Reading the daily papers I found a short notice: Serbia plans to erect a monument in honour of Gavrilo Princip right on time for the 100 year jubilee of the act that triggered WW1. His footprints in brass on location were bad and tasteless enough when it was done decades ago but this seems a new low.
It got them their 'independence', and the war would've likely happened anyway with any other excuse. Not to justify them but it isn't that crazy when you think about it.
It's not as if Serbia was not independent before and not even yet done with digesting her ill-gotten gains from the two Balkan wars (the first against Turkey, the second against their own ally in that war, Bulgaria). And what the Serbs did with those that could not get serbified in those areas verged on full blown genocide.
Btw, the archduke was not a target because he was an insufferable <censored>* but because he was a moderate on Balkan affairs who threatened to use diplomacy and peaceful means to find a solution for the problems that plagued that region. He had to die or he would have deprived the vultures of the prospect of carrion.
To be nasty, PETA should celebrate. It looks like no single human being in history has shot as many animals as the archduke did for his entertainment.
*which he arguably was outside his home and away from his family
WWI has begun! Tonight sees the first of a million TV programs about it. I have just switched off the first one which shows how men were recruited. Why would I want to see the process by which millions of young men went to their death?
Useless death, few wars are as dumb as that one.
As for recruiting methods, this classic says it all
[youtube=425,350]CIEwKyxr2bU[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIEwKyxr2bU
A cynic would say that these days 'all the girls you can rape' should be the new US recruiting slogan given how female soldiers are treated (plus the occasional native girl that one can shoot afterwards and declare to have been a terrorist in disguise)