Fighting Noise with Signal: Military drills
Last week there’s been a lot of noise in Belgrade.
First, there was a Military academy students central celebration in front of the state parliament building. I object to joining the army as much as the next guy, which means I don’t. To paraphrase the words of the great Bill Hicks, anyone… who wants to join the army should be allowed in (you might want to check the original though, somehow he said it way better than me).
But please don’t ever celebrate again by flying MIGs over the city in full throttle, breaking the sound wall barrier right over my freaking head. If you really must show off, do it somewhere where there aren’t any people who experienced the Serbia bombing of ‘99 comitted by NATO. Which we officially don’t want to join, btw. I agree on this one with Kostunica so much that I’ve even come up with a clever solution how we can avoid even being asked to join: Cancel the military. Retire the generals, fire the majors and send the soldiers home to their families where there’s actual food for them. Without the military, the military alliance becomes impossible.
The cure for the noise created by MIGs: stereo playing something loud through the headphones. What would you play?
In order to enhance the signal you make in the comments, I will write about other last week’s noise-maker in the following article. Stay tuned.
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Hi V,
Whilst the air force was practicing a few days before the flyover, they frightened and traumatized several friends of mine who had flashbacks to the bombing. As one said, a commercial airliner sounds nothing like the bombers, but those old MIGS sounded just like Belgrade was back in 1999.
That said, the troops look snappy, especially the combat unit leading the march.
JD
Hey there Jonathan!
I haven’t seen the parade, I didn’t even know that there was a parade. I’ve been to one last year though, but I don’t recall the planes making so much noise.
A friend told me she was going through Tasmajdan park when they flew over this year and that some of the kids playing there started to cry…