Daniel Nexon here (http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2008/08/maybe-weve-got-it-all-wrong.html), which has the benefit of being in English. It is entirely possible that Saakashvili will emerge the victor (assuming he manages to stay in power), and that seems to be more likely the case after hearing Biden last night. For whatever reason—oil, military contracts, psychological lack of direction, he talks English well—the US is overeager to support Saakashvili in Georgia, so I suppose the smartest thing would be not to write more posts but to just sit and wait. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:39:34 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./why-support-georgia.html [UPDATE: I’ve cleaned up this post for style and have added some links, now that I am in front of my own computer in Brussels.]I first heard of the incidents in the Caucasus (South Ossetian provocation leading to Georgian shelling leading to Russian response, which has included crossing into Georgia proper) while hidden in a dvaras (http://www.taujenudvaras.lt/) north of Vilnius. The context of learning was the noise of a drunken Lithuanian nationalist proudly saying he had no sympathy whatsoever for any Russian pilots who had been shot from the sky. Russians are scum, he explained. At the time, I thought he had a much earlier incident (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/world/europe/22georgia.html?ref=world) in mind.It was only upon return to Vilnius that I started reading up on the news, and, still, persistently the focus remained the same in both the Lithuanian and Western press: Russia is to be villified at all costs. In the Lithuanian media this did not even have the benefit of a history of the South Ossetian struggle—either the writers assumed the readers all knew of the tale, or they figured that anything excusing Russia would be not right.Then I read about the denunciations of Russia from the Baltic presidents and Lech Kaczyński, culminating in their forming a “Presidential Shield,” by descending to Georgia to show support for the catastrophic over reach of Mikheil Saakashvili. (Commentary here (http://alfa.lt/straipsnis/c84008)) It is certainly no surprise to me to see the likes of Valdas Adamkus supporting a Washington-OKed fledgling democracy. Bush has relied on Adamkus and his fellow Eastern Europeans to provide numbers in favor of his blunt object foreign policy against the more nuanced approaches of France and Germany (who were the ones who put Georgia's NATO bid in the slow lane). But political cover is one thing. What I was not expecting was for the appeals to become more popular (and here I count e-petitions, facebook groups, and conversations at Balti Drambliai). But as the “we must support Georgia” drums started up, I failed to see a way around it without being either a Bush/Cheney apologist or, for the moment, as racist as that guy up in Aukštaitija.Remember: Russians can't be trusted.This is a dress rehearsal for invading Lithuania.My response is: slow down and think through the course of events that lead to this. Read a sober banker (http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2008/08/georgia_on_my_mind.html) (as centrist as they get) on the subject. Read an interview (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2008/08/11/king/index1.html) with a professor familiar with the region. There are a lot of ins and outs and what have yous to the crisis, and, though, yes, “this aggression will not stand, man,” it is crucially important to figure out which aggression that is. In the event of the cease-fire, it is easy to say “everyone behaved badly,” and what is most important is that no more lives are lost, and there is a bit of value to leaving it as that. But the “everyone is to blame” argument might strike some as appeasing the “imperialist” claims of Russia. But why, then, a few days back, was the popular appeal for the oppressed Georgians and not the oppressed Ossetians, who have been considered barbarians (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=462) by the Georgians? Why is Lithuania siding with a man talking about reconstructing the borders established by [[David the Builder]], even if this means crushing small ethnic minorities? Why are Lithuanians not, instead, supporting the rights of (de facto) self-determination for the Ossetians?Are there reasons that do not devolve into the above bullet points? NATO, of course, is contractually bound to get Lithuania’s back, should Russia invade. So what, then, again is the point for all this “support”?And where, then, is this outpouring of support for standing up against aggressions that will not stand, when the Jewish Community Building in Vilnius gets run up and down and defaced (http://www.juedische.at/TCgi/_v2/TCgi.cgi?target=home Param_Kat=3 Param_RB=31 Param_Red=10267)? Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:27:35 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./getting-the-most-out-of-your-dollar-in-lt.html Part of stressing about a trip to Europe these days is trying to milk the most value out of the terribly weakened dollar, which limps even in comparison to the wee litukas. I have wondered for a very long time what the most economical means of converting money might be, so today I ran some numbers and did some research in a post on Donkey Hottie (http://www.1984produkts.com/donkeyhottie/archives/2008/07/22/spending-money-abroad/). The actual post is sort of interesting, but there’s lots of math. If that frightens you, here is my conclusion, based on my specific account with Citibank:Always go to Lithuania with as many US dollars as you feel comfortable bringing. Once you’re there, if you convert to Litai via cash or via a bank account at a Lithuanian bank is up to you—the account saves you not even $1 per $1000 in exchange versus cash, making the hassle of opening an account potentially not worth it. And though you’ll lose money emptying out the account back into dollars to bring back home (assuming you did not spend it all), the rate the bank will give you will still be in the vicinity of 2% off the real rate. That means that even still you lose less money converting from USD > LTL > USD at Hansa Bank (http://www.hansa.lt/en/index.html) than you do converting USD (> EUR) > LTL at Citibank in your neighborhood. If anyone else has any tips about stretching the dollar in conversion, I would love to hear them. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:39:24 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./they-can-dance-our-dances.html (http://www.daveblackonline.com/nov-dec_2006_blog_archives.htm)In the comments (culture-etc./getting-ready-for-svente.html#jc_allComments) on this webpage as well as in personal discussions during the course of Šokių šventė (http://www.sokiusvente.com/), a certain red herring has arisen time and time again. At first I ascribed the reemergence to its professors’ lack of attention paid to an issue I thought I had already covered. I’ll just assume I was unclear and restate the case here.The argument, seen as a compromise to Darius Udrys’s suggestion (culture-etc./evading-the-monolithuania.html) of having a Litvak (or other Ashkenazi) dance group perform a dance at Šokių šventė, is that if said dance group were to download “our” music and learn “our” dances, they would be more than welcome to dance at “our” šventė.Making this claim ignores the fact that Litvak dances are already “our” dances, if we imagine ourselves as Lithuanians. In fact, I hold it out as a source of shame that—inviting a Litvak group notwithstanding—the organizers of Šokių šventė have never seen it fit to include dances emerging from the immense (and culturally fecund) Jewish community of Lithuania. And