I obviously don't know why Wozniak personally wants Serbian citizenship, but it is worth noting that Serbia is a good second passport for anyone that already has a US/EU/CA/UK citizenship. This is because Serbians have visa-free access to China, Russia, and a few other places that Western citizens tend to have more difficulties with.
Why though? Did they just figure they’d grant one, and he just went ahead and accepted? Or is there a reason he needs one that wasn’t explained? I know that people sometimes shop around for a passport from whatever EU country for reasons, but Serbia isn’t one. (With all due respect to Serbia)
Not the answer to your question but your question did lead me to something fun:
"The company desperately needed the Macintosh to be a hit. Instead, after an initial flurry of interest, sales of the new computer came in far below expectations. The Macintosh was underpowered, and the lack of software for it kept business customers away. In April 1985, Sculley convinced the Apple board to strip Jobs of his management duties. Sculley put out a statement that Jobs would continue to be a “creator of powerful ideas and the champion of Apple’s spirit,” but in reality Jobs suddenly found himself in a no-man’s land at the company he’d created. He was kicked out of his office and moved to a small building across the street, *which he nicknamed Siberia*. For a couple of months he dragged himself into the office to take the occasional phone call, but with depression setting in, he eventually stopped visiting the Apple campus altogether.
That September, Jobs officially cut his ties to Apple and announced plans to start a new company, NeXT, taking with him a handful of Apple engineers. "
Election is in 10 days, so government is desperate to show how cool they are. He probably got paid few millions bucks, so they could parade him around and give him citizenship.
Serbian accession is not at all likely in the coming years. They have had full candidate status since 2012.
Last year the European Parliament passed a resolution saying it "strongly regrets Serbia’s non-alignment with EU sanctions against Russia, which damages its EU accession process." There's also the problem regarding their relationship with Kosovo.
Also, only 34-43% of Serbians want to join according to polls. Compared to Albania's 97% and Montenegro's 79%.
I think Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and even Ukraine are more likely to join the EU next.
I've lived in both Serbia and Albania fairly recently. Yes, 90-something % of Albanians would be glad to instantly improve their standard of living. Culturally (i.e. 'European Values') they're far from aligned with the EU right now.
Serbia, on the other hand, does largely share "European Values", more and more so every year.
Its political alignments can change very quickly. But the cultural trajectory is clear.
All stars point to that likelihood being pretty much zero. There is no apettite from either side to push the process along, other than from few outspoken politicians.
“Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić met in Belgrade with computer engineer and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.” And didn’t you see the photo and the video (time mark ~32:00) in TFA?
“The convivial Wozniak, who teamed up with the late Steve Jobs to found Apple in 1976, arrived in Serbia ahead of Dec. 17 parliamentary and local elections, in an apparent boost for President Aleksandar Vučić and his populist right-wing governing party.
Wozniak said he feels “so lucky” to be in Serbia and that he and his wife Janet, who is also getting a passport, will from now on “promote” Serbia. He said he will become a Serb living in the U.S.
Vučić said at a joint news conference in Belgrade that “it is an honor” for Serbia to deliver the passports to Wozniak and his wife.”
Probably, though I’m surprised he doesn’t realize it. He should know about Serbia’s political situation if he travels there, and especially when he’s invited there.
It's customary for us here in EU to grant citizenship/titles/university degrees to various important people who have contributed to a specific field. Some countries do it out of recognition others for country/political gains, but it doesn't hurt to have a collection of passports :-)
It's one of few remaining militarily non-aligned countries. If Big War breaks out it is unlikely Serbia will be enacting conscription. It is also not a likely nuke target.
> It's one of few remaining militarily non-aligned countries.
There are lots of countries that are strictly militarily non-aligned (as in, not members of any mutual defense pact.)
It is true that there are relatively few countries that are not either militarily aligned or strongly in the geopolitical orbit of one or more of Russia, China, or the US, but...Serbia isn't in this category, either.
> There are lots of countries that are strictly militarily non-aligned (as in, not members of any mutual defense pact.)
In Europe?
> It is true that there are relatively few countries that are not either militarily aligned or strongly in the geopolitical orbit of one or more of Russia, China, or the US, but...Serbia isn't in this category, either.
Actually, Serbia often gets criticized for playing a juggling game between EU, Russia, and China. As far as orbits go, for all its bravado about 'brotherly' Russia, it is actually mostly dependent on the EU
The country not being a nuclear target is only a relevant advantage if you move there.
Also, conscription is absolutely irrelevant for someone his age. Besides, citizens living abroad are usually not pressed into service, even in times of war.
Not that I think that's why woz accepted citizenship, but it would allow him to move there in the event that tensions escalated to the point he thought it nessesary.
Care to elaborate? Serbia is not a member of NATO or other military alliances, does not supply arms to any country involved in current conflicts, and says it loudly.
"It is the greatest honor for us that I believe that the Government of Serbia will grant the creator of the global IT industry a Serbian passport. I congratulate Wozniak and his wife, who will become citizens of Serbia today or tomorrow," said Vučić.
