Why on Earth is Slovenia doing this?

Slovenia remains the smallest of the former Yugoslav republics that had the blessed fortune of being spared the devastation wrought on its former co-republics. There were small skirmishes, and a helicopter was shot down on its territory, but the Belgrade-controlled Yugoslav National Army withdrew from Slovenia after just ten days of fighting. Slobodan Milosevic had better things to do, so to speak, by moving on to Croatia, which had a sizable Serb minority, particularly around the Krajina region.

Slovenia (along with Croatia) was the richest of the former Yugoslav republics, and moved towards free market capitalism and democracy the quickest. Some tourist guide books -- and now officials from the Slovene government -- have gotten on the bandwagon, and are trying to get the rest of the world to forget that Slovenia was once part of that bygone entity called Yugoslavia. When academics and journalists talk about the Western Balkans, Slovenia is noticeably not included in this definition.

So, in short, this country of some 1.5 million people (or is it closer to 2 million now?) has fared remarkably well. It joined NATO and the EU in 2004, and was the first ex-communist country with mature-enough financial institutions to join the Eurozone.

With all of this remarkable and exemplary progress, one can only wonder why on Earth Slovenia's government has elected to do this? "Slovenia's ruling coalition parties have joined opposition parties in calling for a referendum on a border deal agreed with Croatia...The four ruling parties as well as Prime Minister Borut Pahor and President Danilo Turk have decided to support the opposition initiative and said on Tuesday they will only ratify the border agreement if it secures majority support in a referendum, expected in early 2010."

Not long ago, newspapers that pay attention to this region of Europe had hailed a victory between Pahor and his Croatian counterpart Jadranka Kosor, who had signed an agreement ostensibly resolving a long-running dispute over the Adriatic Bay of Piran and demarcations between the two countries that were fudged during the Yugoslav period.

The problem? "The move may again complicate Zagreb's bid to join the EU, since Slovenia has blocked Croatia's EU entry negotiations pending a solution to the 18-year-old dispute." One cannot help but be reminded of another referendum in Slovenia's recent past, which embarrassed its leadership and dismayed human rights observers. After independence in 1991, Slovenia removed other Yugoslav nationals living in the country from official registries, thereby stripping them of their residency rights.

The government moved to fix this sad state of affairs, only to be squashed by a referendum. As the BBC's country profile for Slovenia reports, "Parliament later passed a bill restoring their citizenship but a referendum held shortly before EU entry in 2004 overturned it by an overwhelming margin." This came just on the eve of entry into the EU: what irony!

Now, Slovenia will have another referendum, while Croatia's EU bid, which it needs quite badly, is again left dangling in the Adriatic wind. But the authorities say we should not fear anything, but fear itself: "Nevertheless, the ruling parties are confident they can win. According to Reuters, a recent opinion poll showed 48.5 per cent of citizens would support the agreement while 14.6 per cent were undecided." Let us hope so.

Atta boy, Klaus!

So ends the twilight zone of uncertainty surrounding the EU's Lisbon Treaty. The last vestige of resistance to a process that would streamline decision-making in the EU and make it into the global power it should be has vanished.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a free market economist par excellence, accepted the decision of a Czech constitutional court, which rejected a complaint against Lisbon, and subsequently ratified it just a short time ago.

As such, a new European Council president post is in the offing, as well as a common foreign minister that will trump the current arrangement of a foreign affairs representative and the external affairs commissioner. Time now, it seems, is of the essence -- bien sur, I say, given that this whole affair with the Lisbon Treaty has been in an uncertain pipeline since the early summer of 2008, when the Irish electorate voted, in a referendum, against it (they subsequently affirmed support through a second referendum held recently).

From the report: "The Eurosceptic Czech leader had recently said he would no longer attempt to block the treaty, after receiving the promise of an opt-out from the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights." It seems that this opt-out was driven, yet again, by the need to "avoid property claims from ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II."

A further step, then, which is cause for celebration. The bit about the Sudeten Germans, however, remains the sore spot it was post-1945, but that is another story.

Visas and diplomatic spats

There are moments when I really question decisions made by the Canadian government concerning aspects of how it conducts its foreign policy. This Ottawa Citizen story, headlined "EU warning: may impose visas on Canadian diplomats; Retaliatory step to push Canada to lift visas for Czechs," is just one of those times.

Back in July of this year, this country's Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney -- probably more well-known for his publicized spat with British MP George Galloway, whom Kenney banned from speaking in Canada -- imposed visa requirements on both Mexican and Czech citizens. It has, predictably, raised quite the storm, though the Czech case appears to be more threatening, just because of the far-reaching consequences that are involved in raising the ire of one of the most powerful political and economic blocs in the world.

From the paper, quoting EU justice minister Jacques Barrot: "This situation is not acceptable -- not just for the Czech Republic but for the European Union as a whole. The European Union is a whole and it is not right and proper for Canada to require visas from one member of this ensemble." Later, the paper points out that "Ottawa reintroduced the requirement for Czechs to obtain visitor visas in July after hundreds of minority Roma from the central European country sought asylum in Canada."

There are, in my view, several issues that emerge from this little charade. First, for quite some time now, Canadian authorities have been wriggling in their offices over protectionist sentiments in the United States, particularly the "Buy American" clause in recent stimulus packages. A wise remedy, that both Ottawa and Brussels had begun to toy with, was to create a Canada-EU free trade agreement, which would begin to offset the excessive reliance on exporting 80%-odd of our goods south of the border. It is hard to see how this chilling of relations could be conducive to such a vital long-term objective.

