The ship Ilinden, which was under jurisdiction of the Ohrid Port Authority, sunk while taking tourists along the route between Ohrid and St. Naum. The ships Galeb and Aleksandrija were passing nearby and aided in the rescue efforts.

I wonder how the media dare show such footage from the disaster site [including bodies of the drowned floating under the surface]. Some Macedonian journalists are out of control… Do penalties for unethical behavior even exist? Where’s their humanity?

May the shipwreck victims rest in peace. We wish the survivors speedy recovery, both from their physical injuries and from the horrors they've experienced.

In addition, Refleksii expressed sadness and shame [MKD], fearing that the disaster struck due to incompetence and a lack of enforcement of the laws by the state.

Speaking from her experience as a licensed tourist guide, Vasilka Dimitrovska pointed out that overcrowding of boats [MKD] was not uncommon on Lake Ohrid. She noted:

No improvisation is allowed in the world of tourism. The basic difference between a tourist and an adventurer is that the former pays in advance to make sure his arrangement is safe and without any dramatic meanderings from their vacation plans.

Media expert Sead Dzigal wrote [MKD] on the Comminications blog from the shores of Lake Ohrid:

The media acted as organs of ministries, spokespersons, state services and other centers of power. One could only sadly watch the ridiculous attempts by these ORGANS to line up in the behaviorist race with the human capacity of the audience to synthesize and organize the information in their heads, as they relentlessly pumped announcements and statements which needed to amnesty every freakin’ institution from responsibility.

Even though the sorry hulk of a ship (made in 1924, when Hitler started writing Mein Kampf) had all the permits and inspections by our “state services,” even though it loaded passengers over the allowed capacity, and even though it had two life belts [MKD] on board. Nobody was responsible for that. Everybody absolved themselves with a jinx and continued minding their business and watching football. If there are indeed charges pressed against the “perpetrators” (the skipper and his first mate [MKD]), then responsibility has to be demanded by their “institutional backers and enablers.” Nobody raised that issue. The Public Broadcasting Service acted as a communist bulletin documenting the trips of the individual ministers to the site and their statements of condolence. It certainly is a service, but not a public one. It only serves the authorities, no matter who runs the administration, all these years. Such a convention of ministers on the screen can only be understood as brutal political PR. If some public official has competencies in the matter, then they should do their job, and inform the public through the proper channels, like a spokesperson. Otherwise, why pose on TV as a “benevolent onlooker of the tragedy.” Only one person who actually participated in the rescue efforts (a lady) was interviewed, all those who jumped in the water to help the victims remain anonymous. But, we were treated to numerous statements by the saddened ministers, even though the only concrete action by the one with competencies in the case was to call experts from Croatia to aid the investigation.

I (personally) assume that this is due to omnipresent corruption and reliance on political connections: if you give a person the right to squeeze profits at will, then even the loss of human life is cheap to such businessmen. Therefore, either by boat, airplane, food or medicine, tomorrow any citizen of this country can fall victim to the legal and moral decay.

Earlier, several boating accidents on Lake Ohrid claimed lives and limb of several Macedonian citizens during the last few months, without political consequences or effect on the local public officials. This time, Macedonian Minister of Transport and Communications offered his resignation immediately after the incident.

Thumbnail from Mega Star, used under a Creative Commons license

Origami workshop during the celebration of Sakura in Skopje, Macedonia. Photo: Irena Efremovska.

Following the tradition established last year, Bi announced [MKD] the event on her blog using a visually pleasing graphic, and several other bloggers, such as Volan and Razvigor, spread the word [MKD]. The editor of the front page of Blogeraj, Macedonia's top blogging platform, announced [MKD] the festivities also, re-using one of Volan's old photos. In addition to that, Agnes provided subtle introduction in her own way by publishing a poem entitled Sakura [MKD] several days earlier.

Kids performing karate kata during Sakura celebration in Skopje, Macedonia. Photo: Irena Efremovska.

The program, organized by the Kendo-Iaidō Federation of Macedonia in cooperation with Samurai Dojo and supported by the City of Skopje, included performing martial arts katas and an origami workshop.

Bloggers who attended the festival mostly published photo-galleries or photo-essays. Volan, who uses his blogs to serve the public as unofficial chronicler, even apologized [MKD] for providing fewer photos than usual because he arrived a bit late at the scene.

Zoriv, another elderly blogger, published his Sakura photos as part of his report [MKD] on walkabout through Skopje center on a lazy Saturday, comparing local architectural and cultural features with foreign counterparts.

