Join the European Family: Importing Racism into Serbia

source: kurir-info.rs

If you’ve heard of Resnik, you’d think of Serbs as violent racists. If you actually go to Resnik, you’d find Serbs and non-Serbs alike trying to protect their community from a tycoon-sponsored government intrusion.

Resnik is a southern suburb of Belgrade, a village on the slopes of Mt. Avala. In the recent weeks it gained notoriety when Belgrade’s mayor Dragan Đilas accused its residents of being racist for opposing the forceful resettlement of Roma from New Belgrade into their town. In the street protest tens of individuals were injured, both among the Resnik residents and the police. Fourteen residents were charged with enticing racial hatred.

Resnik, with a diverse demographic picture, home to autochtonous Serbs and Roma and reportedly a large number of former Serb refugees from Croatia, opposed the move for several reasons, neither one being racist. Namely, the move was opposed by Serbs and Roma alike, and at the core of the opposition was the fact that reportedly no one asked the Resnik residents whether they agreed to have an informal settlement built in their community for an outside group. They rejected the accusations of racism, citing the fact that Roma and Serbs already peacefully coexist in Resnik and that many Roma joined the protests as well. In turn, they charged Dragan Đilas, the Vice-President of the ruling Democratic Party, with racism, since the underlying motive for forcefully resettling these Roma was to move them away from the exclusive residential complex of Belville in New Belgrade, owned by Serbia's shadiest businessman and its wealthiest man, Miroslav Mišković. Apparently, due to negative effects of the aesthetic inadequacy and the high propensity for crime that the Roma slums adjacent to Belville had on the sales numbers of the exclusive condo complex, the Roma had to be resettled. In other words, Mišković the real estate magnate couldn't make money with the Gypsies as next door neighbors, so they had to go.

It's the election season in Serbia and party financiers like Mišković had to have their way. Dragan Đilas, the mayor and the VP of the incumbent Democratic Party, put on his third hat, that of Serbia's dominant media mogul, and significantly supressed the media reporting of the issue, while he dealt with it politically. Despite daily peaceful protests by the Resnik townspeople, both Serbs and Roma, the moguls had their way and the apartheid policy continued. Neither should the Roma be forcibly moved, nor should the Resnik residents be denied the rights to manage their own local affairs pertaining to zoning and land distribution. Đilas needed a political cry, so he cried racism. In fact, if there was any racism here, it came from him.

I'm not actually trying to portray Đilas and Mišković as racist. Their actions speak loudly enough. They merely conducted the business as usual, trumpling the rights of Serbia's citizens indiscriminately. In this instance, they violated the rights of the Belville Roma as well as the rights of the Resnik residents. But the deals between the government officials  and the domestic and foreign shady business interests that brought Serbia to its knees would make one's head spin in disbelief. Just like in the United States, the moneyed interests have the direct access to your president, a senator or a mayor and they'll tell the mercenary politician what to do. Nothing new or unusual. When it comes to racism, however, Serbia and the Western societies like the United States are incomparable. The racial segregation in harsher or milder forms has gone on in the United States since its inception and in many forms it still goes on, however informally. Just drive down the Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn or go to Camden, New Jersey. In the South, it is still institutional in many places. But hey, this is the United States where the founding principle of nationalist exceptionalism that governs the introspection of the political culture blurs that view and things do not get honestly described and understood for what they most obviously are. Unlike in the United States, racism is not an element of the cultural tradition of Serbia.

However, I'd be in denial to claim that there is no racism in Serbia, regardless of the fact that the Resnik case had very little to do with it. Yes, there are skinhead soccer fan groups declaratively racist. Just like many Italian soccer fan groups are neofascist, or like Paris Saint Germain fans kill one of their own just because he was a North African and not a white Frenchman like themselves, the racism in Serbia is limited to small groups of youths radicalized by poverty and, in what separates them from their Western European counterparts, the notion of racism is foreign to their culture.

source: holocaustresearchproject.org

Other than Roma, or Cigani, as Serbs and the neighboring peoples have traditionally call them, the region had no races other than white. Serbs have traditionally fought with their neighbors and amongst themselves, like every other European nation, over the land, or religion, but race was not a factor, since the racial differences did not exist. The Roma have been a part of the Serbian society since before the liberation in the 19th century and their place in that society has never been denied. Serbia, unlike some Western European countries, had no exclusionary policies against Roma. It was Germans and Croats that systematically exterminated Serbs, Jews and Roma in the Second World War. There have never been pogroms of Roma perpetrated by the Serbs in any such fashion. Expulsion of Roma, happening in the European Union, have never been perpetrated in Serbia. France, to be fair, pays its Roma several hundred euro a person to leave the country, and the Roma, of course, take the money, leave, and come back after several months for more. Some non-Nazi Western European countries also took it to the extreme in the past; Sweden of all places had a law on the books until 1976 that allowed for forced sterilization of the Roma women. This has never been a case in Serbia.

Yet, the Serbs, especially the young ones, have been methodically accused of racism of the kind Đilas shamelessly pointed the finger at in Resnik. Even more alarming than Đilas' use of disturbing and false paradigms for personal ends is the pattern of portrayals of Serbs as racists coming from the very Western Europe that invented all kinds of intolerance, from racism to religious persecution and institutionalized inequality. Whether it comes as a form of low-level political pressure on Serbia or as a way to dehumanize the Serbs and bring them down to the low moral ground the Western European societies have historically been at, such a portrayal definitely serves a political purpose, a purpose without a doubt damaging to the Serb national reputation and psyche. The fact that Dragan Đilas, in the public manifestation of his underhanded maneuvering, reached for racism where racism did not really exist tells how the notion, imported from and imposed by the European Union societies has penetrated the Serbian public life even if racism itself is hardly ever felt in the Serbian society. It is of a special concern that Serbian politicians and other public personalities have been using such artificial notions for their own ends, thus accepting fallacies projected as social problems and helping impose them on the Serbian public where they do not belong.

I guess if Serbia wants to be a member of the European family of nations, it has to be made to act like one and at least pretend to exercise racism and intolerance in the best Western European tradition. Nothing less than that will be accepted or forgiven. 

The Snake in the White House and a License to Kill

source: serbianna.com

While the entire Serbia is embroiled in the electoral pandemonium of false promises, broken false promises (that’s when a candidate promises an impossibility, people elect him based on that promise, he admits the promise was false and then runs for re-election), loyalty v. betrayal charades, regurgitation of irrelevant notions etc., the Serbs in Kosovo, abandoned by their government physically and legally, are bracing for the invasion from across the Ibar River following the warmongering rhetoric of Hajredin Kuqi, Deputy Prime Minister of the rogue Republic of Kosovo, coinciding with his boss’ pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. Hashim Thaci, accused of organ trafficking in a Council of Europe report, otherwise known as the Prime Minister of the rogue state of Kosovo, and familiar to his acquaintances who survived the pleasure of meeting him as “Snake,” was greeted warmly in the highest circles of the American politics, including by Vice-President Joe Biden, a notorious backer of anti-Serb agenda in Kosovo and elsewhere. In news other than Thaci’s visit to the White House and Kuqi’s threats of invasion, ROSU, the special operations unit of the Kosovo Albanian security forces, has been building up presence on the south side of the Ibar River, reportedly gearing for the invasion on the free Kosovo Serb municipalities north of Ibar, readily threatened by Kuqi and solicited the support for in the right places by Thaci. Thaci might have gone to Washington for the Cherry Blossoms Festival and merely swung by to see his good buddy Joe, but something the White House said in its press readout of the meeting troubled me, not because of the content, which is pretty bland, but because of the context and the timing of the visit. “Vice President Biden reiterated our support for Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the readout said, which sounds to me like a signal that the U.S. stands behind any Albanian move to exert control over the entire territory the White House recognized as the Republic of Kosovo. With the invasion in the offing, the threats made, the mobilization imminent and the leader soliciting the blessing, what else could this statement mean?

