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Date: 23 Dec 1995 23:58:20
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: OMTY@MATRIXPR.COM
Subject: Re: http://mediafilter.org/SJ/Pages/Peace to All
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    Hi,good look to all you ,I whant you'r pease.No more
war!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                          from: PUERTO RICOand ME


From notes@igc.apc.org Sun Dec 24 04:15:49 1995
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Date: Sun, 24 Dec 1995 00:22:46 -0800 (PST)
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: Ivo Skoric 
Subject: HOLIDAY GREETINGS
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From: Ivo Skoric 

Russians seem to get tired of capitalism pretty quickly.  Free
market economy

doesn't look at all as the post card images of downtown districts
of famous

European and American major cities.  Is this the first democratic
free elections

victory of bolsheviks in history?  (I hope the Workers World Garry
is happy, and

he will leave the Balkans for a while now; poor Garry actually
unsubscribed).  In

Poland where free-market-communists won elections, state telephone
monopoly

established an Internet monopoly, too - through the one and only
Internet

provider for entire Poland (NASK).  This is the first successful
example of

government control over the Net.  I hope it won't be repeated.


-/-

Clifford Bernath, Defense Department spokesman, says for Sunday
New York

Times that military is looking to use its new Internet toy -
Bosnialink - as a way

to send holiday greetings to troops stationed in Bosnia.  Welcome
aboard.

Zamir.chat is already used to that purpose, as I realized.  Is
that the first time

that Peacenet and Pentagon work towards the same purpose?

-/-

Cyberwarriors have another idea how to use Internet: last week
they shut off

French government communications for an hour by choking their
nodes - in

protest to French stupid stubborn nuclear test policy.

-/-

Imagine ALL THE PEOPLES living a Slobo's dream.  Referring to
multiple

nationalities of former Yugoslavia united in relief over the
signing of peace

agreement, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic often used that
phrase: all the

peoples.  As if he wanted to emphasize that "others" besides Serbs
were also part

of the war that was just brought to peace.  His equalizing of
victim and agressor

(which is so dear to him) was starkly opposed by Tudjman's
historic approach

(from about thousands of years ago), and Izetbegovic's moan (I bet
still didn't

agree with what he was just forced to sign) about the world that
sucks.  All of

them however expressed deepest gratitude first to president
Clinton (who

pleasantly nodded to each of them flattering) and then to other
"great powers"

that "brought peace" to Balkans.  They all conveniently forgot how
the war

started and why.  It's just too embarrassing for everyone, even
the Americans.

But it's not funny at all to those 2/3 of all Bosnians who lost
their homes.

-/-

Today I learned that Mein Kampf was never translated in Croatian,
Serbian or

Bosnian.  In fact it probably was during the Second World War, but
partisans

burned all those copies after the war and of course there was no
re-prints.  What

a terrible entrepreneurial loss.  That book would just sell there
so good, now.

Not that people would much learn out of it (not that they need to
learn much -

they seem to know their ugly ropes good enough even without
fuhrer).  It reads

like bad Nietzsche, like if Nietzsche's malicious sister wrote the
draft for it.  In

fact if Hitler was a theater director, maybe it would be an
interesting decadent,

kind of gross drama.  But he decided to be a situationist to the
extreme.  There

are other telling things about subtle cultural changes that
happened in former

Yugoslavia.  For example in Croatia to have Mein Kampf (in English
or German

preferably) is a hype things among adolescents.  Something that
can help you get

laid.  It is a sort of encouraged form of expressing your youth
rebellion, it is the

state sanctioned form of defying the state (that of course claims
that it severed

all ties with Croatian Nazi-associated past).  You can get your
wrist slapped, but

you are not really going to go down because of it (particularly if
you are from a

 good' communist-turned-nationalist middle class family).  Which
 means that a

better part of Croatian mainstream youth is actually more
nationalist and more

right wing than their already nationalist and right wing
government.  That's plain

scary, man.  They believe that their government is *too
communist*, *too far on

the left*.  This is a paradox reaction of urban Croatian youth to
the political

changes.  There are also demographic changes involved (due to
influx of refugees

from Bosnia and Hercegovina to Croatian urban centers) and
consequentially a

ruralization of Croatian urban culture - which results in even
less emphasis on

multi-culturalism and benefits of "co-existence". Zagreb and Split
downtown

areas are practically run over by Croat refugees from Hercegovina
(who have

relatives in the West who send them money, so they have more
muscle than the

residents of those cities).  And the music changed - literally
(which was the first

sign of a social change according to Plato): more and more cafes
plays  folk'

music catering to Hercegovina crowd, or the new pop-folk music
that mixes no-content lyrics with disco beat produced by sequencer
and traditional folk melody

as a background, preferably performed by a long legged belle in a
miniskirt.  Rock

concerts are almost not advertised.  It's more of an underground
scene.  They are

still around, but scene like slowly dies.  Both Croatia and Serbia
banned playing

of the bands from the opposite republic - which killed bands on
the both sides.

