tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72205764716483136962024-03-13T15:29:57.453-07:00The Serbian RoundupCommentary on political, social and cultural struggles of SerbdomUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-59931646377149899372013-11-07T07:29:00.001-08:002013-11-07T07:32:48.108-08:00Democratic Boycott of the Colonial Serbia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://m.ruvr.ru/data/2013/11/04/1324648892/4h_51085512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://m.ruvr.ru/data/2013/11/04/1324648892/4h_51085512.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: ruvr.ru</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>It took Serbia’s top leadership three days to voice its
opinion on the debacle of its pressure campaign against the North Kosovo Serbs,
related to the local elections in the rogue Albanian state of Kosovo, the first
in which the community was forced to participate. Not only that, but Serbia’s
leadership apparently had to get its own opinion in Brussels.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Between Aleksandar Vučić’s Sunday threat, directed at the
Serb community, in which he asked the occupying force of NATO and EULEX to
allow him 45 minutes to take care of business in North Mitrovica, and
Wednesday’s statement by Ivica Dačić, following consultations with Catherine
Ashton, the official Belgrade’s silence on Kosovo was interrupted only by
Aleksandar Vulin’s unfounded accusations against leaders of the election boycott. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The trigger-happy Vulin first charged local Serb leaders of the boycott with
smashing the voting booths in a Mitrovica polling location. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Then the charges
died down after the anti-election activists presented what they claimed to be
video and eyewitness testimonies to the contrary and accused the Belgrade
authorities of orchestrating the violence after they realized the boycott calls
were heeded by the majority of Mitrovica Serbs and the turnout was abysmal. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>When
the swirling rumors involved the presence of Police General Bratislav Dikić,
now-deputy to Serbia’s Director of Police Milorad Veljovic, in the area, the
purported relation between Serbia’s authorities and the polling site violence became
more believable. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Hashim Thaci ridiculed Vučić’s request to intervene against
the Kosovo Serbs, stating that Kosovo had its own institutions. Not that Thaci’s
statement was anything new or surprising, but Vučić, or anyone else, did not
respond to this apparent challenge to Serbian government’s claim of sovereignty
over Kosovo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>But his minions did launch
a media and parliament-floor offensive against Vojislav Koštunica’s Democratic
Party of Serbia and its key representative in North Kosovo, Marko Jakšić,
blaming this 7-percent-strong opposition party of swaying the election outcome
against the wishes of Serbia government. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Never mind that the attested war criminal Thaci dared to call the North Kosovo activists "criminals."</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Amid this indeed disgusting exchange of accusations and name-calling, no
mainstream media have reported the actual turnout numbers in North Kosovo, while the
Kosovo Albanian authorities did brag about the turnout among Serbs south of
Ibar exceeding 50 percent in some municipalities. The Serb Anti-election Staff reported
Priština’s Central Election Commission’s numbers, according to which the turnout
in Mitrovica was as low as 2.5 percent a couple of hours before the polling
site attack. The Leposavić municipality, according to the same report, saw a 16
percent turnout. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<b><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/yKX4Tveeygk?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Kosovo Police and EULEX arrested one man in relation to the
violence, and quickly let him go; Jakšić said the man was connected to Serbia’s
Gendarmerie. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Going back to the most striking evidence that Serbia is
indeed as much a colony as is its occupied province, we find a new level of
subordination being reached here. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Who would have expected that between Dačić
and Vučić, the two men most directly involved in all aspects of implementation
of the Microsoft Word document popularly called the Brussels Agreement,
including the aggressive on-the-ground campaigning against those local Serbs
who refused to participate in the election organized under the legal framework
of the Albanian Republic of Kosovo, no public statement was made on such a
crucial juncture in the implementation process? </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The election was the pinnacle
of the subjugation process Dačić and Vučić have been steamrolling over the
Kosovo Serbs. And Serbia’s top dogs had nothing to say about it for three days. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Nothing to say until a Brussels bureaucrat told them what exactly they were
allowed to say.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>After another blow was dealt to the Imperial occupying
force by the Kosovo Serb community, Ashton decided the election will be
repeated in three sites in North Mitrovica on November 17. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Thaci bragged about how the “successful” election added
legitimacy to the Brussels Agreement. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>If we know that the sole goal of the
Brussels Agreement was to subjugate the North, and if the North Kosovo Serbs
overwhelmingly and in a democratic way rejected the Dačić-Thaci deal again on November
3<sup>rd</sup>, Thaci’s demagoguery would be dismissed if it was not for the
intent to repeat the push as many times as necessary to claim the Albanian and
NATO victory over the Serbs. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>And with the help of colonial Belgrade,
unfortunately, regardless of the election outcomes, the subjugation process
seems to be at an advanced stage. Belgrade not only turned its back on the
Kosovo Serbs, but has been actively pushing them into the fold of the rogue
Albanian state, which, Serbia, declaratively, refuses to recognize. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://fakti.org/sites/default/files/pictures_lin/dacic_brisel_123.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="173" src="http://fakti.org/sites/default/files/pictures_lin/dacic_brisel_123.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: fakti.org</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Dačić, in his Ashton-endorsed comments, threatened the
Kosovo Serbs with complete abandonment if they did not obey the Brussels
Agreement and subjugate themselves to the will of Albanians by voting on
November 17. Activist Goran Petrović, arrested on Wednesday by Kosovo Police,
has reportedly been the first victim of the expected crackdown against the local
Serb opposition to the Dačić-Thaci deal. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>As Belgrade political analyst Željko Cvijanović
picturesquely described in his most recent piece, Serbia’s leadership first lit
the Kosovo Serbs’ house on fire, and then blamed them for not putting the fire
out by adhering to Belgrade’s instructions. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Following the Ashton meeting, Serbian media did not report
any comments Vučić made about this most pressing issue in the recent history of
the country. Serbia’s President Tomislav Nikolić, whom I almost forgot in this report
because he has been AWOL and a non-factor when he was present in public, expectedly had
no opinion on the most pressing issue in his country’s recent history. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The Belgrade media have been doing a great job of not asking
questions, period, let alone demanding answers from the people paid a lot of money to provide
them. Not only that, but other issues, such as soccer hooliganism, have been
quickly launched into the spotlight of national attention to avert the focus on
Kosovo. The most recent violent clashes between organized fan groups, long-known
to be under the control of political parties and secret police, have apparently
been orchestrated to divert the nation from the issues of occupation and
sovereignty.</b></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-43382352214445132062013-10-24T10:51:00.001-07:002013-10-25T06:58:28.256-07:00Between Belgrade, Thaci and Liberty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQS22mmpcUo9GMt4-OsShlXLde9GqUKEbEc_HyNGpqnG3yI5lyhhw" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQS22mmpcUo9GMt4-OsShlXLde9GqUKEbEc_HyNGpqnG3yI5lyhhw" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">source: kurir-info.rs</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>The all-out offensive against the Serbian communities in Kosovo is intensifying in the days running up to the rogue state's parliamentary election on November 3, in which the official Serbia has agreed to force the Kosovo Serbs to take part. This final step in Serbia's not-so-implicit recognition of the secession of its occupied province is a direct consequence of the "initialed" Microsoft Word document officially called "the Belgrade-Priština Agreement" or, colloquially, "the Brussels Agreement." </b><br />
<br />
<b>I won't discuss the legality or the legitimacy of this paper and its adoption process, because there is none outside that overarching principle hiding behind any political demagoguery: "might makes right."</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>What is important to talk about at the time when all sides to the story but one have accepted that the piece of paper initialed by Serbia's prime minister is the law of the land, however illegal and illegitimate, are the methods of coercion the resilient community of North Kosovo is being subjected to by their own government, its Kosovan counterpart and the Albanian population.</b><br />
<br />
<b>The Serbian participation in the November 3 election legitimizes Kosovo's existence as an "independent" country. (Kosovo, in reality, is a territory occupied by NATO and the EU, and the formal independence from Serbia does not make it any more truly independent than Guam.) </b><br />
<b>Thaci and his imperial overlords need this; without the recognition/capitulation of Serbia and the local Serbs, their imperial conquest can only live a life of a bastard.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Serbs in the North are the only Serbian community that had rejected Boris Tadic's calls to recognize the institutions of the Albanian Kosovo. The Dačić-Vučić-Nikolić trinity, however, has overridden Kosovo Serbs' political will and made a pact with Hashim Thaci's regime to coerce the community into subordination via back door, after Thaci's and NATO's frontal attacks failed numerous times.</b><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://srbinaokup.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/mitrovica-setnja.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://srbinaokup.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/mitrovica-setnja.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>source: srbinaokup.info</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>The general feeling among the North Kosovo population is that if they succumb to the pressure and turn out in large numbers, they would be accepting the legitimacy of the Albanian rule. A recent Priština poll puts the expected turnout in the North at 16 percent. </b><br />
<b>Feeling the resistance and anticipating failure, both Belgrade and Priština have intensified pressure through subtle and not-so-subtle acts of coercion. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Explosions have been rocking North Mitrovica for weeks. Serbs continue being attacked by Albanian mobs - not only in the North - on a regular basis. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Most seriously, a conflict is being stirred between the minority of the Serbian population who is willing to go along with Belgrade's mandate and the majority who rejects the Albanian rule despite Belgrade's orders. It is unclear which incident fall into what category, but the very intensification is a clear sign that the pressure and tensions are rising and that they are related to Serbian community's unwillingness to sign its death sentence, i.e. to agree to a predicament that threatens its very existence on its ancestral land. </b><br />
<b>Lines of the conflict are now drawn not only between local Serbs on one side and Albanians, their government and their imperial occupiers on the other, but between pro-integration and pro-liberty Serbs. </b><br />
<b>The new puppet regime in Belgrade has achieved what neither the old regime nor the occupying military force could: it divided the North Kosovo Serbs to expedite their subordination into the rogue Albanian state of Kosovo.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>On October 23, arson was reported in a North Mitrovica cafe. An explosion was reported in the same street on October 18.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://srbinaokup.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/marici.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://srbinaokup.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/marici.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>source: srbinaokup.info</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>On October 19, two Albanians attacked a nineteen years old Serb in an ethnically mixed area of North Mitrovica. </b><br />
<b>Earlier that day, a bomb exploded on the balcony of a house belonging to an election candidate of the Civic Initiative "Srpska," the Belgrade-formed faction running for seats in the Kosovo legislature.</b><br />
<br />
<b>On October 14, Nebojša Marić, a local Serb leader who called for boycott of the elections, was reportedly injured when an explosive device blew up his bedroom window while he was sleeping.</b><br />
<br />
<b>On October 8, it was reported that Albanian mob burned the home of Slavomir Grubanović, a Serb returnee to the village of Belo Polje, near Peć. On the same day, another group crossed the bridge into North Mitrovica and stoned the former town hall building.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Of course, the response to these incidents from the occupying force of NATO and EULEX has been the usual one: a condemnation, if that, and the casual purported inability to find perpetrators.</b><br />
<b><br />Parallel and intertwined with the acts of violence against the Kosovo Serbs is the political charade ran by the official Belgrade. </b><br />
<b>Amidst the dog-and-pony show involving Dačić and Aleksandar Vulin, the special envoy, reportedly being banned from entering Kosovo, Aleksandar Vučić becoming an honorary citizen of the town of Leposavić, Thaci interchangeably thanking Belgrade for encouraging Serbs to vote and warning it not to get involved, the repeated warnings and threats issued by Belgrade officials, most specifically Vulin, to Serbs who called for boycott or decided to not adhere to the Belgrade-Priština agenda have been the most worthy of attention.</b><br />
<b>Vulin, a controversial personality with flip-flopping political character, like most of the key leaders of Serbia's puppet regime, has been campaigning intensively and enforcing the message that Kosovo Serbs must obey the Brussels Agreement or else. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Two juxtaposed instances show that Vulin is not kidding either.</b><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/1385216_575920049123237_1123263244_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/1385216_575920049123237_1123263244_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>source: b92.net</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Radica Maksimović, the school administrator in Serbian enclave of Šilovo, near Gnjilane, ordered her staff to attend the Dačić rally in the central Kosovo enclave Gracanica on October 19, declaring that Saturday a work day. Maksimović and her staff are Serbian government employees and Dačić was to call on central Kosovo Serbs to get out and vote on November 3. The administrator is a member of Dačić's Socialist Party of Serbia.</b><br />
<br />
<b>On the other end, public sector employees of North Mitrovica, also on the payroll of Serbia, were expressly forbidden to walk in the anti-participation rally, organized by the Serb National Council of North Mitrovica on October 22.</b><br />
<br />
<b>The locally organized Interim Assembly of Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija formed its Anti-election Staff in response to the intensified pressure from Belgrade. </b><br />
<b>Their position of non-compliance is based on the very reasonable forecast that Serbs will have to assimilate or be driven out by the Albanian if they integrate their communities into the rogue state and recognize Kosovo's legal system in any shape or form. They find the proposed "union of Serb municipalities," with its vague jurisdiction, not an adequate protection at all, considering the experience of most of other Serb communities in Kosovo that fell under Priština's rule. </b><br />
<b>The Anti-election Staff has recently accused official Belgrade of stirring conflict among the North Kosovo Serbs and artificially creating the atmosphere of distrust and fear among neighbors. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Patriotic commentators, both within and outside of Kosovo, have felt especially betrayed by the calls for compliance coming from key leaders of the Serbian Orthodox Church, including Patriarch Irinej himself. Based on reports and public statements of individuals and groups on patriotic portals, a lot of Kosovo Serbs feel that church leaders sided with Thaci and Dačić and against them in this ongoing conflict. </b><br />
<b>The Church, next to the people, has been the main pillar of Serbian presence in Kosovo and Metohija for centuries, but its current Kosovo agenda seem to be stuck between the philosophies of "addition by subtraction" and "go along to get along." </b><br />
<br />
<b>An increasing number of not only Kosovo Serbs is vocal about the support for the disgraced and removed Bishop Artemije, who they saw as the most genuine advocate for Serbian interests and rights in the occupied territory.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>All in all, the November 3 election threatens to seal the fate of the semi-free Serb communities in Kosovo. However low the turnout gets to be, Belgrade, Priština and Brussels are likely to ignore it and declare victory and legitimacy of the outcome, thus shutting the door on any presence of the Republic of Serbia in its occupied province and basically throwing the local Serbs to the wolves. Rumors of loads of ballots with fake voter identities being shipped into Kosovo are rampant. Having direct experience with how easily and regularly democratic process is manipulated, I'm significantly more inclined to believe the rumors than to disregard them. </b><br />
<b>Whatever the way, the outcome will legitimize the secession and occupation of the Serbian province and it will veil Serbian regime's unconstitutional and unpatriotic acts, which many a Serb considers a treason, in the readily touted ''consent'' of the people. </b></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-15116741980848887792013-09-24T08:09:00.001-07:002013-09-24T08:09:17.177-07:00Kosovo Serbs: Presumed Guilty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.rtv.rs/sr_ci/hronika/slike/2013/09/19/euleks,-ubijen,-napad,-zvecan,-eulex_660x330.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://www.rtv.rs/sr_ci/hronika/slike/2013/09/19/euleks,-ubijen,-napad,-zvecan,-eulex_660x330.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: rtv.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Five days have passed and the killer of the EULEX officer is still
unknown. </b><br />
<b>
</b><b>On September 19, <a href="http://www.b92.net/eng/news/crimes.php?yyyy=2013&mm=09&dd=19&nav_id=87711" target="_blank">attackers killed one and wounded three</a> EULEX members of the
Customs Component in an ambush near the village of Balaban in Zvečan
municipality. In the run-up to the controversial parliamentary election in
Kosovo, scheduled for November 3 and projected to involve the North Kosovo
Serbs for the first time, the murder of <span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Audrius
Šenavičius, </span>while initially provoking a whirlwind of reactions,
especially from Belgrade, has been quietly pushed under the carpet as no news
of it have come out after September 19.</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>Not in the mainstream media, at least. </b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>This story is not unusual in itself; attacks on the Western forces occupying
Kosovo have happened before and they all came from the Albanian side (now, <i>this</i>
may sound surprising to the not-so-well-informed observers). What was unusual
is the rapid reaction by the official Belgrade. Both Prime Minister Ivica Dačić
and his First Deputy Aleksandar Vučić immediately sharply condemned the
attacks. Dačić blurted out that this was a "bullet fired into Serbia's
future," and Vučić threatened a "fierce response" by the Serbian
government. Both statements strongly implied that it was Serbs who killed<span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"> Audrius Šenavičius. News portal InSerbia
quoted Dačić as saying that this was "an extremist and not a patriotic
act." </span></b><br />
<b>
</b><b><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">"This is an attempt to ruin
everything Serbia has achieved in the past period. Serbia has no right to
remain silent and allow terrorists and extremists to believe that they are the
ones who can manage Serbia,” said Vučić. (inserbia.info)</span></b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b> Both men apparently assumed that the act was perpetrated by disgruntled
Serbs who felt an attack on EULEX would constitute an act of revenge, a
patriotic act of sorts. They assumed this despite the fact that Serbs in Kosovo
do not have a history of ambush attacks against the occupying forces. They know
well that Serbs in Kosovo only resisted being integrated into the Albanian
state, and always used non-violent methods against heavily armed KFOR and
EULEX. But, for whatever reason, Dačić and Vučić went out on a limb to assume
Serbs killed the EULEX officer.</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>Why would they assume this?</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://www.vestinet.rs/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ivica-Dacic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://www.vestinet.rs/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ivica-Dacic.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: vestinet.rs</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Well, I would call it projecting rather than assuming. Dačić and Vučić have
experienced problems forcing the North Kosovo Serbs into the Albanian state of
Kosovo. The agreement that Dačić signed with Catherine Ashton and Hashim Thaci
on April 19, 2013, naturally was not well received in North Kosovo. After all,
the local Serbs to which the terms of the agreement most directly apply were
never consulted. The Brussels Agreement literally abolished the remaining
institutions of the Republic of Serbia in its occupied province of Kosovo and
Metohija and removed all the protections of the rights of Kosovo Serbs. The
upcoming election is the final step in completely subordinating the Kosovo
Serbs to the legal system of the Albanian "Republic of Kosovo," occupied
and ran by NATO and EU. </b><br />
<b>
</b><b>So, naturally, there is a lot of animosity between the Kosovo Serbs and
Belgrade leadership. The North Kosovo Serbs had their democratic referendum in
which they overwhelmingly decided against their integration into the Albanian
state. They issued declarations voicing their opposition to and fear from the
subordination. They formed their interim people's assembly to assert their
political unity in opposition to the occupation. The official Belgrade, led by
Dačić, Vučić and president Tomislav Nikolić, ignored their wishes and bribed
and threatened many into subordination. Others they simply removed. </b><br />
<b>The
opposition, however, is still swelling and its calls for a boycott of the
Brussels-imposed elections still alarms Belgrade, whose representatives have
specific orders from Brussels to see this through or risk falling out of favor
with their imperial overlords. </b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>So, now, Dačić and Vučić could hardly wait for a false flag attack, or a
real attack, to accuse the disobedient Kosovo Serbs of extremism and of
undermining Serbia's future, and, in the best fashion of Western political
students, use the events as pretext to swoop in, make arrests of key political
opponents, scare the rest and clear the path towards the subordination of all
the Kosovo Serbs to the Albanian government in Priština. </b><br />
<b>
</b><b>How else would anyone explain the reaction from Belgrade?</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://www.b92.net/news/pics/2013/04/09/13004543135163e809ee1f3399845358_MidCol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://www.b92.net/news/pics/2013/04/09/13004543135163e809ee1f3399845358_MidCol.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: b92.net</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Belgrade has relinquished all its authority in its occupied province and to
matter-of-factly state it will respond in a fierce way is plain ridiculous. Of
course, NATO and the EU forces in Kosovo can let the Serbia's investigators to
come in and help rummage around Serb areas, but only because it suits them, not
because it empowers Belgrade in any way. </b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>The natural, professional and diplomatic reaction would be to take it easy,
condemn the attack in a neutral way while the investigation is ongoing, and
shut up. But no, without even asking what happened, Serbia's leaders rush in to
show fierce loyalty to their colonial overlords. A "Hail!" from
Belgrade would be in order here.</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>I'm only making sensible points here, trying to observe this abnormal reaction
opposite a normal one we are used in situations that are less politicized. Which
professional politician, in his right mind, rushes to conclusions and goes on a
limb like that, without following any rational or procedural logic? A puppet with orders,
of course.</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>Say, an Albanian did this. This is a more likely scenario not because I wish
Serbs are not at fault here, but for the obvious reason of this particular crime
scene location being notorious for Albanian extremist activity and because it
is the Albanians who wish to clear the obstacles for subordination of North
Kosovo. They are the onesAnd what is more like them than to commit a crime and
blame Serbs for it? To outright wave off false flags and false pretexts amidst
the global political turmoil in which they abound would be stupid. </b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>Serbian media under the corporate or state control did not go in depth
reporting about the investigation. The EULEX website had no updates after the
original press release, which is not unusual. But the one looking for more
background information on the attack can find in Serbian independent news
sources. Thus, the news portal New Serb Political Thought (NSPM) lined up
reasons to believe this attack was committed by local Albanians.</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://srbinaokup.info//wp-content/uploads/2012/04/naoruzani_siptar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://srbinaokup.info//wp-content/uploads/2012/04/naoruzani_siptar.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: srbinaokup.info</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Namely, NSPM cites other, well-documented attacks by Albanians in this
narrow area where the Mitrovica-Leposavić main road leans on the Albanian-inhabited
villages of Žaže, Boljetin and Lipa, in Zvečan municipality.</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>In 2003, local Albanians attempted to tear down a nearby railroad bridge.
The Albanian National Army (ANA) took responsibility for this murder after the
UNMIK spokesperson denied the possibility of ANA's involvement.</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>Later that year, an Indian member of UNMIK was killed at the exact same location. The Albanian National Army (ANA) took responsibility for this murder
as well. </b><br />
<b>
</b><b>In 2006, a Ukrainian member of KFOR was shot when Albanians fired on KFOR
convoy in the same area. </b><br />
<b>
</b><b>The notorious video footage of Albanian snipers menacingly observing the
main road was shot by a Tirana Albanian channel in this location on April of
2012. Serbian pleas to disarm the former members of KLA roaming the area went
unheeded. According to Belgrade newspaper Novosti, KFOR spokesman Mark Stimmler
said for the occasion that the local Albanians were armed neither more nor less
than it was customary!</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>Adding to these instances of attacks against NATO, Albanian civilians stoned
Serbian buses on the same road on numerous occasions. </b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>All in all, judging by the past experience, if one is going to make any
assumptions, it's safe to assume that local Albanians killed the Lithuanian.
Whatever the investigation produces, Belgrade leadership's assumption that
Serbs have done this is malicious and extremely short-sighted and amateurish.
