You may not have noticed, but in the last few days/weeks/months/years (depending on how you look at it) Bosnia and Herzegovina has been teetering on the Brink of Disaster. Why? Oh, for all the familiar reasons. Key posts in the central government unfilled, general political deadlock stretching in all directions, […]
Remember the kitschy post-WW2 Yugo-monuments? They are doing the Internet rounds. But … what is this over at Instapundit where Megan McArdle is guestblogging? CREEPY/COOL abandoned Soviet war monuments in the former Yugoslavia. Posted at 12:41 pm by Megan McArdle
If you want a scintillating, furious polemic on why the Yes to AV campaign lost so heavily, go no further than Liberal Vision: The YES campaign was eminently winnable. But it ended up being run by readers of the Guardian for readers of the Guardian. Readers of this newspaper are […]
Most of the moral and legal burbling on whether it was right for the US special forces to shoot Bin Laden ("extrajudicial execution/killing" seems to be one the favourite phrases used) utterly misses the point. Which is that the whole operation depended on brave beyond belief soldiers walking into a […]
Here’s an unexpected bonus: a series of pictures of the now (mainly) decaying bombastic communist monuments erected across Yugoslavia in the Tito era to commemorate supposedly heroic Partisan achievements or sites of Nazi and other war crimes by the Communists’ opponents during WW2: In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of […]
Here’s a bold idea. That the peoples of the ‘Western Balkans’ (ie mainly the former Yugoslavia area) push out the febrile internationals and sit down for some hard talking: With the Powers pushed out the locals – assuming they actually want to settle their disputes – could then grapple with the choreography […]
For many years I have been a friend of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies, a sturdy enemy of collectivism based in deepest Westminster. they did fine work in mobilising anti-communist analysis and economic thought during the Cold War and thereafter. This week they hosted a fine presentation and discussion […]
Back from Belgrade. Mixed feelings. The city has stagnated since I was last there a few years ago. Some snazzy new buildings, but most of the place looks to be gloomy, poor and crumbling. The authorities have utterly failed to mobilise national business energy and SMEs, and instead are busy squeezing anything which still […]
Today is the 8th anniversary of the assassination of Serbia’s dynamic young prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. And as the years drift by, Balkan conspiracy theories spread their twisted tentacles in more and more directions. Here for those who can use Google Translator are the mutterings of close Djindjic spin-doctor Vladimir […]
Off I dash in the general direction of Belgrade, my first visit back there in quite a few years. I have not mentioned here a new role of mine, namely a member of the Board of trustees of The Lord Slynn of Hadley European Law Foundation. This is a group […]