Second, there is the issue of resources, and the rather lackadaisical approach Canada has taken to its consular obligations and responsibilities in the recent past. "Barrot said as a first step, Canada should open an office in Prague where Czechs could obtain Canadian visas, instead of having to travel to Vienna as they do now." This report fails to point out that Canada already has an embassy in Prague. It also has an embassy in Bratislava (Slovakia). Yet the Prague embassy is also accredited to Slovakia, but visitors from both countries must go to Canada's embassy in Vienna for long-term visas, or for other consular affairs -- no mean feat for many people in both countries who don't exactly have a ton of disposable income.

Canada has been shutting down a number of its offices throughout Europe. I know, off-hand, that its consulate in Saint Petersburg has been closed, as has its embassy in Sarajevo (in this last case, Bosnian applicants will have to go to Budapest for their needs, even though Bosnians require visas to visit the EU too...). Still other countries do not have Canadian consular offices on their soil, like Montenegro. Why this sparse presence, in light of these new realities?

Third, there is the Roma question: the visa requirement was imposed after several asylum requests came disproportionately from Czech Roma, who most certainly face nasty discrimination, not solely from extremist gangs and such, but also from everyday people (I speak from seeing this so many times myself). While Ottawa certainly has the right and obligation to filter out bogus refugee and asylum claims from all countries, this approach is closer to throwing the baby out along with the bath water.

One can only hope that the situation will stabilize, and the Czech government has been gracious enough (well, also quite pragmatic, since tourist dollars account for a lot, especially in Prague) to not reciprocate on Canadian travellers. But problems, little as they may seem, always have the enduring potential to grow into something quite nasty. Alas, this is a case in point.

Microcosms of transition

Finding myself back in Canada following a seven-month stint in Montenegro, I am still sorting through my experiences. Being a subscriber to regular news items from the excellent Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), I found that much of what I witnessed and experienced in Podgorica (and elsewhere) was complimented by the informed content I read from the folks at BIRN.

I frequently found myself pondering the issue of relationships and the lives of young people outside the academic/professional sphere. I was especially curious to see how people my age related to the transformations taking place in their society, as well as how these changes were affecting them.

Montenegro is a special case in point, since the country is so small; its population is somewhere in the vicinity of 650,000, so I was expecting some degree of modesty and conservative traditions to predominate everyday life. Everyone knows someone who, in turn, knows some other people; what goes around comes around. Networks are extremely wide and strong in the Balkans, a legacy of a decade of war and crippling sanctions, but also steeped in tradition.

This story, therefore, is slightly unrelated to what I have described, and it deals specifically with Serbia. Its conclusions and implications, however, apply and extend to Montenegro, and some of what I learned and observed while there. This piece reports: "Health officials report that between 150,000-200,000 abortions are carried out every year in Serbia, news-site Mondo reported Monday...Every twelfth woman between the ages of 15-49 years has had an abortion. Most had not used contraception."

Serbia's total population is a little higher than 7,300,000. In the early 1980s, Serbia already had the reputation for having one of the highest abortion rates in Europe, a fact that nationalists failed to point out when they identified the high Albanian-speaking population within Kosovo and the declining number of Serbs in the province.

I do not know the statistics for Montenegro, but they are something just as frighteningly high, in proportion to the country's small size. Statistics are hard to come by, since Montenegro keeps getting looped in with Serbia, despite three-plus years of independence (go figure). Someone told me that it was in the range of the thousands.

Returning to this story: "[Dr. Katarina] Sedlecki [of the Family Planning Centre of Serbia] considers the abortion situation in Serbia as severe as every fourth abortion was carried out on women who had already had four or more abortions...She added that there are few organised efforts to promote sex education, or to provide information on how to limit family size in Serbia's family planning programme...Sedlecki stressed that economic factors are not the main reason for the high number of abortion cases in Serbia."

The story points out that other researchers indicated that there remain low levels of knowledge concerning contraception, the nature of abortions, "a belief that modern contraceptive methods are harmful to health, and a number of psychological barriers, [including] those arising from relationships with partners." They should also have pointed out, as I witnessed first-hand repeatedly, the social stigmas that befall women in particular that choose to become sexually active (or are just perceived to be such).

Little else can be said from this report, only that so many of the social problems confronting these 'transition' countries, like Serbia and Montenegro, are as much structural and political as they are societal and habit-borne. Montenegro is the tougher fish to fry, just because these realities are shrouded in tradition, secrecy and patriarchy. I found myself frequently frustrated, unfairly perhaps, by such tradition-honed factors that have persisted, despite the obvious negative outcomes that result. This arena of abortion rates in the region is just one aspect of this, and persists not so much out of necessity as it does because of other factors that, evidently, trump economics and the tangibles.

Revolutions have this invisible, yet potent factor to take into account. Montenegro (and Serbia) has a long way to go -- a generation or two, I would reckon -- before anyone can talk about full-out success in conquering legacies and habits forged by past experiences. I say this with sadness, because Montenegro is a country I adore, and consider like my second home and nationality.

Just another day of ‘standard operating procedure’

Torture has been a constant in world history for as long as rivalries, war and intelligence gathering has taken place. Extreme situations and circumstances, the reasoning has gone, denote the need for extreme measures; to fight fire with fire or, according to the last U.S. administration, to fight terror with terror. The ends justify the means, and in the Iraqi arena of the ‘war on terror,’ these extreme, ostensibly intelligence-gathering measures against “security detainees” were helping to save the lives of American soldiers being killed by insurgents.

The many photographs of prison abuse and torture that were published worldwide in 2004 horrified as much as outraged. It was a phenomenon matched by the grotesque reactions from official circles in Washington DC – President Bush admitting to the low ebb to which America’s image had dropped, but then reiterating “we do not torture,” even though irrefutable proof would continue to emerge that, certainly in Iraq, torture not only happened but was sanctioned at the highest level. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, in moments of almost homicidal and maniacal bluntness, has continuously justified the use of heavy-handed techniques as indispensable to fighting America’s new enemies.