This is not to say that it should be taken lightly, quite the opposite. </b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>According to reports from mainstream media, denied by Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s
special envoy for Kosovo, Belgrade sent about 150 plain-clothed policemen into
North Kosovo to ostensibly help in the investigation, but in effect to further
enforce the already forceful message Serbia's official envoys have been
spreading to the Kosovo Serbs: Don't you dare oppose us! Under what other circumstances
would NATO, EULEX and the Albanian authorities have agreed to let the official
Serbia back into the conquered land?</b><br />
<br />
<b>As Enver Hoxhaj, the rogue state's foreign minister, hinted at in <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2013/09/23/kosovo-presses-belgrade-on-killing/" target="_blank">yesterday's interview to the Wall Street Journal</a>, Belgrade did get the green light to storm in under the investigation pretext and repress the opposition to the subordination process. It's not surprising that an Albanian official accuses local Serbs of killing the EULEX official in the area where only his Albanians conduct attacks and kill foreigners, but the fact that the official Belgrade does so builds an entirely new, although not-so-unexpected, political dimension.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Five days after the initial assumption and the accusatory reaction, though, whatever investigation is going on is not producing any results. But, the Serbs must have done it, right? Such is the presumption of guilt on the Imperial frontier. </b><br />
<b>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-4515835413715573042013-09-19T11:30:00.002-07:002013-09-20T10:15:33.907-07:00A Postcard from the Colonial Serbia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://sapphocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/puppetmaster1.gif?w=480&h=723" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://sapphocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/puppetmaster1.gif?w=480&h=723" width="212" /></a></div>
<b>The Republic of Serbia is sliding deeper into the neo-colonial state with
every decision and every public statement its leaders make. The North Atlantic
Empire and its collaborators have been tightening the noose around the neck of
the Serbian people for decades through physical destruction and takeover of
assets, and increasingly, by literally appointing its leaders and their
advisers. It is important to separate Serbia's leadership from its people and
emphasize that the ostensibly inefficient leadership has been put in place to
be inefficient in advancing the interest of the society, but very efficient at
executing the imperialist agenda by not fighting against it and allowing its
operatives to freely roam. They are not the best Serbia has; they are merely
the ones best serving the agenda of the Empire and one important part of that
agenda is to prevent the truly best and truly patriotic from rearing their
head. </b><br />
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b>Where to start delving into such an expansive subject?</b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>While in the years of Boris Tadić Serbia relinquished any political leverage
for defending its occupied province of Kosovo and Metohija, the events made a
hopeful turn with the surprising victory of Tomislav Nikolić in the
presidential election in May of 2012. While the deeply corrupt administration
of Tadić simply had to go for the sake of - so was hoped - Serbia's salvation,
the pre-mature announcement of Nikolić's victory, coming from Brussels of all
places, signaled that the post-Tadić era may not bring the substantial changes Nikolić's
voters had hoped for. And outside of changing the cast, the decades-long
scenario for Serbia's destruction kept being adhered to. Nikolić's politics is
a continuation of Tadić's, with a lot of acceleration and a lot more deception.</b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>Only a year later, the Serbian political leadership <i>de facto</i>
recognized the secession of Kosovo. Although they deny it in a very amateurish
and sloppy way, Serbia's leaders did agree to recognize Kosovo's Albanian
government as it sees itself, as well as the borders, customs, tax
jurisdiction, symbols, and the legal systems. Anyone who can read the documents
they signed with Hashim Thaci can see nothing but a not-so-implicit
recognition. On top of that, the Ivica Dačić-Aleksandar Vučić axis of power has
been forcing the insofar resilient Serbs of Kosovo to abolish their self-rule
and subject themselves to the rule of Hashim Thaci's administration. And they
have been doing this while feigning great difficulties in preserving Serbia's
integrity and emphasizing the imperative of Serbia continuing on its path
towards the European Union. Meanwhile, the statements from Brussels and Berlin
have been clear: without the explicit recognition of the Republic of Kosovo,
Serbia cannot hope to ever join the Union, regardless of what else it concedes
along the way and what dangled carrot it bites into from now to then. When you
willingly concede a trench to the advancing enemy (and the leading EU countries
have been the foremost promoters and sponsors of Kosovo's secession from
Serbia, even fighting a war against Serbia to that end), and you justify the
deed by the desire to please the enemy and get taken over by it, your
allegiances are clear beyond questioning: you are the agency of your people's
enemy. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>The amount of deception involved in the process of giving up Kosovo at the
orders of Brussels has been mind-boggling and defeating. The levels and the
nature of deception are not characteristic only to the Kosovo narrative; it is
omnipresent, but it is most obvious here, because the Kosovo issue is more
straightforward than, say, the broad and vague subject of corruption. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://www.novosti.rs/upload/images/2013//04/02/1%20VUCIC-ESTON-DACIC-0204-2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://www.novosti.rs/upload/images/2013//04/02/1%20VUCIC-ESTON-DACIC-0204-2013.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: novosti.rs</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>In the process of blocking any form of patriotic discourse out of the
mainstream, the Serbian public space has become completely dominated and
polluted by the basest kind of public relations maneuvering, the most
distasteful content and the lowest scum journalism and politics could produce.
The media organizations, void of ownership and financing transparency or, in
other cases, owned by Western European media conglomerates, cleansed
journalists of integrity and true servants of the public from its ranks.
Honorable exceptions are rare, subdued and trying to survive and feed their
families. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>The tabloids, ever-ready to serve any regime, came to dominate Serbia's news
arena by appealing to the lowest instincts of the average readers, in the
dirtiest fashion of Hollywood's and CNN's "dumb-it-down" methods.</b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>Vučić's omnipresent "war on corruption" has been the best example
of this. </b><br />
<b>Vučić, in slapping together the cabinet after the election last year,
took for himself several unrelated posts and carved up the cabinet so that he
gradually became identified as the increasingly dominant force within it,
despite the fact that he was not the prime minister. The image of a dictator
has been in the making by the public relations architects for some time and the
Serbian public has been carpet-bombed by it through the ubiquitous tabloids.
Although he hasn't been formally in charge of any aspect of any state mechanism
that could be reasonably expected to lead and execute the fight against
corruption, the ostensible victories have been associated with his name. The
strongest effect of the so-called "war on corruption" has been the
raising of the profile of Vučić. In all actuality, and this is becoming more
painfully obvious, this "war" was nothing but a decoy needed to
protect the true baron robbers of Serbia from punishment. After a year of
bombastic arrests, well-publicized by the tabloids well ahead of time, all we
could see was a selective justice, or no justice at all, for the sake of
removing the politically inexpedient out of the way of advancement of others
who wanted to take their place and their loot. We could also see no attempt to
reform the judicial system as a force in reducing corruption. We saw a man
being put up on a pedestal; this man, armed with self- and regime-serving
tabloids, deceived the public that there was a fight against those that robbed
it and that he was the one to be praised for it. More than a year later, some
of the arrested have been let go, some have been kept in detention, some have
been indicted but not tried, and most of those who the Serbian public equates
in guilt with those targeted are still walking the streets, more powerful than
before. Meanwhile, it's never been easier to buy a master degree, to perform a
surgery without any expertise, to run an energy conglomerate without any
qualifications, to procure a favor, to fix a public bid... How do you imagine
fighting corruption with the same Minister of Interior, the same state police
chief and the same special prosecutor for organized crime in place? If Dačić, Milorad
Veljović and Miljko Radisavljević wanted to fight and not to protect the
corrupt, they would've started years ago. Or are we saying they were prevented
by their boss, Tadić, from fighting corruption? Why hasn't Tadić been brought
to justice then?</b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://images3.kurir-info.rs/slika-620x419/izglasana-vlada-skupstina-srbije-1378163259-360665.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://images3.kurir-info.rs/slika-620x419/izglasana-vlada-skupstina-srbije-1378163259-360665.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: kurir-info.rs</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>The most recent example has been the so-called "reconstruction" of the cabinet. The one-year old cabinet was "reconstructed," 11 new ministers were named into 22 departments, all of this without the parliamentary election and without naming specific reasons and specific performance deficiencies of the replaced ministers. Simply, the cake needed to be cut anew, but outside of democratic procedures. If half the cabinet ministers did a bad job, what exact bad job did they do? How does such a huge number of under-performers reflect on the cabinet overall, i.e. if half the cabinet warrants replacement, should not the entire cabinet fall? Doesn't the entire cabinet warrant the examination of its work possible only via parliamentary election? But no one in the mainstream media demanded answers to these questions. Dačić and Vučić decided they wanted to stay in power despite the horrendous performance of their selected teams, and the people had no say in it. The deception succeeded to the degree of people not thinking they should have a say in it.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>
</b><b>To sum up, the Serbian public was deceived to think that the regime change
brought relief and that the new regime is "fixing problems," as Serbs
like to word it, while, in effect, there has been no interruption in the
process of subordinating and plundering Serbia. In hindsight, the only reason
the regime change was necessary was the continued deception: Tadić and his
cohorts were bringing the dissatisfaction to the boiling point, so the fresh
faces and fresh impressions were needed. The process could only continue
uninterrupted if the critical mass of people does not get enraged by the
installed puppets' actions to the point where it'd rise up and drag them into
the streets, or, God forbid, do something more serious, like pull its savings
out of the banks and commit mass credit default. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>To make the deception even graver, the economic side of things doesn't look
any brighter. While the NATO aggression on Serbia left its infrastructure and
industrial production in shambles, as was the war's objective, the violent
regime change colloquially referred to as the Fifth of October (of 2000),
opened the already trembling floodgates for marauding Western imperial shock
therapists and economic hit men. For the past 13 years, the economic narrative
of Serbia has been one of corrupt privatization processes, artificially induced
defaults, forceful acquisitions, rising unemployment, decline in production, a loan upon a loan from the IMF and other imperial loan-sharks, the ever-expanding political power of economic tycoons and the fire sale of all of
Serbia's valuable economic assets that anyone was interested in. And, most
tellingly, the siphoning of live cash out of the county in alarming amounts. In
other words, a re-colonization. A war on corruption is an impetus, but unless
the indictments start with the likes of Mlađan Dinkić and other corrupt
government officials, it remains a hoax. After all, only those elected and
appointed to serve the public can be corrupt. But the Empire would never
install a regime that would work in the interest of the Serbian public and
against its own.</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/26/article-2066493-0C16AAE400000578-583_634x436.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/26/article-2066493-0C16AAE400000578-583_634x436.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: dailymail.co.uk</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Under Nikolić, Ivica Dačić and Aleksandar Vučić, the colonization not only
intensified, but became more blatant and flagrant. While Slobodan Milosevic
used to bring in accomplished Serbs from the Diaspora to raise the legitimacy
of his regime, and while during the years of Zoran Đinđić and Vojislav Koštunica
- and Tadić, for that matter - a number of Serbian expatriates that returned to
participate in Serbia's politics and economy were at least well-qualified, if
not well-intentioned, the new Serbian regime made it a trend to employ
unqualified Serbs, from within and from abroad, and to make the travesty more
heinous, to hire such mercenaries as Alfred Gusenbauer, the much-maligned and
much-investigated former prime minister of Austria, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn,
the former head of the IMF who, for well-publicized
reasons unrelated to his economic expertise, needs no special introduction. Not
to mention the fact that the pre-eminent "killer" of Serbia's
economy, Dinkić, the man who for 13 years presided over Serbia's
ever-nosediving economy, most recently heading the Ministry of Finance,
remained in government even after his party was kicked out of the coalition.
He's now the vice-something in Vučić's committee for cooperation with United
Arab Emirates. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>That's another change the new regime introduced. In the spirit of Nikolić's
campaign promise, the only one he kept, Serbia's new regime has turned to all
four sides of the world in looking for buyers and colonial masters, as opposed
to Tadić's customary sycophantic gaze into the West. UAE's crown prince
Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan is leading the way in buying off
Serbia's remaining defunded and defunct assets. Apparently, the
colonization seed-and-bait money is coming from the Persian Gulf now, so Dinkić,
who always had his ear to the tracks, is in charge of filtering it through, and
siphoning the profits out and around. The Islamic influence in general is
gaining ground in Serbia, through investments and culture, and the regime is
doing nothing to slow it down. Remember, one of Belgrade's premier parks still
boasts a statue of former Azerbaijani dictator Heydar Aliyev, erected in his
honor by Tadić and Dragan Đilas, the mayor of Belgrade, because Aliyev's son,
the current dictator, spent some money beautifying the park. Mind-boggling, I
say.</b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>Serbia hoped for a change when Nikolić beat Tadić on the third attempt. After
all, Nikolić was a radical nationalist, who, for 17 years prior to his split
with the Serbian Radical Party, had been ranting against the practices that
brought Serbia to its knees. It was clear Nikolić and his sidekick Vučić
weren't the same politicians before and after the summer of 2008, but
understanding what any Serbian nationalist would be up against in trying to
come to power, and figuring that the old Radical notions of the united Serbdom
weren't feasible anymore, and imagining the rift within the party starring
Vojislav Šešelj on one and Nikolić and Vučić on the side, a lot of Serbian
moderate and progressive nationalists secretly hoped Nikolić and Vučić were
trying to deceive the Empire. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>The most damaging, but potentially the most cathartic effect, however, was
the cooptation of the traditional nationalist political current into the
imperial agenda. It is damaging for an obvious reason: the patriotic ideology
has no more significant outlets or outfits as Nikolić and Vučić didn't just
crossed to the dark side, but brought along a lot of moderate nationalists as
well, depriving them of the opportunity to align with their true ideology. An
entire range on the political spectrum has been occupied by the followers of Nikolić
and Vučić for years, because of who they were and what they said. Even those
nationalists who didn't like the two, flocked to their support in opposition to
the colonial regime of Tadić's Democratic Party. Now, while some have awakened
and others are beginning to, the Nikolić-Vučić range still occupies a
significant voting bloc. Some people vote for Nikolić's and Vučić's Serbian
Progressive Party by instinct, some have conveniently flown over from losing
parties, but more importantly, a lot of nationalists will abstain from the
process completely, thus giving up their power as citizens and contributing to
the imperial agenda remaining dominant. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>Of course, Serbia won't get better for it and that brings out the cathartic
aspect of the otherwise damaging effect of cooptation. Ideologically, the
Progressives have become indistinguishable from their opponents and
predecessors in power, and the trend shows that while they still occupy a large
chunk of the nationalist range of the ideological spectrum, they will be sliding
into the realm formerly held by the Democratic Party and squeeze it out or get
enmeshed with it. Tabloids, propaganda and deception can't put bread on
people's tables, and as a colonial regime, the Progressives and their Socialist
allies, together with their esteemed advisers, cannot do anything to help
Serbia's economy and living standards, if they cared to, just like the
Democrats couldn't and won't. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>The question is how long can the Empire continue stringing up and recycling
puppets before the disenfranchised Serbian people draw the line, and how long
will the nationalists who flocked to the Progressives keep making up excuses
for Nikolić and Vučić, before realizing they have been deceived, humiliated and
betrayed. Fortunately for the Empire, while the polyarchical socio-political
system it has built in Serbia doesn't stop people from distancing themselves
and opposing the colonial regime, it does prevent them from grouping together
under a single banner. The opposing ideological realm is cut up into very small
groupings that are generally disappointed offshoots of dominant currents and
that have no common ground to stand on. The Empire is not safe from having its
colonial regime overthrown, as the popular energy can be built up to that end,
but it seems safe from facing an alternative system, opposed to it, being set
up. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>What concerns me the most is that the Empire, once its puppet masters feel
their interests have been satisfied as much as the current regime was capable
of, or once they see a real threat to the puppet regime in the form of
accumulated popular opposition, would usurp the energy built up around the
opposition, activate trained activist cells dormant within the NGOs the
Western funds and institutes have set up and financed, stage another violent
coup and concoct a new political narrative that will extend its domination over
Serbia. </b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
<b>
</b><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-69181607293554146182013-08-16T13:57:00.000-07:002013-08-16T14:05:06.285-07:00Would Tesla Have Survived the Genocide?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://serbianna.com/srpski/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Smiljan_Memorial_Center2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://serbianna.com/srpski/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Smiljan_Memorial_Center2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: serbianna.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
According to Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanović, physicist Nikola Tesla and novelist Ivo Andrić were two of the greatest Croats that ever lived. Milanović stated this for the momentous occasion of Croatia's admittance into the European Union earlier this year. In Tesla's case at least, it'd be the same as if Barack Obama brazenly and hypocritically said that the legendary Sioux chief Sitting Bull was one of the greatest Americans that ever lived, regardless of the fact that the Americans committed genocide against the people Sitting Bull belonged to. Likewise, Croats committed genocide against Serbs, the people Tesla belonged to, but as the great Serbian poet Jovan Dučić said, Croats are the boldest people not because they don't fear anything, but because they have no shame. Thus, Milanović shamelessly usurped the legacy of a man whose family and neighbors Milanović's political predecessors exterminated.<br />
<br />
Nenad Jovanović of Serb National Council, a civic organization of the Serb minority in Croatia, <a href="http://snv.hr/vijesti/zatrto-sjecanje-na-stradanja-u-rodnom-mjestu-nikole-tesle/" target="_blank">reminded the public on Thursday</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (link in Serbian)</span> of the fate that would have most definitely awaited the great scientist if he found himself in his native village rather than in New York City in 1941. <br />
Smiljan, a small village in the region of Lika, nested on the eastern slopes of Mt. Velebit several kilometers west of Gospić, was the birthplace of Tesla in 1856 and a scene of the terrible carnage Croat fascists inflicted on his fellow villagers less than 90 years later, in one of the lesser known episodes of the genocidal enterprise by the Independent State of Croatia, aimed at its Serbian population. The genocide, which began with the creation of the Croat fascist state in April of 1941, halved the Serbian ethnic presence in the areas that are today Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.<br />
<br />
As for Smiljan, Jovanović writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>"The numerous visitors that pay homage to the world-renowned genius Nikola Tesla at his memorial complex in the village of Smiljan next to Gospić, upon approaching the Orthodox church of St. Peter and Paul, remain shorted for an answer to the question of who rests in the large tomb at the cemetery that lies on the slope of the hill next to the church. Until 1991, they could get that answer from the monument erected over the tomb. It read that, at this place, remains lie of more than 530 victims of Ustasha genocide committed from 1941 to 1945. Judging from the absence of any desire to restore the monument, this will stay a secret for many generations to come." <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(translated by SR)</span></i></span></div>
</blockquote>
Jovanović cites at least three major massacres, with the central one taking place in August of 1941, when 506 Serbs of Smiljan and the adjacent hamlets were rounded up and executed. The last known massacre took place as late as March of 1945. Croats also destroyed the church in which Tesla's father Milutin had been the parochial priest. Many Serb residents ended up in the nearby death camp of Jadovno, never to be seen again.<br />
<br />
The now-absent monument with the inscription was erected in 1977, according to Sofija Pejnović of the Archive of Serbs in Croatia, quoted in Jovanović's article, after partial remains were collected and re-interred at the tomb. Every August 2, until 1991, relatives and neighbors of the victims
gathered to pay respects at the tomb, which now stands unmarked. The author stops short of describing the circumstances that led to the removal of the monument in 1991, but it coincided with the rise of Croat militant chauvinism and the accession of Franjo Tuđman's Croat Democratic Union, which built its legacy partially on the re-branding of Croat clero-fascism from the Second World War. <br />
<br />
Pejnović herself went on to wonder how the great man would have fared if he had the misfortune of being in Lika at the time of the genocide. She regrets the unwillingness of Croatian authorities to conclusively deal with the legacies of their fascist predecessors and restore the monument. Yet, for political expediency and cultural self-validation, they readily usurp the legacy of Tesla and other Serbs hailing from the areas that relatively recently became Croatia.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-52751474464911500032013-08-14T12:33:00.001-07:002013-08-14T13:27:27.696-07:00The Fall of Porphyrogenitus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pesicisinovi.co.rs/image/vincansko-pismo01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.pesicisinovi.co.rs/image/vincansko-pismo01.gif" width="215"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: pesicisinovi.co.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>I’ve become an adherent of the Serbian autochthonic
historical school (SAS). <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/02/deretic-against-porphyrogenitus.html" target="_blank">Back when I wrote</a> about the need to strategically
approach the overthrow of the official conjecture of Serbian history, the one taught
in schools, in favor of the better supported and the more logical narrative
pushed by a group tentatively led by Jovan I. Deretić, I was just a believer, but, I
admit, I was not ready to enter full blown arguments nor did I fully understand
the depth to which the official version of Serbian history has been falsified. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>I do not intend to expound on what historians like Deretić,
Dragoljub Antić, Slobodan Jarčević, archeologists like
Đorđe Janković, anthropologists like Srboljub Živanović, linguists like Olga Luković-Pjanović, Svetislav
Bilbija and Radivoje Pešić, and numerous others before them have argued and
substantiated in opposition to the official narrative centered on the notion
that Serbs settled their current homeland in the Balkans in the first half of
the 7<sup>th</sup> century A.D. These scientists and researchers have done the
work that a mere blog entry can only under-appreciate or distort, if trying to
rehash or analyze their voluminous findings. Rather, directing this at the
adherents of any imposed official narrative and the apprehensive, not only
among the Serbs, I want to ask them to open their minds, tear down the ideological
walls blocking their willingness to learn and try to dwell in the realm where
dogma is not knowledge and where gaining knowledge is a continuum. In other
words, give thinking and learning a chance. History of the Balkans is the
history of Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, Illyrians, Thracians, Celts, Huns,
Goths, Turks and other real and conjectured historic nations, and new interpretations and findings
about it should interest every European historian and history buff. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>For the laymen, of whom I consider myself just an advanced
one, it is important to put the Serbian autochthonic historical school in a
political paradigm. I say political because the official narrative, the one advanced
after the Berlin Congress of 1878, became official not through any scientific
discourse, but through political decisions. Simply, under the direct influence
of the scientific elites of Western European powers that held Serbia’s
international recognition in its hands, the government of Serbia established
the conclusions of what the Autochthonists call the Vienna-Berlin school of history
(VBS). The VBS-propagated narrative rivaled the long-held views of Serbian
academics and aimed to replace the notion that Serbs were descendants of the
people autochthonous to the Southeast Europe with the theory that proposed they
were settlers or invaders from the lands beyond the Carpathian Mountains. Those
scholars that objected to this new narrative were either censored, like Miloš Milojević
and Pantelija Srećković, or ignored, like Sima Lukin Lazić. Roughly a hundred and
fifty years later, after several generations of Serbs learned that their
ancestors showed up on Lower Danube as invaders and/or were resettled around
the Roman Illyricum by the Eastern Roman emperors in the 7<sup>th</sup> century
A.D., replacing a couple of million people that had already lived there for millennia,
the representatives of the renewed Serbian Autochthonic School sound ludicrous
with their findings and conclusions that negate the official version. But they
are ludicrous only to the closed-minded as their analysis of historiography,
replete with sources otherwise held in high esteem by world historians, supports
their conclusions in an absolutely more convincing way than the VBS scholars
can ever hope to root their official narrative in. The VBS advocates among
Serbian historians still, however, dominate the educational and political institutions
in Serbia, which leaves no room for a contentious academic debate on the subject. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUAM:INV100979_dynmc?width=560&height=560" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUAM:INV100979_dynmc?width=560&height=560" width="320"></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: harvard.edu</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>I’ve become an adherent not because the SAS-proposed
narrative glorifies Serbdom so much more, but because it is so much more
convincing and backed by more credible evidence. Let me be clear: the human history
is largely unknown, regardless of what scholars claim they have concluded with
certainty. Most of it is not written, and what’s written could have been
one-sided, falsified and otherwise dishonest. Further we go into the past, more
unknowns and more speculation we find. This includes the knowledge about some
of the better known historical developments and phenomena. We still cannot
claim with certainty who built Rome and who the original Romans were. Nor do we
know the origins of the leader of the barbarians who finally sacked Rome,
Odoacer. Yet we interpret events that followed with unwarranted certainty. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>If
Romans could not exist before Rome was built, who built Rome? The Etruscans? The
Latins? Depends on who you ask. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Who were the Illyrians? Where they a homogenous
group? What language(s) did they speak? What do we know about them that is outside
of the uncertain? What did they call themselves? We do not know. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>How do we know
that these Illyrians, with the name given to them by their Greek neighbors,
with the attested warlike habits and the spirit of resistance that put both
Roman and Macedonian conquests on a trial, did not call themselves Serbs? All
we know is that they supposedly disappeared exactly when Serbs showed up, although
there is no explanation of how a lightly armed barbarian horde could subdue and
eradicate a nation Alexander the Great and Augustus had serious troubles with,
a nation that for three centuries produced Roman emperors and generals. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Weren’t
most of the names of the ancient peoples just conjectures of their hostile
neighbors? </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Most of the historical sources leave a lot to be desired and
leave plenty of room for speculation. If we are to dwell in the world of
speculation, let’s speculate in logical rather than illogical terms and let’s
lean on the historiography that is more convincing and credible, even if it
leaves something to be desired, rather than on the sources that are hardly
credible and hardly convincing. I did not become an adherent of SAS because I believe all that the Autochthonists say, but because the official version that I learned in school sounds crazy.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br></b></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>So, without going too deep into the complex historical analysis,
what is so logical about the Autochthonists’ views on the Serbian past?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The central theme of the Autochtonists’ historical claims is
the purported settling of the Serbs in the Roman province of Dalmatia in the
first decades of the 7<sup>th</sup> century A.D. as described in <i>De Administrando
Imperio</i>, the 10<sup>th</sup> century writing reportedly authored by the Eastern
Roman Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. The Autochthonists claim that
DAI is the only source describing the migration of the Serbs to the Balkans,
that it describes a physically impossible effort of a mass migration and that
the sources contradicting DAI are numerous. Furthermore, they claim that Serbs
are the autochthonous people of the Roman Illyricum and that they, under a
variety of names, inhabited the area since before the Roman times. The SAS
denies that Serbs could settle Dalmatia, as DAI claims, in a mass way, or that
any large tribal group could move in a way DAI described, without the necessary
logistics, even if the territory they moved over was not inhabited by hostile
population. The Authochthonists explain the migration of peoples in the ancient
times as movements of name-bearing elites rather than of majority of
population. They break down a mass migration in the 7<sup>th</sup> century
conditions that existed in Pannonia and the Illyricum and prove it physically
impossible, unfeasible and inexplicable. Add to it the fact that only one
source of questionable credibility describes it, we have very little reason to
believe Serbs settled Dalmatia in the 7<sup>th</sup> century A.D. with the
approval of an Eastern Roman emperor. The Autochthonists completely destroy DAI as the source for establishing the origins of Serbs.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br></b></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Bato-1.jpg/240px-Bato-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Bato-1.jpg/240px-Bato-1.jpg" width="185"></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: wikipedia.org</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The SAS does not only negate the migration, but,
stemming from this negation, attempt to decipher the Serbian existence in the
Helm (old name for the Balkans) prior to it, through the Romanization, resistance to Roman conquests, and,
under a variety of names for different tribes of one and the same people, show
that the Slavic Serbs originate in Pannonia and dwell across the Balkans for
the duration of the Antiquity. Archeological and anthropological evidence they lean on show that
the people calling themselves Serbs today continually inhabit the area all the
way back into the Vinča civilization of the 6<sup>th</sup> millennium B.C. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>On the surface, it looks to a layman that one speculation is
going up against another, but in volumes of research, the Autochthonists, who
are not an organized group but a collection of like-minded scientists, cited
sources like Herodotus, Appian, Strabo, Plinius the Elder, Nestor of Kiev, Einhard etc., as
well as their own original research. On the other hand, the VBS and the
mainstream narrative proponents have nothing but DAI, which the SAS claims was falsified
by the Vatican in the 17<sup>th</sup> century for the purpose of establishing
the Croat nation in the Western Balkans as a rival to the Serbs, and the hold
over the political power. This motive for the falsification of DAI is at the
gist of the narrative replacement theory; for the German movement eastward, the
notorious <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drang Nach Osten</i>, it was
important to prepare an ideological terrain, to deny the right of the Slavs
to their ancestral homeland, to brand them invaders and usurpers and to build a
premise for their removal or assimilation. Croats, in this sense, would be just
a historical episode in this conquest, a role the Slavic groups of today’s West
Baltic or Austria played in the past. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drang
Nach Osten</i>, in effect, consists of centuries-long push by the German
ambition to conquer and assimilate scores of Slavic nations from the North
Sea to the Alps.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>These are historical notions, backed by facts and
analysis, but submerged in the dominance of German-influenced cultural and
scientific patterns. The Serbian Autochthonists look away from the Germanic
influences and into the Serbian own scientific and research capabilities, to
get closer to the truth about their own past.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br></b></div>
<b>
</b><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Of course I won’t try to convince anyone that the autochthonic
narrative is the Holy Writ of the Serbian history. One has to make one’s
own conclusions. Just like I didn’t accept DAI for a long time before I even
familiarized myself with the Autochthonists, I don’t take for granted every
conclusion they’ve arrived to. What is important is not to disqualify their
findings and not to confine oneself within the boundaries imposed by their scholarly
rivals. What I scratched in this text hopefully only spreads the debate. But
the debate is what is needed, for the sake of science, and it can only happen
if the interested scholars are open to it. More importantly, this debate should
not be left only for scholars to drive; all the learned and the willing to
learn should take part in it, if for no other reason but to figure out how and why
historical narratives are created and imposed for political expediency and how it affects their reality. So far, Serbian
mainstream historians have only resorted to mockery, name-calling and
defamation of the Autochthonists, despite the calls for a scientific debate. This
is not surprising; the mainstream historians have built their reputation and
had their titles bestowed on them by following the simple rule of repeating the
official narrative. No digging, no researching, just repeating. To abandon it
would mean a complete devaluation of their careers.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The main perceived deficiency and the main reason for the mockery and disqualification of the Autochthonists' findings pertains to them possessing elements of what the reactionaries all over the world call conspiracy theory. Of course, any discovery that endangers power-that-are will be characterized and disqualified as conspiracy theory by pundits and advocates who strive to remain entrenched in the mainstream, that is, in the good grace of those powers. Nothing wrong in being branded a conspiracy theorist by those whose conspiracy you aim to reveal and unmake. Moreover, it is quite natural that serious plans are kept secret and that one part of keeping a secret is to attempt a character assassination of those who get close to publicizing it. It doesn't mean those who seek the truth should stop just because they get called names.</b></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-78858488210155742162013-06-03T13:52:00.000-07:002013-06-04T12:34:40.655-07:00News from Under the Carpet: Mass Graves of Sarajevo Serbs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQacyAMCiEKHGWd5IFG1n-6-xH8YCYOJ2MfYH9Um3hwpoETH2D_" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQacyAMCiEKHGWd5IFG1n-6-xH8YCYOJ2MfYH9Um3hwpoETH2D_" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: slavicnet.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Sarajevo is known to a common Westerner as a town surrounded by mountains that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics. Younger Westerners, and those not interested in sports, especially at freezing temperatures, remember Sarajevo as a town besieged by the Army of the Serb Republic for three years in the early 1990s. At least, that's what their trusted media told them. Fans of Angelina Jolie became familiar with Sarajevo after her failed attempt at directing called "In the Land of Blood and Honey," which portrayed a twisted love story with a Serb "war criminal" and a local Muslim girl as the main protagonists. Well, the only <i>real</i> story of the kind was the one of Boško Brkić, a Serb, and Admira Ismić, a Muslim, killed by a sniper on the Vrbanja bridge trying to escape from the Muslim-held area and towards the Serb defense lines. Serb soldiers were able to pull their bodies out and bury them in the suburb of Lukavica. Most of the victims of Sarajevo, primarily on the Serb side, haven't gotten a proper burial even to this day.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>What the Western audiences do not remember Sarajevo for was the horrible loss of life suffered by the Sarajevo Serbs during the Bosnian war of 1992-1995. On June 3, the renewed effort at exhuming remains found new evidence of mass graves within the city limits where the killed Serb civilians were reportedly buried by their Muslim executioners during the ethnic cleansing campaign. The exhumations at the Alipašino Polje locality produced remains of four
different individuals, before they were brought to a halt last November.
