Byzantine Blog

Naser Oric, the Bosnian Muslim Butcher of Serbs, has walked out smiling and free as a bird from the Kangaroo Court in Hague today.

The Monster was indicted and tried for gruesome crimes committed against Serbian population in Srebrenica and in the villages surrounding Srebrenica, before Serbian troops took the town over. Portrayed by the Dutch UN battalion as “a crook, a robber, a pimp and a murderer,” Oric used the Srebrenica “safe haven” status to burn Serb villages and massacre their occupants before quickly withdrawing to the security provided by the UN's safe haven.

According to the general Lewis MacKenzie, the commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, “these attacks reached a crescendo in 1994 and carried on into early 1995 after the Canadian infantry company that had been there for a year was replaced by a larger Dutch contingent (...) As the snow cleared in the spring of 1995, it became obvious to Naser Oric, the man who led the Bosnian Muslim fighters, that the Bosnian Serb army was going to attack Srebrenica to stop him from attacking Serb villages. So he and a large number of his fighters slipped out of town. Srebrenica was left undefended with the strategic thought that, if the Serbs attacked an undefended town, surely that would cause NATO and the UN to agree that NATO air strikes against the Serbs were justified.”

Although Bosnian Serbs knew all too well about the sadistic slaughterer in Srebrenica who led Bosnian Muslim forces in murderous raids against them, it wasn't until a foreign reporter learned about Oric's crimes that the Hague has shown any interest in prosecuting anyone but Serbs. As early as in 1995, Bill Schiller reported:

Oric is a fearsome man, and proud of it. I met him in January, 1994, in his own home in Serb-surrounded Srebrenica. On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's Greatest Hits. There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing. Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork. "We ambushed them," he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen. The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: "We launched those guys to the moon," he boasted. When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: "We killed 114 Serbs there." Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises (...) Lately, however, Oric increased his hit-and-run attacks at night (...)

Despite the fact there was ample evidence of Oric's grisly crimes against civilian population during the war in Bosnia available from the mid-nineties, he wasn't indicted until 2003. On the contrary, Naser Oric was enjoying his freedom as the owner of a disco club in Bosnian city of Tuzla right up to his arrest, in April of 2003. Even so, Oric remains the only Srebrenica Muslim indicted by the Hague for the crimes against Serbian civilians.

Apparently, during his mock-trial Oric kept repeating: “Your honours... I am not guilty” and it worked - the “judges” believed him: Oric was acquitted of direct involvement in the murder or cruel treatment of Serbs, and of responsibility for the wanton destruction of entire villages, churches, homes and property. While he was convicted of “failing to prevent men under his command killing and mistreating Bosnian Serb prisoners,” and sentenced to two years in jail, he was immediately freed since he has already spent three years in the Hague during the charade of a trial. We can only hope the Kangaroo Court “judges” will follow their historical verdict with a public apology to the ogre and compensate him monetarily for keeping him away from his disco business a year longer, or keeping him away at all.

With that nasty wrinkle successfully ironed out, the road to rewriting history is entirely clear: no one will ever be able to connect the dots or to understand what really happened in and around Srebrenica. Most importantly, the Western responsibility for preventing peace, arming and backing Muslim jihadists in the war against Christian Serbs on the territory of former Yugoslavia in an effort to colonize Balkans, and the criminal bombardment of the undefended country for which no one is even expected to face the trial - all of it is efficiently swept under the carpet, buried and forgotten. That, after all, was the sole purpose of the mockery of justice Hague personifies, as confirmed for the hundred-thousandth time today.

Posted by Svetlana at 05:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

Yesterday, on June 28, Serbian greatest religious and national holiday and the red letter in the calendar of Serbian Orthodox Church, Vidovdan, was celebrated by Serbs world around with Holy Liturgy and Memorial Service (parastos) for Holy Kosovo Martyrs from 1389 til today.

The main celebration was traditionally held in Gracanica and at the adjacent site of Gazimestan (Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia) where the historical Kosovo battle took place 617 years ago, when a Christian army led by Serbian Tsar Lazar fought the invading Ottoman army of Sultan Murat.

His Holiness Patriarch Pavle, though ailing in his tenth decade of life, arrived from Belgrade to serve the Divine Liturgy and hold the Memorial Service. He was greeted by the Bishop of Raska-Prizren Diocese, His Grace Artemije, who thanked Patriarch for celebrating each Vidovdan with the faithful Kosovo Serbs for the past ten years, coming to Kosovo and Metohija where the Patriarch himself has spent 34 years in reverent Service:

You are showing us today that there is no such weariness and no ailment that can avert us from the righteous path.

Addressing the faithful gathered at Gazimestan, Serbian Patriarch recalled Christ's words:

He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. [John 11:25-26]

“And those who do not believe, though they still walk on earth, are already dead”, said Patriarch. He emphasized that in all parts of Serbia that Faith is alive today and asked the Lord to help us endure according to the Christ's word “he who endures to the end shall be saved” [Matthew 24:13]. This is the Faith that has “sustained our ancestors, and it will sustain us too if we uphold it.” Praying to the Lord for salvation of the Serbian nation after the Service to the Holy Serbian defenders of Faith on 617th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, Patriarch Pavle prayed for our enemies, so that they should recognize the truth:

God, help our enemies recognize the truth. God, help us that when we meet our forefathers, they recognize us and accept us as their posterity, and especially help us to be recognized and accepted by You, our Lord!

In Gracanica, Bishop Artemije said that today is “Serbian Great and Holy Friday”, when Serbian nation along with Holy Tsar Lazar 617 years ago stepped out to "testify its Faith in the Heavenly Kingdom and serve Lord Christ, the honorable Cross and the Golden Freedom. Since then, Vidovdan is our eyesight, our path and the guide on our earthly road.”

Bishop Artemije stated that Kosovo should stay what it has always been, “our spiritual and cultural cradle, Serbian Jerusalem. What Jerusalem is for the Jewish people, Kosovo and Metohija is for the Serbian people.” His Grace Artemije said that “entire Serbia is a shrine, and Kosovo is its altar,” and added that there could be no shrine without an altar, as there could be no Serbia without Kosovo.

He reminded that for the last seven years Vidovdan is celebrated in difficult conditions in Kosovo and Metohija, in times when our nation is tormented and suffering. “Still, we live in spiritual freedom which Christ bestowed upon us,” said Bishop of Raska-Prizren Diocese, Artemije.

The road leading to church and the place of celebration was heavily guarded by armed troops. Despite all the precautions and additional KFOR troops assigned to protect Serbian clergy and faithful, Kosovo roads were blocked by Albanian protesters and 116 Albanians were arrested.

Posted by Svetlana at 04:26 PM | Permalink

In 1998 Serbian artist and calligrapher Svetozar Pajić Diak began a study of the historical material related to the Serbian nation and its participation in the creation of literacy culture from the 12th to the 16th century. Admiring the beauty of our historical and cultural heritage, which is very little known, he set on a difficult mission of a new transcription of old artistic works from the Middle Ages, in the manner the old scribes.

With a goose quill and aged paper, he hand-copied the original of The Codex of the Emperor Stefan Dušan in a calligraphic manner, and then hand-copied the same Codex into the contemporary Serbian language, using the same manner and style. With the same inspiration, he continued to hand-copy the most beautiful pages of the Gospels, first on aged paper, then on kidskin and finally on parchment.

Now we have newly hand-copied Medieval spiritual works rescued from the centuries of oblivion and made available to the views and admiration of contemporary man. And that was Mr. Pajić’s goal in all his endeavours; in his own words, he wanted to present to his nation its own literacy culture and unique beauty of Medieval miniatures.

From the introduction to the artist's work, by Professor Bogdan Stanojević

Posted by Svetlana at 01:17 PM | Permalink

Niti cemo se pokoriti, niti ukloniti!
We shall neither submit, nor yield!

In 1887, on the occasion of the celebration of Vidovdan (Saint Vitus' Day) in the Serbian Monastery of Ravanica, Nikanor, the Bishop of Pakrac, addressed his flock with these words: “I shall not make a long sermon. It is enough to tell you: Brethren, today is Vidovdan!”

Indeed, for Serbs, wherever they are, that is sufficient.

Speaking about Vidovdan ethics and its significance for Serbs, on the 600 years anniversary of Kosovo Battle, on Vidovdan in 1989, Father Mateja Matejic wrote:

The Kosovo Ethics, which are implanted in the national consciousness of the Serbian people, have not changed for 600 years - nor will they ever change. The basic values of those ethics, bequeathed to Serbs on Vidovdan in 1389, have not been chiseled on two stone tablets, but are impressed in the inmost being of every Serb.

Every nation has one date in its history which it considers more important than any other. For the Serbs, the most important date in their history is June 15, by the old calendar - June 28, by the new calendar (Vidovdan). On that day, in 1389, 600 years ago, Serbian and Turkish armies clashed on the Kosovo Field. Both the Serbian ruler Prince Lazar and the Turkish Sultan Murat I died as a result of the battle. In addition, a great number of Serbian military leaders, as well as a great number of Serbian warriors lost their lives. Notwithstanding the fact that according to historical documents neither the Serbs nor the Turks won the battle, Serbia was so exhausted that it was unable to continue resisting the Turks - a few decades later the heirs of Prince Lazar recognized Turkish suzerainty and five centuries of domination of the Serbs by the Turks ensued. That long and martyr-like enslavement changed the course of Serbian history and interrupted the cultural progress of the Serbs, which was clearly evident during the rule of the Nemanja dynasty.

It is difficult to assess the importance of the Kosovo Battle for world history. Such is also the case with the battles at the Alamo or Gettysburg, which are so important for American history. However, it is undeniable that the Battle of Kosovo was exceptionally significant not only for Serbia, but also for Europe and European Christian civilization.

Kosovo Battle, painting by Petar Radicevic

It is a fact that on Vidovdan, June 15, 1389, the Serbs, without help from a single European nation, defended on Kosovo Field not only the frontiers of their own territory and lives of their people, but, at the risk of losing their national independence, they also defended the interests and security of Christian Europe. In the conflict of two rival civilizations, the Muslim and the Christian, the Serbs checked the wave of the Turkish invasion, interposed themselves as a wall between the Turks and Europe, and enabled Europe to make preparations for its own defense. It is questionable whether the history of Europe would have been the same without the Battle of Kosovo and the sacrifice of the Serbian nation.

However, no matter how great the historical value of Kosovo and Vidovdan may be, for the Serbs they have an additional unique dimension and preeminence. Persons of non-Serbian origin may consider Kosovo as only a far-away, strange, and even unimportant geographical territory, and Vidovdan, June 15, 1389, as a date of a battle of which they know little or nothing. As far as the Serbs are concerned, Kosovo is their Holy Land, the cradle of Serbdom, and their inalienable, historical, national, and cultural heritage. As far as they are concerned, Vidovdan, June 15, 1389, is not just the date of a battle, but their nation's identity, and the sacred will and testament which contains religious, ethical, and national principles for all Serbian generations from the Kosovo Battle until the present. In the national consciousness all of Serbian history is divided into two periods: prior to the Kosovo Battle and after the Kosovo Battle. And whereas the other battles in which the Serbs took part are mentioned only in historical textbooks, Vidovdan alone is included in the calendar, which registers holidays and the names of saints exclusively. Vidovdan alone has become a national holiday which has been observed through the centuries, and it is observed on this occasion, 600 years after the Battle of Kosovo.

Warriors fresco from 14th century, Pec Patriarchate, Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia

As a geographical territory, Kosovo was Serbian even before the year 1389, before Vidovdan. That ownership was not marked by sticks, in the way the prospectors for gold marked their claims, nor by the deeds written in ink on paper, but by ancient and magnificent churches and monasteries and by Serbian cemeteries and tombstones. The capitals of Serbian kings and the thrones of Serbian archbishops and patriarchs were in Kosovo. Moreover, with the Battle of Kosovo, Kosovo and Vidovdan merged into a single concept and became a synonym with a specific meaning: the Serbdom. After June 15, 1389, one cannot speak of Kosovo apart from Vidovdan or about Vidovdan apart from Kosovo. They are inseparable because on Vidovdan 1389, on the Field of Kosovo, in the blood of Serbian warriors was written an indelible deed that forever confirms the Serbian ownership of Kosovo. Vidovdan commemorations, which have been celebrated annually for centuries, are reconfirmations of both the Serbian ownership of Kosovo and of the Vidovdan-Kosovo ethics, which are the core of the Serbian national image and the essence of Serbian identity.

It should be emphasized that the Vidovdan commemorations are not celebrations of a Serbian military victory over the Turks, for the Serbs were not victorious in the Kosovo Battle. However, it is incorrect, and even malicious, to claim that at Vidovdan commemorations the Serbs “celebrate their defeat in the Kosovo Battle.” Such a statement has no logical or historical support. According to the historical documents, the Turks had not won a victory in the Battle of Kosovo. Neither a military victory nor a military defeat are not and could not have been either the reason or the meaning of Vidovdan commemorations. On those occasions the Serbs honor and commemorate the heroes of Kosovo who laid down their lives defending their faith, freedom, nation, and country. At the same time, Vidovdan commemorations are the annual reviews of the post-Kosovo Serbian generations. They are evaluated in terms of Vidovdan-Kosovo ethics and on the basis of their reconfirmation of the Pledge of Kosovo. On Vidovdan, June 15, 1389, on the Kosovo Field, the Serbs chose once and for all their religious, cultural, ethical, and national identity. Their choice, in the form of an unwritten pledge, was handed down to all post-Kosovo Serbian generations and, through 600 years, Serbs have lived by that pledge.

In the course of six centuries the geographical boundaries and demographic constituency of Kosovo, as well as the political and social conditions have changed. Serbs, who represented a majority in Kosovo, have been reduced to a minority. Uncontrolled migration of thousands of people from neighboring Albania to Kosovo on one hand and, on the other, mass exodus of Serbs from that territory, because of the merciless oppression to which the Serbs have been subjected by the newcomers, especially in the period 1943-1988, has changed the status of the Serbian population from a majority to a minority. Atrocities, unheard of even in uncivilized countries, have been perpetuated against the Serbian population in Kosovo. Regretfully, biased reporting in the world press, including the American, misrepresents the situation in Kosovo. Victims - Serbs - are portrayed as oppressors, whereas oppressors - the Muslim population in Kosovo - are depicted as victims. It is incomprehensible that the freedom-loving Serbs, the allies of America in two world wars, are being taunted and attacked in the American press, whereas their oppressors, the former allies of Hitler and Mussolini in World War II, are undeservedly favored and supported. Thus, not only geographical territories, social and political conditions, but allegiances change, too.