So much of what happened at Abu Ghraib – that is, the tip of the proverbial iceberg that the public knows about – started out as a legal grey zone that originated with the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, not long after the 9/11 terror attacks. Then, like a snowball, one thing led to another, and this legal grey zone that identified Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters as not belonging to any existing nation-state and, therefore, a loophole within the Geneva Conventions, set out the groundwork for what was to follow in what the Bush administration identified as another arena for the ‘war on terror.’ In short, the ghoulish and obscene photographs of American volunteers doing these things to Iraqi detainees failed to tell the whole story.

Over the course of a short time span, I read the book Standard Operating Procedure by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist and writer that I deeply admire, having first read his work on post-genocide Rwanda, as well as his lesser-known book about an unsolved murder in New York City. This is his first collaborative work, having co-authored this book with the filmmaker Errol Morris, who had earlier released a documentary of the same name (I have yet to see it).

To say that I was expecting something mind-blowing is doing an injustice, though what I expected is just what I received, as will anyone else that reads this book. It not only conveys just what and how Abu Ghraib happened, as told through the words of its chief perpetrators and participants, but also is a potent rebuff to those supporters, past and present, of the Iraq War and regime change. While torture and the usage of “black sites” has been used by the Central Intelligence Agency since its inception post-1945, so much of what is written here reads like the past: the same old story of intelligence failures and techniques that have taken place time and again.

There is so much to say about Standard Operating Procedure, as the darkness it dredges up is presented in a fast-paced tone, but is inherently complex and multifaceted at the same time. The United States, and by extension the entire ‘coalition of the willing,’ were sent to post-Saddam Iraq in March 2003 to neuter the threat posed by the old regime’s weapons of mass destruction and sponsorship of terrorism – links that, notwithstanding a few diehards that insist that there was a connection between these things, did not exist. What started out as a belief that the abuse of prisoners, a term never used by the coalition forces, was the result of a few rogue elements turned out to be an open manifestation of authorized usage of intense techniques to gather what was supposed to be a source of vital information about the post-Saddam insurgency in Iraq. The President, the Vice-President and the Defence Secretary, not to mention the occupation forces themselves, remain culpable for all that happened.

Yet, when all was said and done, a small handful of individuals were punished, and no one above the rank of sergeant was prosecuted. In fact, even before the scandal came out, government and military echelons were more interested in finding ways of keeping things quiet and out of the spotlight – an effort thwarted in no small part by journalists and some within the military that approached them with these incriminating materials. The head honchos, and all members of the Central Intelligence Agency were given a quiet, but guaranteed immunity. There are standards, it seems, and there are standards.

The story Gourevitch and Morris have written is largely told from the voices of the Military Police stationed in Abu Ghraib and the surrounding military zone. Morris, who was the main interviewer of these key participants, has had plenty of experience in interviewing, and his skill at getting his subjects to simply talk is beneficial as it is revealing. Most of these personnel were clueless as to what they were supposed to be doing, and were entrusted to extract intelligence from what turned out to be mostly Iraqis caught in the wrong place and at the wrong time, with no significance whatsoever – about 90 percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were innocent of any wrongdoing, insurgency-related or otherwise.

Those that managed to be acquitted of any wrongdoing by nefarious Iraqi judges were sent back to Abu Ghraib for months on end, pending their official release approvals. In between this, a few American MPs began taking snapshots of interrogations as a way of distancing themselves from what they knew was inherently wrong; one of them, Sabrina Harman, said she took the photographs because she wanted to document and bear witness to the crimes in the prison, thereby acquitting herself of any responsibility. There were others, of course, that were not so benign, and delighted at the chance to slam heads against walls or sexually degrade inmates.

Some critics have looked down on the decision Gourevitch and Morris made in not including any of the abuse photographs in the book. Just as well, since they only tell part of the story – and they can be found all over the Internet and in other documentary collections. While Gourevitch is impressively detached from his subject and offers no personal disgust into his work, it does sometimes seep through, serving as a reminder of the ubiquity of disgust, shame, disappointment and outrage that he must have had to confront while putting this book together.

Since then, US President Barack Obama has effectively spelled an end to the ‘war on terror,’ having ordered not only the closure of black prison sites worldwide but also of Guantanamo Bay’s facilities. Obama has also made plans to re-criminalize torture, thereby potentially seeing investigations and legal proceedings against senior members of the old Bush administration. He has also indicated a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq in the foreseeable future; a decision that, while significant and another break from the past, may well end up doing far more harm than good. Everywhere one looks concerning Iraq, they come away having seen an indelible mess and screw-up that will beguile and horrify for a long time. Gourevitch and Morris have put together a work that will stay relevant long after this war has fully ended.

You are the perfect drug

Trent Reznor is probably best known for his creative and absolutely smashing musical entity Nine Inch Nails. Last summer, my best friend and I were fortunate enough to see the group perform at the Air Canada Centre; the stifling summertime heat was matched by the absolute intensity and mind-blowing performance they delivered.

Reznor's personal experiences of addiction, depression and darkness is as much sad as it is hopeful, as he overcame his personal demons while still maintaining a commitment to his musical genius. I remember, back in late 1994, when I first heard The Downward Spiral -- a little shocking looking back, as I was just in elementary school -- and being hooked on it, off and on since then.

Granted, I have a bigger appreciation for the old Trent of the Pretty Hate Machine and Broken days, but I still listen to his newer stuff, the most recent of which he allowed to be downloaded, for free, off his web site. I am sad to hear rumours that he may not be touring as Nine Inch Nails for the next while, if ever again. I guess he just reached and crossed a personal threshold that now warrants a quiet retreat and recovery. All the same, hats off to the man.

