Pink provocations

Responding to an earlier event in which a Serbian architecture student provoked an incident with his poorly conceived street performance of appearing on Zagreb's main square with a large portrait of Četnik commander and World War II era collaborator Draža Mihailović (he received a short prison term for disturbing the peace and was sent home), a Croatian hacker has got his material onto the site of the sleazy (and privately owned) Serbian television network RTV Pink. B92 carries the text, which seems fairly innocuous considering the effort involved:

"Greetings, Greater Serbia. We would like to have our own text on your national television. If you can take photos on our square with Četnik leaders, we can also appear on your national television with our own national symbols.

"Greetings to Stevan Vranešević who so courageously took his picture in the middle of Croatia. Thank you for the hospitality which our basketball players got in Belgrade. Warm greetings from Croatia.

After that the story continues in a warm and fuzzy tone. RTV Pink did not delete the message, telling visitors to the site in a postscript that they did not consider the purpose of the message to be destruction but communication (Note: This information is from B92, the Pink site was not reachable Monday morning, probably preopterećen). Responses to the message among B92's visitors who posted messages are also distinctly not outraged. Here are some examples:

"I welcome this gesture by our dear friends from Croatia. It demonstrates that Pink is the national television of Serbia. Who watches RTS anymore?"

"I think that this is the work of RTV Pink. Željko [Mitrović, head of RTV Pink] uses any means to attract attention."

 "One more sign that on both sides there are normal and, thankfully, humorous, young people."

"I would say this is done with style. This text on the site of RTV Pink automatically raised the quality of the site, at least in the cultural sense. Greetings to all Croats and Serbs who fight with words, irony and other intellectual weapons."

"Interesting news. I think that it is (unfortunately) a very telling sign of the (present) distinctions between 'us' and 'them.'"

"Pink is not the national television but a national vision. Pink is all of us ... the kid really hit the central point of the Serbian nervous system." 
 
"This is the continuation of war by other means. These kids were raised in the nineties on the programs of 'national' television and 'national' textbooks."
 
 "Bravo! This can be taken positively. On both sides there are good and competent hackers. I hope that in the future we will also compete in better disciplines. You remember the eighties and the competition between the Zagreb and Belgrade cultural scenes. What is more, I hope this will lead to better understanding of the need for internet protection. Nobody can learn anything from photos with Draža, but from 'hacking' sites they can! Greetings to people in Zagreb and especially people in Split!" 

There are certain to be more comments (the link again, right here) as the day goes on.