Saint Nicklaus Day was the day when those 60.000 people who registered on Facebook were supposed to come out on streets and protest against the government in major Croatian cities.

Bear in mind that a string of on-line protests against the government brought Croatian police arresting Facebook activists, with Croatian police de facto breaking the US Constitution – as Facebook servers are located in the United States and Facebook users accept ToS agreement made under the Anglo-Saxon law.

When the day of protest came, activists saw a lot of public posters rewritten with new ones. These new ones stated that the protest has been cancelled, causing additional confusion to non-Facebook visiting crowd – but more over, police forces in smaller cities like Kutina openly warned organizers that they will attack any protesters. At the same time, Mayor of city of world-famous Dubrovnik banned the protest. The major is a party member of governing party, Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ). 

All things aside, the protest can be viewed as a failure in attendance, since only 4000 people gathered in country’s capitol, additional 500 or so joined the protest in Split, while Zadar, Rijeka and Osijek witnessed couple hundred people. Overall, more than 60,000 people gave support and roughly 10% showed up. One explanation could be combination of rain and shilling campaign, another as apathy – just like US saw apathy in 2004 elections. We all know what happened in 2008 and who demolished its conservative opponent. Even Red states voted for change, and that is the lesson Croatian politicians were afraid of.

There is a big lesson to be learned here. Major victory was won even before the protests took place. For starters, Croatian government decided to abandon all of its recent controversial decisions, such as freezing salaries in the public sector, banning gifts for children of employees in the public sector and so on. So, “Grinch the Prime Minister” went back to being Doc Ivo “We are in banana situation” Sanader (his statement from failed negotiations with the Unions).

The biggest winner of this whole Anti-Facebook charade is without any doubt – Internet. In a matter of hours, news of every misstep taken by governing cabinet, governing party and their influence in the police ended up under a lamp light of independent foreign and domestic media.

You can’t stop the signal.

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However, mainstream media didn’t exactly show in droves to see more several thousand people that waited in Zagreb and hundreds of people in several other cities in Croatia – these people waited for World of Warcraft: The Wrath of Lich King add-on. The price was set at $60 for the regular and $120 for the Collector’s Edition – and yes, there were many happy faces walking off with the Collector’s Edition.

The line went on and on and on...

However, during the great wait, it was funny hearing people discussing how much fun you can get from WoW and how much fun you can get fron an iPhone… luckily, political topics were a big no-no, and that shows growing up of this burdened country. Organization of the event was impeccable as always, since guys’n’girls in Algoritam have a lot of experience with midnight sales (Harry Potter, WoW). What really surprised me wasseeing more people gathered for this add-on than for the previos add-on, The Burning Crusade. But contrary to typical geekhood that usually stand in lines, it wasn’t a rare sight to see the whole family… or a particularly attractive females… next time you’re talking to a Tauren, be warned, he might be a (hot) she.

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Photo courtesy of Index.hr

At 6:25PM, car bomb killed mr. Ivo Pukanic and mr. Niko Franic. Ivo was founder and owner of Nacional Media Group (NCL), while Niko was director of marketing and a sad collateral in this act of terrorism.

As of tonight, several good friends of mine have been put under police protection as a consequence of yesterday’s car bombing which took lifes of Ivo Pukanic and Niko Franic. What makes the matter worse, or IT-based is the fact that these friends had nothing to do with writing about politics. I don’t think they wrote a single politics-based or crime-investigating article. They wrote about world economy, reviewed console games and basically, lead normal lives of a journalist that is always pressed by deadlines. Now, they have police cars in front of their homes, and I spent the night calming people down.

It is 2:59AM right now, and instead of doing benchmarks of Badaboom encoding software, I’m spending my night talking with colleagues and friends that have police cars in front of their homes. Yes, the situation is critical, and nobody knows who’s next. After 68 unsolved mob-murders and god-knows how many non-tied ones (but were tied), streets of Zagreb are not safe. I only hope that airport will be in one place until I leave on Sunday morning.

When I moved to California, a lot of my Croatian friends told me the regular crap when it comes to US, mostly based on experiences of watching TV shows. Sadly, I cannot explain to these people what US is all about, but we all know how cities in US with terrible crime rates had crackdowns where corrupt officials were taken down.

For my Croatian buddies sending me messages to “calm down” and “you’re misrepresenting Croatia, America is much worse”, all that I can say is – wake up and smell the coffee. When it comes to America, watch American Gangster or read how Guiliani fought crime on the streets of New York.

Sadly, a lot of things are happening in Croatia, as a consequence of govenrment that placed their heads in the sand for 15 years and let almost 70 mob-related murders go unpunished, doing only cosmetic changes to the way how police force works. I wish police and special forces all the best in fighting crime, but as it is right now, Croatia is no longer a safe country. You can be the next collateral in mob killings that happen during daytime, 100 meters from the central police HQ in Croatia (last week’s execution of Ivana Hodak), or worse.

My thoughts and prays are with those who are now being protected. May no more blood be shed.

UPDATE@4:23AM: I’ve learned that one of my ex-colleagues was injured in the car bombing. Ivica Horvat and  Vedran Duhacek worked in the graphics department of NCL. According to information I have now, police has increased protection on journalists and media owners in City of Zagreb.

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