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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 15, 2009 14:11:04 GMT
If you think the Macedonian spell scandal is interesting, you should follow the Serbian equal-rights-for-LGBT debate . . .
I tell you people - UK politics are dull, dull, dull . The Balkans is where the madness is at politically.
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Post by motorist on Mar 15, 2009 14:15:48 GMT
If you think the Macedonian spell scandal is interesting, you should follow the Serbian equal-rights-for-LGBT debate . . . I tell you people - UK politics are dull, dull, dull . The Balkans is where the madness is at politically. Bampot Diplomacy - you have a new hobby ;D |
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 16, 2009 19:51:02 GMT
And in more news from the Balkans, the residents of Mostar are demonstrating to demand a donkey be made mayor.
The southern Bosnian city of Mostar is facing and a rapidly worsening economic and social crisis brought on by intractable political bickering that has blocked the establishment of a new city government and adoption of its budget for more than five months.
The head of Mostar's Red Cross, Alen Kajtaz, has warned that because of this situation all soup kitchens operating in the city have been left without provisions. “I hope that we will not be forced to shut down public soap kitchens, because if that happens I am afraid that some people will starve to death,” Kajtaz told reporters over the weekend.
“The political collapse, which is present in Mostar over the past five months, will inevitably spread to the economic and social sphere,” reported the influential Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz on Sunday, in an alarming article titled “Mostar threatened by famine”.
Protesting over the inability of their politicians to elect a city mayor more than five months after the last elections, local residents brought a donkey to demonstrations that they held last Thursday, proposing the animal be the city’s new mayor.
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 16, 2009 19:52:29 GMT
P.S. One of the best things about Balkans media in English is the spelling errors.
I too am concerned about the closure of the soap kitchen. They'll smell really bad . .
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 17, 2009 20:44:35 GMT
Today the talk of the Balkans is the disco dancing past of a Macedonian Presidential candidate.
The ruling conservative VMRO DPMNE party's presidential candidate, Georgi Ivanov, now a professor of political science at Skopje's law faculty, was a hot blooded disco dancer in his teenage years, he told local media on Monday.
Ivanov claims that he even won a few amateur dancing contests when he as young, at his favorite holiday destination, the Greek tourist resort of Leptokaria.
“Since I was seven, my brother and I used to go on holiday to Dojran, Macedonia. When we got our passports we started going to Greece… We spent whole nights at the beach playing guitar… There was a disco dancing contest in Leptokaria. I won the first place two times in a row with my partner, a girl from Lisice (a Skopje suburb),” he told the ''Vest'' newspaper.
Born in the small Macedonian town of Valandovo, the 49 years-old presidential hopeful said he earned his first money from a guitar amplifier that he built for his band called “Apsaz Dan”, after Diana Ross’s hit song from the early eighties called ''Upside Down''.
“At the time Diana Ross’s Upside Down was a big hit. I gave the name “Apsaz Dan” to our band after this song but I wanted it to sound more local,” he said.
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 26, 2009 10:43:34 GMT
And today's big story from the Balkans - Macedonia has too many voters! Macedonia’s voter register has to be revised, political experts argue after international monitors suggested that there seems to be a striking discrepancy between the number of voters and the overall population.
“It is impossible for a country of two million to have 1.8 million voters. That has to be addressed,” Pia Christmas Muller, the Vice-President of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in the Europe Parliamentary Assembly and the Coordinator of short-term observers in Macedonia’s local and presidential poll said on Monday, just one day after Sunday’s first round of presidential and local election.www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/17653/Oh I wish I was going to the Balkans this year . . . preferably with a UN armed guard right enough. I have been desperately pitching ideas at my friends who do stuff like run radio stations, that I should go and make them a documentary about the Balkans. But nobody is interested. Probably because I have absolutely no experience of making radio documentaries about anything at all. I just figure it can't be that difficult, and that someone ought to pay me to bring this kind of stuff to the wider public. |
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Post by motorist on Mar 26, 2009 10:46:52 GMT
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 26, 2009 11:16:32 GMT
"It is impossible for a country of two million to have 1.8 million voters"  Oh boy, once this work experience is up, the Macedonian student is in for a lot more teasing ;D Be gentle. They are a fledgling democracy, and, compared to other Baltic states, the FYR Macedonians are the good guys. They didn't really ethnically cleanse each other to any great extent, and they are lumbered with that stupid FYR prefix because of the sensitivities (sp?) of the Greeks. I shouldn't laugh at them. It's not really very nice. |
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Post by Patrick on Mar 26, 2009 12:28:08 GMT
