Here is the Comment I have posted on OutsideLeft’s site: I have lived for most of my life in countries grappling with different forms of socialism (communist Yugoslavia, apartheid S Africa) or trying to escape from it (post-communist Russia, post-war Bosnia, post-Milosevic Serbia, post-communist Poland). So I feel qualified to […]
We have not tried this before. But I have been asked to help Alisa. She is at Sarajevo University and has a serious medical problem. She has been advised to begin therapy immediately. But: Although this medication is covered by the Bosnian authorities through their solidarity fund into which, as you know, […]
Reader Alban is tenacious. He says that the 1974 SFRY Constitution differed from the 1946 Constitution; the later model did not have Kosovo as part of Serbia. Er, wrong. Article 2: ̐
Here is an interesting analysis with lots of examples from ESI describing how the sulky tricephalic Bosnian donkey will in fact lurch forward if the juicy European carrot (in this case visa-free travel for all Bosnians) is big and juicy and close enough. All sorts of laws and inter-Entity harmonisations have […]
Various readers are continuing assorted Balkan wars in their comments on this site. It always happens, sooner or later. Keep it cool, folks. Reader Alban (pro-Kosova) makes a strong (and wrong) claim: Kosova never has been part of Serbia. Under Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) it had the status […]
Remember that great film starring Peter Sellers? This is not about that. Rather it is to pick up a comment posted by our old friend Ivor (at least I think it is ‘Ivor’ – s/he again cunningly leaves no email trail) on my observations about Neil Craig’s claim that I […]
I have been mulling over the EU-sponsored Report on the Georgia/Russia conflict which, being a very European document, spreads blame around with great punctilitude. An interesting yarn. This remarkable passage caught my eye: … international law does not recognise a right to unilaterally create a new state based on the […]
Neil Craig at A Place to Stand goes for it: MILOSEVIC’S CRIME WAS TO BE INNOCENT & NAIVE SAYS BRITAIN’S AMBASSADOR This is a long and not altogether coherent assessment of various replies I have posted on his site arising from his bold claim that the LibDems are complicit in […]
More on that self-proclaimed independent EU-sponsored Report on the 2008 Georgia conflict. Points of interest from it, as they come: The Mission had no access to intelligence reports: a serious setback, I’d say. Not least since the whole business was launched because of what Georgia + Washington ‘really’ thought Moscow […]
Reuters report some unhappiness in Brazil about the fact that former President Zelaya of Honduras is camping out in their Embassy in Tegucigalpa: Government and opposition legislators in Brazil’s Congress have urged President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to stop Zelaya from using the embassy as a political theater. "Zelaya’s […]
