Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: verita' di guerra

"Guerra in tre parti"
"Come unico corrispondente nordamericano in Kosovo per la più parte
dei 78 giorni di bombardamenti della Nato - scrive il 20 giugno - sono
passato attraverso una guerra di tre parti di cui la prima vittima è
stata, come nella maggioranza dei conflitti, la verità. (...) Molte
delle risposte che cercavo, fosse solo per amore di giustizia e per la
mia propria sanità mentale, sono andate perdute nel buio e nella
nebbia della guerra. Non ho trovato eroi. La Nato ha chiamato la sua
devastante guerra aerea contro la Jugoslavia 'un intervento
umanitario', una battaglia storica tra il bene e il male per fermare
la pulizia etnica e far ritornare i  kosovari albanesi alle loro case.
Ma da dentro il Kosovo, essa non è quasi mai apparsa così
semplice e pura. E' sembrato piuttosto come aver chiamato un idraulico
per riparare una perdita ed averlo osservato allagare la casa".
(2.fine)
----signature--------------
Da quando chiamano intelligenti le bombe
preferisco che mi considerino un perfetto idiota.

Kosovo, Paul Watson.
Aggiungo un altro esempio di vero giornalismo "controcorrente".
World Socialist Web Site 
www.wsws.org
The Austrian writer Peter Handke, European public opinion, and the war in
Yugoslavia
By Bernd Reinhardt
11 August 1999
Although many German-speaking artists took cover during the war in
Kosovo, the Austrian writer Peter Handke stood out by sharply
criticising NATO's actions from the very beginning as criminal.
"Morality is the new word for despotism", is how he countered all
those—such as writers Günter Grass, Stefan Heym, Hans Magnus
Enzenburger; the cabaret artist Ellen Tiedtke, or Wolfgang Niedekken,
the lead singer of the German rock group BAP—who either supported the
bombing for moral reasons, kept quiet, or who argued for UN intervention
(Handke's interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 15, 1999).
"Pictures and words can be used to create the greatest deception, and
earn great amounts of money," is what he said elsewhere about official
media reports of mass slaughter being carried out by the Serbs. "No one
knows what is going on in Kosovo, because no one can get in.... The
refugees are all saying the same things. Why should that make it more
credible?" [1] Handke turned the tables on the official justifications
for the bombings, saying NATO had not prevented a new Auschwitz, but had
rather created one. "In those days, it was gas chambers and shooting
squads, today it is computerised killers from 15,000 feet." [2] Just two
days after the first bombs had fallen, Handke issued his first open
letter, which spoke of "Green slaughterers". [3] He demanded that the
"German Minister of Death" (Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping), who just
months before had sent him birthday wishes, "should return my books to
me." [4] Handke attacked the sociologist and philosopher Jürgen
Habermas for lending the war his moral support. He undertook several
short journeys to Serbia, and returned the Büchner Prize (the highest
award for a German-language author) that he had been awarded in 1973.
The response of the media was to shower him with abuse. It was not only
German-speaking colleagues who turned their backs on him. "There are
intellectuals who, after hearing his utterances about the war in
Yugoslavia, have sworn never to pick up another of his books", wrote
Susan Sonntag in New York. The French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut saw
in Handke an "ideological monster", whose utterances were based on a
"Germanic guilty conscience" and the "conviction that he was an
invulnerable genius". This campaign reached a climax when, in mid-May,
the actress Marie Colbin spoke out in an open letter. She told of
private arguments, which apparently became violent, from an earlier time
when she lived with Handke, with the aim of portraying him as a violent,
power-hungry man, and a "vain author ... who enjoyed depicting himself
publicly as the 'voice in the wilderness'." She drew the conclusion that
he was "an ideologue of modern Balkan fascism". [5] The Berliner Zeitung
pointed to Handke's Olympian outlook and naiveté, criticising the
literary work of this internationally recognised author as
"narcissistically wrapped up in itself", as the attempt to work on a
"poetic parallel universe", which he had "increasingly sought to
construct as an impenetrable castle against the real world". [6] The
Swiss writer Laederach called Handke's statements on the war in Kosovo a
case of "advanced mental fog". The German-Swiss PEN Centre saw in him
the "blind inhabitant of an ivory tower", whose "pro-Serbian
derailment", as the PEN general secretary put it in the Berliner
Zeitung, reveals a "particularly unpalatable cynicism". [7] There is,
however, nothing in Handke's public statements to indicate that he is a
supporter of the Serbian nationalist Slobodan Milosovic, or his
politics. Anyone who has followed his writings over recent years can see
this clearly. His latest play, about the war in Yugoslavia— Die Fahrt
im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg ( Journey in a canoe, or
the play about the film of the war)—which premiered in June at the
Vienna Burgtheater, likewise contains no trace of pro-Serbian sentiment.