source: vestinet.rs

The invasion of the North has to be timed perfectly, the right pretext has to be found for it, and there cannot be any room for half-measures or errors: the Serbs of Kosovo have to be brought to their knees or ethnically cleansed. Thaci came to Washington to make sure this is supported by the White House and/or to create leverage against all the possible factions within the anti-Serb alliance that are hesitant to allow the invasion.  KFOR, which is NATO, the military overlord of the occupied province, and EULEX, the European Union police force that serves as the other prong of the Western occupation of Kosovo, have reportedly been tentative in allowing the Albanians to invade the free North. (When I say “free” North, I mean free of the Albanian rogue state controls, not free of NATO and EU occupation, although the latest, EU-directed “footnote” deal between the official Belgrade and the Kosovo Albanian representatives removed a giant roadblock for the Albanian controls to be legally exerted in the North.)  There were reports of both EULEX and KFOR officials clashing with the Albanian military and police commanders, a much unexpected and puzzling new development that only the passage of time will clarify. The struggle between the Western agents and the local Albanian factors over the monopoly on the use of coercive power may be rearing its head, impelled by the increasing ultra-nationalist popular pressure, whether organic or orchestrated, on the Albanian officials to deal with the free North Kosovo Serbs. Considering the alarming levels of inter-ethnic violence in the neighboring NATO protectorate of FYR of Macedonia, intensified today after five bodies of Macedonian men killed execution-style were found near Skoplje, the Albanian regional expansionist tendencies are newly culminating in a violent way and the North Atlantic community’s operatives on the ground may be looking at a scenery quite different from what the ever-aggressive White House sees it.

Then there is the matter of the Serbian election possibly being held in the North Kosovo municipalities on May 6. According to the Serbian Constitution and to the rhetoric of the Tadić government, Kosovo is Serbia, despite Belgrade's actions contradicting both the highest legal act and the rhetoric. Since the North Kosovo institutions are still free, the Serbian authorities may be physically able to set up polling points in this part of the province. Whether they would is a debate reluctantly held in Serbia as the less relevant campaign issues are overwhelming it and submerging its otherwise monumental significance, perhaps to the pleasure of the responsible officials. Thaci has warned against it, Belgrade has kept its official mouth shut, but some presidential candidates have personally campaigned in Mitrovica. It is not impossible that Boris Tadić resigned from the post of the president - ostensibly to be able to call for the presidential election and run for the third time - to actually throw hot potatoes out of his hands in case of an election-related incident in the North Kosovo. Now he doesn't even have to touch the issue of the Constitutional mandate of holding the election in the province and he may still retain the power when everything is said and done. Wicked.

source: jtf.org

There is also a possibility of a program conflict between the NATO allies, where the United States do not care how the possible ethnic cleansing of the Serbs will reflect itself in Serbia, while Germany does not want to be too rough with Boris Tadić before the May 6 elections; where Washington D.C. or rather, Langley, Virginia, is satisfied with the role the rogue state of Kosovo plays in the international drug trade chains and has no problem with treating its Albanian protégés with a field day in North Mitrovica, while Germany’s domination of Europe is still not cemented to the point where it can afford to run amok like Hitler could; where the ever-present Turkey may be including the desires of the Balkan Muslims in the package of demands in return for doing America’s bidding in Syria; where Germany and the United States may not see eye to eye when it comes to the effects and implications of the Russian barging in last December, vis-à-vis their differing respective relations with Russia… Just speculative points that could be further explored by more qualified analysts, or perhaps by one of the outed Serbian journalists contracted by George Friedman’s Stratfor, since their access to the relevant information should be way more direct than mine.

Meanwhile, not a day goes by in which a non-Albanian is not physically assaulted in the Albanian-dominated areas of Kosovo. Emil Lečina, a Bosniak from Serbia visiting relatives in Metohija, is most likely going to lose an eye after one such assault near Peć on Thursday.  Savo Mojsić, a Serbian youth killed by Albanians last November in the north Mitrovica, was the victim no. 1002 since the beginning of the NATO occupation. Perpetrators never get prosecuted by the local Albanian authorities, Serbs have no power to defend themselves against these random attacks, and the foreign representatives in Kosovo do not enable the basic rule of law in the occupied territory. Both North Kosovo and Macedonia are powder kegs waiting to blow up and the incidents of inter-ethnic violence escalating daily do not help calm the passions. All the Albanians need is a nod from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, as always. 

Hope to Change: The Last Twist of Boris Tadic?

source: telegraf.rs

The parade of mannequin politicians and quazi-leaders that is the Serbian parliamentary election campaign will, as the leisurely press conference featuring President Tadić announced on Wednesday, culminate into the presidential one, coming to the theater near us in the next few days. I haven’t commented on the campaign mumbo-jumbo yet. What is there to say, anyway? Economist Nebojša Katić said it best when he warned that Serbia’s economic dire straits and its IMF bondage may produce an electoral outcome in which, in fact, losers can turn out to be winners. Katić claims that whoever wins will end up in an unenviable, and ultimately untenable, position of having to enslave Serbia to IMF even deeper. Even if not one serious contender talks about this issue openly and honestly, I am glad Katić pointed toward the true winner, well ahead of the poll, well ahead of the count, rendering both effectively meaningless.

On the other hand, Serbia is not isolated in this ominous economic predicament – practically half the world have fallen victim to the IMF global domination schemes we are forced to call “free trade.” Nor does the Serbian campaigning style of parroting surreal and deeply condescending pitches make its political scene weird in comparison to other “democracies.” Barrack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy insist they were successful in their presidential terms, too, and that they must continue steady on their course. I guess the Americans and the French still live well enough not to bother to check their respective presidents’ exclamations for accuracy. Obama and Sarkozy can afford to sound nonsensical to those who listen, since their main opponents are ideologically empty suits as well, and the race to the bottom continues: people that decide to get out and vote if the weather is nice will try and elect the lesser evil. However, Boris Tadić, a standup comedian of a recent renown, had to add a twist to the otherwise boring and half-hearted spitting contest. Indeed, it has been a meek competition in seismic positional shifts, cheap bartering and brazen declarations of utter falsehoods.

source: vesti-online.com

Before the twist, it was typical Serbia. The ruling party that criticizes corruption and failures of the past years as if someone other than itself was at fault. The key coalition partner of socialist-nationalist-opportunist fame prone to interchangeable outbursts of militant rhetoric against foreign security threats and military actions against own people. The marginal, yet ambitious and openly anti-Serb one-man party of irresistibly incoherent declamations on issues unrelated to Serbian realities. On the other side of the blurred center line, there is an agreed upon clear-cut favorite, the opposition party that have never run in an election before and whose position on every issue is ambiguous and often only slightly differing for its ruling nemesis. Then, the twist.

Patiently waiting for the last moment, President Tadić, in a hilarious move that didn’t even faze the ever-enduring people of Serbia, maneuvered into resigning from his post, or, as he called it, “shortened the term.” He played this, apparently constitutional, “game of thrones,” so he could call the presidential election alongside the parliamentary election, and run in it. A twist, indeed. Why didn’t Obama think of this while he was ahead in polls? Oh, yes, the U.S. Constitution does not provide for the ridiculous option of resigning as a head of state as a method of electoral maneuvering. Once you resign, you are out. The question is: why did Tadić do it? Some analysts think he is sure of his party’s victory – and his own, subsequently - after the initial public polling and he wants to secure another four-year term while he’s ahead. Others, like Željko Cvijanović of Novi Standard, think that, on the contrary, Tadić is concerned after the initial polling and aims to give his party a boost.

