Re: <nettime> the architecture of survival

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@transmediale.de>]

dear jon,

with all due respect for you and for the work done by drazen, veran matic,
sasa mirkovic, gordan paunovic and many others at b92 in belgrade, but -
unless i gravely misunderstand - what you say is highly exaggerated. in
fact, b92 was broadcasting from a highrise in the centre of belgrade, most
of the time with a government license, and always with the strict attempt
to stay within the terrain of legality. sure, there was political
pressure, let alone a lot of vicious stuff happening under the milosevic
government. yet they always kept up appearances and only switched b92 off
within their own counter-legality, but tolerated the dissident radio and
its wide-ranging activities right in front of their eyes. from all i know,
pgp encryption was only used hesitantly since the kosovo war in 1999. and
the anti-milosevic message certainly - and bravely - went out on the air,
in serbia, without encryption.

to equate the situation in serbia pre-5oct00 with that in afghanistan is
nonsense and certainly does not help anybody to understand anything. don't
fall into the media trap of putting all totalitarian fundamentalist
terrorist-sponsors in one camp - that camp is too big and would, on many
counts, certainly include some people in nato-land.

regards,
-a


>The Architecture of Survival
>Jon Ippolito

>The irony is that any U.S. crackdown on personal telecommunications
>privacy may unwittingly hamper foreign resistance to the sort of
>totalitarian regimes that tend to sponsor terrorism in the first place.
>Had Drazen Pantic of B92 radio in Belgrade broadcast his anti-Milosevic
>commentary from some permanently accessible brick-and-mortar tower, he
>might not be alive today. It is only the ability to operate via an
>anonymous Internet presence that saved him and other nomadic resistance
>leaders from the fate of the Taliban's unlucky dissidents. We do not yet
>know whether e-mail encryption helped bin Laden hide his plans from the
>CIA, but we do know for sure that Pantic and his peers have used such
>privacy safeguards to help liberate their people.
>





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