The Dutch held out but Europe, as usual, wants to have its way so after a threat to ram Serbia’s EU ‘assessment’ through by majority vote, the Dutch folded. However, there is a provision that every step of Serbia’s accession will have to be subject to a unanimous vote. The Dutch, we can imagine, will …
Continue reading “Serbia, the EU and Muslims in the Balkans”
It’s turning out to be a Bosnia-focused weekend here. Marko Hoare has an excellent and sober assessment of Angelina Jolie’s Bosnia “imbroglio” up here. For those who don’t know, the British left often has an odd — to say the least — way of viewing the Balkan Wars. Mainly it consists of lionizing Milosevic as …
Thursday I was excited to see the photo of none other than Ratko Mladic on the cover of the IHT at the newsstand; “he’s been caught,” I thought, “just like Karadzic a few years ago.” Of course, he hasn’t, and the article spends far too much time on summarizing the case against the general, although there …
A student passed me this joke on the Chilean mine disaster, which also plays on a lot of other recent Italian news (Sarah Scazzi, Giancarlo Tulliani‘s house, the Naples trash crisis, the electoral crisis). Mainly it’s funny, if you get it all. Deep Italian current events, knowledge, sure, but enjoy: If it had happened in …
This time I’m not writing to encourage you to vote for an artist. This is for real. Or as real as it gets with opposing the Civil Rights–rejecting, Amero-believing regressive lunacy that will become our state’s cross to bear. Yes. A man only an alien could love… Kentuckians, get out there and vote. I realize that …
ENEL is getting pretty interesting. Check out their Green Power. Back when in 2008 I was impressed by their solar generation, tracked by the minute, at their headquarters near Largo Cairoli in Milan. As was predicted in the Italian press years ago — and in these pages a few weeks back when people were naive …
It’s voting season. And this year in the US, it will be important to vote. But that’s not what I’m pushing here. You need to go here and vote for Igor Tosevski for Wooloo’s artist of the month. When I lived in Macedonia, I met one Igor Tosevski through a series of mutual acquaintances. After …
Beppe Grillo hilariously sums up the commonalities between Southern Europe’s most toxic nationalist-separatist groups. Wow, takes me back to the early nineties when deeply mistaken writers were comparing Serb separatists to those sane, cozy Northern Italian separatists. Sorry kids, it’s in Italian — it’s been a long week.
FINAL UPDATE: I can’t really say it any better than the Guardian does here. Belgrade’s Vreme ran this story today. There was a rather choice photo of masked Ivan Bogdanov burning an Albanian flag; it’s since been replaced so I leave you with this video that tells the story even better. Clearly burning the Albanian …
Why is Genoa always a place for spectacular violence? There is much to be said about the violence of Serbian football fans in Genoa yesterday, but alas, I have to be away from the computer all day today. Mainly what I want to say is that Vuk Jeremic can apologize in the media all he …