JOURNAL ARCHIVE: posted by H.V.O.M at 8:28 PM Thursday, September 15, 2005
I am going to describe a dream I had earlier today, because as strange as it seems, I think I am supposed to. I think someone is testing me and they want me to relay to them what they sent to my sleeping mind. I guess they want to see how much detail I remember when I am awake or something like that. It has happened a couple times lately but I have resisted writing about it. Mainly because it agitates me so to be manipulated like this.
I had that dream again about the house I bought in South Carolina back in the early '90s. I loved that place, it was quiet and relaxing. That house is always the central element in dreams I have sometime. There are usually variations to the situation, but the house is always there. And there is usually another element to the dream. In the dream, I discover that I still own the house and I can go back there any time I want, even at the very moment I realize it is still there. It is a great feeling to know I can sleep there that very night if I want to.
In this dream last night though, there is something about my nieces. One of them has bought the house and will live there now. This is one of ten houses that one of ten nieces is getting. Not sure what that means, I only have two nieces. So anyway, I have two cars parked outside. One is that Mazda RX-7, and just like re-discovering the house in the prior dreams, this car is suddenly mine again and I am very happy to see it. I faced a dilemma though about how to get two cars back to my place, whereever that was. There is a lot of food in one car and I am transferring it from one to the RX-7. It was dark. Then I found myself at what seemed to be my own place in the country, the grass was very high. Never seen this place before, but there seems to be something slightly familiar about it. Next image I remember is my Jeep blocking the entrace of my driveway. But the postman has driven around it and is delivering the mail. He has a lot to deliver. At one point, he walks up to the house, or the garage, but I do not talk with him. Before this, I had been walking around the property and there are a lot of other buildings with purposes I don't know but they have a lot of objects, tools and such, cluttered around. I am standing on the porch about to go in and a woman throws open a hatch on the porch and starts climbing up from under the porch. She is carrying a fishing tackle box and something else I don't recognize. She is a scientist or something. She is on some kind of expedition to go out and cause frogs, I think it was, to contract the "mumps." I don't know why she was doing it, but she said they weren't doing it themselves. I woke up at this point and I could hear some loud-mouth in another room on this floor talking loudly next to his window about how he never contracted the mumps when he was a kid even though he had actually tried to contract it by getting into bed with someone that had the mumps.
I'm not sure if this dream happened after I went back to sleep or it had occured earlier, but I was in that unfamilar house there in the country and I was trying to get ready. I was meeting some family members in town for lunch but I kept getting interrupted. At one point, the clock read 1:38 pm but I had to be there at 2pm and I had not even showered or shaved yet. I didn't know how to get in touch with them to let them know I would be late.
The other dream I had was about fighting some kind of aliens. I'm not sure if this dream happened before the one I wrote about above or if it happened later. In this dream, I am still in the Navy, but I am wearing some kind of camoflauge uniform, maybe army or marines. These aliens have invaded a subway and there are a lot of travelers around in danger. I am about to drop from exhaustion after 36 hours of fighting, we have been retreating and I am separated from the other soldiers. I am carrying two heavy packs, trying to find another unit to group up with, with passengers stream through the facility, they are even getting on the trains as some of them are still coming through. I have lost my rifle somewhere. I still have plenty of ammo, but I can't find a rifle. A woman at a coffee kisok says something to me that I don't remember, she has dried blood on her hands as she is preparing coffee. Then I am outside and I have found an armory where I get another rifle. I start heading back to the subway. A woman drives up in a car and asks me if I am who she thinks I am. But I can't remember seeing her actually in the car, all I can remember is seeing her buried in the dirt with only her talking face exposed. That is all I remember.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 15 September 2005 excerpt ends]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_War_of_Independence
Croatian War of Independence
The Croatian War of Independence was fought from 1991 to 1995 between forces loyal to the government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia)—and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations in Croatia by 1992. In Croatia, the war is primarily referred to as the Homeland War (Domovinski rat) and also as the Greater-Serbian aggression (Velikosrpska agresija). In Serbian sources, War in Croatia (Rat u Hrvatskoj) is the most commonly used term.
