A Bit More Detail

• This report from the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso noting the sheer scale of emigration in parts of rural Albania, proceeding to the point of depopulating entire territories, tells a remarkable story.


• This opinion suggesting that, due to the breakdown of the economy of Venezuela, we will soon see a refugee crisis rivaling Syria's seems frighteningly plausible.


• Politico Europe notes that, in the case of Latvia, where emigration has helped bring the country's population down below two million, there are serious concerns.


• OZY tells the unexpected story of hundreds of young Namibian children who, during apartheid, were raised in safety in Communist East Germany.


• Many Chinese are fleeing the pollution of Beijing and other major cities for new lives in the cleaner environments in the southern province of Yunnan. The Guardian reports.

• blogTO looks at deserted Mirvish Village.


• Crooked Timber reenages with the Rachel Carson and DDT myth.


• The Crux looks at the Mandela Effect, exploring false memories.


• Dangerous Minds makes the case for the musical genius of Bobbie Gentry.


• From the Heart of Europe's Nicholas Whyte recounts his visit to Albania's bunker museum.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes Brazil's retirement of its only aircraft carrier.


• The LRB Blog looks at the extent and speed of events in the Trump Administration.


• Marginal Revolution engages with a book examining France's carving out a "cultural exception" in international trade agreements.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw reports on the passing of rulership of the Australian micronation of Hutt River.


• Peter Rukavina shares good advice for visiting museums: visit only what you can take in.


• Window on Eurasia looks at Russian Orthodox Church opposition to a certain kind of Russian civic nationality, and argues Russia is losing even its regional superpower status.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell reports on how local councils in the United Kingdom are speculating on commercial property.

Romania’s finance chief sees an opening for her nation to become eastern Europe’s go-to investment destination as nerves jangle over government policies in Poland, until recently the region’s top performer.

The second-poorest European Union member has been underestimated by investors and eclipsed by its neighbors for too long, said Finance Minister Anca Dragu, citing a calmer political backdrop and an economic expansion that’s set to surge more than 4 percent this year. Standard & Poor’s cut Poland’s credit rating on Jan. 15 on concern the new government is undermining the independence of institutions such as courts and media.

“There are certain developments in the region that have investors worried,” Dragu said Friday in an interview in Bucharest. “Compared with that, Romania’s economic growth is balanced and sustainable, we have an educated population and relative political stability that we need to appreciate more because we don’t have extremist parties that cause problems in other countries.”

Romania is no stranger to political drama itself: Dragu is part of a technocrat cabinet led by former European Commissioner Dacian Ciolos, who took over in November after anti-corruption protests in the European Union and NATO member prompted his predecessor to quit. It also faces competition to lure cash fleeing Poland from other local peers, such as the Czech Republic, a regional haven whose 10-year borrowing costs are lower than every country in the world except for Japan, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The top court of the United Nations ruled Tuesday that Serbia and Croatia did not commit genocide against each other's people during the bloody 1990s wars sparked by the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

[. . .]

The International Court of Justice said Serb forces committed widespread crimes in Croatia early in the war, but they did not amount to genocide. The 17-judge panel then ruled that a 1995 Croat offensive to win back territory from rebel
Serbs also featured serious crimes, but did not reach the level of genocide.

[. . .]

Tuesday's decision was not unexpected, as the UN's Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, a separate court also based in The Hague, has never charged any Serbs or Croats with genocide in one another's territory.

Croatia brought the case to the world court in 1999, asking judges to order Belgrade to pay compensation. Serbia later filed a counterclaim, alleging genocide by Croat forces during the 1995 "Operation Storm" military campaign.

Rejecting both cases, court President Peter Tomka stressed that many crimes happened during fighting between Serbia and Croatia and urged Belgrade and Zagreb to work together toward a lasting reconciliation.

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepares to celebrate the end of Canada’s free-trade negotiations with Europe on Friday, there is persistent concern that two unhappy eastern European countries could still derail the deal.

