Here follows a bit of demographic speculation. It’s guesswork right now, but we’ll know in a year or two if I’m right. Interesting Fact #1: birthrates tend to drop during recessions, and the drop tends to correlate with both the severity of the recession and the speed of its onset....

We’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing over Greece in the last couple of weeks. Various commenters have compared it to 1968 and to 1973, have noted the deep-rooted miseries that this has exposed in Greek society, and have expressed concern that violence may spread to other Mediterranean economies (...

It took just 57 days, which by Serbian standards is pretty quick. It’s a strange beast, with Milosevic’s old Socialist party riding shotgun on a coalition of pro-Western liberals and technocrats, but it’s actually less insane than what they had before. In order to make it work, the...

Following up to my earlier post, some discussion of the international reaction to Kosovar independence. At the moment, 43 countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence. (I’m defining “country” here as “member of the UN General Assembly. Sorry, Taiwan.) Since the UNGA ...

Liveblogging the first half hour, before I’m too drunk to continue. Romania okay, will get votes but not a winner. Britain so-so, not that bad but not real Eurovision. Albania cute female lead singer in a cloak with bare midriff and a wind machine… okay. Germany godawful! Geez — ba...

I’m tempted to liveblog, but I plan to drink, so maybe not. Quick: in the few hours that remain, who’s your favorite? The bookmakers’ favorites are Russia, Ukraine and Greece. Me? I like those Latvian pirates, and hell, Romania’s always pretty good. Okay, a kind word for Arme...

I’ve been meaning to write about the Serbian elections, and the continuing slapfest over Macedonia, and some more about the frozen conflicts, and all that good stuff. But first: Niko Bellic is Serbian. He’s not just a generic Eastern European; he’s a Bosnian Serb who fought in the ...

So, the Albanosphere: about 7 million Albanians in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Greece and Montenegro, plus another million or so recent emigrants and gastarbeitern scattered across Europe and the US. I’m going to leave the diaspora mostly out of the picture. They’re very important, but I...

The latest news from Macedonia: a local art gallery did a billboard showing the Greek flag with a swastika in place of the cross. The Greeks have, of course, gone completely apeshit. Front page news, demonstrations, formal diplomatic protest. This is one of those perfect Balkan storms where you have...

I was going to do a rather obnoxious post about the Macedonian name issue, but decided not to. You can see a draft of it in the comments section over here. Meanwhile, here’s an idea I’ve sometimes toyed with: a series of posts on the leaders of small European countries during the Second ...