That Pesky Democracy

Famous anarchist Emma Goldman once said, "If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal." Following last weekend's presidential elections in Serbia, the party of the incumbent Boris Tadic must be wishing they had made voting illegal. It appears that...

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A Different Endgame

Three days from now, citizens of Serbia will head to the polls and cast their ballots for their preferred candidate among the seven. Between the media and the pollsters, there is an expectation that no candidate will get the necessary majority in the first round, and...

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Shilling for the Empress

The new year has hardly had time to properly start, but the Washington Post has already set the tone for things to come. In the January 2, 2008 issue, on page A13 (opinion), the Post carries an abridged article by Moisés Naím, titled "A Hunger for America." Never mind...

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It’s No Longer 1999

After several years of enjoying near-unchallenged world hegemony, in 2006 it began appearing as if the U.S. Empire had suffered a series of setbacks. The true extent of this "long defeat" became obvious in 2007, as the fruitless Iraqi occupation continued to...

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The Die is Cast

Another chapter of the Kosovo crisis was closed on December 19, when the UN Security Council accepted the report of the "troika" that negotiations between Serbia and the Albanian separatists in its occupied province of Kosovo had failed. As predicted, the...

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The Final Assault

When in May 2005 the Bush apparatchiks officially adopted the Clinton policy towards the Balkans (until then, they merely allowed it to continue out of inertia), predictions were rife that independence for the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo would be just around...

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On the Brink

There is one constant in the proclamations of those championing the independence of the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo: the more they claim it is "inevitable" and just around the corner, the less likely it becomes. The drive to officially sever the...

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From Beneath You It Devours

The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West by Christopher Deliso, Praeger Security International, 2007 For almost two decades, events in the Balkans have been described in the West as a simple consequence of "greater Serbian...

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Sorrow’s Home

SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA - Winter came early this year in the Balkans mountains; the first snow of the season has come and gone, leaving the streets of the capital a soggy mess. As late as last week, Sarajevo's thousands of cafés still had their summer...

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The Phantom Menace

Dozens of neo-Nazis were arrested in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad on Sunday, as they rallied despite a government ban and clashed with a crowd of protesters. Western media hurried to make hay of the incident; the New York Times appended the two-paragraph...

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