Zoran Djindjic

Balkanska pravila (Balkan Rules)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU9-vd_sNsk
Ako stane... (If it stops...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjPCSGPTNMI

Milorad Dodik

Milan Mladenovic

Ivica Osim

Dragutin Dimitrijevic Apis

Josip Broz Tito

Dragoslav Mihajlovic

Emir Kusturica

Najpoznatiji srpski reditelj Emir Kusturica izjavio je u intervjuu ruskom dnevniku „Utro” da on nije „menjao veru” kada se krstio u pravoslavnoj crkvi.
Kusturica je objasnio da je jedan deo njegove porodice u vreme Otomanskog carstva primio islam, a da se on krstio.
„To nije promena vere, već prosto krštenje”, rekao je on, dodajući da se deo porodice u kojoj je njegov otac, uvek smatrao Srbima.
Povodom sadašnjeg života na Mokroj Gori, planini u zapadnoj Srbiji, kojoj je udahnuo novi život, Kusturica je rekao da je odlučio da živi tamo gde ga „ljudi biraju ne na izborima, već zato što im se dopada ili ne”, a da je Drvengrad jedna moderna verzija manastirskog života i njegova zadužbina.
On je dodao i da izuzetno voli da boravi u Moskvi, jer u Rusima vidi bratski narod: „To je kulturna i antropološka veza koju niko ne može da raskine”.
Kusturica se u intervjuu posebno osvrnuo na pitanje Kosova, ocenjujući da ukoliko Zapad prizna nezavisnost Kosova, on priznaje i „biološki recept” i ideju o vladavini „onih kojih je više nad onima kojih je manje”, a ne građansko društvo, za koje se bori.
„Ne razumem težnju Zapada da prizna nezavisnost Kosova, gde nije zaživela ideja o zajedničkom životu, gde treba da vlada princip biološkog recepta, koji se zasniva na činjenici da je Albanaca više i da oni treba da imaju nacionalno prvenstvo”, rekao je on, ocenjujući da „to potpuno protivreči idejama nove Evrope”.
Kusturica je sebe opisao kao „zakletog antiglobalistu” koji je procesom globalizacije nezadovoljan jer predstavlja „kraj epohe, izdaju principa hrišćanstva u potpunosti, izdaju principa zajedničkog života, svega što čovek može da stvori i čemu pripada”.
„Antiglobalizam je otpor gubitku individualnosti. Sve što postoji u ljudskoj kulturi stvoreno je u najranijoj fazi, kada je kultura samo pridavala formu životu. Sada je to neopaganski princip, koji stavlja korporaciju iznad svega, a celokupno ljudsko iskustvo se pretvara u tržište i profit. I to je najveća katastrofa”, ukazao je on. „Korporativni kapitalizam guši individualnost”, ukazao je Kusturica i podsetio da je Hristova ideja milosrđa i saosećanja „najznačajnija ljudska ideja”. (Tanjug/Mondo)
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On Đurđevdan (St. George's Day) in 2005 Emir was baptised into the Serb Orthodox Church as Nemanja Kusturica (Немања Кустурица) in Savina monastery near Herceg Novi, Montenegro.
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'I will not cut my film'
He has won two Palmes d'Or and is threatening to pull his latest film from British cinemas. Emir Kusturica invites Fiachra Gibbons to the village he has built near Belgrade to explain all Friday March 4, 2005
The Guardian
Emir Kusturica has just finished writing his letter to the censor.
"I will not cut my film because, because, because ... because of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz." "What do you think?" he asks me. I tell him that as an argument it has a certain economy and elegance, but it might not be the most practical of approaches.
"I don't care," he says. "That shithead is driving me nuts. He is messing with my sleep."
The British censor has asked him to remove a scene from his new film, Life Is a Miracle - a typically full-blooded romance set against the backdrop of the Bosnian war - in which a cat pounces on a dead pigeon.
Kusturica had thought it a reasonable metaphor for how idealists and innocents are easy prey for calculating big beasts in times of conflict.
The offending shot lasts of all of two seconds and is about as disturbing as an episode of the Teletubbies. But the British censor said no and Kusturica, one of the greatest film directors in the world, is so flummoxed and upset that he is considering pulling the film from the UK altogether.
I beg him not to. "You don't realise what an emotive issue pigeons are in England," I say, with all the plausibility I can muster.