Croatian radio refuses to play Serbian rock bands under the
disguise of the law

that (literally) "bans oriental sounds" - which is bullshit, since
rock and roll

sounds equally in Serbia, Croatia, Norway, Spain and the U.S.
Meanwhile, folk

songs (even those that are heavily orientally sounding) have no
problems to get

marketed and sold in Croatia among Hercegovci (who have their own
laws that

they wrote for themselves).  Of course, as with everything else in
this war - the

situation in Serbia is even worse, or better - it is more
COMPLETE.  Rock is

almost entirely holocausted out of Serbian culture and replaced by
a surrogate

called "turbo-folk", which combines  folk' with disco and even rap
(but which is

politically correct and follows the great leader).

There is still a small minority of Yugoslavs - whom nobody likes
or respects

expect Western human rights activists and corporate foundations
that back

them.

-/-

So they are bound to repeat the mistake of constantly supporting
the wrong

crowd in the Balkans: like when I read report of 1986 I can see a
lot of people

whom they accuse today of war crimes were honored as the victims
of Yugoslav

dictatorship: Vladimir Seks, Vojislav Seselj, Dobrica Cosic,
Franjo Tudjman,

Gojko Djogo, Alija Izetbegovic (note that both Croatian and
Bosnian president are

here, as well as the infamous leader of Serbian White Eagles).  I
actually feel very

uncomfortable being squeezed (but not under my personal name -
rather as

entire group, since young guys with no college degree never really
made a front

page for human rights foundations sycophants) with Seks and
Izetbegovic on the

same page.

Helsinki Watch, Amnesty International, Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights,

Carnegie Foundation, Soros Foundation - to name just a few - they
all actually

work under same basic principle: they are bureaucracies.
Sometimes in sixties,

the ancestors of "robber barons" decided that it makes good P.R.
to GIVE (tax-deductible, of course) money to charities.  So,
charities proliferated.  They also

provided jobs for that surplus over-educated college generations
of bored middle-class kids from the late sixties (and today).
Once the rich guys give away money

it is on non-profit mandarins to decide how to spend it.  And they
are well

entrenched caste.  Once you are "in" you just rotate from function
to function,

from organization to organization, much like you did rotate in
Yugoslav socialist

political structures once you were a part of the "process".  The
second similarity

is "political correctness".  Although the content of "P.C." and
the content of

"moralno-politicka podobnost" (which coincidentally means
"morally-political

correct", and was the  filter' for successful in former
Yugoslavia) is different, the

idea is the same: creating a vague ideological filter, kind of
like setting up the

rites in religion and then making the rites more important than
the belief itself.

Third similarity is economical: that many middle persons (I guess
that'd be P.C.)

have their plastic cups shaking on the long way down from Mr.Soros
or Ford,Inc.

to the poor and hungry, and displaced and homeless, that those
actually in need

receive very little: most of the money is spent on research,
pardon, on salaries

and expenses of the research team (who sure has to travel a lot).
Besides being

of little real help, those organizations are all dying.  As we can
learn from the

Yugoslav example, rotation of insiders and "political correctness"
make up for

negative social Darwinism and are actually suicidal.  It certainly
helps to explain

lame and disastrous approach that all of them had towards the
Yugoslav

problematic in late eighties and later.  Once I discovered the
real bureaucratic

nature of not-for-profit sector in the U.S., I realized why they
repeatedly fall in

the same trap in the territories of former Yugoslavia: like
everybody else they

always tend to like those who are similar to them.  They tend to
prefer middle

class people with academic background (scholars, fellows..), who
are (or were)

already part of the system, flashy titles are a plus.  Before the
war most of the

people in former Yugoslavia who'd fit this description were
nationalist dissidents.

Now they are so-called Yugo-nostalgics.  They tend to overlook
lesser forces in

that societies which if properly assisted may better serve the
interests of

humanity.  They often dismiss those forces because they do not fit
in sacrosanct

guidelines (or just unwritten prejudice).

To their credit, they are surprisingly capitalist-flexible.  When
the failure is very

obvious, they change personnel.  Both Helsinki Watch and more
recently

Amnesty International had employed persons with more extensive
understanding

of former Yugoslavia, and Soros Open Society Institute made some
unusual right

choices by financing alternative media.  Actually, Helsinki Watch
is hunting for a

new person to "do Yugoslavia", since the one who holds this
position now is

leaving for The Hague to work for War Crimes Tribunal, soon
(rotation, heh).

ivo