Civilisations perish because they listen to their Politicians and not to their Poets
Language as a Weapon
Letters from Vienna #18
In the early 1990s the Austrian writer Peter Handke was translating Shakespeare (sadly, he was finding it extremely difficult and desisted after “A Winter’s Tale”), publishing intense, philosophical-poetical essays on themes such as jukeboxes, success and Thucydides, and working on a play in which none of the characters said a single word.
I asked him at the time whether the play in question (“Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten”) was the completion of his piece: “Kaspar” (1968) and whether language was, for him, a weapon. To the first he replied: possibly, to the second: it depended upon how one uses language.
It was by reading and listening to the language employed in describing the conflict in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s that Peter Handke began to question the narrative perpetrated by the Main Stream Media (MSM).
He travelled to the Balkans and, in 1996, published a book about his experiences there (“Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien”), which, in the German-speaking world, was almost universally reviled. He was accused of aiding and abetting Serbian nationalism and, by implication, of being a collaborator in mass murder. At the time I didn’t take the matter seriously and let him know as much, something he neither forgot nor forgave. It was a foolish error on my part yet it didn’t prevent his innate kindness toward me.
What Peter Handke did was something all writers and artists should do: he dared to question the official narrative. And the official narrative remains confused and contradictory, which is why so few people claim with any degree of honesty to know what actually happened to former Yugoslavia. When one reads a book on the topic its analysis invariably jars with observed reality and it reaches, as a rule, wholly illogical and ridiculous conclusions.
To a large extent what happened to Yugoslavia is not a matter of “conspiracy theory” but open, official record and one of common sense. The conflict in Yugoslavia was caused not by “Serbian aggression” or “Serbian nationalism” but rather by the decision of the constituent parts of Yugoslavia: especially Croatia and Bosnia, both of which had sizeable Serbian “minorities” (in Bosnia the Serbs might well have formed the majority, which is why a Muslim fundamentalist like Alija Izetbegović couldn’t win an election by democratic means) to become independent states. Thus, if a part of the US or the UK decided to secede from the rest of the country, there would inevitably be conflict. The question always is: how is a conflict resolved? In the case of Yugoslavia: the death of Tito was long anticipated, as were the difficulties in Kosovo, as were the tensions between Serbs, Albanians and Croats, yet no outside body ever came to the aid of Yugoslavia. On the contrary: the country was doomed to die for a variety of geo-political reasons, which had nothing to do with “Serbian nationalism” or “Serbian aggression”.
“The motive behind the intervention was not NATO’s newfound humanitarianism but a desire to put Yugoslavia – along with every other country – under the suzerainty of free-market globalisation…”
“Much of the debate about the Yugoslav conflict revolves around questions like: Whom do we believe? What sources do we rely on? Is it the free and independent Western media or Belgrade’s government-controlled press? I would answer as follows: The US media, as most of the news media in other Western nations, are not free and independent. They are owned and controlled by largely conservative corporate cartels that adhere to the self-serving Neo-liberal ideology of international finance capital.”[1]
The shameful role the media played in the rape and destruction of Yugoslavia was ably documented in “Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting” by Peter Brock, a book which sickened me to the core. Since then I have had a profound aversion to those journalists who played a role in this evil crime.
Two episodes in particular stuck in my mind: the bombing of the Markale market in February 1994 and August 1995. A Serbian acquaintance, who was passing through Vienna on his way to Canada, told me that a friend of his, a cameraman, had received a phone call advising him to go to the Markale market where a story awaited him. Thus, he was able to film the immediate aftermath of the attack, which killed and injured dozens. How did the Bosnians, the Serb asked me, know of the impending attack? Was it because they had perpetrated it themselves? At first, I was horrified and a chill went down my spine. Then I thought: this cannot be. I reassured myself that he was a Serb and thus undoubtedly biased. Sadly, his account found confirmation in a report I later read in the International Herald Tribune, in which the UN stated unequivocally that the attack had come from the Bosnians and not the Serbs.
Had more people been aware of how false flags are regularly used to manipulate the media and the masses 9/11 would never have been possible but that is a subject for another essay.
“Brooking institute fellow and Balkan expert Susan Woodward eyed her fellow panel members at American university in Washington D.C., and momentarily chilled the 1993 discussion, stating with piercing conviction that the media is “indisputably a weapon of war, and everybody knows it!””
“The crucial propaganda wars in Yugoslavia were won in 1991 and 1992, Woodward said, by Slovenian, Croatian and Bosnian information ministries – and their hired public-relations gurus…”
“Perhaps the most decisive PR success occurred with the spectacular weekend bombings at the market of Sarajevo on February 5, 1994, which caused sixty-eight deaths and about 200 wounded. The mortar blast was later documented by United Nations investigators as originating from nearby Bosnian government troops and not from a single, pinpoint-accurate 120mm mortar fired from distant Serb positions.”
“The Bosnian government knew they were murdering civilians, including Muslim citizens. They planned it that way. It happened on a Saturday – market day for all Sarajevans. It was a terrorist disaster planned for the media…”[2]
The companies at the heart of the propaganda war against Yugoslavia, such as Ruder Finn, managed to successfully stay out of the limelight. Similarly, the ones at the centre of the current “Corona crisis”, such as ATI (“whose historical contracts were in the field of the dissemination of propaganda”)[3] are also hidden in the shadows. According to David Martin: it is these firms, which are essentially front companies for the CIA, that have a much more central role in the current “Corona crisis” than companies such as Pfizer or Moderna. Thus, according to David Martin: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Merck and Gilead are merely subcontractors of the firm ANSER.
Whatever the case may be propaganda, images and language are currently being used as weapons in an ongoing war against humanity on an unprecedented scale. Had more people listened to Handke in the 1990s the war in Yugoslavia would have ended much sooner, many MSM journalists would have been exposed for the criminals they are, mistrust in the media and governments would have been much greater and the mass murder known as the “Scamdemic” impossible. To quote the late great Jonas Mekas: “In the very end, civilisations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.”
[1] p.2-3 “To Kill a Nation” by Michael Parenti
[2] p.117-118 “Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting” by Peter Brock