Serbian hero, Milos Obilic

Fortunately, Kosovo ethics remain unchanged and those values will always endure for all future Serbian generations. Those values, briefly defined, are as follows:

• Uncompromising faith in God, without which there is no genuine philanthropy;
• Philanthropy, as a confirmation of the professed faith in God;
• Firm dedication to Christianity as it is confessed by the Orthodox Church;
• Priority of the spiritual over the material;
• Faithfulness to God, nation, and motherland;
• Freedom as a precious value for which everything should be sacrificed, whereas it should not be sacrificed for anything in the world;
• Honesty, righteousness, and love for peace - virtues to be practiced by individuals as a basis for healthy social relationships;
• Placing common interest above personal interests and readiness to sacrifice for those interests;
• Compassion to be extended even to enemies;
• National unity as a condition for national existence.

This testament, this set of ethics of Kosovo, represents the greatest importance of Kosovo and Vidovdan.

Inseparable through six centuries, it is the reason we celebrate Vidovdan today.

On June 15/28, 1914 the assassination in Sarajevo serves as a pretext for Austro-Hungarian declaration of war to Serbia, which triggered the First World War.
On June 15/28, 1921 the Serbian king Aleksandar proclaimed the new Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, known thereafter as the Vidovdan Constitution (Vidovdanski ustav).
On June 15/28, 2001 former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was betrayed and deported to the Kangaroo Court in Hague to stand “trial”.

Posted by Svetlana at 12:06 AM | Permalink

Paul Evdokimov, the great poet of Orthodoxy, in his Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty approaches the subject of Divine Beauty in the following way:

(...) As the fathers note, the first day of creation is not proti but mia, that is, it is not first but rather one, unique, not one of the series. It is the alpha which already carries within itself and calls forth its omega, the eighth day of the final harmony, the pleroma.

This first day is the joyous hymn of the Song of Songs sung by God Himself, the flashing eruption of “Let there be Light”. This Light is not an optical phenomenon; such light will appear only on the fourth day with the creation of the astronomical sun. The primal Light of “in the beginning,” according to the absolute meaning in principio, is the most shattering revelation of the face of God. For the world just beginning its development, “Let there be Light” means “Let the revelation be” and “Let the One Who reveals, let the Holy Spirit come!” The Father pronounces His Word, and the Spirit shows Him forth; the Spirit is the Light of the Word. This Light reveals God as the absolute Thou and immediately calls forth the one who listens to Him and contemplates Him: a second light having arisen from the Light, like its alter ego and mirror in the light-revelation-communion.

Even after the Fall “a light... shines in the dark.” The light does not shine just to illuminate but to transform the night into the day without end: “...your light will rise in the darkness, and your shadows will become like noon” (Is 58:10). “The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light” (Mt 6:22). The Hesychastic tradition teaches the method of silent meditation and the science of the light: “The perfect ones study the divine not only by the word (the Word) but also by the light of the word (the Holy Spirit), mysteriously...”

At the ultimate heights of holiness, the human person “becomes in a certain sense light” (Gregory Palamas, Homilies on the Presentation of the Holy Virgin in the Temple). Seraphim of Sarov was thus able to clothe himself in the sun and shine. Being himself called “a striking likeness,” St. Seraphim was the living icon of the God of Light. St. Gregory of Nyssa described the elevation of the soul of him who hears in the following way: “You have become beautiful by coming close to my Light.” Man is drawn upward; we might even say “falls up” and attains the level of divine beauty. To be in the Light is to be in an illuminating communion which reveals the icons of persons and things. This communion allows us to grasp their logoi as contained in divine thought and thus initiates these persons and things into their perfect wholeness: in other words, persons and things are initiated into the beauty that God willed for them.

The Book of Revelation is the end, but it is also the beginning. The Light of the first day is the object of the vision and it is also the organ of vision. Just like the first moment of creation, “the future age is but one single day, the Great Day,” in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa. The Book of Revelation says that “it will never be night again, and they will not need lamplight or sunlight because the Lord God will be shining on them” (Rv 22:5).

“I am the alpha and the omega... the beginning and the end.” The circle of the Revelation hinges both on the differentiation and on the perfect identity of all its elements. The first word of the Bible “Let there be light” is also the last word: “Let there be beauty.” Man's only choice is to become a complete and living doxology: “Glory to You Who has shown us the Light.” “One thing I ask of the Lord, the one thing I seek is to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and to contemplate the Beauty of the Lord.” As the Spirit of Beauty, the Spirit's proper work is a “poetry without contemplation of the divine Beauty which extends over all eternity...”

Posted by Svetlana at 12:57 PM | Permalink

St. Nikolai (Velimirovic) opens his Alphabet of Truth with the entry about Angels:

Angels were created before men. The Book of Genesis says: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Under ‘heavens’ all of God's saints have single heartedly understood angels, or the world of the divine spirits, the armies of incorporeal forces. According to the Lord's Revelation and the visions of the holy men like St. Jerotej (Hieroteos) and St. Dionysius, angels are grouped in nine orders based on the might and power and wisdom they were bestowed by the Creator. Those nine vast orders are: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels. Human mind cannot comprehend the magnitude and glory of the angels, nor can it calculate their numbers. Only man's heart can delight in his greater and older and superior brothers - brothers, we say, for there is one heavenly Father of both angels and men.

Note: This is my translation from Serbian, so mistakes and clumsiness are entirely mine, being that St. Nikolai's writings are graceful and refined like finely crafted jewels.

Posted by Svetlana at 01:24 AM | Permalink

Belgrade Evening News reports a renowned Austrian author and playwright Peter Handke has once again refused to accept the Heine award, this time the alternative one, asking his friends and eminent German intellectuals to send his award money to “Serb enclaves in Kosovo and Metohija, to people who are living under impossible conditions thanks to the supporters of ‘freedom’ imposed upon them by NATO bombs”:

Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that even the most extreme do not dare criticize him for it. He has given up the alternative Heinrich Heine award that the actors and intellectuals of Berlin wished to bestow upon him, in favor of the Serbs of Kosovo who live “surrounded by barbed wire and tanks”.

When NATO started its cynically named “Merciful Angel” brutal bombing campaign against Serbia in March 1999, Peter Handke promptly announced he is quitting the 'current' Roman Catholic church in protest at the Vatican's views on the Balkan conflict. He also returned the 10,000 marks he received in 1973 as the winner of the Buchner prize, Germany's top literary award. During the relentless pounding of Serbia from 15,000 feet by the most powerful nations in the world, Handke declared:

Mars is attacking, and Serbia, Montenegro, the Republika Srpska (the Serb part of Bosnia) and Yugoslavia are the fatherland of all those who have not become Martians or green butchers.

Handke turned the tables on the official justifications for the bombings, saying NATO had not prevented a new Auschwitz, but had rather created one:

In those days, it was gas chambers and shooting squads, today it is computerised killers from 15,000 feet.

Just two days after the first bombs had fallen, Handke issued his first open letter, which spoke of “Green slaughterers”, referring to the German party in power. He demanded that the “German Minister of Death” (Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping), who just months before had sent him birthday wishes, “should return my books to me.”

In the interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Handke said:

I am with the Serbian people, not Milosevic. Anyone who is not a pronounced anti-Serb is despised as being ‘pro-Serb’. Whoever mentions Milosevic's name without immediately adding 'slaughterer', 'Balkan Hitler', 'God protect us', is accused of taking sides with Milosovic. To be called pro-Serb today is an honour.

After the jury comprised of writers decided to award the prestigious Heinrich Heine Prize for literature to Peter Handke whose literary genius remains undisputed, the army of pen-pushers and German marginalia, the multitude doomed to eternal mediocrity and pettiness swarmed in to criticize the jury decision. A week before the council of the city of Dusseldorf bureaucrats was scheduled to confer in order to officially renege awarding of the Heine Prize, Peter Handke wrote to the city mayor suggesting the council members should take a stroll in the park, or go to the banks of Raine, instead of wasting time on debate over his work. He informed the public he is renouncing the award in order to spare everyone further humiliation and to protect his work from the bureaucratic vulgarity.

Serbian nation has very few and far-between friends. We have never had many friends anyway, it was all an illusion, wishful thinking, a mirage conjured up in-between wars by our foolishness, ignorance and naivety. But those few good men and women that are honoring Serbs with their friendship today are more valiant and valuable then entire armadas of present day empires.

If going through the pure misery and pain of having to put up with all the insults, abuse and sheer malice during the past fifteen years was the price that had to be paid to get to know Peter Handke, James Bissett, Julia Gorin, Scott Taylor, Jared Israel, Harold Pinter, David Binder, Peter Brock, James and Stella Jatras, Diana Johnstone, Michael Parenti and others like them -- it was well worth it, for there is no doubt we are in the company of the best.

Posted by Svetlana at 05:44 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Make your own Picasso drawing, using elements provided at MrPicassoHead. This is more like a quick and fun collage, but if you prefer a free-hand experiment in drawing, you should try the ArtPad for making a true digital masterpiece.

Posted by Svetlana at 07:32 AM | Permalink

After war criminal Agim Ceku was received by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and given an opportunity to address UN Security Council, repeating Albanian Muslim demands to amputate Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia, U.S. President George Bush is promptly summoning Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica to Washington.

Now that the leaders of the most powerful country in the world have learned straight from the horse's mouth about the ‘wishes and desires’ of terrorist KLA, their next step is to inform the Serbian Prime Minister where to sign to hand the chunk of his country over to terrorists.

Bush also called on Serbian Prime Minister Koštunica to listen to the needs of the Albanian majority in Kosovo. During a round-table discussion with students in Vienna, Bush said that he will work with Koštunica on confirming the needs of the people of Kosovo, and that America’s politics are also interested in guaranteeing the rights of all minorities.

Funny Mr. President should frame things in such a way, being that in Serbia, of which Kosovo is still an integral part, Albanians are a minority, not a majority. Even with all the illegal immigrants from Albania that NATO allowed to freely pour in and terrorise Kosovo after the bombardment of Serbia ended (read an interview with the Leader of the Jewish Community in Pristina, who testified Serbs and other non-Albanians “were not driven out from Kosovo by Albanians from Pristina but by Albanians from Albania”), Albanians still comprise less then ten percent of Serbian population.

As a minority, it is in fact Albanians who should pay attention to the needs and wishes of the Serbian majority. Otherwise, they'd be nothing but terrorists and should be treated accordingly. Isn't that so, Mr. Bush?

Posted by Svetlana at 05:49 PM | Permalink

While the indicted war criminal, Agim Ceku is being received at the highest level of the U.S. Government in Washington, by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in order to promote independence for his criminal enterprise in occupied Serbian region of Kosovo and Metohija, Ceku's constituents and partners in crime have stepped up the campaign of violence in an effort to drive the remaining Serbs out of Kosovo.

On July 16, 2006, they opened fire on two British tourists whose only crime was that they drove around Kosovo in a car with Belgrade licence plates. Few days later, on July 19, they vandalized yet another church, the Church of the Holy Virgin in Obilic, near Pristina. These fine upstanding men in whose name NATO waged a war on Serbs and launched tens of thousands of tons of explosive (over 23.000 tons of explosive) during three months of bombardment of Serbia, have ripped four crosses off the lateral domes of the church, tore part of the roof and broke church windows.

After Bishop Artemije of Raska-Prizren Diocese named the culprits and publicly accused Kosovo Albanians for the attack, the so-called Council for Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms from Pristina issued a press release saying Serbs are lying - there was no attack on this church, except for the Kosovo Kristallnacht two years ago, when Albanians did vandalize it. If it wasn't for the meticulous documentation and before and after pictures, the no-they-didn't “argument” might have had some chance.

Yesterday, on July 20, 2006, a 68-year old Serb returnee, Dragan Popovic, was found shot dead in his house in Klina, Kosovo and Metohija. Murdered man was living alone and was one of around fifty Serbs who have dared to return to their homes in Kosovo a year ago, after being forcibly expelled by Albanian Muslims occupying Kosovo.

Today, Kosovo Albanians have desecrated the Orthodox cemetery in Staro Gracko near Lipljan. They have destroyed 16 gravestones and desecrated, among others, the graves of 14 Serbian harvesters that were massacred by Albanian Muslims on July 23, 1999, while working in their fields. But this was the result of less effective plan B, since plan A failed: two days before Memorial Saturday, on June 8, locals have found a landmine in this cemetery, planted there before Memorial Saturday so that it would explode when the family members of the deceased came to visit the graves of their loved ones. The planted landmine was reported and removed by the members of KFOR.

This is only the latest from the long list of desecrated Orthodox cemeteries in Serbian region of Kosovo and Metohija. After the province was “freed” by NATO in 1999 and the UN Mission in Kosovo began, hundreds of Serbian cemeteries throughout the Province have been desecrated or turned into garbage lots. Thousands of crosses were broken or smashed into pieces. On several locations the bones of the dead were scattered out.

The Church of St. Andrew in Podujevo was also targeted today. After being torched and destroyed during the March 2004 pogrom, when the altar was blown up with explosives and the crosses on the church wrenched off by Albanians as recorded on a video available on the web site of Serbian Orthodox Church, the destroyed altar section of the church was repaired and a new door and windows were installed in November 2005, as part of the restoration project headed by the Council of Europe. Today, for the third time in this year alone, Albanian terrorists have vandalized the same church again. They broke down the entrance door and the windows again and wrote new derogatory graffiti on the walls of the church, signing it all with a well-known trademark of Kosovo jihadist's: UCK (KLA).

To paraphrase Albanian terrorist from Brooklyn, Florin Krasniqi: "This is your KLA, Messrs. Clinton, Clark, Blair, Schröder and Chirac". This is your KLA and your responsibility.

Posted by Svetlana at 05:36 PM | Permalink

Ever wondered how would you look on a Modigliani canvas (apart from eLONGated)?