After the local Serb associations of victims' families and concentration camp survivors
accused the officials of Bosnia's Missing Persons Institute of a cover-up and of blocking the exhumations, the effort was renewed and the new evidence now seems to point towards the early findings just being a tip of the iceberg. The Serb organizations insisted that the Alipašino Polje locality be further explored and threatened lawsuits, citing witness testimonies that pointed at this locality being one of many in which the killed Sarajevo Serbs' bodies were being dumped.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<b>Of pre-war Sarajevo's roughly 160,000 Serbs (about 30 percent of population) it is estimated that less than 20,000 remain in the city today.* A majority of them was expelled during and after the war, but Belgrade's Institute for Investigations of Serb Suffering in the 20th Century named 6,755 Serb civilians confirmed to have been killed in Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995 at the hands of various armed factions and thugs in one way or another related to the Bosnian government led by Alija Izetbegović. In the book <i>Serb Victims and Places of Execution of Sarajevo Serbs</i>, written by Milivoje Ivanišević, Institute's top researcher, the author adds to the above number the names of 1,390 individuals still considered missing, 27 individuals who died immediately after the war, succumbing to wounds and injuries, as well as 53 names of individuals whose identities could not be confirmed with absolute certainty.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkcgMX_JuK_yop1ZfjPL-vMYKPEflYDL-3aVdY8xDbNB0G3v7Z" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkcgMX_JuK_yop1ZfjPL-vMYKPEflYDL-3aVdY8xDbNB0G3v7Z" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: novosti.rs</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>When the war began, thousands of Serbs fled the city into the Serb-majority suburbs, but thousands of others remained at their Sarajevo homes, refusing to take sides. They were targeted for their property, or for the simple fact that they were Serbs, meaning second-class citizens in the Muslim-controlled city, unprotected by law. Responding to Bosnian Muslims' dismissals and counter-claims that the Sarajevo Serbs were killed in the Serb shelling of the city, Ivanišević retorted that, according to his findings, most of the victims were killed at close range, in their homes and in the concentration camps such as the Viktor Bubanj garrison or the Kazani death pit. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Mirsad Tokača, a Bosnian Muslim researcher, claimed the total number of civilian victims among the Bosnian Serbs - in all of Bosnia-Herzegovina - to be about 4,000, which contrasted Serb accounts in a preposterous way. Survivor accounts and family members' testimonials, topped with demographic research rebuked Tokača. American lawyer Stefan Karganović, who analyzed demographic findings on behalf of the government of the Serb Republic, argued against Tokača's findings and criticized him for minimizing the number of Serb victims and wildly exaggerating Bosnian Muslim casualties of war. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The well-documented anti-Serb bias in the matters of investigations of these and other war crimes has stalled any meaningful progress in bringing a closure to the families of the victims. Almost eighteen years after the war ended, most of them still haven't been given a chance to properly bury their loved ones. Various judicial, administrative and political maneuvers by the Sarajevo government and the relevant international agencies effectively undermined investigations of war crimes against Serbs in general. The matter of thousands of Sarajevo Serbs, occasionally brought back to light by the families seeking justice, is but one of many.</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
*<span style="font-size: x-small;">Since the war's end, Bosnian Muslim leader and parties have been blocking a population census from being conducted, so all demographic data related to Bosnia-Herzegovina are mere estimates. These estimates often include the Serbs living in the former divisions of the city adjoined to the municipality of East Sarajevo, in Serb Republic.</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">The latest is that the census is projected to be held in October of 2013.</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-55941501675858833792013-04-08T13:51:00.001-07:002013-04-08T18:47:21.753-07:00Referendum Questions for the Nothing Deal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkXVkDo4S2i9WjvEYAp5ner7FbZW-w5rNahJG62WW4fdKG91Jl" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkXVkDo4S2i9WjvEYAp5ner7FbZW-w5rNahJG62WW4fdKG91Jl" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: kurir-info.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The government of Serbia rejected the Brussels-imposed terms on dismantling of the North Kosovo self-government on Monday and urged the counterparts in Brussels to continue
negotiations. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After several days of meetings at the highest level and a general
fear-mongering atmosphere spread by the statements of high government officials
in somber, cataclysmic overtones, Serbia's leadership decided to heed the
overwhelming popular resentment towards the perceived ultimatum and say "No!"
to Brussels. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"No" to what exactly remains a mystery. No one has ever seen the
proposal Serbia was deliberating on. According to Aleksandar Vučić, the First
Deputy Prime Minister, the terms of the proposal were merely "read off"
to the Serbian delegation at the end of the long session on April 2 and the
proposed "solution" included "nothing" for Serbia. Namely,
amidst the bombastic news coverage dominated by the reports of Vučić and Hashim
Thaci "raising voice" at one another, and vague statements of interpretation
of the proposal, submerged into a Shakespearean "to-be-or-not-to-be"
dilemma and the clamor of spin from both opponents and proponents of accepting
"nothing," the people of Serbia were shorted for the real debate on
not just this proposal, but the larger issue at stake here.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Vučić, the most dominant political figure in Serbia, despite the official
hierarchical position he holds, set the tone for the nail-biter weekend of
deliberation, first with the reported winning of the staring contest with Thaci
and then with building the divisive public atmosphere in the run-up to Monday's
decision. This was the eighth round of negotiations between mainly Prime
Minister Ivica Dačić and Kosovo Albanian leader Hashim Thaci, which Vučić
joined for the first time. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The negotiations, to the best knowledge of the Serbian public, focused on
the status of the Serb-populated North Kosovo - the four municipalities -
within what is apparently, though not explicitly, accepted to be an independent
state of Kosovo, dominated by its Albanian majority and occupied by NATO.
Several months back, in January, Dačić agreed to proceed with the
implementation of the so-called "integrated border management" plan,
agreed to by the Boris Tadić administration and its special negotiator Borko Stefanović
in December of 2011. That plan, at the time it was conceived and accepted, was
not presented to either the Serbian public or the Serbian National Assembly.
Serbs in North Kosovo had been defending the right to self-determination, and in
this specific case, to the physical connection with the rest of Serbia, with
their bodies, for months prior and post the Stefanović deal. The new Serbian
government, by implementing the IBM deal, effectively made a step towards <i>de
facto</i> recognition of Kosovo's secession and inclusion of Kosovo's Serbs into
the rogue state. Both Stefanović and Dačić pushed the deal onto the Serbian
public as pertaining to "administrative crossings," avoiding the
clearly identified term "border." The language and its repercussions
couldn't be clearer and more defeating, however. The deal imposed the Albanian
customs officers on the administrative crossings between North Kosovo and the
rest of Serbia, effectively drawing a border and giving Priština the power to
collect customs. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The implementation of IBM paved the way for the new-old condition, read off
to Dačić and Vučić in Brussels: dismantle the autonomous political institutions
of the North Kosovo Serbs and subjugate them to the will of Priština. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSLhr8utPeOOp7rtCGgJ9mVhVnJMPsEjz5C6mmoIDLaC_l28Gjn" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSLhr8utPeOOp7rtCGgJ9mVhVnJMPsEjz5C6mmoIDLaC_l28Gjn" /></a></span></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: b92.net</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">EU's Catherine Ashton posed as the neutral sponsor of the talks. Meanwhile,
the EU is a side of the Kosovo conflict since all of its member-countries
fought the war that wrested the province away from Serbia, and more
momentously, since its police force patrols the NATO-occupied province in
accord with the Ahtisaari plan, which has never been validated and accepted by
the United Nations Security Council, nor has it ever overridden the
still-standing UNSC Resolution 1244. The EU, contrary to the Helsinki Final Act
and contrary to the wishes of five of its member-countries who haven't
recognized Kosovo's independence, decided to take the Albanian side and aid it
in winning concessions from Serbia. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On April 2, following seven bargaining sessions and hours of
"negotiations" in the eighth, Ashton could only come up with a list
of what apparently were watered-down Albanian demands for the end of Serbia's
protections for Kosovo Serbs. Vučić talked of a "huge disappointment"
in Ashton's approach. While Aleksandar Vulin, head of Serbia's Kosovo Office,
named four stumbling blocks in the negotiations last Tuesday, Vučić found one
disrespectful enough. Namely, while Serbs were asking for a minimum of autonomy
for North Kosovo, including judiciary, local police, demilitarization and urban
planning, Thaci, who fought for independence from Serbia that already had given
the Kosovo Albanians a full political and cultural autonomy, kept rejecting even
the minimum of political rights for Kosovo Serb. Not only that, but he insisted
on redrawing the municipal map of Kosovo to gerrymander the Serb majority in
the four municipalities and lump the North Kosovo Serbs into a larger region in
which Albanians would overwhelm them. That's when Vučić, admittedly, lost his
temper.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ashton and Thaci came back with a "final solution," which was, in
effect, a slightly modified gerrymandering attempt to erase the Serbian
majority area. That, following the deliberation within the Dačić cabinet, among
the leadership of all the ruling coalition parties, with President Nikolić,
with the leadership of Serb Republic (yes, Milorad Dodik came to Belgrade to
lend his bit of advice), and following the blessing of Serbian Orthodox
Patriarch Irinej, was rejected on Monday. Not to mention the popular outrage Vučić
and Dačić undoubtedly strained to hear correctly. The Dveri Movement and
the Movement Neverborder organized sit-in protests at the Republic Square in
Belgrade and refused to leave until the national leadership said "No"
to Thaci and Ashton.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the whirlwind of emotions the Kosovo issue inevitably stirs up in Serbia,
several important points were missed:</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.b92.net/news/pics/2013/04/07/4081529255161a3ea5379f549049492_368x246.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.b92.net/news/pics/2013/04/07/4081529255161a3ea5379f549049492_368x246.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: b92.net</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. Serbia's representatives were allowed by the public to easily slide
without being held up for the word-for-word interpretation of the proposal,
including all the points of the proposal and the explanation how it was
possible that, in a bargaining session, one side doesn't get the final proposal
from the other side, in a written form. In other words, while most Serbs reject
proposals from the EU outright because the EU has never displayed signs of
neutrality in Serbian-Albanian relations, the public needed to hear and see
every letter of the document pertaining to the paramount national issue. How
could Vučić and Dačić leave Brussels so utterly
disrespected and short-changed? The basic rules of bargaining were violated here and the violated
side did not even complain about it.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. Since the EU continued to treat Serbia with utmost indignation and
disrespect, how reasonable is it to expect that such treatment will not be
continued no matter what Serbia conceded en route to pleasing Brussels into
granting it the date for the start of accession talks? And considering the
damages that the EU's involvement in the Serbian affairs has inflicted on
Serbia so far, why would Vučić and Dačić continue to insist on the European
path, going as far as prophesying a doomsday if Serbia didn't accept the latest
ultimatum or if it abandoned the EU path for any other reason?</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. Was this mere bargaining over the status of the Serb minority inside a "Republic of Kosova," with the recognition of independence implied? Serbia's Constitution prohibits the government from treating Kosovo as an entity outside of Serbia, but Thaci is being treated as a foreign leader. Phrases like "the normalization of relations" implies two independent countries, and nowhere is it emphasized that the talks are not between two independent countries. Serbia is going to be required to recognize Kosovo before, if ever, the accession to the EU happens, that's been made clear on many EU levels. By negotiating lesser points and skipping over the question of status and an agreement on it, the recognition becomes implicit, but irreversible as the institutionalization of agreement terms drives the Kosovo formal independence to the point of <i>fait accompli</i>. In other words, if the status is not negotiated now, there won't be other opportunities. Like the IBM deal divested Serbia of key leverage points, any future deal will make the Kosovo recognition as a process more and more irreversible.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://images3.kurir-info.rs/slika-900x608/manastiri-svetinje-kosovo-gracanica-kosmet-ksp-kfor-1328585176-47156.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://images3.kurir-info.rs/slika-900x608/manastiri-svetinje-kosovo-gracanica-kosmet-ksp-kfor-1328585176-47156.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: kurir-info.rs</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4. Was such a proposal just what was to be expected following the politics
of concessions by Serbia? How could any one be surprised, especially the two
people who have been on the receiving end of the EU politics their entire
lives? The impression is that Serbia is not bargaining, thus not asking for
anything and getting nothing, but merely looking for ways to make the
concessions less painful and to that end spinning the messages from the EU to
placate the reaction of its own people. If the UNSC effectively didn't afford
Kosovo a recognition of independence, why is Serbia doing it? Ashton and other
imperial emissaries can wrap it in any cloth they want, i.e. spin it as
normalization and stabilization, it is clear that nothing less than Serbia's <i>de
facto</i> recognition of Kosovo's independence is demanded. This is not even a
case of obstinacy in the face of perceived injustice. No, it is a case of
defending statehood by defending one's Constitution and the people this
administration swore to protect. Serbia soon won't exist if it keeps conceding.
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5. It is wrong to assume this proposal, however unjust and - as Vučić said -
"terrifying" it apparently is, means some form a D-Day for Serbia.
While this administration inherited a very bad situation from the previous one,
and while it was Boris Tadić who abandoned the UNSC Resolution 1244 and allowed
the Ahtisaari plan to take effect, the Dačić government built up to this moment
itself by following in Tadić's footsteps and by not making any constructive
moves to alleviate the bad predicament. There could be no mistake that only
ultimatums and blackmail could be expected from the EU and only sheer
aggression from the Albanians in future as well. Unconditionally insisting on
the EU path means that Serbia is not opening itself for options, but that it
must consider any condition the EU imposes in return for the acceptance in very uncertain forms.
Thus, the latest ultimatum is only the latest one in the line of similar
Western threats, and it won't be the last one like it wasn't the first one.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">6. Why aren’t the interests of the Serbs south of Ibar considered at all? More
Serbs live in the ghettoized enclaves south of Ibar than north of it. They have
been subjugated by the Albanian rogue state, but the prospects of their
survival are dim if the North Kosovo falls into the Albanian hands. The need
for pretenses of a multiethnic society will cease and all the Serbs are gradually
to be expelled. No reason given to believe otherwise. Finally, together with the people
and the land, the greatest value of Kosovo lies in its being the spiritual cradle
of the Serb nation. No one is negotiating the future of Serbian cultural
heritage, churches and monasteries eight centuries old. These cultural
monuments, still alive as centers of spirituality, have been under
attack, both physically and culturally. While the physical destruction has been
well documented, it is less obvious – although the Albanians are not hiding it –
that the Serbian religious objects are planned to be passed off as Albanian
medieval heritage. One only needs to look for a Kosovo country guide in any
American bookstore. The Serbian expulsion from Kosovo can only be made final
when all of the components of Serbian historical presence are destroyed. By not
insisting on the inclusion of these points, Serbia is giving them up. </span></b><br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGmcYgineoTLOlQ_ZmoSaFqdttgJl8Oe_amlBH6yLW6FZdVTFTMg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGmcYgineoTLOlQ_ZmoSaFqdttgJl8Oe_amlBH6yLW6FZdVTFTMg" /></a></span></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: alo.rs</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When the Serbian public is forced to think only in terms of ultimatums, only
in simple, referendum-type terms, the people’s energy is manipulated into
neglecting key issues and key battlefields where Kosovo can and must still be
defended. Only the most emotional opponents of Kosovo independence in Serbia
are still overlooking the fact that NATO and Albanians have succeeded in
ripping most of the province away from Serbia. But they haven’t succeeded in stealing
all of the land and they haven't succeeded in stealing any of its heart and soul. But
they will keep trying and will succeed only if Serbs give it all up. The battle
for Kosovo is much more than mere physical control of the stolen land. </span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But as nothing radical is going to happen because Serbia rejected this
"nothing" deal, it may cost the EU some credibility in dealing with
the situation and it may be pushed out by the more determined forces, like the
United States, as we saw happen during the Bosnian War. Would that effectuate a
counter-intervention from the East, that of Russia, it is hard to predict.
Russia has voiced its opposition to the proposal, but its ambiguous approach to
the Serbian affairs leaves us guessing. Thaci would most definitely like to
dispatch a NATO ethnic cleansing unit to "liberate" the North and be
rid of the Serb population for good, and as such an option was made available
to Croatia in 1995 and to Thaci himself in 2004, I wouldn't put it past him to
try and win support for it again.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is unclear whether the rejection of the ultimatum was an act of
bravery or an act of calculated misleading of own people. Time will tell, and
soon. Whichever it is, the terms of it need to be clarified and interpreted.</span></b><br />
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" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: palelive.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Mired in the avalanche of
political spin, hyper-production of distractions and non-stories designed to
confuse, rile up, discourage or diffuse, in other words, to manufacture and
perpetuate the matrix of control, we allow stories of true value to get covered
in dust, the examples of true valor to die forgotten and prevented from lifting
up the Serbian nation.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">This is a story that must
be shared today. This is a story of Spomenko Gostić, а soldier of the Army of Serb Republic and a war hero. When he was killed by a Bosnian Muslim mortar
on March 20, 1993, Spomenko was five months short of his 15th birthday. He was
not a hero just because he fought in defense of his people; at the young age of
14, with none of his dreams fulfilled, he consciously sacrificed them all for
one ideal: courage in patriotism.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">When Predrag Simikić, a
French Serb who saw a report on Spomenko airing on Television Novi Sad in the
fall of 1992, came to the front lines of Mt. Ozren to find him and offered to
adopt him and take him to France, Spomenko thanked his benefactor and refused
to go while the war was still being fought, deciding not to abandon his
brethren. He promised he'd visit France when the war ended. He had no way of
knowing he wouldn't live that long.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">He could have easily saved
himself, and he would've been forgiven. He was 14, it wasn't his war. Men
with more of a duty to stay and fight fled. But, I guess, they were lesser men
than Spomenko. Cynics would say he was a foolish child. Cynics would blame
those who let him stay on the front lines. At 14, he couldn't be foolish. He
didn't have time to become foolish. The fact that grown men let him stay in
harm’s way doesn’t take anything away from his heroism and it is his heroism
that has to be honored. The cynics can miss the point and be wrong at any age,
I guess. </span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Spomenko Gostić was born
on August 14, 1978, in Doboj, Bosnia. His life story was heroic, its ending
heartbreaking, and 20 years later, it is merely a passing news item, which
compounds the tragedy. In 1992, the first months of the war took his
grandmother, his last family. She was killed by an enemy mortar in their
village of Jovići, which bordered Muslim villages. His village being near the
western defense lines of Serb-held Mt. Ozren, Spomenko took refuge with a unit
of the Army of Serb Republic. At the time, the orphan had nowhere else to go.
And, apparently, he didn’t want to go anywhere.</span></b><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="data:image/jpeg;base64,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" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: banjaluka-info.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The Army took him in, and
Spomenko, with his friend Velibor Tripić, volunteered to become a mail courier.
According to Tripić, Spomenko was soon "promoted" and given a horse-drawn cart to deliver food rations to the soldiers on the front line, a very
dangerous task. Protruding into the Muslim-controlled territory, Mt. Ozren area
was surrounded by Muslim forces on three sides and it was an arena of
never-ending battles. Threatening to cut the Muslim-controlled territory in
two, it was a must-conquer piece of land for the Bosnian Muslim army. The
defense lines were unsteady. Muslim numbers were overwhelming on all fronts.
