Posted on 06/03/2006 2:04:45 AM PDT by kronos77
A political and cultural row is brewing in Germany over a decision to award the Heinrich Heine literature prize to Peter Handke, the Austrian author who courted controversy with his eulogy at the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic.
The Austrian author was named winner of the 50,000-euro ($70,745) prize, given by the city of Duesseldorf.
But political and literary leaders are arguing whether the writer, known for his pro-Serbian statements and writings, should be allowed to receive the prize. Handke produced a travelogue in 1996 that showed sympathy for the Serbs as victims of the Balkan wars.
Earlier this month, the Parisian theatre company Comédie-Française withdrew his play Voyage to the Sonorous Land or the Art of Asking from its 2006-07 season following his appearance at Milosevic's funeral.
"For my soul and my conscience it was impossible to welcome this person into my theatre," company administrator Marcel Bozonnet said, adding that to host someone's work in the theatre was "an act of recognition, of love."
Milosovic died in prison in the Hague in March, while awaiting trial for war crimes.
At Milosevic's funeral, Handke paid respect to him as "a man who defended his people."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Latest news is that Vim Venders stood in support of Handke
I wonder had he been a hamas supporter and a holocaust denier if he'd have been more welcome.
If he was a HAMAS suporter and Holokaust denier, he would be French president.
They should ban books of Solzhenitsyn and Orwell too!
Advice to Mr Handke, just change the word Serb to Palestinian. See, no problems.
I've always had a little mental list of things I'd pay a hundred dollars to watch, and having the spetznaz rescue Milosevic and shoot the Hague to pieces in the process was at the top of the list when Milosevic died. Slobodan Milosevic was a hero and Europeans who hope to survive other than under sharia law had best learn that.
With all due respect... but anyone who says that Slobodan Milosevic is a hero is an (insert something which could get me banned if actually written) who hasn't lived under his regime.
I doubt you were in Yugoslavia from 89-96... and if you were, you'd know that what this Hendke character is doing is not much better than people who are trying to rehabilitate Hitler.
The war was bloody, and he's one of the people who orchestrated it. It wasn't only the muslims who did the killing, the serbs did the same and in equally brutal fashion.
I recommend that you visit some ex yugoslavian countries and ask the people what they think of Milosevic...
I know what the people think, because I went to school with refugees from bosnia (both muslim and serb); none of them thought of him as a hero.
And to your worries about muslims and Europe... it was the slovenian and croatian people who halted the turks in "Vojna Krajina". If needed, we will fight again, but not before it is absolutely neccesary.
It's easy to speak of war when you've never been faced with one happening in front of your eyes. Hearing the air strike sirens test every first saturday of the month always takes me back in time when I was a 7 year old kid shaking in the basement of the house with yugoslav army bombarding the nearby hill (and yes, people died then).
Milosevic was one of the main villains in the wars on the balkan no matter how much some people try to persuade others it was just a "war against islam". It was an attempt to create a "Greater Serbia", to submiss Yugoslavia to serbian control through centralism.
Slovenia was lucky to have survived this war with fewer than 100 people killed.
*posted anew, because the proper spelling of Milosevic's name messed up the structure
I have no apriori stake in anything involving the balkans. I am not of slavic origin, a member of the orthodox church etc. and in fact I do not really even know any Serbs. I speak Russian reasonably well and I have a reasonably good idea of how Russians think, and there was a big question mark in 95, i.e. assuming everything you read in the media is correct and the Serbs really are the assholes of the world, is it worth damaging relations with Russia over? To me the answer was not really, but I could not have framed an argument or a case very easily.
When the whole process started up again in 99, I decided to make it my business to go out on the internet and learn as much as possible on the subject. Here's what all I learned:
As nearly as I can tell, the Serbs are the closest thing there are to normal decent people in the Balkans. There were 25 or 26 ethnic groups in the yugoslav federation, only three or four of which had any sort of a problem dealing with Serbs, and those are the three or four which sided with Adolf Hitler in WW-II.
In fact the Serbs declared war on Hitler and held him for many months and sent him into Russia in the dead of winter instead of on schedule, but for which we might all be working in a Nazi coal mine in West Virginia. In fact, the Serbs rescued something like 500 allied airmen who were downed coming back from the raids over Ploesti and other balkan targets. Any allied airman who ever parachuted into Croatia, Albania, or any of the other parts of the Balkans was tortured and killed. The Serbs paid a huge price for this, two or three million being killed in death camps in the surrounding states, which sided with Hitler.