Well, now you can get a pretty good idea if you upload your photo into a Face Transformer applet and choose one of the art transformations from their drop-down menu.

Here are some more of my art transformations (all from the same photo).

Posted by Svetlana at 04:21 AM | Permalink

Today at midnight the part of Orthodox Church following the old calendar (Jerusalem, Russian and Serbian Orthodox Church), having rejoiced for fifty days following our Lord's Pascha, has started the Fast of the Apostles.

This is the fast that Christ's disciples undertook after the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. As part of their preparation, the Holy Apostles began a fast asking God to strengthen their resolve and to be with them in their missionary undertakings.

It is this fast that we take part in while observing the Apostles' Fast. We do this not only because we honour the Apostles and their sacrifice, but also as a preparation to be sent as missionaries into the world, to reflect and radiate Christ to those around us.

Speaking about the Holy Apostles and the “perfect knowledge” given to them by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, St. Irenaeus wrote:

The Lord of all gave to His apostles the power of the gospel, and by them we also have learned the truth, that is, the teaching of the Son of God - as the Lord said to them, ‘He who hears you hears Me, and he who despises you despises Me, and Him Who sent Me’ [Lk.10:16]. For we learned the plan of our salvation from no other than from those through whom the gospel came to us.

The first preached it abroad, and then later by the will of God handed it down to us in Scriptures, to be the foundation and pillar of our faith. For it is not right to say that they preached before they had come to perfect knowledge, as some dare to say, boasting that they are the correctors of the apostles. For after our Lord had risen from the dead, and they were clothed with the power from on high when the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were filled with all things and had perfect knowledge. They went out to the ends of the earth, preaching the good things that come to us from God, and proclaiming peace from heaven to all men, all and each of them equally being in possession of the gospel of God. Against the Heresies, III

Lest we should start thinking we are sacrificing too much of our comfort by observing yet another fast, that of the Apostles, St. Neilos the Ascetic is reminding us of the devotion Christ's Holy Disciples have shown:

The Apostles received this way of life from Christ and made it their own, renouncing the world in response to His call, disregarding fatherland, relatives and possessions. At once they adopted a harsh and strenuous way of life, facing every kind of adversity, afflicted, tormented, harassed, naked, lacking even necessities; and finally they met death boldly, imitating their Teacher faithfully in all things. Thus through their actions they left behind a true image of the highest way of life. Ascetic Discourse, Philokalia, Vol. I

Even though the Apostles' Fast is less strict then the other fasts in the year, it is still an important observance by the faithful. For as St. Ambrose of Optina warns:

People have to answer greatly for not keeping the rules of the Church with respect to the fasts. People justify themselves by saying that they never considered it a sin to eat dairy products during the fasts. They repent and consider themselves sinners in every other respect, but they do not think to repent about not keeping the fasts. Meanwhile, they are transgressing the commandment of our holy Mother, the Church, and according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, they are as the heathen and publicans because of their disobedience.

At the same time, Holy Church Fathers are warning against superficial fasting, the one that is concerned only with abstinence from certain types of food, while forgetting the more important, inner fast:

Fasting is acceptable to God when abstention from food is accompanied by refraining from sins, from envy, from hatred, from calumny, from vainglory, from wordiness, from other evils. He who is fasting the true fast ‘that is agreeable’ to God ought to shun all these things with all his strength and zeal, and remain impregnable and unshakable against all the attacks of the Evil one that are planned from that quarter. On the other hand, he who practices abstention from food, but does not keep self-control in the face of the aforesaid passions, is like unto one who lays down splendid foundations for a house, yet takes serpents and scorpions and vipers as fellow-dwellers therein. St. Photios the Great

In his Homilies on the Holy Spirit, St. Basil the Great provides even more thorough guidance:

Beware of limiting the good of fasting to mere abstinence from meats. Real fasting is alienation from evil. ‘Loose the bands of wickedness.’ Forgive your neighbor the mischief he has done you. Forgive him his trespasses against you. Do not ‘fast for strife and debate.’ You do not devour flesh, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you indulge in outrages. You wait for evening before you take food, but you spend the day in the law courts. Woe to those who are ‘drunken, but not with wine.’ Anger is the intoxication of the soul, and makes it out of its wits like wine.

May we all enjoy the soul-renewing, spiritually rewarding and salvific fast.

Posted by Svetlana at 04:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into Your embrace more than friends have.
Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.
Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.
Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does,
so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary,
having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.
They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself
They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments.
They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself
They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.
Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf.
Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.
Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.
Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.
Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.
Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of Your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them;
multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:
so that my fleeing to You may have no return;
so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;
so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;
so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;
so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven;
ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception,
which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.
Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows,
that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.
One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.
It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.

Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies.

A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand.
But a son blesses them, for he understands.
For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life.
Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.

St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Serbian Orthodox Bishop, Prayers by the Lake

Posted by Svetlana at 04:58 PM | Permalink

“Were we to seize and to eliminate the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, and our mills would be dead and idle.”
B. A. Behrend, distinguished author and engineer.

If you happen to be in or near Pittsburgh, Pasadena on Tuesday, June 20th this year, remember to visit the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science located at 5000 Forbes Avenue. At Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute at 11:30 a.m. the bronze statue of Nikola Tesla will be unveiled, followed by special presentation by a Tesla expert, Jeffrey Sellon, P.E. and a reception.

The brief and succinct introduction to the event says almost everything one should know about Tesla's rare genius:

Nikola Tesla was possibly the greatest discoverer the world has known since Leonardo da Vinci. Even so, Tesla is one of the least recognized scientific discoverers in history.

• It was Tesla, not Edison, who discovered the alternating current we use today.
• It was Tesla, not Marconi, who discovered radio.
• It was Tesla who discovered fluorescent lighting.
• It was Tesla who discovered the basics of robotry, computers, and missile science that are the foundation for today’s technology.

Nikola Tesla, a Serb from Lika (Serbian Krajina in Croatia), was born into a family with long line of Serbian priests and baptised in Serbian Orthodox Church. His baptism certificate reports that he was born on June 28, 1856 (Julian calendar), July 10 by the new, Gregorian calendar. His father, Rev. Milutin Tesla of Serbian Orthodox Church, was hoping Nikola will continue the family tradition and get ordained into priesthood, but didn't insist, since Nikola started showing his calling was of different nature from a very early age. Tesla's mother was Đuka Mandić, herself a daughter of a Serbian Orthodox priest. By Tesla's own account, his mother was a gifted inventor, a maker of tools and devices for her weaving, carpentry, and other handiwork, from whom he inherited most of his extraordinary talents.

Not surprisingly, a number of Croatian nationals are investing a lot of time and effort to persuade the world Nikola Tesla was of Croatian nationality, even though Tesla was a son of no other but a Serbian Orthodox priest and a Serbian Orthodox priest's daughter was his mother. Even the online Wikipedia had to note on the pages about Tesla that “his nationality is disputed between Croatians and Serbs”. This must be due to inordinate amounts of stubbornness, among other things, by those who prefer to ignore not just Tesla's heritage, Faith and ancestors, but also his own words:

There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often case with young delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the behalf of the whole of humanity. If those hopes would become fulfilled, the most exiting thought would be that it is a deed of a Serb. Long live Serbdom! Addressing thousands of Belgrade citizens who came to greet him upon arrival, on June 1st 1892.

As you can see and hear, I have remained a Serb overseas where I have done some researches. You should do so and by your knowledge and hard work you should glorify Serbdom over the world. Speaking to the Belgrade University students in 1892.

By the time he was a teenager, Tesla spoke four languages. At about age 17, he found to his delight that he could create things in his mind, picturing them as the finished product without models, drawings or experiments. Later on, he related in his autobiography that he experienced astonishing moments of inspiration from an early age. Tesla would visualise an invention in his mind in precise form and minuscule detail before moving to the construction stage; a technique which is sometimes known as picture thinking. This is how he explained this unique creative process:

Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.

Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria. While there, he studied the uses of alternating current and engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books, including Faust by Goethe, one of Tesla's favorite poets. At times, however, Tesla's discipline and thirst for knowledge turned to be an overwhelming burden:

I had a veritable mania for finishing whatever I began, which often got me into difficulties. On one occasion I started to read the works of Voltaire when I learned, to my dismay, that there were close to one hundred large volumes in small print which that monster had written while drinking seventy-two cups of black coffee per diem. It had to be done, but when I laid aside the last book I was very glad, and said: “Never more!”. (Nikola Tesla, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla)

Tesla worked in Budapest and Paris before moving to States in 1884, where he was hired by Thomas Edison to work for Edison Machine Works. He resigned in 1886 and established his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. Until his passing on January 7 1943 in New York, Tesla invented a telephone repeater, rotating magnetic field principle, polyphase alternating-current system, induction motor, alternating-current power transmission, coil transformer (known as Tesla coil transformer, or Tesla coil), wireless communication, radio, fluorescent lights, and more than 700 other patents.

One commentator gives a perfect snapshot of Tesla's genius that allows for direct insight into what this amazing man truly out of his time was capable of:

Think about this... the technology to make cell phones has existed for 115 years! It was invented by Nikola Tesla in 1891! In fact everything we consider to be “modern technology” has been perfected for almost a hundred years!!!

Tesla conducting experiments in his Colorado Springs Laboratory. Dec. 31, 1899.

Tesla had a plan to give FREE power to anyone in the world capable of installing a metal rod into the ground in 1910, but was sabotaged by both J.P. Morgan (International Banker) and Continental Edison (Tom 'EVIL' Edison, and his cronies).

Nikola used to sit in his Laboratory in Colorado, and create 10,000 megawatt lighting storms....just for fun. He determined the exact frequency of the planets harmonic convergence, a means by which anti-gravity power became a reality. In 1911, he flew the worlds first flying 'saucer', utilizing his new technology.

Tesla also wrote the plans on 'weather modification' and designed a real working antennal array, to manipulate weather patterns from any stationary spot on the planet.

Tesla was also able to create earthquakes and has enabled us to replace horse-driven carriages with motor cars, for without his coil transformers (Tesla coil) no motor car could operate, today or ever. No wonder U.S. Ministry of Defense has seized all of his notes, drawings and experiment logs immediately after his death, and keeps them in strict confidence since 1943!

During his lifetime, Tesla became a fellow of the AIEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of a dozen other professional societies. He received over 13 honorary degrees from such diverse institutions as Columbia, Yale, and the Universities of Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Sofia. In 1937, he was nominated for the Nobel prize in physics by the same man who previously nominated Albert Einstein for the highest award, Felix Ehrenhaft of Vienna.

Throughout his life Tesla was a strict vegetarian and a celibate. In spite of all the adulation that was heaped upon him, Tesla had but one desire - to continue his work. He allowed himself no more then four hours of sleep a day and was an exceptionally disciplined and hard worker. He enjoyed poetry and the opera and though he was not a drinker, he appreciated a glass of beer and advocated the limited consumption of liquor as an elixir of life. Although extremely popular - his public demonstrations were more crowded then the concert halls - and with many admirers who considered him charismatic and fascinating, he never married and counted very few people as his close friends. Mark Twain was one of them:

I had hardly completed my course at the Real Gymnasium when I was prostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my condition became so desperate that I was given up by physicians. During this period I was permitted to read constantly, obtaining books from the Public Library which had been neglected and entrusted to me for classification of the works and preparation of the catalogues. One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears. Nikola Tesla, “My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla”

Among the monuments honoring Nikola Tesla and his genius is the bronze statue at Niagara Falls, between the United States and Canada boarders, built in the mid-seventies. It is a twin of Tesla monument from 1963, erected in front of the Electrical Engineering building of the Belgrade University in Serbia.

Although most of Tesla's notes and manuscripts remain out of reach sixty years after his death, being classified as top secret by the U.S. Ministry of Defense (Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time), many of his inventions, thousands of artifacts and personal items can be seen in Belgrade Museum of Nikola Tesla.

Along with numerous web sites dedicated to Nikola Tesla (a very good and detailed one with verified information about the great inventor is available here) and books about his life and work published in dozens of languages, there is also a Tesla Memorial Society of New York which has written a proposal to United Nations' officials to proclaim July 10th, Nikola Tesla's birthday, an international “Nikola Tesla Day”. It is also important to note that year 2006 is the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth.

Note: This entry's title is part of the title of the book written by Robert Lomas: The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century: Nikola Tesla, Forgotten Genius of Electricity.

Posted by Svetlana at 03:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

Who Lost Kosovo?

Senator John Kerry, the defeated 2004 Democratic candidate for president, was the subject of a May 28 New York Times article about how he is once again trying to rebut allegations about his military service made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. With a sympathetic media, such as that represented by the Times story, Kerry thinks he might be able to rehabilitate himself and try another presidential run. The Times endorsed Kerry for president in 2004.

But Kerry may have some competition. On Memorial Day, another former Democratic presidential candidate, retired General Wesley Clark, tried to rewrite the history of the war in Kosovo in order to make himself into a great military hero. “Last week,” he said, “I returned to Kosovo for the first time since I retired from military service. For me, this trip was very personal. In 1999, I commanded the NATO forces that stopped the genocide against ethnic Albanians by Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian forces.”

That sounds pretty impressive-commanding the forces that stopped genocide. Too bad it's not true.

Genocide is defined as seeking to eliminate an entire group of people. But the number of dead found in Kosovo after the war was said to be only 2,108. That was the figure given by Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, at a December 1999 press conference. But it wasn't clear they were all Kosovo Albanians. Indeed, many may have been Serbs. That's a terrible loss of life, but it's no genocide.

That figure also didn't include the number of Serbs killed in Serbia by the NATO mission commanded by Clark and ordered by President Clinton. The mission was both illegal and unconstitutional, since Clinton never received the authorization of Congress to conduct the war.

In his message, Clark went on to tell another whopper. Referring to the NATO campaign, he said, “This was an example of how we CAN do it right: diplomacy first, strong leadership, working with others, and using force only as a last resort. We had a plan for what to do after the operation before we began air strikes.”

Working with others? Congress was bypassed. And what was that plan? Serbia today is being dismembered, so that a Muslim state in Kosovo can be established. Clark didn't mention that most of the Albanians in Kosovo who want independence are Muslims.