Spomenko had to navigate his way with the horse team towards and along the Serb
trenches, and out of the sight of Muslim artillery and snipers, often through
minefields. At one point, a land mine blew up his wagon, killing his horses,
but he escaped with light wounds. He recovered and returned to defend Jovići,
heavily shelled and deserted by the population, joining only a handful of
troops. Helping with food, mail and ammunition delivery, transporting the
wounded, being shot at and himself wounded on a few occasions, Spomenko was
unwavering in his courage: he soldiered on through bullets, mortar fire and
mud. On the Visići Hill, on March 20, 1993, the mortar that killed him was one
too many for the young hero to evade.</span></b><br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Spomenko's case was
extreme because he was a boy. He was an unconventional man in an unconventional
war. He was not merely defending the front, he was the front, reportedly
swearing on his grandmother's grave that he wouldn't leave. The wondering about who let this boy die on a front line could be left only to the uninformed and the likes of those Spomenko accused of cowardice in
his interview for TV Novi Sad. Spomenko was a hero not only because of what he
was, and he was a man among men. He was also a hero because he clearly knew
what it took to be a man, what he was sacrificing and what for. In his own
words, he volunteered to help his people to liberate themselves. Right or wrong, he gave his life for it.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Brane Milivojević, the
only survivor of the shelling that killed Spomenko, visits his grave often.
‘’He dreamed of finishing school, building a household,’’ Milivojević said for
Serb Republic’s TVBN. ‘’It wasn’t his fault he was born at this time and in
this place.’’ </span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">This is not only a story
of courage and patriotism. It is a story of dying values, a story of the time
in which cowardice and conformism is valued more than courage and resistance.
Outside of Ozren, Spomenko has been largely forgotten. Outside of the tombstone
in Jovići, marking where the remains of the hero lied, Spomenko's short, but
heroic existence hasn't been noted. No monument to him, no school or a street
named after him. Can Serb Republic, still fighting for survival against
external as well as internal foes, hope to live without duly honoring those who
gave her life? When Slobodan Pešević of Belgrade's daily Novosti reminded us of
the young hero's sacrifice in a November 2012 article, we were not only
reminded of Spomenko, but of numerous others whose sacrifice has not been honored
and whose valor has been, perhaps deliberately, left out of the matrix of our
national identity, strength and progress.</span></b><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" 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" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: kurir-info.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">It is problematic that
Serb Republic forgot men like Spomenko. Forgetting one’s heroes will reduce its
birthright from the monumental assertion of survival and independence of the
Serb people west of Drina to a bureaucratic feud within the confines of a North
Atlantic imperial protectorate, targeted for extinction by the foreigners and
neighbors alike. No country hoping to survive can afford to forget the
very reason it lives.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Several days ago, however,
Serb Republic’s Ministry of Labor and Veterans Affairs directed the Doboj
municipal authorities to look for a location suitable to erect a monument to
the young hero. It has been reported that the Ministry has been planning for it
since 2012. It is never too late to remember and honor. He should have a
monument and a street named after him in every town in Serb Republic. Most of
us can't be as courageous or as patriotic, but we should respect and honor his
courage in patriotism all the more.</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">His name means
"remembrance" in Serbian. And we forgot him. He was my age. He died
so the likes of me could live. It is time to remember, share his story and
honor him. </span></b><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-79366724710389597222013-02-05T13:29:00.004-08:002013-02-05T13:29:45.525-08:00Resilience of the North Kosovo Serbs Tested Anew<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/c100.0.403.403/p403x403/480452_282825041845648_1226061452_n.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/c100.0.403.403/p403x403/480452_282825041845648_1226061452_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: facebook.com/kosovskamitrovica</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two Serb children were wounded yesterday when a hand grenade was thrown at
their home in the ethnically mixed neighborhood of Bošnjačka Mahala in North
Kosovska Mitrovica. That's in Kosovo, the Serbian province occupied by NATO and
the EU police force (EULEX) and in the context of local circumstances, it is
nothing unusual. Milica (age 9) and Borivoje (age 3) Vučetić were playing in
their room when the attacker threw the hand grenade through a window. The
wounds were light and the children are in stable condition, although Borivoje
may need blood transfusion due to the injuries to the face and neck,
dangerously close to vital blood vessels. This was the second bomb attack in
the town in 24 hours.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I said this is nothing unusual for the Serbs who remained in Kosovo despite
daily attacks on their lives and property. And while the attacks have indeed
gotten less bloody over the years - compared to the murder of children in Goraždevac
in 2003 or the Pogrom of March 2004 - a new spin is being added to the crimes
by the ever better trained representatives of the rogue state of Kosovo.
Namely, Besim Hoti, the regional spokesman for the Kosovo Protection Corpse,
the police force of the rogue state, announced today that a Serb neighbor of
the attacked family has been arrested in relation to this attack. This reminded
of the desecration of the Serbian cemeteries two weeks ago in Kosovo, following
Serbia's removal of the Presevo monument, when the Radio-Television of Kosovo
reported that it was actually the local Serbs who desecrated their own
cemeteries to make themselves appear as victims of Albanian terror.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Well, over the course of more than 13 years of occupation, persecution and
terror that resulted in Kosovo virtually ethnically cleansed of Serbs, they
have had more than enough occasions to present themselves as true victims, but
no one wanted to hear them. If no one reacted to the March Pogrom of 2004, when
thousands of Serbs came under orchestrated mob attacks south of the Ibar river
and had to flee or die, with the Western media ignoring or deliberately
misreporting even the UNMIK statements on the bloody ordeal, why would Serbs be
making up incidents of far lesser relevance and magnitude now? If the heinous
murders of the boys in Goraždevac did not cause global outrage, why would
anyone expect last month's destruction of the monument erected by their
families in their honor to cause any objective response? Or if their murders
didn't disturb hearts of the global community, why would mere flesh wounds of
the Vučetić children?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/c101.0.403.403/p403x403/563097_282792158515603_604907307_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/c101.0.403.403/p403x403/563097_282792158515603_604907307_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: facebook.com/kosovskamitrovica</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although Steva and Snežana Vučetić, parents of the children attacked on
Monday, have expressed doubts about their neighbor's guilt, Srđan Stojanović is
marked as the perpetrator, despite the fact that the KPS is neither legitimate
nor objective a police entity in the eyes of the Kosovo Serbs. Not to mention
the social media reports by Serb residents of the neighborhood, who alleged
that Stojanović was actually the one who transported the wounded children to
the nearest medical facility.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The question here is not whether anyone should outright dismiss a
possibility of a Serb attacking another Serb in North Kosovo, but how truthful
the reports coming from an Albanian source can be, especially in the light of
KPS' general ineptitude and notorious unwillingness to deal with crimes
committed against Serbs where it was believed Albanians were the perpetrators.
The question is not whether there are Serbs capable of this, but whether we can trust the institutions founded in the practice of killing Serbs, raping their women, abducting them and cutting out their organs for sale. For 13 years, attacks on Serbs, their property and their cultural heritage have
gone unpunished, reportedly encouraged and oftentimes orchestrated by the
Albanian authorities. Serbs died, the perps walked, and that's been a fact of
life in Kosovo for 13 years. Now, should the authorities with such a proven
track record of disregard for the rule of law be trusted when alleging they caught the perpetrator in this instance, in an unusually short time - for their
standards, at least - and he's a Serb?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The fact that weapons were found in Stojanović's home indicated to me that
the Albanian police was more interested in targeting an arms-possessing
potential enemy rather than looking for the attacker. Of course, that's just a
speculation, albeit not an unfounded one because arrests of Serbs deemed
dangerous and willing to resist the occupation are not uncommon in
Kosovo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Vučetić family, as you can imagine, is only interested in the well-being
of their children, as are all the benevolent observers, but incidents like
this, in such an emotionally charged political environment have far deeper
running implications for the Kosovo Serbs who persevere through the oppression
and occupation. Their emotional security is being targeted now as well, whereas
in the past, the attacks were limited to their lives and property. Their
survival and perseverance heavily depended on the fact that it was clear to
them who the enemy was, whom to defend against, and who'd have their back.
Incidents like the attack on Vučetić family and the contradicting reports and
allegations stemming from it sow confusion in the hearts and minds of the Serbs
who see their own government in Belgrade increasingly leaning towards cutting
them off. If the Vučetić family is convinced by the Albanian authorities that
their Serb neighbor tried to kill their kids, while they see their president
and prime minister in Belgrade wining and dining with the Albanian officials
who inflicted pain and horror on their community and whose actions endangered
their very survival, how can they justify not leaving their Kosovo homes or not
succumbing to the pressure of giving in to the rogue Albanian authorities?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One can't find a more patriotic and resilient community than the Serbian one
in North Kosovo. They have suffered through the Pogrom in 2004, constant
disturbances along the lines of separation and in mixed neighborhoods, bloody
attacks in the apartheid-resembling enclaves south of Ibar, and finally,
attacks by NATO and EULEX, orchestrated to impose the full occupation on them
and subjugate them to the NATO-puppet Albanian Kosovo. NATO and the Albanians
have killed their children before, but there's never been a doubt about who the
enemy was. That was the source of their resilience. With the attack on the Vučetić
children, combined with the show of intent by Belgrade to abandon them, the
occupiers have taken a new approach: break their spirits by confusing them and
blurring the line between their friends and enemies.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-35046360712238042752013-01-22T10:48:00.001-08:002013-01-22T10:48:07.655-08:00Bringing Down the Presevo Monument<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR3nTpOfoC3H-7II8UMkl65I0N9szz64A353nSMq8I-7rwz9E_y" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR3nTpOfoC3H-7II8UMkl65I0N9szz64A353nSMq8I-7rwz9E_y" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: novosti.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Preševo monument has been removed over the weekend, after Ivica Dačić came back from the meeting with Hashim Thaci in Brussels. Serbs should be happy, but this Serb is far from it.<br />
This is not a matter of Serbs never being satisfied, an argument and a sentiment used to suppress any negative public response to the move, but a matter of this Serb not being willing to buy the dilettantism and cheap populism, especially when it is sold while ignoring Serbian law. <br />
<br />
Today, Zoran Stanković, chief of the Coordinating Body for Serbia's South, which includes the Preševo area, <a href="http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2013&mm=01&dd=22&nav_id=84278" target="_blank">said that the removed monument will not be destroyed</a>, but its fate will be discussed further, with relocation to a more suitable place as an option. Stanković also said the whole monument issue was a base for political manipulation and "an attempt to secure better negotiating positions, to use the moment in
the Belgrade-Priština dialogue, because some would like to draw
parallels between that area and northern Kosovo."A bargaining chip, then? If it was a chip indeed, whose chip was it?<br />
<br />
<br />
Stanković, the man in charge of the security crisis-fertile area, appointed specifically to deal with these kinds of problems, hasn't been a player in the process, if we can even call the pissing contest and the Gendarmerie action a process. While I wholeheartedly support Serbia's resolve to protect people's sensibilities and defend itself against provocations from its hostile minority, I didn't see the removal of the monument through such a prism, as it was unclear which law was broken by its placement, who filed charges and at which court, how the legal decision to remove it was arrived to and who made it. Serbia's dealing with sensitive issue must be grounded in its law and when it is not, there must a question: to whose benefit?<br />
<br />
The people of Serbia are happy in their fervor and oblivious to the implications of the removal and the total disregard of the law by the Dačić government. Dačić's populist maneuver worked. The rule of law failed and the Albanian provocation succeeded.<br />
<br />
The OVPBM, the terrorist group whose fallen members the monument honored, has been amnestied by the government of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2002, and the argument that the monument honored enemies of the state does not hold water, unless the amnesty excluded the killed members of the group. Anyway, since there hasn't been a legal process in which such distinctions can be defined, the public will remain in the dark as to what the hell just happened.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTz-YdnS6uMX149bk3cznP0RlQhmMyWwwk0Cc_iknArDeF10oS5" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTz-YdnS6uMX149bk3cznP0RlQhmMyWwwk0Cc_iknArDeF10oS5" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: radiokim.net</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To make things even more confusing, Serbia's Prime Minister didn't order a removal of the museum honoring the killed commander of OVPBM in the village of Veliki Trnovac. Wouldn't that be expected if any logic was followed? The monument to Aćif-efendi in Novi Pazar is still standing as well, even though Albanian fascists from the World War II have never been amnestied. In my mind, all three stand to offend Serbia's people equally, so why remove only one and outside of the legal process at that. The inconsistency in upholding Serbia's laws cast more doubt about patriotism of Serbia's Prime Minister and the government he heads. <br />
<br />
If the monument was a problem only because it was built outside of the mandated construction process, as Stanković's inexplicable offer to the Albanians to reapply for a permit seemed to imply, then why would the Prime Minister get involved? Why wasn't it resolved by appropriate construction officials? Why was their such a national attention generated by Dačić's threats and Preševo Albanians' warmongering if this just ended up being a construction permit issue?<br />
<br />
While the Preševo Albanians, including their deputies in Serbia's National Assembly, screamed that there can be no peaceful solution to the monument crisis, across Kosovo, their brethren went on a violent rampage against Serbian cemeteries, monasteries, homes, even tearing down a monument to the fallen World War II anti-fascist fighters in the village of Vitina. So, while Serbia fails to enforce its own laws in tearing down a monument to the Albanian fascist in Novi Pazar, Kosovo Albanians go ahead and lawlessly derelict Serbia's fight against fascism, not to mentioned the continued attack on the lives and homes of Serbs. It is confusing, right? Anything that goes against logic is confusing like this. It is easy to see why the Albanians would destroy a Serbian anti-fascist symbol, attack a monastery in Đakovica and reportedly desecrate about 140 grave sites in a matter of two days; Albanians are still waging a war against Serbia, even if defenseless monuments and graves are the target, and their fascist legacies are still very much alive. Serbia, on the other hand, is not easily understood. Why would you leave a monument to a convicted fascist standing, but temporarily remove one of the monuments to the terrorists you have amnestied? Why would you amnesty terrorists is a million dollar question, asked 11 years too late...<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRBf-gTew3LMJ2FqXIZQ_vC_Yw1YEQgK_fY94fNCd0H-izbc_gZ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRBf-gTew3LMJ2FqXIZQ_vC_Yw1YEQgK_fY94fNCd0H-izbc_gZ" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: vesti-online.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Outside of populism so characteristic of Dačić, the manipulations, as Stanković called them, around the Preševo monument, served as a false show of Serbia's strength and a pretext for the Albanian leaders to mobilize popular support against Serbia, both in Priština and in Preševo. Dačić and Thaci reportedly agreed to freeze negotiations on customs levies at the North Kosovo crossings for a period of one year and, more importantly, to open the North Kosovo status as a mandatory bargaining subject of sorts. In President Nikolić's weird Platform for Kosovo, or at least in one of its versions, North Kosovo is treated as an autonomous subject under the autonomous province of Kosovo within Serbia. Unreal, ain't it? Under the recent parliamentary Resolution on Kosovo and Metohija, Kosovo is reaffirmed as a province of Serbia, but the key commitment was made to the EU path, which is contradictory in itself. Now, Thaci couldn't be expected to relinquish the hardline position regarding the North without receiving a "just" compensation. He can't sell it to his own warmongering public without a promise of getting something in return. Or is Dačić just putting fear into the Serbian public that the insistence on North Kosovo could cost Serbia the Preševo area, especially in the light of his repeated intention to dismantle Serbia's state institutions protecting Serbs in the North Kosovo municipalities? If this was a bargaining chip that Serbia bet with, how exactly will this resolution benefit Serbia?<br />
<br />
I myself fear that the Preševo monument issue may serve to galvanize the Preševo area Albanians in asserting more of the existing desire for a unification with Kosovo, inching closer towards the goals of the Greater Albania project. The Preševo area was not an open issue until the monument charade and it will be Serbia's defeat if it does become an issue parallel with North Kosovo.<br />
<br />
Dačić, sowing confusion, populism and inconsistency in statements and in deeds, stand to be blamed by the Serbian public for not dealing with the Kosovo - and increasingly - the Preševo problem with a higher degree of responsibility, but instead operating outside the constitutional framework and keeping the public unaware of the details of the process and its implications, while doing it all under the watchful eye and directions of Brussels imperialist bureaucrats that aided the Albanian expansion. And apparently, Serbian lives and property in Kosovo remain unprotected and exposed to all kinds of Albanian violent extremism and ethnic cleansing policies.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-71100660397391793742013-01-17T14:56:00.001-08:002013-01-17T15:00:54.587-08:00The Presevo Monument: A Chip, a Decoy and an Outpost<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQOwG8SeiiTVbnflS6-oer59T6uhvwFRM6JXSt6brje72sPC2DIoQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQOwG8SeiiTVbnflS6-oer59T6uhvwFRM6JXSt6brje72sPC2DIoQ" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: voiceofserbia.org</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The deadline for removal of <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/12/transplanting-conflict-presevo-is-serbia.html" target="_blank">the Preševo monument</a> has passed without action
by the men responsible to act, or at least the man who set the deadline in an
outburst of verbal bravado, Ivica Dačić. Dačić threatened a forceful removal, instead of
taking legal action. It was clearly smoke and mirrors,
as is usually the case with Dačić's "threats." Threats of no less than a war over the monument from the Albanian side, both in Kosovo and the Preševo area, only amplified the clamor.<br />
<br />
Serbia's government,
increasingly subjugated to the will and whim of Western officials, even the low-ranking
ones, like Philip Reeker of the U.S. State Department, decided to allow the
monument to the men who attempted to rip off another part of it to remain
standing. For the sake of charade, the Preševo municipal assembly decided to
"legalize" the monument in a weird twist of Serbian jurisdictional
mumbo-jumbo. Just like<a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/08/generals-and-efendis-leveling-field-of.html" target="_blank"> the monument to Aćif-efendi</a> remained standing and just
like no one talks about that formerly hot topic anymore, the Preševo monument
will probably experience the same legitimization. The museum built to honor the
commander of the terrorist OVPMB, which, as an extension of OVK (Kosovo
Liberation Army), was thwarted in its attempt to transfer the NATO war against
Serbia east of Kosovo administrative line in 2000-01, has never even been
debated as an issue in the Serbian public. I don't consider the museum to be
any less of a provocation against the home country by the Albanian minority
than the Preševo monument. I hate when I have to substitute arguments with
comparisons of this type, and I know how Americans like to think their lives
are objectively more precious than lives of others, but imagine building a
monument to Mohammed Atta in the lobby of the Freedom Tower. There.<br />
<br />
The fact that Serbia's increasingly subservient prime minister cowers before
any threat to his good standing with Western powers doesn't make the threat of
the Greater Albania design, being materialized beyond the territory of Kosovo,
any less critical. The fact that Serbia shies away from a conflict may indeed
mean that the Albanian encroachment beyond Kosovo is fully supported by Western
imperialists in the same way their terrorist actions in Kosovo were in 1998. Dačić
is currently meeting with Hashim Thaci in Brussels and their working lunches
may produce changes in the Kosovo stalemate, but considering the fact that the
imperialist European Union is sponsoring the talks, there is no doubt that
those changes will only benefit the Albanian side, even if in the short term Dačić
is able to sell the solutions as a win.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTzi4az2l_27_j-x_RS-ZNCTsslVR3J_Q7Gg2YnekxUgNpYIbKP" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTzi4az2l_27_j-x_RS-ZNCTsslVR3J_Q7Gg2YnekxUgNpYIbKP" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: nasisrbija.org</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In other related news, Serbia's National Assembly adopted the Resolution on
Kosovo and Metohija built on principles that were not very dissimilar to the
principles Serbia was guided by in the failed Vienna talks in 2006. It will be interesting to see if Dačić, who has already allowed the Albanian customs to stand at the administrative line crossing, <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/12/line-across-heart-advanced-degree-of.html" target="_blank">effectively drawing a border</a>, obeys the Resolution in his talks with Thaci. President Nikolić's
Platform has already been dismissed by both Dačić and, of course, Thaci. In Priština, any
and all Serbian official lines are ridiculed and outright waved off. Albanians
are not ready to negotiate, but only to accept no less than the official
recognition. The EU keeps sending mixed messages but the course of its actions
doesn't speak loud enough only to those paid not to hear. The EU has police
presence in Serbia's occupied province without any international agreement
warranting it and its mercenaries in Belgrade still dare to speak of its
political missionaries as neutral, as some form of mediators. How could an
occupying force be impartial in the process in which the country its armies
occupy is a participant? Were the Nazi Germans impartial to their Croat
cronies' genocide against Serbs? No, they allowed it and supported it. Why does
anyone expect Catherine Ashton to impartially mediate talks between the side
her bosses support and the one her bosses have fought a war against?<br />
<br />
Dačić often insists on resolving the Kosovo issues once and for all. This is
illogical because it puts the imperative on Serbia to strive to solve the issue
that others imposed on her, while the other side is actually the one begging
for a solution. The Albanians and their overlords need Serbia to affirm what
they call "reality" and legitimize their aggression against her. What
better absolution of sin than when the victim herself absolves the
aggressor?<br />
<br />
The Preševo monument issue may indeed play out as a bargaining chip against
Serbia and for Dačić at this stage. (I say "at this stage" because no
agreement made with the Albanians and their overlords is permanent. Even if the
Preševo issue is a decoy now, the Preševo Valley subject will open up under the
Greater Albania design eventually.) If Dačić comes back from Brussels with
Thaci's nod to the Preševo Albanians to remove the monuments, whatever further
concessions he makes to Thaci will be masked in the "victory" of the
monument removal. As things stand now, even this is hardly likely. So, I'll
quit speculating about something we will find out very soon.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSK8rJNqakw3YTlVncPDxE8l3KVHwPeaqLg51mgFsVzfytknudo" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSK8rJNqakw3YTlVncPDxE8l3KVHwPeaqLg51mgFsVzfytknudo" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: webpublicapress.<span style="font-size: xx-small;">net</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
No matter how Dačić spins it, the policy of concessions to the EU hasn't
produced anything positive and brought back only losses to Serbia. But since it
is Serbia who is professing its undying desire to join the EU, the bargaining
power generated by the fact that it is others asking something of Serbia is
lost. With it, the power to condition the side across the table in the Kosovo
haggling is gone. Thus, Dačić continues Boris Tadić's policy of allowing the
Kosovo recognition in through the back door, distracting the Serbian public
with side issues by amplifying them in a way that trumps real, meaningful
debates about Serbia's strategy of defending its national interests.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Preševo monument issue in itself, notwithstanding the humiliation and
provocation it represented, should be irrelevant to everyone outside of
Serbia's prosecutors and courts. In a country that increasingly acts like a
colony, it becomes a matter of high political priority that must be resolved with
the involvement of foreign ambassadors. Meanwhile, the people of Serbia sink deeper into discontent and, while Tadić's removal from power is still regarded as a definite positive, the new administration, continuing on his path in many areas, doesn't have a promising future. Voices against the Western imperial tyranny and plundering are ever louder, especially among the youth, radicalized in opposition to the continued Western aggression against the Serbian nation. </div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-56882753000597720242013-01-09T09:37:00.001-08:002013-01-09T11:04:59.156-08:00''Springing'' Dodik and Serb Republic's Survival<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRLPGtOkkOHHR5oCKsHoTUZqjJSqFVKulHdg6y15t_uZPa5ToSO" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRLPGtOkkOHHR5oCKsHoTUZqjJSqFVKulHdg6y15t_uZPa5ToSO" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: svevesti.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On its 21st birthday, Serb Republic is "more stable than ever," President Milorad Dodik said. At the same time, he and his party's PR guru Rajko Vasić have been increasingly warning the public of a prospect of a violent overthrow, or a "spring" being in the works against their leadership. They cited knowledge of intensified financing of Western-sponsored NGOs in Serb Republic and their agitation among the impoverished and economically deprived segments of population, which Serb Republic, like every other country in Southeast Europe, doesn't lack.<br />
<br />