Handke told the Austrian magazine News that Milosevic was the "country's
elected president" and had to "defend his country's territory". He
added, "Anyone in his position in the last ten years would have acted
the same way he did. He was left no choice." [8] In the interview with
the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted above, he said clearly, "I am with the
Serbian people, not Milosevic. Anyone who is not a pronounced anti-Serb
is despised as being 'pro-Serb'. Whoever mentions Milosevic's name
without immediately adding 'slaughterer', 'Balkan Hitler', 'God protect
us', is accused of taking sides with Milosovic." He added, polemically,
that "to be called pro-Serb today is an honour. A few years before,
Handke had argued against the demonisation of the Serbs in the Bosnian
war. In autumn 1995 he travelled to the "land of so-called aggressors"
because all the newspaper articles had unleashed an urge to "look behind
the mirror". "Who can really tell," he wrote, "what such a thing is
like, if one has only been shown a picture?" [9] When the Süddeutsche
Zeitung in January 1996 published the report of his visit, "Justice for
Serbia", he was violently attacked in the media and accused of having a
"pro-Serbian" attitude. The opposite was the case. Anyone who bothered
to read his text carefully could not fail but notice that even in his
dispute with the young French writer Patrick Besson, Handke expressed
concern that in rejecting any generalised media prejudice against Serbs,
one had to avoid going over to the opposite extreme, an equally
generalised "defence of the Serbs". Such arguments "contained the danger
of expressing something which could be likened to the glorification of
the Soviet system by certain visitors from the West in the 1930s." [10]
One reason for the unceasing vilification of Handke is plain to see.
Comparing NATO's intervention with that of the Nazis is both a
provocation and a withering criticism of all those anti-fascists from
the 1968 generation whose moral appeals for decades stressed that war
must never again be permitted from German soil. Now, having themselves
called for war, they had to conjure up a second Hitler to justify their
about-face. There may, however, be another, more important
consideration. Handke has rejected the prevailing opinion in Europe (and
especially in Germany) that supports, in the name of national
self-determination, the formation of numerous petty states in the
Balkans. He has called this policy "absolutely childish", according to
one German Internet newspaper which indignantly quoted Handke's views on
the "liberation struggle of the Kosovo Albanians". [11] Is this perhaps
why Handke has been labeled "pro-Serb"? Handke clearly sees nothing
positive in the division of the Balkans. In 1991, in his book Abshied
des Träumers vom Neunten Land ( The Dreamer's Farewell from the Ninth
Land), he spoke against the separation of Slovenia from Yugoslavia. In
the account of his travels, entitled Justice for Serbia, to which his
critics continually return, his regret over the dissolution of
Yugoslavia is evident. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Handke expressed
his sorrow over the "tragic failure" of what he called
"reform-communism" in Yugoslavia. [12] His book ends with an extract
from the suicide note of a former Tito partisan who, in desperation,
killed himself in 1992. "The betrayal, the decline and chaos of our
country, the difficult situation into which our people have been thrown,
the war ... in Bosnia Herzogovina, the extermination of the Serbian
people and my own illness have made my further life senseless." [13]
About his wife, who was Handke's host, he wrote: "Until the end of her
life, she would remain a thoroughly convinced Yugoslavian—not
Serbian—communist ... even today this is the only possibility she sees
for the south Slav people. Before the German invasion in 1941, under the
monarchy, there were a few who owned everything. Next to them was only
howling poverty. And now, in this special Serbian state—where the
powers that be are 'traitors', as in the other new states—this is
repeated, with avaricious war profiteers alongside of half-frozen
have-nothings." [14] As Handke writes in his conclusion, Justice for
Sebia is not only directed at a German-reading audience, but is "also
for those in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia". [15] Handke wants to remind the
people of the former Yugoslavia that they have a common past. To this
end, he is not so concerned with the current theatres of war. He calls
to mind unspectacular, inconspicuous, everyday events shared by the
various peoples—events which previously would not have been given a
second thought. For example, he recalls how, early in summer, swimmers
would swim backwards and forwards between the Bosnian bank and the
Serbian; that many people had Muslim friends; how cosmetics from
Slovenia were popular, as was Bosnian fruit and vegetables that were
shipped over the Drina; that at one time, the buses used to go from
Bajina Basta to Tuzla and Srebrenica, and this was nothing special; in
contrast to today, it was not unusual to see a car from Skopje/Macedonia
parked on the street. The reader is given an impression of how natural
it was that the various languages and dialects existed alongside each
other in the Balkans, and how this unconsciously penetrated everyday
life—until today. When Sladko, Handke's Serbian travel companion from
Germany, visited his parents' village, "despite straining to listen, I
suddenly understood nothing—were they even speaking Serbian? No, the
family had naturally started speaking Romanian, the conversational and
private language of most villagers. Porodin was renowned as such a
linguistic island. But did they even consider themselves to be Serbs?