He referred his supporters to photos of his visit to Kosovo. Previously, however, Clark had posed for a photo with Hashim Thaci, leader of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), also known by the initials UCK. This is the group laying siege to Serbian Christian churches in Kosovo today.

For those interested in this largely untold (by the media) story, go to the website of Bill Murray, chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, who visited the area in August 2004 and filed this stunning report. 

Our media are ready and eager to pounce on Bush whenever he is perceived to have made a misstatement, but a retired General and former Democratic presidential candidate tells blatant lies about Kosovo and gets away with it. In fact, he uses his participation in this illegal and unconstitutional war as a badge of honor.

Bush, of course, will be the favorite target for some time to come. Typical is Frank Rich's forthcoming book about the Bush presidency, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina.

That will be the media theme at least until after the November congressional elections.

Rich and his colleagues will try to make you ignore the fact that while Bush has had a policy of fighting terrorists in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, Clinton, Clark & Company had a policy of helping them gain political power through false charges of genocide.

Posted by Svetlana at 01:32 PM | Permalink

Today is the seven year anniversary of kidnapping and subsequent brutal murder of Serbian Orthodox monk, Father Hariton (Chariton) of the Holy Archangels Monastery near Prizren in Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia.

Fr. Hariton was kidnapped by the KLA Albanian extremists on June 15th 1999 in the streets of Prizren. His body was found one year later on August 8th 2000, in an unmarked grave in the cemetery of the Albanian village of Tusus near the city of Prizren. According to the post mortem report, Fr. Hariton's body was decapitated and severely mutilated. He was stabbed several times by knife. With his clothes the investigators have found Fr. Hariton's barely legible ID and the praying rope, by which his monastic brethren have identified him. The perpetrators of this murder have not yet been found.

A month later, on July 19 1999, Hieromonk Stefan Puric of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Budisavci near Klina in Kosovo and Metohija, was also abducted by the armed UCK (KLA) terrorists. According to the witnesses, father Stefan was violently tortured and subsequently murdered by Albanian terrorists. Fr. Stefan's body has never been found. By the information obtained from the Albanian side by Fr. David (Perovic), Fr. Stefan's mutilated body was thrown in an empty well and covered with animal carcasses.

Remembering the Kosovo New Martyrs, the Archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Church from Boise, Idaho, Very Reverend Father Nektarios Serfes, wrote on this day:

Both men were simple monastic, gentle souls who wholeheartedly loved God and their Holy Orthodox Church. They paid the ultimate price of service to God, bearing witness to their Christian faith in the face of an enemy sworn to destroy the Church and to eradicate the entire history and legacy of Serbian Orthodox Christianity throughout the region.

We know that those who lose their lives for the love of Christ will quickly join the ranks of His saints and enter into everlasting life with Him in the eternal paradise. These new martyrs of our own time surely have received their crowns and have joined the ranks of the saints and martyrs from the all the centuries since the Church's founding. We should count ourselves blessed to have known such people whose faith was so strong and whose sacrifice was so great. In the end, their victory is also our own for their courage and their piety strengthens ours as we follow them in defending the Faith against the rising tide of antichristian sentiment in the modern world.

(...) Let us humbly remember to pray to the New Martyrs of Kosovo, Serbia: Monk Hariton and Hieromonk Stefan, and all the other Serbian Christians who have lost their lives during these last decades of war and persecution in the Balkans, as we pray to God to save what remains of the Serbian people and the Serbian nation, and to ease the ongoing suffering of innocent Christian men, women and children still struggling at this hour just to survive in Kosovo and Metohija.

Holy Serbian New Martyrs, pray for us!

Posted by Svetlana at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Good web design basically means three things: functional, practical and accessible. It doesn't simply mean “pretty”, but it does end up being pleasing to the eye, like everything that is orderly, clean, well organized and neat. In other words, think of visual appeal as a consequence of solid structure and order, rather than as a result of chaotic and unrestrained imagination. These are some of the basic rules of good web design that apply to large corporate web sites as well as to personal pages -- regardless how big or small, these ten simple principles will assure your site is useful, efficient and visually appealing.

1. Four Colors
   Black and white, as every artist will tell you, are not colors. Well, they are in web design. And they are your most important, basic colors, used primarily for background (white) and text (black). You have two more colors to add for just about everything you would like to highlight on your site: logo, links, headings... Rule number one is the bullet-proof insurance you will never go overboard and create a migraine-inducing mess of a page.
2. Center Nothing
   We have all tried it at some point - struggling to make the collection of various elements on the page ‘come together’ by centering them. We thought it looks nice and orderly if it's neatly grouped in the middle. Well, it doesn't work. It makes the site look amateurish, it is difficult to follow through and very difficult to read. Left to right and top to bottom is how we read, it is how we scan the page and it is the way it should be, if you want people to stay and get interested in the content of your site that you worked so hard to make available.
3. White Space
   Leaving enough room for each element on your page to breathe is essential. You must have seen the sites where images and text are crammed in like potatoes in a sack, struggling for space and attention. Images that are too big, heavy blocks of text without breaks, links bunched up so close it takes a sharp-shooter to click on the right one... Finding the back-button after landing on such site becomes a matter of urgency. White space is web designer's prime assistant: it helps her organize the content and make it visually appealing and pleasant.
4. Subtlety
   Once we get our hands on any better graphic program, we tend to go crazy over effects we can now, finally, create. So we start adding shadows on just about everything and buttonizing even the pictures of our pets. At some point, the fact I couldn't make a big round button (with shadow!) for every page that would be a link to my homepage was absolutely killing me. I think I spent a week on that "project" and discarded it about a month later when I learned it might not be as cool as I thought it was. Subtlety is a hard thing to achieve, but it is the main reason why well designed web sites are beautiful. It doesn't mean nothing should be bold and bright, it just means that if some part of the web page is bold and bright everything else has to be subtle.
5. Separate Apples and Oranges
   Text should always be text, never an image. Logo is the only exception, since it is usually graphic that includes textual part. Transforming blocks of text into images and pasting them on web pages makes search engines think you have no content - there is nothing to index except images. And images cannot give you any decent placement in search engines, because none of your keywords are legible to search engine spiders. Worse, though, is the fact that people with visual disabilities who rely on screen readers (software that reads text on the screen and outputs the information to a speech) to use Internet, are virtually barred from sites where text is converted to images. Such sites are violating the most basic principles of web usability and, apart from being a sure sign of poor design, are discriminatory.
6. Group
   Think of all the things you want to put on web site in groups. This is like cleaning up: plates should go in the kitchen, towels belong in the bathroom, jeans, socks and t-shirts in the closet or, more likely, in the washer, and so on. You have to have a separate place for each group of items you would like to publish. These transform to sections or pages of your site. Each separate page then needs to be further organized to allow for easy access to the main content and to other pages and sections. On a single page, you need to have a place for logo, a place for links, a place for the main content and a place for your copyright and personal information. Keep these sections in the same location throughout the site and your visitors will enjoy a pleasant and easy stroll through your portion of the cyberspace.
7. Prioritize
   Is the picture of your pet really the most important message of your entire web site? If not, then it shouldn't be the largest image you have and at the very top of your home page. Think of your home page as of your window display: the most important things to be found on your site should be there. That doesn't mean that EVERYTHING you have on your site should be crammed in your window display, just the most important parts. When a visitor gets in he’ll find more good stuff, but don't chase him away with the entrance that looks like a marketplace after the flood, because most surfers won't waste their time digging through the pile in order to find something interesting. Invite your visitors with few well chosen, nicely displayed items, and let them find the rest.
8. Mind Your Fonts
   Two fonts are all you need for the entire site. Actually, one is more then enough, but some people like to use a different font for their links or headings and that cannot hurt. More then that, though, is too much. There is a flood of painfully designed web sites with itsy-bitsy tiny fonts most people can hardly read. The idea that small is beautiful is fine, only beauty isn't the sole purpose of web sites - they usually have some information to convey. And if the information is barely legible, regardless how beautiful, the site fails. So, keep your fonts to a healthy, medium size, allow some space between text lines and choose one easy-to-read font for all your text. For web sites these are usually sans-serif fonts, like Georgia, Verdana or the most popular, Arial font.
9. Be Square
   Making people scroll horizontally rather then vertically, leading them through a labyrinth of "rooms" instead of pages, unusually shaped weird objects in place of list of links and, generally, trying to re-invent the wheel doesn't add anything but frustration to surfer's experience. In this sense, web site is very much like a book or magazine and it should comply with certain rules in order to be fully accessible and re-visited. Granted, there are some books in rather weird formats that were published, but how many of those do you keep on your shelves? At some point, we all thought white background is boring and black text is dull as dull can be, but when you visit the web sites featured on Best of the Web, CSS Zen Garden etc, guess what -- over ninety percent of those amazing, gorgeous sites have the boring white background and super-dull black text! So, don't boldly go into the unknown with your site, or most people will never find it.
10. Simplify
    Learning to discard the non-essentials is probably the hardest rule of all. Over time we tend to create collections of cute little icons, buttons, arrows, borders, animated gifs that are just perfect for our stuff and hundreds of megabytes of images - flowers, kittens, pink bunnies, white puppies, purple hearts - you name it! None of it is necessary, none of it serves to promote our message, most of it has nothing to do with our message to begin with, but IT'S SO CUTE and irresistible that we have to paste it somewhere. Don't. And if you did, start removing all the non-essentials, today. Essential to your web site are only those things that work hand-in-hand with your content, where connection is obvious and doesn't need to be explained to anyone. Ask yourself if it's absolutely necessary to have certain parts of text blue, or purple or yellow. Would it be just fine if it was simply black? Will your page lose the clarity and importance if the bear-smelling-flower animated gif wasn't there? Would we know what your site is about if you didn't have those 45 smileys there? Would we, perchance, enjoy visiting your site more often if you didn't stop to greet us on five welcome-enter-hello-thanks-for-visiting-pages before we finally hit the home page? So, get rid of the clutter, dust your site off and make it useful.

Finally, some people might be less then thrilled to discover the 11th rule added to the ‘Ten Golden Rules’ but this one is the most important and above all:

Learn (X)HTML and CSS
There is a flood of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software that allows everyone to create web pages in an instant, but most of the pages produced this way are loaded with excess, junk code, impossible to validate and therefore practically inaccessible. The blog service providers also enable creating entries through WYSIWYG text formatting, but nothing gives you as much freedom and flexibility as the basic knowledge of XHTML/CSS. It takes less then an afternoon to learn the essential HTML markup and, combined with the endless possibilities style sheets offer, those few hours will be the best investment you could have made.

Posted by Svetlana at 08:43 AM | Permalink

Srdja Trifkovic, the foreign-affairs editor of Chronicles Magazine, in his article A Bishop's Lonely Struggle wrote:

When various Balkan potentates come to Washington, you can guess their ethnicity by the kind of treatment they receive. Albanian terrorists like the KLA leader Hashim Thaci do rather well. They are received at the State Department, which but a decade ago would have deemed them untouchable. They have full access to the mainstream media and publicly-funded think-tanks to propagate independence for their mono-ethnic criminal fiefdom.

When Bishop Artemije of Rashka and Prizren, the spiritual leader of Kosovo’s beleaguered Serbs, comes to Washington, he stays with friends in suburban Maryland who drive him hundreds of miles to meetings in Chicago, Pittsburgh, or Cleveland. He is received in Washington by low-to-middle ranking bureaucrats who listen to him politely but repeat stock platitudes that should be too embarrassing to utter by now (“we want a democratic, multi-ethnic Kosovo, in which each group will be able to prosper in peace and security,” und so weiter, und so weiter).

The reason for the discrepancy is simple. Bishop Artemije has no money because he is not dealing drugs; he has no armed thugs under his command; and he is telling the truth, warning that “working for Kosovo’s independence is to prepare, consciously or unconsciously, the ground for a militant jihad and terrorism in the heart of Europe, which will put at risk all democratic values of Europe and of America itself.” That is not what the U.S. government and its European partners want to hear.

Before he left States, at the end of February this year, His Grace Bishop Artemije wrote the following letter to President Bush, published by American Council for Kosovo:

Dear Mr. President:

I take the opportunity to write to you at the conclusion of my latest visit to your great country. Knowing the numberless pressing responsibilities that weigh upon you, I thank you in advance for taking the time to read this plea on behalf of my flock, the Orthodox Christian people of Kosovo. Since I know you are yourself a Christian, I can only pray that what I relate to you here will find a resonance with you that cannot be attributed solely to the justifications of state policy and global strategy but will be illumined for you by the true Light, which is Christ our God.

Foremost among your duties – and especially since September 11, 2001, – you have carried the heaviest of crosses: the leadership not only of the United States but of the whole civilized world in the global struggle against jihad terrorism, which threatens not just America but peaceful people of all faiths and nationalities. That is why we who live in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija find it difficult to understand why so many voices of influence in Washington, including some in your own Administration, support a course of action that would hand to the terrorists a significant victory in Europe.

As you know, this month talks are set to begin that will determine the future status of Kosovo, which since 1999 has been administered by the United Nations under NATO military control. While your Administration has taken no formal position on the outcome of the talks, many in the U.S. Congress, in the Executive Branch departments and agencies, and among NGOs believe that independence is the “democratic” outcome for Kosovo in accordance with the demands of Kosovo’s Muslim Albanians, who greatly outnumber the province's Orthodox Christian Serbs. During the years of international control, the violence directed against us had been decreased only by the reduction of the possible targets – fewer Christian Serbs to be attacked or kidnapped, fewer remaining churches and monasteries to be demolished by perpetrators who are never apprehended.

The Archpastor of Kosovo's Orthodox Serbs, Bishop of Raska-Prizren (Kosovo) Diocese of Serbian Orthodox Church, His Grace Artemije.

As the archpastor of Kosovo’s Orthodox Serbs, I came to America once again, as on several previous occasions, to bear witness to the agony that has befallen the Christian people of Kosovo and to warn against the path that lies before us. Detaching Kosovo from democratic Serbia would mean a virtual sentence of extinction for my people in the province – the larger part of my diocese – who continue to face unremitting violence from jihad terrorist and criminal elements that dominate the Albanian Muslim leadership.

