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 …
Author Archives: hnbjr
If it had been in Italy…
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 …
Rand Paul in the Corriere
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 …
Quick Roundup
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 …
The Artist is Presented
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 …
Of Chetniks and Padanians
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.
“Football”
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 …
Genoa
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 …
Violence at Cinecitta’ Station
Nasty violence at Cinecitta’ station at the end of Rome’s Line A metro yesterday, in full daylight: after an argument in the line over whose turn it was, a 20-year old Roman struck a 32-year old Romanian nurse in the face. She went down and fractured her skull; he walked off and was later arrested. …
The Importance of Being Serbian
Belgrade’s Gay Pride parade has been an opportunity for the its nationalistic and regressive right-wing youth to rebel against European values for as long as Serbia has been trying to rehabilitate itself after the Milosevic regime, i.e., the last decade. Although the mobs of the right succeeding in actually stopping it last year, this …