As announced on the Japan@Mk blog [MKD], Sakura celebrations will continue in the evening of April 30, with indoor activities in the CK Cultural Center, including Japanese music, haiku recitations, manga art exhibition, and anime movies projections.

Sakura participants leaving the scene. Photo: Irena Efremovska

The only other person who can come close in this regard is the late pop singer-turned national hero Toshe Proeski (1981-2007), but he has been allowed to rest in peace for the last couple of weeks, after the closure of a defamation lawsuit between his girlfriend and his manager.

Alexander III of Macedon (356 BC – 323 BC), on the other hand, has no such luck – national TV Kanal 5 this Sunday descended to a new level of Hades when it literally “raised” his spirit in a so-called news item [MKD] about a “historian” who went to Florida with a camera crew to seek the services of an allegedly famous medium to provide contact with his (sic!) ancestors. In the video, the spiritualist claims that a young man dressed in lion's skin is standing in the room, saying he went to Persia not for conquest but to seek cultural exchange, and would like to know more about the contemporary Macedonian linguistics.

Marble portrait of Alexander the Great said to be from Alexandria, Egypt (2^nd or 1^st century BC), currently in the British Museum, London, UK. Photo: Filip Stojanovski

Razvigor blog, run by the author of this article, commented [MKD] on this quasi-news item asking how come the ancestral spirit could communicate in English, a contemporary language which developed thousands of years after his death, but had no information on Macedonian, which developed in a similar manner. In addition, this “communication” did not provide any exclusive information which would have been known by the historical Alexander, such as locations of treasures that can be unearthed by archeologists and used as evidence, or known by his spirit – like the location of the grave containing his earthly remains.

Two days later, a user on the social bookmarking service Kajmak.ot “unearthed” [MKD] an obviously faux news item [SRP] from a Serbian blog about the discovery of Alexander's tomb in the south of the Republic of Macedonia, near the Greek border. The article is written with the structure of a “real” news story, but any resident of Macedonia with minimal knowledge of local geography or social issues would immediately recognize it as a joke, since all the names of official institutions, functions, locations and persons involved are nonexistent.

Screen shot of the front page of Macedonian news portal Kirilica from April 14, 2009, prominently displaying the faux news about discovery of the grave of Alexander the Great as a real news item.

During that day, a number of Macedonian media, such as the news portal Kirilica [MKD], published Macedonian translations of this “news” in its entirety, adding just a small, barely noticeable disclaimer that the content has not been confirmed. Such gossipy items did not contain any fact-checking whatsoever, nor did they include a link to the original source. During the day, the site was frequently unavailable, possibly due to bandwidth overload.

Some bloggers took the bait, like Vojvodataa, the author of the blog Radikalno, who wrote [MKD]:

Please God, let this be true. The article contains many first names and surnames, I think there is some truth in it. If this is true, Our Lord is coming to aid our century-old struggle for our name and the elements of our identity, of which Alexander of Macedon is an indivisible part.

Other bloggers, such as Mojon and Azhder, reacted with lascivious humor, inviting the media to republish their posts about a discovery of a sexy photo of Alexander's seventh grade math teacher taken with his iPhone Ancient [MKD], and finding of the two sculls of King Marko [MKD].

On the other hand, the scientifically-grounded Archeological Diary documented the whole affair, providing an overview of the sensationalist (including A1, the most influential national TV station) and more somber media coverage of this affair. The blog's author Vasilka Dimitrovska, an archeologist, wrote [MKD]:

First and foremost, any information must be checked with at least three independent sources. Good God, even I—a non journalist—know that. It is nebulous to distribute news about anything connected to archeology without going in the field, even about the tomb and the spirit of Alexander of Macedon in person. Unless one checks all the options and removes even a shadow of doubt, the scientific public should be spared of such turbulent, emotionally charged media observations.

I suppose that the historians and the archeologists will continue to keep mum about these events [MKD], just like they kept silent about the world's first hamburger, the Copper Book, the Hunza and the Kalash, the Rosetta Stone affair, etc. There's nothing worse than such silence and ignoring, because it implies silent approval of such hypotheses and theories. We as society slowly move closer to the axiom “that the land has always been ours,” aiming to provide an united and monolithic view of a historical walkabout from the Paleolithic to Tito, even though some of the episodes are not quite “safe” and lead to the above mentioned failures of reason.