"I am not cutting my film for this jerk," he insists. "Was he brought up by pigeons or something? I love Ken Loach and your football and your working class, but I do not believe the great English culture is going to be undermined by one eastern European cat.
"I just don't get it. The pigeon was already dead, we found it in the road. And no other censor has objected. What is the problem with you English? You killed millions of Indians and Africans, and yet you go nuts about the circumstances of the death of a single Serbian pigeon. I am touched you hold the lives of Serbian birds so dear, but you are crazy. I will never understand how your minds work."
The workings of the undeniably brilliant mind of Emir Kusturica, the only director other than Francis Ford Coppola to have won the Cannes Palme d'Or twice, can be equally unfathomable. Stories of Kusturica are legend. Of his gonzo love for guns, how he likes to fire off a few hundred rounds before breakfast to get the juices going, of the controlled anarchy of his sets, awash with goats, geese, Gypsy bands and explosives, and how he works his crews to the point of lunacy. On Life Is a Miracle, a sprawling Zhivago of a love story, he shot for 12 full nights in the small city of Cacak and didn't use a second of the footage.
Kusturica is a walking morass of contradictions: a Sarajevan "Muslim" whom many Bosnians accuse of abandoning his city at its hour of greatest need to side with the Serbs. And yet Kusturica was a fearless critic of Milosevic. He challenged one of his most blood-drenched henchmen to a public duel in Belgrade and squared up to a still more grisly Serb supremacist in the street.
Like his great films - Underground, Time of the Gypsies, When Father Was Away on Business and Black Cat, White Cat - he is passionate, unpredictable and hilarious: you can see why he drives himself and the people around him to madness, and why they always forgive him for it. He has an irresistible mix of bravery, warmth and vulnerability.
Kusturica does not have fans as much as followers, who turn out in their thousands all over the world to his concerts when this bear of a man takes his Balkan "punk" band, the No Smoking Orchestra, on the road. But nothing could have prepared even them for what Kusturica has done now.
I turn up in Belgrade as the thermometer sinks south of -20 degrees. "Come to my village," he demands. "I have something to show you." Three thousand feet up on Tara mountain the next morning, the full effect of his latest piece of "inspired lunacy" sits under 2ft of snow. Kusturica has sunk himself deep into debt, spending more than £1m to build a pastoral paradise, his own version of Plato's republic, in one of Europe's last great peasant redoubts.
"This is my Utopia," he declares. "I lost my city [Sarajevo] during the war, now this is my home. I am finished with cities. I spent four years in New York, 10 in Paris, and I was in Belgrade for a while. To me now they are just airports. Cities are humiliating places to live, particularly in this part of the world. Everything I earn now goes into this."
What started as a couple of salvaged traditional wooden houses 18 months ago, on a bluff above the spectacularly beautiful Mokra Gora valley in western Serbia, has mushroomed into a modern take on the great monastery-universities of the middle ages. The village is equipped with a library, Serbia's most advanced cinema and, most incongruously of all, an underground basketball arena - a tribute to the three world championships won by the former Yugoslavia.
For Kustendorf, as he calls the place, is also a hymn to Serbian cultural achievement and traditional living - a kind of cultural Alamo, as a country that has been cut off from the world by war and sanctions opens itself up to the gentle mercies of globalisation.
"I am making a stand here. I want to do something constructive. In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don't have experience of the west, they even believe that western shit is pie." Given that the prophets of the free market in Serbia often tend to be the same gangsters, war profiteers, smugglers and chancers that Kusturica lampoons in his films, you can see his logic.
