This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction – And still the sun shines, the sparrows come each morning to the bakery for crumbs.

Excerpt from the radio show Peščanik, 9th October 2009: Srđa Popović reflects on the roots of violence in contemporary Serbian society.

The trouble is that human rights don’t grow on trees, but that you have to work very hard for them to come into existence.

The intention to put the affairs regarding human and minority rights under jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice is damaging in many aspects.

Serbia still aspires to play an arbiter in some exclusively internal affairs of its neighbor.

It is a long-term project that brings together 60 Southeast-European historians to work together through multiperspective history of the region.

Tim Judah's analysis: If you only want bad news from the Balkans, it is easy enough to find. But in many respects, things are not as bad as commonly believed.

The party was constantly being divided by this built-in contradiction – both democratization and nationalism, and the result is Tadic’s slogan – both Kosovo and Europe.

A small nation certainly has and is something. But being insignificant, it is worth only with its racial and not cultural individuality. This value remains localized and a small nation lives in international solitude, so to speak.

It is a weird feeling to stand in Potocari, silently reading the engraved names, hundreds of them, almost your entire family, and unconsciously looking for your own name among them, right there between Hamdija and Hasan, alphabetically.

Countries that are more integrated with the EU have suffered more from the crisis. These countries are also better positioned to profit from the various measures introduced in the EU to support stability and spur recovery.

A group of over 200 “distinguished intellectuals” signed a petition calling for a referendum on whether Serbia should join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Peščanik interview with the departing Croatian president Stjepan Mesić about Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, his conflict with Catholic hierarchy...

This government has envisaged a reform too extraordinary in its scope and quite incomparable to any set of reforms in any other country. In practical terms, this reform meant revolution.