The twist does add to the dynamics, but it also adds to the sad state of the Serbian political reality. Maneuvering is the word of the day and it has no boundaries. All the public polling is rigged and the results swing back and forth so much that the pie charts resemble political cartoons rather than real statistical public opinion indicators. Political programs, let alone ideologies, are inconsequential for the most part. Not that Obama and Romney, or whoever ends up running on the Republican ticket, have serious programs or subscribe to principled governing outside the will of the country’s elites. Francois Hollande, Sarkozy’s main opponent, is a lifelong party apparatchik with no particular political views outside his party line.

source: eizbori.com

France and the Unites States do not, however, face dismemberment; they do not face a proclamation of their own partitioning from within; they do not face choices that practically endanger their bare existence as independent nations; Serbia does. And the Serbian president is playing a game, after recognizing Serbia’s partitioning and while actively preparing for another one. Maybe Marseille is a segregated crime cartel, but Kosovo is a criminal state in which organ traffickers hold Serbs prisoners with the help of the Serbian president. Maybe a half of Southern California’s population is foreign-born, but it is not actively planning secession like Vojvodina or the so-called Sandžak. Serbia is facing the loss of territory and the loss of independence. Real debates about the real issues are held outside of the mainstream, outside of the decision-making process. Boris Tadić has become a spokesman for the Italian Fiat instead of being a spokesman for Serbia. With the exception of Vojislav Koštunica’s DSS, the newcomer Dveri, and the Radicals, occasionally, no one discusses real problems facing Serbia. No one posits their politics against the real issues. Serbian partisan politicians are in a permanent search for a job, for the highest bidder. Their statement must always be measured in honesty, vague in accuracy, overly optimistic and plausible to the audiences. But hard choices take strong leaders to make them and the Serbian people are faced with a serious lack of options and a serious deficiency in the ability to recognize such leaders.

Comedic talents and gamesmanship aside, Boris Tadić is not a true, genuine leader that can facilitate the democratic process in the direction Serbia needs to be led in. He has only proven to be a mannequin, a model for a conformist politician, conformist to anti-Serb interests, that is. He and his cohorts have buried Serbia under the rubble of failed economic policies, public indebtedness, dependency on foreign interests detrimental to the well-being of the Serbian nation, corruption on all levels, blatant mismanagement and general ineptitude in public administration. It’s not even only Tadić; the entire political structure run by the Democratic Party and its allies has been nothing but a conglomerate of corrupt and undemocratic globalist apparatchiks, making counterproductive and counterintuitive decisions and serving interests that openly run their anti-Serb agenda through a web of NGOs and civic groups. The seemingly founded accusations of rigged public bids are rampant, including major projects, but the lack of transparency, the limited freedom of information and the investigative mechanism controlled by the regime discourage or suppress the rare whistleblowers, like in the recent case of firing of anti-corruption inspector-turned-whistleblower Ljubiša Milanović. All in all, Boris Tadić sits atop a rotten pyramid.

The change is overdue. Serbia deserves a new leadership, patriotic for a change and democratic in fact, not in the name only. Let us hope the twist of Boris the Comedian will be the last humiliation of Serbia he orchestrated and that it will twist his way out of power. 

Suleiman the Magnificent: The New Hero of the Depraved Serbia

source: pressonline.rs

The last time Suleiman the Magnificent conquered Belgrade, he executed the Hungarian defenders and deported the Serb warriors and their families to Istanbul. Practically abandoned by the Hungarian King, whom the city belonged to, and ultimately betrayed by a local Hungarian magistrate, the Serbs of the White City still offered enough resistance for Suleiman to reach a conclusion that they couldn’t be trusted as vassals at such a strategically important junction of his empire. During the siege in August of 1521, Ahmed-pasha, charging from the banks of the Sava River, boosted his troops’ morale by lying that it was the time of Vidovdan, the great Serbian “defeat” in the battle of Kosovo. Later, the Ottomans renamed the city Dar-al-Jihad, or “House of War” in Arabic.

The Nazis planned to rename the city Prinz-Eugenstadt, after the great Austrian general who conquered Belgrade from Turks in 1717. Field Marshall von Mackensen erected a monument to the Serbian defenders of Belgrade in 1915, famously remarking that the German imperial troops “fought against an army that we have heard about only in fairy tales." Hitler had to bomb Belgrade into ashes to defeat its fighting spirit, which he didn’t have to do with any major city in Europe west of Russia. Even the American imperial war machine had to go through Belgrade en route to furthering its imperialist goals. Belgrade bowed to no one.

That was then. Things have changed. Looking down from Jannah, Suleiman, the magnificent destroyer of Belgrade, must be having second thoughts about the pleasures received from the seventy-two virgins whose company he has been deservedly enjoying since 1566. In Serbia of all places, his magnificence is adored today by enough women to swap rosters of seventy-two ever y day. Alright, they won’t all be virgins, he’d have to survive a plump, graying, but eager suburban housewife here and there, but the point is clear: in Belgrade and in Serbia, Suleiman may be looking at a new Jannah. Belgrade’s Prva Srpska television station, owned by a Greek, Minos Kyriakou of Antenna Group, basically invited the imperial legacy of the Ottoman Sultan back into Serbia by buying the rights to broadcast Magnificent Century (Muhteşem yüzyıl), the Turkish historical soap opera based on the more romanticized elements of his life. According to Prva Srpska press release of February 28, the second episode of this show of reportedly questionable artistic quality was seen by over 1.7 million viewers in Serbia of little more than 7 million people. I won’t even touch the business side of this phenomenon, other than noting that the previous Turkish soap opera, “When leaves fall,” reaped such success that the cast of the series was invited to Serbia for a special recognition. Ok, Serbs did the same for certain Latino soap opera stars too, and although I find all such adulation tasteless and even repugnant, my attitude towards the popular infatuation with this particular show and its main character has less to do with my general views of the “bread-and-games” mentality than with my incredulity over the fact that the Serbian cultural consciousness is so depraved that an Ottoman sultan can be seen as some form of popular hero in Serbia. According to internet commentary coming out of Serbia, not only that middle-aged men and women curb the physiological instincts of breathing and blinking when the show is about to come on, but Serbian boys have begun emulating this “hero” as theirs.

source: kibris1974.com

This is not just any soap opera, nor is this just any historical character. Suleiman was the greatest ruler of the Ottoman Empire, which kept the Serbian people prisoners for four centuries. Suleiman embodied the Ottoman oppression over the Serb Christians that was unparalleled in the Serbian history, in its duration and in its effects. The case of deportation of the Belgrade Serbs in 1521 was not an exception, it was a norm. Any adoration of Suleiman by the Serbs, even in such a seemingly innocent way as the popularizing of a soap opera anchored by his fictional characterization can be understood as, means a dehumanizing lack of self-respect. Respecting Suleiman as a great historical figure and understanding his role in the Ottoman, European and Serbian history objectively is one thing. But creating a popular fantasy out of his characterization and associating a feeling of joyful reverence with a depiction of Suleiman the man and the sultan is abhorrent, self-demeaning and ultimately dehumanizing.

How else could I characterize the sentiment in which victims celebrate the image of their oppressor? Even if he was the most benevolent emperor, which he apparently was not, he was still an occupier and his empire was still a foreign power, thus under all circumstances manifestly hostile to the interest of the Serbian people who wanted to preserve their culture and identity. What Suleiman’s empire brought to the Serbs were the utter economic and cultural devastation, the national and personal humiliation and the isolation from the European culture the Serbs were integral participants in until the Ottoman conquest. The Ottoman Empire of Suleiman, his ancestors and his descendants brought a religious divide that still tears at the heart of the Serbian nation and is a cause of horrific fratricidal conflicts; it brought devshirme, or “the blood tax,” that saw some of the most promising and capable young Serbs ripped away from their mothers’ clutching arms and ruthlessly groomed for the imperial service, only to come back as tormenters of their own brethren. Even the rare examples of acemi oglan, the blood tax recruits, who remembered and respected their roots, like Mehmed-pasha Sokolović, could not alleviate the justified feeling of the dehumanizing devastation this practice had caused to the Serbian people. The primae noctis privilege, often invoked by the Ottoman lords of Turkish and Serbian ancestry alike, abridged only by a threat or an execution of violence on the part of Serbian humiliated males, left an even deeper wound in the Serbian psyche.