Kusturica is even planning a film as a part of his crusade against consumerism, where the daughter of a prostitute flees the city with a country boy. "They say that I am a conservative, but I am not. I want there to be an alternative, to have other options rather than just this one authoritarian, corporate model. To me there has been a tectonic change in the world and corporate control has become the new bolshevism. I know it is crazy, but I want to create a place where people can come in an organised way to think differently, to think their own thoughts."
His model for this Balkan Fitzcarraldo is Chilander, the great Serbian monastery on the Greek holy mountain of Athos, which kept Slavonic scholarship alive in the dark ages, though it is not clear that even he knows what he will end up with. Just like his films, there's a great deal of extemporizing. He has laid out and built 25 houses already, using his own idiosyncratic rules of classical proportion involving a set of ropes and a great deal of guesswork, "like the ancient Greeks did".
Yet this seat of learning will soon also have its own ski slope, and he is contemplating building another more secluded house for himself now that hundreds of his fans have begun to descend on the place at weekends. "The original monastery house in which I planned to spend the rest of my life is not working out. People come and you have to offer hospitality. Sometimes it's a bit like being in a glass cage." Even on the day I was there, he was stopped four times in the snow by visitors wanting to talk and have their photos taken with him.
Yet there is no doubting the sincerity of Kusturica's vision. He describes the Damascene moment when he decided to build the village like a celestial visitation. "One day when I was shooting I noticed a shaft of light hit the hillside. 'There I will build a village,' I thought." But the most jaw-dropping thing of all, given that Kusturica is descended from several generations of Bosnian Muslims, is that the centerpiece of the place is an orthodox church dedicated to the 13th-century scholar Sava, the patron saint of Serbia. What would his late father, Murat, have thought of that? "My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks."
The war, and his despairing attempt to cling to the debris of the old Yugoslavia, still casts a long shadow on his work. He insists he didn't choose sides, and it was his refusal to do so that made him a pariah in Sarajevo, a city that he clearly loves but which he probably cannot return to. Mokra Gora is about as close as you can be in Serbia to Sarajevo without crossing the border. Even his house looks out over the mountains to Bosnia. It is hard not to see him as a man inching his way home. The war mostly passed this place by. Shepherds in sheep-pelt coats still make their own cheese, flowery rakia and smoked sausage.
The Muslim villages over the hills in the Drina valley were not so lucky. Many who refused to abandon their homes in 1992 were massacred. Plenty of Serbs died too, of course. Life Is a Miracle begins in the weeks before this idyll disintegrated and ends during the war when a Serb falls in love with a female Muslim hostage who is about to be exchanged for his own captured soldier son. It is based on a true story of torn loyalties, and Kusturica says it really hit home. The main character could almost be a cipher for him. Like thousands of others in the former Yugoslavia, Kusturica refused to believe that war was coming. "I couldn't accept what was happening. I have dealt with it now. It no longer haunts me," he insists, but you wonder. Much still rankles more than a decade on. He recounts the story of how an American journalist grilled him at Cannes when he made Underground, about why he hadn't made a film attacking Milosevic. " 'Have you ever heard of metaphor?' I asked him."
He is now making a documentary about Diego Maradona, someone with whom he feels more than a little cosmic affinity. "I am very impulsive too - I know how it can drive you into the zone of madness." We talk about that goal, the "hand of God", and the church that sprang up in Buenos Aires to honour the footballer, the cult of Santa Maradona. "Most people only remember Maradona for the bad parts now," he says. "But he was a genius, someone who lifted us and himself up to the level of the gods. When he said after he scored that goal that it was the hand of God, to me it really was. There are always motherfuckers queuing up to pull you down to earth. But we must fly occasionally, we all have to feel that joy or we are nothing."
· Life Is a Miracle is released on March 11.

