<nettime> for nettime [fwd: Rewired 27 Mar 1999]

[insomnia <insomnia@EUnet.yu> (by way of andreas broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>)]

please, forward these messages to the list. i am from novi sad,
yugoslavia, and i want to present my outlook to the nato intervention.
thanx!
vladislava

REWIRED
March 27, 1999

Living in Bombland: A Serbian Diary

by Vladislava Gordic <insomnia@EUnet.yu>

--

Vladislava Gordic is an assistant professor of American and English
Literature at the University of Novi Sad. We met in Ljubljana nearly two
years ago, poking around for literary resources on the Web. We'll be
updating Rewired with her diary entries as they come in. /dwh

--

Living in Bombland

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 06:21:43

I'm writing this as the morning breaks; the third night of NATO aggression over
Serbia is over. The restless night, which I mainly spent in ups and downs --
running down to the shelter, then every two hours up to my apartment, where the
first thing I grab is not food or water but -- the keyboard of my computer...
As long as we have electricity, as long as phone lines, my modem (which is
quite an oldie) and my swollen tooth permit, I will keep on writing, taking
this down. Taking this disaster down.  Remembering a Kate Bush's song, which
goes, "as people around me grow colder, I turn to my computer..."

What is to be said about the coldness of people? It is just that somebody with
a big dick and a cold heart decided to become (luke)warm-hearted and prevent a
humanitarian catastrophe by creating a greater one... It is just that somebody
decided to turn this sanctionland in which I live into a bombland.

When they first threatened to bomb Serbia last September, people from Belgrade
made a joke about how the city will become renamed -- it will be called
BOMB-ay. That is precisely what happened on the night between Friday and
Saturday -- Belgrade was bombed, the very heart of the city, blazing in flames,
the poisonous gasses started leaking out of demolished factories on the
outskirts of town.

Burn, baby, burn -- that's what probably was ringing in the ears of the
aggressors. Children have been killed, Serbian medieval monasteries (which are
under the protection of UNESCO) were hit yesterday, the university campus in
Nish, a town in southern Serbia, has also been bombed. The bombs fell on the
student dormitory; museums and schools have been shelled as well.

What a nice cluster of military targets. Burn, baby, burn.

I'll be back with you, as soon as i can. I'll try to rest for a while, to
refresh myself before the next attack starts.

--

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 10:56:29

Bombland Revisited

The morning of March 27th, 11 am CET. We are here fearing the next emergency
siren, which will take us into damp, uncomfortable shelters with no air
conditioning and no furniture. I seem to be catching a cold to accompany my
swollen tooth which is inoperable now. We are fearing further attacks, because
CNN seems to take for granted rumours of ethnic Albanians killed in Kosovo.
They obviously need a further excuse to bomb schools, petrol stations, picnic
areas, factories.

CNN reporters lament on clouds which hampered harrier planes to be even more
destructive. Shall we here, frustrated and traumatized civilians (soon to be
poisoned, since they did their best to hit the chemical factories near
Belgrade) confide only in bad weather to stop the NATO invasion?

I try to read, but I cannot. My father takes shelter in a book by Roald Dahl,
called _Stories of the Unexpected_. The proper title, that is.

--

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 11:00:24

NATO bombed the Serbian medieval monastery Gracanica, which is under the
protection of UNESCO.

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