Brother Serb, would you celebrate Suleiman if he came to snatch your teenage daughter from your home and take her to his harem? Would you idolize Suleiman’s TV characterization if you had to cripple your infant son so Suleiman’s children-snatchers would find him unfit? Would you be exhilarated by Suleiman’s greatness if it was you who was sent by a Suleiman’s noble to “walk the shoes” while he ravaged your wife? Well, you are a Serb today because your ancestors fought to preserve their identity, their culture and their honor by clearly distinguishing theirs from the foreign, the victimized from the villains, the oppressed from the tyrannical… Not all the Serbs have. What do we call those now?

I really do not care how Suleiman is depicted in the Turkish popular culture. He was a great Turk and as the Serbs should celebrate Tsar Dušan, so should the Turks celebrate whomever they respect. But for the Serbs to celebrate heroes of their oppressors is beyond comprehension and beyond sanity. How low can the Serbian self-esteem stoop? Seemingly, there is no rock bottom. How could the free people celebrate their conqueror and a tyrant would probably be best answered by sociologists.

source: zimbio.com

Yes, I have a grievance against Prva Srpska. Every self-respecting Serb should feel aggrieved. But judging from the ratings of the show, there are not that many self-respecting Serbs around anymore. The soft power of the renewed Turkish expansionism is slowly, but surely, infiltrating the Serbian society and that fact is way more alarming and dangerous than a Serb nationalist somewhere having an opinion on the Serbian Jannah of Suleiman the Magnificent and the Serbian depravity. Hollywood creations made most of the world sincerely sympathize with the American imperialist manifestations by adapting them to the fates of individuals portrayed as heroes anyone could sympathize with. Yes, you have rooted for John Rambo to kill all the Vietnamese defending their own villages and families. Yes, you wanted Colonel James Braddock to find and save the “missing in action.” Yes, such reduction of the struggle between the good and the evil to the individual and the personal level did brainwash masses into subconsciously cheering on the underdog Rocky Balboa against the dehumanized Ivan Drago. Whatever the way and whoever the characters, the soft power of Hollywood ultimately paved the helipads for the menacing Black Hawks to land. Prva Srpska Television (which translates as the First Serbian Television), for reasons known to its owners and editors, wants the Serbian public to idolize Suleiman, the greatest embodiment of the former Turkish glory. Its translators did not translate the title of the series, Magnificent Century, correctly, or directly. In Serbian, the title would translate as Veličanstveni vek, yet, as adapted to the Serbian audience, it actually carries the sultan's name and the moniker, Sulejman Veličanstveni.  

Remember, the Turks did not leave the Serbian lands, they were expelled by the force of Serbian arms. The fact that their expansionist power is soft now and that the bedazzled Serbs innocently sympathize with Suleiman and his Russian convert khatun, Hurem, means only that we can reasonably expect to ultimately hear the roar of tanks waving the star and crescent on the red cloth and to see them rolling down the roads paved by the agents of the soft power, such as Prva Srpska. The difference between the soft and the hard power can be quite unnoticeable and deceiving, quite amorphous, especially to the unconscious Serb whose eyes are glued to the television screen and fixated on the unreal tribulations of fictional people. In 1521, Suleiman surrounded and attacked Belgrade from Zemun, his men charged the walls of the fortress repeatedly, eventually overwhelming the Serb defenders, then they ethnically cleansed the city. The 2012 version of Suleiman is a soft power paratrooper who aims to cleanse the consciousness of proverbially unsuspecting Serbs of any self-respect, dignity or self-awareness, after which the keys to the city will be given to him without struggle. And of course, as Suleiman promised in the show, "the Turks won't harm those that beg for mercy."

Serbia's Twitter Vanguard: Showcasing the Sycophantic Loyalty

source: novosti.rs

Twitter allows for that Hitlerian propaganda technique: keep it short, keep repeating, overwhelm and it will pass as the truth. For the past two days, the tweeting Serbia has been screaming the “happily ever after” paroles readily manufactured and projected to hype up the “joy” of Serbia’s people caused by the European Council nodding in approval of Serbia’s “credible commitment and … further progress in moving forward with the implementation in good faith of agreements reached in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue including on IBM, has reached an agreement on inclusive regional cooperation and has actively cooperated to enable EULEX and KFOR to execute their mandates” (http://www.consilium.europa.eu).

In translation, Serbia was finally granted the status of a candidate for the EU accession, after being rejected on December Ninth of last year, due to the commendable capitulation to the pressure to technically recognize its province of Kosovo as an independent state. That was the only “progress” I have seen since the December Ninth and the surrender of Kosovo was the lone condition the candidacy hinged on. And that is what Serbia’s Twitter community is exhilarated over. In effect, the candidacy is nothing tangible, but Serbian regime’s PR machine, including its Twitter cog, is working on all cylinders to make it look like a tangible success of Boris Tadić’s regime.

This exhilaration is unnervingly expressed in empty, softly Hitlerian, serotonin-charged repetitions that can’t escape resembling an election campaign typical of Serbia. The incessantly tweeted and retweeted paroles like “smile today more than any other day,” or “welcome to the brighter future” sounded eerily familiar to Hitler’s “No one shall go hungry! No one shall be cold!” posters from 1934, in form and within a broader context. (The only difference was that Hitler indeed intended to reinvigorate the power of the “pure” German race at the expense of every other European nation, while Tadić intends to empower every vulture out there at the expense of the Serbian people’s independence and prosperity.) The deliberate, consent-manufacturing form of these messages has only been outdone by their volume following the news from Brussels. It is clear to me, after being hit by a score of variations on the “brighter future” and “don’t worry, be happy” themes, that this tweeting campaign has been engineered in advance by a political marketing agency in Belgrade or in Brussels, to artificially induce the Serbian public into believing that the EU candidacy is indeed their long-awaited salvation.  Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it aims to credit the Tadić regime for this “success,” thus giving it a much needed wind in the sails in the election campaign. In reality, both the “success” and the “credit” conditioned on it are highly refutable categories.

source: slobodnaevropa.org

Assuming from tweets by some of its more prominent members (the prominence is measured in the number of followers, not in the value of the tweeted content – sometimes it looks like they are diametrically opposite), Serbia’s Twitter “community” prides itself on being the sophisticated social networking bunch, more urban and with a more emancipated worldview than its Facebook counterparts.  In 140 characters or less, this “sophisticated” community presents an image of Serbian society – and their private lives - with an utter disregard for any Serbian grammar rules (or lacking the sufficient knowledge of grammar – I can’t say with certainty which is the case).  In Serbia where the Serbian language is massacred by more important public personas than the Twitter vanguard, this is neither a surprise nor does it warrant a special emphasis.

What should be emphasized is that the Twitter outburst of eurofanaticism does not really reflect the mood of most of the population. While the Twitter-provided PR tools are accessible to all and the only alarming development is the lack of an organized effort at discrediting the “success,” most of Serbia’s mainstream media is regime-controlled, directly, through ownership stakes and the managing boards, or indirectly, through economic and political pressures, so the reports  touting the candidacy as a success of the Boris Tadić regime and hesitantly glorifying it as a step forward into the brighter future are not really surprising. The readers’ commentary beneath these articles, however, reveals a picture quite different from the regime-disseminated “feel-good” qualities of the mainstream reports and the Twitter gloating. Across the board, comments submitted below Tadić’s reaction pieces, sway the pendulum dramatically into the direction of euroskeptics, with eurorejectionists taking up a significant chunk of the public response pie chart. Even on such regime-controlled outlets as the B92 internet site, notorious for its censoring of the follow-up commentary, it is clear that the mood of the Serbs who decided to speak out is not nearly in correspondence with the Twitter pro-regime community who are celebrating the floating of the EU flag on the Serbian government buildings. On the B92 website, opinions range from “Hell, no!” to “Let’s wait and see,” with a very small number unconditionally supporting the candidacy. Even those who welcomed the candidacy were often lambasting the regime.  On the websites with less controlled commentary content, this pendulum swings almost fully towards those who are skeptical or outright rejectionist.

source: typicallyspanish.com

This kind of reaction, relatively unfiltered and unfettered, is especially significant as it is an indicator of the electorate’s mood in the run-up to the election. Those who assume that the candidacy itself, and not the price paid for it, would play the key role in re-electing the current regime with the same or a similar roster, should look at the popular reaction expressed across the board. The people seem to see through the regime’s calculated intent to represent the candidacy as the first step out of a the economic dire straits, while making it look like someone other than this regime was responsible for the horrible shape of Serbia’s economy. To every sane Serb it is clear that the Tadić regime, which touts the EU candidacy as some kind of salvation from the economic misery, actually buried Serbia into the economic dumpster it is now. It would be the same as if the aforementioned Hitler came to Auschwitz to save the Jews. The commentaries seem to dwell on the point of Tadić’s utter ineptitude in fixing Serbia’s internal problems rather than on the perceived benefits of the EU candidacy. More than anything else, it looks like the people have stopped trusting anything that comes out of Tadić’s mouth, not only because all of his statements sound so disconnected with reality and infantile, but because the people completely distrust the source. The question is how will this mood affect the election outcome and what kind of tricks and pressures will the regime succumb to in the run-up to the election.