Canada requires a visa for travellers from Romania and Bulgaria and some European diplomats worry that one or both of the countries could block ratification of the agreement if the requirement is not lifted, The Canadian Press has learned.

Harper is to host European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy for a Canada-EU summit Friday in Ottawa.

The event is being touted as a victory lap in what has been a protracted five years of negotiation of the wide-ranging trade and investment pact with Europe, known as CETA.

But one western diplomat, close to the talks, says the Romanian and Bulgarian visa issue remains an irritant.

“There is still a problem with the Romanians and Bulgarians. Canada requires a visa for them, which upsets them a lot,” said the diplomat, who agreed to discuss the matter on the condition they not be identified.

Those who wonder why so many Bulgarians and other Eastern Europeans support Vladimir Putin’s aggressive approach in Ukraine should take note. The hardships of transition have meant relative deprivation: you might be better off than you were 25 years ago, but your neighbor is much wealthier. So who is to blame? “The democrats,” the Americans (our new masters) and their culture. Free speech is not as attractive as employment and security. The EU is about bans, the United States is about wars. Fancy cars are expensive. Madonna is a hollow PR product; much deeper is Lyube, one of Putin’s favorite bands. And yes, those hamburgers and sodas make you fat or stupid, or both.

A completely different generation is on the rise. Those born in the 1980s and 1990s remember not communism but transition. For them it is easy to believe in the former’s benefits, because they know the latter’s problems. Unlike us, who had seen all the Russian films and only the good American ones, they have seen all of the Hollywood productions, but only the masterpieces from Moscow. As youngsters, they are natural revolutionaries, rising against the world’s sole superpower. First, they were anti-globalists, then nationalists. Now they cheer for Putin.

He also has a soft power, of a sort. A strongman, hunting tigers, defeating enemies, conquering lands, challenging Yankees, professing patriotism, faith, and mysticism: what else can you wish for a young man’s dreams? In a way, Putin resembles a Game of Thrones character. Even technology, supposedly Russia’s weak point, is a lure. I have heard younger people enthusiastically praise Russian social networks, Russian GPS navigators, and Russian smartphones.

[. . .]

Bulgarian pro-Westerners note, though, that those same young people head West when they leave the country in droves. But not every émigré is successful, and the disgruntled ones who return nurse a grudge against the West. Additionally, their parents back in Bulgaria hate the West, because it steals their children.

Skopje has long needed sprucing up. But opponents of Nikola Gruevski, who have long accused the prime minister of populist nationalism, will hardly be dissauded by the nature of the construction boom (which the government has christened Skopje 2014). With an election in the offing, Mr Gruevski will no doubt enjoy taking credit for the new structures mushrooming throughout the city centre.

In Skopje’s central square a massive plinth is being built. It will soon be topped with a huge statue of Alexander the Great. Many Macedonians could not give a fig for Alexander. But they will be delighted to see the Greeks, who have been blocking Macedonia's EU and NATO integration over an objection to the country's name, turn apoplectic with rage when it is unveiled. The Greeks accuse the Macedonians of appropriating Alexander and trying to steal their Hellenic culture.

But that is just one element. Museums, domes, a new foreign ministry, a bridge bedecked with statues of lions and [. . . ] a triumphal arch are all springing up, transforming the centre of town. Some of the buildings suit the landscape, but the new constitutional court, with its massive Corinthian columns, seems a trifle overpowering.

Skopje 2014, which we first wrote about last year, has accentuated bitter disputes between the majority Orthodox Macedonians and Muslim Albanians, who make up a quarter of Macedonia's population. Whenever someone suggests building or rebuilding a church in Skopje, the Albanians demand the same for a mosque. Tensions invariably mount.

