March 2013
4 posts
February 2013
8 posts
Great Serbs: Ruđer Bošković
Ruđer Bošković, born on May 18, 1711, in Dubrovnik, and died on February 13, 1787, in Milan, was one of the greatest Serbian physicist. He also attained glory as an astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, poet and diplomat.
“Why are they killing the poet in socialism?”
– Branko Miljković, a great Serbian poet of the 20th century, bellowed this in a Zagreb tavern on February 11, 1961. He was immediately arrested. The next day, his body was found hanging from a tree.
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Great Serbs: General Milan Nedić
General Milan Nedić, the most controversial Serb in the 20th century, was born on September 2, 1878, and died on February 4, 1946. He is best known as the German collaborationist prime minister of the occupied Serbia from 1941 to 1944.
Born in Grocka, near Belgrade, Nedić’s ancestry is traced back to the Nedić brothers, heroes of one of the first battles against Turks in the First...
Great Serbs: Aleksa Šantić
Aleksa Šantić, one of the greatest Serbian romantic and nationalist poets, was born in Mostar, Herzegovina, on May 27, 1868, and died in his hometown on February 2, 1924.
Šantić was born in a merchant family, and while his father died early, the uncle who raised him prepared him for a business career. Young Aleksa attended business schools in Trieste and Ljubljana, but, upon his return, he...
Great Serbs: Marko Miljanov Popović
One of the greatest heroes of the Serb struggle for independence, Marko Miljanov Popović, was born on April 25, 1833, in Medun, near Podgorica, Montenegro. He was the leader of the Kuči and Bratonožići highlander clans, a general (vojvoda) of the Montenegrin Army and an author.
Marko Miljanov was given the rank of a general by knez Nikola Petrović Njegoš and he commanded the Montenegrin Army in...
Алекса Шантић: ''Сељанка''
Снег пада и веје. У сеоској луци Све је пусто. Само, као сенка тупа, Низ пртину уску, са штапом у руци, Погрбљена, бледа, једна жена ступа. Ступа и једнако испод борна чела Погледује тамо у костуре живе, Где се на домаку реке, у дну села, Сеоскога уче стан самотни скрива. Нек’ ветрови бесне, нек’ мећаве хуче И засипљу сметом путеве ратара, Она сваке дневи одлази код уче, Па учи и...
The Serbian Literary Herald
The Serbian Literary Herald (Српски Књижевни Гласник) was launched on February 1, 1901, by Bogdan Popović, a giant of Serbian literary criticism.
It was issued during two periods, separated by the Great War. First it ceased being published in 1914, to be re-launched in 1920. The onset of the Second World War saw the end of the Herald.
Throughout both periods, the works published in the Herald...
January 2013
12 posts
“I don’t fear any man, not the Knez, not the Council, not a minister, not a...”
– Toma Vučić Perišić, Serbian general and the leader of the party of the Defenders of the Constitution
“Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to...”
– Sun Tzu
Have you heard of... Jakov Jakšić?
Jakov Jakšić was Serbia’s first postmaster and, as the state treasurer under Knez Miloš Obrenović, the first reformer of state finances.
He was born in Srem in 1774, as Jakov Popović. Already a wealthy merchant, he crossed into Central Serbia to fight in the First Serbian Uprising. He died in Belgrade on January 29, 1848.
Saint Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church
“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the...”
– Sun Tzu
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his...”
– Lao Tzu
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All...”
– George Orwell
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Great Serbs: Radomir Putnik
Radomir Putnik, vojvoda of the Serbian Army and its Chief of the General Staff in the Balkan Wars and in the World War II, was born on January 24, 1847, in Kragujevac.
Putnik took part in all of the wars Serbia waged from 1876 to his death in 1917. He commanded the Serbian Army in the Balkan Wars victories, as well as in the two initial victories over Austria-Hungary.
After the withdrawal of...
“The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”
– George Orwell
Bringing Down the Presevo Monument →
The Preševo monument has been removed over the weekend, after Ivica Dačić came back from the meeting with Hashim Thaci in Brussels. Serbs should be happy, but this Serb is far from it…
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while...”
– A quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove)
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The Presevo Monument: A Chip, a Decoy and an... →
The deadline for removal of the Preševo monument has passed without action by the men responsible to act, or at least the man who set the deadline in an outburst of verbal bravado, Ivica Dačić. Dačić threatened a forceful removal, instead of taking legal action. It was clearly smoke and mirrors, as is usually the case with Dačić’s “threats.” Threats of no less than a war over the...
December 2012
2 posts
Transplanting Conflict: Presevo is Serbia! →
Parallel with the pressure on the ever-obliging Serbia from the direction of the official Brussels, the Kosovo final solution is being pushed onto the Serbian nation, as basic principles of good conquest strategy mandate, through manufacturing of threats to escalate the conflict beyond the territory of the province. The renewed provocations against the Serbian government by the Albanian leadership...
Line Across the Heart: Advanced Degree of Treason →
Serbia, covered in snow, has drawn a line across its heart that won’t melt away when the snow melts. If I wanted to be romantic, that’s how I could put Serbia Prime Minister’s decision to implement the shadowy agreement “negotiated” between Boris Tadić’s administration and the Kosovo Albanian secessionist structures, under the watchful eye and whip of Brussels...