Initially, the war was waged between Croatian police forces and Serbs living in the Republic of Croatia. As the JNA came under increasing Serbian influence in Belgrade, many of its units began assisting the Serbs fighting in Croatia. The Croatian side aimed to establish a sovereign country independent of Yugoslavia, and the Serbs, supported by Serbia, opposed the secession and wanted Croatia to remain a part of Yugoslavia. The Serbs effectively sought new boundaries in areas of Croatia with a Serb majority or significant minority, and attempted to conquer as much of Croatia as possible.
The weakening of the communist regime allowed nationalism to spread its political presence, even within the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In 1989, political parties were allowed and a number of them had been founded, including the Croatian Democratic Union (Croatian: Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica) (HDZ), led by Franjo Tudman, who later became the first president of Croatia. Tudman made international visits during the late 1980s to garner support from the Croatian diaspora for the Croatian national cause.
In January 1990, the League of Communists broke up on the lines of the individual republics. At the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, on January 20, 1990, the delegations of the republics could not agree on the main issues in the Yugoslav federation. The Croatian and Slovenian delegations demanded a looser federation, while the Serbian delegation, headed by Miloševic, opposed this. As a result, the Slovenian and Croatian delegates left the Congress.
In February 1990, Jovan Raškovic founded the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) in Knin. Its program stated that the "regional division of Croatia is outdated" and that it "does not correspond with the interest of Serb people". The party program endorsed redrawing regional and municipal lines to reflect the ethnic composition of the areas, and asserted the right of territories with a "special ethnic composition" to become autonomous. This echoed Miloševic position that internal Yugoslav borders should be redrawn to permit all Serbs to live in a single country. Prominent members of the SDS were Milan Babic and Milan Martic, both of whom later became high-ranking Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) officials. During his later trial, Babic would testify that there was a media campaign directed from Belgrade that portrayed the Serbs in Croatia as being threatened with genocide by the Croat majority and that he fell prey to the propaganda. On March 4, 1990, a meeting of 50,000 Serbs was held at Petrova Gora. People at the rally shouted negative remarks aimed at Tudman and other Croatians, chanted "This is Serbia", and expressed support for Miloševic.
The first free elections in Croatia and Slovenia were scheduled for a few months later. The first round of elections in Croatia were held on April 22, and the second round on May 6. The HDZ based its campaign on an aspiration for greater sovereignty for Croatia and on a platform opposed to Yugoslav unitarist ideology, fueling a sentiment among Croats that "only the HDZ could protect Croatia from the aspirations of Serbian elements led by Slobodan Miloševic towards a Greater Serbia". It topped the poll in the elections (followed by Ivica Racan's reformed communists, Social Democratic Party of Croatia) and was set to form a new Croatian Government.
A tense atmosphere prevailed in 1990, and especially so during the period immediately before the elections. On May 13, 1990, a football game was held in Zagreb between Zagreb's Dinamo team and Belgrade's Crvena Zvezda team. The game erupted into violence between football fans and police.
On May 30, 1990, the new Croatian Parliament held its first session. President Tudman announced his manifesto for a new Constitution (ratified at the end of the year) and a multitude of political, economic, and social changes, notably to what extent minority rights (mainly for Serbs) would be guaranteed. Local Serb politicians opposed the new constitution on the grounds that the local Serb population would be threatened. Their prime concern was that a new constitution would not henceforth designate Croatia a "national state of the Croatian people, a state of the Serbian people, and any other people living in it" but a "national state of the Croatian people and any people living in it". In 1991, Serbs represented 12.2 percent of the total population of Croatia, but they held a disproportionate number of official posts: 17.7 percent of appointed officials in Croatia, including police, were Serbs. An even greater proportion of those posts had been held by Serbs in Croatia earlier on, which created a perception that the Serbs were guardians of the communist regime. After HDZ came to power, some of the Serbs employed in public administration, especially the police, lost their jobs and were replaced by Croats.
