5/24 Review - Dramatics and Righting Historical Wrongs

Friday means reflecting on our past week.  Tune in to get a gist of the big news, my opinions on the news, videos, art, and music.  My discoveries are yours to enjoy!

5/17 Reflections and Sharing Time

 This is the round up of the past 7 days. Short news blurbs/my opinions on them, and some cool stuff I tweeted about for those who don't follow me/scroll through the little box to the right.

Chechnya: A Little Background Series

Due to the events in Boston, Chechnya is the hot topic.  There is a lot of solid, fair information out there, but there's also really prejudiced, xenophobic information as well.  This post should hopefully condense the history of the neighboring north Caucus neighbors as well as Chechnya and give context since the name and history of this region will be tossed about for the next couple of weeks, at least.  Let me clearly state this now: it is unclear whether the conflict in Chechnya has any relevance to the Boston bombing and I am not endorsing a direct link between the two.  This is merely to give more information about a misunderstood, seldom-taught corner of the world and it's best to have more straight information out when it's being talked about.  Let us proceed.

Moving Forward: 4/19 Review

This past week hasn't been the flashiest in terms of news, but there has been some movement on the political scene.

Central Europe

Hungary got quite a bit of negative attention this week, and for more than solely-political reasons.  To add to the constitutional changes that Fidesz has put into action, they've decided to annoy Brussels with an ad hoc tax to pay EU fines.  Delightful.  It had one thing going in its favor: the ruling on the violent interrogation was upheld.

Romania made two big decisions this week: 1) they are abandoning their original EU target year and postponing until 2020 and 2) they are proposing a property restitution bill to settle disputes from collectivization during the Soviet era.  A Romanian daily paper is concerned that this will fuel the Romanian real estate bubble.

Germany has a new party emerging: Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has an outline of its political stances here (in German - sorry!).  Surprise, surprise, they are not pro-EU/United States of Europe and challenging the CDU/CSU coalition that's been in power since Merkel stepped up the podium.

Baring It All: 4/12 Recap

Welcome to the recap of the week.  There's so much to read and know that I've taken the liberty of condensing it for you.  If you want to see these things as they happen, follow me on Twitter!  You just have to click that button over to the right.  It's not far...  You can also see who I follow; I discovered that Twitter is the best place to find anything on CEE and there are fantastic, smart people to interact with.

Let's get to it.

Risen Again - 4/5 Recap & Rants

It was Easter this past Sunday and it was a good time to indulge in the east European traditions, some of which seemed a little more cruel than unusual.  Particularly when it involves whipping women.  There were lovely eggs to make up for it, though.  Though Europe had it tough because snow, not flowers, came to greet them on the symbolic holiday of rebirth.  It's like winter reborn.

The cat's out of the bag. Orbán is the most sought after television personality in Hungary.  No, I'm kidding, he's stealing all the airtime available.  I want graphs on the Politburo air times for comparison, just for kicks.

April Fool's!  I thought this was a pretty USA-centric holiday, but it turns out that Odessa is the OG of pranks.  The best part was that Humorina started during the Soviet rule. That's one way to let off steam about the endless droning of ideology!

What in the World?: Reflections on 3/29

Another delightful recap of what impressed and intrigued me over the past week.

News

My CEE corner of the internet BLEW UP when Berezovsky died.  I read multiple articles on him because  I had no idea who he was.  He's an important figure since he created the monster that is Putin.  Too many articles to link here.

I am following what I need to about Cyprus, but all I have to say is: whoa.

Friday Round Up - 3/8

I have been all atwitter on twitter this week!  Lots of stuff going on in Europe these days, particularly the southeasterly neighbors in the Balkans.  Europeans be trippin', as they say.  There were so many happenings that this post is all news and very little play.  Scroll through my twitter for some of the fun diversions I found!

Roundup of the Week

Today's post is rounding up both the big news from Europe and some discoveries I've made. 

 

News

Bulgaria: This is the most recent and biggest news in Europe.  If you haven't followed up on it, simply scroll through my twitter feed to the right of this post to find numerous sources on it.  Borisov has made a somewhat unusually gallant gesture by stepping down, but it's also just that: a gesture.  His choice of words were, at the very least, an excellent homage to the fundamental ideals of democracy: "The people gave us power and today we are returning it."  Politics is part performance and that's part of its power, but the other part comes from action and there hasn't been much movement on that front.  It has been remarked that Borisov is the tip of the corruption iceberg, hence why people are still protesting.  Presseurop did publish an article showing the cyclical patterns in Bulgarian politics and pointed out that this isn't exactly new fare for the impoverished nation.  It shouldn't be surprising that Bulgaria has struggled so much to shake the weights of the past since it was the most loyal USSR satellite and had the most centralized and sovietized economy in the bloc.  Like everyone else, I'm waiting to see the results of these protests and if they will materialize into either a real political movement, simply a reactionary movement with no clear agenda, or a knee-jerk reaction to austerity that will mirror Greece. 

Belarusian Insight

The Independent published a rare interview with Lukashenko.  It's an intriguing read about a man that controls the last Soviet dictatorship.  A great Tuesday read.