Even today, while the international community maintains formal control, Kosovo has become a black hole of corruption and organized crime, including trafficking in drugs, weapons, and slaves. All too often these things happen under the noses of NATO soldiers, who fear to confront these criminals directly. (The details are catalogued on the website www.kosovo.net .) Indeed, the sporadic outbreaks of violence are themselves cited as justification for independence, as if appeasing Muslim “frustration” in the form of an ongoing intifada will bring peace anywhere. In the midst of the war on terrorism, it is unbelievable, but true, that official Washington regards as legitimate interlocutors – and in the case of independence, the future de jure rulers of Kosovo – Albanian Muslim “leaders” whose crimes and terrorist ties are beyond doubt. Indeed, two of them, Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj, are known to have met with Osama bin Laden in Tirana in 1995 to plan the terrorist campaign that has brought us to this moment.

Nothing I say is to suggest that prior to 1999 all was well in Kosovo, before the initiation of international administration. But now, to empower men of violence with state authority is no solution to problems that go back many years. Forcibly detaching Kosovo from democratic Serbia, contrary to all accepted legal principles, cannot resolve the absence of the rule of law and of elementary standards of human rights. A workable solution for Kosovo must address first of all the fact that Kosovo is part of sovereign Serbia, and that a solution must be found that provides for the human dignity and respect for all people, whether Albanian or Serb or Roma or Turk, whether Muslim or Christian. Viable and balanced plans have been put forward, that can ensure safety for all citizens with a fullest degree of self-rule, in accordance with all accepted standards. The question of Kosovo’s status is one of legality and not of politics.

Kosovo Albanians, on the other side, have engaged all available resources to convince the world, one way or another, through peace or violence, that the independence of Kosovo is a panacea that will solve all of Kosovo's problems and automatically improve all basic standards, and bring peace and stability to the region. I think many Americans would be shocked to learn that key sectors in their government - heeding the pressure of a noisy and well-funded lobby – is pushing for Kosovo independence, which would consign the remaining Christians of Kosovo to the mercies of a violent Islamic jihad movement. At a time when money and radical propaganda pour into Kosovo from around the Islamic world, I ask: does it make sense for America to hand them a great and unnecessary victory? Even aside from what may happen to my people – which is my first responsibility – what can be gained from such an outcome in terms of peace in the Balkans, or in Europe? What can America gain?

I emphasize that the push for independence for Kosovo is neither inevitable nor desirable. Indeed, absent Washington’s support for the perceived imperative of Kosovo independence, – a misguided policy of your predecessor’s Administration, which inexplicably has not been abandoned – this agenda would not be moving forward at all. At this time, I ask with all urgency that this policy at long last be reevaluated and preferable alternatives given serious consideration.

I know that people in enlightened countries, in democratic countries, do not like to think in terms of winners and losers when it comes to matters of religion and ethnicity. What I have proposed as a preferable solution tries to address everyone’s needs and fears within a democratic European country, Serbia. But let me assure you, that is not how the radicals on the Muslim Albanian side and their jihadist supporters around the world see it. The victory of jihad in Kosovo would be a local triumph pointing the way to further victories to come, eventually to a worldwide victory. They would point and say: “Where is their God?”

As Christians, our hope of victory is not an earthly one. “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.” With all respect, I remind you that in our part of the world, we suffered centuries under shari’a rule, and no man knows the numbers or names of all the martyrs from those times. We do not prefer to repeat that nightmare, but we are prepared for it if it comes. But my plea to you, as the leader of the United States and the Free World, is that the American government would not help hasten that day for the Christian Orthodox people of Kosovo.

I thank you for your attention and pray that my words appear to you in the spirit in which they were written.

Do the politicians read anything other then "what their itching ears want to hear" (2 Timothy 4:3-4)? Or are His Grace's appeals as one Christian to another addressed to the wrong person?

Posted by Svetlana at 04:05 PM | Permalink

As the New York Times reported yesterday, Kosovo independence is almost a certainty now.

The ugliest part is that no one seems to feel any shame for promising to "draft a resolution for the Security Council that will be so specific to the province that it will avoid setting a precedent for other separatists". So, the UN Security Council and governments of Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Germany are assuring the world only terrorist KLA will be granted their wish and handed 10.000 square miles amputated off one country over, but no other terrorists and separatists anywhere else in the world will be allowed to do the same. Why not?

Because the goal is to punish, further humiliate, weaken and, if possible, destroy Serbia and Russia, not any of the Western countries where other minorities might have the same appetites.

In other words, Basques will never be able to refer to Kosovo as the legal precedent that allows them to seek independence from France and Spain and take the chunk of these countries with them, Quebec will have to remain within Canada, and Scotland and Wells will not be able to finally part their ways with Britain.

When they grant the independence to Albanian terrorists occupying Serbian region of Kosovo and Metohija, Western powers will make sure Serbs from Republika Srpska in Bosnia won't be able to break away from the choke-hold they were thrown in with Bosnian Muslims and Croats. Western governments will also be especially careful to word this abominable act of legalized rape on the international level so that Russians who found themselves stranded in Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Ukraine can never hope for independence from the pro-NATO, anti-Russian Western subsidized regimes. No other nation will be allowed to seek their independence, and no other terrorist group will be given the luxury of hijacking part of another country through bloodshed, intimidation, murder, pillage and aggression, like Muslim Albanian KLA is. This piece of cake, the fertile, mine-rich chunk of Serbia where Americans have built the largest military base in Europe, Camp Bondsteel, will be given to Albanian terrorists and to them alone. And this is not despite, but precisely because Kosovo is the heart of Serbia: rip the heart out and you're done, mission accomplished.

Posted by Svetlana at 03:09 PM | Permalink

Of course people have the right to their opinion. Even if that opinion is entirely based on the merciless anti-Serbian propaganda spread in the West through Ustashi and Muslim lobbies and their employee, PR agency Ruder Finn (it was Slovenians and Croats who have subscribed to the services of Ruder Finn first, in the 1991 and 1992. Since their anti-Serbian campaign was a smashing hit in the West for which it was intended in the first place, both Bosnian and Kosovo Muslims hired the same agency a little bit later during the wars). Serbs have paid dearly for refusing to hire the services of the same high-end liars when they were offered for $80.000 a year, naively believing everyone can see what is happening. So, after Ustashi and Muslims have funnelled millions of dollars into Demonize the Serbs Campaign, it is not a big surprise every car dealer and shoe salesmen in the West hates Serbs, feeling he knows exactly what really went on in the civil wars of the 90's. But when Dick of the BudgetCarDealership and Billy of PayLessShoes start regurgitating Ruder Finn's lies as their own 'expert analysis', that turns into a straw that brakes the camel's back.

 IGNORAMUS #2  A Canadian variety, owner of a web site with thousands of pages on just about everything under the sun, but mostly about religion and politics. This guy doesn't seem to have much expertise on anything, save for some obscure awards he applies for regularly and keeps receiving in exchange for the link back, but he deems himself an "essayist" and has filled hundreds of pages with endless, boring-to-death, patronizing "essays" in which he pours his overwhelming wisdom that has to be poured out somewhere, otherwise he might burst.

One of his "essays" caught my attention: it is a quasi-psychological, quasi-philosophical, quasi-historical pile of bilge explaining to the world Serbian collective psychology and history. At the core of this endless idiocy authored by I-Wish-I-Knew-What-I'm-Talking-About Bruce is his claim Serbs are psychologically marked for eternity by "the lost" 1389 Battle of Kosovo, so the wars in former Yugoslavia were in effect led because of this Battle that took place 600 years ago. The best part is that the bulk of his references listed at the bottom (when you, eventually, manage to reach the bottom) are Ustasha and terrorist KLA sites which specialize in offering such a distorted and mangled picture of Serbia and its history that it becomes entirely unrecognizable.

Bruce is a dangerous man, the kind of mega-ignoramus who thinks he should preach and teach: no one will let him do it anywhere in real life, so he does it from the virtual pulpit he has set up for himself. He's dumb as a doorbell, but he believes himself to be sharper than most of the ordinary folk out there, for unlike everybody else he gets right through to the very essence of the problem; it would take him quite a while to find Serbia on a world map (starting from Africa), but he believes he's quite an expert on the area, because he read about it on Albanian terrorist sites; he would turn into a pillar of salt if he was asked to name one church in Kosovo or say something about the formation of Serbian state, but he prides himself on reading Ustasha accounts of Battle of Kosovo and feels he could write a textbook on Serbian history.

The 1389 Battle of Kosovo wasn't lost for the Serbs -- it was a draw, since both Serbian Tsar Lazar and Ottoman Sultan Murat were killed. But being that this is a common mistake and historical inaccuracy most Westerners keep repeating since Austro-Hungarians started spreading the fear of "Greater Serbia" (their own bourgeois fantasy, used to plant the seed of fear and hatred between Croats and Serbs), I'm willing to overlook this one. Still, Bruce should learn, since he's so eager to write essays on Serbian history, that even though Serbs were outnumbered by 10-1, they fought so heroically and with such resolve, that the bells of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris rang out in their honor and Ottomans praised them as "a worthy opponent". Because of the courage they have shown in the battle in which entire Serbian aristocracy sacrificed "for the Honorable Cross and Golden Freedom", Serbs have retained their statehood for another two centuries, before being annexed by ruthless Osman Empire.

An average Serbophobe will undoubtedly decide it's an overstatement, but the fact of the matter is that Braveheart is a schoolyard brawl in comparison to the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, only no Hollywood producer will ever finance the filming of that piece of Christian history. So, dust off your history books and learn about Orthodoxy on the front lines of jihad, self-sacrifice and honor, before producing another pile of gibberish.

Apart from that: where did Bruce The Essayist get an idea 14th century Kosovo Battle is the key event, most closely connected to the civil wars of the 90's? Has nothing happened between the 14th and the end of 20th century?! So, there was this Battle 600 years ago which Bruce thinks Serbs lost and THEN, all of a sudden, because they "lost" this battle, Serbs decided to attack Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims -- is that how it went?! Serbs can only wish they had it that easy!

First, there were Serbian uprisings in the 18th and 19th centuries to free from Turks which Serbs, as is obvious, won (otherwise, we'd be greeting each other with Selam aleykum and speaking Turkish now - NOT! Serbs have kept their faith, language and national identity intact during 500 years of Ottoman oppression and brutal attempts at forced conversion). Then there were the First and Second Balkan wars in which Albanians, again, allied themselves with Turks, promising to "manure the plains of Kosovo with Serbian bones." (They are still working on the same plan.) Then came the First World War in which Serbia allied itself with Russia, Greece, Italy and France, against mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire (whose allies were, among others, Croats and Slovenians), Germany, Bulgaria and Albania. Serbia has lost the third of its population in this war and Serbs were hailed as "the small nation that has darkened the glory of the ancient Sparta" in France, States and most of the Western world. Then came the Second World War in which Serbs again fought on the side of old allies, including USA and Great Britain. In WWII Serbia lost another third of its population, almost half of which were killed by Croat Usashi and another half by Bosnian and Albanian Islamofascists who were Hitler's trusted allies. Even though Serbia was freed from German occupation, her treacherous Western allies betrayed her in the end, handing the rule over Serbia to a Croat communist, Josip Broz.

Now, after all that, how did it happen that Serbs suddenly decided to attack and invade, for the first time in their entire history, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and their own region of Kosovo and Metohija? Well, they didn't. They neither attacked anyone, nor could they "invade" the lands in which they lived for centuries: all Serbs wanted in the nineties, when their old enemies united with their old deceitful allies in order to destroy Yugoslavia and re-colonize the Balkans, was to remain in their multicultural, multiconfessional state, and not become subjects in the newly formed Neo-Nazi Croatia or Muslim Bosnia run by Shari'a (no one argued against Slovenian secession; since Slovenia was already ethnically clean, Serbs didn't care one way or the other where they go. The only thing that actually happened in Slovenia wasn't a war by anyone's standards, but Slovenians killing Yugoslav army conscripts on the border and shooting at unarmed army conscripts in retreat). To their own detriment, Serbs also were not willing to sit and watch Western/Al-Qaida subsidized Albanian terrorists ambushing and killing policemen, city mayors, 18 year old army conscripts and civilians in Serbian own state, just like no other country in the world would. Unlike most other countries in the world, though, for daring to oppose foreign armed insurgency and terrorism in their own land, Serbs were mercilessly bombed for 78 days by German Luftwaffe (yet again), Americans, Brits and the rest of the "friends" from the West.

The sad truth is that, while Serbs were undefeated on each of the battlefields fighting for their own survival, they lost the even more fierce propaganda war miserably. And Bruce the Self-Styled Expert is nothing but an annoying reflection of that defeat.

Posted by Svetlana at 08:19 PM | Permalink

O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of Blessings and Giver of Life: Come and abide in us and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One!

Troparion to the Holy Spirit sung in Church on this day.

On the 50th Day after Pascha, the Holy Church celebrates the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (Holy Pentecost).

When the Day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)

In His farewell discourses to His disciples, the Lord told them: "I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; you know Him, for He dwells with You, and will be in you.... [The] Comforter, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name. He will teach you all things"... (John 14:16-17, 26) These words of the Lord were accomplished on the 50th Day after the Passover (Pascha), for the Seal of the Holy Spirit was seen on the Apostles in the form of fiery tongues, just as, in Holy Chrismation, we receive the Seal of the Holy Spirit in the form of the Holy Chrism.

The people who were present were greatly amazed at the sight, and especially that each one of them, no matter what nationality, heard the Apostles speaking to them in their own language. But others mocking said, "They are filled with new wine". (Acts 2:13)

Then Peter got up and spoke to them: Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: "And in the last days it shall be. Cod declares, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; yea, and on My menservants and My maidservants in those days I will pour out My Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day. And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved". (Acts 2:14-21)

Peter went on to speak of the Risen Christ and His redemptive acts, reminding them that this Jesus Cod raised up, and of that "...all [of the Apostles were] witnesses." (Acts 2:32) He continued: "Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy spirit. He has poured out this which you see and hear." (Acts 2:33)

Many of those hearing were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" And Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit...." So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. (Acts 2:37-38, 41)

On today's Feast, seven Kneeling Prayers are read by the Priest during the Vespers which immediately follows the Divine Liturgy of the day, while everyone is on their knees; this being the first time kneeling is permitted since Holy Pascha. During the Kneeling Prayers each member of the Church is making the wreath of freshly cut, sweet-smelling grass with which the Iconostasis was decorated and the floor of our St. Sava Church was covered with today.

