| ichael . benson on Thu, 6 May 1999 23:20:12 +0000 |
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| Syndicate: tricky, tricky |
Yeah! Very good! But I say it admiringly! Very devious!
What am I talking about? What I'm talking about is that the last
syndicate message signed by "me" was a monkey-wrench, a cracked mirror
in the Balkan funhouse, a veritable misnomer, literally! In other
words, I didn't write it, and I didn't sign it, and it didn't
originate with me. But it sure as hell *looked* like it came from me.
So, hats off -- it was very well done, and makes me suspect that I
have a secret sharer, a devious double, a joker in the deck with a
keyboard, vial of crack and a serious attitude problem. As they say in
Ljubljana: 'full cool.' It almost doesn't matter that such a person is
probably directly employed by Mirjana Markovic (see article attached
below).
Ha ha, and ho ho. I suppose part of the kick of it for my alter ego is
that (1) I have to respond, presumably, to the list, so he/she gets to
feel like he/she is yanking my chain, and (2) this person is
completely anonymous, kicked back no doubt with a full beaker of slivo
and enjoying a deep dark tobacco-stained chuckle, something like the
sound a toilet makes when it flushes (or at least, that's what I
imagine -- only in this case the toilet would have to have brown
teeth).
'Course, it also leaves me with a little bit of a problem, which is
that I suppose from now on nobody will have any idea (not that anyone
need give a shit, just to continue the toilet metaphor for a minute)
if a message signed by me is actually *from* me... Hmm. (Thoughtful
pause.) But then again, why the hell not? As Walt Whitman said, "I am
large enough to contain contradictions". Or was that Dobrica Cosic?
(Second thoughtful pause.) And who the hell's asking, anyway?
I'm curious, though, if this kind of thing has happened on syndicate
before. Yeah -- curiouser and curiouser. [& don't forget to read the
interesting text attached below.]
Cheers,
Michael Benson
-----------------
Captain Dragan's Serbian
Cybercorps
How Milosevic took the Internet
Battlefield
BY MICHAEL SATCHELL
Both sides in the Kosovo conflict are locked
in a fierce information war. Besides atrocity
accounts and combat by press briefing, this
"soft war" campaign includes a cyberspace
clickskrieg by the Serbians and World War
II-style leaflet drops by NATO planes.
So far, Slobodan Milosevic seems to be
winning. "The vast majority of war coverage
that is getting into Serbia is not believed,"
concedes Ann Pincus of the U.S. Information
Agency. Retired Army Col. and information
warfare expert C. Kenneth Allard says that
NATO's indoctrination effort is "the most
remarkably bad performance that I've ever
witnessed."
The greatest irony is that the Serbs have
seized the Internet initiative from the
wired-up Americans. On the 13th floor of
Belgrade's tallest building, a drab pile of
brown steel called the Beogradjanka, young
volunteers-mainly students whose high schools
and universities have been closed by the
war-tap away at two dozen battered old
computers souped up with new hardware. The
electronic boiler-room operation is linked
with more than 1,000 computer volunteers
working at six other centers in Belgrade.
Polite. They debate in chat rooms, translate
articles into English, update their
technically sophisticated, politically
strident Web site (www.yu), network with other
anti-NATO groups around the world, and
encourage Serb expatriates to become
politically active. Signs emphasize three
rules: No swearing. Be polite. Always leave
room for negotiation. Hacking is theoretically
forbidden, although unclassified computer
systems at NATO headquarters, the U.S.
Information Agency, and U.S. Navy facilities
have been disrupted by barrages of E-mail
(spamming) or computer-generated pulses
(pinging). To a person, the volunteers dismiss
American accounts of mass deportations,
killings, rapes, and other atrocities. Says
Ceda Rajacic, 23, his voice dripping with
disdain: "That's part of their propaganda
war."
Serbia's cyberoffensive is led by Dragan
Vasiljkovic, widely known as Captain Dragan,
who ran unsuccessfully for Serbian president
in 1992 against the incumbent Milosevic.
Dragan is a war hero to the Serbs-and a war
criminal to other Balkan ethnic groups. The
silver-haired 44-year-old led a paramilitary
unit accused of "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia
and Bosnia. He later established a fund for
Serbian veterans. The day after NATO bombs
began falling, he turned the fund's offices
into a computer center to wage psychological
warfare. Says Dragan: "The average American
doesn't hate us. They are being manipulated by
the media."
Meanwhile, the U.S. side relies on programming
by Voice of America and Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, augmented by broadcasts
from EC-130 "Commando Solo" planes. These
flying radio stations transmit one-hour
programs four times daily of wire-service news
and NATO messages, interspersed with European
pop music. But a Pentagon official admits that
their 10,000-watt signal is so weak "they are
blanketing an area the size of my desk."
NATO aircraft also have dropped 19 million
leaflets. Some are warnings to Serbian troops:
"Remain in Kosovo and face certain death."
Others explain NATO's action to the Serbian
people: "Hundreds of thousands of refugees are
fleeing Milosevic's pogrom. Do not allow
misguided patriotism to bind you to his
atrocities." But one leaflet was so badly
translated that it sounded stilted to younger
Serbs and reminded older ones of Nazi
propaganda. And because the planes stay
outside Yugoslav air space, crews must
calculate altitude, wind direction, and target
distance, then hope the leaflets float to
their destination. A few days ago in the
province of Vojvodina, an elderly man named
Dusan recalled that World War II leaflets were
valuable for cigarette rolling paper. "These
aren't even good for that," he grumbled.
With Alex Todorovic in Belgrade, Warren
Strobel, and Richard J. Newman
(from US News and World Report)
Michael Benson <[email protected]>
<http://www.ljudmila.org/kinetikon/>
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