Let the Twitter eurofanatics be reminded of one illogical aspect of their gloating campaign. One of the most retweeted lines deals with the hope that the EU will weed out the corrupt political and economic practices in Serbia. If such a message was retweeted by anti-regime pundits, it would have certain validity to it, as contradictory as it is. But if the pro-regime cohorts insist on such a political oxymoron, I can only abhor their blatant disregard for logic. If the EU even had the intention of weeding out corruption, the first people that would end up in prison under such an arrangement would be the very regime politicians and economists, their sponsors and the ruling coalition’s party apparatchiks, all mired in corruption up to their eyeballs. And where would this conclusion leave the pro-regime Twitter cohorts? In an insane asylum, of course. How could anyone in their right mind call for the elimination of corruption and at the same time support the regime that facilitated it and that feeds off of it? The EU doesn’t weed out corruption, it only affords special privilege to its loyal subjects and then validates, legitimizes and protects that privilege by legalizing it.

source: washingtonpost.com

While this gloating v. sulking mood swing rages online, no one is asking the real questions. What is the map of Serbia that was granted the candidacy? What was the real nature of Romania’s opposition to Serbia’s candidacy and how was it alleviated, i.e. what did the Serbian regime commit to in respect to “the Vlach question?” How will Serbia treat the legitimate political will of its own citizens who live in North Kosovo? What will be the next set of conditions? No EU candidate from the former Communist Eastern Europe has ever become a member without first joining NATO. Montenegro became the candidate in December of 2011 and the pro-NATO campaign has been full-fledged since 2010. Will it not be one of the conditions for Serbia as well? How will Serbia manage its relations with non-EU countries, namely Russia, now that Brussels decides all of Serbia economic policies? What will the “special relations” with the EU do to the Dayton Peace Accords now that the EU can influence Serbia’s special relations with non-EU countries? Will Serbia be asked to cut the special ties with Serb Republic? These are all the questions of utmost importance that the Serbian public must insist on being answered. The fairy tales of the promised Europe, which, mind you, still includes Greece devoured by the economic and political catastrophe and Spain with ever-growing unemployment, especially rampant among its youth, are not what any responsible and patriotic Serb should be seduced by.

The Twitter vanguard is in competition with itself, jockeying for a job with an EU “reform” agency, a foreign bank that will bring “prosperity” to Serbia, an NGO that spreads democratic and European “values,” or within the ever-expanding regime. Twitter is where they can best showcase their sycophantic loyalty. They do not tweet in the interest of the people, they are in it for themselves. They are dangerous, however, because their engineered excitement can generate an image of a general joy at the candidacy that can trickle down through the ranks of undecided voters and translate into the electoral support for Boris Tadić and his regime, as the safest of all gambits.

The Submission of Serbia: No Deal or A Raw Deal?

source: blic.rs

Oxford dictionary defines “deal” as “an agreement entered into by two or more parties for their mutual benefit, especially in a business or political context.”  It defines “submission” as “the action of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.” Tell me, according to these definitions, did Borko Stefanović make a deal or did he sign a submission to Edita Tahiri in Brussels on Thursday?

Serbia’s government officials, Eurofanatics and other NGO mercenaries in Serbia are gloating over the fact that Serbia de facto recognized the independence of its southern province of Kosovo, confidently rewriting dictionary entries to conform to the current needs of the spin machine. Of course, they can’t admit that Serbia indeed recognized Kosovo as equal to Serbia in international relations with this “deal,” so it’s best to redefine the actual term. No, what you thought of as a “deal” is not “deal” anymore; if you get raped, we’ll call it a “deal” because we feel you could have gotten killed, so in effect, you cut a “deal” with your rapist, who decided it’s for the mutual benefit that he just rapes you and spares your life. Borko Stefanović, in the meantime, successfully auditioned for a job in Brussels, just in case the whole EU candidacy farce deservedly crumbles again. Dictionary.com also defines a “deal” as “a secret or underhand agreement or bargain” and in this sense, Stefanović did make a deal. If Stefanović gets hired, Božidar Đelić, the former Minister for European Integrations, will be pissed because he had to audition for 12 years, and he can make the case that he was at least as successful as Stefanović, maybe not in the domain of Eurointegrations, but definitely in the area of disintegration of Serbia. Who screwed Serbia more, Đelić or Stefanović, is a question history will answer, I’m afraid incorrectly, since it looks like Noel Malcolm will write our history.

source: politicalforum.com

Going back to the original question, it is important to dwell on the definitions for a moment. I didn’t draw the two words out of a hat. The official Serbia has been flaunting the word “deal” to describe the cunnilingus that took place in Brussels yesterday. According to Oxford dictionary, “cunnilingus” means “stimulation of the female genitals using the tongue or lips.” If we want to be honest, Borko Stefanović did just that to Edita Tahiri, but I needed a term with less of a personal and more of a political connotation, so, after checking several potential matches, I settled on “submission.” Let us not misinterpret it, still. The key difference between the figurative cunnilingus performed and the submission I will describe, was in that the cunnilingus was not a forced act, while submission can be forced and unforced. Therein lies the defeat of Serbia: Stefanović’s submission was not forced, but deceptively incentivized, deceptively for the naïve people of Serbia.

What exact gains did Borko bring Serbia in the advertised “deal?” I remind you, in order for it to be a deal, it had to bring mutual benefits of the parties involved.  The Albanian side clearly won all the concessions, but how did Serbia benefit? There were three conditions, in this round of the subjugations process, upon which the granting of the EU candidacy stood, and all three involved Kosovo: (1) stop blocking the Albanian separatist “state” from taking part in regional conference, i.e. stop pretending it is not independent; (2) the execution of the December agreement on the integrated operations of the administrative crossings, i.e. let Albanian customs officer control the crossings they didn’t control before; and (3) remove the roadblocks from North Kosovo, i.e. allow EULEX to occupy the area and to exercise its imposed mandate over the majority Serb-inhabited part. With the footnote of without it, Kosovo, whose independence Boris Tadić “staunchly” and “adamantly” does not recognize, will be sitting next to Serbia, as an equal, in 36 international initiatives, according to Kosovo’s Deputy Foreign Minister. (Hey, I don’t like calling him that either, but how else will the official Serbia address him in regional conferences?) If that is not recognition, then I don’t know what is. According to Glas Srpske, Petrit Selimi, the man holding the title above I uttered with heaviness of the heart, said the following to Serbian reporters (in my translation):

“Kosovo will not be an observer, not an adjoined member, but a full-fledged member, with the ratification powers… The footnote is just a word, and it is more important that we’ve become a member of the [international] organizations.”