if the response then turns to a lack of cultural specificity in the other dances, I present the following two pieces of evidence:1. Even if we assume that Litvak dances—regardless of who is dancing them—have “no place” in a Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival (an offensive assumption, but whatever), what on earth place does the “[[Virginia Reel]]” have at such a Festival?At the 1976 Šokių šventė, as I have pointed out before, the dancers danced the “Virginia Reel.” (http://www.sokiusvente.com/_lt/main.php?id=history) This is a simple historical fact. Trying to make a claim for it as a “Lithuanian folk dance,” seems a bit far fetched, even as Lithuanian boosters are wont to make claims for the presence of Lithuanians in John Smith’s Jamestown colony.Of course, the dancers danced the “Virginia Reel” to celebrate the bicentennial of the US. I was a babe then, so I have no idea how the dance went down or if there were even sarcastic, farcical attempts to fold the dance into any kind of Lithuanian tradition. But it stands there, as a big, stinking, sweaty counterexample to the propriety of having “non-Lithuanian” dances at Šventė. When the dance comes from a group we like (atavistic Scotch-Irish), we do their dances. When it’s a group we don’t...2. Yet even the dances that are classified as “Lithuanian folk dances” have cultural specificity to them affixed to minority groups within Lithuania already. Here I point to the always popular “Pempel, pempel (http://www.sokiusvente.com/media/07Pempel_pempel_0506_2m17s.mp3).” Any glance at any version of the lyrics (http://lithuanian-american.org/oktetas/pempel.html) will confound a speaker of Lithuanian. It looks like Lithuanian, some words are intelligible, but others are not at all. The lyrics are, of course, in Samogitian, not standard Lithuanian, and the song is a Samogitian song. And for anyone who begins to argue that “žemaičiai — lietuviai,” I encourage you to read up on Antanas Kontrimas (http://del.icio.us/lithchat/žemaitija), the figurehead of the movement to get Samogitian listed as an official minority nationality in Lithuania. So it’s ok to dance “Pempel, pempel,” a dance of questionable and dubious “Lithuanianness,” but not ok to dance a “Litvak” dance. It is ok to dance a dance with lyrics that are in the vicinity of incomprehensible, because somehow the minority community of Samogitians has been welcomed under the Lithuanian umbrella. But because a noxious history of anti-Semitism has not granted the same to the community of Jews living within the same area, their dances do not count as “Lithuanian.”It’s actually funny—as a child, I relished “Pempel, pempel” precisely because of its stark cultural otherness. It was the one song we sang at stovykla that I could not understand, so I got extra interested in it and fascinated by it. Ironically, I always looked at it as the “token” Samogitian song in our dainorėliai in exactly the same way that I always looked at “Shalom Chaverim (http://www.itsgila.com/songsisraeli.htm)” as the token Hebrew song that we would sing at our school Christmas pageants. To repeat, then: saying that any dance group that would learn “our” dances was welcome to dance is a canard, because it never stops to consider what sort of political damage we are doing by deciding what is “ours” and what is not “ours.” It is precisely over this incuriousness that the current mess erupted. Udrys aggressively suggested we abandon that laziness and spend some time to reconsider what is “ours,” but the atavistic cultural wing of JAVLB freaked out. “Ours” is what JAVLB (and its ŠŠRK) say it is, even if that arbitrarily includes the “Virginia Reel” and “Pempel, pempel.” Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:36:12 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./dual-citizenship-thwarted-again.html Well, it’s a good thing I decided to wait until after Šokių šventė (http://www.sokiusvente.com/) to weigh in on the Seimas’s passing a nearly certainly unconstitutional dual citizenship law (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=5237), since President Valdas Adamkus just vetoed (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=5340) it. About the veto I do not have much to say, since the article I read is only filled with Regina Narušienės over the top histrionics and descent into self-parody. Having her complain about people who are beholden to a “pasenusis mentalitetas” absolutely made my day. But still, some value exists in looking at what the new law proposed. It basically took to heart the Constitutional Court’s rulings about the unconstitutionality of citizenship based on ethnic criteria by not granting dual citizenship to “ethnic” Lithuanians (who may still be eligible to get Lithuanian citizenship after forfeiting their other citizenship). And that was a good step. The quicker the precedent forms that divorces the ethnic nation from the republican state, the better. But the new law had a sort of twist that has a very good justification with a nefarious politics behind it. The first time I heard about the Constitutional Court’s decision about stopping dual citizenship, someone suggested to me that it was somehow based on the fact that Lithuanians were panicked about the “lines around the block in NYC” of people petitioning for Lithuanian passports. In other words, they feared a massive return of an exiled Jewish community to the Lithuanian public (and political) sphere.So whether or not it is true that there exists a paranoia about a Jewish population with political power, the new law limited dual citizenship only to people (and their descendants) who could prove that they fled Lithuania after the Soviets invaded in 1940, as opposed to earlier, when, of course, masses of Jews and others were fleeing Central Europe as Hitler’s influence grew larger in nations like Lithuania (for more, read Eidintas (http://www.lituanus.org/2003/03_3_06.htm)). On the one hand, it makes sense to give dual citizenship to those who fled their nation and had their citizenship stripped by a USSR that claimed that their nation no longer existed (and, thus, that the automatic USSR citizenship all Lithuanian citizens received was invalid). I may not have existed had my grandparents not fled, but certainly my mother would have reproduced, and those children would have been Lithuanian citizens, had it not been for WWII.On the other hand, the Soviet invasion begs to be understood in historical context, which this post-1940 distinction completely ignores. Contexts like how Lithuania colluded with the USSR to ensure its autonomy against Poland. Contexts like how Vilnius’s being the capital of Lithuania is in large part the result of the secret protocols in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Contexts like these demonstrate that WWII did not begin (in Lithuania) with the marching of the Soviets in 1940, but, rather, began far earlier, with a political climate that threatened the continued autonomy of the Lithuanian Republic as it felt pressure from two different spheres of influence (German and Soviet). Can you really blame a Jewish family in Kaunas for wanting to get the hell out of the increasingly noxious environment in 1938? Yet that family would have been ineligible for dual citizenship.So by drawing the political line over dual citizenship, the Seimas still managed to underhandedly effect an ethnic agenda. As a result, I am glad to see that Adamkus chose to veto the law. Plus, it keeps the conflict within the realm of the legislative for a while longer. The more finesse this gets at the legislative, the better, since it will hopefully only grow in constitutionality (though I doubt it). Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:34:09 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./getting-ready-for-svente.html Well, who but a Nazi would deny that Karl Marx was a German because he was a Jew?—Mr. Wilson, The Stranger I leave for Šokių šventė (http://www.sokiusvente.com/) on Wednesday, making this post the likely last peep from me before then. I start with a quote from the interesting but not spectacular Nazi hunter movie, [[The Stranger (1946 film)|The Stranger]], a 1946 production starring both [[Orson Welles]] and [[Edward G. Robinson]]. Robinson plays Wilson, a G-Man who is tasked with finding the whereabouts of Franz Kindler, the mastermind behind the [[Final Solution]], who disappeared without any trace of his identity (other than knowledge of what his all-consuming hobby was and that one other Nazi knew who he was, his underling).Welles plays Kindler, who has refashioned himself as a history teacher at a private school in Connecticut. Charles Rankin he's now called, and he marries at the start of the movie a daughter of a Supreme Court justice. Wilson gets in with the family, and then he gets invited to a dinner with them all.Here Rankin explains that democracy is not in the German blood. Lines like “All men are created equal” and “liberté, égalité, fraternité” have no German counterpart. Rankin’s young brother in law then offers Marx as a counterexample. Rankin immediately retorts that Marx was no German; he was a Jew. This quick retort is the only thing that keeps Wilson on Rankin’s tail as a potential Kindler.And I think the line is a good lead into this pre-Šokių šventė post. It was not even half a year ago that Darius Udrys turned JAVLB upside down (culture-etc./evading-the-monolithuania.html) by suggesting that a Litvak dance group perform a Litvak dance at šventė. [[Litvaks]], of course, have been vital contributors to Lithuanian culture for over 500 years, yet for the organizers of šventė, including them would have threatened the “Lithuanianness” of the event. The complainers built up shields against claims of anti-Semitism by offering the farcical argument that allowing Litvak dances would then mean that they should allow dances from remote cultures such as those on Zanzibar. In other words, the Litvak is so wholly Other to the Lithuanian, that her cultural contribution is equivalent to that of an African villager a half a world away.The Litvak, by being a Jew, has no right to a claim on Lithuanian culture (though, of course, Catholics, Lutherans, atheists, etc., do, right?). The Litvak is not Lithuanian, the thinking goes. She is a Litvak, and that is it. Closed are the doors to Šokių šventė to these anomalies. They are not Lithuanians, so they should not have opportunities to perform their cultural dances in our cultural fair. Let them learn our dances and dance them, if they like. But their culture is out of bounds.And, well, now we know how Ashkenazi [[Edward G. Robinson|Emanuel Goldenberg]] reacts to that: Only a Nazi would deny that a Litvak is a Lithuanian because she is a Jew. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:54:01 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./dual-citizenship-without-amending-the-constitution.html The beforementioned (announcements/lietuviams.com-interview-on-delfi-and-alfa-too.html) response from PLB to the question of citizenship (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=5029) remains a complete mystery to me. I eagerly want to play a game of “find the subtext” in pulling apart the various moves in Narušienė’s statement, but the subtext that emerges is so grotesque and offensive, that I do it only hoping, sincerely, that I am missing something. Before addressing her statement, I reread the LRKT decision regarding the unconstitutionality of the law on citizenship (http://www.lrkt.lt/dokumentai/2006/n061113.htm). It is a brilliant document with an approach to the constitutional term “tauta” that is, well, devastating to the racist rhetoric mobilized by the ardent nationalist diaspora community. There exists also an oddly framed English translation of the decision (http://www.lrkt.lt/dokumentai/2006/r061113.htm), but in some places it is absolutely wrong (“nepertraukiamas” does not mean “discontinued”; it sort of means the opposite), and it often feels like weird English. Nevertheless, language knowledge is no excuse to avoid reading the decision. In any case, Narušienė’s statement ends with five bullet points, which I will take up below. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:31:58 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//announcements/lietuviams.com-interview-on-delfi-and-alfa-too.html As I mentioned in the last post (announcements/lrytas-interview.html), a more detailed interview (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=5110) with me (and a neat photo (http://www.lietuviams.com/files/Image/1826.Moacir_Pareira_Asmeninio_archyvo_nuotr..jpg)!) appeared in lietuviams.com on Monday. It was since picked up by delfi (http://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/emigrants/article.php?id=17415390) and alfa (http://www.alfa.lt/straipsnis/c76488), and my comment about envisioning Vilnius as a Disney World Fantasyland even ended up being the “dienos citata” at delfi. So that’s that. So now I'm on the record in the Lithuanian media twice as saying that I think it’s foolish for PLB and the Seimas to play games with trying to pass (probably unconstitutional) resolutions regarding dual citizenship instead of saving all their political capital for an actual amendment to the constitution. Both interviews were done before I'd seen the PLB response (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=5029) to the Socialliberalų petition to amend the constitution, so my silence is one of simply timing. I haven’t looked over the response in enough detail to put together a response, but that has largely been since my first, quick response resulted in great pain as my jaw somehow hit the floor. Straipsniai - Announcements Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:43:20 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//announcements/lrytas-interview.html I met yesterday afternoon with Monika Bončkutė, the correspondent to Lietuvos rytas and editor of now up (http://www.lrytas.lt/-12130263851212860134-p1-Emigrantai-JAV-lietuvis-M-P-de-Sa-Pereira-D%C4%97l-dvigubos-pilietyb%C4%97s-nag%C5%B3-nelau%C5%BEysiu.htm) on lrytas.lt. A more, how shall I say, pensive interview will be appearing in lietuviams.com next week. But I was casual with Bončkutė, so it is only fair that the article is also casual. Basically, I have no complaints with the article, though there are two small factual errors points of confusion: my grade school was not predominately Jewish and Brazilian. There were, actually, no Brazilians there. But there were many Jewish students (in comparison to national averages), and New Bedford is full of Portuguese. Not a big deal.In another paragraph, she writes that I said that my parents didn't speak English to each other. The opposite is the case. I just did not want to say that they primarily spoke English, since I simply do not remember, and I suspected that I may recall their English more than their use of Lithuanian or Portuguese because I was not allowed to speak English at home, so I used instances of their English use as evidence for my own use.So, like I said, two small errors sites of uncertainty, neither of which really changes the focus of the article. I have not yet really decided what it means that I am being attached to this issue of dual citizenship, since I think there are far more pressing concerns, but it is what is in now, and I have a casual attitude toward it that can be described pretty easily. So that is that.The comments (http://www.lrytas.lt/?data= id=12130263851212860134 view=6) are, of course, hilarious and mostly completely miss the point. I especially appreciate the one calling me a capitalist stooge.