Posted by Svetlana at 03:39 PM | Permalink

Don't get me wrong: I'm very grateful to Al Gore for his invention of the Internet and I truly appreciate the fact it enables every single moron on earth to have his soapbox, his own slice of cyberspace where he can reveal his intricate thought patterns and meanderings of his precious mind to the world at large. The only thing I object to is when an ignoramus starts taking himself seriously and playing an "expert" in the areas he obviously knows nothing about.

Balkan politics is one of those areas where very few people among the multitude that's spamming the world with megabytes of pure nonsense actually know what they're talking about. How difficult is it to understand that watching CNN and having an Internet access doesn't exactly make you an expert on a region, nation or history? It must require an inordinately high IQ indeed, since every Tom, Dick and Harry out there seems to think watching TV is quite sufficient to confidently get into unraveling the Balkans for the rest of us. One way of countering this type of idiocy is to unmask the so-called experts.

 IGNORAMUS #1  Mohammed-something (no, I'm not going to link to any of the ignoramuses, it is against my No Room For Idiots policy) wrote a super-pathetic My Dear Readers "article" (for the lack of the better word), and posted it on the www. In it he basically claims that "Serbs [one and all] are unable to face the reality" which is, in Mohammed's esteemed opinion, the reason for "the bloodshed" on the territory of former Yugoslavia in the 90's. You don't say! So, Serbs are not only inherently evil since they're solely responsible for the "bloodshed", they are also collectively tripping. Mohammed must believe he's no less than a Lord's Prophet, for he doesn't feel the need to offer a single shred of evidence in support of his biased and offensive claims - he can just lay it on thickly and move on to other pressing issues in need of his attention.

What Mohammed doesn't know, or pretends that he doesn't know, and what he certainly doesn't want his Dear Readers to know, is whom the Serbs really fought with in, for example, Bosnia and Kosovo. He pretends he has no idea Al Qaeda was formed in the beginning of the 90's, in Bosnia whose islamofascist leadership headed by Alija Izetbegovic awarded Osama bin Laden with an honorary citizenship and a Bosnian passport as early as in 1993.

Clearly, Mohammed and his dearly beloved readers would rather remain ignorant of the fact that, with Serbs out of the way, Bosnia became a snake-pit of jihadists from around the world, that Kosovo ethnically cleansed of Serbs has turned into the abominable criminal state where drug, arms and human trafficking are the only viable 'industries' and where one gets killed for speaking the 'wrong' language, and that behind both London and Madrid bombings were no other than Bosnian and Kosovo Muslims, who are showing their gratitude to the Western rescuers with terrorist attacks.

So, instead of patronizing Serbs and spreading his sleazy amateurish propaganda on the web, Mohammed should do a favor to his brothers on the territory of former Yugoslavia by advising them to stop hoping every anthill in their backyard is a King Tut's pyramid and face the reality of being colonized by the West and besieged by the jihad. Mohammed needs to tell his Bosnian Muslim brothers they have milked the Srebrenica myth long enough, that they'll finally have to start working if they intend to survive their "independence". Those blessed decades when Serbs were building their factories, schools, roads and hospitals, when Serbs were providing them with jobs, paychecks, pensions and health care in the name of Brotherhood and Unity are long gone and buried deep underneath Bosnian hills -- sorry, "pyramids"... and they are never coming back.

Posted by Svetlana at 09:42 PM | Permalink

Visiting the new, independent Slovenia, Peter Handke wrote:

Now... I arrived at the Hotel 'Zlatorog' ... at the valley's end, everything arranged for German speakers, and in the entrance the framed photos of Tito's visit had been removed not a pity really and replaced with those of Willy Brandt.... On state television almost nothing other than German and Austrian channel over and over again a foreign trade or economic delegation was having native folk songs sung to them. Then the Slovenian President would enter the scene. Wasn't he once a capable and proud functionary? But now he behaves like a waiter, almost like a lackey, who serves up his country to the foreigners who visit, as if he wanted to satisfy every wish of a German employer or customer: the Slovenians aren't this or that, but rather a 'hard working and willing Alpen people'. A Journey to the Rivers: Justice For Serbia

The first question that Handke heard a customer in the new supermarket ask, was: "Has The Bild (German newspaper) arrived?"

Likewise, the Independent State of Croatia II (NDH II), never bothered to curtail its rather embarrassing enthusiasm for the opportunity given by Germany, Vatican and the West in general to turn the clock back and revert to the ethnically clean German satellite. Quite the contrary. From the fateful 1991 when Tudjman's Croatia proudly unveiled the dusted off insignia from its fascist slice of heaven with the spontaneous burst into a collective Danke Deutschland song - the absolute worst, prime example of the kitsch, tastelessness and shameless sycophancy ever recorded in the history of humanity - till today, Croatia has been cheerfully sliding back in time, to the abominable 1940's.

The renowned Balkan expert, Diana Johnstone, wrote in September of 1999:

When I visited Croatia three years ago, the book most prominently displayed in the leading bookstores of the capital city Zagreb was a new edition of the notorious anti-Semitic classic, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Next came the memoires of the World War II Croatian fascist Ustashe dictator Ante Pavelic, responsible for the organized genocide of Serbs, Jews and Romany (gypsies) that began in 1941, that is, even before the German Nazi "final solution".

However, if the Croatian fascists actually led, rather than followed, the German Nazis down the path of genocide, that doesn't mean they have forgotten their World War II benefactors. After all, it was thanks to Hitler's invasion of Yugoslavia that the "Independent State of Croatia" was set up in April 1941, with Bosnia-Herzegovina (whose population was mostly Serb at the time) as part of its territory. And the hit song of 1991, when Croatia once again declared its independence from Yugoslavia and began driving out Serbs, was "Danke Deutschland" in gratitude to Germany's strong diplomatic support for Zagreb's unnegotiated secession.

In the West, of course, one will quickly object that the Germany of today is not the Germany of 1941. True enough. But in Zagreb, with a longer historical view, they are so much the same that visiting Germans are sometimes embarrassed when Croats enthusiastically welcome them with a raised arm and a Nazi "Heil!" greeting.

So it should be no surprise that this year's best seller in Croatia is none other than a new edition of "Mein Kampf". This is not a critical edition, mind you, but a reverently faithful reproduction of the original text by that great European leader, benefactor of Croatian nationalism and leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler.

The magazine "Globus" reported that "Mein Kampf" is selling like hotcakes in all segments of Croatian society. For those who want to read more, there is a new book entitled "The Protocols of Zion, the Jews and Adolf Hitler" by Mladen Schwartz, leader of the Croatian neo-Nazi party New Right, and "Talks with Hitler" by the Fuhrer's aide Herman Rauschning, as well as various other memoires celebrating the Ustashe state whose violent massacres of Serbs shocked the Italian fascist allies and even German diplomatic observers at the time. (Nazi Nostalgia In Croatia, by Diana Johnstone)

Of course, the fact that Pope John Paul II went to Croatia in October of 1998 to beatify Aloysius Stepinac who openly supported Nazi regime and Croatia's bloody pogroms by inviting clergy to help the Ustasha efforts in cleansing the country from 'Serbian schismatics', Jews and Gypsies in the name of "faith" has hardly helped Croats come to terms with their monstrous past. Neither does this sort of negative encouragement by Vatican promote civilized (or Christian) behavior which would finally allow, 15 years later, over a quarter of a million Serbs they purified the Independent State of Croatia II from, those who survived the "Operation Storm" and "Lightning", to return to their land in Krajina and rebuild their burnt, bulldozed and stolen homes. The same Pope who refused the invitation by Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, His Holiness Pavle, to hold a joint commemoration to almost a million victims of Croatia's Nazi madness in Jasenovac, on its 50 years anniversary in 1995, has rushed to beatify the one who gave blessings to the pogroms, in the name of Roman Catholic church. No wonder the clock is turning back to the time of the rule of the Beast.

Posted by Svetlana at 01:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

At the beginning of United Nations' (Nations United against Serbia, as Kapor would say) blockade of Serbia in 1991, Serbian artist, writer and famous bohemian Momo Kapor started a yet-another-blockade journal that was later published under the title Blockade 011. On Monday of the Fourth Week of the blockade, he wrote:

I read in the papers British Conservative Peter Bisley's statement that 'Yugoslavia's 1918 birth was unfortunate', with which I absolutely agree! But this honored Brit has no idea that among the midwives to that unfortunate birth was one of his compatriots - Miss Flora Sandes - who, as tender and beautiful as she was, was shot at by Slovenians and Croats dressed in Austro-Hungarian uniforms, while Albanians (that Great Hope of European Family!), according to their old tradition, were attacking her from behind during the long marches in the freezing torrential rains over Albania.

Born in 1876 to an Irish clergyman, Flora Sandes enlisted as a volunteer with a Serbian ambulance unit upon the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war with Serbia on 28 July 1914. During the Great Retreat, she joined the Iron Regiment of Serbian Army on the heroic march to Corfu through treacherous Albanian mountains - the deadly but ingenious strategy which allowed Serbian Army to break through the rings of siege and free Serbia from the outside, paying for that freedom with the entire third of its population.

Death itself, which was brutally cutting Serbian nation and army down with bullets, grenades and typhus, was halted for an instant in Valjevo hospital, stunned before those strange gray eyes of London fog and spared their lives. In 1915, it allowed the ship on which Flora rushed to return to Thessaloniki and then to Serbia to safely pass through torpedoes of Austro-Hungarian Sumarens and minefields, astonished by the courage of this woman who, after the lectures in London and fundraising for Serbian Army, was going back to hell. (Momo Kapor, Blockade 011)

The old Serbian journalist and diplomat, Milan Jovanovic Stojimirovic wrote that the "British Amulet of the Second Regiment" was an exceptional horse-rider (Serbs have given her a beautiful white mare which carried her through the four years of war and which she named Diana) and skilled gun and rifle shooter:

Her admiration for our common soldiers was endless, as was her moral exaltation and a determination to give her life for us. Soldiers loved and respected her like a sister, they practically carried her in their arms. Afterwards, Flora was saying she was never in the company of more honorable men, where no one has ever offended her or attempted to hurt her. Praising our soldiers as people who wouldn't steal and pillage even when they were dying of hunger, she always underlined their noble traits, for they were considerate of her feminine honor and have never injured her pride and integrity.

After the war in which she was wounded by a grenade, Captain Sandes retired with Serbia's highest war decoration, the Star of Karadjordje. She chose to stay and live in Belgrade, the capital of a newly born Yugoslavia. She married a Serbian Sergeant in 1927 and stayed in Belgrade even after his death, in 1941. During the WWII when Serbia found itself once again under occupation by yet another German incarnation, Captain Sandes was briefly called as a member of the reserves and, despite her age and the lingering effects of an old war wound, was willing to fight alongside Serbian Army again. She returned to England long after the WWII was over and Serbia was freed again, where she died in 1956, in Suffolk.

In her book An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army, published in the midst of WWI, in 1916, Flora wrote:

We finally came to anchor in a ruined Albanian hut in the middle of a bare plateau on the top of a hill, where we found the Commander of the battalion there before us, he having ridden another way. The Fourth Company, whom we had already met once that morning, were holding some natural trenches a short way farther on, and we were not allowed to go any farther. The Bulgarians seemed to have got their artillery fairly close, and the shrapnel was bursting pretty thickly all around. We sat under the shelter of the wall and watched it, though, as it was the only building standing up all by itself, it seemed to make a pretty good mark, supposing they discovered we were there, which they did very shortly.

An ancient old crone, an Albanian woman, barefooted and in rags, was wandering about among the ruins, and she looked such a poor old thing that I gave her a few coppers. She called down what I took at the time to be blessings on my head, but which afterwards I had reason to suppose were curses. The shells were beginning to fall pretty thickly in our neighbourhood, and our Battalion Commander finally said it was time to move on. He proved to be right, as three minutes after we left it the wall under which we were sitting was blown to atoms by a shell. My old crone had disappeared in the meantime to a couple of wooden houses on the edge of the wood. We had to cross a piece of open ground, which we did in single file, to reach this wood, and before we got to it we got a whole fusillade of bullets whistling round our ears from the friends and relations of the old lady upon whom I had expended my misplaced sympathy and coppers. These were the sort of tricks the Albanians were constantly playing on us from the windows of houses, whenever they got a chance.

We got down through the wood to where we left our horses, waited for the Fourth Company to join us, which they presently did, and then rode on, halting for a time, not far from where some of our artillery were shelling the enemy down below in the valley. The officer in charge showed me how to fire off one of the guns when he gave the word, and let me take the place of the man who had been doing it as long as we stayed there.

It was dark when we got to our camping ground that night, close to where the Colonel and his staff were settled, so I sent for my blankets and tent, which I had left with them, and camped with the battalion. After a light supper of bowls of soup we sat in a circle round the camp fire till late, smoking and chatting. The whole battalion was camped there, including the Fourth Company, with whom I had previously spent an evening at their camp in the snow, and I thought it very jolly being with them again. It did not seem quite so jolly, however, the next morning, when we were aroused at 3 a.m. in pitch-dark and pouring rain, everything extremely cold and horribly wet, to climb into soaking saddles, without any breakfast, and ride off goodness knows where to take up some new position.

It was so thick that we could literally not see our horses' ears; I kept as close as I could behind Captain Stoyadinovich, and he called out every now and again to know if I was still there. We jostled our way through crowds of soldiers, all going in the same direction up a steep path turned into a mountain torrent from the rain, with a precipitous rock on the near side, which I was told to keep close to, as there was a precipice on the other. A figure wrapped up in a waterproof cloak loomed up beside me in the darkness and proved to be the Commander of the Fourth Company. He presented me with firstly a pull from his flask of cognac, which was very grateful and comforting, and secondly a pair of warm woollen gloves, which he had in reserve, as my hands were wet and frozen.

We rode like this till after daylight, and then sat on the wet grass under some trees and had a plate of beans; they tasted very good then, but I've eaten them so often since that now I simply can't look a bean in the face. They asked me if I was going to tackle the mountain on foot with them or if I would rather stay there with the transport. I went with them, of course.

