24.10.2016
Monday at the Book Fair
The idea builds the world but it also destroys it, so many things, starting from the idea to a concrete action, secret or public, affect the security of a society – this is the main message of the second day of participation of Odbrana Media Centre in the 61st International Book Fair in Belgrade and of the two very interesting books that Odbrana presented: "Public goals of secret societies" by Milos Jankovic, Assistant Minister for Human Resources and "Political delicts – assassination and rebellion", by Goran Matic, Director of the Office of the National Security and Classified Information Protection in the Serbian Government. Promotion, held in the Borislav Pekic hall, was opened by Colonel Stevica S. Karapandzin, Director of Odbrana Media Centre.
"This year, Odbrana Media Centre is represented at the book fair with a total of 500 publications, some hundred of which are completely new, with 25 works meant for a wider readership, and the rest being of great importance for the defence system", Karapandzin said. "At this fair, the Media Centre will present 15 new works printed this year. The characteristic of this year's publications of Odbrana Media Centre is still marking the centenary of the Great War. I would use this opportunity to draw your attention to very interesting works dealing with the religious service in the armed forces, Serbian-Greek relations, the Royal Air Force. There are also books dealing with the Serbs, as military commanders in the Russian army, from Peter the Great to the October Revolution, then downing of the F-117 "Night hawk", biographies of interesting personalities who did exceptional deeds in some difficult moments, and then were repressed in memories. As the Media Centre deals also with geopolitics, it was natural that we also had among this year's publications the books such as "Russian Gas Age" and others."Dragana Markovic, Head of the Publishing Activities Division in the Odbrana Media Centre and the one who is responsible for editing the two books presented today, recalled the huge problem that the book has been constantly facing in recent years, under pressure from electronic and virtual media:
"For the past thirty years before the Book Fair, there has been a debate whether the book in its paper form will survive or be suppressed by some of its electronic versions. If we turn around, we can see that it has already been articulated for 61 times and book reports loud that it is still among us. Therefore, every published book should be perceived as another victory, and every read book – as a ticket to our more beautiful, comfortable and meaningful world. Books that will be discussed today belong to the most important publications of Odbrana Media Centre published this year.The books concerned deal with very specific topics – secret societies and political delicts that lead to the destruction of the constitutional order of a country; or they address security issues, in a special way. This time, Odbrana left it to authors to present their works.
Milos Jankovic, Assistant Minister for Human Resources in the Serbian Ministry of Defence, the author of nearly 70 works, out of which 50 belong to poetry, said that the book is actually the fruit of his MA thesis, defended several years ago at the Police Academy, with some changes – because, in the meantime, there have been changes in the secret societies, some organizations have disappeared, some new emerged.
"Secret societies are part of our everyday life", Jankovic points out. "Their public goals are most often human rights, respect for diversity, human goals, etc. However, their range of activities is very wide, whereby public goals are not contested, while the secret ones are always an issue because they are not sufficiently known. In this book, these societies are divided into four groups: political societies, criminal religious and philosophical, and general ones. And they all have their own secret goals that are well packed through the prism of public objectives and work".
As the activities of secret societies have often been associated with political changes and upheavals in many countries, it was natural that besides this book, another book dealing with political delicts through the assassinations and rebellion, by Goran Matic, PhD, with exactly the same title "Political delicts – assassination and rebellion"."The idea runs the world but it also destroys it, and until the end of the 19th century, subversion and murder of monarchs were almost the only way in which the coups were carried out", Matic recalled, pointing out another important reason for the development of this work – from early 20th century, with the strengthening of democracy and democratic institutions, every subversive idea was faced with a new problem – the murder of a ruler was no longer enough for a radical change, but all the ideas that lead to the coup and those working on it are forced to destroy the institutions to make the coup possible. Therefore, the problem of protecting the constitutional order is still up to date, especially in Serbia. “Therefore, the battle for the Serbian statehood is not finished, it still continues", Matic said.
Milan Milosevic, a long-time lecturer at the Academy of Criminalistics and Police Studies and reviewer of this book pointed out that this is the topic and the approach that a small number of researchers have dealt with so far, which is illogical, especially in Serbia, considering the past and the fact that we as a country have often been exposed to various challenges.
"The book moves our understanding from the topic it deals with, not by one, but by several steps and it is a great introduction to the world of political violence and criminal law and security phenomena that threaten the constitutional order. At the same time, it is a call for researchers to enter more deeply into this topic and deal with the impact of political delicts on the Serbian legal system, for example. "Odbrana Media Centre continues its participation in the Book Fair with new promotions of interesting works from its own publishing production contributing to the safe place of a printed book as a favourite media and the window to knowledge.
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