Boris Tadić, saw the “deal” quite differently:

“Kosovo will not be presented in regional fora and institutions as an independent country, but in line with UN Resolution 1244 on Kosovo and the opinion of the International Court of Justice.” (Source: B92)

Did they read the same agreement? 

source: smedia.rs

Now, if Serbia is an independent state and Kosovo has the same participation rights as the independent Serbia, or, in other words, if Serbia will not have any influence over decisions and attitudes such Kosovo puts forward in these international initiatives, aren’t they equal? Did Boris Tadić not allow Kosovo to have the same international status before the world as Serbia has? If the footnote in effect does not abridge Kosovo’s participation in any way and if Hashim Thaci has said numerous times that the UN Resolution 1244 did not bind him, which dumb Serb will believe Tadić’s rhetorical gibberish? What has changed the official position of Serbia from Vuk Jeremić’s insistence on blocking Kosovo to Stefanović accepting it gladly? The footnote? Give me a break.

Borko Stefanović inadvertently revealed how much of a “deal” this actually was:

“It is clear now that all the criteria set by the European Council for Serbia to get the EU candidate status have been fulfilled.” (Source: B92)

So, he signed off on all the demands, literally going down on not only Tahiri, but the rows of Brussels eurocrats, effectively bringing Serbia down with him for all the cunnilingi and the fellatios. The Oxford linguists would probably support my figurative references to the oral sex instances, but the long English faces would frown upon the “deal” redefinition, in any language. What Borko Stefanović did in Brussels was in no way a deal, and did not benefit Serbia in the slightest, but it was subordination to the will of Serbia’s Western European and Albanian enemies.

While Stefanović was performing the cunnilingus in Brussels, Serbia’s special police hidden behind face masks attacked and removed the roadblock at Jarinje. It was a clear sign that the official Belgrade meant business, that both Brussels and Priština could trust it in advancing their agenda. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be hilarious.

And while the EU candidacy was again positioned as the paramount goal, worth all the humiliations and masochism, didn’t Tadić claim that all the conditions had been met before the December Ninth decision as well? 

Ninety Nine Percent Against the Fourth Reich and Its Belgrade Proxy

source: novinar.de

Since the North Kosovo Serbs unequivocally refused to recognize the institutions of the self-proclaimed independent Kosovo in the Sretenje Referendum, a democratic expression the official Belgrade condemned in a very undemocratic manner, there is a question of legitimacy of Serbia’s further involvement in negotiations with the Kosovo Albanian representatives.  It is very unclear whom Borislav Stefanović, Serbia’s representative in the negotiations that resume tomorrow in Brussels, actually represents. Not Serbia’s interests in Kosovo, that much is understood. The Kosovo Serbs said so in the Sretenje Referendum on February 14 and 15. The interest of Serbia in its province of Kosovo naturally corresponds with the best interest of the Serbs living in Kosovo, and if they, in areas where they still enjoy a semblance of physical and political freedom, decided to democratically express their disagreement with the agenda Boris Tadić’s government continues to pursue, there could be only one interpretation of such an action: Serbia’s president is working against the interest and wishes of Serbia’s citizens in Kosovo whose very existence as a free community holding onto their ancestral homes hangs in balance. In no way can Tadić’s stance be more justified than the stance of the very people who are directly affected.

Stefanović and Edita Tahiri will meet and continue to negotiate the best and the least painful way – the least obvious way, that is - for Serbia to surrender Kosovo, finally and officially. No one expects this to be the last round of the talks that solidify the surrender, but the signs of intent are posted all over and the only trouble is in selling it to the Serbs in as veiled a form as possible. Any negotiation with a party whom one doesn’t recognize in the form that party represents itself must be about the basic terms of the recognition, i.e. the adjustment of that representation that is acceptable to the counterpart.  Following this logic, if Serbia didn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence, the subject of the conversation could only be the very framework under which Serbia would agree to even talk to the Kosovo Albanians. This would be logical, but straying away from logic wouldn’t be isolated to this particular case when it comes to Serbia’s national politics. Serbia did not recognize the independence of its southern province, yet it engaged in bilateral talks with it, not about the nature in which such an entity would come to the negotiating table, but about its international functionality, thus effectively recognizing its separate political existence and aiming to find ways to ease its own province into the international relations. This is not all - Stefanović has already all but transferred over the border control authorities at crossings which Serbia controlled and the birth registers that are the exclusive property of Serbia’s government, thus effectively binding the North Kosovo Serbs to the Albanian separatist authorities’ administrative functions. We all remember the failed status talks and the reality that Brussels never wanted to negotiate Kosovo’s status as it masterminded Kosovo’s current de facto separation from Serbia. This reality makes the logic moot, but it doesn’t make it non-existent.

source: vesti-online.com

However, a new reality has hit home on Serbia’s Statehood Day: the North Kosovo Serbs have used their democratic right to freely chose not to recognize either Priština’s authority over them or Stefanović’s concessions to the Albanian separatists. They effectively abandoned the line imposed on them by the Tadić government as they realized that the official Belgrade was not working to preserve their status as a free community under the sovereignty of Serbia. If the Albanian separatism in Kosovo is a reality that has to be reckoned with, why would the will of the Kosovo Serbs be seen as anything less than that? Why would their free and democratic expression be ignored? Can any expression be more democratically viable than the 99% representation in the rejection of the separatist Kosovo institutions by the North Kosovo Serbs, accompanied by a 75% popular response to the referendum in spite of extraneous circumstances created by weather elements?

Kosovo’s independence is not a done deal. Most of the world did not recognize it, including two permanent UN Security Council members, five EU member-states, Israel and the majority of Islamic countries, and new recognitions came to a standstill or a trickle at best. Serbia’s government in all actuality appears more than willing to give in to the Albanian separatists if the reward is to be the EU candidacy it longed for. On that front, nothing has happened between the December Ninth rejection (the emphasis is due to the date’s potential significance to the Serbian history as a modern-day Vidovdan) to encourage the hope of the smaller part of Serbia’s public that placed all their eggs in the EU-acceptance basket.

Sure, Wolfram Maas, the German ambassador in Serbia, continued the best tradition of the “warm” German-Serb relations by openly meddling in Serbia’s party politics via a personal attack on Vojislav Koštunica, the former Prime Minister who is not even a major opposition leader anymore, betraying frustration and impatience. Koštunica was not a random target; he recently published a manifest of what I called the Koštunica Doctrine, an in-depth articulation of his matured political philosophy that advocated a political and military neutrality of Serbia between the East and the West and elaborated on the position he’s held for some time that it is against the interests of Serbia to move towards joining the European Union, not only because of the Confederation’s economic failure, the uncertain future, and the traditional hostility towards the Serbian people by some key EU members, but also because of Serbia’s natural opposition to losing its independence to a foreign, undemocratic super-state. The war of words expanded onto other points, but the larger point shouldn’t be missed: Germany’s increasing colonialist tendencies do not tolerate opposition, especially such an eloquent one and especially at the moment in which such ideas can undermine the German consolidation of power in EU countries with an already considerable political and philosophical opposition to what many perceive as the Fourth Reich. Democracy is but a collateral in this German onslaught.

source: rts.rs

While Maas has been engaging Koštunica, other EU diplomats have been cajoling Serbia’s leaders into believing that the EU candidacy is within reach, at the fingertips, and that all Belgrade has to do is let Kosovo go. Of course, no one in Brussels and Berlin is asking Serbia to recognize Kosovo, and after Serbia agrees to unblock Kosovo’s participation in regional conferences and helps remove the barricades in the North, no new demands will be set. Maybe just the annulment or an adjustment of the trade agreement with Russia, a demand that the EU Ambassador in Serbia, Vincent Degert, hinted at several times, but that is all. While Maas said there will not be any new demands, Laszlo Surjan, the vice-president of the European Parliament, all but guaranteed Serbia will become a candidate by March 1. Nicolai Wammen, the Danish EU Minister, on the other hand, insisted that Serbia will only win the candidacy on March 1 if it showed progress in fulfilling demands in the interim. In the interim? The only thing happening in the interim is the Brussels meeting between Stefanović and Tahiri.

