Belgrade looters a smash on YouTube

While Americans watched their embassy burn last Thursday, Serbs in Belgrade watched as other Serbs ransacked more than 90 storefronts along the capital city’s main drag.

During the chaos, one Belgrade resident caught a pair of women on camera snatching clothes and shoes from broken store windows (watch the video here).

At one point, the cameraman asks a woman, her arms full of pilfered shoes, if she had found her size. Later, when a different thief refuses to tell the cameraman her name, he calls after her sarcastically, “Hero of the protest!”

The video, posted on Youtube as “Kosovo for sneakers,” has been a huge hit among Serbian speakers. With more than a million views before it was taken down and resubmitted, it has drawn thousands of comments from Serbs angry at the behavior demonstrated in downtown Belgrade that night.

The video has also spurred on a series of mock Kosovo/Nike ads such as this one that is making the e-mail rounds:

The top reads “Kosovo is Serbia” and the sneakered man to the left of Condi is Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica — a fierce advocate for keeping Kosovo in Serbia.

Serbs may have a rocky future ahead of them, but at least they haven’t lost their sense of humor.