Kamo sreće

Having multiple files increases the compile time, think of all the femtoseconds you can save by having everything in one place!

From Serbia, I have a supermarket about 200m from my apartment and a mall with a huge supermarket about 20 mins away on foot. In my city at least, you’re rarely more than 15 mins away by foot from a supermarket, they’re everywhere.

When I started out, I used to change distros like socks lol While you do have to reinstall programs, having a separate /home partition means that you can keep your stuff between changes

Bombs were falling on civilian targets nowhere near Kosovo. Various bridges, schools, hospitals, a chemical plant in Pančevo that almost destroyed the entire city, the Chinese embassy, a bomb fragment fell literally in my family’s garden. Hundreds of civilians died, my grandma almost impaled on a table from a bomb shockwave and the glass shattered onto the cradle I was in (I was 1 year old at the time), but luckily my mom placed protection around me just in case. This was on the far north of Serbia.

To be clear, OP is a tankie who shouldn’t be given any attention or a platform (I checkes their post history), but the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was a campaign that caused untold suffering to countless civilians (be it in injuries, deaths, or just going through every day not knowing whether you and your loved ones will be alive tomorrow) that had absolutely nothing to do with Kosovo, something that left scars in society that are still felt. It was not simply “disturbing a genocide”. Not to mention that it was an attack launched without the approval of the UN.

There are a lot of disturbing videos available on reddit. The police chasing and beating the living hell out of people on the ground, the director of the police claiming on national television that the protesters didn’t allow an ambulance to pass, even though there is a video showing the ambulance passing through the crowd of protestors only to be stopped by the police, who then used the situation to commence a surprise charge at the protesters. And all this because we want… check this… elections. Something our overlord used to hold every 2 years, but now he’s scared.

Probably because they are.

The entire infrastructure of modern civilization rests on a single digit number of companies. How is this acceptable to anyone? Why is everyone just okay with this?

If you like black metal, Praznina and The Stone are amazing Serbian bands. Praznina’s 2023 album “Čovek koji Nije” is one of my all time favourites

I still cannot come to terms with the fact that people find it completely normal that modern civilization rests on a handful of companies. If Google, Microsoft and Meta were to disappear tomorrow, half the planet would collapse given how many completely depend on their infrastructure. This by itself should be enough to induce a mania of local development and decentralized structures, but alas.

This was partly explored in Erich Fromm’s work “Escape from Freedom” and “The Anatomy of Human Destruction”, but basically, if I understood correctly, sadistic personalities use it as a means of defence against loneliness and isolation. By exerting power over another, they temporarily lose the painful feeling of being alone. Abusive people tend to be miserable when their victims leave them and they have nobody to control.

Nobody gains anything from cruelty, it’s a symptom that something’s terribly wrong with the person in the first place. Even animals don’t display acts of cruelty in the wild, they do so only when confined to cages and subjected to other inhumane treatment.

A small correction: there is no leader. The students themselves decide everything on plenary sessions and every decision is executed by working groups that are formed afterwards. You always have different people executing the decisions to avoid any one person being seen as a “leader”. And we are slowly shifting to citizens themselves forming local groups in their neighbourhoods with the same organisation.

But yes, the students asked that only Serbian flags be shown, because these are protests that have support from a wide range of people, from anarchist vegans to ultra nationalists, so they want to prevent any division. That doesn’t stop some right wing dipshits to bring Russian flags, even though Russia explicitly condemned the prorests as a “coloured revolution”, but what can you do.

While some EU representatives from the parliament have been supportive, the EU has a negative image because officials still act like everything’s in order. Ursula is set to meet with our psychopathic dictator, and Marta Kos wrote how she had a constructive talk concerning Serbia’s steps towards EU integration with the guy who tried to cause a bloodbath during the 15 mins of silence a few days ago. A guy who also officially (as a president under the Serbian constitution) has about as much say as I do concerning these things.

