Belgrade (Special to Informed Comment) – Former wartime foes Serbia and Kosovo signed a deal on economic normalization that has very little to do with relations between Belgrade and Pristina, as its main beneficiaries are the United States and Israel rather than local populations in the Balkans. Under President Donald Trump auspices, Serbia’s President Aleksandar […]
- Africa (147)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (841)
- Australasia (2)
- Australia (6)
- Authoritarianism (182)
- Canada (1)
- Cats (1)
- Culture (421)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (248)
- Dissent (288)
- Economy (729)
- Education (75)
- Elderly (3)
- Energy (1,084)
- Environment (1,513)
- Europe (789)
- Featured (2,685)
- fiction (5)
- Food (8)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (464)
- History (241)
- Human Rights (994)
- Immigration (17)
- International (607)
- Islamophobia (307)
- Juan Cole (268)
- Latin America (68)
- Latinos (3)
- leisure (21)
- media (376)
- Middle East (7,272)
- Arab World (4,624)
- Iran (916)
- Israel (704)
- Israel/ Palestine (1,952)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (264)
- Turkey (446)
- military (105)
- Modernism (1)
- nationalism (102)
- NATO (6)
- Natural Disasters (11)
- nuclear weapons (59)
- Patriarchy (2)
- Peace (75)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (11)
- privacy (19)
- racism (354)
- Rape (5)
- religion (840)
- Rights (128)
- robots (1)
- Romance (1)
- science (117)
- Secular (West) (8)
- Secularism (25)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (1)
- Spirituality (21)
- Statelessness (14)
- Surveillance (259)
- Terrorism (1,036)
- Tolerance (4)
- Uncategorized (8,045)
- United Nations (80)
- Urbanization (3)
- US Foreign Policy (593)
- US politics (3,997)
- Anti-War Movement (6)
- Campaign Finance (27)
- Censors (21)
- Central Intelligence Agency (59)
- Civil Rights (83)
- Congress (38)
- Conspiracy Theories (6)
- Constitution (322)
- crime (5)
- Democratic Party (576)
- Democratic Socialists of America (14)
- Domestic Terrorism (16)
- Drone Warfare (26)
- Espionage (116)
- Ethnicities (287)
- Far Right (221)
- FBI (42)
- Foreign Policy (203)
- Gay Rights (14)
- Guns (65)
- Immigration (194)
- Israel Lobbies (83)
- Marijuana (1)
- Militarization (229)
- National Security State (384)
- Native Americans (26)
- Nuclear arsenal (6)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (367)
- Police (34)
- prison reform (6)
- Private Prisons (1)
- Puerto Rico (25)
- Religious Right (1)
- Reproductive Choice (7)
- Republican Party (2,494)
- Supreme Court (60)
- Voter suppression (19)
- Whistleblowers (4)
- Xenophobia (8)
- Veterans (29)
- Voting Rights (4)
- War (279)
- Western Religion (376)
- White Supremacists (93)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (291)
- workers (147)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (121)
Balkans
Ottomans saved Hungarian PM Orban’s Ancestors; now he says Islam never part of Europe
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban not only continued to defend his anti-immigrant bigotry but went on to say that Islam has never been part of Europe. Mr. Orban not only is increasing the misery of largely Muslim refugees, but now he has erased 1300 years of […]
3 Memes: Twitter debates as Russian support for Syria intervention Doubles
By Anna Shamanska | ( RFE/RL) | – – Support among Russians for military intervention in Syria has more than doubled, to 31 percent in early October from 14 percent in September, according to independent pollster Levada Center. The increase comes with coverage of air strikes filling Russian state airwaves, press, and the Internet, and […]
Desperate Afro-Asian Migrants flee war, famine through risky Balkans on The Road To EU
By Iva Martinovic | (RFE/ RL) | – – These days, the park flanking Belgrade’s bus terminal and the nearby railway station teems with migrants. They are from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Somalia, and they are on the last leg of a grueling journey they hope will take them to the European Union. Inside the […]
5,000 Hanging Skirts: How Women Remember War Rape in Kosova
By Frances Trix | (Informed Comment) | – – On 12 June, 5,000 skirts and dresses were hung on 45 clotheslines in the football stadium in Prishtina, capital of Kosova. “The laundry is washed clean, like the women who are clean and pure—they carry no stain,” asserted artist Alketa Xhafa-Mripa, the Kosovar originator of the […]
“Nationalism and terrorism are constructed things to divide us”: Macedonian elections and a Balkan “War on Terror”
By Frances Trix | (Informed Comment) | – Now it appears, thanks to EU mediation, there will be new national elections in Macedonia next April 2016. In one sense it is quite early—there were national elections in April 2014 in which Nikola Gruevski, president since 2006, was once again elected. But in another sense, these […]