I came across this long, but fascinating article about Nine Inch Nails' initiatives outside of their music, and into the ways in which they distribute their work while simultaneously reconciling themselves to the new realities facing the record industry and keeping links with their fan base alive and well. Those realities are, of course, the rise of Internet-based file sharing and downloading of music, often illegally -- something that inevitably is nurturing a whole generation of youngsters that view music as something they are entitled to pluck and use as they see fit.

I still have vivid memories of eagerly going to a local HMV music shop to buy the newly-released album from a given band, without having heard anything from it, and then driving home, trembling with delight at what I will expect when I fire up the CD. There is a certain magic quality to this, which probably explains why I still, to this day, buy CDs -- even though they are played just once, technically, on my computer, which then feeds everything to an IPod.

Where has all the magic gone? Computers, the Internet, mp3 files, ITunes -- that all sounds too robotic, which says much for where we are going as a society...but that is also going off topic.

"Reznor hasn't been trying to save the record industry, and doesn't push himself forward as any kind of example or seer. All he has been trying to do is to release Nine Inch Nails's music to the greatest effect. Some of the financial decisions he has made along the way seem almost suicidal. But, even so, perhaps more than anyone else right now, he has been offering the record industry a remarkable lesson in survival and some clues as to how, for those who are smart and passionate and flexible, there are ways forward."

The whole story is there, for anyone that wishes to read it all. Reznor and, by extension, Nine Inch Nails achieved what is, for many, almost unachievable; they did not let it get to their heads, nor did they forget their humble and servant-status origins before moving deep into the mainstream (and the perks that have come with it, both artistically and financially). I reckon, speaking as a fan and admirer of Reznor and his music, that this is the proverbial icing on the cake: as practical as it is a recognition of, and homage to, his fan base, as much as it is self-preservation in the face of changing realities.

As this article wraps up, "Now theirs is a more controlled, coiled anger; the sincerity without the damage. Reznor has prospered by realising that there are some changes it is dumb not to make." Music-making meeting the politics of the recording industry, and an embracing of the new realities that emanate from it: that is the perfect drug, if there ever was one.

Citizenship and assimilation

The former Soviet republic of Moldova, with a population of just over 4 million, remains one of the smallest post-Soviet republics. It is also the poorest country in Europe, with a dilapidated infrastructure, outmoded agricultural techniques, and about one-fourth of its working population that does not technically work in Moldova.

In 2001, President Vladimir Voronin, of the Communist Party, became President; his government recently was re-elected, but not without triggering violent spasms of unrest in the capital of Chisinau that forced a recount reiterating the Communists' victory.

It is also the site of a peculiar form of separatism, east of the river Dniester, which is populated by a sizable number of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, along with Moldovans, but which is controlled by former Soviet political elites that played the nationalism card just before Moldova became independent in August 1991.

Really, though, the conundrum over the 'Trans-Dniester Moldovan Republic' is a thinly-disguised squabble between the Moldovan authorities and the ex-Soviet elite in Tiraspol, who preside over an enclave of Soviet-style decorum and bravado, complete with rampant organized crime, illicit weapons dealing, human trafficking, and minimal central authority. The "president" of Trans-Dniester, Igor Smirnov, runs the place as his personal fief, with his two sons running a good deal of the breakaway state's business.

Moldovans, historically, have ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties with neighbouring Romania; between 1918-1940, Romania and Moldova were one country, and it was following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1940, followed by the insanity of the Second World War, that Moldova became a part of the USSR. Few politicians in post-1989 Romania have been keen on nurturing irredentism in Moldova, given the country's nasty poverty and the instability it harbours with Trans-Dniester.

The Romanian government, however -- along with Russia -- has long been accused of meddling in Chisinau's affairs. Curious, then, that the Romanian government has been making it easier, as of late, for Moldovans to acquire a Romanian passport, much to the chagrin of the Moldovan authorities. Romania's President, Trajan Basescu, says he wishes to avoid a new "iron curtain" from falling between the two countries, but one cannot help but wonder if this is just an alternative to the mud-slinging, territory-altering prospect of somehow reunifying the two countries together. The last time this possibility emerged was right in 1990-1991, but Romania was nowhere near its current level of stability and economic prospects, let alone EU and NATO membership, at the time.

"This mass granting of the Romanian citizenship is a way to assimilate the Republic of Moldova...We see it a threat to the statehood, a threat to the integrity and sovereignty of our country." Or so says Vladimir Turcanu, a Moldovan MP. More than 100,000 Moldovans have Romanian passports already, and there are another 20,000 applications in the pipeline (though President Basescu cited a figure of 650,000 envelopes at the Romanian embassy in Chisinau).

If this all keeps up, Moldova may well become a closer rendition of post-Soviet Armenia, another poverty-mired country in which one-third of its population has left the country for a better life abroad since 1991. Eighteen years of supposed nation-building and identity-fostering will have been in vain, and a country will have virtually vanished, to be replaced by...what?

We will, we will...but should we, and can we?

Sometimes, there are developments that encompass a multitude of issues all at once. The news that Turkey and Armenia are, apparently, set to repair and resume ties of some sort after mutually committing one another to persona non Grata-status since 1993, stands out in this regard.

The issue covers, first, the endemic issue of what happened to Anatolian Armenians in 1915, and whether or not it actually constituted genocide. It is a subject best left to historians on both sides of the border, but sometimes such things are just not possible. Too often, nationalists are unable (read: unwilling) to concede facts and think in a level-headed fashion and are more interested in scoring polemical points.