"We can boast that the computer genius is a citizen of Serbia," he said. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić met in Belgrade with computer engineer and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
No, I disagree. It was more like a calculator. And not really accessible.
The Apple I was the first proper one (the way most people would recognize a relatively usable personal computer), and it kicked off a revolution. That revolution was coming though, Apple or not.
I'm wondering why would Woz care tht much about this publicity, even through a Serbian friend connection (tennis player Tipsarević). Serbian tech scene is getting stronger every year, getting some big tech presence, but still I doubt Woz would really care about it.
In principle yes, but other countries may not recognize it on the basis of human rights. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality." So it should at least be possible to renounce such a citizenship.
International law regarding nationality generally focuses on preventing statelessness, so there isn’t much on prohibiting additional citizenships.
In practice it works more like this: the state passes laws that deem anyone with X qualities is a citizen. Usually this means “born there” or “has parents born there.” This theoretically makes the person a citizen, even if they’ve never interacted or visited the country in any way.
In English "Global Navigation Satellite System" is a generic term for any system like GPS (i.e. also including the Russian, EU, Chinese, etc equivalents) so I would suspect it's a bad translation.
I wonder if this is the "one weird hack" to expand the tax base of a country. Just grant citizenship, then start sending tax bills.
"Dear Mr. Musk, here is your Argentinian Citizenship! We welcome you with open arms! P.S. please note that as of 2020 we have in place a tax on high-wealth individuals. The appropriate agency will be in touch. Renouncing citizenship takes about a year"
US also imposes an unrivaled insane extraterritorial law (FATCA) on foreign banks requiring them to do expensive reporting on US persons, making them worldwide pariahs in the banking system even when they hold dual citizenship.
It's pretty safe to assume this is not the case, countries don't "trick" people into citizenship for this. Plus Steve would know the implications of accepting this citizenship, and could challenge it and not pay a dime if there were hidden clauses.
There are downsides to that. For example, this is how me, my parents and my siblings ended up with different surnames on our passports. They all started as the same surname, but then got mangled independently during translation...
I rather they kept the original spelling because that's his name, but only if Serbs can figure out how to pronounce it. Which, in the modern world, is a reasonable assumption for names written in the Latin script.
Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation; languages have wildly different ideas how to pronounce written text.
Paradoxically, Serbian belongs in the group "write as you hear"; the mapping between writing and pronunciation is quite simple and uniform in slavic languages. It is English, that you have to learn twice -- first time to speak, second time to spell.
> Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation
Yes, I understand this: being a Spanish native speaker, I had to learn the rules of pronunciation of the English language. Spanish is also pronounced as written, mostly.
You can figure it out, so it's still better to spell English names in English, Serb names in Serb, and so on. The only concession I will make is leaving out extraneous accents and glyphs in informal writing (e.g. written accents; I will accept if they are omitted and substituted by the closest glyph in your language).
"Translating" names is something I really, really dislike. In this particular case, it's extra silly, since everybody who cares already knows who Woz is and will read his name correctly, Serbs included. This is not some random person whose name they just heard for the first time.
If my name were John and I moved to Brazil should I be mad if people call me Joao, or if Sebastian, Sebastiao?
It’s no big deal.
There was a Mexican dude whose parents named him Joe, but they pronounced it something close to /Dzoe’/, so neither /Dzou/ nor /Xoe/. I think he was better off going by Joe over here.
But John and Joao are definitely not the same name. If someone asks you "is your name John or Joao?", even in Brazil there's only one right answer. At best you can say "both names can trace their origin to the same root name", but they are not the same name.
The Mexican guy's name or your anecdote is named Joe (but pronounced like he or his parents wanted it). There are no two ways about it.
In Argentina and Uruguay some people are called "Jonathan", only pronounced "Shonatan" (or in some Spanish pronunciations, "Yonatan"). That's the way it is.
Finally, phonetically spelling the name and surname of a known celebrity, as in Wozniak's case, just seems silly to me.
Is the president of the US You Baiden? That's a phonetic spelling in Spanish, after all! (Silly, right?).
It's funny because in Croatia we don't do that, but it's an almost identical language. I still remember reading old ex-yu comic books with New York spelled as Njujork and so on. The problem is that you can't really capture the pronunciation since english has more sounds and serbian and croatian are phonetic limited to 30 letters, Stiv Voznijak doesn't capture it correctly, that's how you get the harsh slavic/russian accent. There is also a tricky situation with trying to keep the original like we do in Croatian, for example we can't read asian or arabic symbols, so it doesn't make sense to keep them, but we usually use the english transliteration which is to me also a bit silly.
> The problem is that you can't really capture the pronunciation
Can you do that in general if you don't know the actual language, though? Even native English speakers sometimes have issues with certain borrowed French words, despite those being in English.
