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 extreme by killing all his extras.

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 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: more close to the final solution. 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: so 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 a 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, formerly members of the Communist League. 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 plain 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).

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