From Cork to Toronto

The way things are going, Stephane Dion will be supporting a constitutional amendment to extend the current Parliament indefinitely. Swamped under the current Cadman fiasco was any reaction to a February 19 blog post by Paul Wells noting Harper's delay in recognising Kosovo as independent (or declining to do so) and theorising that this was while a delay can be seen as dissuading unilateral secession, openly explaining the delay would endanger Adequiste votes for Tory federal candidates. Well, the only thing worse than a party not declaring a side is to pick both . Jim Karygiannis (from the so-con wing of the Liberal Party ) sided with his Serbian constituents and declared opposition to recognising Kosovo. The problem is that his Leader wants to recognise Kosovo - and Karygiannis can hardly say he missed Dion's take since Wells knew about it 12 days ago and the Montreal Gazette the day before that. That said someone should explain to M. Dion what "unanimous" mea...

The Times notes that someone forgot to tell the Polish Prime Minister, as in "the Germans" episode of Fawlty Towers, " don't mention the war " Speaking from Warsaw, he claimed Poland deserved a better deal on voting rights because of Germany’s “incomprehensible crimes” against his country between 1939 and 1945. “It was the Germans who inflicted unimaginable injury, terrible harm, on Poles – incomprehensible crimes – and Poles like Germans, while Germans do not like Poles,” he said. Another reason if the EU ever need more why voting rights should be by mathematical formula rather than horsetraded. Meanwhile the Sun delights over this incident, calling the Poles "plucky". PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski fumed: “We are demanding one thing, that we get back what was taken from us. “If Poland had not to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66million. “It was the Germans who inflicted unimaginable inju...

I notice Slovenia will join the Euro zone on 1 January. Last time I went to Slovenia I needed several currencies to get from Cork to Portoroz via Stansted, Treviso and Trieste. Now I would just need two with the UK holding out. Why oh why do they pick such stupid exchange rates though - 239.640 tolars to the Euro. Would rounding it to 240 really make that much difference? When Ireland joined it was 0.787564 punts/Euro - 1.55% short of a nice round 0.8 but the Slovenia gap is an order of magnitude less at 0.15%. The increase in hassle and resentment caused by a ratio only a Brussels econocrat could love is something you'd think they'd have learned to avoid from the last conversions.

I see Silvio Berlusconi fainted during a speech yesterday - maybe it's the stress from his impending trial . The Economist waged a campaign against Berlusconi even before he became prime minister and started rewriting laws to shield himself leading to an open letter in 2003 requesting him to respond to detailed allegations. Perhaps he is just taking a cue from the Sopranos?

I mentioned this vote some time ago in connection with Quebec secession but I caught a lengthy Financial Times article on the May 21 referendum itself when it popped up on Google News. A couple of interesting tidbits: The 55% requirement with a 50% turnout was Javier Solana's idea, the same guy who thought leaving Serbia and Montenegro together was a good idea in the first place to the extent that the combined entities was nicknamed "Solania". Hmmm... The Prime Minister of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, points out that while Serbia remains joined to any other part of former Yugoslavia, the dream of "Greater Serbia" remains alive in the minds of the extreme Serbs - the fact that Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić remain at large shows there's still quite a few of them. Montenegro is already using the euro as its currency unlike EU member Slovenia, although this is not altogether unsurprising since the D-mark was the unofficial currency of Yugoslavia in the ...

Vues d'ici has an interesting post on the EU conditions for Montenegro's secession referendum from Serbia, and whether the 55% in favour the EU are demanding would have consequences for a future Quebec secession referendum. Not sure I agree with the conclusions, but thought-provoking all the same.

In 2001 I was sitting in a bar near Portoroz, Slovenia watching cable news when the first attempt to arrest Milosevic was going on. That eventually went nowhere but shortly afterward the deed was done. In the bar at the time were several Yugoslav (Serb) students, some of whom were active against Milosevic in local movements, all of whom wondering what the future would bring. The attitude of the diehard Milosevic sympathisers is understandable if misguided - if he had gone to Russia I doubt he would ever return. It sickens me to be honest when some are deemed too old/sick to stand trial when they reached that old age walking over the bones of those they murdered. As the BBC obit points out , until the Dayton accords Milosevic was still untouchable, swanning around the world signing peace accords while sizing up his next target. Is it too much to hope that rather than obsessing over Milosevic's supposed martyrdom, Serbia can move forward towards an open society, as Croatia did wi...