A Marxian fable
At one time, I found it useful to think in terms of Marx’s dictum: from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. Start with Plato, not altogether literally…
Three weeks before the elections
Our candidate for the Eurosong scheduled for the first week of May has more publicity than the presidential candidates taking part in the elections scheduled for April 2nd.
Serbia on spring break
The prime minister promised to engage in presidential campaign only in his free time (although, he also promised not to run) and then secured this free time by dismissing the government.
Candidate’s thirty-seconds quote
“I’m not campaigning. We didn’t spend a single dinar, we didn’t hold a single rally. I didn’t go anywhere to campaign in any way. Is this true? It is. So, why are you talking about campaigning?”
Ne da(vi)mo Beograd protest speech
We’re not only asking for the resignations of the mayor and the minister of police. We are asking for judiciary truth, legal truth, and not political lies. Our demand is neither exaggerated nor illegitimate…
Always on the women’s side
Vucic, the knight in shining armor, will defend Marija Mali as the mother whose children were taken away, but won’t mention her as a woman who is the victim of domestic violence.
Serbia’s lying problem
The New York Review of Books
The peripheral countries often offer an early prophecy about the direction things are going. The outskirts are not the ones to create new global trends – they are just the first to crumble.
History as elephant in the room
Where does a contemporary history of Serbia begin? How is the Yugoslav legacy reflected within it? And does all the talk about memory and forgetting in post-conflict societies really help?
Tribal rules
Last week, the Bar association of Belgrade refused to register Vladimir Vukcevic, former war crimes prosecutor, into the attorneys’ registry. We could have anticipated this last year…
Future of auxiliary police in Serbia
There was no discussion about auxiliary police in Serbia, and the public was not informed that last year’s Law on police enables the Ministry of interior to form that kind of police.
Promocation
The problem is not the fact that it’s a Serbian train, since Serbian trains and buses regularly travel to Kosovo and vice versa, but the fact that the words „Kosovo is Serbia“ are written on it.
January 9th – lapsus memoriae
Wait a minute! What are we actually celebrating on January 9th? We forget the essence. And the essence is the answer to the question about what actually happened on January 9th, 1992.
Whistleblowing in the police
Pointpulse
The two police officers stated that during the commemoration in Potocari in 2015 as many as 19 police officers were at the event and that they were given the task to secretly record the event.
To the new years of fighting
Ready for a new year of fighting, because the Dark is afraid of us! Whose city? Our city! We started 2016 with this message. A year of the fight against a serious threat to our city.
Contribution to Danica Marinkovic’s biography
The parliamentary majority believes that her testimony in the Hague has freed Slobodan Milosevic and his police and army officials from any accountability for Racak.
Kosovo Special Court is operational
Heinrich Böll Stiftung
This could be a tsunami that would cause a succession of political generations. Without Thaçi and the Drenica group, their PDK would face a blow that would be difficult to overcome.
New era of total lies
In a weak and underdeveloped society such as the Serbian one, a lie is not used for ideological seduction, but for linking authoritarian government and dependent citizens into a permanent coalition.
Trump and power
wiiw
Trump announced that he was going to pull the US out of TPP and was going to negotiate bilateral trade deals. To get better deals for the US: ‘to bring jobs and industry back’.
Vukovar. Entertainment
The front page of Vecernje novosti on Monday, November 18th, 1991 brought two equally huge headlines: “Vukovar under control of Yugoslav army” and “Folk singer Lepa Brena is getting married”.
Revenge of the politics
Branislav Ristivojevic, a professor at the Novi Sad Faculty of Law, recently published his view on the annulment of Slobodan Beljanski’s PhD thesis. He spoke on TV Pink, made a statement to TV Vojvodina…
The years the SPP has devoured
The GDP of the Eastern European countries in 2015 was 60% higher than 25 years ago, while Serbia is 25% below that level. These countries as a whole are 85% more developed than Serbia.
Insult of the week
Not a day goes by that we don’t get insulted by the government. It insults us collectively, as a group, as individuals. But at the end of the day, the government feels the most insulted.
Ruling by fear or the rule of fear
Introduction to Vojin Dimitrijevic’s book “The reign of terror”: He wrote this book more than 30 years ago, believing that the end of the XX century was to bring a liberation from fear.
Another perspective
We are witnessing a conflict of the state with itself: MPs attacked the Ombudsman, and the prosecutor’s office attacked the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance.
Prime minister’s (dis)honest choice
Mr Vucic seems to have found it difficult to simply say the minister in question was lesbian: rather, he used the medical term, adding that this was her ‘stated orientation’.
Olympic battle for Kosovo
The government’s instruction means fewer medals for Serbia, but fails to show how it will manage to defend Kosovo. The first question being in which sports our medals and defense of Kosovo could “clash” at all.
The exes
Ten days after the murder in Zitiste we still came to the point where violence is violence, jealousy is jealousy, and it’s hard to be left by a partner. You can read all about this in the article on the Politika website.
Guantanamo in Serbia
Torture methods used in Serbian institutions resemble interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the American prison Guantanamo, whose closing the prime minister is supposedly enabling.
Speech by the future president of Serbia in Srebrenica on July 11th
Students in Serbia will know every detail about the Srebrenica genocide – from textbooks and through school excursions to the Memorial Centre, where we stand today.
IMF has left, problems remain
Heinrich Böll Stiftung
Out of 550 enterprises, the procedure of liquidation, merger or privatization has been concluded in 300 companies with 25,000 workers. What about the remaining 250 companies with 55,000 employees?
Performance and self-management in Yugoslavia
About a new book by Branislav Jakovljevic: it was written by a performance studies scholar, but it is also a study of the economic and political failure of Yugoslavia.
Stairway to Brexit
EJIL: Talk! – Cameron has just announced that he will be stepping down by October, but the irony is that we may yet remember him sentimentally under, say, a prime minister Boris Johnson.