Where did the members of the ruling party and Vučić's Trabants meet? How is it possible that out of those huge hundreds of thousands of supporters, almost an entire area remains? What is the real possibility of the ruling party to attract (some new) public figures and experts for the future government? What does all this agree about the social and political climate, except that fear has changed sides
The students in the blockade managed to organize simultaneous protests in front of the public services in Belgrade and Novi Sad within two hours, to gather thousands of citizens on a rainy night without any of the authorities finding out before the action had already started. What is left to the government? Spin, which hits her head like a boomerang and the president's angry face because he has been five steps behind every student move in recent weeks. What did that event show in the long run, especially before March 15, when it comes to students, what about citizens, and what about the authorities, especially about President Aleksandar Vučić
The student protest marches map a new Serbia that self-identifies as a Serbia freed from fear (...) Every place the students passed through, anthropologically speaking, participated in the transition process. That transition was from a state of anxiety and anguish to something that those who participated in the students' receptions, according to their own statements, experienced as a newly acquired freedom. It is difficult to find something similar in the recent political history of Serbia
"Blockades have all the characteristics of an organic change - a change that is pure, spontaneous and original. Under such circumstances, hardly any outside support is needed to turn the protest into political change. The greatest strength of this protest is the firm demands. The protest is pure and uninstrumentalized. Moreover, even the one who would try to instrumentalize it, does not know how to do it. That is why all international factors will wait to see the resolution of the situation and take new positions after it."
What did the students start with their rebellion, their demands and the way they fight for them? What is actually happening to us? What kind of seed was planted? And what effects can this rebellion have? In the long run, does the government or the system change? How suddenly that youth - drugged for years to be disinterested and selfish - turned out to be so thoughtful and noble
"Now some other young people have appeared, completely different, who are inspired by the same thing. Maybe they are inspired by someone's religious education, maybe someone's anti-religious education, maybe someone's philosophy... Maybe they are a new world that adapts much better to dramatic technological development. But maybe they actually feel what freedom means in the true sense, even much deeper than we who have uttered the word many times felt it. Perhaps they sense the danger brought with it by the apparent crisis of democracy throughout the world. I confess, I thought there were no more such young people as we were. However, they exist and are realistically much better than us and much less susceptible to manipulation, both by the so-called deep state and by politicians and the media."
"Today, the discourse on the Balkans focuses on corruption and poverty. For example, if you read the news, even when Bulgaria is presented as an attractive tourist destination, it will always be described as 'the poorest country'. That adjective cannot be omitted. Of course, Bulgarians are now waiting for a poorer country to join the European Union so that they can finally stop being the 'poorest'. Poverty is criminalized, it is considered something bad, almost a moral flaw"
How do the parents and brothers and sisters of the young men killed on December 14, 1998 in Peja feel and what do they think today? Why did Aleksandar Vučić declare in 2013 that he had knowledge that this crime was not committed by persons of Albanian, but Serbian nationality? Why did he never want to receive the victims' families and, despite repeated promises, share with them the information he claimed to have? And how far the investigation into this crime has come
Is there a germ of a political alternative to the Serbian List? Has the opposition finally remembered that it could help the Serbs in Kosovo? And how? How important is that? How does the regime in Belgrade (not) react to the fact that someone finally dared to step into the political ban of the president
There has been talk of bringing back conscription for years, and so far the talk has seemed like yet another trickery of the public by the authorities. However, in the midst of the crisis in Kosovo, the president has now said that this time - for real. In the previous days, the tabloids also dealt with how the countries of the region are jealous of Serbia because it buys modern weapons and has such a strong army. However, for years - people from the army have been leaving. Military exercises are mostly made as shows, not only to "overshadow the simplicity" and gain some points, but also to cover up the true state of affairs. And what is it like? The editors of "Vremena" were contacted by a whistleblower from the Serbian Armed Forces who talks about exactly this - what are the relations within the Armed Forces, what is the (imp)possibility of advancement, what is the influence of politics and unprofessional personnel, what is happening with the military union, what are the investments, how much is an army trained for war operations
"Pacifism largely determined the identity of the Nazarene believers, and influenced their conflict with the authorities. (...) That is how the Nazarenes, from the beginning of the establishment of communities in the area of today's Vojvodina in the middle of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, were in conflict with the state as conscientious objectors"
"In front of suffering, reason becomes silent. There is a scientific explanation for this: creativity and rationality are not located in the same part of the brain. When the radio is working, creativity is silent and vice versa. But we can also look at it in a spiritual way, because suffering makes us repent, breaks our ego, we feel less like the inhabitants of this earth and closer to God"
We really are a colony, of course, suited to economic neocolonialism. And I think it started already in the eighties. In addition to our kleptocratic elite, there is capital from all sides - from those directly from the East and West, to that whose real owner is often unknown in the Kafkaesque world financial system. I always find it amusing when someone from more developed countries criticizes the so-called business environment, especially in terms of corruption, and I wonder - wait, aren't all those companies making deals with the corrupt elite in those semi-developed countries of the world? And those compradros elites are preparing a legislative and anti-worker environment that favors that type of economy. I think that Serbia lacks a strong authentic left, sufficiently nationally conscious, but socially oriented, with a realistic geopolitical overview of things.