May 2012
35 posts
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The Serbian Roundup: "The Tease Note and the Rough... →
When Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy congratulated Tomislav Nikolić on his presidential election victory – three hours before the closing of the polls on Sunday, mind you – it was clear the game was on. The press release was quickly taken off the Council of Europe web site, but not before Croatian daily Večernji List launched it into the serbophone media space. Of course, I refused to...
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Tuzla Convoy Massacre
On May 15, 1992, Muslim paramilitaries in Tuzla, Bosnia, ambushed and massacred close to 200 soldiers of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), who were withdrawing from the city in accord with the pre-arranged agreement between the JNA commanders and the Tuzla authorities.
The convoy, leaving the ”Husinska Buna” barracks as agreed, was moving out of the city and towards Serbia,...
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The May Assembly and the Proclamation of Serb...
Beginning May 13, 1848, (May 1, per Julian calendar, then in effect), leaders of the Serbs of southern Hungary met in Sremski Karlovci, at the historical May Assembly, to form Srbska Vojvodina (“the Serb Voivodeship”) and declare its autonomy from the Hungarian parliament.
The Metropolitan of Karlovci, Josif Rajačić, was raised to the level of Serbian Patriarch. Đorđe Stratimirović...
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Great Serbs: Laza Lazarević
Laza Lazarević, one of the most significant author of short stories in the 19th century Serbia, was born on May 13, in Šabac. Lazarević was a physician and, in his relatively short life - he died at 40 - he published only nine short stories. He was a literary realist and was considered the founder of Serbian psychological short story.
His stories are abundant in motives of Serbian patriarchal and...
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“A riot is the language of the unheard.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
– Henry David Thoreau
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The Serbian Roundup: "Election Fraud In Serbia:... →
The main goal of the anti-fraud protesters should be to entrench the truth that the fraud has been committed in the mind of the people seeking truth and justice, by documenting and calling the attention to various evidence to the fraud, thus de-legitimizing the power of this regime, letting the entire people know it was not elected, it does not stand on the fundamental principle of democracy, the...
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The Serbian Roundup: "Election in Serbia: Fraud,... →
The icing on the cake was the Thursday morning report that the regime banned Dveri’s election fraud protest, set for the evening. Dveri leadership decided to hold a press conference in front of the RIK headquarters instead, but called on people to not join the protest, warning that the regime is prone to inserting salts into the crowd to try and provoke violence in the streets and blame the...
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“The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So...”
– Simon Wiesenthal
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NATO Crimes: Bombardment of Niš
Niš, the birthplace of Roman emperor Constantine the Great, was heavily bombed by NATO planes on May 7, 1999. Illegal cluster bombs killed 15 and wounded 19 civilians. One hundred and twenty residential buildings were damaged. Two containers with 100 to 150 cluster bombs in each were dumped on city’s downtown.
Photosource: politika.rs
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The Serbian Roundup: "Election in Serbia: The... →
On the crossroads yet again, Serbia cannot afford another four year term of a foreign mercenary government. The full delivery of not only Kosovo, but Vojvodina as well, seems to be in the cards. The cold hallways of Nemanjina 11 haven’t been less hospitable to ideas friendly to Serbdom since 1990. Dačić holds the keys to a different future or at least to a prolonged hope.
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The Ostružnica Assembly of 1804
The first assembly of the leaders of Serbs of the Belgrade Pashaluk was held in the village of Ostružnica on May 6, 1804. The leaders of the First Serbian Uprising assembled in Ostružnica to define the agenda ahead of the negotiations with Belgrade Turks, to devise plans for future operations, to determine organizational roles etc.
The key demand determined by the Ostružnica Assembly was the...
Saint Sava interment at Mileševa
On May 6, 1237, the remains of Sava Nemanjić were interred in the Mileševa monastery. Sava died in the Bulgarian capital Veliko Trnovo in 1236, on his return from the Holy Land. In 1594, Sinan-pasha exhumed Saint Sava’s remains, transported them to Belgrade and burned them at the Vračar hill.
Photosource: en.wikipedia.org
“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above...”
– Alexander Hamilton
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Serbian Heroes: Colonel Milenko Pavlović
On May 4, 1999, a hero fighter jet pilot, colonel Milenko Pavlović, of Yugoslav Air Force, was shot down over western Serbia, fighting 16 NATO planes.
Pavlović, born in Gornje Crniljevo in 1959, was shot down over Valjevo, defending the NATO attack on the ammunition factory Krušik and a nearby military storage. He flew the last mission in place of a younger pilot, whom he ordered to stand...
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Knez Danilo's Code of 1855
The Code of Knez Danilo or the General Law of the Land was adopted on May 5, 1855, by the Montenegrin legislature at the initiative of knez Danilo Petrović Njegoš.
The Code, inspired by the Law of Bishop Petar I, aimed to outlaw the patriarchal customs and tribal autonomy impeding the rule of law and unity of the state. It had 95 articles and it applied to both Montenegrin and Highland tribes. It...
“The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.”
– Simone Weil 