Latest monitoring report on Romania- definitely not the last

Today the European Commission released the monitoring reports on Romania and Bulgaria, foreseen by the “cooperation and verification mechanism”.

On the whole, not many surprises: the rough tone that was expected, telling off the two countries for the very small (if existing) progress regarding judicial reform and fight against corruption. This time, Bulgaria is more severely punished, with part of its funds being suspended. Romania receives yet another warning but still no decisive measure such as the activation of the safeguard clause or retention of European funds.

What is the Commission’s assessment of Romania? In the usual diplomatic slang, the report notes that Romania presents a “mixed picture”. However, it does not take great further reading to realize which are the predominant shades in this “mixed picture”: although Romania seems to have re-established its commitment to judicial reform and the fight against corruption, the “legal and institutional framework is still fragile” and decisions on (especially high level) corruption are highly politicized. Some progress is acknowledged, but so is the lack of political consensus regarding justice reforms.

In conclusion, Romania still has a (rather long) way to go in fulfilling all the benchmarks set at the time of accession and will continue to be closely monitored by the Commission. A crucial element is the political will to fully implement all the commitments made by Romania when joining the EU; and looking at the Romanian political arena at the moment, this does not seem to be a safe bet.

One can almost hear the sigh of relief in the high governmental offices in Bucharest, at the confirmation of the fact that (1) no safeguard clause will be activated, (2) no funds will be suspended, (3) Bulgaria is considered to do worse and is more harshly sanctioned. ‘Schadenfreude’ and relief, that’s all.

Unfortunately. Now they can happily continue their holidays. They “escaped” this time again. This makes me doubt the effects of such a neutral report. Maybe next time the Commission can act more severely. It is sad, but only a “shock therapy” might make the Romanian political class aware of the importance of fulfilling its commitments and not just indulging in the mere satisfaction of doing slightly better than the neighboring country.

Written by Anda

Dragandabic.com – The surreal website of Karadžić is a fake!

By now we all know about a certain Dr Dragan Dabic (aka Radovan Karadžić). It is also a fact that Karadžić worked as a doctor of alternative medicine in the centre of Belgrade. And he even had his own website!

First thought: How weird …  Second thought: Wait a minute… why is there an English translation? Also the headline…

“The Ever Increasing Need for Alternative Viewpoints in the Modern World.”

- shouldn’t it be about medical viewpoints??? Also the rest of the quotes are clearly written with the war criminal in mind:

Behind every able man, there are always other able men.
A wise man makes his own decisions,an ignorant man follows the public opinion.
He who cannot agree with his enemies is controlled by them.

An email that starts with “healingwounds@” … give me a break!

I think this page is a big fake! In the Whois directory you can find the following information:

Domain Name: DRAGANDABIC.COM
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
Updated Date: 22-jul-2008
Creation Date: 22-jul-2008
Expiration Date: 22-jul-2009

Aha … the page was created yesterday and now everyone seems to “find” the website and is amused about the email address…

BTW: Apparently the real website is this one: http://www.psy-help-energy.com/ – looks very weird as well! (Update: There is also a discussion about a few suspicious things connected to this website!)

Update: In case you are still not convinced that this is a hoax (although international media has also picked up the story eventually) compare this screenshot from July 28 with the screenshot from July 23! You will notice:a separate page in Serbian, more advertising, some esoteric signs and a black and white picture called “dragan-dabic-mladic”…

Update: The International Herald Tribune reveals the background story of the hoaxer here: An online hoax becomes a source about Karadzic:

The hoaxer identified himself as Tristan Dare, and described himself as a “media artist who specializes in masterminding viral ‘guerrilla style’ interactive online performances.” He said he was a “citizen of the world, and currently resides in the global village.” He agreed to be interviewed, but only via e-mail, after being reached at the randomized e-mail address assigned to the person who registered dragandabic.com. His identity could not be confirmed.

He would not speak over the phone, but laid out a chronology of the site’s creation and editing, and had meticulously tracked his viral experiment across the media landscape with a couple of dozen screenshots of news Web sites, from Poland to China to Japan, that referred to the site.

[...]

He said the Internet traffic totals “reached 24,000 by the end of Day 1 (July 22), to 180,000 visitors on Day 2 (July 23).” He added, “In those first two days over 1.6 million files from this one-page site were served to automatic server requests,” which includes not only accessing the site but also viewing or linking to the photos on the site.

Read the complete article here.