The most vivid example brought small groups of Macedonians and Albanians to fisticuffs. Recently, a church-like steel skeleton appeared on the site of an old church inside Skopje's fortress (pictured). The authorities claimed they were merely building a museum in the shape of a church. But Albanians reply that under the original church is an older Illyrian structure; as, they say, they are descended from Illyrians, the site should be theirs. Construction has now stopped, but the issue reveals the delicate balance between Macedonia's two communities, in which religion, identity, land and power are all deeply entwined.

The erection of statues of historical figures and grandiose public buildings looks like an expression of ethnic Macedonian identity. But they are not the only ones; their structures are merely the most visible to outsiders visiting Skopje's centre. Visit Albanian districts in and around the capital and you come across hundreds of new mosques.

Macedonia’s Albanians have a reputation of being much more religious than their brethren from Albania or Kosovo. Their mosque-building has even begun to alarm Albanians from Albania, where they have been labelled as "Talibans" in television chat shows.

Yet the Democratic Union for Integration, a Macedonian Albanian party, which is in coalition with Mr Gruevski, has strictly secular roots. So one wonders whether there is a sub-plot to the mosque-building frenzy. In most cases, a new mosque declares not only the glory of Islam, but that the land on which is stands is Albanian. The paradox is that you can find Albanian-controlled town halls flying American flags a stone’s throw from new mosques sporting Saudi Arabian ones from their minarets.

This is one reason why the church-museum affair is so touchy. Many Macedonians say they keep quiet about the often illegally-built mosques for the sake of social harmony. That is why it irks them that an attempt to build something that merely resembles a church becomes a huge incident. Albanians, by contrast, see Skopje 2014 and related projects like the church-museum as a project designed to shove “Macedonian-ness” down their throats.

[T]he project has had a rough start. Thousands of Montenegrins took to the streets in protest when word got out that the old Arsenal navy yard would be recast as a playground for the idle rich. Some locals think Munk & Co. is building something akin to a gated community for floating Russian billionaires – Russian tourists and investors are already so thick on the ground that the country is known as “Moscow by the Med.” Marine biologists fear the yacht harbour will damage the already stressed ecology of the Bay of Kotor, the Med's only fjord and one of the loveliest anchorages on the planet.

Montenegro presses against Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Albania on the southern fringes of the Dalmatian Coast. The seaside is heaven. Green mountains plunge into the Adriatic, the water is cerulean blue and unsullied. Ancient towns, some fortified, dot the shores. Hotels, restaurants and shops are springing up everywhere, but the densities (and the prices) are nowhere near the horrific levels of France's Côte d'Azur.

If Mr. Munk gets his way – there is no reason to think he won't, given the money already invested and the approvals obtained – the Te Manu won't stick out from the crowd at Porto Montenegro, some 15 kilometres north of Budva. The Bay of Kotor marina will have berths for 650 yachts, 150 of them superyachts. Boats as long as 150 metres could be accommodated in a pinch.

Central and Eastern Europe states are in danger of never catching up with Western Europe, as the long term economic growth potential in the region is undermined by a widening human capital gap with the west of the continent, a report has warned.

The report -- called the European Human Capital Index -- ranked eastern EU members and candidates on their ability to develop and sustain their human capital, and was released by the Brussels-based Lisbon Council think tank on Monday (15 October).

Since the collapse of communism, economic growth in the former communist states is far above growth seen elsewhere on the continent, narrowing the difference in economic wealth between the two halves of the continent.

But researchers now fear that a continuation of this performance is unlikely, unless certain problems are urgently addressed.

"The entire study shows a closing of the gap in the last 15 years, but now it could widen again," Peer Ederer, the lead author of the study warned during the report's presentation.

"An economy does no longer only have to be efficiency-driven. If you want to be able to compete with Western Europe and Asia, you have to become an innovation-driven economy," he said later on.

In particular, the report highlights the region's shrinking population, continuous brain-drain, chronically high unemployment and inadequate investment in education and skills - especially in workers aged 45 or more -- as the main problems.

"Stop early retirement schemes, reduce unemployment, stimulate part-time employment. Keep them in the job, get them in the job, in every way possible," Dr Ederer said.