THE MOUNTAIN SHOOK, A MOUSE WAS BORN

SERBS ARE NO GHANDI

THE “IDES OF MARCH”

WHY IS NO ONE PROTESTING VUCIC REGIME’S MEDIA CENSORSHIP?

Guess it all has to do with expectations. Those who were hoping for a change after today’s massive demonstrations in the Serbian capital will be left disappointed. “The mountain shook, a mouse was born,” goes an old saw (“tresla se gora, rodio se mis” – the Serbian version of this proverb).

Aleksa Cvetanovic, one of the student-protestors, told the SBS News, an Australian news channel, that whatever the outcome, it’s important for the people of Serbia to stand together.

 “I would like to see a regime change, but it is a long shot; and it will be difficult to achieve. Today we will demonstrate our dissent, to show how many people will be there, to show what we are striving for, for a normal state, a state of law, without corruption, lying, media pressures, persecutions, expulsions, and unjust sentencing. We are hoping for the best. What will happen, no one knows.”

Well, nothing happened. Nothing has changed. Aleksander Vucic’s corrupt regime remains in power despite the impressive turnout. The government sources put it at 107,000, while the Arhiv of Javnih Skupova, which counts people at such events claimed 275,000 to 325,000 “or more.”

The Serbian president, known for his sophistry and double-talk, wondered afterward why were so many “rich people” in the streets today, adding that there were almost “no poor people at these protests, or those who are poorer.”

“Let’s see what we have against the rich, to look at our mistakes openly,” he said about the country in which the only really “rich” people are Vucic and his cronies who have enriched themselves through theft and corruption. Which brought about the massive student-led protests which have rocked this small Balkan country for the last four months.

Click on the video below to see the Slavija square at the height of protests.

SERBS ARE NO GHANDI

What hope is there for the Serbs to take down Vucic’s corrupt regime by peaceful means?

Frankly, slim to none. Serbs are no Ghandi. This Indian-born lawyer was an exception in the history of mankind. He took down the then most powerful empire in the world practically singlehandedly. But it took a lifetime of patience, perseverance, courage and sacrifice to do it. And in the end, at the age of 78, after he had kicked the British out of India, Ghandi was assassinated by one of his countryman.

So he became a legend, a saint, like Jesus and his disciples.

The Serbs are the people known for their fiery temperament. Which is why they have been a thorn in the eye of many empires. The Ottoman empire occupied Serbia for five centuries, but in the end lost it.

The Serbs caused the World War I (at least one Serb did – Gavrilo Princip), then fought and eventually prevailed against the Austro-Hungarian and German empires (of course, with the help of other allies). Which led to the creation of a much bigger country – Yugoslavia, with a Serb king as the head of state. In World War II they participated in a guerrilla war against the Nazis and eventually threw them out.

WHO TRAINED THEM? WHERE IS THEIR “GHANDI?”

Given all this violent history, I was utterly amazed at how well organized and how well behaved these hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were today. That’s just not in their genes. That’s something that had to have been taught and learned. Like the lessons in school or the army.

Who taught the students that? Who finances them? Who is their “Ghandi?”

Actually, what’s happening in Serbia is a “reverse-Ghandi.” There is no leader. Yet everything seems to run smoothly like a Swiss clock, unlike the opposition rallies from yesteryears which were chaotic and fizzled out quickly.

THE “IDES OF MARCH”

These questions are particularly poignant on the day known in history as the “Ides of March.” On this day in 44BC, some 60 Roman senators stabbed and killed Julius Caesar on the Senate floor (see (see THE IDES OF MARCH ARE UPON US… WHOSE FUNERAL IS IT? PEACE DOVES’?, Mar 15, 2014).

It was an ominous sign. Just as a Roman soothsayer predicted 2,069 years ago.

On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, “Well, the Ides of March are come”, implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled. To which the seer replied, “Aye, they are come, but they are not gone.” This meeting is famously dramatised in William Shakespeare‘s play Julius Caesar, 

Clearly, the Serbian “Caesar” survived the Ides of March.