That is an issue in itself. Turkey's ambassador to Canada was recently withdrawn over Prime Minister Harper's referral to 1915 as "genocide," a stance that Ottawa has taken, much to the chagrin of Turkey. South of the border, President Obama is likely set to reiterate his personal stance on the issue (affirmative) at the end of April, when a remembrance day by Armenians takes place, and US Presidents traditionally speak about the subject.

Then, there is the nature of Turkish-Armenian relations that have remained foul, symbolically, for a century, but which became acute post-1993 over the Nagorny Karabagh war. This is an enclave within the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, populated now totally by Armenians, which turned into a quasi-kerfuffle between Armenia and Azerbaijan in early 1988. Following 1991, it turned into a full-out war between the enclave, backed by Armenia (and Russia), and Azerbaijan (which also received help from Russia -- go figure).

A fragile ceasefire was imposed in May 1994, but Armenia and Azerbaijan remain technically at war, with skirmishes sometimes taking place. Peace efforts since then have all failed, mainly because Armenia and Nagorny Karabagh's leadership have been more interested in pursuing nationalist policies and catering to the shouts emanating from the Armenian diaspora (think former Armenian President Robert Kocharian versus his predecessor Levon Ter-Petrossian).

Azerbaijan, on the other hand, pumped to the brim with hard and bountiful oil cash, is one of the world's most corrupt states, with a small clique, run first by Heidar Aliyev and now his son, Ilham, controlling the political landscape. The Azerbaijani side of the coin has, in turn, been unwilling to pursue a resolution to the conflict because of domestic political factors that have consistently opposed a reconciliation with the Armenians.

Even now, in the spirit of Turkish-Armenian normalizations, Baku is howling: the status of the Nabucco oil pipeline is at stake, which would reduce the EU's dependence on Russian energy, but which Baku is threatening could be compromised by a shift to the Russians, given that they have already offered to buy Azerbaijani crude at European prices. "Opening the border could lead to tensions in the region and would be contradictory to the interests of Azerbaijan," Azeri Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov has said.

Finally, the icing on this ziggurat-like cake is Turkey's EU ambitions. Ankara's support for Baku has raised the ire of the folks in Brussels (though, admittedly, it does not take much for them to find issue with Turkey in the best of times), as has its stance on the events of 1915. Turkey's trajectory is also at issue now, a certain 'damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't'-like scenario.

At the same time, it is being pressured by the United States to assist regional peace efforts through its traditional brokerage and go-between efforts at mediating long-standing crises in the region, as between Israel and Syria, and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This is definitely something to watch, as the stakes are enormous and the issues laden with every kind of explosive you can imagine.

Milo, vi ste kralj!

Elections are all over Europe these days. Slovakia recently had presidential elections, which will have a second round in a run-off vote some time in April. The Czech government collapsed recently, the outcome of which remains uncertain. Macedonia (or 'FYROM' to those sensitive of the name) held presidential elections this past weekend too, as much in a bid to prove to the world its capability of holding free and fair elections independently.

Montenegro is due to have a parliamentary election on Sunday. Several individuals are running as representatives of coalitions or blocs in a bid to try and win the position of government head, though no one questions that the long-standing incumbent, Milo Djukanovic, will win. The man, in one fashion or another, has held the position of Prime Minister and/or President of Montenegro since 1991, making him something of a relic of everything that has happened in the region.

Television, for about one month now, has been allocating certain slots for "political marketing," ostensibly giving all contenders space to voice their views and try to woo would-be voters to select their number on the ballot. Djukanovic's bloc, known as the "Coalition for a European Montenegro," has, by my reckoning, been dominating the scene. It is as if the voting public already knows that he will win. Quite ironic, given that Djukanovic's bloc has been using the slogan of "Sigurno," which means "assurance," in his campaigns.

This report, by contrast, in reporting on the possible closure of the KAP aluminium plant in Podgorica, suggests the Prime Minister called snap polls in a bid to win a victory before the financial crisis became really acute in the country, thereby affecting his popularity. For a country of some 650,000 people, the closure of this plant, along with a large mine, would affect 4,000 workers -- KAP aluminium alone makes up 40% of the country's industrial production.

There is a burgeoning tourism industry, but many owners of coastal hotels and resorts, buoyed by the economic boom following independence in June 2006 that spurred massive renovations, are now wondering how they will pay their creditors given that less tourists will come this summer, owing to the financial crisis worldwide.

Whoever wins the vote -- and my rather unremarkable prediction is that it will most certainly be Djukanovic -- has a lot on their plate. In fact, this is an icky understatement. Other sentiment, however, says it is not a matter of just winning, but that there is no one else but Djukanovic to lead Montenegro at a time like this; he brought the country this far, so why not let him take it a little further, given that the EU and NATO (via Olli Rehm) have been applauding the country's progress thus far.

Montenegro never had a war on its territory. If anything, it was like a sideshow to the other Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, though details are emerging relating to the country's culpability in some crimes and collusion with Belgrade in this regard. It fared remarkably well, and stands poised for a status of incredulity. For now, however, observers will be watching this election and the broader means by which its winners will tread the economic storms looming fast.

"The victims and perpetrators are still among us"

Following the Second World War, occupied Germany wound up being partitioned, albeit gradually, into two distinct entities that became a symbol of Cold War divisions in Europe. There was a democratic, free-market West Germany, as well as a communist, non-democratic and Warsaw Pact East, whose official name was the "German Democratic Republic." Berlin was a divided city.