On Tuesday, there was a condescending tone of denial <a href="http://www.dw.de/%C5%A1ta-%C5%BEeli-dodik/a-16504998" target="_blank">in a Deutsche Welle article</a>, written by a Bosnian Muslim and re-posted on B92 website, which, considering the outlets and the sources quoted, indicated to me that Dodik and Vasić are not merely talking crazy populism they tend to engage in every now and then. In fact, even with the notion of a violent overthrow of a government of a non-independent entity such as Serb Republic sounding so absurd and counter-intuitive, I'm inclined to regard such a prospect with fearful attention after Veran Matić's B92 jumps to mock it. Serb Republic has been under the threat of abolition since its establishment and Dodik has become a symbol of the resistance to Sarajevo's post-Dayton onslaught against the Serb entity. The Dayton Accords, which established Bosnia-Herzegovina and recognized Serb Republic as one of its two entities, had been violated consistently by the Office of High Representative and the Sarajevo central leadership prior to Dodik's second accession to power in 2006. Effectively decapitated through the political persecution of its leadership, the Serb Democrat Party couldn't withstand Sarajevo's march towards the abolition of Serb Republic in the first part of the last decade, but Dodik's return to power and his staunch and, oftentimes, abrasive attitude, has stabilized Serb Republic as a defender of the interests of Serbs west of Drina. He went so far to chastise and frown at Western envoys, and while a part of it was a show for the people and electoral rhetoric, in essence, that was the only way to repel the ever-oppressing imperial agents and their Sarajevo clients.<br />
<br />
Considering the degree to which Dodik's burly presence, both political and personal, thwarted the abolition of Serb Republic efforts, it is understood why Western imperialist agents would want to overthrow him. One ridiculous element of the whole "spring" prospect is, as I said earlier, the fact that the Western imperialists would violently target the democratically elected government not of an independent state like Libya or Syria, or Yugoslavia in 2000, but of an entity within a state.<br />
Dodik appears to be close to World Jewish Congress and, indirectly, to certain influencers in Israel, through his key advisor, a Holocaust survivor Arie Livne, as well as to Russian leadership and business circles. He recently closed the <a href="http://www.ekapija.com/website/sr/page/584099_en" target="_blank">key energy deal</a> with Russia's oil magnate Rashid Sardarov and the building of a new coal plant in the mining town of Ugljevik is underway. NIS (Serbia's largest oil corporation, owner by Russian Gazprom Neft) <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-30/austria-s-omv-sells-bosnian-gas-stations-to-gazprom-neft-s-nis.html" target="_blank">has bought Austrian OMV's gas stations</a> throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was close to Serbia's former president, Boris Tadić, but the current leadership, despite the advances he has made, has been cold towards him, with Ivica Dačić rejecting Dodik's call for a formulation of a united national political strategy. Although a staunch supporter of Serbia's refusal to recognize Kosovo's secession, Dodik repeated his proposal to divide Kosovo along ethnic lines, but that was ignored in Belgrade as well.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQHcgwFhg6YgGDELtuDE8R1pF-MTViLcFmCf57li2iYltd4OqxXsg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQHcgwFhg6YgGDELtuDE8R1pF-MTViLcFmCf57li2iYltd4OqxXsg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: pressrs.ba</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The opposition within Serb Republic to Dodik's Alliance of Independent Social-Democrats (SNSD) is mainly represented by the formerly ruling Serb Democrat Party (SDS). While SDS holds significant power at the local level, kicking SNSD's behind in most major cities' mayoral races in October, and while the entity-level political battles between SNSD and SDS are as fierce as ever, they are united in the front towards Sarajevo and usually follow the common strategy in defense of Serb Republic. Although Dodik has become the symbol of resistance against Muslim domination over Bosnia in recent years, without the support from SDS' Mladen Bosić, it would be hard for him to remain as steadfast. For the sake of Serb Republic, it is crucial that their power-sharing model, where SDS dominates on the local level and SNSD controls the higher levels, is entrenched and maintained. I haven't seen indications that SDS leadership is willing to "spring" Serb Republic and remove Dodik in the streets, but there are minor parties clinging to the margins of the political arena dominated by SNSD and SDS, whom I wouldn't put past the desire to grab power in any way possible. Out of Mladen Ivanić's Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), which has seen a precipitous decline, and former president Dragan Čavić's Democrat Party (DP), whose leader strives to reclaim lost political strength, together with the Serb Republic extension of Serbia's ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), an aspiring "spring" architect could, under right circumstances, assemble a coalition of the willing and pit it against Dodik in a way they themselves, relying on their own capacities, cannot. Supported by the unions and a number of trained NGO operatives, and relying on popular mobilization spurred by a negative PR campaign, a street attack against Dodik in the mold of the one against Slobodan Milošević is not beyond a realm of a possibility.<br />
<br />
For Serb Republic, such an event would be a disaster on many levels.<br />
First, any instability within Serb Republic, especially one caused and orchestrated from the outside, is an invitation for vultures to come and feast on it. Serbia, right across Drina, is a cautionary tale. The robbery and the colonization of Serbia that ensued following the Milošević ouster in 2000 highly exceeded the negative aspects of Milošević's rule, however just his removal appeared to be at the time. At the time, Serbs that bulldozed Milošević out of power were not aware that CIA and NED sponsored their "revolution." A similar ouster of Dodik would almost certainly signal to Sarajevo that it is time to go for Serb Republic's jugular. I'm not even saying that no one but Dodik can secure the survival of Serb Republic, only that no foreign-sponsored overthrow of a people's choice can ever be grounded in a motivation benevolent to Serb Republic and the Serbian people. Or, from another angle, if the likes of those who conduct "springs" are going for Dodik's head, he must be doing something good for Serb Republic that its traditional, lurking enemies desire to end.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRm6_cVFANs2jKC7agDir0xD6qJttFMAmfmkW9BhjHC9dQ_HRILTQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRm6_cVFANs2jKC7agDir0xD6qJttFMAmfmkW9BhjHC9dQ_HRILTQ" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: blic.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Second, anyone who advocates violence in Serb Republic is most likely an enemy of its people. Serb Republic has one top priority: survival. In the world of perceived greater and lesser evils, there is no model for its survival more appealing than power-sharing between its two major parties. The bad economic situation may continue to deteriorate and Dodik would be advised to roll up his sleeves, curb his personal greed and improve it, because he can. The increased popular outrage at the standard of living and widespread systemic corruption, and especially at Dodik's visible role in contributing to it, may indeed prove to be fertile soil for Western NGOs recruitment of cannon fodder against Dodik. Dodik must not close his eyes to this possibility, as examples of ousted leaders who refused to adjust their position in relation to their own people are too many to count.<br />
<br />
Third, SDS, should it be drawn into a violent battle against Dodik on behalf of Western imperialists, must remember it is a party of Radovan Karadžić, because no matter what, its enemies will always remember this and if they pardon it for a short term co-optation, they will never forgive it. It must remember that the real enemy is in Sarajevo and not in Banja Luka and it must look for ways to bring Dodik to a position of cooperation for the benefit of Serb Republic. It appears Bosić is well aware of this and that's a positive.<br />
<br />
Petar Luković, a renowned anti-Serb propagandist from Belgrade, might as well be right when he mocked Dodik and his "conspiratorial" sentiments for Deutsche Welle and dismissed it as rhetoric and even a straw Dodik is grabbing onto to preserve his power. Dodik could just be playing mind games with the people. Sure, it's possible, but since Luković called it, I doubt it. I wasn't even going to rush into commenting on Dodik's "conspiratorial" sentiments if I didn't see Luković's "analysis," in which he curiously, and I'd say, nervously, pokes fun at someone even talking about such outlandish propositions such as CIA and Vatican meddling, foreign-financed "independent" media etc. Yeah, sure, it is preposterous to think that ever happens...</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-52630927790995550772012-12-27T09:53:00.003-08:002013-01-09T09:38:18.588-08:00Transplanting Conflict: Presevo is Serbia!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSzY2ubSowTyClCsGHK5_jmw4VHi_oy52pBjA0-vhEZPbZZBSDHkg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSzY2ubSowTyClCsGHK5_jmw4VHi_oy52pBjA0-vhEZPbZZBSDHkg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: wikipedia.org</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Parallel with the pressure on the ever-obliging Serbia from the direction of the official Brussels, the Kosovo final solution is being pushed onto the Serbian nation, as basic principles of good conquest strategy mandate, through manufacturing of threats to escalate the conflict beyond the territory of the province. The renewed provocations against the Serbian government by the Albanian leadership at the far south of Serbia are indications of this dangerous, but tactical escalation.<br />
<br />
As all the conflicts in the Southeast Europe are, the Kosovo conflict is just a battle in the imperial conquest of the region and the Albanians are a mere cannon fodder, which, in the short-term, get to advance some of their own nationalist agenda under the umbrella of the larger imperialist effort. Since this is a matter of the Albanian people being pitted against the regional obstacle of the North Atlantic imperial community, the Serbs, only fools can think this is a Kosovo-confined conflict. The Serbian government's troubles are not confined to Kosovo Albanians, as a small, but concentrated Albanian minority inhabit the strip of Serbia's territory outside of Kosovo, around towns of Preševo and Bujanovac in South Morava valley. This particular population has been thrown into the conflict by their Western sponsors before, during the 2000-01 uprising, and it looks like its being leveraged against Serbia again these days. (To be clear, the difference between Albanians within Kosovo and those living and operating outside of it, in the rest of southern Serbia and in Macedonia, are ethnically and ideologically non-existent. They all propagate and fight for a Greater Albania, they all serve the same imperialist agenda, whether they know it or not, and they only have slightly different short-term objectives.)<br />
<br />
These days, the government of Serbia, which many hoped would reverse <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/02/submission-of-serbia-no-deal-or-raw.html" target="_blank">the Kosovo policy of the previous, Boris Tadić-led government</a>, in fact intensified that approach, breaking all the rules of political engagement with secessionists and foreign oppressors, as well as its own Constitution. Ivica Dačić, the Prime Minister, has so far shown way more eagerness <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/12/line-across-heart-advanced-degree-of.html" target="_blank">to comply with the demands</a> of the European Union for the recognition of Kosovo's independence. The man who, during the election campaign, expressed willingness to use military force to keep Kosovo within Serbia, now <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/10/the-secret-handshake-with-snake.html" target="_blank">eats lunch with Hashim Thaci</a>, the Kosovo Albanian leader and a terrorist who still plays a key role in ripping Kosovo away from Serbia and <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/orig/browne.php?articleid=14428" target="_blank">ridding it of its Serbian population</a>.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRDTIuZc8rSJons3IlDGWnOd5AZaJQZO6vKytuTcLV3lMEdCfTu" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRDTIuZc8rSJons3IlDGWnOd5AZaJQZO6vKytuTcLV3lMEdCfTu" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: kurir-info.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Regardless of the fact that Dačić has been overly compliant and eager to please, the pressure on Serbia is intensifying in the form of radicalization of the Albanian population in Serbia outside of Kosovo and undermining of the state authority in the area, as if any radicalization is needed. In fact, the militant, armed groups within this population only need an order to pull the trigger. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/08/generals-and-efendis-leveling-field-of.html" target="_blank">I wrote about the monument</a> commemorating a notorious World War II fascist in Novi Pazar, Aćif Efendi, and from this perspective, it appeared to have been just a prelude, a sort of a test for Serbia's government, which we see growing into a chain of similar provocations in the Preševo area. I might have not mentioned that Aćif Efendi, the fascist militia leader of the Novi Pazar Muslims, was an ethnic Albanian, although the Muslim militia he was leading was largely non-Albanian.<br />
<br />
In Preševo, <a href="http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2012&mm=11&dd=22&nav_id=83296" target="_blank">a monument was recently erected</a> to honor the fallen members of the so-called Liberation Army of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa (OVPBM), a KLA-organized insurgent militia whose attempt at transplantation of conflict from Kosovo to Preševo valley the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian police defeated in 2001.<br />
<br />
In Veliki Trnovac near Bujanovac, the 2012 Albanian Flag Day - the major pan-Albanian national holiday - was commemorated with the grand opening of a museum honoring one of the killed commanders of the terrorist OVPBM, Ridvan Qazimi. On the same day, November 28, the town of Bujanovac woke up to a model of a yellow-colored house placed symbolically at the central square. Albanian organizers of the festivities, many of whom were former members of OVPBM, claimed it was a house in the Albanian city of Vlore, where the independence of Albania was declared in 1912, but to local Serbs it represented the house in northern Albania where, according to <a href="http://assembly.coe.int/asp/apfeaturesmanager/defaultartsiteview.asp?ID=964" target="_blank">the Dick Marty report to the European Parliament,</a> kidnapped Serbs were butchered for organs. Be it as it may, the Serbian <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-monument-to-evil.html" target="_blank">sensibilities were seriously offended</a>, but their Albanian neighbors didn't seem to care. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRR9sZ7i9fdxiIZOcRNlX5UGump-T3SUFhzGYc_JppeZPx9t_Tc" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRR9sZ7i9fdxiIZOcRNlX5UGump-T3SUFhzGYc_JppeZPx9t_Tc" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: b92.net</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Now, the main question is: outside of sensibilities, what is the problem here? Besides the fact that such forms of celebrations offend and logically radicalize, which leads to more bad blood, and in the Balkans, sow seeds to bloodshed when the imperialist powers find the bloodshed convenient, there is a huge question of the legitimacy of the Serbian government when it comes to the response to these activities.<br />
<br />
The local glorification of an Albanian fascist in Novi Pazar was a cause for Dačić and, mainly, Aleksandar Vučić, his first deputy, to go berserk, threaten political reprisals and forget about it after several days. The plaque to an Albanian fascist still stands in Serbia. Serbia does penalize Serbian ultra-nationalist, anti-fascist and anti-EU youth, but doesn't do anything about the glorification of fascism by the leaders of a Muslim minority. It's almost blasphemous to fall short of condemning Serbia's own collaborators with Hitler, who never donned Nazi uniforms and never contributed a unit to Hitler's war efforts, but the man who under fascist insignia killed Serbs in Serbia gets a monument. Staying the course towards the EU mandates such passive behavior of Serbia's government towards attack on its legitimacy, I guess.<br />
<br />
The three anti-Serbian manifestations in the South Morava valley have been a subject of scorn from Dačić on and off, but no definite legal action has been taken. Dačić, ever a dilettante, demanded that the Albanians who erected the Preševo monument remove it, or else. Of course, after the Aćif Efendi plaque stayed, why would the Preševo Albanians be afraid of the Serbian government and Dačić? Dačić's threats haven't materialized, of course. I'm not even saying that he should have sent police to the tear down the monument, just that he should have followed legal procedure, order the appropriate government department to investigate the matter and proceed according to law. If it's legal to erect a monument to an enemy of the State, so be it. If a glorification to an ethnic Albanian terrorist doesn't incite ethnic hatred, then let it stand. But ever a dilettante and ever a populist, he disregarded the law, took the issue out of the state institutions and conveniently did nothing with it, postponing the resolution until an opportunity to earn brownie points arises. The threats and charges swirled only to create an impression that the man who's quitting on Kosovo and dining with Thaci is actually a hard-line nationalist, even an authoritarian, with whom one doesn't mess. The parliamentary debate on the Preševo monument issue produced no results. Dačić is reviving the issue these days, primarily as a distraction in the run-up to the next round of what he called "negotiations" with Thaci, but also as a good populist way to draw attention to himself in response to President Nikolić's bargaining platform for Kosovo.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTb4po5qtJVVo81u4nuozsxmoSrgpd6zQv8I6a0bqT2Ef47T50-" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTb4po5qtJVVo81u4nuozsxmoSrgpd6zQv8I6a0bqT2Ef47T50-" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: novosti.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The local Albanian leadership, however, have been throwing down a challenge: come and take it down! Encouraged by the fact that Serbia will do absolutely nothing that disappoints Brussels, not even respect its own laws, the Preševo Albanian leaders can afford to stick a finger in her eye. The smoke and mirrors display continues and the only way these monuments will be removed is as a counter-favor for Dačić leaping into a full Kosovo recognition.<br />
<br />
The transplantation of conflict doesn't, however, get hindered with Dačić's game of interchangeable attempts at winning brownie points from the Serbian people and from Brussels. The threat of an Albanian violent expansion beyond Kosovo is real and imminent, as the Preševo valley is included in the Greater Albania designs since 1878, and as Serbian official Milovan Drecun warned on Thursday of an accumulating presence of armed militia on the Macedonian side of the border* and on the Kosovo side of the administrative line. In 2000 and 2001, when it quelled the insurgency spilling over from Kosovo, Serbia had much more independence in acting to protect its sovereignty than in 2012. In other words, there is not one reason to believe Serbia will buy the safety of the remnants of its territory by quitting on Kosovo and the Preševo valley is the most serious contender for the next flashpoint of anti-Serbian violence.<br />
<br />
*<span style="font-size: x-small;">A third of Macedonia's population are ethnic Albanians, and the power
has been shared on an equal basis between the Slav-speaking majority and
the Albanian-speaking minority after the Albanian insurgence in that
country in 2001.</span> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-34986471061116034352012-12-11T10:22:00.000-08:002012-12-11T10:33:27.276-08:00Line Across the Heart: Advanced Degree of Treason<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRTpqnLtLmMN9sg0YN-jcTw1aoKK3CN1ai_wmN4dJ7b5XsETVEoqg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="102" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRTpqnLtLmMN9sg0YN-jcTw1aoKK3CN1ai_wmN4dJ7b5XsETVEoqg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: ebritic.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Serbia, covered in snow, has drawn a line across its heart that won't melt
away when the snow melts. If I wanted to be romantic, that's how I could put
Serbia Prime Minister's decision to implement the shadowy agreement
"negotiated" between Boris Tadić's administration and the Kosovo
Albanian secessionist structures, under the watchful eye and whip of Brussels
headmaster for the Balkans school of imps, Catherine Ashton. Now, we can joke
all we want, but since yesterday, Serbia agreed to place customs checkpoints in
the middle of its internationally recognized territory.<br />
This is not a recognition only in the fact that to recognize Kosovo, official Serbia has to say it and it didn't say it. In fact, it insists it will refuse to say. But even this advancement of the unconstitutional policy related to Kosovo changed this outsider's entire view on the degree of Serbia's ruling elites co-optation into the Western imperialist agenda against its own country and people. <br />
<br />
In my book, the state revenue, including the customs revenue, is one of the
pillars of a state, whether that state is recognized under the selectively
upheld UN system or not. An occupying power like NATO <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2005/03/24/an-evil-little-war/" target="_blank">can indeed execute a land grab,</a> disregarding the UN system and the internationally agreed legal
principles, but the aggrieved party, in this case Serbia, only lost the
occupied piece when it signed it over to the occupier. First Boris Tadić
violated Serbia's Constitution <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/02/submission-of-serbia-no-deal-or-raw.html" target="_blank">by authorizing the ''footnote'' deal</a> with Priština in February
of this year, then Ivica Dačić went a step further and put his own stamp on it,
with, to make matters even more embarrassing, Hashim "the Snake"
Thaci sitting across the table and, undoubtedly, gloating. On December 10, the
first border crossing recognized as such by both sides opened up more than a year after <a href="http://srbo.tumblr.com/post/12040599545/kosovoroadblock" target="_blank">the North Kosovo Serbs repelled the attempt </a>of the Albanian secessionists to do the same by force. Yes, the spin
coming out of the Serbian government's lousy PR circles is that the Jarinje
checkpoint is an administrative crossing, despite the fact that agreement under
which the embarrassment went down is flagrantly named the Integrated Border
Management. Now, one doesn't have to be an English Ph.D. to be laughing at the
attempt to spin the unspinnable using incorrect translation. I'm not laughing,
however, and neither is any Serb who recognizes the gravity of this development
that borders on treason, no pun intended. <br />
<br />
This is an issue of Serbia sovereignty, not of policy or ideological
direction. It is even less understood when measured against the purported
justification for the capitulation, the accession to the European Union. I say
purported because even if this reason is justified, it is not immediate. Serbia
is trading Kosovo for a date to start negotiations with the EU, who, as we all
know, doesn't negotiate with its future members, but simply devours them once
it transforms their internal affairs to its liking. Serbia is trading its
sovereignty for a chance to embark on a road towards a complete loss of
sovereignty. Yes, if someone else tells you how to run your affairs, how to
make your money, how to spend your money, you have no sovereignty, regardless
of the fact that your state has its own color on the political map of Europe
and a slumbering chair in the UN General Assembly.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRuJ41zSzWf9EyD5HfpVArz5XSaeCzhOvADbBMEh2qN9NfSKrIv" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRuJ41zSzWf9EyD5HfpVArz5XSaeCzhOvADbBMEh2qN9NfSKrIv" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: rt.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This is also an issue of democracy. Let's pretend for a second that people
actually do elect their political leaders and not just legitimize one group of
imperial bureaucratic servants over other groups. Boris Tadić first took the
Kosovo issue out of the jurisdiction of the UN Security Council, whose
Resolution 1244 was the only act of international law which legitimately
defined the relationship between Serbia and its occupied province. Eager to
please his whip-cracking Western masters, he happily disregarded the one
document that lent Serbia a chance to fight for Kosovo in a setting where 2 out
5 power players refused to tear down the international legal system and
recognize the Albanian secession. He violated Serbia's Constitution that relied
on 1244 when it specifically named Kosovo as its unalienable part. He allowed
Brussels to take over the Kosovo standoff without the authorization of
democratically elected National Assembly, which led to the implementation of
the Ahtisaari plan, whose draft was rejected by Serbia and internationally. We
know the consequences: EULEX arrived to Kosovo and the Albanians declared their
independence in all of Kosovo, not only in the parts they controlled. Then they
demanded recognition and the abolition of the free Serbian institutions in
North Kosovo.<br />
<br />
Serbian patriots expected a reversal of this treasonous and undemocratic policy
with the May 20 victory of former nationalist Tomislav Nikolić and the
formation of a coalition cabinet led by Ivica Dačić, a Slobodan Milošević
disciple. <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/08/source-vestinet.html" target="_blank">I wrote about the importance of the change</a> and the hope that Serbia's defenses could only strengthen in comparison to the effects of the Tadić rule. In the face of knowledge that Serbia's independence in making decisions based in self-interest seriously deteriorated under Tadić, I hoped for a more balanced and sensible approach by the new administration. I was almost certain that the Kosovo and EU policies would undergo rethinking, reconsideration, if not readjustment under what was possible under the accumulated circumstances. As no administration has an obligation to affirm any part of the
policy of previous administrations, especially if the old policy was
unconstitutional, I expected the Tadić policy at least submitted to the
judicial review of the Constitutional Court, if not reversed outright. However
relieving and hopeful his decision to abandon the coalition with Tadić's
Democrat Party and form the cabinet with Nikolić's Progressives was, Dačić's
continuation and even escalation of Tadić's Kosovo policy put his cabinet on
the same treasonous course with Tadić.<br />
<br />
Now, Dačić was a Tadić ally and a minister from 2008 to 2012, but it was clear that Tadić
had dictatorial and unconstitutional tendencies around which his cabinet, led
by Mirko Cvetković, had very little constitutional mandated independence. When Dačić,
and Nikolić for that matter, swore by their EU-affirming values in the election
campaign, it sounded so unbelievable and mind-boggling considering their past
that we waived it off as campaign rhetoric forced on them through the circumstances of political
subjugation to the EU that Tadić masochistically invited and accepted. Six
months into their joint rule, Dačić not only still swears by the EU, but keeps
going farther than Tadić in dancing to the music being played from
Brussels. I maintained hope for a period of time that Dačić, the flip-flopper that he is, could be playing all sides for the benefit of Serbia, but some lines are not to be crossed and when they are, there is no purgatory that can wash one off of the blemish of treason. Statesmanship is indeed a game of realpolitik, but it is game of trust and confidence as well. And there can be no trust in Dačić after this, with Nikolić, as supportive of Dačić's course as he's been, not instilling a lot of confidence either. If Dačić is going rogue, Nikolić sure has enough pull to sanction him. The ruling clique, however, is united behind Dačić to the point where even the insofar staunch leaders of the North Kosovo Serbs are being seen as succumbing to the new reality.<br />
<br />
Serbia is faced with coming into the final stretch of its own
dissolution that not only rips off a part of its already-occupied territory,
but tears down its defense against such attempts in the future. Vojvodina, its
northern province that derived its autonomy from the same anti-Serbian
Communist decrees as did Kosovo, has been a target of subversive activities
hiding behind human and minority rights for some time. Raška, the region with a
relatively significant Muslim minority, has been a hotbed of fascism revival
and Wahhabi growth, two elements naturally hostile to the home state. Their
connection to the ever aggressive pan-Bosniak nationalism rooted in
radical Islam has been a manifestly growing concern to the regional stability.