Dr. Dejan Ilic

Profesor i odbojkaš Dejan Ilić (48) je doktor nauka, a kao vanredni profesor predaje na nekoliko svetskih univerziteta, senator je u Evropskom privrednom senatu, jedini je Srbin redovni član Akademije nauka u Njujorku.
Pre tri godine dobio je nagradu za životno delo Svetskog udruženja hemičara u SAD.
Osim u svoju suprugu, ćerkicu, fizičku hemiju, Smederevo i Selevac, dr Dejan Ilić zaljubljen je i u odbojku. Prvi put zaigrao je sa 16 godina, a od Crvene zvezde stigao je do francuskog Medona i nemačkog Drezdena. I danas igra.
'Ja sam čovek seljak. Ovde trošim energiju na fizičke poslove, zidam, okopavam, volim da vozim traktor u zamašćenim pantalonama. Napajam vijuge za nove ideje.'-ovako govori prof. dr Dejan Ilić, jedan od najuspešnijih Srba u dijaspori, doskora direktor nemačke firme „Varta-mikrobateri“, a odskora prvi čovek kompanije za proizvodnju filmskih uređaja ARRI AG u Minhenu. 'U selu se stalno nešto radi. Pomažem komšijama ako šta treba da se ponese, ozida. Sadim i orezujem ruže, traktorišem', kaže čovek koji je izumeo prvu evropsku litijumsku bateriju za pejsmejker i izazvao revoluciju u svetu mini baterija. Za bateriju za slušni aparat marke „power one“, dr Ilić dobio je drugu svetsku nagradu za dizajn.
Prošle godine je bio proglašen jednim od 20 najboljih menadžera na svetu. U konkurenciji 1.000 najbriljantnijih mozgova, dr Ilić bio je jedini kome je mesto rođenja u Srbiji.
'Angažman u ARRI AG, najstarijoj kompaniji na svetu za proizvodnju filmskih uređaja, izazov je koji se ne odbija. Fizička hemija i spektroskopija su moja ljubav. Mogućnost da kreirate novi digitalni svet dobije se jednom u radnom veku. Pripremamo se za izradu novog čipa za 3D tehnologiju, što je prvi korak ka digitalizovanom bioskopu', objašnjava dr Ilić okupljenima u seoskoj kafani.
Kaže da je novi posao prihvatio i zato što je Minhen u poređenju s Elvagenom, 200 kilometara bliži Selevcu.
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23 Januar 2007
Dejan Ilić, direktor „Varta mikrobaterije”, dobitnik je svetske nagrade za inovacije u kategoriji srednjih preduzeća, koja mu je dodeljena tokom vikenda na svečanosti u poznatoj frankfurtskoj zgradi „Alte opera”.
Ovu nagradu Dejan Ilić dobio je za izum prve polimer baterije u svetu, ugrađene u najnovijem MP3 plejeru, poznatog proizvođača „Epl”.
„Reč je o izumu koji je poznata američka firma ugradila u svoj minijaturni MP3 plejer zahvaljujući kome su njihove akcije na tržištu porasle za osam do devet odsto, a akcije celog tržišta elektronike na kraju su zbog toga porasle za četiri odsto.
´Varta mikrobaterija´ na ovom projektu uradila je da baterija za ovaj MP3 plejer može na sebi da ima tri mikročipa, zatim da komunicira sa čitavom elektronikom, a ceo trik bio je u tome da izumemo bateriju koja će da se puni dok korisnik skida muziku sa kompjutera, u čemu smo i uspeli”, izjavio je Dejan Ilić, direktor „Varta mikrobaterije”.
Po njegovim rečima, ovaj MP3 plejer, koji se na tržištu SAD prodaje po ceni od 499 dolara, ne samo da može da skida muziku i isto vreme puni bateriju već korisniku pruža i slušanje muzike od 20 sati, a baterije se mogu puniti čak 1.000 puta.
„Varta mikrobaterija” je već prodala pet miliona baterija za ova uređaj, a u celom svetu „Epl” će u masovnu prodaju MP3 plejer pustiti već od aprila ove godine.
I pre nego što je u subotu dobio nagradu, ceo hol „Alte opere” odavao je utisak da će baš Dejan Ilić dobiti ovu prestižnu nagradu.
Naime, u „Alte operi” mogli su se videti panoi tri firme koje su dobile nagrade u svojim kategorijama, a između ostalog tu je bio i pano „Varta mikrobaterije”, koji je prikazivao baterije za minijaturni MP3 plejer.
„Mislim da su Nemci bili u šoku kad su čuli da je jedan Srbin dobio nagradu za inovaciju, a ova nagrada za Srbiju znači mnogo. Pre svega, Dejan Ilić otvara vrata mnogim poznatim kompanijama u Nemačkoj, a on je, kao veliki patriota, spreman da pomogne svojoj zemlji”, izjavio je Ognjen Pribićević, ambasador Srbije u Berlinu. Može se reći da je sa ovom nagradom Dejan Ilić na krovu sveta, jer je ovo samo jedna u nizu nagrada koje je Ilić dobio. Prošle godine u Monte Karlu bio je proglašen za najboljeg menadžera u svetu. (Blic)