Honestly, we avoided a massive tragedy at that moment. People described that it sounded like a car or airplane was coming at them at full speed, so they instinctively ran away from the roads. People further away didn’t see or hear anything, they just saw a crowd running in panic and so they ran as well. I was maybe 50-100m away from where it happened, and all we heard was noise, yells, and then people running, so the people around me also started running, but we all stopped after maybe 5s.

A lot of people think that our overlord wanted to cause a stampede which would lead to thousands of injuries and just chaos in order to discredit the protests. Or maybe they wanted to launch the cannon after the 15 mins of silence were over, which would cause mass confusion since nobody would have any idea what was going on, but triggered it early. In any case, the psychopath used an illegal weapon to attack people literally standing still and being quiet.

I’m convinced that at least 400k people were present, probably more. I’ve never seen such a crowd in my life, and I’ve been on most protests since 2020.

EDIT: The organisation that usually counts this stuff said around 300k, and maybe more, they couldn’t make a precise count because people were constatntly moving from place to place. Still the biggest one is Serbian history.

I’d add Adrienne Cowan from Seven Spires and Melissa Bonny from Ad Infinitum to that list. But, as you said, in symphonic metal you’d be hard pressed to find a band without an amazing female vocalist.

It’s hard to really give a true representation of the general atmoaphere in Serbia during these times. For as long as I’ve been conscious, Serbia was a land of cynics and depression. Negativity was the norm, and even I said back in November that these protests would last until new year / Christmas, then the students will go back home to get drunk or whatever and that will be the end of it. If someone had told me 3 months ago that almost the entire country would be optimistic about the future, that there would be a real chance to finally end the rule of SNS, that students would walk over 100km to places and be greeted as liberators by huge masses, fireworks and food, I’d ask them what movie were they watching. Also protests are being held all over the country, so much so that someone made a website to keep track of the future ones: kudanaprotest.rs

The next big gathering will be in Niš on the 1st of March.

I’m so used to seeing English everywhere that I actually have trouble navigating things like settings in my native Serbian.

The PM’s resignation is thought to have happened in order to force new elections and thus kill the momentum. The fact that they can win any election was used almost every time we had unrests (we had elections in 2012, 2014, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and now they want 2025).

All relevant opposition parties agreed (they very rarely agree on anything) that there will be no elections. Everyone is in agreement with that: prison time, a transitional government to enable free elections, and then we get elections. Who will form the transitional government? I’m not sure, but the atmosphere is generally that this has to be the end of SNS and all prominent members, nothing less is acceptable.

As for villages/cities: rural areas get most of their information from TV, and the few non-propaganda channels that exist are not even an option in remote areas, so a lot of them don’t even know anything from media besides “some students are protesting”. But these protests were held in places we would never expect (someone joked that places are rising up that didn’t rise up even against the Ottomans), so I’m not sure how are these events seen in remote villages.

Funny that you mentioned Bangladesh, because I remember reading about it being the “first gen z revolution” and thought how this could be the second. Students from Belgrade announced that they will walk to Novi Sad tomorrow to join the huge protests announced on Saturday, where again a bridge will be blocked for 24h (and another 2 for 3h each)

That’s a tough one. First, the current state of politics here is as follows:

The main character here is president Aleksandar Vucic. He was the head of the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska Napredna Stranka, SNS), the party that has been in power since 2012, until a few years ago. He’s officially not the head anymore, but he still holds rallies and campaigns for SNS, even though he’s not on any lists or positions during election campaigns. The president has a ceremonial role according to the Serbian constitution, but you can see him almost every day (I’m not even joking) on TV answering questions on everything from infrastructure projects to how many peas and beans we have in stock (not joking). Not a single institution is doing its job because everything has to go through him.