The degree of brazenness with which these subversive forces operate was best
manifested in erecting a monument to the local World War II Muslim fascist
leader in Novi Pazar that went ignored by the Serbian government, which chose to look away out of fear of offending local sensibilities.<br />
<br />
Breaking down the barriers set up by the defense of Kosovo breaks down
defenses everywhere, unless Dačić and Nikolić decided to follow the
counter-intuitive logic of Milošević and allow themselves to be convinced that
if they gave up Kosovo, the North Atlantic imperial designs would stop there,
leaving Raška, Vojvodina or Albanian-dominated municipalities in the South
Morava Valley undisturbed. Imperial designs don't stop, they get stopped.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTn8SBHxime_5aM5_bhiauHEFvSUcnlSOOyFY8n2NiAB_ckQjzN" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTn8SBHxime_5aM5_bhiauHEFvSUcnlSOOyFY8n2NiAB_ckQjzN" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: grayfalcon.blogspot.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The human dimension of the disaster a Kosovo recognition would bring about
is as significant as the geopolitical one. The four municipalities of North
Kosovo, inhabited and controlled by local Serbs, which have in effect been the
target of the IBM agreement due to their unwillingness to subject themselves to
the Priština secessionist regime, are now faced with a very real ethnic
cleansing prospect. They repelled several attacks of NATO in 2011, they held a <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/02/ninety-nine-percent-against-fourth.html" target="_blank">referendum affirming their desire</a> to remain a part of Serbia, they froze in the cold standing at Jarinje and trying to prevent the border crossing between them and Serbia from being built, <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/06/message-in-blood.html" target="_blank">they've been shot</a>, beaten, pepper-sprayed, yet they stood firm. In order to defend their homes, they need the help of their government and now, their government is telling them to stand down and stand over on the other side of the border.<br />
<br />
More than 200,000 Serbs have already been cleansed from the
Albanian-controlled parts since NATO boots arrived it in 1999, while
approximately 50,000 still live in ghettoized enclaves south of Ibar River,
most of them fighting for bare survival, but refusing to abandon their
ancestral homes. Some areas have been completely cleansed of Serbs. It is clear
that the remaining enclaves are a part of the Albanian display of tolerance
intended to create an impression that Serbs can indeed co-exist with Albanians
in an Albanian-dominated society. Random unpunished murders and robberies of
isolated local Serb homes, together with the non-existence of legal system that
could even investigate the organ trafficking allegations or more than 1000
cases of murder of local Serbs, make the Kosovo Serbs unconvinced that they
won't be attacked and expelled en mass as soon as the trouble in the North is
resolved and the pretense of tolerance is not needed anymore. But check out the
continued hypocrisy of the Albanian leadership: they demand Serbia's
unconditional recognition of their sovereignty based on the fact that they
inhabit and control the land, while they refuse to bargain even over an
autonomous status within so recognized Kosovo for the North Kosovo Serbs, also
inhabiting and controlling their land. With their Western sponsors supporting
such a blatant manifestation of the logic of power against the logic of rights,
what can local Serbs expect from their Albanian neighbors but a continuation of
terror?<br />
<br />
Seeing all this, the official Belgrade still decided to sell the lives of
Serbs in exchange for a shaky promise of a paradise lost that is the European
Union. Betraying the Constitution, abandoning its endangered citizens and
brethren, exposing Serbia to renewed aggression and butchering and doing it all
to please an imperialist structure that spent its entire history aiding
Serbia's enemies, thus becoming one - all of this begs a question: whose
interests does the Dačić administration advance? Not those of the Serbian
people. A Serb in North Kosovo is the same as a Serb in Belgrade; if you betray
the interests of one, you've betrayed the interests of all. Furthermore, if
you've violated the Constitution, you've abolished the mechanism that awarded
you the legitimacy to rule; the election that brought you to power is null and
void if the democratically adopted Constitution doesn't bind you. In short, Mr.
Dačić and all the power that derives from the power of his position ceased to
be legitimate the moment he kicked to the curb the source of that power. And if
this is correct, if the Serbian government is not bound by the interests and
democratically expressed desires of the Serbian people, the next question is:
who does it answer to? I fear the answer to this question logically and
naturally justifies not only a call for an overthrow of the illegitimate
government, but, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence,
"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
Object evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is
their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security."<br />
<br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-22626671640928397342012-11-19T08:55:00.004-08:002012-11-19T20:01:22.031-08:00Imperial Justice 101: The Lesson of Adis and Ante<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBdSYuK2vg7TREJL49HPQ7UPC8t40kX5a7QlMHQzIJfU5vBakg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBdSYuK2vg7TREJL49HPQ7UPC8t40kX5a7QlMHQzIJfU5vBakg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: press.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Adis Medunjanin, a Bosnian Muslim kid from Queens, New York, who allegedly plotted to blow up New York City subway system, aiming to kill numerous Americans, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/nyregion/adis-medunjanin-convicted-of-subway-bomb-plot-gets-life-sentence.html" target="_blank">sentenced to life in prison </a>on November 16. The same day, Ante Gotovina, the Croat general who commanded over the most horrific ethnic cleansing operation in Europe since the World War II, namely, the expulsion of more than 220,000 and murder of more than 2,000 Serbs in the Serb Republic of Krajina, in early August of 1995, was freed by the Hague Tribunal together with his partner in crime, Mladen Markač. (Another perpetrator, general Ivan Čermak, was freed last year.) These two verdicts go to show how one fares as an enemy of the North Atlantic imperial system in comparison to its friends and allies. They are a message to other potential political criminals that it is ok to kill people selected as enemies of the North Atlantic imperialism, while it is wrong and punishable to be against it.<br />
<br />
Now, I am a New Yorker and a Serb. I condemn anyone who plotted to kill innocent civilians, not only in the city I live in, but anywhere on the planet. I know this is a moot point and a little hypocritical one at that, if you are paying taxes and buying bullets that strike innocent hearts, but, unfortunately, for billions of people, including yours truly, the only way to fight injustice is to yell "Injustice!"<br />
<br />
Anyway, if the Medunjanin kid really was plotting to bomb New York City's subway,* I applaud the U.S. courts for dishing out the harshest punishment, thus protecting the American civilians from the enemy that its government created and let in. Yes, the Bosnian Muslims are reputed allies and, I'd say, friends of the U.S. government, whose military fought alongside them against the Bosnian Serbs. The war brought a lot of them to America, and many of them are Muslim first, Americans probably never. Some decide to act upon that difference, like Medunjanin or Sulejman Talović, the Bosnian Muslim terrorist who killed five people in Utah in 2007. While I understand when a Palestinian wants to kill Americans, I feel a special kind of contempt towards Bosnian Muslims who kill Americans. As a man of high moral standards, I condemn ingrates who stab their friends in the back, which is how these Bosnian terror cells and individuals - and Albanian ones for that matter - repay for the Americans aiding their war against Serbs.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSyN3YYQrNzoD_lJp5qug0-5QUyrXLhWMk7P8A-R7vLflz12gwL" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSyN3YYQrNzoD_lJp5qug0-5QUyrXLhWMk7P8A-R7vLflz12gwL" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: telegraf.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Croats, on the other hand, knew better. <a href="http://www.srpska-mreza.com/Krajina/Elich.html" target="_blank">When Franjo Tuđman undertook the Operation Storm</a>, the final solution for the Serb-inhabited, UN-protected Serb Republic of Krajina, in August of 1995, <a href="http://cryptome.org/us-op-storm.htm" target="_blank">he did it with American blessing and, reportedly, aid</a>. Testimonies from the fleeing Serbs of NATO planes bombarding their convoys while the Croats were shelling and chasing them are numerous and undisputed. Ante Gotovina was the Croat hero who succeeded in liberating and cleansing this UN-protected entity of its population. He fought on the side of the North Atlantic Empire and he received a recognition for it from the legal arm of the Empire, the Hague Tribunal, which doesn't even have any legal ground for being around. Anyway, Gotovina did the imperial bidding, he wasn't trying to kill Americans but actually succeeded in killing Serbs, and that is, apparently, fine under the international law.<br />
<br />
Oh, how convenient this rogue term "international" is... When it comes to killing Serbs, in the Operation Storm or in the NATO butchering of Serbia in 1999, the international law doesn't apply. Hell, even the U.S. Constitution goes out the window (which shows that the American nation does not hire the American military anymore, but that's a different issue), since the U.S. Congress did not approve going into war against Serbia in 1999 either.<br />
<br />
So now we have these two simple situations: one, an alleged plot to kill Americans worthy of a life-in-prison sentence, and the other, an imperial military operation that successfully drove 220,000 Serbs out of their ancestral homes and killed more than 2,000 of those unable to run for their lives or unwilling to abandon their land. Now, under what kind of international justice system - let's pretend this is a non-imperialist category that can indeed exist - the first situation warrants a life in prison in the country that is a standard-bearer of the international rule of law agenda, while no one is held accountable for the mass murder and the expulsion of a quarter million people, a crime way more horrific than mere plotting to kill? I stand corrected: a crime way more horrific if one applies moral standards and common sense, not if one holds "the international law" principles over it.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRCUtjB-K_OPjAzlUZaRdgiZr6M6uchg-i2Z1kPOA7q9vRuYYiDKg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRCUtjB-K_OPjAzlUZaRdgiZr6M6uchg-i2Z1kPOA7q9vRuYYiDKg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: glas-javnosti.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The fact that the <a href="http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2012/11/16/feature-02" target="_blank">entire Croat nation went into ecstasy over the Hague decision to free the mass murderers and that the Serbs were astonished by the verdict</a>, despite the court's anti-Serb history, are both effects of these two nations' understanding of their respective positions in international relations. Croats showed a continued high understanding and zealous reverence for the nationalist agenda of their leadership, irrespective of heinous crimes committed in the name of it, while Serbs were puzzled by both the fact that the Western Europe and the United States - whom they call "international community" instead of the North Atlantic Empire - would insult them like that and that Croats would show such a disregard for Serbian sensibilities. The Serbian public showed a continued and alarming lack of understanding of international politics and, what's more surprising, an astounding, even stupefying, shortage of historical memory by which this disappointment in Croats was made possible, <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2011/04/injustice-for-all.html" target="_blank">despite early warnings of this particular outcome to this particular case.</a><br />
<br />
The most important message here is the imperial one and it is clear and terrifying; to all those that didn't get it in the past two decades: killing Serbs is fine by us and if you do it, make sure you consult us, so it's done right.<br />
<br />
*<span style="font-size: x-small;">considering the numerous cases where FBI agents were reportedly
initiating and fomenting potential terror cells for career gains and
budgetary purposes, i.e. fabrication of a reason to operate, it is hard
to believe anything that mainstream media report on these terror plots</span> <br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-59855710541413687732012-11-07T09:01:00.001-08:002012-11-13T08:36:13.749-08:00Voting Out of Spite: The American Serb No-Choice Ballot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTf7G9yzOrf2ta4OAx2FBX7kQAOE7O4VdUdFxe9O760IduwyBWtTw" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTf7G9yzOrf2ta4OAx2FBX7kQAOE7O4VdUdFxe9O760IduwyBWtTw" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: rferl.org</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I live in the United States and I voted in yesterday's general election. I'm concerned with the dilapidated economic conditions, high unemployment, increasing trade deficit, increasing debt, increasing income gaps, decreasing personal freedom, finance-controlled state subduing popular dissent, lack of preparedness and response to Hurricane Sandy, high cost of living and many other social, political and economic issues that should concern a member of a particular society. But, I am a Serb in the United States. And I don't vote on issues. Not on the domestic policy issues, at least. Now, it's not like either President Obama or Governor Romney would care about issues of common people outside the campaign rhetoric, but a participant in a democratic process should, I guess, pick a candidate who is closest to what he or she cares about, in simplest terms. An American Serb generally doesn't vote FOR anyone, but AGAINST a Biden, a Clinton, a McCain, against whoever Madeleine Albright supports, against whoever bombed Serbia, recognized Kosovo...<br />
<br />
I really hate the fact that the bridge tolls in my area cost me an arm and a leg, but even if I have a choice of voting for someone who swore not to rob me blind, I'd still vote based on his or her position on Kosovo. True, no U.S. presidential candidate stood with the Serbs since Woodrow Wilson, and no matter how hard an American Serb looks, he'd be hard pressed to find a candidate with no affiliation to anti-Serb agenda. Does that leave us with no choice but not to vote at all? <br />
<br />
In 2004, calls within the American Serb communities to vote for George W. Bush took on a dimension of a campaign. <a href="http://www.serbianna.com/columns/mb/030.shtml" target="_blank">Websites, newspaper ads and internet debates</a> really engaged the American Serb Diaspora. Wait, was Dubya a friend to the Serbs? Didn't his administration pounce to recognize Thaci's Cartel State in 2008? Didn't the worst act of ethnic cleansing in the 21st century occur on his watch against the Kosovo Serbs in March 2004? All true, but in 2004, it was John Kerry, his opponent, who inexplicably promised to recognize Kosovo during the campaign, although Kosovo was far from being a foreign policy priority or a campaign issue. It was John Kerry who received more than half a million dollars in one evening from the Albanian-American community led by Florin Krasniqi, a well-known arms dealer, via the notorious Serb-haters Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark, who took the money over in the Cipriani ballroom in New York. Of course Serbs were going to vote for Kerry's opponent. The movement in the Serbian community was not ignored by Kerry, who wrote a letter to the Serbian community in Pittsburgh, addressing the issues Serbs held him in contempt over.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS9vE-DoZnN4hhaHQbOgBoXijcO_lARrqBnn2tEvni6s6fhBnLF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS9vE-DoZnN4hhaHQbOgBoXijcO_lARrqBnn2tEvni6s6fhBnLF" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: serbianna.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 2008, the campaign in support of John McCain's opponent was not that vigorous, but a lot of Serbs did clamor for Ron Paul, a man whose Congressional voting record was clean of anti-Serbian activity. Barack Obama was a political novice and his anti-Serbian record was acceptable, but having selected another notorious Serb-hater Joe Biden as his VP choice, it was no surprise that many Serbs abstained from supporting either of the major candidates. Today, faced again with Obama, with Biden and the Clinton family by his side, it's no surprise to hear the American Serbs calling for a Mitt Romney vote. I won't be the Serb who voted for Romney, the epitome of the financierism devouring the world, just because Biden is the alternative. It is increasingly difficult for the American Serbs to find a place on the ballot to circle and not to feel guilty.<br />
<br />
I left half of my ballot empty. I considered going "white ballot" and leave the entire ballot blank, but I felt it is my right to at least write a name in. If I wasn't a Serb, I'd weigh the issues. I'd weigh a Wall Street bankster against a sketchy lawyer for South Chicago slumlords. I'd weigh which of the two politics would provide me with less of a reason to move back to the even greater uncertainty of Serbia. I'd weight which of the two groups of very similar campaign donors is less hostile to a common man. But with financial feudalists behind Romney, with Joe Biden plus the welfare state next to Obama, it was really not a choice for me. But since I vote with the Serbian heart rather than with an American mind, if Romney extended an appropriate message into Serbian communities, Serbs like me, despite the disgust towards financierism, would be swayed.<br />
<br />
In November of 2004, Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich expressed gratitude to Ohio Serbs for voting Republican and helping Bush win in this swing state in which Serbs were traditionally voting Democratic due to their strong union affiliations. He even went as far as to hint at the Serbian support being crucial in communities where Serbs reside in large numbers. In 2012, no one will thank Serbs, as Serbs are politically non-existent in the United States. Now, Bush did recognize Kosovo in 2008 and the U.S. foreign policy was still strongly under the paw of the remnants of the Clinton State Department, but the mobilization momentum was very important for the gain in political weight the American Serbs carry. Perhaps influencing the presidential elections is far fetched, but there are Congressional districts where Serbs could significantly affect election outcomes, if they were organized into voting blocks.<br />
<br />
While the election of 2004 appeared to have increased Serbian community's participation, bolstered by the hope that its choice may aid a Serbian cause, or at least prevent a greater evil, the momentum thus gained hasn't been capitalized on. The government of Serbia hasn't reached out to the American Serb community with initiatives to further utilize its voting power. The Serbian Unity Congress, for a while the most promising American Serb organization, appeared to have been completely co-opted into its leaders' personal political ambition, detached from the American Serb interests and interest of Serbdom. Serbs live in large numbers in such swing states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, even Florida. In Ohio, President Obama won by 100,000 votes last night. There is a lot more than 100,000 Serbs in Ohio to cajole, if they presented an organized voting block worth sucking up to. There is a voting potential vastly unappreciated and neglected out there.<br />
<br />
The American Serbs do have numbers to posit themselves in voting blocks that could demand their voice to be heard, but the power of their numbers hasn't been shaped into a political movement nor has their voice been articulated into a message that could produce an electoral demand. Voting AGAINST a candidate, on any level, is an inadequate effort at a spiteful personal satisfaction, which is fine but largely futile, but voting FOR a candidate who promised even the slightest gain for the American Serb communities in exchange for our vote is a political engagement on a more serious level, even if the results are not seen immediately.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, I'll continue leaving half a ballot empty and throw dice on the rest of it as no candidate will do anything for me. And I can't blame anyone since I haven't asked any candidate to do a thing for me and my community. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-70969406877389996712012-10-22T10:15:00.000-07:002012-10-23T10:24:36.704-07:00The Secret Handshake with the Snake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQuSY9tiG8ZKYqtsxYnr17UzAIPqjrhk-eGTcmaI_DgNGTRh8VJ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQuSY9tiG8ZKYqtsxYnr17UzAIPqjrhk-eGTcmaI_DgNGTRh8VJ" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: b92.net</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hashim ‘’The Snake” Thaci is a war criminal and a terrorist,
according to Serbia’s government and probably every Serb this
side of Nataša Kandić agrees with this assessment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>President Tomislav Nikolić has reiterated that, while being aware
that the official Belgrade must continue talking with the Kosovo Albanian
secessionists, he refused to meet with the suspected war criminal sitting in the
chair of the so-called Kosovo Prime Minister. On Friday, however, a bombshell
piece of news broke the Serbosphere: Ivica Dačić, Serbia’s Prime Minister, just
finished meeting with Hashim Thaci in Brussels! No announcement in Serbian
media, no hint that this is the new official course Serbia is taking towards
the Kosovo secession issue, just a “this-just-in” news report of the event that
just happened, followed with cries by the patriotic side of the Serbosphere, accusing
Dačić of treason, his Socialist Party spin masters patting their leader on the
back for carrying the “heavy burden” and dealing with the Kosovo issues
resolutely and the co-opted Serbian media following suit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will not delve into the implications. I want to dwell
on the reactions to the actual meeting from both Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, let’s look at how one would expect either side to
react.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thaci was arrested in Budapest in 2003 and let go
immediately after the intervention of the then-UNMIK head Michael Steiner. The
arrest was based on Serbia’s international arrest warrant from 1997, which hasn’t
been withdrawn by as late as 2010, according to Snežana Malović, Serbia’s Minister
of Justice in the Mirko Cvetković cabinet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> All reports point towards it still being in effect.
</span><a href="http://thebloodyellowhouse.wordpress.com/dick-marty/" target="_blank">The well-publicized report to the Council of Europe by the Swiss Deputy Dick Marty</a> put Thaci squarely at the center of the organ extraction and
trafficking operations, but the failure of the Hague Tribunal’s investigators
to even touch the subject was as glaring an evidence as any of Thaci being
protected from high circles of European politics. The Interpol does not list him
as a person wanted by Serbia, but Malović accused the international police
agency of refusing to list him claiming he enjoys diplomatic immunity. He is a
diplomat of which internationally recognized country or an intergovernmental
agency exactly? In any case, Thaci is considered a criminal in Serbia, a leader
of the Albanian takeover of Kosovo and a devil himself. Yet, in the face of the
sentiment that should be grounds enough to refuse any dealing with Thaci and to
renew the calls for his arrest, Dačić allows himself to be summoned to Brussels
by Catherine Ashton and to shake hands with the symbol of Serb suffering and
the dismemberment of Serbia. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Barack
Obama even floated the idea of meeting Osama bin Laden, instead of assassinating
him (reportedly), Joe Biden would be nesting behind the big desk in the Oval Office
now and the Clintons would laugh. Yes, Thaci is the Serbian Osama bin Laden and
it would be reasonable to expect that a meeting with him at the highest level
would cause riots in Serbia. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the other hand, one would expect the Kosovo Albanians to gloat
over the fact that Serbia was forced to place the resolution of the status of
their secession as the top national priority by Belgrade and that the Serbian
Prime Minister himself was forced to have a sit-down with their warlord and the
drug cartel master. Borislav Stefanović, the former negotiatior of technical terms, was an emissary, an apparatchik who
signed off on all the Albanian demands that his boss, Boris Tadić, had agreed
to from Belgrade. Forcing Dačić, however, to stoop down to Thaci’s level must
be a reason to gloat, right? Wrong.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s now see how diagonally opposite to the expectations
the reactions have been. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSMCrclDfngwwTctk_GnF15J9WiPkBaQipq0uNI0pF7N8S7jZnP" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSMCrclDfngwwTctk_GnF15J9WiPkBaQipq0uNI0pF7N8S7jZnP" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: b92.net</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On Monday, while Belgrade was peaceful, as it was the entire
weekend and as if its Prime Minister didn't just shake hands with the Snake, Priština was rioting! The followers of Albin Kurti, the leader of the
Self-Determination Movement, clashed with police, trying to overrun the Kosovo Parliament
in a protest over the meeting. They accused Thaci of treason and carried banners
calling for a cessation of talks with Serbia and a move towards unification
with Albania. Kurti and his movement are an ultranationalist challenge to the
rule of Thaci’s crime ring and this wasn’t the first time they used force
against the Thaci regime. But an instance in which Thaci, despite the war crimes and terrorism baggage, got to sit at the same table with Serbia’s Prime Minister in the
process of what might end up being a recognition of Kosovo’s independence, was
not likely to become a cause for a protest by radical ultranationalists. Yet it
was.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Serbia, only one political party – the extra-parliamentary
and now largely irrelevant Serbian Radical Party – openly accused Dačić of
treason. While the Albanians consider any conversation with Serbia a treason,
Serbs haggle over banalities such as whether Dačić shook Thaci’s hand –
allusion to Tadić’s embarrassing handshake with Thaci in Croatia after his
presidential election loss – instead of asking the Prime Minister, the
President and their media the only legitimate question here: When exactly has
it been decided and to whom exactly was it announced that the new official
course in “defending” the southern province was embarked onto? Why was the meeting kept secret until it ended? And why was Serbian media playing deaf-mute? If the Prime
Minister is meeting with Thaci, that’s a new, self-depreciating, shameful course
for Serbia. But even Vojislav Koštunica’s Serbian Democrats characterized the
meeting only as “damage to Serbian national interests.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The media, most of which is still controlled by the
Democratic Party-imposed cadre, has done a great job of misinforming the
Serbian public and minimizing the effects and reverberations such a colossally important
event was bound to cause. The fact that no media outlet – to my knowledge –
announced the meeting is indicative of the confluence of interests that created
the context. Serbian media’s pro-Western editors, ever trigger-happy when a
chance to embarrass the new government presents itself, stayed embarrassingly
quiet and passed on the chance to call Dačić out in the run-up to the
meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can understand why the
outlets close to the government or inching towards its good graces kept they air waves and presses shut, but I can only explain this momentous development on the former Tadić
regime media side by pointing towards their cue givers in Brussels who wanted
nothing to undermine the preparations for the historic event. They couldn't afford to allow a negative reaction in Serbia a week before the meeting to shake Dačić's resolve. I mean, why would, otherwise, the outlets
such as Blic or B92 spare Dačić? Only a week or so before these same outlets
blasted Dačić for misspeaking at a German World War II victims’ commemoration,
when he blamed “criminals” who have murdered Serbs in the past for blocking
Serbia's EU bid today. Now, this is attack-worthy and the Thaci meeting is
not? It wasn't a big deal that no one informed the Serbian media that there was
going to be a meeting of historic proportions? The media spin that followed was
best depicted in the quote they beat us over the head with: ‘’’I told him
(Thaci) that Kosovo is as much mine as it is his, I was born in Kosovo,’ noted
the premier.’’ You officially met with the war criminal, unannounced, almost
secretly, without regard to the official policy of the rest of your government,
that’s what you did. Who cares what you told him?...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And just to touch on the actual implications of the meeting…
Whoever waves this meeting off as a chess move, know that Serbia is several
moves behind and very uncomfortable with the clock. Talking with Kosovo
Albanian officials is one thing and regardless of the context in which the Serbian public
places the Kosovo secession, their attitudes are a reality and cannot be ignored. Talking with
Hashim Thaci, on the other hand, is out of question as a circumstance resulting
from any kind of strategic maneuvering, because it not only sends contradictory
message from the very top of the Serbian government, one that shows no coherence
and no elements of leadership, but it also departs from the set bargaining attitude,
however feeble, and, more importantly, from the self-respect position that
every negotiator must establish and project. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Treason or not, Dačić’s handshake with the Snake charts a
new course in Serbia’s politics: one that opens Serbia up for anything, one that
has no aces up its sleeve, one that goes all in against the weathered Brussels
big stack bullies who brought Serbia to its knees in the first place and who
don’t even have to hide behind a poker face anymore.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-72605157411964904262012-08-09T14:40:00.000-07:002012-08-09T14:43:40.325-07:00Generals and Efendis: Leveling the Field of Sins<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/072_files/004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/072_files/004.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: serbianna.com</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Among other
well-publicized issues, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić drew
more positive attention to himself in the past few days <a href="http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2012&mm=08&dd=06&nav_id=81645" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">by calling to accountability</span></a>
a fellow minister who participated in the ceremony of unveiling of a
commemorative plaque in honor of a well-known Fascist from the World War II
era. Namely, Minister Sulejman Ugljanin, a Bosniak from the Raška region, was
present at the commemoration of one Aćif Hadžiahmetović, better known as Aćif
Efendi, in Novi Pazar. Vučić asked for a special meeting in which the rest of
the cabinet criticized Ugljanin for supporting a local move that showed
disregard for the anti-Fascist tradition of the Serbian people and for the
victims of the Fascist militia leader in question. The cabinet decided it
wanted the plaque removed. Ok, there you
go, problem solved. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Well, hold
your horses, this is the Balkans where no solution is quick...</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Some of the
Western-collaborationist Serbian media characters drew a parallel between Vučić
criticizing Ugljanin and his support for the rehabilitation of the Serbian
Chetnik commander, general Draža Mihailović, whom the media-dominating Western
puppetry in Serbia still considers a Nazi collaborator, based on the Yugoslav
Communist determination that Nazi collaborators were all who didn't join the
Partisans. Of course, I expected nothing less from the anti-Serb
foreign-sponsored cohorts of Serbia's NGO world, but regardless of their quickness
to justify any anti-Serb action, a thorough historians' effort should finally
be undertaken to clarify who's who of Serbia's World War II bloody waters. Now,
I and many other Serbs know a hero of two world
wars and the first resistance fighter against Hitler in the occupied
Europe cannot be equated with a Fascist crony, but the Serbian nation, for the
sake of understanding its own role in the recent European history and to shut
the mouth of the anti-Serb agitators, has to get this part of their history
straight. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Vučić and
Ugljanin aside, ghosts of the World War II German occupation of Serbia and the
civil war that ensued parallel with the anti-Fascist resistance haven't stopped
roaming its mountains and valleys since one side in the conflict, Tito's
Communists, was brought into power by the Red Army and Winston Churchill. The
Allies won, and the Communists won, and they each wrote a version of history
that glorified their noble purposes and vilified their enemies. Fine, every
victor in history has done that without much regard for facts or justice. The
evil of Italian Fascism and German Nazism was defeated and the
Nuremberg trial told the story of the war as the offspring was supposed to
learn it. The offspring of the warring South Slavic factions, however, learned
several different versions of the story and the fall of Yugoslav Communism in
1990 opened a Pandora's box of unresolved historical disputes that very much
affected the state-building and reconciliation processes. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRvoHBC5OcuIFxJZlOzDhlWsGUjkvmkYBWN_6k56xEgftc5Ezoc4g" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRvoHBC5OcuIFxJZlOzDhlWsGUjkvmkYBWN_6k56xEgftc5Ezoc4g" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: teslasociety.org</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Without going
into the well known historical detail, I want to stick with Aćif Efendi's case
versus the cases of Serbs accused by the Communist regime of collaborating with
the Nazi occupier. Who he was, <a href="http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/072.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">the history knows</span></a>. Tito's Communists executed him
for ''collaborating with the occupier'' which was a vague qualification. The
local Serbs see Aćif Efendi as an enemy whose
Fascist Sandžak Muslim Militia killed thousands of Serb Orthodox
peasants in the Raška region (or Sandžak, as local Muslims call it). This
Sandžak Muslim Militia fought as a Nazi paramilitary appendix until it was
defeated. It targeted Serbs, without differentiating their Royalist or
Communist allegiance. To be clear, the Nazi Germans were the aggressor and the
occupier of Yugoslavia as well as the dominant military force, capable of
committing the most severe atrocities of all the warring factions. Those who
fought alongside it were its appendices with similar capabilities, incomparable
to the lesser capabilities of the resistance fighters, either the Communists
Partisans or the Royalist Chetniks. These two were just guerrilla, fighting the
Nazis and their domestic collaborators such as the Croats or the Sandžak
Muslims, as well as each other. To fight each other, each side on more than
occasion put aside the fight against the Germans. Aćif Efendi was, no doubt, a
German helper and a fighter against the resistance movement of both varieties,
enabled to commit mass murder on a scale his Nazi mentors were notorious for.