Kosovo in fact had been majority Serb prior to the war and was the ancient heartland of Serbia, with 1500 or so orthodox shrines and monasteries. Many Serbs living in Kosovo were killed by the nazis, and Tito, a Croat, moved many more out of Kosovo, and then you started getting large numbers of Albanians moving into Kosovo to escape one of the worst regimes in the commie world in Albania. Most Albanian Kosovars are in fact illegal immigrants.
Bad went to worse after the war until Milosevic ended up having to rescind the autonomy of the province in 89, and that was the genesis of the modern problems of Kosovo. Milosevic had no options; every other ethnic group in Kosovo was being brutalized by the Albanians. According to every account I was able to read, in the winter of 99, there was in actual fact nothing resembling ethnic cleansing or genocide going on in Kosovo; only a bunch of innocent people trying to protect themselves from a low-grade guerilla war being waged by narco-terrorists with money and arms being supplied by other nations.
In fact the whole problem in Kosovo was the Albanians, who appear to be universally hated in the region. These people average ten or twelve children per family, and attempt to ensconce themselves into little corners of other peoples' countries and breed for fifteen or twenty years until they constitute a majority population in those corners, and then break those corners off into their "greater Albania". Greeks, Macedonians, Serbs and othere refer to this as "rabbit breeding your way to power". That's aside from rape, murder, poisoning wells etc. etc., which they also excel at.
From everything I was able to read, Albanians are responsible for as much as 90% of European heroin trafficking, most of the prostitution south of Germany, most of the traffic in stolen vehicles moving from Europe to Russia and the Levant, and on and on and on. Therefore it came as no surprise to to learn that the real reasons such as they were for our involvement had basically nothing to do with Albanian Kosovars, who no rational person could give a rat's ass over. There were six or eight real reasons for wanting to get into Kosovo and together they did not add up to a believable case and the pentagon advised Slick not to do it.
Nonetheless the thing which was on the front page of virtually all American journals at the time was the Juanita Broaddrick story, i.e. a credible allegation of a brutal rape by a sitting president of the United States, and Slick clearly needed something to get that story off the papers. A week after Kosovo started, there were pictures of Slick and his toadies doing high-fives and talking about hitting a home run. A home run, in fact, which cost the lives of several thousand little slavic orthodox children.
As near as I could tell, NATO commanders realized that this thing was another episode of dog-wagging for which they could not ask pilots to risk their lives over and ordered bombing attacks practically from orbit, and then when they realized they could not harm the Serbian military from 25,000', embarked upon a wholesale campaign of what most people would call war crimes, targetting the Serbian people and their infrastructure hundreds of kilometers from any legitimate military target.
Aside from every other problem with Kosovo, the precedent which it represents cannot possibly be allowed to stand. If ethnicity is everything and ownership and sovereignty don't mean anything anymore, then what are we going to say when the UN comes here demanding that we hand Texas, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and California over to Mexico on the same perverted basis?
One of the things I've noticed about hoodlums and bullies over a long period of time is that they seem to excell at accusing others of the kinds of crap which they themselves perpetrate. This may simply be a natural tendency of a$$holes to assume that the whole world consists of a$$holes similar in nature to themselves. I assume this is basically what is behind most or all of the accusations against Serbs which originate with Bosnians, Albanians, and Croats.
I mean, just prior to 9/11, I was seeing (on usenet) comments from people in many of the surrounding countries vouching for the character of the Serbs, and this included people from Greece, Macedonia, Hungary, and several others. They were all saying that normal decent people have never had problems dealing with Serbs.
heh... you'll have to tell me one day which history books you've been reading.
1) Partisans were created from different ethnicities and even political beliefs (they weren't even communist in the beginning).
2) It wasn't only the serb partisans, in fact the first liberated territory in Europe was in Slovenia (and yes, there were also croatian partisans)
3) True; some people cooperated with Hitler (but that happened in slovenia, croatia and serbia). And after the war that problem was "dealt with" in the most brutal possible manner. In fact the post-war killings are one of the main differences between the conservative and liberal political parties in slovenia (conservatives want to rehabilitate the white guard - collaborators (in a way)).
4) There were less ethnic groups in Yugoslavia; not 25-26, at least not major ones.
5) All of the major ones had problems with serbs (btw... you do know that a week ago montenegro held a referendum to declare independence from serbia - and it passed).
6) If you ever come to slovenia, you'll be able to see some of the planes that were shot down during WWII, and I know that at least a couple years ago some of the airmen that were saved came back to slovenia for a visit.
