Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 14:48:18 -0800 From: insomnia <insomnia at EUnet.yu> To: nettime-l at Desk.nl Subject: <nettime> serbian diary, march 30 Sender: owner-nettime-l at basis.Desk.nl Precedence: bulk Status: U
at the crack of dawn, two missiles fell on greater novi sad - civilian targets, as usual. at noon, a first concert of protest against nato intervention started. it gathered thousands of people, a lot of slogans. by the way, this was the first day of nato bombardment i dared go down town - and i did not regret it. the spirit resembles very much the days of the student velvet revolution which happened in 1996: shiny, smiling faces, people wearing paper targets on their clothes or foreheads. slogans, both in english and serbian, are witty, ironic, condensed and striking like haiku poetry - 'monica, clench your teeth' (i admit this is my favourite; serb people mock clinton mostly for his fatal fondness of felatio, and monica lewinsky becomes a funny simbol of opposition to clinton's policy), 'clinton, fuck hillary for a change', 'nato wanted', 'wellcome to budjanovci' (the village where f-117a was downed) and many, many others. shopwindows are full of slogans and cartoons, grafitti with the obligatory word 'nato' are everywhere. in the word 'nato', letter 't' is sometimes replaced by swastika. that is very telling, since this nato agression is equalled to fascistic agression in 1941 more often than not. later on, i visited a protest gathering of writers' association of vojvodina, which took place in matica srpska, the oldest serbian cultural institution. matica srpska publishes the world's oldest literary periodical, 'letopis matice srpske', which is 175 years old. so much for serbian 'barbarism'. my friends and colleagues take floor to express their protest, resentment and bitterness. my colleague jovan popov, whose wife has been in labor for days, read his sonnet called 'mars above the maternity ward'. he was inspired to write it on seeing a red spot in the midnight sky from the hospital window. it was mars, the planet of war.
i was appalled when i saw the albanian demonstrations on euro news - they shouted 'nato' and 'clinton', saying that nato;s strikes should be more severe, even if that meant civilian victims among kosovars. have you ever thought of supporting agression by sacrifying your own children? this seems a bit barbarous to me. every life counts, don't you think so? or is it just an oldfashioned belief?