The common denominator is that the pressures, hard and subtle, are mounting in the run-up to the talks and especially in the light of the Sretenje Referendum. Even Hashim Thaci is playing nice these days, showing willingness to accept the crazy arrangement of subtitles and asterisks under Kosovo’s name in the regional conference representations. At the same time, Serbian news media report on an alleged communication sent by the Albanian separatist authorities to certain EU destinations, urging them to deny Serbia a candidacy. Only Vuk Jeremić "inexplicably" insists on a hard stance – Wammen’s warning came after a meeting with Jeremić. A coincidence? Jeremić is Stefanović’s boss, believe it or not, and one who doesn’t have any control over his underlink, apparently. You can’t make this stuff up.

And in the same interim, the North Kosovo Serbs have to be reckoned with. The referendum showed they will not bow to Stefanović’s concessions. The entire premise of Belgrade negotiating on their behalf has fallen. They know it and Boris Tadić knows it. That is why he did not even mention Kosovo in his Statehood Day remarks on the day of the Sretenje Referendum. The Sretenje Referendum was the day his Presidency hit the rock bottom and he knows that too. If he recovers from that embarrassment, Serbia will not recover from him.

As for the Kosovo Serbs, there are no guarantees that KFOR will not simply expel them from their homes if they decide to disobey the Brussels’ marching orders Stefanović and Tadić most definitely will have accepted on their behalf. There are no guarantees the Albanian separatists will not attempt another pogrom of Serbs of the March 2004 variety, out of a “justified” frustration their “legitimate” desires have not been fulfilled. There are simply no guarantees for the Serbs; not even life and liberty, let alone a pursuit of happiness. 

Falling off the Shoulders of Giants: A Moral Ditch of the Ungrateful Nation

source: bportlibrary.org

The Fourth of July is the Independence Day in the United States, a country and a people proud of its short, and aggressively imperialist, history. On this day in 1776, their Founding Fathers, a group of local Englishmen, landowners, signed a piece of paper that carved in stone the conviction that they and the causes they represented were exceptional. And, reading Jefferson, Adams, Madison (he was not the signer of the Declaration of Independence, but he was Father of the Constitution), and studying the example of Washington, these men were exceptional indeed. As I said, these were Englishmen, local elites, making a break from their mother country that was thousands of miles away because its laws were impeding their desire to play by their own rules. The principles of that split, however, paved the way for the entire nation they founded to embark on a way of progress, emancipation and, eventually and unfortunately, imperialism.

Karađorđe Petrović, Stanoje Glavaš, Janko Katić and Vasa Čarapić were hunted men in 1804 when they got together in the village of Orašac and decided to fight for their lives and to put a stop to centuries-old oppression and occupation. They were also elites; they were peasant elites of a peasant people that rose against the enslavement, against all odds, with the only assistance coming from the Serb leaders from outside the Ottoman Empire, almost as enslaved as they were. On the shoulders of these giants, the Serbian liberation and unification was to be carried out and it almost was.

The Fifteenth of February was to Serbia what the Fourth of July was to the United States. The Manifest Destiny of the North American English elites is still being pursued, only not in the Appalachian, where it began, but in the Hindu Kush, where many such enterprises met their end. Karađorđe’s covenant was broken by his great-grandson in 1918, when he misunderstood it. Could that be the reason Serbia, restored in 2006 to its 1878 borders - de facto - celebrates its birthday so shyly? (Although it doesn’t change the sentiment of this article, it should be clarified that Serbia’s Statehood Day unites both the memory of the First Serbian Uprising in 1804 and the adoption of the Sretenje Constitution on this day in 1835. The Sretenje Constitution was one of the first democratic constitutions in Europe, but it was abolished due to the pressure from the Ottoman government, as Serbia was still not fully independent.)

Let’s get back on track… On the Fourth of July, the sky between the Atlantic and the Pacific is covered in blue, red and white, in stars and stripes, and in fireworks. You just know it’s someone’s birthday. Everybody and their mother parade under some kind of a patriotic banner. Every July, Hollywood, that Parthenon of the American culture, pops out another creation full of American nationalist chest-bumping. And that is the way it should be. Tell a Vietnam veteran - who fought a lost war and probably got spat on and called a baby-killer when he came back - that it is pathetic to celebrate the loyalty to his country and you better duck or run, because he’d be reaching for his gun rack instantly. Any geezer that charged the Omaha Beach in 1944 will punch you in the face if you insult his sacrifice and show anything but respect for the causes his comrades jumped the machine gun nests for. Serbia celebrates her memory of heroes by cowardly questioning and impeding the democratic right of the Kosovo Serbs to decide their own fate in the face of extermination and while standing at the Alamo of Serbdom in the 21^st century. Should Karađorđe come alive, he'd puke before dispatching many a Serb to the eternal hunting-grounds for treason, cowardice and plain thievery. Oh, wait, this Serbia would send him to the Hague before he could draw his cutlass out.

source: royalfamily.org

Granted, Jefferson and Washington are probably turning in their graves looking up at what has become of the society they helped found, but the state they delivered still at least pretends to be standing on the principles they set. Boris Tadić’s Serbia cannot even fool itself into thinking it stands for anything its founding fathers, Karađorđe and knez Miloš, set the course for. Whether thrusting his sword into the occupier's flesh like Black George did, or weaseling and bribing his way into freedom like Miloš Obrenović did (after the heroic victories in the battles of Dublje and Ljubić, to be just), the common denominator was in that they both acted to make crucial gains for Serbia and Serbia did gain, up until 1918.

I know, Serbia that was restored in 2006 is not Serbia of the Sretenje Constitution of 1935. I know the 90 years of the cancer called Yugoslavia and the 45 years of the plague called communism have eaten away at the Serbian brain and heart and it is not easy to recover from such blows. But the people in power should expedite the healing process, not keep throwing wrenches in it.

Karađorđe has been a dead man for 200 years, and so has been George Washington, but to negate his greatness, his true significance while he lived and acted and his symbolic significance today, is not only embarrassing and humiliating, but unbecoming of a progressive nation. By shying away from a full-blown national celebration of the nation’s birthday and of the greats that delivered the people from the chains of oppression, Boris Tadić’s government is indeed diminishing their greatness. Of course, the Americans have never negated Washington’s greatness and, in fact, they built themselves into a superpower because their state-building generations propped themselves up on the shoulders of their giants, like Washington and Jefferson, and continued on their course by furthering the sensible nationalist ambition the Founding Fathers embodied. And what has become of Karađorđe's and Miloš's vision? A gay parade in Belgrade draws more attention from media, supporters and opponents, and state agencies, i.e. the police, than the Statehood Day. The Statehood Day is marked by museum expositions, medal reception ceremonies and wreath-laying, all accompanied by cocktail hours in which mentions of the heroic past this day should celebrate are considered party pooping by the elbow-rubbing hypocrites and sycophants in attendance.

source: politika.rs

But where is the people of Serbia in this embarrassment? It is the people's holiday, after all. Serbia of 1804 was ruled by the Ottoman oppressors, and Karađorđe, Jakov Nenadović and Milenko Stojković were the people that rose against that oppression. The people do not need the state to throw their birthday party. Where are the patriotic parties and organizations? Where are the Serbian nationalists? Did they succumb to be represented by a bunch of outraged youngsters who saw in the shy celebration yet another opportunity to rebel and ridicule their irresponsible and cowardly elders? It took 16 years of booing and mocking to bring back the Serbian national anthem Bože, pravde, so I guess yesterday's incident at Marićevića Jaruga (the location of the Orašac meeting in which one of yesterday’s commemorations was held; translates as the Gully of Marićević or the Ditch of Marićević, i.e. of Teodosije Marićević, the host of the meeting) is going to have to be repeated for many years to have any effect. OK, Serbia is several feet deep in snow, but do you cancel your national birthday celebration because of weather elements? Are you proud of any bit of your history, my Serbian brothers and sisters? If Dino Merlin - whom I'm ashamed to mention in this context, but I have to – can fill the Belgrade Arena with Serbs, his mental patients, three times over, why can't Karađorđe, who fired the bullet that killed the beast to set us free? (If the Americans had Karađorđe and Hajduk Veljko, Hollywood wouldn't need to invent William Wallace and the studios would kill for such stories.)

