Prologue

INTO THE YEAR 2011, WITH A YEAR OF DEFEATS AND VICTORIES BEHIND US
Bitter Deposits of Experience

How was it: ”A year left. It rolled away like a pebble down a slope, moved by our feet.” One more, one less, depending on which side you turn to.
During the previous year, we have emerged from the crisis several times and we will do the same in the New Year too. We will not get bored, we’ll keep repeating it until the crisis gets bored and leaves. Or until we find more intelligent speech writers. All this indicates the terrifying depth of the crisis. Crisis of taste, morals and meaning; the economic crisis is only their mathematical expression. Spinned visionary enthusiasms here usually end by tax rate increases. (When it seems to you that the story they are serving you is too sweet, check whose hand is in your pocket.)
Until the world exists with Serbs in it, the year 2010 will remain remembered for one more, the biggest up to now, translating of the Kosovo tragedy into a political farce. Everyone politically and historically literate knew in advance what the opinion of the Hague Tribunal would be about the illegal secession of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia, and where they would go to get this opinion. Everyone knew what could be born from another encounter of relativized law and blind force. However, until the last moment, there was hope that no one was participating on our behalf in the fixing of the game against us. Alas! The documents later published on WikiLeaks, however insignificant they are and not revealing anything new, made our fall into farce even more difficult and the feeling even more pathetic. The consequences will have a long-term impact. That is why the most painful impression from 2010 is: while all this was happening, it seems that no one in Serbia shed a tear, no one took out the final argument. (Is it so?) Even more painful than the fact that only in December 2010, after all this and after the honorable report of Dick Marty, Western Europe was informed that the torn away Kosovo is a criminal creation, founded on Albanian terrorism, trafficking of drugs, weapons, humans and human organs of savagely murdered victims.
In 2010, we were hit by great floods several times, we had an earthquake in Kraljevo, the epidemics of malignant diseases reached dramatic proportions (keeping the causes secret is the Serbian foreign policy). The sportsmen have again brought us most joy. Tennis, water polo, volleyball players... They showed us again that, if Serbs today want to become champion, in any field, it is not sufficient for them to conquer their rivals at the court. They must also win the judges, the audience, the organizers. The whole System. And the excellent Serbian basketball players in Turkey shared the fate of their country: they were brutally robbed before the eyes of the whole world. Afterwards they were promised that once, when it no longer matters, everything will be investigated in detail.
Happy New Year 2011.