The view that history is a science based on immaculate myths, lacking elements that would contradict the fragile “officially ours Macedonian evolutionist schema” deserves criticism. We do not need to lie [MKD] – the truth is enough, no matter what it is. In spite of the fact that the same tendency spans from Greece to Sweden – recent research showed that national myths of all European countries are almost identical [MKD]. Dissemination of such trivial information provides a fake image to the world about strengthening of our identity (esp. the ancient Macedonian part), while lacking the scientific approach, published scientific papers and documented archeological findings. I really can't see why we should use a technique of self-identification through denial [MKD] to confirm any type of identity.

To conclude, I think that the Macedonian journalists covering culture, and especially the topic of history->identity should get more education about archeology as a science which deals with societies of the past, not the present. I for one would speak at such a seminar or a workshop. If need be, pro bono. :-)

Alleged reasons for canceling the profile included the fact that personal profiles are intended for personal and noncommercial use by individual persons, posting of disturbing photographs on the profile – including post-mortem remains of crime victims, as well as the opportunity for violations of privacy of other Facebook users.

The creation and especially the removal of the MOI’s personal profile on Facebook attracted significant attention of the Macedonian public.

After the publication of the profile, the article in Utrinski vesnik, published on April 4, related statements by journalists invited to become “friends” with the MOI via the profile. The journalists perceived this act as potential threat to their privacy, because after the establishment of this “friendship” the profile administrator would gain access to all their activities in this social network.

Daily Dnevnik voiced similar concerns about threats to media freedom on Feb. 14, after a MOI employee repeatedly requested that the paper supply a list of mobile phone numbers of journalists who cover political or social topics. The closure of that scandal included a public apology by the MOI.

MOI officials quoted in the initial article by Utrinski vesnik stated that the profile is “unofficial” means of communication and its goal is to make the police closer to the citizens.

During the last weekend, some citizens used the opportunity to ask where they can report violation of the Constitution and the Law on Macedonian language, which stipulate that state bodies must adhere to certain linguistic standards, alluding on the use of Latin instead of Cyrillic alphabet on the profile and the lack of proofreading. However, instead of providing a reply, the anonymous administrator of the profile simply deleted these inquires.

The blogger Virtuelna qualified the profile as “total amateurism”, and pointed at the paradox contained in the statements by official institution which claims to communicate unofficially. In addition, she wrote (MKD):

[…] They should publicly reveal who’s behind the profile. Honestly, I am terribly interested in who the public servant is - a MOI employee - spends mine and your tax money on continuous “facebooking.” The changes on the profile are very frequent, almost every second, and during regular work hours, meaning that “somebody is constantly lurking…” Hey, my boyfriend complains I’m a cyber[-addict]. Therefore, I qualify for employment at the MOI. I would have no problem to receive a state salary to update a Facebook profile 8 hours per day. On top of that, I promise to be very active on Facebook Chat too, and I can also maintain several distinct profiles simultaneously!!!

[…]

The profile also contains photographs which must come from a MOI archive. Shouldn’t publishing of such content require a special permission? Or the public servants can be careless, and share whatever they find on their workplace servers […]

On April 8, Utrinski vesnik published (MKD) a statement by Damjan Arsovski, editor of IT.com.mk:

I got the idea to get in touch with Facebook after reading an article stating that Macedonian laws do not prohibit the MOI to open such profile, but nobody mentioned anything about the compliance with the internal rules and regulations of Facebook […]

Janko Ilkovski, a TV host running the pro-government call-in show “Jadi burek” also addressed the MOI Facebook profile issue. He recently gained notoriety by calling for action against the peaceful protest organized on March 28 by a group dissatisfied with the government’s decision to use public funds for building a new church in Skopje. “The counter-protest” turned violent, and the police failed to prevent the pro-government mob from thrashing a number of students. In his show aired on April 7, Ilkovski referred to the act of contacting Facebook as a form of ‘snitching,’ and several times repeated the name of the man who dared to turn the attention of the foreign company to the MOI profile.

Pro-government columnists and bloggers wage a campaign against talking about country’s problems abroad, branding it as ‘snitching’ and high treason.

In a statement for Radio Free Europe about this case, Darko Buldioski, representative of the NGO New Media Centre, opined that closing of the MOI profile resulted from lack of knowledge of the responsible employees, who failed to read the terms and conditions.

In fact, Facebook does not prohibit legal entities and institutions to use their platform, but they must use the so-called pages and groups, or rent advertising space. These means provide opportunities for presenting information in a manner which is far less invasive in regard to privacy of the regular users when compared to personal profiles reserved for individuals.

