¡Exterminate All the Brutes!
I've been in the grip of a blinding, impotent rage ever since Sunday morning, 14 April 2013, when I read a lengthy piece of propaganda in the Most Serious Paper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat. It was a true work of art, pictures and all, in the highest level of bullshit that only the great masters like Noam Chomsky or Michel Chossudovsky are able to reach. And it was in the Pravda, so it had to be true. Many folks outside of Finland don't understand the triangle of Business, Police and Press that practically every citizen in this country bows to. Anyway, more of that later... for now, it's enough to say that HS, or Horse Shit, is where most of my fellow countrymen get their daily dosage of hatred, and indeed, I got mine as well. For years to come.
To misquote Hunter S. Thompson misquoting John Mitchell, "This country is going so far to the East you won't be able to recognize it."
The only way to face up to the Monster is to act, to do something, however small, to overcome the apathy this leech of mastodon proportions spreads like the foul breath a sewer. So I'm gonna insert here an English translation of a self-published short memoir written last year, titled very appropriately...
Raining Lies
... when the dark ghosts of Knin began to wail, almost all Croats and Serbs responded
to this call to arms. The lure of Knin proved fatal for both nations.
That quote is from Misha Glenny's book The Fall of Yugoslavia. It hasn't been translated into either of the local dialects, and the aforementioned bogeymen have nothing to do with the following story, which has come to haunt me from two years back.
Knin is situated in the Krajina, as some of the more enlightened readers might know. That's all there is to it, alas, and I don't recommend anybody starting digging for more info on their own. The case is closed, period. If you add the name of the region to the word "massacre" and conduct a search, you'll put your soul at risk. You'll lose your last shred of faith in the human race, encounter the living dead: true delegates of the Western civilization. And these guys, may I add, are real.
The notes below deal with a cable car connection, or the lack of it, which isn't current any more. The lack, that is. Current... I mean... The entry is outdated, in short: it has no relevant subject matter whatsoever. I extend my apologies for the damage done to the Academy, the City, the Parents and the...
Colleagues?
Consider this an obituary of a nation.
We are not needed any more. It's over. The Finn's Party is famished, therefore it is finished. The Golden Calf is dying - it is possible that we are finally allowed to go free.
Is it?
~
Srđ begins its ascend at the foot of the city walls, inside the walls, really, for the Northern part of the Old Town is built on a ridge. The mountain climbs up, almost straight up in places, to 412 meters. There's an impressive cross at the top, a decaying fortress dating back to the glory days of Napoleon, and the final stop of a cable car line. The car isn't in use yet. We followed the test runs from below. The car moved eventually, proceeded, as if feeling ill, for some 20 meters, and stopped. It didn't move again for as long as we watched.
We heard that at the opening, reopening to be exact (the cable had been destroyed in the war and was at last being renovated), of the cable car line, the restaurant at the top would be all set up as well. How nice, we said. But we had no time to wait. This was our last day in town. Tomorrow we'd fly back home.
Our entourage consisted of my father, mother, my daughter and me. We took a minibus to the nearest village. It was a 1,5 kilometer hike to the top of the mountain from there. The landscape reminded us of Lapland - however, there were differences. A flower like bird rape bloomed everywhere, the Sun held us in its spotlight, and the temperature was in the thirties of Celsius.
A Balkan game: How many Serb-dominated towns can you attach to the word "siege"?
As in the siege of Sarajevo, Vukovar, Dubrovnik?
"The attacking troops took their positions on the mountains, and then chose their targets as if the city were a smorgasbord....
"Damn, the JNA only needed to drop something heavy, and in all likelihood the object would find its way into the city, causing considerable damage along the way."