I can't help but wonder what would this brave woman and a WWI hero, who passed 50 years ago, say about the present occupation of Serbian region of Kosovo and Metohija and the diligence with which Britain's rulers are working on its amputation from Serbia only to hand it over to Albanians on a silver platter. Unlike Captain Sandes, the cowards in expensive suits who are playing Monopoly with our history, countries and lives, the faceless, nameless, tasteless mass of gluttons will never fight for what's good and true and right -- they'll just slither around in life, dreaming of an office higher up, of a newer car, bigger lobster, larger mansion... And if no one else but the Albanian drug-cartel will pay for it - so be it! No one will remember them, no one will thank them, no one will think much of them, they'll sink into the world's collective oblivion even before their bodies start getting cold, but at least they had all the caviar and champagne they could gobble down for a brief time while they thought they were alive.

Posted by Svetlana at 05:18 PM | Permalink

The Hanging Of Peter Handke From The Orthodox Gallows
-- The Krauts Match the Frogs in Universal Autism

By Gilles d'Aymery

Doomed be the fatherland, false name,
Where nothing thrives but disgrace and shame,
Where flowers are crushed before they unfold,
Where the worm is quickened by rot and mold - We weave, we weave. - Heinrich Heine

(Swans - June 5, 2006) It was not enough. The controversy surrounding the scrapping of Peter Handke's play from the roster of the Comédie Française in France had not yet receded that the German guard dogs of intellectual conformism did a tour de force, a little coup of their own, an auto-da-fé on Handke's character. These trite MacDonaldized Middle Minds managed to influence the body politic, cowards in gray suits, into reversing the decision by the jury of the Heinrich Heine Prize of the city of Düsseldorf, where Heine was born in 1797, to award the much coveted honor to Peter Handke in December 2006, on the 150th anniversary of Heine's death.

As the story goes, on May 20, 2006, the jury of the bi-yearly prize announced that Peter Handke had been selected to receive the award. As administrative customs dictate -- it is a city award -- the city council had to approve the decision, a pro-forma determination -- the council has never rescinded a previous choice by the jury. Writers such as Wolf Biermann and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Max Frisch and Elfriede Jelinek, and other personalities (Marion Dönhoff, Richard von Weizsäcker) have been awarded the prize. The city approval in all cases was a formality. Not with Peter Handke, though.

(Note: As I neither read nor speak the language of Goethe, I am relying almost exclusively on the translations made in the daily "feuilletons" published on signandsight.com, the excellent English-language service of the German online culture magazine Perlentaucher.)

The jury considered that Peter Handke's work, "within the spirit of fundamental human rights that Heine valued deeply, promote[d] social and political progress, and foster[ed] understanding and solidarity between peoples." The bien-pensants, this "class of people who foster and perpetuate conventional wisdom" in the words of James Traub, rushed to work hurling criticisms at the jury's selection in the pages of major papers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the (Munich) Süddeutsche Zeitung, the (Swiss) Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and Die Welt. One luminary, Hubert Spiegel, asked in FAZ: "Does the brazenness with which Handke glosses over Serbian crimes and denies ethnic cleansing foster solidarity between peoples?" Handke, "the holder of absurd political positions," assured Uwe Wittstock in Die Welt. Christoph Stölzl, one of the members of the jury, was quick to confess that he had not been in favor of the decision.

Exemplifying the hypocrisy, Matthias Kamann wrote in Die Welt:

While Handke continues to be accused for drawing parallels between Auschwitz and the bombardment of Serbia, Joschka Fischer has yet to feel any consequences for fantasizing with total disregard for reality about having to prevent another Auschwitz in Serbia. Thoughts like these, and the apocryphal 'Hufeisenplan' (Operation Horseshoe) which was cooked up by the then Minister of Defence Rudolf Scharping, fitted and still fit well with the feuilletonistic debate of consensus that "Germany finds new responsibilities through the Kosovo war." Peter Handke however was ostracised from public debate, which is determined not to see consensus destroyed and only accepts artistic obstinacy when this confirms the cartel.

But the damage was done. The Düsseldorf City Council announced 10 days later that it would revoke the prize. The sycophant Tilman Krause of Die Welt applauded the revocation: "What luck that at least the politicians in this country have some sense!" Krause would have been a joyous man in the years before German Ground Zero; and presumably, he would also have applauded the German authorities that banned Heine's work in 1835.

An outraged Thomas Steinfeld, however, had this to say in the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung:

That's not how things are done. The mayor of Düsseldorf can't ring up Peter Handke and say he'll get the Heinrich Heine Prize this year, if just a few days later the City Council says no, on second thoughts he won't win it after all. That's not how things are done. The former historian, museum director and now politician Christoph Stölzl can't be member of a literary jury and then -- as soon as a democratic decision meets with public criticism -- go around saying the person who won wasn't his man. That's not how things are done. And now all manner of politicians are piping up and calling the decision "a poor choice," "unthinkable," and "insensitive," while leaving no one in any doubt that they've never read anything Peter Handke has written on the subject. That's not how things are done.

In the same paper, two members of the jury, Sigrid Löffler and (French Germanophile) Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, "announce[d] in an open letter that they [were] resigning from the jury of the Heinrich Heine Prize." They added:

No one can comprehend, let alone want to approve of, Handke's bizarre acts regarding Milosevic," [but] one of the jury's reasons for giving Handke the prize in the first place was that he is undaunted in his poetic stance by public opinion and its rituals. The witch-hunt now raging against unwittingly demonstrates how clearly Handke really did deserve the Heine Prize.

Former Heinrich Heine Prize winner and 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient Elfriede Jelinek, as she did with the Comédie Française censorship of Handke's play in Paris, objected strenuously. But it's in FAZ that Frank Schirrmacher outlined best the pallid situation:

Should Peter Handke be allowed to receive the prize? This is purely a question of power. If he doesn't receive it after the jury's decision has been made clear, then literary prizes in Germany will be exposed as the arbitrary character assassinations that they have always been, from the times of the "anonimo romano" until today. Honouring someone, regardless of how controversial he may be, and then openly declaring him unworthy of that honour, without anything else having happened, is the ultimate form of social backslide. It turns the literary critic into the henchman of the politician. With the politicians' interference, the critic's objections to Handke now sound like a denunciation to the police.

What next? Bonfires of Handke's books in the public squares of Düsseldorf?

Orthodoxy is a potent elixir. Deviate from it and see the watchdogs high up on the ramparts, shouting the accusation of délit d'opinion. Once upon a time, it might have entailed a lettre de cachet and a sojourn at the Bastille or worse, being burnt at the stake for heresy. Today, a play is censored, a literary prize denied. The revisionist label is stamped on the culprit's forehead even though the opinion has been expressed from the very time the events occurred. Possibly in the future, 20 or 30 years from now, a new law will be passed in parliament criminalizing nonconformist thoughts, a bit like an addition to the 1990 Anti-Revisionist Supplement to the Press Law in France (Fabius-Gayssot Law, July 14, 1990...no less)

Flawed logic, sloppiness, navel-gazing arrogance, careerism, character assassination know no limits in the age of Wal*Mart intellectualism. From Germany to France and the USA (see how Ward Churchill is being "lynched" in Colorado), the mob-like anthills -- the red sort -- of the black and white world where shades are an inconvenience to be smashed with grandiloquent statements, armies of pious mercenaries, and when necessary, boots and camps, carry on with the delight of darkness and the self-importance of their own obscurity, as, in that far-away land of the mind, a handful of people keep shining, over and against all odds.

"Structures are the progeny of established powers," once wrote Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle (Paris, 1967). Those systematized structures are "based on the explicit or implicit assumption that this brief freezing of historical time will last forever. . . . . [a belief] in the eternal presence of a system that was never created and that will never come to an end. . . . . This fallacious reasoning stems from the limited intellectual capacity of the academic functionaries hired to expound this thought, who are so thoroughly caught up in their awestruck celebration of the existing system that they can do nothing but reduce all reality to the existence of that system."

What sins has Peter Handke committed, according to contemporary academic functionaries?

He is a revisionist: How can he be? Peter Handke has consistently refused to demonize the Serbs from the very moment the tragic dismemberment of Yugoslavia began taking place. He has consistently questioned the genocidal label applied to the Serbs, with a prescient thought process that eventually will be acknowledged by history. He has consistently refused to tag Slobodan Milosevic a "Hitler-like dictator." People have yet to come forth to show that a "dictator" has ever been elected more than once in a multi-party political system with ample opposing parties and media (Milosevic was elected three times, and the fourth time was skewed through the efforts and money of his international foes). He has consistently denounced the ICTY for what it factually has been, a Kangaroo Court that has yet to prove anything.

He is a "negationist": The most slanderous accusation of all. Handke has never ignored the horrors that took place in that civil war. He simply has not accused any one side, and he has kept questioning the rationale and the respective responsibilities. Take Iraq today. There is a civil war going on among Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis. Who's the demon? Handke would say: "I do not know." He would then refuse to single out one party for the whole trauma. Finally, he would ponder the larger, outside responsibilities that created the quagmire. Should the USA, through its illegal invasion of Iraq, be considered responsible for the current mayhem? Igualmente, shouldn't one analyze the respective responsibility of Germany, the U.S., and France as a junior player, in the Yugoslav mayhem? If so, to what extent? Why, he would ask, do we always have to demonize the enemy du jour? Fair questions, no? And not much to do with "negationism"...

But in the feeble-minded universe in which our courtesans operate, the adamant refusal to demonize the Serbs becomes ipso facto an assault against the orthodoxy. To question or challenge the bien-pensants threatens the very conventions based on their twisted logic and is met with the repeated howling accusations of heresy. What's the meaning of freedom of speech, then, when every time one opens one's mouth in contradiction of conventional wisdom, one is pilloried, sees one's career threatened, and finds oneself ostracized to the point of becoming an outcast? What's the point really of freedom of speech, if nobody hears you, or hears you and tars and feathers you?

Society of the spectacle, indeed.

I asked a friend who has been the object of much hatred for the simple fact of being a "Serb" by birth: Why is it that they, the academic functionaries, can't face a Peter Handke rationally? The answer was blunt: They have too much to loose if they look in the mirror. They've made careers out of their positions. They have careers to keep, and many laurels to gain, or not loose, by avoiding disputing the powers that feed them.

Anything that can be done, I asked further? Remind them of Ruder & Finn, the PR firm that was so instrumental for the media-cleansing onslaught during that period. Try to have them read your February 2001 piece, "Kosovo - The 'Banality of Evil,'" my interlocutor suggested. It might make a tiny few reconsider the entire tragedy, but I would not bet the bank on it, if I were you. Egotism and petty bourgeois selfishness will perdure.

Heinrich Heine moved to Paris in 1831. He never went back to Düsseldorf....died in Paris in 1856, and is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre. In the Finnish literature Website, Pegasos, under the Heine entry, one can read that his "critical views annoyed the German censors, and he had no chance of becoming a prophet in his own country. At the end of 1835 the Federal German Diet tried to enforce a nationwide ban on all his works. Soon Heine found himself surrounded by police spies, and his voluntary exile became a forced one. The poet once stated: When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on."

Peter Handke is in good company. There are plenty of clowns in Germany still.

As Heine wrote:

I know the authors, I know the tune,
I know it line for line-
In public, water is all they preach;
While in secret they guzzle wine.
(Germany, A Winter's Tale - 1844)

Once again, Zivela Peter Handke!

Posted by Svetlana at 04:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

For a wonderful summer refreshment and generous amounts of inspiration, read the old Serbian fairytale The Goat's Ears of Emperor Trojan. The story is beautifully illustrated by Jelena Obradovic, a winner of the Golden Pen Plaque at the 8th International Biennal of Illustration.

Posted by Svetlana at 11:33 AM | Permalink

A good friend of mine who recommended the book about Elder Porphyrios, said: "It is like bathing in the Light of the Holy Spirit".

One of the great spiritual Fathers of the Orthodox Church, elder Porphyrios is the contemporary saint who began his monastic life on Holy Mount Athos at the age of twelve and reposed in the Lord in December of 1991, when he was 86 years old.

During the lifetime of obedience, prayer and inexhaustible joy and love for Christ, the holy elder was given many gifts, among them the gift of second sight and healing. He would address numerous visitors by their Christened name before they were introduced to him, he could see children in wombs, subterranean waters, souls of men, undiagnosed illnesses and the upcoming bloodshed. He would call his spiritual children and monastic brethren even during night urging them to pray for their Serbian brothers in Christ, seeing with his spiritual eye the great tragedy that was looming over Serbian nation, long before anyone could imagine the suffering that was to come.

Maria Condoyani Ioannidou wrote about the elder: "He had the smile of a child from the Heavenly Kingdom and the kind of innocence one can only find in little children. He also possessed the perfect purity which made him seem immaterial and translucent, like a clear glass; in him one would see his own reflection with all the consequences of the fallen state."

She remembers how she told her parents, upon return from the Elder who was in Athens at the time: "This man loves me much more then you do. I now understand how much Christ loves us all."

Although each of elder's countless spiritual children would always receive advice and guidance adjusted to their personalities and needs, Father Porphyrios was striving to impart on everyone the inner asceticism of ceaseless repetition of Prayer of the Heart ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner"). He taught that the single most important virtue everyone needs to obtain through prayer, Church attendance and holy sacraments is boundless, joyful, overwhelming love for Christ. The holy elder taught that all other virtues are derived and built upon this one, the love which punctures the heavy crust of sin that bounds us to death and opens the floodgates of Light, that is Christ.

Holy Father Porphyrios, pray for us!

Posted by Svetlana at 03:40 PM | Permalink

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Writing in that fateful year, 1939, T.S. Eliot, intellectual and Christian, admonished his contemporaries who had placed their faith in the triumph of democracy. Democracy is not enough, Eliot wrote.

''As political philosophy derives its sanction from ethics, and ethics from the truth of religion, it is only by returning to the eternal source of truth that we can hope for any social organization which will not, to its ultimate destruction, ignore some essential aspect of reality.

''The term 'democracy,' as I have said again and again, does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces you dislike – it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler and Stalin.''