The general director of the RTV public service does not see any other problems either in his house or in the media world, except for the young weather forecaster, who got a gaffe and someone broadcast it by mistake.
I remember a patient from the hospital in Padinska Skela, who was depressed and hospitalized for the first time in the forties because her son told her: "You work all your life, you have nothing, and Arkan's people have everything." He left with them, got hooked on heroin and was devastated. She did not come to the hospital because of psychopathology, but because of social pathology; society was completely disrupted, and consequently she suffered and had to seek help. In the hospital, or in psychotherapy, you help someone, that person returns to the family or to the society of a perverted value system, of rampant violence, and everything you have achieved is destroyed very quickly.
"The players are different, very talented and less talented, smart and not so smart, but they are a difficult people because they all have great vanity. It is already undermining the team spirit in the national team when you announce that you called Jokić. Maybe now everyone is expecting that presidential invitation. And if Vučić really called him, which I think is a mistake, then he should not publish it yet as part of his marketing. Of course, players must have certain privileges when they sacrifice their rest and need for recovery to play for the national team; they should have certain privileges even if they are not members of the Serbian Progressive Party. But it seems to me that Vučić did it in order to take credit for Jokić's playing. To him, we are all - and Jokić in this situation - indirect means"
"Some countries in Africa have a much stronger civil society and are more vocal when it comes to non-transparency of loans, corruption or human rights. They see China as a violator of human rights, and Western sources are more attractive to them. However, I have heard many times what African politicians say to their colleagues from the European Union and the West in general: 'Yes, we would rather have a loan package and we are happy to have human rights as part of it, but there is no money from you. In fact, you are only talking big stories, pointing fingers at us when we borrow from China, but you are not offering us any alternative'”
"Europe will play a smaller and smaller role in global politics in the future. Not only do we have a shrinking population, but also a shift in global power. Even with Biden, one of his successors or with Trump, US politics will be different compared to the past fifty, sixty years. There's globalization, supply chains, different interests in the Pacific, China, Taiwan... The US has always been both a transatlantic and a Pacific nation. So the turn to Asia is not a new thing. And we Europeans have to find an answer to that."
"While Pašić's circles were in power, there really was a lot of high-level corruption and even though it was known, the courts did nothing because Nikola Pašić was protecting his people. In the 1930s, the country was different, there were obstacles, not everything could be done. But those punitive measures were not directed against their own, against the royal camarilla, but against those who had already lost power, so their examples proved the fight against corruption."
Miloš Vučević's presentation lasted for three and a half hours of reading, after which he presented the new Government of Serbia. When it comes to expertise, the connection between ministers and portfolios generally seems as if they were pulling a name from one drum, and a portfolio from another drum, so what suits whom. But well, it's not about expertise. But as far as the exposé is concerned, it contained all sorts of things: a handful of commonplaces, soulless odes to one's own party, a description of Serbia that you certainly wouldn't recognize, and poetic moments of escape.
When it turned out that DD had died a violent death, few were really surprised. It wasn't just about the desire for revenge, it wasn't even about the fact that we googled different forms of evil, but that we expected the state to act against the state, that those who should protect the system are the same ones who undermine and destroy it
"The spin dictator needs to convince the public that he is a competent leader. That is why it needs economic growth. His problem is that for economic growth he needs a modern knowledge-based service sector - and for that he needs a creative class, entrepreneurs and highly educated professionals. So the economic problem of the spin dictator is that he needs an educated class for economic growth, but if this class becomes too numerous, it becomes too expensive to silence and/or co-opt. And the more money is spent on silencing the educated class, the less there is for the rest of society."
"I don't think it's a good solution not to go to the Belgrade elections and go to the elections in other places. This would contribute to the decline of trust in political parties, in the institutional struggle, in the form of organization that says - we organized around the basic postulates, which is participation in elections and winning power in elections. This would lead to an even stronger wave of populist movements, which would then flirt with various non-institutional actions. All this would create even greater social chaos. After so many years of rule by the Serbian Progressive Party, our society has been served"
According to a 2012 estimate by consulting firm Jane's, the price of an hour of "burst" was 16.500 US dollars, now it can only be higher, due to inflation. Further, the assessment accepted by NATO is that each pilot should achieve 180 flight hours per year - a low number of flight hours means not only insufficient training for combat missions, but also a higher risk of aviation accidents. According to that calculation, it is necessary to allocate almost three million dollars a year just for one pilot. Even if that money is provided, it will be at the expense not only of other budget users, but also, for example, the possibility of training and maintaining infrastructure in other units of the Serbian Armed Forces."
Back then, the program of the Serbian Radical Party stated that they were against the death penalty. Of all the things from the radical past that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić could have repented of, he chose to publicly change his mind and repent of his support for the death penalty.
"There are also many people like me in the Netherlands, we are a mixture of Indonesians and Dutch, and there are, of course, Indonesians as well. And people have a hard time understanding the difference between us. The difference is in our history"
"It is not a problem in the relationship between what was said and what was kept silent in the ODIHR report. We should not blame the authors of the report for thinking that they have left room for mutually exclusive interpretations. Because they are not. The problem is in our backyard, in that it has become a practice to convince the domestic public not to see what is completely obvious to them (...) In the shortest and as simplified as possible, the erasure of the border between the state and the party that ODIHR points out means that the elections they are getting to the point where only the government that issues them can get them"
