Balkanalysis.com

The fractious and ever burgeoning Macedonian opposition has announced its collective desire for the upcoming parliamentary elections to be held not in summer, as significant members of the ruling coalition would like, but in either spring or fall, reported A1 Television on Friday. Speaking for over 20 opposition parties, VMRO-DPMNE chief Nikola Gruevski presented the [...]

By Ioannis Michaletos Greece and Turkey are the two wealthiest countries in southeastern Europe. Their family fortunes are concentrated in select areas that go back for generations. In these archetypal Mediterranean nations, familial dynasties rather than individual businessmen thus ensure the transfer of power, prestige and wealth. In 2005, the wealthiest Greeks and Turks continued [...]

By Paula Ganga* There has been a great debate regarding Romania’s level of preparedness for joining the European Union in 2007. Controversy has also surrounded the issue of whether the EU can integrate such a large country, one beset by so many structural and institutional problems. But the question of whether the two partners are [...]

Military Operations Macedonia (Part 2), From the Spring of 1917 to the End of the War The Imperial War Museum and The Battery Press (1935, reprinted 1997), 365 pp. 21 appendices, 10 sketches and maps (including 1 fold-out) and 6 pictures Reviewed by Christopher Deliso “”if ever it should come about that a British Government [...]

Two Macedonian Muslims lost their lives in what has become an annual bout of anarchy in Mecca, Skopje’s Makfax reported today. In all, over 350 pilgrims lost their lives during the penultimate moments of a devil-stoning ritual. Makfax confirmed that the two Macedonians “died in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during devil-stoning rite [...]

Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK by Alexei Monroe, with foreword by Slavoj Zizek MIT Press (2005), 400 pp. Reviewed by Mark White* In 1987, Neue Slowenische Kunst, or NSK – an obscure art collective made up of several art and performance groups from Slovenia, a Yugoslav republic still four years from independence – was commissioned [...]

In this exclusive interview with a Canadian police detective of long and varied experience, Stu Kellock, readers get the inside story of how UN investigators in Kosovo sought to crack down on criminals and terrorists – but were systematically stopped, because of the perceived need to safeguard the interests of the Western political elite and [...]

By Christopher Deliso The Bush administration – and the nation – has a lot at stake in the upcoming trial of former Cheney aide I. Lewis Libby over the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity to the media. And if prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald decides to indict others (especially top Bush aide Karl Rove, as [...]

By Ioannis Michaletos In today’s Greece, manufacturing is one of the economic sectors faced with great difficulties in coping with the new, globalized business arena. The emergence of Asian states, most notably China, along with ever-increasing domestic production costs, have cost Greek industrial manufacturers dearly, and translated into numerous job losses. On the other hand, [...]

By Mehmet Kalyoncu Arguably “Kurdistan’ already enjoying de facto independence; and the powerful Kurdish statelet in Iraq provides, under Massoud Barzani’s rule, an example for other long-neglected minorities in the region of Northern Mesopotamia. Could the example of the increasingly independent Kurds in Iraq presage further rounds of ethnic discord and state fragmentation in the [...]