B92 Blog

About a month ago I started blogging for Foreign Policy magazine.

Just recently the blog opened up for comments. And what regional coverage has elicited the most heated comment debate so far? The Balkans… One mention of FYROM’s name issue and off they went. Day one of the debate and “Damn Turks!” has already been dropped. (It’s always their fault isn’t it.)

Now, I know many of you on here enjoy contributing your two cents, so if you want to get in on this, check it out:

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node

True, I do carry a North Carolina driver’s license, and I will still vote in the Tar Heel state come next November, but in the wee hours of one Sunday morning a few weeks back, I was initiated into the reality of life in Washington, DC – I was mugged.  

I had been out at a party not too far from my neighborhood, and at the end of the night my roommate and I decided to walk the mile or so back to our house. Just before turning down our small side street, I heard someone running behind us. Despite the late hour, my suburban naiveté kicked in, and I said to my roommate, “Scoot over, a jogger’s coming.” But instead of passing us, the “jogger” grabbed me fro

We have almost a full year to go before the 2008 elections in the US, but already our potential presidential candidates are in full campaign mode.

I’m not much of a political junky, but this campaign spot, scheduled to hit the Iowan airwaves today, was just too amazing to not pass on.

It comes from oddball Republican Mike Huckabee...

...and it was all made possible by the "prayers and sacrificial givings" of his dedicated supporters (see his official blo

In an unlikely blend of Red Scare themes and civil rights movement tactics, students on college campuses across America were encouraged to hold sit-ins, canvas their schools with fliers like these, an

Reporters without borders released its annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index, with only Ukraine and Belarus ranking lower than Serbia among European states.  I was surprised to see just how far down the US ranked. Last year it actually came in below Serbia.

This year's report also concludes that bloggers are now threatened as much as journalists in traditional media -- a good sign for the power, though not comforting for the blogger.

An explanation of how the list was compiled can be found here. 

Two months ago I packed my bags and left Belgrade to take a job in Washington, DC Đ not in anyway an answer to the BIA vs. CIA question, I should point out.

At the moment I am working for The Atlantic, a slightly left of center, general interest publication with a long and respected history.

Recently, in an introductory conversation with a blogger for the magazine’s newly expanded website, I mentioned my year in Serbia and my interest in South Eastern Europe. His response: “Oh, the Balkans Đ that’s so esoteric. Aren’t you about ten years too late on that?”

(As a side note, Atlantic writer Robert Kaplan was not “ten years too late.” He jumpstarted his journalism career in the early 1990s with his travelogue of the region, Balkan Ghosts Đ a popular yet quintessentially ignorant, Western account of the region on the eve of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. To give you a sense of Kaplan's take on the place, he begins by

Prizren

Quite honestly, I was nervous about the trip. Since my arrival last fall I had wanted to see the province I had heard so much about, and an Albanian friend in Priština had extended an open invitation, but the occasional reports over the last six months or so of bombed UN or OSCE vehicles troubled me a bit, as did the idea of my unnecessary American presence further complicating an already precarious situation. But when three American students called me to say they were heading down to Kosovo two weeks ago, I decided to join them.

The four of us arrived at the Kosovo border at