Off in the distance, behind me, Edith is singing her heart out.

The political sanctions made Milosevic, he said.

At last, I am finding satisfaction of my intellectual curiosity and want of, what I consider profound conversation. MD is sitting in his office, casually slouched in his chair wearing his usual black jeans and white shirt, going into details over how the western sanctions essentially backfired and enabled Serbia's decline into austere nationalism.

In the 1960s we lived as westerners did. Rock music, I wanted to look like James Dean, I read James Joyce and Faulkner, he continued. But what is important is that MD doesn't want to make the mistake most Serbs make when looking at themselves in the mirror. He doesn't want to export blame onto to someone else.

We are like children in this sense, he suggests. Always blaming others for our misfortune, never recognizing that we are partners in this situation. He calls it self purification, but it seems to me that it is only skin deep, and doesn't lead to any change. Rather the result is in fact a worsening of ones psychological situation. Neither MD or I think that the Serb is totally to blame, that every actor in this theatrical performance we call geo-politics shares the blame. But as long as blame is being externalized, then the Serb remains a victim, and thus a prisoner, of their situation.

Take the paradox of the SRS party (the Radicals) who are fighting hard against EU encroachment in Serbia. Their support for the Pro-Karadzic rallies is case in point - they tell Serbs that Tadic (Tadic Juda!) is going to destroy Serbia by handing it over to those pesky Europeans. What they offer as an alternative is trully the paradox of paradox: A nationalist Serbia in league with its Russian Brothers. Slavic solidarity, though it has never existed historically, is the order of the day. Do they really not see that they are mearly trading one hegemon for another, and that they will still not be in control of their own house?

The conclusion is that this political rhetoric is just another way to justify political movements, and to gain power; it has neigh to do with a desire for Serb freedom or an improvement of life for the ordinary Serb. I ask if maybe this is not the signs of a dying party; a last ditch attempt to regain power? My colleagues at work all think that Serbia is on the European path, from which it will never stray. MD shruggs, and I agree with that sentiment. Who knows?

In the 1980s we all saw Serbia's future as a Western one, part of Europe. No-one could even imagine Milosevic back then, he said. History is never absolute, and always finds ways to shift gears.