[Update 21 June 2008]: I only remarked on the two divergences from my intent to make it clear that they were visible there for me so that when someone (like my mom) read the interview, she wouldn't think I had completely misremembered my youth. Bončkutė told me, however, that what the article stands as a faithful representation of what I said, reverified by listeners of the interview. In other words, I misrepresented my youth. So now I say that I did that unintentionally, and that this space is not for correcting her, but, rather, for correcting myself. Straipsniai - Announcements Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:45:39 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./lithuania-gets-a-logo.html Almost two weeks ago, the committee for the branding of Lithuania narrowed down (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=4875) their two finalists for logos for Lithuania. The plan of the logos was to be bold and assertive, much like the new bold Lithuania (culture-etc./lithuania-contemplates-extreme-makeover-pt.-1-of-3.html) that the government wants to present to the world. This is the second attempt at coming up with a logo, though it is the first attempt since the new “bravery” ethos of the state.In the first run, I made comparisons (culture-etc./what-should-lithuania-look-like.html) between the proposed logos and two logos that used a lot of color—to the point of using the variegation as a point of distinction: that of the Czech Republic and Brazil. The Czech logo is unclear, since I cannot tell if the various voice balloons are different languages or viewpoints. Both have historical weight, but the Prague before Hitler, was, I imagine, a far different Prague than today’s, in terms of multiethnicity.The Brazil logo has some similarities to the Lithuanian one, in that both involve polychromatic blending and overlapping, with white letters spelling out the name of the state. For Brazil, though, I joked that the blending was a comment on the multiracial nature of the state, with the white lettering being either a negative cutting out (removing the state from the population), or a subtle reemphasis of white domination.Then this week the Seimas made their choice. They got rid of the god-awful “LT’S GO!” logo, which left only the desaturated polychromatic minimap logo. Zuokas is quick on the draw (http://www.zuokas.lt/2008/06/06/lietuva-isgyvenimo-salis/lt/):Suprantu, kad ta alyvinės, rusvai gelsvos spalvų gamos dėlionė yra įdomi, profesionaliai sulipdyta, ir ją kūrusieji turi protingus paaiškinimus, kodėl ir vardan ko tai darė, kad tai naujas žodis dizaino madose ar pan. Gal.Bet prie ko čia Lietuva ? Kaip tos kaladėlės su jose netvarkingai išsivarsčiusiomis raidėmis atspindi, kas yra Lietuva ? I’m not a big fan of the logo, either. I still think the simple tree from the last go-round is the best, but this logo does do a few interesting things. First, it asserts the primacy of the Lithuanian State, as opposed to the Lithuanian Nation. This is done in three subtle ways: it does not use the tricolor, which is a nationalist emblem appropriated by the state; it shapes the logo to a rough approximation of the borders of the state, as opposed to the fantasy of a greater ethnic Lithuania; and it asserts the name in English, not Lithuanian, thereby including Lithuania as a general state among a global order of states, not as a particularized state bound by its use of a specific language.The other interesting thing it does is break up the state map into separate units. I am not enough of an expert on Lithuania to know if the splits are meant to suggest various cultural/ethnic/linguistic/administrative regions of Lithuania, but I think that that is implied: here is Žemaitija, here is Aukštaitija and so on. But in the blending, it reminds me of the comment on multiracialism implicit in the Brazilian logo. And here, then, the minimap is a comment on the multiethnicity of Lithuania. A logo based on the trispalvė would have been the fascist cry “Lietuva lietuviams!” converted into a marketing slogan. A logo that avoids the tricolor rebuilds the state as a paragon of tolerance.So that is my answer to Zuoko question about the fantasy of the Republic of Lithuania spelled out by the logo: it is one of inclusion, of political (as opposed to ethnic) borders, and of conviviality (http://books.google.com/books?id=BpYHonKn_vIC pg=PR15 dq=postcolonial+melancholia+conviviality sig=x9fjeDifdRcWBNa1SbIj0SUJzJ4), of the possibility of different whatever (http://books.google.com/books?id=6ekx1dg4nSgC pg=PT9 vq=whatever dq=community+agamben source=gbs_search_s sig=c_hqYrtVor2yxv0VcZ9rfjmMUp4#PPT9,M1) populations living together. The Czech logo, by keeping the colors separate, maintains the possibility of different people all speaking to each other at the same time but not understanding or listening to each other. The Lithuanian logo forces the different people together, to blend, to merge, to form a unity based not on a single individual color, but, rather, based on the border of the negative space surrounding the colors as a whole.Zuokas next, however, addresses the attached slogan (not reproduced in the logo): “Sense of Challenge.” I can add another data point to Zuoko understanding that that makes Lithuania out to be a land for extremists and those not concerned with putting in massive efforts to avoid failure (in business). Calling a country “challenging” is very weird, if one is trying to lure people to the country. Even “adventure” would be softer. Though “challenge” is so far afield that it certainly is not a cliché (like “friendly” or “promising” would have been). So I am still pretty darned ambivalent about this rebranding effort. The logo that they have chosen has grown on me considerably, though I think that the layout of the text (and the drop shadows) is pretty darned inexcusable. But, then, I’m not a design student. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:12:51 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./sajudis-at-20.html (http://www.collectplaza.lt/articles.php?product=3941) There is no way I can have a bunch to say, personally, about the twentieth anniversary of the founding of [[Sąjūdis]]. After all, I was still a pre-teen born and living in the US. But I can talk about being in the wake of Sąjūdis, from the pins we got from visiting relatives (as pictured) all the way to the t-shirts that my friends and I designed and silk-screened as part of our contribution to Kaziuko Mugė in 1989. That is, even we pre-teens across the Atlantic felt what was going on, and we responded to it with gestures both creative and (to us, unproblematically) patriotic. We had two shirts in March 1989: one was designed by Darius Lalas, and it featured a negatively composed, bold and sans-serif “FREE Lithuania NOW” along with barbed wire down the side, a sort of reference to the standard, Kronika-fueled gulag mentality of military occupation, in which the barbed wire can be best described as metaphorical, antagonistic. The second shirt, designed by Algis Kalvaitis (http://ny.therealdeal.com/articles/architecture-s-loss-is-developers-gain), was a squiggly “Sąjūdis” with rays spiraling out of the name and a [[Columns of Gediminas|Gediminaičių stulpai]] in a sun, sort of a psychedelic take on the pictured pin. We lined up yellow, green, and red dye on the spreader and applied all three colors at once, smearing the tricolor horizontally across the design. So though aesthetically I didn't really like the smearing, now I can see that it prophesied the main contribution of Sąjūdis: the establishment of