Oh I wish I was going to the Balkans this year . . . preferably with a UN armed guard right enough. I have been desperately pitching ideas at my friends who do stuff like run radio stations, that I should go and make them a documentary about the Balkans. But nobody is interested. Probably because I have absolutely no experience of making radio documentaries about anything at all. I just figure it can't be that difficult, and that someone ought to pay me to bring this kind of stuff to the wider public. You and I can go - I can "Do Documentaries"! PS - if any of your radio friends have any vacancies, let me know! ;D Listen out for anything by Mark Coles, or Mark Mardell and certainly Peter Day for some great radio pieces. Mardell's are almost textbook jounralism - from the opening FX to "set the scene", through to the variety of voices he'll use to keep the interest of the listener - all interspersed with little bits of ambient background that takes you on a journey through the feature. Brilliant. |
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 30, 2009 10:52:27 GMT
Today's news is a worrying deterioration in relations between Romania and Moldova. www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/17754/The Romanians and the Moldovans are ethnically and culturally identical, but Moldova was 'taken' from Romania by the USSR, and Moldova only became an independent nation in 1991 when the USSR broke up. This is a hard one to understand. It's like Sussex falling out with Essex. In other news, Serbia & Croatia are getting on a bit better, and Greece & Macedonia might even agree that Macedonia can call itself what it likes in due course (although it is felt that Obama is less than interested in this dispute, and George W Bush was a great supporter of Macedonia.) |
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Post by trubble on Mar 30, 2009 11:43:12 GMT
And precisely how will this affect the Eurovision Song Contest?
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 30, 2009 12:08:52 GMT
And precisely how will this affect the Eurovision Song Contest? Kosovo may have been recognised as an independent state by most (but not all) EU member states and by the USA and the Maldives, but it has not yet been recognised as such by the Eurovision powers it seems, as there is no Kosovar entry. Interesting times. |
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Post by trubble on Mar 30, 2009 12:26:43 GMT
I'm not letting it sway my vote. I will still vote for Scotland.
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Post by everso on Mar 30, 2009 12:34:12 GMT
Today's news is a worrying deterioration in relations between Romania and Moldova. www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/17754/The Romanians and the Moldovans are ethnically and culturally identical, but Moldova was 'taken' from Romania by the USSR, and Moldova only became an independent nation in 1991 when the USSR broke up. This is a hard one to understand. It's like Sussex falling out with Essex.In other news, Serbia & Croatia are getting on a bit better, and Greece & Macedonia might even agree that Macedonia can call itself what it likes in due course (although it is felt that Obama is less than interested in this dispute, and George W Bush was a great supporter of Macedonia.) Sussex? PAH!! Who do they think they are with their posh accents! |
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 30, 2009 12:39:49 GMT
I'm not letting it sway my vote. I will still vote for Scotland. Interesting. Which nation do you think will be first to have an entry in its own right to Eurovision - Scotland or Kosovo? (I have to say I'd probably bet on Kosovo the way things are right now. You know, the ancient nation of Kosovo, the one that had its own monarchy, the one that still has its own legal system . . . NOT.) |
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Post by trubble on Mar 30, 2009 12:52:12 GMT
My money is certainly on Kosovo. I'm sorry about that because I would prefer a Scottish entry.
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Post by trubble on Mar 30, 2009 12:52:52 GMT
The Latvians tried to enter this year as the Irish entry. Fluffin cheek.
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Post by trubble on Mar 30, 2009 12:53:20 GMT
Today's news is a worrying deterioration in relations between Romania and Moldova. www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/17754/The Romanians and the Moldovans are ethnically and culturally identical, but Moldova was 'taken' from Romania by the USSR, and Moldova only became an independent nation in 1991 when the USSR broke up. This is a hard one to understand. It's like Sussex falling out with Essex.In other news, Serbia & Croatia are getting on a bit better, and Greece & Macedonia might even agree that Macedonia can call itself what it likes in due course (although it is felt that Obama is less than interested in this dispute, and George W Bush was a great supporter of Macedonia.) Sussex? PAH!! Who do they think they are with their posh accents! You tell 'em, everso. Smash the oiks! |
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 30, 2009 13:05:43 GMT
The Latvians tried to enter this year as the Irish entry. Fluffin cheek. How did that work? How weird. I don't remember that story. WHat happened? Got a link? I'm not sure about the Latvians. I've never really looked into them much. Are they twats like the Ukranians and Slovakians, or good guys like the Czechs and the Estonians? (Oh yeah . . and please stop dragging my exciting Balkans thread off topic. Or something.) |
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Post by Patrick on Mar 30, 2009 13:44:04 GMT
Which nation do you think will be first to have an entry in its own right to Eurovision - Scotland or Kosovo? Not Bloody Andy Stewart again!  |
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