If any Serbs are reading this blog (and I hope some are), please read this great article by Rosemary Bailey Brown. She’s married to a Serb ex-pat. While Rosemary has a unique perspective on things, she missteps comparing the histories of the two countries. Serbia is an OLD country; the U.S. is a very young country, relatively speaking. We can’t claim roots that go back to the 10th Century. Plus, it’s a bit disengenuous to think that Serbs want to befriend America or even to understand it. Their kneejerk reaction to a country that unilaterally and without provocation bombed them, bombed their highways and byways, power plants, electrical sources, water sources, radio towers (Avala, anyone?) is abject hatred and who can blame them?
I may be one of those small handful — two percent — of Americans who even know anything about Serbia and because I do, I’ve managed to delve into quite a bit of its history, and particularly into what really went on in the 1990s. Our country, along with Western mainstream media, has swept just about all of this right under the rug. They have reason to. What our country did was wrong and there is no excuse for it. And because of that, I’m ashamed to be an American.
But YOU have a chance to make a difference in how the majority of Americans view Serbia. And in how Serbia views the U.S. Myself? I have been fortunate enough to get to know a great Serbian man. I’d LOVE to think that most Serbs are like him, honest, forthright, gentle, decent, loyal, kind. He accepts me even though I’m sure he’s not happy about what my country did to his. But we got past that. Maybe others can too. Pozdrav!
Svetlana calls it as she sees it over at the Byzantine Blog. Read about NATO’s latest attempts to bulldoze over the remaining Serbs in Kosovo. Can you say ethnic cleansing? I knew that you could.
The Air Medical Evac Team of the Serbian contingent, stationed in Kinshasa, Kongo, Africa, as part of the MONUC mission in that troubled country, has had the honor and the privilege to safeguard the famous Hollywood star George Clooney and Jane Hall, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General.
George Clooney is very popular in Serbia, not just for his acting and charm, but also because he has opposed the independence of the Serbian Province of Kosovo. Rumors say that Robert de Niro, Sharon Stone, Sean Connery and some others have also made the Serbian voice heard in Hollywood.
A popular serbian wedding song from Kosovo and Metohia. Although it is performed on festive occasions, the song begins with sad verses: “A dense fog has fallen… not a thing can be seen.” A large number of songs from Kosovo begin with the same verses. These words are a metaphor for the suffering and pain of the Kosovo Serbs in slavery under the Turks. Dense fog symbolizes the burden of life, under the pressure of which freedom cannot be glimpsed (”not a thing can be seen”). In the very next verse, like light shining through the darkness of slavery, the song places a tall tree in sight. Beneath it sits a tailor, sewing a wedding waistcoat upon which silver adornments shine like stars in the sky. These verses testify to the existence of faith, hope and joy even in slavery.