a fantasy of a united Lithuanian state, acting in concert for the best interests of the population of the state. Once the Lithuanian state became a reality, the fantasy was shattered, as older organizing fantasies of unification (like the Lithuanian nationalist fantasy) overtook it and reasserted their positions of power. Of course, in the diaspora, this made perfect sense (at least to me): how on earth could an organization that had both [[Brazauskas]] and [[Landsbergis]] as members adequately represent the interests of the ethnic nation? Brazauskas was a communist!But like I said, I was a kid. So here are a few other, better thoughts about Sąjūdis:A two-part video about the movement from Lietuvos rytas (“Dainuojančiai revoliucijai ginklų nereikėjo”): part 1 (http://www.lrytas.lt/videonews/?id=12124304801211572288 sk=2), part 2 (http://www.lrytas.lt/videonews/?id=12124308831210901991 sk=2) Lietuviams.com reprints some more historical context (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=4964) as well as a list of events around the world (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=4968) in commemoration.Artūras Zuokas reiterates the fantasy (http://www.zuokas.lt/2008/06/03/kas-vyko-ir-kas-nepavyko/lt/) of a unified movement.Regimantas Adomaitis considers that each of us have different, personal histories (http://lrytas.lt/-12124841651211918224-p1-Lietuvos-diena-Aktorius-R-Adomaitis-S%C4%85j%C5%ABdis-istorik%C5%B3-reikalas-video.htm) of Sąjūdis, some lasting far longer than 20 years, while also declaring that the movement is for historians only now. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:20:08 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./petpunk-creates-a-real-tourist-video-for-vilnius.html Back when inCulto’s video for “Welcome (to Lithuania)” was first making its way (culture-etc./eurovision-and-welcome-to-lithuania.html) through the diaspora, many times the link to the video was included with some kind of language calling it a “commercial” or “tourist video” of some sort for Lithuania. Well, via Ežiukas su kedais (http://eziukasvilniuje.blogas.lt/), I learn that the animators, PetPunk (http://www.petpunk.com/) , have now made a legitimate touristy video for Vilnius (http://eziukasvilniuje.blogas.lt/385045/vilniu-reprezentuojantis-petpunku-filmukas.html) and its cultural capital festival next year: What do you think? As I wrote in the comments on Ežiuko blog, I find the accent cute and disarming, like that of a grandfather about to spin a story about a forgotten world in the mists of time. The Princess Bride in Vilnius, say. I share, however, some of the concerns about “kindness” and the Gediminas legend, although it provides an excuse for trumpteting the long, long history of multiethnic Vilnius. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Tue, 27 May 2008 13:39:18 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./my-passport-my-souvenir.html [Amerikos lietuvis published this op/ed by me (http://www.alietuvis.us/al/index.php?news=264) last week. Now that it is online, I have translated it into English and posted it here.]Pagal Lietuvos Respublikos pilietybės įstatymo 1 straipsnį Lietuvos Respublikos piliečiai yra… asmenys, iki 1940 m. birželio 15 d. turėję Lietuvos pilietybę, jų vaikai, vaikaičiai ir provaikaičiai.Among these descendants I find myself. So there am I, one of those with a right, from birth, to Lithuanian citizenship, a right I have often compared with the Jewish birthright to the citizenship of Israel, which makes for an interesting coincidence, as I’m writing these words during the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. A century ago, Zionists and Lithuanian nationalists saw their goals in parallel, so maybe it would be useful to see if there are worthwhile similarities today.The return to Israel is called “[[aliyah]]” (ascent), and emigration from Israel is called the “[[yerida]]” (descent). So already it’s clear under what frame the migration to and from Israel is seen among Jews and Israelis. The statistics regarding aliyah are straightforward: within the first four years of the establishment of the State of Israel, almost 700,000 new citizens arrived. Since then, the annual numbers have fluctuated between 15,000 and 35,000. And as we all know, there was a huge flush after the disintegration of the USSR in the 1990s, when during that decade 800,000 new immigrants arrived to Israel from Eastern Europe alone.One of my (many) childhood fantasies was that there would be a similar ascent to Lithuania once it regained its independence. All of us Lithuanian-Americans would get our Lithuanian passports, and we all—my brothers, my friends—would “return” to a state which, though we had never visited it, we called our homeland.Unfortunately, it did not really work out that way. On both hands I can count the number of my Lithuanian-American coevals who have “returned” to Lithuania to live there permanently. Perhaps among the earlier generations, especially among the exiles after WWII, a larger number has returned for good, but I imagine that the standard operation is simply to travel to Lithuania once a year or so to vacation in a de facto summer home: a condo in Vilnius. I hear many explanations for why people are in no rush to return, but the most present is always economic—it is simply hard to earn a good living in Lithuania. But this forces a question: what kind of patriots are we, if economic comfort is reason enough for us not to return to our “homeland”? Is not, actually, our sacrifice most important now, while the economy of Lithuania is still emerging? We are, after all, Lithuanians, and “[[Tautiška giesmė|Lietuva, tėvynė mūsų]],” some [[Vincas Kudirka|patriot]] once wrote. So are we not obligated to support that homeland with more than our vacation budgets? Would it not be useful to draw inspiration from [[Nathan Hale]]’s regret about having only one life to give to his country?But somehow this patriotism and ethnic feeling [tautiškumas] fails to jostle a Lithuanian-American out of his or her rut in the US. I know far more Lithuanians born in the US who have either a [[Vytis]] or a tricolor tattooed on their bodies than live permanently in Lithuania. I am not criticizing these painted patriots, since they are, more than likely, my friends. But I feel it is important to keep this anecdotal image in mind when trying to understand better the issue of dual citizenship.A tattoo is a permanent mark of something. By getting a tattoo, a person assents to carry a permanent mark on his or her body. That’s how I begin to understand the desire to get ink injected into your skin in the form of a Vytis. Nationalists, after all, have taught us at Lithuanian schools and summer camps that our Lithuanianness is some kind of invariable aspect of our identities from birth. As a result, that Vytis is already branded on our souls. The tattoo, then, becomes an afterthought. It merely signifies to the world what the person already feels inside.Yet that tattoo is a mark that can also be concealed, say, by a suit worn to a job interview. So the Vytis is a permanent mark on the body, but it can be concealed in order to get a better job. So again, the pursuit of economic gain stands between a subject and his or her patriotic duty to be always a Lithuanian and a patriot.A subcommittee in the Lithuanian [[Seimas]] is currently deciding to whom it will grant the privilege of dual citizenship, even though their new set of criteria will probably be as unconstitutional as the previous set [struck down in 2006 by the Lithuanian Supreme Court]. But among those, to whom the privilege will not be extended, are Lithuanians born in the US as well as Lithuanians who have become naturalized citizens of the US. These