Deliverance of Freedom

The result of an utmost repression and regime's paranoia was the appearance of a group of young people --- mostly students --- who called themselves "OTPOR" (a word which means "The Resistance" in our language,) or urban guerrillas. In order to bring down the regime, they started a woodpecker strategy - knock thousands of times into the tree and maybe a hole will appear.

Those kids knew the mentality of the Serbian people very well. They knew that in the most difficult times the only thing that would be able to move the crowd despite fear is HUMOUR. So, they performed a lot of cute and imaginative street actions (two of those were "IT'S TIME" and "HE IS FINISHED"), making fun of Milosevic and his regime - and that's what Milosevic and his Yes-men hate above all - and these actions captivated all the sympathies of those "unpatriotic, unbelieving domestic traitors" which was the synonym for the regime's opponents. Their symbol was a constricted fist.

Soon, a majority of young people all around the country -- and even older people! --- started to wear T-shirts with this symbol! That was a beginning of bravery for us! Then leaflets appeared with a scanned picture of Milosevic's wife and the slogan "Vote for my husband once again". .. More


MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE:

Community of Kings

At any given time, several thousand people from around the world are "duking it out" with different versions of "Age of Empires," the best-selling computer game of all time, at Microsoft's TheZone.com.

With the latest expansion disc released this fall, "Age of Empires: The Conquerers," such new races or "civs" as Aztecs, Huns, Mayans and Spaniards have been introduced to appeal to the worldwide marketplace of online gamers. Other new features, such as villagers with better AI capabilities when working for their masters, have been added to make this autocratic autopia seem more fluid and viscerally engaging.

Such forces can be commanded by a fast-clicking community of online kings, who are locked into their PC screens as feudal fiends, looking from a top-down point of view as they order their miniature units to gather resources, raise armies and explore all kinds of terrain to search out their enemies... before their enemies find them first.....More


MY GLASS HOUSE:

The Story Teller

In times past, in villages far away, people would sit around fires late into the night and listen to men like me recount the adventures and mishaps of their lives. Some believe that is why you come to this flickering screen and rush to see what I have to say.

I was, perhaps, harsh to say that people come to see how screwed my life is compared to theirs. At least one person has said that people come back because they see the echoes of their own mistakes in mine. And that is the job of the story teller, isn't it? To weave the universal tale and make it seem like it was only about one person when it is actually about all of us. I know when I stumble through the night and its horrors, when I look for love, when I mourn the dead, when I toss a child into the air and catch her --- giggling! --- into my out-stretched hands, so are you.

When I weep at night about my fears and regrets, so are you. My "Glass House" is a window into the life of a soul, I guess.

You certainly could have picked a better one. You could have picked one with a happy childhood, fulfilled love, and more than this Cathedral of Words to leave behind ...t applause breaks the spell of the music; the other that the release of tension through expressing gratification is a product of the music.

Predictably, too, - most dichotomies being false - I find myself in neither camp. I would like to clap between movements of a Bach Orchestral Suite because they are the most sublime dance music ever written but I could no more applaud at the end of Mahler's Ninth Symphony, let alone between movements, than at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer even though it represents the pinnacle of my spiritual life.

The problem with rule-based democracies is that they cannot resist making rules.... KEVIN CAREY, "ART: Music" More

G21 ASIA: Was there a holocaust in New ZealandÝin the middle of the nineteenth century, perpertrated by the British on the Maori ? Probably not.

Not in the strictest sense of the word. But there was theft of land on a large scale and systematic duping of the locals which lead to wars , and therefore casualties, between Maori and colonizers in the 1860s , at one time called The Maori wars, now called The New Zealand Wars. Revisionist historian James Belich's book and television programme of that title sought to redress the historical balance through getting the semantics correct..."Whither the Maori?" HUW TURNER More

POWERSSOUND: Tall and slender with a pleasant, if undistinguishedm singing voice, Chapin was seen by many thousands of children every week. The adults, unless they happened to walk through the living room while the show was on, were blissfully ignorant of Tom... BOB POWERS "Bluegrass Sounds Great" More

RDR 10.02.00: DEBUT! Singapore's ANA JUMARI explains how "Asia joins The Rush."

RDR 09.29.00: As you might expect, ROD can only say it once. "Yes. Truly, madly, deeply!"

LOOKING FOR A PREVIOUS "RDR" Essay? Visit our complete ARCHIVES.

CARTOONS BY GASPIRTZ: Award-winning cartoonist at his best. OLIVER GASPIRTZ.

VOX POPULI: From Diamond D, Higganum, CT, USA:

RE titanium -- http://www.g21.net/africa2.html

wow great article. this magazine just keeps getting better!!!