What comes next?

Well, I don’t know. Guess we’ll have to consult that Roman seer. He nailed it back then.

WHY IS NO ONE PROTESTING VUCIC REGIME’S MEDIA CENSORSHIP?

Meanwhile, as editor and publisher of the Truth in Media for the last 35 years, one could not help but wonder why nobody focused on the total media censorship of this historic event by the Vucic regime? I was able to watch the demonstrations ‘live” in Arizona on the N1 channel internet stream. But I was told that almost none of the local TV channels broadcast the news from this historic event.

I find that outrageous. That’s like what the Tito communist regime did in 1968 when this writer was also a student-demonstrator in Belgrade. Those protests also ended up peacefully and with public concessions by the communist dictator. Which he quickly recanted. And this went on for another 34 years before there was a substantive change of government in Serbia.

Guess the silver lining in all this is that the PC and Internet revolutions, which this writer predicted in 1994 would empower the individuals against the powerful corporations and governments, have indeed born fruit. The MSMs (main stream media) can try to censor things but the internet and the social media will run circles around them like some 20th century dinosaurs.

“The PC and the Internet have empowered individuals and small companies to compete with giant enterprises on a level playing field. They’ve become equalizers. Kind of like the invention of handguns. The latter enabled even the little old ladies to overpower the giant sumo wrestlers if accosted by them” (Forbes column “Move over Einstein, Signor Da Vinci Is Back“, Jul 1997).

So it goes.

UPDATE March 16

WAS SONIC WEAPON USED AGAINST PROTESTERS?

Take a look at these two videos…

The crowd reaction was typical for people exposed to a non-lethal but ear-splitting sound which a Long-Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, emits. It is a sonic gun first developed as military weapons in response to the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000. Military officials asked the LRAD Corporation (now Genasys) for a device with two functions: to communicate at a distance with potential threats, and to disperse them with an unbearable alarm-like sound.

And here’s what that feels like in the words of one New York City resident who was exposed to an LRAD ray in 2014:

“Horrible, nauseating pain hit my body,” he tells Popular Mechanics, “and thenI realized it was sound. At first you just think, ‘What’s happening to me?’ Your body goes into complete pain and panic mode. It’s the sound equivalent of looking into the sun.”

This person’s description is remarkably similar to the reactions the Belgrade media have reported about the people who experienced this attack on their ears in Belgrade last night.

In 2017, a group of New Yorkers sued the NYPD for damages resulting from sonic attacks during the protests that followed the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo, one of the officers who murdered Eric Garner in 2014. The department argued loud sounds can’t constitute a use of force, which the judge rejected, allowing the case to proceed. An earlier suit in Pittsburgh awarded $72,000 to a bystander who suffered permanent hearing loss from an LRAD attack in 2009.

WHO DID IT?

Back to Belgrade, several Serbian government officials, including president Vucic, have denied that the sonic gun was fired by one of their own. Indeed, use of something like that against peaceful citizens would only make things worse for the government.

Yet as you can see from the above images, this isn’t something that an ordinary citizen would be able to afford. And not just because of the extraordinarily high prices – between $100,000 and $190,000 depending on the model. Unless he/she is a well-funded terrorist provocateur.

It is also because it is ILLEGAL in the US to sell it to individuals. “This item is restricted to Law Enforcement, Military or Government personnel,” reads the Curtis Blue Line website which sells LRADs (see above image).

So if it was not the Serbian police or the military that deployed the sonic gun, who was it?

That’s a million-dollar question which can only be answered if a witness comes forth with a photo or a video of the shooter. Or at can describe what they looked like. After all, given the bulky size of this weapon, it is not something that you can hide in a backpack or something. Especially surrounded by thousands of people.

Unless, of course, it was fired from a balcony. In which case, again, there ought to be witnesses – the neighbors whose eyes were surely peeled on the street during the protests.

Well, we’ll see what the investigation which the government has promised discovers.