Privacy protection remains an extremely important topic in Macedonia, which still struggles with the burden of the totalitarian regimes. Before 1990, the state surveillance system included use of technological devices and recruiting relatives, friends and colleagues of “suspects” who had to inform the authorities about their every move. In an excerpt from her book “Communist Intimacy” published (MKD) on the portal Okno.mk, writer and teacher Jasna Koteska related the tragic experience of her family resulting from the four decades of systematic surveillance over her father, the late poet Jovan Koteski:

When you look upon this diffusion of state power and its most perfidious penetration in the intimate world, executed through your friends, you cannot ask: where did they draw the line? The parts of the dossier made available to the family reveal that some of my mother’s friends, spouses of our famous poets, were also police informers. Where does this list end? What surprises linger behind the black markers that hide the identities of some of the still-secret informers?

This is not the first outbreak of technophobia in Macedonia (MKD). Traditional media have been portraying computer geeks as a threat in the past on many occasions. A case in point was the 2002 affair when many citizens complained about inflated phone bills, and titles such as “Citizens ripped off by computer geeks' hot line talks” (MKD) blamed some generalized hackers, “burying” the possibility for mishap by the Telecom deep in the bowels of the text.

The latest technophobic trend includes articles with almost identical structure. They first advocate the thesis that gaming is a waste of youth's time, making them antisocial and aggressive, supported by anonymous statements by gamers or internet café owners, as well as psychologists or sociologists who confirm the thesis, even though they haven't actually made any empirical research about the issue. Use of stigmatizing terminology “suitable” for the demonized, marginalized groups in such articles is particularly worrisome.

For instance, the article “They leave their girlfriends and jobs to play” (MKD) equates gaming with “addiction” leading to “abandoned workplaces; stalled or ruined studies, and broken loves.” The most alarming thesis is that “violent games cause aggression,” for it portrays gamers as potential murderers who could snap at any time.

A similar story titled “Internet cafes are full of gamers” (MKD) incited numerous reactions on the Macedonian web, especially on the link sharing service Kajmak.ot (MKD). The article quotes a sociologist who seems to forget that children used to play “shoot them up” games such as “cowboys and Indians” or World War II-inspired “partisans and Germans” way before computer games were invented:

Experts warn that such games are dangerous. The aggression in front of the computer continues in the games outside the internet cafes, because when they exit into the real world, they are incapable of communicating in any other way.

“I had an opportunity to observe several internet cafes and a group of children who spent a lot of time there. They constantly played war games. They got so carried away, they even screamed, they were so immersed,” stated university professor Ilija Acevski.

“At that time I asked myself what the connection with reality was, when they faced real life after that. Will there be negative consequences? Of course!” said Acevski.

Placing a comment after the article on the A1 website, Darko Buldioski, one of the authors of the Komunikacii blog, wrote (MKD):

I still don't understand how the same old stories get repeated without any effort to dig a little deeper.

Such observations by this expert do not make him an expert. He should make his views public after conducting a scientific research on the subject, not an estimate at a glance.

In stories of this type, journalists continuously claim that “scientific research done worldwide justifies the fact that this way of communication represents addiction, an addiction which is the same as all types of vices.” Where are these scientific researches, why don't you show them to us…

Damjan Arsovski, the editor of the portal IT.com.mk, also reacted by vivisecting the news with responses paragraph-by-paragraph in his article “Macedonian media are full of stupidities” (MKD):

“To spend 5, 6 or more hours per day on the computer playing games or surfing the net, to live in cyberspace in a spaceless time.” (sic)
- I spend 5-6 hours per day on the internet every day, and in this “unreal” world I communicate with my peers, with businesspeople, receive information from all over the world, work on my education…

But even he could not muster a comment to the qualification from the conclusion of the article:

Gamers are regular people. They are children, fathers, husbands, brothers, but behind the computer screens they have another face–to use geek speak–they most often become cyber beasts.

FOSS advocate Arangel Angov posted a link to a scan of similarly absurd article from an old American tabloid as his reaction.

Treating this subject in such a way can be correlated with the lack of will to explore the underlying reasons for the increasing number of crimes, which is one of the dominant topics in the Macedonian media. Experts do not even attempt to explain the psychological or sociological motives affecting the perpetrators of the violent incidents during the parliamentary elections in June. It seems it is far easier to attack the gamers, even though so far no gamer has been pointed out as perpetrator of an incident involving violence.

However, it must be noted that some positive portraits of gamers have appeared in the same media outlets in the past, but only in the context of participation of teams from Macedonia in world cybersports championships (MKD).