'Of course — what else?'" [16] "Why had there been such massive
slaughter?" Handke asked. "Who were the aggressors? Were those who
provoked a war the same as those who started it? And what did 'starting
it' mean?" [17] In contrast to the official media reports in Western
Europe, he was unable to discover any "Serbian paranoia". He suggested
that it was not present on the territory where "three ethnic peoples ...
intermingled, not simply in the 'multi-cultural' capital, but rather
from village to village, and in the villages themselves, even from house
to shack, living side-by-side and in between one another..." He
concluded that "legendary grains of sand... were blown up and became as
big as rocks" thrown in the anger of war. That happened in "our
darkrooms". [18] "How could this be compared to any violent dreams of
'Greater Serbia'?" he asked. "In the end, wasn't it rather a 'Greater
Croatia' that proved to be something more real, or more effective, or
more massively determined and conclusive, than the illusory grains of
sand of Serbian legend, that nowhere and never became a unified concept
of power and policy?" In biting words, he wrote of the new independence
of the Slovenian state: "Now... I arrived at the Hotel 'Zlatorog' ... at
the valley's end, everything arranged for German speakers, and in the
entrance the framed photos of Tito's visit had been removed—not a pity
really—and replaced with those of Willy Brandt.... On state
television—almost nothing other than German and Austrian
channels—over and over again a foreign trade or economic delegation
was having native folk songs sung to them. Then the Slovenian President
would enter the scene. Wasn't he once a capable and proud functionary?
But now he behaves like a waiter, almost like a lackey, who serves up
his country to the foreigners who visit, as if he wanted to satisfy
every wish of a German employer or customer: the Slovenians aren't this
or that, but rather a 'hard working and willing Alpen people'." The
first question that Handke heard a customer in the new supermarket ask,
was: "Has the Bild [German newspaper] arrived?" [20] On his journey in
April of this year, Handke lashed out against "the fat German, courtly
mendacious French and expansionist American" language of the
negotiations, which he followed on the hotel television, and the logic
of the NATO attack, "which could bomb both a corn field and a chicken
coup, because corn, chicken and eggs could nourish an enemy soldier". He
mused: "It's their own fault? The guilty, isn't it the people of this
land themselves.... What does the country say? The country says
absolutely nothing, it only becomes quieter, much quieter, and thereby
doesn't say anything—which is more enduring. It means: no, we're not
to blame." [21] Last year, the Austrian cultural journalist Sigfrid
Löffler delivered a speech to the Goethe Institute in Montevideo
entitled "Peter Handke and the controversy over his text , Justice for
Serbia." She supported Handke and traced the origins of the incessant,
malicious press attacks back to a fundamental question that Handke had
provoked: Who will really do justice to the war in Yugoslavia?" "The
storm of disapproval that arose in the press following the publication
of Justice for Serbia ... can only be understood if one keeps in mind
the really audacious provocation that the poet was undertaking,
legitimised by nothing other than the artist's sheer self will. The poet
is not only seeking to criticise the predominant media practices and
place a question mark over them. He wants to counterpose his poetic
experience, his poet's eye, to the picture of the Serbs that the media
paints world-wide. Against the superior power of media opinions about
this war, he counters with his poetic voice. A single individual opposes
the world's entire press: the poet, in and for himself. And he has the
nerve to pose the question anew: Which side bears the guilt for the
Yugoslavian war of secession?" [22] Handke declares that the majority of
war journalists "confuse their role as journalist with that of judge, or
even demagogue, and ... are just as nasty as the dogs of war on the
battlefield." Their words are kept "on the taut leash they are given."
