We've seen in the past how easily bogus stats from a biased industry can suddenly become "fact" as the Serbian press uses the numbers without questioning the assumptions or even noting the inherent bias in the numbers. What's most frustrating is that the Serbian press continues to take these studies at face value, and never once questions the most basic ...

It seems like a decade or so ago, it was pretty easy to find a traveller who had a story about the taxi scams of Belgrade. There's been so much press coverage about the so-called Belgrade taxi mafia (unlicensed taxi drivers)  that you wonder who could possibly still fall for them. Apparently, the answer is Annie Nieman who was visiting ...

I really want to stop writing stories about clueless Dutch politicians making braindead statements about Serbia's Full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, but it just never stops. The latest is that the Dutch foreign minister, Maxim Verhagen, is claiming that the arrest of Ratko Mladic would be the best proof that Serbia accepts European values: Full cooperation with the court in ...

For the past ten years or so, we've been hearing all this hand-wringing about how Serbian Government was not cooperating fully with the Hague Tribunal. The latest example is in a recent John Boonstra post in the UN Dispatch blog. There is a big problem with the article. Boonstra tries to paint Serbia's cooperation with the Hague Tribunal as a failure: ...

A whole bunch of folks are sending this one in, so let's get it covered. B92 is running an article entitled "Djelic: More funds for science: Science Minister Bozidar Djelic says that no less than Eur 44,000 will be set aside for scientific research this year." It's pretty obvious that Eur 44.000 is almost a laughable amount. As a commenter ...

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister for EU integration, Bozidar Djelic, gave a speech, at the opening of the first EU information centre at the Svetozar Markovic university library, to a group of people supposedly calling on them to be open to the world, and, most importantly, learn to embrace the potential of the EU integration. So, let's go to the details. So, ...

Over at arirusila.wordpress.com, Ari Rusila points us to a well worth reading (if long) study (PDF) published by UK-based think tank Open Europe claiming that European propaganda is organised according to a methodical plan, manipulating public opinion on the merits of European integration. Open Europe reveals that large sums of public money (2.4 billion euros a year) on propaganda are ...

The Dutch government has been rather aggressive over the years in "blocking" Serbia's EU integration. Most recently, the Dutch government blocked the implementation of the stabilisation and association agreement (SAA) between Serbia and the EU (an accord that would put Serbia clearly on the road to EU membership), because the Serbian authorities have not yet arrested Ratko Mladic. The basic ...

The State Secretary with the Ministry for Kosovo, Oliver Ivanovic, gave an interview to beta news agency (found via B92) claiming that Serbia must join the EU and then "Europe will treat Serbia with more respect, and our position will be much better," to re-open of the Kosovo status talk. In other words, we're going to treat EU with respect to ...

If you've been paying attention to the Serbian news about Serbia’s integration in the EU, you may have heard the story that made the rounds about an opinion poll stating that 61 % of Serbian citizens support Serbia’s EU integration. You can download the full report as a PDF, but it's in Serbian. Some news stories and blogs cover the ...