When Eliot wrote, the world had before it a textbook example of how democracy can be exploited by its enemies: the Third Reich.

After his failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler decided to take the longer road to power, the democracy road.

Named chancellor of Germany as leader of the largest minority party in the Reichstag in 1933, Hitler used plebiscites to enable the German people to participate in his rule and ratify his policies. After the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the Anschluss with Austria, national referenda were held. Up to 99 percent of all Germans endorsed his actions. By Munich, he was the most popular political leader in Europe.

This, then, is the point. Democracy is but a process by which people participate in choosing and confirming their rulers. But if the peoples of Europe have lost their belief in the truths of Christianity – the faith that made Europe – and the morality and ethics derived from those truths, they can wind up with a hell on earth.

Which brings us to Holland, a nation that can rightfully claim to be in the avant-garde of post-Christian Europe.

In Amsterdam, in the Red Light District, there are brothels, sex shops and sex museums. Women advertise their charms in storefronts. Window prostitution has been legalized, as has possession of marijuana and hashish, which are sold over the counter in coffee shops. Drugs are done openly. Pornography is pervasive.

Amsterdam has a ''liberal and tolerant attitude,'' runs a web ad. ''Instead of criminalizing everything, this upfront city wears its heart on its sleeve.'' Not to be outdone, Utrecht has a canal-based red light district. Rotterdam has sex clubs and private houses for the legalized enjoyment of the pleasures of the flesh.

Holland also leads Europe in the ''liberal and tolerant'' stance it has taken toward suicide. In April 2002, a Dutch law took effect permitting physicians to assist in euthanasia and suicides so long as the procedure is carried out in a medically appropriate fashion.

Anyone 16 or over has a right to suicide. If you are between 12 and 16, you have to get your guardian's approval to kill yourself. In World War II, the Dutch doctors who resisted the Nazi euthanasia program were heroes. Apparently, those doctors were just behind the times.

The latest news from Holland is that a new party is about to be formed, the Charity, Freedom and Diversity Party. Principal platform plank: reduction of the legal age for sex from 16 to 12 years old.

"We are going to shake The Hague awake!" say the pedophiles of Holland, for whom dropping the age for sex to 12 is but the beginning. They wish to eradicate all prohibitions on sex with children and with animals.

This, of course, would cheer the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the American sexologist whose ''researchers'' either abused scores of children and infants, or who used the testimony of child-molesters to make the case that adult-child sex can be beneficial to both.

Which brings us back to Eliot's point. If one rejects Christianity, and the morality and ethics that proceed from it, on what ground does one stand to outlaw drugs, prostitution, euthanasia, assisted suicide and sex with children or dogs?

Holland today, and America - with its toll of aborted babies now nearing the 50 million mark since Roe v. Wade - raise profound questions for conservatives and traditionalists.

What if the free society chooses to become a decadent and depraved society? Do we still owe it allegiance and loyalty? Does a community have the right to impose its values, if those values are rooted in religion, on a minority that disbelieves in those values? We certainly did that during the civil rights era of the 1960s.

At what point does a regime, even if democratically elected, become illegitimate, as surely Hitler's was by the time Eliot wrote?

"What makes you think the West is worth saving?" the priest asked Whittaker Chambers when he visited him in that hospital room in the 1950s. Good question then. Better question now.

Perhaps the Muslims, who may well be a majority in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague in 10 years, will moot the issue for us all.

Posted by Svetlana at 02:36 PM | Permalink

"...Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”

"And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen." (Luke 24:44-53)

Since 1403, when Serbian king Stefan Lazarevic gave Belgrade the status of the state capital, the Ascension of the Lord is slava of the city of Belgrade, my hometown. One of Twelve Great Feasts of the Church, Spasovdan (Savior's Day in Serbian) is given a special significance among Serbs, whose greatest historical and legal document, the Legislation of Tsar Dusan (Dusan's Code), was published on this day in 1349. On the Feast of Ascension in 1939, Belgrade city was awarded the highest war medal, the Star of Karadjordje with 4th degree swords.

Belgrade Church of Ascension, built in 1863, is the traditional keeper of city slava. It has kept the original municipal banner - the red brocade with the icon of Lord's Ascension on one side and gold-thread inscription Belgrade Municipality, and icon of St. Petka on the other, with the message: He Who Celebrates the Slava is Helped by It. From this church each year on the Feast of Ascension after the Holy Liturgy a procession is headed by the Serbian Church Patriarch and led through the city.

The procession first stops at Terazije Fountain, with prayers for the health and well-being of Belgrade citizens. On its next stop, at Saborna (Universal) Church, the procession offers prayers for protection from suffering, wars and famine, for peace and prosperity. On the third stop, in the yard of the Church of Ascension, the procession prays for the souls of Belgrade defenders and heroes. The city of Belgrade's holy protector and intercessor before the Lord's Throne is the Most Holy Theotokos, to whom king Stefan Lazarevic dedicated the city.

Posted by Svetlana at 04:15 PM | Permalink

The fact most people in North America and Western Europe are blissfully unaware of the genocide being committed over Christian Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija since 1999 and as we speak is hardly their fault. While western media was tireless in whipping up hysteria over the Serbian role in civil wars that followed the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the 90s, while it is still mirroring the devastating policies of its governments that led to these bloody wars in the first place, and while it continues to openly root against Serbs and gloat over further destruction and dismemberment of Serbia, the same media remains dead-silent about the genocide of Serbs perpetrated under their very noses.

In the course of wars that followed unilateral, West and Arab-backed secessions of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as during the 78 day of NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999, many myths were spawned. Among them, "Srebrenica genocide","Serbian atrocities", and supposed "mass murder" of anywhere from 10.000-100.000 (depending on how hysterical and over-caffeinated State Department representatives were each day) Albanians in Kosovo. The Kangaroo Court in Hague, financed by the well-known Serb hater, George Soros and NATO, was established to canonize these myths and cement them into the history. Fifteen years and millions of dollars later, the majority of claims and allegations remain unsupported by the evidence on the ground. But, despite that, despite the fact that overwhelming majority of the victims in these wars were Serbs, with over 1,5 million refugees ethnically cleansed from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, Western media persists on parroting the same falsehoods over and over, taking its cue from Goebbels who asserted that "a hundred times repeated lie becomes the truth".

Some of these myths were planted so masterfully that today, ten or fifteen years later, no one even dares to question them, for fear of being branded "genocide apologist" and punished for disobedience and dissent. The exceptional Austrian writer, Peter Handke, is the prime example of modern-day inquisition: for daring to question the accepted "truths" regarding Serbs, Handke is facing virtual obliteration by the quasi-intelligentsia of his time. His books are being taken off the shelves in Western European bookstores, the literary rewards he is given are furiously disputed and revoked and his plays are removed from the repertoires of European theatres, most notably, Comédie-Française. And the reason for this censorship akin to Nazi book-burning rites, is not Handke's literary opus - no one has yet denied the fact Peter Handke is one of the greatest contemporary writers world-around - it is his political views that are behind the witch-hunt, his courage to challenge and deny the official version of the events. So, he is made to suffer.

Peter Brock, one of the very few and rare reporters who are honoring their profession in our time, has successfully dealt with the dirty reporting that brought much grief to entire Serbian nation, vilifying it beyond recognition, in his new book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia. Following his work and that of former NY Times reporter David Binder, CNS' Sherrie Gossett has written an article calling for return of Pulitzers awarded for piles of lies a number of western "journalists" have built carriers on.

A new DVD, "Days Made Of Fear", provides the indisputable evidence of the Serbian genocide Albanians are committing in Kosovo since the official end of the war in 1999. Speaking about the deafening silence of western mainstream media regarding this genocide, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media cites:

The footage of ravaged and destroyed Serbian Churches and Monasteries is appalling. The DVD is a shocking affirmation that the American television Networks such as CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the others are all lined up with the foreign policy establishment and are active practitioners of official censorship. I cannot recall seeing any of the horrifying footage on this DVD on American television (...) The same U.S. media which continues to attack the Bush administration for lying about the Iraq war, continues to give Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Wesley Clark, and Samuel Berger a pass for their destructive war on Yugoslavia. We should remember also that at the last Democratic National Convention in Boston two years ago, one of the top KLA men was an honored guest of John Kerry. The same U.S. media which was appalled by the Taliban's destruction of the 2,000-year-old Buddhist statues has nothing to say about the remarkable Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries which have stood since the period preceding the Ottoman conquests, and which are being systematically destroyed.

Refusing to beat around the bush, Cliff Kincaid accurately calls mainstream media's stubborn blindness for the plight of Kosovo Christians, a cover-up and a scandal. The main reason behind it, Kincaid notes, is the fact "the media reported the war wrong and now refuse to report who has really been victimized by it":

Let's remember that Clinton ordered U.S. military intervention in the Balkans against the Christian Serbs on the grounds that "ethnic cleansing" and even "genocide" were being waged against Serbia's neighbors. Most of that was hokum. Serbia, a U.S. ally in World War II, was being ruled by the communist Slobodan Milosevic, who was desperate to hold on to power in the former Yugoslavia, which included Serbia. While Milosevic was a problem, the Clinton "solution" made the problem worse. Clinton gave the green light to military aggression against the Serbs and even ordered the CIA to provide support to the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was allied with Osama bin Laden and radical Islamists. The U.S. bombed Serbia and forced Milosevic, who was later turned over to a U.N. court, to capitulate. Milosevic recently died in a U.N. prison.

Kosovo, like the American southwest, has been deluged by outsiders, who now want political power. In Kosovo they are Albanian Muslims, many of them illegal aliens from neighboring Albania. They want, with U.S. and U.N. support, to turn Kosovo into an independent Muslim state. The Bush Administration should stop - not accelerate - this madness.

All we know for sure by now is that neither George W. Bush, nor Tony Blair, Bill Clinton et al, or anyone diligently working at CNN, FOX News, ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC to remind us once again of Serbian inherit "evilness" will shed any tears over 22 year old Mi­lja­n Ve­sko­vi­ć brutally slain in Kosovo today, nor over any of his brothers and sisters in Christ systematically mutilated and murdered by Albanian Muslims during last seven years. Once thoroughly dehumanized by the western politicians and media, in their eyes Christian Serbs remain less worthy of the compassion then whales or wolves are afforded by the same media.

And we thought fascism was defeated.

Posted by Svetlana at 07:48 PM | Permalink

UK Financial Times should be congratulated for publishing article by Eric Jansson, Human rights: Safety remains elusive, on May 29. It represents a rare piece of honest reporting in a desert of lies, misinformation and half-truths Western media thrives in.

Referring to the above photo, an image recorded during the pogrom of remaining Serbs in Kosovo in March 2004, Eric Jansson writes:

Few Serbs can forget the jumpy young man who scaled the Church of St Andrew in Podujevo two years ago.

Thousands of times, television screens across Serbia - including the beleaguered Serb enclaves in breakaway Kosovo - have replayed the videotape. It shows the man climbing to the burning church's rooftop and attacking a metal cross - tugging, twisting it until it crashes down, to the delight of a crowd of ethnic Albanians in the churchyard below.

The unidentified man generated an iconic image of the pogrom that swept through Kosovo in March 2004. The three-day orgy of violence pitted tens of thousands of rioters against minority communities, Serbian Orthodox churches and their United Nations and Nato protectors.

The damage toll catalogued afterwards in a report from Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, listed 19 people killed, 954 injured, and 730 houses and 36 religious sites destroyed, some containing priceless examples of ancient Byzantine Christian art.

'The March riots' remain a vital reference point for diplomats and Nato military commanders gauging the probability of a sudden return to violence.

Since then, Kosovo's secessionist leaders have struggled to persuade others of their commitment to the safety and human rights of minorities in Kosovo amid discussions about possible independent statehood.

'There will be no repeat of March 2004. The citizens are aware how much damage an event like that can cause,' says Fatmir Sejdiu, president since March this year.

But many observers warn that serious violence may erupt again if Kosovo's provisional authorities do not achieve full independence from Serbia this year.

The president denies this, but he warns: 'The international community has to be careful. We do not want to stimulate politics that could generate conflict. It is not good to test the citizens' patience.'

When the UN and Nato intervened in the province, they pledged to create a safe, multi-ethnic space before determining Kosovo's political status. It is no longer clear that this goal can be achieved. The UN initiated Kosovo's status negotiations in late 2005 although an overwhelming majority of Serbs in the province still say their basic right to safety is trampled routinely.

A steady trickle of violent incidents against Serb communities keeps the intimidation factor high. This month alone brought several shootings and the stoning of a busload of 60 Serbs travelling to market. On May 6 gunmen ambushed a Serbian Orthodox priest, his wife and two children travelling in their family car. They narrowly escaped.

Extremists also struck Podujevo, vandalising a second church and setting back reconstruction efforts funded by the Council of Europe.

Sava Janjic, an influential monk who is the Serbian Orthodox Church's diplomatic contact point in Kosovo, calls this 'persecution'.

He says: "The Church is its people, and our faithful people, clergy and monks have been living for years without basic freedoms and dignity. In most of Kosovo we still cannot move without military or police escort, and we are exposed to everyday verbal abuses and harassments."

Slavisa Petkovic, the only Serb minister in the provisional government, claims that open persecution ended in late 2004, when he took office, and that threats to minority communities are on the wane. "There has been a substantial relaxation of relations between most Serbs and Albanians living in Kosovo," he says.

Yet Mr Petkovic's own parents are among the many Serb refugees who choose not to return. More than 223,000 Serbs and other minority individuals have left the province since the war. Fewer than 15,000 have moved back, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Contradicting both UN officials and Kosovo's elected leaders, Hilmi Jashari, the province's top human rights lawyer, says that little progress is being made. "I would not say that the human rights environment has changed dramatically from 2004 until today. In fact, from 2000 until now I have not seen a dramatic change," he says.

As acting chief of Kosovo's human rights office, a public institution founded by the UN mission but independent from it, Mr Jashari says he recently reopened his file on the March riots in response to complaints that they were "never properly investigated" by local or international authorities.

A Human Rights Watch report released today sides with the complainants, lending weight to claims that neither basic safety nor legal protection can yet be taken for granted.

Posted by Svetlana at 12:58 PM | Permalink