Fair point, I think it just looks silly to me because I'm not used to it and in this modern age it seems a bit quaint. The other thing is that sometimes it might not be immediately obvious that Matthew Perry is the same person as Metju Peri. And since today everyone is exposed to english and other big languages, knowing the original spelling can be considered a part of basic literacy.
I find I need to say some names out loud to know what they mean when I read texts from Serbia. In Serbia they take the principle 'speak as you write, write as you speak' to the end. I also think that Croatian is a more pure Slavic language, and that Serbs are more liberal with adopting foreign terms. It is also interesting that all Croats can uderstand someone from Belgrade or Banja Luka without any issues (not including street slang), but some Croats have trouble understanding other Croatian dialects.
It is more of a both-are-used situation. Walking around Belgrade, you’ll see a mix of both. Younger people especially use the Latin alphabet much more.
No thanks, I'd prefer to keep my name the way I identify with it. I'd only do it when a name's original script is not legible to the populace of the residing culture.
People are too attached. If you move to Japan of China you will have to transliterate your name or adopt a local name. Unless you’re Japanese or Chinese there is no way around it.
I love localized names. So I like what the Serbians did for Steve here.
In any event it’s his name but it’s their language and they get to spell it according to their transliteration rules.
>If you move to Japan of China you will have to transliterate your name or adopt a local name.
I can't speak for China, but I can speak for Japan. I occasionally transliterate my name for one reason or another, but 99% of the time I'm rocking my name the way I identify with it. Don't mistake me for not participating the local culture. I speak the language, the government (city and federal), and my employer, a local firm, all use my latin name on all official documents and informal communications. My coworkers and friends will usually use my latin spelling as well. Bear in mind, these are usually mixed-provenance sentences where they'll switch to latin for my name in the middle of an otherwise fully native sentence. I'm happy to transliterate it when the situation calls for it but I'd prefer it not be forced on me if it can be helped.
To answer a sibling comment, do I identify it more spoken or written, I would say the written form. I'm tolerant of accents, foreign languages with separate syllabaries, verbal typos, and other such errata, so I don't really care strongly how my name is pronounced as long as an earnest attempt is made.
That's actually what they used to do in the old days. All the saints, kings, politicians, etc would be localized, eg croatian count Josip Jelačić is József Jelasics in hungarian or Joseph Jellachich in german, Franz Ferdinand is Franjo Ferdinand in croatian, etc
Can you elaborate? I live in Serbia for two years and don't feel much xenophobia towards me. I am aware of above-average homophobic sentiment here, and some hate towards ex-Yugoslav neighbors, but hey, they were at war and it is mutual.
I take issue with the "least xenophobic places out there nowadays", I don't think that needs further elaboration, it would require a lot of work to establish that any place is compatible with that label and based on what I've seen Serbia likely would not be close to the top of the list, you give two nice examples already and I would have a couple of others.
Well, given the current state of affairs in the EU/UK, with those anti-Israel marches on one side and the general stance toward migrants on the other, Serbia seems like a quieter haven to me right now. Also, Serbs are very relaxed and genuinely friendly. Also, the crime rate is relatively low (especially given the amount of firearms, or maybe thanks to it). So, if the author of the previous comment is looking for a place to move, Serbia can be a good fit regarding the overall level of hospitality/peace of mind.
You seem to always pop up when there's a thread about Serbia and you always post about Serbs and Serbia in a negative context no matter what it's about. I lived in Serbia for 6 years and no, they are overall not xenophobic people.
> You seem to always pop up when there's a thread about Serbia and you always post about Serbs and Serbia in a negative context no matter what it's about. I lived in Serbia for 6 years and no, they are overall not xenophobic people.
That's bullshit, twice over. For one I don't pop up in every thread about Serbia (and a casual inspection of your comment history shows that you in fact do exactly that), for another I have not made the claim that they are overall xenophobic people, that's your strawman.
I wouldn't make the claim that people from NL (where I'm from), Germany, Serbia or any other country that I'm familiar with is "the least xenophobic places out there nowadays".
If you can prove the opposite I'll be happy to take it back. Just like those other countries I've mentioned Serbia has it's problems. Denying that doesn't make it so.
I only have some annecdotal stories, from a friend who grew up in Croatia and then had to flee during the Yugoslavia war, where one of the parents is Serbian and the other is Albanian. The stories are both from his childhood (being pushed into the sea as a kid, because they noticed he's from a certain group, not being sold bread as a kid because he used the wrong word when ordering) and from recent years (e.g. getting beaten up at a bar by a group of people, because from his accent it was clear he wasn't from that area).
I'm not trying to say that Serbia sucks, or that Serbs suck, or that all Serbs are like that, or anything in that direction. Almost all people I personally know from ex-Yugoslavia (including Serbia) are great people. But – especially given the conflict-rich history of that area – there are still a lot of conflicts and animosities between ethnic groups, and Serbia also has its fair share of xenophobia (in contrast to what GP suggested in their comment).
What's happening is what's happening everywhere else: there are different Serbians, some are great, some are nice, some are not so nice and some are terrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Serbian_...