The student section had some sort of theme going on.  Roman togas, one kid had a Roman centurion helmet on, flags of multiple countries, and a sign "Serbia is Kosovo" (or maybe it was the reverse......I was a business major, so excuse my geographic indifference).  Anyway, was it a play on our international players?  Was there a Serbian recruit in the house?   

Kosovo is Serbia is somewhat the equivalent of saying that the 13 colonies are part of England.

If the Smith Center staff understood it better, the sign would have been removed.

I was thinking the same thing about the sign being removed. Kosovo claimed independance from Serbia in 2008 and Serbia will not recognize Kosovo. Whoever had the sign was probably a Serbian national, can't tell anything about Nemanja's political feelings about it, but that doesn't matter. It was also because their Presidents just met.

http://www.rferl.org/content/kosovo-serbia-presiden lts-meeting/24895022.html

 Actually, Kosovo is to Serbia what Taiwan is to China (only with official sanction from the State Department).

A better analogy might be "Kuwait is Iraq" given that there was a war fought over it (among other reasons) in the 90s.  

I assumed it was meant to be some sort of joke or reference to Mikic's Serbian heritage, just like my name on this board is a nod to Montreal native JJ Brade (who we used to joke attacked the hoop with the reckless abandon of a crazy french separatist).

To my knowledge JJ Brade was never a French Separatist, and perhaps my homage would actually insult him, though the French Separatists' complaints aren't related to ethnic violence directed against them so it's really not that raw of an issue.

To the contrary, given the still-recent war between Serbia and Kosovo and the fact that Serbia is still opposed to the UN support for an Independent Kosovo, I ofund that sign to be in poor taste.  

Poor taste is in abundance, now as always.

I assume it was for Mikic and was held by a Serbian but ya I was uncomfortable with it. The most sympathetic interpretation is that it's an expression of Serbian patriotism but really it's pretty terrible considering how the Milosevic government was basically attempting genocide against the Kosovar Albanians. Shame none of the students working the event were Elliott School students I guess.

 At the 2010 World Cup, I attended the Germany-Serbia game. There were a few Serbian fans (only a few out of about 1,000) wearing "Jugoslavia" shirts. I thought that was in pretty poor taste, to say the least. There was also a brief (about 20 second period) where the Serb fans chanted one of their nationalist chants from the war, the evil eyes they got from the German fans (who outnumbered them 10 to 1) shut that down pretty quickly. BTW, Serbia won 1-0.

 i thought i was the only one not to understand it....feel less out of touch now

Kind of the opposite of what they used to hang at the Camp Nou. I always thought it would be clever to get a 'Quebec is not Canada' sign going at Expos Nationals games.

Sorry to weigh in on this as it is already a waning topic, but my computer has been out of action since last Friday (Heavy winds damaged the FIOS cable box outside.)

As for Kosovo's identity, if you go by population, Kosovo is overwhelmingly Albanian and this would support a notion that the territory should be independent of Serbia (which since the breakup of Yugoslavia has not been too tolerant of Albanian minorities within its diminished realm).  However, Kosovo contains land and monuments that were the original homeland of the Serb nation; and in the hearts and minds of patriotic Serbs, it is forever a part of Serbia.  This is the dilemma.  The Serbs mentally cannot let go of Kosovo.

This is in  contrast with Poland and Germany:  both contries lost substantial territory during and after World War II:  Poland lost its eastern half in the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact that enabled Hitler to invade Poland.  Much to Roosevelt's and Churchill's frustration, Stalin refused to cede any of that territory back to Poland at the Yalta Conference.  As a result, Germany had to cede a large portion of its eastern lands to Poland in 1945 (the city of Stettin, provinces of Pomerania, Silesia and one-half of East Prussia [other half went to USSR] as well as the city of Danzig).  Adding to German indignation was the forcibie removal of ethnic Germans by the vengeful Poles, with a heavy loss of life.  However, both contries have accepted the status quo and have moved on.  In short, both countries have "let go" of their eastern  provinces as opposed to the Serbs.

I went to the game and saw the sign.  Ironically, Mike Hall was there as well, courtside with Pops.  Posters here may recall Mike Hall's post a couple of years ago where he bitterly recounted being pelted by small batteries by Serbian spectators who dispised Americans (they blame the Kosovo rebellion on the USA).  Watching that sign waving kid must have rekindled unpleasant (and painful) memories.

Bottom line:  Let's keep politics out of basketball games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGlwW_01eSw

same sign at the European soccer game between a French and a Spanish team.

 Maybe we can use this as the latest reason that Mikic can't hit an open 3.

CJS. Silesia and Pomerania were ancient Polish lands which contained a lost of Germanized Poles who were allowed to stay. But a closer look showed a lot of the Germans removed came from Russia and the Baltic States and resettled in the old borer areas. The the Oder River was figured as more defensible, as so Stalin thought. Also, Stalin wanted Kalinburg as a warmer water port. So he gave the Poles Pomerania and lower Silesia. 

 As for Kosovo, the ethnic Albanians are today showing no toleration for the other large minority in Kosovo, the Roma. (My wife likes to do Balkan folk dancing for some reason and they had a teacher from that area of Europe. )No one wants to talk about that. But the teacher asked at one of the

(Lost the tread)  But the teacher asked at one of the question and answer sessions why the US is involved in Kosovo. He was surprised by a guy who happened to be a Geology professor who said that the Kosovo area contains precious metals that are used in modern US military aircraft. US feels it is easier to deal with Albanians than Serbs. Surprise, surprise. No oil but something else.

This "intellectual" thread reminds me of the time on Spring Break in Key West, while the throngs of Eastern Southern Georgia State College of the Western Florida Panhandle Community School for the Deaf were pounding beers on the beach, a group of us played Boggle.   #NerdsareClassy

 Some more fuel for the fire (or slightly warm embers)