The party has over 700k members (more than 10% of the population) because if you want to hold a job in any public position, you have to be a member of the party, attend rallies, vote for SNS (with photo evidence that you did it, even though that’s illegal) , otherwise you get fired. Almost all the media in Serbia is SNS propaganda. So, given that they hold all the media, institutions, governmental positions and decide whether a large chunk of the population will have food tomorrow, elections are kinda meaningless in places outside of Belgrade and maybe Novi Sad, because they can do whatever they want with no reprecussions. For example, in 2023 they literally brought 10k people from Bosnia to vote in local Belgrade elections, swiftly giving them citizenship and registering them where they could. You had apartments of like 30m^2 that had 60 people registered as living there. They also moved people from other places to Belgrade so that they could vote there, and then they re-registered them back so that they could vote also back home. This was all proven without a shadow of a doubt, and absolutely nothing was done about it. So the prime minister resigning is honestly almost meaningless because there are no institutions or ministers in Serbia, there is only Vucic.

As for the opposition, on the one hand you can’t blame them too much because there’s not much they can legally do, but on the other hand they often screw up whatever they can. They used to take control of protests that emerged, led people to walk up and down all over Serbia for months, and then nothing. In 2023 we had the huge protests with the oposition parties leading them, and an election was held in December. The elections were a scandal fest as they always are, but even with those 10k Bosnians, SNS did not manage to get a majority in Belgrade, and they had to hold elections again. It was a huge moment since it was the first time SNS did not manage to win something (keep in mind that every city, every municipality, every local body is controlled by SNS), and people very actually pretty hyped that Belgrade will be freed. And then, in a move probably unseen in the history of parliamentary politics, half the oposition decided to boycott the elections. They said that the conditions for fair elections were not met and they would not participate, but only in Belgrade and Nis (the third biggest city), they would participate in other cities. That was one of the biggest wtf moves ever recorded, and ofc SNS won almost everything in Serbia again (one municipality in Nis had the oposition win I think). So they are either disliked (“they’re all the same” etc), or seen as incompetent by the majority.

One idea that has been floating in the public is for the students to form a government by appointing the professors they deem best suited for a transitional government, and then turn the country upside down and punish the members of SNS for everything they did, and then hope for the best that we will have new, younger people emerge. This is a very special time because very many people are really sympathetic towards the students, as they should be since they have been nothing short of excelent in almost every respect. The majority really just want the whole system and political class to burn down and to start again, but I think that’s the case almost everywhere.

Sorry for the long post, just thought I’d clarify the situation here since this is hitting the news in a lot of places.

tl;dr - Some opposition parties are at best alright, but non really inspire anyone. Ideally the students will lead us out of this mess into a new era, but in any case the number one priority is to fill the prisons to max capacity with the mafia running this country.

Vucevic said the immediate cause for his quitting was an attack on a female student in Novi Sad early Tuesday by assailants allegedly from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. Vucevic said that “whenever it seems there is hope to return to social dialogue, to talk … it’s like an invisible hand creates a new incident and tensions mount again.”

For those wondering on the nature of the attack: students were putting stickers on objects in the city calling for protests this Saturday, then two guys from the ruling party (read: hooligans) came at them with baseball bats, broke one girl’s jaw, and chased the rest with a car.

These are hopefully the final stages of a cancerous regime coming to an end. Keep in mind that the students didn’t ask or care about any resignations or elections, they have 4 concrete requests that, if fulfilled, will lead to most of the ruling party going to prison. This is just replacing one puppet with another.

But we can still nontheless rejoice in the government collapsing.

There was an incident in Belgrade yesterday where a 25 year old woman ran over 6 people with her car.

Farmers came to Novi Sad today to join the students in the blockades. The students also announced a major event on Monday, though they’re keepinh it secret for now.

They also announced blocking 3 major bridges that lead to Novi Sad on the 1st of February.

My personal opinion: this year will either be the end of the ruling party in Serbia, or the year of the biggest repressions in Serbian history. Most people support the students, many businesses (even big ones) joined the call to a general strike yesterday. Teachers continued their strike, with parents supporting them, the bar association also extended their strike, even IT workers joined in.