Sveti Ilija

Prema kanonu SPC, praznik Svetog Ilije obeležen je „crvenim slovom”.
On, kako se veruje, upravlja munjama i gromovima.
Predanje kaže da je Ilija sin Savahov iz plemena Aronovog, brata Mojsijevog rođen 816. godine pre Hrista u Tesvitu, pa mu je nadimak Tesvićanin.
„Kada se Ilija rodi, njegov otac Savah vide angele Božje kako dete ognjem povijaju i daju mu plamen da jede”, zapisano je u „Prologu” vladike Nikolaja Velimirovića.
Vladika Nikolaj je pisao o plamenom karakteru svetitelja, borcu za pravu veru i protiv razvrata i nemorala, koji je vladao u jevrejskom narodu u vreme cara Ahaava i carice Jezavelje.
Prema starozavetnom predanju, Sveti Ilija nije umro, već se palenim kočijama vazneo na nebo, pa se ovaj prizor najčešće slika na pravoslavnim ikonama koje se iznose pred oltar na praznik Ilindan.
Mnoga narodna verovanja vezana su za svetog Iliju Gromovnika, a običaj je da se na njegov praznik ne radi u polju, da se ne bi navukao gnev svetitelja.
Veruje se da Sveti Ilija„komanduje” gromovima, dok se za njegovu stariju sestru Ognjenu Mariju (30. jul) veruje da upravlja ognjem, a njegova mlađa sestra Marija, čiji se praznik obeležava u avgustu, zove se Blaga.
Kad grom udara, onda kažu da Sveti Ilija, po zapovesti Božijoj, gađa đavole, pa kad grom pogodi u drvo, niko ga ne seče, čak ni za ogrev.
Oko Ilindana su često nesnosne žege, čuvene ilinjske vrućine, ali kada taj svetac mine, žege opadaju i dolaze svežije noći, pa otud i izreka: „Sveti Ilija, vatra sve milija” ili „Od Svetog Ilije, sunce sve milije”.

Isac Newton

Britanski naučnik Isak Njutn, otac moderne fizike i astronomije, u pismu iz 1704. godine predvideo je kraj sveta za 2060. godinu.
Njegovo pismo juče je izloženo u Hebrejskom univerzitetu u Jerusalimu u sklopu izložbe pod nazivom „Njutnove tajne”.
Čuveni racionalista, koji je kraljevskim izuzećem pošteđen zaređenja u engleskoj crkvi - što je bilo uobičajeno za akademika njegovog doba i zbog čega nije morao slediti njeno učenje - ipak je zasnovao svoje predviđanje na Biblijskom tekstu.
Njutn je utvrdio je da će svet nestati 1260. godina posle osnivanja rimske imperije u zapadnoj Evropi 800. godine naše ere.
Sa Univerziteta je saopšteno da je pismo prvi put javno izloženo od 1969. godine.
Njutnov rad krajem 17. veka na Univerzitetu Kembridž bio je kamen temeljac moderne nauke do otkrića relativiteta i kvantne mehanike u prošlom veku. Međutim, već je dugo poznato da se ovaj istaknuti fizičar iz engleskog mesta Grentama interesovao za alhemiju koje moderna nauka nije prihvatila.
Njutn je četiri godine proveo u pripremi rada iz alhemije.