That basic history masks the other, more serious and trenchant diversions that took place following 1945. As a component of the Soviet Bloc, East Germany had a KGB carbon-copy secret police responsible not only for foreign intelligence gathering but also domestic surveillance. This police force, known as the Stasi (fully, 'Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,' or "Ministry for State Security"), was officially founded in 1950, and was among the most ruthless and brutal of the Eastern Bloc's secret police forces, matched perhaps by the wickedness of Romania's Securitate, or Czechoslovakia's Statna/i Bezpecnost (literally, "State Security").

Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal was unsparing in his opinion of the Stasi; he said that they were "worse than the Gestapo." Their surveillance and torture techniques became legendary, as well as the sheer cruelty with which they pressed their agenda. Apparently, a German daily alleged that the Stasi had even partaken in radiating some political opponents, so that they would get cancer within a few years. One out of every fifty East Germans was a Stasi informer, with some estimates stating that this is too conservative a number.

Every post-communist country has had to deal with the particular legacies that emanated from the Cold War, one of them being purging and/or reforming these ex-surveillance agencies known only for their coercion and repressive policies in enforcing communist rule on their populations. The processes, known as lustration, has had mixed results: some countries, like the former East Germany and the Czech Republic, have been vigorous (albeit imperfect), while others, like Romania and Slovakia, were ruled in the 1990s by old-style governments that were unwilling to do so. Others, like Albania, have just begun.

Germany, after reunification, had the double misfortune of not only coming to grips with the Nazi past, but also the Stasi/East German legacy. This last bit remains an issue. Consider this BBC story, which deals with a former, albeit unwilling informer, of the Stasi, who has remained haunted and affected by this past ever since the Berlin Wall came crashing down. This particular woman became a so-called "Romeo spy," tricked into unwittingly handing over West German secrets to the Stasi by being seduced by one of its agents and reassured that her information was being used by pro-peace Western groups.

"It's like an invisible amputation of the soul," this one woman declared. "I am totally alone, I don't have any family, I don't have any friends," but for eleven dogs that she has in her house -- in the Netherlands. After 1990, she was prosecuted and given a suspended sentence and fine, though the agents that cajoled her, and thirty other women, into giving away state secrets were given immunity; to this day, they receive state pensions for their service.

Mind you, Germany has complex, yet very thorough laws on access to information for people affected by the secret police. With a set mandate of operation, the former East German archives enable people to access and read their files, sometimes enabling them to track down their former informers, though this is not sanctioned or officially encouraged. Oxford intellectual Timothy Garton Ash, by his own investigations, confronted those that informed on him when he was in the DDR in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He wrote about them in his book The File. There is now, in Berlin, a Stasi museum -- next time I visit Germany, I will make it a point to check it out.

Some say the Germans have become good at confronting their nasty pasts. The double-whammies of Nazism and Communism are no mean feats to deal with. West Germany went through a period of amnesia throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s about its Nazi past before finally confronting its legacy, through studies of history, popular culture and political will.

Ghosts of the Stasi, however, remain painfully at issue, despite the methodical efficiency of reconciling this dark period. This kind of healing may take a longer time yet to set in.

What if...?

Former Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was murdered six years ago in Belgrade. The story, or at least one of many, is here.

His death left a lot of unfinished business in the matter of Serbia's transition, although the groundwork he had established looked very promising. He was shot right outside his government's headquarters, dealing a nasty blow towards overcoming Serbia's recent history and its endemic image, which is still alive and well in many circles of "opinion," of political instability, economic stagnation and lawlessness.

Not a whole lot to be said about this anniversary, but only to ask the inevitable: how would things have been different if the man had lived? How, particularly, would he have handled the pressing question of Kosovo's status, or the issue of remaining war criminals at large?

The 1980s revival in Europe

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s are probably familiar with some of the noteworthy tunes from those years, even if we cannot quite place a song name or artist to a particular song. In other cases, someone might describe the `80s as a ‘bygone era,’ but for anyone living or working in Europe right now, this is most definitely not the case.

Attend a dance club, and you will find yourself – as I was, just a few nights ago – standing still and baffled, reveling at that point in your mind between familiarity and recognition, before realizing that what a particular deejay is playing is a heavily-remixed version of a song that made its debut in the early 1980s. In this particular case, it was New Order’s ‘Blue Monday.’ Or, alternatively, go for an evening stroll down a street, and you will hear a familiar jingle emanating from one of the open-door cafes and bars you pass by.

The 1980s are alive and well in Europe, and it is like a blast from the past. In the same way, it is also as much a reflection of how much has happened since then, and a reassuring nod that new generations, many of who have no recollections of those times, can now appreciate some of the musical magic that defined a generation from twenty-plus years ago. I count myself as one of the lucky ones: I am old enough to remember record players, as well as actual vinyl wrapped in record sleeves; cassette tapes were considered a musical space shuttle, because it meant you could actually record your records onto them and then, inevitably, play the stuff in a car stereo.

My older sisters dressed in the fashion of those times, and had the characteristic hairstyles. I remember being totally enthusiastic for one boyfriend that would drive up in our driveway in a sporty Chevy Cavalier Z-24, with a souped-up muffler that could still be heard blocks away. I remember riding my bike with friends, and the high point would be to eat packs of jawbreakers until your mouth hurt from all the gum and crunching. Care Bears, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Brave Star, Ghostbusters, GI Joe, Golden Girls, Thunder Cats, Star Trek TNG, and a whole host of other memories trickle back. I admit my evident nostalgia.

I counted New Order, early-era Depeche Mode, Guns `n Roses, Pet Shop Boys, Dire Straits, The Police and The Cure, just off the top of my memory, as stuff that has been making the rounds here in Montenegro. Television, radio, and club scenes…even the Podgorica police station was playing these tunes!

