Non-paper nonsense

On the top list of attempts to dumb down the public by meaninglessly giving great official significance to officially insignificant actions, non-papers are beginning to endanger the polygraph.

First, the front pages of newspapers and television headlines were filled by a kind of "non-paper" that mysteriously appeared in the public, which predicted border changes in the post-Yugoslav area based on ethnic principles and was linked to Janez Janša. Then, just as mysteriously, another "non-paper" appeared in the Kosovo media, which starts from the immutability of the borders and the independence of Kosovo, and which was linked to Germany and France.

I don't want to go into the content of either piece of paper, because both pieces of paper are actually completely unimportant. In public, these papers are presented with awe as some kind of secret "non-papers", with the obvious aim of concealing their banality, because for most citizens, something non-paper like that can cause the feeling that it is some kind of conspiracy theory, because they are not informed at all conspiratorial true meaning of that term. Explanations of what the term "non-paper" actually means have been lost in the sensationalist debate about who and who is talking about who's head.

Non-paper (non-paper, i.e. non-document) is simply a written note with an unofficial, non-binding character, which is why it does not have a stamp, signature, header, serial number or anything similar. Non-paper does not have any mark of secrecy, as a form it is not intended to keep anything secret, secret documents, of course, have the mark "official", "state" or some kind of secret, so they are a real treasure for the media when they get hold of them. In diplomatic practice, it is common for the person who drafted the non-paper, or the one to whom the non-paper refers, to put his initials, because it is not intended to hide his identity.

A non-paper can be a proposal, a hypothesis, an idea, a record of a conversation, a reminder, whatever. The non-paper has no prescribed form, and due to its non-binding character, the author does not comment on it in public.

These pieces of paper, which were obviously intentionally sent to the media, are not non-papers, but trial balloons. And maybe the first was a trial balloon and the second was a response to a trial balloon. Maybe the third, fourth, fifth will appear soon... so the sky above the Western Balkans will be filled with colorful balloons.

Nevertheless, very briefly about the content of those papers, in order to underline the futility of dealing with them: those "Janša" papers correspond in their spirit to Vučić's never publicly explained ideas about the exchange of territories, i.e. the change of borders. The spirit of the "German-French" papers corresponds to the image of the West, with the exception of a few countries. All in all - nothing new.

I suggest that the media stop messing around with those unofficial writings by unknown authors, don't fall for such transparent games, or don't participate in them.

Here, I'm starting now.