Alan Greenspan

Bivši direktor Federalnih rezervi SAD kaže da je obezbeđenje nafte bilo suštinsko u svrgavanju Sadama Huseina.
Alan Grinspen tvrdi da je zvaničnicima Bele kuće pre pokretanja rata u Iraku rekao da je svrgavanje Sadama Huseina suštinsko u obezbeđivanju naftnih rezervi.
Upitan da li ima razloga za zadovoljstvo što je lider Iraka Sadam Husein uklonjen sa vlasti, Grinspen je odgovorio da je to „bilo od suštinskog značaja”.
U svojoj knjizi „Doba turbulencija: Avanture u Novom svetu”, Grinspan piše da mu je „žao što je politički nezgodno priznati ono što svi znaju, a to je da je rat u Iraku uglavnom vođen zbog nafte”. Međutim, kako ističe Vašington post, Grinspanova najveća podrška za zbacivanje Huseina sa vlasti bila je ekonomske prirode. „Mislim da je Sadam Husein jasno stavio do znanja, imajući u vidu 30 godina dugu istoriju, da je bio blizu preuzimanja kontrole u moreuzu Hormuz, kuda dnevno prođe 17, 18 ili 19 miliona barela nafte”, objašava Grinspan i dodaje da je zbog toga rekao da je „od suštinskog značaja” bilo svrgavanje bivšeg iračkog lidera.
Grinspen je sa dužnosti prvog čoveka Federalnih rezervi otišao početkom 2006, posle 18 godina na čelu te institucije.

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Greenspan described himself as "lifelong libertarian Republican"

In "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World", published September 17, 2007, Greenspan rails against President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Republican-controlled Congress for abandoning the Republican Party's principles on spending and deficits. Greenspan's criticisms of President Bush include his refusal to veto spending bills, sending the country into deeper and deeper deficits, and for putting political imperatives ahead of sound economic policies.

Greenspan also offers his opinion that the Iraq War is about oil, writing, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil".

Gen. Kuribayashi

" The life of your father is just like a lamp before the wind." - Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, in a letter to his son.
Kuribayashi, who had advocated against banzai attacks at the commencement of the battle, began to realize that Japanese defeat was imminent.
It has been said that Kuribayashi himself led this final assault which unlike the loud banzai charge of previous battles, was characterised as a 'silent' attack.
If ever proven true, Kuribayashi will have been the highest ranking Japanese officer to ever personally lead an attack during World War II.
Additionally, this would also be Kuribayashi's final act of departure from the normal practice of the commanding Japanese officers committing seppuku behind the lines while the rest perished in the banzai charge, as happened during the battles of Saipan and Okinawa.

Peter Handke

Nikola Tesla

Slavko Curuvija

Curuvija, who edited the newspapers "Dnevni Telegraf" and "Evropljanin", was shot 17 times in the head and back by two masked gunmen April 11 outside his Belgrade apartment during the NATO military offensive. He was owner and editor of his newspaper, the first private daily established in Serbia. Curuvija was returning home with his wife at the time of the shooting. He had been repeatedly harassed for his articles critical of the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic and various state-owned newspapers had called him a "traitor".

The daily newspaper "Politika" has alleged that three policemen from the Republic of Srpska (a Bosnian Serb entity) are implicated in Curuvija's death, and that Luka Pejovic, a Montenegrin who was identified as Curuvija's killer by a witness, was innocent. Pejovic was gunned down outside his Belgrade home on 5 December 2000.

It is Sunday and The Bombed One seems more agitated than usual. Slavko Curuvija was killed a couple of hours ago in front of his house.