And his Sandžak Muslims had every right to form their own fighting units and
side with whoever they thought would further their causes. The Raška Muslims
have every right to decide whether the likes of Aćif Efendi were their heroes.
They just have be considerate of the feelings of the Serbian majority.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Here I have to
introduce the key question: what is the sin, being a Fascist, a collaborator or
a loser of the war? Were the traitors those who joined the occupiers, those who
collaborated with them, those who turned against the king and the exiled
government, or those who simply ended up losing the war?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">When Harry
Truman decorated general Dragoljub Mihailović, commander of the Yugoslav Army
in the Fatherland, a.k.a. the Serbian chetniks, secretly so he didn't have to
explain himself to the new Communist government of Yugoslavia who executed
Mihailović two years earlier, it was understood at the time that an American
president wouldn't award the Legion of
Merit to a Fascist collaborator, but to a proven anti-Fascist. In the middle of
the American anti-Nazi war, Hollywood, ever ready to side with the ideals
projected by Washington, made a movie about general Draža, called <i>Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas,</i> and
the Time Magazine put the famed warrior on its front page, celebrating him as
the only anti-German fighter in the entire occupied Europe. Thus, Draža was
definitely anti-Fascist not only because some Serbs thought so, but because his
important contemporaries conceded so and supported him as such. If he was a
Nazi collaborator, I doubt the Americans would side against their interests and
recognize Draža. Although the Communists, the victor in their rebellion against
the legitimate Yugoslav government, executed both the general and Aćif Efendi,
their judgement should solely be analyzed from the perspective of them winning
and exerting a retribution on the losers. Aćif Efendi was not a Fascist because
the Communists executed him, but because he fought alongside the Germans and
the Italians. Draža fought against both occupying armies, and the mere fact
that his Communist enemy sentenced him to death doesn't make him a collaborator
with the occupier but simply the enemy of the Communists.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSF3qlsl9FdjIyhBETSzNgBzK2mQo2gdU1VnuTWfH1dM4DCTuwzHQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSF3qlsl9FdjIyhBETSzNgBzK2mQo2gdU1VnuTWfH1dM4DCTuwzHQ" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: pogledi.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">It is time to
introduce another key character, way more fitting this discussion. General
Milan Nedić collaborated with the Nazis as he hesitantly accepted his
appointment to head the provisional government of the German-occupied Serbia.
Even he is still on a level of collaboration below Aćif Efendi because Nedić
did not contribute a single fighting unit to the German war efforts against the
Allies. Nedić's sin was in that he did not join the resistance against the
Germans, effectively impeding it through the German-controlled Serbian Volunteer
Corps, thus rendering himself a traitor to the Serbian cause, although his mere
position as a collaborator helped save hundreds of thousands Serbs escaping
Croatian genocidal policies. Considering this, as well as the fact that the
German official retribution policy in the occupied Serbia mandated the
execution of 100 Serb civilians for one German soldier killed by the resistance
fighters, on one level Nedić cannot be blamed for disregarding the geopolitical
and imperial alliances between Great Powers to try and save lives of the Serbian
people facing extermination. To save the Serbs, Nedić sold out on his World War
I hero reputation. Outside of the fact that Nazism turned out to be an absolute
evil, Nedić's blame has to be revisited and analyzed more honestly. Was it better that he accepted the position to act as Hitler's puppet or that the Germans allowed Croat and Bulgarian Fascists to overrun Serbia? He had no
obligation to fight for the imperial causes of Stalin, Roosevelt or Churchill
at the expense of the Serbian nation, just like Aćif Efendi had no obligation
to join Partisans or Chetniks. If Nedić didn't succumb to the Nazi pressure, I
wonder how many Serbs would have survived the occupation. While Mihailović is
slowly being legally rehabilitated in Serbia, Nedić's rehabilitation is a
national taboo. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">One conclusion
is that Aćif Efendi is nowhere near the Mihailović comparison and whoever
compares the anti-Nazi fighter with a Nazi crony is deluded or malicious and
doesn't have the truth and the reconciliation at heart. General Mihailović
should be taken out of this discussion altogether. If there are heroes, he is a
hero to the Serbian people, no question about that. But if Aćif Efendi joined
the Nazis to better the chances of his Muslim brethren in cleaning the area of
Serbs or protecting his people against the Communists or the Chetniks, this
should be stated and analyzed from the appropriate angle. If he was perhaps wrongly accused of , this should be revisited too. Even if this wouldn't remove
the Fascist label from his name, but it would enable Serbia and its Muslim
minority to open more honest discussions, desperately needed. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">If <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2838816/posts" target="_blank">Croats can glorify their Fascist past</a> unimpeded and be accepted and protected by the EU as
such, then the table in the Fascist-anti-Fascist debate have turned in the whole
of Europe and Europe is <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2012/05/victory-day.html" target="_blank">not so anti-Fascist anymore</a>. Then Serbia has to look
past the Communist-borne notions and decide how it wants to view its World War
II past. It has to decide whether its Muslim minority can be allowed to
celebrate its anti-Serb Fascists. If a case is made that they could, then
Serbia should have no regard for those offended by a Nedić rehabilitation
either. Any discussion of a
rehabilitation of Fascists like Aćif Efendi must be predicated on the
rehabilitation of the Serbian Nazi collaborators like Milan Nedić, Dimitrije
Ljotić or Kosta Pećanac. If the Bosniak minority in Serbia is justified in
offending the sentiments of the Serb majority by glorifying Fascists, then the
Serb majority should start looking at its own Nazi collaborators who saved
Serbian lives under a different light. Nazi or Fascist collaboration is in no
way greater a sin than actually being a Nazi or a Fascist.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">It is just for
Serbia to start looking at its own past and teach its own offspring the truth
without much concern for geopolitical and ideological mandates imposed by
foreign, often anti-Serbian, interests and doctrines. </span></span></div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-90773114257548217322012-08-07T09:55:00.000-07:002012-08-07T13:29:07.826-07:00Neglected by Croatia: The Realities of Dubrovnik<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTlYcAllUiwC2f2e7uDhROvGT7iNQEfjlxSlOfHoafY_puqlau7fQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTlYcAllUiwC2f2e7uDhROvGT7iNQEfjlxSlOfHoafY_puqlau7fQ" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: hu.wikipedia.org</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The political battle to build the Pelješac bridge that would connect the Dubrovnik region with the rest of Croatia has taken on a new dimension: the <i>Free Dalmatia </i>newspaper from Split <a href="http://www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/Novosti/Hrvatska/tabid/66/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/183357/Default.aspx" target="_blank">published a story </a>(<span style="font-size: xx-small;">link in Croatian</span>) warning of the increase in the separatist mood among the Dubrovnik population due to the negligence of Croatia's authorities towards this remote region.<br />
<br />
How is this a topic for the Serbian Roundup, you ask. Dubrovnik was a Serb-inhabited medieval city whose survival through centuries of foreign occupation of other Serb lands ensured the survival of great historical and cultural heritage, invaluable to Serbdom. Since its inclusion in the Croatian Banovina in 1939 and in the Independent State of Croatia, it's been divesting itself of its Serb Dalmatian character. Now it is a part of the Republic of Croatia and almost no Serbs live there, but it is still a part of the Serb cultural heritage and one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The mere fact that it belongs to Croatia as of lately cannot erase the Serb millennium of its ethnic character and its political independence. As a historic Serb city, it is, of course, of interest to the Serbian Roundup.<br />
<br />
Now, this is not a call to return Dubrovnik to its Serb origins in any way. Serbian dreams and Dubrovnik realities diverged significantly after the Croat genocide against Serbs of 1941-1945, perhaps even before that. After Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the Dubrovnik Republic in 1808, according to the local lore the Dubrovnik gentry decided to stop having children as they refused to raise offspring without freedom. Many did heed that call and entire noble families died out. The Croat genocide against the Serbs did not exclude the Dubrovnik area and most of the Serb inhabitants were eradicated from the city and from the vicinity. The Austro-Hungarian abolition of Serb rights in 1908, the croatization of the Serb Catholics, the influx of Croats from other parts of Dalmatia, the genocide against Serbs and the revival of Croat ultra-nationalism and chauvinism of the 1990s turned Dubrovnik into an all-Croat area. Serbs can't stake a claim to it anymore and, obviously, Dubrovnik is neither a Serbian problem nor on the radar as a Serbian political issue. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS_ZDal_45tgH7aSqFPpcI_v_Js977_MZcLY7xb_COix6uV42E7Pg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS_ZDal_45tgH7aSqFPpcI_v_Js977_MZcLY7xb_COix6uV42E7Pg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: forum.krstarica.com</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Although this article in <i>Free Dalmatia</i> was clearly a lobbying effort aimed at Croatia's government to push through with the stalled building of a bridge to the Peljesac peninsula, probably aided by financial interests that are in a hurry to make good on their investments, it cited some definite reasons for dissatisfaction in Dubrovnik, which, coupled with Dubrovnik historic statehood and independence, can indeed increase separatist tendencies. Namely, the Dubrovnik coast, since it is not a Croat historic land, is geographically isolated from the rest of Croatia, with very weak transportation connections, which, according to <i>Free Dalmatia</i>, significantly deteriorated after Croatia's independence in 1992, mainly due to neglect. It is not easy for Croatia to maintain the connection with Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik was an independent merchant state, a rival of Venice, and its overland trade networks, as well as other relationships, ethnic and cultural, were mainly leaning on its most natural logistical partner, the Serb hinterland of Herzegovina, Bosnia, Zeta and Rascia. The inhabitants of Dubrovnik were mostly Serbs of Hum (Herzegovina) and their descendants, the most famous of them being Ruđer Bošković (Ruggero Boscovich), one of the most important European astronomers of the 18th century. The Ottomans, after the conquest of the Serb hinterland, knowing the significance of Dubrovnik's Western connections allowed its trade with the hinterland to continued unimpeded. All this has been well-documented in the Dubrovnik Archive, one of the most precious resources for students of Serbian history. Dubrovnik is simply not near the rest of Croatia and that, apparently, is a problem.<br />
<br />
<i>Free Dalmatia </i>sources cited not only a lack of transportation connections, especially during the off-season months between October and April when Dubrovnik is not as important to Croatia's economy as during summer, a lack of drinking water, sanitation services, including the sewer system, and the increased transfer of local institutions of political and economic self-governance out of Dubrovnik and into Split and the port of Ploče. Corruption and budget misappropriations are rampant, according to the article. Now, we are not talking about some fishing village where tourists like to come, bathe and eat figs; this is Dubrovnik, whose Old City - under UNESCO protection - is one of the pearls of the Mediterranean and whose history and architectural beauty transcends politics of Zagreb or Split. Increasingly a remote province and a milking cow, Dubrovnik and its citizens like artist Davor Lucianović, who contributed to the <i>Free Dalmatia</i> story, are right to feel aggrieved.<br />
<br />
The <i>Free Dalmatia</i> article suggested: if you don't build this bridge, expect Dubrovnik to request more autonomy. Since Dubrovnik's history of independence is much longer than Croatia's own, this would not be an unreasonable request even if <i>Free Dalmatia's</i> only motivation was to lobby for the bridge.<br />
<br />
Even if Dubrovnik became completely croatized during the fascist Independent State of Croatia, it is not unreasonable to find popular dissatisfaction in this historically independent region, especially with the prospects of economic prosperity an increased independence would carry. A renewal of the spirit of independence among the people of Dubrovnik would, due to its traditional outlooks and geographic position, also renew its historic role as a cultural and economic bridge between the quarreling states of the Southeast Europe. Croatia supports secession in neighboring countries, and although one shouldn't deduce too much from one article, I'm sure the region wouldn't stand in the way of Dubrovnik gaining more independence from Croatia. A case in point is the international affair surrounding the very bridge that started all this, with Istanbul, I mean, Sarajevo, conveniently invoking an agreement between Franjo Tuđman and Alija Izetbegović to block Croatia from connecting with Dubrovnik.<br />
<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-24362567205159065862012-08-02T11:50:00.000-07:002012-08-02T11:58:59.711-07:00Kill the Beast: Grading the Regime Change in Serbia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRzYtrLYykjIRrou6oZ3X3nX2pD4lIa_feas7Y198yQoqL1Fun3" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRzYtrLYykjIRrou6oZ3X3nX2pD4lIa_feas7Y198yQoqL1Fun3" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: vestinet.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Surrounded with cheers, hope, suspicion, hypocrisy, sycophancy,
indifference, loathing and fear, Ivica Dačić and Aleksandar Vučić have grabbed
the levers of state power in Serbia with a necessary resolve in the past week.
The road from a Milošević protege who narrowly escaped lustration to the Prime
Minister of Serbia was long for Dačić. The road from a Šešelj protege to the
state intelligence czar and the Minister of Defense was even rougher and longer
for Vučić. Who would've thought on the eve of the parliamentary election on May
6th that these two men would stand together in the ouster of the corrupt regime
of Boris Tadić, which, in its own blinded self-righteousness, thought it was
destined to rule Serbia into the ground?<br />
<br />
To round up all the twists and turns in Serbia's post-election coalition
building, dismantling, patching and finally corralling, one would be remiss to
start with May 6th, let alone on May 20th. If I wanted to analyze the fall of
Boris Tadić's Western client regime, I'd had <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2011/12/merkelian-limbo-of-boris-tadic-tomorrow.html" target="_blank">to revisit the December 9th</a>
rejection of Serbia's EU candidacy and the subsequent <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2011/12/konuzin-ante-portas.html" target="_blank">humanitarian sortie of Russian Ambassador Konuzin into North
Kosovo</a>, i.e. the EU-Russia Summit in Brussels that accompanied it. If we
look at this series of events as a watershed moment, the victory of Tomislav Nikolić
should be seen as the spring of the river that is Serbia liberated from Boris Tadić.<br />
<br />
Since the Fifth of October of 2000, Serbia hasn't seen a change so dramatic.
When <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/05/election-in-serbia-fraud-fraud-fraud.html" target="_blank">the election fraud</a> not only marred the results but also to devalue the
democratic process and to discourage any hope for a regime change in Serbia,
<a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/05/tease-note-and-rough-road-ahead-for-new.html" target="_blank">the unexpected victory of Nikolić</a> unleashed a chain of events that can
hopefully provide a chance for Serbia's salvation and recovery. The victory
wasn't unexpected because Nikolić was an underdog, but because Tadić was
inclined to steal the election.<br />
From this perspective, wiser by a couple of months, there are several
questions that must be answered before Serbia can grapple with the effects of
the regime change.<br />
<br />
First, how much of a regime change was it really? <br />
Commentators on both sides of the aisle question, for differing reasons, the
direction of a regime change in which almost half of the previous
administration remains in office and in which some of the most reputedly
corrupt public figures of the past 12 years get to not only go unpunished, but
to stay in power. Mlađan Dinkić, for example, served as the Governor of the
National Bank of Serbia, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Economy in
previous administrations - all positions of key relevance to the economy that
is lying in ruins as a consequence. Dačić himself was the key ally to Boris Tadić
since 2008. On top of these two, an array of former Tadić allies
has crossed over to the winning team. What the hell is Vučić, the new head of
Serbian Progressive Party, thinking taking in all these no-good appendices of the corrupt regime he invested 12 years into beating? Well, whoever thought the Progressives,
the plain-clothed derivative of Vojislav Šešelj's Radicals with 25 percent of
popular support, can just barge in and bring down the system created by a
corrupt regime with such a firm hold of the state and economic power, was plain
naive. Tentacles of the power Tadić's Democratic Party was an umbrella for
extended much deeper than the power to simply cut them off at will. The
Democrats were the octopus, even if all the tentacles were not their own, e.g. Dinkić
and his clique. To change the regime, one had to kill the beast at its helm and
it does appear that the Democrat beast is not only out of power on thenational
level and gradually being pushed out in most municipalities it had held, but
its nervous system has become a wreck due to betrayals of allies and infighting. If the ouster of the ruling party is a
regime change, then the Progressives, with the willing cooperation of the
former junior partners in the regime, did pull it off. Just compare the power
of Boris Tadić and his cohorts before and after May 20th.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.novosti.rs/upload/images/2012//03/09n/pol-ljajic-tadic-djilas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="219" src="http://www.novosti.rs/upload/images/2012//03/09n/pol-ljajic-tadic-djilas.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: novosti.rs</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Second, outside of a violent street uprising or a coup d'etat, how does one
conduct a total regime change? Gradually, of course. <br />
Nikolić and Vučić correctly understood that the election victory was just a
ticket into the fray, not a championship belt. If the goal was to kill the beast, one had to be a fool to engage it
in a hand-to-hand combat, but had to instead utilize everything at his
disposal, even Mlađan Dinkić, if that's what it took to cut the legs from underneath
the beast. And it did. What were the alternatives? Street protests over the
well-documented election fraud, which could have led to instability,
unpredictable outcomes and more suffering of the people quick to demolish, but slow to build. Co-habitation, meaning Nikolić as an
ineffective president with constitutionally limited power, ignored, sabotaged
or smeared by the Democrat-led cabinet, Democrat-controlled institutions and
Democrat-owned media. If the Progressives abstained from coalition-building out
of moral considerations, Boris Tadić would've kept on destroying the country. It
wasn't much of a choice, one had to admit. It's better to have Dinkić as a
junior, junior partner than Tadić as the Prime Minister.<br />
<br />
Third, are the Progressives, combined with Dačić's Socialists and Dinkić's
United Regions, ideologically and behaviorally more of the same in comparison
to Tadić's regime? In short, no. <br />
Some commentators tend to base this notion on the EU-related rhetoric. True,
the Progressives are stuck on the pro-EU rhetoric as well. True, the Socialists
have been beating the EU drums, although a lot more shyly than the Democrats,
for the past four years. True, Dinkić, with his ideologically amorphous coalition/party, has been in the service of EU and every other foreign interest in
Serbia for as long as the Democrats have. It is also true that this time
around, Dinkić is showing significantly less inclination to act independently,
out of fear of falling out of the line with the coalition and falling victim to
the Vučić-promised anti-corruption offensive, or due to an inexplicable change
of heart (just kidding). It is also true that Dačić finds himself in an
ideologically way more comfortable coalition this time around, due to his
somewhat nationalist leanings and a chance for his Socialists to actually
replace the Democrats as the main ostensibly leftist party on the political
scene. (If you wonder how a party can be nationalist and leftist at the same
time, it is time for you to stop thinking about Left and Right in the
conventional terms and start observing the dichotomy as merely elementary to
the globalist-anti-globalist spectrum.) Finally, we'd be fools if we thought
that it is enough for Šešelj's disciples to change their party emblem and to
declare themselves pro-EU, to actually and completely abandon the Radical
pillars they had been building themselves for two decades. When Dačić made the
last-minute deal with Tadić in 2008, breaking the coalition promise to Nikolić
and Vojislav Koštunica, it became clear that the West will never allow the
Radical Party to get into power and that some kind of transformation was
necessary. Now, I'm not saying Nikolić and Vučić would absolutely reveal their
true Radical self once they took the helm. This game is way more serious than
that, the powers that are may be weaker than in 2008, but will not allow
Serbian nationalists to play them for fools. The line Nikolić and Vučić are
walking is very thin. Still, if we base our conclusions in the rhetoric only, Nikolić
and, to a slightly lesser degree, Vučić, have shown significantly more of a nationalist strain than it could have been expected from someone who'd continue
Tadić's anti-Serbian policies.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRc-iLmekiqi8nad1oSR3bSH_3aaV9P5uq4VcKNMZLWjNCGNNvo2A" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRc-iLmekiqi8nad1oSR3bSH_3aaV9P5uq4VcKNMZLWjNCGNNvo2A" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">source: tanjug.rs</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To make any sustainable improvements, the new administration had to wrestle
away the control of the levers of power from the corrupt, but deeply entrenched
Democrat machine. It was neither an easy task, nor would it be smart to kid
oneself that it is a finished task. At this point, nothing is more important
for Serbia than to minimize the influence of the Democrat Party and the
foreign-sponsored NGO networks in Serbia. To actually judge the new
administration against the old one, the public needs to be fully apprehensive
of the fact that Serbia cannot hope to improve without halting the downward
spiral first. It would be a grave mistake to expect miracles, economic,
Kosovo-related or in foreign policy, from this administration; if they prevent
the crash which the Tadić Democrats have pushed the country very close to, that
will be a miracle enough. Although there are more important issues than corruption, if ten corrupt politicians or businessmen actually end
up going to jail, and both God and the entire Serbia know there are hundreds
who should, I'll take my hat off to Dačić and Vučić. Low expectations? Not at
all. Serbia is not stagnating, it is sinking fast, not unlike the rest of Europe.<br />
<br />
The election of Tomislav Nikolić on May 20th and all the developments
stemming from it, including the Constitutional Court decision on the
Vojvodina Statute and today's change at the helm of the insofar uncontrollable
National Bank of Serbia, instill hope that the reversal of the sinking
trajectory is possible. I'm willing to criticize the new leadership for their
failures, but every Serb is obligated to give them time to fail or succeed.<br />
<br />
I know one thing: I'll take President Nikolić and the cabinet led by Dačić
and Vučić over Tadić as the dictator usurping all the power any day and it's
not even a choice of a lesser evil. The failure of democracy on May 6<sup>th</sup>
was somewhat vindicated on May 20<sup>th</sup> and although the Nikolić victory
cannot erase the injustice of the electoral fraud, it did default at less than
a maximalist democratic ambition would desire and under the circumstances unfavorable to any
kind of a democratic outcome. In other words, it was as much of a victory for
democracy as pre-May 20 Serbia could yield.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-65718075343143940232012-07-17T14:28:00.000-07:002012-07-17T14:38:19.914-07:00Crimes against Kosovo Serbs: Burning the Evidence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The news on war crimes
against Serbs could be considered rare news in the Western media. On the burning of the remains of
Serb miners in a Kosovo mine, killed in June of 1998, the basic Google search produced <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/07/17/Fire-at-suspected-mass-grave-site/UPI-88611342554015/?spt=hs&or=tn" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">this one UPI article. </span></a>Is it
a lack of newsworthiness, a busy news week or something else that prevented
news media from reporting on the fires that have most likely devoured the remains
of 12, perhaps more, Serb miners, thrown by Albanians in the mine pits near
Obilić, in the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija?</span><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.smedia.rs/vesti/slike/77/news_96377.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.smedia.rs/vesti/slike/77/news_96377.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">source: smedia.rs</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Not only that the
so-called "international justice system" has been indifferent, even ill-disposed, to the suffering of Serbs in the wars of Yugoslav succession, conveniently
positing them as the all-guilty side despite the overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, but it has allowed even the most obvious and best documented cases of
terrorism and war crimes against Serb civilians to be ignored, excused,
tampered with, hidden in plain sight and the evidence most blatantly destroyed.
