This thread is intended to give some historical context to the symbolic weight of this victory. My hope is that the social movements don't stop here, but pull on the threads that bind Serbia's colonialism in Kosovo to neoliberal imperialism that followed and the present-day autocratic regime of AV.

You can read about the corruption related to the Trump project in the article linked. We cannot understand this victory as just some kind of legal win-it came on the heels of a year of open rebellion by the anti-regime student movement and extensive organizing.

apnews.com/article/serb...

Serbia's autocratic regime led by Aleksandar Vučić has profited greatly from urban renewal, often through brutal dispossession of its own, like in the case of the Belgrade Waterfront project. Like Kushner's Affinity, these efforts are funded by Gulf petrostates.

www.eurozine.com/luxury-and-p...

For Belgraders, these layers intersect, often in ways that erase Serbian culpability in the 1990s wars. Yet, what is equally erased in official discourse is the neoliberal dispossession that followed 1999, of which Kushner's hotel deal (pictured) would have been the last straw.

The buildings were designed by Nikola Dobrović between 1955-65. They are a memorial to anti-fascist struggle, imitating the Sutjeska canyon where the Yugoslav partisans turned the tide of WW2 in the Balkan theatre in 1943. A movie about it stars Richard Burton:

www.imdb.com/title/tt0070...

The buildings Kushner and Trump set their sights on remain of one of the few unprivatized reminders of the bombing in Belgrade's very center. They have been standing in ruins for 26 years now.

None of this excuses the horrific massacres of Albanian civilians in Kosovo or the long-standing colonial governance of the province by Serbia & Yugoslavia. Look up Podujevo. Most Serbs however experienced the bombing not as an attack on Milošević, but as a prelude to accumulation by dispossession.

There are many other examples, from the Zastava factory now owned by Stellantis to the federal police headquarters now sporting skyscrapers built by the Israeli investment firm AFI (image). In 1999, Serbia's GDP fell by 40% and most of its industry was destroyed. It was bought cheap in the 2000s.

For example, the former Central Committee building in New Belgrade was hit by several Tomahawk missiles. It was bought and rehabbed by a company partially owned by Merrill Lynch. Today, it houses a shopping mall and Microsoft's headquarters for Southeastern Europe.

NATO also targeted civilian and economic infrastructure not connected to the war effort. Passenger trains, Easter markets, hospitals, and housing blocs were all hit. In subsequent years, private investment funds bought out the bombed-out shells for pennies.

The ruins are symbolic for multiple reasons. First and foremost, they are a stark reminder of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, which was ostensibly to stop Milošević's ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo. The cleansing was real and the campaign did achieve that.

I hear you, and your project looks great! That said, just scanning the docs - the level of learning I'd have to do just to make a simple website is beyond what I have time for. It's not for me or (I suspect) the vast majority of people working a full-time job where this is not part of their job.

I get where the incentives are, and the personal website era is dead. But I am surprised there isn’t something intermediate that would handle templating more easily.