{"id":2277,"date":"2024-10-01T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/?p=2277"},"modified":"2025-05-12T12:40:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T12:40:25","slug":"1-oct-2024-response-to-wsj-not-funded-by-the-west-or-russia-but-fueled-by-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/1-oct-2024-response-to-wsj-not-funded-by-the-west-or-russia-but-fueled-by-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"1 Oct 2024: Response to WSJ – Not Funded by the West or Russia, but Fueled by the People."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Original Article: This $2.4 Billion Lithium Mine Is Caught Between Russia and the West, Sept. 30, 2024<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to the biggest environmental movement in Europe, the movement against lithium mining in Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic has claimed<\/a> we are funded by \u201cthe west.\u201d Now, in your article, we have come to discover that \u201cthe west\u201d suspects that we are fueled by Russia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be difficult for leaders in bed with extractivist corporations to be confronted with a genuine decentralized peoples\u2019 movement of this magnitude of hundreds of thousands in the streets and protests in over 50 towns. We are a movement that has unified people of varying ideologies, political preferences, education levels, ages and life experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While our autocratic leader, Rio Tinto, the US embassy and Germany\u2019s Chancellor (who wants to avoid a recession by re-powering Germany\u2019s ailing car manufacturing fleet with electric vehicles) promote this mine, it is not surprising that \u201cthe west\u201d would use Vucic style propaganda to suggest that if a movement they can not control is successful it must be funded by a political rival. It\u2019s a politically fashionable rhetoric used to delegitimize and destabilize genuine, non partisan, people-led descent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People have been opposing this mine for years but it\u2019s only now, when lithium unleashes a white gold-rush that Serbia is getting coverage. Here, the issue of land is crucial; especially to the farmers threatened with expropriation. It is our collective respect for land, farming and nature, not Russia, that fuels our solidarity and hope. It is insulting to the intelligence and hard work of those who have built this movement, and to the hundreds of thousands who have joined us on streets, to claim it is fueled by anything other than hard work, unity and determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bojana Novakovic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

coordinator of the Mar\u0161 sa Drine collective against lithium mining in Serbia <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please note that the movement against lithium mining in Serbia is decentralized and coordinated by various civil society groups who comprise the organizational platform of this collective campaign. Mars sa Drine is one of those groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original Article: This $2.4 Billion Lithium Mine Is Caught Between Russia and the West, Sept. 30, 2024 When it comes to the biggest environmental movement in Europe, the movement against lithium mining in Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic has claimed we are funded by \u201cthe west.\u201d Now, in your article, we have come to discover that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1530,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,66],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-open-letters","8":"category-press-en"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2278,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions\/2278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}