Instead of research into the origins [of the war], what counts is only
"the sale of naked, randy, market-oriented facts, or bogus facts". [23]
For Handke, the truth about the war is not one-dimensional, and does not
run in a straight line, as the media would have us believe. "The
problem—is it only mine?—is more complicated, complicated by many
levels of reality, or degrees, and in trying to clarify it, I am aiming
at something quite thoroughly real, in which all of the swirling threads
of reality enable some sort of context to be vaguely grasped." [24] The
two film directors in Handke's Journey in a Canoe also experience this.
In the end, they abandon their joint film project regarding the war in
Yugoslavia. They find the events on the ground too confusing and alien
to make a simply drawn story that would move the public, using the tried
and tested formula, as they had originally intended, where everything
"unfolds nicely according to plan". At one time, students in Berlin
(before they later became writers, lawyers and politicians) occupied the
media headquarters of Axel Springer, publisher of the gutter newspaper
Bild, in protest "against total manipulation". That was in 1968. Today
they look back at their fight against the "power of the media" with some
nostalgia, but also with mounting incomprehension. For today they are,
above all, more tolerant. Handke clearly does not belong to this group.
He goes his own way, critical and unimpressed by the prevailing
opinions. The high standards he has set himself as a "traveller in the
cause of truth"—as a journalist from the Berliner Zeitung
condescendingly remarked—thereby throwing his international authority
as an artist into the balance, deserves respect. The fact that he
presently provides the portrait of an isolated fighter underscores the
rapid right-wing development of the intellectual and political milieu
from which Handke himself comes, and which in past times brought forth
such critical spirits as Jürgen Habermas, Stefan Heym and Gunther
Grass. The accusation that he has assumed the role of the "voice in the
wilderness" out of pride or to seek publicity is levelled against Handke
only because, in reality, the writer is holding the fort alone. Notes:
1. Burgenland-Online,
http://www.burgenland.com/Tmh/Zrlokal/Kultur/news-17380.asp
 2. SZ 15.
May 1999, interview
3. Online-Archiv Munzinger, Peter Handke p. 5
4. SZ 15. May 1999, interview
5. Tiroler Tageszeitung Online 21. May 1999,
http://www.tirol.com/tt/Welt/Politik/article_34300.html
 6. Berliner
Zeitung, 3 April 1999
7. Berliner Zeitung, 31 March 1999
8. Vienna Online,
http://www.vienna.at/pubs/news/lokalviol/1999_05_11_14_16_wwn_33.asp
 9.
"Gerechtigkeit für Serbien"(Part 1), SZ 05. January 1996, culture pp.
1, 2 10. Ebenda, P. 3
11. Burgenland-Online, see Note 1.
12. SZ 15. May 1999, interview
13. "Gerechtigkeit für Serbien" (part 2), SZ 13. January 1996, culture
p. 4 14. Ebenda p. 3
15. Ebenda p. 4
16. Ebenda p. 1
17. "Gerechtigkeit für Serbien" (part 1), p. 2
18. Ebenda, pp. 3-4
19. Ebenda, p. 4
20. "Gerechtigkeit für Serbien" (part 2), p. 3
21. "Der Krieg ist das Gebiet des Zufalls" SZ 05. June 1999
22. Sigrid Löffler "Peter Handke und die Kontroverse um seine
Streitschrift ‚Gerechtigkeit für Serbien" unter
http://www.goethe.de/hs/mot/vortra//loef-1d.htm
 23. "Gerechtigkeit für
Serbien" (part 2) p. 4; (part 1) p. 2
24. "Gerechtigkeit für Serbien" (part 1) p. 2
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