Lithuanians in America obviously still have the right to become citizens of Lithuania, but exercising that right now requires a rather serious sacrifice: a blue passport.But wouldn’t this blue passport, a passport to a patriot’s temporary home, be a mere trifle? Should not the patriot be eager to get rid of that temporary status? Does not the patriot want to flee from that diaspora, from that misleading pseudo-homeland America, to that land of permanence, which was his or her property before birth?Yet, again, for some reason it does not tend to work out that way.So why do the words “O beautiful, for spacious skies” make an impression on a Lithuanian in America? The answer now is rather clear: these aforementioned people are not, simply, only, Lithuanians. They are also Americans. By their actions and gestures, then, they betray their [Lithuanian] nationalism. Still, the obligation of nationalism, like that of Zionism, is an obligation of returning. But this attraction of nationalism is interrupted by the pursuit of capital accumulation (among other things): scattered in the space of globalism, we try to go there, where the wages are best or the life is the most comfortable. So for the very same (and completely legitimate) reasons why Lithuanians are leaving Lithuania (or Israelis are leaving Israel), US-born Lithuanians and Jews do not “return” to their “homelands” in greater numbers.So what, exactly, is the point of dual citizenship? I have yet to hear a good (that is to say, nonselfish [non-economic]) reason, why, to an adult born in the US, dual citizenship is a crucial necessity. Every reason I hear drifts into the subjunctive [in Lithuanian]: “I would retire in Lithuania,” “I would move there, if the living standard would improve.” My own reason is no more semantically firm: “I would teach in Lithuania or the EU if I were to get a position.” In other words, we have no idea what the future may bring, so it is good idea to keep our options open. But having a plethora of options is also nice and convenient. Though in my childhood I was a childish nationalist, for these selfish reasons of convenience I am a full supporter of dual citizenship.Patriotism, however, is not supposed to be convenient. So why do we, calling ourselves Lithuanians, choose the soft option? Would it be so hard to transfer those subjunctive reasons into the indicative? “I am retiring to Lithuania.” Great. Do it! “I am going to move there, and living standards will improve.” Great. Do it! “I am going to teach in Lithuania...” well... the point is clear: for patriots, nationalists, national heros, professional Lithuanians, and the like, there remains a way to take this path to Lithuanian citizenship. But it requires a sacrifice. They have to juridically demonstrate precisely how important Lithuania is to them.So if that Lithuanian feeling is such an essential part of a person’s identity, that we feel it from our birth, why on earth are we so hesitant to forfeit US citizenship?Back to my childhood fantasy, where I’m sitting with a passport of the Lithuanian Republic in my hands. There’s my name; there’s my photo. But is this theoretical passport a guide to one possible future, which lands me in Lithuania? Or is it merely a souvenir, a reminder of those bygone days when I was still an idealist, caught up in the childish daydreams where the Lithuanian nation [tauta] and the Lithuanian Republic would share a 1:1 relationship?On the other hand, if I were to get that passport now, then every time I open it, my very eyes would look at me and remind me that I did not choose the soft option. I chose which was my “homeland,” even if in so doing I risked my economic comfort. So that is my challenge to those, who would use patriotic and nationalist organizations (like LBs) to seek not national ends, but simply ends of comfort. Prove to me why in order for me to live a complete patriotic life as a Lithuanian I need more than just US or Lithuanian citizenship—that I need both.It is standard for Lithuanians to argue that it is an ethnic obligation for a Lithuanian to take on the burden of learning the (impossibly difficult) Lithuanian language—a serious burden to anyone who did not have the dumb luck of being born in a household where Lithuanian was spoken. But when it comes to citizenship, they demand the least burdensome path. Why? Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Tue, 27 May 2008 11:35:21 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./grinding-away-the-ornaments-of-demagoguery.html Yesterday instead of working on my dissertation proposal, I threw together an 1100 word column for Amerikos lietuvis. It’s not very good, so I told them just to look at it and tell me if they wanted me to clean it up. Furthermore, it’s almost unreadable from dripping with irony, for which I cannot really account. I think the problem grows from the shame and frustration I feel over seeing the demagoguery that many people are stooping to (myself included, to a point) regarding this issue. To reiterate (culture-etc./the-lies-plb-tells-us.html): calling the Lithuanian Supreme Court’s decision about dual citizenship a “revoking” of a “birthright” is offensive to the extreme. It is, simply, demagoguery.And “demagoguery” is a word used by Lina Pečeliūnienė in her sober article about the citizenship battles, “Beprasmiški mūšiai dėl pilietybės (http://www.valstietis.lt/Beprasmi%C5%A1ki-m%C5%AB%C5%A1iai-d%C4%97l-pilietyb%C4%97s-2094-1-328s.html)” (via lietuviams.com (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=4725)). She reiterates what we have known all along: the Supreme Court’s decision was sound, and if we don’t like it, we have an avenue to effect change: amend the Lithuanian Constution. Full stop. To wit:Ypač A.Lydekai kliuvo nuo Pasaulio lietuvių bendruomenės valdybos pirmininkės Reginos Narušienės. Jai atrodo, kad KT ir Lietuvos politikai nesupranta savo veiksmų pasekmių - atima prigimtinę viso pasaulio lietuvių teisę į Lietuvos pilietybę.Nieko jie neatima. Prigimtinė teisė atgauti Lietuvos pilietybę visada išlieka, jei lietuvis atsisako kitos pilietybės. Ir viską tie mūsų politikai supranta. Tik kai kurie iš jų (Andrius Kubilius, Gintaras Steponavičius, iš dalies ir A.Lydeka) pataikaudami emigrantams siekia apgauti Konstituciją. „Tvarkos ir teisingumo“ partija varo demagogiją: ateisime į valdžią, išvaikysime KT ir viską padarysime taip, kaip Rolandas Paksas buvo pasišovęs valdyti dekretais.O tai, ko reikalauja R.Narušienė, būtų tas pats senas įstatymas, kuris prieštarauja Konstitucijai. Ir nėra dėl ko pliekti KT - jo nutarimas labai išsamus ir pagrįstas. Jeigu tik­rai norime išplėsti dvigubos pilietybės ribas, reikia keisti Konstitucijos 12 straipsnį. Ir tą galima padaryti tik referendumu. Dėl nieko kito nereikia laužyti iečių.That really is all there is to the debate. Let the Seimas Work Group come up with a narrower set of exceptions—but they might be struck down, too. The best option has always been the most fundamental: amend.When there is a Constitutional problem, you fix the Constitution. So, davaj. Enough screwing around atop soapboxes, išeivija. Draft a damned amendment, if dual citizenship is so important to you. But I’ll bet that the laziness that makes the soft option of dual citizenship (putting off having to choose a citizenship once and for all) will inform the ability of writing an amendment. That said, I will certainly sign the petition (as I am always (lazily) in favor of legislation that benefits the lazy). Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Wed, 14 May 2008 15:32:38 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./yes-plb-is-lying-to-you.html (http://www.alietuvis.us/al/index.php?news=247) My lack of faith in my intuition about the dual citizenship issue has sort of encouraged me to keep my opinions wishy-washy and indirect—to criticize with glancing shots. In my previous post (culture-etc./the-lies-plb-tells-us.html), for example. I have to asterisk the most important point out of diffidence. The wariness was the result of the fact that though I suspected that my eligibility for Lithuanian citizenship had not changed as a result of the 2006 Lithuanian Supreme Court decision regarding dual citizenship, I did not know that it had not changed.In preparing a letter to the editor that I sent to Amerikos lietuvis to denounce the dishonest distortion (http://www.alietuvis.us/al/index.php?news=247) of the citizenship issue provided by my representative, PLB chairperson Regina Narušienė, I decided that the force of my rhetoric crucially depended on my being able to turn my suspicion into fact.Turns out I was right—and I didn't even have to make a phone call. The Lithuanian Embassy's website says clearly (http://www.ltembassyus.org/index.php?-209629287) (and in mostly intelligible English, even!):[P]ersons, restoring or applying for the citizenship of Lithuania as of 16th of November, 2006, must remounce their current citizeship after it will be stated that he or she is eligible and can become a Lithuanian citizen. Those who are willing to apply may do so according to the established procedure (see bellow). After analyzing the application the person will be informed if s/he is eligible to become a Lithuanian citizen. Person, willing to obtain Lithuanian citizenship and a passport, will then have to renounce his or her current citizenship and prove this fact to the Lithuanian migration authorities. [sic all of this]The “bellow” includes both eligibilities:persons who were citizens of the Republic of Lithuania prior to 15 June 1940, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, residing in other states (provided that such persons, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren did not repatriate);persons of Lithuanian descent who reside in other states. In other words, and I’ll write this in huge letters:Everyone who was eligible for Lithuanian citizenship before the Supreme Court ruling is STILL eligible for Lithuanian citizenship.There is no “taking away.” There is no “revoking.” There is no “abusing rights.” There is no “betraying.” All that changed after 16 November 2006 is that anyone who exercises a right to citizenship must, also, renounce their previous citizenship.This is obviously not a small thing to renounce. But it does mean that anyone who complains about the decision is not actually complaining about a right to citizenship. Given the recommendations by the Seimas work group on dual citizenship, this complaining person (read: Narušienė) is using the rhetoric of rights to argue for the mere privilege of indecision. If I want Lithuanian citizenship, I can get it. But it, like everything in life, has a cost. It is now a far steeper one than it was before. But I can still get it. The payoff: to say that the focus of the argument is misguided when it is about dual citizenship, as the focus should be on the revoking of a birthright is A LIE. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Wed, 07 May 2008 14:12:25 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./the-lies-plb-tells-us.html This... This is why people who are intelligent, self-aware, and young have absolutely no desire whatsoever to volunteer to help out with Lietuvių bendruomenė...PLB chairperson R. Narušienė is stooping to the some of the most depraved spin and propaganda imaginable (http://www.alietuvis.us/al/index.php?news=247) in trying to boost the popular support for overturning the Lithuanian Supreme Court's decision to stop respecting dual citizenship:Lietuvoje buvo ir yra kalbama tik apie DVIGUBOS PILIETYBĖS principą, kuris LR Konstitucijoje, išskyrus numatytus „atskirus atvejus“, yra draudžiamas. Tačiau juk Lietuvos Konstitucija teigia, jog LR pilietybė įgyjama gimstant ir kad žmogaus teisės yra prigimtinės. Užsienio lietuviai tiki, jog jų pilietybės teisė yra prigimtinė. Štai kodėl, diskusija pirmiausia turėtų būti apie užsienio lietuvių PRIGIMTINĖS PILIETYBĖS TEISĖS atėmimą, o ne apie dvigubos pilietybės suteikimą.In short, for the non-speakers: the issue here is not about dual citizenship, but, rather, about the revoking of a birthright to citizenship. This is, easily, the most offensive thing I have read today, and it is in the running for the most offensive thing I have ever read regarding the citizenship debate.NO ONE—absolutely NO ONE—who was eligible for Lithuanian citizenship before the Court's decision was made is now ineligible. NO ONE is having their citizenship revoked ( yet, she FUD-ishly adds later in the document).* Her invocation of international rights to secure political cachet among the expatriate/diaspora Lithuanian community is an appalling OBSCENITY in its audacious comparison to actual, legitimate abuses of human rights.The Lithuanian law grants that nearly anyone who would want Lithuanian citizenship (or would argue a Lithuanian ethnic heritage) is allowed to have it. What they are not allowed to do is have their cake and eat it. If you want to be a citizen of Lithuania, go ahead—but leave your blue US passport at the door.So again:NO ONE—absolutely NO ONE—who was eligible for Lithuanian citizenship before the Court's decision was made is now ineligible. NO ONE is having their citizenship revoked.To turn the argument from one about the elitist demands of the diaspora community into one about human rights is grotesque. Words fail. Shame.* This is my understanding of the constitutional argument, though I am not, of course, a practicing constitutional lawyer in Lithuania. Then again, neither is anyone on the PLB board. Furthermore, Narušienė makes no effort to disabuse one of my reading in her remarks. It makes rhetorical sense to do so, which is why I suspect my reading is simply obscured in FUD. [UPDATE 7 May 2008] This diffidence is not necessary. As I write (culture-etc./yes-plb-is-lying-to-you.html), the Lithuanian Embassy clearly states that the ruling has not changed eligibility requirements other than by adding the renouncing aspect. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Tue, 06 May 2008 19:39:38 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./onomastic-bias.html Via lietuviams.com (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=4501), I read an article in Delfi (http://www.delfi.lt/archive/article.php?id=16700516) by Eglė Digrytė about the recent surge in “non-Lithuanian” names among children of Lithuanian emigrants in the UK. The lede is worth reproducing in full: Shakyra, Lee, Leya, Sameeras, Adnan, Radu, Kvinta, Younas… Tai – ne muzikos ar kino žvaigždžių vardai. Taip savo atžalas šaukia Didžiojoje Britanijoje įsikūrę naujosios bangos išeiviai. Todėl mūsų šalies ambasada pradėjo raginti juos mažyliams duoti lietuviškus vardus. I’ll be getting back to this troubling paragraph later in this post. In any case, Digrytė worries that UK Lithuanians have started competing among themselves for who can have the most exotic name. Or they borrow names from stars, or, ultimately, she writes, they choose such unfamiliar names that guessing the gender of the child becomes difficult. (!)In steps the Lithuanian Embassy in London (http://uk.urm.lt/), with their promotion “Mano vardas LIETUVIŠKAS!,” which encourages emigrants to encourage the spread of Lithuanian linguistic traditions without forgetting Lithuanian names. The article concludes with the usual non sequiturs regarding the age of the Lithuanian language, but the conclusion is clear: Lithuanians should be naming their children Lithuanian names, preferably ancient ones (such as “Eglė,” one might surmise). Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:54:14 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./why-this-citizenship-petition-sucks.html [Surely you have probably received an email encouraging you to sign the Bičiulystė e-petition asking the Seimas to grant dual citizenship to NATO member nations and Australia. I think the petition is junk in its reasoning (and in its practice, but that is a different issue). Amerikos lietuvis asked people to write in with their opinions on this petition, and so I did. Then I translated what I wrote into English, and now I am printing the English translation here. The Lithuanian original is available on lietuviams.com (http://www.lietuviams.com/index.php?user_sub_id=44 itemID=4540).] When I first heard the news about the recommendation to the Seimas that they not allow US citizens to also be citizens of Lithuania, I immediately guessed the US Lithuanian community would flip the hell out. I knew I'd be reading screed after screed with an LB logo affixed to it.In fact, I was so on point with my prophecy that I should’ve bought a lottery ticket that same day. On the other hand, maybe it’s best that I didn’t, since one thing I failed to predict was the bizarre turn that the dissatisfaction with the Seimas work group's recommendation would take.Simply, there are a lot of great reasons why Lithuania should allow US citizens to hold dual citizenship. It would clearly strengthen relationships between both nations, especially financially. We so quickly forget that it was capital provided by the denigrated “first-wave” Lithuanian-Americans that kept the economy of first Lithuanian Republic solvent. So though Lithuania is now in better economic shape, it doesn’t make sense to ignore such a potentially large set of human ATMs. Furthermore, should there be some kind of crisis (terrorist, say) that befalls Lithuania but does not invoke the NATO charter, the presence of many US citizens in Lithuania might encourage the US to take a more active approach in helping defuse (as it were) the tension. Finally, dual citizenship is hardly unprecedented, and Lithuania can boldly incorporate it.However, among the great reasons for US/Lithuanian dual citizenship, you will not find the reasoning of choice in the Lithuanian-American public sphere: the fact that both the US and Lithuania are in NATO. I don't understand why both PLB chairperson R. Narušienė and the Amerikos lietuvis editorial board have taken this path, especially as it leads to ludicrous attempts at equating NATO with the EU. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:48:47 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./tolerant-lithuanians-threaten-diaspora-community.html [This is a hastily assembled translation of the article, “Tolerantiški lietuviai — grėsmė senajai išeivijai (http://vakarai.us/news/137/ARTICLE/2828/2008-04-21.html)” by Mykolas Gudelis, published in Vakarai. I’m providing the translation here for those (both who consider themselves Lithuanian and not) who care about these sorts of issues. The translation is reprinted here with permission from Vakarai.Personally, anyone who read my letter in Lietuvos rytas (English (culture-etc./evading-the-monolithuania.html)) about this issue can see that I have much in common with Gudelis’s viewpoint—a less charitable soul would even whine that he seems not to have read my piece. He loses the plot a bit with his invocation of a slippery slope, which furthermore risks an equivalence of anti-Semitism with other forms of intolerance. It is definitely not as simple as he makes it seem. Furthermore, he runs into his own set of dichotomies between old and new, which reek of their own prejudice. Still, it is important that this issue of intolerance writ large remain in the public forefront when it comes to affairs of the Lithuanian diaspora. I may change the translation around in parts as corrections are given to me. Some tricky or key words I've reproduced with their Lithuanian (original) counterparts in brackets.--m] In the seventeen years of Lithuanian independence, more than half a million Lithuanians have left their homeland. As such, an existential question arises both among Lithuanians in Lithuania and Lithuanians abroad: is the Lithuanian nation [tauta] vanishing? Clearly, there’s no single answer to this question, and, upon further investigation, it seems to me that there is nothing to worry about: Lithuanians are surely not becoming and will not become extinct.The Lithuanian nation has a unique property, which protects it from globalization, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, the migrant workforce, and so on. It’s tricky to name this defense mechanism. I wouldn’t want to call it “hatred” [neapykanta], but perhaps “dislike” [nemėgimas] works better. This word, “dislike,” is based on the Lithuanian verb “to like.” It’s simply the negative form. We often say, “well, it’s not that I can’t stand it. I just don’t like it.” But what is the difference between hating and disliking? Where do we draw the line, past which disliking becomes hating? Surely disliking and hating are two different things, but how do the two concepts really differ? Leaving aside the subtleties of the Lithuanian language as well as the ontological explorations, I think that everyone has a different answer to these questions. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:29:52 +0100 http://www.lithchat.com/joomla//culture-etc./dual-citizenship-to-return-to-lithuania.html (http://www.dokumentai.lt/pasas.htm)After the Lithuanian Supreme Court decided (http://www.lrkt.lt/dokumentai/2006/n061113.htm) that the current laws regarding dual citizenship were unconstitutional (a decision I tacitly supported by not discussing it (culture-etc./lithuanian-citizenship-reading-list-2.html)), the Lithuanian politicians, under pressure from the immense diaspora community (both recent emigrés and soi-disant exiles from the WWII era), decided that they needed to come up with a new system of laws. It is hoped that these laws would be constitutional this time. So today I read that, in fact, a proposal is going to be making its way to the Seimas (http://www.lzinios.lt/lt/2008-03-17/trecias_puslapis/pasiektas_kompromisas_jau_kursto_gincus.html) rather soon. This proposal splits the pool of possible dual-citizens into six categories:Presidential exceptionsPolitical prisoners and deportees, as well as their descendantsExiles who left Lithuania between 1940 and 1990Ethnic Lithuanians who live in traditionally Lithuanian lands (Puńsk, etc.)Children of current Lithuanian citizens born outside of LithuaniaLithuanian citizens who, living in other nations of the EU, acquire citizenship in the other EU nation.PLB, unsurprisingly, showed its intense pro-NATO bias by arguing that the sixth group should be changed to include NATO nations. Chairperson Regina Narušienė argues that NATO guarantees the continuity of Lithuania’s indepedence, after all. It strikes me that not included in the list above is the exception made for all descendants of interwar citizens. So someone like me is out of luck and unable to get dual citizenship. (I suppose I am still eligible to get Lithuanian citizenship and forfeit my US citizenship, though...)As a result, the news is sort of middling. I can't loophole my way into an EU passport (on the one hand), but (on the other hand) the committee has clearly shown a concern with the new diaspora coming on the heels of [[accession]]. That is, certainly, good to see. So the solution still won't satisfy the old dypukai sitting on their bags of gold in the suburbs of Chicago, but it does go far in satisfying the actual problems Lithuania currently faces. Straipsniai - Culture, etc. Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:44:58 +0100