It also makes for effective advertising: I recently counted my second online CD purchase – yes, I still buy physical CDs rather than opt for ‘downloads,’ since computers are fallible, and data loss is a sad reality – of music from the 80s, stuff and bands I knew about, but never pursued seriously until now. No better way to keep expanding my rather limited musical horizons than the present.

A lot of crazy things were happening in the 1980s: the Cold War was reaching its final decade, and the nuclear issue had become especially frightening, which often became fused with the cause of environmentalism. Communism in Europe slowly began to unravel, permanently changing the alignments that had defined the second-half of the last century. Free-market capitalism was stretching far and wide, often via the expansion of multinational corporations. The AIDS epidemic was in full-force by then, and young people were curbing the sexual excesses of the 1960s and 1970s. Gay rights activism made significant breakthroughs, only to be stigmatized by this epidemic as being an exclusively “gay disease.”

The then-called “third world” was experiencing calamities that began to be broadcast on international television. Other developments in such countries sometimes motivated American covert interventions, as in Central America. Economics and recession were on many working people’s minds. Conservatism appeared to be spreading, particularly in Britain, the United States, West Germany and Canada, which created a backlash in the artistic and cultural communities.

All of these factors, and many more, thematically and structurally influenced so much of the music of the 1980s. It was easy, after this decade passed, to laugh off the fashion and musical excesses of those days, but that there is a new revival happening now is amusing and fun.

But, this might also be the sign of troubling prospects that go beyond nostalgia: music, as with other cultural and artistic mediums, very often is an outlet of how segments of society reconcile the realities of everyday life and current events, particularly the negative and disquieting ones. That the 1980s are being revisited and, quite often, relived again may well be the telltale sign that some believe recent history is repeating itself, or that the more things change, the more they stay the same. If so, then why not learn from the generations before us that went through much the same thing -- and make a lot of fun out of it in the meantime?

Flashbacks to the past

One would think that, in a perfect world, Nazi-hunting, as a profession, would be an antiquated and unnecessary profession. Of course, given the plethora of war criminals from other conflicts that remain at large and, more often than not, given refuge by countries that fail to grasp the significance of prosecuting them, war criminal-hunting remains highly important.

Sometimes, though, hopes are dashed by realities, and this story tells a very horrific and nasty tale. Aribert Heim, an Austrian-born doctor who joined the Nazi Party in 1935, and who later conducted grotesque medical experiments at a number of concentration camps during the Second World War, was once considered to be still at large. Now, it is alleged, he died in 1992, while living in Cairo. Yet there remains an unclaimed bank account in Germany, also in Heim's name; his relatives cannot claim it until there is proof of its owner's death. Thus far, it has remained untouched, making it ever so possible that this old killer is still alive, somewhere.

Heim was detained for a time by the U.S. Army after the war, but made it out. I remember researching that Dr. Josef Mengele -- another Nazi doctor and experimenter nicknamed "Dr. Death" -- was held by the American authorities for two months, under his own name, after the war -- had similar luck in evading the authorities. Anyone interested in reading the full story about this particular case should check out Gerald Posner and John Ware's biography. Adolf Eichmann also spent time in an American-run internment camp, from where he escaped in 1946, though he was using an alias, I believe, since his name began to appear at the Nuremberg trials then underway very frequently.

It was thought, for much of the time, that Heim was living somewhere in South America -- the same destination for thousands of ex-Nazis/fascists following 1945, given that the regimes there, like those of Juan Peron and Alfredo Stroessner, were more than friendly to these individuals. Peron apparently set aside 10,000 blank Argentine passports for the use of former Nazis. The likes of Eichmann, Mengele, Rauff, Stangl, Pavelic and others all come to mind.

This will be a fascinating, albeit spooky development to watch. Consider this older, but still relevant piece about the world's remaining war criminals from the Second World War, and you will find that the number is still not unsubstantial. Let it be a lesson, however, given that these initiatives are a last push to get those still remaining at large, in the current climate: Nazi and/or fascist crimes should not hold exclusivity over the war criminals of today. I cannot help but lament that the vigour and outrage surrounding the capture of criminals from the Second World War is often markedly different from pursuing the likes of Ratko Mladic and company.

Where's my Stolichnaya?

Oh no! Russia, that bad old, Cold War-honed, newly-resurgent superpower, willing to bully its immediate and distant neighbours with its control of vital energy supplies and natural resources, is on the move again! Just look at what they did to Georgia this past August, and what they have just done to Ukraine! Watch out, because the Russians, growling and mean bears wearing human faces and swilling vodka straight from the bottle, will pounce on us and rip our heads off...

Yeah, yeah, yeah -- whatever. Christian Caryl is a journalist that I much admire, ever since I came across his reportage in the wake of the October 2002 Moscow theatre crisis, and the ensuing catastrophe that followed in its aftermath. He has written another fine piece, in the form of a book review, dispelling the tale that Russia and the "West" are on the verge of a "new Cold War."

I get embarrassed when I watch some American TV programs, which always fall into the trap of portraying not only Russians, but most Central/East Europeans as corrupt, degenerate and bumbling idiots that can easily be tricked or seduced by alcohol or wads of well-used cash...American dollars, no less.

It is very true that in the West, another term I am sometimes wary of using but nothing else comes to mind, there is a lingering Cold War mentality regarding the bestial nature of the "East," and the last American administration was particularly keen on nurturing it. Bush's would-be successor, John McCain, upheld all this, as with his comments about Vladimir Putin's eyes and the three letters of "K-G-B" appearing.

Heck, when I told people I was moving to Montenegro, many eyed me with fear, as if I was going to live with machine gun bullets ricocheting off my roof, or that I would become a gangster. Long story short, those popular stereotypes are alive and well, mainly coming from people that would probably be hard pressed to know specifics about Russia -- let alone point out Montenegro on a map.