Media experts Sead Dzigal and Darko Buldioski provided joint analysis of the web presence of both the incumbent party, VMRO-DPMNE, and the main opposition party, SDSM:

Good: use of blogs, YouTube channels, Myspace, Facebook, Hi5 etc.
[…]
Good also: use of video, audio, posting documents, comments, etc.

Most of—it seems all—the campaign materials are available online, too. The websites receive regular updates… and heavily use free online services, apparently to cut costs, which seems like a smart move.

Bad: the “social” portion is absent in their use of social media. The blog posts are mainly transcripts of their rally speeches, and the content is basically recycled from their TV commercials and other uses such as to be fed to traditional media, analysts, journalists and similar actors, but not blogs per se. The posts are long, different audiences are targeted in each post, and personal experiences or input from the politicians is lacking. Even the impressions on their events are lacking, depriving their blogs of the essential individual, personal perspective. The video clips are made for TV and not for vlogs, print campaigns which do not fit viral media, photos as décor and not as source of (inside) information. […]

Probably these are the reasons why these blogs do not receive many visits, there are but a few comments, and are simply left out of the general political discussion (for the time being).

In conclusion […], it's great that political parties adopted many new services and channels for electoral propaganda, but the effects will probably be quite small, because the websites are used as web repositories or warehouses for loads of materials tirelessly produced for the electoral campaigns in Macedonia.

In a comment to the same post, prominent local blogger Ribaro, wrote (MKD):

The most interesting thing about the bunch of blogs created by political parties for this election is that they have some incompetent idiot appointed as administrator responding to user comments. For instance a response to some relevant question by such person was: “And who's asking?” Bottom! As long as they belittle the power of the blog and the blogosphere, their blogs will receive minuscule visitor flow and only by their praising party members. The situation was the same with the elections in 2006. They advanced in quantity, but not an inch in quality.

Many bloggers reacted to a statement by Greek Foreign Minister that even mentioning the existence of Macedonian language and ethnicity is “not helpful” to solving the name issue, perceiving it as continuation of the policy of ethnocide. Zharko Trajanovski, referred to the related U.S. Dept. of State Briefing, extracting the most interesting parts (MKD).

In the same vein, dozens of bloggers promoted the video of the song “Postojam” (”I Exist”), by embedding it in their own posts and even reposting copies of it on YouTube. The video features scenes from documentary films about the ethnic cleansing of Macedonians during the Greek Civil War of 1946-49, accompanied with humanistic lyrics: “I exist… All is forgiven: even your wish for me to be no more.”

The author of the blog Agnes wrote (MKD):

Since its official release, the video of the single “Postojam” by the pop rock singer Miyatta received wide media coverage and it is a topic of discussion among the Macedonian population all around the world. Interest for the English translation of the lyrics and releasing it abroad has also been shown. Regardless of the context, the video has become something worth a comment. Those who were familiar with that part of Macedonia's history congratulated Miyatta for delivering this audio-visual expression. Those who see such pictures for the first time, think that it is too painful to be true. Some believe that this is just an attempt at attention-seeking. All kinds of positive and negative comments are yet to be heard. I am happy that the number of people who were indifferent towards “Postojam” is rather small.

Images of sorrow and exile on the one hand, and images of unity and pride on the other make for a rather authentic representation of Macedonia.

The past is not to be revived, but to be outgrown.
Let us outgrow it, but first,
Let us know it!
Macedonia exists.

In the other direction, the blog Drugarche posted translations of articles from the Greek press, including cartoons [MKD]. A number of bloggers also praised the interview of the Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski [GRE], given to the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia, and posted links to its English translations. Some offered more historical information from ancient books [MKD] and Western newspaper archives [MKD], as well as about the possible origins of the Greek flag.

But, most importantly, blogs have proved to be the primary vehicle for distributing information on grassroots peace-building. The news about the upcoming visit of about 50 Greek peace activists to Macedonian capital Skopje scheduled for May 17, 2008, appeared [MKD] on the influential Vuna blog first:

This is not an attempt to stoke fires of the Macedonian nationalist sentiments. This is not a call to stone embassies, supermarkets or whatever.

On the contrary, this is a call to participate in an event intended as opposition to all the madness. Greek citizens are first and foremost human beings, and most of them have nothing to do with their retrograde and fascizoid state policy, nor with the hordes of morons who harass people on the highways. At the same time, not all Macedonian citizens are hotheads who “hate every Greek thing” and can't wait to throw stones on the Liaison office.

[…]

Peace, love, empathy!