I’ll tell you where the real patriots were yesterday and the day before. The seventy five percent of the North Kosovo Serbs defied the nature, their so-called government and their fear, to say a loud “No” in the referendum against the occupation and oppression, on the birthday of Serbia, in the best tradition of Karađorđe, while their government disowned them, not only failing to resume the state-building tradition of the Orašac meeting and the Sretenje Constitution, but reversing it. Where Karađorđe erected roadblocks before foreign warlords and where Miloš pushed them out with slick peasant diplomacy, Boris Tadić is begging them to come and take what they please. Where Miloš humiliated himself to save and free Serbia, Tadić humiliated Serbia to better himself and his sycophantic cohorts. I see, making too much noise about Karađorđe and Miloš might screw up the process of brainwashing the Serbs into believing that everything good, honorable and heroic about their past is in fact detrimental to the higher principle of obedience to foreign masters for the sake of being shown mercy and thrown crumbs from the imperial kitchen.

The nations that have no respect for their past heroes cannot hope to give birth to future heroes. What can Serbia hope for?

Heroism Reduced to "Inat" and the Lost Parts of Serbdom

source: smedia.rs

Inat is a Serbian word for “defiance.” A word and a trait of national personality Serbs are very proud of, without a doubt, ask any Serb. Any Serb can name a number of historical instances in which the Serbs heroically defied a powerful enemy or two, or three. You don’t flip the bird to Adolf Hitler just because you don’t like his mustache. You don’t go dancing under NATO bombs just because the bridges were closed for traffic. However, inat is also a Turkish word for “defiance.” I’m not an etymologist and I can’t tell you which language the word originated in. What I can say is that defining inat as a Serbian national trait is misleading and traditionally costly, although very emboldening. No, I’m not diminishing heroically righteous feats – and sacrifices – some Serbs tend to ascribe to inat, but there must be a word said about the other side of the coin that is this inat thing.

Mihajlo Latas, a Serb from Janja Gora, Lika, became Omer-pasha, the most fearsome and celebrated general of the Ottoman armies of the mid-19^th century and a man who almost suffocated the free Serb principality of Montenegro in 1853. No, he wasn’t a devshirme victim; he converted as a grown man. About 20 Ottoman grand viziers were of Serb descent. Numerous other Serb converts served in the Ottoman armies since the time of Ahmed Hercegović, the son of Herceg Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, conquering and pillaging the very lands they were born in. Some very bold estimates project a figure of 9 million of present-day Turks descending from the Serbian people. The accuracy of the number is not even relevant, the principle is: Serbs converted to Islam as much as they defied Islam and the Ottoman rule. For every Lazar, there was a Konstantin Dejanović and even Marko Kraljević, that fought against the Serbs, if not in Kosovo, than in other battles. Which inat are we talking about?

Thousands of the Military Frontier Serbs converted to Catholicism due to political and economic pressures as well as opportunities. The fact that there is no Catholic Serbs today tells us a little something about the ancestry of a large chunk of the Croat nation. I’m sure the Serbs that were expelled from Croatia in 1995 would claim inat as one of the determinants of their rejection of the renewed Croat hegemony. But where was inat when their relatives chose to cross over or succumbed to the pressures of the Vatican agents a century or two back? 
Where was inat in the Arnautash Serbs out of which at least one third of Kosovo Albanians descend? 
Where was inat in Sandor Petofi, born Aleksandar Petrović, the greatest Hungarian poet of the 19^th century? Communist partisans were overwhelmingly Serbs that turned against Serbdom for the advancement of a hostile foreign ideology, not for the sake of inat.

source: en.wikipedia.org

Where is inat in Montenegrin Serbs that are openly betraying Serbdom for a job offer in the Djukanovic mafia state? Where is inat in Vojvodina Serbs who are way too easily allowing the ideas of separation from Serbia to take root? Where is this famous inat in Serbian leaders and their NGO accomplices who are eagerly handing Serbia over to her enemies, who are aiding and abetting foreign interests in dismembering and ravaging Serbia? Is this inat thing exclusive to Serbs who claim it or is it somehow applicable to all of Serbdom, as one would be prone to conclude from boisterous chest-bumping of some among us? Which Serbs are inatli, Tadic’s sycophants, Čeda Jovanović’s fifth column, or perhaps Nenad Čanak’s separatists? The only thing these Serbs are in defiance of is Serbdom itself.

In every generation that defied, there was a pretty large contingent that succumbed, in one way or another. Succumbing didn’t only mean openly betraying, joining the enemy and taking up arms against your own. Succumbing didn’t always mean converting to an occupier’s religion, either. Succumbing meant inflicting damage to the vitality of Serbdom by abandoning it, turning against it or failing to defend it. After each of these processes of inflicting the damage ended, Serbdom found itself poorer for the contingent that succumbed. We came out of all of these battles smaller, sometimes ostensibly victorious, but always boasting defiance, conveniently forgetting those that didn’t defy. 
As a side note, there was most often a formula to this dual response to foreign advances. The advance came in two ways, the physical assault and the soft power. The head-on attack would inflict comparatively lighter losses on Serbdom than the process of a gradual takeover. Most Serbs didn’t convert to Islam as a way to avoid that head-on assault, but during the post-conquest centuries, when they attempted to get integrated into the Ottoman society and pursue social and economic opportunities. Conversions didn’t always have as their goal the protection of estate or the continuation of privilege, but were considered a legitimate social mobility option. To avoid being frowned upon, a convert would simply have to move to less diverse Muslim areas and blend in. In the Military Frontier, most Serbs who converted to Catholicism were offered “a middle ground” option of the Church Union, which only served to eventually catholicize the Serbs completely. Cajoling and conning historically worked much better against the Serbs than aggressive physical power. And it had nothing to do with inat.

source: serbianna.com

Again, I’m not here to downplay the heroism of those generations of Serbs who, wisely or unwisely, stood up and defied oncoming assaults, but I am trying to put inat, an attribute that caused a lot of false perceptions about Serbian reactions to hostile advances, into a perspective that shows the banality of ascribing this trait to all of Serbdom. I will even question its application to Serbdom as an identifying trait at all. The feats of heroic generations should be seen for what they were, isolated from any kind of superficial inscriptions on our collective Zodiac card. These feats were not caused by inat, but by the natural need of our people to defend itself, to correctly respond to assaults on its freedom and dignity…      
Kingdom of Serbia did not reject the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum in 1914 for the sake of defiance – let’s not diminish the act. Serbia was a free country whose independence would have been seriously undermined if she succumbed to the pressure from Vienna. It was not an irrational response; it was a conscious, deliberate, political decision, albeit an extremely brave one. If we would write it off to inat, we would seriously devalue it. The defiance of Hitler in 1941 was expressed with the purported egging on from the intelligence agents of the British Empire, but it was still completely within the Serbian ever-present desire to reject foreign rule, again, not for the sake of defiance, but for the sake of freedom. General Draža Mihailović wasn’t the only anti-fascist resistance fighter in the entire Nazi-occupied Europe in 1941 because he wanted to defy and stop Germans and Croats, but because he wanted freedom for his people. It would be unjust to ascribe his heroic struggle to such an irrational reaction as inat. Even in 1999, Slobodan Milošević, for all of his ill-advised decisions, did not reject the first Rambouillet “agreement” because he was playing a defiant warlord, but because it imposed such unjust terms which no self-respecting independent state could afford to succumb to. (In a more current example that Serbs like to cite, Novak Djokovic is not wreaking havoc atop the men's tennis world out of Serbian inat, but after years of hard work and tightening his skills, he reached the mental and physical heights that allow him to be one of the most dominant players ever.)

Defiance for its own sake is an irrational reaction and while Serb leaders committed many a nonsensical, irrational decision in their history, most of them were not due to a defiant nature of their character, but due to a plain amateurism and an inability to lead. As I said, our history is replete with examples of ambiguous responses to foreign advances. In every case, only one part of the Serbian nation could claim inat as its trait, and even that would not be warranted. We, as a people, should begin looking at our history in less of a romanticized and superficial way to recognize its real values and to judge it more honestly.