Caryl does concede, however, that Russia's internal problems -- demographic, identity-related mostly -- is a real threat, and not in the least for the Russians themselves. He argues, as does the subject of his review, that Russia's post-Soviet, post-Yeltsin sense of grievance trickles into the way it conducts its politics: "It is precisely Russia's intense, revisionist nationalism, born out of the perceived humiliations of the Yeltsin period, that represents a threat not only to its own neighbors but also to Russia itself."

So many of the seemingly-old issues confronting Russia in the 1990s, like organized crime, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, crumbling Soviet-era military and nuclear facilities, and the vulnerability of Russia's reliance mainly on its natural resources that fluctuate according to world market values, are still at issue. But that we are poised for a new confrontation with Russia? That's stretching things way too far. The real threat comes from ourselves, but also, he seems to imply, from Russia's own self-neglect, especially regarding problems that remain unchanged. Unfortunately, only the Russians can fix these.

Caryl calls for a united NATO bloc, certainly, in being firm and consistent in its relations with Russia. He also calls for greater accountability and security, particularly with energy companies based in the West, which are all too often just front companies used to launder money that originated from sketchy and corrupt sources.

But he also points out that consistency and even-handedness on the part of international groupings, like NATO, the Group of Eight, and the Parliamentary Assembly of Europe, is essential. It might also be prudent to be a little more careful and strategic where the matter of NATO membership to places like Ukraine and Georgia are concerned.

Now that the European Union relies, give or take, on Russian energy supplies (30%, by last count, of the EU's stuff comes from Russia), and that there really is no clearly-defined East-West paradigm shaping the way countries on both sides of the Atlantic conduct their foreign policies, it becomes all the harder to fix our households.

As a starter, though, perhaps the respect Russia so clearly wants and demands might not be a far-off request to grant? Besides, Russia's political elite do not lack intelligence, and know that they stand, in the long run, to be on the dirty end of the stick if they allow themselves to become international pariahs, with investors and prestige turning a blind eye to them. After all, in this world of capitalism, the free market, and the power of international finance, it is pin-stripe-suited CEOs and Chairpersons that have more power than tanks, missiles and nuclear arsenals.

The Cold War really has departed forever.

Facts speak for themselves

I sincerely hope that there are flaws in this poll's methodology. If not, then they say much for the political forms of deliberate self-harm that appear to have become more endemic in Serbia, particularly where the recent past is concerned. "Two-thirds of Serbs would not turn in fugitive genocide suspect Ratko Mladic, whose arrest is necessary for Serbia's further progress towards the European Union, according to a poll released on Friday [23 January]..."

"Belgrade-based Strategic Marketing said only 14 percent of people answered 'yes' when asked whether they would provide information leading to the capture of the wartime Bosnian Serb commander, whose arrest comes with a multi-million reward. Sixty-five percent responded 'no.'"

The report later quotes an official working for this particular marketing company, who explains that, "In a choice between a hero and a villain, it is hard to expect from people a straight 'yes' when asked whether they would turn him in...The authorities still have not managed to explain to the people the gravity of the crimes he was charged with."

Contrast that to this recent development in my current home country of Montenegro: in May-June 1992, Montenegrin police arrested and deported a large number of Bosniaks living in the country, and had them deported back to Bosnia-Herzegovina. These deportees disappeared shortly thereafter, and only a small number of bodies have been found since then. Others, apparently, were killed on Montenegrin soil: an ignoble legacy that parallels the role of Montenegrin auxiliaries in the shelling of the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, also in 1992.

But now, contra Serbia above, the Montenegrin authorities have admitted and confronted this dark legacy, at least partly. "Following a government session on December 25, 2008, Miras Radovic, [Montenegrin] Minister of Justice, announced that court settlements had been agreed for 42 cases concerning people deported in May 1992 worth 4.13 million euros."

The aforementioned compensation agreements should rightly serve as a role model for Montenegro's neighbours, which have yet to even begin confronting the recent past, and the dark id of shared responsibility for heinous crimes that they all hold. But, it appears, some are more interested in myths and legend rather than in solid realities that tell a very different story.

Post-New Year's hangovers, post-Soviet style

Political hangovers are constants, and in the post-coloured revolution spheres of the former Soviet Union, one can argue that they are especially searing and dizzying. With yet another gas crisis currently underway, and with EU-Russia relations at an all-time low following the summer's events in Georgia, this reality has now trickled into the question of eventual NATO and EU membership for these states.

Not that the question of membership has ever been dead-certain, of course. The fact that these countries are located in such proximity to Russia, and by their special post-Soviet legacies that could take many, many decades to resolve and/or reconcile, serious observers have been loathe to say something like this could happen anytime soon.

Ukraine, or so this report identifies, is a special disappointment, not only because of its close proximity -- and sometimes epicentre position -- to the current gas row now underway, but because the two titans of the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko (one called the "gas princess" by some of her critics), spend more time fighting amongst themselves rather than battling the ubiquity of red tape and corruption that remains a constant in Ukraine.

I have also read elsewhere that the EU is on the verge of launching a lawsuit against Russia and Ukraine over the halting of gas deliveries; it is the second time in the span of days that reassurances have been met with contrary conduct. Here in Montenegro, my current home, the effects are negligible, but just north-east of me, in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and beyond, there is a cold snap underway, and people are actually questioning their ability to heat their homes and businesses in light of the shortages that could well ensue soon.

Not the ideal way to usher in the New Year, that's for sure; but, given the track records set in the events of recent years, perhaps it should have been expected. I hope that a future post of mine will not start to argue that all the optimism and hope of Georgia and Ukraine's coloured revolutions was in vain. Boze moj.