To an informed Serb, it is needless to prove that the Western-imposed justice
is but a justice of a mace and, as such, it should have no moral or historical
bearing on the future and the consciousness of the Serbian nation. However, since a lot of Serbs, out
of a specific ideological proclivity, a base material interest or mere
ignorance, simply accept the imposed and unwarranted blame in the most
masochistic of ways, the struggle to keep educating Serbdom and its friends on
the truth of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s is ongoing and perhaps harder
than ever. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In a continued effort
to inform and educate, I am relaying here my translation of the text of the
latest press release of the Serb National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija,
the local organization of the North Kosovo Serbs, led by Milan Ivanović, on the subject of the burning of Serb remains in the mine pit. The
publishing of the translated press release on the Serbian Roundup has been approved by the
organization. The Serbian original is posted <a href="http://snvsevernogkim.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/%D1%81-%D0%B0-%D0%BE-%D0%BF-%D1%88-%D1%82-%D0%B5-%D1%9A-%D0%B5-6/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here.</span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Serb National Council
of North Kosovo and Metohija</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Press Release</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>June 16, 2012</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>In the makeshift coal
mine of the village of </i><i><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Žilivode near Obilić, fires have been burning for
the third day in the pits in which the Albanian terrorists had thrown bodies of
12 Serb miners, kidnapped on June 22, 1998. Outside of these confirmed findings,
it is believed that the Albanians had thrown 14 additional bodies of Kosovo
Serbs in the mine pits.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">To thwart the already started exhumation of remains of the ill-fated
Serbs, local Albanians filled the pits with large amounts of gasoline-soaked rugs
and burned them two days ago. The fire which engulfed both the coal and
the bones of the kidnapped Serbs is burning for the third consecutive day.
However, neither the Albanian authorities nor KFOR and EULEX moved to send
emergency fire units to Žilivode, because the morbid cover-up of the crimes
against Serbs did not bother them, to say the least.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General, will most likely not be informed of the
fact that Albanian terrorists are unimpeded in killing the 12 Serbs for the second
time ahead of his visits to Belgrade and Priština, since he expressed his
''concern'' only over ''the security situation in the North of Kosovo'' and
praised the efforts of KFOR and EULEX aimed to ''calm the situation,'' not even
mentioning the unprovoked armed attacks of KFOR against the barehanded Serb
civilians.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">In accord with the famous saying: ''After me – the deluge,'' there has
not been even a formal reaction by the technical cabinet of [Serbia's]
Democratic Party and its Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija on the repeated
killing of the 12 Serbs in Obilić, which is, mildly put, a moral crime of the
outgoing government.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="sr-Latn-BA">Dr Milan Ivanović </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>President of the Serb
National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And while the evidently orchestrated events the
Western media called "the Račak massacre'' served as a pretext for NATO to
bomb Serbia in 1999, this crime, committed by the local Albanian terrorists six
months prior to
the Račak hoax, has never been punished and, as things stand, no Albanian will
ever be held accountable for it, since NATO and EU occupiers of Kosovo gave
their Albanian proteges a free hand in destroying the evidence. </span><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><b><span lang="sr-Latn-BA" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif";"> </span></b></i></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-71323582783137501082012-07-09T15:01:00.000-07:002012-07-09T19:46:30.656-07:00The Right to Seek the Truth against the Srebrenica Myth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOvcdJKk7y895ZI5_HlBCXfwxx35ro9WCXyuwiHjISvIb66621" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOvcdJKk7y895ZI5_HlBCXfwxx35ro9WCXyuwiHjISvIb66621" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: vaseljenska.com</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">It appears
the Serb Republic-funded </span><a href="http://www.srebrenica-project.com/" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Srebrenica Historical Project</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"> has been doing a good
job of providing evidence and arguments that the allegations of genocide
committed in and around Srebrenica in July of 1995 have been standing on a
shaky ground all along. How do I know this? Well, if Michael Dobbs, a watchful
anti-Serb pundit writing for Foreign Policy magazine </span><a href="http://dobbs.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/29/the_wages_of_genocide_denial" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">goes on the offensive against Stephen Karganović and his project</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">, that means Karganović has made
progress dangerous enough for the continued standing of the myth Bosniaks and
their allies like to call “the Srebrenica genocide.”</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Before I get
into the argument, I want to underline a couple of technical issues. I am not a
genocide "denier" because it is impossible to deny something that doesn't exist.
I am a Srebrenica “truther” and the truth about Srebrenica encapsulates
historical developments stretching from 1992 to 1995 that can in no way be
limited to July of 1995. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the
Srebrenica “mythers,” whose version of events currently “prevails” with the
North Atlantic community’s interested public. The difference between the “truthers”
and the “mythers” is in the fact the “truthers” are willing to seek the truth,
while the “mythers” are only obstinate in defending the myth they have
fabricated to favor their political agenda. And the litmus test for "mythers" is their complete denial of more than 3000 Serb victims in and around Srebrenica at the hands of Naser Orić and his "unarmed" cohorts. The very basis for the Srebrenica myth is the monopolization of victimhood by the Bosnian Muslims. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dobbs has been
performing an unofficial function of the public advocate for the anti-Serb
Republic interest, with the Srebrenica genocide allegations being the central
theme of his watchdog career. He is a typical “myther” of a Western variety. Karganović,
on the other hand, is a Serb-American lawyer who heads the Srebrenica
Historical Project, funded by the government of the Serb Republic. This project
was undertaken to seek the truth and challenge the myth surrounding the Army of
the Serb Republic’s capture of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, fabricated by the
Sarajevo government and its Western allies. These two men, one on a serious
mission of defending the legitimate interest of the Serbian people to free the
besieged truth, the other seriously attempting to undermine that defense, were
bound to clash. </span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQLcPnoJqw8XAnupQeWaB9C8gCHmB_e62gq47oqFAq7hKxKE1x4" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQLcPnoJqw8XAnupQeWaB9C8gCHmB_e62gq47oqFAq7hKxKE1x4" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: kurir-info.rs</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In a “revolutionary” turn of perfidious events, Dobbs triumphantly ''uncovered'' that the Serb Republic is actually financing Srebrenica Historical Project!
Well, I ask you, Mr. Dobbs, if someone accuses you of committing a crime you
know you haven’t committed and based on that accusation your entire existence
is being threatened, wouldn’t you try to defend your claims? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was
about time the Serb Republic has encouraged projects such as this one to
finally and decisively clarify the events surrounding the capture of Srebrenica
to the Serbian public. The leadership of the Serb Republic would be committing
injustice towards generations of young Serbs who would have to learn their
history from the decisions of a foreign court, evidently hostile to Serbs, if
it has not attempted to seek the truth in a non-compromised way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Since he
cannot produce any substantiated offense against Karganović’s findings other
than the reiteration of the very genocide qualifications Karganović has been
arguing against, Dobbs tries to appear understanding by seemingly allowing the
disagreement and differing interpretations of the events, but expressing
outrage at <span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f;">what he called <i>“the
unsubstantiated challenges to underlying facts that have been proven beyond
reasonable doubt.”</i> This construction is a spin in itself because it doesn’t
make logical sense to not mind dissent on one end but to disprove of the right
to express the substance of that dissent<span class="apple-converted-space"> on
the other. On a more important note, Dobbs cunningly slips in expressions like
<i>‘’proven beyond reasonable doubt’’</i> or, in another place<i> “suppressing the
truth,”</i> instituting the acceptance of what he wants the reader to believe is
the truth. Not many allegations related to Srebrenica have been proven beyond
reasonable doubt and no one honestly seeking the truth can afford to claim so.
By doing this, Dobbs sets the audience up for denying the Serb Republic a right
to challenge what the “mythers” established as “the truth.” In their eyes,
there can be no truth but their truth and people like Karganović and, by
implication, Milorad Dodik, are, in such a twisted paradigm, naturally branded
‘’deniers’’ of such a truth. By extension, this qualification applies to the
entire Bosnian Serb population. He finishes with a punch, best he could muster,
err, parrot: </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f;"><i><span class="apple-converted-space">“</span>For the government and parliament of Republika Srpska to
finance such outlandish theories makes the Bosnian Serb statelet complicit with
efforts to suppress the truth about the worst massacre in Europe since World
War II.</i><span class="apple-converted-space"><i>” </i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f;"><span class="apple-converted-space">What kind of a “myther” would Dobbs
be without the Amanpourian references?<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR53VscUksYRIzWWbaMKH0NGw01VmzMy_XX_zbcl_vO-CVXTVrRNg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR53VscUksYRIzWWbaMKH0NGw01VmzMy_XX_zbcl_vO-CVXTVrRNg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: glassrpske.com</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f;">Instead of me boring you
with intepretations, </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ll
quote Karganović is his response to Dobbs’ panicked </span>finger-pointing<span style="font-family: inherit;">: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>“…w</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>e receive a grant which is voted by the
National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska. Those deputies are elected by the
people of the Republic of Srpska. The people of the Republic of Srpska are not
complaining, presumably because they regard our work as worthwhile. So why is
Dobbs unhappy? Is he a Republic of Srpska taxpayer? He unctuously claims that 'I
have no objection at all to a vigorous and open debate about the evidence
presented to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, which deserves to be fully
scrutinized.’ So even if he were personally contributing to our budget as a
taxpayer shouldn’t he still be expected to be consistent and to put his money
where his mouth is?”</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Enough said. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The leadership of the Serb Republic owes the search for the
truth to the men and women who bled to build the Republic, as defenders of
their own, not as genocidal killers the ‘’mythers” and the overzealous Western anti-Serb crusaders made them out to be. The
Banja Luka government owes to these people the truth they could continue to
build their Republic on. Moreover, whatever the truth turns out to be, children
of the Serb Republic must learn it from their parents and their teachers, not
from their war enemies, malevolent foreign agents, anti-Serb trial chambers and
the prosecutors of the Republic’s founding fathers.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-26093565893264670672012-07-02T21:30:00.000-07:002012-07-02T21:32:27.667-07:00The Final Ahtisaari: No 1244, Just Juggernaut<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnqLYjSBOw4ckt_M5RAe3xJDsnfw-iEglP2BcChkk80c6lQo9KXg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnqLYjSBOw4ckt_M5RAe3xJDsnfw-iEglP2BcChkk80c6lQo9KXg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: fi.wikipedia.org</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Kosovo paradox peaked on Monday; nothing out of the ordinarily deviating path, but a development nevertheless. The<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">International Steering Group (ISG), a self-appointed group of Western countries that "supervised" the so-called independence of the rogue state of Kosovo, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-kosovo-independence-idUSBRE8610RE20120702" target="_blank">declared the end of that supervision. </a>According to the decision, the International Civilian Representative (ICR) for Kosovo, Peter Feith, will close his office in Priština in September, a move that will supposedly remove the babysitting element from the Kosovo Albanian attempt at statehood. All of this sounds fine, right? Wrong.</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">The end of the supervision is just the latest in the series of illegitimate moves by a group of countries that have recognized Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Although these countries, including the United States and most of the European Union members, called themselves ''the international community,'' there was nothing as global about them as the moniker leads one to believe. The attempt to add weight to Kosovo's illegitimate independence by backing it with an "international" support can indeed fool a lot of observers. This "international" community, consisting of only 25 countries, excluded two permanent members of the UN Security Council, China and Russia and five EU members. It was not a UN body; these countries simply decided they had enough power to carve a new map of Europe, like Hitler thought he could do in 1938. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">Namely, the ISG is a creation of the Ahtisaari Plan, a failed 2007 attempt by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari to impose a complicated anti-Serbian solution for the occupied southern province of Serbia. Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize for this plan, despite the fact that the plan failed miserably. But hey, other people have received the devalued prize for nothing, too. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">Ahtisaari does not matter, but his plan does. The Plan, or the draft Settlement, as it ended up being called, proposed creating provisional governing structures that would in effect serve as <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2007/02/08/ahtisaaris-final-solution/" target="_blank">a transitional mechanism towards Kosovo's statehood</a>. Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica rejected the Plan, claiming it violated the UN Charter and undermined Serbia's sovereignty, seriously deviating from the UNSCR 1244, which governed the relationships since the occupation of Kosovo and Metohia by NATO in 1999. Instead of the Plan dead-ending there, the Western countries that would go on to recognize Kosovo a year later, actually went ahead and began implementing it in cooperation with the Kosovo Albanian leadership. Thus, the ISG and the ICR were created. This failed and utterly one-sided proposal ended up clearing the path for Kosovo Albanians' declaration of independence a year later. Serbia's disagreement counted for nothing; Serbia had no say in it, despite its </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">sovereignty and</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.111112594604492px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">territory being blatantly ripped away from it. The North Atlantic community, led by the United States, disregarded the UN Security Council again, just like in 1999 when it attacked Serbia and occupied Kosovo and Metohia, and implemented a proposal that sides did not agree upon, in order to grant independence to the rogue Kosovo Albanian state.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRaJ54NM6IXtoQLorhAlf2FvFctRNEKzTFDmJkDAHlvQaX7L6w8" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRaJ54NM6IXtoQLorhAlf2FvFctRNEKzTFDmJkDAHlvQaX7L6w8" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: rtvbn.com</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">In Vienna on Monday, the gang of 25 just finished the job. Serbia, still stuck on the UNSCR 1244, did not even react. How could it? For the official Belgrade, even if it had a standing government, Kosovo's independence is illegal and illegitimate, regardless of what a bunch of Western countries decided. However, the reality on the ground, just or not, legitimate or not, denies one after another of Serbia's claims to its occupied southern province.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">I know might makes right. I also know that no matter what the Albanian sponsors unilaterally decide, Kosovo is Serbia until Serbia decides it isn't, even if it can't effectively control the province. But the blatant disregard of the United States and NATO for the internationally accepted norms and standards, not only in respect to Serbia, leads me to believe that the world order in which the UN Security Council served as a hub for global political communications and conflict resolution is over. There are no more conflict resolution forums of the kind and the North Atlantic alliance's steamrolling through the Kosovo case, imposing solutions favorable to one side and carving new states out of the existing UN members, is only the latest example of <a href="http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html" target="_blank">the intent to dominate at all costs</a>. A complete disregard for the complexity of the problem, which the recurring attacks against the North Kosovo Serbs by NATO remind us of a couple of times a month, shows the world what NATO countries really are: an aggressive military juggernaut bent on obliterating every opposition it isn't afraid of. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">The Monday decision in Vienna is a relatively insignificant one in terms of the developments in the Kosovo case, but it does show the intent to further the agenda, to keep pushing forward. Camp Bondsteel is staying put, so it is not like NATO is withdrawing. Ending the supervision only attempted to give the further legitimacy to Hashim Thaci's government, the legitimacy that upholds the reality on the ground, </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">very unfavorable to Serbia and, <a href="http://www.serbianroundup.com/2012/06/hamlets-soliloquy-by-ibar-river.html" target="_blank">more directly, to the Kosovo Serbs.</a> The ISG countries did not pretend to trust the Albanians with governing themselves, but the prolonged official babysitting would not make anyone look good.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="line-height: 21.111112594604492px;">One question remains unanswered: how long can Serbia ignore the reality and play the Euro-integration game in denial of the hostilities the EU countries and the United States would not stop bombarding it with? </span></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7220576471648313696.post-80453322417657226942012-06-24T22:21:00.000-07:002012-06-25T10:45:23.994-07:00Revising History for the Holocaust Leverage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/WW2-Holocaust-Europe.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/WW2-Holocaust-Europe.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: en.wikipedia.org</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Whether
it was the words out of Stuart Eizenstat’s mouth or it was, <a href="http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2854" target="_blank">as Julia Gorin claims</a>, Haaretz’s “strained insertion,” <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/eu-should-hold-countries-seeking-membership-accountable-for-holocaust-roles-says-u-s-diplomat.premium-1.440002?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.225%2C2.226%2C" target="_blank">the article published in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper on Friday</a> did accuse Serbia of participating in the Holocaust and did
call on the European Union “</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;">to
exact the maximum amount of leverage</span><span style="background-color: white;">” against countries applying for
membership, namely Croatia and Serbia, to coerce them “to take responsibility
for their roles in the Holocaust.” Those were loaded words regardless of
who spoke them. They were loaded on many levels.</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">It would not be the
first time a newspaper with agenda puts words in people’s mouth to “set the
mood” for furthering that agenda. However, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_E._Eizenstat" target="_blank">Stuart Eizenstat is not just anybody</a>. Before he was a lobbyist for Covington and Burling and a senior
strategist for APCO Worldwide communications consultancy firm, Eizenstat was,
among other things, the U.S. Ambassador to the EU (1993-1996). In this
capacity, he served as a kind of a Holocaust compensation czar, i.e. he was one of the
foremost agents of what <a href="http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?ar=14&pg=4" target="_blank">Norman Finkelstein famously branded “the Holocaust industry.’’</a> Namely, Eizenstat went after selected European countries,
beginning with Switzerland, who ostensibly profited from the persecution of
Jews. With Switzerland in particular, Eizenstat negotiated a $1.5 billion payout
to Jewish organizations that represented victims. Similar efforts against countries
like Poland and Belarus appear to be ongoing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">I will not get into
Finkelstein’s criticism; you can check<i> </i><a href="http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/order-books/" target="_blank"><i>The Holocaust Industry</i> online</a>. I can’t even say that I am against the shakedown
where it is proven to be warranted, although there is a question of reverse injustice. This mini highlight reel of Eizenstat’s
career should just serve as the backdrop for his motivation for the Haaretz
statement. It is neither unexpected nor unusual for Eizenstat to engage in such
rhetoric and it is almost certain that Eizenstat did point the finger at
Croatia and Serbia as potential targets for a restitution shakedown and that
Haaretz dutifully relayed it. Even outside the official capacity, Eizenstat is
continuing his mission; if there are more countries to shake down, the agenda
is set and he is on top of it. Eizenstat is lining up targets, that’s all. But
to line Serbia up next to Croatia is not only outrageous, but very devious on
his part. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Forget about the fact
that Serbia - the political entity - did not exist during the Holocaust even as
a German puppet, but as a divided, occupied and ever-restless region whose
guerrilla brigades tied up in fighting a disproportionate number of Nazi troops
that would otherwise be adding to the German power at Stalingrad. Forget about
the fact that the largest part of what is Serbia today was under direct
occupation of Wehrmacht. Forget about the fact that Srem was annexed to the
Independent State of Croatia; that Bačka was annexed to Nazi ally Hungary; that
Banat was under a direct control of the <i>Volksdeutsche</i>,
its German minority; that Kosovo and Metohia were under the fascist Albania and
that southern parts, today’s Macedonia, were annexed to Nazi ally Bulgaria. Forget
about the facts that Serbia accepted Jewish refugees prior to the Nazi occupation,
at the time when FDR was turning away from the U.S. coast the ships with
fleeing Jews and when American companies were enjoying great business
relationships with Adolf Hitler’s government. Historical findings and analyses cemented
the notion that Serbs were the primary victims of genocide on the territory of
Kingdom of Yugoslavia and that Serbia, which did not exist as a separate
political entity since 1918, could not be held responsible for crimes against
Jews committed by German, Croat, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian fascists on
its territory at the time these same occupiers committed the same horrible
crimes against the Serbs. How could the occupied Serbia be responsible for
crimes against Jews when it didn’t even possess so much power to prevent the
German policy of executing 100 Serbian civilians for every German soldier
killed by the Serbian anti-fascist guerrilla on its territory? Germany had
allies and puppets; Serbia was neither. Serbia was a German, Croat, Hungarian,
Bulgarian and Albanian-occupied, torn up land with citizens bleeding and dying without
discrimination. The Semlin death camp, the largest death camp in the territory that is Serbia today was a Croat-run camp, in the Croat-occupied Srem, to which Serbs, Jews and Roma alike were brought to die.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRwERRxO0I6jzXg4wnY8yLZBmU_kblwfuGaNxxS_JSye1hRVvb_Ow" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRwERRxO0I6jzXg4wnY8yLZBmU_kblwfuGaNxxS_JSye1hRVvb_Ow" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: xx-small;">source: rts.rs</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">It is especially
egregious that Eizenstat puts Serbia into the same basket with Croatia. If
there is a moral or legal ground to go after the Republic of Croatia for crimes
committed by Croat fascists in the World War II, it is at least helped by a proven
fact that the genocide committed against Jews, and especially Serbs, on the
territory of the Independent State of Croatia <a href="http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/084.shtml" target="_blank">was indeed committed by Croats,</a> not by
Germans or Italians. The Croatian defense against the shakedown attempts is
entirely up to the Croats. Two things are certain: Croatia committed the
genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma and it was a country ruled by Croats. There is a catch
in Eizenstat’s proposal, though. Leveraging, the key word he used, will not be possible
with Croatia, because Croatia’s membership in the EU has been approved. The
levers can only be pulled in the case of Serbia, who is only a candidate and whose
membership is very uncertain and far down the road, at best. I am sure
Eizenstat would like to shake any country down indiscriminately, but in this
instance, the general idea of his proposal allows only for Serbia to be
blackmailed in such a way. Of my particular concern is not whether Serbia’s
road to the EU membership would be impeded by a sudden condition from EU
related to the restitution. As a eurorealist, I advise against Serbia even
encroaching on the suicidal path towards the EU membership. I am alarmed by the
grave danger of Serbian history being revised to accommodate Eizenstat’s vision,
equating victims of the genocide with the murderers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;">Eizenstat’s “advice” to
the European Union is a matter of policy that he and his cause can utilize, it
is not about history. However, without revising history, the policy he proposed
can neither be implemented nor can the Jewish organizations utilize it for
their ends. Unfortunately, policymakers that ostensibly aim to rectify past
injustices rarely consult historians in good faith, other than those who are
willing to manufacture “findings” in service of the set agenda. To hold Serbia
responsible for Holocaust, the policymakers Eizenstat tries to influence have
to undertake a serious revision of history of the World War II. Revising
history in any way that paves the road for holding Serbia responsible for
Holocaust would mean equating victims and the perpetrators. Such a revision would
not only leave Serbia open for a shakedown; it would unjustly
negate the historical role Serbia and the Serbs played in the anti-fascist
struggle, including the salvation of fleeing Jews at the time it was still
possible to do. It would negate the fact that the first uprising against Hitler's rule in the occupied Europe was started in Serbia and by the Serbian Royalists of general Draža Mihailović. It would open a Pandora’s box of radical misinterpretations
that would further strain Serbian wits and deeper distort the consciousness about
the just struggle Serbs embarked on in service of anti-fascism and freedom. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">George
Orwell famously wrote in <i>1984</i>: “Who
controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the
past.” A conscious and forward-looking Serb cannot afford any further revision
of the Serbian history by self-serving agents of foreign interests consistently
seeking leverage to undermine Serbian defenses or simply to increase their own
gains, even if those gains are tied to a righteous cause on some level, as is
Eizenstat’s motivation. Eizenstat is justified to seek revenge against
the injustice committed against his Jewish brethren and he has no obligation to
feel sympathy towards the Swiss or the Croats, if he feels their governments
had a hand in it. But by going after the nations that suffered under the same fate
as his Jews, Eizenstat’s cause loses the high moral
ground it operates on. Finkelstein would negate the existence of the high moral
ground in the first place, but I will not. To each his own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Holding
Serbs responsible for Holocaust opens a door into future in which anyone,
without exceptions, can be held responsible for the World War II genocides
committed against Jews, Serbs, Russians, Poles, Roma and every other European
and non-European people. Once you equate victims and perpetrators, anyone can
fall into either group and no one can monopolize either group.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5