7)Kosovo and slovenia... one of the serbian generals once threathened slovenians that they'll move all slovenians into kosovo and vice versa. That's the reality of it.
8)Problems in Kosovo have been there since the middle ages (kosovsko polje), not since 89. It was Tito that actually stifled the violence for a while. (brotherhood and unity - which was the guiding motto of yugoslavia).
9)From slovenian point of view americans have a lot of kids (to the point of 10-12 kids)
10) I can't tell you much about NATO bombing, that was something we didn't really have a connection to. We're just dealing with the consequences of it (slovenian soldiers are probably the most important resource nato/un have there, because we're not hated by either side, we speak the language (at least passively) and know the culture + customs)
11) Albanian mafia... sure; they smuggle drugs and some weapons while selling vegetables and fruits in the market. But then again; serbian mafia is quite strong also (especially in weapon smuggling).
Your first source... http://www.srpska-mreza.com/ddj/Kosovo/articles/Binder87NYT.htm
the first word srpska means serbian the second work mreza means network. If you look at the content you'll see it's nothing but an apologistic website.
The second source...
http://members.tripod.com/~sarant_2/kstexts.html
some other text titles from this site:
Harold Pinter: The US is now a highly dangerous force, totally out of control
Harold Pinter: We are bandits guilty of murder
Peter Handke: The whole planet of Earth's name is Yugoslavia
.
.
.
Third link...
can you say "media is creating the reality". That was the first thing my communicology professor told us. Media is also creating events in order to increase sales; nothing new. I hardly think that call something untrue due to one article which was fabricated, when there were hundreds of such articles posted.
"One of the things I've noticed about hoodlums and bullies over a long period of time is that they seem to excell at accusing others of the kinds of crap which they themselves perpetrate." <---- apply that to serbs, they're the ones most audiable about that, if you don't believe me, try speaking to some serbs on this site. Serbs will be portrayed as saints and everyone else will be the devil himself. (speaking from experience here ^_^)
*other than during the 10 day war I've rarely had any troubles with serbs (other than my grandfather... but that's to be expected in a crazy family like mine :D )
I was reffering to milosevic btw; not the serbs as a whole :)
but let me twist the logic for you so you'll see how easy it is:
germans between WWI/WWII were struggling with inflation, couldn't have any army, paying war debts,... hitler came and solved the situation (from the german perspective), then the situation went spiralled out of control
I think it was similar with the serbs; all you need is the right madman and an appropriate autority submissed people and you've got one hellish situation.
“Hearing the air strike sirens test every first saturday of the month always takes me back in time when I was a 7 year old kid shaking in the basement of the house with yugoslav army bombarding the nearby hill (and yes, people died then).”
Who did die from the bombing? There were no civilian homes bombed. Most of the dead were Yugoslav border guards and army. There was Austrian film of Slovenes shooting at those who surrendered. Many weren’t even ethnic Serbs. The Slovenes shot down a helicopter delivering bread to Yugoslav soldiers trapped in their barracks. Slovenes had cut off electricity and water. They had civilians crowd around to prevent soldiers from being taken to the hospital.
What about Slovenia stealing the bank deposits of former non-Slovene Yugoslavs – even Croats are trying to sue to get that money back?
What about Slovenia being the about the only European country without a mosque, even refusing for around 30 years the demands of its Muslim population? Yet the same Slovenes pushing Muslim rights and privileges were they live with or near Serbs?
What about the “erased people”?
The Serbs aren't in the news for the violent and spectacular robberies and killings going on in Britain and Spain. The Albanians are, and in white slavery too.
At least 2 Albanians have been named in the recent record breaking robbery: £40m stolen in Britain's biggest robbery
Many of the Partisans were former Ustasha given amnesty by Tito. Croats always switch sides when they lose their German support and are losing.
The Partisans were given false credit for Chetnik attacks against the Germans. British communist moles were lying for Tito. The British also tried to prevent the largest rescue behind enemy lines because they didn't want Draza Mihailovic to get credit. This is confirmed by OSS (American operatives) testimony.
No, he stifled NEWS of what was going on. Serbs were fleeing Kosovo in the seventies and eighties. There was also fighting continuing after WWII.
Tito allowed illegal immigration of Albanians and put taxes on Serbs to fund Kosovo.
And your soldiers stand by passively while Serbs are murdered and their churches are destroyed.
"Slovenes" stopped the Turks in the Krajina? LOL How laughable! How could they when their "historical" territory was near the Italian border? Come back to reality, Aker and grow up.
Those stories are from the New York Times in the 1980s. They do check out.
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