FEMEN Moves to France

FEMEN has now set up camp in Paris, France after their well-publicized stunt in support of Pussy Riot.  The feminist featured in the piece linked above said that they were invited by French feminists, but Inna was also in physical danger after cutting down the Orthodox cross with a chainsaw.  I've featured and discussed FEMEN's protest methods in a post long, long ago, but I think that now Pussy Riot has received international support, American women are increasingly aware of their disenfranchisement, and attention is also being directed at westernizing countries in the Middle East where women are starting to fight back, feminism has come back in a way that hasn't been popular for at least 2 decades.

EuroCup

I haven't posted anything on the EuroCup because I'm an ignorant American who doesn't ever watch football (I know enough to call it football!).  I should get more into it since football plays a vital role in politics (re: Central and South America).  History plays a huge role as well, as the whole world realized today.  Just in case they forgot that some wounds go pretty deep.

Krtek Coming to an App Near You!

I am coming to my senses a little bit just about 25 days before the wedding.  Then the madness will be over and I will dedicate more time to my CEE pursuits and answering emails from my few (but very adoring!) fans.  I loved the emails.  Truly.

You may remember my post about the passing of Zdeněk Miler, the creator Krtek, a wonderful children's cartoon from the Czech Republic.  Today in my Emerging Europe RSS feed from the WSJ blog, I saw this article about Miler's granddaughter and her plans to take Krtek global.  I'm pretty excited for people beyond the Eurasian continent to come in contact with good children's animation.  Maybe I'll get my future tikes some little Krtek plushies.  I am honestly going to be the most off-beat mom on the block; my children will know CEE from their early years.  

A Beloved Czech Passes Away

Though Kim Jong Il's death is also significant, it was auspiciously timed with a famous Communist dissident's death, which brings much more sorrow.  Václav Havel was a famous and principled dissident in Czechoslovakia who eventually came to be president.  His reluctance to be president reminds me of George Washington, but Havel had much more healing to begin.  His presidency was a testament to his good nature--he never lost himself in politics, but always searched for the light of truth.  The Economist did a lovely eulogy for this great man and his death is a sad fact of history.  Havel will be remembered kindly.  The eulogy touches on what his version of The Beggar's Opera illustrated: living a lie is living a lie.  He lived the truth and we loved him for it.

Serbia + Kosovo = civil?

You've probably already heard the news.  Serbia and Kosovo struck a deal on the border after a few weeks of Les Misérables-esque car barricades AND after Germany frowned upon Serbia's EU ascendancy publicly.  Am I the only one who's excited?  Who's saying, "WHOA" and refuses to listen to any conversation in the near vicinity because I'm so psyched for some Balkan cooperation?  Maybe.  This does not damper my enthusiasm.

Krtek otec zemřel

Zdeněk Miler died this week.  He was the animator of the famous "Krtek" animation that the whole world fell in love with.  I fell in love with it in one viewing.  So accessible, cute, and universally loved.  I am very sad he is gone and that his classic, classy style is no longer to be created.  Rest in peace, Zdeněk.

Euro crisis: what of it?

My hiatus on this blog coincided pretty closely with the time when the euro started falling apart.  That was not planned.  But now that work has slowed down, it's given me some time to do otherwise productive activities--this blog.  I've missed it so.  I wanted to address the euro crisis, but only on a broad basis.  I do not understand a penny's worth about macro/microeconomics and though I get the general idea, I do not think myself so clever that I actually believe I know what I'm talking about.  So let's join together as I talk out of my butt (no, I joke, I won't be talking so much about economics).

Balkan News

via

My RSS feed reader is slowly becoming larger than the newspapers I read.  I recently made it worse by adding Balkan Insights, which will supplement the six I was reading before.  I can't even keep up with some of them, so I simply browse headlines to keep myself sane.  This website is great and a fantastic addition to my feeds because I need some more Balkan news.  I give a full review after the jump.

Other Problems to Worry About

I've been following the eurozone crisis from a distance because I cannot summon enough economic knowledge to fully understand this financial crisis.  The CCGA panel was helpful, but I still feel like I don't understand the complicated world of imaginary money.  Does anybody really understand it?  I always get the sense it's morphed into a complicated beast no one knows how to tame.  So now I need something else to talk about, which is difficult since most of the news outlets are freaking out about that.

Big News for Serbia

via

I read Eastern Approaches this morning to come across this article.  When I read the rest of my European RSS feeds, about half of the press releases were about the arrest of Ratko Mladić, the haunting general of Bosnian Serb forces.  He ordered the killing of 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica and was the commanding officer in the Siege of Sarajevo––in other words, he is the big fish.  As the article points out, this opens up the discussion for Serbia's EU ascension, but it also allows for the nation to lustrate its past.  The lessons of The Haunted Land seem just as poignant now as they were in the early 90s.  The big question now is the same one that Rosenberg writes about, "How do we purge the past to move forward?"

With the possibility of EU ascension on the line, Serbia will be more closely watched as they lustrate one of their biggest and meanest ghosts of a bloody, post-Communist war.  I hope that Serbia is able to do so and move forward to a much brighter future.