He wrote some very compromising and raw articles about Milosevic and his lunatic acts. This was one of the few but brave people who stood up and fought.

The Bombed One is right on target.

In a war where who knows how many people are being killed, the murder of 50-year-old renegade newsman Slavko Curuvija really does get my sympathy.

Curuvija, according to The Bombed One and reporters from the former Yugoslav republic, was a great journalist, one who regularly pissed off Slobodan Milosevic.

There was little reaction to this crime in Serbia. That is probably a consequence of fear that something could happen to people if they try to speak up.

For The Bombed One, Curuvija's death is symbolic.

As a publisher and editor, Curuvija had a long history of butting heads with Milosevic, criticizing the Serbian leader's policies, his connection with criminals like Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, and the ruling party's corruption.

Bit by bit, Milosevic tightened the noose around Curuvija. On October 14, 1998, the Dnevni Telegraf was banned. Then the newsroom was sealed—and everything taken by government thugs—upon passage of a law called The Creation of Special Measures In Conditions of Immediate War Danger and NATO Threats. Curuvija and his editorial team were fined several times.

Then, on March 8, he was sentenced to five months in jail for "disturbing the public."

His appeal was in the works at the time of his death.

Most people who knew him were in a way expecting something like that to happen to him.

The Bombed One, and Serbs like him opposed to Milosevic, lost perhaps what little hope they had of ending the madness.

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Me, I lost a hero I never knew I had.

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April 14, 1999 By all accounts Slavko Curuvija was not a saint. The Serbian publisher and editor had cruised in shady circles, at times even rubbing shoulders with members of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's regime. His personal life was, well, lively. Tall and charismatic, a dapper dresser with a neatly trimmed gray beard, the 50-year-old had a reputation as a serial womanizer. The editor in chief of the Daily Telegraph newspaper crusaded against the corruption and often brutal actions of Milosevic's cronies. To liberals, he was one of the good guys.

So last Sunday, on Orthodox Easter, when masked gunmen pumped seven bullets into his head, a jolt of fear and revulsion hit Belgrade's pro-democracy elite. On Wednesday, despite rumors they would be arrested, more than 2,000 of them -- artists, opposition politicians, journalists -- flocked into downtown Belgrade's sprawling "New Cemetery" to pay respect to one of their own. No one doubted who was behind the assassination. It was a ritual murder, done on a major religious holiday, in front of his wife. It was a message from the regime to people like us that we, too, can end up like that.

There's more than one war being waged in Yugoslavia. Milosevic was fighting on at least three other fronts: war in Kosovo, Montenegro President and elimination of liberal opponents.

Milosevic liberal opposition in Serbia is on the run, either out of the country or underground. "We're virtually dead."-says one of them. Make that literally, in the case of Curuvija. Grief and shock floated through the onlookers, but the overriding emotion was fear. Nobody spoke up in protest.

As long as the war continues, the situation promises only to get worse. The airstrikes have unified most Serbs behind their leader, if only to defend their country.

Ironically, the only faint source of hope comes from a man who once betrayed them. Vuk Draskovic, an eloquent speaker who marched at the front of the pro-democracy protests of 1996, but later meekly joined Milosevic's ruling coalition, gave a surprising speech condemning the killing of Curuvija on his television station Tuesday. "Those who ordered and committed the murder of Slavko Curuvija have pointed on Serbia a weapon more powerful than all of NATO's bombs and missiles," he thundered, warning of a civil war. At the funeral, some people wondered what Draskovic's speech really meant. Only one thing was certain. "Man, he has balls," exclaimed a journalist.

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Slavko Ćuruvija, born August 9, 1949 in Zagreb.

After graduating from University of Belgrade's Faculty of Political Sciences, Ćuruvija found employment as a business secretary and PR assistant at Mašinogradnja company in Belgrade. He soon became the contributor to Zagreb's Danas weekly magazine, as well as to the Social Research Center (Centar za drustvena istrazivanja).

Between 1984 and 1986, he worked as an analyst in Federal Interior Secreteriat and State Security.

