Yugonostalgia’ gains force as Croatia prepares to join EU this summer

Yugonostalgia

In Tito’s birthplace, ‘Yugonostalgia’ gains force as Croatia prepares to join EU this summer

Associated Press, May 25, 2013

Croatia may be on the doorstep of the European Union, but in this tiny village another union of nations was getting all the glory.

In Kumrovec, the birthplace of Yugoslavia’s late communist leader Josip Broz Tito, thousands gathered Saturday to mark his birthday and pay their respects to him and the ex-federation that fell apart in a cascade of ethnic wars more than 20 years ago.

As Croatia prepares to formally enter the EU on July 1, becoming only the second former Yugoslav republic to become a member of the bloc after Slovenia, many in this town and across the region still regard Yugoslavia as having been a haven of peace and prosperity.

“Tito, the one and only,” Slobodan Janusevic, a 52-year-old retiree, said. “I think all the worse of both the EU and today’s Croatia.”

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Turkish Addictive Soaps Operas: The Unstoppable Boom

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Turks Bewitch The Balkans With Their Addictive Soaps

Turkish soaps have replaced Latin American shows as must-sees for many TV viewers in the Balkans – tapping into nostalgia for a system of family values that people in the region have lost, and lament.

Amina Hamzic, Maja Nedelkovska, Donjeta Demolli and Nemanja Cabric in Belgrade. BIRN Sarajevo, Skopje, Pristina, Belgrade

Balkan Insight,  May 1, 2013

Turn on the TV in any part of the Balkans today and you may well tune into a Turkish soap opera.

Booming in popularity across the region, according to media research agencies, dozens of these imports are being screened daily on televisions from Albania to the Black Sea.

Sociologists explain the phenomenon, in part, as a sentimental reaction on the part of viewers in the Balkans to an old patriarchal family model that appears dead in the Balkans but which is still alive in Turkey – at least in TV shows.

Viewers that Balkan Insight talked to say they love the shows for their realistic characters, intriguing plot lines that include whole families and the lack of violence and obscenities.

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La UE fracasa en su intento de eliminar la corrupción en Kosovo

Ladrones_Pristina-Foto-Valdrin-Xhemaj-EPA “El Estado no se construye con ladrones”, reza la pancarta que exhibe un ciudadanos albanés de Kosovo durante una manifestación celebrada en Pristina el pasado 22 de marzo, contra la corrupción y la subida de la luz. Fotografía de Valdrin Xhemaj, EPA

La UE fracasa en su intento de eliminar la corrupción en Kosovo

El primer ministro Thaci mantiene una pésima reputación por tolerar la corrupción

La UE sabe que el problema es endémico

Las organizaciones criminales no encuentran demasiados obstáculos para operar en varios países de los Balcanes

Íñigo Sáenz de Ugarte, eldiario.es, 23 de abril, 2013

Dino Asanaj apareció muerto en su despacho en junio de 2012. El cuerpo del jefe de la Agencia de Privatización de Kosovo tenía 11 heridas de arma blanca. Al lado estaba un cuchillo, manchado con su sangre. Sorprendentemente, unos días después la investigación dictaminó que en realidad se trataba de un suicidio. No se halló rastros del ADN de otra persona en la sangre encontrada. Había una nota de suicidio de su puño y letra. Asanaj estaba siendo investigado por la acusación de haber solicitado un soborno –de cuatro millones de euros, nada menos– por la privatización de un hotel. No parecía que esta denuncia pudiera hacer peligrar la posición del político, ni mucho menos llevarle a prisión.

Fue una muerte sospechosa, como lo ha sido todo el sistema de privatizaciones en Kosovo, lleno de acusaciones de corrupción y de trato de favor a los amigos del Gobierno de Hashim Thaci. El suicidio de Asanaj, un hombre de confianza de Thaci, no es una gran tarjeta de presentación de la limpieza de estos procesos.

Como en muchos procesos de reconstrucción nacional ayudados por la ONU y Occidente, la llegada de los millones de la ayuda exterior y la falta de estructuras políticas y jurídicas han supuesto una mezcla peligrosa en Kosovo. Además, desde los años 90 las guerras de los Balcanes y las nuevas fronteras han extendido el poder de las organizaciones criminales. Es una zona clave en la llegada vía Turquía del opio asiático y una buena cantera de mano de obra delictiva.

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Albanian sworn virgins

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Jill Peters Photography: Sworn Virgins of Albania

Albanian sworn virgins – Wikipedia

Albanian sworn virgins (Albanianburrnesha or virgjinesha) are women who take a vow of chastity and wear male clothing in order to live as men in the patriarchal northern Albanian society. To a lesser extent, the practice exists, or has existed, in other parts of the western Balkans, including KosovoMacedoniaSerbiaMontenegro,[1][2] Dalmatia and Bosnia.

Other terms for the sworn virgin include vajzë e betuar (most common today, and used in situations in which the parents make the decision when the girl is a baby or child), mashkull (present-day, used around Shkodra), virgjineshëvirgjereshëverginesavirgjin,vergjineshaAlbanian virginavowed virginmuskobanimuskobanjostajnica (Serbian: means man-woman, manlike, she who stays), tombelijabasaharambasa (Montenegrin), tobelija (Bosnian: bound by a vow), zavjetovana djevojka (Croatian), sadik (Stahl, Turk Moslem: honest, just).[3]

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Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions

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London: A Golden Dawn supporter, his t-shirt design incorporating the party’s logo

Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions

Buoyed by its meteoric domestic success, the far right party is planning to expand ‘wherever there are Greeks’

 in Athens, The Guardian, Monday 1 April 2013

Emboldened by its meteoric rise in Greece, the far-right Golden Dawn party is spreading its tentacles abroad, amid fears it is acting on its pledge to “create cells in every corner of the world”. The extremist group, which forged links with British neo-Nazis when it was founded in the 1980s, has begun opening offices in Germany, Australia, Canada and the US.

The international push follows successive polls that show Golden Dawn entrenching its position as Greece’s third, and fastest growing, political force. First catapulted into parliament with 18 MPs last year, the ultra-nationalists captured 11.5% support in a recent survey conducted by polling company Public Issue.

The group – whose logo resembles the swastika and whose members are prone to give Nazi salutes – has gone from strength to strength, promoting itself as the only force willing to take on the “rotten establishment”. Amid rumours of backing from wealthy shipowners, it has succeeded in opening party offices across Greece.

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