In 1986, Ćuruvija joined the staff of Borba.

He stayed with the daily paper until 1994 while regularly contributing to Komunist, Vjesnik, NIN, Večernji list, Nedelja, Pobjeda, TV Belgrade, TV Politika, TV Sarajevo, and some foreign publications.

In 1994, after the regime's unofficial takeover at Borba, Ćuruvija, along with many other staffers decided to leave the daily. While some of them quickly reconvened to form Nasa borba, Ćuruvija took another career route, hooking up with Momčilo Đorgović to create Nedeljni telegraf - a weekly tabloid newspaper. In 1996, the duo founded Dnevni telegraf - Serbia's first privately owned daily in more than 50 years.

In 1998, Ćuruvija additionally started a bi-weekly magazine Evropljanin where he gathered some notable names of Serbian journalism such as Aleksandar Tijanić, Ljiljana Smajlović, and Dragan Bujosevic.

Both Curuvija-owned publications undeniably benefited from his access to Mirjana Marković, wife of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. Ćuruvija's common-law wife Branka Prpa who was with him at the time of his murder attaches less significance to this friendship saying that it "revolved around conversations that many other journalists engaged in with Mira Marković hoping to manipulate her into revealing more than she'd originally planned". Prpa went on to add: "However, I think they became the ones being manipulated as the time went on".

Dnevni telegraf was banned on October 14, 1998 under a special new decree.

Furious with the new developments, Ćuruvija demanded to see Mira Marković and a meeting was arranged at her party's (Yugoslav Left) offices during the week Dnevni telegraf was banned as the new Information Law was being prepared. The meeting, reportedly quickly turned into a heated exchange.

Curuvija was shouting: "What the hell do you think you're doing. If you continue down this crazy path, you can be sure you'll all be hanging off lamp posts in Terazije".

The culmination of the day-long trial was a crippling DM350,000 fine.

Aleksandar Tijanic:

"A hired assassin killed him. A more interesting thing is who ordered his murder. I don't know who ordered it, but I know who his greatest enemies were. They were: court, the court jester and the court communists. Slavko had very powerful enemies. Slavko originated from Lika and he endured all of that stoically. He believed that Milosevic would fall soon. I claimed that he would hold power for years. I didn't notice his fear. He had two wrong assumptions. The first one was that this regime was dying. The second was that somebody from high circles would warn him in the case of a danger. It couldn't be expected. Such decisions are usually reached in a very narrow circle and there is no one to warn you. "

-He was mostly reproached because of your articles. Were you afraid?

"Both of us were threatened. A day before Slavko was murdered, I received twenty phone calls; a male voice repeated the same sentence: You are an imperial agent. The next day, Slavko was dead. When the threats began I allowed him to inform me if my articles endangered his newspapers.
We talked twice about it and I suggested that we should make a pause. He refused it. He said that it was our job and that we had to do it. Once, he was visited by a high official of the Socialist Party of Serbia, who told him that I had to stop writing such articles. If not, they would kill me.
Slavko called me immediately and told me the name of that man. He is director of a plant. I asked Slavko if that man precisely said that they were going to kill me and not him. Slavko said that I was the one. I told Slavko that he was to decide whether my articles were going to be published or not, but that I would write them in any case. He decided that we should go on. Later events showed that he was more important for them."

"The first anniversary of his death made a greater sensation than the very murder. Many things were accepted silently because of the war."

Slavko Curuvija was killed not because he had fought for the freedom of his newspapers and for the media freedom, but because he had fought for freedom within a society composed of deceits, failures, hallucinations and crime.
"He was killed because somebody had estimated that the Serbs' habits of speaking and thinking should be broken."

Slavko's murder is the first real political murder in Serbia and the beginning of the public degeneration of the system. With his life, Slavko ransomed the lives of several other journalists.

"He who forgets that Slavko was murdered not because of his newspapers, but because of the freedom in Serbia, becomes an accomplice in a continual crime the end of which cannot be seen."